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I've now read through the entire thread. Nothing that anyone suggests prevents this split. Labeling the scenarios as "Hard" (non-optimizers stay away), "Medium", and "Easy" (optimizers will be bored) don't help at all...
Also, (b) codifying scenarios, putting in that hard bright line, makes things worse.
We either have to fix the game or fix the people. Do you know how to fix the people? I don't, so I'll try to fix the game.
Also, it's not just about labelling the mods. It's about actually having variable difficulties available within the same level range, thereby (at least coming closer to) satisfying the different power levels/playstyles, and at least making the fracturing into cliques process, if it must take place, easier and more painless.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Red Ninja, I guess the question doesn'tmake sense to me.Of course you "fix the people". Or, put more normally, we have community expectations for PFS players, and we teach those expectations to people.And if they don't follow them, then nosig is right: we exclude them.
Here's an example, which I run into a lot. It's not the same as "non-optimizers". It's players who screw around at the table. Players who have their characters say rude things to important NPCs. People who deliberately play "whimsical" or "insane" characters, who do not contribute at all in most encounters. (I watched one PC oracle spend all her healing out of combat, before the first encounter. Another PC died of his wounds a couple hours latr.) Or just attack everything. "Leeroy Jenkins!"
There is no warning label you can put on a scenario that will make it a success for an entire party of those players. There's no way to put the scenarios on easy-mode for them.
The answer to the problem is to tell the player,"That kind of behavior is not acceptable. We don't have to be Seal Team Six, but we are playing professional Pathfinder Agents. We wouldn't be sent on this mission if we were insulting to the Venture Captains, or blood-thirsty when dealing with potential allies and non-combattants." And then, if they keep at it, shun them.
If we can do that for players at one end of the spectrum, it's probably the right answer for players at the other end of the spectrum.
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Foisting off the responsibility for game balance/playstyle on the individual human beings involved in play and expecting diplomacy to resolve everything for you is a bad idea.
I feel bad for your situation, but do you really expect PFS to put the banhammer down on every potentially broken build? I just don't think that's reasonable.
If you feel that way, why don't you make a "Broken PFS Builds" thread? Maybe something will get banned if it's really bad. Or maybe a design change will be considered for future versions of PFS. (Then again, there's also the potential for making these broken builds more popular, but that's the risk you take).
Maybe if you explain the builds (and scenario and outcome), maybe there are elements that are being overlooked that will improve the level of challenge? There are GMs here with a lot of experience that could probably help. Maybe it will be a good learning experience for everyone.
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If you are having a problem with a player making tables not fun, it's a people problem, not a character problem.
Sometimes it's a character problem. Quite often this is a harder line to draw than you might expect.
An approach that can work is to encourage them to think about ways they can keep the can of spinach in their back pocket, only to be unleashed when it's time to have the Popeye "wabbit out of the hat" level of power. Multidimensional play that makes them fun for others to be at the table with is the goal, and "Explore. Report. Cooperate." and "Don't be a jerk" are both campaign rules...
You can "encourage" players to do whatever you like. And they can tell you to kindly go take a hike unless you care to show them RAW backing your suggestions. And "Don't Be a Jerk," frankly, is simply meaningless. It's a nice thought, but there are just too many possible interpretations of what defines "being a jerk" in the context of this game.
This means that the 3 to 6 other people at the table with you are also entitled to have fun - if notional-you're stealing theirs because you can't let them try to contribute, then you actually ARE playing the game wrong.
You say that's what it means. I will play devil's advocate on the part of the optimizers, however. They will respond that if the other people aren't having fun then they should build their characters better, and that being better at character creation shouldn't be against the rules. If anything, their thinking goes, it is the goal. It is the other players that are playing the game wrong, not the optimizer. And you may say that those players are the majority, but this is a logically fallacious argument (appeal to popularity). "Have you never heard," they will (quite correctly) ask "of the tyranny of the majority?" That your view is favored by the majority is irrelevant.
"Does history record any case in which the majority was right?"
-Robert Henilein
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
-Mark Twain
We don't need a campaign rule to say this - it's inherent.
You saying this does not make it so. If it was "inherent" then we wouldn't have to have this conversation. In fact, there are a lot of complex issues behind this and a lot of shades of grey, which is why the behavior is so difficult to address in the way that you are advocating.
Either way, a structural change to the campaign that reduces everyone else's options to "fix" a substantial minority problem is a drastic step.
I couldn't agree more. happily, I have proposed no such thing, but am instead a proponent of structural changes that enhance, not reduce, everyone's options.
Now let's look at your proposal.
First, the Year Zero problem (not Season 0, but Year Zero - the first year of implementing a sweeping program of change)...
What do we do with the existing scenarios in your scheme of difficulties?
How do tiers work for development?
How do we get enough story to fit with three difficulties in the scenario, and how do we yardstick those difficulties? How much increase in wordcount / pagecount will we be allowed to...
1. No change to old mods. Go on running them the old way.
2. Work for development? What do you mean?3. Shouldn't be an issue. The story won't change based on the difficulty. Not certain that it would actually require increased word or page count over the tier system that exists now.
These kinds of specifics are hard to deal with here, but none of the difficulties you mention seem even slightly insurmountable to me.
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I feel bad for your situation, but do you really expect PFS to put the banhammer down on every potentially broken build? I just don't think that's reasonable.
