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Thoughtbot360
2007-05-22, 05:46 PM
I once asked the question "Where do NPCs get their XP?" I got the answer "You are confusing game mechanics with story dynamics (or some-such like that). You level up NPCs at will to whatever is neccesary to challenge the PCs at any given time (In other words, the BBEG is likely to be at best, level 3 when the PCs are level 1, even if the BBEG is a ten-thousand year old mummy sorcerer:smallannoyed: -but then, hey, shouldn't Elves have learned how to do more than merely be proficent with a bow and sword in their 100 years of childhood learning?). " But if this is the case, then imagine this scenario:

read the spoiler, its not gonna reveal whose baby it is on your favorite soap opera *rolls eyes*
Its Shawn's baby, suckers!:belkar: Anyway, lets assume the PCs start their campaign they meet at farmer Ben's house (it could have easily been farmer Bill, or farmer Stu, or farmer Floyd, but "a generic farmer" sounds heartless and breaks vermisitude, Players can decide whether or not X farmer is important enough to recall his name.) and Ben is a 1st-level commoner (like the rest of the generic farmers who are kept in equal parts poverty and obscurity and therefore they never get any XP except from killing the occasional fox in the chicken coup). The adventurers only meet him because Ben has unique information on the monster they've been hired by their client to hunt down. They get the info from Ben and kill their monster, but the Baron's daughter, who was captured by the monster tragically died in the crossfire. The DM wants the PCs to feel guilty about this and says that "Yes, a 9th level Cleric might give a free Raise Dead to get into the Baron's good graces, IF you could one. Alas, you -cannot-, they are too rare." Afterwards, the PCs go on one levelling thread mill of an adventuring carrer, and reach level 10. Now lets say for some reason, they get hired to quell a peasant uprising, originated in farmer Ben's village. Lets say Ben is not sympathetic to the revolution and he shelters the PCs, only to be discovered by a small plattoon of the revultionary army and he is attacked. Now, to be a decent challenge to 10th-level PCs, all the villagers fighting would have to gain some more levels of commoner, or this is going to be a very boring and redundant adventure. But to stand a chance to survive, Ben will have to be a little higher level, even if say, the Revolutionaries have levels of warrior and Ben doesn't. And if the leader of the Revolt is, lets say 9th level, then one of the PCs will shout out "Hey! This is the tenth NPC/Monster/whatever that has 9+ character levels! And two of them were Clerics (of dangerous cults, but they could still have benefitted from a political favor or two, to advance their, at the time secret, agenda.) why couldn't we find them -or one of the other Clerics that have popped up to ressurect our Mage on a regular basis after his 'brillant plan of the week' *glowers at Wizard*- to rez the Baron's daughter way back when. And heck! I know this peasants weren't this strong when the kobolds attacked back then. 'Oh save us, brave adventurers, they are eating our babies (KAMB reference FTW)!' Now they don't suck, where were these people?"

DM: They hadn't reached 9th level yet?

PC: So the universe revolves around our level, or concientidentally we just happened to start this campaign when the universe was suddenly raining xp on NPCs, so that the HORSEFLIES are stronger now? Actually, some of these revolutionaries are stronger than my Riding dog...and he's part dire-wolf! Shouldn't you be making everything stronger just to keep up?

DM: errrr......*Is not sure what to do, but the prospect of writing stats for leveled up EVERYTHING just so he is at least consitent in the arbituary-ness doesn't appeal to him*

Of course, the alternative is to leave the bad guys at the start of the game with many a character level, but the problem is high level evil adventurers and dark lords aren't like high-CR monsters. They might level up so you its hard to "catch up" to their powerlevel before you fight them. Also their plans won't "wait" for you to level up, so theres the chance of bumping into them before the DM "planned" for you to fight them (actually more likely, the PCs see a chance to attack the BBEG and take it).

So I was thinking why not just run a world where everyone is 1st-level, and just give Fighters more feats, Rogues more skills, Barbarians more Rages/day Casters more spells per day (and perhaps, some 1st-level versions of none-broken spells. Meteor Swarm and Polymorph might be a problem -true strike seems kind of dangerous-, but Spider Climb? Leviatate? Legend Lore? Dream? Raise Dead, perhaps?), etc.?

Fax Celestis
2007-05-22, 05:51 PM
I once asked the question "Where do NPCs get their XP?" I got the answer "You are confusing game mechanics with story dynamics (or some-such like that). You level up NPCs at will to whatever is neccesary to challenge the PCs at any given time (In other words, the BBEG is likely to be at best, level 3 when the PCs are level 1, even if the BBEG is a ten-thousand year old mummy sorcerer:smallannoyed: -but then, hey, shouldn't Elves have learned how to do more than merely be proficent with a bow and sword in their 100 years of childhood learning?). " But if this is the case, then imagine this scenario:

read the spoiler, its not gonna reveal whose baby it is on your favorite soap opera *rolls eyes*
Its Shawn's baby, suckers!:belkar: Anyway, lets assume the PCs start their campaign they meet at farmer Ben's house (it could have easily been farmer Bill, or farmer Stu, or farmer Floyd, but "a generic farmer" sounds heartless and breaks vermisitude, Players can decide whether or not X farmer is important enough to recall his name.) and Ben is a 1st-level commoner (like the rest of the generic farmers who are kept in equal parts poverty and obscurity and therefore they never get any XP except from killing the occasional fox in the chicken coup). The adventurers only meet him because Ben has unique information on the monster they've been hired by their client to hunt down. They get the info from Ben and kill their monster, but the Baron's daughter, who was captured by the monster tragically died in the crossfire. The DM wants the PCs to feel guilty about this and says that "Yes, a 9th level Cleric might give a free Raise Dead to get into the Baron's good graces, IF you could one. Alas, you -cannot-, they are too rare." Afterwards, the PCs go on one levelling thread mill of an adventuring carrer, and reach level 10. Now lets say for some reason, they get hired to quell a peasant uprising, originated in farmer Ben's village. Lets say Ben is not sympathetic to the revolution and he shelters the PCs, only to be discovered by a small plattoon of the revultionary army and he is attacked. Now, to be a decent challenge to 10th-level PCs, all the villagers fighting would have to gain some more levels of commoner, or this is going to be a very boring and redundant adventure. But to stand a chance to survive, Ben will have to be a little higher level, even if say, the Revolutionaries have levels of warrior and Ben doesn't. And if the leader of the Revolt is, lets say 9th level, then one of the PCs will shout out "Hey! This is the tenth NPC/Monster/whatever that has 9+ character levels! And two of them were Clerics (of dangerous cults, but they could still have benefitted from a political favor or two, to advance their, at the time secret, agenda.) why couldn't we find them -or one of the other Clerics that have popped up to ressurect our Mage on a regular basis after his 'brillant plan of the week' *glowers at Wizard*- to rez the Baron's daughter way back when. And heck! I know this peasants weren't this strong when the kobolds attacked back then. 'Oh save us, brave adventurers, they are eating our babies (KAMB reference FTW)!' Now they don't suck, where were these people?"

DM: They hadn't reached 9th level yet?

PC: So the universe revolves around our level, or concientidentally we just happened to start this campaign when the universe was suddenly raining xp on NPCs, so that the HORSEFLIES are stronger now? Actually, some of these revolutionaries are stronger than my Riding dog...and he's part dire-wolf! Shouldn't you be making everything stronger just to keep up?

DM: errrr......*Is not sure what to do, but the prospect of writing stats for leveled up EVERYTHING just so he is at least consitent in the arbituary-ness doesn't appeal to him*

So I was thinking why not just run a world where everyone is 1st-level, and just give Fighters more feats, Rogues more skills, Barbarians more Rages/day Casters more spells per day (and perhaps, some 1st-level versions of none-broken spells. Meteor Swarm and Polymorph might be a problem -true strike seems kind of dangerous-, but Spider Climb? Leviatate? Legend Lore? Dream? Raise Dead, perhaps?), etc.?

You might be interested in my Complete Commoner NPC variant (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10278).

greenknight
2007-05-22, 06:03 PM
The simple answer is that the Class/Level system of D&D isn't really all that good. The best way to model experience is through a system which takes time to learn and training into account. Which means going out into the wilderness and killing 1,000 monsters before breakfast won't advance you 50 levels or so in just a few hours.

Ok, so the levelling example I gave is a major exaggeration, but based on 4 challenging encounters per day and roughly 13 challenging encounters per level, a PC party could conceivably gain 2 levels per week, or 100 levels per year. And if each encounter lasts no more than 5 minutes (50 rounds, which is a lot longer than most battles last), they'd only have to take half an hour per day to do it.

Belial_the_Leveler
2007-05-22, 06:05 PM
Levels represent acheivement and experience-usually combat experience though not always. They do not represent challenge rating directly-this only happens if you have a single creature to think of.

The example you give is one of poor planning and mistaken assumptions. The poor planning has to do with requiring a 1st level commoner to survive through being too tough to easily kill. The mistaken assumptions revolve around 1st level commoners being no danger to 10th level PCs and that the farmer that needs to survive will fight. The second is resolved easily enough-the farmer is not a fool to want to fight all the villagers in the rebellion. He'll hide in the basement while the battle lasts. The first is also quite easily resolved. Increase the number of commoners in the rebellion and give them bows. After all, most peasants hunt and they'd make bows for weapons in the rebellion more easily than they'd make any other weapon. Now, 200 peasants shoot arrows. 10 arrows strike due to nat 20. 10d8 damage. Not bad for a no save attack that always hits. Up the number of peasants to 1000. 50d8 damage. That takes care of even a 20th level PC in one round if he's careless. Peasants don't need levels to be a challenge-they need numbers. And 200 peasants, spread out and determined, are a challenge for a 10th level party.



As for your no-leveling suggestion, you remove a great deal of the acheivement sentiment from the game. A character that always remains lvl 1 is not so interesting to play as there is no development. Besides, you're creating some serious problems. For one, a wizard that can cast Meteor Swarm and is still 1st level will only have 3 HP. So, a single punch will take him down.

Tengu
2007-05-22, 06:09 PM
I'd assume that those extra levels some NPCs have came from roleplaying XP.

karmuno
2007-05-22, 06:09 PM
Just because there are levels doesn't mean that everything has to be leveled to suit your PCs. First of all, for the problem with the ninth level cleric, the PCs probably CAN find one, but his prices are far too high. Or maybe her body is mutilated beyond the effects of a raise dead spell (or whatever spell 9th-level clerics use to bring people back to life). Or maybe they legitimately can't find a high-level cleric, and only manage to later because they have gained more connections or something. Also, the peasants don't all have to be leveled. In fact, this could probably be run as an encounter sans dice. Or, alternatively, you can have some of the peasants be of higher level from the start, but they're still peasants (i.e. commoners). Or, even better, as the DM you can completely avoid the situation altogether of a long, boring, redundant encounter and do something else with your time, like have the PCs hunt out King Torg (All Hail King Torg!)

And even if NPCs level to fit the story, that doesn't mean the the BBEG is 3rd level when the PCs are 1st. If he is meant to be a difficult foe in combat, he should be of much higher level than the PCs, so that they can't possibly defeat him head on. Alternatively, he could be low-level, but his real strength is in manipulating other people, but he is still vulnerable in combat. And, of course, most players aren't that observant in that they either won't notice or won't care that the DM is scaling up encounters because it's sort of expected that it's a fictional, fantasy setting. The leveling system is no excuse for a less-than-perfectly-planned campaign (which, let's face it, all DMs run).

Having said that, however, if leveling doesn't work for you, feel free to use a level-less system. I have a couple problems with it myself (Hp mostly, but that's for another post), but I use it because it's extremely convenient. This is just my two cents.

Miles Invictus
2007-05-22, 06:26 PM
Something I've thought of is the idea of merging mooks into squads -- essentially, a base creature with a larger size category and lots of bonus attacks. It's not so much that all of the warriors in the world have gained five levels, it's that they've realized the only way they stand a chance against a 5th-level PC is if they attack as a single coherent mass. That they act like a single creature and provide a level-appropriate challenge is simply a coincidence. :smallamused:

That reminds me -- didn't some splatbook come out with a "mob" template, that let you make swarms for larger creatures? Seems like that'd also do a good job of push the low-level-but-still-dangerous angle.

Thoughtbot360
2007-05-23, 01:06 AM
Ok, Mozilla crashed -twice- before I could post earlier, so here's the short-short version.

Wizards and other casters as low as level 3 can take on a mob of 1st-level mooks if they fight dirty enough (although if they don't have the right spells, then might be not be able to fight dirty.)

Invisibity, then Leviatate, then Summon Swarm (poisonous spiders) in that order can rout an angry mob unless they surrond you in the first round. For bigger, more professional groups a few more levels of your caster class might be needed but armies can be highly solo-able with Wind Wall (or Protection from Arrows) and Fly (Or Leviatate) in combination, so long as you can mount a long offensive (and Summon Swarm is a concentration duration spell).

Also, to deal with the question of the game being "boring" and static, I refer to the Alexandrian: (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html)


So what have we learned so far? Almost everyone you have ever met is a 1st level character. The few exceptional people you’ve met are probably 2nd or 3rd level – they’re canny and experienced and can accomplish things that others find difficult or impossible.

