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I do not enjoy it when a GM runs a combat as written when it is painfully obvious to all parties involved that the fight will be a cake-walk, and the party go from being heroes to thugs ganging up on a miniscule threat. Often the fights are over before initiative is rolled, yet we still need to spend at least 30 minutes of game time wiping up the remains. Not fun.
I'd prefer a GM that would adjust a 'pack' of 2 wolves vs 6 adventurers up to 6 wolves, to ensure the players are having fun. Increased chance of player death? Yes. Less players asleep at the table? Definite yes.
I think the 'Entire party vs one kobold druid' fight in First Steps pt.3 is a good example of an unfun and unchallenging combat that needs revision by a GM to make challenging.
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I'd prefer a GM that would adjust a 'pack' of 2 wolves vs 6 adventurers up to 6 wolves, to ensure the players are having fun. Increased chance of player death? Yes. Less players asleep at the table? Definite yes.
I think the 'Entire party vs one kobold druid' fight in First Steps pt.3 is a good example of an unfun and unchallenging combat that needs revision by a GM to make challenging.
Two comments on this:
If the GM consistently adjusts the difficulty of the encounters so your party is constantly pushing the threshold of death at every turn, you are going to wind up , at some point, where your resources are not going to be available/appropriate to handle the standard encounters because you have burned up so many resources dealing with "enhanced" encounters earlier in your career.
Second, if your party actually wound up in combat with the Kobold Druid in First Steps part 3, maybe your party needs to reconsider their approach to the game. That encounter is much more fun and challenging when dealing with it as an actual role playing encounter, rather than just playing gang up on a lone, non-optomized druid and her AC. How do you avoid combat with the druid?
The same thing holds true with other encounters, and not just teh optional ones, by the way.
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I'm not talking about 'pushing the threshold of death at every turn'.
I'm talking about snoozing through fights where the power level of the party is at least three times that of the encounter.
It'd be wonderful if the Kobold druid was a roleplaying encounter and the party needed her 'map out of the swamp' that she'd hidden and had to convince her to give it up. Instead it's written as a bunch of adventurers killing a hermit. Yes, she can summon one poison frog, but with one visible target at the start of combat, I'm not surprised if she goes down in the first round to some parties out there.
Of course there will be unoptimised parties that find some of these combats challenging as written. But I can't see it happening at any of my tables.
My message is there needs to be a certain point where the GM looks around the table and realises that a battle with the odds of 3 vs 1 isn't that interesting. Are they a 'bad' GM by adding more mooks? I'd say no.
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In principle I agree with the thoughts about fights that are no challenge being no fun.
However the argument that Mike and Mark got me to NOT think they're making crazy talk when they say 'run as written' is twofold.
Primarily, that it's hard to judge feedback on a scenario when they don't know whether it was run as written. I don't know if thats their main concern, but its the one that actually gets me to agree with them.
Secondarily, I'm another long time GM who in my own opinion, has a good grasp on what's 'enhancing the enjoyment' and what's 'oops, that was too much..'. However, my OTHER reason I see M&Ms rule having merit is because the GMs who can't see the difference between 'fun' and 'too much' are not going to be able to tell that THEY are in that category. In fact, they'll be likely to insist they can tell the difference perfectly well, probably citing long experience..
Furthermore, if they go ahead and say 'do it, but do it in moderation..' that will become 'ignore what's written and do what you want!'.
Organizations have to be legislated down to the lowest common demoninator. If they give an inch, we will take a yard.
So.. is it hypocritical to run combats as written and freely allow 'creative solutions' to skill/social challenges? Probably. But is it unavoidable? Yes, because I refuse to run absolutely everything completely as written with no deviation. This isn't a MMO.
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I really dont know where to start or if my small Gming experience matters really.
I still remember first time when I Gmed scenario, it was kinda unknown terrain for me but I really wanted to do it, luckily it was the Goblins scenario and how hard is it to roleplay goblins? It went well I guess for first timer, but eventually I figured out that my roleplay just sucks for the time being but I am still trying on it.
Over my small Gm carrier, 8 games by now, I did notice that PCs often pass without scratch on them. Barbarians 1shoting bosses on lv1 , it was kinda ridiciolus for me but I didnt turn away from scenario much because of the fact that 1 small deviation, as in adding 1 more creep, could be enough to kill some character or even party maybe unlikely to happen but at this early levels of me as Gm I would feel pretty bad about it.
So I led pretty much every scenario by the book as much as I could.
On the other hand, I dont like giving PCs free xp, gold ,chronicles, you name it. I mean seriously, those NPCs had enough or even way more fights and experience in their lives then to be killed by some dumb Barb who doesn't even care if the area is traped or ambushed. I will use my Gm rules to make hard life for the PCs as much as I can but always in limits of scenario or which are under my control. Some of those include adding: extra hp (rarely), making different positions, flanking NPCs, terrain advantage, there is lots of things to do which scenario gives me.
Hardiness on side. I have yet to see some brilliant creativity. Often they didnt even read their mission fully ( those mission handwritings can be really hard to read! ) or they just follow the guy who points the finger on next destination.
I did have few maybe absolutily good moments from some players, they actually managed to figure out whats gonna happen next, hillarious! I wanted to reward them for that, but couldnt figure out any way behind that next step, sucha shame.
I do have some wishes tho, adding maybe some human commoners, wheather effects and such, I would like to keep PCs thinking «was that NPC important or?».
Thats about all I can come up with.
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I run scenarios as written and require players to complete faction missions as written in the scenario.
