Pathfinder Blues

[jordangreywolf]

My gaming anymore is basically taken up by Pathfinder. I feel like it has so much potential, yet I'm getting weary of it already.


Rise of the Runelords
The online "Rise of the Runelords" campaign has been interesting, but mostly just because of the phenomenon of being able to automate so much of the number-crunching with the Fantasy Ground tools. The trouble is that there are still quite a few hitches: whatever team was responsible for programming in the spells, items, etc., left a lot of rather conspicuous gaps. Sometimes I even find outright errors in the spell mechanics. (Isn't this something that should have been detected by now? Perhaps even fixed? It's CURE SERIOUS WOUNDS, for crying out loud -- not a particularly OBSCURE spell that could have escaped notice for the past several years from disuse.)

Pathfinder is interesting in that it represented an attempt by players of 3rd edition d20 games (and then edition 3.5) to keep on with the "SRD" when the makers of D&D wanted to run on to 4th edition and embrace a game system that tried to ape the terminology and ideas of online MMO grinders (with fighters as "tanks" and rogues as "DPS" and so forth), but without, y'know, the actual SPEED of computer-run games. Sorry, but when I see a game embracing a representation of those principles, that just takes me even further away from anything even pretending to be a simulator of how things might play out for a group of heroes embarking upon high adventure. Instead, it's "raid group vs. boss fight." Meh. I can't blame folks for wanting to stick with an existing system and just polish it up a bit more, rather than throwing it entirely out (and, while they're at it, the entire library of adventures and such already built up for it).

Well ... that last part I thought was the big deal, but now I've got my doubts. I mean, Pathfinder as a rulebook plays pretty nicely. It fixes a few little flaws of the old edition 3.5 without doing anything so outrageous that it would count as a different system. I could theoretically run a bunch of 3.5 or 3.0 adventures with the system largely as-is. I could mash it up with Iron Kingdoms d20 or the old World of Warcraft RPG. But the big draw with Pathfinder was with its expansions and "adventure paths." And those? Eh ... I'm not too impressed, based on what I've experienced so far.

Now, there's one big source of bias here: I am not a fan of "adventure paths" or "plot point adventures" in general. I read an article recently about "old school" dungeon modules and how games such as D&D were developed during a time when the big names in fantasy fiction tended to churn out protagonists who were a bit more mercenary: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Conan, Elric of Melnibone, etc. With such a tone in adventure, the stereotypical group of adventurers meeting in a tavern, raiding a lich's tomb for treasure as much as for saving the countryside ... that worked, really. A "dungeon" was largely a concoction of a map and a bunch of points of interest: sure, there might be some sort of time-dependent events (you have X days until the Evil Sorcerer completes his incantation to resurrect the Ancient Dragon King to lay waste to the countryside!) but any "story" that happened was largely just a product of intra-party behavior and weird ways in which the PCs dealt with challenges.

Adventure paths seem to rely more upon a sequence of events in a story that's destined to play out a certain way and the PCs are just shoehorned into the plot.

I feel like there ought to be some sort of happy medium here, and I'm sure it can be done, but I'm not getting the sense that these adventures are really written for that. In part, that's because I gather that these grand campaigns were first released as serialized encounters and episodes only later gathered up and published together. The trouble with serializing an adventure (with the conceit that a GM might actually be running the adventure, then waiting on the next installment in order to proceed) is that it necessarily has a bunch of "bottleneck" points all along the way. There's really little way to account for alternate branch points unless each successive installment gets bigger and bigger (or more and more VAGUE).

"Rise of the Runelords" really drove that home for me when it gave us the pretext of a murder mystery -- but one in which there were precious few clues of any import. Oh, sure, there were "clues" to be found -- oh, gee, ANOTHER rune carved into the chest of the victim! -- but it was of the sort that there was no realistic opportunity for the players to go, "Aha! We've GOT IT! Gather up the suspects in the smoking room, and we'll reveal WHODUNNIT before the murderer strikes again!" No, it's more just, you rush to the site of the latest murder, maybe you get to fight something, you collect another useless "clue," waste time flailing about playing "detective" (all inquiries turn up nothing of use), and things only move along when we're called in for the NEXT murder ... and sometimes that happened WHILE we were investigating the previous one.

