Following up on Nobodyshome's observations, I don't have problems with regular APs either. My modifications usually consist of boosting hit points and stats for major NPCs to equal PC stat and hit point generation. My own hit point boosting for brute creatures that are supposed to be able to soak massive damage. And rebuilding NPC to my preference of class, spell, and feat lists. Basic modifications using the rules is how I usually modify APs. I have no trouble using the rules to make encounters challenging in APs. Sure, it takes a bit more work at higher level, but it's still very doable using the rules as is.
Mythic is next to impossible to balance at high level using the rules as is. When damage numbers for single rounds are reaching quadruple digits for a single character, I cannot reasonably scale defenses to deal with that kind damage output. The only way to counter that type of damage output is to not be hit. That is next to impossible to do for an extended period of time for a single creature against an entire party. If you have even a party of four with two major damage dealers, an arcane caster, and a divine caster, how can anything built using the Pathfinder ruleset withstand that kind of damage output?
Let's say you have the following party:
1. Paladin Dual Path Champion/Hierophant
Fleet Charge
Mythic Power Attack
Alignment Insight to adjust smites
Improved Critical Falchion or Scimitar
Mythic Improved Critical
Legendary Weapon level 2 (Foe-Biter)
That paladin is going to output around 300 to 1000 points per round past level 11 or so.
2. Slayer Archer Champion
Fleet Charge
Mythic Improved Critical
Mythic Rapid Shoot
Mythic Many Shot
Deadly Aim
Legendary Weapon (Foe-Biter)
This guy is getting an extra two arrows on top of his normal attacks for up to 9 per round or so. All the arrows doing x4 on a crit.
He's probably adding 200 to 500 plus.
3. Arcane Caster Archmage
He's either using save or suck or buff spells to boost attacks.
He might be doing additional damage as well.
He's basically reducing the target's effectiveness and defenses so the two damage dealers hit easier.
4. Divine Caster
Healing and doing much like the arcane caster.
So you have damage output of 500 to 1500 or so a round depending on the number of crits. Much of bypassing DR due to Paladin smite. Even 500 a round is destroying any mythic creature you fight up to and including demon lords.
How can I use the rules to design enemies if the damage output is so high that no enemy can withstand attacks from the PCs? And the same is true the other way. If I design highly effective NPCs using the mythic rules, then the PCs are dying all the time in the first or second round. If the NPCs win initiative, I probably have a TPK on my hands.
I don't get how Paizo designers thought number inflation was the way to go for Mythic. Numbers were already too high in regular Pathfinder. Then they make them higher? And add only 30 to 50 hit points to the PCs. And maybe a 100 to the monsters. That is one or two uses of Foe-Biter or one or two crits with mythic power attack. How do game designers that get paid to do this fail to take into account the mathematical problems that such numbers cause for encounter design. I don't understand how they could have messed up the scaling so badly in mythic, when it is easy to calculate and see the problem.
Or did they truly intend on PCs and NPCs killing each other in one hit. So fights come down to win initiative and kill or lose initiative and die. I wasn't expecting that type of game.
I was expecting mythic to be more about mythic feats like amazing feats of strength. Higher than normal stats. Things like becoming a demigod (That is doable and very cool). Legendary weapons that allowed powerful magical effects like cutting down objects in one hit or boosting strength or calling down lightning (some of this you can do). Not insane number inflation that makes initiative the number one roll for both sides. Winning initiative should not be the most important roll in a battle in my opinion. You better not miss your perception rolls for stealth or you're dead.
Slayer, Ninja, or Rogue Sniper with Greater Sniper Goggles and Legendary Weapon with Undetectable, Foe-Biter, and Greater Invisibility can kill anything from range. The tarrasque would die easily to such a character. It's nuts.
Here's the thing that these "you're not playing encounters right" chaps don't get. I could very easily take a Mythic monster that is built as-is in the game, play it intelligently, and wipe out the entire party starting with a surprise attack on the primary damage-dealer that kills him outright and then pounces the healer and eliminates him right afterward.
Overpowered Mythic goes both ways. You can have a Mythic foe that is able to wipe the group out if that enemy gets the first strike in.
I'm sorry. I don't consider killing a Demon Lord in one strike to be Mythic. To me, a mythic fight is one in which Hercules is fighting the Hydra, striking off heads and having two new heads grow each time... and finally driving the freshly severed head into a flame and searing it... realizing the weakness of the Hydra... and killing it with blade and fire. This is not Hercules driving a blade through the Hydra and chopping it in half in an animesque move. This is a long fight in which a foe seemed unkillable until its weakness was discovered and the heroes exploit that weakness to eliminate it.
Pathfinder can't do this. And Mythic Adventures makes this version of an epic battle even less viable.
And just think.... this will be my very first full campaign that I will be GMing for. :-)
And I can't wait. Because, I know what mythic should feel like. The videos that I linked to earlier in this thread say it all for me. Superman vs Doomsday. Superman vs Darkseid.
Then you may be sorely disappointed when the superhero gets knocked down in one shot.
Yeah. Mythic basically turns almost everyone into Glass Cannons. They hit really hard but one hit will probably take them out as well.
Well, to me, the numbers (hit point wise) are superfluous. I am not interested in a TPK. If somehow manage to roll enough damage to kill a PC, then I will mentally change it to where they are just knocked out. So to speak.
I have already been talking to my friends who will be my players. They know how I am envisioning the "big time" fights. If an enemy has mythic ranks, then it should be a challenging fight. Now, if the PCs manage to come up with a good plan and whatnot, then they should be rewarded.
I am not concerned about non mythic opponents after book 1.
All of my mythic opponents will have mythic surges to be able to negate crits against them on the fly. My PCs know this. And they are OK with it. But, they also know that there are only so many surges owned by each opponent. So, they know that if they force the opponent to negate a crit, that is one less thing he can do offensively.
I am more interested in trying to create epic feeling fights. I am looking forward to pushing myself to better describe the fights in that manner.
|
@Galnorag: You're running a party of six. That alone will break any game, let alone a Mythic one.
I've found that increasing hit points to full and adding 50% to the number of foes often isn't enough to challenge a party of six. Unless of course you use tactics, have foes with Teamwork Feats or working to flank enemies, set up battle-lines and rear archers, and basically go military on your party.
In addition, you're going with a 20-point build. The AP is meant for 15-points and Mythic is so over-the-top that even "just" an extra five points can break things.
