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woodlandkammao
2016-02-26, 06:48 AM
It's a common sentiment both in the splatbooks and posts on this forum that high level PC's are completely OP when compared to the average soldier. But not only that, Level 1 is considerably above average when it comes to the common man. A level 1 fighter is a expertly trained soldier, a level 1 cleric is uncommonly blessed by their god among the clergy, a level 1 rogue is an accomplished thief and seasoned combatant. Higher levels are comparatively like the demigods of legend. Giving an enemy class levels, even a few, is shorthand for "serious business".

So in this thread, I want to come up with two things I can put into my setting's canon.
1) Why are some people gifted with the potential to become so powerful? With the context that every level gained is a huge step above even a seasoned warrior, why do these few people become so powerful with the experience of a few skirmishes?
2) Why on earth do these incredibly powerful people always bump into each other coincidentally, become friends, and end up forming groups of 3-7?

I can think of a few ideas. Perhaps there are primal magics in the world which choose champions to fight against the powers which threaten it. Perhaps, like in The Last Airbender, or the Eternal Champion, the souls of the few greatest heros and villains are reincarnated with each generation, destined to regain their power and seek each other out. Perhaps they actually are literal demigods, as with Hercules. I want to avoid the cheesy cliches, like some prophesied chosen one or a Charles Atlas Superpower (Google it).

Can you come up with something original, and interesting? I'd love your ideas.

Comet
2016-02-26, 07:03 AM
1) If you're playing a game where XP is gained by killing things: maybe the act of killing actually, literally, transfers that being's power to you? Maybe some people are imbued with miniature negative energy planes, reverse energy drain, soul siphoning, divine blessing of war, violent karma or whichever metaphysical reasoning fits your world. This also has the added benefit of combining the players' need to kill things for XP with the characters' motivation to do the same.

2) A lot of D&D groups these days play in a way where character death never really happens, whether through the DM cheating in the players' favour or resurrection being readily available. This would solve your problem, since you would only need one of these heroic characters per player. Maybe two, if you need backups.

Cluedrew
2016-02-26, 07:52 AM
On Replacement Characters: At higher levels (so... 3+) the rumour mill would have turned a few times, so these high level characters may of heard of each other and seek each other out. That might actually be a cool way to populate the story world, have people make replacement characters ahead of time and then hear stories about them in taverns and such.

On Class Rarity: The easiest way fix the rarity disparity is to make higher level characters not so rare. Sure the "common man" may be some sort of level 0, but even if that is 95-99% of people that gives you a lot of not so common people to work with. Considering the number of really strong things the PCs will have to fight it shouldn't be unreasonable that there are some other strong characters holding them at bay. This only works if you are willing to use a certain set of base assumptions which does not fit all settings, but there you have it.

It reminds me of a time I played a CRPG. It was set in two warring contraries, you explore most of country A in the low levels and then you travel to country B and fight there local creatures and some soldiers. And I couldn't help put wondering how country A has not been smashed to little pieces considering the comparative strength of their forces.

johnbragg
2016-02-26, 08:06 AM
HIgh level challenges are fairly rare, which is why the LArge STable Civilized Kingdom in the semi-distant background of the campaign functions.

Adventuring is a pretty lethal business, so sensible folk try to stay out of it. Adventures not only make one late for supper, they tend to make one BE supper.

I try to stat NPCs in the hurt business as 50% 1st level, 37.5% 2nd level, about 10% 3rd level and the rest Special NPCs. And a lot of the 2nd and 3rd levels have gotten out of the business of risking their lives.

PCs are distinguished at low levels by 1. Willingness (eagerness) to go risk death; and 2. Awesome stats that make 1 not completelty suicidal behavior.

Adventurers are pretty rare, which makes them distinctive. Which makes them sort of a fraternity. And I believe in role-protection as a principle of design, so it makes sense for them to form and maintain groups.

Back to OP.

1. It's not through "a few skirmishes", usually. IT's through taking on and winning (or surviving) much tougher fights than the average 1st level NPC fighter. The 3rd level PC, who has been adventuring for a few months, has as much experience with danger and combat and risk-of-death as the grizzled 3rd-level Captain of the Town Guard.
2. The whole fraternity/guild thing, combined with the fact that we tend not to tell the stories of the ones who boldly strode forth and ended up in the goblin's stewpot.

Âmesang
2016-02-26, 08:32 AM
In the case of one WORLD OF GREYHAWK'S® character's explanation for being a-cut-above-the-rest I borrowed the sherem transformation spell from GHOSTWALK, making a few adjustments:

Replace "Bazareene" with "Suel" — both have a history involving arcana and monks (Scarlet Brotherhood)
Assume that the "iron ring that has touched lava" material component touched lava from the Hellfurnaces (eastern border of the Sea of Dust/former Suel Imperium)
Replace the flawless emerald focus with a flawless diamond focus (or other blue/violet/white gemstone, since it seems that the focus ties in with the Bazareene monk/sorcerers' eye color)

(Of course half of the reason was 'cause I'm tired of the played out "dragon ancestor" theory for sorcery, so this seemed like a fun, in-game explanation.)

On the other hand my favorite Pathfinder character started at 3rd level (and is still there) with no magical gear or abilities, just lots of masterwork, special material items and mundane abilities; something about it feels very wholesome, very believable… well, in the way that John Rambo is more believable than Merlin. :smalltongue: I still haven't thought of a backstory to explain the hows and whys of her skills and abilities, though, and I should; 'cause you don't just wake up as a 3rd-level survivalist with such fine gear.

Raimun
2016-02-26, 08:39 AM
1) If you're playing a game where XP is gained by killing things: maybe the act of killing actually, literally, transfers that being's power to you? Maybe some people are imbued with miniature negative energy planes, reverse energy drain, soul siphoning, divine blessing of war, violent karma or whichever metaphysical reasoning fits your world. This also has the added benefit of combining the players' need to kill things for XP with the characters' motivation to do the same.


That's... brilliant. As long as the ethics of this kind of activity are explored.

Kind of like in Highlander but for everyone and no one's immortal.

As for why some people start with class levels? Exceptional nature, nurture, circumstances or some combination, no doubt. Some people in the setting are born as natural warriors or sorcerers. Some study to become wizards or rogues. Some get chosen by a god as a cleric and some find and bond with an eidolon. Others are natural martial warriors but also study arcane secrets and are known as Magus.

Quertus
2016-02-26, 01:37 PM
1) Why are some people gifted with the potential to become so powerful? With the context that every level gained is a huge step above even a seasoned warrior,

How do you generate stats? 3d6? Then everyone has that potential. Higher? Then adventurers / PCs are already a cut above average. Whether or not anyone could achieve their potential, adventurers are the ones who did. They are the ones who, instead of learning a respectable trade & settling down with a family, choose instead to study under a powerful madman, and pick up the murder hobo "career" of going out and killing stuff, and looting their homes and corpses.


why do these few people become so powerful with the experience of a few skirmishes?


A few skirmishes?! Back in my day, XP was doled out at a trickle. Gaining a level could take years IRL, and represented more chances to die than any sane person living in a generally safe world would reasonably take. Do you have any idea how many 1-on-1 duels to the death against his equals your average swordsman would have to fight in order to advance from 1st level to 2nd? It used to take hundreds; in 3e, it would take 4. Which means that a 2e 2nd level character probably had more "experience" than a 3e epic character!


2) Why on earth do these incredibly powerful people always bump into each other coincidentally,

Because Gandalf. There are no coincidences.


become friends, and end up forming groups of 3-7?

Actually, they sometimes travel in groups of 2 or 1. These individuals are often even more powerful, the cream of the cream, the pinnacle of adventurer society.

Some are possessed of attributes dwarfing even the impressive powers of their lesser brethren; others seem capable of simultaneously advancing two distinct skill sets.

A detailed study of these mighty creatures may help unlock the secrets of the universe, or at least shed some light on the OP's original question.

VoxRationis
2016-02-26, 01:42 PM
It's a common sentiment both in the splatbooks and posts on this forum that high level PC's are completely OP when compared to the average soldier. But not only that, Level 1 is considerably above average when it comes to the common man. A level 1 fighter is a expertly trained soldier, a level 1 cleric is uncommonly blessed by their god among the clergy, a level 1 rogue is an accomplished thief and seasoned combatant. Higher levels are comparatively like the demigods of legend. Giving an enemy class levels, even a few, is shorthand for "serious business".

So in this thread, I want to come up with two things I can put into my setting's canon.
1) Why are some people gifted with the potential to become so powerful? With the context that every level gained is a huge step above even a seasoned warrior, why do these few people become so powerful with the experience of a few skirmishes?
2) Why on earth do these incredibly powerful people always bump into each other coincidentally, become friends, and end up forming groups of 3-7?

I can think of a few ideas. Perhaps there are primal magics in the world which choose champions to fight against the powers which threaten it. Perhaps, like in The Last Airbender, or the Eternal Champion, the souls of the few greatest heros and villains are reincarnated with each generation, destined to regain their power and seek each other out. Perhaps they actually are literal demigods, as with Hercules. I want to avoid the cheesy cliches, like some prophesied chosen one or a Charles Atlas Superpower (Google it).

Can you come up with something original, and interesting? I'd love your ideas.

I usually don't assume single levels of fighter or rogue are exceptional. Mid-level fighters and rogues abound in my settings. Even a no-name bounty hunter is likely to have several levels in each.

Segev
2016-02-26, 02:15 PM
A while back I posited the following as a suggestion as to why "commonplace resurrection" wasn't having more of an impact on a D&D-type setting, but it might key in a bit on explaining the "PC rarity" phenomenon, too, so I'll offer it as a possible setting element again:

In this setting (whatever it is), the capacity to be brought back from the dead by any means (raise dead, reincarnation, resurrection, wish, etc.) is something inborn in rare individuals. These individuals are exactly as rare as you want adventurers to be in your game. Or, just maybe, slightly less, because there might be some who have this gift who choose not to adventure. But you get the idea.

It isn't hereditary. It isn't explained. It just happens that some can be brought back from the dead with the right magics.

They're valued because they can be paid to take on dangers which are likely to kill them, and often the promise that one or more will be raised just gets factored into their up-front pay. They also, due to their higher-risk profession, tend to gain levels faster.

There may well be non-Adventurer adventurers (i.e. ones who can't be brought back if they die), but their death rate is likely such that they are in miniscule numbers.

The effect could be made more extreme (but easier to detect) if cure spells only worked on Adventurers, too. Others can only regain hp the long, slow way. This would make the Heal skill more valuable than clerics to commoners, as well.

Beleriphon
2016-02-26, 02:39 PM
It's a common sentiment both in the splatbooks and posts on this forum that high level PC's are completely OP when compared to the average soldier. But not only that, Level 1 is considerably above average when it comes to the common man. A level 1 fighter is a expertly trained soldier, a level 1 cleric is uncommonly blessed by their god among the clergy, a level 1 rogue is an accomplished thief and seasoned combatant. Higher levels are comparatively like the demigods of legend. Giving an enemy class levels, even a few, is shorthand for "serious business".

So in this thread, I want to come up with two things I can put into my setting's canon.
1) Why are some people gifted with the potential to become so powerful? With the context that every level gained is a huge step above even a seasoned warrior, why do these few people become so powerful with the experience of a few skirmishes?

Its not really a few skirmishes. Most adventures see more combat than a professional soldier does in a lifetime. A hardened veteran of multiple campaigns has probably only ever fought in a half dozen battles, maybe a dozen for a particularly active series of campaigns. The average D&D adventurer sees that inside of a month, sometimes inside of a weekend. I mean could imagine if we actually saw as much combat as the a guy that fought and survived the entire European campaign during WWII from start of finish over the course of a few months, rather than a six years? That guy would probably have a quite a bit to teach us about how to fight. He'd probably also legitimately have serous psychological problem, but D&D doesn't address that.


2) Why on earth do these incredibly powerful people always bump into each other coincidentally, become friends, and end up forming groups of 3-7?

The typical D&D game doesn't have incredibly powerful people bumping into each other, it has a group of nobodies out for gold and glory. They get powerful later.

johnbragg
2016-02-26, 03:12 PM
A while back I posited the following as a suggestion as to why "commonplace resurrection" wasn't having more of an impact on a D&D-type setting, but it might key in a bit on explaining the "PC rarity" phenomenon, too, so I'll offer it as a possible setting element again:

I think a bigger limitation, in the campaign setting, is the 5000 gp material cost. Looking at the 3.5 PHB page 129, it costs another 450 to pay an 9th level NPC caster. So list price of 5450 gp.
In other words, it costs you:
11 heavy warhorses or
1/2 of a sailing ship or
1/6 of a galley or
27 royal outfits.

