The concept of level

[RandomCasualty2]

If you are level 15, it means you are CR 15, it means you cannot be more powerful than CR 15s, because that means CR is literally meaningless.

Well it's okay to be better than some CR 15s. In practice the same game challenge is going to produce some matchups where your 15th level character is a big favorite against a CR 15 enemy. There however should also be some matchups where you are an underdog too.

You'll never practically get a 50/50 everywhere. but it's basically assured that you're broken if you're a favorite over almost every CR 15 that's in print.

[Hicks]

and exact clone of his character is a valid CR of his level encounter.

CR is broken, as in it does not work. Furthermore it cannot work, as the system for designating its assignation is founded on nothing more solid than whim. When held as a tautology, it describes a logically impossibility: A mirror match and gargantuan Giant Scorpion against a 10th level character both are described as 50% chance of success. And if you say a gargantuan Monstrous Scorpion posits a 50/50 chance of death to a horse archer on the open steppe you are insane. Or a liar, pick one. The absolute maxim of "If CR = CR, then 50% chance of success." is false. Stop proselytizing it as if it were valid truth, or I'm gonna start referring to you as a false prophet as a kenning. CR is a guide, and often as not a false one at that.

Why can you not wrap your mind around the reality that a character is always 2 level appropriate attacks from death? A martial class can TWF + Whirlwind and kill any number of level appropriate enemies he can reach from level 1 to 20. The multi-target Save or Die spells come online at level 1 with sleep, color spray, and silent image. You can kill your mirror match as if it were a mook, with the proper (i.e. what you were going to do anyway) tactics. You have set up a false dichotomy and your conclusions are not supported by evidence, testimony, or reality.

---

Ubernoob, kindly sit down and shut up. That is the reality of the game at that level, if you can't deal with that, play at a lower level, preferably lower than 9th as that is where the wizard telekinesis barrage comes online; or lower than 6, as any martial class can get TWF, Combat School, and Whirlwind by 6th level. Go swim in the kiddy pool and STFU.

High level D+D is stupid crazy, and if you can't deal with it, fine; but don't you DARE tell me that after I shelled out $120 on those damn books that I must limit my game to what YOUR house rules approve what I can do in MY GAME.

The fact that you can't think to defend against a 6th and 9th level tactic speaks volumes to what stunted limits you allow yourself. Your games must be more coddled than what you espouse as JE's ideal.

[PhoneLobster]

Why is this that bad game design? If you're playing in a game where you stealthily infiltrate jungles armed with only a sword armed it may in fact be a perfectly fair trade.

Its never a fair trade because there are two actual scenarios in play.

1) Players influence game events.
Situational disadvantages are either non-entities or significantly devalued.

2) Players don't influence game events.
Situational disadvantages fuck you over more than intended. Or they don't but the game sucks because players don't influence game events.

You can and should have advantages and disadvantages in your system. The problem is that certain folks make the mistake of thinking those disadvantages balance out the advantages. They don't. They can't.

To create a balanced game design you should almost certainly lean toward balancing play with the assumption that most advantages basically always apply and disadvantages are pretty much negligible.

If you were writing Rock-Paper-Scissors the RPG you balance the game play based on the players almost always being in favorable match ups. Because in what sort of screwed up at the table game play will they not be? Especially in what sort of screwed up real game play situation are they going to be facing 50% favorable and 50% unfavorable on a reliable basis?

Being colour blind isn't a balancing factor. Its pretty much free background fluff.

It should be treated as such.

Instead dumb asses go around writing vast alignment/magic element/class/faction advantage and disadvantage "perfectly balanced" match up tables on RPS principles like any of that will mean dick in an actual table top game using the system.

RPS isn't perfect, but it is in fact handy if you want to have situations where you regularly rotate people in and out of the hot seat/winner's circle without favoritism. The problem of course is that in your example you're tacitly assuming that Swords > Seeing which is just not true for all games--your example verges on strawman, PL.

No. RPS is BAD for rotating people in and out of the spotlight.

Because if players have influence over the game then each damn bastard is going to be pulling their own way on the RPS table. Or worse, they all pile up on S and all push that way.

And are you going to MAKE them all play evenly R, P, and S characters and only provide encounters in an equal round robin distribution of R, P and S?

Are you never going to write/run a whole adventure or adventure arch with themed or repeating opponents? Because if you do you just screwed everything by running multiple encounters/games all in R and not in P and S.

And don't you have that one player who bullies the group into taking the adventure towards opponents he particularly wants to beat up or locations he wants to visit or whatever? Well give him an RPS advantage, especially one different to the other players and THAT is going to hurt the game even more.

How are you going to solve that? Are you now going to be game police and step in amongst the players all the time and say "now now Jerry, you guys can't go to the fortress of Rock this week because you went to the fortress of Other Rocks last week, you MUST go to the fortress of Paper this week so that Jill can shine. No matter what role play or events or reasoning you give even if Jill says she is fine with the fortress of Rock thing or whatever.".

[Hicks]

Phone: you have two orphaned "close quote" tags at the end of your post. To get this to look right, I put one "open quote" tag in my post. Please edit your post and remove the orphaned tags at the end of your post.

This is a stop gap so the thread is readable past this point.

[PhoneLobster]

I was already editting it now you've screwed the page up you ass.

