No, you're not wrong in noticing the pattern.
I don't care to speculate what Paizo's reasons are(if I did, it wouldn't be very flattering).
Yes, IMO the situations come up too often.
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A lot of people who write APs do their entire book. All the social, combat, exploration, ect.
My personal opinion is that a lot of those writers are better writers than gamers.
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The CR system is skewed toward the fallacy that single enemies are a reliable threat to a party. In reality, a single enemy of CR=APL isn't a challenge for an APL *party*. Dropping another CR=APL monster bumps the CR to APL+2, which is a hard fight according to the rules, even though the party still outpaces the at APL enemies by 2 sets of actions per round.
Removing the EL counter was a great step to fixing encounter design, but the CR scaling promotes solo monsters, and ends up with more frequent cakewalk encounters that are at CR or CR+1-2.
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A lot of people who write APs do their entire book. All the social, combat, exploration, ect.
My personal opinion is that a lot of those writers are better writers than gamers.
This I have been saying for longer than I recall. Many APs feel like novels that the party are interupting.!
In my experience players tend to HATE multi npc encounters to the point of having one say
"Can we just all subtract %50 of our spells and abilities in exchange for removing all non important mooks?"
NPC's, the ones with names, usually have a good deal of background to them and time put into them. It's difficult to get this across to some players at the best of times. Cheapening the NPC's by making several named ones with less details doesn't make for a well written story, and adding nameless mook NPC's takes away from the narrative weight of the BBEG / NPC.
More importantly, the writers cannot know what your party makeup is. The encounters as written may need adjustments by the GM or reinforcements to fit your party, but the well written NPC's usually don't need much more thinking for their motivations and goals etc.
I prefer to have a well written AP with a final showdown with a nuanced and complicated NPC that can struggle with optimized builds or a full party.
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Lincoln,
A couple factors I'd like to throw out there for your consideration. Writers and developers need feedback. That also includes hearing what we could have done better. Unfortunately, sometimes the feedback we get is so hostile its difficult to read it. That's not an excuse for not continuing to improve. I'm pointing out that we get a lot of sarcasm. That doesn't help. That stuff gets tuned out.
Incidentally, your posts in this thread are helpful. I'm not even speaking about this specific thread or any post in it. There's no finger pointing happening in this thread, I'm speaking in general.
Another thing to consider, there is a significant delay on the feedback an author receives and what we can then do about it. I am not making this thread about me, but I am going to use me as an example:
By the time I got any feedback on The Shackled Hut, Demon's Heresy was turned over. It was gone. There is literally a six month delay in our ability to compensate from what was learned. So, by extension, The Half-Dead City is more of a reflection of Reign of Winter than it is Wrath of the Righteous.
I can tell you this.. Say I hypothetically wrote another AP chapter, there would be only one or two solo encounters in say 52 hypothetical pages, and neither of them would be the final encounter. But they would be well suited to an entire group.
Hypothetically this would be evidence that we're listening and acting on it. Nevertheless, there is a delay before the echo comes back.
Hope this helps!
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I appreciate the information and the viewpoint, Jim. I'm usually quite pleased with the flavor and the power level of what appears in APs; the "lonely boss monster" was worth noting because it seemed to me to be one of the few cases where there is a disconnect between the way the game plays and the way the adventures are written.
Absolutely.For the record, I think your comments are entirely accurate as well as helpful.
Obviously I can't actually speak for all writers. I like to think, however, that we are all continuing to adjust and refine as we learn. Plus for the health and frankly the variety—the developers are always adding to the author pool. They have to. It would be unwise to rely on the same 8 men and women, plus the adventures need different people in order to remain fresh. Each new author has a bit of a breaking in period and that is hard to avoid no matter how naturally talented they are.
Although! Our Developers do not change and they are always the vigilant watchdogs and vangards of quality and innovation.
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By the time I got any feedback on The Shackled Hut, Demon's Heresy was turned over. It was gone. There is literally a six month delay in our ability to compensate from what was learned. So, by extension, The Half-Dead City is more of a reflection of Reign of Winter than it is Wrath of the Righteous.
I can tell you this.. Say I hypothetically wrote another AP chapter, there would be only one or two solo encounters in say 52 hypothetical pages, and neither of them would be the final encounter. But they would be well suited to an entire group.
Shackled Hut solo Feedback:
2 Logrivich: you had those clock ringing automotons on tracks and did not use them as mechanical minions in the boss fight with the dragon. If my group hadn't immediately smashed them I would have had two extra bodies he could call out in the middle of their ambush after a round or two.
3 dawn pipers: I threw in some extra twigjacks in the tree one and turned them into more 4e style elite/solos so I increased their hp and had their spell like powers affect the group and not single targets.
4 Granny witch in the tower: I boosted her familiar into a monster of its own and had her hexes work as gaze attacks instead of single target to involve more of the group. I had her able to call out to an undead cleaver cook who came in to aid her.
