[3.5] Organic Characters vs. Force Grown

[Thurbane]

Hey all,

Some recent threads have had me thinking...

What are some of the main crunch differences you would notice between a character that has been played right from 1st level, to a character that was generated at X level above 1st?

Some feats and other character choices are more likely to be taken at lower levels than higher. Once Fly or Spider Climb become readily available, people aren't likely to sink ranks into Climb, for instance.

I guess with the retraining rules, or Psychic Reformation, these can be swapped out later. (FWIW, my group doesn't currently use either of these rules. I will probably be allowing retraining next time I DM a long term campaign).

Also, I find that characters are usually more likely to hang on to quirky or interesting magic items they find at lower levels, than they are to spend WBL on them when generated at higher levels.

What are your thoughts and experiences with this type of thing?

Cheers - T

[Grams]

Well the RP/direction of your character certainly changes which leads to different feat progressions and magic item purchases.

Ie. My crusader was going to be a faithless warrior sellsword but after a few levels and "quests" I'm now the captain of a ocean fleet that proselytizes the word church of st. cuthbert.

Never would have thought I'd be saving 51k for an Admirals bicorne and dumping every feat, from 6 on, into leadership.

[Epsilon Rose]

Aside from changes in character arc, I think the biggest change you'd see is fewer diminished versions of powers, especially on classes with very limited lists of powers. You might also see more PRCs with prerequisites that would be painful to play through. For example, there's a homebrew PRC, that I know of, that thurges 3 classes and can't be entered before level 10. It's an interesting PRC, but I wouldn't want to play through it's first 10 levels (the classes don't really stack at all, until it makes them stack).

[Thurbane]

Yes, I think Fochlucan Lyrist is a great example of this.

Short of using well known cheese for early entry, the lead up to this class in the "intended" manner would require you to be a pretty sub-par triple classed character up to 10th level or so. Rogue 2/Bard X/Druid X seems to be the designer's expected entry...

[Adverb]

I always assumed the Lyrist was written by someone who missed the first edition bard.

For anyone who doesn't know how they worked, I suggest reading the following craziness: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/excerpts/excerpt_ph1_bard.pdf

[Thurbane]

Oh yeah, for sure it was an attempt to recreate the 1E bard.

[jedipilot24]

More magic items in general for starting at higher levels.
On a similar note, I have a question.
Could a Martial Adept created above 1st level pick for their maneuvers known all the higher-level maneuvers that they qualify for, or do they have to choose maneuvers as if they had started at 1st and then leveled up?

[Person_Man]

I personally find that players are far more willing to use low Tier, "all day" classes if you start out at low levels. Having something like d12 hit dice, heavy armor, and martial weapons is actually a real and meaningful thing at 1st level, whereas having d4 hit dice, no armor, and 4ish useful spells can be a real challenge to play. Resource management (hit points, use per day abilities, equipment/gp) is a big thing at low levels, and low Tier classes sometimes have more resources for the first 2 levels.

[Red Fel]

I think that the key thing is that when one builds a character in advance, from scratch, there is something of a vacuum. Optimization becomes a list of "best overall" choices, offset against personal playstyle or flavor decisions. By contrast, when building level-by-level, choices are less "best overall," and more "best in context." Class and feat choices become more opportunistic.

It's hard to say that one is more optimized than the other. When building in a vacuum, of course, you can optimize freely, pick the best numbers and class combinations. But when building from one level to the next, your optimization choices are informed - you know the setting, the mechanics, possibly even the villain. Decisions that may not have seemed as optimal in a vacuum suddenly become desirable. In this way, "organic" building can be simultaneously more optimized and less optimized.

In terms of mechanical differences, I will go back to my point about opportunism. Players building a character in the moment are more likely to draw on feats that give them a more tangible, immediate benefit than those optimizing in a vacuum. That's not to say that players in the moment will prioritize these feats over long-term benefits, but rather that they are more likely to consider them than an out-of-campaign optimizer is. Similarly, class choices become a function of what the DM has given the party. Did someone get a boat? Perhaps it's time to take a level or two of Dread Pirate. Are we fighting a lot of Evil Outsiders? It's Hellreaver time. Did somebody just cast Phantasm on the Bard? Welcome to Live My Nightmare. And so forth.

[Emperor Tippy]

I generally see fairly little difference. Psychic Reformation means that an organic character can become a fairly well optimized character for a minor cost.

Getting a pocket item maker (a Simulacrum of a creature with XP free Wish that you can stuff in your bag of holding) is relatively trivial cost wise and means that by ECL 10 or so you can totally respec all of your gear in a week or two of downtime.

