A bit of d20-3e / PF1e grumbling about legacy magic

[eyelessgame]

I am feeling annoyed by the number of cool magical effects that become useless once protection spells against them become routine.

Silence, Protection from Evil, Invisibility Purge or See Invisible, Freedom of Movement, True Seeing, (some editions') Death Ward, Darkvision - it feels like tons of interesting monster powers become worthless when these get used.

Passwall, Discern Location, even Locate Person or Locate Object, Teleport... so many of these spells seem like they make the interesting aspects of the game too bypassable. Every adventure I try to craft for high-level adventurers, every hook, simply makes the adventure become "let's use divinations to figure out where to jump to, scry it, buff up with everything, teleport in, achieve the objective, and get out". There are only so many things that can be repeatably used to foil this plan.

I mean... there's a splatbook paladin power that allows him to radiate his immunity from fear to a 10' radius, and ... even just that eliminates tons of additional powers.

Even just the Pathfinder consolidation of skills adds to this - every party will have all relevant skills at absurdly high levels; there's no such thing as an undetected trap, locked door, or missed clue.

And as a GM I'm often reduced to "throw lots of monsters with lots of hit points, high damage, high AC, at them, and make the game just a bunch of dierolls," which is fun, now and then, but... too many other avenues are simply closed off.

This is an ancient problem with D&D in all its incarnations, of course. But it's I'm sure part of why GMs/DMs have, over the years, burned out on running the high-level campaigns their players are enjoying.

It's definitely still fun for the players, and they've earned a bit of the right to roll right over things that used to stop them; that's what player progression is supposed to let them do. But ... you have to be able to get in their way, still.

I can get away with a certain amount of "well, this is an epic power not covered in the rules, you still wind up grappled, your freedom-of-movement notwithstanding"... or "this trap has an ad-hoc +20 to the difficulty, so it triggers despite you rolling a 50". But they have to be few and far between.

Or, every lair can be the lair of a wizard smarter than me, and if there's a counter to the magic they're using, the wizard thought of it and cast it, which I discover and decide ahead of time. It's otherwise an overwhelming job to prep for these adventures, and I find myself dreading it every week.

*sigh*

[Azothath]

I think you are grousing about challenge design and such. You know they should vary from martial, to social, skill, trap/haunts, puzzle, environmental, and strategic solutions. The idea (from Game Theory) is to vary the best counter-strategies and methods.

PF1 by design is easier than DnD3.0/3.5. That's just a fact.

Mythic games are total drama soap opera. So it needs to be about strategy, plot drama, etc rather than monster fights. Seriously - copy the plot from a tele-novella and use that.

I think you need to know the magic system better to understand its weaknesses and then a judicial hand in some monster retooling. I certainly hope you are enforcing the knowledge skills for monster identification each and every time rather than letting PCs claim they remember.

Lastly - a GMs job is not to win - as you do ALL THE TIME. PCs die. Meteors fall from the sky and kill most of life. Suns explode. The universe goes on. One way to look at it is your job is to put on a play and be the adult in the room. The players are actors in that improvisational play. How good is that play?

[Oli Ironbar]

It’s also an issue when a party has had enough experience with different enemy tactics that, even without metagaming, there are some go to tactics that they will reuse. But!

As a party becomes more powerful and as the players start playing smarter, the objective of the game can still change. Monsters that can destroy a whole city are common at the highest levels and defeatable, but can the party use the same talents to save a city from crime or a plague or bring prosperity?

It’s the issue of writing a Superman story, it’s not about whether he can defeat the enemy but how he goes about it to save the innocent at the same time.

[Taja the Barbarian]

Just to be clear, most of the spells you are complaining about go back at least as far as AD&D1e in the late 70's and probably back to the earliest versions of Basic D&D, so you are kinda complaining that water is wet...

PCs have very similar issues: In our AD&D2e campaign back in the early 90s (using a lot of AD&D1e adventures), I found that by the time my thief finally got his hands on a ring of invisibility, pretty much EVERYTHING could see through it one way or another...

[Lord Fyre]

I know that this is a Pathfinder 1e thread, but did Pathfinder 2e address any of these problems?

[Taja the Barbarian]

Lord Fyre wrote:

I know that this is a Pathfinder 1e thread, but did Pathfinder 2e address any of these problems?

