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This has been one of my pet projects for a couple of years, now. I've been adopting the World of Warcraft setting to Pathfinder (mostly by way of adventures and such - Pathfinder's grown enough that reasonable facsimiles for all the iconic classes, spells, and other abilities can be drawn together using just Paizo books), and now that I have most of the framework figured out, it's time start working on the adventures themselves.
First off, I'm going to be rewriting chunks of the canon story, particularly the earlier stuff, to both make it resemble a tabletop campaign more (so, for example, each zone is boiled down to a single plotline that strings together the more important and iconic quest chains) and to - in my eyes - fix some of the ...less well-planned/written plot points (so most of the overarching plot of Outland, for example).
But all of this is just background stuff for the advice I'd like to ask which, in short, is how would you construct and handle an adventure for 20 players? You see, I'm basically working on two versions of this plan: the first is simply constructing it as would be played by your typical 4-6 player group, nothing particularly out of the ordinary as far as campaigns are normally run. This is the version that I am actually planning to run. But, as a sort of thought-experiment, I guess, I'm also working on an idealized version of the campaign. The one that I'd run in a perfect world where I could find a reliable group of enough players, could devote as much time and resources to it as I want, and so on. Key to this version is having four simultaneous groups of players, each consisting of five players. Two groups would be Horde, two would be Alliance, and one group of each would start in Kalimdor and one of each in the Eastern Kingdoms. To simplify things a bit, I'd probably also start them a couple levels higher and in Darkshore, the Barrens, Westfall/Loch Modan (this one doesn't get resolved so easily), and Silverpine Forest so that I don't have to worry about which city to start them in.
But I digress. So, obviously, this would - again, in an idealized world - allow things like including the PvP battlegrounds where the Alliance and Horde parties get to fight each other, but also - theoretically - truly epic raids. Most of the time, the same-faction parties would team up to take on 10-man raids, but for the major ones - generally those that end the expansion like Icecrown Citadel and Siege of Orgrimmar - all four groups would join forces for a cross-faction 20-man extravaganza.
Obviously, Pathfinder really isn't designed to handle so many simultaneous players, and as I've said this is pretty much doomed to remain a daydream, but I thought it would be something fun to at least try to figure out. Of course, I should also note that I have no qualms with giving NPCs (particularly bosses) abilities that go beyond what the rules would strictly allow, much like bosses in WoW have. This is primarily to prevent tabletop players from horribly breaking encounters due to having access to actions and abilities completely alien to MMOs in general, let alone WoW specifically, and as often as possible won't simply be some nondescript blanket immunity. In theory, there will generally be some way around any of these defensive (or offensive) abilities I grant to NPCs, however it's also likely that most of these weak points will be meaningless to try exploiting. For example, (WoD SPOILER WARNING) to use the current final raid encounter, Gul'dan will have an immunity (throughout the Draenor section of the campaign) to charms, compulsions, and other mind-affecting abilities which is granted to him by Archimonde. Defeating Archimonde removes these protections, however it doesn't matter since as he's dying, Archimonde immediately turns on Gul'dan and banishes him to the Nether. (SPOILER DONE)
Still, this sort of thing is a very basic defense that's just to counter some of the inherent flexibility of a tabletop game, (although I should also mention that I will be encouraging flexibility in many other cases - I won't be forcing players to simply kill a dozen demons or collect twenty bear pelts the whole time, and any time that it wouldn't drastically rewrite the overall continuity, I'll be trying to figure out diplomatic and other non-combat solutions that players can make use of to resolve encounters that, in WoW, can only be solved by violence. In fact, it's likely that only the major raids will need to stick to standard killing of guys) and won't really mean much when trying to make an appropriately challenging encounter for twenty players.
TL;DR
Sorry, this sort of got away from me in length. How would you set up and run an adventure for 20 simultaneous players?
Also, in retrospect, I should've named this thread something like "Warcraft Campaign and Adventures With Huge Parties". If admins have the ability to rename threads, could one do that for me, please?
