De canistro textrinum

[Mistborn]

It's a fact that stories about the underdog winning are inherently more satisfactory than the ones where the stronger force crushes the weaker. One is heroic, the other is bullying. So yes, enabling the PCs to beat opponents they lack the means to confront directly is one of the things MTP excels. However, this is good for the game. It's more memorable when you defeat Demogorgon because an allied god changed the landscape to restrict the demon's abilities and another ally forged an artifact for you to use than if Demogorgon is simply in your "beatable CR" range and you simply stab him in a straight-up melee.

Wow, now that I have a chance to fully respond to this post I have a hard time doing it. This statement is fucked up in so many ways. It's clear now the nocker truly does not understand how TTRPGs work. Authored fiction and TTRPGs in fact work in ways that are completely incompatible. D&D is not just not the game for nocker, it's the worst possible game for nocker.

So let's get something straight, heroes in fiction face impossible odds and win because the author dictates everything by fiat. This can't happen in D&D. People have a hard time grasping this and just internet arguing at them doesn't seem to be cutting it. So here is a little koan.

"In D&D you can only defeat the opponent you are able to defeat."

If anyone can figure out what that means themselves they're a step closer to understanding why victory by MTP is meaningless.

[Foxwarrior]

Wouldn't you be somewhat confused to discover that the modern campaign you were playing in was actually set in a world with no aircraft, nockermensch? Not even if you only found this out halfway through the campaign?

[nockermensch]

Wouldn't you be somewhat confused to discover that the modern campaign you were playing in was actually set in a world with no aircraft, nockermensch? Not even if you only found this out halfway through the campaign?

Yes I'd be confused. That's why I said "one shot".

Also, regarding Misty's last tirade. No, Misty. You're wrong. Or rather: You're right in the shallowest of the senses, and wrong on everything that comes afterwards.

[Slade]

Here, a CR 3 Beholder:

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=557.0

It has fear, Charm, and Sleep eyes too.

Balors as well:
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=1820.0

Vrock:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost ... tcount=981

Although the abilitird of as Vrock are low level spells:
http://dndtools.eu/spells/book-of-vile- ... rock--144/
1st level spell =spores
http://dndtools.eu/spells/book-of-vile- ... eech--187/
2nd level spell =Screech

[Foxwarrior]

Ah, so when you say "one shot", you mean "a game with many tantalizing world details that you'll never get to understand, a la The Lost Room".

[Mistborn]

Also, regarding Misty's last tirade. No, Misty. You're wrong. Or rather: You're right in the shallowest of the senses, and wrong on everything that comes afterwards.

I find it hard to believe that you actually understood what I was saying. If you did you wouldn't be so frozen fast.

[Foxwarrior]

I do believe your koan would be equally accurate if you said "you can only defeat the opponent you are able to defeat," Lord Mistborn.

[nockermensch]

Ah, so when you say "one shot", you mean "a game with many tantalizing world details that you'll never get to understand, a la The Lost Room".

Sometimes, yes. There's a story at hand. The story is resolved. The game is over. If it was an adventure against orcs, and no player was a hobgoblin, the question "do hobgoblins exist in this world" is pointless wankery. If we didn't fight an orc assassin using blink or incorporeal udead and we don't have ethereal plane affecting powers, I seriously don't care if the ethereal plane even exists there. And so on. I'm okay with things outside of the adventure's scope existing in a quantic state.

I find it hard to believe that you actually understood what I was saying. If you did you wouldn't be so frozen fast.

I find it hard to believe that you don't see the shallowness of what you said. Here's a hint: Frodo was able to defeat Sauron.

[Mistborn]

I do believe your koan would be equally accurate if you said "you can only defeat the opponent you are able to defeat," Lord Mistborn.

If you've been following what I've been saying you should understand the lesson inherent in that statement vis a vis TTRPGs. I don't thing nocker understands though, otherwise he wouldn't be so frozen fast. If anyone thinks they understand they should try explaining it to the rest of the class.

I find it hard to believe that you don't see the shallowness of what you said. Here's a hint: Frodo was able to defeat Sauron.

I find it hard to believe you're using the story of LotR as an example of something to be emulated in D&D. This is literally my strawman version of your position

[Stubbazubba]

I actually agree with Misty that in D&D, you can only defeat the enemies you can defeat.

