1) Regarding player characters being over-prepared for an encounter: if they did their homework, I'm cool with that. In a big uber boss fight, I think it's as fun for the players to kickass as it is for them to be super challenged. If they've taken the time to research their enemy, and prepare accordingly, I'm cool with them annihilating the boss. It can be a little frustrating ... but that's why the boss usually has a surprise or two of his own in reserve.
2) Regarding unprepared characters: that's always a challenge at high level in 3E. I think this goes away somewhat in 4E because you're not spending as much time preparing spells and such, your abilities are almost always useful, and high-level enemies and there aren't as many special defenses to counteract (e.g. where's my cold iron long sword? In 3E, I think this is a question of adventure design. If the players are going to the Paraelemental Plane of Ice, I'm not going to throw an Effreti at them just to screw with them because I know they won't have any fire magic up. I think this comes back to my earlier point of "know your party". I'm generally not in favor of random encounters to begin with, but at high levels IMHO every encounter needs to be planned, and part of that planning is knowing what your group's capabilities are.
That said, if the party is aware of a situation, and chooses not to prepare for it, well, then I say the demons should have them for lunch.
3) Regarding magic items: With high level characters (and low level ones for that matter) I try and include a good mix of magic items, including ones that only particular characters can use, as well as multi-use ones that everyone (or most everyone) can rely on).
I'll need to double check the Pathfinder rules, but I think they're going with a weapon group approach to a lot of combat feats, which should help with the "hey, how much can I get for this fiery burst dire spear +3 that I can't use?". Also, I wonder if increasing the feat progression (granting feats ever other level instead of every third) might also help with this by giving the martial classes more feats to play with (and thus, the possibility of being able to use more treasure out of the box).
One aspect of 3.5 that I don't like, and has been problematic for the group in Maure Castle, is the whole "golf bag of weapons" problem where players take to carrying one of everything in order to be able to affect high-level creatures (which typically have an assortment of special damage reduction capabilities).
I think this is something that could be handled through mid-to-high level feats ("exploit weapon" perhaps?) that would allow them to emulate certain capabilities. Or perhaps some uber weapon trait that allows it to bypass multiple forms of damage reduction (e.g. the "glorious" weapon is lawful and good aligned for purposes of damage reduction).
Fri, 08/15/2008 - 10:36am
A couple of thoughts here:
1) Regarding player characters being over-prepared for an encounter: if they did their homework, I'm cool with that. In a big uber boss fight, I think it's as fun for the players to kickass as it is for them to be super challenged. If they've taken the time to research their enemy, and prepare accordingly, I'm cool with them annihilating the boss. It can be a little frustrating ... but that's why the boss usually has a surprise or two of his own in reserve.
2) Regarding unprepared characters: that's always a challenge at high level in 3E. I think this goes away somewhat in 4E because you're not spending as much time preparing spells and such, your abilities are almost always useful, and high-level enemies and there aren't as many special defenses to counteract (e.g. where's my cold iron long sword? In 3E, I think this is a question of adventure design. If the players are going to the Paraelemental Plane of Ice, I'm not going to throw an Effreti at them just to screw with them because I know they won't have any fire magic up. I think this comes back to my earlier point of "know your party". I'm generally not in favor of random encounters to begin with, but at high levels IMHO every encounter needs to be planned, and part of that planning is knowing what your group's capabilities are.
That said, if the party is aware of a situation, and chooses not to prepare for it, well, then I say the demons should have them for lunch.
3) Regarding magic items: With high level characters (and low level ones for that matter) I try and include a good mix of magic items, including ones that only particular characters can use, as well as multi-use ones that everyone (or most everyone) can rely on).
I'll need to double check the Pathfinder rules, but I think they're going with a weapon group approach to a lot of combat feats, which should help with the "hey, how much can I get for this fiery burst dire spear +3 that I can't use?". Also, I wonder if increasing the feat progression (granting feats ever other level instead of every third) might also help with this by giving the martial classes more feats to play with (and thus, the possibility of being able to use more treasure out of the box).
One aspect of 3.5 that I don't like, and has been problematic for the group in Maure Castle, is the whole "golf bag of weapons" problem where players take to carrying one of everything in order to be able to affect high-level creatures (which typically have an assortment of special damage reduction capabilities).
I think this is something that could be handled through mid-to-high level feats ("exploit weapon" perhaps?) that would allow them to emulate certain capabilities. Or perhaps some uber weapon trait that allows it to bypass multiple forms of damage reduction (e.g. the "glorious" weapon is lawful and good aligned for purposes of damage reduction).
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