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

[Runestar]

I would say that the main issue is the difficulty for a company to create a "1-size-fits-all" template that caters to different gaming groups. You have some parties who are extremely optimized, and others with less optimized PCs. Where do you settle for a middle ground? I have heard reports of lv14 parties taking down the tarrasque, others still having problems with it at lv20.

So the disparity is even more apparent compared to lower levels.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Thanks for trying to twist my words, but I think I made my point.

Paizo could only work with the rules they had.

I think you did your point badly, that's why I twisted it - Neither Paizo or DMs can be blamed for short-comings of a system.

Or at least, either cannot be singled out more than the other.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

If every member of your group multiclassed with the bard because they wanted to also be a travelling group of musicians and write songs about their adventurers, and kick ass.

FIFY.

I thought everybody ran this campaign:

 

[Arkobla Conn]

A tangent question

If D&D didn't escalate the level limits, instead keeping it around level 10ish, how would the 3e ruleset be evaluated? Most of my games were between 5 and 12...so we never saw the power creep most folks complain about.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

What are the non-paizo, high-level adventures that we can compare these to? Can we say that "company X" does high-level 3.5 really well? Does Whiterock or World's Largest Dungeon fix the high-level burnout problem?

I ran a high-level 3.5 game from first through 21st level or so, drawing on the original 3rd edition modules from Sunless Citadel through Bastion of Broken Souls. I hit some massive burnout points there as well. High-level is a beast to run, and your players need to be on their game, all the time, to run their characters effectively. Preparing for it takes a lot of work as well, and not everyone wants to devote that kind of time to mind-numbing number-crunching.

There is also Ptolus. Our DM is running it right now and after all this talk of high level play problems I was asking him if he was burning out because I wanted to go to level 20. The answer I got surprised me. Not only wasn't he burning out, but he also wanted to continue on into epic level play so that he could run more stuff from the book.

 

[DwarvenDog]

@Brown Jerkin, does your Ptolus DM have experience with other 3E high-level games where he DID get burned out with the system? Or is the Ptolus game a first attempt at getting to these levels?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I would say that the main issue is the difficulty for a company to create a "1-size-fits-all" template that caters to different gaming groups. You have some parties who are extremely optimized, and others with less optimized PCs. Where do you settle for a middle ground? I have heard reports of lv14 parties taking down the tarrasque, others still having problems with it at lv20.

So the disparity is even more apparent compared to lower levels.

I think it's also a little the "fault" of the system to allow parties with these great power discrepancies. It certainly makes it hard to create a one-size-fits-all adventure under these circumstances.

 

[kitsune9]

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

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)

Not me. I never minded too much of the high level play for 3.5; however, I think it is because I've always ran campaigns from 1st to 20th level and even epic and didn't mind running the encounters. My only issue with high level play for 3.5 was the amount of time to write up encounters for it and that I think it high level could have been better for speeding up play, but it is what it is, so I run with it. I know others here felt differently and just hated it and that's okay too. Everyone's got their different take on high level play for 3.5.

Paizo's adventure's are a bit tough. Age of Worms was the last AP I just ran and it was brutal. My players needed about 7-8 characters to effectively deal with a lot of encounters so they hired mercs and took leadership to get cohorts to round out their party. When they got to the end battle, they had 10 characters in their party and it still drained all their resources.

 

[Storminator]

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).

I ran a high-level 3.5 game from first through 21st level or so, drawing on the original 3rd edition modules from Sunless Citadel through Bastion of Broken Souls. I hit some massive burnout points there as well. High-level is a beast to run, and your players need to be on their game, all the time, to run their characters effectively. Preparing for it takes a lot of work as well, and not everyone wants to devote that kind of time to mind-numbing number-crunching.

In my case, I don't hold Paizo responsible at all.

I'm way to busy to make my own adventures for 3e. I chose to play published modules, without modification, because it was that or don't play. No one else would DM either.

And it's fine at low levels. But when I printed out the 10 page stat block for a Vrock (with all the SLAs and spell descriptions, and the Dretch stat block thrown in) it occurred to me that I was still doing more prep than I wanted to run an unmodified adventure.

I did have some non-rules issues with Savage Tides. I thought Sasserine was extremely cool, and was kind of sad that the adventure path went away from it and never returned. I would have liked a more sandbox approach to the Isle of Dread itself. I thought the pearls didn't actually work well as a doomsday device. But I thought they were some pretty solid adventures over all.

PS

 

[Gothmog]

Paizo is not responsible for the high-level problems of 3.x- that is a built-in fault of the system.

However, IMO Paizo is responsible for escalating the arms race in their modules and materials, and for bad encounter design. I believe from previous comments I've seen on ENWorld and the Paizo board its even been publicly stated by Paizo that they assume all PCs should be optomized who play their adventures, and that many of the encounters are designed to be very difficult/meat-grinders. I know after we played about 60% through Age of Worms, we quit playing 3.x althogether due to the royal PITA running and playing a game had become, and went on to other systems until 4e came out. I loved the concepts and story for AoW, but the implementation was terrible IMO.

Ourph made a very good point about the power escalation in Paizo products, and their use of custom monsters. Personally, I like custom monsters- it keeps PCs on their toes. While many of the Paizo monsters are very cool conceptually, many of them seem overdesigned, such that they are not on par with monsters from the MM of the same CR, which makes it hard for a DM to know what he's getting himself into with Paizo materials. This is a trend I've noticied in Paizo stuff from the start- they tend to increase the power such that you're playing "D&D with the power level cranked up to 17". Having seen their APs so far and the Pathfinder Beta ruleset, it hasn't eased my reservations with Paizo, and it seems to be a chronic problem with them IMO.