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pjackson |
Just because something is a monster does not mean it is always an enemy.
Just because something can dome a lot of damage with a full attack does not mean it should not have options to use when not in melee.
The magical trap rules are broken from a simulationist point of view. There is no logical reason for saying they can be used for beneficial spells. Whether a special is beneificial or not depends on the circumstances. CLW is harmful to undead. Inflict Light Wounds heals undead. Create Water could be used to create the classic deathtrap of a room that slowly fills with water.
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dunelord3001 |
![Chatterer](http://cdn.paizo.com/image/avatar/10Chattererswarm3.jpg)
Monster Creation Guidelines and a menu of abilities that will see use during a game (oddly enough I realise I'm asking for something that's become a 4th Ed. hallmark), but reducing NPC/monster complexity would go a long way to helping out those GMs who don't have hours to spare.
4th is like a sewer with a few dollar bills in it. You shouldn't ignore the good stuff just because 99% is crap.
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Arcane_Guyver |
DreamAtelier has some really good advice. I'd say it basically boils down to, "Give the NPC/monster abilities it can use for up to 5 rounds, and nothing more." PCs invariably kill things quick, so the expected lifespan of an NPC is way too short to determine what Crafts & Knowledge skills it has, let alone low-level attack spells it will never use. Also, stat NPCs & monsters up with all buffs pre-cast; just don't tell your players.
Generating NPC gear will still take time. If there's a Pathfinder resource like the one found in the back of the v3.5 Player's Handbook 2 (which gives example gear for NPCs of various classes & levels), I'd recommend using it as a starting point.
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beej67 |
![Shark](http://cdn.paizo.com/image/avatar/PF22-12.jpg)
One thing we did in our campaign was break the world into small regions, each run by a different pantheon, and then limited "world wide" spells to region only. So no cross-region scrying, no cross-region teleport, no cross-region gate, and your entrance into the higher planes of existence is location specific in the game world itself.
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![Rust Monster](http://cdn.paizo.com/image/avatar/rust-monster.gif)
Jason Beardsley wrote:I had a lot of insightful and helpful posts in the previous thread. I'd like to take some advice from one of those posters and start this thread.
What would make HLP easier to run (GMs perspective)?
What would make HLP easier to play (Player's perspective)?
Please share some hints, tips, and tricks you use, or think would benefit making HLP not as difficult as it is, at least, perceived to be.
From a GM perspective, I think that one of the most prevalent problems with high level play is inexperience. I'm not saying this to knock anyone who GMs, but it's a fact of the matter that most campaigns start at low level, and then slow down and end as they get into the high level play are.
What this means is that we're all used to playing at levels 1-10 or 12, and we've spent massive periods of time learning what works in that sort of play. Comparatively, we've probably spent less than a tenth* of that amount of time playing and running at high levels. Because we're unfamiliar with it, we're uncomfortable with it, and we don't realize that it can not, inherently, be run the same as 1-12 play.
The solution to this problem is being given advice on how it can be done, and looking up inspiration for how to accomplish these things. A great deal of such material has already been published, but finding it, and realizing it is applicable, can be very difficult.
A short reading list that I would recommend to anyone planning on high level play:
-Master of the Game, by Gary Gygax.
** spoiler omitted **
-XDM: X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, by Tracy and Curtis Hickman.
** spoiler omitted **...
Good gods, what a great post!
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![Rust Monster](http://cdn.paizo.com/image/avatar/rust-monster.gif)
I'd like to echo the idea that high level play is a paradigm shift for the GM and the players. Behind the screen, the games should be designed to maximize roleplay again, and actual battles can be fewer but more meaningful. A quick example would be seeing the culmination of the characters desires in the forms of either riches, power, land, nobility etc., while still providing targeted games where the PCs must truly overcome a challenge.
For decades 60-70% of the high level games involved espionage, intrigue, and wider-lens travel than ever before.. to far off countries, or other planes of existence. But once there, and once the roleplay clarified the mission, the actual battles were less around each corner, but more centralized to the main opponent or challenge.
And if you've "raised" a good batch of characters from L1-12, you should have ample story threads overlapping to keep everyone interested.
Imagine an evening's adventure going something like this:
I. Exposition - characters gather after a 4 month hiatus. Each can roleplay thier experiences. Then a matter of grave importance requires their attention.
