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DC 423 dominate person. BZZZZZT. Thank you for seeing the light of Mesmer. We'll be taking that army to go. Now saddle my horse. Scratch that *quickened polymorph object* You are the horse.Example: I need to convince the king to help me. I could of course kill him, because I'm a superhero, but that won't be the same, and there's no way his people would follow me if I am guilty of regicide.
And it's got to be better than "make a diplomacy check". Imagine if we resolved encounters with 'fight checks'
Sure, because no king hever was aware of that problem and has taken any
countermeasure.Any noteworthy king that is not adequately protected will be already a puppet of some other NPC with the power of dominating him, so you will not be competing with the king ST but with the spells already dominating him.
One adequately protected will will almost certainly notice your attempt and will not appreciate it.
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Talk about influence and obligations is good and all, but the Pathfinder rules don't support you at all.
Other game systems do. For example, Damnation City, by White Wolf covers this. Or many indie games nowadays. But there is no framework of support for that kind of play in Pathfinder. The little bits that there are (ie Diplomacy checks) have the aforementioned problems.
GMs are really on their own, running their own pet subsystems, etc. Which is great. Which is fun. Which is something I do and advocate. But it's not playing Pathfinder. You might call it that, but that's not what you're doing anymore.
DiplomacyYou can use this skill to persuade others to agree with your arguments, to resolve differences, and to gather valuable information or rumors from people. This skill is also used to negotiate conflicts by using the proper etiquette and manners suitable to the problem.
Check: You can change the initial attitudes of nonplayer characters with a successful check. The DC of this check depends on the creature's starting attitude toward you, adjusted by its Charisma modifier. If you succeed, the character's attitude toward you is improved by one step. For every 5 by which your check result exceeds the DC, the character's attitude toward you increases by one additional step. A creature's attitude cannot be shifted more than two steps up in this way, although the GM can override this rule in some situations.
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Any attitude shift caused through Diplomacy generally lasts for 1d4 hours but can last much longer or shorter depending upon the situation (GM discretion).
You can get people to listen to you and maybe get their help for an immediate action.
Long term you need much more than simply the diplomacy skill.|
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Things that make mid/high-level unplayable:
4.) Railroaded plots. ... No time for crafting, buying, selling, sleeping, or any of that "normal" stuff. The GM runs a tight ship.
Interestingly, my experience is exactly the opposite. Problem is: GM gives a quest (Go to the Cerulean Sea and find the lost civilization of Atlantis), player immediately goes Greater Teleport: I'm here, want a souvenir? (substitute Greater Teleport for any of your favored tactics, such as scry'n'fry, find the path and most divination spells, etc)
Almost all objectives are hastily achievable with a lotta spells, and PCs can generally solve one by day. There are little to no downtimes, since if the GM hands any quest, they can probably solve it in one day or two. I converted a 13th level 3.5 campaign to 4e and the wizard player told me: Thank God, I was about to get Greater Teleport.
The PCs are the one who runs a tight ship. You give them an objective, it's generally done in under a week. Try DMing a high-level campaign and leaving your players without ANY goals whatsoever.
Only if you allow the spells to do stuff that they can't do.
1) greater teleport to Atlantis: where you have got your reliable description?
2) Find the path: "The recipient of this spell can find the shortest, most direct physical route to a prominent specified destination, such as a city, keep, lake, or dungeon."
It don't find the path to a lsot continent. You have the name of a city on the lost continent? Good, now you have the most direct physical path to it (if it still exist).
Not the teleporting path, the astral projecting path, the plane shifting path.
You have a physical route to follow.
Straight that way and sorry, it pass through the Sargasso Sea and the Bermuda Triangle.
And so on for countless other spells.
Read the limitations, spells are powerful but not omnipotent.
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I've both DMed and played in 12+ and over games. When I hear people having PCs say I'll use fly or ressurect, I sigh and say what are you trying to put them against? granted they have a lot of power but you are GOD!!! as DM you should craft a tale that makes them have to do specific challenges. I had a group having to do a scavenger hunt around the multiverse to win the soul back from a triskter god as he was testing the PCs' who had "decided" to retire. i had clearly set challenges and they either met them or didn't. also dungeon delving is mostly a thing of the past at these levels as is most material plane encounters.
They have these powers and spells thatwhen put against normal armies can easily decimate foes, have them be called upon by some planar traveler or other high level npc they met at lower levels to help them in some alien landscape to battle a coven of fiendish dragon witches who are breeding powerful half-dragon demons to slowly send into the multiverse aided by there fiendish undead companions.
As for players who are using spells and other things to break the rules, let them for a bit. I mean if its fun for them don't completely squash there fun. though if they break them you can to the have uped the ante than break the rules add templates that can't noramlly be added to a creature, splice a creature my classic is the hydra-dragon or the beholder-tarresgue, or any other interresting combinations, i try to cap my adventurers to about 30 or 40 levels though, because after about 22 its is honestly hard to do stuff on the fly but not impossible.
Though a good rule to remember for High level play is you are the DM, you are GOD and it is your world your multiverse and the PCs' no matter how high a level they are, are still peons in this world and subject to the rules that you and the books have in place.
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It was the most boring time I've ever spent playing D&D.I can only imagine...how horrible :(It wasn't so bad up until we fought Orcus and Asmodeus, with their dragon army. But that's when the GM opened up the flood gates of monty haulness. At first I was glassy eyed with glee over all the stuff (especially the rod of seven parts which I had been questing for since 10th level, and had only discovered 5 pieces by then).
That was all fine. But the campaign should have ended then. Instead we became the Justice League of Galaxia. It SHOULD have been fun, I suppose. But there was nothing to do but kick super villain's asses. Nothing.
We didn't need food. We didn't need air. We didn't need a planet. The only thing that could possibly challenge us was some deux ex machina GM fiat uber monster, and each time we beat one, our loot level doubled again.
There was nothing but endless combat that we inevitably won and it became a literal chore trying to decide which awesome magical items to use for the next fight.
Different strokes for different folks I suppose. It just went from the sublime to the ridiculous in no time flat.
High level play is like a MMO. Everybody goes do their "Lolth runs", or "Tiamat runs" or "Orcus runs". There's a line outside Tiamat's cave on the 1st layer of Hell/Baator. Devils love it because they get to charge entrance fees.
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I can see why you would be bored. It's also why high level play tends to get problematic if you insist on the whole "slay the dragon" again routine once you hit double digits. Any plot that relies on a single encounter or outcome is going to get destroyed the second it meets the players.
See my other posts. That's why we had the FTL sailing ship. The GM set us up as a D&D version of the Green Lantern Corps. We were the defenders of the galaxy, and he'd pit us against some awesome super-villain on some planet that was raping and pillaging willy-nilly. We'd fly in and save the day.
Now the GM was very imaginative. He made up some really crazy things for us to fight. My ranger died twice, and was cast into the void and had to be retrieved by a wish. (Back then dying cost you a point of constitution, so it was a real bummer).
We weren't fighting an endless parade of dragons. Especially not after we slew an army of dragons on our home planet. We were fighting Nazi versions of Superman, or planet-spanning slimes, or interstellar super beings...
I appreciated the effort he put in, but man, another day of kicking God's ass again? Booooring.
Ayep. That's why I prefer the game to *not* be about combat. Sure there's combat, and hell, I like kicking butt as much as the next person, but an endless stream of combats is dull, and an endless stream of epic combats is stultifyingly dull.
Impossible to hit AC. The BBEG spent the last 20 years in gladiatorial combat and can hit 39 AC with a +18 on damage and a crit threat of 15? Nobody in the party can match that with their armor and shields. Which, with multiple attacks, means the meatshield of the party is hamburger after two rounds. Most parties don't have two meatshields. Everybody else pops smoke and leaves the area.
The players in my group have concluded that AC doesn't matter; at a high-enough level you will get hit. They get by okay, and I don't worry about it. In a hard combat, there's usually at least one character death; it's expected. After all, the players expect all the monsters to die - why should they be the only ones?
Magical choice lockup. Let's see, do I use the Level 9 mega-spell that will kill everyone, or the Level 5 spell just for this type of monster, or buff everyone with a Level 7 spell - is it dinner time already?
Six seconds. I say this all the time. "Hey, a round is six seconds. What are you doing? You don't know? Okay, you delay until you do." Another thing that helps a lot is the "you're next" thing - telling the next person in the initiative order to nut up and be ready. But I make heavy use of delay for spellcasters that can't make up their mind. It's even realistic - if they're sitting there pondering what to cast, that's exactly what they are doing.
Railroaded plots. You defeated a room full of ninjas? Sorry, you made too much noise in the dungeon, the ogres in the next room heard you and here they come. Defeat them and the last ogre standing sets off the alarm that wakes up the dragon. Ok, you defeated them all, congrats, you leveled. Which you did last game too. Have your character re-optimized with a prestige class at their new level by next game! You have to race the goblin hordes to save the princess by nightfall. No time for crafting, buying, selling, sleeping, or any of that "normal" stuff. The GM runs a tight ship.
Yes, I agree that railroaded plots are an anathema - but a pure sandbox campaign where the PCs wander without purpose is not fun for the GM - how can you plan for a campaign where today they're exploring deep in the elemental plane of earth looking for diamonds the size of boulders, tomorrow they decide to create a small kingdom, and the next day they start an interplanar hunt in order to rid the multiverse of the Doomguard?
