1st Level Artifacts, & Other Nonsense

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 11:04 am

A lot of gaming is based on the idea that your start at the bottom and get better. It's a hero's journey, often open-ended and without any predefined finishing point, but the fact is that in many games you start out at 1st level (or the equivalent) and you maybe face appropriate challenges and eventually you level up...rinse, repeat.

This works well in a player and campaign mindset where the PCs are, for lack of a better term, normal joes - yes, they may be able to tap the arcane magics to reshape the universe, but right now they can cast one magic missile and then have to go lay down for a while if they want to do it again. Meanwhile, various NPCs are the movers and shakers of the game universe; they (probably) don't interact directly with the PCs because the PCs are completely beneath their notice. If Elminster is an MVP in Major League Baseball, then the starting-out PC is a kid at the local T-ball league.

But, there is another mindset, one which you see more often in comic books (and novels, which is why Elminster & co. tend to run around in game universes): the idea that the PC is special. Either they're the Chosen One, or the have some Special Gift, or they wield The Artifact, but the basic idea is that the PC has some attribute or status that makes them stand out from their peers, usually with added responsibility. And this need not be some Sorcerer Supreme bullshit where the rest of the party are sidekicks, there are plenty of groups where everybody has some special whatsit: Ronin Warriors had their armor, for example.

Which brings us to today's dumb idea: giving 1st-level characters artifacts. It's not for every game, because it assumes a level of asymmetrical threats: a 1st-level fighter with a Hackmaster +12 is expected to be able to trounce 1st-level NPCs; it sets them a cut above the rest. On the other hand, it also means that in a world without lots of magical swords, the Hackmaster is the go-to guy to handle any threats, including some that above his nominal paygrade. This leads to the interesting case of the PCs a) being the only ones that can actually handle a threat, and b) making them work for it a bit, but c) when it gets done, they're Big Damn Heroes.

Plus, you get all the usual artifact plots built in to the campaign: what if Your Special Widget gets stolen? Possessed by a dark/chaotic spirit? Starts to lose power? Broken? In need of a power upgrade sidequest?

It's a fun premise. More than a little silly, but I think it could work. The key is of course that the artifact(s) have to be unique, potent (even to the point of completely unbalancing at low levels), and ideally exist in a setting where similar items are rare, if only to avoid trade-up sickness (i.e. trading in the +1 magic sword because the monster you just killed has a +2 magic sword).

And of course, it doesn't have to be an artifact. It can be some given power, but those tend to be harder to manage and bleed into "mutant superpower" a bit. A case in point for how /not/ to do this are dragonmarks from the Eberron setting - while thematically appropriate, they're not the same thing because the PC has to keep feeding them feats to keep them at all level-relevant; it's something that's part of any regular NPC, taking up potential slots that could be filled with other things - in other words, it doesn't make the PC special (yes, yes, cue special snowflake music). But of course the whole point in this kind of game is to make the PCs special, a cut above the average joe - and if they're all special in their own way, that's fine too.

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 11:12 am

Artifacts at level one are perfectly acceptable as a trope and easy enough to do mechanically. But rather than a hackmaster +12 you can do an item which levels along with the character to make sure it never becomes irrelevant yet not the smack hammer of doom. That being said, a lot of high level powers really aren't. I mean, how is a vorpal weapon overpowered at level 1?

K · Post by K » Mon Apr 15, 2013 3:00 pm

If you read a lot of Joseph Campbell, you find out that every hero myth has the hero having some kind of special power.

That being said, the discussions in the various Difficulty threads make it clear that a lot of people are playing a strategy game and not doing anything involving cooperative storytelling recreating hero myths. This means that there is not only no real reason to conform to the hero myth structure by giving PCs extra powers, but you'd be actively fighting the strategy game elements by doing so.

