RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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If I understand correctly, Mike Brock and the rest of the campaign leadership are concerned that some PCs are continually playing at subtiers above their level, and that this procedure (a) eventually buys them access to enough protective gear that they're not dying all the time, and (b) is otherwise skewing the Wealth by Level curve.
As I understand Sean K. Reynolds' views on Wealth by Level, the Pathfinder game is designed that characters are always hovering at the WBL ideal. If a character needs to spend money on something that's not personal loot, then his wealth is a little lower for a while, but he should be back up to normal WBL after a few sessions. Likewise, if a character gets some sort of equipment boon -- say, picks up a chunk of a fallen comrade's gear -- then the character's money stream dries up until his level catches up to his wealth.
This form of Wealth by Level is not servicable in an Organized Play environment. Some people are going to be below WBL, because they paid for consumables, or because they paid for two raise dead spells, or they ran away from missions that were too tough, or just because they decided to play down a sub-tier from their level a couple of times. Once you get below WBL guidelines, there is no mechanic to over-reward your character until you return to wealth equilibrium.
Likewise, there are situations where a PC never ends up paying for soncumables or raise dead spells with money, never has to sell back equipment at half price, and maybe quits some adventures very early on, having gained gold but no XP. Again, there is no mechanic to under-reward the character until his level catches up.
So, in an organized play environment, some people will be below WBL. If the WBL guideline is intended to act like an average, then other people will be above the average. And some PCs die, and some players retire losing PCs, and those all tend to be the people below the WBL guideline. So natural forces select that, if there is variation, the general populace will eventually comprise survivors, which skew high.
(It's like how some GMs allow their players to roll for stats and keep rolling until they like whatthey get. That skews high.)
Continually choosing to play with more powerful allies in higher subtiers is one opportunity for higher-than-normal wealth, but it's neither the only mechanism (As many people have explained, at some length) nor the root cause.
The root cause is the variability of wealth, and the economic self-selection that voluntarily retires characters on the low end of the curve.
I don't have a good solution (I'm honestly not sure there's a problem); one not-good solution is to "correct" a PC's wealth every time he or she makes an even-numbered level: Figure out what you want the typical wealth to be when a PC hits sixth level. See what the character really has, after her 15th XP. If the character is short, provide funds to eliminate half the deficit. If the character is long, pay gold (or sell off equipment at full gold value) to cut the excess in half.
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If you had a "get under this cap" requirement, what would happen is you'd have a cure moderate wounds potion chugging contest just before those adventures, like vacation days running out at the end of the year. You'd wind up with a blurry, infernally healing, flying, tiny, cats graced ninja going to town with sneak attacks from his wand of scorching ray just because they need to purge. If you have a "we will move you up to this level" cap you'll get that same thing all the time.
You could say that the prestige points ARE your entire consumable budget, but 325 gp per session doesn't quite cut it at the higher levels.
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I have heard some players talking about the 'List'. I haven't seen it, but apparently someone has put together a list of the scenarios that:
- Can be played up pretty easily.
- Can be played up if you have a couple of higher level PC's along
- Should never be played up.
I would think you're still taking a significant risk of a long dirt nap. But if you have several skilled players working together it seems doable.
Personally, I have had very poor luck with playing up. Died twice and got rich once. Doesn't appear to be worth the odds to me.
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There is not winning this argument. Any solution you come up with is either going go result in many losers with no winners or will be subject to abuse by a minority of power gamers.
Imposing a hard cap per scenario on WBL blocks the power gamer, it also punishes players for playing down by placing them permanently below the WBL curve.
Any attempt to normalize WBL outside of wealth accumulated during scenarios will result in system manipulation via consumables, placing the power gamer permanently ahead of the curve.
On a personal note: if I know I will never have the opportunity to make up wealth by level, I will never play down. As there is typically only a single table running at my location, this means I'll have to choose to sit out. Playing down with a mixed group of level 1-2 characters is now permanently damaging to my characters progression. If this means the group no longer has a legal table, I am sorry.
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On a personal note: if I know I will never have the opportunity to make up wealth by level, I will never play down. As there is typically only a single table running at my location, this means I'll have to choose to sit out. Playing down with a mixed group of level 1-2 characters is now permanently damaging to my characters progression. If this means the group no longer has a legal table, I am sorry.
This illustrates the most important reason that all of the proposed "fixes" to WBL are dangerous. Namely that they disproportionately screw over people who have the least opportunity to play, and more worryingly potentially damage PFS in general in places entirely in the most extreme instances.
