Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both

[Lago_AM3P]

Okay, so, you guys totally lost me at the suggestion of implementing time-based adventures as a punishment for people taking advantage of one of the few bones the game world throws you.

You know, because characters deciding not to clear out an entire goddamn tomb in one sitting at steadily decreasing effectiveness is the 'rollplaying' thing to do.

Seriously, I have no idea where the idea that characters are supposed to fight several encounters without replenishing their resources came from. In source material, the idea of a hero who has to iron man their way through encounters until the end of the adventure is actually very rare. Off of the top of my head, only Die Hard and 24 try to do this. Now, I'm not against the idea of time-based adventures. If the princess gets kidnapped by troglodytes, the consequence of the characters dilly-dallying should be a skeleton in a pretty dress and a pissed-off prince. I'm cool with that. But people are trying to squeeze blood from a turnip here with all of this forced effort to stop the Frank Cheat or whatever.

There's definitely no versimilitude to be had from this. Most adventures in source material only have one big encounter between replenishment periods. Seriously, in Star Wars, did Luke try to fight Jabba with his hand still sliced off and missing his lightsaber? Even when they were raiding the Death Star labyrinth, how many knock-down fights where Luke and Han Solo had to worry about running out of ammo or being so injured they couldn't continue did they have? In Lord of the Rings, how many weeks passed between their big battles?

It seems to me that the whole 'you need to fight so many encounters between replenishment periods or you're a powergamer' is a construct of VIDEO GAMES, not the other way around. Only in dumbfuck D&D cRPGs and Final Fantasy are you expected to 'man it up' through the entire dungeon. These setups are completely artificial conceits made to reflect the limitations of software and game design. And I don't give a shit whether or not pen and paper roleplaying reflects this style.

Seriously, Batman builds new gadgets and does some investigation and Jaden Yuki tries to find more cards for his deck between encounters. That's the way it has always been, that's the way it always will be. In D&D, I am completely confounded that people would suggest an entirely different way of completing adventures. I find it especially amusing and idiotic that people get so whiny about people protecting their nuts in a game where A) people get bleedingly butthurt over cheap and easy resurrection while simultaneously subjecting your characters to game-ending dangers and B) your characters are supposed to spend a significant portion of their time not actually advancing the plot (training, researching, crafting, etc.)

What gives, gentle reader? When you force players to conform to this artificial construct in the name of stopping 'rollplay' it is YOU in fact who are forcing the characters to 'rollplay'.

[Captain_Bleach]

Whenever adventurers rest in the middle of a dungeon, the other occupants in 5 minutes at most realize that something is wrong if the complex is not on alert yet, and will attack the PCs while they are resting. Barbarian type monsters will charge on in, providing a distraction for the Rogue-like monsters to catch the party unawares. Spell-casting monsters prepare to cast Invisibility and Silence on the Stealthy Monsters, who Hide and Move Silently to resting/sleeping PCs to coup de grace them, then Sneak Attack any PCs on watch.
Even "dumb" monsters usually have a tactical leader.

[CalibronXXX]

So if the PCs try to rest you kill them in their sleep and waste a bunch of time rolling up new characters?

Rope Trick is a Second Level Spell for goodness sake! What is the fucking point of it other than to let you rest up whenever you damn well please from level 3 on!?

Not that I'm saying adventures shouldn't have time constraints, because they usually should.

[Captain_Bleach]

1189563623[/unixtime]]So if the PCs try to rest you kill them in their sleep and waste a bunch of time rolling up new characters?

Only if they are act really stupid, i.e. resting in the middle of a dungeon full of monsters! Of course, I decided that coup de grace is too cheesy, but Flat-footed Sneak Attack still hurts.

[NineInchNall]

rope trick, teleport, plane shift, greater teleport, mordenkainen's magnificent mansion, and gate all make resting in the middle of a dungeon something of a trivial task.


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[RandomCasualty]

1189560387[/unixtime]]
Seriously, I have no idea where the idea that characters are supposed to fight several encounters without replenishing their resources came from.

It's an attempt to balance out the BS X/day mechanic. If you have X/day then to make it meaningful you need to have more than one encounter per day, otherwise X/day becomes at will, and not even a limitation anymore.

If we dump the X/day mechanic, then we don't even care when people rest.

[Draco_Argentum]

1189560387[/unixtime]]Even when they were raiding the Death Star labyrinth, how many knock-down fights where Luke and Han Solo had to worry about running out of ammo or being so injured they couldn't continue did they have?

But they were expected to get out of the Death Star without resting 8 hours. This of course worked because their abilities didn't arbitrarily recharge after 8 hours rest. Reloading a blaster is a combat action. Getting hit by a stormtrooper just doesn't happen.

