|
I've seen a lot of threads saying the mods are too easy or saying that they're too difficult. Everyone posting along those lines is missing the point.
Too easy or too difficult are relative terms. The problem is not that the mods are too easy/tough, but that the high degree of customization available to characters at this point has all but rendered obsolete level range as an accurate indication of mod difficulty. You can create two characters of the same level who are wildly distant from each other in terms of overall power.
Incidentally, yes, this has always been true especially in 3.5, but it was less true in PF for a while. But now the Beast of Power Creep is slouching inexorably towards the destruction of this game. Rovagug's awake; we're gonna need a bigger boat; etc.
The bigger boat we need, in this case, is difficulty ratings for mods that are more specific than the current level ranges. The only other option is to stop publishing books that give PCs choices, and even then we still need difficulty ratings because the damage has already been done.
For those who are wondering what the heck I'm talking about, let me explain. There are two PFS players locally who I will call Bond and Rip. Bond's characters are totally optimized killing machines, so much so that I have actually started dropping out of games if I see he is signed up to play in them. I drop out of these games because I know that with him at the table the mods can not possibly present any significant challenge. Although I personally find this degree of optimization boring, I do not blame Bond at all. There are very good arguments to the effect that he is playing the game "correctly."
Rip's characters, on the other hand, are almost universally terrible from an optimization standpoint. He takes a level of this and a level of that, mostly based on the sort of roleplaying experiences the character has had during play. While I find this degree of rules-ineptitude frustrating, I do not blame Rip at all. There are very good arguments to the effect that he is playing the game "correctly."
A party composed entirely of Bond-built characters would roll equal CR mods every time with no difficulty whatsoever, to the point that the mods would be effectively unplayable (except for those who enjoy winning with 0 challenge).
A party composed entirely of Rip-built characters would be rolled by equal CR mods every time, to the point that the mods would be effectively unplayable (except for the highly masochistic).
"Well then," I hear you saying, "everything is fine. Some Bonds and some Rips will show up, and it will all balance out." Would that it were so. My own personal experience has indicated that it is not. Even one or two formidable optimizers at the table renders the old mods impotent, but the newer mods often turn deadly without their presence, to the great frustration of the Rip-style players who get TPKed and then come post threads about how the mods have become too hard.
Incidentally, the greater difficulty of the newer mods is usually the result of artificially manipulated encounter levels, often involving enemy alchemists (who are great at going nova and are therefore unnaturally effective as NPC challenges) and/or environmental difficulties that have not been factored into the encounter level. But I digress...
The point is, mods need to be printed with difficulty indicators. It's as simple as putting Easy, Average or Hard somewhere on the cover, with "Average" mods probably cleaving pretty closely to the existing CR guidelines. Easy mods should challenge only fairly ineptly built parties. Hard mods should challenge even seasoned optimizers. This simply needs to be done in some fashion, if not in exactly the way I've indicated. People need to know what they're getting into. Otherwise some significant portion of players are going to be frustrated whether the mods get easier or tougher.
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator
|
So who do we base the difficulty indicator off of, Rip or Bond? As you said, "the high degree of customization" makes it a truly difficult, if not impossible task.
If we rate something as "difficult" and Bond finds it easy, then we still have the same problem. Also, do we rate it as a one star GM running the game or a five star GM running the game or a developer here at Paizo running the game? The skill level of a GM will most assuredly be the biggest determining factor of the difficulty of a scenario. And then, do you rate it with role players in mind, optimized characters in mind, a mixed group of the two (which you admit you don't play with one of those), or something else? Also, do you consider age and experience in a rating scale? A group of five 16 year olds who have been playing for 5 years will probably handle the scenario better than a group of 30 somethings that just started playing RPGs.
Even if you base it off of what 6 pregens could do, it depends quite variably on the player knowledge of those running the pregens. Six of us running pregens here at Paizo will probably have a very different experience than six new players in Moscow. Even if we rate a scenario as "easy", the group of six brand new players may TPK and the we get roasted for labeling it "easy."
So, how do you come up with a true difficulty indicator or rating scale that is going to satisfy the masses? I don't think it Is possible but here I am listening to suggestions.
It's not so easy as just putting a label of hard, easy or moderate on a scenario. There are many factors to consider before slapping a rating on a scenario.
