What the hell is TNE?

[Crissa]

Yes, because all games I want to play are limited to historical settings without fantasy races, that's for sure! </irony>

-Crissa

[Elennsar]

If that's the case, I want to know who changed your mind, and how, so I can learn their secrets. </obvious sarcasm>

More to the point, the reason I said that is that you don't need to have people unable to fit in human sized areas to have a pretty diverse range.

And you don't need every thing with an Intelligence score over 1 to be playable as a PC.

[Ice9]

It's good to know that I was apparently hallucinating all those campaigns I played in. Because according to the responses I've gotten, it's impossible to use the same system for low and high levels, and it's impossible to use D&D for anything. Again, this is the "non-tailored clothes are useless piles of crap" thing - my t-shirts would beg to disagree with you.

Now sure, you can say that a tailored system is better, in an ideal world. But then we're getting back to the trade-off thing again - how much better is a tailored system? Better enough that it's worth not being able to run as many games with it? Better enough that it's worth not being able to insert classes or races that you or your players want?

[virgil]

You can still have a basically tailored setting/system that's actually fairly broad and varied, more than can be statted up by a handful of people in a reasonable amount of time. That's where the variance and homebrew insertion can occur, statting up the unstatted section going off of the setting's guidelines. I don't think the assumption was for there to be only three races and five permutations of skill allocation or anything that limited.

[Elennsar]

I have two answers.

1) D&D does not produce settings where both high and low levels are viable.

EITHER as viable? Fine. Both together in the same world? Not without giving your SoD (Suspension of disbelief) rope burn.

The gap between high levels and low levels is too large.

One can certainly use D&D for the kind of stuff D&D represents, but that's a very particular high/heroic medley.

As for tailored:

Yes. If I want to play Middle-Earth, I want a game that is designed to reflect that.

Being able to run a hundred games in a halfassed way and being able to run five really, really well is a no-brainer if you are concerned about those five games.

Particularly when there's another hundred you can't run at all within D&D without massive work.

[Username17]

Even if those places are better suited for that course, many people would prefer to get the whole meal in one sitting. That's my position with levels - I'd rather play one campaign that spans from low to high level than 4-5 mini-campaigns using a different system in each.

Then low level characters don't matter.

Seriously, if power levels ramp up from low level street brawls with goblins up to continent shattering magic duels with gods - then your street brawls at low level are not important. If players will ever get access to Elminster levels of power, then you have the Elminster dilemma: why the fuck isn't Elminster solving your entire quest in six seconds?

If the game's chess board expands to the point where the power level of a starting character is that of a meaningless pawn, then when you start out you are playing a meaningless pawn. That's OK for some people, indeed many people legitimately enjoy working through months and years of playing time to finally achieve being a real player in the world after being an acknowledged minor flunky. But other people don't.

If you add the super human super-tastic power levels to the game, you are robbing the human power levels of meaning. It's that simple. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

-Username17

[Crissa]

I rather thought we solved that with giving heroic actions time and presence requirements; sure you could shatter the continent and fight for days, but to do that, you'd have to commit to fighting for days and using up your resources on those continent shattering casting by actually being in the battle continuously.

I'm not really sure that Elminster being able to shatter continents really means he can be in thousand of disparate places at once, saving kittens and such.

And if he could, would his opponents really wait until he got back to them?

-Crissa

[Elennsar]

The problem is, the amount of effort it would take for him to save a kitten is so minimal that it wouldn't interfer with shattering a continent. That, unfortunately, is part of being an epic level wizard as things stand.

And even if it isn't...you're still meaningless to the setting when the most you can do is save a kitten.

[Username17]

Gotham and Metropolis do not actually work together in the same universe. While they do make a crossover called World's Finest, it's a cognitive dissonance masterpiece.

Gotham is a place where the Penguin and the Joker can run around causing havoc by just having some mooks with pistols. Metropolis has fucking Superman in it. In order to tell a proper Gotham City story, you have to assure us that Superman isn't there. In Single Author Fiction you ca do that by simply having the author never mention Superman. But in a Role Playing Game to actually make Superman not be there, he has to not be there.

-Username17

[virgil]

Hard for me to say for other people, but I'm personally fine with having a game where your characters aren't real players in the world situation. A game about cops and detectives in L.A. involve some pretty important stuff from their point-of-view, yet their influence/power ends at the city limit.