If you know someone who’s 4th level, then you’re privileged to know one of the most talented people around: They’re a professional sports player. Or a brain surgeon. Or a rocket scientist.

If you know someone who’s 5th level, then you have the honor of knowing someone that will probably be written about in history books. Walter Payton. Michael Jordan. Albert Einstein. Isaac Newton. Miyamoto Musashi. William Shakespeare.

So when your D&D character hits 6th level, it means they’re literally superhuman: They are capable of achieving things that no human being has ever been capable of achieving. They have transcended the mortal plane and become a mythic hero.

..............

The problem with having false expectations about what “Strength 20” or “15th level” really means is that it creates a dissonance between what the rules allow characters to do and what you think characters should be able to do. For example, if you think that Conan should be modeled as a 25th level character, then you’re going to be constantly frustrated when the system treats him as a demigod and allows him to do all sorts of insanely powerful things that the literary Conan was never capable of. From there it’s a pretty short step to making pronouncements like “D&D can’t do Conan” (or Lankhmar or Elric or whatever).

The other problem is the expectation it brings to your campaigns. If you believe that epic adventures are only possible for characters who are 20th level, then your players are going to have a long, hard slog through lower levels of utter tedium before they can get to the “good stuff” that resembles the fantasy stories they love.

..........

But what frustrates some people is that D&D assumes that you’re going to move from one level of power to an extremely different level of power. So they spend a lot of time tweaking the system and trying to get it to perform at a more uniform level from 1st to 20th level.

I think this is the hard way of doing it. Instead of fighting the system, I’d rather try to work with it: Target the precise range of levels which form the “sweet spot” for whatever campaign concept I’m working on, and then tinker with the character creation and advancement rules to keep the campaign focused in that sweet spot. Those changes can be as simple as “XP awards will be 1/10th the normal size and everyone should create a 5th level character”, but more complicated variants are more than possible.

The point is that you find that “sweet spot” and then you tinker with one aspect of the system, rather than trying to redo the whole thing.

That ending sentiment "tinker with one aspect of the system, rather than trying to redo the whole thing" also a good, short way to explain why I'd prefer to stick with D&D then switch to another system (at least, just yet), but not the only reason- I also have an alternative magic system that uses D20 rules.

But the point you should have taken from the article is that you can (and in fact should) find a level or group of levels that have the most potential to tell the story of your campaign (even if your story is just a skeleton with plot, prominent NPCs, a setting, and lots of spontaneous imagination, but those make for the RPG sessions, anyway) and stick to that range as much as possible. This "first level" world is an attempt to impose sticking to a "sweet spot" on the characters, but there is a reason why this campaign isn't just a long 1st-level adventure: You can still improve, but it focuses on the improvements that are the only ones worth getting excited about. I'm not refering to more attack power to hit thing and more hit points to survive getiting hit by things and even more attack power to hit things coupled with even more hit points....YAAAAAWWWWWNNN! ....Where was I? Oh, yes. I'm talking about class abilities! (although some class abilities like certain spells or improved Rage and Sneak attack are nothing *but* extra damage in a bag, so we might want to nerf -preferibly ban cause I'm lazy- some of those.) Ideally you can have class progression mean getting one class-specific improvement in lue of leveling up. With large sums of money and training time you can change class or dual-class (which would give you the starting benefits of your new class, and let you continue to gain benefits from your old class, but slow down the progression of both, so a Fighter/Barbarian gains both feats and rages/day, it just takes him longer to get them than if he had focused on one class. You can also triple-class and multi-kill!- I mean multi-class.)

In the Revised Elements of Magic, (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2699&) controlling spells is a lot easier because of the magic systems inherient maniability. You can even keep the caster level progression chart and give mages +1 caster level at every "improvement variable", just do the following things (If you've never used Elements of Magic, prepare to be confuseded):

-You can only buy spell ehancements from a spell list that cost a cantip or 1 MP (although some spell lists, like Move Nature and the Illusion [Element] series can have no limit), You cannot, for instance, cast a spell that does 6d6 damage. However, the MP limit for caster levels is still relevent as their is NO cap on general enhancements (which are things like spell range, AOE, duration, etc.) Therefore, your 5th level mage can cast an Evoke Fire 1/ Gen 4 spell that is essentially a 2d6 damage Fireball that functions excatly as a fireball should, its just not as overpowering vs. our fragile little NPCs.
-If you run a system were saving throws do not improve, then spell DCs will have to be (10 + Charisma modifier), instead of (10 + 1/2 spells MP cost +Charisma modifier), and mages that want stronger Save-suck/lose spells will have to buy more Charisma points or use the Intense Spell metamagic feat
-Rules for Complex spells are as normal except for Evoke [Element/Alignment] spells.
-Summon [Creature] spells can exceed 1 MP, but only for the purposes of buying the "Obedient" enhancement.
-You can exceed 1 mp for Heal [Element] and Evoke [Element] side effects (and all excessive damage dice bought for Evoke death or Heal [Element] must be converted into, but you cannot purchase Enduring healing or Enduring damage.
-Some other spell lists have haven't throught to much about, but I might house rules Create [Element] spell lists out of the game, do you know you can create an object of UNLIMITED market price at 6th level (it's expensive to make it permanent, but thats not the point. You don't need forever to con somebody)!?

So, yeah, point is, you can see your character improve (especially your spellcaster) but encounters are a lot easier to balance and its a lot easier to explain to newbies. The last thing I'd point out is that the 3 ranks + level limit only applies to creating a character at the start of the campaign, you can have as many ranks in a skill as you want, just as soon as you get skill ranks (which you can do, both by superficial "leveling up" AKA reaching "Improvement Intervals" and by training under a master of that skill.)

Thoughtbot360
2007-05-23, 01:13 AM
You might be interested in my Complete Commoner NPC variant (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10278).

By the way, that is an interesting system (and a tad self-regulating if your setting is historically accurate with people dying around the age of 30.)

nagora
2007-05-23, 08:24 AM
Ok, so the levelling example I gave is a major exaggeration, but based on 4 challenging encounters per day and roughly 13 challenging encounters per level, a PC party could conceivably gain 2 levels per week, or 100 levels per year. And if each encounter lasts no more than 5 minutes (50 rounds, which is a lot longer than most battles last), they'd only have to take half an hour per day to do it.

I have been wondering recently what the deal is on these forums of people casually talking about 20th+ level characters as if they think such things are possible. As a 1st Ed player I can't imagine ever getting beyond the mid-teens with a character. The highest level characters in our old campaign are 13th and they took ten years (real world, about 40 years game world - their children were about 9th level, some henchmen died of old age) of regular playing to get that high. No NPC was above 16th level, unless you count a handful of "monster NPCs" like Lolth.

And the thing is: we never quite played the 1st ed experience rules as printed - it should have taken longer!

Is 3rd edition REALLY that easy to advance levels in?

Edit: spelling

Ranis
2007-05-23, 08:32 AM
Statistically, farmers must get into many more random encounters in a month than PC's do in a year. So why aren't they epic?

banjo1985
2007-05-23, 08:37 AM
Unfortunately so, you can and do level up very quickly in 3rd edition, and some of the expansion books really do throw out any form of balance to proceedings. The only way my group can get a rewarding D&D campaign off the ground nowadays is if we ban everything except the Players Handbook and Dungeon Masters guide, making up our own adversaries and leaving it to the GM's whim on when we go up a level.

As a group we've never really gone past 8th level, but most of our campaigns tend to finish at that point. We prefer the game at lower levels before the inbalancing effects of level ups kick in and the rules go to pot!

I've had problems with the level up system from the beginning and the exaqmple up top shows one of its glaring holes. I just hope they clear everything up for 4th edition.

Tormsskull
2007-05-23, 09:38 AM
Is 3rd edition REALLY that easy to advance levels in?



Yes. In my personal opinion (which I often take a lot of flack for), it was specifically modeled that way to cater to people with shorter attention spans, AKA younger crowds. You can't really blame Wizards for wanting to make more money, but the way they did that was by making the game appeal to a different demographic.

I would not be surprised to see future editions of D&D increase the # of levels in the overall scheme (which 3rd edition basically did with epic levels). 4th edition might have 50 character levels, with each level being less important than in current rules, but still giving the player the feeling of constant advancement.

Mr the Geoff
2007-05-23, 09:54 AM
Hmm never had that much of a problem with this.

Early on in your career the BBEG is still level 20, you just haven't met him yet, you're up against a minor lieutenant at best, who is level 6 or so. It's only when mr level 6 SBEG stops making reports that the BBEG even looks in your direction.

Level 1 commoners? well if I go back to the area where I started there's still only level 1 commoners about, but I am in a big city now not a backwater village and the place is full of level 3-4 guards with occasional higher levels.

Then again at level 10 we pretty much wipe the floor with everyone we meet, the real problem now is that we have put a few noses out of joint and attracted the attention of extraplanar beings through being all level 10 and heroic and stuff when most of the high level npcs we encounter, especially the casters, were smart enough not to paint huge targets on their backs by murdering evil demon lord whoever's personal favourite blackguard.

There's always a place you can find high level encounters from without having to bump up your recurring npcs and anyway, back when we were level 1 the reason we couldn't find a mid level cleric was a lack of funds and the fact they were all 100 miles away in a decent sized town.

lord_khaine
2007-05-23, 10:02 AM
i doubt that, 20 lvs have been the standart since 2nd edition, i really dont think wizards would be so stupid as to change that.

as for the lv system, i have allways found it to be a good and simple system, that allows you to run high fantasy campaigns, without the excessive bookkeeping found in rolemaster.

as for the commener lvs, someone else at the wizards boards suggestet that their encounters was on a bigger scale, like getting the harvest in house, or surviving the winter, those would then ad up, so that in the end a very old commener might be something like lv 4, before he died.

pc's, and to a lesser degree those npc with pc classes, are larger than life, and gets more encounters per year than normal people, wich results in more xp at a bigger risk to life and health.

ReluctantDragon
2007-05-23, 10:09 AM
I
PC: So the universe revolves around our level, or concientidentally we just happened to start this campaign when the universe was suddenly raining xp on NPCs, so that the HORSEFLIES are stronger now? Actually, some of these revolutionaries are stronger than my Riding dog...and he's part dire-wolf! Shouldn't you be making everything stronger just to keep up?



Statistically, farmers must get into many more random encounters in a month than PC's do in a year. So why aren't they epic?

Actually, Thought, you answered your own question. Yes the universe does revolve around your characters. NPC's don't exist until you encounter them. Any past/present/future they have is based on your perception of them. For instance, the farmer never has ANY encounter statistically or not unless it is pertinent to the existence of you as a PC. What annoys me is when people approach a game like D&D expecting as much realism as possible in a mechanics system that is based off of a tabletop wargame. The mechanic for the world outside of the PC's DOES NOT EXIST. Even if you homebrew rules(i.e. Fax's Complete Commoner, although it is good), it is still akin to the square peg in the round hole. Dungeons and Dragons is not the game to be playing if you are preoccupied with the versimillitude of aspects of the game that have no direct connection, mechanically or thematically, with your character or playing group.

In the end, does it matter what Farmer Ben's area consisted of in terms of high level clerics? Hell no. Not to the story that the DM is attempting to facilitate and have you as a player participate in and drive forward. Nor to the overall game mechanic itself for a D&D campaign. The end result is a complication that resulted in little to no real effect on the versimillitude of the game world itself. It might resolve itself easier in your mind, should you be the type of person to worry over those details, but I would think that a different gaming system(GURPS?) would be more likely to cover those types of aspects.

My 2.
RD

Tormsskull
2007-05-23, 10:24 AM
The mechanic for the world outside of the PC's DOES NOT EXIST.

That depends on your preference of play. I often create large campaigns, intricately detailed countires, cities, religions, etc. If the players encounter it, great, I know why this thing is the way that it is. If the players never encounter it, no big deal, but I still know why this thing is the way that it is.

Getting into very specific things, like a particular farmer not leveling up while the PCs do, that's not important to me as a DM so I don't really worry about it.

Really, how "off-camera" events are handled is up to the DM. If the PCs send some NPC that they know on a mission, the DM could just arbitrarily decide if the NPC succeeds, fails, or some other outcome, or he could assign a percent chance that the NPC would succeed, and then roll to find out.

I'm a big fan of the roll and find out method. Once again, I don't do this for every single event because it would just be too time consuming to attempt. However, for more major events (say two armies fighting, important NPCs activities, etc) I do.

I think it is of grave importance that the Players aren't under the assumption that the world revolves around them, at least in a game that has roleplaying, as that often leads to more metagaming in my experience. I like to place completely mundane activities/events in front of my Players so that they feel like their characters are part of a world, not the focus of the world.