Let me hear your thoughts. I'm not picking on anyone in this thread. I'm going to play devils advocate and welcome others to join me. If we are going to consider something like this, then we need to poke as many holes as possible in a suggestion to see if it would actually work as people intend it to do so.
|
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
Does Paizo triple its output so that each difficulty setting has the same number of scenarios we currently have?
Do they divide up the current output so that anyone who's only interested in one difficulty setting is now playing only one-third as often as they used to?
Do the different difficulties provide different rewards? (Remember that any non-always-available item which appears in the scenario MUST be on the chronicle sheet.)
I'm in the middle of a scenario's level range; do I play up into easy? Or do I play down into hard? What's the difference in difficulty between the two? What's the difference in gold rewards?
What if we can't muster tables where all the players can agree to a given difficulty setting? (That is, what if there are only 4-5 players and some want "hard" while others want "easy"?)
What if some newbies show up so I make a PC appropriate for "easy" mode, but after about 5 games they stop showing up, and all the remaining regulars mostly play "hard" (might even be my own preference as well)? Now I have a PC with 5XP whom I can't play because he'd die in the only local games.
Make all of those issues go away, Red Ninja, and I'll consider your idea.
|
|
Extensive Scenario play testing ?
I don't think it's feasible, but if Paizo were to tap into a bunch of play testers who could run through each adventure and report on the perceived level of difficulty, that might provide a good estimate of difficulty. And the blame would fall on the play testers in general for the label if players complain.
The reason I don't think it would work is that it would require a lot of time to play test and the play testers would need to keep quite.
I don't think players would stand for having to wait several months while others got to play a Scenario just to determine it's difficulty and gamers are terrible secret keepers.
Not to mention play testers would want to tweek the scenario which would mean another round of play tests for the new changes. A vicious cycle.
I think the best way to gauge a Scenario's level of difficulty is to read the reviews for a Scenario (assuming early players/GMs submit them).
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Perhaps if PFS did not continue to place so many combats in each scenario, and instead focused on telling good stories in every scenario, perhaps the challenge level of the scenario's combats would not be so important.
Stop publishing optional encounters. Use that page count to show us more of the Golarion canon.
Stop publishing 4+-combat scenarios. Set a maximum of three combats per scenario for slugfests, and two for story-driven scenarios, and use that saved page count tell a good story which lets the players bask in Golarion canon.
If the measure of a scenario was not its fights, and was instead the story it told and the canon displayed, perhaps this problem would not be so severe.
Also,
Banning the Synthesist and the Vivisectionist was a good start. The campaign needs to go further to remove overpowered options, thus directly addressing Red Ninja's observation, an observation which is all too familiar.
I imagine the campaign staff and the Venture-Officers are pretty sure what some of these overpowered options are. Get rid of them. Stop sentencing us being forced to choose between watching Bond play or walking away. Then there would be a much better baseline to design the two-to-three combats per scenario for.
Also also,
Previous organized-play campaigns would place labels on their scenarios merely based on trusting the author's and the editor's judgment. If the author and the editor know the game they are designing for, they should be able to do just fine, as they did in previous organized-play campaigns.
-Matt
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Let me hear your thoughts. I'm not picking on anyone in this thread. I'm going to play devils advocate and welcome others to join me. If we are going to consider something like this, then we need to poke as many holes as possible in a suggestion to see if it would actually work as people intend it to do so.
You could theoretically have a check box in the scenario to report
TPK
X characters died but got better.
It would give you a larger sample size to see when deaths are occuring, because right now you only know who dies in what scenario locally but overall you only know they die if they don't come back.
|
Pathfinder Society Campaign Coordinator
|
Let me hear your thoughts. I'm not picking on anyone in this thread. I'm going to play devils advocate and welcome others to join me. If we are going to consider something like this, then we need to poke as many holes as possible in a suggestion to see if it would actually work as people intend it to do so.You could theoretically have a check box in the scenario to report
TPK
X characters died but got better.It would give you a larger sample size to see when deaths are occuring, because right now you only know who dies in what scenario locally but overall you only know they die if they don't come back.
But I thought the purpose of a rating system people have been asking for would be before they played it, not afterward. With this system, Sure it gives every one a good metric 6 months after release but it doesn't solve the problem people have been asking for - a rating system when a scenario is released before they play.
