Game Systems: when a disadvantage is not a disadvantage

[Lago_AM3P]

In D&D, there are actually a lot of situations in which this happens, and it generally ends up making the game worse. Some of my more favorite examples:

Greater Magic Weapon pretty much eliminated any reason to buy a +2/+3/+4/+5 magical sword ever. You can either get a regular sword and pocket the money for something else or get a +1 flaming shocking sword and end up with a better sword.

The stat-replacement thing of polymorph. Feh.

Using spells to replace skills. Why put any points into jump or climb, at all, when there are effects that make your rogue fly? While these skills aren't even any good when balanced against themselves, even if they were, one low-opportunity cost spell would invalidate them.


This is pretty obvious in D&D. I'm finding that it's extremely obvious in superhero-based games, especially when you use an advantage to cover for both. Who cares if you're wheelchair-bound, like Professor X, if you can mentally command someone to do your research, open doors, and fight for you? Then you pocket all the skill points you saved into another power. But you can still do this to an extend in D&D games as well.

How common is this phenomenon outside of D&D, and how bad is it?

[RandomCasualty]

Aside from the Professor X thing, I don't see any disadvantages here. It seems you're just talking about overpowered spells.

Greater magic weapon and polymorph are bad spells quite simply because they increase the non-caster's dependant on casters. The optimal way to play a non-caster is to load your sword with a bunch of abilities like shock and flaming, and then get the casters to GMW it. And polymorph is just a "you're so hosed if you don't have it" spell. Really it's all about spellcaster dependence. The game has enough already without these spells.

Fly versus Jump is a different story. Jump shouldn't even be a skill. It might as well just be a check any character can make d20 + str bonus + hit dice. When you compare it to other skills, it's total garbage. Either that or at the very least they could do what White Wolf does and lump it into one generic athletics skill, that covers swimming, jumping, climbing, etc.

[Modesitt]

Disadvantages that don't actually inhibit your actions in any way, shape, or form are rampant under almost all gaming systems.

The worst offenders are merit/flaw systems with roleplaying flaws. You might take a flaw that says you have to make some sort of roll to back down from a fight. But if you would never back down from a fight anyways, it's not a flaw at all. It's just free points for playing your character how you want to.

In Shadowrun, magicians can get cyberware implanted in themselves to improve themselves in various ways, but doing so buggers up their magic. Some magicians known as Shamans can worship a totem for their powers. Every totem gives some bonuses and penalties. A few totems have the penalty that you lose twice as much magical power from getting cyberware implanted compared to a normal magician. This isn't actually a flaw because most magicians are dedicated to being magicians and would never kick themselves in the balls by getting cyberware installed.

One really fun trick I've seen done is that someone will take a flaw that gives them an enemy in their background and they'll go into great detail describing this enemy, right down to some pieces of equipment he possesses. Funny how that equipment just happens to be stuff the PC would want.

[RandomCasualty]

1085412230[/unixtime]]
The worst offenders are merit/flaw systems with roleplaying flaws. You might take a flaw that says you have to make some sort of roll to back down from a fight. But if you would never back down from a fight anyways, it's not a flaw at all. It's just free points for playing your character how you want to.

I find the roleplaying flaws tend to depend on the DM. In the hands of the right DM, those can be purely nasty, especially when you end up in fights where you're hopelessly outmatched and now you can't retreat.

[Username17]

This isn't actually a flaw because most magicians are dedicated to being magicians and would never kick themselves in the balls by getting cyberware installed.

Not if you are powergaming. I have honestly never seen an Eagle Shaman. Ever. Those guys blow. What with the diminishing returns gained from higher magic ratings (that is, raising your magic rating from 6 to seven allows you to bind a force 7 spirit without taking physical damage, but raising your magic rating from 11 to 12 just lets you bind a force 12 spirit without taking physical damage - but you're still guaranteed to pass out on the drain code so you can't bind them anyway - that 12th point of Magic Rating doesn't help you do anything because you can't actually use the force 12 stuff it supposedly allows), and the fact that continually raising your magic attribute also comes with nifty powers - sooner or later you'll be initiating yourself into higher mysteries and not give a good god damn about your continually rising magic attribute that is no longer helping you.

