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Satyr
2010-07-08, 01:33 AM
http://www.ugurcanyuce.net/images/fantasy/large/web5_009.jpg
Real Men don't need stupid shirts.

Inspired by the abundance of threads dealing with the dislike for the aesthetics of optimisation, nostalgia or ways to deal with the D&D-typical overkill with many yet bland magical items, this collection of suggestions, house rules and many, many alternative class features should help to capture a more classic Sword and Sorcery feeling for characters and campaigns.

I remember reading quite plausible argumentations that the most iconic characters of fantasy literature – larger than life characters like Conan or Aragorn being only low to mid-level characters in D&D. I hate this. This pissed me off. Is there anything worse to say about a supposedly epic fantasy game than the fact that it seems unsuitable to capture the feeling of the staples of fantasy literature? King Conan is the epitome of being epic. You can measure awesomeness of fantasy characters in MicroConans. Any system where the very archetype of adventuring fantasy hero is reduced to a comparatively weak character has serious issues.

These rules were considered on the base of fantasy literature. The good stuff (Moorcock, Martin, Abercrombie), and the iconic stuff (Conan, Tolkien, Leiber): You know what these have in common? The protagonists are heroes who solve their problems by beating them with a sword. If they have access to magic – which is not even that common among the traditional fantasy heroes – this always play a secondary role to swordsmanship – and this is how it should be. Swordfights are awesome. Wiggling your fingers until your problems go away is not. Not even the iconic wizard – Gandalf, you remember him – uses his magic more often than his sword. Not even the most iconic D&D character – you know, this Drow with the two scimitars – is a magic user per se. The reason for this is simple: Magic makes for good antagonists, but for protagonists, it is not very interesting.

The following suggestions, rule adaptations and the like are based on the assumption that a good fantasy game should capture the feel of good and iconic fantasy literature.

And yes, you could likewise use something like Iron Heroes or Serpents and Sewers. But I think this version here is a lot more accessible.

The ideas are, that the main characters of a satisfying fantasy game are classic fantasy heroes who can either outfight or outsmart their foes and are usually not limited to one particular niche but have a decent all-round awesomeness – while spellcasters have two defined roles: Villains, and Comic Relief.

And, to make it a little plausible, every aspect has a little justification and background paragraph.


These rules use the following concepts:

Protagonists are Heroes. Heroes are warriors (or at least charming rogues)

Gestalt Rules (at least for heroes) are fun.

The Tome of Battle adds variation to the game and is a good raw material for heroes.

Level 4 is the new level 1

All Magical Items are unique Artifacts and are awesome, rare and precious by default.

You don’t need to change spellcasters, you only have to control the access to spells.

Flying heroes belong in a four color comic, not a fantasy epic.

Teleporter belong in Star Trek, and are not even really fun there.



The Little Index:
Abilities and Character Build (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8875078&postcount=2)

Available Classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8875126&postcount=8)

Gestalt Class Combinations
(http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8875160&postcount=10)

Alternative Class Features and specific rules for single classes/ class Errata (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8876577&postcount=67)

Available Resources (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8879075&postcount=133)

Campaign Rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8879300&postcount=141)

Action Economy and Spellcasting (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8890350&postcount=239)

Specific Clarifications

Satyr
2010-07-08, 01:36 AM
Abilities and Character Build
Abilities are based on rolls. The rolls consist of six times 5 dice, drop the two lowest and reroll once per roll all 1s and 2s. The ability scores can be distributed at will.

Hitdice for Player characters are roll twice, the higher result counts

The game uses Gestalt rules, but with limitations on the choice of the Gestalt sides.

Every branch of the gestalt is treated separately. A character cannot take the same class on both branches of the Gestalt; once a class level was gained on the one side, it is banned for the other side.

Favorite Class rules are applied separately for each branch of the Gestalt build.

Prestige classes which advance two different spellcasting types are always banned. This also affects prestige classes which would progress both spellcasting and one other similar set of powers, like invocations.

Racial Hitdice and Level adjustment may be taken on one side of the Gestalt progression as if they were NPC class levels (meaning that they can be combined with full caster classes). The same works for Monstrous advancement levels (such as those found in Savage Species).

Characters can take up to two Flaws and gain the usual Bonus Feats for them. Every character has to take one Flaw. Characters with a spellcasting ability have to take a flaw that influences their spellcasting ability.

Reasons: With these rules, player characters are a lot more spectacular in their own rights, and are thus a lot less dependant on magic and supportive items. The rules for the gestalt design are more clarified to ease the use of the rules and hinder more bizarre builds. The flaws create more well-rounded characters, and again help to make characters a tad more powerful, but mostly because little perfect characters aren't that interesting to begin with.

Prodan
2010-07-08, 01:37 AM
Why don't you just play a system like Riddle of Steel?

Grumman
2010-07-08, 01:42 AM
Any system where the very archetype of adventuring fantasy hero is reduced to a comparatively weak character has serious issues.
What nonsense. The existence of the levels 7-20 do nothing to make your adventuring fantasy hero weaker, they just extend the scale. If it was incapable of representing these sorts of heroes, that would be a "serious issue".

Math_Mage
2010-07-08, 01:43 AM
Why don't you just play a system like Riddle of Steel?

Because he can? :smallconfused:

Also:

And yes, you could likewise use something like Iron Heroes or Serpents and Sewers. But I think this version here is a lot more accessible.

Satyr
2010-07-08, 01:43 AM
Why don't you just play a system like Riddle of Steel?

Because nitpicking on D&D and coming up with houserules is what I do if I get bored and have nothing significant to do.

Besides, I believe that "Play something else" is a terrible advice. It's basically saying " Don't bother, it's not the system - you are wrong." Roleplaying mechanics are not carved in stone. Rules are flexible and always, always, always should be adjusted and personal tastes and preferences of the particularly group. I strongly assume that you and your group always know better what's fun for you than a game designer you have never met.


What nonsense. The existence of the levels 7-20 do nothing to make your adventuring fantasy hero weaker, they just extend the scale. If it was incapable of representing these sorts of heroes, that would be a "serious issue".

It is a question of scales and references, not absolutes. I don't think that Conan deserves to be reduced to a low level character. Frankly, I also don't think that player characters deserce to be more awesome than that. Perhaps similarly awesome if they are really, really good and put really, really mucgh effort in it - but as an automatism? Hell no.

Prodan
2010-07-08, 01:45 AM
Besides, I believe that "Play something else" is a terrible advice. It's basically saying " Don't bother, it's not the system - you are wrong."
No... it's saying the exact opposite.


Roleplaying mechanics are not carved in stone. Rules are flexible and always, always, always should be adjusted and personal tastes and preferences of the particularly group. I strongly assume that you and your group always know better what's fun for you than a game designer you have never met.

Yes, but if you're going to make a ton of far reaching changes to better emulate the feel of a specific fantasy genre, why not start with a product that is closer to your desired final result?

Satyr
2010-07-08, 01:51 AM
Available Classes:
These houserules refer mostly to two types of classes: The martial Adepts from Tome of Battle, and diverse Factotum class variations.
Having both psionics and magic in the same game is pretty redundant, so we only need one of these two systems. While the psionic rules are more sensible, useful and fun, the usual Vancian Magic is pretty the default set-up and thus these are in use.
Basically all non-psionic classes are valid choices, except the Truenamer and the Artificer.

Reasons: Psionic Classes are not valid, because there is already a magic system, that doesn’t necessarily need to be duplicated. The Truenamer just plain sucks. And planning a campaign which emphasizes the personal power of characters over item dependability doesn’t cope well with an Artificer who can introduce practically every magical item.

Satyr
2010-07-08, 01:59 AM
Yes, but if you're going to make a ton of far reaching changes to better emulate the feel of a specific fantasy genre, why not start with a product that is closer to your desired final result?

Again, writing houserules is a form of procrastination which does not require too much effort. Less effort than learning a new system. And people like playing D&D. For various reasons. It's cerainly not the best (or even one of the better) systemsv around, but it is huge. It is easier to find players for a more or less obscure houseruled D20 derivate than for a better designed and more suitable other system, solely because it's D20.
Besides, it's more cost effective. A new system also requires that you purchase it. There are a few good free systems, but they are still quite obscure.

Satyr
2010-07-08, 02:07 AM
Gestalt Class Combinations
This is probably the core of the suggestions involved in this - the framework of how to design the Gestalt combinations to create heroic characters.

Completely mundane characters such as fighters, rogues or knights may be combined freely with every other completely mundane class. The dragon shaman count as completely mundane characters for this purpose, despite his otherwise supernatural abilities.

Initiating classes (crusaders, warblades, and swordsages) and characters with limited spellcasting, such as bards or the different factotum variations can be combined freely with mundane classes but not with each other (So, Warblade/Fighter is a valid combination; Warblade/Hexblade is not). Dragonfire Adepts and Warlocks only count as partial spellcasters for this purpose.


Full Spellcasters such as Clerics or Wizards can only be combined with a NPC class. Binders count as full casters for this purpose.

Racial Hitdice, Level Adjustment and Racial progression levels count as NPC classes for this purpose.

Some spellcasters may be combined with usual mundane classes instead of a NPC class, for some, the limitations are more rigid:

The Beguiler may be combined with the Ninja, Rogue or Swashbuckler instead of a NPC class.

Healers may be combined with Paladin, Ranger or Monk.

Warmages may be combined with Fighter, Marshal or Swashbuckler.

Wu Jen and Shugenja may be combined with Monk, Ninja and Samurai.

Archivists, Clerics and Druids may explicitly not be combined with Level adjustments, racial hitdice or monster advancement classes.

Wizards may only be combined with the Commoner, Aristocrat and Warrior classes. They may explicitly not be combined with Level adjustments, racial hitdice or monster advancement classes.

A character may have only one class that grants one type of magic; a player can only have one base class that grants divine or arcane spells (or invocations). This does not include prestige classes (so, a character may not take both Wizard and Sorcerer levels on the same branch of the Gestalt, or Bard//Duskblade on two different branches). For this purpose alone, the martial adept classes’ maneuvers count as a form of spellcasting.

Reasons: The more powerful or exotic a class is, the less Gestalt options it gets. The limit on different spellcasters are there to ease the bookkeeping and emphasize the philosophy of the campaign which is more focused on heroes than wizards.
The basic assumption is that the heroic character which is the target of these rules uses either a Tome of Battle class, the Factotum, or both.
The more severe limitations for powerful spellcasters are also there to create a soft ceiling for exotic features - a character with powerful spellcasting is already exotic enough that he or she doesn't need to be a obscure creature from outer space.

Friend Computer
2010-07-08, 02:33 AM
{Scrubbed}

pasko77
2010-07-08, 02:42 AM
It is a question of scales and references, not absolutes. I don't think that Conan deserves to be reduced to a low level character. Frankly, I also don't think that player characters deserce to be more awesome than that.

I think it's a problem of definition of "awesome".
Conan is just some idiot with muscles. I can't see where his awesomeness says "he's the bestest character ever". That's a matter of personal tastes, and I don't measure characters in "microconans". I like Elric much more, and he's literally able to command the gods (ok, not reliably, but still).

The houserules you are searching for do already exist, they're called "E6". What you are trying to do is unreasonable. For instance, if Conan was level 20, do you realise that he could swim into molten lava for several rounds?

Gan The Grey
2010-07-08, 02:47 AM
Somebody here do that thing where you link that page that talks about the levels of iconic heroes statted out in D&D, because it specifically addresses the OP's issue with 'My favorite fictional heroes are more powerful than D&D paints them."

aberratio ictus
2010-07-08, 02:52 AM
I really like the effort. Carry on.

JonestheSpy
2010-07-08, 03:31 AM
Good tread Satyr. too tired to comment intelligently, but hopefuly tomorrow. Kudos.

Math_Mage
2010-07-08, 03:35 AM
Somebody here do that thing where you link that page that talks about the levels of iconic heroes statted out in D&D, because it specifically addresses the OP's issue with 'My favorite fictional heroes are more powerful than D&D paints them."

Well, it's here (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html), but the OP realizes that. But instead of calibrating his fantasy heroes to D&D, he wants to calibrate D&D to his fantasy heroes.

And he wants to use gestalt to lower power levels...:smallconfused: This might be a fix that improves game balance, and I will applaud if that turns out to be the case. But it's not a good way to get back to Conan and Tolkien. As others have said, E6 is a better variant for that, if we're sticking to D&D houserules.

Milskidasith
2010-07-08, 03:38 AM
I find the notion that playing D&D in a certain way is "wrong" and your method is better because it's for "real men" offensive.

Anyway, you know what? Conan is low level. So what? If you think he's awesome, that's fine. You can be a dull as 15th level character, or an awesome fourth level character. Trying to change the d20 system when A: other systems and B: E6 work to limit the power to where melee is viable is a lot of work for no real benefit, and from the rules listed so far, all you've done is screwed basic melee classes even more because they don't have gear but full casters still exist.

As a side note, the wording you've got for the gestalt is... odd. You say that fighters and such can only gestalt with other mundane classes, but also that semi-magical and martial adepts can only gestalt with... mundane classes. So if you're a warblade, gestalting with fighter is fine, but since you are a fighter, you aren't supposed to gestalt with warblade.

Math_Mage
2010-07-08, 03:43 AM
Trying to change the d20 system when A: other systems and B: E6 work to limit the power to where melee is viable is a lot of work for no real benefit, and from the rules listed so far, all you've done is screwed basic melee classes even more because they don't have gear but full casters still exist.

FWIW, the OP has indicated a desire to nerf casters via their spells, which would work...with tremendous amounts of work.

Milskidasith
2010-07-08, 03:47 AM
FWIW, the OP has indicated a desire to nerf casters via their spells, which would work...with tremendous amounts of work.

Most "nerf spellcasters via their spells" projects generally go the "You fail X % of the time" or "You summon horrible monstrosities you're going to have to cast spells at to kill, summoning more later" or "Your spells take so long to cast combat is over before you cast anything" or other types of stealth ban. Actually individually changing all the spells in D&D would be so time consuming you may as well just write a new system, especially because basically every "Save or suck/die" is more than non ToB melee (and even low level ToB melee) can do.

Harperfan7
2010-07-08, 03:54 AM
I find the notion that playing D&D in a certain way is "wrong" and your method is better because it's for "real men" offensive.


:vaarsuvius: I don't see the issue.

Also: Really?

Anyways, the issue here is that D&D goes far beyond most iconic fantasy-fiction stories in terms of character power, mostly because of magic. In real life, it'd be damn impossible to be better than Conan, but in D&D where warriors have good reason to aim higher, it's not a big deal. It's like a gold fish getting bigger in a bigger pond, warriors have to adapt to the world they live in.

Heliomance
2010-07-08, 04:43 AM
Most "nerf spellcasters via their spells" projects generally go the "You fail X % of the time" or "You summon horrible monstrosities you're going to have to cast spells at to kill, summoning more later" or "Your spells take so long to cast combat is over before you cast anything" or other types of stealth ban. Actually individually changing all the spells in D&D would be so time consuming you may as well just write a new system, especially because basically every "Save or suck/die" is more than non ToB melee (and even low level ToB melee) can do.

Thinking about this, how much would changing the vast majority of spells to full-round actions make a difference? Would it help bring casters down into slightly less dominating everything forever, in combat at least?

Morph Bark
2010-07-08, 05:16 AM
While I appreciate the effort you're trying to put forth, and I very much agree that "play something else" is terrible advice (because if you can find a DnD group in your area, they might be interested in changing some rules up, but they might not be interested in a different tabletop RPG), I don't agree with the notion that low-level characters can't be epic heroes.

And spellcasting makes for lousy heroes because it isn't interesting? Uh, wrong. The reason so many mythic heroes are primarily swordfighters is because magic was reserved for mythical creatures and gods, and even if they had magic they knew little of it and were more experienced with the sword. In those very rare cases where magic was more common, that magic wasn't the way it is in DnD, mainly consisting of divinations, necromancy and things that one would agree with with dubbing it not being manly. A wizard who crashes through the enemy blowing up a platoon of goblins with a fireball and making the dragon die in a cave-in from his earthquake before he casts a quickened spell to protect himself? Still manly.

To emphasize, yesterday I found a link in the signature of a member of this forum that shows what I mean really well. You may not be into video games, but this can also really illustrate the idea of how to play DnD in a manly way: here it is (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwEHUPkJ7lE).

Gan The Grey
2010-07-08, 05:19 AM
Thinking about this, how much would changing the vast majority of spells to full-round actions make a difference? Would it help bring casters down into slightly less dominating everything forever, in combat at least?

I think the most common argument is that it is the spell effects themselves that are broken, and changing the casting time wouldn't significantly hinder casters. Their isn't much difference between a SoD that kills as a standard action and one that does the same as a full-round. The target is still dead, and your fighter still feels useless.

Eldan
2010-07-08, 05:43 AM
Heh. That reminds me of that game I once started here (which crashed and burned on page 1) where everyone had to gestalt pure barbarian with one other class of at least 3/4 BAB. And they had to be old or venerable.

Modeled on Pratchett's Last Hero. Would have been cool if it had worked.

potatocubed
2010-07-08, 05:46 AM
I think the most common argument is that it is the spell effects themselves that are broken, and changing the casting time wouldn't significantly hinder casters. Their isn't much difference between a SoD that kills as a standard action and one that does the same as a full-round. The target is still dead, and your fighter still feels useless.

I would argue that the foundation of the wizards > fighters problem is that magic is rewriting reality, and fighting is hitting people with sticks. It isn't the spell effects that are broken so much as the whole concept of magic.

You can fix this by adding pseudo-magical (or actual magical) effects to fighting, a la ToB, Exalted, or 4e. Alternatively you can add drawbacks or limitations to magic so that reality-altering power isn't all that great - see Call of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies, 7th Sea, or Dragon Age for attempts at this with varying levels of success. Or you can abandon all hope of balance and make everyone play mages, like in Ars Magica.

But so long as you imagine magic to be rewriting reality and fighting to be wholly 'within reality' you're going to keep running into this problem.

Gnaeus
2010-07-08, 05:53 AM
The reason for this is simple: Magic makes for good antagonists, but for protagonists, it is not very interesting.

The wealthiest woman in England and her millions of fans called. They say this statement is wrong.

Other popular series with wizard protagonists available on request.

potatocubed
2010-07-08, 06:01 AM
The wealthiest woman in England and her millions of fans called.

I wondered for a moment what the Queen has to do with magic. :smalltongue:

Eldan
2010-07-08, 06:05 AM
Quiet, he can't be told! The Norrellites will kill us!

Anyway, yes, no magic in England.

Kaiyanwang
2010-07-08, 06:06 AM
I wondered for a moment what the Queen has to do with magic. :smalltongue:

Me too :smallbiggrin:

Heliomance
2010-07-08, 06:25 AM
Me too :smallbiggrin:

And me

Yes, a SoD as a full round action still makes the fighter cry, but making spells full-round actions means they become interruptible. If your spell effect doesn't go off until a full round after you start casting, everyone has a chance to hit you and make you lose that spell.

Morph Bark
2010-07-08, 06:27 AM
And me

Yes, a SoD as a full round action still makes the fighter cry, but making spells full-round actions means they become interruptible. If your spell effect doesn't go off until a full round after you start casting, everyone has a chance to hit you and make you lose that spell.

There is a difference between a casting time of "1 round" and "one full round action" though.

lesser_minion
2010-07-08, 06:41 AM
It is a question of scales and references, not absolutes. I don't think that Conan deserves to be reduced to a low level character. Frankly, I also don't think that player characters deserce to be more awesome than that. Perhaps similarly awesome if they are really, really good and put really, really mucgh effort in it - but as an automatism? Hell no.

Writing 'badass' on a character's sheet doesn't make them one. Nor can any combination of numbers and words you care to write.

Being 20th level doesn't make you more awesome than the 7th level barbarian over there. It just makes you more powerful.

And there's a big difference.


I find the notion that playing D&D in a certain way is "wrong" and your method is better because it's for "real men" offensive.

As far as I'm aware, Satyr isn't saying "this is how to play the game, only sissies play vanilla". It's just a reference to the "Real men, real roleplayers, loonies, and munchkins" joke.

Eldan
2010-07-08, 06:52 AM
Yeah. Conan doesn't need to be level 20. And, looking at the power levels D&D often throws around up there, it isn't necessary. Sure, a level 20 fighter is perhaps not far above Conan's power level. It still means he can throw himself off a tower and shrug it off, then go and hold his breath for half a day. Conan, as far as I'm aware, wasn't fighting wizards casting time stop and Genesis, he was fighting wizards casting the equivalent of mid-level spells, like Planar Binding.

Basically: there's a level of power above Conan. Several, even. Final Fantasy Characters were mentioned before. Could they kill Conan? Probably. Are they cooler? Hell no.


Which, of course, still doesn't mean your ideas are actually bad. Sword and Sorcery games can be cool when done right.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-08, 07:18 AM
Level 4 is the new level 1
I think the more fundamental problem here is that you're making reference to 'levels' at all. The idea of a single, unitary, power-based metric for character progression tends to emphasise the idea that progressing in power is the ultimate goal of the game.

Characters in classic sword-and-sorcery rarely advance greatly in personal skill and prowess over time at all. Conan starts off badass and stays that way. Elric starts off with a demonic sword and keeps it throughout his adventures. Their development over time was primarily emotional and thematic, rather than in terms of raw ability. And any RPG that invokes 'Hit Points' with a straight face is going to wind up emphasising brute force and a christmas-tree arsenal rather than strategy and quick-thinking as the means to victory.

This isn't to say that your measures aren't a step in the right direction, but all you've done here is haul the rules a few inches back up the slippery slope of players' natural tendencies. You really need to get over that slope entirely.

You want to see an RPG optimised for these stories? Check out Sorcerer and Sword (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcerer_%28role-playing_game%29#Main_rulebook_and_supplements), or possibly The Riddle of Steel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Riddle_of_Steel).

Heliomance
2010-07-08, 07:28 AM
There is a difference between a casting time of "1 round" and "one full round action" though.

Very well, give them all a casting time of a round then.

Satyr
2010-07-08, 07:40 AM
These rules are based on the assumption that King Conan - the guy who was a thief, bandit, pirat king, leader of a great horde, and eventually conqueror of the largest realm of his age, the guy who succesfully battled entities of such horror that the mere knowledge of their existance alone usually means madness and insanity, is indeed an epic character. If you share one planet and universe with this guy

http://api.ning.com/files/1m-S-7rq8Vaz0e0jgss-hFu8*xsoAIW1vU1YL9AB8O5XRlUu6E0*IP9dc9QD711bwNjl66 AC6EY1XWXH6Z62VFuLCR*z-iAK/cthulhu6.jpg

and still manage to have the largest and shiniest testicles around, you are pretty epic, especially when you are just a normal human being with no superpowers whatsoever, and your particular universe is quite rigid when it comes to the whole natural laws aspect.

Yes, defining Conan, Aragorn and let's say Jaime Lannister as the epitome of epic characters is an assumption, not a clear cut fact. This assumption is supposed to act as the base for the suggeytions in this thread which should help to create the feeling and atmosphere of something like this:


http://www.ugurcanyuce.net/images/fantasy/large/web4_022.jpg

Sure, this assumption doesn't work for everybody, so much is certain. Does that mean that it doesn't work for somebody? No. As the discussions in this very forum in the last week or so might have shown, there is a vocal minority (including me) who has more interest to play their D&D more like good ol' Sword and Sorcery. As such it is certainly a matter of taste and personal preferences.

Morph Bark
2010-07-08, 07:44 AM
As the discussions in this very forum in the last week or so might have shown, there is a vocal minority (including me) who has more interest to play their D&D more like good ol' Sword and Sorcery. As such it is certainly a matter of taste and personal preferences.

Just don't forget about the "sorcery" part and it's all cool. :smallwink:

Gan The Grey
2010-07-08, 07:45 AM
And me

Yes, a SoD as a full round action still makes the fighter cry, but making spells full-round actions means they become interruptible. If your spell effect doesn't go off until a full round after you start casting, everyone has a chance to hit you and make you lose that spell.

I think you mean a 1 round action. A full-round action begins and ends on a wizard's initiative in the current round.

Edit - NINJAS!!!!

Eldan
2010-07-08, 07:50 AM
But see... that T-Rex is CR 8. You create an epic battle against it at levels 6-9, perhaps. At level 20, your fighter is supposed to be able to wrestle it to the ground (it has grapple +30, at these levels, a human fighter has about the same), or kill it alone, easily.

Basically, yes, Conan shares a world with Cthulhu, but he doesn't fight him in a sword fight. A level 20 fighter does have supernatural powers, basically, just not flashy ones.


But this discussion is pretty stupid anyway. I mean, we're not here to convince each other of our estimate of Conan's level. We're here to discuss rules.

What I've found works pretty well for Sword and Sorcery is the Vitality/Wound points rules, perhaps with some tweaking. It means that a good hit with a sword still decapitates a guy, instead of high level fighter hacking each other ineffectively for five minutes. I would include two optional additional rules, however:
Nonlethal attacks never deal wound point damage on a critical hit.
Vitality points regenerate a lot faster, naturally. In one campaign, I said that you heal them all, totally, with five minutes of rest. The difference is that you don't need as much natural healing, but you don't become much tougher.

Gnaeus
2010-07-08, 07:52 AM
Sure, this assumption doesn't work for everybody, so much is certain. Does that mean that it doesn't work for somebody? No. As the discussions in this very forum in the last week or so might have shown, there is a vocal minority (including me) who has more interest to play their D&D more like good ol' Sword and Sorcery. As such it is certainly a matter of taste and personal preferences.

Now hey, if you had made that reasonable statement instead of the insulting and out of date original post, some of us wouldn't have rejected your ideas out of hand.

Instead, you forced us to weigh Conan in Micro-Potters. On that scale, he is fat, stupid cousin Dudley. No villain worth his salt can be defeated by a guy whose primary attribute is Thews.

Coplantor
2010-07-08, 07:57 AM
I wondered for a moment what the Queen has to do with magic. :smalltongue:

You know that the Queen is no longer the wealthiest woman in England, right?

Eldan
2010-07-08, 07:57 AM
It isn't, actually. Conan's pretty good at stealth and trickery, as well. I think I've seen him statted up as a rogue/fighter, actually.

Gnaeus
2010-07-08, 08:06 AM
It isn't, actually. Conan's pretty good at stealth and trickery, as well. I think I've seen him statted up as a rogue/fighter, actually.

Rogue levels do not help you pass potions class, and you can't fight the dark arts without passing potions. You know who is not impressed.

(Besides, Conan is a warblade. The text of Iron Heart Surge should have read "With a standard action, negate any hostile effect which Conan could shake off by shouting "Crom!" and getting angry." The debates on how the power is used would have made much more sense.)

Amphetryon
2010-07-08, 08:12 AM
You can measure awesomeness of fantasy characters in MicroConans.I have to say, I lol'd.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-08, 08:22 AM
...there is a vocal minority (including me) who has more interest to play their D&D more like good ol' Sword and Sorcery.
This is like saying you want to play your guitar like a bongo, or your trumpet like a xylophone, or your piano like a fiddle. Yes, with sufficient tinkering it should be technically possible, but what would possess you to even try?

kjones
2010-07-08, 08:38 AM
Love it or hate it, D&D 3e has a lot going for it - there's a ton of published material for it, it's got a huge community, and the d20 system is pretty versatile. These are all good reasons to stick with D&D instead of going to another system.

Also, I would recommend that everyone consider Satyr's ideas as an interesting option, not as a statement that any one playstyle is "right" or "wrong". The more options, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

lesser_minion
2010-07-08, 08:38 AM
Rogue levels do not help you pass potions class, and you can't fight the dark arts without passing potions. You know who is not impressed.

You have extra skill points. You can burn them on craft (alchemy) and craft (poisonmaking) if you want.

It's not like even the NEWTs required potions that went significantly outside of those two.

potatocubed
2010-07-08, 08:43 AM
This is like saying you want to play your guitar like a bongo, or your trumpet like a xylophone, or your piano like a fiddle. Yes, with sufficient tinkering it should be technically possible, but what would possess you to even try?

Because sometimes it's enjoyable to tinker and create, just because you can. I certainly have more pre-written adventures than I could ever possibly run, but I still modify them and make up my own.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-08, 08:47 AM
This is like saying you want to play your guitar like a bongo, or your trumpet like a xylophone, or your piano like a fiddle. Yes, with sufficient tinkering it should be technically possible, but what would possess you to even try?

Because despite being deeply flawed, D&D's basic mechanics are still superior to other systems?

In my experience EVERY set of rules needs tinkering to work anyway.

(My current game world is very much more LotR-y in tone (though by no stretch of the imagination quite as low-flash as that!) The magic system has been overhauled (in that I've kicked Vancian to the curb), MMs lobbed out and the bestiary redesigned from scratch, and rules added to make it more "it's you, not your WBL", some fixes emplaced to up the effectiveness of weaker classes...