Making an assumption here, but the large majority of people who post here, and have been asking for such a thing, play a scenario in the first few months of release. A check box isn't going to do anything for those people.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
This is one of those things that is really difficult to quantify into a system that is streamlined enough to be useful but really easy just for players and GM's to use common sense. Look at who is playing, ask the GM is this a group that should play at level or up, etc. GM should be able to give guidance. Over with in 1 min. If you try to codify something like this it will be a nightmare. I know that is hard to accept for some Pathfinder/3.5 players because this system is based on a rule for everything. However, some old school common sense can solve this issue.
|
Let me hear your thoughts. I'm not picking on anyone in this thread. I'm going to play devils advocate and welcome others to join me. If we are going to consider something like this, then we need to poke as many holes as possible in a suggestion to see if it would actually work as people intend it to do so.You could theoretically have a check box in the scenario to report
TPK
X characters died but got better.It would give you a larger sample size to see when deaths are occuring, because right now you only know who dies in what scenario locally but overall you only know they die if they don't come back.
But I thought the purpose of a rating system people have been asking for would be before they played it, not afterward. With this system, Sure it gives every one a good metric 6 months after release but it doesn't solve the problem people have been asking for - a rating system when a scenario is released before they play.
Making an assumption here, but the large majority of people who post here, and have been asking for such a thing, play a scenario in the first few months of release. A check box isn't going to do anything for those people.
True, but it's fairly easy to implement, and a lot of people don't end up playing scenarios until months after they've been published anyway. It's a good step in the right direction, and as the reports come in, you'll have more data to judge future scenarios by. The more information you get, the better you can judge. Now, as a GM and reporter for an event, I'm all for not requiring more paperwork, but something that only comes up when characters die doesn't seem like too much work.
Now, the counterpoint: As useful as the rating system would be, what's the point? People will play everything in their preferred difficulty range, and then they'll have to play in the other ranges anyway. And we'll only end up having more disagreements at the table about what to play. It's hard enough trying to decide whether to play up or down, an you imagine trying to decide whether to play (Up+hard||Up+medium||Up+easy||Down+hard||Down+medium||Down+easy)?
|
|
But what it WILL do is give you a better view of how deadly a given scenario is, which can be useful information for the future. If 75% of the parties going through a given adventure have two or three PC deaths, that's a good indicator that the scenario should be looked at to determine WHY it's so deadly, so that writers can learn from that for FUTURE adventures.
But looking at the scenario won't tell you why it was so deadly for those parties and not others. Only actual feedback and play reports will.
|
Let me hear your thoughts. I'm not picking on anyone in this thread. I'm going to play devils advocate and welcome others to join me. If we are going to consider something like this, then we need to poke as many holes as possible in a suggestion to see if it would actually work as people intend it to do so.You could theoretically have a check box in the scenario to report
TPK
X characters died but got better.It would give you a larger sample size to see when deaths are occuring, because right now you only know who dies in what scenario locally but overall you only know they die if they don't come back.
But I thought the purpose of a rating system people have been asking for would be before they played it, not afterward. With this system, Sure it gives every one a good metric 6 months after release but it doesn't solve the problem people have been asking for - a rating system when a scenario is released before they play.
Making an assumption here, but the large majority of people who post here, and have been asking for such a thing, play a scenario in the first few months of release. A check box isn't going to do anything for those people.
Could we have a Died/Hard/Medium/Easy button on the page for the scenario and a running average? Would enough people click it or go and look at it to make it worthwhile?
Or could these be placed at the top of the threads on the messageboard where people discuss the scenario? Perhaps autocreate a discussion thread when the scenario is released?
I think that the died-got-better box for reporting is worthwhile, even if the data is delayed.
|
|
...ask the GM is this a group that should play at level or upJust a note, there is never a choice between playing at-level or playing up. The only time you can choose to play up is if you're between subtiers, which by definition means there's no option to play at-level.
Fine play easy or hard. And Yes I hope your GM at least knows enough to help with this decision. If not you have bigger problems than this.
|
|
I agree with Red Ninja's assessment of power-creep. Personally, I heavily limit myself (despite superscribing) to primarily Core Rulebook items, because I find much of the power-creep in other books, frankly, disgusting. I don't talk about it often, because different people have different tastes, but the issues in PFS are exactly why I find it so distasteful.