So a raise dead spell costs a lot, but I haven't bought any heavy warhorses or galleys or royal outfits lately, so I'm shaky on translating that to our standard of living.

PHB prices a banquet at 10 gp per person. 5000 gp buys you a banquet for 500 people. So maybe a raise dead spell costs about the same as a modern American wedding? (MAybe fewer guests, but you have to pay the band, rent the limo, buy the dress, get the tux, flowers, rent the hall, church might cost something if you're not connected, etc).

To get an idea of what a well-off person's annual income is, let's take a look at the SRD Craft skill entry. "You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning about half your check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the craft’s daily tasks, how to supervise untrained helpers, and how to handle common problems. (Untrained laborers and assistants earn an average of 1 silver piece per day.)"

So let's stat up a master silversmith. Expert 3, 15 Int, Feats: Skill Focus (Craft) and Artisan(+2 Craft, +2 Appraise).
Average check is 10 + 6 ranks + 2 Int + 3 Skill Focus + 2 Artisan + 2 masterwork tools + 2 assistance, total 27. Take 2 weeks vacation and that gives you an income of 675 gp/year. (EDIT: Ooops).

675 * 8 = 5400 gp, close enough. So a Raise Dead spell costs about as much as 8 years' income for someone basically at the top of the medieval income scale.
If translate that Master Silversmith income to, say, a modern family doctor's income, in the $150,000 ballpark, we're looking at a $1,000,000 bill for dying.

Adventurers are the spendthrift pro athletes of the D&D world. What seems normal and affordable to a professional dragon-provoker is not normal for the economics of the campaign.

(And that's setting aside the economy-breaking spells of 3.5)

Segev
2016-02-26, 04:04 PM
*excellent analysis*All of that is true, but I glossed over the big reason why that isn't sufficient, for which I apologize: nobility and royalty. They can afford feasts for 500, 11 warhorses, and country castles to vacation in; they absolutely will buy the materials to resurrect themselves, and that screws with the expectations of a lot of plots in these kinds of settings (not the least being assassination plots and the efforts to which they go to avoid them).

With this setting element, it doesn't matter how rich and powerful you are, politically: you cannot be brought back, so your death is as big a deal in that setting as it would be in the real world. This brings back those expectations of attention to security and sense of urgency to protect the King (or sense of how assassinating him might make a difference).

PersonMan
2016-02-26, 04:15 PM
He'd probably also legitimately have serous psychological problem, but D&D doesn't address that.

In my experience, many players are suspicious and on-edge enough that their characters end up behaving very closely in-line with people who have been in wars - constant vigilance, unable to relax even in a safe setting, etc.

cobaltstarfire
2016-02-26, 04:18 PM
I don't personally consider level 1 to be "above average" it's the bare minimum to be considered fully trained in your class. A lv 1 character is still a rookie, having only recently grasped whatever skillset they have well enough to be considered capable at it.

Someone who makes it to 2 or 3 has gotten to practice their skills in real world scenarios and has learned a little more, and someone pushing 4 or 5 has quite a lot under their belt.

For martial classes this may take years for your average person who just lives a comfortable life in town. It may come faster for someone who guards a merchant caravan and gets in a couple of skirmishes every couple of trips. And it'll come very quickly for the adventurer who seeks out all kinds of danger and survives it.

For the magical classes it's another thing that can take years of study and experimentation, the local hedge witch or cleric who occasionally heals scrapes, or the entertainer with a passing interest in illusions may never grow past level 2 or 3, but someone more deeply invested in learning magic, or going out and using it, seeking out information, and learning new uses for it learn and grow faster.

I've never played a game of D&D where the party gets to high enough level to be resurrected, and usually the PC characters are a bit better than npc's, with the NPC's having used an inferior stat roll method. High level npc's that could resurrect the player if they even existed were probably pretty rare themselves.


I think worlds where resurrection may be more common may still not see resurrections be successful as often (assuming they could be paid for in the first place). Isn't one of the rules for most resurrection spells that the person has to want to come back and can't have died of natural causes? Seems like adventurers are the only ones who would potentially be coming back a lot, and then they'd have to have been successful enough for the party to be able to foot the bill.

johnbragg
2016-02-26, 04:30 PM
All of that is true, but I glossed over the big reason why that isn't sufficient, for which I apologize: nobility and royalty. They can afford feasts for 500, 11 warhorses, and country castles to vacation in; they absolutely will buy the materials to resurrect themselves, and that screws with the expectations of a lot of plots in these kinds of settings (not the least being assassination plots and the efforts to which they go to avoid them).

With this setting element, it doesn't matter how rich and powerful you are, politically: you cannot be brought back, so your death is as big a deal in that setting as it would be in the real world. This brings back those expectations of attention to security and sense of urgency to protect the King (or sense of how assassinating him might make a difference).

That just means that your assassination plot has to prevent (or at least seriously impede) raising the target. If raise dead is on the table, then so are scry, teleport and plane shift. The point is, the king being kidnapped presents just about as big a risk to the kingdom as him being assassinated. In fact, successful assassination pretty much requires kidnapping him. The real trick is figuring out how to stop the Royal Archmage from gate-ing the king back the next day.

Segev
2016-02-26, 04:51 PM
That just means that your assassination plot has to prevent (or at least seriously impede) raising the target. If raise dead is on the table, then so are scry, teleport and plane shift. The point is, the king being kidnapped presents just about as big a risk to the kingdom as him being assassinated. In fact, successful assassination pretty much requires kidnapping him. The real trick is figuring out how to stop the Royal Archmage from gate-ing the king back the next day.

Oh, sure. But all of that makes for a different picture than what fantasy often presents. I'm all for all of that if you don't change the rules in some fashion; it makes sense and can be full of interesting story potential. This is just a suggestion for how to construct a setting where things are more how they're commonly treated, when the writer seems to forget that death is a revolving door for the sufficiently wealthy.

johnbragg
2016-02-26, 04:58 PM
Oh, sure. But all of that makes for a different picture than what fantasy often presents. I'm all for all of that if you don't change the rules in some fashion; it makes sense and can be full of interesting story potential. This is just a suggestion for how to construct a setting where things are more how they're commonly treated, when the writer seems to forget that death is a revolving door for the sufficiently wealthy.

I haven't read a ton of fiction where raising the dead is as mechanistic and easy as it is in D&D. Either it's off the table, or it's some highly unreliable method.

The Druid reincarnate spell is a fun option.

Segev
2016-02-26, 05:07 PM
I haven't read a ton of fiction where raising the dead is as mechanistic and easy as it is in D&D. Either it's off the table, or it's some highly unreliable method.

The Druid reincarnate spell is a fun option.

And yet, a lot of scenarios written for D&D assume that threats of this kind of assassination are serious and severe. Even if they're just homebrew that the DM messed up in his assumptions on. Sometimes, it's easier to come up with a way to make it work with what the DM instinctively plans than to rethink the DM's plans to account for how the game rules change the world.

In short: I agree; there are ways around it. But this can provide an alternate solution and makes for a different "feel" to the world.

JNAProductions
2016-02-26, 05:09 PM
What if once you died under the law, you're dead for good? Doesn't matter if you're brought back, your son has inherited your lands, your wife is a widow, and the law says you can't do jack about it

Belac93
2016-02-26, 05:09 PM
I like the idea that most non-commoners have PC classes. So the average rookie soldier would be level 1, a veteran probably level 4-7, and a guard would be about 2-4. Maybe a kings guard could be up to 10.

Segev
2016-02-26, 05:17 PM
What if once you died under the law, you're dead for good? Doesn't matter if you're brought back, your son has inherited your lands, your wife is a widow, and the law says you can't do jack about it

I've seen that used, but it seems weirdly applied, not like something that would come up naturally in a legal system that existed in a world where resurrection was a common-enough thing that the wealthy could nearly guarantee it for themselves.

johnbragg
2016-02-26, 05:47 PM
I've seen that used, but it seems weirdly applied, not like something that would come up naturally in a legal system that existed in a world where resurrection was a common-enough thing that the wealthy could nearly guarantee it for themselves.

A system like that, you'd expect an escrow provision, where you'd have a sizable waiting period before an inheritance would be legal.

Ooof. Funerals powered by resettable speak with dead traps. EDIT: OK, doesn't work by RAW, but still.

Alex12
2016-02-26, 06:00 PM
First off, successful adventurers, at least the ones above level 1 or 2, are special snowflakes, the cream of the crop, the best of the best. This is mechanically represented by higher stat-gen results, gestalt or partial gestalt, Mythic abilities, or simply having access to feats/spells/classes/whatever that non-adventurers just don't get. Even from very young ages, adventurers tend to be special in some way, the sort of people that, 20 years down the line, people they grew up with remember them, albeit not necessarily in a good way.
Non-adventurers also tend to be satisfied with their afterlives and frequently don't respond to raise dead and similar spells. Adventurers seem to be tied more closely to mortal concerns, and so are far more likely to respond to resurrection spells.
Furthermore, adventurers seem to have an intuitive grasp of the flow of combat, one that is enhanced when they work together. Somehow, even if they've just met that same day, a quartet of adventurers is capable of near-seamlessly working as a team, intuitively understanding and anticipating each other's actions as if they were mentally linked (representing OOC in-combat tactical discussion) to a degree that would make the average drill instructor weep with envy.

Âmesang
2016-02-26, 06:29 PM
What if once you died under the law, you're dead for good? Doesn't matter if you're brought back, your son has inherited your lands, your wife is a widow, and the law says you can't do jack about it
(True) Resurrection can bring a person back who's been dead for no more than 10 years per caster level; so what would happen to a person revived decades after death? Centuries?

A shame Theodore Roosevelt couldn't serve a third term. :smalltongue:

Douche
2016-02-26, 06:48 PM
I personally feel like you guys are reading too much into it. I guess most of y'all want to live like peasants in the dark ages... But in most fantasy settings I'm familiar with, like 90% of the population is some kind of Mage or knight. Just look at Warcraft. I'm pretty sure there's 10x as many shamans and Paladins as there are, like, bakers. Or the bakers just do it for a living and are in fact shaman

Cluedrew
2016-02-26, 07:38 PM
Since it has come up a few times I thought I would mention a thought I had. If XP is an in-universe thing, why don't people have levels in Baker?

I mean what king wouldn't want to higher the cook would could prepare that 5000gp feast on their own in fifteen minutes with whatever they found lying around?

There are exceptions but most of the time you see over the top abilities in two areas: magic & combat. Actually lets add computer hacking, stealth, construction & medicine to that list, I could go on but we get less over the top representations as we go. But that falls well short of the list of areas it would be really nice to someone who had an epic level of skill in. The cook example for one.

Âmesang
2016-02-26, 08:18 PM
Does anyone else feel like reading Toriko all of a sudden? :smalltongue:

awa
2016-02-27, 12:21 AM
you can still have an assassination even with raise dead exist it just gets more complicated for example raise dead needs a head so if you decapitate him raise dead is no longer an option.

True resurrection still works but if your going after a guy who can call in a 9th level spell with a 25,000 gp spell component you can splurge for some extra anti restoration power of your own. I believe their is a metal that traps the souls of those it kills (complete warrior maybe?) that would probably work.

Coidzor
2016-02-27, 12:49 AM
I have a setting where the most mundane people are limited in terms of how much they can level and that as one gets more special, one's level cap increases.

Most people worth naming as NPCs are basically E6. While royals typically have some kind of kinship with something special, a demigod, a great dragon, a demon Prince, and might be able to achieve epic levels depending on how new the dynasty is.

There are ways, mostly suicidal or involving very unsavory acts of mass murder or soul-eating, for an individual to strengthen their bloodline, allowing for jumping ship from an E6 game to a higher level cap.

TheThan
2016-02-27, 02:17 AM
Why are some people gifted with the potential to become so powerful? With the context that every level gained is a huge step above even a seasoned warrior, why do these few people become so powerful with the experience of a few skirmishes?


The same reason why not everyone in our world are millionaires. They simply don’t have that list of characteristics that give them the ability to become rich. So in a fantasy setting; not everyone has that set of qualities that allow them to become great nobles knights, legendary thieves, powerful wizards and wizened sages.



Why on earth do these incredibly powerful people always bump into each other coincidentally, become friends, and end up forming groups of 3-7?


The same reason why rich people in our world tend to know each other. They live and operate in the same social strata. They have business dealing with each other, are introduced to each other through social gatherings and their children attend the same schools (and join the same fraternities/sororities).