Why? Because I think 3.5 D&D is still better than anything else (aside possibly from Rolemaster, and I find that more energy to run nowadays).)

I think my response would have to be "why wouldn't you want to tinker with it?"

Samurai Jill
2010-07-08, 08:55 AM
Love it or hate it, D&D 3e has a lot going for it - there's a ton of published material for it, it's got a huge community, and the d20 system is pretty versatile.
The piano is a versatile instrument. But you still can't play it like a fiddle without it essentially ceasing to be a piano.

In the time it takes it modify D&D to actually imitate Sword and Sorcery well, you could have learned a new RPG several times over. It's a false economy.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-08, 08:59 AM
Because despite being deeply flawed, D&D's basic mechanics are still superior to other systems?
Superior for what, exactly? They certainly don't support Sword and Sorcery very well.

In my experience EVERY set of rules needs tinkering to work anyway.

Because sometimes it's enjoyable to tinker and create, just because you can...
But why not tinker with something that's closer to your ultimate goals? If you want to play it like a fiddle, why not get a fiddle in the first place, and tinker to get the right sound from it?

Eldan
2010-07-08, 09:03 AM
Because sometimes it's enjoyable to tinker and create, just because you can. I certainly have more pre-written adventures than I could ever possibly run, but I still modify them and make up my own.


This is totally off-topic, but are there any chances of you ever posting any of those? Because while I like DMing, I suck at writing actually coherent adventures and dislike most of the published ones I've seen.

Theodoxus
2010-07-08, 09:10 AM
How many people do you know that own sufficient copies of 'alternate' fantasy role playing games compared to D&D? I've only ever played D&D (going back to the original Red Box) and picked up the 4e box set. And... Palladium. I've heard of GURPS, Rolemaster, Hackmaster, S&S, etc, but have never actually seen a book for them. My gaming group has never played them either - and has no desire to learn a new set of rules.

D&D, and specifically 3e, have become iconic. I'd hazard that 99% of all pen & pencil gamers have some knowledge of how a 3e game works. Even die hard WoD players typically have some knowledge of 3e stats. (The two games I've played that are the most opposite... though I guess Amber (which again, have only heard of, never played) would be even more diametrically opposed.)

Yes, I'm sure some one some where has created the perfect blend of Sorcery and Steel with rules that would make us drool. But if so, they have crappy marketing.

D&D isn't great because it's perfect, it's perfect because it's great (as in large). It has a huge following and a passionate one at that. Until another juggernaut comes along to displace it with better marketing and better rules (those two never seem to appear in the same place, ever), it will be the go to game for modding.

Optimystik
2010-07-08, 09:10 AM
I agree with Jill - better to start closer to the goal than jam the square peg into the round hole. (Try an octagon instead!)

If money is the issue however, that might be more understandable. Does S&S have an SRD or similar?

Eldan
2010-07-08, 09:18 AM
You people are lucky that you have D&D. I've never seen a D&D book in this country, much less any other RPG product. I've tried ordering them in book shops ("Sorry, WotC is not a publisher on our list.") and toy stores ("Sorry, that's a book, not a game. You should try book shops.")
I only ever heard about D&D when one of my friends came back from visiting his family in England with strange new books: "Dude! It's a game you play around a table, but it's like Baldur's Gate!"
We then proceeded to buy the core books from Amazon UK, but I doubt I'd have heard about D&D until much later (when I watched a lot of american TV, there's enough references here and there) without that lucky happenstance. Most other games, I'd imagine, are harder to get.
Now, a local gaming store (judging by what the store looks like making 90% of it's money from Warhammer 40k) sells the 4E Player's Handbook, but not any other D&D manual and a few Shadowrun books because the store owner's a fan (but apparently can't find a group).

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-08, 09:20 AM
Superior for what, exactly? They certainly don't support Sword and Sorcery very well.


But why not tinker with something that's closer to your ultimate goals? If you want to play it like a fiddle, why not get a fiddle in the first place, and tinker to get the right sound from it?

D&D 3.5 is, in my opinion, just flat-out BETTER than any other system out there. The fact there is an imbalance caused by a relatively small proportion of the spells is problematic, but no more so than in Rolemaster (where magic is much more swingy in power-level) or Warhammer FRP (Fireball kills everything) or Dungeoneer...And pretty much every other system I've seen, aside from them, is simply mechanically moribund. (Except possibly GURPS; but that doesn't, to me, do anything I can't do better in Rolemaster.)

Level-based systems are not incompatible with sword-and-sorcery (or anything else), and I like level-based systems, so why would I want to not use the best of the rest? (Especially if it means not spending more money - or storage space. Houseruling is cheap in those terms.)

I use D&D (or at least a hybrid Stargate-SG1/Star Wars D20) for more-or-less everything, except what I decide is better in Rolemaster/Spacemaster. As that stands, that very short list is actual Middle Earth games (as I have the RM books to do it) and our Spacemaster party that we've been playing for fifteen years or so. D20 does everything else, because it's just plain BETTER in spite of it's numerous flaws. AND it's easier to tinker with, because there's a large and very smart community of rule-smiths to draw upon when you want to modify something.

I say again, why wouldn't I want to use D&D?



Let me put it this way: I do not give even the slightest flying frag about D&D's fluff, or it's "feel", old-school, new-school or otherwise; or that of any other ruleset. D&D is not a game to me, it's a set of rules I'm going to use to play the game on the world I build. I have no loyalty to any game system other than which it commands via it's functional rule mechanics. I play Warhammer FRP because I have the questbooks, Rolemaster because despite it slower pace, it still great fun once ina while and Dungeoneer because it's a simple step up from HeroQuest for beginners. I've played AD&D, pre 3.x D&D, 4E, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, BESM (D6) and at least one version of Traveller. I've read MechWarrior, GURPs and Heavy Gear, as well as several others and they simply have mechanics that are not superior to either Rolemaster (the second-best system) or D&D 3.5. I'd much rather work from a better supported base, who larger fan-base means there are far more number-crunchers who understand modelling than some genera-specific game I might never use for more than one campaign.

Heliomance
2010-07-08, 09:22 AM
Because despite being deeply flawed, D&D's basic mechanics are still superior to other systems?

In my experience EVERY set of rules needs tinkering to work anyway.

(My current game world is very much more LotR-y in tone (though by no stretch of the imagination quite as low-flash as that!) The magic system has been overhauled (in that I've kicked Vancian to the curb), MMs lobbed out and the bestiary redesigned from scratch, and rules added to make it more "it's you, not your WBL", some fixes emplaced to up the effectiveness of weaker classes...

Why? Because I think 3.5 D&D is still better than anything else (aside possibly from Rolemaster, and I find that more energy to run nowadays).)

I think my response would have to be "why wouldn't you want to tinker with it?"

That's an impressive set of nested brackets you've got there.

lesser_minion
2010-07-08, 09:23 AM
If money is the issue however, that might be more understandable. Does S&S have an SRD or similar?

S&S is Satyr's personal homebrew system. (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Serpents_and_Sewers)

Optimystik
2010-07-08, 09:24 AM
You people are lucky that you have D&D. I've never seen a D&D book in this country, much less any other RPG product.

My home country (Jamaica) has no D&D at all. I was introduced via Baldur's Gate and NWN.

I live in the States now, but definitely feel your pain. :smallfrown:

At the very least you can rely on PbP, the SRD and free online material (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1109.0) to help scratch your itch. :smallsmile:

Or just do what I do, and devote more time to talking theory :smallbiggrin:


S&S is Satyr's personal homebrew system. (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Serpents_and_Sewers)

I meant Swords & Sorcery actually, unless they are the same?
Whichever "grittier, more Conan-y" one was recommended to the OP.

Eldan
2010-07-08, 09:31 AM
As I said, I can get the books from Amazon (with ridiculous taxes) or... uhm... borrow them from friends. Still, you actually have to find out they exist before you can order them, which isn't exactly easy. Then you have to convince other people (even huge nerds already playing Warhammer and computer games) that sitting around a table rolling dice can actually be a cool way to spend an afternoon.

Morty
2010-07-08, 09:36 AM
I agree with this thread's premise, even though I do think it might be easier to simply play a different system. Yes, D&D doesn't support Sword & Sorcery very well unless we just chuck ~14 levels out of the window. But for some people, including me and Satyr, that means a huge clash of expectations and reality. It doesn't help that the design is schisophrenic - high-level noncasters are supposed to be Conan types, but even if they were on Conan's level, which they aren't, they can't compete with magic-users who at this point are worldshakers.

Grumman
2010-07-08, 09:43 AM
Yes, D&D doesn't support Sword & Sorcery very well unless we just chuck ~14 levels out of the window.
I still don't see why you people think this is such a terrible burden. The whole point is that you don't want what those 14 levels have to offer, so why are you so distraught about having to not use them?

Shademan
2010-07-08, 09:51 AM
just use E6?
but hey, if you don't wanna, just keep on working. you're doing fine. at least i found it a fun read

Satyr
2010-07-08, 09:55 AM
Now hey, if you had made that reasonable statement instead of the insulting and out of date original post, some of us wouldn't have rejected your ideas out of hand.

I'm sorry if I insulted or offended anyone with the first post. This was not the intention of it, and if any of the phrases or notions there were in any form insuting or offensive, I want to apolgize; please mention which passage was problematic, so that I could change it quickly to avoid any future misunderstanding.


What I've found works pretty well for Sword and Sorcery is the Vitality/Wound points rules, perhaps with some tweaking. It means that a good hit with a sword still decapitates a guy, instead of high level fighter hacking each other ineffectively for five minutes. I would include two optional additional rules, however:
Nonlethal attacks never deal wound point damage on a critical hit.
Vitality points regenerate a lot faster, naturally. In one campaign, I said that you heal them all, totally, with five minutes of rest. The difference is that you don't need as much natural healing, but you don't become much tougher.

I had the exact same thought, including an accelerated regeneration rate for Vitality points and a slowed down one for Wound Points, making the split between Endurance and and real injuries a little bit more obvious.


I agree with Jill - better to start closer to the goal than jam the square peg into the round hole. (Try an octagon instead!)

This is probably a very philosophic question, but I wholeheartedly disagree. I think that adaptability and flexibility are among the most important qualities should have, and that overtly speciliazed games are in fact limited, narrow-minded and enforce a hide-bound form of gaming. I think that with enough effort, passion interest and perhaps talent, yo ucould probably take any setting you enjoy and any system you prefer together to create something you thororughly like and enjoy.

PlzBreakMyCmpAn
2010-07-08, 10:01 AM
Melee can't have nice things? I applaud anyone equalizing DnD's magic level.


FWIW, the OP has indicated a desire to nerf casters via their spells, which would work...with tremendous amounts of work.Been there, done that (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=3288.0) (for the really bad stuff)


This is like saying you want to play your guitar like a bongo, or your trumpet like a xylophone, or your piano like a fiddle. Yes, with sufficient tinkering it should be technically possible, but what would possess you to even try?Whoa whoa whoa! As a proud frenooon player I'd say that its way easier to have DnD sans magic than the above mentioned combinations.

Friend Computer
2010-07-08, 10:02 AM
This is like saying you want to play your guitar like a bongo, or your trumpet like a xylophone, or your piano like a fiddle. Yes, with sufficient tinkering it should be technically possible, but what would possess you to even try?

This is actually beside the point. D&D does what the OP wants it to. The OP is just whinging because the game also goes further, and he wants a RAW cap at where lv.7 is, but at the same time is so used to the high levels of D&D that he lets it go further, because Conan is epic, and in D&D, Epic is defined as lv. 21+ so of course Conan is level 21+!

If the OP was honest and was not a troll, they would look at either E6 or Conan D20.

Satyr
2010-07-08, 10:16 AM
Alternative Class Features and specific rules for single classes/ class Erratas:

All usual alternative Class Features are legitimate choices. Players who can come up with feasible homebrewed alternative class features can use them as well, but as usual these are checked on a case by case scenario.

Likewise, racial alternative class features are valid choices, too.


Here are a few extra alternative class features to play with. Especially for Factotums. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=159273)

Alternative class features which emulate the class features of another class can be exchanged for that class’s alternative class features if applicable.
Classes with identical class features may pick identical alternative class features, even when these are not listed as such, and if the choice is sensible (e.g. Scouts may replace their trapfinding ability just like a Rogue, if the final concepts seems sensible).

All divine spellcasters must follow a concrete deity and have to take the appropriate domains if applicable. No domain cherry-picking or abstract ideals or other such nonsense. For Druids and the like "Mother Nature" is a concrete diety.

Druids must take the Shapeshift alternative class feature from PHB II or the Deadly Hunter alternative class feature from UA. Basically, you have to choose between shapeshifting (of sorts) or an animal companion.

Archivists have no access to arcane spells via alternative class features of certain classes which converts the spell lists (like the Divine Bard). Basically, they have only access to Adept, Cleric, Druid, Ranger and Paladin spells. If this is not sufficient, I conscider you to be spoilt.

Factotums can use their Cunning Strike ability for as many dice of sneak attack damage as they want, but every dice of damage costs 1 inspiration point.

Warblades gain their 2nd stance on 5th level, allowing to take 3rd level stances then.

Crusaders gain their 2nd Stance on 5th level, their 3rd stance on 9th level, and their 4th stance on 15th level, allowing them to take 5th, respectively 8th level stances then.

Swordsages gain their fifth stance at 15th level, allowing them to take 8th level stances then. The swordsages AC bonus also applies when the swordsage wears no armor as well as when they are wearing light armor

A Ranger’s animal companion is calculated exactly as the one of a druid with three lesser class levels.


Reasons: Okay, most of this is nitpicking. The limitations for spellcasters are there to create a little bit more of a balance of power - again, they are not really handicaped, but they don't get as much candy as the other characters.
The changed stance development was included as a replacement for a real ToB erratum. I think the changes are sensible.
Again, the Basic assumption is that PlayerCharacters are either ToB martial adepts, Factotums or both. The alternative factotum class features (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8875250&postcount=3) should help everybody to build their factotum of their dreams.
Perhaps the most problematic idea is the "pick your alternative class feature" mentality which basically means that most players can pretty much custom made their character classes if they wish to do so. I personally have little problem with this, but to include a control element, the case by case scenario phrase is added.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-08, 10:21 AM
This is actually beside the point. D&D does what the OP wants it to. The OP is just whinging because the game also goes further, and he wants a RAW cap at where lv.7 is, but at the same time is so used to the high levels of D&D that he lets it go further, because Conan is epic, and in D&D, Epic is defined as lv. 21+ so of course Conan is level 21+!

If the OP was honest and was not a troll, they would look at either E6 or Conan D20.

It really bothers you that much that someone you'll likely never meet, much less ever game with, wants to modify his game to suit his personal preferences, which yours apparently differ from? Really?

Granted, Satyr might have been better served in working on balancing his variant mechanics (which is actually what the thread is supposed to be about, not the ensuing debate about the fact he apparently shouldn't be doing it) by posting in the Homebrew forum, but still...

You must think me a terrible troll, as well then, since I don't play D&D the way you do, either. I am genuinely sorry that his and my version of fun is so disconcerting to you.



Edit: I might pinch the ToB class errata myself, actually; I keep meaning to work it out but never remember at a convieniant juncture.

hamishspence
2010-07-08, 10:25 AM
There's also the fact that (at least in DMG2 and Cityscape) ordinary senior statesmen are supposed to be 10th level aristocrats, ordinary veteran guards are supposed to be 10th level warriors, and so on.

The splatbooks seem to not follow E6 in their assumptions about ordinary townsfolk.

Gnaeus
2010-07-08, 10:36 AM
I'm sorry if I insulted or offended anyone with the first post. This was not the intention of it, and if any of the phrases or notions there were in any form insuting or offensive, I want to apolgize; please mention which passage was problematic, so that I could change it quickly to avoid any future misunderstanding.

That would mostly be these three paragraphs.


Is there anything worse to say about a supposedly epic fantasy game than the fact that it seems unsuitable to capture the feeling of the staples of fantasy literature? King Conan is the epitome of being epic. You can measure awesomeness of fantasy characters in MicroConans. Any system where the very archetype of adventuring fantasy hero is reduced to a comparatively weak character has serious issues.

These rules were considered on the base of fantasy literature. The good stuff (Moorcock, Martin, Abercrombie), and the iconic stuff (Conan, Tolkien, Leiber): You know what these have in common? The protagonists are heroes who solve their problems by beating them with a sword. If they have access to magic – which is not even that common among the traditional fantasy heroes – this always play a secondary role to swordsmanship – and this is how it should be. Swordfights are awesome. Wiggling your fingers until your problems go away is not. Not even the iconic wizard – Gandalf, you remember him – uses his magic more often than his sword. Not even the most iconic D&D character – you know, this Drow with the two scimitars – is a magic user per se. The reason for this is simple: Magic makes for good antagonists, but for protagonists, it is not very interesting.

The following suggestions, rule adaptations and the like are based on the assumption that a good fantasy game should capture the feel of good and iconic fantasy literature.

I can think of dozens of protagonists from popular or award winning fantasy that use magic (or similar finger wigglings that are indistinguishable from magic except for setting fluff, like the Jedi). Saying that Harry Dresden, Harry Potter, Rand Al Thor, Granny Weatherwax and their peers are not interesting or that their books aren't good fantasy literature is not very polite to their fans.

Also, if capturing the feel of Tolkein and Howard is your main goal, you can start with giving stat penalties to female and non-white characters, because Tolkein and Howard? Kinda racist and sexist. Just because something was an archetype of fantasy literature 60 years ago does NOT make it a good idea in a modern RPG.

Heliomance
2010-07-08, 10:43 AM
Granny Weatherwax uses magic even less than Gandalf does. About the only actual magic I can think of that we've seen her do is Borrowing. Mostly she succeeds the same way the Doctor does - by making it up as she goes along and knowing how the world works better than anyone else.

Shademan
2010-07-08, 10:43 AM
think he wants the howard feel of ADVENTURE... not opression

Gnaeus
2010-07-08, 10:46 AM
Granny Weatherwax uses magic even less than Gandalf does. About the only actual magic I can think of that we've seen her do is Borrowing. Mostly she succeeds the same way the Doctor does - by making it up as she goes along and knowing how the world works better than anyone else.

Borrowing. Flight. Bringing people back from the dead. Blessings and curses that then come true. She mostly USES headology, because being a good witch means knowing when not to use magic. But she has it at her disposal.

hamishspence
2010-07-08, 10:52 AM
Also, if capturing the feel of Tolkein and Howard is your main goal, you can start with giving stat penalties to female and non-white characters, because Tolkein and Howard? Kinda racist and sexist.

Neither of them had any problem using female characters as formidable fighters though (Belit & Valeria in Howard, Eowyn in Tolkien)

Axolotl
2010-07-08, 10:54 AM
I can think of dozens of protagonists from popular or award winning fantasy that use magic (or similar finger wigglings that are indistinguishable from magic except for setting fluff, like the Jedi). Saying that Harry Dresden, Harry Potter, Rand Al Thor, Granny Weatherwax and their peers are not interesting or that their books aren't good fantasy literature is not very polite to their fans.How many of those fall under "traditional fantasy"?


Also, if capturing the feel of Tolkein and Howard is your main goal, you can start with giving stat penalties to female and non-white characters, because Tolkein and Howard? Kinda racist and sexist. Just because something was an archetype of fantasy literature 60 years ago does NOT make it a good idea in a modern RPG.That's kind of strawmanning him. Just because he want a more swords and sorcery flavour doesn't mean he's a racist.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-08, 10:55 AM
D&D 3.5 is, in my opinion, just flat-out BETTER than any other system out there...
Again, better at what, exactly? Promoting realism or verisimiltude? Providing a scaffold for compelling, collaborative story-telling? D&D has never done these things particularly well, if at all.

Personally, I find that 4E does everything that 3E did well, but better.

Level-based systems are not incompatible with sword-and-sorcery (or anything else)...
I can think of a large number of things with which they are completely incompatible (starting with "a modicum of realism" and working up from there,) but the fact is that level-based systems are only really compatible with Sword and Sorcery as long as- as has been pointed out already- you chuck out most of the actual levels. In which case, why have them at all? What actual benefit do they confer to this kind of play?

Levels, classes, HP and XP serve a valuable purpose in a particular form of play: team-based powergaming against a steadily escalating sequence of waves of dispensable cannon-fodder. Nothing wrong with it, but it has little or nothing to do with the stories which ostensibly inspired it.

I say again, why wouldn't I want to use D&D?
Because the things it does well have almost nothing to do with the real heart and soul of Sword and Sorcery. On a superficial level, sure, they both involve killing monsters, getting treasure, swinging magic swords, and the like, but in the original stories these are simply means to end of making a larger thematic point about the protagonist's decisions. In D&D, they're the whole point.

People play games where 99% of the rules are concerned with (A) stabbing, (B) looting and (C) logistics and then complain when players naturally overlook the 1% that anything has to do with actual protagonism.

Optimystik
2010-07-08, 10:57 AM
This is probably a very philosophic question, but I wholeheartedly disagree. I think that adaptability and flexibility are among the most important qualities should have, and that overtly speciliazed games are in fact limited, narrow-minded and enforce a hide-bound form of gaming. I think that with enough effort, passion interest and perhaps talent, yo ucould probably take any setting you enjoy and any system you prefer together to create something you thororughly like and enjoy.

Well, of course you can - just as with enough effort, passion, interest and perhaps talent, you can turn a piano into a fiddle.

The "effort" is the problem, and that is the burden Jill, myself and others are trying to lessen on your end.


There's also the fact that (at least in DMG2 and Cityscape) ordinary senior statesmen are supposed to be 10th level aristocrats, ordinary veteran guards are supposed to be 10th level warriors, and so on.

The splatbooks seem to not follow E6 in their assumptions about ordinary townsfolk.

If you grant them more PC-ish classes though (e.g. make Aristocrats into Nobles from Dragonlance) then E6 would probably be a better fit.

Shademan
2010-07-08, 10:58 AM
combat in GURPS tend to be very swift and deadly. and I just LOVE the character generation. You might wanna try that. you can make ANYTHING with GURPS.
then again...D&D IS simpler...

Bharg
2010-07-08, 11:02 AM
Is the style and length of your beard related to your level?

okpokalypse
2010-07-08, 11:02 AM
I've taken some time in the past to ratify the spellcasting system for D&D and I found that the easiest thing to do to make it more "balanced" was to just get rid of save or die and save or suck. Period.

If you force a Wizard to actually have to blow things down via damage, they become a lot more comprable to melee in terms of power-scale. BUT at the same time you MUST figure out a way for a Wizard to remail continuously useful as part of that balance. If you're going to take away their strength, you have to alleviate their biggest weakness - being tapped out. Perhaps giving a reserve feat every 5th level as a freebie could work - who knows... Still though, if a caster is tapped, there's nothing to power the reserves. Oh well....

Samurai Jill
2010-07-08, 11:04 AM
This is probably a very philosophic question, but I wholeheartedly disagree. I think that adaptability and flexibility are among the most important qualities should have, and that overtly speciliazed games...
D&D is very much a specialised form of game that does one thing well. Perhaps not overtly so, but I don't see how being honest about your specialisation is a bad thing.

....I think that with enough effort, passion interest and perhaps talent, you could probably take any setting you enjoy and any system you prefer together to create something you thororughly like and enjoy.
With sufficient effort, probably, yes. What I'm questioning is why you need to go to the effort in the first place? There are already games which emulate this genre very well. Why reinvent the wheel? If you insist on tinkering, you could always try to improve on those.

Gnaeus
2010-07-08, 11:11 AM
How many of those fall under "traditional fantasy"?

What is "traditional fantasy"? Wheel of Time almost certainly is. Diskworld probably, I don't know if adding humor makes something not "traditional". Harry Potter is modern, but could just as easily have been set in the dark ages, since most of the action takes place in or around Hogwarts or other traditional fantasy settings. Dresden Files is something of an outlier, since it really incorporates another genre (hard-boiled-detective fiction), but it is certainly fantasy in nature. None of them fall into the Sword & Sorcery sub-genre, but all are fantasy, and all are good (or at least more popular among modern readers than many of the authors he cited.)

No one referred to "traditional fantasy". He did refer to "traditional fantasy heroes", but clearly there is at least a rival tradition in which magic is acceptable. He clearly states that magic using protagonists aren't interesting, and that fantasy heroes should use swords instead, and he supports this view with a handful of examples from a sub-genre as if trying to portray Sword and Sorcery as "good fantasy" and other sub-genres as something else. My response is that that is NOT the only good fantasy, not even the most popular modern fantasy, and that there are lots of elements of it that are positively obsolete.


That's kind of strawmanning him. Just because he want a more swords and sorcery flavour doesn't mean he's a racist.

I do NOT think he is a racist. I do think it points out in a very extreme and correct manner that the genre has changed in the last century, that some of those changes are a good thing, and that it is by no means a sure thing that a fantasy RPG should do something because the writers of the 1930s-50s did it.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-08, 11:14 AM
I agree with Jill - better to start closer to the goal than jam the square peg into the round hole. (Try an octagon instead!)

If money is the issue however, that might be more understandable. Does S&S have an SRD or similar?
I'm afraid not, but the basic rules aren't terribly complex- I might take a shot at summarising the rules (or some adaptation/amalgam of them) on the boards for anyone interested.

I imagine you could pick up 2nd-hand copies on amazon or store sales or by digital download in any case. They're relatively cheap.

Satyr
2010-07-08, 11:15 AM
Level 4 is the new Level 1
I personally think that E6, while basically a very good idea, has the disadvantage that it limits the differentiation of the game from 1 to 20 (and beyond) to 1 to 6 (and beyond). This means that game actually becomes more uniform and offers less variaton, which means that one of the major contributions to the game's flexibility is reduced in the transfer progress.

Let's face it, planning and building characters is a part of the appeal of D&D. Knowning that you can do this impressive trick or master that world-shattering combo is fun. Adding Gestalt rules to the whole mix makes even more fun, because you have more raw material to play with. By all means, I would miss this, and that's why I don't like E6.

The idea behind the suggestions at hand is not to create a more realistic or more gritty D&D per se; the characters are still supposed to be larger than life - even more so than in vanilla D&D, but they are supposed to be awesome all by themselves, not because of the number of trinkets they carry or because they basically cheat the natural laws.

The problem which occurs from this however is the relationship between the player character in all its obvious power and their environment. Sure, the player characters are supposed to be awesome, but they also - true to the Fantasy Literature they are supposedly based on, no four color comic book heroes who walk through the (in)famous world of cardboard.
There is a simple solution for this which also allows to differentiate a bit more among all kinds of characters.
This solution is as simple as it sounds: Level 4 is the new level 1. Player Characters start at Level 4. Most standard NPC will be level 4 by default. Level 4 is the general base to measure stuff by.
And you should cound to 4.

The result is simple - just add class levels, or if this would be silly, racial hitdice. So yes, an average wolf suddenly becomes a 4 HD creature. Which makes sense, as it is supposed to hunt 1 HD lambs.

This does not mean that the lower levels do not exist or are insignificant - to the contrary. They just represent something less experienced than an average adult.

Level 1: Kid. These characters are minors, and young ones at that. Typical characters would be young pages, little plucky kids or small kittens to save from trees. You know, this is the cute level. You may call them younglings, but only if they are slaughtered.

Level 2: Teenager. A bit older than a kid, but still on the adolexcent side. The typical character for this would be a squire, or the protagonist of a young adult novel.

Level 3: Green or Freshling. These are new recruits, novices, journeymen and the like. Still not as experienced as the standard level, but everybody has to start somewhere, right? Really lazy, spoiled or sheltered persons may never advance further than this but the majority still manages to reach level 4.


The second asumption is, that everyone and everything is based on Gestalt rules, but these are often not very obvious, because the second class is almost always a NPC class, and often mostly redundant. Yes, most watchmen will be both warriors and commoners, but who would ever recognize it?

Let's take the average dirt farmer. Based on these assumptions, he is by default a human Expert4//Commoner4. He has such stimulting skills like Profession (Farming), Craft (simple general repairs), Handle Animals [for Animal Husbandry], Knowledge [Local] and a few skill ranks thrown in in stuff like survival ("You know, you really shouldn't eat those berries, they are poisonous"), Appraisal ("This is the best cabbage I've ever seen"), Craft (Cooking) to actually get something to eat, Ride (one rank to not fall from the mule when he rides to the market), Heal (to care for ill bovines or children) and perhaps some small hobbies, like Perform (Bagpipe) or Craft (Woodcarving).

Based on this, most things just got tougher, and a little bit more dangerous - almost to the same degree as the player characters.

Dienekes
2010-07-08, 11:18 AM
D&D is very much a specialised form of game that does one thing well. Perhaps not overtly so, but I don't see how being honest about your specialisation is a bad thing.

With sufficient effort, probably, yes. What I'm questioning is why you need to go to the effort in the first place? There are already games which emulate this genre very well. Why reinvent the wheel? If you insist on tinkering, you could always try to improve on those.

