GMing Smarter, Not Harder: Accounting for High-Level Spellcasters

[Ninjaxenomorph]

In the Pathfinder game I play in, PCs are hitting level 9 or 10, and with that our wizard and cleric are getting The Good Spells. Our GM, saying he's not used to running at such high levels (which to be fair he is not), is struggling to account for our abilities.

For example, we are investigating some missing children, so naturally we followed up with the parents and obtained materials for Scrying them. Our GM straight-up told us he was considering not giving us anything with the spell, since he wants us to actually 'investigate'. Which is fine, but we're not 1st level adventurers. If we have access to it, we're gonna use the spy satellite, not talk to informants. He also very nearly invalidated actual divinations by not giving us anything, but eventually I cajoled him into giving us a vague answer (the kind the spell specifically gives), which DID point us in the right direction. He's also considered giving out increased XP as rewards for if we DON'T use Teleport to accomplish tasks.

With my complaining out of the way, is there any advice I could give him in general regarding accounting for high-level magic without invalidating it?

[BearonVonMu]

Like you said, you are entering the levels where your characters are truly becoming powerful.
You are high enough level that "find the missing children" is not really a cause worth much of your time, frankly. Unless the missing children is a sign of some truly horrifying and dangerous thing happening, that sounds more like a level five adventure.
There are stories that work at low levels and stories that work at higher levels.
For actually dealing with the abilities? Let them work. Let the cool powers you've worked to level up to function as they are supposed to. Let the adventure go by, even if it goes by in a blur. Learn that a vast distance will be negated by teleporting, that finding hidden things will mean scrying, and that environmental hazards are going to be overcome more easily now.
Maybe take a look at some pre-printed adventures of the appropriate level to give you examples of how other people handle the level bracket you're in?
What would be best would be to have played at that level and watched someone with skill do it. Learn from an experienced hand. Of course, that's not always available.

[Trebloc]

I play 3.5, but I think most of this should translate over pretty well.

Obviously talk with the DM about this. Here are some points I have in no particular order
- You are right, the kind of investigation where some average Joe parents are asking adventurers to find their kids is a low level quest. To adjust this, I'd up it. Instead, nobles or royalty are asking for help since they can both afford the help and warrant the attention of a higher level party. The antagonist(s) are smart though, so will use tricks as well. Anti-scrying methods for this instance, but also things like polymorphing, leaving false trails, disinformation...etc.

- Teleportation. Ask why your DM wants you to walk from point A to point B. To get ambushed by a handful of level 1 bandits? Or that marauding dozen of kobolds can threaten you? The levels you're at, you'd need giants and devils and demons jumping out from behind trees to provide a reasonable threat for a journey. So really, skipping the bandits and orcs is a time saver.

That said, the bad guys are prepared for this to some extent. Traps related to teleportation (3.5 has an anticipate teleport spell), wards that prevent teleportation...etc. Also cannot teleport somewhere unless you've seen it, so the protection from scrying also comes into play here.

- DM smart. The group is higher level and has more options. So open up the DM playbook. Sure, the party scryes the kidnapped kid and teleports in. But darn it all, the bad guy had planned ahead for that happening, so set a nasty trap for just such an occurrence.

Bad guys should be smart. They'll research the heroes and plan counter strategies. Hold actions to disrupt spells. Hit the PC's weak points. Divide and conquer. Use advantages to help their cause. And of course have an escape plan for when things go south.

- What the party can do, the DM can to. If the DM is getting frustrated about any nasty magic coming his way, be sure to toss some back at the group. The group is getting to the level where "death" is an inconvenience, like poison and stat damage were at low levels. He's gotta realize that PCs are going to die, it's almost impossible for it not to happen. The players need to realize that too.

- Don't let the party do the 30 minute adventuring day. Make the casters really consider their spells and how to utilize them. If they go nova for 3 fights and are tanked, don't let them rest. I like to use time limits of some sort, either known or unknown to the group, so that resting is something that needs to really be considered.

All that said, I would suggest to not go balls-to-the-walls with every bad guy. The PCs have their toys and want to use them, so they should succeed some of the time.

[Kallimakus]

My expertise is limited here, since I dealt with the problem by saying 'Right! No levelling after 8!' which is decidedly unhelpful.