By the time you are ECL 20 you actually have the money and resources to afford total soul rebuilds and can actually repick every level (and all skills, feats, spells, and other level up choices) bar your first HD for a measly 500 XP. Combined with the right prep work and shenanigans and you can actually pull off even better than normal early entry shenanigans in some cases.

I once played a Wizard who upon reaching level 20 rebuilt himself as a Wizard 1/ Ardent 1/ Cerebremancer 10/ Uncanny Trickster 5/ Legacy Champion 3. He had an ML of about 60. Fluff wise this was done as the wizard turning his massive arcane power and understanding of numerous esoteric fields into a ritual to massively increase his power and capability. He later redid the same basic ritual numerous times as he became higher level and could regularly advance Cerebremancer before again redoing it with Cerebremancer advancing Psion. It might have been hideously optimized but it was also fully organic to the character.

[limejuicepowder]

I don't know how this weighs in on which type of character would be stronger, but I've noticed a tendency to lament character creation choices made on advanced characters.

For a mid-OP player like myself starting at very low level, I don't necessarily have every level, feat, and skill point planned out, but I have a pretty good idea of where I'm going. As I level, I balance my original plans with what is going on in the campaign. But if I'm starting at higher level, I can't do the second part of that; everything is chosen from the start. This can easily lead to picking things that look great on paper but don't get used once the game starts (usually because it doesn't apply to that particular campaign). Or perhaps the character's roll in the party ends up being different than was anticipated, and some of my build choices become poor or irrelevant. I can largely avoid that situation with a character that levels organically, vs one that pops in to the world at higher level.

[Person_Man]

I generally see fairly little difference. Psychic Reformation means that an organic character can become a fairly well optimized character for a minor cost.

Getting a pocket item maker (a Simulacrum of a creature with XP free Wish that you can stuff in your bag of holding) is relatively trivial cost wise and means that by ECL 10 or so you can totally respec all of your gear in a week or two of downtime.

By the time you are ECL 20 you actually have the money and resources to afford total soul rebuilds and can actually repick every level (and all skills, feats, spells, and other level up choices) bar your first HD for a measly 500 XP. Combined with the right prep work and shenanigans and you can actually pull off even better than normal early entry shenanigans in some cases.

I once played a Wizard who upon reaching level 20 rebuilt himself as a Wizard 1/ Ardent 1/ Cerebremancer 10/ Uncanny Trickster 5/ Legacy Champion 3. He had an ML of about 60. Fluff wise this was done as the wizard turning his massive arcane power and understanding of numerous esoteric fields into a ritual to massively increase his power and capability. He later redid the same basic ritual numerous times as he became higher level and could regularly advance Cerebremancer before again redoing it with Cerebremancer advancing Psion. It might have been hideously optimized but it was also fully organic to the character.

Wait, so you actually play real life epic level RAW games with Tier 1 game changing magic? I know your forum name is synonymous with the concept, so it's not really that surprising. But what happens to your character(s) when they lose Initiative? Enemy casts Time Stop or whatever, you lose, game over? Or do all of your characters have elaborate backup plans, and the entirety of the game is all about resolving the plot while avoiding direct conflict with other high level magic/psionics users? (Which actually sounds like an interesting game, now that I think about it).

[Epsilon Rose]

Wait, so you actually play real life epic level RAW games with Tier 1 game changing magic? I know your forum name is synonymous with the concept, so it's not really that surprising. But what happens to your character(s) when they lose Initiative? Enemy casts Time Stop or whatever, you lose, game over? Or do all of your characters have elaborate backup plans, and the entirety of the game is all about resolving the plot while avoiding direct conflict with other high level magic/psionics users? (Which actually sounds like an interesting game, now that I think about it).

I have a sneaking suspicion that Tippy's games play out more like go or, maybe, eclipse phase than MtG.

[Magesmiley]

I think that you'll see less of the top tier classes, and the wizard in particular, with organic characters A lot of players don't really have the patience for low-level casters. Particularly the ones playing them for their power. Players with wizards that have survived the low levels have a very different mindset than ones who jump past the low levels.

[Emperor Tippy]

Wait, so you actually play real life epic level RAW games with Tier 1 game changing magic? I know your forum name is synonymous with the concept, so it's not really that surprising.
On occasion. Although most of the time I use my own epic magic variants and often even my own epic rules entirely.

Granted, I don't recommend playing RAW epic.


But what happens to your character(s) when they lose Initiative? Enemy casts Time Stop or whatever, you lose, game over?
Or do all of your characters have elaborate backup plans, and the entirety of the game is all about resolving the plot while avoiding direct conflict with other high level magic/psionics users? (Which actually sounds like an interesting game, now that I think about it).