I do not expect nor want that. That is the opposite of what I'm going for. If anything, I want more not less permissiveness, but I want a system that is flexible enough to deal with that permissiveness (or at least the level of it we have already). I do not blame the optimizers. I'm sure some people would call me one of them, since from their frame of reference I am. And this is my point: It's relative. I don't want to blame anyone; I want a system that works with the full range of options that the system itself has empowered players to utilize. The current one does not.
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Foisting off the responsibility for game balance/playstyle on the individual human beings involved in play and expecting diplomacy to resolve everything for you is a bad idea.I feel bad for your situation, but do you really expect PFS to put the banhammer down on every potentially broken build? I just don't think that's reasonable.
If you feel that way, why don't you make a "Broken PFS Builds" thread? Maybe something will get banned if it's really bad. Or maybe a design change will be considered for future versions of PFS. (Then again, there's also the potential for making these broken builds more popular, but that's the risk you take).
Maybe if you explain the builds (and scenario and outcome), maybe there are elements that are being overlooked that will improve the level of challenge? There are GMs here with a lot of experience that could probably help. Maybe it will be a good learning experience for everyone.
I'm not trying to a jerk here, but I already listed some. Let's just start with the examples of Capt Deeper Darkness and Capt +35 grapple.
There are too many of these builds to be banned. This is why I think PFS is still too easy. The number of builds that break their scenarios is still too high. The NPCs lack resources to deal with schemes that I deal with everytime I run a homebrew.
This is why I propose side bar templates to enable "hard mode" for these kinds of PC groups. I'm not judging per se, I'm not wanting to ban anything. That's a BS solution to me. Cracked up PCs are prepared for and therefore should be challenged by cracked out scenarios. There is nothing wrong with this. Other players can play "easy" or "normal" and never even mess with it.
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I'm not trying to a jerk here, but I already listed some. Let's just start with the examples of Capt Deeper Darkness and Capt +35 grapple.
There are too many of these builds to be banned. This is why I think PFS is still too easy. The number of builds that break their scenarios is still too high. The NPCs lack resources to deal with schemes that I deal with everytime I run a homebrew.
This is why I propose side bar templates to enable "hard mode" for these kinds of PC groups. I'm not judging per se, I'm not wanting to ban anything. That's a BS solution to me. Cracked up PCs are prepared for and therefore should be challenged by cracked out scenarios. There is nothing wrong with this. Other players can play "easy" or "normal" and never even mess with it.
+1. Total agreement with all of this.
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How does adjusting the difficulty of a given encounter solve the problem stated? If you make it harder you'll better challenge your optimizers, however, in the same stroke your weaker players will be less able to contribute and be at serious risk of losing a character. The problem doesn't go away, it really gets worse if anything.
Having adjustable difficulty levels, aka a "hard mode", would only help the situation if you could guarantee the players sitting at the table were all of the same level of optimization and ability. And that seems highly improbable.
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How does adjusting the difficulty of a given encounter solve the problem stated? If you make it harder you'll better challenge your optimizers, however, in the same stroke your weaker players will be less able to contribute and be at serious risk of losing a character. The problem doesn't go away, it really gets worse if anything.
Having adjustable difficulty levels, aka a "hard mode", would only help the situation if you could guarantee the players sitting at the table were all of the same level of optimization and ability. And that seems highly improbable.
Not true. The players can discuss amongst themselves and determine the best difficulty. If the power builds are good enough, the other players might be comfortable with "hard mode". Homoegeneity is not required for this scheme to at least *improve* the situation.
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If you mandate that they all must be the same level, then you are correct. If you let a lower level optimizer play alongside a higher level 'casual' then they could be roughly the same level of power.
They've already said they do not want players playing out of tier, and have already shown they dislike players playing up. Why would they then go and implement a system that caters to that, or even needs playing up to even out?
Not true. The players can discuss amongst themselves and determine the best difficulty.
Players already strong arm weaker ones into playing up for the greater wealth, how would this be any different? If you're not optimized, or even sub-par your survivability is diminished already, deadly combat only makes this more apparent. Like I said before, if you're adjusting difficulty to challenge stronger builds, the weaker ones at the table will feel less able to contribute, while also being in great danger of losing their character. Even if the power builds can "protect" the weaker ones, how fun do you think that is for all involved? All this does is give us a new set of problems to consider while also managing to fail to address the issue at hand.
And if they did implement a hard mode, would most players do it if there wasn't a greater reward for the extra challenge? My guess is no.
Hard Modes and adjustable difficulties; maybe someone can use them as part of some greater scheme to balance things out, but as they stand on their own, just aren't the answer.
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Alright then, out of curiosity, what is your proposal for the situation? If your region doesn't have this particular issue, you might not have given it much thought, which is fine. I've thought about this quite a bit, and I just don't see any other fixes other than the "build police", which is absolutely anathema. Also, I've not seen much "strong arming", because the math of most table APLs do not allow for the choice. It takes a pretty specific level grouping to be able to choose.
Maybe its just me. From this thread, I'd say this is not the case. But I can't *stand* a table where my character is simply redundant and every encounter is a foregone conclusion. It makes me wish I was doing anything other than playing PFS. Maybe others just don't care as much.
They don't like "playing up" because they seem to be a bit too focused on the player wealth issue. That, to me, is a non-issue. But I think its controllable, unlike player builds, so they will want to control it.
I would have increased rewards for "hard mode", by the way. Reward should always scale with risk.
