In reading a number of these adventures, and in playing in an adventure path that I haven't read, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the STUPIDEST thing a party can do in a Paizo adventure is to scout out the enemy. I'm getting the increasing impression that the encounter design basically requires the players to ignore the basics in good military tactics.
Does anyone else get that impression? Is that bothersome for your table or good for your table? Do the players of rogues, rangers, and scouts mind? Is there any way for Paizo to either fix this design problem or signal to DMs how to reward good scouting?
Director of Brand Strategy
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In reading a number of these adventures, and in playing in an adventure path that I haven't read, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the STUPIDEST thing a party can do in a Paizo adventure is to scout out the enemy. I'm getting the increasing impression that the encounter design basically requires the players to ignore the basics in good military tactics.
Does anyone else get that impression? Is that bothersome for your table or good for your table? Do the players of rogues, rangers, and scouts mind? Is there any way for Paizo to either fix this design problem or signal to DMs how to reward good scouting?
Can you give examples? While I understand the theory behind your question, I don't know where it comes into play that scouting is a "bad idea" as written.
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Creative Director
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In reading a number of these adventures, and in playing in an adventure path that I haven't read, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the STUPIDEST thing a party can do in a Paizo adventure is to scout out the enemy. I'm getting the increasing impression that the encounter design basically requires the players to ignore the basics in good military tactics.
Does anyone else get that impression? Is that bothersome for your table or good for your table? Do the players of rogues, rangers, and scouts mind? Is there any way for Paizo to either fix this design problem or signal to DMs how to reward good scouting?
I'd love to see some examples of where you feel that scouting out a location is stupid.
On one level, of course, it IS stupid, since I'm not sure how fun it is for a table full of gamers to sit around and wait while the rouge skulks around the dungeon exploring in advance, since that means all the NON-scouts have nothing to do.
But that doesn't mean that we consciously create every encounter to be non-scoutable. I'm really curious to learn more about why you think that way, because even though it has the potential to make for a table full of bored players as I mention above, scouting a location IS an important tactical step.
I've generally found that 3.5 does somewhat discourage scouting. Though in my experience its more along the lines of playing Russian Roulette. Its not so much that encounters are designed not to be good for scouting but that your pretty much gambling that enemy X that is down the hall has no way to detect you and bring to bear the full array of powers meant to be a significant challange to an entire party (and therefore overwhelming to a single scouting character).
Usually the enemy is operating on home turf, often that means they are essentially set up for an ambush. If one player sneaks into the room significantly ahead of his comrades and a wall falls down behind him while all the monsters jump out then that player is very close to screwed. If the wizard detects you and casts hold person there is no one immediately around to protect you from the coup de grace thats coming the following round etc.
If the same happens but its just the party being split in half or one player in the party being paralysed then the group as a whole will take counter measures. This is especially true at higher levels where the mage has become an essential party member with the job description of 'fix the problem'. In this case scouting means a lone individual wandering around a lethal environment without the kind of magical support so necessary to save your behind from a powerful spell or brutal trap.
Hence my experience has been scouting is usually not the best plan because even if it works great 4 out of 5 times that just means the scouting player is going to buy the farm on that 5th encounter. Essentially encounters tend to be designed to challange a whole party and most big baddies of whatever stripe have some kind of counter measure to help it detect intruders that are sneaking into the area so that the whole party has a tough time getting the drop on the big baddie, this combo means that a single PC is in great danger wandering significantly ahead all alone.
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I don't think that they are discouraging scouting by any means. Several of the encounters I have read actually give you information the PC's can use if they do some scouting. I will have to say that most of the time the information is not a huge advantage in the encounter but I am guessing the reason for that is what James stated above. Scouting is fun for one or two players and that is all. So if a lot of encounters are designed to be harder without scouting then at every building or cave the PC are going to scout it out. Three of the players have to take a 15 minute break while the scout goes on ahead. Players are going to get real pissed about that pretty quick but if they get their ass kicked every time with out scouting they will not have much choice. Not the best way to design an encounter I am guessing.