The creativity clause I use for GMing in general and allow players to bypass encounters and improvise as needed. I generally allow players to take whatever actions thay want and never tell them that cannot be done, if there should be a minimal chance that what they propose could actually work.
Eg. in one of the scenarios where the Flip-Mat: Ship was used I let a gunslinger go into the cargo hold and shoot a gun straigt up through the main deck (at an enemy) - the chance of the plan working was very small. I required successive Str and Dex ability checks and when that succeeded I imposed 50% concealment and a -10 attack penalty. The concealment did not prevent the attack and the player rolled a natural 20 on the attack roll. It was glorious.
I only change faction mission copletion conditions if the scenario does not make sense. I can count the instances on one hand.
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To summarize a lot of what was said above - running PFS scenarios as written is important because:
1. If you make it "harder" the party needs to use more consumables, putting them at a disadvantage in later scenarios and compared to other groups;
2. Some GMs would not handle the permission to make changes well, resulting in more player deaths (and player deaths leads to fewer players);
3. Allowing people to sub out skills for faction missions makes it easier to exceed the expected 1.5 prestige-per-scenario average;
4. It is the rule of PFS, and if you aren't following the rules you aren't following the rules.
HOWEVER - Based on my own observations only, I would say that there are way more "killer players" out there with optimized characters that can cakewalk scenarios, AND many more tables with more than four players, then there are "killer GMs" who abuse their power. (And frankly, a "killer GM" doesn't need to change the scenario to kill players.)
To me, the solution is to develop a rule system for a future Guide to Organized Play that instructs GMs how to adapt for more players at the table. "Add one creature per PC over 4," or "Add 2 appropriate speed bump creatures from earlier in the scenario to the single caster at the end if you have more than 4 players," - that sort of thing. (Obviously, this would require lots of wordsmithing and research; this is just a concept.)
This could provide a way to up the challenge with less uncertainty - a party of 6 players will use less consumables than a party of four as well, so upping the challenge based on party size is the least problematic - it mostly addresses points 1, 2 and 4 above.
Thinking out loud, I would also consider the idea that if the party still breezes through the first two encounters using the above system, the GM could treat the party as having 1 more player than it actually has... something like, "If the party with X PCs takes less than Y% damage in both of the first 2 combat encounters, treat them as if they were a party of X+1 for the remainder of the scenario."
Total GM fiat isn't going to happen, folks - it's organized play, it has to have some standardization. But I firmly agree that cakewalks are as bad (or worse) than killer scenarios. We need to allow a table of four newbies to survive (mostly), yet still challenge six experienced gamers who have been together for years. The only way to do that is a well-defined sliding scale for the GMs to implement, so they have the tools to do it within the system, instead of having to work outside the system (and sometimes causing problems down the road).
In my one, and so-far only, experience as a PFS judge, a third-level Zen Archer killed the boss in the first round of a Tier 1 and 2 game. I wish I had felt a bit more confident about throwing in some extra henchmen or giving the boss some extra hit-points. It was a pretty disappointing finale after slogging through a long maze. I kept making the players move in initiative to maintain a little suspense, but there was really nothing to do at that point.
As a player, I would much rather die occasionally than have somewhat regular cakewalks.
In the dozen or so PFS games I've played, I've noticed a general trend that the fights vs. monsters tend to work better. A few things that I think would make most of the scenarios work a bit better when the baddies are humanoid:
1) Always give them extra weapons. Preferably, these are a little weaker than the primary weapons but not useless. PCs have them. It's silly when a disarm or grease spell completely ends an enemy's combat effectiveness.
2) Put in more henchmen body shields. This will keep low-level, low damage PCs happy, encourage AoE spell use, and give the more powerful enemies more time to do their thing. It also encourages team tactics as opposed to all the PCs attacking the one lonely sorcerer.
3) Give the boss at least enough HP to survive a typical critical hit from a level-appropriate fighter. They get attacked anywhere from 4 to 20 (haste, multishot, etc.) times per round even at lowish levels. They're going to take a lot of damage and a lot of critical hits. Armor fortification would help too.
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(Ideas about adjustable encounters)
Several months ago, I proposed that multi-mook encounters could be made adjustable without even materially affecting the word count/layout.
Suppose you have an encounter with some undead. Let's say that at subtier 1-2 there are supposed to be 5 skeletons and at subtier 4-5 there are supposed to be 5 ghouls (or whatever).
Currently, the encounter would have a Bestiary-referencing stat block entry headed with "Skeleton (5)" at 1-2 and "Ghoul (5)" at 4-5.
Suppose instead we had "Skeleton (APL+3)" and "Ghoul (APL+1)".
Now, instead of a party of four freshies and a party of six 2nd level PCs facing the same 6 skeletons, the freshies (APL 1) would face 4 skeletons and the party of six 2nd-levels (APL 3) would face 6 skeletons. Meanwhile, a group consisting of a 3rd-level, two 4ths and a 5th (APL 4) would fight 5 ghouls and a group of six 5th level PCs (APL 6) would fight 7 ghouls.
Since the additional information would easily fit onto an existing line, I see no reason it should run into issues with space limitations.
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In my one, and so-far only, experience as a PFS judge, a third-level Zen Archer killed the boss in the first round of a Tier 1 and 2 game. I wish I had felt a bit more confident about throwing in some extra henchmen or giving the boss some extra hit-points. It was a pretty disappointing finale after slogging through a long maze. I kept making the players move in initiative to maintain a little suspense, but there was really nothing to do at that point.
What did you expect? That kind of thing isn't the norm, so it should be expected that it'll result in weirdness. That doesn't mean it's indicative of a problem.
