4th Edition Quirks

[Fuchs]

Speaking of straw men, this is another one. See, the DM by no means has to be setting out to try to kill PCs for it to happen. He just has to play a two round combat. And you need good tactics and solid characters not to be killed by the Iterative Probability of win spells and full attacks and whatever else taking you out in 1-2 rounds.

Factually wrong. Because the existence of numerous DMs that have no problems running DnD 3.X without PC deaths happening and without demanding optimization from PCs is an observable fact.

I'd argue that every one of those DMs were fudging things to some degree. Not dying in 3.x requires active effort on someone's part; it is not something that you just happen to avoid.

Well, yes. Like not using SoDs, making the NPCs capture, not kill PCs, etc. But as far as I know nothing in 3.5 states "The DM has to use SoDs, has to make his NPCs kill PCs!".

[RandomCasualty2]

The rustmonster in MM2 pretty much demonstrates in complete and absolute detail "Let the dice fall where they may" is dead in DnD4.0.

Well it means 4E is toned down for sure and that the PCs have a much bigger edge. You don't just get as fucked over in 4E as you would in 3E with shit like rust monstres and disjunction. But that in no way goes against "let the dice fall where they may."

The counter to that principle is encouraging you to fudge. And as far as I've seen, the incentive to fudge rolls has actually gone down as time has went on. 2E actually encouraged you to fudge dice in some of its supplements. I never really saw this in 3E, but due to the deadliness of the game, many DMs would have to resort to fudging to keep the party alive. And the swings in 3E were absolutely devastating. A few lucky crits by monsters, especially if they happened to have great axes or scythes could easily end in TPK for a party or at minimum a single character dying. And characters had no mechanism to save themselves like edge in Shadowrun.

4E, because it's so easy, really seems to be trying to eliminate the fudging from the game. Yeah, the consequences of bad dice aren't as bad, but at the same time, you're actually encouraged to "let the dice fall where they may." mainly because the game is less swingy.

Now 4E is designed to be pretty easy, but it's not designed to be fudged.

[RandomCasualty2]

But most importantly, you also consistently fail to demonstrate how your assumptions make the game better. Hardly anyone fucking cares about playing Murdering Hobos. Most people also don't care about drilling through spell and feat lists to excavate stuff that will allow them to beat feat-rearranged monsters or optimized God-casters (my players, for instance, generally take my advice on optimization, but I cannot and will not force them to read supplements, never mind optimization-related forums, because most of them are overworked enough at their jobs). Neither of this prevent people from running great DnD games. Not that I really expect you to really understand these, because you've spend the last month or three proving that there are no opinions other than "yours" and "wrong" in your world, but this needs to be said.

Yeah, pretty much one of the Roy's favorite parts of the game is optimizing, so he has difficulty understanding how people can not like that I think. He even stated in one thread that as a DM he liked to optimize NPCs and monsters with the crazy taxcode NPCs as PCs system in 3.5.

And that's okay for his games, but he doesn't seem to realize that not every game runs that way.

The simple fact of difficulty and optimization is that it really doesn't make a difference. DMs can simply adjust the difficulty of encounters regardless of party. And good DMs do that anyway. If your PCs are a bunch of min/maxers, then obviously I'm going to throw tougher shit at them, if they can't min/max out of a paper bag, then the encounters will be easier.

The only way I can see optimization becoming a concern is if you're using modules where the difficulty is fixed. Otherwise, DMs are expected to scale the difficulty anyway if they want a long running campaign.

[Iron Mongler]

RC and Fuchs have got this.

[violence in the media]

I'd argue that every one of those DMs were fudging things to some degree. Not dying in 3.x requires active effort on someone's part; it is not something that you just happen to avoid.

Well, yes. Like not using SoDs, making the NPCs capture, not kill PCs, etc. But as far as I know nothing in 3.5 states "The DM has to use SoDs, has to make his NPCs kill PCs!".

Of course there's nothing saying that, and there's nothing wrong with playing a gentleman's agreement game. However, you still have to contend with the stealth SoDs (like Color Spray or Blasphemy spam), problematic monsters (like Shadows), accidental death and dismemberment (LOL max scythe crit), or figuring out how long you can carry a campaign by simply adding HD to ogres because you can't use anything above CR 8.