And then you get cyberware, because you might as well. Maybe not a lot, but some. That stuff can keep you alive.

So if you take the Eagle Totem or the Unicorn Totem, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually - and for the rest of your life. An Eagle Totem has a shelf life, if you play long enough they always suck. I've been in Shadowrun campaigns that lasted for years, noone has ever been willing to take a Totem that is sooner or later going to screw you ecause everyone knows that any particular character might end up getting played for a long time.

---

Which is, of course, the real point of drawbacks like the strictures of Eagle Totem. In Modesitt's world, people probably only play a couple of pickup games now and then, with new characters all the time. Either that or there's a huge character fatality rate (there's no raise dead in Shadowrun). Either way, disadvantages that don't do anything now probably look pretty good, regardless of what they are going to do to your later. I, on the other hand, have characters who have hundreds of Karma - garnered from games in which the GM explicitly felt that handing out 10 or more Karma for any adventure was absurd. In such long running games, there's no way that you would ever see anyone choose Eagle, or any similar drawback.

---

If you want to talk "penalties that you might as well take", talk Ars Magica. You play Dr. Victor Frankenstein essentially. Your research, by definition, pisses off the locals. If people discover where you are, the plebes will come with pitch forks forcing you to fight them off or run away.

There's a disadvantage "Orphan", which has absolutely no effect on you whatsoever except that less people know where you live. That's not a drawback, it's all good.

---

But what you're mostly talking about with things like Polymorph, is things which cover the cost of other things - advantages that aren't advantages because they don't do anything. There's no reason to buy Strength because being a Firbolg is easy and fun, and comes with more non-stackable strength than you could ever imagine.

That's in a lot of games as well. In Vampire there are disciplines which are strictly inferior to other disciplines, and there are skills that don't do anything if you have certain magical powers, and so on. In Shadowrun you can get "Headware Memory" which is memory chips planted directly into your brain and is extremely expensive. Or you can get a Router attached to your datajack and get a "built-in-device" which happens to be a pile of optical memory chips. This is much cheaper and less invasive, even though it is in all ways like unto getting headware memory except that it also allows you to mentally contact other devices in and outside of your body.

There's always going to be shitty choices in any character generation system. That's unavoidable, and desirable. You actually want there to be guys out there with stuff that is a sufficiently bad deal that none of the players would take it. It allows you to have villains who have unique schticks who are none-the-less going to lose to the player characters.

What's undesirable, is having any of these "stupid options" be basic player options. All of those (such as getting a Climb skill) should be roughly balanced against each other.

-Username17

[Modesitt]

In Modesitt's world, people probably only play a couple of pickup games now and then, with new characters all the time. Either that or there's a huge character fatality rate (there's no raise dead in Shadowrun).

Sadly close to the truth. I'm convinced that I must have done something to one of SR's developers in a past life. Without fail, any time an SR game I'm involved in gets to about the 150 karma mark it disintegrates due to scheduling conflicts, GM burn out, or the multitude of other reasons that campaigns die off. D&D campaigns, White Wolf campaigns, those can all last for very long periods of time, but as far as SR is concerned I'm simply cursed. That probably greatly colors my perceptions regarding the value of cyberware in magicians.

I'm yet to encounter an Eagle either, but not for the reasons you outline. Mostly people pass over it in favor of totems that give bigger bonuses than +2 to detection and spirits of the sky. But I have encountered a couple of Unicorn shamans, albeit under GMs who banned a couple of the choicier bits of cyber and bioware.

[Username17]

I don't know about you, but I generally pick up about 150 Karma in about 50 game sessions. Which means that playing every week except Christmas and Thanksgiving would make a 150 Karma game last for an entire year. That's not shabby for a game, really it isn't.

In any case, while you seem to be implying a rate of Karma gain much faster than I tend to see, you should still be seeing cybermages running around rampant at that level of experience.

The point at which it is advantageous to become a cybermage will, of course vary from character to character, but let's run the numbers for various kinds of characters.

