The reason why fighters will never have nice things.

[violence in the media]

So maybe this "high-level" definition I'm seeing comes down to:

--High level people never travel on the ground...they fly, or teleport, or astrally project, or have a spaceship. So you can (almost) never come to grips with them.

--High level people use ranged attacks almost exclusively, usually highly devastating ones. They shoot lasers, or explosions, or use ki-fist-dim-mak waves or something.

--High level people don't worry much about the mundane planet...they're busy with other planets, or dimensions, or whatever.

--High level people ignore mundane dangers. Things like fire, ice, hunger/thirst, sleep, terrain, poisons, whatever...none of these things matter, unless they are magical (and usually high level magic).

--High level people consider death an inconvenience at worst; to fully deal with them, you need to trap their soul or something.

To this I would add:

--High level people receive deference.

--High level people perform favors or fulfill requests, they don't take jobs or follow orders.

--High level people come up with the plan, and assign the duties.

--High level people are not trying to stay on your good side, you are trying to stay on theirs.

--High level people are not vulnerable to the machinations of people a certain distance below them.

--High level people get involved with things that are neither simple, straightforward, or cut and dry.

--High level people sometimes change things in big ways. If you don't have to make a note in the campaign guide about how things are different now in a way that would be noticeable and profound to people outside a small geographic sphere, then it might not have been a truly high level adventure. There's a difference between an adventure being high level because it involves a CR17 dragon and an adventure being high level because you changed the elemental affiliation of efreeti.

A high level adventure might, depending on your setting conceits, involve something like the denizens of a demiplane enticing the party to grant them an audience so they might relate their plight of the githyanki assault on their corner of the cosmos. They humbly beseech the party to drive out the githyanki invaders and destroy any knowledge the githyanki have relating to their demiplane (location, resources, existence, etc). All while attempting to keep secret any unique qualities or features that would inspire the party to conquer the demiplane for themselves.

The PCs would decide how to go about doing that and would essentially be "in charge" the entire time. Though their enemies might number in the thousands--figure the Githyanki assigned a division to this conquest--there are going to be conflicts that are resolved by simply handwaving a company of githyanki soldiers out of existence (because 13th level Druid > 200 githyanki grunts). They still have to deal with the larger issue of making the upper command structure "forget" about the demiplane (and the party, if they're concerned) and the potential decision to keep it for themselves. Even said, that "high level" adventure might be for 11th - 15th level characters.

Even after this adventure is over, there's probably going to be continuing concerns about the githyanki, making use of or governing the demiplane, or both. Maybe the demiplane will serve as the jumping off point for the next adventure where they attempt to civilize and ennoble the goblin race by usurping the cruel and sadistic pantheon that keeps producing them as cowardly, skulking scavengers. (This one might be more truly high level, as at the end of it your characters might be overseeing the birth of the goblin Martin Luther King, Jr. and the MC is line-editing the goblin entry in the monster manual to Alignment: Any and removing the Charisma penalty.)

[souran]

Violence: Your additional items are all roleplay oriented and are totally system independant.

Additionally, they don't even make sense if we assume that "level" is a quality like "aliegnment" and is actually invisible to the characters/npcs.

lets take a look:

To this I would add:

--High level people receive deference.

Totally system independant. Also, unless the game has a fame/infamy system (which most table top rpgs do not) then this is entirely magic tea party.

The DM decides how much deference the npcs show by his relaying their actions to the pcs.

Usually having achieved a high level should have also involved the acquisition of fame and infamy from the stories told.

Additionally, I would say that the visibilty of a characters actions has more to do with this effect than straight up level. 10th level characters who prevent a 15th level character from attaining godhood in a visible way are going to be more famous than 20th level characters who prevent an invasion of the prime material plane by the entire hordes of hell if the adventure takes place entirely in the 9 hells.

--High level people perform favors or fulfill requests, they don't take jobs or follow orders.

Again this is more a roleplaying factor than a rules one. High level characters are more likely to know kings and lords and other individuals with temporal power.

Also, while it is likely true that even rulers and power players ask High level characters to participate in the adventure much more nicely than if the heroes were were low level, they also probably offer little if any reward - instead figuring that the heroes will take such work on spec.

--High level people come up with the plan, and assign the duties.

Again, this is totally a stylistic issue. It cannot be supported in the rules. Hell on this point I would say that only about half the player base would even agree.

--High level people are not trying to stay on your good side, you are trying to stay on theirs.

Again, this is a social status issue. High level characters are likely to have greater social status than low level characters.

By the time you are high level you want your character treated as an equal to the games power players. Kings and Wizards should indeed stop acting like you need to be lead around by the nose.

But it isn't a function of the rules.

--High level people get involved with things that are neither simple, straightforward, or cut and dry.

This is a matter for the story. Also, when you have 4-5-6 players some will see events in a black and white way while others see nuiance. Also, this can be a real stumbling block if your players are looking for an escapist pasttime. They may not WANT to make heavy moral decisions for your fantasy world.

While its nice when it works out this way, this is not really a high vs. low level item. This is a top to bottom style of play question.

