Is Mythic Adventures viable?


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Quote:
sure the story is nice to have (when such a thing exists in an AP, not all of them have a story)

... which ones don't? Speaking on the Paizo APs only at least, I'm pretty sure all of them have a core plot.


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Yeah, I don't get the complaining OP. I've run many, many adventures over the years (since about 1987). I've had to significantly rework... every, single, one. That's the GM's job. If you run something out of the box and expect it to work perfectly, then expect problems. PCs will either be too powerful or too weak or whatever. Always happens. Always. The adventure gives you an outline, so you don't have to start from scratch- then you do a little tweaking- and you're ready to rock and roll. But don't skimp on the tweaking.


Piccolo Taphodarian wrote:
leo1925 wrote:

To be fair, even if we are talking about non mythic rules, battles taking 2 or 3 rounds at levels 10+ (especially 13+) and solo encounters being a joke is the norm with the current system.

For example when i played Jade Regent, the final battle was run pretty much as written (minus the stupid stuff) and was added an adult forest dragon, the battle was over in 3 or 4 rounds (i don't remember) and there were 5 PCs. When i DMed shattered star, with A LOT of changes which ended up making the battle a CR 22 (and that doesn't include the second life of the BBEG) against lvl 17 PCs, the battle managed to last 8-10 rounds (i wasn't counting after 4th) and mind you i don't think that the PCs had more than 20%-30% chance of losing.
In the Jade Regent the battle was against 4 (5 with the dragon) and in Shattered Star the battle was against 8.

What exactly is your problem with 15 point buy? i am not sure i understood.

My problem with 15 point buy is that I know I'm more than 15 points. I'm not an ambitious adventurer whose very life relies on well-rounded attributes.

I picture adventurers as the best of the best of their professions (classes). If you were to measure professional athletes and some highly physical professions like Special Ops soldier, you would find they were well above a 15 point buy campaign. For example, you do not have to take a low strength to have a high intelligence. There are many athletes that lift I excess of 400 to 500 lbs, which is an 18 to 20 strength that have IQs in excess of 150 and can run, move, and engage in athletic endeavors that would both indicate a higher dexterity and con. They also don't lack Charisma or Wisdom. The 15 point model encourages an idea of human development that isn't true: that you have to give up something to have something else.

In fact, physical training builds up all three physical stats at the same time. This is well known by anyone that engages in physical training. It in no way damages your mental capacity to do so....

I agree with this. 15 is too low. I use - can't remember the number now- the highest recommended in the core book (25?). It's a fine number, and folks are happy. I also say no scores lower than 8 on the sheet (keeps things from getting too crazy on the min-maxing side).

Paizo Employee Design Manager

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Robert Carter 58 wrote:
Yeah, I don't get the complaining OP. I've run many, many adventures over the years (since about 1987). I've had to significantly rework... every, single, one. That's the GM's job. If you run something out of the box and expect it to work perfectly, then expect problems. PCs will either be too powerful or too weak or whatever. Always happens. Always. The adventure gives you an outline, so you don't have to start from scratch- then you do a little tweaking- and you're ready to rock and roll. But don't skimp on the tweaking.

I remember running the line of modules that led up to City of Golden Death. I didn't have time to really dig in and make any adjustments beforehand, so I just ran them as written. The party was well optimized and actually had access to a pretty broad array of materials to pick from, including pretty much the whole libraries of Dreamscarred Press, Super/Rogue Genius Games, Kobold Press, and Rite Publishing. There was a RGG Death Mage, some kind of shadow magic assassin-type class from Kobold Press, a Mosaic Mage (RGG again) built to blast and heal, and a Psychic Warrior from DSP. They absolutely destroyed the first module, and then were brutally, brutally beaten when they attempted CoGD, actually failing the mission and nearly TPKing. The point being, every group is going to have different strengths and weaknesses and without taking the time to know your group, know the challenges, and adjust accordingly, it's impossible to make an adventure that will be just right for every group and playstyle. Paizo has to err on the side of the encounters being a little easier, because if 4 new players see Wrath of Righteous sitting on the shelf and think "Gee whiz, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen! Maybe we oughta try this Pathfinder game out!" and then have a terrible time playing with party members dying every couple sessions, they're not going to decide that WotR s bad, they're going to decide that Pathfinder must be bad.

I reiterate my earlier suggestion. If you're finding the Paizo APs aren't challenging enough and you aren't going to take the time to customize the encounters, pick up one or two of the Frog God super-adventures and see if that's more your style.

Sovereign Court

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@Ssalarn: Pretty much this. Frog God Games adventures are very brutal and merciless but then again, as a player you are informed that's the kind of adventure that you are going to play. Rappan Athuk real final boss basically can't be defeated unless you are being a very nice gm...a cr 35+ encounter.


If a GM won't invest the time and effort to tweak a pregenerated campaign or adventure path if it falls short of expectations or otherwise doesn't click with the group, then why should I invest the time and effort to build and roleplay a character at that table?

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Eltacolibre wrote:

@Ssalarn: Pretty much this. Frog God Games adventures are very brutal and merciless but then again, as a player you are informed that's the kind of adventure that you are going to play. Rappan Athuk real final boss basically can't be defeated unless you are being a very nice gm...a cr 35+ encounter.

I'm considering letting one of the guys in our group try running us through Rappan Athuk again sometime in the next couple months here. I figure I'll coordinate with the other party members and we'll create some kind of highly coordinated super-group that uses a Slayer (Vanguard), a Tactition (from DSP), a Paladin, and a Vitalist. The first (and last) time we ran it we didn't have time for a party planning session thinking we'd be fine since we knew we were going to have a cleric and a bard, and we just got obliterated.

Then we played Jade Regent and got to feel better about ourselves for a while.

Silver Crusade

Buri wrote:
leo1925 wrote:

I agree, since the CR system is tied to the xp system and the CR system is wonky at best, i also advise to drop xp entirely and make encounters that can challenge your group.