Just to echo some previously made points, the nature of the game limits scouting. This is pretty similar to "hacking" in Shadowrun 1st or 2nd ed. Yeah, it is an iconic part of the game, but it fails because it takes the rest of the table out of the encounter.
That said stealth, especially party-wide stealth via spells or class abilities, is greatly rewarded in most any encounter.
Hmmm ... in my experience, scouting works, because the rogue or other scout never was more than a few rooms away (just far enough for the scream for help to be heard <G>).
In the three APs I'm involved in, the rogue in each has had opportunities and successfully scouted about.
Scouting can be a good idea but it highly depends on the foes the party is facing.
Against humans & humanoids foes, scouting can be really efficient, but when creatures like aberrations, which have good perception scores and tremendous hiding skills, come into play, the scout becomes a prey and as lots of the predator creatures use grab or swallow strategies to quickly disable their target, things that a scout has lots of difficulties to deal with.
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I think scouting falls down at higher levels due to magical alarms, blindsense, tremorsense, etc, rather than any deliberate encounter design on Paizo's part.
Having said that, if every room or cave is populated to 'provide a level-appropriate challenge for 4 PCs of (EL-plus-or-minus-one-to-four)', then it is going to be exasperating for a PC who is set up to be a backstabbing or sniping commando.
A good compromise is, instead of always having single high-CR critters, or mobs sat in big lumps, is to have an occasional 'encounter' consist of the same number of creatures, but dispersed through several nearby rooms, within earshot of each other, so if approached by a typical unstealthy party, the normal encounter, with the whole group occurs anyway, but if approached by a stealthy PC, he has the option to sneak past them all (relying on several checks) or take out small pockets of enemy at a time.
I'm also interested in hearing what Paizo examples the original poster has in mind.
From my general D&D experience, there's a "sweet spot" where scouting works well (note: by "scouting" I mean sneaking up close to an enemy, not staying 100+ feet away). At level 1 (say), the difference between a stealthy character's Hide/Move Silently and the average monster's Spot/Listen is not terribly big, and many monsters can kill you in one hit; that makes scouting a pretty bad idea. And at high levels, everyone in the party can be invisible/inaudible (if they wanted to), so there's no particular need for one character to go ahead alone; either an enemy will have the special senses needed to detect the scout (blindsense, scent, true seeing, etc.) or they won't. But in the middle, you have a point where a sneaky character can crank up his Hide/MS skills (with a Cloak of Elvenkind or feats or whatever) to a pretty good level and he won't be in danger of dying in one blow. At that point, scouting is pretty useful.
All IMHO, of course.
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From my experience playing Living Arcanis' modules, it is very, very common to have the NPCs ambush the PCs and almost never the other way around.
Just compare how often you need to make Perception checks and Stealth checks.
Another real-world-stupid but gameplay-savvy example I have come from yesterday's playing session of the very beginning of RotRL. My Archer accompanied the other PCs in their foray to rescue bystanders when it would have made far more sense for him to stay on the roof of the main haven and provide covering fire to any returing group, whether PCs or NPCs.
While I do research to back up this gut impression, I will say that I agree entirely with Jeremy Mac Donald's analysis and that Paizo may be reflecting a flaw in the system unconsciously.
I deny the validity of the argument that adventures should outlaw scouting because it's boring to the other players at the table. First off, the major premise of the game is supposed to be that the players share the spotlight in turns as one feature of team play. Class design was set up so that for some challenges you'd need a wizard, for some challenges you'd need a cleric, for some challenges you'd need a face man, for some challenges you'd need a nature specialist, etc. It's boring as hell to play the ineffectual rogue in an undead adventure or a fighter facing foes best handled by a wizard. But that doesn't invalidate using undead when an adventure calls for it.
Is it really fair to automatically deny the spotlight to players who play classes who gather information as one of their primary purposes? It's okay for the rogue's player to be bored during the cleric's spotlight scenes, for the fighter and wizard players to be bored during the diplomacy scenes, but not okay for the other players to let the ranger/scout/rogue shine? If the other players are bored, perhaps they should try to be a bit more giving as players.
