The reality is there are two general types of playstyles: one which desires a challenge and relishes a chance of failure, and one which prefers to stomp through a module. The latter camp has a physical reaction to gaining half XP for failing a skill challenge or missing out on a treasure bundle. Often one player will gravitate between the two playstyles. Pleasing both is, IMHO, an exercise in futility.
With APs, players just love using them. It does bump the players, but I hate not giving them APs. Some mods are almost famous for denying milestones. What do others think? How big a deal is it for players to get their milestones and be able to AP often?
Personally, I belong to the school of Action-Points-should-be-earned, but have been at many tables where there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth when the players made four skills rolls or butchered a bunch of minions and believe they have earned, nay, deserve an Action Point.
First the worst thing to do is to engineer combats to make life hard for nova striking and optimised characters. Moving in that direction marginalises characters that are not optimised, and makes things even more difficult if your party happens to be missing a striker to do that nova damage.
I think that's an untrue assumption. The key is to realize that a nova striker offers a once-per-encounter burst of ridiculous damage. There are a number of way to deal with that:
Monsters with a powers that allow them to avoid damage in a nova round—e.g. interrupts that weaken or provide insubstantial. At Paragon, most players will be spending their action points at the beginning of their turn, so an 1/encounter immediate interrupt stun is a nasty power that ends a nova round without having as much of an effect on non-nova characters. Even the Clay Scout's power can make nova strikers regret their actions.
Terrain / traps that make a monster invulnerable until they are dealt with.
Monsters that start the encounter with absurd resistances / defenses and get easier as the encounter goes on.
Monsters that "bait" players into novaing on a suboptimal target (e.g. The Amidala Effect).
Of course, players who play optimize strikers would probably enjoy rolling their huge dice and (unknowingly) having their damage not count than being denied actions.
My general strategy is to write encounters that are as difficult as the rules allow, knowing that DMs often soft-ball fights, unintentionally employ bad tactics, or just skip things they don't like. While DMs are empowered to make encounters more difficult, I feel like doing so is poor form—a party TPK'd after the DM manipulated the encounter to be more challenging is more likely to feel cheated.
Authors should also provide some ways for the monsters to "cheat." When the Aglarondian Elf Avenger hangs out with his Durparan Elf Druid buddy, both of whom own amulets of alertness, being able to auto-spot the lurkers all of the time takes away a lot of the drama. While authors shouldn't make perception-optimisation useless, they should provide guidelines to make sure that it doesn't destroy the mood of the adventure.
1st, it is a concern, but it is a concern with more than just strikers, it is intrisic to the system.
The problem with any game that uses such a range of power levels between various levels is: Either the powers at high levels will be really good, or the powers at low levels will be really boring. Here, we have the former problem rather than the latter.
By the time you get to upper paragon, many different classes can defeat an enemy with a single action, so the strikers defeating an enemy with a single round is not at all out of line. People just remember them more because large numbers are involved. Increasing monster HP simply disadvantages the strikers with respect to everyone else.
Whether or not you feel that it is reasonable for whichever PC gets the first action to single-handledly handle a major portion of the encounter is another issue: it is the way the system is built, and errataing small numbers of powers and abilities simply makes it require more system mastery to do it. It by no means renders things impossible.
Some specific points:
1. Tiles are indeed all but required (or were as of the last time I wrote a module). You need to have a specific reason to not use tiles, which is then approved by the admins. An example of a legitimate reason was an underwater adventure.
2. Second, creating rituals or other game mechanics as a backhanded way of altering stats is hopefully extremely frowned upon. There is no meaningful difference between writing in the module "The caster has completed a ritual that gives him resist damage 10" versus just writing "resist damage 10" in the stat block. The fact that the author is not allowed to write it in the stat block should be a big clue that it is not acceptable to include it in some other fashion.
3. Includibng specific abilities to counter novas (like the immediate interrupt stun previously mentioned) merely requires PCs to know about those abilities. Often they are also encounter powers (after all, how could an immediate interrupt stun be anything else and be at all reasonable) and best case for the baddie, the baddie stops one nova, the PC next in the initiative order then novas to compensate. More typically, the PCs will know about the trick (through knowledge checks) and will then manage the situation appropriately.
