Pathfinder Society Scenario difficulty

[Tarma]

Looking to split this conversation off from the Mythic discussion. While it was stated that Mythic would be over powering for PFS as a whole, I sincerely believe that difficulty in the Pathfinder society as a whole is almost completely a non-issue.

For this discussion, please note that there are a few outliers to these points which I hopefully will address in this point.

The following are some observations as to why difficulty is practically a non-issue in PFS.

1.) Scenarios as of late are extremely binary.

By this I mean that many scenarios recently have their difficulty based around one specific threat. For example: Can someone in your party deal with sudden darkness? Can your party make a certain check? If your party can deal with the threat, then it's a cake walk. If not, then you might be in trouble. But often times the threats are fairly common threats.

2.) Enemy creatures are simply outnumbered in combats.

While this has been getting better as of late, anything other than an even number of enemies suddenly puts the NPC encounter at a major disadvantage. Let's assume that the big bad can throw out a pretty hefty spell such as fireball or disintegrate. Worst case scenario, a party member might die. But then the other three to five party members will proceed to demolish the heavy hitter. And with at least 3-5 attacks compared to their one, it doesn't bode well for the creature.

More enemies isn't always the answer either, as it means their individual CR has likely been reduced for parity. But as anyone who's ever played with a Barbarian at level 1 knows, a baddie with 4 HP just doesn't stand a chance against a power attack.

3.) NPC's wealth isn't at parity.

For this and the next issue, I can't say what the policy for Season 6 and 7 has been, but for past scenarios when an NPC has a PC wealth their CR increases. This means that at the same level, an enemy NPC is already outclassed. Where a PC might already have a +2 or +3 weapon, the NPC's they are facing may only have the wealth for a +1 weapon and potentially +1 armor before looking at increasing their versatility with potions or scrolls.

If you up the wealth of a NPC, the CR goes up and then reaches the cap for the scenario. Which is then a tough spot. Does the party increase a similar level but equal CR creature, but then leaving out lesser creatures to annoy the party? Or do they just fight a higher leveled but equally geared NPC? Either way, that lowers the amount of creatures that a party fights.

4.) NPC stats are not on a 20 point buy.

Again, this is only going from past scenarios as I can't say what the policy is for Season 6 or 7. But in past scenarios, when an NPC has not been on a 15 point buy, their CR has increased. But when their CR increases, they have fewer creatures in the encounter. Adding to that, even if their CR increases by stat parity, their wealth has not. So you can either have a NPC with equal stats or a NPC with equal wealth. But even with that addition, that would mean that an NPC with equal stats and wealth to one PC would have an increase of at least 2 CR, meaning that while they may be on par with one PC, they would still be completely outnumbered by the party.

This turned out to be longer than I had intended, but I will end this post here before getting into items that are making scenarios much easier. And obviously, there does need to be some guide bar. Subtier 1-2 shouldn't be facing fireballs or getting disintegrated. Or facing Pit Fiends. But there has to be something that can be done in order to normalize difficulty a bit.

[TetsujinOni]

These are all well-known issues with their roots in the general audience targeting of the campaign, and it is possible to exploit certain mechanisms in the CR calculation system to create "higher tuned" encounters on the same XP budget.

That's called an arms race. We've succeeded in declining to engage in one.

The tension of trying to make the XP budget of 1/3 of a level's CRs per scenario fit within a 4 hour convention slot makes for some strong limitations on encounter writing.

All of the things you cited are part of the core rules on encounter design.

This is the normalized difficulty, adjusted for the table size being 6 players commonly.

Embracing the fact that we don't need tightly tuned PCs to face this campaign and still be able to strongly succeed in combat is a good thing for the campaign overall. Once you've got 60 games GMd you've seen enough of the campaign go by to perhaps notice the recurring new-players-first-character power level vary wildly between those who want to play the charop game and those who want to storytell and everything in between. We embrace all of those players and don't want to trust GM fiat to put the safeties back on - so we don't take the safeties off in the first place, design to the CR system adjusted only for the table size, and ignoring the fact that level 1 PCs on 20 point buy are +1 APL compared to the 15 point buy the CR system is built on.

And so far as I've ever heard, it's all intentional.

[Jessex]

I think the heart of the problem, based on comments from scenario authors, is the CR system.

Take a fairly average party of 5 first level PFS characters. If you calculate the party's CR as if it was an enemy to fight it is 2.5 yet the CR of encounters in tier 1-2 scenario tends to be less than 2 except for the BBEG. This makes every fight lopsided in the favor of the party period. Either they will outnumber the enemy or they will be superior qualitatively.

And that ignores the way PFS calculates APL which further tilts things in the PC's favor.

[TetsujinOni]

And this is by design because of the patterning of 15 encounters per level and 1/3 of a level of XP budget per scenario.

[Ragoz]

They don't use the entire 1/3rd exp budget per scenario and things are vastly weaker because of that.

