So, most APs are written with the expectation of being played on the medium XP track. The exception is Rise of the Runelords, which my group is playing at the moment on the fast XP track. We're about half way through book two, and (while we're enjoying it a lot) many of us are finding it a little TOO fast. It's almost as if the players are levelling up before they get a chance to fully come to grips with the abilities they gained from the previous level.
Hypothetically, if Paizo were to release an adventure path that was designed for the slow experience track, possibly finishing at around about 10th level, would you be less, or more interested in it? Would you find it frustrating?
Personally, I think it would be ideal for my group. I think I prefer a much more relaxed pace to a roleplaying game, but I'm sure a lot of groups would be very different. I also think it would solve a lot of the inevitable mechanical problems that come with high level play. And I don't think you necessarily have to have high level characters to tell an epic story. After all, if Lord of the Rings were an adventure path, what level do you think Frodo would've been by the end? Commoner 2/Rogue (Scout) 3?
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Honestly for me the best would be some kind of epic campaign going up to level 20 in slow xp track, and enjoy the ride all they way there.
Of course a campaign like that would probably take like 10 modules or something and like a year to DM by playing every week, but that would be nice!
I'd have mixed feelings about that. I like the level range from 3 to 10 the best. Many builds just do not work well starting from 1 or the characters have to change their tactics very much during the first levels but I later the martial/caster disparity gets worse.
And when starting at first level you can't already have both of your multiclasses (if doing multiclassing) and thus have to explain why your fighter suddenly starts casting spells for example.
So with the slow track you'd have to endure longer in low levels but you'd have more time before the math breaks down.
TL;DR I would like an AP that starts at 2nd level and then uses the slow XP track.
I wouldn't be interested at all
But I don't use experience anyhow I just give levels
I would prefer it. I'm currently running Rise of the Runelords and Skull and Shackles for different groups, and both groups take so many detours in the interest of tying up loose ends in the story that the slow track has proven far more useful in keeping them level appropriate for what they're intended to be facing.
I use it myself in my home game and I prefer the low-level game. So very receptive.
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I would be very open to a slow progression adventure path as well. I'm currently Serpent's Skull under slow progression, and I think it really gives the characters a chance to immerse themselves in their new abilities and equipment before moving onward.
I equate it almost to sports, football specifically. Any fans of the game will constantly hear new players talking about "playing slow, thinking about the playbook rather than playing instinctively, etc." Well, I think roleplaying games are the same. If you're constantly learning new rules and powers for your character, how can you ever play instinctively and really let the roleplaying aspects flow?
Of course, this is completely my opinion, and I'm not slamming anyone else's preferences or gaming styles. :)
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I wouldn't play. Too slow. While I like to enjoy my levels for a bit, I also like to get to the next level before I turn 30.
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I wouldn't play. Too slow. While I like to enjoy my levels for a bit, I also like to get to the next level before I turn 30.
On the other hand, I prefer slow progression track, because I like low level play and to me it's completely raisonable that a character may die of old age without reaching his fifth level :)
It always depend of the style of play :)
I started my group with the Beginner box with the intent of doing Rise of the Rune lords after a few sessions... but my players didn't want to roll their own characters! I put them on the slow track to keep them within a reasonable level to begin RotRL (we started with three level 3s, a level 2 and a level 1 who levelled after the Sandpoint assualt, been increasing CRs where I see fit to deal with it) and I am liking the amount of freedom the slow progression gives. Though I am wondering about the wisdom of my descision once we get to chapter 3 and beyond...
Modulock's point is fairly in line with how I'm thinking- my players are all new to tabletop RPGs and definitely need time to figure out their spells abilities and items. Though I am not sure about an AP set to slow by default. It might require too much material for the AP format to move things along at a steady pace. Maybe a sandbox-themed AP would benefit from it more than a tightly story-driven one.
I equate the progressions to television media- fast being the completly focused miniseries, medium being the "British brevity" style semi-episodic but largely arc based 13 episode season while slow is more the American style 24 episode season, there may be an overarching plot, but there is a lot of other, not always related stuff going on.
Or a separate product line? "The Slow Path": additional encounters and such that can be purchased to tack onto an existing AP. Probably something that covers all 6 APs with one products (if it really wouldn't be that many encounters).