Character A: The Spell Jockey. The Spell Jockey throws spells. Lots of spells, all the damn time. He picks up a lot of different spells, and can do a lot of things with them. He probably has all the awesome spells - including Clairvaudience, Sculptstone, and Personal Silence. He probably has spells that he uses in combat, such as Stunblast and Chaotic World. The highest force of any spell h ever needs to cast is Sculptstone at Force 8, the point at which you can passwall on concrete. He therefore can start spending Essence as soon as his Magic Attribute hits 9, which will happen at Initiate Grade 3 - which costs 34 Karma (3 to join a group because initiating on your own is retarded, 9 for your first grade, 10 for your second, and 12 for your third - because initiating without an ordeal is like hammering nails through your nipples). And since it comes with Centering, Shielding, and Masking - this character is just going to do spend those points.

The Conjurmaniac: This character has a larger need for Magic Attribute, because the spirits he can call are open ended and he can pay the drain at home when he can just go to bed to deal with the problem. Nonetheless, if he tries to summon anything with more force than his Charisma times 1.5 he's basically up a creek since he needs two Charisma successes against a TN that is showing on like one die in 18 or less just to keep from passing out from the stress and causing an Efreet the size of a dumptruck to go uncontrolled right over your own fragile form. Furthermore, you need to get 1 success on a conjuration test against the force for it to show up in the first place, and two successes if you are trying to bolster an elemental to that point - so you are basically not going anywhere attempting a Force 11 ritual regardless of how high your Charisma is. So you don't need a Magic Attribute past 10 or so. Assuming you are getting this out of Initiation, you are still looking at immediate "might as well" status on becoming a cybermage as soon as you pick up initiate grade five, which will set you back 62 karma.

And honestly, that's the outside limit, really. One of my characters was a Rigger/Aspected Conjurer at character creation. You can sidestep the need to have your essence as long as you fulfill all of your Geasa, and if you need to sequester yourself for five days to properly bind a greatform elemental, what's an extra 24 hours to get all your crap together? A Conjurer doesn't have to use their magic during adventures except when acting as an astral carrier in watcher dueling.

Yes, at character creation you can be an aspected conjurer with 3 Essence, 3 Geasa, and a Force 3 Familiar. And you can be summoning force 10 elementals right out of the box. And during the large amount of time you don't want to use your extremely valuable elementals to perform menial tasks you can be a Rigger or a Decker or something full time. Weird, but it does work. To this day, everyone involved in that game can tell you all kinds of minute details of Chun the Unavoidable - because weird and effective makes for memorable characters (and that's the game where one of the characters had only throwing and spray weapons as combat skills and coined the term "Wet Noise" to describe obfuscatory collateral damage).

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

Shadowrun was a game you really couldn't powergame otherwise it just got ridiculous. There's no real reason not to use an assault cannon and walk around in military grade armor except for pure roleplaying ones, or if the GM just doesn't allow you to take those items.

And when everyone PC and NPC is running around with assault cannons, the game just turned into a "one shot kills" match which was dull as ever to play.

[Username17]

There's no real reason not to use an assault cannon and walk around in military grade armor except for pure roleplaying ones, or if the GM just doesn't allow you to take those items.

Um... it's a game in a modern setting. Unlike in the traditional Fantasy World, which is inherently Libertarian, you really can't get away with stuff.

In Dungeons and Dragons you can get away with basically anything unless someone with a bigger sword tells you that you can't. In a modern setting, society definitionally has a bigger sword and tells you that you can't do much of anything. The only reason you can get away with anything at all under these circumstances is that society hasn't noticed you.

The limit on what you can do in a modern setting is stealth, not firepower. The nation you are in will essentially never run out of Sheriffs, they can hire more of them faster than you can kill them. If you get in a fight with society you definitionally lose.

You can't personally have a big enough magic sword to conquer the world in a modern setting, the world has billions of people and nuclear weapons. You can't win a personal military victory - unlike a fantasy setting where you very plausibly could.

The "assault cannon" is therefore completely worthless, as it makes more noise than a silenced sniper rifle and doesn't kill people any more dead. It makes you easier to find, and as soon as that happens - you die. In a game where everything depends upon secrecy, saying that the game is no fun because you can use an assault cannon is like saying that the game is too short because you can shoot your friends right in the face on purpose if that's what you want to do.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

The thing is that if you've got military grade armor, you can pretty much take on the entire police force and win, as it is possible (especially if you're a troll) to soak pretty much everything they've got.

