Was the Challenge Rating system such a bad idea after all?

[User3]

We know that the Challenge Rating system failed in D&D, mostly because of the way that we both had a more or less uniform level of character advancement and the fact that characters do not advance equally; effects like Initiate of Mystra show the CR for what it is.

However, should we give up on the idea entirely?

I used to be an advocate of arbitrary-advancement systems, but after playing some Mutants and Masterminds and some Shadowrun I'm not so sure anymore. In these systems you can have a rate of advancement that has nothing to with how challenging your adventures are.

Which looks fine, but then there's also the problem that most people want their characters to last as long as possible. So there's actually a perverse incentive for the characters to seek out missions where they avoid the Renraku and harass some Gangers.

Of course, there is the fact that the DM can just adjust the challenge and the fact that players seek a certain level of challenge when playing an RPG, otherwise they wouldn't bother playing a combative one.

Still, the fact that D&D had a meaningful system for gauging just how powerful your character should be and had a built-in system to reward your character depending on how brave the players were puts it ahead of other advancement systems, in my opinion. In Shadowrun, the same suggests you might get 1 or 2 extra Karma points if you regularly take on Prime Runners instead of faceless minions and makes no real statements regarding just how badass you have to be to take on Red Samurai. And I think this is crap.

What do you think?

[Username17]

The problem with CR is that it does two things:

1. Guesstimates risk.
and
2. Assesses Rewards.

Or to put it another way:

CR is supposed to keep DMs from doing stupid things (like dumping a Hill Giant on a 2nd level party). But unfortunately it also encourages PCs to do stupid things (like run in the front door and start hacking their way through the entire enemy army).

---

More freeform games like Shadowrun lack a coherent defintion of threat, that's bad. But they also encourage players to minimize their risk by doing smart things - that's good.

Shadowrun sort of has a threat guage in the mook "Professional Rating" - you can easily see that Red Samurai are more hardcore than are Lonestar Patrols. The problem is that in Shadowrun virtually anything can kill you, so a low or high Professional rating does not guaranty an easy win or pitched battle.

In a world with helicopter gunships and space-based mass drivers, the biggest question in any combat is not how tough the opposition is - but how much attention you are going to draw to yourself overcoming the enemy. And that's situationally dependent rather than opposition relevent.

---

Ultimately, I'd rather have no guidelines at all than have guidelines that don't work and objectively punish my character for intelligent planning. But I still think that the CR system was a good idea and could potentially be salvaged.

CR just has to not give you XP. It has to exist only as a measure of how much monster is going to invert your intestines so that the DM doesn't TPK on accident and PCs know when to run.

-Username17

[User3]

I really like the idea of CR, in principle. It is supposed to generally tell you the range where a certain threat lives, and thats valauble information for PCs and DMs alike.

The problem is this: the level system doesn't work, at present, in DnD. At any particular level, different characters can have wildly differing levels of power, and wildly different tactical options available to them.

Not knowing what a character or monster can or should do at a certain level make CRs impossible. I mean, look at a CR 20 Animal in any of the MMs, something like a Titanic Tiger or some crap. This is going to be a monster that is either a pitched melee battle that depletes the party resources, or its going to a single Fly spell on an archer. Heck, it might just be a single casting of Mindburn or a Save or Die.

For a CR system to work, you need to know what someone can do at any level. A system like that would say "Ok, now you are CR 5, so you either get crazy keeping out of reach movement (like flying or d-dooring), ranged attacks (like bows, tail spikes, boulders), or the ability to submarine (like Hide/Invisibility or burrowing)." Its looks like rock/paper/sissors, but it does it at every level and both monsters and PCs conform to that model.

Not only are tactical options balanced, but stats will be as well: mages are high magic, low attack, low defense, and moderate saves while fighters are high attack, moderate defense, low saves, and low magic. The difference between the "high" attribute and the "low" attribute for two characters of the same level won't be more than 6 on a d20 roll, and everyone generally does everything they do within a range so that you are not crippled at any one facet of a character.

The problem with an actually balanced system is this: people suck. Some players are bad at DnD because they are not good with tactics or numbers (or both), and its going to make them feel like crap when they know that even though they should be able to beat an appropriately CRed monster, they can't because they suck.

This is why DnD has puzzle monsters. You can't feel bad when a puzzle monster kills you, because you obviously didn't get the puzzle. On the flip side, you don't need to be good if you have a blessed crossbow bolt.

The most balanced game in the world is chess, and most people can't play it because it doesn't have the illusion of luck to cover up failings in skill, allowing people to feel shitty about themselves when they suck. Even with the randomness of DnD, the game is too tactical already to be more balanced without losing some of the "fun" factor.