Second, it's insanely useful investment of time to the other players. If they're bored, they're being short-sighted. While the PC scouts, the others in the party should prepare. The wizard and cleric can partially customize their spell lists and even the fighter can figure out which weapon from his golf bag is the best one to use, rather than figure it out on the fly in melee. While the scout's doing all this, the players can spend the time prepping the next day's spell lists or at least brainstorming their strategy and tactics (under the rather problematic assumption that the scout will make it back to them).
My first example is Crown of the Kobold King, where
Contrast this with Hollow's Last Hope, where
And I'm a player in an Age of Worms campaign and our party just keeps getting its head handed to us whenever we scout. (Please use spoilers for anything related to that AP, as I don't want to read it.) It's possible that we're dumb as scouts, but we send out a scout and a rogue as a team and they either get mauled or come back with little information.
Lastly, I want to point out that if I'm right about this technique, it doesn't mean that the modules are badly designed. I'm arguing that if my gut instinct is right, this is a flaw that the authors should watch out for.
Having said that, if every room or cave is populated to 'provide a level-appropriate challenge for 4 PCs of (EL-plus-or-minus-one-to-four)', then it is going to be exasperating for a PC who is set up to be a backstabbing or sniping commando.
A good compromise is, instead of always having single high-CR critters, or mobs sat in big lumps, is to have an occasional 'encounter' consist of the same number of creatures, but dispersed through several nearby rooms, within earshot of each other, so if approached by a typical unstealthy party, the normal encounter, with the whole group occurs anyway, but if approached by a stealthy PC, he has the option to sneak past them all (relying on several checks) or take out small pockets of enemy at a time.
Bingo. That's a great solution.
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roguerouge, it really depends on the module/encounter/author. Some encounters are bad to scout, per the information you gave for D1. Sometimes this is for story integrity, sometimes it's for wordcount (more entrances can mean more rooms depending on how it is done) the first three adventures of savage tide had 5-6 places where scouting could help if done right, it also had 2-3 where it would bring a string of too many bad guys for the party to handle. The solution above is even used in the first adventure IIRC.
In reading a number of these adventures, and in playing in an adventure path that I haven't read, I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the STUPIDEST thing a party can do in a Paizo adventure is to scout out the enemy.
While I do not deny any of the points that have been made by you and others, I do not see where this is an inherent flaw of Pathfinder RPG and Paizo's modules, as opposed to a dynamics that does not fit well with fantasy RPGs in general.
The issue of the rogue/ranger hijacking the game and resulting in other players being bored definitively is problematic, but has nothing to do with Pathfinder RPG itself.
As for the issue of magic and traps, they are a reality of medieval fantasy, they are likely to be there in any other sword and sorcery RPG...
My group has used scouting extensively before (admittedly not in a Paizo adventure) and worked wonderfully, but players and DMs worked together in that :
- A) DM made sure that a only reasonable time was spent on scouting.
B) DM made sure the other could interact within themselves, with the scout or other NPCs (in other words keeping them "in the game") whenever as possible.
C) Scout player did what he/she had to do and came back to the others promptly.
D) Other players would take a passive look to the game and enjoy the scout adventure.
A scout should always be ready to come back with a result of "this place is full of traps and critters! I'm not going in there alone!" Friendly DMs could easily hint as much in the scout primary investigation with a "you're about to do something stupid" insinuation.
That is already a good deal of information to bring back, and the group can prepare appropriately.
'findel
I think it's a potential issue that can be handled with a good DM.
My character is currently going through AOW as well (that link isn't a spoiler by the way), and he is a scout/ranger. I have a love-hate relationship with scouting. I've maxed out the relevant skills. I know, more or less, what not to do, and generally I have an idea of what I want to find out.
But, prepping aside, once I start scouting I'm absolutely terrified that Fayne will encounter something that the entire party ought to face, not him on his own. I'm also aware that the others will get bored if I take too long.