More importantly perhaps, it makes it almost prohibitively difficult to organize small gamedays in a way that expands the player-base. Places with multiple events each week each with multiple tables are great and all, but where PFS has a chance to really really shine compared to other OP organizations is in more marginal areas.
The leadership has in the last year done a great job of starting to make PFS relevant to that majority of players outside big cons and major US metropolitan areas, so based on his track record so far, I trust Mike to have the perspective that many of the big names around here are missing and not hold PFS back from where it needs to go in the years to come.
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I also have to say, I don't think this is something I would classify as a significant problem.
I know there are players that have gamed the system to have a good bit more wealth than my PC's (even more than my PC's that haven't died or failed missions). But that really doesn't effect me in any significant way.
Those players have a tendency to stick together in groups. We are not playing against each other like on some PvP MMORPG. Yes, they stomp through the later scenarios easily. So what? As long as I can still play, be effective, and have fun - it's all good.
To me it is very similar to the people that play console games with the cheat codes. Yes, they walked through on suicide difficulty and never had a problem. I might roll my eyes a bit, but if they are having fun and I am having fun...
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On a personal note: if I know I will never have the opportunity to make up wealth by level, I will never play down. As there is typically only a single table running at my location, this means I'll have to choose to sit out. Playing down with a mixed group of level 1-2 characters is now permanently damaging to my characters progression. If this means the group no longer has a legal table, I am sorry.
I also have to say, I don't think this is something I would classify as a significant problem.
I know there are players that have gamed the system to have a good bit more wealth than my PC's (even more than my PC's that haven't died or failed missions). But that really doesn't effect me in any significant way.
Those players have a tendency to stick together in groups. We are not playing against each other like on some PvP MMORPG. Yes, they stomp through the later scenarios easily. So what? As long as I can still play, be effective, and have fun - it's all good.To me it is very similar to the people that play console games with the cheat codes. Yes, they walked through on suicide difficulty and never had a problem. I might roll my eyes a bit, but if they are having fun and I am having fun...
I really don't have much to add, other than to say that these two quoted posts give a pretty good explanation of why I think the proposed "fix" to take place this summer is worse than the current "problem".
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There is not winning this argument. Any solution you come up with is either going go result in many losers with no winners or will be subject to abuse by a minority of power gamers.
Imposing a hard cap per scenario on WBL blocks the power gamer, it also punishes players for playing down by placing them permanently below the WBL curve.
Any attempt to normalize WBL outside of wealth accumulated during scenarios will result in system manipulation via consumables, placing the power gamer permanently ahead of the curve.
On a personal note: if I know I will never have the opportunity to make up wealth by level, I will never play down. As there is typically only a single table running at my location, this means I'll have to choose to sit out. Playing down with a mixed group of level 1-2 characters is now permanently damaging to my characters progression. If this means the group no longer has a legal table, I am sorry.
You could always have a new level 1 ready to play with that table.
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I keep seeing people talk about how they don't like the fix that's coming, but unless I missed something the powers that be haven't actually announced what the new rules will even be.
Which is why I described it as a "proposed" fix. I know it's not final yet, and I hope that what we were originally told never will be.
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I went to a PFS event a few weeks ago and I had a lv 4 druid but the rest of the group were all level 1. My character had already a played up once or twice so it was no big deal to play tier 1-2 and help the new characters along. With the new rules I would have dropped and not played, even if it was the difference between making a table or not.
I'm confused. A level 4 playing down would have still gotten the gold from the 1-2 under the current rules, just like it would have under the proposed fix, and yet it would have changed whether or not you played?
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I went to a PFS event a few weeks ago and I had a lv 4 druid but the rest of the group were all level 1. My character had already a played up once or twice so it was no big deal to play tier 1-2 and help the new characters along. With the new rules I would have dropped and not played, even if it was the difference between making a table or not.I'm confused. A level 4 playing down would have still gotten the gold from the 1-2 under the current rules, just like it would have under the proposed fix, and yet it would have changed whether or not you played?
Being able to play up once in a while for extra wealth is the counter-balance in the current system to occasionally losing wealth by playing down. Without that counter-balance, playing down becomes less palatable.
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Being able to play up once in a while for extra wealth is the counter-balance in the current system to occasionally losing wealth by playing down. Without that counter-balance, playing down becomes less palatable.
I see.
I've said it before elsewhere, but I'll say it again here:
The problem which needs to be fixed isn't WBL. It's the Fame system. It allows these WBL issues to be just that; issues. With Fame limits as they are, they aren't really limits, especially mid-level range. People can buy big-budget items if their WBL is high. I recently got pinpointed by the local group because my level 7 ranger had Celestial Armor, even though I had the gold and the Fame for it.