Same reason people do most things involving this forum, for fun. In the end, he thinks this can work, and it doesn't matter a whit that you think it can be done better elsewhere. He isn't hurting anything let the man do his work.


I do NOT think he is a racist. I do think it points out in a very extreme and correct manner that the genre has changed in the last century, that some of those changes are a good thing, and that it is by no means a sure thing that a fantasy RPG should do something because the writers of the 1930s-50s did it.

All genre's change. He likes the feel of swords (as do I) over magic. Saying that some people like the changes is fine, he doesn't. Heavily implying "look they were racist so your way is worse than mine" (even if that's not what you were trying to imply that's how it came off) is a load of bull.

He wants to capture the feel of pulp fiction over 20 levels. If you don't like that style too bad, he ain't building this for you.

The Big Dice
2010-07-08, 11:19 AM
combat in GURPS tend to be very swift and deadly. and I just LOVE the character generation. You might wanna try that. you can make ANYTHING with GURPS.
then again...D&D IS simpler...

...Simpler than quantum phisics maybe. D&D isn't a simple system in the slightest. First off, look at the sheer volume of required reading. Then look at the complex interactions and the many strange and counter intuitive constructs the game has. Two doubles becomes a triple? Where did they study maths?

D&D is the Windows of the Roleplaying Games world. It's ubiquitous because it often seems to be the only option. But it's really not that great and if you look around, there are other ways of reaching the same end in much more satisfying and less complex ways.

My advice to any gamer is, play lots of different systems. They all offer something different, and while some of them are better than others, you might come to the realisation that D&D isn't the be all and end all that it seemed to be.

As for the OP's ideas, there's some interesting thoughts there, and using Conan as a baseline isn't a bad idea. As long as you remember that Conan was just a man. He could be injured near to death by a guy with a dagger, and that alone makes Epic D&D unsuitable for modelling him and his exploits.

Gnaeus
2010-07-08, 11:29 AM
All genre's change. He likes the feel of swords (as do I) over magic. Saying that some people like the changes is fine, he doesn't. Heavily implying "look they were racist so your way is worse than mine" (even if that's not what you were trying to imply that's how it came off) is a load of bull.

He wants to capture the feel of pulp fiction over 20 levels. If you don't like that style too bad, he ain't building this for you.

He asked what was insulting about his original post. I told him. As I said:


Now hey, if you had made that reasonable statement instead of the insulting and out of date original post, some of us wouldn't have rejected your ideas out of hand.

If the thread had started with an expression of personal preference for S&S instead of decrying D&D for failing to model "good fantasy" we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Shademan
2010-07-08, 11:32 AM
...Simpler than quantum phisics maybe. D&D isn't a simple system in the slightest. First off, look at the sheer volume of required reading. Then look at the complex interactions and the many strange and counter intuitive constructs the game has. Two doubles becomes a triple? Where did they study maths?

D&D is the Windows of the Roleplaying Games world. It's ubiquitous because it often seems to be the only option. But it's really not that great and if you look around, there are other ways of reaching the same end in much more satisfying and less complex ways.

My advice to any gamer is, play lots of different systems. They all offer something different, and while some of them are better than others, you might come to the realisation that D&D isn't the be all and end all that it seemed to be.

As for the OP's ideas, there's some interesting thoughts there, and using Conan as a baseline isn't a bad idea. As long as you remember that Conan was just a man. He could be injured near to death by a guy with a dagger, and that alone makes Epic D&D unsuitable for modelling him and his exploits.

I learned D&D much quicker than GURPS.
CONCLUSION: D&D is simpler. and not in a bad way.

Dienekes
2010-07-08, 11:33 AM
And after you highlighted what you found insulting you went on to say that to get the Tolkien and Howard feel he should be racist. Being insulting right back after he offered to change the offending statements is well I'd go into what I think it is, but I already have 2 strikes against me on this board already and don't want to push my luck.

Umael
2010-07-08, 11:37 AM
On reading this, it seems like a lot of posters have thin skins and chips on their shoulders.

The OP defining the game as a "Real Man's D&D" doesn't mean that only men can play it or that if a man doesn't, his masculinity is up for question. It refers to the time period where fantasy WAS about the might of men overcoming terrible powers through brawn, brain, and skill - mundane, martial skill, not happening to know the right spell. Even certain mundane tricks, like distracting your opponent so you can get in a lucky strike, were frowned upon.

It harkens back to an age most of us, even the OP I bet, never were around to actually witness, but instead these fans wrapped themselves up in them in pulp graphic novels they swiped from their grandfather's collection and read up in their attics.

In a way, it was a dinosaur age, where things were big and terrible and awesome without flashy lights and complicated politics. As a "dinosaur age", this was both cool and boring - cool, because killing a carnivorous apatosaurus-like monster with nothing but a huge double-bladed axe and a loincloth was an grown man's dinosaur-boy's fantasy - boring, because after a while, subtlety and complexity and more developed characters became as sirens to lure the fans away.

I don't believe the OP meant "Real Man's D&D" in a way to dismiss any other style of D&D, but that it was a "macho" game without being sexist, a game where it was okay to have a damsel in distress just as much as you have an Amazon warrior who is dressed in an animal skin breast-band and loincloth and nothing else, unlike that leather-chic-dressed warrior princess-wanna-be.

This kind of gaming reflects a gritty, grim style that is still over-the-top without necessarily being dark fantasy. People WILL still die in this, sometimes horribly, but it is more by tooth and sword than by poison and magic. There is a kind of tribal feel to this, even when you are talking about empires, a place where 300 IS an army, and not just an over-glorified macho-fest with hints of homo-eroticism.

I've got more comments, but I'll save them for now...

Gnaeus
2010-07-08, 11:48 AM
And after you highlighted what you found insulting you went on to say that to get the Tolkien and Howard feel he should be racist. Being insulting right back after he offered to change the offending statements is well I'd go into what I think it is, but I already have 2 strikes against me on this board already and don't want to push my luck.

I never at any point attributed any such belief to him. If you believe that I am insulting Howard or Tolkein unjustly, I can cite sources. I made that suggestion not in the serious belief that he would go be racist, but to clearly point out that basing your game on literature from the 30s is not always a good idea.



The following suggestions, rule adaptations and the like are based on the assumption that a good fantasy game should capture the feel of good and iconic fantasy literature.

His assumption is inaccurate. I have already pointed out some of the reasons why. There are some elements from literature that should be captured, some that certainly should not, and lots that are up to personal opinion.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-08, 11:50 AM
Personally, I find that 4E does everything that 3E did well, but better.

I can think of a large number of things with which they are completely incompatible (starting with "a modicum of realism" and working up from there,) but the fact is that level-based systems are only really compatible with Sword and Sorcery as long as- as has been pointed out already- you chuck out most of the actual levels. In which case, why have them at all? What actual benefit do they confer to this kind of play?

I'm afraid, Jill, it is quite obvious that we will never see eye-to-eye on this.

Rolemaster has the most "realism" (sic) I've seen in any RPG, and that is a level based-system.

Personally, I find 4E did nothing better than 3.5 does do except balance between the characters, and that to the point of homogenity. I've played 4E as a player, and I was not impressed (and most of our group were actually happy to get back to play their 15th-17th level 3.5 party1). I will play 4E, but no force on Earth will make me DM it, as I find it's game design philosphy is completely contrary to my own.

3.5 is best-suited to my and my group's preferences, despite it's flaws. I am not going to about to adopt E6 (which throws out half of the interesting mechanics of the game) nor I am going to switch systems for an inferior set of rules when 3.5-with-modifications will be just flat-out better than an inferior-system-with-modifications (for my personal purposes). Especially if it means wasting all that money spent on 3.5 priorly and more on a new system; which won't have even remotely the same breadth of options and flexibilty as 3.5 has.

No system is perfect; in fact most set of rules, RPG or wargames both are crap. If you don't worry too much about that sort of thing, e.g. if you want a fairly heavy RP-based campaign where you don't need to rely on rules as much, that fact matters less, so long as the rules are at least functional to within your tolerances. You can have a perfecly good RPing game just using say, HeroQuest, because you don't need rules to roleplay. (They can contribute, but they aren't required.)

I personally want to have a set of rules suited to my purposes, which does include levelling and a heavy combat element (as well as RPing.) Overall, the base mechanics and structure of D&D currently do that best for me. If it means some fluffing or adjustment (or a lot of same), then fine. No problem there. No different to any other rules system. So far, there are just a handful of rules sets; 3.5 (slash D20), followed by Rolemaster that I consider to be optimal. If 3.x never existed, I'd be playing Rolemaster exclusively.

As it does, I shall continue to modify, tweak and enhance 3.5 up the wazoo until as and if I discover something I consider to be better suited, and then I'll modify, tweak and enhance that up the wazoo.



Anyway, to comment, Satyr on your actual rules mechanics, that doesn't seem to unreasonable. It's sort of similar to what I've done on my own world, which is to raise the average level to 2-4, not 1 and go from there. I like my Tolkien-style Elves, so I achieved making them Better Than You Mortals by simply reasoning by the same logic that if your average farmer goes up a level or two over the years, a long-lived creature might be more (so their average level is 6-8). Elf PCs are thereby going to be young Elves (as dragon PCs - which I also have - are young dragons). It works nicely, and has the advantage of not requiring any rules changes.

You might want to consider better scaling environmental hazards (e.g. traps, lava, falling, tunnel collapses) if you plan to use them with any regularity, since under current rules, they aren't lethal threats towards the upper half of the current level count (which I consider a flaw in the rules), but it depends where you want to set the "superhuman" barrier, really.



1And for the record, I have no problems with characters at that level-range being borderline or striaght-out superheroes. But I don't envision my cleric/monk, at 8th level, just coming into reasonable mechanical effectiveness, being able to beat Conan to death; nor my 12th level Pale Master being able to single-handledly beat the Fellowship of the Ring. The six 17th level killing machines I'm currently DMing for? Yeah, those guys I'd see tackling, say, the X-Men or something.

The Big Dice
2010-07-08, 11:51 AM
I learned D&D much quicker than GURPS.
CONCLUSION: D&D is simpler. and not in a bad way.

After not playing the game more than once or twice in the past 10 years, I can still "think" in GURPS terms. After 5 years of playing pretty much nothing other than D&D, I still have to look up grapples, bull rushes and a few other things.

Conclusion? GURPS is simpler, more internally consistent and less awkward than D&D.

It's also (to me, after having played it almost exclusively for the best part of a decade) the gaming equivalent of white rice. It's filling, but the amount of effor it takes to make something tasty out of it is just too much.

Dienekes
2010-07-08, 11:59 AM
I never at any point attributed any such belief to him. If you believe that I am insulting Howard or Tolkein unjustly, I can cite sources. I made that suggestion not in the serious belief that he would go be racist, but to clearly point out that basing your game on literature from the 30s is not always a good idea.

Why should I care what long dead men believed on race, or be offended if you insult them? They mean nothing to me. However when you claim (as you appeared to earlier but have since cleared up) that the old ones were racist and therefore their style of play is worse than the new that is hilarious as it is wrong. Saying that personally I like this new style and your game system is not for me, also these passages seemed offensive is a perfectly rational and dependable belief.


His assumption is inaccurate. I have already pointed out some of the reasons why. There are some elements from literature that should be captured, some that certainly should not, and lots that are up to personal opinion.

His assumption is accurate to him, which makes sense when he's writing the system. If you don't follow his assumption (since it is an assumption and noted stated as a direct fact) I don't see what your problem is.

Anyway, we're starting to go around in circles so I'm dropping out of this topic. I do wish to see what Satyr draws up though, if it's any good maybe I'll borrow some concepts.

Satyr
2010-07-08, 12:06 PM
Also, if capturing the feel of Tolkein and Howard is your main goal, you can start with giving stat penalties to female and non-white characters, because Tolkein and Howard? Kinda racist and sexist. Just because something was an archetype of fantasy literature 60 years ago does NOT make it a good idea in a modern RPG.

I don't even know what to say to this. Seriously. I never thought of that. I don't even think that "Racism sucks, Sexism is bad" does even need to be said explicitly. This should really, really go without saying.

BTW: Harry Potter included something like seven magical items, if you don't include the wands, and there are several situatiuons in the books where I honestly asked myself how all these wizards became the luddites they seem to be.
Esme Weatherwax doesn't have any magical items, as far as I can tell - the more hero-style characters like Captain Carrot don't have any ones, either. Besides, she really is the evil witch, but decided not to be the antagonist, so I guess she's somewhere in the grey area here.
I haven't read the Wheel of Time, so I can't say much about Mr. Al-Thor, so I cannot comment on that.
And Harry Dresden was the most fun when he had a crippled hand and before the power creep accelerated that much, but here again, problems are solved with dedication, smarts and the occasional chainsaw, not only magic.
Not one of these characters - as far as I can tell - works similar to a D&D wizard.

The thing is - there is very little fantasy literature at all where characters have the aboundance of magical items which appear in D&D. From a dramaturgical perspective, this happens for a reason, because all too powerful McGuffins can be poisonous for the tension of the plot, and create the feeling, that it's not the protagonist but the item that solves the problem which degrades the supposedly protagonist to an extra. Used magic sometimes have a similar tendency, and is often used better when it is used more subtly.
From a game perspective alone, the suggestions in this thread are targeted on creating characters which are awesome because they are strong, fast, smart, headstrong and cunning, not because they have the Doilee of Ultimate Power.
But, if you take away the toys, you hurt the mundane characters a lot more than those who don't need magical items to do magical stuff, so you need a way to solicit this already existing power gap. I decided to do this with the power of TESTOSTERONE! and in reminescence to a character which is actually a ridiculous Mary Sue - Conan - but who is so cheesy and over the top that it is actually enjoyable again.

Draz74
2010-07-08, 12:15 PM
I wondered for a moment what the Queen has to do with magic. :smalltongue:

Hmmm, I wondered rather when the woman he intended to indicate moved south from Scotland. :smalltongue:

Gametime
2010-07-08, 12:21 PM
Levels, classes, HP and XP serve a valuable purpose in a particular form of play: team-based powergaming against a steadily escalating sequence of waves of dispensable cannon-fodder. Nothing wrong with it, but it has little or nothing to do with the stories which ostensibly inspired it.


I'm not sure whether you intend for this remark to have the negative connotation that "powergaming" so often implies. I hope not, since I'm sure you can understand how being reduced to, apparently, nothing but powergamers makes those of us who enjoy D&D feel.

At any rate, I don't think that getting gradually stronger over the course of an adventure is an abomination, or even antithetical to the telling of a good fantasy story. I'm not sure where the idea that sword and sorcery characters don't get stronger comes from; Conan shows a vaguely defined but nonetheless obvious progression of power from the earlier stories. When he's a thief, he's still strong enough to fight off several men; when he's a reaver or pirate, he's capable of fighting of several trained soldiers; and by the time he's a king, he can not only lead an army to victory, but kill a dozen trained assassins and a magical hellbeast in the span of a single hour.

I don't think levels are required to have a good system to emulate fantasy. I don't think they're detrimental, either, and I think your dismissal of them is based more on personal preference than any accurate portrayal of the genre.

Also, hit points? What system doesn't have some sort of numerical abstraction to represent health?


...Simpler than quantum phisics maybe. D&D isn't a simple system in the slightest. First off, look at the sheer volume of required reading. Then look at the complex interactions and the many strange and counter intuitive constructs the game has. Two doubles becomes a triple? Where did they study maths?

It's actually a completely mathematically sound rule, if you view doubles and the like as bonuses to damage. Two 100% bonuses to damage become a 200% bonus to damage. Since multiplication is more intuitive, though, they continue to use doubling and tripling and just introduce that rule to ensure that the damage doesn't scale faster than necessary.


D&D is the Windows of the Roleplaying Games world. It's ubiquitous because it often seems to be the only option. But it's really not that great and if you look around, there are other ways of reaching the same end in much more satisfying and less complex ways.



I can see that. And, like Windows, there are some people who are informed and still prefer the ubiquitous system despite everyone telling us that it's terrible.

On an unrelated note, re: Conan's level, does anyone else think the fact that the wizards Conan faced don't seem to be beyond 9th to 11th level is excellent proof that he is 18th to 20th? After all, we've all seen the threads discussing what level wizard could defeat what level fighter; clearly, since he's victorious, he must be several levels higher! :smallbiggrin:

potatocubed
2010-07-08, 12:39 PM
This is totally off-topic, but are there any chances of you ever posting any of those?

Hmm... I dunno. Most of the adventures I write are one-page scribbles with no maps, since I hold a lot of what I'm going to run in my head and tend to generate maps on the fly by drawing on the battle mat. I do write some ideas up as proper adventures, but those are mostly things I hope to sell so posting them online for free would be counterproductive. :smalltongue:

If I ever finish writing up my collection of 4e monsters I might stick them up somewhere.

kjones
2010-07-08, 12:49 PM
On reading this, it seems like a lot of posters have thin skins and chips on their shoulders.

The OP defining the game as a "Real Man's D&D" doesn't mean that only men can play it or that if a man doesn't, his masculinity is up for question. It refers to the time period where fantasy WAS about the might of men overcoming terrible powers through brawn, brain, and skill - mundane, martial skill, not happening to know the right spell. Even certain mundane tricks, like distracting your opponent so you can get in a lucky strike, were frowned upon.

It harkens back to an age most of us, even the OP I bet, never were around to actually witness, but instead these fans wrapped themselves up in them in pulp graphic novels they swiped from their grandfather's collection and read up in their attics.

In a way, it was a dinosaur age, where things were big and terrible and awesome without flashy lights and complicated politics. As a "dinosaur age", this was both cool and boring - cool, because killing a carnivorous apatosaurus-like monster with nothing but a huge double-bladed axe and a loincloth was an grown man's dinosaur-boy's fantasy - boring, because after a while, subtlety and complexity and more developed characters became as sirens to lure the fans away.

I don't believe the OP meant "Real Man's D&D" in a way to dismiss any other style of D&D, but that it was a "macho" game without being sexist, a game where it was okay to have a damsel in distress just as much as you have an Amazon warrior who is dressed in an animal skin breast-band and loincloth and nothing else, unlike that leather-chic-dressed warrior princess-wanna-be.

This kind of gaming reflects a gritty, grim style that is still over-the-top without necessarily being dark fantasy. People WILL still die in this, sometimes horribly, but it is more by tooth and sword than by poison and magic. There is a kind of tribal feel to this, even when you are talking about empires, a place where 300 IS an army, and not just an over-glorified macho-fest with hints of homo-eroticism.

I've got more comments, but I'll save them for now...

This, this, this. Satyr - keep doing your thing, pay the haters no heed. I'm listening.

Friend Computer
2010-07-08, 12:53 PM
It really bothers you that much that someone you'll likely never meet, much less ever game with, wants to modify his game to suit his personal preferences, which yours apparently differ from? Really?

Granted, Satyr might have been better served in working on balancing his variant mechanics (which is actually what the thread is supposed to be about, not the ensuing debate about the fact he apparently shouldn't be doing it) by posting in the Homebrew forum, but still...

You must think me a terrible troll, as well then, since I don't play D&D the way you do, either. I am genuinely sorry that his and my version of fun is so disconcerting to you.



Edit: I might pinch the ToB class errata myself, actually; I keep meaning to work it out but never remember at a convieniant juncture.
I don't care that the OP is homebrewing a system to their taste, and to say that is a gross misrepresentation of my posts. If they feel the E6 is the power level they want, but instead want it spread out over 20 levels and are unhappy with the way Conan does this, then I hope they get it right for their taste. That has nothing to do with my posts. My posts have been about the OP declaring 3.5 wrong and broken because his favourite characters are not the most powerful. About the OP declaring that only a subset of fantasy is worthy of D&D. About the OP's sexist assertion that their game is for 'Real Men' and that other games must be for girls or sissies. That after complaining about the powerlevel of D&D going way over what he wants, the OP does not cap power at the supposed 'Real Man's Fantasy' level nor address the reasons why level 6 is 'mundane epic' in the new 'Real Man's Fantasy' nonsense, but instead lets it go on as before with no meaningful difference between martial level 20 in this system to RAW D&D. The OP is therefore not interested in changing the power level of the (non-magical) game and the complaints have no reflection in the rules changed, and the confrontational, sexist nature of the complaints made shows that the OP was only interested in stirring up trouble.

okpokalypse
2010-07-08, 12:58 PM
Also, if capturing the feel of Tolkein and Howard is your main goal, you can start with giving stat penalties to female and non-white characters, because Tolkein and Howard? Kinda racist and sexist. Just because something was an archetype of fantasy literature 60 years ago does NOT make it a good idea in a modern RPG.

Not for nothing, but since basic D&D I have given a Str Penalty to Female Human builds, and they get the option of getting the penalty back to either Wisdom or Charisma (Determined Randomly).

I'm not being sexist, but if you think that Human women and men have equal strength both on average and as an attainable natural maximum, you're delusional. Men and Women are just plain different biologically, and one of those keen differences is Strength.

Shademan
2010-07-08, 01:04 PM
After not playing the game more than once or twice in the past 10 years, I can still "think" in GURPS terms. After 5 years of playing pretty much nothing other than D&D, I still have to look up grapples, bull rushes and a few other things.

Conclusion? GURPS is simpler, more internally consistent and less awkward than D&D.

It's also (to me, after having played it almost exclusively for the best part of a decade) the gaming equivalent of white rice. It's filling, but the amount of effor it takes to make something tasty out of it is just too much.

hm, I learned D&D first. so i guess it's all about old dogs not learning new tricks or something...
And if I implied that GURPS is bad I didnt mean it. it is awesome. what I meant is that GURPS is MUCH more detailed than D&D. in both combat and character creation. which is GREAT fun. but in D&D I can throw up a character or NPC or something twice as fast.

kjones
2010-07-08, 01:05 PM
Before this thread gets locked due to flinging about accusations of sexism, let me just point out that the "Real Men" thing is a reference to this classic classification scheme (http://dragon.facetieux.free.fr/jdr/Munchkin.htm).

PersonMan
2010-07-08, 01:08 PM
Not for nothing, but since basic D&D I have given a Str Penalty to Female Human builds, and they get the option of getting the penalty back to either Wisdom or Charisma (Determined Randomly).

I'm not being sexist, but if you think that Human women and men have equal strength both on average and as an attainable natural maximum, you're delusional. Men and Women are just plain different biologically, and one of those keen differences is Strength.

Yes, but those are normal people. These are people who run around killing monsters and breaking the laws of physics multiple times before lunch. At higher levels, they can do completely absurd things like fall from >9000 feet and live without much trouble. What people aren't playing is Average Joe/Jill, they're playing Exceptional Bob/Sarah. And as far as I know, there isn't a maximum for any stat in DnD, anyways.

But let's not discuss this. I'd rather not have the thread locked, so let's get back to talking about Sword&Sorcery and the like.

Gametime
2010-07-08, 01:17 PM
Not for nothing, but since basic D&D I have given a Str Penalty to Female Human builds, and they get the option of getting the penalty back to either Wisdom or Charisma (Determined Randomly).

I'm not being sexist, but if you think that Human women and men have equal strength both on average and as an attainable natural maximum, you're delusional. Men and Women are just plain different biologically, and one of those keen differences is Strength.

Average discrepancies do not translate to upper bounds, and as far as I know there is no evidence suggesting a great disparity in maximum upper body strength between men and women.

Suggesting that heroes - who are, by their definition, exceptional - conform to averages and norms is bizarre, at any rate, and balancing out mechanical disparities by introducing more sex-linked character attributes is problematic for any number of reasons.

Oslecamo
2010-07-08, 01:18 PM
From a game perspective alone, the suggestions in this thread are targeted on creating characters which are awesome because they are strong, fast, smart, headstrong and cunning, not because they have the Doilee of Ultimate Power.
But, if you take away the toys, you hurt the mundane characters a lot more than those who don't need magical items to do magical stuff, so you need a way to solicit this already existing power gap. I decided to do this with the power of TESTOSTERONE! and in reminescence to a character which is actually a ridiculous Mary Sue - Conan - but who is so cheesy and over the top that it is actually enjoyable again.

Except that Conan and many other ancient heroes did have rows of magical items. You may know them better as "minions", "expendable allies" and other such names.

Pretty much all of Conan adventures have him befriend a bunch of people who are then conveniently sacrificed one by one (or by the droves) to allow him to suceed. Nevermind how he's always stumbling upon trinkets that allow him to bypass his next oponent's defenses.

Ulisses cheats, backstabs and literally feeds his own companions to monsters to keep them busy while he escapes. No, he's not even worried about glory. He just wants to get back home and is only on the Illiad war because the other "heros" threatened to kill his son. Yes sir, an heroic spirit among brave "larger than life" characters reduced to holding little kids hostage.

Oh and to set sail on the first place? Had to sacrifice a princess. Another heroic deed for the records!

Meanwhile Acquilles thinks he's the strongest one there is, and probably is, but that doesn't save him from being killed by an arrow. He doesn't die in an epic duel, overwhelmed by impossible odds or fighting some epic monster. He's sniped at range by one of the most coward greek "heros" that sacrificed his city and family so he could brainwash the prettiest woman in Greece.

Where's your TESTOTERONE power now?:smallamused:

So no, "fantasy heros" are not just muscles and brains. Fantasy heros use every means at their disposal to achieve victory. And I bet that if Ulisses or Conan had cheap magic item shops available, they would gladly spend their loot there. Heck, Ulisses does pray to get the god's help plenty of times!

Arbane
2010-07-08, 01:19 PM
Not for nothing, but since basic D&D I have given a Str Penalty to Female Human builds, and they get the option of getting the penalty back to either Wisdom or Charisma (Determined Randomly).

I'm not being sexist, but if you think that Human women and men have equal strength both on average and as an attainable natural maximum, you're delusional. Men and Women are just plain different biologically, and one of those keen differences is Strength.

Oh, goodie. These discussions NEVER devolve into horrible flamefests! :smallconfused:

As PersonMan pointed out, there's NOTHING 'normal' or 'average' (or even terribly 'realistic') about adventurers who can shrug off a battleaxe to the face, fracture the laws of physics by waving their hands, and/or dodge 30'-wide explosions. I say let the wimminfolk go everywhere, fight everyone, and kill everything the men get to.

But hey, it's your houserules. How many female players do you have?

Coplantor
2010-07-08, 01:22 PM
Can we please stop summoning the thread lock?

PersonMan
2010-07-08, 01:27 PM
Can we please stop summoning the thread lock?

+1

Let's get back to Conan and swords and magic and stabbing. And houserules. And...whatever we were talking about.

arrowhen
2010-07-08, 01:30 PM
Imagine if all real-world conversations were like internet D&D conversations...

Kid #1: I'm gonna take my castle Legos® and build a sailboat out of them!

Kid #2: What!? How dare you say that sailboats are cooler than castles? That's factually incorrect!

Kid #3: Lego® brand building blocks are about imagination, not mechanics. If you can't just throw your castle in the bathtub and pretend it's a sailboat, you fail at creativity!

Kid #2: Yeah! I'm not playing Lego® wrong, you are!

Kid #4: What a waste of time. You should just buy a toy sailboat.

Kid #5: Noobs! Both castles and sailboats are suboptimal. You should build a cable-stayed suspension bridge.

Grognard: Bah. The original 1913 Erector Set was the last true edition of building toys!



To the OP: don't listen to these naysayers. Keep tinkering -- and sharing -- to your heart's content.

Morty
2010-07-08, 01:32 PM
So no, "fantasy heros" are not just muscles and brains. Fantasy heros use every means at their disposal to achieve victory. And I bet that if Ulisses or Conan had cheap magic item shops available, they would gladly spend their loot there. Heck, Ulisses does pray to get the god's help plenty of times!

I think that's kind of the point here - heroes in myths, legends and fantasy literature had to use their wits, play to their strengths and generally use every resource at their disposal instead of punching through anything with Magick or "sheer awesomeness".

Coplantor
2010-07-08, 01:32 PM
Imagine if all real-world conversations were like internet D&D conversations...

Kid #1: I'm gonna take my castle Legos® and build a sailboat out of them!

Kid #2: What!? How dare you say that sailboats are cooler than castles? That's factually incorrect!

Kid #3: Lego® brand building blocks are about imagination, not mechanics. If you can't just throw your castle in the bathtub and pretend it's a sailboat, you fail at creativity!

Kid #2: Yeah! I'm not playing Lego® wrong, you are!

Kid #4: What a waste of time. You should just buy a toy sailboat.

Kid #5: Noobs! Both castles and sailboats are suboptimal. You should build a cable-stayed suspension bridge.

Grognard: Bah. The original 1913 Erector Set was the last true edition of building toys!



To the OP: don't listen to these naysayers. Keep tinkering -- and sharing -- to your heart's content.

And thus! A sig quote is born!

Caphi
2010-07-08, 01:34 PM
I think that's kind of the point here - heroes in myths, legends and fantasy literature had to use their wits, play to their strengths and generally use every resource at their disposal instead of punching through anything with Magick or "sheer awesomeness".

