Campaign Descriptors to Run Away From Really Fast

[Alabenson]

When a DM describes what their campaign is like to you, what are a few things that you would consider to be red flags, i.e., indications that you should avoid the campaign as though they were playing FATAL.

A few of mine are as follows:
Large, overly restrictive ban lists, especially for reasons of "balance".
I can certainly understand banning a few books/Prcs/spells/etc. However, a highly restricted source list, especially if the DM says its to "balance the classes", tells me that either the DM may have control issues, or plays with potentially problematic players.

Campaign is described as low/no-magic.
There are certainly systems that can do low/no-magic worlds very well. D&D is not one of them.

DM wants us to use pregenerated characters.*
To me, this says that the DM isn't planning on running a collaborative game, but rather wants the PCs to act out a story that he (the DM) has already planned out.
*Obviously, I consider games run at cons to be an exception to this rule.

[Arbane]

This is going to be a heavy politics, high roleplaying game.
Two reasons for this one. The first is that this sort of game doesn't really interest me much. The second is that I keep hearing horror stories of people who DO make social-heavy characters only to find that most NPCs are social-fu-immune combat monsters who could kill them with their eyelids.

I've been working on this world for twenty years and ten campaigns!
Your characters will be insignificant plankton who will be grudgingly permitted to watch the actions of the IMPORTANT PEOPLE of the setting as long as you display the appropriate amount of awe and keep your grubby hands off of the scenery.

[Wyntonian]

I've been working on this world for twenty years and ten campaigns!
Your characters will be insignificant plankton who will be grudgingly permitted to watch the actions of the IMPORTANT PEOPLE of the setting as long as you display the appropriate amount of awe and keep your grubby hands off of the scenery.

I'm sorry, but I've never found this to be the case. While you may have had a bad experience or two, I find myself actually preferring a fully-developed world, and everyone whose worlds I've played in has been a really good DM who uses the world as a backdrop for the characters, and not the other way around.

Also, I'm a worldbuilder, so that kinda hits a nerve. We're not all like that.

[dsmiles]

This is going to be a High-Op game.
High-optimization games no longer appeal to me. There was a phase in my life where powerful characters mattered. That's no longer the case. I like to grow my characters based on their experiences, background, and life goals. Optimization is now a tertiary (at best) concern.

[ericgrau]

We're not all like that.
Ya twenty years and two campaigns would be more of a red flag, because few have actually been allowed to and/or wanted to play in it and the DM is probably heavily invested into not changing his setup he worked tirelessly on without input.

I was going to say a couple things but they managed to appear in the first posts. Must be common problems.

EDIT @ V: I will agree that "heavy politics" tends to mean "heavy railroading" whether it's supposed to be that or not. It can be done well, but it's hard.

[ngilop]

This is a prequal campaign so, you guys can just go wild and do whatever, you are going to 'win' anyways.

this sentance would have saved me 4 months of playing a game that I eventually walked away from. For me having a charatcer and knowing that there is no way I am going to die or even fail in what the overarching goal is, is very boring and extremely unfullfilling.

but that is just my playstyle, i know some people like the 'superhero' charatcer where they easily trounce all opposition and never have much, if anything to worry about.



This is going to be a heavy politics, high roleplaying game.
Two reasons for this one. The first is that this sort of game doesn't really interest me much. The second is that I keep hearing horror stories of people who DO make social-heavy characters only to find that most NPCs are social-fu-immune combat monsters who could kill them with their eyelids.

I've been working on this world for twenty years and ten campaigns!
Your characters will be insignificant plankton who will be grudgingly permitted to watch the actions of the IMPORTANT PEOPLE of the setting as long as you display the appropriate amount of awe and keep your grubby hands off of the scenery.

two points on this one.

First It wasn't really a heavy socail and RP based game if all npcs met were completely built around deadly combat, its not a campaign descreption as much as a lieing DM

Second I guess you also hate playing in published and/or officla campaign settings as well. the best games/campaigns ive ever played with are campaign worlds that are 20+ years old.

For instance Im playing as a bard in one right now that is 35-ish years old on a RP forum off site. Yeah so what if there are other important NPCs out there and that my character is not the greatest thing sinced sliced bread and baby got back? Its probably just a playstyle difference but I enjoy a world with an actual story and existance beyond my character and just becuase i am a player doesn;t mean that the universe needs to revolve around me and that my character be the single most aweosme focal point in all of everything. really how do you even play a charatcer that is the single most important, awesome, and stupendous thing in all of creation, especially when their be things liek Kings, dieties, ancient monsterous horros etc etc in existance?



in all it just sems like you happened upon a bad DM not so much that those particular campaigns were bad and running away from is warranted.

[Thiyr]

A few of mine are as follows:
Large, overly restrictive ban lists, especially for reasons of "balance".
I can certainly understand banning a few books/Prcs/spells/etc. However, a highly restricted source list, especially if the DM says its to "balance the classes", tells me that either the DM may have control issues, or plays with potentially problematic players.

Mostly, I'd just be concerned with what it is they feel is imbalanced more than anything. I mean, banning books you lack in dead tree form is fine, and banning, say, Core would be something plenty of people would say is the first step to being balanced.



DM wants us to use pregenerated characters.*
To me, this says that the DM isn't planning on running a collaborative game, but rather wants the PCs to act out a story that he (the DM) has already planned out.
*Obviously, I consider games run at cons to be an exception to this rule.

Other exceptions: If it's a new system/variant that's sufficiently different (if you're trying out, say, Legend or something), or if it's a one-shot and you won't have time for char-gen at the table.



Also, as far as old worlds go, I'm perfectly fine with them under the condition that the players are capable of doing things. We need not be the only notable thing to have occurred, but the players should have a chance to become at the very least somewhat notable. Otherwise, I find I actually really appreciate a lot of the little details that can come with a setting like that.

As far as myself:

High level/high power
This generally tells me either "Hey, I'm throwing things that are blatantly unfair unless you, the player, are prescient" or "I have no idea what it is that I am doing and honestly thing that all lvl 20 characters are the same". Just a bad idea either way, to be honest.

edit: to clarify compared to dsmiles, I'm not against high op, but specifically high power. I build characters well, but I have them make sense. But eventually that breaks down and doesn't work as well, and generally I find games that I've seen marketed as high level/power don't work well for that. Unless it's just an arena "go kill stuff" thing.

Crit Fail Tables
Because casualties should never be incurred from taking a swing at a training post.

Stealth oriented games with large groups
If a character is sneaking around, generally it's alone or with one other person. This takes attention from the DM. This means everyone else is doing little to nothing, table chatter will start, and not much will happen overall if it gets too distracting. This is not fun. If everyone is trying to sneak, things will slow to a snails pace. this is not fun. If you want to run a sneaking mission, keep player count low.

[Voyager_I]

"..oh, and this campaign will be using my half-assed rework of the magic system that makes playing a caster of any sort incredibly frustrating without addressing any of their core issues. Expect partial casters to be completely worthless, especially if they were already mediocre, as I haven't lessened the penalties for them in any way."

[Hirax]

Low magic, when it only means that there aren't many magic items and other spellcasters available. IE, don't play melee, play a caster.

[Siosilvar]

Large, overly restrictive ban lists, especially for reasons of "balance".

ToB banned for "balance". Now, I can certainly understand banning ToB on fluff reasons, despite the fact that it's incredibly easily refluffed to be not quite as wuxia/anime/weeaboo fightan magic/whatever you want to call it. I'm also okay with not caring about balance at all. But banning ToB for balance with mundane melee misses the even greater balance issues between mundane melee and spellcasters.

[Urpriest]

Large Groups

Sometimes a large group is necessary, such as in an (insufficiently nerdy) college setting where there are very few potential DMs. But in general, groups above eight or so are a recipe for boredom.

Mixing in other activities

The worst DM I have ever heard of once had an NPC deity challenge the players to Age of Mythology: The Board Game. That aside, generally if the group is sharing their attention between gaming and something else (unless that something else is relatively benign, like eating) then expect the game to degrade.

My nephew...

Stereotypically, the DM's girlfriend is always the recipient of bias. However, many DMs can DM games containing their girlfriend and have it come out alright. This is not true for nephews. DMs of the world: your nephew is not as smart or as good a gamer as you think he is. Don't bring your nephew to a game with adults. Just don't.

You're just the person to add X to my group!

Perhaps the DM tells you he's glad someone interested in roleplaying is finally joining. Perhaps he thinks your levelheaded temperament will cool down the loony players in the group. Perhaps he thinks that because you don't play complete sociopaths constantly you can help curtail the mercenary behavior of the other characters. Any of these is a sign that the group is not interested in what you are interested in, and further that the DM resents his group. Both of these are poison for fun gaming.

[IdleMuse]

"..oh, and this campaign will be using my half-assed rework of the magic system that makes playing a caster of any sort incredibly frustrating without addressing any of their core issues. Expect partial casters to be completely worthless, especially if they were already mediocre, as I haven't lessened the penalties for them in any way."

I was once pitched a game by a GM with the hosuerule Clerics are overpowered, so I've fixed them by removing the Domain granted power for each domain. Wtf?

Same GM... Limited selection of races: Gnomes, Lizardfolk, or... Kender.

[Engine]

Campaign is described as low/no-magic.
There are certainly systems that can do low/no-magic worlds very well. D&D is not one of them.


This. Oh, this.
I played in a Ravenloft campaign where my 10th level Ranger had a mithral breastplate, a +1 scimitar e a couple of hundred coins. Nothing more. It was a painful experience, especially with a Cleric, a Druid and a Wizard in the party.
Now when I hear those words I say lightning fast: "Dibs on the Wizard!". Now I have a lot less headaches.

[dsmiles]

Now when I hear those words I say lightning fast: "Dibs on the Wizard!". Now I have a lot less headaches.
Why would you have to call dibs? Can you not have more than one of any character class in the party?

[Urpriest]

Why would you have to call dibs? Can you not have more than one of any character class in the party?

Oh yeah, this:
You need to play a Cleric

A group that thinks that specific classes are required to be in every party. There must be a rogue to search for traps, there must be a cleric to heal, no other classes can do it. Stay away from these guys.

[onemorelurker]

I've been working on this world for twenty years and ten campaigns!
Your characters will be insignificant plankton who will be grudgingly permitted to watch the actions of the IMPORTANT PEOPLE of the setting as long as you display the appropriate amount of awe and keep your grubby hands off of the scenery.

For me, a bigger warning about this is This world is from a novel I'm writing!

[Engine]

Why would you have to call dibs? Can you not have more than one of any character class in the party?

It's not that I have to call dibs, but most of the times I don't play a class if there's already one PC with that class in the party unless I feel that I could have a distinct character, mechanically speaking. To me it's kind of boring to have my character perceived like "the other Wizard of the party".
(Or Cleric. Or something else)

[ericgrau]

Oh ya, a good sign of that is "you need a rogue for the traps"... and soon the only skills he uses are the ones to find traps. That's a red flag telling you "let someone else play the rogue" or "dip only one level of rogue for trapfinding b/c that's all you really need then do something completely different with your other levels."

[Lonely Tylenol]

I was once in a game that used the following:

I've been working on this world for twenty years and ten campaigns!

And I want to add the following to it, based on my experiences:

A. Concurrent campaign timelines, non-concurrent campaigns
I was once in that game world, and one of the things that irked me the most about it wasn't that the game had been run before--sometimes, that can actually add a new level of depth as the consequences of past actions play themselves out in new campaigns (think Pokémon Gold/Silver to Pokémon Red/Blue), but when campaign timelines run CONCURRENTLY, it's a recipe for disaster. Mind, this was also a world where we were railroaded from plot point to plot point with no real input into how things were going to go down, but basically, we ended up receiving a prophecy that the queen was going to die in a month--and there was nothing we could do about it. The queen was a week's travel away, but there were "more pressing matters" to attend to--such as the cashing of cheques two weeks away in the opposite direction. (Long-range teleportation was banned in this game. I know this for a fact; my first character concept was a plane-shifter/telekinetic wizard.) When I asked why this was so, I was told that, in a previous campaign in the same game world, the party had failed to prevent the queen's assassination, so her death was fixed in the timeline (even though it hadn't happened yet, and was completely preventable by the new party). It remained as an off-camera event. Nothing says "on the rails with no way off" like predestination and fate.

The "beta campaign"

I wasn't even aware of what this term actually meant until a few months into my first campaign (and it yet seems to be an isolated affair), so I'll educate those of you unfamiliar with the term (hopefully that is "most or all of you" on what it means: a "beta campaign" is a campaign that the DM has run before, from start to finish (or close), with the specific order of events already planned out from during (or even before) the "beta testers" ran it. In this case, it was particularly insidious; the two players from "beta campaign" were in our version of the game, and one of them was the de facto party leader, who made all the party's big decisions (and often chose our course). I'll bet you know where this is going! That's right: for the first seven levels, every game session in the campaign followed the exact same sequence of events as the "beta campaign". I don't even know what happened after that, because I quit at level 7, but I'm willing to bet it kept going on that vein. So I actually have to recant my first statement: Nothing says "on the rails with no way off" than sitting next to somebody who's already ridden the train to the last stop. If you hear the words "beta campaign" uttered within earshot, even from someone not related to your group, run fast and far.

Oh, and the "beta campaign" duo spoiled EVERYTHING. ALL OF THE THINGS.

That DM was also guilty of, from those listed, Large Groups (we got to 9, briefly, but I confess that I have no problem with this, as it was a player decision), You Need to Play a Cleric (I needed to play the wizard), Limited Selection of Races/Classes (everyone was a Human, with a PHB class... Except for one of the "beta campaigners", who got to pick a Scout for his class), and This World is From a Novel I'm Writing! (Self-explanatory).

From that game, I also want to add:

Unreasonable Race/Class Limitations
See "Banning ToB for Balance" and "Large, Overly Restrictive Ban Lists". This wasn't even a matter of legitimate balance concerns: when we had a new player (who wanted to play a shadow-themed illusionist) who we were helping with character building, he said "sorcerer". I suggested beguiler. The DM protested, saying in a past game he let someone play a doppelgänger beguiler and the class was so broken[/b] that he would never allow it in his campaign. I was a wizard 5/incantatar 1 with a DM-suggested home rule (which I was actively resisting, even as a relative newbie) that wizards don't need to prepare spells as long as they have their spellbook on hand (which you don't need to actually look through to find a spell).

Humble Villager
If you know you're beginning a campaign as a hick from a small village (and so is the rest of your party), and you're still playing the campaign anyway, then you obviously have no desire to play a character with a backstory or with existing character development from the start, and that's fine, I suppose, at least for some. But if the DM has told you where you've come from, and how you got there, then he's probably also going to be telling you where you're going. See every Japanese RPG trope, ever.

I, myself, am guilty of Large Groups (although it was a player decision, democratically decided, and not a DM decision, and my early difficulties with that are well-documented here), and, to a lesser extent, This World is From a Novel I'm Writing! (I can explain! The game started as a novel, until I came to the realization that that is a [i]terrible way to run a game, scrapped the novel idea and any characteristics of it that bled into the game world too much, like "plot lines", and continued to build the game and world without novelization. I have no regrets!).

If you're guilty of any of these, own up to it, because then you can at least explain yourself (if there's some justification) or get tips on how to avoid them. :smallsmile:

[dsmiles]

Humble Villager
If you know you're beginning a campaign as a hick from a small village (and so is the rest of your party), and you're still playing the campaign anyway, then you obviously have no desire to play a character with a backstory or with existing character development from the start, and that's fine, I suppose, at least for some. But if the DM has told you where you've come from, and how you got there, then he's probably also going to be telling you where you're going. See every Japanese RPG trope, ever.
I've played in one of these, once. Though the limitations were only that we all came from the same humble village, and all knew each other since childhood. Anything beyond that we were to come up with ourselves. (We ended up with the son of the blacksmith [rogue], a grumpy dwarf who knew our parents [paladin], the local magician's apprentice [sorcerer], a middle-aged hunter [ranger], and the half-orc raised by the local church [monk].)

[Heliomance]

Humble Villager
If you know you're beginning a campaign as a hick from a small village (and so is the rest of your party), and you're still playing the campaign anyway, then you obviously have no desire to play a character with a backstory or with existing character development from the start, and that's fine, I suppose, at least for some. But if the DM has told you where you've come from, and how you got there, then he's probably also going to be telling you where you're going. See every Japanese RPG trope, ever.

Not seeing what's wrong with starting as a hick from a village. Everyone needs to start somewhere. The campaign I'm running at the moment, I told the players they all needed to be from the same village, and they all needed to be the same race. The campaign demanded it - they weren't adventurers before the campaign began. But I have no desire to tell them where they're going - it's a very sandbox game, and I'm using it to teach me how to react and DM on the fly, responding to what the players do.

If you're interested, this is the campaign pitch I gave:
The darkness of the caves is all you've ever known, all there's ever been. All there is. Darkness, and toil, and the struggle to survive. Occasionally, very occasionally, people whisper of something known as "magic". Not that anyone pays any heed. Only a feebleminded babe could believe those tales. You remember an old lady who would tell you stories of such things. You haven't seen her for many years, now. You try to remember the last time you saw her. Probably about the time you repeated one of her tales to your parents. They cuffed you, and told you to pay no heed to such flights of fancy. The next time you wandered past her house, she wasn't there.

Ah well. Probably best to not give it too much thought. No, the idea of magic is even more fanciful than the children's tale about the Sky that was supposed to have stretched overhead once, blue and magnificent. Foolishness.

The darkness of the village is lit by torches, flickering and smoky. Most need refreshing every sleep. Some don't, though. They never go out. It's never occurred to you to wonder how they burn without fuel. It's just part of life.

Life is difficult. A constant struggle to get enough food. The village cultivates mushrooms that grow in the lightless caves. Some of them are eaten, but they taste foul. Most are fed to the pig-like creatures that serve as both beasts of burden and meat. Earthquakes are a terrible danger, as well. Even a small one can cause large rocks to fall from the roof.

Space isn't a problem, at least. The cavern systems are endless, as far as anyone can tell. Not that anyone strays too far from home. People that leave the circle of light don't always come back. There are things in the darkness, and most of them are hungry.

Now you've grown up some, you realise your parents were right. Well, you would if you ever thought about it. Life is hard enough. There's no room for stupid stories about magic. Doesn't help anything, pointless fantasies like that. No, you stopped thinking about even the idea of magic many years ago. It has no place in the real world.

You don't even notice as you turn down a dark tunnel, and a ball of light appears hovering behind you, lighting your way. Someone else does, though.

[ngilop]

Not seeing what's wrong with starting as a hick from a village. Everyone needs to start somewhere. The campaign I'm running at the moment, I told the players they all needed to be from the same village, and they all needed to be the same race. The campaign demanded it - they weren't adventurers before the campaign began. But I have no desire to tell them where they're going - it's a very sandbox game, and I'm using it to teach me how to react and DM on the fly, responding to what the players do.

If you're interested, this is the campaign pitch I gave:
[spoiler]snip cool sounding cmpaignspoiler]

See, lonley tylenol needs to say that that is his personal preference in playstyles please refer to my post above where I said
some people like the 'superhero' charatcer where they easily trounce all opposition and never have much, if anything to worry about.

some poeple actually like playing a charatcer like in the original dungoen siege where you are naught but a simple farmer but end up being teh savori fo the kingdom/world/universe. other like to be superman where pretty much nothing hurts them and they win everytime.

looks like myself and heliomance are in the former group, while lonely tylenol is in the latter.


I just want to stress that when it comes to things about playstyles please indicate that is what it is, much as I did in my own post. just beucase somebody like being Y does not mean that X is an atrocious thing and that everybody else shoudl never attempt it.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Not seeing what's wrong with starting as a hick from a village.

In and of itself, nothing, I suppose, but it came with the assumption that, because we were all originated from the same village, that we were naive, know-nothing country bumpkins--and would remain so forever (even after several months, in-game, of adventuring, complete with regular death and dismemberment, life-threatening experiences, the whole enchilada). THIS was often accompanied with "your character wouldn't do that", and... Well.

Basically, the DM told us that, as village folk, we had to play stupid--which is something my character wouldn't do. I should know, BECAUSE IT'S MY CHARACTER.

I guess this is also part of the same set of issues as "Pre-Generated", "You Need to Play a Cleric", and "Race/Class Restrictions" in my mind, because it fits under the same pitfall: the DM input overruling player preference. Now, I'm not saying that the DM has no say in this matter (I myself personally worked with every player on developing their character concepts and finding them a place in the world, if they needed one), but it absolutely MUST be voluntary, in my mind: if your player comes to you with Ramgar, Human Barbarian, Scourge of the Undead Hordes and Wielder of the Dreaded Silvershaft, and you tell him you already rolled up a gnome Paladin for him, and by the way here are your character development notes, then you'd better bet he's going to rebel (and this is a subset of that; what if your player's background is incompatible with your restrictions, but is otherwise interesting and fair?).


looks like myself and heliomance are in the former group, while lonely tylenol is in the latter.

That is such a remarkably unfair characterization that it's actually insulting, but moreover, it's also wrong.

I have absolutely nothing against playing the humble villager--and have myself done so on several occasions, from a farmhand surrounded by warriors and nobles to the streetrat who is trying to escape his ignoble background and break into the richie-rich lifestyle--and have begun nearly every campaign I've ever played at level 1 (the only ones I haven't were close to level 1; I've never played beyond level 10 outright, because I've never gotten that far), and frankly I prefer it that way.

What I HATE is being told what to do. I play D&D because it's NOT a JRPG, or an MMO. I play it because you can be emotive with your characters and bring them to life through an intricate process of development, of tragedy and of victory, as opposed to playing a cut-and-paste, funny-haired weirdo with an unnecessarily large sword who needs a tutorial for freakin' everything. I play D&D because the world is responsive, and even your enemies are thinking, feeling entities, not weaponized algorithms.

So basically, I suppose what that means is that I am more than happy to actually play a humble villager (and have built them and played them, time and time again), but if I am told my background fluff, and after several levels of adventuring, am still expected to have not deviated from that fluff (through something like, say, character development, for example), then the character becomes incredibly flat and one-dimensional. If I fight in two separate wars, and am still expected at the resolution of the second to say "golly, that sure was an exciting adventure! Why do people always want to hurt each other, Pluto?", as if nothing was learned in the years of training and months of adventuring in the interim, I will be discontent. If I am ever told "you can't do that, that's evil" in response to using charm person to gather information (again), I will rage quit, and I don't think I'm alone in that conclusion.

[JadePhoenix]

This is going to be a High-Op game.
High-optimization games no longer appeal to me. There was a phase in my life where powerful characters mattered. That's no longer the case. I like to grow my characters based on their experiences, background, and life goals. Optimization is now a tertiary (at best) concern.

This, so much this.

[ngilop]

In and of itself, nothing, I suppose, but it came with the assumption that, because we were all originated from the same village, that we were naive, know-nothing country bumpkins--and would remain so forever (even after several months, in-game, of adventuring, complete with regular death and dismemberment, life-threatening experiences, the whole enchilada). THIS was often accompanied with "your character wouldn't do that", and... Well.

Basically, the DM told us that, as village folk, we had to play stupid--which is something my character wouldn't do. I should know, BECAUSE IT'S MY CHARACTER.

I guess this is also part of the same set of issues as "Pre-Generated", "You Need to Play a Cleric", and "Race/Class Restrictions" in my mind, because it fits under the same pitfall: the DM input overruling player preference. Now, I'm not saying that the DM has no say in this matter (I myself personally worked with every player on developing their character concepts and finding them a place in the world, if they needed one), but it absolutely MUST be voluntary, in my mind: if your player comes to you with Ramgar, Human Barbarian, Scourge of the Undead Hordes and Wielder of the Dreaded Silvershaft, and you tell him you already rolled up a gnome Paladin for him, and by the way here are your character development notes, then you'd better bet he's going to rebel (and this is a subset of that; what if your player's background is incompatible with your restrictions, but is otherwise interesting and fair?).



That is such a remarkably unfair characterization that it's actually insulting, but moreover, it's also wrong.

I have absolutely nothing against playing the humble villager--and have myself done so on several occasions, from a farmhand surrounded by warriors and nobles to the streetrat who is trying to escape his ignoble background and break into the richie-rich lifestyle--and have begun nearly every campaign I've ever played at level 1 (the only ones I haven't were close to level 1; I've never played beyond level 10 outright, because I've never gotten that far), and frankly I prefer it that way.

