Shitty character concepts need to die

[Username17]

Link

People are seriously flipping their shit when I suggest we should cap fighters.

I have no idea what they want.

They want the ability to not advance their characters. Conan is a low level character who stays a low level character throughout his adventures, but he was used repeatedly as an example of a character who stayed mundane.

What the people on that thread were flipping their shit about was the suggestion that they had to gain power and had to change in order to do so.

I generally agree with this... I've often felt like a lot of the issue with the fighter debate has been because of psychological issues and cognitive dissonance, and that many of the people complaining would be satisfied if the issue were simply presented differently.

Like a previous poster said, people really do want to come to the game table, start out and make "sword guy" but are often okay if sword guy EVENTUALLY learns Sever the Aether when he graduates from Knight to Shining Phlebotinum Knight. I doubt there'd be too much outcry at having something like the Tome Knight, and that there'd be even less outcry if every class was capped that way and requiring people to move on to a graduated concept.

Simply messing around with the names like that is probably a viable way of avoiding a backlash from all the psychological problems people have with just saying "there is no mundane level 20 guy."

Pretty much this. If all the regular classes cap out at 6th or 10th level and you have to take a Prestige Class after that, no one is going to bitch. It's just the structure of the game. People get caught up on a couple of issues:

• The fact that the Tome Knight goes to 10th level and the Wizard goes to 20th level freaks people out. Even though you can still play a prestige classed Knight out to 20th level and even though no one actually plays a 20th level pure class wizard regardless, people don't like the implication that "Wizard" is a 20 level character concept and "Knight" is a 10 level character concept. It's totally true, but people don't like being told that. The solution here is to cap "Wizard" and "Knight" at the same level, and allow wizards to simply continue their concept with paragon paths like "Archmage", while knights have to get some fucking phlebtonium in their paragon progressions.
  
  The fact that character progression is mandatory at all really pisses in peoples' Cheerios. A lot of people just don't want to get to level 8. There should be an option to just stay at one level and continue picking up skills and bullshit abilities. You'll notice how in the WotC thread, so many people were complaining about doing high level things at all. They shouldn't have to.

-Username17

[ishy]

So this thread grew a lot over night, lets adress some of the points some people made.
I'll admit, it was my fault for using the fighter word. It threw people for a loop I guess.

So making it so that the Fighter is better at using magic swords or making it so that flying creatures aren't perfectly stable fortresses in the sky (...)

Your solution is B)Giving the non-magical guy magic (in the form of a magic sword) + A) nerf the shit out of everything that is magical

Wait, so how's F supposed to be good enough then? If your only non-realistic ability is "whenever you would roll a die, choose the result", how are you supposed to fight an invisible, astral projecting, flying wizard who summons ghosts and force cages at you?

By banning such monstrosities before the campaign even starts. The problem disappears like that.

Your solution is A) Low power-level games

go with a job system. if the fighter is holding a sword, he has fire powers. switching to a mace means you can smack rivers to freeze them, and spears let you control the weather and summon lightning bolts.

the elemental spirits think high level fighters are really cool, you see. djinn and efreet spend half their time arguing over whether a varangian guard could beat a jaguar warrior in a fight

Your solution appears to be B)making non-magical guy magical

So yes, you can totally have abilities like Throw the idiot ball (Ex) that requires a saving throw or some shit and make the target commit a stupid tactical mistake (the player decides exactly how) for the next round. Place those abilities on a limited schedule (the hero knows he cannot push his luck too much, after all) and you're done.

Now, this has a phlebotinium source, namely "being a plucky protagonist".

So your solution is B)Giving the non-magical guy magic and lying about it.

I might translate "low power level games" into "not crazily high-powered games," but there are still a few options you missed:

E) Fuck balance. Adam plays Gandalf; Bob plays a crippled hobbit; both enjoy it.
F) Plot points! People who play fighters are the specialist of snowflakes, and receive metaplot or metagame powers.
G) Fuck real characters, right in the ear. Wizards roll on the "raped by demons" table, just for funsies.
H) Everyone else loses combat effectiveness. All spellcasting has a minimum time of [level] minutes (or whatever), all items go away, and everyone else acts 1/3 as often.
I) THUNDERDOME! All arena combat, all the time. Not exactly a solution, but it prevents the (even worse) out of combat disparity.
J) Squads. Adam is a wizard, Bob is a regiment.
K) Entourage. Fighters are inherently charismatic, and have organizations of thousands working for them. That's a little ironic, because they still lose in combat, but they get to just have all kinds of stuff: equipment, intel, money, etc.