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I've gotten into the habit of running most everything on the slow track, except the Rise of the Runelords AP that I'm running now, which is on the Medium track. Slow progression enables me more leeway to do more things inside the story or to create additional stories for my players. Kingmaker is our primary game right now, and I don't see how anyone can play that AP with the standardized Medium progression rate. That AP would be no fun at all if you couldn't add in your own story lines. Not that the AP is written poorly, mind you; it's awesome! However, there's simply too many possibilities to just run it with what's been written.
So far, our group has selected Shattered Star and Skull & Shackles as almost certain future games after we're done with the couple we're playing now, and I've already told them that both of these will be played on the slow progression, as would Carrion Crown (another they've shown interested towards), because there are simply too many ideas I've got for all those APs. Granted, it does help that my players enjoy longer campaigns, typically running 2-3 years in length.
I'm blessed with an awesome group that way!
All that said, I'd be incredibly receptive to a slow progression AP!
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I wouldn't play. Too slow. While I like to enjoy my levels for a bit, I also like to get to the next level before I turn 30.
30, huh. I vaguely remember being 30 once. Ageist = P
Although I doubt we'd ever do it... a slow progression track would probably allow us to do an AP that reaches 15th level with ease. Slow isn't THAT much slower than Medium.
Aw - that's too bad. I'm really loving this idea. I could completely do without 15-20th level. By that time, I want my players characters to be retired or dead.
I'd be down if it were a theme that suits a slow and measured pace, maybe long term exploration or organization building. Maybe something like tutors to a noble child trying to raise them to be a good ruler.
Creative Director
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Although I doubt we'd ever do it... a slow progression track would probably allow us to do an AP that reaches 15th level with ease. Slow isn't THAT much slower than Medium.I think it would be pretty cool.
All it takes is enough of us saying that we want it, right?
That, and enough folks not asking for Medium and Fast. And I doubt there's enough slow trackers out there to even make a dent in the medium trackers.
And even then, probably not. The primary reason we use the Medium track for most of our adventures isn't because we prefer it over slow or fast, but because it splits the difference. It's the medium one, after all. That means that it's easier for folks to adjust the adventures to slow or fast. If we went to slow or fast, it'd make it unfairly more difficult to adjust for those folks who want to play on the other side of the scale.
Medium splits the difference and makes the adventure equally usable across the board.
Although I doubt we'd ever do it... a slow progression track would probably allow us to do an AP that reaches 15th level with ease. Slow isn't THAT much slower than Medium.
I'm curious, how did Council of Thieves manage to end at lvl 13? Same number of modules and page count as every other, yet it lags 2-4 levels behind every other AP. What happened there and why?
A lot fewer actual encounters, and a lot of them were weaker, lower-XP encounters, from what I recall.
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On a related note, have you ever thought of doing an AP which was a bit less encounter / xp heavy?
e.g. instead of levels going: 1/4/7/10/12/14 finishing at 16 having it go 1/3/5/7/8/9 and finish at 10.
Richard
Not really, since when we don't reach higher levels, the outcry of frustration is very loud. Likewise, we see an outcry if we bloat things with XP rewards that folks don't feel like they were earned.
The encounter to page ratio in an Adventure Path is what it is today as a result of a decade of me working on balancing that ratio, in large part from playtesting and from customer feedback over that past decade.
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Although I doubt we'd ever do it... a slow progression track would probably allow us to do an AP that reaches 15th level with ease. Slow isn't THAT much slower than Medium.I'm curious, how did Council of Thieves manage to end at lvl 13? Same number of modules and page count as every other, yet it lags 2-4 levels behind every other AP. What happened there and why?
It ended at level 13 because we were still unfamiliar with the way the Pathfinder RPG's XP system differed from 3.5. The bulk of the AP was written before the Pathfinder rules were in print and solidified, and while the rules for things like character classes and monsters and all that were pretty solid, the much more nebulous matter of actual adventure design was something that really wasn't playtested at all.
Further compounding this was the choice to present a lot of story elements and a significant amount of "here's how to do sewer geomorphs" and the like that used up a lot of space. Had we just presented a standard map of sewer tunnels with encounters along the way, I think that the end level in the 1st book would have been at least 1 higher. And that's just one example; in the second adventure, a huge part of the adventure was not combat but parties and acting, and we were still deeper in the mindset of 3.5's weird relationship with story awards for XP. And so on.