(That said, have you tried adding +1 to every stat of every monster? That makes THEM a 25-point build. It's a quick fix that you'd be surprised at how much it helps over time.)
Yes I have no illusions, any AP must be reworked for the party you have, especially if you break the 4 character / 15 point buy expectation, this is my third AP that I've run, so I'm not surprised or disappointed, and I was trying to chime in on the side of this AP, that is I think "Failed" is much much to strong a word. Its just the amount of rework I've had to do is a little overwhelming.
So I guess I'm kind of neutral on the AP, the content is great, the crunch needs a lot more work then I would have liked.
As an example...
The party mentioned previously, we were short a person last night, who was the Cleric 9/MT 4, faced a woundwyrm, the Wyrm has tactical advantage on the players, had the advanced simple template, the agile mythic template, its size bumped to gargantuan, and an additional mythic rank or two. Beast clocked in around CR20/MT3, which is supposed to be a CR 23 encounter. The players down a person, and really 50/50 MT 3 or MT 4, clocked in at at around APL 14, so CR +9 encounter. Should have been a TPK, but by some miracle it wasn't. I believe the miracle was either bad monster tactics (which could have been called GM fiat) but in the surprise round the beast removed one player from play with an earthquake, burying him in a fissure. The next few rounds he basically toyed with the paladin, wizard, and bard while the druid saved the buried back up fighter. Here is where the bad tactics came in, basically he was fly by attacking for 1 hit per turn (being agile he could do that twice) and breathing when ever possible. Once the paladin became a bother the beast filled attacked him into the grave. The next round the party used up a mega resource to bring the paladin back, while the dragon breathed. Round after that the paladin was put back in the grave, and the wyrm was surrounded. Looks grim for our wyrm right? nope he put 3 of the remaining 4 unconscious in the one round, didn't kill because he just wanted them to stop hurting him. He then played cat and mouse with the shape changed druid for a while, the druid scoring enough hits to put the wyrm in a situation. Risk an AO to kill the druid or live to fight another day. So the wyrm fled, to fight another day.
So was it a close fight? yes, was it mythic, dear gods yes. Did it leave the Druid who worships gorum impotent with rage, yes, and could the fight have gone differently if the Dragon just opened each round curb stomping one PC, yes. The PCs were never never never expected to hunt the woundwyrm this early in the module, the caravan raids, the ruined and scarred ground where the raids occurred, were supposed to be foreshadowing of the penultimate encounter... Instead they were like "we are f'ing invincible we can do this" and they very nearly did...
TL;DR; MT+APL is not a real measure of a parties real effective level, I'm thinking MTx2+APL? Having learned this lesson, I have more prep work, which makes me a sad panda...
As a story I dont feel WotR "failed" however as a campaign meant to challenge a group of super duper heroes I do feel feel it is a huge failure, as a campaign meant to challenge regular super heroes (i.e. Non mythic) its somewhat okay, tho still under CR
Good summary.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
except for the "super duper" part, wish I could have that back:)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Honestly, I think this whole derail about optimizers/efficient players/whatever you want to call them is a major cause of the frustration seen here.
The complaint from GMs who have gotten the PCs to 3rd tier and above is that it's effectively impossible not to optimize the PCs in such a way that they're one-rounding supposed BBEGs.
My fighter's player finally gave up, and asked if he could rewrite his character as a Guardian instead of a Champion because all the Champion options that made any sense at all were too overpowered.
So here we are, over 1000 posts in, and people are still saying, "Well, it's your fault as a GM that you have a bunch of over-optimizing players."
Having just finished Book 3, my major complaints are:
- The Champion path is too focused on massive damage so a melee character on the Champion path ends up outdamaging everyone else combined.- The encounters would be under-CR'ed for a non-mythic campaign. In Books 2 and 3 you see many, many fights between 9th level characters and CR 5-7 enemies. As Piccolo has said, the PCs SHOULD feel like they can curb stomp anything non-mythic. But three or four such encounters would suffice. Fifteen or twenty is just plain frustrating.
=====
So we've played a grand total of 21 AP books, including 9 with the classic "4 15-point PCs" where I ran all the encounters as-written. The *only* books where I've had major issues with repeated underpowered encounters have been books 2 and 3 of WotR.So the continuing, "All APs have this problem," or, "Your players are too optimization-heavy," posts are definitely a bit frustrating.
Though as Chris pointed out, the hostility level does ratchet up beyond what is polite or proper.
I hope you didn't take my post as that - I was just commenting that given my usual group (5 people - only 1 of which is an optimiser, however plays really goofy concepts so it's not much different in the end) if they suddenly got into heavy optimization I wouldn't be upset - I'd just have to up my game. That was in response to the comments about GM's getting all bent out of shape over people with good builds - My group uses hero lab - with every book option purchased. The only class I ban outright is summoner - races are based on the campaign (I didn't allow goblins for RotRL for example). I have pointed my GM to this thread for the wrath campaign to make him aware of potential issues (we are only on book 2) in the future - and hope that we can work around them in terms of power creep.
I do feel like I missed the boat though - as my champion build (as I have a tentative plan for up to 20) took neither power attack or the mythic version.
And I'm the worst optimiser in our group.
Honestly when people make comments that 'all other choices are so bad it forces you to take these' - I feel like you are saying my build is horrible and I must be stupid.
Perhaps a bit of less assuming how many people play the game - and more understanding that there are all flavors out there, some of us don't focus on overwhelming damage.
As an aside we got together as a playtest for really high level play with the intention of making uber powerful characters - and even still we were not seeing anyone put out the kind of damage people talk about in high level play. I go through Ravingdork's characters for ideas and such - and seriously I just don't think I could find it *fun* to be a druid that does 150+ damage with a bite at level 13. I mean - could I do it? Sure - but my table just doesn't quite play that way.
...I don't get how Paizo designers thought number inflation was the way to go for Mythic. Numbers were already too high in regular Pathfinder. Then they make them higher? And add only 30 to 50 hit points to the PCs. And maybe a 100 to the monsters. That is one or two uses of Foe-Biter or one or two crits with mythic power attack. How do game designers that get paid to do this fail to take into account the mathematical problems that such numbers cause for encounter design. I don't understand how they could have messed up the scaling so badly in mythic, when it is easy to calculate and see the problem.
