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For all the people that say the reason they want to play up has more to do with challenge than the extra gold, I bet if PFS offered a hard mode with no extra rewards, that very very few people who say they want a challenge would actually choose to play hard mode.
I think that slightly fewer PEOPLE would want to play up but that would result in a larger shift in playing up.
If at your random table you have
1 "I want to live! Play down!"
2: Meh. Whatever.
1: Play up! I need a downpayment on a +2 falcata!
1: Play up! My 4d8+927 damage crits are being wasted on low level mooks!
changing the first play up might bring along the mehs.
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Reading this thread has been wonderfully educational. I'm new to PFS, so it was interesting to see some of the implied assumptions and rules. For grins, I thought I'd make a little list to show everyone what the newbie player took away from all of this.
While still a risk, a non-minmaxed character can play up on season 0-2 (3?) scenarios and survive. Just know that things are out to kill you and play smart.
At a convention (which is the only time I'm realistically going to encounter this), be upfront with the other players about playing up. In my case, this probably means saying "hey, I'm low level. If you guys are willing to CARRY me, I don't object to the risk. But my tactics are going to be much different against a higher level opponent. I'll mainly concentrate on supporting with consumables and little stuff on the side. Don't count on me for melee stuff. If you guys still think you can rock this scenario under those terms, I'm all for it."
Corollary- if I have the high level character, recognize that I'm carrying the scenario. Try not to one shot everything.
Ware playing down- it negatively impacts your wealth. A few times are okay, though. Particularly if it's one of the harder season 4 scenarios. (I myself am not experienced enough with the system to build uber characters, so it's safe to assume the scenario would still retain some challenge even if I were a level (or two?) higher.)
Remember that pregens are always an option if you don't have a high enough character. But apparently pregens suck and nobody likes playing with them, so carefully consider this option.
You can always opt not to play. Or at least that's what the review board will say after the fact, regardless of any outside considerations that may have applied then but certainly don't now.
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I'm just curious. Why do you twiek out PCs for PFS? It seems unnecessary.
People playing up.
Angry dice gods (a few times i've had characters survive double nat 20 crits solely by the extra HP or two i got them by tweaking)
A different paradigm about success than you seem to have: you're happy failing fairly often, some people go with a "never give up, never surrender!" Approach. I know I don't like it when ANYONE in my group fails a faction mission.
Bad groups: If you're in a party with 4 wizards, they better be 4 damned good wizards.
Just to do it: sometimes you don't need a minivan to run on nitrous oxide, you just want it to.
My own personal thing: sometimes I'm using one class like another (ie, i have a druid and an inquisitor that fill into the "rogue" slot). To show people this can be done i need someone doing the jobs BETTER than the original, not just as well.
Build up and ramp down. Build down: you're stuck with it. I can play a character weaker than they are by not using a spell every round, buffing allies instead of myself , or not making the full use of my abilities. You can't play a character stronger than they're built just in case something hits the fan.
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Also, surprise rounds.
Some DM's and scenarios feel overly enamored with the bad guys getting these. You open a door, they have readied actions. You're walking down the street, they're invisible. You're playing bait, they have the whole area covered in fog and silence. You have a +40 perception the scenario says you need to declare that you're looking for an ambush.
Coming back from that kind of disadvantage without loosing ANYONE can take a bit of doing.
If you're in a party with 4 wizards, they better be 4 damned good wizards.
Corollary: If they ARE damn good wizards, EVERYTHING DIES.
Plus possibly the entire city block is now rubble.
:)
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"A different paradigm about success than you seem to have: you're happy failing fairly often, some people go with a "never give up, never surrender!" Approach. I know I don't like it when ANYONE in my group fails a faction mission."
Having an Osirion character cured me of any delusions of getting every faction mission.
As an aside, most people who build death machines don't seem willing to "hold back".
Is it really so rare in PFS to be against total optimization? If that's the case, I might be in for a lot of boring tables going forward. If people optimize that much, they need to make these scenarios even harder. I know about the problems with Living Greyhawk, but I don't play these for 5+ hours at a time to be bored out of my skull as a tweak mercilessly slaughters everything with no group assistance necessary. Or even worse, a pet.
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"A different paradigm about success than you seem to have: you're happy failing fairly often, some people go with a "never give up, never surrender!" Approach. I know I don't like it when ANYONE in my group fails a faction mission."
Having an Osirion character cured me of any delusions of getting every faction mission.
As an aside, most people who build death machines don't seem willing to "hold back".
Is it really so rare in PFS to be against total optimization? If that's the case, I might be in for a lot of boring tables going forward. If people optimize that much, they need to make these scenarios even harder. I know about the problems with Living Greyhawk, but I don't play these for 5+ hours at a time to be bored out of my skull as a tweak mercilessly slaughters everything with no group assistance necessary. Or even worse, a pet.