If it was D&D Luke would've busted out force pwn then made Han rest for 8 hours. Vancian casting doesn't generate stories like a novel or movie because it simply doesn't resemble they way magic works in any media other than itself/wargames and a couple of Vance's books.

[Lago_AM3P]

I'm sorry. The Death Star one was a bad example. I retract it.

Vancian casting doesn't generate stories like a novel or movie because it simply doesn't resemble they way magic works in any media other than itself/wargames and a couple of Vance's books.

But there's other power schemes in media that require an arbitrary amount of downtime between uses. I agree that most of the time the story doesn't define how much time should pass before Yusuke can use his spirit gun again or when Green Lantern needs to recharge his power ring.

Guess what? D&D magic plays by the same rules. But D&D magic gives us the courtesy of giving you a good estimate WHEN you need to do this and also clearly defining a replenishment scheme. 8 hours is arbitrary, but it's a lot more fair than 'whenever the hell the DM says so'. I have no idea why this sticks in peoples' craws so much.

[tzor]

1189552407[/unixtime]]Actually, a great deal of adventures don't have meaningful time constraints.

I think the better statement is that that do not have explicit time constraints. They have implicit ones. Theseimplicit ones aren't noticeable until you really start to slow down dungeon advancement by retreats or by other means. The basic implicit time constraint is that you need to advance faster than the speed of the information of your presence and your tactics.

If information about you does manage to propogate through the areas of the dungeon you are eventually planning to attack, one of two things may happen. The first option is you will be facing a better prepared force, since they are not preparing specificaly for you and your tactics which they are now both aware of. The second option is more vile; knowing that you really are kick ass adventurers they simply take the time to relocate. They are not there, nor is their treasure.

Simply put the moment the characters enters the dungeon that dungeon changes. DMs have to plan for this fact. DMs that don't and insist that no matter how slow a group progresses it has no impact on the environment around them only encourages such behavior which in turn makes those classes that have no recharge constraints but instead have general overall suck more sucky than they normally are.

[RandomCasualty]

1189597341[/unixtime]]

But there's other power schemes in media that require an arbitrary amount of downtime between uses. I agree that most of the time the story doesn't define how much time should pass before Yusuke can use his spirit gun again or when Green Lantern needs to recharge his power ring.

Guess what? D&D magic plays by the same rules. But D&D magic gives us the courtesy of giving you a good estimate WHEN you need to do this and also clearly defining a replenishment scheme. 8 hours is arbitrary, but it's a lot more fair than 'whenever the hell the DM says so'. I have no idea why this sticks in peoples' craws so much.

Well, 8 hours tends to be far too short for most stories, and too fast for others. Recharge should happen at the speed of plot IMO, and that means that recharge should be based on story time frames. Once per adventure is fine, or even X/level (similar to action points).

Note that this shouldn't apply to everything you do. The small stuff should be at will, or 1/encounter. It's only the big stuff that needs this cap. Superman shouldn't be flying around the world and turning back time too often, because that's a major event.

[JonSetanta]

I've had too many debates just like this on Sean K Reynolds forum, WOTC, and ENWorld. I can't do it any more, I'm set in the belief that Vancian x/day SUCKS ASS and I refuse to use anything like it these days.
It;s no good convincing Vance-fans or strategy gamers that actually prefer Vancian Wizards since they will probably never change, and those that will change require enough time and reading (only if they are smart, though) to see how much of a contradiction the statement "Vancian casting is balanced".

It's a joke, and it's gone too far for too long. I can't believe so many people hold it as the fantasy standard for spellcasters.

[Captain_Bleach]

So do you know of any good non-Vancian spell casting systems out there?

[Jacob_Orlove]

I hear there are some decent superhero games that have well-implemented at-will powers, although those games still probably do a terrible job with whatever they actually call "magic".

[Voss]

1189566030[/unixtime]]rope trick, teleport, plane shift, greater teleport, mordenkainen's magnificent mansion, and gate all make resting in the middle of a dungeon something of a trivial task.


You want some threads that will make you laugh or cry? Click here. I guarantee good fun.

Was that 'kreynolds' in the 'Lesser Transformation' thread Sean K Reynolds?
this one- http://www.enworld.org/archive/index.ph ... br][br]And was he always such an idiot? 'My players don't exploit the system, so no one does?' No wonder 3.0 had such amazingly bad holes in it.
Nice of him to put the level of the spell so low that a wizard or sorcerer can persistent it (or just spam it) and walk around all day with a full BAB. Or stick it in a wand and take the most BAB-craptastic multi-class combinations that max out other abilities, and not care about the 'penalty'.