Pilum
2016-02-27, 03:00 AM
What if once you died under the law, you're dead for good? Doesn't matter if you're brought back, your son has inherited your lands, your wife is a widow, and the law says you can't do jack about it
I think I've just found the "why are you doing this" background element for a future PC :smallsmile:

Telok
2016-02-27, 03:42 AM
The same reason why not everyone in our world are millionaires. They simply don’t have that list of characteristics that give them the ability to become rich. So in a fantasy setting; not everyone has that set of qualities that allow them to become great nobles knights, legendary thieves, powerful wizards and wizened sages.



The same reason why rich people in our world tend to know each other. They live and operate in the same social strata. They have business dealing with each other, are introduced to each other through social gatherings and their children attend the same schools (and join the same fraternities/sororities).

It's a nice thought but D&D doesn't play that way these days. Back in old-D&D times the fighter could become a Lord at 10th level, build or conquer a castle, and actually be a political mover and shaker. Same with other classes, followers, bases, and social status were explicitly part of the game.

These days characters get a level for every ten to fifteen moderately difficult events they participate in, most adventurers gain a level every two to three weeks unless they intentionally stop adventuring. Characters in modern games default to anonymous homeless orphans whose primary efforts are aimed at accumulating powerful magic items. Social standing, reputations, and political power are no longer emphasized in the rules. In many cases they may even require the expenditure of personal resources (skills, feats, money) that would otherwise be spent on personal survival. Being socially engaged in modern D&D often means that the character is less able to survive the next time some cult summons a demon or the undead come swarming up out of the sewers. Characters no longer become dukes, barons, or guildmasters. Instead they tend to go and fight the next size up dragon from the last one that they killed, and they do it because they gained another level this month so now they need to buy the next +3 magic item in order to keep up with the new monsters that will show up next week.

After two years a character can go from being a mop pushing apprentice to a semi-divine force of nature that goes around kneecapping gods as a hobby. These people aren't interested in marrying princesses or setting tax rates, they care about paying a god-thing to put a new enchantment on their armor.

The game has changed. The PCs no longer become wealthy landowners or robber barons. Now they become tropical storms and hurricanes. Massive, powerful, devastating, arising from nothing and then disappearing into the air leaving an altered landscape.

Steampunkette
2016-02-27, 03:42 AM
Right now I'm writing a setting in a world made manifest from thousands of years of people dreaming. The world is no longer malleable, for the most part, except in specific wild regions and under the power of particularly powerful individuals called Waking Dreamers.

All PCS and some NPCS will be waking dreamers. People who have the ability to directly alter reality with Hero Points. Creating impossible structures, making a wall appear or a door vanish, things like that.

That's how I plan to explain the difference in power for the setting. Maybe it'll work for you!

awa
2016-02-27, 12:53 PM
It's a nice thought but D&D doesn't play that way these days. Back in old-D&D times the fighter could become a Lord at 10th level, build or conquer a castle, and actually be a political mover and shaker. Same with other classes, followers, bases, and social status were explicitly part of the game.



perhaps i'm missing something but you quoted him but then your comments don't seem to have had anything to do with what he said. The fact that d&d no longer hands a fighter a keep should have nothing to do with the fact that only high level pcs are going to hang out in the upscale sections of the magic mart.

Telok
2016-02-27, 03:47 PM
perhaps i'm missing something but you quoted him but then your comments don't seem to have had anything to do with what he said. The fact that d&d no longer hands a fighter a keep should have nothing to do with the fact that only high level pcs are going to hang out in the upscale sections of the magic mart.

The point is that there isn't a social strata, nor social networks or schools or clubs, for high level people in modern D&D. These people go from dirt farmer to demi-god in roughly two years (you can do it in as little as six months), they don't "hang out in the upscale sections of the magic mart" unless there's only one magic-mart and it stocks +5 vorpal swords and Staffs of Power along side the 50 gp potions.

These people simply don't spend enough time with any one set of people to develop significant relationships. In the beginning they are nobodies ordered by the sheriff to go kill rats and bandits, a couple months later the king asks them to kill a dragon, and a few months after that they have gods petitioning them to stop eldritch horrors. Then there's these 'other adventurers', how often have any of your groups sat down with another band of adventurers for a round of drinks and to swap stories? It doesn't happen because modern adventures all play to the trope of the PCs being story protagonists or 'chosen ones'. If there were enough other adventurers for there to be social activity then there would be competition for the adventures and that dragon would have been killed two months ago by the last group that was your level at that time.

Real life people know each other because they spend years in one place, doing a similar set of things, and swapping resources with their neighbors or raising kids. D&D adventurers don't do that. They fight new and more powerful monsters every other week, end up traveling to other planes of existance, making enemies that can scry and teleport and, burn down cities. Adventurers don't raise families because those families don't level up with the adventurer and AoE damage scales with level.

Now, your particular game may not play this way. That's a thematic or campaign choice made by the DM. Current D&D rules don't disalllow it, but it's not the way that the published adventure modules allow for and the CR/encounter math works against it.

...although it could make for an interesting campaign. If an adventuring party gains a level every two weeks to a month and stays in one area then the CR appropriate monsters have to come to them. Assume that adventurers leave and go off plane hopping after 19th level and that there are four or five parties separated by about four levels each. So when the PCs are 3rd level there are parties of 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th level in the city having level appropriate adventurers. Level based magic item churn and the influx of monster treasure allows for a magic-mart economy to make sense. So one month a dragon army will attack the city, because thats a 19th level set of encounters. Next month demons invade, that's for the 15th level party. Next month the 11th level party stops a necromancer who is sending wights out into the city. Next month several buildings burn down and a bunch of nobility and civil leaders are killed during a demonic plot that the 7th level party stops. All this time the PCs are trying to complete their own quest to stop the were-rat gang in the sewers while not getting killed by attacking dragons, random undead, and loose demons that are all way above their level.

Then the whole adventure cycle repeats but now the PCs are the 7th level party.

WarKitty
2016-02-27, 05:08 PM
Take a page from mythology. The PC's are, in some manner, divine. Maybe they are the half-breed children of deities, or people with unusually strong blood of outsiders. As they level up the universe increasingly warps in their favor. Eventually they become gods themselves.

nedz
2016-02-27, 05:19 PM
I tend to run it as 90% of the population are level 1 dirtbags and the other 10% of the population have ambition and take the risks. This still leaves me a lot of NPCs to play with who will be of a variety of levels.

But then I don't like the memes of professional adventurers or BBEGs. I prefer organisations of Temples, Guilds, Noble Houses, Secret Cults, etc. - who all compete with each other. It's this competition, and the resultant conflicts, which drive the progression rather than monsters and dungeons - though obviously I have done that in the past. I also like to insert meaningful amounts of downtime where less stuff happens - though this can be fast forwarded through in terms of playing time.

goto124
2016-02-27, 09:27 PM
Telok: Firstly, not all modern games are what you describe.

Secondly, the "modern games" as what you're describing (it's actually a specific playstyle that is not any more wrong than another) is one that doesn't pay heed to much outside hack-and-slash. Those sort of games would not be bothered with IC justifications of anything, really.

Thirdly, if we're going into games (old or modern) that do bother with dealing with powerful NPCs, they won't display what you've described. Either the PCs do take the time (with appropriate timeskips), or they have good reasons to set up relationships in short amounts of time via high social skills both IC and OOC, or they start off with connections to other people of high power already.

The Insanity
2016-02-28, 08:19 AM
In our games an average adult is at least 3rd level (1st and 2nd levels are kids and teens respectively). Most common people don't exceed 6th level, but many reach it naturally just by living their lives and surviving into old age. All that being said though, characters that do exceed 6th level aren't really that special or rare. They're just... better than the rest.

ImNotTrevor
2016-02-28, 09:45 AM
I think this discussion is hitting on the two most important pieces of advice I have for GMs.

1. Your players are human beings, and in this hobby probably adults or late teens. Treat them as such.

2. Make sure you're using a system that fits your narrative needs.

More specifically, number 2.

I think this is a problem in D&D, except that in D&D it's actually a non-problem since the entire point of D&D, and its entire reward structure therefore, is built around "Go kill X, take it's stuff, and become more powerful." People have, for a long time, noticed that D&D is clumsy at things outside of that cycle. (And some things that are.)

What a system rewards has a huge impact on how it is played. Now, D&D will tell you to reward whatever you want, but this isn't actually a reward structure. It's "design a reward structure for us plz n thnx." In other words, don't bother trying to use that as evidence that D&D is designed to reward things outside of killing stuff. It's not, but permission has been given to change that. (Permission you don't need, btw)

Stars Without Number, by contrast, rewards 2 things: Completed Missions (regardless of kill count) and Completed Goals (which are set by each player for their own character with help from the GM.) This means that the system is designed to reward more kinds of solutions and even rewards personal projects. It doesn't matter HOW you get the Engine Core from the Sunken Obelisk back from the Three Pillars Syndicate and into the hands of Promadyne Industries, so long as that happens. And if you track down John Skeeves and finally take your revenge along the way, your character gets some XP to reward their initiative. (This reward system is not unique to SWN, obviously, I just have the most experience with it.)

So if you want a game where characters aren't spending their time stabbing things and accruing wealth and power as their primary objectives, play a game that rewards different behaviors.

If you don't want a game where the characters are ridiculously powerful compared to everyone else, then stay away from D&D, Exalted, Apocalypse World, and their ilk. Don't try to justify it within the system unless that is really important to you for some narrative reason. Otherwise, it's just part of the system.

If you want characters that are just as powerful as everyone else, try Stars Without Number for Sci Fi and Torchbearer for Fantasy. Sadly, I'm not familiar with too many of these systems. My players like to feel awesome, rather than mostly average. SWN is the exception for them, they rather like it.

I might be rambling, but it feels like a lot of the problems I see in this and most threads are solved by those two points I mentioned earlier. Figured I'd mention them.

goto124
2016-02-28, 10:00 AM
If you don't want a game where the characters are ridiculously powerful compared to everyone else, then stay away from D&D, Exalted

I was under the impression that in those two games, it's perfectly normal that every character is ridiculously powerful until everyone is only average compared to one another. When everyone's powerful, no one's powerful. Get it...?

ImNotTrevor
2016-02-28, 10:09 AM
I was under the impression that in those two games, it's perfectly normal that every character is ridiculously powerful until everyone is only average compared to one another. When everyone's powerful, no one's powerful. Get it...?

Sure, but the complaint is about "The adventuring party is Power Level 9000+, but most NPCs are Power Level 4." If you don't want THAT to be the case, then pick a system where it isn't.

Power level within the party is a different matter entirely, and one I didn't touch on at all.

D+1
2016-02-28, 10:33 AM
nobility and royalty. They can afford feasts for 500, 11 warhorses, and country castles to vacation in; they absolutely will buy the materials to resurrect themselves, and that screws with the expectations of a lot of plots in these kinds of settings (not the least being assassination plots and the efforts to which they go to avoid them).

With this setting element, it doesn't matter how rich and powerful you are, politically: you cannot be brought back, so your death is as big a deal in that setting as it would be in the real world. This brings back those expectations of attention to security and sense of urgency to protect the King (or sense of how assassinating him might make a difference).
Your problem there revolves around the idea of an afterlife and who will choose to REJECT the afterlife for any reason. As you say, with resurrection magic being given the cost and availability that it does in order to have it work for PLAYER characters makes it too easy to use for NPC's. DM's get weird about having all rules apply equally to PC's and NPC's so nobody wants to just declare that it doesn't matter WHY it won't work for NPC's it just doesn't because the spell was NEVER EVER intended to prevent NPC's in a campaign setting from ever being permanently killed. That's only possible because DM's WILL NOT draw distinctions between player characters and NPC's.

But so be it. You can still make that work. All you need do is assume that an afterlife is paradise. Whatever your religion is, whomever your patron deity is... when a character dies that character is either sent to a Bad Place from which they are flat out NOT PERMITTED to leave as eternal punishment for their religious misdeeds, or else it's paradise. Well, if it's paradise - who chooses to leave paradise? Whatever it was that your deity or religion promised as your afterlife is the thing that you GET as your afterlife. Maybe you get to fight gloriously and victoriously for all eternity at the side of your deity. Maybe you get to be reunited with all your loved ones who have already passed on. Maybe you get waited on hand and foot in decadent luxury for eternity. Maybe you just get to run nekkid in green fields of grass and wildflowers singing songs with birds and dancing. Whatever it is doesn't matter - it's the thing you ostensibly want most and have been promised by religion/deity. Even if you're a king or rich person, or an NPC adventurer. When you die and get to the afterlife IT IS A PLACE, OR CIRCUMSTANCE WHICH YOU WILL NOT CHOOSE TO LEAVE. ... Unless you're a PLAYER character and your desire is not to have your PC sit idle forevermore in an afterlife but to return to mortality and pick up right where you left off.

