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



## cangrejoide (Mar 10, 2009)

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




Nebulous said:


> Unless you were just burned out and wanted a change of pace, which is understandable too.  High level 3.x is a pain.






Sabathius42 said:


> Afterwards we unanimously agreed that we would not finish the campaign and leave things as is because we didn't really enjoy high level play very much.






Holy Bovine said:


> In my game big D went down in a 2 and a half rounds.  Kyuss himself lasted 4.  Wouldn't have been so bad but each of those fights took 2 hours to get through!  So I was pretty much done with high level 3E after that.  When I run 3E again it will be a 10th level cap tops.






Storminator said:


> We got half way thru Savage Tide, and I just ended the campaign. I was so burnt out on 3.x at that point that I wasn't going to run another adventure in it. 4e came out the same time, so I just bailed.






beldar1215 said:


> I think burn-out was my big problems as well. I did not enjoy running a high level 3.5 game. I think the fact that the game died was OK. Everyone is ready to give 4th a go.
> 
> Beldar






Rechan said:


> I know a guy whose AoW campaign crashed thanks to the Big H. Went to 4e.
> 
> I've actually never had a TPK. Usually my campaign crashes due to player or DM issues.







ki11erDM said:


> As for my AoW campaign, the players I have are way to tactical and skilled to have died in those last few adventures.  I had to really beef up the encounters to even challenge them.  Big D and K were nearly killed in the first 2 to 5 rounds, and were easily killed off even with the modifications I made.  But the encounters did show that 3.x was totally broken at high level and really needed fixing… the end of that campaign really got me excited for 4e.







Verys Arkon said:


> 4e was coming out, and 3.5 was getting difficult to run even at 12-14th level.  So far 4e has been great to run so far, but I haven't seen any paragon or epic level play yet to judge if they 'fixed' it (although most reports I read say it is good).







Agamon said:


> It's alright, my players got to the end, stopped Kyuss, and I still consider the campaign a failure.  It just wasn't fun anymore in the last 4 adventures, I was just going through the paces for the benefit of the players who wanted to see it through to the end, irregardless of the fact that they were on their 3rd party at the end.  Playing that high-level stuff reminds me of trying to walk through neck-deep mud.







S'mon said:


> A big part of the problem was the stats.  High level 3e is incredibly hard to do.  If it had been for 5th level PCs it might have been ok.  It was one factor in me changing to running 3e with a 1-10 or 1-12 level range instead of 1-20.






Gundark said:


> We played until about 17th level in the AoW. I think we had 2 TPKs and a lot of player character death. We stopped at the island adventure as 3.5 was burning the whole group out. We didn't touch D&D again until 4th.




Okay from my own acnecdotal experience: the day I decided to give up on DMing  3.5 was after a grueling AP made by Paizo. The schackled city Adventure path. I loved the setting, I loved the plot. But the encounters were tiresome, maybe it was not paizo's fault, but they made their encounters geared to maxed out characters and any non-optimized party would surely end in a TPK. 

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)


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## Jack99 (Mar 10, 2009)

Interesting theory. Can't wait for the fallout.


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## Dice4Hire (Mar 10, 2009)

One problem I had and still ahve with 3.5 is the level of rules-(ab)use players bring tothe table. You can have a bunch of guys who choose good classes, feats and magic items, thus being quite effective, and then one guy comes in with a munchkined out (but totally legal) killing machine of a character. 

I had to kick out several of the latter, as I have a lot of the former and don't like to play the way the latter guys like to play. 

But as for Paizo, I never went through one of their adventures, but I would have to generally agree. Paizo took combats to the bloody edge, and I knew there was no way my players could ever get through one of end-of-module encounters, much less two or three like most modules expected. They just do not have that ability.


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## avin (Mar 10, 2009)

Is there any kind of "if your players aren't full maximized" advice on AP? Any sort of way to tone down encounters?


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 10, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> Okay from my own acnecdotal experience: the day I decided to give up on DMing  3.5 was after a grueling AP made by Paizo. The schackled city Adventure path. I loved the setting, I loved the plot. But the encounters were tiresome, maybe it was not paizo's fault, but they made their encounters geared to maxed out characters and any non-optimized party would surely end in a TPK.
> 
> 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?
> 
> ...



We ended AOW after a TPK when we just were no longer interested in running against overpowered monsters (though I will give some fault to the DM, who isn't really among our better ones.  )

I am not sure how much is Paizos fault and how much is just because that's how higher level 3E worked. But I subscribe to the theory that the APs helped us recognize all the flaws we found in 3E, despite being otherwise very good. Without the APs, we might have played other games more, too.


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## Jeff Wilder (Mar 10, 2009)

One thing to bear in mind: Shackled City and Age of Worms were designed for six PCs.  That was easy to overlook.  (I'm not sure about Savage Tide.)  Even with six PCs, those campaigns are tough ... with four, they're meat-grinders.


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## delericho (Mar 10, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> Okay from my own acnecdotal experience: the day I decided to give up on DMing  3.5 was after a grueling AP made by Paizo. The schackled city Adventure path. I loved the setting, I loved the plot. But the encounters were tiresome, maybe it was not paizo's fault, but they made their encounters geared to maxed out characters and any non-optimized party would surely end in a TPK.




I'm not sure it's specificalyy Paizo, so much as high-level published adventures in general that have this problem. With limited page counts, they have to make sure every encounter counts. Amongst other things, this means they ramp up the difficulty. It also contributes a lot to the "5 minute adventuring day" issue.

Additionally, in order to cut down on stat blocks, they faced a certain pressure to use Monster Manual creatures where possible. Unfortunately, in 3.5e this gave few high-level choices other than Evil Outsiders. This could lead to things readily becoming repetitive. Not to mention that these are amongst the hardest monsters to run well, what with all their spell-like abilities.



> 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?




In the course of a recent house move, I came upon some of the old "Countdown to 3rd Edition" issues of Dragon magazine. Ironically, one of the design goals they state is that the game should work properly across the whole of the level range. Peter Adkison was particularly interested in high-level play, that being his personal favourite.

Personally, I suspect that Paizo aren't directly to blame for a lot of the problems people have seen at the high levels of their APs, but rather that for many people those APs represent the bulk of their high-level experience in 3.5e. They're certainly the bulk of our shared high-level experience. So, I suspect they may be uncovering and highlighting the existing problems, rather than being at the root of those problems.


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## Drkfathr1 (Mar 10, 2009)

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). 

Those over the top, very maximized, near impossible end battles can be easily toned down to a more appropriate level of difficulty. 

Should they be tough? Sure. Should they have the potential for character deaths? Sure. 

Should they be TPK with little chance of survival? No.


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## Fenes (Mar 10, 2009)

I haven't had much trouble running high-level 3.X, though I don't do much combat.

We usually have to cut down 90% of the combat encounters if we ever use a bought adventure.


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## BryonD (Mar 10, 2009)

I have no clue on the data.....

But I would wager that more than 75% of the high level play amongst ENWorld posters was associated with Paizo APs.

I don't think Paizo correlates with high level problems beyond the level that Paizo correlates with all high level play.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 10, 2009)

Drkfathr1 said:


> No offense to anyone, but I wouldn't blame Paizo for this...I'd blame the DM's.



Hmm, so Paizo is to "blame" only for being unable to provide suitable adventure paths for a lot of DM or their groups?


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## hexgrid (Mar 10, 2009)

Drkfathr1 said:


> 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).
> 
> Those over the top, very maximized, near impossible end battles can be easily toned down to a more appropriate level of difficulty.




This logic makes it impossible to evaluate a published adventure at all, doesn't it? The DM can theoretically adjust _any_ shortcoming of a module.

But I don't blame Paizo, either. The fault is with the rules system. It's no surprise that the Pathfinder adventure paths all stop at 15th or 16th level (IIRC).


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## TerraDave (Mar 10, 2009)

High level problems that made me glad to go 4E: Yes.

Paizo AP: No.


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## DwarvenDog (Mar 10, 2009)

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.


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## Drkfathr1 (Mar 10, 2009)

hexgrid said:


> This logic makes it impossible to evaluate a published adventure at all, doesn't it? The DM can theoretically adjust _any_ shortcoming of a module.




Pretty much yeah, but that's the nature of an RPG, its all in the hands of individual DM's. That's what a DM is supposed to do. Not every published adventure (of any level, in any form) will work with every gaming group or mix of PC's. 

Which leads to the main point, Paizo wasn't the problem, the High Level rules were the problem. Paizo could only work with what they had.


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## Drkfathr1 (Mar 10, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Hmm, so Paizo is to "blame" only for being unable to provide suitable adventure paths for a lot of DM or their groups?




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

Paizo could only work with the rules they had.


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## dmccoy1693 (Mar 10, 2009)

Drkfathr1 said:


> No offense to anyone, but I wouldn't blame Paizo for this...I'd blame the DM's.






Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Hmm, so Paizo is to "blame" only for being unable to provide suitable adventure paths for a lot of DM or their groups?




I have to agree with Drkfathr1.  Paizo followed the rules and made (and still makes) adventurers that fit the rules.  They do not know every last individual DM.  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, Paizo cannot account for that.  The adventure needs modified (toned down) to fit the group.  If the group has no one that can find a trap and no one to turn undead, the DM has to compensate with fewer traps and less undead.  The adventure needs modified.  If the whole group prefers role playing to combat (*maybe they should try a white wolf game*) and build their character's sub-'optimal' (*oh, do I hate that word when referring to RPGs*), than the adventure needs modified.  

If Paizo provided adventures that were to easy, than they'd be boring and no one would get excited about playing them.  They wouldn't be memorable.  No, I have to agree.  The DM needs to modify every adventure to the specifics of his or her group.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 10, 2009)

Drkfathr1 said:


> Pretty much yeah, but that's the nature of an RPG, its all in the hands of individual DM's. That's what a DM is supposed to do. Not every published adventure (of any level, in any form) will work with every gaming group or mix of PC's.
> 
> Which leads to the main point, Paizo wasn't the problem, the High Level rules were the problem. Paizo could only work with what they had.





I agree that every adventure/module needs to be modified by the individual GM, but when is enough? One thing is to modify an encounter, another is to rewrite the full encounter completely. If I am gooing to buy a module I should not be forced to spend too much time modifying it. If I need to rewrite it, I might as well stop buying modules and write them myself.

As for the rules, well yeah Paizo did not write them. They are not at fault for bad rules.

But on their encounter design , did they not exacerbate the 3.5 high level problem?

At the very least they made it very obvious and plain to see for my group, to a point we all decided to stop playing D&D. It actually made us loathe the rule system and made us gravitate toward simpler systems.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 10, 2009)

dmccoy1693 said:


> If Paizo provided adventures that were to easy, than they'd be boring and no one would get excited about playing them.  They wouldn't be memorable.  No, I have to agree.  The DM needs to modify every adventure to the specifics of his or her group.




Easy does not mean boring. The one thing that makes me go back to Paizo adventures are the plots and rich settings. Even now I run AOW under 4E, and yes I have to make full conversion to 4E ( but they only take me like 1/10 of the time I spent doing it under 3.5).


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## RangerWickett (Mar 10, 2009)

DwarvenDog said:


> 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?




For the later adventures in the War of the Burning Sky campaign saga, I tried my best to keep things easy to run. Stat blocks for spellcasting villains included "buff suites" so that it was easy to see what their adjusted stats would be if they had a chance to buff themselves vs. if the PCs caught them by surprise. I polished off the hard edges of a few high-level outsiders, both to make them unique individuals, and to make them easier to run. 

Eventually, I clued into making a new creature sub-type, "Unit," which was like a swarm, but for large (25-person) military units. Dealing with four units in a combat is a heck of a lot easier than having 100 individual warriors on a battlefield.

I won't deny, the main villains of the final 6 adventures are all pretty complex foes. I also think they're pretty cool, with interesting set-piece encounters to make them stand out from your typical "fight a dude in a room" combats that left me disappointed with the Savage Tide, no offense to Paizo. When the final fight of a whole campaign, against 



Spoiler



the demon lord Demogorgon


 takes place in such a dramatic location as 



Spoiler



a house on a lake


, I think you're kinda missing out on the potential of high-level gameplay.

For Burning Sky, we had:

Adventure 7 - Ari Marmell wrote this amazing Predator-esque forest battle with a shadowdancer who uses hit and run tactics, ambushes, and huge traps (like using his pet shadow to trick you into going into a field of poisonous flowers, where ghouls hide in the pollen mist). The fight takes you across a half dozen locations as the party tries to outwit an enemy on his home turf.

Adventure 8 - In a magical research facility, your goal is more to wreck the enemy's experiment than to just kill the main villain. The sorcerer running the experiment is safe behind a wall of force, and you've got to survive his minions and break key components of an eldritch machine to get to him. Author Jeremy Anderson was inspired by some of the best elements of WoW raid bosses.

Adventure 9 - You have to stab the heart of a 90-ft. tall animated colossus. Yes,  God of War II did it first, but if you're going to steal, steal from the best.

Adventure 10 - The villain has the metaphysical keys necessary to unlock an imprisoned ally, but you fight her in a Labyrinth-esque mansion that follows irrational logic.

Adventure 11 - You take an army onto a mile-long living airship. 

Adventure 12 - I'm not sure if anyone noticed this, but the vast cavern where you encounter the final villain is a small scale replica of the map of the entire region where the campaign takes place. The combat has a minor objective in each of the nations you've traveled to so far.


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## FourthBear (Mar 10, 2009)

I will note that complaints on the difficulty of the major encounters in the Paizo Adventure Paths (particularly in Shackled City) were not confined completely to the high level adventures.  I recall many people noting that a number of the encounters in Life's Bazaar, Zenith Trajectory or Three Faces of Evil were particular meat grinders, all of which are in the first third of the APs.


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## TerraDave (Mar 10, 2009)

Thinking more on this, it really was not just Paizo. The fact that you had a whole E6/E8/E12 movement indicates that 3E had high level issues beyond the APs.


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## Rechan (Mar 10, 2009)

Funny thing about "Paizo didn't write the rules."

They are now.

Do the rules that Paizo is writing fix the high level problem?

I'd like to see someone take the Pathfinder rules and play AoW and compare.


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## Rechan (Mar 10, 2009)

FourthBear said:


> I will note that complaints on the difficulty of the major encounters in the Paizo Adventure Paths (particularly in Shackled City) were not confined completely to the high level adventures.  I recall many people noting that a number of the encounters in Life's Bazaar, Zenith Trajectory or Three Faces of Evil were particular meat grinders, all of which are in the first third of the APs.



God, that's the truth.

I honestly sat in during 1 adventure of the Shackled City path; the Flood one. That literally took at _least_ two months of play. I wanted to tear my hair out.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 10, 2009)

RangerWickett said:


> <SNIP>




Those are really good ideas, I think I am going to check out Burning Sky.

thanks.


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## chaotix42 (Mar 10, 2009)

I ran the Age of Worms and Savage Tide APs, and both campaigns were full of PC death. In the early adventures the AoW killed my entire party* one at a time until they were all replaced/raised from the dead! Once the PCs got into mid-high levels the casualties slowed down, with Revivify and Revenance keeping true death down to a minimum. 

My PCs love to find the most brutal combinations of feats, classes, spells, etc. (anything I'll let them get away with) so I suppose Paizo's APs were perfect for them. Sometimes I had to make encounters _more _challenging - lots of their undead foes had too few hit points and would go down with a stiff breeze.

I fully blame any high-level woes on 3.x. Paizo just did their best with what they had.

* OK, I admit, it was me.


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## Rechan (Mar 10, 2009)

Ho-le-crap, RangerWickett. 

I don't even play 3e, and I don't think I"d be using the WotBS adventure path, but those adventures sound _badass_. Adventure 7 is right up my alley.


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## Ourph (Mar 10, 2009)

IMO, Paizo tended to play too much of the "arms race" game when creating new monsters or NPCs. I noticed this a lot in the _Rise of the Runelords_ AP. By "arms race" I mean, the general consensus is that good players are using tactic X, so we'll create a monster that is immune to tactic X.  Then when players switch to tactic Y, we'll create a monster that is immune to both tactic X and Y.

Eventually you've got an opponent who lasts the 8-12 rounds the designers apparently want it to against the PCs but only because they're all reduced to wailing on it with their most ineffective attacks while burning all their healing powers to stay alive long enough to finish it. Those kind of grindy combats aren't fun for anyone and I only really noticed it against opponents that were custom-made by Paizo. 

By comparison, most standard Monster Manual opponents die very quickly vs. fresh PCs with good players. However, our DM was able to simply add more opponents of the same type if he wanted a tougher combat. To me, that's a much better fix to the problem.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 10, 2009)

I'm surprised no one has added experiences of high level RPGA play into this discussion.

Also it bears saying that the issue with high level 3.5E isn't so much the difficulty of a Paizo AP but how unfun the game gets at that level, and how the imbalances and wildly varying effects of character generation affect the high level game, especially within published adventures.


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## jasin (Mar 10, 2009)

We started 4E immediately after finishing AoW.

While I wouldn't say we started 4E _because_ of AoW, the annoyances it brought (culminating in the fight against Kyuss lasting less than two rounds, with him not managing to make a single attack) certainly made use more receptive to 4E. High-level play can get tedious, but our other (homebrew) campaign which reached ~20th certainly didn't leave us as drained as AoW.

It's open for debate if this can be blamed on Paizo's adventure writing, or if it's an inevitable consequence of the monster-PC arms race.


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## Runestar (Mar 10, 2009)

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.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 10, 2009)

Drkfathr1 said:


> 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.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 10, 2009)

dmccoy1693 said:


> 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:


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## Arkobla Conn (Mar 10, 2009)

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.


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## Brown Jenkin (Mar 10, 2009)

DwarvenDog said:


> 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.


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## DwarvenDog (Mar 10, 2009)

@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?


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 10, 2009)

Runestar said:


> 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.


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## kitsune9 (Mar 10, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> 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?
> 
> ...




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.


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## Storminator (Mar 10, 2009)

Drkfathr1 said:


> 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).






DwarvenDog said:


> 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


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## Gothmog (Mar 10, 2009)

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.


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## Brown Jenkin (Mar 10, 2009)

DwarvenDog said:


> @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?




In general he normally burns out after about 6 months no matter the system we are playing (He also runs HERO System). He has run 2 other 3.x games that he stopped the campaign at about 10-11th level. We also had another DM (who left the state) that ran a 3-20 campaign that our current DM played in, and both of the DMs often talked shop. Ptolus however has kept him interested far longer than normal.


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## S'mon (Mar 10, 2009)

I have no experience with Paizo adventures, and I encountered the same problems as everybody else.

The only time I really had fun with high level 3e was GMing some solo stuff with an 18th level Fighter type character, he had fun leading his armies, hacking up CR 8 monsters, slaying the evil high priest, negotiating with the diplomats of rival powers, and the 3e rules rarely intruded too much.

