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

[DaveMage]

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.

Agreed. The problem is, it really is too much, but I don't want to give anything up. (That sounds irrational, and it probably is. It's kind of like having available too many desserts to choose from--all of which you love. You don't want anyone to take away your dessert choices, even though you couldn't possibly eat them all.)

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.

I enjoy both. However, I can understand the negative(s) about selecting and planning too much.

That's the inherent problem with "Adventure Paths" though. The characters and DM have to suit the adventures to make it through, rather than the adventures suiting the players and DM.

Much better, imo, to run modules as you go through the campaign, such as DCCs, choosing them as to what's appropriate for your group.

If one loves to homebrew, then you're exactly right. However, there are times when you want to beat an adventure - be it a one-shot like the Tomb of Horrors, or a full adventure path. Groups may want to play the Paizo APs for the challenge - to test their playing ability rather than for the purpose of immersing themselves in a character. (Granted, those things are not necessarily mutually exclusive.)

 

[cangrejoide]

You know, I did actually address that. In fact, in the paragraph immediately after the one you quoted.

If the DM gives out more XP than the PCs 'should' receive, they'll gain levels faster. Over the course of the campaign, this will naturally compensate for the 'optimisation gap' between the characters they have and the characters that the adventure assumes.

Still, it's a moot point now. Groups wanting to "just play" would probably be better served by 4e anyway.

Bur even here system mastery fails, you see an optimized 3rd level fighter is maginitudes better than 5th or even a 6th level fighter. And if you have a mixed group, wold you give extra xps to the unoptimized warrior and not to the rest of the party?

Quick solutions do not fix this, they only agravate the problem.

 

[billd91]

But, lacking system mastery, to what extend do I need to increase the advancement?

There's no specific formula and you may not even have to do it. The DM's job is to know his players and their PCs and have a rough idea of what they can and cannot do. And then, if running a tailored campaign like an AP, adjust the AP a bit to accomodate the play style of the group.

I've been running Shackled City for a group of 5 players, only one of which does a lot of optimization, and they're doing quite well without me nerfing a thing. That one player who powergames the most is very much a team player. The characters he makes up have very interesting suites of powers that work well together, but he works well with the rest of the party, doesn't hog the spotlight, and exhibits a lot of in-character leadership.
He also DMs a lot and so has a good perspective on RP gaming in general.

When you've got that sort of thing going for a gaming group, system mastery, and differences between player's levels of system mastery, aren't much of a problem. It's mainly a problem when the ones with mastery don't work well with those without it or don't recognize how that difference interacts with the game as it will be presented by the DM.

 

[cangrejoide]

Ah Plissken... you poor naive waif!

Let's discuss the high level hasted, two-weapon fighter, with multiple attacks with both hands, each with a different modifier, each weapon with a different special ability that interacts with the monster's DR differently...

You roll 8 d20, add a different number to each one, calculate and report each one's damage individually, including the special abilities that go with each roll! Then the DM subtracts a different number from each roll, totals the results and reduces the monster's hp. And if the monster has regeneration or fast healing, there's a possibility those separate damages have to be tracked separately for the entire combat. Hopefully this high level fighter isn't a dervish, with movement in there between each attack, attacking different enemies on each (or some!) roll.

Oh, or a druid with an animal companion, 6 summoned creatures (all with multiple attacks... each one different...) and special conditional attacks like Rend, which depends on whether or not some of the base attacks hit. This player might need to move 8 allies (including himself) and make up to 20 attacks (all with different modifiers, damages, and damage types) and resolve a high level spell each turn.

4 or 5 PCs like that and it'll be half an hour to get back to your turn.

PS

This pretty much sums my experience with high level combat+ add the DMs turn to attack with NPCS and enemies.

 

[ki11erDM]

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).

DMs bought an adventure from Paizo and they expected it to work. So yes, it was Paizo's fault.

I ran AoW for a few reasons, but the main one was I did not have the time to do all the prep work for a new campaign. If I am paying someone to do that prep work then I expect it to be reasonable. And I honestly think it was... it was just a perfect illustration of why 3.x was not going to work over level 14 or so.

Also... how many DMs do you think actually have exp running level 20 encounters? I know I have been playing and DMing since... 85ish... and that was the first time I had ether played or DMed at that level. Which probably speaks more about how broken high level play is than any AP.