The issue is that by using that way where you have to rebuild entire encounters, then rebuild entire floors of encounters, then an entire book of encnounters. Then you ask yourself why are you buying APs, i buy them because i don't have the time to make my own campaign but i end up having to create my own encounters for big chunks of the campaign...

So only run 4 player, 15 point build, nonoptimized characters, with a set number of roles that only one character can occupy and you're set. It's untenable for Paizo to anticipate every party combination.

Yeah... .... ... no sorry it doesn't work. It took the time to create a set of 4 iconics and gave them mythic stuff. Other than adding a level or two they are almost identical to their writeups in the NPC guide.

Mythic Iconics will still destroy the adventure.

Silver Crusade

KestrelZ wrote:

I wish you luck in your endeavor.

Mythic Adventure rules were rather ne when Wrath of the Righteous was released. It was a prototype in how mythic adventures could be run, and a lot of things were illuminated.

- The designers seem to have underestimated the mythic abilities. The supposed mythic tier equals a half level does not stack up as actual play shows each tier seems to be a force multiplier from a previous mythic tier.

- The threats PCs face will need considerable rework. This is true of all adventure paths since each group is unique. Wrath of the righteous just needs more tweaking than average.

- Still has potential. It may require work, yet it can still be very fun for players if handled correctly.

Hopefully Paizo will have another mythic AP in the future. Maybe not a full 20 level, 10 tier advancement AP. Maybe a 17 level, 4 tier advancement track? Things get wonky once PCs gain more than 3 or 4 mythic tiers (much like 18+ level PCs).

Look I get that publishing the hardcover MA and the AP at the same time, but if they had waited about 6 months, I am certain that the end product would have been much better.

The stated reason to do mythic rules, was to be able to do adventure paths like savage tide and WotR. And while I like a lot about the mechanical implementation, the higher level enemies are just not able to keep up.

I a char manufacturer develops a new engine for a new type of race car and ends up with an engine to heavy for the frame of the car to support...


Are you kidding me? Are you actually defending the (hypothetical since we can't be sure) design decision to assume a first time foray in nearly every high level content in APs?
We are in the 15th AP in general, the 10th AP using the PF system (11th if you count RotRL AE), don't you think that it's time to stop assuming first time foray in high levels?

Orthos wrote:
Quote:
sure the story is nice to have (when such a thing exists in an AP, not all of them have a story)
... which ones don't? Speaking on the Paizo APs only at least, I'm pretty sure all of them have a core plot.

Of the top of my head, Kingmaker and Shattered Star, i played in the first and DMed the second.

blahpers wrote:
If a GM won't invest the time and effort to tweak a pregenerated campaign or adventure path if it falls short of expectations or otherwise doesn't click with the group, then why should I invest the time and effort to build and roleplay a character at that table?

First of all the time spend by the DM is A LOT more than the time spent by players. Secondly, it's one thing to tweak and another thing to rebuild an entire book and i am not just saying this, i had to rebuilt nearly every encounter in dead heart of Xin (book 6) and had to rebuilt the majority of the encounters in into the nightmare rift (book 5).


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Having GMed Shattered Star, there most absolutely is. It's your job to communicate it to the players. I agree if you run it as printed then it doesn't seem so. It plays like a mindless dungeon crawl. But, there's actually a very deep story in the background that spans several APs. I would suggest heavily drawing off the Rise AP to help communicate it. It's awesome you can even do that since it's the only Paizo AP to be a part 2 which has the benefit of having a part 1. In addition to that, in every other module, story, and AP that anything Runelord, Thassilon, or Lissala plays a role, it can probably be tied back to the Shattered Star mythos to heavily imply events of the past. You can actually weave a very high intrigue story out of it with just some research and the will to do so. The AWESOME thing about Shattered Star is that the more you play the more you can outright share those details and explore them. This is brought to fruition and pushed in your face in book 6, and you should know what I'm talking about. You could even run a campaign to tell the deep story background leading up to SS with just the events described in it as the framework and then jump your group to 'present day' and run them through SS itself if you're feeling particularly adventurous.

As to AP design, it is a smart way to for Paizo to do what they do. They perpetually keep their content available to newcomers.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

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Every AP could be the first one a player or group sees and plays in. In fact I think I know at least one person for almost every AP whose first PF experience was that particular AP.
Paizo targets casual players. If you and your group are not new or casual players, you need to either tweak the adventures or graduate to the 3pp materials targeted at your (less common) playstyle.


@Buri
I know that you can draw from RotRL in order to give shattered star some flavor, i did so but the issue is that i did by myself, and the reason i could do it is because i have GMed RotRL, the shattered star books weren't helping me do that for my players.
I should explain my previous statement more, there might be a story there (maybe it's too episodiac but that's issue with most of the APs) but the thing is that the players never get to hear any of it. About shattered star, only books 4 and 6 actually did something to let the players experience the story.

@SSalarn
ONE player, one. Not a whole group, there is no reason to assume that there are noumerous entire groups that are playing the game for the first time at high levels, instead you can be sure that there are noumerous groups that do NOT play at high levels for the first time.
While i agree that 3pp APs can be very good (altough after shattered star i have concluded that definetely don't like dungeon crawls and at least 2-3 of them are huge dungeon crawls), the thing is that i am too invested to Golarion to start learning other settings.


leo1925 wrote:

Are you kidding me? Are you actually defending the (hypothetical since we can't be sure) design decision to assume a first time foray in nearly every high level content in APs?

We are in the 15th AP in general, the 10th AP using the PF system (11th if you count RotRL AE), don't you think that it's time to stop assuming first time foray in high levels?

Not when Paizo's stated design goal is, as Sslarn said, to assume that a new player, new GM, or completely new group can pick up ANY AP and start with them.