II. Rising Action - the characters travel to the far off place by means of dragon, or airship, or something within their financial means. Upon arrival at destination, a battle ensues of one kind or another. But more importantly, something is learned that is key to the goal.
III. Climax - the characters now center in on the central target or mission. Yet a twist leaves them facing a worthy challenge of great might. Whether battlegrid or imagination is your medium, give them a fight. Make it worthy. Any previous encounters don't compare to this combat.
IV. Falling action - there are consequences, the roleplay continues. There are repercussions and fallout that must be decided. There are allies to inform, and adventure on the horizon.
This basic storytelling formula is releveant at any level, but when it comes to high level we often think solely about combat. Ed Greenwood has written a lot about high level play i.e. Powers of Faerun, but reaching back to Gygax or other great story designers here is a must. The relevancy and enjoyment of high level play isn't in the numbers, they are mostly barriers to enjoyment at the high levels.
Tons of tactics on table management can be found in the other thread, but at the end of the day, limitations on players isn't the best solution. The best solution to high level play involves a re-look at one's own game design, and decidedly acting counter-intuitively to what you see in the game rules i.e. you will see more stat blocks, longer stat blocks, more mechanical complexities and yet... seek out the simple that makes rpgs work. Seek out the story, the characters, the NPCs, the mystery, the description. And give your players more material to work with, and encourage them to roleplay their asses off.
If your players feel like lords, and knights, and high wizards, they will enjoy acting like them. If, on the other hand, game progression has been disperate but not comprehensive of this paradigm shift where they are in charge, the game can devolve into focus on individual powers, game mechanics, and result in GM limitation just to keep the game afloat.
The biggest shift is for the GM to give away a lot of their typical control. When you're sitting across the GM screen from an archmage, assume that mage can blow away the screen, alter the story, teleport the players anywhere at anytime. Instead, let go, like Obi Wan told Luke in episode IV, and come into the game with less constraints, less restrictions, and see what your players, now leaders, are capable of coming up with, and be ready to meet their challenges on the great equalizing battlefront of roleplay. Roleplay is an equalizer at any level. Bring your imagination, and push your own rp, description, story richness, and they'll go home happy for sure. Be sure to include the epic battle, be sure your boss has minions, be sure terrain is a factor, be sure you understand some of the more complex spells... but really, as a gamemaster you know the world, and at the high levels the players want to really make big differences. Whether its a fight of good against evil, or their own initiative to find a +5 holy sword, whether its their own barony or kingdom at steak, or whether someone has hurt a loved one, whether the adjacent kingdom has just invaded, or whether the known resting place of the methusalah has finally been discovered... imagination and story are the great balancers at this level, and when the GM shifts the paradigm from providing hooks to listening for hooks, and when the players shift from listening for hooks to being the hook... great things happen.
-Pax
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Maddigan |
![Abadar](http://cdn.paizo.com/image/avatar/B02_Abadar_God_of_Cities_H.jpg)
Another lesson I re-learned as a DM about high level play having run my group to lvl 20: Let the players have fun.
I planned out an encounter with a big legendary creature (CR 23 versus lvl 19 players) attacking the PCs capital city. I buffed this guy. I adjusted him to make him more formidable including having his master buff him up with permanent greater magic fang and the like. I planned his tactics well including evading to let spell durations run out and wear the PC's magic and powers down.
Then what happens?
The first time this guy takes flight to start his evasion tactics the following sequence of events occurs:
1. The sorcerer turns into a huge silver dragon. The Zen Archer Monk, the bard, and the oracle mount on top of him. He takes flight and catches up with the creature. So now we're in an aerial combat over the city.
2. The big creature blasts the sorcerer and moves in close to rip him apart and throw him from the sky with his next action.
3. The Zen Archer monk has a legendary artifact bow with an ability called Sorrow that is like a more limited form of vorpal. If she rolls a natural 20 and confirms the crit, the bow requires a DC 25 Will save or it outright slays the creature. It's a mind-affecting death effect. The creature is mind-blanked and has a +34 Will save.
So she uses Perfect Strike and has brilliant inspiration on. She rolls 4d20. What does she get? A 20 and a 19.
And what does the legendary creature roll for its save? A natural 1.
