I won't say "never" but it's highly unlikely.
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I won't say "never" but it's highly unlikely.
What about special events (such as part of a con) that let us play a character to a higher level? Don't raise the campaign cap, but only let those PCs participate and advance through a small handful of scenarios only available at events. I know the PFS Document discusses possible opportunities to possibly play level 12s again, but speaks not of advancement in said opportunities beyond level 12.
I won't say "never" but it's highly unlikely.
Josh, I'm curious about this. Is it b/c higher-level adventures need to be bigger for stat blocks and such, or are there other considerations? I've bought every single one of these, but never thought to ask why they stopped @ 12th level.
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I won't say "never" but it's highly unlikely.Josh, I'm curious about this. Is it b/c higher-level adventures need to be bigger for stat blocks and such, or are there other considerations? I've bought every single one of these, but never thought to ask why they stopped @ 12th level.
This is speaking from experience as an author and Triad member from the Living Greyhawk campaign, and all IMHO, of course... :-)
Increased amount/size of stat-blocks is certainly a contributing factor (which can be mitigated by limiting the adventure to specific level bands/tiers). But at higher levels, encounters *really* need to be tailored by the GM to the specifics of the party, much moreso than when PCs are starting out -- and in a home game this is easy enough to do. But in a living-style campaign, while the CRs of an encounter may be appropriate for the levels of the PCs sitting at your table, the particular selection of creatures can, in some cases, simply be a total pushover because of certain abilities that group has; conversely, the creatures could just as easily completely manhandle the group, resulting in a TPK.
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I would suggest implementing a high-level campaign after level 12.
Some many efforts deployed to reach level 12: this need a reward instead of a forced retirement!
To prevent any implication by high-level characters on the world of Golarion, the candidate characters would enter a oneway gate to the outer sphere (campaign setting page 180) and never come back again.
New adventure environments could appear and disappear at will because of planar movements or rifts....(endless possibilities).
The high-level campaign would have its own organized play rules, different from the main campaign (planar forks illegal for play?).
Sorry to resurrect this, and thanks to ArVagor for his explanation, but as a new season of scenarios comes out, I want to revisit this issue.
So, Josh, if you read this, what is the official explanation of why none of these go beyond 12th level?
One reason is probably that the higher the level, the more time is needed to play, so it becomes harder and harder to fit a full scenario into a 4-5 hour block.
Director of Brand Strategy
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Several good points have been mentioned upthread concerning development and playtime, but also consider this: PFS has been active for going on three years now, and we're only just this winter completing the first Tier 12 arc. There have also been very few (I mean really very few) groups reporting that they've even played the two parts of that arc already released. So one reason there's nothing above 12th level at present or in the near future is that other than sporadic threads such as these bringing up the topic every few months, there isn't yet a need for anything above the current level cap. It's something we're watching and have a few ideas of things we might try out, but nothing on the immediate horizon. Get your PCs up to 12 first, play through the existing arc and report it, and we'll take that new data into consideration.
That said....
I have no intention of ever raising the cap. :-) There are a dozen reasons why and I've discussed them at length in other threads and at conventions. The two main reasons are this: folks tend to get more insular as they level up in org play and slowly stop creating new characters to come down and play with the new players. This eventually chokes the veterans out of the "getting and encouraging new players" game and I want to avoid that at all cost. The second reason is that the game gets more and more complicated above that level and the number of GMs who can confidently and entertainingly run a game in the teens shrinks from the same GMs who can do that below level 10. There's also the time limit vs challenges above level 12, Mark's note about the speed of leveling right now, the extra development and layout challenges presented by high level play, etc etc etc.
Now once we see a nice group of retired level 12s reliably forming and playing, my intent is to release annual scenarios for retired PCs. Whether or not this means raising the level cap to accommodate retired PCs is a question for 2012, methinks.
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Why, specifically, aren't the Specials ("Year of the Shadow Lodge") eligible to be treated as 'bring them out of retirement' events? It seems like a natural fit, allowing the Best of the Best to lead the charge in an epic adventure that requires everyone to pull out all the stops.
As someone newer to PFS, I for one do not want to play a special in which every veteran player pulls out their Level 12 and their contributions by far overshadow those of the lower level groups present. Because that is what specials would become: The Level 12s (possibly 13s) and 'Everyone Else'.