First solution that I can see (and a variation of which I will give) is to embrace the change. As you say, these are abilities that the players have been looking forward to (probably), so shutting them down is not exactly nice, though I sympathize. By saying that they should embrace it, they should also acknowledge that these abilities exist. If they exist, people know of them. If people know of them, people can counter them to an extent. For example:
Scrying gives you a view of the target and 10ft area around them. Put them in a featureless cell. Scrying still provides information (child is alive), but doesn't really help to find them. Alternatively, investing in lead screens or magical protection is possible. Scrying also can't tell you the location on a more general scale (like direction or distance)
Teleport, on its own, only really lets you go back to places you've been. I don't think that's a huge issue. Much like Fast Travel in Skyrim or an airship in Final Fantasy, it just allows you to skip undesired content. Using it to skip desired content is bad form from players' side. It is worst when combined with Scrying, so methods that block that are useful. Alternatively, use an illusion in the room to provide a false destination. Or redecorate daily to change the nature of the location. Or move the scrying targets constantly. If you teleport into 'a featureless stone cell somewhere' I don't think your odds of landing in the right one are great.
Divination can be embraced as a vector for new information. Equally, the spell has limitations.

Using the spy satellite analogue, it is useless for finding something indoors.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

I have to start working soon, but I can answer the reason we are doing this 'low level quest' is because it happened on our vacation while we were deciding whether to go strike against a continent full of undead or go kill a god of nightmares' prophet. And the kids are being held on the Plane of Shadows, so something IS going on.

[Geddy2112]

If the quest is a side quest, the DM should not care that you "solved" it quickly. And if the kids are on another plane, that is still going to require plane shifting, which is highly innacurate so you still have to hoof it somewhat.

Also, teleport is not 100% accurate, and dangerous if you are not very familiar with the place. It also won't cover huge distances, so depending on the size of the world it may take a LOT of teleporting to get across a continent, and you have to at least know the place you are aiming for.

For dealing with high level spellcasters, start making adventures that REQUIRE high level magic to even access. Magical locks and barriers that lower level parties cannot even break. Incorporeal monsters that cannot be harmed by nonmagical weapons. Locations that require teleport/plane shift to get to. Enemies that will kill parties outright if they don't magically buff up. Things like environmental hazards, highway bandits, and the like are just minor inconveniences for the party at this point. As others have said, scrying and similar spells are not world ending or perfect-they don't solve the problem, just make it easier. For the right puzzles and encounters, these spells will serve tools so the party can attempt them, and nothing more.

Requiring the use of magic just to continue playing will tax the casters some, so they don't have as many other spells to throw in combats and to otherwise break reality.

[Kallimakus]

For dealing with high level spellcasters, start making adventures that REQUIRE high level magic to even access. Magical locks and barriers that lower level parties cannot even break. Incorporeal monsters that cannot be harmed by nonmagical weapons. Locations that require teleport/plane shift to get to. Enemies that will kill parties outright if they don't magically buff up. Things like environmental hazards, highway bandits, and the like are just minor inconveniences for the party at this point. As others have said, scrying and similar spells are not world ending or perfect-they don't solve the problem, just make it easier. For the right puzzles and encounters, these spells will serve tools so the party can attempt them, and nothing more.

Requiring the use of magic just to continue playing will tax the casters some, so they don't have as many other spells to throw in combats and to otherwise break reality.

I have a small nitpick about this. Namely that the game shouldn't require casters to solve every problem. At any level. So if you create these sorts of challenges, there should be some in the opposite direction. Things that CANNOT be achieved through magic, or situations where spellcasting is detrimental. Like an environment or creature that eats or redirects magical energy. But this is just my opinion.

[Godskook]

Your DM wants to run challenges suitable for low-level PCs, but the game went past that. The simplest answer is to play a different game.

In this case, P6. I use e6 in 3.5, and I love it for helping keep players in the target zone for "normal" adventures.

http://p6codex.com/

[Nifft]

In the Pathfinder game I play in, PCs are hitting level 9 or 10, and with that our wizard and cleric are getting The Good Spells. Our GM, saying he's not used to running at such high levels (which to be fair he is not), is struggling to account for our abilities.

