The End of 4e D&D.

[baduin]

Can someone explain to me the contempt for "equipment" which seems to prevail on this board?

I understand that characters must have "build-in" powers. Using tools is forbidden. I do not understand why.

I could mention that men differ from animals exactly by using tools. Animals can do anything they do by themselves, men have to use tools. And they do. Swords are equipment, armor is equipment, bows are equipment, etc.

Is it because anyone can use the equipment, so my character will not be SPECIAL when using it? I am not sure why RPG characters have to be special, but no matter.

In addition, I am not sure that the idea that anyone can use any tool is correct. When one reads about a fighter ace, the first thought is generally not: I could do the same if I had the plane.

[TOZ]

Because if your character needs to use an item to be a hero, it's the item that is a hero, not your character. I.E. the Christmas Tree effect.

[Crissa]

If the equipment is independent of the character, then any character can use it.

Ca + E < Cb + E if Ca < Cb.

There are ways to get around it, but if you look at RAW, it doesn't use them.

-Crissa

[Dr_Noface]

Is it really such a crime to play a combat-capable character with no magical plot advancement powers? I think its possible for a player to be content with mundane plot advancement powers at high levels. As long as fighter guy gets to sneak, seduce nymph-dragons, command an army and attend diplomatic talks he'll still have things to do in between combats. We just have to make sure the fighting guy and the skillful guy are one and the same.

A player who selects a class with few plot advancement powers probably wouldn't use them in a class that had them (see typical high level evoker). Will a character get his party TPKed because he doesn't have (or won't use) his magical plot advancement powers? I think as long as the character carries his own in combat, the rest of the party won't resent him. Even a high level fighter can slaughter armies, it just takes an hour or two as opposed to a minute or two.

EDIT: Crissa, I think people who play a fighter and people who don't want to slice mountains in half may be unfortunately one and the same at times.

[baduin]

Because if your character needs to use an item to be a hero, it's the item that is a hero, not your character. I.E. the Christmas Tree effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Richthofen

Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (2 May 1892 – 21 April 1918), widely known as the Red Baron, was a German fighter pilot with the Imperial German Army Air Service (Luftstreitkräfte) during World War I. He is considered the ace-of-aces of that war, being officially credited with 80 air combat victories, more than any other pilot.

[Dr_Noface]

Baduin, the Red Baron is clearly in the Heroic Tier. He can't stand toe to toe with paragon threats, such as Abraxus, Secret Demon of Secrets. As such, he doesn't have paragon tier plot advancement powers (such as the atomic bomb).

[TOZ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Richthofen

King Kong slaps your plane out of the sky. You fucking die. Game over.

[Lago PARANOIA]

As long as fighter guy gets to sneak

The artificer comes up with a single-use invisibility cloak, the druid turns into a mouse, and the paladin just takes off his books and sneaks just as good.

seduce nymph-dragons,

The artificer comes up with a love potion that can even work on the goddess of love, the druid actually turns into a nymph-dragon, and the paladin radiates divine love and hope to make the nymph-dragon feel at ease.

command an army

The artificer outfits his soldiers with clockwork swords and siege engines, the paladin summons an angel army, the druid calls up a horde of elements.

and attend diplomatic talks

The paladin activates his aura of awe to cow the other people, the druid consults with the spirits of the diplomat's ancestors to find their psychological weak points, and the artificer dons his helmet of Read Thoughts and splashes some pheremone perfumes on him.

he'll still have things to do in between combats.

And the Angel Summoner can order his minions to ride on some bikes.

[CatharzGodfoot]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Richthofen

King Kong slaps your plane out of the sky. You fucking die. Game over.

So are you saying that the plane is the hero in that situation, or are you just making non-sequiturs to avoid admitting that you're wrong?

[TOZ]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Richthofen

King Kong slaps your plane out of the sky. You fucking die. Game over.

So are you saying that the plane is the hero in that situation, or are you just making non-sequiturs to avoid admitting that you're wrong?

The point being that 'being really good at flying a plane' means just as much as 'being really good with a sword' in high level D&D.

Edit: Although yes, 'item being the hero' was probably not the terminology to use.

[baduin]

King Kong loses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merian_C._Cooper

"In the 1933 version of King Kong, Cooper and co-director Ernest B. Schoedsack appear at the end, piloting the plane that finally finishes off Kong. Cooper had reportedly said, "We should kill the sonofabitch ourselves."

