Why don't more people play high level campaigns? 13th+

[drothgery]

Again, on the whole S-B-T thing, I think it's something that so rarely actually comes up in play. It's far too easy to get around. Any BBEG worth having a name is going to have a pretty darn high Will save, meaning that he's going to know you're coming most of the time. Add to that the chances of failed teleport, and the relative ease of blocking teleport, I fail to see why people have such a hard time with this.

Eh. Any party that I've been in that could S-B-T without much difficulty would. Now, my current group (I'm one of Spatula's players) hasn't, because the character that could scry had a Vow of Poverty, and so keeping a scrying device around was rather inconvenient. But we did a lot of just buff-teleport (just scout the place out first and pick out an innocous location to 'port into) or buff-wind walk. Of course, the casters died (my bard/sublime chord and the aforementioned VoP cleric) on Tuesday...

 

[Raven Crowking]

When was that article RC? I've been subscribing for the past three years and don't recall that one.

I'll see if I can pull the issue for you, but I have to admit upfront that I have a lot of things in boxes right now. It was an article on the use of divination spells, early in the 3.0 days, that specifically noted to Scry the mook (who has a lower Will save) instead of the master. Good advice in that article, actually.

(If anyone here has it handy, you'd save me much digging through boxes.)

Oh come on. When almost every encounter is 1-4 levels BELOW APL, that's piss poor design. Even by the suggestions in the 3.0 DMG that's poor design. Of the encounters in the region, only two or three are actually par or above.

Yes, and it is compounded by the fact that the EL guidelines break down when you're considering masses of low-CR creatures against higher-level parties (as you mention also).

Or, it could be that the designer read the advice about scaling CR/EL based upon party resources, and assumed (falsely, in your case) that a party that couldn't leave the dungeon or craft items was unlikely to have the resources to meet opponents of the same EL as normal. Which is, IMHO, exactly in keeping with the guidelines. It just so happens that the guidelines, as levels increase, become rougher approximations than they were at lower levels.

They dropped the ball on this region. Jim Pinto said so. It happens.

Sure. What I am suggesting, though, is that it is harder to drop the ball at lower levels, and easier to drop the ball at higher levels. This is true in every edition of the game, not just 3.x.

Woe to the DM who tries to cut his teeth on a high level adventure. Back in 1e (UA included), I had a friend who decided to start his DMing carreer with 14-16th level characters (he gave us an XP amount). We were to fight our way to the lower planes and confront Tiamat. Instead, what we did was B-S-T (1e version) and mopped the floor with Tiamat and her cronies in two rounds. And we survived, relatively unscathed.

This has nothing to do with the level of the adventure either. A 5th level adventure with the same spread of EL's would be a poor adventure as well.

Sure it does. The writer is, presumably, trying to take into account the lack of resources of the PCs. In the WLD, not only will the average party not meet the per-level wealth guidelines, but they won't have the opportunity to optimize their gear. This skews effective APL, and thus needs to be taken into account when determining appropriate EL.

As level increases, so does the effect of PC resources. A 5th level fighter who lacks average wealth per level is not nearly as hampered as a 20th level fighter. In a setting like the WLD, the percentage of average wealth-by-level that you have presumably drops as well, from 100% (when they enter the dungeon) to whatever it is when they (hopefully) leave. The un-optomized 5th level fighter is presumably closer to the optomized 5th level fighter than the un-optomized 15th level fighter is to the optomized one.

And that, I think, is where the problem with this region began. It is also, I think, "close to following the guidelines in the DMG", although as I said previously I don't have that book here to quote.

Just because it got published, I don't think you can say that it is automatically written by above par writers. The d20 landscape is littered with the broken corpses of poor game designers.

Sure. But how many of them continue to publish and sell? Poor game designers leave broken corpses. I find it hard to believe that game designers were simply chosen at random to create the WLD, given the amount of resources allocated to (and the price point of) the project. Jim Pinto agrees that they dropped the ball with this section, but surely Jim Pinto is above average, and surely he took at least 10 minutes to peruse the section.

It seems reasonable to assume that the section was OKed for some reason, even if play later proves that reason wrong.

As far as work load is concerned, I would think that reading a module is probably considered basic level.

I agree. You know that I agree; that the reason that I haven't yet really delved into the WLD a second time is because of the huge amount of rewriting I deem it to need.