99% of my play has been with my static group. At the one convention I went too thus far, it did seem to run a broad spectrum from ruthless powergaming to pure role-play. Most folks I saw and spoke with about characters veered towards the middle of that though, with a fun story for their character who was built to serve some role efficiently.
I too would like to see harder mods, but I understand the design and business difficulty of this. Balancing a single mod to cater to both role-players who are easy going on game mechanics as well as maximized powergamers would be extremely time consuming and taxing to do for every single scenario.
So what does that make the best solution then? It's difficult to say. The best you can do for the time being is try very hard to find a like-minded group of pathfinders, and play with those individuals as much as possible.
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...they need to make these scenarios even harder
I too would like to see harder mods
The difficulty of challenges seems to have ramped up a bit mid-season three to the present. If you are playing mostly older scenarios, keep this in mind. That is not to say there aren't "hard-mode" scenarios in older seasons, but their ratio was a bit lower. Of course, ever-expanding player options has a huge impact on that as well. Most scenarios, even season zero can be a challenge is you stick to core material. But, add in the APG, UM, UC, and the various splat books and suddenly, former challenges become much easier to overcome.
Scenario challenges are largely dependent on the PC party mix. One group's cake-walk is another group's tpk. There has been a lot of talk recently about harpies. Have a bard in your group? Well, you probably had no problem with them. No ranged attackers? Then you may well have fallen prey to their captivating song coupled with flight tactics.
It is nearly impossible for authors to write material that is universally challenging to all players. Some like under-optimized gaming where flaws give their PC "character", while others like to power-game. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to experience the game, unless your goal is to be the center of attention all the time and you hedge the rest of the players out. But, that is an issue with the player, not the game.
When you have a fairly regular local group, you tend to optimize to the same level of power. You also tend to coordinate, intentionally or not, your character classes and archtypes to fit with the others you play with. This leads to better party mix and easier to overcome challenges. Contrast that with convention play where you are often completely unaware of who you are gaming with, both character and player-wise. This can lead to a clash of styles, gaping holes in your party skills, or redundancies amongst the PCs. None of which are necessarily conducive to "winning" play. It is important to understand the dynamics of both locations and to approach them differently. Manage your expectations for each and your fun-o-meter will consistently be reading higher.
Explore! Report! Cooperate!
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"When you have a fairly regular local group, you tend to optimize to the same level of power. You also tend to coordinate, intentionally or not, your character classes and archtypes to fit with the others you play with. This leads to better party mix and easier to overcome challenges."
Yeah, that's my issue. With my local group, I don't usually have to do a thing. Just stand there and watch them win. I don't need to cooperate, because there's nothing I can do to make the encounters more trivial than they are already making them.
So with that in mind, I prefer convention play. I have a much better chance of actually mattering at the table.
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"A different paradigm about success than you seem to have: you're happy failing fairly often, some people go with a "never give up, never surrender!" Approach. I know I don't like it when ANYONE in my group fails a faction mission."
Having an Osirion character cured me of any delusions of getting every faction mission.
You should adventure with my druid. Doyle was doing so many of their "disarm this device" and "find this plant" missions that he picked up ancient osirioni as a language.
As an aside, most people who build death machines don't seem willing to "hold back".
I'm sure some people aren't willing, but consider
Your level of optimization " Death machine" "Just right" or "Concept character" is not written on your forehead (or your table tent). People have no way of knowing how good your character is without knowing you. The only real way i know whether to step on the gas or the break is if I know someone's character from previous experience or their level. IE, if there's a low level monk in the party and we're playing at tier I'll wrestle the velociraptor for his amulet of magic fang and give it to the monk.
Some people don't think they're death machines: they think they're optimized at just the right level. Optimization is like driving. In driving, anyone going faster than you is a **#$#$& lunatic and anyone going slower than you needs to learn how to drive. In optimization anyone more optimized than you is a cheese eating munchkin and anyone less optimized than you is a waste of space: everyone's views on the matter, including yours, are subjective.
Is it really so rare in PFS to be against total optimization? If that's the case, I might be in for a lot of boring tables going forward. If people optimize that much, they need to make these scenarios even harder.
Which will drive more optimization which will drive out the casual builds which will lead to more optimization....
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Something I've seen at Gencon tends to help prevent play up or down problems is premustering. Usually there are several tables running the same scenerio. Before a coordinator comes, all the players discuss among themselves what character they have and what level. The higher level players group together and lower level group together. Sometimes you end up with a wide mix table, but this is more exception than rule. Also helps in that you can make sure each group has a complementary mix of skills and abilities.
Locally, the venture capatin uses Warhorn to set up games, allowing you to see the party mix as people register. It's easy to switch characters if a bunch of 1st level guys sign up at the same table as you did with your 4th level. Alternatively, it's easy to drop out of that game and move to another with complementary levels.