Honestly I would really love if 2 scenarios per season were written with "Hard Mode" to scale up the difficulty for no rewards and only if the entire table agreed. It's nice to be given the opportunity to play such a game.

[FLite]

I would like to point out that the NPCs are *supposed* to be outgunned by the PCs.

Lets say we had a way to make every scenario "fair" and did so.

By definition this meant the PCs would fail half the time. Most of those failures would end in one or more deaths. Even the wins would result in a few deaths. For sake of convenience, lets assume that the number of PCs who survive failure would be approximately equal to the number of PCs who die succeeding.

I have never yet seen anyone get enough gold to raise dead before level 4, so that is 9 games.

50% chance of survival over nine games means that only about one in five hundred characters would make it to fourth level and go on to survive playing. I really don't think that would benefit the campaign.

Even with only a 5% chance of PC death each game, only 63% of PCs make it to level 4.

The games *have* to be a cakewalk, or no PC would survive to reach tenth level. After level 4, they can tune up the lethality on a few scenarios, since the Prestige Point system means you have a buffer so that raise dead doesn't cut into your wealth by level so much. But even then, TPKs have to be remarkably rare, they should only happen about 1 in 20 games.

So think about it this way:

The challenge is not in completing the mission. It's not even really about getting both prestige points usually (though that is occasionally hard.) The challenge is doing all that without spending more than 10% of what you made from the mission.

A TPK or Mission Failure is massively bad luck
A success with one or more deaths or several expensive conditions to clear is a failure.
A flawless success is a win.

With that mindset, you should win about 50% of the time.

[FLite]

Ragoz wrote:

They don't use the entire 1/3rd exp budget per scenario and things are vastly weaker because of that.

Honestly I would really love if 2 scenarios per season were written with "Hard Mode" to scale up the difficulty for no rewards and only if the entire table agreed. It's nice to be given the opportunity to play such a game.

I don't know about season 6 or 7, but season 5 had that. One problem with the season 5 hard mode is that on at least one of the scenarios, it pretty much doubled the run time.

[Ragoz]

It's optional so I'm ok with that situation. If it was only 1 or 2 scenarios per year you can plan around it and schedule when you have free time or play it as a normal game.

Season 6 did not have this at all sadly.

[outshyn]

Jessex wrote:

I think the heart of the problem, based on comments from scenario authors, is the CR system.

I think this is very true. Here is part of a post I made a couple of months ago, and it shows why the current CR system is creating crappy encounters.

The PFS rules for determining a group's level of power does not follow the rules in the Core Rulebook. And the Core Rulebook is based upon D&D 3.5 where a different and more exact system is used!

In other words, with each new "level" of rules, we've made CR more & more fuzzy, and thus more & more difficult to gauge. So it's a problem of our own making.

Here is the problem, illustrated by each "system" that calculates party level, using 7 adventurers of 3rd level as an example:

• PFS: sum of character levels divided by # of PCs, so 21/7 = 3.
  
• Pathfinder (no Society): sum of character levels divided by # of PCs, but add 1 for big groups, so 21/7 = 3 + 1 = 4.
  
• D&D 3.5: sum of character levels divided by four (always 4, no matter the actual number of PCs), so 21/4 = 5.25!!!
  

As you can see, Pathfinder in general not only beefed up PCs, but made it so that big groups come out with an average level that is lower. So you're throwing weaker challenges at tougher characters; it becomes more of a cakewalk. And then Pathfinder Society in particular modified even that so that the PCs get even weaker challenges.

In other words, in D&D 3.5, that group of adventurers would be going up against a tough CR 5 or 6 monster, but in PFS it's "fair" and "by the rules" for that same group to go up against a CR 3 monster. No wonder we're having issues with the system. And no wonder that Pathfinder Society is having problems with overpowered characters.

[FLite]

Except that that is no longer true.

It was true in season 0-3, where the encounters were written for a party of 4. (So basically, D&D 3.5 CR)

But starting with season 6, they are written for a party of 6, with the CR reduced by (approximately) 1 for groups of 4.

So basically, Pathfinder CR.

[Ragoz]

When I said they weren't providing enough exp for appropriate level PCs to actual get 1/3rd per scenario I think it is because of the exact reason you are describing Outshyn. In most cases they should be fighting enemies about 2 cr higher from what I can tell.. almost exactly what you found for your 3.5 edition calculation.

It's one thing designing the enemies with PC wealth or optimal options etc. I think this rarely happens and probably shouldn't too often. I think it is a whole other issue when literally every enemy is 2 CR too low in this campaign.

That doesn't even begin to touch how the prestige system, boons, rerolls, and extra gold beyond the normal character advancement makes everything even more lopsided.

[FLite]

So for all of you who are saying scenarios should be tougher,

What percent of the time should:
The PCs earn 0 PP
The PCs earn 1 PP
One PC die
Two PCs die
The party TPK?
The PCs make no money
The PCs make half the money.

[outshyn]

FLite wrote:

Except that that is no longer true.

