I have seen it represented on this message board and especially elsewhere that the "math" of Pathfinder "breaks down" at the "higher levels." I've seen this repeated without explanation.
My question is: specifically which parts of the game stop working as intended at higher levels? Is there really a specific issue or is this one of those things that gets repeated without any real substance to it?
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When the random element of determining success (d20) becomes swamped by fixed effects (BAB, skill checks, etc.), keeping things from being either autosuccess or autofailure becomes very difficult, particularly as different classes gain BAB or other bonuses at different rates. Eventually, keeping things challenging for full BAB characters means 3/4 BAB classes have no chance of hitting, e.g.
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Additionally, most of the common spells used for such things (enlarge person, righteous might, ect.) have this text in their description:
"Multiple magical effects that increase size do not stack."
The reason that strong jaw works with any size increase is because of it's wording, notably it does not actually increase your size:
"Laying a hand upon an allied creature's jaw, claws, tentacles, or other natural weapons, you enhance the power of that creature's natural attacks. Each natural attack that creature makes deals damage as if the creature were two sizes larger than it actually is. If the creature is already Gargantuan or Colossal-sized, double the amount of damage dealt by each of its natural attacks instead. This spell does not actually change the creature's size; all of its statistics except the amount of damage dealt by its natural attacks remain unchanged."
A strongly damage max monk [ki mystic/weapon adept/qinggong] would have a Strength of 49:
18 base
2 race
5 level up
6 inherent (orc eldritch heritage)
6 belt
2 weapon adept level 20
10 size from turning into a gargantuan earth elemental
And would run Arcane Strike, Power Attack, Celestial Obedience to shape change into said elemental, boots of speed, an +5 amulet of mighty fists, and easily self-employed scrolls of strong jaw for an attack routine of:
18 BAB
19 Str
1 weapon focus
5 amulet
1 competence
1 morale
1 haste
-3 size
-6 Power Attack
to hit, and...
28 Str
5 amulet
1 quain martial artist
5 Arcane Strike
12 Power Attack
damage, for...
+37/+37/+37/+32/+32/+27/+27/+22 (16d8+51/19-20). He would also be rolling 2d20 for each attack roll and keeping the best result.
When the random element of determining success (d20) becomes swamped by fixed effects (BAB, skill checks, etc.), keeping things from being either autosuccess or autofailure becomes very difficult, particularly as different classes gain BAB or other bonuses at different rates. Eventually, keeping things challenging for full BAB characters means 3/4 BAB classes have no chance of hitting, e.g.
At what point in the game does this become a problem? Are any particular classes or abilities more prone to causing it?
When the random element of determining success (d20) becomes swamped by fixed effects (BAB, skill checks, etc.), keeping things from being either autosuccess or autofailure becomes very difficult, particularly as different classes gain BAB or other bonuses at different rates. Eventually, keeping things challenging for full BAB characters means 3/4 BAB classes have no chance of hitting, e.g.At what point in the game does this become a problem? Are any particular classes or abilities more prone to causing it?
I think by level 12 a power attacking fighter is auto-hitting. Of course you should except the fact that the first swing a martial makes is an auto hit. If you don't other non-full martials just won't be able to do much.
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Your rogue needs a 14 to save. Your cleric needs a 3.
Is that a feature or a bug? In other words, is it intended that the cleric is the example not be at risk for the will saves while other classes are at risk? is not being at risk an intended benefit of being a cleric?
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There are a few issues.
Firstly, Damage scales far faster than HP and survivability. Effectively, its a bit of an arms race, and when you get to a certain point, enemies and players can easily be killed in a single round. That generally means that he who goes first wins the fight. This is where the term Rocket-Tag comes into play.
The same scaling issue occurs with accuracy versus AC, accuracy outscales AC at the high end.
Saving throws also get very tough. If you are a caster that does not put a serious focus on breaking SR and building up DCs, you will see most of your spells fail. Monster DCs scale very well, and the second part of this is that any weak save becomes a huge liability. DCs scale much faster than weak saves. At 20 you are likely to see save DCs of 30+ and your weak save caps out at +11 base with a +5 cloak.
Magic, then, becomes the most important side-stepper. With access to powerful divination and travel spells, casters can side-step a ton of previously difficult content. Having the right protective spells can completely shut down certain tactics, but the greater impact is that surviving one round means that you will likely win the Rocket-Tag game.
So its often about what you can do with a single action... and eventually that just goes nuclear. For all the bluster about caster dominance, they are just as dead if a barbarian can pounce on them... easily in one full-attack. Divination, then, needs to be used to increase effective range on both sides... travel spells to get in or get out. Massive damage in every fight either obliterates one side very quickly.