[Dr_Noface]

Lago, I was just saying the fighter can handle all those situations in a mundane way. He doesn't need to be able to exclusively handle them to not feel useless. None of the three characters you mentioned handled any one challenge exclusively, just differently.


And when in doubt, the fighter can use twice as many magic items as a wizard for some reason.

[Ice9]

Re: Everybody gets crazy at paragon tier.
Based on previous discussion about this, I think a tier isn't going to do it. You need it to actually be called a separate game. It can be completely compatible, have rules for starting from existing characters, and come out at the same time by the same publisher, but it has to actually be a separate book with a separate name.

Because otherwise, some people will see "game goes to level 20" and "ordinary swordsman is playable at level 1" and will not accept, for any reason, that those two facts do not combine into "ordinary swordsman is playable at level 20".

[hogarth]

ay what? Everything you list in option #2 is possible in an E8 game (with the possible exception of the "office building" sized enemy

That's because in an E8 game people plop that shit down for you in a convenient-to-use manner.

The point is that eventually characters will be the cause of dimensional battlefields and mass summoned ghost horses and volcanos out of fukken nowhere.

Frank didn't mention any of that shit. He mentioned teleportation (e.g. Dimension Door), force fields (e.g. Resilient Sphere), dimensional travel (e.g. naturally occurring planar portals) and flying horses (e.g. trained pegasi or Phantom Steeds). Please stop moving the goalposts.

No one has a problem with wizards and clerics and druids doing these things.

Seriously, there are tons of people who have no interest in playing D&D much beyond level 8. I honestly believe you're in a tiny minority if you think that every class should have the ability to summon "volcanos [sic] out of nowhere" (or the equivalent).

[Lago PARANOIA]

Edit: Although yes, 'item being the hero' was probably not the terminology to use.

No, that is the terminology to use.

If someone can kill King Kong with their bare fists, that's badass. If they can kill King Kong with a musket, that's a bit less so, but still impressive. If they need a biplane to kill King Kong that's much less so, even if it's one on one. I mean, you still need some skill in order to do it but there are literally thousands of people who could step up to the plate. If you need an F-14 Tomcat to kill King Kong then that's laughable.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Frank didn't mention any of that shit. He mentioned teleportation (e.g. Dimension Door), force fields (e.g. Resilient Sphere), dimensional travel (e.g. naturally occurring planar portals) and flying horses (e.g. trained pegasi or Phantom Steeds). Please stop moving the goalposts.

Yeah, and if the players don't have access to it then what the fuck does it matter in the first place? I mean, characters in Call of Cthulhu come face to face with magic and supernatural horrors that a D&D character will never dream about, but does it really matter?

The thing is, in D&D characters will eventually be able to teleport and dimension travel and throw up force fields. It won't just be DM-induced setting dressing. Your 18th level druid can make Yggdrasil v2.0 rise up in the middle of the desert Right Now if she felt like it. If a character can't do something equally as impressive then they should fuck off and die.

Seriously, there are tons of people who have no interest in playing D&D much beyond level 8.

Then they should stop playing D&D when they get to level 9 rather than forcing their bullshit version on everyone else.

If they still want to keep playing with the same fucking characters with the same fucking shit for the next two years, then they should do so. If they don't want to give up their precious mortal swordsmen, then they don't gain levels anymore. They reach the height of their potential and all of their enemies from now on are about as strong as the Dark Warlord they fought a year ago.

If that's what they want, then why are they being such little crybabies about not advancing their characters some more?

Do they want some bigger numbers so they feel like they're changing but not in a way that actually changes the way the plot flows? Fine, we have an E8 variant. Your characters stop gaining new schticks, they just get numbers and horizontal advancement instead. That means that 20 campaigns from now, when they need to balance on a rope above the bazaar, the DC is now 35 instead of 28 like it was when they first hit level 8.

And if they're so in love with the idea of writing 'Fighter 20' on their character sheets then they could do that, too. Every time they get some bullshit invisible bonuses their level goes up.

FUCKING PERFECT. We get all of the grind of World of Warcraft while having to change none of the content!

[Lago PARANOIA]

So here's how it goes. Because Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft have warped peoples' brains to the point of expecting certain numbers even when it doesn't make any sense because of a facile, puerile need to emulate something they don't understand like a basement dwelling cargo cult, we have an E8 variant.

People at E8 don't go into the prestige classes, ever. Once they hit level 9, rather than being Angel Knight 9, they're Fighter 9. This is how you know that they're playing E8, because they're above level 8 but don't have a prestige class.