As for wanting to add mooks/HP, let me ask you: would you have increased his loot as well? The guy playing down with his level 3 character is getting low-tier rewards, so why should he have to face mid-tier challenges to get it? That's just as much cheating as reducing the challenge of a 4-5 to accommodate the 2nd-level PCs who played up, but then still giving them the 4-5 rewards. Making it the other direction changes nothing.
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This idea occurred to me over this past weekend at a regional convention.
There have been many threads over the past few years arguing where or not a GM can deviate from the written text of a scenario and how far that deviation can go before it crosses some subjective line.
There have been just as many threads about allowing players to be creative in performing their faction missions despite specific completion conditions/skills being written in the text.
So, I ask, if you are on the side of "run as written," do you require the players to follow the completion criteria as written?
OTOH, if you allow creativity to complete faction missions, do you apply the same rule of creativity to running the scenario?
Just wondering how much hypocrisy exists out there...
My rules regarding run as written are as follows.
1) Run as written...The only time I do deviate from what is printed is when what is printed is incorrect. When they don't give enemies any skill ranks or mess up while calculating their stat block (even health can be incorrectly calculated).
On a side note, something that really irritates me are enemy spellcasters with scribe scroll (since this feat is prohibited in PFS), although even then I don't give them replacement feats.
2) ...while doing the best you can with what you have...
Even if some enemies are mechanically weak, it doesn't mean you can't exploit them to the best of their abilities. Don't focus on what they don't have, focus on what they do have, and what you have at your disposal. You know ALL the PCs weaknesses. They only know a few of your minions weak spots. If you, as a GM, know player X is weak against action Y, come up with reasons for the NPCs to exploit that weakness. Kobold archers aren't a threat, until they start peppering the person with robes -- because they don't have armor on! Because of this, nearly all of my PKs have come from mostly aquatic situations, because people in my area refuse to invest in anything that helps in underwater combat.
3)...to ensure that everyone has fun.
I've had games where people offed the end boss in one hit. I've had games where one persons build makes other characters obsolete. While these situations are ones that make me sigh, but I don't respond by giving bosses more HP.
Instead I talk to the player and explain what I enjoy most in PFS. Making challenging PCs, working with my teammates, etc. IMO, If you respond to the player(s) with godmode characters by making the fights proportionately harder, they'll just make their characters more godmode.
Anyway, that's what I've been doing for the past few months and it mostly works out. The one exception was the Winter Module Madness Marathon we did a couple months ago where I encouraged PCs to be as broken as possible, since they couldn't level up mid-module. Level 4s against CR7-8s is rough.
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This idea occurred to me over this past weekend at a regional convention.
There have been many threads over the past few years arguing where or not a GM can deviate from the written text of a scenario and how far that deviation can go before it crosses some subjective line.
There have been just as many threads about allowing players to be creative in performing their faction missions despite specific completion conditions/skills being written in the text.
So, I ask, if you are on the side of "run as written," do you require the players to follow the completion criteria as written?
OTOH, if you allow creativity to complete faction missions, do you apply the same rule of creativity to running the scenario?
Just wondering how much hypocrisy exists out there...
Well Bob, I suppose i think this game is all about creativity. As GM's we are encouraged to adapt to a player's creative solution to a problem presented in a scenario.
I guess I allow creativity to complete faction missions. I also allow myself a little wiggle room when running a scenario.
I have done all of my GMing for PFS at game stores. I have strangely enough, yet to find myself GMing at a convention although i have gone to a few local small conventions: Mace in NC, Meppacon in PA, Anonycon and Concon in CT, and Carnage on the mountain in VT. I have GMed at Game Theory in Raleigh NC, at Au Bon Pan where the NYC PFS meets, and I have GMed at my "home" store "Toy City" in Keene New hampshire, near where i live in Brattleboro VT.
I guess by GMing at game stores, i have the luxury of getting to know my players.....and knowing my players, i would feel a little more comfortable with the players and their "creative" solutions, and more comfortable adjusting a scenario in small ways to take my players into account.
If I were to run a game at a convention I would stick much closer to Run as Written.
So i guess it depends on the enviornment in which you are running a game.
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Sometimes I feel like I'm the only PFS GM who gives a sh** about anything beyond the here-and-now of my own damn table.
Then I read a post like WalterGM's above and feel a little better. :)
Interesing, I foud WalterGM's post woefully misinformed in spots and wrong in others.
NPCs are not shackled by the same restrictions as PCs. They can have scribe Scroll, be demons, have templates etc.
He's advocating abusing his OOC knowledge as a GM to have monsters exploit weaknesses in PCs that they have no way of knowing. (While the robed example is visible, his post seems to indicate much more to me)
What did you expect? That kind of thing isn't the norm, so it should be expected that it'll result in weirdness. That doesn't mean it's indicative of a problem.
In my limited experience, it's pretty common to have a level 3 character with a few level 1's. Given how easy it is to one-hit kill a level 1 PC, putting four level 1's and one level 3 in a Tier 4-5 game will probably lead to a couple of them dying.
As for wanting to add mooks/HP, let me ask you: would you have increased his loot as well?
No, I would not have increased anyone's loot. I assume the player would have had a better time actually having a fight with the BBG.
The guy playing down with his level 3 character is getting low-tier rewards, so why should he have to face mid-tier challenges to get it? That's just as much cheating as reducing the challenge of a 4-5 to accommodate the 2nd-level PCs who played up, but then still giving them the 4-5 rewards.
We have a very different perspective on the risks and rewards of playing. A judge intentionally changing the rules to hurt someone or incapacitate the power of a player (sorry trip doesn't work on this guy, he has protection from good on him, etc.) is, in my view, a bad thing. Increasing the difficulty to make the fight last a bit longer is, again in my view, a good thing.
