What needs to be removed to make high level dungeons work?

[Username17]

Yah. Maybe there is a 3rd level Aristocrat who administrates, but if there's a stronger person who wants the job, then they get it.

Spellcasters have family, friends, ideologies, and people that they simply do not like. I have to imagine that a number of them will prosecute their views as they see fit, essentially making them the law of the land. A government is going to have a hell of a time being legitimate if it cannot enforce its rule on inhabitants, especially if some other power base routinely enforces its own rule.

The basis for society functioning and and having laws be followed is the idea of Leviathan. That society as a whole is more powerful than anyone in society, and thus everyone is compelled by force monopoly to follow the rules of society. If that is not true, the social system cannot be maintained. Then you get shit like Rhodesia.

Even Libertarians of today believe that you have a right to life and private property (as an extension of your right to life by the labor theory of property), and that society has a collective duty to protect those rights.

D&D posits a world in which one man who happens to be a bad ass is very likely to be more powerful than society collectively. Furthermore, it posits a world where people kill their enemies and take their stuff as a career. In short: it is a society that has less collectivism than Ayn Fucking Rand believes is needed, and which lacks the collective power to enforce such even if political theorists of the time demanded it. Which they obviously don't, considering that people have "city adventures" and no one thinks this is weird.

-Username17

[Novembermike]

In Die Hard his goal is to save the hostages. He only kills the bad guys because they are threats to the hostages. The Nakatomi Plaza is a sandbox where McClain systematically eliminates threats to his goal.

And that's exactly what good D&D should look like. There's a structured setting, the Nakatomi building, and McClain ends up wiping out all the bad guys by the end, and he uses a variety of strategies to take them down. He doesn't skip any encounters...

Bullshit.

Bruce Willis says the signature line of the film just before skipping an encounter.

Seriously, go back and watch it. The DM sets up an encounter and J.M. sneaks away just before initiative is about to be rolled.

Game On,
fbmf

I don't think anyone has a problem with players creatively skipping an encounter every once in awhile. It's just that most of the wizard skip options are uncreative (use a power from your sheet) and they can do it far too often.

[K]

D&D posits a world in which one man who happens to be a bad ass is very likely to be more powerful than society collectively.

I'm not sure about that. Certainly, DnD posits a universe where a badass can be more powerful than society locally. I mean, you can just be a badass and it doesn't matter if you wear the chief hat in your village because there isn't shit that the actual mayor and his guards can do to you.

But society collectively? Society in DnD Land is explicitly about powerful people and/or monsters basically hunkered down and minding their own business for the single reason that, in DnD Land, life is cheap and death is not the worse thing that can happen to you.

I mean, old write-ups of Faerun used to list cities and give you a paragraph on every major archmage and hero living there on top of the high-level characters who care about government enough to hold office (as well as whoever secretly holds power). The setting itself implies that for every 18th level Archmage there is a Great Wyrm Dragon somewhere who is also an 18th level Sorcerer made out of dragon.

I don't see people really having a lot of innate conflicts in DnD Land for the simple reason that people's interests rarely overlap so only the most egregious crimes or plots ever draw a response. I mean, the reason the paladins of the realms don't form armies and go root out Hellgate Keep or Myth Drannor is not because those places aren't full of demons (they are), but because each powerful character is following his own bliss and most of the time his interests are local and sometimes as lame as "protect the property rights of the peasants of my hometown."

I'm serious when I say that it should be nearly impossible to get people to actually fight. Getting Manshoon to go toe to toe with anyone and not just sit in tower and do research should be really hard. I mean, it's not like they need to kill things for XP. The plot in court where you figure out who poisoned the visiting ambassador is worth XP too, and you aren't risking getting your soul permanently eaten by a barghest like you might if you are working on world conquest or poking around some tomb.

So yeh, if you are a powerful guy and you want to be the leader of a city like Westgate, you could go to war with the guys running the city. The problem is that there are other power groups who don't want to run the city themselves, but nonetheless don't want you setting the city on fire to get it because that's where they keep their stuff.

The settings themselves always explicitly list the fact that whenever you gain a level, there is an appropriate villain and sometimes hero of equal or greater level somewhere. That makes it hard to buy that anyone is ever more powerful than society.

