3.5 high level woes and Paizo's hand in it.

[cangrejoide]

Forked from: Campaign ends badly, 4th edition here we come!

Unless you were just burned out and wanted a change of pace, which is understandable too. High level 3.x is a pain.

Afterwards we unanimously agreed that we would not finish the campaign and leave things as is because we didn't really enjoy high level play very much.

In my game big D went down in a 2 and a half rounds. Kyuss himself lasted 4. Wouldn't have been so bad but each of those fights took 2 hours to get through! So I was pretty much done with high level 3E after that. When I run 3E again it will be a 10th level cap tops.

We got half way thru Savage Tide, and I just ended the campaign. I was so burnt out on 3.x at that point that I wasn't going to run another adventure in it. 4e came out the same time, so I just bailed.

I think burn-out was my big problems as well. I did not enjoy running a high level 3.5 game. I think the fact that the game died was OK. Everyone is ready to give 4th a go.

Beldar

I know a guy whose AoW campaign crashed thanks to the Big H. Went to 4e.

I've actually never had a TPK. Usually my campaign crashes due to player or DM issues.

As for my AoW campaign, the players I have are way to tactical and skilled to have died in those last few adventures. I had to really beef up the encounters to even challenge them. Big D and K were nearly killed in the first 2 to 5 rounds, and were easily killed off even with the modifications I made. But the encounters did show that 3.x was totally broken at high level and really needed fixing… the end of that campaign really got me excited for 4e.

4e was coming out, and 3.5 was getting difficult to run even at 12-14th level. So far 4e has been great to run so far, but I haven't seen any paragon or epic level play yet to judge if they 'fixed' it (although most reports I read say it is good).

It's alright, my players got to the end, stopped Kyuss, and I still consider the campaign a failure. It just wasn't fun anymore in the last 4 adventures, I was just going through the paces for the benefit of the players who wanted to see it through to the end, irregardless of the fact that they were on their 3rd party at the end. Playing that high-level stuff reminds me of trying to walk through neck-deep mud.

A big part of the problem was the stats. High level 3e is incredibly hard to do. If it had been for 5th level PCs it might have been ok. It was one factor in me changing to running 3e with a 1-10 or 1-12 level range instead of 1-20.

We played until about 17th level in the AoW. I think we had 2 TPKs and a lot of player character death. We stopped at the island adventure as 3.5 was burning the whole group out. We didn't touch D&D again until 4th.

Okay from my own acnecdotal experience: the day I decided to give up on DMing 3.5 was after a grueling AP made by Paizo. The schackled city Adventure path. I loved the setting, I loved the plot. But the encounters were tiresome, maybe it was not paizo's fault, but they made their encounters geared to maxed out characters and any non-optimized party would surely end in a TPK.

I know 3.5 High level rules were not the best, but how many of you got to this revelation after playing any of the Paizo's APs? How many of you gave up on 3.5 shortly after that?

Did Paizo actually helped a lot of people move to 4E?

(PS I love and I am currently running AOW under 4E)

 

[Jack99]

Interesting theory. Can't wait for the fallout.

 

[Dice4Hire]

One problem I had and still ahve with 3.5 is the level of rules-(ab)use players bring tothe table. You can have a bunch of guys who choose good classes, feats and magic items, thus being quite effective, and then one guy comes in with a munchkined out (but totally legal) killing machine of a character.

I had to kick out several of the latter, as I have a lot of the former and don't like to play the way the latter guys like to play.

But as for Paizo, I never went through one of their adventures, but I would have to generally agree. Paizo took combats to the bloody edge, and I knew there was no way my players could ever get through one of end-of-module encounters, much less two or three like most modules expected. They just do not have that ability.

 

[avin]

Is there any kind of "if your players aren't full maximized" advice on AP? Any sort of way to tone down encounters?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Okay from my own acnecdotal experience: the day I decided to give up on DMing 3.5 was after a grueling AP made by Paizo. The schackled city Adventure path. I loved the setting, I loved the plot. But the encounters were tiresome, maybe it was not paizo's fault, but they made their encounters geared to maxed out characters and any non-optimized party would surely end in a TPK.

I know 3.5 High level rules were not the best, but how many of you got to this revelation after playing any of the Paizo's APs? How many of you gave up on 3.5 shortly after that?

Did Paizo actually helped a lot of people move to 4E?

(PS I love and I am currently running AOW under 4E)

We ended AOW after a TPK when we just were no longer interested in running against overpowered monsters (though I will give some fault to the DM, who isn't really among our better ones. )

I am not sure how much is Paizos fault and how much is just because that's how higher level 3E worked. But I subscribe to the theory that the APs helped us recognize all the flaws we found in 3E, despite being otherwise very good. Without the APs, we might have played other games more, too.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

One thing to bear in mind: Shackled City and Age of Worms were designed for six PCs. That was easy to overlook. (I'm not sure about Savage Tide.) Even with six PCs, those campaigns are tough ... with four, they're meat-grinders.

 

[delericho]

Okay from my own acnecdotal experience: the day I decided to give up on DMing 3.5 was after a grueling AP made by Paizo. The schackled city Adventure path. I loved the setting, I loved the plot. But the encounters were tiresome, maybe it was not paizo's fault, but they made their encounters geared to maxed out characters and any non-optimized party would surely end in a TPK.

I'm not sure it's specificalyy Paizo, so much as high-level published adventures in general that have this problem. With limited page counts, they have to make sure every encounter counts. Amongst other things, this means they ramp up the difficulty. It also contributes a lot to the "5 minute adventuring day" issue.

Additionally, in order to cut down on stat blocks, they faced a certain pressure to use Monster Manual creatures where possible. Unfortunately, in 3.5e this gave few high-level choices other than Evil Outsiders. This could lead to things readily becoming repetitive. Not to mention that these are amongst the hardest monsters to run well, what with all their spell-like abilities.

I know 3.5 High level rules were not the best, but how many of you got to this revelation after playing any of the Paizo's APs? How many of you gave up on 3.5 shortly after that?

In the course of a recent house move, I came upon some of the old "Countdown to 3rd Edition" issues of Dragon magazine. Ironically, one of the design goals they state is that the game should work properly across the whole of the level range. Peter Adkison was particularly interested in high-level play, that being his personal favourite.

Personally, I suspect that Paizo aren't directly to blame for a lot of the problems people have seen at the high levels of their APs, but rather that for many people those APs represent the bulk of their high-level experience in 3.5e. They're certainly the bulk of our shared high-level experience. So, I suspect they may be uncovering and highlighting the existing problems, rather than being at the root of those problems.

 

[Drkfathr1]

No offense to anyone, but I wouldn't blame Paizo for this...I'd blame the DM's. As a DM you have to know what your players can handle, and what constitutes a balanced or tough encounter for them. (and when to recognize an impossible encounter).

Those over the top, very maximized, near impossible end battles can be easily toned down to a more appropriate level of difficulty.

Should they be tough? Sure. Should they have the potential for character deaths? Sure.

Should they be TPK with little chance of survival? No.

 

[Fenes]

I haven't had much trouble running high-level 3.X, though I don't do much combat.

We usually have to cut down 90% of the combat encounters if we ever use a bought adventure.

 

[BryonD]

I have no clue on the data.....

But I would wager that more than 75% of the high level play amongst ENWorld posters was associated with Paizo APs.

I don't think Paizo correlates with high level problems beyond the level that Paizo correlates with all high level play.