We try to use every resource at our disposal. Some guys just have more different resources at their disposal than others. That's what the tier system is. A sorceror can be forced to rummage through her toolbox for a way out of a jam as much as a fighter can - but the two's situations will look quite different, and many things that would challenge the latter so are just annoyances to the former.

Heliomance
2010-07-08, 01:41 PM
Borrowing. Flight. Bringing people back from the dead. Blessings and curses that then come true. She mostly USES headology, because being a good witch means knowing when not to use magic. But she has it at her disposal.

Borrowing I mentioned. She can't fly under her own power, the broom is a magic item. She didn't bring anyone back from the dead, she bargained with Death for them, a feat which can be done by anyone with big enough cojones that can see Death. As for the blessings and curses, I'm blanking on any that came true that weren't either self-fulfilling or came true because she manipulated people.

kjones
2010-07-08, 01:43 PM
Imagine if all real-world conversations were like internet D&D conversations...

Kid #1: I'm gonna take my castle Legos® and build a sailboat out of them!

Kid #2: What!? How dare you say that sailboats are cooler than castles? That's factually incorrect!

Kid #3: Lego® brand building blocks are about imagination, not mechanics. If you can't just throw your castle in the bathtub and pretend it's a sailboat, you fail at creativity!

Kid #2: Yeah! I'm not playing Lego® wrong, you are!

Kid #4: What a waste of time. You should just buy a toy sailboat.

Kid #5: Noobs! Both castles and sailboats are suboptimal. You should build a cable-stayed suspension bridge.

Grognard: Bah. The original 1913 Erector Set was the last true edition of building toys!



To the OP: don't listen to these naysayers. Keep tinkering -- and sharing -- to your heart's content.

This reminds me quite a bit of Wired's article about if D&D books were cookbooks. (http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/alttext/2008/06/alttext_0618)

potatocubed
2010-07-08, 01:51 PM
Imagine if all real-world conversations were like internet D&D conversations...

If this forum had reputation, you'd get a +1 for that.

But it doesn't, so you'll just have to imagine it instead.

Kylarra
2010-07-08, 02:24 PM
So no, "fantasy heros" are not just muscles and brains. Fantasy heros use every means at their disposal to achieve victory. And I bet that if Ulisses or Conan had cheap magic item shops available, they would gladly spend their loot there. Heck, Ulisses does pray to get the god's help plenty of times!I'm pretty sure you're being facetious, but for the record, Conan's hatred of magic and magical things is pretty well established, even his friends that are spellcasters are only grudgingly trusted and he still has issues with them casting "buffs" on him.

Optimystik
2010-07-08, 02:26 PM
Imagine if all real-world conversations were like internet D&D conversations...

Kid #1: I'm gonna take my castle Legos® and build a sailboat out of them!

Kid #2: What!? How dare you say that sailboats are cooler than castles? That's factually incorrect!

Kid #3: Lego® brand building blocks are about imagination, not mechanics. If you can't just throw your castle in the bathtub and pretend it's a sailboat, you fail at creativity!

Kid #2: Yeah! I'm not playing Lego® wrong, you are!

Kid #4: What a waste of time. You should just buy a toy sailboat.

Kid #5: Noobs! Both castles and sailboats are suboptimal. You should build a cable-stayed suspension bridge.

Grognard: Bah. The original 1913 Erector Set was the last true edition of building toys!



To the OP: don't listen to these naysayers. Keep tinkering -- and sharing -- to your heart's content.

I'm Kid #4.

arrowhen
2010-07-08, 02:32 PM
I'm pretty sure you're being facetious, but for the record, Conan's hatred of magic and magical things is pretty well established, even his friends that are spellcasters are only grudgingly trusted and he still has issues with them casting "buffs" on him.

Which is why barbarians in 1st ed. AD&D had strict limits on magic item use and hanging out with spellcasters.

okpokalypse
2010-07-08, 02:32 PM
Oh, goodie. These discussions NEVER devolve into horrible flamefests! :smallconfused:

As PersonMan pointed out, there's NOTHING 'normal' or 'average' (or even terribly 'realistic') about adventurers who can shrug off a battleaxe to the face, fracture the laws of physics by waving their hands, and/or dodge 30'-wide explosions. I say let the wimminfolk go everywhere, fight everyone, and kill everything the men get to.

But hey, it's your houserules. How many female players do you have?

Quite a few actually over the years. And it's never been a real problem simply because not one Female player I've play with has EVER wanted to play the huge hulking human female warrior. In fact, any female human warrior I've ever encountered has been finesse-based for the most part, be it archery, dervish or the like... And in that regard, they all work wonderfully.


Average discrepancies do not translate to upper bounds, and as far as I know there is no evidence suggesting a great disparity in maximum upper body strength between men and women.

There is immesurable and unrefutable evidence that there is a wide gap. Just look at powerlifting records by gender. Men have 30%-40% more Lower-Body Strength and 50%-60% more Upper-Body Strength co-relating the to differentials at almost any time period in the last half century or so. Men also have nearly 100% more (double) joint strength than Women.

My nephew, a former Army MP and professional bodybuilder could, at the age of 24, Clean & Jerk 500 Lbs. He weighed 245 Lbs then. There is currently only 1 woman in the world that can Clean & Jerk 400 Lbs (She's 270 Lbs) - and she's the Olympic Gold Medalist. Ironoically, my nephew wouldn't even come close to being able to compete at an Olympic Level with that lift. Not. Even. Close.

Men, because of heightened testotsterone levels, grow larger, have more muscle mass both generally and in proportion to body weight, have more lung capacity (thus greater endurance), have greater muscular hypertrophy (enlargement of muscular cells) and have greater bone density.

I don't want to cause a gender flame-war here, but it's just the facts of human biology. Anything to the contrary is largely based on sentiment.

As it pertains to Gaming, sure - it really doesn't matter. If you want to play a woman that has a Million Lb carrying capacity and can lift a small town on her shoulders, all the best. All I'm saying is that she makes her initial start at a -2 on her quest for 77 Strength (Yes, that's > Million Lb Heavy Load) and she is (randomly) more wise or personable than her male counterparts.

EDIT: This is my last post on the gender topic. It's way off base here and no adding anything.

EDIT II: The OP may want to start a new thread that we all agree to not mangle with regard to the accusations of sexism, racism or any other ism...

Coplantor
2010-07-08, 02:44 PM
I'm Kid #4.

I think I been all of those, even grognard :smalltongue:

Darkxarth
2010-07-08, 02:49 PM
And thus! A sig quote is born!

Alas, it is too long to actually be a signature quote, but it works well as a link.

Arbane
2010-07-08, 02:49 PM
Imagine if all real-world conversations were like internet D&D conversations...

Kid #1: I'm gonna take my castle Legos® and build a sailboat out of them!

Kid #2: What!? How dare you say that sailboats are cooler than castles? That's factually incorrect!

Kid #3: Lego® brand building blocks are about imagination, not mechanics. If you can't just throw your castle in the bathtub and pretend it's a sailboat, you fail at creativity!

Kid #2: Yeah! I'm not playing Lego® wrong, you are!

Kid #4: What a waste of time. You should just buy a toy sailboat.

Kid #5: Noobs! Both castles and sailboats are suboptimal. You should build a cable-stayed suspension bridge.

Grognard: Bah. The original 1913 Erector Set was the last true edition of building toys!



To the OP: don't listen to these naysayers. Keep tinkering -- and sharing -- to your heart's content.

And here I was worried I'd never find a good sig quote. :smallsmile:

Coplantor
2010-07-08, 02:50 PM
Alas, it is too long to actually be a signature quote, but it works well as a link.

Does indeed, check the bottom of my sig if you dont believe me:smallwink:

Murdim
2010-07-08, 02:53 PM
Imagine if all real-world conversations were like internet D&D conversations...

*snip*

Here it is for you.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Internet_map_1024.jpg


Also, I must say that I find Satyr's work to be really inspiring. I also like the fact that before any pretense of game balance or verisimilitude, the whole premise of the thing is to bring the Rule of Cool back to its rightful place. Sometimes we just want to be done with the Christmas Tree Effect, the SoDs, the teleportations, the mandatory flight, the encounter-ending spells, the spellcasting bears (and more generally, the fact that all the awesome potential of morphing spells and effects is wasted into boring, game-breaking "optimal uses"), the one-trick pony fighter (thanks Gestalt !), the spells that make skill checks obsolete, the Wealth by Level, whatever.

Darkxarth
2010-07-08, 02:53 PM
Does indeed, check the bottom of my sig if you dont believe me:smallwink:

Ah, you beat me to it. I suspected as much, but did not check.

Coplantor
2010-07-08, 03:01 PM
Also, I must say that I find Satyr's work to be really inspiring. I also like the fact that before any pretense of game balance or verisimilitude, the whole premise of the thing is to bring the Rule of Cool back to its rightful place. Sometimes we just want to be done with the Christmas Tree Effect, the SoDs, the teleportations, the mandatory flight, the encounter-ending spells, the spellcasting bears (and more generally, the fact that all the awesome potential of morphing spells and effects is wasted into boring, game-breaking "optimal uses"), the one-trick pony fighter (thanks Gestalt !), the spells that make skill checks obsolete, the Wealth by Level, whatever.

Indeed, the fact that this guy here was inspired to do this a few days ago (or yesterday, who knows!) and already brought up all these changes is admirable.

I want to be Satyr when I grow up :smalltongue:

Endarire
2010-07-08, 03:25 PM
"Real men" don't need shirts. They use mage armor!

horseboy
2010-07-08, 03:28 PM
I would argue that the foundation of the wizards > fighters problem is that magic is rewriting reality, and fighting is hitting people with sticks. It isn't the spell effects that are broken so much as the whole concept of magic.
Eh, what's really broken is combat mechanics. 5' of steel through the chest is no longer lethal past level 5 or so because hit points scale faster than fighter damage output. The wound and vitality almost helps, or just capping HP at 10th ala AD&D, or just grab the "wounds" system from Earthdawn.
Course, if you stop and look at D&D magic it doesn't actually "rewrite reality" that's just something the fans have gotten in there heads from somewhere. The magic from a fireball actually magnifies a firecracker into a grenade. There is no "rewriting reality" involved.

D&D 3.5 is, in my opinion, just flat-out BETTER than any other system out there. The fact there is an imbalance caused by a relatively small proportion of the spells is problematic, but no more so than in Rolemaster (where magic is much more swingy in power-level)
The power imbalance I always saw in Rolemaster was that spell lists gave casters 6-10 skills for the price of one, that way they had more options open to them. My broadsword could still kill a 50th level orc just as well as Moose's firebolt. Considering it's a 30 year old system that's not bad and if you drop more 'modern' spell/psionic versions from SPAM and HARP it balances out quickly.

Back to the OP: I'd also mandate that all spellcasters specialize. All the casters I can remember in the subgenre were either invokers, summoners, diviners or enchanters. I can't remember a single one that had equal access to all abilities. Also I'd look into bringing back spheres for divine casters for similar reasons.

Math_Mage
2010-07-08, 03:32 PM
Eh, what's really broken is combat mechanics. 5' of steel through the chest is no longer lethal past level 5 or so because hit points scale faster than fighter damage output. The wound and vitality almost helps, or just capping HP at 10th ala AD&D, or just grab the "wounds" system from Earthdawn.
Course, if you stop and look at D&D magic it doesn't actually "rewrite reality" that's just something the fans have gotten in there heads from somewhere. The magic from a fireball actually magnifies a firecracker into a grenade. There is no "rewriting reality" involved.


Choosing the archetypical blasting spell to describe a perception of casting based on non-blasty spells is...odd.

PAO: "This creature is actually a frog."
Power Word Kill: "This creature is actually dead."
Gate: "This plane and that plane are actually connected."
and so on.

Jarawara
2010-07-08, 03:35 PM
The problem I have with the whole concept here, is that even the rule rewrites, even with the 'magic is nerfed and mostly an NPC kind of thing', even with upping the starting point at level 4 and gesaulting double warrior types together... we're still faced with the fact that a 20th level D&D fighter doesn't play like Conan.

Conan is a smart, cunning warrior. (Whoever said he was an 'idiot' should be taken out back and beaten with R.E.Howard's original books.) Conan is quite powerful, and though there *was* a time he was a relatively young and inexperienced fighter, starting at level 4 seems appropriate to him. Later in life, Conan could pretty much defeat nearly anything that came his way.

BUT... Conan was smart enough to dodge out of the way of a falling pillar. And Conan did not stand and grin as enemies fired arrows into his chest. Conan did not jump off cliffs, crash hard, pick himself up and dust himself off before pursuing the enemy. And Conan most certainly did not go swimming in hot lava simply because he knew he had enough hit points.

That's the stuff of 20th level characters. Conan... is not 20th level (as per the D&D rules). Unless you address the Superman complex of D&D high level characters, Conan can't really be modeled by the system. That's why I've always said that Conan is 8th to 12th level or so - still powerful enough to kick ass and take names, but not act like Superman.

Now I'm not saying that D&D can't be 'fixed', but so far, you've not addressed that aspect of the issue. And I'm not sure if you should. Instead, keep working on making the lower levels part of the system work, and then expand upward until the system breaks - and then either fix it, or cap the system. If the reason you wish to go to 20th level is only because WotC went to 20th level, then you're needlessly slaving yourself to someone else's broken game. Take the game only as high as YOU need it to go, while keeping Conan feeling like a true hero (but not a Superman).

Try the E6 system, but rework it to say... E10 or the like. A 10th level warrior, in a world largely devoid of magic users and magic shops, is going to be fairly epic already, and as pointed out before, can out-fight a T-Rex. (As opposed to a 20th level fighter who can out-wrestle one.) Try E10, then adjust upward or downward based on personal taste and playtest data. Don't fall into the trap that you *need* to have 20th level people.

Oh, and when you finally do implement E10 (or whatever level), then stat out Conan as 12th level (a couple levels above whatever maximum you set). He's just that awesome, he doesn't play by the rules!

Flickerdart
2010-07-08, 03:38 PM
Choosing the archetypical blasting spell to describe a perception of casting based on non-blasty spells is...odd.

PAO: "This creature is actually a frog."
Power Word Kill: "This creature is actually dead."
Gate: "This plane and that plane are actually connected."
and so on.

Or even better, Wish. Just Wish.

Satyr
2010-07-08, 03:58 PM
Available Resources:

Spells:
By default, spell choices are limited to the SRD. Spells from other sources require a case by case confirmation by the Gamemaster.
Some spells (you know, the annoying ones) will be banned. As usual, the case by case is mostly there to include a strong GM control mechanism.

Feats:
Feats can be chosen from every book, as long as it is a sensible choice (3rd party products are included on a case by case confirmation by the Gamemaster.)
Item creation feats work a bit different are usually not a recommended choice for player characters.

Prestige classes:
Prestige Classes can be chosen from every book, as long as it is a sensible choice (3rd party products are included on a case by case confirmation by the Gamemaster.)

Prestige Classes which furthers spellcasting of a previous class on each of its class levels and add useful class abilities are banned by default, but as usual, there can be exceptions.

Certain prestige classes might advance a character's known and readied maneuvers and stances on every other level with the usual halved initiator level. Which classes might apply for this is decided on case by case by the player and the GM. This concerns classes which are clearly supposed to be taken by fulltime warriors, but which would bring the maneuver progression to a grinding halt.


Equipment:
Let's face it, there are only three, perhaps four armors which are worth the while, and these are used all the time. Ignore the name of the armor, just pick the light armor which you think look best on your character, declare it to be a light/medium/heavy armor and use the stats for a chainshirt/breastplate/fullplate. This doesn't change the price, only the appearance.
the magic item compendium is at hand. There are no Items of Legacy or Magic Marts™ (no free item shopping). Magic enhancements may be available, as usual on a case by case scenario.
Magical items which are just there for lazy people - especially wands, and the like, are banned by default.

Money
The WBL system is not applied as usual. Instead, use something like the table below as a rule of thumb, and remember that most of this wealth should come in the form of naturalia, or even landownership if appropriate. Adding a few thousand gold coins to a local economy just calls for "fun with inflation".
The table lists different aspects for money and magical items. This latter include all stuff like scrolls, potions and other expandables.

When it comes to magical items, at least half of the worth of any magical loot, etc. should consits of magical weapons and armor, weapon crystals, and similar warrior-related stuff (like a a scabbard of keen edges or gauntlets of ogre strength . About 20% are should consist of expandables such as scrolls and potions (again, wands are inappropriate), the rest 30% should consist of fun, but mostly warrior or trickery related stuff
(Bracers of Archery are a good choice, a Hat of Disguise is okay, a Ring of Spellstoring is not).

Special Bonuses (or the Power of Testosterone):
Every few levels, a character gets a little bonus just for being that awesome. It's not much, but it should help to deal with highr saves and the like.

{table=head]Level|Money|total worth of magical items|Special Bonuses

1st|
depends on class|
0|
-

2nd|
250|
500|
-

3rd|
500|
750|

4th|
750|
1000|
Save Bonus +1

5th|
1000|
3000|
Bonus Feat

6th|
1500|
5000|
DR 1/-

7th|
2000|
8000|
-

8th|
2500|
11000|
Save Bonus +2

9th|
3000|
15000|
-

10th|
3500|
19000|
Bonus Feat

11th|
4000|
24000|
-

12th|
4500|
29000|
DR 2/-, Save Bonus +3

13th|
5000|
35000|
-

14th|
5500|
41000|
Evasion

15th|
6000|
48000|
Bonus Feat|
+x|Class Ability

16th|
6500|
56000|
Save Bonus +3|
+x|Class Ability

17th|
7000|
65000|
Mettle

18th|
7500|
74000|
DR 3/-

19th|
8000|
84000|
-

20th|
8500|
94000|
Save Bonus +5, Bonus Feat[/table]

Save Bonus: Starting at 4th level and every 4 levels afterwards, the Character gains a +1 bonus to all Saving Throws.

Damage Resistance: Starting at 6th level, the Character gains a Damage Resistance of 1/-. Unlike the usual limitations of Damage Resistance, this stacks with Damage Resistance from all other sources. All 6 levels ever after, the Damage Resistance increases by +1.

Bonus Feats: At level 5 and every five levels afterwards, the character gains a bonus from the following list: Diehard, Dive for Cover (CA), Endurance, Enduring Life (LibMo), Font of Life (HoH), Great Fortitude, Iron Will, Lasting Life (LibMo), Lightning Reflexes, Improved Toughness, Quick Recovery (LoM), Toughness, or any feat of the [Luck] type. The character must qualifiy for the feat as usual.

Evasion: At 14th level, the Character gains Evasion, as the Rogue class feature. If the character already has Evasion or would gain Evasion later on through a class feature, he gains Improved Evasion instead.

Mettle: At 17th level, the character gains Mettle, as the Crusader class feature of the same name. If the character already has Mettle or gains it later as a class feature, he may reroll any failed Fortitude or Will Save once per day but must accept the second result even if it as worse than the original one.

horseboy
2010-07-08, 03:58 PM
Choosing the archetypical blasting spell to describe a perception of casting based on non-blasty spells is...odd.

PAO: "This creature is actually a frog."
Power Word Kill: "This creature is actually dead."
Gate: "This plane and that plane are actually connected."
and so on.
PWK, Gate, Wish and all the other 9th level spells are plot devices. They're there for carte blanche explanations of how the BBEG did that. PAO borders on plot device, but still requires mercury, and smoke (the symbols of change and ephemeral) bound by gum arabic to temporarily transform one thing into another thing. There's a reason those overlooked material components are there.

Morty
2010-07-08, 04:04 PM
I can't speak for Satyr, but if I were making a project like this one, I'd try to, above all, reduce the difference between high and low levels. The way it is, the rise in power from 1st to 20th level is so immense most canon characters from myth and literature stop at low-to-mid levels. If the gap was narrowed, Conan, Hercules et consortes could be more easily portrayed as high-level characters.

Math_Mage
2010-07-08, 04:06 PM
PWK, Gate, Wish and all the other 9th level spells are plot devices. They're there for carte blanche explanations of how the BBEG did that. PAO borders on plot device, but still requires mercury, and smoke (the symbols of change and ephemeral) bound by gum arabic to temporarily transform one thing into another thing. There's a reason those overlooked material components are there.

Rewriting reality with symbolic logic represented materially still counts as rewriting reality.

The Big Dice
2010-07-08, 04:11 PM
I can't speak for Satyr, but if were I making a project like this one, I'd try to reduce the difference between high and low levels. The way it is, the rise in power from 1st to 20th level is so immense most canon characters from myth and literature stop at low-to-mid levels. If the gap was narrowed, Conan, Hercules et consortes could be more easily portrayed as high-level characters.

The biggest issue for me is the constant accumulation of hit points. As a means of tracking how many units survive a round of combat in a wargame, they're fine. As a means of tracking how much physical punishment an individual being or creature can take, they suck. Like many D&D concepts, they really do belong back in the 1970s.

They're also one of the biggest reasons there's such a massive power gap between 1st an 20th level in D&D.

And at least back in the 70s, D&D characters stopped gaining large amounts of hit points after 9th level or so. Instead, they'd get a fixed amount based on their class. Which is something I've often thought about reinstating for 3.5.

Morty
2010-07-08, 04:17 PM
The biggest issue for me is the constant accumulation of hit points. As a means of tracking how many units survive a round of combat in a wargame, they're fine. As a means of tracking how much physical punishment an individual being or creature can take, they suck. Like many D&D concepts, they really do belong back in the 1970s.

They're also one of the biggest reasons there's such a massive power gap between 1st an 20th level in D&D.

And at least back in the 70s, D&D characters stopped gaining large amounts of hit points after 9th level or so. Instead, they'd get a fixed amount based on their class. Which is something I've often thought about reinstating for 3.5.

Exactly. I don't know why I didn't mention that, since I've always thought it was one of the biggest reasons the gap is so huge. Other things high-level characters can do without magic are stuff we see in movies and books - incredible displays of swordfighting, huge leaps, wall-running et cetera. Taking 200 crossbow bolts without blinking? Not so much. HPs aren't inherently unrealistic, it's just that there's too many of them in D&D. WFRP uses hit points too and yet characters are far from invulnerable there.

Flickerdart
2010-07-08, 04:18 PM
DR 3/- is a cruel joke by 18th level. Hell, it barely does anything at level 2.

Ormagoden
2010-07-08, 04:24 PM
<snip>

Let me put it this way: I do not give even the slightest flying frag about D&D's fluff, or it's "feel", old-school, new-school or otherwise; or that of any other ruleset. D&D is not a game to me, it's a set of rules I'm going to use to play the game on the world I build. I have no loyalty to any game system other than which it commands via it's functional rule mechanics. I play Warhammer FRP because I have the questbooks, Rolemaster because despite it slower pace, it still great fun once ina while and Dungeoneer because it's a simple step up from HeroQuest for beginners. I've played AD&D, pre 3.x D&D, 4E, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, BESM (D6) and at least one version of Traveller. I've read MechWarrior, GURPs and Heavy Gear, as well as several others and they simply have mechanics that are not superior to either Rolemaster (the second-best system) or D&D 3.5. I'd much rather work from a better supported base, who larger fan-base means there are far more number-crunchers who understand modelling than some genera-specific game I might never use for more than one campaign.

HERE HERE! I'm actually rather disappointed by a large number of posters in this thread.

Satyr prefers Sword and Sorcery style gaming but also prefers rules as they are framed in D&D 3.X

Why is everyone coming down on Satyr so hard? It is a noble effort that I hope bears fruit!

Satyr
2010-07-08, 04:25 PM
General Campaign Rules

Damage Rules:
This game uses the Vitality Point (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/vitalityAndWoundPoints.htm) alternative rules from the SRD with the following exceptions:

After a fight, a character may regenerate Vitality Points lost in this specific encounter by resting for half an hour, eating a bit, taking a sip from his bottle and bandaging wounds. The regained Vitality points are equal to the result of a Constitution roll or half the Vitality Points lost in the last encounter, whatever is lower.

Wound Points are healed with the same speed as ability damage. Spells like Restoration which would otherwise heal ability damage have no effect on Wound Point Regeneration. Long Term Care (see the Heal Skill) however, does.

Healing powers or effects (like a Cure spell the Paladin's Lay on Hands ability) only affect Vitality Points, and heal one Wound Point for every 10 healed Vitality Points (always rounded down). This effect is based on the maximum number of Points the spell would heal, even if the healed character is already at full Vitality points. They have no other effect on Wound Points whatsoever.

A character cannot heal more Wound Points through magical healing than his constitution modifier per day.

Monsters and NPCs are treated exactly like PCs for this; they have a number of Vitality points equal to their HP, and Wound Points equal to their Constitution Score. Creatures without a constitution score have Wound Points equal to 10+their Number of HD.

Player Characters can increase the threat range of any weapon they use by 1 point for a –4 penalty to their attack roll. NPC can do this as well, but they usually forget about this ability.

Damage from non-combat sources, like Falling may require a fitting Saving Throw; a failed one means that the damage is Wound Point, not Vitality Point damage (and yes, this means, a character can plummet to death. Shocking, I know).

Reason: Think of Vitality as a form of combat Endurance, and general toughness, while Wound Points represent real injuries.This system is more realistic and therefore plausible, than the standard Hitpoint rules, but the overall toughness and feel remains. In addition, wounds can have a long term effect if a character is hurt (which again, feels more authentic and therefore adds to the game’s atmosphere) and having different rules for PCs and NPCs is usually a bad idea as it introduces two different rules where one should suffice.


Armor Class and Defense
This game uses the Armor as Damage Resistance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm) rules from the SRD.
As there are only very few ways to improve ones’ AC without Magic, player characters will easily become easier to hit with fewer magical items. Therefore, they gain an additional bonus to their defense as described below.
A player character (and named NPC and the like) can choose between Parry and Dodge defense. A character can switch between these two forms of defense based on the occasion, as both forms of defense have their peculiarities.

Parry Defense: A character using Parry uses his weapon or shield to block, parry and avoid incoming attacks. This grants a Defense bonus to the AC equal to half the character’s BAB. This Bonus is also added to the Touch and Flat-footed AC, but is lost when the character is paralyzed. To benefit from Parry Defense, a character needs to wield a weapon or shield he is familiar with. An animated shield, shield spell or similar effect that grants a Shield AC is not sufficient for this; the character must actively wield a real physical shield for this. Likewise, a natural weapon is not sufficient as it is usually an extraordinarily stupid idea to block an incoming sword with your fist or teeth.

Dodge Defense: Dodge Defense is based on the quick movements and evasive reflexes of a character. A character with a fast reaction time and the ability to move becomes a more elusive target. Such a character gains half his base Reflex Save bonus as a Defense Bonus to his AC, but this bonus is lost if the character is flat-footed, loses his Dex bonus to AC etc. Uncanny Dodge may help with this. The benefit of Dodge Defense applies only when the character is wearing no armor, light armor, or medium armor and not carrying a heavy load.

Reasons: As already mentioned, there are not many ways to boost defense by non-magical means which means that characters would become more and more easy to hit as they (and specifically their enemies) advance in level. Therefore this bonus. The Parry bonus is generally the better one, and again this benefits the frontline fighter, but the frontline fighter deserves to be the most awesome character anyway, and thus has earned these little privileges.


Environment and Encumbrance:
The Deprivation rules (http://darknessfalls.leaderdesslok.com/options_deprivation.htm) from Midnight / Honor and Shadow are used. Thus, environment-based Fortitude saves are a regular appearance in the life of an adventurer and characters can suffer severe punishment from being softies. The Endurance feat can be a life-saver.

Reasons: This is a real men campaign, not some kind of vacation in a nice friendly garden. Therefore, being tough and hard is what the characters are supposed to be, dammit!

Satyr
2010-07-08, 04:28 PM
(finally! constructive, concrete critic)


DR 3/- is a cruel joke by 18th level. Hell, it barely does anything at level 2.

Usually, you are right. But with the Vitality/Wound point system, where getting more than 20 "real" hitpoints is difficult, and in combination with the armor as DR rules, I think it is bit more worthwhile. But perhaps one spread out the development further and increase it, something like DR +1 every three levels.

hamishspence
2010-07-08, 04:32 PM
Likewise, a natural weapon is not sufficient as it is usually an extraordinarily stupid idea to block an incoming sword with your fist or teeth.

I like this phrase. Parrying with natural weapons (monk unarmed strikes?) might make sense in the context of an unarmed battle though.

Math_Mage
2010-07-08, 04:34 PM
The AC mechanics are appreciated.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-08, 04:35 PM
I like this phrase. Parrying with natural weapons (monk unarmed strikes?) might make sense in the context of an unarmed battle though.

For monks, maybe let them use dodge defense in melee, without having to move more than a 5' step? It really just depends on how you fluff it. They can punch into adamantine anyway, so they might as well punch a knife and break the knife.