For example, we are investigating some missing children, so naturally we followed up with the parents and obtained materials for Scrying them. Our GM straight-up told us he was considering not giving us anything with the spell, since he wants us to actually 'investigate'. Which is fine, but we're not 1st level adventurers. If we have access to it, we're gonna use the spy satellite, not talk to informants. He also very nearly invalidated actual divinations by not giving us anything, but eventually I cajoled him into giving us a vague answer (the kind the spell specifically gives), which DID point us in the right direction. He's also considered giving out increased XP as rewards for if we DON'T use Teleport to accomplish tasks.

With my complaining out of the way, is there any advice I could give him in general regarding accounting for high-level magic without invalidating it?

Your DM is giving you local, low-level challenges.

You are at the level where you can handle regional challenges.

D&D is several different games -- this was once quite explicit, as "Basic D&D" was a whole different box from "Expert" or "Immortal". You've gone from the low-level game to the mid-level game, and your DM should come to us for advice on how to run this fundamentally different game.


What I do when running for 16th level PCs (and up):

- Don't bother prepping problems with known solutions. Just present realistic problems, and let the players work out how to solve them. Even if a problem seems insolvable, the PCs can probably solve it anyway.

- Prep NPCs with motivations & agendas, not set-piece battles. Have NPCs react in plausible ways, both for and against the PCs.

- Have a deep folder of prepared encounters (mostly plucked from the 'net). Steal pre-built monsters & encounters because most won't get used.

- Have a back pocket for random threats which will occur if the PCs don't manage to dig themselves into trouble on their own. (Mostly un-used, my players were good at sticking their noses where they weren't wanted.)

[Red Fel]

One of the rules I try to follow as GM, which not everyone does, is cribbed from improv - "Yes, and."

That is, if the players present me with something the PCs can legitimately do as an attempt to solve a situation, I train my instinct to be "Yes, and," rather than "No." (Occasionally, "yes, but.") The idea is that if the PCs can do X, and present me with a perfectly reasonable explanation as to how X can help them achieve their immediate goal, I shouldn't disallow it on the basis that I don't want them to achieve their goal that way. D&D, like life, isn't a multiple-choice test; it's an essay exam. (Occasionally, short-answer.)

Now, that doesn't mean that I make it easy. Just because the PCs can do X, it doesn't mean that X solves the problem. Sometimes, X creates more problems. Sometimes, X gets them partway to the goal, but not all the way. And sometimes, if the PCs are going to bypass the problem using X, I should take it as a sign that they're not really interested in diving into the details of this particular quest.

Other posters have mentioned how a DM can offer countermeasures or pitfalls even against high-level solutions. That's fair. But the takeaway - and the advice you should give your friend - is to learn to roll with it. Don't say, "You can't scry for that," or "You can't teleport there," but instead say, "Okay, you scry, but what you see..." or "Okay, you teleport, and what you find..."

Or, if it comes up a lot, just ask the players after the session, "Were you just trying to bypass that quest because you were bored?" Maybe they weren't, but maybe they were, and it informs future quests if you ask.

[RoboEmperor]

Honestly you are doomed. Just like how there is no way a wife can change her husband, there is no way a player can change his DM. You're either in d&d to do epic **** with magic, or you're in it to make a low magic lord of the rings style adventure. In the former case the DM usually starts out as a player and fully enjoys what d&d has to offer before DMing, and the latter has no interest in playing d&d, is out to replicate lord of the rings, was never a player and started DMing from the get go, and arbitrarily picked d&d since it's the biggest.

Magic has a steep learning curve because in addition to using the spells by themselves, performing combos with multiple spells can truly turn you into a physical god of this world capable of doing anything and breaking the campaign. You actually have to play high level d&d with experienced players for at least a year to really get a feel for what the spells can do and learn the system, so when a DM out to replicate lord of the rings is confronted with high level magic, there is not a chance in hell such a DM has any intent of learning high level magic, and even if he miraculously does there is not a chance in hell he'll be able to deal with high level magic, which means you are doomed.

If a man is not qualified for a job, you don't hire him. Simple as that, because not only is training not your job, but training takes a long while, which is why you don't hire a guy who is not trained for the job unless you plan on training him yourself, but that doesn't work here because the DM is the one with authority. You don't train someone to be your boss.

So in conclusion, either:
1. Don't use high level magic except the terrible ones like cone of cold and delayed blast fireball. Or
2. Get a new DM.