Or did they truly intend on PCs and NPCs killing each other in one hit. So fights come down to win initiative and kill or lose initiative and die. I wasn't expecting that type of game...
James Jacobs actually answered that question earlier in the thread.
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2r1pa&page=11?Wrath-of-the-Righteous-A-Fail ed-AP#517
...The problem is that there really wasn't a lot of good solidJames, there's something I'm curious about and I was hoping you might be able to shed light upon. Since many of the issues that have arisen with this AP are related to Mythic and the numbers underlying the system, I was wondering if there was any attempt to mathematically model expected damage outputs, initiative values, and other fairly basic "be good at your combat niche" type character building options? Things like probability of success, expected damage amounts, etc are all calculatable values. I've found the bestiary monster CR guidelines (how much HP, damage, etc you should expect for a monster of a certain CR) extremely valuable and I was wondering why it appears something similar wasn't done when developing this system.
Thanks for your responses in this thread and I look forward to seeing what you come up with next.
Thanks, Caedwyr.
Nice to see James Jacobs tell us what happened. That explains a lot.
The long and short of it, is that for any future playtests, stress testing of the underlying math/system at all levels of play is extremely important. Whether or not that feedback will produce any changes (see Advanced Race Guide racial point system) is another thing, but at least Paizo will have been provided with the data since they don't seem to do any such rigorous testing themselves.
Well, the problem with this is when there are people who rigorously test the number-crunching side of things, it tends to be the people that are already heavily associated with that kind of thing - which, by and large, tend toward the more aggressive side of the scale, in my experience. Which, given some of their complaints about the way playtesting tends to be received, I can see why they're irked. So we're in a chicken-and-egg situation.
|
|
So, basically, Paizo didn't do any of the number crunching to test out the math and relied on the mythic playtest to catch any problems with the math. Additionally, it sounds like the playtesting for the Wrath of the Righteous campaign was pretty much non-existent. The long and short of it, is that for any future playtests, stress testing of the underlying math/system at all levels of play is extremely important. Whether or not that feedback will produce any changes (see Advanced Race Guide racial point system) is another thing, but at least Paizo will have been provided with the data since they don't seem to do any such rigorous testing themselves.James, there's something I'm curious about and I was hoping you might be able to shed light upon. Since many of the issues that have arisen with this AP are related to Mythic and the numbers underlying the system, I was wondering if there was any attempt to mathematically model expected damage outputs, initiative values, and other fairly basic "be good at your combat niche" type character building options? Things like probability of success, expected damage amounts, etc are all calculatable values. I've found the bestiary monster CR guidelines (how much HP, damage, etc you should expect for a monster of a certain CR) extremely valuable and I was wondering why it appears something similar wasn't done when developing this system.
Thanks for your responses in this thread and I look forward to seeing what you come up with next.
The problem is that there really wasn't a lot of good solid playtesting feedback for high tier, high level characters for us to work with. At least, as far as I saw. The high level Wrath of the Righteous adventures used the best feedback and material we had... but in large I felt increasingly like I was flying into the dark. There were SO many options available, and to a certain extent I kind of felt like the design team and the playtesters alike really focused more on character building than they did on actually building adventures or how to build long-term campaigns for Mythic. Which is sort of par for the course, it feels like... the higher level things get, the more they need playtesting, but the less folks seem interested in playtesting them.
In a way, Wrath of the Righteous IS the high-level mythic playtest. It's a shame that it's also the final product, I guess.
If I did this again, I'd be in a better place to develop a more well-balanced and well-made AP... but I'm not eager to do it again anytime soon. Which is too bad for me, since the type of story I wanted to tell with Wrath (facing off against demigods/etc.) is one I particularly like (it's the core of the 3 Dungeon APs we did, after all).
I just really think that Mythic sort of failed at one of its roles—to provide a solid play experience beyond 20th level, which is kind of what I wanted but, as it turns out, wasn't really exactly what came out of Mythic Adventures.
Interesting, because that's not what I took from James' comment. I took James' comment to mean that the forum playtesters focused on building characters (various combinations of game stats) instead of creating characters and then playing them in live games, which appears to be the kind of feedback he prefers when building adventures. This seems to be in-line with Paizo comments I've seen in previous playtests where they place a higher value on feedback garnered from games played and less on theroycraft.
-Skeld
I hope you didn't take my post as that - I was just commenting that given my usual group (5 people - only 1 of which is an optimiser, however plays really goofy concepts so it's not much different in the end) if they suddenly got into heavy optimization I wouldn't be upset - I'd just have to up my game. That was in response to the comments about GM's getting all bent out of shape over people with good builds - My group uses hero lab - with every book option purchased. The only class I ban outright is summoner - races are based on the campaign (I didn't allow goblins for RotRL for example). I have pointed my GM to this thread for the wrath campaign to make him aware of potential issues (we are only on book 2) in the future - and hope that we can work around them in terms of power creep.
I do feel like I missed the boat though - as my champion build (as I have a tentative plan for up to 20) took neither power attack or the mythic version.
And I'm the worst optimiser in our group.
Honestly when people make comments that 'all other choices are so bad it forces you to take these' - I feel like you are saying my build is horrible and I must be stupid.
Perhaps a bit of less assuming how many people play the game - and more understanding that there are all flavors out there, some of us don't focus on overwhelming damage.
As an aside we got together as a playtest for really high level play with the intention of making uber powerful characters - and even still we were not seeing anyone put out the kind of damage people talk about in high level play. I go through Ravingdork's characters for ideas and such - and seriously I just don't think I could find it *fun* to be a druid that does 150+ damage with a bite at level 13. I mean - could I do it? Sure - but my table just doesn't quite play that way.
I never focus on individual posters -- if someone bothers me enough, I flag and move on. Honestly, nothing you said bothered me at all until your last post, ironically enough.
I personally don't care for phrases like, "...you are saying my build is horrible and I must be stupid...", as they are the type or statements that lead to conflict.
I *never* pass judgement on how someone else plays the game.
My observation was that the player who is playing a full BAB PC in my game (a fighter) is having trouble, because what he considers the "obvious best choices" for a primary damage-dealer (Fleet Charge, Mythic Power Attack, Foe Biter, etc.) lead to a broken game where he one-rounds everything. So he is having to intentionally choose different abilities to avoid derailing the game.
He doesn't like that. He likes to open up Hero Lab, list everything out, and choose whatever he thinks is "coolest" at the moment. If "coolest" ends up one-rounding every BBEG, he (and the other players) are unhappy that he chose it.