I just can't see any GM staying sane with a high-level sandbox campaign. Note that Kingmaker was *not* a sandbox in the largest sense of the word - the PCs have a very defined purpose, even at higher levels. It's not like they could up and head for Ustalav without abandoning everything they worked for (and all who depended on them).
Realizing that at Level 18, your player character can pretty much take on the baddest, drunkest, ugliest dwarf in the bar - and win. Which means the city guard is about as threatening as a set of bowling pins, and you don't have to take their riffraff when they show up to break up the bar fight. By...
This is an issue, and it is why I will not run an evil campaign. If the PCs are the good guys, why would they do this? And if they're not, then sure, every once in a while some fool who doesn't know who they are will start trouble. But it's not like they'll lop his head off - they'll teach him a lesson. This is a common trope in heroic fiction and film, and it's a fun one. I've used it, and the players felt damn good teaching that no-good NPC a lesson.
Not that it didn't have repercussions later, of course :)
I personally am the same way, though I would probably limit the sources initially just because I'd rather find appropriate places for the rest in the world that I would be creating and using additional sources to help make the different regions feel different. But those who are overly worried about potential combinations and than allow massive amounts of material need to understand that they are the source of their own headaches.That's why you are careful about what sources and materials you use. If you allow all possibly compatible sources with no screening, you deserve what you get. You may not be able to predict every combination, but most of the major ones have clear warning signs.I allow every single official WoTC and Paizo printed book in my campaign.Mixing WOTC 3.5 stuff with Pathfinder stuff without screening is a very bad idea.
Too many game mechanics, feats and spells have been changed.
You can add selected pieces of one to the other, but with a lot of caution.
Sure, but that's a game mechanics issue, not an issue with being overpowered. And the players know about the mechanics issue; whenever they want a feat from Pathfinder, they ask me about it. I've got a 200-page feat compendium with many (but not all) feats in it, and I'm doing my darndest to keep up with the Pathfinder ones.
However, that's got little to do with being overpowered. It's more of an issue with 3PP materials, which is how I treat the Pathfinder stuff (and which is pretty much the only non-WoTC material we use). I'm using 3.5e rules, and back-port the Pathfinder stuff to 3.5e. That's way easier than converting the whole bleeding campaign (and all the 3.5e material) to Pathfinder. But the next campaign will be straight Pathfinder; by then there will be sufficient source material.
Pro-memory: when adding a long post to an already existing one always copy it with CTRL-C before posting it. :(
Install Lazaras.
After I got burned in a Cyberpunk 2020 session in which a player threw the "Smear" rule from Maximum Metal at me, I changed my rule to: If I don't own a copy, it doesn't exist. I'm letting players create characters using the Core book and the APG, plus the players guide I'm writing for the campaign.I personally am the same way, though I would probably limit the sources initially just because I'd rather find appropriate places for the rest in the world that I would be creating and using additional sources to help make the different regions feel different. But those who are overly worried about potential combinations and than allow massive amounts of material need to understand that they are the source of their own headaches.That's why you are careful about what sources and materials you use. If you allow all possibly compatible sources with no screening, you deserve what you get. You may not be able to predict every combination, but most of the major ones have clear warning signs.I allow every single official WoTC and Paizo printed book in my campaign.
I do have a rule that they can only use WoTC books that I own, but it's not a huge issue. But that doesn't mean I've read and/or memorized all of them, nor does it mean I intend to. Too much material.
I guess I just have a different take on it. Rather than rigorously using carefully selected rules to make sure that my plans for the campaign don't get derailed, I just roll with it. They've done some crazy and incredibly stupid stuff, and some crazy and incredibly clever stuff. In the end, it all is creating a story, and they're creating the story as much as I am.
Of course, now I'm thinking about making a "Spells that don't exist in my world" list. Teleport and Wish are probably going to be in the Top 5. Not only that, magic items are NOT for sale, and most rewards will be allies and contacts, not treasure.
No teleport, greater teleport, wish, miracle or plane shift? How about word of recall or transport via plants? Or wind walk? You start ending up with a huge ban list.
I'd suggest working on plots that don't require removal of teleport in order to function. Adventuring at a high level is not just adventuring at low level but with more hit points - it's a very, very different animal.
I've both DMed and played in 12+ and over games. When I hear people having PCs say I'll use fly or ressurect, I sigh and say what are you trying to put them against? granted they have a lot of power but you are GOD!!! as DM you should craft a tale that makes them have to do specific challenges. I had a group having to do a scavenger hunt around the multiverse to win the soul back from a triskter god as he was testing the PCs' who had "decided" to retire. i had clearly set challenges and they either met them or didn't. also dungeon delving is mostly a thing of the past at these levels as is most material plane encounters.
They have these powers and spells thatwhen put against normal armies can easily decimate foes, have them be called upon by some planar traveler or other high level npc they met at lower levels to help them in some alien landscape to battle a coven of fiendish dragon witches who are breeding powerful half-dragon demons to slowly send into the multiverse aided by there fiendish undead companions.
As for players who are using spells and other things to break the rules, let them for a bit. I mean if its fun for them don't completely squash there fun. though if they break them you can to the have uped the ante than break the rules add templates that can't noramlly be added to a creature, splice a creature my classic is the hydra-dragon or the beholder-tarresgue, or any other interresting combinations, i try to cap my adventurers to about 30 or 40 levels though, because after about 22 its is honestly hard to do stuff on the fly but not impossible.
Though a good rule to remember for High level play is you are the DM, you are GOD and it is your world your multiverse and the PCs' no matter how high a level they are, are still peons in this world and subject to the rules that you and the books have in place.
This is a short summary of our last game. It ran for several hours.
While using a flying temple to search for the lost shrine that's its home base, they find a tiny isle in the middle of a nearly endless swamp that is home to a small group of half-celestial dwarves that have lived there for millenia. The dwarves were in hiding because their sentries saw an incoming attack.
Reassuring the distraught dwarves, they close the door again and the PCs easily defeat three paraelemental ooze monoliths (CRs 17, 17 and 20) advancing Godzilla-like on the islet. Then they're attacked by the two ooze elemental kraken that were watching the outcome (CRs 20 and 30), and the larger kraken takes out two PCs with Devastating Critical before going down to the 63rd-level fighter. The other kraken is no match for the monk and goes down quickly.
The party briefly pops home - the cleric didn't make the game that day, so they went "to the temple where he was meditating" in order to get a couple of true resurrections cast, and less than half an hour later they're back on the island.
After this show of force, the party has time to speak with the dwarves, and recognize the poverty of their existence. So, they dump off several loads of lumber (more precious than gold), the druid does a plant growth on what's left of the hidden garden (the target of the ooze creatures, who don't get much vegetation to munch on these days, turn their boats to ironwood, etc.
They realize that the chambers the dwarves live in, under the island, were not actually created by the dwarves, and in fact are so incredibly depressing that the party brings in some of their staff to redecorate. Studying the grim architecure, the wizards (with their insane Knowledge (planes)) realize this is probably daemon architecture, but there's no clues as to why it's here. They also find that the rooms descend below water level, but were sealed up by the dwarves becuase oozes kept coming up from below.
In addition, they realize that there's some sort of immortal cat living with the dwarves, but there's no sign of it, and given the half-celestial (and leonine) aspect of the dwarves, they are pretty sure it's a silvanshee agathion.
Finally, the dwarves share a cache of odd objects they've collected in their travels in the swamp - a small cache of miscellaneous goods and magic, virtually none of it of any value to the dwarves. One item is associated with an assassin's guild they've run into in a far away kingdom, one is a headband of inspired wisdome +4 that bears emblems of the Four Horsemen and thus the dwarves locked it away, and one item is a small, greasy green idol of an octopus-headed fellow, that they got from the northeast, in a place of bad dreams.
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The combat took perhaps an hour, probably less. I used average damage for the kraken, which had the full Improved Rapidstrike tree, giving them something like 27 attacks per round, and I had one of the players calculate the damage for me. The biggest delay was the wizard, who couldn't decide what to do when the fighter was dragged under the muddy water by the kraken - he ended up going incorporeal, diving into the water, and shooting maximimzed repeating split-ray twinned disintegrates like a blind gunfighter. Even hit the kraken once. Even with about 1300hp, the kraken didn't survive the fighter more than two rounds because he had the full weapon specialization tree allowing him normal attacks even in a grapple. But the Fighter did feel it.
The majority of the game was exploring the island, talking to the dwarves, and trying to figure out where and if the puzzle pieces they found fit into their larger picture.
Next game they'll explore the submerged tunnels and then probably head northeast to see what exactly the "place of bad dreams" is, though they have a sinking suspicion they know, given who the idol was of. And that's why I found Wake of the Watcher so delightfully timely. It's all the worse for them because in the past they were warned by an oracle (not an Oracle) that one thing they would have to do is wake the sleeper, and that it might be their doom.
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As you may gather, this sounds a lot like a normal game. The main difference is that they can accomplish a lot more - but that doesn't make them omnipotent. And since they have a specific goal in mind (yep, it's "save the world"), it's not like they're just hanging around and eating pie.
