The Feeling of Epic

[Voss]

1202148414[/unixtime]]
Hell, I, as a player, made such an encounter memorable... course my Monstrous Spider Skeleton, human skeleton lackeys, squirrel familiar delivering inflict spells to heal said lackeys and goblin necromancer making all that shit possible, helped...

A spider skeleton is always going to be really fucking memorable. Just on the basis of its complete lack of one.

'Holy shit, remember that spider that had bones? That shit was whack.'

[Prak]

Exoskeleton, smart one.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1202169619[/unixtime]]
'Holy shit, remember that spider that had bones? That shit was whack.'

Best line of the internet today.

[Koumei]

I think Kobolds *specifically* shouldn't have class levels, and should always be losers. Every other weak-ass mook can go ahead and do it, but kobolds should remain the living joke of the universe.

"Yap yap yap! We're descended from dragons! Yap!"
*squish*

But I'd still be thinking "Holy shit, that's a 15th level Wizard!" rather than anything about the race. I would barely register that it was a kobold, goblin, gnome, halfling or whatever casting those spells. I'd pay attention to it being a wizard. The same even holds true for a human, unless they are particularly hot, and let's be honest: a vast amount of evil necromantic sorceresses are.

Bigode: If real wars work like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where anyone the author cared to name hacked through several units all on his own, then I'll concede that generals and the like are really important and cool, and we should model characters on those guys with names.

Come to think of it, RotTK is exactly what D&D should be like. Named characters intrinsically detect other named characters (like the three oath brothers just randomly wandering into a town, deciding to join forces against the rebellion, winning, then deciding they should be oath brothers), named characters can mow their way through mooks, and a battle between two named characters is what actually determines victory or success.

Add a few more dragons (well, it has a couple of creatures that could be dragons, or could be snakes), mind flayers, spells and the like, and there you have it. Instant awesome.

Prak: In both cases, you basically showed what made the situation cool: things that have nothing to do with weak little guys beating on kobolds. In the first instance, an animated spider exoskeleton, and in the second instance, being high level and polymorphing people into things.

[Orion]

So, Koumei, your argument is that kobolds aren't cool if you don't let them do anything cool?

[JonSetanta]

1202176784[/unixtime]]The same even holds true for a human, unless they are particularly hot, and let's be honest: a vast amount of evil necromantic sorceresses are.

Well of course!

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Deekin was cool.

[Talisman]

1202176784[/unixtime]]I think Kobolds *specifically* shouldn't have class levels, and should always be losers. Every other weak-ass mook can go ahead and do it, but kobolds should remain the living joke of the universe.

"Yap yap yap! We're descended from dragons! Yap!"
*squish*

That's up to you, of course. But it sure sounds like:
"Kobolds are lame because I think they should be lame."
"Why do you think they're lame?"
"Because they are!"

If played that way, they have no reason to even exist, and you'd be better off (IMO) simply saying "kobolds don't exist in this campaign."

[Koumei]

I preferred the female human bard. The one who knew what a hireling's job is (buff me, don't steal any glory) and who fancied my character.

And no, I don't think little shits can ever really be cool in a way that *they* are what's cool. Sure, they can be cool by dint of being wizards, and thus, be suitable challenges that might be seen as Epic - but they'd still have to splash a lot of spell power out for anyone to care. But compare them to dragons, beholders, mind flayers, fiends, celestials and gazebos: Those things are cool and epic and worth writing about without adding a single class level.

What I'm getting at is that foes should actually be impressive in their own right, without being treated like PCs to boost them up to "impressive". Let the PCs be the ones gaining cool class features, let monsters have innate awesome.

I suppose that's also why I like playing monstrous creatures - because everything cool about them is pre-packaged just by existing. They don't have to learn how to be awesome, they just get born that way.

[virgil]

Wouldn't the vast majority of your logic that kobolds are a joke apply to humans? If it's not a classed human, the baseline is Jimmy the Dirt Farmer, from what I've seen. These guys are even more of a joke than kobolds, because they're not even worth the effort to try and kill, unlike kobolds. They stand there, almost always alone unless they're in a mob to try and drive out something that could crush them all, and get attacked by everything in the world except adventurers; because they don't even have anything of value for the adventurers to steal (unlike kobolds).