SO, yeah, it was basically inexperience in writing and developing for Pathfinder adventures that ended up with us more or less designing the AP for what was more or less the 3.5 XP progression... which is even faster than Pathfinder's Fast XP track. If you use the 3.5 XP rules for Council of Thieves, I suspect you'll find that PCs will reach about 16th level.
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We don't use exp, just handing out levels. That said, I would certainly buy an AP that was designed for fewer levels per module. I find the current level way too fast, forcing the GM to add a *lot* of side adventures to keep the players competent with their characters. (We call it "level burn" when either the player can no longer handle the character's abilities, or the player can no longer understand the character's personality. "Last week I was a farmboy, now I'm a superhero. Yikes. I guess next week I'm either a god, or stark raving mad....")
When we played Shattered Star, there were segments where the PCs were going up a level every session (real time) and every day (game time). It was insane. Sometimes more than one level. (Module 3 in its entirety was two sessions of about 4 hours each and 1.5 days game-time.) The player in that game is a very good rules mechanic, but even he struggled, and I would have been hopelessly lost.
I don't expect to get this, though, as it's apparently a minority taste. We mainly cope by tucking other modules into the innards of the AP. (Shattered Star didn't work well with this, though--it's too goal-focused and dungeon-heavy.) Some combos that have worked well for us:
Savage Tide 1-2 in Council of Thieves
Realm of the Fellnight Queen in Kingmaker
Carrion Crown 3 in Kingmaker
Legacy of Fire 4 in Skull and Shackles
Ruby Phoenix Tournament in Jade Regent (highly recommended)
You could probably tuck Second Darkness 1 and Shattered Star 1 into Curse of the Crimson Throne pretty well, too.
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[I'm curious, how did Council of Thieves manage to end at lvl 13? Same number of modules and page count as every other, yet it lags 2-4 levels behind every other AP. What happened there and why?
Bastards of Erebus consists mostly of walls and walls of text. It looks more like a (not so) short story than a RPG adventure. Only the final showdown resembles a "normal" part of an adventure path.
As to why - it was the first adventure path under the brand new Pathfinder RPG, and I imagine life at Paizo at the time must have been incredibly hectic.
When the PCs go to return the horses at Jacovo’s stables near the city gate, they find a handsome but arrogantlooking man berating Jacovo for not having a certain kind of horse available. This man is Thesing Umbero Ulvauno, a local actor and opera singer of some repute who has let his growing reputation feed his ego to a ridiculous level. He’s a very melodramatic man with a habit of cursing out anyone he sees as an underling, exaggerating how important he is and implying that not immediately acceding to his wishes is a personal affront intended to threaten his career. As it turns out, the horses the PCs borrowed are exactly the sort he needs for his impromptu performance this evening of The Elopement of the Dowager Princess, which features a scene wherein “the princess and her handsome lover—played by me, of course—
flee the city pursued by the king’s horsemen.” A DC 10 Knowledge (local) or Perform (act or sing) check lets a PC recognize his name even if they’ve never attended one of his performances.
Ulvauno believes the PCs took the horses to vex him, perhaps to aid a rival actor, and is only satisfied with excessive apologies from the PCs and Jacovo. His initial attitude toward Jacovo and the PCs is unfriendly. If the PCs express ignorance as to his identity, he says, “Don’t you know who I am? I am Thesing Umbero Ulvauno, one of the greatest tenors in the city!” He grows angry and abusive if the PCs ignore him or are unimpressed with who he is, shifting his attitude to hostile. (Opera is a popular art in Westcrown, and he truly is a minor celebrity, so PCs who pretend not to know him are actually being very rude, regardless of his attitude). If the PCs leave while he is still hostile, he takes out his anger by verbally abusing Jacovo (which gets back to Gorvio, who is unhappy that the PCs left his uncle there to take the blame). Thesing eventually finds out who the PCs are and plots petty acts of vengeance such as sending them boxes of dead flowers, offering free tickets to someone else’s performance of a terrible opera, spreading rumors that one of the PCs is a castrati, and so on.