Fax Celestis
2007-05-23, 10:27 AM
Actually, Thought, you answered your own question. Yes the universe does revolve around your characters. NPC's don't exist until you encounter them. Any past/present/future they have is based on your perception of them. For instance, the farmer never has ANY encounter statistically or not unless it is pertinent to the existence of you as a PC. What annoys me is when people approach a game like D&D expecting as much realism as possible in a mechanics system that is based off of a tabletop wargame. The mechanic for the world outside of the PC's DOES NOT EXIST. Even if you homebrew rules(i.e. Fax's Complete Commoner, although it is good), it is still akin to the square peg in the round hole. Dungeons and Dragons is not the game to be playing if you are preoccupied with the versimillitude of aspects of the game that have no direct connection, mechanically or thematically, with your character or playing group.

You've got a point, considering the DMG and other DM-oriented sourcebooks give little-to-none in this area.

Dausuul
2007-05-23, 10:42 AM
Yes. In my personal opinion (which I often take a lot of flack for), it was specifically modeled that way to cater to people with shorter attention spans, AKA younger crowds. You can't really blame Wizards for wanting to make more money, but the way they did that was by making the game appeal to a different demographic.

*shrug* Or perhaps they realized that if you're going to build a system that rewards players in a mechanical way for what they do, the rewards ought to come a little more often. They just didn't consider the consequences in terms of plausibility and suspension of disbelief... in fact, my one big beef with 3E is the way suspension of disbelief is always sacrificed to make the mechanics run smoother.

I've been playing D&D for almost twenty years, and I like the increase in "reward rate." If you ask me, though, a better way to increase the reward rate would be to break down level advancement into several smaller steps. So each session you get a little better, with a somewhat larger bump when you actually hit the next level--as opposed to getting nothing for several sessions and then a 40% jump in your combat prowess (and I'm not exaggerating, that's roughly what you get every time you level).


I would not be surprised to see future editions of D&D increase the # of levels in the overall scheme (which 3rd edition basically did with epic levels). 4th edition might have 50 character levels, with each level being less important than in current rules, but still giving the player the feeling of constant advancement.

That would make more sense than a "partial-level" system, but would have backward compatibility issues.

nagora
2007-05-23, 10:42 AM
The mechanic for the world outside of the PC's DOES NOT EXIST

It's called 'the DM'.

DreadArchon
2007-05-23, 10:45 AM
as for the commener lvs, someone else at the wizards boards suggestet that their encounters was on a bigger scale, like getting the harvest in house, or surviving the winter, those would then ad up, so that in the end a very old commener might be something like lv 4, before he died.
Things like blizzards do have CR's attached to them, after all.

My sarcastic response, however, has always been "That guy? Yeah, he works at the slaughter house. Cows may not be much XP on their own, but it adds up fast. That guy? Grinds boars in the forest during the weekend. That woman on the corner? Hey, giving birth is like CR 4 in a medieval setting. The shop owner? Er, he has an NPC-only feat that lets him gain XP for crafting. Yeah, totally, it's called "Practice" or something like that."

Tormsskull
2007-05-23, 10:54 AM
I've been playing D&D for almost twenty years, and I like the increase in "reward rate." If you ask me, though, a better way to increase the reward rate would be to break down level advancement into several smaller steps. So each session you get a little better, with a somewhat larger bump when you actually hit the next level--as opposed to getting nothing for several sessions and then a 40% jump in your combat prowess (and I'm not exaggerating, that's roughly what you get every time you level).


Yeah, that's what they did in Dungeon's & Dragons Online. There was ranks set up between the levels. I think it was something like 3 ranks and then on the 4th rank you attained a new level. I don't know, I never had a problem with the slower character advancement of OD&D or AD&D.



That would make more sense than a "partial-level" system, but would have backward compatibility issues.


Yea, but backward compatibility issues = customer must buy all new books. That's WotC's main goal I think a lot of times.

hewhosaysfish
2007-05-23, 10:56 AM
Things like blizzards do have CR's attached to them, after all.

My sarcastic response, however, has always been "That guy? Yeah, he works at the slaughter house. Cows may not be much XP on their own, but it adds up fast. That guy? Grinds boars in the forest during the weekend. That woman on the corner? Hey, giving birth is like CR 4 in a medieval setting. The shop owner? Er, he has an NPC-only feat that lets him gain XP for crafting. Yeah, totally, it's called "Practice" or something like that."

I know a player who, if told that, would immediately stat up a randy female character for the express purpose of grabbing as much xp as fast as possible (and relying on the party cleric in case of complications. Even Cure Minor can stabilise instantly. Remember: the facade is medieval but the workings are entirely fantastic).
Come to think of it, he always plays randy females anyway... Perhaps he knows something I don't.

nagora
2007-05-23, 11:03 AM
*shrug* Or perhaps they realized that if you're going to build a system that rewards players in a mechanical way for what they do, the rewards ought to come a little more often.

Reward comes from other sources than level increases: treasure, magic items, fame, political power within the game setting etc. These can all increase much more often than level and as a consequence of role-playing actions which need give no XP value.

Valdren
2007-05-23, 11:14 AM
I just figured I'd throw in the fact that I've heard stories of a group of level 1 commoners (with scythes, pitchforks, and the like) rip an 9th level fighter to shreds. And I've also made a 7th level party run away from a small (7 I believe) group of 1st level fighters (three tower shields in the gate and 4 archers with far shot and precise shot, not to mention the 100 yard dash to the front gate........ I DID warn them (via NPC) about the front........

Telonius
2007-05-23, 11:29 AM
"Adventuring party" probably counts as an Overwhelming Challenge to some commoners. If enough of them pass through, some of the commoners are going to level up.

hewhosaysfish
2007-05-23, 11:33 AM
"Adventuring party" probably counts as an Overwhelming Challenge to some commoners. If enough of them pass through, some of the commoners are going to level up.

*rofl*

But don't you only get xp for overcoming challenges not just watching them walk past. What does a commoner want when an adventuring party comes to town? Because he has to get it to get the xp. And they would only count as an Overwhelming Challenge if he wanted to fight them. If he wanted to, for example, sell them turnips then there CR would depend on whether they like turnips or not, how hungry they are, how well they can haggle, etc. :smallbiggrin:

Telonius
2007-05-23, 12:05 PM
Well, the Giant has some ideas (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0122.html) on that.:smallbiggrin:

Innkeeper's challenge: your Inn must not be burned down by the end of the adventurers' stay.
Shopkeeper's challenge: accurately appraise the item they're selling you, despite the seller being the party face.
Barmaid's challenge: escape with your dignity intact.
Barmaid's challenge (alternate): spend the night with the party Face. (XP Total inversely related to starting Charisma score).
Town Guard's challenge: get the adventurers to disarm before entering town.
Street Urchin's challenge: Successfully play a prank on/give false information to the adventurers.

Thoughtbot360
2007-05-23, 01:42 PM
Actually, Thought, you answered your own question. Yes the universe does revolve around your characters. NPC's don't exist until you encounter them. Any past/present/future they have is based on your perception of them. For instance, the farmer never has ANY encounter statistically or not unless it is pertinent to the existence of you as a PC. What annoys me is when people approach a game like D&D expecting as much realism as possible in a mechanics system that is based off of a tabletop wargame. The mechanic for the world outside of the PC's DOES NOT EXIST. Even if you homebrew rules(i.e. Fax's Complete Commoner, although it is good), it is still akin to the square peg in the round hole. Dungeons and Dragons is not the game to be playing if you are preoccupied with the versimillitude of aspects of the game that have no direct connection, mechanically or thematically, with your character or playing group.

In the end, does it matter what Farmer Ben's area consisted of in terms of high level clerics? Hell no. Not to the story that the DM is attempting to facilitate and have you as a player participate in and drive forward. Nor to the overall game mechanic itself for a D&D campaign. The end result is a complication that resulted in little to no real effect on the versimillitude of the game world itself. It might resolve itself easier in your mind, should you be the type of person to worry over those details, but I would think that a different gaming system(GURPS?) would be more likely to cover those types of aspects.

My 2.
RD

You just blew my mind.

shaddy_24
2007-05-23, 02:59 PM
I don't think that's the point. So every enemy NPC is at a level they can challange you (whether alone or in groups). Is that a bad thing? Or would you rather to never take on a single NPC above level 5 or so? There'd be no point in playing beyond that, and some groups enjoy being an impossibly high level.
For your level 1 only idea, I don't like it so much. Almost every major monster would be way to high leveled for you, so you would never even see a dragon or any powerful enemy. Also, that hampers characters greatly. If rogues and barbarians never get increases in sneak attack or rage, no one's going to play them. Those are their major abilities. If they simply get banned or nerfed, they have little point in the game, beyond the rogue becoming a key.
There are many different people and they all enjoy playing a different way, so I'm not saying you shouldn't try it. But think hard before you make a change like that, because it throws off any class balancing that does remain. Fighters, rangers, paladins and barbarians would be very common though, because they would be the only ones able to survive for long periods of time (first level spellcasters get few spells and no hitpoints, no sneak attack for rogues, most other classes with too low combat ability, etc).

Dark
2007-05-23, 05:24 PM
Well, I understand where you're coming from. A game world feels very weird if everyone levels up along with the PCs. It also gives a feeling of futility. What's the point of leveling up if every encounter is just rescaled to your new level? Your PC doesn't actually become more powerful that way.

Avoiding this doesn't have to be difficult, though, and it certainly doesn't require redesigning the whole level system. I've found that a few rules of thumb fix the problem nicely.

1. When you design the campaign, decide on the range of levels in the NPC population. Who's 1st level? Most people, or only adolescents? Are the town guards 1st, 3rd, or 5th level? What about the elite royal guards? What's the highest level NPC typically present in a town, major city, or border fort? How common are PC classes compared to NPC classes?

2. Decide how fast specific NPCs will level up, if at all. For active NPC heroes, about half the speed of the PCs seems right, but tie it to game time and not to the PC's performance.

Once you've settled these questions, stick to them. As your PCs advance in levels, they will gradually grow in stature, becoming more and more important in their region. Their challenges should grow too, but not by scaling up the commoners. Put them in situations that are actually more dangerous and larger in scope. An easy way to do this is to use their reputation: higher-level NPCs will account for the PCs in their plots, and will oppose the PCs directly more often.

At some point the PCs will be a match for the most powerful NPCs in your campaign. What then? More rules of thumb:

3. Widen the campaign. The PCs greater power also gives them a greater range of operations. In a much larger area (say, you move up from country-size to continent-size) there are bound to be some NPCs of higher level than they've met before. Introducing travel to other planes will also widen the campaign this way.

4. Start some wars. Actually the PCs are likely to do that for you. In a warzone, it's reasonable for the average NPC to be higher level than in peaceful areas, both because of attrition (the low level ones died) and because a warzone offers greater challenges.

5. Expect the PCs to go looking for trouble. Instead of shaking down the local kobolds, they'll boldly go treasure-hunting in the Dragonspine Mountains. They'll travel to wild and unexplored frontiers, where the dangers and rewards are greater, and they'll meet high-level NPCs who traveled there for the same reasons they did.

6. When the PCs approach the limits of mortal power, they will likely interfere with some divine plans along the way, intentionally or not. The gods will either start making their lives difficult, or assign them quests which amounts to the same thing.

Played this way, the PCs can really feel their characters' ever-increasing impact upon the world. And that's the part I like best, because I have a lot of mua-ha-ah-ah-ah-ha in me.

Thoughtbot360
2007-05-23, 06:08 PM
I don't think that's the point. So every enemy NPC is at a level they can challange you (whether alone or in groups). Is that a bad thing? Or would you rather to never take on a single NPC above level 5 or so? There'd be no point in playing beyond that, and some groups enjoy being an impossibly high level.
For your level 1 only idea, I don't like it so much. Almost every major monster would be way to high leveled for you, so you would never even see a dragon or any powerful enemy. Also, that hampers characters greatly. If rogues and barbarians never get increases in sneak attack or rage, no one's going to play them. Those are their major abilities. If they simply get banned or nerfed, they have little point in the game, beyond the rogue becoming a key.
There are many different people and they all enjoy playing a different way, so I'm not saying you shouldn't try it. But think hard before you make a change like that, because it throws off any class balancing that does remain. Fighters, rangers, paladins and barbarians would be very common though, because they would be the only ones able to survive for long periods of time (first level spellcasters get few spells and no hitpoints, no sneak attack for rogues, most other classes with too low combat ability, etc).

Then I'll bet you'd hate Sargent Brother's rules (for Historical-esque campaigns with mostly humanoid and human enemies and fantastic beasts as a dangerous rarity). Behold:

AC Bonus : Every class gets an AC bonus equal to the Base Attack Bonus of the class. This bonus is negated if the character is immobilized. Shields provide a greater AC bonus than they previously did. Bucklers or other small protective devices add +1 AC. Small shields, such a round shields, add +2 to AC. Medium shields, such a heater and teardrop shields, add +3 to AC. Large shields, such as Viking round shields, add +4 AC. Body shields, such as Roman ones, add +5 to AC.

