Things Other People Aren't Allowed to Like

[quanta]

It wasn't true in first edition either.

In D&D, high level characters fight Darkseid. If your character concept cannot conceptually fight Darkseid, it is not a high level D&D concept. QED.

I haven't looked at Queen of the Demonweb Pits in a long time, but from what I remember, it's design and scope absolutely would not match what 3e characters fighting Gods would do.

There was a giant fucking list of some of your most awesome spells that not only ceased to work, some of them became actively dangerous to use. I'm pretty sure this was supposed to hamstring the wizard and cleric. And it seemed to me like you were actively expected to just stab Lolth in the face to kill her.

[Swordslinger]

Live Action shows are limited by their budget, not by any power level wankery crap. Showing Hercules throwing mountains and stomping the ground so hard that it causes 10.0 earthquakes while Hades sends zombie dragons after him costs money. Lots of money. Sticking Hercules in a muscle suit and putting a grim-reaper looking guy in a headlock barely costs even a hundred dollars. By contrast these scenes always cost about the same amount of money between literature, video games, and animation and so they rarely resort to that Vanilla Action Hero crap.

While true, you're missing the point.

The point is that the portrayal of a god can be anywhere from Conan the Destroyer to DBZ, it's dependent on what kind of story you can tell. If you want VAHs to fight gods, you can have that happen. Your story just looks more like Conan and less like DBZ.

And it's not the wrong way to do that either.

[echoVanguard]

Not to mention engaging the gods in combat is not necessarily something you can do in every system (or even most of them). Furthermore, even in D&D, there are entities you can't engage in combat, like Ao and The Lady of Pain.

echo

[Lago PARANOIA]

The point is that the portrayal of a god can be anywhere from Conan the Destroyer to DBZ, it's dependent on what kind of story you can tell. If you want VAHs to fight gods, you can have that happen. Your story just looks more like Conan and less like DBZ.

And it's not the wrong way to do that either.

If you have VAHs fighting gods then it implies that five peasants with knives can fight a god, too. There's nothing particularly wrong with that, I just want you to be aware that you can't do a paradigm shift of 'Gods aren't all that strong' to 'Fighting Gods makes you really fucking badass and awesome' if you do decide to play that way. Fighting a god in those systems is on par with defusing a bomb, cracking into a safe, and piloting a helicopter in inclement weather.

Not to mention engaging the gods in combat is not necessarily something you can do in every system (or even most of them).

But in most systems, even D&D, fighting a god is still way beyond the ken of VAHs. Yes, in D&D you're limited in power level and there are some boundaries you'll never crack even though there are beings that lie beyond the PC ceiling; but way, waaaay before then you're expected to fight things like frost giant squads and dragons the size of skyscrapers.

If you're limiting the power level to medium-low superheroics, you're also saying that you're never going to fight mind flayers or beholders without changing the scope of what mind flayers and beholders do. Considering how much of a mess 4E made of the whole ting I doubt that this is a fruitful enterprise.

[echoVanguard]

Yes, in D&D you're limited in power level and there are some boundaries you'll never crack even though there are beings that lie beyond the PC ceiling; but way, waaaay before then you're expected to fight things like frost giant squads and dragons the size of skyscrapers.

If you're limiting the power level to medium-low superheroics, you're also saying that you're never going to fight mind flayers or beholders without changing the scope of what mind flayers and beholders do. Considering how much of a mess 4E made of the whole ting I doubt that this is a fruitful enterprise.

The opposite viewpoint is still applicable, though - in 2E, the power scaling curve was a lot flatter, but players were still expected to fight all of those things at the appropriate levels.

echo

[Lago PARANOIA]

Is the power scaling curve a result of uneven and slipshod mechanics or an intentional thematic choice though? Children in 4E D&D can punch through walls of solid adamantium even faster than a catapult can. That doesn't mean that the setting is supposed to be post-Exalted level universal badassery, it just means that the gameplay sucks.

[quanta]

s the power scaling curve a result of uneven and slipshod mechanics or an intentional thematic choice though? Children in 4E D&D can punch through walls of solid adamantium even faster than a catapult can. That doesn't mean that the setting is supposed to be post-Exalted level universal badassery, it just means that the gameplay sucks.

Okay, I'm really curious as to how this is possible. I don't even remember stats for a catapult in 4e.

[Josh_Kablack]

I don't recall 4e catapult stats either, but as per the 4e (pre-essentials) DMG, page 65, a "vault door" that is made of adamantine has an AC/Ref of 4 a Fort of 12 and 200 HP.