Knaight
2010-07-08, 04:37 PM
Satyr prefers Sword and Sorcery style gaming but also prefers rules as they are framed in D&D 3.X

I got the sense he was writing this to prove a point more than because he thinks 3.X has really good rules. I've been getting a bit of a "GURPS is awesome, D&D isn't very well designed vibe from him"*. Take the parry and dodge defenses, those are very, very GURPSesque.

*OK, so this might be a small understatement. Whatever.

Milskidasith
2010-07-08, 04:40 PM
Wound point rules only serve to hurt melee classes even more; Melee uses it's HP as a daily resource, mages use their spell slots, plus being fatigued from a wound point loss hurts melee without affecting spellcasters. So does a massive buff to AC; it only really hurts ray based casters and martial characters. Also, dodge defense seems rather useless; at just about every level past third, your base reflex save is going to be lower than your BAB unless you have bad BAB and good reflex saves.

Just saying "Use SRD spells, ban the broken ones" isn't really enough to bring spellcasters down to normal levels. Rule zero is not the same as balance.

Giving out less money also doesn't help melee classes. So far, your nerfs, besides the vague "ban broken spells" all make melee classes far worse than they were previously, and do nothing to get rid of the "magic rewrites reality" problem.

EDIT: Also, the deprivation rules make it so that a normal human walking around all day in 90 degree weather in appropriate clothes, with an average survival roll, will fall unconcious most of the time, and has a significant chance to flat out die. That's... rather nuts. It gets even weirder with cold weather, where you can be knocked unconcious in a parka in weather that isn't even below freezing. And guess what? Casters are still better because of protection from elements.

Satyr
2010-07-08, 04:53 PM
Wound point rules only serve to hurt melee classes even more; Melee uses it's HP as a daily resource, mages use their spell slots, plus being fatigued from a wound point loss hurts melee without affecting spellcasters. So does a massive buff to AC; it only really hurts ray based casters and martial characters. Also, dodge defense seems rather useless; at just about every level past third, your base reflex save is going to be lower than your BAB unless you have bad BAB and good reflex saves.

Just saying "Use SRD spells, ban the broken ones" isn't really enough to bring spellcasters down to normal levels. Rule zero is not the same as balance.

No, the spells are only one part of the system; the tipping of the balance scales for casters is the difference in the gestalt options and prestige class selection. I tried to not include anything that could be interpreted as a malvolent nerf for spellcasters, because these are often interpreted as making them less fun to play. But they don't get as many options, or extra stuff.
I'm not sure if a well-built synergetic ToB//Factotum build can compete with a single class commoner, but I guess the gap is not that big anymore, especially when the lack of available magical items include spells, so that wizards and archivists are limited to 2 spells of their choice and whatever the Gamemaster grants them.

Milskidasith
2010-07-08, 04:57 PM
No, the spells are only one part of the system; the tipping of the balance scales for casters is the difference in the gestalt options and prestige class selection. I tried to not include anything that could be interpreted as a malvolent nerf for spellcasters, because these are often interpreted as making them less fun to play. But they don't get as many options, or extra stuff.
I'm not sure if a well-built synergetic ToB//Factotum build can compete with a single class commoner, but I guess the gap is not that big anymore, especially when the lack of available magical items include spells, so that wizards and archivists are limited to 2 spells of their choice and whatever the Gamemaster grants them.

I'm fairly certain that a ToB//Factotum can, in fact, beat a commoner. Anyway, your gestalt options idea isn't enough to help out; gestalt is not nearly as strong as people think it is, at least not for advancing classes. It's even better for casters than it is for noncasters, because there are plenty of low tier classes (paladin) that grant amazing chassis benefits to casters (+cha to all saves for a sorc).

Anyway, I don't see your purpose. You want Conan to be a level 20 character (because he's cool? Again, coolness /=/ power; there are cool commoners and plaid wearing pun-puns) when Conan hardly tips the scale past 7 (and that's probably giving him more power than he has in the series), yet you're advocating gestalt for everybody and bonus feats. That makes Conan even less likely to be a twentieth level character, and by removing magical items, you're merely hurting melee a lot more.

Also, scrolls are cheap as hell, so casters can still get all the spells they need with your current WBL listed.

Basically, your nerfs are scattered and your intent (make melee viable, make Conan level 20) does not seem to match up with your mechanics (Your nerfs mostly hurt melee with the caster nerf being near strictly "rule zero spells out").

PersonMan
2010-07-08, 05:00 PM
Also, scrolls are cheap as hell, so casters can still get all the spells they need with your current WBL listed.

He banned scrolls.

Milskidasith
2010-07-08, 05:03 PM
He banned scrolls.

And I quote:


The table lists different aspects for money and magical items. This latter include all stuff like scrolls, potions and other expandables.

Math_Mage
2010-07-08, 05:08 PM
Anyway, I don't see your purpose. You want Conan to be a level 20 character (because he's cool? Again, coolness /=/ power; there are cool commoners and plaid wearing pun-puns) when Conan hardly tips the scale past 7 (and that's probably giving him more power than he has in the series), yet you're advocating gestalt for everybody and bonus feats. That makes Conan even less likely to be a twentieth level character, and by removing magical items, you're merely hurting melee a lot more.

This is my main point of confusion--what about all these modifications, including a significant strengthening of the character chassis by gestalt, brings the power level down to Conan when an ordinary 15th-level Fighter is already stronger than Conan before magic items come into play? You're concocting an interesting set of houserules, but I don't see how they get you to your stated goal.

Edit:


Basically, your nerfs are scattered and your intent (make melee viable, make Conan level 20) does not seem to match up with your mechanics (Your nerfs mostly hurt melee with the caster nerf being near strictly "rule zero spells out").

I disagree with the characterization of the caster nerf as rule zero. Everything that Satyr is doing here is rule zero if that is. If Satyr develops a balanced spell list (admittedly a big "if" given the task), then it is just as much a part of his system as the gestalt rules and the AC rules.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-08, 05:17 PM
Also, scrolls are cheap as hell, so casters can still get all the spells they need with your current WBL listed.

Basically, your nerfs are scattered and your intent (make melee viable, make Conan level 20) does not seem to match up with your mechanics (Your nerfs mostly hurt melee with the caster nerf being near strictly "rule zero spells out").

The first point is easily remedied by simply not having magic item shops and/or just not letting casters buy scrolls. If magic users are rare, they might not be so bothered about making them. And to deal with PC item-crafting, you could simply move the crafting rules to a more AD&D-level, where instead of gold and XP, you actually have to find the materials with which to do it. (Monster parts are useful again! Hooray!) Little to no scrolls (perhaps only found as treasure) means that a practical, in-game wizard build (for example) is going to have to start using some of their spells slots for other things they'd normally use scrolls for. Clerics might be forced more back towards heal-bots when you can't rely on Wands of Lesser Vigour or CLW (and no Healing Belts, either).

Spell casters are not strictly the problem in and of themselves - abusive spells are. But the time you've restricted in to core spells, and taken away all the caster's most abusive toys - for example, of the top of my head, Colourspray, Wind Wall, Timestop, arguably Sleep, Holy Word (et al), Polymorph (et al), Gate, possibly Divine Power, many of the SoDs - in combination with the gestalt rules, I think that's a fairly moderate way to close the gap, actually.

If the intention is to make it might over magic, perhaps even reverse the caster/noncaster dynamic (without spell failure nerfs and such that make caster not fun to play), I think this is a good way about it.

Making casters closer to blaster-and-support only is actually a very good way of evening the balance. You might even go as far as removing metamagic altogether, as well.

Math_Mage
2010-07-08, 05:22 PM
Spell casters are not strictly the problem in and of themselves - abusive spells are. But the time you've restricted in to core spells, and taken away all the caster's most abusive toys - for example, of the top of my head, Colourspray, Wind Wall, Timestop, arguably Sleep, Holy Word (et al), Polymorph (et al), Gate, possibly Divine Power, many of the SoDs - in combination with the gestalt rules, I think that's a fairly moderate way to close the gap, actually.

I would allow most noncore spells too. There's less noncore broken material than core broken material, so skip Celerity and a couple other things and everyone's happy. Particularly paladins and rangers, who get quite a bit of love from e.g. Spell Compendium.

Milskidasith
2010-07-08, 05:27 PM
The first point is easily remedied by simply not having magic item shops and/or just not letting casters buy scrolls. If magic users are rare, they might not be so bothered about making them. And to deal with PC item-crafting, you could simply move the crafting rules to a more AD&D-level, where instead of gold and XP, you actually have to find the materials with which to do it. (Monster parts are useful again! Hooray!) Little to no scrolls (perhaps only found as treasure) means that a practical, in-game wizard build (for example) is going to have to start using some of their spells slots for other things they'd normally use scrolls for. Clerics might be forced more back towards heal-bots when you can't rely on Wands of Lesser Vigour or CLW (and no Healing Belts, either).

Spell casters are not strictly the problem in and of themselves - abusive spells are. But the time you've restricted in to core spells, and taken away all the caster's most abusive toys - for example, of the top of my head, Colourspray, Wind Wall, Timestop, arguably Sleep, Holy Word (et al), Polymorph (et al), Gate, possibly Divine Power, many of the SoDs - in combination with the gestalt rules, I think that's a fairly moderate way to close the gap, actually.

If the intention is to make it might over magic, perhaps even reverse the caster/noncaster dynamic (without spell failure nerfs and such that make caster not fun to play), I think this is a good way about it.

Making casters closer to blaster-and-support only is actually a very good way of evening the balance. You might even go as far as removing metamagic altogether, as well.

Blaster casters without metamagic are fairly suboptimal even compared to melee unless you allow double threat spells like Melf's Unicorn Arrow (sort of weak, but gets the real feel of magic for swords and sorcery; knocks the warrior back and deals moderate damage) or wings of flurry. If all casters can do is damage, and you remove their protective spells, then melee's doing exactly what casters do, but better.

Anyway, getting rid of scrolls would work, but, again, the way it's statted out currently, that isn't the case. Also, until he *does* nerf the spells, saying "DM removes the broken spells" is balancing through rule zero.

PersonMan
2010-07-08, 05:29 PM
Magical items which are just there for lazy people - especially wands, and the like, are banned by default.

Sorry, I thought he said scrolls. But still, I think that 'items which are just there for lazy people' probably includes scrolls, which is also (probably) described by 'wands, and the like'.

EDIT: Ooops. Oh, well, fixed.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-08, 05:31 PM
I would allow most noncore spells too. There's less noncore broken material than core broken material, so skip Celerity and a couple other things and everyone's happy. Particularly paladins and rangers, who get quite a bit of love from e.g. Spell Compendium.

Oh, I agree, if it was me, personally, I'd simply go through my entire compiled spell lists and delete the ones I didn't want. (Like I did for my own campaign world.) I only said "core-only" because Satyr had already said so.



(Yes, I did actually spend the hours typing up all of the spell descriptions and page references for all the spells from SpC, the Completes, Draconomicon, Libris Mortis, Relics & Rituals (I bought the damn thing, damned if I don't use it...), Sea Farer's Handbook (ditto), XPH, Planar Handbook, Manual of the Planes, Magic of Faerun (ditto, even if we don't play on Faerun for choice); my mate had done the Core. And yes, it took Bloody. Ages. And then I did the feats as well. And I've still not gotten around to doing the PsyWar's or some of the Complete caster's lists. But, by gum, it ain't half-been worth the effort, as now a caster PC can just look at one list, not pile through umpteen books... )


Blaster casters without metamagic are fairly suboptimal even compared to melee unless you allow double threat spells like Melf's Unicorn Arrow (sort of weak, but gets the real feel of magic for swords and sorcery; knocks the warrior back and deals moderate damage) or wings of flurry. If all casters can do is damage, and you remove their protective spells, then melee's doing exactly what casters do, but better.

Anyway, getting rid of scrolls would work, but, again, the way it's statted out currently, that isn't the case. Also, until he *does* nerf the spells, saying "DM removes the broken spells" is balancing through rule zero.

And this is a problem for this type of game how? Great, if you can get casters BELOW the noncaster power curve, that's kinda what Satyr wants, isn't it?

But you don't need to remove all the protective spells. Stoneskin, probably, Wind Wall abso-fracking-loutely. Hell, I ban that in my NORMAL games, never mind about a low magic one. Level up or remove Protection from Arrows, and suddenly, wizards are frightened of archers again.

Mage Armour and Shield, though, are hardly abusive.

SoDs are not the end-all and be all of the caster, and you culd take them out (mostly) and still leave the casters with plenty to do (at low level stuff like Web, Grease, Enlarge Person; none of them abusive and contrubute diffently to Magic Missile.)

Milskidasith
2010-07-08, 05:31 PM
Sorry, I thought he said scrolls. But still, I think that 'items which are just there for lazy people' probably includes scrolls, which is also (probably) described by 'scrolls, and the like'.

OK, so there's some contradiction here. It's no more strange than making a level 20 character model Conan by lowering his wealth and gestalting him.

Zovc
2010-07-08, 05:40 PM
Available Classes:
These houserules refer mostly to two types of classes: The martial Adepts from Tome of Battle, and diverse Factotum class variations.
Having both psionics and magic in the same game is pretty redundant, so we only need one of these two systems. While the psionic rules are more sensible, useful and fun, the usual Vancian Magic is pretty the default set-up and thus these are in use.
Basically all non-psionic classes are valid choices, except the

Reasons: Psionic Classes are not valid, because there is already a magic system, that doesn’t necessarily need to be duplicated. The Truenamer just plain sucks. And planning a campaign which emphasizes the personal power of characters over item dependability doesn’t cope well with an Artificer who can introduce practically every magical item.

I'm sorry, but your logic here makes me "lol" so hard.

"Magic items are too abundant! Conan isn't epic enough! This game needs to be fixed!"

"Oh, 'Psionic classes are more sensible, useful, and fun', but let's stick with [the ever-so-broken] magic!"

You're trying to 'doctor up' the system to your tastes, but you don't want to use the more 'sensible, useful, and fun' alternative to magic? Almost the entire Expanded Psionics Handbook is available to everyone freely!

Oslecamo
2010-07-08, 05:44 PM
Anyway, I don't see your purpose. You want Conan to be a level 20 character (because he's cool? Again, coolness /=/ power; there are cool commoners and plaid wearing pun-puns)

Allow me to point you to this phrase from the OP:



Reasons: This is a real men campaign, not some kind of vacation in a nice friendly garden. Therefore, being tough and hard is what the characters are supposed to be, dammit!

So, yeah, the tougher you are, the more "real men" you are, whatever Satyr means by that.

What I find most amusing it's that he states in the first post he wants to get away from "four color comic", but honestly, the more he reveals of his work, the closer it looks to exactly that.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-08, 05:45 PM
"Oh, 'Psionic classes are more sensible, useful, and fun', but let's stick with [the ever-so-broken] magic!"

You're trying to 'doctor up' the system to your tastes, but you don't want to use the more 'sensible, useful, and fun' alternative to magic? Almost the entire Expanded Psionics Handbook is available to everyone freely!

Yeah, Satyr, I missed that earlier. He does have a point. It'd be much easier to refluff psionics, which doesn't have nearly so many potential abuses; especially if you personally think it's better than Vancian (which I've never liked personally). I mean, I can understand no psionics if you don't like 'em, but saying that you think they are better and not using them does seem kinda...strange. You don't even have to ditch the caster classes, just replace their spell progression with Psion (etc) power points and powers gained.

Knaight
2010-07-08, 05:59 PM
Except for the minor fact that the entire point of this homebrew is to take standard issue D&D and bend it to sword and sorcery. While some of us (myself included) feel that there are other ways to do that (e6), psionics would be detrimental, as they fall outside the design goal.

Oslecamo
2010-07-08, 06:04 PM
Except for the minor fact that the entire point of this homebrew is to take standard issue D&D and bend it to sword and sorcery. While some of us (myself included) feel that there are other ways to do that (e6), psionics would be detrimental, as they fall outside the design goal.

On the contrary, this homebrew is aiming at bending D&D into Muscle and TESTOTERONE!, and keeps pointing to third party materials besides the OP's own homebrew while mentioning pretty much every official splatbook, so there's no really reason he can't point to psionics wich are easily available in the srd.

Coplantor
2010-07-08, 06:13 PM
Armor Class and Defense
This game uses the Armor as Damage Resistance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm) rules from the SRD.
As there are only very few ways to improve ones’ AC without Magic, player characters will easily become easier to hit with fewer magical items. Therefore, they gain an additional bonus to their defense as described below.
A player character (and named NPC and the like) can choose between Parry and Dodge defense. A character can switch between these two forms of defense based on the occasion, as both forms of defense have their peculiarities.

Parry Defense: A character using Parry uses his weapon or shield to block, parry and avoid incoming attacks. This grants a Defense bonus to the AC equal to half the character’s BAB. This Bonus is also added to the Touch and Flat-footed AC, but is lost when the character is paralyzed. To benefit from Parry Defense, a character needs to wield a weapon or shield he is familiar with. An animated shield, shield spell or similar effect that grants a Shield AC is not sufficient for this; the character must actively wield a real physical shield for this. Likewise, a natural weapon is not sufficient as it is usually an extraordinarily stupid idea to block an incoming sword with your fist or teeth.

Dodge Defense: Dodge Defense is based on the quick movements and evasive reflexes of a character. A character with a fast reaction time and the ability to move becomes a more elusive target. Such a character gains half his base Reflex Save bonus as a Defense Bonus to his AC, but this bonus is lost if the character is flat-footed, loses his Dex bonus to AC etc. Uncanny Dodge may help with this. The benefit of Dodge Defense applies only when the character is wearing no armor, light armor, or medium armor and not carrying a heavy load.

Reasons: As already mentioned, there are not many ways to boost defense by non-magical means which means that characters would become more and more easy to hit as they (and specifically their enemies) advance in level. Therefore this bonus. The Parry bonus is generally the better one, and again this benefits the frontline fighter, but the frontline fighter deserves to be the most awesome character anyway, and thus has earned these little privileges.



I think I can recognize a GURPS player when I see it. Also, you have to choose between parry and dodge right?

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-08, 06:19 PM
I think I can recognize a GURPS player when I see it. Also, you have to choose between parry and dodge right?

Not necessarily... After all, there are only so many ways to do it. I once abortively attempted to write my own system, completely from first principles. I had a parry and a dodge mechanic and a DR-like mechanic. And this was long before I borrowed GURPs to read. (Actually, when I did - for the purpose of seeing how they'd done things - I was amused to see that GURPs and I had been thinking along similar lines about modelling reality, if not in mechanical resolution.)

Besides, there's nothing like cherry-picking the best bits of rules and retro-fitting them into something else. I don't play Pathfinder, but that hasn't stopped me nicking their better ideas as fitting 'em into my own game. Heck, even 4E has had one or two ideas which have been astonishingly useful when back-fitted to 3.5!

Aroka
2010-07-08, 06:23 PM
I think I can recognize a GURPS player when I see it. Also, you have to choose between parry and dodge right?

Conan d20 (which already does everything Satyr wants to do) uses Parry and Dodge defence, and you use the higher one (except against missiles; Dodge only).

Conan d20 is completely awesome. (And Conan is 20th level, obviously. Just he amount of punishment he takes in any longer story shows that. Barbarian 15/soldier 1/thief 1/pirate 2/noble 1.)

Coplantor
2010-07-08, 06:25 PM
Besides, there's nothing like cherry-picking the best bits of rules and retro-fitting them into something else. I don't play Pathfinder, but that hasn't stopped me nicking their better ideas as fitting 'em into my own game. Heck, even 4E has had one or two ideas which have been astonishingly useful when back-fitted to 3.5!

Yeah, I love this too, but there´s so much stuff I like I just dont know where to start!

Dusk Eclipse
2010-07-08, 06:52 PM
http://www.ugurcanyuce.net/images/fantasy/large/web5_009.jpg
Real Men don't need stupid shirts.


I actually feel a little offended because of this image.

The background is clearly an aztec (or at least mezoamerican) temple and yet the warriors I see there, are classcal* despictions of vikings.



*In the sense that most media portrays them.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-08, 07:19 PM
Mayincatechnorse.

Axolotl
2010-07-08, 07:31 PM
I actually feel a little offended because of this image.

The background is clearly an aztec (or at least mezoamerican) temple and yet the warriors I see there, are classcal* despictions of vikings.



*In the sense that most media portrays them.And? Isn't DnD all about visiting far away lands and strange cultures? And looting their temples.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-07-08, 07:41 PM
And? Isn't DnD all about visiting far away lands and strange cultures? And looting their temples.
:smalleek: Never thought about the image that way..... still, it bugs me for some reason:smallannoyed:

Blackfang108
2010-07-08, 07:57 PM
Conan is just some idiot with muscles.

A man named Robert E Howard once wrote a book 925 pages long refuting this statement.

It's called The Complete Chronicles of Conan. This is the original Conan. I suggest you read it one day. It is definitely worth it, just to learn that the perception of Conan as an idiot couldn't be more wrong.

Aroka
2010-07-08, 07:58 PM
A man named Robert E Howard once wrote a book 925 pages long refuting this statement.

It's called The Complete Chronicles of Conan. This is the original Conan. I suggest you read it one day. It is definitely worth it, just to learn that the perception of Conan as an idiot couldn't be more wrong.

Seriously. He may have decapitated the King of Aquilonia personally, but he didn't get to do that because he had big muscles. He got to do it because he had big brains and giant charisma.

Coplantor
2010-07-08, 08:06 PM
Seriously. He may have decapitated the King of Aquilonia personally, but he didn't get to do that because he had big muscles. He got to do it because he had big brains and giant charisma.

I think people remembers Conan from the saturday morning cartoons. Or since he is TEH UBER barbarian, he must be an idiot, right? :smalltongue:

Crow
2010-07-08, 08:07 PM
Satyr, I thought this would be a good place to post my slightly-expanded weapons grades. Maybe you can make use of them.

Weapons:
Inferior : -1 to hit and -1 damage
Normal : (normal)
Fine : +1 to hit
Superior : +1 to hit and +1 to damage
Masterwork : +2 to hit and +1 to damage

Optional rule for Inferior weapons : Breaks on an attack roll of "1". So a 5% chance.

Optional rule for all weapons : If a blade is commissioned as a custom piece (rather than picked up from a treasure hoard or something), it gets an additional +1 to hit (on top of all other bonuses). This is because the piece can be specifically sized and balanced for the intended wielder. This bonus only applies to the intended wielder, but can apply to another person if they are of close to the same height/build as the original owner.

The damage bonuses are small because it is hard to make a weapon actually do more damage (that is up to the wielder). It is possible however to make a weapon easier to use, which is why the highest grade gets the +2 to hit.

Crafting modifiers (add to base DC for weapon):

Inferior : -3
Normal : +0
Fine : +4
Superior : +8
Masterwork : +12

Costs:

Inferior : -50%
Normal : (normal)
Fine : +300gp
Superior : +1000gp
Masterwork : +2000gp


Armor:
Inferior : -1 AC
Normal : (normal)
Fine : -1 armor check penalty
Superior : +1 AC and -1 armor check penalty
Masterwork : +2 AC and -1 armor check penalty

Optional rule for all armor : If a suit of armor is commissioned as a custom piece (rather than picked up from a treasure hoard or something), it gets an additional -1 armor check penalty (on top of all other bonuses). This bonus only applies to the intended wearer, but can apply to another person if they are of close to the same height/build as the original owner.

Crafting modifiers (add to base DC for armor):

Inferior : -3
Normal : +0
Fine : +4
Superior : +8
Masterwork : +12

Costs:

Inferior : -50%
Normal : (normal)
Fine : +150gp
Superior : +1000gp
Masterwork : +2000gp


In actual games, it works pretty darn well. The only downside that my players brought up was the very long crafting times for some items (of course the same could be said for any item made from adamantine or such.



...and yes, calling Conan just an idiot with big muscles is quite shallow and uninformed. =)

Icewraith
2010-07-08, 09:14 PM
Satyr, have you considered expanding skill points available to non-skillmonkey classes? Gestalting rogue or scout or factotum works well, but an archery cleric/fighter still doesn't have enough skill points to spot things within range of his bow. Granted the dice mechanics might reflect an extra 4 intelligence compared to 32 point buy anyways, I'll have to pack up my laptop in a few minutes and don't have the inclination to calculate the average results of 6d6 drop 2 reroll 1&2. I'm guessing lots of sixteens.

Yes this will technically boost the power levels of clerics and the like, but I've always thought base 2 skill points was too few for any class save perhaps the wizard. Keeping the current list of class skills will still tip things in favor of sneaky types, just make it viable to put points in cross-class.

With regards to archery it needs some way to be more effective at ranges greater than 30 feet. Granted, I'm not sure about how vp/wp works, but you could have arrows that strike their target always wound? Seems a bit too strong when written like that. If the idea is to have characters not relying on magic so much a viable method of dealing with flying opponents is necessary.

Finally, you've mentioned two flaws available for more feats but the one thing I really like from 4.0 is the one feat every two class levels for all classes bit. With all the material available for 3.5 it results in 11 feats instead of 7 and at closer intervals. This is especially strong for melee types who have interesting but lesser-powered combat style feat chains now available to them without taking up half their level progression.

Yes, casters get more metamagic feats now but with a hard cap on spells per day, fewer pearls of power they will have to apply them more judiciously. The problem with casters is that at some point you need to still make them worthwhile, and not in a "I need to play a cleric not cause I want to but we will die without one" sort of way. Nobody wants to end up playing someone who is the lowest damage in the party but is the one ferrying the party with spells all over the place- you're not a PC, you've then become Zelda's boat from Windwaker. Yes you have an interesting backstory and many key abilities that progress the story but at the end of the day you're still a damn boat.

The intitial gestalt rules in the first post run along the lines of similar rules my group has implemented, if you apply them to the opponents they result in much more effective melee enemies (who incidentally have beter saves, so they're not as likely to all blow the roll against glitterdust). The "4 is the new level one" also gets rid of waves of boring 1st level orcs, now an orc raiding party has barb4/rogue4s backed up by a barb/cleric and maybe a bard/barb, giving the whole raiding party even more damage. That can turn into a much more significant challenge for group of level eights than a mob of 1s is for a bunch of level 5 PCs, for example.

Zovc
2010-07-08, 11:37 PM
Except for the minor fact that the entire point of this homebrew is to take standard issue D&D and bend it to sword and sorcery. While some of us (myself included) feel that there are other ways to do that (e6), psionics would be detrimental, as they fall outside the design goal.

...and yet Tome of Battle finds mention (and acceptance).

Knaight
2010-07-08, 11:45 PM
Somehow, I get the feeling that it falls under "melee is so borked there is no other possible way to deal with it."

Gametime
2010-07-09, 12:06 AM
...and yet Tome of Battle finds mention (and acceptance).

The reasoning given for excluding psionics was that it effectively provides a duplicate magic system, and that's true. Many spells are the same, the level delineation is the same, there's even a variant for Vancian casting that basically turns it into psionics. Satyr feels that having two extremely similar magic systems is detrimental to the feel of the setting, and so eliminated the less ubiquitous one because he's trying to reach the broadest market possible.

Tome of Battle, on the other hand, isn't effectively replicated by any other options given to melee.

Satyr
2010-07-09, 01:49 AM
Yeah, Satyr, I missed that earlier. He does have a point. It'd be much easier to refluff psionics, which doesn't have nearly so many potential abuses; especially if you personally think it's better than Vancian (which I've never liked personally). I mean, I can understand no psionics if you don't like 'em, but saying that you think they are better and not using them does seem kinda...strange. You don't even have to ditch the caster classes, just replace their spell progression with Psion (etc) power points and powers gained.

While I personally think that the psionic rules are somewhat more sensible, the Vancian magic is a very large and significant part which at least partially defines the system; usually, people are more familiar with it, and ii is the standard assumption of how the game works.
Sure, replacing all spellcasting with psionics would probably work, especially if you change the nomenclature correspondingly. But there are relevant areas of magic which are not suficiently covered by the existing rules - necromancy for example (which I think is necessary for dramaturgic reasons).
I have an almost exact copy of the rule suggestions where Vancian magic is banned and psionics are assumed as the only form of "magic"; as I mentioned, this is not completely without problems on its own, because often plot-relevant stuff will fall flat in this context, and the "alternative super powers" such as Invocations or Incarnum Magic seem to assume Vancian magic as a screen of references. However, which system you chose is, at least for me, pretty much a question of taste.

The problem is redundancy. The systems are so similar, you really don't need two where one is completely sufficient. That just add clutter and make the game a little bit more unclear and unintuitive (that's true for every subsystem) but does not add that much to the game after all. So, I think that the net gain of adding psionics is not sufficient, thanks to redundancy.

The Tome of Battle stuff however is not as redundant, and personally, I highly enjoy it. I think that a Warblade is a lot more fun to play than a fighter, and a more significant difference than between playing a Cleric and an Ardent.