We're really just firemen, and we'll never run out of fires. (Well, I suppose everyone COULD get killed off, and then there would be no more people to be murdered, hence no more murders....)


Map Fail
And then there's the cartography. We're reliant upon digital images for maps of the country, city, dungeon, whatever it is we're exploring, and at times it seems that there was a certain lack of communication between map-makers and adventure-writers. A room description may make mention of something in the northeast corner of the room, but it would seem that the only furnishing to be found on the map at all is in the SOUTHWEST corner instead. Or, it's a cliffside manor that we've previously seen on the zoom-out map is on the WEST side of the seaside town, yet once we get to the zoom-in map of the estate, there's inexplicably a cliff and ocean shore on the EAST side. We could say it's just a rotation error, but there's a compass rose that should set such things straight, and there are certain details on the map that HAVE to be where they are, or else we couldn't have entered the map on that side. Here's a map of the city with all the buildings quite clearly spelled out on it ... and we zoom in on the action at the one building that has any plot relevance to the area, and the layout doesn't correspond to ANYTHING we saw on the larger map, and a location that should have been landlocked according to the mega-map has us on the waterfront here.

And so on and so forth. I've seen some artists on DeviantArt actually put together their own alternative maps for the very same campaign (accidental discoveries while doing Google image searches to try to make tokens to help the GM), so apparently I'm not the only person who's run into this problem.

The Perils of Fast Leveling
Another (IMHO bigger) problem is that the adventure -- at least in the form of instructions being given to the GM, as I hear -- seems to be very set on regulating just what level the PCs are at, and how much treasure the PCs have, in order to be sure they can take on the latest challenges. Gee, we keep getting our backsides handed to us -- maybe, while things are relatively calm, we ought to see if we can do some sort of side-quest to get a little extra cash, maybe a little extra experience? Maybe we could recruit another ally? NOT ... A ... CHANCE. Such things would upset the delicate balance. (Does it upset the delicate balance if I spend money on establishing a new orphanage? I'm pretty sure that sort of money expenditure has nothing to do with improving my combat stats ... not unless I'm raising a horde of Little-Tyke-Commandos on the side, anyway.)

On the one hand, I suppose it can be something of a relief for the GM to have a lot of this stuff spelled out so deliberately, rather than leaving it all up to "GM discretion" -- and for a GM who may very well be on his first major campaign at this point. But on the other, I can't help but feel that a lot of these absolute determinations are rather arbitrary, and strict adherence to them could be a detriment. ("Guidelines" are useful, but I think it's also helpful to identify them as such, and to discuss at some point where their utility might end.)

One theory I've heard from another player who's been through this campaign is that normally the details of this adventure are meant to be interspersed with OTHER adventures the PCs go on. Like, go tackle a dungeon here, fight some random monsters there, and THEN every once in a while, after some passage of time, the GM sprinkles in a new event to move the mega-story forward. Instead, this campaign is being run JUST with these events, and we're going on a sort of accelerated XP track. (We tend to go up a level once every one or two sessions, and it's not uncommon that I'll get new spells, abilities, etc., and not even get much chance to use them before I've gone up another level.)

I suppose the problem there is that even if the XP awards are amped up to keep us up to speed with the minimum level requirements, that just means we're going up in level -- and of course, the level of any challenges will be boosted to match. If we're not doing all those side-quests, we're not earning all that loot we might have. Plus, if there are any adventures that give us a chance to make new friends, gain allies, gain situational bonuses outside of normal advancement (e.g., an adventure reward is a magical boon from the fairies, or someone finds a magical artifact that teaches him a long-lost language) -- well, none of that is happening outside the main "plot."

I keep hearing from the GM that challenge ratings "assume" that by a certain level, the PCs will have accumulated so many GP worth of loot (presumably focused on better armor and better weapons, rather than superficial stuff such as a stylin' hat). So if we're not meeting that, then if encounters are level-adjusted, the experience acceleration is working against in some ways.

