I have to laugh when an adventure says the players always lose if they fight X NPC.

[AnonymousPepper]

I was reading some of the old 2e Dark Sun material - it's of interest to me as background material because my 3e group is heading to Athas for Happy Fun Times(tm) soon - and this morning I was checking out The Valley of Dust and Fire. There's a pretty big section on Borys of Ebe, the Dragon, and a large amount dedicated to what happens if the players fight him.

The whole book, after you get past the information about the Silt Sea (which is all pretty cool, mind you), when it's not discussing the terrain of the Valley or the politics and layout of Ur Draka (again, also pretty cool), is wrapped up in just this ever-escalating dread about the sheer power of the Dragon. It's finally capped off with a few pages about his lair and fighting him, and concludes with more or less directly saying that unless you intend to carry the plot further somehow afterward and his death is truly demanded, the players should under no circumstances defeat Borys; this gets laid on to the point of providing suggestions on how to suitably describe the deaths of your players' high-level characters.

In all fairness to the setting, Borys is completely omgwtfhax powerful (in fact, I've heard it claimed that he's the most powerful statted major NPC in existence, and I can believe it, going by rough 2e-3e conversions in my head), more or less second only to Rajaat (who's currently somewhat indisposed). Not to mention, yeah, he *is* tremendously important, unless your PCs are at such ridiculous power levels that they can handle Rajaat themselves now that the entity responsible for keeping his can sealed is now dead.

And in fairness, 2e didn't **** around.

But still. I mean. If it has stats, you can kill it, and Borys is no exception; I can't imagine that there weren't tricks in 2e that were just as broken as anything that exists in 3e. Honestly, I can't say I'm particularly a fan of out-and-out saying that the PCs should lose. Mostly because I find it funny on the grounds that if you tell a group of players that they can't do something because they're just not able to, they can and will, without fail, figure out a way to do it.

I'm just using the 2e example for the sake of, well, example, of course. I've seen it written out in more or less exactly the same way in 3e splatbooks - such and such an NPC is an incredibly powerful [insert impressive list of levels here] and will easily destroy the players if angered. As I recall (although my memory may be flawed, so bear with me on that), for a specific example, the Ravenloft material more or less says that Strahd just simply crushes any good divine caster other than paladins that enter his realm.

You kinda gotta wonder if the people writing the books were really aware of what could be achieved in their own system if somebody is determined enough.

[Kraken]

The Red Hand of Doom has a similar situation.
At one point you're supposed to cut a deal with a lich, who is supposed to be too powerful to handle. Not only is his actual stat block pretty wimpy (blighter, 'nuff said), but earlier in the adventure path you receive a staff of life. The lich's meager 71 hit points just aren't up to the task of holding on long enough to be a danger.

[Necroticplague]

You kinda gotta wonder if the people writing the books were really aware of what could be achieved in their own system if somebody is determined enough.

Given some of the things written in those books, it would appear not. They write material that would allow for a post-scarcity society to exist without significant trouble, and then go the assumption that things are mostly medieval. They write mechanics where the amount of things that require magic to kill is as long my arm, then assume most people have never seen magic. The setting writer's seemed blissfully unaware of the basics of how the system worked, much less what could be achieved at it's max potential.

[JustIgnoreMe]

I can't imagine that there weren't tricks in 2e that were just as broken as anything that exists in 3e.
You clearly never played 2e. There wasn't anything like the number or degree of insanely broken tricks in 2e as there are in 3e/3.5. I think the most abusive thing was probably "Flesh to Stone" followed by "Rock to Mud". And you needed two different people to cast those, because they were on different spell lists and there was no realistic way to have both enough Wizard levels and enough Cleric levels to cast both. Everything was DM adjudicated, none of this "rulebook says I can" malarkey either.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

You clearly never played 2e. There wasn't anything like the number or degree of insanely broken tricks in 2e as there are in 3e/3.5. I think the most abusive thing was probably "Flesh to Stone" followed by "Rock to Mud". And you needed two different people to cast those, because they were on different spell lists and there was no realistic way to have both enough Wizard levels and enough Cleric levels to cast both. Everything was DM adjudicated, none of this "rulebook says I can" malarkey either.