Basically what you said. Have you ever read the Savage Tide's adventure? Think like that only a lot more optimized and starting at high CR challenges. If you want to kill a level 20+ character (especially a caster and extra especially an Epic caster) then you are talking a dozen or more adventures (not encounters usually but three to four equal CR encounter adventures) of prep work. You adventure to discover the defenses on your target and then you adventure to find ways to overcome each of those defenses. Then, once you have done all the prep work, you have the final fight. Which is, if you have done everything right, often very anti-climatic.

This is a level where straight death isn't even an inconvenience. Hell, I've had characters kill themselves just because True Res was the best way to heal back up. I've played characters that could immediate action True Res 60 characters for free. As a tertiary ability and not a primary feature. Or could immediate action throw out 60 Ice Assassin's of the enemy that they are facing (or any other creature type that he wanted). Blinking into existence 60 Great Wyrm Dragons (specific type dependent upon the enemy face) to deal with peons was something of a signature move (and each dragon was actually quite optimized).

At these levels the whole game isn't about straight fights, it's strategy, puzzles, and RP with the fights being mostly secondary. Why? Because if you can actually get within 30 ft. of an enemy with all of their defenses and contingencies stripped off then anything can kill anything else in one round. And if you haven't stripped the defenses then no one is going to be harming anyone else.

[Suddo]

Wait, so you actually play real life epic level RAW games with Tier 1 game changing magic? I know your forum name is synonymous with the concept, so it's not really that surprising. But what happens to your character(s) when they lose Initiative? Enemy casts Time Stop or whatever, you lose, game over? Or do all of your characters have elaborate backup plans, and the entirety of the game is all about resolving the plot while avoiding direct conflict with other high level magic/psionics users? (Which actually sounds like an interesting game, now that I think about it).

From what I've gathered one of his homebrews is that WBL is a sort of magic item aura and if you go too much above it your character explodes. So he doesn't care if you respec your character or have billions of free gold at your base. When you to assault the lich's cave you only get to take a certain amount.

[Person_Man]

At these levels the whole game isn't about straight fights, it's strategy, puzzles, and RP with the fights being mostly secondary. Why? Because if you can actually get within 30 ft. of an enemy with all of their defenses and contingencies stripped off then anything can kill anything else in one round. And if you haven't stripped the defenses then no one is going to be harming anyone else.

Sounds interesting. If it ever really works for you for an extended adventure, you should write a book. I find that it's almost impossible to really "get into" most works of high fantasy (ie, god-like magic exists) for more then 300 pages or so, because the internal logic of the world almost always breaks down once you start thinking about it. Seriously, no one thought to use a Time Turner to stop Tom Riddle from becoming Voldemort and killing so many people? No one thought to use the Eagles to fly into Mordor? Why doesn't Melisandre just use her magical ability to give birth to shadow assassin things to kill off all of her/Stannis's rivals? And so on.

As it pertains to this thread, when playing an "organic" character, I think that some players also have a hard time transitioning a character from low fantasy ("let's grind through dungeons, but be careful, I only have 4 spells today and half of them are only useful in very specific situations") to high fantasy ("ok, lets avoid all conflict with the enemy so that we can figure out what earth shattering magic he's using and find a way to bypass it"). D&D can be a totally different game depending on what level you're playing at and what classes/spells/powers/etc players choose to use.

[Emperor Tippy]

From what I've gathered one of his homebrews is that WBL is a sort of magic item aura and if you go too much above it your character explodes. So he doesn't care if you respec your character or have billions of free gold at your base. When you to assault the lich's cave you only get to take a certain amount.

Pretty much.

You get WBL and HD*1% of WBL (minimum of 1,000 GP) on consumables on hand at any given time. If you want to use a magic item that isn't a consumable then it takes an hour of meditation to attune (during which time you can attune as many or as few magic items as you want) the item, after which you get its benefits as normal. If you want to use an item without attuning it then it counts against consumables and its risky (if it puts you over your limit you blow up and can't be ressed).

You, of course, have to have the item that you want to attune on hand but that is rarely an issue.

Fixed items like bases don't count against WBL at all (but if you carry it around in your pocket then it is not a fixed item).

[Thurbane]

Could a Martial Adept created above 1st level pick for their maneuvers known all the higher-level maneuvers that they qualify for, or do they have to choose maneuvers as if they had started at 1st and then leveled up?
I believe that characters starting above 1st do not get to break the core rules of their class, and can only select feats and other abilities that were legal at the given level they would normally have been obtained. So in answer to your question, no, I don't believe they could.

If that's not the RAW, then that's certainly how it is at my table anyway.