If Fame limits were tightened, those big-budget items would be reserved for higher levels rather than richer characters. Yes, you can still have many small-budget items, but this is tiddly-winks to characters with multiple wondrous items.
As intended, the Fame system is fine, assuming that every character will fail to earn around 25% of their faction missions. In practice, it's unrealistic. Several people have perfect or near-perfect Fame and as such have a much higher spending limit.
From my perspective, it's not the WBL which is broken. It's the Fame which allows you to spend it. Fix the Fame, you hold back the power gamers, even if only for a little, and no one else suffers drastically.
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I keep seeing people talk about how they don't like the fix that's coming, but unless I missed something the powers that be haven't actually announced what the new rules will even be.
No, but they announced what they were planning, and no me gusta.
Actually, I think the idea has merit, conceptually. It will encourage community-minded players to make sure they have a large variety of characters available so they never get stuck playing down. However, in practice, I think it's just going to shaft new players.
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I keep seeing people talk about how they don't like the fix that's coming, but unless I missed something the powers that be haven't actually announced what the new rules will even be.
the fix known as "the fix that's coming"= the proposed fix from the podcast, ie, take the lower of where you are or what you played.
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The problem isn't the tier 1-5 games. Everybody ought to have a level one character waiting in the wings once you hit level 3 or 4 for times when you need to play down. The problem is with higher tier games; no one should be forced to play down or play a pregen. That's not fair nor is it fun. The solution to this is simple: regardless of tier, characters should get the correct wealth for their level. So a 4th level pc with 5 first level guys (a tier 1-2 table) would still get 4th level gold. Same with that 4th level pc with 5 seventh level guys (a tier 6-7 table).
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There are a lot of assumptions in here. The solution we've come to is not the same as the one we discussed in the podcast. We'll let everyone know what we've decided when the time is right.
Yes ... how odd that we would assume, in light of no new information, that the old information was still relevant.
>.<
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I have seen this at a couple of tables too, these players will be the first to complain that faction missions aren't fair or achievable. usually next level they start to look at spreading skills. (with some gentle guidance).Actually, lately I've been seeing a bunch of really lopsided PC's that dump 2 stats, have no skill points and are failing well over half of their faction missions.
That may be an anomaly that will go away however.
I have seen little evidence of them adjusting anything. One guy started a new character and left his level 5 sit. None of the others will change anything, "Because you just can't make a decent archer/THW/whatever if you don't dump at least 2 stats." They have 1 skill point per level which goes into perception. They whine and grumble but there is nothing wrong with their perfect build so it isn't going to change. {shrug}
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There's nothing stopping you from making and playing a new character to enjoy with the new low level players.
This is a tremendously narrow attitude. A lot of people like myself are casual players, if part of the fun of the game is progressing a single character when you only get to play once a month or so, then it's going to be very frustrating to be forced to roll up a new character who it'd take three months of playing to get up to level two, and that's at the expense of a character we actually enjoy playing because let's face it, Pathfinder doesn't have quite the same characters-are-totally-awesome-to-play-from-level-one thing that some other systems do, a lot of the reward is at higher levels.
I really hope the 'solution' that the dev team has come up with is to acknowledge that the problem was in their heads all along, but I wouldn't be surprised to end up with something really terrible and hamfisted. I could be wrong though, who knows?
Plural of anecdote and all, but at my (fairly large) flgs last night not one person had anything good to say about getting rid of gold for playing up.
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... because let's face it, Pathfinder doesn't have quite the same characters-are-totally-awesome-to-play-from-level-one thing that some other systems do, a lot of the reward is at higher levels...
This statement totally astonished me.
I will freely admit that I haven't played all that many systems. But I have never seen one that was nearly as enjoyable from low level on up as PF. To me that has always been the biggest thing drawing me back to PF over and over.
Everything else I've looked at has always been grind thru until you are experienced/vetran/leveled/whatever, then we can have fun.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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There are a lot of assumptions in here. The solution we've come to is not the same as the one we discussed in the podcast. We'll let everyone know what we've decided when the time is right.Yes ... how odd that we would assume, in light of no new information, that the old information was still relevant.
>.<
At least as visible/public/whatever as the podcast, I'd say.
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A lot of people like myself are casual players, if part of the fun of the game is progressing a single character when you only get to play once a month or so, then it's going to be very frustrating to be forced to roll up a new character who it'd take three months of playing to get up to level two, and that's at the expense of a character we actually enjoy playing...Certainly you could create a second character you'd enjoy playing. There can't be just one perfect character for you with everything else being pointless.