So it's not that you can't build a visceral, wonderfully-deep champion who doesn't one-round enemy demon lords. It's that it's way too easy to accidentally do so just by choosing "what looks best at the moment".
|
...James, there's something I'm curious about and I was hoping you might be able to shed light upon. Since many of the issues that have arisen with this AP are related to Mythic and the numbers underlying the system, I was wondering if there was any attempt to mathematically model expected damage outputs, initiative values, and other fairly basic "be good at your combat niche" type character building options? Things like probability of success, expected damage amounts, etc are all calculatable values. I've found the bestiary monster CR guidelines (how much HP, damage, etc you should expect for a monster of a certain CR) extremely valuable and I was wondering why it appears something similar wasn't done when developing this system.
Thanks for your responses in this thread and I look forward to seeing what you come up with next.
The problem is that there really wasn't a lot of good solid playtesting feedback for high tier, high level characters for us to work with. At least, as far as I saw. The high level Wrath of the Righteous adventures used the best feedback and material we had... but in large I felt increasingly like I was flying into the dark. There were SO many options available, and to a certain extent I kind of felt like the design team and the playtesters alike really focused more on character building than they did on actually building adventures or how to build long-term campaigns for Mythic. Which is sort of par for the course, it feels like... the higher level things get, the more they need playtesting, but the less folks seem interested in playtesting them.
In a way, Wrath of the Righteous IS the high-level mythic playtest. It's a shame that it's also the final product, I guess.
If I did this again, I'd be in a better place to develop a more well-balanced and well-made AP... but I'm not eager to do it again anytime soon. Which is too bad for me, since the type of story I wanted to tell with Wrath (facing
Yeah, playtesting with the mythic rules and letting GMs post how their players decimated the encounters is certainly useful data, but we didn't really have that much advice on how to build a mythic campaign.
I mean, that a number of mythic abilities have a great effect on adventure design (the ability to replenish non-mythic abilities is a big one), many playtesters had their doubts when the playtest ended - I was on of them. The Adventure Path was supposed to be a good example for a mythic campaign... but it didn't happen.Paizo has obviously learned from this, but to reiterate the point once more, some things like mythic power attack (complicated math and a making high crit weapons even better) mythic spells like mythic meteor swarm doing so much damage that player and monster hp could not keep up and of course the ability to go nova with mythic vital strike and a second standard action ...
Those things were discussed in the playtest, and while it is possible to create encounters capable of posing a credible threat to mythic characters ... it didn't happen.
The long and short of it, is that for any future playtests, stress testing of the underlying math/system at all levels of play is extremely important. Whether or not that feedback will produce any changes (see Advanced Race Guide racial point system) is another thing, but at least Paizo will have been provided with the data since they don't seem to do any such rigorous testing themselves.Well, the problem with this is when there are people who rigorously test the number-crunching side of things, it tends to be the people that are already heavily associated with that kind of thing - which, by and large, tend toward the more aggressive side of the scale, in my experience. Which, given some of their complaints about the way playtesting tends to be received, I can see why they're irked. So we're in a chicken-and-egg situation.
Which goes to the point of showing how thin-skinned the developers are. If people are not exceedingly polite in presenting their points, the developers just ignore them. Since ability to number-crunch and social grace seem to be mutually irreconcilable concepts for some people (and I am not discounting myself from that... I get passionate and angry when I see things which should have been obvious to anybody with the ability to even slightly math out stats. And I am far from a math-person), a ton of really good feedback tends to get ignored. To the detriment of the game.
I wish that both the developers would work on reading some heavily critical feedback and that people who do really good math on the game design could deliver said results in a better way. Including myself.
And I better get myself to bed before I begin a fatigue-ridden rant on how I suspect that the developers don't really care about making a structurally sound game, as long as they meet their monthly quotas.
The long and short of it, is that for any future playtests, stress testing of the underlying math/system at all levels of play is extremely important. Whether or not that feedback will produce any changes (see Advanced Race Guide racial point system) is another thing, but at least Paizo will have been provided with the data since they don't seem to do any such rigorous testing themselves.Well, the problem with this is when there are people who rigorously test the number-crunching side of things, it tends to be the people that are already heavily associated with that kind of thing - which, by and large, tend toward the more aggressive side of the scale, in my experience. Which, given some of their complaints about the way playtesting tends to be received, I can see why they're irked. So we're in a chicken-and-egg situation.Which goes to the point of showing how thin-skinned the developers are. If people are not exceedingly polite in presenting their points, the developers just ignore them. Since ability to number-crunch and social grace seem to be mutually irreconcilable concepts for some people (and I am not discounting myself from that... I get passionate and angry when I see things which should have been obvious to anybody with the ability to even slightly math out stats. And I am far from a math-person), a ton of really good feedback tends to get ignored. To the detriment of the game.
I wish that both the developers would work on reading some heavily critical feedback and that people who do really good math on the game design could deliver said results in a better way. Including myself.
And I better get myself to bed before I begin a fatigue-ridden rant on how I suspect that the developers don't really care about making a structurally sound game, as long as they meet their monthly quotas.
That would be strange if they ignored aggressive feedback. Then again the scaling problem is easily observable. That's why it is so amazing, when such number problems are missed.
Mythic Power Attack or Foe-Biter are both easy to see as a problem. The number boost is multiplicative, while the hit point boost is linear. Mythic Power Attack increases damage per attack by 4 by level 12 or 6 two-handed, and by a minimum of 32 or 72 on a crit due to the double-double effect. When you double the power attack bonus before applying the critical modifier, you get a multiplicative damage spike that far exceeds the linear hit point bonus.
A non-mythic scimitar attack using power attack by level 12: 1d6+8 for -4 attack for around 11 to 12 damage. On a crit 2d6+16 for an average of 23 damage.
A mythic scimitar attack using mythic power attack by level 12: 1d6+12 for an average of 15 or 16 damage. Not such a bid deal. Mythic power attack on a crit 2d6+48 (double 12 to 24, then double by crit multiplier to 48) for 53 points of damage. A single Power Attack by itself boosts damage by over 30 points for a single critical hit.
That destroys the hit point boost for a tier 10 PC by itself, not to mention the other bonuses from a huge stat increase and not including mythic improved critical. It destroys one third of the hit point bonus for a tier 10 mythic monster in one hit with Mythic Power Attack by itself.