[RobbyPants]

In Die Hard his goal is to save the hostages. He only kills the bad guys because they are threats to the hostages. The Nakatomi Plaza is a sandbox where McClain systematically eliminates threats to his goal.

And that's exactly what good D&D should look like. There's a structured setting, the Nakatomi building, and McClain ends up wiping out all the bad guys by the end, and he uses a variety of strategies to take them down. He doesn't skip any encounters, though his actions also shape what the bad guys do, as opposed to the bad guys just sitting in one room the entire time.

The adventure is "keep the hostages safe", and so long as there are bad guys there with guns, he can't do that. If he could ninja sneak in, open up a super secret shaft, and get the hostages out without killing all the guys, he'd probably do that. Once the hostages are out, SWAT can go about murdering everyone else for him.

But there's no super secret passage. So, the easiest way to go about saving all the hostages is to murder all the bad guys. Killing them all was part of the adventure. Skipping encounters meant not finishing the adventure. If the adventure were instead "get to Nakatomi's computer and do some shit", he could totally skip all the encounters and do that.

Edit:
So, the issue of making a D&D adventure where you don't skip encounters: you need to make them mandatory for a reason that makes sense. If you can do that, then there's no encounter skipping.

[fbmf]

And that's exactly what good D&D should look like. There's a structured setting, the Nakatomi building, and McClain ends up wiping out all the bad guys by the end, and he uses a variety of strategies to take them down. He doesn't skip any encounters...

Bullshit.

Bruce Willis says the signature line of the film just before skipping an encounter.

Seriously, go back and watch it. The DM sets up an encounter and J.M. sneaks away just before initiative is about to be rolled.

Game On,
fbmf

I don't think anyone has a problem with players creatively skipping an encounter every once in awhile. It's just that most of the wizard skip options are uncreative (use a power from your sheet) and they can do it far too often.

HIDE and MOVE SILENTLY are written on McClane's character sheet. He has more potential uses per day than a wizard has daily spells memorized.

So, to quote Hans Gruber, "You were saying?"

Game On,
fbmf

[talozin]

So, the issue of making a D&D adventure where you don't skip encounters: you need to make them mandatory for a reason that makes sense. If you can do that, then there's no encounter skipping.

Yes, quite. Getting into more fights than you absolutely have to is retarded, unless you're all playing Troll Slayer dwarfs in a Warhammer game.

[sabs]

So, the issue of making a D&D adventure where you don't skip encounters: you need to make them mandatory for a reason that makes sense. If you can do that, then there's no encounter skipping.

Yes, quite. Getting into more fights than you absolutely have to is retarded, unless you're all playing Troll Slayer dwarfs in a Warhammer game.

Even then, you're not getting into MORE fights than you need to. Every fight is necessary

You are after all trying to commit suicide.

[Judging__Eagle]

I don't think anyone has a problem with players creatively skipping an encounter every once in awhile. It's just that most of the wizard skip options are uncreative (use a power from your sheet) and they can do it far too often.

Excuse me? Use in an uncreative manner? What the hell does that even mean? Using a power as it is written in the rulebook, and doesn't allow for any other uses?

You'll seriously have to explain how you expect someone to use a Flash-Burst bomb in a manner other than a Flash-Burst bomb, and do something else other than blind a bunch of fools in a tight area for about a minute. [Colour Spray]

Or, just make them go to Sleep.

I honestly see fighters and rogues used more in a more uncreative and more stupid manner than spellcasters are.

I'm guessing that you're fine with a wizard using their Silent Image to create an image of a fiendish monster; and have that scare away all of the encounters you wanted to throw at the party; because it's creative (something you obviously get a hard-on for) and moreover, it's completely reasonable within the setting of the world (b/c let's be honest your enemies are going to say "holy crap, giant silent on-fire daemin knight, ruuuuuunnnnn!").

Somehow I doubt that, and you're the sort of assclown MC that just likes to screw players; either because they've roflstomped your narrowly planned scenarios with a tiny bit of creative use of their powers; or because you can't create any sort of encounter that doesn't challenge the non-casters, but actively challenges the spellcasters.