That simple decision - that NON-PLAYER characters will not voluntarily choose to give up the afterlife (no matter what their mortal life was like), solves your problem. PC's can then return from the afterlife as much as you care to permit them. Non-player characters NEVER return from death - unless you really REALLY REALLY want them to, and then all you have to do is give them a motivation that will overcome the desire to remain in paradise. Or maybe some kind of curse or prophecy that they have to fulfill enables them to return despite being killed, or maybe even FORCES them to return. But for PLAYER characters - it's always the choice of the PLAYER whether they want to retire the PC at that point or put another quarter in the slot and hit the "Rejoin Game" button.

By default that does make player characters HIGHLY unusual people. They're going to be just about the only ones running around a game world who come back from the dead without being UNdead. NPC's should certainly see them as... a little dubious, a little weird, as awesome and dangerous, as people who seem to have some Great Destiny to fulfill. It would be only natural that a GROUP of such people would inevitably congregate together.

But that INSTANTLY solves every problem you really have with death and resurrection. NPC's who are killed will STAY killed, while PC's get to come back to life without having to jump through all manner of ridiculous hoops intended to prevent NON-PLAYER characters from taking advantage of magic whose presence in the game is ONLY intended for significant use by PLAYER characters.

JNAProductions
2016-02-28, 01:08 PM
Your problem there revolves around the idea of an afterlife and who will choose to REJECT the afterlife for any reason. As you say, with resurrection magic being given the cost and availability that it does in order to have it work for PLAYER characters makes it too easy to use for NPC's. DM's get weird about having all rules apply equally to PC's and NPC's so nobody wants to just declare that it doesn't matter WHY it won't work for NPC's it just doesn't because the spell was NEVER EVER intended to prevent NPC's in a campaign setting from ever being permanently killed. That's only possible because DM's WILL NOT draw distinctions between player characters and NPC's.

But so be it. You can still make that work. All you need do is assume that an afterlife is paradise. Whatever your religion is, whomever your patron deity is... when a character dies that character is either sent to a Bad Place from which they are flat out NOT PERMITTED to leave as eternal punishment for their religious misdeeds, or else it's paradise. Well, if it's paradise - who chooses to leave paradise? Whatever it was that your deity or religion promised as your afterlife is the thing that you GET as your afterlife. Maybe you get to fight gloriously and victoriously for all eternity at the side of your deity. Maybe you get to be reunited with all your loved ones who have already passed on. Maybe you get waited on hand and foot in decadent luxury for eternity. Maybe you just get to run nekkid in green fields of grass and wildflowers singing songs with birds and dancing. Whatever it is doesn't matter - it's the thing you ostensibly want most and have been promised by religion/deity. Even if you're a king or rich person, or an NPC adventurer. When you die and get to the afterlife IT IS A PLACE, OR CIRCUMSTANCE WHICH YOU WILL NOT CHOOSE TO LEAVE. ... Unless you're a PLAYER character and your desire is not to have your PC sit idle forevermore in an afterlife but to return to mortality and pick up right where you left off.

That simple decision - that NON-PLAYER characters will not voluntarily choose to give up the afterlife (no matter what their mortal life was like), solves your problem. PC's can then return from the afterlife as much as you care to permit them. Non-player characters NEVER return from death - unless you really REALLY REALLY want them to, and then all you have to do is give them a motivation that will overcome the desire to remain in paradise. Or maybe some kind of curse or prophecy that they have to fulfill enables them to return despite being killed, or maybe even FORCES them to return. But for PLAYER characters - it's always the choice of the PLAYER whether they want to retire the PC at that point or put another quarter in the slot and hit the "Rejoin Game" button.

By default that does make player characters HIGHLY unusual people. They're going to be just about the only ones running around a game world who come back from the dead without being UNdead. NPC's should certainly see them as... a little dubious, a little weird, as awesome and dangerous, as people who seem to have some Great Destiny to fulfill. It would be only natural that a GROUP of such people would inevitably congregate together.

But that INSTANTLY solves every problem you really have with death and resurrection. NPC's who are killed will STAY killed, while PC's get to come back to life without having to jump through all manner of ridiculous hoops intended to prevent NON-PLAYER characters from taking advantage of magic whose presence in the game is ONLY intended for significant use by PLAYER characters.

I like this. A lot. Especially how it drives home just how cuckoo most adventurers are.

Arbane
2016-02-28, 02:03 PM
The campaign I'm currently in is set in a city with so much weirdness going on that 'adventuring' is a major industry. Our party is sorta-friends with one other party, and enemies with another. Fun times.

Jurgen Hubert wrote an interesting setting called 'Doomed Slayers' (https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?571602-necro-Doomed-Slayers-Justifying-the-tropes-of-Adventurers) in which adventuring is an actual profession with some distinct perks: adventurers aren't taxed or hindered in traveling much and they get to keep any loot they find, but they're also not allowed to stay in one place long, they're not supposed to kill 'people', and they can't own more than they can carry. Of course it's a REALLY dangerous job, which is why in some places surviving at it for 7 years gets you out of debt or any non death-sentence legal trouble...

For the power differential thing, someone else on RPG.net came up with an amusng campaign setting where character levels were effectively a real thing - for some reason, some people (adventurers) are just capable of achieving power normal people find impossible. (Most NPCs top out at level 6 or so - PCs just keep on going, if nothing kills them.) And a high-level fighter really CAN survive enough physical abuse to turn a normal man into hamburger and keep fighting. On the down side, adventurers tend to be prone to recklessness and wanderlust, which is why they rarely try to take over the world.

Darth Ultron
2016-02-28, 02:41 PM
This is one of the classic game vs alternative reality problems. And it is basically that the generic, default D&D world is a fictional place made for a single reason: so some real life players can have some fun. So the world of D&D makes no sense what so ever, as the game always comes first.

And the generic, default D&D world makes a lot of assumptions like:

1)The world is sort of like Dark Ages Europe....except no overbearing religion and all bad stuff of P-13 or higher is ignored.

2)The world is also sort of like Colonial America in the sense that there are large pockets of 'other people' and wild animals/monsters just outside of civilization.

3)Magic, for no reason is rare and has no effect on the world other then a tiny sprinkle here and there.

4)Magic is, oddly, super common in spots where it will make a good, fun or cool story or plot point....but #3 always applies.

5)Everyone utterly ignores every single fact about the strange fantasy magical world they live in and continue to act like it is Dark Ages Europe.

Then you get to the game parts:

1)PC's are special and rare, often times the only ones in the whole world.

2)Everyone else in the world is helpless.

3)The world is always, oddly, in equal power level to the PCs. No 1st level PC's will ever fight(get killed by) a great wyrm dragon.

bulbaquil
2016-02-28, 03:32 PM
Because adventurers are always born with Jupiter in a fire sign in the 11th house and with a close positive aspect with the Sun.

Because adventurers actually are the prophetic "Chosen Ones" for something, and the rest of the world... isn't.

Because 2 plus 2 is both 4 and 5, simultaneously. But only when the moon is full, and not during a lunar eclipse, because then it's 6.

In a world where magic, deities, dragons, flying castles, faster-than-light spaceships, thousand-year rainstorms, etc. are possible, why is it necessary to insist on explaining things logically, scientifically, or - for that matter - even consistently?

The actual reason is that D&D - and, for that matter, all RPGs - are not pure simulations. Even those that purport to be highly simulationist are not 100% simulations. Every RPG has some gamist, simulationist, and narrativist elements to it. The most obvious aspect of the first - that every RPG has gamist elements - is simply the fact that the characters, whatever the game, are being played by the players, not by themselves: They don't actually exist except as a figment of someone's imagination interacting with figments of other people's imaginations and the rules of the game.

Since the goal of a game is, ostensibly, for people to have fun, rather than to accurately simulate every aspect of an imaginary world in excruciatingly painstaking detail, compromises must be made. Verisimilitudes must be broken to fit the rules and assumptions of the game, or said rules and assumptions must be broken or revised to retain verisimilitude as measured from the perspective of the GM/players. Logical inconsistencies must be - depending on the makeup of the GM/player mix - patched, hamhandedly justified, or outright ignored. This process is usually called "house ruling".

Quertus
2016-02-28, 03:55 PM
What a system rewards has a huge impact on how it is played.

Stars Without Number, by contrast, rewards 2 things: Completed Missions (regardless of kill count) and Completed Goals (which are set by each player for their own character with help from the GM.) This means that the system is designed to reward more kinds of solutions and even rewards personal projects. It doesn't matter HOW you get the Engine Core from the Sunken Obelisk back from the Three Pillars Syndicate and into the hands of Promadyne Industries, so long as that happens. And if you track down John Skeeves and finally take your revenge along the way, your character gets some XP to reward their initiative. (This reward system is not unique to SWN, obviously, I just have the most experience with it.)

So, if you've got a horrible GM, who delights in making all your missions fail, you never earn any XP? And, possibly worse, if you are dedicated to the mission, but the mission fails because your "team" is busy pursuing their own objectives, they are rewarded for this behavior, while you are "punished" for your dedication with not receiving any XP?

Given the choice, I think I'll stick with murder hobo-inducing rewards. At least there, I can still earn XP if all our missions fail, or everyone else is either exploring the system and/or dead weight.

johnbragg
2016-02-28, 04:13 PM
So, if you've got a horrible GM, who delights in making all your missions fail, you never earn any XP? And, possibly worse, if you are dedicated to the mission, but the mission fails because your "team" is busy pursuing their own objectives, they are rewarded for this behavior, while you are "punished" for your dedication with not receiving any XP?

Given the choice, I think I'll stick with murder hobo-inducing rewards. At least there, I can still earn XP if all our missions fail, or everyone else is either exploring the system and/or dead weight.

In other words, "I'm not having actual fun, but at least the numbers on my character sheet are increasing"? IF you have a horrible GM who makes all of your efforts fail, does earning XP make it okay? If your fellow players are all sabotaging the party, goes racking up your kill count make that any better?

Maybe it's better if the system doesn't smokescreen bad games by giving your pretend character pretend cookies to get you to come back next session.

Spamotron
2016-02-28, 04:19 PM
So, if you've got a horrible GM, who delights in making all your missions fail, you never earn any XP? And, possibly worse, if you are dedicated to the mission, but the mission fails because your "team" is busy pursuing their own objectives, they are rewarded for this behavior, while you are "punished" for your dedication with not receiving any XP?

Given the choice, I think I'll stick with murder hobo-inducing rewards. At least there, I can still earn XP if all our missions fail, or everyone else is either exploring the system and/or dead weight.

No system exists that will give you a good time if your fellow players are jerks. Remember the motto: "No game is better than a bad game."

PersonMan
2016-02-28, 06:38 PM
3)The world is always, oddly, in equal power level to the PCs. No 1st level PC's will ever fight(get killed by) a great wyrm dragon.

Maybe a generic 'most world(s)' is different, but I've never played in a game where there wasn't the understanding that, if you went to the right place, you'd end up finding super powerful monsters, you just didn't until you could take them because you're not suicidal.

Cluedrew
2016-02-28, 07:31 PM
No system exists that will give you a good time if your fellow players are jerks. Remember the motto: "No game is better than a bad game."The phase "make the best of a bad situation" only applies if you cannot leave or change the bad situation. So given the choice, I would try to talk to the table to improve the game or leave.

I played a game with a similar system, it worked quite well because people came to the table wanting to have fun as a group. Actually one guy kept getting people into trouble, but in an interesting way so it was fun.

Also I'm going to agree with Darth Ultron that your default D&D world is not put together very well. But you can get away with a lot of cracks that are obvious if someone looks is no one is going to look. Which is to say the world doesn't have to be internally consistent if people would rather spend time else where. However to me this is about a world for the people who do want things to be consistent.

ReaderAt2046
2016-02-28, 07:37 PM
I actually did try to justify that once. The idea is that every PC has magic, but the way they use it varies. So Clerics are those who have been invested with power by the gods. Part of that power is manifest in divine spellcasting, the rest is used to make them stronger and faster and especially tougher. In this world, a high-level fighter like Roy has plenty of magic, it's just that the magic is entirely devoted to things like making him stronger than a bull elephant or letting him be hit with a huge axe and not be seriously hurt.

ImNotTrevor
2016-02-28, 08:54 PM
So, if you've got a horrible GM, who delights in making all your missions fail, you never earn any XP? And, possibly worse, if you are dedicated to the mission, but the mission fails because your "team" is busy pursuing their own objectives, they are rewarded for this behavior, while you are "punished" for your dedication with not receiving any XP?