Then there's the idea of having the upper-echelons of power few in number, so there aren't enough Elminsters to go around as far as quest-resolution is concerned.

[Crissa]

So, the fact that Superman is off doing things in Metropolis and isn't in Gotham (or any of the other DC cities) doesn't ever come into play?

Honestly, you act as if they could be everywhere. Why would they be?

-Crissa

The problem is, the amount of effort it would take for him to save a kitten is so minimal that it wouldn't interfer with shattering a continent. That, unfortunately, is part of being an epic level wizard as things stand.

You didn't explain why he would be able to save that kitten, however, without interfering with World Domination.

On one hand, he certainly could save the kitten. On the other... Does expending a day to save a kitten mean all kittens forever remain saved? Why does it extend that it wouldn't interfere with shattering a continent?

[Elennsar]

As things stand. Not as things are forced to be. As things stand.

Please read what I actually write.

So you could do that, but you'd have to make sure that they weren't able to do six things as close to at once as you wanted, and have to accept being at mook level until you reach bigshot level.

Or do what Virgilese proposed, which works to some extent.

[virgil]

Oh, for a power disparity like Superman's, that's a different story. I don't see any reason for him not to take 2 minutes out of his day, which essentially every comic has shown that he has, to zip over to Gotham and capture every costumed villain out of their cells; or hell, Batman to have a Superman signal of his own once he finds the location of a villain, calling upon the Kryptonian like some kind of airstrike.

As an aside, Batman & Superman reminds me of THIS.

But the Gotham/Metropolis example does show that there is a limit on power-plays before it goes too far. Lesser examples exist. Spiderman and Doctor Strange pretty much play on different levels by quite the margin, and there are definitely strata of power in most of the known Marvel universe; which for the most part works because there isn't really anyone consistently on Superman's level.

[Elennsar]

Both are within the same general "advanced human" level, as opposed to superhuman and the like, presumably.

Its certainly possible for lower level people or less skilled people to be significantly weaker, but if anyone fears a group of guys with guns, that ought to generally be true for everyone playable (and everyone who can be anywhere).

[Draco_Argentum]

Since the TNE plan was 20 levels of numeric scaling we're rather into the level one people don't matter territory.

---

Far more importantly than that little fact: Elennsar, how about you post less. Obsessively taking up near 50% of the posts is getting pretty obnoxious. Do you honestly believe your post rate is justified? Not even the most outspoken and opinionated members of the forum post as much as you.

[Elennsar]

I think that I have something useful to say when I post. Its not like there's a limit where if I make ten posts and you make five then there's only three posts left for everyone else.

Right now in this particular discussion, I think there's a lot useful I'd like to say, not so much in say, "Dealing with the size of the Player Character."

So how about you find something legitimate to complain about instead of the fact I think my opinions on something are worth sharing?

[Roy]

Why the Fuckity Fuckstar is this bullshit about mother fucking Centaurs on the mother fucking inside getting dragged into other mother fucking threads?

[Username17]

Why the Fuckity Fuckstar is this bullshit about mother fucking Centaurs on the mother fucking inside getting dragged into other mother fucking threads?

You'll have to ask Phone Lobster, he brought it up unbidden. He likes to keep making elaborate and tyrannical positions that I am supposedly advocating and then ruthlessly attack them. And apparently it all has to do with centaurs or something.

I'm not super sure how me saying that one player giving an adventuring mandate to the GM and the other players is a dick move translates to the GM always giving adventuring mandates to all the other players, but whatever. It's his ball and I'm done responding to it directly. From now on I'm just going to indirectly snipe at him the way he indirectly snipes at me.

Fair is fair.

-Username17

[Neeeek]

So, the fact that Superman is off doing things in Metropolis and isn't in Gotham (or any of the other DC cities) doesn't ever come into play?

Honestly, you act as if they could be everywhere. Why would they be?

According to the DC Universe, Superman can literally move at (or slightly less than) the speed of light. He could round up every criminal in Gotham during his coffee break by literally going every single place in the city they could possibly be. Superman can circumnavigate the globe multiple times in a second (something he's actually done in the comics), he can effectively be everywhere.