First, I'd recommend a seperate GM for each group. Second, limit each player to 10 seconds to think about their turn, 10 seconds to articulate their turn, and 10 seconds to move their mini, roll dice, etc. This will create a 30 second turn, which is already pretty long for a party of 20, but without limitors like these, you won't go anywhere. 30 second turns in such a group makes a 10 minute round, and that's without any monsters' turns! This puts even the most trivial of encounters (like, say, the guards in front of the Lich King's fortress) at a half hour! Third, many of the boss fights in WoW hinge on the BBEG escaping either to a later part of the dungeon, or to a completely new dungeon. Figure out how you feel about players out-thinking you, and preventing the bosses from retreating, because it'll happen, no matter how much you plan, especially with 20x more brains working against you. Finally, with the turn-based combat system of Pathfinder, single-enemy bosses become trivial (even laughable with a group of 20); you may want to redesign some of the bosses to instead be five or six individual creatures who add up to the same CR, or at the very least, give the boss a ton of addons.
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1) Yeah, even if I went with PbP (I haven't decided which way would be preferable - there are points for and against both), I was planning on recruiting at least one other GM, and preferably a total of four.
2) Wow, I didn't even think about that. O_O
That's probably a point in PbP's or at least some online format's favour... Although, on the other hand, PbP could be worse without really strict rules like that, even for PbP's already slow pace. And it's exacerbated by one of the points against PbP: players who are essentially strangers and so can't really be guilted into showing up like an in-person player can be. :p
This is actually starting to remind me of an idea I once had for combining Risk and wargaming.
3) Again, that's part of what the not-strictly-abiding-by-the-rules abilities I mentioned at the end is for. Some bosses teleport in one way or another which can only be countered by dimensional anchor-like effects which there really doesn't an equivalent for in Warcraft lore outside of one or two possible examples that require items or rituals to create, so that can be handled by simply disallowing such spells, at least without prohibitively long casting times. And it may be a dirty trick, but being the GM, I can always say they have a counter to what the PCs try to do, even if he doesn't, although that should definitely be kept to a minimum. Of course, some of the times when a boss escapes in the game (particularly if all they do later is get defeated, again) then I could allow the PCs to capture him anyway, and replace the later encounter with another character or something else entirely. Perhaps even remove it if plot and pacing allow.
4) Yes, the 20-man encounters will definitely be where I focus most of my not-abiding-by-the-rules efforts when building encounters. At least earlier on, this will probably be much easier since a group of ten or twenty 10th-level characters can probably be a sufficient match for a single CR 20+ boss. Of course, this sort of strategy won't work so well as we get closer to, and even start to surpass level 20.
Incidentally, my current plans are to divide WoW's 100 levels into 25 Pathfinder levels with a mythic rank at the end of each expansion. Players will be granted levels at pre-defined points in the game, and I'll simply be doing away with XP. The troublesome thing is that with Legion and beyond, I'm pretty much absolutely sure that I'm going to have to condense the levels so that WoD ends at 20th level. It just 4:1 divides up so nicely as it is, naturally staggering things out so that players gain either a level or mythic rank at suitably regular intervals (particularly after Outland) that I'm afraid a 5:1 ratio would break... But that's another matter entirely and not the point of this thread.
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Hmm... Perhaps at least a partial solution for the time issue would be to keep the groups divided (but adjacent to and able to communicate with each other) and run by their respective GMs for the trash encounters with each group getting a quarter of the trash to kill, and only combining for the bosses themselves. This also lets it stick to the theoretical ideal that ignored enemy turns since (generally) only one enemy would need to take a turn. Four GMs preparing the counter should help to counter the 20 brains trying to exploit the fight, and even in fights where adds are summoned, those can be delegated to the co-GMs to handle while the fourth runs the main boss. It's still going to be a much longer fight than most, but I'm sure it will at least feel exciting and epic, and perhaps could even allow for some skimping on the actual difficulty of the encounter. Even if the boss only survives for four or five rounds, that fight would last almost an entire real-life hour, and the turn time limit would mean that something is constantly happening to keep up a frenetic pace.
At that rate, if you've got a 3-6 hour gaming session, you can get through one or two bosses (and their preceding trash) each session, with time to spare for typical relaxed chatter and non-game discussion. However, in order to avoid arc fatigue, the longer raids will probably need to have some of the unimportant bosses cut. What do you think would be an acceptable number of sessions before people get tired of climbing Icecrown Citadel, or hunting Deathwing? Three? Four? Maybe five? I've only managed to be part of two real life gaming groups and neither was particularly structured, so the number of sessions we'd spend on one adventure varied wildly.
4) Yes, the 20-man encounters will definitely be where I focus most of my not-abiding-by-the-rules efforts when building encounters. At least earlier on, this will probably be much easier since a group of ten or twenty 10th-level characters can probably be a sufficient match for a single CR 20+ boss.