[Emperor Tippy]

Sounds interesting. If it ever really works for you for an extended adventure, you should write a book. I find that it's almost impossible to really "get into" most works of high fantasy (ie, god-like magic exists) for more then 300 pages or so, because the internal logic of the world almost always breaks down once you start thinking about it. Seriously, no one thought to use a Time Turner to stop Tom Riddle from becoming Voldemort and killing so many people? No one thought to use the Eagles to fly into Mordor? Why doesn't Melisandre just use her magical ability to give birth to shadow assassin things to kill off all of her/Stannis's rivals? And so on.
I have a few book ideas sitting around (and even a few bare-bones outlines) but as with everything else, its a matter of time. I run my own business and work, on average, 60 hours a week (hell, between last Friday and Sunday I spent a total of 95 hours in the air). Then I have family and personal commitments. Then I have my political activities (although those are mostly folded into work).

Honestly, my primary entertainment methods are table top RPG's and a couple of computer games. And the only reason that I really get the time to play D&D and Shadowrun fairly often is that my primary gaming group is made up of myself, my chief counsel, and a couple of my other employees and since I own the company we get to play using the companies facilities. It's amazing how much more pleasant to DM it is when you can get a fully rendered and populated city with a RAW appropriate residents and integrating real life demographics and sociological information. It has so very much spoiled me for DMing.

I actually have most of a 3.5 rewrite about 98% done along with a host of gaming utilities that blow anything else publicly available out of the water pretty much ready for public release but that is in limbo due to various legal issues. Receiving a free copy and being part of the play test was actually going to be the prize for me Monk challenge and the start of the viral marketing campaign for a Christmas season release but the whole project ended up shelved temporarily but indefinitely.

[Telok]

As it pertains to this thread, when playing an "organic" character, I think that some players also have a hard time transitioning a character from low fantasy ("let's grind through dungeons, but be careful, I only have 4 spells today and half of them are only useful in very specific situations") to high fantasy ("ok, lets avoid all conflict with the enemy so that we can figure out what earth shattering magic he's using and find a way to bypass it"). D&D can be a totally different game depending on what level you're playing at and what classes/spells/powers/etc players choose to use.

I find that characters who level up actually go from low to high D&D pretty well as long as the player isn't a complete... fool. I'll use the word 'fool' here. This presumes that you aren't levelling every adventure or faster. Most people, during an adventuring career, will say "Man, that <monster X> messed me up! I need <ability Y> to deal with that in the future." And then they go on and adventure, side quest, or do something to get ability-Y. Then, if they find that thier old tactics stop working they try or develop new ones. The characters tend to evolve with the campaign and the threats that they face.

In contrast it's the characters created at higher levels that actually seem less able to adapt and cope with different situations (not including divination/batman wizard types of course, but those see less play than more specialized casters in my experience). I've seen lots of level 10+ created characters with potentially crippling weaknesses and heavy specialization in a very narrow capability. Melee with a 20' move and no ranged weapons or flight. Sorcerers with half thier list being direct damage acid spells, or no spells with a range greater than short. Rogues who have no offence or defense against undead and constructs. Entire parties where nobody has ranks in search or spot skills or can cast detect magic. Highly multiclassed fighter types with a +6 Will save at level 16. Often these are one trick ponies focused on winning initative and doing damage. These sorts of characters come in because a) they found the build on a char-op board and it's the "best" at what it does, or b) they're playing the character building game and not the game that's going on at the table.

I think that characters who don't grow and learn are less viable in an actual campaign. These characters tend to be the ones that spring, fully formed, from a character building mini-game that isn't involved in the campaign that is actually played.

[Urpriest]

More magic items in general for starting at higher levels.

I find the opposite, in general. If you grow organically, your WBL is mostly in lots of little lower-level items, rather than a few big ones, since you pick them up as you go and don't sell if they're still useful.

[Chronos]

One issue with starting at high level is that you're not as familiar with your character and their abilities. I know my 16th-level character (started at 15) has a lot of spells that I keep on forgetting about, because there's just too much to learn at once. If we'd started from lower levels and worked our way up, I'd have gotten those a few at a time, and had a chance to learn what I had before I got more.

[Svata]

No one thought to use the Eagles to fly into Mordor?
I always have a problem when people bring this one up. Sauron would have noticed the eagles, all of the Nazgûl would have attacked at once, and the good guys would have lost. They had to SNEAK in for a reason. One does not simply fly an eagle into Mordor.

[Thurbane]

I find the opposite, in general. If you grow organically, your WBL is mostly in lots of little lower-level items, rather than a few big ones, since you pick them up as you go and don't sell if they're still useful.
There's a common houerule in my group (at least I think it's a houserule) that when generating characters above 1st, on a certain amount of WBL can be spent on any one item - usually 1/2 or 1/3. This generally means a few smaller items than one "mega-item".