However, I think this is an inexcusible flaw in the modern gaming environment, where characters are more important than die rolls and narrative elements more important than rules mastery.

The number of people who actually want to play D&D as-written is so remarkably small, and they would be better served either by wargames or computer games. Meanwhile, the number of people who want to play an adventure story with randomized game elements - which is what D&D sells itself as - is much larger, and much more important.

Therefore, I agree that there's nothing wrong with scaling down enemies to appropriate power levels to facilitate a narrative that the group can invest in. Yes, it makes the setting way more fluid, but only crazies on the internet think that a D&D game's setting needs to be rigidly close to how the RAW presents it, or even rigid at all, for the game to be enjoyable.

[Foxwarrior]

I don't appreciate it when novels play loose with their setting consistency either, Stubbazubba. Scaling down the power levels doesn't have to involve turning your setting into mush, however; you just have to embrace the fact that you're not playing in the Generic D&D Setting.

Lord Mistborn: You don't like quests that involve a BBEG you don't kill with overwhelming firepower?

[Fuchs]

There are so many different high-level monsters around, the world doesn't change significantly if you scale down a number of them for low-level adventures and campaigns. It would not even change if you removed them entirely, there are enough monsters around to fill any needed "ecological niche", especially if you can use advanced and classed monsters.

Remove every monster that was newly introduced in the Epic Level handbook. 99,9 % of all D&D games are not affected, their players won't even notice it because their "game space" never included them in the first place. You can do the same with monsters from other less used sourcebooks - no one misses them, never having seen them in the first place. And the settings are not affected either, since almost no setting actually needed or used those monsters at all, and not every GM, to say the least, had those books in the first place.

You can eliminate or change just about every monster in the game and the game settings won't change significantly because there are enough other monsters around to take their place, should it be needed. A great number of monsters never had a "place" in the first time for being too obscure for the vast majority of games.

Vrocks are not iconic monsters that make or break a setting. Whatever you do with them doesn't change a setting significantly at all (with the exception of "Dungeons and Vrocks, the special vrock-centric campaign for special players who care a lot about vrocks".)

And what goes for vrocks goes for the vast majority of monsters - no such monster is of critical importance for a setting. And tehre are a lot of monsters from such obscure sources that the average player doesn't meet them ever, just because the GM never even bothered to use them if he even knows of them. The setting is not harmed by this either. If those monsters are never used they might as well not exist - or get scaled dopwn to a level where they get used.

With regards to scaling down "everything": Unless your idea of a low-level adventure consists of trying to get high-level stuff to solve the problem (which is not exactly a very popular stance, to say the least, nor what published adventures are commonly written for), low level adventures don't feature high levels, and therefore that stuff can be left in an undefined state. There is really not much if anything in a low-level adventure that needs the presence of high-level characters or monsters, most (gear, help, services) can be provided by lower level sources as well.

Now, even if it's terribly important for your character that an archmage picked him up as an orphan and then teleported him to his foster home, unless you plan to use that in game in any significant way - like, "call my archmage uncle" - it does not affect the adventure anymore than the other PC's membership in an assassin's guild that does not provide any help during the adventure.

[ModelCitizen]

I apologize for ever bringing up the Lower Planes and giving K and Fuchs an excuse to blather about a monster that a lot of people don't have any personal attachment to. If you didn't grow up on 1e or Planescape you probably don't care about vrocks. I guess K figured out that picking an example monster that's somewhat removed from the core D&D experience makes his position sound less dumb than it really is.

I suggest reading every mention of "CR 3 vrock" as "CR 1 fire giant." Every argument made so far to justify stealth-nerfing vrocks can be used just as well to justify a two-story-tall burning jotun being killed in face-to-face combat by a couple of house cats.

[fectin]

"In D&D you can only defeat the opponent you are able to defeat."

You're dead wrong. D&d is a game of defeating opponents you cannot defeat. That is the Gordian Knot at the heart of the game. Anything else is easy mode, a tutorial at best.