Stay away from this thought process. Let's look at a 10th level Fighter.
BAB +10, Weapon Training x2, and 62k gold (based on the wealth by level chart, and we'll put almost everything into offense with a +3 weapon, and a +6 belt of Giant Strength) = +18 to hit. The AC to beat is a CR20 Pit Fiend's 38. You only hit on a Natural 20, with your favored weapon, and with your highest attack bonus. Sure, there are other feats, and buff spells to utilize, but meanwhile, you've put everything into offense to have maybe a 20% chance to hit, and now your defense is terrible, and the Pit Fiend full-attacks you and hits every single time, and now you're dead. That is not an exciting turn for the guy who needed to wait 10 minutes to go. This is why you'll need to take a CR20 boss and split him into five or six easier opponents, who all add up to a CR20 encounter. With one big boss, he's either a pushover, or eventually goes over that line to the point where no one can touch him. It's not an easy line to put one single monster on, and you'll waste more time trying to tweak it than redesigning the whole thing to be more balanced. Yeah, a lot of classic WoW fights go out the window with that, but that's the nature of tabletop games like Pathfinder.|
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Yeah, I realized how faulty that idea was as soon as I started thinking about it. Some encounters already are a few bosses like the Assembly of Iron in Ulduar and the Iron Maidens in Blackrock Foundry, and others have trash just before them that is normally cleared before engaging the boss in actual WoW, but can easily be added to the encounter for tabletop. But Arthas, Garrosh, Illidan... Aside from some trivial adds, these guys really should be solo if at all possible.
It seems pretty clear that they'll probably have to be built by hand specifically for this sort of encounter in mind, with only token adherence to the normal Pathfinder rules of character and monster construction. A lot more hit points is a natural first step - probably about four to five times what they should normally have, but that doesn't do much to counter save-or-die spells, or even just spells that inflict penalties that could stack with other spells. Personally, I think that doing away with most save-or-die spells for the campaign is acceptable, although there are those who would disagree. Simply boosting his saves won't work since he should be able to be reliably affected by most other spells. I can probably also justify (in-character) giving them immunity to the same sorts of effects as they have in WoW like fear and polymorph, though other effects like stun and daze would be harder to justify. I may be missing something, but talking myself through it all, it's starting to seem much more doable, now.
Speaking of spell saves, by the way, I've always been a bit discontent with the way they work in D&D and Pathfinder. Because of how spell save DCs are calculated, low level spells become all but useless at higher levels if they allow a saving throw. While it makes sense from one point of view - if you're powerful enough you should be able to shrug off low-level spells like rain water - it doesn't really from another perspective - you can outright kill a target with your finger of death, but if you just want to tire them out, your touch of fatigue does nothing. High level creatures can generally already pretty much ignore the effects of low level spells since doom's -2 penalty to attack rolls doesn't mean much to a 20th-level fighter wielding his favourite weapon. But again, I'm getting off topic (aside from the fact that I'd much rather let weaker spells affect bosses than stronger ones, as a general rule). -_-'
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When it comes to putting together a Warcraft campaign, I would suggest taking a look at the Swords and Sorcery sourcebook World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game for the 3.5/d20 system. It may still take some converting, but it would allow for a more faithful feel to the campaign. With this is the Horde and the Alliance books that come along with it.
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I knew someone was going to mention that, I meant to say that I did in fact have all of those books in the original post. Thanks for the thought, though. I have combed through them and weighed the pros and cons of converting and even flat-out using the system, but I want to encourage people to play characters rather than classes, and I think that things like having to decide whether your warlock is more of a summoner, witch, or sorcerer will help with that. The engineer and, to a lesser extent, the shaman are the only ones I'm unsatisfied with for this approach, but I am working on creating an alchemist alternate class (like the ninja or anti-paladin) that's sort of a gunslinger/alchemist hybrid (in the vein of the hybrid classes from the Advanced Class Guide for the former. As for shaman, after starting to make a class for it, I'm leaning towards relying more on spell choice, feats, (including some homebrew ones and some conversions from the Warcraft RPG) and refluffing to give the cleric, druid, possibly the inquisitor, and Pathfinder shaman classes a WoW shaman feel if that's what the player's aiming for.