How do you miss that scaling problem? I can see it easily. It's showing in my game at level 6 in my campaign. It was the first feet by both the mythic swashbuckler (a dex-based class) and mythic barbarian. The Swashbuckler is critting on a 15-20 by level 5. The barbarian will have mythic combat reflexes and Come and Get Me by level 12 along with Mythic Power Attack with a two-handed sword. That is a gigantic red flag scaling issue right there. Yet it was completely missed by the game developers and it is a more broken, unbalanced combination than Crane Style block that they nerfed into uselessness. Why aren't the Paizo developers aggressively nerfing way, way overpowered offensive combinations like Come and Get Me or Mythic Power Attack? The scaling problems with such abilities are much, much, much more problematic than Crane Style single attack deflection ever was. It's very hypocritical and contradictory behavior from them.
It makes it seem as though the Paizo developers respond more to Pathfinder Society than they do to their regular player base. We know they're smart guys at Paizo. It wouldn't take them much to do the math and figure out Come and Get Me, Mythic Power Attack, Foe-Biter, and Mythic Improved Critical are too powerful. They should be toned down. Come and Get Me has needed to be toned down for ages. I rarely see them make changes to abilities past level 12. That is where Pathfinder Society ends. I can't help but think that those of us that play the higher level game are ignored by Paizo developers.
"How do you miss that scaling problem?" is about the exact phrase I have mentally exclaimed a lot over the past half year, with some minor phrasing variations. I don't know, I simply don't know.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That would be strange if they ignored aggressive feedback.
As much as I hate to say it, it has a precedent, going as far back as all the way to the original Pathfinder Beta.
There are a handful of posters here - off the top of my head Magnus himself, Rynjin, RavingDork, and a few others - who are known as being exceptional number-crunchers, who have all but removed themselves from the playtests because their findings aren't acknowledged. And that's not counting the ones who have already left, or who were before my time. Every time there's a playtest, you always end up with the same two camps of complaints: one group like this who complains their findings are being ignored, and another group complaining that the first group's feedback is too forceful, too aggressive, too hostile.
Add to this that Paizo Devs have repeatedly said things like that the martial-caster disparity is not intrinsic to the system but rather a problem of imbalance of skill and/or style among players, and that their games don't have an issue of casters rendering martial characters obsolete at mid-to-high levels.... Yeah. (I'd actually link to the incident in question, as an example, but I don't have the patience to dig through James Jacobs's ginormous thread.)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Putting me in the same category of number-crunching as those others is very flattering, but untrue. I do some basic math and come to results which any other person who would do it would come to. Rynjin, RD and the others are way, way more into optimizing than I'd ever be, which helps them find those hidden flaws. I just see the obvious stuff and say aloud "Why don't the developers see this, too? Why don't they care?!?"
I like to think that my people skills are somewhat better than with those others, though. I manage a good dialogue with James from time to time, after all. :p
Putting me in the same category of number-crunching as those others is very flattering, but untrue. I do some basic math and come to results which any other person who would do it would come to. Rynjin, RD and the others are way, way more into optimizing than I'd ever be, which helps them find those hidden flaws. I just see the obvious stuff and say aloud "Why don't the developers see this, too? Why don't they care?!?"
I like to think that my people skills are somewhat better than with those others, though. I manage a good dialogue with James from time to time, after all. :p
Ravingdork has people skills, it takes skill to thoroughly drive people crazy like he/she* does:)
*this being the internet i never assume they are the same gender as the avatar says:)
|
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Putting me in the same category of number-crunching as those others is very flattering, but untrue. I do some basic math and come to results which any other person who would do it would come to. Rynjin, RD and the others are way, way more into optimizing than I'd ever be, which helps them find those hidden flaws. I just see the obvious stuff and say aloud "Why don't the developers see this, too? Why don't they care?!?"
I like to think that my people skills are somewhat better than with those others, though. I manage a good dialogue with James from time to time, after all. :p
And neither your "seven experienced optimizers" group, nor RavingDorks "why is everybody looking at me like that?" group nor Rynjin's "I have no time to play the game, I'm too busy theorycrafting!" groups are anywhere close to an average gaming group (and hence, the market target group).
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
And neither your "seven experienced optimizers" group, nor RavingDorks "why is everybody looking at me like that?" group nor Rynjin's "I have no time to play the game, I'm too busy theorycrafting!" groups are anywhere close to an average gaming group (and hence, the market target group).Putting me in the same category of number-crunching as those others is very flattering, but untrue. I do some basic math and come to results which any other person who would do it would come to. Rynjin, RD and the others are way, way more into optimizing than I'd ever be, which helps them find those hidden flaws. I just see the obvious stuff and say aloud "Why don't the developers see this, too? Why don't they care?!?"
I like to think that my people skills are somewhat better than with those others, though. I manage a good dialogue with James from time to time, after all. :p
We're not talking about hidden flaws in the game or strange combinations that skirt the rules. I kill that stuff myself as a DM. I'm not going to freak out on Paizo because some guy parsed every feat to create a strange sap using character that can do insane nonlethal damage. I also don't care about non-sleeping, mounted, charging, eidolon barbarian.
I care about straight forward problems that make my life hell as a DM. Easily accessible parts of the game that create balance problems. My list isn't even particularly long.
Come and Get Me: Major damage scaling issues when barbarians build around this ability. Yes, I know there are ways to beat this ability. But not by creatures that rely heavily on melee attacks alone. It is almost impossible for any melee enemy to withstand a Come and Get Me barbarian once they get this ability, especially melee monsters. It makes fights against them trivial. Attacks are multiplicative. +4 to hit and damage against does not match 40 or 50 point hits against the attacker resolved before his attack. It doesn't even make up for the barbarian's DR. They have low AC the majority of the time as it is. +4 to hit and damage is a joke to a barbarian.
No save spells: Euphoric Tranquility and Prediction of Failure can be major problems, especially so when used in conjunction with high level Metamagic Quicken Rods.
Euphoric Tranquility is an amazing crowd control spell. Touch a demon or dragon, control it, kill all his helpers, then get one round where everyone gets their attacks first. It makes getting information easier than any other spell in the game. Requiring a touch attack does not make this spell balanced.
Prediction of Failure: No save -4 on every roll. Sure, those immune to fear or mind-affecting affects aren't bother. But anything this works on gets basically no save. It applies a -4 to everything the group does to it and all its attacks.