--High level people sometimes change things in big ways. If you don't have to make a note in the campaign guide about how things are different now in a way that would be noticeable and profound to people outside a small geographic sphere, then it might not have been a truly high level adventure. There's a difference between an adventure being high level because it involves a CR17 dragon and an adventure being high level because you changed the elemental affiliation of efreeti.

This point I mostly agree on. However, using this standard the only high level adventures I can think of are:

"Die Vecna Die!" - Results in a 2E world becomming a 3E world.

Dragonlance Key of Destiny - Results in the Death of Takhisis and Paladine becomming mortal. Also supposedly ends a lot of the wierd "age of mortals" crap.

The 4E Dragon magazine adventure path that ends with the death of Tiamatt and implies that results in a world LITERALLY without the concepts of greed or envy. Note that along the way the players have changed the entire relationship of the gith and shadar-kai to the setting.

...And thats it. Also, note that while all three of these adventures involve the PCs fighting dieties at one point or another, and often involves slaying a diety that is not what meets your criterion.

For instance "Age of Worms" adventure path does not meet your criterion because after you have defended the world of greyhawk from the Worm diety thingy you really have not changed a damn thing. It also hurts that that diety was forgotten until your party started intervening.



Consider your adventure again.

The things that really seem to make it high level are

1) The adventure seeks out the players, the players don't have to seek out the adventure.

2) It happens in a place "normal" people cannot see and might not even blieve exists (some far part of the cosmos)

3) You indicate that things could/should be handwaved because the players are better than small armies. However, that is actually besides the point. The real reason a number of things are handwaved is beacuse the adventure assumes that the player characters can order a task to be accomplished and NOT do the task themselves and still expcet that it gets done.


All the other aspects of your adventure could just as easily be part of a level 1 adventure.

Change the "far flung corner of the cosmos" to "Little minning villiage with secret super weapon", change the gith to orcs/goblins/bandits.

After defeating the bandits the players have a number of options, do they hide the super weapon, do they turn it over to a kingdom? Do they use it and make a new kingdom with themselves on top? Do they use the weapon to enslave the village once its under their control?

There really is not that much that high level about that plot, becuase stories don't really care about level.

[FatR]

Well, looking at what fantasy, comics and anime offer us...

--High level people never travel on the ground...they fly, or teleport, or astrally project, or have a spaceship. So you can (almost) never come to grips with them.

Yes. Almost all high-end characters in various media have access to alternate modes of movement, most commonly flight/airwalking (for villains teleportation is just about as common, but heroes are rarely given it, generally when their power level is completely insane already). Just so they aren't instantly owned by attack powerful enough to wreck the landscape, for starters. Also see, the next point.

--High level people use ranged attacks almost exclusively, usually highly devastating ones. They shoot lasers, or explosions, or use ki-fist-dim-mak waves or something.

No. They do have effective ranged attacks, and more often than not their most powerful attacks are ranged, but all powerhouses who aren't explicitly fragile wizards use melee as their default form of combat.

--High level people don't worry much about the mundane planet...they're busy with other planets, or dimensions, or whatever.

No. This is DnD peculiarity that arose from the need to explain, why the heck high-level people haven't ended pseudo-medieval stasis yet. However, high-level people can and do influence affairs on continental and planetary scale. Their adventures also often impact greater parts of the universe, but most often as a result of destroying the outside threats to their favored piece of real estate.

--High level people ignore mundane dangers. Things like fire, ice, hunger/thirst, sleep, terrain, poisons, whatever...none of these things matter, unless they are magical (and usually high level magic).

Yes and no. Non-magical dangers can affect them. These dangers must be far more exteme than mundane fire and poison. Stuff like battling in the lake of lava (not on top of it, under it), or having a mountain fall on you should still be somewhat threatening. Again, fragile wizards and other glass cannon characters might be affected more easily. For that they are usually compensated by having bigger nukes or open-ended reality-warping powers.

--High level people consider death an inconvenience at worst; to fully deal with them, you need to trap their soul or something.

Generally yes, alas. Revolving door of death happens rather often in high-powered series. At the very least, high-level characters will be able to negate or ignore the effects of apparently mortal wounds, survive much greater hurt than they are supposed to, or otherwise be practically impossible to actually kill. (I mean, above and beyond the protection afforded by whatever defensive superpowers they might explicitly have.) Sometimes they even might be able to actually undo negative events.

[Ice9]

--High level people receive deference.
--High level people perform favors or fulfill requests, they don't take jobs or follow orders.
--High level people are not trying to stay on your good side, you are trying to stay on theirs.

I wouldn't call these a characteristic of high-level in particular.

First off - they're all relative. Even if you're only 3rd level, that's still strong enough that a dirt-farmer village will be very polite in asking for your help. Even if you're 15th level, a god won't be bowing to you. As you rise in level, the number of people that humbly request your help will rise, and the number that look down on you will decrease, but it's more like a smooth curve than a low-level / high-level dividing line.

Secondly, these depend on your perceived strength, which may or may not be your actual strength. If you're 17th level, but you've been extremely stealthy in your exploits, to the point that nobody knows you did them, then don't expect a lot of deference off the bat. Conversely, if at low-level, you somehow manage to take credit for slaying a god or saving an empire, then you may gain a reputation entirely out of scale with your actual abilities - with the attendant benefits and dangers thereof.

