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Hi All,
So attendance has been growing at my FLGS (Yay!), but with new players comes the need to have a variety of table levels available to play at, to help minimise the number of people playing a pregenerated character.
In my experience so far, people would much rather play one of their own characters than a pregen, even if it means playing out of the subtier for the scenario. However, it is unfortunate when a player is forced into playing a pregen because they don't have a character that is legal within that tier, but is only a level away from the subtier.
I don't enjoy explaining to players that they cannot play their level 2 in a subtier 3-4 scenario, but could play that character in a subtier 4-5 scenario.
Alternatively, it is unfortunate when a player cannot complete a multi-part arc because they levelled up too highly to finish it with that same character (though I will admit this can be avoided most of the time thanks to the change in slow/fast track rules).
My proposal is (in addition to making everything just that little bit more complicated), that an allowance is created for characters to be played out of tier, and at the end of a scenario, gold is awarded in a similar fashion to OOST gold, except the values for playing low or high are set values, averaged with the played subtier. Characters would still not be able to play more than one subtier from their current character level. Some examples:
Tier 1-5
Level 6-7 characters could play at subtier 4-5, earning half the gold awarded by the scenario + 1650. (The numbers might not be quite right, but I took 3,300 to be a benchmark for gold awards at subtier 6-7).
Tier 3-7
Level 1-2: OOT half 3-4 gold +250
Level 8-9: OOT half 6-7 gold +2750
Tier 5-9
Level 3-4: OOT half 5-6 gold +600
Level 10-11: OOT half 8-9 gold +3850
Tier 7-11
Level 5-6: OOT half 7-8 gold +1300
So, here is my hastily written & terribly put idea :)
I'd be grateful for any feedback, as I can fine tune my argument once I know the weaknesses in it.
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I wish players could always play their characters too. However, a higher level character can spoil the fun for the other players if allowed to sit in your example.
In the Tier 1-5 table, if a level 7th level character is allowed to play chances are he will overpower the table and the other players won't have much fun.
The way we have been trying to keep things balanced here in Jacksonville is having a lot more tier 1-5 tables and asking players to develop more than one character. Paizo has been kind enough over the past year to add more Tier 1-5 scenarios!
We also encourage new GMs to run these lower level tables too.
Now starting our 4th year locally we have about 60 active players and 10 active GMs.
It took a while but 95% of the players are able to play one of their characters not a pre-gen.
(Another example, even in legal games, 7th level playing in a 3-7 tier game that is playing down with a bunch of 4th level characters is a game changer and can disrupt the game enough as it is...I wouldn't want the limits moved.)
Venture-Captain, Massachusetts—Central & West
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I'm personally against it. I feel like a lot of adventures make balance assumptions based on what players are able to bring to the table. It's almost imperative that writers have some sort of assurance as to what players will and will not have access to.
As an anecdote, I've seen a 1-7 scenario (people will probably be able to guess which one it is) almost ruined in premise because a level 7 cleric had access to a particular 3th level cleric spell played down to tier 3-4. I mean, it wasn't a matter of being more effective in combat. It was a matter of major plot points gone in a few minutes. Things like this are the reasons why the tiers have started to shrink a bit since the start of Pathfinder Society. Not just combat-wise, but skill and ability wise, it's hard to challenge things as the levels increase. A 50-foot drop in your way is a killer for level 1-2, and a bruiser for levels 4-5. At 7, players may have flight, feather fall, great climb scores, earth manipulation, magical ropes that they can just thrown about.
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I think such a drastic change is probably no in the best interest of the campaign. This is an extremely confusing rule you are proposing, saying that basically "A 3-7 scenario means for levels 3-7, but others can play too." I have enough trouble explaining the APL rules that were released *two years ago* to people who have been playing/GMing all that time. This is far more confusing than that, and in my opinion not really necessary.
It's a good idea for people to have multiple characters to be able to build a community, and part of building a community is to have low levels tables. If you get to a point where you have multiple times, it's good to have maybe a 1-5 going alongside a 5-9, but every community pretty much starts out with lots and lots of low levels scenarios. (Speaking of which, if you don't schedule ahead of time, I recommend it! It helps alleviate a lot of the drama of not having a character in range.)
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Tier 3-7
Level 1-2: OOT half 3-4 gold +250
Tier 1-7 was discontinued after a certain point because of the significant difficulty of writing/balancing adventures across such a wide range of levels. I've not seen anything that would persuade me that this isn't still the case.
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So, Jack, would your proposal allow for an entire party of 2nd-level PCs getting together and tackling Bonekeep (or any other 3-7 scenario)?
Murderhobos gonna die.