I can't believe this. I plan this creature out. I think this is going to be a long fight. The creature has 1080 hit points since I buff up my big colossal creature hit points to survive extended battles with parties. And he rolls a natural 1, fight is over with minimal damage to the PCs, even though their city was torn up and many of their people killed.
Initially I suffer what is known as DM shock. You're sitting there scratching your head a little irriated your players destroyed an encounter you thought would be difficult.
Then I sat back, thought about it, decided this is high level play. This type of pain could go either way. If one of my PCs was hammered and rolled a natural 1, they would be equally as dead.
And when I thought about it some more, it would have looked absolutely epic in a story book or a movie.
The zen archer monk and her companions riding on the back of a huge silver dragon against a creature that ripped up their city, killed hundreds or more of their people, and was like Smaug in the hobbit. The Zen Archer fires her arrow just as the creature is about to tear them apart and send them to the ground. She fires. A single perfect shot and the creature is felled from the sky.
When the dice hand you and your players an epic storybook moment, you just gotta sit back and enjoy it. This is the type of lucky exhange that makes for legendary gaming sessions. My players were pretty excited and let out a cheer. Amazingly lucky series of rolls for my player. Good for them.
That's why when you're running a high level game. You have to learn to enjoy your players winning and being powerful rather than being irritated when they destroy the enemies you made. They're supposed to win. They're the heroes.
I do the best I can to design a decent challenge for them. Then I let them have fun. If they win easy, oh well. They're high level. They're a major power in the land now meant to rival gods and legendary creatures, not cower before them.
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Caliburn101 |
![Market Patron](http://cdn.paizo.com/image/avatar/19OpenerHangingPlaza01a.jpg)
Heh - after my last post being avalanched by caffiene-fueled critics let me post this here again AND explain my reasoning and experience.
So firstly the explanation;
Experience - I have been GM'ing the various iterations of 'd20' since 1977. Hopefully that means I know something of what I am talking about!
Reasoning - I have never found high level play satisfying except at the very finale of a campaign on the odd occassion. Lvl 13+ characters represent varying degrees of 'superhero', and as such are not much represented in cultural, mythological or novel format except (almost exclusively) as SINGLE heroes who eclipse everyone around them.
Making stories up for GROUPS of such 'fantasy superheroes' becomes increasingly difficult and improbable/fantastical. By all means play a fantastical game - but I find that d20 isn't the one to do it in - games like Exalted do it far better because they are designed for it.
I do shake my head at people who think things should be 'EXACTLY as they are in the rulebook' and criticise decisions made by DM's on their campaign balance. There are plenty of RPG's out there which have lower power levels but in which GM's can run 'Epic' plots whilst keeping flying, teleporting and stabbing fully grown Bull-Elephants to death in 6 seconds with a pair of fruit knives to a minimum!
GURPS & Runequest (d100) are particularly good at this but other notable examples exist.
Besides - name an epic fantasy hero you know of from novels who needed all the d20 high level play trimmings? Conan? Druss? Gandalf? - no - no flying, teleporting or giving someone a migraine if they are a 'magic' detector. Conan had 1 high quality sword and magical belt - that was all he needed to become the most powerful King in the world. Druss had an ex-demon-possessed axe as his only legend-writing tool. Gandalf even when White couldn't level armies on his lonesome, or teleport Frodo to Mount Doom (damn short novel that would have been....).
You don't need nine pages of Su's, Ex's, Feats and Spells to be Epic, and d20 CAN be adjusted in a relatively simple way to accomodate a more mainstream fantasy power-level whilst enjoying the strengths of the system. Power levels are all about comparison to 'what is out there' in the end.
So - my next post on this thread will repeat the template I use for ease of reference if you are interested more in RP than Power Levelling. It works well enough and has been playtested by a significant number of people over decades - hope you like it ;)
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Caliburn101 |
![Market Patron](http://cdn.paizo.com/image/avatar/19OpenerHangingPlaza01a.jpg)
I have a campaign-limiting template which helps enormously with the high level play problems d20 creates 'by default'.
1. All players have to have 1 level in a secondary character class – Commoner, Expert, Adept etc. as a prologue to what they did before. This goes against the 20th level cap and counts as their 1st level class for skill, HP’s etc. Depending on the one you pick – you get background/inheritance bonuses for the character – kit, money, contacts, patrons, unusual secrets etc to balance them out – Commoners of course get the most to compensate.