And then, on top of that, there's the matter of getting acquainted with how to use your new class abilities, spells, etc., effectively. I'd be utterly lost if someone said, "Let's run an Epic D&D campaign!" and we all got assigned level 20 characters, as I tried to sift through 20 levels' worth of abilities and spells and such I've never used before. I mean having a +20 to your Lockpicking vs. a +1 is simple enough, but I'm talking about all those mish-mashed feats and counter-feats that individually look like a hodgepodge of bonuses, but together they have a "synergy" if used strategically a certain way. At an accelerated pace, we get new stuff, but hardly get a chance to check out the rules before we blow through and get something else added to the list. And it's not, "Great! I get new awesome stuff faster!" because the enemies get STRONGER, too (higher saves, higher AC, higher chances to hit, MUCH MORE DAMAGE, more HP, etc.), so if I'm not using my new edges to the degree the designers ASSUMED a typical player would be doing, then I'm falling behind the curve.


Kingmaker
Then there's "Kingmaker." That's being done as a tabletop game, with a different GM. It's a bit slower -- I'm not sure how much of that can be attributed to the lack of automation, whether it's the style of campaign, or what. The premise of this is that the PCs at first started exploring a wilderness area, going from hex to hex as they pleased. It was, in a way, a "mega-dungeon." That is, the big empty hex map WAS the "dungeon," and we were pretty free to choose in what order we encountered the challenges, with the vague hint that things tended to be more dangerous to the south (so we did well to start filling in the northern parts of the map, to get some gear and experience before tackling the monsters to the south). Then, we had to take on a big boss bandit king, and then we were tasked with building a "kingdom."

The kingdom-building "mini-game" seemed interesting in abstract. I remember when I tried making up a sort of "mini-game" for devoting resources toward improving a base for our heroes in the Unleashed campaign, some people were making comparisons to "Kingmaker" -- and I hadn't played it, so I had no idea. Now that I've had a chance to go through the mathematical headaches and such ... I like MY system a whole lot better. I could go into lots of detail, but the main thing is that the Pathfinder Kingmaker "mini-game" involves a great deal of math, a great deal of writing in numbers, adding them up, then having to erase everything and start over because of some modifier that got applied, and all sorts of meta-gaming.

(What sort of meta-gaming? Well, building certain structures will reduce "Unrest" by a point or two -- say, like building a new area of housing. Trouble is, that's a one-time benefit. If "Unrest" is already at zero, you've essentially wasted that benefit -- I checked, and the rules explicitly declare so. So, we end up doing weird stuff like, "Well we COULD use some more houses, but right now there's no Unrest. Let's wait and see if there's Unrest next month and THEN we'll build them." And that's the sensible and strategic choice to make, but I haven't any idea how to justify it story-wise without getting overly "cute." And then there are the events with things like slavers abducting our people, or cultists on the move, and I keep thinking, "Hey, GM, shouldn't we, as heroes, like, jump out of Kingdom Mode, and go adventuring and go fight these guys personally?" But, no, there's no provision for that, so apparently our PCs just keep busy doing bureaucratic stuff -- each turn represents an entire month of game time -- and let the game mechanics sort it all out for us.)


NPC Tagalongs & Play Balance
And then there's the matter of followers, allies, pets, and so on. First off, I realize I've got a bit of a problem when it comes to games. I wanna CATCH 'EM ALL. Is there a fiery nightmare steed? That's far more interesting to me as a potential mode of transportation than some boring ordinary HORSE. Or maybe we can rescue those NPCs and add them to our merry band. Now, in some games and settings, there are natural limits to these things. Of course, the Nightmare might just rather drain your life force than give you a ride, no matter how high your Charisma or whatever, and the cowardly NPCs might more than happily disperse at the next village you reach rather than following Adventurers into danger on a regular basis. Or you're traveling in a spaceship that only seats so many people, or it's a post-apocalyptic setting and, sure, you COULD bring that dog along, but you'll need to feed it and it might start barking at an inconvenient moment when you're trying to hide from zombies.

Okay, so Unleashed was just plain broken. My PC there was actively encouraged to pick up new creatures to train as Warbeasts, and as soon as he did, he kind of broke the game balance, and the GM had to bend over backwards to explain why my critter can't come along on the adventure, or else made plainly clear that he was going to boost up the opposing forces for every Warbeast added to the party (in which case we start metagaming about whether this Warbeast's presence is carrying its own weight or not, since the opposition scales to account for it).