One thing I do keep changing my mind about, however, is how to handle totems. I can't decide whether it would be better to treat them primarily as unique spells or as a metamagic feat. Some of the advantages of making them spells is that it would allow each one to be clearly and concisely defined more easily than trying to cover all the possibilities from the Earth Elemental Totem to the Searing Totem to the Cloudburst Totem to the Grounding Totem with a single metamagic feat. I could break it up into three or four different feats, but any mechanically convenient way of dividing up the totems doesn't strike me as being very lore friendly. If I could figure out a way to divide them up, however, then perhaps I could name each of the feats "Earth Totemic Spell", "Fire Totemic Spell", and so on, that would make it easier to stay loyal to the way that WoW limits totem use by only allowing one spell modified by the given feat to be active at a time. However, four feats is a lot to ask a character with no bonus feats to sacrifice, which is why if I go that route, I'd rather stick to just one feat for the basic ability to cast totemic spells.
As for what does make a totemic metamagic feat a good idea, most totems more-or-less replicate other spells, just with a longer duration, greater number of subjects, etc. so making them entirely new spells seems redundant when much the same effect could be achieved by a metamagic feat that extends the spell's area or duration in exchange for being able to be prematurely ended by any quick-thinking enemy. Essentially allowing the application of either Widen Spell, Extend Spell, or one or two other metamagic feats at one spell level lower than the emulated feat requires seems approximately fair in exchange for the shortcomings of tying the spell to a totem, and can reasonably replicate most totem spells in WoW. While there are only a handful of totemic spells that players can cast, there are many more that enemies can use, and lore in general suggests to me that totems could potentially produce all sorts of effects, which making a metamagic feat would allow much more easily than trying to make individual spells for all possible effects. Of course, there are totems that can't be easily replicated in this manner, but I suppose I can make a few homebrew spells (or, more likely, convert those from the aforementioned system) to cover those gaps.
Also, since I brought it up, but didn't really resolve it, I'm almost definitely just going to limit totems to any four - different, so you can't place two of the same - totems being active at once rather than trying to figure out how to divide things into the four elements (especially if I use the metamagic feat idea, which I am leaning ever so slightly towards) and keep them reasonably balanced so that such a restriction isn't mechanically arbitrary. Although, given how Pathfinder's magic system works, it seems unlikely to me that any but the highest level casters would have many more than four totemic spells prepared.
Just wanted to add my support for this idea, and wish more folks would try it. I love the WarCraft world.
Let me also express my frustration with the lack of a good enhancement shaman type character/class/build.
Just wanted to add my support for this idea, and wish more folks would try it. I love the WarCraft world.
Let me also express my frustration with the lack of a good enhancement shaman type character/class/build.
Kineticist with the Kinetic Blade Infusion Wild Talent?
Maybe. I'll look into it. Haven't looked a lot at Occult Adventures.
I would start by reading this.
In some ways, this is extremely similar to playing WoW. Except that all "quests" are group quests. The trick would be to break things down to be playable in a single session, so that characters are back at the meeting point to join a different group should the real life scheduling work out that way.
One aspect I can comment on from experience, Google Docs is great for coordinating and keeping documentation in one place for the DM's. I've been co-DMing a campaign for the past couple years and Google Docs has been invaluable. We have a collection of core documents, each major location, house rules, factions, npc lists, etc. Then we have a document for each session. I make the document prior to the session with notes about what could happen, major plot points, general focus, links to relevant information, NPC's appearing, etc. After the session I add a recap of what actually happened.
As for Shaman totems, they're just AoE spells. Some are buff spells, some are attack spells, etc. What makes them different is that they get centered on a location that doesn't move. Imagine a Bless spell, but instead of being cast on the players, it's cast on the ground and people who stand there (allies) get the benefit. I would pretty much just use the Cleric/Druid list, but make certain spells "totems". Don't change the power level of the spells, but make having them cast as totems rechargeable. For example a Shaman (Cleric) could cast a totem using a Channel Energy instead of a spell slot if they choose.
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Just wanted to add my support for this idea, and wish more folks would try it. I love the WarCraft world.
Let me also express my frustration with the lack of a good enhancement shaman type character/class/build.
Warpriest, ranger, inquisitor and the shaman itself (certainly if you pick the Battle or Stone spirits) look to me like they could get the job done. Of course, you may need to do a bit of refluffing, but that's pretty much par for the course.