Enervate and Energy Drain are quite bad too. Completely neuters one enemy in an encounter.
Shorter durations and/or saves for a lot of these spells should be added to these extremely common spells.
Witch Sleep Hex: Not sure why they added standard action, long-term sleep to the game. It's an encounter killer that is for sure. They knew this from past experience with D&D. They hammered it in the Core Rulebook. Then added it back with witch. It's just as powerful and problematic as the spell that caused all the problems in old D&D. Not even sure why it was added back. It's even more powerful in the hands of a Magus Hexcrafter. I'd reduce the duration of this to one round, maybe two rounds at higher level. Not affected by Cackle. I'd make it a full-round action like the sleep spell.
Changes like these to problematic abilities would make the game much more balanced and less problematic to run. DMs are the life blood of D&D. The players have nothing to do if we DMs don't run the game. I feel like they should address that aspect of their game more frequently. They should be able to sift what is problematic for a single DM that they probably don't need to act on and what is problematic for a large percentage of DMs that causes major balance problems.
Please note that Gorbacz has no idea about who my players are and how much they optimize (answer: two know their stuff, although nothing compared to what people present in the DPR threads, one gets her characters built by one of the first two, one builds decent characters and two are pretty damn bad at building powerful characters. And when one of the first two comes up with something really crazy, I always put my foot down and say "no".) and so his "opinion" should be discounted as valid discussion material.
The strength of my group mainly lies in having played together for a long time and thus having worked out some effective tactics and that AP's are difficult to adjust to this and a generally larger than normal group, this AP in particular so.
Also, generally what Piccolo said. Mythic Adventures problems happen not because people optimize... they happen because the fundamental math is broken and people need to actively anti-optimize to have the game not come crashing down around their ears. And that is just simply bad design.
That would be strange if they ignored aggressive feedback.As much as I hate to say it, it has a precedent, going as far back as all the way to the original Pathfinder Beta.
There are a handful of posters here - off the top of my head Magnus himself, Rynjin, RavingDork, and a few others - who are known as being exceptional number-crunchers, who have all but removed themselves from the playtests because their findings aren't acknowledged. And that's not counting the ones who have already left, or who were before my time. Every time there's a playtest, you always end up with the same two camps of complaints: one group like this who complains their findings are being ignored, and another group complaining that the first group's feedback is too forceful, too aggressive, too hostile.
Add to this that Paizo Devs have repeatedly said things like that the martial-caster disparity is not intrinsic to the system but rather a problem of imbalance of skill and/or style among players, and that their games don't have an issue of casters rendering martial characters obsolete at mid-to-high levels.... Yeah. (I'd actually link to the incident in question, as an example, but I don't have the patience to dig through James Jacobs's ginormous thread.)
The thing that throws me off is that I wasn't forceful or agressive at all when I was pointing out Mythic's potential rocket tag issues during the playtest, yet nothing that I said seemed to affect the final product at all.
If feels like you have to make a big deal in order to even get noticed during a playtest (unless you are pointing out something really obvious), but then if you make enough noise that the issue becomes known people will probably complain that you're being a jerk about it. And yea, chances are that at that point you are.
|
|
And neither your "seven experienced optimizers" group, nor RavingDorks "why is everybody looking at me like that?" group nor Rynjin's "I have no time to play the game, I'm too busy theorycrafting!" groups are anywhere close to an average gaming group (and hence, the market target group).Putting me in the same category of number-crunching as those others is very flattering, but untrue. I do some basic math and come to results which any other person who would do it would come to. Rynjin, RD and the others are way, way more into optimizing than I'd ever be, which helps them find those hidden flaws. I just see the obvious stuff and say aloud "Why don't the developers see this, too? Why don't they care?!?"
I like to think that my people skills are somewhat better than with those others, though. I manage a good dialogue with James from time to time, after all. :p
While it is correct, that some of the groups and people you mentioned are in the minority, I would argue, that most Pathfinder GMs and players are more experienced than the demographic APs are designed for (new players/GMs).
However this doesn't change the facts that some rules/options are very very powerful and have the potential to change the game for the worse. In this specific case, quite a number of people where right, and while it is true, that creating mythic characters was a main target for us playtesters.. we mentioned, that nonmythic monsters weren't capable of challenging mythic characters.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Add to it that I think Paizo underestimates the power of the internet and the shared collective of knowledge that exists.
Gamers have changed in the last 10 years. In the last 10 years, we've seen the online presence of games explode, and the upsurge of competitive gaming thrive. In addition, you have competitive games with RPG elements like DOTA, WoW, or LoL that incorporate level up mechanics and accumulated skills/abilities. This means that players will seek advice to become better at the game, reading guides, watching videos, seeking builds to further their characters success.
People raised in this shared knowledge age are doing the exact same thing to TTRPGs like Pathfinder. New players that eventually get online seeking advice on how to be better at the game. What do they find? Complete character optimization guides.
They take these guides and extract the information within to suit their build needs. So every time a guide comes out for a class, that becomes more and more knowledge that is put into the hands of new players. This means that you have new players that are having their hands held through character creation by leaning on someone else.
It'd be like creating a level 1 character and the GM handing you items of 10th level PC wealth. Sure, you're not as good as a 10th level PC (just as a new player reading the guide isn't as good as those who have experience), but you're a damn sight better than a normal 1st level PC.
|
|
The take-away for the players who want to participate in playtests is figuring out what format their analysis needs to be in for Paizo to receive the data and treat it with due consideration, rather than ignoring it. It appears the best way to do this is to do a mock-run of an adventure, post the results, and describe the probabilities of success along with an analysis as to where those success/failure rates come from when put up against something intended for that level of challenge. It's bit more work, but seems to do a better job of reaching the developers.
Good post. I thought the bolded snippet from your last paragraph was particularly interesting. In each playtest since the original PFRPG Alpha, Paizo employees have specifically asked for playtest feedback, which they have defined (roughly) as "make some characters, play them in an adventure or at least some encounters, and tell us what you think." They've even gone so far as to say that things like theorycrafting are much less desirable to them and get much less consideration. The bolded portion of your comment is exactly what Paizo asks for from the community during a playtest, while the bulk (or most vocal part) of the feedback seems to be theorycraft (I built a ThisRace with 10 levels in SomeClass and took TheseFeats and calculated that his DPR should be X) without a single die being rolled, which is exactly the kind of feedback they've said is least helpful to them.