Paizo Devs have stated, ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS, that the APs are written so that low-optimization, brand-new-to-the-game players and GMs can play them, and that ANY GROUP WITH MORE EXPERIENCE THAN THAT WILL NEED to make adjustments - and that it's MUCH MORE LOGICAL for the more experienced groups to adjust UPWARD than to expect the newbies to adjust DOWNWARD. It's not hypothetical. It's how they said they do business. Intentionally.

There are no less than four people in this thread who have said that very same thing, countless times.

Yes, That Is Paizo's Design Statement. That Is How Things Work. I don't know how else to say it.

Quote:
Orthos wrote:
Quote:
sure the story is nice to have (when such a thing exists in an AP, not all of them have a story)
... which ones don't? Speaking on the Paizo APs only at least, I'm pretty sure all of them have a core plot.
Of the top of my head, Kingmaker and Shattered Star, i played in the first and DMed the second.

I'm running Kingmaker. There is a core plot. How far did you get?

Silver Crusade

I ran Kingmaker for my group, it definitely can't handle a witch with a slumber hex or a ranger with favored enemy human and access to the APG spells.
The metaplot in the adventure is so obtuse, that the players felt the the switch between book 5 and 6 quite inorganic.

I would welcome the inclusion of optional encounters/harder challenges in the APs, the PFS scenarios can do this, why not the APs?


Sebastian Hirsch wrote:

I ran Kingmaker for my group, it definitely can't handle a witch with a slumber hex or a ranger with favored enemy human and access to the APG spells.

The metaplot in the adventure is so obtuse, that the players felt the the switch between book 5 and 6 quite inorganic.

I would welcome the inclusion of optional encounters/harder challenges in the APs, the PFS scenarios can do this, why not the APs?

Do it yourself. PFS tables don't have that luxury, so the material spells it out for them. I'd rather the AP have more base content filling its pages and trusting me to ramp things up or down than sacrifice valuable pages for optional adjustments.

Seriously, any schmuck can add a second ogre to a combat to up the CR. Show some initiative!


@Orthos
In Kingmaker we went up to the battle with the lesser Jabberwock, and after we killed before it had the chance to act we quit the campaign.

There is a difference between adjusting and throwing everything out of the window and rebuilding. WotR (from what i have heard) needs you to throw every encounter, in books 4+, out of the the window and build it again from the ground up. RotRL original converted to PF needs very little adjustment (and you are doing quite some work since you are converting), RotRL AE needs quite a bit of adjustment but nothing too serious. Shattered Star books 1,2,3,4 need quite a bit of adjustment in order to not be so boring* and several adjustment in general, books 5 and 6 are almost unsalvagable (encounter wise). Kingmaker (that i played, not run) needs a wholesale building from the ground up (again encounter wise). Jade Regent (that i played, not run) needs quite a bit of adjustment but nothing too severe like the previous ones (for example more opponents with arcane capabilities would be good, some ninjas needed some alterations to their feat/trick selection).

You think that this design goal of completely new people (if it's true and not a hypothetical one, since i have never seen this from someone from Paizo) is a good one? That's what i am arguing, i don't think that it's a good one.

PS. I forgot to mention that i also get a lot of use from the descriptions in the APs, descriptions aren't my strong suit so the APs really help me in that regard.

*you can't believe the number of encounters with CR=APL-2, CR=APL-1, CR=APL, those battle rarely even made a dent to the resources of the characters, all they did was bore my players and eat up out real life time


Books 1-2 of many AP's can be pretty deadly (I'm thinking specially at the final part of book 1 of S&S, first TPK in many years). Is later than the difficulty drops.
I would like to up a bit the challenge on the 3-6 books of the APs, but I can understand the reasons Paizo do like it. That said, I think the "for experienced groups, the DM should up the encounters" should be more explicit.
On the topic of Mythic, I love the concept, but is true that mythic monsters must gain potency. But for my the greatest problem is the inbalance on favor of offense. Downgrading some offensive options and upgrading some defensive ones will make a great service for mythic rules.
Right now, my group is thinking of making some AP (possibly Throne of Night of Fire Mountain) with just two PC but with mythic ranks. Could be interesting.


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Quote:
In Kingmaker we went up to the battle with the lesser Jabberwock, and after we killed before it had the chance to act we quit the campaign.

That should have been more than enough for the players to be aware of the metaplot going on, IMO.

Quote:
You think that this design goal of completely new people (if it's true and not a hypothetical one, since i have never seen this from someone from Paizo) is a good one? That's what i am arguing, i don't think that it's a good one.

I really don't care. Because as I stated prior, I'm going to rebuild nearly everything in any campaign I run anyway - at the absolute very least, because I have a homebrew setting I run everything in, not Golarion, and said homebrew setting has a lot more common races than Golarion does so I tend to mix up the NPCs from being so predominantly human.

But regardless of whether it is a good idea or not, it's what Paizo DOES. It's their established business plan. And it's worked well for them, so if it ain't broke, why fix it?

And before you say "but it IS broke!", their sales say otherwise. Go have a look at the recent posting about what books are nearly out of print, then go look at the various AP volumes to see which ones are ALREADY out of print. I dare say there's quite a few in both sets.

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(if it's true and not a hypothetical one, since i have never seen this from someone from Paizo)

I've seen it several times. I can't go searching for it right now, but if no one beats me to it I'll try to do so sometime between now and the weekend. (I'd normally say "tonight after work", but tonight is Kingmaker night =D and I have a few last-minute prep things to do before game.)

Sovereign Court

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it's not hypothetical, they talk about it even in this gencon video, adventure design 101

They can't assume that it isn't a group first time into an AP. Funny enough in the video above, they do mention as well they don't have luxury to cater to specific group of players and that's something that you as the DM can do, since you actually know your players abilities and the likes.


Thanks for that =)


It might very well be broken but not showing it, keep in mind that up until now Paizo had the market all for itself, there was nobody else that could get a share of the market that Paizo aimed, now with 5E things might change because 5E aims at the people who want 3.X (along with other people) just like Paizo does.