[Fuchs]

I apologize for ever bringing up the Lower Planes and giving K and Fuchs an excuse to blather about a monster that a lot of people don't have any personal attachment to. If you didn't grow up on 1e or Planescape you probably don't care about vrocks. I guess K figured out that picking an example monster that's somewhat removed from the core D&D experience makes his position sound less dumb than it really is.

I suggest reading every mention of "CR 3 vrock" as "CR 1 fire giant." Every argument made so far to justify stealth-nerfing vrocks can be used just as well to justify a two-story-tall burning jotun being killed in face-to-face combat by a couple of house cats.

K already said it would be not appropriate to scale down a 50 foot dragon so it was a cr3 base monster. Though curses and prior existing damage and wounds and such can help there some.

If I wanted to use fire giants at CR3 - I think I used "stock" fire giants as a GM once in 20 years, and never met them as a player - I'd adjust the encounter, through choice of enviroment, and hindering and helping gear and circumstances you can adjust an encounter pretty well, see "Vrock captured and trapped and drained by mage".

There is no rule that prevents the GM from adjusting encounters so they are easier or harder. I thimnk no one is actually claiming that you can only ever face monsters on a balanced battlefield, with everyone prepared, healthy and ready, and never under (very) favorable conditions.

[Mistborn]

I apologize for ever bringing up the Lower Planes and giving K and Fuchs an excuse to blather about a monster that a lot of people don't have any personal attachment to. If you didn't grow up on 1e or Planescape you probably don't care about vrocks. I guess K figured out that picking an example monster that's somewhat removed from the core D&D experience makes his position sound less dumb than it really is.

I suggest reading every mention of "CR 3 vrock" as "CR 1 fire giant." Every argument made so far to justify stealth-nerfing vrocks can be used just as well to justify a two-story-tall burning jotun being killed in face-to-face combat by a couple of house cats.

Well nice to see there are still people not frozen fast here.

Planar travel is a staple of what it means to be high level in D&D. Now if you never leave the prime that stats of the Vrock may not mean anything to you but the Vrock is important to the expanded setting. Vrocks are a part the Demonic hordes of the Abyss who are locked in eternal blood war with the Legions of Hell itself. The armies of the lower planes are kind of a big deal. Or at least they are supposed to be.

This is what the CR 3 Vrock world looks like. A portal between the Abyss and the Prime has been torn open and now Vrocks blacken the sky. Then the Vrocks are killed by the local militia. Or do Vrocks only have stats when the PCs are fighting them.

You're dead wrong. D&d is a game of defeating opponents you cannot defeat. That is the Gordian Knot at the heart of the game. Anything else is easy mode, a tutorial at best.

I would have thought the person who wrote the epic Ignoratio post would understand. Oh well, life is full of disappointments.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I find it hard to believe you're using the story of LotR as an example of something to be emulated in D&D. This is literally my strawman version of your position

You realize that D&D has been chasing after Tolkien since the beginning, right? That Lord of the Rings was at or near the top of the list of things Gygax and Arneson were trying to emulate when they wrote the game right? You realize that one of the core classes that has survived to this day was created to emulate, and was named in reference to Aragorn right? That Halflings were originally named Hobbits and were only changed in name after a C&D from Tolkien's Estate, and even then were clearly ripping off Tolkien until 3e came out, right?

Frankly, Misty has yet to add anything to any thread he decides to grace with his opinion. He's either an idiot or a troll and either way, I think I'm better off without him so I think I am going to add him to my ignore list now.

[Mistborn]

I find it hard to believe you're using the story of LotR as an example of something to be emulated in D&D. This is literally my strawman version of your position

Notice I said story and not setting. Replicating the story of LotR in D&D is dumb. So dumb that an entire webcomic was written about how dumb it is.

Stay frosty my friend.

[ModelCitizen]

If I wanted to use fire giants at CR3 - I think I used "stock" fire giants as a GM once in 20 years, and never met them as a player - I'd adjust the encounter, through choice of enviroment, and hindering and helping gear and circumstances you can adjust an encounter pretty well, see "Vrock captured and trapped and drained by mage".

That's the thing. As soon as we start talking about a different monster suddenly it's not cool to nerf the shit out of it. I don't know whether you subjectively think fire giants should have lots of HD because they're big or because they have a consistent traditional place in the Gary Gygax Dungeon Heirarchy, but for one reason or another you don't think the same rules apply. You're using vrocks as an example of some general principle but you're not willing to extend the principle beyond a few monsters you don't care about.