The other way to explain it is that the strong areas of a character grow very quickly and the weak areas grow very slowly. At low level, the D20 is a huge part of your check results, and the difference between the things you have focused on and the things you haven't is rather slight. As you gain levels, that gap increases, and the D20 is a less and less relevant factor in determining success. The bounds shift and you start seeing the the things you focus on have very high odds of success, and the things that are your weaknesses become more pronounced.
This creates a sort of rock-paper-scissors scenario. If you hit my rogue with a debilitating will save... he is in real trouble. If you hit him with a reflex save, he laughs at you. The middle ground, in effect, largely disappears. And the consequences for success or failure are always escalating.
Simply put, what happens if you fail a fort save at level 1? What happens when you fail at level 20? Big differences.
What is a strong save at 1? +2 more than a weak save
What is it at level 20? +6 more than a weak save.
This all makes the game far more deadly and far more swingy. Monster X getting a full attack on you first at level 1 is usually not that big of a deal... at level 20 it can easily spell death.
So, ultimately, the issue is that offenses scale faster than defenses, and once the gap becomes too large, things break down into a game of predicting the enemy, the enemy predicting you or trying to prevent your prediction... zapping in and exploding everything in one round...or being exploded.... its all just a big mexican stand-off waiting to see who blinks first.
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Is that a feature or a bug? In other words, is it intended that the cleric is the example not be at risk for the will saves while other classes are at risk? is not being at risk an intended benefit of being a cleric?
Your rogue needs a 14 to save. Your cleric needs a 3.
Its a benefit to one and a huge liability to the other.
Say you have a level 1 cleric with an 18 wisdom... will save +6
And you have a level 1 fighter with a 12 wisdom... will save +1
DC 15 will save: 60% chance for the cleric, 30% for the fighter.
At level 20, you have a cleric with a 34 wisdom... will save +29
(wisdom bonuses, +5 levels, +5 inherent, +6 headband)
Fighter with a now 14 wisdom... will save +13
(less likely to put his resources into wisdom, but should have some small bonus)
DC 30 will save: 95% for the cleric, 15% for the fighter.
This sort of thing can be seen all over the place, and the issue is that this saving throw is really really hard for the fighter, but laughable for the cleric... and a lot of the saves are built so that they can challenge the cleric....
If you want to challenge the cleric you are going to need a DC high enough to ensure that the fighter is going to need to roll a natural 20 to pass his save.
There are a few issues.
I found your post very helpful. thank you.
This sort of thing can be seen all over the place, and the issue is that this saving throw is really really hard for the fighter, but laughable for the cleric... and a lot of the saves are built so that they can challenge the cleric....
If you want to challenge the cleric you are going to need a DC high enough to ensure that the fighter is going to need to roll a natural 20 to pass his save.
I see your point. My question was intended to be more philosophical. From a "game" perspective, is it desirable to have the higher levels become harder for the players? Is that what was originally intended? Or is it more desirable that the game's difficulty remain constant as players level?
I could imagine that this kind of difficulty scaling might have been intended by the Gygax era designers. Many older "modules" (such as the infamous "Tomb of Horrors") were designed specifically to test a player's mettle as they avoided being killed. My sense is that having a high level character was meant to be an achievement back then. So I would speculate that difficulty scaling may be a vestige of that era. But assuming that is true, my question is: is this "legacy feature" desirable?
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I think the game wasnt "designed" with high level play in mind sometimes (for the afformentionned "huge gaps"). It's been frustrating me a lot since I can never seem to make a balanced character because of it. I understand difficulty should scale, and for a good team and decent optimizers you can come out even, but it's friggen hard.
Honestly, despite the reverence Gygax receives, all the stuff he implemented has only managed to conviced me that he was a mechanical gamer first, and a petty one at that. I dont think it's a desirable "legacy feature".
My experience with higher level play is limited, so here's your grain of salt...but I don't think it's a matter of "higher levels are more difficult", but that they are more extreme. Someone above said swingy. Things either do very little to you, or kill you outright.
I don't find the idea particularly pleasant, and in the game I'm running right now I plan to keep an eye on things and make changes as appropriate.
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Of course he was a mechanical gamer. He built his game off of war games.I think the game wasnt "designed" with high level play in mind sometimes (for the afformentionned "huge gaps"). It's been frustrating me a lot since I can never seem to make a balanced character because of it. I understand difficulty should scale, and for a good team and decent optimizers you can come out even, but it's friggen hard.