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Alright then, out of curiosity, what is your proposal for the situation?
I've thought about it, I'm a problem solver by trade. I haven't given a solution because I haven't come up with a satisfactory one as of yet. Anything I could think of would require a massive overhaul to how PFS is structured and I don't believe that's desirable.
I've thought about adjustable difficulty considerably, part of my issue with it is the additional work a GM would need to prepare (since they won't know if they players are doing hard mode or not). Having to consider more information and additional rules only increases the chances a GM will make an error, and I've seen grievous ones that have killed players (such as a GM applying DR 10/magic against fire damage). Yes, GM's should know the rules, but even the best GM is fallible and can forget a seldom used mechanic.
I suppose a good question to ask would be; How would you go about making the combat more challenging?
-More enemies?
-More HP?
-Higher CR enemies?
-advanced templates?
-inflated enemies stats?
-Some combination of the above?
Each of these will increase the challenge, but poses more work for the GM and generally inflated combat durations. And while longer durations means more chances for everyone to contribute, it also means you're likely to start pushing your time constraints for the scenario. And all of these still put the sub-par optimized party members at greater risk, and the power builds might not always be able to adequately protect them. It's not a clear solution.
Honestly, I've found that smarter enemies using better tactics is almost always a more satisfying challenge then inflated numbers whether that's the # of enemies, their hp, their stats or their CR. A group of lowly kobolds or goblins with a favorable environment can wreck havoc on a party of optimized players.
And maybe that's the solution, some encounters written with enemies employing smarter more deadly tactics, using their environment to great effect. I'd also give the players the ability to avoid these deadly situation with cleverness and/or silver tongues. And if not completely avoidable, more favorable if they're clever enough leading up to the encounter.
I've actually seen this already employed in several modules, one where we got to the BBEG before their scout got back to warn them, leaving them unprepared for us. Had they been prepared we'd have had a much more difficult fight on our hands and likely would have lost a party member or two.
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I really appreciate the thought out response.
GMs not running NPCs correctly is a separate, but unfortunately, relevant issue at hand as well. Me, I'll just call it out if a GM is not running an NPC correctly. I know many of the stat blocs pretty well from memory. People shouldn't be punished for a GMs mistake.
"Honestly, I've found that smarter enemies using better tactics is almost always a more satisfying challenge then inflated numbers whether that's the # of enemies, their hp, their stats or their CR. A group of lowly kobolds or goblins with a favorable environment can wreck havoc on a party of optimized players."
I would love it if this could fix it. And favorable environments certainly help. But at its core, PFS combat is a math problem. Too many scenario-breaking builds have the math so skewed in their favor that even favorable environments are just a speed bump. If they are rocking a 30+ AC, then they can literally ignore the enemies and just deal with the environment.
That, and with things like cracked out fighter/archers, the fights are just over so *quickly*. The only way to combat that that I see it to inflate aggregate the hps that the fighter archers must chew through. Or increase aggregate NPC defenses. Yes, there are darkness schemes, but we already know that that is a powerful scheme in its own right.
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And if they did implement a hard mode, would most players do it if there wasn't a greater reward for the extra challenge? My guess is no.
Hard Modes and adjustable difficulties; maybe someone can use them as part of some greater scheme to balance things out, but as they stand on their own, just aren't the answer.
To borrow some population analysis work from WoW, there's several tiers of players in any large population you're trying to serve from the same pool of content. There's the hardcore group that pursue World First achievements and then ram their way through Heroic modes on the new content for more, better "stuff".
There's the less hardcore, but still raider, group that more or less corresponds to the "will go to conventions", "we have 9+ rounds of events in a 45 minute travel radius every month" and "running out of stuff to play" groups.
And there's the new folks, casuals, and otherwise not raider players, who comprise a likely high majority of the players in our campaign.
Itemization and rewards are part of the treadmill-reward feedback loop for Heroics, and would need to be similar for Hard Modes to be worth development time (if no one plays them, they weren't worth the time invested... if there's nothing but bragging rights, the population that would play them becomes very very small)
The most likely result of this would be even more stratification and fragmentation of the player base.
Hard modes would seem to perpetuate and encourage precisely what you wish to avoid with them.
Perpetuate and encourage is fine with me. I don't care that they do it so much is how it renders everyone else at the table useless in encounters. I'm just looking to give them something to do other than ruin the scenarios as currently written.
Oh, and WoW when I was playing, did indeed have "heroic mode" for their instanced zones. I'm not advocating anything new or revolutionary here.
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I'm not trying to a jerk here, but I already listed some. Let's just start with the examples of Capt Deeper Darkness and Capt +35 grapple.
There are too many of these builds to be banned. This is why I think PFS is still too easy. The number of builds that break their scenarios is still too high. The NPCs lack resources to deal with schemes that I deal with everytime I run a homebrew.
This is why I propose side bar templates to enable "hard mode" for these kinds of PC groups. I'm not judging per se, I'm not wanting to ban anything. That's a BS solution to me. Cracked up PCs are prepared for and therefore should be challenged by cracked out scenarios. There is nothing wrong with this. Other players can play "easy" or "normal" and never even mess with it.
I disagree, I think there are maybe 5-10 builds that could be banned, tops.
In my experience, I've met maybe one PC build that should be banned, but the player didn't ruin the scenario, so it wasn't needed. He could have dominated the scenario, but he chose not to.