Well I guess I should have added, or a combination of the above or something. Lets go through your list:
E) Either you are lying to your playerbase and are saying that they are totally equal characters (C) or you're telling them to go fuck themselves (D) or you're running a low power-level game (A) or a combination I guess
F) You've chosen option B) here, gave your non-magical guy magical plot points and lied about how they are not magical
G) Sounds like you're running a low power-level game
H) Sounds like you're running a low power-level game
I) Like you said yourself, this is not relevant at all.
J) Your squad still can't touch a d&d ghost for example, unless they are magical
K) Exact same thing as J except the scale?

[Anguirus]

Long time lurker here. I felt compelled to add my two cents. I think that the most interesting thing here (although probably not the most useful) are the related ideas of metagame powers and powersource: protagonist because, honestly, that is usually what people mean when they say they want to play a mundane character. That makes sense because it is a well established character archetype and is really very appealing in a base escapist fantasy sense. Protagonist guy really is the most fantastic (in a psychoanalytical sense) character you can play because the narrative, and often the rules of the universe contort around you to allow for your success. If you're ever going to give the mundane folk what they want (which might not be possible) you're going to have to design a powersource: protagonist class. Here are some of the issues with that.

First, that kind of universe distorting power is actually the exact thing that rules exist to tamp down. The only reason that we don't just mtp is to avoid "nah-uh, you didn't shoot me because when you weren't looking I switched out your bullets with blanks" which can only be done through some sort of third party abitration (the rules engine). That said, this only becomes a big deal when you're undermining somebody else's narrative agency. So, while Batman and The Joker are on the exact same powersource, in rpg land PCs need to be immune to the effects of protagonist powers or feelings will get hurt.

Second, under no circumstances can the players be aware of the fact that their mundane powers are actually protagonist powers. People fucking hate being told that Batman has plot armor more than anything. This also makes sense because nothing ruins an escapist fantasy more than being reminded that it is only a dream, or, rather, that it could only ever be a dream.

Finally, there doesn't feel like there is a lot of room for gaining new class features. This is not the same as saying that plot-hack protagonist guy can't be part of a level 20 adventure, but fundamentally "nah-uh because..." is just as useful agaist orcs as it is deities. Anything they can do is going to level automatically such that they can't learn newer, better versions of their abilities. This might actually be what people want, though, so it might not be a problem.

[Caedrus]

The fact that character progression is mandatory at all really pisses in peoples' Cheerios. A lot of people just don't want to get to level 8. There should be an option to just stay at one level and continue picking up skills and bullshit abilities. You'll notice how in the WotC thread, so many people were complaining about doing high level things at all. They shouldn't have to.[/list]

-Username17

Essentially, making something akin to E6, except applicable at whatever level you want. I suppose having such a feature could also have the fringe benefit of preventing characters from "freezing" at level 20.

[Winnah]

All fighters should secretly receive an illusionist cohort that follows them around and magically embellishes their 'exploits' to Quixotic levels of absurdity.

This continues until the other players crack the shits, the player of the fighter realises that they are being fucked with, or the DM loses patience, at which point the reveal is made. The fighter then catches a fever and their secret illusionist cohort rolls their comatose body into a latrine to die.

That's the only mutually satifying way I know how to respond to the desire to play a high level, incompetant muggle in fantasyland. The fighter player get's to have their moment of glory and I get to cruelly mock them. Win/Win.

[OgreBattle]

Essentially, making something akin to E6, except applicable at whatever level you want. I suppose having such a feature could also have the fringe benefit of preventing characters from "freezing" at level 20.

Upper level Class Features turn into feat bought for an EXP value perhaps.

[nockermensch]

The fact that character progression is mandatory at all really pisses in peoples' Cheerios. A lot of people just don't want to get to level 8. There should be an option to just stay at one level and continue picking up skills and bullshit abilities. You'll notice how in the WotC thread, so many people were complaining about doing high level things at all. They shouldn't have to.

This is very true and it should be dealt the game having some of the alternative advancement schedules you guys discussed on the ... book of gears?

Remember, in the fucking Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, the PCs stayed exactly the same for the whole run. Videogames have another problem: They're built like 4e, while you keep "progressing" just to do basically the same tasks against higher DCs.

