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Brova
2015-06-24, 04:56 PM
D&D has never really presented a coherent, useful, and balanced set of rules for high power play. Various editions have tried, but none have really succeeded. I don't know enough about 1e or 2e to comment on their problems, but consider the problems of the other editions.

3e came the closest to having high level games work well. Spells like teleport and plane shift open up new vistas for adventure, options like planar binding and animate dead change the ways people fight, and stuff like shapechange or hide life feel like things powerful wizards should be able to do. But the problem is that huge swathes of those options are broken. Things are broken in various ways, ranging from the absurdity that is the polymorph line to the various things that break when you ignore components (wish, hide life) to the fact that teleport based ambushes are lower level than teleport based retreats (teleport and word of recall). But for all the flaws, 3e genuinely attempted to make high level play a different game from low level play.

There's not a lot I'm going to say in defense of 4e. I don't like it and I don't think it's a good game. By abandoning all the funky powers like simulacrum or polymorph any object 4e gave up the part of 3e's high level play that was genuinely exciting - the game changing powers. But 4e did put forth the idea of tiers. That's good, because it creates a conceptual distinction between games where you run away from dragons and games where you fight dragons. It also gives breakpoints where characters have to give up outdated concepts like "guy with a sword" in favor of level appropriate concepts like "demigod". But the glaring flaw in 4e's rules is that the game doesn't play particularly differently at level 30 than it does at level 3.

5e made the commitment to bounded accuracy, which basically means there is not a high level game at all. It seriously takes a couple hundred dudes to kill anything short of the most powerful dragons in the game, and that is if those dudes are 0 level peasants. Doing that is essentially unworkable if you want high level play.

So that raises some obvious things that can't happen. First, high level play can't be mechanically unworkable. Second, high level play can't just be low level play with bigger numbers. Finally, high level play can't involve "army of peasants" being a serious threat. So what should high level play look like?

Answering that question basically involves looking at the source material for D&D. The source level for low level D&D is pretty well known. You've got Conan, LotR, and some other stories in that vein. Part of the problem in defining high level play is that there isn't really agreement as to what the inspiration for high level play should be. There's a definite feeling that because Conan and Gandalf are really badass in their stories, they are really high level. Obviously, that doesn't actually hold up because they don't do the things high level people do.

So what is, or rather should be, the source material for high level D&D? My personal favorite example is Rodger Zelazny's Lord of Light, a book I highly recommend not just as an inspiration for high level play but as a legitimately fantastic novel. Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness is also good, although a lot more weirdly written. Other inspiration can be found in the Codex Alera, the Dresden Files, and a lot of superhero comics.

So, what should high level play look like? What monsters/powers/quests feel high level? Which ones feel low level? How should the combat minigame change? The noncombat minigame?

Lord Raziere
2015-06-24, 05:08 PM
depends on the direction you want to take.

for high level power, you can take two directions: internally powerful and externally powerful.

Internal power looks much like DBZ: the world around you is basically the same but you got great power within you that can cause great changes to the landscape and such.

External power looks more like The Culture or whatever advanced technological society you care to name: you change the world so much that your advantages come from the vast resources and machines that you have contrived together.

Gods are canonically Internally powerful- all their power is inside them and they don't change the world much because of it. personally externally powerful sounds like a transhumanist deal to me that I would want only if I was playing a strictly transhumanist game, while Internal power sounds a lot like the "bigger numbers" problem you already have, so I'm not sure what your aiming for...

Vitruviansquid
2015-06-24, 05:24 PM
3e came the closest to having high level games work well. Spells like teleport and plane shift open up new vistas for adventure, options like planar binding and animate dead change the ways people fight, and stuff like shapechange or hide life feel like things powerful wizards should be able to do. But the problem is that huge swathes of those options are broken. Things are broken in various ways, ranging from the absurdity that is the polymorph line to the various things that break when you ignore components (wish, hide life) to the fact that teleport based ambushes are lower level than teleport based retreats (teleport and word of recall). But for all the flaws, 3e genuinely attempted to make high level play a different game from low level play.

There's not a lot I'm going to say in defense of 4e. I don't like it and I don't think it's a good game. By abandoning all the funky powers like simulacrum or polymorph any object 4e gave up the part of 3e's high level play that was genuinely exciting - the game changing powers. But 4e did put forth the idea of tiers. That's good, because it creates a conceptual distinction between games where you run away from dragons and games where you fight dragons. It also gives breakpoints where characters have to give up outdated concepts like "guy with a sword" in favor of level appropriate concepts like "demigod". But the glaring flaw in 4e's rules is that the game doesn't play particularly differently at level 30 than it does at level 3.

5e made the commitment to bounded accuracy, which basically means there is not a high level game at all. It seriously takes a couple hundred dudes to kill anything short of the most powerful dragons in the game, and that is if those dudes are 0 level peasants. Doing that is essentially unworkable if you want high level play.

Ugh, not this again.

Each of these systems you described in the quotes above *do* have workable models for high level play. Low level play having some simularities to high level play doesn't mean the high level play is unworkable, except the simularities you decided to focus on aren't the same as the simularities in 3e. A couple hundred low level characters being able to fight a single high level character doesn't mean high level play is unworkable, except that it wasn't possible in 3e.

You will never fix the problems in 3e because the fixes will always be incompatible with the parts of 3e that grognards have deemed sacred cows.

You want to make high level play balanced, but changing out the broken spells will be killing your sacred cow. You want to make high level play scale, but changing unbounded accuracy will be killing your sacred cow.

Brova
2015-06-24, 06:16 PM
Gods are canonically Internally powerful- all their power is inside them and they don't change the world much because of it. personally externally powerful sounds like a transhumanist deal to me that I would want only if I was playing a strictly transhumanist game, while Internal power sounds a lot like the "bigger numbers" problem you already have, so I'm not sure what your aiming for...

Gods are actually a very good example of how high level play could work. Two examples, one from mythology and one from fiction.

First, Hephaestus. Hephaestus is the god of smiths. He is the best smith and can smith stuff way better than various mortal smiths. But that's not just "bigger numbers". He isn't able to smith a longsword really fast, he's able to smith Zeus's thunderbolts at all. In D&D terms it's the difference between having a big craft modifier and being a high level Artificer.

Second, Lord of Light. Lord of Light has various gods. Many of them have superhuman abilities. But those abilities aren't just "bigger numbers" like super strength or super speed. Lord Agni has a weapon that burns demons out of reality and scarred the surface of the moon when he tested it. Sam can fly, call down lightning, and bind demons. Ratri can turn day into night and move through shadows. Yama can kill people by looking at them.

All of that is essentially internal power, but it all manifests in new abilities that let people face new challenges.


Each of these systems you described in the quotes above *do* have workable models for high level play.

Only in the most technical sense. You can play a game in 4e where your level is 5 or 15 or 25 or whatever. But that game won't involve (within the rules) people summoning hordes of demons, or bargaining with genies for wishes, or teleporting across the world in the blink of an eye. Similarly, you can totally have a game at level 20 in 5e. But the same orc thugs or goblin mobsters are still a meaningful threat to you. That does work insofar as the game doesn't hit a divide by zero error trying to parse any of it, but it isn't high level in the sense of being different from low level play.


You will never fix the problems in 3e because the fixes will always be incompatible with the parts of 3e that grognards have deemed sacred cows.

Nope, not even close. Fixing wish involves literally a single line of text stating "you can only wish for items of up to X GP". Fixing planar binding et al is harder but still basically workable if you use a leadership based model. Fixing shapechange is rougher, but you can close the crazy broken stuff by stopping people from stacking abilities from multiple forms. gate just needs to give people a save or something so that you can't use for the Free Vacation: No Save trick to stop people. And so on. It's a lot of fixes, because it's a lot of content, but the fixes are not terribly difficult nor do they drastically alter the content.


You want to make high level play balanced, but changing out the broken spells will be killing your sacred cow. You want to make high level play scale, but changing unbounded accuracy will be killing your sacred cow.

There are very few broken spells. The only thing that really seems impossible to salvage to me is ice assassin, and even that is basically just the temporal fugue from Creatures of Light and Darkness. Some stuff needs to be re-leveled (for example, I think the game works better if long distance teleport ambushes are endgame instead of midgame). Some stuff needs to be reworked (for example, everything about diplomacy). But (almost) nothing has to be thrown out wholesale.

TurboGhast
2015-06-28, 06:45 PM
One important thing about high level play is that the players get to affect a larger scale. A low level character might only be able to affect the town he or she is in, but a high level one can change the course of an entire empire by their actions. This creates a feeling of power stronger than exists from simply leveling up.

goto124
2015-06-28, 07:24 PM
At this point the PCs should be dealing with huge political plots that encompass countries or even planes of existance. As opposed to 'kill these monsters', there are smart complicated enemies and many crucial factors to consider.

Thrudd
2015-06-28, 08:07 PM
Of course there is no correct answer, because what D&D is supposed to be is different for everyone.
In my D&D, the high levels shift into players ruling kingdoms, researching their own spells, and leading armies in battle, with the occasional adventure to personally address powerful threats. On an individual level it isn't much different, except the characters are better at everything and cast more spells.


At this point the PCs should be dealing with huge political plots that encompass countries or even planes of existance. As opposed to 'kill these monsters', there are smart complicated enemies and many crucial factors to consider.

if players are going to be dealing with political plots and matters of state and country, their characters should have some authority. That's why I want rules to describe the working of a kingdom, economics and large scale battles, castles and siege and ships, etc. when they get to high level, the players have should probably have amassed huge fortunes and used that to found their own domains, attracted followers and can afford to employ professional armies. Now the game can include politicking with other lords of the land, making trade deals, addressing large threats like a migration of monsters invading or a warlike neighbor invading your allies' territory, or even being that warlike kingdom and invading smaller kingdoms.

NichG
2015-06-28, 08:39 PM
Forgetting about D&D for the moment, I'd generalize the question in the following way: How much can you make gameplay feel as though it becomes progressively different in fundamental ways, but still in a fashion which makes for a coherent whole?

The way I look at it is to think of the various formative assumptions that hold in the game when you're playing at a specific point or level, and then progression is a process by which those assumptions are relaxed or broken. For example, one could make a game where, at the start, one hit kills you. The formative assumption is 'you must avoid getting hit' or more generally 'this game is about avoiding danger'. However, if you want to give a feel of progression, you could introduce an ability that allows you to survive multiple hits without dying, but only a limited number over the course of your lifetime. At that point, the formative assumption is 'this game is about managing your resources over the course of your character's career' or something like that. However, you can then break even that assumption by allowing characters access to abilities which permit them to recover their hit point pool as well as abilities that let them spend hit points to do things. So now the formative assumption is 'this game is about the timing of expenditure and recovery actions, so that you don't get caught off-guard with your HP too low'. At the 'high level' you could have a monster that uses mechanics which would be totally unfair to characters at the low level (an aura that automatically does 1hp of damage to everyone within it, for example), because its balanced against different assumptions.