Anything that was supposed to involve a challenging battle for a group of 15th+ PCs was dire.  Either it was trivially easy or TPK territory (with a few PCs escaping).  That was equally true of published stuff like Necropolis as homebrew stuff.

And I could never send enemies to ambush the PCs.  1st strike advantage was so overwhelming that the PCs would have had no chance of survival.

The game had seemed to work fine through the 1st 10-12 levels, as long as no high-CR (16+) foes appeared, so now I just run the game in a 1-10/12 level range and it works fine.

I do think 3e's claim to 'fix high level play' was the biggest load of codswallop in the history of RPGs.


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## Agamon (Mar 10, 2009)

Paizo only gets picked out because they published well written and very popular adventures.  They didn't really invent the AP, but they sure popularized it, and that's why a Paizo AP is often mentioned in conjunction with dislike for high level 3.5e.  I won't say AoW was horrible, quite the opposite.  Aside form the dud that was Spire of Long Shadows, I really enjoyed running each adventure up to and including (and especially) Prince of Redhand.  The fact that the fun level dropped off the side of a cliff after that was more of a problem with the rules than the adventures.

And adventure difficulty was only a fraction of the problem.  People say 4e combat can be grindy, but it has nothing on high-level 3e.  I'd say all the die rolling due to iterative attacks is probably my biggest beef.  Some fights I had to sit on my hands to stop from clawing my eyes out of their sockets.


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## S'mon (Mar 10, 2009)

Iterative attacks - I hardly ever saw an iterative attack in high level 3e.  The spellcasters so dominated the battlefield that melee fighters with 20' move rarely even got an attack in, never mind iterative attacks.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 10, 2009)

Gothmog said:


> 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.



I tend to share this opinion, with ... not really a reservation, but: It seems that the "overdesigned" monsters where a general problem in 3E. It didn't matter whether it was Paizo, another 3PP or WotC, you'd always find monsters that were just way stronger than their CR implied. 

We used to say that the actual CR of a monster is its CR + Monster Manual Number. And for "custom" monsters in an adventure, I suppose the actual CR was something like CR + 1d8-3. 

Not always was it just because of "overenthusiastic" design. I remember a monster that got the Half-Fiend template. It had tons of HD, and unfortunately, that template gave the monster a spell (Blasphemy or something like that) with a caster level equal to its HD. But it's CR was _way_ lower than its CR, and the spell basically could kill an entire party unless it was unusually widely spread out. 
The tools given by the game weren't all that great here _and_ the designers didn't double-check the stats either. (Or maybe they did, and just wanted to include a "Rat Bastard" moment. In that case, well done, you made it. But if you don't promise to never do this again, I don't guarantee buying any more adventures from you, anyway.)


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## Voadam (Mar 10, 2009)

DwarvenDog said:


> 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?



1-20 Adventure Paths I can think of:

Original Adventure Path: WotC

Shackled City: Paizo

Age of Worms: Paizo

Savage Tide: Paizo

Warlords of the Accordlands Campaign Adventure: AEG

Castle Blackmoor: Zeitgeist Games

War of the Burning Sky: E.N. Publishing

Dragonlance Age of Mortals Trilogy (Key to Destiny, Spectre of Sorrorws, Price of Courage).

Close:

Rappan Athuk Reloaded: Necromancer Games (about 4-20)

Necromancer, Paizo, Monkey God, Goodman, WotC, and Malhavoc each have some non AP high level adventures though I think Paizo in Dungeon would have the most for say levels 15-20.


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## jodyjohnson (Mar 10, 2009)

delericho said:


> In the course of a recent house move, I came upon some of the old "Countdown to 3rd Edition" issues of Dragon magazine. Ironically, one of the design goals they state is that the game should work properly across the whole of the level range. Peter Adkison was particularly interested in high-level play, that being his personal favourite.




For us, 3.x was head and shoulders better at high level play than the previous 1e AD&D and 2e AD&D editions.  

We played vastly more high level 3.x than we ever successfully did in 1e or 2e (mostly due to exponential XP and starting at 1st after a tpk).

It took us years of play to discover the short-comings of high level play and it was primarily extreme option bloat (spells, feats, multiclassing, creature powers), the attendant bookkeeping bloat, and action bloat (iterative attacks, cohorts, summoning, charm).

3.x for us solved the earlier problems of high level play only to open up another set.


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## Festivus (Mar 10, 2009)

> 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)




I don't think I ever felt the pain of high level D&D until I ran Age of Worms. We are almost done with the AP, and I have sworn that I will never run above level 10 in 3.5 again. I don't think it helped me to move to 4e as we still play 3.5 too, but it had exposed the problems of high level 3.5 player sufficiently to me. I'll let someone else DM high level 3.5, I don't mind being a player at higher levels.

ps: I am running Savage Tide under 4e


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## Matrix Sorcica (Mar 10, 2009)

Voadam said:


> 1-20 Adventure Paths I can think of:
> Castle Whiterock: Goodman Games




That's lvl 1-15, IIRC.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 10, 2009)

Above level 8 or so, 3.5E combat tended to involve a lot of:

1. Text messaging
2. 2 people getting together to optimally create/manage characters for other games, or one person doing the same alone
3. Surfing the internet on laptops
4. Playing video games on laptops, handhelds, and phones
5. Knitting
6. Reading comic books from the stacks of the store we were playing at
7. Writing adventures for another game they are DMing
8. Crossword puzzles
9. Tuning out the world while listening to an iPod
10. Simply reading D&D sourcebooks brought to the game

I have honestly seen every one of these occur during 3.5E combat, and on multiple occasions. It just comes with the territory of 30 minute turns before your next chance to act.


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## Khairn (Mar 10, 2009)

Drkfathr1 said:


> 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).
> 
> Those over the top, very maximized, near impossible end battles can be easily toned down to a more appropriate level of difficulty.
> 
> ...




Agreed.  And thanks for stating what should be the obvious, but sadly gets missed far too often.

I'm not going to sit here and say that 3.5 RAW isn't broken in some places.  It is.  And any adventure (AP or not) that includes higher level encounters are going to illustrate some of those problems.  And I'll also conceed that in some Paizo AP's the power creep got a little heavy.  Of course that's why as a GM I read & review an adventure and fine tune it for my group before I play it.

Having said that, any GM and any players who are not aware of the characters capabilities or the rules to the point that a combat which lasted for only 4 rounds took hours to play, needs to get some help.  

I know this is based on personal experience, but I never had a problem with the combat time of my 3.5 games.  The players all knew that they had a limited time (1-2 min max) to make their decision and take their actions.  And as a GM I was on top of all the NPC's and if there was a question about the interpretation of a rule, I made the call at that moment and then reviewed it after the game was over.   With those few simple guidelines, even boss fights usually took less than an hour.

If I can run a game that way, I really don't see what is preventing others from doing the same.


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## DaveMage (Mar 10, 2009)

I had a blast playing and DMing gestalt 26th level PCs, so high level play was fun for me.

The only thing about it that is (potentially) an unfun issue is the time combat takes - especially when opponent numbers are greater than 4.   It's even worse when both sides summon creatures. 

The idea that the Paizo adventures burned out some GMs is interesting, though.  I'm a big Paizo fan, but I have only skimmed through the adventure paths - not run or played them.  This may have factored into Paizo's decision to change the AP from a 1-20 level deal to a 1-15 range that they have for Pathfinder APs.

The #1 problem I have with 3.x is the time it takes to both prepare for and play.  The problem is, I don't want to give up the options of 3.x, so if the choice is faster play, but give up options vs. quicker play with less options, I'll take the former.  I think some of what Paizo is doing with the Pathfinder RPG will speed up higher level play, but to what degree, I have no idea.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 10, 2009)

jodyjohnson said:


> 3.x for us solved the earlier problems of high level play only to open up another set.





I am curious what problems from high level play did 3E solved over previous editions?



Khairn said:


> Having said that, any GM and any players who are not aware of the characters capabilities or the rules to the point that a combat which lasted for only 4 rounds took hours to play, needs to get some help.
> 
> I know this is based on personal experience, but I never had a problem with the combat time of my 3.5 games.  The players all knew that they had a limited time (1-2 min max) to make their decision and take their actions.  And as a GM I was on top of all the NPC's and if there was a question about the interpretation of a rule, I made the call at that moment and then reviewed it after the game was over.   With those few simple guidelines, even boss fights usually took less than an hour.
> 
> If I can run a game that way, I really don't see what is preventing others from doing the same.




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.


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## S'mon (Mar 10, 2009)

jodyjohnson said:


> For us, 3.x was head and shoulders better at high level play than the previous 1e AD&D and 2e AD&D editions.




It's strange, I found super high level 1e/2e infinitely easier to run than 3e.  Part of it, I was younger and my brain worked better, but the system itself was so much simpler.  I could challenge a 117th level Lesser God PC in 1e a lot easier than I could do a 16th level adventure in 3e.


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## demiurge1138 (Mar 10, 2009)

delericho said:


> Personally, I suspect that Paizo aren't directly to blame for a lot of the problems people have seen at the high levels of their APs, but rather that for many people those APs represent the bulk of their high-level experience in 3.5e. They're certainly the bulk of our shared high-level experience. So, I suspect they may be uncovering and highlighting the existing problems, rather than being at the root of those problems.




I would have to agree with this sentiment. I've run a lot of high level D&D, both Paizo paths and non-, and the same problems were present in both to roughly the same degree.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 10, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> I am curious what problems from high level play did 3E solved over previous editions?




The levels being playable at all? I never minded doing so, but the entirety of my experience with AD&D involved treating the levels above 11-12 as if they didn't exist. That being said, I'd say that I'd prefer doing so to dealing with 3.5E at any level at this point.


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## S'mon (Mar 10, 2009)

Khairn said:


> I know this is based on personal experience, but I never had a problem with the combat time of my 3.5 games.  The players all knew that they had a limited time (1-2 min max) to make their decision and take their actions.  And as a GM I was on top of all the NPC's and if there was a question about the interpretation of a rule, I made the call at that moment and then reviewed it after the game was over.   With those few simple guidelines, even boss fights usually took less than an hour.
> 
> If I can run a game that way, I really don't see what is preventing others from doing the same.




I could and did - actually I expect players to declare their actions immediately, or at least within 6 seconds, unless they have a query re AoOs or some other rule.  But I don't really regard an hour for 1 battle as satisfactory. It might have been if the system could accommodate 1 battle per session, but playing like that with 1 only 1 fight in a game-day further overpowers the casters.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 10, 2009)

DaveMage said:


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




It got my attention, too.



> If the choice is faster play, but give up options vs. quicker play with less options, I'll take the former.




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

Tough call.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 10, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> The levels being playable at all? I never minded doing so, but the entirety of my experience with AD&D involved treating the levels above 11-12 as if they didn't exist. That being said, I'd say that I'd prefer doing so to dealing with 3.5E at any level at this point.




Hmm well because your GM and your group decided never to play those games doesn't make it a problem.


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## BryonD (Mar 10, 2009)

TerraDave said:


> Thinking more on this, it really was not just Paizo. The fact that you had a whole E6/E8/E12 movement indicates that 3E had high level issues beyond the APs.




I don't think this is a correct correlation.  To the best of my memory every conversation about E6 (etc) as about its merits at converting D&D into a much lower powered, low fantasy version of gaming.

It may certainly be that many people who loved E6 also thought that high level D&D was a pain.  But E6 was about game style and power level preference, and that would be the same even if high level ran easier than low level.


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## Voadam (Mar 10, 2009)

Matrix Sorcica said:


> That's lvl 1-15, IIRC.




I think you are right. Edited above.


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## Spatula (Mar 10, 2009)

DaveMage said:


> 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.


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## DaveMage (Mar 10, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> 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*


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## DaveMage (Mar 10, 2009)

Spatula said:


> 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.


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## S'mon (Mar 10, 2009)

DaveMage said:


> 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!


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## MerricB (Mar 10, 2009)

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!


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## cangrejoide (Mar 10, 2009)

MerricB said:


> I wrote about this last year:
> 
> How Paizo made me hate 3E
> 
> ...





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).
> 
> ...




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


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## Khairn (Mar 10, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> 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.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 10, 2009)

DaveMage said:


> 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.)


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## James Jacobs (Mar 11, 2009)

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.


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## AllisterH (Mar 11, 2009)

Isn't this simply because of the spread in effectiveness between characters of the same class at different levels?

An unoptimized 5th level cleric is going to be almost as effective as an optimized 5th level cleric simply due to the lack of options. Contrast that with a 15th level cleric and how much of a spread there is between unoptimized and optimized.


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## DaveMage (Mar 11, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> Curses!
> 
> In that case we disagree.
> 
> (Although personally I am on a sliding scale... some options matter, some don't.)





I am generalizing, in the comparitive sense between editions.  1E, 2E, and 4E all are much more limiting when it comes to options than 3.x.  (4E may get there one day, but that would probably be after Player's Handbook 10 is out.)  1E and 2E are much faster in play, but 4E, by many reports, actually takes _longer _in combat than 3.x (by the RAW).  I like the speed of 1E/2E, but would never go back to them for more than a one-shot beacuse they don't have the options (or rules changes) that I've grown to really like.  4E has changed too many things that I like about D&D for me to give it serious consideration (alignments, fluff changes, powers for all classes, etc.).

Now, I could certainly be convinced to limit specific options if it led to a more fulfilling experience, but in a general sense, I prefer having options to faster play.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

James Jacobs said:


> 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.





So Pathfinder solution to High level play is not to play it?


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## baradtgnome (Mar 11, 2009)

RangerWickett said:


> Eventually, I clued into making a new creature sub-type, "Unit," which was like a swarm, but for large (25-person) military units. Dealing with four units in a combat is a heck of a lot easier than having 100 individual warriors on a battlefield.




Brilliant.  Do you or someone have an example of that somewhere abouts?  I think that is a good mitigating tool for some higher level problems.  I hate to take 'armies' out of my story line - but they are so onerous to run.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 11, 2009)

DaveMage said:


> I am generalizing, in the comparitive sense between editions.  1E, 2E, and 4E all are much more limiting when it comes to options than 3.x.  (4E may get there one day, but that would probably be after Player's Handbook 10 is out.)  1E and 2E are much faster in play, but 4E, by many reports, actually takes _longer _in combat than 3.x (by the RAW).  I like the speed of 1E/2E, but would never go back to them for more than a one-shot beacuse they don't have the options (or rules changes) that I've grown to really like.  4E has changed too many things that I like about D&D for me to give it serious consideration (alignments, fluff changes, powers for all classes, etc.).
> 
> Now, I could certainly be convinced to limit specific options if it led to a more fulfilling experience, but in a general sense, I prefer having options to faster play.




1. Options--1E and 2E had less options. 3E has infinitely more options than 4E, but if you only look at non-worthless 3E options, combined with how subtle differences can be in 4E in actual play, they are a lot closer in terms of options than you'd think
2. 1E/2E are the fastest RPG systems I've ever seen played. 4E is faster paced than 3E, but resolving combat takes about the same amount of time. 3E is faster than 4th at lower levels(1-5), and gets much slower at higher levels(11+). In my experience, 4E runs about as fast as 3E does during the 6-10 level range, but with quicker turns keeping everyone more involved. 4E and 3E are both far slower than 1E/2E, and its not even close.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 11, 2009)

DaveMage said:


> Now, I could certainly be convinced to limit specific options if it led to a more fulfilling experience, but in a general sense, I prefer having options to faster play.




Well... Just off the top of my head, are skill points for NPCs really the key to a fulfilling experience?

How many of them matter in combat? Concentration? Tumble? Spot?

And... I'm spent. You tell me.


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## James Jacobs (Mar 11, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> So Pathfinder solution to High level play is not to play it?




To this point, that's been the Pathfinder Adventure Path's solution. We haven't written one yet using the Pathfinder RPG rules, though, since they're not done yet.

EDIT: of course... the actual level ranges of our Adventure Paths have varied in Pathfinder (Runelords goes from 1st to about 17th, Crimson Throne 1st to about 16th, and Second Darkness 1st to about 14th.)

FURTHER EDIT: Is there a market for high level adventures anyway? Six years of being in the Adventure Market make me think that answer is, unfortunately, no. From a customer viewpoint AND from a game designer viewpoint... High level adventures were ALWAYS hard to get folks to write (and write well) for Dungeon. The most popular level was 7th level.


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## Storminator (Mar 11, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> Hmm well because your GM and your group decided never to play those games doesn't make it a problem.




Back in those days we never would have dreamed of making a PC at anything other than 1st level. We never made it past 12th (and that only for one PC).

I never saw anything that made me think it couldn't be done, but we never got there.

PS


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## ProfessorPain (Mar 11, 2009)

This thread will die a beautiful death.


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## Man-thing (Mar 11, 2009)

James Jacobs said:


> The most popular level was 7th level.




We have always played campaigns in the 1-12 range, most ending sometime naturally around 7 or 8. One of the things that we found hurt our high level play was iterative attacks. It just slows, everything down.


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## Shroomy (Mar 11, 2009)

James Jacobs said:


> FURTHER EDIT: Is there a market for high level adventures anyway? Six years of being in the Adventure Market make me think that answer is, unfortunately, no. From a customer viewpoint AND from a game designer viewpoint... High level adventures were ALWAYS hard to get folks to write (and write well) for Dungeon. The most popular level was 7th level.




Isn't this something of a self-fulfilling prophecy?  I'm fairly confident that higher-level play will never be as popular as lower-level play, simply because of the time investment involved with getting to those levels, but if the system effectively starts to break down, requiring a lot of work and patience to get it to work right (if at all), then its going to directly impact its popularity and thus sales.  If there isn't much of a market, then in general, people aren't going to focus their efforts on writing for it, and if they're not writing for it and not running it, then there not going to be able to get the experience necessary to write a good high level adventure, which is especially important IMO since one of the primary reasons why it is so hard to write a good one is because of the mechanical breakdown and all the extra work that it entails.


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## DaveMage (Mar 11, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> 2. 1E/2E are the fastest RPG systems I've ever seen played. 4E is faster paced than 3E, but resolving combat takes about the same amount of time.




I love the speed of 1E/2E.  But I love the feat system too much to ever go back to 1E/2E.  Overall combat speed is what I'd like to improve - but I don't know how to do it without taking away combat options.




Wulf Ratbane said:


> Well... Just off the top of my head, are skill points for NPCs really the key to a fulfilling experience?
> 
> How many of them matter in combat? Concentration? Tumble? Spot?




A simplified skill system for NPCs (and monsters) would be fine (and even preferred).   

I also like what Paizo has done with the CMB.  The method for resolution has been quickened, but the options have not changed (you can still bull rush, overrun, etc.).

Thinking about it a bit more, I guess the options I'm really referring to are PC options.  For example, I wouldn't want to lose the option to grapple simply beacuse grappling can take some extra time to resolve.  




James Jacobs said:


> FURTHER EDIT: Is there a market for high level adventures anyway?




