I first got into Paizo's APs because I didn't want to create a campaign from scratch. Runelords was premade and all in one book, so it was easy for me to use. Hero Labs allowed me to modify it further and have fun with it.
My suspicion is that with programs like Hero Labs, GMs are much more likely to modify the campaigns to suit their needs. The AP is a foundation from which we can build on. So yes, we use the APs to save time. But modifying something that is already built is not that difficult, especially as computers become integrated into roleplaying record keeping. It was one thing a decade ago when computers might be used for character sheet generation, but wasn't integrated into the game itself. Nowadays more and more GMs are using computers to run many aspects of the game.
Think of it as a GM-controlled computer game. We can use online map programs and spreadsheet programs to keep all the data functioning smoothly. But the GM is the one still doing the storytelling and the players are interacting with one another. In many ways it's the best of both worlds - the creativity of tabletop and the versatility of computer games.
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Well, at the very least the Agile template can make (with some slight modifications) make single boss encounters more viable. ^^I agree, but I have to add, that I really love the mythic rules and it is not unlikely, that I will change future campaigns to include/replace some level advancement and wealth per level with mythic tiers.
Level 10/Tier 4-5 could be more interesting (giving players more ways to flesh out their character) than straight level 15.Since I my group consists of veterans of a variety of systems (and they are great tacticians) I will have to rewrite most encounters anyway.
I think all the new templates are excellent additions to the game (don't forget invincible), the add a bit of offensive/defensive power, bonus hit points, and provide an easy way to surprise old metagaming players (divine, arcane).
More excellent, bite sized rules like this, are always a welcome addition to the game.
Well, at the very least the Agile template can make (with some slight modifications) make single boss encounters more viable. ^^
I agree. If nothing else, Mythic has made my non-mythic games so much more interesting. I used Mythic on the boss fight of Chapter 3 of shattered Star
** spoiler omitted **
Very nice idea, that little spash of mythic power can make enemies more memorable and epic^^
Creative Director
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But when the next edition of Pathfinder comes around (I say this with the usual caveats of "if" and "when"), there needs to be some discussion and action about how high-level can be made more manageable and less rocket tag-y. Although that discussion already happened in the playtest of this edition of the game, not that much was actually done about it. It would be nice if we could find a way to make monsters last longer and be more of a credible threat to high-level parties.I'll better stop now before I get carried away and start ranting about magic item crafting and encounter design. ^^
That's absolutely true, but it takes a back seat to the more important "How much can we get away with changing the rules that everyone's already comfortable with?" question. When we first did Pathfinder, the answer to that question was "Very little." Today, with more than a decade of customer loyalty and trust built up in Paizo, we've got a lot more leverage to make riskier and bolder decisions, and if/when at some point in the future we DO decide to do a 2nd edition, we'll have, in theory, even more leverage.
How much more? Who knows?
Baphomet has the Summon Demons ability just like any other Demon Lord right? So why not us that?
Summon Demons (Sp) Three times per day as a swift action, a demon lord can summon any demon or combination of demons whose total combined CR is 20 or lower. This otherwise works like the summon universal monster rule, with a 100% chance of success. This counts as a 9th-level spell effect.CR 20 worth of demons... When I first read this a few days ago, I couldn't help but think of a post Ashiel made detailing out this very thing.
** spoiler omitted **...
Hm. For some reason, when I first read that ability I thought it was a strict addition of CRs, which wouldn't really be that good. Of course, that reading doesn't make any sense either. Thanks for enlightening me :)
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On the topic itself, I feel the mythic CR guidelines are a bit strange. They suggest that for a group of level 12/rank 6 characters, 1/3rd of encounters should be CR 12, 1/3rd should be CR 15, and 1/3rd should be CR 13-14. So all encounters should be between CR 12 and CR 15.
That's only barely above what would be normal if the characters didn't have any mythic ranks at all, and, considering an L12/MR6 group is supposedly equivalent to an APL 15 group, it's even far below what would be an average set of encounters for a group of 15th-level normal characters.
In the given example, I'd say it would be more appropriate for the lowest end of encounters to be CR 13-14, while the highest should be CR 17-18.
I haven't yet read through the AP, so I can't really say whether the encounters within are pushovers or not, but if they're built close to the CR guideline in Mythic Adventures, then they're likely to be.
But when the next edition of Pathfinder comes around (I say this with the usual caveats of "if" and "when"), there needs to be some discussion and action about how high-level can be made more manageable and less rocket tag-y. Although that discussion already happened in the playtest of this edition of the game, not that much was actually done about it. It would be nice if we could find a way to make monsters last longer and be more of a credible threat to high-level parties.I'll better stop now before I get carried away and start ranting about magic item crafting and encounter design. ^^
That's absolutely true, but it takes a back seat to the more important "How much can we get away with changing the rules that everyone's already comfortable with?" question. When we first did Pathfinder, the answer to that question was "Very little." Today, with more than a decade of customer loyalty and trust built up in Paizo, we've got a lot more leverage to make riskier and bolder decisions, and if/when at some point in the future we DO decide to do a 2nd edition, we'll have, in theory, even more leverage.
How much more? Who knows?
Well, I hope to be part of that discussion as much as is possible from the outside. We'll see "how much more" if/when it happens. At the very least I hope to make some substantial points of discussion on the questions of "why do we do things this particular way?", in regards to high-level play, SoD and "Save or Suck" spells (and those new "save and still suck" variety ones), magic item dependency and crafting magic items.
Anyway, back to the scheduled program about mythic gameplay. :p
But when the next edition of Pathfinder comes around (I say this with the usual caveats of "if" and "when"), there needs to be some discussion and action about how high-level can be made more manageable and less rocket tag-y. Although that discussion already happened in the playtest of this edition of the game, not that much was actually done about it. It would be nice if we could find a way to make monsters last longer and be more of a credible threat to high-level parties.I'll better stop now before I get carried away and start ranting about magic item crafting and encounter design. ^^
That's absolutely true, but it takes a back seat to the more important "How much can we get away with changing the rules that everyone's already comfortable with?" question. When we first did Pathfinder, the answer to that question was "Very little." Today, with more than a decade of customer loyalty and trust built up in Paizo, we've got a lot more leverage to make riskier and bolder decisions, and if/when at some point in the future we DO decide to do a 2nd edition, we'll have, in theory, even more leverage.