[Username17]

1085550361[/unixtime]]The thing is that if you've got military grade armor, you can pretty much take on the entire police force and win, as it is possible (especially if you're a troll) to soak pretty much everything they've got.

You have no fucking clue what you are talking about, do you?

Pulling this kind of shit ends in Shadowrun exactly the same way it did when those punkasses in LA tried it. More cops come with bigger and bigger guns until you die. You can't beat society in a straight up fight. This isn't up for debate, they have nuclear weapons if need be, there is nothing whatsoever that you can do to turn this into triumph.

They will kill you if you try this shit. That's the difference between a modern game and a fantasy game. In the fantasy game, the biggest guy on the block is practically unkillable, and the only reason you aren't head of state right now is because the king is played by the Macho Man Randy Savage and will whup your behinds. You can fight your way through all the guards and conquer townships if that's what you want to do, and when you become enough of a badass the king is you.

In a modern game, anyone can kill the president. It's hard, because there are a lot of people who don't want you to do it, but it can be done. Everyone can be killed with a big enough bullet, and a big enough bullet can be purchased in a store. Killing the president of a company or a nation is simply a matter of will and planning - anyone can do it. But the head of state is also replaceable. If you stab the head of state you can't just take his crown and expect people to work for you - he's just a symbol in a modern setting. Killing individuals doesn't matter. First, they'll probably kill you because you are just as fragile as the head of state, and second there's another guy waiting to take the president's place who represents essentially the same set of interests.

Killing in a modern setting is trivial both in the sense of being easy to accomplish and being of virtually no consequence in the long run. It's a different paradigm, and one in which having a bigger hammer is completely pointless in nearly all circumstances.

The invulnotroll character is nigh invulnerable only in street level combat. As soon as things extend beyond the range of gangers with switchblades he's not invulnerable anymore. The troll with an assault cannon in military armor is a huge target, and a military threat. He'll be treated like one, and tanks and missiles go through him like needles in buttermilk.

The biggest baddest military threat you can make in shadowrun - or any modern setting rpg - is chaff before the awesome power of society at large. There's 6 billion people in the world, they pay taxes, they have missiles, and they simply won't take your shit when you try to take them on all at once.

That's not a flaw in the game, that's not DM penis effect, that's just how modern settings work. You win by getting away with stuff, not by butting heads with the whole world. You can win that kind of dick waving contest in a fantasy world, you can't win that kind of dick waving contest in a modern setting.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1085554244[/unixtime]]
Pulling this kind of shit ends in Shadowrun exactly the same way it did when those punkasses in LA tried it. More cops come with bigger and bigger guns until you die. You can't beat society in a straight up fight. This isn't up for debate, they have nuclear weapons if need be, there is nothing whatsoever that you can do to turn this into triumph.

Yeah, well if you want to make it unrealistic and have them drop a nuke on their own city, then sure. But they're not going to do that no matter how bad it gets. Also, cops don't have heavy military weapons. They use pistols, shotguns, assault rifles and sniper rifles. Even SWAT forces aren't equipped with anything capable of breaching mil grade armor.

The invulnotroll character is nigh invulnerable only in street level combat. As soon as things extend beyond the range of gangers with switchblades he's not invulnerable anymore. The troll with an assault cannon in military armor is a huge target, and a military threat. He'll be treated like one, and tanks and missiles go through him like needles in buttermilk.

This assumes you aren't in the city. The military isnt' going to be able to fire missiles and tank shells at you if you're still in the city. So here's what you do. You attack whatever you're supposed to attack in your heavy combat gear. Then when you make off with whatever it is you came for. You're invulnerable to the cop's weapons anyway, so you blow the crap out of them. And you have a mage waiting for you somewhere to turn you invisible. This lets you elude any kinds of special forces, and you disappear into the shadows until your next adventure.

Seriously, have you ever checked how good military grade armor is? Heavy armor with the helmet grants you 16 ballistic and 12 impact defense. An assault cannon does 18D... meaning you can be pretty likely to escape relatively unwounded assuming you've got high body. Even the vehicle mounted assault cannons do only about 20D if I remember correctly.