Specials in in prior living campaigns have often become more about who is higher level with more toys doing something heroic while everyone else watches than an actual cooperative large group play experience in which everyone has a chance to shine. I have no desire to see them become that here.
EDIT: For coherence because I hadn't had coffee yet when I wrote it.
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Has slowing down the pace of levelling been discussed at all? Thirty-three scenarios from birth till retirement is just too few!
-Matt
It has been discussed in another thread -- link deficient today however so if someone has a link yayyy -- the basic jist of it is that the leveling will not be slowed down to accomodate the faster paced players as it would be unfair to the ones that cannot play as often. The leveling as it stands is the most fair option.
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It has been discussed in another thread -- link deficient today however so if someone has a link yayyy -- the basic jist of it is that the leveling will not be slowed down to accomodate the faster paced players as it would be unfair to the ones that cannot play as often. The leveling as it stands is the most fair option.Has slowing down the pace of levelling been discussed at all? Thirty-three scenarios from birth till retirement is just too few!
-Matt
More importantly it would totally screw up the wealth tables and invalidate all previous scenario which were written and balanced on said tables.
The only way that leveling will slow down or the cap will be increased is if the organized play campaign gets a reboot.
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Has slowing down the pace of levelling been discussed at all? Thirty-three scenarios from birth till retirement is just too few!
-Matt
That wholly depends on how much you play. at the rate I'm going, I started in a GenCon08 session 0, and currently only have 14 sessions under my belt. A lot of this is because I run other players through scenarios I've already run (or timing conflicts forcing me to miss games)and I have 2 more GM credits that my main character isn't high enough to take credit for yet. at this rate my first level 12 character won't be retired until late 2012. AND I play a lot more than those who only play at conventions, so for these people, upping the number senarios would be a big turn off.
As someone newer to PFS, I for one do not want to play a special in which every veteran player pulls out their Level 12 and their contributions by far overshadow those of the lower level groups present. Because that is what specials would become: The Level 12s (possibly 13s) and 'Everyone Else'.
I haven't played the shadow lodge event, but I've heard stories of the lowest table being the first to understand the actual mission, and were pushing along ahead of the high level tables at the at least one point.
Why, specifically, aren't the Specials ("Year of the Shadow Lodge") eligible to be treated as 'bring them out of retirement' events?
Who said that once we have retired level 12s these events wouldn't be expanded to 12s? (Right now we don't have any retired level 12s).
Has slowing down the pace of levelling been discussed at all? Thirty-three scenarios from birth till retirement is just too few!
-Matt
Our first level 12s popped into existence about 22 months after the campaign began. That doesn't seem too quick to me. And if we were to ever change the pace of leveling, we'd have to retire everything released before the moment we changed the pace as the wealth-per-scenario is tied into the rate at which you level vs. gold per character level.
As someone newer to PFS, I for one do not want to play a special in which every veteran player pulls out their Level 12 and their contributions by far overshadow those of the lower level groups present. Because that is what specials would become: The Level 12s (possibly 13s) and 'Everyone Else'.
I've run or witnessed this Special at three events: Paizo Con, Paizo Con UK, and Gen Con. At none of those events did the high tier table over-shadow everyone else. In fact, the Special is written in such a way that it's not possible for the high tier table to simply do everything and let the beginner tables come along for the ride.
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As someone newer to PFS, I for one do not want to play a special in which every veteran player pulls out their Level 12 and their contributions by far overshadow those of the lower level groups present. Because that is what specials would become: The Level 12s (possibly 13s) and 'Everyone Else'.I've run or witnessed this Special at three events: Paizo Con, Paizo Con UK, and Gen Con. At none of those events did the high tier table over-shadow everyone else. In fact, the Special is written in such a way that it's not possible for the high tier table to simply do everything and let the beginner tables come along for the ride.
I'm happy to hear that.
Ok, thanks for the official (and unofficial) responses. I have a clearer sense of why the cap is there now.
To be honest, I buy these not b/c I will ever run (or play in) an official tournament/society adventure, but simply b/c they're reminiscent of short adventures like I used to enjoy in Dungeon magazine. I will run them simply as short adventures; nothing more, nothing less.
I can live w/ the level cap.
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...if we were to ever change the pace of leveling, we'd have to retire everything released before the moment we changed the pace as the wealth-per-scenario is tied into the rate at which you level vs. gold per character level.