Honestly, despite the reverence Gygax receives, all the stuff he implemented has only managed to conviced me that he was a mechanical gamer first, and a petty one at that. I dont think it's a desirable "legacy feature".
Simple question. How much do you actually know about Gary Gygax as a GM? How much have you read about the settings he created or the games he ran? This applies to both of you.
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Simple question. How much do you actually know about Gary Gygax as a GM? How much have you read about the settings he created or the games he ran?Honestly, despite the reverence Gygax receives, all the stuff he implemented has only managed to conviced me that he was a mechanical gamer first, and a petty one at that. I dont think it's a desirable "legacy feature".Of course he was a mechanical gamer. He built his game off of war games.
Yeah, I have to jump in here as well ... to williamoak - we pretty much owe everything to Gygax. He was an incredibly creative and clever guy who created the game we all know and love. Heck, he created the very concept of the RPG. From everything I've read and heard, he was an amazing DM who ran amazing games. Don't disparage Gygax, just because modern high level play has issues.
I also think we need to be careful this doesn't shift off topic. Let's try to shift this back to why the numbers break down at high levels ...
Solo monsters are difficult as well. Due to the layered defenses of high-level characters and monsters, tactics are much more binary.
For example, orcs can be grappled, tripped, shot with arrows, enchanted, hidden from, etc.
Every tactic works.
By the time you're facing an Erinyes, hiding ceases to work. They' ve got true seeing, so normal sneaking doesn't work. They're immune to fire and poison, have strong SR. They can teleport and fly, so battlefield control is very difficult. And if you only have melee weapons, good luck. They'll either shoot you full of flaming arrows, or unholy blight you to death.
Even later on, things get even harder. Take a look at shoggoth in the Bestiary. You don't have a lot of options against one of those. Nor do you have a lot of time. If you have something that works, you get to live. If not, you get eaten.
That's on top of the swinginess of the math...
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By the time you're facing an Erinyes, hiding ceases to work. They' ve got true seeing, so normal sneaking doesn't work.
Thank you for once again showing that the vast majority of people that talk about how the game breaks down don't actually both to read about the things they are talking about.
It does not negate concealment, including that caused by fog and the like. True seeing does not help the viewer see through mundane disguises, spot creatures who are simply hiding, or notice secret doors hidden by mundane means.
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I also think we need to be careful this doesn't shift off topic. Let's try to shift this back to why the numbers break down at high levels ...
Sorry, but I've heard too many people harp on and on about the "greats" of PnP (like gygax & monte cooke & others) and acting like the flaws there were werent there, and I get irritated because some folks talk like there's some sort of "sacred doctrine of play" that if you just used, you wouldnt have your problems.
In any case, there is also a case to be made that "there are so many rules to apply that you forget some". True seeing vs sneak is a good example. SKR has weighed in on the non-functionality of the classic "scry & fry".
But yeah, from a pure theorycrafting standpoint, I can see that the numbers simply dont match up, and that's not good. It probably varies a lot if you have a good/well organized team.
It gets complicated (which is to be expected) at high level (I'll be getting there for the first time soon) but it's more than just a numbers game.
One thing to "moderate" that is more NPCs rather than monsters; those types of enemies are generally less "extreme" & more manageable from what I can gather.
Sorry, but I've heard too many people harp on and on about the "greats" of PnP (like gygax & monte cooke & others) and acting like the flaws there were werent there, and I get irritated because some folks talk like there's some sort of "sacred doctrine of play" that if you just used, you wouldnt have your problems.
Wow, you played with Gary? What was that like?
The problem with the math breaking down can be largely avoided if multi-classing is encouraged. Particularly if the multi-classing isn't in pursuit of being a one trick pony.
The problem is that Pathfinder as a game rewards single-class characters and characters who specialize in particular.
The problem with high level game is that everything becomes a "Save or Die" effect...
Be target by a full attack, you die
Fail a save you die
If AC and HP scaled a bit better and Save-or-Lose effects were rarer and required more than a single failed save to take you out of the fight, Rocket Tag wouldn't be such a problem...
I've been trying to tone down SoL spells and think of ways to make characters more likely to survive the 1st round, but it's a lot of work... Increasing poor saves to that they start with a +1 and grow to a +9 could help... But still, saves are too binary and can easily dictate how the story goes.
The other problem is that at high level, magic becomes so powerful and so present that there are many situations that mundane characters can't even interact with. Casters become gods. Martial classes become the clean-up crew.