That's only a single mechanic (hit points), but of course the game is made up of tons and tons of stacked assumptions. When you visualize how a particular session might go, the sorts of things you take for granted are the assumptions that will really define distinctions in the feel of play. For example, a random grab-bag of assumptions that tend to make it into RPGs and how you might break them:

- Each player controls one character (break: minions, controlling organizations, armies, etc. At the high end, you can play with the very concept of a 'character' as being the fundamental unit of the game and instead have broader units)
- An adventure takes place at a location (break: adventures which consist more of the relationships between NPCs and organizations than a particular site)
- Characters are constrained by architecture such as walls, doors, pits, etc (break: flight, teleportation, etc)
- The characters travel together and face risks/situations in synchrony (break: abilities that can act remotely, things which make planning or constructing contingencies the larger part of the gameplay)
- The game is heavily combat-focused/threats primarily originate from other actors (break: adventures which deal with solving natural disasters, socioeconomic issues, diplomatic issues, etc)
- Bad situations can be resolved by killing the villain responsible/death matters (break: various kinds of immortality, returning from the dead, etc)
- There is always a bigger fish/the world exists in a power equilibrium
- Wealth matters (break: infinite wealth schemes, upper limits on what wealth can procure)
- Characters are constrained by what they do and do not know (break: divination, omniscience, etc; this is a hard one to run)
- The rules are constant (break: abilities which let characters invent new abilities)

There are many, many more. I would say that, roughly speaking, every such fundamental assumption you can identify can lead to a game with a single 'level up' that feels qualitatively distinctive. So if you have a list of 19 such assumptions, you can do a game with 20 levels where every single level up changes the way the game is played in a deep way.

goto124
2015-06-28, 08:52 PM
"- Bad situations can be resolved by killing the villain responsible/death matters (break: various kinds of immortality, returning from the dead, etc)"

IRL, it's broken by the nature of the bad situation. You can't solve starvation, natural disasters, complicated politics, etc just by stabbing enough guys. Sure you could kill the evil dictator, but that alone doesn't feed the common people.

Milo v3
2015-06-28, 09:14 PM
You can't solve starvation, natural disasters, complicated politics, etc just by stabbing enough guys. Sure you could kill the evil dictator, but that alone doesn't feed the common people.


Kill God Of Hunger/Kill Enemies of God of Food
Kill God Of Volcanos/Kill Enemies of God of Volcanos
Kill Enemies of God of Politics

Incanur
2015-06-28, 09:41 PM
I would take inspiration from various comics for high-level play: Doctor Strange, Adam Warlock, Thor, Green Lantern, etc. I've run free-form campaigns based on such aesthetics.

My biggest problem with 3.x epic-level rules was the sheer complexity and bookkeeping involved - as always as of course so many thing being overpowered. The complexity is appropriate, in a way, but I found it almost unworkable. Having a page of buff spells plus epic spells plus a million items is just too much.

Lord Raziere
2015-06-28, 09:42 PM
Kill God Of Hunger/Kill Enemies of God of Food
Kill God Of Volcanos/Kill Enemies of God of Volcanos
Kill Enemies of God of Politics


huh, that Exalted-DnD solution thing finally came full circle. thats generally the response Solar Exalts give when people protest that you can't solve complicated problems by killing a god...

Milo v3
2015-06-28, 09:59 PM
huh, that Exalted-DnD solution thing finally came full circle. thats generally the response Solar Exalts give when people protest that you can't solve complicated problems by killing a god...

Well, it's more that both my campaigns and Exalted takes inspiration from real world myths (IMO exalted just looks like a mash up of Greek + Shinto mythology).

goto124
2015-06-28, 10:17 PM
Bwahahahaha! XD

That's assuming you have those kind of gods, that they're doing their job, etc.

Milo v3
2015-06-28, 10:23 PM
Bwahahahaha! XD

That's assuming you have those kind of gods, that they're doing their job, etc.

Oh, that's another idea for quests: "God of X isn't doing his job. Fix that." Like...

The god of volcanos hasn't been doing her job and keeps taking blood bribes from various cultures, get the volcano god to do their job.

dream
2015-06-28, 10:49 PM
D&D has never really presented a coherent, useful, and balanced set of rules for high power play. Various editions have tried, but none have really succeeded. I don't know enough about 1e or 2e to comment on their problems, but consider the problems of the other editions.

<big snip>

So, what should high level play look like? What monsters/powers/quests feel high level? Which ones feel low level? How should the combat minigame change? The noncombat minigame?
D&D had high-level options 30 years ago :smallbiggrin:;

OD&D had Companion (15th-25th level), Master (26th-36th level), & Immortal (beyond levels) rules. Most reviews of the Immortal rules include criticisms of the system's high power levels making it "a different game" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_Immortals_Rules) than D&D.
AD&D handled high levels w/ DMG rules & modules suited for high-level PCs
3rd was your "best answer"
4th was abandoned because it was 4th edition
5th Edition will have been released one year next month, so it's still new.

What does high-level D&D look like? Superheroes. IF you haven't played Mutants & Masterminds or any other superhero RPG, try them, then you'll know exactly how the highest levels of D&D look. It's how playing the Immortal rules felt (punching out ancient dragons, flying across dimensions like Superman, wiping out entire armies in a few rounds).

But, you're looking for high-level gaming from an edition that hasn't even presented all the character options yet :smalltongue:

NichG
2015-06-29, 03:17 AM
"- Bad situations can be resolved by killing the villain responsible/death matters (break: various kinds of immortality, returning from the dead, etc)"

IRL, it's broken by the nature of the bad situation. You can't solve starvation, natural disasters, complicated politics, etc just by stabbing enough guys. Sure you could kill the evil dictator, but that alone doesn't feed the common people.

I ended up putting that kind of thing on the line immediately above that one.

What I was getting at with 'death matters' is that the game fundamentally changes if its impossible to make things stay dead. If you have to deal with villains who can always come back no matter what you do to them, you have to deploy different kinds of solutions than the usual 'rush their lair, put a sword in it'. Exalted goes the opposite direction and says 'death is permanent, period' specifically because it wants to enable that sort of 'kill the god of hunger' solution.

Its sort of like fighting against the Jedi as Darth Vader - when you strike them down, the situation gets worse for you rather than better. So you have to get what you want without being able to say 'thou canst not act!' to your enemies.

unbeliever536
2015-06-29, 07:33 AM
D&D has been, since 3rd edition, about managing resources*. The way to change the game over the course of levels is to change the nature of the resources managed, either by introducing new resources or by expanding how those resources can be spent. For example, pre 3rd edition D&D had a concept called "name level" (9th or so) where characters acquired an entourage of lower level characters and were expected to own or build a base of some kind. If you take that idea and run with it, the high level mark is where you shift from managing your personal resources to managing the resources of your entourage and keeping them functioning. At this point, a character should have enough resources that they can protect themselves fairly trivially, but keeping their personal guard going should be tough. You can expand outward from there, until eventually the PCs are marshaling armies against the villain (much like Aragorn and Gandalf in LoTR). This kind of shift also manages to avoid the superhero/DBZ "problem" for those that aren't interested in that kind of game. There are other ways you can go with this; if every class works approximately like a Ranger or Paladin, where you gain spellcasting at a level beyond 1st, then you have a shift when magic becomes available and players need to manage their spells and buffs in addition to their HP and regular actions.

I do think it's important to have tiers be ranges of levels, so that people who want to play a game that doesn't do these kind of extreme shifts in character don't have to sacrifice the sense of progression that comes from playing a level based game.

*This is what makes non-ToB warrior types boring in 3rd edition: the only resources they have to manage are their HP and their actions, and those are neither unique nor interesting (for warrior types).

Hawkstar
2015-06-29, 09:48 AM
DSo that raises some obvious things that can't happen. First, high level play can't be mechanically unworkable.Of couse.

Second, high level play can't just be low level play with bigger numbers.Yes it can. Being able to smash a manticore to pieces in one shot is categorically a higher-level feat than running in terror from the nigh-invulnerable Manticore.


Finally, high level play can't involve "army of peasants" being a serious threat.Yes it can. But high-level play provides more options for dealing with said threat from hoards of peasants. Low level characters have to settle for being chased out of town with torches and pitchforks. High-level characters can hide in castles, raise armies, or just cow the entire hoard of peasants by dominating each one individually.

Brova
2015-06-29, 10:30 AM
One important thing about high level play is that the players get to affect a larger scale. A low level character might only be able to affect the town he or she is in, but a high level one can change the course of an entire empire by their actions. This creates a feeling of power stronger than exists from simply leveling up.

At this point the PCs should be dealing with huge political plots that encompass countries or even planes of existance. As opposed to 'kill these monsters', there are smart complicated enemies and many crucial factors to consider.

I can definitely get behind that. Having low level play be about solving problems you can solve by stabbing someone in the face and high level play be about problems that require maneuvering before you can reduce them to face stabbing is a good idea. It comes with built in solutions to what should be done about non-combat problems and potentially an answer to the teleport ambush. The problem with teleport ambushing people was that short term buffs created an asymmetric and difficult to counter attacker advantage. But if the assumption was that killing archwizards or demon lords required you to go around destroying the artifacts that powered them you could have a reason why there would be defender advantage in that situation.


*snip*

There are many, many more. I would say that, roughly speaking, every such fundamental assumption you can identify can lead to a game with a single 'level up' that feels qualitatively distinctive. So if you have a list of 19 such assumptions, you can do a game with 20 levels where every single level up changes the way the game is played in a deep way.

I don't know if you want to go as far as radically altering the game every level, but there is the question of how much leveling up should change the game. Consider 3e. Gaining an even level doesn't really change the game for a Wizard. He still has the same level of spells, and gets a couple more spells per day. Gaining odd levels is usually a bigger jump (limited flight comes online at 3rd with swift fly, alter self, levitate, and spider climb, actual flight at 5th with fly, and so on). You certainly could compress that so the game was nine levels long and you gained a new set of powers every level. If you accept that XP based leveling doesn't need to exist and that playing a game where you are level 5 (or whatever) the whole campaign is a reasonable choice, you can do that. I don't think you want to go quite that far, especially because I doubt people will accept a version of D&D with nine levels, but it's something to think about.



Kill God Of Hunger/Kill Enemies of God of Food
Kill God Of Volcanos/Kill Enemies of God of Volcanos
Kill Enemies of God of Politics


Yes, definitely. Those are all solutions that high level people should have to problems. Notably, the fact that you can kill gods means that the Cleric needs to be looked at. If you expect to get to the point where you can stab Pelor in the face, "guy who gets his power from Pelor" is not a workable archetype.


My biggest problem with 3.x epic-level rules was the sheer complexity and bookkeeping involved - as always as of course so many thing being overpowered. The complexity is appropriate, in a way, but I found it almost unworkable. Having a page of buff spells plus epic spells plus a million items is just too much.

