Starfinder Society Developer
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Foreward: I'm not new to GMing, but this is my first season of society play.
Now, I'm aware of the fact that death in society play is a much more significant threat than in regular play, since when a character is dead, they're gone, unless the group has access to a raise dead spell of some kind. The buildup of a chronicle that could be lost also adds weight to this. I'm also aware that most scenarios are designed to be run in 4 hours or less, so things can't get too in depth.
My home group, which I've been running exactly by the letter for each mission, has been utterly smashing every scenario, with one exception (I believe it was the end boss fight in 1-02 against Talbot). There's actually been a running joke that our Solarian is always frustrated because combat has never lasted longer than 3 rounds, so he's never gotten to use supernova or any of the other 3 charge solarian revelations. Most fights, the PC's take one or two good hits that eat up most of their SP, but then the sheer amount of damage they're putting out as level 4's (Example, our vesk has a damage code of 1d10+8 on their doshko, our mechanics have 1d8+4 on their rifles) just kills stuff too quickly for anything more to happen.
Is this intentional, that society play combat is usually pretty easy? Is this still just a growing experience, in that starfinder is a new system so the balance has to still be worked out? or am I missing some rules that should be making it more challenging? Does it get more difficult in the higher level scenarios?
We've certainly erred on the side of caution with our first batches of scenarios. This is intentional—killing off a PC early in the campaign has the unintended side effect of making it difficult to "catch up" to other players, especially with the rampant demand for higher tier content. I'm regularly getting asked about players having access to Tier 5+ content already...
That being said, some of the latest encounters are starting to pickup in terms of intensity. I would specifically like to call-out #1-11 and #1-13 as having some particularly intense encounters.
I suspect you'll start to see some higher difficulty encounters as the campaign gets its feet under it! But thanks for the feedback, it's important for us to hear things like this.
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I prefer challenges to be a little on the low side. It de-incentivizes power gaming, as the optimizers get bored with stomping everything and wander off, while the non-optimal players aren't hosed by encounters build to challenge optimal play.
This isn't to say there should be no challenge, but the hard fights will be much more memorable with the right amount of rarity.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I also think that if difficulty is to go up, I'd like it to be done by making monsters have more HP, not more to-hit/damage. I like a combat where you have both reason and time to do some tactical maneuvering.
If monsters hit so hard that pre-emptive nuking of the monster is the only tactic that can get us to the far end, then we get into the same race to win initiative and hose monsters into the ground before they get to act that plagues Pathfinder.
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The challenge seems about right for the 1-4s. And I second TOZ's point that lower challenges make for more diverse player-bases and builds.
For what it's worth, my second-ever SFS scenario, 1-02, featured a table of three plus a pregen having our poor pregenerated Navasi one-shot from full health straight to death! There's still room for dice to make for a dire situation with the current challenge level. I wouldn't mind a little more difficulty in the 3-6's though.
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I prefer challenges to be a little on the low side. It de-incentivizes power gaming, as the optimizers get bored with stomping everything and wander off, while the non-optimal players aren't hosed by encounters build to challenge optimal play.
This isn't to say there should be no challenge, but the hard fights will be much more memorable with the right amount of rarity.
To be honest, while I like a challenge, I don’t mind this either, for the same reason.
Even better are challenges to actually be a little on the easy side, but that seem to be much tougher than they are!
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Organized Play Lead Developer
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This is what I was suggesting earlier. A goblin with only 17hp in a level 3-4 scenario isn't a challenge, much less a threat if he only gets to fire his d6+1 junkblaster only once. Make him a little more survivable, and the encounter feels more fulfilling. What you DON'T want to do is give the little biter a better gun.The challenge seems about right for the 1-4s. And I second TOZ's point that lower challenges make for more diverse player-bases and builds.