Just try to get your DM to spend hours online learning high level spells. He will never do it. Also he will consistently say "Don't do that" with all your high level spells or he will be extremely frustrated so don't plan on enjoying high level magic d&d with him. You are doomed.

This is why interviews are extremely important. You find out whether your goals are similar or not before investing months together.

[Tyrant]

- Have a deep folder of prepared encounters (mostly plucked from the 'net). Steal pre-built monsters & encounters because most won't get used.
Do you have any pointers on places to find some of these?

[Nifft]

Do you have any pointers on places to find some of these?

Most of them came from other people's campaign journals / "story time" threads: that was nice because they'd talk about how the encounter went, and that gave me a ballpark for expectations.

Some came from homebrew monster threads. For those, I had to develop a critical eye. That critical eye is also great for published material.

Mostly I was getting stuff from EN World; that might still be a decent place. There might be good stuff here on GitP, too.

[Silus]

Honestly you are doomed. Just like how there is no way a wife can change her husband, there is no way a player can change his DM. You're either in d&d to do epic **** with magic, or you're in it to make a low magic lord of the rings style adventure. In the former case the DM usually starts out as a player and fully enjoys what d&d has to offer before DMing, and the latter has no interest in playing d&d, is out to replicate lord of the rings, was never a player and started DMing from the get go, and arbitrarily picked d&d since it's the biggest.

Magic has a steep learning curve because in addition to using the spells by themselves, performing combos with multiple spells can truly turn you into a physical god of this world capable of doing anything and breaking the campaign. You actually have to play high level d&d with experienced players for at least a year to really get a feel for what the spells can do and learn the system, so when a DM out to replicate lord of the rings is confronted with high level magic, there is not a chance in hell such a DM has any intent of learning high level magic, and even if he miraculously does there is not a chance in hell he'll be able to deal with high level magic, which means you are doomed.

If a man is not qualified for a job, you don't hire him. Simple as that, because not only is training not your job, but training takes a long while, which is why you don't hire a guy who is not trained for the job unless you plan on training him yourself, but that doesn't work here because the DM is the one with authority. You don't train someone to be your boss.

So in conclusion, either:
1. Don't use high level magic except the terrible ones like cone of cold and delayed blast fireball. Or
2. Get a new DM.

Just try to get your DM to spend hours online learning high level spells. He will never do it. Also he will consistently say "Don't do that" with all your high level spells or he will be extremely frustrated so don't plan on enjoying high level magic d&d with him. You are doomed.

This is why interviews are extremely important. You find out whether your goals are similar or not before investing months together.

Hi there, I'm the DM the OP mentioned. Just to clarify a few things:

1) Started running this campaign from level 1 and now the players are 9-10. As the OP can attest I can be a little crazy but I'm nowhere near as crazy to start a game at lvl 10.

2) The reason I'm out of my depth is because I've never dealt with mid-to-high end magic in a game, either as a DM or as a player (most games I play in last until at most lvl 6 or 7 before the DM gets bored/tired).

3) It's not a matter of me not wanting the players to utilize their spells and abilities, it's that as a DM I'm not sure how to counter them effectively because, as point 2 mentioned, I've never had to deal with them from the player end, and pulling a Rule Zero seems like a **** move to say the least.

[Nifft]

Hi there, I'm the DM the OP mentioned. Just to clarify a few things:

1) Started running this campaign from level 1 and now the players are 9-10. As the OP can attest I can be a little crazy but I'm nowhere near as crazy to start a game at lvl 10.

2) The reason I'm out of my depth is because I've never dealt with mid-to-high end magic in a game, either as a DM or as a player (most games I play in last until at most lvl 6 or 7 before the DM gets bored/tired).

3) It's not a matter of me not wanting the players to utilize their spells and abilities, it's that as a DM I'm not sure how to counter them effectively because, as point 2 mentioned, I've never had to deal with them from the player end, and pulling a Rule Zero seems like a **** move to say the least.
1 - Good for you for keeping going.

2 - Sorry to hear that. You're going above & beyond by not giving up.

3 - We can help. Here's some general high-level advice: don't counter PC spells / skills / abilities. Require them. Create plots with no mundane solutions, and let the PCs use magic to solve the plots anyway.

Make a thread for your campaign, describe what's going on and the sorts of stories you want to tell, and we can give you more specific advice.