Add to that the possibility of anti-scouting tactics by enemies (it is their base of operations after all) and magic which trumps my scouting skills and I could easily die.
But this keeps it realistic. It also keeps forays quite short. It also makes me think harder about where I want to go and exactly why I want to go there. What's the ROI, in effect.
And you also start asking "What can I do to make it easier for me, and more fun for the others?" and you start thinking about things like how to keep in contact with the others to involve them with decisions. Like how to make sure you can get back to them quickly. And like how to avoid being insta-killed. That last one is hardest, mainly due to Fayne's catastrophically bad Will save :-)
Anyway, you can find out how Fayne is doing on his journal (AOW spoiler alert!)
Luckily for me, I have Snorter as a DM. And he's posted a good solution to this already, IMO. :-) But if he has one more bad guy casting a mind-affecting spell at Fayne, I'll have to garrot him.
No offense.
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In RotRL at least, our rogue beguiler has done famously at the whole scout ahead thing. She has a lot in her arsenal to back her up in that though. A minor dim door, invisibility, darkvision goggles, the ability to spam silence spells, message, and a necklace of fireballs if everything goes pear-shaped. With invisibilty sphere, silence, and spider climb, we managed to tromp all over a certain keep without raising an alarm until a foe got away. She's frustrated in this particular undead portion that we recently did however. Most of her spells were useless and the variety of things she could do was cut way down, but at least as far as we've seen, there is plenty of scouting opportunities in RotRL and a simple message spell keeps the entire party involved and ready to come to the rescue if things don't turn out to well.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Last party I played in, we had a fair amount of scouting. The rogue would scout and had Shadrach's psicrystal with her (pet rock)
We also did more urban scouting with the silver dragon and the pet rock.
Of course with a mile range, the pet rock could 'yell' for help and Shad could bring the rest of the party, depending on his needs.
"Shad, is Qui-tai in trouble?"
*psicrystal reports it's fine, but she's hard pressed by gnolls.*
"Nope, she's fine."
*Waits a few more rounds, pet rock reports she's down and bleeding* "Wait! She's in trouble! Lets go rescue her!" :-)
What factors in encounter and lair design encourage or reward scouting?
I've listed a few benefits that I expect from scouting: a general sense of the size of the area being adventured into, a peek into parts of the interior, discovery of extra entrances, what the dominant monster type is and a sense of what the exterior guarding mechanisms are like.
I'd add that giving the scout the ability to get a sense of troop deployments and/or patrol schedules would be something that I'd expect occasionally from a good encounter design.
"Yup, there's monsters in there" is not, to my mind a sufficient reward for the huge risk entailed by scouting. I knew that when I sat down at the table at the start of the evening.
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i run online games
so sometimes someone decides to scout along... then while the scout does this, the others do other things in the main page... and when the scout returns he informs the rest of what happened... they can prepare accordingly
also if the scout does risky things he is going to get his ass hand back one day... it comes with the job...
so why play a rogue if the only useful thing is sneak attack while flanking? this for me is stupid... a good character that is nerfed because the group is going to be bored...
James... I do take the comment agravating from a DM perspective...as a DM one must be abkle to give a player 5 minutes to check something, you already make the fighter useless outside combat, so ITS boring for a fighter to be in town? or for the wizard the moment his spells are useless.. like saying fighting against golems?
I as a DM and the poeple who I play as a DM make encoutners with the mind of players could send scouts... If you know what youare confronting its easier... if no the battle is tought as nails... sometimes even almost imposible to win...
and the Kobold Guides say it too... what is ridiculous (not stupid... people should not be called stupid just because they don't get a good idea or have no militar training... or have not seen a militar movie where scouting is well used) is that having the chance the character gets comfortable and lazy and don't use good strategies to get their enemies easier... sometimes you can do the scouting... sometimes... well not everything work well.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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The discussion seems to be limited to physical scouting by a PC. There's lots of other types of recon that a party can use, and depending on the situation, some are better than others.