Didn't I just say that?
More importantly it would totally screw up the wealth tables and invalidate all previous scenario which were written and balanced on said tables. The only way that leveling will slow down or the cap will be increased is if the organized play campaign gets a reboot.
Maybe you just can't read my posts from Table 38...
FWIW we have at least one level 12 and approximately 15 more players within a scenario or two from hitting the cap. The only thing holding them back is scheduling through the end of th Everwar series. (and I'm the only GM who's run it)
I do try and remind those that are so close that they aren't "guaranteed" to make level 12, but they don't seem to listen. :)
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I suppose I'm in the minority here, but I like the level cap. It changes the way the character develops. Sort of like impending mortality...
Besides, there are so many race/class combinations that I want to try, and so little time. After 37 modules (if the character lives so long), I will build and play a replacement character. I like the variety.
I suppose I'm in the minority here ...
You might be in the vocal minority, but not the actual minority.
Devil's advocate: how does leveling ruin your roleplay? If you're, for example, playing a mournful goth elf with the Governator's voice, how does the possibility of going from level 1 to level 2 cause you to lose the ability to roleplay that character?
The quickness of leveling is, frankly, a myth. It takes you 18-20 months to hit the cap if you play every single scenario the month in which it is released. Considering there are many groups that finish an AP in less time (up to levels 16-18), I'm not so sure that hitting level 12 in 20 months is "quick."
Now I can certainly appreciate that one of the things you can sacrifice in an organized play environment, especially if you play different groups every time, is that story and character cohesion you can get from playing with the same people every session. Hopefully, though, you've created a character you enjoy playing with interesting rules or character quirks and you just play your PC the way you want to play your PC at every session. :-)
I've never had a problem roleplaying in any adventure in any game--roleplaying is largely up to the player, even if you have to create the opportunities for it to happen.
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Devil's advocate: how does leveling ruin your roleplay? If you're, for example, playing a mournful goth elf with the Governator's voice, how does the possibility of going from level 1 to level 2 cause you to lose the ability to roleplay that character?
The quickness of leveling is, frankly, a myth. It takes you 18-20 months to hit the cap if you play every single scenario the month in which it is released. Considering there are many groups that finish an AP in less time (up to levels 16-18), I'm not so sure that hitting level 12 in 20 months is "quick."
Now I can certainly appreciate that one of the things you can sacrifice in an organized play environment, especially if you play different groups every time, is that story and character cohesion you can get from playing with the same people every session. Hopefully, though, you've created a character you enjoy playing with interesting rules or character quirks and you just play your PC the way you want to play your PC at every session. :-)
I've never had a problem roleplaying in any adventure in any game--roleplaying is largely up to the player, even if you have to create the opportunities for it to happen.
As I said it doesn't hurt the "in the moment" roleplaying. And there's no complete loss in the ability to roleplay the character. It's completely possible to act like a racist arrogant Taldan Gnome cleric. And I enjoy it!
The OOC 18-20 months is indeed a long time, but from a character's point of view, its only 37 missions/adventures. How long are these missions? Even if Pathfinders take a month off between each one to write their Chronicles, they would have to retire from the Society after 3 years.
I can't speak for AP's and the pace of leveling. I haven't made the time to play or run them, despite subscribing. :(
I'm used to having more than 3 missions between levels, especially at mid-levels. To me, it's these missions help define the character. The lack of those stories leaves the character less defined. Yes you can create a rich and detailed history for your character, but it's just a story, it's fiction. The events that happen at the table are (sort of) non-fiction.
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Josh, this is on the level cap. I understand some of the reasons for the level cap as far as time issues go. Why not give players the option of playing above el 12 but having the game consume 2 slots instead of one. Pehaps allow PFS players that do no play at Conventions to go above EL 12.
From a [ue business standpoint you are cutting your nose to spite your face. By artificaly capping PFS at EL 12 you are impacting the revenues for pazio for higher level mods that are not created and sold.
From a pure game standpoint the level cap means a great number of real good feats can never be expericenced by players in PFS,
Just so you don/t think I am slaming you I am really enjoying myself playing PFS at my local game store. "Shameless Pulg, Shop at Balck Diamond games in Conord Ca."
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I'd like to see some evidence of widespread play of our existing high-level scenarios before seriously discussing something like this.