How much more? Who knows?
It depends on how far from the original Pathfinder v.2 goes.
Let's put it this way. D&D 4rd ed. failed because the rumors were out that classes were being seriously altered to the point we'd no longer see the core classes we were so familiar with... and some races as well. So many people said "I'm not leaving 3rd edition..." and Pathfinder pulled out v.3.75 that helped deal with some significant issues while retaining the core elements of what made AD&D great.
When D&D 3.0 came out, it was not a significant deviation from 2nd edition AD&D. You still had the core classes and the core races. Instead, we had elements condensed that were needlessly complex, such as saving throws, attacks per round, and so forth.
So Pathfinder 2.0 would need to retain the elements that players truly enjoy. Core classes would be one. Core races another. From there, combat could be modified to make it easier and faster, as could magic. A better sense of balance between the classes is also something that would be well suited to the game.
(Another thing that is inherent to the system, which D&D 4 forgot, was that part of the fun inherent in fantasy roleplaying is the concept of the ordinary person who achieves greatness over time. This is why Pathfinder succeeded while D&D 4 failed - 4th ed. had you start out uber and slowly grow more uber... while Pathfinder remained on the road of starting out low and growing into greatness.)
So really, what's needed is for Pathfinder 2.0 to retain that growth from ordinary to extraordinary... but to also allow for the epic battles where two foes would rain blows on one another, slowly weakening one another, before finally one prevails.... rather than taking a Black Arrow of Dragonslaying and one-shotting Smaug. The latter may seem dramatic, but ultimately it loses something in translation.
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I first got into Paizo's APs because I didn't want to create a campaign from scratch. Runelords was premade and all in one book, so it was easy for me to use. Hero Labs allowed me to modify it further and have fun with it.
My suspicion is that with programs like Hero Labs, GMs are much more likely to modify the campaigns to suit their needs. The AP is a foundation from which we can build on. So yes, we use the APs to save time. But modifying something that is already built is not that difficult, especially as computers become integrated into roleplaying record keeping. It was one thing a decade ago when computers might be used for character sheet generation, but wasn't integrated into the game itself. Nowadays more and more GMs are using computers to run many aspects of the game.
Think of it as a GM-controlled computer game. We can use online map programs and spreadsheet programs to keep all the data functioning smoothly. But the GM is the one still doing the storytelling and the players are interacting with one another. In many ways it's the best of both worlds - the creativity of tabletop and the versatility of computer games.
These days it would require an intervention to keep me away from my hero lab, my pdfs and d20pfsrd.com.
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It is pretty disheartening to see the creative director basically stick his fingers in his ears and say "lalala it's the gms fault not ours" every high level adventure 12+ needs massive tinkering to not completely fall apart from my experience. this is from someone who has been running D20 system since it came out, you have to try hard to NOT break the system.
It could SOMETIMES be a case of inexperienced or bad DM's but not acknowledging the glut of terrible problems high level play has and addressing them in the adventure design (make the battles harder) seems to give off a "I don't give a crap people will buy this stuff regardless" kind of attitude.
"There are no problems everything is going according to plan"
*SIGH*
I love the adventure paths (greatest rpg idea ever) but there is big room for improvement in the back halves of these paths, not even seeing a problem is really disheartening.
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But when the next edition of Pathfinder comes around (I say this with the usual caveats of "if" and "when"), there needs to be some discussion and action about how high-level can be made more manageable and less rocket tag-y. Although that discussion already happened in the playtest of this edition of the game, not that much was actually done about it. It would be nice if we could find a way to make monsters last longer and be more of a credible threat to high-level parties.I'll better stop now before I get carried away and start ranting about magic item crafting and encounter design. ^^
That's absolutely true, but it takes a back seat to the more important "How much can we get away with changing the rules that everyone's already comfortable with?" question. When we first did Pathfinder, the answer to that question was "Very little." Today, with more than a decade of customer loyalty and trust built up in Paizo, we've got a lot more leverage to make riskier and bolder decisions, and if/when at some point in the future we DO decide to do a 2nd edition, we'll have, in theory, even more leverage.
How much more? Who knows?
Well, I hope to be part of that discussion as much as is possible from the outside. We'll see "how much more" if/when it happens. At the very least I hope to make some substantial points of discussion on the questions of "why do we do things this particular way?", in regards to high-level play, SoD and "Save or Suck" spells (and those new "save and still suck" variety ones), magic item dependency and crafting magic items.
Anyway, back to the scheduled program about mythic gameplay. :p
But when the next edition of Pathfinder comes around (I say this with the usual caveats of "if" and "when"), there needs to be some discussion and action about how high-level can be made more manageable and less rocket tag-y. Although that discussion already happened in the playtest of this edition of the game, not that much was actually done about it. It would be nice if we could find a way to make monsters last longer and be more of a credible threat to high-level parties.I'll better stop now before I get carried away and start ranting about magic item crafting and encounter design. ^^
That's absolutely true, but it takes a back seat to the more important "How much can we get away with changing the rules that everyone's already comfortable with?" question. When we first did Pathfinder, the answer to that question was "Very little." Today, with more than a decade of customer loyalty and trust built up in Paizo, we've got a lot more leverage to make riskier and bolder decisions, and if/when at some point in the future we DO decide to do a 2nd edition, we'll have, in theory, even more leverage.
How much more? Who knows?
It depends on how far from the original Pathfinder v.2 goes.
Let's put it this way. D&D 4rd ed. failed because the rumors were out that classes were being seriously altered to the point we'd no longer see the core classes we were so familiar with... and some races as well. So many people said "I'm not leaving 3rd edition..." and Pathfinder pulled out v.3.75 that helped deal with some significant issues while retaining the core elements of what made AD&D great.
