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Ghost49X
2013-01-18, 12:16 PM
Hello,
I've been thinking about party numbers and I've been wondering why limit yourself to a 5 man group? Why not go into a dungeon with a small army?
I'm been wondering about how large could you make a group?
I understand that the larger the group the longer it takes to do stuff (metawise) which results in things becoming boring while everyone is waiting on 1 player or the GM.

Here is what I propose (additional adjustments may be needed)

System: D&D 4e
Medium: Email & PBP

What I propose
Each player controls 1 "party" of 5 Adventurers
All characters of a party use the average initiative for that party, so they basicly act at the same time.
The player submits his party's actions all at once.
The GM uses similar parties of monsters (typically based on encounters) and each monster "party" is played in the same way.

For social encounters each player can send one character to attend and rp through him (though I'm assuming each player will stick to one or 2 such characters when the occasion comes around)

Since this would be played through email and pbp you could take your time on your turn (within reason of course)

Also the parties should be self sufficient so they could split off to have their own encounters (that would also affect the others in some indirect way)

Now I know this isn't the perfect system but it's an idea and I would like people's honest opinion on it. Of course this is not for everyone so only constructive criticism please.

Note: To do this sort of thing I'd use mapping software to create battle maps in some common image format which I would email to people so they can clearly see what the terrain looks like and where people are. People would then use the map to describe what they do (including scribeling on it if wanted)

Grinner
2013-01-18, 12:37 PM
What would this add to the game? How would this be fun?

I don't mean to sound hostile, but when making changes to a game, these questions need to be asked.

Gnomish Wanderer
2013-01-18, 01:56 PM
Hello,
I've been thinking about party numbers and I've been wondering why limit yourself to a 5 man group? Why not go into a dungeon with a small army?Because 1/5th of the treasure is better than 1/100th of the treasure

Ghost49X
2013-01-18, 11:05 PM
What would this add to the game? How would this be fun?

I don't mean to sound hostile, but when making changes to a game, these questions need to be asked.

The feel is different with more people in the fight. There are more viable tactics (as well as strategies) at your disposal and you can be more direct in combat. This is not to say that you can't use stealth, but it isn't your only viable option when dealing with a large amount of competent foes.

Though the different DM guides usually advise to avoid putting too many people in a fight as this creates clog, I seek a way to do so while reducing the clog as much as possible

It would add some additional tactical (as well as strategic) choices


Because 1/5th of the treasure is better than 1/100th of the treasure

1/100th of a large 1,000,000gp treasure is better than 1/5th of 500gp. With the resources of a larger group you can attempt tougher fights for more reward instead of farming out goblin lairs.

Grinner
2013-01-19, 12:53 AM
The feel is different with more people in the fight. There are more viable tactics (as well as strategies) at your disposal and you can be more direct in combat. This is not to say that you can't use stealth, but it isn't your only viable option when dealing with a large amount of competent foes.

Though the different DM guides usually advise to avoid putting too many people in a fight as this creates clog, I seek a way to do so while reducing the clog as much as possible

It would add some additional tactical (as well as strategic) choices

And that's also five times the paperwork and headaches...

I like the idea. I really do. But maybe D&D 4e just isn't the system for it?

Ghost49X
2013-01-19, 07:10 PM
And that's also five times the paperwork and headaches...
I like the idea. I really do. But maybe D&D 4e just isn't the system for it?

Compared to the other systems I know 4E is the simplest, though I guess this varies from person to person.

Even if I only played with 1 player who controls 5 characters 4E would probably be the simplest. Since every class has at wills and every class has encounters and dailies they are all somewhat balanced inrelation to each other and all powers are explained on a short powercard format.

If I compare this to 3.5/Pathfinder each class has their own abilities to keep track of and few of these are similar to each other. Characters have options like power attack, and other combat manuvers (trip, disarm ect.) complicated spells, turn undead, large spell lists to choose from and so on. What I mean by this is though the system goes well when everyone is playing 1 character each, they eventually learn their abilities by heart. Where as anyone who knows 4E can sit down and play a premade character fairly quickly, certain classes from 3.5 or path require more than a causual knowledge of the class to avoid clot.