Strategy games derive meaning from the assumption of equality with the game being "more strategy-ish" as you increase the equality. For example, chess or go are considered big-time strategy because everyone starts exactly the same, but Starcraft is less strategy because the various armies are only balanced and not the same.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 5:43 pm

Well, I'd take a "strategic" game over a "more strategy-ish" game any day of the week. Asymmetric conflicts are fun to strategize for.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 7:25 pm

Well the specific example of the Hackmaster +12 is genius satire directed at the mathematical absurdity of a game where you need to roll a 16+ on a d20 in order to hit an Orc, and without damage bonuses, you need to hit each orc more than once to put it down and you encounter 30-300 of them, potentially at 1st level.

The math on how that works in a game where some non-zero percentage of PCs are expected to survive multiple sessions AND players at the table have to wait for all other players' and antogonists' turns to finish before taking another turn is so bad that shifting bonuses by 60% of the entire RNG makes for a playable game.

The Hackmaster +12 is also satire of the type of player who realizes such things and finds the crazy rules exploits which make such things possible and will passionately and convincingly argue why such things make for a better game - you know, most of the posters here on the Den.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 10:58 pm

K wrote:If you read a lot of Joseph Campbell, you find out that every hero myth has the hero having some kind of special power.

As I recall, that's only true during the Return portion of the monomyth. Generally, the hero starts out as a normal guy who hears The Call.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 11:01 pm

Josh_Kablack wrote:Well the specific example of the Hackmaster +12 is genius satire directed at the mathematical absurdity of a game where you need to roll a 16+ on a d20 in order to hit an Orc, and without damage bonuses, you need to hit each orc more than once to put it down and you encounter 30-300 of them, potentially at 1st level.

The math on how that works in a game where some non-zero percentage of PCs are expected to survive multiple sessions AND players at the table have to wait for all other players' and antogonists' turns to finish before taking another turn is so bad that shifting bonuses by 60% of the entire RNG makes for a playable game.

The Hackmaster +12 is also satire of the type of player who realizes such things and finds the crazy rules exploits which make such things possible and will passionately and convincingly argue why such things make for a better game - you know, most of the posters here on the Den.

What? No. Hackmaster +12 is from Knights of the Dinner Table and is an example of a player gaining a ludicrously overpowered Big Ass Sword. That's the beginning and end of it.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 11:15 pm

This sounds like a cool idea for a one off campaign. Don't tell the player's anything is up, then drop the Sword of Kas or an Orb of Dragonkind at the end of the first adventure and watch the sparks fly. It would definitely be a game the players would remember!

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 11:34 pm

fectin wrote:
K wrote:If you read a lot of Joseph Campbell, you find out that every hero myth has the hero having some kind of special power.
As I recall, that's only true during the Return portion of the monomyth. Generally, the hero starts out as a normal guy who hears The Call.

There are plenty of myths in which the hero starts out as a freaking demigod with super-strength (Herakles, I'm looking at you). The hero starts off in a mundane situation, but that doesn't mean that he himself is mundane. He could just be living a normal life with a wife and kids who he loves until Hera mind-controls him and makes him murder them all.

Heck, even Luke was able to bullseye womprats in his T-16, a feat which would have been impossible without subconscious Force use.

Anyway, its standard for the hero to get his magic artifacts and whatever soon after heeding the call.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Mon Apr 15, 2013 11:53 pm

Yeh, it's called the supernatural aid. Could be an annoying fairy that's always pestering you and pointing out that monsters need to be killed with swords. Or it could be a laser sword that requires precognition to use because fucking weightless blades amirite (?), or it could be that you're strong enough to use mountains to change the course of a river. Whatever.

Fectin's thinking of the ultimate boon, the object of the quest. Which could well be destroying the supernatural aid, Frodo and the ring.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Apr 16, 2013 12:58 am

Yes, the Hackmaster +12 is a joke in KotDT.

It's an effective joke because it neatly encapsulates multi-level satire into a single seemingly purile tagline. Not my fault you haven't played enough Orcs at the Gates to realize that

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Apr 16, 2013 1:08 am

Orcs at the Gates is a different beast entirely (and tip o' the hat if you own it, too rich for my blood).

rasmuswagner · Post by **rasmuswagner** » Tue Apr 16, 2013 4:48 am

Ancient History wrote:Orcs at the Gates is a different beast entirely (and tip o' the hat if you own it, too rich for my blood).