I'd buy 'em.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 11, 2009)

DaveMage said:


> I love the speed of 1E/2E.  But I love the feat system too much to ever go back to 1E/2E.  Overall combat speed is what I'd like to improve - but I don't know how to do it without taking away combat options.
> 
> Thinking about it a bit more, I guess the options I'm really referring to are PC options.




System mastery plays a role here.

Certainly you can fault any system that introduces options for the PCs faster than the players can assimilate them.


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## DrunkonDuty (Mar 11, 2009)

I've jumped to the end of this thread after reading only the first few posts, because I was worried about spoliers. So apologies if I go over stuff already said. 

I'm very interested to read the OP, as I was beginning to think much the same thing: the APs are designed for hard core munchkin characters. Allow me to explain my experience.

Age of Worms spoilers follow.

We are into the second part of Age of Worms, the mines with the Ebon Triad cultists. Our party was 7 strong (down to 6 now.) So I was interested to read that the AoW was designed for 6. 

So far we have avoided 3 TPKs purely out of GM fudging.

1st: at the end of the Whispering Cairn. 5x 1st and 2nd level characters fighting 2x power gamed 6th level monsters (the Wind Duke's soldiers) which are given automatic surprise and, with +9 Initiative almost certainly first action in the round after that. A miracle* any one survived.

2nd: in the the temple of Hextor. Bad guys 3rd and 4th level, party 2nd and 3rd. Numbers even. Partly this was the fault of the GM just deciding one of the bad guys could run down a 20 foot wall, across 20 feet of sand in the arena, get an attack in and stand between us the escape route. Said bad guy was spiked chain wielding trip monkey. We got past him and were about to run when a PC who'd died in an earlier fight came back in a flash of light, all buffed out the wazoo* and turned the tide of battle.

3rd: Penultimate fight against the Erythnul cultists. Tough bottle-neck to get into the cave followed by being attacked by a 6th level barbarian (party 3rd and 4th level) with additional buffs from potions. Miracle we survived.*

*All miracles supplied by GM fiat. Conditions apply.

I don't like this style of play. I should maybe point my GM to this thread. It might give him some pointers about how to handle/tone down the AP.

cheers all.


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## Rechan (Mar 11, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> System mastery plays a role here.
> 
> Certainly you can fault any system that introduces options for the PCs faster than the players can assimilate them.



Or assume that most if not all players are going to grok system mastery. 

Some players (and some playstyles) just do not give themselves to character building finesse.

Although with someone like that, they should run far, far away from high level play.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 11, 2009)

Rechan said:


> Or assume that most if not all players are going to grok system mastery.
> 
> Some players (and some playstyles) just do not give themselves to character building finesse.
> 
> Although with someone like that, they should run far, far away from high level play.




The bad issue with system mastery and playstyles is that in terms of 3.5E, differences kill. They really don't mix. Get a group together where some people powergame and others don't, and tears will follow. Get a group together who want different things out of the game, and tears will follow. I can understand that people who have put together a good group of like minded people have had wonderful experiences with the system. I can also say that my own experiences, involving a motley group of different abilities and playstyles, found it pretty much impossible to get a harmonious game of 3.5E off the ground.


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## Rechan (Mar 11, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> The bad issue with system mastery and playstyles is that in terms of 3.5E, differences kill. They really don't mix. Get a group together where some people powergame and others don't, and tears will follow.



Oh I know. 

I've ran for groups of ROLEplayers. Those same groups just got frustrated and confused when they leveled up.

I've also seen a group who made their choices based on their CHARACTER. Where the only healer is a Cleric 3/Pal 2. The only spellcaster is a Sorcerer 3/Rogue 2. And the party routinely got its ass handed to it because the DM went by the book with CRs.

I don't have anything against that style, but I feel bad for those players. Because I believe that 1) 3e punishes you for playing that way, and 2) it leads to frustration for that kind of player, because they're fighting against the system itself. Not to mention that 3) I feel there's not a lot of more fluff, less combat focused options for those types of players.

No, I'm not a fan of system mastery.


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## Plissken (Mar 11, 2009)

Never played high level before. Started 3.5 and soon after 4e came out. Besides spellcasters kicking ass, which, I don't have a problem with since that is what the Wizard is all about, what other problems are there? 

It seems to me like melee fighters in high level just do multiple attacks. Roll like, what, 4 d20s and then damage. 

There was talk of grindiness. How's this different from 4e grind? 4e high level monsters have like, 800-2000 HP. While high-level damage output is...4-6[W] + Strength mod. Difference?

I'm also hearing talk of monsters kicking too much ass. So far in my experience with D&D 4e, with Dungeons own Scale of War AP, there are so many encounters that are much above the parties level. I've been in encounter after encounter where at least there has almost been a TPK or at least 3-4 characters unconscious.

Just wanting to hear the differences since I've never played high 3.5.


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## Jeff Wilder (Mar 11, 2009)

DrunkonDuty said:


> I've jumped to the end of this thread after reading only the first few posts, because I was worried about spoliers. [...] Age of Worms spoilers follow.



Um ... okay.



DrunkonDuty said:


> 1st: at the end of the Whispering Cairn. 5x 1st and 2nd level characters fighting 2x power gamed 6th level monsters (the Wind Duke's soldiers) which are given automatic surprise and, with +9 Initiative almost certainly first action in the round after that. A miracle* any one survived.



We fought for one round in this encounter and then _ran_.  It's my opinion that it was intended as an initially unbeatable encounter.  (We went back at 2nd- or 3rd-level and kicked wind warrior butt.)



DrunkonDuty said:


> 2nd: in the the temple of Hextor. [...] 3rd: Penultimate fight against the Erythnul cultists.



This whole adventure was very difficult, I found.  We beat the Erythnul cultists, after I stubbornly refused to run, because my PC got lucky and critted the strongest barbarian.  I was Disabled at the time.

That would have been a TPK.

There have been many very challenging encounters since, but the only real TPK possibilities were caused by the DM.  (E.g., granting surprise round to the bad guys when there really should not have been one.  Stuff like that.)  But yeah, that adventure against the Ebon Triad was flat out brutal.


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## Runestar (Mar 11, 2009)

> There was talk of grindiness. How's this different from 4e grind? 4e high level monsters have like, 800-2000 HP. While high-level damage output is...4-6[W] + Strength mod. Difference?




In 3e, it was not impossible to kill a foe in a single attack or full attack action at high levels. It simply took forever to resolve the attack sequence because of all the modifiers involved.


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## Freakohollik (Mar 11, 2009)

DrunkonDuty said:


> 1st: at the end of the Whispering Cairn. 5x 1st and 2nd level characters fighting 2x power gamed 6th level monsters (the Wind Duke's soldiers) which are given automatic surprise and, with +9 Initiative almost certainly first action in the round after that. A miracle* any one survived.




I remember this fight. I was worried that it would be TPK, but when we actually ran it my group of 4 3rd level PCs rolled over those wind dukes no problem. There was a psychic warrior, druid, wizard, and a knight. The psychic warrior was great with a bow, so even though the wind dukes were flying they couldn't win fighting at range. They then closed to melee and got hurt even harder. Those wind dukes had no chance at all.

But we did have a TPK against the grick. It had DR 10/magic and the party had just one magic weapon. Also, it made its save against sleep.

I never ran the second adventure, but it looked like a lot of fun.


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## Desert Hare (Mar 11, 2009)

drkfathr1 said:


> 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).




qft.


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## S'mon (Mar 11, 2009)

James Jacobs said:


> 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.




One advantage of making it 1-14 is that a GM with fewer or less skilled players can run it as a 3-16 instead, or even as a 5-18 (though the initial encounters may be rather easy for 5th level PCs), using the written stats, and it should work.  You can't do that with an AP written as 1-20.


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## delericho (Mar 11, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> Above level 8 or so, 3.5E combat tended to involve a lot of:
> 
> 1. Text messaging
> 2. 2 people getting together to optimally create/manage characters for other games, or one person doing the same alone
> ...




Of course, it's entirely possible that all of that goofing off and not paying attention contributed somewhat to those 30 combat rounds.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> System mastery plays a role here.
> 
> Certainly you can fault any system that introduces options for the PCs faster than the players can assimilate them.





IMHO System mastery is what killed 3e. We want to play, not just have to plan out and methodically select everything optimized for our character.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

Rechan said:


> Oh I know.
> 
> I've ran for groups of ROLEplayers. Those same groups just got frustrated and confused when they leveled up.
> 
> ...




Well my group  was half/half, so basically I had to make up 2 encounters. The tough guys to attack the minmaxed players and the minions or lackeys that would attack the 'roleplayers'. In the end chaos and hilarity ensued.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

Plissken said:


> Never played high level before. Started 3.5 and soon after 4e came out. Besides spellcasters kicking ass, which, I don't have a problem with since that is what the Wizard is all about, what other problems are there?
> 
> It seems to me like melee fighters in high level just do multiple attacks. Roll like, what, 4 d20s and then damage.
> 
> ...





Well OTTOMH, the one huge big difference is that under 3E I could TPK the whole party in 1 round ( save vs Die, huge DMG output, etc) while on 4E a TPK ussually occurs after a long while and many tactical choices have been taken. So in 4E TPK occur more from bad tactical choices than in 3E which was ussually was a bad random roll that dictated the outcome.

There is also that in 3E you could have 1 character that could do anyting ( combat monster) while in 4E the combat is more about teamplaying and synergy between characters.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

delericho said:


> Of course, it's entirely possible that all of that goofing off and not paying attention contributed somewhat to those 30 combat rounds.




Well if the system itself did not work to hold the attention or capture imagination while in combat, you can hardly blame the players ( which I hear statistically  80% have ADD).


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## Jeff Wilder (Mar 11, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> IMHO System mastery is what killed 3e.



In your opinion, 3E is dead?  Really?

System mastery is such a weird concept.  On the one hand, I want the fact that I know the rules pretty well to have some bearing on my enjoyment of the game (including in creating characters).  On the other hand, I don't want someone new to the game -- or just a more casual player -- to get screwed.

Then you've got the idea of deliberately built in rules mastery, where the "traps" are pretty obvious to folks that are paying attention.  On the other hand, if designers try to eliminate that, they create a situation where it actually takes _more_ skill to recognize which options are less powerful, because the gap is smaller and less obvious.

I think that the extent to which rules mastery is a problem in 3E is proportional to the amount that players in a group are in "silent conflict" to have the toughest, meanest, baddest sumbitch of a character.

My groups experience that syndrome toabout a 0.5, on a scale of 1 to 10, so 3E's system mastery isn't a downside for us.


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## delericho (Mar 11, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> IMHO System mastery is what killed 3e. We want to play, not just have to plan out and methodically select everything optimized for our character.




If you and your group just want to play, without worrying about character optimisation then... why not just play and not worry about character optimisation? The game rules don't actually require you to painstakingly search all those books in order to eke out every possible +1 bonus, you know.

And if you're concerned that your PCs will now be unable to face off against the challenges in published adventures, I have to solution for that too: if the DM gives out 125% of the XP he 'should' give out, the party will rise in levels faster, which will naturally compensate for the 'optimisation gap' as the level of the adventures goes up.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 11, 2009)

Jeff Wilder said:


> In your opinion, 3E is dead?  Really?
> 
> System mastery is such a weird concept.  On the one hand, I want the fact that I know the rules pretty well to have some bearing on my enjoyment of the game (including in creating characters).  On the other hand, I don't want someone new to the game -- or just a more casual player -- to get screwed.
> 
> Then you've got the idea of deliberately built in rules mastery, where the "traps" are pretty obvious to folks that are paying attention.  On the other hand, if designers try to eliminate that, they create a situation where it actually takes _more_ skill to recognize which options are less powerful, because the gap is smaller and less obvious.



And thus it doesn't hurt as much if you fail to see the best options or even decide against using i. 




delericho said:


> If you and your group just want to play, without worrying about character optimisation then... why not just play and not worry about character optimisation? The game rules don't actually require you to painstakingly search all those books in order to eke out every possible +1 bonus, you know.



Maybe it is because people still want to play published adventures... like those from Paizo...


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 11, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> IMHO System mastery is what killed 3e. We want to play, not just have to plan out and methodically select everything optimized for our character.




Perhaps I've used the term a bit too loosely, then.

I don't mean squeezing every last bit out of an optimized character.

I mean knowing what your character is capable of, and how to use those rules, regardless of how he may be optimized. 

(For example, the first time a paladin is able to turn undead, he has a new set of rules to learn.)

System Proficiency.

Better?


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## vagabundo (Mar 11, 2009)

delericho said:


> Of course, it's entirely possible that all of that goofing off and not paying attention contributed somewhat to those 30 combat rounds.




Of course, but I think the slowness of the combat round leads to disengagement from the game and that exacerbates the problem. A vicious circle.

It can be hard to get higher level 3.x combat rounds to go at a good pace, very hard. It is one thing that 4e got right, to some extent. While the overall time spent in combat may not have changed greatly, the number of rounds has increased, players dont have to wait as long for their round and engage more in the scene. YMMV of course.

Some of these gains, for my group anyway, is to do with prep; I've printed out power cards and they were a big time saver. Now I've doing up sheet per level on the character bulder and it does all the maths wonderfully. Similar tools for 3e might help.

@OP: For the record I do not think Paizo are to blame, it is just something that is inherent in the system.


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## Rechan (Mar 11, 2009)

> There was talk of grindiness. How's this different from 4e grind? 4e high level monsters have like, 800-2000 HP. While high-level damage output is...4-6[W] + Strength mod. Difference?



The difference between 3e and 4e grind:
3e: Each round takes a long time, real-time, to resolve. The aforementioned three-round combat taking two hours. 
4e: Each round is shorter, real-time, to resolve but each battle consists of more rounds.


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## Keefe the Thief (Mar 11, 2009)

You cannot blame it on system alone - the Paizo adventure paths have a certain way of creating and managing encounters that is highly problematic if combined with 3e high-level play. I loved the idea, the concept of the adventure paths. The execution using 3e, less so. 
A good GM fits the adventure into the preferences and abilities of his group. A good adventure writer fits the game system into the basic goals of his idea.


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## Grimstaff (Mar 11, 2009)

Drkfathr1 said:


> 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).




That's the inherent problem with "Adventure Paths" though. The characters and DM have to suit the adventures to make it through, rather than the adventures suiting the players and DM.

Much better, imo, to run modules as you go through the campaign, such as DCCs, choosing them as to what's appropriate for your group.


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## delericho (Mar 11, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Maybe it is because people still want to play published adventures... like those from Paizo...




You know, I did actually address that. In fact, in the paragraph immediately after the one you quoted.

If the DM gives out more XP than the PCs 'should' receive, they'll gain levels faster. Over the course of the campaign, this will naturally compensate for the 'optimisation gap' between the characters they have and the characters that the adventure assumes.

Still, it's a moot point now. Groups wanting to "just play" would probably be better served by 4e anyway.


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## BryonD (Mar 11, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> Above level 8 or so, 3.5E combat tended to involve a lot of:
> 
> 1. Text messaging
> 2. 2 people getting together to optimally create/manage characters for other games, or one person doing the same alone
> ...



That just screams bad DM to me.

If the DM can't keep the players involved in the story then you you have a problem.
I can believe that players may stay more focused on the minis battle if the game is a fast and easy minis battle type game.  And there are certainly games that do that better than 3E.  But if the story isn't there in one system, it isn't going to be there in another.  And if the tactical battle alone is what keeps people focused, then you are playing a different kind of game than what I think of as an RPG.  Not that my definition is the one truth of roleplaying.  But different game styles will require different mechanics.


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## Storminator (Mar 11, 2009)

Plissken said:


> Never played high level before. Started 3.5 and soon after 4e came out. Besides spellcasters kicking ass, which, I don't have a problem with since that is what the Wizard is all about, what other problems are there?
> 
> It seems to me like melee fighters in high level just do multiple attacks. *Roll like, what, 4 d20s and then damage. *




Ah Plissken... you poor naive waif! 

Let's discuss the high level hasted, two-weapon fighter, with multiple attacks with both hands, each with a different modifier, each weapon with a different special ability that interacts with the monster's DR differently...

You roll 8 d20, add a different number to each one, calculate and report each one's damage individually,  including the special abilities that go with each roll! Then the DM subtracts a different number from each roll, totals the results and reduces the monster's hp. And if the monster has regeneration or fast healing, there's a possibility those separate damages have to be tracked separately for the entire combat. Hopefully this high level fighter isn't a dervish, with movement in there between each attack, attacking different enemies on each (or some!) roll.

Oh, or a druid with an animal companion, 6 summoned creatures (all with multiple attacks... each one different...) and special conditional attacks like Rend, which depends on whether or not some of the base attacks hit. This player might need to move 8 allies (including himself) and make up to 20 attacks (all with different modifiers, damages, and damage types) and resolve a high level spell each turn.

4 or 5 PCs like that and it'll be half an hour to get back to your turn.

PS


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 11, 2009)

delericho said:


> You know, I did actually address that. In fact, in the paragraph immediately after the one you quoted.
> 
> If the DM gives out more XP than the PCs 'should' receive, they'll gain levels faster. Over the course of the campaign, this will naturally compensate for the 'optimisation gap' between the characters they have and the characters that the adventure assumes.
> 
> Still, it's a moot point now. Groups wanting to "just play" would probably be better served by 4e anyway.




But, lacking system mastery, to what extend do I need to increase the advancement?


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## DaveMage (Mar 11, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> System mastery plays a role here.
> 
> Certainly you can fault any system that introduces options for the PCs faster than the players can assimilate them.




Agreed.  The problem is, it really is too much, but I don't want to give anything up.  (That sounds irrational, and it probably is.  It's kind of like having available too many desserts to choose from--all of which you love.  You don't want anyone to take away your dessert choices, even though you couldn't possibly eat them all.)



cangrejoide said:


> IMHO System mastery is what killed 3e. We want to play, not just have to plan out and methodically select everything optimized for our character.




I enjoy both.  However, I can understand the negative(s) about selecting and planning too much. 



Grimstaff said:


> That's the inherent problem with "Adventure Paths" though. The characters and DM have to suit the adventures to make it through, rather than the adventures suiting the players and DM.
> 
> Much better, imo, to run modules as you go through the campaign, such as DCCs, choosing them as to what's appropriate for your group.




If one loves to homebrew, then you're exactly right.  However, there are times when you want to beat an adventure - be it a one-shot like the Tomb of Horrors, or a full adventure path.  Groups may want to play the Paizo APs for the challenge - to test their playing ability rather than for the purpose of immersing themselves in a character.  (Granted, those things are not necessarily mutually exclusive.)


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

delericho said:


> You know, I did actually address that. In fact, in the paragraph immediately after the one you quoted.
> 
> If the DM gives out more XP than the PCs 'should' receive, they'll gain levels faster. Over the course of the campaign, this will naturally compensate for the 'optimisation gap' between the characters they have and the characters that the adventure assumes.
> 
> Still, it's a moot point now. Groups wanting to "just play" would probably be better served by 4e anyway.