Fawning, praise, and flattery are the best way to improve Thesing’s attitude; all other attempts have a –5 penalty to the Diplomacy check, though an especially attractive female PC might be able to put him in a better mood with some flirtatious words and complements on his appearance and talent (no penalty to the check). He is a conceited man who considers himself quite a ladykiller, yet he only sees women as conquests or temporary trophies. While he can be very charming, to an experienced eye he is rather transparent in his lack of sincerity. He may even resort to verbal or physical coercion to have his way with a woman if nobody else is around. Appeals to his ego; offers to provide alternate horses or attend his next performance, and cheer especially loud (and perhaps boo all the other male leads); or even aid him somehow with magic may also work.
If the PCs manage to shift his attitude to indifferent, he accepts their apology and makes arrangements for the groomed horses to be sent to one of the outdoor theaters in town for his performance. If they shift his attitude to friendly, he is arrogant but pleasantly so—offering minor complements that in retrospect are condescending or insulting (“that shirt makes your face seem more attractive”), comparing them to lovers he’s discarded or servants he’s fired for minor failings, and so on. If a female PCs is responsible for his friendly attitude, he tries to seduce her; if she accepts, she’s just “the latest distraction,” but if she refuses, she “should be honored that a woman so unattractive gets any attention at all.” Thesing is not a pleasant man, and gets what he wants because of his talent (though he is not as good as he claims to be) and ability to manipulate people with his looks and charisma.
Unfortunately, Thesing’s performance later that evening doesn’t go as well as he’d hoped (one of the horses kicks one of the other actors), and he blames the PCs, both for tiring the horses beforehand and for forcing him to exert his voice too much before the opera, causing a slight tremor when he sings. (Though probably only a few people in attendance could hear it, he knew it was there.) This shifts his attitude one step toward hostile, and over time it just gets worse. Ulvauno appears in later volumes of the Council of Thieves Adventure Path and is a potential rival for the PCs; he remembers their actions and behavior in this encounter, perhaps even referring to them as “the horse thieves” depending on the outcome of this encounter.
Story Award: If the PCs leave Jacovo’s stables after shifting Thesing to an indifferent attitude, award them 900 XP. If his attitude is friendly when they leave, award them 1,200 XP
So, most APs are written with the expectation of being played on the medium XP track. The exception is Rise of the Runelords, which my group is playing at the moment on the fast XP track. We're about half way through book two, and (while we're enjoying it a lot) many of us are finding it a little TOO fast. It's almost as if the players are levelling up before they get a chance to fully come to grips with the abilities they gained from the previous level.
Hypothetically, if Paizo were to release an adventure path that was designed for the slow experience track, possibly finishing at around about 10th level, would you be less, or more interested in it? Would you find it frustrating?
Personally, I think it would be ideal for my group. I think I prefer a much more relaxed pace to a roleplaying game, but I'm sure a lot of groups would be very different. I also think it would solve a lot of the inevitable mechanical problems that come with high level play. And I don't think you necessarily have to have high level characters to tell an epic story. After all, if Lord of the Rings were an adventure path, what level do you think Frodo would've been by the end? Commoner 2/Rogue (Scout) 3?
Rise of the Rune Lords is Fast Track XP? We have been using medium. Though Fast Track just means you'd be 1 level higher.
I typically don't use XP in Adventure paths. I level the player up when then they need to be.
If someone wants an adventure path for the slow path... why not make one yourself and then offer to sell it as a PDF through Paizo? You'd have to avoid anything specific to Golarion (like its gods) but otherwise you could create an AP designed specifically for a slower pace of adventure. And it need not even be limited to six chapters in that case.
Or pitch it to a third-party producer. I'm sure there's someone who'd be happy to produce a product like this, if the story is interesting enough.
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I run my campaign on the Slow track, so I'd do an AP on the Slow track too by adding stuff. The compromise might be for it to be written as Medium while adding some compressed notes about what else a GM might put in to pad things out. You don't need lots of detail or full statblocks, just a page or two per character level.
I'm the opposite extreme.
I'd rather see an AP that started at 10th and went to 20th than one starting 1st which stopped right before I considered a character interesting enough to be worth remembering in a few years.