Side point: I've tried a couple times to run encounters like what you're describing, where a low level party gets a gimmicky way to defeat a massively over-CR'd melee bruiser. It has been my experience that it doesn't fucking work. The PCs either treat the encounter like a Gygaxian trial-and-error puzzle and try random shit (likely including "go punch it to see if it's an illusion" and then one of them dies) or they just get frustrated because they don't know what they're "supposed" to do and default to running in and hitting it with a greatsword. Basically you either have to have big blinking arrows pointing to how they're supposed to win (super lame) or they die and then blame you for not making your expectations clear (even lamer).

[violence in the media]

That's the thing. As soon as we start talking about a different monster suddenly it's not cool to nerf the shit out of it. I don't know whether you subjectively think fire giants should have lots of HD because they're big or because they have a consistent traditional place in the Gary Gygax Dungeon Heirarchy, but for one reason or another you don't think the same rules apply. You're using vrocks as an example of some general principle but you're not willing to extend the principle beyond a few monsters you don't care about.

I'm kind of curious why you have to use low power vrocks in the first place? Wouldn't half-fiend kenku get you all the diabolical birdman you need? With the added advantage that you can just plug that combo into most monster generators on the web and have it spit out the result in less than a second?

[nockermensch]

I find it hard to believe you're using the story of LotR as an example of something to be emulated in D&D. This is literally my strawman version of your position

Notice I said story and not setting. Replicating the story of LotR in D&D is dumb. So dumb that an entire webcomic was written about how dumb it is.

Stay frosty my friend.

While that comic is a hilarious read, it's very dumb to claim that's dumb to play the Monomyth in D&D.

Seriously, Misty. The story of LotR is the fucking Monomyth. Not every campaign needs to be about it, but some are, and they're very fun. For all that frozen fast forced meme you keep spouting, it's you who're frozen in a permanent babby's first d&d. Wake up.

[nockermensch]

If I wanted to use fire giants at CR3 - I think I used "stock" fire giants as a GM once in 20 years, and never met them as a player - I'd adjust the encounter, through choice of enviroment, and hindering and helping gear and circumstances you can adjust an encounter pretty well, see "Vrock captured and trapped and drained by mage".

That's the thing. As soon as we start talking about a different monster suddenly it's not cool to nerf the shit out of it. I don't know whether you subjectively think fire giants should have lots of HD because they're big or because they have a consistent traditional place in the Gary Gygax Dungeon Heirarchy, but for one reason or another you don't think the same rules apply. You're using vrocks as an example of some general principle but you're not willing to extend the principle beyond a few monsters you don't care about.

The general principle that's maintained is "present encounters at the difficulty that's convenient for the situation." For some monsters this can be achieved my nerfing the monster, for other monsters by placing negative circumstances on the battlefield, etc.

And yet again, if I need a "CR 1 Fire Giant", this is easily achieved by putting black skin and a red wig on a half-ogre warrior 1 and giving it fire immunity. The reasoning is exactly the same for the CR 7 balor: There's a creature calling himself "a fire giant"; when the PCs ask for a description I'll say it's "a black skinned, red bearded humanoid, 8 feet of ripping muscles."

D&D has crazy genetics that aren't fully explained by templates, and I sincerely don't care if a 8' tall guy who's 1/8 fire giant, 1/8 ogre and 6/8 peasant stock decides to bully tiny people by claiming he's the real thing. In fact, this kind of confusion and misleading must be rampant in the vast expanses of low level d&d lands. Somebody's uncle, twice removed, once served in an army that was scattered by fire giants and now nobody in the village is willing to call the bluff of the bully who's demanding protection money. In fact, the smith's son tried to and was splattered for his troubles. (because the 1d6hp expert didn't exactly fare well against the 2d6+7 large tetsubo the "giant" carries)

And if the situation demands armies of those guys, then sure, there's some wizard or shit conducting breeding experiments, and yet again, this regimented CR1 race of brutes say to everybody that they are fire giants. Maybe there are real fire giants into the racket benefiting somehow.

