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It's not purely a bad gm problem. I also see it as a player issue. People are saying "This scenario wasn't what I expected so you should...
It's not purely a bad gm problem. I also see it as a player issue. People are saying "This scenario wasn't what I expected so you should have warned me" Which is kind of ridiculous if you think about it. Should I expect to be told a scenario uses incorpreal foes so I can avoid it? What if climb or swim is required? Better tell me, I won't have fun if I bring that full plate guy. Heaven forbid I run into hardness or dr\-, better tell me so I can bring that beats tick with an adamantine gteatsword.
I'd like to shine just a little light on this...
If the "incorporeal" ability came out in a recent book and this was the first time it was put into an adventure... would you still think it silly to have some form of warning for the players?
Yes.
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Whereas every other character that isn't the Face would be sidelined when using the other rules. These new rules make socials more inclusive, rather than exclusive, which is why I like them.
I don't totally share it but I can definitely understand the frustration. With my social characters I spend a LOT of resources so that they'll shine in the moderately rare social encounters. They pay a price for that competence. They are markedly less effective in the combats that mostly dominate most scenarios.
So, I have a character who SHOULD shine. And they don't.
Surely it isn't hard to understand why that would frustrate some people.
I've seen melee fighters similarly frustrated when every combat happens at range. Or healers frustrated when the enemies are so insignificant that their healing abilities aren't needed. Etc.
Personally, I'm ok with my Uber diplomats being rendered only useful. They have such ridiculous diplomacy skills that they'll still rock. But it would bug me if one of my "spent some resources to be at least competent at diplomacy" characters found himself more or less useless.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Personally, I'm ok with my Uber diplomats being rendered only useful. They have such ridiculous diplomacy skills that they'll still rock. But it would bug me if one of my "spent some resources to be at least competent at diplomacy" characters found himself more or less useless.
I think to some degree these mechanics do that better than their precursors. In these rules the number of points you can earn for getting really high results is capped at 2 per check, whereas in older scenarios there was no limit. I remember in Hellknight's Feast I steamrolled the influence that way.
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But it does change things because in stead of rolling a knowledge skill or profession skill to get a bonus on a diplomacy roll (the way it should work in my opinion), you are rolling a knowledge skill or profession skill IN PLACE of a diplomacy skill and the DC for doing this was reduced. So that is a fairly fundamental change.Here's the thing though, the influence system / verbal dueling isn't really doing anything new in the same way that mass combat is.
It opens up uses for more skills. Skills that characters have always had access to. It's just now that they're getting more chances to be used.
But it isn't a fundamental change to a pretty standard Diplomacy DC, which you could still use. My +8 at 1-2 did very well.
If you went into this on just diplomacy, you were at standard DC's. I'm not sure how it's unfair that other skills were easier.
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Another thing I've heard people talk about in this thread is tier-appropriate DCs. That doesn't exist in Pathfinder.
It most certainly DOES exist in PFS adventures. It is now utterly routine for a scenario to list something like "Diplomacy check 16. 21 in high tier".
Heck, the 4 player adjustment often changes DCs.
I know that isn't Pathfinder as written but it certainly is PFS as written.
And I (mostly) think it a good thing. My diplomancers are silly good as it is, they need the artificial DCs.
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I have re-reviewed most of the 300 so posts on this and I notice something...
The OP said "I was at a table with four other players and we were told this would be a social scenario. We had a social paladin, a social fighter/rogue another fighter, a sorcerer and a couple others I don't remember. We utterly failed in this adventure because we didn't have the right knowledge skills or profession skills." -
so, if I am reading that right, his judge couldn't have run this correctly. If there were two characters described as "social XXX"... how did they fail the checks? I can only come up with four ways....
1) the judge (incorrectly) restricted checks to only those PCs that first passed the Knowledge/Profession checks - or perhaps only allowed PCs with those skills to make checks. (the "social" characters weren't allowed to make the check)
2) the judge (incorrectly) penalized diplomacy checks made by those PCs or groups that did not first make/pass the Knowledge/Profession checks (the "social" characters using Diplomacy only suffered a major minus to Diplomacy Skill checks)
3) the players rolled poorly. (perhaps because they didn't know/weren't allowed to "Take 10"? - but that's just nosig being nosig).