One other thing: the dwarves? The highest level was the level 3 adept. Why? Because it's realistic. Why would a group of level 30 dwarves be hanging around on a island? On the other hand, a small group of normal dwarves trapped there 5,000 years ago when the entire region was subsumed by swamp, sharing the area with a few leonal agathions and a silvanstree agathion? Well, you're likely to end with what the party found.
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I'd suggest that it's pretty unfulfiling DMing to try to actively take away, shut down, or otherwise negate all the PCs' hard-won toys at high level (or any level for that matter). They paid their dues to get the ability to cast that greater teleport spell (for example), didn't they? Having everywhere they want to go inaccessible must make the PCs start to think 'What's the point?'...
Generally, I think it's part of the DM's job to be aware of what the PCs are capable of. Once you know that, it's much, much, better to incorporate it into the game, to reward its use with further interesting stories, than it is to try to negate it. Sure, sometimes an appropriate bad guy will come along who will have an appropriare counter - that's good, that keeps eveyone on their toes - but it's not the best place to start from when you're thinking up what to run.
So - your PC Cleric can bring people back from the dead now? You'd think people would be interested in a guy who could do that... Teleport anywhere on the planet you say? Hmmm... I'm pretty sure there's an NPC or two around who happen to have need of a chap with just such a talent...
I'd guess that play-style may have a big impact on how difficult things can get, or not, at high level. If you happen to use the Pathfinder rules to play what's essentially an 'enhanced' miniatures skirmish game, then I can see how trying to extend that play-style to high levels would be a challenge (what with the impossibility of keeping the PCs confined to the battlemat and all...). If your game is one of 'the PCs Vs the world' where NPCs are treated as set-dressing, and the PCs only really see themselves as 'real' then I can see that causing problems too. If you're playing a more immersive game, where the PCs are integrated parts of the overall game world, then chances are all the stuff they did, friends and enemies they made, and the way the world developed up to the high levels you happen to have hit have already paved the way for what you're doing at high levels of the game. That's not trying to say that one play style is more 'right' than another, but just that some play styles will have an easier time making the transition to higher level play.
As for the game not supporting social interaction... I think there's a faily common fallacy around that 'more pages' devoted to something in the rules equals 'more important' to the game. I don't see it that way - to me, more pages are simply devoted to the stuff which can't be simulated in the real world (you know, without getting arrested...). If you're not LARPing, you're not going to be acting out physical combat, so you need more rules to simulate that. If you happen to be a muggle, then you're gonna' need rules to simulate magic use too. Talking to people, on the other hand, is something you can roleplay out by... talking... so the only rules you need are guidelines as to how good your character is at it, as opposed to you. That doesn't make talking to people any less important an aspect of the game than hitting them with sticks... just a much more simple one to simulate.
All IMHO, as always.
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In Savage Tide (the longest running, and highest-level ending campaign I've run), my players really got into the Affiliations / Obligations part of the game.
We had:
Rogue/Psion/Wizard/Elocator with her Fighter/Ardent/Elocator cohort, running the "Z Couriers," the interplanetary courier service/mail system. She specifically sought out all kinds of crazy places to put her "Z Pads" (areas where she and the others had "studied carefully" and put visual warning signs in place to advise of incoming teleporters), and in general really threw herself into the role. I even was able to "GP Sink" her for a bunch of treasure, between outfitting her small army of orphans, their housing costs, and the bits of non-combat gear she wore (like a communicator based on the correspond power, but continuous.)
Another player had the ultimate crafting cohort (Conjurer with all the "make stuff" spells and a really really high Craft(everything) check) and an interest in global commerce. He ended up buying out most of Sasserine, and creating, almost singlehandedly, forts and settlements up and down the coastline between Farshore and Sasserine. At the end of the game, I think he held something like 25-35% of all the land holdings around Sasserine, controlled the entire block of the city where the Lotus Dragon lair resided, and built a huge manor house in all of the major cities the party came across in the game (Sasserine, Cauldron, Farshore, Scuttlecove, that crazy demon city on the Abyss).
This kind of stuff really intrigued them, and made them feel like Big Darn Heroes, and absolutely did NOT need massive CR combat stuff to handle.
@GBonehead: JR & the rest of the crew off to handle WotW, upgunned to ridiculousness? HA! Sounds super-fun!
How to apply this to high level play: Don't give your PC wizards time to prepare. If someone is going to take them captive, have them do it when the PCs are sleeping, rather than trying to threaten them. Or even just when you're sending assassins after them. Don't make expensive spell components readily available to your players (at least, not all the time). Diamond Dust for ressurrection? Religious institutions are now controlling that, and you'll need to preform a service for their faith before they are willing to even let you buy any. Can the PCs really afford to let the BBEG get on with his plans for 8 months before they call up the reinforcements? My personal favorite here (which can be used at all levels of play) is to have enemies destroy spell component pouches.
This is all great advice for mid-level campaigns. At high levels, we're talking about PCs with personal demi-planes. They sleep in magnificent mansions, not on the ground. They don't need to buy diamond dust from your local church; they just go to another plane where people are more willing to sell. Why should they care if some mere king doesn't cooperate with them, when they're on a first-name basis with demigods? And if their spellbooks and spell component pouches are still vulnerable to low-level tactics, then you should have killed the entire party a long time ago.
And these epic-level BBEGs that are just about to destroy the entire multiverse, and have to be stopped right away? What have they been doing for the last several millenia? And why are there so many of them popping up right now? And how did they all get so powerful all of the sudden? And doesn't it strain credibility just a bit that there's a new one appearing every time the last one is defeated? Yeah, you can always pull out the clicheed it-only-happens-once-in-a-million-years "Conjunction of the Million Spheres" from Moorcock to explain these sudden appearances, but if the once-in-a-million-years event happens every few months, it starts to get old.
High-level play sucks because it doesn't make any sense. Any semblance of a coherent story ends up with more holes in it than Swiss cheese, so really you're just left with a bunch of episodic fights against enemies with no logical reason for their existence, and you hand-wave the rest of the discrepancies and try not to look at them.
How to apply this to high level play: Don't give your PC wizards time to prepare. If someone is going to take them captive, have them do it when the PCs are sleeping, rather than trying to threaten them. Or even just when you're sending assassins after them. Don't make expensive spell components readily available to your players (at least, not all the time). Diamond Dust for ressurrection? Religious institutions are now controlling that, and you'll need to preform a service for their faith before they are willing to even let you buy any. Can the PCs really afford to let the BBEG get on with his plans for 8 months before they call up the reinforcements? My personal favorite here (which can be used at all levels of play) is to have enemies destroy spell component pouches.This is all great advice for mid-level campaigns. At high levels, we're talking about PCs with personal demi-planes. They sleep in magnificent mansions, not on the ground. They don't need to buy diamond dust from your local church; they just go to another plane where people are more willing to sell. Why should they care if some mere king doesn't cooperate with them, when they're on a first-name basis with demigods? And if their spellbooks and spell component pouches are still vulnerable to low-level tactics, then you should have killed the entire party a long time ago.
And these epic-level BBEGs that are just about to destroy the entire multiverse, and have to be stopped right away? What have they been doing for the last several millenia? And why are there so many of them popping up right now? And how did they all get so powerful all of the sudden? And doesn't it strain credibility just a bit that there's a new one appearing every time the last one is defeated? Yeah, you can always pull out the clicheed it-only-happens-once-in-a-million-years "Conjunction of the Million Spheres" from Moorcock to explain these sudden appearances, but if the once-in-a-million-years event happens every few months, it starts to...
Yeah, this is very similar to what I was describing with the galaxy-wide superheroes our party had become. Eventually it was clear there was no rhyme or reason to the multiverse at all. The whole of existence was focused solely on providing something for our party to fight. That's when we said "enough, let's start a new campaign."
@GBonehead: JR & the rest of the crew off to handle WotW, upgunned to ridiculousness? HA! Sounds super-fun!
See, I have literally been waiting years to use this one particular WizKids figure I picked up ...
Oh, was that out loud? :-)
... tons and tons of great stuff ...
+1 to everything DreamAtelier wrote.
This is the kind of info that helps run a campaign, and makes it fun for everyone. And that bit about then ending is spot on. From day one, the current campaign has had a defined plot arc. Granted, I didn't (and still don't) know precisely how it will end, but I do know what the pieces are - and when they're put together, it will be complete.
I only hope it will be as climactic and awesome as DreamAtelier's finale.
(edit to avoid double post)
And these epic-level BBEGs that are just about to destroy the entire multiverse, and have to be stopped right away? What have they been doing for the last several millenia? And why are there so many of them popping up right now? And how did they all get so powerful all of the sudden? And doesn't it strain credibility just a bit that there's a new one appearing every time the last one is defeated? Yeah, you can always pull out the clicheed it-only-happens-once-in-a-million-years "Conjunction of the Million Spheres" from Moorcock to explain these sudden appearances, but if the once-in-a-million-years event happens every few months, it starts to get old.
Which is why the plot is so important. A plot gives a rationale for these things. A sandbox where "stuff keeps popping up" is not a rationale - it's a bunch of random encounters.
If epic wizards imprisoned the 13 Evil Elemental Lords beneath the lands of your kingdom 5,000 years ago, and 4,000 years later wizards unknowningly set up spell pools siphoning what they thought was natural power sources, and now the wards are weakened and the Lords are popping out of the ground like popcorn, that's not random. It may seem random at first to the players, but it's not.