Duly noted Voadam! Thank you. :)
I'll need to steal some of those, Voadam! :)
One thing I will say on the complement point is that at least the Big Fight with the guardian keeping people from entering the Hut at the end of The Shackled Hut had an ally! :) It made sense and lessened the likelihood of the Big Bad being taken out with a mob action first round.
In my opinion, the easiest way, I have found, to make these single foe encounters more difficult it to tack on class levels/templates. Yeah, that foe may have less actions per round than the group, but when said foe breaks the standard challenge by a few levels, it's going to be much more difficult. As a GM, it's a good idea to playtest encounters beforehand to see how easily your PCs run through key encounters. If it's too easy, add 2 class levels or a template and playtest again. You could also make all single villains either gestalt classes or, if they are monsters, do a similar thing with gestalt, but with a similar creatures capabilities. There are numerous ways around the action economics issue! :)
I'll need to steal some of those, Voadam! :)
One thing I will say on the complement point is that at least the Big Fight with the guardian keeping people from entering the Hut at the end of The Shackled Hut had an ally! :) It made sense and lessened the likelihood of the Big Bad being taken out with a mob action first round.
On that one I added in a yeth hound on a leash and the female Troll captain I hadn't used in the tower. Depending on how many showed up for the game I was going to increase the number of combatants, if our sixth guy had shown up I was going to have a yeti rumble out of the snow as well.
In my opinion, the easiest way, I have found, to make these single foe encounters more difficult it to tack on class levels/templates. Yeah, that foe may have less actions per round than the group, but when said foe breaks the standard challenge by a few levels, it's going to be much more difficult. As a GM, it's a good idea to playtest encounters beforehand to see how easily your PCs run through key encounters. If it's too easy, add 2 class levels or a template and playtest again. You could also make all single villains either gestalt classes or, if they are monsters, do a similar thing with gestalt, but with a similar creatures capabilities. There are numerous ways around the action economics issue! :)
I go with more 4e/Trailblazer style to deal with the action economy.
If I want to give a little boost I make them 4e style elite with double hp and double attacks. This can mean free twin spell metamagics or a haste style effect to give another attack or move action to effectively pounce.
For a true solo I multiply hp by party size and give them group attacks. So their single target effects turn into area of effect breath weapons or gaze attacks or just auras for powers and whirlwind attacks to engage the whole PC melee gang going against them.
I try and give them reaction things as well like autodamage to attackers or AoOs or immediate action stuff if I can think of something appropriate so there is villain action on the PCs' turns.
I have also noticed this i would very much like for it to change, the reason i buy the APs is because i don't have the time to make my own campaigns. While i understand that i have to make some changes here and there, i can't re-write* nearly every serious encounter on books 5 and 6 (sometimes book 4) that defeats the purpose i buy the APs in the first place.
Also my other problem is that while some encounters can probably work as solo encounters (even at high levels), they have a very bad spell selection and so bad tactics that they can't work as a solo encounter.
I am running shattered star and book 5 has a final boss that had the potential to be a challenging solo encounter but then that same boss has only 1 defensive spell and that is displacement (2 if you count greater invisibility), it's not prebuffed and he has some of the worst tactics i have read. Do all of the above make sense for the story we have? absolutely. Do all of the above make the boss into something to wipe the floor with? also yes.
When i run that part i had to remake the boss in order to change his feats, his spell selection and his tactics all the while trying to not make changes that contradict the story, also i created a mature adult red dragon sorcerer 3 (and had to create a half assed story for him and why he is there in case the players wanted to talk before the battle) as an addition to the single boss.
Boy was i right to do so...
My party killed the big boss in round one before he had the chance to act so my own created (lesser) enemy was all that i had left in order to make an interesting final encounter, luckily i managed to do just that.
All of that took A LOT of my time to do.
On the other hand the final battle of book 4 was SO much better (and more interesting but that is a story issue), still i had to make to recreate the NPC, becuase his spell selection was quite bad (but not awful) and change a feat or two but the tactics were quite sound, and that were all the changes i made into the encounter (ok i changed the favored enemy of his bodyguards/minions but that didn't take any time).
The difference between the two final battles were that in book 5 you had a single (with the potential of being) overpowered boss while in book 4 you had a powerful boss with 4 minion/bodyguards and 2 not-so-minion/bodyguards.
Guess which is easier to work with in order to make a good final encounter?
I understand that sometimes (especially in high levels) the story gets in the way and you have to make a solo encounter, i really do. My answer to that is that you either make another story that doesn't restrain you so much OR you build the solo encounter in such a way that can actually work as a solo encounter (that includes build, tactics, terrain, making sure that the PCs are actually worned out by the time they face it, etc).