Such as Uber-Runed hallways, with powerful spells written along the walls; but aren't glyphs or active traps; quite literally, they're spells; and a spellcaster can copy them down for use later. Remember, Traps are meant to slow, stop or delay entrance. Those things can be done by all sorts of methods; luring weak willed enemies with cheap or trivial bribes is good too. Also, making the group decide between abandoning new spells for the wizard to learn; or leaving the wizard behind to learn new spells (Mwah, Mwuahahahaha!) is a good idea.

Pro-tip: never split up the party. Was given to me by an MC who'd been doing it a bit over a decade longer than I had; it's very true, and an awesome way to make "higher level" dungeons better.

Force the PCs to make super sub-optimal choices; like splitting up the group; not using their magical equipment (local sensors will cast Dispell Magic every round that they detect spells being cast or magical items in active use, temporarily suppressing items and removing spell effects; most PCs will seriously not activate item if it means that they won't have to worry about it being turned off or on a cooldown later.

Afterall, a normal fighter can still seriously kill shit when they're level 10; they just can't kill on-par shit at level 10.

Some of my previous higher level games had the PCs handing away equipped items permanently in order to bribe creatures or officials or simply to keep Nightmare bandits at bay while in Hades. Since the treasure came at a very consistent manner, the Players were fine acting as if all of their possessions were transitory at best.

So... Frank's point on how items aren't "Owned", and are 'attuned' at best is a good basis for determing how to make PCs powerful or not. PCs should be encouraged to give away treasures, or use one-shot magic attacks; and be compensated over the course of the adventure, or by the next treasure payout the group finds (hint, hint, not that hard to do, you being the MC and all, seeding treasure is nothing to be ashamed of it happens in stories all the time).

so... unorthodox things to keep players in lower level mode:


1. Bribe the party such that they don't want to bring the high level spellcaster along; then give the Player a disposable set of creature
(s) for the briber to loan to the party for this next time-sensitive adventure

2. Throw hordes of weak-ass shit at the PCs; force them to not use more than mundane gear. Past level 6 this is reasonable; their natural numbers will allow them to plough through groups of enemies per encounter with no problem, even if they have no magical gear, actual Masterwork gear will be something they care about b/c they can Power Attack for just a bit more than usual.

3. Make the group split up the party any way that you can; multiple levers that need to be pulled at the same time; or other "triggers" for events and actions; or as in 1. out of adventure reasons for a PC to not be used in the adventure.

[Wrathzog]

I'm not sure about that. Certainly, DnD posits a universe where a badass can be more powerful than society locally. I mean, you can just be a badass and it doesn't matter if you wear the chief hat in your village because there isn't shit that the actual mayor and his guards can do to you.
...
I don't see people really having a lot of innate conflicts in DnD Land for the simple reason that people's interests rarely overlap so only the most egregious crimes or plots ever draw a response.

Then does it matter to distinguish between Collective Society and Local Society? If I am a peasant and there's someone running around murdering all of the guards and no one can or will stop the murderer then what good is society as far as I'm concerned?

If it takes shitting into Elminster's Cheerios to get him involved in a conflict, then he doesn't matter when it comes to maintaining society.

When it comes down to it, our concepts and ideas on society will never apply to D&D world. The very rules of the universe are different. There comes a point in a person's life when Fire goes from Life Threatening to a Minor inconvenience because you have multiple HD.

In our world, infants can kill the most powerful people on the entire planet if they have a gun. Society works because humans in general are fucking fragile. Enforcing the rules is simple because if you don't follow the rules, you get shot and then you die. Any police officer in the world is capable of ending your life in an instant in the name of maintaining society's rules.

We don't have that in D&D world. Guards are level 4 warriors. They're just strong enough to kick the shit out of individual peasants that get out of line. If an adventurer with real class levels comes into town and starts wrecking shit, there is not much that the guards can do about it other than hope someone with real power comes long to help them out.
And that's not a good thing for the peasants in your world.

[Novembermike]

HIDE and MOVE SILENTLY are written on McClane's character sheet. He has more potential uses per day than a wizard has daily spells memorized.

So, to quote Hans Gruber, "You were saying?"

Game On,
fbmf

Yes, but Hide and Move Silently tend to get enough penalties on open ground and against prepared watchers that it isn't an issue. The player can generally stay around the periphery of a guarded area or get into an unguarded area, but there are significant restrictions on what a player can do. Things like invisibility are much more poorly defined, and a basic invisible + floating combo somehow can be reasonably seen as near perfect move silently and hide.