Any more than the CR30 kraken in my example was random. It may feel like a random encounter, but it wasn't - there's a reason these things are starting to happen, and by now the players know why it is and are trying to stop it.
High-level play sucks because it doesn't make any sense. Any semblance of a coherent story ends up with more holes in it than Swiss cheese, so really you're just left with a bunch of episodic fights against enemies with no logical reason for their existence, and you hand-wave the rest of the discrepancies and try not to look at them.
A game that makes no sense sucks because it makes no sense. That's no different than being a first level character and going into a dungeon where there's 14 adjacent rooms, each with a monster sitting there in stasis waiting for you to Kill It And Take Its Stuff (TM). That's not a side effect of high-level play.
If epic wizards imprisoned the 13 Evil Elemental Lords beneath the lands of your kingdom 5,000 years ago, and 4,000 years later wizards unknowningly set up spell pools siphoning what they thought was natural power sources, and now the wards are weakened and the Lords are popping out of the ground like popcorn, that's not random...
But you can't pull that trick more than once, so, yes, I should have said, "continued high level play makes no sense." In your example, OK, you've invoked the "million spheres" doomsday scenario I alluded to, and fired off your 13 Evil Elemental Lords. What happens after the PCs defeat them? Do you next introduce 16 Trapped Planar Menaces who are escaping from their centuries-old bonds? How many times can you pull that trick before it becomes strained, obvious, and lame?
The only solution is to end the entire campaign after the 13th Evil Elemental Lord is defeated, and roll up new characters at 1st level. On this point, DreamAtelier is spot-on.
The ending is the most important part Kirth. If you've got a high level game, you need to have one... an endless parade of BBEGs (from what brassbaboon has said, it sounds like that's what he's experienced) of the week is something that will turn everyone off eventually.
Yes -- on this, I agree completely. Which means that there is no such thing as a viable open-ended campaign; they all have to end at some level, and preferentially before they get too extremely absurd. If you're playing 30th level PCs, you've been in BrassBaboon's unfortunate situation for a long, long time. Starting at about 15th level, your PCs are ultrapowerful superheroes, and the clock is ticking for counting down to the end of the campiagn.
Personally, I consider 10th-14th to be "high level," and anything past that to be part of the end game you alluded to, with the campaign finish line in clear sight.
Every campaign I run has an end. I design the campaign with the end in mind. When the campaign is over, it is over. If the players want to continue to play those same characters in some other campaign (whether I am running it or not) that's their decision. But my campaigns are not open ended.
There are two reasons for this.
1. I believe this focuses the party and provides a consistent plot line and story arc for the players to immerse themselves in.
2. I get to play as a PC in the next campaign and I don't have to GM all the time.
My most epic campaign was one where the goal was to restore the race of dwarves which had been destroyed in a planet wide genocide. The campaign involved armies of dragons, demons and extra-planar beings. The party which eventually completed the campaign became legends. Since all of my campaigns occur in the same reality, there are literally towns named after the PCs in that campaign.
But when it was over, it was over. "Good job! You restored the dwarves! Your names will live in legend as long as dwarves survive."
The end.
If epic wizards imprisoned the 13 Evil Elemental Lords beneath the lands of your kingdom 5,000 years ago, and 4,000 years later wizards unknowningly set up spell pools siphoning what they thought was natural power sources, and now the wards are weakened and the Lords are popping out of the ground like popcorn, that's not random...But you can't pull that trick more than once, so, yes, I should have said, "continued high level play makes no sense." In your example, OK, you've invoked the "million spheres" doomsday scenario I alluded to, and fired off your 13 Evil Elemental Lords. What happens after the PCs defeat them? Do you next introduce 16 Trapped Planar Menaces who are escaping from their centuries-old bonds? How many times can you pull that trick before it becomes strained, obvious, and lame?
Not unless that was my plan from day one. It was, after all, just an example. Commenting on the example doesn't negate the point - which is that it's *not* a random stream of opponents. So, yes - it would end after that. Just like a module. If you play a module, you don't get all upset because it ended - you just play another one. Or if that was too short for you, you play an Adventure Path next time.
Is it lame that there's a second level of a dungeon? Is it lame that there's parts 2-6 of Adventure Paths? Is it lame that G1 led to G2 and G3 (and then D123 and Q1)? No, because they're designed that way. Nobody should say "what? Frost giants this time? That's lame!"
Same goes with campaign design. You can design a long campaign, or a short campaign, or a one-off ... but it's the design that's important. You don't want each session to be a result of the GM leafing through the Bestiaries and going "okay, let's see what they fight this week..."
(edit)
It's the Men in Black answer really. They've ALWAYS been popping up. Only today it's your job to stop them now that the last set of heroes just bought it.... for good.
And these epic-level BBEGs that are just about to destroy the entire multiverse, and have to be stopped right away? What have they been doing for the last several millenia? And why are there so many of them popping up right now?
Heheheheheh
Awesome.
Sorry I couldn't get back to you earlier, Shifty. I think we're in different timezones.
Take a look at the chapter on 'combat'. Then read up on all the spells which have combat uses, and equipment used in combat.
Now read the section on negotiation. Oh, wait, there isn't one....
Now show me the chapter on brushing your teeth, going to the toilet, etc.
Just because it doesn't have a 'chapter' prescribing the specifics doesn't mean squat. It is the GM's job to build all that based on the tools he is given in the core rules. The rules provide the ingredients, the GM is the Chef that turns them into a meal.
Brushing your teeth is not a meaningful game challenge, therefore it does not need support.
However, I would posit that trying to secure an alliance of all the kings of the south so that you can unite them under one banner is a meaningful game challenge. Depending on the type of game you're running, "getting married" could be a meaningful game challenge. Just as "kill the red dragon" is a meaningful game challenge.
Now, let's focus on the first example (creating an alliance of kings). How would you run that in a game? Well, first thing you'd need are personality sketches of all the kings. Each will have different desires and needs. If a PC courts a king successfully, the PCs can get him to join their cause. So, what support do we have in the Pathfinder game? (or, to use your terms, "what ingredients do we have to make this meal?")
Well, I can roll Know:Local, Sense Motive, or maybe a divination spell in order to learn what it is a given king wants me to do (and possibly how likely he is to betray the alliance). Then what? Is it as simple as "I do his quest, and then he joins?" Or maybe it's "if I do his quest, I get a +4 modifier on my Diplomacy roll to make him join"?
I'm simplifying things, to be sure, but that's about it as far as tools given by the system (and even that last bit was pretty ad-hoc).
I see the task of "getting the king to join the alliance" as something worthy of support to the same extent as a combat encounter. Here's what I would like to see in the rules:
- as you level up, as a class feature, your network of spies and informatants grows; you pick specific areas (criminal gangs, the church, etc) and you can get special info from those areas
- as you level up, as a class feature, you gain certain titles. These allow you to change and modify the world around you. Think of them like spells, but powered by beaucracy rather than magic. And by that I mean: they have distinct, defined, and clear uses. Can a GM ad-hoc say "you're a Bishop, you can change church law"? Yes, yes he can. But at that point it is handwavy or houserules, and subject to his whims. I'm talking about rules support, so the PC is provided, up front, with clear knowledge of his own abilities. Example.
- a country-wide social-combat mechanic. By that I mean propaganda wars. Right now, maybe you could make a Perform check, and distribute a poster around town, and your GM can make an ad-hoc or homebrew ruling. I'm talking about something like this
Now go pick up the GMG, and go pick up Kingmaker (as two obvious ready sources)
Have a loooooong read.
You'll find stuff like the City Guards, stuff like boons, and a whole raft of empire building materials.
Oh and its all Pathfinder.
Yes, Kingmaker was a tremendous step forward. That is the sort of rules support I am talking about. That takes it out of the realm of GM-handwavy and into the realm of rules.
Simply put the comments
Are both amazing, and I can't wait for him to make his case. Extraordinary stuff coming from soneone in his position.
"But the Pathfinder rules don't support you at all"And
"But it's not playing Pathfinder. You might call it that, but that's not what you're doing anymore."
My point is this: you can do all sorts of cool stuff like you were talking about. But the GM has to adjucate it. And Pathfinder does not give the GM much to go off of. It does not give him many "ingredients". So a GM has to start homebrewing and coming up with other solutions. At that point, he's not using rules printed in the book that says "Pathfinder" at the top that he paid $50 for. He's using his own rules. Therefore, he is not playing Pathfinder.
Pathfinder does not give you a modifier to your Intimidate check for holding someone's daughter hostage. But it does have a modifer to hit for attacking from high ground. Pathfinder does not have a way to represent a months-long propaganda war, chipping away at an enemy kingdom's resolve. But it does have a way to represent a rounds-long melee combat, chipping away at an enemy warrior's HP.
I'm not trying to bash Pathfinder. I love the game. But we do need to recognize "what it is built to do" and "what it is not built to do." It's built to make adventurers and go on adventures. It's not built to make oligarchs and run large organizations.
In short: it's built for low-level play, it's not built for high-level play.
