Venture-Captain, Massachusetts—Central & West
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I believe it was chosen to be around the level where you're no longer sent out on "grunt" missions. If you look at the stats given for some of the Venture-Captains and faction leaders, they are around that level generally.
Also, now with Sanctioned Modules allowing PFS characters who are retired to play above, you can keep your character going.
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I believe also that level 12 was where the action economy of a full table of players started to break down and scenarios went past their allotted timeframe. So to avoid complaints about table timeframes and such, the decision was made to cap the retirement level.
I’m sure there is a hugely better answer if you search the PFS forums for retirement or lvl 12.
Director of Brand Strategy
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It's also a matter of campaign resources. The wider range of levels we produce Pathfinder Society content for, the less there is at any given level. Sanctioning Pathfinder Modules allows players to play beyond 12th level without putting a strain on Pathfinder Society campaign staff or lessening the number of scenarios released for lower levels, which is where we find most people are playing the campaign.
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It's also a matter of campaign resources. The wider range of levels we produce Pathfinder Society content for, the less there is at any given level. Sanctioning Pathfinder Modules allows players to play beyond 12th level without putting a strain on Pathfinder Society campaign staff or lessening the number of scenarios released for lower levels, which is where we find most people are playing the campaign.
I was about to post this! This was what I thought was the biggest reason. Yes, you could try to "scale" them more, but advance templates and additional class levels only go so far.
(related topic for a discussion at some other time: Am I the only one that thinks that tier 1-7 scenarios are horribly balanced in relation to 1-5 and 3-7s?)
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You are in a minority Azarius. Most people prefer to play below 10th level and sales reflect this.
I'd hazard a guess but I reckon the level 1-5 modules have sold a heck of a lot fewer copies than the level 11+ ones. That's why Paizo produces more low-mid level modules than high level ones.
+1 to this. Sweet spot for me has always been levels 6-10. YMMV.
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My personal sweet spot is in the 5-9 range.
And I suspect that sales don't drive the level of modules that PFS offers.
From my convention experiences over the last 4 years in the UK, I've found that PFS gaming always, always skews towards the low levels whenever you get a big group of people in one place. There's just more low level characters around than high level, so more low levels mods are needed.
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It seems to me that the main reason for stopping at 12 level is a time constraint. 12th level + missisons take longer than 4 hour slots that are allocated for conventions. as far as making 12th level senarios
pushing out lower level senarios I can see that from Pazios POV why
dosent Pazio take submissions for high level senarios from 4 star GM's
or Kyle and Dragoonmoon this would not tax PFS senarios of lower level and you only need 4 to 6 senarios per year and make them 8 hour senarios.
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... why
dosent Pazio take submissions for high level senarios from 4 star GM's
or Kyle and Dragoonmoon this would not tax PFS senarios of lower level and you only need 4 to 6 senarios per year and make them 8 hour senarios.
The amount of editting, layout, and art costs - not to mention payment to the writer - would certainly eat into Paizo's budget for PFS scenarios.
Just because a freelance writer - or even one doing it for free - is involved does not reduce the cost of everything else. And Paizo is not in the business of releasing mediocure products.
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This all said, I would be in favor of a DIFFERENT retirement scenario as an alternative to EotT before we see lvl 13+ scenarios. I still have not had a chance to run a character to retirement, but I currently have 2 characters that am VERY fond of, and am having a really hard time deciding which one to retire with.
But that is also a tangent topic for possibly a different thread :D
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In my personal experience, the game is most playable between levels 3 and 12. Those are the levels where I plan to start and end my campaigns. In my most recent home game, the day the PCs hit 13 was the day the game broke in half. IMO, there's just a critical mass of ways that PCs can go too far off the rails. I have managed to keep the game interesting after 13, but it's quite a job. I would never want to do so at a convention, especially with a pre-written mod.
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This all said, I would be in favor of a DIFFERENT retirement scenario as an alternative to EotT before we see lvl 13+ scenarios. I still have not had a chance to run a character to retirement, but I currently have 2 characters that am VERY fond of, and am having a really hard time deciding which one to retire with.
But that is also a tangent topic for possibly a different thread :D
Mike and/or Mark have said elsewhere that the number of people who have reported playing Eyes of the Ten is small compared to the rest of the play, so at the moment there is little incentive to release a different retirement arc - their resources are better spent on scenarios that are playable by more of the playerbase.
That being said, I recognize that for some people this is a real, earnest request - so all I can suggest is to encourage others to play Eyes of the Ten to completion. More reported games = More likelihood of a new retirement arc.
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12th level + missisons take longer than 4 hour slots that are allocated for conventions.
I was recently told that the 4-hour guideline generally came from early seasons (which I was accustomed to Season 0), but that in more recent seasons, the general guideline for slots is that they are run in five hour increments.
Does anyone have any clarification for this, by any chance?
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I am fairly new to Paizo and PFS, having tried the whole 4E LFR experiment (Arghhhhh) (but was a veteran LG gamer). I have but one question, why was 12th level chosen for character retirement?
In addition to the responses given above, my answer to this question is always limited wish. When you are trying to run a campaign where everyone is playing by the same rules, things above 12th level get far too reliant on GM interpretation. (I call them the imagination levels - where what your characters can do is mainly limited by your imagination.) It's absolutely fun but also next to impossible to keep things standardized.
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In addition to the responses given above, my answer to this question is always limited wish.
If the problem were simply a few spells which didn't work in the OP environment, those would be easy enough to ban from play (the way that PFS currently bans spells like permanency and reincarnate).
To me, limited wish is just one example of the increased complexity of the game system once you get up into the teens. And, yes, it's particularly bad with spellcasting, but even non-spellcasting PCs can get pretty complicated. I can understand that some players only feel that their characters are beginning to come into their own at that level, but to me (a player and DM of 3E, 3.5, and Pathfinder since 2000), 12th level is about where the game becomes less fun, both to play, and to DM.