When D&D 3.0 came out, it was not a significant deviation from 2nd edition AD&D. You still had the core classes and the core races. Instead, we had elements condensed that were needlessly complex, such as saving throws, attacks per round, and so forth.
So Pathfinder 2.0 would need to retain the elements that players truly enjoy. Core classes would be...
I am expecting, more of the good design I have seen from Paizo in the last years and while mythic adventures has some problems (most of them came from other sources, and you can't expect MA to "fix" the game)after hoping to get another ELH, Paizo has done something far better.
The abiltiy to use powers that feel epic, at any level, show an understanding of game design, that I miss in other RPGs.That said, if in a couple of years, Paizo decides to take this grand venture, I would love to be part of the playtest (and fight tooth and claw for what I think makes the game better :P )
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It is pretty disheartening to see the creative director basically stick his fingers in his ears and say "lalala it's the gms fault not ours" every high level adventure 12+ needs massive tinkering to not completely fall apart from my experience. this is from someone who has been running D20 system since it came out, you have to try hard to NOT break the system.
It could SOMETIMES be a case of inexperienced or bad DM's but not acknowledging the glut of terrible problems high level play has and addressing them in the adventure design (make the battles harder) seems to give off a "I don't give a crap people will buy this stuff regardless" kind of attitude.
"There are no problems everything is going according to plan"
*SIGH*
I love the adventure paths (greatest rpg idea ever) but there is big room for improvement in the back halves of these paths, not even seeing a problem is really disheartening.
Well, it is ususally easy to make combats a bit more challenging. And you have to realize, the problem with high level play, come most of the time from the core rulebook.
Back when they made the Pathfinder RPG, they could not change that much, and frankly, even at this point in time they can't just errata/change the core rules to the extend, that would be required to "fix" the insanity that is high level play.
Is the problem with Mythic simply that the templates don't give enough 'oomph' when compared to actual Mythic Paths? If so, have you considered just giving the monsters Mythic Paths instead of Templates?
Maybe even build your self some 'templates' of Mythic Path abilities you like to mimic some of the templates already existing?
For instance, selecting something like the Guardian path for an 'Invincible' template and selecting the DR and Regen abilities, maybe even dual-path Archgmage for Eldritch Armor or something.
It is pretty disheartening to see the creative director basically stick his fingers in his ears and say "lalala it's the gms fault not ours" every high level adventure 12+ needs massive tinkering to not completely fall apart from my experience. this is from someone who has been running D20 system since it came out, you have to try hard to NOT break the system.
It could SOMETIMES be a case of inexperienced or bad DM's but not acknowledging the glut of terrible problems high level play has and addressing them in the adventure design (make the battles harder) seems to give off a "I don't give a crap people will buy this stuff regardless" kind of attitude.
"There are no problems everything is going according to plan"
*SIGH*
I love the adventure paths (greatest rpg idea ever) but there is big room for improvement in the back halves of these paths, not even seeing a problem is really disheartening.
Come to think of it, there is across the different AP boards a conspicuous silence by GM's who express frustration about how difficult the later AP modules are. I mean, I don't really see many posts at all about that. It could of course be selective bias by me, but at best there seem to be GM's whom say that the challenge level was about right on some important fights.
But expressions of "this was too hard on my group" seem to be missing for the later AP modules, they really seem across the board to be only a thing for the first two or three modules of an AP.
Is the problem with Mythic simply that the templates don't give enough 'oomph' when compared to actual Mythic Paths? If so, have you considered just giving the monsters Mythic Paths instead of Templates?
Maybe even build your self some 'templates' of Mythic Path abilities you like to mimic some of the templates already existing?
For instance, selecting something like the Guardian path for an 'Invincible' template and selecting the DR and Regen abilities, maybe even dual-path Archgmage for Eldritch Armor or something.
That is something scorpion_mdj has been doing. It really helps a ton to bring opponents up to par.
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It is pretty disheartening to see the creative director basically stick his fingers in his ears and say "lalala it's the gms fault not ours" every high level adventure 12+ needs massive tinkering to not completely fall apart from my experience. this is from someone who has been running D20 system since it came out, you have to try hard to NOT break the system.
It could SOMETIMES be a case of inexperienced or bad DM's but not acknowledging the glut of terrible problems high level play has and addressing them in the adventure design (make the battles harder) seems to give off a "I don't give a crap people will buy this stuff regardless" kind of attitude.
"There are no problems everything is going according to plan"
*SIGH*
I love the adventure paths (greatest rpg idea ever) but there is big room for improvement in the back halves of these paths, not even seeing a problem is really disheartening.
Huh, I absolutely didn't see what he said in that light. Strange how something can be interpreted so differently between two people.
I suppose it depends on what you wanted the AP to provide for your purchase. If your intent was to purchase it so that you could use the mechanics of it to challenge your players, I can see why needing to modify it to your needs would be a frustration.
Much of the reason I wanted it was to find a strong story core that I could bend my own mechanics around. In that light, it's been an excellent purchase. The statistics of NPCs and monsters presented I do tend to greatly modify, but thanks to the forum resources it's not a huge challenge to do. Really, the gold within the pages comes from the story presented, which I absolutely love.
With the amount of responses on the WotR forums we've had from Mr. Dinosaur, I certainly don't think the intention is to say "people will buy this stuff regardless". I think it's to clarify that the mechanics will cater to a less experienced player base, while the story will still be a strong reason to purchase the AP even if you're hosting a more experienced group of players.
I'm definitely in the latter category, as some of my players have made monstrously powerful characters. I'm looking forward to modifying the encounters heavily and adding my own mechanics to give them a challenge, but I absolutely respect that sometimes that can be quite a lot of work for me or any GM.
