Taking the Nova Fallacy out to die once and for all.

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Sun Sep 13, 2009 6:53 am

The necromancer at the end of the castle should spend the entire invasion casting spells to fight the PCs or cower and hide, probably. Nobody just sits there when there's a serious threat in their home.

Note, should. The mechanics don't really support this very well.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Sun Sep 13, 2009 5:55 pm

Ice9 wrote:It's funny how people always think of the Psion as being especially nova-prone, when they're the same as any spellcaster during the first 1-2 battles of the day. Each round they can blow a maxed-out power ... and the spellcaster can cast a top-level spell. It's not until around the third fight of the day that a spellcaster has to resort to lower-level spells, and by that point the Psion is starting to run low on power points. So there's only a narrow window when the Psion can nova any better.

Ignoring edge cases where a psionicist just doesn't have anything impressive to show for their new manifesting level because their previous one, empowered, is more effective, I think this is a good summation that shows that I hadn't really thought about novas in DnD enough.

It appears the idea of a nova doesn't come up until encounter X, where encounter (X-1) is the one where the Vancian spellcaster ran out of neat tricks.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Sep 13, 2009 6:05 pm

Mean Liar wrote:It appears the idea of a nova doesn't come up until encounter X, where encounter (X-1) is the one where the Vancian spellcaster ran out of neat tricks.

That's a good summation. And thus it falls to the fact that a one encounter NPC is by definition in "encounter 1" which is pretty much always less than "encounter X" and thus is at a relative advantage in any scenario in which there is a meaningful chance that the PCs are going to be in "encounter X" at any point in the day.

Of course, when people talk "Nova" they are often thinking in terms of Nuclear Lightbulb CoDzillaing rather than actually blasting away with top level spell effects. That is, a character who can pull a 15 minute workday and come screaming in having popped a couple of Candles and plowed half (or more) of their spell slots into short duration party buffs is going to rape you. The terminology is vague, because the two effects aren't even remotely similar and yet they get the same terminology applied to them.

-Username17

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Sep 14, 2009 5:03 am

I usually saw it (on the WotC boards) in terms of "The Psion can blow half his load on dealing 9999 damage to everyone in the first turn, that is why he rocks your pants off. The Warlock sucks precisely because all his resources are at will and can't be super-charged into one load."

I never felt that was entirely accurate. After all, the Warlock sucks for MANY reasons. Being able to cast Bestow Curse three times per round wouldn't help him.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 3:42 am

FrankTrollman wrote: Of course, when people talk "Nova" they are often thinking in terms of Nuclear Lightbulb CoDzillaing rather than actually blasting away with top level spell effects. That is, a character who can pull a 15 minute workday and come screaming in having popped a couple of Candles and plowed half (or more) of their spell slots into short duration party buffs is going to rape you. The terminology is vague, because the two effects aren't even remotely similar and yet they get the same terminology applied to them.

-Username17

I've never actually known what to call that; the characters that load up on buffs, then go to town?

I tend to call it "hulking up" before a fight, in order to guarantee a win.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 7:23 am

Judging__Eagle wrote:I've never actually known what to call that; the characters that load up on buffs, then go to town?

I tend to call it "hulking up" before a fight, in order to guarantee a win.

I'd call it MMOG style, since that's what people do in all MMOGs I played - buff to the max before even thinking of attacking.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 7:25 am

Is it really a nova if they can adventure fully buffed for three hours? That's plenty of time to clear pretty much any dungeon.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 11:35 am

Exactly. As I said, that's the most effective tactic to ensure you can go at it a while since you'll stay at full power for a very long time. Even a minute a level buffs can end up around 45 minutes or close just by a karma bead (which by the way anyone can use, you just have to UMD casting a divine spell, it's not divine caster level only) and Extend. The 10 minute a level stuff is lasting for hours, and the hour/level stuff is lasting over a day.

But MMO style? Since when is curbing off Iterative Probability as much as possible indicative of or exclusive to MMOs?

souran · Post by **souran** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 2:05 pm

The thing about the mmo comparisons:

mmo's assume that the party/group has every possible advantage that classes can stack together. The fight designers just assume that you will have those advantages and compensate accordingly.

Additionally, mmo don't just assume that the party/group/raid/whatever is going to nova, they make the act of using the nova at the right time essential to actually winning the fight.

D&D encounters dont' follow this paradigm (usually). Players assume that if they expended a spell slot to give somebody bulls strength that the effect is actually a buff, it eleveates them above what they should be at that level. If every foe internally compensates for the use of buffs people get frustrated because the buffs don't make them superior they make them sufficient. If everybody assumes that if they meet a party of 4 adventurers that there is a 5th one who is invis then invis is not really special.

Anybody remember shortly after 3e came out and had all those hour long stat buffs that every fight against a spellcaster began with casting dispell magic on the party? I did it, you did it, every dm did it. It was the only way to handle the dragon ball z power up parties.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 2:18 pm

Yes, I know about Dispels. Thing is, if faced with the choice of win spell = win, and dispel > win spell = win, the latter is still better because it makes the Rocket Tag a little less pronounced and gives a little more time to react before being utterly annihilated. Though that wasn't happening as a result of some +4 enhancement buffs, though those did help Fighters Have Nice Things by allowing them to save cash on the stat items.

Also since Dispels are a reversal, they add a little more tactical depth to the combats.

Cielingcat · Post by **Cielingcat** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 2:45 pm

The thing about NPCs is that they are not PCs. They come into a fight with whatever you give them, and that is all they have. An NPC does not have "expended resources"-he has things that he has access to and nothing else. You may limit or expand the NPCs normal abilities based on what you want them to do, but the NPC never has more abilities than you want it to and it never uses more abilities than it actually uses.

An NPC never "saves" an ability for later-you, as the DM, simply decide that the NPC will not use this ability in the idea that it may come up somewhere off screen that the NPC needs it for, but these events never happen. The off screen stuff that the NPC does it simply something that the DM arbitrarily decides on based on (hopefully) what is best for his players' enjoyment of the game, or on his own, or whatever.

If an NPC has more actions than it has abilities, then the NPC will by necessity use every ability it will ever use-even if you choose to hold back an ability, you are essentially saying that the NPC does not have that ability. If the NPC has more abilities than actions, though, the DM has to make decisions on which abilities it will use in response to the situation that it encounters the PC in, meaning that adding additional abilities, even if they are never come up, still impact the game.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 6:16 pm

souran wrote: Anybody remember shortly after 3e came out and had all those hour long stat buffs that every fight against a spellcaster began with casting dispell magic on the party? I did it, you did it, every dm did it. It was the only way to handle the dragon ball z power up parties.

Even that didn't work well. Because honestly as a buffer, you were happy if you got the enemy wasting its turn trying to dispel you. It took a powerful caster to dispel you, so it's way better that he blows his action firing dispel magic rather than something that may hurt you, like black tentacles or glitterdust.

D&D encounters dont' follow this paradigm (usually). Players assume that if they expended a spell slot to give somebody bulls strength that the effect is actually a buff, it eleveates them above what they should be at that level. If every foe internally compensates for the use of buffs people get frustrated because the buffs don't make them superior they make them sufficient. If everybody assumes that if they meet a party of 4 adventurers that there is a 5th one who is invis then invis is not really special.

Yeah, this is a mistake D&D makes. Stuff fighters do isn't really assumed to be special, but caster stuff gets this special treatment. Like we're supposed to all go crazy that the cleric cast bulls strength and spikes, cause that makes him better, but a fighter's abilities are just standard fare. It's stupid.