Forked Thread: So, about Expertise...

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

Forked from: So, about Expertise...

I'm going to run 1 or more experimental encounters at epic level to test the theory that epic is too easy. I wanted to discuss my experiment design in here before I went off and actually do the work, so that we get a fair and solid experiment. I'll post the results.

I'm going to have 5 players build level 22 pc's.
I'm going to restrict the feats, powers, items and classes to PHB 1 only so that I don't have to worry too much about power creep. I might allow each player to take one magic item from the adventurers vault, just to widen their choices some.

I'm going to design 4-5 encounters in the N+2 to N+4 range.

the pc's will not have prior knowledge of the encounter composition.

I think I'll give each level 22 pc his choice of 8 magic items. This is less than pc's might expect to acquire in a career but more than double the suggested starting allotment for pc's starting at high level.
A choice of one of these arrays for magic item level:
(24, 22, 22, 21, 20, 19, 17, 15) or (23, 23, 22, 21, 20, 20, 16, 15) substituting a lower level item in a higher level item slot is fine. Each pc will also receive 1 potion of vitality.

If I decide to use one encounter only I'm going to subtract 3 surges from each player and randomly have pc's roll to expend 1 item daily and 1 daily power from each pc to simulate that encounters are cumulative and there will often be previous wear and tear on the pc's prior to entering an encounter. Each pc will also roll a d6 and lose his AP on a 1 or a 2. Alternatively I might have the pc's play an N+2 encounter, short rest and play an N+3 encounter. I think these two will have similar effects on the party but my random subtraction will obviously be much easier from a workload stand point.

I might try a second experiment with the +2 math allowed for each pc. No feat taken, just give all pc's +2 to all ATT's at level 16. I'll definitely do this if the initial test kills one or more pc's.

I'm very interested in hearing what others think of the variables I'm choosing for the experiment. Namely, random power removal, magic item levels, and encounter levels.

Thanks,
Bo

 

[KarinsDad]

I think you should limit the party composition to having at least one PC from each role. Although other combinations are possible, the game really is designed with this default setup and alternative setups such as three strikers and zero leaders will skew your results.

Additionally, you need to give the players more time than normal to examine their PC's abililties during each round. It takes a while for a player to understand PC capabilities if they have never played that PC, especially at higher levels. As an experiment that is supposed to measure how easy higher level is, the DM cannot rush the players into making decisions, or by definition the DM will be making the encounter harder due to rushed choices on the part of the players.

 

[Plane Sailing]

If you have the character generator, you could get it to generate five appropriate 22nd level characters to get an wotc-themed view of a party.

regarding presence or absence of action points, is there any reason why you don't just give a 50% chance of it being present? Since they come back every two encounters.

Although it would be more work, I think that doing two encounters would be much better than randomly removing a couple of powers (especially since there is very likely to be some power synergies which the player would expect to be able to use together)

Cheers

 

[KarinsDad]

regarding presence or absence of action points, is there any reason why you don't just give a 50% chance of it being present? Since they come back every two encounters.

I thought his 2/3rds chance was reasonable.

If one is doing a random encounter in time, more than half of the PCs do have their actions points IME. Our players always save their action points for tougher encounters or bad tactical situations. A few of our players spent them a bit more frivolously when we first started playing, but that's stopped happening. They are hoarded more now and at least for our group, more than half of actions points are available the vast majority of the time.

Although it would be more work, I think that doing two encounters would be much better than randomly removing a couple of powers (especially since there is very likely to be some power synergies which the player would expect to be able to use together)

Agreed.

It would also address the action point issue with multiple encounters starting at the beginning of the day. The players just need to know that this is a regular encounter day so that they will save their action points and dailies appropriately.

Personally, if the encounters are going to be n+2 to n+4, I think 3 consecutive encounters would gain the information the OP wants and there would be no need for random removal of powers or action points.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

I think you should limit the party composition to having at least one PC from each role. Although other combinations are possible, the game really is designed with this default setup and alternative setups such as three strikers and zero leaders will skew your results.

I sort of thought about this as the most likely situation (2 strikers, leader, controller, defender) but flexible on the second striker. I definitely will add this to the experiment design.

Additionally, you need to give the players more time than normal to examine their PC's abililties during each round. It takes a while for a player to understand PC capabilities if they have never played that PC, especially at higher levels. As an experiment that is supposed to measure how easy higher level is, the DM cannot rush the players into making decisions, or by definition the DM will be making the encounter harder due to rushed choices on the part of the players.