Whether or not the feedback they want is the feedback they need is a different debate. Playtest feedback takes more time (and possibly more coordination since you generally need multiple people to execute it) and that may be the reason more people are interested in providing theorycraft feedback.
-Skeld
The take-away for the players who want to participate in playtests is figuring out what format their analysis needs to be in for Paizo to receive the data and treat it with due consideration, rather than ignoring it. It appears the best way to do this is to do a mock-run of an adventure, post the results, and describe the probabilities of success along with an analysis as to where those success/failure rates come from when put up against something intended for that level of challenge. It's bit more work, but seems to do a better job of reaching the developers.Good post. I thought the bolded snippet from your last paragraph was particularly interesting. In each playtest since the original PFRPG Alpha, Paizo employees have specifically asked for playtest feedback, which they have defined (roughly) as "make some characters, play them in an adventure or at least some encounters, and tell us what you think." They've even gone so far as to say that things like theorycrafting are much less desirable to them and get much less consideration. The bolded portion of your comment is exactly what Paizo asks for from the community during a playtest, while the bulk (or most vocal part) of the feedback seems to be theorycraft (I built a ThisRace with 10 levels in SomeClass and took TheseFeats and calculated that his DPR should be X) without a single die being rolled, which is exactly the kind of feedback they've said is least helpful to them.
Whether or not the feedback they want is the feedback they need is a different debate. Playtest feedback takes more time (and possibly more coordination since you generally need multiple people to execute it) and that may be the reason more people are interested in providing theorycraft feedback.
-Skeld
Indeed, actual "play"test results are hard to acquire. Most people have only so much time to play now days as it is. Hell, I haven't played PF since April because my group always take s a hiatus for the summer (though October is usually when we begin again).
But, in order to playtest, you have to either sacrifice your normal campaign, or add additional play time on top of what you've already got. For some people, neither is really feasible. In my group, I'm the only one really willing to playtest, but my group has increasingly relied on myslef as the GM in recent years, so I get to encounter test instead of play test. At which point I may as well simply do theorycraft as it will have the same result when I report it.
I say that, because when I'm playing a character, I build it and play it and don't know what the result will be. I don't know the upcoming trials. But as a GM, I see the character's feats and abilities, and I have an encounter set up, so I roughly know how its going to end up already simply by extrapolating the date, no dice rolling needed. It's essentially the same as theorycraft, only it takes longer and more people.
I know that when it came to the Playtest for the Advanced Class Guide, I was only able to get one in. My group met once a month, bypassed the encounter where I introduced several of the hybrid classes, and it was only a side-encounter I created specifically for the purpose of running the Advanced classes (and also introduce mythic to the Runelords game) when I was able to run the characters and see how they worked.
I have to wonder if Paizo might be better off hiring a dozen people for two weeks of temp-work and have them run through the initial playtest. The advantage is that Paizo would have a better idea of how confusing the rules are to novices, and if they are working on it for all ten days of the temp assignment, each group would likely get in at least 16 games (after initial training). The Paizo full-time employees watching (and probably GMing) the playtest would have a hands-on view of what was going on.
---------
Paizo seriously needs to put out an official errata. I know Mythic is broken. They need to own up to it and fix the worse problems. That's all. Because they're still using Mythic. Book 2 of the Iron Gods AP includes a Mythic foe. And Mythic does have its uses, especially for beefing up a lower-level encounter to be more interesting and innovative - dual initiative alone is a massive benefit for boss-encounters as acting twice in a round helps alleviate problems caused by action economy.
I have to wonder why we've not seen an errata.
The take-away for the players who want to participate in playtests is figuring out what format their analysis needs to be in for Paizo to receive the data and treat it with due consideration, rather than ignoring it. It appears the best way to do this is to do a mock-run of an adventure, post the results, and describe the probabilities of success along with an analysis as to where those success/failure rates come from when put up against something intended for that level of challenge. It's bit more work, but seems to do a better job of reaching the developers.Good post. I thought the bolded snippet from your last paragraph was particularly interesting. In each playtest since the original PFRPG Alpha, Paizo employees have specifically asked for playtest feedback, which they have defined (roughly) as "make some characters, play them in an adventure or at least some encounters, and tell us what you think." They've even gone so far as to say that things like theorycrafting are much less desirable to them and get much less consideration. The bolded portion of your comment is exactly what Paizo asks for from the community during a playtest, while the bulk (or most vocal part) of the feedback seems to be theorycraft (I built a ThisRace with 10 levels in SomeClass and took TheseFeats and calculated that his DPR should be X) without a single die being rolled, which is exactly the kind of feedback they've said is least helpful to them.
Whether or not the feedback they want is the feedback they need is a different debate. Playtest feedback takes more time (and possibly more coordination since you generally need multiple people to execute it) and that may be the reason more people are interested in providing theorycraft feedback.
-Skeld
All my feedback is based on play. Shouldn't they be accepting feedback based on playing the game outside of controlled play-testing?
I had no idea what Come and Get Me was until I ran a barbarian that used it. It became so problematic at high level that I dread running another barbarian with it. I learned all the different methods of dealing with the ability running against it as a DM. Those methods are narrow and if used constantly, they negatively impact the barbarian player and make it seem as though I'm targeting him specifically. That's a bad situation to be in as a DM.
Not to mention that the means to counter Come and Get Me are often defeated by other group members. If you attempt to use invisibility to avoid AoOs, then the divine caster usually casts invisibility purge or they buff the barbarian with true seeing or the like. Reach is generally countered by polymorph spells or the Step Up line of feats or a transformative reach weapon.
I could list all the different encounter scenarios that have destroyed encounters with the options I've listed. Even if you learn to deal with such abilities, Paizo releases something that counters the defense. For example, Thanatopic Spell was released allowing enervate and energy drain to penetrate the defenses that already exist to counter the abilities. So caster players immediately latch onto this counter and I'm back to being frustrated. Seems like play testing should continue past initial testing to refine the game. I'd almost enjoy them starting a DM rule discussion forum, so those of us that DM can give them direct feedback on rules from our games. It seems like that would be extremely helpful feedback.
Whether or not the feedback they want is the feedback they need is a different debate. Playtest feedback takes more time (and possibly more coordination since you generally need multiple people to execute it) and that may be the reason more people are interested in providing theorycraft feedback.
