|
I've been DMing the Age of Worms campaign for about two years now and we're well and truly into the high level stage of things. The characters are 17th level, going to hit 18th in a session or two.
Before I comment on pathfinder’s impact on our high level play, let me state a few things about the campaign.
I allow all the splat books, but I've heavily tweaked the feats to try and match pathfinders take on things.
We play spell points from Unearthed Arcana. This was done as we have an evil party and this gave the cleric the option of "Spontaneous healing" to a certain degree
The spell compendium is in play and the spells in here take precedence over any spell in other splat books. I have ruled some spells out due to the spell point option (Limited wish and wish are a bit too powerful with spell points). Actually less of a rule out than enforced strict limitations on their usage to help balance the extra power spell points provide.
We use magic item compendium and I’ve stuck to wealth by level as much as possible within the confines of the campaign. There have been two occasions where players got to a location of significant wealth and access to magic gear that I allowed them to respect their gear as they saw fit and could afford.
With these provisions in place and given the questions from Jason in the sticky post, here's my take on things.
1) How do high level characters compare to one another? There are some inequities when facing one another, but do the classes still successfully fill a role when played as part of a group? Which classes need better high level abilities and what might they be within theme?
The classes play well together. No one class seems to outshine the others in our game. I've discussed this point heavily in other threads and I know there are people who just won't agree. However, for our group, using characters that have grown organically, with little restriction on gear based on wealth per level, all the characters work well together.
However, we did have to house rule in an option for melee characters to use their iterative attacks for movement. When they started getting three attacks per round but couldn't use them after moving, it started making fighting types fall well and truly behind the bell curve. This option has already been discussed in the combat thread.
Please note our experience is based off heavy group work, with all players working together to make the group more effective. This means the spell casters in my group are more than willing to spend points fully buffing the other players in order to make them more effective, and the fighters readily take the big hits so the casters stay out of trouble. There are spells in the spell compendium that are essential for party success, particularly mass conviction to boost saves. Greater Heroism does this better in the Pathfinder rules, except it can only target individuals. A mass version would be useful. It would also be useful for clerics to have a mass booster like conviction in the pathfinder rules, if you don't want people to be reliant on the old 3.5 books.
- How does the game change if there is a limit to the number of "buff" spells that an individual character can benefit from? How does this affect the game if the limit is 3, 5, or a number equal to 1 per two or four levels.
I tried to implement this change to our campaign but after discussing it with a few of my players we decided against it. There were some situations that would've TPK'd our party if they hadn't been buffed, and some critters that would've been walked over if they hadn't had time to buff. I can't comment more than this on this point sorry. Without play test experience I don't know how it'll pan out, but it will certainly change how some of the pre existing modules play out.
- With the changes to many of the high level spells to massive damage dealers, how does this impact fights against high HP monsters. Does this give the melee classes a better role in a high level fight.
This change made a big difference to the style of play of my casters. Because of the hit point nature of damage now, it means fighting types have a much better chance of staying in fights after one of these babies goes off, even if they fail. The damage output is still high enough to be scary though. My casters no longer rely on dropping a death spell to get the job done. They still try them but realise that someone else will probably have to finish the job for them. It's also changed how many big hitting types I can throw at my players. First time we played with the limited death spells I didn't compensate enough in the fight design and threw just a few too many giants at them. Luckily they had the capacity to run away and try again.
The fighters in my group wouldn't function as well without maneuverability items. There's a cheap pair of teleporting boots in magic item compendium that two of the melee types still use (up to 60ft teleport). It's helped them out of a number of holding type spells (solid fog for example) without relying on the casters overly much. The new critical feats are also proving popular with my fighting types. The bleed effect is a killer, also the blindness if you can drop it onto a caster. I tried to convince one of my players to take up the sword and board feat that makes people unable to leave your threatened squares but haven't sold him on it yet. I can see that being a great mage disruptor as well.
We haven’t had too much trouble with the classic improved invisibility flying caster of death issue, as our group works well together. However, I'd recommend some of the items I mentioned above making their way somehow into the game.
The only other point I'd like to make is certain skills become so high as to make checks on them obsolete after a certain level. Spellcraft to cast defensively is practically a given at the moment. An automatic pass makes it very hard to do anything about spell casting in combat. We're ok with that in my group but it is an issue that I think needs looking at. I’m sure it's been discussed before.
Fights take forever at high level. This is seriously slowing down progress for us in the campaign, however every fight is becoming memorable rather than just a few different ones. Each fight seems much tenser. Part of that is the great scenarios in the campaign, but much of it has to do with sheer variety of things going on as well. I'd like to see combat speeded up but I don't really know how to achieve that. Part of it at my table is player prep and focus, but part of it is all the number crunching and dice rolling. I can't really offer much more advice.
This one’s been more a summary of our experiences to date rather than a discussion point. Hope it helped.
Cheers