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@Undone: Just to verify, you know that your group of 4 at 2, 3, 3, 4 would be playing sub-tier 1-2 without the 4 player adjustments?
Also note that what you are complaining about losing is exactly what has been causing the issues that the new out-of-sub-tier gold, and tier determination rtules are designed to prevent?
You are not talking about Playing your PCs with, more-or-less, golkd close to the actual Wealth by Level guidelines gold, but what was gold well above the correct gold for their level.
Maybe you should consider playing a PC with gold by the WbL chart, instead of significantly higher.
The encounters, even in the worst of the Season 4 scenarios, are set for a party of 6 with gold amounts as set by the Wealth by Level chart, not one set by the (supposedly rare) PC who has never played a PFS scenario other than by playing up.
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So, yes, the maximum gold possible for any given PC has been reduced in general, because level 1 characters can't piggy back and earn 4-5 gold and level 3 can't earn 6-7, etc.
Having lost that maximum, the minimum has also been raised, as it is impossible for a level 3 to get 1-2 gold now. This makes it much easier to put tables together, not harder.
So who is exactly getting upset about what?
Also, if your group is consistent, the APL should only fall in between tiers around 20% of the time. Say for APL 3, yes, you are in between teirs, but for APL 1-2 and 4-5, its not even an option. You play the tier that your APL states.
The difficulty of putting tables together depends on your p;layer base. This rules does NOT UNIVERSALLY make muster easier. It makes playing down hurt less, but it also makes playing up WORSE. That means if there are points where you have players who MUST play up or have the option to often, you may find this new system quite painful for mustering.
Owner - Enchanted Grounds, President/Owner - Enchanted Grounds
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I realize this will be considered purely anecdotal, however I must try: I had a store full of PFS players this past Monday that I presented this to (explaining the rules thoroughly). They universally lauded it is an awesome solution. Not a single person griped about the playing up "penalty" keeping them from wanting to play up.
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Why would that be statistically more common than playing down? Shouldn't it all average out?
So then you admit that the problem of table mustering hasn't be affected by this rule ONE BIT...right? Because you said it makes it easier. I said it may not for some area. Basically places that had no issue with playing up will now have issue because they are now playing down instead. What this rule does is instead of rewarding playing up mechanically, it rewards playing DOWN mechanically. The level 3 in a 1-5 gets the same gold wither they play in the 1-2 or 4-5. The 4-5 has more death and requires more consumables. That means mechanically, your better off in the 1-2. So now, instead of the level 2 getting bullied to play up and get extra gold, the level 4 gets bullied to play down. What people seems to not understand is that this system doesn't actually fix ANYTHING beyond shrinking the extremes of the Wealth chart (which is a fine enough goal...but if that was the case, this wasn't the way to do it to begin with. They should have just done a gold per scenario based on level of that was their goal). It also means that there will be more games where it becomes a joke as the tables favor playing down and you all sit there bored for 4 hours. This will then lead to lower tiers getting increased in difficulty that will cause tables who don't have higher level out of tier characters to TPK which honestly leads to a whole slew of issues. I already hear complaints that PFS needs too much system mastery in season 4. Well...with this wealth system, I'm gonna say we haven't seen nothing yet.
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The only time you will get a choice. Is when all characters are the same level and there in between tire. Other then that there is no choice on playing up or down now. It is determined by table size and what season your playing in. The removing of the choice of playing up or down. Will do more to reduce there ability to game the system.
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Maybe you play with better players on average than I do, Cold Napalm, but I pretty much dread playing up in Season 4.
I play up with pre-gens just fine. level 7 pre-gens in a 10-11 is fun. Then again I have been told I am crazy....
In anycase, it's not JUST the other players. My characters come prepped to deal with things all on their own as well.
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The only time you will get a choice. Is when all characters are the same level and there in between tire. Other then that there is no choice on playing up or down now. It is determined by table size and what season your playing in. The removing of the choice of playing up or down. Will do more to reduce there ability to game the system.
Yeah...that is another aspect tho. While you may think it reduces gaming the system, all it does it make it harder to muster. You can STILL game the system...it's just that without the choice, you instead of talking about what option is best, you just walk from the table that forms not to your liking.
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I play up with pre-gens just fine. level 7 pre-gens in a 10-11 is fun. Then again I have been told I am crazy....
I hate to break this too you, but if you are regularly surviving high tier games in Season 3 and 4 playing up, especially using pregens, the only reason you haven't had a character die is GM incompetence or GM mercy. Neither of which should be tolerated at a high tier table. The gloves have to come off at some point.
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I play up with pre-gens just fine. level 7 pre-gens in a 10-11 is fun. Then again I have been told I am crazy....I hate to break this too you, but if you are regularly surviving high tier games in Season 3 and 4 playing up, especially using pregens, the only reason you haven't had a character die is GM incompetence or GM mercy. Neither of which should be tolerated at a high tier table. The gloves have to come off at some point.
