I can't seem to locate the previous thread on game difficulty, and a new thread to discuss the "difficulty" of the game seemed appropriate.
I find that our normal group of 4 or 5 people tear through the game because of three main factors:
1) Each character is able to close a location on their first or second turns pretty consistently (except for the fighter, that is). We even poke fun of each other if we fail to close a location on our turn. There needs to be a mechanic to place henchmen and villains closer to the bottom of the deck (maybe a Pandemic type system).
2) Our players NEVER fail a monster check (1 fail per 3 play sessions). Monsters' checks should be higher and they should scale with the number of players in the game. Most monsters should always do some combat damage making armor much more valuable.
3) Blessings make encounters trivial. Here are some suggestions on how to curtail some of their usefulness:
- Blessings always add a D4.
- Blessings can only be used by players in the same location. (?unless you have the divine skill?)
- Only one blessing may be played per check by anyone.
- Blessings played by players in other locations are always buried. (?unless divine skill?)
I know you don't want to over complicate an already complicated game, but I find our play group quickly losing interest in the game because it is waaaaay too easy. I told them A4 would be harder, but the first two scenarios might have been even easier than the previous adventures.
=(
The other thread(s) you mentioned are here and here.
Can I ask, are you saying each character is finding a henchman in the location deck in their first turn or two? So that by the time 10 turns is complete you've got 4 or 5 locations closed? I wasn't quite sure how to read what you said.
Also, who are your 4 or 5 characters?
you could always just "up" the difficulty on yourselves by using any of those rules you mentioned. You could also try adding extra locations, lowering the number of cards in the blessing deck, or just removing monsters that you find too easy. Nothing is holding you to the exact playstyle mentioned in the rulebook, if you want to challenge yourselves, then just do so.
Huh, did you not run into a lot of the newer monsters, maybe? We hit the shining child two or three times, and seemed to find a troll every adventure, which necessitated Poog or Charmed Fire Dragon or just leaving and trying to avoid it. Then there were the harpies, which caused us to burn blessing on Wisdom checks even after Merisiel found the +2 wisdom headband.
Maybe you've got a better spread of abilities/blessings in a larger game, but as Meri and Kyra we felt a lot more pressure in this AP, and had to hold blessings back for combat checks way more often than we have in previous APs. I don't think we're doing anything "wrong." We play a heavy scouting game. Meri's got Magic Spyglass and Shalelu, Kyra uses Augury. Both of us noticed a problem with getting weapons into our hands, due to decks getting bigger, I guess. We took weapon feats at the end of AP4.
When playing 6 player solo I definitely do not find that closing locations happens nearly that often. I would also say that 2 of the things you are mentioning seem to contradict each other to me.
If you are closing a location almost every turn with every character that tells me that you are using the maximum number of blessings/allies/etc to explore as much as possible and that you are using up a decent amount of those as well (if you are only able to explore 2 times then out of 10 cards - or even 8 cards on turn 2, that's not terribly likely to turn up the villain or the henchman). It *could* happen but it's not going to happen enough where every game you're taunting people on the rare chance it doesn't happen, so this tells me that you are exploring at least 3-4 times and using up that many allies and blessings every turn.
I guess that's possible, but if you're using blessings to explore that much then how do you still have enough blessings to use out of turn to help other people to make all of those encounters trivial?
Yes, the game is not amazingly difficult but I don't think it's nearly as easy as you're describing.
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When people come here (or BGG, or wherever) and say "the game is too easy," they really need to recognize that they're not giving anything but anecdotal evidence. Everyone has their own experience with the game, and while most of these experiences are probably typical, some of them will likely be atypical. Some parties will hit a lot of easy monsters, make their rolls to acquire boons all the time, and otherwise have an "easy" experience.
Others will have dice that just don't cooperate, difficult banes that pop up, and the like. These players might still win, but it will seem like a challenge.
The only way to "prove" which one is the more typical experience is to gather a great deal of play-test data from a decent number of groups over time. I am hoping that Paizo (or someone else) creates a website that can collect this data and publish these statistics. This could allow all of us to compare one adventure path vs. another, one character vs. another, one scenario to another, etc. to determine how things really stand.