Spoken like someone who never chunky salsa'd a dragon with a Minor Helm. We clearly played very different 2nd Editions.

[ShurikVch]

2E spell Chromatic Orb, starting from certain level, can paralyze anybody without save (and kill on failed save); it's a 1st level spell

[Necroticplague]

You clearly never played 2e. There wasn't anything like the number or degree of insanely broken tricks in 2e as there are in 3e/3.5. I think the most abusive thing was probably "Flesh to Stone" followed by "Rock to Mud". And you needed two different people to cast those, because they were on different spell lists and there was no realistic way to have both enough Wizard levels and enough Cleric levels to cast both. Everything was DM adjudicated, none of this "rulebook says I can" malarkey either.


Spoken like someone who never chunky salsa'd a dragon with a Minor Helm. We clearly played very different 2nd Editions.

While I firsthand haven't played 2e, the stories I've heard from others that have seem to agree with TheTeaMustFlow more. Stuff was just as much, if not more, broken than 3e core, it was just harder to notice because it was more niche, and there weren't thriving online communities devoted to pointing a spotlight at every single game design failing it had in reverse alphabetical order. Incidentally, "Everything was DM adjucated" is a major design failing. It's like a video game you have to re-code yourself just to be able to run.

[AnonymousPepper]

none of this "rulebook says I can" malarkey either.

To be fair, this is, in practice if not as written, true for 3.5 too. I run a really high-power game and I still maintain and frequently use the right to say no at any given time (usually to my artificer, 'cause he can be the give an inch take a mile type - and so am I, so I fully understand what he's getting at at any given time. :smallcool:). The rules are simply too poorly or broadly written or have too many adverse interactions in too many cases for it to be any other way.

I find that playing pure RAW tends to lead to Not-Happy Not-Fun Times, and so do most players.

[TheCrowing1432]

Isnt there stupid things that even if you stick to core only you can do?

[AnonymousPepper]

Isnt there stupid things that even if you stick to core only you can do?

Absolutely. Wish is core, thus so are infinite Wishes, and ultimately that's all you need.

I'm not talking about excluding splatbooks, though, I'm talking about judicious use of Rule Zero when the general sanity of RAW is clearly out to lunch.

[AvatarVecna]

Isnt there stupid things that even if you stick to core only you can do?

What, in 3.5? Oh hell yeah. Some of the absolute least balanced things are in Core: Monks and Fighters are pretty cripplingly terrible in Core without severe assistance, while some of the most broken spells in the game come from the Player's Handbook (Polymorph has its own handbook, and one of the best combat forms available throughout 3.5 is the various Pyro-/Cyro-hydras from the Monster Manual; PH also has Time Stop, Planar Binding, Contingency, Silent Image, and a lot of the other most commonly abused spells).

EDIT: As TPAM points out, Wish is also Core, as is the spell you can mimic with Wish that lets you gain access to multiple free Wishes...which means that, with nothing but the Core books, there's a method for infinite Wishes that only cost you the XP of the first Wish spell.

[Szifers]

You kinda gotta wonder if the people writing the books were really aware of what could be achieved in their own system if somebody is determined enough.

This was before the age of player entitlement. The rules didn't bind the DM in any way.

[AnonymousPepper]

This was before the age of player entitlement. The rules didn't bind the DM in any way.

Rule number one of nostalgia is that people, as a whole, never, ever change, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise. >_>

Also, DMs still are completely unbound by the rules. That's never not been a thing and it's never not going to be a thing. In almost any gaming system ever, actually. The GM always has and always will have full veto power over anything that happens at the table if they so choose. It's just a matter of willingness to do so.