Hit Points : Player Characters do not get class hit dice, rather they have a number of Hit Points equal to their Constitution plus half of the of the maximum hit points that can be roled for their class at level one. This is the same for inhuman creatures, their hit points are modified by their size:
Fine & Diminutive : No hit Points, instant kill
Tiny : 1/4 Constitution Hit Points
Small : 1/2 Constitution Hit Points
Medium : Constitution Hit Points
Large : 1.5 * Constitution Hit Points
Huge : 2 * Constitution Hit Points
Gargantuan : 3 * Constitution Hit Points
Colossal : 4 * Constitution Hit Points
No-name faceless NPC's have half of the above hit points, while named or important NPC's have the same Hit Points as PCs do. Something that is brought to zero or fewer Hit Points can survive down to negative their maximum Hit Points before dying. The Toughness feat may only be taken once.

Sneak Attack : A rogue's sneak attack does 1d6 damage plus 1 per level of the rogue plus the damage for a normal attack of that type. Every other level (2, 4, 6, 8, etc.) a rogue gets a +1 bonus to score a critical hit on a sneak attack. This means that on the sneak attack roll of a 5th level rogue, a natural 18 on a roll to hit would be treated as a natural 20. This only applies to the first roll. Non-rogues who successfully sneak attack an opponent do an additional 1d6 damage but nothing more.

Magic Spells : Magical spells can only inflict one die of damage to any single opponent per level of the spell, plus the level of the casting magic user. For example, a level 10 wizard casts fireball - everyone in the area of effect takes 3d6+10 damage before a saving throw is made. Some damage spells ignore armor (such as horrid wilting), while others (like magic missile or fireball) half (round down) the armor value of the victim(s). Healing magic can only heal up to the spell's level in Hit Points to any particular target. This means that Cure Light Wounds will only heal 1 point of damage. Level 0 spells cannot heal actual Hit Points, but it will stop bleeding and stabilize the dying.

Armor Rules

Armor Rating : This is a value of damage reduction that a character has based upon the armor that they wear, the toughness of their skin, or anything else which provides a physical barrier that protects the character from injury. Armor provides no bonuses to AC. Below are new rules :

Damage Reduction
Padded or soft leather : 1
Thick leather, wood, wicker, hide, weave, etc. : 2
Buff coat, cuirboulli, or thick hide : 3
Byzainted or light chainmail : 4
Heavy chainmail, scale, splint : 5
Coat of plates, banded : 6
Light or partial plate : 7
Heavy plate : 8

Critical Threat Range
Critical threat scores are based on the armor being worn and not the weapon. A successful critical hit ignores the armor's damage reduction instead of multiplying damage. If an entire character’s body is covered by armor (including the face), then the critical threat range is 20. If the helm is open faced, it drops by 1. If there is no helmet, it drops by 2. If the arms are only partially covered, it drops by 1, if there are is no arm protection, it drops by 2. If only one arm is covered it drops by 1. The same applies to legs. If the body is not protected, it drops by 4 and if the body is only partly protected, it drops by 2.

Armor Weight
When determining the degree to which a suit of armor weighs down a character, double (quadruple for body) the damage reduction of each region protected and all locations together (head + left arm + right arm + left leg + right leg + body). If the area is only halfway protected, do not double the value. For every 10 points above 10 that the total value comes to, there is a -1 armor penalty. For every 25 points, reduce the character Dexterity modifier by -1. For every 35 points of armor, the wearer of the armor suffers a -5 penalty to movement speed.
Bronze armor weighs a little more than steel or iron armor (same penalties) but it provides one less point of armor Damage Reduction. Masterwork armor either acts as if it were 1 DR lighter or adds 1 to DR.

Armor Examples

Armor DR Dex Penalty Speed Critical
Full Plate 8 -4 -10 -15 20
Chain Haulberk 5 -1 -3 -5 16
Roman Lorica 6 -1 -3 -5 16
Buffcoat 3 - - - 15
Breastplate 8 -1 -2 - 14
Thick Clothing 1 - - - 18
Full Chainmail 5 -2 -5 -5 19
Greek Plate 6 -2 -6 -5 18
Scale Shirt 5 - -1 - 14
Samurai Armor 5 -2 -6 -5 20
Field Plate 7 -3 -8 -10 20
A Great Helm 8 - - - 12

Also, I mentioned a method of advancement. The primary difference is simplification by each class getting one thing as they progress, like fighters get a feat for every 1000 experience points or some such, but they never get more than +1 BAB or 1d10 HD without magical assistance. One thing thats always confused me is why every low-level wizard doesn't get a wand of 3rd-level magic missile. Its like carrying a 3rd-level sorcerer in your pocket (literally, thats the only spell they use, ever)! So if they have access to wands (which are basically extra spells in a bag), then why in the world would A) any but the poorest wizards/magic domain clerics not get one and B) anyone play a sorcerer? Wands just seem to break the whole idea of Spells/day being a balancing factor. Elements of Magic item creation includes rules for creating mana batteries to circumvene this. (including RENEWAL mana batteries that regain their ability to recharge spellcasters at each and every morning!)

Seriously, heres a run down:

Hit points and Armor:

I've decided to borrow SargentBrother's rules on hit points, including armor DR and critical hit range.

Everyone:

Get +1 skill rank every 1000/(the amount of skill points you'd acquire if you gained a level of your "current class") xp (for instance a Human Rogue with INT 12 -10 skill points per level- gets a skill point for every 1000 divided by 10...100 experience)

Get +1 bonus ability point every 5000 xp

Changing classes:

After paying a training fee, and spending some downtime in a city that has facilities (a Weapons dojo, Magic college, Monastery, Thieves guild, etc.) to teach you the skills of that class. Afterwards:

You use the highest BAB

You use the highest Base Fort, Ref, or Will saves (a Fighter Rogue get +2 Fort and Ref, but a Taskmage with +1 in each that chages to Barbarian gets +2 Fort, +1 Ref, and +1 Will)

You retain all your skills and class abilities from your old class, but gain the starting abilities of the new one, and continue to progress via this class.

The class you are leveling is called your (Current class) and you have xp for every class you trained in (IE if you got 1000 xp as a fighter, and then switched classes and recieved 500 xp as a barbarian, then you have 1000 fighter xp and 500 barbarian xp.)

Multi-classers:

When you choose to have two or more "current classes", you must split the xp you gain evenly. However, Favored classes get 10% more xp out of their share. Humans and Half Elves choose their favored class when they first multi-class. This might be seen like a cheesy way to milk more xp, however both classes in a dual-class character will still be slow-growing.

BAB:

The classes that gain +1 BAB per level, have +2 BAB in this system

The classes that gain +0.75 BAB per level, have +1 BAB in this system

Pansy mages, have +0 BAB in this system

BAB Prerequisites for feats are ignored. If you have Cleave, go ahead and get yourself some Boobies (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0102.html)

Fighter:

Gain Bonus feats every 1500 fighter xp, can pick Weapon spec if you have Weapon focus in the approipriate weapon.

Barbarian:

More Rages/day and better uncanny dodge after (undecided) barbarian xp has been gathered.

Rogue:

Start with Sneak attack and trap finding. Get a better sneak attack critical threat range by +1 for every 3,000 x (current number of sneak attack improvements) Rogue xp, and also gain better uncanny dodge and trapsense

Monk:

Start with Get Flurry of Blows, Monk bonus feat, Wisdom to AC, and 1d6 unarmed damage. Get random other stuff after acquiring x Monk experience.

Mage:

Start with +1 caster level (which in EOM, comes with spell lists and magic points) and Magic boons and acquire another Caster level every 1000 Mage xp. You can another moderate magic boon for every 5,000 and a Major magical boon (in lieu of further moderate magic boons) for every 5,000 mage xp past 15,000

Taskmage:

Start with +1/2 (actually 3/4 but it rounds down, you see) a caster level and a Taskmage bonus feat. Gain a bonus feat every 4,000 Taskmage xp and + 3/4 caster level for every 1,000 taskmage xp.

Mageknight:

Start with +1/2 (actually 3/4 but it rounds down, you see) a caster level and two Mageknight bonus feats. Gain a bonus feat every 1,000 Mageknight xp (until you reach 4,000 xp, thereafter it takes 4,000 xp to get a new feat) and + 3/4 caster level for every 1,000 MageKnight xp.

Jarawara
2007-05-23, 09:38 PM
Thoughtbot, a question on Sargent Bro's rules.

You get half your class hit points, plus your constitution score, at first level.

How many more hit points do you get with additional levels? None? Or did I misinterpret?

*~*~*

Interesting proposal. I might steal elements of it, since after officially learning 3E (in progress now), I fully intend to dismantle it. Thanks for posting your thoughts, Bot.

Thoughtbot360
2007-05-24, 05:06 AM
Thoughtbot, a question on Sargent Bro's rules.

You get half your class hit points, plus your constitution score, at first level.

How many more hit points do you get with additional levels? None? Or did I misinterpret?

*~*~*

Interesting proposal. I might steal elements of it, since after officially learning 3E (in progress now), I fully intend to dismantle it. Thanks for posting your thoughts, Bot.

You get no additional hit points at additional levels. Now, your wizard might dip into Barbarian for the higher hit dice and then continue about his mary way. The Maximum hit points is basically equal to = 6 (if you have even one level of barbarian) + Constitution + 3 from the toughness feat. The biggest problem with his system is that attack spells are simply to strong, even with his nerf (9d6 +17 damage is never a good thing vs. a party of 30 hp or less, and thats not counting the Elves and small characters...). You might find some of his posts on the forums someday, but here's a link to thread wherein I firsted asked for the rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2130064).

Kemper Boyd
2007-05-24, 05:44 AM
I think Mongoose's Conan does a better job with levels and versimilitude than D&D. For example, most soldiers in armies with any training or experience are level 3, with veterans being level 5 or higher.

Most D&D settings, where there are huge amounts of level 1 people puttering about, with a small number of high-level people, make no sense as far as the rules of the game go. I mean, all people overcome challenges during their lifetime. The idea of most people being level 1 mooks is likely related to earlier editions, where most common people were level 0.

nagora
2007-05-24, 09:39 AM
Most D&D settings, where there are huge amounts of level 1 people puttering about, with a small number of high-level people, make no sense as far as the rules of the game go. I mean, all people overcome challenges during their lifetime. The idea of most people being level 1 mooks is likely related to earlier editions, where most common people were level 0.

Most people in storys *are* mooks. They don't matter to the plot; in real life they would never make a difference to the world and long ago gave up any potential to do so. They are level 0: unable to step out of the background. In a book or movie they're the ones that get killed by the bad guys and saved by the good guys. It makes no sense to give them experience or levels, any more than a potted plant.

Levels are a dynamic thing which should only be given to dynamic characters. A blacksmith who has been smithing for 20 years is still just a blacksmith. Nothing more.

Soldiers are the same, and so are most orcs, ogres, and (hob)goblins. They get the stats in the book and maybe 1 in 100 have that spark of "it" that allows them the chance to shine out and gain levels. That's not something experience gives you, "it" is what allows you to turn experience into something special.

Thoughtbot360
2007-05-24, 01:56 PM
Most people in storys *are* mooks. They don't matter to the plot; in real life they would never make a difference to the world and long ago gave up any potential to do so. They are level 0: unable to step out of the background. In a book or movie they're the ones that get killed by the bad guys and saved by the good guys. It makes no sense to give them experience or levels, any more than a potted plant.

Somehow, that seems equal parts cold and short sighted. Some "background people" are actually very skilled yet die in the crossfire, or the explosion, or whatever and even if the heroes are moving on to save the world, you can bet that someones out there bemoaning: "He was the greatest mind of his generation!" and mean it. This might not be a problem, but more than a few guides have pointed to the value of not making the player's out to be the centers of the world, or even neccesarily the saviors of it.


After all, the true purpose of running an adventure for your friends to blunder through is so that everybody has fun, not so their imaginary characters can get more imaginary life experience and imaginary money and imaginary magic items. The players’ enjoyment comes from being a participant in a good story which they would normally not be able to be a part of in real life.

But of course the primary question is whats really wrong with going from 5 hp to 200 and becoming a god to go off and fight god-like beasties? Nothing. Just that the trek from 5 to 200 is long and hard and usually as fast as the GM can make it when he sees the players losing interest, but in doing so your lower-level world becomes less than a foot note. Theres a problem with DBZ-ing your campaign, and its possible that your whole world becomes irrevelant (as witnessed by your adventurers now fighting across the upper planes and wondering when did their simply goblin-hunting lives turn into Planescape?)

Jack_of_Spades
2007-05-25, 01:46 AM
Hmm...when I have NPC that the PC encounter regularly they are usually competing adventurers or other characters that would be out doing things that would grant XP.

My BBEGs are usually around the PCs level when they first meet. My favorite, one so far, was a traveling merchant who had four levels of Wizard and specialized in Necromancy. He went with the PCs on some of their adventures and I had him gain a share of their XP. Then, the PC brought him an artifact he wanted that reacted with another item the PC had; it summoned a demon who kidnapped his wife. Then he became the BBEG and did everything he could to destroy them. They already knew how strong he was when they worked together, and he was actively searching for weapons to use against them, so he could have gained XP from killing monsters too.

The town uprising doesn't need to have the villagers be higher level. I mean, the PCs probably don't want to fireball them all to death; more likely the fun part of that encounter would be trying to stop the revolt WITHOUT annihilating the commoners.

nagora
2007-05-25, 05:40 AM
This might not be a problem, but more than a few guides have pointed to the value of not making the player's out to be the centers of the world, or even neccesarily the saviors of it.


