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Higher level adventures are harder to do while still remaining fresh. At low level dungeons are deadly, mysteries are possible and PCs mostly are still forced to fight on the enemy's terms. Once effects like teleport, scry etc come into play the game shifts and the bad guys have to start operating on the PC's terms.
So the problems with higher level adventures are a loss of space due to longer stat-blocks, and difficulty of pace as the NPCs are forced to become reactive in the face of PCs seeking to achieve their own goals.
Kingmaker handled this well by giving the GM a toolbox to shape a campaign rather than a playset the PCs had outgrown.
Then there seems to be the book 5 problem, wherein the PCs know who the BBEG is, but must go on a McGuffin hunt/sidequest first. Curse of the Crimson Throne had skeletons of Scarwall. Serpents Skull had whatever book 5 was.
I think a restructuring of the plot arches could help. Basically treat the AP as three major acts, each with its own "boss" orchestrating events in the previous book. This makes Book 5 a reactive situation, the book 6 villain orchestrates an assault, the PCs defend. When that's done book 6 is a toolbox for a PC assault on the campaign arch villain.
Yea, I agree. There's exceptions (KM6!), but that's the tendancy I've noticed as well.
I'm convinced that it's a multidimensional problem in dealing with high level material:
- As DM_Dudemeister said, it's naturally hard to write for
- but also, I don't think many people actually play the high-end stuff
The second point makes it so that they don't have to try too hard on the first point.
GMs who post on these forums are a small subset of all AP-purchasers, and we're more likely to finish the whole thing. However, that being said, I'd be real curious to see a graph that asks "what book did you stop at?" My guess is that very, very few of us forum-goers are doing high-level AP play.
(Either because we hate the mechanics of high-level play, or we want to "go long", but life intervenes and groups break up after 6 months before we get a chance to get past level 10.)
Sure, PCs might ask for high-level now and again, but when's the last time you heard a GM clamoring for it? And APs are primarily sold to GMs.
I always find it funny how people request for *more* high-level adventures without realizing just *how* much more difficult it is to write a challenging adventure for parties that have assumed access to 8th and 9th level magic.
That's why we request more high-level material. Most of us can write our own low-level material with little difficulty.
It's true in my case, but I also recognize that part of that is due to me losing interest in the current "theme" and getting interested in the next AP leading up to its launch.
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I don't see it as complaining as observing. There are exceptions to the rule and in recent Paths definite improvement, but discussing it isn't whining.
It's a way of finding solutions. With 3 Bestiaries and a GMG full of NPC stats I think we'll see more room for the higher level adventures to breathe (thanks to shortened stat blocks)
I don't see it as complaining as observing. There are exceptions to the rule and in recent Paths definite improvement, but discussing it isn't whining.
It's a way of finding solutions. With 3 Bestiaries and a GMG full of NPC stats I think we'll see more room for the higher level adventures to breathe (thanks to shortened stat blocks)
agreed, i was off base and deleted the post. thanks
Agree to a point. Kingmaker and Carrion Crown are great all the way through (ymmv). Serpent Skull definately suffers from "sag" at the back end. Jade Regent is losing me in the middle, I think this is because of the Caravan rules not being fully tested (I really wish Paizo would stop with these extra optional rules).
I have no opinion on Council of Thieves, I didn't have a chance to read much of it beyond the first two chapters.
Out of the original non-PF ruled APs, Runelords and Crimson Throne were excellent all the way through and Legacy of Fire was good too. Second Darkness sagged in a few places and I'm probably the only one who didn't care for the first chapter of it.
Pre-Golarion APs all were great. Maybe it's the Greyhawk lover in me?
Pre-Golarion APs all were great. Maybe it's the Greyhawk lover in me?
I can't speak about the other two, but Shackled City stumbled a bit at the end, with a premature climax in Thirteen Cages and Strike on Shatterhorn which was mostly filler.
Jade Regent is losing me in the middle, I think this is because of the Caravan rules not being fully tested (I really wish Paizo would stop with these extra optional rules).
I don't mind the optional rules themselves, it is the one shot and done design of some of them that bothers me. Just because something makes it into print should not make it the defacto final version especially in this day and age of digital options (pdf). It would be nice if Paizo would put in additional effort to finalize them over time. I keep bringing up the request for more supplemental pdfs to include such things and perhaps one day we will see such a thing. Until that day I will keep plugging away in my effort for them to see the light of day.