In addition to sending a PC out ahead to scout, a party can use animal companions or familiars as scouts. These often don't trigger the same response, especially if they're not much of a threat. Most guards won't shoot down every hawk or eagle that flys by for instance. Shapechanging magic can accomplish the same thing for a PC, whether it's wildshape or any of the XXX shape spells. Finally, there's lots of useful divination spells that can scout an area, such as arcane eye, clairvoyance, prying eyes, etc.
If you expand your definition of scouting to include all of these and more, then I don't see anything that discourages scouting.
On one level, of course, it IS stupid, since I'm not sure how fun it is for a table full of gamers to sit around and wait while the rouge skulks around the dungeon exploring in advance, since that means all the NON-scouts have nothing to do.
James! You're a D&D designer, and you don't know how to spell 'rogue' correctly? Hang your head in shame. :P
Seriously, though, I don't think giving players scouting options detracts from the game. If anything, I think it enhances it. In one of my campaigns, for example, the players had to break into a warehouse, run by a group of smuggglers, in order to find a stolen artifact. The warehouse was surrounded by a high wall, with a handful of guards at various posts, and an entrance at one end, where merchants could deliver cargo.
Now in writing this scenario, I didn't have any set idea about how the players had to break into the compound. I certainly tried to think of a couple of ways (they could scale the wall at one end, where there were fewer guards, or pretend to be merchants bringing in cargo). However, I wanted to leave it fairly open, so that players could decide for themselves how they wanted to achieve their goal.
Anyway, after the players scouted the location, they ultimately decided that the best method was to pose as merchants sent to pick up some cargo. Not having any cargo of their own, they decided to make a Gather Information check, and found a merchant willing to give them the receipt for some cargo he had stored there. Using the receipt to legitimately enter the compound, three of the players distracted the warehouse workers, while the two rogues scouted around for the artifact. So while it started out primarily as a scouting expedition, ultimately, it turned into a pretty enjoyable experience for everyone.
One other thing to keep in mind: Just because rogues and scouts are the classes primarily built to scout an area, don't assume that other classes can't contribute meaningfully to such expeditions. Clerics and wizards, for example, have a host of divination spells that give them the ability to scout locations, or even follow the activities of other scouters from afar. Meanwhile, fighters can use Intimidate to help rogues and scouts on Gather Information expeditions, or even just provide a little muscle if things get out of hand. Seriously, if you give players the option of scouting an area, you'll be surprised how many of them get involved in it.
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Also, don't assume that just because rogues and scouts are the classes primarily built to scout an area, that other classes can't contribute meaningfully to such expeditions. Clerics and wizards, for example, have a host of divination spells that give them the ability to scout locations, or even follow the activities of other scouters from afar. Meanwhile, fighters can use Intimidate to help rogues and scouts on Gather Information expeditions, or even just provide a little muscle if things get out of hand. Seriously, if you give players the option of scouting an area, you'll be surprised how many of them get involved in it.
agreed, there arelots of options, thanks for reminding us of them :)
what is ridiculous (not stupid... people should not be called stupid just because they don't get a good idea or have no militar training... or have not seen a militar movie where scouting is well used) is that having the chance the character gets comfortable and lazy and don't use good strategies to get their enemies easier... sometimes you can do the scouting... sometimes... well not everything work well.
Just to be clear, Montalve, I never called anyone stupid. I said that encounter design might be making smart tactics by smart players turn into stupid moves. I'm sorry that I was unclear about that.
I would think that trying to push a scout into every situation is most definitely not a good idea, but that, from what I recall, it doesn't really become a bad idea until the scout decides to get close enough to interact with the targets.
For example, I think that once a scout has determined any exterior defenses of a cave complex, that actually entering it is stupid idea. It is not that I think scouting is bad, just that it isn't going to be a good idea to head deep into a hostile complex when you don't have a secure escape route.
What factors in encounter and lair design encourage or reward scouting?
