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

[Voadam]

That's lvl 1-15, IIRC.

I think you are right. Edited above.

 

[Spatula]

The idea that the Paizo adventures burned out some GMs is interesting, though.

I think earlier posters who have noted that the Paizo APs are the mechanism by which many DMs first experienced high-level 3e have the right of it. High-level 3e simply burns out DMs. If Paizo shares any of the responsibility for that, it's in creating real meat-grinder adventures that killed campaign continuity for some groups. Perhaps also, Paizo helped create the perception that those levels are just as readily plug-and-play as the "sweet spot" levels (via the mere fact that the original APs go to 20), thus setting up false expectations for the adventures.

 

[DaveMage]

Thank goodness you chose "faster play, but give up options" over "quicker play with less options."

Tough call.

Crap.

That should be: I'll take more options with slower play over less options with faster play. *sigh*

 

[DaveMage]

I think earlier posters who have noted that the Paizo APs are the mechanism by which many DMs first experienced high-level 3e have the right of it. High-level 3e simply burns out DMs. If Paizo shares any of the responsibility for that, it's in creating real meat-grinder adventures that killed campaign continuity for some groups. Perhaps also, Paizo helped create the perception that those levels are just as readily plug-and-play as the "sweet spot" levels (via the mere fact that the original APs go to 20), thus setting up false expectations for the adventures.

With the benefit of others playtesting, I've decided that the Paizo adventure path adventures (as well as Necromancer Games adventures) must be played at the upper limit. So if an adventure lists that it's for levels 6-8, it's best to have 8th level PCs to start.

 

[S'mon]

With the benefit of others playtesting, I've decided that the Paizo adventure path adventures (as well as Necromancer Games adventures) must be played at the upper limit. So if an adventure lists that it's for levels 6-8, it's best to have 8th level PCs to start.

That's a good rule of thumb. Another way of looking at is that they assume 6 PCs, not 4, and heavily min-maxed PCs with highly competent players. For typical normally skilled players, add 2 levels. For a party of 4, add 2 levels (you might get away with add 1 level if the PCs cover all the bases and are min-maxed, but 2 is safer).

So where the adventure says "6-8", and you have 4 typical PCs and 4 averagely skilled players, you need to add on 4 levels to the lowest listed - ie it's actually a 10th level scenario!

 

[MerricB]

I wrote about this last year:

How Paizo made me hate 3E

Although Paizo was somewhat constrained by the rules system, it also made some staggeringly dumb decisions in encounter design; for instance: Kyuss, the final encounter of the Age of Worms, is immune to sneak attacks (and an Aberration, not undead), meaning that any rogue who has played through the entire series is pretty much useless in the final encounter. Our rogue did 3 damage to Kyuss.

The less said about the Spire of Long Shadows the better.

So, while Paizo wrote what were and are generally good and memorable adventures within the limits of the system, some of its designs exacerbated the problems with the 3e system.

Cheers!

 

[cangrejoide]

I wrote about this last year:

How Paizo made me hate 3E

Although Paizo was somewhat constrained by the rules system, it also made some staggeringly dumb decisions in encounter design; for instance: Kyuss, the final encounter of the Age of Worms, is immune to sneak attacks (and an Aberration, not undead), meaning that any rogue who has played through the entire series is pretty much useless in the final encounter. Our rogue did 3 damage to Kyuss.

The less said about the Spire of Long Shadows the better.

So, while Paizo wrote what were and are generally good and memorable adventures within the limits of the system, some of its designs exacerbated the problems with the 3e system.

Cheers!

Very good read.

I'll add that under 4E AOW shines.

For example here is how I did the Xyrzog encounter:

On my AOW game one of the bosses is a mindflayer with 2 land octopus ( Octopin?) on a circular chamber with a pool that has mindflayer larva in it.

For my 4E game I redesigned the encounter and placed the Mindflayer on a ledge ( 15' high) so that he would attack and dominate Pcs, meanwhile I placed 8 crystal tubes with a humanoid corpse in it. During the encounter an Intellect Devourer will jump into the corpses to animate them and attack the Pcs. The PCs can shatter the tubes to prevent the Intellect devourer from animating the corpses. After all 8 corpse are either animated or destroyed the Intellect devourer will flee ( the Intellect devourer actually doesn't have stats he is just a encounter device).

Meanwhile any person 'pushed' into the center pool will be attack by the larvae, also any broken tubes will create an area of caustic fumes and broken glass which will harm anyone passing or being pushed into.

The mindlfayer himself will also have a telekinetic power once he is bloodied so he can push people into the pool or the broken tubes. And the very end he will levitate to the center of the room and use his telekinetic power to create a maelstrom of caustic fumes and broken glass as an aoe in the room for one round.

So from a normal run of the mill encounter I may have made a more dinamic and scripted combat. I been Gming for years but for some reason ( mostly after the WOW influences) I enjoy so much more creating this sort of scripted combats. I think my players will really enjoy this ( and after this weekend I'll come and post how it went).

from: What WOW taught me about Gming in 4E... - RPGnet Forums

 

[Khairn]

My group could quote mostly any rule from the book by memory and we had all the combat stats totals written out before hand ( yes we used power cards back then ), and still the combat rounds tended to drag on. A simple boss combat could last from a couple of minutes to hours. The disparity of High end 3.5 really was troublesome.

As a DM fudging an encounter could really speed it up, but not all groups like extreme fudging.

I guess we were just lucky with either the players, adventures or combats we played because I never experienced the mind numbing extended combats that many are attributing to 3.5 Certainly boss mobs or combats involving many targets could become protracted, but I've only seen the protracted battles when we weren't paying attention. Of course YMMV.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Crap.

That should be: I'll take more options with slower play over less options with faster play. *sigh*

Curses!

In that case we disagree.

(Although personally I am on a sliding scale... some options matter, some don't.)

 

[James Jacobs]

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.