Hey everyone,
Recently I've been running my players through a number of pre-written modules and adventures of various level ranges throughout the campaign. To accommodate the (often large) discrepancies in intended levels I've been tweaking stat block numbers to try and make the encounters somewhat interesting regardless of how far above the party is in power level.
My question is would this ruin immersion for you as a player? For example, encountering a Grey Render wildly above the power level it should be, though technically now somewhat of a challenge. Would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter.
Thanks!
You're doing the right thing - adapting the power level of encounters to the actual power level of the party.
Some might question your use of the word "wildly". But there are well-known ways to increase the difficulty of critters and still follow the rules of the game:
- add additional critters (either same type or different)
- add a template (or two) to the existing critters
- give the existing critters character levels (if they're intelligent enough)
If the discrepancy between expected character level of a given adventure and your group of PCs is too great, you may need to alter more than just the adversaries they face. Higher-level PCs have vastly more resources to overcome terrain obstacles than lower-level ones.
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I expect pre-written adventures to have built their narrative track in a way that makes the scaling somewhat sensible: the goblins reveal their links to their hobgoblin masters, who serve the graveknight, and so on...
One of the things I do when writing my own stuff is "You Must Be This Tall to Ride" process - throw out a threat that is quite clearly beyond the party's capabilities to incite them to seek to build their own power.
For my wife's first campaign, set in the Forgotten Realms, the PCs were present for a manifestation of an Avatar of Tempus, who charged the cleric (one of the PCs) to sack Menzoberranzan. They were 1st level. They went looking for trouble as a process to gather power and material to fulfill the quest.
Depending on how wild "wildly" is, it may be better to change up the creatures entirely. For example, if my level 10 character was asked to clear out a camp of goblins for a small town; it would strain credibility to find that all the goblins were level 6 fighters and wizards. Even though the adventure may be fun.
Not even a little bit, because that's how genre fiction usually works, and that's what PF tries to emulate. This is a game based off fantasy novels and movies; you don't usually see the good guys getting curbstomped, nor do you see them doing the curbstomping.
I feel like "immersion" is free in Tabletop RPGs so not really a thing that is worth worrying about.
What I don't like, however, if the world of the game is too player-centric. That is, if the PCs hear about a dragon at level 1 and decide to fight it, that shouldn't to well for them. If the PCs can't pick fights the PCs can't win, that lacks verisimilitude and bugs me.
You shouldn't force the PCs to be out of their depth, but if they can't choose to go out of their depth that's unrealistic. There should be appropriate consequences for things like "low level PCs mouthing off to authority figures" IMO.
Really, all creatures of the same type having the same stats is more immersion-breaking. If you want, everything should be able to have stats 3-18 before racial modifiers. They don't need to be 'average'.
Really, all creatures of the same type having the same stats is more immersion-breaking. If you want, everything should be able to have stats 3-18 before racial modifiers. They don't need to be 'average'.
A nice thought, but a bookkeeping nightmare and totally impractical in practice. Easier to give them an "average", except for special "leader" types (chief/shaman, e.g.).
There is a long-running organized play campaign out there set in a different genre that attempts to address this by effectively giving opponents a power boost when dealing with advanced characters, but keeping them the same when dealing with newer characters.
It has both drawbacks and benefits, though it can somewhat strain credulity when the big boss is soaking up everything the older character can throw at them, and the new folks are blowing chunks off of it...
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I prefer more of a world setting where you can run into things above and below your CR so long as the ones that would end in a TPK are signposted "Inside this cavern the dread demon fligglewump was sealed away after a terrible battle where 70 holy knights lost their lives." If you open up the cavern you deserve to be killed horribly. On the other hand if you a group of 12th level adventurers decide to accept the villagers request to help deal with a group of goblins raiding them its going to be a nice, relaxing curb stomp battle for the party.
Honestly its one thing I hated about oblivion where everything scaled up with you. "Its a bandit in mouldy rags with a rusty knife" one hard battle later "Yay I have a rusty knife". After hours of levelling and getting stronger you go through the same area "Oh its that bandit respawned this will be a . . . What on earth?" Bandit is now equiped with full obsidian plate and a magical greatsword. It just left me feeling what's the point in trying to improve if everything is always going to be a "balanced" battle to the death. Sometimes I like to actually feel like those extra 10 levels actually make a difference to my power level.
That I do agree with. It's a flaw of computer games, I suppose.
I feel like it's not so much a flaw of the medium, but instead illustrative of certain video game designer priorities. Compare, for examples, Fallout 3 and New Vegas- same game world, same engine, a lot of mechanics in common, a lot of the same art assets, different studios. The former has a philosophy of "you can wander in any direction and you will face level appropriate challenge" whereas the latter has a philosophy of "the world is what it is, the roads are mostly safe except for some trouble spots, but the further you get from them the more dangerous it gets."