I simply disagree that your first reaction was wrong. These guys are flipping powerful. Your second reaction (this region sucks) may not be wrong either....but that doesn't mean that your first reaction was.

The WLD makes changes to the base assumptions (and brings them to your attention in the introduction, including some suggested means of dealing with those changes). The writers attempt to compensate for the changes in those assumptions. This is harder as the levels increase, because there is a cumulative effect involved.

I suspect that, if we had access to the WLD writers' guidelines, we might know exactly why the ball was dropped in that section, and hence exactly why said ball-dropping was missed by the editor.

(This may be good evidence that the 3.X engine can handle a low-resource setting without nearly as much adjustment as some have argued, though. )

 

[00Machado]

My highest campaign stopped at level 12. Even at levels 9 though I started noticing the extra time that would have to go into preparing NPCs, and considering the different options PCs had to approach both combat and investigation elements of adventures.

It would have been easier I think had I been able to play a character in 3.5 at those levels first, and learn as I went, but being put me in the role of needing to be better prepared.

 

[Hussar]

Meh, RC. Thinking about it, I can be reasonably sure that something like this probably happened:

The adventure for Region D was submitted at about 10th - 12th level. I would work nicely there and be able to be run after G quite easily. Sometime later, someone said, "Oh crap, we forgot the Tarrasque. Where can we put it?" And someone else stuffed it into D without rewriting the rest of the region. Thus the levels were badly skewed.

Think of it this way. 90% of the creatures faced in D give zero xp value to the party. They are all CR 3 or lower. For a 15th level party, even a substandard one, that's still nowhere near a challenge.

Again, the problem isn't that the party was too strong - it wasn't even party equipment that made the difference, it was casters - it was that the region was badly made. The fact that its stuffed off in the corner and no one plays it means that it has avoided scrutiny for a long time.

But, let me repeat that. It wasn't party optimization that made the difference. When you stuff a 15th level adventure with creatures with 26 hp or less, it's a cakewalk. The fact that there are three other regions of equivalent level - N, O and H - all without these issues shows how badly made this region was. Those that played N had no problems with the party being too powerful for the region. The existence of a couple of spells from the Spell Compendium made a difference, but, not the party equipment.

My first reaction was, "WOW, the party is really strong, they are creaming these encounters." And that's a reaction a lot of DM's have to high level play. But, then you start actually looking at the encounters and you realize that it isn't that the PC's are strong, it's that the encounters are weak. How many threads are there of DM's complaining about there favourite bad guy getting offed in two rounds and someone steps up and points out that the encounter, by the guidelines, should have been a turkey shoot?

Sure. But how many of them continue to publish and sell? Poor game designers leave broken corpses. I find it hard to believe that game designers were simply chosen at random to create the WLD, given the amount of resources allocated to (and the price point of) the project. Jim Pinto agrees that they dropped the ball with this section, but surely Jim Pinto is above average, and surely he took at least 10 minutes to peruse the section.

Heh, how many d20 products does AEG make now?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Meh, RC. Thinking about it, I can be reasonably sure that something like this probably happened:

The adventure for Region D was submitted at about 10th - 12th level. I would work nicely there and be able to be run after G quite easily. Sometime later, someone said, "Oh crap, we forgot the Tarrasque. Where can we put it?" And someone else stuffed it into D without rewriting the rest of the region. Thus the levels were badly skewed.

You may be right; that's a pretty plausible scenario.

EDIT: OTOH, if that's what they did, that's horrible editting. Absolutely horrible. As in the "failed to take ten minutes" type of horrible.

 

[Qualidar]

People bring up the bugaboo of scry/buff/teleport all the time, but, it's one of those internet memes like how 3e is like a video game. It looks good on paper but sees almost no use in actual play.

I've seen it used excessively once: we were playing 2e.

~Qualidar~

 

[pawsplay]

I think mainly because it requires either a long running campaign, or getting three to five people to make 12+ characters from scratch without screwing them up completely. Naturally, if you haven't first run a long running campaign, they don't have experience playing level 12+ characters....

At least two of my current group have said they are enjoying that our campaign has reached tenth level and that higher level play is more exciting. So I don't think it's because 10th-20th level D&D isn't fun.