4) the OP doesn't know what a "social" character is...
I think the most likely answer is #2 - which means this entire thread is about someone (the judge) who doesn't know the (new) rules, enforcing what he thinks they are... Or am I missing something?
nosig, you keep this up we're going to have to make a whole *clothing line*...
That aside, we had a GM that (without pointing out mechanical numbers) emphasized HEAVILY that 'traditional' social skills weren't quite as important as 'trained Knowledge skills' and did give us the offer that even if a skill wasn't appropriate if it was roleplayed closely to what was required from one of the other skills, it might be more difficult but not impossible to use.
We just had the misfortune of unintentionally accidentally blowing up one of the bidders, completely by mistake, completely not our fault, because we didn't know said bidder's background and we were trying to really *impress* them.
This made it exceptionally difficult to line up our ducks and made it a lot more difficult on us as a party, but we managed to *just* squeak through.
That's a statistical outlier though.
During HKF, the group I played with had a hard time socially, so the 'takeaway' for that scenario to this one was 'Get All the Discovery You Can', to the point we had Discovery out the wazoo but very little Influence which left us scrambling...
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Another thing I've heard people talk about in this thread is tier-appropriate DCs. That doesn't exist in Pathfinder.
It most certainly DOES exist in PFS adventures. It is now utterly routine for a scenario to list something like "Diplomacy check 16. 21 in high tier".
Heck, the 4 player adjustment often changes DCs.
I know that isn't Pathfinder as written but it certainly is PFS as written.
And I (mostly) think it a good thing. My diplomancers are silly good as it is, they need the artificial DCs.
Once in a while I'd love to see characters punished for being broken at a skill. Something to the effect of at DC 30 the mad emperor is swayed by the words of the PC and changes his ways but exceeding the DC by 10 or more he is so enthralled that he losses all reason and feels the need to enslave the PC. Encounter CR = APL + 4 begins.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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Once in a while I'd love to see characters punished for being broken at skill. Something to the effect of at DC 30 the mad emperor is swayed by the words of the PC and changes his ways but exceeding the DC by 10 or more he is so enthralled that he losses all reason and feels the need to enslave the PC. Encounter CR = APL + 4 begins.
So do you feel that a character that is exceedingly good at combat should also be punished for doing that too well?
If someone puts an emphasis on something, it is because they want to be good (or even excellent) at it. Those resources used for becoming an excellent diplomat didn't go into monster knowledge checks, physical skill checks, or something else that could have been useful.
I don't mind that a 'diplomancer' can avoid encounters completely. I don't see how that is very different than a barbarian that can one-shot an NPC. The thing is you want to avoid having either of them single-handedly steam-rolling a scenario.
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Venture-Agent, Nebraska—Omaha
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Once in a while I'd love to see characters punished for being broken at skill. Something to the effect of at DC 30 the mad emperor is swayed by the words of the PC and changes his ways but exceeding the DC by 10 or more he is so enthralled that he losses all reason and feels the need to enslave the PC. Encounter CR = APL + 4 begins.So do you feel that a character that is exceedingly good at combat should also be punished for doing that too well?
If someone puts an emphasis on something, it is because they want to be good (or even excellent) at it. Those resources used for becoming an excellent diplomat didn't go into monster knowledge checks, physical skill checks, or something else that could have been useful.
I don't mind that a 'diplomancer' can avoid encounters completely. I don't see how that is very different than a barbarian that can one-shot an NPC. The thing is you want to avoid having either of them single-handedly steam-rolling a scenario.
The raging bloodrager that lethally crit the practice guard with her earthbreaker should probably have had more than a slap on the wrist...
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Once in a while I'd love to see characters punished for being broken at skill. Something to the effect of at DC 30 the mad emperor is swayed by the words of the PC and changes his ways but exceeding the DC by 10 or more he is so enthralled that he losses all reason and feels the need to enslave the PC. Encounter CR = APL + 4 begins.So do you feel that a character that is exceedingly good at combat should also be punished for doing that too well?