Spider-man and Dr. Strange is a different matter, mostly because Dr. Strange generally doesn't give a rat's ass about the guys Spidey goes after or the crimes they commit, and even if he did, Strange has a lot of stuff on his plate and doesn't have what amounts to as infinite time to do whatever he wants every day.

[PhoneLobster]

other mother fucking threads?

You might have missed it, but it's what this thread is directly about, this thread indeed was suggested ON the centaur thread. Live with it.

Also, translation time:

I'm not super sure how me saying that one player giving an adventuring mandate(Like refusing to go into goblin warrens) to the GM and the other players is a dick move translates to the GM always giving adventuring mandates to all the other players (Like demanding they go into the damn goblin warrens before the game breaks from messed up terrain balance), but whatever.

At the end of the day Frank YOU are the one making the claims about centaurs and every other thing you don't like being generally game breaking things rather than just saying "I don't feel like using them". This is a big deal as it gives the more credulous around here the idea that Mighty Frank has discovered a bullshitium elemental trait that prevents them from being used as part of good game design.

[Username17]

PL, everything you say about the centaur subject is going to be ignored. I stuck to it on the centaur thread, I'm giving you notice that I'm continuing to ignore your deranged straw man arguments on this subject on every single fucking other thread you feel the need to infect with it.

The centaur thread was locked because you were being an asshole. Me responding to any of your baseless assertions in any direct fashion can't possibly do anything productive.

-Username17

[Elennsar]

Crissa: The amount of Elminster's time it would take to save a kitten is so minimal that he could probably do it while waiting for something he set up to deal with something major to finishing booting up (in comptuer terms).

So he could save dozens (hundreds? Thousands?) of kittens and return before his shatter-a-continent ritual needs his direct attention again.

Failing that extreme, you still have the issue that he'd be able to take care of any invasion into the Dalelands by any "conventional" force (which would be useless in a setting with beings like him), so PCs at mook level (which is going to be most levels if lower levels are that overwhelmingly below his power level) are not going to be able to meaningfully influence the fate of the Dalelands.

This is not necessarily the case if he's just much higher level, but if higher level people break kingdoms over their knee and low level people are barely beyond what modern cops can do (and higher level people aren't leveled by Colt's Gun), then PCs are their mooks.

That is a problem. Even if Elminster isn't just a sign Greenwood needs to get laid and stop having bad sexual fantasies, and even if we make him merely 20th level, he's still able to take care of anything 5th level (or even 10th level) characters can do better and faster and safer. 15th? Maaaybe not. But certainly 1-10.


So I would strongly hope that TNE does not give higher levels that are ever actually directly in play this power. Its one thing for the Dark God we never face personally to be that strong or for the Leveler to be that strong and only defeatable by luck and strategy, but having Elminster or whoever be able to make anything less than that level irrelevant at any serious act of saving or destroying is a bit much.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So he could save dozens (hundreds? Thousands?) of kittens and return before his shatter-a-continent ritual needs his direct attention again.
...
That is a problem. Even if Elminster isn't just a sign Greenwood needs to get laid and stop having bad sexual fantasies, and even if we make him merely 20th level, he's still able to take care of anything 5th level (or even 10th level) characters can do better and faster and safer. 15th? Maaaybe not. But certainly 1-10.


So I would strongly hope that TNE does not give higher levels that are ever actually directly in play this power. Its one thing for the Dark God we never face personally to be that strong or for the Leveler to be that strong and only defeatable by luck and strategy, but having Elminster or whoever be able to make anything less than that level irrelevant at any serious act of saving or destroying is a bit much.

It's fairly trivial to keep the ..."economy of actions"... such that Elminister can't save kittens while he's destroying continents. I think a system where getting a large number of people to do good things (like save kittens) while you're destroying continents is ideal.

[Neeeek]

That is a problem. Even if Elminster isn't just a sign Greenwood needs to get laid and stop having bad sexual fantasies, and even if we make him merely 20th level, he's still able to take care of anything 5th level (or even 10th level) characters can do better and faster and safer. 15th? Maaaybe not. But certainly 1-10.

The issue is more that anything he might ask a 5th level character to do, he could do himself in less time than it would take to explain to the 5th level guy want he needs done.

[JonSetanta]

Fantasy RPGs have a legacy to uphold, not that I agree with it in any way.

D&D 1e DMG quote