Cheating is a bizarre choice of words. Messing with your reward sheets and lying about attack bonuses are examples of cheating. Trying to make sure your players have fun is one of the primary purposes of GMing. Perhaps changing the level of challenge is inappropriate in society play. Cheating, it is not.
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I flatly reject that adjusting challenges shouldnt be done because it makes (or has the potential to make) characters expend more resources than characters who ran the same scenario, but faced a different challenge.
While that argument makes sense at face value.. it's hogwash. Whether one plays up or not makes for much more reliably different rates-of-consumption of valuable expendables that affect their WBL. Even the variation in crits can cause you to burn an extra healing potion or scroll, compared to another group at another table running the exact same fight the exact same way.
So it's a machts nichts if the NPC had a little 'tweak'.
However, as I said earlier there ARE other valid reasons besides that as to why 'run combat as written' has some gravitas.
As Bob pointed out, they may be valid, but they're hypocritical as compared to substituting skills for faction missions, allowing a creative solution that wasn't expressly allowed for in the text, etc.
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Interesing, I foud WalterGM's post woefully misinformed in spots and wrong in others.
NPCs are not shackled by the same restrictions as PCs. They can have scribe Scroll, be demons, have templates etc.
He's advocating abusing his OOC knowledge as a GM to have monsters exploit weaknesses in PCs that they have no way of knowing. (While the robed example is visible, his post seems to indicate much more to me)
Spoiler'd to keep this thread on course.
I'd just like to be clear that I frown upon people being jerks in general. And if a GM only targets people's vulnerabilities (i.e. sundering a fighter's weapon every encounter) they quickly become a jerk. I was trying to advocate the approach of not throwing in the towel when you're dealt a hand of 6 kobolds in a level 3-7 scenario, for example. As a GM you do have the power to easily be a jerk (again, sundering a fighter's weapon every encounter), but its how you control that power that makes your PCs wary of any encounter they play at your table, no matter the number of kobolds.
Not all monsters are unintelligent. Any fight I look at the creatures int (and foreknowledge of the PCs) to see if they know what abilities to use on who. I've had enemies use abilites that I knew would fail (i.e. spells on a dwarf, fire damage for a fire sorc, etc), but after the fail they learned, just like PCs do. If a goblin misses a fighter with a roll of 19, he's not going to keep attacking that fighter in that manner. Sorry.
In response to the rest: I was unaware that non-monstrous NPCs are allowed to have more feat options than players. This just sits very uneasy with me -- whether or not it is legal. And I don't advocate giving them replacement feats.
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From my admittedly limited experience as a player, it seems that there are a lot of cakewalks at tier 1-2, and things get tougher after that. Not that there aren't occasional cakewalks after that, but we do have to keep things in perspective when it comes to assuming that all scenarios need to be tougher.
As for those that are against modifying RAW even on skill based faction missions, let me give you a non-hypothetical example from my very first time GMing for PFS:
The faction mission said that the players would encounter a clockwork moving statue, and the player was instructed to smash it open, study the pieces, and report back on the details of how it works.
The scenario said that it requires a DC 20 knowledge (engineering) check to gather enough useful information to report back. Bear in mind that this is tier 1-2, so I wasn't convinced anyone in the group would even have that skill, let alone be able to hit such a hard DC. But as worded in the scenario, that was the ONLY valid way to complete the faction mission.
My first thought upon reading the scenario was "Why not just bring the whole statue back intact, so the faction leader can have a team of experts study it, instead of breaking it and studying it in the field like that?" The player who got that faction mission thought the exact same thing, asking me how big and heavy the statue was when the time came. If it had been solid marble or something, I'd have said it was too heavy to carry, but given the clockwork stuff inside, I decided it wouldn't be that solid and heavy. They had a pack horse with them, so a couple of members of the party carried it to the horse together after the rest of the adventure was over, and I awarded the player the full 2 prestige points.
Is that acceptable to all of you? Technically, it doesn't follow RAW, but it seemed like a reasonable solution to me. And here's the real kicker: When I complained about that faction mission in a thread about the adventure here on the message boards, the writer of that adventure agreed with me that this solution was acceptable, even though the wording of the scenario had stated that only the skill check would get the job done.
But I didn't modify the combats, or go easy on the players, even though the fights kept going badly for them, and I was scared of getting a reputation as the guy who killed all the PCs in my very first time as a GM for PFS.
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Sometimes I feel like I'm the only PFS GM who gives a sh** about anything beyond the here-and-now of my own damn table.
Then I read a post like WalterGM's above and feel a little better. :)
Interesing, I foud WalterGM's post woefully misinformed in spots and wrong in others.
NPCs are not shackled by the same restrictions as PCs. They can have scribe Scroll, be demons, have templates etc.
He's advocating abusing his OOC knowledge as a GM to have monsters exploit weaknesses in PCs that they have no way of knowing. (While the robed example is visible, his post seems to indicate much more to me)
The Scribe Scroll thing is a good example... of why WalterGM is right. WalterGM made a mistake, but it's okay because he didn't change anything as a result. Meanwhile, if other GMs in this thread had made the same mistake, they'd have "fixed" it by swapping in another feat and potentially caused problems.
As for OOC knowledge, your speculation of abuse is no more valid than speculation to the contrary. I think his point was that NPCs can be run much more dangerously than they typically are without deviating from written tactics.