So yeah, a framework like D&D where the conceptual space for what constitutes an "adventure" explodes many times from an 1-20 progression gets on some people's nerves.

[nockermensch]

By banning such monstrosities before the campaign even starts. The problem disappears like that.

Your solution is A) Low power-level games

See my above post. D&D up to 3e is the product of 30 years of designers masturbating over spellcasters (which were always their self-projected characters). A lot of things spellcasters take for granted in D&D don't need to exist and in fact don't exist in a lot of genre fiction.

So yes, you can totally have abilities like Throw the idiot ball (Ex) that requires a saving throw or some shit and make the target commit a stupid tactical mistake (the player decides exactly how) for the next round. Place those abilities on a limited schedule (the hero knows he cannot push his luck too much, after all) and you're done.

Now, this has a phlebotinium source, namely "being a plucky protagonist".

So your solution is B)Giving the non-magical guy magic and lying about it.

If by magic you mean "the power to do awesome stuff", then yes. A lot of useless discussion happens when somebodyFrank preemptively defines "magic" as "the ability to do cool things" and then proceed to unsurprisingly bash non-magical people for not doing cool things. It's totally begging the question and useless for any productive discussion.

From another angle, the way you describe the ability working goes a really long way to make people define a class as "magic" or not. If the Hero class has a feature called One in a million (Ex) that allows them to treat any roll like a 20 (and if it's an attack roll, to automatically confirm the critical) and the flavor text is that "when it matters most, you strike true, no matter how impossible the shot may be." then I take that a lot of people would accept this as "non-magical". And if Throw the Idiot ball's flavor text is something like: "You realize the perfect combination of circumstances to goad or trick your enemy to commit a fatal mistake. Maybe it's an insult you throw, maybe a feint or just your body language, but you can make people act in a way that they'll immediately regret." then again I think people wouldn't think that's "magical". Because pop culture already convinced them that this is how the underdog wins.

Of course, this is cultural. Eastern cultures have a widespread belief in kung fu/chi, so that when we enter the tall tales universe of storytelling, they can readily believe that a highly trained monk can non-magically stand on thin bamboo stalks or something. Western audiences don't buy that, but they buy John Rambo or Frank Duke going alone against entire armies and winning. Same thing when Batman, Conan, Rick O'Connell or Indiana Jones face supernatural monsters and wins.

This is a terrible idea, and fuck you for suggesting such an ability. I think I would break my usual rule of not passive aggressively dicking with people.

Instead, if anyone picked the stupid idiot ball class, I would have every fight be whatever I had wanted the fight to be + 40 of those idiot ball classes. And every single one of them would make the stupid player who stupidly choose the idiotball class to be an idiot every round of every fight, and his character would universally be known as the idiot who the rest of the party drags around. Because fuck that shit.

Yeah, fuck you too, you passive aggressive bitch. So I guess it's also okay for the MC to add +40 kobold sorcerers all casting magic missile to every fight? Or, more to the point, 40 wizards casting hold monster every round?

Of course, people having a "plucky protagonist" power source will look strange if you put them in a minion role, for exactly the same reason that 8 level 7 wizards don't make a valid CR 13 fight, because from a very basic perpective, level 13 characters don't tend to survive when getting hit with 8d4 negative levels, or 56d6 of elemental damage or even 28d4+28 of unerring force damage.

A guy like this would be better used as a boss fight. The PCs will know they can expect a hellish fight if they're against the Blood Tyrant, general of a thousand armies, exactly as in current D&D they'd fear the guy's court wizard. I want parity between the classes.

Finally, I don't care if this offends your sensibility or not, but the game already makes an artificial distinction between PCs (protagonists) and not PCs. NPCs get to die like animals, while PCs get to survive and prosper in the face of what should be, at least from the story perspective, insurmountable odds. My proposal is to recognize at once the way western pop culture let the non-magical guy to win (cheating horribly in his favor) and write actual game abilities to do that. I believe people who want to be the Conan would be more willing to accept a real class built like this.

[Caedrus]

The fact that character progression is mandatory at all really pisses in peoples' Cheerios. A lot of people just don't want to get to level 8. There should be an option to just stay at one level and continue picking up skills and bullshit abilities. You'll notice how in the WotC thread, so many people were complaining about doing high level things at all. They shouldn't have to.