In any case I'd suspect that if a high-level adventuring party were to deliberately try to assault Borys, the single most powerful statted entity in the setting, in his own lair, being possessed of the giant pure adamantine balls/ovaries (we're talking Imperial Guard standard issue levels here) necessary to do so and the confidence that they were actually strong enough to (and the actual power level to back it up)... given the setting (it's freaking Dark Sun!), they're either the best and luckiest players in the history of ever, or they probably had a pretty lenient GM in the first place. That, or the same campaign has been going weekly for a very long time.

[Elkad]

I've been breaking things since at least 1st edition, and I'm sure people were breaking Chainmail.

Just one 1e example. We were having a one-shot multi-player free-for-all arena match, and we had like a week of prep time. We got a set amount of monsters, purchased by their XP value, and some gold and a character with a set amount of experience points. 15th level or so IIRC. Other players were buying reasonably powerful demons and such.

I bought several shambling mounds, and an equal number of some minor demon/devil that could cast a weak lightning spell at will. Every lightning attack on a shambling mound causes it to grow by 1HD. 1e rounds are 1 minute, so after the week of prep time when the match kicked off, my shambling mounds had 10,000HD each.

The other players all ganged up on me. Didn't matter.

[Job]

What Necrotic said, also


Incidentally, "Everything was DM adjucated" is a major design failing. It's like a video game you have to re-code yourself just to be able to run.

Completely incorrect.

[Bobby Baratheon]

Completely incorrect.

I don't know about that. Without a common framework to measure expectations against, you might as well be playing Calvinball. If your players don't have access to that framework (because it's entirely subject to the DM's whim), they have to guess what you find acceptable, and that's just lame.

[Job]

The 'common framework' available to the players is knowledge concerning the system, the DM's character, and the president set by the DM. He or she is the adjudicator and that is a position held in trust by them at the pleasure of the players, and who knowable qualities and judgments sustain.

It's gross equivocation to label adjudication "DM whim"

I was mostly concerned with the analogy, I don't think it works.

[atemu1234]

The 'common framework' available to the players is knowledge concerning the system, the DM's character, and the president set by the DM. He or she is the adjudicator and that is a position held in trust by them at the pleasure of the players, and who knowable qualities and judgments sustain.

It's gross equivocation to label adjudication "DM whim"

I was mostly concerned with the analogy, I don't think it works.

It's like a glitchy program, wherein to make it function, you need to fix it to make it work.

[AnonymousPepper]

As far as I'm concerned, D&D is kind of like the Fallout games. Sometimes they can be kludgy as **** and you praise your lucky stars that you've got devconsole available (assuming you're not a console peasant :smallcool:), but for the most part it's fun as all get-out ;you generally reach a sort of equilibrium where you're willing to tolerate occasional bouts of total dysfunction, since you usually can fix the problem to your satisfaction, and you just settle into a state where you don't get concerned unless tweak you made to it causes it to spit out 1+1=window every five minutes.

[Scots Dragon]

It's like a glitchy program, wherein to make it function, you need to fix it to make it work.

Alternatively it's an game involving people which is designed with a referee in mind. The terms Dungeon Master and Referee are used entirely interchangeably in earlier editions of the system, by the way.

[paranoidbox]

You clearly never played 2e. There wasn't anything like the number or degree of insanely broken tricks in 2e as there are in 3e/3.5. I think the most abusive thing was probably "Flesh to Stone" followed by "Rock to Mud". And you needed two different people to cast those, because they were on different spell lists and there was no realistic way to have both enough Wizard levels and enough Cleric levels to cast both. Everything was DM adjudicated, none of this "rulebook says I can" malarkey either.

I'm not sure if you remember the Skills & Powers and the Spells & Magic books (and others, but I forget what they're called). I broke ALL the things with the options those books provided. I've made Clerics, Druids, and even Bards that were basically one-man wrecking crews. And the best part was that the rulebook did say I could, so... yes, there was a big amount of malarkey going on.

Good times, crazy days.

[Seto]

It's like a glitchy program, wherein to make it function, you need to fix it to make it work.

