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

[Freakohollik]

1st: at the end of the Whispering Cairn. 5x 1st and 2nd level characters fighting 2x power gamed 6th level monsters (the Wind Duke's soldiers) which are given automatic surprise and, with +9 Initiative almost certainly first action in the round after that. A miracle* any one survived.

I remember this fight. I was worried that it would be TPK, but when we actually ran it my group of 4 3rd level PCs rolled over those wind dukes no problem. There was a psychic warrior, druid, wizard, and a knight. The psychic warrior was great with a bow, so even though the wind dukes were flying they couldn't win fighting at range. They then closed to melee and got hurt even harder. Those wind dukes had no chance at all.

But we did have a TPK against the grick. It had DR 10/magic and the party had just one magic weapon. Also, it made its save against sleep.

I never ran the second adventure, but it looked like a lot of fun.

 

[Desert Hare]

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).

qft.

 

[S'mon]

There are a lot of good points and excellent observations in this thread... many of which were the same good points and excellent observations that led us at Paizo to choose to limit Pathfinder's adventure paths to the 1st–14th level band, or thereabouts.

One advantage of making it 1-14 is that a GM with fewer or less skilled players can run it as a 3-16 instead, or even as a 5-18 (though the initial encounters may be rather easy for 5th level PCs), using the written stats, and it should work. You can't do that with an AP written as 1-20.

 

[delericho]

Above level 8 or so, 3.5E combat tended to involve a lot of:

1. Text messaging
2. 2 people getting together to optimally create/manage characters for other games, or one person doing the same alone
3. Surfing the internet on laptops
4. Playing video games on laptops, handhelds, and phones
5. Knitting
6. Reading comic books from the stacks of the store we were playing at
7. Writing adventures for another game they are DMing
8. Crossword puzzles
9. Tuning out the world while listening to an iPod
10. Simply reading D&D sourcebooks brought to the game

I have honestly seen every one of these occur during 3.5E combat, and on multiple occasions. It just comes with the territory of 30 minute turns before your next chance to act.

Of course, it's entirely possible that all of that goofing off and not paying attention contributed somewhat to those 30 combat rounds.

 

[cangrejoide]

System mastery plays a role here.

Certainly you can fault any system that introduces options for the PCs faster than the players can assimilate them.

IMHO System mastery is what killed 3e. We want to play, not just have to plan out and methodically select everything optimized for our character.

 

[cangrejoide]

Oh I know.

I've ran for groups of ROLEplayers. Those same groups just got frustrated and confused when they leveled up.

I've also seen a group who made their choices based on their CHARACTER. Where the only healer is a Cleric 3/Pal 2. The only spellcaster is a Sorcerer 3/Rogue 2. And the party routinely got its ass handed to it because the DM went by the book with CRs.

I don't have anything against that style, but I feel bad for those players. Because I believe that 1) 3e punishes you for playing that way, and 2) it leads to frustration for that kind of player, because they're fighting against the system itself. Not to mention that 3) I feel there's not a lot of more fluff, less combat focused options for those types of players.

No, I'm not a fan of system mastery.

Well my group was half/half, so basically I had to make up 2 encounters. The tough guys to attack the minmaxed players and the minions or lackeys that would attack the 'roleplayers'. In the end chaos and hilarity ensued.

 

[cangrejoide]

Never played high level before. Started 3.5 and soon after 4e came out. Besides spellcasters kicking ass, which, I don't have a problem with since that is what the Wizard is all about, what other problems are there?

It seems to me like melee fighters in high level just do multiple attacks. Roll like, what, 4 d20s and then damage.

There was talk of grindiness. How's this different from 4e grind? 4e high level monsters have like, 800-2000 HP. While high-level damage output is...4-6[W] + Strength mod. Difference?

I'm also hearing talk of monsters kicking too much ass. So far in my experience with D&D 4e, with Dungeons own Scale of War AP, there are so many encounters that are much above the parties level. I've been in encounter after encounter where at least there has almost been a TPK or at least 3-4 characters unconscious.

Just wanting to hear the differences since I've never played high 3.5.

Well OTTOMH, the one huge big difference is that under 3E I could TPK the whole party in 1 round ( save vs Die, huge DMG output, etc) while on 4E a TPK ussually occurs after a long while and many tactical choices have been taken. So in 4E TPK occur more from bad tactical choices than in 3E which was ussually was a bad random roll that dictated the outcome.

There is also that in 3E you could have 1 character that could do anyting ( combat monster) while in 4E the combat is more about teamplaying and synergy between characters.

 

[cangrejoide]

Of course, it's entirely possible that all of that goofing off and not paying attention contributed somewhat to those 30 combat rounds.

Well if the system itself did not work to hold the attention or capture imagination while in combat, you can hardly blame the players ( which I hear statistically 80% have ADD).

 

[Jeff Wilder]

IMHO System mastery is what killed 3e.

In your opinion, 3E is dead? Really?

System mastery is such a weird concept. On the one hand, I want the fact that I know the rules pretty well to have some bearing on my enjoyment of the game (including in creating characters). On the other hand, I don't want someone new to the game -- or just a more casual player -- to get screwed.

Then you've got the idea of deliberately built in rules mastery, where the "traps" are pretty obvious to folks that are paying attention. On the other hand, if designers try to eliminate that, they create a situation where it actually takes more skill to recognize which options are less powerful, because the gap is smaller and less obvious.

I think that the extent to which rules mastery is a problem in 3E is proportional to the amount that players in a group are in "silent conflict" to have the toughest, meanest, baddest sumbitch of a character.

My groups experience that syndrome toabout a 0.5, on a scale of 1 to 10, so 3E's system mastery isn't a downside for us.

 

[delericho]

IMHO System mastery is what killed 3e. We want to play, not just have to plan out and methodically select everything optimized for our character.

If you and your group just want to play, without worrying about character optimisation then... why not just play and not worry about character optimisation? The game rules don't actually require you to painstakingly search all those books in order to eke out every possible +1 bonus, you know.

And if you're concerned that your PCs will now be unable to face off against the challenges in published adventures, I have to solution for that too: if the DM gives out 125% of the XP he 'should' give out, the party will rise in levels faster, which will naturally compensate for the 'optimisation gap' as the level of the adventures goes up.