I mean, do you guys really want to metagame so much? This is not AD&D anymore (where the DM was out to fuck with you and you had only your own metagame knowledge to keep you alive).

[Mistborn]

While that comic is a hilarious read, it's very dumb to claim that's dumb to play the Monomyth in D&D.

Seriously, Misty. The story of LotR is the fucking Monomyth. Not every campaign needs to be about it, but some are, and they're very fun. For all that frozen fast forced meme you keep spouting, it's you who're frozen in a permanent babby's first d&d. Wake up.

ara ara, is this really the place you're unwilling to retreat from. Well it seems that a long last I can bring this increasingly pointless exercise to a close.

You can't plan events with iron certainty in a role playing game not without taking control away from the PCs. RPGs are nothing like single author fiction and trying to make them more like authored fiction is as trying to make video games more "cinematic".

As for the Heroes Journey that fails as an RPG concept at stage 1. In D&D you totally get the ability to refuse the call and not get railroaded back onto the prepared plot. The players have the ability to say "fuck this shit I'm going to Mechanus". That the one thing that RPGs have that Video Games can't match, the ability of the player to set aside the story they had prepared for them and write a new one.

Are you sure you're not the one still playing babby's first D&D nocker.

[Wrathzog]

I'm confused. So, I'm reading this wikipedia article on the monomyth, because it's pretty interesting, and refusing the call is literally step 2. In D&D terms, that would be the point where the DM pulls the players back into the story regardless of their protests (whether through coercion or inducement). Ideally, you do this without being too heavy-handed.

And while you're absolutely right about the key difference between TTRPG's and VRPG's being the Human Adjudicator/Narrator, the DM, you're ignoring his ability to KEEP the adventure on rails if he so chooses. The Players can totally refuse to play his adventure if they want, but he is just as in his right to totally refuse to not play his adventure. That road goes both ways.

[nockermensch]

As for the Heroes Journey that fails as an RPG concept at stage 1. In D&D you totally get the ability to refuse the call and not get railroaded back onto the prepared plot. The players have the ability to say "fuck this shit I'm going to Mechanus". That the one thing that RPGs have that Video Games can't match, the ability of the player to set aside the story they had prepared for them and write a new one.

Are you sure you're not the one still playing babby's first D&D nocker.

First, it's hilarious when you boast that your character can set aside the story prepared for them, in a discussion about the validity of the Monomyth. You're a walking newbie joke.

I guess the term "character hooks" is anathema to you, no? Character backgrounds aren't there to fill space in a sheet that already has to contain too much, but to provide ways to draw people into stories.

The part that you're failing to see is that no DM that values his time writes character agnostic plots. The players will be presented with adventures they can't refuse or they'll break character, and when this is well done, nobody will call it rail-roading. If you're the lone mysterious stranger without past in a group of characters with background, you'd be simply dragged along, and help the overall narrative by providing insights from an outsider PoV, which is completely awesome on itself.

Of course, you can also totally be a dick and say: "I care nothing about these people I just met. I'll go to Mechanus." and then adventure will actually split into time slots where for (1/party size)th of the time I DM a solo adventure for you and for (party size-1/party size)th of the time I DM the character driven story for the rest of the party.

But guess what, once you finish whatever first solo adventure you had, you now have character hooks. You made allies or enemies, and now you can be drawn into stories too. And chances are like 1:1 that whatever story I create for you will intersect with the main storyline. Which means your character can or join one of the stories made for him, or he can keep his entire 1-20 life fleeing from his destiny, but this is okay, because this is a story too.

Since you were in a koan mood a while ago, here's some gratuitous buddism: your character has karma. If not a preexisting karma provided by the "character background" paragraphs, a dynamically generated karma generated by his own actions in game. The illusion of freedom you have in a RPG is as illusory as it is in real life. The world is living, and will engulf your character, react and adapt to his actions. The character will in fact walk through rails, but he'll not realize this because the rails were made for him.

So, back to what you wrote: while it's completely true that RPGs aren't scripted like videogames. What you described as a "RPG's strength" is actually an open sandbox videogame. People have been roleplaying "their own stories" in open sandboxes since the early 90s, at very least. The actual strength of a RPG is above this weaksauce.