On the other hand you could build a character so that all his feats and special abilities fall into permanent passive bonuses (Weapon focus, Shield Expertise ect.) as to avoid this sort of thing, but I think that giving a character only passive bonuses instead of things that open up new ways of using tactics will make those characters "boring" as all they do is swing their sword repeatedly. Granted at-will powers aren't that divers ether but they can still provide a different if simple angle of aproach to things.

PS: I know this sort of idea would create some clot and paperwork but I'm trying to figure a way to reduce it as much as possible, yet remain with a coherant system of rules.

4E also has more robuste guide lines for setting up encounters with the right challenge.

Grinner
2013-01-19, 07:27 PM
It seems that you're sort of trying to turn D&D back into a wargame. So why not follow the example of actual wargames? Instead of creating full D&D characters with all of the micromanagement that entails, simplify it.

Have you thought of using Microlite20 (http://www.forum.koboldenterprise.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=22)? It's a simplified version of D&D 3.5, though you might want to make a few changes to it, like the addition of feats. Also, check that the Advanced rules are included.

Ghost49X
2013-01-20, 07:41 PM
It seems that you're sort of trying to turn D&D back into a wargame. So why not follow the example of actual wargames? Instead of creating full D&D characters with all of the micromanagement that entails, simplify it.

Have you thought of using Microlite20 (http://www.forum.koboldenterprise.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=22)? It's a simplified version of D&D 3.5, though you might want to make a few changes to it, like the addition of feats. Also, check that the Advanced rules are included.

Well I don't hate wargames but I've always felt that they loose to RPGs when given the sheer amount of customization that most RPGs allow, something that a quick read through the microlite system also gave me the same impression. Yes I want to simplify things but not at that cost.
in relation to D&D 3.5 (or in general to the D20 system) there were alot of micromanagement involved, something they've tried to fix with 4E.

It's not that I'm preaching both sides, I'm just hopeing for something in the middle.

valadil
2013-01-20, 10:55 PM
So I think early D&D/Chainmail actually started in the exact opposite manner. They had wargames for armies and someone (who I think was Dave Arneson, but I'm not positive) suggested a smaller warband where everyone had just one character. The premise seemed confusing but the gameplay was pretty solid.

Cutting out plot reasons, IMO the motivation behind smaller groups is for logistical reasons. You can get 5 people across a chasm a whole lot more easily than 500 people. If a spinning blade trap is going to cut down half your foot men, don't bring those guys. Just send in the elites who can get by it. Unless I'm misinformed (which is a very real possibility), that sort of campaign was where RPGs as we know them began.

caden_varn
2013-01-22, 07:29 AM
The reason this would not appeal to me would be that it either requires a large number of players (assuming one player per character), which means each player gets a small percentage of the GMs attention, or each player having multiple characters, which I'll go into more detail as this was your suggestion.

First, I like to create a character with a reasonably unique background and set of motivations and triggers, so one of my characters may react to a given situation very differently to another. For me, running multiple characters inevitably means that at best one of them will have a personality, the rest will fairly much be faceless followers as far as RPG is concerned.

Second, I find 4E combats take a long time already with 3-4 characters (1 per player, we are a small group), if you are trying to be at all tactical. It takes especially long when you are playing a character you don't know that well (we normally share the GMing and play the GMs character in combat between us). I could not reasonably keep up to date with the tactics of 5 characters, and I doubt the rest of my group would fare any better - it would take my group FOREVER to run a combat with these options.

I think your comment about not wanting to use a lighter system as you don't want to lose customisation options shows a great difference in our preferences - I already find the sheer number of options available in the 4e character generator to be too many - I don't have the time or the interest to read through all the available feats etc. to find the best one. I suspect you enjoy this aspect of the game?

In the end though it is horses for courses. One of the great things about this hobby is is can accommodate a large number of different playstyles and interests. If you and your players find this a fun way to play, go for it!

blueblade
2013-01-22, 10:15 AM
aside from the crunch and extra paperwork, you may quickly find yourself making multi-target damage far more powerful than single, unless you drastically alter how these things work.