[Hicks]

Chillax. I did not see your name on the forum front page and acted to minimize the damage while you were away. Fixed.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Its never a fair trade because there are two actual scenarios in play.

1) Players influence game events.
Situational disadvantages are either non-entities or significantly devalued.

Uh, yeah, that's part of the fun. If my WWI pilot has the advantage of 'Flying Ace' but has the disadvantage of 'Coward' he'll try to avoid extended flights or missions.

Seeking advantageous situations to maximize your advantages and minimize your disadvantages should just be part of the damn game, especially in a game that emphasizes tactics.

2) Players don't influence game events.
Situational disadvantages fuck you over more than intended. Or they don't but the game sucks because players don't influence game events.

Again, that's also part of the fun. I don't like Gygaxian death traps, but honestly, no one should expect their character to play at 100% efficiency all of the time. This means that sometimes your Fire Mage ends up fighting salamanders and sometimes your cowardly pilot is sent out on a double mission.

To create a balanced game design you should almost certainly lean toward balancing play with the assumption that most advantages basically always apply and disadvantages are pretty much negligible.

Okay, but that's not Rock Paper Scissors. In RPS disadvantages always generically apply. If you pick Blue on the 4-color wheel then for a generic adventure you're disadvantaged for 25% of the time and there's no way around it. Big deal, so is Red/Yellow/Green.

Because in what sort of screwed up at the table game play will they not be? Especially in what sort of screwed up real game play situation are they going to be facing 50% favorable and 50% unfavorable on a reliable basis?

One, a balanced monster set can eliminate the discrepancy. That's actually one of the fundamental assumptions of a balanced RPS game; for level 2 you have three Paper Monsters, three Rock Monsters, and three Scissor Monsters.

Two, honestly, even though you could achieve a perfect ratio of suck/win, you ideally don't want to get this outcome ahead of time. Players are going to have differing skill levels and experience. If you apply a 50% favorable situation to a group of players then what you'll actually have is the less experienced people sucking more and the more experienced people sucking less. Which means they get more spotlight. You want to be able to adjust the favorable rating in both directions, so that when a new player with a Paper comes to the table or a Paper player had a bad run the last adventure the DM can make it so that they face more Rock monsters.

Being colour blind isn't a balancing factor. Its pretty much free background fluff.

No, you're strawmanning again. If you're playing a private detective game it's a huge disadvantage and if you're playing an ace fighter pilot game it's a crippling disadvantage. You can't say ahead of time that any disadvantage (or advantage for that matter) will or will not apply. It depends on how you design the game.

Because if players have influence over the game then each damn bastard is going to be pulling their own way on the RPS table. Or worse, they all pile up on S and all push that way.

And don't you have that one player who bullies the group into taking the adventure towards opponents he particularly wants to beat up or locations he wants to visit or whatever? Well give him an RPS advantage, especially one different to the other players and THAT is going to hurt the game even more.

Okay, but that doesn't have anything to do with RPS. That's a flaw of any roleplaying game, even ones where you can't select your abilities. If the players have frickin' GUNS and they're fighting melee-only zombies then you should expect the players to try to start combat as far away as possible. If you have a bully at the table who wants to fight nothing but orcs because he has an Orc-Slayer weapon then they're going to be fighting more orcs.

So fucking what?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Look, if you don't like RPS here are the two alternatives I've seen done.

I waste it with my crossbow!

All abilities are always available at any time. 10th level crossbow shooting is just as good as 10th level swordsmanship. And I mean in any situation. The archer is just as good as the swordsman when sniping enemy fortifications, when in a closet with a troll, and so on.

Some powers are more equal than others.

Some abilities are just better than others. It's your job to find out which things are awesome and which things suck. If you pick up a generically sucky ability like Rice-growing in a Saharan desert campaign then sucks to be you. Build a better character next time.

Unless you have some sort of alternative I've never heard about, PL, those are the only other systems I've seen done.

[Kaelik]

No, you're strawmanning again. If you're playing a private detective game it's a huge disadvantage and if you're playing an ace fighter pilot game it's a crippling disadvantage. You can't say ahead of time that any disadvantage (or advantage for that matter) will or will not apply. It depends on how you design the game.

No, he's not strawmanning, (or at least not here) you are.

His argument is the following:

Players are smart enough to never take a disadvantage that will ever meaningfully affect them.

IE, In a detective game or a fighter pilot game, they will not take the Color Blind Flaw for the +2 Swording.

The will instead take the "Wears a brightly colored coat" Flaw for "Casts Divination at will." Or -2 Swording for +1 Plane Flying.

He may be right, he may be wrong, but he is definitely not strawmanning, because his whole point is that players will make damn sure they avoid any situation in which the flaw would come up, IE, if they are making a fighter pilot, they will take flaws that have no effect on piloting fighters.

[Judging__Eagle]

Quote
for great justice

Okay, again Frank. It's not about Rock paper scissors.

It's a direct contradiction to MGuy and JE saying:

"Rogues should not fight as well as fighters, Rogues should stand in a corner during fights."

And JEs:

"Fighters are unbalanced, That's what Fighters do. Fighters beat everyone in combat all the time because they are just that awesome. Fighters should be better than every other class. FIGHTERS JIZZ IN MY PANTS!"

I have both never have said that, nor have never condoned that.

Like I said before, you put words in my mouth.