As for Shaman totems, they're just AoE spells. Some are buff spells, some are attack spells, etc. What makes them different is that they get centered on a location that doesn't move. Imagine a Bless spell, but instead of being cast on the players, it's cast on the ground and people who stand there (allies) get the benefit. I would pretty much just use the Cleric/Druid list, but make certain spells "totems". Don't change the power level of the spells, but make having them cast as totems rechargeable. For example a Shaman (Cleric) could cast a totem using a Channel Energy instead of a spell slot if they choose.
Those are some really great ideas to use for building a WoW shaman class. However, I like how I figured out ways to make most everything else fit into a preexisting class, and really like using the... don't-really-know-how-to-describe-it approach... I guess by comparing it to the class that I definitely am making, the engineer. It kind of has a couple of analogues (the gunslinger, alchemist, and perhaps investigator), but it takes some serious refluffing to turn infusions into gadgets, and even then there are a lot that wouldn't make sense as machines, plus a pointed absence of any offensive gadgets like a freeze ray or lightning generator. This combined with the potential for an engineer-type class to fit into so many different settings lends the class greater utility from a creator's standpoint. Conversely, the WoW shaman is, overall, similar enough to existing Pathfinder classes, as well as not having a lot of use outside of the setting that can't be met just as well as another Pathfinder class.
But this is just my personal design philosophy. I believe that base classes should have a fairly wide utility when it comes to character concepts (like the rogue or wizard), or at least fill a fairly common niche (as does the alchemist or oracle). Things specific to a certain setting that would have difficulty working in an unrelated one, I think, work better as prestige classes or occasionally archetypes. In fact, I am also working on a warlock prestige class - in addition to the fact that, as I said earlier, witches, summoners, and other arcane spellcasters can emulate them well enough (although not quite perfectly - though remarkably better if you consider them as affliction, demonology, or destruction specs, respectively), it seems to me that in Warcraft lore, you generally need to already have some arcane talent in order to call the demons with whom you bargain for greater power to become a true warlock, anyway. Aside from player warlocks, that's pretty much always the order of things, it seems: become powerful mage, want more power, call demon, ???, profit. And so, warlock being a prestige class rather than a base class seems to make the most sense. But I digress.
Anyway, great idea, and I'd actually love to see someone use something like it for a class, but unfortunately, it won't be me. Oh, and many thanks for the link. I've only skimmed it so far, but it looks like it'll be really helpful for both this project in particular, and perhaps even my games in general.
Also, yes, almost all totems are just AoEs in some form or another, and that would be easy enough to make a simple conversion system for, either through the application of a metamagic feat, or some homebrew archetype, but then we have the elemental-summoning totems, which could only be described as an AoE by keeping the elemental within the totem's radius, or the Searing Totem for which there isn't really even a similar spell (that I know of) to base its behaviour on. Also, should a totem always be a conjuration spell since you're calling the totem into existance, or should the spell's school depend on the totem's effect so that a Stoneskin Totem is an abjuration spell, and a Sentry Totem is a divination (or also abjuration... creating homebrew spells has really taught me how ill-defined and arbitrary some official spells' schools can be - shield is an abjuration while ablative barrier is conjuration? And then mage armor is conjuration but floating disk is evocation??)?
I would try to separate the MMO totems from the canonical totem of the witch doctor from warcraft 3, the totems back then were more like expendable items or really cheap crafted items (much like scrolls if you will) that the character could use at will (expending his mana of course). But that because it's a game, the totems have to work as a mechanic that makes sense in a game, they are handcrafted wooden objects that spawn from the caster's will.
You could go the MMO/videogame route and make the physical object spawned by magic (yes, that works, magic can do that) that could be learned with a metamagic (or rewarded from an archetype).
Or make it an actual magic item crafting skill, similar to scribe scroll, but has the center of the spell as the totem object itself. You could just say that instead of scribe scrolls, certain races/cultures use craft totem for the same effects.
For instance, for the shaman class, you could replace the 2nd level Hex with craft totem or the totem metamagic. The pathfinder shaman has a lot of the fluff from warcraft's shamans, it even has (one of) a witch doctor archetype.
Most game effects would work with either option.
Area spells would affect whoever is inside the totem's radius during it's activation, buff spells would affect a single target if the spell is single target, single targeted spells would still require a target when the totem is dropped. And we could balance the advantages of it being stationary with a limit of one totem of each element at once (you would have to make judgement calls on each spell though).
Also, Searing Totem is a simple Produce Flame spell that attacks whoever the caster chooses on his turn (yes we can make it smarter than on the MMO).