But yes, all of my character's I played from 1st up tended to have a lot more small items that they hung onto, until they became totally redundant.

[OldTrees1]

There's a common houerule in my group (at least I think it's a houserule) that when generating characters above 1st, on a certain amount of WBL can be spent on any one item - usually 1/2 or 1/3. This generally means a few smaller items than one "mega-item".


This house rule is acknowledged and made stricter in the PHB II guidelines for higher level characters.

[Vortenger]

I actually have most of a 3.5 rewrite about 98% done along with a host of gaming utilities that blow anything else publicly available out of the water pretty much ready for public release but that is in limbo due to various legal issues. Receiving a free copy and being part of the play test was actually going to be the prize for me Monk challenge and the start of the viral marketing campaign for a Christmas season release but the whole project ended up shelved temporarily but indefinitely.

If you ever want any outside feedback, I'm sure there's more than a few of us who'd love to read your work. If the project is unable to go public, that is.

[Person_Man]

And the only reason that I really get the time to play D&D and Shadowrun fairly often is that my primary gaming group is made up of myself, my chief counsel, and a couple of my other employees and since I own the company we get to play using the companies facilities.

Trust me, you have a much better gig then most. My job is also involves long hours and travel, but I lack the ability to call my wife and tell her, "Sorry honey, I know that I'm working late tonight and you picked up the kid from day care again. But the boss really wants us to clear this level of the Tomb of Eternal Damnation on schedule." If your business ever needs a Project Manager with 15+ yrs of experience, drop me a line. It sounds like your team is much more interesting to work with.



I always have a problem when people bring this one up. Sauron would have noticed the eagles, all of the Nazgûl would have attacked at once, and the good guys would have lost. They had to SNEAK in for a reason. One does not simply fly an eagle into Mordor.

Gandalf couldn't summon a shaft of white light to drive them away as he did in Return of the King, or think of any other spell to distract or delay the Nazgul for a brief amount of time needed to slip past? Galadriel couldn't use her god-like power to do something other then handing out magical trinkets and sending cryptic messages? They couldn't recruit a sufficiently large group of giant Eagles to take down or delay 9 Nazgul? They couldn't mount teams of sharp shooting elves on the Eagles? They couldn't use the Eagles to fly to the border of Mordor, and then dismount and sneak in for just the last leg of the journey? At the Council of Elrond, no one even bothers to raise any of these alternatives, or discuss the various magical super powers of the elves and how they could be used?

There's a difference between mythology/fairy tales and modern novels. In the former, readers just accept that everything is entirely made up and fantastical. There is no suspension of disbelief to be broken, because from the start you don't expect anything to occur in a logical fashion.

But in a modern Western novel, if the authors go to the trouble to create elaborately detailed characters and worlds and interactions between them, then readers are going to be more sophisticated, and some readers may expect some sort of rationale or internal consistency for why things occur.

If you read Tolkien as a mythology, then it's a great story. Some things don't make sense. But who cares? Dragons, elves, dwarves, magic, friendship, high adventure, and isn't it cool to imagine a world where such things could occur, and so on. But if you read it as a novel, there are a lot of little details that just don't seem to hold together.

D&D can often face the same difficulties, in that we want our characters and adventures to "make sense" while still existing in a game world where people have magical super powers that don't seem to have any effect on the world other then when those characters are fighting monsters.

[Emperor Tippy]

Trust me, you have a much better gig then most.
Oh I know. There are downsides to building, owning, and running your own company but (in my opinion) the upsides far outweigh them.


My job is also involves long hours and travel, but I lack the ability to call my wife and tell her, "Sorry honey, I know that I'm working late tonight and you picked up the kid from day care again. But the boss really wants us to clear this level of the Tomb of Eternal Damnation on schedule." If your business ever needs a Project Manager with 15+ yrs of experience, drop me a line. It sounds like your team is much more interesting to work with.
I'll make a note of it and if you want to drop me a PM with your name, e-mail, address, industry, and clearance level then I will pass it on to HR as someone for potential recruitment. That basically means that they will learn everything there is to know about you, decide if you would likely be a good fit, and if you would be, then see if there are any openings that you would be a good choice to fill (and put you on the list of possible future employees to be run against any future positions that open up). If there is a job opening that HR feels you would be a good fit for then you would be contacted, if not then you would never even know that we had ever looked at you.

Doing the background check before you extend the offer of employment gets you around those pesky laws against doing in depth checks on applicants and lets us make far more carefully tailored recruitment packages (also one of the reasons that we require employees be cleared).

Oh course, I make no promises about anything.