What I HATE is being told what to do. I play D&D because it's NOT a JRPG, or an MMO. I play it because you can be emotive with your characters and bring them to life through an intricate process of development, of tragedy and of victory, as opposed to playing a cut-and-paste, funny-haired weirdo with an unnecessarily large sword who needs a tutorial for freakin' everything. I play D&D because the world is responsive, and even your enemies are thinking, feeling entities, not weaponized algorithms.

So basically, I suppose what that means is that I am more than happy to actually play a humble villager (and have built them and played them, time and time again), but if I am told my background fluff, and after several levels of adventuring, am still expected to have not deviated from that fluff (through something like, say, character development, for example), then the character becomes incredibly flat and one-dimensional. If I fight in two separate wars, and am still expected at the resolution of the second to say "golly, that sure was an exciting adventure! Why do people always want to hurt each other, Pluto?", as if nothing was learned in the years of training and months of adventuring in the interim, I will be discontent. If I am ever told "you can't do that, that's evil" in response to using charm person to gather information (again), I will rage quit, and I don't think I'm alone in that conclusion.

so, you didn't mean what you said in your original post about running away form the humble villager beginnings being a valid reason?

one shoudl write/say what they actually mean instead of writing/saying something that means something completely the opposite.

I apologize for insulting you.

[bloodtide]

Campaign is described as low/no-magic.
I run away fast from this one. I've never seen a good low magic D&D game. They are all horrible.

I've been working on this world for twenty years.....
I hate this one. Mostly as DM's that say it are all smug that they have had a imaginary campaign world longer then some players have been alive. And they want to be treated like a god or something.

Worse: is with 'old campaigns' like this a DM often falls in love with his world and will refuse to change anything or let anything be changed. So when the players try to do something like 'chop down the Standing Tree' the DM will jump up with tears in his eyes and say ''nope, you can't do it rocks fall on all of you. I made that tree in '79 at my grandma's house right before she passed away''.

And the even worse: Back in '88 the DM had a grand, spectacular adventure in Watertown with his group at the time. They all patted him on his back, stroked his ego and give him their firstborn kids. Now in 2012, the DM wants it all again. So he pulls out the Watertown adventure for a new group. but then the DM just gets more and more mad when the new group does not exactly follow in the foot steps of the old group. The Dm constantly has to change things 'um, no guys you go down East street' and endlessly complain when things don't go his way.

[Lonely Tylenol]

so, you lied and when you said in your original post about running away form teh humble villager beginnings being a valid reason?

What? No--I used "Humble Villager" to characterize it as part of a bigger problem, which is easy to recognize because of its close affiliation with every JRPG trope ever written, and that's being thrown into a situation where your backstory/archetype is set in stone by the DM (you are the "humble villager"), and going forward, you are expected to never deviate from the backstory/archetype... Which the DM set in stone (no matter what happens, you are always the "humble villager"). Imagine if Luke Skywalker was every bit as much of a naive youngster at the end of Return of the Jedi as he was at te beginning of A New Hope, or Frodo Baggins as much of a fresh-faced bumpkin at the end of Return of the Kings as he was in the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring... See where I'm going here? Your characters are not in stasis (especially if you don't want them to be).

If you're going to read every one of these literally, then "You Need to Play the Cleric" only applies to clerics--which it certainly does not.

Like I said, if you are fine with your DM determining some of your backstory and character exposition (or all, as is often the case for the "humble villager", because "I am a humble villager from the village of Humbleton" leaves little room for adventure and excitement, especially when your background needs to be homogenous enough to apply equally to everybody; this means that any background, and even quite a bit of the foreground, has to be applied directly by the DM to all the players, which is what makes the "humble villager" an ideal example of this pitfall), then that's fine. Some run contrary to this red flag, and actually run an open world, where player input actually matters, as Heliomance suggested of his game, and to them I say good for you. But I, personally, won't play a country bumpkin (or a Gnome Paladin) just because the DM told me to, and going forward, I won't be pigeonholed into being a country bumpkin in spite of development. I am happy and willing to start as Ged at level 1, but if I'm still Ged at level 10 (and not Sparrowhawk, as was my intention), then we have a problem.

To clarify (and summarize); I have no complaint with low-born characters, or low-level characters, or people that start off with no knowledge of the big picture. What I have a problem with is the DM telling you what you are, because it often means (as it has, in my experiences) that the DM is going to keep telling you who you are, and that's not fun.

I was hoping I wouldn't need to say all that, being that these have all been phone-posts, but whatever. Have I made my statements clear to everyone yet?


one shoudl write/say what they actually mean instead of writing/saying something that means something completely the opposite.

I said exactly what I meant. If you are fine with the DM telling you where you came from, that's great, but it also means the DM is more than likely going to tell you where you're going, and that is dangerous to anybody who likes developing their own characters, or making their own decisions, or playing the role of your choice. Since D&D is a role-playing game that, at its best, involves lots of character development and decision-making.

I also said (more than once, by the looks of things!) that these were based on my experiences, and the thread's original poster states that these are things you would consider to be red flags, so I also don't get where that came from. In any case, your mileage may vary.


I apologize for insulting you.

I'm sorry for the wall(s) of text. For what it's worth, this is pretty much my default option (even when posting from a phone!).

[houlio]

Basically, the DM told us that, as village folk, we had to play stupid--which is something my character wouldn't do. I should know, BECAUSE IT'S MY CHARACTER.

Gotta agree with this, even if I know nothing about the actual campaign world as a player, I think having the freedom to help further the process of defining the world is really awesome. I know from experience that as a DM, my players can come up with things I never would think of by myself, and it's really helpful for fleshing things out when you can use what they think of the world so directly. Basically, it's fun for players to have say in what goes in the setting, and it's easier on the DM.

I understand why being shoehorned into something can suck, I don't always want to play some ignorant farm-hand who doesn't understand how to pull his sword from its scabbard. Conversely, I don't always like playing mega-learned adventurer types either.

[Dr_S]

Not seeing what's wrong with starting as a hick from a village. Everyone needs to start somewhere. The campaign I'm running at the moment, I told the players they all needed to be from the same village, and they all needed to be the same race. The campaign demanded it - they weren't adventurers before the campaign began. But I have no desire to tell them where they're going - it's a very sandbox game, and I'm using it to teach me how to react and DM on the fly, responding to what the players do.

I agree with this, my group tends to play homebrew worlds, and so before the session starts no one really knows too much about the world to really develop their own stories. I definitely ask people ahead of time what kind of characters they want to play, so I can accommodate them as best as possible of course though.

[Seerow]

I hope you enjoy puzzles as much as I do!


Seriously, never again. These devolve quickly into wasting hours staring at a magical wall that has no justification for existing except blocking our way to get further into the dungeon, trying to figure out the answer to the riddle the DM put on it.



On a natural 1 you hit yourself

This rule actually led to some hilarity where an enemy with a particularly high AC wound up killing himself while the whole party whiffed at hitting him, but seriously this rule is so unrealistic and stupid I can't stand it.


I have a bunch of house rules, but I've developed them over years of playing and have never taken the time to write them all down somewhere

I played a campaign with a guy like this for a couple of years. The guy was a great story teller, but I would be REALLY stretching to say we ever played Dungeons and Dragons. Just for reference of how far out his rules were, your starting hit points in his campaign was something like all of your stats added up, multiplied by 10, with an extra bonus based on class. Rolling stats was roll 1d20, if it's a 20 roll a d6 and add it to the 20. After playing the game for years I'm still not quite sure how damage worked. Spells could be used a number of times per day equal to spell level. So a 1st level spell is only 1/day, while a 9th level spell is 9/day. These things just scratch the surface of the house rules that I became aware of through playing.

I asked the DM several time for a list of this stuff codified so I'd have a better idea of what to expect and be able to plan a little better, and each time was told it would take too much effort to write it all. While playing I noticed a lot of the rules seemed to fluctuate or change (possibly why I wasnt able to pin down how damage works), but any time he was confronted about it, his response would be "No this is the way it's always worked, you're just mistaken".

I could probably write a book on the idiosyncracies and frustrations from that campaign, it really was a brilliant example of how not to write a custom game system. But yes, since then any house rules I want to see ahead of time and in writing, before deciding if I want to join a game.

[Arbane]

Not seeing what's wrong with starting as a hick from a village. Everyone needs to start somewhere. The campaign I'm running at the moment, I told the players they all needed to be from the same village, and they all needed to be the same race. The campaign demanded it - they weren't adventurers before the campaign began. But I have no desire to tell them where they're going - it's a very sandbox game, and I'm using it to teach me how to react and DM on the fly, responding to what the players do.

If you're interested, this is the campaign pitch I gave:
The darkness of the caves is all you've ever known, all there's ever been. All there is. Darkness, and toil, and the struggle to survive. Occasionally, very occasionally, people whisper of something known as "magic". Not that anyone pays any heed. Only a feebleminded babe could believe those tales. You remember an old lady who would tell you stories of such things. You haven't seen her for many years, now. You try to remember the last time you saw her. Probably about the time you repeated one of her tales to your parents. They cuffed you, and told you to pay no heed to such flights of fancy. The next time you wandered past her house, she wasn't there.

(SNIP)


What immediately came to mind: "Digging tunnels, day after day. That's my job..." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=M_Y2DwQtZI4#t=175s)

And one DM I had did the 'you all have to start as humans, from the same village' thing. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that she asked us to come up with some details on what we wanted to do, our ambitions and a few relatives....and then had the town sacked by Drow who dragged us away for a year of torture and misery, which we only escaped thanks to NPCs, one of whom became her husband's character's stalker. :smalleek:

[Philistine]

Core Only
Especially when the reason given is "Because 3E was totally balanced before all the splatbook power creep."

Starting at Level One
Because nothing says "Fun" like spending a couple of hours working out a detailed background and behavioral profile for your character, only to be instagibbed by a longbow crit on the first attack of the surprise round of the first encounter of the game. You can still be little fish in a big pond, with lots of scope for advancement, by starting at level 3 or even 5 - without the absurdly excessive lethality of level 1 play.

And a big +1 to Critical Fumble Rules Are in Play, because what 3E really needs is more ways to make magic-users better than mundanes.

[ngilop]

What immediately came to mind: "Digging tunnels, day after day. That's my job..." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=M_Y2DwQtZI4#t=175s)

And one DM I had did the 'you all have to start as humans, from the same village' thing. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that she asked us to come up with some details on what we wanted to do, our ambitions and a few relatives....and then had the town sacked by Drow who dragged us away for a year of torture and misery, which we only escaped thanks to NPCs, one of whom became her husband's character's stalker. :smalleek:

so I just watched like 3 or 4 of those episodes and .. its like watching myself in anime form!!!! it like that the creators of that show stalked me for a couple of weeks and then created Kamina. .... sorry to get off topic byt thanks for showing me an anime that i might actually enjoy.

[Crasical]

I hope you enjoy puzzles as much as I do!


Seriously, never again. These devolve quickly into wasting hours staring at a magical wall that has no justification for existing except blocking our way to get further into the dungeon, trying to figure out the answer to the riddle the DM put on it.

I'm suddenly tempted to try and justify a riddle like that by having it lead to the lair of a Mind Flayer Gourmet. Only the smartest may pass, because only the most intelligent brains are delicious enough for his refined palate.

Also, RE: Humble Villagers/pregenerated backstory, I sometimes suspect that I have a serious problem with this. When I make my character, I almost always go into some level of detail about where they are from. This wouldn't be a problem, but I tend to include mentor figures or supporting organizations as well, either the Druidic guardians of my islander's village or the fortress-prison my reformation+discipline obsessed Inquisitor's sect controls, or a cult of frog-worshiping poisonous-bodied alchemists and assassins who's ancestors interbred with hezrou eons ago.

I always feel guilty about including these things, even though I don't honestly believe they will have much of an impact on the game at all. I already rules-lawyer and backseat-GM way too much, so adding these things feels like interfering with the setting, something someone on my side of the DM screen doesn't have much business doing. Penny Arcade mentioned it in one of their blogs, comparing it to the BDSM term 'Topping from the Bottom'.

[The-Mage-King]

What immediately came to mind: "Digging tunnels, day after day. That's my job..." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=M_Y2DwQtZI4#t=175s)


Same here. It just... sprung to mind when I saw that.

[Crasical]

so I just watched like 3 or 4 of those episodes and .. its like watching myself in anime form!!!! it like that the creators of that show stalked me for a couple of weeks and then created Kamina. .... sorry to get off topic byt thanks for showing me an anime that i might actually enjoy.

Careful there. Kamina is kind of a memetic badass. If you compare yourself to him too much, people will start thinking you have a big ego. :smallwink:

[ngilop]

Careful there. Kamina is kind of a memetic badass. If you compare yourself to him too much, people will start thinking you have a big ego. :smallwink:

thanks for calling me a badass. :biggrin:

and while i don't have an ego (well for most things that is everybody has a bit of an ego about something) i am 'annoyingly' optimistic as ive been told.

[Alefiend]

Starting at Level One
Because nothing says "Fun" like spending a couple of hours working out a detailed background and behavioral profile for your character, only to be instagibbed by a longbow crit on the first attack of the surprise round of the first encounter of the game. You can still be little fish in a big pond, with lots of scope for advancement, by starting at level 3 or even 5 - without the absurdly excessive lethality of level 1 play.

I respectfully disagree. What you describe is a failing of the GM, not of starting at level 1. There's a reason they invented screens for the GM to roll dice behind.

I've always preferred to grow my characters organically from their beginnings, rather than start at higher level.

[Lord_Gareth]

I respectfully disagree. What you describe is a failing of the GM, not of starting at level 1. There's a reason they invented screens for the GM to roll dice behind.

On the flip side, you can always just be honest about your play style with your players. Each and every one of my groups knows from the first session that I leave the dice where they fall; I'm not saving them, and I'm not saving the BBEG or major NPCs either. With that in mind, I still manage to get them to give me detailed and rich low-level characters, even knowing how lethal/swingy it is.

[Crasical]

I respectfully disagree. What you describe is a failing of the GM, not of starting at level 1. There's a reason they invented screens for the GM to roll dice behind.

I've always preferred to grow my characters organically from their beginnings, rather than start at higher level.

I've seen a few arguments for charop that include 'My concept is that my character is -competent-, I want to mechanically reflect that', paraphrased of course. In my games, I find 3-5 is about the point that my characters start feeling powerful in their own right, so if I intend my character to have already be a grizzled veteran who served in a war, be a priestess of their tribe, be a practitioner of an elegant but dangerous sword style... I'll avoid starting at first level. It is most certainly a personal preference, but I've started at first level often enough to prefer starting a little higher.
Like absolutely everything else on this list, it's a subjective matter, and 'A good DM can compensate' isn't really an issue. I imagine a truly spectacular DM could run a homebrew sci-fi game with everyone as plant-people, erotically charged, with his girlfriend, hand everyone premade characters and have it go off amazingly well.

This doesn't mean that I wouldn't see a lot of descriptors on that list as a warning sign.

[Seerow]

I'm suddenly tempted to try and justify a riddle like that by having it lead to the lair of a Mind Flayer Gourmet. Only the smartest may pass, because only the most intelligent brains are delicious enough for his refined palate.


Oh sure, it CAN be justified in some cases. But the case that turned me off to puzzles altogether, we found our way to a dungeon, where we find like 5 or 6 doors with riddles/puzzles on them, that need to have the answer written on them to open. After we opened them, the door basically vanished, never to return (so it was clearly placed there JUST to **** with us specifically. None of the riddles tied into the theme of the dungeon at all (which could have made sense, maybe), and I'm pretty sure the only intelligent creature we ran into in the dungeon wasn't a native inhabitant of it. As far as I was able to determine there was no in-game justification for these existing at all, the DM just felt it wasn't a proper dungeon without puzzles.

[bloodtide]

Like absolutely everything else on this list, it's a subjective matter, and 'A good DM can compensate' isn't really an issue. I imagine a truly spectacular DM could run a homebrew sci-fi game with everyone as plant-people, erotically charged, with his girlfriend, hand everyone premade characters and have it go off amazingly well.

This doesn't mean that I wouldn't see a lot of descriptors on that list as a warning sign.

It would be nice if sometimes they would be subjective....but that is not reality. When you see a Red Flag....well, it's red for a reason.

When you hear 'Gamefospeak' like Druids are awesome demigods, so I fixed them or My Houserules balance D&D, you already know what your getting.

[Ravens_cry]

My Little Pony LARPing using the FATAL system.
I am deeply afraid of what depraved brinkmanship with be offered to surpass this.

[Acanous]

I want a page-long Backstory, anything goes.
When the DM asks for a backstory, without telling you anything about the setting or imposing any restrictions, he's fishing for ideas. He's going to go through player backstories one after another, killing/kidnapping your relatives and railroading the rest of the party.
The villain won't have any motivation that would stand up to a saturday morning cartoon (Ok, except maybe Captain Planet) and it's likely you're all "Prophicied Heroes" or something. Anything to toss you all together.

Now, asking for a Backstory is fine, so long as the DM gives you some reasonable info to work with. "I want a backstory that places you in X town at Y time" for example, or "I want a backstory that integrates you into this published/known campaign setting" That's cool too!

It's the "Anything goes" that's the tipoff.

[Thiyr]

I find it odd that people always seem to bring up the "killed/kidnapped family" thing when talking about backstories. If it happens to every family of every character then I suppose it gets played out, but (and I suppose I should be thankful for this), it hasn't ever really happened to me. Or I should say, it's happened but in a way that tends to be enjoyable rather than frustrating. If I write a backstory (Protip: I will always write a backstory. Generally a page, maybe more.), I almost expect it to be tied in somehow. I will throw in hooks with the intent that they get used. And if they don't, well, that's okay too. But I put it there so the DM has an easy way to get my character, and me by association, invested in whatever they're doing.

(Sad it didn't get used, but it was so satisfying after a DM read a character's backstory, got to the point where the carcass of an animal matching the animal form of my character's lycanthropic mentor, having him point out "you know that they revert to their humanoid form when they die, right?" and just telling them "That's the point. But my character doesn't know that.")

[Ravens_cry]

@Acanous:
I don't think mining character back stories for ideas is a bad idea in and of itself. It can help integrate the characters into the game. Of course, it can also be done extraordinarily poorly, like some of the ways mentioned, but it can also work really well.
I agree that 'anything goes' can be a warning sign in many campaigns though.

[umbergod]

Noticing a lot of hate for low-magic campaigns. I don't know about you guys, but every campaign I played in that was low-magic, was also low caster. Meaning for every 1 caster class/prc level you had, you had to have 2 non caster levels. Otherwise a full cleric/wizard/sorcerer would mess things up. The 2:1 ratio didnt apply to rangers or paladins or the like that never got much in the way of casting, and I think it was a 1:1 ratio for bards. Basically never much beyond 4th lvl spells, and only at high levels

[Heatwizard]

Noticing a lot of hate for low-magic campaigns. I don't know about you guys, but every campaign I played in that was low-magic, was also low caster. Meaning for every 1 caster class/prc level you had, you had to have 2 non caster levels. Otherwise a full cleric/wizard/sorcerer would mess things up. The 2:1 ratio didnt apply to rangers or paladins or the like that never got much in the way of casting, and I think it was a 1:1 ratio for bards. Basically never much beyond 4th lvl spells, and only at high levels

The problem is that D&D is a high-magic game, and trying to force it into a low-magic situation makes it fall apart at the seams really hard. Slicing down on PC spell-power makes the problem worse.

[Tvtyrant]

The problem is that D&D is a high-magic game, and trying to force it into a low-magic situation makes it fall apart at the seams really hard. Slicing down on PC spell-power makes the problem worse.

I don't know where everyone comes up with this. The rest rules don't provide you with a lot of health, but if you're playing low magic/gritty then that is probably what you want. Moreover, almost all of the abuses come out of the high magic nature of the game and one of the most commonly used fixes is to keep people at a low level where magic isn't as powerful.

[TypoNinja]

Second I guess you also hate playing in published and/or officla campaign settings as well. the best games/campaigns ive ever played with are campaign worlds that are 20+ years old.

For instance Im playing as a bard in one right now that is 35-ish years old on a RP forum off site. Yeah so what if there are other important NPCs out there and that my character is not the greatest thing sinced sliced bread and baby got back? Its probably just a playstyle difference but I enjoy a world with an actual story and existance beyond my character and just becuase i am a player doesn;t mean that the universe needs to revolve around me and that my character be the single most aweosme focal point in all of everything. really how do you even play a charatcer that is the single most important, awesome, and stupendous thing in all of creation, especially when their be things liek Kings, dieties, ancient monsterous horros etc etc in existance?


I actually dislike Faerun as a campaign setting for this reason, you can never do anything in it spectacular, or rather, because of its nature the spectacular is commonplace.

With a world already populated by epic level characters, interventionist deities, and detailed political alliances there is no room to carve out a space for you in it. Because as soon as you become strong enough to threaten somebody else you'll just get stepped on by somebody with 10 times your power, or an entire nation, or a God who's agenda you might be upsetting. You are stuck taking part in somebody else's grand scheme, with no room to start your own.

Faerun is a great setting for just hackity slashy, but its not so good if the players want to actually impact the world before level 30.

[Novawurmson]

Core Only
Especially when the reason given is "Because 3E was totally balanced before all the splatbook power creep."


Bah; that's what I was going to say! Well, except for "low magic lol," which has been covered extensively.

If you don't have points in a skill, you shouldn't be able to use it.
Yes, that includes the Swim skill. I want my game to be realistic! This isn't some kind of fantasy game.

I don't want anyone playing a Bard because they're underpowered.
Monk? Yeah, that's a powerful class, go for it!

I'm ashamed to say that this one was me back when I first started DMing.

[Novawurmson]

I I imagine a truly spectacular DM could run a homebrew sci-fi game with everyone as plant-people, erotically charged, with his girlfriend, hand everyone premade characters and have it go off

THIS IS WHAT YOUR DECK HAS WROUGHT (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/6/28/).

[umbergod]

I don't know where everyone comes up with this. The rest rules don't provide you with a lot of health, but if you're playing low magic/gritty then that is probably what you want. Moreover, almost all of the abuses come out of the high magic nature of the game and one of the most commonly used fixes is to keep people at a low level where magic isn't as powerful.

This pretty much sums it up. I can't vouch for anyone else, but some of the best fantasy novels I read, were very low magic/gritty. The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie is a good example. There is basically only a handful of powerful casters in his novel setting, with the majority of them (basically everyone) not being casters. Maybe its just me, but I like games that don't include easy "I win" buttons, also known as full casters :P

I do enjoy campaigns without said restrictions, but sometimes a low-magic campaign is right up my alley. Makes you appreciate that +1 sword you found that much more

[nyarlathotep]

THIS IS WHAT YOUR DECK HAS WROUGHT (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/6/28/).

There are no bad campaign ideas only bad DMs.

There are no bad characters only bad players.

[Heliomance]

What immediately came to mind: "Digging tunnels, day after day. That's my job..." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=M_Y2DwQtZI4#t=175s)


Hehe... that was one of my sources of inspiration, yes.
Totally not planning on having the final boss be the plane of Mechanus transformed into a giant mech...

[Coidzor]

I respectfully disagree. What you describe is a failing of the GM, not of starting at level 1. There's a reason they invented screens for the GM to roll dice behind.

So... level 1 being a place that is hilariously lethal on a mechanical level isn't a problem because the DM can compensate for the problem of level 1 characters dying from a stiff breeze. Am I understanding you correctly here? :smallconfused:

Certainly sounds rather Oberonian. :/


My Little Pony LARPing using the FATAL system.
I am deeply afraid of what depraved brinkmanship with be offered to surpass this.

Please tell me you haven't seen this for real. Lie to me if necessary. :smalleek:

[nyarlathotep]

Please tell me you haven't seen this for real. Lie to me if necessary. :smalleek:

I hope that it is not only real, but that we can get a campaign log.

[Seerow]

I hope that it is not only real, but that we can get a campaign log.

But it was a LARP....

[Coidzor]

But it was a LARP....

And considering it's FATAL, video footage would probably be illegal...

[Amphetryon]

I Just Saw/Read This Awesome Story And Now I Want To Run A Campaign.The reasons this raises red flags for me should be obvious. "I've been workin' on the railroad, all the live long day. . . ."