I think it's to clarify that the mechanics will cater to a less experienced player base, while the story will still be a strong reason to purchase the AP even if you're hosting a more experienced group of players.One of the problems with this concept, however, is that the mechanics seem meant to cater to less experienced players, but with mythic thrown on top of high level (even mid level) play, even those less experienced people can very easily construct characters that find the AP a cakewalk (and if the group is less experienced, then they'll be significantly less able to adjust as needed). In that sense, mythic "dials up" the problems to the point where it becomes noticeable even by those less experienced groups.
Ahh, OK, I see where you're coming from. My players' levels of experience already necessitates me having to do heavy adjustments of the encounters, but that would certainly be off-putting to have a less rules savvy group of players feel no sense of an epic challenge from the AP. Scaling up raw numbers doesnt seem like a very elegant solution to the problem, but I'm a big fan of the more dynamic boss mechanics that have been suggested in other threads here.
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Well, I think you can't just brush off the criticisms with the "we can't account for experienced players", especially when some aspects which are clearly unbalanced are baked into the mythic system (i.e. Amazing Initiative) or will be taken by everyone who can read (i.e. Power Attack and Mythic Power Attack for melee).
I am not arguing, but i would like to say that are people out there playing Pathfinder RPG that can't read in english. They are intelligent people, some even have P.H.D.s, they just never had any motives to learn english and for some motive or another started to play Pathfinder and just want to have fun.
Beside people who can't read, there are people who just want to roleplay and don't want to take combat-oriented abilities everytime they level. Adventure Paths are know in Brazil for their rp aspects and not because they are challenging.
I have to wonder if WotR seems so easy because it comes on the heels of Reign of Winter - an AP which was NOT a cakewalk for quite a few of the encounters. And the funny thing is, RoW just BEGS to be Mythic. The +2 to stats for the Mantle of the Black Rider is quite similar to that from the second Mythic Tier. Other abilities given in Book 6 are likewise akin to Mythic Tiers in some ways. Yet that AP proved to be... nasty.
And I say that having a group three levels above what they should be (though they'll finish at 6th level so that disparity will slowly lessen). I still managed to take a group with rolled stats (35-point equivalent) and could have killed half the group without trying if I really wanted to.
So I must wonder if WotR became "easier" in part because RoW was designed for veteran players. It overcompensated. And the crew at Paizo wanted the players to feel Mythic. Thus "easy fights" rather than more balanced conflicts.
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Creative Director
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It is pretty disheartening to see the creative director basically stick his fingers in his ears and say "lalala it's the gms fault not ours" every high level adventure 12+ needs massive tinkering to not completely fall apart from my experience. this is from someone who has been running D20 system since it came out, you have to try hard to NOT break the system.
It could SOMETIMES be a case of inexperienced or bad DM's but not acknowledging the glut of terrible problems high level play has and addressing them in the adventure design (make the battles harder) seems to give off a "I don't give a crap people will buy this stuff regardless" kind of attitude.
"There are no problems everything is going according to plan"
*SIGH*
I love the adventure paths (greatest rpg idea ever) but there is big room for improvement in the back halves of these paths, not even seeing a problem is really disheartening.
Sorry you interpreted my response that way, since that's not the point I was trying to make.
We DO listen, and we DO constantly work to improve our Adventure Paths. But the time it takes for us to react and apply what we learn is significant; I'm getting ready to outline the August AP for 2015 already, and that's more or less the earliest I can draw feedback from Wrath of the Righteous into the early design goals of an AP.
That said, in a LOT of ways, Wrath of the Righteous was in uncharted territory since it had such increasing reliance on new rules.
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Creative Director
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And the main reason you see more comments about earlier adventures being hard, I suspect, has more to do with the simple fact that more folks play the lower level adventures. This isn't because the higher level ones are worse or harder or whatever as much as they are simply the ones you play later in the cycle. As we all know, there are LOTS of reasons why game groups never finish campaigns, and that skews feedback results toward the earlier adventures, unfortunately.
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I *LOVED* the response I got in the Rise of the Runelords: Spires of Xin-Shalast GM thread:
"I just noticed this obvious error. Why hasn't anyone else reported it?"
"A: No one else has gotten that far?"
James is right; there's a HUGE skew towards the first 3-4 modules of an AP just due to groups falling apart before finishing... We've finished modules 1 of Kingmaker and Council of Thieves, Modules 1-5 of Crimson Throne, and Modules 1-6 (with luck) of Carrion Crown and Rise of the Runelords. (I'm hoping Karzoug falls this Saturday, but using that Prismatic Wall to split the party in two and then killing off half the party is just going to be brutal. I'll feel awful the whole time I'm doing it...)
That makes us 2-for-5 (40%), and we're a dedicated, long-standing group with no serious changes to group makeup since we started 2 years ago.
(I'm not counting Shattered Star in the 'aborted campaigns' set, because it was the kids' campaign, and to blame an AP for two 9-year-olds and a 12-year-old abandoning it is totally unfair to Paizo. They're loving Serpent's Skull so far, though...)
Yes, the problem that the GM's which actually get to finish AP's is much less than the number which only partially go through them is something well known. But from the ones which actually get there, you seldomly hear much about how difficult those modules were for the player characters. I think taking this lack of feedback as "all is well" is the wrong approach, especially when complaints usually fall on the side of "this is too easy!".
If most novice groups never get to these modules and the non-novice groups which get there are not challenged, then maybe the general assumption should be that the level of difficulty should be raised, to account for mostly experienced groups even playing the high-level parts of the AP's.
After all, the argument that "you can always adjust the encounters" cuts both ways. A GM can also always tailor hard encounters down when the group is composed of less experienced players (or experienced players who chose to collectively get a bit eclectic in their character choices ^^). If mostly experienced groups are the ones who run the high-level content, I think it should be Paizo's obligation to tailor their AP modules for them, too and not towards an idealized group of "novice players", who either are really only playing the low-level stuff or by the point that they actually have reached the high-level content should have advanced beyond the stage that they should be considered "novices" anymore.