--High level people come up with the plan, and assign the duties.

You can do this as soon as you can afford hirelings, have followers, or rouse up a local militia. It's not exclusive to high level.

[Echoes]

it was directed specifically at the picture and quote, and how often people think i care about 3rd....

i dont like it...i dont agree it made things "better'...it jsut gets annoying to hear people think that i give a shit about it as if i wanted to destroy it, i jsut hate it being pushed to me in any way as if it was better than 3rd for you means i should adopt the same attitude...cause i wont.

the "stop liking things i dont like" image was totally having nothing to do with how i fel.

i think MANY games such and people can play them, and i RARELY enter a thread about Shadowrun....it was cute for the card game i played, and the genesis game wa also cute, but not something i would play for an RPG...so i dont bother with those thread...but the ignorance of the past eiditions by some, and by their own admission gets old when they claim an older edition did this, when they dont know..it is why i stres ANY time that i played or the info i have about 3rd or 4th...it limited cause i think they are crap, and dont mind someone else telling me my knowledge of it is wrong, cause i could care les about learning it when i dont like what it exemplifies.

and you cannot deny that WotC did exactly that with 3rd, then with 4th...changed things because someone who didnt play would be more interested in playing....long before coming here and maybe before here even existed those people loving 3rd and agreeing with WotC thought it would never happen to them, but it did with 4th when they told everyone "you're doing it wrong if you like and play 3rd"..so basically it is Maxus, who you can tel i dont like from my sig...jsut ocming in trying to start shit...which i dont mind i can throw his/her shit back in his/her face....

i could really care less why someone would like 3rd or 4th better...in the context of this thread, i just use what i know of them an other edition to explain why the way 3rd and 4th have stressed to play has caused a problem with things in the way the game is viewed...that playing it isnt meant to work as they were preached to by the marketing department...but something different as written in the game...

you and all others can like what you want...i really dont care...but it feels contrary that i am passive aggresivley being told not to like what i like.

i dont mind if someone comes out and tells me not to like 2nd i will openly laugh back at them...just get tired of the word twisting shit such as Maxus likes to do.

speaking of this thread and your 2nd edition characters....what do you consider high level?

You are a lying sack of shit. No one in this thread has been telling you to stop liking 2nd edition or that you have to play 3rd. You stormed in here ranting about how everyone else was doing it wrong, and anyone who played or enjoyed 3.x was directly shitting on your game.

I like how you ignored my entire post where I called you on your bullshit. Of course, fbmf did the exact same thing and you responded to him, but that makes sense: I'm just some random low post-count member, while he can ban your ass. So you backpedal like crazy because you don't want to piss off the guy in charge.

[PoliteNewb]

Well, looking at what fantasy, comics and anime offer us...

--High level people never travel on the ground...they fly, or teleport, or astrally project, or have a spaceship. So you can (almost) never come to grips with them.

Yes. Almost all high-end characters in various media have access to alternate modes of movement, most commonly flight/airwalking (for villains teleportation is just about as common, but heroes are rarely given it, generally when their power level is completely insane already). Just so they aren't instantly owned by attack powerful enough to wreck the landscape, for starters. Also see, the next point.

Assuming you agree with that, WHY do you see alternate movement forms as defining for high-level? Why can't a person be high-level and still walk on the ground? You gave one example--avoid being owned by groundwrecking attacks--but can't that be solved simply by large-scale dodging, not necessarily large scale movement? Ichigo from Bleach can dodge huge blasts that destroy buildings, but he can't fly, or even travel long distances at superspeed. Why must non-flying people automatically be defined as low-level?

--High level people use ranged attacks almost exclusively, usually highly devastating ones. They shoot lasers, or explosions, or use ki-fist-dim-mak waves or something.

No. They do have effective ranged attacks, and more often than not their most powerful attacks are ranged, but all powerhouses who aren't explicitly fragile wizards use melee as their default form of combat.

I was ready to disagree, but after rereading what you said I agree. So, again: why are ranged attacks a must? The pat answer is because all bad guys have them, but I can think of plenty of bad guys which could be defined as "high-level" who either have or prefer to mix it up in melee...dragons, for example (in most cases they can breathe fire, but that is not long-range, can be limited in use, and does not need to be their primary attack; most iconic dragon fights I can think of from movies and such involve a lot of biting and clawing).

--High level people don't worry much about the mundane planet...they're busy with other planets, or dimensions, or whatever.

No. This is DnD peculiarity that arose from the need to explain, why the heck high-level people haven't ended pseudo-medieval stasis yet. However, high-level people can and do influence affairs on continental and planetary scale. Their adventures also often impact greater parts of the universe, but most often as a result of destroying the outside threats to their favored piece of real estate.

And again...why? Superman is high-level, right? He doesn't influence socio-politics for the most part, even though he's entirely capable of destroying other countries. Why can't high-level people be powerful, but limited in how widely they can employ that power? (aside from simply defining it that way)

--High level people ignore mundane dangers. Things like fire, ice, hunger/thirst, sleep, terrain, poisons, whatever...none of these things matter, unless they are magical (and usually high level magic).