Assuming a child attacks with a -1 to hit (8 Str, 1st level, nonproficient) and deals 1d4-1 points of damage per hit (unarmed strike) - because let's face it, that's the minimum attack and damage value in the system.
Disregarding crits (which I can't be bothered to figure out if they apply vs objects in 4e), the kid averages out to 1.2 damage per round, so with the 6 second combat round, one can chew through it in 16 minutes 40 seconds. Even if you scale that up to the toughest entry in the chart "even bigger statue", that only ups the timeframe by x5, so the smallest, weakest possible attack in the entire game, will on average destroy biggest toughest object in the game in only 1 hour, 23 minutes and 20 seconds.

3e had a thing called Hardness that largely prevented small attacks from wearing away castles and permanent structures and some additional handwavy guidelines about inappropriate attacks (3.5 PHB 165) that at least usually worked to prevent PCs from destroying terrain via the basic attack rules until PCs got to the serious badass level.

4e doesn't, so if a catapult has any sort of reload time that reduces it's DPR to under 1.2 then it's less damaging than repeated slaps from a small child, and the system makes no differentiation as to the target.

[quanta]

I don't recall 4e catapult stats either, but as per the 4e (pre-essentials) DMG, page 65, a "vault door" that is made of adamantine has an AC/Ref of 4 a Fort of 12 and 200 HP.

Went to that page... interesting.

It's actually even stranger in some ways than Lago said. From the same page, "An object reduced to 0 hit points is destroyed or otherwise rendered useless. At your judgement, the object might even still be more or less whole, but its functionality is ruined- a door knocked from its hinges or a clockwork mechanism broken internally, for example."

So yeah, Children can only punch through walls of adamantium if the DM says they can. Otherwise the wall is merely "rendered useless". Which in no way means it's not still in the damn way.

The only way I actually see to break walls that doesn't involve handwaving it is the DCs on the previous page (64) for strength checks to break down walls. Which given that skill checks scale with level and that nothing I know of stops you from just trying until you get a 20, means eventually everyone can break down 1 ft. thick masonry given a few minutes (granted at level 30 assuming no other modifiers but level). Could be handy for Str based fighty types though if there's a good way to pump Str checks.

[wotmaniac]

So yeah, Children can only punch through walls of adamantium if the DM says they can. Otherwise the wall is merely "rendered useless". Which in no way means it's not still in the damn way.

but then you have to define "useless" ... which is defined by what exactly is the "use" of said object.
the "use" of a wall is to separate space in to distinct areas by providing obstruction. definitionally, the only way to really render a wall "useless" is to rip it down and/or remove it.

[Josh_Kablack]

The thing that bugs me is that they could have included a clause about "objects have resist all: N" and/or restated the handwavium clauses from 3e about "the Dm may rule that some attacks are ineffective against some objects - swords cannot usually cut through stone walls and maces cannot sever ropes"- either would have taken less than 100 words and would have been both more plausible and less open to PC abuse than idea that objects only have HP.

If you want to go with a system where objects have only defenses and HP but no hardness or resistance, then you should set the defenses high enough that low level characters spend a lot of rounds not dealing any damage and you need to set the HP high enough that breaking really big and tough objects is measured in days, not minutes. Set the AC / NADs of a stone "vault door" to at least 30 and now characters below 4th level are only dealing damage one out of 20 rounds - which means that it's only worth tracking damage within combat time if someone is high level or lucky. Set the HP to at least 750 (average damage for a hard hitting 1st level character of 15 * 30 hits per hour * 16 nonsleeping hours in a day, rounded up a small but) and you have a system where anyone can overcome physical barriers with perseverance, but now it at least takes an entire workweek for an 8 year old to break through a stone wall. Still not exactly realistic, but less abuseable and at least possible to rationalize the results.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That's way too many hitpoints. I personally would be dismayed that a mid-level wizard couldn't just blast open a stone vault with a Delayed Blast Fireball. I personally say just implement a hardness rating. In 3.0E that system actually worked out pretty darn okay. Maybe not perfect across the board, but the results were generally plausible.

[quanta]

but then you have to define "useless" ... which is defined by what exactly is the "use" of said object.
the "use" of a wall is to separate space in to distinct areas by providing obstruction. definitionally, the only way to really render a wall "useless" is to rip it down and/or remove it.

The "use" of wall is not necessarily to prevent people from getting from one side to the other though. It's often just to preserve privacy. So you may as well just say you can now hear what's going on on the the other side of the wall cuz there's a little crack.

Seriously, the rules are literally "you can't break down obstructions by attacking them unless the DM says so".