I kinda understand it now, if Paizo sees the number of new players rising (my guess is via sells of begginer's box, core rulebook and PFS) then he tries to make it's APs as new-player-friendly as possible.
I still don't agree with it and i don't think it's needed, especially at the degree of dumbing down i see, but i think i can see things more clearly now.
Maybe the issue is that there aren't a lot of people like me, who buy APs because they have time issues, maybe it's because i don't have hero lab* which greatly decreasses the time needed for building/rebuilding/adjusting encounters (i am currently saving up money to buy it, it's a very expensive piece of software), maybe i need to enforce more restrictive house rules, maybe limit things to core rulebook only.

Anyway i really enjoyed the discussion, it really helps to talk about these things (even if we threadjacked a bit) in order to understand the situation better and find solutions.

By the way which high level APs are out of print? Only RotRL 5 and 6 is out of print (and even then Paizo still has some non mint)

*i am currently using PCGen, which a very nice, considering that it's free, but it has quite a few shortcomings that place it A LOT behind hero lab


Quote:
It might very well be broken but not showing it, keep in mind that up until now Paizo had the market all for itself, there was nobody else that could get a share of the market that Paizo aimed, now with 5E things might change because 5E aims at the people who want 3.X (along with other people) just like Paizo does.

Not really. Go check out the handful of 5e vs. PF threads already floating around. 5e is less targeting fans of 3.X and more targeting those with nostalgia for 2e and earlier, and people who want something simpler than PF but still want to stick with a d20 system. There's a little overlap between the two, and Paizo may lose a small handful of fans to 5e - especially people who are dissatisfied with PF's expansions or "bloat", though the definition of what exactly comprises bloat varies from person to person - but I don't expect it will be anything dramatic.

Paizo doesn't have much at all to fear from 5e, really. Most people who really want 5e aren't going to be horribly interested in PF anyway, and vice versa. You'll hear a lot of vocal minority people blasting PF for bloat and such like, but many of these people have been saying those since PF came out, and some of them have either never played PF (and thus hang out on Paizo's forums for other reasons) or were just tolerating it until something more their style came along.

Quote:
By the way which high level APs are out of print? Only RotRL 5 and 6 is out of print (and even then Paizo still has some non mint)

I was just talking about AP volumes being out of print in general, not necessarily high or low level.

High level stuff never sells as well as low level, because a lot of groups never play high level: a lot of campaigns end or die off or are abandoned before reaching high levels, and a lot of groups use E6 or some variant thereof and therefore don't need high-level content. Which only exacerbates the issue of "we can't assume anyone playing this has experience with high level content".

Quote:
Maybe the issue is that there aren't a lot of people like me, who buy APs because they have time issues

I'm sure there are some, because you are far from the first to come forward with this complaint. The issue is more that "experienced GMs/players with not much spare time for prep" are less their Target Audience than "brand new players" and "experienced GMs/players who are willing/able to make adjustments".

Paizo Employee Design Manager

There's also the fact that most groups composed of individuals that don't have time to prep a game don't have time to spend on character optimization. Not to be a tool, but if you'd spent the time you did writing all your posts in this thread visiting the thread dedicated to the AP you were complaining about, you'd have already found someone who'd posted adjusted encounters designed for more experienced groups.


Ssalarn wrote:
There's also the fact that most groups composed of individuals that don't have time to prep a game don't have time to spend on character optimization. Not to be a tool, but if you'd spent the time you did writing all your posts in this thread visiting the thread dedicated to the AP you were complaining about, you'd have already found someone who'd posted adjusted encounters designed for more experienced groups.

It takes significally less time (more like non-comparable) to plan an optimized character than to adjust an AP for those kind of characters.

Why do you assume that i don't check the fora for the various APs? As i said i have DMed RotRL (all of it) and Shattered Star (again entirely).
When i run RotRL i run the first 3 books using convertions of the original and the last 3 books using the AE (because AE happened to come out while i was playing it), sure the first two books had nearly finished convertions (and very good ones at that), but at third book and after the convertions were smaller and smaller (both less content and less variant), that's why i switched to AE; but because there was so little time since it came out there weren't a lot of adjustments posted.
As for Shattered Star (i have started it last September and i ended this July), have you ever hung out in that forum? It's more quiet than a graveyard and from the looks of it (number of threads and postcount in the threads) this was the case from the beggining. I was the first (and only) one to provide a well completed adjustment/rebuilding including a sizable amount of statblocks.
Most probably i will start DMing Iron Gods in October and i am all over the iron gods forum and info for technology in general.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

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It really doesn't though. There's lots of things you can do on the fly, especially as an experienced GM.

Tag a copy of the advanced simple template to your GM screen for quick application.

Add monsters to any encounter where the action economy is stacked in the player's favor.

Ignore stupid tactics suggestions and don't let yourself think the scariest part of a pit fiend is his full attack.

Remember that summoning spells and abilities are part of a creature's CR and they're expected to be used without providing additional xp.

Assume that if your group of murder hobos has been steamrolling everything that word is going to get out and enemies will be smart enough to target specific weaknesses.

Don't let players pull off 15 minute work days with magnificent mansion spells. By the level they can cast it lots of things can see invisibility and dispel the effect, or just stand outside the doorway assembling an army until the PCs emerge.

Remember that the devs fell for it when playtesters insisted that Mythic tiers were only worth half a level and boost the CR of every encounter by .5/party tier. That can be extra monsters, templates, mythic ranks, whatever.

Maybe you do some or all of the above, but the point is that setting up any of those can be done on the fly and takes less time than character creation.


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Templates are your best friend, believe me. I have so many books of templates it's not even funny. And a bookmark straight to the Templates page on PFSRD.


Ssalarn wrote:
It really doesn't though. There's lots of things you can do on the fly, especially as an experienced GM.

I really don't like making changes on the fly, it feels kinda like cheating to me i prefer to make the changes beforehand, i know it's somewhat irrational but i can't explain it better.

Ssalarn wrote:
Tag a copy of the advanced simple template to your GM screen for quick application.

