During me and a friends play through Saturday I got to thinking that I feel sometimes power feats are not given out...oh lets say...enough? I feel that more in MM after completing it twice now. Most of the time I feel things are well balanced. But sometimes we get that quest that just has the stupidest or most pointless reward where we feel like "aww still no power up"
Now with this in mind I have two things,
1. does anyone else ever feel the same way?
2. if so, or not, does anyone do any altercations or house rules about more frequent power ups? I am not generally for changing rules unless it is minor convenience tweaks or so. But I was curious if anyone has found a fair and balanced way to make you feel more EMPOWERED I guess is the best way to say it.
This is what I do and it seems to go over pretty well with my group.
I review all the rewards and count the number of skill, power and card feats. Then I look over a few character cards and get a general idea of how many check boxes there are for the three feats. Skills are typically 15 across the board for all characters and I think card feats are around 10...? but power feat boxes may vary a little.
So say I have 15 skill feats on the character card, and the rewards from the entire adventure path give us 11 skill feats to earn. I'll start all the characters with 2 or 3 skill feats right off the bat.
It doesn't over power characters. (One might think it does but not really.)
It still leaves us with the inability to max out on all the skills by the end of the adventure path. Or in some cases we will still have skills that never receive a bonus.
So for instance with the Wrath set, I'll allow everyone to start with one power feat, one card feat and three skill feats.
Again, it doesn't overpower our characters and we don't feel like putzes from the start. And it does help curb the feeling that the existing feat rewards are limiting.
Mummy's Mask actually gives you the first power feat sooner than any other adventure path, because it gives you one for completing the B adventure.
Each character has 4 power feats on their "base" character card and 12 on their role card (the original 4 and 8 new ones).
I'm fairly certain each adventure path has given out 3 power feats prior to rewarding the role card and 7 power feats total (4 after choosing your role card).
Part of the reason that is done is to make sure that the final version of your character's powers don't look exactly like the final version of someone else who played the same character and role. You have choices that will make your character different from other copies of the same character. I think that is an important distinction. So, I'd be hesitant to pile on too many additional power feats.
But I do agree, the power feats are perhaps the most desirable feat, since they tend to change your character the most. They are also the place where you might plan a progression (I have to take this feat, then this feat, then this feat and then I'll be able to do this awesome thing).
I agree about that distinction hawkmoon, But you hit the nail on the head with it being the most desirable and the fact that sometimes you have that plan progession you have to hit to get the results you want. I will say I like MM thing About the one at the get go but I think it shorts you one towards the last scenario. I could be wrong. But I am thinking of just doing a +1 bonus. Unsure. I appreciate the opinions and ideas. Great community :)
Honestly, if this was something my group was having an issue with, I'd prepare a more complex solution for the next adventure path.
Ideally, they're confident with a choice of character in advance of the Adventure Path starting. I would create custom character sheets for each of the selected characters, giving them more powers (locked behind additional power feats) and ways to modify their powers. Rather than a total of 12 power feats, I'd probably expand the character to have something like 18 power feats to pick. Then I'd add more power feat rewards at a rate that the players would enjoy (something like 2 as scenario rewards per adventure, besides the first one, plus 1 every now and then as an adventure reward, so that around 13 or 14 power feats are given out).
This would require expanding the general 'concept' behind a character, and possibly giving more choice elements as to how to build them. An easy way of getting inspiration is looking at other printings of that character, such as from a Class Deck.
Ideally, I'd add in some other houserule to make the game a little harder to compensate for the more powerful characters. It might be as simple as treating a bunch of boons and banes as if they had the Veteran trait, or remove one starting blessing from the blessings deck on the second Adventure, and then another on the fourth, and the sixth, so the final set of scenarios are done with 27 blessings, not 30.
Probably some combination of the blessing removal as stated and messing with other numbers. "Treat each villain as if it had the Veteran Trait" (increase difficulty based on the Adventure Deck number) and "Remove a starting blessing at AD2, then again on AD4 and AD6" would be my go-to nerfs.