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As for wanting to add mooks/HP, let me ask you: would you have increased his loot as well? The guy playing down with his level 3 character is getting low-tier rewards, so why should he have to face mid-tier challenges to get it? That's just as much cheating as reducing the challenge of a 4-5 to accommodate the 2nd-level PCs who played up, but then still giving them the 4-5 rewards. Making it the other direction changes nothing.
Jiggy, many of us have made clear that RAI does not including adding extra gold/XP/PA.
Mike Brock has asked us for patience as he begins to work on solutions for these issues.
I, for one, am happy to give it him. I support and look forward to his solutions to the issues that leads to this divide (RAW vs. RAI). Mike needs time to adjust things and I'll be evaluating my RAI approach as those solutions come out.
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only PFS GM who gives a sh** about anything beyond the here-and-now of my own damn table.
It's weird how we both sorta feel the same way about things, Jiggy.
I believe in infinite purity of playing a scenario the first time (#9) and that includes that every player have a reasonable challenge and chance to contribute/shine.
I cringe a bit when I hear that Local Coordinators aren't empowering judges to adjust for their playgroups....because I want scenarios be the best they can possibly be. If the LC feels they should run it as is, then that's how it should be. If the LC trusts the GM to do more, then that should happen to.
That said, I don't think we will reach an agreement except possibly in both of us supporting Mike Brock with patience as he makes his changes. I'd rather focus on that on anything-but-this-issue.
-Pain
p.s. Jiggy, would you like to hash this out off list? Email or PM?
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Cheating is a bizarre choice of words. Messing with your reward sheets and lying about attack bonuses are examples of cheating. Trying to make sure your players have fun is one of the primary purposes of GMing. Perhaps changing the level of challenge is inappropriate in society play. Cheating, it is not.
Each subtier has an approximate challenge level, and an approximate reward level; there's a ratio of balance between them. And you honestly believe that changing one side of the equation is cheating but changing the other side is your responsibility as a GM?
Screwing with the challenge-reward ratio is cheating, regardless of which end you tweaked.
Also, this:
Trying to make sure your players have fun is one of the primary purposes of GMing.
I agree. I'm just not so selfish as to extend that responsibility only to my own players and leave the other umpteen thousand hanging out to dry.
Think about the big picture. Our responsibility as GMs is to the WHOLE community of PFS players, not just the handful at our own table.
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p.s. Jiggy, would you like to hash this out off list? Email or PM?
Well, we both have similar goals/priorities and have each stated our positions, so I'm not sure there's much to hash out; but I'm always open to a PM if you have more to say/ask! :)
And you honestly believe that changing one side of the equation is cheating but changing the other side is your responsibility as a GM?
Nope. I think you misunderstand me. Perhaps we just disagree. An accusation of cheating is a serious one. I would reserve it for serious infractions, not either of the above.
Think about the big picture. Our responsibility as GMs is to the WHOLE community of PFS players, not just the handful at our own table.
I'm a bit confused. Could you explain how adjusting the difficulty at one table has a negative impact on the whole community? Is it diverting attention from officially adjusting scenarios? Will players try to power up a character in some scenarios to dominate in others? If it's the former, I probably agree. If it's the latter, I probably disagree. If it's about "the Rules", I can empathize but probably disagree.
Like I said, I've only GMed one PFS scenario and played in a dozen. In that short amount of time, it's pretty clear that GM's need some flexibility.
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Some interesting points are made here for me to ponder. I'm sure that I can fall many different ways around this "issue".
Some issues I've faced both as a Judge and as a player.... just for other people to ponder.
** spoiler omitted **** spoiler omitted **...
Here's some more, taken from my experience:
From the GM's eyes, it was a "cakewalk" and he "tweaked it" so that it would "be challenging enough to be fun". Just like people keep talking about. The players did NOT have more fun.
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Think about the big picture. Our responsibility as GMs is to the WHOLE community of PFS players, not just the handful at our own table.I'm a bit confused. Could you explain how adjusting the difficulty at one table has a negative impact on the whole community? Is it diverting attention from officially adjusting scenarios? Will players try to power up a character in some scenarios to dominate in others? If it's the former, I probably agree. If it's the latter, I probably disagree. If it's about "the Rules", I can empathize but probably disagree.
Like I said, I've only GMed one PFS scenario and played in a dozen. In that short amount of time, it's pretty clear that GM's need some flexibility.
I think he's talking about players reviewing and talking about scenarios after playing them. If the reviews here on the web site for a particular scenario all lean towards "That was too easy", then the Paizo staff have a baseline for creating more challenging scenarios later. If half the GMs make it more difficult on their own, then the players will talk about the thrilling challenge, and the Paizo employees will use an incorrect baseline for difficulty when designing future scenarios. So in that regard, running as written helps the long term health of the Society as a whole.
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Think about the big picture. Our responsibility as GMs is to the WHOLE community of PFS players, not just the handful at our own table.I'm a bit confused. Could you explain how adjusting the difficulty at one table has a negative impact on the whole community? Is it diverting attention from officially adjusting scenarios? Will players try to power up a character in some scenarios to dominate in others? If it's the former, I probably agree. If it's the latter, I probably disagree. If it's about "the Rules", I can empathize but probably disagree.
I'd be happy to clarify. :)
There are multiple ways that actions at one table have relevance to those at other tables:1) If you consistently increase difficulty for your local group, they'll get better and better at rising to the challenge (especially if they don't realize you're fudging). Their characters will end up uber-powered, and when they eventually try out a Con or another venue, they'll dominate combats and steal the limelight from more moderate players. Meanwhile, if you'd have left the difficulty alone, the players might have started adjusting the power levels of their PCs to match, allowing them to interact much more favorably with other players when they explore new venues.