If it was a one time occurrence you would be right.
The level 3 I mentioned was created after I ruined a scenario for a group while playing down with another character.
Should I create a 3rd character to play down with? A 4th? A 5th?
At what point would I be better off just playing level 1 Kyra pregens and banking credits on a character I will never actually use?
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A lot of people like myself are casual players, if part of the fun of the game is progressing a single character when you only get to play once a month or so, then it's going to be very frustrating to be forced to roll up a new character who it'd take three months of playing to get up to level two, and that's at the expense of a character we actually enjoy playing...Certainly you could create a second character you'd enjoy playing. There can't be just one perfect character for you with everything else being pointless.If it was a one time occurrence you would be right.
The level 3 I mentioned was created after I ruined a scenario for a group while playing down with another character.
Should I create a 3rd character to play down with? A 4th? A 5th?
At what point would I be better off just playing level 1 Kyra pregens and banking credits on a character I will never actually use?
For a very long time, my group has fluctuated greatly between 4 to 10 people. Other commitments come up, and new players come in, replacing those who have left because of those commitments. I have 6 characters now, 5 of which were created by restarting in order to allow the new player his own character instead of always being forced to play a pregen. None of them are above level 5 (and some are mostly GM credit). Other players have similar numbers of characters for the same reason.
When we have the players, then we have a high level table and a low level one. It's not always possible, and in these cases inclusivity trumps everything.
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There are a lot of assumptions in here. The solution we've come to is not the same as the one we discussed in the podcast. We'll let everyone know what we've decided when the time is right.Yes ... how odd that we would assume, in light of no new information, that the old information was still relevant.
>.<
At least as visible/public/whatever as the podcast, I'd say.
I dispute your assertion that post 865 on a thread is as visible as a well-announced podcast that was being liveblogged by people on the forums.
... but thanks for the link. :)
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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The liveblogging you refer to, as well as the podcast itself, also mentioned that they wanted people to discuss alternatives on the messageboards, and an 18-page thread raged for days.
So yeah, when X itself points people to Y, then Y will always be at least as visible as X.
...but you're welcome. :)
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The liveblogging you refer to, as well as the podcast itself, also mentioned that they wanted people to discuss alternatives on the messageboards, and an 18-page thread raged for days.
So yeah, when X itself points people to Y, then Y will always be at least as visible as X.
...but you're welcome. :)
Except that lots of people (including me) give up on that big discussion thread, because it got too unwieldy to bother with before I got that far. The 800th post in any thread is always less visible than the 1st post in every thread, because the majority of readers will give up before they get that far.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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To be clear, I'm not talking about the visibility of the final resolution. I'm talking about the visibility of the fact that the idea proposed within the podcast was not the final word, the way some folks seem to keep talking about it as though no other ideas had ever been on the table.
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.. it's going to be very frustrating to be forced to roll up a new character who it'd take three months of playing to get up to level two, and that's at the expense of a character we actually enjoy playing ..
Is this really a practical situation, though?
If someone has a 5th level PFS character and their once-a-month game is at the local game store, that should imply that there's quite a few other folks playing 4th-6th level characters who have shared the past year or so of adventures together.
The situation where the game day happens and a specific 5th level character is floating and alone without fellow adventurers implies that not enough of these 4th-6th level folks showed up that particular day.
Either that's a temporary blip due to schedules, so all you are really missing is playing the level 5 loner one session and you're back in the saddle next month, or...
If those 4th-6th level folks don't come back with any frequency ever again, that lone 5th level character is kind of stuck until that game store has a crop of characters to play with him (and by stuck, he's not in anything appropriately challenging for anyone for quite a while).
In either case (or the case you're not sure if the level 5 "team" ever returns again), isn't playing a fresh PC with this new fresh crop of players the better course for long-term fun? Sure, I'd certainly be bummed if my 5th level character was sitting on a shelf due to lack of other players to play him with, but I don't know if I'd force feed him into a half-dozen level 1-2 groups just because I refused to try something new?
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If someone has a 5th level PFS character and their once-a-month game is at the local game store, that should imply that there's quite a few other folks playing 4th-6th level characters who have shared the past year or so of adventures together.
My once-a-month character made it to 7th level. I've not seen a level 7+ game in my area this year.
I started a new character to avoid playing down too far. She has balanced between playing up and playing down to date.
I have another character, level 2, but he is part of a set group running a series of sanctioned modules. He is not available for general play and will not become available until 5th or 6th level.