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It does not negate concealment, including that caused by fog and the like. True seeing does not help the viewer see through mundane disguises, spot creatures who are simply hiding, or notice secret doors hidden by mundane means.
Don't get snippy. I'll explain.
At first level, it's a straight-up roll, stealth vs. perception. Since skills bonuses are generally pretty low, the roll is much more important than the modifier. Stealth is hard and risky.
At fifth level, the party generally has access to second level spells, but they are few in number, and therefore precious. But a character who focuses on stealth and dexterity is starting to assemble some bonuses, and will have an easier time of it.
At 8th level, the party has enough gold and spell power that turning the rogue invisible generally can be done as needed. Which is what I meant by normal sneaking, at that level. And against most CR appropriate foes, it works amazingly. Add in some darkness, and you're practically undetectable. It's a golden age for sneaking.
Until it's not. The Erinyes ignores invisibility, ignores darkness, and has a perception of +16, which is good enough to give them about a 50/50 chance at spotting you. If there' s two of them, and there should be if you're scouting ahead for your party of four, you now have a 75% chance of being spotted by one of them.
Unless, of course, you got someone to cast non-detection. Then the Erinyes has to pass a caster level check to spot you.
Unless, of course, the Erinyes' spell resistance protects her from the non-detection, which then allows her true seeing to overcome your invisibility, and then therefore roll with their perceptions vs. your stealth.
Notice how it's gotten more complicated? That's what I meant by binary, there are a series of yes/ no questions that will determine success or failure, over and above the simple die roll of perception vs. stealth. Which is also problematic at high levels, as discussed above.
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The game can break down, but that does not mean it has too. It really depends on how the group plays and the skill of the GM.
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I'm with Wraithstrike on this one. I'm currently GMing a game where the PCs all have high stats, have 21 class levels, and are mythic tier 3.
It's a blast.
The trick, though, was to stop caring about the numbers. When the bard is effectively a walking lie detector (+53 sense motive) and the paladin and fighter between them can deliver 400+ DPR without difficulty (vastly more with a little luck on the dice), the wizard can really make reality sit up and beg, and the rogue who just picked up a level in Shadowdancer can hide from everything and deliver crushing sneak attacks without breaking a sweat, you stop getting precious about encounters.
I keep reminding myself of a guideline I've set for myself: if someone rolls a d20, the PCs have won.
Yes, they have combat encounters, and I try to make them interesting, plot-related, and worth the effort of rolling dice, but the idea of them losing an encounter with dice involved is, basically, laughable. The PCs have won.
Yeah, I could grab Cthulhu's stats and he would roflstomp them into the ground. But that wouldn't be fun for me or my players.
My players definitely want their characters to improve, but we've all recognised that combat isn't the way to do it. So I use roleplaying, with a simple rule in place: any encounter in which "active" social abilities play a part is APL vs CR. Any encounter where either no or only "passive" social abilities play a part is a "pure roleplaying encounter" and earns them XP as an encounter with CR = APL (as per the rules). They earn FAR more XP roleplaying than they do rolling the dice.
It's not easy to create plots that they can't waltz through, but it's possible because the unwritten social contract we have says that I'll try to make it fun if they don't go out of their way to walk over everything. They do, anyway, because of their abilities, but they do it without even trying, and I account for that in my adventure design.
It's a blast.
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The problem with high level game is that everything becomes a "Save or Die" effect...
Fail a save you die
If ... Save-or-Lose effects were rarer and required more than a single failed save to take you out of the fight, Rocket Tag wouldn't be such a problem...
Maybe. But then nobody would use them.
Wizard: I cast Feeblemind on the enemy mage.
GM: OK, he rolls a 17, 21, 23, and 29 on his saves.
Wizard: Crud. 4 saves? Well, that 29 beats my DC. No effect. I should have cast Haste instead.
GM: OK, bad guy's turn. He casts slow on the Monk. You get 3 saves.
Monk: 27, 19, 25.
GM: Oh well, you made the save. Twice, actually. I guess the monster should have just used melee, maybe he wouldn't have wasted his whole round...
But still, saves are too binary and can easily dictate how the story goes.
They're supposed to be binary. It's the only thing that makes them viable.
I remember the good old days, way back when Hold Person gave you one save. You make it, you're good, but if you fail, you're paralyzed for a bunch of rounds. Period. People actually cast Hold Person in those days. I used it when I played a caster. Other players used it. DMs would have their NPC casters use it.