I stand by my statement that someone has to be actively working to prevent PC death in 3.x. If it isn't the players (through optimization), then it must be the DM. And, if the DM is doing all the death-prevention, you eventually get to the point where you have to wonder how much of this is game and how much is simply pretend.

[Roy]

If you are actively anti optimized, then it doesn't even take repetition to kill you. It just happens each and every time.

Did you even read what he said? It is an observable fact that there are games of D&D where the players are unoptimized and not a single one dies after a dozen or more battles. Replying to a statement you made is not a strawman.

Which is only possible with active cheating on the part of the DM. Which given that the interchangeable and disposable straw man is WAH I DUN WANNA DIE! is likely exactly what he meant.

Factually wrong. Because the existence of numerous DMs that have no problems running DnD 3.X without PC deaths happening and without demanding optimization from PCs is an observable fact.

I'd argue that every one of those DMs were fudging things to some degree. Not dying in 3.x requires active effort on someone's part; it is not something that you just happen to avoid.

Well, yes. Like not using SoDs, making the NPCs capture, not kill PCs, etc. But as far as I know nothing in 3.5 states "The DM has to use SoDs, has to make his NPCs kill PCs!".

We've been over this. Combo of DM cheating/coddling, and DM doing things worse than killing the PCs. Obviously, these are contradictory. He can't even make up his mind as to whether he wants to go for super easy mode auto wins, or wankfests where you suck NPC jailer cock for the rest of the campaign.

Yeah, pretty much one of the Roy's favorite parts of the game is optimizing, so he has difficulty understanding how people can not like that I think. He even stated in one thread that as a DM he liked to optimize NPCs and monsters with the crazy taxcode NPCs as PCs system in 3.5.

Somewhat correct, completely irrelevant. Competence =/= optimization. In any case my liking it, or not liking it in no way changes that the baseline is competence, and if you don't fucking have that you are fucked. Full stop. Now if you set the bar at optimized instead, then everything gets boosted up. That's basically what every Tome game ever is, since that is what it's designed for. And that's cool, but I don't do it. The important part to take home though is there's no room to adjust DOWN unless you are willing to change the entire system such that it no longer resembles D&D 3.5*.

If there's one weak character in an otherwise competent party, then that means the mooks everyone is expected to just blow right through actually give this guy serious trouble, and the real enemies that warm up the real characters... well let's just say about the only thing you're accomplishing in that fight is a literary device... which is the fancy way of saying you're casually being smacked around for the lulz while the real characters do all the work.

If most or all of the party is composed of dead weight, there is simply no one to drag it. You are at best severely limited in the categories and types of encounters you can run simply because so many stock enemies will utterly slaughter weaksauce characters. You should not be at all surprised to see the party lose again, and again, and again, even when pulling routine encounters straight out of the Monster Manual with absolutely no changes made to them. We're talking shit like losing to Sorcerers who do nothing but Fireball and Scorching Ray with no defensive measures over 1st level, losing to an ordinary human barbarian (singular) half your level whose entirely strategy can be summarized as 'HULK SMASH!' and this being what you chose to throw at the party after realizing they couldn't deal with monsters, so you tried easy mode Monty Hall coddling in the form of humanoids.

And ya know what? That's fucking depressing. It's fucking depressing for the DM, who wants them to win but they can't do it without cheating. It's fucking depressing for the players who do nothing but lose and then either die or get some bullshit wanking Deus Ex Machina to save them. It's fucking depressing for the characters who are the ones getting bitch slapped around and are clearly in over their head.

And all of that would go away if they were up to par to actually do this Murdering Hobo thing that is 'being a PC in D&D'. But as long as they aren't, the entire fucking game rots for it.

* - Someone said something earlier to the effect of me limiting D&D to 3.5 in the context of optimization being required to cockblock Iterative Probability or something like that. I don't remember who it was, and all the whiners sound about the same. Regardless, that is not the case. I wrote that deliberately excluding 4.0. But that's it. 3.0 is pretty much every 3.5 problem except worse. And 1st and 2nd edition are filled with lots of DNS moments so that optimization just to get through the day was even more of a requirement back then. And for much the same reasons. You need your saves up, AND you need a means of resisting the no save effects. Or avoiding them entirely. Either way.

[Roy]

I'd argue that every one of those DMs were fudging things to some degree. Not dying in 3.x requires active effort on someone's part; it is not something that you just happen to avoid.