'Nurr. Balance? You aren't going for a high score, so obviously nothing needs to be balanced'

[Lago_AM3P]

It;s no good convincing Vance-fans or strategy gamers that actually prefer Vancian Wizards since they will probably never change, and those that will change require enough time and reading (only if they are smart, though) to see how much of a contradiction the statement "Vancian casting is balanced".

I wouldn't go as far as to say that I ENJOY Vancian casting. It has some weaknesses associated with it. My biggest issue is how at low levels it makes you look completely inept. No one can satisfactorily explain to me why low-level D&D mages are so weaksauce compared to mages in almost every other game system.

However, I enjoy the tactical challenge. I enjoy having a wide range of abilities to use and I enjoy how the system is set up so that if you want to try out or experience a new option it doesn't cause the campaign or your character to grind to a halt. I also like how it has allowances for objectively inferior options without causing your advance or appropriately-levelled power to fall off of the map. I like how it emphasizes temporary weaknesses and the importance of planning for your spell selection.

I really don't understand why people hate Vancian casting so much, other than the fact that they want to use spell points and Vancian casting is apparently what's holding them back. Not, apparently, because it's an unimaginative system that's a holdover of 8-bit gaming.

I actually prefer the Shadowrun system of spellcasting. There's some things that I don't care for (like spellcasting linked explicitly to line of sight) but the system works really well. There's very little paperwork involved unlike Vancian casting and it doesn't screw people for puttering around with their class abilities.

[Crissa]

There's lots of paperwork ahead of time in Sahdowrun, like Hero has, which puts me off. And the fact that it doesn't have enough rules in one damn book makes it inaccessable to most of the gamers I play with - people who aren't hard core.

My biggest trouble lately is to get people to try a new system - because half of what makes gaming 'fun' to them is remembering how damn hard it was to play first-ed D&D and getting too drunk to do math or strategy.

That's something that the whole scry and die argument fails on: What drunk player wants to keep doing that shit?

-Crissa

[Lago_AM3P]

Well, 8 hours tends to be far too short for most stories, and too fast for others. Recharge should happen at the speed of plot IMO, and that means that recharge should be based on story time frames. Once per adventure is fine, or even X/level (similar to action points).

I don't have a problem with 8 hours. A lot of stories seem to have a time limit on abilities of 'once a day'. Well, 8 hours usually works out the same as 'once a day' only that it spells out what you have to do and doesn't allow for bullshit like fighting at the stroke of midnight or the crack of dawn or whatever. it also encourages downtime and party vulnerability.

A schedule of per encounter, adventurer, or whatever works as well. Different strokes for different folks but I also caution to have some sort of outside schedule in case the party fighter wants to beat up some alley thungs to impress a barmaid or a wizard wants to whip up a cake for a wedding. I, however, will not ever support x/level. It wrecks balance, screws organic/roleplayed characters, and doesn't fit within stories. Not even stories where a character's power level is exhaustively mapped and catalouged like Pokemon.

[Lago_AM3P]

There's lots of paperwork ahead of time in Sahdowrun, like Hero has, which puts me off.

I only own two Shadowrun books but when I got the core rules book on a whim I was very surprised at how easy it was to understand things, especially the magic system.

There's some bullshit about how magic works and all that game-specific crud but actually getting all of your spells and knowing how they work seems easy.

[Koumei]

1189660965[/unixtime]]
That's something that the whole scry and die argument fails on: What drunk player wants to keep doing that shit?

I think that's a group-specific problem - I have only played once while drunk, and even then it was just in the tipsy range, not the "falling over, can't count, no attention span" range.

I personally like the Ars Magica system of magic: Work the spell out beforehand, and you can cast it all day every day as much as you like. Make some shit up on the spot and you can still do it all day, it'll just be a fair bit weaker.

[RandomCasualty]

1189661077[/unixtime]] I, however, will not ever support x/level. It wrecks balance, screws organic/roleplayed characters, and doesn't fit within stories. Not even stories where a character's power level is exhaustively mapped and catalouged like Pokemon.

How do you figure? There are lots of stuff in stories that characters just don't do very often and break out only a rare amount of times.

Assuming that adventurers are going to advance, then x/level is just a more stable version of x/adventure. For while an adventure may be variable in length, you'll always level at about the same rate, whether it's 6 short adventures or one long epic.

X/level tricks are basically reserved for stuff that heroes bust out only once in a while. Most of the time gambit just throws charged explosive cards at people, but sometimes he does something cool like charging a large object or Wolverine's adamantium skeleton. All literature, movies or comics feature characters doing powerful stunts above and beyond what they normally do. This system is a perfect way to handle those powerful stunts without them totally dominating the game.