From where I sit, it doesn't look like there is much of an audience for this type of thing, because when we provided it, very very few players took advantage of it.
I know that will probably change as things move forward, and we may have jumped the gun a bit in terms of when we released the Eyes of the Ten arc, but so far the available high-level adventures we have provided have generated almost no reported play, almost no discussion on paizo.com, and zero formal reviews.
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From a [ue business standpoint you are cutting your nose to spite your face. By artificaly capping PFS at EL 12 you are impacting the revenues for pazio for higher level mods that are not created and sold.
Doesn't high-level content take more time to develop and cost more to produce all for a smaller audience?
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Devil's advocate: how does leveling ruin your roleplay?
For me, three adventures is just a little too fast. Playing my Ranger I have so many cool and different abilities and spells that I just don't get to use. In LG, I think I played about six adventures between levels, twice as many as PFS. There was just more time to do things. In PFS my ranger just hit 5th level. So far I have cast two (2) spells, fought my favored enemy just four times, used my favored terrain once, never tracked, and never effectively used my animal companion. Also, I never quite have time to check out all the rules and learn how to run a PC at a specific level. I'm going to U-Con in November. I've got to prepare my ranger (character sheets, animal companion build, purchase wish list, PC table tents) for 5th, 6th and 7th level. That's just a little to much/to fast.**
As for the OP, I don't mind a level cap. I wish it was a little higher (14th), but I understand the difficulties with those higher level adventures. I guess what I would like to see is a 'soft reset' to the experience system: 2nd level is gained after 3 adventures, 3rd after the 6th adventure, then after that it takes 4 adventures to level up (10th, 14th, etc). 1-3rd level PCs are just so limiting and more difficult to survive bad rolls. I wouldn't change the gp purchasing power of the PA system nor would I change how PA is awarded, but I would reduce the gold award for all tier 3+ games appropriately. This could also reduce the current need to get 1.75 PA per adventure down to something a little more reasonable like 1.5.
Well, as usual, Just My Thoughts :-)
-Swiftbrook
** yes I know that Kyle and Doug are going to be GMing and I may never reach 6th level, yet alone 7th. They are most likely going to have a TPK competition between the two of them. If I can, I'm just going to stay far away from from them and pack extra survival gear when I can't.
All I'm doing is home brew stuff until there's support through level 20. Even if I do run some short term game I prefer high level games. Low level stuff is way over done.That said....
I have no intention of ever raising the cap.
Then it's entirely possible that an organized play environment that requires you to play through those low levels might not be for you. ;-)
Also: what Erik said.
I'd like to point out that at GenCon we had trouble making one legal table for 12th level play. Out of the 4 or so GMs that were ready to play I was the only one to actually have a table and we had to sit a GM at that table to make it legal.
I really don't see a problem with the cap yet.
I know, personally, this has been an accessibility/avoidance issue. After my main hit 11th last year (at this time) I just stopped playing her.
One of the main factors being accessibility: I knew I wanted to play certain mods since I only had 3 left so it had to be 'those' mods. The other being avoidance, because, I knew I had only three left.
...I have heard similar concerns from other players reaching as early as 8th or 9th. "OMG I only have 9 mods left!"
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I'd like to point out that at GenCon we had trouble making one legal table for 12th level play. Out of the 4 or so GMs that were ready to play I was the only one to actually have a table and we had to sit a GM at that table to make it legal.
I really don't see a problem with the cap yet.
I know, personally, this has been an accessibility/avoidance issue. After my main hit 11th last year (at this time) I just stopped playing her.
One of the main factors being accessibility: I knew I wanted to play certain mods since I only had 3 left so it had to be 'those' mods. The other being avoidance, because, I knew I had only three left.
...I have heard similar concerns from other players reaching as early as 8th or 9th. "OMG I only have 9 mods left!"
This is quite true in our area -- we have a number of 9+ characters, and are now looking at what we want to play for them, versus keeping enough of the higher level mods open for our other characters.
Now, are all of our mods reported? Not a chance. Why? Because typically, whoever is GMing us just plain forgets. And has forgotten for over a year now (we only began playing PFS last September). So consequently, since (as far as I know) only GMs can report a game (i.e. you can't report your own progress) our high level characters will probably never "show" as high. (Any chance players will ever be able to record their own progress? I think this would drastically improve reporting.)