Well, yes. Like not using SoDs, making the NPCs capture, not kill PCs, etc. But as far as I know nothing in 3.5 states "The DM has to use SoDs, has to make his NPCs kill PCs!".

Of course there's nothing saying that, and there's nothing wrong with playing a gentleman's agreement game. However, you still have to contend with the stealth SoDs (like Color Spray or Blasphemy spam), problematic monsters (like Shadows), accidental death and dismemberment (LOL max scythe crit), or figuring out how long you can carry a campaign by simply adding HD to ogres because you can't use anything above CR 8.

I stand by my statement that someone has to be actively working to prevent PC death in 3.x. If it isn't the players (through optimization), then it must be the DM. And, if the DM is doing all the death-prevention, you eventually get to the point where you have to wonder how much of this is game and how much is simply pretend.

Hell, even just advancing Ogres. Being Giants, they get 3/4th BAB per HD... but 4 HD a level. So that's +3 BAB (and thus, +6 damage on every hit) and that's not counting things like size advancement and such. It doesn't take very long at all for even Ogres to hit the 1-2 auto attacks = dead character mark. Hell, they're close to that as is if not already there given that they do something like 11-25 a hit vs characters that have about 30ish HP if level appropriate, and that's considered the high end for the level. One crit or two hits, and down they go.

It's every fucking where, and trying to change that will at best result in something that no longer resembles D&D. Which is why I recommended he go play 4.0, since that is exactly what they did and that is exactly how that turned out. Also, it is such an involved process it's impossible not to notice the nerf. As in foam bats. Because that's your 'deadly weapon', and the same for them. It's very blatantly fucking obvious someone is protecting you from yourself. Now, if you were some kids playing around with toys, that would be ok. Likewise if you were novices in training, protections against getting hurt would be expected. But those fights there are supposed to be real, and to the characters they ARE. Taking that risk away is wholly unacceptable. It is the only reason to play games, period. Without failure, there is no success, and there is no victory. You have no fucking reason to play. At all. Unless you get off to auto winning over and over because you can never fail no matter how much of a dumbfuck you are. In which case I recommend pornography. Same amount of pointless wanking, but 100% more boobies. Also, we don't have to see that anymore.

[Fuchs]

I'd argue that every one of those DMs were fudging things to some degree. Not dying in 3.x requires active effort on someone's part; it is not something that you just happen to avoid.

Well, yes. Like not using SoDs, making the NPCs capture, not kill PCs, etc. But as far as I know nothing in 3.5 states "The DM has to use SoDs, has to make his NPCs kill PCs!".

Of course there's nothing saying that, and there's nothing wrong with playing a gentleman's agreement game. However, you still have to contend with the stealth SoDs (like Color Spray or Blasphemy spam), problematic monsters (like Shadows), accidental death and dismemberment (LOL max scythe crit), or figuring out how long you can carry a campaign by simply adding HD to ogres because you can't use anything above CR 8.

I stand by my statement that someone has to be actively working to prevent PC death in 3.x. If it isn't the players (through optimization), then it must be the DM. And, if the DM is doing all the death-prevention, you eventually get to the point where you have to wonder how much of this is game and how much is simply pretend.

I cannot use anything above CR8? How so? I've been running a campaign for years, currently at level 17.

[Roy]

Well, yes. Like not using SoDs, making the NPCs capture, not kill PCs, etc. But as far as I know nothing in 3.5 states "The DM has to use SoDs, has to make his NPCs kill PCs!".

Of course there's nothing saying that, and there's nothing wrong with playing a gentleman's agreement game. However, you still have to contend with the stealth SoDs (like Color Spray or Blasphemy spam), problematic monsters (like Shadows), accidental death and dismemberment (LOL max scythe crit), or figuring out how long you can carry a campaign by simply adding HD to ogres because you can't use anything above CR 8.

I stand by my statement that someone has to be actively working to prevent PC death in 3.x. If it isn't the players (through optimization), then it must be the DM. And, if the DM is doing all the death-prevention, you eventually get to the point where you have to wonder how much of this is game and how much is simply pretend.

I cannot use anything above CR8? How so? I've been running a campaign for years, currently at level 17.

Because everything at that level has a You Lose effect? And that's not counting plain old HP damage? Even long before that... 8 out of 9 level 11 creatures have at least one, and the last one is a fucking werewolf.