Now what's specific about video games compared to tabletop ones is largely an issue of scale. You make a big video game and you're expecting millions of people to play it. So you're hitting for broad appeal, and one of the most successful strategies here appears to be "making the player feel like he or she is special, and that the world exists to cater to their whims". Indeed, we can see this in action by how many people complained about New Vegas because you couldn't just go north from the starting location even though NPCs explicitly tell you not to go that way because it's dangerous, there are literal signs all throughout the environment not to go this way, and the "too much for low level characters" stuff ramps up in three distinct stages.
Now when you're running a game for like 3-6 people it's a lot easier to get a handle on what, specifically they like and just do that. So you can tune things to that on the fly. The preference my group seems to have is something along the lines of "the game world is what it is, not a theme park for the player characters, and the fights aren't too hard assuming the players make sensible choices (but may be certain defeat if they make bad ones.) Different groups are going to want different things, and for the most part they're all okay.
As player or GM i would prefer the 'world as it is' approach, as that seems more realistic and thus immersive. If a lvl 1 group is hired to clear out a band of goblins in the forest, and theres a CR 18 dragon also living in the forest, the locals will surely know about it and give plenty of warning. If and when the dragon is encountered, it should be recognized as too much a threat and the encounter should be 'how to avoid the dragon' or 'how to convince the dragon we arent worth its time' or whatever. I think the problem with scaling encounters to the apl is the mentality that all encounters exist to be resolved through combat. I dont hold this mentality, and hacknslash gaming is the least immersive for me.
That I do agree with. It's a flaw of computer games, I suppose.I feel like it's not so much a flaw of the medium, but instead illustrative of certain video game designer priorities. Compare, for examples, Fallout 3 and New Vegas- same game world, same engine, a lot of mechanics in common, a lot of the same art assets, different studios. The former has a philosophy of "you can wander in any direction and you will face level appropriate challenge" whereas the latter has a philosophy of "the world is what it is, the roads are mostly safe except for some trouble spots, but the further you get from them the more dangerous it gets."
That's one of the major reasons people say New Vegas is the only good Fallout game in recent years.
I believe a DM should "steer" players towards level appropriate encounters through information and motivation, as well as physical obstacles, rather than simply scaling up wolves and scaling down dragons as needed. Of course, this is more difficult in a pre-written adventure.
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A lot GMs fall into a trap where they are trying to balance every encounter within 3 CRs of a party (usually the Party’s APL and three challenge ratings above), but the joy of level 7+ is that you have hit the sweet spot. You can throw challenges APL +/- 5 at the party and they’ll still have fun. Dramatically lower challenges will let the players feel bad-ass as the same ogre they had trouble with at level 1, now goes down in one round using few to no resources. A CR 12 dragon meanwhile needs to be telegraphed, because a prepared party with plenty of warning and access to the right magic items might be (rightly) confident enough to face off against such a beastie. However, if caught by surprise might look for diplomatic solutions or escape routes.
Varying the challenge is key to immersion on the tactical level.
Really, all creatures of the same type having the same stats is more immersion-breaking. If you want, everything should be able to have stats 3-18 before racial modifiers. They don't need to be 'average'.A nice thought, but a bookkeeping nightmare and totally impractical in practice. Easier to give them an "average", except for special "leader" types (chief/shaman, e.g.).
Didn't say it was practical, just that it breaks immersion more than adjusting encounters to make them level-appropriate.
(though I did run a 3.5 game in Undermountain where I used a generator for monster stats. Lasted a good while before I went back to the usual process.)
If you feel that it is a problem, you could imply that the party is constantly curb stopping groups of very, very unlucky goblins, orcs, and bandits in the background as they travel along.
The kinds of 1HD enemies that end instantly is the melee guy walks over and gives a lazy swing. The kind of fights that are so wildly under their level, it isn't even worth having on the table. Treat it like the job background system- just an occasional roll where they get a small amount of gold. This would represent the amount of loot that is... frankly negligible at their level.
This would turn the fight that actually happen as 'the most interesting thing that happened to you recently'.
Not sure if this works with modules (which have their own existing story structure, which might not have room for these random attacks). But it works well enough for home games.
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My issue with "scaling" encounters is that my experience with it has been GMs trying to make every combat a serious challenge. Sometimes the players should just fight CR=APL encounters and stomp them/get to feel like a powerful hero. It gets old fast when every single combat is taking up most of our resources and we're hanging on by the skin of our teeth. It also makes encounters with BBEGs either no harder than other encounters or a practical TPK.
Depending on the circumstances, scaling can break immersion for me, or not. The examples above where the party finds themselves moving through the wilderness on their way to hunt down some goblins and hear about a dragon? Immersive. Organic. But in the big bad's lair, scaling makes more sense. Weaker troops further out, elite guard closer to the boss for better defense. That's just me though.