Right...because good tactics and player co-operation has NOTHING to do with such things....
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I hate to break this too you, but if you are regularly surviving high tier games in Season 3 and 4 playing up, especially using pregens, the only reason you haven't had a character die is GM incompetence or GM mercy. Neither of which should be tolerated at a high tier table. The gloves have to come off at some point.Right...because good tactics and player co-operation has NOTHING to do with such things....
Right. Eventually the dice catch up to the best of us. Unless your GM is pulling punches or fudging dice, that is.
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You should not have any problems about people being bullied to play up/down, simply because people do not have a choice, your parties APL and number of players determines your tier in almost every case now.
Which is a good thing, as a simple rule for what tier people should play it makes it fair and even, if you want more difficulty you can always ask the DM for more without needing to make any changes I find taking off the gloves sorts out balance a lot better than playing up ever did.
This.
Undone: your PFS group is very exceptional. The rule changes were not meant to cater to groups as you describe them. Sorry if your group falls apart, but it sounds like they have already completely mastered PFS. Sounds like they need to play in my homebrew. :)
"If you have two legal characters you've got a choice and can easily force the table up or down if you've got a level 2 and a level 5."
That won't affect the money of the people playing out of tier. And for 6 player tables, a single person has less sway. At a six person table, you are more likely to end up playing up with the 4-person adjustment.
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Having too much cash isn't nearly as destructive as having differing levels of system mastery in the group and in the mod writing. A group with high system mastery in a mod written for the average player will walk all over it with 50% of the WBL guidelines.
Gold doesn't matter.
Seriously? Are you trying to argue that 20-30k worth of gear doesn't matter at all over the dozens of rolls made in every single adventure?
Gold matters.
...I can say with assurances that gold was the sole reason the group avoided a TPK.
Gold matters.
That's fine, truth be told at levels 1-5 the gold hit doesn't mean much to me. There's little to buy for most of my characters thanks to the fame cap and the loss is only ~1k. At levels 3-7 and 5-9 the loss is gigantic and intolerable to the point that playing down an entire level or playing up 1 time can make the difference between death 2 weeks down the road a level up.
Gold doesn't matter but then it does.
Tactics trump everything.
But really gold doesn't matter.
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Right. Eventually the dice catch up to the best of us. Unless your GM is pulling punches or fudging dice, that is.I hate to break this too you, but if you are regularly surviving high tier games in Season 3 and 4 playing up, especially using pregens, the only reason you haven't had a character die is GM incompetence or GM mercy. Neither of which should be tolerated at a high tier table. The gloves have to come off at some point.Right...because good tactics and player co-operation has NOTHING to do with such things....
Except there are ways to get re-rolls. Or make dice less relevant. And yes, dice can mess with you royally despite all this...but that isn't an issue of playing up. Eventually this can happen to you regardless of playing up, at or down. So does that mean that those players who reach 12 without any death had GM that took it soft on them? Or did they play well and mitigate bad dice rolls well enough to eak by? Did they use consumables wisely and good tactics or did the GM go easy? Your assumption that it's the GM is quite disingenuous and not fair to the players.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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We've got 3 expendable animal companions/pets, several standard action summons, a character immune to half of the enemies outright since he's flying, and essentially 9 characters thanks to AC's. Large amounts of summoning and pets make it so that enemies shouldn't ever attack us directly and deny dice rolls.
Just remember, the NPCs can have tactics too. I feel that the NPC's inability to deal with this combination has more to do with the scenario designer's lack of imagination (and unwillingness to arbitrarily kill off less optimized parties.) At the level they are playing, NPCs should have ways to deal with flyers, they NPCs should be using battlefield control to delay the summoned creatures while they concentrate damage on the summoners, or should be simply casting banishment to send the summoned creatures back home.
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I have seen pets that can easily take on even optimized PCs. Depending on the animal chosen, they get huge AC and stat boosts. It takes a lot of gear to make up for those. And PFS is a gold-starved setting. But pets aren't affected by that at all!
It takes something like a Tetori Monk, fighter archer, heavens oracle or something of the like to really put an optimized pet to shame.
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Nosig, I think it depends how well you optimize the pets. There are some disgusting pets out there. Especially if you throw swarms of summons out first.
Note that this is pretty much a druid special, because the summoner really can't summon meaningful monsters while the eidolon is out. I guess animal domain clerics can really take advantage as well.
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Calling the Eidolon takes 10 rounds, so it's not something you're likely to do in combat. I have heard that there is a spell you can cast to summon your eidolon (and give him the benefit of Augment Summon to boot) but I'm not familiar enough with the class to say for sure.
