I don't know if its uniquely game changing, but it takes the rocket tag from level 11 or so and brings it into the start of the game.Yo and yo.
The difference being at low levels you cannot color spray all day, every day, every opponent you see. color spray is something you save for the big fight or a "hey, there's a whole bunch of mooks in the right shape here... blast it!" You run out of save or die spells before you run out of encounters. At higher levels, you have enough save or die spells to blast everyone.
A witch can always throw the save or die spell without using up her utility/buff spells. Its not the mere existence of the save or die spell, its the outright ubiquitous use of it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't know if its uniquely game changing, but it takes the rocket tag from level 11 or so and brings it into the start of the game.Yo and yo.The difference being at low levels you cannot color spray all day, every day, every opponent you see. color spray is something you save for the big fight or a "hey, there's a whole bunch of mooks in the right shape here... blast it!" You run out of save or die spells before you run out of encounters. At higher levels, you have enough save or die spells to blast everyone.
A witch can always throw the save or die spell without using up her utility/buff spells. Its not the mere existence of the save or die spell, its the outright ubiquitous use of it.
And Slumber hex has its own limitations. It can only affect a creature once per day. it only lasts for a number of rounds equal to the witch's level. Its only a single target.
I..really don't see how the ability to lock down one target for1-4 rounds is hurting a game when numerous well optimized characters can one-shot same CR creatures or provide numerous or AOE lockdown for more rounds exist. You can have your color spray heavens oracle. Or an optimized 2Handed fighter/barb or a magus with 3d6 shocking grasp at level one or 2-3 DC 17 sleep/color spray/charm person or..f#%* so many things in this game.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I understand the Slumber hex makes it necessary for GMs to retool encounters so that they're not pushovers, but on the other hand perhaps it's not that, dare I say, "unrealistic"?
You're in a world of fantasy, and PCs *are* extraordinary individuals who do amazing things, such as... ensorcell a giant. And then a commoner comes along who stabs the giant in the heart.
The opening question was less out of a concern for a game balance and more about whether it changes the game world significantly. Well, it's a world of fantasy where David sometimes beats Goliath. No biggie.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I..really don't see how the ability to lock down one target for1-4 rounds is hurting a game when numerous well optimized characters can one-shot same CR creatures or provide numerous or AOE lockdown for more rounds exist.
I think they're complaining that the witch can, if lucky, fight "out of her weight class." I can't think of any other ways offhand that a first level character (or pair of them) can take out a CR 9 creature without a hell of a lot of situational help (e.g. trying to fight an elder fire elemental in a swimming pool). I'm sure some of the numbermancers can come up with something, but it's not that important.
Basically, it lets you win against something you shouldn't have been using in the first place; a GM who presents a frost giant to a level 1 party is either incompetent or a dick. A specific witch build has a 50/50 chance of being able to negate what would otherwise be a TPK. Of course, this isn't specific to a witch. A skilled bard, for example, could simply make an appropriate Diplomacy check, make the giant friendly, and then persuade it to wander away while leaving its treasure behind -- for some reason, that's not considered to be game-breaking.
There are lots of limitations in the witch's sleep hex that make it very challenging to use effectively in level-appropriate encounters. It doesn't work on what seems to be a third of the bestiary. It only works for a few seconds, so timing and positioning are critical. You only get one use of it per creature per day.
So, basically, it's a long-shot "I win" ability against something one won't face, and a substantial puzzle against the goblin horde that one will face.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
So, basically, it's a long-shot "I win" ability against something one won't face, and a substantial puzzle against the goblin horde that one will face.
Of course, when the single brute charges the fighter, only to be slumbered when the witch gets to act, and leaves it within five feet of the fighter, it's a pretty good 'I win' ability.
Of course, when the single brute charges the fighter, only to be slumbered when the witch gets to act, and leaves it within five feet of the fighter, it's a pretty good 'I win' ability.
This is the non-existent CR 9 brute you (should not have) put in as a level-appropriate encounter for the APL 1 group?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This is the non-existent CR 9 brute you (should not have) put in as a level-appropriate encounter for the APL 1 group?No, it was the boss of a particular 5-9 Tier PFS scenario.
