I am beginning to appreciate some of the design decisions of 4E.

[the Jester]

How in the world does it take 2.5 hours to put together a spell list? People always come in with these stories about massive amounts of time required to set up encounters and I just don't buy it. Most of my encounters are run on the fly with absolutely no prep time.

Try running epic 3.5 without playing fast & loose with the rules and you should see what folks are talking about when they say these things.

Heck, I remember spending six or eight hours on a single epic villain more than once, between advancing/leveling/prestige classing and custom spells, items, epic spells, etc. Not to mention having a couple of versions of alternative stat blocks available for the page's worth of spell buffs being fully active, (mostly) inactive (except for constant or permanent effects) and completely disjoined. (In an epic game, if you don't have this ready, things grind to a halt after the first spellcaster takes his turn.) I would routinely spend far more time in prep than in actual game play during my epic campaign. Don't get me wrong, it was worth it- I really enjoyed it- but it was a ton of work, especially as the bad guys often died without having a chance to act. Wince.

So the reduction in prep time that 4e offers is fantastic.

That said, it's easy to get around the superlong prep times in high-level 3e by simply not slavishly following the rules; estimate skill points without worrying about cross-class costs, wing the feat selection past a certain point, only worry about the top three levels of spells, etc.

What I find interesting about the way that 4e did it is that it basically takes all those shortcuts and makes them RAW. What skills does this monster have? Well, what does it need? What feats does it have? Don't worry about it. Here, give it enough cool stuff to do and call it good. Oh, it's supposed to be a villainous fighter? Let's throw in some powers based on cool fighter powers but make up the actual details to suit. And so on.

I love the tinkery, toolkity nature of 3.5 creature design (pc or monster). Remember when templates were actually cool and worth using? Remember when you could have a gargoyle binder/blackguard that dripped complexity on the page? But the trade off is time and effort and complexity. Instead of "Okay, my damage should be 2d8+10 because of my level", it's "Okay, my base damage is 1d6... but I have Improved Natural Attack, so it's 1d8... my strength bonus is +4, but it's my only natural attack, so I get strength and a half... so that's +6... now, if I have bull's strength and guidance of Galador up, that increases by strength bonus to +6, so +9... and I get an additional +2 vs. chaotic or evil, or +5 vs. Chaotic Evil..." Fiddle fiddle fiddle.

As usual when discussing the differences between different editions, it's all a matter of taste. I think I might actually enjoy the monster design process of 3e more, but it's a hassle to have to use it for a game at high levels.

 

[ruemere]

Except the part where you have to go through all the spells and a) know what they do, and b) pre-prep their level dependent aspects.

Here's the thing: I have nothing against "winging it" in general but I have found that it is far worse to let the game grind to a halt in order to look something up than it is to spend some time prepping. As it is we are only playing a 4 hour session (if that) every 2 weeks (if that). Letting things likelooking up rules and spells eat time is neither fun nor fair.

In addition, I consider it effectively cheating for the GM to just pick spells on the fly. I wouldn't let a PC do it, and I won't do it to them. I am something of a RBDM, so i consider it extra important to "play fair". I can't break rules or it becomes unfair when PCs die.

DISCLAIMER: The post is not meant to antagonize or patronize. This is just a list of basic solutions to basic high level issues.

This is not good if you want to run high level session with no practical knowledge of pertinent rules [1]. And knowing core spells quite important.

Still, it is quite possible:

- Pathfinder Adventure Paths contain excellent entries in NPC stablocks: Before Combat and During Combat. All you need to do, is to find some clerical personnage and borrow both tactics and spells. You don't need more than 3-4 buffs and 3-4 spells.
If in desperate need for valid tactic, drink potion of invisibility and spam Summon spells focusing on elementals.