[RandomCasualty]

1141199126[/unixtime]]
For a CR system to work, you need to know what someone can do at any level. A system like that would say "Ok, now you are CR 5, so you either get crazy keeping out of reach movement (like flying or d-dooring), ranged attacks (like bows, tail spikes, boulders), or the ability to submarine (like Hide/Invisibility or burrowing)." Its looks like rock/paper/sissors, but it does it at every level and both monsters and PCs conform to that model.

Well really, if you want a CR system that means anything, you can't have too many "counter or die" abilities like flight or undetectable invisibility and crap. The issue is that these abilities force monsters to have a relevant counter ability or they lose. Versus flight you either need missile attacks or be able to fly yourself. Against invisibility you need super high spot, or the ability to see invisible things and so on. And there's only so many of these you can potentially have before your monsters are going to look all alike because they have to meet the basic laundry list of crap.

In fantasy, the big stupid melee beast is a staple, so really I don't think it's a good idea to have crap that takes it out of the game. We have hydras, Tarrasques and collossal tigers, and we have them at all sorts of levels and CRs.

If we want CR to work, the power of abilities is going to have go down quite a bit, and the game is going to have to look more like a MMORPG where lots of effort is put in to prevent "cheese kills".

Alternately you could just run something similar to Shadowrun and get objective based XP instead of CR based, like Frank is saying. Then you'd have CR be nothing but a rough guideline. In this case you'd probably want to throw in certain tags on monsters that list ways to easily evade them, so novice DMs realize that the Tarrasque isn't all that awesome unless someone is dumb enough to engage it in direct combat.

[User3]

Well really, if you want a CR system that means anything, you can't have too many "counter or die" abilities like flight or undetectable invisibility and crap. The issue is that these abilities force monsters to have a relevant counter ability or they lose. Versus flight you either need missile attacks or be able to fly yourself. Against invisibility you need super high spot, or the ability to see invisible things and so on. And there's only so many of these you can potentially have before your monsters are going to look all alike because they have to meet the basic laundry list of crap.

The devil is in the details, of course. The list of possible counter can run so long tht most people won't notice any overlap. Flying with long-ranged attacks is countered by either:
A. Comparable ranged attacks(long range breath weapon, long range charm/petrification/laser beam gaze, boulders, spells like Fireball or Lighning bolt any other long range spell, access to bows, ).
B. Invulnerability to ranged attacks/submarining(DR/melee, burrowing so you have total cover, being invisible or concealed while not attacking so you can't be targetted).
C. Comparable movement(d-dooring, comparable flight speed, shadowwalking, ethereal movement)

This is just a partial list, but you get the idea. With a little creativity, you can have monsters that get abilities off of one of these basic categories, and have it be unique. For example, a Column B ability might just be the ability to cast Fog Cloud or just the ability to cast Invisibility, or you might take an ability that is both on column B and C, like Shadowwalking. The potential flavor is endless, even if the tactical options are relatively limtied. Shadowwalking can instead be Treewalking, Firewalking, Stonewalking, Co-axial Movement, or any number of other options that are tactically the same but have sightly different mechanics.

In fantasy, the big stupid melee beast is a staple, so really I don't think it's a good idea to have crap that takes it out of the game. We have hydras, Tarrasques and collossal tigers, and we have them at all sorts of levels and CRs.

Big stupid melee monsters can still be around, but you need to give them a couple of new abilities. I'm perfectly fine with DR suddenly working on all damage sources and a Tarrasque having "DR/melee and X", and a Hydra can have "DR/melee." That means to defeat them you actually need to fight them in an authentic and flavorful way.

If we want CR to work, the power of abilities is going to have go down quite a bit, and the game is going to have to look more like a MMORPG where lots of effort is put in to prevent "cheese kills".

MMORPGs don't have any tactical options at all, meaning that RPGs won't play them in a tabletop environment. Turn-based games like DnD thrive on tactial options, so I really don't see any appeal to this approach. The MMORPG way of doing DnD involves stacking numbers together and not having tactical option, which is worse of both worlds.

Alternately you could just run something similar to Shadowrun and get objective based XP instead of CR based, like Frank is saying. Then you'd have CR be nothing but a rough guideline.

We already have that. Read the section on CR again. Its supposed to be a rough guideline, and you are supposed to get XP for avoiding the hydra chained in the room. Since that doesn't work, we need something new.

In this case you'd probably want to throw in certain tags on monsters that list ways to easily evade them, so novice DMs realize that the Tarrasque isn't all that awesome unless someone is dumb enough to engage it in direct combat.

Thats the easiest "fix" to DnD without rewriting the whole system. Things like Trolls can have a [Closet] tag meaning that they aren't challenging unless you fight them in a closet, and you can have the [Kills One of Your Party] tag on crap like beholders that fire off three save or dies a round.

But honestly, I still don't think that will work. You'd need a laundry list of tags on every monster to CR them well for every circumstance.