Alternatively, you could have paragon paths instead. Paragon paths are different from prestige classes. Prestige classes are transformative, paragon paths are not. So while 'Pit Fighter' or 'Thief Acrobat' are wholly inappropriate for prestige classes, they are not for paragon paths. This is denoted by the terminology Fighter / Pit Fighter 8 or Wizard / Arcane Trickster 8 so people don't get them confused with prestige classes.

Paragon paths do not offer abilities of a fundamentally more plot-affecting structure then what you get in base classes. Sure, they might have different names and different stock effects, but they never do things like let your character transform into a dragon or blight the landscape in a 5 mile radius. They're mostly horizontal advancement; so instead of a 9th level Archmage having two of each of spell levels one through five, a 9th level Wizard / Arcane Trickster has two of each of spell levels one through four. And two more level four spells that are unique to the paragon path or some shit.

Characters level up and get bonuses, same as always, but since the nature of the challenges aren't changing the DM has to invisibly pad monster hit points/defenses and skill DCs. I recommend actually starting E8 a bit before the flavor of a mortal swordsman hits its limits so that people won't notice the level treadmill so readily; after all, the reason why they're playing this variant rather than just keeping their character level at 8 is because their goddamn Willing Suspension of Disbelief is broken. I recommend combining challenges to help hide this. A Fighter / Pit Fighter 10 has to fight off two trolls firing arrows at him while climbing a tree. A Fighter / Pit Fighter 18 has to fight off four trolls firing arrows at him while climbing the castle walls in the rain.

E8 goes to level 20. It stops there because the level treadmill becomes too obvious past this point.


Satisfied yet, you fucks?

[FatR]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Richthofen

Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (2 May 1892 – 21 April 1918), widely known as the Red Baron, was a German fighter pilot with the Imperial German Army Air Service (Luftstreitkräfte) during World War I. He is considered the ace-of-aces of that war, being officially credited with 80 air combat victories, more than any other pilot.

First, fighter aces mostly used the same mass-produced equipment as average Joe Pilots. In fact, they are badass exactly because they excelled at using the same stuff people around them used, not because they were bestowed custom-made planes and shit. Second, the problem is, RL aces and other combat badasses don't have the power it takes to affect the course of history by sheer personal badassery. You can have the highest personal victory count of the currently alive pilots in your theater of the war, and your last combat flight still will be a meaningless act of defiance over the burned-out ruins of your capital. In high-level DnD, PCs are supposed to routinely win wars on their own and otherwise shape history. In fact, shaping history is basic premise of high fantasy.

[hogarth]

Satisfied yet, you fucks?

Whom are you talking to?

[Psychic Robot]

Your 18th level druid can make Yggdrasil v2.0 rise up in the middle of the desert Right Now if she felt like it. If a character can't do something equally as impressive then they should fuck off and die.

Perhaps the problem is that the druid can do that in the first place.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Whom are you talking to?

Everyone who whines about wanting to play D&D with the same mundane, non-evolving characters for several years but also still want to feel like they're advancing.

I don't have a problem with people wanting to stay at level 8 or 12 or 4 for the rest of their lives. I really don't. I also don't have a problem with people going 'oh, I want my character to change a lot from level 1 to 8 but then not change much after that until I stop at level 20'.

I am however openly contemptuous of people who say that they want their numbers to go up but also to have the adventure bend over backwards to accommodate them. I don't have a problem with Batman only fighting the Joker. I also don't have a problem with Batman donning a super suit when he needs to fight Doomsday. I do have a problem with the game pretending that Batman doesn't need a super suit or something similar to fight Doomsday and basically has the plot warp to their whims so it can go 'see, Batman CAN beat Doomsday without that crap, it just takes a little effort!'

Perhaps the problem is that the druid can do that in the first place.

Then the game should cap out at level 8. Or the game should hit the level treadmill at level 8.

Don't fucking stand there and lie to me that my mundane fighter with a sword 50% sharper and faster than average can take on an ancient wyrm dragon because his offscreen numbers went off. That's insulting and manipulative. And I have no respect for people who want to be manipulated in such a fashion.

[Psychic Robot]

Why must level 20 give characters a ridiculous amount of power? The things you describe characters doing seem more like plot effects than abilities that characters should be capable of doing. Summoning Yggdrasil in the middle of a fighter is something that the BBEG generally does, not Team Good. Badass Normals are a staple of fantasy literature, so why shouldn't they be perfectly viable in D&D?