2) If a fight ends up too hard but was run as-written, people can post reviews (every one of which Mark Moreland reads) and future scenarios can improve. If a fight is too hard because you overshot your adjustment, then any review posted gives false information. At best, Mark has no data with which to improve future scenarios. At worst, he has the wrong information and ends up making future combats even easier!
3) If you increase the difficulty of an encounter, the PCs have to expend more resources. In theory, this could eventually put the PCs too far behind the wealth curve to keep up even with unadjusted scenarios. But even if the actual difference caused is nominal, a player discovering that he's had to spend Xgp more than someone else due to GM fudging is going to be pissed. So much for "in the interest of fun", eh?
4) Let's assume for a moment that you're so skilled that you NEVER overshoot the difficulty adjustment (sure). What happens when someone who's familiar with your practices decides to take a shot at GMing, but without that level of experience? Boom, unfairly killed PCs. Or what happens when one of your players who doesn't know you adjust difficulty tries to GM, sees the PCs (who are optimized for your super-encounters!) cakewalk his combats, and thinks he must be a bad GM?
5) What about when the combats aren't supposed to be difficult in that particular scenario? Maybe it's more RP-focused. Way to teach people it's all about killing, eh?
6) What about when the reason it was going to be a cakewalk is because the PCs were specialized against that particular type of encounter (i.e., a disarm expert against a special-weapon-wielding BBEG, as described in a previous post) and you buff it up? Instead of "more challenge = more fun", you've got "more challenge = creative characters aren't worth it". You incentivize making cookie-cutter DPR builds. The same ones you're probably tired of seeing.
7) What happens when a more moderate player joins, and in the buffed-up encounter sees the heavily-optimized PCs shining while he/she fails to contribute? Now they go away thinking PFS is a club for optimizers, and might not come back.
The list goes on. Everything you do at the table has repercussions. Players react and adapt, because most will believe that the experience you provide is the norm. Whatever you push them towards, they either will do or will leave PFS to avoid.
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GM's using meta-knowledge to the benefit of NPC's and to the detriment of characters. I don't know what to say about that other than "distasteful."
The bigger issue with that is the GM is forcing the players to play his/her style. A good GM will try to adjust to the play style of the players trying to provide each with a chance to shine. Within OP, this is more challenging than in a home-game where you can adjust over time, but I would be embarrassed as a GM, if players described me as not accommodating or marginalizing a player's style of play.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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GM's using meta-knowledge to the benefit of NPC's and to the detriment of characters. I don't know what to say about that other than "distasteful."
The bigger issue with that is the GM is forcing the players to play his/her style. A good GM will try to adjust to the play style of the players trying to provide each with a chance to shine. Within OP, this is more challenging than in a home-game where you can adjust over time, but I would be embarrassed as a GM, if players described me as not accommodating or marginalizing a player's style of play.
I agree wholeheartedly. I apply the same logic to adding monsters/HP or otherwise buffing encounters.
Uses meta-knowledge? Check.
Benefits NPCs? Check.
Detriment of characters? Check.
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While that argument makes sense at face value.. it's hogwash. Whether one plays up or not makes for much more reliably different rates-of-consumption of valuable expendables that affect their WBL. Even the variation in crits can cause you to burn an extra healing potion or scroll, compared to another group at another table running the exact same fight the exact same way.
So it's a machts nichts if the NPC had a little 'tweak'.
If you're looking at a single example like your own game, absolutely. However, over thousands of tables a year, those variations average out because they are, by nature, random. You're welcome to disagree with me, of course, but it's not my opinion so much as math's opinion.
By contrast, a systematic error like a GM who always ups the NPCs for his weekly game store event is another matter. Those players may travel to GenCon and suddenly find they are thousands of GP behind other players whose GMs played it straight.
Was going to say more, but Jiggy beat me to it.
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On using meta-knowledge against PCs:
Back when minis were made of lead and dice has numbers filled in with a crayon, some upstart magazine ("Dragon", I think it was called) ran an article about how to run super-intelligent monsters. (The assumption being, the monster is smarter than the GM.) The only way that seemed to simulate it was to use knowledge of the PC's weaknesses, even if the monster "shouldn't" have known it. The idea being that a super-intelligent being would be able to quickly parse all of his own abilities against the observations of the PCs, and choose the best option. (Think Sherlock Holmes running through the combats in advance in his mind in the new movie.)
So, even this technique has its place.
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At the end of the day its the GM's Job to make a players time enjoyable within the constraints of not only the mod but also the players actions.
So if he has to adjust the encounters against his players actions then I dont see the problem. This why the DM's Screen was orignally made to make a command decision and keep the players in the dark about it in the name of FUN! I woulnt change stats/spells(i.e. metrics). NPC tactics are another matter....
As a GM I will make these changes esp. at the lower (1-3) levels. At the higher levels I will use tactics that are not described in the mods to react to the players actions and experience (which coincidentally are not listed in the mod either. LOL).
The PFS Guidlines are set for the metrics within the game. The actions which NPC's take should be mutable to compensate for the different party/player compositions and experience.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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At the end of the day its the GM's Job to make a players time enjoyable within the constraints of not only the mod but also the players actions.
So if he has to adjust the encounters against his players actions then I dont see the problem. This why the DM's Screen was orignally made to make a command decision and keep the players in the dark about it in the name of FUN! I woulnt change stats/spells(i.e. metrics). NPC tactics are another matter....
As a GM I will make these changes esp. at the lower (1-3) levels. At the higher levels I will use tactics that are not described in the mods to react to the players actions and experience (which coincidentally are not listed in the mod either. LOL).