*sometimes this is easy, like making a single monster battles contain two of the same monster (maybe add the advanced template to both) but when we have NPC encounters i can't just have his identical twin brother be with him, i have to make some other NPC or monster be there with him
I have found that the Mythic Rules work great as a solo monster booster. A couple levels of Mythic (or Mythic Template) against non Mythic PC's gives them the power/action economy/durability to make these fights more memorable and challenging.
Can you give us some examples of the changes you made using the mythic rules and the results?
PS. I am not asking to make APs hard and challenging enough for the super optimized party, i understand that there are a lot of groups out there who would get TPKed all the time by such an AP, what i am asking is that APs aren't so easy that my work of changing them for my (normally/moderately optimized) party not take so long.
PS 2. I know that my job would be a lot easier if used Hero Lab but i don't have the money to spare on this way overpriced (but awesome) software, instead i get to work with the much more limited (but free) PCGen.
** spoiler omitted **
I was trying to avoid spoiler by saying he instead of she (the reason i put it in a spoiler tag was to avoid wall of text and not to avoid spoiling).
Now about the reason of not being her type, let's better go into spoilers:There were a lot of minor reasons i went with a red dragon instead of a blue:
1) It was easier to work with from a CR/mechanics/build POV
2) The whole "grew up with no parents and no siblings" part of her backstory led me to beileve that she wouldn't have any reason to trust more a blue dragon than any other type of dragon.
3) I have a gnome pyromaniac blaster sorcerer in my party, so i thought it would be somewhat funny to have them face a fire breathing dragon.
4) At the beggining of book i had them meet/face the red dragon disciple (red)dragonrider king of Brevoy (long post-kingmaker story from another campaign) while he was on his way to join the Fourth Crusade (i have WotR happening on the background) and wanted to give them a small wtf moment when they faced the red dragon.
5) I have a huge red dragon mini and a gargantuan blue dragon mini but i dodn't have a huge blue dragon mini.
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Can you give us some examples of the changes you made using the mythic rules and the results?
As far as AP's goes I've only ran Council of Thieves most of the way through (before Mythic was released) and started a couple that fell through (Rise of runelords, Reign of winter). Though I have honestly never been a GM that runs content straight out of the book. (I have alot of fun customizing an adding on to the adventures).
Though, I have had great success with my home campaign (A "sandbox" set in Golarion) and many one-shots (Ran through Roll20) adding Mythic levels/templates to solo monsters. Adding Mythic lets the creatures do stuff they wouldn't be able to do (Act twice in Initiative, Attack more times per round, Assess to more powerful spells and feats) and Mythic Surge give them the edge they need to become challenging.
The easiest way would be to add one of the Templates to a creature, but more customization can be added by adding levels of Mythic or (even more work) designing a Mythic version of the creature. The possibilities are endless.
It belatedly occurs to me that one reason the writers might go with single opponents is that they have to keep an eye on wealth-by-level and the sorts of magical items that are handed out in the campaign. Giving all the treasure value to a single monster allows them a big enough budget for the 'boss' to carry magic items that the PCs won't regard as 'spares' or 'trade goods'.
That doesn't happen (from what i have seen), too much wealth (from a non solo encounter) might be a concern but there are ways to solve this issue.
I like to keep the encounter size around that of the party, maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower, depending on the strength of the enemies.
One trick I've used a couple times that works out relatively well is gestalting class levels ontop of monsters' racial hit die. Beefs them up, gives them a few tricks the party wouldn't otherwise expect.
This is where one aspect of Mythic actually comes in handy - there is a Mythic Template where the enemy gets two actions a turn, one at +20 initiative.
I've noticed the same thing and agree with you to a point, Lincoln. My concern is not so much the cake-walk solo encounters (my players don't seem to mind being efficiently, brutally and unsportsmanly awesome) but the lack of opportunities for a PC to shine in other ways:
- vastly outnumbered melee master overcoming foes (Cleave, whirlwind strike come to mind)
- vastly outnumbered spell caster overcoming foes (what's the point of fireball anymore?)
- Nimble heroics through crowd of hostiles (acrobatics/mobility stuff)
- Motivational speaker bard soothing an angry mob
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This is where one aspect of Mythic actually comes in handy - there is a Mythic Template where the enemy gets two actions a turn, one at +20 initiative.
I've been looking for an apropriate place to use this template for a while now. Did you try it? how well did it work out?
And in general, I agree with the majority here. Encounters with single monsters are silly, and the sweet spot seems to be 3 - 5 foes against a 4 men party. I like boss fights better when the boss has 2 - 3 convincingly strong mooks that demand attention from the party.