Shadowrun just didn't work well if you powergamed it to an extreme level, because there were certain choices that were just way better than others, with no disadvantage. Like you were always better off filling your gun (assuming you didn't use an A.cannon) with armor peircing rounds. And the game was full of those choices.

[Username17]

Even SWAT forces aren't equipped with anything capable of breaching mil grade armor.

I suggest you go back and reread the SWAT teams in Shadowrun, they sure as heck are.

Seriously, have you ever checked how good military grade armor is?

Yes... it's about 12-16 points of hardened armor, which is alot. But it also corresponds to as much as 5 points of vehicle armor, which means that an anti-vehicular weapon turns you into meat paste. It further corresponds to about 1 point of Naval Armor, which means that naval weapons (which the government in fact does have) are essentially incapable of not killing you whether you are wearing it or not.

Shadowrun just didn't work well if you powergamed it to an extreme level, because....

I'll finish that for you:

....you apparently didn't know the rules, and any system where people are munchkining out and don't know how the system works is bassically just people dicking around.

-Username17

[Sma]

Troll in Milspec Armor ?

Stunball

Yeah, for a short time you´ll get away with tons of stuff, but then you´ll have to run. As you were saying. And if you take things as written you can´t seriously hide from watchers.

Greetings,
Sma

[RandomCasualty]

1085583175[/unixtime]]
Yes... it's about 12-16 points of hardened armor, which is alot. But it also corresponds to as much as 5 points of vehicle armor, which means that an anti-vehicular weapon turns you into meat paste. It further corresponds to about 1 point of Naval Armor, which means that naval weapons (which the government in fact does have) are essentially incapable of not killing you whether you are wearing it or not.

You're fighting in a city. They aren't exactly going to be able to turn a battleship cannon on you. I can see it now, a troll on a stick raft holding his assault cannon firing away at a battleship. Come on Frank, I expect more than this from you.

As for vehicle weapons, vehicles have response time, and its not like they're going to just pull a tank out of their ass into the middle of a crowded city before you can get anyway.

This isn't king of the mountain, and the character isn't a freaking moron. He doesn't stand on top of a building and yell "come and get me!" and proceeds to see how high a kill count he can get before they take him down. This is a tactical strike with full armor and weapons, making him pretty much invulnerable.

Now, the magic that targets his willpower can stop him, but having lighter armor and weapons won't make that situation any better. So he might as well go full out.

The point is that anything he might want to do with light weapons, he can do better with full military gear.

[Username17]

The point is that anything he might want to do with light weapons, he can do better with full military gear.

Then you have no point, because that's not true.

Any time you start kicking up shit in a modern setting, you start a timer going. That timer is the emergency threat response of the society whose shit you are kicking. When that timer goes far enough, the society will have come up with something that can and will kill you.

Now, by increasing your own protection, by wearing armor, using a fast car, or whatever, you can extend that timer by increasing the requirements that they'll need to take you down.

But there's a flip side. The more you piss the cops off, the faster they fill that timer because the easier a time they'll have requisitioning stuff.

Showing up with assault weapons, wearing military equipment in public, and killing police pisses off the cops. It makes them show up with bigger stuff faster.

Using military grade armor doesn't make your life easier, it pisses the cops off and makes them show up with antitank guns on helicopters - which they in fact do have. There's a point of diminishing returns when escalating your combat hardware is just sticking more of your body into the hornet's nest - it actually makes your job harder.

The second part of this, of course, is that the more you piss off society, the harder they'll track you down. If you wander around as a 3 meter tall hooligan with military armor and an assault cannon killing cops, they will hunt you down and they will kill your ass. Period.

Think of it like GTA. If you fire weaponry, you pick up a point of police response. That's the kind of thing you can duck by just hiding in an alley until they lose interest. But if you run around with military armor and heavy weaponry, you have like 6 points of police response. The amount of time you can survive that is very limited. And unlike GTA, you police response meter doesn't go away on completion of the mission. Mostly you just die.

So if you start a run and one of the guys wants to pull out military armor and an assault cannon, the first thing you do is poison them, because their stupid ass is going to get you killed if you don't.

