Still more Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both

[K]

I don't know know why people resist the idea that a character should be able to fight most creatures of a certain CR. In any battle, you may actually be the only one fighting that creature so it's super important that you not be useless.

For example, if your four-person party gets hit by a fear effect, the fact that only you made your save is a big deal to the party's survival.

[ubernoob]

I don't know know why people resist the idea that a character should be able to fight most creatures of a certain CR. In any battle, you may actually be the only one fighting that creature so it's super important that you not be useless.

For example, if your four-person party gets hit by a fear effect, the fact that only you made your save is a big deal to the party's survival.

Is this related to optimizing, or something else. Generally it is the weakest archetypes (cough warriors in 3E cough) that need the most min/maxing.

[Tydanosaurus]

I don't know know why people resist the idea that a character should be able to fight most creatures of a certain CR. In any battle, you may actually be the only one fighting that creature so it's super important that you not be useless.

For example, if your four-person party gets hit by a fear effect, the fact that only you made your save is a big deal to the party's survival.

There's other ways to go. In a well-made game, for example, if the BBEG knocks down the whole party except for one with a mez:

A Tank would protect the party by sucking up hits until the rest of the party recovered from the Fear effect, and perhaps kill off a few mooks;

A Healer would cure or resist the mez;

A Controller would drop crowd control of its own until the rest of the party recovered;

A Striker would blow off emergency attacks to kill as many as possible (and hopefully be mezzed in any event, since it's least equipped to deal with the situation.)


Is that fun? That's another issue altogether.

[JonSetanta]

For example, if your four-person party gets hit by a fear effect, the fact that only you made your save is a big deal to the party's survival.

Odd, Frank is always barking that save's don't matter. With a poor save progression it's against a character's odds to pass.
Warriors run in fear or become locked down while Mages usually bend over vomiting from poison or disease. That's how D&D has been for a long time.

[RandomCasualty2]

For example, if your four-person party gets hit by a fear effect, the fact that only you made your save is a big deal to the party's survival.

Honestly I don't care who you are. If you lose 3/4 of your party, you should be fucked.

The full group of monsters against 1 PC is pretty much a slaughter if the encounter was balanced for 4 PCs.

[Quantumboost]

For example, if your four-person party gets hit by a fear effect, the fact that only you made your save is a big deal to the party's survival.

Honestly I don't care who you are. If you lose 3/4 of your party, you should be fucked.

The full group of monsters against 1 PC is pretty much a slaughter if the encounter was balanced for 4 PCs.

If the encounter was balanced to be a 50/50 chance for 4 PCs, yes.

If it was balanced just to leech of some of the party's resources, having 3 PCs out of action for a few rounds shouldn't necessarily result in the fourth being insta-gibbed.

[RandomCasualty2]

If the encounter was balanced to be a 50/50 chance for 4 PCs, yes.

If it was balanced just to leech of some of the party's resources, having 3 PCs out of action for a few rounds shouldn't necessarily result in the fourth being insta-gibbed.

If one monsters ability can KO 3 PCs, then it sounds a lot morelike a 50/50 encounter to me. I mean one more missed save and the encoutner would be a total TPK.

[Tydanosaurus]

For example, if your four-person party gets hit by a fear effect, the fact that only you made your save is a big deal to the party's survival.

Honestly I don't care who you are. If you lose 3/4 of your party, you should be fucked.

The full group of monsters against 1 PC is pretty much a slaughter if the encounter was balanced for 4 PCs.

Not really. You're forgetting that effects have durations.

Again, a game can be balanced so that a Fighter can go into "Protect" mode and protect the entire party for three rounds, while doing no damage, for example. It could be a close call that the Fighter can do that, keeping the game exciting and flavorful while still letting the Fighter do Fightery stuff. The game can even meet the needs of the DMF thread by having the Fighter's "Protect" power involving lots of minor amounts of damage to the NPC's, simulating Conan, for example, whirling and stabbing through a pack of bad guys.

There's nothing inherently wrong or unbalanced with that. That's essentially how Tanks work in MMO's. It just needs to be done well.

[Quantumboost]

I didn't say KO. I said "out of action for a few rounds". This includes such obscure and bizarre effects as "lol I casts fear".

[Draco_Argentum]

Ugh. I was so sickened by this whole thing that I just reported OneWing as flaming and trolling and didn't come here for a few days. God that was disgusting.