-Skeld
It seems indeed impractical for most groups to run extra sessions or put their normal campaign on hiatus to build test characters and play some off-sessions for said feedback. Also, that feedback most likely would still be skewed by group composition, GM ability and what types of encounters are chosen.
I am not saying that using theorycraft is the better solution, but it has its advantages, one of which is that comparing classes to each other is much more clinical and conclusive than in a playtest environment.
Testing should focus versus environment. It should include a party component of commonly used spells and support abilities. I think the game is fairly well balanced at early levels. What we need badly is testing for the higher level game. That is when it starts to get out of hand. Say level 10 or 12 plus play-testing.
|
|
The thing is, you don't actually need to sit down with other players to do what I posted. In it's core, all you are running is a same-game test with a variety of combat and non-combat challenges. You can take an average paizo adventure and look at the overall goals and individual goals and then model the probabilities of a character being able to achieve those goals. I'm not talking about one fight after another, but rather attempting to run through an adventure, maybe with a generic party, maybe solo.
Theorycraft is the analysis part. Playtesting is the calibration of the models used for the theorycraft. Maybe eventually, paizo/the players can develop some standardized suites of tests to help evaluate new content.
The big point I'm trying to get across, is I think that an argument that says "with x combination of class features/feats a character will have a Z% chance of success on circumstance X. Is this intended?"
That is still theorycrafting, useful, but not perfect.
It think it makes sense to go through an adventure and list for example the number of encounters a witch could ruin with the slumber hex, or enemies immune to precision damage.
|
|
PFS makes a good test environment. You have a set of short adventures that everyone should be playing basically the same way (so there are no weird houserules that interfere or interact with) and you have the potential for a wide swath of possible race/class/etc. combinations and different people with different playstyles.
Of course, the Mythic playtest didn't use PFS.
-Skeld
|
|
PFS makes a good test environment. You have a set of short adventures that everyone should be playing basically the same way (so there are no weird houserules that interfere or interact with) and you have the potential for a wide swath of possible race/class/etc. combinations and different people with different playstyles.
Of course, the Mythic playtest didn't use PFS.
-Skeld
I agree that PFS can be useful for testing. Another way to do it, would be to do a simulated run through a PFS adventure. The drawback of course, is that PFS does not handle the higher levels very well at all. What we really need are some very good high level modules that take into account the type of capabilities characters possess for the higher levels. I seem to remember the Mythic playtest having a sample mythic adventure, but I don't remember it being all that useful and a lot of it was tied up in the mythic trials system that was later revised.
Actually, to make this more constructive, do people have some modules they suggest to use as test candidates for the different level ranges?
Maybe I'm being dense here, but what do you mean by "a simulated run through"? This could be a matter of semantics regarding the term "simulated." This is a term I encounter daily in my profession, where it has a very specific meaning and is always considered to be inferior data.
-Skeld
|
With the Wrath AP the encounters IMO should have been designed from the ground up to be optimized IMO. Even if it meant going against their design philosophy of developing aps for beginners. All they had to go was write a disclaimer "for experienced DMs and players only" on the cover. If any so needed to be optimized from the ground up it was this one. It might haveade it eadier to run or the encounters more challenging. Even with the badly designed Mythic rules.
My experiences with the aps is different from nobodyshome. Three APS run. Two to completion one halfway. I have had to rewrite the encounters most of the time. If it's a poorly designed BBEG. To having to boost the hp and equipment of the other npcs. A good example is in Rise of the Runelords. At one point the group is fighting a bunch of Ogres. The main problem is that the encounters are inside structures that are for medium sized creatures. One of them a fort. It's kind of hard for the npcs to swarm the party when they are large sized creatures. The players were still challenged. Yet it took s lot if reworking on my party. Next time I run it I would scrape having the Ogres in the Fort. Nor are my players heavily optimized. Only one really. The rest have properly built characters.
I can see shh some of the posters who know the math of the system boycott the plsytests. I don't blame them either. If what some of them say is true the devs for the most part are not interested in feedback. Apparently they tell posters to stop posting or posts disappear. As well if the fans keep pointing to flaws and they get ignored then why bother. In the end I think the whole plsy test process is a feel good public relations exercise. So that the hardcore fans can point to Paizo and go "look how good Paizo is compared to Wotc". The devs are not forced to use the feedback of course. Yet if they are going yo do their own thing why ask got it in the first place. I respect the devs. I like the product for theidtvpsrt, I also see the same mistakes being repeated over and over.
When it comes to developing new material it goes to two extremes. Either it's too good like Sacred Geometry, or not worth taking like Slashing Grace. No proper middle ground. At this point they should be going it in their sleep. Which is why I dont understand how thug messed up with the Mythic Rules. I probably will not run the ap. I don't mind reworking a sp. Not to the extent I would have to for this one.
Here's the thing about the AP. It works fine... without Mythic. You can even replace the Mythic with regenerating Hero Points, and you probably won't have too big a problem. It would even be simpler to run!
Here's the thing. The APs are designed for levels 1-15 to 17. Of all the APs out there, only one is designed to go to level 20.
Wrath of the Righteous.
WotR had two problems going for it. First, this AP uses the Mythic Rules, which were still new and being hammered out, and thus they underestimated things. Significantly. And second, it is the first AP to go to level 20, and they underestimated THAT impact as well.
WotR could work if you only have 5 Mythic Tiers. It works better if you replace the Mythic with Hero Points that regenerate - at least, in theory, and I've not heard anyone say that it didn't work. And last, if you just run the game as a non-Mythic game for the PCs, then a crew that optimizes their abilities and feats would likely find the game to be challenging but doable (especially if you allow a couple artifacts to be possessed by the PCs).
There's also several methods of nerfing Mythic. Doing so makes it far less overpowered and more viable. While there are some areas (book 3) that are underpowered, a novice group with nerfed Mythic or an experienced optimized group with normal rules would likely enjoy the AP, especially as it had a strong storyline for the most part.
They should be things of wonder that can spawn entire campaigns, with upsides and definite downsides.
This here is where you disagree with the devs. Jacobs stated in one of the AP issue threads - I think somewhere in Mummy's Mask - that Paizo deliberately does not tack negative effects onto Artifacts. His reason for this is that Artifacts are supposed to be the best of the best items, something every character should want, and that he and the other devs don't want players tossing an Artifact away because "cool power but not worth the risk of incurring the downside".