Forum: Public Forum

Some replies in order of post arrival:

Ian.

I did not calculate the EL myself but it should indeed have been in the EL15+ ballpark, i.e. "very challenging". I am still saying "Encounter Level" (EL) and "Level Adjustment" (LA, well this one I do not really use it anymore as PRPG has no rules yet for players as monsters) by the way, even if Paizo has adopted "CR" for everything. That being said, I discussed it with Andrew yesterday early evening and commented that the notion of CR should only apply at adventure design level and not at the tactical encounter level.

In common terms this means that if the players decide to open all the floodgates, they should not complain about the EL being three level higher than they are expected to handle.

To be fair, even a very cautious party would have had to face a serious challenge, Enga on her own would have been tough had the humble GM been graced with only average dice rolls, and not the sucky series of "two out of three below five" that had to be endured for that poor Kobold Barbarian.

Enga was meant to be backed-up by the Ogres then the Stone Giant patrol, so only a party that decided to fight along a tactical retreat plan to pull Enga Keckvia would have faced the manageable list of the other EL11-EL12 encounters.

The CR system is good for design but gets on its head pretty quickly as you should know:

•It works fine at adventure design stage: it makes it easy to balance threat, XP and treasure rewards.

•It is "rule of thumb" okay for the GM who needs to increase the challenge when handling six characters; hence my own encounter difficulty increase rules.

•It falls apart when players meta-game it as the well known paradox of the encounter becoming more difficult as more people fight it, rears its head.

I know this is being pedantic, but no, you did not face a CR/EL 16 as the encounter was not designed for you to face all of the actors at once. The party's decision to push-in to finish off Enga INSIDE THE COMPLEX was the one that opened all the gates.

When Jason Bulmahn dropped the CR/XP level related table for Pathfinder RPG and went back to the earlier D&D editions habit of having a fixed XP allocation per monster I thought it was a mistake, but now I have realised that it addresses indirectly the EL paradox. The amount of XP is now fixed per adventure, not per encounter; i.e. whether the party progresses slowly or not, they will level-up at the same speed.

Assuming you had managed to kill or rout all the opposition at the last session, after a couple more encounters, the old D&D 3.5 way of XP allocation would have REWARDED the party for acting stupidly because more XP would have been dished to LV10 PCs when these LV10 characters would have been doing the job of LV11 characters. With the simplified approach, it no longer serves the party to be punching above its weight, thus the GM is less likely to have to hold off punches from tougher monsters.

Nagri has all it takes to exit the complex safely without breaking a sweat. He can be invisible, cast spell silently and even fly. If he uses the main entrance/exit to get out of his predicament, he can indeed get out away pretty easily. There is no reason for the monsters to use see invisibility by default. Of course, if Nagri chooses to do things that void this assumption, things could indeed get nasty very quickly.

Adam.

Well, looks like I didn't miss much then!

What are you talking about, three hours play without dropping of initiative!

That was epic.

Shame... I thought that tictactically we were getting more organised, but it's always harder with players controlling more than one character, particularly at higher levels.

They pushed too hard, racial hatred of Kobold etc. I was also sadistic in sending them all these easy Ogres… then once enough time had been wasted, entered the Stone Giants. Hmm... why did I want to use the word dragon here?

Now this is a real dilemma for me. As with trying to bluff our way through the main gates... meta-gaming tells me that it's probably possible with luck, or at least trying won't mean instant death. Meta-gaming also tells me that there's very likely to be back door or secret entrance... because there always is. There's usually also the possibility of prisoners, inciting rebellion etc.

The party should be motivated by kicking Karzoug in the gonads. To do so, they obviously need to deal with his minions first. Mokmurian is one of them. Besides, not doing anything would lead to Mokmurian's army reaching critical mass and overpowering all of Varisia, thus ending the campaign. Prisoners, hostages or not, Jorgenfist must be stormed. Oh, and there may be some loot inside too.

Karzoug, who is to be encountered in two adventures from now, is on the cover of the Gamemastery Guide, he has crap loads of ioun stones encrusted in his forehead, a very nice glaive, all sorts of magic items, and an expensive wardrobe. Why would a greedy party retreat to their grotty little castle and forget about all of this?

The diplomatic entrance "We are here to meet with..." to Jorgenfist is now closed, unless a large amount of illusion magic or disguise skills is used. This does not mean that the party has to go through all the encampments either. Ironically knocking on the door of the guard-tower and choosing "Attack plan DELTA: Charge, Power Attack", then conspicuously walking from the guard tower to Jorgenfist itself while keeping the gatekeeper in check would to the trick. The gate-keeper will be made aware of the incursion, but not the troops, who believe the place to be impregnable for morale and motivational purposes.

Then of course, Galenmir and his Stone Giants patrol would wait for the party at the bottom of the pit. The key here is to realise that Galenmir has not had a good look at the party, those who have are dead. Galenmir will check with the Redcaps and will obsess about the small tunnels. To him, the Redcaps have recruited some mercenary help to retake the lower level of Jorgenfist. The party has done nothing else but kill people on that level. They have not even freed the Dwarven prisoners! Hence all points to an assault and not a rescue or infiltration mission. In other words, the above ground troops will not be concerned with the incursion, or again: the party will not be expected to show-up from above.

Laurent,