I agree, but the PCs should be the centre of the DM's story; who wants to play spectators in a game when we can all do that in real life by watching the news? The story may develop to encompass the world but it doesn't have to, and actually it's so hard to pull off the "save the world" plot that it's probably best not to try.

Worrying about experience and levels for commoners is a waste of the DM's time and also dilutes the importance of the people who should be taking the foreground in the story - PCs and their NPC counterparts, ie, the protagonists and antagonists.

Roderick_BR
2007-05-25, 09:05 AM
I say it's just bad positioning of PCs.
So, if the PCs go visit Ben, and find a small army attacking, who are they? They couldn't be hidding all this time. Maybe they came from a far place. Or they were some small guerrilla that just leveled up at the same time the PCs did.
I'm all for allowing PCs to meet characters of diferent levels. Sometimes it's fun to enter a florest where the PCs fought a horde of orcs 10 levels ago, and see the surviving members flee in terror from the now near-god PCs.
The DM must level up the *adventures*, not the places the PCs already passed by.
If a tomb was too hard for the PCs some years ago, now it's a walk in the park. Of course, the PCs should be doing more important stuff than crawling on easy dungeons, but that's what the DM needs to fix.
I remember a game where we had to flee from a monster too hard to kill, and several levels later we decided to return to the cave. The dungeon itself was easy, but the monster (that gained only a couple HDs) could be fought without risk of a TPK.
The DMG says something about how to manage the game outside the PC's influence. Not rules, just how to manage.
So, higher level PCs must go after high level monsters and dungeons. If they happen to pass in a place they've been at lower level, the place should be lower level, unless something important happened.
Back to Ben: If an army is strong enough to menace a 10th level party, they probably already took over Ben's town. If they have no one above 2nd or 3rd level, sucks to be them. It's up to the party to solve things. That's how it works.
Now, maybe you WANT the villagers to be high level. They've been in a war for a long time. How long? Since when the PCs left? For over 10 levels? And they never heard about any war going on?

Ben: Farewell, adventurers... Ah! An invading army! Defend yourselves!
PC 1: Hmm... we just left the town yesterday. I wonder how they are doing.
PC 2: They are fine, there's no one to menace them now.

The problem here is that you wanted the 1st level commoners to gain 10 levels of PC classes overnight. That doesn't happen. Maybe the war started a while ago, and only now the PCs heard about it. By the time they got there, many villagers got 1 or 2 levels, maybe 3.

As I said once, D&D is not Final Fantasy Tactics. When you are in a place, the enemies doesn't "level up" to the group's level. You could very well enter an area with way too weak monsters, if there's no reason for them not to be there.

PC 1: Ah, the orc florest. And to think that years ago we were scared of walking here.
PC 2: True. Hmm.. I haven't seen a orc since we arrived. Where are they?
PC 3: Hey guys! I just saw a troll back there. This place didn't had trolls before, did it?
PC 1: I think now I know what happened to the orcs...
Years later.
PC 1: And here we are again. Remember that one time the place was overrun with trolls? We had to chase them out.
PC 2: True... did the orcs return after that?
PC 3: I think they did. I have this feeling that someone has been watching us since we entered the florest, but it didn't came after us.
PC 2: Maybe they remember the ass kicking we gave them ;)
PC 1: Yeah. Well, we reached the end of the florest. Let's camp here and continue tomorrow morning.

Kemper Boyd
2007-05-25, 03:51 PM
Worrying about experience and levels for commoners is a waste of the DM's time and also dilutes the importance of the people who should be taking the foreground in the story - PCs and their NPC counterparts, ie, the protagonists and antagonists.

Most of the time, levels and such of the common people/scenery don't matter at all. However, those matter for example when the player characters are involved in a barfight or fight alongside with villagers against an invading army.

And personally, I think a world where nobles and really experienced soldiers can be level 10, and those who are level 20 are real living legends is preferable to a world where there are only level 1 people and a few demigods, with practically nothing in between. For one thing, it makes it easier to give decent opponents to the player characters.

nagora
2007-05-26, 06:25 AM
And personally, I think a world where nobles and really experienced soldiers can be level 10, and those who are level 20 are real living legends is preferable to a world where there are only level 1 people and a few demigods, with practically nothing in between. For one thing, it makes it easier to give decent opponents to the player characters.

Well, I think that experienced soldiers should top out at about level 4-5 and living legends start at the teens (with avatars of deities being 20th+), but I generally agree. I'm just saying that the level system should reflect the ability (which includes the desire) to make a difference. That's what makes leveled characters stand out and, above all, why they get hit points beyond those of their physical bodies.

And, bluntly, peasants are born, live and die as peasants because they lack that spark. At least soldiers (volunteers) have decided to fight for something, which can also happen to peasants but historically, peasants in feudal settings rarely took much preactive part even when their countries were invaded, mostly because they usually had nothing to gain or lose since they were at the bottom of the pile, very often below the status of horses or other expensive animals.

Matthew
2007-06-05, 09:05 PM
Ah Thoughtbot, thinking too hard methinks. D&D 3.x doesn't lend itself very well to consistant world building. The key element you are missing is demography, though. In the default game there are already a set number of Level X folk in Place Y. Encounters for Player Characters are level appropriate. If, however, they go out of their way to seek higher level adversaries or allies, there is nothing you can really do to stop them. The question isn't really why couldn't the Characters find a Level 9 Cleric to raise the Princess, but why couldn't the King?

The fragile nature of suspension of disbelief is the primary reason I play lengthy D&D Campaigns in a Home Brewed and House Ruled (A)D&D Campaign World/Setting and why I use a very slow experience progression that rarely sees Characters go past Level Seven. D&D 3.x I reserve for short campaigns or one off adventures. Picking holes in D&D is not really a challenge. Just look at the economy to see one element that makes no sense.

By the by, most medieval people did not die at age thirty. The average age is the result of factoring in high infant mortality and superimposing a view of the early industrial world onto the Ancient and Medieval. It is, however, a common misconception.

silvermesh
2007-06-06, 11:51 AM
i think the challenge of a peasant uprising should be more the challenge of solving it without having to kill all the peasants, so theres really no point in levelling those peasants up in the first place. NPCs don't need experience to level, but that doesn't mean they're required to level just because theyre not getting experience. NPCs should be at whatever level the DM deems appropriate at any given time. changing them might seem to need some justification, but only if it is blatantly obvious that they've changed. there is no rule stating All NPCs need to be level X, or X number of levels below the PCs, or anything of the ort. It's all DM fiat.

as far as "only key characters should have back story". this may be true of many authors, but the best of the best fantasy writers flesh out every character that they can. When names and faces aren't put on bodies, this usually means that the author is trying to glorify combat, where if they flesh out the victims, this means they are showing the brutality and horrifying nature of war and death. It puts more at stake, and makes the heroes even more heroic. generally i've found that in stories where side characters are one dimensional, the heroes are two-dimensional at best.

It's the DMs job to make the world engrossing for his PCs, so that the team together can write the story. the DM writes the world, the players write the heroes. As a DM your world will be much more immersive if you have a big driving idea behind everything, it makes it more believable. sure, it doesn't make a lasting difference on the overall story if peasant bob just so happens to have single-handedly taken down a rabid bear with a lucky shot in his youth, but it certainly adds some color to your campaign world, and it makes the players actually want to explore more of your world having bits of color like this.

It's true, nothing matters if it doesn't directly affect the PCs, but since when did things have to matter? having things that don't matter in your game make it more enjoyable because it adds to the suspension of disbelief.

Matthew
2007-06-11, 03:19 PM
Moved From "What's so Evil about being a Lich"


Disclaimer: Do note that my opinion on this issue is at variance with the DMG. NPCs gain experience in the DMG as described (at least in my 3.0 DMG).


So it doesn't matter if I say, Wish that every humanoid on the material plane was an epic level wizard and it gets granted?
Indeed not. It does not matter. A silly wish like that has to be phrased in a none meta game manner to begin with and will not be allowed in any sensible game. Even if Wish worked that way (which it doesn't, as there are limits on what it is supposed to be able to achieve), other Wizards would have abused it in such a manner well ahead of your Character ("I wish I was a God", "I wish I travelled back in time and killed my father - whatcha gonna do now causality?"). The game rules only model game reality, they are not game reality itself.


The problem is experience points and character levels are very real resources in the player character's society.

No, they are a very real game mechanic and resource.


If NPCs don't have experience points, then how do you explain the existance of:
-Magic item shops

NPCs don't require experience to create Magic items. They create them as appropriate, end of story.


-Monsters with character levels

Why would they need experience points to have Character levels? They have them as appropriate. NPCs do not work like PCs. They don't have experience points.


-NPC Clerics that can resurrect your cleric

They don't need experience points to use high level magic. The game world has a demography. X number of Y Class Characters exist in Z size Town. That's how it works.


-The large number of 1 HD peasants farming the fields of a nation rife with monsters, many of which probably could eat out a village of them in one day (Look, dragons are huge, flying creatures that live a hella long time, they will likely eat entire ecosystems if they aren't hunted to extinction, and there is ALWAYS a much smaller standing army than there are farmers until we get to modern agricultural practices.

You're thinking in game mechanics again. Don't think how do the game mechanics affect X. The fact is, there are large populations of peasants and in the wilderness there are populations of Monsters. There's nothing more to it.


The peasant at the bottom is disempowered and generally kept ignorant. He has no chance to learn how to be any kind of effective warrior like the nobles or the PCs do. He has difficulty advancing finacially and I would imagine difficulty advancing in personal power. Besides, even if he levels up a bit whats he going to say when a tribe of Trolls comes to eat his neighbors and his family, "Begone, foul trolls or face the wrath of tenth-level commoner!"? Oh, wait, thats too meta-gamey, you don't want people in the game world talking about their level and class. Let me try again: "Begone, foul trolls or face the wrath of a simple village man that is inexplicably better at taking a beating and throwing rocks at baby-stealing kobolds than the other villagers!....not by much, though.")

I take it you are not familiar with the feudal system, then? Peasants expect protection from their Lord. He and his followers are obligated to hunt down threats and destroy them. They don't do so via game rules, that would be an adventure. They do so via the story.


Basically, they'd all be dead and the kingdom would starve in their absence. A Tiger is easier to scare away from a settlement than a Huge 18 HD Winter Wolf. And a Tarrasque? Forget about it.

You're thinking about these things in isolation. The game world exists in the state it exists. The rules don't apply to anything outside of the experience of the Player Characters. When the mechanics don't make sense, it's the mechanics that are wrong.


-Where do Wizards learn 9th level spells? I mean, when they level up, they get two free spells before they go off to the scroll market. And they start their careers with knowledge of ALL cantips. Doesn't that mean that every Wizard academy has access to all the spells Wizards can use? Sorcerers and Bards just manifest certain magical abilities, and Divine spellcasters get their spells from prayers, so it makes sense that they can pray for any spell they have the power to cast and if no temple knows the spell, say "True Ressurection" exists, then a God can inform the first cleric that reaches lvl 17 *stammers* I-I mean has proven their worth to the God. But Wizards can't be inventing these spells as they go along, or else nobody would ever succeed a Spellcraft check to recognize a Time Stop Spell that a Wizard had "Invented" unless they saw the wizard in action before. Knowledge of the spell would not exist.

NPC Wizards do not use the D&D mechanics for advancement. It depends entirely on the campaign world where Wizards learn Spell X. In Greyhawk it's fairly clear that all Spells are available, but powerful Wizards are reasonably rare.


-Permanent Spells. If you ever set a permanent alarm spell on a safe, one thing that should pass the theif's mind is where are the NPCs who set the alarm trap get the experience.
That may be something that crosses the Player's mind, but the Thief wouldn't think that.


How often do they spend experience? How likely is it that common farmer's homes might have permanent magical wards? Hey, though, maybe thats whats protecting the weak from being attacked by an invisible stalker in the middle of the night. Maybe anti-monster protections are affordable. But then if the rogue in your party has a very traditional "burglar" character concept in mind, finding the average house more trapped than the average dungeon is going to ruin his night.

They don't spend experience. They just do story appropriate things. That's all.


In a way XP is a renewable resource. What I want to know is WHAT renews it.

Nothing renews it. Only PCs get experience.


Some stories revolve around a resource shortage. But XP can make it all better. Seriously. If there's a dought, the priestess' decanter of endless water will restore any well to its former glory. If its a lack of medicine during a plague, then just ask a high-level Paladin, I promise you he'll never find a better use for them, and with enough Paladins, the plague gets weaker. Shortage of Labor or Recruits for the military? Just bind a few outsiders and dominate some hostile humanoids (though I do wander about the ethics of using summon and mind-control spells in the first place -I mean, if you use Summon monster spells a lot, don't those outsiders have other things to do? How are they always ready and willing to fight?). Is there an Oil shortage in contemporary fantasy game with magic and modern technology? Light is a cantip, I'm sure you could produce a permanent, magical light bulb that will shrink the need for energy from an oil-burning plant, if only some industrous casters had some XP (and in a modern setting, education is more rampant, so more than a few people would learn magic). Now, the one problem with xp is that if a high-level character dies, then you lose all his powers and all the magic items he might have made. (Actually, here's a house rule you should consider. Magic items might work after their creator's death, but permanent spells cease to work should the caster die or somehow permanently lose his powers, or maybe suffer some negative levels and lose the ability to cast the spell that he made permanent.)