My point is this: you can do all sorts of cool stuff like you were talking about. But the GM has to adjucate it. And Pathfinder does not give the GM much to go off of. It does not give him many "ingredients". So a GM has to start homebrewing and coming up with other solutions. At that point, he's not using rules printed in the book that says "Pathfinder" at the top that he paid $50 for. He's using his own rules. Therefore, he is not playing Pathfinder.
Exactly right. Pathfinder provides the rules for half a game; every GM is forced to come up with the other half for him or herself. Maybe they choose to default to hand-waving and fiat -- maybe they try to devise some actual mechanics to fill that yawning gap. Skills rules are weak and anemic in Pathfinder (as they were in 3e/3.5), and social interaction is left to a few skills. Only combat and spells are fleshed out with enough detail to do anything much more than just make things up as you go.
But that's actually a problem over ALL levels of play.
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DreamAtlier: Vow of Poverty from 3.5 is a Supernatural feat (all Exalted Feats are) and so you lose the benefits inside an A-M Shell.
And a VoP guy can't own ANYTHING valuable...he doesn't get 'one item'.
Now, the PF VoP might work, but only for monks ;)
Rest of it is a good post.
As for what comes after the 13 Elemental Lords...why, it's their coalition of sponsoring Demigods. Who, it turns out, are the pawns of the true Demon King of the Abyss, their puny elemental war the mere outbreak for uniting the Abyss and sending Demons out across the multiverse, starting with the home planes of the Heroes...and unknown to the Demon King, he's being manipulated by the Ancient Horrors imprisoned deep in the Abyss, who are hoping for enough destruction to break free and once again take up the Titanic fight with the Gods, and their deaths serve to shatter the prison of the Nameless One who will end the World...
Each event just builds upon the next, you take it as you go for as long as you want to go. The heroes are there because they were chosen to defeat the final battle at wherever the end is...and all this epic stuff is just dominoes being knocked down on the way to wherever you want that endpoint to be.
The characters can choose any endpoint that they wish. It's all up to how the DM can plan it.
==+Aelryinth
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I guess that's just a matter of opinion and what one's personal game experience has been like. For my part, I tend to look at 9-14 as Mid level, while 15+ qualifies as high level.
Personally, I consider 10th-14th to be "high level," and anything past that to be part of the end game you alluded to, with the campaign finish line in clear sight.
Kirth and I consider 10+ to be "Epic" play. 20+ is just silly. :)
Yes -- on this, I agree completely. Which means that there is no such thing as a viable open-ended campaign; they all have to end at some level, and preferentially before they get too extremely absurd. If you're playing 30th level PCs, you've been in BrassBaboon's unfortunate situation for a long, long time. Starting at about 15th level, your PCs are ultrapowerful superheroes, and the clock is ticking for counting down to the end of the campiagn.
The ending is the most important part Kirth. If you've got a high level game, you need to have one... an endless parade of BBEGs (from what brassbaboon has said, it sounds like that's what he's experienced) of the week is something that will turn everyone off eventually.That's something that's highly subjective, based on how the GM runs the game, and the group they're dealing with. I've been in games where the GM started flubbing like that at 10th level, and in others where everything was new and unique without falling into the pit that BrassBaboon endured up until 28 or 30.
Personally, I consider 10th-14th to be "high level," and anything past that to be part of the end game you alluded to, with the campaign finish line in clear sight.I guess that's just a matter of opinion and what one's personal game experience has been like. For my part, I tend to look at 9-14 as Mid level, while 15+ qualifies as high level.
Yes, very subjective.
Our current campaign was specifically created to be an above-20th level campaign. But we didn't start there. We started, I believe, at 4th or 6th level, and played all the way through in order to familiarize ourselves with those little used, high-level spells and abilities.
But all that was just the prelude.
I still consider anything above 12th-level to be high level - but I don't consider any level inherently absurd. It's only as absurd as you make it, and if you choose not to make it absurd, then it's not absurd.
As far as I'm concerned, even up until level 30 or so we were still learning the ropes, and round level 40 the players definitely hit their stride. Now a few of them have broken 60, and while I know there's an end in sight, I can't quite see it yet.
My original estimate, about two years ago, was that they'd be in the 90-100 range when things were done. Now I'm not so sure, since they've gotten more experienced and may clean things up earlier. Or they may not.
It's this real, under the belt experience that our group has that makes me chuckle when people say that high level is unplayable.
Now: Could anyone here come to my table and break it? Absolutely. But that's not the point. A player can break any table - I've been at tables where they have. There's nothing we can do about players who are trying to break the game (or who, via lack of experience, have a broken game - though at least in that case they can learn). They will succeed. I just don't care about that - I care about the people who genuinely want to play the game.
(edit: Hi ToZ! Welcome to silly-land!)
I consider EL6 to be 'human' play.
I consider EL10 to be 'post-human' play.
I consider EL 11-20 to be 'superhuman' play.
I consider 21+ to be 'Eternal' level play, i.e. deity and profound forces stuff. Once you hit 21, you aren't mortal anymore.
Just me, tho.
===Aelryinth
(edit: Hi ToZ! Welcome to silly-land!)I really wish I could have a do-over with my Epic-level group. It could have been so much more than a fight scene montage...
:(
Definitely. Occasionally fun, occasionally mind-deadeningly dull, but in our opinion a distraction from what's really going on.
Recently though, I was talking with a friend about E6 and how it worked, and he goes, "What about E20". I was stunned. It's so easy. All the game shattering math just goes away. It's beautiful.
We have decided to allow characters to keep gaining levels in classes, with a max of 20th for base classes, and 10th for prestige. No ability (sneak attack, spell casting, turning, attack bonus, nothing) can have more than 20 levels of "effect". No matter what combo of classes you have, you take your 'best 20' for all categories, including hit points and saves.
So, I have a Cavalier20/Fighter13 that I've been playing off and on since 1987. But in actual, practical power he is about CR24!
A cool side effect is that you can mash PCs and NPCs together with some level disparity, because the 'limit 20' rule evens them out quite a bit.
-Cheers
This is amazingly close to the epic level rules I devised for the one such campaign I've run. And I can speak from experience: these rules work well.
(Amusingly, at the time, I had never even heard of E6; I devised the rules I used based off of gestalt rules and the conclusion that I wanted levels past 20 to make characters more competent / capable of doing new and interesting things, without causing exponential power growth if you kept adding more levels of, say, wizard.)On the other hand, I didn't run a monster-a-week game; I ran a sandbox game. One PC decided to set up a new city-state to serve as a haven for a particular downtrodden race. Another PC delved into lost arcane secrets, trying to learn the origins of the gods. A third PC decided to go conquering warlord, starting with her ancestral homeland. And so on; I didn't need a parade of monsters, because I had quite enough conflict just dealing with the inevitable fallout of whatever the PCs were currently trying to do.
Since the fighter and wizard in the group are not usually fighting each other, this idea is completely irrelevant to high level play.High level magic. Nothing a fighter does can ever compare to "I wish."
More specifically: Long duration buffs and action economy. A wizard wins against a lot of encounters at the beginning of the day when they cast over land flight. Also, the first round of combat a wizard can change the world, a fighter can run forward and draw a weapon.
Remember that the fighter can draw a weapon as he moves, so he should be able to whack at least once. For what its worth...
While the fighter and the wizard are working together, as the fighters player it gets a little boring when
Fighter: Ok, i move up to the monster and whack it for.. yes! 100 points of damage.
Wizard: I move back one kilometer and Cast Tensers Roaving meat packing plant. It deals 11ty million points of damage save for half , purifies the creatures remains, cuts them up into delicious snacks and teleports the snacks to orphanages around the world. The place where the monster died will now grow tomatoes the size of a kobold that emit sparkles under the moonlight.
If your fighter is only doing a 100 points, he isn't built that well. There's lots of options for fighters now. They are probably the best melee class in the game now.
At lvl 19, my fighter moves, hits, does 180 points of damage and requires a DC 29 Fort save or the target is stunned. At lvl 20, he'll do 270 points, stun with a DC 30 save. He can also whirlwind attack stun.
The monk at lvl 12 moves, trips, gets and Aoo and sets up the next melee to move in and hammer.
The two-weapon fighter moves, hits with both weapons, and does damage. I haven't picked up any feats to supplement him yet since the two-weapon warrior is still a little lacking since the feat investment is still too high. No idea why they haven't lowered the feat investment yet given how much they've given the two-hander fighter to date. But I'll have to chalk this up to too little testing between the two-hander fighter and the two-weapon fighter.
The archer is also messing people up at range.
Since the fighter and wizard in the group are not usually fighting each other, this idea is completely irrelevant to high level play.High level magic. Nothing a fighter does can ever compare to "I wish."
More specifically: Long duration buffs and action economy. A wizard wins against a lot of encounters at the beginning of the day when they cast over land flight. Also, the first round of combat a wizard can change the world, a fighter can run forward and draw a weapon.
Yes and no. I found more difficult create a fighter BBEG than a wizard BBEG.
Then I decided for EK, but that's another matter :D
I usually never make BBEG's alone either fighter or wizard. Neither one can stand up to a group.
Yeah. A fighter is easier to waste alone.
But a wizard isn't that much harder. Nothing like a wizard buffing up a fighter to attack the BBEG wizard while the cleric keeps the fighter clean and healed. Little chance for the wizard to win.
If you're not designing a party to fight a party, you're BBEG is going to get wasted.