It was true in season 0-3, where the encounters were written for a party of 4. (So basically, D&D 3.5 CR)

But starting with season 6, they are written for a party of 6, with the CR reduced by (approximately) 1 for groups of 4.

So basically, Pathfinder CR.

OK, but that still sucks compared to the more exact 3.5 system it's based upon. So we still have not fixed the problem.

[FLite]

Re: wealth by level.

Unless I misunderstand, wealth by level is the amount of wealth that a PC has held onto, not the amount they have earned.

The following numbers are total wealth earned. I don't have a break down for total wealth retained.

So, my bloatmage has survived to level 8, that is 21 games. He has 28 PP, and 39,000 GP wealth. (Well, less some expendables.) If he had died roughly once every 10 scenarios, he would be just about dead on the wealth by level.

My Barbarian at level 12 is actually about 7000 under wealth by level, but has enough PP for a couple of raise deads, so again, give or take a death or two, right on wealth by level.

My Ifrit swashbuckler is going to go into level 6 with about 3K over wealth by level and about 24 PP, or about one and a half deaths above wealth by level.

So I stand by my assertion that any given PC should be dying at most once per 10 games. (And probably not even that much at levels under 4, where there is no coming back)

[Ragoz]

I don't think we have to break anything down into percentages Flite but I can generally answer how those currently are for myself..

I have never received 0 prestige on a mission.

I have earned 244/250 prestige in games I have played.

I have died once in PFS. I'll call it an extraordinary circumstance because it was a 4 player hard mode run of the Sealed Gate where I was level 9 in the high tier. *Edit* No wait I actually died once more recently in Bonekeep 2 final room.

*Edit* That same game of Bonekeep 2 one other person had died earlier in the mission. So 2 people did die this one time.

I have never seen a TPK, either playing or GMing, nor have I heard of one happening from any tables.

I assume people make no money or half money when they have failed the mission somehow and so I have never seen this. At most I've lost one encounter worth of gold and this is very very rare.

I'm ok with the game remaining the same for everyone who doesn't enjoy harder scenarios. I just would like to see Hard Mode implemented a small percentage of each new season for people who do enjoy it.

[FLite]

I think we do need to break it down into some metric, because if we are going to change the difficulty, we need to know what the target difficulty is.

And then we need to figure out what the effect on the campaign would be of meeting that target.

I haven't died much, (partly because I am quite happy to run away) but I have certainly killed my fair shared of characters. And there have been plenty of times I have stuck people with a 1000 gp bribe when they couldn't make the skill check to talk down the price.

[outshyn]

FLite wrote:

I think we do need to break it down into some metric, because if we are going to change the difficulty, we need to know what the target difficulty is.

I would simply want the target difficulty to be what it was with the CR system under 3.5; that system worked and didn't get complaints like PFS does. I think that can just be a blanket statement with no metrics, because 3.5 is a proven system that didn't fall apart from "too hard" or TPK complaints. We don't need math to prove out what history has already proven.

Having said that, if everyone here wants to explore metrics, go for it.

[Ragoz]

I would make the difficulty actually designed so players receive 1/3rd the exp they would need to level on tier.. pulling from another thread I once created..

Updating Scenarios

Experience per game party of 6 needs to level:

1-3 Average exp level: 2, 4000 exp
3-5 Average exp level: 4, 18000 exp
5-7 Average exp level: 6, 46000 exp
7-9 Average exp level: 8, 102000 exp
9-11 Average exp level: 10, 210000 exp

An example I used was 4-12 Refuge of Time where at low tier players receive 43,200 exp. They need 58,800 more exp to get 1/3rd of the exp they need for their level. In high tier they get 121,600 and need 88,400 more for an appropriate scenario. This translates to about 2 cr more per encounter in practice.

I think this is the best place to start if change is actually desired, providing the challenge you would expect if you leveled after 3 scenarios.

[The Fox]

When I first joined this campaign (one third of the way through Season 4) I thought that the scenarios were too easy.

My thinking has changed completely on this. Now I think the scenarios, are—on average—just right in difficulty.

If they were all much harder, I would need to bring my A-game for all of the characters I build (or at least my B-game). That's not what I want in this campaign, and I think a lot of other players I know feel similarly.

I like to try out different character ideas. Different personalities. I know that powerful builds and interesting personalities are not mutually exclusive—I have several characters with both. But if I only need to build to a power level of Medium, I feel free to experiment with some zanier ideas that might be less mechanically sound.

For instance, most of my characters forego many of the "Big-6" items: belt/headband of stat-boosting, cloak of resistance, ring of protection, amulet of natural armor, magic armor/shield, magic weapon.

None of my characters have a cloak of resistance. Only one has a ring of protection or an amulet of natural armor—she is a tank and doesn't have a magic weapon.

Because I don't feel like my characters need those "Big-6" items, I can try some of the more fun, flavorful, and interesting magic items instead. (The cloak of resistance, in particular, is the most boring item in the game; every time we find one in a scenario, I just want to have my character go toss it into a bog.)