I have found that things run more smoothly when you have the actual statblock with the advanced template in front of you instead of having to remember the extra omph each time the monster/enemy acts.

Ssalarn wrote:
Add monsters to any encounter where the action economy is stacked in the player's favor.

It's not always that easy, first you have to be careful not to go overboard but most importantly, i have seen a lot of battles that even if add 2-3 more of the same monsters it won't do anything at all and that's because the monster in question can't do anything to any of the PCs (or at least in time). When those times happen i either remove the encounter entirely or build a completely diffent encounter.

Ssalarn wrote:
Ignore stupid tactics suggestions and don't let yourself think the scariest part of a pit fiend is his full attack.

Oh i do, so much, my issue is that i have to pay in order to read such crap tactics and then completely ignore them and make up my own.

Ssalarn wrote:
Remember that summoning spells and abilities are part of a creature's CR and they're expected to be used without providing additional xp.

I know that but this brings up a separate isse (that i was discussing last night with another DM), we don't know if the summon monster SLA of monsters require 1 round or a standard action, i am of the opinion that it requires 1 round but i am thinking that i should change it for my games because i have noticed that writers seem to think that it's a standard action.

Ssalarn wrote:
Assume that if your group of murder hobos has been steamrolling everything that word is going to get out and enemies will be smart enough to target specific weaknesses.

That isn't as easy to accomplish as you make it out to be, apart from the issue that it might seem that you are targeting specific player(s), there is the issue that in a lot of cases it doesn't make sense within the story for the opponents to know such things.

Ssalarn wrote:
Don't let players pull off 15 minute work days with magnificent mansion spells. By the level they can cast it lots of things can see invisibility and dispel the effect, or just stand outside the doorway assembling an army until the PCs emerge.

Fortunately i haven't seen this problem happen, except for random encounters and the majority of the kingmaker AP that i had played.

Ssalarn wrote:
Remember that the devs fell for it when playtesters insisted that Mythic tiers were only worth half a level and boost the CR of every encounter by .5/party tier. That can be extra monsters, templates, mythic ranks, whatever.

I don't see how this helps, first of all i don't DM in wrath of the righteous, i play in it (currently book 2) and secondly the CR system at high levels is wonky at best and outright non-functional at worst.

Ssalarn wrote:
Maybe you do some or all of the above, but the point is that setting up any of those can be done on the fly and takes less time than character creation.

I expressed my feelings about on the fly changes but even if i put that aside, i don't know about you but i really can't handle so many on the fly changes at high levels, can't keep track of them. Maybe it's because i don't have enough experience as DM, i have only DMed a couple of modules, two full APs and a small white wolf's WtF campaign.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

The standard for SLA's is that they are standard actions unless otherwise noted, so most monsters should be using their summon abilities as standard actions, leaving them a move action available for tactical positioning of whatever flavor is appropriate. It also means the summoned monsters should be acting immediately and attacking in the same round the creature summons them, which opens up a lot of tactical "oomph" that sounds like it could mke a big difference in your encounters.

Wrath of the Righteous:
So, for example, the BBEG in the.. 5th book I believe? Anyways the BBEg who can summon CR 20 worth of monsters as a swift action should be sending a huge wave of demons who all act immediately at the party, using the confusion to step back and soften the party up or teleport to a hidden position before sending another wave and continuing to take actions that eat party resources and soften them up.

While he's a bit unusual in that his SLA is a swift action, this basic strategy should apply to any demon or devil with a summon SLA. Summon demons who attack immediately that turn with their strongest abilities, try and keep them between you and the heroes long enough to fire off some debuffs, and avoid getting close enough for them to put their holy avengers in you until it's time to finish them.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

leo1925 wrote:
Ssalarn wrote:
Assume that if your group of murder hobos has been steamrolling everything that word is going to get out and enemies will be smart enough to target specific weaknesses.

That isn't as easy to accomplish as you make it out to be, apart from the issue that it might seem that you are targeting specific player(s), there is the issue that in a lot of cases it doesn't make sense within the story for the opponents to know such things.

While it does vary from AP to AP, it's not unreasonable. Wrath of the Righteous actively assumes that the enemy is collecting a detailed dossier on the party. There are numerous parts in Rise of teh Runelords where the enemy shares information on the heroes with other memebers of their "network". Even The latter portion of Jade Regent has numerous assumptions that the enemy is aware of the party.

Honestly, I'm having trouble thinking of an AP where there isn't a network in place that should be helping the enemy prepare for the party. I've never played Shattered Star so I can speak to that one, and Reign of Winter has a lot of encounters where it wouldn't make sense for information to be freely shared, but Reign of Winter is generally regarded as a pretty difficult AP anyways, what with all the environmental hazards providing constant party debuffs.

And if particular players are the ones causing the problem they really should be targeted, especially by groups that have had opportunity to assess the threat.


In Jade Regent only in book 6 and maybe in late book 5.
In Kingmaker it's a no except for parts of book 5 and late book 6.
In Shattered Star it's a no except the final battle of book 4, maybe stretch it for last third of book 4.
I agree about RotRL, at books 3(last part), 4 and 6 it makes sense for enemies to have some intel on the PCs if not full dossiers.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

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leo1925 wrote:
I agree about RotRL, at books 3(last part), 4 and 6 it makes sense for enemies to have some intel on the PCs if not full dossiers.

Even in the first book of RotRL there's several areas for information on the party to spread.

Rise of the Runelords:
The ghoul noble in the first part is a member of the cabal and in regular contact with his allies. Depending on how long it takes the party to actually track him down beneath the estate, there's a lot of opportunity for him to send info about them on. Even if they manage to reach him quickly before such a communication goes off, there's always the possibility that they'll flub up like my group did and go to the magister in the next city for help, not realizing he's a member of the cabal, at which point he prepares a trap and notifies his master in her tower of what's going on. She then has ample opportunity to spread word about the party to the rest of the cabal, and certainly does so if she escapes the encounter on the tower. So really, the party should be working against enemies who are intimately familiar with their abilities and tactics almost right out the gate.