A nonlethal but unwinnable combat is had. If the party succeeds an observer decides that the PC are too dangerous to live and a more difficult and deadly encounter is had.
Optimizing is fine and good but at a certain point I stop trying to make well rounded characters because if I can`t hit that DC 40 at level 10 my +18 to diplomacy may as well be a +10 because all I can do is aid another.
I have similar feelings about combat optimized characters but it`s harder for scenarios to address that in a general manner since power levels vary so much in this game.
Edit: Also what KingofAnything said. If there were consequences to excessive force it would go a long way to toning down heavy damage builds.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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Edit: Also what KingofAnything said. If there were consequences to excessive force it would go a long way to toning down heavy damage builds.
I know of a couple of different scenarios where excessive force does penalize. They usually come with clear warnings as part of the block text or in answer to a question to an NPC (usually the VC) about use of force.
Even when there aren't such warnings, it is much harder to question a dead man.
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In my area we have a saying, often heard at tables I play at (or judge) - "Don't kill them! They're worth more alive!". Sometimes this results in the Lib.Edge faction PCs swinging with renewed vigor, trying to kill the NPCs before the D.A./Exchange/S.S factions can turn them over to the guard to be sold into slavery.
Have I stabilized monsters? Sure! lots. after all, "they're worth more alive". Where do you think all that fiendish blood comes from? Dead fiends only give up blood once. And Monstrous guards are not cheap!
And if my PC gets a reputation as someone who ALWAYS captures enemies - maybe "what goes around, comes around". Some day that might be my girl bleeding out there.
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I have re-reviewed most of the 300 so posts on this and I notice something...
The OP said "I was at a table with four other players and we were told this would be a social scenario. We had a social paladin, a social fighter/rogue another fighter, a sorcerer and a couple others I don't remember. We utterly failed in this adventure because we didn't have the right knowledge skills or profession skills." -
so, if I am reading that right, his judge couldn't have run this correctly. If there were two characters described as "social XXX"... how did they fail the checks? I can only come up with four ways....
1) the judge (incorrectly) restricted checks to only those PCs that first passed the Knowledge/Profession checks - or perhaps only allowed PCs with those skills to make checks. (the "social" characters weren't allowed to make the check)
2) the judge (incorrectly) penalized diplomacy checks made by those PCs or groups that did not first make/pass the Knowledge/Profession checks (the "social" characters using Diplomacy only suffered a major minus to Diplomacy Skill checks)
3) the players rolled poorly. (perhaps because they didn't know/weren't allowed to "Take 10"? - but that's just nosig being nosig).
4) the OP doesn't know what a "social" character is...
I think the most likely answer is #2 - which means this entire thread is about someone (the judge) who doesn't know the (new) rules, enforcing what he thinks they are... Or am I missing something?
I did clear this up at some point but when I say we had social characters that means we had characters with more than one rank in diplomacy, bluff, intimidate and sense motive. But not all of those skills were max ranks for all characters. The best we had in any given skill was a +10 I think and most were around a +7 or +8. This was at tier 4-5. So we were not the super uber social skills out the wazoo table but we were no slouches either and these were characters that, after talking with the other players, had been successful in other social scenarios. We did hit DC 20 and fail at diplomacy, we did hit DC 30 and told we barely succeeded. We were able to do some discovery but because we didn't have the right knowledge/profession skills to use in place of diplomacy we had to use diplomacy and intimidate which were "harder" to use. We did not use bluff because we, as players, didn't want to risk getting kicked out or making negative progress if we failed the check. We did ask about taking 10 at one point and were told that we couldn't and I don't think it came up again. But we as players were completely unfamiliar with the Ultimate Intrigue Influence system so none of us knew how it was supposed to work outside of what our GM told us.