Yes and no. Non-magical dangers can affect them. These dangers must be far more exteme than mundane fire and poison. Stuff like battling in the lake of lava (not on top of it, under it), or having a mountain fall on you should still be somewhat threatening. Again, fragile wizards and other glass cannon characters might be affected more easily. For that they are usually compensated by having bigger nukes or open-ended reality-warping powers.

I accept your revised version. That said, same question.

--High level people consider death an inconvenience at worst; to fully deal with them, you need to trap their soul or something.

Generally yes, alas. Revolving door of death happens rather often in high-powered series. At the very least, high-level characters will be able to negate or ignore the effects of apparently mortal wounds, survive much greater hurt than they are supposed to, or otherwise be practically impossible to actually kill. (I mean, above and beyond the protection afforded by whatever defensive superpowers they might explicitly have.) Sometimes they even might be able to actually undo negative events.

It may seem weird, but I actually have a much bigger problem with "return from the dead" than "withstand damage that should totally kill people". When I see guys in Bleach get nearly chopped in half, and they're fine a couple pages later, I'm pretty much okay with that...as long as their heart doesn't stop and their head doesn't come off their shoulders, it doesn't break my WSOD.

It's the returning from long death (in some cases, years or more) that bugs me.

My sole point in clarifying how other people want to define "high level" is, why do you feel the need to define it that way? Really, the converse...why do you feel the need to define anything less as "low level"? Both of those words are entirely arbitrary, and there's no reason you can't have a high-level world that doesn't involve those traits.

[violence in the media]

You know, you're right that the things I listed aren't exactly mechanical aspects of being high-level, though there are mechanical components, but they've always been the things that (to me) indicated when you were really "there."

Ice9 is pretty spot on with some of those things being a relative curve. But, it's a curve that generally coincides with gaining numeric levels as you outpace the plausibility of random NPCs having levels. This is the situation where the city watch is 3rd level when you're 1st, the become 5th when you're 3rd, and then when the MC reflexively makes them 7th once the PCs return at 5th level, the players call bullshit and the MC backs off.

I also realize (now) that I've been operating under at least two assumptions that may not be universal: 1. The common and the exceptional are well known; and 2. What happens during the gaming session is not the extent of what happens.

Assumption 1 is pretty much the idea that, where bears are common, people know about bears. Also, everyone knows who Superman and the Fantastic Four are, and can probably name a few of their exploits. As D&D doesn't have a reputation system, we've always used level as a loose substitute. Yes, you sometimes get people with reputations that are out of sync, but that's usually a result of deliberate effort or exceptional circumstance.

Assumption 2 is the one where, despite never having it mentioned "on-screen" we assume that everyone poops. And that's just kind of a shorthand for saying that we accept a certain amount of unexpected circumstances from the MC without needing game session event causality. For example, people can have "heard of you" without you having dragged Sir Robin's minstrels around with you in game.

I don't recall being able to pull off many of the things I listed with any character lower than 10th level, at least not in a satisfactory manner or with any sort of frequency or reliability. Again, being high level (to me) is more about tipping over the point where you become one of the biggest fish in your pond, and then getting to interact with the world from that standpoint, and less about how often you can teleport or kill a yak with mind-bullets.

[BearsAreBrown]

Flight s being a must at high levels is because no matter how supersweet the Bleach guy is at swording, if his opponent can fly and he can't then he is fucked.

[PoliteNewb]

Flight s being a must at high levels is because no matter how supersweet the Bleach guy is at swording, if his opponent can fly and he can't then he is fucked.

Why? Owls can fucking fly, and they don't own people. Neither do Rocs, necessarily.

Fly only becomes essential when flying artillery platforms are the default. And frankly, I think they're kind of boring.

[Midnight_v]

I think its demo'd the best by comic books whats supposed to be going on.

Ever read "The Authority" I note that the Midnighter is a high level fighter, and really Jack Hawksmore plays a similar "I punch it to death" but he's also something much more.
So yeah the Midnighter He does teleport in and kick the hell out of whatever is the problem, but that he's somekind of tactical battle simulator gone mad is just fluff. Point is... even at high level theres some space for the ass kicker guy. I"m not sure if he's worth not having 2 Apollo's though, but his power is combat and that means he gets Foil like in the Tome fighter which fucks over supermans pretty often.
The do high level things I think like . . . keep god from taking back the earth and bullies the goverments of the world into playing nice.
I don't know if thats not just more of the
Kobolds adventures x 10 = high level play

Why? Owls can fucking fly, and they don't own people. Neither do Rocs, necessarily.

Fly only becomes essential when flying artillery platforms are the default. And frankly, I think they're kind of boring

You sir, I doubt can fly but you just fucking owned all. I applaud you

[MGuy]

But there are different comics. Even comics with essentially the same characters show them at varying degrees of power. What's more I find a lot of comics and manga kind of ignore the direct affect being able to destroy half a continent really should have on the people at large. Seriously in a world where the justice league or x-men exist, considering the number of them and the technological level of their gadgets along with the super villains, "modern" society should not look anything like it does today in these stories.