[FatR]

Factually wrong. Because the existence of numerous DMs that have no problems running DnD 3.X without PC deaths happening and without demanding optimization from PCs is an observable fact. Besides equating DnD with "DnD 3.5", you're making assumptions about the way DnD is run, which are not true in many games, probably the most of them. Primarily, an assumption, that the GM not only constantly adjust opponents, to always keep them threatening, he also adjust them to a certain and pretty high benchmark of competence, expected from a party of the present size and level, and not to PCs' actual degree of competence. If, just for example, statblocks of the plot-important enemies are fixed, from the beginning of the adventure, like they are in my current campaign, and do not change depending on how well or how poorly PCs had prepared for them (or how many dudes they bring to battle), the very notion of "load" becomes obviously idiotic.

Fail. Without optimization, Iterative Probability will nail you consistently and repeatedly.

Except... not. It only will if your numerous assumptions about the way the game should be run, which are, again, assumptions, no matter how fanatically you cling to them, are shared by the GM. If they aren't, not necessarily. In other words the real life proves you observably fucking wrong (you can just look at most of the numerous campaign chronicles posted on the Internets by various people to notice that), because your predicted demanded results resemble the actual play experience less and less. Just for example, my current party survived from level 1 to 9, with only one permanent character death (two more deaths were caused by a crit from a THFing half-ogre + the cleric's mistake of wasting an action on healing his comrade, as opposed to attacking, and the same cleric's decision to go harass the BBEG alone; but by this time the party had scrolls of Raise Dead), without a single instance of fudging and with monsters being run quite aggressively (by I this I mean actively going out to hunt PCs, using alarms and ganging up, etc).

And it doesn't understand the concept of safewords. If you are actively anti optimized, then it doesn't even take repetition to kill you. It just happens each and every time.

See above.

The comparison is to a set standard. Guess what you're doing? Oh right.

Yes, that's what I'm doing (because our group puts a big emphasis on the setting's internal consistency). You, however, compare to a standard that magically scales according to number and level of PCs. Yes, I know, the rules of DnD 3.X encourage that. No, it is not the only way to run it.

It is what it is. More of your lying strawmen aside, the purpose is to get people at par or better.

"Being on par with other PCs" =/= "being seriously optimized". The party can be equally weak and still survive just fine, as long as their GM sends appropriately suboptimally chosen/suboptimally built/underCRed opposition after them (or just runs most of the published adventures). So stop saying "PCs must be on par", when you actually mean "optimize or die, because the opposition WILL be optimized". Or, in your own words:

Without optimization, Iterative Probability will nail you consistently and repeatedly.

which, in DnD 3.X is actually more likely to happen with optimization, unless the GM allows you to steamroll the opponents and does not optimize them in turn. Because in 3.X, generally, more optimization = more rocket launcher tag.

[Kaelik]

You, however, compare to a standard that magically scales according to number and level of PCs. Yes, I know, the rules of DnD 3.X encourage that. No, it is not the only way to run it.

...

The party can be equally weak and still survive just fine, as long as their GM sends appropriately suboptimally chosen/suboptimally built/underCRed opposition after them

Yes, if you have a bunch of shitty level 14 PCs, like Pathfinder Iconics, and you only face fucking Ogres and Kobolds, and you never face encounters of your CR, and you never force a will save on the fighter, you can have weak PCs that don't die.

But that has nothing to do with anything. If you aren't going to come even remotely close to following the CR guidelines, then your game stops having anything to do with D&D at all.

Yes a level 10 Fighter can kick ass on Kobolds. (Unless they are Sorcerers, in which case they win). But that has nothing to do with the idea that weak PCs cannot play the actual game of D&D, which yes, does involve your level 10 Fighter facing the occasional CR 8 challenge every once in a while.

Other types of play exist where people make characters based on the D&D rules, and then never open a book again, and seriously never actually roll dice at all, even in combat. That does happen. It doesn't mean they are playing D&D.

[Leress]

Here is an open question: What exactly is playing D&D?

[FatR]

There are "Pathfinder iconic fighter" weak characters, likes of which just cannot be created unless you deliberately try to cripple your PC. And there are "Only good enough to run through an average published adventure" weak characters, which also will certainly be torn apart like wet paper if they are put against any challenges from Roy's games, but represent the way DnD is meant to be played and is actually played, cause, you know, people buy these adventurers. The second kind of weak characters does not actually require optimization beyond making blindingly obvious choices (except for some killer adventures), but the claim that playing them does not represent playing DnD is obvious bullshit.