But then someone came along and made an edition where Hold Person allows a save every round. Now, if it affects the target at all, it probably only paralyzes him for a round or two. Maybe you waste your spell slot and your entire round just paralyzing one enemy for one round - you trade your round to neutralize his round. If you're lucky.
Now nobody uses it. I don't. My players don't. Maybe if a monster has it in its stat block I'll try it on a PC that looks like it has a low WILL save. Maybe. Or I just have the monster do something else that will be more useful.
For me, when I play a caster, I look for spells that put me in control. Spells that don't leave the outcome in the GMs hands. Maybe he'll be fair and let one bad Saving Throw trivialize his fine-tuned encounter. Or maybe he'll look at that bad roll there behind his screen and decide to pretend it was a good roll, just to make the fight more suspenseful. He's probably right; ending a boss fight because one player (out of a 5-man team) casts one spell and the boss blows a single roll is anticlimactic and boring. Still, it means I wasted my time preparing it and wasted my time casting it. Or maybe he doesn't cheat, but he actually rolls well. I wasted my time preparing it and wasted my time casting it.
No, not for me, thanks. I'll cast buffs and controls and maybe some rays - I get to control all those numbers, I get to focus on what works, and I definitely don't ever get shut down by a GM's desire to keep the fight interesting at my expense.
In short, be very wary of "toning down" those SoL spells - nobody will ever use them if they're toned down too much (and IMO, too many are already so "toned down" that they're useless, right out of the core book). If that's your goal, you can save time by just banning them instead of working on new rules to tone them down.
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They're supposed to be binary. It's the only thing that makes them viable.
I remember the good old days, way back when Hold Person gave you one save. You make it, you're good, but if you fail, you're paralyzed for a bunch of rounds. Period. People actually cast Hold Person in those days. I used it when I played a caster. Other players used it. DMs would have their NPC casters use it.
But then someone came along and made an edition where Hold Person allows a save every round. Now, if it affects the target at all, it probably only paralyzes him for a round or two. Maybe you waste your spell slot and your entire round just paralyzing one enemy for one round - you trade your round to neutralize his round. If you're lucky.
Now nobody uses it. I don't. My players don't. Maybe if a monster has it in its stat block I'll try it on a PC that looks like it has a low WILL save. Maybe. Or I just have the monster do something else that will be more useful.
For me, when I play a caster, I look for spells that put me in control. Spells that don't leave the outcome in the GMs hands. Maybe he'll be fair and let one bad Saving Throw trivialize his fine-tuned encounter. Or maybe he'll look at that bad roll there behind his screen and decide to pretend it was a good roll, just to make the fight more suspenseful. He's probably right; ending a boss fight because one player (out of a 5-man team) casts one spell and the boss blows a single roll is anticlimactic and boring. Still, it means I wasted my time preparing it and wasted my time casting it. Or maybe he doesn't cheat, but he actually rolls well. I wasted my time preparing it and wasted my time casting it.
No, not for me, thanks. I'll cast buffs and controls and maybe some rays - I get to control all those numbers, I get to focus on what works, and I definitely don't ever get shut down by a GM's desire to keep the fight interesting at my expense.
In short, be very wary of "toning down" those SoL spells - nobody will ever use them if they're toned down too much (and IMO, too many are already so "toned down" that they're useless, right out of the core book). If that's your goal, you can save time by just banning them instead of working on new rules to tone them down.
Just because they are "supposed" to be something, it doesn't mean it's a good idea.
It's a matter of taste, I suppose...
Personally, I don't have any fun with SoD, neither as target nor as the caster. SoD effect effects are one of the most boring tactics in the game, IMHO. It's like flipping a coin to see who wins.
There is nothing more boring and frustrating than rolling a 12 instead of a 13 and then being completely unable to do anything. At that point you might as well leave the table and go watch TV... Not because of tactics or smart play from the enemy. Nope. It's all because of a single d20 roll...
Hold Person is still a pretty decent spell... It's not a combat ender anymore, but you can still paralyze someone and have an ally coup de grace your target in the same turn. That's good enough for a 2nd level spell...
But when I say "tone down SoD effects"I don't mean "allow more saves", (although that could be a possible fix for some of them). What I mean is make the effects of the spell be more (or less) damaging depending on how well you roll.
e.g.: Hold Person: If you fail your save by 5 or more, you're Paralyzed, but if you fail by 4 or less, you're simply Staggered.
Something like that.
Increasing your saves and the DC of your spells would still be just as important, but characters wouldn't be completely removed from battle because they rolled a 12 instead of a 13.