[Midnight_v]

But there are different comics. Even comics with essentially the same characters show them at varying degrees of power. What's more I find a lot of comics and manga kind of ignore the direct affect being able to destroy half a continent really should have on the people at large. Seriously in a world where the justice league or x-men exist, considering the number of them and the technological level of their gadgets along with the super villains, "modern" society should not look anything like it does today in these stories.

1. I suggested the Authprity particularly because it really doesn't change that much power level wise, I'm not talking about the justice league, or the X-men or superman franchises that have been around for half a century or more. I'm discussing something thats been around for 1 to 3 authors who've kept the integrity of the characters very closely exact to as they've always been. Essentially, there are is not different Authority yet and I picked them for that reason.
2. The reason why those worlds still are like ours today is actually VERY much like as is suggested in the tome. People with power do NOT share it. You are NOT going to mass produce People of Mass destruction and tech like that is rare and/or extremely tightly guarded. Like how it is trying to buy nukes today. You might have a microwave in your house but you're not getting plutonium no matter what, and super dudes get powers from things NOT as repeatable, containable, or controlable as nuclear power. So just because there's a dude who burns face with his hellpower having a hellfire dispenser in your kitchen or to heat your home is just prett much completly fucking out, cause, he doesn't want you doing that, nor do the powers of hell, nor does your central, state, and local government.
So yeah I picked pretty well honestly, the authority, as a rubric for high level adventure.
The more I review it, the more I think that the thing I mentioned above is true. fight kobolds x 10 = high level.
You get to skip travel times and the koblods are called somethign different but its the same isn't it. . .

[Avoraciopoctules]

All I'm saying is, here is how some people who presumably know something about the game are defining "high-level". I figured you would disagree...but I would also appreciate it if you would give some of your own examples of what you think "high-level" adventures are like, or what you'd like to be doing at "high-level".

I'm tentatively defining "high-level" as the upper quarter of attainable power levels...in 1E/2E, you seldom got past 9th and almost never past 14th, so anything in that range is high-level. In 3E, getting to 20th is actually doable in a reasonable time span, so 15th-20th is high-level.

So lay it on me: what kind of crazy-town adventures do you want? If no published adventures fit the bill, give me some adventures you've been on, or run, or seen, or heard about.

1. The god-dragon Volcaetus has broken free of his chains and reignited the Smouldercone. Now an army of Abysian lava-men marches on the surrounding lands. The last of the ice mages who kept Volcaetus bound seek out the PCs and try to convince them to travel into space, then ride a frozen and highly magical comet (with monsters on it, plus at least one powerful guardian spirit) back down into the atmosphere and crash it into Volcaetus's skull-shaped volcano-top stronghold. Then maybe stab him in the face and steal some of his fire powers.

There's a bunch of nations allied against Volcaetus, and it is up to the PCs to decide who to help and under what conditions.

2. Shortly after taking the caveat-free elixir of longevity (lasts for a few thousand years before they need to make another) they had strived so hard to get, the PCs are again reminded that the amazing fuel the Magic Republic they've been buying powered armor and fancy gadgets from uses for most of its machines is having very bad long-term effects on the environment. Now that they could conceivably live forever, it might be time to think about engineering some societal change before this hamhanded global warming metaphor catches up with them.

3. There's a ghost king and his thousand-or-so spectral followers who would really appreciate it if the PCs convinced this demon lord to take back the curse it put on their descendants. Their descendants are a small nation based around a powerful and valuable magical energy node, and this nation would also be quite happy if the curse were gone, cause it's all burdensome and stuff. Maybe the sun never shines there AND more monsters haunt the area than normal AND people get evil magic birth defects. And there's a portal to hell open in the magic node, so it's pretty easy for stuff to get to or from the Boss Bad's hizzouse.

Thankfully, the demon lord is not immune to being mobbed by highly elite adventurers and stabbed a moderate number of times (after you kill it, it transforms, revealing a new, vaguely more difficult form. Only twice at the very most, though.), and its minions can never get along well enough to form into more than a group of small and loosely allied warbands. Save Cursedopolis and everyone there will be chill with the PCs. They could be the new bosses of Notsocursedanymoreville.

-----------------------------------

Reviewing number 3, I think I need to get some sleep. Goodnight.

[Parthenon]

1. I suggested the Authprity particularly because it really doesn't change that much power level wise, I'm not talking about the justice league, or the X-men or superman franchises that have been around for half a century or more. I'm discussing something thats been around for 1 to 3 authors who've kept the integrity of the characters very closely exact to as they've always been. Essentially, there are is not different Authority yet and I picked them for that reason.
2. The reason why those worlds still are like ours today is actually VERY much like as is suggested in the tome. People with power do NOT share it. You are NOT going to mass produce People of Mass destruction and tech like that is rare and/or extremely tightly guarded. Like how it is trying to buy nukes today. You might have a microwave in your house but you're not getting plutonium no matter what, and super dudes get powers from things NOT as repeatable, containable, or controlable as nuclear power. So just because there's a dude who burns face with his hellpower having a hellfire dispenser in your kitchen or to heat your home is just prett much completly fucking out, cause, he doesn't want you doing that, nor do the powers of hell, nor does your central, state, and local government.
So yeah I picked pretty well honestly, the authority, as a rubric for high level adventure.