A little bit: PF2e casters are generally less powerful, and some of the more 'world altering' spells (like teleports) are uncommon so GMs are supposed to actively allow access to them rather than just hope players don't take them.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

eyelessgame wrote:

I am feeling annoyed by the number of cool magical effects that become useless once protection spells against them become routine.

Silence, Protection from Evil, Invisibility Purge or See Invisible, Freedom of Movement, True Seeing, (some editions') Death Ward, Darkvision - it feels like tons of interesting monster powers become worthless when these get used.

Passwall, Discern Location, even Locate Person or Locate Object, Teleport... so many of these spells seem like they make the interesting aspects of the game too bypassable. Every adventure I try to craft for high-level adventurers, every hook, simply makes the adventure become "let's use divinations to figure out where to jump to, scry it, buff up with everything, teleport in, achieve the objective, and get out". There are only so many things that can be repeatably used to foil this plan.

I mean... there's a splatbook paladin power that allows him to radiate his immunity from fear to a 10' radius, and ... even just that eliminates tons of additional powers.

Even just the Pathfinder consolidation of skills adds to this - every party will have all relevant skills at absurdly high levels; there's no such thing as an undetected trap, locked door, or missed clue.

And as a GM I'm often reduced to "throw lots of monsters with lots of hit points, high damage, high AC, at them, and make the game just a bunch of dierolls," which is fun, now and then, but... too many other avenues are simply closed off.

This is an ancient problem with D&D in all its incarnations, of course. But it's I'm sure part of why GMs/DMs have, over the years, burned out on running the high-level campaigns their players are enjoying.

It's definitely still fun for the players, and they've earned a bit of the right to roll right over things that used to stop them; that's what player progression is supposed to let them do. But ... you have to be able to get in their way, still.

I can get away with a certain amount of "well, this is an epic power not covered in the...

My problem with high level play is just how number and option bloat really makes turns take a lot longer.

The issues you're describing aren't quite the same, and it sounds to me your tastes run towards a game closer to Shadowdark than Pathfinder that really curbs the player power and reduces the impact of skills and spells in the exploration/roleplay elements of the game.

Which is a different style of play from Pathfinder, which is primarily a combat simulator that gives the players tools to smoothly traverse between encounters with clever uses of skills and resources.

Have you ever run a fight with invisible enemies when the party doesn't have See Invisibility or Glitterdust? It's a miserable slog, with a lot of extraneous skill-checks (to see if they spot footprints in the dirt), searching the character sheet to remember if anyone brought flour to briefly make the opponents visible, and a 50% miss chance just extending the fight by about 50%.

At higher levels, the expectation is that characters (and their opponents) will have access to certain cool abilities and the cool ability counters. My players love how clever they feel when they brought the right counter to the party.

By the way, if they're facing high level opposition, they'll be famous enough their scry and fry tactics would also be well known, and there's plenty of ways to counter scrying and teleport for high level opposition.

[TxSam88]

Remember, most of what you describe are still limited resources - put the party on a timer, don't give them the ability to only have one encounter per day. Also - most of the BBEG will be on par or higher level than the party, with plenty of additional resources, he can do many of the same things the part can.

[Liliyashanina]

My suggestion against such spells is that, especially prot from evil, they expire after absorbing a "domination" for example.

I do view protection from evil and air bubble as the biggest culprits.

I also run dispell magic different, in that you can try to dispell a specific spell, after identifying the magic effect.

Which is like, a Succubus notices that someone is under FOM because she cant grapple him, and tells her Babau summon to "dispell that freedom of movement, but let him keep the death ward so he lasts longer".

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

As far as I'm concerned: feature, not bug*.
One thing I dislike is a lack of change in game play as the game progresses. If the difference between 1st level play and 20th level play is just numbers, that at first level you fight a 1 HD orc in a 10x10' room and get 100 gp, and at 20th you fight 20 HD orc in a 200'x200' foot room and get 2000 gp, it's really unfulfilling.

I think following some old school D&D assumptions is right thing here. In BECMI at least, it was assumed that around a certain level you would more or less settle down and take on more social roles in the setting. High level play wasn't just murder-hoboing, you had responsibilities. I did this in my game, and when you have to spend time and money and effort on making you little community in the world flourish, lots of the problems aren't the type of thing you can just cast a spell at and have them disappear**.

