Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder: Encounter Design Simplified

What I was thinking was a feat every odd level, the two +1s every 4th level (like Star Wars) and then the class features of a Paragon racial level at 2nd, 6th, 10th, 14th, and 18th level (would need to invent new paragon levels for 14th and 18th, but the Paizo Dark Sun has some suggestions).

Release 3 didn't include Wulf's scheme but I assume that the timing was too tight to include them. That said, I really hope Paizo does utilize them in the Beta. I'm doing a full Pathfinder conversion for The Freeport Trilogy and Wulf's system is lightning fast and even fun. On the other hand, the Pathfinder charts make my brow furrow as I try to puzzle out slots with extreme uncertainty (creatures of less than CR 1 and mixed groups are particularly simpler to assign with the XP budget system.)

Very much looking forward to what Trailblazer may hold in store for PF,

peter

Wulf, I spent the weekend using your system to convert Death in Freeport and it worked great in every respect. Naturally, however, it led me to some of the same balance questions that lay further afield. Specifically, Pathfinder devalues NPCs without racial hit-die to CR-2 and NPCs with only NPC classes to CR-3.

The CR decreases allowed me enough room in the budget to make better fights but I still think that they came out soft at every level (challenging, hard, epic-- ad I won't even consider average or easy as worth running since these wouldn't be worth the time in our 3-hour weeknight sessions).

But monsters have no CR adjustment in Pathfinder as of yet and fights that included them according to budget felt way too easy--and I think there needs to be some some devaluation across monsters as well.

Basically, I would love to be able to recreate the "widescreen" feel of 4e battles within the 3.75 rules---and without resorting to minions and other 4e-isms. Do you have ideas in this area---is that something likely to be seen in Trailblazer? Are there any thoughts you'd be willing to share now?

Thanks for reading and the new charts!

-Peter

Gotham Gamemaster said:

Wulf, I spent the weekend using your system to convert Death in Freeport and it worked great in every respect. Naturally, however, it led me to some of the same balance questions that lay further afield.

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Thanks, Peter. Yes, I'll reiterate-- I never purported to do anything other than simplify/codify what Jason was trying to accomplish.

The CR decreases allowed me enough room in the budget to make better fights but I still think that they came out soft at every level.

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I want to make sure I understand you. You were running Pathfinder PCs through Death in Freeport, and they felt overpowered? The PCs dominated?

If so, I would expect that. There's no question that Pathfinder PCs are more powerful and it is going to be felt most acutely at low levels.

Basically, I would love to be able to recreate the "widescreen" feel of 4e battles within the 3.75 rules---and without resorting to minions and other 4e-isms. Do you have ideas in this area---is that something likely to be seen in Trailblazer? Are there any thoughts you'd be willing to share now?

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I am trying to very finely zero in on what I want to do with Trailblazer vis-a-vis Pathfinder.

Certainly there's a certain "Heartbreaker" aspect to my work, as there are some things that Pathfinder won't do that I, quite frankly, will do. Pathfinder is strongly beholden to a customer base that wants an "old school" feel, which means that there are certain Gamist approaches that I will take, that Pathfinder will probably never, ever try. (To pull the biggest name out of that hat, Trailblazer has a "10 minute rest" mechanic.)

I have more design freedom than Pathfinder, however, because I don't have the restriction of having to necessarily offer a single, cohesive vision. It wouldn't make any sense for Pathfinder to say, "Well, you can do iterative attacks this way, or that way, or this third way." I can do that.

Pathfinder has to tread the best, widest, most accessible path. That's a great design goal and if I had the kind of clout Paizo had, I'd love to be in a position to dictate the de facto default 3.75 ruleset. That mantle is firmly around Paizo's shoulders, and make no mistake, I think that is a great thing.

Folks who pick up Trailblazer, I hope, are those who are willing to roll up their sleeves, whip out the machete, and hack their way off through the design wilderness.

I can (as I did with Grim Tales) present the problem, discuss solutions, invite the individual DM to look over my shoulder, and empower him to make his own choices.

To answer your question: I have been working hard on Minion, Elite, and Solo monster equivalencies that tackle this problem without veering so far into Gamist territory as 4e. I can estimate with confidence the relative power levels of PCs (even Pathfinder or Trailblazer "boosted" PCs), and from there I can recommend Encounter Budgets that are a closer fit to the actual power levels in play.

Let me give you something concrete you can try in your next game.

If the power of a normal 3.5e PC is a function of X, where X = character level, and the power of a Pathfinder PC is a function of (X+2), multiply your Encounter Budget by the fraction (X+2)/(X).

So at 1st level, multiply your budget by x3/1.
At 2nd level, x4/2.
At 3rd level, x5/3.
...
At 20th level, x22/20.

(1) Even with the increased budget, you're still not going to want to buy creatures well above the party level. (There are asymmetric powers at work.)

(2) With more creatures per encounter, you're going to have to reduce the XP awards, otherwise the PCs will level too fast. Talking off the top of my head here, you should be able to just flip the fraction over and multiply the XP award by that.

Thanks, Wulf!

I didn't even try to run Death in Freeport yet--we converted to PF as soon as it came out and there have been enough sessions that I could eyeball the converted adventure and judge that the numbers weren't going to add up.

I'll give the increased budget a try (and keep in mind that CRs must remain within reasonable limits) and see what I come up with---it's certainly a lot more expansive than core!

I was drawn to PF for fluff reasons (I'm one of those who hasn't been able to grok why the old fluff had to go out with the old bathwater) so backwards compatibility is a lower priority for me--and now that I am starting to see some of the limits of 3.5 encounter design, I think I'll be an eager Trailblazer.

-Peter

Wulf, for your "rounded" XP table, I might suggest rounding some of the larger XP totals (starting at say level 12 or 16) to the nearest thousand instead of hundred.

whydirt said:

Wulf, for your "rounded" XP table, I might suggest rounding some of the larger XP totals (starting at say level 12 or 16) to the nearest thousand instead of hundred.

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As I said above, round it to the number of significant digits that pleases you best.

Some levels you will want to round to the nearest 1000, or 5000, or 10000, etc.

Personally I am comfortable with 500 xp's hanging off the ends.

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A curious question: would this point-buy/ set XP award system work as-is for vanilla 3.5 D&D? It might make life easier for a neophyte DM with whom I am working to develop her first set of adventures/ encounters.

If not, are there any tweaks I might need to make it work more easily?

BTW, thanks for the hard work in figuring things out!