[Swordslinger]

3e had a thing called Hardness that largely prevented small attacks from wearing away castles and permanent structures and some additional handwavy guidelines about inappropriate attacks (3.5 PHB 165) that at least usually worked to prevent PCs from destroying terrain via the basic attack rules until PCs got to the serious badass level.

Well not really, hardness was mostly a joke, because you could just power attack anyway, which would almost certainly beat it out and thus tunnel through rock with your greatsword in 3E. About all 3E's object damage rules did was prevent rats from chewing through doors. Though that's still better than 4E, because 4E actually took those awful object rules from 3E and made them worse. The object damage rules are almost always universally ignored by any DM playing 4E. What I do is just allow people to make an ability check (whatever the attack stat of the attack you're using is) against the break DC of the object (which are generally way more sane).

[Swordslinger]

If you have VAHs fighting gods then it implies that five peasants with knives can fight a god, too.

Well, not necessarily, no. Just because Rambo can fuck up an army, doesn't mean five random soldiers can. VAHs aren't normal people exactly. They're highly skilled, very accurate and good at what they do. Legolas for instance is a VAH.

Just because Conan takes out a god doesn't mean any warrior could. He is Conan, he's a rather awesome fighter. He may not throw mountains or fire lightning out of his ass, but in a sword fight, this guy is a badass.

But in most systems, even D&D, fighting a god is still way beyond the ken of VAHs.

In 4E D&D you can take out Orcus and you're basically a VAH through the whole game. In Eberron (regardless of edition), you can fuck up the warforged lord of blades, who happens to be considered a god. Most other systems don't even bother to stat out gods.

If you're limiting the power level to medium-low superheroics, you're also saying that you're never going to fight mind flayers or beholders without changing the scope of what mind flayers and beholders do. Considering how much of a mess 4E made of the whole ting I doubt that this is a fruitful enterprise.

Skyscraper sized dragons you'd probably have to eliminate, but beholders and mind flayers, I don't see why. I can see Conan or Legolas fighting either of those. The only deal with a mindflayer is that you happen to be arbitrarily mentally tough enough to shrug off their psionic attack. And with a beholder, you're just dodging lasers. VAHs have done that stuff all the time.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Except Mind Flayers and beholders fly.

VAH's generally don't.

Sure, they can pick up ranged weapons, but the fliers can fly out of reach and drop giant rocks.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Swordslinger: Thanks for completely demonstrating why VAHs are not only inherently dissociative but a downright dishonest archetype.

The basic problem with VAHs fighting alongside and against people with real superpowers and keeping up mechanically is that it makes the game really stupid. I mean on one corner you have Mazinger McPaladin, who flies on a golden unicorn, wields the mountain-cutting Masamune (which is inexplicably a broadsword) which he summoned with his purity, and infuses himself with the spirits of angels for extra combat prowess. Yet despite all of these advantages he doesn't autowin against a beholder or a mind flayer because these guys have skin so tough that they can resist his blows and even with his greater-than-human speed and strength he's still at risk from their lasers.

Yet the VAH, who has none of these advantages is supposed to keep up with them? WTF does the beholder's eye beams suddenly become slower when targeting the VAH (if they moved at the same speed they did at McPaladin they'd never hit him)... why did it take the VAH five hits to take down the beholder while it took the paladin 6 his despite them being the same beholder? Was that angel and holy sword crap just for show?

[Gx1080]

Given that people LOVED Kratos punching gods until they bleed (even without that much help of his magic items), I would say that people love the stupid, or at least, they don't care too much about it.

Yes, people want that the guy who trains a lot is on equal footing as the Paladins and Wizards. Even if it is stupid.

If it bothers you so much, just put an alternative Technological Steampunk classes to cut a little the excesive Magic Wank and be done with it.

[Josh_Kablack]

That's way too many hitpoints. I personally would be dismayed that a mid-level wizard couldn't just blast open a stone vault with a Delayed Blast Fireball.

Baloney.

In all the threads you have posted announcing your dismay you have never once indicated your dismay that such didn't happen in 3e.

SRD PAGE that shows stone in 3.x has hardness 8 and 15 HP per inch and explains that fire deals half damage to objects. So that's 23 damage to get through a one-inch stone wall, or 46 fire damage, which means it takes a 14d6 fireball to get through such on expected average damage from a single shot. So unless 14th is "mid-level" in 3e, it ain't happening.

So don't start pretending this dismays you now, because I think it's pretty obvious that LAGO makes public the parts of games that actually dismay him.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Would I have gotten that overly pedantic rant if I had said that the DBF was energy admixtured with Sonic?

[Josh_Kablack]

Yes.

I woulda just used a wall thickness more than 1 inch.

Because I really thought the point of the Den, and IMHO especially was overly pedantic rants.