At the higher levels of play, the opponents are higher level too and can take appropriate steps to avoid being undone by a single spell. Lots of these spells and abilities aren't perfect.
E.g. divinations. There are limits to divinations. Range limits, obfuscation limits like Mind Blank or thin sheet of lead, and most importantly: knowledge limits for spells like Commune or Contact Outer Plane. D&D gods are on the whole not omniscient. There are things they don't know, there are things that are hidden from them, there are things they hide from others. The sorts of issues high level PCs get involved in increasingly fall into these categories. This isn't to say that every diviantion should fail but some should and many will give less information than the PCs would like.

But if this isn't the type of thing you like or feel comfortable running, it is important to remember that D&D is a toolbox: you don't need to use every tool in the box if you don't want to. This requires a thorough think-through of what you want to ban or alter and why, and basic limits on mechancis should ideally be decided on before the game starts and the world should reflect the limits.

*This attitude runs in into one of the many You're Doing It Wrong Problems: anyone who can't handle what I can needs to 'git gud' and anyone who runs D&D at higher power levels is a filthy power gamer who doesn't know how to have fun at proper power levels.

**Well, you can but consequences often turn out to be more problems down the line.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

But if this isn't the type of thing you like or feel comfortable running, it is important to remember that D&D is a toolbox: you don't need to use every tool in the box if you don't want to. This requires a thorough think-through of what you want to ban or alter and why, and basic limits on mechancis should ideally be decided on before the game starts and the world should reflect the limits.

Quoted for Truth.

Also, don't be afraid to investigate 3rd-party stuff.

[Azothath]

Strategies not changing as level increases is two fold; GM not adapting types and varying challenges to the level, and Players not adapting as they are 'successful' at what they are doing.
People want to win, to be successful. The game gives them the sense that they did that and were successful and powerful.

I could chat about what I think are the models and trends in published works, but ...

[gnoams]

Or, you could just use the tools that exist in the game to counter the counters. Especially if you're talking about high level magic users. Anything PCs do NPCs can too. Dispel magic is a thing. Mind blank is a thing. Simulacrums. Contingencies. Or just drop an anti magic field and grind the game to a halt as everyone has to spend half an hour to recalculate their entire character in order to proceed with the combat. I ran games like that in my youth. The PCs kill the villains, so they come back from the dead because they have access to all the high level magics top. Their backup plan kicks in and their minion uses the toenails they saved to true res them. They they scry and die back at the PCs, ambushing them in their sleep, killing half the party and retrieving their stolen gear. And it'd go back and forth for a while before the players would come up with some clever ways to stop the villains for good. I'd run swarm shifter monks, dual wielding vorpal kukri assassins, and all sorts of bullshit.

But... I don't care about any of that stuff when I run anymore. I worry about writing an interesting plot. You can always ramp up the combats, throw bigger and badder things stronger than they are, make the game into an arms race, but that's just not really the interesting part of the game to me these days. If the PCs stomp the combats I wrote?, great, more time for the fun stuff in between.

[Azothath]

I did hear of a GM who had a high level caster use a simulacrum of an magicbane bandersnatch(or jabberwock) in a moderate sized (30*40) enclosed room to defeat a high level party in a PF1 Scenario circa 2013. It lost half it's abilities but kept the anti-magic aura. The party did request he make it hard and challenge them. Uff da, he paid it in spades.

[Dragonchess Player]

Or the villain is an efficiently leveled eldritch knight/arcane archer that uses Imbue Arrow with antimagic field to shut down the party casters... Then sends in the barbarian minions to beat them to death while they can't cast and all of their magical protections are down.

[eyelessgame]

Thanks, everyone. Excellent advice, encouragement, and more than a little bit of eyerolling, and all welcome.

I admit - I was mostly just kvetching. The campaign's been thrilling, and everyone can see the end from here - probably ending it in roughly February, probably around session number 230... more than anything I think I've just got some fatigue from the setting, mechanics, and structure, because I've been running it (Monte Cook's Ptolus) for a really long time (since 2019).

But after that kvetch I wound up prepping a pretty good session anyway, and as you say, the most important things that happen are the NPCs that show up, and the plot development; the fights are the sauce, not the entree. As soon as I came up with the important complexification (another pair of adventurers, in over their heads, looking for a completely different artifact) it got a lot more fun to prep.