The real problem is novas of any sort, but they are intrisic to the game we play. Most people hate Karpov-like 'accumulation of small advantages' or what have been referred to as 'grinds'. So you have a system that doesn't generally encourage grinding. You can't both prevent grinds and novas, as they are effectively antonyms.
Brayden Glad
Dealing with WotC customer service is like milking an emu...
You might get scratched, bitten or kicked, or might simply be ignored, but you won't be successful...
As I said in the OP, this thread is about paragon because it sounds as if heroic tier is largely working fine now as a challenge level. Between new monsters and author tactics (terrain, better foe team construction, MM2 boosts, etc.), the mods are often fairly challenging. For paragon, I hear very few posts saying that the mods are tough. I actually hear a higher ratio of "too easy" than we did at the beginning of the campaign. (Speak out if paragon is proving tough for you, please!)
I'll go ahead and say that. All the paragon mods I've played have proven to be quite tough. Then again, I've only played Spec 1-3 paragon (yeah, let's spend entire combats restrained, immobilized, stunned, dominated, weakened, or all of the above; can we go back to mere weakening insubstatial regenerators?), Drawing a Blank (all dazed and dominated and in difficult terrain, all the time, yeah), the conclusion of the radiant vessel quest, and the conclusion of the necromancer arc (Bald)--maybe those are just all unusually hard mods.
On the other hand, paragon mods are pretty notorious for running long (in Northern California, we usually schedule them for six hour slots rather than four hour slots), people still have a limited number of paragon characters, and my experience thus far is that paragon mods are just plain less enjoyable than heroic tier mods. So it may well be that the reason you don't see as many Dale 1-7 style "paragon is too hard" threads is because people play a lot fewer paragon than heroic mods.
1. Tiles are indeed all but required (or were as of the last time I wrote a module). You need to have a specific reason to not use tiles, which is then approved by the admins. An example of a legitimate reason was an underwater adventure.
I will add that they have specifically been asked about the fantastic locations maps and refused to allow writers to use them in place of tiles. I'm a bit surprised that they even allowed an underwater adventure to eschew them.
The fact that the author is not allowed to write it in the stat block should be a big clue that it is not acceptable to include it in some other fashion.
I'm under the impression that the only reason that modifying stat blocks is frowned upon is that WotC policy is to include every "new" stat block in the compendium and they'd prefer not to have to do this for every adventure (debate the merits of this policy elsewhere - it has been stated that this is the policy, so there it is). The reason is not concern over balance or appropriateness, it is one of logistics alone.
First off, there's a difference between establishing the encounter in such a way that nova strikers can't kill important monsters/NPCs in the first round and making the fight drag because the party has no strikers. Resistances, insubstantial and immunities fit in the latter (tho I still think can be very appropriate) and terrain, tactics and monster powers fit into the former. Fights can drag for a lot of reasons, Defenses, Resistances, Tactics, poor and excellent, bottlenecks, poor luck, and so forth. Saying that we should avoid dragging fights is a good thing. Gimping the strikers in one fight, and the controllers or defenders in another (where gimping == focused tactic to diminish their abilities) I think is just going to be one of those things that happens. And it should.
Yes it should happen, that was actually the point - trying to stop it is trying to design out a feature of the system. The other point was that trying to stop the optimised characters from doing what they are supposed to do, is not the way to create fun games for those who are not optimising.
Second, I don't think, even though it is nice, that Dungeon Tiles have to be the way that terrain gets created. Last I checked, DTs are not a requirement for building module terrain so authors just need to be willing to do stuff that isn't as "easy" as DTs. Draw the darn map folks, we've been doing so since the beginning of time.
You are misinformed, the Writer's Guidelines specify use of Dungeon Tiles.
Third, and Fourth: So, if you put an Extended Rest into the mod, chances are you're going to have just as many APs or more as if you didn't, given the LFR constraints.
Ok lets stop and look at this. If you write an Extended rest into the module you know that the PCs will be at capacity and you can write around that. The fact that PCs Milestone items etc are all shut off, things that let PCs accumulate and use multiple Action Points are also weakened and so on - especially as we are talking Paragon (and above) is also an advantage. It also means that the story of the module is not constrained to "1 day" which becomes more of a problem once you reach higher levels.