Ah, so it was a monster that should have been defeatable by clever play, and was.
I fail to see the problem. I could have accomplished the same thing with a first level Silent Image spell by making him charge headlong into something lethal.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
So again.. you are saying something with a sucky will save will suck against something that requires a will save... duly noted. I guess we learn something new every day...
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
So again.. you are saying something with a sucky will save will suck against something that requires a will save...
Egad, Holmes. How did you do that?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A level 3 cleric can drop hold person on that same giant. Except he can do so at three times the range and can try again of he fails.
How many times per day?
How many boss monsters does he face in the average day?
You're complaining that someone used a save-or-lose effect on what was, by your own admission, a boss monster. That's generally when I see them used. So the answer to your earlier question is "the intelligently played cleric has as many save-or-lose spells for the boss monster as he needs."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A standard frost giant has a Will save of +6, and a Fortitude save of +14. Let's be very generous to our first level duo--the Witch has 20 Intelligence, and let's say Ability Focus (Slumber Hex), and the fighter is wielding a Greataxe with 20 Strength.
That means the Witch is throwing out Slumber at DC 17; the giant has a 45% chance of succeeding at his save. That jumps up to 55% if the GM decides that PCs can't take a feat designed for monsters.
Let us further posit that the witch manages to get off this Slumber Hex when the Giant is standing directly next to the 1st level fighter, and does indeed fall asleep. The fighter winds up with his greataxe and delivers a coup de grace with Power Attack. Average damage is 6.5 weapon damage+7.5 Strength+3 Power Attack=17. The giant succeeds on that save 90% of the time, automatically wakes up, and is immune to that Slumber Hex for the rest of the day. Goodbye, 1st level witch and fighter! If the fighter gets his *maximum* damage, that pushes the save up to 12+7.5+3=22.The giant will still succeed the save 60% of the time. Better, but still not great.
And all this is the best case scenario, that the witch and the fighter are as good as they can possibly be at 1st level, and the positioning is just right, and the Giant doesn't smash them with thrown rocks from well outside the range of the Witch's hexes.
The fighter winds up with his greataxe and delivers a coup de grace with Power Attack. Average damage is 6.5 weapon damage+7.5 Strength+3 Power Attack=17. The giant succeeds on that save 90% of the time
A coup de grace is an automatical crit and the DC is 10+damage. The frost giant needs a natural 20 to succeed on the save, even if the fighter rolls minimum damage.
having 1st lvl witches "defending the frontier" is hardly an effective or 100% foolproof strategy...
as pointed out by MULTIPLE people...giants throw rocks
even if 1 giant fell to a slumber, i forsee a giant scrimmage line at max range forming up and flattening any town / survivor with rocks.
I avoid Slumber Hex for this reason.
It's pretty much a max spell level DC that never runs out of spell slots.
So you can spam it (1/target) on BBEGs and all the incidental enemies you come across.
Sure, there's sometimes better tactical options, but it's a pretty damn effective single target Save or Suck...
And you are always free to cast any of your other normal spells in those other cases.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Considering that you have to in initiative and the frost giant has to fail its save, you're looking at about a 1/4 chance of succeeding, even in under optimal circumstances. In all other circumstances, the frost giant kills both the witch and their friend.
If you lose initiative, you are no worse off than any other tactic.
Better, because it's Su and doesn't provoke like spells.
So other than tactical reasons for avoiding single target spells (or immunity), it's something that works great at every CR you should be facing. Some enemies way above normal APL might be good at resisting it, but they will be the same or stronger vs. anything else you could throw at them.
If you lose initiative, you are no worse off than any other tactic.
No, in a lot of situations you would want to avoid the uncertainty of a save-or-suck spell. As a simple example, if the giant had just moved into your face, you might be inclined to get the hell out of there. There are various ways of dealing with the potential attack of opportunity, starting with Obscuring Mist or the simple smoke stick (can't AoO people with concealment, which either grants), and the nice thing about running away is that it's 100% successful. Hanging around and hoping that the giant fails a coin flip is a very... courageous... move.