This is very true and it should be dealt the game having some of the alternative advancement schedules you guys discussed on the ... book of gears?

Remember, in the fucking Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, the PCs stayed exactly the same for the whole run. Videogames have another problem: They're built like 4e, while you keep "progressing" just to do basically the same tasks against higher DCs.

So yeah, a framework like D&D where the conceptual space for what constitutes an "adventure" explodes many times from an 1-20 progression gets on some people's nerves.

There are definitely lots of stories where there is very little character power progression. On the other hand, there are plenty of stories where progression is very real. I prefer to point at examples like the team in Avatar: The Last Airbender or Mass Effect.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, fuck you too, you passive aggressive bitch. So I guess it's also okay for the MC to add +40 kobold sorcerers all casting magic missile to every fight? Or, more to the point, 40 wizards casting hold monster every round?

That would be totally fine as long as it is within CR, otherwise, see below.

No you retarded shit monkey. The entire point of the exercise is for the player to realize that an ability which makes you choose to do stupid things is a bullshit ability. If a player gets Held, or gets Dominated, they can say "I didn't choose to do that, I was held or dominated." But if they get Idiot balled, then their character really is a fucking idiot, and they really did choose to do something stupid.

PCs are not that fucking special. It does not make sense for the Int 34 Wizard BBEG to spend his first round running up with a dagger to stab the fighter, just because the fighter decided that is what he wanted, and to make that point, if they insisted on playing the stupid fucking class against my explanation of why they shouldn't, their character will be stupid all the time as punishment. In reality, I probably would just ban the damn character, but it is fun to imagine punishing people as stupid as you.

Finally, I don't care if this offends your sensibility or not, but the game already makes an artificial distinction between PCs (protagonists) and not PCs. NPCs get to die like animals, while PCs get to survive and prosper in the face of what should be, at least from the story perspective, insurmountable odds.

No it doesn't. It distinguishes between PCs and NPCs by giving one of them slightly more wealth. That is it. NPCs don't have to die. PCs do often die "like animals." PCs do not survive and prosper against insurmountable odds, they beat odds that are in their favor, and occasionally, every once in a while, something not in their favor. Instead, what they actually fucking do is use their resources to ensure fights are in their favor, so they don't die.

The fundamental problem is you literally picked the dumbest trope from the dumbest kind of storytelling and decided that was the only fucking way that any game should be made.

Some people might find it fun to read about a plucky action hero who is a piece of shit getting lucky, but as a game concept that is complete shit. The purpose of the game is to have your decisions matter, and lead you to your goals. Shitty guy who gets lucky is literally the exact opposite of that.

[Foxwarrior]

Nockermensch: You can only defeat what you are able to defeat. Stop liking storylines only for the parts of them that prove the protagonists weren't really outmatched after all. Also, 28d4+28 (shouldn't that be 32d4+32?) damage by a bunch of hard-to-maneuver guys with inferior stealth and detection skills and spells is what those guys need to even have a chance at killing a level 13 character. I don't think I've ever seen a situation where a squadron of people was actually overpowered for its EL.

Kaelik: You're not just playing the bumbling idiot in this case, really; you're roleplaying the bumbling idiot and "rollplaying" (tactically playing if you prefer) the bumbling idiot's outrageous luck. Presumably to keep things balanced, your outrageous luck is not sufficient to put your CR above your level.

[Kaelik]

Kaelik: You're not just playing the bumbling idiot in this case, really; you're roleplaying the bumbling idiot and "rollplaying" (tactically playing if you prefer) the bumbling idiot's outrageous luck. Presumably to keep things balanced, your outrageous luck is not sufficient to put your CR above your level.

I am aware of that, except 3 things:

1) I am violently opposed to anything that disassociates what you are roleplaying and what you are rollplaying. Narrative mechanics are bad, and you should feel bad for using them.

2) I have no idea why anyone would enjoy roleplaying a bumbling idiot either.

3) Most importantly, you are not the only fucking person in the game. So while you are roleplaying a bumbling idiot, and you might enjoy that, for some stupid reason, everyone else in the party is now roleplaying a character who travels with a bumbling idiot for no good fucking reason, and therefore, their characters suffer.

It is basically just as bad, if not worse, than things like the Forsaker PrC, or the Vow of Peace feat. You are in effect advocating for the creation of a class called "Person Raper" who gets their powers from Raping people. Yeah, some people might enjoy RPing the concept (and before you say anything, I believe that the number that enjoy roleplaying a rapist exceeds those looking to roleplay a bumbling idiot) but you are still encouraging everyone else to now make characters that can accommodate adventuring with someone with that specific trait.