Bur even here system mastery fails, you see an optimized 3rd level fighter is maginitudes better than 5th or even a 6th level fighter. And if you have a mixed group, wold you give extra xps to the unoptimized warrior and not to the rest of the party?

Quick solutions do not fix this, they only agravate the problem.


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## billd91 (Mar 11, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> But, lacking system mastery, to what extend do I need to increase the advancement?




There's no specific formula and you may not even have to do it. The DM's job is to know his players and their PCs and have a rough idea of what they can and cannot do. And then, if running a tailored campaign like an AP, adjust the AP a bit to accomodate the play style of the group. 

I've been running Shackled City for a group of 5 players, only one of which does a lot of optimization, and they're doing quite well without me nerfing a thing. That one player who powergames the most is very much a team player.  The characters he makes up have very interesting suites of powers that work well together, but he works well with the rest of the party, doesn't hog the spotlight, and exhibits a lot of  in-character leadership.
He also DMs a lot and so has a good perspective on RP gaming in general.

When you've got that sort of thing going for a gaming group, system mastery, and differences between player's levels of system mastery, aren't much of a problem. It's mainly a problem when the ones with mastery don't work well with those without it or don't recognize how that difference interacts with the game as it will be presented by the DM.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

Storminator said:


> Ah Plissken... you poor naive waif!
> 
> Let's discuss the high level hasted, two-weapon fighter, with multiple attacks with both hands, each with a different modifier, each weapon with a different special ability that interacts with the monster's DR differently...
> 
> ...




This pretty much sums my experience with high level combat+ add the DMs turn to attack with NPCS and enemies.


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## ki11erDM (Mar 11, 2009)

Drkfathr1 said:


> 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).




DMs bought an adventure from Paizo and they expected it to work.  So yes, it was Paizo's fault.

I ran AoW for a few reasons, but the main one was I did not have the time to do all the prep work for a new campaign.  If I am paying someone to do that prep work then I expect it to be reasonable.  And I honestly think it was... it was just a perfect illustration of why 3.x was not going to work over level 14 or so.

Also... how many DMs do you think actually have exp running level 20 encounters?  I know I have been playing and DMing since... 85ish... and that was the first time I had ether played or DMed at that level.  Which probably speaks more about how broken high level play is than any AP.

But as you can see from the my quote in the OP, we did not have a TPK, the encounters were just a mind numbing grind.  By the last two or three adventures all the story was done, all the mysteries were known, the only thing the players had left to do was grind out some encounters… seemingly endless 3-5 hour long encounters.  That’s why I laugh my arse off anytime I see the ‘4e is a grind’ or ‘4e kills role playing’ threads, those people are just totally out of touch hehe.


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## billd91 (Mar 11, 2009)

AllisterH said:


> Isn't this simply because of the spread in effectiveness between characters of the same class at different levels?
> 
> An unoptimized 5th level cleric is going to be almost as effective as an optimized 5th level cleric simply due to the lack of options. Contrast that with a 15th level cleric and how much of a spread there is between unoptimized and optimized.




It isn't just the difference between optimized and unoptimized but also the difference between divergent development paths thanks to all of the options. Because of the number and variety of options, it's quite hard to predict just what sort of character composition you'll see at high levels. And I think that's why there so much variation in people's experiences with adventure paths.

I also think that's one reason Paizo now prefers to end a path around 15th level now. Leave any adventuring beyond that to the DM who knows his players best and knows the choices they've been making.


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## delericho (Mar 11, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> But, lacking system mastery, to what extend do I need to increase the advancement?




Lacking the magical ability to see the particulars of the individual group in question, how could I (or the DMG writers, or the authors at Paizo) possibly answer that question? The best thing to do is to pick a number and see how it goes. Over time, the amount may need to be increased or decreased, or might be just right.

And the same is true of the CR system as well - it is flat impossible to write a system that will work for every group in every situation. So, the thing to do is try it and then adjust the difficulty up or down as required.

Honestly, is it too much to expect a modicum of intelligent thought from DMs? Or does that also fall under "system mastery"?


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## wedgeski (Mar 11, 2009)

delericho said:


> Honestly, is it too much to expect a modicum of intelligent thought from DMs? Or does that also fall under "system mastery"?



No, it falls under, "I thought buying adventures was supposed to help me, but I just spent an hour adjusting this encounter down from a certain TPK to a likely TPK. Why am I paying for this again?"

I would expect the adventure itself to help the DM do this, at least by offering advice on how to scale the encounter down... or preferably, given a choice, up. I don't recall whether the Dungeon-era AP's did this, but it's patently unfair to blame anything except the adventure (and to some extent the system) for this problem.


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## delericho (Mar 11, 2009)

wedgeski said:


> No, it falls under, "I thought buying adventures was supposed to help me, but I just spent an hour adjusting this encounter down from a certain TPK to a likely TPK. Why am I paying for this again?"




When using a single pre-published adventure, you can fix this in one step by running an adventure for a slightly lower level than your group. So, for a 6th level group, you might run a 5th level adventure without modification. Simple.

In an adventure path context, you can fix this by giving out more XP to the group as they progress. (In the first adventure, you will probably also need to give them more opportunity to rest between encounters than you normally would.) As the campaign progresses, they'll move ahead of the recommended levels, closing the 'optimisation gap', and so fix the problem. Simple.

If you refuse to do this, then yes, you are left with having to do the work to adjust the adventures. Short of eating up thousands of words from their very limited page counts, the adventure writers simply cannot print more than the most cursory of adaptation notes - to the point where even including those cursory adaptation notes becomes pointless.

Or perhaps I should complain that every single 4e adventure that has ever and will ever be published is utterly worthless, because they assume a 5 PC party, and I only have 3 players?


----------



## Dragonblade (Mar 11, 2009)

Storminator said:


> Ah Plissken... you poor naive waif!
> 
> Let's discuss the high level hasted, two-weapon fighter, with multiple attacks with both hands, each with a different modifier, each weapon with a different special ability that interacts with the monster's DR differently...
> 
> ...




Heh... You just exactly described our high level 3.5 games. 

Thankfully, we all play 4e now.


----------



## thecasualoblivion (Mar 11, 2009)

delericho said:


> Of course, it's entirely possible that all of that goofing off and not paying attention contributed somewhat to those 30 combat rounds.




Not really. 30 minute(minimum) combat rounds would have happened with or without the distractions. The distractions were the response to things taking that long in the first place.



cangrejoide said:


> Well if the system itself did not work to hold the attention or capture imagination while in combat, you can hardly blame the players ( which I hear statistically  80% have ADD).




Its hard to keep attention when you aren't personally involved in the game for 15-30+ minutes at a time. Watching other people add up numbers on dice or paging through books and character sheets isn't very interesting, and that was where most of the time gets lost. 




delericho said:


> If you and your group just want to play, without worrying about character optimisation then... why not just play and not worry about character optimisation? The game rules don't actually require you to painstakingly search all those books in order to eke out every possible +1 bonus, you know.
> 
> And if you're concerned that your PCs will now be unable to face off against the challenges in published adventures, I have to solution for that too: if the DM gives out 125% of the XP he 'should' give out, the party will rise in levels faster, which will naturally compensate for the 'optimisation gap' as the level of the adventures goes up.




Because its the real world, and in the real world sh^$ happens. Maybe you get lucky and get a great group. For the rest of us, we get at least one person who optimizes more than the others, and the game goes to crap. As for the second paragraph, why should this have to happen? If I am buying a published adventure, it is to save myself preparation. What you describe is preparation. Is it so wrong to want a game that works correctly out of the box? 4E does. While most people used heavy housefules, 1E and 2E still worked just fine as written. 3E is the exception in terms of D&D. 




Plissken said:


> There was talk of grindiness. How's this different from 4e grind? 4e high level monsters have like, 800-2000 HP. While high-level damage output is...4-6[W] + Strength mod. Difference?




3E grind came from the players, not from the monsters. A 3E Rogue could easily attack 4-6 time per turn, with different modifiers on different attacks, rolling 8d6+modifiers and up for each hit. Unless you're a math whiz, it takes time to add up all those dice. Power attack, summons, buff stacking, and other things similarly could slow things down to a crawl. Add to this monsters with heavy immunities, ability drain, and other things and you get grind.

As for 4E, I've got a campaign going at level 16, and its the fastest 4E game I've ever run. We have some incredibly powergamed characters, but killing Elites in one round and winning combats in 2-3 rounds is still impressive, not to mention fast. Hundreds of hp is commonplace, but we have the firepower to chew through that in incredible fashion. Thanks to the Warlords obscene initiative bonus to the entire party, the battle is often over before the monsters get a turn. We did a test game at level 30, and people would be amazed how fast a level 30 Ancient Red Dragon dies, thousands of hp and all.


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## billd91 (Mar 11, 2009)

wedgeski said:


> No, it falls under, "I thought buying adventures was supposed to help me, but I just spent an hour adjusting this encounter down from a certain TPK to a likely TPK. Why am I paying for this again?"
> 
> I would expect the adventure itself to help the DM do this, at least by offering advice on how to scale the encounter down... or preferably, given a choice, up. I don't recall whether the Dungeon-era AP's did this, but it's patently unfair to blame anything except the adventure (and to some extent the system) for this problem.




Are you using the plot? The maps? The NPC ideas? The hooks? The treasure caches?

So you had to adjust an encounter or three by adding or subtracting creatures or levels or hit dice. Did you save time overall doing those adjustment compared to writing the whole thing or the whole thing you would have otherwised used? If yes, then that's why you are paying for it.

I don't know too many adventures I've run right out of the book with no modification. That's simply par for the course.


----------



## thecasualoblivion (Mar 11, 2009)

billd91 said:


> Are you using the plot? The maps? The NPC ideas? The hooks? The treasure caches?
> 
> So you had to adjust an encounter or three by adding or subtracting creatures or levels or hit dice. Did you save time overall doing those adjustment compared to writing the whole thing or the whole thing you would have otherwised used? If yes, then that's why you are paying for it.
> 
> I don't know too many adventures I've run right out of the book with no modification. That's simply par for the course.




Not being able to run adventures without modification is a feature of 3E D&D. The wild variations in power level the game possesses creates this problem. I have, in the past 12 months, run both 4E and 2E published modules without modification. It was never a serious problem in AD&D, and its not an issue with 4E.


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## Saracenus (Mar 11, 2009)

As a player, 3e is fun to play. I only have one character to take care of and I can pre-stat out any commonly used abilities and buffs.

As a DM 3e becomes an exponential nightmare. Its only made worse when you start adding players after the 4th.

My current 3.5 campaign has 8 players and it is becoming unmanageable. The combat rounds are long and people are having trouble staying focused on the game during the wait for their turns. This is at 6th level where only one PC has iterative attacks. Yes, the gulf between optimized and non-optimized players is already evident and wide.

Worse, my prep time is too damn long. I am using pre-published adventures that I have to modify heavily. I don't enjoy this and I don't have the time for it. My game will probably die soon. I am going to loose some people when I switch to 4e.

I have been playing and DMing since the early 80s and I was a Living Greyhawk junkie so I am very familiar with the good and the bad with 3e.

Any system that requires the DM to patch over its faults to make it playable is flawed. 3e is bloated with choices that make it nearly impossible to provide a balanced encounter without hurculean effort.

Anyway, I don't blame Piazo for the problem but their encounter design doesn't help it.


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## billd91 (Mar 11, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> Not being able to run adventures without modification is a feature of 3E D&D. The wild variations in power level the game possesses creates this problem. I have, in the past 12 months, run both 4E and 2E published modules without modification. It was never a serious problem in AD&D, and its not an issue with 4E.




For the most part, it was a feature of the game dating back to 1e and basic. How many names did the denizens of the Keep on the Borderlands have? DMs have been adding names to those NPCs since the dawn of that module.

I've been adjusting adventure hooks and monsters in modules ever since 1e because, invariably, there are things my players do differently from the core concept of how the mods were written. It is expected that DMs may well need to do so. I've also run 3e modules unedited when the module design and hooks have coincided with the way my game has been running. But that's always been dependent on the specifics of the module, it's placement, and a host of other detail-based features not limited to stat blocks.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 11, 2009)

Dragonblade said:


> Heh... You just exactly described our high level 3.5 games.
> 
> Thankfully, we all play 4e now.




So you broke your game. 

What will you move to after you break your _new _toy?


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## Storminator (Mar 11, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> So you broke your game.




Do you think those two character examples are _not_ representative of 3e? Because they seem pretty ordinary to me. A TWF and one of the main casters... it's not like I even gave them Leadership.


> What will you move to after you break your _new _toy?




The new toy seems a lot more robust to me.

PS


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 11, 2009)

billd91 said:


> For the most part, it was a feature of the game dating back to 1e and basic. How many names did the denizens of the Keep on the Borderlands have? DMs have been adding names to those NPCs since the dawn of that module.
> 
> I've been adjusting adventure hooks and monsters in modules ever since 1e because, invariably, there are things my players do differently from the core concept of how the mods were written. It is expected that DMs may well need to do so. I've also run 3e modules unedited when the module design and hooks have coincided with the way my game has been running. But that's always been dependent on the specifics of the module, it's placement, and a host of other detail-based features not limited to stat blocks.




Giving NPCs names and adding/altering plot is a far cry then having to adjust the difficulty of 3E monsters. The two are not comparable



Wulf Ratbane said:


> So you broke your game.
> 
> What will you move to after you break your _new _toy?




Some games are less breakable than others. I've played Rolemaster, Champions, AD&D 2E, D&D 3E, 4E, Exalted, new and old World of Darkness, Amber Diceless, d20 Modern, SWSE, and a few others on smaller occasions. With the possible exception of Exalted(which while it breaks down a lot, tends to break down at launch and the game dies before it really starts), 3E D&D is by far the most breakable RPG. I played AD&D for years, and it was never as fragile as 3E is. 

Games break all the time from group burnout and logistics. 3E can break down from the system itself though more than any other game(aside from, again, Exalted crashing and burning before getting off the ground in the first place).


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## DM_Jeff (Mar 11, 2009)

Many of these observations are completely valid for some groups. 

Two important factors to managing high level play are having a DM very on top of the flow of the game and never running anything exactly as written (it must be tailored for your group, because no one knows it but you).

Second is a good group of friends who knew the rules and worked together not against each other.

No, my answer is not just "the right DM and the right players", but it's a titanic factor, in my opinion.

I ran *Shackled City *up to 20th level with 6 characters, and even wrote a sequel bringing the players to 21st level. It was fun. Obviously different from the levels of the 5-15 level range to be sure, and some combats ran longer or shorter than others, but it was all fun. I wouldn't want all encounters perfectly balanced, in fact. That's just me.

I've run *Rise of the Runelords *to conclusion at 15th level and *Crimson Throne* to 14th and the only grind came at the very final encounters in both campaigns. And, looking back, I realise I no doubt should have taken a few extra minutes to study up on their resources and modify for my group. Were they still fun? My group and I had a blast each time. No kidding.

I eagerly await some of the changes Paizo says it will bring to the Pathfinder RPG for high level play. Mostly because, as so many have pointed out, they clearly see the problem from the perspective of those who designed the most adventures for it. And if it smooths out some more problems as it goes, each game can be better for it.

-DM Jeff


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 11, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> So you broke your game.
> 
> What will you move to after you break your _new _toy?




What will people do after something they use breaks down? They get something to replace it, at least if that is cheaper/easier than trying to repair it. If possible, something better, something that will last them longer, or fits their requirements better.

I wouldn't be surprised if I, in 5 to 15 years, will play D&D 5E. Or Shadowrun 5E. Or Exalted 3E. Or (oh, please please please) Torg 2.0.


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## Spatula (Mar 11, 2009)

Jeff Wilder said:


> Then you've got the idea of deliberately built in rules mastery, where the "traps" are pretty obvious to folks that are paying attention.  On the other hand, if designers try to eliminate that, they create a situation where it actually takes _more_ skill to recognize which options are less powerful, because the gap is smaller and less obvious.



But the effectiveness gap also becomes mostly inconsequential.



Jeff Wilder said:


> I think that the extent to which rules mastery is a problem in 3E is proportional to the amount that players in a group are in "silent conflict" to have the toughest, meanest, baddest sumbitch of a character.



I don't think that an actual conflict is required, although one will probably excaberate the issue.  It's very easy for the unitiated to make characters that aren't just suboptimal, but that are actively ineffective, which isn't much fun when placed side by side with some powergamer creation.  No need to be "the best" - just a desire to be operating on the same plane of existance.


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## Remathilis (Mar 11, 2009)

Dragonblade said:


> Heh... You just exactly described our high level 3.5 games.
> 
> Thankfully, we all play 4e now.




I've told this story before, but, hey, one more time.

A "Typical" Round of our last 3.5 20th level game.

PC 1: Wizard/Loremaster: Cast _Bigby's Clenched Fist._ Check SR. Make attack roll with Clenched fist. (+20 for CL, +11 str, +7 Int mod, -1 Str). Roll damage (1d8+11) and target rolls Fort save vs. Stunning. Then casts _Quickened Magic Missile,_ Checks SR 5 times, 5 1d4+1 missiles. Then directs his 1d3 summoned, augmented huge earth elementals to make full attacks (2 attacks, +19 melee, 2d10+9.

PC 2: Cleric 20: Reminds everyone of their vigor spell (everyone gets 4 hp back. Uses Divine Power to up his caster level (turn check) then casts _Cometfall,_ 20d6 damage, Reflex 1/2. Moves. Else, Casts _Heal_ or _Mass Cure_ to save Ranger, F/W and/or Rogue. 

PC 3: Wizard/Arcmage: Begins with Polar Ray (20d6, ranged touch, checks SR). Uses _Quickened Targeted Dispel Magic_ on Foe, rolling a CL check for each of the foe's buffs. DM recalculates foes stats. Moves. 

PC 4: Ranger 20. Makes 5 attacks (4 bab, +1 speed) with +4 speed bastard sword, rolls damage (DM subtracts DR and notes), and rolling for three attacks with off hand (+3 cold iron holy shortsword) again doing damage and DM subtracting DR.

PC 5: Rogue/Thief Acrobat. If its sneak-attackable (which is rare) 5 foot, (to flank with ranger) make three attacks with primary hand (each doing 1d8+5 +8d6 SA) and one with off hand (doing 9d6 SA). DM notes totals and subtracts DR. If not, hang back with my shortbow and do three attacks at 4d6 (fire, holy). DM checks DR and Energy Resist.

PC 6: Fighter/Wizard/Eldrich Knight/Arcmage. Arcane Strikes with full attack for a +9 to hit, +9d4 damage on four attacks. DM notes, subtracts DR. _Quickens a magic missile_ (checks SR, 5 1d4+1) for good measure.

Enemies Turn. 