In regards to OP: I am against this idea. While some players may be able to handle this with out making the table either too easy or too hard and thus not fun for others, some players will not. I think that there are plenty of mechanisms available to make sure that you can sit down and play at a table (as long as you have not played the scenario befor). I try to keep a variety of lvls so that I can fit in the right tier. I am not perfect and have larger gaps at the upper lvls but it works out well. In addition, if you don't have a character that can play the scenario you can always use a pregen. The pregens are there for this exact reason.
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I'd oppose such a change.
In my experience, there is already too much difficulty when lowest level possible and highest level possible characters play together. The highest level character stomps over everything, the lowest level either can't contribute or gets killed by random AoE effects or the like.
In the ideal world the only out of subtier characters who could play would be of the intermediate level (eg, level 3 in a 1-5). I'm most certainly NOT asking for such a change since that would make creating tables a completely impossible nightmare but I think it would significantly improve the tables that ARE run.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 32
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If the group playing at the store has grown enough. Maybe it is time to adjust how you do scheduling and sign-ups, with something like Warhorn.
Make sure to schedule at least one low level game in addition to any higher level games.
Then make sure to post the schedule well enough in advance for everyone to sign up. If you need to limit the signups to 5-6 to leave room for walk ins.
Doing advanced signups is the easiest way to make sure everyone gets to play their own character instead of a pregen.
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If the group playing at the store has grown enough. Maybe it is time to adjust how you do scheduling and sign-ups, with something like Warhorn.
Make sure to schedule at least one low level game in addition to any higher level games.
Then make sure to post the schedule well enough in advance for everyone to sign up. If you need to limit the signups to 5-6 to leave room for walk ins.
Doing advanced signups is the easiest way to make sure everyone gets to play their own character instead of a pregen.
this
this is your next stepyour player pool is growing and that is good
time to grow the organization of that player pool
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We went through this when we were growing as well. The only way to solve it is to start scheduling in advance using something like Warhorn, combined with recruiting more GMs. If you expanded the boundaries of level play (and people above have given you many good reasons why we shouldn't), you'll still run into those boundary cases eventually - you've just moved the goal posts. It would be a band-aid fix for your Lodge, but it causes huge problems campaign-wide, because yes, a level 11 PC *destroys* a Tier 5-9 scenario. (We try to avoid even out-of-subtier gaming, since a level 5 PC destroys a subtier 1-2 scenario just as badly.)
Besides, if your Lodge is growing, you'll eventually need to pass the burden of choosing scenarios on to your players - everyone thinks they can just maintain a database of all their players and what they've played, so they can always schedule something that everyone can play. Then they grow beyond the point where that is doable, and/or run into the players who don't update their game histories and undermine the whole effort.
Trust me on this: when you grow, you need to be able to schedule games based on your GMs (allowing for a range of levels), and then let players decide which ones they'll play and what level they'll play. At times, there will be no game for someone to play, and that has to be OK. Hopefully, there will be other games at other times or locations that they *can* play.
It can be surprising how quickly a Lodge grows. We went from 3 to 30 regular players at a single venue in a year, and then to about 150 players at three venues plus running our own Con in the next year or so. Better to build the scheduling infrastructure now so it's there where you need it.
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Thanks for the feedback all, and there are some pretty strong points to address here.
The main argument here is that playing down is a problem, even when playing in tier but OOST. My proposal, which is quite broad in terms of level availability for OOT play would exaggerate this problem and be detrimental to organised play. Agreed.
So, Jack, would your proposal allow for an entire party of 2nd-level PCs getting together and tackling Bonekeep (or any other 3-7 scenario)?
I'm assuming that this point is to highlight a weakness in the presentation of my argument as it would be difficult to enforce against this kind of table composition. I'll have to consider adjusting the language to ensure this cannot happen, something along the lines of the party's APL must still fall within the level range of the subtier.
However, if you're declaring a challenge, I'm in. I've never played bonekeep, but how hard could it be ;)Warhorn will certainly help. I used to be able to keep track of the each player, each of their characters, and what levels they were all at, but this is getting harder every week. How far in advance do other coordinators organise their events, assuming a weekly session (I might set up another thread in the GM section to take inventory of how I'm coordinating sessions at the moment and what I could do to improve on that).
Having played a level 5 in low-subtier 1-5 and a high-subtier 5-9 the next day, I've been on both sides of the "not really fitting in" possibilites. It's awful.
I know it's not plausible in any way, but I'd almost like to restrict it further. "1 level out of subtier, no more?"
1 level out of subtier is often fine, and this is usually what we would aim for. How about if I was pitching for characters that are 1 level out of tier, so long as the APL is still within subtier?
So, if we were playing at subtier 5-6, at the moment, the legal level range of characters for this table is 5-9. A level 9 character here is going find things too easy, and get less gold for that XP point for their trouble.What if the legal level range for this table was instead 4-7? It's a tighter level range, but allows characters closer to subtier to participate with their characters. Level 4 characters would be awarded OOT gold, and level 7 characters OOST gold.
