The Gaming Den

NineInchNall wrote:Way to set up a false dichotomy / hollow man there. How's about you take the barrel of cocks out of your mouth and come up with a better retort?

I'm impressed by how much butthurt that one sentence caused you.

animea90 wrote:Sometimes the party doesn't have a choice. Maybe they made a gaff and got caught sneaking through the enemy fortress. Now the enemy has sounded the alarm and they are under attack by large numbers. Or maybe the BBG decides to hole up in his fortress with his minions(an incredibly common strategy).

That's understandable, and maybe my post was edgier than it needed to be. Still, I don't like the idea that all fantasy needs to have fights against huge swarms of enemies, which is the main thing I took umbrage to.

Dean wrote:Any Orc village now presents the PC's with the Elminster problem, of making them question why they are doing anything when any settlement they meet can bring more force to bear than they could possibly stand against or create.

This is a succinct explanation of my complaint. The only role I can imagine for the party is one of stealth and intrigue, where a large group won't work, but even then the terrible skill system(also with bounded accuracy) makes that unappealing, and it won't work for any character who isn't designed around stealth and intrigue.

Night Goat wrote:

animea90 wrote:Sometimes the party doesn't have a choice. Maybe they made a gaff and got caught sneaking through the enemy fortress. Now the enemy has sounded the alarm and they are under attack by large numbers. Or maybe the BBG decides to hole up in his fortress with his minions(an incredibly common strategy).

That's understandable, and maybe my post was edgier than it needed to be. Still, I don't like the idea that all fantasy needs to have fights against huge swarms of enemies, which is the main thing I took umbrage to.

No one is saying that huge swarms is a necessary thing. 3e is a perfect example, literally any level 10 PC can beat up so many CR 1/2 Orcs that you could plausibly send 400 of them and it wouldn't matter. The fact that a bunch of Orcs who were individually a viable challenge to you at level 1 can't touch you at level 10 doesn't mean that you actually do fight 400 of them, it means that you spend your time fighting more interesting opposition.

This is in direct contrast to a bounded accuracy system where the system actually encourages you to substitute a large number of shitty level 1 enemies for a tactically interesting fight.

Night Goat wrote:

NineInchNall wrote:Way to set up a false dichotomy / hollow man there. How's about you take the barrel of cocks out of your mouth and come up with a better retort?

I'm impressed by how much butthurt that one sentence caused you.

... I'm pretty sure this is the Gaming Den. You know, the place where "suck a barrel of cocks" is roughly equivalent to "hello." Methinks you need to lurk more.

Night Goat wrote:That's understandable, and maybe my post was edgier than it needed to be. Still, I don't like the idea that all fantasy needs to have fights against huge swarms of enemies, which is the main thing I took umbrage to.

You can personally like whatever you want but if Sauron can be killed by any random group of 10 people then nothing in that story makes sense. What you like doesn't matter because this is a fundamental principle of the genre. Thulsa Doom, Malificent, Smaug, Bavmorda, and the Kurgan can all murder more men than you can gather up in an afternoon and that is a requirement for every fantasy story that has ever been told. You can call me a little whiny mob grinding baby all you want but if you want a story about the greatest heroes of the land teaming up to fight evil then you need to make those heroes a better evil fighting force than the nearest baseball team.

Dean wrote:

Night Goat wrote:That's understandable, and maybe my post was edgier than it needed to be. Still, I don't like the idea that all fantasy needs to have fights against huge swarms of enemies, which is the main thing I took umbrage to.

You can personally like whatever you want but if Sauron can be killed by any random group of 10 people then nothing in that story makes sense. What you like doesn't matter because this is a fundamental principle of the genre. Thulsa Doom, Malificent, Smaug, Bavmorda, and the Kurgan can all murder more men than you can gather up in an afternoon and that is a requirement for every fantasy story that has ever been told. You can call me a little whiny mob grinding baby all you want but if you want a story about the greatest heroes of the land teaming up to fight evil then you need to make those heroes a better evil fighting force than the nearest baseball team.

Not gonna commit to a statement on the other four but you are giving Thulsa Doom in particular far too much credit as an individual fighter. The way I remember the film, he mostly hid behind an army and wasn't all that competent in actual combat.

Also, you're drawing a false dichotomy - saying that someone should lose to 1,000 trained and well-equipped soldiers is much less profound than saying they should lose to 10 baseball players... or even 10 trained and well-equipped soldiers.

Omegonthesane wrote:Also, you're drawing a false dichotomy - saying that someone should lose to 1,000 trained and well-equipped soldiers is much less profound than saying they should lose to 10 baseball players... or even 10 trained and well-equipped soldiers.

