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Why Good Players Do Not 14.25.
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<blockquote data-quote="kbrakke" data-source="post: 7000370" data-attributes="member: 6781797"><p>There seems to be a huge mismatch in desires and expectations.</p><p></p><p>For me, when I play an adventure path style (Homebrew or pre-written) I expect and plan to make most of the encounters and adventuring days an appropriate challenge for the players. In the fiction of these worlds once they get to tier two or higher they are expected to be fighting against organizations of intelligent creatures who will respond to new abilities or tactics that the party has. In this style of adventure I am never worried about the players being too good at hurting enemies. I would be fine with auto hit auto kill attacks from the players as long as their ACs stay at 21 or lower and their saves are not unusually high. I am comfortable in my ability to challenge players in an engaging way provided their defenses are not too high. (If their defenses are too high it is possible but much more work and I personally dislike it because it just means more prep time to develop specific monsters. The fights tend to drag on longer because the monster need significantly more defenses and attacks, but to avoid rocket tag style play they can't be that much better at damaging. Post level 20 I don't mind but it's nice being able to use the monster manual as is for most gaming). </p><p>In the style of game where the players are heroes for whom the world changes to accommodate these feats represent increases in power and allow the players to face new and powerful foes but does not throw encounter balance out the window. The players will still be challenged because they are expect to as they are the heroes of this story. </p><p></p><p>However in a different style of game, a more naturalistic game if you will, the expectation is that the world is as it is and the players do what they will. The world will respond but there is no expectation of consistently meeting a challenge. In this world the feats represent a jump in power that the world is not feasibly able to deal with. In this world things like adding more enemies or getting better gear simply doesn't make sense. However, I maintain that it is not game breaking, or to be more accurate no more game breaking than anything else you can do by the rules as is. Even without feats a dedicated fighter can reach 21 AC and do reasonable damage every round. 21 AC is frankly absurd for most monsters of CR 1-10 to hit. Additionally simply using certain spells can make many encounters trivial. I think if you are playing in a naturalistic game and want to extend your sweet spot forbid feats and multiclassing. But even with that some % of encounters are simply going to be easy for your party, that's the price of making a more expansive world. On the flip side the party can use planning and forethought to tackle greater encounters which has a certain appeal. If you want the highs then you should allow for the lows, lest you devalue the players triumphs.</p><p></p><p>If you are trying to do an adventure path style, but not modifying the monster or encounters then I would strongly suggest against allowing feats and multiclassing if your goal is to consistently provide a challenge. Another option is to mess around with resting or frame the more epic encounter days in terms of the full adventuring day. However wanting specifically pre-written adventures to be balanced for your specific adventuring party that does include feats and multiclassing is a hard sell. </p><p></p><p>Also, honestly, the players just doing more damage is such an easy problem to balance for. If they're doing 120 more HP on average than you expect add 120 HP of enemies. I'll give an easy out in the fiction, the cultist hideout actually had 8 cultists instead of 4. Monsters in this edition get hit all the time past level 5, if the players have difficulty hitting a monster I am astonished. To make a challenging encounter (Hereby defined as an encounter where the players bitch and moan about how hard it is despite not being as deadly as it seems) I would rather face a high damage team than a high defense team.</p><p></p><p>Or to sum it all up:</p><p>If you are playing a heroic adventure change the encounters to challenge the party, that is how the story should go. If it's a natural world they will find somethings easier than average and be able to tackle bigger challenges, that is the way of the world. If you want to run a prewritten AP without any changes you're out of luck for basically any specific party but more so with feats and multiclassing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="kbrakke, post: 7000370, member: 6781797"] There seems to be a huge mismatch in desires and expectations. For me, when I play an adventure path style (Homebrew or pre-written) I expect and plan to make most of the encounters and adventuring days an appropriate challenge for the players. In the fiction of these worlds once they get to tier two or higher they are expected to be fighting against organizations of intelligent creatures who will respond to new abilities or tactics that the party has. In this style of adventure I am never worried about the players being too good at hurting enemies. I would be fine with auto hit auto kill attacks from the players as long as their ACs stay at 21 or lower and their saves are not unusually high. I am comfortable in my ability to challenge players in an engaging way provided their defenses are not too high. (If their defenses are too high it is possible but much more work and I personally dislike it because it just means more prep time to develop specific monsters. The fights tend to drag on longer because the monster need significantly more defenses and attacks, but to avoid rocket tag style play they can't be that much better at damaging. Post level 20 I don't mind but it's nice being able to use the monster manual as is for most gaming). In the style of game where the players are heroes for whom the world changes to accommodate these feats represent increases in power and allow the players to face new and powerful foes but does not throw encounter balance out the window. The players will still be challenged because they are expect to as they are the heroes of this story. However in a different style of game, a more naturalistic game if you will, the expectation is that the world is as it is and the players do what they will. The world will respond but there is no expectation of consistently meeting a challenge. In this world the feats represent a jump in power that the world is not feasibly able to deal with. In this world things like adding more enemies or getting better gear simply doesn't make sense. However, I maintain that it is not game breaking, or to be more accurate no more game breaking than anything else you can do by the rules as is. Even without feats a dedicated fighter can reach 21 AC and do reasonable damage every round. 21 AC is frankly absurd for most monsters of CR 1-10 to hit. Additionally simply using certain spells can make many encounters trivial. I think if you are playing in a naturalistic game and want to extend your sweet spot forbid feats and multiclassing. But even with that some % of encounters are simply going to be easy for your party, that's the price of making a more expansive world. On the flip side the party can use planning and forethought to tackle greater encounters which has a certain appeal. If you want the highs then you should allow for the lows, lest you devalue the players triumphs. If you are trying to do an adventure path style, but not modifying the monster or encounters then I would strongly suggest against allowing feats and multiclassing if your goal is to consistently provide a challenge. Another option is to mess around with resting or frame the more epic encounter days in terms of the full adventuring day. However wanting specifically pre-written adventures to be balanced for your specific adventuring party that does include feats and multiclassing is a hard sell. Also, honestly, the players just doing more damage is such an easy problem to balance for. If they're doing 120 more HP on average than you expect add 120 HP of enemies. I'll give an easy out in the fiction, the cultist hideout actually had 8 cultists instead of 4. Monsters in this edition get hit all the time past level 5, if the players have difficulty hitting a monster I am astonished. To make a challenging encounter (Hereby defined as an encounter where the players bitch and moan about how hard it is despite not being as deadly as it seems) I would rather face a high damage team than a high defense team. Or to sum it all up: If you are playing a heroic adventure change the encounters to challenge the party, that is how the story should go. If it's a natural world they will find somethings easier than average and be able to tackle bigger challenges, that is the way of the world. If you want to run a prewritten AP without any changes you're out of luck for basically any specific party but more so with feats and multiclassing. [/QUOTE]
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