[Crissa]

Why is the big stupid combat monster a staple above level 5-10, anyhow?

Kings don't fight Giant cats, they own them and put them in boxes to throw adventurers in with them.

Why not have 'CR5 (20 melee)' if you want to have the stupid cat-in-a-box for the epic warrior to fight?

-Crissa

[Username17]

For D&D monsters you can just give things 3 CRs. The first number is the level of the party it is a challenge for in a strategic encounter. The second number is the level of the party it is a challenge for in a low-tactics slugfest. And the third number is the level of the party it is a challenge for in a closet.

So an Ogre is CRed at 2/4/4 - because it's got roughly the damage output and toughness of a 4th level Fighter but it has glaring weaknesses in ranged combat.

A Troll is CRed at 4/5/9 - because it can be effectively harried with webs and ranged attacks and such (but still regenerates), and is quite nasty in melee. And of course, the "closet troll" is legendary because that rend will outright kill 7th level party members.

But the Mindflayer is CRed at 8/7/6 - its good tricks are all long ranged or combo-driven. The more you can herd it into close combat the less meaningful it is.

We already have that.

No we don't, we have challenge based XP not objective based XP. You actually get less XP for pressing on without resting so that you can ambush the Black Knight on the road than you get for resting up, preparing some invisibility, and sneaking into the Black Knight's castle past his moat hydra.

You get XP for challenges passed, but not for challenges averted. It encourages tactical thinking but not strategic thinking. You get less rewards for preventing the Dark Gate from opening than you do for fighting your way through the Gate to shut it down.

-Username17

[User3]

Why is the big stupid combat monster a staple above level 5-10, anyhow?

Simple. Most DnD players are not good at tactics or strategy. They really need high level monsters that don't ask a lot of them.

No we don't, we have challenge based XP not objective based XP. You actually get less XP for pressing on without resting so that you can ambush the Black Knight on the road than you get for resting up, preparing some invisibility, and sneaking into the Black Knight's castle past his moat hydra.

You get XP for challenges passed, but not for challenges averted. It encourages tactical thinking but not strategic thinking. You get less rewards for preventing the Dark Gate from opening than you do for fighting your way through the Gate to shut it down.

What version of Dnd are you paying? The XP section on pages 36-41 clearly has rules for awarding XP for "story awards" and mission goals, and it also tells you to give XP for monsters based on whether those monsters were in the way of your "goals". In your example, if the Black Knight usually stayed in his castle guarded by a hydra and he was returning to it, then you'd get the hydra XP for catching him before he got home and behind the aforementioned hydra.

Even if your DM didn't do that, you'd still have the same XP, since actual play time vs number of encounters is the same. Each play session is the same regardless if you have X encounters in a session that composes one adventure, or if you have X encounters in a session that compose X-2 encounters for the last part of one adventure and 2 encounters for the start of a new adventure. Each encounter avoided is time banked to spend playing the next encounter, and since you are fighting thing within your CR range, you average XP is the same.

But the XP awarding system is beside the point. Ever since 3.X it has always been a total DM call, and as a system that works. The real issue about CR is keeping players from dying to closet trolls.

For D&D monsters you can just give things 3 CRs. The first number is the level of the party it is a challenge for in a strategic encounter. The second number is the level of the party it is a challenge for in a low-tactics slugfest. And the third number is the level of the party it is a challenge for in a closet.

So an Ogre is CRed at 2/4/4 - because it's got roughly the damage output and toughness of a 4th level Fighter but it has glaring weaknesses in ranged combat.

A Troll is CRed at 4/5/9 - because it can be effectively harried with webs and ranged attacks and such (but still regenerates), and is quite nasty in melee. And of course, the "closet troll" is legendary because that rend will outright kill 7th level party members.

But the Mindflayer is CRed at 8/7/6 - its good tricks are all long ranged or combo-driven. The more you can herd it into close combat the less meaningful it is.

Anyone can assign arbitrary number to things, and that still doesn't mean anything. The Titanic Tiger is no challenge at all to a flying party member with a bow and enough arrows, so no arbitrary number will ever represent it.

Lots of abilities are just "win or don't win" depending on whether you have the right counter. Most natural were-creatures are a flat win or no win to a low level party if they don't have casters with the right spells or silver weapons, and that means that any number higher or lower than "you can't win this encounter" for parties without the right stuff is just wrong.

Thats not even counting casters that prepare non-optimal spells. Each spell level has about 4 spells that are great, and if you take them then most of your encounters are cakewalks and if you don't then you can't win.

So many problems can be fixed by just saying what people should be able to do at a certain level. Spells like Obscure Object or Magic Weapon should just have a [Story] tag on them to tell people that picking these instead of Sleep or Web at levels 1-4 is the same as saying "I'm not playing the combat portion of this game."