Pretty much. High level 3e goes off the deep end in terms of options and complexity, and the returns in terms of "world altering abilities" are really low. Also, the game breaks into tiny pieces. Any system for high level play needs to figure out how to let you summon a hurricane of acid or a plague of crazed trents with the same (or similar) complexity that the low level system used for burning hands and summon monster I.


What I was getting at with 'death matters' is that the game fundamentally changes if its impossible to make things stay dead. If you have to deal with villains who can always come back no matter what you do to them, you have to deploy different kinds of solutions than the usual 'rush their lair, put a sword in it'. Exalted goes the opposite direction and says 'death is permanent, period' specifically because it wants to enable that sort of 'kill the god of hunger' solution.

Its sort of like fighting against the Jedi as Darth Vader - when you strike them down, the situation gets worse for you rather than better. So you have to get what you want without being able to say 'thou canst not act!' to your enemies.

There should probably be both enemies you can kill and enemies you can't. There should totally be an option to go into the abyss, fight your way to Orcus's throne room, kill him, and become the new Orcus. At the same time, there should also be enemies you have to imprison (like Cthulhu). Also, there should be a way for people to raise Orcus from the dead so he can try and get his title back.


Yes it can. Being able to smash a manticore to pieces in one shot is categorically a higher-level feat than running in terror from the nigh-invulnerable Manticore.

Actually, a manticore is the perfect example of why high level play has to involve getting new abilities. Consider the plight of a low level fighter when faced with a manticore. Being a low level fighter, he has a sword, a shield, and some durable armor. But the manticore can fly and make ranged attacks. It doesn't care about him, no matter how big his numbers are. The sword could be a +100 sword of painful stabbing, and it still wouldn't care. The manticore is not a challenge you can defeat unless you have the ability to fly or make ranged attacks. Compare that to the goblin, who you can defeat with just a sword.


Yes it can. But high-level play provides more options for dealing with said threat from hoards of peasants. Low level characters have to settle for being chased out of town with torches and pitchforks. High-level characters can hide in castles, raise armies, or just cow the entire hoard of peasants by dominating each one individually.

Uh, what? You've just demonstrated how a horde of peasants would be a threat to low level people, but not to high level people. Unless you would like superheroes who defeat demon lords to flee when confronted with having to actually fight an army of peasants? Remember, the Avengers defeated an army of aliens without any losses. It's incredibly immersion breaking if people who can do that can't defeat an army of peasants without fearing for their lives.

Hawkstar
2015-06-29, 05:45 PM
Yes, definitely. Those are all solutions that high level people should have to problems. Notably, the fact that you can kill gods means that the Cleric needs to be looked at. If you expect to get to the point where you can stab Pelor in the face, "guy who gets his power from Pelor" is not a workable archetype.That is making big assumptions about the nature of Gods. Killing the "God" of a problem like this doesn't solve the problem - all it does is blow up the dude at the control panel, casting the world into random chaos.


There should probably be both enemies you can kill and enemies you can't. There should totally be an option to go into the abyss, fight your way to Orcus's throne room, kill him, and become the new Orcus. At the same time, there should also be enemies you have to imprison (like Cthulhu). Also, there should be a way for people to raise Orcus from the dead so he can try and get his title back.With High Level = Bigger Numbers, eventually you should get to the point that enemies you previously had to imprison you can now destroy outright.


Actually, a manticore is the perfect example of why high level play has to involve getting new abilities. Consider the plight of a low level fighter when faced with a manticore. Being a low level fighter, he has a sword, a shield, and some durable armor. But the manticore can fly and make ranged attacks. It doesn't care about him, no matter how big his numbers are. The sword could be a +100 sword of painful stabbing, and it still wouldn't care. The manticore is not a challenge you can defeat unless you have the ability to fly or make ranged attacks. Compare that to the goblin, who you can defeat with just a sword.Every character of every edition has a reliable ranged attack from level 1. Those who disagree can't read. Even a fighter that doesn't put a single resource into Ranged combat and takes the Shakey flaw (In 3.5) still has a scaling ranged attack that gets better with level (Even if it doesn't keep up with their melee capabilities). A high-level fighter is still getting more frequent(More Attacks/Round) and more accurate(Better THAC0/BAB/Half-level/Proficiency Bonus) ranged attacks than a low-level one. And flight... flying mounts merely require Bigger Wealth to obtain.



Uh, what? You've just demonstrated how a horde of peasants would be a threat to low level people, but not to high level people. Unless you would like superheroes who defeat demon lords to flee when confronted with having to actually fight an army of peasants? Remember, the Avengers defeated an army of aliens without any losses. It's incredibly immersion breaking if people who can do that can't defeat an army of peasants without fearing for their lives.Actually... it's better to say that the higher the level, the easier it is to deal with larger armies of peasants, which provides more options for dealing with them. A level 1 hero would likely be done in by a mere 3 peasants, . In case you didn't notice in the Avengers, they never took on the entire army all at once with both trying to focus-fire destroy each other. Instead, their high level allowed them to take on larger groups of multiple mooks in greater sequences than a low-level band. Most of the army's firepower was dedicated to destroying the city, and the Avengers had too coordinate their movements to minimize exposure to enemy fire, and maximize their own ability to target enemies.

Also - since the genre is eating its own tail like the Ouroboros snake... have you looked at and played any CRPGs ever (Especially Action-RPGs like Diablo)? Most don't have the huge disparity in ability between high-level and low-level play that you seem to demand, while still conveying that "You are high level now" or "Dude, you're a level 1 nobody".

NichG
2015-06-29, 06:22 PM
I don't know if you want to go as far as radically altering the game every level, but there is the question of how much leveling up should change the game. Consider 3e. Gaining an even level doesn't really change the game for a Wizard. He still has the same level of spells, and gets a couple more spells per day. Gaining odd levels is usually a bigger jump (limited flight comes online at 3rd with swift fly, alter self, levitate, and spider climb, actual flight at 5th with fly, and so on). You certainly could compress that so the game was nine levels long and you gained a new set of powers every level. If you accept that XP based leveling doesn't need to exist and that playing a game where you are level 5 (or whatever) the whole campaign is a reasonable choice, you can do that. I don't think you want to go quite that far, especially because I doubt people will accept a version of D&D with nine levels, but it's something to think about.

I'd say that actually D&D 3.5e has something like 5 levels, roughly broken down into the ranges Lv1-4, Lv5-8, Lv9-12, and Lv13-16, Lv17+.

In the first range, the game is very swingy and resources are quickly used up, so a party that wants to make their way through an enemy compound or something seriously has to avoid fights in order to have the endurance to make it. Overland travel is difficult and even still expensive compared to the party's wealth (buying horses is an actual noticeable cost, buying a boat is basically an impossibility still). Spatial obstacles are still challenging and for a given party may simply be impassable (scaling a mountain, dealing with a pit, fighting off a flying creature, etc). Permanent magic items are sufficiently limited as to mostly be irrelevant at these levels aside from generic +1 things.

In the second range, various forms of flight come on line, which means that 'obstacle course' challenges go from puzzles to resource sinks. The first significantly powerful AoEs begin to appear as well. Between flight and those long-range AoEs, characters can effectively decimate armies at this level, though it remains challenging to pull off. Class roles start to develop more strongly into their late-game forms, though the power balance hasn't fully materialized yet. Also, a character at these levels can take a few blows before going down and there are on-the-spot raise dead abilities like Revivify and Last Breath - the game becomes much less swingy and some of the risk-management aspects are exchanged for resource-management aspects. Permanent magic items now become fairly commonplace. This is also the range where characters first get access to PrCs, which means the feel of advancement can change.

In the third range, a bunch of strategic game-changers come on line. Raise dead proper comes on line, so death is just something to manage rather than strongly avoid. Scrying comes on line, so the way that the party can gather information about their world becomes far more non-local - they can gather intel without ever having to 'go' someplace to do it; all they need to know is a 'who' and that person becomes accessible. Additionally, since teleport (and plane shift) come online, the party can now travel large distances instantly that previously would have involved an extended time and exposure to local dangers, as well as skip large segments of dungeons or other linearized environments. In this range, it becomes hard to run challenges based on sequential travel without using gimmicks. Challenges have to become bigger picture and more distributed here - the issue is the enemy organization, not the enemy castle, etc.

The fourth range is larger and blurrier, but one big characteristic here is the emergence of save-or-dies and the transition of the game back to rocket tag. Do you have the right Contingencies, Immunities, and Buffs to not be automatically shut down by something the enemy has? Can you get through the enemy's Contingencies, Immunities, and Buffs? Also, characters tend to have enough resources to do basically never really worry about running out. At the start of this range, characters will often be finishing off their first PrC and so they'll be receiving their first capstone ability. A lot of builds are going to come into their own here. The assumption broken here is actually a fairly small one, scope wise (the nature of the attrition game and a shift in meaningful defenses).

The fifth range is when you get the real reality-benders (Lv9 spells). At this point a character can initiate the Tippyverse, attack the cosmology, create new planes of existence, go wherever they want freely, etc. The assumption broken here is that the DM is the one who determines the cosmology, since now characters can successfully alter it.

In principle there's a sixth range for epic level play, but it isn't actually different if epic spells aren't being used.



There should probably be both enemies you can kill and enemies you can't. There should totally be an option to go into the abyss, fight your way to Orcus's throne room, kill him, and become the new Orcus. At the same time, there should also be enemies you have to imprison (like Cthulhu). Also, there should be a way for people to raise Orcus from the dead so he can try and get his title back.


This isn't about 'should', but rather that a change in this dynamic will absolutely change the nature of gameplay. A game in which you can kill Orcus and he stays dead has a very different feel than a game in which if you kill Orcus he immediately self-resurrects no matter what. Therefore, its something you can do to define a level transition. If you're designing a game, you may decide not to ever do that (e.g. Exalted, where 'death is irreversible' is a cornerstone of the system's philosophy), or you might embrace it even at very low levels (something like Ghostwalk), but when it comes online it absolutely makes a difference.

Milo v3
2015-06-29, 06:25 PM
Killing the "God" of a problem like this doesn't solve the problem - all it does is blow up the dude at the control panel, casting the world into random chaos.

I actually can't think of a real world mythology where that is true. Gods might do things like make the sun rise every morning, so if you killed them the sun wont rise (unless someone takes their place), it wont cause the sun to chaotically start randomly moving out of nowhere or cause suns to spontaneously appear or anything. The sun just wont rise until someone makes it rise.

Brova
2015-06-29, 07:19 PM
That is making big assumptions about the nature of Gods. Killing the "God" of a problem like this doesn't solve the problem - all it does is blow up the dude at the control panel, casting the world into random chaos.

That depends on how gods work. As Milo points out below, the source material doesn't generally have reality flipping out because you killed a god. Stuff just stops working right. You could also very reasonably have a model where "god" was just a word for "high level guy". In that model, Pelor isn't some how "in charge" of the sun, he's just a dude with a lot of sun powers that he grants to his followers. If you kill him, you can claim those powers. Maybe it's a deal like Dominions where there are sites of power that let you do super hardcore things, and the gods just happen to be the ones sitting on them (also basically how Creatures of Light and Darkness worked).