Hmmm, if I hold myself to the same stricture of acting in 60 second intervals I'm not sure that I'm actually penalizing the pc's at all, they effectively get 10 minutes of thinking per action and I get less than 2 (I understand that only the last minute of each interval has the "full view" of the tactical situation but I know I am already pretty sure of my next action before it's my turn in most encounters). Fantasygrounds also has a pretty solid interface for reviewing your powers but I do need to consider this since I don't want to unfairly bias the experiment. IME the one minute rule actually seems to have a galvanizing effect on players making them focus more on the encounter.

If you have the character generator, you could get it to generate five appropriate 22nd level characters to get an wotc-themed view of a party.

I'm not a subscriber but my DM is so I could possibly have him take a look.

regarding presence or absence of action points, is there any reason why you don't just give a 50% chance of it being present? Since they come back every two encounters.

I find 50% to be low. If you have an odd number of encounters per day you actually have more than 50% availability and my gaming group tends to try and save them if possible. If you have 3 encounters in a day your AP availability is 2/3's and if you have 5 it's 3/5's. I chose 2/3's as a rough approximation, it's not perfect but there's a lot of random chance built into that number anyway. If you did exceedingly well or exceedingly poor on a previous encounter your odds would change a lot. bottom line is 50/50 seems too low to me.

Although it would be more work, I think that doing two encounters would be much better than randomly removing a couple of powers (especially since there is very likely to be some power synergies which the player would expect to be able to use together)

Cheers

great point. perhaps this would be offset somewhat by making them roll for one power to be used up and then select the other.

I thought his 2/3rds chance was reasonable.

wow we agree on something

It would also address the action point issue with multiple encounters starting at the beginning of the day. The players just need to know that this is a regular encounter day so that they will save their action points and dailies appropriately.

Right, I'll call it "a day in the life at 22nd level". I wouldn't simply spring the second encounter on them after their dailies were all gone.

Personally, if the encounters are going to be n+2 to n+4, I think 3 consecutive encounters would gain the information the OP wants and there would be no need for random removal of powers or action points.

If I ran an N+2.5, then an N+2, then an N+3+ and the pc's didn't feel challenged I would feel very certain that epic is not fun.

I hadn't planned on this level of "work" but anything worth doing is worth doing well. If I'm actually going to simulate a challenging day for these pc's I'm thinking 3 encounters with budgets in the neighborhood of: 33k, 31k, and 40k(N+3.5) this would give them each about 42% of the experience to go up a level. This also represents what we find to be a challenging day in our campaign in heroic so I mentally have something to compare it to.

This also artificially guarantees that they all have an AP in the final (big) encounter, but I'm OK with that. A 3.5 is a serious encounter and I'm not out to kill the pc's I want to find out if epic is actually viable from a fun/playability/challenge standpoint.

 

[Regicide]

Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress is already out. Just run it.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress is already out. Just run it.

I could do that but I think I prefer to control the encounter design for several reasons. 1st I don't really want any N or N+1 encounters because they're sort of a waste of time with regard to measuring "challenge". Second, sometimes the published mods have a ridiculous encounter that will call into question the results. Third, with a published adventure there's a greater chance of prior knowledge.

I was out running errands today and it occurred to me that since this will take a lot of man hours played out (especially if I play 3 encounters possibly twice if I go back and do it again with the +2 math correction) maybe the way to do it is play by post. I could update a map and status chart on the web every round and the players would each basically need to make one post per round. I work from home and build online database applications so I can handle posting 5 times per round pretty easily. I figure as long as everyone who was interested in contributing has regular access to their email throughout the day it would only take them 10-15 minutes a day to get through 2-3 rounds. You read what has happened before you and you take your actions. I'll put a dice roller online on the same page as the map and give everyone playing their own password so that no one can write to the dice roll file who isn't the active player.

there are a lot of posters on this site who make more than 3 posts a day (there's a synergy issue in that you might be waiting for someone else to act otherwise I would think we could get 4-5 rounds a day) anyone interested in being a pc?

karinsdad? keterys? planesailing?

 

[Plane Sailing]

I like the idea but I'm in the wrong timezone (and I'm going to be at a conference all next week without access to the web) so I'll not be able to help out.

(agree with the reasoning on the AP issue now, BTW)

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

I like the idea but I'm in the wrong timezone (and I'm going to be at a conference all next week without access to the web) so I'll not be able to help out.

(agree with the reasoning on the AP issue now, BTW)

My daughters are in town for 10 days, I'm only working a few hours a day while they're here so I won't be at the pc as much anyway. I'm going to try and do this in April either with people on FG2 or else I'll find 5 players who can make 3-5 posts a day. I just like the idea that we won't have to spend 2-3 long gaming sessions working through this and peoples time wouldn't be tied up during other players actions. I would think you could read the current situation and pick an action in 2-10 minutes on most turns. So you would probably be looking at no more than 10-20 minutes a day though it might take 2-3 weeks to complete the encounters. I think we all spend more than 10-20 minutes most days on DND