Seriously. The fighter should be able to walk up and beat down a Demon Lord in one-on-one combat by virtue of his awesome fighting skills. The fighter shouldn't need to summon an army because he can kill an army. The fighter shouldn't need to conjure Yggdrasil because he's as strong as Yggdrasil.

Those are all things that Badass Normals can do. I think we need to focus on supporting that archetype rather than saying "fuck you, play a Hell Knight if you want nice things."

[Lago PARANOIA]

The fighter should be able to walk up and beat down a Demon Lord in one-on-one combat by virtue of his awesome fighting skills.

So the fighter will need Angel Armor to meet the flying demon, he will need an Eye of Seeing headband to spot the flying demon, he will need a Holy Sword to actually hurt the demon, he will need a Ring of Protection to stop the demon from instantly mind controlling him, he will need a Ring of anchoring to stop the demon from teleporting away or summon minions (or a Ring of teleporting to pursue and banish other demons), he will need some Armbands of Might to get enough strength to swing his Holy sword and not get torn apart in a grapple, he will need a cloak of fire resistance so he doesn't get burned up by the demon's aura...

At that point, you're either playing a Gadgeteer who happens to be really good with a sword (and why not? Paladins and Swordmages are good with a sword) or you scrub the ability of the demon to do all of that shit. He's not a fighter. It's like describing your 11th-level wizard with the ability to cast 'fireball' and nothing else but ice spells 'a master of flame'.

If you foolishly insist on the fighter still being able to fight without that crap, then you need to make the demon weaker. That means that the demon loses some combination of their ability to fly, summon minions, resist nonmagical blades, conjure a fire aura, turn invisible, teleport away, and have super demon strength. But at that point he's not really even a demon at all, just some scary-looking mook.



And that's precisely my point. The takeaway from these thought experiments is never 'good thing Batman conveniently had all of that equipment' it's 'good thing Batman is so badass' even though we all know that Batman would've never been able to beat Doomsday without that equipment. But that never happens. Stories go out of their way to manipulate the audience into thinking that a mortal swordsman can stand up to a demon if they have enough badassery, but they also don't want to give mortal swordsmen cool shit. So they rely on wank and misdirection in order to pretend to have their bullshit 'mortal swordsmen/vigilantes can still keep up!' plot.

I despise being lied to by my stories and you should, too.

The things you describe characters doing seem more like plot effects than abilities that characters should be capable of doing.

So players should not have abilities to let them affect the plot? So what the hell do the players do if they're confronted with a demon who plans to summon Yggdrasil v2.0 in the middle of the city and suck out all of the water so that the capital becomes a desert in a couple of years?

Oh, that's right, the DM should forcefeed the players options. The druid can't re-summon Yggsdrasil v2.0 to somewhere more convenient and then the wizard rebuilds the landscape. The players have to overhear some bullshit plot about an amulet that will undo all of the damage. And no, they can't forge it or keep it or hear about this ahead of time. And no alternate solutions are allowed, either.

What a terrible game; the players can't do anything unless the DM hands them deus ex machinas. Don't tell me I'm strawmanning your position, that is exactly what you said.

[CatharzGodfoot]

That means that the demon loses some combination of their ability to fly, summon minions, resist nonmagical blades, conjure a fire aura, teleport away, and not get his face wrecked if the demon grabs him. But at that point he's not really even a demon at all, just some scary-looking mook.

No, it just means that the warrior can hit super hard with a bow (hard enough to pierce even supernaturally strengthened hide), pin the demon with arrows to keep it from teleporting away, and is a skilled enough grappler to put the demon in a finger lock while deftly avoiding its natural weapons.

[Lago PARANOIA]

No, it just means that the warrior can hit super hard with a bow (hard enough to pierce even supernaturally strengthened hide), pin the demon with arrows to keep it from teleporting away, and is a skilled enough grappler to put the demon in a finger lock while deftly avoiding its natural weapons.

Hey look, guys, CG is doing exactly what I described. He's nerfing the demon offscreen while pretending he's not buffing the fighter.

You can't pierce his supernaturally strengthened hide with a fucking mundane arrow. Nonmagical swords bounces off him. Like it did to a werewolf many levels before him. What the fuck is a non-magic arrow supposed to do?

Stopping the demon by pinning him down with arrows. Next you're going to tell me that he gets the demon to trip by tying his shoelaces together.

And no. No amount of 'skill' is going to let you put the demon in a finger lock. He's as fucking strong as an elephant in a compact size. That's more offscreen demon nerfing.