[sabs]

Again,

In a world where there's literally thousands of people who can cast Invisibility. WHY THE HELL do you not have security measures in place to try and deal with that.

Your Watch Captains have a Helm with See Invisible on it.
You have a Wizard that puts up Alarm around your estate/castle, Clerics with Glyph of Warding. There are bloody options.

It's like having guards today who use torches, swords, and wear metal armor, and complaining about that guy with the stun gun.

[mean_liar]

You know, just as something that occurred to me:

Guards and Wards
Confusion: Where there are choices in direction—such as a corridor intersection or side passage—a minor confusion-type effect functions so as to make it 50% probable that intruders believe they are going in the opposite direction from the one they actually chose. This is an enchantment, mind-affecting effect. Saving Throw: None. Spell Resistance: Yes.

Like... wow. I mean, you'd have to hide the spell with Nystul's Magic Aura or whatever so that it's not visible to Arcane Sight, but neato.

[echoVanguard]

You know, just as something that occurred to me:

Guards and Wards
Confusion: Where there are choices in direction—such as a corridor intersection or side passage—a minor confusion-type effect functions so as to make it 50% probable that intruders believe they are going in the opposite direction from the one they actually chose. This is an enchantment, mind-affecting effect. Saving Throw: None. Spell Resistance: Yes.

Like... wow. I mean, you'd have to hide the spell with Nystul's Magic Aura or whatever so that it's not visible to Arcane Sight, but neato.

I would think that would play merry hob with one's tabletop maps, as an added consideration.

echo

[Novembermike]

Again,

In a world where there's literally thousands of people who can cast Invisibility. WHY THE HELL do you not have security measures in place to try and deal with that.

Your Watch Captains have a Helm with See Invisible on it.
You have a Wizard that puts up Alarm around your estate/castle, Clerics with Glyph of Warding. There are bloody options.

It's like having guards today who use torches, swords, and wear metal armor, and complaining about that guy with the stun gun.

Because there are dozens of these effects. A guard captain that's supposed to be able to keep wizards out of a castle needs to be able to see invisibility, fly, detect if someone is tunneling under the ground, stop teleportation, have enchantments on the walls to keep someone from turning them into mud, be able to detect people moving past him on other planes, have protection from magical darkness and probably spell resistance so he can't be put to sleep or charmed.

I'm probably forgetting a half dozen other things a wizard can do as well. Pretty much the only way to keep a medium level wizard from skipping an encounter is DM fiat.

You're basically just house ruling that wizards can't use their spells, which is pretty much an Oberoni.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

The enchantment to keep wizards from turning your walls to mud is "build a wall out of it". That's covered with mundane tech.

[Novembermike]

Wait, are you saying they should build their walls out of mud? There are some fairly obvious issues with that.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

It's in the first sentence of the spell description, look it up.

[Swordslinger]

But there's no super secret passage. So, the easiest way to go about saving all the hostages is to murder all the bad guys. Killing them all was part of the adventure. Skipping encounters meant not finishing the adventure. If the adventure were instead "get to Nakatomi's computer and do some shit", he could totally skip all the encounters and do that.

You're mistaking what I mean by skipping an encounter. Sneaking past someone isn't skipping the encounter, the same as bluffing them isn't. You don't have to fight, but there has to be a chance where you're pitted in some kind of contest with them. Whether that's a duel of wits, or stealth versus perception or a good old battle is generally something up to the player and situation.

Skipping an encounter is not interacting with them at all. An easy way to know is if you had to reference the NPCs character sheet for anything. If you didn't then they've skipped that encounter.

The only time you'll ever skip an encounter legitimately is if they happen to not be in your way at all. In which case, generally that's either a battle the adventure doesn't expect you to fight anyway, or it's a trivial branching encounter. And it's reasonable to expect some of these rooms to be missed in a dungeon quest, after all, part of dungeon exploration is perhaps listening at a door and deciding "This room isn't important."

However, teleportation and burrowing right to the bosses room aren't like that. They're total plot killers, because any fortress design becomes useless. Every room that isn't the boss room now becomes unimportant, unless you take specific means to make it important. Further, any escape scenarios now become unimportant, since escape now takes a single spell. Really what those spells do is take the dungeon out of Dungeons and Dragons.