To me, the defining characteristic of non-Low heroic fantasy is being able to challenge society's monopoly of force, even in relatively stable places like Old Kyoto and Athens. Even if you can't personally murder the Roman Legions, they can't murder you either short of finding another unique special snowflake superman and thus it vastly changes how you interact with society. See: Vash the Stampede, Superman. And of course once you have several people who can backhand non-superpowered people in the face and fuck the queen in front of the king and his praetorian guard, some of them are going to elect to become villains and that's where you get your Dr. Dooms and Shao Khans and the like. Once that happens, a ragtag bunch of misfits with odd superpowers deciding to take matters into their own hands become heroes instead of a group of narcissists wanting to steal the glory away from our brave soldiers.

Now, heroic fantasy society is shitty and disorganized, so the threshold of being able to tell the police force and military to piss off is depressingly low. But it is a bit higher than being able to take on 1,000 trained and well-equipped soldiers in a goat pasture with no prep time.

FrankTrollman wrote:Yeah, as I understand the spellbook casting thing, any wizard can just sit down with a spell book and hack out a fabricate without even using a spell slot. All they have to do is be high enough level to understand the ritual (which is... 7th?) and spend 10 minutes fucking around with their book. Since you can get a return on a casting of fabricate of a couple dozen pounds of gold, any Wizard high enough level to do that commands an hourly wage of "more gold than they can physically carry."

Since even the item creation revealed so far takes at least 10 days, there is literally no amount of gold you could physically give to a Wizard to buy his time for long enough to make any magic item unless he's so weak that all he can write is a low level spell. Every magic item made must be made by a Wizard who wants the intended recipient to have the item or be purchased with a commodity more valuable than gold.

5e hasn't connected those dots, but it's technically too early to condemn them for not doing so because the DMG isn't out yet.

-Username17

This is...almost a good explanation for their magic item availability. Low level scrolls and potions appear reasonably available, but so far everything beyond that is pretty rare.

hogarth wrote: If you're arguing that selling a +1 sword should be worth just as much gold as it takes to pay for a private army of 100,000 soldiers (or whatever), you're an idiot.

How many soldiers should one be able to buy with a ming vase?

also, there are some hidden gems for mundanes, IF you are willing to dig for them. The great weapon master with a halberd and the neo-cleave feat drops a dude or gets a critical, he generates an attack. Bonus actions are limited to just one per turn, though (though I imagine we'll see DMG rules for multiple bonus actions/reactions), and a ranger/rogue can use whirlwind attack to drop whole groups of guys if they can get into the middle of them, then cunning action their way back out to behind the fighter.

RobbyPants wrote:

hogarth wrote: If you're arguing that selling a +1 sword should be worth just as much gold as it takes to pay for a private army of 100,000 soldiers (or whatever), you're an idiot.

How many soldiers should one be able to buy with a ming vase?

A Ming Vase is worth around 1.3m dollars. The number of soldiers will depend heavily on your circumstances. Based on how much actual warlords spend, you could probably buy and outfit a 100 or so soldiers in a poor area of Africa.

Now, these numbers aren't exact but they are going to accurate within an order of magnitude. You are going to get at least 600k for your Ming Vase, but you won't get 6 million dollars.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/1 ... 84399.html

Great weapon master is equally good, or given buffs, even better on clerics that get heavy armor and martial weapon proficiency (which is about half the domains). War would be my particular callout here, since they snag several paladin buffs for combat. But valor bards are also a better contender than any mundane.

The ranger's whirlwind attack isn't impressive at all. It is a single melee attack against all creatures in 5' (at least the alpha version). Unless the ranger is literally surrounded that is probably 3-4 guys tops. Damage-wise and target wise, a caster just casting shatter (as a 2nd level spell) will do more damage to more people. Given that whirlwind doesn't happen until level 11, and you'd need to also be a 2nd level rogue to cunning action... That is out and out pathetic for a 13th level character.

Mundanes can honestly go fuck themselves. Sadly possibly even moreso than other editions of D&D, which is damned impressive accomplishment. It depends how bad the hit point scaling is for higher level monsters- at least in 1e, a fighter could rip 1/3 to 1/2 hit points off a dragon in a round. In 5e, the great weapon fighter feat is pretty much mandatory to do that to an ogre.

3e is a perfect example, literally any level 10 PC can beat up so many CR 1/2 Orcs that you could plausibly send 400 of them and it wouldn't matter.

This is false or contains unstated assumptions.

I think it actually breaks down if you are (for example) playing a monk really poorly and we wait for the orcs to get crits. But "literally" now means "figuratively" so I wouldn't worry about it.

Schwarzkopf wrote:

3e is a perfect example, literally any level 10 PC can beat up so many CR 1/2 Orcs that you could plausibly send 400 of them and it wouldn't matter.

This is false or contains unstated assumptions.

No it isn't.

I mean yes, there are technically unstated assumptions. Like when I say 1+1=2 I technically have the unstated assumption "in base 10." And I technically have assumed all sorts of things, like that PCs have level appropriate gear, and that PCs have the goal of living so they don't walk out into the middle of a sea of orcs and then commit seppuku, or that even though technically a Wizard who has been feebleminded and then polymorphed into a snake and the tied in a knot around a branch and then beaten to -5HP is "literally any" and would die to orcs, that previous work done by other forces doesn't count, and the orcs have to fight the PC at full strength.