The choice is even starker if you consider that the range of the Slumber hex is only 30', which means that if the giant is close enough to you to hex at the start of your turn, he's close enough to single move and attack -- and probably kill you -- at the end of your turn if he makes the save.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The witch is using a standard action to disable a single foe. If it fails, she can't do it again. The witch also has to be in close range.
The example of a 1st level party beating a frost giant doesn't hold water. A Slumber hex only lasts 1 round for a 1st level witch. The fighter would have to be 5 feet away in order to coup de grace. If this isn't true or the hex fails, the party dies. Yeah, they could beat it, but many powerful creatures can be bushwhacked by low level characters if everything goes in their favor.
If the giant just have moved into your face you have to cast defensively 5ft away do not work due to reach. So, far from 100% of chance to success.
No, in a lot of situations you would want to avoid the uncertainty of a save-or-suck spell. As a simple example, if the giant had just moved into your face, you might be inclined to get the hell out of there. There are various ways of dealing with the potential attack of opportunity, starting with Obscuring Mist or the simple smoke stick (can't AoO people with concealment, which either grants), and the nice thing about running away is that it's 100% successful. Hanging around and hoping that the giant fails a coin flip is a very... courageous... move.
If you're worried about the roll for casting defensively, use the smokestick instead.
By the same logic, isn't daze "uniquely game changing"? You can spam that at-will too.
A first-level character who deliberately optimized their AC would have a fair chance of avoiding the Frost Giant's attack(s) since the giant's attack bonus is "only" +18. Is that uniquely game-changing?
As others have noted - you can only slumber once per target; if the target succeeds the save you're S.O.L.; even if they fail the save they're out of commission for only one round.
Plus isn't there some guideline somewhere that says you shouldn't award XP when the CR is that far out of their league because the only way they could be expected to succeed is dumb luck? I'm not seeing it in the SRD, but on the other hand I don't really care. If you're throwing frost giants against a 1st level party I'd say you deserve what you get when the witch gets lucky with a slumber.
(Unless of course I'm missing something! Feel free to correct me, that's how we learn things)
What is all the talk of spamming Slumber? It only affects a single target once whether or not the save was successful. I know many AP's send random encounters consisting of 1 creature, but that's always been known to be weak/a bad idea. Having a single enemy against numerous PC's ends with combat lasting 1, maybe, 2 rounds if you have characters who use good tactics and options.
There are many, many, many problems with the balance and design across classes in 3.5/Pathfinder but I don't see slumber as any more terrifying than sleep, color spray or the wealth of other AOE save or dies casters get. Sure, they can only do them X number of times per day..but then again, slumber can only target any particular enemy once a day as well. Its much more effective for a witch to evil eye so the next caster's save or die is much more likely to hit.
Its much more effective for a witch to evil eye so the next caster's save or die is much more likely to hit.
This is not always - or even, perhaps, typically - the case if you dive into the math of things.
If we took a typical CR 10 Will save (+10) and a 10th level witch and wizard with, for the sake of argument, Will DC 22 for their hex and SOL spell respectively, and if the witch might either hit the monster with Slumber or hit it with Evil Eye before the wizard drops his spell:
When in option A the witch uses Slumber, you've got a 55% chance of failed save, followed by a wizardly second strike that can hit the 45% of passed saves with another 55% failure save or lose. The monster has only a 20.25% chance of passing both saves.
If, instead, in option B, the witch uses an evil eye to pave the road for the wizard's SOL, the -4 to saves increases the failure rate of the Will save from 55 to 75%.
So there are two observations.
The first is that in option B, the wizard is guaranteed to have to expend his spell, whereas in option A, he will only have to cast his spell at all the 45% of times that Slumber fails.
The second is that option A results in a greater chance (79.75%) of at least one failed save, compared to option B's 75% chance.
So using evil eye over slumber in this case both leads to a lower rate of landing a save-or-lose, and roughly doubles your other caster's rate of expending his best save or lose spells, per encounter.