The rogue should be murdering monsters just as well as the Fighter, Barbarian, Samurai or Wizard.

I said fights are unbalanced. If someone goes first, guess what? Unbalanced fight. If someone uses an effective tactic to stymie the enemy? Yup, unbalanced fight. That's the nature of success in a competition. You find voids in an enemy, and attack there.

Unfortunately you just can't read what people write, or make shit up, and think that since you say someone said something, it's obviously what they said. That's cool, I'm sure it works for you in the real world. Except that here, there's a record, and text that's been written down.

Also, people that make fail builds exist, and even if I tell a player that they are deliberately gimping their PC, and suggest an easy option, is it my fucking fault that the player did not take it?

I hope to dog that it's not. One never knows in Kaelik-land though. Since he says things that no one ever said, or thought. /shrug

As for PCs murdering monsters, it should happen. Everyone should do it. Except for one instance, when the player doesn't want to (and yes, I have had people do that).

As for killing monsters, it does happen. In my own games no less. Everyone gets in on killing monsters. That must be a real shocker for you two, but I guess you learn something new every day.

Every character type is able to murder monsters and do so quickly. I honestly wouldn't have it any other way.

Seriously, it feels like some little alien crawled into your head Kaelik and is making you write up lies that the real Kaelik knows aren't true.

Heroes vs Monsters
Good, bad, I'm the guy with an actual name

When it comes down to it, no standard encounter in D&D will have a character actually threatened by an equal level monster.

A CR 1 Fighter is... really not threatened by a few Kobolds. If he's in scale mail, carries a heavy or tower sheild, and uses a longsword; and assuming he put his 15 into Str; he'll probably kill a kobold every other round. By the time he's nearing death, he's probably killed 2 or 3, and the remaining ones are injured or retreating.

If his dex mod is 0, his AC would be 18; his to-hit is probably +1 (tower sheild penalty negates str mod). If he plays his tactics right, he can engage in charging in to get the charge bonus to hit; and hit the kobolds AC of 15 on a 13+ (not great odds, but hey, low level is pretty harsh, and we all know it). The kobolds hit him on a 17+, and deal 1-5 damage (not a lot, but after 3-4 hits he will probably drop).

Of course.. that's assuming that the PC in question didn't use a ranged weapon at all when facing multiple targets that his ranged attacks to actually harm.

Which is the problem with gedankens, there's so much assumed, that it's hard to know if the PCs are acting smart, or really dumb. The kobolds slings do shitty damage; and only when kobolds are upgraded to using light crossbows and show up in ratios of 2+ per PC do they become a threat at level 1 play. If they just have slings, and are far, a longbow is going to wreak havoc on them, with little threat to the PCs.

At higher levels, the difference between a PC, and a monster is... well, a lot.

Magic armour, magic weapons, special abilities granted by items; special abilities granted by class; synergizing of different sources of power, or abilities in order to create specific strategies or tactics that fit a character.

The level 8 bard doesn't kill 60 orcs b/c he's got bigger numbers; he's also got abilities that let him just kill 60 orcs.

Rock Paper Scissors
Uh... more like Vampire, Troll, Demon; whatever

Heavy fighters, spell casters, light fighters. What's the difference? For me, I feel that it's a matter of method, flavor, and style. A wizard steals someone's brain and drops it on the ground; a rogue steals their heart all Killua-style from HunterXHunter; and a Fighter turns their lungs into broken feta cheese. No matter what, the target has a bad day.

Kaelik seems to have it in his head that flavor = power. Which is a fucking retarded concept, and I honestly have no idea where or why he believes that.

I think that he mistakes powerful characters with the notion that characters of that flavor are expected by some people to have more power than other characters.

Remember, Kaelik is seriously a person that lies about math, on things that I actually have linked, in arguments we have had on these boards.

Ubernoob just says stuff, but he hasn't actually said the sort of hyperbole that Kaelik seems to use for this specific case.

All three of the "tome" characters in that game could kick ass and take names. Prak's monk could seriously curb-stomp things his own CR; Jaggyd's 'dumb' Barbarian build [size feats to the max, and swing a polearm for max reach] could easily kill something her own CR in a single round of face to face fighting; and my rogue/bard/monk/fighter could solo most monsters his own CR.

I've run about 100 or so encounters using Tome material, and that's the norm for that material. From level 1, to level 20; that's what happens. The Tome Knight-Archer will seriously just fly over fools and wrfpwn them just as hard as a min-maxed fighter or RoW Barbarian will. A Samurai will one-round a Dragon even a few CRs above their level, using "sword-cut-spell" techniques and "Samurai uses Auto-Crit. It's super effective." A person who has never played 3.5 can look at the Dungeonomicon Monk; the RoW Feats, and make a level 11 character that deals 8d3 Con and 8d3 dex damage (on failed Fort saves) over 8 attacks; has Concealment, and each attack forces the target to make a Reflex save or be Helpless for 1 round.

The tome stuff lets you make very effective characters. That was the point. If you're not happy with that, go and play an all caster party, or something, and I, and others, will go and play games where the Knight and the Wizard go pwning fools in the face at an equal rate of effectiveness.


The Vampire Malenti Barbarian
Hey Charliiiee, we're going to candy mountan, Charliiiee

Currently, in the new game I'm running, there's a newbie playing a barbarian. When I say 'newbie', I mean, they've never even held a funny sided dice in their life. I just ask them questions about what they wanted to be, and do, and had them look at feats, and magic items.

