Savage Pathfinder - More of a Slog Than PF1?

[Retreater]

So the system only works if the GM plays the enemies in non tactical bad ways? As a player this feels for me awfull, since its a "the GM must intervene else we would lose" feeling.

One of my beefs with it is the adage "keep the Bennies flowing." It's as if the system works only by the graces of its metacurrency.
Character miss too much? Have you given enough Bennies?
If they can't soak all their Wounds? Have you given enough Bennies?
Are the characters roleplaying their Hindrances for too many Bennies? Is it becoming distracting? Maybe you shouldn't have given those Bennies.

I feel like the system is a house of cards that stands or falls purely on the vibes of its GMs.

 

[Dalekdad]

One of my beefs with it is the adage "keep the Bennies flowing." It's as if the system works only by the graces of its metacurrency.
Character miss too much? Have you given enough Bennies?
If they can't soak all their Wounds? Have you given enough Bennies?
Are the characters roleplaying their Hindrances for too many Bennies? Is it becoming distracting? Maybe you shouldn't have given those Bennies.

I feel like the system is a house of cards that stands or falls purely on the vibes of its GMs.

I'm a long time SW GM and I have never 'kept the bennies flowing.'

At most I will reward one for a great roleplaying moment or refresh them if the session starts off with the players in a wildly dire situation.

 

[thullgrim]

I typically hand be. It’s out after every scene. Bennies are also health, not just re-rolls of other bonuses.

I find ‘low level’ Savage Worlds on par with PF 1 for encounter time. I find ‘high level’ Savage Worlds on par with ‘low level’ Savage Worlds for encounter time. That is to say it’s faster at higher levels than PF 1 which is where that games turns into a slog.

You’re on the right track by applying the SWADE toolkit to the converted APs. Turning more speed bump encounters into Quick Combats or portions of dungeons into Dramatic Tasks lets you chew through a bunch of content quickly. The last time I ran Burnt Offerings in PF1 I think it took 12 or 14 sessions. The last time I ran it in SWADE I think we did it in 6.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I feel like the system is a house of cards that stands or falls purely on the vibes of its GMs.

Which is a huge plus to OSR and DM heavy styles!

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I'm quite new to SWADE but I think overall the system is pretty good. It's a complex system, there are a lot of moving parts. It's not suited to all styles of game. And I feel that a straight conversion of a PF adventure path is not a great fit. As others have said - there's too many little fights and that turns the whole thing into a slog.

BUT... I've run an AP in PF1 and I had to remove a lot of encounters as all they did was slow down the game for no reason. Especially high level PF1 where so many encounters are just speed bumps. They're the sort of encounters meant to wear down resources. But SWADE doesn't lean much into resource management. (There's some, caster power points for instance, but it's not as central a tenant as it is in DnD-alikes.) So it doesn't make sense to have loads of little fights. (Unless y'all enjoying the combat for itself.) @thullgrim 's advice on using the quick options strikes me as excellent.

Re. bennies - call me the Spacing Guild - the bennies must flow! Yes, it will effect the game style a lot. More bennies means more cinematic. I'm good with that. Obviously YMMV etc.

Re. playing NPCs in less than the optimal tactical way - it's fine. More than fine. Many moons ago I was having a flick through the 1st ed. Warhammer RPG. (It was the new hottness at the time.) I remember reading the stats for, IIRC, giants. And it listed a weakness - drunkeness! Mind blown.

It was the first time I'd seen something like this in a rules set. A weakness that was a character flaw. Something that would encourage the GM to play the NPC in a less than optimal way. The concept gelled with me immediately. I expected my players to role play their characters. Why shouldn't I? So yeah, cowardly goblins using gang up, crazed berserkers going non-stop wild attack, etc.

Cheers y'all.

 

[mamba]

Pinnacle has confirmed that is the case, they are not allowed to adjust the APs or make new ones.

so how do these differ from the PF1 ones, only in the mechanics described (which probably is not a large part of an adventure)?

 

[thullgrim]

so how do these differ from the PF1 ones, only in the mechanics described (which probably is not a large part of an adventure)?

There quite a bit of condensing as well. Room descriptions, loot, lots of things get removed but not the encounters themselves. The number of combatants might change but as a general rule if the AP had an encounter the conversion will as well.

Sometimes there are obvious solutions. In Burnt Offerings there’s a thicket maze. It’s pretty trivial to combine some of the encounters into one larger one, or use the chase rules to develop it into a running battle. SWADE is pretty good at handling a large number of combatants at once.

The conversions also lack much of the additional material the original APs had
To support the adventure.

 

[MGibster]

One of my beefs with it is the adage "keep the Bennies flowing." It's as if the system works only by the graces of its metacurrency.
Character miss too much? Have you given enough Bennies?

Bennies are the oil that keeps the engine running. Unfortuately, the swingy nature of SW means you're never sure if your normal 4 quarts of oil is good, or if you need 7 this time, or maybe just 2 will work. I've had sessions where the PCs were down to their last Bennie or entirely out, others where they had more Bennies at the end of the session than they did at the beginning, but more commonly it's a mixed bag. Some players have a ton of Bennies because they never had to spend any and others are out because they had to spend them to survive.

It's a particular pet peeve of mine when someone points out a flaw in a system and others come by, tell them it isn't a flaw, and then give a bunch of tips for how to mitigate what they say isn't a flaw. I'll come right out and say it, you're right. It's a flaw. I love SW, but the swingy nature is a flaw.

I feel like the system is a house of cards that stands or falls purely on the vibes of its GMs.

I kind of feel that way about most games. I'm having a blast running a D&D 5.5 game right now and it's certainly not because of the rules. It's because me and the players are having a ball.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, there are tactics I'd use with a Wild Card but never with an Extra because it would leave them so vulnerable; rather than feeling authentic it just makes them come across as having no survival instinct at all. Even Extras should be characters, not ammunition.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One of my beefs with it is the adage "keep the Bennies flowing." It's as if the system works only by the graces of its metacurrency.

To some extent, that's true; its an open-ended die roll system, and almost all of these are buffered by their extent metacurrency.

That said, the "flow bennies like water" tends to be overrated. I never did that when I was running the system and it didn't break anything. You just have to make sure they have enough to be able to do Soak when a damage roll blows up.

As I've noted before, if Wild Cards are missing too much, chances are whatever opponents are being put up against them have too much--probably way too much Parry. That's a problem that has parallells in any number of games.