I can also try actions that are not tactically optimal. My tank mentioned above is often seen wearing a blindfold to practice her blind-fighting. It costs her a move action to remove it, but it is enjoyable for me. If I felt like every fight was going to be a potential TPK, I would not have been able to develop that character—who is currently my favorite character, I think.

I find the difficulty of the scenarios to be just right. :)

[JohnF]

Another data point:

I've got 244XP (spread over 14 characters). 89 of those are GM credit, and another 33 come from playing levels of Thornkeep or Emerald Spire (which are closer to a 1XP scenario than to a 3XP module).

That's something like 133 scenarios worth of play, during which a character has only died four or five times (three times on one character, all in subtier 8-9!). All deaths were resolved before end-of-play.

So, when I'm playing, my characters seem to die perhaps 4% of the time.
The death rate when I GM is closer to half that - I think I've killed eight or nine characters in 400 (+/- 50) chronicles handed out.

[JohnF]

outshyn wrote:

I would simply want the target difficulty to be what it was with the CR system under 3.5; that system worked and didn't get complaints like PFS does.

A difficulty level that is appropriate for a multi-level adventure path (where characters can be designed with some knowledge of what they will be doing, and who else will be in the party) isn't really what we want for a setting where a character will be facing a wider variety of challenges, and will frequently find themselves adventuring in an unbalanced party missing one (or more) key roles. Add to that the fact that until recently players only got one chance to play any given scenario, and you can understand why the system is designed to have the PCs win most of the time.

[outshyn]

Well John, I kind of defer to you on that, but with one exception. Even if that is the case, it causes no harm to do what Ragoz suggests -- do the optional "hard mode" more often. Very, very often from my own experience GMing, there are "mooks" or other filler NPCs/monsters in a fight that are reduced for 4 person mode. There is no reason why there could not be an optional increase. It'd literally be a single sentence added next to the 4 player option: "If the players ask for hard mode, add 1 enemy." (Of course, you'd specify what enemy you're adding just as you specify what you're removing in 4 player mode.)

That might not be truly "hard mode" in the sense that adding a single mook very often isn't even a 1/2 CR increase, but at least it tips the scale of the action economy. It might mean fights go 5 rounds instead of 4. Even that minor option would be welcome.

You know me & my crew, John. You can imagine that Gennaro, Walter, John G, Houston, and myself would certainly group together and try for hard modes like that. Maybe even throw Chris in there if we really wanted to rules-lawyer and murderify our way through things. We would probably still cakewalk those modules even then, but at least it'd be a "Hmm, that actually got interesting for moment," kind of thing.

Since hard mode does exist for some modules, this simpler version just needs to be implemented more often.

[Rushley son of Halum]

The issue is there, anyone who's payed out of tier can see it. Characters are just well out of balance with anything that can be thrown at us and still be considered reasonable.

I'll give an example from the Sky Key Solution.

Spoiler:

The final fight, the one that you're not supposed to go anywhere near until after the other tasks. The one that doesn't get leveled down for lower parties, the one the scenario tells the GM to warn players about. We took that on, at level 6-7.

I nearly beat it. If the GM hadn't employed some pretty specific tactics to keep us (well me) from being anywhere near the big bad then i'd have shut it down in 2 rounds and that would have been it.

A level 6 brawler nearly shut down what is apparently a level 13 or 14 caster. That should not be possible. That fight should be totally 1 sided, that we had any hope at all is absurd. I needed to role a 4 to finish that fight. Though it did inspire me to get a dimension door cape.

[outshyn]

Rushley, son of Halum, I have but one question: HOW?

Seriously, drop it in spoilers if you must, but I am stupefied as to how a level 6 brawler can solo that final fight, much less in two rounds!!!

[Auke Teeninga]

Sky Key Solution:

There is no tier 6-7, so I suspect tier 5-6? There is actually some scaling down as the tier 10-11 does have extra enemies. I suspect some grapple shenanigans, but that shouldn't be easy with improved invisibility/mirror images/fly

[blackbloodtroll]

"Hard Mode" also can turn away newcomers.

You need a sweet spot.

Maybe some are cakewalks, and some are TPK monsters.

That depends on the party composition.

I have seen parties see the same scenario, in totally different lights, as far as how challenging they thought it was.

Having a few slightly easier adventures early in the career, helps newcomers get hooked.

[outshyn]

blackbloodtroll wrote:

"Hard Mode" also can turn away newcomers.

Huh? Hard mode is optional -- every hard mode comes with mandatory text that states that if even a single player says no, then the game runs as normal. It's impossible for it to turn away newcomers unless the GM and players all collude to pressure a newbie into doing it, which is explicitly not OK by the hard mode rules we've already got in play.

That just seems like a red herring.