Sure it is easier to accommodate a bumbling idiot, characters who feel bad for idiots and feed them apples are more prevalent than people who accept rapists, but you shouldn't make a class that legitimizes a specific kind of RP that negatively effects everyone else's character concept.

[nockermensch]

Nockermensch: You can only defeat what you are able to defeat. Stop liking storylines only for the parts of them that prove the protagonists weren't really outmatched after all.

This is perfectly true, but a lot of it has to do with presentation. You'll notice I always talk add a "from a storytelling perspective" or some other weasel word when I'm talking about it.

Q: But isn't there a cognitive dissonance here?
A: Yes, there is. The "underdog" is not actually an underdog. That's just his gimmick. He's a kind of fictional character so dangerous as the reality bending casters adventuring with him. Only that instead being Green Lantern, he's the goddamn Batman. What he cannot do with his own powers, the universe conspires to give him. And in a game the way to make the universe conspire in favor of a character is to give him abilities that say so.

As for Kaelik, besides the complimentary fuck you, you badger cvnt dick, I'd like to point that even taking the your prejudices and lack of imagination in mind, a simple reading of Discworld will show a world where the power of being a plucky hero is readily recognized by everyone (it's how the barbarian heros get going). There's no roleplaying/rollplaying dissonance there. A guy in a loincloth with a sword is as dangerous as a wizard, and everybody knows that.

[name_here]

I think a large part of the resistance to prestiging out is that prestige classes are not very good. Like, people complain about how prestige classes have a number of conceptual issues relating to giving up power now for power later when there might not be a later and hoovering up skill points, but probably the biggest issue is simply that the official prestige classes are bad. I would be unsurprised to learn that a lot of the people flipping their shit about tome knight going to 10 instead of 20 have not met any official prestige classes they would like their character to take, and aren't up for writing their own/can't sell it to their DM. They tend to fall into one of the following categories:

1. Too specific. There will be a racial requirement, or some other reason they aren't cut out for it. Example: Dwarven Defender. Even disregarding that it's a physical class designed around standing still and doing melee damage, you have to be a dwarf to take it. However, I recall that it's at least good at what it does, even if what it does is not viable.

2. Too focused. You can make the requirements for it, but the class is for people who want to do a specific thing and you don't want to do that thing. And there isn't one for the specific thing you do want to do in the books you own, because if every prestige class were in this catagory, Sword And Fist would still not be able to have a class for everything fighter and monk players would want a class for. The one I instantly think of here is the Oozemaster, though that's a magical class.

3. Not suited to PCs. For whatever reason, this class plain does not work in the party. They have cool abilities and all, but either they simply can't travel with their power, they take too much downtime, or they're simply designed for supporting characters. Physical types generally elude this, at least. Example: That one micro wizard prestige class that casts teleport better in exchange for spell levels or whatever. You want to have one, you do not want to be one.

4. Bland. The class is simply uninteresting. It might be good mechanically, but not in an exciting way, or it might give bonuses to skill checks. Example: first half of Horizon Walker. Each level you get +4 to skill checks and +1 against natives in a new type of terrain. Whatever.

5. Too fluff-integrated. This class represents members of an organization or somesuch, and the abilities it has are connected to that organization. Or it's connected to certain planar cosmologies. It doesn't fit your setting and can't be easily re-written to do so. Example: The Alienist. It summons Lovecraftian horrors from the far planes, so there need to be Lovecraftian horrors in the setting.

6. Just bad. If you want to do what this class is intended for, keep taking levels in your base class and you will be better at it. Example: Just about every magical prestige class that gives up spellcasting progression. They simply can't give bonuses large enough to offset falling behind.

Basically, I think that in order to sell people on short base classes, you must improve the quality of prestige classes. And you must have more of them than you have base classes in order for prestiging out to mean anything.

[Username17]

Basically, I think that in order to sell people on short base classes, you must improve the quality of prestige classes.

Yes. First of all PrC requirements just have to fucking go. Even the Paragon Paths of 4e have too many bullshit requirements.

And you must have more of them than you have base classes in order for prestiging out to mean anything.