[Sayt]

The reason I always thought that they never used the eagles to get to Mordor was that the One Ring was much more... awake, for want of a better term, and that an eagle would be very easy for the One Ring to dominate.

[Adverb]

I find that it's almost impossible to really "get into" most works of high fantasy (ie, god-like magic exists) for more then 300 pages or so, because the internal logic of the world almost always breaks down once you start thinking about it. Seriously, no one thought to use a Time Turner to stop Tom Riddle from becoming Voldemort and killing so many people? No one thought to use the Eagles to fly into Mordor? Why doesn't Melisandre just use her magical ability to give birth to shadow assassin things to kill off all of her/Stannis's rivals? And so on.

Have you tried Brandon Sanderson? http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/

[TuggyNE]

Gandalf couldn't summon a shaft of white light to drive them away as he did in Return of the King, or think of any other spell to distract or delay the Nazgul for a brief amount of time needed to slip past?

I suspect he only got that ability after reincarnation as Gandalf the White, by which time Frodo and Sam were of course already nearly inside Mordor.


Galadriel couldn't use her god-like power to do something other then handing out magical trinkets and sending cryptic messages?

She was already quite thoroughly occupied in fending off the direct magical and mundane attacks from the Eye, and had little to spare for any kind of assault.


They couldn't recruit a sufficiently large group of giant Eagles to take down or delay 9 Nazgul?

That might work, but would be extremely difficult, since you'd need enough to make it through dozens of miles of contested airspace over Mordor. It's also a tough sell: "Hey guys, we love your alliance with us, so can you give us, say, 250 of your number that we will mostly fritter away with distractions and sacrifices to make it to Mount Doom? Don't expect to come back. Oh, and pack a lunch for the first few hundred miles, because it's going to be hard to find food for you all on the way."


They couldn't mount teams of sharp shooting elves on the Eagles?

Now that might, conceivably, have worked, with 2-3 times as many elf/eagle pairs as Nazgûl. Shooting accurately off not only a mount, but an intelligent flying mount, would seem to be a trick that most elves would need to practice a bit first though.

Also, it occurs to me that all the Nazgûl would need to do is delay them long enough for a host of, oh, a thousand or so orcs to be sent to the Sammath Naur, and then bim goes your chances of dumping it in. And since the eagles could be spotted by flying spies hundreds of miles out, Sauron might reasonably have reserved such a host just in case. What's a thousand as a backup plan when you have hundreds of thousands total?

And once you're stalled on the mountain facing the orcs, the Nazgûl come back with remounts and it's time for the grudge match.


They couldn't use the Eagles to fly to the border of Mordor, and then dismount and sneak in for just the last leg of the journey?

It would not be at all difficult to mark approximately where the eagles landed and then raise security around that area. And since there were, for practical purposes, only two ways into Mordor, and both of them had lots of guards that could be mobilized or rapidly reinforced for constant patrols, the plan would pretty much just fail. Then, too, the Nazgûl could just fly out and do some recon until they spotted them.

Basically, the plan as enacted was not merely to sneak in, but to sneak in without anyone realizing they were sneaking in at all, or where they were going. It mostly worked, too, since the few reports received were muddled, incorrect, and incomplete.


At the Council of Elrond, no one even bothers to raise any of these alternatives, or discuss the various magical super powers of the elves and how they could be used?

The Council went on for hours and we are only given a summary of some of the more important ideas, so who knows, perhaps they did think of it. It's not as though they had any giant eagles at the council to ask about the feasibility and politic of the idea, either, so proposing "hey, let's go ask Gandalf's allies to do this dangerous thing and if they don't agree or it doesn't work we're back to square one and even lower on time and positioned worse" is not the best plan in the world.

[Urpriest]

Oh I know. There are downsides to building, owning, and running your own company but (in my opinion) the upsides far outweigh them.


I'll make a note of it and if you want to drop me a PM with your name, e-mail, address, industry, and clearance level then I will pass it on to HR as someone for potential recruitment. That basically means that they will learn everything there is to know about you, decide if you would likely be a good fit, and if you would be, then see if there are any openings that you would be a good choice to fill (and put you on the list of possible future employees to be run against any future positions that open up). If there is a job opening that HR feels you would be a good fit for then you would be contacted, if not then you would never even know that we had ever looked at you.

Doing the background check before you extend the offer of employment gets you around those pesky laws against doing in depth checks on applicants and lets us make far more carefully tailored recruitment packages (also one of the reasons that we require employees be cleared).

Oh course, I make no promises about anything.

So, to recap, Tippy runs a defense contractor or something analogous...is there anyone on this forum who is not exactly what you imagine based on their posting style? Is Curmudgeon actually a highly-placed Librarian? :smalltongue:

For the record, theoretical physicist here.

