Session Difficulty
I’ve been playing a lot of Pathfinder: Kingmaker lately, and as I am also currently writing the first Kazarim Campaign Setting Adventure path, I’ve started thinking a lot about difficulty settings. In part, this is because PF: Kingmaker is insanely difficult. Like, 10 dread zombie cyclops priests attacking you at once sort of things, after a variety of finger of death traps (that despite a +24 to spot, you still don’t), and a lot more dread zombie cyclops encounters. Sheesh. I’m level 11, so I guess that’s right? Doesn’t feel like it.
Some of this insane difficulty relates to the system: a real time with pause CRPG calibrates differently than a tabletop RPG for a load of reasons, not the least of which is there are additional restrictions in a CRPG due to the limits of what a game can reasonably accommodate. While I’m able to predict a lot of my regular play group and what their actions are likely to be in a given situation (my wife’s character will turn into a bear and eat its face, or shoot it the eye with an arrow, for example), the best parts of gaming to me are when my players leave me at a loss for words. And a CRPG can’t do that.
But one thing a computer game is great at is math. Which is why, I think, you get big epic fights happening in CRPGs a lot, with tons of monsters on screen. Because as a GM, I don’t want to deal with 50 enemies, but the computer just makes it work.
Anyway, given the difficulty of PF: Kingmaker, I’ve been reflecting on some of the games I’ve run, and the adventure paths I’ve played in. Most of the time we do custom content stuff, but before the Shadowrun game I’m running now, I ran a Pathfinder game through Council of Thieves. Now, this AP has a lot of weird going on—it was the first AP written for the new system (the brand new Pathfinder 1st Edition on the waaay back machine), and it feels a little uneven overall, despite a great premise. But what feels particularly strange is the scaling of the encounters. Many of them feel underpowered, and a few are so insanely difficult that I can’t really imagine what the designers were thinking.
SPOILERS, Obviously
Take, for example, the trip into Delvehaven, the abandoned Pathfinder Lodge in Westcrown. The exterior grounds are littered with magical traps: Isolation Spheres. These are DC 29 to perceive and to disarm, and what they do is create a 10-foot radius resilient sphere that summons a swarm inside of it on the round after the trap goes off. The Reflex DC is 16 to avoid this fate, but that still means that non-Dexterity characters are probably toast. Swarms are nasty, and unless you’ve got a good concentration check and some AOE, you are probably not getting rid of them for the 10-minute duration of the sphere/swarm combo. Every 10 feet, there is a 5% chance of running into one of these traps. The players are probably 6th level. CR 5? Hmm.
Once inside, one of the encounters is a group of soulbound dolls that harass the PCs. They are CR 2, and while they are kinda creepy, aren’t really a threat on their own. But there is also a huge shadow triceratops skeleton (CR 7) that has a +18 gore attack that deals 2d10+15 +1d6 negative energy damage… oh yeah, it also gets to be hasted for fun and profit just because, has a 20% miss chance if it moves and a 50% miss chance if it stands still, and can shoot darkness beams that hurt people if they try to range it. And it has resistance of 10 against positive energy, in addition to all of the normal skeleton stuff. That thing would have wiped the party if I hadn’t pulled a punch or two.
Likewise, toward the end of the AP, the characters are in the 14th level range and they are still fighting a bunch of level 4 rogues. In fact, the last chapter of Council of Thieves, I had to basically throw out all of the encounters as scripted and rewrite them, or my players would have steamrolled everything.
So reflecting on PF: Kingmaker, that feels about right for what I’ve been playing. The computer game is tonally equivalent in encounter design to Council of Thieves. Do wimpy goblins still attack me for some reason? Yes. Do crazy giant undead priests whoop my but? Yep.
I’d like to think that my encounter philosophy is a bit different. I tend to have fewer combat encounters, but most of them are difficult. Occasionally I will throw in a fight against a much weaker opponent, but those get stale pretty quick. I also tend to avoid monsters in favor of other humanoids with class levels, and monsters thrown in for special occasions. Most of the encounters are APL or slightly higher. Is that too hard? Am I committing to a PF: Kingmaker level of frustration? Hmm.