EDIT:

But that has nothing to do with anything. If you aren't going to come even remotely close to following the CR guidelines, then your game stops having anything to do with D&D at all.

This is bullshit as well. Not even because you effectively claim, that every edition of DnD before 3rd has, somehow, nothing to do with DnD at all. Because, really, for how many people the CR is the defining trait of DnD?

Also:

But that has nothing to do with the idea that weak PCs cannot play the actual game of D&D, which yes, does involve your level 10 Fighter facing the occasional CR 8 challenge every once in a while.

A level 10 fighter beating CR 8 challenges =/= rocket launcher tag, as described by Roy and the need to optimize relentlessly to keep up. Not even nearly. Particularly if the GM tries to specifically compensate weaker classes, or places the encounters in places that allow the fighter to easily engage them (like, you know, dungeons).

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

You know. It would be interesting to see how well these Pathfinder iconic characters would do in the later modules put out by Paizo.

[FatR]

Badly. They will probably be able to mop up minor encounters, but bosses will kill their asses. I look at the iconics from the back pages of their modules (not their current PFRPG ones, 3.5 ones, which were somewhat less crappy) and just cannot see how they are expected to survive and win. Doesn't help, that until the Second Darkness AP, all previous adventure paths had major spikes of difficulty which can waste even a reasonably-built, well-rounded party, particularly if the party goes in expecting no more resistance than usual.

[Leress]

You know. It would be interesting to see how well these Pathfinder iconic characters would do in the later modules put out by Paizo.

Hell, there are some free adventures from WOTC and RPGnow that can be used right now.

[RandomCasualty2]

Somewhat correct, completely irrelevant. Competence =/= optimization. In any case my liking it, or not liking it in no way changes that the baseline is competence, and if you don't fucking have that you are fucked. Full stop. Now if you set the bar at optimized instead, then everything gets boosted up. That's basically what every Tome game ever is, since that is what it's designed for. And that's cool, but I don't do it. The important part to take home though is there's no room to adjust DOWN unless you are willing to change the entire system such that it no longer resembles D&D 3.5*.

What's competence?

You have several ways to measure this in D&D.

• How do you compare with your other PCs.
• How do you compare with monsters.
• How do you compare with modules made for your level.
• How do you compare with some arbitrary list of challenges (such as the same game test)
• Comparison versus the most powerful character build possible for that class at that level.
• Comparison versus the most powerful character build possible for that level.

Now, pretty much the first two are relative. A monk, a bard and a poorly played sorcerer may well be about even PC vs PC wise. They wouldn't compare with a character you or I might build, but still, they're not playing with either of us, so that doesn't even matter.

Really any test against monsters has the main flaw that it depends on monster tactics for the most part. Are we assuming monsters use the most killer tactics? What if they don't? I think it's fair to have monsters use weaker tactics against PCs who themselves use weaker tactics.

And even if you don't meet up to your CR in monsters, then who cares. Honestly. The only balance you ever care about is PC vs PC, because that's the one where one character gets overshadowed by another. Aside from that, the rest is entirely arbitrary.

So if the entire party is weak, where is the problem?

[Roy]

Except... not. It only will if your numerous assumptions about the way the game should be run, which are, again, assumptions, no matter how fanatically you cling to them, are shared by the GM.

Fail. If we were going by your caricature straw men of my position vs weaksauce characters, it wouldn't take Iterative Probability. I'm assuming we're going by D&D, which given that we're fucking discussing D&D is exceptionally reasonable.

Skipping past repeats of Fail, and general bullshit.

which, in DnD 3.X is actually more likely to happen with optimization, unless the GM allows you to steamroll the opponents and does not optimize them in turn. Because in 3.X, generally, more optimization = more rocket launcher tag.

Fail. Optimization boosts defense faster than offense because the baselines for defense start much lower than offense. You can easily see this by going from a core only game to a game that also lets in MIC and SC. Suddenly saves improve quite a bit, on both PCs and NPCs. So win spells stick less. And there's also more stuff to counter other things. More optimization actually moves AWAY from RLT, as you're going from a 50% chance to instantly fucking die every round of every fight ever to about a 5% chance of the same.