You actually don't. You need to have more than one prestige class you can go into, but if you can get into each paragon path from more than one base class, you could fulfill that criteria even if there were less paragon paths than base classes.

Basically, 3e and (especially) 4e present a theory of class development that looks like this:


But that's horrendously inefficient. You end up writing a lot of prestige content that no one is ever going to use. You could instead have a progression that was more like this:



And then the amount of late game content you'd have to write to give people comparable amounts of real choice would be literally an order of magnitude smaller.

-Username17

[name_here]

I think you'd need either two unique prestige classes for each base class or lots of multiple-entry classes. Or lots of base classes. Otherwise there'd be a substantial risk of people at the table having overlapping options. I mean, you could write them to be versatile enough that a Rogue/Shadowdancer is noticeably distinct from a Fighter/Shadowdancer, but then you've basically created two closely related classes.

That being said, the prestige classes for a given class don't have to be as different from each other as base classes do, so making two prestige classes for each base class would not triple the workload. And you'd have an excuse to cut down the number of base classes.

[nockermensch]

At the risk of completely derailing the thread (even this is the "Misty is buttfrustrated that people like what he doesn't like" thread), I wonder how the "few prestige classes" scenario can play when coupled with the different recharge mechanics discussed recently. If we think that it's cool that each class has a different recharging schedule (and I think it is), then how to combine this with short base classes and the obligatory entry in PrCs? Are those goals even compatible?

[name_here]

Well, SW:TOR has four base classes with two prestige classes each(plus each gets flavored differently for Republic and Empire) and at least three distinct recharge mechanics. The prestige classes just use the same recharge as their base class. While SW:TOR has many problems, that part works fine

It's obviously a lot more difficult if two classes with distinct recharge mechanics can share a prestige class. Honestly, I'd advise against trying; either go with a small enough number of base classes that writing two prestige classes each is a reasonable goal, or write multiple base classes on the same power schedule and give them a shared pool of prestige classes.

If for some reason you must, I'd advise letting the base class set the recharge mechanic for both of them. Place all the recharge mechanics on the same scale (or provide a fixed conversion if you want more granularity for some base classes) and don't write abilities that become completely broken on any of the charge schedules that can access the class that has them.

Since presumably the charge schedules are intended to keep people from spamming their most powerful attacks, keeping two schedules is just asking for set B to be charged up just as set A is starting to run low. If the ones associated with the initial charge schedule fall out of being level appropriate, it's a lot of meaningless bookkeeping.

[Kaelik]

At the risk of completely derailing the thread (even this is the "Misty is buttfrustrated that people like what he doesn't like" thread), I wonder how the "few prestige classes" scenario can play when coupled with the different recharge mechanics discussed recently. If we think that it's cool that each class has a different recharging schedule (and I think it is), then how to combine this with short base classes and the obligatory entry in PrCs? Are those goals even compatible?

Well, you could have Cleric/X/Y who all have a choice between PRCs ABC that are encounter. But it does somewhat limit you, like for example, Necromancers are completely fucking different, and smaller variations become harder to keep as a character concept.

But frankly if you are making KSF with it's resource mechanics, that is one game, and you make a different game to implement the PrC idea. KSF just needs to make no classes that are shit, so Hero needs to have plebotinum.

[ishy]

Isn't having an almost infinte amount of prestige classes a good thing? It seems people like supplements with prestige classes in them.
And if it is for a home game, you could just tell your players / make something up yourself?

[Aryxbez]

Nah, I don't think there's a problem with that. There are plenty of people who have DM's give them artifact swords to compensate, it just works out.

Y'all keep on trying to solve a problem nobody asked. The people who play as lvl20 fighters enjoy it, alongside their wizard buddy who throws fireballs.

How many of you really play that much level 20 D&D, with the wizards doing everything they can do?

Seriously? did you actually just make that cop-out statement, making oneself sound much like the ignorant RPG masses (sighs). It's not a problem by opinion, it's one by fact, and just because it's not noticed, doesn't mean it's not a problem currently going on, and hindering them. Looking back, even on my "personal D&D experience" my Dwarf Fighter was getting punched back harder by the monsters, that I usually was able to do back at them (also was quite swag dependant,though seemed the case for us all). So I know that my Fighter wasn't as awesome as he should be, and willing to admit that. Artifact Swords are fiat devices more than not, unless there's common rules DM's used to make them (so far I've heard Polymorph to Tiger/Dragon w/Pounce for Monks, and turning into Huge Sized monsters), you're supporting "bad rules are fine, so long as you ignore the game" which I recall being rather contradictory for your nature sir.