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Simple question. How much do you actually know about Gary Gygax as a GM? How much have you read about the settings he created or the games he ran? This applies to both of you.Of course he was a mechanical gamer. He built his game off of war games.I think the game wasnt "designed" with high level play in mind sometimes (for the afformentionned "huge gaps"). It's been frustrating me a lot since I can never seem to make a balanced character because of it. I understand difficulty should scale, and for a good team and decent optimizers you can come out even, but it's friggen hard.
Honestly, despite the reverence Gygax receives, all the stuff he implemented has only managed to conviced me that he was a mechanical gamer first, and a petty one at that. I dont think it's a desirable "legacy feature".
I was around back then. I met Gygax and played with Arneson. You have to remember D&D was a dual creation, Gygax was the rules guy, Arneson was the imagination guy. I did get to watch Gygax DM once at a con. To Arneson, the rules were just a vague guideline, he played very fast & loose and made stuff up as he went along. Gygax could do that too, but he stayed within the loose framework that was OD&D.
Back to the OP- It doesn't really, except perhaps at the levels where Spellcaster can toss 9th level spells. This may be one reason why most AP’s stop then.
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The original Tomb of Horrors as well as Castle Greyhawk pretty much epitomise Gygax's style as a GM, as well as the culture of gaming in those days. Campaigns and campaign settings were essentially a means to string together series of dungeon crawls and give them a storied reason for you and your hapless bands of heroes to endure traps ranging from the seriously deadly to the comically deadly. (Such as the statue with an orb of annihilation in it's mouth for fools who stick their heads inside.) Yet Gygax's campaigns for all their derided style, did produce a pantheon of memorable characters. So perhaps it's highly dependent on what the players bring to the table as well.
Not quite. ToH was built to teach players that their hubris was unfounded. It was meant as a killer dungeon, not as a real dungeon. You only went there if you thought your PC was unbeatable. And, usually you sent in a clone anyway, or left behind something to get resd. ToH was anything BUT a typical Gygax dungeon.
But "Campaigns and campaign settings were essentially a means to string together series of dungeon crawls and give them a storied reason..." is true. Just not the super deadly traps. While Gygaxian traps were certainly deadlier than todays AP's, the death rate was quite low, once you got out of low level.
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The original Tomb of Horrors as well as Castle Greyhawk pretty much epitomise Gygax's style as a GM, as well as the culture of gaming in those days. Campaigns and campaign settings were essentially a means to string together series of dungeon crawls and give them a storied reason for you and your hapless bands of heroes to endure traps ranging from the seriously deadly to the comically deadly. (Such as the statue with an orb of annihilation in it's mouth for fools who stick their heads inside.) Yet Gygax's campaigns for all their derided style, did produce a pantheon of memorable characters. So perhaps it's highly dependent on what the players bring to the table as well.
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Castle Greyhawk which not written by Gary Gygax (and indeed, was published years after he left the company), and Tomb of Horrors which was specifically written to be used at a Con against 'expert' and boastful players?
Look, I never met the man. I never played with him, and I have no personal knowledge of him. That said, I find the overwhelming majority of people that talk about him are in the same boat and are basing their comments off of dubious knowledge at best. Most of the 'killer gm' stuff came out of conventions where half the goal was to kill off an enormous number of players in the initial rounds. Most of the 'killer' game modules were taken from those conventions.
What little I've pieced together actually paints Gygax as a more RP oriented GM, who cultivated characters over years (in fact many of the Greyhawk major NPCs are former PCs).
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Everything I've heard or read about Gygax (which is a fairly significant amount) makes him out to be a very smart, extremely creative guy.
For anyone looking for an accurate and *very* interesting look at Gygax and the early days of TSR, check out the link below. It's from the upcoming Designers & Dragons series - the excerpt includes the entire 100+ page chapter on TSR. WELL worth reading!
The D&D which Gygax & Arneson built assumed that higher level characters would have better chance of success - not just against "level appropriate" situations, but in general - for attacks and saving throws (and thief skills if you had them).Difficulty vs. "level appropriate" situations should remain constant, or actively improve - chance of success in a likely to happen scenario declining as your character "gets better" is counter-intuitive to the point of detriment to the player experience.
Playing devils advocate for a moment, I thought that the concern was precisely that your character was getting better. Your characters effectiveness is relative. In the examples used above the characters essentially became "too good" in their niche which left them not good enough out of their niche. So, based on the comments it seems that the problem is that characters become increasingly good as they level to the point where they become specialized. At the same time the consequences for failure become worse.
In any case, couldn't this be easily solved by adjusting the weaker saving throws?