As far as the cap goes, I personally am totally fine with it, as is most of our group I think, but between the rate of leveling and the relatively few mods (one character leveling to cap takes over half the mods at this point in time), it does make it a bit tough.
And Josh, I know you have said part of the reason you have the cap is to encourage new characters being built -- great! But why not increase the production of mods? If it's cost...I have a hard time going along with that one. I talked to quite a few people at GenCon that would love to write mods, even on a volunteer basis -- maybe you can have two categories of mods - free-written ones that are the "normal" mods, and paid-written ones that are more "Core" or "special" mods?
My point to more mods is that I can honestly say at the moment that our group has almost zero mods available to us to level a new character, and we only have 2 characters a piece right now - one that is in the 9-11 range and one in the 3-5 range. So unless we replay (which would be out of spirit and not really desirable by our group), we're stuck, and are not even able (though willing) to help out the idea of play play play, at lower levels.
More importantly it would totally screw up the wealth tables and invalidate all previous scenario which were written and balanced on said tables.
I see this as fairly easy to compensate for: 1.)Change a few numbers in each scenario to fix the gold - cheap and easy since everything is PDF and 2.) make it so that only characters created as of XX-XX-XX date start on this new leveling system. Yes, you may get people that have a bit more wealth than others on occasion, but that won't happen for long as those people will level quickly. Making this a non-linear leveling curve would help things along on that aspect even moreso, and probably make the whole world fall into peaceful dance...or at least a chunk of us happy for our characters.
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Now, are all of our mods reported? Not a chance. Why? Because typically, whoever is GMing us just plain forgets. And has forgotten for over a year now (we only began playing PFS last September). So consequently, since (as far as I know) only GMs can report a game (i.e. you can't report your own progress) our high level characters will probably never "show" as high. (Any chance players will ever be able to record their own progress? I think this would drastically improve reporting.)
As a GM (and sometimes as the coordinator of a convention), one of your most important (maybe sacred) duties is to report the results of your scenarios online at paizo.com/pathfindersociety. Reporting is a cascading effect. We need accurate records so that we know how many people are playing Pathfinder Society each month so that we can track growth so that we can properly budget the Society. The more people that play, the more money we dedicate to the Society (on potential things like player and GM rewards). Failing to report can also have direct consequences for a player who loses his chronicle sheets—because we track things like sessions played and prestige gained, we can do a fairly decent job of rebuilding a character sheet that was lost in a fire or left behind at a convention. If a character’s online records are not accurate, then in a very real sense the character’s physical records are not as well. Physical records always count as the truest accounting of a character—but keep in mind the consequences of failing to your report your sessions.
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As a GMOK...but that doesn't really help our situation...that hasn't happened and now things are screwed up. I'm putting forth some ideas to help that situation, and I highly doubt we are the only ones having that issue.
You are indicating to me that the data Erik and Josh are looking at appears to be valid. You aren't playing higher level (by choice) and what you are playing isn't getting reported. No need to raise the level cap. Which appears to be the current official position.
EDIT: And letting players self report is only an open invitation for abuse, so then you have to create a two step process which is actually more difficult and requires more work for everyone than the current system.
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As a GMOK...but that doesn't really help our situation...that hasn't happened and now things are screwed up. I'm putting forth some ideas to help that situation, and I highly doubt we are the only ones having that issue.
You can designate one person to report all future and past scenarios. As coordinator you can report even ones you did not personally run.
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That said....
I have no intention of ever raising the cap. :-) There are a dozen reasons why and I've discussed them at length in other threads and at conventions. The two main reasons are this: folks tend to get more insular as they level up in org play and slowly stop creating new characters to come down and play with the new players. This eventually chokes the veterans out of the "getting and encouraging new players" game and I want to avoid that at all cost. The second reason is that the game gets more and more complicated above that level and the number of GMs who can confidently and entertainingly run a game in the teens shrinks from the same GMs who can do that below level 10. There's also the time limit vs challenges above level 12, Mark's note about the speed of leveling right now, the extra development and layout challenges presented by high level play, etc etc etc.
Now once we see a nice group of retired level 12s reliably forming and playing, my intent is to release annual scenarios for retired PCs. Whether or not this means raising the level cap to accommodate retired PCs is a question for 2012, methinks.
+1.