While in theory someone was typically getting shafted a full attack round (moving, etc) each PC's turn had at least three distinct parts, many had up to seven or more. It also assumes around round 3 or higher, rounds 1 & 2 were typically full of charging, the casting of haste and mass animal buffs, dispelling enemy buffs etc. 

No wonder it took nearly half-an-hour to play out one round of combat...


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## Agamon (Mar 11, 2009)

I admit, my group in AOW were mostly competent players, with one "master" and one player that loved making sub-optimal PCs.  The sub-optimal PCs had a casualty rate about equal to the competents (but didn't help a whole lot in combat, often making things tougher for everyone).

The system master, OTOH, went through 11 PCs in RttToEE and 9 PCs in AoW.  He was really good at maximizing his damage output...which made the nasties glare at him all the more.  That, combined with the fact that his tactical ability is on the low end of the spectrum, and most of those attacks that made the party cringe were directed at his PC.

So far, he's fairing a lot better in 4e. (In fact, no PCs have died so far...I'm losing my killer DM rep...I need to run something by Paizo again )


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## billd91 (Mar 11, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> Giving NPCs names and adding/altering plot is a far cry then having to adjust the difficulty of 3E monsters. The two are not comparable




They are absolutely comparable. In both cases, you change the off-the-rack product for personal consumption. Ever change the city where something was set? Ever change the treasure to be more fitting to your current group of PCs? Ever change a plot hook or character because it would then be more meaningful for the current PCs? Ever swap out one humanoid type for another because the use they were put to in the module didn't fit the campaign?

It's all the same thing. Published modules frequently need work to adapt them to the current game at the table. What that adaptive work needs to be will vary from table to table just as the make-up of the players and PCs vary.


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## Rechan (Mar 11, 2009)

Remathilis said:


> Uses _Quickened Targeted Dispel Magic_ on Foe, rolling a CL check for each of the foe's buffs. DM recalculates foes stats. Moves.



This is about where I stopped, curled into a ball, and wept.

But then, I broke into a sweat re-calculating to-hit and damage after receiving a Bull's strength when using a two-handed weapon.

As a sidenote, I read over that and bang my head against a wall seeing the Magic Missiles. 20th level characters using a 5th level slot to do 5d4+5 damage (and checking SR five times). There's a reason I hate magic missile with a passion. It just brings the mental image of Rambo taking on Godzilla with a BB gun.


----------



## Agamon (Mar 11, 2009)

billd91 said:


> They are absolutely comparable. In both cases, you change the off-the-rack product for personal consumption. Ever change the city where something was set? Ever change the treasure to be more fitting to your current group of PCs? Ever change a plot hook or character because it would then be more meaningful for the current PCs? Ever swap out one humanoid type for another because the use they were put to in the module didn't fit the campaign?
> 
> It's all the same thing. Published modules frequently need work to adapt them to the current game at the table. What that adaptive work needs to be will vary from table to table just as the make-up of the players and PCs vary.




Comparable, yes.  Just like looking for a needle you dropped on the floor is comparable to looking for one dropped in a haystack.


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## BryonD (Mar 11, 2009)

Rechan said:


> This is about where I stopped, curled into a ball, and wept.
> 
> But then, I broke into a sweat re-calculating to-hit and damage after receiving a Bull's strength when using a two-handed weapon.



It is difficult to respond to posts that involve people going on and on about what they can't handle.


----------



## BryonD (Mar 11, 2009)

Storminator said:


> The new toy seems a lot more robust to me.



I agree.  It certainly has a lot fewer moving parts.


----------



## Rechan (Mar 11, 2009)

BryonD said:


> It is difficult to respond to posts that involve people going on and on about what they can't handle.



Then don't respond.


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 11, 2009)

Storminator said:


> Do you think those two character examples are _not_ representative of 3e? Because they seem pretty ordinary to me. A TWF and one of the main casters... it's not like I even gave them Leadership.
> 
> 
> The new toy seems a lot more robust to me.




The old toy had wheels.

You broke the wheels off it.

The new toy does not have wheels.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!


----------



## Storminator (Mar 11, 2009)

Rechan said:


> This is about where I stopped, curled into a ball, and wept.




Ever seen 6 epic PCs caught in a Disjunction? 

End of the session right there. 45 minutes of rolling saves, and another hour of recalculating sheets... Surprise round plus half a round of combat - and time to go home.

Brutal.

PS


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 11, 2009)

Storminator said:


> Ever seen 6 epic PCs caught in a Disjunction?




Hmm... Yeah, that's a tough one. 

If only there were some solution that immediately presented itself.

I'd get on that but I'm still working on the druid with the 8 summoned pets. 

Another tough nut to crack.

Real stumper.


----------



## Storminator (Mar 11, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> The old toy had wheels.
> 
> You broke the wheels off it.
> 
> ...




The old toy was named "the downhill racer" and had wheels that attached via a Rube Goldberg machine - each wheel to a different part of the body via a different Rube Goldberg machine. 

When racing the toy downhill (as implied by the name!), each wheel came off in a unique and unpredictable way at a different part of the race.

The new toy has wheels that attach to axles and rolls perfectly every time.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Cut the BS Wulf.

PS


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 11, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> The old toy had wheels.
> 
> You broke the wheels off it.
> 
> ...



My old toy was a skateboard. It was really cool stuff and I could do some neat tricks, but the wheels didn't make it fit for the kind of terrains I wanted to use. 
Now I've got a hoverboard. It's awesome.

I love these analogies and play around with them.


----------



## Storminator (Mar 11, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> Hmm... Yeah, that's a tough one.
> 
> If only there were some solution that immediately presented itself.
> 
> ...




Possibilities...

1) never have any PCs close enough to be disjoined... ever, even when out of combat (which is when we were attacked). 

2) always dedicate an epic level caster to counterspelling disjunction

3) never have epic PCs

4) cut a deal with the DM to never use disjunction

5) play 4e? 

All kinds of possibilities...

PS


----------



## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 11, 2009)

Storminator said:


> The new toy has wheels that attach to axles and rolls perfectly every time.
> 
> Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
> 
> ...




You're bad at analogies.

You specifically named multiple trouble spots caused by options and play styles that _simply do not exist_ in the new game.

I note that nobody's mentioned sweet spot scaling, nobody's mentioned encounter design, nobody's mentioned the rest mechanic, nobody's mentioned monster design, etc. 

You know: the things that 4e provides _actual solutions for_.

Instead of just taking your toys away from you so you don't hurt yourself.


----------



## Erik Mona (Mar 11, 2009)

Saracenus said:


> My current 3.5 campaign has 8 players and it is becoming unmanageable. The combat rounds are long and people are having trouble staying focused on the game during the wait for their turns. This is at 6th level where only one PC has iterative attacks. Yes, the gulf between optimized and non-optimized players is already evident and wide.




I had a similar experience running Age of Worms in my own campaign, at about the level you are referring to, and coincidentally I also had 8 players. While I agree that 3.5 has some crazy abilities, the biggest problem here is that you are running an adventure with 8 players. The game is not really designed for that many players, and the usual result is that the people who are not addicted to the game start to do something else, like read, doodle, knit, etc.

With 10 players, the problem is exacerbated even more. With 28, it is virtually unplayable.

Speaking as Paizo's publisher, we're mindful of the problems with 3.5 at high levels and willing to hear about people who think our encounter designs make it worse. But 8 players is too many. It was too many for second edition, it's too many for 3.5, and it's too many for 4.0.

It's just too many.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 11, 2009)

Storminator said:


> Possibilities...




6) Go outside and play catch with lawn darts.


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## billd91 (Mar 11, 2009)

Erik Mona said:


> I had a similar experience running Age of Worms in my own campaign, at about the level you are referring to. While I agree that 3.5 has some crazy abilities, the biggest problem here is that you are running an adventure with 8 players. The game is not really designed for that many players, and the usual result is that the people who are not addicted to the game start to do something else, like read, doodle, knit, etc.
> 
> With 10 players, the problem is exacerbated even more. With 28, it is virtually unplayable.




I ran 1e in college for 10 people for a term. Couldn't get anything done. I was pretty happy to pare it down to 6 the following term.


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## Piratecat (Mar 11, 2009)

Stop the snark, people. Thinly veiled aggression does not play well, no matter what its wheels look like.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 11, 2009)

Erik Mona said:


> I had a similar experience running Age of Worms in my own campaign, at about the level you are referring to, and coincidentally I also had 8 players. While I agree that 3.5 has some crazy abilities, the biggest problem here is that you are running an adventure with 8 players. The game is not really designed for that many players, and the usual result is that the people who are not addicted to the game start to do something else, like read, doodle, knit, etc.
> 
> With 10 players, the problem is exacerbated even more. With 28, it is virtually unplayable.
> 
> ...




A minor nitpick, but eight players was not too many for second edition. I ran two years of 2E campaigns at my FLGS back in my 2E days, and those games were 8 players minimum. 2E was quick and easy enough to make that work, at least in my hands. 8 players could overwhelm a table, or the DM, but it did not overwhelm the system. The system handled it just fine, just as it handles our Dragonlance game with 11pcs(played by 5 players), some dependent NPCs, fighting against bands of monsters that outnumber them 2-1 or even 3-1. Encounters that still run faster than 3E or 4E battles. 11 players was pushing things, but 8 players ran just fine.


----------



## kitsune9 (Mar 11, 2009)

delericho said:


> Of course, it's entirely possible that all of that goofing off and not paying attention contributed somewhat to those 30 combat rounds.




I agree. If my players were half as unfocused, I'd quit running.


----------



## Storminator (Mar 11, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> You're bad at analogies.
> 
> You specifically named multiple trouble spots caused by options and play styles that _simply do not exist_ in the new game.
> 
> ...




Ah! You had a point. Sorry, I missed it.

Iterative attacks are a method for helping melee guys scale with spell casters, but it's an awful one. Doing 6[W] with a single attack is much, much better (or close burst melee attacks, all with a single attack bonus). This is the point of my TWF example.

Summoning and cohorts and animal companions that _add_ to your action pool is thematic, and "simulationist" but is a nightmare at the table. Having your companions eat up your actions is much, much better, and doesn't scale completely out of control. Your turn takes about the same amount of time. Hence, Druid example.

Long term buffs and the Christmas tree effect intersect with dispels in ways that are simply nasty at the table. Wiping out the animal buffs and making the rest have tight, defined durations means recalculating takes a few seconds, not hours. Disjunction example.

Can you really see the only design changes as taking away options?

PS


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 11, 2009)

kitsune9 said:


> I agree. If my players were half as unfocused, I'd quit running.




Its a chicken or the egg problem. Players being unfocused was in our case, a direct symptom caused by it taking 30-45 minutes for their next turn to come around. I'm sure being unfocused added to the time encounters took, but encounters being way to slow was an unacceptable problem to begin with.

As for this direct quote, I did quit running 3E, and players being this unfocused was a big factor in that decision. I run 4E now, and this problem does not exist. The game is too fast paced to go ADD to the degree I saw in 3E.


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## Treebore (Mar 11, 2009)

I don't know what pages 2 through 8 of this thread says, but high level 3E play sucks, period. Its the rules, not the adventures, that are the problem. Its also why I am not even going to look at Pathfinder yet. The 3E rules set needs some serious rewriting to make high level play work. When Paizo gets around to doing that with PAthfinder, then I will get excited.

One of the reasons I am not interested in 4E is that I see very similar problems to why high level play won't work in 4E either. Streamlined monsters will help things a bit and definitely lesson the stress, but the mechanics are still going to cause overload.

So I'll stay with C&C because it allows me to run high level games like I did in 2E, and I learned to run successful high level games in 2E.


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## Voadam (Mar 11, 2009)

wedgeski said:


> No, it falls under, "I thought buying adventures was supposed to help me, but I just spent an hour adjusting this encounter down from a certain TPK to a likely TPK. Why am I paying for this again?"
> 
> I would expect the adventure itself to help the DM do this, at least by offering advice on how to scale the encounter down... or preferably, given a choice, up. I don't recall whether the Dungeon-era AP's did this, but it's patently unfair to blame anything except the adventure (and to some extent the system) for this problem.




The Dungeons I have from Paizo (which includes some Shackled City AP) all have advice on scaling the included encounters up and down.

Goodman Games DCCs all did as well.


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## Piratecat (Mar 11, 2009)

Storminator said:


> Ah! You had a point. Sorry, I missed it.



Pete, please re-read my post #150 and consider whether this was necessarily the best way to phrase things.

Ahem.

Okay, folks, carry on.


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## Erik Mona (Mar 11, 2009)

Treebore said:


> I don't know what pages 2 through 8 of this thread says, but high level 3E play sucks, period. Its the rules, not the adventures, that are the problem. Its also why I am not even going to look at Pathfinder yet. The 3E rules set needs some serious rewriting to make high level play work. When Paizo gets around to doing that with PAthfinder, then I will get excited.




A fair amount of Jason's time has been spent on this issue post-Beta, and we just completed the high level portion of the playtest, which resulted in numerous changes and modifications. These are, to some extent, patches rather than complete rewrites, however, as the game is meant to update 3.5, not tear it down to the ground and start from the beginning.

I'm very eager to see how the high-level changes in Pathfinder affect the perception that high level play is "broken". I am sure they will satisfy some people, and disappoint others. But I like what I have seen so far, and I think a lot of other people will too.

--Erik


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## ProfessorPain (Mar 11, 2009)

Erik Mona said:


> A fair amount of Jason's time has been spent on this issue post-Beta, and we just completed the high level portion of the playtest, which resulted in numerous changes and modifications. These are, to some extent, patches rather than complete rewrites, however, as the game is meant to update 3.5, not tear it down to the ground and start from the beginning.
> 
> I'm very eager to see how the high-level changes in Pathfinder affect the perception that high level play is "broken". I am sure they will satisfy some people, and disappoint others. But I like what I have seen so far, and I think a lot of other people will too.
> 
> --Erik




You guys did a great job in the beta. My only complaint is the Skill Section could be more explicit (there was some confusion in our group over how many skill points characters are supposed to have). Can't wait to see what kinks you work out in the final version. My group is playing a Pathfinder game and we love it. I hope you guys stay with the updating model, as the whole reason we started pathfinder was to use our old 3E settings, modules and supplements (and purchase new ones as they come out). 

Honestly, I am not a big fan of high level play in any game; I just don't enjoy playing uber powerful characters. And in 3E I think it was the splat books created unintended consequences that really destroyed high level play. If I were you, I place more emphasis on responsible use of prestige classes and new feats. And identify broken combinations and dissallow them. Or just have a flat rule that asks people to employ common sense on the issue.


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## Treebore (Mar 11, 2009)

Erik Mona said:


> A fair amount of Jason's time has been spent on this issue post-Beta, and we just completed the high level portion of the playtest, which resulted in numerous changes and modifications. These are, to some extent, patches rather than complete rewrites, however, as the game is meant to update 3.5, not tear it down to the ground and start from the beginning.
> 
> I'm very eager to see how the high-level changes in Pathfinder affect the perception that high level play is "broken". I am sure they will satisfy some people, and disappoint others. But I like what I have seen so far, and I think a lot of other people will too.
> 
> --Erik




Yes, I do follow your guys' design blogs and forum posts, so I know you are addressing what you can, I also understand why you cannot do a complete rewrite at this time. You have to stay largely compatible with the 3E core rules.

So what I am hoping to see is you guys do a "High level PF D&D Game Book", that does completely rewrite what needs to be rewritten and does allow for an enjoyable, and challenging, high level game.

To make high level play work best is a complete rewrite that changes the whole scaling of power with levels. To do that you would have to rewrite 3E from the ground up, and I don't see Paizo ever doing that, but I wish you would.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

-Edited due to red post.-


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

-Edited due to red post.-


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## joethelawyer (Mar 11, 2009)

Erik Mona said:


> A fair amount of Jason's time has been spent on this issue post-Beta, and we just completed the high level portion of the playtest, which resulted in numerous changes and modifications. These are, to some extent, patches rather than complete rewrites, however, as the game is meant to update 3.5, not tear it down to the ground and start from the beginning.
> 
> I'm very eager to see how the high-level changes in Pathfinder affect the perception that high level play is "broken". I am sure they will satisfy some people, and disappoint others. But I like what I have seen so far, and I think a lot of other people will too.
> 
> --Erik




Thx for the response Erik. Think you can give us a basic overview of the patches?  I tried to follow the discussions on Paizo's board as best I could, and was especially interested in the high level aspect of it, but could not really glean anything concrete as to the steps PF would take to address these issues.


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## Treebore (Mar 11, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> Wow look at Erick with the snarK!!
> 
> So you actually GMed for 28 people? You the man!





Are you trying to get banned over your own thread? Take a chill pill. Plus if you think Erik is being snarky your waaay too sensitive. Besides, it doesn't change the facts, he is right in what he says.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

Treebore said:


> I don't know what pages 2 through 8 of this thread says, but high level 3E play sucks, period. Its the rules, not the adventures, that are the problem. Its also why I am not even going to look at Pathfinder yet. The 3E rules set needs some serious rewriting to make high level play work. When Paizo gets around to doing that with PAthfinder, then I will get excited.
> 
> One of the reasons I am not interested in 4E is that I see very similar problems to why high level play won't work in 4E either. Streamlined monsters will help things a bit and definitely lesson the stress, but the mechanics are still going to cause overload.
> 
> So I'll stay with C&C because it allows me to run high level games like I did in 2E, and I learned to run successful high level games in 2E.




Can you explain a little more why do you think 4E will have the same pitfalls 3e had?


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

-Edited due to red post.-


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

Treebore said:


> Are you trying to get banned over your own thread? Take a chill pill. Plus if you think Erik is being snarky your waaay too sensitive. Besides, it doesn't change the facts, he is right in what he says.




Heh well I posted without actually reading those red posts. I'll go back and delete them.

-Edit: There any material that maybe considered against red post is gone.


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## Treebore (Mar 11, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> Can you explain a little more why do you think 4E will have the same pitfalls 3e had?




Sure, they haven't changed the power scale issues. High level games are still going to be long drawn out head aches because of the multitude of special powers, resistances, and immunities are going to pile up and overwhelm the game very much like they do in 3E.

The only hope I have for further improvement in 4E is the fact that they capped the levels in 4E at 30th level. So they might actually keep things scaled nicely, but considering how powerful the game starts at just 1st level, I am not holding my breathe. I will keep an eye on it though.


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## Primal (Mar 11, 2009)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Hmm, so Paizo is to "blame" only for being unable to provide suitable adventure paths for a lot of DM or their groups?




Just as much as WoTC is to blame for the same with their 4E products, i.e. that parties with 3 or 4 players are struggling when those adventures are "optimized" for 5 players. In the end, every DM needs to "tailor-fit" adventures to suit the party; I don't hold any illusions over what would happen if I ran KoTS without any modifications for 2 players.