I've listed a few benefits that I expect from scouting: a general sense of the size of the area being adventured into, a peek into parts of the interior, discovery of extra entrances, what the dominant monster type is and a sense of what the exterior guarding mechanisms are like.
I'd add that giving the scout the ability to get a sense of troop deployments and/or patrol schedules would be something that I'd expect occasionally from a good encounter design.
"Yup, there's monsters in there" is not, to my mind a sufficient reward for the huge risk entailed by scouting. I knew that when I sat down at the table at the start of the evening.
I can't say that I agree with the idea that good encounter design needs to go out of its way to make the game 'scout friendly'. Personally if the DM has to start orchestrating things so that the scout can perform this mission then its time to just give up on it.
Personally I don't design my homebrew adventures by presuming that the party will or will not scout - I try not to even presume a party. I juts make the liches lair or the temple of cultists or whatever. If the players want to scout be my guest if they don't thats fine too...but if scouting means walking into a room where a liche with permanent true seeing happens to hang out then thats obvously really bad news for the scout player. IMO if it does turn out, as I suspect is true, that in D&D its just not a good idea to scout then thats a reasonably valid conclusion. The players will just have to learn to play without scouting, beats having the DM fall all over himself to try and make the encounters work for scouting when they would not normally, IMO.
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what is ridiculous (not stupid... people should not be called stupid just because they don't get a good idea or have no militar training... or have not seen a militar movie where scouting is well used) is that having the chance the character gets comfortable and lazy and don't use good strategies to get their enemies easier... sometimes you can do the scouting... sometimes... well not everything work well.Just to be clear, Montalve, I never called anyone stupid. I said that encounter design might be making smart tactics by smart players turn into stupid moves. I'm sorry that I was unclear about that.
roguerougue, actually my comment is for James
I understand that both of you talk about the situation, and your people take into account scouting... just that sometimes it appears that its not the smartest thing to do :Pmy complain is for James for disregarding a good tactic for the PC for not being surprised and TPK so often :P
I can't say that I agree with the idea that good encounter design needs to go out of its way to make the game 'scout friendly'. Personally if the DM has to start orchestrating things so that the scout can perform this mission then its time to just give up on it.
I agree. However, I would also say that good encounter design doesn't necessarily involve beating the tar out of a creature and taking its stuff. As a DM, I like to give my players opportunities to use skills they wouldn't normally use in combat, and scouting encounters are a way to do that. After all, you're very rarely, (if ever) going to get an opportunity to use disguise or forgery in the middle of combat. However, if you're trying to scout out the defenses of Lord Zan in the city of Hoffelsburg, there's an excellent opportunity to use both of these skills to infiltrate the city's army, pass oneself off as a commoner, or come in under the guise of a merchant.
Giving players opportunities to use skills outside of combat is a way to reward them for putting ranks into those skills in the first place. That doesn't mean that every encounter has to give players these opportunities. However, if you don't throw them in their every once in a while, don't be surprised when the players decide to dump all their skills into Acrobatics and Perception, and ignore things like Linguistics and Stealth.
... it has the potential to make for a table full of bored players as I mention above, scouting a location IS an important tactical step.
Boredom around a gaming table. Never seen it. Just more side conversation.
I can't say that I agree with the idea that good encounter design needs to go out of its way to make the game 'scout friendly'. Personally if the DM has to start orchestrating things so that the scout can perform this mission then its time to just give up on it.
My argument is that if an author or a DM consistently designs adventures that fail to give a core four character the spotlight even once, that's bad design. For example, one adventure with an anti-magic theme? That's fine. Three in a row? That's bad.
roguerougue, actually my comment is for James
Gotcha.
I can think of two instances where scouting was used to good effect in 2 different APs.
RotRL
I'd also add that I thought this encounter was designed well as it actually rewarded the group for being cautious and doing their homework.
SD
I know there are a few more cases as my group does like to collect information ahead of time (well when they're in the mood, sometimes things just have to die). So far, I've been happy with the APs and the background information provided as it helps reward the group when they do scout.