The level 11 vampire [ToN +0 LA template] sahuagin (malenti) 2/ RoW barbarian 9 in my newest game has:

-Adamantine breastplate; so good DR, added to Barb DR
-2 Adamantine Clawed Gauntlets (the fact that this is a good fluff fit for the race is coincidental)
-str item
-con item

And... there's really nothing else that the player has used. they've just relied on basic class abilities combined with feats (TWF, Whirlwind, Mage Slayer, Relentless Rage (Koumei's feat, I changed one of the things so that it just gives pounce isntead of letting you shoot all of your non-heavy weapons while/before charging).

They have an Str mod of 11 (with wish economy, racial mod, template and a +4 str item, it's pretty easy to see how that can happen), but their Barbarian class abilities are always 2 levels behind. They also roll 5d6 of Rage dice; which frankly is a lot. On average, they deal about 30 damage a hit, but number range from 24-64 per hit; and a Fire Giant dies well before they've used all of their 6 attacks. Usually 4 will do the trick.

If two creatures are beside the Barbarian, they get eviscerated. Things 10' behind, stymie the PC from being able to kill enemies forever; so large creatures are an interesting way of both making the player feel awesome, and not allow them to kill everything that's close to them in one round.

The Troll Shaman
Watch as I kill them with my shaman powers!

The Wizard is, a fucking Troll, and he has both the lowest survivablity (only 60-odd HP at level 11; since he's a CR 5 Troll); but he's also got the most lethal survivability. He just casts Magic Jar, and most creatures don't make a DC 26 will save that easily, so his survivability is 'naturally' low, but he makes up for it by not caring if his current body dies. He also likes to use Evocations. He's a 2e player, and thinks that damage spells are a good way to do things.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I should care, but I do tell him that stuff like a web, or solid Fog would completely devestate the opposition. In one encounter, he cast Obscuring mist, then decided to mind-fuck a Fire giant in a castle and just be the fire giant, since it was easier than fighting his way into the base with his troll body. For the cloud giant 'boss', he just cast Magic Jar; and reigned in the BBEG's Fiendish Tyrannosaur pet, allowing the other PCs free reign to murder any fire giant too stupid to not run away.

Aasimar Monk
First I use Frying Dragon style to get to the roof; then Hidden Tiger Style to sneak across the plain; then I punch with no style, and what happens?
The Fire Giant is a pile on the ground, blood gushing out from every one of his orifices and pores; also, he's crippled

The Monk is able to fly (airwalk), and shoot fire from his mouth (the 1d6 per monk level of fire damage ability is nice; I changed the attack to be a line attack with less range, since it's more of what the player wants; I might change it to be "standard action: line attack 10' per monk level, or range touch attack medium (or long) rang"); he flies around and shoots fire. His other master style is Concealment and attacks make target's Helpless (if they fail a ref save).

So, he's got mobility, and infiltration down pat just by having special abilities. Both styles give him damage options; and one gives him defense; while the other gives him mobility.

He's also got TWF, Extra Arms, and Carrier [Filth Fever]. So... there's a lot of low-ish damage attacks (compared to the barbarian at least). However, he's dealing Con and Dex damage, meaning that the saving throws for his poison and 'helpless' fighting style become harder to resist as time passes.

The Opposition
This is your enemy, whether you choose to kill them or not, is up to you.

Their enemies are... CR 10 Fire Giants. Lots of them. The thing is, a Fire Giant has a very narrow range of options; while the PCs have a ton. The PCs can out manouver, out fight, and out last the Giants.

The Giants have "more numbers"; immunity to the monk's fire attack; a decent ranged attack; hobgoblins with siege and bows as support, and throwing rock. With the down side of vunerability to cold.

The PCs don't have vulnerabilities that can be really exploited by the Giants; while the giants have weaknesses that the PCs can exploit. You can probably guess how most fights go.

When faced with roughly equal numbers of giants (or their stone golem or hobgoblin support); the PCs can kill them without a sweat; they take some hits, sure, but it's not like the Barbarian can't survive 70 points of damage in a single round; and the Monk has enough AC and Concealment that he doesn't care, when he does get hit (hasn't actually -happened- yet, in part due to timing, and location, but also very high AC). The wizard doesn't give a shit about his body, ever, since he goes body-dancing and perfectly infiltrating every enemy unit that the players see; then goes berserk and starts using his new body to attack a squad of Fire Giants, then shifts back to his Troll body and gets up again to find some more enemies.

Here's the question: are those characters all on the same level?

They're all hard to kill; and all of them can kill monsters, usually at least 1 per round, and 2 if a situation is set up well.

For the most part, they can each kill a monster of their CR almost guaranteed.

Is that... super broken? Apparently, according to Kaelik, it is. Killing a creature lower level than you without using all of your attacks is probably super broken in Kaelik land; just like using all of your 'special' abilities in a row to kill a single creature two CRs higher than you, that you and other people had previously injured, is also super broken in Kaelik-land.

Expected Kills per round
Now remember kids "KILLING SPREE!" starts at three. You can remember, because they rhyme.