Given the choice, I think I'll stick with murder hobo-inducing rewards. At least there, I can still earn XP if all our missions fail, or everyone else is either exploring the system and/or dead weight.

I think several others have already made this point for me, but this is solved by my #1 piece of advice:

1. Your fellow players are human, and probably adults. Treat them as such.

In other words, just talk to your GM about it or leave the table. A DM can do effectively the same thing by never allowing your group to fight anything more threatening than a lone goblin, and makes you split the XP, and gives you 1 CP per encounter. Which a DM could, in theory, do. Just like the situation you describe with a purposefully malicious GM. A purposefully malicious GM will always screw you over, no matter the system. So a system complaint is rendered null once the complaint hinges on the possible existence of a malicious GM.

As for more specific complaints, Goals tend to promise smaller XP rewards than missions do. (There are exceptions, but these large scale, highly difficult goals will create missions on their own.) They also typically take longer to accomplish overall. If everyone is running down goals, and you aren't, you can swap out your own goals to ensure you still get xp. It can even be smaller tasks related to the mission. It won't be lots of XP for each one, but setup for your heist can net you pretty decent amounts of XP. What's more, missions get you money. Most goals I've seen require money. And all of my players naturally found themselves striking a balance between personal goals and the mission at hand.

Of course, if you read that reward structure and decide it is not what you want, don't play SWN. It's not a BETTER reward structure, it is a different one that results in a different kind of play.

If you can raise a skill by failing a certain number of rolls, that encourages riskier behavior rather than defensive play.

D&D's reward system rewards killing monsters and taking their stuff, so players will tend towards aggressive behavior and "murderhoboism."

It's not about what is the best reward structure, but which is best for the kind of narrative you're hoping will be created through play.

AMFV
2016-02-28, 09:45 PM
This is one of the classic game vs alternative reality problems. And it is basically that the generic, default D&D world is a fictional place made for a single reason: so some real life players can have some fun. So the world of D&D makes no sense what so ever, as the game always comes first.


It's completely possible to have it make sense, generally that's more effort than people need and folks don't have issues suspending their disbelief so it's unnecessary effort.



And the generic, default D&D world makes a lot of assumptions like:

1)The world is sort of like Dark Ages Europe....except no overbearing religion and all bad stuff of P-13 or higher is ignored.


Not strictly speaking true. Most D&D settings are a fairly bastardized affair, none of them are really even close to Medieval Europe. You don't really have feudalism either, trade is far different, starvation nonexistent. I mean the settings are similar to fantasy novels set in a pseudo-medieval time, but not even remotely close to a medieval time in virtually every game setting I've ever read. Forgotten Realms and Mystara are closer to Final Fantasy than they are to medieval Europe. The same could be said of Greyhawk (although that one is kind of a hodgpodge), Eberron certainly.



2)The world is also sort of like Colonial America in the sense that there are large pockets of 'other people' and wild animals/monsters just outside of civilization.


The same as in Medieval Europe, where wolves could devastate towns... even in the latter part of that era. Hell in 19th and 20th century Russia that was true of Bears, we aren't very far from that time at all in fact.



3)Magic, for no reason is rare and has no effect on the world other then a tiny sprinkle here and there.


Not an assumption in any published setting I've read.



4)Magic is, oddly, super common in spots where it will make a good, fun or cool story or plot point....but #3 always applies.

Generally this is the rule in almost every published setting, rather than #3



5)Everyone utterly ignores every single fact about the strange fantasy magical world they live in and continue to act like it is Dark Ages Europe.


But it isn't Dark Ages Europe, it's fantasy novel land, it isn't even supposed to be Dark Ages Europe, or even remotely close, which is perhaps why the disparity is so evident to you.



Then you get to the game parts:

1)PC's are special and rare, often times the only ones in the whole world.


The only what's in the whole world. That is certainly the case in many games, but not really in D&D, not even in 3.5 era D&D.



2)Everyone else in the world is helpless.


Or they have other things to do than root out Kobold menaces, like other constraints on their time or money. Hiring heroes is cheap, and a lot less irritating than solving it yourself.



3)The world is always, oddly, in equal power level to the PCs. No 1st level PC's will ever fight(get killed by) a great wyrm dragon.

You've clearly never played any edition of D&D prior to 3rd. That's certainly not the case in the bulk of other edition. Nor in 3rd. Look at Ashardalon a CR 27... that's 2-7 Encounter, in a level 17 adventure. That's not particularly atypical there are often encounters in published adventures that far exceed player capacity. The Ghostlord in RHOD is intended to be such. There are many more examples if you start including other editions. 3.5 encounter tables also include monsters that significantly overlevel the PCs, so again you're mistaken. If the GM chooses to tailor encounters to the PCs, that's his/her choice, but certainly not an assumption of the system.

Darth Ultron
2016-02-29, 12:41 AM
Your confusing the default generic world as presented in the core rules with all the published settings. They are not the same thing. The first thing a published setting must do is throw out all the core rules about the world.

For example, the core rules have idiotic rules like you only find more classes and levels in big cities. You can't have a town of all wizards, for example. And huge, powerful groups are impossible.

Magic is rare in D&D to explain why the world is still stuck in the. Dark Ages.

The standard plot is the PC are the only ones that can do anything. And the whole setting of Eberron is based on this idea.

There are rules for not just overwhelming and killing the PCs. And rules for having the world scale with the pcs.

ImNotTrevor
2016-02-29, 04:36 AM
Your confusing the default generic world as presented in the core rules with all the published settings. They are not the same thing. The first thing a published setting must do is throw out all the core rules about the world.

For example, the core rules have idiotic rules like you only find more classes and levels in big cities. You can't have a town of all wizards, for example. And huge, powerful groups are impossible.

Magic is rare in D&D to explain why the world is still stuck in the. Dark Ages.

The standard plot is the PC are the only ones that can do anything. And the whole setting of Eberron is based on this idea.

There are rules for not just overwhelming and killing the PCs. And rules for having the world scale with the pcs.

I'm not sure if this is a complaint about Game Design, or the premise of the thread. I'll assume it's the latter, though.

D&D's standard, nonspecified setting does actually claim in the DMG or DMGII to be vaguely "european." Or at least, in most instances it is.

And it is true that D&D does tend to scale its challenges, though that much I can understand. It's one part good design, one part "1st level characters are relatively not-famous and would neither seek out a fight with a Great Wyrm dragon, nor would they be likely to attract enough ire from one to merit a personal visit."
But there are systems where this situation doesn't occur because levelling up isn't a thing in those systems. (FATE, especially FATE Accelerated, somewhat follow this. M&M also does, apparently.)

In systems where you don't level, the challenge level can fluctuate without it always being just Moderately Difficult to succeed.

In games like Torchbearer, most encounters will be deadly challenges.

Of course, if my PCs do something incredibly stupid like challenge the best warrior in the world to a game of swordfight at lvl 1, I will inform them that this is a really really stupid decision and they are very likely to die, and are they really certain they want to do this? If they say yes, then they die and can't complain because I warned them very explicitly that they were being stupid. (Just an example, this has never happened to me, nor do I expect it to.)

Again, a lot of this is system dependant on D&D and I can name systems where any or all of these complaints aren't the case. So, if you want to not worry about justifying this stuff, there are games where you really don't have to because those aren't things that happen in those systems. *shrug*

Make sure you're playing the system that actually fits your needs.

Segev
2016-03-01, 01:09 AM
Your problem there revolves around the idea of an afterlife and who will choose to REJECT the afterlife for any reason. As you say, with resurrection magic being given the cost and availability that it does in order to have it work for PLAYER characters makes it too easy to use for NPC's. DM's get weird about having all rules apply equally to PC's and NPC's so nobody wants to just declare that it doesn't matter WHY it won't work for NPC's it just doesn't because the spell was NEVER EVER intended to prevent NPC's in a campaign setting from ever being permanently killed. That's only possible because DM's WILL NOT draw distinctions between player characters and NPC's.

But so be it. You can still make that work. All you need do is assume that an afterlife is paradise. Whatever your religion is, whomever your patron deity is... when a character dies that character is either sent to a Bad Place from which they are flat out NOT PERMITTED to leave as eternal punishment for their religious misdeeds, or else it's paradise. Well, if it's paradise - who chooses to leave paradise? Whatever it was that your deity or religion promised as your afterlife is the thing that you GET as your afterlife. Maybe you get to fight gloriously and victoriously for all eternity at the side of your deity. Maybe you get to be reunited with all your loved ones who have already passed on. Maybe you get waited on hand and foot in decadent luxury for eternity. Maybe you just get to run nekkid in green fields of grass and wildflowers singing songs with birds and dancing. Whatever it is doesn't matter - it's the thing you ostensibly want most and have been promised by religion/deity. Even if you're a king or rich person, or an NPC adventurer. When you die and get to the afterlife IT IS A PLACE, OR CIRCUMSTANCE WHICH YOU WILL NOT CHOOSE TO LEAVE. ... Unless you're a PLAYER character and your desire is not to have your PC sit idle forevermore in an afterlife but to return to mortality and pick up right where you left off.

That simple decision - that NON-PLAYER characters will not voluntarily choose to give up the afterlife (no matter what their mortal life was like), solves your problem. PC's can then return from the afterlife as much as you care to permit them. Non-player characters NEVER return from death - unless you really REALLY REALLY want them to, and then all you have to do is give them a motivation that will overcome the desire to remain in paradise. Or maybe some kind of curse or prophecy that they have to fulfill enables them to return despite being killed, or maybe even FORCES them to return. But for PLAYER characters - it's always the choice of the PLAYER whether they want to retire the PC at that point or put another quarter in the slot and hit the "Rejoin Game" button.

By default that does make player characters HIGHLY unusual people. They're going to be just about the only ones running around a game world who come back from the dead without being UNdead. NPC's should certainly see them as... a little dubious, a little weird, as awesome and dangerous, as people who seem to have some Great Destiny to fulfill. It would be only natural that a GROUP of such people would inevitably congregate together.

But that INSTANTLY solves every problem you really have with death and resurrection. NPC's who are killed will STAY killed, while PC's get to come back to life without having to jump through all manner of ridiculous hoops intended to prevent NON-PLAYER characters from taking advantage of magic whose presence in the game is ONLY intended for significant use by PLAYER characters.
Sure. You can do that. I'm not sure why you're so insistent on finding alternatives framed as "do this INSTEAD of what you suggested, Segev!" Why do you find my particular suggestion so horrific that something, anything must be found as an alternative to it?

Though I'll point out that, if this is the case, why would your nobility and royalty protect themselves from assassination, since the afterlife is so awesome?

But there are any number of ways to handle it. Including just ignoring it and pretending everything's fine with the existing assumptions. I offered a suggestion for one way to handle it and possibly build a bit of interesting fluff into the world, while also providing an excuse for why "adventurers" are a recognized thing that are hired as mercenaries rather than being always on-retainer spec-ops forces.

PersonMan
2016-03-01, 01:05 PM
Though I'll point out that, if this is the case, why would your nobility and royalty protect themselves from assassination, since the afterlife is so awesome?

For the same reason that people in the real world try to stay safe even if they believe they will enter a supernaturally good place after they die.

woodlandkammao
2016-03-02, 12:32 AM
For the same reason that people in the real world try to stay safe even if they believe they will enter a supernaturally good place after they die.

That's a good point. There's no shortage of real believers in the afterlife, so we don't need to model their beliefs hypothetically.

JNAProductions
2016-03-02, 12:57 AM
Just a quick reminder-religion talking is against forum rules. I don't think anyone's crossed the line or anything, but it's veering close to dangerous territory, and I don't want to see anyone in trouble for forgetting.

Segev
2016-03-02, 09:27 AM
The distinction in a setting where magical resurrection and the like are "a thing," particularly if our security-minded potentates take out a magical "life insurance" policy that includes them, it would be known that the reason somebody is not coming back to life is that they like the afterlife so much better than the life from which they were evicted in an untimely fashion. Even if you argue that they only have the clerics' word for it that that's why they're not returning (and thus suspicion that the corrupt clergy are bilking people out of their "insurance" money by not delivering on the promised product), the few who do come back will be able to say whether that was the case or not.

Also, I think reincarnation lacks a "voluntary non-return" clause. Those exist in the resurrection line based (in context) on knowing who's trying to bring them back, so Good King Bob isn't going to come back if it's Wicked Cleric Bobtorturer, who changed his name legally based on his favorite activity, that's trying to resurrect him. He doesn't want to be locked away in a torture chamber and will wait for Friendly Cleric Bob'sfriend (who also changed his name legally out of a sign of loyalty) to do it.