@NobodysHome: I'd be very surprised if your plans to split the party and kill one half off will work out as you plan it to. High level characters have a way of getting around this kind of stuff. ^^
If most novice groups never get these modules and the non-novice groups which get there are not challenged, then maybe the general assumption should be that the level of difficulty should be raised, to account for mostly experienced groups even playing the high-level parts of the AP's.After all, the argument that "you can always adjust the encounters" cuts both ways. A GM can also always tailor hard encounters down when the group is composed of less experienced players (or experienced players who chose to collectively get a bit eclectic in their character choices ^^). If mostly experienced groups are the ones who run the high-level content, I think it should be Paizo's obligation to tailor their AP modules for them, too and not towards an idealized group of "novice players", who either are really only playing the low-level stuff or by the point that they actually have reached the high-level content should have advanced beyond the stage that they should be considered "novices" anymore.
Except that the novice groups are the ones less likely to modify the adventure. I'm very interested how often groups run adventures "as written." I love Paizo's content and don't consider myself anywhere near the crunch fanatic I usually see on these boards. But I find I am constantly restatting or adding encounter to make things more interesting or challenging. I have reverse engineered every major NPC I have ever used to at the very least get a good handle on their abilities and potential strategies.
That said, it is way easier on the fly to make a too powerful NPC pull it's punches or make a gross strategic error than to ret con a weak boss guy to make things more interesting.
Honestly, Magnuskin, I'll have a much better idea after this weekend.
The final battle of Carrion Crown was duly epic for us; most of our resources were depleted, and we used up a Limited Wish to cast Breath of Life on the paladin, plus a hasty, "Retreat down the tower healing as we go and burning all our resources," just to survive.
*BUT* that party was ludicrously poor on tactics and on builds (a 15th-level sword-and-board paladin with a full AC of 24? You KNOW something is wrong...). So Carrion Crown gives me a good, "Poor players have trouble but can make it," data point. (And I feel like I can call the players 'poor' since I was one of them. You're allowed to insult yourself on the boards, right?)
This weekend is my FAR more tactically-minded group taking on Karzoug. On paper it looks like it's going to be really nasty and really close. On Sunday we'll know whether I underestimated them.
But that'll give me 2 completed APs to consider. So far, Book 6 of RotRL AE has been very rough on my players, so I have no complaints about it. Almost every boss battle was a joke (Gamigin, the dragon, Khalib), but Ceoptra was nasty for them, as were pretty much all of the non-boss battles (rooms full of 6-8 giants led by a rune giant, groups of kuchrima shooting at them, etc.)
In other words, my experience is woefully limited, but CC was a good hard ending for a group of 5 really badly-built, badly-played characters. RotRL looks like a good hard ending for 4 reasonably-built, well-played characters. As I said, I'll come back and post here on Sunday if you're interested in how things go...
EDIT: Bkowal: Both APs are being run as-written with no mods to the encounters.
Perhaps the greatest problem with APs is the fact five players are considered the same as four. Mind you, this also is true when it comes to Cohorts - even adding just one Cohort will alter the balance of power for the group. Two cohorts becomes even more overpowered... and if all four of your core players took Leadership? Then you just had the group double in size and in all likelihood include classes and the like to fill any weaknesses; bards and clerics are both excellent cohorts, as would be a sorcerer who focused on player-buff spells. (The cohorts don't even have to directly participate in combat to unbalance things.)
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Just a theory: Perhaps the dropoff in difficult is an illusion, and perhaps all the AP volumes are indeed built to the same difficulty, and built with the "average group" in mind.
However, perhaps there's a strong correlation between "experienced players" and "persistent players", whereby a majority of players reaching book 6 happen to be the experienced ones.
Anecdotally, many low-experience players I know would quit a campaign if there was a TPK, and proceed to kick off a new one. If this bears through for many groups, then the only ones playing in the endgame are the players most likely to win combats.
Even moreso, I've found that low-experience players choose to end their campaigns when it gets too high level and the rules become too unwieldy for them. It's really only highly-experienced players that I see desiring playing double-digit levels.
All of this compounds the selection effect, and undermines the concept of an "average party" for any given book.
Therefore, perhaps it makes sense to raise the baseline skill assumption for higher level material?
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I spent some time championing high-level adventure content and now I have a whole AP geared toward high-power play (though mythic is not really the same as straight high-level but that is beside the point) so I'm certainly not complaining. However, the more I read the more concerned about this I get. It is probably unfounded but I guess we will see.
My WotR group is moderately built, moderately played, however, I have two two-handed warriors wielding greatswords so I know damage output is going to be immense. I also have a cleric and a sorcerer/rogue. The cleric gives me pause once she hits high level but the sorcerer does not since he is dual classing and his mythic path is going to be trickster, leaning more heavily on the rouge aspects of his character. I am hoping that my group is more in the middle ground of player/character ability that is mentioned upthread.
I am keeping a close eye on these boards for advice to alter the game if I need to.
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As soon as I see the word "Naginata" I wince and know that this is a group I would never get along with. It's a cheese weapon. Every optimized melee build uses one. I judge entire parties based on whether their fighters and barbarians are wielding naginatas.
I don't really see anything special about the Naginata. It hardly the only x4 crit weapon. Okay, so it has reach. Big deal. I'm curious what horrible experinces people are having with this particular weapon. Is there some class/feat that makes special use of it?
I don't really see anything special about the Naginata. It hardly the only x4 crit weapon. Okay, so it has reach. Big deal. I'm curious what horrible experinces people are having with this particular weapon. Is there some class/feat that makes special use of it?
As soon as I see the word "Naginata" I wince and know that this is a group I would never get along with. It's a cheese weapon. Every optimized melee build uses one. I judge entire parties based on whether their fighters and barbarians are wielding naginatas.