Evil eye does offer some benefits over slumber. Versatility, for one, it is capable of doing more different things whereas Slumber is a one solution fits all type of hex. Reusability for another. Is evil eye a straight up more effective way to save-or-lose than Slumber, though? Not really.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
If you lose initiative, you are no worse off than any other tactic.
Right, but let's remember that if you are as worse off as any other tactic, you are dead. Two first level characters have less than one round to take out the frost giant, or somebody probably dies.
Better, because it's Su and doesn't provoke like spells.
How is that even relevant? If the witch doesn't win initiative, or if the giant makes the saving throw, the giant is just going to kill somebody. Even if all they manage to do is kill the party member next to them, that means no CDG, and then the giant gets up. If more than one party member is threatening the giant, then they all die, thanks to Great Cleave.
Things become ever so slightly more interesting with a level 2 party (2 rounds of slumber! woohoo!) which means even if the frost giant kills your lovely assistant, you can still dash over and perform the CDG yourself. Assuming you can do enough damage to make that a viable tactic.
Daze does not make you helpless. daze DC and duration do not improve with levels.By the same logic, isn't daze "uniquely game changing"? You can spam that at-will too.
Good point on helpless.
Monsters' saves increase with level too so I think the DC is a wash. I don't see duration as relevant since the "abuse" is that you can CDG them as soon as they're asleep - whether you do that in one round or three is immaterial.
Maybe OP's example of the frost giant is distracting. Would it be more instructive to ask, can a 1st level witch do inordinately well against CR 1 encounters compared to other classes? If that was the case I'd be more convinced it was a game-changer.
I would also like to point out that, as you level, creatures saves tend to increase much faster than DCs. Yes, the slumber hex scales with spell level effectively, but the thing is, ask any Blaster or SoS wizard, that the DC is jsut ot good enough. You need to crank it up more. Wizards are known to crank up the Spell DC of their spells by alot, just to make it viable. The only way to really increase your Hex DC (If your GM does not allow monster feats) is to use Evil Eye (effectivelly giving +4 DC)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Seems to me that in a game with this ability the GM needs to:
A. Enforce the ability's range limit
B. Enforce the ability's duration
C. Make sure that single-enemy encounters are both rare and varied
You do this and it seems to me that the frequency in which the Witch's slumber hex will be game breaking will be small.
Witches are not marginalized women singled out to demonstrate the power of the ruler or the unity of the community. They have real, actual, demonstrable power. They have no struggle to be accepted as social equals, they're already on top of the pile.
I noted the social bias because the very nature of the hexes is such that even in a non-historical world, they are still "different" and thus likely going to be subjected to an enhanced level of scrutiny and critique. Encouraging the witch coven to come isn't the hard part; getting them to openly practice would be the harder sell. Even if they are tolerated, being openly accepted as social equals would still be a major challenge.
Power which can make them social outcasts at the same time that it makes them forced to be respected and possibly feared. Being accepted as powerful is not the same as being accepted as a social equal. There are many reasons that many wizards live in isolated towers, and it not just the preferences of the wizards choosing to live there. In Golarion, it's not as much of a challenge, because it's pretty clear where the concern for historical accuracy ends, but a lot of homebrew worlds stick closer to historical realities, and the historical reality was that anyone who was different, and it didn't really matter what the reason causing the difference was, did not mesh entirely with the community they lived in, even if they were often respected and even feared.
Effect: A witch can cackle madly as a move action. Any creature that is within 30 feet that is under the effects of an agony hex, charm hex, evil eye hex, fortune hex, or misfortune hex caused by the witch has the duration of that hex extended by 1 round.I don't see how Cackling will help with a Slumber Hex, plus at first level a witch has only one hex.
My bad on Cackle. Extra Hex is still a feat, though.