Now that I think of it, my RotRL group has had their butts handed to them everytime they did not have a chance to scout.
For example in Fortress of the Stone Giants
Then they got to the valley around Jorgenfist. They scouted the valley, and took out targets of their choosing. They scouted the fortress and almost and did not nearly have as much trouble.
Granted the group is a ranger, a rogue/mage, and a rather stealthy cleric.
I might go so far as to suggest that Paizo's writers construct encounters the way that most game writers do: with the assumption that the party is going to charge in, swords and wands waving.
Now, of course, not every party operates this way. Some parties are big into scouting and some are big into diplomacy, and I don't think either option is really given all that much thought in the writing of the various AP encounters. This is due, I'm sure, to the limitations involved in writing adventures for an impossibly large number of possible party-types, word-count, etc. such that it seems the target audience must be the average kill, kill, kill party (of course, we could get into a discussion about whether or not that really is the "average" party).
So, I think it's fair to say that Paizo encounters are not written with much thought to scouting, diplomacy, or many of the oddball tactics my party threw at me as we completed RotRL. It is, of course, incumbent upon the DM to figure out the results of actions other than "Charge. Kill." As has been posted above, this is done regularly.
As a personal anecdote, the halfling rogue in my RotRL party snuck into Thistletop and murdered half the goblins there before any alarm was raised. We are halfway through CotCT, and my players still talk about that shining moment for the rogue (who survived the entire AP; this was his personal highlight), and no one at the table was bored while he was sneaking around.
O
As a personal anecdote, the halfling rogue in my RotRL party snuck into Thistletop and murdered half the goblins there before any alarm was raised. We are halfway through CotCT, and my players still talk about that shining moment for the rogue (who survived the entire AP; this was his personal highlight), and no one at the table was bored while he was sneaking around.
I'm not sure if you were suggesting this but I would like to reiterate that this is not what I consider scouting. To me, once one starts wandering through Thistletop, you have stopped scouting and begun engaging the enemy.
(note to self: swap all those enchanters for psions.)Luckily for me, I have Snorter as a DM. And he's posted a good solution to this already, IMO. :-) But if he has one more bad guy casting a mind-affecting spell at Fayne, I'll have to garrot him.
No offense.
And you think I'll treat the DM that sics psionicists on me better than I would if it were enchanters?
Garroting would be a mercy in that case...
More examples... with spoilers aplenty.
"Do not pass Go. Go directly to dead." : Monsters or Traps insta-kill scouts
Rise of the Runelords 2 (haunts). Rise of the Runelords 6 (monsters). Entombed with the Pharaohs (traps and ambushes). Pact Stone Pyramid (traps).
"We only have one shot at this!" : Ticking clock makes it immoral or impossible wait a day to customize spell lists.
Hollow's Last Hope (increases body count). Curse of the Crimson Throne 2 (duh), Carnival of Tears (one day event), final encounter area of Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale (have something like 1-2 days once you've travelled there).
Rise of the Runelords 6 (monsters).
I disagree that this is a bad situation to scout. There being monsters doesn't stop scouting inside a building, it definitely increases the difficulty but has an increase in the amount of rewards. It might kill most that try to enter with stealth, but that just means to me that that it is more likely to be a bad idea to use stealth to scout.
There is more to scouting than stealth, I believe that trying to apply it to every situation is the failure of a scout.
Rise of the Runelords 6 (monsters).I disagree that this is a bad situation to scout. There being monsters doesn't stop scouting inside a building, it definitely increases the difficulty but has an increase in the amount of rewards. It might kill most that try to enter with stealth, but that just means to me that that it is more likely to be a bad idea to use stealth to scout.
It struck me as a module where scouting goes like this: Good work scouting. Good work scouting. Dead scout. The power level of the monsters alone makes a single mistake automatically fatal, although at least scouting the
It struck me as a module where scouting goes like this: Good work scouting. Good work scouting. Dead scout. The power level of the monsters alone makes a single mistake automatically fatal, although at least scouting the ** spoiler omitted ** is possible.