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I'm trying to imagine a character card with 18 power feats squeezed onto it. In most cases, the six additional power feats would simply be progressions of existing powers (e.g., +2 □+3 □+4 □+5 □+6) rather than the addition of variation. If the cards were larger (perhaps Tarot sized), the developers might be able to fit more power feats and a lot more variation, but I just don't see that happening with the current card sizes (and I don't want to increase the card sizes because I like everything remaining backward compatible). This might be good for homebrews, though, where you're not necessarily tied to the existing card sizes.
Also, more rapid progression means that adventure path difficulties would have to be increased to correspond. The characters are theoretically balanced against a nominal difficulty curve (yes, I know the APs have different curves). Increasing power progression for characters changes all of that, changing the way in which they interact with the game. I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing, basically turning into nothing more than the equivalent of AD 7, AD 8, etc.
Personally, I like the relatively slow rate of advancement, mixed in with other rewards. It makes a power feat momentous without feeling like a video game power up that I get for crossing a line.
I guess for me its just that I simply want to skip some scenario's because the combination of "not a fun objective" with a crappy reward, like all allies under X card or X location, really discerns me from wanting to finish it. Just a personal quam.
I have had people in my group, who it was their first play through of any PACG Ad Path, kind of get bummed out that they do not get anything for killing X amount of monsters, For example Zombicide, where you get something as simple as XP ticks. I am like "no the reward is at the end of scenario...and its an item that is not basic." so all this work for an item that isn't basic or a loot that gives +1 to your X check. They start to get burned out. Now for me that feeling comes and goes as I have played every adventure path at least twice or more now. SO I guess that was the feeling I was trying to get past.
I really like the recommendations for a solution, May try them. generally like I said I do not like to change much from the game except a small altercation.
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Some remarks:
- WotR technically allows you to get all the power feats of your character by the end, but it takes some work. Even if you play through it normally, you get to 9 power feats as far as I recall.
- One character from the recent Hunter CD actually has more power feats than usual, both pre-role and on the roles: he gets to temporarily check them as his signature power.
- MM gives you the power feats earlier during the first 3 ADs, breaks even when you get the role, and then awards them later than usual. You don't get the 7th class feat at the end of AD6 but in a scenario before that (can't remember if AD5 or AD6). In my opinion, putting the power feats on AD completion is the acknowledgement of the devs that to a lot of people, they are more valuable than the card feats that often served this purpose before.
- Judging from WotR (and my RotW homebrew), getting tons of feats is cool but also diminishes the feeling of accomplishment when you get them. The desire to get them is one of the major motivational mechanics of the game, and I think it is at a good place.
- I think the actual issue here are lackluster card rewards rather than the amount of feats. Playing a scenario for good loot cards or mechanical upgrades (new ships in SnS / various stuff in WotR / Traders in MM) works just as well as feats in my experience; it's only the scenarios with randomized rewards or loot no one cares for that feel unexciting.
Those are more common in the older sets, and generally decrease with rising AD number across all sets; the AD0 prologue is the worst offender with this regards, at least prior to MM. The simplest house rule is just to skip AD0 if you want a proper reward structure and start at AD1. That being said, I think it's right that the beginnings start out that humble; that's kind of the point to appreciate the progression later on.
Doppelschwert, yes its the scenarios with the random items and such where it just feels "MEH." Again im at the point where I feel the pace is right where it is but I think you hit the nail on the head about my problem and its all these quests where I get a pointless trader or get a random weapon from the box, it provides me with sometime 0 desire to do the scenario and just skip it. but I have not decided to skip any scenarios yet because, as said before, I like to play as close to the rules as I can.
@Triffixrex: I'm trying to understand why you think progression feels slow.
Are your friends playing the game like Sentinels of the Multiverse? So when they start up a session, they pick a character and play it? And so you get people who play scenarios that are way out of line of what their character should be because they're missing feats?
This implies to me that they don't actually want character progression, since that implies continuity and playing the same character over a longer period of time. They want appropriate character level.
You should just give them the feats they would have had if that character had done the scenarios up until the current one.