Power which can make them social outcasts at the same time that it makes them forced to be respected and possibly feared. Being accepted as powerful is not the same as being accepted as a social equal. There are many reasons that many wizards live in isolated towers, and it not just the preferences of the wizards choosing to live there. In Golarion, it's not as much of a challenge, because it's pretty clear where the concern for historical accuracy ends, but a lot of homebrew worlds stick closer to historical realities, and the historical reality was that anyone who was different, and it didn't really matter what the reason causing the difference was, did not mesh entirely with the community they lived in, even if they were often respected and even feared.
In the real world, people were (and are) feared for being different. The only real source of power in the real world is people willing to do your bidding. Not so in Pathfinder; you can have actual, personal power that's independent of social structures.
I've run a campaign with a player that lovvvvved abusing the slumber hex. To be honest, I found that less of a pain in the butt than the crane style monk in my other game. At least the witch can be countered with lots of small bad guys and/or a big guy who is undead or has an awesomely high will save.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In the real world, people were (and are) feared for being different. The only real source of power in the real world is people willing to do your bidding. Not so in Pathfinder; you can have actual, personal power that's independent of social structures.
Power which can make them social outcasts at the same time that it makes them forced to be respected and possibly feared. Being accepted as powerful is not the same as being accepted as a social equal. There are many reasons that many wizards live in isolated towers, and it not just the preferences of the wizards choosing to live there. In Golarion, it's not as much of a challenge, because it's pretty clear where the concern for historical accuracy ends, but a lot of homebrew worlds stick closer to historical realities, and the historical reality was that anyone who was different, and it didn't really matter what the reason causing the difference was, did not mesh entirely with the community they lived in, even if they were often respected and even feared.
True, but that would make the jealousies that come with having power that much greater, since some people might be compelled to use social structures to limit such individuals, as they couldn't affect the actual power base.
This isn't to say that all witches, or indeed PC classes in general (since like the frost giant example, a focus on the witch alone is actually a bit narrow), would be shunned, just that many on this thread are assuming that simply having the power, and the potential for that power, would be enough to get the respect needed to have a village recruit you, and that to me is a problematic assumption. Many villages in the wilderness wouldn't know about the slumber hex, so they wouldn't know to recruit, and even if they did know about it, fear and distrust of outsiders and, quite possibly, unknown magic, in general would limit their willingness to openly recruit. That isn't to say that they would chase away a local or an immigrant that showed that particular talent, but the idea that every village would go looking for it is a bit of a stretch.
Just like few villages anywhere would actively ask a wizard to build a tower on the edge of their fields, a witch, or indeed any arcane caster would not have the social pull to make them that valued to a simple commoner who can just as easily get rid of the giant by having the village give that giant 5 goats every year for leaving them alone and 5 more for keeping other giants from bothering them. Even many divine casters would likely have the same difficulties, depending on the location of the village, and the predominant faith of the region.
We as players, DMs, and module writers tend to think of casters as an indispensable part of the fantasy economy, when in reality, for pretty much every world I've seen other Eberron, with Golarion and even FR being part of the former group, there is nothing that makes magic that critical to the common person. They could just as easily hire a retired level 15 fighter to train the villagers how to fight and/or an engineer to help them make basic, but still useful, fortifications. This would have the same basic effect as the giant fearing a witch putting them to sleep, and be possible at more or less the same cost. Magic is still a powerful tool, but it's not the only tool available.
Witches are not marginalized women singled out to demonstrate the power of the ruler or the unity of the community. They have real, actual, demonstrable power. They have no struggle to be accepted as social equals, they're already on top of the pile.
I noted the social bias because the very nature of the hexes is such that even in a non-historical world, they are still "different" and thus likely going to be subjected to an enhanced level of scrutiny and critique. Encouraging the witch coven to come isn't the hard part; getting them to openly practice would be the harder sell. Even if they are tolerated, being openly accepted as social equals would still be a major challenge.
Yes, let`s not make a connection between people on Earth who were accused of witchcraft and the Pathfinder character class.
On Earth, in the days when people were punished for witchcraft, anybody who was believed to have magic powers would be considered a witch. That means ANY spellcasting class would be considered witches were they to appear on Earth in those times. Even Paladins and Clerics would have to talk very fast to explain what they were doing.