-TimD
I know it is unlikely to actually result in one, but I'd just like to add my voice to those that would love a Slow XP path. The lower levels are the ones in which investigation and mystery adventures thrive, and I feel AP are excellent at those (when they have the opportunity). I'd love for a path to fit an extra one or two of those in before advancing spells cancels it all out.
A six book AP that finishes at 10th level at slow progression would mean the party got 160,000 EXP for the entire AP.
Under medium progression, that'd put them at 11th. All slow progression does is put a party a level behind medium progression.
Anyways, a six book AP that only provides 160,000 XP per PC for the entire run would have to be really light on combat, and rarely or never have ECL+1 or higher fights.
In other words, as has been more or less already noted in this thread, Paizo's already done this (albeit by accident!), and it's called Council of Thieves.
My group runs the APs on slow progression, because we're running for a larger party and significantly ramp up encounters to compensate.
I kind of took that to an extreme in my Carrion Crown game - I was ramping up encounters so much that despite being on slow progression, my PCs got a level ahead of the recommended level. It was fun, though.
Hypothetically, if Paizo were to release an adventure path that was designed for the slow experience track, possibly finishing at around about 10th level, would you be less, or more interested in it? Would you find it frustrating?
Much, much more interested. Also, much more likely to run an AP rather than mine them for ideas.
Perhaps it's just a difference in RPG tastes these days, but I prefer the slower advancement of years past. Now, everything seems like a rush to the finish line. Rinse & repeat.
No group I have ever played in or run a campaign for was working towards an artifical level milestone. They played their characters b/c they enjoyed them and switched due to character death or out of a desire to try something else.
One of my few criticisms of the APs is that while no specific timelines are laid out, they seem to assume a very quick player progression. I've long since tired of the Newbie->Demigod in less than a year of campaign time paradigm.
And while it's not part of the AP line, the need to satisfy the "level-spread" of the Medium advancement track would prevent encounter padding/bloat as seen in Dragon's Demand, which had an excessive level-spread to cover, IMO. (The specific encounter I'm thinking of awards 40k+ XP for talking their way out of an encounter and avoiding combat. I'm all for awarding XP for things other than combat but I don't think a conversation is worth 40k+ XP.)
The thing that I find jarring is how fast, in game world time, the characters progress through levels. We are just wrapping up Carrion Crown, and in 90 days or so, the characters have gone from 1st to 15th level.
This. A thousand times this.
Now, I know the APs frequently build in suggestions on pacing, but that effort is largely undermined given that even if a GM is "tapping the brakes" between installments, the Medium track will have PCs leveling within days (likely) or weeks (if you're lucky).
There is one way to get around this, though for some campaigns like Wrath of the Righteous it would be impossible: institute Training rules.
The training doesn't need be nearly as expensive as in the AD&D days. It could be something so simple as cubing the level and multiplying by 50 (much like the cost of copying spells in a Wizard's spellbook). Thus it'd be 50 gp for lvl 2, 200 gp for lvl 3, 450 gp for lvl 4, and so forth. But the biggie is requiring the PCs to train for a week. They have to have off-time while training. But for training alone, it would be 17 weeks for training alone in adventuring. They also have to go to an area where they can train, so it's not just in-the-field. It even requires players to develop relations with mentors... and finding new mentors when they outstrip the teaching abilities of their existing mentor.
Thinking about it, there's also the option of just running an existing AP as slow progression and not adjusting encounters, even for a larger or higher point buy group.
This will result in the party being a level behind the AP's expected level.
If you ran Council of Thieves as-is on slow advancement, the party would start the final book at 10th level and be 12th by the end.
Of course, they'd also be 1st level for the entirety of Book 1, reaching 2nd level at the end.
That could be an interesting way to play an existing AP on hard mode.
My group's done this with the Serpent's Skull AP - five 20 point-buy PCs on slow progression, with the GM running it generally as-is. Our life oracle didn't have Heal until Book 5. We hit L15 right before the final dungeon in book 6, which made the final boss really, really nasty. (You're expected to be 16 to fight him. He has the potential to immediately wipe out a 15th level party.)
2) After we defeated the Charu-ka leadership in Savith-Yi, an usually smart Charu-ka rose to power and allied with us. We later fought the Gorilla King's forces in a joint venture. I'm still pleased to this day that my half-orc rogue 10/fighter 1 killed the Gorilla King with a thrown trident.