[outshyn]

Auke Teeninga wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Thanks. I still don't get it though. Although I cannot buy the PDF, I can see the stat block on pfsprep, and if I were running that BBEG, then even without the extra monsters, I would wipe the floor with a level 6 PC. How would you not?

Spoiler:

Rushley mentioned Dimension Door, so we can assume that the BBEG cast that. If so, even if the BBEG was grappled, it's now free, and should always be placed in a position to not be re-grappled right away. So right after doing something like that, if I were the GM, I'd next cast Greater Invisibility, move, and then next turn Fly, and then maximized Lightning Bolt, Scorching Ray (does 12d6 at her level), maybe heal up, and then finally resume melee. Even then, I'd be using the Shocking Grasp magus stuff to make it really painful. I don't know how a level 6 brawler survives that.

Even more, Rushley said that the only way she survived was through tricks. So apparently the fairly normal stuff I describe above was easily overcome by the brawler, and the GM had to counter it with something awesome but I don't know what that could be. I'm so puzzled.

[blackbloodtroll]

outshyn wrote:

blackbloodtroll wrote:

"Hard Mode" also can turn away newcomers.

Huh? Hard mode is optional -- every hard mode comes with mandatory text that states that if even a single player says no, then the game runs as normal. It's impossible for it to turn away newcomers unless the GM and players all collude to pressure a newbie into doing it, which is explicitly not OK by the hard mode rules we've already got in play.

That just seems like a red herring.

I meant as upping all scenarios difficulty, to encompass a certain level of "Hard Mode".

This thread is not a complaint on the difficulty of scenarios?

Did I miss something?

[Ragoz]

You missed where while talking about overall difficulty I asked that for there to be optional hard modes a couple times per season just so people who do enjoy can have that experience.

[outshyn]

blackbloodtroll wrote:

Did I miss something?

You are correct that the discussion was, at least initially, about upping the difficulty overall. However, "hard mode" is a more narrow focus: it's a feature of some modules already, and it is entirely optional. It is a phrase that was coined to mean a certain thing: an extra monster here or there, added to a module, and only added IF the players all agreed to "suffer" the extra difficulty.

So if you were using "hard mode" as a general blanket term for everything discussed here, then that explains the confusion. I personally am not wedded to the idea of forcing a general difficulty increase on everyone, especially if people like you & John think it turns away newcomers. I don't believe that, but I defer to you guys. It doesn't hurt me at all to accept that point of view. However, having abandoned that aspect, I am still wedded to the idea that current difficulty levels suck. If we cannot have a general increase in difficulty, then the alternative is hard mode: already accepted, already in play, already successful, and completely optional. Let's just do it more. Let's get into more modules.

[blackbloodtroll]

General blanket term.

Now, I believe you want something like the "4 player adjustment" in scenarios, but in reverse.

Basically, little notes that say "to increase difficulty, add this".

Something like that, yes?

[Ragoz]

Yes. There are three scenarios with "Hard Mode" as a written option for them currently. They are pretty much the 4 player adjustment in reverse (but can be even more extreme in some cases). They also are independent of the 4-player adjustment rules and can be run with both rules at the same time.

[Auke Teeninga]

outshyn wrote:

Auke Teeninga wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

Thanks. I still don't get it though. Although I cannot buy the PDF, I can see the stat block on pfsprep, and if I were running that BBEG, then even without the extra monsters, I would wipe the floor with a level 6 PC. How would you not?

** spoiler omitted **

I don't get it either.

Sky Key Solution:

Maybe the GM hadn't prepped the final encounter as he didn't suspect a 5-6 party to take on the BBEG. The level 9 party I ran (all expert players, they were not threatened by anything else in the entire adventure) would have had multiple deaths if time hadn't run out.

[theshoveller]

Ragoz wrote:

I don't think we have to break anything down into percentages Flite but I can generally answer how those currently are for myself..

I have never received 0 prestige on a mission.

I have earned 244/250 prestige in games I have played.

I have died once in PFS. I'll call it an extraordinary circumstance because it was a 4 player hard mode run of the Sealed Gate where I was level 9 in the high tier. *Edit* No wait I actually died once more recently in Bonekeep 2 final room.

*Edit* That same game of Bonekeep 2 one other person had died earlier in the mission. So 2 people did die this one time.

I have never seen a TPK, either playing or GMing, nor have I heard of one happening from any tables.

I assume people make no money or half money when they have failed the mission somehow and so I have never seen this. At most I've lost one encounter worth of gold and this is very very rare.

I'm ok with the game remaining the same for everyone who doesn't enjoy harder scenarios. I just would like to see Hard Mode implemented a small percentage of each new season for people who do enjoy it.

By contrast, I've had one PC death and a few 'by grace of GM' near-misses. I've killed several PCs as the GM. I've GM'd a TPK, and been at the next table from some others. I've seen a convention special where half the party was dead in the first two rounds of combat. I've walked away with 0 Prestige from a scenario, and I've been docked gold for various encounters. I've never played or ran Bonekeep.

I don't think your experience is typical.