I'd keep going, but Kaelik is smiting you nicely.

So instead I'll move on to the last bit of Fail you posted.

Most 'published adventures' are actually fairly tough. They have a tendency to start off with an encounter 2 or 3 levels higher than you when you haven't even broken in your character yet and don't let up very much from then on. Every Paizo 1-20 path starts with a decently tough level 3 fight. And while these are just basic enemies focusing fire (aka, basic tactics), the fact of the matter is 3 wolves, or a small group of warrior 1s or what the fuck ever can easily 1 round a level 1 character unless built very well. RHoD starts with a level 8 fight with a level 5 group coming in three rounds later as a wave 2 (or as reinforcements, if you suck and can't finish a D&D fight in 3 rounds). It starts at level 5. Oh yeah, and they ambush you, so they have Attacker Advantage on their side.

What is most telling about this though is that just because published modules make level +2 encounters the new routine encounters, they end up as hard or harder than anything I do. Yet somehow characters hardcore enough to actually come out of those meat grinders intact still get slaughtered by my campaign. Seeing as you're just wanking off to a straw man caricature, and I actually know what the fuck goes on there I find this hilarious.

Oh and the Paizo campaigns are definitely worse, because they have no concept of encounter design, as evidenced by them using things from the Monster Manual 2, aka Book of Random Numbers on the Page. A particularly noteworthy example is an encounter with... I think ten Spellweavers. Now, Spellweavers have like 35 HP, single digit saves, etc... and are supposed to be level 10 creatures, who in large numbers are meant to be thrown at a level high teens party. At the same time, they do 60-150 a round, no miss and no save. Each. Which means you can pretty much resolve this fight by rolling initiative, and if the enemy acts before the PCs it's a TPK, and if they don't they die to a light breeze. And this assumes a competent party. Hell, even an optimized party could get slaughtered here because it's practically a refugee DNS moment from mother fucking 2.0.

Those joke iconics would probably need half the fights cheated on to avoid TPKs (and the other half cheated on to avoid some of the group dying). The TPK rate improves to 90% if using the most recent iconics.

[Roy]

Somewhat correct, completely irrelevant. Competence =/= optimization. In any case my liking it, or not liking it in no way changes that the baseline is competence, and if you don't fucking have that you are fucked. Full stop. Now if you set the bar at optimized instead, then everything gets boosted up. That's basically what every Tome game ever is, since that is what it's designed for. And that's cool, but I don't do it. The important part to take home though is there's no room to adjust DOWN unless you are willing to change the entire system such that it no longer resembles D&D 3.5*.

What's competence?

You have several ways to measure this in D&D.

• How do you compare with your other PCs.
• How do you compare with monsters.
• How do you compare with modules made for your level.
• How do you compare with some arbitrary list of challenges (such as the same game test)
• Comparison versus the most powerful character build possible for that class at that level.
• Comparison versus the most powerful character build possible for that level.

Now, pretty much the first two are relative. A monk, a bard and a poorly played sorcerer may well be about even PC vs PC wise. They wouldn't compare with a character you or I might build, but still, they're not playing with either of us, so that doesn't even matter.

Really any test against monsters has the main flaw that it depends on monster tactics for the most part. Are we assuming monsters use the most killer tactics? What if they don't? I think it's fair to have monsters use weaker tactics against PCs who themselves use weaker tactics.

And even if you don't meet up to your CR in monsters, then who cares. Honestly. The only balance you ever care about is PC vs PC, because that's the one where one character gets overshadowed by another. Aside from that, the rest is entirely arbitrary.

So if the entire party is weak, where is the problem?

I am judging it based on the things they are supposed to overcome. As this is basically an opposed check. If their skills can handle it, they win. If not, Team Monster wins. Full stop.

Comparisons to other PCs also matter in the sense of getting everyone on the same page. Having say... a Druid and a Fighter in the same party will, at the minimum result in two annoyed PCs and one annoyed DM.

Now. If the group is at the standard level, when you decide you want to run protagonist x you can just do that. If they're over it, you can still just do that, but you might need to jack it up. If they're below it, there's a chance you can't use them at all, because they'd fucking annihilate the weaksauce party. This should not surprise you, as the party is not level appropriate and thus, by definition cannot successfully take on level appropriate encounters. The more they are below par, the more often this comes up. This severely limits your options. And it's far more severe than you might think, as you could seriously end up unable to use a basic human Barbarian whose entire strategy consists of charging and PAing with a greataxe while ticked off. No Leap Attack or Shock Trooper or anything, just a very basic Barbarian. And oh yeah, he's half the level of the party. Despite being inferior in every way that matters to an Ogre of the same level, which is to say the stock MM ogre.