My gaming club has it - I tried it, and WTF is this shit?

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Apr 16, 2013 8:57 am

The problem with handing out a hackmeister +12, is that it breaks the RNG on the offensive side, while not doing anything for your defences.
But the idea of handing out something completely over the top does have merit, and can make the game more fun. You just need to be careful with what you hand out.

Otakusensei · Post by **Otakusensei** » Tue Apr 16, 2013 9:02 pm

My brother recently started a Pathfinder game with this concept at it's heart. I tried to warn him off the idea because Pathfinder CR mechanics are already fuckoff useless. In the end he decided to move forward on the hopes that the players would take the opportunity to place roleplaying and cooperative storytelling above min-maxing. He also gave me a spot at the table and the equivalent Hackmaster +12, so at least he knows my tastes well enough. I figured I'll ride things out, play up my character as much as possible and keep my eye out for the +3 pommel stone.

The concept started when I threw Distant Worlds at him a few weeks back. That concept (which my character has discerned a glimpse of) revolves around an alien (possibly extra solar) agent that was on Golarion sometime before the aboliths got pissed at Aztlant and hit the world with a massive magic rock. The agent didn't see that coming and bought it. For whatever reason his gear, all appropriately standard human size and shape/configuration, survived. Previously it was all genetically keyed to him, but in the interim has become effectively Bind on Use and remains so until death of the current user. A bit cheesy, but ultimately easy to explain and deploy with enough mortality keyed finality to get the players attention.

The items range a bit:

The aforementioned Hackmaster +12 - Lightsaber style push button any-sword, 3d6 touch attack
A helmet - True seeing, image mag, funky threat detection spider sense
A bracer - spell library, Identify spell, realtime Google Golarion mapping Another bracer - SR, deflection bonus
Armor - Guyver style living metal protection
A cloak - Optical, sonic and thermal camo, natch
The special Beam Cannon - 6d6 lightning bolt gun with range "Yes"
Maybe more, who knows? -Scare ghost sounds-

So, everything a little over the top. We started at 1 and everyone got one or two devices more or less randomly. We're 4 now and things are still for the most part on the rails with the original characters still intact. He's doing a good job of mitigating the madness by throwing challenging encounters at us while swinging the threat of some vastly more far reaching and dangerous threats entirely too close behind. I'm concerned that eventually he's going to run into the classic post 5th level problem in 3.P systems, "What Do I Throw At Them Now"? But we'll see.

It's the type of game where your players really have to be on board with their own agendas and characterizations. You can't let a character be based around the super doodad or things start to break down when the world doesn't revolve around your glass cannon-ness. Because even if you have a Hackmaster +12 you most likely aren't walking around with more than 12 hit points to start. Or you'll get bored when you aren't backstabbing things because your character is literally all about that stealth cloak.

He's added in some minor downsides to some of items and hinted that the others aren't apparent yet. Also that there may be a chance to power up at a later point at the cost of a magnified downside. I'm not sure I like this tact much and it really doesn't serve much purpose. If you want to balance the mechanics, just don't toss out artifacts. If you do toss out artifacts, don't worry about balancing the characters at level. So far the downsides are staying away from the mechanics but it still stands to see where he will go.

I'm bringing some tea next time, cause this party is going to be particularly magical.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:07 am

New games want to be Harry Potter getting the Deathly Hallow, Death Cloak of Invisibility at level 1? i can buy this as it seems the games are going from play to earn things within the game and just play for the sake of playing....

i always thought a game had a goal, and a TOY was the thing you play with just for the sake of playing with it? does this mean the first post is saying most games today are not games, but merely toys?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 3:17 am

Different focus. In a lot of games the idea is that you start out as a nobody or average joe and work your way up - you don't start out as the world's greatest sniper or a master swordsman or an archmage, you start out as a 1st level fighter named Mike with a longsword. There are reasons for this - attractiveness of low-level play, leveling as a reward and incentive for playing, leveling leading to new sourcebooks with new powers and stuff to encourage players to buy more product, etc.