[Ascalaphus]

I think difficulty can be very hit or miss. To a significant degree that's due to the CR/EL system. It's very open to manipulation, increasing or decreasing difficulty.

Increasing difficulty
- Giving NPCs perfect gear to go nova in that encounter, but not so much that it merits the +1 CR for PC-degree gear. Easily done with consumables.
- Not adding EL for terrain that clearly favours the NPCs.
- Extreme synergy in monsters: shocker lizards + flesh golems. Pugwampis barely have any CR but paired with any mind-immune monster they significantly increase difficulty (but not EL) just by hiding in the bushes nearby.
- Combining class levels just right. An odd number of class levels on a monster with "no synergy" increases its CR just as much as the even number one below it.
- Class level dips. Putting a few barbarian levels on a Ghast for example. (Ignoring some rules, too.)
- Front-loaded classes. Two level 2 barbarians with weapon focus, combat reflexes and longspears are still just an EL 3 encounter, but +9 to hit and 1d8+7 damage they're a lot more dangerous than a Dire Wolf (also CR 3 on its own).
- Stacking abilities with synergies. Something that punishes PCs for staying in an area combined with something that slows them and makes them provoke attacks by leaving.
- Enemy builds that patch all weaknesses; good AC, CMD, all three saves, reach and close-by attacks, iterative attacks against touch AC.
- Nova enemies (magi!)
- Putting a dedicated archer NPC in a spot with no information for the GM on how PCs could get there.

Decreasing difficulty
- Putting enemies in an environment that frustrates their abilities (flyby monsters in a small room)
- Bad tactics (summoning lots of critters that can't hit PC AC anyway), battlefield control that hurts the NPCs just as badly
- Lots of mooks with not enough to-hit to actually hit PC frontliners and no way to get around them
- Mooks with not enough Initiative, AC and HP to survive until their first turn

.

These things make it that CR/EL really isn't such a good metric for difficulty. It seems like some authors manage too squeeze a lot more difficulty out of CR than they should, while in others an encounter costs more time in overhead (initiative tracking, administering complicated battlefield control) than actual challenge.

.

As an aside: why do we even care whether the amount of "XP" you get for three PFS scenarios compares to that required to level up in a regular campaign? Why is that important?

[Quentin Coldwater]

I wanted to make a similar thread for a while now. Maybe it's the scenarios I pick, maybe it's my GM style/bad rolls (my average on the d20 goes way down once I go behind that screen), maybe it's properly specced out players, but I'm finding it hard to challenge players. I've had multiple encounters where no one ever got hurt, and a few scenarios where I only managed to injure the tank slightly. I don't want to make my players's lives difficult or make them fear for their lives, but I'd like to offer some resistance, at least. Right now I feel like I'm just throwing up roadblocks, rather than actual threats.

I know PFS has to cater to the lowest common denominator, but I'd like to see the option of "advanced players". Not necessarily hard mode, but the option to change the numbers slightly if you see your table's breezing through things. Things like slapping the Advanced template on things, more mooks, or just increased HP, so the enemy can stand for a few more rounds and actually be a threat. I've had so many encounters where the enemy just fails due to action economy, just one or two more mooks would've made things much more interesting.

Which leads me to another thing: lots of encounters, especially bosses, are just one big enemy with maybe one or two mooks, versus a properly specced out party. That's just not fun. I feel epic when I wade through hordes of enemies roughly my level (or maybe slightly below) before I confront the final boss. A single enemy whose class level is two or three higher than the tier we're playing in versus a party of 4-6 just fails. I'm trying to think of a scenario without resorting to spoilers, but I can't. Anyway, I'd rather have to fight through more cannon fodder before fighting an opponent I'm equally matched with than one big guy that's rendered ineffective once there's two frontliners around him.
Or, have enemies have better synergy, with adventurer-like setups: one full-BAB class, one arcane caster, a Cleric, and maybe a fourth wild card. They're covering each others's weaknesses, and a reliable healer means fights can go on for longer. I've seen so many encounters fall just because of healing output on our side. One big guy can hit as hard as he wants, but if you can rotate frontliners, we'll eventually chip him down, as he's no way of healing himself.
Season 6 had a good start with actually designing PC-like parties rather than pulling random enemies from Bestiaries or the NPC Codex, which I really liked. It ups the difficulty for the GM a lot, since you have to track a lot more feats, but those fights were way more memorable than most other seasons. I think season 2 was the worst in this. Seasons 0 and 1 were wild and wacky and power level wasn't really known, so they varied wildly, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Season 2 felt like an overcorrection sometimes (especially before the four-player-adjustments), where on the 1-2 tier most enemies could be oneshotted due to an encounter consisting of 4 enemies with 8 HP each, or one enemy with 15 HP.
I guess my main complaint is that combats don't last long enough, and once everyone's in combat, it becomes a static mess of five-foot steps and full attacks. Tide of Morning had a great final encounter that shows how mobile a combat can be, and how my players really had to adjust to these tactics.