Kaelik, these crazy numbers of killing "every monster" in a round are, well... crazy. Even fully cracked out with every piece of advice, that "character" I had could kill 1 super monster in a round, and by super monster I mean 2 CRs higher due to the arbitrary way that added HD 'increases' CR. At best he might harm a bunch. Even then, the monster had to be pre-softened up, and it took the use of a per-round ability to make it possible without being interrupted or killed.

I've never said anything about what amount of creatures a PC should kill; but 1 per round of the PC's own CR seems reasonable. If you can kill 2 with a favorable situation, that's pretty good too. Killing 3+ of your own CR means you've got something going on. Like... say, a bunch of Barbarians who use Whirlwind to kill mobs of guys in each round, hittting everything once or twice; and then the third one that passes through the mob drops the monsters, or you made the ceiling collapse, and a cat came out of the hole to watch the pwnage.

What happens in combat
Ready, set, fight!

With PCs having benefits that monsters never do (a player tactically thinking about what they will do; carefully selected gear, feats, levels and skills to leverage specific types of strategies that fit the character; using other PCs to set off or enhance your own PC's abilities), it's pretty understandable to see an encounter where it goes like this:

Round 1:
-Contact, [sometimes sneaking/spotting happens; sometimes the PCs or NPCs set up something to prep for the fight]
-roll init
fastest PC attack [PCs tend to have at least one member who will out speed most people in any fight. I remember a monk PC where I'd start my Init countdown at "Anyone here over 30 Initiative?"]
-first attacks: PCs and Monsters attack each other

maybe a PC gets injured; maybe really badly, if unlucky, maybe killed. The PCs will either kill a few monsters if they are on equal CR terms; or will have some other effect on the enemy
-end round

Round 2
-the players assess the situation, and decide to keep figthing, mop up or start popping specials b/c it's a tough fight
-PCs attack
-PCs get attacked; the fight should have some sort of rhythm at this point, and you'll see what's going to happen a couple moves based on current actions

Round 3

Mop up; anything still alive is either fleeing, or about to get killed; or even hand-waved since it's obvious that 4 Fire Giants aren't going to stand up to a Cloud Giant (their 'boss', who just cast Cone of Cold on them); a Barbarian that just killed 3 of them in the last 2 rounds, and a Monk that just killed 2 in the last round.


That's how most encounters tend to play out in my experience. While there are the occasionally "padded sumo" fights; I've seriously never seen or been in an encounter that went to 6 rounds.

mirror matches

Wait... are you me? Or just an evil copy of me?

On the topic of mirror matches. I actually like the idea. It's a really good way to see if you know your own character's weaknesses better than other people do. Going 2 on 1 is something that makes me really interested and curious. Mostly b/c I have no idea if I could get my own character to survive or not. "maybe" if I exploited large and specific weaknesses that they have; I could kill one, but never against the same person. I'd have to do something different each time, as many of my characters rely on having multiple series of tactics that they can use for ranged, melee, single targets (of various types), target-rich environments (of various types).

[Lago PARANOIA]

His argument is the following:

Players are smart enough to never take a disadvantage that will ever meaningfully affect them.

IE, In a detective game or a fighter pilot game, they will not take the Color Blind Flaw for the +2 Swording.

The will instead take the "Wears a brightly colored coat" Flaw for "Casts Divination at will." Or -2 Swording for +1 Plane Flying.

The Strawman comes into play when he used intentionally contrived examples to diss the RPS system. Yes, it is totally possible to have these problems in a game, but that's the problem of specific examples--not the RPS system.

He may be right, he may be wrong, but he is definitely not strawmanning, because his whole point is that players will make damn sure they avoid any situation in which the flaw would come up, IE, if they are making a fighter pilot, they will take flaws that have no effect on piloting fighters.

That is also a strawman, because that is a 'flaw' of any system with open choice, not just RPS. That's fine if you don't like it (though this makes me wonder why you're playing a tactical RPG) but you can't use those things as an indictment to the RPS system. They exist in every game, even one where a DM hands out identical character sheets.

[Username17]

JE: stop relying on specific examples, because they are too long. Also a Kobold warrior is CR 1/4, so a Fighter has to take down four of them even at first level to take out his level worth of opponents. An enemy of his level is a Kobold Sorcerer with color spray, which is of course a very brutal and quick battle where if the Fighter gets the first blow in he probably wins, and if the kobold gets the first low in he probably loses.

And that's the problem with relying so heavily on specific examples. That example is a bad example, and I still can't tell whether your overall point is right or wrong.

Right Point: In actual games, players get better than the standard attribute array (even 4d6c3 gives better average stat lines for most characters), special items, advanced intelligence, non-standard advantages and even just plain more familiarity with their character (that they play every session) than the DM gets with the monster of the week (that is brand new to them in most cases). So in actual play, PCs almost invariably win challenges that a character of their level "right out of the box" would have difficulty with. Let's face it, if you play in the Sunless Citadel, everyone gets a free zombie bodyguard that you can replace when it dies. If you play Expedition to Castle Greyhawk, you can get the Fire or Cold subtype and some free non-standard stat boosts. If you play Red Hand of Doom you can draw upon Giant Eagles for fun and profit (and free). And so on.

Wrong Point: A Level X Character in abstract is better than a CR X Monster in abstract.