Aaaaahahahahahahaaaaaaaaa. The man is all class.

It doesn't really matter how powerful you are with respect to the world... if it did, either Exalted or A|State wouldn't work as a game.

You're kidding me. Lets assume they are both balanced and that A|State is low power PCs from context. His example proves his point is wrong. Power level is very important, if you're trying to play LotR Exalted is not the system for it.

[Username17]

"How powerful with respect to the world" is in fact the only thing that matters. This game is Player vs. Monster as a general rule. If one player is more powerful relative to the world than another player, that's where imbalance steps in. Two characters can seriously be wildly different apparent power levels in a fight against each other and it won't matter so long as both characters are roughly the same power with respect to the world.

Basically JaronK marked himself as a guy who I don't have to listen to ever.

-Username17

[Bigode]

I'm fairly sure you guys aren't paying attention enough to this last part (not that Jaron isn't completely retarded, mind you). He's talking about homebrewing classes, and in a system where there already are 2 (or more, dunno) widely disparate class power levels. So, somebody making a class without fixing the system has to make either a warrior or a spellcaster, right? What he actually means is that you have to pick one of them, not try to follow the other(s) (except he believes there are 5 tiers, not 2), and which one you pick doesn't matter because you can tailor your adventures to either one you like best, while the actual necessity you have is making sure an entire party's in the same level.

Of course that doesn't have to mean duels are always fair - but I don't think he meant that at all - but when one wins against 40% of the enemies and the other against 90% (what I think he actually meant with "interplayer imbalance"), you have a problem; OTOH, you (as GM of a particular campaign) don't have a problem with a group composed of members who'd individually lose to 90% of the enemies of CR = their level, because you can actually just not use those.

And he's saying "it doesn't matter" because both high-power and low-power can work, but of course that requires one not to be retarded enough to pick the wrong one.

[Tydanosaurus]

"How powerful with respect to the world" is in fact the only thing that matters. This game is Player vs. Monster as a general rule. If one player is more powerful relative to the world than another player, that's where imbalance steps in. Two characters can seriously be wildly different apparent power levels in a fight against each other and it won't matter so long as both characters are roughly the same power with respect to the world.

So true. Imagine Class A, whose class powers are increasing the abilities of teammates, and Class B, the glass-jaw damage dealer. Class B could do slightly more damage than parapalegic penguin, and Class A could turn teammates into Galactus, the Eater of Worlds, but in a duel with Class B, Class A always loses.

[Bigode]

Except this figures into inter-player imbalance (who contributes more to a party). AFAICT, "powerful with regards to the world" means "able to change the world", which has little (but yeah, not quite nothing) to do with it.

[Psychic Robot]

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1067450

Craft: Fuck the Players

Apparently, my post--

If the players want to spend the next twenty years making Profession checks for money, I say let them. In the meantime, the BadWrongGuys are doing their own things, and they're being more productive than making money. By the time the PCs have the money for their ultra-powerful equipment, they're going to need it to survive against the armies of Mordor.

--is punishing the players because it has realistic consequences.

Here's some gold for ya:

Or you could actually play the game [instead of using Craft skills].

And this is the glaring problem for simulationist gaming. It rolls over, shows its soft underbelly and goes "please abuse my system in such a way as to ruin it for everyone else! PLEEEEASE? I won't even try to stop you because in reality everything isn't fun and fair, so why should it be any different in a game that's supposed to be fun and fair?"

Sadly, more people don't take the opportunity to shoot it in the head.

The Fourth Edition rules make sense. People can opt to make things and sell them. If they want to do it quick and dirty, they lose money. If they want to make a profit, it's a skill challenge and the profits are counted as part of their treasure parcels.

So the best path to freedom is consequences for not doing what the DM wants you to do?

So if we're looking for crafting rules in D&D that make sense, Fourth Edition is easily the most sensible rules to date.

[If you were to do as you suggest, the PCs would] fight the armies of Mordor, die in thirty seconds, and tell the DM it is time for a new game, 'cause that one was boring.

[Tydanosaurus]

This was my favorite:

By using Ability checks and a variety of skills when crafting and selling items -- Streetwise, Diplomacy, and other skills depending on the product, for example -- Crafting becomes more than a single roll in the downtime.