The PFS Guidlines are set for the metrics within the game. The actions which NPC's take should be mutable to compensate for the different party/player compositions and experience.
I don't understand why people keep talking about tactics in regard to running scenarios as written. I have yet to see a situation where the written tactics were so incredibly specific as to require actually going against them in order to accommodate the PCs' actions.
If the tactics say "NPC does X when they hear the PCs approaching", but they don't hear the PCs approaching (due to stealth or whatever), then obviously they don't do X. That's not going against the written tactics.
So why does it keep coming up? Every NPC tactic I've read has been no more than a couple of sentences outlining a general strategy. What gives?
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Jiggy, it is this very point that shows that GM caveat may not be the issue. It may be that we all have a different definition of what is within the scope of the scenario and what constitutes freelancing.
Without a fundamental agreement of where the line is, it makes it very difficult to decide when, if ever, is a good time to cross it.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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As the person that prompted all this discussion about meta knowledge, I feel obligated to reign it in a bit. No one, as far as I know, is advocating the position of “you know Bob’s fighter is lactose intolerant, so you have him fight a milk monster.” Rather, I think the people who think like I do are advocating the stance that, not all monsters are, for lack of a better term, stupid. They have drive, motivation, and they don’t want the PCs to win. They’re going to focus casters with attacks, disarm fighters, set up traps, and exploit whatever weakness they can discern. The tricky part comes in seperating what you know as a GM (the meta) from what your cast of characters know (NPC knowledge).
A good GM can separate these two categories of knoweldge, and play the part of the NPC to a T. When a PC is low on HP and gets focused in combat, you can say that “they attacked you, Bob, because they saw that you’re bleeding profusely and close to death. And finishing off weak opponents is a pretty standard practice for combatants.” This is different than saying “they make it a point to attack the bat flying above you Bill, because they know it’s your familiar. Suck it.”
No GM is perfect. I’d like to think that we strive to be, though, and part of that striving is making each encounter vibrant and unique so that PFS doesn’t become the nightly grind of oh so many MMOS.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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Jiggy, it is this very point that shows that GM caveat may not be the issue. It may be that we all have a different definition of what is within the scope of the scenario and what constitutes freelancing.
Without a fundamental agreement of where the line is, it makes it very difficult to decide when, if ever, is a good time to cross it.
I think that changing combat tactics is worlds apart from adding or removing foes from a combat.
Combat tactics are a general rule of action in my mind. If the situation is A, then actions X, Y, and Z may be taken in response. If the situation is B or C or whatever, though, the tactics need to change as well. Someone who’s tactics dictate they blast PCs with magic missle each round will not continue to do it each round if the PCs have someone counterspelling, or wearing a Brooch of Shielding.
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While that argument makes sense at face value.. it's hogwash. Whether one plays up or not makes for much more reliably different rates-of-consumption of valuable expendables that affect their WBL. Even the variation in crits can cause you to burn an extra healing potion or scroll, compared to another group at another table running the exact same fight the exact same way.
So it's a machts nichts if the NPC had a little 'tweak'.
If you're looking at a single example like your own game, absolutely. However, over thousands of tables a year, those variations average out because they are, by nature, random. You're welcome to disagree with me, of course, but it's not my opinion so much as math's opinion.
By contrast, a systematic error like a GM who always ups the NPCs for his weekly game store event is another matter. Those players may travel to GenCon and suddenly find they are thousands of GP behind other players whose GMs played it straight.
Was going to say more, but Jiggy beat me to it.
You're proving my point and you might not even realize it.
Let's say character A has played every scenario exactly as written.
Let's say character B has burned 2,000gp in expendables on things that were increased in difficulty by his various GMs.
Let's say character C has never played down, and in fact, often has played up.
Who's at a disadvantage here?
Grabbing some chronicles at random, I won't name which ones so I don't have to use spoiler tags.
On one of them my one of my characters has run, the tier 3-4 gold award is 1,324. That same adventure, if played up in the 6-7 tier, is 3,473gp. Do that 3x just at level 5, and you have more than 6,000gp advantage over someone who has not. Just over the course of THREE SCENARIOS. That's less unbalancing than having to burn an extra potion or scroll over those same scenarios? You'd have to be burning 2,000g worth of scrolls and potions PER SCENARIO to be in the same discussion.
There are reasons why we should stick to 'as written', but fairness of WBL isn't one of them.
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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so - I have a heavy armor cleric. Lots of AC - but he has a Hat of Disguise and uses it to make himself LOOK like he is lightly armored (studded leather and buckler normally, kind of like a Rogue.) he moves fast and tends to prompted AOOs.
It is amazing how many times the monsters in the second encounter (and later) never even swing at him - even when he looks like one of the other party members (two hats, PCs switch disguises between encounters). They often don't even take AOOs when he moves past them (so that they wont have AOOs to attack my party members). DM is playing the monsters correct? heck, I don't know, I didn't read the tactics (don't attack dwarves maybe).
In the first fight, if the creatures had an Int over 10, I'd have them make some checks after hitting you with physical attacks to discern you were disguised. Then, for the rounds following that, their tactics would change. Same goes for each fight where you encounter new foes. They would likely check you out the first round, see that you were metallic (possibly), and find something squishier. It's like animals and electric fences. It only takes a few times before they learn not to trust them for good. And if animals can learn, so can mooks.
Resently, my Alchemist set a monster on fire. Large fast moving flyer. I pointed out that the creature could put itself out with a reflex save, but it would loose it's attacks to do so. Rather than fly away, and maybe put the monster continued to attack (while on fire) for two or three rounds, and when it died it fell out of sight (we were unable to reach the body to check for loot). I wonder if the Tactics as written were "combat until dead".
