Way of the Wicked and a 3.5 party

[Umbranar]

Hello Playgrounders,

As the title suggests I am planning on running the Way of the Wicked campaign saga, which is made for pathfinder.
Our party has been playing with the 3.5 rules for years and I wonder if 3.5 character are a problem to this campaign?

Here is a breakdown of my concerns:

1. The power ceiling of PF is way lower then 3.5, would the npc`s need a tweak?
2. XP is handled a little different in PF. The XP progression of Way of the Wicked is Medium. Would this be a problem or is this easely converted to 3.5?
3. Skills are a little different. Will this be an issue?
4. We like to use the point buy system. Should I allow 3.5 builds, should I use the 3.5 point buy system or the PF system?
5. With 3.5 we use the tier system and its point buy corrections for higher tiers. Is there such a thing for PF?

Thanks in advance, hope you can help :smallbiggrin:

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I played through the first module and most of the second module in a PF-only game, so I speak from that experience. (The game broke up mostly because the DM got super busy... and I moved to a different continent.)

Like with all modules, I recommend a healthy dose of flexibility in how the module plays out. We had one skill-focused Inquisitor who should have been incredibly useful (massive perception/face/stealth skills, utility spells, and the auto-disguise stuff). But (I think) the module forced us into particular encounters, especially combat encounters, no matter what we did. The one trick pony combat character LOVED that, of course, but the skill character felt pretty railroaded. Honestly, I was playing a utility sorcerer and felt pretty railroaded as well, but at least I was also good at combat. Let good plans work.

This problem is only going to be exacerbated by the existence of crazy 3.5 mechanics. Mindsight, crazy 3.5 spells that weren't nerfed, earth glide, and other off-the-wall abilities are going to muck with a purportedly sandboxy but IME pretty linear module*. To be honest, a high-damage character like a Whirlpounce Barbarian will dominate WotW if it's played straight.

What this means is that, sure, use the 3.5 material. But use the module as a guideline. The combats (generally) were pretty tame for a group of relatively optimized PF-only characters, so you can add more/more powerful enemies if you wish (but mind the optimization level of your group). When we came up with off-the-wall solutions, the best thing that happened tended to be a surprise round, but I'd reward creativity a bit more.

In general, for ease of use, I'd use PF as a basis and port in 3.5 material as needed.

Good luck!

*It's in a spoiler, so bewareI acutally liked the game and the group, but you can avoid these potential pratfalls:
Point 1: Does Asmodeus really enforce/honor contracts made under extreme duress? I mean, sign or die? Really? Couldn't it have been, "Oh, you don't HAVE to sign... but then you'll probably be eaten by a grue or killed on sight by the Mitrans." I get why this happens, but it IS pretty railroad-y. That would be fine, but the rest of the missions are just so specific that you kinda get a feeling of fake freedom. "Go, do what you want to achieve this mission... but this particular way is the one way that works." Speaking of which...
Point 2: The scoring mechanism for Balentine (sp?) was not to my liking. We could depopulate the entire garrison (and we pretty much did) except for Havelyn, and that would trigger a lose condition. At a certain point I want to play out the friggin' battle and SEE how he holds everyone off by himself. We used Knowledge: What the Module is Thinking (aka Knowledge: Engineering... Make sure someone knows this, or just give the info to them!) to make sure we took out all the main targets/sabotaged the equipment/killed the other important targets for a very nice "score." We pretty much only missed out on the Rookery, but it's difficult to say what he could have sent out with his birdies other than "wtf is going on, attack maybe?" Killed him afterwards.
Point 3: What the hell is the point of doing absolutely anything to fix up/man the tower in the second module when Our Buddy Pestilence is just going to Earthquake it all to crap? My character spent 2 IC game sessions spamming Stone Shape to amp up the fortifications with tens of feet of stone in well-crafted archways in the main chamber only to see it all fall apart at the force of fiat. Also the golem is too crazy to be useful, I wasted alchemy ranks, and we ended up just selling it. Also the Rumble of Fiat basically makes any previous plan turn to crap once you complete the next third of the plan. So many plans went to waste in Module 2, and the game ended right before the climax, so we didn't even know if we succeeded at the fiat-enforced final encounter or not. But knowing the module we probably would have.
Point 4: The leadership mechanic was pretty lame, time-wasting, and completely unnecessary in our experience.
Point 5: Don't make enemies prescient. This may have been our particular DM compensating for the party's combat ability, but enemies tended to be pre-buffed no matter what the circumstances were. Very annoying; just up their level/number instead.

[killem2]

1. The power ceiling of PF is way lower then 3.5, would the npc`s need a tweak?

This is true, and you are going to feel it through most of book one. My group is almost done with it. We started in may and we play once a month for 9 hours. Depending on how many characters you may have to tweak either the battles or how much xp they really get.



2. XP is handled a little different in PF. The XP progression of Way of the Wicked is Medium. Would this be a problem or is this easely converted to 3.5?