Errr.... the Authority. The one where they had thousands of modified superpowered humans hidden in invisible buildings inside every single city and they all went out and broke shit up. Where in another storyline mass devastation happened to pretty much every single city in the world and life carried on as if it had never happened?

Authority changes a lot power wise within the party. It has:

• Completely awesome world changers- Engineer and Doctor,
• High level characters who can do the amazing- Apollo and Hawksmoor (Hawksmoor can teleport between cities, talk to cities and see the past within them, make the pavement and walls melt and suck in enemies, and as a deus ex machina turn an entire city into a fuck off huge mech),
• Mid level characters- Midnighter and Shen are Batman and Hawkman on crack, and while Jenny's actual powers are powerful, they are very limited.

Jenny Sparks/Quantum doesn't really count because her whole point is that the MC changes the world based on her actions without her input- encouraging someone to go into politics as a spur of the moment suggestion makes them Hitler-level successful. Her whole schtick is that she's the MC's girlfriend, and that the setting revolves around her. It could happen in any game with an MC girlfriend playing - in an epic game and a 1st level game.

---

I just looked up the Wikipedia article on the Authority and I'm pretty much "What the fuck?". The level of power is really weird now. You have Grifter and Deathblow- fucking Grifter, who have powers of "has guns". And they're supposed to be able to help the Engineer, who can make as many gun turrets as she wants and have several of her all shooting fuckoff huge railguns as an afterthought?

Okay, fine, Deathblow is now Wolverine with guns, but still... Grifter?

[BearsAreBrown]

Why? Owls can fucking fly, and they don't own people. Neither do Rocs, necessarily.

Are you purposefully being pedantic? We've all heard the tale of the Tarrasque who is beaten by a level 5 Wizard with a Crossbow. And look, that also explains the dominance of ranged attacks at high levels. Just because you think it's boring doesn't make it wrong.

[Ghostwheel]

One idea to make the fighter "archetype" half-decent in "high-powered" games (as defined by many on the board) is to use something like the Unearthed Arcana or 4e ritual system--but redone.

Imagine if anyone and everyone could use them. But redo them completely. So anything plot-related that a character needs to do under their own power becomes a ritual. A 5th-level equivalent ritual (3.x) could give someone the ability to fly. An 11th-level ritual would open a planar gate to wherever-the-hell-you-wanted. And a 17th-level ritual would summon a primordial elemental hound that would ferry you forever in an instant wherever you wanted to go. Whatever.

Make the rituals easy to use (1 minute casting time) with low DCs, and make it so that certain rituals can only be learned depending on the number of *ranks* in the specific skill, rather than by any actual check. Furthermore you can have some of them stored in ancient underground libraries or w/e, allowing DMs who want to scale their acquisition around the adventure, while others can just give them all at once (or allow PCs to research them in 10 minutes or whatever).

This at least allows any character who's trained (and you'd be stupid not to) to do any of the plot-related stuff. Heck, you could even allow some rituals to "hang", like the spells in the Chronicles of Amber books. So you're a fighter who'll need to fly? Instead of using the ritual in-combat (waste of time, 10 rounds, ugh), do it beforehand then "trigger" it when combat begins and fly for 5 minutes at a time. After that redo the ritual and you're ready to fly again. Or open up planar gates. Or summon gods. Or destroy cities. Or collapse the universe. Whatever.

[shadzar]

I like how you ignored my entire post where I called you on your bullshit. Of course, fbmf did the exact same thing and you responded to him, but that makes sense: I'm just some random low post-count member, while he can ban your ass. So you backpedal like crazy because you don't want to piss off the guy in charge.

you post was probably jsut a total pile of shit, but fbmf actually had content and doesnt join in the shit sucking like most others.

i have been banned from better boards...i dont fear banning. even had to show DF how easy it was to get around the ban feature of both vBulletin and phpBB if someone wanted to. when you wipe the shit from your mouth i will be more likely to respond to something you write.

[tussock]

Low level: Ride a magnificent destrier, command vicious hounds, fight ten men. Save the town, rescue the Sheriff's men, have truck with the Barkeep's daughter.

Mid level: Ride a flying ship, command fire and ice, fight a pack of trolls. Save the barony and push it's boundaries, rescue the Princess Bride, have truck with a Succubus.

High level: Ride an old dragon, command the four winds, fight the king of the giants. Save the nation, rescue an artifact set, have truck with the Queen of the Drow.

Epic level: Ride the ages, command the future, fight the whims of demi-gods and demon lords. Save all the folk of the northern lands, rescue a land lost to Ravenloft, have truck with the Goddess of truck and it's quite never the same again.

Demigod: Write your own city. Ten thousand loyal demons? Done.
Lesser god: Write your own nation. Giants rule the Pomarj now? Done.
Middling god: Write the continent anew. Dragonflight shakeup, new nations? Done.
Greater god: Write great changes to the world. Never did like the 3rd age? Done.

Overgod: Hi.

And true this, you can build the lot of them with AC, HP, DR, regen, spells, attacks, and actions per round. No fancy scales, just +enough per step that two below can't hope to beat it even with infinite tries.