[RobbyPants]

Well, I agree with you right up until the last paragraph.

Teleportation and burrowing are plot killers for low level plots. When the PCs get high level abilities, MC needs to remember that and not throw a hissy fit if the PCs avoid encounters. If he wants them to engage an encounter, he either has to make it interesting or mandatory.

[Novembermike]

It's in the first sentence of the spell description, look it up.

Stone to Flesh then, or Shape Stone, or Rock to Mud on the foundation.

[K]

Well, I agree with you right up until the last paragraph.

Teleportation and burrowing are plot killers for low level plots. When the PCs get high level abilities, MC needs to remember that and not throw a hissy fit if the PCs avoid encounters. If he wants them to engage an encounter, he either has to make it interesting or mandatory.

That's what we've been telling people, but they don't seem to want to get it.

You don't have to plan out elaborate counters to all of the player's possible tricks. You have to make encounters part of the adventure so that they can't be skipped and still complete the adventure. I mean, if you kill the BBEG and don't save the princess, that a fail condition that impacts rewards and has story consequences, meaning players are not going to skip the "saving the princess" part of the adventure.

It's bad design to make encounters that PCs don't have a reason to do. I mean, people really don't want to cut through a dungeon full of guards when the mission is "save the princess," but they will if the mission is "clean out the dungeon" and doing that is how they get a reward.

[Novembermike]

Well, I agree with you right up until the last paragraph.

Teleportation and burrowing are plot killers for low level plots. When the PCs get high level abilities, MC needs to remember that and not throw a hissy fit if the PCs avoid encounters. If he wants them to engage an encounter, he either has to make it interesting or mandatory.

It's not a level thing. You can have demigods that walk everywhere they go and don't cast spells. It's just that these plots are based on not being Really Fucking High Magic.

I mean, you could tell the God of War stories as high level plots. You need to go into hell, punch whoever's ruling there in the face until he lets you out, rip the heads off a bunch of monsters and stab the God of War in the face until you feel like you've gotten enough revenge. That's something that Joe the 3rd level barbarian isn't going to be doing. A wizard can just teleport over to Olympus though and bypass about half the plot.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

It's in the first sentence of the spell description, look it up.

Stone to Flesh then, or Shape Stone, or Rock to Mud on the foundation.

Again, it specifies in the spell description that Rock to Mud won't work like that for large structures. RTFA (Read the Furnished Materials, Sir)

[Username17]

I'm not sure about that. Certainly, DnD posits a universe where a badass can be more powerful than society locally. I mean, you can just be a badass and it doesn't matter if you wear the chief hat in your village because there isn't shit that the actual mayor and his guards can do to you.
...
I don't see people really having a lot of innate conflicts in DnD Land for the simple reason that people's interests rarely overlap so only the most egregious crimes or plots ever draw a response.

Then does it matter to distinguish between Collective Society and Local Society? If I am a peasant and there's someone running around murdering all of the guards and no one can or will stop the murderer then what good is society as far as I'm concerned?

If it takes shitting into Elminster's Cheerios to get him involved in a conflict, then he doesn't matter when it comes to maintaining society.

Yes. What we recognize as society is still completely incapable of mattering to any high level dude. Other high level dudes still matter of course, and they very definitely exist. But the crap covered peasants don't mean shit.

Which gets us back to the original point: if you kill the dragon, you have a monopoly of force and you are the government. If you decide to wear a crown or take a crown from whatever second level aristocrat has it right now, you just do that. And then it's done.

K's point is a separate issue where other governments may very well be personified in other dragon slayers whose opinion you have to give a fuck about. So it's basically the opposite of the concerns of a dictator in our world: they support or condemnation of "the people" under you is completely fucking meaningless; however the United Nations General Assembly can and will break you like a twig if you step out of line.

It's bad design to make encounters that PCs don't have a reason to do. I mean, people really don't want to cut through a dungeon full of guards when the mission is "save the princess," but they will if the mission is "clean out the dungeon" and doing that is how they get a reward.

Yes. This is the core of the entire conversation. I don't know why Swordslinger is still talking.

-Username17

[sabs]

For a Wizard to Teleport over to Olympus and bypass everything he has to be fucking level 17, and know the Gate spell.

I mean, fuck, you're whining that a level 17 Wizard can bypass your stupid Castle plot?