I'm not even going to go into fighting and rogue classes. They can't even play DnD without casters past 3rd level.

[RandomCasualty]

1141238350[/unixtime]]
The devil is in the details, of course. The list of possible counter can run so long tht most people won't notice any overlap. Flying with long-ranged attacks is countered by either:
A. Comparable ranged attacks(long range breath weapon, long range charm/petrification/laser beam gaze, boulders, spells like Fireball or Lighning bolt any other long range spell, access to bows, ).
B. Invulnerability to ranged attacks/submarining(DR/melee, burrowing so you have total cover, being invisible or concealed while not attacking so you can't be targetted).
C. Comparable movement(d-dooring, comparable flight speed, shadowwalking, ethereal movement)

Keep in mind that hiding or invulnerability to ranged attacks isn't really a counter per se, because it's so individual. Monsters tend to work in groups, like PCs, and being able to hide or protect yourself only helps you, and it also means you're removed from combat. So great, you can hide and meanwhile the fliers just pick off your allies while you're sitting in a corner.

Also, not every encounter even needs to be about killing stuff. WHile you're hiding they can just fly right past you. Really you're looking at ranged attacks and flight as being the only great counters to flight. There are other ways to flee the field of battle for sure, but they don't help you win.

With all the melee monsters, you just can't be handing out flight so easily.

Big stupid melee monsters can still be around, but you need to give them a couple of new abilities. I'm perfectly fine with DR suddenly working on all damage sources and a Tarrasque having "DR/melee and X", and a Hydra can have "DR/melee." That means to defeat them you actually need to fight them in an authentic and flavorful way.

Suire, you could do stuff like that, but that's going to take a lot of balancing to ensure that your creatures have enough DR. The problem is that even just a single point of damage is going to be enough to kill off something with DR/melee. It just takes longer.

Also, big dumb beasts are usually not the focus of the adventure and are more obstacles. In this case, being able to fly is pretty muhc getting you past them and winning the combat.

MMORPGs don't have any tactical options at all, meaning that RPGs won't play them in a tabletop environment. Turn-based games like DnD thrive on tactial options, so I really don't see any appeal to this approach. The MMORPG way of doing DnD involves stacking numbers together and not having tactical option, which is worse of both worlds.

Well, you can have tactical options, like different special attacks and stuff. You just can't have "counter or die" abilities, where you absolutely need a small set of coutner abilities or you lose automatically.

There are game settings where flight doesn't matter. Shadowrun for instance. People can be flying around and it doesn't affect balance at all, because everyone owns guns. Flight in SR is pure mobility. In D&D however it's actually a dominant ability, simply because a lot of your opposition doesn't have ranged attacks or has ranged attacks vastly inferior to their melee attacks.

D&D is primarily a melee game. It's also made to be played on a two dimensional grid. D&D handles three dimensional landscapes especially poorly. The less flight we have, the more balanced and smoothly the game will run.

[RandomCasualty]

1141240437[/unixtime]]Why is the big stupid combat monster a staple above level 5-10, anyhow?

I would ask first why people flying around at levels above 5 is a staple.

And big monsters are totally a staple of fantasy. We're talking about hydras, purple worms, umber hulks, gorgons, big ass scorpions, golems and of course the Tarrasque. And I could go through more, but I think we get the idea. Now unless we want to go bringing down the CRs of creatures, things probably won't work and really 5 CRs just isn't enough.

Why not just push flight back till about level 15 or so?

I mean as I said before, the game doesn't even support flight well. We have skills like climb, jump and swim that are supposed to be useful. We've got a combat system that pretty much isn't designed for 3 dimensional combat at all, and handles it in a piss poor fashion.

Flight is more a staple of superhero genres rather than fantasy. In fantasy, flight is generally a plot device that tends to get killed, stolen or broken rather quickly.

[User3]

1141259744[/unixtime]]

1141240437[/unixtime]]Why is the big stupid combat monster a staple above level 5-10, anyhow?

I would ask first why people flying around at levels above 5 is a staple.

And big monsters are totally a staple of fantasy. We're talking about hydras, purple worms, umber hulks, gorgons, big ass scorpions, golems and of course the Tarrasque. And I could go through more, but I think we get the idea. Now unless we want to go bringing down the CRs of creatures, things probably won't work and really 5 CRs just isn't enough.

Why not just push flight back till about level 15 or so?

I mean as I said before, the game doesn't even support flight well. We have skills like climb, jump and swim that are supposed to be useful. We've got a combat system that pretty much isn't designed for 3 dimensional combat at all, and handles it in a piss poor fashion.

Flight is more a staple of superhero genres rather than fantasy. In fantasy, flight is generally a plot device that tends to get killed, stolen or broken rather quickly.