I never make BBEG's alone save for perhaps dragons. And I buff their hit points up to really high levels depending on the size of the party.
Unless the opponent knows the characters, how is he going to know every trick. Even 25 int wizards and 1000 year old dragons have limits. Should such characters be powerful and smart, yes. Be prepared for most of the major tactics (fly, invisible, scrye/die...), ok. But to know EVERY trick, that's going too far. And while energy drain is dangerous, how often do high level creatures encounter it? If they are traveling in an area know to be infested with monster that drain, sure. If your enemy is known to use it, sure. But as an everyday defense, that's metagame thinking at it's worst.I'm running a lvl 18 campaign right now. I don't find it unplayable as long as you accept that D&D is its own fantasy genre. You must play in the dynamic to make it work.
A few guidlines for that dynamic I follow:
...
3. Enemies know every little trick a player uses.
...
So I don't allow any high level creature to travel without resistance to energy drain given the danger and the lack of resistance to it.
No. Metagame thinking would be if I planned for this defense because the player used it. I plan the defense no matter what the player is doing. I assume every single high level creature that can plans for energy drain.
A creature would not live a 1,000 years and a 25 intelligence high level wizard would not survive that long if he doesn't know energy drain is the most dangerous and least defensible attack out there. He is an utter fool not to plan for it.
Simple tactics like calcific touch and energy drain will be known. Even a high level fighter should be very aware of such attacks. Energy drain is the single most dangerous and indefensible attack in the game. Plenty of undead have it. A lvl 4 spell can do it.
Every creature with the resources will travel with resistance to energy drain in anything I run. I do not see how they could possibly have lived as long as they have without it since it can destroy anything from dragon to demon easily. And with Thanatopic Spell, it makes it even worse.
If they get hit with something like that, they will most likely leave the fight. And then return to kill the individual that did that to them in my campaigns. I see no reason to play them any other way and expect them to live.
Even when I run my own clerics, every single cleric I make when they cast spell immunity they make themselves immune to enervate and now calcific touch. I don't even wait to see what the creature is using. I always include those two spells. No save and you are doomed if you get hit by them a couple of times.
People talk about the GM "knowing the rules" and "being familiar with counters" and I'm sorry, but I'm going to call foul.
It's not just individual spells that are at issue, but their synergy (it's why it's called "scry and fry" afterall).
I am not convinced that the GMs on this thread have contemplated every synergy between the various spells in the Ultimate Magic, plus Core, plus whatever 3PP or campaign-specific stuff that's being used. That's too many spells, too many class abilities, etc to keep track of how they all might interact. And problem is, the 30 INT, five-thousand year-old Red Dragon the party is up against: he does know all those synergies and counters, at least in-game. Problem is, I'm his GM, I only have so much time to prep an encounter, not to mention his lair/backstory and other non-combat elements of the session. While at the same time, I have a handful of PCs pooling all their prep-time browsing through d20pfsrd looking for broken combos. I can't compete with that. And telling me that I should is just rediculous.
And then after they past him in one beautifically executed round, they ask "why didn't Mr Ancient Supergenious Dragon think of that, it could have been totally undone by X, Y and Z spells? They've been around since the founding of Thassalon." and then I throw the book at them, which was printed last month (considerably more recently than Thassalon's founding) and we're back to playing E6.
It is impossible to know everything. I ran into a new spell from the Ultimate Magic one of the "genius" Paizo designers tossed in that a player found. I find these type of spells very annoying. And it is why I ask the question "Why can't game designers catch these spells before they make it in the game? Do they seriously not know how badly this ruins encounters and makes DMing harder?"
Making life on the DM hard with badly constructed rules such as out of control spells is part of what hurts their game.
The spell I ran into was Prediction of Failure. No one discussed this one on the forums, so I didn't pick up on it until it was used. This spell Prediction of Failure causes a creature to be shaken and sickened. If it misses its save, the conditions are permanent. If it makes the save, the conditions last for 1/round per level. Now this creature has a -4 to all its saves and attack rolls and a -2 to damage for each attack.
So now this CR 21 Shoggoth gets hit with hold monster with a -4 on its save, which it is not immune to due to having an intelligence, and the encounter turns from dangerous to trivial as the fighters beat on it without it being able resist.
It is spells like this that I find annoying. Spells with no save against their effects that make other spell more effective.
The Paizo designers have to know that most combats come down to 3 or 4 rounds. When a spell's effect lasts for 1/round a lvl with no save, that is going to easily be the entire combat. So why put such a spell in the game? It's nearly an autowin for the party.
It seems to me that Paizo only tests the game between level 1st and 10 or 12. I would be very surprised to learn that Paizo spends much time, if any, testing high level play. I would say the same thing of the 3.0 designers.
That's one thing I give 4E. They seemed to have tested from lvl 1 to lvl 30 to make the game as playable at lvl 1 as it is at lvl 30. Whereas the 3.0 editions seemed to have made the game playable from lvl 1 to about lvl 10 to 15 or so. Once your past that level, you better be one heckuva an experienced DM willing to read the magic system like your studying for your doctorate to catch all these ridiculous magical tactics they allowed into the game.
I can handle most of this stuff. I've been playing the game for 20 years plus. I do insane stuff that most DMs with less experience wouldn't dream of doing like giving the Shoggoth 1160 hit points or building entire parties when the module has one BBEG at the end.
I rarely use the encounter in a module as planned. And I don't like BBEG's to be alone unless they are dragons, and then I boost their hit points usually by a few hundred. Players are craft. They build beastly characters and think of ways to synergize as a party that most DMs going exactly as an encounter is written or exactly by the rules can't possibly counter.
So you gotta step outside the box at high level and design what you know will give your players a challenge without much regard for the rules. That takes experience which not a great many DMs have, especially young DMs new to the game. If the designers would do a better job of balancing and testing the high level game, this problem wouldn't exist. But until they do, high level play is going to be something like roulette for a DM. Sometimes he'll nail the challenge level and sometimes either the party of the BBEG is going to lose it all very quickly.
How to apply this to high level play: Don't give your PC wizards time to prepare. If someone is going to take them captive, have them do it when the PCs are sleeping, rather than trying to threaten them. Or even just when you're sending assassins after them. Don't make expensive spell components readily available to your players (at least, not all the time). Diamond Dust for ressurrection? Religious institutions are now controlling that, and you'll need to preform a service for their faith before they are willing to even let you buy any. Can the PCs really afford to let the BBEG get on with his plans for 8 months before they call up the reinforcements? My personal favorite here (which can be used at all levels of play) is to have enemies destroy spell component pouches.This is all great advice for mid-level campaigns. At high levels, we're talking about PCs with personal demi-planes. They sleep in magnificent mansions, not on the ground. They don't need to buy diamond dust from your local church; they just go to another plane where people are more willing to sell. Why should they care if some mere king doesn't cooperate with them, when they're on a first-name basis with demigods? And if their spellbooks and spell component pouches are still vulnerable to low-level tactics, then you should have killed the entire party a long time ago.
And these epic-level BBEGs that are just about to destroy the entire multiverse, and have to be stopped right away? What have they been doing for the last several millenia? And why are there so many of them popping up right now? And how did they all get so powerful all of the sudden? And doesn't it strain credibility just a bit that there's a new one appearing every time the last one is defeated? Yeah, you can always pull out the clicheed it-only-happens-once-in-a-million-years "Conjunction of the Million Spheres" from Moorcock to explain these sudden appearances, but if the once-in-a-million-years event happens every few months, it starts to...
Adventure Paths are designed from 1st to 17th. They usually do have an interesting story that lasts for all those levels rather than this continous stream of world shattering events. But if you're talking level 20 plus adventuring, then you're talking something else.
Have you never read comic books or watched James Bond? Same thing applies to high level PCs.
No one is teling you high level play is Lord of the Rings or whatever other book you've read. It isn't. That type of storytelling is possible, but you have to tailor the campaign to fit.
High level play is more like a superhero comic. You can still tell some great stories, but their going to be incredibly fantastic. High level characters are not fighting your local tyrant lord. They are fighting the god king next door with the colossal red dragon servant looking to take over the world. They are fighting the incursion of a demonic army. And their names are known throughout the land where a king or council looking to defend against the demonic incursion or tyrant lord will go looking for them.
No. Metagame thinking would be if I planned for this defense because the player used it. I plan the defense no matter what the player is doing. I assume every single high level creature that can plans for energy drain.
...
Every creature with the resources will travel with resistance to energy drain in anything I run. I do not see how they could possibly have lived as long as they have without it since it can destroy anything from...
The problem I have is the "travel with resistance" part. Is energy drain dangerous, yes. Would they have a plan to deal with it, probably. Would they constantly expend resources to deal with a power that might come up once in a blue moon (in most cases), why? If they all have defenses against it, then why would anybody ever use it, so why would anybody have defenses against, because nobody ever uses it, because...
When you start using absolute phrases like "every single high level creature", "would not survive", "Every creature with the resources will" or "I do not see how they could possibly have lived" I hear no room for individual creatures to be arrogant, lucky, isolated or foolish. "Most", "probably", "if a known threat exisits" I can buy. But such absolute terms as you use = metagaming. (OK, I have to say it...Only a Sith deals in absolutes...or something like that; though I am not saying Maddigan is a Sith.)