From my experience all campaigns (homebrew or otherwise) tend to sag in the back half. You're dealing with the shine coming off the apple.
Players have had to deal with character limitations (on certain types of power, roleplaying goals, unrequited revenge, etc) for a long time and then you run that alongside a high level fight taking a whole session in and of itself and everyone starts to get fatigued.
But a successful campaign is better in the end than the sum of its individual parts. There's always that deadly chase, close escape or one-on-one nail biter fight, and then there are the fun yet rediculous "and then we burned his country to the ground" moments of high level play. A good group is going to push through the fatigue and see the forest for the trees.
So while I do agree with the OP, I don't think its anyone particular fault in the process. Nor is it particularly damning to the roleplaying experience of campaigns/AP's in general.
I've read the last few books of a few APs, and it seems to me the quality of the AP is fine at the upper levels. I think that most campaigns, in general, slowly die out over time. Playing the same character again and again, in the same setting, isn't as fun.
What's interesting to me is how people keep their long running campaigns fresh and exciting. Do you take breaks? In these breaks, do you play a different campaign, PFS, board games, or just don't meetup?
I've read the last few books of a few APs, and it seems to me the quality of the AP is fine at the upper levels. I think that most campaigns, in general, slowly die out over time. Playing the same character again and again, in the same setting, isn't as fun.
What's interesting to me is how people keep their long running campaigns fresh and exciting. Do you take breaks? In these breaks, do you play a different campaign, PFS, board games, or just don't meetup?
I'm not sure. The three longest running campaigns I've been involved in were all 5-years long or more:
* The game we had that started soon after high school; we'd get together a couple times a year and play. That was AD&D and lasted for about 5 years; we were all friends before and after so it was as social as it was gaming.
* A 3.5e convention campaign. It had started as a 2e campaign, I got involved in around 2000 when it transitioned to a 3e campaign very successfully, and then the quick transition to 3.5e gave it a slow wasting disease; it survived until 4e, and then the 4e transition killed it within a year. We shut it down in 2010, but by then nobody really noticed.
* A 3.5e (and now 3.5e/Pathfinder) campaign that started in 2006 and is still running strong. Again, we were all friends before we started, and it's as social as gaming.
But during that span and before I've been in at least 25 other campaigns that either attempted to start, started then fizzled, or even ran for a year or so. Many of them with the same group of friends.
I see three factors that contribute to a successful campaign:
1. GM commitment. The #1 reason any of the campaigns failed was because the GM wouldn't/couldn't continue (childbirth, moved, too busy, burned out).
2. Players that are friends on a personal level too. If there's a reason other than just gaming to get together, that increases the chances of successfully continuing on.
3. Sufficient player pool. There has to be enough players so that the game can go off even when someone abruptly can't make it. People are busy; crap comes up; that's life. If you've only got 3-4 players and a GM, you're probably canceling the game if any can't make it.
There's a lot of secondary aspects to it all, but most of those feed into one of the above - in particular PVP, lack of interest in the game (it's not fun, the GM isn't good, the system is bad) tend to feed into #3 on the list above.
I've retired 7 campaigns for a variety of reasons:
* I found the level of PVP unacceptable (once)
* I wanted to start a new campaign (twice)
* I moved out of state (twice)
* I didn't have time to run two campaigns (once)
* The number of players was too low to continue (once)
I've left campaigns (rather than being involved as they fizzled to nothing) only 3 times; once I moved out of state, once I didn't like the way it was run and offered to run instead, and the other because I ended up with too many activies and that was what I opted to stop.
Take all that as you will :)
My final piece of heretical advice: it might be time for the "each volumes adventure can be run stand alone or as part of an AP" design philosophy to end. By trying to make the individual AP adventures stand on their own it dilutes the experience for the group that is running the entire AP. To me, the group and GM that are dedicated to running the entire AP start to finish should be rewarded for the effort, not have a diluted experience because the AP tries to straddle the fence between the "start to finish group" and the "one off" group. For a great example of this look no further than "Skeletons of Scarwall"; a great stand alone high level dungeon crawl but a mediocre part 5 of the AP. To me that should be reversed, especially at the part 5 stage.
This makes a lot of sense to me. Those looking for one-shots would still have the module line, plus would presumably be able to rejig the AP instalments with a little effort. The benefit from such a slight shift of focus, rather than trying to "be all things" would be worth experimenting with, in my opinion.
