Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder 3: The Hook Mountain Massacre

[Qualidar]

Fair enough. Camp is the wrong word. How about "not scary" or "been there, done that"? Not saying it wasn't a mildly entertaining film, just that deformed creeps by themselves isn't scary.

Are you talking about the recent remake version?

If anything, the X-Files episode about the inbred family was MUCH scarier. Just thinking about that episode gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Q.F.T.

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

Nightmares, man. Lots of nightmares from that episode. ::shudder::

 

[GlassJaw]

Are you talking about the recent remake version?

The most recent remake, yeah.

 

[James Jacobs]

The remake was okay... but the original's the one that I had in mind when I first started talking with Nick Logue about making the Pathfinder ogres into fleshy-headed mutants.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If anything, the X-Files episode about the inbred family was MUCH scarier. Just thinking about that episode gives me the heebie-jeebies.

The revelation of where the family kept their ... female member ... still creeps me out. "Home" was easily the scariest X-Files episode. Heck, Fox wouldn't rerun it for years, in fact.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

The remake was okay... but the original's the one that I had in mind when I first started talking with Nick Logue about making the Pathfinder ogres into fleshy-headed mutants.

James, any chance you guys could start optimizing the NPC's a little bit better?

The first encounter is against a 6th level fighter. He's wearing no armor, carrying no shield and using a 1 handed weapon. He's out hunting in the wilderness.... it stands to reason he'd be somewhat prepard for a fight. I'm not really sure how he stumbled to 6th level in one piece. As such, he's nearly effortless gold and exp to even an underpowered party.

This is a common complaint I have with your adventures. NPC's just cant quite grasp the value of a good AC. You acknowledge the issue of low HP with the Skinsaw Man. Why isnt he wearing at least some leather armor, upping his AC by an additional 2? Yeah, the party fighter's still going to hit him, but at least they cant always power attack for full.

Similarly, NPC's are often saddled with weak feats and worst of all, NPC class levels. I think most experienced DM's will acknowledge that non-caster NPC classes are rather over CR'd at CR = level. Inflating their CR with levels of expert and aristocrat or just plain weak combinations (Tsuto in Burnt Offerings, the skinsaw cultists in The Skinsaw Murders) creates a lot of work for DM's wishing to challenge a standard party. As it stands, it seems any encounter based around monsters will be exciting and reasonably tough... but the classed NPC's are too often too easy as written.

The adventures have all been excellent to this point. I just wish I didnt have to redesign the named NPC's to make their fights more memorable.

 

[Rauol_Duke]

The first encounter is against a 6th level fighter. He's wearing no armor, carrying no shield and using a 1 handed weapon.

Are you talking about Rukus? If so, (Spoiler: he can't use a weapon in his deformed right hand and suffers penalties for weilding a 2-handed weapon) I'll leave the armor question for James or Nick.

 

[+5 Keyboard!]

This has been stated somewhere before, but I couldn't tell you where. The NPCs for Pathfinder were created with a "what makes sense" mentallity rather than mechanical optimization. Meaning, their backgrounds and roles in the adventures are the key to their design, not making them all bruisers optimized for a fight, necessarily. Note: this doesn't extend to ALL NPCs like a blanket statement. Obviously, the big baddies should indeed be optimally designed. I haven't combed the stats on the fight encounters enough to weigh in on whether or not they're up to snuff. However, I've heard complaints that the quasit in Burnt Offerings was nigh impossible to defeat and the haunts in The Skinsaw Murders were horrible individual PC deaths just waiting to happen.

From just a brief perusal of The Hook Mountain Massacre, there's some really tough encounters in there. Mind you, the above isn't all NPCs I'm suggesting are lethal challenges. But the point is, again, most of the NPCs are designed the way they are intentionally with story in mind.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

True men read in the bathroom!

Just so long as you're not DM'ing from there.

 

[James Jacobs]

James, any chance you guys could start optimizing the NPC's a little bit better

Not all encounters should present equal challenges. That's one of my overarching philosophies of adventure design. Each adventure should have encounters that allow PCs to feel like they're the heroes—that means that some encounters SHOULD be pushovers. Also, some encounters should serve only to advance an adventure's theme; this is the case of the 6th level fighter in question. Having the PCs encounter a big freaky mutant like this is the goal of the encounter, not to push them to the limits of thier capabilites, or even to give them a stand-up fight.

I think the main problem here isn't that some monsters have low armor classes or glass jaws... it's that the CR system doesn't work as well as it should. According to the rules, a 20th level human commoner is the same CR as an 18th level lich wizard. You get the same XP for each. Likewise, a fighter with the appropriate amount of gear who spends that gear on stuff other than armor (and therefore has a really low armor class) and only picks feats from the PHB is the same CR as a fighter who spends all his money on armor and a weapon and numbercrunches his feats from dozens of non-core supplements.

I suppose we could be a bit more realistic about assigning CR scores to creatures. As written, the ogrekin fighter at the start of "Hook Mountain" is more like a CR 5 or CR 6 monster, but if we start doing that, we'll be having a different set of messageboard debates.

ANYway, I think there's plenty of High Armor Class villians as is in Pathfinder. The BBEG of "Skinsaw Murders" can easilly start out that battle with an AC well over 30, for example. Also, keep in mind that Pathfinder isn't for one particular group to play; it's for thousands of groups. Not all of them are going to be as good at the game. I suspect that there are groups out there who find the NPCs in Pathfinder to be uniformly TOO tough.

We're kind of aiming for the middle of the road here. That, plus the fact that I always want some encounters in an adventure to be mood setters or make the PCs fell tough is why you'll continue to see NPCs in Pathfinder that you might think are underwhelming.

ALSO: I try to preserve what the authors of adventures want, in most cases. A lot of times, that means that an author who's more gifted at the story side of an adventure than he is at the mechanical side of the adventure will include NPCs that aren't really capable of filling the role of super-numbercrunched foe. Usually I'll try to err on the author's side, even if that means putting in a fighter who's got a deformed hand that means he can't use shields or two handed weapons.

ANYway, if you haven't thrown some wimpy foes at your PCs, you should try it out some time. If the PCs come out of the battle feeling heroic and proud and tough, and if the players seem to have had a good time of it, isn't that good for the game?