What you seem to be forgetting is that in most fantasy stories, being big really matters. Unless it's specifically their specialization, most heroes have trouble hitting a target 200' away with an arrow when it is flat-footed.

When fighting a hydra, the character's archery attacks (1) Don't matter 'cause he can't get in a good hit, (2) Provoke AoOs because those necks reach really far, or (3) cause the character to run out of arrows and have to melee.

Generally speaking, flight in stories is nowhere near as good as flight in D&D for combat.

[User3]

Keep in mind that hiding or invulnerability to ranged attacks isn't really a counter per se, because it's so individual. Monsters tend to work in groups, like PCs, and being able to hide or protect yourself only helps you, and it also means you're removed from combat. So great, you can hide and meanwhile the fliers just pick off your allies while you're sitting in a corner.

Two points:
1. Not every counter has to be perfect. It just has to be competitive so that no situation is an "instant win." Thats where the tactical part of the game begins. Everyone gets tactics that are strong counters to some tactics and weak to other tactics.
2. If the monsters are within the right CR range, then everyone has a counter tactic. In a mixed group of monsters (made common in the superhero genre), some guys will have great tactics vs your favorite tactic, and some will have weak tactics vs your favorite tactic.

And if you are fighting outside your CR range, I don't care if you almost always auto-win against some guys. Thats what being more powerful is all about.

Suire, you could do stuff like that, but that's going to take a lot of balancing to ensure that your creatures have enough DR. The problem is that even just a single point of damage is going to be enough to kill off something with DR/melee. It just takes longer.

When I say "we should know what a character can do at a certain level", I'm serious. You need to know everything, including how much damage a person can do at a certain.

This crap where you mix crazy feats and class features for massive damage makes for an unbalanced game, because the people who don't do it are underpowered and the ones who do it can be overpowered.

[Crissa]

I don't see where the 'win or no win' doesn't fit into CR.

Sure, a CR 9 party will have trouble with a bunch of CR 2 silver-only critters - but they'll survive, whereas a CR 2 party will have to flee or be obliterated. But they can get the items.

And many things, like flight, become available as certain levels. Pegasus was granted at what level, yes?

But flight in earlier versions had ratings, and many versions weren't suitable for combat, leaving you like the hydrogren balloom lofted above the battle to drop a pair of grenades.

And some things need higher CRs, yes, because they need to be killed by a great hero or an army.

But by level 15, you're a pretty much a nearly epic hero. You're at the level of Heracles, or something. Level 10 you're a Lord or King. Ya gotta remember that unless you're going to turn the D&D world upside down.

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1141327437[/unixtime]]
Two points:
1. Not every counter has to be perfect. It just has to be competitive so that no situation is an "instant win." Thats where the tactical part of the game begins. Everyone gets tactics that are strong counters to some tactics and weak to other tactics.

Actually a counter against an absolute "counter or die" ability, like flight, needs to be perfect. Because if the guy can stay out of range and always fly around you, then basically you are taken out of the fight. It's as if he killed you without really killing you. And if he can avoid you, pretty much that means you're a nonfactor.

2. If the monsters are within the right CR range, then everyone has a counter tactic. In a mixed group of monsters (made common in the superhero genre), some guys will have great tactics vs your favorite tactic, and some will have weak tactics vs your favorite tactic.

Well, I think it's important to separate fantasy from superhero, because they're entirely different.

Superhero combats are basically all super versus super. They're also modern, meaning that you've got lots and lots of ranged attacks. If the supers don't have ranged attacks, they've got flight or quasi flight (like being able to jump really high).

It's a natural thing in superhero battles that terrain really doesn't matter (There are a few exceptions for the more mortal heroes, like batman). The same isn't true for fantasy where you've got slippery ice bridges, treacherous swamps, small stepping stones over rivers of fire, and giants hurling rocks from atop high plateaus. Heck we've got swashbucklers swinging on chandeliers and Conan scaling the serpent tower. All this stuff is gone if you have the fly spell. Seriously, it's like an insult to the entire genre.

And while flight certain has its place in fantasy, it's always something that for whatever reason isn't used all the time.

And if you are fighting outside your CR range, I don't care if you almost always auto-win against some guys. Thats what being more powerful is all about.

This is thinking too much in superhero genre as opposed to fantasy. Yeah, Hulk can pound down a near infinite amount of army men, but heroes in fantasy arne't supposed to be taking down armies. And basically when you change "can kill CR X with little risk" to "can kill CR X with zero risk", you make heroes into army killers.

This crap where you mix crazy feats and class features for massive damage makes for an unbalanced game, because the people who don't do it are underpowered and the ones who do it can be overpowered.