[Pilo]

Well if no ones want to, i can be the DM : The guy will not prepare any scenario, will ask for you to choose the loot. Because just like everyone else, he do not want to master the game.

The campaign is based on this guy campaign who will play with us : The DM has fun in the past, but does not get all the clues and the former DM who is now a player will correct the DM everytime the mistake is a disavantage for him and use knowledge he get for being a DM but that his character should not know.

[Rejusu]

Starting at Level One

This, very much this. Even level two is somehow infinitely better than level one and you can still get the whole starting out feeling from a level two or three character without the same sense of being completely useless. I mean seriously a level one Druid has at most two level one spells and a handful of cantrips. Combat wise once they've cast their two spells all they're doing is sitting back and watching their animal companion fight.

I prefer to start around level 6, which means everyone has a character capable of pretty interesting stuff but hasn't quite got to the stage where they're stupendously powerful. I would never go below level 3 again if I could avoid it. If you're playing a class without bonus feats you only have one feat, and having only a single feat really kind of sucks.

You need to play a Cleric

Justified, but this should be decided by the party and not the DM. It also should never be class specific, and you should never force a player to change their character or play something they don't want to play. There's nothing wrong with telling a player that the party would benefit from someone who can fill a specific role though. It should be a suggestion, not an order.

Generally it's not so much "a cleric" as: Healer/Caster/Warrior/Skillmonkey that form the main roles a well balanced party should have. A party face is also useful but really anyone with a decent Charisma score can fill this role.

We have this to an extent in the game I'm starting soon. One player that was planning on being the caster dropped out and now our skillmonkey is thinking of rerolling caster. It's important to note that none of us actually asked him to or suggested he should, it's just that he himself believes that he needs to play a caster because the group needs one.

If we were actually going to enforce it though we've currently got two people filling the Warrior role and one of them should switch to caster. Preferably the other guy, as my Psychic Warrior is vastly superior to his incredibly useless CW Samurai. But we wouldn't tell him to reroll, though it's not as if he'd listen if we did. So instead we're trying to find another player to replace our caster and fill out the party.

[nyarlathotep]

And considering it's FATAL, video footage would probably be illegal...

My curiosity would probably land me in jail, but I would post a funny reaction video first.

[Philistine]

I respectfully disagree. What you describe is a failing of the GM, not of starting at level 1. There's a reason they invented screens for the GM to roll dice behind.

I've always preferred to grow my characters organically from their beginnings, rather than start at higher level.
I'm sorry, but if you consider playing by the rules to be a "failing," then I'm not sure you and I have enough common ground to profit from discussion. Because it is the rules, and not the GM, that make Level 1 so ridiculously lethal in 3E. For myself (and many others, I'm certain), it is not at all satisfying to "overcome" challenges by GM fiat - which is what you seem to be advocating.

Also, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "growing" characters "organically," or why you apparently think that's something you can't do starting from a baseline other than Level 1. But FYI, it sounds really really pretentious.


Noticing a lot of hate for low-magic campaigns. I don't know about you guys, but every campaign I played in that was low-magic, was also low caster. Meaning for every 1 caster class/prc level you had, you had to have 2 non caster levels. Otherwise a full cleric/wizard/sorcerer would mess things up. The 2:1 ratio didnt apply to rangers or paladins or the like that never got much in the way of casting, and I think it was a 1:1 ratio for bards. Basically never much beyond 4th lvl spells, and only at high levels
I don't think it's safe to assume that the houserules of your table are universal, or even especially widespread.

As others have said, D&D doesn't really lend itself to this style of play anyway - many higher-level opponents will have abilities such that you can't even engage them in a meaningful way without recourse to magic of your own, and even the ones which don't will rapidly out-scale mundane characters devoid of magical gear.

[rot42]

Game starts at 2ish, or maybe 2:30 - I am generally late.

Work and school and the occasional unavoidable obligation need to take precedence over gaming, but if the DM is not prioritizing the game it is likely to be disorganized and poorly run.

Everything you say at the table is in character. / Everybody is gabbing instead of paying attention to the other characters' actions.

The two ends of the involvedness spectrum. The first is mostly a personal preference: I think the game runs smoother when players can get rules clarifications or ask each other about plot points that their characters would remember. Or point out another PC has a better option or could move into a flanking position or something else that builds group cohesion without metagaming too seriously ("too seriously" of course needing to be individually determined). "Your character does not know about THAC0" is funny about once, and thereafter is annoying.

The second is a more serious warning sign, but one that unfortunately is probably not available until you actually get to a session. The line for "too much" table talk will vary from person to person and group to group, but the game breaks without one. D&D is a cooperative game, and players distracting each other instead of being involved in the game is a recipe for a generally frustrating experience. Either the game is boring or the players are rude, neither of which are likely to lead to fun.

[Ernir]

I have gathered enough of these for myself that I barely apply for PbPs any more. So many of them are just obviously headed towards disaster.

ToB banned for balance1, Multiple/Superlarge Groups2 and I'm new to PbPs, but I want to run one3 are probably my biggest red flags.

1Indicates a complete misunderstanding of the game's balance issues.
2To be fair, some people can handle it. It's just ridiculously rare. The worst part is that it gives me the feeling that the person involved has no idea how much work is actually involved.
3I'm sorry. I know it's possible to get it right the first time. I still get the image of someone seeing the ocean for the first time and jumping in head-first.

[Alefiend]

My Little Pony LARPing using the FATAL system.
I am deeply afraid of what depraved brinkmanship with be offered to surpass this.

Not a reason to run away really fast, so much as it is a case where homicide (of the GM) could be justifiable.

Though if I'm honest, I'd love to see somebody write a story about this. :smallamused:

[Amphetryon]

Starting at Level One

This, very much this. Even level two is somehow infinitely better than level one and you can still get the whole starting out feeling from a level two or three character without the same sense of being completely useless. I mean seriously a level one Druid has at most two level one spells and a handful of cantrips. Combat wise once they've cast their two spells all they're doing is sitting back and watching their animal companion fight.

I prefer to start around level 6, which means everyone has a character capable of pretty interesting stuff but hasn't quite got to the stage where they're stupendously powerful. I would never go below level 3 again if I could avoid it. If you're playing a class without bonus feats you only have one feat, and having only a single feat really kind of sucks.

You need to play a Cleric

Justified, but this should be decided by the party and not the DM. It also should never be class specific, and you should never force a player to change their character or play something they don't want to play. There's nothing wrong with telling a player that the party would benefit from someone who can fill a specific role though. It should be a suggestion, not an order.

Generally it's not so much "a cleric" as: Healer/Caster/Warrior/Skillmonkey that form the main roles a well balanced party should have. A party face is also useful but really anyone with a decent Charisma score can fill this role.

We have this to an extent in the game I'm starting soon. One player that was planning on being the caster dropped out and now our skillmonkey is thinking of rerolling caster. It's important to note that none of us actually asked him to or suggested he should, it's just that he himself believes that he needs to play a caster because the group needs one.

If we were actually going to enforce it though we've currently got two people filling the Warrior role and one of them should switch to caster. Preferably the other guy, as my Psychic Warrior is vastly superior to his incredibly useless CW Samurai. But we wouldn't tell him to reroll, though it's not as if he'd listen if we did. So instead we're trying to find another player to replace our caster and fill out the party.
To the first point, for me it's less that Starting At Level One is a problem of survivability, and more that it's a problem of getting the party together. I've been at too many tables where one or more of the players will fight tooth and nail against any variety of Handwavium that pushes brand new 1st level characters together, often resulting in PvP. I've not personally seen this problem if starting at an XP total greater than zero, which makes it easier to say the party all knew each other from the time they fell in the sewer and fought that giant rat, or whatever.

For the second, when I DM I try to couch the "everyone must play these roles" discussion in terms of "D&D is a team game that presumes you'll be able to handle the following roles within the party in some way; encounters will generally be smoothest when this presumption matches reality. You'll probably be happiest if you all either decide which roles within the party you're filling, or decide together that certain roles are going unfilled." Requiring X player to play Y class, or even fill Z role, should only even come up if a player is replacing a departed player with an ongoing group, IMO.

[DrDeth]

Low magic- Yes, can be very bad. Generally means the DM wants complete control, and can’t have it if the PC’s have too many toys. Mind you a “no Olde Magik Shoppe” campaign is just fine.

Pre-gens. Very, very bad except a playtest game.

Ban BoNS/ToB for “balance”- just plain silly.

Critical Fumbles. Ok, already D&D has a large power discrepancy between spellcasters and warriors- and you want to make it WORSE?!?

Super-DMPC= Run away fast!

Level One is fine. As long as L2 come very quickly. Let us get to the “sweet spot” around 4-8 fast, then linger there.

[nyarlathotep]

In general the DMs who want to start at level 1 seem like they would be better served by running an E6 game in total or a different game all together than D&D.

[bloodtide]

Noticing a lot of hate for low-magic campaigns. I don't know about you guys, but every campaign I played in that was low-magic, was also low caster. Meaning for every 1 caster class/prc level you had, you had to have 2 non caster levels. Otherwise a full cleric/wizard/sorcerer would mess things up. The 2:1 ratio didnt apply to rangers or paladins or the like that never got much in the way of casting, and I think it was a 1:1 ratio for bards. Basically never much beyond 4th lvl spells, and only at high levels

I hate low magic D&D games in general, but I've found that most games suffer from a couple common problems:

*When the DM says 'low magic', he is just talking about the player's characters. The rest of the world is full of magic.

*When the DM says 'low magic', he wants to have very detailed like reality world. For example he wants to take up twenty minutes of game time with the characters just building a campfire for the night, and another twenty minutes catching some food and another twenty minutes cooking it and..

*The DM hates magic, even just 'low' magic. So when the very houseruled and nearly useless wizard hits the guard with his single magic missile, the DM will still spot rule that 'oh your magic missile bounces off his armor and does no damage'.

*When the DM says 'low magic', he means to say 'my game is a railroad with no magic detours'. With 'low magic' the DM can force LotR like quests on the players: To break the curse you need to get the Drink of Omens and only Fodi the once and only wizard in the whole world knows about it....and the only way to his tower is to walk through the Swamp of Doom!

[navar100]

Low Magic

There are two forms:

1) Banhammer on wizards, clerics, sorcerers, etc.: This means the DM hates his players being "powerful". Either he can't handle the power or revels in his power of being the DM. Only NPCs get to do amazing things. Only NPCs can have Poof! Stuff happens. The DM can do whatever he wants. He's the DM. He's your Master; bow down to his Awesomeness.

2) Spellcasters are allowed as normal: This means the DM hates his players having stuff. Players will not have magic items. They will be poor. They have limited options on what to do, not specifically because of the lack of items but for the same reason. Choo choo! The players can only do what the DM wants them to do. By not giving the party stuff, the players learn their welfare is provided by his Benevolence. He's the DM. He's your Master; bow down to his Awesomeness.

(Insert character type) are persecuted/treated as pariahs/hunted:

The DM will not admit he hates (insert character type). He pretends to be magnanimous in allowing a player to have such a character instead of outright banning it, but the truth is he is banning it. He really doesn't want players to play (insert character type).

My campaign stresses roleplaying. We have sessions where no dice are rolled.

In other words: Stormwind Fallacy. Another sign of hating player characters be powerful, but anyone who enjoys the mechanics of the game are automatically munchkins in their eyes. If your character is very competent in combat, the DM hates you. Personally I like these type of game sessions. It is nice to break the anxiety inherent in combat. It is fun to roleplay, and it's cool to get things done in the gameworld. It's the stressing of having lots of these that's the red flag. I don't want them for every or most game sessions.

This is an Evil campaign

The DM and players want to carry out their own personal fetish fantasies. This is not a game. It's mental master something.

[Lonely Tylenol]

In general the DMs who want to start at level 1 seem like they would be better served by running an E6 game in total or a different game all together than D&D.

I've been meaning to ask about this. I've seen all this hate about "Level One" and "Low Magic", most of which I understand, but I run an E6 game (and "Low Magic" just means, to me, that full casters progress as normal to level 6, but beyond those limitations, fourth-level spells MAY stagger in small quantities, and fifth-level spells are beyond the scope of potential for any one caster; basically, your typical E6 game). What are your thoughts on "Level One" and "Low Magic" (being the lack of high-level spells in the world, not low magic ON TOP of E6) in the context of E6? Or is E6 itself taboo in your minds?

[nyarlathotep]

E6 is awesome for the type of game it is meant to support. Additionally low magic and level 1 are not bad in and of themselves, but if the DM is stressing them they tend to send up warning signs. Hell even DMPCs can be good, but they usually aren't and thus they are warned against.

[Dr_S]

E6 is awesome for the type of game it is meant to support. Additionally low magic and level 1 are not bad in and of themselves, but if the DM is stressing them they tend to send up warning signs. Hell even DMPCs can be good, but they usually aren't and thus they are warned against.


Why is a DM who starts campaigns at level 1 a warning sign other than you don't like to run level 1 games?

[Absol197]

(Insert character type) are persecuted/treated as pariahs/hunted:

The DM will not admit he hates (insert character type). He pretends to be magnanimous in allowing a player to have such a character instead of outright banning it, but the truth is he is banning it. He really doesn't want players to play (insert character type).

I sort of disagree with this. I don't care what kind of character my players play (in fact, my group seems to have the opposite problem from what appearfs to be the norm; the martial characters are the ones who are too effective, and no one wants to play casters), but I have created worlds where the "pariah sorcerer" concept is in use. Not to limit the player's choices, but because it makes for an interesting world. Also, I think the "hunted character" concept is a fun one to play around with.


This is an Evil campaign

The DM and players want to carry out their own personal fetish fantasies. This is not a game. It's mental master something.

This one I agree with. I've never run or played in an evil campaign that went well. Not because of the, uh, fantasies idea you put forth, but because, when told that they can play evil, the players come up with concepts that are completely incapable of working together. Evil characters have trouble working together normally, because they can't trust each other, but when everyone's character is a selfish bastard who is after something different, it makes it hard to see why the characters are working together in the first place, and keep them working together for long.

[nyarlathotep]

I could see some evil campaigns working but they are usually like the Soviet campaign from Red Alert evil or Skeletor evil.

[JoeYounger]

Why is a DM who starts campaigns at level 1 a warning sign other than you don't like to run level 1 games?



Because the game is less balanced at level one than it is at level 20.

For example, a level one gnome sorc can colorspray 10 level one pcs. Well go with point buy to get an 18 cha, gnome makes it 20, +1 dc for gnome and +1 dc for spell focus illusion, that's a dc 18 will save at level one or almost certain death for all 10 of the other PCs.

Also, the lethality is stupid. I just spent seriously close to 6 hours refining a character, planned out to max level, and working to come up with a fun back story, and in our second combat I was grappled by a scorpion and killed the next round due to a crit. It's so frustrating to be killed like that and lose all of that work. My dm let me just clone the pc and reintroduce him to the party, but that feels like cheating now.

[Terazul]

The Low Magic thing gets alot of flak because 3.5 encounters are designed with the characters having access to magic in mind. I've seen far too many "low magic" games in which that means the characters are starved for level-appropriate equipment, and I'm not getting so much as a +1 weapon until level 12 (so I could even TRY to hit something incorporeal). Furthermore, when it comes to casters and low magic it usually either means that:

A) Casting is allowed and not messed with, but maybe only one for the party. This means that the martial characters fall even further behind because they're far more gear dependent, and casty dudes will be fine because hey! Spells!

B) Casting is allowed but it's been made so aggravating/ineffective that it effectively doesn't function (for PCs) which kills an entire subset of possible character concepts, and also seems kind of passive aggressive (you can try but I'll just make it not fun).

C) No casting! Nothing resembling casting at all ever. So you've basically got a couple of core martial characters, and every time I've seen this enacted, things like ToB and Incarnum are also banned, so you've basically got a party that's only got the vanilla martial characters. Which are gear dependent. But they aren't getting gear. Fun!

So there's that. Also, in my experience, more often than not I see it done in the name of either "balance" (hilariously resulting in scenario A), just like when someone knee-jerk bans ToB or Psionics. It's easy enough to take care of the problem causers, rather than sledgehammering the whole system. OR they're doing it for the sake of "realism", which is a whole 'nother cup of tea, in that 3.5 isn't designed for that sort of game either. They essentially both fall into "maybe you should look into another system" category if you want to run that kind of game. Basically, unless you know otherwise, it implies the person has no concept of balance with regards to 3.5, and means that if you understand it better than them, there may be some problems going down the road. "There's anti-magic fields everywhere" "what".

I admittedly also have a problem with the level 1 thing, but that's more personal taste because I find it boring. I occasionally enjoy the "from zero to hero" stories where you're basically nobody, but the lethality issues at level 1, combined with the lack of options your character tends to have just bug me. With the exception of ToB and many of the later releases, characters either tend to have either something reasonably neat/powerful and character defining, but they can only do it once/twice in a day (Spells/Rage/Bardic Music/etc), or something always on/unlimited use, but only works in a very limited scenario (Favored Enemy/Sneak Attack/etc). And it's usually only one thing, so any combat encounters feel like they're just greataxe tag to me, and any social or skill based challenges really don't show because everyone's still working with a fairly small pool of points.

Because of this, I generally enjoy starting in the 4-6 range. Aside from being a bit more durable thanks to HD, most characters now have at least 1-3 feats in their repertoire, more time (and points) to hone their skills so that their fortes actually show, and a couple class features to back up whatever concept they're trying to play, with many getting ready to enter their first specialized prestige class. It's around then that I really start to feel like I'm in a true "party" where everyone has they're own thing going on because they've got enough spells/maneuvers/invocations/soulmelds/power points or whatever to cut loose or show off, and enough of their feat and skill choices to be iconic in their own particular style.

But yeah. That's my take on the Low Magic/Level 1 thing. It might work for your games, but if I was going to be working with a new GM, I would definitely either have a long talk to him if I saw these on his list, or I'd simply cut my losses and bail early. I honestly think everyone should remember that this entire thread is subjective to one's preferred playstyle. Don't take it personally if someone doesn't care for the type of game you like.

[Philistine]

I've been meaning to ask about this. I've seen all this hate about "Level One" and "Low Magic", most of which I understand, but I run an E6 game (and "Low Magic" just means, to me, that full casters progress as normal to level 6, but beyond those limitations, fourth-level spells MAY stagger in small quantities, and fifth-level spells are beyond the scope of potential for any one caster; basically, your typical E6 game). What are your thoughts on "Level One" and "Low Magic" (being the lack of high-level spells in the world, not low magic ON TOP of E6) in the context of E6? Or is E6 itself taboo in your minds?
There's a world of difference between Low Level and Low [/i]Magic[/i]. Unless you're making significant additional changes to the game, E6 is the former but not the latter. Eberron is a good example of a low-level setting that is nevertheless high-magic.

Level 1 is still ridiculous, though. The example I gave when I brought the subject up? That was taken from an actual game: after creating several paragraphs of detailed backstory, then spending more time weaving that together with the other PCs, the party Rogue ate a longbow crit in the surprise round of the first encounter. Ker-splat. That left the party with a hole in our collective skill-set and (because we were "friends and neighbors" rather than "an adventuring company") a real problem trying to fill that hole in a way that made sense IC.

And it's a Red Flag because most of the time, it's a sign that the DM doesn't really understand the rules (or care to, often enough). Either way, the game the DM wants to run is likely going to be a poor fit for a rules-heavy system like 3E.

[Averis Vol]

This is going to be a low magic campaign
I am guilty of this one, but i can explain. my group has a tendency to play very high magic games, so even the melee characters are some weird gishy combination. so i decided, not through hate of magic or wanting to control the campaign, to have a change of pace and set the guidelines for the campaign as such:
"you are citizens of Handrel, you don't have to have lived there your whole life, but you do have to be there long enough to become a citizen, because being one means you are are drafted into the city militia if the king is ever to send out a call to arms. no casters what so ever, you can still play a paladin or a bard but you lose the spells. you can keep the abilities, like inspire courage or lay on hands or what have you. you must have a role in the town, you cant just be jack the murder hobo living in the sewers, so choose a profession and even if it isn't a class skill add it to your list and maybe a few other skills that would fit, like diplomacy if you want to be a merchant, or gather information and sense motive if your a guard. next, you start at level two, this is to symbolise that you are a bit more spectacular then most people, once you give me your back story i will give you a flaw based on it, or you can make your own. it doesn't give you a feat as i don't see why having an imperfection gives you any special ability. now in those parameters, build a character.

now, when i made this i told them magic did exist, it was just a little more low brow, you can still acquire magic weapons but not every town will have your flaming bastard sword you really really wanted, items from obscure books were going to be from obscure places. i wanted it to be a gritty game with only a little healing besides resting. i made a point to the heal skill, it can now be used to stabilize an injured limb ( i used a fallout like limb damage system, each limb has 1/6 of your HP and once that number is depleted, the limb causes a negative effect, nothing game ending but just enough to show that you don't make it out of every fight without a problem to fix ) and survival could be used to find stuff in the wild to aid the healing process.

and we're six missions into this new campaign and surprisingly my groups loving the switch from high magic.

now the one that irks me somethin fierce.

this campaign has a bunch of my characters as NPC's!

god i hate this, the person puts all his characters that he builds to be power houses in the game so we get forced into obeying them or falling into their shadow while they do everything. and when we do try to fight them we get stomped regardless of what we do because the dm cant stand to see his babies get hurt or beat.

[dsmiles]

Level 1 is still ridiculous, though. The example I gave when I brought the subject up? That was taken from an actual game: after creating several paragraphs of detailed backstory, then spending more time weaving that together with the other PCs, the party Rogue ate a longbow crit in the surprise round of the first encounter. Ker-splat. That left the party with a hole in our collective skill-set and (because we were "friends and neighbors" rather than "an adventuring company") a real problem trying to fill that hole in a way that made sense IC.Meh. I love low-level games. I really hate starting above level one. I don't have the chance to really grow my character based on his/her in-game experiences, if we start at level 4 with no in-game experiences.

[Coidzor]

^: Unless this means that the game will consequently be X sessions shorter as a result, which is not a given, your statement is still fallacious, as you should have just as much opportunity to have him react to the campaign as a 1st level character.
I've been meaning to ask about this. I've seen all this hate about "Level One" and "Low Magic", most of which I understand, but I run an E6 game (and "Low Magic" just means, to me, that full casters progress as normal to level 6, but beyond those limitations, fourth-level spells MAY stagger in small quantities, and fifth-level spells are beyond the scope of potential for any one caster; basically, your typical E6 game). What are your thoughts on "Level One" and "Low Magic" (being the lack of high-level spells in the world, not low magic ON TOP of E6) in the context of E6? Or is E6 itself taboo in your minds?

Unless you're doing something like taking the obsession with "CL requirements" to absurd lengths, E6 ≠ "Low Magic" as it comes up in common parlance.

Level 1 games are still an exercise in raw tedium, but I don't see them as something to run away from really fast so much as impetus to make an attempt at convincing the DM to either use a higher HP schema houserule or just start at 2nd or 3rd level.

And if they have a stick up their butt about that, they're [string of unflattering terms] and not worth the time.

[Rejusu]

Meh. I love low-level games. I really hate starting above level one. I don't have the chance to really grow my character based on his/her in-game experiences, if we start at level 4 with no in-game experiences.

You do realise that growing your character from level 4 isn't much different from growing it from level 1? Maybe if you started at level 20 it'd be hard to figure out how your character got there. But anything below level 10 is easy to account for. The difference between starting at level 1 and level 4 in terms of character development is pretty negligible especially.

To be honest it's really just level 1 that's the problem. Level 2 or 3 (3 is the best lowest start point in my opinion purely because of the second feat) is a much better starting point.

[Dr_S]

Because the game is less balanced at level one than it is at level 20.

For example, a level one gnome sorc can colorspray 10 level one pcs. Well go with point buy to get an 18 cha, gnome makes it 20, +1 dc for gnome and +1 dc for spell focus illusion, that's a dc 18 will save at level one or almost certain death for all 10 of the other PCs.