Also it`s worth noting that a `witch` need not be female, on Earth or Golarion. The term does not necessarily mean a female person. At the Salem witch trials seven of the twenty people executed who were accused of being witches were men. Sometimes male witches were called wizards. It`s a modern idea to associate the term witch with women.
Likewise the Pathfinder character class is in no way restricted to female characters. We may assume that because of the influence of the hag races female witches are more common on Golarion than male ones, but there is no requirement anywhere in the character class that a witch be female.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
On Earth, in the days when people were punished for witchcraft, anybody who was believed to have magic powers would be considered a witch. That means ANY spellcasting class would be considered witches were they to appear on Earth in those times. Even Paladins and Clerics would have to talk very fast to explain what they were doing.
In my home world, there are places where all spellcasters have to do exactly that, precisely because they are spellcasters. Most places don't go quite that far, but the idea that someone using spells or similar abilites, like hexes, would be viewed with a bit of suspicion is not that crazy, even in a world where those things are more common. Having lots of kinds of magic in the world is not always the same as having it all accepted and commonly practiced in a given locale. The only drawing point I took from real life is that "different" is not always accepted (and magic very definitely qualifies as "different" to most commoners; a useful "different" in many cases, but not all, and it's still not precisely normal even when useful), and even when it's tolerated, it's still not always encouraged or supported; I did this because the very human impulses that drive that reaction are still there in a fantasy world, since we are still modeling ourselves to a large degree, even if the precise examples that trigger it are usually different.
In the end, it comes down to how people choose to view magic in their world. Even a published setting like Golarion is often up for individual interpretation. In a setting where magic is widely accessible to the commoners, and thus widely used, having something like the slumber hex is a big deal. In other settings, where commoners routinely look to other solutions first or simultaneously, it's far less of a world issue because the use of magic isn't embedded as deeply. To me, a realistic world is one where different locales respond to different types of magic for different reasons, some rational, some not so rational. Having every village in the world have a witch with the slumber hex is not realistic to me, because magic isn't so universally useful that every single village is going to reach the same solution to how to defend their village or be that reliant on just magic.
|
This discussion is forking off in two directions which have quite different issues about them.
First of all we have the situation of adventuring PCs. GMs change the world to accomodate PCs. In Rise of the Runelords when they visit sandpoint at the beginning they meet goblins, later on they meet stone giants. Coincidence? Hardly - we suspend disbelief and allow reality to be twisted around in order for the game to work. In this context, a part of 1st level characters wouldn't come across a Frost Giant. Furthermore, a higher level party might not come across lone Frost Giants if they were slumber-optimised because the GM might change the encounter to suit. Clearly, as has been pointed out, there is still an issue with a Witch's slumber hex turning some encounters boring or forcing the GM to change so much that the module starts to lose its theme - however that is part (A) of this problem.
The second is the considerations on the game world. What we accept in terms of world-bending for the sake of PCs becomes ridiculous if applied wholesale to the fantasy world. How would you feel if you encountered a dozen low level humans out to set up a new village in the middle of a giant infested area and when you asked them how they were going to deal with the giants they glibly replied "Oh, we're too low level for them, they wont attack us until we're much more powerful"! My original question was much more about looking at things from the Frost Giant's pov and trying to figure out how this hex, which is available at 1st level, and whose reputation we can only assume would spread after a few David vs Goliath successes, would change the way Frost Giants and their like behave. This is point (B).
Richard
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This discussion is forking off in two directions which have quite different issues about them.
First of all we have the situation of adventuring PCs. GMs change the world to accomodate PCs. In Rise of the Runelords when they visit sandpoint at the beginning they meet goblins, later on they meet stone giants. Coincidence? Hardly - we suspend disbelief and allow reality to be twisted around in order for the game to work. In this context, a part of 1st level characters wouldn't come across a Frost Giant. Furthermore, a higher level party might not come across lone Frost Giants if they were slumber-optimised because the GM might change the encounter to suit. Clearly, as has been pointed out, there is still an issue with a Witch's slumber hex turning some encounters boring or forcing the GM to change so much that the module starts to lose its theme - however that is part (A) of this problem.