The game can break down, but that does not mean it has too. It really depends on how the group plays and the skill of the GM.
If the break down is a function of the basic math of the game, your assertion seems counter intuitive to me. Please explain.
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Because it's less about the math and more about how individual GMs react to the math.
Proceeding from the example up above about the cleric auto-passing will saves, or the fighter auto-failing any saves high enough for the cleric have a reasonable chance to fail -- I'd note that the GM is not obligated to jack up every will save DC just so will save effects work on the cleric.
In fact, it is perfectly fine if the cleric auto-passes most will saves. It lets the cleric's feel good about having an enormous will save. Knowing that a jabberwocky, star-spawn, pit fiend, or what have you can't possibly get in your head is kinda cool.
Similar with fort saves for fighters, reflex saves for rogues, etc. When designing encounters, you can actually count on PC(s) ____, ____, or _____ being able to resist effect ____ with minimum repercussions, allowing the party to cope if PC(s) ____, ____, or _____ get hammered.
Now, one thing to keep in mind is that monsters are balanced against a relatively low baseline = four 15 point characters who are not optimized for maximum DPR or catastrophically high save DCs. Monsters are designed to be reasonable challenges for those sorts of characters.
And so when you have a mostly, if not entire, min/maxed party that's optimized for save or die and/or rocket tag, higher level monsters will often just crumple because they were designed to challenge a much weaker party.
And so templates and somewhat to completely arbitrary adjustments may become more and more necessary at higher levels. I'll give enemies max HP, or the advanced template and max HP, or the advanced template, +5 to all saves, double max HP, and even bonus standard actions (that occur on different initiative counts), depending on how important an enemy is and what I expect from it.
Anyways, the math CAN get funky at higher levels, but it's perfectly possible to roll with it and adjust as needed. Experience matters a lot with that.
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The game can break down, but that does not mean it has too. It really depends on how the group plays and the skill of the GM.
If the GM had to fix it, it means there was an inherent problem in the first place though. Never been a big fan of the philosophy that a GM should fix it myself. Lays blame on individuals instead of citing flaws.
Anyways, I've always thought the scaling was a bit off with saves vs. DC, AC/CMD vs. attack, and the options casters have vs. the options martials have. High level play can devolve into rocket tag easily too.
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This sort of thing can be seen all over the place, and the issue is that this saving throw is really really hard for the fighter, but laughable for the cleric... and a lot of the saves are built so that they can challenge the cleric....
If you want to challenge the cleric you are going to need a DC high enough to ensure that the fighter is going to need to roll a natural 20 to pass his save.I see your point. My question was intended to be more philosophical. From a "game" perspective, is it desirable to have the higher levels become harder for the players? Is that what was originally intended? Or is it more desirable that the game's difficulty remain constant as players level?
I could imagine that this kind of difficulty scaling might have been intended by the Gygax era designers. Many older "modules" (such as the infamous "Tomb of Horrors") were designed specifically to test a player's mettle as they avoided being killed. My sense is that having a high level character was meant to be an achievement back then. So I would speculate that difficulty scaling may be a vestige of that era. But assuming that is true, my question is: is this "legacy feature" desirable?
Well, I guess that the issue is that it isn't actually difficult... its actually easier in many ways. Magic starts to sidestep a lot of things that could previously have posed a challenge.
If you go through all the proper set-up, which is pretty easy with the right magic... then you know how to go about each fight before it happens... or your enemies know how to counter you. Some of it is, at least, fairly interesting in this phase of things, but its one of the areas where martials feel pretty well left out. SO it can be interesting for the Wizard.. but the fighter is left twiddling his thumbs and then being pointed at a monster like an attack dog.
Monsters have pretty specific strengths and weaknesses, and magic has the right kind of specificity to exploit that. Magic also become the entirety of the non-combat set up, exploration, information gathering, etc. Which leaves martials pretty far out in the cold. Then when combat does happen, the right defensive spells are 100% necessary... really those are the big difference makers. Offensive magic is wonderful, but the major input from the casters needs to be shutting down the absolute lethality of high level enemies. Martials, then, just sort of mop up the rest... martials actually end up doing most of the damage, but everyone there knows that the battle is won or lost by the casters.
Still, your enemies have access to all of the same set-up time and resources as your heroes... so it can often be a game of who has the most diabolical plan. Which may seem like a good thing... but it isn't. The opportunities for fun cinematic action, and entertaining ad-libbing just disappear. When things go right, the party obliterates everything. When things go badly.. its not a clown-car of comical errors and over use of resources anymore... its just death.