They are not supposed to be.... stop thinking of them as a damage source and start thinking of the uses that can be made of an ally on the table... PCs will care about minions that start aiding their boss, and minions that work like alarm bells and so on. Start using minions for their story purpose and not their combat purpose and they are more usefull.
And finally, stun. And daze. I am definitely in the "I don't like this camp." but I've gotten a lot less rabid about seeing them in fights. If I was writing a mod, I'd use them if appropriate.
I didn't say don't I said use them sparingly and appropriately.
Ok lets stop and look at this. If you write an Extended rest into the module you know that the PCs will be at capacity and you can write around that. The fact that PCs Milestone items etc are all shut off, things that let PCs accumulate and use multiple Action Points are also weakened and so on - especially as we are talking Paragon (and above) is also an advantage. It also means that the story of the module is not constrained to "1 day" which becomes more of a problem once you reach higher levels.
That doesn't put PCs just at capacity, that makes a different game. If the PCs have all their dailies and it is obvious that there's only one encounter left, that means people start using them all up - that really benefits certain classes over others - some classes have lots of powers that require sustains or the major benefit is that the effect that lasts the entire combat. Those dailies lose a lot. Certain classes(aka Primal classes) just got a universal downgrade.
Also, not sure what you're talking about here on multiple action points - regardless if you have more than one action point, you're not actually allowed to use more than one per combat. PHB 286: "Whatever you use an action point for, you can spend only 1 per encounter"
Finally there's no real limit on story being constrained to one day - all the writer has to do is put some sort of obvious time limit, challenging environment that kills the ability to sleep for an extended rest, etc...sure, you could take an extended rest, but if you don't get to the castle before the the armies of Szass Tam do, then everyone will be slaughtered by the time you get there. And those armies will get to the castle in an amount of time based on the party's practical max speed.
There are multiple ways in Paragon to get extra action points and use them in a combat you have already used an action point in, the ability becomes more available the higher level the character is.
But you are missing the point - the point is to find ways to make the modules more diverse and more interesting and inhibit a wide spectrum of tactics, both in individual combats and meta-tactics for modules. If when you sit down to play a module the only way to know the ideal meta-tactics is to have the module spoiled then the experience as a whole will benefit.
In some modules the strikers will rock (and authors need to accept that strikers will kill enemies quickly - it is their job) in other modules some other role will shine. Using an array of approaches and varying the modules is a great way of making that work.
In making a list of suggestions the idea is not to incorporate each one in each module, it is to cherry pick them for your module to make things work better for the module, enhancing the play experience for it.
The module Arts is a good example of a module that could have an Extended Rest - and there would still be multiple combats after the extended rest....
In short the idea shouldn't be to limit the authors more than the writers guidelines already do so it should be to provide ideas that inspire them.
I for one have really enjoyed Finding Harmony and Falling Snow, White Petals because there was plenty of opportunity inherent in the module for extended rests etc. I felt much more natural than the usual "you have to do this as quickly as possible" that is the typical module.
Modules should take time and they shouldn't all have artificial constraints to stop resting - it limits what authors can do, which limits the experience they can provide, which is imo a bad thing for the campaign.
Yes it should happen, that was actually the point - trying to stop it is trying to design out a feature of the system. The other point was that trying to stop the optimised characters from doing what they are supposed to do, is not the way to create fun games for those who are not optimising.
I think you're wrong there. Let's take a different example. Controllers have area affects meant to affect multiple targets. If the fight is set up such that no enemy is ever, or can ever be next to another target (or even within say, burst 5), is that "removing" a feature of the game? No. It just happens to be optimum tactics in some situation. War ain't fair, move on.
You are misinformed, the Writer's Guidelines specify use of Dungeon Tiles.
Apparently, and that makes me sad. But I can understand why WotC would want this.
Ok lets stop and look at this. If you write an Extended rest into the module you know that the PCs will be at capacity and you can write around that ... It also means that the story of the module is not constrained to "1 day" which becomes more of a problem once you reach higher levels.
Wait, two sentences ago weren't you arguing that we shouldn't write around or against PC's capabilities? Pick one.
