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I try to build well-rounded characters.
As a result, they excel at a couple of skills, do 'okay' at a few others, and have 'holes' in what they can do because no solid character can do 'everything'.
When it comes to combat they hold their own (though I admittedly get paranoid and usually have them fight defensively unless it becomes painfully obvious the opponent isn't hitting or other options open up like flanking, bards, etc) but are consistently out-classed, out-gunned, and flat-out dps'd compared to someone that made 'rocket tag' the be-all and end-all of their character.
Despite this, the only time it's been an issue is during discussion on the forums...
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What I've found is that the ones with 'hard mode' tend to be the hardest ones already before the adjustment, they actually could use an 'easy mode' instead.
Sometimes 'hard mode' can just be 'play the optional encounter' which many times tends to be the hardest one.
Pathfinder Society Lead Developer
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Pink Dragon, from a mechanical standpoint, what do you see this involving? Is it an additional entry in the "Scaling Encounter B2" sidebar, noting how to reduce the CR by each encounter by 1? Is it the removal of certain mechanics that can lead to deadlier foes (e.g. phantasmal killer, high-crit weapons, high DR, etc.)? Is it some blanket adjustment, such as treating every printed number as 2 lower? Does the system grant lower rewards—tricky because doing so further weakens those characters, but not doing so attracts those who might exploit the system to gain rewards without commesurate threats?
It's difficult to provide a fair assessment of this proposal without having a better sense of what you're looking for.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I think PFS is actually reaching a general level of maturity in setting the difficulty of scenarios. I find S4 to be the actual peak. That one has a lot of extremely potent solo enemies which can swing entirely the wrong way for a party, often due to wacky abilities.
S5-7 has become much better at tiers and 4-player adjustments that really balance well. There's still an occasional freak monster that totally breaks the curve but they've become rarer and tend to be due to someone (writer, editor or GM) misunderstanding an ability.
There's also a clear link between scenario difficulty and tier. Higher-tier scenarios tend to be relatively more difficult. You have to be prepared for much more different things.
There's also trend starting on S5 and gathering steam in S6-7 to requiring more skills from PCs, which some people are grumbling about. Personally I think it's a good trend because it means diversifying away from combat-only challenges, and it creates different kinds of twists and turns in the story. But if you "learned" what a PFS PC "needs" (and what he doesn't need) during earlier seasons, it can be painful because you have to unlearn some of it.
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I'm not gonna argue about whether this easy mode would be viable idea or not (I think the major problem is the rewards part). But this question I can answer based on what I feel like when building characters.
I do not want to mechanically optimize because there are so many options, I'd like to actually experience as many of them as possible.
I definitely understand. My fun with characters is odd builds. Making them good enough to be good is, for me, part of the fun.
You do not need power attack on a well built paladin to be relevant/good enough for PFS. I have a boatload of melee types without it (the polyhedral gods hate me, I dare not tempt them), and they do just fine (though i am eyeing pirhana strike on my adorable bundle of fluffy death). PFS is already at the level where you can do this if you want to.
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Hi Pink Dragon!
As it stands right now, I disagree with you regarding the need for an Easy Mode, because I do not feel that the scenarios are geared towards over-optimization, but I can appreciate that you may have a different view.
You mentioned that some people (I'm assuming you include yourself in this) prefer to play "Interesting but mechanically inferior (in combat)" characters. I was wondering if you could expand on that, because as it stands, that phrase doesn't make much sense. I mean, there are skill-monkeys who may not hit hard but generally bypass combats due to diplomacy, and there are 'silly' characters, like "How high can I get a character and still have a +0 BAB?" (Mine is Wizard 1/Sorc 1/Cleric 1/Oracle 1/Rogue 1/Warpriest 1) but neither of these seem to warrant an easy mode.
Every character created is going to be able to do something well, unless specifically built otherwise. I guess my question is, what kinds of characters do you believe necessitate an 'easy mode?'