It's far too late to change anything, but I feel too much came out, far too quickly. The APG playtest started almost before the Core Rulebook was out - with no time to establish a baseline for how powerful the Core options were. Ultimate Combat and Magic double-downed on the development team, and it shows in the variance of power level in those books.
Can it be fixed? Mike has certainly taken some positive steps (Bracers of Falcon's Aim, etc.), and probably needs to take more. Pathfinder was built on playtest feedback. What better playtest is there than Pathfinder Society to determine what needs to be fixed? Perfect? Never. But darn good.
Break out the Ban-Hammer, and make it official errata over time too!
|
Perhaps if PFS did not continue to place so many combats in each scenario, and instead focused on telling good stories in every scenario, perhaps the challenge level of the scenario's combats would not be so important.
I assume the RP to Combat ratio in PFS is based on what the overall player base is asking for. This is going to disappoint those like yourself that would like a different ratio but I think, especially in Season 4, they are giving the table more of an option along these lines. Mods like the Blackros Matrimony and the Disappeared offer so very heavy RP/story options. How much they go into it is up to the table, which is how it should be.
Stop publishing optional encounters. Use that page count to show us more of the Golarion canon.
So instead of giving the players the option of more combat (thus harder mods) you are say they should force them to play easier?
Stop publishing 4+-combat scenarios. Set a maximum of three combats per scenario for slugfests, and two for story-driven scenarios, and use that saved page count tell a good story which lets the players bask in Golarion canon.
My experience as a Writing Director for LFR tells me this will only exacerbate the problem. Squeezing the same XP into fewer encounters makes the mod more difficult, not easier. In LFR the time crunch issues surrounding mods combined with authors desires to limit action points forced a 2 to 3 combat encounter paradigm. In a normal D&D adventure you get a mix of encounters, some easy, some hard, some moderate. Easy encounters make players feel good about themselves. Hard encounters challenge them. Two or 3 encounters only leaves room for hard. Because authors could not spread out interesting fight components over several encounters they tried to squeeze all of it into the few encounters they had. The overall effect was to create overly complicated and difficult grindfests that took even more time to go through than the 2 or 3 lesser encounters they replaced.
If the measure of a scenario was not its fights, and was instead the story it told and the canon displayed, perhaps this problem would not be so severe.
So if they tell a good story players won't mind if they died or were never challenged in combat? Again, my experience tells me otherwise.
Also,
Banning the Synthesist and the Vivisectionist was a good start. The campaign needs to go further to remove overpowered options, thus directly addressing Red Ninja's observation, an observation which is all too familiar.
There are literally thousands of possible broken combinations out there. Trying to ban them all would an exercise in futility and ultimately would not improve the game because gamers will always want some level of broken in a game. All the staff should be doing is banning the more egregious cases or working with Paizo to see them changed into something more reasonable. And they seem to be doing just that.
|
Let me hear your thoughts. I'm not picking on anyone in this thread. I'm going to play devils advocate and welcome others to join me. If we are going to consider something like this, then we need to poke as many holes as possible in a suggestion to see if it would actually work as people intend it to do so.You could theoretically have a check box in the scenario to report
TPK
X characters died but got better.It would give you a larger sample size to see when deaths are occuring, because right now you only know who dies in what scenario locally but overall you only know they die if they don't come back.
This suggestion could provide really valuable feedback in the long term. It doesn't help in the short term, but any good feedback should be considered.
Banning the Synthesist and the Vivisectionist was a good start. The campaign needs to go further to remove overpowered options, thus directly addressing Red Ninja's observation, an observation which is all too familiar.
I imagine the campaign staff and the Venture-Officers are pretty sure what some of these overpowered options are. Get rid of them. Stop sentencing us being forced to choose between watching Bond play or walking away. Then there would be a much better baseline to design the two-to-three combats per scenario for.
Ban options that lead to insane combat monsters? Lets take a look at two very simple options from the CRB. A basic 18 str barbarian, two handed power attacking barbarian, while raging, has a damage of 2d6+12, average damage of 19 at first level. Lets give a supposed boss 3d8 hitpoints, and give him a 14 con. Average hitpoints will be 20 hp. That is within striking distance of a single hit killing them, and that is nothing but a basic first level barbarian.