Well to some degree you wont' be able to eliminate this. Combos are always going to exist, the best thing you can do is try to control truly abusive abilities like flight. Keep in mind that even with DR/melee, you'll just get people trying to attack with reach weapons from the air. Good tacticians are always going to find ways around various limitations. If given the ability to become totally immune to melee attacks, they'll figure out some way to kill something even if it is mostly immune to ranged attacks.

CR can work for a fantasy game, it's just the abilities of PCs need to be limited to fantasy abilities and not superhero abilities.

[RandomCasualty]

1141333050[/unixtime]]
But by level 15, you're a pretty much a nearly epic hero. You're at the level of Heracles, or something. Level 10 you're a Lord or King. Ya gotta remember that unless you're going to turn the D&D world upside down.

This stuff is all relative. Nobody actually said level 15 has to equal a legendary hero. That could just as easily be level 5 or level 30.

Aragorn and Conan are archetypical warrior kings, but we'd probably not call them above level 5-6.

[PhoneLobster]

This is thinking too much in superhero genre as opposed to fantasy. Yeah, Hulk can pound down a near infinite amount of army men, but heroes in fantasy arne't supposed to be taking down armies.

As is the case whenever someone starts claiming some sort of difference between comics and fantasy/mythology somone is making the all to common mistake of assuming their apparrently exceedingly minimal knowledge of fantasy and mythology encompasses the field in its entirety.

Fantasy and mythological stories CONSTANTLY have one or a few heroes standing against entire hoards and armies. Where the hell have you been your entire life living on the moon watching a censored edition of lord of the rings with all the combat scenes cut out?

From Elric to Willow to the god damned effiminate fellowship of the ring themselves with Gilgamesh and half the cast of the Mahabharata and every second figure of ancient myth around the globe thrown in for good measure. They all stand up as lone warriors or tiny doomed bands of heroes against ARMIES, often supernatural unstoppable armies OF DOOM.

The lamo cast of Stargate fricking do it during every single god damned season finale.

The entire arching story line of Farscape WAS a small band of escaped criminals vs in excess of two empires...

And how many fantasy novels revolve around a single hero (and sometimes a handful of companions) going up against the great and evil empire? Last I looked it was damn near all of them.

I just cannot wrap my head around anyone thinking that heroes vs armies is somehow restricted the Hulk... where DID anybody ever get that kind of wierd ass idea from?

[RandomCasualty]

1141357701[/unixtime]]
From Elric to Willow to the god damned effiminate fellowship of the ring themselves with Gilgamesh and half the cast of the Mahabharata and every second figure of ancient myth around the globe thrown in for good measure. They all stand up as lone warriors or tiny doomed bands of heroes against ARMIES, often supernatural unstoppable armies OF DOOM.

The lamo cast of Stargate fricking do it during every single god damned season finale.

The entire arching story line of Farscape WAS a small band of escaped criminals vs in excess of two empires...

Well I don't consider most myths to be the type of fantasy D&D is emulating. Myths tend to be larger than life obviously and involve pretty much no rules. Basically people just do whatever the hell they feel like for the purposes of the story. If you want some guy to shoot out the sun with an arrow he can, and he can also miss a target at 100' in the next. Myths don't have any consistency at all, and really I don't think we can even try to simulate them in D&D.

As for your other stuff...
Willow didn't slay an army, in fact they spent most of their time running from the evil army. They didn't stand and cut them all down.

Similarly the Fellowship of the Ring didn't singlehandedly win the siege of Gondor or the battle of Helm's Deep. If they could do that they'd have just sent Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn out there and not lost their fortifications to the orc siege. Heroes lead armies, they don't replace them.

As for Stargate, sure I've seen them defeat armies before, but generally it's with some high tech gizmo plot device. But lets also remember they've been captured by armies on several occasions too. WIth their normal weapons, they've killed large groups, but certainly not entire armies.

As for Farscape, what show were you watching? I can't think of a single instance where they took out anything resembling an army. Their ship had no weapons, They basically used stealth, speed and trickery to evade and confuse their attackers.

Of you examples, Elric was about the only one who actually slew a true army singlehandedly. And well, I don't see any DM handing out Stormbringer to his PCs anytime soon. Elric also killed gods, so he was severely epic, as was his weapon. Elric was by far the top of the power spectrum as far as heroes go.

And how many fantasy novels revolve around a single hero (and sometimes a handful of companions) going up against the great and evil empire? Last I looked it was damn near all of them.

Fighting an empire and killing an army are two different things. Heck, Shadowrun is about fighting evil corporate empires too, but you certainly don't see SR PCs taking out entire armies. They have to lay low and use surgical strikes to accomplish their goals. Fighting an empire is all about accepting that the empire is bigger and badder than you are, and that you can't afford to stay in one place too long and let them concentrate their forces on you.

Similarly you didn't see Luke taking on a legion of Stormtroopers in Star Wars or Aragorn slaying the entire army of Mordor singlehandedly. They all used armies and support.