Also, the lethality is stupid. I just spent seriously close to 6 hours refining a character, planned out to max level, and working to come up with a fun back story, and in our second combat I was grappled by a scorpion and killed the next round due to a crit. It's so frustrating to be killed like that and lose all of that work. My dm let me just clone the pc and reintroduce him to the party, but that feels like cheating now.

your sorcerer scenario is a bit deceptive, in that 1 color spray is only a 15' cone so you're hitting at most 6 or 7 people and only if they're arranged in exactly a 15' cone directly in front of the sorcerer. Not only that but you aren't describing a CR 1 encounter because the DMG says to add 1 to the CR and you're giving your encounter full point buy which is going to be better than the elite array, then, a level 1 sorcerer has the same health problems as a PC (in fact more so than anything with melee) and so if he even misses 1 PC he's in a situation where he most likely won't survive and color spray isn't an instant kill so as long as the party wins, there would be no deaths.

Your scorpion scenario sounds unfortunate but atypical, but brings up I think what is the biggest difference in our mindsets. I don't care about my character's back story at all. If he was a prolific hunter and hero prior to the campaign, I can't take credit for any of those deeds (nor would I want to) it's what they accomplish while I'm at the helm that I care about. (or in case of an epilogue or time jump, things that my actions helped bring about) I prefer my characters to be a blank slate as much as possible, and I think most of my group does as well. Again we generally play homebrew settings so we want to learn about the world before we go deciding how we want our characters to interact with it, and that's what those low levels help us do.

[dsmiles]

You do realise that growing your character from level 4 isn't much different from growing it from level 1?It is when your campaigns don't generally last past level 10. That's at least 8-12 more sessions of gaming.

[Coidzor]

It is when your campaigns don't generally last past level 10. That's at least 8-12 more sessions of gaming.

You guys never learned how to compensate, eh? That's unfortunate.

[dsmiles]

You guys never learned how to compensate, eh? That's unfortunate.Compensate? For what? I'm military; long-term campaigns are unfortunately few and far between when people move every year or two.

[Dusk Eclipse]

This game will be roleplay focused, so don't optimize
HELLO STORMWIND!!! :smallsigh: I can't really see why wanting to optimize a character is detrimental to roleplaying, I just can't. True I am more mechanical oriented player; but that doesn't mean I will only focus on the mechanics of my character.

Low level and/or low magic are also a red flag for me; but that is mostly due personal prefference and the fact that I spent about 4 or 5 years of my 7 year gaming carreer without ever going higher than level 10 (and now I don't even play D&D even more :smallsigh:)

[Hiro Protagonest]

If I ever run low magic, I'll be coming up with a point system where you can buy abilities with points in place of using GP to buy magic items. Abilities usually done by magic items, like saving throw and resistance bonuses, or a form of limited flight (worse than the flight items, but also costs less points), as well as attack, damage, and AC bonuses. In low but not no magic, you can get magic items, but they're worth double or triple the listed cost, and cost half of the new price to make, as well as adjusting the XP costs appropriately.

Anyway, banning ToB for balance would be my excuse to build a GOD wizard and turn the fighter into Beowulf with flight, and the rogue into Drizzt with sneak attack and flight If the DM complains that the fighter and rogue are overpowered, that'll tell me he really doesn't understand the system. If he complains I'm overpowered, I'll lay off and make a weaksauce blaster wizard. Even the Orb spells aren't that powerful if you don't build a Conjurer, in which case you're just using them for blasting to round out your arsenal, or use reducded level metamagics, which also make Fireball powerful.

[Lonely Tylenol]

There's a world of difference between Low Level and Low [/i]Magic[/i]. Unless you're making significant additional changes to the game, E6 is the former but not the latter. Eberron is a good example of a low-level setting that is nevertheless high-magic.

The only additional restriction is that any item that can't be made with the above guidelines (that is to say, 6th-level spellcasting and third-level spells for normal magic users, or 8th-level spellcasting and fourth-level spells for artificers) can't be made in-game, and any items that do exist outside of those boundaries are artifacts.


Level 1 is still ridiculous, though. The example I gave when I brought the subject up? That was taken from an actual game: after creating several paragraphs of detailed backstory, then spending more time weaving that together with the other PCs, the party Rogue ate a longbow crit in the surprise round of the first encounter. Ker-splat. That left the party with a hole in our collective skill-set and (because we were "friends and neighbors" rather than "an adventuring company") a real problem trying to fill that hole in a way that made sense IC.

And it's a Red Flag because most of the time, it's a sign that the DM doesn't really understand the rules (or care to, often enough). Either way, the game the DM wants to run is likely going to be a poor fit for a rules-heavy system like 3E.

That sounds like something that can be worked around, though. I agree that unlucky crits suck and they can undo hours of work (see above), and if you're going to start at level 1, the party should only remain level 1 briefly, and you should approach it with extreme caution if you're going to do things by the books, such as only using weapons like x2 crits, or Small-sized creatures (whose damage increments are one smaller), or just using creatures with light and one-handed weapons, or something to that effect... OK, yeah, I can see the problem. Level 1 can be managed intelligently, but it also needs to be managed intelligently.


Unless you're doing something like taking the obsession with "CL requirements" to absurd lengths, E6 ≠ "Low Magic" as it comes up in common parlance.

"absurd lengths" needs to be defined here. Part of the point of E6 is that 20th-level artifacts don't exist in the world, and even CL 10 items (such as a sword that produces a 10th-level fireball effect) marginalizes the importance of having class levels.

So for those that object to this notion: What constitutes "absurd lengths" for such limitations (within the context of E6)? Does the description at the top of my post (items requiring 5th-level spells or higher, or a CL of 9 or higher, are restricted or artifact-level) constitute as "absurd lengths"? Or are we talking beyond that point?

(NOTE: This is a point of contention within E6 players and DMs, so there really isn't a correct answer here; it's been talked to death within the E6 community, even within my short tenure, but I'd kinda like to see what people think outside of it, too.)

[Coidzor]

So for those that object to this notion: What constitutes "absurd lengths" for such limitations (within the context of E6)?

Not even being able to get a measly +2 stat item. That's been my biggest source of annoyance with die-hard E6 fans who try to get other people to do it and then won't budge, ever, about those items, like their egos depend upon them being banned by anyone and everyone who does anything similar to E6.

[Arbane]

If I ever run low magic, I'll be coming up with a point system where you can buy abilities with points in place of using GP to buy magic items.

Like this? (http://www.greenronin.com/store/product/grr2523e.html)

[Lonely Tylenol]

Not even being able to get a measly +2 stat item. That's been my biggest source of annoyance with die-hard E6 fans who try to get other people to do it and then won't budge, ever, about those items, like their egos depend upon them being banned by anyone and everyone who does anything similar to E6.

OK, I can get that: periapt of wisdom and its counterparts are kind of iconic items, and it's hard to think of a game without them. They can also be made by a 6th-level artificer, even with a hard cap (so I see no reason why you would not be able to even make one, unless your DM blanket-bans Eberron, or targets Artificers, which is... Well).

[Dr_S]

70% of all population centers are considered a small town or smaller.
Based on the DMG's community modifiers (small town = 0) a level 4 character will on average be the strongest character of their class in any population center, those that aren't will typically be the 2nd strongest.

(max fighter or rogue is lvl 8 in a small town, is basically the only time that level 4 PC won't be the first or second strongest of a given class in a town of less than 2000 people, and they'll be tied with the 2 level 4's that lvl 8 generates)

So I think there is a difference between level 1 and 4 in terms of growth, because by level 4 a person of your skill should have considerable influence on most places they visit simply by virtue of being amongst the strongest of their class. Character growth isn't just about power, having that much influence outside of an urban setting means you're going to be calling the shots right out of the gate in a lot of places you go. Since my group seems to have a similar wave length (we like our level 19 death matches, occasionally but generally we're of a like mind about what kind of campaigns are fun) I think that we as players like to EARN that influence. At level 1 you're about average, perhaps a little stronger as a PC class level is usually greater than or equal to 2 NPC class levels and the sheer number of level 1 commoners is considerable. I guess you're more the median, but when talking about people's abilities compared to statistics (life expectancy, IQ, etc.) we tend to use average and median interchangeably. Each level or so you increase (the math gets fuzzy and I did it in another thread but was calculating something else, so this is an approximation) each level you increase you half how common someone of your power is... so that at level 1, 1:2 people are as strong or stronger, by level 4 1:16 which makes you in the top 95 percentile by level 10 there are like 10-50 people in a metropolitan area and surrounding population centers who compete with you in power and influence.

I didn't mean to get ranty, this wasn't personal I was up late last night and despite hating any statistics class I've ever taken I seem to like using statistical analysis of this particular DMG chapter when I'm discussing this game. I don't know why, I obviously accept that other people have differing opinions of me as my best friend is a "play video games on easy until I learn the controls" type where I'm a "trial by fire, any setting below the hardest doesn't exist" type. I'm just trying to understand the different mindset and I think a lot of it comes down to different priorities when we assess whether a campaign was fun or not.

[navar100]

I sort of disagree with this. I don't care what kind of character my players play (in fact, my group seems to have the opposite problem from what appearfs to be the norm; the martial characters are the ones who are too effective, and no one wants to play casters), but I have created worlds where the "pariah sorcerer" concept is in use. Not to limit the player's choices, but because it makes for an interesting world. Also, I think the "hunted character" concept is a fun one to play around with.


I can understand. Will you accept "nuance" or "context"? It's a subjective thing for me. It depends upon how the DM explains it. If he's just describing the world and helps you create the hunted character's background, then it's just the gameworld. If he proudly boasts about it and warns you, then he's really banning it but will take personal delight in making your character's life difficult. You can't complain because he "warned" you.

[Drelua]

Dr_S, I think you forgot about NPCs. The number of 1st level commoners can be close to 90%, making even a level 1 PC class very exceptional. Honestly, even though I agree with pretty much everything you've said, I like high level campaigns. I rarely start as low as level 3 because of the lethality, but I'm in a very casual group. Plus, we like our characters being exceptional. You're right though. A level 4 could probably do pretty well in UFC, realistically, and I would have a very hard time justifying the use of the same backstory for both.

[bloodtide]

My campaign stresses roleplaying. We have sessions where no dice are rolled.

While I like this idea, it just never works. The whole point of playing a game is to have rules(and rolls). Otherwise your just sitting in a chair free form role playing. Even worse the gameplay can ground to a halt when the DM wants to take six hours to role-play out the entire festival week at the king's castle and then ''oh it's midnight, game is over''. And then even when you want to play the game and roll something the DM will snap ''Oh no you must role-play that out and ignore that silly roll''.


This is an Evil campaign

Again this idea rarely works. Far too many people do the Chaotic Stupid and they only get worse from there.

[JoeYounger]

your sorcerer scenario is a bit deceptive, in that 1 color spray is only a 15' cone so you're hitting at most 6 or 7 people and only if they're arranged in exactly a 15' cone directly in front of the sorcerer. Not only that but you aren't describing a CR 1 encounter because the DMG says to add 1 to the CR and you're giving your encounter full point buy which is going to be better than the elite array, then, a level 1 sorcerer has the same health problems as a PC (in fact more so than anything with melee) and so if he even misses 1 PC he's in a situation where he most likely won't survive and color spray isn't an instant kill so as long as the party wins, there would be no deaths.

Your scorpion scenario sounds unfortunate but atypical, but brings up I think what is the biggest difference in our mindsets. I don't care about my character's back story at all. If he was a prolific hunter and hero prior to the campaign, I can't take credit for any of those deeds (nor would I want to) it's what they accomplish while I'm at the helm that I care about. (or in case of an epilogue or time jump, things that my actions helped bring about) I prefer my characters to be a blank slate as much as possible, and I think most of my group does as well. Again we generally play homebrew settings so we want to learn about the world before we go deciding how we want our characters to interact with it, and that's what those low levels help us do.

I wasn't using the sorcerer as a bad guy to fight, I was showing that a level 1 sorcerer can beat almost any other class of equal level with one spell. What I was describing was an encounter I had a week or so ago, where my sorcerer and one other person fought off about 15 gnolls, one of which had 5HD. I'm not by any means saying its the be all end all, but it isnt balanced for one person to be able to beat 90% of all other classes 80% of the time in a one on one fight.

As for my other story, I feel like it is VERY typical. Who doesn't have a story of someone getting crit at level one and dying from it. Our DM specifically told us to bring 1-2 back up characters because of how lethal the game it at that level. At level 1, almost anything can crit and kill almost anything else.

[Urpriest]

The big problem with "pariah" classes is that few DMs understand how to balance the game with them in mind. D&D isn't a point-buy system, it's class-based, and you have very little to do in an encounter if you can't use your class abilities for fear of discovery. If your world is such that using certain class abilities gets you killed then the classes involved need other abilities to compensate.


Edit: also,
It's a normal game. Why do you ask?

Some DMs won't tell you anything about the game, the optimization level, etc., no matter how hard you pester them. Even if it's a game already in progress they don't seem to understand the idea that you might actually decide whether or not to enter a game based on something besides which system it uses (if that, there are some DMs that won't even reveal that information).

[Grendus]

Starting at Level One
Because nothing says "Fun" like spending a couple of hours working out a detailed background and behavioral profile for your character, only to be instagibbed by a longbow crit on the first attack of the surprise round of the first encounter of the game. You can still be little fish in a big pond, with lots of scope for advancement, by starting at level 3 or even 5 - without the absurdly excessive lethality of level 1 play.

I'm in the camp that says this is a DM failing. Why are you giving the monsters x3 weapons at level 1? Why is the first encounter an ambush? Why not fudge the roll, if that's within your playstyle? To me, it sounds like you had a DM who didn't understand how swingy level 1 can be and didn't plan accordingly. But YMMV, starting at higher levels is fun as well. I just don't see level one campaigns as necessarily a bad thing, plenty of good ones have started there too.

[Dr_S]

I wasn't using the sorcerer as a bad guy to fight, I was showing that a level 1 sorcerer can beat almost any other class of equal level with one spell. What I was describing was an encounter I had a week or so ago, where my sorcerer and one other person fought off about 15 gnolls, one of which had 5HD. I'm not by any means saying its the be all end all, but it isnt balanced for one person to be able to beat 90% of all other classes 80% of the time in a one on one fight.

As for my other story, I feel like it is VERY typical. Who doesn't have a story of someone getting crit at level one and dying from it. Our DM specifically told us to bring 1-2 back up characters because of how lethal the game it at that level. At level 1, almost anything can crit and kill almost anything else.

At the same time a sorcerer can blast a group of PC's like that, a fighter can roll minimum damage and kill most casters. a rogue has to roll pretty garbage not to kill most casters, I mean, a sorcerer at level 1 only has 4+con hp, who wins at level 1 is generally the one who wins initiative between PC's.

I don't have a story about a level 1 encounter critting and killing a party member because level 1 encounters might do enough to bring a character negative, but don't seem to do enough that even on double damage they bring someone to minus 10.

[Ravens_cry]

I don't have a story about a level 1 encounter critting and killing a party member because level 1 encounters might do enough to bring a character negative, but don't seem to do enough that even on double damage they bring someone to minus 10.
Orc with Greataxe with max strength ( 18+4 racial mod=22) does 10 damage minimum, 30 on critical. If they have a level of barbarian and are raging, it gets worse.

[Dsurion]

I have to admit I feel like I'm committing a lot of sins with the amount of people who don't like Low Level/Magic/Wealth games. They're pretty much exclusively what my group likes to run and play.

What I'm not particularly ever going to be interested in are going to be...

Heavy Optimization
Heavy Roleplaying
High Level/Power
High Fantasy

[Averis Vol]

Orc with Greataxe with max strength ( 18+4 racial mod=22) does 10 damage minimum, 30 on critical. If they have a level of barbarian and are raging, it gets worse.

but what DM who doesn't hate their PC's would do that to his/her group though? at level one that's blatantly trying to kill them, no questions asked. a more reasonable level one encounter is a couple goblins with short swords or kobolds with slings, that is much more apropriate. it might can do more damage but at least it will do it in sections so the PC's have time to heal.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Orc with Greataxe with max strength ( 18+4 racial mod=22) does 10 damage minimum, 30 on critical. If they have a level of barbarian and are raging, it gets worse.

This. A thousand times this.

This is the problem with low-level games when done poorly. I've already done the damage analysis on this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12789442#post12789442) for a new DM (for a level 2 group), and I think it quite adequately explains why level 1 CAN be so swingy; really, any weapon with a x3 multiplier, or an 18-20 threat range, or wielded in two hands by a character with some STR, or a barbarian of any kind, etc. Keep in mind that I used stock SRD characters for my analysis, with mild alterations, instead of Point Buy characters (which would obliterate a level 1 party member).

The thing of it is, I also came up with a solution to this problem (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12789578#post12789578). Instead of using "grip and rip" types, two-handed weapons with high-STR characters, Large characters, or weapons with high damage dice in general (greatswords, for example), you can use character types and strategies that are not optimal for damage, but still make sense in the game world. For instance, if you want to build up to a raid on an orc tribe, maybe you can begin with the goblin scouts that they've been bullying into subordination (they use small-sized shortbows, which do 1d4/x3, and clubs or light maces, which do 1d4/x2 crit), which later gets the party entangled in a turf war between the gnoll tribes and the orc tribes that have been competing over the goblin slaves. Then, when the party fights the orcs and gnolls, they first fight their way through a number of weaker shock troopers (not the feat); the gnolls they may encounter (if they fight against the gnolls) are chucking short spears and wielding clubs (both are 1d6/x2), and the orcs are wielding crude handaxes (or short swords) with bucklers of some sort. Gnolls may be accompanied by hyenas, goblins by riding dogs, and so on. Your boss on the gnoll's side may be a shamanistic character, represented by either a 1st-level druid or another class along those lines, with a wolf for an animal companion; depending on how strong the party is, you may opt for spells like shillelagh, for damage output, or produce flame, if you need to go easy on the party (or you want your druid to last longer than his wolf), or entangle if you need to ramp up the difficulty a bit; differentiation comes easily within the spell list, as well as with the assistance (he could be accompanied by goblins with shortspears or something).

If they fight the orcs, they may run through some orcs employing crude, hit-and-run tactics with sword and board style, before they finally run into the chief's right-hand man, who is a level 2 or 3 cleric in banded mail and a light shield, who uses debuffs to ail the party as his minions take point. Maybe, after fighting the lieutenant, the party earns the ire of the orc chieftain, a barbarian with anger management issues who is not a greataxe-wielding "grip-and-rip" type, but instead a raging berserker who comes at the party with two handaxes (which have more benign to-hit and damage implications).

Between this singular plot arc (and the complementary battles you might engage the party in, depending on environment, campaign type, party size, and differentiation [for the latter two, make adjustments based on scale, not difficulty of the creature]), you're probably brought your fresh-faced party from 1 to 3 without risking insta-gibbing them on the sole basis of an unlucky crit, because the opportunity never showed itself just because of the weapons you chose. (You may still gib the party when they do something stupid, and they WILL do something stupid, because they are the PCs. But that is not a DM-created problem, unlike the greataxe-wielding 20-STR orc barbarian who cleaves through the level 1 wizard and his rogue friend like butter, which is.)

[Ravens_cry]

but what DM who doesn't hate their PC's would do that to his/her group though? at level one that's blatantly trying to kill them, no questions asked. a more reasonable level one encounter is a couple goblins with short swords or kobolds with slings, that is much more apropriate. it might can do more damage but at least it will do it in sections so the PC's have time to heal.
From what I understand, orcs are pretty common low level enemies. They aren't the moral boosting puds that goblins and kobolds are, but I feel bad killing those. I mean, look at this guy (http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg190/scaled.php?server=190&filename=koboldt.jpg&res=medium).
An orc even with average strength, 14, with no rage bonuses, gets a minimum of 12 on a critical with a greataxe and a median of 21, enough to out right kill most level 1 characters.
Is this hating ones PC? I don't think so, D&D is basically the heroic journey in game form. You start out weak but become strong.
Whether this suits you and your group is a matter of preference and opinion.
Edit: And for Pelor's sake, unless your name is really e. e. cummings, please use capital letters when appropiate. </pet peeve>

[Lonely Tylenol]

From what I understand, orcs are pretty common low level enemies. They aren't the moral boosting puds that goblins and kobolds are, but I feel bad killing those. I mean, look at this guy (http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg190/scaled.php?server=190&filename=koboldt.jpg&res=medium).
An orc even with average strength, 14, with no rage bonuses, gets a minimum of 12 on a critical with a greataxe and a median of 21, enough to out right kill most level 1 characters.
Is this hating ones PC? I don't think so, D&D is basically the heroic journey in game form. You start out weak but become strong.
Whether this suits you and your group is a matter of opinion.

I've got you beat by a few minutes on my post, but to reiterate:

Why are you giving your orc a greataxe (1d12/x3)?!

EDIT:


Edit: And for Pelors sake, unless your name is really e. e. cummings, please use capital letters when appropiate. </pet peeve>

By Boccob's beard, why are you not denoting your possessives with an apostrophe?!

[Philistine]

I'm in the camp that says this is a DM failing. Why are you giving the monsters x3 weapons at level 1? Why is the first encounter an ambush? Why not fudge the roll, if that's within your playstyle? To me, it sounds like you had a DM who didn't understand how swingy level 1 can be and didn't plan accordingly. But YMMV, starting at higher levels is fun as well. I just don't see level one campaigns as necessarily a bad thing, plenty of good ones have started there too.

I was a player, not the DM; but I assume that x3 crit weapons were in play because several of those - notably bows, axes, and spears - are so commonplace among savage and/or monstrous humanoids as to be downright stereotypical. (Not that it would've mattered in this case, as this particular Rogue's player had left Con at 10 - given the damage rolls obtained, even a normal hit would have pushed him to negatives, and a double-damage crit would have sufficed to drop him to -10.) The Rogue was targeted (by one of the two opponents) because he was 30' out in front of the party, trying to scout. And it was an ambush because the one die the Rogue got to roll before his game ended was a Spot check, which he failed. (Also note that the shot would've been a killer, ambush or no ambush, against anyone but the party's Barbarian; I mentioned the timing of this particular PC death only to highlight the absurdity.)

Finally, as Coidzor said, the mere fact that it is necessary to "understand how swingy level 1 can be" so that you can "plan accordingly" is itself an indictment of the system.

[Ravens_cry]

I've got you beat by a few minutes on my post, but to reiterate:

Why are you giving your orc a greataxe (1d12/x3)?!

It is iconic. Look at the orc picture in the monster manual. If that's not a greataxe, I'll eat my cat ears. It's pretty common in other fantasy art as well. A big green tusked guy with a Big Freaking Axe is practically archetypical.



By Boccob's beard, why are you not denoting your possessives with an apostrophe?!
OK, I admit I am not the worlds best at grammar. I try to keep my their and there, my then and than, in there proper places,but I still make mistakes. Correct apostrophe use is indeed a major stumbling block of mine, but are capitals too much to ask for?

[Lonely Tylenol]

I was a player, not the DM; but I assume that x3 crit weapons were in play because several of those - notably bows, axes, and spears - are so commonplace among savage and/or monstrous humanoids as to be downright stereotypical.

x2 alternatives might include a club, sling, shortspear, javelin, blowgun, throwing axe, and sickle. Beyond that, using light weapons (such as the handaxe) and light versions of ranged weapons (such as the shortbow relative to the longbow) helps reduce lethality, even among x3 weapons.

Regardless...


Finally, as Coidzor said, the mere fact that it is necessary to "understand how swingy level 1 can be" so that you can "plan accordingly" is itself an indictment of the system.

This is ultimately what it boils down to.

Run poorly, a game at level 1 can prematurely end the careers of many PCs with a bad roll of the die. The problem is, there are default options (like the falchion-wielding orc warrior in the SRD) that make this all too common of a reality, so the default is still that level 1 is swingy and luck-based. You need a DM willing to plan the first few levels intelligently to make them work.

[Dsurion]

OK, I admit I am not the worlds best at grammar. I try to keep my their and there, my then and than, in there proper places,but I still make mistakes. Correct apostrophe use is indeed a major stumbling block of mine, but are capitals too much to ask for?You are treading on very thin ice. :smalltongue:

As to the rest though, even as someone GMing the system having never played it before, it was really obvious. Hit Dice of d4, d6, d8, and d10 can be easily one-shotted by every day weapons at first level. Squishy casters are killed by daggers (d4). Squishy Rogues are killed by Quarterstaves (d6). Rangers are killed by Spears (d8). Fighters are killed by heavy crossbows (d10). Those are all simple, common weapons. It took all of 3 minutes to browse - is that so hard to recognize?

[Lonely Tylenol]

It is iconic. Look at the orc picture in the monster manual. If that's not a greataxe, I'll eat my cat ears. It's pretty common in other fantasy art as well. A big green tusked guy with a Big Freaking Axe is practically archetypical.