Just some things I've seen that mitigate chance of having a bullying issue.
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"Some people don't think they're death machines: they think they're optimized at just the right level. Optimization is like driving. In driving, anyone going faster than you is a **#$#$& lunatic and anyone going slower than you needs to learn how to drive. In optimization anyone more optimized than you is a cheese eating munchkin and anyone less optimized than you is a waste of space: everyone's views on the matter, including yours, are subjective."
Of course its subjective. I still think that the scenarios themselves are kind of an objective measure, but they vary too much for this to be useful.
"Which will drive more optimization which will drive out the casual builds which will lead to more optimization...."
The counter to this is that the casual builds don't get to play if there are optimized characters at the table anyway. But this will certainly lead to many TPKs if no optimizers are present. Probably not what Paizo is looking for.
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Nosig... it's simple ... say I don't want to play up .. then if the table decides to play up, you then have additional choice, stay and play or walk away...
it's unfortunate that it can't just be make that the table has to be in agreement but there are time when you might just have to walk away
While that's true, for some of us (including you PFCBG) the chance to play is so rare that walking away is a crap option. Unless the con venue has a really good bar I guess.
There's also that pressure of a table collapsing if one or two players choose to walk rather than play the tier they don't want. Sure, the other players can toss in a GM run pre-gen, but that's asking for a tpk if they're playing up. So I consider that a collapse. Ymmv.Time was, back in the days of other OP campaigns, that the player(s) with the low level PCs had veto power. That was in the rules.
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If people are uncomfortable playing with optimizers they will find other tables. I could careless the other builds at the table. What scares me is the play of other people. When people run away at the slight hint of danger, or when they run to the nest room to pull another fight knowing they can vanish or outrun their team. I have people at my local group I make a point not to rely on or trust because because that will get you killed.
Smart play beats smart builds. If someone builds a weak character does not mean they will not be useful. It is the person at the table not the paper in front of them. Anyone can look at other powerful builds and make a kick butt character. Not everyone can kick butt no matter what they play, but those are the people I want in my team.
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If you're in a party with 4 wizards, they better be 4 damned good wizards.Corollary: If they ARE damn good wizards, EVERYTHING DIES.
We had three Chelaxian summoners (cleric, druid, wizard) back in Season 0. We didn't really mind playing up. Or what other characters happened to be around. It got old pretty fast.
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Your level of optimization " Death machine" "Just right" or "Concept character" is not written on your forehead (or your table tent). People have no way of knowing how good your character is without knowing you.
This is such an enormously underrated point that I think even Paizo should consider making more obvious in organised play, because it may not matter what your level is, death machine 3 vs concept character 7 could be the same thing, making this whole argument irrelevant.
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What is the primary reason most that low-subtier players or those between subtiers generally want to play up?
First thing that comes to mind is more gold! But that's probably not the whole reason every time.
- More gold
- Party composition
- Determining power level of each character (death build/just right/concept character)
- Experience with a familiar GM's difficulty level
What is the primary reason high-subtier players generally don't want to play down?
- I've spent too much, but I need the gold, bad (to be useful, not to be greedy)
- I've played a lot of low tier scenarios (and I need the gold, bad)
- We're hardcore enough and we've played plenty of cakewalks (with this GM, possibly) before, why are we still playing down? Risk is minimal.
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Thistledown: If it's season 0-3 and there are six of them, their APL is one higher. It is POSSIBLE that their APL can round up to 9 and they have the option to play up.
If it's season 4 and the highest is level 8, they do not have the option. If there are any whiners, show them what they missed: after the game is over, run the final fight at high tier as an exhibition game (no risk of death, no rewards for success), and see if any of them change their minds. :)
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Since this topic has been raised, I have a few questions that tie directly into some discussions John and I have been having here in the office.
What is the primary reason most that low-subtier players or those between subtiers generally want to play up? What is the primary reason high-subtier players generally don't want to play down?
For me...
I play up when I trust the other players to play well. Not so worried about their build...but I want them to be able to actually play well. I have done the local PFS enough where I know player that if I see, I can count of them to get things done and keep other players alive. Many people see me as one such player.
When do I play down? When I see certain players, I KNOW it's gonna be rough playing...OR if I just don't know at all.
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Tthistledown:
This may help:
Step 1: Make sure all characters are within the Tier of the adventure. This means if the adventure is 7-11, all characters must be 7-11.
Step 2: Determine party APL (Add up all the leves and divide by the # of players)
Step 2b: If prior to season 4 and you have 6+ players add 1 to APL. (Note that if this + forces you to play the higher subtier you may instead play the lower, effectively making this bonus to APL the player's option to take or not)
Step 3: Round to the nearest whole number and if it falls into a subtier (A 7-11 has 2 subtiers 7-8 % 1011), the players must play that subtier. If it falls in between subtiers (ex. APL 9 in a 7-11) the party may choose which subtier to play.