Yes, enough magic solves all problems. No, it's not freely available to everyone and all situations.


You might throw up your hands and say "Ok, xp has a presence in a society if we look at it as an operating simulation, but how does this affect the adventure the player characters are having? As a DM I'm supposed to provide a story, not a system!"

No, experience doesn't have a presence in society. It only effects Player Characters and the story they are part of. The system supports the story, not the other way around.


Well, thats one way to look at it, but in the event that your players ever acquire fiefdoms or something similar and have direct control over a little piece of civilization, it might be worth it to tally up how many high-level magic users and how common magic items are if the player say, puts a high-tax value on the ownership of such items (which in some old tax systems, meant that the tax collector is likely to repossess the tax-heavy item if the person in question is unable to pay.) How well can a PC use the magical resources of spellcasters to advert disasters that visit his little kingdom? How many brave NPC adventurers will offer their services to help the PC? The first step is to find out how many of what level are in a community, and to do that, you have to figure out how much XP the NPCs are getting, where they are getting it, and how much are they using in creating magic items/permanent spells.
No, you use the demographics in the DMG. Experience is entirely irrelevant to that. If you want a detailed look at D20 Fief building, see A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe.


And if they aren't selling magic items, then thats a problem for the PCs at lower levels, because then they have nowhere to buy healing potions and +1 Greatswords.

Again, that's a different mechanic. The frequency at which such things are produced is not dictated by experience points.


If you want to hand-wave it, thats fine, but if a PC ever gets control over town or two, and asks for a report of say, how many Cleric are capable of casting Raise Dead, and you give some number your pulled out of your ass, and then he wants to keep track of any increases or decreases in that number-well, you might have wished that you worked out a system for NPC experience points.

The DMG provides guidance for this. There are many supplements and articles on the subject as well. You don't need a system for NPC experience if you have actually developed a Campaign World and established the demographics and economy of that society.
Consistantly, you are imagining an undeveloped Campaign World that needs mechanics to create and propel it. No Campaign World needs that. D&D is not like a MOMCRPG where the mechanics need to underlie and propel everything in that gameworld.

Aquillion
2007-06-11, 03:29 PM
I once asked the question "Where do NPCs get their XP?" I got the answer "You are confusing game mechanics with story dynamics (or some-such like that). You level up NPCs at will to whatever is neccesary to challenge the PCs at any given time (In other words, the BBEG is likely to be at best, level 3 when the PCs are level 1, even if the BBEG is a ten-thousand year old mummy sorcerer:smallannoyed: -but then, hey, shouldn't Elves have learned how to do more than merely be proficent with a bow and sword in their 100 years of childhood learning?). " But if this is the case, then imagine this scenario:

read the spoiler, its not gonna reveal whose baby it is on your favorite soap opera *rolls eyes*
Its Shawn's baby, suckers!:belkar: Anyway, lets assume the PCs start their campaign they meet at farmer Ben's house (it could have easily been farmer Bill, or farmer Stu, or farmer Floyd, but "a generic farmer" sounds heartless and breaks vermisitude, Players can decide whether or not X farmer is important enough to recall his name.) and Ben is a 1st-level commoner (like the rest of the generic farmers who are kept in equal parts poverty and obscurity and therefore they never get any XP except from killing the occasional fox in the chicken coup). The adventurers only meet him because Ben has unique information on the monster they've been hired by their client to hunt down. They get the info from Ben and kill their monster, but the Baron's daughter, who was captured by the monster tragically died in the crossfire. The DM wants the PCs to feel guilty about this and says that "Yes, a 9th level Cleric might give a free Raise Dead to get into the Baron's good graces, IF you could one. Alas, you -cannot-, they are too rare." Afterwards, the PCs go on one levelling thread mill of an adventuring carrer, and reach level 10. Now lets say for some reason, they get hired to quell a peasant uprising, originated in farmer Ben's village. Lets say Ben is not sympathetic to the revolution and he shelters the PCs, only to be discovered by a small plattoon of the revultionary army and he is attacked. Now, to be a decent challenge to 10th-level PCs, all the villagers fighting would have to gain some more levels of commoner, or this is going to be a very boring and redundant adventure. But to stand a chance to survive, Ben will have to be a little higher level, even if say, the Revolutionaries have levels of warrior and Ben doesn't. And if the leader of the Revolt is, lets say 9th level, then one of the PCs will shout out "Hey! This is the tenth NPC/Monster/whatever that has 9+ character levels! And two of them were Clerics (of dangerous cults, but they could still have benefitted from a political favor or two, to advance their, at the time secret, agenda.) why couldn't we find them -or one of the other Clerics that have popped up to ressurect our Mage on a regular basis after his 'brillant plan of the week' *glowers at Wizard*- to rez the Baron's daughter way back when. And heck! I know this peasants weren't this strong when the kobolds attacked back then. 'Oh save us, brave adventurers, they are eating our babies (KAMB reference FTW)!' Now they don't suck, where were these people?"

DM: They hadn't reached 9th level yet?

PC: So the universe revolves around our level, or concientidentally we just happened to start this campaign when the universe was suddenly raining xp on NPCs, so that the HORSEFLIES are stronger now? Actually, some of these revolutionaries are stronger than my Riding dog...and he's part dire-wolf! Shouldn't you be making everything stronger just to keep up?

DM: errrr......*Is not sure what to do, but the prospect of writing stats for leveled up EVERYTHING just so he is at least consitent in the arbituary-ness doesn't appeal to him*

Of course, the alternative is to leave the bad guys at the start of the game with many a character level, but the problem is high level evil adventurers and dark lords aren't like high-CR monsters. They might level up so you its hard to "catch up" to their powerlevel before you fight them. Also their plans won't "wait" for you to level up, so theres the chance of bumping into them before the DM "planned" for you to fight them (actually more likely, the PCs see a chance to attack the BBEG and take it).

So I was thinking why not just run a world where everyone is 1st-level, and just give Fighters more feats, Rogues more skills, Barbarians more Rages/day Casters more spells per day (and perhaps, some 1st-level versions of none-broken spells. Meteor Swarm and Polymorph might be a problem -true strike seems kind of dangerous-, but Spider Climb? Leviatate? Legend Lore? Dream? Raise Dead, perhaps?), etc.?Your mistake is in not adjusting the types of challenges for the PCs. Third-level PCs should not be fighting ancient mummy lich-kings; ninth level PCs should not be fighting small-scale peasant uprisings (although a larger revolution could make an interesting campaign, with high-level revolutionary leaders and royal guards and so forth participating on either side.) If you have your players going on adventures that are inapproprate for their power level (It's OVER NINE THOUSAAAAND), naturally it's going to seem absurd or unfair in one way or another.

Dervag
2007-06-11, 10:28 PM
I have been wondering recently what the deal is on these forums of people casually talking about 20th+ level characters as if they think such things are possible. As a 1st Ed player I can't imagine ever getting beyond the mid-teens with a character. The highest level characters in our old campaign are 13th and they took ten years (real world, about 40 years game world - their children were about 9th level, some henchmen died of old age) of regular playing to get that high. No NPC was above 16th level, unless you count a handful of "monster NPCs" like Lolth.

And the thing is: we never quite played the 1st ed experience rules as printed - it should have taken longer!

Is 3rd edition REALLY that easy to advance levels in?

Edit: spellingIn a word, yes.

In First and Second edition, the experience required to level up increased more or less exponentially with level. A fifth level fighter had about twice as much experience as a fourth level fighter, who had about twice as much experience as a third level fighter.

Whereas the experience gained from encounters tends to increase more slowly, so it takes more encounters to gain each successive level.


In Third Edition, they totally revamped the experience rules. Now, gaining each level requires 100X experience points, where X is your current level. So a 1st level fighter needs 100 XP to level up; a 7th level fighter needs 700 XP to level up, and so on. So now a fifth level fighter doesn't have twice as much XP as a fourth level fighter; he has 50% more.

To compensate for this, most encounters give less XP than they did in earlier editions. Fighting a bunch of giants in First Edition was good for a few thousand XP; in Third Edition it's more like a few hundred. They also came up with a mathematical system to index the power of an encounter (the "Challenge Rating") against the level of the party, to determine the experience awards. So if a second level party kills a rampaging ogre, they get more XP than a fourth level party, while a tenth level party probably wouldn't get any experience at all for it because one ogre is not a threat to a party of tenth level characters.

The standard everything is calibrated to is that a party of four Xth-level characters, facing an encounter of Challenge Rating X, will have to expend roughly 20% of their resources to win on average. Therefore, they can be expected to face four challenges of their level a day if they battle to the point of exhaustion. Presumably, they won't normally be challenged that many times a day; that's just an upper limit.

Now, the other part of the standard is that it takes 13 level-appropriate challenges (encounters with Challenge Rating equal to the level of your four-man party) for the whole party to gain enough experience to level up. This is supposed to be true regardless of level.

That means that even if you only face one seriously threatening opponent a DAY, you gain enough experience to level up about every two weeks.

Combine that with the fact that Third Edition does not have any mandatory rules for training time, so there's nothing to stop you from gaining your level the instant you kill the last giant. The result is that Third Edition characters really do level up so fast that a campaign can easily reach 20th level over a reasonable period of play time (a few years).



I say it's just bad positioning of PCs.
So, if the PCs go visit Ben, and find a small army attacking, who are they? They couldn't be hidding all this time. Maybe they came from a far place. Or they were some small guerrilla that just leveled up at the same time the PCs did.
I'm all for allowing PCs to meet characters of diferent levels. Sometimes it's fun to enter a florest where the PCs fought a horde of orcs 10 levels ago, and see the surviving members flee in terror from the now near-god PCs.Of course, sometimes it's also fun for the third level characters to realize that they've just taken a wrong turn and entered the Forest of Ettins, any one of which can eat their entire party for lunch.

Jack Mann
2007-06-11, 10:51 PM
X*1,000 XP, Dervag, not *100. Other than that, you're pretty much right.

Matthew
2007-06-11, 11:03 PM
Indeed, though the 3.x DMG pays lip service to Story Awards and slower rates of advancement, the default state is very remeniscent of certain CRPGs. Pretty much the number one thing I dislike about Third Edition, but fortunately not too hard to deal with (published campaign arcs not withstanding).

It's funny really, Wizards were always more powerful than Non Wizards past Level 10, but the chances of getting there in an average game were pretty low so few people really noticed. The 2.x Dungeon Master's Option: High Level Campaigning discusses the situation at length with virtually no answers...

Aquillion
2007-06-12, 02:14 AM
The change to the xp curve (well, the total elimination of the xp curve) also sort of screwed part of up justification for the game's underlying universe... it's been a staple of the D&D world, since the very start, that most people in the world are low-level. This is easy to explain using old XP rules, where you basically had to be making a dedicated and deliberate effort to become more powerful if you wanted to get anywhere, but now it just doesn't make any sense. Sure, your typical farmer isn't levelling up... but what about, say, caravan guards or soldiers or the like? You'd expect some form of level inflation, where roughly equal-level soldiers are used against each other in regular battles until every army in the world consists entirely of epic-level troops.

(And this isn't just about mechanics, since we all know XP doesn't apply to NPCs. The idea behind them--that each successive level represented more work than the one before it--was an important part of the underlying world. Taking that out makes things strange.)

Honestly, I kind of don't like the 3.x system, even though I have to admit it's better mechanically. It feels sort of soulless, in a way... almost too pat.

Bosh
2007-06-12, 02:48 AM
What's very important is to avoid the CRPG feel that you're doing the same things as low levels as at a high levels but with both sides getting power. It feels silly and has things feel like everything is revolving around the PCs.

What you do is to have the PCs recieving different challenges depending on their level and not have such convenient things as "wow lucky that you arrived, our town is being threatened by a critter that is at an appropriate CR and nobody else can possibly deal with it" sillyness. For example in my campaign the party progressed through:

1. Dealing with belligerant local drunks.
2. Dealing with local politics, beating up farmers, stealing horses etc.
3. Being involved in raiding small villages.
4. Getting involveved in a civil war as veteran soldiers, eventually getting in a cheap shot that finishes off a wounded enemy claimant to the throne and getting rewarded handsomely by the victor.
5. Back home dealing with local politics and instead of taking order from the local movers and shakers, the party becomes the movers and shakers.
6. Deal with threats to their local hegemony, framing attempts, hired killers etc. and crushing all local opposition.
7. Being noticed by the King for their loyal support and their ability to kill people en masse and being appointed as royal tribute collectors to the northern tribes.
8. At this point in the campaign they will finally meet a real BBEG, one who wouldn't have even noticed a bunch of thugs who didn't do anything much more but get involved in local fueds and serve as soldiers. But now that they're trying to tax the BBEG's people the game is on and the PCs will soon be running head on with the BBEG's supernatural underlings...