With High Level = Bigger Numbers, eventually you should get to the point that enemies you previously had to imprison you can now destroy outright.

No you don't. Consider someone who has cast hide life. No matter how big your attacks are, you cannot kill them. Any amount of damage will just leave them staggered unless you destroy their finger. You need either the ability to find it (and considering that it is probably hidden in another dimension, that involves horizontal growth), or some ability that trumps or avoids hide life (perhaps ability damage, or some kind of soul trapping).


Every character of every edition has a reliable ranged attack from level 1. Those who disagree can't read. Even a fighter that doesn't put a single resource into Ranged combat and takes the Shakey flaw (In 3.5) still has a scaling ranged attack that gets better with level (Even if it doesn't keep up with their melee capabilities). A high-level fighter is still getting more frequent(More Attacks/Round) and more accurate(Better THAC0/BAB/Half-level/Proficiency Bonus) ranged attacks than a low-level one. And flight... flying mounts merely require Bigger Wealth to obtain.

That is not disproving my point. The fact that "have a ranged attack" is a low level option does not mean you can defeat flying archers without that option. Your thesis was that high level play could just involve progressing numbers, and that could allow someone to go from "tough fight against manticore" to "curb stomp manticore". By demonstrating that you could not simply start with a low level ability (swording) and add numbers to let someone defeat a manticore, I disproved that thesis. Obviously, what challenges are low level will depend on what abilities you have a low levels. But that doesn't prove that new abilities don't unlock new adventures.


Actually... it's better to say that the higher the level, the easier it is to deal with larger armies of peasants, which provides more options for dealing with them. A level 1 hero would likely be done in by a mere 3 peasants, .

Yes, and one of those options should be (and in the source material is) "brutally murder the lot of them". Like you would do if you were Smaug against the dwarfs in the backstory of the Hobbit. Or Giaus Sextus in the scene where he kills an entire company of superhumans in one action. Or when you're Rand al'Thor versus an army of Trollocs.


In case you didn't notice in the Avengers, they never took on the entire army all at once with both trying to focus-fire destroy each other. Instead, their high level allowed them to take on larger groups of multiple mooks in greater sequences than a low-level band. Most of the army's firepower was dedicated to destroying the city, and the Avengers had too coordinate their movements to minimize exposure to enemy fire, and maximize their own ability to target enemies.

I'm sorry, what is your actual point? That because high level people fight higher level mooks, they should also be threatened by lower level mooks? Look at the climatic scene in the Avengers 2 where they trash a whole horde of Ultrons defending ... whatever it was in that church.


Also - since the genre is eating its own tail like the Ouroboros snake... have you looked at and played any CRPGs ever (Especially Action-RPGs like Diablo)? Most don't have the huge disparity in ability between high-level and low-level play that you seem to demand, while still conveying that "You are high level now" or "Dude, you're a level 1 nobody".

Actually, I haven't played Diablo. But let's talk about a very specific game I have played: the Orc campaign in Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. Now, that doesn't give you any sort of plot altering power whatsoever. But what it does do is let you chew through armies of minions without any risk to yourself. Seriously, the final act is just you versus a human army, and you cannot lose because they cannot hurt you. The only people able to threaten you are other heroes.


This isn't about 'should', but rather that a change in this dynamic will absolutely change the nature of gameplay. A game in which you can kill Orcus and he stays dead has a very different feel than a game in which if you kill Orcus he immediately self-resurrects no matter what. Therefore, its something you can do to define a level transition. If you're designing a game, you may decide not to ever do that (e.g. Exalted, where 'death is irreversible' is a cornerstone of the system's philosophy), or you might embrace it even at very low levels (something like Ghostwalk), but when it comes online it absolutely makes a difference.

I'm inclined to say that death should generally be permanent unless you do something about it, but that there should be countermeasures you can take. So when you go kill Orcus, he doesn't immediately pop back into being, but if some cultists grab his body and enough virgins, they should be able to get him back (unless you used trap the soul or something). But there should also be a big adventure about setting up conditions where it is both reasonable and safe to kill Orcus. So you'd have some reason to kill Orcus (maybe his "kill people" agenda is at odds with your "remain alive" agenda, maybe you just think his wand is really cool), but there would be a bunch of obstacles. Stuff like...

...Orcus has been using the souls of the damned to attract Atropals to the region of the astral near his place. If you kill him before dealing with them, they will go berserk and spread plagues (both of undead and disease) over the material plane.
...Orcus has removed his organs and hidden them in canopic jars warded against scrying. If you don't find and destroy them, Orcus can't be killed.
...Orcus has a mutual defense pact with Pale Night. Convince her it's not a good idea, or you'll have to fight her fiendish spawn as well as Orcus's undead minions.
...Orcus's sanctum is a demiplane and the only person who knows how to get there is a mad archmage. Fight your way through his dreams to uncover the way into Orcus's realm.
...Orcus has granted a council of demiliches access to his supply of souls, in exchange they've loaned him their potent magics. Kill them, or Orcus will bring untold arcane power to bear against you.

And you could do some, all, or none of those quests based on how confident you were in your ability to defeat Orcus. Then, when you decided you were ready, you'd fight your way to Orcus, defeat him, and figure out how you were going to make sure he stayed dead.

NichG
2015-06-29, 08:00 PM
I'm inclined to say that death should generally be permanent unless you do something about it, but that there should be countermeasures you can take. So when you go kill Orcus, he doesn't immediately pop back into being, but if some cultists grab his body and enough virgins, they should be able to get him back (unless you used trap the soul or something). But there should also be a big adventure about setting up conditions where it is both reasonable and safe to kill Orcus. So you'd have some reason to kill Orcus (maybe his "kill people" agenda is at odds with your "remain alive" agenda, maybe you just think his wand is really cool), but there would be a bunch of obstacles. Stuff like...

...Orcus has been using the souls of the damned to attract Atropals to the region of the astral near his place. If you kill him before dealing with them, they will go berserk and spread plagues (both of undead and disease) over the material plane.
...Orcus has removed his organs and hidden them in canopic jars warded against scrying. If you don't find and destroy them, Orcus can't be killed.
...Orcus has a mutual defense pact with Pale Night. Convince her it's not a good idea, or you'll have to fight her fiendish spawn as well as Orcus's undead minions.
...Orcus's sanctum is a demiplane and the only person who knows how to get there is a mad archmage. Fight your way through his dreams to uncover the way into Orcus's realm.
...Orcus has granted a council of demiliches access to his supply of souls, in exchange they've loaned him their potent magics. Kill them, or Orcus will bring untold arcane power to bear against you.

And you could do some, all, or none of those quests based on how confident you were in your ability to defeat Orcus. Then, when you decided you were ready, you'd fight your way to Orcus, defeat him, and figure out how you were going to make sure he stayed dead.

And yet, this game is fundamentally different from one in which no matter what you do, you cannot actually kill your target, but must somehow deal with them while operating under that constraint.

If you are playing such a game, then rather than thinking (from the player side) 'how can I work around Orcus' contingencies?' or (from the DM side) 'what obstacles do I need to put in the way of killing this target?', you are forced to think of solutions that are actually different than 'taking out the target'. That's what I mean about creating a completely different feeling of gameplay across levels. The sorts of directions you need to think on in order to successfully overcome a challenge are fundamentally different than the ones you used before. You can't just scale up your thinking from the previous level - doing so will be fundamentally ineffectual, for the same reason that the fighter with no ranged capability or flight simply cannot take out the manticore no matter how awesome they are at hitting things.

Steampunkette
2015-06-29, 08:02 PM
What should high level D&D look like?

A group of friends sitting around a (central surface or device which provides a play space) while (experiencing emotions of a wide variety) which makes them feel (satisfied or happy) to have been a part of the game.

After all, it doesn't get higher level than OOC!

More seriously: There should be high adventure. Whether that means punching out deities or fighting against an enemy army or wrestling a dragon. The players should -feel- powerful. And do amazing things within the narrative construct of the game.

Raimun
2015-06-29, 09:35 PM
Out of the three game systems, 3.5, 4e and 5e, it's 3.5 that got it mostly right.

4e is just about bigger numbers. Battles are always fought on areas that are at the most the length of 20 five feet squares... because there are no powers that go beyond this. Sure, at higher level some dude might able to mentally dominate someone for 1-3 turns or teleport over 50 feet. Sure, it was balanced and I actually enjoyed that but I was always astounded at what 4e players called "powerful".

5e. Let's just say that bounded accuracy is a terrible idea, no matter how you look at it. It's very inorganic and arbitrary. This isn't Twilight 2000. The heroes shouldn't be normal people. They shouldn't be bound by "20 as the max stat" or "+6 BAB at 20th level". Besides, all that achieved was to make full casters that much more powerful.

3.5. had the right idea... mostly. The problem isn't that Clerics, Druids and Wizards get Miracle, Shapeshange, Timestop and Conjurations for all three of them. The problem is that Fighters, Barbarians and Rogues don't get at very high levels equally insane abilities. The way I see it, their abilities should be at least as insane or even more insane than spells but there would be a limited amount you can learn and know (still a fair number but not all or most of them), you couldn't change them every day but you could basically use them unlimited times per day, if you can make the required DC/check, when you use it. DC might be even optional for some supportive stuff that just give static modifiers that are always on. Kind of like Feats but up to the eleven. Here's some ideas martial/non-magical classes could choose from. Do note that while many are high level abilities (15th-17th+), they shouldn't be all "capstone-abilities but creep up just like spells do.:

- Pass a Will (or Fort) save to come back alive if killed. Like Valten.
- Better/improved saves.
- Deflect and redirect a spell with your sword.
- Other clearly and blatantly anti-spell/magic/psionics/infusion/incantation/incarnum/wishful thinking/whatever abilities
- Such as Spell(/Whatever) Resistance
- Chance to block anything. Perhaps even earth when you fall from the orbit.
- As a reaction to an attack (or anything else you can perceive), do a "Batman-exit". The rogue wasn't there in the end.
- More powerful reaction stuff. Think it is like Contignency but with only one (or two or three) settings.
- Clearly superhuman physical ability, such as Strength, Movement Speed or Jumping distance (etc.).
- Heck, even "multiple turns per round", a la Shadowrun and Vampire.
- Killing Blow. One hit. One kill. More reliable than Vorpal Sword.
- Other special attacks. Harder to pull off but very powerful.
- Limit Breaks. When the going is tough, the tough get going.
- Rage Meter.
- Stuff from the Book of Nine Swords but without all the low level "+1D6 Fire damage"-tricks and removal of slot system
- Factotum-esque abilities would make wonderful mid-level abilities for some classes.
- Fast Healing (regeneration)? Why not.
- Damage resistance.
- Mesmerising Leadership. Forget the normal Leadership. Does require a lot of money/resources but comes with a castle, territory and regular, stable income.
- Incredible luck. When you roll a D20, roll two and pick the highest. No other limitations.
- Some other form of Incredible luck, like a small amount of Hero Points/Day. The only finite (but renewable) resource of the list.
- More attacks? More attacks.
- Select a regular Feat-Chain for the day.
- Sherlock Holmes/Bat-deduction. It's not that bad compared to Legend Lore and other divinations.
- Long range shockwaves by swinging your sword really fast.
- Buster sword/Fusion Sword/Masamune, Blades of Chaos/Athena, any other crazy and impossible weapon you can find in fiction. By Custom Base Weapon-rules. Read Pathfinder Custom Race-rules for inspiration.
- Even more attacks to go with the Blades of Chaos.
- Ability to tear off a monster's head (etc.) and use it's gaze attack/whatever until you find even more fearsome Gorgon or Iron Golem and choose to replace the head. You can't carry two heads. Yet.
- Like in Pathfinder, the ability to forge magical items without the knowledge of spells.
- You're actually a demi-god/chosen one/some template. Do note that this is the only thing in the list that grants other than Extraordinary (Ex) abilities.
- Split a mountain with a hammer or a sword. Primarchs could do it and they weren't even The Emperor.
- Cut a hole through space-time continuum. For practical purposes.