Ghost49X
2013-01-22, 03:27 PM
Cutting out plot reasons, IMO the motivation behind smaller groups is for logistical reasons. You can get 5 people across a chasm a whole lot more easily than 500 people. If a spinning blade trap is going to cut down half your foot men, don't bring those guys. Just send in the elites who can get by it. Unless I'm misinformed (which is a very real possibility), that sort of campaign was where RPGs as we know them began.

5 people across a chasm is alot harder than 500. But getting 20 people accross isn't much harder than 5. I'm not trying to go for an "epic war" feel where thousands fight in pitched battles but rather a small force close to 2 dozen characters max.


The reason this would not appeal to me would be that it either requires a large number of players (assuming one player per character), which means each player gets a small percentage of the GMs attention, or each player having multiple characters, which I'll go into more detail as this was your suggestion.

First, I like to create a character with a reasonably unique background and set of motivations and triggers, so one of my characters may react to a given situation very differently to another. For me, running multiple characters inevitably means that at best one of them will have a personality, the rest will fairly much be faceless followers as far as RPG is concerned.

Second, I find 4E combats take a long time already with 3-4 characters (1 per player, we are a small group), if you are trying to be at all tactical. It takes especially long when you are playing a character you don't know that well (we normally share the GMing and play the GMs character in combat between us). I could not reasonably keep up to date with the tactics of 5 characters, and I doubt the rest of my group would fare any better - it would take my group FOREVER to run a combat with these options.

I think your comment about not wanting to use a lighter system as you don't want to lose customisation options shows a great difference in our preferences - I already find the sheer number of options available in the 4e character generator to be too many - I don't have the time or the interest to read through all the available feats etc. to find the best one. I suspect you enjoy this aspect of the game?

In the end though it is horses for courses. One of the great things about this hobby is is can accommodate a large number of different playstyles and interests. If you and your players find this a fun way to play, go for it!

Some people like having more options others like more meaningful choices a small group of people even rather have someone look at their options pick out a few and then present them with a list of 3 options vs the original list of 20. I myself like alot of options, not because I like picking out the best but because I like trying out different combinations and hate having a cookie cutter build, dislike systems where you have several options but it's obvious only one of them is worth it so everyone takes that path. 4E is actually on the low side for character options, each supplement tends to add ≈2 more options per class each and the Dragon magazine is the only reason you're bombarded with a hundred or so options when you use the CG. Great for some but thats too much even for me. As for the core thing with 4E taking alot of time, it's usually downtime due to people looking up powers and considering their next move; with pbp you can literally read the post, think about it, take a shower while thinking about it then posting without extending the time too much.

Also as for the style of the game I do enjoy games like Final fantasy tactics that allow you to build a small party and customize several characters along the way.


aside from the crunch and extra paperwork, you may quickly find yourself making multi-target damage far more powerful than single, unless you drastically alter how these things work.

Well that depends on the DM; in my case I see the group spliting up to fight different facets of the same enemy force. This would allow normal group size battle most of the time and occasionally larger fights. I personally wouldn't bunch together due to AoEs and magic causing alot of damage to soldiers in formation. Rather I'd have you fight as a skirmisher unit.

Anxe
2013-01-22, 03:56 PM
I think other people have already pointed out some problems with you idea. Another one is that you want to do it as a PbP. People are going to drop out. If you do it with a massive amount of characters though, then eventually it should dwindle down to enough people who want to stay that the group is the right size for a normal party.

But really, why not do a war game? Less customization yes, but thats the point. You want to control more people, then they have to be less specific in their powers. Otherwise the paperwork is too much.

Ghost49X
2013-01-23, 09:48 AM
I think other people have already pointed out some problems with you idea. Another one is that you want to do it as a PbP. People are going to drop out. If you do it with a massive amount of characters though, then eventually it should dwindle down to enough people who want to stay that the group is the right size for a normal party.

But really, why not do a war game? Less customization yes, but thats the point. You want to control more people, then they have to be less specific in their powers. Otherwise the paperwork is too much.

I'm trying to take a bit of both, Wargames are usually great for great battles I don't really want anything bigger than a skirmish, Even if I only had 2 players I'd still want 2 parties. The fact that your whole party acts on 1 initiative means the only person you're waiting for is you and the DM, if a battle happens where you have lets say 3 parties present it wouldn't be much longer than waiting on 3 people. Its not like you have to wait on individual actions of each character.