For what it's worth, my second-ever SFS scenario, 1-02, featured a table of three plus a pregen having our poor pregenerated Navasi one-shot from full health straight to death! There's still room for dice to make for a dire situation with the current challenge level. I wouldn't mind a little more difficulty in the 3-6's though.
One additional consideration is that in a Tier 1–4 scenario, there could be 1st-level PCs participating in a Subtier 3–4 experience, and with a few exceptions, 1st-level PC damage tends to be pretty low. That’s especially true compared to the damage jump that a 3rd-level PC gains. If we raise hit points considerably beyond where the design benchmarks are, we may provide some groups additional challenge, but we could turn just as many groups’ experiences into slogs in which both sides slowly whittle down each others’ health totals. That’s not a fun experience for the latter groups.
As Thurston’s alluded, I think you’ll find more challenge at higher tiers and as the campaign matures. What I’d add to his “it’s harder to catch up” note is that Tier 1–4 character death can also mean that someone’s early (or first) experience with Starfinder Society, organized play, RPGs or some combination of these is failure. Often times that translates not just to “difficulty catching up,” but to “I’m never coming back.” Pathfinder Society also errs on the softer side for any adventure including 1st-level PCs for the same reason. That said, Pathfinder Society scenarios get consistently harder around level 5 (by which point players have a good feel for their characters, their powers, and how to tackle common threats), and I suspect Starfinder Society will have a similar feel.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I suspect that the 1-4 gap is going to be the biggest one; bigger than a 3-6 gap for example.
At level 3 you get weapon specialization which is a big thing, as well as damage boosts from better trick attack, soldier gear boost and so on. At level 3 damage really goes up very noticeably.
So when we're talking about a L1 in a 3-4 tier... Yeah, he's not going to do impressive damage. The L3 in the 5-6 tier is probably going to be a lot better comparatively. But I dunno if we'll see long and slow whittling down of enemies, because to be in the 3-4 tier, you need a bunch of 3-4 PCs. And unless those are all pure support characters, at least some characters should have the damage output to keep things moving.
The worst case I think will always be the L1 frontline build playing up. If your character build requires you to stand front and center for the monster's attacks, that's going to hurt. But if we're asking, what's the way to make the 3-4 tier tough without killing the L1 playing up? I'd rather go for giving the monster more HP than giving it more damage/to-hit. Especially on 1-4 scenarios. At later tiers you can swing that balance more towards hard-hitting.
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I'm also wondering if the huge jump in combat power at L3 isn't a reason to focus more on separate 1-2 and 3-6 scenarios.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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Sometimes I prefer a higher difficulty and more tactical options, but it can be hard to translate that into a scenario that does not "just" end up costing the party more money for health potions.
That said, with the static cost of raise dead, I do not averse to increasing the risk of death significantly once that spell becomes very affordable.
I have now played and run a fair number of scenarios, and due to the ability score system, and resolve... your class has a major impact on your survivability at lower levels, so I would prefer at least waiting until players have received their level 5 stat boost.
Playing and running the AP is quite interesting, we had a couple of encounters that felt pretty hard, but we are now level 6 and it's working rather well at the moment.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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This is what I was suggesting earlier. A goblin with only 17hp in a level 3-4 scenario isn't a challenge, much less a threat if he only gets to fire his d6+1 junkblaster only once. Make him a little more survivable, and the encounter feels more fulfilling. What you DON'T want to do is give the little biter a better gun.The challenge seems about right for the 1-4s. And I second TOZ's point that lower challenges make for more diverse player-bases and builds.
For what it's worth, my second-ever SFS scenario, 1-02, featured a table of three plus a pregen having our poor pregenerated Navasi one-shot from full health straight to death! There's still room for dice to make for a dire situation with the current challenge level. I wouldn't mind a little more difficulty in the 3-6's though.
When it comes to this point, I have received a bit of negative feedback when it comes to technomancers with magic missile regularly one-shotting enemies, particularly with 4 player adjustments.
So slightly higher hp might be appreciated.