Clarified earlier: It's the nodachi that's the culprit. The only 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range, so you promptly go 15-20 as soon as you can and it's just uber-devastating. Most weapons balance crit range vs. damage -- scimitars and rapiers are 18-20, but are only 1-handed, 1d6 weapons. A 2-handed 1d10 weapon with an 18-20 crit range massively increases DPR from fighting classes, so virtually every optimization guide I've seen uses the nodachi as the melee weapon of choice.
When everyone uses a nodachi, you know something's funny about it...
I may as well mention that when I ran serpent's skull for my moderately optomized group I had to buff the heck out of the entire final book in order to keep things challenging. Every single enemy got the advanced template, and bosses also got mythic tiers/templates and maxed HP. I had to buff the final boss into essentially a mythic CR 24 in order to put up a good and frightening fight against my five level 15 players.
That was a 5 CR increase... which tells me that there is more of an issue here than my group just being well optomized, well equipped via crafting, and having one extra player. Do those things really make a 5 CR difference? I can't even imagine what my GM who is running WotR is going to have to do to buff the final encounter against six well optomized level 20 tier 10 players. He might have to push the final boss to CR 35 just to survive a round against our archer ranger!
I may as well also mention that my players actually had problems in book 4 of Serpent's Skull, so it seems to me that part if the issue may be that Paizo is simply underestimating how powerful high level characters can be.
Yes, actually. An optimized group with optimized gear via crafting and an extra player makes a phenomenally huge difference in the way games are played.
Just giving the group an extra player gives them 25% more actions to be taken in each round, which can be the difference between an enemy last more than one round.
Each of the above 3 are powerful game changers from a group, and tossing all 3 into one group makes a really big difference in encounter difficulty.
Gotta agree with Tels, although I personally would also hope that the system would be a bit more flexible and accomodating to these kinds of variations.
Gotta agree with Tels, although I personally would also hope that the system would be a bit more flexible and accomodating to these kinds of variations.
I agree, but at the same time, so many groups are very different than the assumed norm.
The monsters in the game are all designed around the 4 man group of 15 point buy players with intelligent (not necessarily optimized) choices.
When you start playing a 20 (or even 25) point buy group, with 5 or 6 players with moderate to high optimization, your group is so far from the assumed normality that the GM really doesn't have a choice at this point other than to custom design everything.
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Well, I was going to go off into a little rant, but I decided to snip it and hit the main points.
- I don't think Paizo, or anyone really, could have foreseen how video games like World of Warcraft or League of Legends have changed the gamer markets. Both games are extremely rampant, and both games have tons of build guides or advice guides or 'how to play' guides etc. All of the people that play either of the two, and a TTRPG like Pathfinder, are going to be adopting many things from the video game, into their table top game, like builds, party roles etc.
- The power of the Internet is also not taken into account very well, but this is something many people have been struggling with across all forms of business or social networks. I highly doubt the levels of optimization we see today, were possible 20 years ago, and a large part of that is the internet and the ability to share advice, information and other things back and forth. Post a character idea, and you get it critiqued by dozens of posters who can spot weaknesses, or strengths, and give advice on how to do things better.
With the change in mentality in how the game is played, combine with the abundance of information and advice possible through the internet in the form of guides and forums, I can't help but think that the 'assumed standard' level of optimization is drastically subpar.
I think, that, if Paizo were to release a rating guide for their content on the degree of difficulty, that would help with lots of peoples' expectations. For example, an overall rating of 1-10 for each of the adventure paths, and each of the 6 books would have an overall rating itself.
Take Curse of the Crimson Throne, for example. The 5th book, Skeletons of Scarwall, is a pretty dangerous dungeon with several encounters that can just straight murder a party inside, and would get a higher rating of 7 or 8. It's not a 9 or 10 because the inclusion of a Paladin in the party can turn most of the encounters into cakewalks.
I heard of a PFS scenario where the party has to hold a hilltop or something, against multiple waves of enemies and that many of the parties failed that scenario (if not most failed). So that one might get a 9 or a 10.
It's the nodachi that's the culprit. The only 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range, so you promptly go 15-20 as soon as you can and it's just uber-devastating.
(Isn't the falchion also a 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range?)
- The power of the Internet is also not taken into account very well, but this is something many people have been struggling with across all forms of business or social networks. I highly doubt the levels of optimization we see today, were possible 20 years ago, and a large part of that is the internet and the ability to share advice, information and other things back and forth. Post a character idea, and you get it critiqued by dozens of posters who can spot weaknesses, or strengths, and give advice on how to do things better.
With the change in mentality in how the game is played, combine with the abundance of information and advice possible through the internet in the form of guides and forums, I can't help but think that the 'assumed standard' level of optimization is drastically subpar.
That's a really interesting point. I hadn't thought of that before. That could well be a big part of the story...
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I don't really see anything special about the Naginata. It hardly the only x4 crit weapon. Okay, so it has reach. Big deal. I'm curious what horrible experinces people are having with this particular weapon. Is there some class/feat that makes special use of it?
As soon as I see the word "Naginata" I wince and know that this is a group I would never get along with. It's a cheese weapon. Every optimized melee build uses one. I judge entire parties based on whether their fighters and barbarians are wielding naginatas.
Clarified earlier: It's the nodachi that's the culprit. The only 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range, so you promptly go 15-20 as soon as you can and it's just uber-devastating. Most weapons balance crit range vs. damage -- scimitars and rapiers are 18-20, but are only 1-handed, 1d6 weapons. A 2-handed 1d10 weapon with an 18-20 crit range massively increases DPR from fighting classes, so virtually every optimization guide I've seen uses the nodachi as the melee weapon of choice.
When everyone uses a nodachi, you know something's funny about it...
High crit range weapons are the way to go for every class, with mythic even for rogues, since they can take precision critial.
Regarding the nodaichi, while it is good and looks nice, you could always save a feat and take the falchion a two handed weapon that deals 2d4 damage with a crit chance of 18-20/x2.
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(Isn't the falchion also a 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range?)It's the nodachi that's the culprit. The only 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range, so you promptly go 15-20 as soon as you can and it's just uber-devastating.
At this point I'm just going to go mumble quietly in a corner to myself...