Regardless, you can absolutely set it up that way. I wasn't trying to say, "do this to make your game make sense; it's the only way!" It was a suggestion for one possibly interesting way to distinguish Adventurers as special, and make the setting conceits that often work their way in more easily consistent with the mechanics of the game. I'm not sure why the hostility towards the idea; so far, nobody's stated a problem with it. Only, "you can do it this other way, or this other way, or any way but what you suggested!"

Telok
2016-03-02, 11:52 AM
Also, I think reincarnation lacks a "voluntary non-return" clause.

This is true in D&D from 3rd edition onward. In AD&D I did once see Raise Dead used to kill a vampire, no save. It may easily not apply to other game systems as well, since this isn't in the D&D subforums there is that to consider as well.

Segev
2016-03-02, 12:21 PM
This is true in D&D from 3rd edition onward. In AD&D I did once see Raise Dead used to kill a vampire, no save. It may easily not apply to other game systems as well, since this isn't in the D&D subforums there is that to consider as well.

I don't recall if this is still true in 3e or not, but I think 2e and earlier specifically stated that raise dead affected undead as slay living did the living, so even if there was a "voluntary refusal to return" clause in raise dead, it wouldn't apply when used on undead, since a different spell's text takes over.

Bohandas
2016-03-02, 01:57 PM
Since it has come up a few times I thought I would mention a thought I had. If XP is an in-universe thing, why don't people have levels in Baker?

That was sort of the premise of Yakitate Japan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakitate!!_Japan)

Bohandas
2016-03-02, 02:07 PM
It's a nice thought but D&D doesn't play that way these days. Back in old-D&D times the fighter could become a Lord at 10th level, build or conquer a castle, and actually be a political mover and shaker. Same with other classes, followers, bases, and social status were explicitly part of the game.

These days characters get a level for every ten to fifteen moderately difficult events they participate in, most adventurers gain a level every two to three weeks unless they intentionally stop adventuring. Characters in modern games default to anonymous homeless orphans whose primary efforts are aimed at accumulating powerful magic items. Social standing, reputations, and political power are no longer emphasized in the rules. In many cases they may even require the expenditure of personal resources (skills, feats, money) that would otherwise be spent on personal survival. Being socially engaged in modern D&D often means that the character is less able to survive the next time some cult summons a demon or the undead come swarming up out of the sewers. Characters no longer become dukes, barons, or guildmasters. Instead they tend to go and fight the next size up dragon from the last one that they killed, and they do it because they gained another level this month so now they need to buy the next +3 magic item in order to keep up with the new monsters that will show up next week.

After two years a character can go from being a mop pushing apprentice to a semi-divine force of nature that goes around kneecapping gods as a hobby. These people aren't interested in marrying princesses or setting tax rates, they care about paying a god-thing to put a new enchantment on their armor.

The game has changed. The PCs no longer become wealthy landowners or robber barons.

What about the PHB2 affiliation rules?

nedz
2016-03-02, 06:11 PM
I don't recall if this is still true in 3e or not, but I think 2e and earlier specifically stated that raise dead affected undead as slay living did the living, so even if there was a "voluntary refusal to return" clause in raise dead, it wouldn't apply when used on undead, since a different spell's text takes over.

That's because in AD&D most spells were reversible. Slay Living was the reverse of Raise Dead and so Raise Dead would kill undead because Slay Unliving.

Faily
2016-03-02, 09:10 PM
It's a nice thought but D&D doesn't play that way these days. Back in old-D&D times the fighter could become a Lord at 10th level, build or conquer a castle, and actually be a political mover and shaker. Same with other classes, followers, bases, and social status were explicitly part of the game.

These days characters get a level for every ten to fifteen moderately difficult events they participate in, most adventurers gain a level every two to three weeks unless they intentionally stop adventuring. Characters in modern games default to anonymous homeless orphans whose primary efforts are aimed at accumulating powerful magic items. Social standing, reputations, and political power are no longer emphasized in the rules. In many cases they may even require the expenditure of personal resources (skills, feats, money) that would otherwise be spent on personal survival. Being socially engaged in modern D&D often means that the character is less able to survive the next time some cult summons a demon or the undead come swarming up out of the sewers. Characters no longer become dukes, barons, or guildmasters. Instead they tend to go and fight the next size up dragon from the last one that they killed, and they do it because they gained another level this month so now they need to buy the next +3 magic item in order to keep up with the new monsters that will show up next week.

After two years a character can go from being a mop pushing apprentice to a semi-divine force of nature that goes around kneecapping gods as a hobby. These people aren't interested in marrying princesses or setting tax rates, they care about paying a god-thing to put a new enchantment on their armor.

The game has changed. The PCs no longer become wealthy landowners or robber barons. Now they become tropical storms and hurricanes. Massive, powerful, devastating, arising from nothing and then disappearing into the air leaving an altered landscape.


Sure, you *can* play adventurers who only frugally live on rations, live in the cheapest place possible when not sleeping in a tent, and who only live for the next fight. But to say that is what the majority of D&D is is laughable.

3.5 introduced affiliation rules. Both D&D and PF have Leadership. PF has a whole book dedicated to doing things between adventures, including establishing and ruling domains (Ultimate Campaign). One of the most popular published 3.5 adventures, Red Hand of Doom, even has a reward for the PCs that is the deed to a fortress for them to claim at the end of the campaign.
One could argue that it was easier in the past when the Fighter just had to hit level 10 to be handed a keep and a plot of land. :P

You have strange notions if you think the majority of D&D tables today are all murderhobos who have no thought beyond xp and magic loot. Most are playing it for the roleplay, which may or may not include noble titles and castles.

Telok
2016-03-03, 01:59 AM
Sure, you *can* play adventurers who only frugally live on rations, live in the cheapest place possible when not sleeping in a tent, and who only live for the next fight. But to say that is what the majority of D&D is is laughable.
...
You have strange notions if you think the majority of D&D tables today are all murderhobos who have no thought beyond xp and magic loot. Most are playing it for the roleplay, which may or may not include noble titles and castles.

I know I play it for roleplay, but I grew up on the 1980s D&Ds where having backstory or drawing a picture of your character was normal. The people I've met in my city nearly all got into D&D with 3e and later, they absolutely do just go from fight to fight and want loot and power-ups at regular and predictable rates. What I see at the game tables at the local stores is the same stuff, fight-loot-repeat. In the last ten years I'm the only person I know of who has written backstory for any of my characters.

Leadership is used for the cohort only if the player gets to craft an optimized second character and replace it with identical clones. Domains, fortresses, guilds, are all scorned because they take away from the character's loot base which is needed to buy magic items in order to survive the next adventure. With the advent of wealth-by-level and requiring the purchase magic items is characters level up things that cost gold without directly benefiting the character are perceived as penalties. The Leadership and Mentor feats takes away from the feats and feat chains that your character requires for combat.

In AD&D the keep of a 10th+ level fighter was a benefit that added to the character. In recent editions it consumed character resources that were also used to survive combat. Temporal power over land and kingdom level political struggles pale when characters become demi-gods in two in-game years.

There have been threads on these boards where people have been outraged by the suggestion that they try to write a backstory or play an interesting personality. People have told me they'd rage quit if backstory was required for a game. In games I've played in familiars, cohorts, loyal retainers, and children have been used as cannon fodder because they're "replacable units".

So yeah, in my area the majority of tables are "murderhobos who have no thought beyond xp and magic loot" because that's what the game rewards.

Cluedrew
2016-03-03, 08:02 AM
Wow... you might just live in the most murderhobo subgroup of role-players I have ever heard of. Ten years without anyone crafting a backstory?

In the groups I'm in a lot of people just do very brief backstories, sometimes limited to what they were doing when the adventure started. ... Come to think of it back stories aren't very popular in the groups I've been in either. But role-play during the game is popular.

Lacco
2016-03-03, 08:33 AM
Wow... you might just live in the most murderhobo subgroup of role-players I have ever heard of. Ten years without anyone crafting a backstory?

In the groups I'm in a lot of people just do very brief backstories, sometimes limited to what they were doing when the adventure started. ... Come to think of it back stories aren't very popular in the groups I've been in either. But role-play during the game is popular.

It all comes down to a group's sense of "what is fun". I dislike long backstories, preferring players to hand me small hooks and creating the rest of the story with them, and sometimes even surprising them.

I think that if you want players who will play something other than "fight-loot-repeat", you have to...well, there was another thread and I was told using word "conditioning" is harsh, so I'll stick with "teach" them. I know I did this with my players - and it works.

The thing is, if you play at a store with 5 unknown people (a thing that never happened to me), it's quite difficult to show them that it's fun to have skills in "cooking", going to public baths after you come from a dungeon and just roleplaying the "we sit and talk by the fire while we prepare for rest, while the bard plays the lute and composes a song about our last heroic deeds". You also need a GM who wants to play this way.

The other thing is - game systems form in a way our view of the game we play. If I'm level 20 mage, I won't sit around the fire talking to other people. If I'm fighter covered in so many magic items, armour, etc. that I can barely move my hand without activating something, with thousands of gold in my bigger-on-the-inside bag, my idea of fun will be using all these items to kill tarrasques and have overall fun destroying mountains, not spending the 200 copper coins I found in the dungeon on a table full of food, few dancers and paying drinks for the whole tavern...

The question is - what sounds more fun for you?

For me - the 20th level games (and their equivalents) don't really work. And while I understand why people want to play them, I wouldn't have fun there. I would have fun if I could find my first fine steel sword after having to fight off the goblins with poorly-forged, notched and rusty iron sword. And the whole "you get to be a baron at the end with a fortress and your own fief"? That sounds swell for me.

Segev
2016-03-03, 09:23 AM
I think part of the problem, if you're facing forts and followers costing character resources rather than increasing them, is that you're either a) not using them right, or b) your DM is not letting you use them right.

There are rules for income, and better, there are rules for how much crafted items cost. Your followers are loyal, dedicated people who want to serve you, admittedly for some amount of benefit in return. Put your professionals to work doing profession checks. Use your own or your higher-level followers' magical abilities to provide basic necessities, where necessary. Where not necessary, let the followers support themselves.

Depending on what you want your followers to represent, you can have a keep (professions support the keep with their income, crafts build their gear, equipment, and the buildings themselves as well as make sellable goods), a village (self-sufficient even more than a keep, with followers who will sell your items at full price and provide you all sorts of home base benefits in the form of things you don't have to pay for), or even more disbursed or clandestine organizations (your followers are spies and agents who, like a lot of real-life spies, lead ordinary lives except when you ask them to do something as part of a covert mission, like deliver covert messages, monitor dead drop locations, or let you know if something of interest is happening).

Keeps, followers, and other such things also give you places to better dispose of unwanted loot. Rather than selling it for half price, your merchant follower will sell it for full price, using it to attract more business to himself. Such loot also can be useful directly in the fort or village or guild. That does take some resources; but so does being a crafter. It's just that you get more out of it than somebody who has to sell it and buy their own custom gear.

Organized well, a group of followers can be a source of resources or a resource in and of itself.

D+1
2016-03-03, 10:30 AM
I'm not sure why you're so insistent on finding alternatives framed as "do this INSTEAD of what you suggested, Segev!" Why do you find my particular suggestion so horrific that something, anything must be found as an alternative to it?? Do what you like. I'm presenting that as the alternative I came up with, having considered the matter for a LONG time. What causes people at the table those problems and how to fix those issues in the simplest and most effective manner; no need to jump through hoops with complicated heaps of additional rules, nor have entire game settings revolve around the solution. If you like your approach better I'm happy for you. Really. Game on and be happy. My zeal for my own solution should mean nothing to you and all the emphasis in presenting it is simply to drive the point home where _I_ see people addressing the symptom and not the disease.


Though I'll point out that, if this is the case, why would your nobility and royalty protect themselves from assassination, since the afterlife is so awesome?
Because until they actually GET there, characters don't really have the understanding of what it would be like to BE there. Once on the other side of that fence they see that the grass really IS greener there.


But there are any number of ways to handle it. Including just ignoring it and pretending everything's fine with the existing assumptions. I offered a suggestion for one way to handle it and possibly build a bit of interesting fluff into the world, while also providing an excuse for why "adventurers" are a recognized thing that are hired as mercenaries rather than being always on-retainer spec-ops forces.LOTS of ways to build fluff into a game world to address the issue. LOTS of rules that people have come up with over the years to more tightly control resurrections and their effect on the game world - most of which aren't really effective at accomplishing that end because they force everyone, PC's included, to jump through the same hoops.