A great way to put this is that low level combats depend on a ton of dice rolls... which means that a lot of the fun of randomness enters the game. Everyone can make or fail saves, hit or miss attacks, look good or look terrible in each combat.
At high level, combats can hinge on a single roll of the die, and sometimes the odds are so stacked that even that roll becomes a foregone conclusion.
The party no longer really needs to interact with anyone either... no more need to "ask around town" for information. No need to buy items... just make them yourself. Make a timeless demi-plane and the ticking clocks are no longer an issue. Long journeys are side-stepped by a single travel spell... as are long dungeons.
LOTR with 20th level characters in Pathfinder would just be a simple teleportation spell... simple and done. Even dimensional locks just mean that you teleport close and then burrow or fly to the end. So the story is greatly compromised.
You CAN have fun at high level... but in my experience, you either need a GM that spends a lot of time slapping down the magical work-arounds, or a group that chooses not to use them... which sort of defeats the purpose.
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LOTR with 20th level characters in Pathfinder would just be a simple teleportation spell...
"One does not just simply teleport into Mordor..."
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The game can break down, but that does not mean it has too. It really depends on how the group plays and the skill of the GM.If the GM had to fix it, it means there was an inherent problem in the first place though. Never been a big fan of the philosophy that a GM should fix it myself. Lays blame on individuals instead of citing flaws.
*shrugs* The GM having to make adjustments is a result of the system having a great deal of flexibility. The higher level you go, the more table variance you're going to have because different parties are going to work differently, and are going to handle challenges differently. The offensive abilities, support magic, and skills, and what stacks with what, vary from party to party.
If you want to prevent that kind of variance, you'd probably have to ban everything outside of the core rulebook, and restrict your players to only being to play [your number of players] classes, with the only change from campaign to campaign being who's playing which permitted class.
And even then you'd still have variance, because different people will play the same class in different ways, based on what they're interested in doing.
I don't view that variance is a problem. It's just something that needs to be adjusted to on a campaign by campaign basis, because every party is different.
So yeah, the math can get weird because while there's an assumed baseline, but it's very, very easy to deviate from that baseline, and a deviation will usually wind up above the baseline because the assumed baseline is relatively low.
I prefer to roll with the deviations, because they can be pretty neat.
The GM having to make adjustments is a result of the system having a great deal of flexibility.
Houserules can be done in any game. Its not flexibility.
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LOTR with 20th level characters in Pathfinder would just be a simple teleportation spell..."One does not just simply teleport into Mordor..."
Shoulda just cast Eagle Aerie at the start of the movie and save all the walking.
The GM having to make adjustments is a result of the system having a great deal of flexibility.Houserules can be done in any game. Its not flexibility.
Agreed....
A problem that can be fixed is still a problem.
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Now nobody uses it. I don't. My players don't. Maybe if a monster has it in its stat block I'll try it on a PC that looks like it has a low WILL save. Maybe. Or I just have the monster do something else that will be more useful.
I use it. My players use it.
It got used on a dominated fighter just the other day to prevent him from attacking his friends. I used it on the other fighter to prevent him from using his bow on the enemy caster. That first fighter was negated for most of the fight.
I use it as a player when I think an enemy would be better off trying to beat my DC with his poor Will save. The good thing about the change is that players are no longer out of the fight and have to make a munchie run while everyone else keeps playing.
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Shoulda just cast Eagle Aerie at the start of the movie and save all the walking.LOTR with 20th level characters in Pathfinder would just be a simple teleportation spell..."One does not just simply teleport into Mordor..."
Yeah, well, Giant Eagles vs Nazgul backed by the full force of Saurons will? Short movie.
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The GM having to make adjustments is a result of the system having a great deal of flexibility.House rules can be done in any game. Its not flexibility.
Maybe flexibility wasn't the right word, but you misunderstand.
Before any house rules come into play - the system allows for a wide variance in how parties can perform, based on their make up.
A party that's composed of the classic four of a fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric, is going to perform very differently from a party that's, composed of, say, a samurai, a ninja, a witch, and a druid. Or a party composed of a paladin, a ninja, a monk, and a magus. Or a party composed of a barbarian and three witches*.
And adding a bard (or other extra party member!) to any of those parties would change their performance even further.
And the higher level you get, the more those differences will vary, as more options and further specialization become possible.
So to prevent that "problem" from occurring, you'd probably have to gut the system and player options, and hard-cap your game at four players.
* The barbarian and three witches was an actual party discussed on the RoW forum. I have no idea if that campaign actually occurred, but I do wonder how it worked out.