On the contrary, this homebrew is aiming at bending D&D into Muscle and TESTOTERONE!, and keeps pointing to third party materials besides the OP's own homebrew while mentioning pretty much every official splatbook, so there's no really reason he can't point to psionics wich are easily available in the srd.

While it is absurdly amusing to read how people try to second guess the intent of these suggestions, it's actually simple: Having fun playing D&D (and not any other system, I know there are many awesome ones out there, and about 25 or so in my own library), while trying to (re-)capture a certain feeling of adventorous fantasy literature like the Lord of the Rings, Conan, or Moorcock's Eternal Champion; where the heroes are larger than life (as in: Tome of Battle), men are real men, women are real women and eldritch abominations are real eldritch abominations.
But the real reason is simply procrastination. I really should work on my stupid thesis about the development of vampire movies, but there is a limit of how many dracula movies you can watch before they get boring and annoying, so I do something light and fun as writing something like this, to get my head free to deal with the comparison between Edward and Louis de Pointe du Lac.


Satyr, I thought this would be a good place to post my slightly-expanded weapons grades. Maybe you can make use of them.

This is so borrowed. I had some ideas about item creation, but luckily, they should work just fine in combination with this.

Zen Master
2010-07-09, 01:54 AM
I would argue that the foundation of the wizards > fighters problem is that magic is rewriting reality, and fighting is hitting people with sticks. It isn't the spell effects that are broken so much as the whole concept of magic.

You can fix this by adding pseudo-magical (or actual magical) effects to fighting, a la ToB, Exalted, or 4e. Alternatively you can add drawbacks or limitations to magic so that reality-altering power isn't all that great - see Call of Cthulhu, Unknown Armies, 7th Sea, or Dragon Age for attempts at this with varying levels of success. Or you can abandon all hope of balance and make everyone play mages, like in Ars Magica.

But so long as you imagine magic to be rewriting reality and fighting to be wholly 'within reality' you're going to keep running into this problem.

Hm ... while I get your point, I disagree.

In many of the books I've read - among them some Conan books and what not - heroes defeat magic by force of arms, or force of will.

While lesser men readily succumb to mind control or some such - Conan will shrug off such effects, and kill the caster.

Basically, what heroes need more than anything is way better saves - and the ban of all spells that cannot be resisted (well - except by having more hitpoints than the spell in question removes).

Math_Mage
2010-07-09, 02:21 AM
Hm ... while I get your point, I disagree.

In many of the books I've read - among them some Conan books and what not - heroes defeat magic by force of arms, or force of will.

While lesser men readily succumb to mind control or some such - Conan will shrug off such effects, and kill the caster.

Basically, what mundane heroes need more than anything is way better saves - and the ban of all spells that cannot be resisted (well - except by having more hitpoints than the spell in question removes).

Problem: Conan actually hits the caster's mirror image/greater, or blink, or ghostform. Unless we're planning on removing the caster's defensive spells while we're busy nerfing his offense into oblivion? I mean, it's easy to make a caster useless that way. Balance is a bit trickier.

Bharg
2010-07-09, 03:42 AM
Is it convenient to use the D&D spell casting to capture the feel of the literature you are aiming at? Wouldn't it be necessary to greatly limit the variety of spells and also to increase the casting time of the most spells?

Also casters should be extremely rare and more like charlatans at low levels only capable of using really minor kinds of unstable magic that becomes stronger, more reliable and quicker, but at least being able to defend themselves by wielding a staff or sword.
The only kind of spells I remember from those books are like simple magic or elemental blasts, continuous rays, shields, summons, bans, teleports, hold person like stuff (classic), all kinds of telekenesis, maybe elemental control, mirror images and projecting yourself as an quasi real image to another location able to see, hear, talk and even cast spells... That kind of things. And illusions!

potatocubed
2010-07-09, 04:40 AM
Problem: Conan actually hits the caster's mirror image/greater, or blink, or ghostform. Unless we're planning on removing the caster's defensive spells while we're busy nerfing his offense into oblivion? I mean, it's easy to make a caster useless that way. Balance is a bit trickier.

Actually, in the Conan stories mages really are glass cannons - there is no magic at all that can protect you from three feet of steel, and it's part of the mythos that there are no problems that cannot be overcome by the use of violence.

Although Tsotha-lanti does survive being beheaded.

Demons are often more troublesome, since some of them are untouchable by normal weapons.

@Acromos, while I can see your point, I disagree. :smalltongue: In books I have read, magic is generally not powerful enough to be the 'win button' that it is in D&D. In books where it is a win button non-magical characters often acquire plot-based spell resistance, which kind of annoys me.

I remember reading one series of FR novels where the main character had literal plot-based spell resistance. They were pretty good, though.

...now I want to write a D&D novel about the adventures of a high-level wizard that accurately reflect the realities of playing a high-level wizard. :smalltongue:

Math_Mage
2010-07-09, 04:56 AM
Actually, in the Conan stories mages really are glass cannons - there is no magic at all that can protect you from three feet of steel, and it's part of the mythos that there are no problems that cannot be overcome by the use of violence.

Although Tsotha-lanti does survive being beheaded.

Demons are often more troublesome, since some of them are untouchable by normal weapons.

I haven't read the Conan stories, so thank you for that insight. But I was commenting on Acromos' attitude that the way to 'fix' things is to vastly improve saves, thereby making Save-or-X useless, and then remove things that don't require a save, whose only barrier to killing you is your hit point total--i.e., blasty spells. The idea that the way to balance casting is to make it useless, or remove the useful, irks me. And then there's the inconsistency you mention with the Conan stories, since nothing has been done about the mage's defenses (unless the same blunt hammer is applied to them as well). So you end up with a mage that is just as game-breaking as ever in some respects, and utterly useless in others--which isn't more fun for anyone.

If you want to balance spellcasting, you have to take the roles that it fulfills--defense, blasting, buff, debuff, BC, Save-or-X--and balance it in each of those roles. You can't let it keep breaking some roles and completely remove it from others--that doesn't help balance at all.

Escheton
2010-07-09, 05:17 AM
step 1: Replace wizard with magewright.
step 2: Replace cleric with shaman.
step3: ??????
step4: profit

FatR
2010-07-09, 05:28 AM
It is a question of scales and references, not absolutes. I don't think that Conan deserves to be reduced to a low level character.
But he totally does. Because he cannot break into the realm of ouright superhuman stuff and therefore he's objectively weak compared to characters who can. Even relatively low-grade superhumans, who mostly rely on the same things as Conan (i.e., swordination), like Benedict of Amber or Gandalf, will make a mincemeat out of him. In direct confrontation, it won't even be a contest. Fantasy powerhouses like Rand al'Thor will cut Conan right in half without even trying. That's before even tapping into any other possible sources of inspiration for a fantasy RPG, like mythology, comics, videogames and anime (to avoid making Conan feeling way too small in the pants).



Frankly, I also don't think that player characters deserce to be more awesome than that. Perhaps similarly awesome if they are really, really good and put really, really mucgh effort in it - but as an automatism? Hell no.
Conan is a low-tier character from a low-power world, however you spin pretentious words. The assumption that he should be the upper plank for power in a game that's supposed to reflect tropes of fantasy genre in general, rather than a few books you like, is absolutely ridiculous.

Also: stop pretending that you're making Real Man's DnD when you aren't at all subtle that you're making Railroading GM's DnD.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-09, 05:32 AM
While I personally think that the psionic rules are somewhat more sensible, the Vancian magic is a very large and significant part which at least partially defines the system; usually, people are more familiar with it, and ii is the standard assumption of how the game works.
Sure, replacing all spellcasting with psionics would probably work, especially if you change the nomenclature correspondingly. But there are relevant areas of magic which are not suficiently covered by the existing rules - necromancy for example (which I think is necessary for dramaturgic reasons).
I have an almost exact copy of the rule suggestions where Vancian magic is banned and psionics are assumed as the only form of "magic"; as I mentioned, this is not completely without problems on its own, because often plot-relevant stuff will fall flat in this context, and the "alternative super powers" such as Invocations or Incarnum Magic seem to assume Vancian magic as a screen of references. However, which system you chose is, at least for me, pretty much a question of taste.

Fair enough (though as half of psioniuc powers are "psionic X" or "X, psionic" you could easily extend that. (Also, I feel I should take this opportunity to mention that I REALLY HATE the fact XPH is not consistent in labelling those two, because it's choffing annoying to have to search the book twice and THEN be referred to the PHB. Grrrr!)


If you want to balance spellcasting, you have to take the roles that it fulfills--defense, blasting, buff, debuff, BC, Save-or-X--and balance it in each of those roles. You can't let it keep breaking some roles and completely remove it from others--that doesn't help balance at all.

Actually, I don't think that's true. Part of Tier 1s trouble is it's flexibility. Taking away Batman Wizards is EXACTLY what you should be doing in this sort of game. Removing all of the wizard's auto-negation defences e.g. Wind Wall, leaving only retardance/mititation based defenses, e.g. Mage Armour is a good step.

(Actually, in my opinion, mages SHOULD be glass cannons in any genera, period. Part of their balance is that when a mage shows up, every fracker on the battle field above animal intelligence will target them FIRST... (And in my games, proper encounter will include spellcaster support, and from level 5 onwards that will include Dispel Magic on every enemy caster capable of loading it!) That is how I personally handle the "overpowered casters" issue, since anything the PCs could do, the NPCs will have done first, better, and in more numbers!)

Dropping casters to a more limited role in blasting, buff, debuff, some not-so-SoD battlefield control (e.g. Web, Grease, Black Tentacles on the borderline) and said defenses with maybe a handful of save-or-X at higher levels still gives them MORE than enough to be not useless. I agree, though, making anything with a save not work at all is the wrong way about it. Debuffs (like Slow or Bane and so on) are not really the big offenders. Removing Save-or-die and the worst of the save-or-be-unable-to-do-anything is the better option. (Or simply push those spells up a few levels.)

potatocubed
2010-07-09, 05:38 AM
I haven't read the Conan stories, so thank you for that insight. But I was commenting on Acromos' attitude that the way to 'fix' things is to vastly improve saves, thereby making Save-or-X useless, and then remove things that don't require a save, whose only barrier to killing you is your hit point total--i.e., blasty spells.

Well, I'm not going to comment on balance since it's not my strong point. I'm just going to hover round the edges of the conversation making pithy observations.

Although that said, perhaps if you left save or duck* spells as they are but let people burn hit points to mitigate or remove the effects of a failed save that might be an idea? It favours hp-heavy classes and weakens magic users at the same time.

Plus, I recommend the Robert Howard Conan stories. If you can get past the 1930s attitudes they're a great read.

* This was a typo, but I like it enough to keep it. Quack.

Zen Master
2010-07-09, 06:19 AM
thereby making Save-or-X useless

That's not actually what I said. My point was to buff saves enough that fighters can compete - in other words, that they always have a decent chance of passing the save.

But Potato is right - wizards in the Conan universe tend to die very quickly once Conan has carved his way through their minions, illusions or whatever.

Mystic Muse
2010-07-09, 06:24 AM
For one, reducing the power level by making everybody gestalt seems like an oxymoron to me. I'm aware that this has been said before but I figured it should be said again.


For another, Are you aware that healers are considered extremely weak? I don't think restricting them to Paladin, Monk, or Ranger is Necessary.


I honestly think what your looking for is E6. Or maybe Conan D20 like somebody else mentioned. With E6 it's extremely unlikely you'll ever get to the breaking point that makes people go beyond Conan and wizards are easier to rein in.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-09, 06:33 AM
I honestly think what your looking for is E6. Or maybe Conan D20 like somebody else mentioned. With E6 it's extremely unlikely you'll ever get to the breaking point that makes people go beyond Conan and wizards are easier to rein in.

I think it's pretty clear by this point that Satyr simply doesn't want to, and I fully support his decision. He's totally allowed to make that decision, you know. I wouldn't play E6 myself, and why should he spend money on something when he can homebrew for free? Plus with homebrewing, he'll exactly what he wants (which is not necessarily Conan-specific-gameplay, only Conan-sort-of-style).

What I can't understand is why on earth there is so much resistance to him doing so, save for the fact he would have been better posting this in the homebrew forum.

(Actually Satyr, you might be best served doing just that at some point, if only to collate your stuff and so you don't have to wade through the discussion to find the mechanics. Though, as many people seem to have missed the title reference (despite it being mentioned twice and linked once), you might want to call it something different.)

Mystic Muse
2010-07-09, 06:45 AM
I think it's pretty clear by this point that Satyr simply doesn't want to, and I fully support his decision. He's totally allowed to make that decision, you know. I wouldn't play E6 myself, and why should he spend money on something when he can homebrew for free? Plus with homebrewing, he'll exactly what he wants (which is not necessarily Conan-specific-gameplay, only Conan-sort-of-style). I thought E6 was under the OGL? Even if it isn't I've seen the rules before.



What I can't understand is why on earth there is so much resistance to him doing so, save for the fact he would have been better posting this in the homebrew forum.
1. Because there are other systems that do what he wants better than D&D will but he wants to go to the time and effort of "fixing" D&D. There's even a variant system that sounds like it's exactly what he's looking for but he wants to extend it to 20 levels.
2. His fixes don't seem to do what he wants them to do anyway.

potatocubed
2010-07-09, 07:04 AM
I thought E6 was under the OGL? Even if it isn't I've seen the rules before.

He means Conan, which you buy.

Although bits of that might be OGL as well - check your rulebook and see.

Mystic Muse
2010-07-09, 07:08 AM
He means Conan, which you buy.

Although bits of that might be OGL as well - check your rulebook and see.

I don't actually have Conan and I'm not sure which book to check under for E6

EDIT: you have 94,000 gold at level 20? That's hardly going to do anything. That's not even enough for a +5 armor and a +5 sword let alone the masses of other magic items most melee characters will have at that point.

Or, the character can just be a tier 1 class and just plain not care.

lesser_minion
2010-07-09, 07:27 AM
E6 is homebrew. You won't find it in any of the official 3rd edition books.

Myatar_Panwar
2010-07-09, 07:27 AM
1. Because there are other systems that do what he wants better than D&D will but he wants to go to the time and effort of "fixing" D&D. There's even a variant system that sounds like it's exactly what he's looking for but he wants to extend it to 20 levels.
2. His fixes don't seem to do what he wants them to do anyway.

If the OP wants to change around D&D 3.5 into something that resembles another system, it really isn't your place to give him advice on other systems when he is clearly happy doing what he is doing! My friends and I used to play our own versions of chess when we were younger, and my mother used to tell me "you can't just change games, they have rules and you must follow them."

It is literally the most ridiculous thing in the world that people would think this acceptable.

Mystic Muse
2010-07-09, 07:30 AM
If the OP wants to change around D&D 3.5 into something that resembles another system, it really isn't your place to give him advice on other systems when he is clearly happy doing what he is doing!

I'm just suggesting that maybe a few other systems will accomplish what he's trying to do because, as far as I can see, his fix isn't doing what he wants it to do and learning a new system will most likely require less effort.

Maybe it'll work different in practice but right now, it looks like he's doing the opposite of what he's trying to do.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-09, 07:30 AM
I'm afraid, Jill, it is quite obvious that we will never see eye-to-eye on this.

Rolemaster has the most "realism" (sic) I've seen in any RPG, and that is a level based-system.
Then you need to acquaint yourself with TroS or Burning Wheel. Those are realistic systems (or at least as close to it as you can reasonably get in an RPG.)

Levels pretty clearly have nothing to do with realism. No amount of killing orcs will make you better at cookery. No amount of mathematical expertise is going to make you physically tougher. Simple fact.

Personally, I find 4E did nothing better than 3.5 does do except balance between the characters, and that to the point of homogenity.
Yes. That is what balance *is*. Everyone being equally powerful, without the easily-exploitable break points that certain 3E adherents apparently find so 'flavourful'.

You go on extensively to praise 3E without making any specific points about why, exactly, it is better than 'inferior' systems at all, or why these so-called "interesting" features outside E6 would be suited to a sword-and-sorcery genre game.

For the record, I'm not recommending E6- I'm questioning why you would need levels at all. Again, what is the benefit to this game feature to a genre of this type, when sword-and-sorcery protagonists, as a rule, start off badass and stay that way?

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-09, 07:31 AM
EDIT: you have 94,000 gold at level 20? That's hardly going to do anything. That's not even enough for a +5 armor and a +5 sword let alone the masses of other magic items most melee characters will have at that point.

Or, the character can just be a tier 1 class and just plain not care.

The point being to NOT have the magic christmas tree effect with a zillon magic items. Satyr is designing a setting that is emphatically not D&D 3.5 and WBL-reliant.

I have done something akin with my own setting, by unilaterally taking away magic items shops (so you can't buy magic items AT ALL - and crafting them require components which require an adventure in themselves to acquire) and folding the basic +to weapons, armour, saves, and some stat boosts into level advancement. Still fine tuning it, but it works.

Mystic Muse
2010-07-09, 07:33 AM
The point being to NOT have the magic christmas tree effect with a zillon magic items. Satyr is designing a setting that is emphatically not D&D 3.5 and WBL-reliant.


Maybe I explained it poorly.

At a certain level, D&D characters are assumed to have certain bonuses. His system does not give you the bonuses and you cannot afford the ones you need with the amount of wealth he gives you.

EDIT: I just think you need to go to way too much effort in order to change the entire twenty levels to something resembling Conan style games.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-09, 07:52 AM
I'm not sure whether you intend for this remark to have the negative connotation that "powergaming" so often implies. I hope not, since I'm sure you can understand how being reduced to, apparently, nothing but powergamers makes those of us who enjoy D&D feel.
I'm not saying that all D&D players are powergamers themselves, merely that they are using rules which are best suited to, and probably encourage, play of this type. If they play it in a different way, then it's by selectively ignoring the natural implications of most of the rules. Perfectly possible, just not very efficient.

There's nothing inherently wrong with powergaming, as long as the rules support it (i.e, to ensure that all participants are equally powerful and useful at corresponding stages of development. That's the sole reason for levels and classes to even exist. Everyone gets a niche, and it's relatively simple to ensure that, if everyone gets an equal share of XP, they all have access to equally valuable resources.)

At any rate, I don't think that getting gradually stronger over the course of an adventure is an abomination, or even antithetical to the telling of a good fantasy story. I'm not sure where the idea that sword and sorcery characters don't get stronger comes from; Conan shows a vaguely defined but nonetheless obvious progression of power from the earlier stories...
Perhaps, but it's unlikely that progression would be a significant factor within a single story arc for characters that are already strong. If you want to have skill-progression in the game, you don't need levels to do it- you can convert 'XP' directly into skill points (as GURPS, essentially does,) progress skills based on practice (as Runequest does,) have experience accumulate as a biproduct of adversity, provided you can justify it, (as in DitV,) or simply let players tweak their stats a bit at the end of a given campaign.

Levels are a dangerous addition because they send the wrong message: The idea that playing is all about winning and competition (which are things that levels exist to support in a healthy way.) The stories of S&S are about dramatic decisions- putting the characters in larger situations where winning doesn't exist, because there's no single well-defined goal. That's what drama is- the lack of a clear-cut right and wrong from the character's perspective when it's important.

...also, hit points? What system doesn't have some sort of numerical abstraction to represent health?
Yes, but Hit Points are a crappy system for doing it, if verisimiltude or drama is what you're aiming for. HP exist to make combat easily survivable in a way that doesn't depend on tactics or skill. You can use a wound or condition system that applies penalties to the character's actions, that may or may not be cumulative (Mouse Guard being a fair example.) Here, death is a condition of negotiations between the player and the GM over the stakes of a given conflict- there is no health guage to speak of.

Coplantor
2010-07-09, 07:54 AM
Or combine hit points with a wound system like GURPS and Cthulhutech does

Kylarra
2010-07-09, 08:09 AM
{Scrubbed}

Knaight
2010-07-09, 08:10 AM
I don't actually have Conan and I'm not sure which book to check under for E6
E6 isn't WotC material, it is a home brew that came off enworld. As for Conan, d20 conan is worthless. Sure, it has a few features that are kind of neat, but it sucks something awful at actually representing a Sword and Sorcery game. The one person I know who actually tried to use it for Sword and Sorcery heavily abandoned it for Fudge, which previously had very little Sword and Sorcery implementation, after playing D&D for almost 30 years, because it was so terrible. They also knew nothing about Fudge at the time.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-09, 08:27 AM
Yes. That is what balance *is*. Everyone being equally powerful, without the easily-exploitable break points that certain 3E adherents apparently find so 'flavourful'.

You go on extensively to praise 3E without making any specific points about why, exactly, it is better than 'inferior' systems at all, or why these so-called "interesting" features outside E6 would be suited to a sword-and-sorcery genre game.

For the record, I'm not recommending E6- I'm questioning why you would need levels at all. Again, what is the benefit to this game feature to a genre of this type, when sword-and-sorcery protagonists, as a rule, start off badass and stay that way?

Because I think that with systems without levels I tend to find you have nowhere to "go", nothing mechancially interesting to look forward to. Sure, your skills might raise a bit, but that's about it. I like levels, though. You don't seem to.

Levels-verses-no-levels is a whole other topic worthy of it's own thread, and even then in the end it boils down to whether you like levels or not. I do like levels, and no amount of effort is going to convince me otherwise. I want my games to be roughly grounded in realism as a jumping-off point for the fantasy/sci-fi, as opposed to just hand-waving-MTSKing (or, say, rule-of-cool-ing everything as 4E does). (Call that a flaw of an engineer's mind...) I also like numbers, and yes, actually, I find sometimes higher numbers ARE more fun.

To answer your question on why I like 3.5 specifically, I like D&D's character creation system, advancement, the multiclassing system (which I think was the greatest stroke of genius in all of 3.x; it was SO OBVIOUS in hindsight, we kicked ourselves for never thinking of it), the feats, the various subsystems; the fact the monsters and the characters are generated under the same system: the whole character/monster generation metagame. I like the action and initative system and the combat system. The core (as opposed to the Core) of the game. Yes, it has it's flaws, but I still find it much more fun to play, to create quests for and to run than any other system. So if I want to address the flaws as I see them, for our group's unique paradigm, then I will.

(And if I and my group to choose to reflect the numbers the game generates as being of a different standard, i.e. if I consider things more E15 than E6, that's our choice, too. It doesn't even need to change the rules, only the interpretation of them; and doesn't matter to anyone outside the group, either.)

I disagree that balance should make everyone the nearly same, which is basically what 4E does. I have no problem with certain things being stronger than others in some respects and not in others. Not everyone should be equal in combat, or outside of combat. I think 3.5's problem is that the gap is TOO large, not that there's a gap at all. 4E was just didn't feel right to me.

[Off-topic]For the record, I just didn't like 4Es take on much of anything, from the lack of mundane equipment, to the lack of real-world animals in the bestiary, too little fluff in the bestiary, too much fluff in the PCs races, the fact that the characters felt like they played far too much the same... I just don't like it much. I am quite willing to PLAY almost any game, as it means I'm not DMing it (heck, you can have hours of fun with something primative like HeroQuest). But there is a massive line between that and liking the rules. If I play 4E, I like the game, but merely tolerate the rules. Note: I don't think the 4E's rules are actually BAD, and certainly mechanically better than the average (and Solos and Minions were totally worth nicking for my 3.5 games!), but they just aim for a totally different paradigm than what I like.[/off-topic]

At the end of the day, it appears the two of us have radically different views on what's good and what's not, and almost certainly very different game paradigms. Satyr probably has a different view again. And, until I am allowed to conquer the world and crush everyone under my skeletal boot, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

(Though on that day, my opinions, shall of course become concrete fact (even and especially in the face of them being flatly contradictory to Reality) and anyone who disagrees with them will be crushed into bloody powder. Nothing personal, you understand, just comes with the Evil Lich territory...)


Maybe I explained it poorly.

At a certain level, D&D characters are assumed to have certain bonuses. His system does not give you the bonuses and you cannot afford the ones you need with the amount of wealth he gives you.

75K is enough for a +5 weapon and +5 armour. Granted, you might have to make do with flat bonuses, not special abilities, but it is doable. (And he did say it was rule of thumb. I mean, personally, I eyeball the loot in my own games, and I've only gone too much overboard when adpating AD&D games to 3.5!)

Though yes, without any level-based +s, the numbers might not be high enough. On the other hand, if he's planning to do a completely new besitary with that level of numbers in mind, it wouldn't matter as much. (Satyr might be better fielding that question himself, though.)

Mystic Muse
2010-07-09, 08:33 AM
75K is enough for a +5 weapon and +5 armour. Granted, you might have to make do with flat bonuses, not special abilities, but it is doable. (And he did say it was rule of thumb. I mean, personally, I eyeball the loot in my own games, and I've only gone too much overboard when adpating AD&D games to 3.5!)

Though yes, without any level-based +s, the numbers might not be high enough. On the other hand, if he's planning to do a completely new besitary with that level of numbers in mind, it wouldn't matter as much. (Satyr might be better fielding that question himself, though.)

:smallconfused: I thought a +5 weapon cost 50,000 and so did +5 armor? Am I missing something?

Eldan
2010-07-09, 08:35 AM
Armour costs half as much as weaponry.

Mystic Muse
2010-07-09, 08:40 AM
Armour costs half as much as weaponry.

Ah. My mistake.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-09, 08:49 AM
Ah. My mistake.

The cost is (bonus squared) x 1000 for armour and shields and (bonus squared) x 2000 for weapons. Presumably to account for the fact you add weapon bonus to two things (attack and damage) and only one to armour, i.e. AC (and also that AC is worth "less" at higher levels; though I suspect that's more accident than design...)

Aroka
2010-07-09, 08:51 AM
Hm ... while I get your point, I disagree.

In many of the books I've read - among them some Conan books and what not - heroes defeat magic by force of arms, or force of will.

While lesser men readily succumb to mind control or some such - Conan will shrug off such effects, and kill the caster.

Basically, what heroes need more than anything is way better saves - and the ban of all spells that cannot be resisted (well - except by having more hitpoints than the spell in question removes).

Well, technically, even Conan knows that only magic beats magic. Sure, he deals with one wizard (Black Colossus) by throwing a sword through him mid-spell, but in Hour of the Dragon and People of the Black Circle, it's another sorcerer and a magic belt, respectively, that level the field. But then again, in Hour of the Dragon, we're talking about an immortal lich from literally thousands of years ago reborn into the world, and in People of the Black Circle, the master of all the sorcerers of an entire subcontinent.

A different approach is necessary - like in Conan d20. Some spells are resisted, some (like your basic hypnotism) just won't affect characters past a certain level, while others take a while to cast in battle, and thus aren't a good idea if you've got no one to stand between you and the angry barbarian hero. Basically, it can't just be "my turn, boom, I won."

So yeah, the D&D approach, with your irresistible dance and your weird and so on, just isn't quite right for sword & sorcery. Wizards should be fragile but powerful, not invincible omnipotent masters of the universe. (That's a different cartoon. Hur hur.)


E6 isn't WotC material, it is a home brew that came off enworld. As for Conan, d20 conan is worthless. Sure, it has a few features that are kind of neat, but it sucks something awful at actually representing a Sword and Sorcery game. The one person I know who actually tried to use it for Sword and Sorcery heavily abandoned it for Fudge, which previously had very little Sword and Sorcery implementation, after playing D&D for almost 30 years, because it was so terrible. They also knew nothing about Fudge at the time.

What exactly is wrong with Conan d20? I've used it for, uh, Conan, which is swords & sorcery. Works wonderfully.

Oslecamo
2010-07-09, 08:53 AM
While it is absurdly amusing to read how people try to second guess the intent of these suggestions, it's actually simple: Having fun playing D&D (and not any other system, I know there are many awesome ones out there, and about 25 or so in my own library), while trying to (re-)capture a certain feeling of adventorous fantasy literature like the Lord of the Rings, Conan, or Moorcock's Eternal Champion; where the heroes are larger than life (as in: Tome of Battle), men are real men, women are real women and eldritch abominations are real eldritch abominations.


And like already pointed out by diferent people on this thread, D&D on itself can already do that. On more ways that I can count. Characters are already tough and powerfull and they're already fighting eldritch abominations and people enjoy them.

Unless by "real" you mean "overmuscled stripper" as your images so far strongly sugest, because honestly, neither Aragorn or any of his companions ran around half naked, and Conan only did so because he liked to sneak around a lot, while his companions where being butchered.

And even then, just grab Unhearted Arcana and there's the rules for characters geting an armor bonus whitout actualy wearing armor.

Zen Master
2010-07-09, 08:57 AM
Well, technically, even Conan knows that only magic beats magic. Sure, he deals with one wizard (Black Colossus) by throwing a sword through him mid-spell, but in Hour of the Dragon and People of the Black Circle, it's another sorcerer and a magic belt, respectively, that level the field. But then again, in Hour of the Dragon, we're talking about an immortal lich from literally thousands of years ago reborn into the world, and in People of the Black Circle, the master of all the sorcerers of an entire subcontinent.