Again, I think since 3rd Edition, DM's have an odd aversion to simply declaring that some rules apply only to PC's, some apply only to NPC's, and some apply in VARYING degrees to either group. They seem to think that all rules must apply to all individual characters/monsters/animals at all times or else... well I don't know what they THINK would happen but IME nothing bad does when you have different rules for PC's than for others. One can also build a game world where PC's genuinely ARE fulfillers of prophecies and CANNOT permanently die until they have achieved their part in the legend. Or you can use Ghostwalk. Or you can build a game world that restricts whom clerics can cast resurrection magic on - or with a single deity (the DM) who picks and chooses who lives or dies. That last one might be as easy to utilize as well, but still involves a specialized pantheon. The DM can simply say, "Because I SAID so and I don't care to bother with defining why." Also very easy to do, but far less satisfactory when part of the issue is that DM or players general DO want some simple explanation of why.

My approach gives a DM "permission" to have different results when applying the same rule to PC's and NPC's. Resurrection is not FORCED upon any character, it's a CHOICE given to them. By simply acknowledging then that NPC's WILL have different perspectives on an afterlife than PLAYER characters the issue is resolved, typically to the satisfaction of everyone at the table, with the least effort or added-on whatnot. You might even still look at it as adding or altering game rules, but I prefer to see it as simply changing your perspective about how applying rules equally and fairly to all can still produce vastly different results for PC's as for anyone else.

johnbragg
2016-03-03, 10:58 AM
Again, I think since 3rd Edition, DM's have an odd aversion to simply declaring that some rules apply only to PC's, some apply only to NPC's, and some apply in VARYING degrees to either group. They seem to think that all rules must apply to all individual characters/monsters/animals at all times or else... well I don't know what they THINK would happen but IME nothing bad does when you have different rules for PC's than for others.

What happens? It cheapens whatever the PCs actually accomplish. It's a distant relative of the railroad plot where the PCs are guided to the spot where they push the Win Button on the McGuffin of Plot Resolution.

It reduces immersion when the PCs and NPCs play by radically different rulesets. IT means that when the party meets an evil NPC party of the same classes and levels, it's not really an equal challenge. At my table, it might not be an equal challenge because the NPCs are built with Elite Array stats while PCs are built with starting scores 18-16-14-12-8, and PCs have Hero Points to buy extra actions or rerolls or whatever. But you want to be careful with that sort of thing, or the world around the PCs can become fairly pointless.

To some extent, the PCs are special snowflakes. But too much of that, and there is no challenge to the game. Your explanation is pretty good for why only PCs benefit from Resurrection--the afterlife is just that sweet, but the PCs have Unfinished Business(TM). Without an explanation that good, the game can feel like silly wish fulfillment pretty quickly.

AMFV
2016-03-03, 11:05 AM
Again, I think since 3rd Edition, DM's have an odd aversion to simply declaring that some rules apply only to PC's, some apply only to NPC's, and some apply in VARYING degrees to either group. They seem to think that all rules must apply to all individual characters/monsters/animals at all times or else... well I don't know what they THINK would happen but IME nothing bad does when you have different rules for PC's than for others. One can also build a game world where PC's genuinely ARE fulfillers of prophecies and CANNOT permanently die until they have achieved their part in the legend. Or you can use Ghostwalk. Or you can build a game world that restricts whom clerics can cast resurrection magic on - or with a single deity (the DM) who picks and chooses who lives or dies. That last one might be as easy to utilize as well, but still involves a specialized pantheon. The DM can simply say, "Because I SAID so and I don't care to bother with defining why." Also very easy to do, but far less satisfactory when part of the issue is that DM or players general DO want some simple explanation of why.

Because that's a stated design goal of 3.5... That's the real why as to why there's rules parity between NPCs and PCs. AD&D and earlier editions lacked that design goal, and it's somewhat persisted in later editions for good or for ill.

Sam113097
2016-03-03, 02:02 PM
The issue of PC power is largely dependent on the game system. In some games, high level PCs are basically gods, while in others, an orc tribe is still a deadly threat to the strongest players. It really depends on what type of game the DM and the players want. D&D 3.5 is great if you want legendary heroes jumping between planes to fight elder gods, but that doesn't fit every group's style of play.

I think that having all rules apply equally to PCs and NPCs is unnecessary. The game system Dungeon World, a spinoff of Apocalypse World, doesn't even stat out anything besides behavior, damage and HP, because that's all the PCs will interact with.

I don't think that there needs to be an in-game "explanation" for adventurers, although the Doomed Slayers setting idea is really well-thought-out and interesting. In a typically fantasy world with magic, monsters, and treasure-filled ruins, of course there are people willing to risk their safety for riches and glory. Adventurers are basically pro athletes with swords.

Segev
2016-03-03, 02:16 PM
Adventurers are basically pro athletes with swords.

X-Crawl! Such a fun setting and concept; pity the mechanical support was always so lackluster.

Clistenes
2016-03-03, 03:12 PM
I tend to assume that the PC's adventuring party is THE adventuring party, not AN adventuring party. There are other powerful people and organizations (wizard guilds, witch covens, churches, knightly orders, legendary pirate ships, assassin sects, barbarian armies...etc.), but there aren't adventuring parties like the PCs' roving the countryside.


Again, I think since 3rd Edition, DM's have an odd aversion to simply declaring that some rules apply only to PC's, some apply only to NPC's, and some apply in VARYING degrees to either group. They seem to think that all rules must apply to all individual characters/monsters/animals at all times or else... well I don't know what they THINK would happen but IME nothing bad does when you have different rules for PC's than for others. One can also build a game world where PC's genuinely ARE fulfillers of prophecies and CANNOT permanently die until they have achieved their part in the legend. Or you can use Ghostwalk. Or you can build a game world that restricts whom clerics can cast resurrection magic on - or with a single deity (the DM) who picks and chooses who lives or dies. That last one might be as easy to utilize as well, but still involves a specialized pantheon. The DM can simply say, "Because I SAID so and I don't care to bother with defining why." Also very easy to do, but far less satisfactory when part of the issue is that DM or players general DO want some simple explanation of why.

I have no problem with a game system in which PCs and NPCs use the same rules. As a matter of fact, I prefer it.

And why aren't there more powerful people in such a world? Because a PC has to murder thousands of creatures in order to reach high level. Most people don't go around doing that, and those who do don't have a DM selecting their fights so they are challenging but not deadly. A NPC adventurer could spend years fighting only goblins, kobolds and orcs, and then bump int a whole Beholder hive or an Ancient Red Dragon or a high level Vampire coven and get killed.

AMFV
2016-03-03, 03:24 PM
I tend to assume that the PC's adventuring party is THE adventuring party, not AN adventuring party. There are other powerful people and organizations (wizard guilds, witch covens, churches, knightly orders, legendary pirate ships, assassin sects, barbarian armies...etc.), but there aren't adventuring parties like the PCs' roving the countryside.

That's usually the assumption. I've toyed with settings where this is different. Like one where the entire countryside was populated by a super-powerful magical empire for 1,000s of years, then there's a catastrophe. So now people recover materials and magical equipment from all the ruins. Adventurers act like miners or people gathering resources. Dungeons are resources, because of their magical potency, monsters are drawn to them, so adventurering becomes a valid profession, in the same way that coal mining or roughnecking is. I've really wanted to do this for a while, have an actual serious adventuring guild, instead of a loose association, it becomes an officious union. That sort of setting would be pretty interesting in it's own regard I think.



I have no problem with a game system in which PCs and NPCs use the same rules. As a matter of fact, I prefer it.

And why aren't there more powerful people in such a world? Because a PC has to murder thousands of creatures in order to reach high level. Most people don't go around doing that, and those who do don't have a DM selecting their fights so they are challenging but not deadly. A NPC adventurer could spend years fighting only goblins, kobolds and orcs, and then bump int a whole Beholder hive or an Ancient Red Dragon or a high level Vampire coven and get killed.

That should be possible with PCs too, or at least that's how I run it. Also you don't have to murder anybody to get to high level in almost any system. You have to "overcome challenges" or "obtain treasure" which doesn't necessarily involve any kind of killing. A stealth run, should theoretically result in similar experience to a murder-fest, in fact more if it's the more challenging route (less if it's not).

Faily
2016-03-03, 03:30 PM
I know I play it for roleplay, but I grew up on the 1980s D&Ds where having backstory or drawing a picture of your character was normal. The people I've met in my city nearly all got into D&D with 3e and later, they absolutely do just go from fight to fight and want loot and power-ups at regular and predictable rates. What I see at the game tables at the local stores is the same stuff, fight-loot-repeat. In the last ten years I'm the only person I know of who has written backstory for any of my characters.

Leadership is used for the cohort only if the player gets to craft an optimized second character and replace it with identical clones. Domains, fortresses, guilds, are all scorned because they take away from the character's loot base which is needed to buy magic items in order to survive the next adventure. With the advent of wealth-by-level and requiring the purchase magic items is characters level up things that cost gold without directly benefiting the character are perceived as penalties. The Leadership and Mentor feats takes away from the feats and feat chains that your character requires for combat.

In AD&D the keep of a 10th+ level fighter was a benefit that added to the character. In recent editions it consumed character resources that were also used to survive combat. Temporal power over land and kingdom level political struggles pale when characters become demi-gods in two in-game years.

There have been threads on these boards where people have been outraged by the suggestion that they try to write a backstory or play an interesting personality. People have told me they'd rage quit if backstory was required for a game. In games I've played in familiars, cohorts, loyal retainers, and children have been used as cannon fodder because they're "replacable units".

So yeah, in my area the majority of tables are "murderhobos who have no thought beyond xp and magic loot" because that's what the game rewards.


And this is where your anectodal evidence that you have obviously have had bad luck with gaming in that area, suddenly lead to "the majority of tables play this way". This forum alone I find is the case that people play D&D differently, but most play it for the story (and Theoretical Optimization is never to be confused with actual gameplay, in my experience). Though you do correct the statement by saying "in my area the majority of tables". Though from what I hear, gaming in stores is much different than gaming at home.

Sad to say, but you've been unlucky.

As for backstories and pictures. Not everyone is skilled at drawing (goodness knows my SO can't even draw decent stick figures), and not everyone writes backstories. I play with people who write lengthy backstories and people who don't make backstories, at all, but everyone is fun to play with. Neither is a requirement for gaming, and shouldn't be either. Sometimes a player would much more prefer to develop a character through gameplay, rather than to have a fully fleshed-out character drawn out before the campaign even begins. I think the protest you mention are more that you are forcing players to do something they aren't nescessarily going to have fun with, and I'm not sure I'd want to play either with a GM that *demands* I write up a minimum two-page backstory for my 1st level noob either. I write backstories when I feel like it, how I feel like it and as long as I feel like it. Some of my characters have almost just had a single line of "lived in the town here all her life with nothing special happening" to a character with an almost Tolkienesque Silmarillion-style tale.

As lacco36 said, hooks and contributions to the overall story is so much more interesting than a lengthy backstory, imo.

I would ask though if you have attempted to lead games for these tables, and introduce them to more story-focused adventures. D&D 3.5 have lots of really good published campaigns and modules, as does Pathfinder, if you need something easy. These poor souls only know murderhoboing, you must spread the light! :smallwink:

Clistenes
2016-03-03, 03:34 PM
That should be possible with PCs too, or at least that's how I run it. Also you don't have to murder anybody to get to high level in almost any system. You have to "overcome challenges" or "obtain treasure" which doesn't necessarily involve any kind of killing. A stealth run, should theoretically result in similar experience to a murder-fest, in fact more if it's the more challenging route (less if it's not).

Murder is just the simpler way to level up. You can do the same thing again and again and again and you always get XP. People who gain XP doing other stuff has to constantly seek new and harder challenges.

And if you don't get your xp through murder, you have to do something equally challenging. If you need to kill a dozen polar bears in order to level up, the non-combat challenge should be equally difficult and impressive. Stuff like that doesn't come often, and most people doesn't go out of their way in order to find it.

AMFV
2016-03-03, 03:46 PM
Murder is just the simpler way to level up. You can do the same thing again and again and again and you alway get XP. People who gain XP doing other stuff has to constantly seek new and harder challenges.

And if you don't get your xp through murder, you have to do something equally challenging. If you need to kill a dozen polar bears in order to level up, the non-combat challenge should be equally difficult and impressive. Stuff like that doesn't come often, and most people doesn't go out of their way in order to find it.