Edit: I suppose when you are higher level, you could summon a few critters and still have time to call your eidolon before they vanish...
Mystic Lemur -- You are referring to the Summon Eidolon spell. That spell lets you summon your eidolon as a full round action.
Also, Elves get a favored class bonus that lets them speed up the ritual to summon their eidolon. By 9th level, an elf summoner can perform the ritual to summon his eidolon in a single round.
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Well I played at Origins with a sorcerer with some kind of dinosaur pet that was by far the strongest thing in the group. I think the kind of animal chosen is pretty important, as some get *huge* AC boosts at level 4 or level 7. Also, some get huge STR boosts as well, which gets multiplied across their multiple attacks.
I don't understand how this disconnect is possible unless you are constantly playing with crack players. Druid animal companions with mediocre feat selections can easily compete with non-optimized PCs by virtue of brute force bonus AC and bonus stats. If anything, optimized pets carry my PCs, not vice versa.
I've even seen ACs do decent damage to devils, but simply power attacking their way through the DR. Brute force math is a harsh mistress, because PFS authors are mostly helpless before it. That's a big part of why I hate ACs; author's can't compensate in any way.
Maybe druids should count as two PCs at a table; but this wouldn't jive with your experiences. I really am at a loss here. I have seen ACs in particular dominate table after table. The most Eidolon action I've seen recently was in a team with a heavens oracles, so I can't comment there. But the summoner is puss compared to the druid, so I don't think the situation is fair at all.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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David, I think that the problem is wider than just assigning a APL bonus to companions. You could wind up with a math of Summons add X, ACs add Y, Bards don't count as PCs, but instead add +1 to the APL of the rest of the table, Assimar counts as +1 APL, etc. There is going to be a massive difference between the capabilities of Player A who puts all his free time into tuning and optimizing his PC, and Player b who wants to just get to gaming and have fun. And the objective of "maximum fun for everyone and as few tpks as possible" means that all adventures must ultimately be written for the non optimal average PC. Which means parties of all optimized PCs will *always* stomp their way through adventures.
About the only way to really fix this would be to
1: beef up optional encounters. The faster you stomp through the adventure, the more damage is waiting for you.
2: more area attacks. It doesn't matter how many summons you have when everyone in the room takes 10d6. Of course that means if anyone is playing up and tagging along, they are now dead.
3: More non combat encounters. Your animal companion isn't likely to help you with diplomatic missions. Of course, if the PCs are optimized, then it means either one PC will be doing all the diplomacy all night long, or it means that the entire party won't have the right skills.
etc.
I think what really is needed is for the NPC's to have more flexible tactics. Or else give them more flexible resources. The easier the PCs have it going into the final encounter, the tougher the final NPC is going to be.
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At high levels, being a flyer is actually a bad thing, until you face a flying enemy. Flying means that you don't have cover, don't get concealment, and are vulnerable to several more spells than someone standing on the ground.
ALso, at high level, ACs, familiars, Eidolons, and Summoned monsters can do a lot. IF the party survives long enough for them to get into range.
Empowered Maximized Horrid Wilting, anyone? Oh, and then rinse and repeat.
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Now imagine the druids you are used to combined with an AC that can only be hit by a "19" or "20" by the average NPC in the scenario. If the authors put in more bottlenecks, the party will stick that AC in the bottleneck and the AC will eat the entire encounter. Bottlenecking just makes good ACs even more powerful.
BigNorseWolf and I have been around and around about this before, but I find druids to be mathematically absurd compared to nearly every other class *in their base form*.
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You know, repeatedly sacrificing a creature that you are emotionally bonded to can't be good for your psyche. In fact, I'd say that making a habit of treating your bonded companion like monster chow would shift your alignment toward evil.
Yeah. If only. ACs are piles of hps, AC, and attacks. That's what they end up being. And if PCs aren't charged prestige to bring them back, they'll continue to be "meat shield number 1, meat shield number 2, etc". Assuming, of course, that the NPCs in the scenario can even hit them.
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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Now imagine the druids you are used to combined with an AC that can only be hit by a "19" or "20" by the average NPC in the scenario. If the authors put in more bottlenecks, the party will stick that AC in the bottleneck and the AC will eat the entire encounter. Bottlenecking just makes good ACs even more powerful.
BigNorseWolf and I have been around and around about this before, but I find druids to be mathematically absurd compared to nearly every other class *in their base form*.
In that case, make the bottle neck vertical :)
90% of these builds could be defeated by a 30 foot ladder with a platform at the top. :)
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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The Devs could put a suck or die mage in there with a lot of spells that drain will saves and heavy duty charms. Turn the druid, and all his summons belong to you now... Set him up so he is optomized to charm one person at a time. A well balanced party won't have too much trouble, a over optimized party will find their own optimization turned against them.