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I just gave up partway through reading an old thread, titled "HIGH-LEVEL WIZARDS ARE BALANCED - IF YOU SANDBAG LIKE CRAZY!" It turned into a place for people to give James Jacobs grief for the lack of min/max optimization in iconic character stat blocks in the backs of the AP books. This got me thinking.
Something Jacobs said several times, and mostly got ignored, is that the stat blocks were created more as a way of expressing the concepts for the characters than of providing characters explicitly and solely well-suited to maximum damage output and utility. This is, I think, exactly the kind of thing Paizo should be doing -- focusing on flavor, on concept, and on theme. The idea of using different stats for the (nominally) same iconic character in different APs, creating something a little better suited to the ideas of the characters as they would fit in the campaign -- sometimes enhancing the sense of someone totally out of his or her element in strange environs -- is great, and I applaud the effort.
This is especially nice because it's not just about the iconics in the backs of the books. I see little touches here and there throughout just about every book, even in the books that list three or four authors and were obviously put together at the last minute in a huge rush because of some publishing process catastrophe -- touches that give a sometimes quirky, sometimes surreal, generally more interesting feel to the adventure as a whole thanks to the deviations from the optimizing norm that arise. These quirks and touches of flavor can help tie things into the world of the AP more firmly than someone who just has the right combination of Magic cards in the deck to be able to get unlimited mana for one turn or something like that.
If the main concern is stats optimization for maximum combat effectiveness, the end result at a punishing rate of two complete, extended campaigns per year is that after a few years all the NPCs in the APs are going to start looking the same, all the plots will start to blur together in the mind of the player, and there will be less and less reason to buy new AP adventures. I like the variety, the quirkiness, the flavor, and all the other nice side-effects of these personal touches added to the APs by the staff at Paizo. Yes, there are flaws from time to time, as in the case of an NPC having a feat without its prerequisite, an occasional typo, or something in a description that doesn't make a whole lot of sense at first glance because of an editorial change that missed a detail, and obviously Paizo should always strive to improve on these things.
I just don't think that interesting flavor and a kind of personalization of things qualify as flaws. I think they qualify as indications of the great investment of care and craftsmanship -- even on a tight schedule -- that the writers for Paizo bring to the development of the AP books.
I've been an AP subscriber almost since I realized that was an option, and along with a couple of friends the books I missed in my subscription have also been bought (including the prehistoric Shackled City hardcover). Sometimes we make changes to things, of course; sometimes something is difficult to use as written (in a manner common to basically every nontrivial adventure module ever published, such as overly complex dungeon floor plans), and sometimes we just come up with better ideas. Something we never do in our games is change something that makes great sense from an in-character perspective just because looking at the numbers suggests the combat benefits could be better if different optimizations are chosen, because we really like the flavor.
Good flavor is harder than optimization acceptable to the casual min/max player, and I really appreciate that flavor in the APs. Thanks, Paizo. We get through about two AP books a year (lots of plot derailing through roleplaying, y'know), but I still accumulate twelve of them a year with my subscription, because I can't bring myself to let any of this great work pass me by. I just want the staff to know that we (the customers and players) aren't all out to get them.
Keep up the good work.