[shadzar]

Ichigo from Bleach can dodge huge blasts that destroy buildings, but he can't fly, or even travel long distances at superspeed.

yes he can effectively....well could before he lost his shinigami powers using the 3rd level of his bankai.

he flies pretty much be walking on the raitsu in the air, and uses the same "flash-step" as yoruichi and byakuya kuchiki et all. and he does this from what would be considered level 1 of his shinigami...


further on flight and levels DBZ Kai Goku starts out using the flying nimbus but on his way home form otherworld down snake ay he then flies on his own, and by then his 7 year old son is also flying with krillin and picilo with only their second fight in the DBZ series which is against Nappa and Vegeta

now you might be saying that Goku and the others are special because they are aliens or something...ok...how about Gohan later on a date with Hercule's daughter and teaches he....a mere human how to fly as well. but she is no where near capable to help them fight against Buu. but she learns the ability to fly as a martial artists...aka fighter and at a low level.

flight should just be considered a mode of transportation and nothing more. Kurosaki doesnt use Yoruichi's antique to fight, just to get him to where Rukia is. When there he flies own his own when needed to fight.

flight cannot be considered a function of high level as it could be simply a racial ability. some it is native and natural to, others have to augment themselves in some way to do it.

[MGuy]

I don't know much about Authority that a wikipedia search doesn't tell me so I have no comment on that front.
But this:

2. The reason why those worlds still are like ours today is actually VERY much like as is suggested in the tome. People with power do NOT share it. You are NOT going to mass produce People of Mass destruction and tech like that is rare and/or extremely tightly guarded. Like how it is trying to buy nukes today. You might have a microwave in your house but you're not getting plutonium no matter what, and super dudes get powers from things NOT as repeatable, containable, or controlable as nuclear power. So just because there's a dude who burns face with his hellpower having a hellfire dispenser in your kitchen or to heat your home is just prett much completly fucking out, cause, he doesn't want you doing that, nor do the powers of hell, nor does your central, state, and local government.

I can never bring myself to believe. A thousand times over the earth has been attacked, taken over temporarily, or terrorized by people with enough super powered mojo to at least change society. Its not about power being shared its about it being utilized. There are simply TOO many super powered and over powered being for life to continue like it is now. Sure if there were only 1 Superman or a handful of humans and villains I could maybe see things churning on the same but there are simply TOO many supers and the level of technology is too high. Even if the Earthbound heroes and villains for any reason that actually makes sense deciding not to make a major impact on society (even though for the most part in these comics they had/have/do) there are generally "aliens" and other non-earthbound horrors that routinely cause disasters. I would think that logically that would change many many things for your average de powered joe. That society would suffer more from panic and fear at the revelation that these "things" exist outside the bounds of your friendly super man or your apparently impotent Bizarro and actually will destroy/kill people.I mean hasn't Darkseid nearly taken over 11ty billion times?

[Aryxbez]

Well it appears to me, an issue in this current discussion, is that Lago Paranoia has yet to respond to whoever addressing him. As well as others ignoring each others posts (like Shadazar it seems), which is simply bad for discussion, and for actually progressing with the matter here. Seems to me what FatR post has the right idea here, perhaps covered most of what I'd want to say. Also what was listed by PoliteNewb, I'd say is rather accurate of what's defining of Higher level play.

--High level people never travel on the ground...they fly, or teleport, or astrally project, or have a spaceship. So you can (almost) never come to grips with them.

Movement like Flight becomes common after awhile, because the average creatures, or encounters you fight in, now have this mode of transport. So, in order to stay competitive, your character must also be able to Fly, and/or have effective means of countering that movement. Be that through pulling enemies down to your level, "Jump Good" Samurai Jack/The Hulk, style, to the point may as well be flight to your foes. So I guess as things progress, eventually required to have certain forms of non-traditional ground based movement, might've experienced foreign forms of movement via items, or mounts (like spaceship fight off aliens, Pegasus for sky fortress, etc.), but will eventually become the norm, and the PC needs to have that power then.

--High level people use ranged attacks almost exclusively, usually highly devastating ones. They shoot lasers, or explosions, or use ki-fist-dim-mak waves or something.

I can see that, well as been said of having good ranged attacks to start. Should have abilities to counter ranged combat, be it through high amounts of movement to stay in their foes face, be able to out tough the attacks, deflect, or otherwise neutralize them, so can melee them proper.

Oh and I support "ki-fist-dim-mak waves", sounds pretty damn awesome.

--High level people don't worry much about the mundane planet...they're busy with other planets, or dimensions, or whatever.

As your abilities become all the more awesomely powerful, and can affect more than just a mere continent, then yes, your adventures should reflect the PC's need to solve issues elsewhere. I'm sure could have adventures that stay on the Material Plane, same planet or whatever.

--High level people ignore mundane dangers. Things like fire, ice, hunger/thirst, sleep, terrain, poisons, whatever...none of these things matter, unless they are magical (and usually high level magic).

Also, like to note falling, seen nowadays in media, PC's don't tend to take any Falling Damage at all, lessened greatly, unless it's in the lower power levels of things. Hell, even Fable games have the whole idea of "Heroes can survive falls that'd kill most" bit. That ramble aside, at high levels, most mundane dangers already countered too easily warrant a check for them and such. Usually elements come into play for the extreme of things, like wrestling tornadoes/tsunamis, fighting through terrain like Giant Old Growth Forests, or through mountains, for terrain to matter much.