But as you can see from the my quote in the OP, we did not have a TPK, the encounters were just a mind numbing grind. By the last two or three adventures all the story was done, all the mysteries were known, the only thing the players had left to do was grind out some encounters… seemingly endless 3-5 hour long encounters. That’s why I laugh my arse off anytime I see the ‘4e is a grind’ or ‘4e kills role playing’ threads, those people are just totally out of touch hehe.

 

[billd91]

Isn't this simply because of the spread in effectiveness between characters of the same class at different levels?

An unoptimized 5th level cleric is going to be almost as effective as an optimized 5th level cleric simply due to the lack of options. Contrast that with a 15th level cleric and how much of a spread there is between unoptimized and optimized.

It isn't just the difference between optimized and unoptimized but also the difference between divergent development paths thanks to all of the options. Because of the number and variety of options, it's quite hard to predict just what sort of character composition you'll see at high levels. And I think that's why there so much variation in people's experiences with adventure paths.

I also think that's one reason Paizo now prefers to end a path around 15th level now. Leave any adventuring beyond that to the DM who knows his players best and knows the choices they've been making.

 

[delericho]

But, lacking system mastery, to what extend do I need to increase the advancement?

Lacking the magical ability to see the particulars of the individual group in question, how could I (or the DMG writers, or the authors at Paizo) possibly answer that question? The best thing to do is to pick a number and see how it goes. Over time, the amount may need to be increased or decreased, or might be just right.

And the same is true of the CR system as well - it is flat impossible to write a system that will work for every group in every situation. So, the thing to do is try it and then adjust the difficulty up or down as required.

Honestly, is it too much to expect a modicum of intelligent thought from DMs? Or does that also fall under "system mastery"?

 

[wedgeski]

Honestly, is it too much to expect a modicum of intelligent thought from DMs? Or does that also fall under "system mastery"?

No, it falls under, "I thought buying adventures was supposed to help me, but I just spent an hour adjusting this encounter down from a certain TPK to a likely TPK. Why am I paying for this again?"

I would expect the adventure itself to help the DM do this, at least by offering advice on how to scale the encounter down... or preferably, given a choice, up. I don't recall whether the Dungeon-era AP's did this, but it's patently unfair to blame anything except the adventure (and to some extent the system) for this problem.

 

[delericho]

No, it falls under, "I thought buying adventures was supposed to help me, but I just spent an hour adjusting this encounter down from a certain TPK to a likely TPK. Why am I paying for this again?"

When using a single pre-published adventure, you can fix this in one step by running an adventure for a slightly lower level than your group. So, for a 6th level group, you might run a 5th level adventure without modification. Simple.

In an adventure path context, you can fix this by giving out more XP to the group as they progress. (In the first adventure, you will probably also need to give them more opportunity to rest between encounters than you normally would.) As the campaign progresses, they'll move ahead of the recommended levels, closing the 'optimisation gap', and so fix the problem. Simple.

If you refuse to do this, then yes, you are left with having to do the work to adjust the adventures. Short of eating up thousands of words from their very limited page counts, the adventure writers simply cannot print more than the most cursory of adaptation notes - to the point where even including those cursory adaptation notes becomes pointless.

Or perhaps I should complain that every single 4e adventure that has ever and will ever be published is utterly worthless, because they assume a 5 PC party, and I only have 3 players?

 

[Dragonblade]

Ah Plissken... you poor naive waif!

Let's discuss the high level hasted, two-weapon fighter, with multiple attacks with both hands, each with a different modifier, each weapon with a different special ability that interacts with the monster's DR differently...

You roll 8 d20, add a different number to each one, calculate and report each one's damage individually, including the special abilities that go with each roll! Then the DM subtracts a different number from each roll, totals the results and reduces the monster's hp. And if the monster has regeneration or fast healing, there's a possibility those separate damages have to be tracked separately for the entire combat. Hopefully this high level fighter isn't a dervish, with movement in there between each attack, attacking different enemies on each (or some!) roll.

Oh, or a druid with an animal companion, 6 summoned creatures (all with multiple attacks... each one different...) and special conditional attacks like Rend, which depends on whether or not some of the base attacks hit. This player might need to move 8 allies (including himself) and make up to 20 attacks (all with different modifiers, damages, and damage types) and resolve a high level spell each turn.

4 or 5 PCs like that and it'll be half an hour to get back to your turn.

PS

Heh... You just exactly described our high level 3.5 games.

Thankfully, we all play 4e now.