Oh, and since you train your body and not your mind or spirit, it's always a Free Action to draw/sheathe/otherwise select/unselect/switch equipment/weapons/gear. Can be used as a reaction that's still Free Action. Still need to use an action to activate/attack/whatever. Let's also throw in free ranks for Use Magic Device.

Yeah, this might sound off but 3.5 spell casters are much, much more powerful than most spell casters in other fiction while martials... are certainly not. Ultimately, this would make 3.5. at least a bit more balanced. Not to mention more fun for the martials.

Hawkstar
2015-06-29, 10:54 PM
No you don't. Consider someone who has cast hide life. No matter how big your attacks are, you cannot kill them. Any amount of damage will just leave them staggered unless you destroy their finger. You need either the ability to find it (and considering that it is probably hidden in another dimension, that involves horizontal growth), or some ability that trumps or avoids hide life (perhaps ability damage, or some kind of soul trapping).Hide Life and similar "Lolnope!" abilities have no reason to exist in a "Higher level = Bigger Numbers" style of game. (Summon monsters, false life, fireball, etc, all do, though, since they're just different implementations of Bigger Numbers)


That is not disproving my point. The fact that "have a ranged attack" is a low level option does not mean you can defeat flying archers without that option. Your thesis was that high level play could just involve progressing numbers, and that could allow someone to go from "tough fight against manticore" to "curb stomp manticore". By demonstrating that you could not simply start with a low level ability (swording) and add numbers to let someone defeat a manticore, I disproved that thesis. Obviously, what challenges are low level will depend on what abilities you have a low levels. But that doesn't prove that new abilities don't unlock new adventures.Except you don't ever NOT have that option. You don't have "Swording" as a low-level ability without having "Shooting a bow" as well.


Yes, and one of those options should be (and in the source material is) "brutally murder the lot of them". Like you would do if you were Smaug against the dwarfs in the backstory of the Hobbit. Or Giaus Sextus in the scene where he kills an entire company of superhumans in one action. Or when you're Rand al'Thor versus an army of Trollocs.You can do that. Just not in a "All of you vs. Me in one open field where you all can make all your attacks on me". Unless you're high enough level that you have the Biggest Numbers to do so. But they're not necessary.


Actually, I haven't played Diablo. But let's talk about a very specific game I have played: the Orc campaign in Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. Now, that doesn't give you any sort of plot altering power whatsoever. But what it does do is let you chew through armies of minions without any risk to yourself. Seriously, the final act is just you versus a human army, and you cannot lose because they cannot hurt you. The only people able to threaten you are other heroes.And yet, the only reason you get that ability is merely Bigger Numbers, and a ludicrously high level of nothing but Bigger Numbers.

Milo v3
2015-06-29, 11:14 PM
Except you don't ever NOT have that option. You don't have "Swording" as a low-level ability without having "Shooting a bow" as well.

Ok, instead of the manticore example, how about a simply 3 CR Shadow. A character that is just a level one fighter + higher numbers will not be able to do anything at all to this 3 CR creature without adding in extra capabilities to the character.

Hawkstar
2015-06-29, 11:22 PM
Ok, instead of the manticore example, how about a simply 3 CR Shadow. A character that is just a level one fighter + higher numbers will not be able to do anything at all to this 3 CR creature without adding in extra capabilities to the character.Well, in 3.5 you smack it to death with your magic sword (Loot is part of level. You WILL get +X Weapons, +X Armor, and +X Cloaks of Resistance as you level up)

In 4e, you smack it to death with your magic sword.
In 5e, you just smack it to death for half damage each time, unless you have a Magic Sword.

Milo v3
2015-06-29, 11:24 PM
Well, in 3.5 you smack it to death with your magic sword (Loot is part of level. You WILL get +X Weapons, +X Armor, and +X Cloaks of Resistance as you level up)

In 4e, you smack it to death with your magic sword.
In 5e, you just smack it to death for half damage each time, unless you have a Magic Sword.

Magic sword hitting incorporeals isn't just numbers, that's an additional capability. If you take a warrior, and just add numbers it doesn't let you hit incorporeals (except apparently in 5e which is really stupid).

Hawkstar
2015-06-29, 11:27 PM
Magic sword hitting incorporeals isn't just numbers, that's an additional capability. If you take a warrior, and just add numbers it doesn't let you hit incorporeals (except apparently in 5e which is really stupid).It's just a +1.

And if it were truly incorporeal, it wouldn't be able to affect you.

Milo v3
2015-06-29, 11:31 PM
It's just a +1.

And if it were truly incorporeal, it wouldn't be able to affect you.

+1 with a rider capability. If it was just the +1 to attack and damage rolls it would do nothing.

As for them being truly incorporeal, it can affect you because they damage the incorporeal parts of you. Draining your strength. It's not like they're clawing at you or stabbing you.

Hawkstar
2015-06-29, 11:34 PM
+1 with a rider capability. If it was just the +1 to attack and damage rolls it would do nothing.

As for them being truly incorporeal, it can affect you because they damage the incorporeal parts of you. Draining your strength. It's not like they're clawing at you or stabbing you.And you're whacking them with the incorporeal parts of you that underlie the corporeal parts of you. I fail to see the problem.

Milo v3
2015-06-29, 11:39 PM
And you're whacking them with the incorporeal parts of you that underlie the corporeal parts of you. I fail to see the problem.

.... You can't. A level one warrior cannot punch ghosts. Is that seriously that hard to understand?

Even if you add +500 to all attack and damage rolls and set all that warriors ability scores to 100. The warrior will be useless against an incorporeal target.

D+1
2015-06-30, 12:17 AM
D&D has never really presented a coherent, useful, and balanced set of rules for high power play. Various editions have tried, but none have really succeeded. I don't know enough about 1e or 2e to comment on their problems, but consider the problems of the other editions.
The degree to which any edition has succeeded or failed certainly is contingent upon what you WANT high-level D&D to look like. For ME, I would agree only in that no edition has done all that well at presenting high level play that works for me. I couldn't really define too well what it is I want in high-level play, only that I have yet to find it. I think the inherent difficulty I have with that is that every version I've tried changes so dramatically from one kind of game to a VERY different kind of game based on what level the PC's are. AD&D starts out as a survival grind and ends up playing more like wuxia and superheroes and that just doesn't do it for me.

Brova
2015-06-30, 07:17 AM
And yet, this game is fundamentally different from one in which no matter what you do, you cannot actually kill your target, but must somehow deal with them while operating under that constraint.

I disagree. I think the dynamic of resurrection existing, but death having inertia captures most of what "death is impossible" does while allowing for more dynamic stories (because there are now plays and counterplays based around resurrection).


3.5. had the right idea... mostly. The problem isn't that Clerics, Druids and Wizards get Miracle, Shapeshange, Timestop and Conjurations for all three of them. The problem is that Fighters, Barbarians and Rogues don't get at very high levels equally insane abilities. The way I see it, their abilities should be at least as insane or even more insane than spells but there would be a limited amount you can learn and know (still a fair number but not all or most of them), you couldn't change them every day but you could basically use them unlimited times per day, if you can make the required DC/check, when you use it. DC might be even optional for some supportive stuff that just give static modifiers that are always on. Kind of like Feats but up to the eleven. Here's some ideas martial/non-magical classes could choose from. Do note that while many are high level abilities (15th-17th+), they shouldn't be all "capstone-abilities but creep up just like spells do.:

*big list of abilities*

Those are pretty solid, and if you downshifted what Tome of Battle did and added those as high level abilities, you'd be a long way towards maintaining the relevance of martial characters. As is, Tome of Battle expects "deal some constitution damage", "everybody charges", and "deal an extra hundred damage" to compete with wish, time stop, and gate. That's ... not happening.


Hide Life and similar "Lolnope!" abilities have no reason to exist in a "Higher level = Bigger Numbers" style of game. (Summon monsters, false life, fireball, etc, all do, though, since they're just different implementations of Bigger Numbers)

hide life is essentially equivalent to being a lich. If you're going to tell me that high level D&D shouldn't have liches, I don't think I can take your position seriously. Also, the hide life spell is drawn, almost word for word, from the legend of Koschei (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koschei). The major difference is that he gets a big debuff dropped on him if you find the thing (also, the thing is a needle and not a finger).


Except you don't ever NOT have that option. You don't have "Swording" as a low-level ability without having "Shooting a bow" as well.

Sure you do. Consider the character of The Mountain That Rides. He doesn't have "using a bow" as an ability. But he's super good at swording. He could advance as far as he might want to in the "swording" skill and still never be able to defeat a manticore (or, as is more appropriate, dragon). Of course, as Milo points out, there are other low level monsters you can't defeat with just "swording" and "bigger numbers". Looking only at monsters from the original Monster Manual and only monsters of CR 5 or lower, you have problems with a variety of monsters.

Wraiths, shadows, allips, and ghosts (no examples in this range, but it's a template) are incorporeal and therefore immune to physical attacks.

Centipede swarms, bat swarms, spider swarms, and locust swarms are swarms of diminutive creatures and therefore immune to weapon damage.

Harpies, manticores, pixies, fire mephits, ice mephits, water mephits, yeth hounds, lantern archons, and a variety of dragons all boost a ranged attack and flight.

Vampire spawn have various mobility abilities and a gaze that drops dominate person on you.


You can do that. Just not in a "All of you vs. Me in one open field where you all can make all your attacks on me". Unless you're high enough level that you have the Biggest Numbers to do so. But they're not necessary.

I don't think we actually disagree on this point. All you're saying is that you should eventually, but not immediately, be able to duke it out with an entire army. That's also what I'm saying


And yet, the only reason you get that ability is merely Bigger Numbers, and a ludicrously high level of nothing but Bigger Numbers.