Well, the big advantage that TTRPGs have over video games is that they're not programs. You're free to do anything, and if you do something the system had not accounted for, the GM is there to handle it by reacting in real time, with a non-predetermined decision. In other words, a video game system has to feature a set number of options and handle everything flawlessly, because it's all there is to the game. The player's intervention on the code is neither expected nor acceptable. By contrast, player and GM freedom is a feature of any TTRPG, it's the open element of it. Gm intervention on the rules is expected, because they're meant to provide a framework rather than be the end-all of the game.

[Spore]

I have always disliked the notion that "the following character is [insert meta words] and thus unkillable". It disenchants the suspense of disbelief and the illusion of participating in a story rather than playing a board game. That is why I LOVE the Eberron setting. Almost any NPC is below 10 or only powerful in some circumstances. You could easily assassinate Merrix D'Cannith with a good plan, some accomplices and a decently levelled character (i.e. levels 3-6). Heck you can even oneshot Jaesa IN her sanctuary where she is propped up to be a 17th level cleric. Because her constitution and HP are ****.

It's also stupid how you can have a character that can reliably kill a dragon 10/10 times just because he is so awesome. Our DM in Pathfinder had to regularly remind us that his BBEG is a half-fiend ancient red dragon with a personalised spell list to deter my Paladin from openly attacking her on the battlefield. And his only saving grace is Save-Or-Dieing me with Blasphemy with a DC that I cannot reliably pass but I am certainly not lucky when I do.

You need enemies you can throw at your PCs that they can deal with. But you should always have a resort of characters that provide a sufficient force to work against them or else your game turns into a group of people murderhoboing Skyrim-Style.

[AnonymousPepper]

It's also stupid how you can have a character that can reliably kill a dragon 10/10 times just because he is so awesome. Our DM in Pathfinder had to regularly remind us that his BBEG is a half-fiend ancient red dragon with a personalised spell list to deter my Paladin from openly attacking her on the battlefield. And his only saving grace is Save-Or-Dieing me with Blasphemy with a DC that I cannot reliably pass but I am certainly not lucky when I do.

...not to nitpick a particularly irrelevant point or anything but you could just buff up, have somebody cast Silence on you (ideally with the ability to recast it if it goes down, maybe some contingent spells), and murder the dragon that way. If you can't hear the Blasphemy, it can't hurt you. >_>

[charcoalninja]

Or just defen yourself before the fight and restore your hearing with magic after you've smote the dragon into a fine red mist.

[Sian]

I don't think anyone ever claimed, with a straight face, that Wizards had system expertise anywhere near just about any CharOp board member, it only became clearer and clearer up through 3-3.5 as CharOp started finding together on the internet exchanging ideas

[Necroticplague]

Or just defen yourself before the fight and restore your hearing with magic after you've smote the dragon into a fine red mist.

Won't help. Blasphemy isn't language-dependent, so your ability to hear it is irrelevant. It effects all creatures in the area. Silence might work, but that's a bit more gray than would be safe to rely on (days it protects against sonic effects, but it doesn't say how).

[Cosi]

I don't know about that. Without a common framework to measure expectations against, you might as well be playing Calvinball. If your players don't have access to that framework (because it's entirely subject to the DM's whim), they have to guess what you find acceptable, and that's just lame.

Yes. If the rules are not predictable, the results of character actions are not predictable. If the results of character actions are not predictable, it is impossible to answer the fundamental question of role-playing: what would my character do? The rules have to be consistent, or the game falls apart. That's not to say that the DM can't have enemies the players can't kill, or puzzles the players can't solve, but those things have to exist within the rules.

[Willie the Duck]

But still. I mean. If it has stats, you can kill it, and Borys is no exception;

That is a part where TSR in particular was inconsistent. The lady of Pain in Planescape is deliberately not given stats because she is not someone you are supposed to (as players) try to defeat in combat. (Lots of) other places, everything up to gods are given stats, so why wouldn't people try to see if they could take them on (especially in white room, arena type hypotheticals). Gygax released Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes in OD&D with a specific admonition that this, this particular power level was supposed to be above what the players could reasonably achieve. To which (anecdotally) the West Coast players who had gotten their characters into level 20 and 30 said something along the lines of "well, you didn't give a level cap on PCs. so watch us go murder a god murdering." TSR and later WotC only rarely got the message from that that something they didn't want killed shouldn't have explicit stats.