Pre-Golarion APs all were great. Maybe it's the Greyhawk lover in me?I can't speak about the other two, but Shackled City stumbled a bit at the end, with a premature climax in Thirteen Cages and Strike on Shatterhorn which was mostly filler.
Savage Tide also had several filler chapters here and there, but not one as bad as the tenth, Wells of Darkness. Quite possibly the worst chapter of any AP that I DMed.
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Paizo themselves creates a sense of drag in their APs with the advancement speed of PCs going into the later books. The standard formula thus far has been:
Book 1: 1-4
Book 2: 4-7
Book 3: 7-10
Book 4: 10-12
Book 5: 12-14
Book 6: 14-16
So where you're picking up about 4 levels per adventure through the first four books, that drops back to three (and sometimes fewer) in the back half. The decisions are perfectly logical, especially given Paizo's challenge philosophy of keeping the CRs somewhere around APL+1 or 2. A 3rd level party versus a CR 5 monster is a hairy encounter, but survivable. A 11th level party can discover that a CR 13 encounter has save DCs they're not ready for and those saves are the ones they needed to see tomorrow. Add in the aforementioned challenges in writing up high-level encounters and the reasoning becomes clear.
The praiseworthy ambition to make an adventure enjoyable to read helps drive that APL+ philosophy: if I want text that puts the story together, I need fewer overall encounters. I also need a certain amount of XP to flow from the adventure to get the PCs to the appropriate level for the next adventure. The solution is fewer encounters at higher CRs.
I suppose one question I have in this process is this: Has there been a decision to simply avoid the end-level (19-20) play? I see lots of talk on the boards about how it's practically unplayable; however, if that is true, I'd rather see that problem addressed than continue running APs for my players where they salivate over that capstone ability and never end up seeing it in play. I'm happy to manage expectations, but I would expect at least one adventure to make use of all the rules, and not just on the side of the bad guys.
Shackled city was great, excepting Strike on Shatterhorn. I chose to end on a high note with Thirteen Cages. The players still wanted to go higher level.
Another DM played us through Age of Worms. We got through it all, but the players were sorely fed up with very high level play.
Rise of the Runelords was great until part 3, I chose to end it there.
Curse of the Crimson Throne looks better all the way through.
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*snip*
I suppose one question I have in this process is this: Has there been a decision to simply avoid the end-level (19-20) play? I see lots of talk on the boards about how it's practically unplayable; however, if that is true, I'd rather see that problem addressed than continue running APs for my players where they salivate over that capstone ability and never end up seeing it in play. I'm happy to manage expectations, but I would expect at least one adventure to make use of all the rules, and not just on the side of the bad guys.
You know nothing really breaks if you give your PCs the Capstone abilities when they hit level 14-16. It's the last adventure after all, the rules are there so use them. I fully intend to do this in Kingmaker.
Actually it'd be great if an AP could write this into the book itself.
Perhaps Shackled Skull or Shattered Star might do this?
I'm happy to manage expectations, but I would expect at least one adventure to make use of all the rules, and not just on the side of the bad guys.
They don't make ultra-high-level adventures for a couple of reasons (at least).
1) They don't sell well.
2) There aren't any rules for classes over level 20, so level 20 PCs can only fight NPCs of their level or lower.
Maybe it's time to switch it up and provide less leveling early in the AP and more leveling toward the end.
Unfortunately, 3E and PFRPG are structured so that high level stat blocks take up more room than low level ones, not to mention that there are fewer high level monsters where you can just refer to a bog-standard Bestiary entry (in order to skip reproducing the stat block).
So a module covering levels 14-16 would be significantly longer (in terms of page count, not to mention play time) than a module covering levels 4-6.
After 3 bestiaries hardcovers and 50+ AP bestiary sections in the APs themselves I really don't think this is true anymore.
..not to mention that there are fewer high level monsters where you can just refer to a bog-standard Bestiary entry (in order to skip reproducing the stat block).
Really? You honestly think there are as many unique CR 14-16 creatures as there are CR 4-6 creatures? That's unpossible!
Using lists from d20pfsrd.com (up to, but not including Bestiary 3), Paizo has published 257 creatures with CR 4, 5 or 6, including 19 dragons. Likewise, they have published 110 creatures with CR 14, 15 or 16, including 34 dragons.
So there are over three times as many non-dragon creatures in the low CR range compared to the high CR range.
So your stats actually show how there are more options to for high level CR encounters than low ones.
And in other news, my weekly chocolate ration was raised from 15 grams to 10 grams.