Drglenn
2013-01-23, 10:32 AM
Sounds interesting, If you can find a DM (or run it yourself) and some other players I'd be willing to give it a go.

Just one question: How would initiative be done for the party? Would it be on the highest in the group? The lowest? Somewhere inbetween?

Anxe
2013-01-23, 10:38 AM
Sounds interesting, If you can find a DM (or run it yourself) and some other players I'd be willing to give it a go.

Just one question: How would initiative be done for the party? Would it be on the highest in the group? The lowest? Somewhere inbetween?

He said averaging somewhere earlier on. So you have four party members. You roll a 4, 6, 18, and 24. Average them out and your whole party acts on 13

Drglenn
2013-01-23, 10:46 AM
He said averaging somewhere earlier on. So you have four party members. You roll a 4, 6, 18, and 24. Average them out and your whole party acts on 13
Ah, cool, that's what I was hoping

Ghost49X
2013-01-23, 03:23 PM
He said averaging somewhere earlier on. So you have four party members. You roll a 4, 6, 18, and 24. Average them out and your whole party acts on 13

Actually, I ment you average out the bonuses and only roll once. The point is to cut clot when you can. While keeping the choices and customization.

As for running this, I posted this here to discuss the rules and systems and stuff. Get some constructive ideas from others and such, though I would enjoy running something like this I'm already running something else so I'll keep this one for later. that being said if you're interested in this PM me and I'll send you an invitation when I do get to running it.

SowZ
2013-01-23, 03:35 PM
I always try and justify why an army couldn't take on the threat, but a small group could. Sometimes I even design monsters or encounters or dungeons where lots of low level mooks actually help the bad guy. In my games, the quest usually has some overall necessity that an army couldn't handle for whatever reason.

Ghost49X
2013-01-23, 04:43 PM
There are situations where a small 5 man group is the best for the situation, other situations demand at least 100 men to do a job. In this case I'm hopeing to create situations where around 15-25 guys is the best size for the group.

SowZ
2013-01-23, 10:56 PM
There are situations where a small 5 man group is the best for the situation, other situations demand at least 100 men to do a job. In this case I'm hopeing to create situations where around 15-25 guys is the best size for the group.

At this point, though, I think you are better off playing a skirmish level wargame than a roleplaying game, since you don't get into your character when you have five of them to play. It is hard to keep track of that many individual special abilities, skills, etc. Things would flow smoother if they were streamlined and rp scenarios would be clunky.

You may as well play a 500 point game of warhammer fantasy.

Exediron
2013-01-24, 12:34 AM
That is not necessarily true.

Although there certainly is a logical limit, with practice I think that most people can handle five characters without too much lapse of role-playing ability. I personally think that somewhere around ten is the limit before you simply have to ignore some of the ones you like less. I've done far more than ten in one scene, and what happens is that when you don't have an initiative to keep things separated you only deal with the ones that interest you the most.

However, at smaller numbers, there are real advantages to having more than one character. One of the biggest is having multiple viewpoints, both metaphorically and literally: if the party splits you can have a character go with both sections, and if you have something you want to say (a suggestion to a riddle, a question to a prisoner, what have you) and one of your characters wouldn't say it, another one can. It saves you from the frustrating choice of keeping silent when you know you have something important to say or compromising your character's personality.

That said, I think the group initiative isn't the right way to go. I use group initiatives (I call them horde initiatives) only for monsters who are so similar I see no reason to give them a different count. If you used one for your characters, it would make them all seem like a block, and it wouldn't really make sense for Lyriel the elf cleric and Gudrok the orc barbarian to always act together even if they hate one another. Also, and I realize this is in a Play-by-Post game and as such is irrelevant, I think it helps to break things up and not lead to one player being too bored if you allow the initiatives to organically space themselves out. That way no one sits there and waits for one player to take all of his turns in order. In a PbP it makes sense, mechanically at least.

As far as scenarios where a larger group makes more sense than a smaller, you're usually getting into more military situations, or splitting into smaller groups. In a traditional dungeon crawl atmosphere there isn't much point to having a large group, and in some cases it actually hurts in tight quarters. My own group solves the question of 'why wouldn't the army just get involved' with the fact that because they're epic, the things they usually go up against would wipe the army out. When an army would work they use one.