Jade Regent is a little less neatly organized and many of the encounters are not directly related to each other, but pretty much every BBEG should have ample opportunity to observe their strengths and weaknesses before coming into direct conflict, except

Jade Regent:
the skeletal samurai mini-boss you encounter early in book 1. Even the goblin chieftain should have opportunity while the party explores the village to determine if there are valid targets for his bane arrows and set a few goblins to hide for an ambush.

Kingmaker is literally directly tied in to the party making a name for themselves and becoming known to a vast social network, so even people not directly allied with someone who has had direct contact with the party should know what to expect by book 2 at the latest.

Another thing I see creep up from time to time that can make a campaign seem too easy. A lot of GM's softball abilities that they think are unfair. For example, in Wrath of the Righteous there's some rat-like demons that absolutely love sundering shit. Some GMs feel like it's bad form to break the party's gear and just have these guys attack, so they seem crazy weak. Don't pull short like this. At least break their stuff, even if you don't want to destroy it. I had those little bastards eviscerate the group's gear before they were finally brought down, making the subsequent encounters much more challenging.
Smart enemies have usually figured out by 3rd level that taking out the guy with the holy symbol or the guy flinging bolts of force and fire first is just smart. If I'm a paranoid cultist who heard about a witch taking out members of my faith by putting them to sleep, I'm going to find every elf in my master's service and put them on guard duty ASAP.

Silver Crusade

blahpers wrote:
Sebastian Hirsch wrote:

I ran Kingmaker for my group, it definitely can't handle a witch with a slumber hex or a ranger with favored enemy human and access to the APG spells.

The metaplot in the adventure is so obtuse, that the players felt the the switch between book 5 and 6 quite inorganic.

I would welcome the inclusion of optional encounters/harder challenges in the APs, the PFS scenarios can do this, why not the APs?

Do it yourself. PFS tables don't have that luxury, so the material spells it out for them. I'd rather the AP have more base content filling its pages and trusting me to ramp things up or down than sacrifice valuable pages for optional adjustments.

Seriously, any schmuck can add a second ogre to a combat to up the CR. Show some initiative!

Building challenging encounters is a bit more trickly than that, you can/must use terrain effects, advanced tactics and buffs. Just adding one more might or might not make much of a difference, depending on your party.

I already give the advanced template to pretty much everything as a matter or course.

Silver Crusade

Ssalarn wrote:

The standard for SLA's is that they are standard actions unless otherwise noted, so most monsters should be using their summon abilities as standard actions, leaving them a move action available for tactical positioning of whatever flavor is appropriate. It also means the summoned monsters should be acting immediately and attacking in the same round the creature summons them, which opens up a lot of tactical "oomph" that sounds like it could mke a big difference in your encounters.

** spoiler omitted **
While he's a bit unusual in that his SLA is a swift action, this basic strategy should apply to any demon or devil with a summon SLA. Summon demons who attack immediately that turn with their strongest abilities, try and keep them between you and the heroes long enough to fire off some debuffs, and avoid getting close enough for them to put their holy avengers in you until it's time to finish them.

Considering the level and tier of this encounter, the PCs are quite likely to kill all summoned creatures within the first turn.

And one of the biggest problem with the encounter is, that the guy known for his clever strategies has apparently left his brain on the dresser.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

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Sebastian Hirsch wrote:

Considering the level and tier of this encounter, the PCs are quite likely to kill all summoned creatures within the first turn.

And one of the biggest problem with the encounter is, that the guy known for his clever strategies has apparently left his brain on the dresser.

He gets 3 uses I believe though, which is three rounds of him throwing CR 20 worth of mooks at the party while still having his normal standard and move available. It should be more than enough to chew through some party resources and soften them up a bit.

As mentioned previously, I don't even read the tactics blocks in APs any more since they're pretty much guaranteed to be advice designed to make things winnable for more casual and less optimized players. If a creature has a reasonably high intelligence, at will teleports, and 7th-9th level spellcasting, I'm going to assume he's smart enough to utilize those resources accordingly.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Orthos wrote:


Paizo Devs have stated, ON MULTIPLE OCCASIONS, that the APs are written so that low-optimization, brand-new-to-the-game players and GMs can play them, and that ANY GROUP WITH MORE EXPERIENCE THAN THAT WILL NEED to make adjustments - and that it's MUCH MORE LOGICAL for the more experienced groups to adjust UPWARD than to expect the newbies to adjust DOWNWARD. It's not hypothetical. It's how they said they do business. Intentionally.

There are no less than four people in this thread who have said that very same thing, countless times.

Yes, That Is Paizo's Design Statement. That Is How Things Work. I don't know how else to say it.

Only that, if you at the actual AP's, that mission statement is more than a bit BS.

Yes, there are lots of "soft" encounters in every AP module, stuff which isn't threatening to anyone unmodified.

However, at the low levels there are quite a lot of very dangerous encounters, some of which would be extremely lethal if some of those opponents would not have ridiculously bad tactics. Xanesha, The Splatter Man, that air elemental in Carrion Crown and many more.

Those encounters show that Paizo is fully willing to spring some hardcore difficult encounters on the players, be they optimized or not.

The lack of high-level hard encounters can therefore be safely attributed to the developers having problems writing challenging high-level encounters, not a general desire to have all AP combats be with monsters equipped with nerf bats.


I always figured those sorts of encounters, which are fairly few and far between in my experience, to be exceptions that slipped through the cracks. Admittedly, I've not played in CC at all and my ROTRL group hasn't gotten to either of those infamous encounters yet.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

magnuskn wrote:

Only that, if you at the actual AP's, that mission statement is more than a bit BS.

Yes, there are lots of "soft" encounters in every AP module, stuff which isn't threatening to anyone unmodified.