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... because let's face it, Pathfinder doesn't have quite the same characters-are-totally-awesome-to-play-from-level-one thing that some other systems do, a lot of the reward is at higher levels...This statement totally astonished me.
I will freely admit that I haven't played all that many systems. But I have never seen one that was nearly as enjoyable from low level on up as PF. To me that has always been the biggest thing drawing me back to PF over and over.
Everything else I've looked at has always been grind thru until you are experienced/vetran/leveled/whatever, then we can have fun.
Shadowrun, iron kingdom, the old world of darkness (especially mage) all lets you make incredibly powerful characters from the get go and for people who like their characters to be powerful from the start, these system are fun from the start. All those system also use a exp to directly increase character vs level. A level based system is always gonna have lackluster low "levels" vs high for people who like powerful characters relative to the whole gameplay.
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Shadowrun, iron kingdom, the old world of darkness (especially mage) all lets you make incredibly powerful characters from the get go and for people who like their characters to be powerful from the start, these system are fun from the start.
Marvel Super Heroes, DC Super Heroes and Champions also come to mind. So do certain Races/Class in Rift. (Glitterboy/Godling anyone?)
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.. it's going to be very frustrating to be forced to roll up a new character who it'd take three months of playing to get up to level two, and that's at the expense of a character we actually enjoy playing ..Is this really a practical situation, though?
If someone has a 5th level PFS character and their once-a-month game is at the local game store, that should imply that there's quite a few other folks playing 4th-6th level characters who have shared the past year or so of adventures together.
The situation where the game day happens and a specific 5th level character is floating and alone without fellow adventurers implies that not enough of these 4th-6th level folks showed up that particular day.
Either that's a temporary blip due to schedules, so all you are really missing is playing the level 5 loner one session and you're back in the saddle next month, or...
If those 4th-6th level folks don't come back with any frequency ever again, that lone 5th level character is kind of stuck until that game store has a crop of characters to play with him (and by stuck, he's not in anything appropriately challenging for anyone for quite a while).
In either case (or the case you're not sure if the level 5 "team" ever returns again), isn't playing a fresh PC with this new fresh crop of players the better course for long-term fun? Sure, I'd certainly be bummed if my 5th level character was sitting on a shelf due to lack of other players to play him with, but I don't know if I'd force feed him into a half-dozen level 1-2 groups just because I refused to try something new?
Perhaps you missed the part where he plays about once a MONTH?!? I actually have the opposite problem as I play in about 2-3 games a week. People like us will quickly end up out of sub tier. If playing down was a perma screw and playing up didn't give me a change to make up for extra consumable usages (including possibility of death), I would in all honesty have played in about 1/4 of my current games, came to the conclusion the headache of table management wasn't worth it (especially as more tables would end up falling through or having their sub-tier changed by people dropping out or walk-ins) and would have not bothered with PFS.
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I'm also curious as to how people know they will in fact get a chance to play up with that character to recoup their losses. Are you going to play a different character until the chance arises? Why not just play a different character for that game? What if you have to play down again later and you never get to a table where everyone is two levels higher than you so you can "recoup your losses"? I never play down and the people that actually care about their wealth don't either. I dont see the problem with changing the system to prevent playing up repeatedly.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I am still curious what their mindset is now.
Although I don't have psychic powers (yet), I imagine that their mindset is something along the lines of "People should always be playing level-appropriate adventures; but since we have finite production capacity, we'll have to make adventures that can each service more than one APL; and since scheduling can be difficult, we'll make it technically legal to play a level-inappropriate adventure if absolutely necessary."
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Perhaps you missed the part where he plays about once a MONTH?!? I actually have the opposite problem as I play in about 2-3 games a week. People like us will quickly end up out of sub tier...
That's what I'm trying to understand, how different areas are different and the social aspect that leads to a person having characters that are a completely different level than other people in their area.
In the OP's case - if his local game store has a game day once a month, what circumstances have led to his character being level 5 and the rest of the folks being level 1? I consider once a month to not be so insanely frequent that he'd out-level other people in his city. My point was to wonder what happened to all the other level 5's in his area that have led to no peer group for him to play in.
In your case, it's the complete opposite. If you're playing 3 times a week, that sounds like a lot - and if you've been doing that for several months, you'd likely have either several characters or a retired character. For all this gaming, there must be a good amount of other players that are the same level as you or you have an interesting case where there's a store with few returning players/characters.
TLDR: What's the circumstance that's led to someone having a level 5 character and being in a store where there are only level 1's to play with? And why is it better for future gaming at that location for the person with the level 5 character to keep playing their level 5 character versus syncing up with those level 1s with a new character?