I posit that humans are a joke, moreso than kobolds, and any attempts to make them cool is the modification itself that's cool rather than the human.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

What do people think of Xvarts?

_______

At the risk of being On Topic: So we want epic combats to take a much longer amount of time? I think Aycarus is on the right track here:

Anyway, here's my two cents on how I'm picturing this particular point to be played out. Part of what you need to do on these scales is simultaneously make lower level abilities obsolete / ineffectual while simultaneously increasing the duration of epic level abilities. Namely, if an epic level doom spell takes 10 minutes to cast, you need to justify why the caster is not taking any damage when his opponents continuously cast 1 round fireballs at him. Simply scaling the casting time of a fireball fails here, since lower level casters then take less time with their spells and hence have the advantage.

But there is another problem that I think we have overlooked. What happens to tactical combat movement and positioning when each round is an hour long? How do you determine if your PC Fighter can get past the guardian Vampire Titan to the BBEG Necromancer Demilich?

Also, we don't want two epic fighters to just stand in front of each other pounding away for hours on end. We want them to chase each other down valleys and up mountainsides. How do we account for this in the rules? Is there an in-game combat advantage that we can give for cinematic fights?

[Aycarus]

1202183090[/unixtime]]At the risk of being On Topic

What? You mean this isn't supposed to be another thread about kobolds?

[Koumei]

1202181267[/unixtime]]
I posit that humans are a joke, moreso than kobolds, and any attempts to make them cool is the modification itself that's cool rather than the human.

You say that as though I'm supposed to disagree with you.

[Prak]

1202184175[/unixtime]]

1202181267[/unixtime]]
I posit that humans are a joke, moreso than kobolds, and any attempts to make them cool is the modification itself that's cool rather than the human.

You say that as though I'm supposed to disagree with you.

So, in your thinking, D&D should start about Lv 5 or 6, and nothing with a CR lower than that should exist, unless it's as a joke?

[Koumei]

Yes, with the exception of "to perform mundane tasks and go crying to the PCs every time they need something done." and "armies".

So, PCs are special by dint of being just about the only people in the world who possess class levels (maybe the rare BBEG could do so. You know, a necromancer lich, or a storm giant barbarian king or something). Humans, elves and all of those still exist in the background, running stores and handing out quests.

Occasionally, the PCs kick kobolds around for a laugh or two. Occasionally, they hack their way through an army, Dynasty Warriors-style (and yes, that is exactly how Romance of the Three Kingdoms portrays it, complete with the "everyone else stands back and lets the heroes duke it out" aspect of the earlier games". I haven't read the historical account of how it actually happened, so can't say how much they fudged it).

But most of their challenges are honest-to-goodness monsters, with starting CRs of 5 or so.

[Aycarus]

1202186159[/unixtime]]So, in your thinking, D&D should start about Lv 5 or 6, and nothing with a CR lower than that should exist, unless it's as a joke?

Personally, I find levels 1-4 work well for introducing new players to the game. Historically I've also used levels 3 and 4 as starter levels to introduce my more seasoned group to the plot of a long-haul campaign.

Of course, the real game doesn't start until level 5, but that's not to say that stuff before 5 isn't fun. Those levels are there for a reason.

[Prak]

I think I'm with Aycarus here, though koumei's stance is valid('cept I like kobolds...)

[RandomCasualty]

Kobolds just are not epic. You can make them challenging, you can make them deadly, but you can't really make clearing out a kobold cave an epic event.

Yeah sometimes you can have a badass who just happened to be a kobold, and maybe you even pit them against the Kobold legion of doom composed of kobold supervillains. But that's the individuals you're concerned with, not kobolds as a race. Kobolds as a race are still a bunch of little yelping crap, and they're just not awesome. They're little ratlike things that hide in holes and die in droves.

[Orion]

Why can't they be a horrible scaly menace of the deep, and the kobold caves are also a demonic temple built around a hellmouth?

[Koumei]

Probably because those demonic temples have a sign saying "You must be this tall to enter the cult."