Sure, but that's because of limitations of the game. In D&D you could have flight, or DR/magic, or be incorporeal, or have fast healing. And I never said high level shouldn't have bigger numbers, just that it shouldn't have just bigger numbers. You can, and should, scale up peoples numbers so that commoners or infantry aren't threats to them. But people should also get abilities like polymorph or planar binding or plane shift.

Hawkstar
2015-06-30, 08:16 AM
Sure you do. Consider the character of The Mountain That Rides. He doesn't have "using a bow" as an ability. But he's super good at swording. He could advance as far as he might want to in the "swording" skill and still never be able to defeat a manticore (or, as is more appropriate, dragon). Of course, as Milo points out, there are other low level monsters you can't defeat with just "swording" and "bigger numbers". Looking only at monsters from the original Monster Manual and only monsters of CR 5 or lower, you have problems with a variety of monsters.

Wraiths, shadows, allips, and ghosts (no examples in this range, but it's a template) are incorporeal and therefore immune to physical attacks.

Centipede swarms, bat swarms, spider swarms, and locust swarms are swarms of diminutive creatures and therefore immune to weapon damage.

Harpies, manticores, pixies, fire mephits, ice mephits, water mephits, yeth hounds, lantern archons, and a variety of dragons all boost a ranged attack and flight.

Vampire spawn have various mobility abilities and a gaze that drops dominate person on you.
D&D is not entirely built around Level = Bigger numbers. If the game isn't built around Level = Bigger Numbers, then Level = Bigger Numbers breaks down. But it's easy to patch. A lich can be smacked down with Bigger Numbers, though you have to go on a quest to smack down his box as well (Which can ALSO be smacked down with Bigger Numbers). Swarms and incorporeal creatures can be dealt with by not using a system that arbitrarily gives them immunity to attacks.

I don't know what The Mountain That Rides is, but if he's any type of fighter, he's proficient with bows or slings, and applies most of his Swording ability to Shooting as well (In D&D), allowing him to deal with all Flying Archers.

Mind-control effects and other exotic conditions are easily countered by using Bigger Numbers in the defense.



I don't think we actually disagree on this point. All you're saying is that you should eventually, but not immediately, be able to duke it out with an entire army. That's also what I'm saying
But an arbitrarily large army can also duke it out with an arbitrarily high-level hero.

Brova
2015-06-30, 09:09 AM
D&D is not entirely built around Level = Bigger numbers. If the game isn't built around Level = Bigger Numbers, then Level = Bigger Numbers breaks down.

I'm not really sure what you're saying. The conservative interpretation is that you think the game has to have scaling numbers built in from the word go. I agree with that, but don't think it's a particularly challenging task. The radical interpretation is that you don't think the game world can function if people get other abilities at high level. I fundamentally disagree.


A lich can be smacked down with Bigger Numbers, though you have to go on a quest to smack down his box as well (Which can ALSO be smacked down with Bigger Numbers).

No, you can't go on a quest to find the lich's horcrux phylactery, because he could seriously have made it out of anything. Go find one brick in New York City, or one grain of sand in the Sahara, or one rock in the Himalayas, or a single coin on a single sunken ship anywhere in the ocean. And that's assuming the lich does't have a magical ability to store his phylactery on other planes, or have more than one, or have it defended by any creature with GTFO abilities. I mean, how is a guy without flying going to get to a phylactery that the lich stored on a tireless dragon zombie that spends its days flying around the upper atmosphere?


Swarms and incorporeal creatures can be dealt with by not using a system that arbitrarily gives them immunity to attacks.

Or by using a system where people get new abilities for advancing. I don't really see why you insist that swarms and ghosts be nerfed so that you can keep playing a character concept with an expiration date.


I don't know what The Mountain That Rides is, but if he's any type of fighter, he's proficient with bows or slings, and applies most of his Swording ability to Shooting as well (In D&D), allowing him to deal with all Flying Archers.

Yes, The Mountain That Rides could pick up a bow. But that would mean acquiring a new option (hitting people with a bow) - exactly the form of advancement that you don't get in a world of bigger numbers.


Mind-control effects and other exotic conditions are easily countered by using Bigger Numbers in the defense.

Only trivially so. Having arbitrarily high defenses lets you bypass low level monsters (though I'd argue sufficiently high defenses probably qualify as a new ability in "immunity to whatever"), but it doesn't let you defeat them. If you push the manticore of the RNG you can solve the quest "get past the manticore", but you still can't do anything in the "kill the manticore" or "stop the manticore from slaughtering peasants" quests.


But an arbitrarily large army can also duke it out with an arbitrarily high-level hero.

This is actually not true in D&D (except for the 20 = auto-hit bit, which I think should be dumped). Consider the case of a dragon versus some peasants. The peasants have +4 to attack (+1 stat + 1 weapon focus + 2 flanking) and the dragon has 25 AC (true of all MM dragons by adulthood in 3e). The peasants can do literally nothing to hurt the dragon, even in arbitrary numbers. In fact, a dragon with DR magic can take a nap in the middle of the army because even a double damage coup de grace can't hurt it.

NichG
2015-06-30, 09:30 AM
I disagree. I think the dynamic of resurrection existing, but death having inertia captures most of what "death is impossible" does while allowing for more dynamic stories (because there are now plays and counterplays based around resurrection).

You're talking about 'this is the dynamic I want'. I'm simply talking about two dynamics which are different, independent of whether or not either or both are desirable. I'm making no statement as to whether or not a game in which for certain enemies complete removal (e.g. death) is impossible would be a good game, simply that it would be a very different game.

A (sort of) real-life example of a challenge like this would be - you are a server admin, and you wish to fundamentally solve the issue of griefers in Minecraft. You can kill a player's character within the game. As the admin for the server, you can even attempt to institute a banlist to prevent the griefer from coming back. But you can't (in practice) kill the griefer's player to absolutely remove the possibility of them ruining things in the game, nor can you kill the idea or impulse to engage in griefing itself.

Solving that kind of problem is very different than solving problems in which you can go and kill the guy who is causing the issue and make him stay dead. Figuring out the complex sequence of plays that lets you make Orcus stay dead is like figuring out a way to really systematically ban a single griefer from the game. But that doesn't stop griefers as a whole being a problem. Instead, to solve the problem of griefers, your solution must be to rewrite the very laws of physics (mod the game to allow for things like block ownership). Instead of solving the problem by attacking its manifestations, you have to solve it by attacking its causes.

That transition isn't something you must include in a game, but its certainly something you could include in a game which would feel very different on either side of the transition.

Mystral
2015-06-30, 09:36 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw

In all seriousness, the epic sillyness of high-level-d&d cannot be be replicated in film and move, because Characters that have such awesome abilities are ridiculously powerfull and would be boring.

Hawkstar
2015-06-30, 09:41 AM
I'm not really sure what you're saying. The conservative interpretation is that you think the game has to have scaling numbers built in from the word go. I agree with that, but don't think it's a particularly challenging task. The radical interpretation is that you don't think the game world can function if people get other abilities at high level. I fundamentally disagree.

It's that the game doesn't need other abilities to be able to become "High Level"

Raimun
2015-06-30, 12:46 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw

In all seriousness, the epic sillyness of high-level-d&d cannot be be replicated in film and move, because Characters that have such awesome abilities are ridiculously powerfull and would be boring.

Well, yeah. Hollywood's idea of a bad guy, even in this kind of setting, would be some Lex Luthoresque "idea guy" or "evil executive" who isn't a credible threat alone but who has his faceless mooks/bumbling henchmen trying to poison the city lake or something.

It wouldn't actually occur to them to make the 20th level hero fight a villain who is also 20th level. With Class levels other than what is effectively pure Aristocrat.

dream
2015-06-30, 01:34 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_ekugPKqFw

In all seriousness, the epic sillyness of high-level-d&d cannot be be replicated in film and move, because Characters that have such awesome abilities are ridiculously powerfull and would be boring.
Someone hasn't seen Avengers. :smallbiggrin:

Brova
2015-06-30, 04:23 PM
It's that the game doesn't need other abilities to be able to become "High Level"

Sure, you can have high level play without new abilities. If you give up liches. And dragons. And ghosts. And other planes. And everything that makes it different from low level play. That's not really "having high level play" in any meaningful sense. For high level play to mean anything, it has to be different from low level play. Or there's no reason to gain levels.

Hawkstar
2015-06-30, 05:52 PM
Sure, you can have high level play without new abilities. If you give up liches. And dragons. And ghosts. And other planes. And everything that makes it different from low level play. That's not really "having high level play" in any meaningful sense. For high level play to mean anything, it has to be different from low level play. Or there's no reason to gain levels.
You don't really need to give up all those things. You can simply make the things like liches/dragons/ghosts/planes be surmountable by low-level characters, but significantly (if not trivially) easy for high-level ones.
And sure there's a reason to gain levels - they allow you to do what you were doing earlier easier. Even without 'lateral advancement', simply by gaining hit points, attack bonus, skill points, and damage, a character becomes more capable at what he's doing. In low-level play under this paradigm, a low-level character struggles against Goblin Mooks, and is helpless before the wrath of a Giant. At high-level, a character effortlessly slaughters arbitrarily large numbers of goblins, barely breaks a sweat against Giants, and might have a bit of an issue (but not too serious) against Dragons.

I'm going to go back to these:

No, you can't go on a quest to find the lich's horcrux phylactery, because he could seriously have made it out of anything. Go find one brick in New York City, or one grain of sand in the Sahara, or one rock in the Himalayas, or a single coin on a single sunken ship anywhere in the ocean. And that's assuming the lich does't have a magical ability to store his phylactery on other planes, or have more than one, or have it defended by any creature with GTFO abilities. I mean, how is a guy without flying going to get to a phylactery that the lich stored on a tireless dragon zombie that spends its days flying around the upper atmosphere?First off, you can restrict what's an acceptable phylactery away from 3.5's universal stupidity (For example, by forcing it to be the box of scripts the name says it is. Or restrict it to a specific type of container) And as for a 'guy without flying'... No such thing. Pegasi can be purchased as mounts at any level. Even without special abilities, anyone can hunt down even the most esoteric phylactery.


Or by using a system where people get new abilities for advancing. I don't really see why you insist that swarms and ghosts be nerfed so that you can keep playing a character concept with an expiration date.Because the character concept doesn't have an expiration date. And a magic sword is just as usable by a level 1 hero as a level 254 hero.


Yes, The Mountain That Rides could pick up a bow. But that would mean acquiring a new option (hitting people with a bow) - exactly the form of advancement that you don't get in a world of bigger numbers.Except he's not getting a new ability at all - he's merely exercising the use of an ability he's always had independent of level - he has the ability to use a ranged weapon at level 1.


Only trivially so. Having arbitrarily high defenses lets you bypass low level monsters (though I'd argue sufficiently high defenses probably qualify as a new ability in "immunity to whatever"), but it doesn't let you defeat them. If you push the manticore of the RNG you can solve the quest "get past the manticore", but you still can't do anything in the "kill the manticore" or "stop the manticore from slaughtering peasants" quests.Sure you can - track it to its lair and stab it (It can't fly 24/7), or Shoot It In The Ass With That Bow You've Had Since Level 1.