I did say Conan books. Quite possibly I should have said Conan stories. I've read more albums (as in comics) than actual books. And while I don't contend what you say, I've never seen Conan use magic - or defeat a magic user by any means besides cleverness and cold, sharp steel.

Aroka
2010-07-09, 09:22 AM
Well, People of the Black Circle is, as I said, an exception; the enemy is probably the most powerful non-undead sorcerer Conan has faced, so he needs the magic belt that protects him from magic. In Hour of the Dragon, we actually see a far more interesting kind of magic - instead of defeating opponents in personal combat, sorcerers alter the course of history by affecting critical battles in subtle ways, like flooding a river to split an army. It takes another sorcerer to counter that level of manipulation.

Mind you, I've read both of those in Conan comics - pretty much all of Howard's stories (including non-Conan stories) were made into Conan comics...

Oh, and I think got Tsotha-lanti of the Scarlet Citadel confused with Thugra Khotan/Natohk (who's the villain in Black Colossus). Tsotha-lanti is defeated (IIRC) by a shapechanged sorcerer, while Natohk gets a sword hurled through him. I don't actually recall how the "lich" in Hour of the Dragon dies, but the key was finding the Heart of Ahriman that makes him immortal.

I can't actually think of sorcerers from any other Howard stories just now. I suppose Red Nails could count, although that's mostly magical items (the skull and the disintegration wand). I don't know if the trickery in Man-Eaters of Zamboula should count, since it is portrayed more as charlatanry than real magic.

It doesn't much alter the point, though - Conan is regularly able to overcome magic, often by sheer force of will, and the sorcerers aren't quite in the same paradigm as D&D magic-users.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-09, 09:34 AM
Because I think that with systems without levels I tend to find you have nowhere to "go", nothing mechancially interesting to look forward to. Sure, your skills might raise a bit, but that's about it. I like levels, though. You don't seem to.
I have no problem with levels in a specific kind of play, as I already mentioned. Outside that context, I just don't think they serve a terribly useful function.

It's not as if Gamist play is inherently dependant on levels either. You could have, for example, a system based solely on feat-chains, which would still exhibit progression over time and afford the revelation of new mechanics. It would be a little harder to balance, and increases the chance of players with overlapping proficiencies, but offers rather more flexibility.

And who's to say that ever-increasing stats are the only thing to look forward to? What about new themes? New characters? New emotional questions? To boldy go where no-one has gone before?

Levels-versus-no-levels is a whole other topic worthy of it's own thread, and even then in the end it boils down to whether you like levels or not... I do like levels, and no amount of effort is going to convince me otherwise.
Convince you that you don't like them? Obviously not. But I may be able to convince you they are not compatible with other things. It's not just a pick'n'mix.

To answer your question on why I like 3.5 specifically, I like D&D's character creation system, advancement, the multiclassing system (which I think was the greatest stroke of genius in all of 3.x; it was SO OBVIOUS in hindsight, we kicked ourselves for never thinking of it)...
Here's another design feature that might seem obvious in hindsight: don't have classes at all.

You see, what I find bizarre about your comments is that you claim to desire and appreciate and emphasise realism yet completely overlook all these rule constructs that have nothing to do with realism. What is it about being a sorceror that makes you inherently inept at learning survival skills? Answer: nothing. (Sure- your background might have presented difficulties with learning the skill beforehand, but there's no reason why you'd pick it up more slowly after creation, given the same opportunities to learn.) The allotment of class skills exists to prevent players from treading on eachothers' toes in terms of tactical and strategic specialties, but it does nothing to enhance verisimilitude. Given you don't seem to care especially about everyone being exactly equally powerful, why bother with classes at all?

Again, it's not that I consider my preferences to be better or your preferences to be worse. I suspect that you might be described as a Gamist-with-Simulationist-leanings, whereas I would be a Simulationist-with-Narrativist-leanings.

I disagree that balance should make everyone the nearly same, which is basically what 4E does. I have no problem with certain things being stronger than others in some respects and not in others. Not everyone should be equal in combat, or outside of combat...
Actually, given that the bulk of the game's rules are explicitly concerned with combat, I think it's fair to expect that everyone be equally proficient at it. It's basically the primary focus of play. Give this, I also see no reason why characters shouldn't be equally powerful outside of combat, since it allows you to somewhat vary the amount of non-combat without particular players feeling periodically useless.

Equally powerful does not imply identical. But when most of your game expressly revolves around fighting, then everyone needs to be equally good at it. 4E still allows for a great deal of specialisation within that context.

Darkxarth
2010-07-09, 09:44 AM
... men are real men, women are real women and eldritch abominations are real eldritch abominations. ...

I have nothing to contribute to the thread, unfortunately, but I do want to ask if this quote is from, or inspired by, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It sounds quite familiar, except that "eldritch abominations" is probably replaced with "Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts of Traal" in the Guide.

kjones
2010-07-09, 10:00 AM
I have nothing to contribute to the thread, unfortunately, but I do want to ask if this quote is from, or inspired by, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It sounds quite familiar, except that "eldritch abominations" is probably replaced with "Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts of Traal" in the Guide.

"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were REAL men, women were REAL women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri." - HGTTG

Darkxarth
2010-07-09, 10:14 AM
"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were REAL men, women were REAL women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri." - HGTTG

I feel guilty for not remembering, but I am glad someone was able to dig up the quote for me (my omnibus copy is at home and I am not).

Mike_G
2010-07-09, 10:26 AM
Imagine if all real-world conversations were like internet D&D conversations...

Kid #1: I'm gonna take my castle Legos® and build a sailboat out of them!

Kid #2: What!? How dare you say that sailboats are cooler than castles? That's factually incorrect!

Kid #3: Lego® brand building blocks are about imagination, not mechanics. If you can't just throw your castle in the bathtub and pretend it's a sailboat, you fail at creativity!

Kid #2: Yeah! I'm not playing Lego® wrong, you are!

Kid #4: What a waste of time. You should just buy a toy sailboat.

Kid #5: Noobs! Both castles and sailboats are suboptimal. You should build a cable-stayed suspension bridge.

Grognard: Bah. The original 1913 Erector Set was the last true edition of building toys!



Best.

Post.

Ever.

okpokalypse
2010-07-09, 10:29 AM
Real Quickly on the Vanican system of Magic... I've used a variant of it that worked well. Instead of having 4 / 4 / 3 / 2 Spells (Example) as with the Vanican System, it does the same "progression" - but converts it all to memorizable spell levels.

So the above example with have 4 (4*1) + 8 (4*2) + 9 (3*3) + 8 (2*4) = 29 Spell Levels of Memorization. It gives the PSP feel of flexibility without having to rewrite augmentation rules in for all the spells. That way a L8 Wizard has flexiblity in how he's going to do his daily spells. 3 4ths (12) & 2 3rds (6) & 5 2nds (10) & 1 1st (1) = 29.

Same thing goes for bonuses due to high ability scores. Convert "Slots" gained into a cumulative Spell Level bonus for memorization... It worked very well for me when I used it...

eepop
2010-07-09, 02:38 PM
While I often disagree with your outlook on things Satyr. I applaud what you are working towards here.

I don't know that my group would ever be in the place where what you propose here is the game we want to play, but I very much appreciate your effort in thinking out what that game would look like.

If I ever am in the market for such a game, your rules seem to be a great set up for it. Thanks.

Lans
2010-07-09, 03:31 PM
FWIW, the OP has indicated a desire to nerf casters via their spells, which would work...with tremendous amounts of work.

I don't think he's doing what you think he's doing.
Player I pray for spells and pick Gate for my 9th level spell
DM: Pelor Gives you rapid Summon Monster 8

Or
Wizard: I get second level spells now Yay!
DM Roll on the chart to see which two you g

Players- Sad


I think this was how it worked in second

Aroka
2010-07-09, 03:33 PM
I don't think he's doing what you think he's doing.
Player I pray for spells and pick Gate for my 9th level spell
DM: Pelor Gives you rapid Summon Monster 8

Or
Wizard: I get second level spells now Yay!
DM Roll on the chart to see which two you g

Players- Sad


I think this was how it worked in second

I assume you mean AD&D 2nd edition? It's a bit hard to be sure from that, but no, that was not how it worked. Not at all. Why would you make statements like that when you don't know the subject?

Gametime
2010-07-09, 03:44 PM
Then you need to acquaint yourself with TroS or Burning Wheel. Those are realistic systems (or at least as close to it as you can reasonably get in an RPG.)

Levels pretty clearly have nothing to do with realism. No amount of killing orcs will make you better at cookery. No amount of mathematical expertise is going to make you physically tougher. Simple fact.



No amount of adhering to your personal beliefs will make you a better sword fighter, and while I'm only familiar with the very basics of the systems your mentioned, I am reasonably certain that is the basis of skill acquisition in both. (Or at least Riddle.)

Both systems look like quality games, but to act as though they don't require you to suspend disbelief when it comes to how your character improves and grows is misleading, at best




Levels are a dangerous addition because they send the wrong message: The idea that playing is all about winning and competition (which are things that levels exist to support in a healthy way.) The stories of S&S are about dramatic decisions- putting the characters in larger situations where winning doesn't exist, because there's no single well-defined goal. That's what drama is- the lack of a clear-cut right and wrong from the character's perspective when it's important.

Why? Because levels represent improvement? Then you could say the same thing about any system that allows characters to get stronger. Heck, you could say the same thing about any system that allows any disparity in any statistic between characters. After all, if you can be stronger than someone else, that's the game telling you to achieve that power at all costs, right?

Frankly, I understand your distaste for levels. That makes sense to me. What I don't understand is why you insist on claiming that levels promote power gaming any more than any statistic-based game does. All levels do is quantify a measure of character power. That's it. I could call a GURPS character level 1 if he had spent less than 100 points, level 2 if he had spent 101 to 200 points, and so on, and he would be the same character. Adding the word "level" to the system's growth mechanisms doesn't detract from it in any appreciable way.



Also: stop pretending that you're making Real Man's DnD when you aren't at all subtle that you're making Railroading GM's DnD.

I'm not honestly sure why Satyr's attempt to tailor the game to his tastes is so horrifically offensive to people. But this sort of comment (and it's hardly alone) is really out of place in a thread like this. You can disagree that the type of game Satyr is aiming for is the most fun, and you can disagree that he's going about achieving that type of game in the best way, but why on earth would you feel the need to insult and belittle his playstyle?

Lans
2010-07-09, 04:14 PM
I assume you mean AD&D 2nd edition? It's a bit hard to be sure from that, but no, that was not how it worked. Not at all. Why would you make statements like that when you don't know the subject?

I recall a section on how a wizard gets its spells, and that was about how it worked. Granted its been over a decade since I've read the books so I may be misrememberiing, or remembering variant rules.
Edit- It basically boiled down to DM's fiat type of thing, kind of how Item creation worked from second.

Umael
2010-07-09, 04:31 PM
Frankly, I understand your distaste for levels. That makes sense to me. What I don't understand is why you insist on claiming that levels promote power gaming any more than any statistic-based game does. All levels do is quantify a measure of character power. That's it. I could call a GURPS character level 1 if he had spent less than 100 points, level 2 if he had spent 101 to 200 points, and so on, and he would be the same character. Adding the word "level" to the system's growth mechanisms doesn't detract from it in any appreciable way.

Umm... I agree with your statements about levels being about equal to promoting powergaming as much as statistic-based games, but... your example is terrible.

I do NOT call a GURPS character level 1 if he has 99 points, and then level 2 if he has 101 points, and I certainly would not consider two GURPS character to be the same "level" if one had 104 points and the other had 189 points.

The difference between level-based and point-based systems is that level-based represents jumps while point-based systems are more gradual in their increase of power. It's like the difference between stairs and a ramp (and if the analogy holds true, it is easier to gain height with stairs if the angle is steep, otherwise better to use a ramp).

Gametime
2010-07-09, 04:43 PM
Umm... I agree with your statements about levels being about equal to promoting powergaming as much as statistic-based games, but... your example is terrible.

I do NOT call a GURPS character level 1 if he has 99 points, and then level 2 if he has 101 points, and I certainly would not consider two GURPS character to be the same "level" if one had 104 points and the other had 189 points.

The difference between level-based and point-based systems is that level-based represents jumps while point-based systems are more gradual in their increase of power. It's like the difference between stairs and a ramp (and if the analogy holds true, it is easier to gain height with stairs if the angle is steep, otherwise better to use a ramp).

Or, in other words, the difference is the severity of the power increase. That's it. A sufficient increase in points represents the same increase in power as a level, more or less. The only significant difference comes in the form of gradation, as you point out, and (usually) greater choice.

The latter is irrelevant to the poster I was addressing, since the issue was that "leveling" is unrealistic. The former is, perhaps, a more reasonable complaint, from a standpoint of "realism;" after all, we do increase in a way that could be better described as "gradually" than "suddenly." Even then, though, it's an issue of how unrealistic the leveling mechanism is, not whether or not it is realistic. We improve ourselves in "points" too minute to be accurately represented by any RPG I've ever seen, and our ability to lose skills from lack of practice is also rarely addressed. Thus, it is unfair to point to point solely to leveling being unrealistic without also noting that point-based systems suffer from similar problems, albeit on a different scale.

Finally, if your only complaint with my example is that the numbers are inaccurate, feel free to replace them with what interval of points you would consider sufficiently sized to represent a "level." Do note that level-based variations in power vary from system to system, and even from class to class, so it is not as though "varying power levels within the framework" is alone sufficient to shoot down analogies drawn between a point-based and level-based system.

I fully admit to being unfamiliar with GURPS, though, and more precise measurements would be appreciated.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-09, 05:02 PM
No amount of adhering to your personal beliefs will make you a better sword fighter, and while I'm only familiar with the very basics of the systems your mentioned, I am reasonably certain that is the basis of skill acquisition in both. (Or at least Riddle.)
Not exactly- it's true that adhering to personal beliefs (or a sense of destiny, etc.) earns you crucial metagame resources (Artha and Spiritual Attributes in BW/TroS respectively) that can be spent to sway the outcome of conflicts. However, these only provide a short-term effect: Long-term skill improvement happens through the same get-better-through-practicing-specific-skills method that dates back to Runequest.

Why? Because levels represent improvement? Then you could say the same thing about any system that allows characters to get stronger.
No- because levels represent a form of improvement that comes at the cost of verisimilitude. Which amounts to a statement that pursuit-of-improvement is more important *than* verisimilitude.

Again, to give the example of Burning Wheel, characters do get stronger over time- but only in the skills which they personally practice, during important story-related scenes. This sends the message that 'getting stronger' is an incidental side-effect of 'accomplishing stuff' (and that both are a side-effect of storytelling,) rather than accomplishing stuff being an incidental means to the end of getting stronger.

And you're right, Burning Wheel does distort strict realism in various key respects- specifically, in ways intended to facilitate storytelling- which is what makes it a primarily narrativist RPG, despite strong Sim elements.

...What I don't understand is why you insist on claiming that levels promote power gaming any more than any statistic-based game does. All levels do is quantify a measure of character power.
Yes! -Yes! -Exactly! That is all levels do: provide an arbitrary metric and/or rationing system for the character's overall power-level.

GM: "Hi! I just want to say that Tommy here is 1.6 times more powerful than Stan at the moment."
Stan: "So what?!"
GM: "Oh, it's not important. Not important at all. Our game is totally not about that. But y'know... I'm just sayin'. Tommy is more powerful."
Tommy: "1.6 times more powerful!"
Stan: "But why would you even say that!? Why do we care?!"
GM: "We don't! It's completely irrelevant!"

horseboy
2010-07-09, 05:06 PM
The difference between level-based and point-based systems is that level-based represents jumps while point-based systems are more gradual in their increase of power. It's like the difference between stairs and a ramp (and if the analogy holds true, it is easier to gain height with stairs if the angle is steep, otherwise better to use a ramp).

That's easily rectified. Just don't spend your character resources right away. Granted it's a lot harder to do with d20 because you don't really have much in the way of character resources, but I've been toying with the idea of doing it the next time I run Rolemaster. Just start everyone at level 2, let them do their stat gain roles, but not spend their 30-40 development points until after they've used a skill. It's handy so that if they're in a strange land they can start saying "I am job" while they're still there. :smallamused:

Umael
2010-07-09, 05:19 PM
Or, in other words, the difference is the severity of the power increase. That's it. A sufficient increase in points represents the same increase in power as a level, more or less. The only significant difference comes in the form of gradation, as you point out, and (usually) greater choice.

Agreed for the most part, although I question the "greater choice" idea. When you level, you get to pick a variety of different levels and a variety of different class features within that level. With point-based, you get to pick from a variety of powers. While it is true that most point-based systems make it impossible to spend just one point, the option to save the points up makes a variety of other options available.

So really, whether you get more choices if you were to play, say D&D 3.5 versus, say Hero is something I'm not sure I would jump on one side or the other immediately. And if you say D&D 3.5 has more choice than Hero, I would suggest AD&D as a counter-example.

(As a sidenote, I forgot to mention Legend of the Five Rings RPG, which uses experence points for gradual improvement, but as your stats and abilities get higher, you can obtain a higher Insight Rank - so it has aspects of both kinds of advancement.)



The latter is irrelevant to the poster I was addressing, since the issue was that "leveling" is unrealistic. The former is, perhaps, a more reasonable complaint, from a standpoint of "realism;" after all, we do increase in a way that could be better described as "gradually" than "suddenly." Even then, though, it's an issue of how unrealistic the leveling mechanism is, not whether or not it is realistic. We improve ourselves in "points" too minute to be accurately represented by any RPG I've ever seen, and our ability to lose skills from lack of practice is also rarely addressed. Thus, it is unfair to point to point solely to leveling being unrealistic without also noting that point-based systems suffer from similar problems, albeit on a different scale.

While I have to agree that a point-based system is a closer model to how we as people progress, I also have to agree that no gaming system I know does a good model of how we as people antrophy from age and lack of use. D&D 3.5 made an attempt, but it does not take much to see how that system has its flaws.



Finally, if your only complaint with my example is that the numbers are inaccurate, feel free to replace them with what interval of points you would consider sufficiently sized to represent a "level." Do note that level-based variations in power vary from system to system, and even from class to class, so it is not as though "varying power levels within the framework" is alone sufficient to shoot down analogies drawn between a point-based and level-based system.

As complaints go, my objections were on the scale of saying, "Well, that's not quite the shade of blue I was asking for, but it will do."

In any case, I don't think even that does a good job of illustrating the differences and why the analogy was a poor one. The interaction of level-based and point-based systems tend to have the game mechanics treat things as being very different.

For example, an undead's level-draining ability was rightfully feared in earlier editions of D&D and is even now something horrible to behold. On the other hand, powers that drain other powers are really, really, really annoying - but also really expensive.

I think a better reason for accepting levels as a valid part of a game system without complaining about it being realistic is that game systems do a horrible job with combat. Either combat is realistic and as slow as molasses or it is fast and terribly unrealistic. Some combat systems are neither fast nor realistic.



I fully admit to being unfamiliar with GURPS, though, and more precise measurements would be appreciated.

Not sure if I can give you a more precise measurement for GURPS, as I don't know it that well (although I know the Hero system much better). I know that a basic GURPS character is somewhere from 100 to 200 points, while one who is more powerful, a basic superhero character, runs around 500 to 700 points.

(I'm sure someone who knows GURPS even better than I can correct me on this.)

If you do want to use the Hero system for an idea of the point-spread, 0 points is normal, 25 is a competent human, 50 is a well-trained human, 75 is super-agent, a low-powered superhero or a hero's sidekick is 150 points, a standard superhero is 250 points, and every 50 points more is significant for the next few iterations.

Math_Mage
2010-07-09, 05:35 PM
Actually, I don't think that's true. Part of Tier 1s trouble is it's flexibility. Taking away Batman Wizards is EXACTLY what you should be doing in this sort of game. Removing all of the wizard's auto-negation defences e.g. Wind Wall, leaving only retardance/mititation based defenses, e.g. Mage Armour is a good step.

I think we don't disagree about the removal of auto-win buttons. However, I also think you confuse 'Batman Wizard' with having auto-win buttons for every role. And flexibility is not the problem. The saying is that Sorcerers are Tier 2 because they only break the game in a limited number of ways, whereas Wizards are Tier 1 because they can break the game in several different ways each day according to their spell prep. Meanwhile, Tier 3 beguilers are flexible and fun, fulfilling a number of roles without breaking them. Dragonfire adepts (around the same tier, I'd guess) fulfill a number of roles without breaking them. ToB melee classes fulfill a number of roles without breaking them.

So let the wizard have some blasts, some good buffs and debuffs and battlefield control. Sure, take away the broken ones, maybe raise others a few levels to simulate a slower progression. And let him have his utility, which is where Batman wizards are meant to shine. There's nothing wrong with Spider Hand or Knock.


(Actually, in my opinion, mages SHOULD be glass cannons in any genera, period. Part of their balance is that when a mage shows up, every fracker on the battle field above animal intelligence will target them FIRST... (And in my games, proper encounter will include spellcaster support, and from level 5 onwards that will include Dispel Magic on every enemy caster capable of loading it!) That is how I personally handle the "overpowered casters" issue, since anything the PCs could do, the NPCs will have done first, better, and in more numbers!)

Mages are glass cannons that get immediately targeted in D&D. The overpowered part is where they tell everybody targeting them to stuff it.


Dropping casters to a more limited role in blasting, buff, debuff, some not-so-SoD battlefield control (e.g. Web, Grease, Black Tentacles on the borderline) and said defenses with maybe a handful of save-or-X at higher levels still gives them MORE than enough to be not useless. I agree, though, making anything with a save not work at all is the wrong way about it. Debuffs (like Slow or Bane and so on) are not really the big offenders. Removing Save-or-die and the worst of the save-or-be-unable-to-do-anything is the better option. (Or simply push those spells up a few levels.)

Agreed.


Well, I'm not going to comment on balance since it's not my strong point. I'm just going to hover round the edges of the conversation making pithy observations.

Although that said, perhaps if you left save or duck* spells as they are but let people burn hit points to mitigate or remove the effects of a failed save that might be an idea? It favours hp-heavy classes and weakens magic users at the same time.

Plus, I recommend the Robert Howard Conan stories. If you can get past the 1930s attitudes they're a great read.

* This was a typo, but I like it enough to keep it. Quack.

A lesser version of Iron Heart Surge? Useful thought.


That's not actually what I said. My point was to buff saves enough that fighters can compete - in other words, that they always have a decent chance of passing the save.

But Potato is right - wizards in the Conan universe tend to die very quickly once Conan has carved his way through their minions, illusions or whatever.

Doing it from the fighter's end makes it very difficult to walk the knife's edge between overpowering spells and making them useless.


I think it's pretty clear by this point that Satyr simply doesn't want to, and I fully support his decision. He's totally allowed to make that decision, you know. I wouldn't play E6 myself, and why should he spend money on something when he can homebrew for free? Plus with homebrewing, he'll exactly what he wants (which is not necessarily Conan-specific-gameplay, only Conan-sort-of-style).

What I can't understand is why on earth there is so much resistance to him doing so, save for the fact he would have been better posting this in the homebrew forum.

For my part, I have trouble understanding how the changes so far lend themselves to Satyr's stated objective of staying around Conan's power level longer. A lot of them, from gestalt to AC, are significant boosts to character power.


I don't think he's doing what you think he's doing.
Player I pray for spells and pick Gate for my 9th level spell
DM: Pelor Gives you rapid Summon Monster 8

Or
Wizard: I get second level spells now Yay!
DM Roll on the chart to see which two you g

Players- Sad

I doubt it. Were this the case, nobody would play a caster at all.


Yes! -Yes! -Exactly! That is all levels do: provide an arbitrary metric and/or rationing system for the character's overall power-level.

GM: "Hi! I just want to say that Tommy here is 1.6 times more powerful than Stan at the moment."
Stan: "So what?!"
GM: "Oh, it's not important. Not important at all. Our game is totally not about that. But y'know... I'm just sayin'. Tommy is more powerful."
Tommy: "1.6 times more powerful!"
Stan: "But why would you even say that!? Why do we care?!"
GM: "We don't! It's completely irrelevant!"

This...is exactly what would happen in a point-based system if one player had more points than another. Obviously, canny distribution of points can mitigate the power disparity...as can canny optimization by level. I completely fail to see the difference.

The Big Dice
2010-07-09, 05:43 PM
Again, to give the example of Burning Wheel, characters do get stronger over time- but only in the skills which they personally practice, during important story-related scenes. This sends the message that 'getting stronger' is an incidental side-effect of 'accomplishing stuff' (and that both are a side-effect of storytelling,) rather than accomplishing stuff being an incidental means to the end of getting stronger.

And you're right, Burning Wheel does distort strict realism in various key respects- specifically, in ways intended to facilitate storytelling- which is what makes it a primarily narrativist RPG, despite strong Sim elements.
That same GNS logic makes Cyberpunk 2020 into a Narrativist game for the exact reasons you've given there. Which it patently isn't. Especially as it was written a good 15 or more years before GNS theory took over the realms of independent roleplaying games.

And, to me at least, illustrates why GNS shouldn't be applied to game systems. Especially as it was originally inteded to apply to players rather than the games they played. BUt that's a debate for private messages or another thread.

GM: "Hi! I just want to say that Tommy here is 1.6 times more powerful than Stan at the moment."
Stan: "So what?!"
GM: "Oh, it's not important. Not important at all. Our game is totally not about that. But y'know... I'm just sayin'. Tommy is more powerful."
Tommy: "1.6 times more powerful!"
Stan: "But why would you even say that!? Why do we care?!"
GM: "We don't! It's completely irrelevant!"
So one player gets preferrential treatment at the table, having a character that is categorically more powerful than the characters of the other people at the tabe. And not just because of optimisationchoices. This character is more than half again as powerful as anyone else at the table. And this isn't a problem?

Honestly, I can't see real people reacting in the way described. What I can see is more like:
GM: "Hi! I just want to say that Tommy here is 1.6 times more powerful than Stan at the moment."
Stan: "So what?!"
GM: "Oh, it's not important. Not important at all. Our game is totally not about that. But y'know... I'm just sayin'. Tommy is more powerful."
Tommy: "1.6 times more powerful!"
Stan:"Why does Tommy get to play something that's that much more powerful than the character I get to play? That's not fair!"
GM: "It's completely irrelevant. We don't concern ourselves about things like that."
Stan: "So you're not going to level the playing field and make sure that all characters are more or less equal?"
Tommy: "Why should he do that, I mean, I'm 1.6 times as powerful as your guy, this game is great."
Stan: "I see how it is." *gathers dice and other belongings together, closes door quietly on the way out*

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-09, 06:11 PM
Math Mage: I think we're actually on the same page, just cross-talking each other a bit.




Again, it's not that I consider my preferences to be better or your preferences to be worse. I suspect that you might be described as a Gamist-with-Simulationist-leanings, whereas I would be a Simulationist-with-Narrativist-leanings.

I think that would be a reasonable statement.

My personal preference for my own campaign world is one with a solidly historical-based (rather than actually historical) grounding, upon which the PCs and villains can jump about. I find it easier to make the basic world around, say, broadly Roman (like the major power of my current camapign world) because it's much easier for me to script the world events from that perspective than try and use 3.5's fairly skewy socio-economic model. (And yes, the behind-the-scenes-accuracy is crucial to my oen enjoyment, even if the players never see it!) The PCs and the villains, on the other hand (in this world, at any rate) are the exceptions in that they are the ones with access to the rarer (i.e. magical abilities). And I'm slowly working on taking out of my own game the plot-breaking abilities (like, say Remove Disease), or at least making it so the world does not actually run on magic.

At high levels, I have no problem with the PCs being superhero-level power and bugger the realism. My problem is that I just can't envision it at level seven! I just really can't see my heavily reflavoured Cleric/Monk (based off Naruto, both the character and the anime), who is just about hitting - what, level 8 I think - and really just starting to hit his stride in being mechanically combat effective, as being able to go toe-to-toe with and beat Aragorn! Heck, I can see him having trouble Captain Kirk... (Mind you, who wouldn't...) I can't see dear old Shikue lasting more than one round against Naruto himself, come to that. Maybe he could duff up Harry Potter... I mean stunning fist verses a wizard...maybe...?

So yeah, I think that would be a fair assesment. Our group is not totally hack-and-slash (though with the last few modules I've been running, you might think so!) but we definately have it as a stronger element in our games. Deep character interaction is not our strong-point! (I mean it's not like we don't roleplay, it's just not to any huge depth, I'll grant you.) Actually, if I got my games as deep as Avatar (that's Proper Avatar, not the blue-cat-people-crap) or Naruto1, I think we'd be doing well. We're hardly Babylon 5-level deep! (I say that since I've been watching it again recently. Held up well after nearly 20 years, by-the-by.)

(Personally, I was totally out of my depth playing Shadowrun, to be honest, and little better with Cyberpunk, and then only because my character was based on the entire of the GLA from Command & Conquer Generals...)