There is a big difference between being elite and being invulnerable. This is the very difference between a fantasy hero and a comic book superhero. The fantasy hero has to get out of there before the big guns arrive and he gets out numbered too badly and killed. The superhero really doesn't care. The hulk is just gonna sit there and take it no matter how many tanks they bring. Numbers are basically meaningless to him.

Aragorn or Conan aren't going to totally render your army obsolete, the Hulk will.

[User3]

Actually a counter against an absolute "counter or die" ability, like flight, needs to be perfect. Because if the guy can stay out of range and always fly around you, then basically you are taken out of the fight. It's as if he killed you without really killing you. And if he can avoid you, pretty much that means you're a nonfactor.

Not killing the monster doesn't have to be a non-factor. If you can't kill the orcish ninjas because their so sneaky, they'll burn the village down and you lose the encounter.

Its the video-game model that fvcks up DnD. There should be few encounters that are "kill this monster, then the door opens to the room with a chest." Thats the kind of crap where the death of the monster is required.

If you are tracking some wizard's hellcat assasin, you want it to be capable of running back to the wizard's lair, but not busting on the party, because they'll kill it and you'll never find his lair and the hostages.

And its the same with PCs. In all my years of DnD, I've never seen a party run. Ever. Not only is combat so deadly that you usually can't, but you rarely have a tactical decision more complex that "I hope we get lucky and not die in this fvcking deathtrap" or " we are so going to bone these guys in their bone-holes."

Tactics=stories, plain and simple. You don't remember the adventure where you critted several times on your Power Attack/Leap Attack and killed the monster really quickly. You remember the time you disarmed the Blood Sword and dropped it into the pool of acid before you bull rushed the bastard in right after it.

As for the issue of power level.... well...... if you are fighting something 7-8 or more CRs below you, you should take small amounts of damage. Then, when you fight an army of crap stuff, you really do want an army behind you because small amounts of damage done by a crap-ton of dudes is fatal.

And I do think a level should come when you just win. Generally, I think its level 21. Epic guys should take no damage from level 1-4 guys. At that level, its not "can you kill this army?" The question is "can you cut your way through this army fast enough to stop the Black King from completing the ritual that turns everyone on the battlefield into zombies?"

[RandomCasualty]

1141373027[/unixtime]]
Not killing the monster doesn't have to be a non-factor. If you can't kill the orcish ninjas because their so sneaky, they'll burn the village down and you lose the encounter.

Well, the issue with stealth is either that you can spot something or you can't, as it tends to be another binary ability, similar to flight. So if the PCs can find the ninjas, then their stealth means nothing. If they can't find the ninjas then they're screwed from the beginning and the village burns.

The thing is that you can be both flying and have a high spot score.

And its the same with PCs. In all my years of DnD, I've never seen a party run. Ever. Not only is combat so deadly that you usually can't, but you rarely have a tactical decision more complex that "I hope we get lucky and not die in this fvcking deathtrap" or " we are so going to bone these guys in their bone-holes."

Well, the issue isn't so much that you can't run, so much as that you'll have to leave comrades behind. People tend to drop a lot in D&D, and once they're down you basically have to leave them behind.

Tactics=stories, plain and simple. You don't remember the adventure where you critted several times on your Power Attack/Leap Attack and killed the monster really quickly. You remember the time you disarmed the Blood Sword and dropped it into the pool of acid before you bull rushed the bastard in right after it.

Sure, and honestly I'd say abilities like flight tend to remove tactics by removing important game elements like terrain. A pit of acid is pretty much a non threat if you can fly. Someone bullrushes you off the edge, and you just hover there.

As for the issue of power level.... well...... if you are fighting something 7-8 or more CRs below you, you should take small amounts of damage. Then, when you fight an army of crap stuff, you really do want an army behind you because small amounts of damage done by a crap-ton of dudes is fatal.

And I do think a level should come when you just win. Generally, I think its level 21. Epic guys should take no damage from level 1-4 guys. At that level, its not "can you kill this army?" The question is "can you cut your way through this army fast enough to stop the Black King from completing the ritual that turns everyone on the battlefield into zombies?"

That sounds pretty reasonable. And achieving a model like that generally means you're going to have to take out a lot of abilities like flight and incorporeality from the game, or delay them until epic levels anyway.

[erik]

1141373027[/unixtime]]
And its the same with PCs. In all my years of DnD, I've never seen a party run. Ever. Not only is combat so deadly that you usually can't, but you rarely have a tactical decision more complex that 'I hope we get lucky and not die in this fvcking deathtrap' or 'we are so going to bone these guys in their bone-holes'

Heh, I've been in parties that have run away, a lot.
Many times with the same campaign/DM, largely because the DM didn't have the slightest grasp of the encounter level concept, and would throw enemies that were both too strong and also too numerous at us than reasonable.