Honestly, I can't say I'm particularly a fan of out-and-out saying that the PCs should lose.

I'm more okay with the idea of "shouldn't win at this point in the adventure" or even "we're writing this adventure. If you want to let the PCs defeat this vitally important character at this point, you'll have to think up for yourself what happens from here on out." It's an old debate about character agency and this certainly isn't the worst offender (*cough* the Dragonlance adventures *cough*).


You kinda gotta wonder if the people writing the books were really aware of what could be achieved in their own system if somebody is determined enough.

I think if they put in the adventure that the PCs aren't supposed to defeat the NPC, then they must have been quite aware that it was physically possible for them to do so by some confluence of the rules.

2e and before were a lot more up front about the game rules being more about facilitating gameplay and not worrying overmuch whether an enterprising group of minds could get together and crack the game open. I think there was a mindset that if the players found an exploit that disrupted either the adventure or DM's plans the group would laugh about it, decide if it was a cool trick the players had discovered or an abusive exploit the DM should squash, and move on.

Foreseeing rules interactions is certainly a hallmark of good game design. However, I can understand it not being a primary design goal, especially if you are writing for the general audience trying to play a fun game and not white room rules analysts trying to crack a system. For instance, if the only way to prevent infinite wish scenarios is to 1) make wishes or their availability so constrained that PCs and DMs can't enjoy the scenario of the PCs finding a magic genie in a lamp who can grant them wishes (a valuable adventure trope that would be a shame to lose) or 2) make the wording of rulebook so unwieldy as to put off the casual gamer (to satisfy those who are put of by the game requiring some DM fiat), I can understand the decision. That's of course a false dichotomy. The correct answer is to have infinitely perfect game designers, who can write a simple, elegant rule that is both unbreakable and easy to use. Those writers are in short supply, however.

[Necroticplague]

Yes. If the rules are not predictable, the results of character actions are not predictable. If the results of character actions are not predictable, it is impossible to answer the fundamental question of role-playing: what would my character do? The rules have to be consistent, or the game falls apart. That's not to say that the DM can't have enemies the players can't kill, or puzzles the players can't solve, but those things have to exist within the rules.

Actually, you can go back a step: without consistent rules, you not only dont know what you will do, but what you even can do.

[Gallowglass]

Here's my view of 2e vs 3.5p and this entire discussion of "knowing the rules"

in 3.5p:
p1: "Okay, instead of just attacking, I'm going to trip the guy to get him out of the way so I can get the spellcaster he's protecting behind him."
dm: "Okay, this is pathfinder, so roll your cmb vs his cmd. He'll get an attack of oppurtunity if you don't have advanced trip feat. If you succeed, you can use your move action to get up to the wizard, but you won't be able attack until next round."
p1: "But I only need to move 5' to get to the wizard, so I can full attack right?"
dm: "No, unless you have the right feat you can't attack, then move, then attack."
p1: "But a 5' step can be taken in the middle of a full attack!"
dm: "it can?" *sigh* "let me look up the rules."

in 2e: with a bad DM.
p1: "Okay, instead of just attacking, I'm going to trip the guy to get him out of the way so I can get the spellcaster he's protecting behind him."
dm: "There's no rules for tripping. You can't do it."
p1: "Oh. Okay, can I just move around the guy to get to the wizard?"
dm: "Yeah."