[Muser]

w00t, listing stuff:

Lessee, with 26 scenarios left I've played most of what regular PFS play has to offer. During that endeavour, I've had 4 PC's of mine die(1 one of them permanently). Yesterday I ran my 60th game(!!!) and it was almost a TPK(3 in the negas, last one surrendered). Beyond that, I've killed 15-17 characters (one permanently, 6 to various mummies[freaking mummies...]) and seen around 20 deaths as a player. Surprisingly enough, most deaths've happened in tier 5-9. It seems to be a conflux of sorts. The ante is uppped, death effects appear, archer enemies get Manyshot and Deadly Aim, black tentacles is bread and butter.

This is a teensy bit scawy considering my attendance of The Blakros Connection in about an hour. Tier 8-9, naturlich.

[Michael Hallet]

I find the biggest difficulty is PCs that don't have enough skill points per level. 2 points per level just doesn't cut it. If the adventure doesn't call for the few skill you have, then you aren't contributing to the non-combat encounters effectively.

[BigNorseWolf]

Most of your ability to urvive comes from your build. You can't start off a weenie and then suddenly explode when you need to

With a martial if you don't hit the ground running and slaughter the 1-5s you'll lag behind a bit in the 5-9s and be blown out of the water by an archer or caster in 7-11.

But given the difficulty of getting higher level tables you play mostly in the level where the character made to be ok at higher levels is in the hot knife through butter portion of their careers.

[Jessex]

I come at this from the POV of someone who has been a GM of a homebrew campaign for decades.

I rarely kill characters. It does occur and I rarely fudge die rolls to keep characters alive.

I design encounters to push not break the PC's.

For PFS encounters it doesn't take a lot to make encounters more challenging without making them TPK's. First, warm bodies. Too many encounters have too few opponents. The reason save or suck single target spells are so popular amongst PFS players is because most encounters involve so few real threats. The BBEG should have a few minions to stand between himself and the party while he cackles and flings spells at them.

Second, better tactics. I'm not talking CDG but it is very frustrating to have the tactics on a caster dictate that their first spell will be, in a scenario I ran last season, enthrall which had basically no chance of working against the party.

[outshyn]

Quentin Coldwater wrote:

I'd like to see the option of "advanced players". Not necessarily hard mode, but the option to change the numbers slightly if you see your table's breezing through things. Things like slapping the Advanced template on things, more mooks, or just increased HP, so the enemy can stand for a few more rounds and actually be a threat.

For what it's worth, you said "not necessarily hard mode" but then you listed exactly the types of things that are done in hard mode. To paraphrase, it seems like you said, "don't call it hard mode, but do exactly everything that hard mode does." Just, you know, FYI. You probably don't care. But if you haven't read a module with hard mode, then you might not have known, and now you do.

Jessex wrote:

Second, better tactics. I'm not talking CDG but it is very frustrating to have the tactics on a caster dictate that their first spell will be, in a scenario I ran last season, enthrall which had basically no chance of working against the party.

I know that scenario. When I played through, the opening spell/power was all he did because he was dead after that. When I ran it as a GM, I knew this would be a huge problem, and I had very little wiggle room to make the encounter anything viable. They spelled out too much, and stipulated too much detail, so I couldn't find much wiggle room. In the end, the only thing I could do was to ensure that the encounter started at the maximum distance possible, hoping that it would take a round of movement simply to close in and start fighting. This worked, and the guy lived to round 2, which then meant he could do some real spell work. That is one of those combat encounters where a team which is heavy on ranged attacks will end everything instantly, and a team of mostly melee will enter into a slog.

If I were designing a "hard mode" for that encounter, I would probably follow your own advice, here:

Jessex wrote:

Too many encounters have too few opponents.

That is to say that I would simply add a mook standing closer to the entrance that the PCs could focus on for a round. That's it. Just... give me a round of the PCs hitting an in-the-way target. He can die right after that, for all I care. That NPC isn't supposed to make any attacks. He's simply there to allow the Enthrall spell to get off, and the gaze attack to get off. Once the opening salvo is made, then let the chips fall where they may. But give the NPCs/monsters a chance to at least last a couple of rounds.

[Ascalaphus]

I get the feeling that in many encounters, the enemies don't really have a Plan. They have some tactics of the form "do X first, then Y", but that's not a Plan.

It tends to start out with group composition. PC parties tend to be a diverse whole, capable of covering multiple bases, handling a variety of threats and presenting many different threats. A PC party spots an enemy party and starts coming up with ways to tear it apart.

NPC groups tend to lack all this. They're just a boss with some goons and some implausible long-term goal. They don't have a Plan to take apart the PCs or to raise the threat of accomplishing their goals in a hurry.

I say "tend to lack" because sometimes they do have it, and those are often scary and memorable combats. When the party is desperately trying to keep the NPC from reaching something, killing a particular someone (and the NPCs planned this assassination, so they start out with the PCs outmaneuvered) or just has a variety of means to take on the PCs and liberal enough tactics that they actually get to do that.