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At this point I'm just going to go mumble quietly in a corner to myself...(Isn't the falchion also a 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range?)It's the nodachi that's the culprit. The only 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range, so you promptly go 15-20 as soon as you can and it's just uber-devastating.
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- I don't think Paizo, or anyone really, could have foreseen how video games like World of Warcraft or League of Legends have changed the gamer markets. Both games are extremely rampant, and both games have tons of build guides or advice guides or 'how to play' guides etc. All of the people that play either of the two, and a TTRPG like Pathfinder, are going to be adopting many things from the video game, into their table top game, like builds, party roles etc.
- The power of the Internet is also not taken into account very well, but this is something many people have been struggling with across all forms of business or social networks. I highly doubt the levels of optimization we see today, were possible 20 years ago, and a large part of that is the internet and the ability to share advice, information and other things back and forth. Post a character idea, and you get it critiqued by dozens of posters who can spot weaknesses, or strengths, and give advice on how to do things better.
With the change in mentality in how the game is played, combine with the abundance of information and advice possible through the internet in the form of guides and forums, I can't help but think that the 'assumed standard' level of...
Sorry, but I have to call B.S. on that one, just about any player, that is willing to read through all the available material can and eventually will chose a powerful option.
And regarding the Internet, years and years ago when D&D 3.0/3.5 were still the "new" system, there were already plenty of forums and websites where players could compare notes and share builds.
The WotC character optimisation board was a particularly deviant nest of unapologetic power gamers and rule lawyer, and I enjoyed my time there greatly.
It really depends on your players, how much time they want to invest in the mechanics of the game, and how creative they are with their choices. The Internet and WoW have nothing to do with this, and while it was not unusual, that a wow player had to google a quest every bloddy 10 minutes, obscure design was hardly a feature.
(Isn't the falchion also a 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range?)It's the nodachi that's the culprit. The only 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range, so you promptly go 15-20 as soon as you can and it's just uber-devastating.
But it got on average 0,5 less damage per hit! ^^
Sorry, but I have to call B.S. on that one, just about any player, that is willing to read through all the available material can and eventually will chose a powerful option.
And regarding the Internet, years and years ago when D&D 3.0/3.5 were still the "new" system, there were already plenty of forums and websites where players could compare notes and share builds.
The WotC character optimisation board was a particularly deviant nest of unapologetic power gamers and rule lawyer, and I enjoyed my time there greatly.
It really depends on your players, how much time they want to invest in the mechanics of the game, and how creative they are with their choices. The Internet and WoW have nothing to do with this, and while it was not unusual, that a wow player had to google a quest every bloddy 10 minutes, obscure design was hardly a feature.
Notice I said 20 years go (I meant to type 20+ but forgot to add the plus), back before 3rd edition. We're talking 1994 and earlier.
While it's true that any player that sufficiently reads the books could develop good characters, I'm talking about optimization. As in, pulling feats, abilities, archetypes, spells, items, etc. from all of the material (including campaign setting books or adventure paths).
Especially when it comes to keeping track of all of the best options for the 20+ classes available. In this situation, you basically have to write a guide just to keep track.
I mean, the choices for a Blaster Wizard vs a God Wizard vs an Abjurer vs a Necromancer are, while very similar, also very different. Your Blaster Wizard is going to want to maximize damage, his save DCs and the ability to penetrate SR. The God Wizard is going to want to maximize the action economy and the best buffs combined with the best controls. Your Abjurer is going to want to maximize his ability to penetrate SR and maximize his versatility in countering incoming spells while simultaneously buffing allies, your Necromancer is going to want to maximize his undead minions, buff his allies (including minions), debuff enemies and penetrate SR.
The ability to penetrate SR is important to many Wizard builds, so you might remember all the different ways, or the best ways, to penetrate SR. However, are you going to remember all the best ways to get the most HD of your undead while also remember all the best ways to deal the most damage with your evocations while also keeping maximum countering versatility for your evocations and keeping track of the best control combos.
On top of that you have to keep track what are the best damage mitigaters and what are the best AC boosters and what are the best save boosters and what are the best damage boosters and what are the best and also which of the above apply to which classes and which classes get the most out of one feat or another and keep track of the weaknesses and counters to said weaknesses to some classes and how to maximize their strengths.
So no, I do not believe the same level of optimization was possible then as it is now, largely because of the sheer number of options available and fallibility of humans to remember everything.
Yes, given enough time a one guy could come up with all of the best builds for every classes and every variation of said classes, but he's not going to be able to do it quickly. In between reading and re-reading and crafting and re-re-reading you still have a life to live, kids to take care of, jobs to work, food to eat. Bating is optional though.
The problem is that the internet has made all of the optimization easier to come buy, because other people have done some, most, or all of the work for you.
While it's true that 3rd edition had the optimization boards, I'm talking about brand new players.
Let's say someone playing WoW joins a clan and makes some good friends. He finds out his friends live near by and they also play Pathfinder. They invite him to play. From his experience playing WoW (amongst other RPG games), he goes to Google and looks for a guide on how to play the class he's selected. He comes across the concept of AM BARBARIAN and decides he's going to play it.
He shows up at the table, and over time, he slowly builds himself AM BARBARIAN and turns all encounters into trivial things with his RAGELANCEPOUNCE and the LANCE THAT PIERCES THE SKY while flying on his BATTYBAT.
The GM, and maybe other players, then comes to the forums complaining about how easy the modules and adventure paths are. Why? Because that same new player read more than just the Barbarian guides and started dropping hints to the other players on options they could choose.
Now you've got a group of fairly optimized people who are playing off the discoveries of others, and the GMs are complaining about how easy the game seems to be.
Optimization, as a concept, is not new. I agree, I was talking about the prevalent attitude of searching for builds, guides, and advice about a game before even playing one. Especially if it involves several hours of time sank into a character, before you discover you built a bad character.