This is actually not true in D&D (except for the 20 = auto-hit bit, which I think should be dumped). Consider the case of a dragon versus some peasants. The peasants have +4 to attack (+1 stat + 1 weapon focus + 2 flanking) and the dragon has 25 AC (true of all MM dragons by adulthood in 3e). The peasants can do literally nothing to hurt the dragon, even in arbitrary numbers. In fact, a dragon with DR magic can take a nap in the middle of the army because even a double damage coup de grace can't hurt it.Actually, they can use Aid Another to boost their accuracy to an acceptable level. And, even a Level 0 Commoner can use a magic weapon. But this is somewhat beside the point, and more related to Bounded Accuracy (Which is actually against "Higher level = Bigger Numbers"

AinSoph
2015-06-30, 06:16 PM
I'm inclined to think of old mythologies in regards this question. The emphasis isn't so much on what the gods are capable of fighting or how they fight, but what they stand for and represent, what themes are at play and how they relate to the broader world. Which is a somewhat alien mindset to the typical D&D player. Frankly, if you characters are walking WMDs capable of changing entire regions on a whim, truly high level, then purely physical conflict is irrelevant. It's more about subtlety and trying to accomplish what they want without breaking the fine china of the universe, trying to rail against metaphysics and the natural order rather than some dudes or some gods. It's about ideas. Sure, you can treat them like superheroes and throw them at the wall of whatever big baddie you want, but if they're so empowered that death is a minor issue to either side, then the story becomes an entertaining but pointless procedural checklist up until the bad guy goes away with a clichéd ominous fade out. You've got to think more subtly to pull off truly high powered campaigns.

I recommend reading nWOD's MtA supplement on Archmastery, called Imperial Mysteries, which is where your characters are indisputable gods. Nobilis is another possibility to check out (though am far less familiar with it), where your players govern abstract concepts. If you want a clear cut real play example of what I mean, look no further than this (http://www.reddit.com/r/gametales/comments/2bfblq/the_tale_of_the_demigods/).

Brova
2015-06-30, 06:57 PM
You don't really need to give up all those things. You can simply make the things like liches/dragons/ghosts/planes be surmountable by low-level characters, but significantly (if not trivially) easy for high-level ones.

Uh, no. There are no number of bonuses you can get to "swording" that will allow you to find a phylactery that is hidden at the bottom of an oceanic trench. You have to have water breathing and swimming as a bare minimum. And that's just one place a lich could hide it. Maybe it's a single twig in an old growth forest. Maybe it's a single cobblestone on a random road in some empire. Maybe it's warded against fire and dropped into a volcano. And that's just stuff the lich can do that takes new abilities to beat. You still have to deal with ghostly possession or being insubstantial. Not only are those both abilities you cannot defeat with "swording", they are abilities that are iconic to "being a ghost".

Also, how do you plan to explain "travel to another plane" without adding abilities to "guy with a sword"? I don't really see that working out well.


And sure there's a reason to gain levels - they allow you to do what you were doing earlier easier. Even without 'lateral advancement', simply by gaining hit points, attack bonus, skill points, and damage, a character becomes more capable at what he's doing. In low-level play under this paradigm, a low-level character struggles against Goblin Mooks, and is helpless before the wrath of a Giant. At high-level, a character effortlessly slaughters arbitrarily large numbers of goblins, barely breaks a sweat against Giants, and might have a bit of an issue (but not too serious) against Dragons.

But the actual monsters are just level treadmill versions of old ones. If I go from "moderately competent against level appropriate guys with clubs" to "moderately competent against level appropriate guys with clubs", I haven't actually advanced. I just happen to be adventuring in a place where the tile set is "ashen waste" or "corpse ocean" or "cult den".


First off, you can restrict what's an acceptable phylactery away from 3.5's universal stupidity (For example, by forcing it to be the box of scripts the name says it is. Or restrict it to a specific type of container)

The iconic phylacteries are a needle inside an egg inside a duck inside a hare inside a chest buried under a tree on a distant island (the Russian legend of Koschei (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koschei)) and various magic artifacts (I think locket, ring, cup, diadem and diary) plus a giant snake (Harry Potter). Actual none of those are your proposed "box of scripts". I mean, FFS, this website is owned by a guy whose webcomic features a lich whose phylactery is a holy symbol. Frankly, none of the source material for liches supports requiring them to use specific items for their phylacteries. The only reason Voldemort's weren't "rock, rock, rock, rock, and rock, scattered around the world" is because he was insane and obsessed with power.


And as for a 'guy without flying'... No such thing. Pegasi can be purchased as mounts at any level. Even without special abilities, anyone can hunt down even the most esoteric phylactery.

Again, phylacteries on other planes, under the ocean, or made anonymous. Also, buying a Pegasus is still acquiring new options. Advancing by virtue of gear is still advancement.


Because the character concept doesn't have an expiration date.

Yes, it does. Conan cannot meaningfully contribute to an adventure where you are expected to personally travel from plane to plane, teleport great distances, and battle demons. Asking him to do so is an insult both to him and to that campaign. Hell, as currently conceived, Cleric has an expiration date. Getting your power from worshiping Pelor does not make sense if you are stronger than Pelor.


And a magic sword is just as usable by a level 1 hero as a level 254 hero.

Yes, and "magic sword" is a form of advancement. When Arthur gets Excalibur he gains new abilities and can overcome new challenges. Much like if he had gained a level. In fact, Arthur probably has a class called "fated hero" which gives him class features like "wizard ally" and "magic sword".


Except he's not getting a new ability at all - he's merely exercising the use of an ability he's always had independent of level - he has the ability to use a ranged weapon at level 1.

The ability to advance is not an ability. Claiming that because The Mountain That Rides could pick up a bow, he has the ability to shoot people in a level appropriate way is basically saying that because as level 1 Wizard could advance enough levels to cast plane shift, he already can. If you don't have a bow, picking up a bow gives you new options. Just like if you are a 4th level Wizard, gaining a level of Wizard gives you new options. You are trying to pull slight of hand with meaningless distinctions between "advancement" and "level". Stop.


Sure you can - track it to its lair and stab it (It can't fly 24/7), or Shoot It In The Ass With That Bow You've Had Since Level 1.

It can fly. What is stopping from nesting in a place you can't reach? Seriously, it flies faster than you move. It can just hit and run the peasants you were supposed to be defending, all while staying out of range of your bow.


It's more about subtlety and trying to accomplish what they want without breaking the fine china of the universe, trying to rail against metaphysics and the natural order rather than some dudes or some gods. It's about ideas.

This is very true. One of my favorite stories is Lord of Light, precisely because the main character doesn't just use his high level-ness to brute force things. He spreads ideas that support his cause, gathers allies, and undermines his opponents. It feels very different from LotR's "take item A to point B" quest.

AceOfFools
2015-06-30, 07:34 PM
NichG may have posted the most insightful things I've ever read on this forum.

The answer about "What do I want high level D&D to do?" is: allow me to have awesome battles with fantasy monsters while hanging out with my friends. I want to be challenged tactically, with clever play and clever planning & character building being rewarded.

I'm probably going to have to disagree with posters who say 3e and derivatives got it right. Cleverly using the tactics available to you are completely degenerate. NichG captured it beautifully:


...
The fourth range is larger and blurrier, but one big characteristic here is the emergence of save-or-dies and the transition of the game back to rocket tag. Do you have the right Contingencies, Immunities, and Buffs to not be automatically shut down by something the enemy has? Can you get through the enemy's Contingencies, Immunities, and Buffs?
...

It's a very good description of how to act optimally. With the right trick, spell, or other ability, you are functionally immune to effects that instantly (or quasi-instantly) win the fights without it. (How many rounds can a lvl 9 PC survive dedicated Enervate spam without death ward or similar?)

This is a boring, undramatic way to win, and an extremely frustrating way to lose.

I actually want high level Dungeons and Dragons to play more like mid level Dungeons and Dragons, where the best way to play the game is to play the game. It's never fun (for me) to have your any given fight come down to who makes the first (un)lucky roll.

I'll note that this is why I abhor anything resembling the modern era with any attempt at realism. Combat by sniper rifle is as tedious as it is effective.

I'll share a few of my favorite moments from the one "high" level (13+) D&D game I ever maintained interest in:

Barbarian jumps 45' from one airship to another to rescue hostages.
Druid wild shapes into a giant octopus to drag bound hostages thrown into a deep and fast moving river.
Use of skills to determine that there was an ambush on the other side of a stone wall, and kicking down the wall to run into the backside of the ambush. The barricade and traps the enemies had set up to fight the PCs being turned back on their foes.
Ninja using stealth + invisibility to sneak into a group of enemies that were staying close together to prevent him from picking them off one by one, and killing them all before they could act with the suprise round + a hasted full attack.
Use of diplomacy to convince the (LG) captain of the guard that the PCs shouldn't be punished for a crime they totally & blatantly committed.

Erth16
2015-07-01, 12:53 AM
Brova, while I do not intend to argue a counterpoint to every point you have because I agree with most of them, I feel I could clear up a couple things you do not quite seem to get.


none[/I] of those are your proposed "box of scripts".

He was referring to the definition of the word phylactery, "a small leather box containing Hebrew texts on vellum, worn by Jewish men at morning prayer as a reminder to keep the law," not the various lich phylacteries in fiction.





The ability to advance is not an ability. Claiming that because The Mountain That Rides could pick up a bow, he has the ability to shoot people in a level appropriate way is basically saying that because as level 1 Wizard could advance enough levels to cast plane shift, he already can. If you don't have a bow, picking up a bow gives you new options. Just like if you are a 4th level Wizard, gaining a level of Wizard gives you new options. You are trying to pull slight of hand with meaningless distinctions between "advancement" and "level". Stop.

Sure, but the ability to advance is irrelevant to an ability had regardless of advancement. You have been going on about how The Mountain does not use a bow and, from what I've gathered, doesn't know how to use a bow. That may be true in GoT, but it is not true in D&D, which coincidentally is the work that is relevant to the conversation. In D&D The Mountain, being a creature with two hands which are at times free, is capable of picking up and using a bow without advancing at all, and it is thus one of his base capabilities that increasing numerical bonuses will increase. Additionally, The Mountain, being The Mountain, would choose to advance in a class capable of wielding martial weapons, such as bows, and even if for some reason you determined he was a monk, he would still have crossbows, and even if he were not proficient in them, increases to BaB/THAC0 would allow him to improve his archery by gaining levels and higher numbers, without obtaining new abilities because using a bow is something he could always do, just because he chooses not to use one or doesn't own does not mean he is incapable of using one. The way it works in D&D or even some hypothetical TRPG assumes, from what has been said about it, that fighter types are capable of wielding bows from the get go. You stop.

goto124
2015-07-01, 01:30 AM
Are Dwarven longbows thrown weapons not a thing?