I gave three Skeleton Champions this Template. It proved... handy but less useful than if I'd given it to something with a higher THAC0 (or the d20 equivalent). Mind you, the group freaked when three skeletons proceeded to attack so far in advance of the group that it wasn't funny (well, it was to me ^^)... but that was nothing compared to round 1.5 with the next group of attacks. =^-^=
The combat ended up taking all night, sadly. Three Divine Template Heukevas and three Mythic Skeleton Champions... and a Haunt that hit the monk hard so she ended up wiffing nearly everything. Didn't kill anyone, but a couple characters did get rather battered.
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I gave three Skeleton Champions this Template. It proved... handy but less useful than if I'd given it to something with a higher THAC0 (or the d20 equivalent). Mind you, the group freaked when three skeletons proceeded to attack so far in advance of the group that it wasn't funny (well, it was to me ^^)... but that was nothing compared to round 1.5 with the next group of attacks. =^-^=
The combat ended up taking all night, sadly. Three Divine Template Heukevas and three Mythic Skeleton Champions... and a Haunt that hit the monk hard so she ended up wiffing nearly everything. Didn't kill anyone, but a couple characters did get rather battered.
I will admit that giving the template to multiple small creatures never even crossed my mind, and you post just sent me reeling with possibilities...
Have you tried giving the template to a big solo boss monster and see if it compensates for the unbalance in economy of action?
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It doesn't compensate, but it goes a long way to helping.
Back in my on hiatus mythic game, I down CR'd on the average numbers table the mythic green dragon from MA and gave it the Dual Initiative ability on top. I think the fight ended up an APL+2 fight for their actual APL based on wbl, high stats and mythic. Took a good seven rounds, which is amazing for a lvl 7 party taking on a CR9 solo.
Didn't help as much 2 levels later when they were fighting a HD reduced Ashurendra (lowered to adjusted CR12 after mythic abilities), but that fight had some cinematic survival mechanics going for the Ashurendra.
The CR system is inherently flawed, which is a major issue with how Paizo staff develops encounters. I follow the guidelines laid out in everyman's guide to designing challenging encounters. This usually means adding a few baddies to most boss type encounters in an AP.
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I tend to be quite liberal with enemies coming to each other's aid. The boss fight in our adventures are more often "three or four rooms' encounters together" as "the big bad sitting in their room."
In fact, the latter is sort of a reward for the players. If they can manage to clear everything else out without the big bad noticing, good on them.
That said, solo enemies in isolated encounter areas are still a problem. The original design of the Karzoug fight is a good example, although obviously resolved in the Anniversary Edition.
Cheers!
Landon
The original design of the Karzoug fight is a good example, although obviously resolved in the Anniversary Edition.
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** spoiler omitted **
The original design of the Karzoug fight is a good example, although obviously resolved in the Anniversary Edition.
Yeah, it's kind of tricky. Playing a spellcaster to their full combat potential is... usually unfun to everyone involved.
But if your players push the limits, it's only fair to push the limits back. Which, if that doesn't result in good gameplay, will hopefully result in everyone taking a step back and re-evaluating their choices.
Action denial and save-or-die work very differently at my table for that reason. A focus on damage and lack of action denial makes it a lot easier to use bosses like Karzoug (as it's just a question of getting their HP and damage right).
Cheers!
Landon
5E D&D came up with quite a good way to deal with the Action Economy of the Party vs Solo monster fights... giving them Legendary Actions. Pretty damn good idea and can be lifted for Pathfinder games.
5E D&D came up with quite a good way to deal with the Action Economy of the Party vs Solo monster fights... giving them Legendary Actions. Pretty damn good idea and can be lifted for Pathfinder games.
What exactly is that?
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Basically all Legendary Creatures get 3 Legendary Actions. They can take a legendary action from a limited list of actions at the end of an opponents turn. They also get a limited number of times they can shake off a status effect to stop the 'Stunlock beat downs'.
So effectively they get 4 actions in a turn (3 legendary ones + their own action). Some of them have a Lair Action that happen on Initiative 20 if you battle them in their lair.
So it gives them an equal action economy against an adventuring party. As well as gives them a limited resistance to getting locked down by a party and wrecked.
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In short... they level out the action economy. I could easily seem them being portable to Pathfinder.
I love the idea of Lair Actions, and Legendary Actions sound like they have their own appeal as well. I'm pretty sure I'll be stealing that.
Here is an excerpt from the D&D website of the Sphinxes.
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I love the idea of Lair Actions, and Legendary Actions sound like they have their own appeal as well. I'm pretty sure I'll be stealing that.
Just be careful with the Legendary actions that you know what you want to do if the party drops below three active members or someone holds their action. Triggering after each player's action interacts a little weirdly with the normal initiative system.
The Agile mythic template is a good alternative if it ends up giving you problems.
Cheers!
Landon
Dual Initiative doesn't really clear up action economy, by the way, I used it as an addon without the rest of the Mythic template and... they never got their second action at -20 Initiative... And the initiative system for 5E is the exact same as the Pathfinder system so it should function the same way.