^^^^ This is why I'm saying you have a player problem, because every player I've ever met that has a powerful build, shows some restraint when needed.
If you think there are a lot of builds that should be banned, could you name 30 of them for me?
Tetori monks should be banned. So should Master of Many Styles, which is just a gateway to many broken builds.
Archers (especially zen archers) are unbalanced, but not bannable. Gunslingers the same.
Trip fighters with reach weapons are annoying, but not bannable.
2H fighters or barbarians aren't OP at all, as a matter of fact I think they are your baseline for upper end DPR.
Summoners are borderline OP, but are fine if the player builds them without making mistakes.
Magus can go nova but are OK.
Having said that, I've met limited players that used these builds. And the ones that do know how to restrain themselves when needed.
Brock has already said he's not implementing a "hard mode" setting for PFS, I'm not sure there's any point in asking for it. The most obvious reason is development effort it would take (more $$$) and it would also need more page count (more $$$). So it's not happening.
The other is they don't want encounters to be discretionary and feel it cause more problems than it would solve. I agree with you that it would be nice in theory, I agree with Brock that it wouldn't work in practice.
If you've read the boards, you'll notice that many GMs make mistakes when implementing the scaling for 4 players (in season 4) and often implement the scaling for special encounters incorrectly. I think adding another (discretionary!) scaling element into scenarios would be even more confusing and a disaster.
I'm not even sure that scaling would solve the problem, because you're trying to fix a problem (unbalanced PC) and you don't even know what problem you're trying to solve. It would be a disaster, at one extreme the scaling would routinely fail to provide additional challenge and on the other extreme it would kill everybody.
We could try to make a few "hard mode" scenarios during the year (like Bonekeep), but the feeling is they wouldn't be popular and worth the time and effort.
The best solution we could hope for is that the scenarios get some kind of labeling (so you know what to expect), but it sounds like they're not inclined to do that either.
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"Summoners are borderline OP, but are fine if the player builds them without making mistakes."
I think druids are stronger, but that's not really the point.
To add to your list, I've seen some kind of bloat mage build that can nuke entire encounters with a single fireball, because their damage was huge and the DC was out of the range where PFS NPCs can realistically make it.
"If you think there are a lot of builds that should be banned, could you name 30 of them for me?"
I don't want them banned. I don't want them ruining scenarios for other people.
"I disagree, I think there are maybe 5-10 builds that could be banned, tops."
People are always finding new combinations to break these scenarios, I think. Just because we haven't seen it, doesn't mean it isn't coming down the pike.
"The most obvious reason is development effort it would take (more $$$) and it would also need more page count (more $$$). So it's not happening."
I think these are cop-outish reasons. The development effort would be trivial if the writers have a decent grasp of the rules and how the game works. Page count? This would add perhaps one page, and they already are doing something *just like this* with the "scale down for 4 people". Just change that space to "easy mode stats" and squeeze in "hard mode". Done.
That being said, you are probably right in that none of these ideas will come to fruition. Just be glad the people you play with hold back their builds. I still don't understand the idea of making a PC like that that you have to hold back with.
They've already ruled out playing out of tier. And apparently difficulty modes, according to Jason S. So basically it sounds like they are going to rely on the "don't be a jerk" rule for this. Perhaps not the wisest gambit with gamers involved.
"The campaign wishes to avoid characters being out of line in wealth to level ratio,"
I know this is a concern, but it is a tempest in a teapot compared to builds.
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I still think my favorite "playing up" solution is the double exp one.
with the exception of 1-5's it's only a bit more than 2x gold on all the scenarios, which I think is fine for the reward.
If you're between tiers, and you play up sure thing, you get a bit more gold, if you do it every single time, it's still not game-breaking.
If you're level 1, and you play 6 times tier 4-5 to get all the monies, that's close to 9k extra gold, double exp reduces that to 4500 extra gold, still a lot, but much more manageable.
Double XP provides a number of benefits for the campaign.
1) Automatically helps curb the gold growth, since it effectively halves the gold from the scenario.
2) Helps newer player's catch-up to the higher level players.
3) it actually makes sense and follows the rules of the game more closely.
What is the drawback here? Complexity for GMs? I don't think that's an issue, they don't have to calculate anything.
EX: Level 2 player at a 4-5 table.
GM: What level are you
Player: 2
GM: Ok, *writes a 2 in the Xp block*
Done.
If having people play wildly out of tier is the problem, just say you can't at all. "If you're the correct level for a sub-tier you cannot play any of the other sub-tier's in that adventure" tell em to pull up a pre-gen.
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It does NOT work. It just fractures the already hard enough to come by members of this community into smaller and smaller groups, which eventually, in many cases, results in the game eventually becoming unplayable since you simply don't have enough people. And don't tell me it doesn't happen, because I've seen it over and over. At best it means people divvy up into cliques and play what are essentially home games that they then report to PFS. I guess this is fine in a sense, but it really starts to beg the question of what the point of organized play is in the first place.Let the players inforce this. Just like we always have.
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If you spoil a game I'm in, I remember it. If you make it a habit, I don't sit with you. If you do it enough, to enough people, no one sits with you, or we just "cold shoulder" you. That's the way the hobby has always worked. It's slow sometimes, but you know what? It works sometimes too.