However, at the low levels there are quite a lot of very dangerous encounters, some of which would be extremely lethal if some of those opponents would not have ridiculously bad tactics. Xanesha, The Splatter Man, that air elemental in Carrion Crown and many more.

Those encounters show that Paizo is fully willing to spring some hardcore difficult encounters on the players, be they optimized or not.

The lack of high-level hard encounters can therefore be safely attributed to the developers having problems writing challenging high-level encounters, not a general desire to have all AP combats be with monsters equipped with nerf bats.

Low levels are easy to balance for. All of the classes have basically the same amount of power, and the same amount of weaknesses. It's harder to gauge what the power of a 15th level party is though. A 15th level group consisting of a Rogue, Monk, Bard, and Barbarian is going to have a whole different world of strengths and weaknesses compared to a group consisting of a Summoner, Druid, Sorcerer, and Alchemist. It is almost impossible to write an encounter that will be equally challenging for both groups. This isn't a weakness of the AP designers, it's a weakness of the entire 3.X system, and all the designers can do is make sure that Group A has a reasonable chance of resolving the encounter and trust Group B's GM to make the necessary adjustments required for a group that has more action economy and versatility than they account for and still accomodate Group A.

Hell you can't even trust that you're balancing between two different players running the same class at that level, as there could be worlds of difference between the power and capability of two clerics, or two wizards, or even two fighters.

Side note and spoiler:

Infamous RotRL encounter:
Xanesha wasn't that terrible a fight for us. We weren't silly enough to run through the giant death trap first, and instead used magic to zoom directly to the main encounter with a see invisibility spell active to locate any hidden threats. We lost our rogue during the fight, but his skill-monkeys tended to die about every 3 encounters anyways so that doesn't necessarily mean anything.


WotR Book 5 special boss, right?:
Baphomet's scroll use ability means that his spell list is everything, and he casts it all at 27th level. Baphomet being played to the hilt should be a hypothetically impossible encounter, since he can show up rocking multiple instances of Aroden's Spellbane (i.e., he can show up immune to dispelling and immune to whatever spells the caster is trying to cheese encounters with) and a completely crazy buff array (mixing/matching cleric, druid, wizard, magus, etc.) allowing him to show up with something like another +22 or so to AC, +11 or more to all his saves, +13 or more to attack rolls, and another +11 or more to damage rolls above and beyond his stat block (which I'm not looking at as I type that, so he may already have some of the bonuses I'm assigning above).

If any caster can do it, so can he.

In a fight between any other demigod and Baphomet, my money's on Baphomet.

Yeah, his default tactics are awful, but the AP writer isn't out to kill the party. You, as the GM, are free to take a different approach =P

Edit: I'll second what Ssarlan says right above me. Low levels are easy to design encounters for, because low level characters are pretty consistently gooberish. High level characters have widely ranging levels of power and specialties, and a trivial encounter for one set of characters could be a near or actual TPK for another set.

Though I do think Paizo lowballed the median numbers of higher CR creatures, which becomes much more evident as you approach and go past CR 20.

Aside: I'd say that Carrion Crown is actually consistently mean all through the AP, but high level PCs are just better able to deal with it than lower level PCs, and so it becomes much less noticable. The ever-expanding toolbox of a high-level party means that they're a lot less likely to be missing the tool for an unexpected job.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Zhangar wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Yeah, his default tactics are awful, but the AP writer isn't out to kill the party. You, as the GM, are free to take a different approach =P

Yeah, if you actually play that guy to the hilt and ignore the stupendously poor suggested tactics, the party needs some serious luck, strategy, and one or two miracles to win the encounter. That really has the potential to be one of the most difficult encounters in the entire AP, despite the party's relative strength at that point. It's only the BBEG's mysterious aneurism that leads to inexplicably poorly thought out actions that make it easy on the default setting.

Silver Crusade

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Zhangar wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Yeah, his default tactics are awful, but the AP writer isn't out to kill the party. You, as the GM, are free to take a different approach =P

Edit: I'll second what Ssarlan says right above me. Low levels are easy to design encounters for, because low level characters are pretty consistently gooberish. High level characters have widely ranging levels of power and specialties, and a trivial encounter for one set of characters could be a near or actual TPK for another set.

Though I do think Paizo lowballed the median numbers of higher CR creatures, which becomes much more evident as you approach and go past CR 20.

Aside: I'd say that Carrion Crown is actually consistently mean all through the AP, but high level PCs are just better able to deal with it than lower level PCs, and so it becomes much less noticable. The ever-expanding toolbox of a high-level party means that they're a lot less likely to be missing the tool for an unexpected job.

Ssalarn wrote:
Zhangar wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Yeah, his default tactics are awful, but the AP writer isn't out to kill the party. You, as the GM, are free to take a different approach =P

Yeah, if you actually play that guy to the hilt and ignore the stupendously poor suggested tactics, the party needs some serious luck, strategy, and one or two miracles to win the encounter. That really has the potential to be one of the most difficult encounters in the entire AP, despite the party's relative strength at that point. It's only the BBEG's mysterious aneurism that leads to inexplicably poorly thought out actions that make it easy on the default setting.

Yeah the setup is crazypants, which makes it soo much worse, since that particular NPCs is currently highly vulnerable. Charging into combat against a group, that just defeated some of his greatest minions (and taking the time to kill the remaining ones first).

Players should not kill that particular NPC in one round by being lucky. If you read the other stuff in that encounter, it is pretty clear that the writer assumes that the PCs will choose to retreat.

But what will happen at this part of their adventuring carrer, is that he will get lacerated by bane arrows.

You might argue that this is the same hubris, that lead to him getting that fancy tatoo (still trying to be vague, but to lazy for a spoiler ^^), but one would assume he learned from that.

A real fight against this guy is supposed to be a pretty handcraftet affair with enemies chosen by the boss, to counter the PCs. Yeah still pretty unhappy with that encounter, especially since the most logical tactic includes abusing mythic time stop.