-Username17

[rapanui]

Quick Thought: To a point, it would be nice to play in fantasy game with the same limitations on what you can do to society...

[Sma]

IMHO you´d simply have to install some sort of fast communication network, maybe a magic 8ball phone in every village.
And of course you´ll have to integrate the characters into society, so they have something to loose when they start breaking kingdoms.

Sma

[Username17]

It would take more than that.

Things that would make Fantasy like Modern:

1> Individuals are not important. This means that peoples have primary loyalty to organizations, not to people. It also means that interest groups are bigger than "The Hapsurgs" even, and are nationally, economically, racially or morally justified.

2> Everyone matters. While seemingly the antithesis of the first, this really isn't. It means that everyone can affect things to some degree. That means that everyone can use firearms in a modern setting, but in fantasy means that everyone can use magic.

3> Offense is bigger than defense. This is a big deal, and often goes right in the face of fantasy. In most fantasy you have magic armor even as you have magic weapons - and thus defense is just as big as offense. Indeed, for modern realities to hold, magical armor would have to be the suck.

---

Remember: under feudalism, the only justification for the economy or the government is "protection". That is to say, the only reason you give taxes or obedience to the government is because it is going to kick your ass if you don't. Therefore, by definition, the biggest baddest dude in the kingdom is the government of any feudal state.

There's no penalty for throwing your weight around too much in feudalism, there can't be. If you kick up enough shit eventually you are the king.

-Username17

[Sma]

I agree,
but... (there had to be one )

Offense is bigger than Defense, In low level play there are lots of people with bigger sticks, and in the high levels there´s always the teleport ambush.

But to get to my point even if rulership consists of a couple of dudes with the biggest sticks, they are providing protection. In a mafia kind of way but they have to look after their subjects else they tend to die out, or simply move to somewhere where they get some measure of security.

I´m going out on a limb here, but what I think (see my superpowers at work) rapanui meant, was a way to keep characters from getting out of hand in remote places. Or even a valid way to have an surviing Outpost in the Wilderness.
Due to the way the Level system works there is simply no way a low level guardsman has achance of stopping the 6th level party, or even te archetypical problem player. Give him a phone and he can. There cartainly are ways around it, but then, if there werent I could simply install a DM altar overlooking every township.

[RandomCasualty]

1085707585[/unixtime]]
3> Offense is bigger than defense. This is a big deal, and often goes right in the face of fantasy. In most fantasy you have magic armor even as you have magic weapons - and thus defense is just as big as offense. Indeed, for modern realities to hold, magical armor would have to be the suck.

Well this is really the case in D&D. A dedicated charge build character can deal out more damage than a dedicated damage soaker character could ever hope to soak. A lot depends solely on the roll of the intiiative dice especially with time stop at high levels.

Really, it isn't about offense being bigger than defense it's about levels mattering less. If you want to run something more modern feeling, 10 militiamen with swords have to be a legitimate threat. That has nothing to do with the value of offense versus defense, it has more to do with character levels being such an impact.

[Username17]

If you want to run something more modern feeling, 10 militiamen with swords have to be a legitimate threat. That has nothing to do with the value of offense versus defense, it has more to do with character levels being such an impact.

No. That is what offense vs. defense is all about. If you can be such a badass that normal people can't hurt you, that means that your defense has outstripped the world.

Whether or not other people who are just like you can hurt you is largely irrelevent, as is the question of the teleport ambush. Teleport Ambushes make the attacker win, which doesn't "favor offense", it favors the defense of the attacker.

As long as you can do things at all where you have no particular fear of death, the defense has won out. In a modern setting, that's never true. And for a fantasy setting to have that feel, it can't be true there either.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

The base offense versus defense argument is really about same level characters. A defensive oriented game is one where you can't kill anything without several hits, One in which you can kill in one round only when the guy is very inferior to you. An offensive oriented game features lots of ways to get one round kills on even leveled opponents. IMO the true test of an offensive game versus a defensive one is to min max it to all hell and then pit two characters against each other and see how long the battle takes. If it's decided by the intiative dice, then you've got an offensive game, if the intiaitive dice is only somewhat important, it's defensive.