By the way, there've been multiple mods that have spanned more than one day. Even if the circumstanes of you not gaining an ER over that time is seen by some as contrived.
They are not supposed to be.... stop thinking of them as a damage source and start thinking of the uses that can be made of an ally on the table... PCs will care about minions that start aiding their boss, and minions that work like alarm bells and so on. Start using minions for their story purpose and not their combat purpose and they are more usefull.
If they do not have a combat effect/use or aren't a true damage source, then they should not have an XP cost. Stairs in a game do not have an XP cost, cover doesn't have an XP rating, doors neither. Those clearly can aid the NPCs or even hinder the PCs, but we don't give them an XP rating. In fact, while some folks would like to give environments an explicit XP rating, currently the DMG makes the job of determining if environment should increase or decrease the difficulty/XP of an encounter the DM's job. ie - a writer job.
I didn't say don't I said use them sparingly and appropriately.
and my point was that, statistically, those abilities are part of the game (your point) at a much higher level than they are currently used. So they are already used "sparingly" and I think we could and perhaps should see them more often. "Appropriately" will of course be a writer prerogative.
I think you're wrong there. Let's take a different example. Controllers have area affects meant to affect multiple targets. If the fight is set up such that no enemy is ever, or can ever be next to another target (or even within say, burst 5), is that "removing" a feature of the game? No. It just happens to be optimum tactics in some situation. War ain't fair, move on.
Controllers are not just about bursts. To some extent the job of controllers is to stop the monsters bunching up - this lets the PCs single out 1 monster and eliminate it better.
The problem with many of the suggestions for making Strikers weaker is they make the combats much worse for parties that lack a striker. Strikers are about a lot of damage to a single target - people (and I mean authors) have complained about strikers being able to kill a standard monster in a round. That is a design feature of the game, it is one of the reasons to play a striker.
Again this is about moderation.
But let's take the easiest example of the no two monsters are ever in burst - an encounter with a solo. Guess what my Wizard loves those encounters... lay down a party friendly zone and drag the monster into it, layer them up with Leader zones and the party has a happy time and the monster has a sad one. This is essentially what will happen in fights where the monsters cannot fight within burst 1 of each other - the PCs will surround and kill them one at a time maybe laying some effects (daze, immobilize, stun) on troublesome monsters other than the one being targeted now.
Still if an author can find a legitimate way to make your scenario happen, I have no problem with it.
Trying to make it happen every module is a problem.
Ok lets stop and look at this. If you write an Extended rest into the module you know that the PCs will be at capacity and you can write around that ... It also means that the story of the module is not constrained to "1 day" which becomes more of a problem once you reach higher levels.
Wait, two sentences ago weren't you arguing that we shouldn't write around or against PC's capabilities? Pick one.
Why is it that people on these forums always ignore context?
Let me spell it out.
As a general approach, trying to marginalise specific roles/powers/abilities or whatever is a bad thing.
As a specific situation you create in writing the mod not taking into account the general abilities of characters is a bad approach. Heck not taking general abilities into account is a bad approach anyway - typical PC attack bonuses and PC defences should be considered when choosing monsters for example.
It is: Don't try to write mods so strikers are unable to kill a standard monster. vs Take into account you just gave them an extended rest.
By the way, there've been multiple mods that have spanned more than one day. Even if the circumstanes of you not gaining an ER over that time is seen by some as contrived.
I know and some of them are contrived and those mods are better for the contrivence being DMed away.
If they do not have a combat effect/use or aren't a true damage source, then they should not have an XP cost. Stairs in a game do not have an XP cost, cover doesn't have an XP rating, doors neither. Those clearly can aid the NPCs or even hinder the PCs, but we don't give them an XP rating. In fact, while some folks would like to give environments an explicit XP rating, currently the DMG makes the job of determining if environment should increase or decrease the difficulty/XP of an encounter the DM's job. ie - a writer job.
First I didn't say they have no effect on combat - I said use them for their story purpose not their combat purpose. There is a difference.
Oh and using them for their story purpose and the effect that will have on combat is pretty much "determining if environment should increase or decrease the difficulty/xp of an encounter".