Next, lets look at a sorcerer. Give them 18 charisma, and spell focus. DC 16 save on a save or suck spell? With an average save of +2 at that level? So the boss has to roll a 14 or higher *each round* to not get taken down.
CRB options for purely destroying encounters exist, and it would be impossible to stop them. Min-maxers will always find a way to make the most powerful character. Ban the best option? They'll find a new best option. A min-maxer will always be at the top of the power tier, and thus we will always have a difference between power gamers and non-power gamers.
My solution? Make non-combat equally as necessary. Scenarios like the Blackrose Matrimony are brilliant examples of this. We don't need all diplomatic scenarios, but scenarios that have some sort of skill gate (and I don't mean a DC 30 Perform (Kazoo) check) would be invaluable. Failure doesn't have to mean the party died...failing to be able to get to where they need to go is also an option, and one I would like to see explored.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Break out the Ban-Hammer, and make it official errata over time too!
Bear in mind that PFS is ultimately a marketing tool for Paizo. Banning huge amounts of published material isn't going to be condusive to selling product so any banning will be limited. The real fixes need to come from the designers, not the PFS staff.
|
|
But I thought the purpose of a rating system people have been asking for would be before they played it, not afterward. With this system, Sure it gives every one a good metric 6 months after release but it doesn't solve the problem people have been asking for - a rating system when a scenario is released before they play.
That would depend on the speed of the reporting. it could theoretically be instantaneous.
Mind you that would come with its own set of problems, as the folks rushing to run the scenario before the ink is dry are probably the more die hard crowds blowing through scenarios.
|
|
Because of the huge player base and the fact that the DM, table makeup and party make up can have a much bigger effect on difficulty than adventure design, the only useful measure of difficulty is from feedback. Such feedback will come too late for us "early adopters" but that is always the price you pay for being one. Players who regularly participate in online discussions don't really need a feedback system because they are already part of one. Any rating system will only be useful if it is easily available and understandable to the masses.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
|
Stop publishing 4+-combat scenarios. Set a maximum of three combats per scenario for slugfests, and two for story-driven scenarios, and use that saved page count tell a good story which lets the players bask in Golarion canon.My experience as a Writing Director for LFR tells me this will only exacerbate the problem. Squeezing the same XP into fewer encounters makes the mod more difficult, not easier. In LFR the time crunch issues surrounding mods combined with authors desires to limit action points forced a 2 to 3 combat encounter paradigm. In a normal D&D adventure you get a mix of encounters, some easy, some hard, some moderate. Easy encounters make players feel good about themselves. Hard encounters challenge them. Two or 3 encounters only leaves room for hard. Because authors could not spread out interesting fight components over several encounters they tried to squeeze all of it into the few encounters they had. The overall effect was to create overly complicated and difficult grindfests that took even more time to go through than the 2...
I think this is an important point to remember. I am thinking of one scenario in particular,
I love the adventure, and it perfectly fits the playstyle of many of my home PFS players -- but I'm leery of running it because I know that my home group is an unoptimized four-person party, and I don't want them to get steamrolled at the end.
Two things that I think would help with this:
1) Remember that an Encounter does not necessarily mean a Combat. Social encounters, puzzles, and traps are all ways to include more challenges without necessarily making things super difficult. This will also help to address the OP's issue, at least somewhat -- Bond may be fantastic in a straight-up fight, but what about convincing that noble to accept a bribe?
2) Since we all get 1 XP per scenario anyway, the encounters don't *have* to all add up. If there's a great story to be told that only takes two encounters, let it take two encounters -- and it doesn't need to be two CR+3 slugfests, either. Conversely, if some scenario demands a lot of short fights, they don't all have to be super-easy. (The latter is harder to manage in PFS, though, since we are constrained to a 4-5 hour timeslot.)
|
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
|
... I thought the purpose of a rating system people have been asking for would be before they played it, not afterward. With this system, Sure it gives every one a good metric 6 months after release but it doesn't solve the problem people have been asking for - a rating system when a scenario is released before they play.
Making an assumption here, but the large majority of people who post here, and have been asking for such a thing, play a scenario in the first few months of release. A check box isn't going to do anything for those people.