This assumes that the gaming community can not and will not discuss matters like mature adults...EVER. Now your group LOCALLY may not be able to do this...right NOW. But see, kids grow up eventually...even the 30 year old ones. The key here is that even if your local group can not do this now, if you lead by example and YOU do this, then your local community will be able to do this as well. When you stoop to their level and get kicked out by acting childish (because I have yet to EVER see anyone get kick out of group when they acted like a mature adult), it doesn't help anyone. So yes, talking works. It works very well. And if you absolutely can not do this, the VL and VC of your area should I would hope be capable of this (if not then we have a new topic for discussion on ways to make PFS better).
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I've now read through the entire thread. Nothing that anyone suggests prevents this split. Labeling the scenarios as "Hard" (non-optimizers stay away), "Medium", and "Easy" (optimizers will be bored) don't help at all...
Also, (b) codifying scenarios, putting in that hard bright line, makes things worse.
We either have to fix the game or fix the people. Do you know how to fix the people? I don't, so I'll try to fix the game.
Also, it's not just about labelling the mods. It's about actually having variable difficulties available within the same level range, thereby (at least coming closer to) satisfying the different power levels/playstyles, and at least making the fracturing into cliques process, if it must take place, easier and more painless.
Do you know how to fix a game without resorting to 4E style of gaming (and even then, that's broken)? BILLIONS of people will have way more brain power then you EVER will. You can not foresee EVERYTHING. People who wanna break the game will do so regardless of ANYTHING you try. Does that mean we don't try? Nope...but it is WAY easier to fix the people then it is to fix the game. People are easy to fix. We have many methods at our disposal for this. From discussion to peer pressure. I would rather try and fix a person then a system any day of the week.
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Do you know how to fix a game without resorting to 4E style of gaming (and even then, that's broken)? BILLIONS of people will have way more brain power then you EVER will. You can not foresee EVERYTHING. People who wanna break the game will do so regardless of ANYTHING you try. Does that mean we don't try? Nope...but it is WAY easier to fix the people then it is to fix the game. People are easy to fix. We have many methods at our disposal for this. From discussion to peer pressure. I would rather try and fix a person then a system any day of the week.
I've now read through the entire thread. Nothing that anyone suggests prevents this split. Labeling the scenarios as "Hard" (non-optimizers stay away), "Medium", and "Easy" (optimizers will be bored) don't help at all...
Also, (b) codifying scenarios, putting in that hard bright line, makes things worse.
We either have to fix the game or fix the people. Do you know how to fix the people? I don't, so I'll try to fix the game.
Also, it's not just about labelling the mods. It's about actually having variable difficulties available within the same level range, thereby (at least coming closer to) satisfying the different power levels/playstyles, and at least making the fracturing into cliques process, if it must take place, easier and more painless.
I prefer engineering solutions. But that's me. You will never convince someone who gets their jollies by breaking scenarios to stop. You might drive them out, but I'm trying to be inclusive.
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I prefer engineering solutions. But that's me. You will never convince someone who gets their jollies by breaking scenarios to stop. You might drive them out, but I'm trying to be inclusive.
Except there are no engineering solutions here. Nothing you do will make the person who gets their jollied from breaking the game from being able to do it. All you can do is slow them down for a bit while they figure out a new combo. You however can get their behavior to change. If you don't think that people can EVER change...then well...you just wrong. I have no idea how you could ever come to a conclusion that people can NEVER change. Is it easy? Nope. But difficult sure as heck beats impossible in my books.
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This assumes that the gaming community can not and will not discuss matters like mature adults...EVER.
Assumes, Concludes, its a foggy line....
Now your group LOCALLY may not be able to do this...right NOW. But see, kids grow up eventually...even the 30 year old ones.
NEVER!
So yes, talking works. It works very well.
I think you may be underestimating the extent to which charisma was dump stated... and i don't mean for the characters.
There's also the problem that David is trying to take his subjective preference for a certain amount of build power and wield it like objective fact. That simply doesn't work. Telling someone that their character is overpowered has no weight to it because overpowered exists entirely in someone else's brain... why should anyone trust someone elses brain over their own? (especially in this crowd. We r smrt, and trust our own brains over other people's.)
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There's also the problem that David is trying to take his subjective preference for a certain amount of build power and wield it like objective fact. That simply doesn't work. Telling someone that their character is overpowered has no weight to it because overpowered exists entirely in someone else's brain... why should anyone trust someone elses brain over their own? (especially in this crowd. We r smrt, and trust our own brains over other people's.)
Hey my charisma is a dump stat. Wisdom too. Still works well for me. And if you have less charisma and wisdom them me...I'm gonna worry a bit about ya there...and move all the way over there.
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Here's what I'd like as a GM:
I'd like a summary stat-block that lists the following:
Primary to-hit, saves, ACs, HP, damage amount. A table would be wonderful, ranked from mook to boss, and an A through F scale on Tactics. Grade A on tactics is "It's well specialized PCs working as a finely tuned team." Grade B on tactics is "It's semi specialized PCs working as a team, standard Season 4 tactics. Grade C on tactics is "Standard Season 3 NPCs." Grade D is "Charges Ahead! Full Attack! Will Try To Flank!" Grade F is "Charges Ahead! Full Attack! Mindless!"
So:
Goblin Mooks
To-Hit: +3, Damage: 1d4+1, F:+2, R:+6, W:-1, AC:18, 13 HP, Tactics: D
Spells in Likely Order of Use
None:
Goblin Bossman!