Right, of heroic fantasy. Nobody starts a game at level 1 with the expectation that entire team is heroes; they start a game at level 1 with the expectation that the party is starting from the bottom (and is thus not expected to not die against these sorts of things).

This is where the differentiation comes in; if you're willing to differentiate to give the orc a greataxe and 18 base STR (for 22 after racial bonuses), then you should, as the DM, be able to take even a cursory glance at the green Conan analogue you just made and say, "that's way too powerful for the level 1 blasty in my party! Maybe I should not throw this at them." If you can differentiate in one way, to create an example of minimum damage insta-gibbing half the party, then you can differentiate in the other way just as easily, to create a counter-example of maximum damge not insta-gibbing most of the party. Remember: club-wielding thugs are iconic as well.


OK, I admit I am not the worlds best at grammar. I try to keep my their and there, my then and than, in there proper places,but I still make mistakes. Correct apostrophe use is indeed a major stumbling block of mine, but are capitals too much to ask for?

That's all well and good--as an English tutor of a number of years (and a soon-to-be teacher), I've learned that cohesive content is much more critical to comprehension than grammar, so I let these things slide myself unless my critique is needed--but if you're going to point out another's spelling and grammar mistakes, you'd better be sure you haven't made any obvious ones of your own. You know, plank in your own eye, and all. :smallbiggrin:

[Ravens_cry]

Right, of heroic fantasy. Nobody starts a game at level 1 with the expectation that entire team is heroes; they start a game at level 1 with the expectation that the party is starting from the bottom (and is thus not expected to not die against these sorts of things).

This is where the differentiation comes in; if you're willing to differentiate to give the orc a greataxe and 18 base STR (for 22 after racial bonuses), then you should, as the DM, be able to take even a cursory glance at the green Conan analogue you just made and say, "that's way too powerful for the level 1 blasty in my party! Maybe I should not throw this at them." If you can differentiate in one way, to create an example of minimum damage insta-gibbing half the party, then you can differentiate in the other way just as easily, to create a counter-example of maximum damge not insta-gibbing most of the party. Remember: club-wielding thugs are iconic as well.

I wasn't trying to say that it was the best way to run the game, just that it is is very possible. As we both showed even with average opponents, level one is deadly.


That's all well and good--as an English tutor of a number of years (and a soon-to-be teacher), I've learned that cohesive content is much more critical to comprehension than grammar, so I let these things slide myself unless my critique is needed--but if you're going to point out another's spelling and grammar mistakes, you'd better be sure you haven't made any obvious ones of your own. You know, plank in your own eye, and all. :smallbiggrin:
In the words of noble Homer, D'oh!

[Mystify]

This is an Evil campaign

The DM and players want to carry out their own personal fetish fantasies. This is not a game. It's mental master something.
I've had it work out really, really well. It was just a one-shot, but I told the players ahead of time "Be evil, there will be a town for you to victimize". What ensued was an amazing session of plotting and scheming as they started up a drug ring and worked their fingers into various pockets of power. At the end of the night we all agreed that we'd love to run a campaign like that, but logistics said no. It was probably one of the best D&D sessions I ever ran.

[IdleMuse]

I have run games that have started at L1, but I think without exception have always levelled them up after the very first session. L1 is great for not overburdening new players with character generation options, D&D is already a crunchy system to chargen for. I usually rush characters up to L4 without too much delay, as that's where I feel the meat of the game lies.

[kardar233]

I don't get the major hate on evil campaigns. Two of the best campaigns I've ever been in were set in Naggaroth, a frozen hellhole inhabited by even-worse-than-normal-Dark Elves who have made a state religion out of elaborate ritual murder, where torture is a valid way of saying "hello", you're not properly married until you've tried to kill each other and nobles have to stay two sword lengths away from each other to avoid precipitous stabbings.

Either you get a powerful and charismatic leader who have bound the party to him in their own separate ways, or a lovely hive of backstabbing and trying to kill each other in painful and inventive ways. Both are incredibly fun.

~EDIT~ Okay, I'll admit that Evil campaigns only really work in an open-world setting unless you've got a clear leader to take charge. They're even worse than most PCs at getting off the tracks, burning the bits and using the railway spikes as improvised projectile weapons.

[Rejusu]

It is when your campaigns don't generally last past level 10. That's at least 8-12 more sessions of gaming.

I'm not sure how starting from level 4 will result in less sessions than starting at level 1, unless you cap your campaign by level. To which there's a rather obvious solution. Now I did assume that when you said growth you meant roleplaying growth, which the amount of RP growth you get is the same no matter what level you start from as you're always going to put the same number of hours in. If you meant mechanical growth then yes level 4 does give you less room to grow your character, but it also means you start with a more interesting base.

Plus you can always compensate by accelerating the levelling process and play to a higher level.


So I think there is a difference between level 1 and 4 in terms of growth, because by level 4 a person of your skill should have considerable influence on most places they visit simply by virtue of being amongst the strongest of their class. Character growth isn't just about power, having that much influence outside of an urban setting means you're going to be calling the shots right out of the gate in a lot of places you go. Since my group seems to have a similar wave length (we like our level 19 death matches, occasionally but generally we're of a like mind about what kind of campaigns are fun) I think that we as players like to EARN that influence. At level 1 you're about average, perhaps a little stronger as a PC class level is usually greater than or equal to 2 NPC class levels and the sheer number of level 1 commoners is considerable. I guess you're more the median, but when talking about people's abilities compared to statistics (life expectancy, IQ, etc.) we tend to use average and median interchangeably. Each level or so you increase (the math gets fuzzy and I did it in another thread but was calculating something else, so this is an approximation) each level you increase you half how common someone of your power is... so that at level 1, 1:2 people are as strong or stronger, by level 4 1:16 which makes you in the top 95 percentile by level 10 there are like 10-50 people in a metropolitan area and surrounding population centers who compete with you in power and influence.

I didn't mean to get ranty, this wasn't personal I was up late last night and despite hating any statistics class I've ever taken I seem to like using statistical analysis of this particular DMG chapter when I'm discussing this game. I don't know why, I obviously accept that other people have differing opinions of me as my best friend is a "play video games on easy until I learn the controls" type where I'm a "trial by fire, any setting below the hardest doesn't exist" type. I'm just trying to understand the different mindset and I think a lot of it comes down to different priorities when we assess whether a campaign was fun or not.

Like anything in the DMG (or any rulebook for that matter) it's all just guidelines. If you don't want your PC's to be big fish in a little pond from the get go but don't want to start from level 1 either the simple solution is to increase the size of the pond. When everyone is super no one is super after all. If the average power level of the world is kicked up a few notches then your PC's still have to earn that respect just as if they were level 1's in a more mundane world.

[dsmiles]

High FantasyNot to quibble, but we may be using different definitions of this term. In literature, "High Fantasy" means not set on earth or an alternate earth. (Lord of the Rings, the Belgariad, Wheel of Time, etc.) "Low Fantasy" means set on earth or an alternate earth (R.E. Howard wrote in low fantasy style, etc.)

[hamishspence]

Not to quibble, but we may be using different definitions of this term. In literature, "High Fantasy" means not set on earth or an alternate earth. (Lord of the Rings, the Belgariad, Wheel of Time, etc.) "Low Fantasy" means set on earth or an alternate earth (R.E. Howard wrote in low fantasy style, etc.)

Didn't Tolkien drop a few hints that Lord of the Rings was Earth, set in the "fantastic past"?

[Heliomance]

Not to quibble, but we may be using different definitions of this term. In literature, "High Fantasy" means not set on earth or an alternate earth. (Lord of the Rings, the Belgariad, Wheel of Time, etc.) "Low Fantasy" means set on earth or an alternate earth (R.E. Howard wrote in low fantasy style, etc.)

Never heard that definition before. I've always heard it used as a qualitative descriptor of the level of supernormal stuff. And of the general tone, or feel, of the work.

[hamishspence]

Wikipedia's definition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_fantasy

says it must be an "invented or parallel world"

though it also mentions the "large scale matters" tending to differentiate it from "sword and sorcery" which tends not to have the fate of the world be at stake.

[Heliomance]

Personally, I would say the Age of Misrule trilogy counts as high fantasy. It's set on modern day earth, England, when the Celtic gods start coming back. Technology stops working, and the fate of the world is at stake. They deal with dragons, fae, and gods. It's about as high fantasy as you get.

[SilverLeaf167]

Personally, I would say the Age of Misrule trilogy counts as high fantasy. It's set on modern day earth, England, when the Celtic gods start coming back. Technology stops working, and the fate of the world is at stake. They deal with dragons, fae, and gods. It's about as high fantasy as you get.
It's not "as high fantasy as you can get", because by the official definition, it's not high fantasy at all.
Would you say something like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson or Skulduggery Pleasant (God I love that series) is high fantasy, just because they have plenty of fantasy elements and most relevant things happen in fantastic ways? No, because "Earth with magic" is clearly low fantasy, and that's what all of those books are.

[Man on Fire]

First, to the person who complained about backstories - what's the point of havign a backstory if not for GM to use it? There are generally two kinds of players who do backstories - one that describe how their character is friend of local duke in hope that GM will put them into some intrugue-high story where they have to help their friend stop plot of some nobles, and the other that just wants to use it as "get free out of jail" card whenever he'll do something bad, because who's going to arrest duke's friend. Either you have backstory because you want to include some plot hooks you would like to take a part in or because you want your character to be precious and special.

Even better than backstories works asking players to give you their beliefs and goals and base adventures on it. There is a thread on suptg that atempted that and made epic campaing for guys playing merchand, blacksmith and ninja. I would provide a link but I don't know if links to 4chan archives aren't forbidden here.

Second, Evil only campaing may be done well, you just need to estabilish something that makes party stick together, like set up some goal and ask players to work in their character a reason why they pursue it. Like, from top of my mind - work with one player on his character to make him terribly rich and give him a reason he would crave certain artifact of doom and then make him hire other guys who may be into this just for money or completely different reasons and some may even work behind the scenes to get everybody else killed.

I'm currently playing pretty sweet campaing on homebrew superhero where everbody are supervillains united by government agent in "favor for favor" type deal - we do some work for him, save the world or kill dangerous monster, he provides us with informations that allows us to pursue our individual goals. And we're playing pretty varied supervillains - our party considers of shapeshifter, ninja, robot, demon from hell and undead cowboy, not to mention that guy who wants to join in with immortal inquisitor/demon hunter.

Get a little creative and even if your players only want to kill, maim and burn, you may work it around. Everybody made Chaotic Evil murderhobo? Set up an Evil Empire that enslaves people and wants to get the partry hanged for disturbing their order. Everyone made scheming backstabber? We're playing Game Of Thrones inspired game with everybody plotting something and trust being very hard to get and easy to lost. Everybody made Neutral Evil selfish prick? Here comes local Kefka, who wants to destroy the world and kill everything in it, including your characters. Give me 4-6 evil character concepts with their goals and motivations and I think I can work something out.

Now, low-magic. I really don't know that much about the mechanics of 3.5 or D&D in general. But reading your posts it sure comes around like you complain because GM just don't let you run the game like you want it to.

I can imagine low-level being pretty well-done, like militaristic campaing in world inspired by Black Company or Berserk that could justify having some classes banned and some limited to only one person per party. in fact, let's try this

Keeping with Berserk example - you can play as fighters, Barbarians, Rogues and Monks (Kushans have some pretty neat monks by the way). Rangers are allowed but their magical abilities would probably be limited and they would recive more bonuses related to their other skills instead (like, more feats or more points to spend on abilities).

Paladins and Clerics are banned because this world has estabilished that religion doesn't work and there are no gods who could grant you powers (unless you're counting God Hand but that means you're a) chaotic evil and b) capable of turning into a godzilla so you're also c) overpowered by any standard possible).

Psionics, Wizards, Sorcerors (changed to be just born with magical powers not being somebodys descedants) and Druids - I wouldn't probably let more than two players playing either of those classes, to keep with Berserk's tone of isolation, but they would be pretty neat (think how Shrieke operates - she is pretty vunerable, but once she fires her magics, she can obliberate everything). It would allow for some neat roleplay based on feelings of loniless and isolation from normal people and having two of those magical guys lets them have roleplaying how they feel finally finding somebody who understands them.

I'm little conflicted about bards, I would probably ban them - they would make magical classes feel less unique. Magic here is something special and rare, not thing somebody can do because he sings in taverns.

Magic items would be rare but powerful and have some addinational effects based on how much you belive in their power - your magical sword +1 may give addinational fire damage if you'll belive in fire spirits living inside it. In other words, instead of switching to new gear I would give players chance to roleplay and get know with their weapons and then give them better powers. I would probably include some sort of bonus points you can spend to improve your weapon's capabilities. Even normal weapon could turn into magical in certain situation (like Guts sword which is theorized to slowly becoming magical because it's constantly used to kill magical creatures). Exception would be pretty good items that would be unique and very powerful (think Berserker Armor).

Races - humans only but I think that little playing around and I could make good substitutes, like child for halfing with keeping most of racial features like +2 Dex, -2 Sr and being small.

As for non-core material - Banned. I ban every book I didn't read and I had read only core :smallcool: (not that I have anything against them, I'm just new to D&D). But hey, give me a book, I'll read it and then dicide. I would probably do selection of prestigue classes - Fienzed Berserker is in, Tribal Protectol is in but unplayable (so I can set up some Troll Tribal Protecter as big boss battle), Dragon Disciple is out because of lack of dragons, Shadowdancer (or what is his name) is in but you are getting shadow-based magic item and have to work on evolving it if you want to take that class (or you join late, already as this and with magic item). Some monsters are also out, while others may be smuggled as Apostles (I can imagine fat guy Apostle who, once his HP runs low, turns into a Beholder).

It's a lot of work on both players and GM's side and I would run it only for group of Berserk's fans, but it can be done. You just need some pre-game cooperation between players and GM, stupid "everybody comes into game night without consulting first what kind of game they want to play" will result in players trying to shoehorn their ideas into setting they just plain doesn't fit and DM rying to shoehorn them into setting he imagined without any flexibility on either side whatsoever. Sure I want to play a monk or goblin paladin, but if GM won't allow it, I have few other concepts prepared. There will be other games I may use those ideas. This game is supposed to be as much fun for both players and GM, yet each side thinks they are special.

[hamishspence]

No, because "Earth with magic" is clearly low fantasy, and that's what all of those books are.

"Earth, only it's a parallel world, so has magic (and a slightly different history)" can actually qualify as high fantasy.

[Dsurion]

Not to quibble, but we may be using different definitions of this term. In literature, "High Fantasy" means not set on earth or an alternate earth. (Lord of the Rings, the Belgariad, Wheel of Time, etc.) "Low Fantasy" means set on earth or an alternate earth (R.E. Howard wrote in low fantasy style, etc.)Hmm. Wasn't aware of a literary definition. I always sort of assumed based on the way people spoke it was mostly about overtones, like Black and White morality, always Heroic protagonists, etc. That sort of thing bores me like nobody's business.

[SilverLeaf167]

"Earth, only it's a parallel world, so has magic (and a slightly different history)" can actually qualify as high fantasy.
Well, yeah, but an Earth where magic is extremely rare or very recently discovered and has/had no real effect on history or really any large-scale matters? Low fantasy, most likely.

For example, a setting where the gods just suddenly appeared and started messing stuff up is low fantasy, but if the gods have always existed (and actually affected the world) and the world is appropriately different, it might be high fantasy.

[DrDeth]

I have to admit I feel like I'm committing a lot of sins with the amount of people who don't like Low Level/Magic/Wealth games. They're pretty much exclusively what my group likes to run and play.



I have never met any players in my over 35 years of playing and DMing that preferred a true Low-Magic campaign. Non-Monty Haul, yes. No “Ye Olde Magik Shoppe”, sure. No “Fantasy Accounting”- of course. But less fun loot that makes their PC’s more fun to play and more survivable? Never.

[Dr_S]

Orc with Greataxe with max strength ( 18+4 racial mod=22) does 10 damage minimum, 30 on critical. If they have a level of barbarian and are raging, it gets worse.

but why would a DM for a level 1 campaign bother doing point buy for an orc?

There's a Monster Manual listing for a CR 1/2 orc. Just use 2-4 of them depending on how hard you want the encounter.

(4 is for groups with improved initiative, favorable position, etc. etc. because 5hp a pop and a -1 will save those things will not be standing for too long, so if your party gets a surprise round, the surprise might be that they killed 4 orcs before standard combat started)

[Mystify]

but why would a DM for a level 1 campaign bother doing point buy for an orc?

There's a Monster Manual listing for a CR 1/2 orc. Just use 2-4 of them depending on how hard you want the encounter.

(4 is for groups with improved initiative, favorable position, etc. etc. because 5hp a pop and a -1 will save those things will not be standing for too long, so if your party gets a surprise round, the surprise might be that they killed 4 orcs before standard combat started)

Those orcs have falchions, which are arguably worse as they crit much more often, making it more likely that problems crop up. Sure, the crit isn't the automatic insta kill, but it is rather likely to be lethal, and happens a lot more frequently.

[Ravens_cry]

but why would a DM for a level 1 campaign bother doing point buy for an orc?

There's a Monster Manual listing for a CR 1/2 orc. Just use 2-4 of them depending on how hard you want the encounter.

Even without point buy, but giving a greataxe, otherwise keeping the same statistics, on a critical the Monster Manual orc (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/orc.htm) will do a minimum of 15 damage and an average of of 34.5, more than enough to kill most level one characters outright.
Level one is deadly.
Whether this is a bug, players should be heroes, or a feature, heroic status has to be earned, depends on what one wants from the game.

[Seerow]

Even without point buy, but giving a greataxe, otherwise keeping the same statistics, on a critical the Monster Manual orc (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/orc.htm) will do a minimum of 15 damage and an average of of 34.5, more than enough to kill most level one characters outright.
Level one is deadly.
Whether this is a bug, players should be heroes, or a feature, heroic status has to be earned, depends on what one wants from the game.

To be fair, 34.5 average damage will kill even most 3 or 4 characters. I mean a level 4 Cleric with 14 con is going to have ~29 average hp. Crits from high crit damage weapons are deadly, and when one lands from a level appropriate enemy chances are somebody is dropping.

[dsmiles]

Didn't Tolkien drop a few hints that Lord of the Rings was Earth, set in the "fantastic past"?I know he did, but everything I've read still classifies The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of The Rings as "high fantasy." Eddings and Jordan are definitely "high fantasy," and if I think hard enough I can come up with more. (Stan Nichols' Orcs comes to mind. Excellent read, btw.)

[Man on Fire]

I think that the definitions of fantasy subgenres are pretty vague and too many to there be a sense of arguing about what goes which. there are people for which Lord of the Rings is epic fantasy and high fantasy is reserved for books more like Earthsea.

I also think we lost the point of all this discussion, what does which book goes to which subgenre has to do with anything?

[Dr_S]

Even without point buy, but giving a greataxe, otherwise keeping the same statistics, on a critical the Monster Manual orc (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/orc.htm) will do a minimum of 15 damage and an average of of 34.5, more than enough to kill most level one characters outright.
Level one is deadly.
Whether this is a bug, players should be heroes, or a feature, heroic status has to be earned, depends on what one wants from the game.

my point about the point buy is that these are not encounters I'm invested in at all unless I'm introducing a recurring villain. So I'm not sure why you assume a DM would give an orc a Great Axe, x3 weapons are stupid at level 1 because as another poster pointed out the falchion is 3 times more likely to crit, and while it won't out right kill people in most cases a crit will bring someone negative at that level and that's far more important than actually killing them.

However unless an unfortunate mage or a class with low con is ******* around in melee, a fighter will survive most falchion crits from an orc, except maybe max damage. (a con of +2 would not survive 7 or 8 for weapon damage before *2, but D4's are going to skew more towards a 5 typically.)

Either way, there seems to be this presumption that DM's running a level 1 campaign are going to go out of their way to optimize enemies against you.

even on a crit, a wolf likely won't take you unconscious in a single round, and that's a higher CR than an Orc, and something I'm far more likely to use.

[Mystify]

I was thinking about the evil campaign thing, and I think I have come to a conclusion:

Its the difference between a chaotic evil campaign and lawful evil campaign.

The lawful evil campaign is much less likely to involve massive amounts of betrayal and random killing sprees. It is more likely to involve elaborate plots to undermine the government and foil your opposition.A lawful evil campaign is fully functional and can be very interesting. Chaotic evil devolves into, well, chaos.

[TypoNinja]

At the same time a sorcerer can blast a group of PC's like that, a fighter can roll minimum damage and kill most casters. a rogue has to roll pretty garbage not to kill most casters, I mean, a sorcerer at level 1 only has 4+con hp, who wins at level 1 is generally the one who wins initiative between PC's.

I don't have a story about a level 1 encounter critting and killing a party member because level 1 encounters might do enough to bring a character negative, but don't seem to do enough that even on double damage they bring someone to minus 10.

When a 1st level party can be TPW'd by a housecat, you know its a fragile party.

[Ravens_cry]

Dr_S
A DM might give them because they are iconic weapons for big raging barbarian types, not realizing their lethality at low levels.
After all, it's not a particularly exotic weapon. The MM image shows one using one, so a DM, trying to be a player killer or not, might use one if they don't run the numbers.
In fact, in a sadly short lived campaign, this is exactly what happened. The Orcs had greataxes and one player got hit by a critical.
You can guess the results.
My point?
A DM who doesn't take care can make level 1 a real killer, even if, no pun intended but I'm not not using it either, they don't have an axe to grind against the players.
Now, there is ways to make it less so, Lonely Tylenol in particular has made excellent suggestions, but the fact remains that, compared to higher levels, low level players are relatively fragile.

[Man on Fire]

I was thinking about the evil campaign thing, and I think I have come to a conclusion:

Its the difference between a chaotic evil campaign and lawful evil campaign.

The lawful evil campaign is much less likely to involve massive amounts of betrayal and random killing sprees. It is more likely to involve elaborate plots to undermine the government and foil your opposition.A lawful evil campaign is fully functional and can be very interesting. Chaotic evil devolves into, well, chaos.

I disagree. What you are describing is more akin to "Chaotic Stupid/Stupid Evil" campaing, a.k.a. Everybody's Belkar. But not all Chaotic Evil have to be "Implying that on the first night I won't rob you in your sleep and stab you in the genitalia" guy, some of them may be more willing to cooperate, especially if set against enemy that would require them to stick together for their own good, like lawful Evil Empire or Lawful Good Crusaders.

Meanwhile lawful Evil may infolve all sorts of betrayal. If I would stick Raoh from Fist of the North Star, griffith from Berserk and Palpatine from Star Wars in one group with Redcloak (Monk, Fighter, Wizard and Cleric), one of them would try to betray the others in order to advance his goals and estabilish his order. Lawful Evil allows to participate in all sorts of betrayals, but require more cunning and subtelty - you aren't openly stabbing somebody in the back, you're manipulating him while remaining on protected position, usually protected by law. Heck, look at what Redcloak is doing in the comics recently and tell me he fits your definition of lawful evil, with all this murdering Tsukiko, lying to Xykon and preparing to have some suprises for him just in case. Tarquin is lawful evil and has no problem manipulating people to make them their scapegoat rulers and then backstab them once it's time for some change.

[Mystify]

I disagree. What you are describing is more akin to "Chaotic Stupid/Stupid Evil" campaing, a.k.a. Everybody's Belkar. But not all Chaotic Evil have to be "Implying that on the first night I won't rob you in your sleep and stab you in the genitalia" guy, some of them may be more willing to cooperate, especially if set against enemy that would require them to stick together for their own good, like lawful Evil Empire or Lawful Good Crusaders.

But guiding them towards lawful evil also tends to lead them away from stupid evil, and chaotic evil very easily turns into chaotic stupid. My campaign wasn't explicitly lawful evil, but that is how it functioned. chaotic evil is much less inclined to have elaborate plots, which is a large part of why it worked so well.
Its more the implication that you should be working on grand schemes instead of massacring villagers.