- leaving open slots is a standard tactic. This is not "winging it", this is RAW for both 3.x and Pathfinder. You need 15 minutes to fill them (or more), but this is the correct way for playing BBEGs at these levels. No adversary is going to know full extent of PC powers, so that's why they are going to throw cannon fodder at the party, while scrying from distance to learn which spells should be memorized.

- use ready-to-run NPCs.
NPCs at d20pfsrd: NPCs - Pathfinder_OGC
Converted AP NPCs at d20pfsrd: Paizo Modules - Pathfinder_OGC

- limit the number of spell sources used by your NPCs. Personally, I prefer to just restrict NPCs to core.

I realize that spellcasters are most difficult to play due to sheer number of options. Yet, most of the problems go away if you realize that you don't need to make them from the scratch.

Regards,
Ruemere

[1] Running high level NPCs requires some experience. You don't need to excel at this, but you need to be able to quickly decide what they do based on their writeups.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

This is not good if you want to run high level session with no practical knowledge of pertinent rules [1]. And knowing core spells quite important.

Depending on the game, the NPC is question might have non-core spells. Not only that, but only accounting for core spells, there are too many to memorize all aspects of the spells.

I ran 3e/3.5e D&D for 8 years and even at the end of the 8th year, you'd still find me stopping in the middle of the game to look up what the range of spell X was or to see if spell X could target objects or allowed a save or what the bonus type it granted was or what the exact wording was on the spell to see if it stopped ability Y from Prestige Class Z.

There's simply too many variables to have a practical knowledge of all the pertinent rules. I began to really hate running any spellcaster who was above level 5 when the number of spells was manageable. And I was easily considered the be the most knowledgeable person in our group regarding the rules.

- leaving open slots is a standard tactic. This is not "winging it", this is RAW for both 3.x and Pathfinder. You need 15 minutes to fill them (or more), but this is the correct way for playing BBEGs at these levels. No adversary is going to know full extent of PC powers, so that's why they are going to throw cannon fodder at the party, while scrying from distance to learn which spells should be memorized.

Yikes. I'd never do this. Mainly because my PCs had this tendency to barge into the BBEGs chamber within 20 minutes of getting through the front door of the castle/dungeon/wherever the BBEG was located. They wouldn't stop to investigate anything, since they didn't want their buffs to run out. So, they'd run from location to location.

Then I'd have to remember the rules for scrying spells, like what the range was, whether you need to have seen the person before or have an item from them, whether they got a save, whether the PCs saw the censor(which I could never remember how it worked, I kept remembering the 3e version while in 3.5e). Then, I'd have to pay close attention to the abilities the PCs used WHILE the scrying was in effect so as to make a decision as to what spells to prepare based only on that information and nothing metagamey(likely while paying attention to the tactics and special abilities of the enemies the PCs were currently fighting, which was already hard to keep track of).

Then, once I had all the information gained from the scrying, I'd need to search through the spell lists in the middle of the game and consider each one("Hmm, Hold Person is useful...did any of the PCs show any mental weakness during that battle? Well...that's a possibility, let's read the next spell...").

This is, of course, assuming the NPC in question has access to scrying magic and/or cannon fodder to throw up against the PCs, that he even knows the PCs are coming, and so on. I've certainly had a number of BBEGs who were simply doing their own thing, trying to conquer the world when the PCs walked up behind them and said "We're here to stop you!" and the BBEG had never ever heard of them before. If the BBEG had left slots open in that situation he just would have been defeated even easier.

I realize that spellcasters are most difficult to play due to sheer number of options. Yet, most of the problems go away if you realize that you don't need to make them from the scratch.

I admit, this was my solution when I ran games. Pretty much the answer was run only preconstructed spellcasters or don't use spellcasters. But even with preconstructed ones, I found myself constantly consulting the book to figure out what their spells did(way more often than if I had just picked them myself, because I pick spells I like...and I like them because I already know what they do).

 

[Votan]

DISCLAIMER: The post is not meant to antagonize or patronize. This is just a list of basic solutions to basic high level issues.