But in Pathfinder, I feel very KEENLY the "meta-game" element of that balance that gets upset if I pick up a pet or an ally or whatnot. I remember once upon a time, when "Charm Monster" was a spell that could reliably add a Bugbear or Orc "ally" to the party for a while (at least, in the computer RPG adaptations), but here it seems my Bard discovers that "Charm Person" and "Charm Monster" are nearly useless -- because to do otherwise would be overpowered. (I.e., "Okay, so the monster decides that YOU are friendly, but it will still happily slay and gobble down all your allies, and if you try to HELP them, it will figure out that you're not really its friend after all. Oh, and these monsters aren't really all that nice to EACH OTHER anyway, so what it really means is that it'll eat all your allies, and leave you for last, then eat you anyway once it gets hungry, because these things don't really have FRIENDS anyway." So why, exactly, would I bother casting this rather than another super-buff?) I mean, I UNDERSTAND it. If I could reliably pick up a monster "ally" in any dungeon (well, "semi-reliably": it might make its Save roll, after all, and as we go up in level, monsters will tend to have higher resist rolls) that would significantly affect the group's fighting power.

But even if I use more conventional roleplay methods ... okay, over in Kingmaker, I've got a Ranger with Wild Empathy. I COULD in theory try to tame some wild beast. Or maybe I could hire a hireling. Or, hey, there are rules in the book that I could BUY a combat-trained hippogriff, if I had the money. Or a GRIFFON! And I can see the wince.

Not that I'd want to actually do that. The weird phenomenon of leveling means that even if the GM did let me pick up a new pet (as the GM begrudgingly let me do with a firepelt cougar in the online game), and even if I COULD train it to be combat-worthy ... NPCs don't level up. Adversaries, however, WILL get stronger, and they'll get harder to hit and they'll hit harder, and eventually it'll be a common occurrence for us to get fireballs thrown at us, and some NPC pet who used to be able to hold its own at level 3 will now get instantly incinerated by a blast that "only" takes half the HP of anyone else in the group who fails a Reflex save.

So, in practice, even when a GM lets me get away with bringing a pet or cohort along, I end up assigning the NPC to "guard the horses," or "guard the entrance," or otherwise stay in the background while we take on the encounters.

Maybe I've been too spoiled by Savage Worlds and by slap-dash online play styles. I mean, naturally, there's a problem with letting the PCs bulk out too much with too many allies, pets, tag-alongs, etc. It can be a nightmare for the GM to try to fairly characterize all those NPCs. ("Joe, Bob, Shirley and R9-X2 each should have OPINIONS about this, but if the GM takes time to make them all pipe up, we'll be here for another hour before we can move along...." It's so much easier to just have them sort of quietly melt into the background until a PC deliberately turns and says, "Hey, R9-X2, what do YOU think about this?")

Maybe I've been giving TOO LITTLE consideration to "play balance" in RPGs -- particularly my Savage Worlds games. However, I feel like all this thinking I've been doing about the meta-game ... I DO NOT WANT my players to be thinking about that. If a player is inclined to invite some NPC to join the group, or to tame a wild beast, or to build a robot, or whatever, I would rather that be a matter of either a role-play choice ("This is the sort of thing my character would do") or a play choice ("It would be AWESOME if my character had his own pet shoulder-dragon!") but not a META-GAME choice ("Yeah, but the GM is going to add another monster to every encounter, and a Shoulder-Dragon won't really help me fight any, so it's going to be a net negative to the party's combat effectiveness").


My Takeaway

Not that I have any sort of solution, per se. I'm honestly not sure how much differently I'd run it if I were in the GM's chair for either of these campaigns. I suppose one thing I'd do right off is to try to rein in any tendency to "tip the GM screen" too much. I might not be thinking so much about "you're supposed to be at this XP level" if I didn't keep hearing it from the GM.

I'm reminded of way back in the day when a certain GM would say stuff like, "You guys are doing so awful, I'm going to have to put more healing potions in the treasure chests!" If there's anything to rip away the illusion of a group of heroes poking around in unexplored places and finding forgotten treasures that've been waiting there for untold ages, and traps and danger just being a natural risk as part of the adventure, it's the invocation of the GM in first-person ("I" am going to "put" these things there -- or "I am going to have to adjust the encounters") in such a way. Just DO it. Don't TELL us, unless there's something we're doing wrong as PLAYERS (not characters) that needs to be adjusted (e.g., better role-playing, or reading the rules more carefully).