Meanwhile lawful Evil may infolve all sorts of betrayal. If I would stick Raoh from Fist of the North Star, griffith from Berserk and Palpatine from Star Wars in one group with Redcloak (Monk, Fighter, Wizard and Cleric), one of them would try to betray the others in order to advance his goals and estabilish his order. Lawful Evil allows to participate in all sorts of betrayals, but require more cunning and subtelty - you aren't openly stabbing somebody in the back, you're manipulating him while remaining on protected position, usually protected by law. Heck, look at what Redcloak is doing in the comics recently and tell me he fits your definition of lawful evil, with all this murdering Tsukiko, lying to Xykon and preparing to have some suprises for him just in case. Tarquin is lawful evil and has no problem manipulating people to make them their scapegoat rulers and then backstab them once it's time for some change.

Yet all that betrayal still allows them to function together as a party. There are ulterior motives, but they are working together in the first place. Notice that I did say it was "less likely to have massive betrayals", not, "there are no betrayals". All of what you described fits my definition of lawful evil very well.

[Rubik]

I know he did, but everything I've read still classifies The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of The Rings as "high fantasy." Eddings and Jordan are definitely "high fantasy," and if I think hard enough I can come up with more. (Stan Nichols' Orcs comes to mind. Excellent read, btw.)Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

Also his collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Good Omens.

[Man on Fire]

But guiding them towards lawful evil also tends to lead them away from stupid evil, and chaotic evil very easily turns into chaotic stupid. My campaign wasn't explicitly lawful evil, but that is how it functioned. chaotic evil is much less inclined to have elaborate plots, which is a large part of why it worked so well.
Its more the implication that you should be working on grand schemes instead of massacring villagers.

But chaotic evil may work on some grand and elaborated plots very well too. Like this - bunch of characters are gathered by Evil God Of Chaos to bring down peaceful kingdom, if they will fail he will eat their souls. And suddenly we have six chaotic evils working on grand scheme and keeping it cool between each other, if they don't want to die.


Yet all that betrayal still allows them to function together as a party. There are ulterior motives, but they are working together in the first place. Notice that I did say it was "less likely to have massive betrayals", not, "there are no betrayals". All of what you described fits my definition of lawful evil very well.

Okay, my mistake. But I still think that Lawful Evil may be less likely to have massive betrayals only in theory - you can play no-betrayal Chaotic Evil campaing as well as "Betrayal Bus Has No Brakes" Lawful Evil campaing.


Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

Also his collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Good Omens.

Humorous fantasy.

[Rubik]

Humorous fantasy.Not an exclusive category, I think.

[Dr_S]

Dr_S
A DM might give them because they are iconic weapons for big raging barbarian types, not realizing their lethality at low levels.
After all, it's not a particularly exotic weapon. The MM image shows one using one, so a DM, trying to be a player killer or not, might use one if they don't run the numbers.
In fact, in a sadly short lived campaign, this is exactly what happened. The Orcs had greataxes and one player got hit by a critical.
You can guess the results.
My point?
A DM who doesn't take care can make level 1 a real killer, even if, no pun intended but I'm not not using it either, they don't have an axe to grind against the players.
Now, there is ways to make it less so, Lonely Tylenol in particular has made excellent suggestions, but the fact remains that, compared to higher levels, low level players are relatively fragile.

Well I agree that lvl 1 players can be fragile, and that a careless DM can ruin a game, but I also think a careless DM can ruin a game at any level. As someone else said, a x3 weapon is going to be 1-hit killing players beyond level 1, so it's not just a first level mess. Though perhaps higher level campaigns the careless DM ends up making things boring instead of death defying.

I tend to favor wolves, as I think I mentioned, as my level 1 encounters, they only do 1d6+1 damage, but they have 13hp instead of the 5 humanoid NPCs have, so combat isn't a fight to "first to land a hit" with them. They also have a positive Will save so they aren't going to automatically lose to the first save or suck spell thrown out. (granted their will is only +1, but still, that negates the spell level of a 1st level spell)

[Phaederkiel]

just want to chip in that in my second session ever, a 4th lvl wizard / warmage got hit by an orc and dropped to -7 in one hit. Thats just the nature of greataxes.

And that is the reason why only the chieftain should have one. So that someone can devise a strategy (backbiter, anyone?) and this strategy better be flawless.

But using such an orc in the first encounter is the equivalent of an single lvl1 gnome wizard casting colorspray on the surprise round - a DM trying to kill his players off.

And yes, this does accidentally happen to new DMs. They will tell you there is no save against a ghost's touch either, because they overread it (which makes two specters surprising you a surprisingly deadly encounter for a lvl 12, i can tell you).

A new DM can do any amount of damage accidentally. Just by setting improbable high skillchecks for example (yes you can jump at the vine and swing across the chasm - the dc was a 35 which you just did not hit...).
But inexperienced DMs should not be the measuring stick against which the System is tested. Neither should be killer DMs.

I actually like lvl 1. Here I feel the most realism. If I were to hit someone with a greataxe, I am pretty sure he'd be pretty dead. And I enjoy having played a character from the very beginning. In fact, I am a little sad that I started my main character at lvl 4...would have liked to see his beginnings.

[Rubik]

In fact, I am a little sad that I started my main character at lvl 4...would have liked to see his beginnings.I'm playing a 10 year old boy at gestalt level 10. You don't have to start at level 1 to start at the beginning.

[Phaederkiel]

You don't have to start at level 1 to start at the beginning.

yes teacher. Thank you.

(i am taking some offense for such a obvious thing to be preached to me)


what I mean is: by starting at lvl 4, I lost three lvls of play that would have occured before the game starts to detoriate again at higher lvl.

[Rubik]

yes teacher. Thank you.

(i am taking some offense for such a obvious thing to be preached to me)


what I mean is: by starting at lvl 4, I lost three lvls of play that would have occured before the game starts to detoriate again at higher lvl.To be fair, look at the quote I quoted:


In fact, I am a little sad that I started my main character at lvl 4...would have liked to see his beginnings.It intimates rather blatantly that you don't see "his beginnings" as being possible at level 4.

[Coidzor]

what I mean is: by starting at lvl 4, I lost three lvls of play that would have occured before the game starts to detoriate again at higher lvl.

On the other hand, you lose the awkwardness of the first 2 levels and spend more time relatively in the sweet spot before 8th-10th or so.

And if you really don't like how it breaks down at higher levels... there's always adopting slower XP accrual systems, requiring more XP to level, ad-hoc leveling, or just plain ceasing to level inside of the sweet spot for your group.

[Voyager_I]

what I mean is: by starting at lvl 4, I lost three lvls of play that would have occured before the game starts to detoriate again at higher lvl.

Except you're spending more time at the levels where a mook rolling a 20 is likely to have you busting out a fresh character sheet. Not everybody would agree that that's worth dealing with just to delay high-level balance issues.

Besides which, just as DMs can be careful in how the structure their low-level encounters to minimize the risk of random deaths, the players can put some effort into mitigating the issues at higher levels.

[Phaederkiel]

well, that would be a possibility for sure. at them moment the group is at lvl 12, probably lvl 14 or even 15 before the end of the campaign.

We just do not know if we can proceed to play those characters afterwards.

and yes, sometimes I think that leveling in D&D goes somewhat fast. Not with this group, since we level only after clearing a storypart / defeating a boss,
but with the other group I play in we leveled to 8 in perhaps 6 big sessions.
Okay, we are only two players, but still, it felt very fast.

Wasn't there a guideline that 13 lvlapropriate encounters should be played to make a lvl?



last but not least: I wanted to be able to brag that I played my character from 1 to 20, but I can only have played him from 4 to 20...I feel sad.

[Voyager_I]

It depends on what your characters are. Most of classes are perfectly capable of participating in level-appropriate encounters. Some are far, far more capable than they ought to be, but that can be ameliorated by players of those classes refraining from breaking the game. On the other side of the coin, weaker classes can generally hold their own with a bit of optimization. Classes that simply can't function in a high-level environment are rare, even if your builds may be a bit constrained.

If your players are willing to make it work, you can carry on just fine.

[Man on Fire]

People, I think that this debate about 1st level vs 4th level is pointless. In reality, it all depends on what you as GM and you as players want to do, some campaings are better progressing naturally from level 1, some with already estabilished seasoned adventurers. I think that starting at higher level would work better for people who rarerly can have time to play, but if you want to see how your farmboy becomes the hero one step at time, good for you. Can we now stop with that topic? It becomes pretty tiresome.

[Jeff the Green]

I know he did, but everything I've read still classifies The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of The Rings as "high fantasy." Eddings and Jordan are definitely "high fantasy," and if I think hard enough I can come up with more. (Stan Nichols' Orcs comes to mind. Excellent read, btw.)

Actually, there are some good hints that The Wheel of Time is actually Earth in the far future. It's still high fantasy, because it's a heavily modified Earth. Seriously, read the Wikipedia article and its sources. High fantasy refers to fantasy set in a "secondary world" distinct from this one, whether it's distinct because this world doesn't exist in the fantasy universe, the two worlds are connected by some portal but otherwise non-interacting, or the secondary world is a sort of secret subsection of this one (like Harry Potter).

More on topic, I avoid This Is a Good Campaign campaigns, for the most part. It tends to indicate that the DM has a simplistic view of good and evil and believes that neutrals can't be heroes and evil can't work together. It also can indicate that Paladins are likely to encounter a heads you fall, tails you fall situation.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Well I agree that lvl 1 players can be fragile, and that a careless DM can ruin a game, but I also think a careless DM can ruin a game at any level. As someone else said, a x3 weapon is going to be 1-hit killing players beyond level 1, so it's not just a first level mess. Though perhaps higher level campaigns the careless DM ends up making things boring instead of death defying.

I tend to favor wolves, as I think I mentioned, as my level 1 encounters, they only do 1d6+1 damage, but they have 13hp instead of the 5 humanoid NPCs have, so combat isn't a fight to "first to land a hit" with them. They also have a positive Will save so they aren't going to automatically lose to the first save or suck spell thrown out. (granted their will is only +1, but still, that negates the spell level of a 1st level spell)

All of this. I threw wolves at my level 1 party, too; they retain a certain level of danger, but are never really going to auto-kill anything (maximum damage on their x2 crit is 14, which even a 12 CON wizard can survive at level 1).


just want to chip in that in my second session ever, a 4th lvl wizard / warmage got hit by an orc and dropped to -7 in one hit. Thats just the nature of greataxes.

Come to think of it, I almost had that issue as a 5th-level Wizard myself. I had 29/35 HP (10 + 4 + 2 HP from 1st level, due to a homerule of +10 HP at 1st level, plus 4d4+10 from subsequent Hit Dice; I bumped my CON from 15 to 16 at 4th level, but was ruled that the Constitution modifier doesn't apply retroactively to bonus Hit Points, hence the specific number), and after being hit by a flaming sphere (and subsequently running away from it), I got charged by a greataxe-wielding orc barbarian, who ignored the PC basing him (and the two others around his path; all three missed their attacks of opportunity) and charged me head-on, scoring a critical hit. Because of a houserule, the DM ruled that, for critical hits, instead of rolling normal weapon damage plus modifiers and multiplying by 3, he would roll weapon damage three times and apply the modifiers to each. For this, that meant 3d12+24 (21 STR of a raging stock orc, +1 greataxe), for a minimum damage of 27.

The DM rolled (in the open; I demanded I be allowed to see the rolled results) 1, 1, 2, +24, for 28 damage.

Regardless, at level 5 (plus 10 extra hit points, 4 of which I had), I was nearly axed outright by a single unlucky crit, and survived only because of disproportionately lucky damage rolls (who here knows the odds of rolling 4 on 3d12?). If I wasn't level 5 plus 10 hit points, I would have been dropped to the negatives from full in a single blow, and that's on minimum (ish) damage.

To put things in perspective: I essentially had 44 hit points of damage before dropping to -10. The 45th would have killed me. That's typical of a Cleric of that level, really. Had I full health, the barbarian could have dropped me to -10 (or worse) with a damage roll of 7. If I did not have the bonus hit points (which was a house rule), then I would have died outright on the 35th hit point of damage (or the 38th if you ignore the other house rule, where a change in Constitution modifier doesn't work retroactively). A damage roll of 4 (or 5, without the other house rule) would have killed me outright. Remember, we're talking about level 5, here!

This remains a 2h/x3 issue, not a level 1 issue. "Squishier" classes can be killed outright by orc barbarians with greataxes reasonably often all the way up to level 7 or 8 with a critical hit; really, at just about every level up until you get overland flight (an 8th-level wizard with 14 CON has 4+7d4+16 = 40, on average, so a 17 base STR raging orc barbarian with a +1 greataxe still kills on a confirmed critical with a damage roll of 9 or better; that's nearly a coin flip we're talking about, there). Even without the +1 greataxe, it would still happen on a 10 or better (25% odds).

The difference between this and that is that a 3rd-level wizard can be invisible, a 5th-level wizard can fly, and a 7th-level wizard can celerity hold person to stop all of these things, but a level 1 wizard can grease, cause fear, sleep and color spray, too. That doesn't mean that all (or any) of these things is necessarily going to happen, and the fact remains that, once you're rolling for damage on that critical hit (however it happened), critical damage from a stock-stat orc barbarian with a greataxe (no +1) auto-kills 25% or better on a 14 CON class with d4 HD until level 8, d6 until level 6, d8 until level 5... And if your CON happens to be less for whatever reason (like, heavens help you, you rolled an elf, or didn't prioritize it), you've got a ways further to go.

Greataxe-wielding orc barbarian is sort of a terrible analogy for this, Ravens_cry, because it remains lethal for a long time thereafter. What's really tragic is losing a level 1 character to a shortbow crit (which is entirely possible with max damage) or a longbow crit (which can kill even a 14 CON barbarian outright at level 1, if he's not raging).


I'm playing a 10 year old boy at gestalt level 10. You don't have to start at level 1 to start at the beginning.

This strikes me as more immersion-breaking than dying at level 1 ever could be. Why is your 10-year-old gestalt level 10? How do you adequately describe that as a "beginning"?


People, I think that this debate about 1st level vs 4th level is pointless. In reality, it all depends on what you as GM and you as players want to do, some campaings are better progressing naturally from level 1, some with already estabilished seasoned adventurers. I think that starting at higher level would work better for people who rarerly can have time to play, but if you want to see how your farmboy becomes the hero one step at time, good for you. Can we now stop with that topic? It becomes pretty tiresome.

Fair enough. I'm more interested in the "evil campaign" myself, anyway.

I've actually played in an evil PF campaign, where the core group were two Neutral Evil characters (myself, the NE human rogue, and a NE human bard) plus one Chaotic Evil character (the CE dwarf barbarian), with some other lesser players (a LE human cleric, CN elf wizard, NN half-elf fighter, NE elf ranger, and some others). More of a sandbox game. The core group were released convicts who had political aspirations (minus the barbarian, who was dumb muscle), which we accomplished by acting as the unseen hand of the government as we made plans behind our employers' backs. Had an absolute blast with it; the bard and I were the party's leaders (I was the head, and the bard, as my lieutenant, was the neck), and we would manipulate the feeble-minded barbarian (who was our muscle) and lead the others through force of personality (and just sheer force). The game was absolutely full of political intrigue, for as we tried to deceive our way to the upper echelon of political power in the region, we found ourselves playing into the hands of differing political factions as well. I wish the DM had kept up with that game, but he had a new daughter and not enough time to keep up with it, which I totally understand. (Everyone in that core group is in my game now.)

On the other hand...


More on topic, I avoid This Is a Good Campaign campaigns, for the most part. It tends to indicate that the DM has a simplistic view of good and evil and believes that neutrals can't be heroes and evil can't work together. It also can indicate that Paladins are likely to encounter a heads you fall, tails you fall situation.

I have been in this type of campaign before (it's the same campaign where all my original "red flags" came from, though, in all fairness), and in that game, everyone was either Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader in a world without Han Solo, which made the entire world seem flat and one-dimensional to me after awhile. Further, characters could never "become" anything other than what they started out with (and we were only allowed to start out good; the DM even balked, initially, when he found out that my character was CG), so even though my character concept was, in a roundabout way, "Ged becomes Sparrowhawk by dabbling in magic not familiar to him in his obsessive drive for knowledge, struggles with his own dark side, and eventually comes to accept that the shadow in his heart is every bit as much of him as he is", I was never able to explore it (seriously, I was once rebuked from casting charm person on an NPC to gather information. Who does that?!).

I'm not saying that campaigns can't have good characters and must have evil characters, but for crying out loud, make it open!

[dsmiles]

I have been in this type of campaign before (it's the same campaign where all my original "red flags" came from, though, in all fairness), and in that game, everyone was either Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader in a world without Han Solo, which made the entire world seem flat and one-dimensional to me after awhile. Further, characters could never "become" anything other than what they started out with (and we were only allowed to start out good; the DM even balked, initially, when he found out that my character was CG), so even though my character concept was, in a roundabout way, "Ged becomes Sparrowhawk by dabbling in magic not familiar to him in his obsessive drive for knowledge, struggles with his own dark side, and eventually comes to accept that the shadow in his heart is every bit as much of him as he is", I was never able to explore it (seriously, I was once rebuked from casting charm person on an NPC to gather information. Who does that?!).

I'm not saying that campaigns can't have good characters and must have evil characters, but for crying out loud, make it open!Two points here:

1. I fully believe Sparhawk is closer to NG than CG. :smallwink:

2. Some players are just too immature to handle evil characters. They think it's free license to go around raping the horses, riding off on the women, murdering the children, and pillaging everything in between.
That kind of mentality isn't conducive to group play, thus the banhammer smites all evil alignments (when it does actually strike). The majority of my group, I'd trust with evil characters, but we had one guy that just went Chaotic Stupid with anything not good-aligned. Thankfully he's gone, and we're free to play the alignments we want.

[Mystify]

Wasn't there a guideline that 13 lvlapropriate encounters should be played to make a lvl?
Yes, but in practice I find that there is enough above-level stuff to reduce that greatly. Esp. with a tiny bit of optimization which leads to higher level encounters being the norm so as to provide a challenge. On level encounters tend to be rather easy, and hence boring.

[Arbane]

Any chance we could move the number-crunching to a new thread? I want to hear about more Signs of an Impending Bad Game.

ROLE-playing, not POLL-playing: The GM is a Roleplaying Snob who will insist upon 20-page backgrounds. Any actions that are not improv soap-opera will be smacked down by nigh-omnipotent NPCs.

[Heatwizard]

Any chance we could move the number-crunching to a new thread? I want to hear about more Signs of an Impending Bad Game.

ROLE-playing, not POLL-playing: The GM is a Roleplaying Snob who will insist upon 20-page backgrounds. Any actions that are not improv soap-opera will be smacked down by nigh-omnipotent NPCs.

I was in a group with a poll-player once. He had to pass out surveys for every scene. Combat was a nightmare, with pie charts and everything. I can see why they'd be asked to keep it in check.

[Yora]

Large Groups

Sometimes a large group is necessary, such as in an (insufficiently nerdy) college setting where there are very few potential DMs. But in general, groups above eight or so are a recipe for boredom.
Though I had a really cool Shadowrun adventure with 9 players. We split up into four teams for the attempt to break into a warehouse, with my character providing sniper support from the other side of the river, and the surveilance and remote-controlled robot guys sitting in a van, with the infiltration team going inside an assault team waiting on the other side of the street for backup. The assault team and my sniper never actually had to get into action, but it was still a really cool game, just planning the whole thing and waiting for a situation in which you would save the day.

[JonRG]

I was in a group with a poll-player once. He had to pass out surveys for every scene. Combat was a nightmare, with pie charts and everything. I can see why they'd be asked to keep it in check.

Tee hee.


ROLE-playing, not POLL-playing: The GM is a Roleplaying Snob who will insist upon 20-page backgrounds. Any actions that are not improv soap-opera will be smacked down by nigh-omnipotent NPCs.

In my experience, 'roleplay not rollplay' has just meant, "Could you say a few words to go with that Diplomacy check? It'll be less boring and probably give you a circumstance bonus." I'm guessing you had a really really bad DM once.


Though I had a really cool Shadowrun adventure with 9 players [...]

This sounds very Ocean's Eleveny, except I doubt your team expanded exponentially with each mission. :smallbiggrin:

[Seerow]

In my experience, 'roleplay not rollplay' has just meant, "Could you say a few words to go with that Diplomacy check? It'll be less boring and probably give you a circumstance bonus." I'm guessing you had a really really bad DM once

My experience with "roleplay not rollplay" DMs lines up more closely with his than yours. In fact several of them refused to use dice for social encounters at all. (Hope you didnt waste any points on social skills!)

Sadly most people who get worked up about roleplaying vs rollplaying are the ones who roleplay the least, they want to play themselves, not the character they are supposed to be who has different abilities than they do.

[Yora]

I actually never encountered any of the problems mentioned in this thread, with the 20 to 30 people I played with.

[JonRG]

My experience with "roleplay not rollplay" DMs lines up more closely with his than yours. In fact several of them refused to use dice for social encounters at all. (Hope you didnt waste any points on social skills!)

Eesh. Guess I'm just lucky. The "worst" campaign descriptor I've seen was You start at Level 1 (no matter what), and I didn't even mind it that much. :smallbiggrin:

[nyarlathotep]

Eesh. Guess I'm just lucky. The "worst" campaign descriptor I've seen was You start at Level 1 (no matter what), and I didn't even mind it that much. :smallbiggrin:

It's not that roleplaying is bad or the people that enjoy it specifically are, but if they feel the need to stress it when talking about the campaign it either says something bad about them or about the group they are in, and if this is from an open invitation type thing it's usually them.

[Coidzor]

Really, starting at level 1 while the rest of the party is level 15 is a much bigger red flashing light with a full las vegas tableau behind and surrounding it.

[Rubik]

This strikes me as more immersion-breaking than dying at level 1 ever could be. Why is your 10-year-old gestalt level 10? How do you adequately describe that as a "beginning"?One half of the gestalt is flavored as racial psionic abilities from being an illithid experiment, and he wasn't human, so the factotum side is the fact that (due to the experimentation) he is super-intelligent and picks up on things REALLY well. He's very much a savant, but he's still a child, with all the lack-of-experience and general naivete (if not lack of knowledge) that entails.

He has theoretical knowledge of all sorts of things (since he's read several libraries' worth of books and has information that was planted directly into his head), but not much real-world experience.

He's not nearly as arrogant, but if you want a good idea of how this kind of thing would work (or you just want an absolutely amazing read) check this (http://fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality) out.

[Urpriest]

I actually never encountered any of the problems mentioned in this thread, with the 20 to 30 people I played with.

You're also German. Healthier gaming culture over there. "German style games" is a term for a reason.

[2xMachina]

When I build a higher lvl char, I put in experiences in the background to tell what it did to lvl up. Perhaps he's a soldier for a while. A merchant guard. Or has run around adventuring (with some sample deeds).

Generally, the 1st few lvls background would be guard/soldier (or magic training, for magic users). My chars don't hop into adventuring at the start. They work around a little, then when they're more powerful/confident, they start being more adventurous.

[JonRG]

Really, starting at level 1 while the rest of the party is level 15 is a much bigger red flashing light with a full las vegas tableau behind and surrounding it.

Yeah, but in this case it actually worked out really well. Definitely not the norm, however.

[SilverLeaf167]

You're also German. Healthier gaming culture over there. "German style games" is a term for a reason.
Oh, I hadn't even heard of this... stereotype, if you will. Is it considered to apply to any other countries? :smallwink:
I don't have that much experience of Finnish tabletop gamers, but from what I've seen, most tend to be good-natured intellectuals; not really the snobby kind, but you know, smart people. And yes, I do count myself into that category.
Maybe it's because tabletop games aren't that popular over here? Information of the game tends to come from overseas; the guy who told me about it first played it in Hongkong, my cousin played it in America etc.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

For me, a lot of these are troubling signals, but no one of them by themselves would cause me to bail. A lot of mechanical issues, including starting at level 1, Critical Fumbles, and even the most obvious descriptor, We're using [System I Don't Like], can be glossed over with a good group of players + storyteller. It's only once these mechanics signals start piling up that I worry. Por ejemplo, a GM who implements a fumble deck gets a groan from me as I continue to make a character. A GM who says No ToB, no Psionics, "Core is balanced", Low Wealth, Additional Multiclassing Restrictions and Critical Fumbles? I might have to bail unless I know for a fact the group is great.

On the other hand, rules which signal the quality of the group itself might cause me to bail at first sight. For instance, No Genderbending. I don't often genderbend, mostly since I don't play a convincing girl, and unlike playing a non-human race people know girls so it might break immersion a bit if I slip up. That said, it's very troubling if the group or the GM can't handle genderbending from someone who can do it. While this might apply to No Evil as well, that one is more likely to be from a more scarring experience with a former player, so I usually let it slide.