Maybe I'm just overly sensative to this sort of DM behavior. My current DM plays an old school, DM vs PLAYERS (not characters) style of DMing. His monsters are almost always reacting to our characters in metagaming ways. Creatures ALWAYS use stealth, they know what tactics the group employs and ALWAYs realize we are the biggest threat they have ever faced even if we have never met them before. It's like we have a sign, "high level pc's, beware" around our neck.
At lvl 19, my fighter moves, hits, does 180 points of damage and requires a DC 29 Fort save or the target is stunned. At lvl 20, he'll do 270 points, stun with a DC 30 save. He can also whirlwind attack stun.
Ok, but considering things have 500 + hit points the fighter isn't doing much. If he doesn't one shot it, it will one shot him.
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High level games are unplayable?
I must have dreamed the last two years then.
In seriousness, it's not unplayable, but because there's not a lot of support for high level games, GMs are left to try and make up everything on their own (level 12-15 you'll still find some stuff, 15+ is out of the question). Prep time is high therefore, because there's a lot of reviewing and tweaking you need to do, and not a lot to compare to for a baseline.
Some GMs master the art of stats on the fly and I've seen good suggestions in other threads about how to do that well.
Linear adventures don't work well for high level PCs, who can solve problems in more ways than, say, your average adventure module is going to be ableto suggest (for space reasons if nothing else). So if you want to run a game at high levels, you're probably having to design the whole adventure yourself from scratch, or at least use modules/adventures as guidelines at best. Some GMs like doing that anyway of course.
I don't find combat is really much slower, except for additional things you have to track, like SR and DR, which become useless anyway (generally, at the end of the day, what is effective at low is effective at high -- high AC, high saves, good to-hit bonus, and I would add that for high level creatures, good debuffs, terrain control, and a way to heal itself at least limitedly is going to be the ideal challenge, in my personal opinion).
Not unplayable. But a lot of work for your average GM.
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What makes high level play unplayable? IMO? Bad players.
You have to have a social contract between your players and the GM. In may be an unspoken contract, but it needs to be there.
After awhile, "good" players realize that insta-win fights aren't fun, for either the players or the GM. So they intentionally try to avoid getting in the rut of using the same overpowered combos in every fight. Just because you have a killer combo in your arsenal as a PC, doesn't mean you should use it every fight ad nauseum.
My players know that it isn't just my responsibility to make the game fun. It is up to them as well. Used sparingly, killer combos can be awesome. But used in every fight, they know that I will have to bring the pain hammer down and use GM metaknowledge to "cheat" the system against them (which usually means TPK and endgame to the campaign).
Good players WANT the game to last. They want to keep getting more powerful, but they also want to be challenged. They KNOW that the game is rigged from the outset, and in their favor. But they want to work WITH their GM to make it a fun and challenging experience for EVERYONE.
Having said all that; I find the concept of E6 to sound downright annoying. But if it works for you; go for it. Just let me know that is the plan from the get-go, so I can find another campaign.....
High level games are unplayable?
I must have dreamed the last two years then.
In seriousness, it's not unplayable, but because there's not a lot of support for high level games, GMs are left to try and make up everything on their own (level 12-15 you'll still find some stuff, 15+ is out of the question). Prep time is high therefore, because there's a lot of reviewing and tweaking you need to do, and not a lot to compare to for a baseline.
I'm guessing I probably spend as much time on non-encounter prep time. Writing the campaign log takes a lot of time, as does the work on the history and the continuation of the plot.
It's true that there's nothing to compare to. And frankly, if you take two level 40 parties, they will have completely different capabilities, making any kind of CR-based comparison difficult - and that's just from a game mechanics standpoint (such as there are game mechanics), never mind player and campaign styles.
Some GMs master the art of stats on the fly and I've seen good suggestions in other threads about how to do that well.
Linear adventures don't work well for high level PCs, who can solve problems in more ways than, say, your average adventure module is going to be ableto suggest (for space reasons if nothing else). So if you want to run a game at high levels, you're probably having to design the whole adventure yourself from scratch, or at least use modules/adventures as guidelines at best. Some GMs like doing that anyway of course.
A linear adventure can work; I use them as sub-plots on occasion. I've found that having the driving factor be terrain doesn't work at all, but having it be plot driven (You must follow the footsteps of Ixic the Wise to complete the ritual) or information-based (Well, you don't know where the lost Crown of Cykorth is, but you know that it was last seen in the city of Abalas).
I don't find combat is really much slower, except for additional things you have to track, like SR and DR, which become useless anyway (generally, at the end of the day, what is effective at low is effective at high -- high AC, high saves, good to-hit bonus, and I would add that for high level creatures, good debuffs, terrain control, and a way to heal itself at least limitedly is going to be the ideal challenge, in my personal opinion).
I don't find combat any slower either. In game time it tends to be quicker, and it's very dependent on a lot of variables. I've had one run for three games. I've also had many over at first initiative.
On the other hand, I find that SR and DR do make a difference. For example they may make the fighter shine (he ignores the first 15DR) or they may make the high-level caster shine (he's the only one that can consistently overcome that
What makes high level play unplayable? IMO? Bad players.
I've never played in a game at a level higher than 16, but those were all fun; then again I know what judges to choose at cons. But I can see a bad GM souring it even more than a bad player.
You have to have a social contract between your players and the GM. In may be an unspoken contract, but it needs to be there.
+10
This is the most important thing. The whole group has to want to play the game. If any of them has some kind of chip on their shoulder about how high-level play sucks or the rules are broken, they will succeed in proving their point. Thing is, I could do that at any low-level table I sat at too; it's nothign to do with the rules for high-level gameplay.
After awhile, "good" players realize that insta-win fights aren't fun, for either the players or the GM. So they intentionally try to avoid getting in the rut of using the same overpowered combos in every fight. Just because you have a killer combo in your arsenal as a PC, doesn't mean you should use it every fight ad nauseum.
My players know that it isn't just my responsibility to make the game fun. It is up to them as well. Used sparingly, killer combos can be awesome. But used in every fight, they know that I will have to bring the pain hammer down and use GM metaknowledge to "cheat" the system against them (which usually means TPK and endgame to the campaign).
Many of such combos are only usable once per day - if your game is a "one fight per day" game, then yeah. But I've seen that they'll hoard the killer combos just in case, or use them prematurely and be sorry later. It's all about keeping the pace up.
Good players WANT the game to last. They want to keep getting more powerful, but they also want to be challenged. They KNOW that the game is rigged from the outset, and in their favor. But they want to work WITH their GM to make it a fun and challenging experience for EVERYONE.
+1
It's back to that social contract thing. But then again, all RPGs are that way. That's why we run into people at conventions that we swear to never play with again, and that's why we're particular about our gaming groups.
Having said all that; I find the concept of E6 to sound downright annoying. But if it works for you; go for it. Just let me know that is the plan from the get-go, so I can find another campaign.....
I'm with dmchucky69 on this one. I understand why people want E6, I just don't like it any more than I like the "let's have everyone start as a level 1 god" campaign or the "okay, time to kill the gods" campaign. Doesn't make them invalid, just means it's not the game I want to play.
Not unplayable. But a lot of work for your average GM.
Well, I've found that any campaign is. I guess the difference is that there's no existing material, so you can't run a high-level game from pregen material.
As far as large stat blocks go, is "know your character" really the only thing that can be done?
Heck no. But if you don't know your character, you are going to drag everything to a screaming halt while you scan your extensive list of abilities and look up all the ones you don't know.
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I'm curious about this. I'd like to use this thread to address specific concerns regarding High Level Play (12+). What specifically makes it unplayable?
Unplayable is not the right choice of words....here.
To brake this down simply it is lack of preparation and DM / GM skills. The amount of things that can occur with charters at higher levels is astounding... and can turn the course of an adventure very quickly.
Combat becomes something that has to have some thought and planned a bit more carefully than just , "I pull my Axe of whoop @$$ out and cleave him." Rather a party is force to really utilize theirs skills and there comrades, feats, special abilities, to maximize the battle.
My point here is... if the DM/GM is not "prepared" to handle a party of 6 players at this level with his arsenal of foes with countering powers near or at the same levels. He / she has has to be prepared to known the parties abilities and the foes abilities in order to exploit them to make the battle fair. Many of the higher level adventures that I have played the the GM runs the game and the story fine but really could have done a better job using all of the tool sets at his disposal which could have easily turned the battle around. Its a touch or DM/GM overload.
How do worlds handle the economics of unlimited cantrips? They incorporate them into the economy. Necessity is the mother of invention. Just like guilds and unions developed in the real world, they would develop in your fantasy world and figure out how to deal with it. That was one of the best parts of Eberron to me; the reality of having low level casters in relative plentitude was taken built into the world and turned into plot points used to drive the world. I plan something similar for my home brew world. Low level magic is comparatively common, but it is controlled by trade guilds, schools, or others who understand perfectly the power they hold, and have no interest in letting it overwhelm the economy. There are some free lancers, like the PCs, but in general, they don't have the access or clout needed to make a go of using their spells to make money on more than a subsistence level of income unless they work within the common framework. Higher level casters are still rare, be they PCs or NPCs, so the common framework is strong enough to support them. In pre 4E Forgotten Realms, unlimited cantrips could potentially be an economic problem, but magic in general in that setting is already so out of whack, I doubt anyone would notice.