This is not good if you want to run high level session with no practical knowledge of pertinent rules [1]. And knowing core spells quite important.

Still, it is quite possible:

- Pathfinder Adventure Paths contain excellent entries in NPC stablocks: Before Combat and During Combat. All you need to do, is to find some clerical personnage and borrow both tactics and spells. You don't need more than 3-4 buffs and 3-4 spells.
If in desperate need for valid tactic, drink potion of invisibility and spam Summon spells focusing on elementals.

- leaving open slots is a standard tactic. This is not "winging it", this is RAW for both 3.x and Pathfinder. You need 15 minutes to fill them (or more), but this is the correct way for playing BBEGs at these levels. No adversary is going to know full extent of PC powers, so that's why they are going to throw cannon fodder at the party, while scrying from distance to learn which spells should be memorized.

- use ready-to-run NPCs.
NPCs at d20pfsrd: NPCs - Pathfinder_OGC
Converted AP NPCs at d20pfsrd: Paizo Modules - Pathfinder_OGC

- limit the number of spell sources used by your NPCs. Personally, I prefer to just restrict NPCs to core.

I realize that spellcasters are most difficult to play due to sheer number of options. Yet, most of the problems go away if you realize that you don't need to make them from the scratch.

Regards,
Ruemere

[1] Running high level NPCs requires some experience. You don't need to excel at this, but you need to be able to quickly decide what they do based on their writeups.

I have used all of these tactics to make a high level 3.5 game work. But the major problem, for me, is when the party does something completely unexpected. I had a folder of pre-made NPCs for this reason . . .

I also found that the tactical complexity of running a high level NPC made it such that I had to spend time thinking about it or it was a cakewalk. Some DMs were just better than me at tactics and so did not have this trouble (but, for me, it was constant).

Adventure paths are what make Pathfinder viable, for me.

 

[the Jester]

DISCLAIMER: The post is not meant to antagonize or patronize. This is just a list of basic solutions to basic high level issues.

This is not good if you want to run high level session with no practical knowledge of pertinent rules [1]. And knowing core spells quite important.

Still, it is quite possible:

- Pathfinder Adventure Paths contain excellent entries in NPC stablocks: Before Combat and During Combat. All you need to do, is to find some clerical personnage and borrow both tactics and spells. You don't need more than 3-4 buffs and 3-4 spells.
If in desperate need for valid tactic, drink potion of invisibility and spam Summon spells focusing on elementals.

- leaving open slots is a standard tactic. This is not "winging it", this is RAW for both 3.x and Pathfinder. You need 15 minutes to fill them (or more), but this is the correct way for playing BBEGs at these levels. No adversary is going to know full extent of PC powers, so that's why they are going to throw cannon fodder at the party, while scrying from distance to learn which spells should be memorized.

- use ready-to-run NPCs.
NPCs at d20pfsrd: NPCs - Pathfinder_OGC
Converted AP NPCs at d20pfsrd: Paizo Modules - Pathfinder_OGC

- limit the number of spell sources used by your NPCs. Personally, I prefer to just restrict NPCs to core.

I realize that spellcasters are most difficult to play due to sheer number of options. Yet, most of the problems go away if you realize that you don't need to make them from the scratch.

Regards,
Ruemere

[1] Running high level NPCs requires some experience. You don't need to excel at this, but you need to be able to quickly decide what they do based on their writeups.

But most of these amount to "don't run him at his full power", whether because he doesn't have the right range of options to compete with the pcs (limited spell choices), he doesn't have an appropriately-customized set of items and spells for his environment and personality, or because he has left slots unfilled (REALLY?? Have you ever seen pcs do this?).

In running epic 3e, I found that most of the quick and easy solutions are only halfway steps. They do the part of the job where you have a stat block in front of you, but they don't do the part where you know how to run that npc. Especially as the levels rise, knowing how the npc can use his abilities to some effect is very important, and that's something that takes time and effort to work out.