If we're at killing a dozen polar bears, in D&D, we're past level 8, so that's pretty powerful in most settings. So you're looking at the top 10 percent of the population, the best bakers might start to approach that level of challenge, the best politicians. Now D&D (and a few others) doesn't really simulate that well, since the best bakers are also going to be awesome fighters. But in that system in the same way that you could become better at baking by murdering a lot of dudes, you could become better at murdering by baking cakes, they just have to be more difficult more challenging cakes.

So yes, most people avoid getting XP, but that doesn't mean that you won't see a certain percentage of people who excel, you see that in real life, in any given field there will be people who excel. So it's not unreasonable to expect the same in a roleplaying game. It's always surprising to me, how people seem to have all kinds of issues believing that things in a game would be equivalent to things in real life.

For example, if you go into a gym, you'll find maybe 2-5% of people who could potentially be competitive at bodybuilding. Of that number there are few competitors, but they do exist. Just because something is unlikely to occur with frequency doesn't mean that it doesn't occur at all.

Clistenes
2016-03-03, 03:51 PM
If we're at killing a dozen polar bears, in D&D, we're past level 8, so that's pretty powerful in most settings. So you're looking at the top 10 percent of the population, the best bakers might start to approach that level of challenge, the best politicians. Now D&D (and a few others) doesn't really simulate that well, since the best bakers are also going to be awesome fighters. But in that system in the same way that you could become better at baking by murdering a lot of dudes, you could become better at murdering by baking cakes, they just have to be more difficult more challenging cakes.

So yes, most people avoid getting XP, but that doesn't mean that you won't see a certain percentage of people who excel, you see that in real life, in any given field there will be people who excel. So it's not unreasonable to expect the same in a roleplaying game. It's always surprising to me, how people seem to have all kinds of issues believing that things in a game would be equivalent to things in real life.

For example, if you go into a gym, you'll find maybe 2-5% of people who could potentially be competitive at bodybuilding. Of that number there are few competitors, but they do exist. Just because something is unlikely to occur with frequency doesn't mean that it doesn't occur at all.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be powerful NPCs. What I'm saying is that there is an in-built reason in the system for those powerful NPCs to be so rare and hard to find.

AMFV
2016-03-03, 03:56 PM
I'm not saying that there shouldn't be powerful NPCs. What I'm saying is that there is an in-built reason in the system for those powerful NPCs to be so rare and hard to find.

There certainly is, because it's not very likely that they would be able to complete encounters above a certain point, eventually people will get to the point where their typical encounters aren't worth anything, and they'll keep doing those, because they're comfortable, they can make a living at that point. After all not everybody becomes a millionaire (only the vast minority), that was kind of my point, rambly as it was, there is a vast minority of people who are truly exceptional in our world (which is part of why fantasy games where we get to be truly exceptional are so enticing).

Telok
2016-03-03, 05:06 PM
...I'm not sure I'd want to play either with a GM that *demands* I write up a minimum two-page backstory for my 1st level noob either. I write backstories when I feel like it, how I feel like it and as long as I feel like it.

...
I would ask though if you have attempted to lead games for these tables, and introduce them to more story-focused adventures. D&D 3.5 have lots of really good published campaigns and modules, as does Pathfinder, if you need something easy. These poor souls only know murderhoboing, you must spread the light! :smallwink:

See, this was what I was talking about. I mention backstory and people assume some two page DM mandated essay entitles "How I became an Adventurer" and then declare they won't play. I've asked for four sentences and even given the topics for those sentences (family, past, goals, home) and been told I'm doing bad-wrong-funkill.

Story focused adventures don't work with people who haven't already bought in, and if they don't know of and hunger for those adventurers then there's no buy in. Teaching doesn't work with people who have a hard time conceiving of NPCs as anything other than quest givers and merchants without personalities. And if the players aren't already thinking in story terms, instead they still think in fight-loot terms, then they get frustrated when they can't think of what to do in a situation and the combat abilities on the character sheet don't help them solve problems. They get bored and either give up or just start killing randomly. In the games I've run there have been a few glimmers of hope every so often but the D&D versions of the last 15 years have pretty well hammered in that gold and feats and options are character build resources for combat. Castles are vulnerable to scry-and-die, dragons ignore walls, low level NPCs die in masses to ubiquitous AoE spells, businesses attract thieves and arsonists.

Then after 25 xp events they've gone up two levels. They need another +1 on the armors and weapons, new spells mean they've started plane hopping to the City of Brass for the shopping, and those castle walls and 1 HD followers have become even less important and useful. The game rules strongly influence play style based on what they reward. AD&D with flat and low hit points after 10th, land granting written into the rules, and soft capped ac rewarded some things. 3.5 D&D rewarded spending all your money and feats on combat abilities, even if the DM ran a more story based game. I have some hopes for 5e, but I'll be a player (and still the only one writing any backstory) for a rather long time because the group dynamics.

Bohandas
2016-03-03, 06:38 PM
The backstory issue brings up another point, which is that it's difficult to have a plausible backstory for a 1st level character that isn't really mediocre.

goto124
2016-03-03, 08:00 PM
Teaching doesn't work with people who have a hard time conceiving of NPCs as anything other than quest givers and merchants without personalities.

That reminds me- how do "roleplayers" conceive of NPCs? I have a very hard time relating to people IRL, nevermind an NPC.

johnbragg
2016-03-03, 08:16 PM
That reminds me- how do "roleplayers" conceive of NPCs? I have a very hard time relating to people IRL, nevermind an NPC.

NPCs are played by the DM. Roleplayers construct an artificial personality for their character, the DM does the same for the rest of the characters in the world.
At least in theory. In reality, most NPCs and many people you interact with in IRL, you are interacting at a very minimal, semi-automatic level so personality doesn't make an appearance.

Sam113097
2016-03-04, 12:37 AM
X-Crawl! Such a fun setting and concept; pity the mechanical support was always so lackluster.

I've never heard of X-Crawl! It sounds interesting, but bad mechanics have brought down a lot of great concepts.

Lacco
2016-03-04, 02:04 AM
Then after 25 xp events they've gone up two levels. They need another +1 on the armors and weapons, new spells mean they've started plane hopping to the City of Brass for the shopping, and those castle walls and 1 HD followers have become even less important and useful. The game rules strongly influence play style based on what they reward. AD&D with flat and low hit points after 10th, land granting written into the rules, and soft capped ac rewarded some things. 3.5 D&D rewarded spending all your money and feats on combat abilities, even if the DM ran a more story based game. I have some hopes for 5e, but I'll be a player (and still the only one writing any backstory) for a rather long time because the group dynamics.

What I see as another "nail in the coffin" is the whole balancing thing. The idea that adventurers should have encounters balanced to their level or other attributes (insert the D&D abbreviations which I don't know) helps this thinking a lot - if I don't get the +1 sword, I won't be able to kill the werezombie and it won't take the 1/4 of my daily resources! Quick, to the shop!!! :smallbiggrin: Ok, this was a bit overdone, but when I saw a reply to some encounter proposal somewhere here at this forum that went something like "it shouldn't be challenging encounter - it should take away a quarter of your daily resources", I stared at it in disbelief for few minutes and started to write a reply. Don't remember whether I posted it because...really?


That reminds me- how do "roleplayers" conceive of NPCs? I have a very hard time relating to people IRL, nevermind an NPC.

Word of the day: conceive. Again, I learned something new, thank you! :smallsmile:

As for your question - well, immersion helps a lot. Colorful NPCs, history of friendly encounters and good roleplay by the GM help a lot. It's part of the playstyle and the level of immersion you seek - if a player is in for quick fun with smashing ork heads & getting loot, it's fine if he views the NPCs as quest-vending machines or shopping opportunities. It's part of the comfort zone - people can care a lot about imaginary things - and technically, all the other participants of this forum can be easily viewed as NPCs :smallsmile:.

And important thing is - in your experience, did any NPC evoke any feelings from you? Any feelings (even negative)?

Bohandas
2016-03-04, 02:10 AM
I would ask though if you have attempted to lead games for these tables, and introduce them to more story-focused adventures. D&D 3.5 have lots of really good published campaigns and modules, as does Pathfinder, if you need something easy. These poor souls only know murderhoboing, you must spread the light! :smallwink:

I think what they need to do is play as demons in the abyss. That way murderhoboing is roleplaying.

goto124
2016-03-04, 03:30 AM
And important thing is - in your experience, did any NPC evoke any feelings from you? Any feelings (even negative)?

"Get out of the way you stupid roadblocking bleeping NPC! :smallrage:

"Boo hoo hoo your parents died and you lost your trinket, yea yea I'll just help you okay?"

:smalltongue:

Lacco
2016-03-04, 03:39 AM
"Get out of the way you stupid roadblocking bleeping NPC! :smallrage:

"Boo hoo hoo your parents died and you lost your trinket, yea yea I'll just help you okay?"

:smalltongue:

I'll take it as "not really". Played lot of cRPGs? :smallamused:

Magnetized
2016-03-04, 08:38 AM
There are a ton of good reasons as to why just anyone and everyone wouldn't be receiving a resurrection. Personally, I've always just attributed it to PC and NPC characters needing to have a certain amount of innate strength of will in order to give up the afterlife to return to a world where you just died.

In 5e, the lowest level "bring someone back to life" spell is revivify. It requires a 5th level character to cast it, requires a 300gp material component which gets consumed, and only works on someone that has died in the last minute.

One way to play it is that you have to have a minimum level of power for the spell to successfully bring you back to life in the first place. Regardless of your willingness to leave the afterlife, if your spirit isn't strong enough you cannot be resurrected. If you are level 5 then you can successfully be brought back up with revivify 100% of time. Every level below 5 drops the chance of it working by 20%. Since most NPCs, especially commoners, will never see level 5 it makes sense that people are not getting brought back to life left and right. Perhaps a failed resurrection attempt damages the spirit that accepts it. If you were a level one NPC that someone is trying to bring back to life, would you risk your spirit being damaged/destroyed on a 20% chance to come back to life? Even if you were level five when you were killed, someone would need to use revivify on you within one minute, which isn't a lot of time.

AMFV
2016-03-04, 08:53 AM
I think what they need to do is play as demons in the abyss. That way murderhoboing is roleplaying.

Or put them in the abyss, then it's the same thing, except now it's a fight to survive against insurmountable odds.

PersonMan
2016-03-04, 09:09 AM
The backstory issue brings up another point, which is that it's difficult to have a plausible backstory for a 1st level character that isn't really mediocre.

Just don't have them doing a bunch of things that you'd expect of higher level characters, or that give a lot of XP.

For example, let's say you have a Paladin. You could say they came from a village and lived a normal life until it was attacked or threatened by some evil thing. The character was a major help to several people from a far-off city who came to help out and after the evil is defeated they're given an offer to join them, to become a holy warrior like they are. They accept. [Insert journey and village-person-whose-eyes-are-opened-to-a-whole-new-world arc, insert training arc].

And then they're level 1.

Segev
2016-03-04, 10:51 AM
I've never heard of X-Crawl! It sounds interesting, but bad mechanics have brought down a lot of great concepts.

The core premise of the setting is that it's a modern-like world wherein the biggest popular sport is a cross between old-style gladiatorial events, modern-style reality TV, and sports. X-Crawl is, essentially, televised dungeon-crawling. In theory, the "same dungeon experiment" is run with all competing parties (who go through at different times and are kept from seeing others' runs), and prizes are awarded for specific accomplishments, completion, and for doing "the best" by whatever standard the DJ set up.

DJ, by the by, is "Dungeon Jockey," who is a combination game show host, reality show host, and antagonistic referee. With Hunger Games to reference, he's the Game Maker.


In more detail, the setting is "modern Earth, but with magic and fantasy races, and America became a reincarnation of the Roman Empire rather than a Republic." There are a lot of details about the setting that I'm not going to get into, but imagine the modern world, set in America, with a paint of a different government system that is supposed to mostly vanish in the face of other, more familiar social constructs.

I, personally, enjoyed the out-of-Crawl side of the game more than the Crawls themselves, but it is very easy to run it as a pure dungeon-crawl experience.


The trouble the setting faced is that, as written for d20/3.0, the designers did not understand game balance and class design. And they tended to err on the weak side. So some really cool class ideas are in there, but they tend to be woefully underwhelming. And a lot of space is dedicated to establishing "League Rules" for the Crawl that ensure you can only have "authentic" D&D-style weapons and stuff in the Crawls...except for various exceptions which are semi-random.

It's playable, and has a lot of potential, but the DM has to know what his focus in the game is, and the players have to be on board for that particular kind of game. And, sadly, a lot of the setting-specific classes chock full of flavor are just bad.