I'll try and develop that thought further, work on some more campaign appropriate language and resubmit the pitch with this new idea.
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1 level out of subtier is often fine, and this is usually what we would aim for. How about if I was pitching for characters that are 1 level out of tier, so long as the APL is still within subtier?
So, if we were playing at subtier 5-6, at the moment, the legal level range of characters for this table is 5-9. A level 9 character here is going find things too easy, and get less gold for that XP point for their trouble.
What if the legal level range for this table was instead 4-7? It's a tighter level range, but allows characters closer to subtier to participate with their characters. Level 4 characters would be awarded OOT gold, and level 7 characters OOST gold.
I'll try and develop that thought further, work on some more campaign appropriate language and resubmit the pitch with this new idea.
I understand what you are trying to do but I don't see any reason to complicate the system further. As it is every table people have the option of playing one of 6 options that are listed on chronicle sheets (low tier/ out of tier/ high tier + normal/slow track).
You aren't expanding options any further if instead you change the level range to be tighter to sub-tier but allow more wiggle room on either the low-end (of a low subtier) or high-end (of a high sub-tier) table. It feels kinda like daylight savings time, you're not actually creating more daylight just moving it around. (Currently every scenario allows 5 levels of play, your idea does actually slightly less at 4)
Scenarios already list what levels are legal, by making it adjustable you make it so that while the table is forming you have to decide if people are actually legal. Example in a 5-9, Two 5s, two 6s, one 9, and one 4 show/sign up for play. The scenario lists the 5s, 6s and 9s as legal, however your proposal changes that to the 4, 5s, and 6s. Not sure that's fair to the player with the legal player being made illegal.
Unless an idea both expands play and simplifies the current system (or at least doesn't further complicate it) I don't feel that it should be adopted. As it is your lodge may be better served going back and starting some new characters (whether this means evergreens, or convincing people it will make the lodge/area/overall experience better). One of the advantages of PFS is the ability to have so many characters running simultaneously. See a concept/start a concept.
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You aren't expanding options any further if instead you change the level range to be tighter to sub-tier but allow more wiggle room on either the low-end (of a low subtier) or high-end (of a high sub-tier) table. It feels kinda like daylight savings time, you're not actually creating more daylight just moving it around. (Currently every scenario allows 5 levels of play, your idea does actually slightly less at 4)
I'm with you there, and while it certainly goes against some of my original intent, I'm aiming to adjust my position to address the concern playing OOST as it stands already leads to a poor game play experience with the exception of playing up or down 1 level, and a gripe that a level 2 character cannot play in a tier 3-4 scenario, but could play at tier 4-5.
Scenarios already list what levels are legal, by making it adjustable you make it so that while the table is forming you have to decide if people are actually legal. Example in a 5-9, Two 5s, two 6s, one 9, and one 4 show/sign up for play. The scenario lists the 5s, 6s and 9s as legal, however your proposal changes that to the 4, 5s, and 6s. Not sure that's fair to the player with the legal player being made illegal.
I hadn't considered the impact that my suggestion would have on organising tables. No longer would a GM be able to say they're running a table at 3-7, but would have to say they're running it at 3-4, with a legal level range of 2-5. I could certainly see this being a problem for larger lodges. I would still argue, however, that this would be preferable to playing in the example table at 5-6 with with a level 9 character in the party. It would also change the gold section on chronicles going forward, and require a notable change in the org play guide.
Unless an idea both expands play and simplifies the current system (or at least doesn't further complicate it) I don't feel that it should be adopted.
I'll keep working on it, and if people keep on giving me feedback like this, I might eventually have something that looks like a good idea. Thanks for the feedback Joe.
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Jack:
One of things you need to keep in mind is that, especially with a PC at the low end, even playing legally can be extremely dangerous. Playing with a PC even one level below minimum can be a quick way to lose players.
Let's consider a 3-7, with a 2, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7
APL = 36/6 = 6, so playing 6-7
6-7 includes possible opponents up to CR 10
CR 8, by the way, includes potential 9th level casters.
I know of one 1-7 that includes the BBEG as a 9th level caster who is pretty much guaranteed, at 6-7, of starting the encounter with an Empowered fireball. 9d6 + 50%. 9*3.5 = 31.5, + 50% = 47.25
Even if the 2nd level saves for 23 damage, unless they get Evasion, most 2nds will be lucky to be bleeding out.
Fortunately, since that is a 1-7, the second level cannot play past 3-4 in it. Unfortunately, even the 3-4 version of the BBEG starts out attacking with what may be an Empowered Shocking Grasp via a rapier in a surprise round.