I see your point. We already have an informal "rating" system, in that people discuss the scenarios on these very messageboards. I know that before I run a scenario, I read all the threads I can find about it to see if it would be appropriate for my group, and how much I need to push things or ease up in my GMing to give my group an appropriate challenge without wiping them out.
Some form of centralized feedback system might be useful, though. Then there would be one initial place to look for an easily-understandable rating, rather than scouring through reviews and messageboard threads to get a sense of the difficulty.
|
|
I have so far avoided posting in the goldilocks arguments but this one seems way more constructive than the others turned into.
Its going to be very hard to add hard/average/easy to scenarios. I think it comes down to reading the reviews and putting in as much time as you can as a gm to prep a game.
Leaving things mostly as is:
-add more alternate tactics/spells
*using king of the storval stairs as an example it has is a combat where the tactics withhold a spell at gm's call. Though this is subjective to a gm's experence it creates an enviroment where you can increase or decrease a major aspect of an encounter. Perhaps ability or tactics should be looked at as more optional in the writen tactics for a group playing up vs one at the top of a teir.
The power creep, skewed wealth per level and increased basic table size required a lot of these changes. Is it perfect? no, but paizo has and is listening. The important thing is to keep puting forth constructive arguments and ideas. Orgainzed play has grown to the point where no matter what happens not everyone will be happy.
|
|
It seems to me that the design assumptions should already take into account if an adventure is balanced for a party of a certain level. We have to trust that the appropriate CRs are being presented in the tiers of the scenarios.
I think the level of difficulty swings by the types and mix of characters that make up the party. What might prove helpful in “rating” adventures is a scale that measures the level of certain aspects of the adventure. This might help the player determine if they are bringing the right character to the party.
Adventure Type: Urban, Wilderness, Dungeon Crawl
Combat: rate 1 to 3 (with 3 being the highest)
Puzzles/Role Play: rate 1 to 3 (with 3 being the highest)
Skills/Investigation: rate 1 to 3 (with 3 being the highest)
The scale can be larger (say 1 to 5) but ultimately there would be a way to calculate the values based upon the content of the adventure. I expect that this will work best for scenarios and likely be different for other content like modules and adventure paths.
Here are some examples of what I was thinking:
Title: First Steps, Part I: In Service to Lore
Adventure Type: Urban
Combat: 2
Puzzles/Role Play: 2
Skills/Investigation: 2
Title: First Steps, Part II: To Delve the Dungeon Deep
Adventure Type: Dungeon Crawl
Combat: 3
Puzzles/Role Play: 2
Skills/Investigation: 1
Title: First Steps, Part III: A Vision of Betrayal
Adventure Type: Wilderness
Combat: 2
Puzzles/Role Play: 3
Skills/Investigation: 1
|
|
I understand the difficulty inherent in coming up with a fix for the situation. And no, I don't think there is any perfect solution, but on the other hand no perfect thing exists anywhere. Don't let, as they say, the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I wish I did have a better solution, but my main point is that something ought to be done to more clearly specify the difficulty of different scenarios. And perhaps we actually need more widely varying difficulties, or a more fluid system for bumping things up and down.
Furthermore, I'm talking about design here too. The CR system, god bless it, good as it is, is simply out of date at this point. That statement may be radical, but is proven if it is possible to create characters that can easily wreck mods at the appropriate CR. And man oh man is it possible. So at this point, some of us actually need harder mods that are theoretically outside the correctly allocated CRs.
I mean, look, as a culture we have to decide what CRs mean to us. If I can create something that disrupts the "appropriate" challenge of the CR encounters, in either direction (easy or hard), then whose fault is that? If characters are wrecking encounters then should we conclude that CRs are too low or that the characters are too powerful? And is that the players' fault for over-optimizing or the designers' fault for making such a thing possible?
Normally, these kinds of issues work themselves out in home games, because the DM just decides, with his fist of iron, where the "correct" power level will be and whether someone's character, even if legal, is "too powerful," or for that matter "too weak." But in PFS, DMs are largely neutered in this regard, so this stuff can only be dealt with on a higher level.
|
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
Come to think of it, I almost wonder whether it would solve the stated problem (or a good-sized chunk of it) to simply empower GMs to take a player aside before a scenario and say "Hey, I've had multiple local players comment that your tendency to solo entire scenarios makes them feel like they shouldn't have bothered to show up. I'll give you a chance to be a team player, but if I get the impression that other players are starting to feel sidelined again, we'll be finishing the scenario without you."