The fact that players pick up advantages unspecified in the DMG for advanced characters (including pure player experience) makes organic characters substantially outperform the level guidelines and do so more and more as they are played organically at higher and higher levels. By 15th level, an Organic character of any type can likely basically solo the entire adventure that is the CR 15 Same Game Test. But a character right out of the box at level 15 still generally goes 50-50 with the challenges unless they suck or were specifically built with the Same Game Test in mind (which is roughly equivalent to the kind of advance intelligence an organically played hero would get in a real game).

---

And... yeeeeah. Ubernoob and Phoelobster are still clear. And stil clearly wrong. So really not much change there.

PhoneLobster is basically saying that Bishops and Knights can't be balanced because a player will attempt to arrange situations where valuable enemies are in clear diagonals from a Bishop or at Civ City border edges from a Knight. While players will do that, that's not indicative that the pieces are especially unbalanced nor is it a coherent argument that they can't be balanced.

Ubernoob is now claiming that RPS only refers to 100% advantage, which it doesn't. But even within that context, if you can't handle a 100% tactical advantage you can't play any meaningful game. Especial a few moves into the game. So you paralyzed your opponent, or you successfully moved silently up to the sleeping enemy, or you took the high ground and can now rain arrows down upon the slow and steady basilisk.... or whatever. There are some situations where you win. Indeed, since many of those situations are the results of chances you took in the past, denying the victory is just kind of dickish and pointless.

---

TL;DR: JE still incoherent, Kaelik still spamming insults, Ubernoob and PhoneLobster still wrong.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

We're going on an adventure!
Whoo-hooo! I'm on an adventure!

A PC class should be able to complete an adventure designed for 4 PCs 3-4 levels lower on their own.

Also, most adventures written up give plenty of opportunities for the players to interact with friendly NPCs and gain an asymetric information advantage over their enemies.

When you know that there are Ogres in the hills; but the Ogres don't know that your Knight is coming after them, then you have actually made the encounter with the Ogres an easier one. You can find individual Ogres, and call them out on Duels, or get a horse or two, and just use horse-archer tactics to bring the Ogres to death.

Some adventures seriously say "you deus ex machina an appropriate message from the diety of the Cleric or Paladin PCs in the group; ephasize the plot hook, and limited time".

Rogues, Wizards, Fighters and Clerics should all be able to complete 'adventures' on their own.

While the rogue is best suited for a death-trap dungeon, and the Cleric for a crypt full of undead; they should both be able to have some overlap.

Probably, the rogue would sneak in, do what needs to be done, and sneak back out. While the cleric would ironman the traps with wands of healing. The RoW fighter would need healing items, or a Rogue dip in their build; and the Wizard just does shit, and wins an adventure.

All of the characters should be able to do the same type of adventures, but some will obviously be better suited for some advantures, over others. The Barbarian with maxed intimidate =/= a diplomat. Pick the 1/2 elf bard or rogue or cleric or archivist or ranger with ranks in Diplomacy instead. They're super effective against monsters with the [Foreign Dignitary] sub-type.

[RandomCasualty2]

A PC class should be able to complete an adventure designed for 4 PCs 3-4 levels lower on their own.

True, The CR system says that 1 level 7 PC = 4 level 3 PCs.

But it still doesn't really answer the accusation people are making against you, namely that you believe that a level X PC should be able to beat a CR X challenge more than 50% of the time.

I've seen a bunch of examples and some other stuff, but I've never really seen you confirm or deny that statement.

[Kaelik]

Fucking goddam JE, you don't win just because you keep typing until the other person's eyes gloss over from your irrelevant bullshit.

The part where five paragraphs after I gave up because you were just bragging about how awesome a D&D game you are playing is I still saw my name... I'm not going to read that shit. I'm not even sure how I fit into you bragging about you game anyway.

1) Fuck you asshole, the Rogue is explicitly something that Mguy said and explicitly something that I was saying that Mguy said, you can tell because it comes before the part where the letter JE come from.

2) Once again, I'm not claiming you don't have people kill lots of monsters. I'm explicitly pointing out that your idea of CR is a sack of shit in which you literally to my fucking face in writing that is recorded claim that a X > X. X == ~X. And other such fucked up logical impossibilities.

3) That's because you are so fucking stupid you apparently don't know what a fucking Dragon is, so I'll spell it out.

Dragons automatically win 100% of the time against non archer samurais. They also automatically win 100% of the time against Archer Samurais once they get second level spells.

A kobold? It's not a CR 1 monster, so the fact that you can beat a single Kobold with a level 1 Fighter has shit to do with anything.

It's your level 1 Fighter versus 4 Kobolds that makes a 50% chance. And you also can't afford Armor, Tower Shield, and Weapon, much less two, but whatever.

And that's explicitly in the "Kobolds show up in 2+ per PC" where they become a threat. IE, they show up 4+per PC and they have a 50% chance of TPKing you, because that's what a EL = Party level +4 means. And that's what a single character fighting a CR = Level encounter is.

4) WTF! I'm not even fucking talking about Rock Paper Scissors. I know you have to go out of your way to attack my character because your words are so fucking retarded that if anyone believes me when I literally fucking quote them, like I did, then you will look like a damn idiot. But At least confine your character assassination to the parts that I have even talked about at fucking all. I have not said a single fucking word about flavor or the difference between class X and Y at all in this thread. I have only spoken about fucking CR.

And unlike you, I have said that CR = CR, not CR = ~CR.