If you want to design a dungeon for a 20-person group, my advice would be to make sure it has more rooms than corridors (large fights are very annoying in corridors, always waiting for the people in front - who rolled worse on their initiative - to move) and to make at least a few of the boss-level monsters very large. Try not to have too many encounters against a single human sized opponent, since they're difficult to use a group effectively against - when you do, use it on purpose for a harder fight. Large numbers of enemies also work well, and are a great chance for your large party to really take advantage of its size. I would also recommend splitting the party when possible, but I know a lot of people around here think that's heresy.

Whatever you do, good luck with your game. :smallsmile:

Ghost49X
2013-01-24, 12:59 AM
Although there certainly is a logical limit, with practice I think that most people can handle five characters without too much lapse of role-playing ability. I personally think that somewhere around ten is the limit before you simply have to ignore some of the ones you like less. I've done far more than ten in one scene, and what happens is that when you don't have an initiative to keep things separated you only deal with the ones that interest you the most.

I don't expect every character's rp to be played to it's fullest (if you do all the better) but instead I intend to have each party send a "representative" to social encounters (unless the situation calls for more) this rep doesn't need to be the same ether.



However, at smaller numbers, there are real advantages to having more than one character. One of the biggest is having multiple viewpoints, both metaphorically and literally: if the party splits you can have a character go with both sections, and if you have something you want to say (a suggestion to a riddle, a question to a prisoner, what have you) and one of your characters wouldn't say it, another one can. It saves you from the frustrating choice of keeping silent when you know you have something important to say or compromising your character's personality.

This is a very good point. Though when the party splits up in this case I tend to split off a whole party for a side objective so that's 1 player. Since this is pbp it does away with requirering other players to sit around doing nothing while 1 person gets his view point.


That said, I think the group initiative isn't the right way to go. I use group initiatives (I call them horde initiatives) only for monsters who are so similar I see no reason to give them a different count. If you used one for your characters, it would make them all seem like a block, and it wouldn't really make sense for Lyriel the elf cleric and Gudrok the orc barbarian to always act together even if they hate one another. Also, and I realize this is in a Play-by-Post game and as such is irrelevant, I think it helps to break things up and not lead to one player being too bored if you allow the initiatives to organically space themselves out. That way no one sits there and waits for one player to take all of his turns in order. In a PbP it makes sense, mechanically at least.

The thing with pbp is the more entities in the initiative queue the longer it'll take as after each one we'll have to wait for that person to do her turn and what if she doesn't post for a day? So 10 people and 10 monsters in such a queue would take several days as people wait for everyone before them to do their 1 action, this would require people who control multiple characters to post several times per day or risk slowing everything to a crawl. If you have a player play all his characters at the same time, he does 1 post and he's done for the day.


As far as scenarios where a larger group makes more sense than a smaller, you're usually getting into more military situations, or splitting into smaller groups. In a traditional dungeon crawl atmosphere there isn't much point to having a large group, and in some cases it actually hurts in tight quarters. My own group solves the question of 'why wouldn't the army just get involved' with the fact that because they're epic, the things they usually go up against would wipe the army out. When an army would work they use one.




If you want to design a dungeon for a 20-person group, my advice would be to make sure it has more rooms than corridors (large fights are very annoying in corridors, always waiting for the people in front - who rolled worse on their initiative - to move) and to make at least a few of the boss-level monsters very large. Try not to have too many encounters against a single human sized opponent, since they're difficult to use a group effectively against - when you do, use it on purpose for a harder fight. Large numbers of enemies also work well, and are a great chance for your large party to really take advantage of its size. I would also recommend splitting the party when possible, but I know a lot of people around here think that's heresy.

Of course this requires room, my senarios also requires people to split off at certain places to preform objectives simultaneously to allow make possible an otherwise impossible fight.

ghost_warlock
2013-01-24, 04:01 AM
I can tell you one thing, my Wednesday night 4e group has 8-9 players (+DM) and booooooooooooy does combat drag on as a result. And even with "only" that many players we tend to plow through most encounters unless the DM significantly buffs the size of encounters to balance the action-economy between sides, which only makes fights take longer.