[Emperor Tippy]

So, to recap, Tippy runs a defense contractor or something analogous...is there anyone on this forum who is not exactly what you imagine based on their posting style? Is Curmudgeon actually a highly-placed Librarian? :smalltongue:

Actually our most profitable arm is investments. Basically automated day trading using proprietary algorithms and programs. It's pretty much a license to print money for very minimal cost. That was our initial product and a large chunk of the algorithms used in that product had intelligence applications both for us (in predicting what peoples future needs and desires would be) and for the government.

Since I had no real interest in just partying the money from my money machine away it got poured back in and split up into a lot of different areas although they generally fall under the headers of R&D/cutting edge research and venture capital/business management. We've managed to become one of the world leaders in evolutionary computing, expert systems, artificial intelligence, and using such systems to solve real world problems (although that is still only part of what we do, I mean we do pharmaceutical R&D one lab down from where we are developing explosives).

Needless to say, there are tons of defense and intelligence applications and the government and the major defense contractors are big clients of ours.

My business philosophy is that if it can make me money then it is worth looking into and I find focusing on a specific field to be shortsighted at the corporate level. Sure, we have largely focused on applying advances in intelligent computing and robotics in novel ways to solve problems but those problems range from chips in smart phones to intelligence gathering to contract analysis.

I mean one of our contracts was to develop a program for a major law firm that would take a contract and compare it to a jurisdictions laws and court precedent and figure out how to legally get around the contract (either to get out of an unwanted contract or to make the contract tougher to get out of). The code for that is actually quite good for testing rules systems actually.

Ah well, this is pretty seriously off topic.

[kennysmith1234]

I am already seeing that Tippy=Win. Yi-sh, wish I had any sort of experience, because that sounds ridiculously amazing, contributing to all sorts of good and science in the world. I really hope you have an R&D lab working on a neural interface that can effectively switch a human mind into a machine.

But on-topic, Force-brewed beverages tend to be incredibly focused in one thing. Even batman/wizard characters are incredibly narrow, since they can do everything passably, but nothing great. You see them with a few big items, and some ridiculous stuff that could easily be destroyed by a smart/lawful evil DM. The main advantage is the simple fact that they are good in any campaign, against most any creature, and in almost every situation.

Organic beverages end up being quite powerful in the long run, since they are built against things that have a higher chance of showing up. The players of said characters are more imaginative about what they have, so they are useful in unexpected places. Massive con is that they are useful in that game, and that game only. Anywhere else and they fall like a man being nut-shot in Fable 2. Imagine making a warforged character in Eberron who can walk into a room full of demogorgon, and walk out carrying to gigantic baboon heads suddenly taken to Faerun, where the gods come for tea on tuesday and this warforged something or other is nothing but a peanut against everything and the kitchen sink being level 20+ with friends and creepy neighbors.

[nedz]

As a DM I create Force grown NPCs all of the time.
This is quite normal I think.

In terms of PCs. If it's a new player joining a group then they are likely to have feats and items which are not relevant to the game, if it's an existing player creating a new character then they are much more likely to have relevant stuff.

[Lord Haart]

In my builds (and i do a lot of character building at request for new people in my gaming circles) the main differences would be:
1. How stuffed levels 1-X are. When i'm given a concept, i'll make sure the build represents it NOW and not, say, next divisible-by-three level from now. Sometimes, this leads to lots of cramming that could seem ugly in hindsight (using Dragon Shaman for a single draconic aura because game started on lvl 2, taking feats the character later gets for free from his class, this kind of stuff). Sometimes, this leads to lack of direction on later level-ups, since the build already represents the character (and whatever parts didn't make it, require a lot more than a single level and are probably omitted forever in this version of the build) and there's no clear direction it could go from there (normally, though, i try to make my builds come pre-packaged with a solid level-up plan for next few levels that organically improves on the current mechanics to keep the character's competence at things he's competent with at the relevant level).
2. At which point ToB dips are taken. Here it's a very clear matter of "take ToB dip as late as you can, it gets you better maneuvers" vs. "Gotta have the maneuvers to be better than without having the maneuvers", so the point at which a character does get his maneuvers is probably pretty close to the starting level of a given campaign.

Of course, that all applies to levels 2 to, i guess, 20. The difference between a character made for this level range and a character that was ill-wrought to be born at the night of Killer Housecats under blood-red light of Firstlevelus is far more pronounced: the first-level guy is very hardcore about personal survival, even if it means taking options that are beyond consideration in any other situation. Like spending a whole feat slot for +5 hp, knowing fully well that in a level or two it will be an utter waste.

[hymer]

Swordsaged LotR stuff:

Clearly, these are mostly contrary as a rhetorical device, I realize that. :smallsmile: But still, let's take a look at them, now that you put them forward.