So, could this have been a GM problem, sure, but I don't like to put the blame on a GM unless I know they did something wrong. In this case, I don't know. So, the scenario ends up getting the blame along with poor implementation of new rules that people were not familiar with. If I could go back in time and read a blurb that said that the Ultimate Intrigue Influence rules would be featured in the scenario I would have read up on how they work and what to expect form them. Even if we'd failed then I likely would have had a better time because at least I'd have known what I was getting into.
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Also, here's an interesting thought.
If this scenario uses a rules sub-set that I (the judge) am unfamiliar with, it's kind of nice having a player at the table who knows how it works.
A while back I was running a game with very little prep - and one of the NPCs was a class that I had never run, in fact that I had never even SEEN run. Yeah, I read the book on it (10-15 minutes of my hour prep time in fact) - but when it came to running him in combat? heck, I could read his tactics but understand them? So I came to that moment in the melee where I'm not sure how it works and... just asked. Sure enough, there's a player at the table who's eyes light up. "Hay! I run a guy like that! Yeah, that's a feat, it does XXX". Me: "So when it says he does YY?" Player: "Oh, he should move to here to do that because...". And it made the game much more fun then me trying to stumble thru playing something I had no idea how it worked. And next time I run it - I'll better understand those class abilities.
I can see letting everyone at the table know we're using the "new rule sub-set from XXX"... that means more than one set of eyes looking at it and more than one brain trying to figure out how to run it.
After all, I'm playing WITH the players, not AGAINST them.
Just out of curiosity what was the NPC that hadn't seen run before?
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Once in a while I'd love to see characters punished for being broken at a skill.
As long as the people with obscene initiatives, absurd to hit or damage numbers, etc are ALSO punished I'd be fine with that :-).
Actually, as a very occassional thing that didn't lead to permanent negative boons I'd find my bard getting kidnapped by the Dragon as his personal slave or my Painter gettng drafted to make a picture of the Emperor absolutely hilarious. I'd happily pay 5 or so prestige for a "body recovery" under those circumstances.
Heck, half the time my characters end up spending an unspecified number of weeks with some NPC after the adventure is over anyway :-). Let me pay prestige for some silly "Beloved by Kappa" boon and I'd do it a fair bit
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We did ask about taking 10 at one point and were told that we couldn't
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So, this could have been a GM problem
Sounds about right. Some GMs simply disallow take 10 because they either don't understand it or they just don't like it.
Brawler... I know, I've lead a sheltered life... :-)
Interesting. I think at this point the only classes I haven't seen run are Medium and Spiritualist (not including PrC, obviously)...well, and antipaladin, but that doesn't count for PFS. Not that I could run all of them, but I've at least sat with them at the table.
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Once in a while I'd love to see characters punished for being broken at a skill.As long as the people with obscene initiatives, absurd to hit or damage numbers, etc are ALSO punished I'd be fine with that :-).
You'll note that the hypothetical I laid out for a skill broken character leads to a kidnapping while the hypothetical I laid out for a combat broken party leads to a tpk.
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I did clear this up at some point but when I say we had social characters that means we had characters with more than one rank in diplomacy, bluff, intimidate and sense motive. But not all of those skills were max ranks for all characters. The best we had in any given skill was a +10 I think and most were around a +7 or +8. This was at tier 4-5. So we were not the super uber social skills out the wazoo table but we were no slouches either and these were characters that, after talking with...I have re-reviewed most of the 300 so posts on this and I notice something...
The OP said "I was at a table with four other players and we were told this would be a social scenario. We had a social paladin, a social fighter/rogue another fighter, a sorcerer and a couple others I don't remember. We utterly failed in this adventure because we didn't have the right knowledge skills or profession skills." -
so, if I am reading that right, his judge couldn't have run this correctly. If there were two characters described as "social XXX"... how did they fail the checks? I can only come up with four ways....
1) the judge (incorrectly) restricted checks to only those PCs that first passed the Knowledge/Profession checks - or perhaps only allowed PCs with those skills to make checks. (the "social" characters weren't allowed to make the check)
2) the judge (incorrectly) penalized diplomacy checks made by those PCs or groups that did not first make/pass the Knowledge/Profession checks (the "social" characters using Diplomacy only suffered a major minus to Diplomacy Skill checks)
3) the players rolled poorly. (perhaps because they didn't know/weren't allowed to "Take 10"? - but that's just nosig being nosig).