So really, even if we are assuming monsters suddenly develop brain damage in response to PCs doing stupid things as if you were fighting some mother fucking mimics they could still very well not end up being able to succeed, even WITH the coddling. Not to mention coddling breeds resentment and cheapens accomplishment. And that's a very real problem.

And it's exactly what you get when the entire party is weak. They aren't heroes. They're dumbfucks getting smacked around. OOC, they're thinking the DM is going too hard on them, even if he is quite visibly holding back because they can't fucking handle anything, so they need Deus Ex Machina spam to avoid death spam.

In other words, they're the fallacy of 4.0 'slayers' where they want to kill things, but are too fucking lazy to learn how so they whine to try to get you to do it for them.

[FatR]

So instead I'll move on to the last bit of Fail you posted.

Most 'published adventures' are actually fairly tough. They have a tendency to start off with an encounter 2 or 3 levels higher than you when you haven't even broken in your character yet and don't let up very much from then on. Every Paizo 1-20 path starts with a decently tough level 3 fight.

Bullshit. The second and third Paizo's APs from Dragon are not "most published adventures". In fact, they are far more lethal than most of Paizo's normal Dragon adventures, never mind their non-Dragon APs, which tend start with things like goblins and human experts (with no numerical advantage) or WotC APs. As a side note, the first fight in the Shackled City AP is not CR 3 and the party must really be quite unlucky to lose it, considering that they even have support, and the first unavoidable fight is CR 2 (PCs also might have support by this point), so no, it doesn't start with a "decently tough level 3 fight".

RHoD starts with a level 8 fight with a level 5 group coming in three rounds later as a wave 2 (or as reinforcements, if you suck and can't finish a D&D fight in 3 rounds). It starts at level 5. Oh yeah, and they ambush you, so they have Attacker Advantage on their side.

Entirely false. The entire fight is CR 8, it comes in two waves, it mostly consist of weak-ass warrior 2 grunts, all enemies are seriously underoptimized. And as the ambushers are said warrior 2 grunts, that have -4 to Hide and -2 to MS, they need a lot of luck to pull the surprise. And it is unclear, whether RHoD starts at level 5 or 6 (the cover and the text contradict each other).

And while these are just basic enemies focusing fire (aka, basic tactics), the fact of the matter is 3 wolves, or a small group of warrior 1s or what the fuck ever can easily 1 round a level 1 character unless built very well.

Except... focusing fire on a single particular enemy in ranged combat is nowhere near a basic tactics, in typical situations, unless you treat mobs as the extensions of GM's Hivemind, and not allowing to melee-gangbang one character from all sides is as basic as trying to do it.

What is most telling about this though is that just because published modules make level +2 encounters the new routine encounters, they end up as hard or harder than anything I do.

A lie. No... a bald-faced, fucking lie. Unless you deliberately anti-optimize encounters, by, say making enemies bugbear sorcerers with Ligtning Bolt as their best spell; equipping enemies with feats like Diehard; granting them shit PrCs like Blighter; putting ECL-adding templates on primary spellcasters; and using sword-and-board or two-weapons-without-bonus-damage grunts a lot. (All examples are from RHoD, said to be the hardest WotC adventure, probably because you cannot screw up dragons too much.) Which you don't, if your actual game examples and, oh, every point you have ever made in discussions I'm aware of, is any indication.

And you know what? If you're insane enough to lie, just to prove a point about a goddamn RPG, to the ignore list you go.

[RandomCasualty2]

I am judging it based on the things they are supposed to overcome. As this is basically an opposed check. If their skills can handle it, they win. If not, Team Monster wins. Full stop.

"Things they are supposed to overcome." According to what? Some arbitrary guidelines in your head?

Now. If the group is at the standard level, when you decide you want to run protagonist x you can just do that. If they're over it, you can still just do that, but you might need to jack it up. If they're below it, there's a chance you can't use them at all, because they'd fucking annihilate the weaksauce party. This should not surprise you, as the party is not level appropriate and thus, by definition cannot successfully take on level appropriate encounters.