To-Hit: +3, Damage: 1d4+1, F:+0, R:+4, W:+1, AC:16, 11 HP, Tactics: C
Spells in Likely Order of Use
Burning Hands (DC 14), Burning Disarm (DC 14), Silent Image (DC 14)
As a GM, I'd like these stat lines all printed on one page, broken up by encounter name. I'd hand a slip of paper out for the players to fill out with the same information.
And I'd spent a little bit of time comparing, figuring that a well played PC party is going to have anywhere from +2 to +4 to hit over the stats on the sheet due to buff spells, and roughly APL/3 in damage buffs shared around.
There are two metrics to check, three, really if you can do head-math.
Compare peak AC to peak To-Hits. Peak AC being more than 15 over peak to-hits means this is a VERY touch encounter.
Peak AC-Peak TH: >16: Encounter is tough. Possible TPK. Good tactics and teamwork required.
Peak AC-Peak TH: 12-15: Encounter is challenging. Expect to drop a PC who'll get better from healing.
Peak AC-Peak TH: 8-11: Encounter is easy. Players will roll over this.
Peak AC-Peak TH: <8: Encounter is a cake walk barring lots of DR.
The second metric is "average damage per hit" - this requires head-math. You take the two biggest damage dealers on the PC side, find their average damage, subtract any relevant DR, add those two results together (assume teamwork from PCs) and divide the target's HP by this number. This gives you an overly optimistic estimate for how many hits that target will take to drop.
Divide APL by 5, multiply by this number. This is (roughly) the number of rounds your encounter will take.
If this number is "4", you've hit the sweet spot. If it's higher than 6, adjust the encounter grade up by one. If it's less than 3, slide the encounter grade down by one.
I can do this headmath in the "close enough for government work" way in my head. Not everyone else can.
The third metric is the spellcasters
PC Spell DC-NPC Save Mod: <5: Encounter is Tough
PC Spell DC-NPC Save Mod: 5-8: Encounter is Challenging
PC Spell DC-NPC Save Mod: 9-12: Encounter is Easy
PC Spell DC-NPC Save Mod: 13+: Encounter is snooze fest.
Basically, I want a quick-and-easy easy way, at a table of strangers, to be able to go "OK, this encounter is a walk-over, this encounter's a walk over, this encounter is going to burn a lot of resources...and on this encounter, let's just give you the gold because there's no way you're going to lose."
It also lets the GM say to the Bond-player: "Hi, this scenario is going to be as dull as watching paint dry for you in terms of combat. Like, running over frogs in a tank levels of tactical challenge. Can you find ways to help me entertain the other players?"
My experience is that the Bond-player doesn't want the scenario to be a cake-walk. He wants to showcase his awesomeness at combat. He wants the Big Hollywood Fight Scene, and he wants to be The Star...and for that, he needs a suitably dangerous foe to match himself with. Godzilla versus Bambi does not showcase his awesomeness.
Letting him know that scenarios are going to be too easy is a favor to both of you.
If I thought it had any chance of being accepted, I'd have scenarios make recommendations of:
"Must have the following capabilities in your party..." and give the derived numbers above for "Challenging" and "Easy", or if there's a need for a "Tough" encounter, saying so. "Is this appropriate?" meter-stick.
And to refer back to a point made earlier:
The more options there are in a system, even if all of them are perfectly balanced, the likelier it is that you're going to get an uncovered base - an option for which the party lacks the appropriate defense, or an option the party has which the encounters cannot handle, like gunslingers attacking touch AC on targets after level 7 or so.
This often gets called "power creep," but it's not quite the same thing.
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This assumes that the gaming community can not and will not discuss matters like mature adults...EVER.Assumes, Concludes, its a foggy line....
Now your group LOCALLY may not be able to do this...right NOW. But see, kids grow up eventually...even the 30 year old ones.NEVER!
So yes, talking works. It works very well.I think you may be underestimating the extent to which charisma was dump stated... and i don't mean for the characters.
There's also the problem that David is trying to take his subjective preference for a certain amount of build power and wield it like objective fact. That simply doesn't work. Telling someone that their character is overpowered has no weight to it because overpowered exists entirely in someone else's brain... why should anyone trust someone elses brain over their own? (especially in this crowd. We r smrt, and trust our own brains over other people's.)
I think its safe to conclude that if 2 PCs can consistently run entire scenarios by themselves, there is a some kind of measurable difference between those PCs and a run-of-the-mill PC. The difference doesn't have to be called overpowered, but again, I hate playing at tables where I'm not contributing anything meaningful. (I don't mean an odd skill roll) I suspect I'm not alone here.
"Godzilla versus Bambi does not showcase his awesomeness"
This. Too much Godzilla versus Bambi in PFS. Too many BBEGs that can't over come a PC who trips.
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All to often PCs come to the table with archetypes that the GM has no experience with. One GM was visibly angered when some guy said "My tetori monk has +33 grapple". The reaction may not have been as angry if an audit had been done ahead of time, or the GM might have asked that PC to even leave. This would be even more useful if there was a "hard" mode to click the adventure up to.
Wait - the GM was mad because someone with a class built to be good at grappling (and relatively little else) was good at grappling?