4) the OP doesn't know what a "social" character is...
I think the most likely answer is #2 - which means this entire thread is about someone (the judge) who doesn't know the (new) rules, enforcing what he thinks they are... Or am I missing something?
I would not consider a +10 or less, at sub-tier 4-5, to be particularly social characters. If they are social based characters, they, at the very least, should have full ranks in at least one of the social skills.
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But it does change things because in stead of rolling a knowledge skill or profession skill to get a bonus on a diplomacy roll (the way it should work in my opinion), you are rolling a knowledge skill or profession skill IN PLACE of a diplomacy skill and the DC for doing this was reduced. So that is a fairly fundamental change.Here's the thing though, the influence system / verbal dueling isn't really doing anything new in the same way that mass combat is.
It opens up uses for more skills. Skills that characters have always had access to. It's just now that they're getting more chances to be used.
But it isn't a fundamental change to a pretty standard Diplomacy DC, which you could still use. My +8 at 1-2 did very well.
If you went into this on just diplomacy, you were at standard DC's. I'm not sure how it's unfair that other skills were easier.
I'm really glad that you and your diplomancer did great at the low tier, but you need to accept that your experience at the low tier and my experience at the high tier were NOT the same experience. We did not do well and we failed the entire mission because we could not make the diplomacy checks.
I'm sorry that you feel that my table's failure and my dislike of this scenario and sincere hope that they let players know ahead of time if they're going to feature non-standard rules in future scenarios somehow diminishes your enjoyment of this scenario. That's not my intent. But your insistence that I'm wrong in the fact that I did not like this scenario and that there's no reason I shouldn't love this scenario is getting a little irksome. You need to accept the fact that we did not have the same experience and the results were polar opposite of each other. I never once questioned why you enjoyed it or that you and your table succeeded in this scenario, I don't know why you feel the need to continuously question that I didn't have fun, and that our table didn't succeed.
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We did ask about taking 10 at one point and were told that we couldn't
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So, this could have been a GM problem
Sounds about right. Some GMs simply disallow take 10 because they either don't understand it or they just don't like it.
Brawler... I know, I've lead a sheltered life... :-)Interesting. I think at this point the only classes I haven't seen run are Medium and Spiritualist (not including PrC, obviously)...well, and antipaladin, but that doesn't count for PFS. Not that I could run all of them, but I've at least sat with them at the table.
To be fair, since the social combat system in Ultimate Intrigue is considered combat, it is not out of the question or against the rules to indicate that while performing social combat, you cannot take 10.
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But it does change things because in stead of rolling a knowledge skill or profession skill to get a bonus on a diplomacy roll (the way it should work in my opinion), you are rolling a knowledge skill or profession skill IN PLACE of a diplomacy skill and the DC for doing this was reduced. So that is a fairly fundamental change.Here's the thing though, the influence system / verbal dueling isn't really doing anything new in the same way that mass combat is.
It opens up uses for more skills. Skills that characters have always had access to. It's just now that they're getting more chances to be used.
But it isn't a fundamental change to a pretty standard Diplomacy DC, which you could still use. My +8 at 1-2 did very well.
If you went into this on just diplomacy, you were at standard DC's. I'm not sure how it's unfair that other skills were easier.
I'm really glad that you and your diplomancer did great at the low tier, but you need to accept that your experience at the low tier and my experience at the high tier were NOT the same experience. We did not do well and we failed the entire mission because we could not make the diplomacy checks.
I'm sorry that you feel that my table's failure and my dislike of this scenario and sincere hope that they let players know ahead of time if they're going to feature non-standard rules in future scenarios somehow diminishes your enjoyment of this scenario. That's not my intent. But your insistence that I'm wrong in the fact that I did not like this scenario and that there's no reason I shouldn't love this scenario is getting a little irksome. You need to accept the fact that we did not have the same experience and the results were polar opposite of each other. I never once questioned why you enjoyed it or that you and your table succeeded in this scenario, I don't know why you feel the need to continuously question that I didn't have fun, and that our table didn't...