5) But since you mention it: My explicit problem is that Tome Martial characters are superior to casters. Superior. Not equal. Superior. That's the problem. The part where Barbarians and Fighters can literally one round anything they can reach? That's better than Wizards, who, because they were designed pre Tome Power Creep, have like a 60% chance at best of taking out a CR = Party level enemy in a single round. Unlike characters that can take ten on attack rolls and automatically declare them dead without fucking rolling a single die against any possible CR = level opposition.

6) Okay... Skimming past JE talking about his super fun D&D games like they have anything to do with anything...

Once again. If you can kill any monster of your CR in a single round, Every monster should be able to kill you in a round.

I'll specifically address this, because you accused me of lying about math earlier because you (sort of like Hicks) get mad at me when I take your word:

JE: He does 400 damage a round.

ME: Okay, 400 damage is too fucking much.

JE: YOU LIE! He only does 200 damage.

ME: Fine I won't believe you, I'll do the math myself. Oh look 240 damage.

JE: No it doesn't! I don't need to do math, you are a proven liar!

Pointless analysis where I show that you do in fact contribute more than twice your CR in power.

Your character, according to your own posted character sheet:

6 attacks that all hit AC 29 every time and do 3d6+32 damage and 3 COn damage.

When you multiply this out, it comes to average damage per round against anything with 29 AC or less, 255 damage +18 Con damage? Do you dispute this? Am I lying about your character sheet or simple multiplication?

No? Good, moving on. A CR 14 enemy, two best choices as far as highest HP Total and highest HP with lowest HD are:

Mature Adult Black Dragon. AC 29
Nalfashnee. AC 27

SO you are autohitting both of them all the way. If we ignore all your AoOs, then we should see if one of them could take three attacks. To determine if you are overkilling by killing two per round.

So... 42.5 damage x 3=127.5 damage on three attacks, not counting Con.

(Quick note, the only Con damage immune CR 14 has 144HP average, so you only kill one and two thirds of those each round, still vastly outperforming your CR of course against the monster most suitable to fighting you.)

Nalfashnee post damage before Con: 47.5 HP left. -70 from Con.
Dragon: 125.5 HP Left. -110 from Con

Con damage: 9 per each: 22HD -5 modifier, and 14 HD -5 modifier.

So funny story, turns out, more HD actually keeps you alive better against your character than fewer HD but higher Con. What do you know.

So long story short, you do in fact kill two per round basically of all CR 14s.

What can they do to you?

+28 AB, against your 36 AC. Even if he hit you on every attack for two straight rounds, which he will never do, you would only take 90 damage, not even your HP. You could effectively solo, by yourself, (On the Plane of Water, after casting FoM on yourself, which you did) 4 black dragons with a 50% chance of success.

I assume you had some way of flying faster than a black dragon or could give yourself Acid immunity/resistance, and could do the same against it in the air.

So in fact, you literally contribute equally to a party of characters your level with that single character.

You don't equal, as you said they should, a party of characters 3-4 levels lower, you equaled a party of characters your level.

Of course, that's not even counting your various wands, Foil action, ect. Which could basically allow you to rape on those four monsters with CR = your level without breaking a sweat. So yes, that character is fundamentally overoptimized.

What I really don't get is why you deny that at one moment, then later claim that all characters should be able to solo 4 monsters of his CR, then turn around and deny it again the next post.

7) "With PCs having benefits monsters never do..."

You don't get to just declare things. Monsters have access to everything players do, and more stuff besides. Monsters get automatically better stats and more HD to account for DMs not taking time to optimize them, then they get cool abilities on top of that to account for PCs ones.

Monsters get everything you get. Monsters can lay ambushes, use divinations, arrange for circumstances, and way more than players, they can set position to their advantage, that's what a "lair" is.

[Kaelik]

Special double post for Frank because he said something worth talking about that shouldn't get lost in that crap with JE:

Frank, maybe it's just a difference of playstyle, but from my experience:

1) Artifacts are never, Better stats for PCs are accounted for by better stats for Monsters.

2) Monsters get to use foreknowledge just as much as PCs. Take Red Hand of Doom, they get to know "There are Dragons and Hobgoblins" but pretty much by a certain point the enemies get to know "One of them flies around invisible charming people, one of them chopps bitches from hiding, one of them jumps 70ft into the air and lands of the enemy point first, and one of them throws poisoned daggers. And one shoots invisible lazors or something, he looks, people die."

Compare that with how much foreknowledge the PCs have about what's coming, and well. It certainly doesn't appear to be in their favor.

[PhoneLobster]

So the lesson we learn today from Lago and Frank is specific examples and discussion of what people actually do at the table has no place in their ideas about game design.

Hmmm.

[Username17]

So the lesson we learn today from Lago and Frank is specific examples and discussion of what people actually do at the table has no place in their ideas about game design.

Hmmm.

As long as it's going to be JE or you giving specific examples, yes.

JE's specific examples went off the rails in the first paragraph and then I was unable to salvage his main point from his screed. Once you start talking about Kobold Warriors (CR 1/4) as "of the level" of the Fighter I can no longer tell whether your point is that a Level X character should be a vastly superior thing to a CR X monster or that Characters should be facing a lot of weaker enemies. I just can't even tell.

And then you made the incredibly bad argument that because you claimed that one example of being good at one thing and bad at another thing was in one circumstance unbalanced that being good at one thing and bad at another could not be balanced. And that's... completely batshit insane.