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All to often PCs come to the table with archetypes that the GM has no experience with. One GM was visibly angered when some guy said "My tetori monk has +33 grapple". The reaction may not have been as angry if an audit had been done ahead of time, or the GM might have asked that PC to even leave. This would be even more useful if there was a "hard" mode to click the adventure up to.Wait - the GM was mad because someone with a class built to be good at grappling (and relatively little else) was good at grappling?
Sure - it came in way outside of the expected boundaries of the GM's experience. See my prior comment on "The more options there are, the more the GM has to understand, and the likelier it is that he's going to have an encounter blindsided or nullified by something he doesn't know."
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Imo one big part of the problem of power creep and optimizers is Herolab
There are alot of players who exclusivity use Herolab at my FLGS. Programs like these make it way to easy to optimize, and usually when these players are audited dont own 100% of the supplements that have the rules.
I am not sure of a solution to this though, maybe a banning of herolab or a faster/easier system for auditing characters
Wow, this is wrong in just so many ways it is hard to pick a starting point.
First of all, the primary assumption in this philosophy is that people who optimize their characters are some how playing the game wrong and need to have their ways changed or be punished for being optimizers. Optimization, perhaps better refered to as Power Gaming, is only one of many basic styles of playing D&D and is neither more nor less important or valid than any other style of playing. Can it conflict with other styles of play? Of course it can. But so can all of the others if they are used to excessively dominate the table. In a campaign with tens of thousands of players you are going to see play style conflicts. I suspect Power Gaming is perhaps the most noticeable because it is the most popular and thus the number of potential conflicts is greater. But like any mixed group of people, the best solution is a social solution, i.e. don't force people to play in a style they don't want to play in; convince them to play their style in a way that minimizes it's interference with everyone else's style. Forcing style changes on others players is going to do nothing but decrease the player base.
Second, Herolab is simply a tool. Banning it will not stop optimization, especially since the biggest tool optimizers have is the Advice Forums on this very website and banning that would be just silly. Especially since they would just move to some other location if that happened. Also note that Paizo gets royalties from Hero Lab so don't count on them giving up that cash cow for a misguided attempt to fix a perceived problem.
Third, auditing won't solve the problem. At best it will force people to buy more products which may be a win for Paizo but it won't stop optimizers. If you are suggesting that this will force people who can't afford all the products to decrease their optimization, not only will this punish people for simply being poor it will fail in the long run because they will simply find a different means of optimizing. If you are suggesting it will stop people from using combos that don't actually work the way the player thinks, well, that's a seperate problem all together.
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*raises hand*
Hi, I'm a new player, and I'm assuming that makes me a non-optimizer by default. How can I voice my fear that "more options for dealing with optimizing players" and "raising difficulty of scenarios" means that I won't have safe ground to grow on, that by not being an optimizer I'm somehow holding my group back? I don't want to play the numbers, I want to play my character, and at the end of the day, this conversation makes me wonder if I'm wrong for having that (clearly narritivist/simulationist, if you subscribe to GNS theory) philosophy in the PFS campaign.
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*raises hand*
Hi, I'm a new player, and I'm assuming that makes me a non-optimizer by default. How can I voice my fear that "more options for dealing with optimizing players" and "raising difficulty of scenarios" means that I won't have safe ground to grow on, that by not being an optimizer I'm somehow holding my group back? I don't want to play the numbers, I want to play my character, and at the end of the day, this conversation makes me wonder if I'm wrong for having that (clearly narritivist/simulationist, if you subscribe to GNS theory) philosophy in the PFS campaign.
I think your concern is genuine and that there is nothing wrong with your play style choice. This is why I favor an Optional Difficulty solution over a fixed one.
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All to often PCs come to the table with archetypes that the GM has no experience with. One GM was visibly angered when some guy said "My tetori monk has +33 grapple". The reaction may not have been as angry if an audit had been done ahead of time, or the GM might have asked that PC to even leave. This would be even more useful if there was a "hard" mode to click the adventure up to.Wait - the GM was mad because someone with a class built to be good at grappling (and relatively little else) was good at grappling?
Well he also had a 30+ AC. I don't think the GM appreciated that.
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Sure - it came in way outside of the expected boundaries of the GM's experience. See my prior comment on "The more options there are, the more the GM has to understand, and the likelier it is that he's going to have an encounter blindsided or nullified by something he doesn't know."All to often PCs come to the table with archetypes that the GM has no experience with. One GM was visibly angered when some guy said "My tetori monk has +33 grapple". The reaction may not have been as angry if an audit had been done ahead of time, or the GM might have asked that PC to even leave. This would be even more useful if there was a "hard" mode to click the adventure up to.Wait - the GM was mad because someone with a class built to be good at grappling (and relatively little else) was good at grappling?
And often the GMs hands are tied tactically in PFS because the scenarios says what they NPCs do, even if against a given PC group, its guaranteed suicide.
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*raises hand*
Hi, I'm a new player, and I'm assuming that makes me a non-optimizer by default. How can I voice my fear that "more options for dealing with optimizing players" and "raising difficulty of scenarios" means that I won't have safe ground to grow on, that by not being an optimizer I'm somehow holding my group back? I don't want to play the numbers, I want to play my character, and at the end of the day, this conversation makes me wonder if I'm wrong for having that (clearly narritivist/simulationist, if you subscribe to GNS theory) philosophy in the PFS campaign.
You will still have seasons 0-2 to start with. And season 3 is not that much worse in general. Just be aware that season 4 kinda takes the gloves off but power gamers still rofl stomp it like its going out of style.