Note: no 3rd level 1000 year old mummies.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-15, 05:56 AM
That ending sentiment "tinker with one aspect of the system, rather than trying to redo the whole thing" also a good, short way to explain why I'd prefer to stick with D&D then switch to another system (at least, just yet), but not the only reason- I also have an alternative magic system that uses D20 rules.

Had a look at the article, and I don't think I really agree with that sentiment at all. I find that going to a new system gives much better results than an existing one.

And his analysis is way off, because he's only ever thinking about one feat (small f) at a time. Sure, Einstein could be modelled as a Level 5 Physicist, and that allows him to make the DC 25 Knowledge (Physics) checks which Justin assumes he would have to make to discover relativity, but a level 1 physicist could *also* have discovered Relativity by that logic. Particularly if you assume that he could have taken 20.

Similarly with Aragorn. It all relies on the assumption that he was fighting CR 1/2 opponents all the way through. This is possibly true, but possibly not. Since Middle Earth *wasn't* built using the D&D rules, it's a meaningless assumption to make. By this logic Smaug was actually only CR 1/2, since he was killed with a single arrow.

I_Got_This_Name
2007-06-15, 01:28 PM
And his analysis is way off, because he's only ever thinking about one feat (small f) at a time. Sure, Einstein could be modelled as a Level 5 Physicist, and that allows him to make the DC 25 Knowledge (Physics) checks which Justin assumes he would have to make to discover relativity, but a level 1 physicist could *also* have discovered Relativity by that logic. Particularly if you assume that he could have taken 20.

Taking 20 takes a retry, and you can't retry Knowledge checks. So, while, yes, on a 20 a 1st-level expert (someone unexceptional; a grad student or an unexceptional Ph.D.) can make a 25 or 30 (answering one of the hardest questions/advancing the state of knowledge in their field) when they're really lucky, they can't solve such problems through any amount of persistence. You make your mark with a DC 30 knowledge check representing some months/years of work, and then you never roll that natural 20 again because trying takes too long (if you're first level).

asqwasqw
2007-06-15, 02:10 PM
*snip* By this logic Smaug was actually only CR 1/2, since he was killed with a single arrow.


Smaug was hit by alot of arrows, they just didn't penentrate his armor. He was more than CR 1/2, because he either had good AC or DR. He just didn't have much HP...

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-15, 05:06 PM
Taking 20 takes a retry, and you can't retry Knowledge checks. So, while, yes, on a 20 a 1st-level expert (someone unexceptional; a grad student or an unexceptional Ph.D.) can make a 25 or 30 (answering one of the hardest questions/advancing the state of knowledge in their field) when they're really lucky, they can't solve such problems through any amount of persistence. You make your mark with a DC 30 knowledge check representing some months/years of work, and then you never roll that natural 20 again because trying takes too long (if you're first level).

That's the problem, though. A DC 30 Knowledge check doesn't require years of effort, it requires literally no time at all.

Matthew
2007-06-15, 05:18 PM
Sure, but it's not repeatable. It's a valid point, though.

Ditto
2007-06-15, 10:08 PM
How many times did Einstein discover Relativity?

...oh, that's right.

Matthew
2007-06-15, 10:59 PM
Not what I mean. The point is once they fail their Knowledge check, they don't get a reroll next round to see if they've cracked it. Still, 1 in 20 Students are going to crack it (or alternatively, they're going to crack 1 in 20 questions) and that's assuming no Circumstance Modifiers.

Dervag
2007-06-15, 11:41 PM
Sure, your typical farmer isn't levelling up... but what about, say, caravan guards or soldiers or the like? You'd expect some form of level inflation, where roughly equal-level soldiers are used against each other in regular battles until every army in the world consists entirely of epic-level troops.What happens is that nobody's watching the NPCs to make sure their challenges are level-appropriate.

A group of equal strength to your own group is a very serious challenge, by definition, because you only have a 50% chance of winning. So consider two possible models for a battle.

In one model, the entire army fights to the death. Your side kills the entire enemy army. However, in the process a lot of your soldiers end up dead. You'd have to fight several battles like that before your soldiers would level up. Most of your soldiers will die in those battles, and only a few will live long enough to level up. Then those soldiers have to keep surviving battles over and over and over, fighting enemies roughly as strong as themselves who have a fairly good chance of killing them in each battle, until they reach a high enough level that low-level mooks can no longer challenge them.

The odds of making it that far are not good, because in a system where armies fight to the death, the odds of surviving any one battle aren't good enough to ensure that you'll survive long enough to gain multiple levels from the battles.

Alternatively, NPC battles may be like real-world battles, where armies generally break and run before taking more than, say, 10-20% casualties. In that case, the XP for fighting a battle is low, although the risk of death is also lower. Spread out over the entire army, the XP is low enough that you have to fight a truly improbable number of encounters before anybody levels up.

PC parties level up quickly because they are constantly taking on a steady stream of small groups of enemies that are strong enough to challenge them, but not strong enough to be very likely to kill them. Only a similar party of NPCs would tend to level up the same way- and presumably there are parties of NPC adventurers who level up the same way; that's where most of the existing high-level NPCs come from. If you don't go adventuring, it takes much longer to gain the experience, and you aren't likely to gain many levels before you die.


Smaug was hit by alot of arrows, they just didn't penentrate his armor. He was more than CR 1/2, because he either had good AC or DR. He just didn't have much HP...Maybe he got critted.


That's the problem, though. A DC 30 Knowledge check doesn't require years of effort, it requires literally no time at all.You're right. Knowledge checks are probably a bad model for scientific research, because they reflect your familiarity with things that are already known. They do not model the time and effort required to grapple with the unknown and figure out things that you didn't even know existed to be figured out before.

Knight_Of_Twilight
2007-06-16, 12:21 AM
Uh...Wait...why are 9th level characters fighting peasents? Thats just kind of silly.

Unless they are the peasents from Kung Fu Hustle. Then it might work. XD

Sutremaine
2007-06-16, 06:57 AM
How many times did Einstein discover Relativity?
As many times as he needed to.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-16, 08:41 AM
You're right. Knowledge checks are probably a bad model for scientific research, because they reflect your familiarity with things that are already known. They do not model the time and effort required to grapple with the unknown and figure out things that you didn't even know existed to be figured out before.

Precisely so, which can be generalised out to the rules in general. The D&D rules system is designed to tell you what happens when a PC tries to do something in the middle of a dungeon, not what happens when an NPC tries to do it for a living.

Thoughtbot360
2007-06-17, 12:59 AM
What happens is that nobody's watching the NPCs to make sure their challenges are level-appropriate.

A group of equal strength to your own group is a very serious challenge, by definition, because you only have a 50% chance of winning. So consider two possible models for a battle.

In one model, the entire army fights to the death. Your side kills the entire enemy army. However, in the process a lot of your soldiers end up dead. You'd have to fight several battles like that before your soldiers would level up. Most of your soldiers will die in those battles, and only a few will live long enough to level up. Then those soldiers have to keep surviving battles over and over and over, fighting enemies roughly as strong as themselves who have a fairly good chance of killing them in each battle, until they reach a high enough level that low-level mooks can no longer challenge them.

The odds of making it that far are not good, because in a system where armies fight to the death, the odds of surviving any one battle aren't good enough to ensure that you'll survive long enough to gain multiple levels from the battles.

Alternatively, NPC battles may be like real-world battles, where armies generally break and run before taking more than, say, 10-20% casualties. In that case, the XP for fighting a battle is low, although the risk of death is also lower. Spread out over the entire army, the XP is low enough that you have to fight a truly improbable number of encounters before anybody levels up.

PC parties level up quickly because they are constantly taking on a steady stream of small groups of enemies that are strong enough to challenge them, but not strong enough to be very likely to kill them. Only a similar party of NPCs would tend to level up the same way- and presumably there are parties of NPC adventurers who level up the same way; that's where most of the existing high-level NPCs come from. If you don't go adventuring, it takes much longer to gain the experience, and you aren't likely to gain many levels before you die.

This in and of itself, is the reason why I look at NPC XP as a serious presence. Look, maybe I could just arbitrarily assign characters levels, but I seriously do want to know how many high level character not only exist but are enlisted in the government. Basically, what Dervag just said was that nobody who isn't an adventurer has a shot at becoming high level, not even the soldiers in a bloody war. Now the thing is, not all members of the standing army are equal. The Samurai, the Mounted Knight, the Spartan Hoplite, and the Viking Raider are all technically warriors, but they are highly trained elite soldiers that spend their lives learning how to fight, and as a result, their position in their society's caste system was quite high. But the thing that mounted knights and highly-skilled swordsmen in the middle ages didn't win wars by themselves. They were popular not because they were the most effective troops in the war (like what a wizard could do in a D&D battle) but because they caught more attention when they did go into action then a mob of conscripts armed with spears and in a tight formation did, despite how powerful the spear-in-formation was. This denotes that yes, the "elite" soldiers are better fighters than the "mook" up on the castle wall or planting a shield wall in the ground, but the "mooks" exist because they actually played an important (usually more dangerous) role and unless its a mounted calvary man charging a group of archers from behind no man cut through "mooks" like a scythe through wheat.

Now the problem with this is that a typical D&D world has creatures much stronger than any human army and they can technically strike at any moment. Now for the leveler-end monsters you could just make them technologically primitive, solitary, or somehow unable to loot or occupy a conquered territory to any great effectiveness so they just give up in the face of minimal resistance. The stronger ones are likely to more likely to cause enough damage in a shorter period of time then the kingdom can cope with before the next monster rolls into town. In the end, a human (or other 1/2- CR race) government stands no chance unless it has higher-level characters stashed away somewhere (and then theres the problem that an invading army of monsters might have their own special forces operatives with lots of levels in PC classes. A troll that is permanently protected from Fire and Acid and knows the Polymorph and Greater Invisibility spells is all kinds of scary.) And don't try to tell me "Npcs are always level-appropriate to the PCs, as the story requires," because something is seperating the wizard who shoots one magic missile a day before going back to cowering behind the fighters and the wizard whos flying around dropping meteors on dragons and polymorphing entire mountains into gold.

Basically, you can't just give the player's level appropriate challenges and say that those challenges are the entire world (at that point in the story or whatever). What if a PC misbehaves and you need some local authorities to lay bring him down, so you send in some NPC anti-magic specialist and some highly-trained leg breakers that are five levels over the offending PC and they beat him into submission? What happens if at a later date, the PCs go looking for help from those same specialists when they go to fight the villain of the hour ("We gotta fight a lich? Hey lets find that guy that put Batman in his place when he went crazy and was trying to coup d'etat that city state's government by himself! I'm sure that if we tell them how dangerous he is and how close he is to their capital, they'll agree to help us out.")?

:roach: : Exposition-rrefic!
TB360: Quiet you.


Maybe he got critted. But it wasn't the arrow that killed Smuag, it was the lake. The arrow hit that one soft spot and the pain caused Smuag to be unable to continue flying so he fell in the lake. Now Tolkien either had it that Dragons were like Fire Elementals and the water "extinguished" Smuag, or that Dragons can't swim and the lake was deep, therefore Smuag used his fire breath in desperation to evaporate the lake, which only resulted in a huge cloud of steam, but it wasn't enough for the dragon to save himself and even probably sped up his drowning. The reason I'm saying this is to point out that if this occurred in a D&D game, it would be entirely by GM fiat, unless there was a way to tell if Smuag was over the water and would fall in if a magic arrow (and it was a magical black arrow, btw) struck him in that one spot and then he dies of drowning in the lake, not organ damage or blood loss (them again, maybe the bare spot was near his heart or stomach and that caused additional pain). But seriously, ARE there any game mechanics for pain causing a flying creature to fall out of the sky? Although, a critical hit on you "weak point" with a magical arrow probably would hurt like hell....


You're right. Knowledge checks are probably a bad model for scientific research, because they reflect your familiarity with things that are already known. They do not model the time and effort required to grapple with the unknown and figure out things that you didn't even know existed to be figured out before.

Yeah, D&D needs mechanics for an "inventing" and a "theorizing skill. The thing about the knowledge skill is that, by its very definition, it can only teach you was society already knows, you only read the books that are available in the university library and once you've cleaned out that library on all the books on lets say, nature, then you may never raise your knowledge (nature) skill ever again unless someone (or perhaps you) founds out something new about nature-if there are people studying plants and animals somewhere, and they likely are. But in terms of game mechanics, you have to house rule or hand wave that process should it ever come up.

Koga
2007-06-17, 01:35 AM
You should add differant levels of monster-levels to npcs.

Probably +Xdy. (X can be any amount, y can be any type of die)


The PCs will never know what to expect. That stupid elf npc could be a 20th level warrior!