I've said this before, but I'll say it again: I think it truly depends on the characters you're running.
that being said, though, I recently finished part 4 with my solo play of lini, and I ran outta time doing the first quest. 25 cards in the loc. deck was really hard on me. I can't imagine trying to do it with each character getting only 4 turns on average.
I'd love to have a video of the 'game is too easy' crowd to find out how they are consistently defeating the odds.
Yes.
I was playing a game of Sentinels of the Multiverse over skype with a friend and his roommate about six months ago. We defeated a Villain that my friend and I had never won against before - which the roommate then declared was "easy". It was only later that I found out from my friend that the roommate (who had been playing a hero that I wasn't familiar with) had been repeatedly playing a card that said "Return all cards of type X to your hand" as if you could pull all cards of that type from in play AND from his discard pile, which was not the case. So he was burning through those cards and then getting them all back from his discard and through this incorrect play had gotten a bunch of extra damage on the Villain. I'm not sure why my friend didn't say anything at the time but in the end all that mattered was that the only reason we won was because he'd been playing incorrectly (it was a pretty close game).
Ever since then I've been a lot more wary about anyone who labels something as too easy. It's certainly possible that others have developed strats that are superior to mine and have created always-win scenarios. But, as Calthaer mentions above, just getting on here and declaring that the game is too easy doesn't really mean anything.
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This occurred early in the development of the game.
Chad: "How often do you think the characters should lose a fight?"
Me: "How often do Pathfinder characters lose a fight?"
Chad: "Basically never."
Me: "Okay, more than that."
I'm playing Amiri on her own. This is the first AP I've really struggled with - I've never had a scenario fail twice in a row up until now, but keep running into problems with the Black Tower (it's taking me ages to close the first two locations and I've been a little unlucky with the monsters I'm meeting).
I'll cheerfully confess to not being particularly good at games and I think that might be part of the problem. Paizo need to pitch the game near the middle of the bell curve - even if they want it to be "tough" there's probably not much mileage in making it as hard as the very clever players would like. If it was pitched where the OP would find it challenging, I think I would have given up a long time ago.
With online RPGs, claims like the one the OP is making are usually met with the response, "Screenshot or it didn't happen." I don't see much reason why something similar wouldn't apply here. How are we to trust that the rules are being followed as they should, that dice shenanigans are not taking place and that the location decks aren't or haven't been stacked with the best goodies?
I for one feel the difficulty of the game is just about right. You want a more difficult game? They're out there; go find one. Or, implement house rules to make this one more of a challenge for you if needed. Also, if the laws of probability don't seem to exist as normal around your group the way they do for most of the rest of us, perhaps you should go buy a lottery ticket instead of complaining on the forums ;)
I've always marveled at all the comments about the game being too easy. I'm playing three different groups so far (6, 4 and 3-player) and we are losing scenarios about 1/3 of the time. And our most advanced group, the 4-player, as only recently begun the 2nd Adventure Deck.
My wife has this habit of finding a henchman or villain on her first turn/explore. But even still, that doesn't guarantee a win. The last scenario for the 6-person group was Black Fang. I think we closed 3 locations in the first 6 turns, yet we still lost the scenario and my brother-in-law's Seelah died due to his aggressive use of cards!
My take on the game is it's very enjoyable, requires planning and strategy, comes down to luck on a lot of explores and rolls, and most of our wins have been nail-biting.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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After filling the locations and before adding the henchmen, shuffle the nine cards take 4 cards shuffle in the henchman/boss card, take the remaining 5 cards and place them on top. Repeat for each location.
...and if that's too easy, just stick them all on the bottom of each deck.
As has been pointed out, this doesn't necessarily make the game harder. First, it gives you information about the locations of henchmen and villains in the decks, which you can use for "safe" explores. Second, it means on average you will encounter more boons before banishing the location deck, which over time should lead to better decks.
A better way might be:if you defeat a henchman or villain, and there are more than 5 cards left in the location deck, they are undefeated.
That still carries the benefit of more chances to get boons - if you really wnat to crank it up, have them be undefeated and banish all the boons left in the location deck.
I can't seem to locate the previous thread on game difficulty, and a new thread to discuss the "difficulty" of the game seemed appropriate.