It's not particularly realistic, but so what? You dont' want superman flying around the world and turning back time all the time. That'd be boring.

[tzor]

1189647798[/unixtime]]I've had too many debates just like this on Sean K Reynolds forum, WOTC, and ENWorld. I can't do it any more, I'm set in the belief that Vancian x/day SUCKS ASS and I refuse to use anything like it these days.

I would disagree that Vancian X/day SUCKS ASS. (I also point out that I've never read a single Vance novel, so I can't be a Vancian fan boy.) I would say that Vancian magic requires a special mindset and that mindset has long since been absent from D&D scenario design.

Time warping breaks the Vancian model. It breaks a whole lot of models. Balancing LX @X'/day against LY @ 1/round (the original balance model for casters and fighters in 1E) is difficult when there is no time warping, but impossible when there is time warping.

Frankly everything sucks unless you go back to square 0 and balance against average damage per round (which is made more complex by odd types of damage). So if the fighter is doing 1 die of damage per round and the wizard wants to do a 5 dice spell then he should only do it once every 5 rounds. Whether or not this is a spell casting delay (generally sucky) or there is a void time after casting a spell where you can't cast more spells, the law of averages has to be enforced in a small or medium time scale.

The problem is you have to grand unify all spell effects so that you can determine how a buff compares to a damage spell. It's not easy. Perhaps the only way to role play is by flying using the seat of your pants.

[Lago_AM3P]

Assuming that adventurers are going to advance, then x/level is just a more stable version of x/adventure. For while an adventure may be variable in length, you'll always level at about the same rate, whether it's 6 short adventures or one long epic.

I don't understand this objection.

Your premise seems to be that tying ability replenishment to levels is a more stable system. I heavily disagree with this. For one, not all DMs level their characters on a schedule of 'you must do this many adventures before you can advance'. Seriously, people get story rewards and sometimes spend their entire adventure doing nothing but investigating and of course the DM will send monsters of varying difficulty (and thus reward). This system is more unstable than per adventure--adventures generally fall on a time frame of 'discovery, then exploration, then any number of encounters with exploration between encounters, then climax (final battle), then denoument'.

Two, per level is a schedule that doesn't conform to any sort of story-based time frame. Seriously, you might be able to level up right in the middle of storming the Dark Lord's castle. If a character had been saving his X/level ability when he was approaching the next level until now, either he's forced to use his Super Secret Ability outside of any sort of context that makes sense (using Dragon Slave against a low-level foot soldier) or lose it entirely.

It's not particularly realistic, but so what? You dont' want superman flying around the world and turning back time all the time. That'd be boring.

Then it should be on a schedule of per adventure or even per two adventures rather than per level. Superman flying back in time all of the time to solve problems is dumb. Superman flying back in time to stop a kitty from being stuck in a tree because his player is about to level and hasn't used it yet is equally dumb.

[Lago_AM3P]

Time warping breaks the Vancian model. It breaks a whole lot of models. Balancing LX @X'/day against LY @ 1/round (the original balance model for casters and fighters in 1E) is difficult when there is no time warping, but impossible when there is time warping.

The schedule for ability replenishment is seriously the most unimportant part of the Vancian model. It will still be Vancian even if characters got their abilities back per encounter or per adventure or even when they took some time out to do something stupid like dance or pray. The fact that people associate regaining ability with obviously failured concepts like 'sleeping' and 'per day' is a gross failure of peoples' imaginations, not the Vancian model.

[technomancer]

I don't like the idea of 1/level abilities. Either you blow it too soon and you might as well not have it, or you save it 'for a rainy day' and you might as well not have it. Unless the DM just flat out tells you "This is the fight to use that ability," then odds are, you might as well not have the ability.

Of course, the same holds true for 1/adventure abilities, and to a lesser degree, 1/day abilities, but at least those refresh faster, so if you blow it, then you still have another chance sooner than "when the DM tells me to level up."

[Koumei]

Hmm. You just gave me an odd idea for the "special and powerful abilities", albeit one that relies on the players and DM not being antagonistic towards each other.

Abilities that can be used "When it's time". So you have abilities you can spam all day (direct damage spells and face-stabbing, for instance), abilities you can use once per encounter (the various battlefield control and Save-or-Suck/Save-or-Die effects) and abilities that you can use when the DM informs you that it's hammer time (Timestop, Wish, Miracle, time travel, Gate, things that destroy planets or stop them from being destroyed, etc)