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Venture-Lieutenant, Maryland—Hagerstown
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It will be like when core came around. In my area, we do not have that many players. I have to go to different counties as it is to play in a game once in a while. So when core came around there was a division. Where people wanted to play core and the others did not. This led to not being able to get a game in either way. Now you want to divide it again with 3 modes.
And think about the GM. Bad enough if they prep low and high tier ahead of time. Older scenarios give you templates to apply. And I hate doing things on the fly. So for example. Level 7-11. Which can already by a prep nightmare depending on the scenario. So I prepare low tier and high tier. Make notes for a 4 player adjust( I can usually tell the table size since we post most of the games on-line.) Now throw in 3 levels of difficulty. For a grand total of 12 different play through option to prep. Not including core, then it easily doubles
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Venture-Lieutenant, Maryland—Hagerstown
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Now throw in 3 levels of difficulty. For a grand total of 12 different play through option to prep. Not including core, then it easily doublesThere is no difference in prepping for core and non core. The NPC's are not affected by the PC's being core.
OK, then. I have misspoken.
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I don't support Easy Mode for the same reason I don't support expanded Hard Mode. It makes a lot more work for GM's. For example, if there came to be Hard Mode, Easy Mode, and standard it means I am prepping six groups of stat blocks (hard, normal, and easy for both subtiers), only three if the people that sign up on Warhorn provide a character level. Which seems like it might just be a bit much.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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The characters that may require 'easy mode' are ones built around doing many things, but no one thing very well. They may not be useless (unoptimized does not equate to useless), but they cannot generate the numbers (whether it's combat or non-combat numbers) that an optimized character can.
I don't want to add any value judgement to this; people should be quite free to play what they enjoy. But I do think that to some degree, this character building philosophy kind of goes against the grain of Pathfinder as well as many other RPGs.
These games are often cast as a band of heroes, overcoming huge odds. They're exceptional people, accomplishing stuff that Joe Farmer can't. But they're also to some degree specialists. They run into sticky social problems that William Wizard can't get out of but luckily he's got Roger Rogue who's quite slippery. And later on when it's time to figure out just what curse is afflicting the princess, William gets his time to shine.
Giving everyone a time to shine is important in RPGs, but it does rely a lot on people actually being significantly better at something than other people. While a jack of all trades can sometimes do that by sheer diversity, in my experience it's rather rare that it's necessary that all the skill stuff is done by a single PC. So while the party needs lots of different skills, it works very well (both in time to shine and in actual numbers) if those are divided among the PCs.
And game systems reflect that; most game systems have a cost structure for [whatever your abilities are called] that rewards moderate specialization. Too little focus and you can't accomplish much of anything; overspecialization tends to have decreasing marginal gains.
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Appeal to moderation is a fallacy as well. Just because a hard mode existed would not neccesarily mean that an easy mode must exist as well.
Argument from Fallacy is the fallacy of asserting that because an argument contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false.
But I am curious why one way of playing needs to be fixed and the other way needs to be catered to if Easy Mode is wrong and Hard Mode is necessary.
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Appeal to moderation is a fallacy as well. Just because a hard mode existed would not neccesarily mean that an easy mode must exist as well.Argument from Fallacy is the fallacy of asserting that because an argument contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false.
Which is what you're doing here, when you don't look up and see all the reasons this isn't needed. The primary argument left was -well, if there's a hard mode there should be an easy mode- and that doesn't follow.
But I am curious why one way of playing needs to be fixed and the other way needs to be catered to if Easy Mode is wrong and Hard Mode is necessary.
1) PFS is already easy mode. Very often its 6 players and the 6 player adjustment just doesn't keep up. Its not just 2 extra party members, you only need one skill guy one tank and one healer at most, so 2 people extra can easily be a 50% boost in output.
2) The solution for wanting well rounded characters in pfs to not feel useless in combat is to make well rounded characters that are not useless in combat. If you have something that crunches scenarios, getting a crunchier scenario to chew on is pretty much your only option.