1And yeah, I do think they both have plenty of depth, in between the Awesome fights...

Gametime
2010-07-09, 09:35 PM
No- because levels represent a form of improvement that comes at the cost of verisimilitude. Which amounts to a statement that pursuit-of-improvement is more important *than* verisimilitude.

Okay, I can see that. Explain to me why point-based system don't also sacrifice verisimilitude. (Hint: They do, although the extent varies from system to system. Every system with which I am familiar sacrifices some level of verisimilitude for character measurements of power, and - by your metric - that makes them all promote this ideal.)


Again, to give the example of Burning Wheel, characters do get stronger over time- but only in the skills which they personally practice, during important story-related scenes. This sends the message that 'getting stronger' is an incidental side-effect of 'accomplishing stuff' (and that both are a side-effect of storytelling,) rather than accomplishing stuff being an incidental means to the end of getting stronger.

See, to me, that sacrifices verisimilitude. I mean, don't get me wrong, Burning Wheel looks super cool and I love the emphasis on personal goals. But let's assume that getting in a sword fight makes me better at sword fighting. That's reasonably, I think.

Now, in D&D, if I do well in enough sword fights, I get better at sword fighting, generally speaking. I might also get better at entirely unrelated things; physical toughness might be handwaved away by pointing out that I've learned to ignore weaker blows, and my Spot and Listen checks might be the result of watching my opponents leading to greater awareness, but why did my Craft: Basketweaving check go up?

There's a loss of verisimilitude there. I totally grant that. It's not perfect by any means. But if I'm understanding you correctly, any ol' sword fight in Burning Wheel won't suffice to make me better at sword fighting. It has to be a sword fight that relates to the plot, or challenges me personally in some way.* Why? What is the justification for that, other than "It makes for more interesting stories?" There's nothing wrong with interesting stories, but you imply that sacrificing verisimilitude is a bad thing. Is it? Isn't it? Is it only when you don't like it? I'm lost, here.


Yes! -Yes! -Exactly! That is all levels do: provide an arbitrary metric and/or rationing system for the character's overall power-level.

Uh, yeah, I know. You still haven't addressed why point-based systems are any different. Why is the size of a character's dice pool in Burning Wheel or Riddle of Steel any less of an arbitrary metric for a character's power level?



As complaints go, my objections were on the scale of saying, "Well, that's not quite the shade of blue I was asking for, but it will do."

In any case, I don't think even that does a good job of illustrating the differences and why the analogy was a poor one. The interaction of level-based and point-based systems tend to have the game mechanics treat things as being very different.

That's fair. ...Sorry if I sounded confrontational or defensive, in my last post. Rereading it, it came off a bit stronger than it should have. My bad.


I think a better reason for accepting levels as a valid part of a game system without complaining about it being realistic is that game systems do a horrible job with combat. Either combat is realistic and as slow as molasses or it is fast and terribly unrealistic. Some combat systems are neither fast nor realistic.

I'd tend to agree with that. I had the exact same reaction to reading the combat rules for GURPS and for Riddle of Steel, both games I've seen praised for their realistic combat: "Man, this looks awesome, but I can't imagine it playing smoothly."

Obviously, that's not going to be true for every group, but I think it's fair to say that realism sacrifices ease of play more often than not.

Knaight
2010-07-09, 11:34 PM
Okay, I can see that. Explain to me why point-based system don't also sacrifice verisimilitude. (Hint: They do, although the extent varies from system to system. Every system with which I am familiar sacrifices some level of verisimilitude for character measurements of power, and - by your metric - that makes them all promote this ideal.)



See, to me, that sacrifices verisimilitude. I mean, don't get me wrong, Burning Wheel looks super cool and I love the emphasis on personal goals. But let's assume that getting in a sword fight makes me better at sword fighting. That's reasonably, I think.

Now, in D&D, if I do well in enough sword fights, I get better at sword fighting, generally speaking. I might also get better at entirely unrelated things; physical toughness might be handwaved away by pointing out that I've learned to ignore weaker blows, and my Spot and Listen checks might be the result of watching my opponents leading to greater awareness, but why did my Craft: Basketweaving check go up?

There's a loss of verisimilitude there. I totally grant that. It's not perfect by any means. But if I'm understanding you correctly, any ol' sword fight in Burning Wheel won't suffice to make me better at sword fighting. It has to be a sword fight that relates to the plot, or challenges me personally in some way.* Why? What is the justification for that, other than "It makes for more interesting stories?" There's nothing wrong with interesting stories, but you imply that sacrificing verisimilitude is a bad thing. Is it? Isn't it? Is it only when you don't like it? I'm lost, here.



Uh, yeah, I know. You still haven't addressed why point-based systems are any different. Why is the size of a character's dice pool in Burning Wheel or Riddle of Steel any less of an arbitrary metric for a character's power level?



That's fair. ...Sorry if I sounded confrontational or defensive, in my last post. Rereading it, it came off a bit stronger than it should have. My bad.



I'd tend to agree with that. I had the exact same reaction to reading the combat rules for GURPS and for Riddle of Steel, both games I've seen praised for their realistic combat: "Man, this looks awesome, but I can't imagine it playing smoothly."

Obviously, that's not going to be true for every group, but I think it's fair to say that realism sacrifices ease of play more often than not.

Burning Wheel advancement. If the dice aren't coming out, odds are you aren't using skills at a level that is significantly challenging. And that is a tiny break in verisimilitude relative to the level system dragging everything up.

The reason the size of various dice pools are not as much an arbitrary metric for a power level is that they only cover a skill. Level is an extremely generic "How powerful you are" a sword skill is "how well can this character fight with a sword", which allows much tighter modeling.

As for combat systems, mechanical elegance can have something run quickly with decent realism. GURPS isn't any slower than D&D, but lets look at Fudge. One of its systems successfully removes alternating turns entirely, correlates damage to quality of a hit with far more gradients than something like Burning Wheel, and simulates that hit getting in the way of physical ability, particularly in combat. Its simple, very fast, and certainly realistic, it just is somewhat abstracted, because the design is very elegant. There are some complicating features, but it still ends up nowhere near as complicated as D&D, while being every bit as realistic, it ends up nowhere near as complicated as GURPS, Burning Wheel, or The Riddle of Steel while being fairly close to any of those in realism except for maybe The Riddle of Steel.

SilveryCord
2010-07-09, 11:47 PM
This Real Man's D&D really does sound like it just need to be Burning Wheel. It might be too abstracted for some, though, but really if you want tactical combat and a balanced martial and arcane divide, 4e is the best option.

Gametime
2010-07-10, 12:09 AM
The reason the size of various dice pools are not as much an arbitrary metric for a power level is that they only cover a skill. Level is an extremely generic "How powerful you are" a sword skill is "how well can this character fight with a sword", which allows much tighter modeling.


But level is descriptive. It isn't prescriptive. That is to say, level is supposed to be a rough measure of your character's power level. It isn't as though your character suddenly gains x power units in every field, though. You gain specific bonuses, appropriate to your character class. If your class is based on sword-fight? Guess what, your increase in level represents an increase in sword-fighting.

Levels are supposed to be measure of how powerful the sum of your abilities is. Having a numeric quantification of how strong a character is isn't unique to level-based systems, and while you may disagree with having a "generalized" representation of "power," having a strict numeric representation of your proficiency with any given skill is still a break from verisimilitude. It is also about as close to necessary as any such break can get, since few game systems can pull off the "Cowboys and Indians" mechanic well. (Some do, admittedly, but they are a bit limited in scope.)

Classless, levelless systems have the potential to offer more customization of specific abilities and qualities. But I still do not see how saying "A 12th level fighter is good at sword-fighting" unforgivably breaks verisimilitude and introduces the incentive to power-game while saying "A fighter with 12 dice in his combat pool is good at sword-fighting" does not.

DISCLAIMER: I realize that 12th level fighters aren't actually all that good at sword-fighting, and I have no idea whether a 12 dice combat pool is any good. Ignore the numbers and focus on the concepts involved.

Umael
2010-07-10, 01:25 AM
That's fair. ...Sorry if I sounded confrontational or defensive, in my last post. Rereading it, it came off a bit stronger than it should have. My bad.

For the record, I was definitely not offended, nor did I see you as being defensive, so don't worry about any ruffle feathers from this quarter.



I'd tend to agree with that. I had the exact same reaction to reading the combat rules for GURPS and for Riddle of Steel, both games I've seen praised for their realistic combat: "Man, this looks awesome, but I can't imagine it playing smoothly."

Obviously, that's not going to be true for every group, but I think it's fair to say that realism sacrifices ease of play more often than not.

Well, according to Knaight, Fudge is pretty good, but I haven't seen the system to weigh on how good it is. One thing Knaight did say, with which I agree, is that the best systems make good use of elegant, streamlined rules.

Sadly, the best way to make good use out of something like GURPS or Riddle of Steel (another game I have not yet played) is to make good use out of computer programs that might not ever exist. There are a lot of D&D games out there that simulate combat, of course, but how well does the program handle improvization? How many systems will get computerized? Electronic dice rollers are one thing, a computer program that can figure out how much damage he takes when you push his face into the deep-fat-fryer is a little different (and does he take more damage if you force his mouth open when you do it?).

Satyr
2010-07-10, 02:28 AM
Messing up the Action Economy
1. Characters may use all iterative attacks with the usual limitations as a standard attack option, plus one additional attack from any additional source, such as two weapon fighting, flurry of blows etc. If a character uses the Full Attack may make all iterative attacks at the full attack bonus; all additional attacks from additional sources such as two weapon fighting, flurry of blows etc. are treated as usual.
On a charge, only the first attack gains the usual bonus if the character in question does not have the Pounce ability.

2. The casting times of spells is usually significantly longer, as can be seen in the table below:

{table=head]old casting time|new casting time

standard action|
1 round

full round action|
2 rounds

1 round|
3 rounds

1 minute or longer|
no changes[/table]


A spell that takes 1 round to cast is a full-round action. It comes into effect just before the beginning of your turn in the round after you began casting the spell. You then act normally after the spell is completed.

This also means, that potential attackers have a very long time to attack a spellcasters to force the victim to make Concentration checks to bring the spell through; or that spellcasters really need bodyguards to protect them from physical harm.

The Quicken Spell Metamagic ability allows the caster to cast 1 round spells as standard actions, and increase the spell level by 2 levels. There are no special rules for spontaneous casters.

Reasons: warrior-types gain slightly more to do per round through this. It is not a large change, but a fun one. Likewise, the longer spellcasting times and the corresponding reduced reliability of spells means that spellcasters are slower and need protectors to make use of their abilities. Both are reminiscences to AD&D combat as I remember it.
When it comes to casting out of combat casting spellcasters suffer from no limitations in comparison to the original rules, so they still can be as versatile


Banned Spells
The following spells are banned by default or moved:


Spell Level 0, 1: Create Water

Spell Level 2: Create Food and Water, Rope Trick

Spell Level 3: Divine Power (banned from the general cleric list, but stays on the War Domain), Tiny Hut, Windwall

Spell Level 4: Minor Creation, Secure Shelter, Solid Fog

Spell Level 5: Fabricate, Major Creation, Overland Flight,

Spell Level 6: Wall of Iron

Spell Level 7: Mage’s Magnificent Mansion

Spell Level 8: Polymorph any object

Spell Level 9: Mage's disjunction, Timestop


The following spells are moved up to a higher spell level:
(If the spells are therefore moved beyond level 9, they are banned).

The shapechanging line of spells (Alter Self, Polymorph etc.) allow for one alternative form per spell. These spells can be learned several time, but every alternative form is a spell on its own. If the spell has a target other than the spellcaster himself, the target needs to be specified by type as well. Most mages just turn into giant snakes, but that never seems to solve anything. The spell level for all these spells is increased by 1.

Flight and flight-related spells are moved up two spell levels. The Overland Flight spell is pretty much redundant if you have Flight and Persist Spell and is therefore banned.
The Fell Flight and Draconic Flight Invocations are Greater, not Lesser invocations.
In any case, the maneuverability of Flight effects is always depending on the Dexterity of the user, with the usual maneuverability as the upper benchmark: Dex<10: clumsy, Dex 10-13: poor, Dex 14-17: average, Dex: 18-21: good, Dex 22+: perfect.

Spells that allow teleports, dimensional travel or the like (e.g Dimension Door, Plane Shift or Teleport etc.) are by default three spell higher than usual.
The Flee the Scene Invocation is a Greater, not a Lesser Invocation.
In any case, a teleportation or plane shifting spell of any kind has a 10% chance to miss the aim by a random margin (usually 1d20% of the travelled distance in a random direction) and a 1% chance to lead to a lethal accident.


Other Powers/Effects:
The Shilling Fog Invocation (Greater, Dragon Adept) is banned.
Other effects, spells or abilities that allow flight, the creation of extradimensional spaces, planar travel or teleport are either banned or treated as more powerful effects, but can be allowed on a case by case decision of the Gamemaster.


Reasons: Flying is good for a four color super hero comic. It doesn’t have its place in a heroic fantasy epic. Riding Dragons, giant eagles, etc. is all good and fun. A flying carpet is okay. A character flying in their own power just looks ridiculous, if they do not happen to be a swallow (African or European). The other reason is, that in a two-dimensional world, spellcasters are more likely to need physical protection
Likewise, teleport and the like works better when it doesn’t work at all. In a computer game, it’s an okay slution to spare time. In a tabletop game, where all distances are mostly one sentence long, there is no time to save, so it basically just wastes dramaturgical effectiveness.
Ropetrick and the like are likewise anticlimactic and thus banned for dramaturgy reasons. Finally, spells which are likely to change the socio-economic structure of the world are banned by default; the creation line of spells are banned partially because of this, and partially because the Laws of Thermodynamics disagree (even more than usual).

Mystic Muse
2010-07-10, 02:42 AM
Reasons: Flying is good for a four color super hero comic. It doesn’t have its place in a heroic fantasy epic. Riding Dragons, giant eagles, etc. is all good and fun. A flying carpet is okay. A character flying in their own power just looks ridiculous, if they do not happen to be a swallow (African or European). Then why don't you just ban it since it seems that you don't want people doing it at all? Also, you can't persist flight under your rules (Unless you changed metamagic and I missed it) so overland flight is hardly redundant. Also, Overland flight gives different benefits.



Likewise, teleport and the like works better when it doesn’t work at all. In a computer game, it’s an okay slution to spare time. In a tabletop game, where all distances are mostly one sentence long, there is no time to save, so it basically just wastes dramaturgical effectiveness.

So, instead of just saying it doesn't exist you instead stealth ban it and make the side effects possibly lethal?

Math_Mage
2010-07-10, 02:57 AM
What happens to ray attack and touch attack spells, now that they have a 1-round casting time?

Zen Master
2010-07-10, 03:48 AM
Doing it from the fighter's end makes it very difficult to walk the knife's edge between overpowering spells and making them useless.

You think?

As far as I can see, it would be almost painfully simple to aim for a given percentage chance to save - say, 50% for an equal CR encounter.

Then of course, the optimizing begins. And all that really requires is that every time the mage has a chance to up the dc by 1, the fighter needs a chance to up his saves by 1.

No, I don't think it's hard at all.

Samurai Jill
2010-07-10, 03:58 AM
Okay, I can see that. Explain to me why point-based system don't also sacrifice verisimilitude. (Hint: They do, although the extent varies from system to system. Every system with which I am familiar sacrifices some level of verisimilitude for character measurements of power...
They sacrifice some level of detail for the sake of being able to complete resolution before the next ice age. But there is a very marked difference in emphasis here. Sim-based systems measure character proficiency because that's part of how the world works- no more, no less. They're not overtly concerned with rationing that power.

Now, in D&D, if I do well in enough sword fights, I get better at sword fighting, generally speaking. I might also get better at entirely unrelated things...
Yes, but in Burning Wheel you can't. Which is exactly what happens in real life. Just having the option to break Sim fundamentally undermines verisimilitude, so if you do it, you need to check why you're doing it.

There's nothing wrong with interesting stories, but you imply that sacrificing verisimilitude is a bad thing....
No. I am implying that sacrificing verisimilitude implies that you/the GM/the game designer consider some other thing more important than that. If you sacrifice verisimilitude for the sake of supporting competition/powergaming, then that's what your game encourages. If you sacrifice it for the sake of story, then story is what you encourage. (And if you sacrifice it for the sake of saving time, that's because you lack a supercomputer.)

I am not saying that competition/powergaming is a bad thing- correctly supported, as 4E essentially does, it can be very fun. But claiming that 3E is a remotely realistic system is just silly.

The reason why I called BW 'as realistic as you can reasonably get' is because it's combat system is so deadly that you couldn't survive it without Artha. (If you cut away the non-realistic elements, characters would just die in short order. So it's as realistic as you can get and still have players run through an imagined campaign: i.e, playing an RPG.)

Uh, yeah, I know. You still haven't addressed why point-based systems are any different. Why is the size of a character's dice pool in Burning Wheel or Riddle of Steel any less of an arbitrary metric for a character's power level?
Because-
(A) It's not a single dice pool. You are good at particular things, and that's all. It's silly to compute an overall power level on that basis, and the game has no interest in doing so.
(B) Growth in those stats is not something you control in the strictest sense: It's a side-effect of doing other stuff, as skills improve through practice. Hence, it's hard to make 'getting more powerful' an end unto itself.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-10, 03:59 AM
Reasons: Flying is good for a four color super hero comic. It doesn’t have its place in a heroic fantasy epic. Riding Dragons, giant eagles, etc. is all good and fun. A flying carpet is okay. A character flying in their own power just looks ridiculous, if they do not happen to be a swallow (African or European). The other reason is, that in a two-dimensional world, spellcasters are more likely to need physical protection
Likewise, teleport and the like works better when it doesn’t work at all. In a computer game, it’s an okay slution to spare time. In a tabletop game, where all distances are mostly one sentence long, there is no time to save, so it basically just wastes dramaturgical effectiveness.
Ropetrick and the like are likewise anticlimactic and thus banned for dramaturgy reasons. Finally, spells which are likely to change the socio-economic structure of the world are banned by default; the creation line of spells are banned partially because of this, and partially because the Laws of Thermodynamics disagree (even more than usual).

I agree with the bulk of the spell choices. Flight is not something that should be gained easily in sword & sorcery, but I have a distant recollection of watching one movie where the villains floated around a bit, so I agree, taking it out totally is unecessary. Likewise, I totally agree witht the plot-breaking spells like teleport and so on. I generally find teleport gives more problems to me as a DM (such as taking out the whole interesting "going/exploration" part of an adventure, plus scry-and-die is a good way to waste a whole dungeon; a prblem if you are not an off-the-cuff DM like I'm not). That said, I often use it as a plot-point for villains, so maybe it should be restricted to ritual-only usage.

Not convinced about the altered spell actions, though. I hope you mean Swift not Immediate actions as standard, as with almost all Immediation action (and to be fair, a number of Swift action) spells would become useless if you have to do it on your own turn with a standard action (Blade of Blood, one of the better and not overpowered offensive cleric spells, for example, becomes useless). I think you'd be better making it much more likely to fail concentration checks (or, if you really want an AD&D style, go back to having no concentration). The extended casting time seems to me to go from merely swiping the caster's best toys away to starting to encroach on being useless. Do you really want your evil wizard villains not casting spells? Because the whole party is easily going to be able to prevent them (unless they can make tehmselves invulnerable to ranged attacks.) I don't think that seems to fit with the flavour you're going for, it strikes me more as a caster-nerf geared towards stymying PC spellcasters rather than helping the genera.

olentu
2010-07-10, 04:15 AM
I agree with the bulk of the spell choices. Flight is not something that should be gained easily in sword & sorcery, but I have a distant recollection of watching one movie where the villains floated around a bit, so I agree, taking it out totally is unecessary. Likewise, I totally agree witht the plot-breaking spells like teleport and so on. I generally find teleport gives more problems to me as a DM (such as taking out the whole interesting "going/exploration" part of an adventure, plus scry-and-die is a good way to waste a whole dungeon; a prblem if you are not an off-the-cuff DM like I'm not). That said, I often use it as a plot-point for villains, so maybe it should be restricted to ritual-only usage.

Not convinced about the altered spell actions, though. I hope you mean Swift not Immediate actions as standard, as with almost all Immediation action (and to be fair, a number of Swift action) spells would become useless if you have to do it on your own turn with a standard action (Blade of Blood, one of the better and not overpowered offensive cleric spells, for example, becomes useless). I think you'd be better making it much more likely to fail concentration checks (or, if you really want an AD&D style, go back to having no concentration). The extended casting time seems to me to go from merely swiping the caster's best toys away to starting to encroach on being useless. Do you really want your evil wizard villains not casting spells? Because the whole party is easily going to be able to prevent them (unless they can make tehmselves invulnerable to ranged attacks.) I don't think that seems to fit with the flavour you're going for, it strikes me more as a caster-nerf geared towards stymying PC spellcasters rather than helping the genera.

Wait I thought making PC spellcasters completely useless was a goal of this since protagonists = heroes = warriors (or at least charming rogues).

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-10, 04:24 AM
Wait I thought making PC spellcasters completely useless was a goal of this since protagonists = heroes = warriors (or at least charming rogues).

There's a lot of difference between "making spellcasters less overwhelming by taking away their most abusable spells and boosting everyone else up a bit" and "making spellcasters useless".

Though I personally think the casting time increase is nto helpful (and it also screws over NPC spellcasters, who are supposed to be the bad guys).

Samurai Jill
2010-07-10, 04:40 AM
This Real Man's D&D really does sound like it just need to be Burning Wheel. It might be too abstracted for some, though, but really if you want tactical combat and a balanced martial and arcane divide, 4e is the best option.
Mouse Guard is probably an easier introduction: more than a few players have remarked that it feels quite similar to Tolkien.


That same GNS logic makes Cyberpunk 2020 into a Narrativist game for the exact reasons you've given there. Which it patently isn't. Especially as it was written a good 15 or more years before GNS theory took over the realms of independent roleplaying games.
Well, that depends: Cyberpunk 2020 could have a whole bunch of other features which contradict a Nar/Sim agenda. The wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_2020#Game_Mechanics) would suggest to me a Sim/Gamist hybrid: there's a strong focus on combat, but also on deadliness and realism, there are fixed classes and unitary XP, but game time must be spent on non-standard skills. I don't see any mention that those scenes must be plot-relevant, and AFAICT, 'class skills' can be learnt without explicit practice.

But again, I'm not particularly familiar with the example given, so maybe you could help me there. It could be a perfectly functional hybrid, but I'm not seeing strong evidence for Nar features.

So one player gets preferrential treatment at the table, having a character that is categorically more powerful than the characters of the other people at the table. And not just because of optimisation choices...
I didn't say that- maybe Tommy just tweaked his character better during creation- but that's not the point.

The point I'm making is that it's silly to say that Levels won't detract from play that doesn't revolve around powergaming, even when they have no binding mechanical impact: their mere existence sends a powerful message about what you consider important in your game.

Stan may well have been perfectly happy with a less powerful character if the group were playing in a style that focused on exploring emotional questions or immersing oneself in an imagined world for it's own sake. Does the fact that Frodo or Sam is far less powerful than Boromir or Aragorn detract from their roles as protagonists? No: All four characters have problems that touch on their innermost loyalties and desires, and all four have to deal with them as best they can with the skills and knowledge available. Having equal power levels might be a nice optional bonus, but explicitly emphasising it will probably do more harm than good here.

http://www.burningwheel.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-1179.html

...I ran a game with a girl and she wanted to make an Elvish Princess. "You will let me start off with an Elvish princess?"

"Sure."

"But its so powerful!"

"So?"

"Most GM's I know would be uncomfortable with us starting out that powerful."

"Its a one-shot, let's live it up and even if it wasn't, its just a matter of scale. An Elvish Princess is still going to have problems, just as a peasant kid in an uncaring city is going to have problems. Those problems are where our game is AT."


Yeah, I had a very similar experience with Riddle of Steel, I had to keep reassuring the player that the NPCs weren't all out to get him, and that his character's girlfriend wasn't going to be kidnapped the second he turned his head. I called it the "Abused Player Syndrome"...

This...is exactly what would happen in a point-based system if one player had more points than another. Obviously, canny distribution of points can mitigate the power disparity...as can canny optimization by level...
The difference is that the point-based system won't go out of it's way to draw attention to relative power levels.

Let me try to emphasis this again: There are styles of play where how powerful you can get is very close to irrelevant.

Tommy might be 1.6 times more powerful- whatever the hell that even means- simply because he did start off with the same number of 'points' and wound up using them better. Or because he's been able to kill more monsters and solve more puzzles and simply earned more XP over time. It doesn't matter.

You are missing the inherent point here: If the GM, or the game rules, go to great lengths to make sure that everyone has an exactly equal share of power, you are saying that gaining power is the most important thing about your game. The problem isn't the relative power levels at all- the problem is that you even care about it that much.

IF 'gaining power' IS one of the most important things about your game, THEN levels are fine and dandy. Do not include them otherwise: they will serve no useful function, and mislead players about your intent.

olentu
2010-07-10, 04:51 AM
There's a lot of difference between "making spellcasters less overwhelming by taking away their most abusable spells and boosting everyone else up a bit" and "making spellcasters useless".

Though I personally think the casting time increase is nto helpful (and it also screws over NPC spellcasters, who are supposed to be the bad guys).

The difference is huge but then again from the first concept it seems that spellcasters should only ever be antagonists. The NPC problem is certainly still there though.

Aotrs Commander
2010-07-10, 04:54 AM
The point I'm making is that it's silly to say that Levels won't detract from play that doesn't revolve around powergaming, even when they have no binding mechanical impact: their mere existence sends a powerful message about what you consider important in your game.

Stan may well have been perfectly happy with a less powerful character if the group were playing in a style that focused on exploring emotional questions or immersing oneself in an imagined world for it's own sake. Does the fact that Frodo or Sam is far less powerful than Boromir or Aragorn detract from their roles as protagonists? No: All four characters have problems that touch on their innermost loyalties and desires, and all four have to deal with them as best they can with the skills and knowledge available. Having equal power levels might be a nice optional bonus, but explicitly emphasising it will probably do more harm than good here.

http://www.burningwheel.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-1179.html

So what you're saying is, it's perfectly acceptable to have a massive disparity in character power provided that combat is of minimal important and the game is about "emotional questions or immersing oneself in an imagined world for it's own sake" but it's completely unacceptable to do exactly the same but also attach a numerical indicator of said power? Really?

You can do that with any system. Yes, you really can. If combat is minimal to irrelevant, you can roleplay with anything1. You could have a deep and meaningful exploration of the human (sic) condition game with HeroQuest rules if you wanted. (The reverse is not always true; decent comabt does actually reauire decent rules!)

Also, I think you just defeated your own point. "Real Man's" D&D is not going to be about emotional questions, it's going to be about burly individuals (of both genders) carrying large weapons and thumping people with them. Not to say their won't be any roleplaying, but it's not going to the main focus.



By the paradigm that the title comes from "Real Men, Real Roleplayers, Loonies and Munchkins" I think you definately fall into the second category. (Yes, by that paradigm, I do fall into the Munchkin category... But then again, I did officially score high enough one the test in the Munchkin's Guide to Power Gaming, so...)



1Okay, maaaybe not FATAL...

Samurai Jill
2010-07-10, 05:04 AM
So what you're saying is, it's perfectly acceptable to have a massive disparity in character power provided that combat is of minimal importance...
Combat can be an important feature: Again, Boromir, Aragorn, Frodo and Sam all get involved in killing orcs and fending off Nazgul. But the important question in the story is how they react to the poison wound and the temptation or corruption of their fellows by the Ring.

The point is that attaching a numerical indicator of overall power when power isn't terribly relevant is sending a contradictory message. There's no good reason for it. Why have levels- and thereby say they are important- if levels are NOT important?

You CAN play this way even when 'levels' are attached to this system, but it requires selectively ignoring what the rules are telling you. Why should the players be obliged to mentally filter out the bits that don't fit?

...Also, I think you just defeated your own point. "Real Man's" D&D is not going to be about emotional questions, it's going to be about burly individuals (of both genders) carrying large weapons and thumping people with them. Not to say their won't be any roleplaying, but it's not going to the main focus.
Again, I'm going to quote from Sorcerer and Sword:

We know Conan's a badass, but the point in "People of the Black Circle" is that he's going to decide about this woman he's attracted to- help her regain her political power or keep her as a partner? Because accomplishing both is impossible. We know Elric has this amazing demonic sword, but the point in Stormbringer is why he would defy the demon Arioch, who not only makes such power available but also, arguably, loves him. But that form of power and that form of love constitute slavery.
Sword-and-sorcery heroes are all about decisions.
There's a similar example of the Grey Mouser having to choose whether to kill this helpless sorceror who's being hounded by ghosts, or sacrifice the live of Fafhrd, his friend. These stories are all about emotional questions (hell, it's the thing that made the Conan Movie more-or-less entertaining.)