If this was a monster, it may not have had the foresight to extinguish the blaze. I would need to know more about this particular situation to give my opinion.
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deusvult: It is possible for more than one thing to be a problem at the same time. A bigger issue does not make everything else a non-issue.
And while THAT is true, it's also true that it's stupid to fix the tiny aggravating factor to a problem while ignoring the major one.
If WBL is the problem, that's another discussion. But as for 'play it as is or you screw people out of money' is just laughable.
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nosig: imagine the AOO thing as the GM learning better tactics in general. He's probably not familiar with a character provoking on purpose and so at first takes the attacks. Later he learns the better tactics of not always taking the first AOO available, especially if the first target seems to eager.
While to your perspective it seems like the GM is using metagame knowledge against you it's really just the GM becoming a better tactician in general. Having learned from interacting with your character. Next time they run a slot and encounter a character provoking on purpose they may not always take the attacks, (although they might not remember the first couple times).
At least this is how I like to imagine it, (although there's probably some metagaming going on I like to give the GM the benefit of a doubt.)
Here's my biggest problem with adjusting table difficulty:
What happens when you ramp the difficulty up and then kill a PC?
The player could very reasonably be upset. Very few things dampen my enthusiasm as much as watching a GM try and softball an encounter that they raised the difficulty of too much. All of a sudden death is nearly impossible and for me at least the suspension of disbelief is destroyed.
That said I did have a lot of fun playing the 4th part of the Everwar series having given the GM permission to challenge us, with the understanding that he wasn't just trying to kill us, but also wouldn't back off if things went south. (Which led to this great moment, Player: "Why didn't I get a check or something to see those two stone golems?" GM: "Because they're not in the Mod." Couldn't argue with that logic.
I also enjoy being effective. One of my characters, Farak, the Most Powerful Mage in All of Absalom doesn't actually do much naturally so I've spent close to 40% his his wealth on consumables.
I've run into situations with him where he really shines on the first encounter do the the use of an expensive consumable particularly appropriate to the situation (Something like a Dimension Door scroll). So the GM raises the difficulty of the adventure to make every encounter challenging and I'm forced to spend way more on consumables than appropriate or reasonable to keep up. A character's power curve who has a more normal consumable use is significantly less effected by this.
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I tend to run games as written.
That said, I do allow creative solutions for players. It's just fun to succeed in an creative, interesting and/or epic way. I tend to be a bit stricter with faction missions, but I allow alternative solutions if that approach would clearly achieve the mission objective, or if the player gives a very good reasoning for using an alternative skill.
I also adjust the NPC tactics with respect to the situation, especially if the PCs adopt unexpected tactics that need to be responded to. Generally, I try to form a picture of the motives and intentions of the NPC and figure out why they were given such tactics, then apply that. For example, if an NPC is not willing to fight to the death, I will not have him charge headlong into a group of PCs even if that would actually be tactically advantageous. I use NPC intelligence to some degree to determine how sophisticated their tactics are and how much they exploit the PCs (apparent) weaknesses.
I'm generally against any GM adjustments to the difficulty level of encounters in organized play (in home games, anything goes). Parties should occasionally meet encounters that are easy because the PCs' abilities worked well against the encounter, and conversely to have a hard time with some NPCs that could counter those abilities. If the encounters are run as written instead of adjusting for party level, the players can genuinely affect their chances of success and survival with the choices they make when building their characters. Even if the GM is perfect and never misadjusts encounters, such adjustments make the effects of character-build decisions illusionary at best (and, as Jiggy said, they promote boring characters).
And besides, perfect GMs cannot even exist as long as there are random factors in the game. Any GM increase of encounter difficulty inevitably increases the probability of PC loss of gold, resources, health or life (not necessarily in that order) through a combination of increased difficulty and unlucky rolls.
It's one of the greatest advantages of organized play that a player can take his character to the table of any GM, anywhere. It's fun for the players as it allows them to adventure with different people and GMs and see different styles of play in action (thanks, Toronto Pathfinders, for letting me visit playing a character that has had all his other sessions on the other side of the Atlantic!). To encourage this, I think a player should have a right to expect a fair treatment regardless of the GM they're playing with. RAW (within reason) provides a groundwork for that.
tl;dr: If a player has a dead character because of the written encounter mechanics, tough luck. If the PC ends up dead because the GM fudged the rules (even if bad luck and player ineptness are additional factors), the player has every right to be pissed about it.
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I run scenarios as written, as long as it makes sense. If the players actions dictate different tactics or re-writing certain encounters, then I certainly do so. Faction missions, I go by what is logical. If you can give me a convincing reason to use a different skill, then I go for it. As for completing faction missions unobserved....I did once have a witch hunt go screaming by outside so everyone else looked away.
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...'play it as is or you screw people out of money' is just laughable.
You are again thinking small-scale. Of course if a given player is systematically playing up, they are better off - but they're either playing in a small community where they don't have a lot of players and so forced to do it, *or* they're gaming the system to make it happen. Both situations can be solved by the GM or the coordinator, assuming they know that *playing up shouldn't be happening regularly*. It should be the exception, not the rule.
Everyone can get good rolls or bad rolls; everyone can be forced to play up or play down due to circumstances. Those random variations tend to average out for a given player if they play enough games, and certainly they do campaign-wide with the number of players there are. However, systematic errors like a GM who makes every game harder for his local group puts those players at a disadvantage compared to other players in the campaign. We can't make rules to address random errors (and we shouldn't), but systematic ones are bad for the campaign as a whole.