Over a span of quite a few real-life years (I'm stingy with XP) my players achieved and passed 20th level. I ran a sandbox style game, and although it was very different from low-level dungeon crawls (which I did occasionally miss), it was quite a lot of fun. Finally broke up when several of my players had to follow their jobs out of state.
I wish I could say I had some special trick or insight. Maybe it worked because we all kind of "grew into" the levels together.
+1
I think that is one of the keys to high-level success. Not a requirement, of course, as there's no recipe, but I do think that growing into the characters is beneficial for successful high-level play.
Though I suspect that having a group of players that plays well together helps a lot as well.
Except a 12th level character who has invested in Diplomacy doesn't want their skill choice negated. At that level with a combination of buffs and aid another can turn even the most hostile enemies into friends (see Diplomacy DCs).
I once DMd a 3E/3.5E campaign that ran for several years and well into epic levels (having started at 1st), and probably would have gone longer had it not been for the death of one of the players. (Yes, I mean players, not characters.
The death of a PC certainly wouldn't have ended the campaign.)And one of the most memorable moments near the end of the campaign involved a Diplomacy check.
The PCs were making their way into a well-defended tower that was the lair of a major campaign villain who had been a thorn in the PCs' sides since early in the campaign -- not the BBEG of the campaign, but certainly a BBEG. At this point, they desperately needed some information he knew, and figured they were probably finally powerful enough to face him directly, and planned to get to him at the center of the tower and beat it out of him.
Now, the tower wasn't easy going, but they were making their way through. And the villain was taunting them telepathically every step of the way.
So finally at one point the party bard decided to talk back to him, and said something like this:
"You know, this tower is kind of annoying, but we're getting through all your traps and monsters. And you know we're going to get to you eventually. And when we do, you're not going to have a good day. So why don't you just make it easier on both of us and tell us what we need to know?"
He rolled a Diplomacy check, and got almost a 50. So... I decided the villain did tell them what they wanted to know.
(And yes, I realize arguably an Intimidate check would have been more fitting. But given the bard's personality and the way he phrased what he said, a Diplomacy check was defensible.)
Of course, I wouldn't allow a Diplomacy check to suddenly make an NPC the party's best friend for no reason. But in this case, under the circumstances, what the bard was saying actually made sense, and it actually was in the villain's best interest to do what he asked (at least, assuming the villain could be reasoned into valuing his own well-being over his desire to harm the party, which I thought was certainly reasonable). It meant bypassing half the dungeon I'd mapped out, but I figured it was appropriate, and made for a good heroic moment for the bard character.
Generally, I think it's part of the DM's job to be aware of what the PCs are capable of. Once you know that, it's much, much, better to incorporate it into the game, to reward its use with further interesting stories, than it is to try to negate it.
Heh. Trying to incorporate the PCs' abilities backfired on me once. The party wizard (actually an arcane trickster by that point) had gotten into the habit of reconnoitering dungeons by wind walking ethereally through the walls, finding out exactly how the dungeon was laid out and what the party would be up against, and then returning to the rest of the party and leading them through the best path he'd found. Now, obviously there are all sorts of ways I could have foiled that tactic if I'd wanted to, but coming up with a reason in every dungeon why the wizard's abilities didn't work or had unfortunate consequences would be annoying for the players. So... I designed one labyrinth with the explicit expectation that the wizard would do this. The maze was full of twisting paths and dead ends and hazards and would be a huge pain to find their way through normally, but I figured the wizard would scout it out beforehand and find the fastest way through, and the whole thing would be dealt with in maybe five minutes of real time.
So, this one time, with the maze from hell that I fully expected the wizard to short-circuit... he didn't. He'd used that tactic on every dungeon the party had been through recently, and now, when there was a dungeon I'd specifically designed with that tactic in mind, he apparently suddenly forgot he could do it. So the PCs were tediously slogging through the maze the hard way, and the players were frustrated by the stupid maze, and I was frustrated because this would all have been prevented if the wizard would just do exactly what he'd done for the last few dungeons, and... bleah. (I think eventually in desperation when they were about halfway through I may have dropped a hint reminding the wizard of his usual dungeon tactic...)
Anyway, though, I thought the campaign remained fun into the epic levels, and the players seemed to feel the same way. (That one annoying maze notwithstanding.)
I totally agree with what's been said by DreamAtelier and gbonehead and others about the importance of having a story in mind, and a plot with a planned endpoint. This campaign had in fact had a story arc planned out from the beginning, and I knew from the start how I'd expected it to end. And, despite the occasional inevitable surprises from the PCs, it did ultimately end up going overall pretty much how I'd planned... I said at the beginning of this post it probably would have gone longer had it not been for the death of a player, but it wouldn't have gone much longer; it was getting very near the end anyway, and would almost certainly have ended in a few more levels regardless. (The other players didn't feel comfortable continuing the campaign for long after the one player had died, but they did want to have one or two more sessions to wrap up the plot and bring it to a good ending, so I just skipped over a few minor bits I was going to run that weren't really important for the main plot anyway and moved the climactic confrontation with the campaign's main BBEG up a little, so the campaign still came to a satisfying end.)
And yeah, I also agree with what's been said about the importance of having good players. If I hadn't had a good group of players, the campaign wouldn't have gone nearly as well. One major powergamer could have made things really annoying. (Which is another argument for not starting at high levels; if you've played with the same players since low levels, you know them well enough to have hopefully weeded out any problem players by then.)
No. Metagame thinking would be if I planned for this defense because the player used it. I plan the defense no matter what the player is doing. I assume every single high level creature that can plans for energy drain.
...
Every creature with the resources will travel with resistance to energy drain in anything I run. I do not see how they could possibly have lived as long as they have without it since it can destroy anything from...The problem I have is the "travel with resistance" part. Is energy drain dangerous, yes. Would they have a plan to deal with it, probably. Would they constantly expend resources to deal with a power that might come up once in a blue moon (in most cases), why? If they all have defenses against it, then why would anybody ever use it, so why would anybody have defenses against, because nobody ever uses it, because...
When you start using absolute phrases like "every single high level creature", "would not survive", "Every creature with the resources will" or "I do not see how they could possibly have lived" I hear no room for individual creatures to be arrogant, lucky, isolated or foolish. "Most", "probably", "if a known threat exisits" I can buy. But such absolute terms as you use = metagaming. (OK, I have to say it...Only a Sith deals in absolutes...or something like that; though I am not saying Maddigan is a Sith.)
Maybe I'm just overly sensative to this sort of DM behavior. My current DM plays an old school, DM vs PLAYERS (not characters) style of DMing. His monsters are almost always reacting to our characters in metagaming ways. Creatures ALWAYS use stealth, they know what tactics the group employs and ALWAYs realize we are the biggest threat they have ever faced even if we have never met them before. It's like we have a sign, "high level pc's, beware" around our neck.
Casting a Death Ward or Spell Immunity with limited wish is pretty easy. So it's not a huge investment of resources.
I certainly don't have my monsters laying around their lairs with resistance up. But it is one of their considerations before entering battle if they can.
My own players prepare for this. Death ward is an extremely common defense.
You have to be prepared as a DM. It certainly isn't DM versus the players. Every good DM wants to see the players win. Seriously, do you think I as a DM want to spend months of my time running characters up to lvl 17 or 18 and see them die? Heck no.
That not only wasted your time, but it wasted my time.
At the same time I don't want to make them feel as though they did nothing to earn their power. I want them to feel as though they were in an epic adventure where they faced death and powerful, intelligent, and dangerous enemies that put them to the test. So I plan accordingly their tactics.
Can't make it easy for the players. But I don't want to kill them or make all their abilities useless.
So if you have had that bad experienc of DM versus the players, I feel for you. That's not how it should be. I have no idea how a DM that spent so much time running his players up can want to kill them. People lose interest playing with that kind of DM.
DMing is first and foremost storytelling. And though a DM shouldn't be afraid to kill his players' characters, he should still respect the time investment, effort, and attachment the player has to that character since the DM had a major hand in each of those elements and seek mainly to challenge, not destroy the PC. That's all I do. I do that by making sure my powerful NPCs have a defense to most common forms of attacks and strategies. They gotta work for that win. But I pay it off when they do.
At lvl 19, my fighter moves, hits, does 180 points of damage and requires a DC 29 Fort save or the target is stunned. At lvl 20, he'll do 270 points, stun with a DC 30 save. He can also whirlwind attack stun.
Ok, but considering things have 500 + hit points the fighter isn't doing much. If he doesn't one shot it, it will one shot him.
That's not at all true.
That fighter is one of the meanest damage machines in the game. When he does 180 points, that is one standard action hit after a move. If he gets a full round of attacks, he does 270 to 340 damage. If he crits, more.
Only things that can kill him in one round are other two-hander fighter types or huge monsters. They should be able to smash on him good if they can unload on him clean.
Otherwise, he has 270 hit points and can take a beating.
And as a I said above, D&D is it's own genre. It was designed as a game. So the fighter isn't going to be able to act in a solo fashion like a book. He needs the cleric and wizard support to help him survive versus the insane stuff they go against. And vice versa since the cleric and wizard will be even more dead against a creature that can take a fighter down quickly if it gets ahold of them.