By accident I came upon an article that proposed that recent editions of Pathfinder/D&D appear to have a problem with the balance between spellcasters and mundane warriors because there is a common assumption that spellcasters can throw all their good spells at their enemies in three encounters per day. Mundane warriors would have their impact on the enemies at a slow but steady pace, but when you don't give them the time to do it before spells are recharged, they won't make much of a difference at all.
The somewhat counterintuitive reason that is proposed is that adventure modules are actually too hard. They are designed in a way that highly encourages, or maybe even enforces, that spellcaster give everything they have as soon as they can, because otherwise the party will not survive. On the other hand, if encounters are easier, the warriors can merrily chip away, while the spellcasters have their really powerful spells but don't want to waste them on the little critters and keep them for when they run into something really big.
Whether or not that actually is the case is of course debatable. However, I would be really interested to get more evidence either for or against that hypothesis. The article is over two years old and Paizo has released a huge amount of adventures in the meantime.
What I want to ask for is for people to check the adventures they have for the Encounter Levels they include, as well as the assumed average party level for these encounters.
I think the relevant section from the DMG was never included in the SRD and as such isn't in the CRB or Game Mastery Guide either. But supposedly a good balance would be:
30% - EL lower than APL
50% - EL equal to APL
15% - EL equal to APL+1 to APL+4
5% - EL greater than APL+4
Might be interesting to see how that turns out.
Love that blog. Read all of it...
Here some numbers I calculated:
No Response from Deepmar: 8/29/63/0
The Midnight Mirror: 5/20/75/0
Master of the Fallen Fortress: 0/64/36/0
Jade Regent
Brinewall Legacy: 6/36/58/0
Night of Frozen Shadow: 15/27/57/0
The Hungry Storm: 7/28/65/0
Forest of Spirits: 27/56/27/0
Tide of Honor: 22/43/35/0
The Empty Throne: 2/19/74/5
Now whether or not 30/50/15/5 is really the golden ration is an entirely different question. But so far these adventures show a significantly higher difficulty than that.
I think the encounters are to easy that is why I like the guide book in the advice forums about building more challenging encounters
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After playing ROTRL yesterday with my usual group of experienced players : encounters as written are most of the time a cakewalk. I used to increase the difficulty level by arbitrarily giving all the monsters max hp + various boosts + doubling their number.
We lost two players recently, and I decided to stop upping the encounters, since they are just the right number in theory (4).
I was despairing, as they litterally trampled everything I threw in their path. There never ever remotely felt at risk. I will now have to work again a lot to rebalance the game, and that is not pleasant at all. I have trouble understanding how anyone can feel threatened by the encounters as written.
But how many encounters do you do before the group rests to recharge spells? That's the interesting data point here.
Our gm started out making every trivial encounter in RotRL into an epic struggle for survival. We took so much downtime it was ludicrous and had quite a few one-shot deaths simply because he was doing the max hit points jack the CR type stuff. Then instead he issuing less xp for encounters than published to keep us a level lower than we should have been thus not having to modify any of the encounters at all. Same trick. Less work for him.
Finally after we addressed it he decided to let encounters roll out the way they were published and things started getting too easy. He's like 'what do I do. this is no fun'...
My only advice? Play the enemy smarter. Use more of its tricks. Be more clever. Understand their stat block. Give it a sense of its own mortality. Think 'if that were my character and I wanted to give it the best possible advantage in its given scenario, what would I do.
It's been significantly more awesome ever since.
The easiest answer is 'try harder'. Less 'lets all stand in a huddle and swing at each other till we die' and more tactical or special ability use. More 'i'm not going to be able to win this by myself, I think i'll run to the next room to get reinforcements' kind of play.
Players far more appreciate the necessity of overcoming those kind of buffs than they do the 'i'm just gonna jack this thing's stats up a bit' kind of buffs.
The preferred method of balancing encounters across an adventure has changed many times over the history of the game. For a long time, attrition was the bread-and-butter of GMs — tight control on resources, whittle them down, starve them and make them paranoid. Nowadays, I tend to go for single-encounter balance, because attrition leads to very slow progress. Paranoia is not fun for all player types (though it is for some).
That's okay. Playing with encounter balance is what a GM does. There is no right method until your players are enjoying themselves (or for some, enjoyed themselves in retrospect, but cursed your name at the time).
Sometimes I still bust out an attrition adventure where the wizard has to mete out his spells carefully and doesn't control the rest cycle. Other times, I get wacky and not only expect the wizard to call for rest after every fight, I REQUIRE it for them to have any chance.
Mix it up. See what works. Don't be afraid that the game will break if you deviate from the suggestions in the rulebook.
As for me, I find that attrition adventures make up probably 5% of my games, the vast majority (80%) are encounter sites with 3-10 encounters that *can* spill over into each other if the players don't actively negate that. Straight-up assassinations, like player-lead scry-n-die encounters, have a place (another 5%) and you should never forget to put the players on the defensive (10%) where they must survive the very same tactics that they employ against threats.
Those percentages are made up, and I left some things out. In fact, anything I left out is something I should probably do more often. The take-home message here is to mix it up as much as you possibly can. Never run the same game twice.
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This is basically an attrition adventure, and while I have weakened them somewhat for the final encounter, there is no reason they won't just trample it like the rest.
It's true that I was tired, and not at my best. But honestly ? i don't think even going for reinforcements in the next room would have changed much. Plus the monsters in this part are not really great thinkers and buddies with the guy next room. 10 Hps less each would not matter much.
And they have not even rested once.
So sure I will try harder next time, but I doubt that would change a lot. There are simply so many options to customize your character exactly like you want, that the game is rigged in favour of the players as there is not enough effort to toughen the opposition. It becomes playing a videogame in easy mode.
Hrm, enough rant for tonight.
In Rise of the Runelords, I made heavy use of the spillover encounter method.
The DCs for hearing battle in an adjacent room are trivial.
I take every room's "creatures" section as a starting position only. They do not wait for the PCs to come and kill them. Stealth monsters move around and hide, brutes roll up the PCs flanks right away, casters buff anyone who happens to be around and set up battlefield controls for the incoming PCs.
Unless the players learn to control the order of battles, they can be easily overwhelmed. It is a beautiful thing when the PCs start carefully learning about NPC disposition of forces, setting decoys and traps to glean information.
Keep this method in mind for every major encounter site in Runelords. It will serve you well.
Yes. That is somewhat against my principles, but it's true. I should have done that.
It's only unfair if there's nothing the players can do to avoid it. For what it's worth, I try to be extremely fair about who hears what, and how much time they have to reposition/buff. I keep myself honest.
Sometimes, my players were stupid and charged into situations they weren't ready for.
Sometimes, they were smart about it it.
Having the option to fail in such a way makes the game a lot more compelling, I think.