Leveling has some downsides. Some encounters become essentially unwinnable at low levels. NPCs tend to be massively overpowered, often with rule-breaking NPC-only bullshit to keep them more powerful than the PCs, and that leads to a lot of bad game design and gamemastering. Players cease focusing on any given story or mission and try to grind through kills and gain XP and level just to level - which works fine for World of Warcraft, not so much for tabletop.

I guess it's one of the reasons I liked Shadowrun for so many years - from a bottom-up perspective, a newly-minted character in the right place and at the right time could cap an experienced PC or NPC in the back of the head and kill them, and that would mean something. It's a brutal approach, but it's a bit more - and I hate to use this word when we're talking fantasy gaming - realistic, and it also encourages sidereal development. That is, once you max out X skill (which you can do at chargen in SR), a character has to decide how to continue to develop their character in other ways - improving related skills, better equipment, martial arts, augmentations, quickened spells, &c. It's not perfect by any means, but I do kinda like the idea that there's an aspect of the game that forces you to chase something beyond the biggest-bonus-dice dragon. (Of course, that does fall apart with adepts and open-ended development.)

If you want to use Harry Potter as an example, Harry is the Boy That Lived. He started out with a badass scar, a rep, a good bit of magical talent, some built-in magic immunities and the ability to speak to reptiles. That's his artifact - the wand and the broom and the cloak and everything come in a bit later, but you can see that Harry started out with an obvious advantage over some of his peers. Ron and Hermione and Draco on the other hand have their respective advantages, but they're not the focus of the series and don't have the Artifact powers Harry has from the get-go.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:23 pm

well if ALL games are still stupidly following D&D, though it died a decade ago; then it makes since they would have everyone start out a hero because Halo, Metroid, etc is where D&D gets its ideas from. well the MP side that is tacked onto the SP story-mode. thus all people seem to be the hero in the multi-player version because the story-mode has you as the fallen hero or whatever to begin with, and so many people are used to that line of thinking... Kratos, Master Chief, Samus, Link, hell even Mario stopped being a humble plumber over 30 years ago...

it is jsut the times. gamers are too lazy to build the "rep" for their characters and want VG fully developed backstories handed to them.

Guyr Adamantine · Post by **Guyr Adamantine** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:54 pm

"Me pretending being an elf commoner is better than you pretending to be an elf princess."

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 9:59 pm

Also "Games taking inspiration from 2013 pop culture is totally inferior than games taking inspriation from 1976 pop culture"

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 10:04 pm

Also, Mario was clearing sewer Pipes in 1983,(pre-crash) he didn't become the hero of the Mushroom Kingdom until 1985 (first post-crash blockbuster). Funny how the guy who likes to complain about youngsters not understanding the history of games can't remember important things like actual dates.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 10:10 pm

2013-1983=30

close enough for government work...

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 10:17 pm

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:Also "Games taking inspiration from 2013 pop culture is totally inferior than games taking inspriation from 1976 pop culture"

what inspiration can be taken from.. "You are a hero! go home and relax."?

2013 pop culture wants to be spoonfed and hand held. what really in pop-culture today has ANYONE working hard to get anything?

what 2013 pop-culture isnt a remake of the 70s pop culture with adding the less work for the protagonist?

a game about... The Notebook? Iron Man 3? Batman 4? Star Wars 7?

Hobbit is a retread...Twilight is NWoD.

Justin Beiber the game to get Jesus tattooed on your ass looking up your crack?

Who will knock Britney Spears up this month?

How much weight will Beyonce put on this week and take off next?

I got it.. Obama-care the game?

NetHack? Korean Missile Crisis? what exactly is 2013 pop culture that wasnt started in 2012 and almost played out?

Oppa Dungeon Style? Hey sexy ogre!... i think not.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 10:27 pm

shadzar wrote:Oppa Dungeon Style? Hey sexy ogre!... i think not.

I think so. There's still time!