This is where you keep putting words in my mouth.
I never said you were wrong in that you disliked the scenario.
I'm saying that your trashing of the scenario instead of placing at least much of the blame on your GM for why you disliked your experience, is what's wrong.
This is what is irksome to many of us who are posting opposite you in this discussion. You are getting defensive like we are saying that you are somehow faulty for having a bad experience. That couldn't be further from the truth.
We are merely trying to explain to you, that the reason you did not have a good experience with this scenario has absolutely nothing to do with the way the scenario was written.
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So, could this have been a GM problem, sure, but I don't like to put the blame on a GM unless I know they did something wrong. In this case, I don't know. So, the scenario ends up getting the blame along with poor implementation of new rules that people were not familiar with. If I could go back in time and read a blurb that said that the Ultimate Intrigue Influence rules would be featured in the scenario I would have read up on how they work and what to expect form them. Even if we'd failed then I likely would have had a better time because at least I'd have known what I was getting into.
Thing is it HAS been pointed out that the GM must have done something wrong. The DC's have been shared with you. Any modifications to those DC's have been shared with you. Us posters can't figure out how a 30 "barely passes" as the DC's should have had it passing with the bonus.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
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I would not consider a +10 or less, at sub-tier 4-5, to be particularly social characters. If they are social based characters, they, at the very least, should have full ranks in at least one of the social skills.
Seems slightly high for everyone except the Bard in CRB. Anyone who doesn't have it as a class skill is going to have to make a significant investment.
+3 if Class Skill (core that would be Bard, Cleric, Paladin, Rogue)
+5 Ranks (major investment for Paladin)
+2 you are likely assuming Charisma. Alright for Bard and Paladin, might be alright for Cleric, lot of rogues wouldn't have this.
Sorcerer could also do it with a Charisma of 20 and full ranks. Since they are a 2 + Int class, that is half their skill points (not including FCB) or an investment in Int.
I'm partially basing this on John Compton's post (see spoiler) on how good is good enough. What you are describing is a character Focused on Diplomacy rather than just Competent.
Edit to add
Investigator (Quinn) +8
Shaman (Shardra) +9
Skald (Hakon) +6 (+7 vs. Ulfen)
Swashbuckler +6
Bard (Lem) +11
Cleric (Kyra) +9
Paladin (Seelah) +10
Yoon (Kineticist) +8
Medium (Erasmus) +9
Mesmerist (Meligaster) +11
Occultist (Mavaro) +7
Spiritualist (Estra) +11
Samurai (Hayato) +7
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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Seeing as how people call social characters with a +10 at tier 4-5, I wonder how my +21 diplomacy druid at level 5 can be called ...Over-achiever? I'm not even sure how you get that high a bonus at that level.
Lets see if I can hit it with my character:
Half Orc: +2 DiplomacyCharisma Primary Class: +5 at fifth level is feasible
Ranks: +8
Trait: +1/More
Class Ability:+2
Skill Focus: +3
There you have the +21 Diplomacy. Not sure how a druid gets that unless they are in fact from Ultimate Intrigue. Once she starts getting more spells she's also disturbingly good at combat and really going to be obnoxious as she's going to act first in potentially every round ever at later levels.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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Seeing as how people call social characters with a +10 at tier 4-5, I wonder how my +21 diplomacy druid at level 5 can be called ...Over-achiever? I'm not even sure how you get that high a bonus at that level.Lets see if I can hit it with my character:
Half Orc: +2 Diplomacy
Charisma Primary Class: +5 at fifth level is feasible
Ranks: +8
Trait: +1/More
Class Ability:+2
Skill Focus: +3
There you have the +21 Diplomacy. Not sure how a druid gets that unless they are in fact from Ultimate Intrigue. Once she starts getting more spells she's also disturbingly good at combat and really going to be obnoxious as she's going to act first in potentially every round ever at later levels.