Gandalf couldn't summon a shaft of white light to drive them away as he did in Return of the King, or think of any other spell to distract or delay the Nazgul for a brief amount of time needed to slip past?

Gandalf the Grey probably couldn't have made the AA-beam that Gandalf the White could. Distracting the Nazgûl when they and Sauron can conclude nothing other than the truth of what you intend is hard indeed.


Galadriel couldn't use her god-like power to do something other then handing out magical trinkets and sending cryptic messages?

Galadriel's power tends to get exaggerated. But seeing as she, Elrond and Gandalf all agreed on the course of action, it's probable that she (and they) did exactly the right thing - and knew it was the best chance for all. In the end, they could only destroy the Ring if fate gave them a hand. Who could have thrown the Ring into the fire, when it was at its strongest and beguiling him?


They couldn't recruit a sufficiently large group of giant Eagles to take down or delay 9 Nazgul? They couldn't mount teams of sharp shooting elves on the Eagles?

With GtW having AA-capability, it's no great surprise that Sauron has radar-capability. He is generally pretty good at seeing things from afar when he isn't being distracted. Take the Ring, lift it above the edge of the mountains around Mordor, and gather magical spirits in giant eagle form around it, and the jig is up. Sauron himself and a bunch of his best minions would be guarding the Sammath Naur in person, and no chance to get the ring in there would come again.
He might let them come closer, and let the non-Hobbits start trying to grab it before he launches his counter-attack and reclaims the Ring.


They couldn't use the Eagles to fly to the border of Mordor, and then dismount and sneak in for just the last leg of the journey?

There were no eagles at the council. Mordor was swarming with Orcs and allied humans. Only while Sauron and his minions were distracted with the war effort and most of them well out of the way was it possible to sneak across Mordor. Sam and Frodo came remarkably close to getting caughtmore than once. What if there had been ten times as many servants of Sauron in Mordor, and they were not so busy heading north and west?


At the Council of Elrond, no one even bothers to raise any of these alternatives, or discuss the various magical super powers of the elves and how they could be used?

Quoting from memory: "Even if you chose for us an Elf-lord such as Glorfindel, he could not storm the Dark Tower, nor win the way to the fire by the power that is in him."
And regarding the Three Rings: "This much may be said: They are not idle. But they were not made to be weapons of war or conquest."
The elven powers are mentioned, and judged insufficient compared to what they are up against. Only if Sauron doesn't know what they intend is there a chance of getting the Ring destroyed.

[Person_Man]

I'll make a note of it and if you want to drop me a PM with your name, e-mail, address, industry, and clearance level then I will pass it on to HR as someone for potential recruitment.

I work in human services (welfare, workforce development, education, health care, etc), lack any meaningful security clearance, and only manage small dollar ($1-5 million) contracts, grants, and projects. I do some website management, but nothing cutting edge. Sounds like you're playing in a much bigger league.



Have you tried Brandon Sanderson? http://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/

Definitely. He's a fabulous writer.


Back on topic, when considering Organic vs. Force Grown characters, I think it's helpful for DMs to specify what type of game world they're going to be playing in. If the DM is playing in a fantastical high magic tippy-verse, then players will build much different characters then if they're playing in low magic dungeon grind, and this is true regardless of what level you start at. If your players think that the BBEG can kill them from miles away with a single spell, they play differently then if they think the BBEG is a dragon sitting on a pile of treasure waiting to be awoken.

[GreenETC]

I find the opposite, in general. If you grow organically, your WBL is mostly in lots of little lower-level items, rather than a few big ones, since you pick them up as you go and don't sell if they're still useful.
I find this weird actually. Most of the stuff I want when I make a character at higher levels is a collection of either stat boosters (things I would have sold to buy anyway) or a bunch of little things, like 8310gp for a +1 Warning Spiked Gauntlet or 2500gp for a Lesser Arrow Deflection Crystal.

The opposite happens when I DM games, where my PCs usually either ask me for what items would be good or go out of their way to buy something worth most of their WBL because they hate item management.

[OldTrees1]

I find this weird actually. Most of the stuff I want when I make a character at higher levels is a collection of either stat boosters (things I would have sold to buy anyway) or a bunch of little things, like 8310gp for a +1 Warning Spiked Gauntlet or 2500gp for a Lesser Arrow Deflection Crystal.

The opposite happens when I DM games, where my PCs usually either ask me for what items would be good or go out of their way to buy something worth most of their WBL because they hate item management.

I am like you however there are some items that I find are worth less than their market price but more than their resell value. An Organic character would have some of these that a Force Grown character would not. (Since the opportunity cost is different)