---

The short answer is that a specific example can be a powerful tool to show that:

• A system can work.
  or
• A system does not work.

No number of specific examples of imbalance will ever show that something can't work. And no number of specific examples of things functioning can show that the system works overall. No matter how many examples you use, there could always be a tweak that balances the system or an exploit you didn't take into account.

---

So both JE and PhoneLobster are making terrible arguments by delving into specific cases. JE would have to expand his argument to all possible matchups to prove his point by his method (which based on post length, he is attempting to do), and PhoneLobster would have to write up all possible RPS systems and demonstrate all of them to be unsatisfactory to proceed by his method. It's just not productive.

If PhoneLobster was arguing that a specific RPS was unbalanced, all he'd have to do is show a single unbalanced choice and he'd be done. But he is not, so his argument is completely fucking meaningless. He's arguing against a specific RPS system that he invented for his example: an actual Strawman as well as being a total non-sequitur.

-Username17

[Psychic Robot]

A fighter with a bow and a horse beats a fighter without a bow and a horse.

[MGuy]

What's this supposed to mean?

[PhoneLobster]

No number of specific examples of imbalance will ever show that something can't work.

Except when we describe something that actually IS the majority of games.

The vast majority.

Basically no actual table top game IN EXISTENCE cycles Rock, Paper and Scissors evenly. Not a one. The vast majority will never even come CLOSE to that.

And considering every RPS style system YOU have every proposed suffers from the problems I outlined... then WTF is your supposed "well it could work" example?

But yeah, you have your head up your ass on this so why bother?

I mean you don't even believe horses can go inside or averages are actual averages.

[CatharzGodfoot]

What's this supposed to mean?

If you give a fighter extra stuff she does better than a fighter without that stuff?

[tzor]

I’m going to partially agree with JE and against the common wisdom here. A classically designed character will (when push comes to shove) have a higher CR than his actual level would indicate (or in odd cases such as a horrid multiclass a lower CR). The reasons for this are many and include the fact that equipment (and most of D&D still was equipment driven) for PC and non PC were radically different. The real question is how much above CR would the average PC be? 10% 50% ?

The fact is that level and CR were “balanced” by using seat of the pants arguments, making assumptions that are, in general, flat out wrong.

[Username17]

PhoneLobster, you haven't made a coherent argument at all. But I'll try to parse your argument into something that can be argued against. If i am inadvertently strawmanning you on this, I apologize, I really am attempting to engage with you.

Argument 1:

• If you have an RPS system, players will attempt to maximize the time they spend interacting with the parts where they excel, and minimize the parts where they perform poorly.
• They will succeed at doing that more often than not.
• Conclusion: Being bad at one thing and good at another is a net advantage.

I think most people will be willing to grant you premise one. But it goes right off the rails immediately afterwards. And here's actually a good way to use a specific example, because you're making an argument about all RPS systems, so a single counter example sinks it. Counter Example: RPS as defenses. Since you do not normally choose whether your opponent uses an Ice Attack or a Wind Attack, a relative bonus to Ice Defense coupled with a penalty to Wind Defense may well be a net disadvantage as the choice of whether to use Ice or Wind is made by people who want you dead.

That argument, as I understand it, is so trivial to falsify it that I just falsified it.

Argument the Second:

• RPS is a net advantage to the player.
• Gaining an advantage is unfair.
• Unfairness is bad.
• RPS is bad.

Well, we don't have to grant the first premise, because it has already been falsified as being necessarily true. But you know what? We don't have to reject it. After all, we know that there are whole systems of RPS that are essentially player-choice in nature, and those ones are very likely to be a net advantage (depending of course on risk sensitivity on how bad it is to be weak in the rare action you have to take off-suit versus how helpful it is to take an action in-suit). Because the rest of the argument is hogwash.

Why is gaining an advantage unfair? Aside from the basic idea of incentives where without gaining an Advantage of some kind there is no reason to do anything, there's the really blatant elephant in the room: what if everyone gets an advantage? Unfairness as regards to gaining an advantage is not that one person gets an advantage, other people could get the same advantage and that would still be fair. Heck, it's not even getting an advantage that other people don't get: other people culd get different and equally valuable advantages and that would be fair as well.

So no. PhoneLobster, you're wrong. Completely, and totally wrong. If you want to design an incentiveless game system, you go ahead and do that. But I have no confidence whatsoever in your ability to do so.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Basically no actual table top game IN EXISTENCE cycles Rock, Paper and Scissors evenly. Not a one. The vast majority will never even come CLOSE to that.

From the game-design portion:
Why do you think that is? Do you think it's because people don't write up enough Paper monsters and Rock challenges? If so, wouldn't that be solved by, oh, evenly dividing up the challenges by writing them? This is getting into crazy inductive logic territory here, where if everyone in the past failed at the task of making a RPS game everyone in the future will, too.

But anyway, it's not like progress hasn't been made. 4E of all systems evenly divides up the categories of monsters, which if their role protection system actually did anything would be a feather in their cap. But seriously, it's not that hard.

From the actual in-play part:
But once you get past the rule-creation standpoint, you don't actually want to force the game to always do Rock/Paper/Scissors in even intervals. That's so the DM can adjust the frequency of the elements to give a player who has been sucking a chance to shine or a character who has been overpowered for awhile a chance to cool down.