I think that is generally how it goes when you get that close to enemies that you plan to come back with an entire party to defeat. If the scout isn't capable of either mitigating the damage of a single mistake then it would not be a good idea to try it regularly.
But this is a situation where scouting is rewarded and isn't a bad idea, until it is pushed past the skill level of the scout. If they can't recognize that walking into the enemy stronghold is outside their abilities, I wouldn't say it is the adventures fault for killing a scout using a good strategy. Walking into a situation one isn't prepared for isn't a good strategy, and I believe that applies to what the scout does just as much as, if not more than, what a party does.
As a personal anecdote, the halfling rogue in my RotRL party snuck into Thistletop and murdered half the goblins there before any alarm was raised. We are halfway through CotCT, and my players still talk about that shining moment for the rogue (who survived the entire AP; this was his personal highlight), and no one at the table was bored while he was sneaking around.I'm not sure if you were suggesting this but I would like to reiterate that this is not what I consider scouting. To me, once one starts wandering through Thistletop, you have stopped scouting and begun engaging the enemy.
Clearly the entire encounter went way beyond simply scouting, but it didn't start that way. The point being that if the DM is willing to improvise a bit, there is certainly a place for scouting in Paizo adventures, or, at least, as much as there is in any published adventure.
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I think the largest "failure" of scouting in any RPG is the lack of true understanding of all that goes into scouting by both the players and the GM.
I am not a hunter, but I come from a family of hunters. And there are so many nuggets of information left out of most encounters, random or designed.
I personally gave up scouting in any game because I never got the information I needed from the GM to make an effective scout run. Any time I asked a pointed question about certain circumstances, I'd get wrong or even conflicting answers.
Just like I gave up decking in Shadowrun, because the GM's didn't have a fundamental grasp of how computers worked, and nearly all of them were "winging" the decking rules.
There are just some things that can't be played correctly, no matter how an author writes things out.
As sad as it is, it is often best for the scout to be an NPC so the GM can just hand out the information s/he wants too. (Much like the Decker in Shadowrun should probably be an NPC.)
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Due to 3.5 cutting back some of the longer duration buffs (Bull's Strength, etc), it's actually hugely beneficial to stage false assaults to get the spellcaster BBEGs to 'buff up' and then take an hour off before the *real* assault. Many BBEGs don't bother to prepare extra buff spells, or use potions, which will have expired long before your party shows up for real.
It's meta-game-y, but often a respectable tactic, since the *vast* majority of BBEGs seem to be spellcasters who have very different buffed and un-buffed difficulty levels.
In my limited experience (in 20 odd years, we've had surprisingly few rogue players), the scout gets into trouble and dies alone. Fail one roll (or one of the bad-guys gets a great Spot check) and your 7th level Rogue is suddenly hip-deep in angry Hill Giants, while the rest of the players sit around watching him get smooshed into paste. I've never been a huge fan of classes that go off and do their own thing (deckers in Shadowrun, aquatic characters in a non-aquatic campaign, astral travellers, etc.) as the rest of the players stand around talking about Monty Python or whatever, while Solo McLoner gets himself into trouble that he can't handle alone anyway.
I am not a hunter, but I come from a family of hunters. And there are so many nuggets of information left out of most encounters, random or designed.
I personally gave up scouting in any game because I never got the information I needed from the GM to make an effective scout run. Any time I asked a pointed question about certain circumstances, I'd get wrong or even conflicting answers.
Care to elaborate? I'd really be interested in what kind of information you would expect the GM to provide in order to make a 'typical' scouting trip worthwhile :).
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I really don't think it's a problem with the rules that make scouting a problem. Scouting is supposed to be insanely dangerous. Also in RL military it is exceptionally rare to send out one lone person as a scout. normally its a small team of men mostly because for one man scouting generally would be suicide mission.
I personally gave up scouting in any game because I never got the information I needed from the GM to make an effective scout run. Any time I asked a pointed question about certain circumstances, I'd get wrong or even conflicting answers.
Such as? That's information authors should know.