One that's confusing is No Metagaming. IME this indicates one of two things:
(1) They actually mean "No OOC table talk during combat and, for some reason, no optimizing." They blithely ignore most of the actual metagaming, such as joining the party because "he looks like a trustworthy fellow."
(2) They are all insane method actors who simply. Do. Not. Metagame.
If I find they mean (1), I hold back the temptation to point out their hypocrisy and add it to the "troubling" signal pile. If they mean (2), I "play an anthropophobic sprinter" and run the hell away from that game.

One that you often don't figure out until mid session is Experience Penalties are in effect. This to me indicates a GM who has serious control issues.

[Coidzor]

You're also German. Healthier gaming culture over there. "German style games" is a term for a reason.

Huh. I've never heard of that one before now.

[Seerow]

One that you often don't figure out until mid session is Experience Penalties are in effect. This to me indicates a GM who has serious control issues.



It's serious control issues to actually use a rule that exists in the core books? I can understand not liking the rule, and avoiding it in games you yourself run, but I wouldn't blame any DM for sticking with a core rule rather than houseruling, especially if most of the group has no problem with it.

[Siosilvar]

Because of a houserule, the DM ruled that, for critical hits, instead of rolling normal weapon damage plus modifiers and multiplying by 3, he would roll weapon damage three times and apply the modifiers to each. For this, that meant 3d12+24 (21 STR of a raging stock orc, +1 greataxe), for a minimum damage of 27.

Not to undermine your point, but that's actually not a houserule. That's how you're supposed to do it.

[Coidzor]

A GM who says No ToB, no Psionics, "Core is balanced", Low Wealth, Additional Multiclassing Restrictions and Critical Fumbles? I might have to bail unless I know for a fact the group is great.

Can you give of any examples of how a group could be great enough to cause you to overlook those kinds of flaws?

[Philistine]

My experience with "roleplay not rollplay" DMs lines up more closely with his than yours. In fact several of them refused to use dice for social encounters at all. (Hope you didnt waste any points on social skills!)
Yep. Or mental stats, for that matter.


Sadly most people who get worked up about roleplaying vs rollplaying are the ones who roleplay the least, they want to play themselves, not the character they are supposed to be who has different abilities than they do.
Pretty much this, except that this category also includes people who treat the bland cliches in the PHB as holy writ and The Definitive Guide to the Classes. Character concepts which don't conform to the stereotypes there enshrined - say, a Wizard who gladly shares knowledge with others instead of being secretive and suspicious, or a Rogue who's actually a stand-up guy with a very specialized skillset instead of a greedy, party-robbing sneak-thief - just completely blow their minds. And, most likely, draw accusations that you're not playing your character right, because "no [member of Class] would ever do that."

[Rubik]

Two words: KENDER DMPC

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

It's serious control issues to actually use a rule that exists in the core books? I can understand not liking the rule, and avoiding it in games you yourself run, but I wouldn't blame any DM for sticking with a core rule rather than houseruling, especially if most of the group has no problem with it.Allow me to clarify. I don't mean multiclass XP penalties. I mean "you RPed that wrong, minus 50 XP." That's explicitly called out as a bad idea in the DMG. Multiclass penalties are sorta lame, but they're not indicative of the same control issues.
Can you give of any examples of how a group could be great enough to cause you to overlook those kinds of flaws?Well, I sorta threw those particular attributes together on a whim, but I've played core only low magic games with extensive fumble rules that worked in spite of these limitations. The group had a bunch of quality roleplayers, and despite the "eh" rules the GM was very open to novel player ideas for solving problems. The story was interesting, the rest of the group didn't care that much that the casters had more utility, and it ended at low enough levels where nothing broke.

[Andorax]

Untimely crits can be deadly at higher levels...nothing unique about 1-3 with that. However, I'd also argue that WotC was well aware of the problem...the 3.0 MM Orc was armed with a greataxe and the 3.5 Orc has a falchon instead (I'm guessing the axe-wielding orc means they didn't change the artwork).

-------------------------------

I've done pregen characters before...typically, it's because of a time-critical situation (weekend campout+gaming, don't want to waste half of it in character generation). It is not, as a rule, an attempt at railroading...but I can see how some DMs might use it as such. Actually, I rather like how the Pathfinder Campaigns have used a campaign-specific trait as a 'hook' into the storyline.

-------------------------------

I've also seen the evil campaign thing done successfully, and agree with those who have said that the more LE groups tend to be more successful than the more CE groups. I'd take it a step further and say that one of the key hallmarks of successful good groups (everyone treated fairly and as equals) is NOT a recipe for success. The most effective evil groups are ones where one character is clearly IN CHARGE. Not necessarily more powerful (or sometimes yes, necessarialy)...but in some manner that one individual has the power, authority, connections, divine right, or whatever to keep the rest of the PCs in line. The "evil glue" that holds the whole diabolical machine together.


On an unrelated note, another one of my more entertaining campaign concepts had to do with an evil party that didn't REALIZE they were evil. Campaign started off with them mid-leveled, fully garbed and equipped (yes, it was pregens too...the horror), in a small upstairs room in the middle of a big city, with cups of a brackish black water in their hands and no recollection of who they were or how they'd come to be there.

Turns out, one of the few ways to get past mind-reading defenses is to give your invaders nothing to read...something of a Total Recall approach. What made it interesting is to see others who knew them for who they were along the way reacting to them, and if they would revert to evil ways just because they were treated that way.

-------------------------------

I'll grant that the discussion of "High Fantasy vs Low Fantasy" in a literary sense is interesting...but it's also contextually irrelevant when the discussion actually has to do with "High Fantasy vs Low Fantasy" in the gaming campaign sense. Which, I've always been given to understand, is the difference between Tolkein-like groups trudging from here to there with one magic sword and one ring (a cursed item no less) between the whole party versus a group of 2nd level PCs hopping on the magic train to go investigate trouble caused by pseudo-living constructs in a set of ruins infested with spell-oozes.

-------------------------------

My largest "large group" campaign topped out at 13, but with 1-2 of the players converted over to "assistant DMs" and some fairly draconian rules to keep combat moving, we made it work and had a lot of fun with it.

-------------------------------

So now that I've covered many of the popular "don't go there" topics and said I'd go there, I'll hit on one of my own personal warning signs:

When a campaign ad is talking about a "Mature" campaign...make sure you know WHICH defintion of the word "Mature" is being discussed.

[Alefiend]

Oh, I hadn't even heard of this... stereotype, if you will. Is it considered to apply to any other countries? :smallwink:
I don't have that much experience of Finnish tabletop gamers, but from what I've seen, most tend to be good-natured intellectuals; not really the snobby kind, but you know, smart people. And yes, I do count myself into that category.
Maybe it's because tabletop games aren't that popular over here? Information of the game tends to come from overseas; the guy who told me about it first played it in Hongkong, my cousin played it in America etc.

Germans get singled out because it's the board game center of the world. An alternate term is Euro-style gaming—there are cooperative as well as competitive elements, rich design and room for strategy, and less dependence on the randomness of dice. The understanding here in the States is that board games and other social tabletop activities are much more popular on the other side of the Atlantic. My experiences with my Swedish RP friend and his wife, as well as his Polish roommate, make me think it's a broad European brush that happens to have been made in Germany.

So, to you and Coidzor, I can confirm that this is definitely a thing.

[ericgrau]

Actually it's given as a bad idea for emotional reasons. Every could get 900 xp + 100 roleplaying xp, and a couple players 900 xp and mostly the players with the bonus will feel good. But if everyone gets 1,000 xp and two get dinged 100 xp for roleplaying they'll feel bad even though mechanically the two scenarios are the same.

It's not purely in the minds of players though. A DM who does this probably isn't a nice person and could be a pain to play with. It could be control issues, or something else. It is smart for a player to be wary of that DM.

[Mystify]

I've also seen the evil campaign thing done successfully, and agree with those who have said that the more LE groups tend to be more successful than the more CE groups. I'd take it a step further and say that one of the key hallmarks of successful good groups (everyone treated fairly and as equals) is NOT a recipe for success. The most effective evil groups are ones where one character is clearly IN CHARGE. Not necessarily more powerful (or sometimes yes, necessarialy)...but in some manner that one individual has the power, authority, connections, divine right, or whatever to keep the rest of the PCs in line. The "evil glue" that holds the whole diabolical machine together.

That is a good point. My campaign did have one character that took charge and acted as a de facto leader. He did initiate most of the scheming, but by the end of the night the rest of the players had embraced it. At one point, he had stepped out of the room, and the rest of the players kept going and managed to get control over the police.


less dependence on the randomness of dice.
That sounds wonderful.

[Silus]

My Little Pony LARPing using the FATAL system.
I am deeply afraid of what depraved brinkmanship with be offered to surpass this.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v606/SilusCrow/Pony/tumblr_lybeuu15op1qfewofo1_400.jpg

Anywho, the big "Run away NOW" kinda thing for me would be:

Using 2/3 options between E6, Low Magic and/or Low Wealth.

Using one of the three? You have a playable game. Two out of the three, and we're gonna have issues. All three? Ok GM, sit down, I'm running an improv game instead of your planned game.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Actually it's given as a bad idea for emotional reasons. Every could get 900 xp + 100 roleplaying xp, and a couple players 900 xp and mostly the players with the bonus will feel good. But if everyone gets 1,000 xp and two get dinged 100 xp for roleplaying they'll feel bad even though mechanically the two scenarios are the same.

It's not purely in the minds of players though. A DM who does this probably isn't a nice person and could be a pain to play with. It could be control issues, or something else. It is smart for a player to be wary of that DM.Okay, it's indicative that the DM has something wrong with him. That's enough for me.

[Coidzor]

Two words: KENDER DMPC

Even worse. KENDER RUSH. :smalleek:

[dsmiles]

I like Kender. :smallfrown:

[Rubik]

I like Kender. :smallfrown:You've obviously never played in a campaign with one.

...at least, not like the one I'm talking about.

[dsmiles]

No, we tend to play them correctly. Taking our cues from Tasslehoff. None of that continuous klepto garbage. Just the occasional klepto, and no important items.

[Rubik]

No, we tend to play them correctly. Taking our cues from Tasslehoff. None of that continuous klepto garbage. Just the occasional klepto, and no important items.Ours was a DMPC, was constantly screwing up attempts at negotiations with hostile factions and getting the party arrested for theft and other issues, was constantly stealing huge important items from us without us noticing (no rolls, no saves, no anything), such that the paladin nearly died (like 3 times) because he suddenly didn't have his weapon or important pieces of armor that kept his full-plate attached to his body (and it suddenly fell off in the middle of combat), and all sorts of other incredibly annoying things.

And when the party all turned on him he nearly TPK'd all of us, despite never helping during all the combat he caused.

[dsmiles]

That sounds more like a DM who doesn't understand Kender, or the fact that DMPCs are usually a bad idea, rather than an issue with the Kender race as a whole.

[Gnoman]

No, we tend to play them correctly. Taking our cues from Tasslehoff. None of that continuous klepto garbage. Just the occasional klepto, and no important items.

The way I handled kender when I played one was to arrange for the DM to, every so often, mix a couple theft rolls against random objects into his secret spot/random encounter/make-you-think-something-is-happening-but-nothing-is rolls, then (if successful ) add the items to my sheet next time he looked at it. (A failure simply meant he told the character in question "You notice the kender reaching intou your pocket."

Worked quite well.

[Rubik]

The way I handled kender when I played one was to arrange for the DM to, every so often, mix a couple theft rolls against random objects into his secret spot/random encounter/make-you-think-something-is-happening-but-nothing-is rolls, then (if successful ) add the items to my sheet next time he looked at it. (A failure simply meant he told the character in question "You notice the kender reaching intou your pocket."

Worked quite well.And now it's time to manifest Psionic Dominate and find ways to utterly humiliate him in the town's square...AFTER forcing him to pay an exorbitant fine for attempted theft to the party.

[huttj509]

That sounds more like a DM who doesn't understand Kender, or the fact that DMPCs are usually a bad idea, rather than an issue with the Kender race as a whole.

Heh, one of my DMs had a rule, NO KENDER*

*except 'Bob' because, let's face it, he could actually play one that was amusing annoying without making you want to smash his head in with a rock.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The DM of the campaign I'm currently playing in (which incidentally is also a Low-Wealth and Evil-Only campaign, but this DM can pull those off) has actually used kender to good effect, the first time I've ever seen it happen. Details in the spoiler:

So the party is traveling from their home city, one of the few remaining free city-states currently under siege by an evil archmage's forces, through a forest infested with drow and other dangers. (Drow are surface-dwellers in this campaign because the archmage slew Lolth on his way to taking over the world.) We ran into some drow and negotiated a peace treaty of sorts with them, contingent upon our helping them with a "minor problem." We agreed to help, and they showed us what their minor problem was.

They took the party to a cage holding a small humanoid creature. It was smiling, attempting to grab anything shiny in sight, and was unkillable: the drow stabbed it, it died, the body vanished, and a few moments later the creature walked into sight again, completely unharmed. Yep, that's right, not just kender, immortal kender. :smalleek: Seems that the drow abandoned Lolth before she was killed once they found out that the Evil Archmage was gunning for her, and in retribution she cursed every member of the drow race to have a kender constantly following them and doing its best to annoy them--and not just any kender, but the most naive, easily-distracted, irritating kender possible. Pretty darn effective curse, I'd say. (Note to self: do not piss off a god in this DM's campaign. :smallwink:)

As soon as the other PCs discovered that these creatures were kender, they wanted to run away as fast as humanoidly possible. Not my character or the party druid, though. See, the reason we were traveling through this forest was to find another free city and set up trade agreements to resupply the city. The city had held on as long as it had thanks to an artifact created by the now-deceased builders of the city that would create a certain amount of food, drinks, and other necessities for every soul you put in it. The population of the city was dwindling since even on siege rations they had to feed the artifact one or two people per day, and the birth rate couldn't keep up. So the druid and I had an idea.

The druid stone shaped and wood shaped a bunch of signs into existence throughout the forest saying "Shiny things that way →" with pictures of various shiny things. These signs would lead anyone who followed them through the forest, over a river, and into the hidden back entrance of the home city, where more signs led them into the inner sanctum where the artifact was. A big sign above the artifact said "Shiny things down there ↓, jump in to get them!" Once this was completed, we tested it, and sure enough, a kender saw the signs, followed them, and threw itself into the artifact, whereupon a new kender popped into being in the forest (and immediately started following the signs) and 1 soul's worth of supplies appeared in the city vaults.

The peace treaty was finalized, the home city received more supplies in one day than they'd had in the past year thanks to the never-ending stream of kender, and the two drow and the home city set up a permanent trade agreement thanks to our efforts. So not only did we manage to kill a bunch of unkillable kender and be rewarded for it, the means by which we did so involved permanently destroying one kender soul every few minutes. Fun times. :smallbiggrin:

[Lonely Tylenol]

One half of the gestalt is flavored as racial psionic abilities from being an illithid experiment, and he wasn't human, so the factotum side is the fact that (due to the experimentation) he is super-intelligent and picks up on things REALLY well. He's very much a savant, but he's still a child, with all the lack-of-experience and general naivete (if not lack of knowledge) that entails.

He has theoretical knowledge of all sorts of things (since he's read several libraries' worth of books and has information that was planted directly into his head), but not much real-world experience.

He's not nearly as arrogant, but if you want a good idea of how this kind of thing would work (or you just want an absolutely amazing read) check this (http://fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality) out.

Perhaps it's the legions of Little Miss Badasses (
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LittleMissBadass), Enfante Terrible (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EnfantTerrible?from=Main.EnfanteTerrible), and other Super Strong Children (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuperStrongChild) that I've been inundated by in the past, but this just doesn't sit well with me. I don't mean to condescend, and I'm not saying it can't be interesting; it's just not my style at all. (The one level 10 I've played was a warrior in his 40s, who got to that point through decades of dedication and rigorous training and by surviving where hundreds, even thousands before him had fallen, which made his level reflective of his experiences.)


Not to undermine your point, but that's actually not a houserule. That's how you're supposed to do it.

Egg, meet face. :smallbiggrin:

You'll have to forgive me. I've only been playing for a couple years now, and I still find myself correcting things I've picked up from past groups from time to time. (In this case, this DM seemed uncertain of the legitimacy of "roll all the dice", but was correct; later, another DM would come around with the "roll, add, and then multiply" rule and be certain it's RAW.) :smallsmile:

[Man on Fire]

The only good DMNPC is one who is incredibly powerful and overshadows the party to the point they all hate him and most importantly, gets killed in very graphic way to show how strong big bad evil guy is.

[Lonely Tylenol]

The only good DMNPC is one who is incredibly powerful and overshadows the party to the point they all hate him and most importantly, gets killed in very graphic way to show how strong big bad evil guy is.

In fact, you can skip the "incredibly powerful" and "overshadows the party" and just skip to the "they all hate him" and "gets killed in a very graphic way", and your party might actually thank you for it. :smallbiggrin:

[Mystify]

DMPCs should never overshadow the party, or do much that is very plot significant. If he is playing something like a wizard, then that is a big warning sign. If he is just a dumb meat shield, its probably fine. I had a successful DMPC once. It was basically the character who used the crossbow turret that the artificer spent all his time enhancing. That way, all of his awesome was really the artificer being awesome by proxy.

[Rubik]

DMPCs should never overshadow the party, or do much that is very plot significant. If he is playing something like a wizard, then that is a big warning sign. If he is just a dumb meat shield, its probably fine. I had a successful DMPC once. It was basically the character who used the crossbow turret that the artificer spent all his time enhancing. That way, all of his awesome was really the artificer being awesome by proxy.I also had a DMPC (of a sort). He was a blind ranger (with archery spec), but he was there mostly as an hp battery and dispenser of advice whenever the PCs got lost and asked him for it.

[Coidzor]

No, we tend to play them correctly. Taking our cues from Tasslehoff. None of that continuous klepto garbage. Just the occasional klepto, and no important items.

Uh huh.

The problem is that the DMs who like them tend to do things along the lines of Rubik's scenario and just claim that they're just taking their cues from Tasslehoff as well.

Also, that potential players of kender are encouraged to act that way by the book that details them for the dragonlance campaign setting. An image floating around the interwebs that we couldn't post or link to due to the expletives highlights (though mostly underscores) this for dramatic effect.

Most "correctly played" Kender would be asked to leave the party by all of the groups I've played with aside from the one with the DM who thought breaking all of our previously established table rules and letting a girl he liked play a disruptive character would help him get in her pants without him actually having to work at it, and if the player didn't take the hint in-game or the explicit OOC "knock it off," they'd be getting murdered the next time they caused trouble during a dungeoncrawl.

[dsmiles]

Most "correctly played" Kender would be asked to leave the party by all of the groups I've played with aside from the one with the DM who thought breaking all of our previously established table rules and letting a girl he liked play a disruptive character would help him get in her pants without him actually having to work at it, and if the player didn't take the hint in-game or the explicit OOC "knock it off," they'd be getting murdered the next time they caused trouble during a dungeoncrawl.Eh. I've always played up the "curious and fearless, but not stupid or lacking in common sense" version. Maybe I'm doing it wrong? :smalltongue:

[Crasical]

Eh. I've always played up the "curious and fearless, but not stupid or lacking in common sense" version. Maybe I'm doing it wrong? :smalltongue:

Supposedly, if you aren't playing them as endangering themselves or their party anytime they're bored, and stealing baubles and trinkets from everyone they meet, friend or foe, you aren't playing them right.

[JonRG]

Supposedly, if you aren't playing them as endangering themselves or their party anytime they're bored, and stealing baubles and trinkets from everyone they meet, friend or foe, you aren't playing them right.

I played a kender that was trying to fight her nature, since she wasn't raised by her own people. She was eventually going to accept whatever wanderlust/whimsy was inherent to kender, but never go full-blown kleptofairy. This concept came about in part because there was another more typical kender in the party, and I didn't want the DM's head to explode. :smallbiggrin:

[Arbane]

On an unrelated note, another one of my more entertaining campaign concepts had to do with an evil party that didn't REALIZE they were evil. Campaign started off with them mid-leveled, fully garbed and equipped (yes, it was pregens too...the horror), in a small upstairs room in the middle of a big city, with cups of a brackish black water in their hands and no recollection of who they were or how they'd come to be there.

Turns out, one of the few ways to get past mind-reading defenses is to give your invaders nothing to read...something of a Total Recall approach. What made it interesting is to see others who knew them for who they were along the way reacting to them, and if they would revert to evil ways just because they were treated that way.


Nice.

That reminds me of another one-shot game I heard about: The PCs were a team of noblemen, all VERY old and weary, but still competent. Their lord had ordered them to retrieve a vital magic item, so they put on their old armor and cloaks, saddled up their mounts, and rode to try to track down the thief who currently had it.

....Turned out they were playing the Nazgul. :smallbiggrin:

[nyarlathotep]

Best plot twist ever.

[Ernir]

I've also seen the evil campaign thing done successfully, and agree with those who have said that the more LE groups tend to be more successful than the more CE groups. I'd take it a step further and say that one of the key hallmarks of successful good groups (everyone treated fairly and as equals) is NOT a recipe for success. The most effective evil groups are ones where one character is clearly IN CHARGE. Not necessarily more powerful (or sometimes yes, necessarialy)...but in some manner that one individual has the power, authority, connections, divine right, or whatever to keep the rest of the PCs in line. The "evil glue" that holds the whole diabolical machine together.
Nice.

That reminds me of another one-shot game I heard about: The PCs were a team of noblemen, all VERY old and weary, but still competent. Their lord had ordered them to retrieve a vital magic item, so they put on their old armor and cloaks, saddled up their mounts, and rode to try to track down the thief who currently had it.

....Turned out they were playing the Nazgul. :smallbiggrin:

Oh, wow. Now I feel the burning need to yoink the ideas. :smallbiggrin:

[Kalmageddon]

Seeing how everyone is complaining about restrictions in campaigns...

In this campaign you can play whatever you want!
I don't like it when a campaign has no clear atmosphere and/or theme going on, I like campaigns that have a distinct flavour to them and when the group is composed of characters that have nothing in common and clearly stay togheter only because otherwise there wouldn't be a campaign it really breaks my immersion.
A DM should be giving advice about what kind of character fits better the campaign and what kind of character would find itself out of place or with nothing to do, "anything goes" sounds good on paper but it always leads to shallow roleplay or useless characters.

[dsmiles]

In this campaign you can play whatever you want!There are certain settings where restrictions make less sense than in other settings. Take Planescape and Ravenloft as examples. Literally anyone can end up in either of those places.

Walk through the wrong portal? BAM! You're in Sigil. :smallbiggrin:

Misty, foggy night? FWOOSH! You're in Ravenloft. :smalleek:

It can happen to anyone.

[Heliomance]

It's not "as high fantasy as you can get", because by the official definition, it's not high fantasy at all.
Would you say something like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson or Skulduggery Pleasant (God I love that series) is high fantasy, just because they have plenty of fantasy elements and most relevant things happen in fantastic ways? No, because "Earth with magic" is clearly low fantasy, and that's what all of those books are.

No. I wouldn't class them as low fantasy either. They're modern fantasy. And actually, the Percy Jackson books I would say hover right on the edge of high fantasy, what with the strong mythological influence, the heroic tone, and the world-ending stakes.

The Dresden Files, while technically being urban fantasy, I tend to describe as "high fantasy in modern day Chicago". It's not about whether the setting is Earth or not. It's about the tone and feel of it.

The Lies of Locke Lamora, though, I would probably call low fantasy, despite being not set on Earth. There is magic, but it's mostly low key, and not the focus of the story. The story is a lot grittier than High Fantasy generally implies, and a lot smaller scale.

You can even have a fantasy story that has no supernatural elements at all. There's one in particular that I read some years ago that made me realize that, sadly I can't remember the name.

[Yora]

Of all the fantasies, Low Fantasy is the least useful term, as nobody really has any clue what it is supposed to stand for.
Which got us the term Heroic Fantasy for low-magic, ordinary-people stories in contrast to the high-magic, epic stories of High Fantasy. Though someone said Heroic Fantasy is just Swords and Sorcery with a more official sounding name.