It is not easily converted in terms of matching the exp. The formula is stupid. But, you can just as easy scrap the 3.5 xp model and use pathfinder. I use slow progression because I had seven people to start, then dropped down to five, added one more, and will be adding another soon. Be mindful of the the minions players can get.

With 3.5, the power level is going to shine through if you are allowing a lot of source material. The thing you will need to remember is, most of book 1 is humanoids. I don't know about the rest of the book but I made this slow progression:


From my experience, depending on the party size, you can actually create an amazing dynamic with the slow progression. In my attempts to GM way of the wicked (all evil ap), I have seven players and i think there are also 4 npcs that they control. The action economy is of course immense. Adding a fast progression to this means your side of the table does tend to get a bit boring and one sided.

I've found that making it a slow progression, makes the players really function as a team, and they really dig into every aspect of their class for every last bit of fuel before resting.





3. Skills are a little different. Will this be an issue?

Yes it will be. If anyone says otherwise they either have way too much time of their hands or they never played the AP.

There are tons of perception checks and a lot of cloak and dagger. You will need to either use perception as a skill or go through and check where listen and spot matter. I originally wanted to make this 3.5 and this aspect is where I decided, we would go pathfinder for it.



4. We like to use the point buy system. Should I allow 3.5 builds, should I use the 3.5 point buy system or the PF system?

The AP gives you a way to roll for the system. It is in the free pdf as well. I like the choose an 18 stat, choose an 8 stat, and roll 1d10+7 in order. The only changes I made to this was, I let the players choose where the 18 and 8 go first, and then put their 1d10+7 rolls in order to fill in the gaps. I also allowed on full reroll of those 1d10's but they had to keep the next set.



5. With 3.5 we use the tier system and its point buy corrections for higher tiers. Is there such a thing for PF?


No. and I am severely biased on this subject. Tier system is such a convoluted joke of a system which is mostly theory craft and I doubt very much many gaming tables have to worry about the implications of it.

I my current group,

There is a cleric with an invisible familiar, an ogre npc, an ice mephit npc, a magus, a summoner, an archer, a rogue, and an alchemist. Due to the slow progression, they are probably 2 levels behind where they should be so n one really outshines anyone or starts taking over roles. Tiers were made IMO to help keep bratty and selfish little players in check. With the mephit, the alchemist, the rogue, and the cleric's familar there is severe over lap with scouting, no one complains about not getting to do thing.

The magus doesn't complain that the summoner can fight in melee.

This is bull**** that is conjured up by paranoid GMs who have no social skills or backbone to call out their ****ty players. :smallfurious: And then it instills unneeded fear in rational GMs who never needed to worry about it. I laugh every time I see giant threads debating over it because it's never been an issue in my group.



Personally, I would use pathfinder, I would make sure you stick to the requirements listed in the ap. LE, N, NL, NE alignments only.

My sig has a journal if you are curious how book one has been going. Enjoy the ap!

[Umbranar]

Oohw Im actually following that campaign journal! Thanks for the tips. I will try convince my players to get into Pathfinder for this campaign and I think that won`t be hard. The thought of playing a 1 to 20 evil campaign makes them happy.

About the tier system: I agree with you but our party sort of needs it. There is always that one guy trying to play the biggest OP stuff in 3.5. I mean we all optimize but most players try to optimize a weaker concept anyway (like a fighter or rogue, not a wizards to play god).

As for stat rolling, Im not really hot for that way of character creation.

[killem2]

Oohw Im actually following that campaign journal! Thanks for the tips. I will try convince my players to get into Pathfinder for this campaign and I think that won`t be hard. The thought of playing a 1 to 20 evil campaign makes them happy.

About the tier system: I agree with you but our party sort of needs it. There is always that one guy trying to play the biggest OP stuff in 3.5. I mean we all optimize but most players try to optimize a weaker concept anyway (like a fighter or rogue, not a wizards to play god).

As for stat rolling, Im not really hot for that way of character creation.

Sounds good :)! I swear by slow progression though. My players sometimes moan about it, but when they get that level, they are so over the moon. Really makes leveling up mean something :).

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

This is bull**** that is conjured up by paranoid GMs who have no social skills or backbone to call out their ****ty players. :smallfurious: And then it instills unneeded fear in rational GMs who never needed to worry about it. I laugh every time I see giant threads debating over it because it's never been an issue in my group.It really doesn't sound like you laugh about it. Maybe you should? Y'know. Let out a laugh. Maybe breathe a little.

I've experienced the difference in tiers quite acutely (sometimes I was the overpowered T1 :smallredface:), and I don't have such an emotional response to it. But I don't like JaronK's proposed solutions either. I worry about the effect of legitimizing bad behavior by imposing a fine (http://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/fine.pdf). This applies to extensive ban lists or "fixes" as well, which IME can be seen as challenges. Better to use a gentleman's agreement and/or social sanctions.

And honestly, if you play WotW straight then purported T4/T5 characters can be the MVPs. Really, anything that does a lot of damage will run roughshod as long as you have a way to pick your battles.