I especially like the suggestion to treat this like a Superman comic. (I said up-front for my campaign that Ptolus is to a typical D&D city setting what Marvel Comics' NYC is to the real NYC. It's not for low-powered 'realism.') You're right, of course. I've been threatening the city on a regular basis now. And the uncomfortable alliances with many nasty folk who don't want the city destroyed either (it's where they keep their stuff!) are really what the campaign's about, as much as anything.

Partly I just have players who - even if they enjoy the story complexity - also wind up trying very hard to short-circuit any scenario - which forces me to think through scenario setup... and makes scenario prep sometimes feel pointless, since I sometimes wind up discarding a bunch of prep because they thought of something I didn't. Even at low levels, every puzzle-trap I ever gave them had to have careful math behind it: "how many combinations are there? How long does it take to try a combination? Then never mind figuring out the puzzle, we can try a thousand combinations in two hours, just move the levers to each possible place until the door opens... it does 2d6 fire damage on each try? okay, the cleric can put on 10 points of fire resistance, and we'll use up one wand of cure light wounds for the times when they roll 11 or 12..."

As a gaming group we've had long conversations about - and scenarios designed to work with - the five-minute work day, or scry-and-fry, or the insanity of 3e magic item economics, or the "antiroleplaying" immersion-breaking abilities like the bard-variant's "once per day take 20 on a knowledge check", or the overwhelmingly high skill levels, or the world-warping effects of CLW wands, or the number of spells that do what my original post complained about, or the ease of a large party maxing out every skill and the multiple stacked bonuses that make skill rolls simply automatic, or the economy of magic item costs and lair value meaning that virtually every magic item you will find by chance is underwhelming and destined for sale, or the plastic sense deriving from no penalty ever being permanent (e.g. no XP costs)... everything that, well, Ptolus is the perfect setting to embrace, and also is all of the reasons that this will be my last d20 campaign.

But I've been playing D&D - with a few hiatuses into other systems - since the days of Men and Magic, and Chainmail. I'm sixty now, and I'm enjoying the hell out of my last "D&D" campaign even if I kvetch. I have a wall covered in bookshelves filled with other game systems - Runequest, Hero, Ars Magica, Traveller, GURPS... there's so much more to explore.

[eyelessgame]

I do want to highlight what Bjørn Røyrvik said.

Quote:

One thing I dislike is a lack of change in game play as the game progresses

That's what I was kvetching about. I wanted to modify one of the critters they faced so that it would have a Crushing Hand constantly active, because thematically it worked well.

And then I realized "no, they'd put freedom of movement on everybody before the scenario started. They all have grapple immunity." So much for the cool separate effect. It was that specific realization that prompted the post.

Fortunately there's very few counters to the annoyance caused by creatures that can cast deeper darkness at will - unless the PCs have tremorsense or echolocation or some other nonvisual targeting, which even at this level several of them don't, so ... a kyton and a devil working together was a reasonably nasty combo. There was also a dark stalker shadowdancer waiting in the wings. :)

[TxSam88]

eyelessgame wrote:

And then I realized "no, they'd put freedom of movement on everybody before the scenario started.

1. How do they know they need it

2. How do they have the number of spell slots available to do this
3. No way they can do this with every encounter.
4. Do it anyway - make them burn the spells

How many encounters are you having before they get to sleep? You probably need to increase this number

[Joynt Jezebel]

One thing to add to what has been said.

I have done this repeatedly myself, so I am not criticising anyone else.

As the party ascends in levels and power, so do the monsters. They also get more complicated and often less familiar to the GM.

If the GM does not take the time to carefully read the monsters abilities and think through their best strategies the encounter can often prove much easier than it would with more preparation.

On another tack, there is a fine line to be trod between having monsters behave intelligently and having them behave as if they have examined the players character sheets. Even very intelligent monsters are not omniscient.

Until the PC has done something, a monster will figure the girl w/o armor and with a wand is an arcane caster of some description. If they have a way of knowing more, typically having met the party before, they will intelligently for what they know the party can do. Not before.

[TxSam88]

Joynt Jezebel wrote:

Even very intelligent monsters are not omniscient.