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-17, 03:24 AM
But it wasn't the arrow that killed Smuag, it was the lake. The arrow hit that one soft spot and the pain caused Smuag to be unable to continue flying so he fell in the lake. Now Tolkien either had it that Dragons were like Fire Elementals and the water "extinguished" Smuag, or that Dragons can't swim and the lake was deep, therefore Smuag used his fire breath in desperation to evaporate the lake, which only resulted in a huge cloud of steam, but it wasn't enough for the dragon to save himself and even probably sped up his drowning. The reason I'm saying this is to point out that if this occurred in a D&D game, it would be entirely by GM fiat, unless there was a way to tell if Smuag was over the water and would fall in if a magic arrow (and it was a magical black arrow, btw) struck him in that one spot and then he dies of drowning in the lake, not organ damage or blood loss (them again, maybe the bare spot was near his heart or stomach and that caused additional pain). But seriously, ARE there any game mechanics for pain causing a flying creature to fall out of the sky? Although, a critical hit on you "weak point" with a magical arrow probably would hurt like hell....

But, as you say, it would be pure GM fiat. And the arrow wasn't *magical*, it was just black. And if it *was* magical, it would have been well above Bard's Wealth-by-level.


Yeah, D&D needs mechanics for an "inventing" and a "theorizing skill. The thing about the knowledge skill is that, by its very definition, it can only teach you was society already knows, you only read the books that are available in the university library and once you've cleaned out that library on all the books on lets say, nature, then you may never raise your knowledge (nature) skill ever again unless someone (or perhaps you) founds out something new about nature-if there are people studying plants and animals somewhere, and they likely are. But in terms of game mechanics, you have to house rule or hand wave that process should it ever come up.

Of course you could argue that the absence of any "inventing" or "theorizing" skill would explain why most D&D worlds have remained at the same level of technology for over a thousand years.

SITB
2007-06-17, 03:41 AM
So... to actually invent/theorize you would need to have ranks in profession(scientist)?

Matthew
2007-06-17, 06:18 AM
Seriously, Thoughtbot, are you not acquainted with the Demography Guidance in the DMG? You don't need to work out Experience of everything to know how many High Level NPCs are in Country X and City Y. It's already laid out. The challenges you give to the PCs are simply 'level appropriate', not 'representative of a levelling up world'.

The mechanics you are seeking are better suited to a MOMCRPG than to D&D.

Also, bear in mind that Knights, Samurai and such are not just the Elite. They are the core of their respective armies (though not in all periods).

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-17, 06:41 AM
Also, bear in mind that Knights, Samurai and such are not just the Elite. They are the core of their respective armies (though not in all periods).

From what I understand, medieval armies actually relied far more on peasants than on knights.

Sure, knights were tough, and they had the swanky armour and the horse, but they were relatively few in number.

Matthew
2007-06-17, 06:56 AM
Depends very much on the period. In the early period, Knights are much more numerous and important, maybe as high a ratio as 1:2.

By 1200, the ratio is smaller; for instance, the Fourth Crusade expected 4,500 Knights, 9,000 Squires and 20,000 Infantry, though the eventual numbers were much smaller. In that case you're talking about anything from 1:6 to 1:4, depending on the status of the Squires.

By about 1250 you're looking at a 1:10 ratio, but that can swing from anywhere from 1:7 to 1:12. For instance, Louis IX took 2,800 Knights with him to Egypt and his army is estimated at around 30,000. This figure is given some corroboration from Joinville at Caesarea, when he reports that he has 60 Knights in his service, each of whom has command of ten men. Regardless, Knights conventionally remain the best equipped, best trained and at forefront of the fighting, whether by Foot or Horse.

By 1300, things begin to change dramatically and the number of Knights eventually becomes very small, both in society and active theatres of war.

Thoughtbot360
2007-06-17, 07:43 PM
Seriously, Thoughtbot, are you not acquainted with the Demography Guidance in the DMG? You don't need to work out Experience of everything to know how many High Level NPCs are in Country X and City Y. It's already laid out. The challenges you give to the PCs are simply 'level appropriate', not 'representative of a levelling up world'.

The mechanics you are seeking are better suited to a MOMCRPG than to D&D.

Sigh, yes I know about the Demography Guidance table. However, as stated by Dervag, there is no real way to police NPC vs. NPC encounters. Now, because NPC's are "off camera" they don't matter. But one of the things that begs the question is why the kingdom is still standing. One of the truisms of any pen-and-paper RPG (not CRPG) is there are always bigger fish. Once the PCs hit epic level and are fighting Worms that Walk on a regular basis, it denotes that there are a lot of Epic level Wizards and Sorcerers capable of becoming Worms all of a sudden. And speaking of the DMG Demographics guide, one thing thats annoying with it is best described by R. Padraic Springuel in his exposition in Population Demographics (http://www.3rdedition.org/articles/viewer.asp?ID=72):


The final problem I have with both the DMG system and the MMSWE system is that it doesn't generate characters of all levels below the highest level NPC. The DMG system is especially bad at this because it doubles the number of characters at half the level. Thus if you generate a level 8 NPC as the highest level NPC in a particular class, the next highest level NPCs will be level 4! With such a wide gap between the top level NPCs in a class, one wonders how the level 8 NPC will be replaced when he dies. [snip] NPCs should advance gradually, not if fits and starts. As a result there should be characters of all levels below the highest attained by any particular community member. Any system we design should contain this feature.

Indeed, how do your replace high-level NPCs when they die? Its less than perfect the way it is set up. However, one thing that makes these things less relevant is to cap-off and limit the explosive power of "high-level" people.

Which brings us neatly back to the original post.


Also, bear in mind that Knights, Samurai and such are not just the Elite. They are the core of their respective armies (though not in all periods).

That wasn't the point, it didn't matter how many lower-end infantry and peasant levies there were compared to knight so much as that the Knights were not invincible. The lower-end members of the standing army still existed and were a notable presence on the battlefield, although as you said, they eventually became the only presence on the battlefield in 1250. A village of Flemish peasants once fought of a group of fully-equipped knights with a multipurpose club called a Gutentag (It looked a bit like a long baseball bat with a spike on its end and and several more set on the head. One might classify it as a mace, but it was a combination really. The spikes held off Knight's chargers and when you closed in, penetrated even plate armor.) So, with the correct technology to Knights armor and horses, simple commoners could bring them down despite their training since childhood. If you say that the Knights in your D&D campaign are weak enough that commoners can stand a chance against them, then when we talk about the monsters....

you know what, forget it. Just forget it.

Saph
2007-06-17, 08:00 PM
Indeed, how do your replace high-level NPCs when they die? Its less than perfect the way it is set up. However, one thing that makes these things less relevant is to cap-off and limit the explosive power of "high-level" people.

Oh, come on. You aren't seriously losing sleep over this, are you?

That table is a very broad average. It's there so that, if the DM wants to instantly generate the NPC population of a place, he's got a by-the-book table to use. The DM's equally within his rights to have ten times as many NPCs of much higher levels, or half as many, or none at all below level 1, or whatever the hell he wants. The point of that table is just to give the DM something to use when he doesn't feel like making something up himself.

As soon as the PCs leave, the population resets as more people move in. Or it stays as they left it, as they don't. Or the power structure reshapes itself. Either way, whatever happens is whatever outcome suits the DM's plot - he just makes up a reason afterwards.

I really think you're taking this too seriously.

- Saph

Matthew
2007-06-17, 08:04 PM
Thoughtbot, you are creating problems for yourself. Why oh why do you expect a game as flawed as D&D to be able to create an internally consistant mechanical world? What exactly is the point in this problem? The power gap between Level 1 and Level 20 has never been so great as it is under 3.x, but why is this a problem beyond what Monsters you choose for an Adventure? D&D does not model real life, but more importantly it does not model a Fantasy World either. All it does is provide mechanics to play a storytelling game. That's really the totallity of its mandate.

You have completely misunderstood the dynamic of Knight and Peasant. The dirty secret of Medieval Warfare is that real Peasants rarely saw any action. Knights were not replaced by Peasants, they were replaced by professional soldiery who didn't want the title of Knight or couldn't afford to obtain it (because it had increased in value). The guys who made up the bulk of the armies of the 1200s, 1300s and 1400s were the same sort of guys who did during the 1000s and 1100s, they just were no longer called Knights. The title Serjeant was more common in the thirteenth century, but the function was almost exactly the same as the Knight of the 1000s (and means almost exactly the same etymologically, Armed Retainer, more or less). Random Village victories aside (I mean are you really seriously bringing up a comparison of this sort of legendary quality?), Knights of the 1100s and 1200s translate as 'wealthy warrior'. They are your Warriors and Fighters and in D&D terms they would have ranged from Level 1-5, the same as the Serjeants. The only difference is that they would have had a higher proportion of Fighters and access to more landed wealth.

Characters who reach 6+ are so exceptional and rare that their demography is inconstant. When one dies, they don't have to be replaced. They either will be or they won't be, as the story requires.

Epic Characters simply don't exist in conventional games of D&D. Should the Player Characters reach that level they will long ago have been Plane Hopping through the Multiverse and their impact on their Native Prime will no doubt be world shattering.

Dervag
2007-06-17, 09:09 PM
Precisely so, which can be generalised out to the rules in general. The D&D rules system is designed to tell you what happens when a PC tries to do something in the middle of a dungeon, not what happens when an NPC tries to do it for a living.My contention is that the D&D model for non-dungeon activities doesn't have to be bad, and that it can be fixed without a total revamp of the system.


But, as you say, it would be pure GM fiat. And the arrow wasn't *magical*, it was just black. And if it *was* magical, it would have been well above Bard's Wealth-by-level.What if it was the most valuable item he owned, and he owned few or no other special items?

Tolkein did make a bit of a point of implying that the arrow was special:


"Arrow!" said the bowman. "Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!"
While this does not explicitly say that the arrow was enchanted, the fact remains that in the story the arrow is special. It is special in such a way that I would be inclined to rule it as 'magical', since it has never missed and never broken in all the times that Bard has used it.


Of course you could argue that the absence of any "inventing" or "theorizing" skill would explain why most D&D worlds have remained at the same level of technology for over a thousand years.That's a good explanation. A possible alternate is that the Knowledge DC for something nobody else has ever known is really really high, so high that only high-level optimized Knowledge skill-users have a chance of making it.


That wasn't the point, it didn't matter how many lower-end infantry and peasant levies there were compared to knight so much as that the Knights were not invincible. The lower-end members of the standing army still existed and were a notable presence on the battlefield, although as you said, they eventually became the only presence on the battlefield in 1250. A village of Flemish peasants once fought of a group of fully-equipped knights with a multipurpose club called a Gutentag (It looked a bit like a long baseball bat with a spike on its end and and several more set on the head. One might classify it as a mace, but it was a combination really. The spikes held off Knight's chargers and when you closed in, penetrated even plate armor.) So, with the correct technology to Knights armor and horses, simple commoners could bring them down despite their training since childhood. If you say that the Knights in your D&D campaign are weak enough that commoners can stand a chance against them, then when we talk about the monsters....

you know what, forget it. Just forget it.What this proves is that a group of commoners with big, nasty weapons has CR equal to that of one knight in armor. However, the same group could probably kill an ogre or some other monster considerably tougher and more powerful than a human. They'd be helpless against epic-level monsters, but that's OK. Epic-level adventures really shouldn't take place in the 'fields we know'. The creatures of that power level are so strong that they don't belong in human kingdoms because they would destroy those kingdoms by interacting with them.

Dove
2007-06-18, 01:39 AM
On inventing, theorizing, and doing research, I think the crafting system is a better model than the knowledge system. Craft (idea) takes a lot of time and resources, though it can go much faster if you really know your field well. It can fail, but generally if you're attacking a problem within your capabilities, with perseverence and a bit of luck, you'll eventually succeed.

Research is a lot like that, with a slight twist: you don't know the DC of the idea in advance. Shoot, you sometimes don't even know what idea you're working on in advance. ;)

As someone else said, Knowledge is a better model for recalling facts you have memorized while under pressure. If you want a model for doing novel research, the craft system is better.

Dan_Hemmens
2007-06-18, 09:14 AM
My contention is that the D&D model for non-dungeon activities doesn't have to be bad, and that it can be fixed without a total revamp of the system.

Ah, whereas my contention is that the D&D model for non-dungeon activities is meaningless, by definitoin.


What if it was the most valuable item he owned, and he owned few or no other special items?

What properties do you suspect that the black arrow had?


Tolkein did make a bit of a point of implying that the arrow was special:

So it was masterwork, then?


While this does not explicitly say that the arrow was enchanted, the fact remains that in the story the arrow is special. It is special in such a way that I would be inclined to rule it as 'magical', since it has never missed and never broken in all the times that Bard has used it.

Since even a +5 Arrow of True Striking and Slaying Everything would miss one time in twenty, and the average GM would rule it a stricly one-use item, I'm really not sure how you would go about statting it up.

The point is that you can read the death of Smaug in one of three ways:

a) Smaugh was a low-HD creature, significantly less powerful than your average Dragon, maybe he was a Wyvern of some sort.

b) Bard used a snacky magical +5 Arrow of True Striking And Slaying Everything, in which case why didn't he use the damned thing *first*?

c) In fiction, as in real life, it is possible for a powerful creature to be killed by a single blow from a mundane, or comparatively mundane weapon, which is not possible in D&D.