in 2e: with a good DM.
p1: "Okay, instead of just attacking, I'm going to trip the guy to get him out of the way so I can get the spellcaster he's protecting behind him."
dm: "hmmm, lets see.... Okay I'll let you make a called-shot attack at -4 to hit. If you succeed you can trip the guy to get him out of the way so you can move up."
p1: "okay, I hit! Can I use my second attack to hit the Mage?"
dm: "yeah at the end of the round when second hits go." *makes note of new "trip mechanic" so that he can use the same general mechanic next time someone wants to try it.*

so in 2e the "common framework" existed, it just wasn't as spelled out and rules heavy as it is in 3.5p. And as far as the player "needing to know what they can do". that's bull****. The player wasn't limited by a list of feats in 2e. "Can I jump off the landing, swing on the chandelier, land on the end of the table and cause the other end to swing up into the face of the bear-warrior?" In 3.5p, they would have to buy a feat to do that (Acrobatic Interior redesigning) or something.

as far as "2e did or did not have as many exploits as 3.5p", 2e had the exact same problem 3.5p now has. An overabundance of poorly designed spells. In the early days of 2e when the wizard an cleric had a small list of available spells (like 13 spells each spell level) the exploits were smaller and the nullification of the other classes was smaller. But then with tome of magic and the net book of spells and splat books, pretty soon they have 100s of spells each spell level to choose from and other-class nullification was a thing and exploits were rampant.

3.5p has now reached that same point. Its the variety of available spells (many of which are built with bad editing) that causes that problem.

in Tome of Magic in 2e, they had 2 low level spells called "Weighty Chest" and "Frisky Chest". Nominally, the idea was, you cast weighty chest on a chest and when someone tries to pick it up it will now weight 8x the weight of the creature trying to pick it up. On frisky chest, the chest would grow legs and run away from the person at 2x the person's movement rate. The problem is, the spell said you could cast it on any object, not just a chest. Queue a 1st level spell auto-win against all foes as the cleric casts weighty chest on the opponents armor or on a cloak and throws it over the bag guy and they are now weighed down by 8x their own body weight.

The exploits were just as bad because they are borne of excessive variety of spells available.

[zergling.exe]

so in 2e the "common framework" existed, it just wasn't as spelled out and rules heavy as it is in 3.5p. And as far as the player "needing to know what they can do". that's bull****. The player wasn't limited by a list of feats in 2e. "Can I jump off the landing, swing on the chandelier, land on the end of the table and cause the other end to swing up into the face of the bear-warrior?" In 3.5p, they would have to buy a feat to do that (Acrobatic Interior redesigning) or something.

This works exactly the same in 3.5. If the DM will let you do it, you don't need anything else. If they don't, they fall into 'bad DM' (is being restrictive really that bad?) territory.

[ExLibrisMortis]

so in 2e the "common framework" existed, it just wasn't as spelled out and rules heavy as it is in 3.5p. And as far as the player "needing to know what they can do". that's bull****. The player wasn't limited by a list of feats in 2e. "Can I jump off the landing, swing on the chandelier, land on the end of the table and cause the other end to swing up into the face of the bear-warrior?" In 3.5p, they would have to buy a feat to do that (Acrobatic Interior redesigning) or something.
Knowing what you can do is more about limits: you want to know how much things 'cost' to do. It's assumed in D&D that you can do that kind of acrobatic maneuvers*, but can you do them once per turn, once per enemy, or once per day? If you don't set a limit, you'll get people telling you - in excruciating detail - how they murder every one of a dozen orcs, all in the surprise round.


*In 3.5, you'll probably need Jump check, a Tumble check, and possibly a Balance check (in PF, it's more sensibly just an Acrobatics check).

[Necroticplague]

so in 2e the "common framework" existed, it just wasn't as spelled out and rules heavy as it is in 3.5p. And as far as the player "needing to know what they can do". that's bull****. The player wasn't limited by a list of feats in 2e. "Can I jump off the landing, swing on the chandelier, land on the end of the table and cause the other end to swing up into the face of the bear-warrior?" In 3.5p, they would have to buy a feat to do that (Acrobatic Interior redesigning) or something.

Actually, there are rules for this. There's no real mechanical difference between swinging from a chandelier and simply making a normal jump, that that would be a simple Jump check for the distance from the balcony to the desired point with a possible circumstance bonus. Hitting the dude with the table like that would be the same as using it as an improvised weapon, so you just use the CWar improvised weapon rules. Solutions are easy when you can separate mechanics from descriptions.