Because if spending 30 minutes, in realtime!, to make an in-game dagger by using the inane skillcheck rules is fun, dragooning your friends into joining you instead of playing XBOX while you waste yoru time, that's gotta be gold.

[Koumei]

Although I agree with "Or you could just play the game instead of making Craft checks.", I especially take issue with:

If they want to do it quick and dirty, they lose money. If they want to make a profit, it's a skill challenge and the profits are counted as part of their treasure parcels.

Which teaches us this: don't bother doing anything not related to stabbing people in the face. If you make money any other way, that money is subtracted from what you'd otherwise get. You're better off sitting on your arse in your spare time, then going on a violent killing spree to get your money.

[Maxus]

Yeah, that's pretty much what 4e tries to strongarm you into doing: Stabbing things in the face.

Except it's not nearly as satisfying, and even if you stab the dragon in the face with your bastard sword, he only gets a scratch. Then he gets pissed and...

...lightly scratches you with his claws. Or maybe mildly singes or freezes you with his breath.

And so on.

[Koumei]

Come to think of it, how many design rules does that sand by?

1. Math is haaaaaaard (check! Remove math by forcing them to have the same result)
2. Someone once cried about it, so remove it (sort of - other means of generating wealth is effectively gone)
3. It'd take more than a few minutes to balance it, so don't include it (check!)
4. Fuck you (check!)

You know, these days my hatred of 4E, despite the problems caused by it for me as a gamer, has now just simmered down into this deep disappointment. Every time I see something new and stupid, I just shake my head and move on.

[Psychic Robot]

You should revise #3: "It'd take more than a few minutes to balance it, so include it in a $30 splatbook."

[RandomCasualty2]

Not really. You're forgetting that effects have durations.

Well if it's 3.5 you're talking about, a 4 round duration mioght as well be forever, even if it doesn't seem that long. You're dealing with rocket launcher tag here, and having your party lose 3/4 of its actions is a death sentence even if it's just for 1-2 rounds.

The only way you survive is if the threat is entirely trivial.

[Psychic Robot]

Let's go back to your original example. You said that the PCs can spend 20 years making proffession checks if they'd like, and buying uber equipment, but the bad guys will advance in that time. So, you have a number of options:

1) The bad guys take over the world sometime within the 20 years. The PCs stop crafting because they are dead. The campaign was not fun, because the PCs did nothing but make die rolls for 3 hours, divide the result in two, and add it to a total, at which point you told them they were dead.

2) You let the PCs take their twenty years of crafting, buy the uber items, and set off on an adventure. They get slaughtered because the bad guys have gotten way more powerful and only taken over most of the world in this time. This is like a slightly extended version of scenario 1, and it's just as idiotic.

3) You increase the difficulty proportionally to make up for the super items of the PCs (eg: They all have +5 swords, so all the enemies have +5 AC and more hit points). This is probably the most fun, but it will quickly become tired. Since the PCs already have the best equipment, there's nothing to strive towards, save story and XP. I'm not saying this is a bad game, just that attaining items at the appropriate level is part of the fun.

4) You don't increase the difficulty of the fights, but you remove the treasure rewards to "make up for" the extra gold the PCs have been gaining through crafting. The PCs go on a rampage for the next 10 levels, finally reaching a semblance of balance around level 17. If your Players like to be super powerful godlike beings, then this is fun. Otherwise, not so much.

5) You don't change anything. The story continues exactly as it would have. The PCs destroy every encounter, and their wealth by level never balances out. They continue to have landslide victory after landslide victory. "Roll to hit" becomes "roll to not get a natural 1". Needless to say, most groups wouldn't find this to be much fun.


So there you have it. The "consequences" for being a shopkeeper for 20 years. Unless there's some other way it could play out? A way that's actually fun?

Or by "consequences" did you mean something like "all the items get destroyed by DM fiat", or "I end the campaign by TPKing and tell the PCs it wouldn't have happened had they not sat around for 20 years (ala #2)"?

I'm going to cry in a fire now.

[Prak]

do elves get morning wood?

It makes me laugh that it came up in gameplay, and cry because of the depth in which I answered.

[ubernoob]

do elves get morning wood?

It makes me laugh that it came up in gameplay, and cry because of the depth in which I answered.

*checks link*

This looks familiar.

[Prak]

y'know, it's funny, I usually don't even look at screen names with posts, so I didn't even notice you were on there...