--High level people consider death an inconvenience at worst; to fully deal with them, you need to trap their soul or something.

As FatR said, death isn't so much a threat anymore, at the High level spectrum of things. People like Kratos (God of War series), are coming back from the dead, fighting way back through Hell, as the norm. Like it or not, I prefer death to have meaning, but am a bit more accepting that to maintain such high level lethality, and the character as well, have to implement ability to circumvent death, assuming it happens common enough.


I think all these powers and such determined at certain levels, came from spellcasters, using them as benchmarks for what Fighter should do at High levels and such. When a Wizard is capable of Walls of Stone/Iron/Force, Fighter should have means, to break them, scale, otherwise circumvent them in some way (if not have ability prior to spellcasters having the spell), Area Attacks? Fighters have them in their own super cleaves, shockwaves and so forth.

Anyway, what was said, hope wasn't total rehash of what other posters have already mentioned. Been a bit since I've read through the whole thread again, so could've missed something.

[mlangsdorf]

Somewhere in one of the Dragon issues and used in one supplement before 2E. There are true diehards who insist that THAC0 was a 1E invention. I, apparently, missed my spot check at the time.

1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide has "To Hit A.C. 0" entries in Appendix E. THAC0 had been around for a long time, but I remember it taking 6-7 years to be generalized as a stat worth having. My copy of B2 (1981) doesn't have it; my copy of B8 (1984) has it.

[PoliteNewb]

to Avoraciopoctules: thanks for the examples, and yeah, those all sound like pretty kick-ass high-level adventures. Now I want Lago and other crazy-town-high-level fans to tell me why fighters can't participate in them.

I'm afraid I'm going to ignore most discussion of The Authority, which was a completely bullshit comic. Parthenon is right; it's designed around character shields and author fiat. In fact, it's a pretty good example of the kinds of adventures where fighters seriously ARE obsolete...if it's something that needs the Engineer or the Doctor to deal with, let's face it, the Midnighter and Swift are tagalongs. And honestly...that's not what I want out of D&D. If I want that kind of shit, I can play Champions, or something MTP-heavy. I simply don't want "high-level" D&D to get that high.

I honestly liked a lot of Ellis's characters (including Apollo and Midnighter) when he was writing the later issues of Stormwatch; the Authority just pissed me off.

Are you purposefully being pedantic? We've all heard the tale of the Tarrasque who is beaten by a level 5 Wizard with a Crossbow. And look, that also explains the dominance of ranged attacks at high levels. Just because you think it's boring doesn't make it wrong.

First, I've heard those stories, and they're bullshit. No monster is just going to sit there while you deal 3.5 damage to him every other round or so. So no, while you can crunch some math that says it's theoretically possible, it is a massive fail to say it will actually happen, unless you play the Tarrasque and other melee brutes as rocks that sit there and get shot.

Second, I never said it was "wrong" to like flying artillery; I said it was boring, AND that it was not necessarily intrinsic to a definition of "high-level" unless you accept it as a base premise. Which you do not have to do.

Tussock: I can go with your definitions, thanks for the input.

Ichigo from Bleach can dodge huge blasts that destroy buildings, but he can't fly, or even travel long distances at superspeed.

yes he can effectively....well could before he lost his shinigami powers using the 3rd level of his bankai.

You've probably read further than me (I'm only partway through the Arrancar arc...Nel just transformed back to her true form), but to date:

1.) I have not seen Ichigo fly under his own power. Make huge leaps, yes...stuff that will let him avoid combat or even slash a flying foe, but not something he can use to fly across the Atlantic, or to the moon.

2.) I have not seen Ichigo use Shunpo to really go anywhere; again, for in-combat dodging and stuff, yeah, he's hella fast. But he doesn't use that to run at 600 mph for hours. As far as I can tell, even Yoruichi who is a master of Shunpo can't use to, say, cross the country. That's why I said "long distances"...it's not a travel power.

To Tzor/mlangsdorf, re: THAC0:

Len Lakofka (an early contributor to 1E AD&D) was the first one I ever saw use the system that became the standard for 2E, in a Dragon magazine (don't recall which)...he basically just evened out the "Attack bonus charts" from the original DMG so that the increases were standardized (in the 1/1 Warrior, 2/3 Priest, 1/2 Rogue, 1/3 Wizard fashion that was the default for 2E). He presented it as a chart, but the standardized increases made it easy to do the math yourself.

Just a bit of trivia.

[hogarth]

1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide has "To Hit A.C. 0" entries in Appendix E.

I was going to mention that, but I wasn't 100% sure I was remembering correctly.

[Maxus]

Total anime nerd nitpick:

Shunpo/the other high-speed moves seem to work like this:

You have an instant to travel. How far you travel depends on your own strength/how good you are at whatever you call your teleport.

So, yeah. It is something of a short-range power.

Now, some things -can- fly/stand on the air and presumably could travel that way. But not especially faster than anyone else, I guess.