2. Flight magic only exists if you have it as a racial ability, or if you can manifest wings or other physical ways of flying around (shapeshifting for example).
3. The Astral Plane is polluted with evil energies making all teleport spells as if they were to an unknown location and doing increasing amounts of negative energy damage the further you teleport. Only teleport circles get around this problem if there is one at BOTH ends. Spells like Blink thus become ‘if I must’ spells and longer distance teleports acts of pure 'desperation'.
4. Demographics is controlled so that the ‘average guy’ is actually 3rd level – not 1st – so veteran Guards can be 5th level and Elite troops ALL 6th level – makes throwing your weight around far more difficult. Campaigns however start at 3rd level. This goes for humanoids too – most Orcs in my game are 3rd level warriors – making a horde of the swines a lot more serious to deal with!
5. Economic model – I throw d20 economics out of the window (where it belongs) and start monetary reward escalation at 3rd level and at one-third the normal rate. Magical item prices stay the same however, making them much rarer.
6. Item Rewards – runs at 3 levels behind the current player level – making crafting feats attractive (yet still expensive – see 5.).
7. CR et al – sod challenge ratings – make informed subjective decisions yourself using it as a rough guide only – most other RPG’s don’t have such a formulaic system and you can throw away that crutch – trust me. You need to do this in any case to ensure the challenge of your encounters matches the lower itemisation etc. of the players.
8. XP – award based on a RP style – like White Wolf or GURPS – in the latter case I just give 10xcurrent level XP per session for turning up, up to 100xcurrent level for RP (based on a ‘how good were they this session’ % conversion factor). So awards for a typical 10th level adventure are (assuming pretty high 75% RP score) = 7600 xp. There are one-off bonuses for great events or achievements as I see fit.
9. Gaining levels – levels represent sizeable jumps in capability which just get bigger as time goes on. For each level gained in my campaigns – PC’s have to spend a ‘downtime’ (with associated living expenses etc.) of at least 3 months + 1 month per level to be gained (so to go from 6th to 7th level takes 10 months of downtime as the PC trains and consolidates their skills). If more rapid level gain is required for a short-term story arc – the DM can ‘accrue’ the downtime for after the story arc finishes – and the PC’s take time out afterwards in mundane pursuits and training.
That’s it really – and it makes for MUCH better campaign where fantastical magic and mountain-shaking monsters are no longer daily occurrences to be swatted aside like kobolds so they mean something when they happen.
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Caliburn101 |
![Market Patron](http://cdn.paizo.com/image/avatar/19OpenerHangingPlaza01a.jpg)
I'd like to echo the idea that high level play is a paradigm shift for the GM and the players. Behind the screen, the games should be designed to maximize roleplay again, and actual battles can be fewer but more meaningful. A quick example would be seeing the culmination of the characters desires in the forms of either riches, power, land, nobility etc., while still providing targeted games where the PCs must truly overcome a challenge.
For decades 60-70% of the high level games involved espionage, intrigue, and wider-lens travel than ever before.. to far off countries, or other planes of existence. But once there, and once the roleplay clarified the mission, the actual battles were less around each corner, but more centralized to the main opponent or challenge.
And if you've "raised" a good batch of characters from L1-12, you should have ample story threads overlapping to keep everyone interested.
Imagine an evening's adventure going something like this:
I. Exposition - characters gather after a 4 month hiatus. Each can roleplay thier experiences. Then a matter of grave importance requires their attention.
II. Rising Action - the characters travel to the far off place by means of dragon, or airship, or something within their financial means. Upon arrival at destination, a battle ensues of one kind or another. But more importantly, something is learned that is key to the goal.
III. Climax - the characters now center in on the central target or mission. Yet a twist leaves them facing a worthy challenge of great might. Whether battlegrid or imagination is your medium, give them a fight. Make it worthy. Any previous encounters don't compare to this combat.
IV. Falling action - there are consequences, the roleplay continues. There are repercussions and fallout that must be decided. There are allies to inform, and adventure on the horizon.This basic storytelling formula is releveant at any level, but when it comes to high level we often think solely about combat. Ed Greenwood has written a lot about high...
A very good post in my considered opinion and the right tac to take on this type of game.