The second is the considerations on the game world. What we accept in terms of world-bending for the sake of PCs becomes ridiculous if applied wholesale to the fantasy world. How would you feel if you encountered a dozen low level humans out to set up a new village in the middle of a giant infested area and when you asked them how they were going to deal with the giants they glibly replied "Oh, we're too low level for them, they wont attack us until we're much more powerful"! My original question was much more about looking at things from the Frost Giant's pov and trying to figure out how this hex, which is available at 1st level, and whose reputation we can only assume would spread after a few David vs Goliath successes, would change the way Frost Giants and their like behave. This is point (B).
Richard
The first part is true enough, and it can certainly cause problems in certain campaigns. Still, the effects on the world are as much as the DM wants them to be. If the DM wants the changes to be a special case for the party, it's no harder to figure out a good rationale for that argument than it is to figure out how to change the whole world around that special case.
The second part assumes that the answer is one that PCs would give, and that is where the problem develops. These aren't PCs; their lives don't revolve around combat and being around lots of magic on a daily basis. They have different lives, goals, concerns, and are more likely to think in terms of the society they grew up in. This means that an answer that would be insane to a party of PCs could be perfectly reasonable to these NPCs and the same would be true with the roles reversed. Obviously a group of settlers going out into giant country is either crazy or they know something the PCs don't if they give that particular answer, but that doesn't mean that the right answer is always magic, or that if it is magic, that it's always the slumber hex. Maybe they know a valley that the giants ignore because the entrance is too small for the giants and mountains around it are too tall to easily climb. Or have plans to make use of the natural terrain to make fortifications. Or have made a pact with a local silver dragon to keep the giants in check. Or lots of other things. The slumber hex is but one of many possible magical solutions, and there are even more non-magical solutions. Ultimately, whatever the answer is probably would not match what a party of PCs would say no matter how hard you try to make it so; they have different goals, different resources, and different concerns. Trying to fight off every giant they see is probably not a good strategy for them because even if it does work the first few times and the reputation of the hex does spread, it could inspire anger and resentment as much as fear and respect, causing even bigger problems. PCs generally don't care because more often than not, they are simply passing through, and not trying to live there on a long term basis; upsetting the local population has far less impact on them.
I guess in the end, I don't see a need for problem A to develop into problem B because the PCs don't live the same lives as the rest of the world, so some deviation from societal norms and thought patterns of non-adventurers is to be expected, especially at higher levels, but even at lower levels. As long as the DM doesn't go crazy and end up with what is basically two separate worlds, having notable differences between how PCs and NPCs view the world is not catastrophic.
When I played a witch recently I didn't take slumber because its brokenly good. And in going to be playing a hex Magus soon and I won't take it for him either.
|
|
I don't see problem A developing into problem B - they're totally different.
Problem A, IMO, is supported by anecdotal evidence quoted here and in several other threads. I am also experiencing it at present in my game. Maybe there are other ways in which it can happen - all I know is that in the 8 years that our group has been together this is the first time we've come across something which just seems to shut down certain encounters in a way which makes the other PCs feel surplus to requirements.
Problem B concerns me as a module writer because I like to present situations which the PCs can, within reason, believe in. It is, as sunshadow21 points out, NPC logic rather than PC logic. Of course in a fantasy world there are plenty of story-based options for explaining why things might run contrary to what common sense suggests. The point, though, is that when you introduce something into the setting which changes the balance of power, you have to take that into account as you piece together scenarios. Slumber Hex appears to be uniquely significant in this sense.
Another way of thinking about problem B is a thought experiment I frequently toy with. Imagine if it was possible to build a massive simulator of the Pathfinder world and then run it through 100 years or so. What would the result look like? Anything that doesn't have a strong urge to survive gets killed off. What's left is a world populated by NPCs and monsters that have maximised out their chances in various offensive and defensive ways. This is where the whole Frost Giant example comes in - the appearance of the Slumber Hex means he has to change his behaviour if he's going to survive.
Richard