At the moment, we're playing AoW with 3 (non-optimized) players, and doing just fine, because the DM has heavy-handedly modified every adventure.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 11, 2009)

Erik Mona said:


> A fair amount of Jason's time has been spent on this issue post-Beta, and we just completed the high level portion of the playtest, which resulted in numerous changes and modifications. These are, to some extent, patches rather than complete rewrites, however, as the game is meant to update 3.5, not tear it down to the ground and start from the beginning.
> 
> I'm very eager to see how the high-level changes in Pathfinder affect the perception that high level play is "broken". I am sure they will satisfy some people, and disappoint others. But I like what I have seen so far, and I think a lot of other people will too.
> 
> --Erik




I'm more concerned with the reality than the perception. More often than not, people who say they are fans of what Pathfinder is doing are the same people that say that 3E isn't "broken", at high levels or otherwise. That being said, I don't think it can be done within the constraints you are working under. The problems with high level play are fundamental to the system itself. Summoning, buff stacking, rolling insane amounts of dice plus iterative attacks either by themselves or in combination, spellcaster/nonspellcaster balance issues, save or die mathematics, et cetera can't be solved without tearing the system down to the ground and starting over. 

I'm in full support of you guys trying to keep the flame alive for 3.5E, regardless of my own feelings for that system. I'm just uncomfortable with advertising something that in my opinion can't be delivered, at least outside of preaching to the choir.


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## Treebore (Mar 11, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> Heh well I posted without actually reading those red posts. I'll go back and delete them.
> 
> -Edit: There any material that maybe considered against red post is gone.




Cool. Just keep in mind its best to never respond in a negative manner. No matter the provocation. Its not easy, but it can be done, and it helps to keep a thread going with more positive feedback, rather than crashing and burning.

Since you seem to want more discourse, keep yourself in check, so we can all keep talking.


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## Treebore (Mar 11, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> I'm more concerned with the reality than the perception. More often than not, people who say they are fans of what Pathfinder is doing are the same people that say that 3E isn't "broken", at high levels or otherwise. That being said, I don't think it can be done within the constraints you are working under. The problems with high level play are fundamental to the system itself. Summoning, buff stacking, rolling insane amounts of dice plus iterative attacks either by themselves or in combination, spellcaster/nonspellcaster balance issues, save or die mathematics, et cetera can't be solved without tearing the system down to the ground and starting over.
> 
> I'm in full support of you guys trying to keep the flame alive for 3.5E, regardless of my own feelings for that system. I'm just uncomfortable with advertising something that in my opinion can't be delivered, at least outside of preaching to the choir.




Well, with Pathfinder they HAVE to preach to the choir. Thats why I am hoping down the road they will do a book with real rules changes. I also agree from the ground up will allow for the best improvement. Hopefully the future will conspire to allow Paizo to do such a thing.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

Treebore said:


> Sure, they haven't changed the power scale issues. High level games are still going to be long drawn out head aches because of the multitude of special powers, resistances, and immunities are going to pile up and overwhelm the game very much like they do in 3E.
> 
> The only hope I have for further improvement in 4E is the fact that they capped the levels in 4E at 30th level. So they might actually keep things scaled nicely, but considering how powerful the game starts at just 1st level, I am not holding my breathe. I will keep an eye on it though.




Well IMHO I dont think this will be the case, a huge ( and common factor) regarding earlier posts was the huge ammounts of actions between players. In 4E no matter the level you still have 3 actions ( standard, minor, movement) at level 30. Even those powers that target multiple opponents do so with the same attack modifier and same dmg. Most buffs are just minor additions ( like + 1 to dmg ) even those are either for 1 round or for the rest of the encounter so mostly fire and forget buffs. Conditions are way more easier to track.

Yeah I admit there maybe an increase in complexity(very minor), but nothing compared to its ealier editions.

Then again my gaming group is only at level 12th right now and it will be like 3 more months until they reach the epic levels. But this is my general perception of what epic level gaming will be: NO CHANGE.


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## Treebore (Mar 11, 2009)

cangrejoide said:


> Well IMHO I dont think this will be the case, a huge ( and common factor) regarding earlier posts was the huge ammounts of actions between players. In 4E no matter the level you still have 3 actions ( standard, minor, movement) at level 30. Even those powers that target multiple opponents do so with the same attack modifier and same dmg. Most buffs are just minor additions ( like + 1 to dmg ) even those are either for 1 round or for the rest of the encounter so mostly fire and forget buffs. Conditions are way more easier to track.
> 
> Yeah I admit there maybe an increase in complexity(very minor), but nothing compared to its ealier editions.
> 
> Then again my gaming group is only at level 12th right now and it will be like 3 more months until they reach the epic levels. But this is my general perception of what epic level gaming will be: NO CHANGE.




Well, PM me if you find that to be the case. I only played up to 3rd level, nearly 4th, and have only read the rules, but playing it is the only solid way to find out for sure.


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## cangrejoide (Mar 11, 2009)

Treebore said:


> Well, PM me if you find that to be the case. I only played up to 3rd level, nearly 4th, and have only read the rules, but playing it is the only solid way to find out for sure.




Cool, but lets not wait 3 months for that. There has to be some forumites that have already experienced epic level play in 4E. 


Anyone wanna share your experiences?


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 11, 2009)

Treebore said:


> Well, PM me if you find that to be the case. I only played up to 3rd level, nearly 4th, and have only read the rules, but playing it is the only solid way to find out for sure.




I've played up to 16th at this point, and I can say that the game at level 16 runs just as good as it does in previous levels. In fact, our 16th level party, which is basically us rolling up brand new characters to run the WotC adventure Demon Queen's Enclave, is the smoothest and fastest 4E game I have been involved in.

I haven't played more than a few experimental stabs at Epic, but most of the issues I and others have seen is that the math gets a little funny at high levels, with PCs not keeping up with monsters in terms of attack bonuses and defenses. PHBII has feats which eliminate these discrepencies.


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## MACLARREN (Mar 12, 2009)

The adventure paths being produced by Paizo are not the problem with high level play.  Adventure paths and any module for that case should be a background for a DM to run a game based upon his groups needs or wants.  Modifications of it may or may not need to occur depending on the group and how they work together.  We have seen enough of the adventure paths by Paizo to understand their design concepts and if it isn't for you, then you have a choice and no need to buy them or use them.  There are plenty of other pregenerated modules out there to use.  I personally enjoy them and like challenging things but that is just me.  The problem with high level play is the mechanics involved.  As stated by everyone.  A lot of people have made good points as to what bogs high level play down and there we are in agreement.  I can say this though, my group has played 4e as well and the tracking of the conditions for this and that and that does not make that game much different.  It created a different type of pain and we chose not to play it due to our play styles.  The game was just not for us and we were really high on it when we started.  However, our DM and some of the others will not go back to 3.5 either due to high level burnout from our DM.  Our Sins campaign ran to approx 17th level and our DM lost interest in the last several levels due to the system and power gain of the system.  High level Spells (IE Teleport, Scry, Heroes Feast, etc), iteritive attacks, summoning, etc. made it difficult to pose a high threat to us at those high levels.  The systems fault and not his.  We could buff pop in, attack and get out.

I think PF will fix a lot of the problems we have in our 3.5 style of game.  We have went back to some degree to Conan 2nd edition rules.  Having a blast with it now.  Part is because all of the pain in the rear DM fun sponge spells are gone as is most magic.  This is working for us.  We were working on our own game for a time and it was going good but was more difficult in getting to an agreement on things.  It would have been good but it is now on the back burner if not dead.  The one thing we all have to remember though is no matter what we are playing, we are playing a game and no game is perfect whatever it is.  I have faith in Paizo and hope to go down that road locally come August if not before and I like what Wulf has done with Trailblazer from what I see as well.  Just my wants.


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## billd91 (Mar 12, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> I'm more concerned with the reality than the perception. More often than not, people who say they are fans of what Pathfinder is doing are the same people that say that 3E isn't "broken", at high levels or otherwise.




So... you're saying that people who don't perceive that 3e is broken aren't perceiving things right?


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## Runestar (Mar 12, 2009)

While we can't blame Paizo for 3.5 flaws, can we blame them for blindly adhering to what are clearly problematic rules and further propagating them? 

For example, if we know that high lv npcs are too weak for their cr, why then do we still stick with them, and list fighter18s as cr18 (or worse, some funny, completely unoptimized combination such as fighter4/wiz7/blackguard4 as cr15?). Should the designers not take it upon themselves to ad-hoc some changes (and maybe address them in a tiny sidebar, so we know they are deliberate, and not some kind of oversight). Maybe if they wanted a mindflayer wiz7 npc, take the initiative to revise its cr to a more resonable 12-13, rather than cr15. 

If we know that certain encounters are undesirable due to all the logistics involved, then try to reduce/do away with them altogether, rather than flooding us with the need for endless grapple checks and the like. If statting out high lv wizards is tedious due to the need to account for even cantrips, then maybe stick with sorcerers or simply handwave away all spells of 5th lv and lower (and say that they are food for arcane fire or versatile spellcaster or something). 

Play up what is so desirable about high lv play, while down-playing the undesirable bits.


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## Treebore (Mar 12, 2009)

Runestar said:


> While we can't blame Paizo for 3.5 flaws, can we blame them for blindly adhering to what are clearly problematic rules and further propagating them?
> 
> For example, if we know that high lv npcs are too weak for their cr, why then do we still stick with them, and list fighter18s as cr18 (or worse, some funny, completely unoptimized combination such as fighter4/wiz7/blackguard4 as cr15?). Should the designers not take it upon themselves to ad-hoc some changes (and maybe address them in a tiny sidebar, so we know they are deliberate, and not some kind of oversight). Maybe if they wanted a mindflayer wiz7 npc, take the initiative to revise its cr to a more resonable 12-13, rather than cr15.
> 
> ...




Why should Paizo not have to do it? Because WOTC themselves have talked many times about how the CR's don't work. Plus Paizo was under contract back then to follow the RULES. In current Pathfinder products Paizo is doing their own thing, trying out different things.

Good advice on how to ignore/handwave the rules to make running high level games easier to run though. Its been a few years, but I seem to remember doing much the same to try and make 3E worth running at higher level. Still got tired of it after awhile.


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## ProfessorPain (Mar 12, 2009)

Runestar said:


> While we can't blame Paizo for 3.5 flaws, can we blame them for blindly adhering to what are clearly problematic rules and further propagating them?
> 
> For example, if we know that high lv npcs are too weak for their cr, why then do we still stick with them, and list fighter18s as cr18 (or worse, some funny, completely unoptimized combination such as fighter4/wiz7/blackguard4 as cr15?). Should the designers not take it upon themselves to ad-hoc some changes (and maybe address them in a tiny sidebar, so we know they are deliberate, and not some kind of oversight). Maybe if they wanted a mindflayer wiz7 npc, take the initiative to revise its cr to a more resonable 12-13, rather than cr15.
> 
> ...




CRs were kind of useless in 3E. But most methods for creating balanced encounters are flawed. THis is something that GMs need to experiment with on their own in a way. CRs are great guide posts, but like you say, sometimes really weak multiclassed foes, or templated monsters end up with CRs that are way too high. And player tactics are also a consideration. Some 5th level parties can handle EL 6 encounters no problem. Others get creamed. I always took that section of the book with a grain of salt.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 12, 2009)

billd91 said:


> So... you're saying that people who don't perceive that 3e is broken aren't perceiving things right?




I'm saying that there are issues with 3E, but some people like the system enough that those issues don't matter. Pathfinder from what we've seen is not dealing with those issues, saying that they are, and people to whom these issues don't matter rejoice about the "fixed" system.


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## billd91 (Mar 12, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> I'm saying that there are issues with 3E, but some people like the system enough that those issues don't matter. Pathfinder from what we've seen is not dealing with those issues, saying that they are, and people to whom these issues don't matter rejoice about the "fixed" system.




But if PF is dealing with things we think _do_ matter then it is, in fact, a fixed system... from our perspective.


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## Rechan (Mar 12, 2009)

It's easy to test the 4e epic level play. Grab some PCs, Dungeon Delve, and spend an afternoon putting it through the paces.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 12, 2009)

Rechan said:


> It's easy to test the 4e epic level play. Grab some PCs, Dungeon Delve, and spend an afternoon putting it through the paces.




As much as I am a proponent of 4E, I have noticed from experience that starting fresh at higher levels is difficult, as higher level characters involve a learning curve for the players involved. Still, Dungeon Delve can give a rough approximation of epic play.


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## Rechan (Mar 12, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> As much as I am a proponent of 4E, I have noticed from experience that starting fresh at higher levels is difficult, as higher level characters involve a learning curve for the players involved. Still, Dungeon Delve can give a rough approximation of epic play.



Learning curve is expected, sure. 

On the plus side, with the Character Builder, the heavy math is done for you.


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## joela (Mar 12, 2009)

*4e high level*



Treebore said:


> Sure, they haven't changed the power scale issues. High level games are still going to be long drawn out head aches because of the multitude of special powers, resistances, and immunities are going to pile up and overwhelm the game very much like they do in 3E.
> 
> The only hope I have for further improvement in 4E is the fact that they capped the levels in 4E at 30th level. So they might actually keep things scaled nicely, but considering how powerful the game starts at just 1st level, I am not holding my breathe. I will keep an eye on it though.




What's the highest 4e game y'all have played so far? I played in an 18th level one-shoot from WotC which I played someone's else PC (warforged barbarian). Until then, the highest PC I've played was 4th. 

I found the 18th level actually quite easy once I figured out his powers. One thing I like about 4e is the consistency of the rules, from the classes and races and monster to their powers.  I'll admit, though, combat took a while: everyone has too many hitpoints!


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 12, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> I'm saying that there are issues with 3E, but some people like the system enough that those issues don't matter. Pathfinder from what we've seen is not dealing with those issues, saying that they are, and people to whom these issues don't matter rejoice about the "fixed" system.




I share those concerns-- but at the same time, realize that no one system is going to please everyone.


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## Jeff Wilder (Mar 12, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> I'm saying that there are issues with 3E, but some people like the system enough that those issues don't matter. Pathfinder from what we've seen is not dealing with those issues, saying that they are, and people to whom these issues don't matter rejoice about the "fixed" system.



The problems with 3.5 matter to _me_.  A lot.  I'm moving from mid- to high-level play in the game I DM, and the prep time and PC power disparity and slow-down of play seems to be doubling with every two or three sessions.  As a player in a 17th-level campaign, I'm frustrated by the slowness of play (much of which, but not all, is a function of the system).

So, again, I care.  A lot.

But 4E broke more than it fixed, for me.  I can't stomach the changes.  I'd honestly rather play 3E from 1-10 than play 4E from 1-30.  It's not even close.

What we saw in Pathfinder Beta and on the boards wasn't extremely encouraging to me.  I think more can be done to mitigate 3E's issues than has been done, even while maintaining 3.5 compatibility.

But ... I do think Pathfinder has made more mitigating changes than people give them credit for.  Many of those changes are subtle, woven into high-level spells and class abilities, for instance.  I also accept that the Beta isn't the finished product, and I'm willing to trust Erik and Jason when they say that the final rules will have much more to address these concerns.  (I'm not giving them a free pass, because I do think these really tough issues should have been tackled more head-on in the playtest.  So I'm not buying Pathfinder sight unseen, as I did the Beta.  But I'm also not going to write it off, as i once thought I might have by now.)


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## BryonD (Mar 12, 2009)

Jeff Wilder said:


> But 4E broke more than it fixed, for me.  I can't stomach the changes.  I'd honestly rather play 3E from 1-10 than play 4E from 1-30.  It's not even close.
> 
> What we saw in Pathfinder Beta and on the boards wasn't extremely encouraging to me.  I think more can be done to mitigate 3E's issues than has been done, even while maintaining 3.5 compatibility.



I've said before that, for me, the changes do more to put a fresh spin on things rather than really "fixing" things.  I certainly agree that at the highest levels the complexity reduces the value of play.  I wouldn't go remotely as far as some many others talking about pain and such.  I still find 3E quite fun at L20.  It is just less fun than lower levels.  I'd like to see that end shored up and I'm not sure I see it.

But I don't mind much at all.  I still love the game.

I'd rather play 3E at levels 5-15 than 3E at level 20.  But I'd play 3E at L20 before 4E at any level whatsoever.  The comparison of effort required to value gained is overwhelming.


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## Erik Mona (Mar 12, 2009)

joethelawyer said:


> Thx for the response Erik. Think you can give us a basic overview of the patches?  I tried to follow the discussions on Paizo's board as best I could, and was especially interested in the high level aspect of it, but could not really glean anything concrete as to the steps PF would take to address these issues.




Jason would be a better person to answer this, but from what I have read and played so far I'd say that the biggest changes come from additional combat options for warrior types (usually accessed through feats) that allow them to stay "competitive" with their spellcasting brethren and a LOT of subtly changed spells. Someone above mentioned disjunction, and dispel magic/greater dispel is another example. This type of spell requires a ton of additional die rolls that grind the game to a halt, so those have been simplified somewhat. Also, most (if not all) "save or die" spells are gone.

There are a lot more changes along these lines, but an overview will have to wait until I'm a little more familiar with them. Jason only finished his primary design on Monday, after all!


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## Krensky (Mar 12, 2009)

Storminator said:


> Ever seen 6 epic PCs caught in a Disjunction?
> 
> End of the session right there. 45 minutes of rolling saves, and another hour of recalculating sheets... Surprise round plus half a round of combat - and time to go home.
> 
> ...




Well, eight. Took an hour (with a fudge of checking magical ammo in 5 shot units), and resulted in two explosions (artifacts of the villian) and three PCs up to their eyebrows in arrows from disjuncted quivers.

Of course this was in 2e, so I'm not really sure how this is an issue with 3e. Disjunction's always been a great idea on paper and in character, but a bad idea at the table. We still kid the DM for making us 'waste' an hour in the climactic fight of the game for it.

Granted, this was also the game that featured a weaponized Instant Fortress (twice), so he probably had some frustration to unload on us.


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## Erik Mona (Mar 12, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> I'm more concerned with the reality than the perception. More often than not, people who say they are fans of what Pathfinder is doing are the same people that say that 3E isn't "broken", at high levels or otherwise. That being said, I don't think it can be done within the constraints you are working under. The problems with high level play are fundamental to the system itself. Summoning, buff stacking, rolling insane amounts of dice plus iterative attacks either by themselves or in combination, spellcaster/nonspellcaster balance issues, save or die mathematics, et cetera can't be solved without tearing the system down to the ground and starting over.
> 
> I'm in full support of you guys trying to keep the flame alive for 3.5E, regardless of my own feelings for that system. I'm just uncomfortable with advertising something that in my opinion can't be delivered, at least outside of preaching to the choir.




Well, as long as we're painting with broad brushes, I'll say that the people who seem most critical of what we're doing are the ones who think the entire system must be destroyed in order to make it any fun at all.

Obviously, both "camps" (are they camps?) are a little strung out on hyperbole and often don't attempt very hard to see the other point of view.