Also, your 3.5 example seems to be based on people who haven't bothered to learn the rules. In my experience, it would look more like this:

Player: Gonna try and trip the wizard.
*roll*
Player: that hit?
GM: yep
*Player and GM both roll*
GM: Whelp, that beats it, he's prone now.
Player: Score. Then I'll take a five-foot step and hit him with my second attack.
And then things continue on. The problem with your 3.5 example is system agnostic, as the reason for the back-and-forth is that neither side has a clue about what the rules are. If you think people are that clueless, that explains a preference for paying less attention to the rules.

[paranoidbox]

so in 2e the "common framework" existed, it just wasn't as spelled out and rules heavy as it is in 3.5p. And as far as the player "needing to know what they can do". that's bull****. The player wasn't limited by a list of feats in 2e. "Can I jump off the landing, swing on the chandelier, land on the end of the table and cause the other end to swing up into the face of the bear-warrior?" In 3.5p, they would have to buy a feat to do that (Acrobatic Interior redesigning) or something.

To be fair, I would take that feat and murderize my opponents with the curtains.

... Probably while saying: "It's curtains for you!"

In fact, the potential for puns would be near endless. Take a chair! Let's table the current topic! Couch, that must have hurt! Let me get something of my chest! Container? I hardly know 'er! (Yes, each and every one of those is bad.)

I should probably first take the Pun Master feat, I guess.

[Scots Dragon]

To be fair, I would take that feat and murderize my opponents with the curtains.

... Probably while saying: "It's curtains for you!"

In fact, the potential for puns would be near endless. Take a chair! Let's table the current topic! Couch, that must have hurt! Let me get something of my chest! Container? I hardly know 'er! (Yes, each and every one of those is bad.)

I should probably first take the Pun Master feat, I guess.

Just think of the synergy with Dashing Swordsman.

[Gallowglass]

Feats> General Feats> Acrobatic Interior Design

Prerequisite(s): 5 ranks in Profession(Interior Design), Acrobatic (feat)

By making an acrobatics check as part of a move action in an area with littered obstacles (such as chairs, tables, grandfather clocks, etc.) you can take one or more of the following benefits:

For every 3 points you exceed the DC of the area you can ignore one square of difficult terrain or move through one square blocked terrain.
For every 6 points you exceed the DC of the area you can move through one enemy square.
For every 3 points you exceed the DC of the area you can rearrange the objects to create a square of difficult terrain within 15' of your movement path.
For every 6 points you exceed the DC of the area you can rearrange the objects to create a square of blocked terrain within 15' of your movement path.

The DC for an area is 10 +3 per enemy within 1 movement increment of your starting position +1 for each square of difficult terrain or for each blocked square along your movement path.

example: Gareth is on a staircase looking down over a crowded tavern floor. There are four enemy combatants and 10 civilians below him and several tables and chairs. His DC for this room will be 10 + (4*2) + 5 (the squares the DM adjucates are difficult terrain due to the crowd and furniture) for a DC of 23.

Gareth has a dexterity of 16 (+3) and 7 ranks in acrobatics which is a class skill (+10) along with the +2 bonus for acrobatic feat. So he rolls 1d20+15. He rolls a total of 35, so he beats the DC by 12.

As Gareth doesn't need to move through the enemy squares to get where he wants to go (swinging on the chandelier to land next to the barmaid he wants to protect) He chooses to spend 6 points to create a square of blocked terrain directly in front of where he plans to land and the other 6 points to create two squares of difficult terrain on either side of the blocked square. He daringly jumps, swings on the chandelier above the roughians, kicks over a chair and a civilian as he is landing and pulls the chandelier down with a thunderous crash in front of him. He turns and smiles at the roughians. "Well, come and get me." Then uses his standard action to ready an attack when one of them enters his threatened squares, or makes an attack at the barmaid behind him.


^^^^

I dunno. Seems complicated. But, eh, first draft.