Mystral
2015-07-01, 04:14 AM
Someone hasn't seen Avengers. :smallbiggrin:

Superheroes are a far cry from D&D characters. A superhero might have only one special item or ability, or maybe half a dozen. A D&D character has dozens of each.

Milo v3
2015-07-01, 05:42 AM
Superheroes are a far cry from D&D characters. A superhero might have only one special item or ability, or maybe half a dozen. A D&D character has dozens of each.

I don't know; Iron Man is an artificer, Captain America is just a Shield Champion Brawler, Hulk is just an Alchemist with the Master Chymist PrC, Thor is just a 20th level fighter with a magic item, Black Widow is just a rogue, Hawkeye is just a fighter....

Frozen_Feet
2015-07-01, 05:55 AM
Superheroes are a far cry from D&D characters. A superhero might have only one special item or ability, or maybe half a dozen. A D&D character has dozens of each.

Plenty of the superheroes filmed have ridiculous swathes of cash and trinkets. Iron man being the most obvious example. If you think he only has "one special item or ability, or maybe half a dozen", you haven't been counting.

Morty
2015-07-01, 06:32 AM
I don't think this is a question with a single right answer - because D&D has always avoided giving one. There's always been a vast gulf between what the flavour text, adventures and NPC descriptions said, and what the rules allow the players to do. Thus we end up with a situation where one person's idea of high-level play is a superhero-style high-action pulp story, whereas someone else would rather have the heroes strangle the world on a regular basis and reshape it to their whim. 3e is the worst offender, obviously, since the rules more or less stop functioning on high levels. And characters simply play on different levels depending on how much magic they have.

So, my answer is - it can be a lot of things, so long as it sticks to something and all rules support it in equal measure. It shouldn't try to have its cake and eat it, too.

Brova
2015-07-01, 08:20 AM
I'm probably going to have to disagree with posters who say 3e and derivatives got it right. Cleverly using the tactics available to you are completely degenerate.

It varies. As written there's a bunch of stuff that is absolutely broken. Running around with shapechange up can make you immune to everything, wish can give you an item that does whatever you want, and gate can kill basically anyone. But there's not a reason that those things have to work in ways that are broken. You could turn shapechange into buff + disguise + utility, you could put a GP cap on wish, and you could offer a saving throw for gate. And all of those tactics are cool. Shifting into new forms for new tactical situations, open ended magic, and planar travel all do things which are totally sweet.


It's a very good description of how to act optimally. With the right trick, spell, or other ability, you are functionally immune to effects that instantly (or quasi-instantly) win the fights without it. (How many rounds can a lvl 9 PC survive dedicated Enervate spam without death ward or similar?)

Three. enervation does an average of 2.5 negative levels a round, in four rounds of that you'll have taken enough negative levels to kill you. So you survive three rounds. enervation's niche is that most monsters don't have defenses running against it and it debuffs saves. It's not really a great kill spell.


This is a boring, undramatic way to win, and an extremely frustrating way to lose.

I mostly agree with this. Hyping up how dangerous the dragon is, only to have it go down when it blows a save is sucky. But mortal combat finishing moves are totally sweet. The best solution is probably a condition track combined with 4e's "bloodied" status. You'd have three tiers of status conditions: minor, major, and incapacitating. A minor status is something like sickened or shaken or dazzled. It's a small debuff that lasts all combat and comes as a free rider on random attacks. Major status conditions are stuff like immobilized or stunned. Those require an appropriate minor status (i.e. someone has to be dazed before you can stun them) and do something seriously nasty with a short duration. Incapacitating status conditions require both a minor status and a bloodied target. Those are stuff like paralyzed or unconscious that take you out of the fight permanently.


I actually want high level Dungeons and Dragons to play more like mid level Dungeons and Dragons, where the best way to play the game is to play the game.

IMHO, the single most problematic assumption for D&D is that advancement should keep happening permanently. If you want to play at some power level where the game works the way you want it to, you should just do that. And there's plenty of support for it in the source material. People in LotR basically don't advance. Nor do superheroes. If you want to play mid level D&D for a long time, you should just keep doing that. Frankly, there are enough monsters at any given CR to keep anyone satisfied for as long as you care to game.


He was referring to the definition of the word phylactery, "a small leather box containing Hebrew texts on vellum, worn by Jewish men at morning prayer as a reminder to keep the law," not the various lich phylacteries in fiction.

I get that. My point (which may have been somewhat obscured) is that in the fantasy stories D&D is supposed to emulate, a phylactery isn't a box of texts. It's some random item, usually with magic powers.


Sure, but the ability to advance is irrelevant to an ability had regardless of advancement. You have been going on about how The Mountain does not use a bow and, from what I've gathered, doesn't know how to use a bow. That may be true in GoT, but it is not true in D&D, which coincidentally is the work that is relevant to the conversation. In D&D The Mountain, being a creature with two hands which are at times free, is capable of picking up and using a bow without advancing at all, and it is thus one of his base capabilities that increasing numerical bonuses will increase. Additionally, The Mountain, being The Mountain, would choose to advance in a class capable of wielding martial weapons, such as bows, and even if for some reason you determined he was a monk, he would still have crossbows, and even if he were not proficient in them, increases to BaB/THAC0 would allow him to improve his archery by gaining levels and higher numbers, without obtaining new abilities because using a bow is something he could always do, just because he chooses not to use one or doesn't own does not mean he is incapable of using one. The way it works in D&D or even some hypothetical TRPG assumes, from what has been said about it, that fighter types are capable of wielding bows from the get go. You stop.

Honestly, the bow example is probably on the weaker side, though there are D&D classes without bow proficiency. Also, the fact that an ability is available from level one doesn't mean you have it from level one. A Wizard who knows only shocking grasp and burning hands is still advancing when he learns color spray, even if he could have known it from level one. Looking at a higher level equivalent of this, is a Paladin picking up a holy avenger (which can shoot rays of holy light, banish demons, and heal allies) not advancement because he could always wield one?

Anyway, this specific issue aside, there are other creatures that are worth mentioning in the same context. Anything incorporeal. Anything with long range teleportation. Anything with an alternate form that looks human. Those can all "defeat" a guy with "really good swording", even if he also has "really good shooting".


I don't know; Iron Man is an artificer, Captain America is just a Shield Champion Brawler, Hulk is just an Alchemist with the Master Chymist PrC, Thor is just a 20th level fighter with a magic item, Black Widow is just a rogue, Hawkeye is just a fighter....

Pretty much this. Although you could make a case for Iron Man as a Warlock, and I'm pretty sure Hulk is a stack of levels in Barbarian, War Hulk, and Frenzied Berserker. He probably has some kind of ACF that lets him take ranks in knowledge skills (and use them despite being a War Hulk).

AceOfFools
2015-07-01, 09:05 AM
Three. enervation does an average of 2.5 negative levels a round, in four rounds of that you'll have taken enough negative levels to kill you. So you survive three rounds. enervation's niche is that most monsters don't have defenses running against it and it debuffs saves. It's not really a great kill spell.


When I say "dedicated spam" I meant to imply multiple casters. I picked that example precisely because it's an example of an "automatic win condition against those without immunity." There are certainly better "instant win if RNG favors you" options available in that level range.


IMHO, the single most problematic assumption for D&D is that advancement should keep happening permanently. If you want to play at some power level where the game works the way you want it to, you should just do that. And there's plenty of support for it in the source material. People in LotR basically don't advance. Nor do superheroes. If you want to play mid level D&D for a long time, you should just keep doing that. Frankly, there are enough monsters at any given CR to keep anyone satisfied for as long as you care to game.



This was actually how I normally played D&D. When people complain about high level games not working, this what they mean.

It sucks to be a player of a game where you have to argue with your friends that they should never get the story-breaker powers the rules say they should, particularly as a PC talking to a GM.

Milo v3
2015-07-01, 09:12 AM
Pretty much this. Although you could make a case for Iron Man as a Warlock, and I'm pretty sure Hulk is a stack of levels in Barbarian, War Hulk, and Frenzied Berserker. He probably has some kind of ACF that lets him take ranks in knowledge skills (and use them despite being a War Hulk).

I still say Hulk is a Master Chymist, since the PrC turns your scientist character into a Hulk/Mr. Hyde when you get angry.

Hawkstar
2015-07-01, 09:14 AM
Yeah... Bruce Banner is definitely not a Barbarian.

Flickerdart
2015-07-01, 09:44 AM
Superheroes are a far cry from D&D characters. A superhero might have only one special item or ability, or maybe half a dozen. A D&D character has dozens of each.
D&D hugely atomizes ability sets that look like part of a coherent whole for a superhero. Let's take Captain America, your average "strong guy" power.

He has, just in his body: Augmented strength (high STR score), augmented speed (high DEX and move speed), augmented toughness (high CON), hand to hand combat skills (IUS/SUS).
And then we have his shield: He can use it for Total Cover (despite it not being a Tower Shield), also throw it, also disarm enemies while throwing it, also bounce it between multiple enemies, also have it return to his hands after being thrown.

And on top of that he has all the skills of an army officer - both with firearms and various types of tools, and tactical and leadership abilities.

Brova
2015-07-01, 09:50 AM
When I say "dedicated spam" I meant to imply multiple casters. I picked that example precisely because it's an example of an "automatic win condition against those without immunity." There are certainly better "instant win if RNG favors you" options available in that level range.

enervation is a 4th level spell. Multiple casters against a 9th level character is seriously two guys, and it's supposed to be a 50/50 fight for him.


This was actually how I normally played D&D. When people complain about high level games not working, this what they mean.

It sucks to be a player of a game where you have to argue with your friends that they should never get the story-breaker powers the rules say they should, particularly as a PC talking to a GM.

Honestly, those powers aren't "story breaking" in any real sense. They are game breaking, but that's not because you can't tell stories where people repeatedly change shapes or call demons from hell. If you patched the broken stuff, those powers would basically be fine if you didn't try to tell low level stories with them.


I still say Hulk is a Master Chymist, since the PrC turns your scientist character into a Hulk/Mr. Hyde when you get angry.

Yeah... Bruce Banner is definitely not a Barbarian.

Bruce Banner's power is that when he gets angry he becomes big and strong. That screams Barbarian. I don't think he can be an Alchemist because he doesn't really have anything by way of "other powers". There's no extracts or bomb throwing. He's just really, really, really strong.

Erth16
2015-07-01, 11:48 AM
Alchemists have a class feature and prestige class just for Hulking out though, Mutagens and Master Chymist. I feel like those plus the high intelligence of Alchemists better fits Banner, even if he doesn't chuck bombs around like a madman.

shadow_archmagi
2015-07-02, 06:07 AM
I think ACKS is ideal for "High level" play. Characters are significantly more powerful both internally and externally, to borrow from the second post. You're a badass now, so you could probably fight a hundred men without much trouble, but you're also the king, so you can rally thousands of men. Wizards get the same sorts of spells as high-level 3.5 (some that are even more impressive!) but the really game-changing ones require rare components and months of labwork to prepare.

3.5 is silly less because of *what* wizards can do, and more because of *how easily* they can do it.