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You will still have seasons 0-2 to start with. And season 3 is not that much worse in general. Just be aware that season 4 kinda takes the gloves off but power gamers still rofl stomp it like its going out of style.*raises hand*
Hi, I'm a new player, and I'm assuming that makes me a non-optimizer by default. How can I voice my fear that "more options for dealing with optimizing players" and "raising difficulty of scenarios" means that I won't have safe ground to grow on, that by not being an optimizer I'm somehow holding my group back? I don't want to play the numbers, I want to play my character, and at the end of the day, this conversation makes me wonder if I'm wrong for having that (clearly narritivist/simulationist, if you subscribe to GNS theory) philosophy in the PFS campaign.
My local PFS lodge is getting into Season 4 scenarios (at the 1-5 level), and here I sit, biting my nails. We're running 4-11 this Saturday. I haven't even gone through First Steps, or anything in seasons 0-2.
There's a tiny part of me afraid to voice this to leaders in my area because I'm a girl, and I don't want to be seen as wimpy or fearful because of my ovaries, but that's an only slightly related concern.
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*raises hand*
Hi, I'm a new player, and I'm assuming that makes me a non-optimizer by default. How can I voice my fear that "more options for dealing with optimizing players" and "raising difficulty of scenarios" means that I won't have safe ground to grow on, that by not being an optimizer I'm somehow holding my group back? I don't want to play the numbers, I want to play my character, and at the end of the day, this conversation makes me wonder if I'm wrong for having that (clearly narritivist/simulationist, if you subscribe to GNS theory) philosophy in the PFS campaign.
I hate to break this to you and possibly scare you away.
If you're a narrativist/internal consistency fan, PFS is going to be a poor fit.
Not because of the Power Gamers or the supreme specialist players, but because of the general constraints of the system and program.
1) PFS tables are run in 4 or 4.5 hour slots. 5 if you're lucky.
2) You have no guarantee that you're going to have meaningful continuity between sessions and characters. You don't even know who's going to be playing with you from session to session.
3) Missions tend to be very linear, though less so as the seasons progress.
4) Combat (the tactical/crunchy part of the game) takes a disproportionate amount of time...and gets top billing over spending a session roleplaying through the first mission briefing.
It can be fun, and it is fun, but you're not going to get a good narrativist/simulationist game vibe out of PFS. Trying to make a good narr/sim supporting Organized Play system is one of the things I've been pondering for two years.
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You will still have seasons 0-2 to start with. And season 3 is not that much worse in general. Just be aware that season 4 kinda takes the gloves off but power gamers still rofl stomp it like its going out of style.*raises hand*
Hi, I'm a new player, and I'm assuming that makes me a non-optimizer by default. How can I voice my fear that "more options for dealing with optimizing players" and "raising difficulty of scenarios" means that I won't have safe ground to grow on, that by not being an optimizer I'm somehow holding my group back? I don't want to play the numbers, I want to play my character, and at the end of the day, this conversation makes me wonder if I'm wrong for having that (clearly narritivist/simulationist, if you subscribe to GNS theory) philosophy in the PFS campaign.
My local PFS lodge is getting into Season 4 scenarios (at the 1-5 level), and here I sit, biting my nails. We're running 4-11 this Saturday. I haven't even gone through First Steps, or anything in seasons 0-2.
There's a tiny part of me afraid to voice this to leaders in my area because I'm a girl, and I don't want to be seen as wimpy or fearful because of my ovaries, but that's an only slightly related concern.
Well you need to discuss this with your local VL or VC. I think the best policy would be to alternate season 4 with non-season 4 scenarios. It will hurt the group a bit, buy perhaps you may want to play a pregen to limit your risk in season 4 as a new player.
The gulf between "new player" and "power gamer" is so vast. Power gaming options are limited at level 1, but by level 5-6, the difference is just enormous.
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*raises hand*
Hi, I'm a new player, and I'm assuming that makes me a non-optimizer by default. How can I voice my fear that "more options for dealing with optimizing players" and "raising difficulty of scenarios" means that I won't have safe ground to grow on, that by not being an optimizer I'm somehow holding my group back? I don't want to play the numbers, I want to play my character, and at the end of the day, this conversation makes me wonder if I'm wrong for having that (clearly narritivist/simulationist, if you subscribe to GNS theory) philosophy in the PFS campaign.
I hate to break this to you and possibly scare you away.
If you're a narrativist/internal consistency fan, PFS is going to be a poor fit.
Not because of the Power Gamers or the supreme specialist players, but because of the general constraints of the system and program.
1) PFS tables are run in 4 or 4.5 hour slots. 5 if you're lucky.
2) You have no guarantee that you're going to have meaningful continuity between sessions and characters. You don't even know who's going to be playing with you from session to session.
3) Missions tend to be very linear, though less so as the seasons progress.
4) Combat (the tactical/crunchy part of the game) takes a disproportionate amount of time...and gets top billing over spending a session roleplaying through the first mission briefing.It can be fun, and it is fun, but you're not going to get a good narrativist/simulationist game vibe out of PFS. Trying to make a good narr/sim supporting Organized Play system is one of the things I've been pondering for two years.
Honestly, I've been realizing that. Though, due to limited choices of gaming venues, PFS is the best option for me to get any gaming in in the area. I've taken to writing sidestories for my character to get my narrative fix.
(Also, if you ever get a good narr/sim solution, do let me know.)