Encounters we had to run from:
Level 4 party vs 1 Drow level 4 Fighter, 30 zombies, 3 or 4 Spawn of Kyruss.

Level 1 party vs 30 zombies/skeletons and 10 ghouls.

Level 5 party vs. ass load of level ? fighters with longbows (we couldn't even make it within melee range... later stormed their fort at night, killed a bunch of the mooks and had to run again from the BBEG running the fort- stole most of his loot and charmed/kidnapped his cohort so we called that a win).

In living greyhawk recently a level 3-4 party had to run and return later to go through a dumb-ass contrived encounter where we have to run a gauntlet past a tripping spike-chain specialist guarding a long stair case, which has a resetting lightning bolt trap at the top, and also there are 3 or 4 hidden rogues in there with a caster who glitterdusts the party. Effing-hell that encounter sucked the first time. We had to drag 3 people up the stairs to get away.
We smoked it after running away and coming back with proper tactics though... even with a party member who spent the whole combat healing/stabilizing the enemy. I hated that fvcker.

Back on to the topic, all of those encounters were things that should have been throwing red flags all over the place for violations of CR/EL being way tougher than the party's average level. The last one was probably the least offensive, since they just didn't take into account all the circumstancial crap (hidden rogues with glitterdust caster, party that has to approach single file past tripping fvcker with combat reflexes after making a jump & balance check to bypass the lighting bolt trap after it hits the first people).

I'm happy that with the CR system I can objectively say that those encounters were too damn hard. Tactics can allow a party to blow the hell out of each of those encounters, but often only if you know in advance what you are in for.

[edit: the inevitable typoes]

[fbmf]

Well I don't consider most myths to be the type of fantasy D&D is emulating. Myths tend to be larger than life obviously and involve pretty much no rules. <SNIP> and really I don't think we can even try to simulate them in D&D.

I can't believe I'm using this example...

Ever heard of Drizzt Do'Urden?

That is definitely D&D based, and although I have never read a Drizzt book, judging from the advertisements and what my friends tell me that dude can take down shitloads of guys with his dual scimitars.

Game On,
fbmf

[User3]

1141413145[/unixtime]]

Well I don't consider most myths to be the type of fantasy D&D is emulating. Myths tend to be larger than life obviously and involve pretty much no rules. <SNIP> and really I don't think we can even try to simulate them in D&D.

I can't believe I'm using this example...

Ever heard of Drizzt Do'Urden?

That is definitely D&D based, and although I have never read a Drizzt book, judging from the advertisements and what my friends tell me that dude can take down shitloads of guys with his dual scimitars.

Game On,
fbmf

Heh heh, the funny thing is that they printed his stats in the FRCS book, and he was the most poorly built high level character I'd seen at the time; he seriously would've had trouble taking down "a thousand orcs".

[Username17]

Yeah. D&D got its start because some people didn't want to paint a whole army of swordsmen and archers. So people were allowed to field an "army" of just a couple of monsters, or a few heroes. In short, the origins of D&D are "small group of heroes vs. army" - that's the whole point and always has been.

That's completely born out by the old "No. Appearing" lines on the monsters sections. Orcs showed up in groups of 40-400. You were expected, even required to engage in military engagements against actual armies. The classic modules such as "against the giants" were all focused around your party holding off dozens or hundreds of evil dudes with swords.

3rd edition D&D is the first edition in the history of the hobby in which they presented individuals or small groups of skilled enemies as reasonable or expectable opposition. Before it's always been "you have the training, the tactics, and the magic weapons, they outnumber you a hundred to one - Go!"

-Username17

[User3]

That sounds pretty reasonable. And achieving a model like that generally means you're going to have to take out a lot of abilities like flight and incorporeality from the game, or delay them until epic levels anyway.

They don't have to go, but they do have to change.

I mean, flight is an ability that birds have, right? The problem is this: it takes a lot of work for a bird to fly. Why is it easier in DnD? You can have Full-round action Flight and thats a lot more balance, right? Swoop attacks can be treated like melee attacks that cause AoOs, and dragons can get a special "strafe" ability so they can only blow fire and fly. In fact, hitting someone in the air with anything should cause a save or else you crash, meaning its really dangerous be a flyer in combat. Isn't is really flavorful and fun to make the attacking gragoyle crash into a wall or dunk them into a pool?

Make flight more realistic, and its actually more balanced.

Make Hide the same. Hiding should be "not moving." The version of Hide that most DnD groups use should be a high level ability on par with Improved Invisibility.

I've played a lot of DnD, and I've never pretended that all abilities were created equal. Rebalancing the more poorly thought-out abilities is the first step. The second step is to make the classes have different abilities of equal tactical use.