Please, save me from scenarios where the boss is an insane priest just sitting in a rectangular basement waiting for us to come and kill him.

[pauljathome]

In my opinion the biggest problem that PFS faces is the frequently massive difference in effectiveness between characters that are twinked out monstrosities, well made, and made by casual players.

This difference increases with level and increases as the power continues to constantly ramp up (sometimes way up) with every release.

Heck, some of the pregens are now significantly more powerful than most PCs (I think the most egregious example is the level 7 arcanist).

There isn't a scenario out there that can stand up to 6 twinked out L7+ characters playing in sub tier. But if any attempt is made to up the challenge to fit that group then it will utterly eliminate 6 normal characters.

And I firmly believe that most of the people who play twinked out characters do NOT actually WANT a challenge. Many say they do but I think that they are mistaken. So, making things challenging for the twinked out groups will pretty much satisfy nobody.

[BigNorseWolf]

Mauljathome wrote:

And I firmly believe that most of the people who play twinked out characters do NOT actually WANT a challenge. Many say they do but I think that they are mistaken. So, making things challenging for the twinked out groups will pretty much satisfy nobody.

I think its a matter of perspective on where the difficulty or skill comes in. Most of the skill and challenge you overcome is when you build your character, not when you play (this goes doubly for martials, who don't have that perfect spell for that situation) . Clever play can nudge your character a little and not understanding some basic.. basics can tank it completely. But you can't get a silk purse out of a sows ear. People ARE looking for a challange, but its to their building ability, not to the oft vaunted playing ability.

[FLite]

As someone who plays in a fixed 4 hour time slot, making fights go longer is not really something I want to aim for. I usually try to go for short and terrifying (and I seem to pull I off pretty regularly. I have WAY more "2 hit points from dead" shots that I have PC deaths.

Our region favors mobility and range, and does decent threat assessments, so a mook by the door with a caster across the room, the caster is still going to be the primary target. (with the mook often left for the lower level players so they have something to enjoy killing.)

I have no real objection to more optional hard modes, but it has to be player choice, not GM decision based on player success. As a GM you don't necessarily know what percentage of my per diem resources I have used. If I am blowing recourses to kill things fast because we are low on healing, it would be massively unfair to punish me by making everything harder. That and it feeds a player vs gm mentality.

One thing I would like to see is more big bads who are *not* the scariest thing in the room. I mean, what is the point of hiring bodyguards who are less combat effective than you. I mean yeah, in some organizations, the deadliest person would rise to the top. But in many it should probably be the best talker.

[Ragoz]

pauljathome wrote:

And I firmly believe that most of the people who play twinked out characters do NOT actually WANT a challenge.

It's like playing chess instead of checkers. I want a more advanced game but the sides are still equal.

When I got home after Sealed Gate Hard I found the product page and immediately gave it a 5/5. If Bonekeep 3 had a page for it I would have done the same because it's awesome.

I think being dismissive of what other people want isn't fair especially when my proposed solution (more hard modes) doesn't detract from the play experience of the whole campaign.

[Thamius]

I find the difficulty and length of a BBEG fight, especially a solo battle, swings wildly based on a single die roll - initiative. If the BBEG gets a poor initiative, they may never get to go, period. I'm not sure how to fix that, unless NPCs and monsters are allowed to Take 10 on initiative, or maybe set a special BBEG rule that the GM rolls, but anything below a 10 gets automatically bumped up to a 10?

[Ascalaphus]

We're starting to see more custom-made NPCs with decent initiative scores, which is good. When I ran Siege of Serpents, the average PC initiative modifier was 13 I think, which the out-of-the-Codex NPCs didn't stand a chance against.

[Ascalaphus]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Mauljathome wrote:

And I firmly believe that most of the people who play twinked out characters do NOT actually WANT a challenge. Many say they do but I think that they are mistaken. So, making things challenging for the twinked out groups will pretty much satisfy nobody.

I think its a matter of perspective on where the difficulty or skill comes in. Most of the skill and challenge you overcome is when you build your character, not when you play (this goes doubly for martials, who don't have that perfect spell for that situation) . Clever play can nudge your character a little and not understanding some basic.. basics can tank it completely. But you can't get a silk purse out of a sows ear. People ARE looking for a challange, but its to their building ability, not to the oft vaunted playing ability.

I dunno about that. I think in many cases the battlefield doesn't really permit a great deal of skill on either side; people encounter each other at about 1-3 Move actions apart with relatively uncomplicated terrain.

I've had much more interesting encounters in situations were more complicated terrain was used (Tapestry's Toil top of the stairs scene, Storval Stairs end fight). Much more maneuvering around, rather than just "how do we deploy into this room and get to the caster".

On such simple terrains, most of the "skill" challenge comes down to the build vs. build. On more complicated terrain there's a bigger role for tactical moving about.