****


But I am prepared to argue my prior point in a 52 page nonexistant edition flamewar if that's what it takes! :K !!!750 HP for a stone wall in a hypothetical alternate 4e where you intentionally discarded hardness but wanted objects of sufficient durability to dissuade PCs from casually destroying them is not "too much", and probably is a barely sufficient minimum to make that happen. I've seen actual 4e low-paragon characters deal over 100 points inside a round inn actual gameplay, and you have posted multi-attacking cheese builds that make those look small in the pants. So really a 750 HP stone wall is gonna make 4e midlevel characters have everybody nova for a round or three to break through.

[Swordslinger]

Except Mind Flayers and beholders fly.

Lets not forget they also live in caves.

The basic problem with VAHs fighting alongside and against people with real superpowers and keeping up mechanically is that it makes the game really stupid. I mean on one corner you have Mazinger McPaladin, who flies on a golden unicorn, wields the mountain-cutting Masamune (which is inexplicably a broadsword) which he summoned with his purity, and infuses himself with the spirits of angels for extra combat prowess. Yet despite all of these advantages he doesn't autowin against a beholder or a mind flayer because these guys have skin so tough that they can resist his blows and even with his greater-than-human speed and strength he's still at risk from their lasers.

Yeah that's true, you can't have VAHs travel alongside superheroes. Of course, there's nothing really saying that superheroes even need to exist in the game. If your gods are explicitly live action style, then mountain cutting swords don't exist. Your paladin is similar to Conan or LotR Gandalf (Yes I know some fanboy is going to go on about all his awesome powers, but I'm just going by what he showed in the movies). Sure, maybe he makes his weapon glow and blinds some orcs from time to time, but he's not tossing the sun at people.

If you decide to play a VAH world, then everything else in your world has to work similar to the VAH. 4E is a pretty good example of that.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Before we start codifying the hit points of objects it's more important to get an expected average damage expression of PCs. I'm not cool with using 3E or 4E benchmarks because the damage benchmarks aren't like even close to even in any edition beyond the first few levels. Fortunately Frank as usual did most of the work and gave us an extremely sensible one, if incomplete (it needs to be reverse engineered somewhat).

Under Frank's benchmarks, if you wanted to have a 7th level character with an average damage expression blow through a 1-foot stone wall with one attack, the wall would have a hardness of 5 and have 8 hit points--extrapolating from the idea that said character can obliterate a minion in one hit that averages 8.5 hit points and DR of 6. That of course is an assumption since the chart never says how many hits it should take down to take a minion, but whatever.

Further extrapolating from that, a 3rd level character will take 3-4 rounds to blast through the wall. A 17th level character can trivially blast through several yards of stone even if they're not specced for DR or damage. This assumes no special abilities on anyone's part. That seems about okay to me actually. The assumption doesn't hold well if you believe in 1st-level commoners, but I don't. I believe 1st-level characters should be on the level of action heroes like John McClane and Timothy Dalton.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you decide to play a VAH world, then everything else in your world has to work similar to the VAH. 4E is a pretty good example of that.

I have no problems with games that work like that, I just hate it when games say that they're all epic and awesome and really they're not. 4E would have earned a lot less hate from me if they just flat-out said that you're supposed to start at squire level and you ended up at Spider-Man level. Every time I read an epic destiny I feel like I'm slapped in the face.

[Dog Quixote]

Yeah that's true, you can't have VAHs travel alongside superheroes. Of course, there's nothing really saying that superheroes even need to exist in the game. If your gods are explicitly live action style, then mountain cutting swords don't exist. Your paladin is similar to Conan or LotR Gandalf (Yes I know some fanboy is going to go on about all his awesome powers, but I'm just going by what he showed in the movies). Sure, maybe he makes his weapon glow and blinds some orcs from time to time, but he's not tossing the sun at people.

If you decide to play a VAH world, then everything else in your world has to work similar to the VAH. 4E is a pretty good example of that.

I agree to a point. But I don't think 4E is a good example of that. Nor any edition of D&D. There's no way a vanilla action hero can believably take on the Tarrasque. Throw a VAH against a Storm Giant and what happens? System wise it works fine, but what happens in game? Does a high level fighter hack through the Storm Giants ankle causing it to fall over and then go and shove it's sword through its ear? I might be willing to buy that if he's fights one giant and is incredibly skillful and lucky, but once you reach the stage when you're fighting more than one at a time it becomes silly. This is as true in 4E as it is any edition. (Except for the fact that in 3E or 4E you're more likely to reach these levels.)

For this reason I prefer low level D&D and am really only willing to play any game so long as it tops out by about level 10.