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They don't make ultra-high-level adventures for a couple of reasons (at least).1) They don't sell well.
2) There aren't any rules for classes over level 20, so level 20 PCs can only fight NPCs of their level or lower.
1) I'm not asking them to do it a lot and a single AP that ran to 20th doesn't seem like it would break the bank. Really, we're talking about a book 6, so we're talking about a part of the AP for which most folk who are interested in the story are committed already.
2) So the bad guy at the end wold need to be one of their legendary monsters. How cool would it be to have an Adventure Path take you into battle with a Great Wyrm or even Fafnheir? Paizo has given us a ton of villains with levels. There's nothing wrong with a making a monster the BBEG, is there?
However, when I DMd them through Savage Tide they thought:
** spoiler omitted **
So there is something to be said for going all out with and AP.
Can't argue with that! Savage Tide and Age of Worms are my two favourite adventure paths so far.
We just finished "Here There Be Monsters" in our Savage Tide play-by-post on this forum, although it's taken almost 4 years. Just another 5 (or more) years to go! :-)
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See I think this is a problem with the expectations of "epic" and "mythic" level rules. If Demon Lords were CR 18-22 and Demigods 23+ then PCs in a 6 volume AP could fight them.
If Paizo even does release "mythic" rules then people are going to get annoyed because APs can't get that high level without missing the crucial low-levels or leaving massive xp gaps. When Paizo experimented with "gap levels" in Second Darkness there was a backlash.
James Jacobs has also stated on multiple occasions that the page count of the Adventures couldn't increase because it's physically impossible for writers and developers to do more than they do (see also: current gap in AP because of time crunch).
I think CR 23+ demon lords and godlings are silly. The amount of time commitment to reach those levels with all the problems of high level play is just not worth it. Change the expectations of the game. Treat level 15 as the cap and level 16+ as "mythic" or "epic" there's a god to kill (again) at the end of Serpent's Skull and that's a pretty epic capstone to a campaign.
This is not a knock against those who want mythic rules, but if you can't kill a god after a year and a half to three years of playing then that's a problem with the expectations of the game and the narrative.
I think CR 23+ demon lords and godlings are silly. The amount of time commitment to reach those levels with all the problems of high level play is just not worth it. Change the expectations of the game. Treat level 15 as the cap and level 16+ as "mythic" or "epic" there's a god to kill (again) at the end of Serpent's Skull and that's a pretty epic capstone to a campaign.
This is not a knock against those who want mythic rules, but if you can't kill a god after a year and a half to three years of playing then that's a problem with the expectations of the game and the narrative.
You're using terminology in worthless ways. I can label level 4 as "mythic" at my table; that doesn't do anything useful. The whole point is to give a label to level 21+ play that isn't the word "epic" ... that way people will stop associating it with the ELH. We already have rules for levels 1-20, they're called the Core Rulebook, labeling them something else doesn't accomplish anything.
Also ... so you're saying the only reason to play at levels above 21 is to kill gods?
You having issues with high-level play does not equal "high level play is silly, pointless and broken."
At our table the players have been playing for over 5 years (real time) and in that time have killed two creatures with a divine rank greater than zero (in one case it was 1, and in another, if I recall properly, it was 3 or 4). The campaign is nowhere near done, but I can unequivocally say they will never, ever kill a god ... yet the campaign is likely to go on for another year, perhaps two, depending on what they do.
Based on your definition, the campaign became pointless several years ago simply because they "hadn't killed a god."
@GBonehead: sorry if my critique hurt your feelings dude. I was referring to the idea of defeating the likes of Kyuss or Demogorgon. I'm not saying all epic games need god killing, I'm saying Demon Lords and Demigods don't need to be such high levels.
Heheheh ... no chance of hurt feelings, my skin's a bit thicker than that.
I just have a habit of chiming in when people make statements about epic play as if they're facts when most often they're that person's experience with their specific group or their opinion of how play should go, and such statements don't seem to take into account the variety of play styles that might exist out there.
Our group's experience has been different than most, I guess :)
And I'll agree with you 100% about demon lords and demigods not needing such high levels in any absolute sense. It's all relative to the campaign. However, in Golarion they do need to be that high, because that is the demographics of the world of Golarion.
On the other hand, if I created a campaign where no character ever exceeded level 5, any creature of CR15-20 might as well be a demigod. On the other hand, in another campaign where the PCs reach levels in, say, the 50-60 range, level 15 demon lords and demigods are pretty silly. In that case they would be significantly higher.