:- s
In a Tier 1-5, how do you have a +8 on ranks? Or are you counting in 5 ranks and a +3 for class skill?
Is a Half-Orc +2 racial on Diplomacy?
Yup Sandkin and the 8 includes the class bonus (5+3). The 2 is from the archetype she's in.
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This is where you keep putting words in my mouth.
I never said you were wrong in that you disliked the scenario.
I'm saying that your trashing of the scenario instead of placing at least much of the blame on your GM for why you disliked your experience, is what's wrong.
This is what is irksome to many of us who are posting opposite you in this discussion. You are getting defensive like we are saying that you are somehow faulty for having a bad experience. That couldn't be further from the truth.
We are merely trying to explain to you, that the reason you did not have a good experience with this scenario has absolutely nothing to do with the way the scenario was written.
And here you go again. You were NOT at my table, you don't know what happened yet you keep saying my interpretation of what did happen and my impression from the scenario are wrong. For all I know the GM bent over backwards to make the scenario play as well as it did for us. For all you know this was the best GM in the universe that ran this for my table and it still wasn't enjoyable. Or it's possible that the GM was the problem but your insistence that my lack of enjoyment couldn't be anything but the GM's fault and certainly not the fault of the scenario is ridiculous. You keep trying to invalidate my thoughts and feelings on this scenario by saying that the GM was the problem or the table was the problem, or the weather was the problem, or the alignment of the sun and moon was the problem. Anything was the problem but the scenario, because this scenario could never have possibly been the problem. You don't know, you weren't there. You had a different experience than I did. Yours was good, I'm happy for you. I'm not going around saying, "oh, yours was only good because of x,y, or z reasons". I accept that your had a good time. I did not. Please just accept that. Unless you can time travel, watch the game play out and see exactly how it happened please quite trying to tell me my impressions are wrong.
Let me be clear. I did NOT like this scenario. I thought it was poorly conceived and poorly executed. The major part I did not like is the sudden and radical change to social interactions. Maybe, if I had been aware of these changes to the core rules and could have read up on them ahead of time I wouldn't feel this way. But this felt like a gotcha game to me (I know Andrew, I'm 100% wrong in how I feel and any negative feelings I have toward this scenario are 100% wrong. I accept this so you don't need to point it out yet again. We will just have to agree to disagree that I have a right not to like this scenario) and I did not have fun with the new rules.
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And here you go again. You were NOT at my table, you don't know what happened yet you keep saying my interpretation of what did happen and my impression from the scenario are wrong.
Based on the information you have supplied, your blame for the scenario IS in error. You most certainly did not like the way the scenario played, but it was not the fault of the scenario that you feel that way.
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I would not consider a +10 or less, at sub-tier 4-5, to be particularly social characters. If they are social based characters, they, at the very least, should have full ranks in at least one of the social skills.
Which is the #1 reason I think there's something wrong with this scenario too. As written, there isn't a reasonable chance for a group of iconics to succeed in the success conditions. You know why? Because they don't have the ranks you're talking about. I'm not talking about a 100% chance every time, I'm talking about even odds that they'll walk out with anything other than zero prestige. Sit down and see what kinds of odds the team put together in the comics has of succeeding (Kyra, Meri, Harsk, Valaros, Ezren, and Seoni). I did it at level 1 and was expecting things to be difficult, but even then the results surprised me.
That is a potential problem in scenario design, as DarkKnight keeps mentioning. In this case the pendulum has swung in an entirely different direction of the "build the scenario for optimization" argument.
I know you guys all like this scenario and want to defend Thursty for writing a really good story (I loved the story, I get it), but piling on DarkKnight and the others that didn't like it over and over again without actually trying to hear their side of the story, arguing that it could only be the GM, and not even trying to see why this scenario may not be entirely well balanced is getting REALLY old.
This is getting dangerously close to reminding me of the stories/arguments/fights over Season 4 difficulty that every single VC yelled at me for saying I was wrong got me to quit back then. Interesting where posts from those same VCs stand now.