*Special Note: A character may never play more than one subtier away. So in the case of a special with many subtiers such as 1-2 3-4 and 6-7: A level 1-2 character may NOT play subtier 6-7 even if the appropriate APL is met.
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There was a long discussion about rounding a couple years ago. I would strongly suggest the intent is to round .0x .1x .2x .3x .4x down and .5x .6x .7x .8x .9x up.
So in a pre-season 4 scenario a party of (7,7,7,7,8,9) does indeed have the option of playing 10-11 if desired.
Please note this section form the bottom of page 33 from the guide:
If, however, the APL was calculated for six players (and thus bumped up
by +1) and this pushes a low-level table out of their subtier and into the level between two subtiers, the players should be strongly cautioned about playing up, as even a party of six players may not be able to handle situations and challenges that the higher subtier will present.
So you should strongly caution them, but allow them to play that subtier if so desired.
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Pirate Rob, could you explain your parenthetic note on 2b?
"Similarly, in fringe cases where rounding to the nearest whole number would force a party to play up to the next subtier, they may instead choose to play down. For example, in a group of three 2nd-level PCs, two 3rd-level PCs, and one 4th-level PCs, their levels would average to 2.67, which is then rounded up to 3; then you would add +1 because of the group size, yielding an adjusted APL of 4th and making the group eligible for Tier 4–5, which is too high-level for most of the PCs."
Since the +1 from group size never forces you to play up, it's effectively optional, the PCs can choose to calculate it when determining their subtier, or they can choose not to. It gives the same result as always adding but then allowing people to ignore it and play down.
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There was a long discussion about rounding a couple years ago. I would strongly suggest the intent is to round .0x .1x .2x .3x .4x down and .5x .6x .7x .8x .9x up.You should always round to the nearest whole number.I think you're safe to do more than "strongly suggest"; it's RAW.
But don't forget about the part of the rule that indicates that if you would normally play down, but the +1 APL for 6 players in seasons 0 to 3 would make you play up, you can still play down (i.e. APL 2.67 + 1 = 3.67 rounded to 4 would make you play 4-5, but because the initial APL was 2.67, which rounds to 3, and gives you the choice to play down, you can still play down.)
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But don't forget about the part of the rule that indicates that if you would normally play down, but the +1 APL for 6 players in seasons 0 to 3 would make you play up, you can still play down (i.e. APL 2.67 + 1 = 3.67 rounded to 4 would make you play 4-5, but because the initial APL was 2.67, which rounds to 3, and gives you the choice to play down, you can still play down.)There was a long discussion about rounding a couple years ago. I would strongly suggest the intent is to round .0x .1x .2x .3x .4x down and .5x .6x .7x .8x .9x up.You should always round to the nearest whole number.I think you're safe to do more than "strongly suggest"; it's RAW.
Isn't that what my 2b note and further explanation to Chris already say?
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But don't forget about the part of the rule that indicates that if you would normally play down, but the +1 APL for 6 players in seasons 0 to 3 would make you play up, you can still play down (i.e. APL 2.67 + 1 = 3.67 rounded to 4 would make you play 4-5, but because the initial APL was 2.67, which rounds to 3, and gives you the choice to play down, you can still play down.)
I was just interjecting my 2¢ in regards to rounding to whole numbers, not determining subtiers. Though I suppose, those pesky .5s are still a grey area.
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Lets please not get into the rounding debate again.
Fromper: check out the tie-breaking section here if you want to learn about different ways to deal with .5
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It just amazes me how many people don't know what "You should always round to the nearest whole number" means. According to every math book ever published, that means .5 gets rounded up every time
When I was in school (granted, that was a long time ago), our math books told us to round odd numbers up and even numbers down (i.e., 4.5 becomes 4 and 5.5 becomes 6).
So my excuse for not knowing what "round to the nearest whole number" means is that I had the one math book that happened to be published with a grievous error.It just amazes me how much math has changed since then.
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nosig, my reply to Fromper was definitely snarky. And for that, I apologize.
My response was not meant to be my take on rounding in PFS play to determine subtier, but rather a response to Fromper's "amazement" that I didn't know what "rounding to the nearest whole number" meant when clearly every math book ever published explains how this is done and no two books differ.
So, nosig, no offense taken; I didn't read any snark into your reply.
Fromper, I do apologize for the snark I directed at you; absolutes and hyperbole tend to set me off...
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Granted if we had played down...maybe it would have been a cakewalk and I'd posting an argument from the other side of the aisle. Who knows?
Well at 1-5 it is a bit easier, as you can most of the time ask the level 4-5 players to play a new level 1 instead and join you in the 1-2 subtier. They may have been the best option in your case, dunno if anyone suggested that.