But saying that the most basic and obvious assumptions that could ever possibly exist are "unstated" is literally the most meaningless thing you could say.

Omegonthesane wrote:Not gonna commit to a statement on the other four but you are giving Thulsa Doom in particular far too much credit as an individual fighter. The way I remember the film, he mostly hid behind an army and wasn't all that competent in actual combat.

Also, you're drawing a false dichotomy - saying that someone should lose to 1,000 trained and well-equipped soldiers is much less profound than saying they should lose to 10 baseball players... or even 10 trained and well-equipped soldiers.

Thulsa Doom shoots instant kill snake arrows, controls people's minds just by speaking at them, polymorphs into a giant snake and can hold his own in melee against Conan who is shown being able to kill a whole soldier squad on his own earlier. In the written Conan universe Thulsa Doom is also a skull faced Lich who is invulnerable to steel and has all sorts of powers too high for the movie's SFX budget.
I don't think this is a false dichotomy. I'm not saying that villains and heroes need to be able to beat unlimited troops or else they can't exist but the number does need to be high. In 5e my baseball team analogy is not an exaggeration, if they want 1st level opponents with bludgeoning weapons to be on 15th level characters RNG then the Giants high level characters worry about fighting will be these ones:

Schwarzkopf wrote:

3e is a perfect example, literally any level 10 PC can beat up so many CR 1/2 Orcs that you could plausibly send 400 of them and it wouldn't matter.

This is false or contains unstated assumptions.

It's not really. I don't think he needs to specify that he is referring to PC's who are wearing level appropriate gear or that they are even remotely competently built. Even a Fighter should be able to fight a few hundred Orcs by level 10.

WIthout DR I think the orcs could take a fighter. 20s are instant hits and the fighter can only kill one or two a round if they spread out and use bows.

Plus, the fighter would start having to make fatigue checks after a while and if he fails those the orcs can kill his unconscious body.

He is their speed or faster, very likely to have some flight capability, fatigue checks for fighting aren't a thing, and orcs dont come listed with bows. He likely has the power to choose the terrain having more mobility options than they do so he does not need to choose standing in the middle of a field allowing 9 people to strike him a turn.

animea90 wrote:WIthout DR I think the orcs could take a fighter. 20s are instant hits and the fighter can only kill one or two a round if they spread out and use bows.

Plus, the fighter would start having to make fatigue checks after a while and if he fails those the orcs can kill his unconscious body.

Ok, problems with your assumptions

A 10th level fighter can have DR. I'm not sure why any scenario would assume that isn't a thing.

20s are natural hits, but there are also miss chances for invisibility, cloaks of displacement, items that grant blur or similar. So cut at least 20% of those natural 20s out. (50% if he can afford a major cloak. Can't be asked to do WBL crunching at the moment). Also, frankly, cover, which is free.

If the fighter is also using a composite (str) bow, he's probably killing 3 per round. Rapid Shot is a thing, and 3 per round assumes he is a chump: alternately, since they're cheap as chips, assume he is packing a necklace of missiles to clear some of the horde out.


And finally... you're just making stuff up now. Fatigue for fighting is where in the rules?

so, this happened and adult dragons have +12 to attack apparently. still somewhat problematic, but you can't say they don't change shit in the last few days before release. yeah. friggin rush job.

Yeah, given the CR of the two adult dragons, I'm not terribly impressed. They just get immunity against 3 spells and then you nuke them down. You just have to put up with a round or two of dickish behavior first.

wizards will just not use spells their MC would veto, and just grind him down with other no-save crap. yawn, what ever.

hd to challange ratio is plain weird, yuan-ti being 13hd to challange 3 for example, and mage/knight is just so blatant "fighters suck" that has to be on purpose.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:the defining characteristic of non-Low heroic fantasy is being able to challenge society's monopoly of force

That's an especially compelling definition. Don't forget it.

Rawbeard wrote:wizards will just not use spells their MC would veto, and just grind him down with other no-save crap. yawn, what ever.

hd to challange ratio is plain weird, yuan-ti being 13hd to challange 3 for example, and mage/knight is just so blatant "fighters suck" that has to be on purpose.

That mage is seriously the only thing in that whole list that worries me, for the simple fact that it can exploit the system the way a PC can. Almost everything else want to engage at knife range. Greater invisibility or Fly (they are both concentration spells)+ area bombardment, with misty step acting as teleportation fuckery to confuse people trying to get a fix on the invisible guy's location. So first round, it goes invisible and moves around, then proceeds to light off 5 area spells and flies off.


Bonus for going back to the Fiend Folio era, with Hobgoblin Captains as a monster entry to accompany Hobgoblins.