Advocating people to get a lesser fantasy experience, low playing their expectations of the game, so they can do MMO-esque substandard tactics, isn't good for the game. After all, if they really want that, they'll eventually figure they can get it better from MMO's themselves. Ensuring people playing on the same page, getting the full experience of D&D, lets them get the full experience and wonder that's brought so many fans to it, giving it reason to exist, and surpass MMO's.

By banning such monstrosities before the campaign even starts. The problem disappears like that.

This part also falls into what I've been saying above, there are things to ban, but you're gonna have to ban quite alot, to make the multitude of "Rifts based balance" to work at all. As been mentioned even in those Fighter v. Wizard, debates, the morons keep trying to place artificial limits on the wizard, who'll just keep finding some other way to achieve their goal, eventually it gets dubbed down to some stupid stuff, but yeah. Wizards have a large set of methods to still be effective, even evocation can be done with some expending of resources that would've been better spent on killer-care-bear stares. So yeah, ye know the point I'm getting at, gonna ban stuff, alot of stuff, which means, your classes appropriate to the system don't exist at all, and probably better off with some other game or no rules at all.

Now, to say something dumb, ya know, people make excuses for anything to happen "because: Magic!" as a literal quote. So, letting something as vague as "because I'm that bad@$$" to explain any extraordinary feat, any worse a power source explanation as the above "Magic"? Perhaps make the case, that if people try to be unimaginative with BA-ness, then so shall they do so with magic, and vice versa. Hell, to back to Evasion, even that could've been a Martial force field created by the force of flexing the muscles or some such in the right way, expelling the explosion around you, hardcore invincibility roll or spinning that fast.

That said, I'm pretty much all board with non-casters doing big effects like that of spellcasters, just make them work, and/or explained differently. So I'm not being told off as just another version of Cleric/Wizard, since if I wanted to play one, I'd do so. Otherwise, I'm sure as Frank said, I'd get used to having a power source eventually via prestige class when it's the assumption of the game (that, 20th level is endgame, of course gonna have something like being a Demi-god, Demon Lord,etc. on your belt).

[OgreBattle]

Seriously? did you actually just make that cop-out statement, making oneself sound much like the ignorant RPG masses (sighs). It's not a problem by opinion, it's one by fact, and just because it's not noticed, doesn't mean it's not a problem currently going on, and hindering them. Looking back, even on my "personal D&D experience" my Dwarf Fighter was getting punched back harder by the monsters, that I usually was able to do back at them (also was quite swag dependant,though seemed the case for us all). So I know that my Fighter wasn't as awesome as he should be, and willing to admit that. Artifact Swords are fiat devices more than not, unless there's common rules DM's used to make them (so far I've heard Polymorph to Tiger/Dragon w/Pounce for Monks, and turning into Huge Sized monsters), you're supporting "bad rules are fine, so long as you ignore the game" which I recall being rather contradictory for your nature sir.

Advocating people to get a lesser fantasy experience, low playing their expectations of the game, so they can do MMO-esque substandard tactics, isn't good for the game. After all, if they really want that, they'll eventually figure they can get it better from MMO's themselves. Ensuring people playing on the same page, getting the full experience of D&D, lets them get the full experience and wonder that's brought so many fans to it, giving it reason to exist, and surpass MMO's.

I don't have a problem with the problem being solved, but I think there is a problem when we're trying to solve it for the hypothetical retard we don't want to play with in the first place.

Like that idea of "hey why not E6 it at whatever level people like to stop at" and "lvl1-10 is heroic, lvl10+ gets curaaaaaazy", that works. That works perfectly and completely solves the question of this thread.

Conan really shouldn't be forced into level 20, but if he reaches level 10 and is empowered by Crom to straight up battle flying Cthulu, we can have a lvl 11-20 Eternal Savage for him to become.

[Username17]

But frankly if you are making KSF with it's resource mechanics, that is one game, and you make a different game to implement the PrC idea. KSF just needs to make no classes that are shit, so Hero needs to have plebotinum.

Not... necessarily.