[RoboEmperor]

Hi there, I'm the DM the OP mentioned. Just to clarify a few things:

1) Started running this campaign from level 1 and now the players are 9-10. As the OP can attest I can be a little crazy but I'm nowhere near as crazy to start a game at lvl 10.

2) The reason I'm out of my depth is because I've never dealt with mid-to-high end magic in a game, either as a DM or as a player (most games I play in last until at most lvl 6 or 7 before the DM gets bored/tired).

3) It's not a matter of me not wanting the players to utilize their spells and abilities, it's that as a DM I'm not sure how to counter them effectively because, as point 2 mentioned, I've never had to deal with them from the player end, and pulling a Rule Zero seems like a **** move to say the least.

That's what I'm saying, you never dealt with it, so you will not be able to deal with it, at least not until you get extensive experience with high level spells. I had DMs get really frustrated whenever I used high level magic and some of them even yelled "That spell is too OP. It shouldn't be able to do that" and either banned the spell or house ruled the spell.

My advice to you is to use your current campaign as a learning experience, and whenever your PCs completely trivialize your encounter with a spell (like scrying), take that spell into consideration for your next encounter, and keep repeating until you learn how all the spells your PCs have access to work. You gotta go through a campaign like this at least once if you want to learn how to deal with them by DMing. So when someone pulls something you don't know how to deal with, don't try to stop it from destroying your current encounter, learn from it, learn how to deal with it online and design your next encounter with that in mind. Every shenanigan the PCs pull can be dealt with within the rules and can be found online or asking a forum like this one, so don't resort to banning spells or house ruling spells. There are a few exceptions though (wish loops and efreetis).

Everyone has to start somewhere so start with this campaign.

[Darth Ultron]

It simply takes more work by the DM:

Magic does have limits, the DM must learn them and use them in the game.

Take scrying. The bad guys were smart enough to:

1.Take all personal items of the kidnapped kid.
2.Destroy any item they could not take.
3.Put the kid in a dark, featureless room.

Ok, so even if he is scryed upon....they see he is in a room. Wow, lots of useful information.

Then there is misdirection: The window outside shows some famous landmark....that is 3,000 miles away from where the kids is. This can be done in plenty of mundane ways, plus many magical ways.

Maybe ''the kid''(aka bad guy) drew a map on the wall of to where they are(that is where they are not, but a trap is).

And once you get beyond 10th level, the bad guys (should) have plenty of magic. And there are ways to block scry type spells.

Fun: the scry sensor has all the casters vision....and darkvision is common enough so ''hiding in the dark'' is pointless. BUT, hiding in the light is awesome. There is no 'light vision', so fill a room with blinding bright light...and no one can see what is in the room. Smoke, water and dirt can also work.

And there is the old trick: have the kid be mobile.

So, it does take work, but it is possible.

[ATHATH]

Your DM wants to run challenges suitable for low-level PCs, but the game went past that. The simplest answer is to play a different game.

In this case, P6. I use e6 in 3.5, and I love it for helping keep players in the target zone for "normal" adventures.

http://p6codex.com/
Seconding using P6 or E6 if you have trouble dealing with high-level abilities.

[Quertus]

Honestly you are doomed. Just like how there is no way a wife can change her husband, there is no way a player can change his DM.

Personally, I've found that going all drill sergeant on the GM, and berating them, their choices, etc until they relent, works wonders for changing the GM's play style in the most efficient of Pavlovian techniques.

Fortunately for this GM, I'll never meet them...


Hi there, I'm the DM the OP mentioned. Just to clarify a few things:

1) Started running this campaign from level 1 and now the players are 9-10. As the OP can attest I can be a little crazy but I'm nowhere near as crazy to start a game at lvl 10.

2) The reason I'm out of my depth is because I've never dealt with mid-to-high end magic in a game, either as a DM or as a player (most games I play in last until at most lvl 6 or 7 before the DM gets bored/tired).

3) It's not a matter of me not wanting the players to utilize their spells and abilities, it's that as a DM I'm not sure how to counter them effectively because, as point 2 mentioned, I've never had to deal with them from the player end, and pulling a Rule Zero seems like a **** move to say the least.

Oh, hey!

The first bolded part demonstrates, imo, the wrong mindset. It's not about invalidating their abilities, it's about crafting an adventure that works despite - or, ideally, because of - those abilities.