All of the things you listed in your list of irreparably broken items are things that Jason has addressed in one form or another in the Pathfinder rules. Granted some of these changes didn't happen until the playtest and thus are not public yet, but they have been addressed.

Have they been addressed to your satisfaction? Reading your posts I'd have to say "probably not," but then I strongly suspect you are not in the target audience of Pathfinder anyway, since you obviously hated 3.5. Lots of us didn't, but that doesn't mean that we're immune to its flaws. 

Contrary to your sweeping generalization, I think the most commonly heard criticism from people who _are_ excited about Pathfinder is that they're worried about the unbalanced nature of high-level play. "Fixing" these issues while remaining true to our compatibility goals will of course be the real trick.

Will we push things too far from the 3.5 core to appeal to the 3.5 die-hards? Will our changes be enough to get people who have given up on 3.5 to give Pathfinder a look?

We won't know that until this upcoming August, at the earliest. All I can do as a publisher is put the very best people on the job and trust that they will do excellent work. I can prod them on one direction or the other, but I've got to trust them.

And I do. I'm enormously pleased with what Jason and the thousands of playtesters have been able to bring us, and I am now looking forward to high-level play in a way that I never did in the era of "straight" 3.0 or 3.5.


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## ProfessorPain (Mar 12, 2009)

Erik Mona said:


> Well, as long as we're painting with broad brushes, I'll say that the people who seem most critical of what we're doing are the ones who think the entire system must be destroyed in order to make it any fun at all.
> 
> Obviously, both "camps" (are they camps?) are a little strung out on hyperbole and often don't attempt very hard to see the other point of view.
> 
> ...




Here are the key things to my enjoyment of 3E:

1) Flexible Mutliclassing System- For me, this is what 3E was all about. Being able to take a level of fighter here, a level of rogue there, etc; without too much difficulty. 

2) Skill Ranks and plenty of Skills- I like to play rogues, and I couldn't stand the changes to the skill system that first appeared in Star Wars Saga. I like being able to take ranks in skills, and having a large number of skills to choose from. 

3) Impressive magic- Sometimes it became unbalanced, but I much prefer impressive magic over nurfed but balanced magic. But I was always one of those players who felt starting out weak, and slowly becoming powerful was a tradeoff that made the class balanced. 

Things I don't like about 3E

1) Stacking rules. These got pretty ridiculous by 3.5, and really became a headache for everyone. Plus there were just too many parenthetical types of everything 

2) Broken feats and prestige class abilities. I wouldn't mind if 3pp publishers released feats and prestige classes that broke the game, but the majority of them came from Wizards. This made it hard as a GM to dissallow classes, feats or spells that were clearly broken when combined with existing classes, feats or spells. This doesn't mean I want everyone to be the same exact power level. Its okay to have some builds that are better than others. That was one of the things that made character design so exciting. But if a build exists that can dish out 120 points of damage by 3rd level in a single round, something is wrong. 

3) Not enough modules or DM support. There just weren't enough modules being released by Wizards for 3E. Back in the 80s with AD&D, my favorite thing to do at the book store was browse the modules and campaign settings for something cool to purchase. As a DM this really fired up my imagination. Also books like the guide to Villains and Campaign Cartographer were great. And who didn't love reading the Van Richten Guides. Stuff like that was missing, until the final year or so of 3E. I know there are more players than DMs in any group, so it makes sense to put out more material for players to buy. But if you help the DM make a kick ass campaign world or a superb adventure, you keep people in the game. Sure put out some splat stuff; but I really think things like the Van Richten guides are better models for what both DMs and Players would buy. You could have a whole line of monster hunting books (Guide to Dragons, Guide to Greenskins, Guide to Demons), that give players character ideas and hunting strategies and give DMs material to use in an adventure and interesting twists.


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## Elodan (Mar 12, 2009)

Erik Mona said:


> Jason would be a better person to answer this, but from what I have read and played so far I'd say that the biggest changes come from additional combat options for warrior types (usually accessed through feats) that allow them to stay "competitive" with their spellcasting brethren and a LOT of subtly changed spells. Someone above mentioned disjunction, and dispel magic/greater dispel is another example. This type of spell requires a ton of additional die rolls that grind the game to a halt, so those have been simplified somewhat. Also, most (if not all) "save or die" spells are gone.
> 
> There are a lot more changes along these lines, but an overview will have to wait until I'm a little more familiar with them. Jason only finished his primary design on Monday, after all!




Sorry to derail this thread slightly.  I haven't been to the Paizo boards in a while (overwhelmed by the design forums).  Do you have plans to do some previews to highlight some of the changes before it's final release?

Thanks.


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## Primal (Mar 12, 2009)

Elodan said:


> Sorry to derail this thread slightly.  I haven't been to the Paizo boards in a while (overwhelmed by the design forums).  Do you have plans to do some previews to highlight some of the changes before it's final release?
> 
> Thanks.




Well, I'm not Erik, but I think Jason mentioned that some of the changes will be featured as previews in the Paizo Blog.


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## joethelawyer (Mar 12, 2009)

Erik Mona said:


> Jason would be a better person to answer this, but from what I have read and played so far I'd say that the biggest changes come from additional combat options for warrior types (usually accessed through feats) that allow them to stay "competitive" with their spellcasting brethren and a LOT of subtly changed spells. Someone above mentioned disjunction, and dispel magic/greater dispel is another example. This type of spell requires a ton of additional die rolls that grind the game to a halt, so those have been simplified somewhat. Also, most (if not all) "save or die" spells are gone.
> 
> There are a lot more changes along these lines, but an overview will have to wait until I'm a little more familiar with them. Jason only finished his primary design on Monday, after all!




 Thanks for taking the time to respond, Erik.  I look forward to hearing more about it as we get closer.


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## Primal (Mar 12, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> I'm saying that there are issues with 3E, but some people like the system enough that those issues don't matter. Pathfinder from what we've seen is not dealing with those issues, saying that they are, and people to whom these issues don't matter rejoice about the "fixed" system.




Well, as Erik has said, a lot has changed from the Beta rules. As it has been a fairly common subject on the playtest boards, I'm sure that Jason and the others have thought really hard about how to improve playability at high levels.

In my group, we've really embraced the Beta rules, and it feels like a breath of fresh air. Not only that, but Paizo is putting out so many quality "must-have" products this year (e.g. Cities of Golarion, Classic Horrors Revisited, Dwarves of Golarion, Legacy of Fire AP, Council of Thieves AP, etc.) that I'm going to be a very happy DM (although financially I'll be deeply in debt).


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## Mercule (Mar 12, 2009)

TerraDave said:


> High level problems that made me glad to go 4E: Yes.
> 
> Paizo AP: No.



This.  I home-brewed my campaign through 15-16th level and got burned out.  An AP might actually have kept me going.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 13, 2009)

Try to deal with this a bit at a time.



Erik Mona said:


> Well, as long as we're painting with broad brushes, I'll say that the people who seem most critical of what we're doing are the ones who think the entire system must be destroyed in order to make it any fun at all.
> 
> Obviously, both "camps" (are they camps?) are a little strung out on hyperbole and often don't attempt very hard to see the other point of view.




Fair enough, though I consider myself a more educated 3.5E player than you might give me credit for. I was a 3.5E player exclusively during the lifetime of that edition(I missed most of 3.0E), was the DM 80% of the time, and I was the guy in our group who, either as player or DM, knew how the system ticked and how to make it dance. 



Erik Mona said:


> All of the things you listed in your list of irreparably broken items are things that Jason has addressed in one form or another in the Pathfinder rules. Granted some of these changes didn't happen until the playtest and thus are not public yet, but they have been addressed.




I don't think I ever used the words irreparably broken. My meaning was to introduce a number of things that bog down the game. I would use the phrase more hassle then they're worth in place of irreparably broken.



Erik Mona said:


> Have they been addressed to your satisfaction? Reading your posts I'd have to say "probably not," but then I strongly suspect you are not in the target audience of Pathfinder anyway, since you obviously hated 3.5. Lots of us didn't, but that doesn't mean that we're immune to its flaws.




I'm not in the target audience of Pathfinder, but I wouldn't say I hate 3.5E. Frustrated maybe, and preferring alternatives(4E and 2E) definitely. I certainly didn't hate it when I was playing it three times a week. As for being immune to flaws, its more of a case of forgiving flaws. People who are 3.5E junkies regularly forgive its flaws. I'm a 4E junkie, and I forgive the fact that the game is nowhere near as fast as I want it to be. Forgiving flaws doesn't lessen them or make them not exist. 3.5Es and 4Es flaws are still flaws.




Erik Mona said:


> Contrary to your sweeping generalization, I think the most commonly heard criticism from people who _are_ excited about Pathfinder is that they're worried about the unbalanced nature of high-level play. "Fixing" these issues while remaining true to our compatibility goals will of course be the real trick.
> 
> Will we push things too far from the 3.5 core to appeal to the 3.5 die-hards? Will our changes be enough to get people who have given up on 3.5 to give Pathfinder a look?
> 
> ...




It is the real trick, isn't it. My issues would be this:

1. I don't hate 3.5E, and would be interested to look at a fix I could believe in.

2. I had enough bad experiences with the system as it is that I'm not impressed by minor tweaks.

3. I am a systems guy, somebody who lurked on the CharOp boards, and not only knew the tricks, I understood how and why they were tricks. Any new system or fix is viewed through these eyes, which are by definition a lot more critical.

4. Knowing the exploits of 3.5E, when I was playing/DMing it, the specter of the game breaking always hung over my gaming experience. I knew the game could be broken, I knew personally how to break it, and I gamed with people who were more than willing to break it. I witnessed the game being broken on many occasions. I broke it myself in some of those instances, as the competitive spirit in me demanded that if one of the other players was going to break the game, I was going to break it harder. I game with people who played to be spotlight hogs and to "beat" the DM. Personally, I play the game to kick ass, and other players using CharOp to break the game raises the bar for kicking ass. 

5. Backwards compatibility--When I played 3.5E, we used a good deal of books. To me, 3.5e just isn't 3.5e without the pile of splats, and I can't imagine playing the game without the Warlock, PHBII, Tome of Battle, or Psionics. Combine this with my systems guru mentality, and the little differences bother me, as would having to tweak books I would plan on using.

6. If we were to start up a new game of OGL/3.5E without the Spell Compendium, our group would experience World War III. Fixing spells kind of loses its luster when you have to limit yourself to the PHB/Pathfinder book, or tweak/limit the Spell Compendium. Its been a while since I've looked at the Beta, but while you say you've toned down save or dies, what about save or suck? Save or Suck spells were usually worse offenders then the killing ones.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 13, 2009)

thecasualoblivion said:


> 4. Knowing the exploits of 3.5E, when I was playing/DMing it, the specter of the game breaking always hung over my gaming experience. I knew the game could be broken, I knew personally how to break it, and I gamed with people who were more than willing to break it. I witnessed the game being broken on many occasions. I broke it myself in some of those instances, as the competitive spirit in me demanded that if one of the other players was going to break the game, I was going to break it harder. I game with people who played to be spotlight hogs and to "beat" the DM. Personally, I play the game to kick ass, and other players using CharOp to break the game raises the bar for kicking ass.




So stop doing that.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 13, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> So stop doing that.




3.5E games with my groups will break with or without my influence, as I described in the statement you quoted. When I play D&D(or any RPG), my playstyle is that of the ass-kicker. If people are using system mastery to break the game, I must do so as well to fulfill my playstyle, as I am not about to kick less ass.

To me the difference was between playing a vanilla Crusader/Warblade/Psychic Warrior as I would normally be inclined to do, or in response to other people powergaming playing a Abjurer/Master Specialist/Initiate of the Sevenfold Veils or DMM Melee Cleric.


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## Saracenus (Mar 13, 2009)

Hello Erik,

Good to see you poking around here, sorry I probably won't be able to attend your DM panels at NorWesCon this year (if you are going).

Actually, I am finding that I can incorporate 4e rules into my 3.5 campaign and it works ok, but the effort I need to expend to bend that system into 3e still makes it too much work.

So, far I my feel for 4e is that it scales much better than 3e and I am pretty sure that my players would not be distracted by all the shinny options that seems to paralyze some of my players.

So, instead of stealing from 4e, I am just going to move over to it and simplify my life. 

I did take a look at Pathfinder RPG Beta and I just don't see the problems with 12th level plus play going away. It also isn't saving me prep time.

I wish you guys well at Paizo, the stuff you guys do is creative and brings out some of the best parts of the 3e system but I am done with it.



Erik Mona said:


> I had a similar experience running Age of Worms in my own campaign, at about the level you are referring to, and coincidentally I also had 8 players. While I agree that 3.5 has some crazy abilities, the biggest problem here is that you are running an adventure with 8 players. The game is not really designed for that many players, and the usual result is that the people who are not addicted to the game start to do something else, like read, doodle, knit, etc.
> 
> With 10 players, the problem is exacerbated even more. With 28, it is virtually unplayable.
> 
> ...


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## Erik Mona (Mar 13, 2009)

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, TCO. I have a better understanding of where you're coming from, and it was nice to read a post that didn't seem to hold Pathfinder or its fans in a highly negative regard. I appreciate that. I hope that even in the height of edition wars we can realize that we all come to EN World because we love gaming, and we all have a LOT more in common than all of us might think.

I think I drew a stronger line in the sand on certain late-era splat books in my own campaigning than you may have. For example, whereas you say you would cause World War III at your table if you didn't allow the Spell Compendium, in my opinion that book had some of the lowest quality control of anything rules-based that I ever saw come out of Wizards of the Coast, and when one of my players (usually Bulmahn) wanted to use a spell from it, I immediately grew suspicious that the spell was broken and would lower everyone at the table's enjoyment of the game. Jason was kind enough to prove me right on several occasions, so I took a "you must get each individual item from this book approved" approach to that one, which mitigated its otherwise ruinous effect on my campaign. Likewise the magic item book, which was more just lame and uninspired than unbalanced.

Jason and I both come out of the RPGA tradition, so I can assure you that we both have a great deal of experience with players who try to squeeze every iota of juice out of a system's corner cases, exceptions, and badly edited rules. A LOT of the stuff that drove you batty has been addressed in one form or another in the rules. Again, I'm uncertain whether the way we addressed them will appeal to you personally, but then you seem pretty happy playing fourth edition, so it seems like you're in good shape one way or the other.

I hope you'll give it a look when the final comes out. Even if you ultimately decide to stick with 4.0 (which I assume you will), you might enjoy seeing how (or if) we addressed some of the issues that ground your campaigns to a halt.

--Erik


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## Piratecat (Mar 13, 2009)

I can't wait to see Pathfinder. Color me excited.


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## thecasualoblivion (Mar 13, 2009)

Erik Mona said:


> (snip)
> 
> --Erik




I'll give it a look, out of curiousity if nothing else. I expect that 2E will be the game I turn to when I need a break from 4E though. That or something by White Wolf.


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## Erik Mona (Mar 13, 2009)

I think both the White Wolf systems and second edition AD&D have a strong "free wheelin'" on-the-fly appeal to them. That itch is best scratched by Call of Cthulhu round these parts.

And it wouldn't take much to pull me into a FASERIP game.


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## humble minion (Mar 13, 2009)

I think Paizo made something of a tactical error by not including (or at least foreshadowing) their fixes to high-level play in the PF beta.

Everyone knows system breakdown during high-level play is a big issue in 3.5.  Paizo release a beta ruleset that doesn't address this at all, but mention in various messageboard posts that they'll get to it later.

Big mistake for a number of reasons:
- People who download the rules and give it a cursory look-over or maybe a quick playtest (but who don't haunt the messageboards) will conclude that it doesn't solve the high-level problems of 3.5, and some may be turned off it for that reason.
- The promised fixes to high-level play will not get the benefit of the open beta playtest.  Given the delicacy and thoroughness required in balancing high-level d20 stuff, the relatively short timescales involved, and the relatively small Paizo employee base available for playtesting, this has got to be asking for loopholes and rules glitches to slip through the net.
- It just plain looks bad.  If Paizo were planning to fix 3.5e, then making the first priority tiny tweaks of class features, skill lists, and minor power boosts, while leaving the massive numerical breakdown problems of the entire system at high levels til a seeming afterthought doesn't inspire confidence.  Surely you'd fix the big, systemic stuff first, and leave the minor details of class balance for later?  It smacks of a disorganised approach to design, and a project lacking in clear strategic goals or any sort of overarcing plan.

I'd love to be wrong, but for the above reasons I'm adopting a very wait-and-see approach to Pathfinder, no matter how much I usually love Paizo stuff.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 13, 2009)

humble minion said:


> Everyone knows system breakdown during high-level play is a big issue in 3.5.




The *biggest*. 

What else compares? 

As far as I am concerned every problem in the game is a high-level issue-- if only because some systemic problems aren't really a big deal until they're compounded over many levels.

I am pretty confident that bringing SKR onto the staff there (as well as having access to Monte) is about as good a sign as you could ask for-- short of having previewed it in the beta. (Which I agree, they should have done.)


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## Piratecat (Mar 13, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> The *biggest*.
> 
> What else compares?
> 
> As far as I am concerned every problem in the game is a high-level issue-- if only because some systemic problems aren't really a big deal until they're compounded over many levels.



I really agree. Sagiro and I were discussing this last night, as we've just hit 19th level in a game that still has a couple of years to go. He's starting to find it challenging to run combats and prepare for games; I found the same thing. I'm looking forward to seeing how it's addressed in Pathfinder.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 13, 2009)

Piratecat said:


> I really agree. Sagiro and I were discussing this last night, as we've just hit 19th level in a game that still has a couple of years to go. He's starting to find it challenging to run combats and prepare for games; I found the same thing. I'm looking forward to seeing how it's addressed in Pathfinder.




I can recommend a couple of things real quick (but knowing Sagiro, he's on to these tricks already):

*PREP WORK/DM SIDE*

1) Skill points for NPCs don't matter.

To be more precise, the skill ranges for NPCs exist to provide a challenge for the PCs-- so just put them where they need to be to serve that function. For most monsters, the DCs of all their natural abilities (eg, poison DC) are set at 10 + 1/2 HD + ability mod. I recommend the same for monster/NPC skills.

2) Use the new statblock format. I get a lot of mileage from this site:
http://mikael.borjesson.net/dnd/monster-list.asp

Pick a monster-- any monster-- and print a sample page. You should get the new format on the top half of the page, leaving you a whole half a sheet for notes. My game prep consists of about 5 minutes of printing out those statblocks (one for every monster that might possibly make an appearance), and maybe 10 minutes of making notes for anything that deviates from the raw statblock. 

(Most of my game prep is spent making maps for my projector, which is a much more fun way to spend my prep time.)

*AT THE TABLE/PLAYER SIDE*

3) Ignore attacks of opportunity caused by moving _into _melee. I _want _my players in combat. My players _want _to be in combat. I remove obstacles that cause them to hem and haw about how to move to get into combat. Basically, if you start your turn in a non-threatened square, you can do anything you want that turn without provoking an Attack of Opportunity, including moving into/through threatened squares. 