[Heliomance]

Locke Lamora is most definitely not heroic :P

At the end of the day, the only definition of high fantasy that can be universally applied is the same as the famous definition of pornography. "I know it when I see it."

[Jzadek]

A lot of these seem to be entirely up to personal preference, really. For instance, I'm in the minority in that I love critical fumbles, both as a player or a DM. It all depends on the DM, in which case you may as well say "a game with a wizard in it" because you can go really munchkin with the class.
Critical fumbles don't have to be about causing yourself damage.

They should make sense, yes, but when done right add so much tension to the game. One of my favourite moments is when my sword shattered against an orc's armour, and I had to beat him with only a dagger. In the end, I felt like such a badass, because I'd beaten the odds.

In another game I was DMing, a minor villain, a mage, fluffed a fireball, and ended up having it explode in his face, simply because he got a critical failure on his concentration check when the thief sneak attacked him with her bow. It was satisfying for all involved. It was even entertaining when my dwarf died because of one, when he was knocked over when his axe was embedded in the Tarrasque's skin. It was a fittingly epic death that wouldn't have happened had he not rolled a one.

[Man on Fire]

Of all the fantasies, Low Fantasy is the least useful term, as nobody really has any clue what it is supposed to stand for.
Which got us the term Heroic Fantasy for low-magic, ordinary-people stories in contrast to the high-magic, epic stories of High Fantasy. Though someone said Heroic Fantasy is just Swords and Sorcery with a more official sounding name.

Low Fantasy: The Witcher, Song Of Ice And Fire, Black Company - hard to call them either Heroic Fantasy or High Fantasy and they pretty sure aren't sword and Sorcery. And no, they lack necessary horror elements to be Dark Fantasy.

And I still think this discussion is pretty pointless.

EDIT: How about we start separate thread for this discussion about what each fantasy subgenre means?

[Alefiend]

How about we start separate thread for this discussion about what each fantasy subgenre means?

Seconded. The original discussion has pretty much petered out, and starting fresh with a new topic will at least let the participants start by clearly defining the question and stating their positions.

All in favor?

[DrDeth]

I'll grant that the discussion of "High Fantasy vs Low Fantasy" in a literary sense is interesting...but it's also contextually irrelevant when the discussion actually has to do with "High Fantasy vs Low Fantasy" in the gaming campaign sense. Which, I've always been given to understand, is the difference between Tolkein-like groups trudging from here to there with one magic sword and one ring (a cursed item no less) between the whole party versus a group of 2nd level PCs hopping on the magic train to go investigate trouble caused by pseudo-living constructs in a set of ruins infested with spell-oozes..

I want to point out that the Fellowship is by no means “Low Magic” they are loaded with magic so high that a Detect Magic tossed in there would blind you. 3 greater artifacts, including the single most powerful magic item in the world, many powerful relics, etc.

[Philistine]

A lot of these seem to be entirely up to personal preference, really. For instance, I'm in the minority in that I love critical fumbles, both as a player or a DM. It all depends on the DM, in which case you may as well say "a game with a wizard in it" because you can go really munchkin with the class.
Critical fumbles don't have to be about causing yourself damage.

They should make sense, yes, but when done right add so much tension to the game. One of my favourite moments is when my sword shattered against an orc's armour, and I had to beat him with only a dagger. In the end, I felt like such a badass, because I'd beaten the odds.

In another game I was DMing, a minor villain, a mage, fluffed a fireball, and ended up having it explode in his face, simply because he got a critical failure on his concentration check when the thief sneak attacked him with her bow. It was satisfying for all involved. It was even entertaining when my dwarf died because of one, when he was knocked over when his axe was embedded in the Tarrasque's skin. It was a fittingly epic death that wouldn't have happened had he not rolled a one.
How does it "make sense" for a full-BAB character to suffer critical fumbles four times as often at level 20 as at level 1? The balance issue remains, as well: mundane characters roll the d20 a lot more often than magic characters do, so adding fumble rules makes the gap even wider.
Also, there's no such thing as a "critical failure" (or critical success, either) on skill checks. Houseruling them in is just as bad an idea as adding fumbles on attack rolls, for the same reason: it disproportionately disadvantages mundane characters, as "there's a spell for that" magic-using characters can often bypass the need to make a roll at all.

As to the genre discussion... People appear to be getting hung up on the words "high" and "low," likely based on the connotations they associate with those words in other contexts; but in the specific context of the technical (well, literary) terms "High Fantasy" and "Low Fantasy," those connotations simply don't apply. "High" and "Low" fantasy refer to stories set in "not-Earth" and "Earth," respectively, and have nothing to do with scale, scope, style, tone, or even "awesomeness"/"epicness." They certainly aren't value judgements on the worthiness of a story! High Fantasy can have a gritty tone (Cook's Black Company, Erikson's Malazan); Low Fantasy can have epic scale and scope (Brooks's Word and Void, many superhero comics). You can even have gritty stories in a High Magic environment within Low Fantasy (Butcher's Dresden), because all of these descriptors refer to different and unrelated qualities.

And yes, in practice this means that the terms High and Low Fantasy are largely useless to readers looking for more stories similar to ones they've enjoyed before. Style and tone, in particular, are likely to be far better indicators of whether a given work will be to an individual's tastes. But that's no reason to ignore what the words actually mean.

[Jzadek]

How does it "make sense" for a full-BAB character to suffer critical fumbles four times as often at level 20 as at level 1? The balance issue remains, as well: mundane characters roll the d20 a lot more often than magic characters do, so adding fumble rules makes the gap even wider.
Also, there's no such thing as a "critical failure" (or critical success, either) on skill checks. Houseruling them in is just as bad an idea as adding fumbles on attack rolls, for the same reason: it disproportionately disadvantages mundane characters, as "there's a spell for that" magic-using characters can often bypass the need to make a roll at all.


I didn't say they automatically make sense, I said that they need to make sense to be fun. If a level 20 character drops his sword, that feels stupid and unsatisfying. If he lunges forward and his opponent is quick enough to sidestep that he over-steps (in-universe the result of his opponent's skill, rather than anything else), it doesn't ring as false.

My group always balanced the critical failures with casters taking far more severe penalties than other characters - if the martial character fails, for example, it's never something so major that they won't be able to recover from it, while for casters, it's generally as if they got hit by a save-or-suck, which tends to take them out of combat, or they take an alarming amount of damage. It's not perfect, but we have fun - if I want to prioritise balance, I'll play 4e, not 3.5, or make a load of house rules removing casters, or something like that. Of course, casters are fun, and it would take the heart from the game to do that.

You don't like critical failures? That's fine, too. I'm probably not going to ever play with you, and if I do play with a group where people don't like them, I don't use them. But whatever you argue, that's a matter of personal opinion.

[Mystify]

I didn't say they automatically make sense, I said that they need to make sense to be fun. If a level 20 character drops his sword, that feels stupid and unsatisfying. If he lunges forward and his opponent is quick enough to sidestep that he over-steps (in-universe the result of his opponent's skill, rather than anything else), it doesn't ring as false.

But it still happens much more frequently for high level characters, since they re making a lot more attacks. Esp. TWF.

[Jzadek]

As I said, you can point out the problems - which are legitimate - as much as you like. You're still not able to change the fact that I've found them to enrich my gaming experience. Anyway, we've got house-rules for that, too; as soon as we get to the point where we have three attacks in a full attack, the confirmation role must be made twice.

[Philistine]

"Fun" is subjective; "sense," not so much. The actual, statistically-verified effect of adding Fumbles is that melee characters get worse at combat as they advance in level. That's a mathematical fact, which you then have to try to reconcile with a system in which rising through the levels is supposed to make characters better at their jobs.

[Man on Fire]

As to the genre discussion... People appear to be getting hung up on the words "high" and "low," likely based on the connotations they associate with those words in other contexts; but in the specific context of the technical (well, literary) terms "High Fantasy" and "Low Fantasy," those connotations simply don't apply. "High" and "Low" fantasy refer to stories set in "not-Earth" and "Earth," respectively, and have nothing to do with scale, scope, style, tone, or even "awesomeness"/"epicness." They certainly aren't value judgements on the worthiness of a story! High Fantasy can have a gritty tone (Cook's Black Company, Erikson's Malazan); Low Fantasy can have epic scale and scope (Brooks's Word and Void, many superhero comics). You can even have gritty stories in a High Magic environment within Low Fantasy (Butcher's Dresden), because all of these descriptors refer to different and unrelated qualities.

And yes, in practice this means that the terms High and Low Fantasy are largely useless to readers looking for more stories similar to ones they've enjoyed before. Style and tone, in particular, are likely to be far better indicators of whether a given work will be to an individual's tastes. But that's no reason to ignore what the words actually mean.

I never seen anyone use terms High and Low fantasy to describe stories set on Earth and not-Earth. I would like to know what your sources are.


By the way, if I would make thread about this genre discussion, link it here and ask everybody to take the discussion there, would I get warned for vigilanting?

[DrDeth]

IMy group always balanced the critical failures with casters taking far more severe penalties than other characters - if the martial character fails, for example, it's never something so major that they won't be able to recover from it, while for casters, it's generally as if they got hit by a save-or-suck, which tends to take them out of combat, or they take an alarming amount of damage.


Since for many spells the spellcaster makes no attack roll, how would they fumble?

[MukkTB]

Its not 'wrong' to desire low magic if the DM really means 'not much magic anywhere.' The problem is just that D&D isn't really the right system.

Furthermore lvl 1 or lvl 10 is more dependent on the DM's ability to place the appropriate challenge. I would agree that moving the players out of lvl 1 quickly is important. When I do that kind of thing I normally set them on an easy quest and give them quest XP that will be enough to get them to 2 within a session. I think most people can agree that the sweet spot centers somewhere a bit below level 10 and above level 3. However I also feel that you can start lvl 1 with the most bloodthirsty DM. Just don't develop the character very much until he hits 2 or 3. Leave space open for a backstory. Its pretty common in TV to flesh out a character's past well after we initially met them. They call it character development.

In the end a DM's quality simply comes down to 'Did you have fun?' Its such a nebulous thing that trying to pin down aspects and then going into endless qualifiers gets to be a little silly after a bit.
He should never do X
Except in conditions A, B, or C.
But C only if D applies.
And sometimes when the player is a ****.
BITE THE DM!
No you should talk to him and tell him that condition E is also a qualifier when B is only met partially.
If he does X really well its ok.
No its never ok! X is Eviiiiillllll!
Ask him if XY is allowed.
Threaten to quit the game.
I would never play with worthless scum who use X.
Use Z to counter X and win the DM-Player arms race.
Ect.

[Elric VIII]

"Fun" is subjective; "sense," not so much. The actual, statistically-verified effect of adding Fumbles is that melee characters get worse at combat as they advance in level. That's a mathematical fact, which you then have to try to reconcile with a system in which rising through the levels is supposed to make characters better at their jobs.


I have had a few thoughts on the topic of fumbles:

Describe them as acts of skill on the part of the person fumbled against, rather than incompetence on the part of the fumbler. Because it's more believable if it's something the enemy does, rather than the skilled caster/swordsman just messing up randomly.


For casters, rolling a 1 on an attack spell/SR check or the enemy rolling a 20 on a save is a fumble. This doesn't give casters an unfair advantage of having less rolls (there are fery few no save/noSR/no attack roll spells).


Only the first suceptible roll of each type of a turn can be a fumble (first attack/SR/save vs your spell and first save you make). This eliminates the chance to fumble more as you ger more iteratives/quicken spells.


Nothing that permanently damages a character. That isn't climactic, it's dumb.


The effects should be something like: magical backlash for SR causes some damage, enemy sidesteps your attack, you are flatfooted to them next round, etc.


Nothing that permanently damages a character (I can't stress this enough); based on some of the fumble tables I've seen, I am amazed that the entire world isn't a bunch of blind, scarred, quad-amputees. The effects should not be significant enough to greatly alter the outcome unless that fight is really close.


That's just my take on it. It helps make the game more than 2 people standing there beating each other with sticks because their AC is neglegible.

[Rubik]

I have had a few thoughts on the topic of fumbles:

Describe them as acts of skill on the part of the person fumbled against, rather than incompetence on the part of the fumbler. Because it's more believable if it's something the enemy does, rather than the skilled caster/swordsman just messing up randomly.
What happens when you're rolling to, say, sunder a pair of manacles and accidentally cut your friend's hands off instead?

"Oops. Your skill at sitting there motionlessly has caused me to fail!"

[Rockphed]

I said exactly what I meant. If you are fine with the DM telling you where you came from, that's great, but it also means the DM is more than likely going to tell you where you're going, and that is dangerous to anybody who likes developing their own characters, or making their own decisions, or playing the role of your choice. Since D&D is a role-playing game that, at its best, involves lots of character development and decision-making.

Sorry for coming into this late, but there is a difference between the DM saying "You are all in town X and know each other" and "you are all from town X and have known each other since you were 5." There is even lots of difference between those and having a DM saying anything about a character. The two above are standard attempts to get the players to design characters who will know each other and be willing to work as a team. Ultimately, there has to be some reason for the characters to meet each other, and most of the standard meetups(tavern, fellow captives, hired by rich benefactor) are much more boring than "you all come from the same town" could ever hope to be.

[Elric VIII]

What happens when you're rolling to, say, sunder a pair of manacles and accidentally cut your friend's hands off instead?

"Oops. Your skill at sitting there motionlessly has caused me to fail!"

The exceptional craftsmanship of the object resists your blow. You take -1 to attack rolls for a round due to the reverberations of metal striking metal. :smallbiggrin:

There are exceptions, but in general, I feel it's a bad idea to make your players look like bumbling idiots 5% of the time (at least when they're not doing it themselves).

[Gnoman]

It could also be something like "The ferocity of your attack caused your opponent to stumble, so you strike extremely badly".

[Jzadek]

I have had a few thoughts on the topic of fumbles:

Describe them as acts of skill on the part of the person fumbled against, rather than incompetence on the part of the fumbler. Because it's more believable if it's something the enemy does, rather than the skilled caster/swordsman just messing up randomly.


Nothing that permanently damages a character (I can't stress this enough); based on some of the fumble tables I've seen, I am amazed that the entire world isn't a bunch of blind, scarred, quad-amputees. The effects should not be significant enough to greatly alter the outcome unless that fight is really close.


That's just my take on it. It helps make the game more than 2 people standing there beating each other with sticks because their AC is neglegible.

These are two bastions of my fumble system, but you put it far better than I did. Especially the first one. As long as you have a DM who'll put some thought into making them actually fun rather than 'oh, you drop your sword' and will make sure they don't reduce badassitude, they can lead to exciting situations.

[Deepbluediver]

Campaign is described as low/no-magic.
There are certainly systems that can do low/no-magic worlds very well. D&D is not one of them.
The key here is get them to accurately define what they mean by "low magic". A game without magic items is very different from a game with no primary casters, which is also very different from when the DM just means "low magic for the PC party, 'cause all the wizards in the world are apparently part of this cabal you are constantly fighting".


DM wants us to use pregenerated characters.*
To me, this says that the DM isn't planning on running a collaborative game, but rather wants the PCs to act out a story that he (the DM) has already planned out.
*Obviously, I consider games run at cons to be an exception to this rule.
I would rather have this than a DM who gives you no guidance whatsoever on what kind of game it's going to be. That's how you show up with your sheet for Krunk the orc-werewolf barbarian and find out that 80+% of all sessions will be your party attempting to sniff out traitors in the court of the king of the high elves.

[DrDeth]

These are two bastions of my fumble system, but you put it far better than I did. Especially the first one. As long as you have a DM who'll put some thought into making them actually fun rather than 'oh, you drop your sword' and will make sure they don't reduce badassitude, they can lead to exciting situations.

So, how do spellcasters fumble spells without a attack roll in your system?

[Elric VIII]

So, how do spellcasters fumble spells without a attack roll in your system?

Well, in the rules I posted above, a spellcaster fumble is either a 1 on SR/Attack roll or an enemy rolling a 20 on a save. The only spells without one of those 3 are usually buff spells, and those usually encourage the casters to go in and make melee rolls.

[2xMachina]

Lvl 20 Ranger: I attack the training dummy with TWF!

Fumble

Oops, both of my +5 adamantine swords broke against the wooden training dummy. Whoops, the training dummy must be exceptionally skilled at blocking my attacks!

Or: Whee, there goes both of my swords, flying off into to sky, cause the training dummy parried it exceptionally well.

Sense? None.

[Jzadek]

You never had a creative DM, huh? In a case like that, I'd, y'know, exercise the fact that I have a mind, rather than a computerised program and veto the fumble. If this was a video game and that was automated, that would be a fair argument. Otherwise it's just a strawman.

DrDeth - I actually prefer the one posted by Elric, but the one I've always used before has mages make much worse fumbles. Sure, you may be batman, but if something blows up in your face, it does it far more dramatically than if the failure was the fighter's. You can also have a critical on a concentration check, something that a mage with intelligent opponents is going to do a lot.

[Jeff the Green]

You never had a creative DM, huh? In a case like that, I'd, y'know, exercise the fact that I have a mind, rather than a computerised program and veto the fumble. If this was a video game and that was automated, that would be a fair argument. Otherwise it's just a strawman.

Not all DMs are creative (not even all good ones). And it doesn't take a non-creative DM to create a problem that way. Just one that's too attached to his house-rules or who doesn't think well on-the-fly.

[Heliomance]

Well, in the rules I posted above, a spellcaster fumble is either a 1 on SR/Attack roll or an enemy rolling a 20 on a save. The only spells without one of those 3 are usually buff spells, and those usually encourage the casters to go in and make melee rolls.

What happens if it's an AoE spell and one of the five enemies caught in it rolls a nat 20? What happens if it's an AoE spell that you catch an ally in, and the ally rolls a nat 20?

[TuggyNE]

What happens if it's an AoE spell and one of the five enemies caught in it rolls a nat 20?

Similarly (as I've seen someone suggest elsewhere), what happens if the spell is made permanent and an enemy rolls a natural 20 on their save three years later?

[Jzadek]

Not all DMs are creative (not even all good ones). And it doesn't take a non-creative DM to create a problem that way. Just one that's too attached to his house-rules or who doesn't think well on-the-fly.

A Dm can screw up anything. You may as well argue that a campaign shouldn't have NPCs because some Dms get too attached.

[Jeff the Green]

A Dm can screw up anything. You may as well argue that a campaign shouldn't have NPCs because some Dms get too attached.

No, because NPCs are necessary to a campaign. The point is that fumble tables are a) objectively unbalancing and b) easy to screw up. If you like them and your DM can make them work, that's fine, nobody is saying you can't have fun like that. Most DMs--even good ones--can't make them work, so it's a sign of a campaign most of us don't want to be a part of.

[Necroticplague]

For an IRL group, a campaign descriptor that sends me packing is this:

"This will be an evil campaign."

Don't get me wrong, I love a good evil campaign that explores exactly what evil is, and has us performing shady acts for some goal, the IRL "evil" campaigns I've been in were intolerable. It was more a problem with other players interpretation of evil which really grinds me. They abuse the "tragic past/fallen hero" archetype so that their "evil" characters are "good heroes, with severe case of ennui and angst." This is probably just a difference in my opinion, but when I think "evil Campaign", I picture The Punisher, Wolverine, and sometimes Deadpool, not Whiny Emo Kid. Thus, why I now do all the evil in PbPs.

[dsmiles]

This is probably just a difference in my opinion, but when I think "evil Campaign", I picture The Punisher, Wolverine, and sometimes Deadpool, not Whiny Emo Kid. Huh. I never really considered those guys evil. They're more anti-hero than evil, IMO. They still do good things, but their motivations aren't neccessarily "good."
When I think evil campaign, I picture actual villains. Lex Luthor, the Joker, Apocalypse, Thanos, Saruman, etc.

[The Glyphstone]

For an IRL group, a campaign descriptor that sends me packing is this:

"This will be an evil campaign."

Don't get me wrong, I love a good evil campaign that explores exactly what evil is, and has us performing shady acts for some goal, the IRL "evil" campaigns I've been in were intolerable. It was more a problem with other players interpretation of evil which really grinds me. They abuse the "tragic past/fallen hero" archetype so that their "evil" characters are "good heroes, with severe case of ennui and angst." This is probably just a difference in my opinion, but when I think "evil Campaign", I picture The Punisher, Wolverine, and sometimes Deadpool, not Whiny Emo Kid. Thus, why I now do all the evil in PbPs.

I wish I knew players who did that. My entire experience of 'evil campaigns' has been the KILLMAIMBURN KICKPUPPIESEATBABIES PVPLOTSOFPVP psychotic flavor, to the point where I outright refuse evil characters and stomp on people who are playing 'Neutral And Totally Not Actually Evil' characters. At this point, I'd welcome the 'Evil And Totally Not Neutral' reversal.

[Rejusu]

Any evil campaign I'd do would have to be limited to Lawful Evil, maybe neutral evil. No Chaotic Stupid. I want to see Xanatos speed chess and gambit pileups, not mindless and senseless evil.

[dsmiles]

I wish I knew players who did that. My entire experience of 'evil campaigns' has been the KILLMAIMBURN KICKPUPPIESEATBABIES PVPLOTSOFPVP psychotic flavor, to the point where I outright refuse evil characters and stomp on people who are playing 'Neutral And Totally Not Actually Evil' characters. At this point, I'd welcome the 'Evil And Totally Not Neutral' reversal.I like playing the evil mastermind trope. Especially as a Telepath/(3.0)Shadowmind/Thrallherd. I don't care much for the overt evil-types; I'm more of an insidious evil-kind of guy. Raping the horses and riding off on the women never really appealed to me.

[Dr_S]

Huh. I never really considered those guys evil. They're more anti-hero than evil, IMO. They still do good things, but their motivations aren't neccessarily "good."
When I think evil campaign, I picture actual villains. Lex Luthor, the Joker, Apocalypse, Thanos, Saruman, etc.

Now I'm no punisher expert, but by modern day standards, I'm pretty sure the punisher is a serial killer.

Now by fantasy standards I guess as long as he's only killing evil people it's alright, but in real life people who kill that frequently often start to lose it a bit and start getting less picky about who they kill.

and Deadpool is a violent psycopath.

Wolverine though I'm thinking is not really evil.

[Deepbluediver]

Lvl 20 Ranger: I attack the training dummy with TWF!

Fumble

Oops, both of my +5 adamantine swords broke against the wooden training dummy. Whoops, the training dummy must be exceptionally skilled at blocking my attacks!

Or: Whee, there goes both of my swords, flying off into to sky, cause the training dummy parried it exceptionally well.

Sense? None.

It's a lot easier to houserule out the worst of the nonsense than it is to come up with a creative fumble table:
For any attack roll you make on a creature with a CR/ECL 3 or more levels below you, you are not subject to critical fumbles, though you still miss on a roll of 1.
For any attack roll you make on a creature with a CR/ECL 5 or more levels below you, you are not subject to auto-miss on a roll of 1, you calculate the attack roll plus bonuses normally to see if you overcome AC.

[Gnaeus]

This is going to be a heavy politics, high roleplaying game.
Two reasons for this one. The first is that this sort of game doesn't really interest me much. The second is that I keep hearing horror stories of people who DO make social-heavy characters only to find that most NPCs are social-fu-immune combat monsters who could kill them with their eyelids.


Another reason that I agree. If I want to play a heavy politics RPG, I will play a larp. In a larp, every character will have his own motivations, and I will be able to tell them apart and remember who is who a month later, because they are being played by different people. I have never been in a game where the DM was so good that I will be able to recognize the one NPC who is backstabbing us out of the 30 that were introduced when that NPC was given a 3 minute description in a game that might have taken place OOC 4 -6 months ago.

[Z3ro]

It's a lot easier to houserule out the worst of the nonsense than it is to come up with a creative fumble table:
For any attack roll you make on a creature with a CR/ECL 3 or more levels below you, you are not subject to critical fumbles, though you still miss on a roll of 1.
For any attack roll you make on a creature with a CR/ECL 5 or more levels below you, you are not subject to auto-miss on a roll of 1, you calculate the attack roll plus bonuses normally to see if you overcome AC.

This is a very interesting rule that I may have to import to my games. Really, the idea of a level 20 character missing the training dummy is just as ridiculous as fumbling against the dummy, and this rule addresses that nicely.

Though to be fair, my groups love fumble tables; really, we love anything random in our games, the funnier the better.