If you can "jack it up", you can also power it down. I don't really see the problem.

So really, even if we are assuming monsters suddenly develop brain damage in response to PCs doing stupid things as if you were fighting some mother fucking mimics they could still very well not end up being able to succeed, even WITH the coddling. Not to mention coddling breeds resentment and cheapens accomplishment. And that's a very real problem.

And it's exactly what you get when the entire party is weak. They aren't heroes. They're dumbfucks getting smacked around. OOC, they're thinking the DM is going too hard on them, even if he is quite visibly holding back because they can't fucking handle anything, so they need Deus Ex Machina spam to avoid death spam.

You've got a big flaw in your thinking. If you want challenging encounters, optimization increases the chances of death, because charOp in 3.5 is almost exclusively offensive. So the more optimized you are, the DM optimizes your foes and you've got glass cannon on glass cannon. That makes the game more lethal, not less. Having more offense makes the game more swingy and open to one bad roll screwing people.

So as far as optimizing making a party less likely to die, that's pretty much not going to happen in anything except fixed difficulty modules. Otherwise the DM jacks up the opposition to compensate, and it becomes glass cannon vs glass cannon.

Rocket launcher tag ends up with a lot of bodies, and some of them invariably will be PCs. The less RLT your game is, the more likely your PCs are going to survive it.

If you want a game with more recurring PCs, then actually less optimization is probably preferable. Two guys fighting each other with fists are less likely to result in a fatality than two guys with assault rifles.

Seriously, the only time you ever care is if you're dealing with modules and your DM insists on running them as is.

[Fuchs]

But that has nothing to do with anything. If you aren't going to come even remotely close to following the CR guidelines, then your game stops having anything to do with D&D at all.

Sure sure... you're the high priest of D&D, and you define what's D&D... right. /rolleyes.

[Lago PARANOIA]

What's the point of doing anything if your DM is just going to float encounters?

Why wouldn't I just want to be a fighter 1 / bard 2 / cleric 1 / wizard 3 who took nothing but skill focus? As long as everyone else builds their characters like that then the DM will downgrade the encounters anyway so I'll face the same amount of challenge.

[RandomCasualty2]

What's the point of doing anything if your DM is just going to float encounters?

Why wouldn't I just want to be a fighter 1 / bard 2 / cleric 1 / wizard 3 who took nothing but skill focus? As long as everyone else builds their characters like that then the DM will downgrade the encounters anyway so I'll face the same amount of challenge.

Right. The point is that the DM is going to challenge the character you make. That's the whole point of an RPG from the start. Level 1 characters don't go fighting great wyrms and level 15 characters don't run through baseline kobold caves. Because it'd be boring. But scaling challenge is an accepted part of D&D gaming. You gain levels, you face tougher stuff. Nobody is questioning that. The only real question here is the rate of difficulty increase.

You either have encounters scale according to the PCs themselves, or you have encounters scale according to some arbitrary baseline. In the former case, your game is always challenging and interesting. In the latter case, sometimes it turns into a brutal TPK machine if the PCs are underpowered and other times it turns into a cakewalk if they're using broken builds. Really I can't think of why the latter would be preferable for a game. Playing it on impossible difficulty or God Mode isn't fun either way.

Part of an RPG is personalization, so the challenge is based on your character, your group and your story. Because RPGs are about just that. You're playing Batman in Batman's comic and that means that whatever he goes against, Batman is probably going to win.

Most people consider that an advantage of RPGs over computer games. I'd rather have the game be personalized if I'm playing a character I like.

If it's a one shot meat grinder, then that's different, but for ongoing campaigns I don't want the DM just screwing me because the PC party doesn't meet up to his predefined standards of how powerful they should be, even though he knows they obviously aren't. Throwing the PCs into a module they can't win is just being a dick.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So why should game designers even worry about game balance at all if the DM is just going to go 'fuck it' and throw out bugbear sorcerers with maximized lightning bolt?

If the DM can just shave off attack points of monsters or cut monster hit points in half behind the scenes then you don't even have to worry about game balance. All you have to do is make sure that the characters are equal and then the DM can pull out whatever deus/diabolus ex machina they want. Someone in the party has a +32 spot skill? Well, the invisible stalkers have a +22 hide skill on top of their invisibility! If no one has a bonus above +8? Then the invisible stalkers start making noise somehow.