I think it's important to have gaps in between levelling up so that you can actually get a chance to play the character at the current level. I wouldn't want to jam rewards together constantly, because I wouldn't get to spend any time enjoying those mid level characters. I want choosing power feat A before B to matter. WotR made a mistake with this (in my opinion), putting a power feat at the end of deck B and then another one as early as 1.2 or so, it almost didn't matter which of the first two you picked first. Maybe it's just all the more reason to do 1-then-B in WotR :)
The one thing I really do think they've done wrong though is that you spend the most time at the no-upgrades level (i.e. all of deck B). I think it has some sort of history that deck "B" is separate from the adventure path and supposed to be optional, and if you give out a full set of character rewards then it's not very optional any more. But seriously, for the amount of money you pay for it who on earth is going to skip half the content in the base box?! If anything, what they should do is give you an entire no-upgrades-adventure at the end, not the start, so you can get extra use out of the character you've customised for a whole adventure, rather than the one you're given.
I see the card-based rewards as basically saying "no reward", it's just that I accept that there needs to be "no-reward" scenarios to pace things out. The most frustrating non-reward has to be the ones where you put a bunch of cards you acquire under the scenario card instead of in your hand, and then the reward is all the cards you would normally have had anyway. Loot is better than random-box-cards, but it's still a good card for some players and no-reward for the others. One thing they've never done is let you choose a card straight out of the box, if they let you do that it could be just as satisfying as a feat.
Re being a deckbuilder, I honestly think if you expect pathfinder to play like a deckbuilder you'll be disappointed. You do have a deck that you improve, and it's fun for some of the same reason deckbuilders are fun, but a dedicated deckbuilder game would have much more diverse options, and (like you say) much faster turnaround. Pathfinder is more about exploration and resource/risk management, with deck tuning and upgrading (rather than "building") as a secondary objective.
Anyway, lest I be accused of not answering the original question at all, if you do want to speed up progression, go for it, but I think you'll want to find some way to ramp up the difficulty faster to compensate. There's a lot of options for that. Adding to the difficulty of the monsters is kind of unsatisfying since it's sort of just directly cancelling the skill bonus. But some that I could even tolerate myself include gradually filtering out the lower deck monsters and barriers (more aggressively than the removing-basics rules that alread exist), adding locations, and some of the things in heroic/legendary difficulty in the Obsidian app.
I think it's important to have gaps in between levelling up so that you can actually get a chance to play the character at the current level. I wouldn't want to jam rewards together constantly, because I wouldn't get to spend any time enjoying those mid level characters. I want choosing power feat A before B to matter. WotR made a mistake with this (in my opinion), putting a power feat at the end of deck B and then another one as early as 1.2 or so, it almost didn't matter which of the first two you picked first. Maybe it's just all the more reason to do 1-then-B in WotR :)
That's not quite correct; you get a card feat for clearing WotR B and a power feat near the end of 1 and soon into 2, so you might have been thinking about the gap between 1 and 2 instead of B and 1.
The one thing I really do think they've done wrong though is that you spend the most time at the no-upgrades level (i.e. all of deck B). I think it has some sort of history that deck "B" is separate from the adventure path and supposed to be optional, and if you give out a full set of character rewards then it's not very optional any more. But seriously, for the amount of money you pay for it who on earth is going to skip half the content in the base box?! If anything, what they should do is give you an entire no-upgrades-adventure at the end, not the start, so you can get extra use out of the character you've customised for a whole adventure, rather than the one you're given.
I totally agree with this analysis, and I think the devs caught up as well; in case you haven't played MM, B is part of the AP, you get one of each feat (and also loot) in B, and you have most of the feats when you start AD6, so it's more or less what you want.
One thing they've never done is let you choose a card straight out of the box, if they let you do that it could be just as satisfying as a feat.
That's not quite true either; you get this kind of reward near the end of both WotR and SotRi.
RE Topic: Following Irgy's suggestion, try making the reward to choose a card straight out of the box every time there is no feat reward and see if it feels better.