If you want abominations of the deep, try Aboleths or Mind Flayers. For less powerful ones (such as the regular cultists that you slay), try full lizardmen (indeed, the bulky image the new dragonborn follow looks ideal for a big dumb brute that rides on the back of a dinosaur, or for a creature of the deep that wishes the world out of existence) or Sahuagin.

Short things just aren't epic.

I even did a monster search on the SRD, and the things I consider cool mostly start at 7th level, although oddly enough, 3rd level also stands out. It has Mephits (you could totally make a story arc about these. 3rd level in its entirety could be about fighting all 37 varieties of them), Minotaurs (you could have a community of them, or just one as a boss at the end of a maze) and Dryads (3.5: not that special. 3.0: forget combat, the goal is to make friends with them and play Magical Tea Party. Or have wild, crazy sex with them. Maybe both at the same time), along with Hell Hounds.

Unfortunately, they're still not really epic, except for the minotaur. And then you have a few more levels of either upping the CRs of the previous things, or trudging through crap until CR 7.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I've said my piece on Kobolds, and attempting say anything else there would be redundant. Instead, the topic!

I don't nessissarily think combat should last full days, though if there's a way to make that possible without making it drag like hell, I say go for it. But combat definatly needs to be able to last more than a round or two.

I was watching Kung-Fu Hustle earlier today, and it occured to me that good martial arts movies (Serious or not) need to be our template here. People need lots of options, and a good reason not to whip out their Uber Attack in the first round. Options should vary signifigantly depending on what the opponent has done, so that Attack A is a better option when your opponent does Defense B than Defense C.

Combat needs to be everywhere, you need to be able to knock someone through a wall, and they stand up angry and a little injured (Though not seriously) and then cross the football feild-length area between you in one round with time enough to whip out an attack on you again. Everyone needs battlefeild control powers and movement powers so that they can push and be pushed around the battlefeild but it doesn't stop you from being able to attack (They change options, they don't take them away)

And we also need good simple rules for collateral damage. Few things say "Badass" like being knocked through a brick wall, standing up dusting yourself off, and pressing the attack; or attacking so hard that the floor between you and the enemy shatters. We don't have simple rules for this right now, and you can't just say "It's flavor" because the condition of the battlefeild should have some impact on the fight, if only because it's easier to see through a wall that has been demolished.

[virgil]

Taking 'epic' fight moveis, what if you expanded the 'rounds' such that the description is with a bunch of normal attacks, and you know the round is over because a big attack is used. Much like normal combat is currently abstracted over 6 seconds with swings/parries/dodges and punctuated at some point with a solid hit, epic combat is abstracted over minutes with exchanges/assaults/evasions and punctuated with a Kamehameha.

You wouldn't worry about people pulling their big guns in the first round, because the scale is abstracted so we put everything but the big guns on the sidelines as background.

[tzor]

1202165330[/unixtime]]

1202151488[/unixtime]]Prak, now you're using crazy apostrophes.

eh? what do you mean?

I think she means the fancy apostrophe’s that Microsoft Word adds to documents when you use it as opposed to the vanillia regular ASCII apostrophe's.

[JonSetanta]

1202206548[/unixtime]] the goal is to make friends with them and play Magical Tea Party. Or have wild, crazy sex with them. Maybe both at the same time),

I want to play D&D with you. But you probably know that by now.

1202216591[/unixtime]]
And we also need good simple rules for collateral damage. Few things say "Badass" like being knocked through a brick wall, standing up dusting yourself off, and pressing the attack; or attacking so hard that the floor between you and the enemy shatters. We don't have simple rules for this right now, and you can't just say "It's flavor" because the condition of the battlefeild should have some impact on the fight, if only because it's easier to see through a wall that has been demolished.

I agree completely, but there are many players/designers against widespread warrior-style attacks that ignore hardness.
It's possible with some freakish combination of ToB and a Tome Samurai, but there are other ways.
Tome Monk sonic attack, or Whirlwind attack with adamantine reach weapon, etc.
Some splat book monster feats give physical area attacks.

But the simplest way might be house rule; physical attacks that miss the intended target instead deal damage to unattended objects in an area of 5' x the attack roll.

[Bigode]

Sigma, you've been saying you want pictures of her for long now. But she's lesbian (to be fair, she discussed wang measuring a lot of late ) ...