Slightly Disagree - I was at Gencon Working for WOTC one year, running the encounter with the Gargantuan Red Dragon. The Red Dragon has an INT over 26. I asked the designer present about how to play a Dragon with that high of a score when it comes to preparing for the party and the things the party had (like protection from energy, which the party always chose Fire)

His reply was to cheat and have the Red dragon use whatever breath weapon the party didn't prepare for.

[Azothath]

LoL... I have to say it is a mix of experiences as each developer/writer has what you think is a mix of better and worse areas, from technically(system mastery for the game), practically(running the game), along with taste, style, and goals.
It's the same for all of us that run games.

As far as game score ability modeling actual measureable intelligence or strength... well, lol, it is what it is. PF1 is way worse than Newtonian Physics so don't expect much.

[Azothath]

on game phases as level increases
some say 3 or 4 (non-mythic play). I'm in the 3 camp.
As it is a game you want to challenge players, have some drama, and a good time.
I think you need a defined 'lesson' for each 4-5 hr story/game. That binds the story and gives it a reason. Without it the game is just pinball/murder-hobo central or vapid. Without a theme or lesson you allow Operant Conditioning to bring forward whatever the player thinks is enhancing their "success" to produce pseudo-random reinforcement. RPGs are about learning various social topics.

[Zepheri]

For me, levels or classes don't mean much (almost nothing); what really matters is the plot, the investigation, and the dialogue. Many may be as powerful as a titan or a god, but that only makes them idiots in combat. What's exciting about the game is enjoying a good story, sharing it with friends, Pass tests (or skill) and remembering the best moments during the adventure. It's true that at higher levels you have more options, but if all you want is to enjoy combat, it's like playing a hack-and-slash game. And that's not really enjoying it; it's just seeing who creates the character with the best damage output in the game.

[Joynt Jezebel]

TxSam88 wrote:

Joynt Jezebel wrote:

Even very intelligent monsters are not omniscient.

Slightly Disagree - I was at Gencon Working for WOTC one year, running the encounter with the Gargantuan Red Dragon. The Red Dragon has an INT over 26. I asked the designer present about how to play a Dragon with that high of a score when it comes to preparing for the party and the things the party had (like protection from energy, which the party always chose Fire)

His reply was to cheat and have the Red dragon use whatever breath weapon the party didn't prepare for.

I don't like the designer's advice. No matter how intelligent you are, you can't figure out an answer where there is nothing to go on.

On another tack, I am currently playing in a campaign where we are level 18 and mythic. My character, a shaman, has a wisdom of 34. An intelligence based character would, if you are strictly logical about the designer's suggestion, be much smarter than that Gargantuan Red Dragon who is right all the time.

No sane GM is going to run a game like that or anything close. It seems a bit like cheating for either the GM or the player.

I would reserve the 100% right all the time for literal, omniscient gods which you never get to fight in person but may be working against.

But that is just me and I am not in charge of everything Pathfinder.

[TxSam88]

Joynt Jezebel wrote:

TxSam88 wrote:

Joynt Jezebel wrote:

Even very intelligent monsters are not omniscient.

Slightly Disagree - I was at Gencon Working for WOTC one year, running the encounter with the Gargantuan Red Dragon. The Red Dragon has an INT over 26. I asked the designer present about how to play a Dragon with that high of a score when it comes to preparing for the party and the things the party had (like protection from energy, which the party always chose Fire)

His reply was to cheat and have the Red dragon use whatever breath weapon the party didn't prepare for.

I don't like the designer's advice. No matter how intelligent you are, you can't figure out an answer where there is nothing to go on.

His point was that the dragon would be smart enough and experienced enough to know that MOST adventurers would prepare to fight a Red dragon, so a smart Red Dragon, would not act like a Red Dragon. Hence, use Acid breath instead of Fire breath.

How else do you portray things with IQ's over 250?

You mention your 34 wisdom mythic character - therein lies the rub. a GM can "cheat" to help portray bad guys who have incredible stats. A player doesn't have that luxury, due to him being limited by their real world limitations.

which is why I make sure every challenge in my games can be solved by a die roll, and not by the players abilities (In game puzzles is the prime example of this). While it's fun to give the players a chance to solve puzzles, we have to remember that it's the Characters that are portraying them, and they need to be played to the limitations of their character.
but, that's a topic for another discussion.