What impact might that have, and what would still need to be addressed?
|
|
Rather, I would like to see some expanded tactics sections in the scenario. Like, if the party rolled over the first two combats, apply the advanced template to this monster, or if the party is struggling, don't use Glitterdust or Cause Fear, even though the monster knows them.
Those sort of things would allow the GM to tweak the difficulty slightly to match the strength of the party he is running for.
|
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
|
Conversely, would you then also pull aside players with poorly performing PCs? Because my rogue had to be carried through The Blakros Matrimony due to poor rolls and enemies that perfectly foiled his abilities.What impact might that have, and what would still need to be addressed?
I suppose that would be something else to be addressed.
On the other hand, is that even an issue? Granted I've only GM'd ~25 games, but I've had people make the comments I talked about more than once, but never the opposite (i.e. "Man, that really shouldn't have been that hard; why is that guy's character so bad?"). I never seem to hear about other people's issues with underpowered tablemates, either (except once, and even then the situation eventually started to seem like it might have had more to do with GM error).
|
|
Hmm, I like what you say about empowering GMs and it dovetails nicely with the thought that just occurred to me.
Let me clarify what I mean about the CR system. It is an excellent tool in the hands of a skilled user for indicating the relative difficulty of an encounter on a scale of 1 to 25 (or so). It it no longer as useful, however, when relating that number to the level of the party.
So. What if we unchain the two and let GMs decide what level of characters get to play the mods?
For example, I post that I am running "The Return of Returno" at its tier 7-8 setting. I will run the game when PCs sign up that have levels totalling between 18 and 28, with a minimum individual character level of 3 and a maximum level of 6.
Or whatever. The GM could set the goalpost wherever he wanted based on his preferences and the needs of the local group, and then the players decide for themselves whether it will be too risky/easy to bring whichever character. The above example is likely to be pretty challenging. Players who like to take it easy probably won't show up, but it will likely be a fun night for people who enjoy being challenged.
|
|
Rather, I would like to see some expanded tactics sections in the scenario. Like, if the party rolled over the first two combats, apply the advanced template to this monster, or if the party is struggling, don't use Glitterdust or Cause Fear, even though the monster knows them.
Those sort of things would allow the GM to tweak the difficulty slightly to match the strength of the party he is running for.
I like it!
|
|
I think the original Poster missed the mark slightly on this. You almost got it "The Red Ninja", but missed it in this way . Some PCs are a perfict fit for some scenarios. The high degree of customization available to characters at this point in the campaign means that some PCs will be a great fit for some challanges... and worse than bad at others. Build a specialist, and he does he's thing better than anyone else every can... and can't do anything else.
.
Got a Max Damage Combat Machine? To bad this encounter means you want to capture the 4 HP guy alive... when you minimum damage is 18 you kill him with one blow with Non-Lethal damage.
Or you need to "make a good impression" on the hostess of the party...
What do you mean, we have to be sure the bandits get away with the treasure? We have to be sure we fail... (anyone recognize the scenario?)
Wait, you mean the bad guy had the information we needed, and would have told us in the "gloating speach"? But I killed him to fast for him to speak?...I fear I am playing with "Rip/Bond" PCs. Given the scenario, often a PC finds this challange easy, while another challange is very hard. For example, I have a friend that runs a deaf Oracle. We played together in a game where the one of the hardest monsters in the adventure used sound attacks... and he hardly noticed. This encounter was a cake walk for him - and as he then thru silence, it became a cake walk for the rest of the party. Two encounters later, the tables turn. The party needs to get an NPC out of hiding in a safe. No problem! we push our "Face" PC out to talk him out... wait, what do you mean you can't hear him? Your high Diplomacy Oracle is deaf?
This is, and has always been, part of the game. More rule sources allows for a "high degree of customization available to characters", which in turn makes adventures very easy... when you get the right specialist in that game.
I get that, but at this point it's very possible to create a party that rolls pretty much everything. Is there going to be an encounter here and there that will just happen to hit them in their collective Achilles' heel? Sure, once in a blue moon. But if you really haven't experienced characters that can curbstomp pretty much every appropriate CR challenge you put in front of them, then you just haven't been playing with any serious optimizers.