4) Use my "fix" for iterative attacks.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-rules-discussion/248004-iterative-attacks.html

That fix allows for batch rolling all attacks at once. 

If Sagiro has anything else specifically that I can help with, let me know.


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## RangerWickett (Mar 13, 2009)

I'm looking forward to the Pathfinder rules, and I've dug the Pathfinder adventures a ton. You guys being free to have your own setting and do your own stuff has fixed nearly all my small critiques of the Dungeon adventure paths.

I guess I just got dissatisfied with some of the early changes I saw, which focused on adding more stuff to core classes, rather than fixing some of the high level structural woes I was most worried about. Especially after working on the latter Burning Sky adventures, I'm a little sick of high level "rocket tag" style games. Hell, we gave our final villainness Tarrasque-esque immortality just so she'd last through a few rounds of combat in the big climax.

The one game I play in, the GM switched to 4e, and my own group decided to switch genres and try World of Darkness for a bit. At this point I feel like I'm too far out of the loop to help with any sort of Pathfinder playtesting. If there's an overview some place of what's changing, I'd be thrilled to see it.


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## Piratecat (Mar 13, 2009)

I'll point him to your post. Thanks.


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 13, 2009)

RangerWickett said:


> I'm a little sick of high level "rocket tag" style games.




Allowing PCs to use Action Points to re-roll failed saves is a good thing.

Allowing BBEGs to use Action Points to re-roll failed saves is better.

Allowing BBEGs to use Action Points to take an immediate action is best.

There may still be a little salvo of "rockets" but you'll have to deplete action points on both sides before there's much risk of an unexpected knockout. 

(Your fights should be more Rocky Balboa and less Mike Tyson.)



> Hell, we gave our final villainness Tarrasque-esque immortality just so she'd last through a few rounds of combat in the big climax.




If the BBEG is alone (truly Solo) then give her 1 action point per PC, and multiply her hit points by the number of PCs in the party.

If the BBEG is part of a group (ie, she has allies, so economy of actions is not quite so crucial) then give her 1 Action Point and double her hit points.


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## mhensley (Mar 13, 2009)

TerraDave said:


> Thinking more on this, it really was not just Paizo. The fact that you had a whole E6/E8/E12 movement indicates that 3E had high level issues beyond the APs.




I don't think this is just an issue with 3e but with D&D as a whole.  I've never liked high level play in any version.  Once you get to the point where ogres aren't scary and you laugh at town guards with crossbows, it loses all sense of realism to me.  YMMV and I'm sure it does.


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## Runestar (Mar 13, 2009)

Serpent kingdoms has this cr18 hydra which can cast 7 spells each round as a 15th lv sorc. How's that for economy of actions? 

What about status effects? They are more common at higher levels, and can easily shut down foes, especially solos (some don't even allow saves, such as white raven hammer, which auto-stuns for 1 round, though the damage is crap).


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## Voadam (Mar 13, 2009)

ProfessorPain said:


> Things I don't like about 3E
> 
> 
> 
> 3) Not enough modules or DM support. There just weren't enough modules being released by Wizards for 3E. Back in the 80s with AD&D, my favorite thing to do at the book store was browse the modules and campaign settings for something cool to purchase. As a DM this really fired up my imagination. Also books like the guide to Villains and Campaign Cartographer were great. And who didn't love reading the Van Richten Guides. Stuff like that was missing, until the final year or so of 3E. I know there are more players than DMs in any group, so it makes sense to put out more material for players to buy. But if you help the DM make a kick ass campaign world or a superb adventure, you keep people in the game. Sure put out some splat stuff; but I really think things like the Van Richten guides are better models for what both DMs and Players would buy. You could have a whole line of monster hunting books (Guide to Dragons, Guide to Greenskins, Guide to Demons), that give players character ideas and hunting strategies and give DMs material to use in an adventure and interesting twists.




What a weird complaint. 

I have over 50 Dungeon Crawl Classic modules for 3e. I don't want to try and count how many paizo 3e adventures there are from Dungeon and Pathfinder. I have more than a dozen Complete Guide to X and Slayer's Guide to X books. 

3e is the most adventure and DM supplement supported of any RPG game ever. 

If you stick to just WotC stuff then yes, 1 AP, Book of Challenges, Return to the Temple, and City of the Spider Queen were pretty much it for 3.0 modules, and Savage Species for exploring existing monsters in depth as players, but 3.5 had a bunch of modules and Draconomicon, Libris Mortis, Fiendish Codices I & II, and Lords of Madness. Plus there was Dungeon providing multiple Adventures every month throughout all of the 3e era from day 1.

If you limit to WotC only for 3e then it does not matter what Pathfinder does or does not do, they are not WotC. If your complaint is lack of adventures and DM support then you just are not taking advantage of the support out there.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 13, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> Allowing PCs to use Action Points to re-roll failed saves is a good thing.
> 
> Allowing BBEGs to use Action Points to re-roll failed saves is better.
> 
> ...



You know, seeing this makes me remember what action points are similar to: hit points.

Seriously, it's the same principle. "OKay, you're hit, but you can spend some points to avoid getting seriously hurt. Let's call them hit points."
"Okay, you're hit and don't have enough hit points. You can spend action points to avoid getting seriously hurt!"

Once again I am convinced that Torgs possibility points did it right. They are both 4E style action points (get an extra chance to do something better) and 3E style action points or D&D style hit points (get a chance to avoid harm inflicted to you.)

Maybe there can be made a case that multiple "points" to cover different areas are okay - but should we use two mechanics to do exact the _same_ thing - both action points and hit points seem to exist to avoid hurt!

Of course, I'd say it is okay to do ths with a 3.5 "derivate", because you'd have to build it from the ground up again.


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## drothgery (Mar 13, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> The *biggest*.
> 
> What else compares?




Spellcaster multiclassing?


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 13, 2009)

drothgery said:


> Spellcaster multiclassing?




Heh. I'd argue that is _definitely _a high-level issue.

A Clr1/Wiz1 is not nearly so hamstringed as a Clr10/Wiz10.


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## Sagiro (Mar 13, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> I can recommend a couple of things real quick (but knowing Sagiro, he's on to these tricks already):
> 
> *PREP WORK/DM SIDE*
> 
> ...



While these are good ideas, my worries aren't really about at-the-table logistics, but adventure design in general.   My party of mostly-spellcaster 19th level PC's has reached the point where they can pretty much do anything they want at any time, so it takes increasingly long to design adventures that can't be trivially short-circuited in any number of ways.

I know it can be done, since I watched Piratecat do it successfully for several years (heck, mine was the PC with _miracle_), but it's not really my strength as a DM.  I don't want my players to start feeling that I'm placing arbitrary restrictions on their ability to flex their near-epic-level muscles, but I also need to keep them challenged.  

I feel like the sweet spot is shrinking with every level.


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## drothgery (Mar 13, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> Heh. I'd argue that is _definitely _a high-level issue.
> 
> A Clr1/Wiz1 is not nearly so hamstringed as a Clr10/Wiz10.




I thought of that later, but it's a noticeable problem even with a Clr 3/Wiz 3.


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## Storminator (Mar 13, 2009)

Sagiro said:


> While these are good ideas, my worries aren't really about at-the-table logistics, but adventure design in general.   My party of mostly-spellcaster 19th level PC's has reached the point where they can pretty much do anything they want at any time, so it takes increasingly long to design adventures that can't be trivially short-circuited in any number of ways.
> 
> I know it can be done, since I watched Piratecat do it successfully for several years (heck, mine was the PC with _miracle_), but it's not really my strength as a DM.  I don't want my players to start feeling that I'm placing arbitrary restrictions on their ability to flex their near-epic-level muscles, but I also need to keep them challenged.
> 
> I feel like the sweet spot is shrinking with every level.




I think you should make adventures that require near-epic-level muscles. Rituals that span 2 continents and 3 planes simultaneously, that sort of thing. Make them move the moon, or put out the sun, or go back in time and finish the world creation ritual.

Or plan a wedding.

PS


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 13, 2009)

Sagiro said:


> While these are good ideas, my worries aren't really about at-the-table logistics, but adventure design in general.   My party of mostly-spellcaster 19th level PC's has reached the point where they can pretty much do anything they want at any time, so it takes increasingly long to design adventures that can't be trivially short-circuited in any number of ways.




Fair enough. You know me-- I'm a mechanics guy.

And your problem is fundamentally a story problem.

I'm usually happy to solve that primarily by curtailing the big three (Raise Dead, Divination, and Teleport-- expressed in any iteration, at any level) by fiat.

(And FWIW, Piratecat certainly used his share of arbitrary restrictions. During the time that I played the Dead Gods/Ghouls of the Underdark portion of his campaign, there were restrictions on divination, raise dead, and teleport all three-- all skillfully curtailed through story rationale.)


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## kibbitz (Mar 13, 2009)

Wulf Ratbane said:


> Fair enough. You know me-- I'm a mechanics guy.
> 
> And your problem is fundamentally a story problem.
> 
> ...




Could you or PC share details of this curtailing? Would be interesting to hear, and maybe a few of us could borrow some ideas.


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## Primal (Mar 13, 2009)

humble minion said:


> I think Paizo made something of a tactical error by not including (or at least foreshadowing) their fixes to high-level play in the PF beta.
> 
> Everyone knows system breakdown during high-level play is a big issue in 3.5.  Paizo release a beta ruleset that doesn't address this at all, but mention in various messageboard posts that they'll get to it later.
> 
> ...




If I remember correctly, Erik and Jason have said that there was a lot of "stretching-the-boundaries" type of stuff that they wanted feedback on in the Beta (in the similar vein but on a smaller scale that WoTC did with ToB). And, I don't know if dramatic changes to high-level play would have been better than subtle changes, because the fact is that only a fraction of playtesters apparently got to try high-level play, and the rest of us just tried to voice our opinions how it should be changed from 3E; the system all of us had played for years. That way Paizo got some actual feedback on the minor changes, and could decide which way to go on basis of that feedback *and* the suggestions of the fans.  

Also, let's remember that it's a free preview of the rules, and if I was in their boots, I wouldn't put all my best ideas into a free preview. After all, if everyone already got them for free, why would they pay for the actual product? All in all, I think it was a class act from Paizo, and an exciting project to participate in, and my group is once again excited about D&D.


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## DaveMage (Mar 13, 2009)

drothgery said:


> Spellcaster multiclassing?





Bah - that's easy.

Play gestalt PCs.


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## Qualidar (Mar 13, 2009)

humble minion said:


> I think Paizo made something of a tactical error by not including (or at least foreshadowing) their fixes to high-level play in the PF beta.




I think when the beta was put out they really hadn't solved those issues. It was still on the to-do list.



Wulf Ratbane said:


> 4) Use my "fix" for iterative attacks.
> http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-rules-discussion/248004-iterative-attacks.html




I love that. I've been mulling the same sort of concept for a while, but I don't have the statistical chops to do it right. Nice work.


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## Voadam (Mar 13, 2009)

Primal said:


> Also, let's remember that it's a free preview of the rules, and if I was in their boots, I wouldn't put all my best ideas into a free preview. After all, if everyone already got them for free, why would they pay for the actual product? All in all, I think it was a class act from Paizo, and an exciting project to participate in, and my group is once again excited about D&D.




Wrong on two counts I believe. There was a print edition of the beta rules for sale, only the pdf was free. I believe they have said the final rules would also be released as a free srd in addition to the full color deluxe for pay hardcover. At least last I heard they were discussing that for the final rules and leaning that way.

Think about the precedent from WotC with 3e D&D. Did you go entirely off of the free srd or did you buy the books?


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## Wulf Ratbane (Mar 13, 2009)

kibbitz said:


> Could you or PC share details of this curtailing? Would be interesting to hear, and maybe a few of us could borrow some ideas.




The adventure involved the death of a goddess, whose portfolio was being picked up by another deity (or two).

All of the action took place deep in the Underdark, which interfered with teleportation; and because of all the deities involved divination/commune was highly suspect. (We were never sure who was providing the answers...)

I don't recall anyone actually dying during this time, but because of the portfolio involved (_Death_) I seem to recall being pretty uneasy about the afterlife (what happened to souls, what bargains would be required, what entities might try to ride piggy-back on a resurrected soul, etc.)

Either Piratecat or Sagiro can fill in the details better than that, I am sure.


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## Primal (Mar 13, 2009)

Voadam said:


> Wrong on two counts I believe. There was a print edition of the beta rules for sale, only the pdf was free. I believe they have said the final rules would also be released as a free srd in addition to the full color deluxe for pay hardcover. At least last I heard they were discussing that for the final rules and leaning that way.
> 
> Think about the precedent from WotC with 3e D&D. Did you go entirely off of the free srd or did you buy the books?




How does that make my first statement wrong?  Naturally, if you wanted the book, you had to pay for it -- I took that as a given. You yourself admit that SRD (in electronic format) equals "free rules", and so does a .PDF (also in electronic format), right? And, both are equally hard to use, in my opinion, unless you print them.

Yes, I bought the Beta rules (just as I did with 3.0 books), and also printed the .PDF for my players. As for 3.5 campaigns, I've only used the SRD, because in my opinion the scope of changes was too little to justify buying the books. Now, if the final PF rules would be just an "updated" Beta with minor changes, would I buy them -- especially if I can simply print the updates for free? Nah, I probably wouldn't... maybe out of support, but I think I would rather wait for PF 2.0. However, I believe there will be enough changes that I will want the book.


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## humble minion (Mar 14, 2009)

Qualidar said:


> I think when the beta was put out they really hadn't solved those issues. It was still on the to-do list.




That's my other concern.  The to-do list was backwards.  The high level issues are so severe and so deeply entwined with the basic structure, assumptions, and maths of the d20 system that addressing them should have been the first thing Paizo looked at when designing the PF ruleset.  Putting them on hold while fiddling around with minutae of class balance and rage points etc is putting the cart before the horse.  Fixes to the high-level problems are likely to echo though the entire system in ways that might not be immediately obvious, and which might not mesh well with the smaller stuff that they've already changed.

I'm just a little concerned that Paizo's PF design process is trying to hang the wallpaper before the foundations have been laid.


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## Erik Mona (Mar 14, 2009)

Qualidar said:


> I think when the beta was put out they really hadn't solved those issues. It was still on the to-do list.




This.

--Erik


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## Erik Mona (Mar 14, 2009)

humble minion said:


> I'm just a little concerned that Paizo's PF design process is trying to hang the wallpaper before the foundations have been laid.




I guess we'll see. 

--Erik


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## Spatula (Mar 14, 2009)

humble minion said:


> That's my other concern.  The to-do list was backwards.  The high level issues are so severe and so deeply entwined with the basic structure, assumptions, and maths of the d20 system that addressing them should have been the first thing Paizo looked at when designing the PF ruleset.  Putting them on hold while fiddling around with minutae of class balance and rage points etc is putting the cart before the horse.  Fixes to the high-level problems are likely to echo though the entire system in ways that might not be immediately obvious, and which might not mesh well with the smaller stuff that they've already changed.
> 
> I'm just a little concerned that Paizo's PF design process is trying to hang the wallpaper before the foundations have been laid.



This was my thought as well.  But then my first impulse, given the task of "fixing" 3e, would not have been to make the game even more complex, so clearly I'm not the intended audience.


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## dante58701 (Mar 14, 2009)

Drkfathr1 said:


> 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).
> 
> Those over the top, very maximized, near impossible end battles can be easily toned down to a more appropriate level of difficulty.
> 
> ...




I'd have to completely agree with you. I've DM'd for 15 years and it's entirely up to the DM to select encounters that are suitable for their group.

More often than not, the players are to blame for their character's own demise. Usually due to goofing off and not taking the dangers seriously. 

I've gamed with many different groups of people. Some more mature than others, but the majority of gamers I encounter are either immature or inexperienced.


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## Voadam (Mar 23, 2009)

I thought of another 3.5 1-20 adventure series, the Dragonlance age of mortals one. So I updated my list from here.


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## Voadam (Mar 23, 2009)

Primal said:


> How does that make my first statement wrong?  Naturally, if you wanted the book, you had to pay for it -- I took that as a given. You yourself admit that SRD (in electronic format) equals "free rules", and so does a .PDF (also in electronic format), right? And, both are equally hard to use, in my opinion, unless you print them.




You had said 







> Also, let's remember that it's a free preview of the rules, and if I was in their boots, I wouldn't put all my best ideas into a free preview. After all, if everyone already got them for free, why would they pay for the actual product?




It is not a situation of the beta being free and the final product being for sale. The beta edition was free in pdf and for sale in print. The final product will also supposedly be free in pdf/srd and for sale in print.

If you were just saying the beta pdf was free and not implying that the final rules won't be then I don't understand your point about not putting your best ideas in the preview beta. People will still get the best final PF ideas for free from the final srd/PDF.

I see no reason to not put the best existing ideas in the beta. At worst some people will have bought the beta hardcover and not buy the final pathfinder book. Even in this worst case scenario Paizo has made a sale (and gotten the payment earlier).


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## Primal (Mar 23, 2009)

Voadam said:


> You had said
> 
> It is not a situation of the beta being free and the final product being for sale. The beta edition was free in pdf and for sale in print. The final product will also supposedly be free in pdf/srd and for sale in print.
> 
> If you were just saying the beta pdf was free and not implying that the final rules won't be then I don't understand your point about not putting your best ideas in the preview beta. People will still get the best final PF ideas for free from the final srd/PDF.




No, the final product is *not* free -- you have to pay both for the PDF and the book. Beta, on the other hand, was a free preview, because anyone could download the rules -- you only needed to pay if you wanted the book (which is only natural). Now, you *could* use the SRD, but then again so you could with 3.5, too, and I wouldn't exactly call 3E a "free" rules set. 



> I see no reason to not put the best existing ideas in the beta. At worst some people will have bought the beta hardcover and not buy the final pathfinder book. Even in this worst case scenario Paizo has made a sale (and gotten the payment earlier).




As Erik said, some of the issues were not yet dealt with when Beta came out, and they also used it to test the "boundaries" of the rules and how they work in play, e.g. how the changes affect high-level play, if at all. If they had released the Beta as an "almost finished" rule set with all their best ideas included, what would be the point of public playtesting or "brainstorming"? I wouldn't be interested in posting daily if I knew the rules are already pretty much set in stone, and my opinions and suggestions, at most, would result in polishing up the wording in a feat or spell. 

And what would be the point of buying the end product, if you could just get a free errata for those 5% of the rule changes? In the worst case scenario, you could lose all sales for the final rules, because people wouldn't pay for minor changes. Yes, they would have sold X number of the Beta rules for those who wanted the printed book, but since Beta was sold for a nominal price, the real cash comes from PF RPG books. And if they had released all the good stuff in Beta, I think it would have been equal to shooting themselves in the foot.


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