However, the second bolded part gives me hope that you are perfectly capable of being a good GM.

So, while you're adjusting to the new power level, one technique is to monitor new power acquisitions, and integrate them into your adventure requirements.

Party gets Scrye? Design an encounter such that scrying on the child provides vital clues (but, following the Rule of 3, is only one of 3 ways for the party to get said clues).

Party gets Teleport? Feed them rumors of a portal to the Plane of Shadows that is so far away that they need Teleport to get there any time this year.

[Zanos]

Generally spells have specific counters. Dimension Lock, Forbiddance, Teleport Cage, Private Sanctum, and the like will go a fair distance to disrupting the players from teleporting into your big bads tower of doom and dusting him, but in general those sorts of countermeasures should be reserved for creatures that actually would have realistic access to them.

I can't type out specific advice but my general advice is that the players are level 10. Level 10 characters are supposed to be a considerable force in the game world. I'd argue that if the most interesting aspect of your encounter is walking 200 miles, you've written a fairly poor adventure for level 10 characters, unless you really want to roll for the encounters with the wolves they would have easily massacred. Interesting thing, there, PCs get access to teleport right around when the vast majority of wilderness encounters would stop being any challenge at all.

I will say that abilities like scrying aren't as busted as some people might otherwise think. The characters only have secondhand knowledge of the children and it's not like they can be told to throw their will save, so a +5 combined with the +5 for scrying a target on another plane could actually prevent the scrying depending on the scryers save DC. Teleporting to a scrying location is most likely going to be on target, but they're also going to need a plane shift. So that's a 4th and 5th level slot from the wizard and a 5th level slot from the cleric, plus potential encounters where the plane shift lands and the teleport lands.

It's not like it's devoid of any drain on their resources, but yeah, finding some missing kids that aren't under heavy guard isn't an arduous task for 10th level characters. But that seems about right to me.

[Tyrant]

Most of them came from other people's campaign journals / "story time" threads: that was nice because they'd talk about how the encounter went, and that gave me a ballpark for expectations.

Some came from homebrew monster threads. For those, I had to develop a critical eye. That critical eye is also great for published material.

Mostly I was getting stuff from EN World; that might still be a decent place. There might be good stuff here on GitP, too.
Thanks I will have to check those out.

[Psyren]

I have a small nitpick about this. Namely that the game shouldn't require casters to solve every problem. At any level. So if you create these sorts of challenges, there should be some in the opposite direction. Things that CANNOT be achieved through magic, or situations where spellcasting is detrimental. Like an environment or creature that eats or redirects magical energy. But this is just my opinion.

Agreed, and most of the spells in question have weaknesses that a GM (through their savvy villains) can exploit to this end.

But the corollary is that these abilities should not be stymied all the time either. If the players finally hit a level where the spy satellite comes online, they should be able to use it, even if all it shows them is the entrance of the dungeon they need to get to. Or if you scry on the missing kid and they are in a blank featureless room, include some small detail that can at least keep the plot moving, like hearing seagulls in the background.


Most of them came from other people's campaign journals / "story time" threads: that was nice because they'd talk about how the encounter went, and that gave me a ballpark for expectations.

Some came from homebrew monster threads. For those, I had to develop a critical eye. That critical eye is also great for published material.

Mostly I was getting stuff from EN World; that might still be a decent place. There might be good stuff here on GitP, too.



3 - We can help. Here's some general high-level advice: don't counter PC spells / skills / abilities. Require them. Create plots with no mundane solutions, and let the PCs use magic to solve the plots anyway.

Make a thread for your campaign, describe what's going on and the sorts of stories you want to tell, and we can give you more specific advice.

Solid advice here.

[edathompson2]

Agreed, and most of the spells in question have weaknesses that a GM (through their savvy villains) can exploit to this end.

But the corollary is that these abilities should not be stymied all the time either. If the players finally hit a level where the spy satellite comes online, they should be able to use it, even if all it shows them is the entrance of the dungeon they need to get to. Or if you scry on the missing kid and they are in a blank featureless room, include some small detail that can at least keep the plot moving, like hearing seagulls in the background.





Solid advice here.

Man, I totally feel for that DM. I remember running my first epic level game. It was awful. It was either TPK or 1 round and the monsters were dead.

Gotta take your lumps. You learn.