Now on to armor. Buying a suit of armor in shadowrun is a lot more useful than a suit of armor in D&D. After all military grade armor really does make you invulnerable to most weapons, more so than a suit of +5 full plate which can always be hit on a natural 20. I mean anyone in Shadowrun can outstrip most of the world with defenses just by buying military grade armor.

It is however the hit points which make a difference. In Shadowrun you've got 10 health levels, and you never get anymore. In D&D as you gain levels you gain more hit points. Now, while you can call these defenses, I would say its a consequence of high level characters being too high above low levels as opposed to any real defenses.

But really, it's not even this that does it... it's the fact that unlike in modern settings you generally have no way of calling for backup. A group of security guards with pistols in shadowrun will never win against someone in military grade armor, it's like the 20th level character killing commoners. They just can't touch him. However, eventually you have to retreat because they have the ability to call in stuff with the capability to kill you, eventually.

Now to make this meaningful you've got to totally take away the ability to teleport, because that makes it way too easy to elude capture, and you need some means of wide area communication. That's it. Seriously even if it takes a balor to kill off a group of high level characters, so long as the average citizen can phone in a balor strike, the world operates much like a modern setting. If the character's can't necessarily get away from the balor in the blink of an eye with teleportation, then effectively the society can defend itself. It really doesn't matter if its a special military squad with antitank weapons or a group of summoned balors, all that matters is that the average joe can phone in an emergency and get some heavy support from somewhere.

[rapanui]

Let me make a few comments for a second here:

1. In D&D, defense excels over offense in the sense that very, very few people have access to the equipment necessary to penetrate certain defensive options. Hence, a mid level character could be expected to wipe out an entire village or town by himself, and quickly too. This is precisely what I want to avoid.

1> Individuals are not important. This means that peoples have primary loyalty to organizations, not to people. It also means that interest groups are bigger than "The Hapsurgs" even, and are nationally, economically, racially or morally justified.

2> Everyone matters. While seemingly the antithesis of the first, this really isn't. It means that everyone can affect things to some degree. That means that everyone can use firearms in a modern setting, but in fantasy means that everyone can use magic.

3> Offense is bigger than defense. This is a big deal, and often goes right in the face of fantasy. In most fantasy you have magic armor even as you have magic weapons - and thus defense is just as big as offense. Indeed, for modern realities to hold, magical armor would have to be the suck.

I found this very interesting. What I had in mind definately had 1 and 2. But 2 shouldn't come from everyone having access to magic, 2 should come from the power of people in large number. I don't care if they are just peasants... if there are 200 of them, they should simply mob up on you and kick your butt. This is difficult to pull off mechanics-wise when a single spell will toast a load of them.

The communications system mentioned by Sma is also key. Outlying and isolated villages are ripe for PC extortion unless they have a way of communicating with the larger group or organization they are loyal to. Would it be possible for such a system to exist with low tech/low magic? Would a system of large flaming pyres a la LotR work?

[Username17]

Outlying and isolated villages are ripe for PC extortion unless they have a way of communicating with the larger group or organization they are loyal to.

They are even so. And they are in the real world too. If you go far enough into the jungles of Guatemala you can massacre people and take their stuff and get away with it. Sometimes people do.

But they don't do it very much, because most people are generally opposed to killing other people, and it's really a lot of work to go that far into the jungle and they people there probably don't have a lot of stuff worth taking.

Sometimes they do, however, and that's when you get conflict diamonds. And while there isn't a whole lot that people can do about that sort of thing, societies do set up certificates of origin and such once they figure out that you are doing it, and when civilized nations find you - they kill you.

Even in a modern setting you can still totally go ape with crazy military hardware in totally remote locations, and in totally secret locations. If a corporation has a secret sweatshop where they use children for slave labor, what exactly are they going to do if some guy with a rocket launcher comes in and demands all the money? If they call the cops, that guy is going to jail, but so are they. If the robbery is costing them less than public scrutiny of their operating policies is, they aren't going to peep.

So even with global communications, there are still times when you can outfit yourself with the biggest weapons you can find and cut loose with little fear of setting off the unstoppable tidal wave of national or international threat response.

But thee's basically no time during which you can pull that crap in the middle of London, or even Pompeii.

-Username17