3) The cyclops general went with us into the Sanctum, and we sank some resources into outfitting him. Totally worth it, since it gave us someone who could actually go into melee with Ydersius and stay there.
4) When we invaded the Sanctum at the end of Book 6, the GM looked at the map, calculated distances, and then had the entire first floor come at us in waves. That resulted in an incredibly hectic but very cool fight.
Combat note - A bunch of 15 level (or lower - Kline, Juliver, and cohorts) characters getting hit by Ydersius's L20 Blasphemy at the start was bad. We probably would've been hosed if we hadn't had the general there to intercept Ydersius while nearly everyone else in the party was paralyzed for a round.
There are two general concepts being discussed here: one where the PCs end the AP at a lower level, and one where they take longer to end the AP at the same level. Both use the Slow progression, but one contains more stuff.
#1 can be done without any further adjustment, merely a recognition that the AP will be harder so you might want to start with a 25pt buy or have some other compensation.
#2 can be done with an existing AP, but the GM needs to pad it out with side quests and some redistribution of treasure to maintain roughly the right WBL.
The combination of these is the OP's proposal, an AP written to include those side quests but not hitting 17-18th level. In practice it would end up at something like 12-14th, on the basis that lower-level characters gain xp much more slowly than higher level ones, but low-level play is slightly faster than higher level (especially as the players would know the PCs' abilities better). So the same calendar time on Slow should give some 75% of the advancement you'd get in Medium.
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Personally I'd go mad.
Thing is, I've done 1st level before. I've done the thing where after three spells, my wizard is out. Playing a wizard who spends most of his day reloading a crossbow isn't fun anymore.
So for me, anything over about 4.5 sessions between leveling up would be frustrating... at least below about 9th. By then you've got access to enough feats, spells, powers, class features and so on that you can really start to mix & match and do something different and fun.
Of course, this is after playing (at least) once a week for the last decade plus. I have the same shudder of revulsion when someone mentions a Core-only <shudder of revulsion> campaign. You'd might as well just hand me pre-gens using the elite array and default equipment. <Gag>
Thing is, I've done 1st level before. I've done the thing where after three spells, my wizard is out. Playing a wizard who spends most of his day reloading a crossbow isn't fun anymore.
I have the same shudder of revulsion when someone mentions a Core-only <shudder of revulsion> campaign. You'd might as well just hand me pre-gens using the elite array and default equipment. <Gag>
What this guy said on both counts.
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It's why I start my players off at 2nd level.
Of course, that's another possibility. Start everyone off at 0 XPs, but 2nd level. So they have to adventure twice as long to reach 3rd level... but they're not underpowered and have some ability. (Similarly you could just start people at 3rd level - for Sorcerers that adds another 1st level spell, gives everyone else an extra feat, and 2nd level spells for Wizards and Clerics.)
While I as a GM might like leveling up people slower and a more gradual pace to gaming (to the point I put the "gradual leveling" mod on my Skyrim PC game), I've noticed some of my players do not. They want quick leveling. They want to become powerful quickly. So really, to each their own.
Most adventure paths I've read have extra time built into them somewhere for crafting purposes, et cetera. It would be pretty easy in most cases to add side adventures or maybe even an ongoing subplot in between chapters.
In Council of Thieves, for example, each chapter has the potential for long breaks in between where something else can happen. In Jade Regent, the caravan journey can be paused for a sidequest.
I think I'd prefer that approach to a campaign a bit more, since it provides the feeling that there's a lot more going on at the time than just stuff which is relevant to the adventure path.
Charlie, that's a neat idea. The only difficulty I see there is that you want to make sure the players don't get off track. An AP by definition is a long railroad... you don't want your players deciding between books 2 and 3 that the interstitial material is what they want to spend their careers working on. So as long as things wrap nicely back into the main plot, that'd be kind of cool.
It's why I start my players off at 2nd level.
Of course, that's another possibility. Start everyone off at 0 XPs, but 2nd level. So they have to adventure twice as long to reach 3rd level... but they're not underpowered and have some ability.
I also start everyone at 2nd, minimum, but I hadn't thought of still having them be 0 XP at that point. I will give that one a shot!
I would prefer fast xp, and having every AP go to level 20.