I find that our normal group of 4 or 5 people tear through the game because of three main factors:
1) Each character is able to close a location on their first or second turns pretty consistently (except for the fighter, that is). We even poke fun of each other if we fail to close a location on our turn. There needs to be a mechanic to place henchmen and villains closer to the bottom of the deck (maybe a Pandemic type system).
2) Our players NEVER fail a monster check (1 fail per 3 play sessions). Monsters' checks should be higher and they should scale with the number of players in the game. Most monsters should always do some combat damage making armor much more valuable.
3) Blessings make encounters trivial. Here are some suggestions on how to curtail some of their usefulness:
- Blessings always add a D4.
- Blessings can only be used by players in the same location. (?unless you have the divine skill?)
- Only one blessing may be played per check by anyone.
- Blessings played by players in other locations are always buried. (?unless divine skill?)I know you don't want to over complicate an already complicated game, but I find our play group quickly losing interest in the game because it is waaaaay too easy. I told them A4 would be harder, but the first two scenarios might have been even easier than the previous adventures.
=(
Shuffle better?
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A mistake I've seen with several groups thinking the game is too easy, is trying to close the locations when they aren't allowed to. First off, when a henchman is defeated, only the person who defeated the henchman can try to close it, and can only try once. If they fail, noone is allowed to try to close it again until the location is 100% empty, and then each player can try once on their turn.
If you defeat a henchman and close the location, and the villain is in the deck, it doesn't close. Everything except the villain is banished as usual, but the location deck stays open with the villain still there.
The game has been easy enough for our group to regularly empty every deck, skipping the auto-close from henchman in order to obtain more cards.
I have to ask: You didn't really mean auto close, right? Defeating a henchman lets you attempt to close, not automatically close. You still have to fulfill the When Closing requirement. Maybe you meant "early" close?
Sophismata, how many characters are you using? I'm guessing you have to be in the 2-3 range. Even so, I am surprised you are able to empty every deck.
I imagine you're using a fair amount of Cures.
I regularly play with 4 characters. I don't come close to emptying the decks.
With 2 characters playing 6 locations I'd say we completely empty 1-3 locations per game without repercussion. We almost never temp. close locations either.
With 2 characters playing 6 locations I'd say we completely empty 1-3 locations per game without repercussion. We almost never temp. close locations either.
6 locations * 10 = 60 total possible explorations, not counting any failed ones that get shuffled back into the deck. If you are almost never TEMP closing locations, and you are completely clearing 3 of these locations, that's 30 explorations right there. Granted many turns will get multiple explores but not without the penalty usually of discarding a card to keep going. I don't see how you are getting this done in just 30 timer blessings, nor killing off your characters.
You are flipping a blessing for each characters turn, yes? You don't all get a turn on one blessing... I've heard a few people think that was the case resulting in really easy games. Just wondering.
Pshaw, we know how to flip the blessing deck. Most-to-all blessings/allies get used for explorations (being slightly more reserved with blessings in AP4, now that monsters are much harder). Multiple staves of healing and cures to recover them, and spyglasses, auguries, and Shalelu to know what's worth what.
Curious how you guys are able to clear and close everything so well. We just started playing not long ago and every time we have lost. Not died just run out of counters. So how are you able to do this without killing off your chars since they only have 15 health?
Hi Koruse. Welcome to PACG! While I don't find the game quite as easy as delslow, I can perhaps offer some advice on how to not time out the blessing deck.
The bigger your party, the more aggressively you will need to explore each turn. So you'll probably need to spend your allies and blessings to explore instead of for their other powers. And the bigger your party, the more you need to get aggressive with exploring.
While the attempting to close a location after defeating a henchman is optional, think very carefully before you pass up that option.
And spread out your characters. You only need to permanently close 2 locations to win. The rest of the locations can be temporarily closed when you encounter the villain. It might not always work out that way, but as the timer starts to run down, spread out as much as you can, so that when you find the villain you can get the other locations temporarily closed.
Well, I just did the first scenario of part 5. It was extremely easy, but there might have been some luck involved. The scenario power didn't really change anything, and the henchmen/monsters/locations weren't too bad. It had a Shrine to Lamashtu, but we got lucky and found the villain there before any blessings were encountered.
The scenarios coming up look a lot more difficult, so I'll see how those go.
Hawkmoon thank you We will give that a try. We run 4 people. So will try the closing 2 onky. That should be more helpful.