There are several things at work here. The most obvious is the desired complexity of characters in higher tiers. I would submit that characters becoming more complicated in Paragon is probably a net win, but that characters becoming as complicated as an AD&D Magic User (with dozens of spells and a full page of wands, scrolls, amulets, staves, rods, orbs, and other sundry doohickies) is bad. Complexity can be held back anywhere from "slightly" to "completely" through giving out bonuses and ability replacement rather than new abilities.

But there's also the question of what the Paragon Paths do. The 3e & 4e system where you continue to advance your base class and get a few largely cosmetic abilities from your Paragon Path/Prestige Class is a non-starter: it requires you to commit to a set of Paragon level abilities for characters before committing yourself to a phlebtonium schedule for those characters. But the Paragon Path is still there to make sure you have things to do in Paragon Tier challenges (like running the kingdom or travelling to another world), and to make sure you fulfill the "you must be this tall" conditions of Paragon Tier adventures. Neither one of those things necessarily affects what your attack sprite looks like when you fight skirmish battles against the Paragon Tier Owlbear equivalents. And if it does change your attack sprites, there's no reason it couldn't just completely subsume your Heroic Tier attacks in the process.

That is to say that being a Star Mage means that you have the ability to travel to distant worlds and create alien monsters to populate your citadel and peer into the void to get information about epic quests and survive in an epic environment and break epic enchantments and all that other shit that is required to adventure at that level. But in small-unit battles, you could just be falling back on your fireballs and stuff that you got for being an Elementalist back in Heroic Tier (though possibly scaled up to deal with Paragon Tier defenses). Alternately: you could be fighting with with star blasts and void gates that are big enough that the question of what kind of elementalist fireblast is available from turn to turn isn't really one that crosses your mind.

And then of course, there are various mid-points between those extremes. Being an Angel Knight could give you one and only one nova action each skirmish battle (or even one per day or something), such that you mostly use your Heroic Tier stuff in mini-combats save for one round where you go apeshit and drop the Divine Vengeance. Meaning that the game mostly plays out like it does in Heroic Tier except there's an extra round of super action for each character distributed somewhere in there. Or you could just accept higher levels of complexity and some amount of power divergence by having the characters juggle two resource systems in Paragon play.

There are actually lots of ways to do it. 4e is a very good example of what not to do, but that holds for almost everything 4e did.

-Username17

[nockermensch]

Is there a clean way to create prestige classes / paragon paths that work around granting a phlebotinium source and are intended to be orthogonal to the base classes?

Say, you have base classes defined by how their combat sprites work, like:
Knight: quickly closes the distance to the enemies and does melee. has powers to keep the enemies close and to interfere with attacks to the weaker party members.
Mage: stays far, evokes elemental magic to hurt and hinder foes. has powers to keep the enemies away and to shield self from attacks.
Acolyte: stays mid range, evokes positive energy to heal and buff the party.
Rogue: stays wherever is more advantageous, looking for chances to deal massive damage with called shots/hits. Has stealth and counterstealth powers.

Then you have by the level 7 or so (assuming a 20 levels paradigm), you introduce a host of paths that work like prefixes for the base classes:
Angel: you get good touched, and can get powers similar to the higher plane creatures.
Hell: you get bad touched, and can get powers similar to the lower plane creatures.
Death: you're instilled by the powers of death / undeath.
Gaia: you're attuned to the natural world, and get plant / animal based powers.
Shadow: you get to wear a lot of black. Eyeliner required.
Dream: you start to tap the power of dreams, gaining powers similar to the fae creatures.
Imperial: you become a part of a huge local empire, can get tiny men to help you and learn the secret techniques that allow you to use special equipment.
Anime: you watch way too much anime. Most powers here require you to shout their names beforehand.
etc...

The paths consist in lists of thematic powers, ordered by minimum level required to take them, and the trick is to have powers that will interest all base classes. So the knight will get angel wings or shadow step to help him to get close range, while a rogue would like something that blinded foes with holy radiance or cloaked him in shadows.

More base classes would be created around forms of fighting. Archer would be another candidate for base class. A summoner/pokemon master would be another. More paths are created based on themes/power sources.

The idea is to economize fluff text. Instead of wasting words saying basically the same thing for prestige classes like hell knight / infernalist / priest of balphegor / infernal assassin, you write the hell fluff once and then present a single list of powers.

[Korwin]

You see these are the people who want to be Batman but that dosen't happen in RGPs. What happens in RPGs is that the crushingly superior foes crush you with their superiority. There is literally nothing we can for these people.

What? Batman is an Wizard!