I ran Way of the Wicked with Mythic rules, they ended 20/10. I quickly realized that single enemies were horribly easy. I added about +50% to the encounters like I had 6 players when I had 4. This was for any encounter, I also added max HP's to anything that was supposed to be powerful. I also rarely used the made monsters as they seemed to be for less optimized players then mine. It was a bit more work but my players had a blast and said that the changes I made it more memorable and less easy.

My main group has been playing pretty regularly since at least 3.0 has been out tho, so they may be the exception. YMMV


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I think part of the problem is that by the time a medium-track party have reached level 15, they have overcome some 210 level-appropriate encounters and I do not believe that it is reasonable to assume a group of players who have played through that many encounters are "novices".

Which then leads to the problem of how to write an adventure to scale up with developing skill. Far easier to continue writing assuming "novices".

I do think there is scope for a high-level adventuring book giving guidance for GMs on how to structure encounters to cope with this (see Alexander Augunas' guide to challenging encounters and the advice for GMing high-level adventures thread), and I could see a case for Paizo creating a PDF line of "Hard-mode Adventure Path" alternative encounters to use as a plug-in for existing APs (yes, Paizo, more work for you!).


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Alternatively it might be something that could be pitched to a 3pp. Legendary Games already does their "Adventure Path Plugins" line; this could be a spinoff of that.

Can I get a link to Alexander's thread? Never seen it before.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Good point: I'd forgotten about LG's plug-ins for APs. That would be the perfect spot for it.

And your wish is my command.


Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

For a really crazy encounter for a high level party, I would suggest checking out the last fight for Second Darkness. This is a 3.5 AP, but if memory serves your party of 4 level 16s are fighting about 15 people, including a level 18 Drow Cleric (back in the CoDzilla days). I don't know how you win that fight as written. And this is after you fight through a small dungeon to get there.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

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Chemlak wrote:

I think part of the problem is that by the time a medium-track party have reached level 15, they have overcome some 210 level-appropriate encounters and I do not believe that it is reasonable to assume a group of players who have played through that many encounters are "novices".

***

You'd be surprised. I have a few players in my group who've played for a really long time and just aren't interested in developing their system mastery past a certain point. People who'd just rather play a character that gets to swing a big weapon around with maybe one or two special tricks and not have to "relearn" how to play each time the levels take the party to a new plateau. There's that whole element where a Fighter or a Cavalier plays the same game from 1-20 but a Wizard plays a different game every 5 levels.


Mythic is perfectly viable. Sounds like you have one of two problems:

1. Your players are twinks and squeezing every optimization out of characters.

2. You may not have what it takes to run a high-power campaign. I don't mean that as an insult, but rather a matter of fact. Some DMs just can't do high-power stuff like Mythic or Epic.

Now problem #1 is easy to solve, just adjust all the encounters by increasing the APL by 1 and cutting XP awards by 1/3. If they still stomp everything, increase the APL by 2 and cut XP awards by 1/2. If they still curb stomp whatever you throw at them, switch to the Slow advancement track as well as increasing the APL by another 1. If you still have the problem, it's probably problem #2.

Problem #2 is difficult to solve. I sometimes think you're born with it or without it. If it can be trained, you need a powerful grasp of mathematics (able to do calculations in your head strong) and play-testing to learn how to manage it.


Robert Carter 58 wrote:
Yeah, I don't get the complaining OP. I've run many, many adventures over the years (since about 1987). I've had to significantly rework... every, single, one. That's the GM's job. If you run something out of the box and expect it to work perfectly, then expect problems. PCs will either be too powerful or too weak or whatever. Always happens. Always. The adventure gives you an outline, so you don't have to start from scratch- then you do a little tweaking- and you're ready to rock and roll. But don't skimp on the tweaking.

First, I beat 1987 by a bit as far as running games.

I always tweak. I don't expect to run APs out of the box. I never have run APs out of the box. I usually focus my tweaks on final encounters and let the PCs destroy the trash. Here's the difference: Regular Pathfinder I can usually use the rule set to tweak final encounters. When I tweaked Kingmaker, I followed the rules except for hit points for brute creatures with simple physical abilities. I always boost hit points by an enormous amount for such creatures.

I can't use the rules to tweak mythic. I literally have to rewrite them.

My problem with mythic is the scaling. Very little defensive scaling, lots of offense. If you're going to create things like Mythic Power Attack, Mythic Improved Critical, Mythic Vital Strike, Channel Power, and Foe-Biter, then create something to counter them. Then I can actually make the opponent challenging without making stuff up like I'm about to do. When I have to go so far outside the rules that it's almost a different game, that book is a failure in my opinion.

Go do the math for Mythic Vital Strike, Mythic Power Attack, Mythic Improved Critical, and Foe-Biter. Let me know if you think it's ok to one shot Demon Lords 8 to 9 CR over your level. Let me know if you think it is a ok that PCs can one shot everything for a minor expenditure of mythic power. If that math seems right to you, I'll have to assume you and I have different ideas about the idea of challenging a PC party.


Sebastian Hirsch wrote:

I ran Kingmaker for my group, it definitely can't handle a witch with a slumber hex or a ranger with favored enemy human and access to the APG spells.

The metaplot in the adventure is so obtuse, that the players felt the the switch between book 5 and 6 quite inorganic.

I would welcome the inclusion of optional encounters/harder challenges in the APs, the PFS scenarios can do this, why not the APs?

Paizo went to pain-staking levels to reduce the effectiveness of sleep in the Core Rulebook. Then decided to give the witch the old version of sleep on steroids. They knew sleep was over-powered and trivialized encounters, when they designed the Core Rulebook. Then they ran out of ideas and decided to give the witch sleep and allow the Magus to get sleep and now the shaman. And now we're back to trivialized encounters, when that option is present.

Not sure why the original Core Rulebook design team knew that sleep trivialized encounters and the later design teams forgot that reason. But they did. Fortunately, the witch is defensively very weak and can be had. Magus Hexcrafter not so much.

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