In video games, this can be mitigated somewhat because video games usually take less time to reach higher levels. Some games, especially those in which you have to farm for items, take significantly longer and a guy might want to know how certain combos pan out before selecting them.
Hell, even games like Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer has a whole website dedicated to builds, despite the fact that leveling a character to 20 in ME3 Online is really easy (taking ~3 hours at most). So if a build doesn't work, you can just start over.
Well, as someone who just now is really getting into ME3 MP again and is working on unlocking new classes (and still trying after all this time for the Harrier and Black Widow, sigh...), I read/watch guides more to get a grip on what some of those abilities even do. ^^
Well, as someone who just now is really getting into ME3 MP again and is working on unlocking new classes (and still trying after all this time for the Harrier and Black Widow, sigh...), I read/watch guides more to get a grip on what some of those abilities even do. ^^
I used the ME3 Wiki to figure out what the abilities did, but even the Wiki has advice on how to use some of the abilities and what to combo them with. But I've used the Guides before to explore different variations of the characters I like. For instance, I never thought of using a Shotgun on an Infiltrator until I read one of the guides advocating using it.
ME3 had abilities? Always wondered what all those extra icons did...
But it got on average 0,5 less damage per hit! ^^(Isn't the falchion also a 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range?)It's the nodachi that's the culprit. The only 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range, so you promptly go 15-20 as soon as you can and it's just uber-devastating.
OK. That made me smile. Thanks!
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I see where you are coming from, but I have to admit that my experience with AD&D is rather limited (I played DSA a german RPG back then), just read a lot of Forgotten Realms material a couple of years ago (and even then I found a lot of unbalanced stuff).
Discoverability is an important part when it comes to this, but even then if you were willing to do this kind of thing it was certainly possible - of course, I tend to take these things too seriously - you could make photocopies of the spells, feats, and prestige classes that you find interesting.
And of course, knowing the “best” options for all those classes is unrealistic, but knowing the class that you decided to play and make that a very good character, that is still quite reasonable.
Searching for every little trait, feat, spell, class feature and magic items to make you “thing” as good as it can be might seem unreasonable, but making a character that is considerably above standard, not that hard.
I remember quite fondly when I bought my first 3.0 splatbook Tome and Blood IIRC, I loved it, but there wasn’t that much content, that I would have considered worth taking.
Reaching the best is a moving target, with plenty of cover and several mirror images. Unless you set your target as “highest possible AC” or something similar, “the best” hard to nail down.
Maybe it is personal experience, but I always liked toying with the rules and creating characters, things like these do come easy for me.
I can agree with you, that current technological advances make it far quicker and easier for players to create a complicated character, and print it with all relevant rules (Oh hero lab, how I love you^^)
However, a couple of years back, it was quite easy to use all the Pathfinder material, since there wasn’t all that much of it. Now these days every splatbook has a couple of spells, and it would be a nightmare to collect them all (151 are plenty :P).
The example with the new player seem realistic, but I honestly think that no new player could understand most of the guides without a firm grasp of the rules, you might be able to create a level 1 character, but playing him is a different matter.
Of course reading guides can make a group more effective, but I suspect, that this effect would start sooner or later, once players get more experienced.
And since quite a number of the players on this board, were present during the Pathfinder RPG beta test, subsequent APs (using only Pathfinder RPG rules) were destroyed as expected ^^
So yeah it got easier, but I think even without the internet a certain subset of players would always find the adventures to easy.
I played several weeks of the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, I… was still shocked from the ending, and not yet willing to let the game go, after all I had planned several playthroughs.
The multiplayer modus is functional, but the booster type unlock system gets old pretty fast, and at least back then, more mission modes were sorely needed.
Well, as someone who just now is really getting into ME3 MP again and is working on unlocking new classes (and still trying after all this time for the Harrier and Black Widow, sigh...), I read/watch guides more to get a grip on what some of those abilities even do. ^^I used the ME3 Wiki to figure out what the abilities did, but even the Wiki has advice on how to use some of the abilities and what to combo them with. But I've used the Guides before to explore different variations of the characters I like. For instance, I never thought of using a Shotgun on an Infiltrator until I read one of the guides advocating using it.
It is good, but they would have needed a crowbar to separate me from my pistol and sniper rifle.^^
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But it got on average 0,5 less damage per hit! ^^(Isn't the falchion also a 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range?)It's the nodachi that's the culprit. The only 2H weapon with an 18-20 crit range, so you promptly go 15-20 as soon as you can and it's just uber-devastating.
OK. That made me smile. Thanks!
It is entirely reasonable, for a martial character not wanting to touch those d4, it took me years to find ones that weren’t evil. ^^
Totally off-topic now, but just to finish this quickly: The fun of the ME3 multiplayer is that a.) it's cooperative play; b.) you get to unlock new stuff via random packs, which heightens anticipation (and you need to play to pay for those packs) and c.) getting new classes (and new weapons) is a big draw, especially since they can drastically alter your playstyle. :)
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I'm probably going to sound REALLY old here, but I played 2E 20 years ago and the optimization and broken character myself and others built was kinf of absurd. I could crank out some pretty disturbing combat focused characters once I pulled in the different handbooks and setting specific books while a friend could do the same with casters. So the optimization was still there.
As was stated above a few times, sharing those optimizations without the internet as prevalent was not as easy as it is today. However, the big difference here is the complexity of characters. Pathfinder characters have a ton of options between class abilities, racial abilities, feats, and all the alternates and so on. PF characters are considerably more complex than 3.x characters because each one has more options to pile on.
And this is where I feel the power level of high-end characters comes from. Compare a level 15 fighter in Pathfinder to a level 15 fighter in 3.5 and the number of feats alone shows a significant rise in power. So, designing adventures for low-level, and to a certain extent mid-level, characters does not require a major departure from D&D philosophy, however, high-level characters have left the predecessors behind and so the philosophy of design is different.
All of this, I feel, boils down to the simple fact that characters in PF, especially once Mythic Adventures is added on, are different beasts entirely than they were in other games.