[Bobby Baratheon]

For the record, the point I was trying to get across was that I believe that overly relying on DM adjudication runs the risk of alienating players. As a DM myself, I'm hardly arguing against the concept. Obviously you need a "referee", or the game is just as likely to devolve into calvinball. In that case, it happens because there's no authority to consult in the game, and the players have to agree among themselves on what is acceptable. I don't think either extreme (anarchy vs DM tyranny) is particularly palatable. I firmly believe the DM's role is to moderate the game and intelligently apply the rules to the situations of the session with an eye to keeping the players happy. That was my original point, for what it's worth.

[paranoidbox]

As Gareth doesn't need to move through the enemy squares to get where he wants to go (swinging on the chandelier to land next to the barmaid he wants to protect) He chooses to spend 6 points to create a square of blocked terrain directly in front of where he plans to land and the other 6 points to create two squares of difficult terrain on either side of the blocked square. He daringly jumps, swings on the chandelier above the roughians, kicks over a chair and a civilian as he is landing and pulls the chandelier down with a thunderous crash in front of him. He turns and smiles at the roughians. "Allow me to bring some luster into the proceedings, gentlemen." Then uses his standard action to ready an attack when one of them enters his threatened squares, or makes an attack at the barmaid behind him.

Nice :-) and FTFY.

[Âmesang]

You're one step closer to finding the Armoire of Invincibility. :smallwink:

[Gallowglass]

Nice :-) and FTFY.

Nice. :) I'm no good at puns.

[Job]

You're one step closer to finding the Armoire of Invincibility. :smallwink:

'The Rolladex of Infinite Wisdom?'

[paranoidbox]

Nice. :) I'm no good at puns.

In all honesty, I spent wayyyyyy too long trying to come up with that one though. I was like "let's see? something with a high light? chandel-here? lamp shading?" But I guess that's just my commitment to the Craft: Puns skill.


'The Rolladex of Infinite Wisdom?'

And a Staff of Thousands (including butlers, maids, pages, porters, chefs, bell boys, etc...).

[johnbragg]

I was reading some of the old 2e Dark Sun material - it's of interest to me as background material because my 3e group is heading to Athas for Happy Fun Times(tm) soon - and this morning I was checking out The Valley of Dust and Fire. There's a pretty big section on Borys of Ebe, the Dragon, and a large amount dedicated to what happens if the players fight him.

The whole book, after you get past the information about the Silt Sea (which is all pretty cool, mind you), when it's not discussing the terrain of the Valley or the politics and layout of Ur Draka (again, also pretty cool), is wrapped up in just this ever-escalating dread about the sheer power of the Dragon. It's finally capped off with a few pages about his lair and fighting him, and concludes with more or less directly saying that unless you intend to carry the plot further somehow afterward and his death is truly demanded, the players should under no circumstances defeat Borys; this gets laid on to the point of providing suggestions on how to suitably describe the deaths of your players' high-level characters.

Rule 0 used to be more of a thing than it is now. So yeah, unless you as a DM have a clue what happens in Athas after Borys is out of the picture, you shouldn't go letting the PCs do that. It's a suicide mission by the PCs.


But still. I mean. If it has stats, you can kill it, and Borys is no exception;

In 2E this was true in a featureless-white-room sense, but the TSR line was that characters who were powerful enough to do things like kill Tiamat were too powerful to challenge, as DM you had screwed up, the PCs should retire into NPCdom and a new campaign should begin.


I can't imagine that there weren't tricks in 2e that were just as broken as anything that exists in 3e. Honestly, I can't say I'm particularly a fan of out-and-out saying that the PCs should lose. Mostly because I find it funny on the grounds that if you tell a group of players that they can't do something because they're just not able to, they can and will, without fail, figure out a way to do it.

You kinda gotta wonder if the people writing the books were really aware of what could be achieved in their own system if somebody is determined enough.

They may have been aware of it, but only as a mathematical possibility. It wasn't on their design radar. It was filed under the category "Rocks fall, everyone dies, roll up new characters."

And, as someone upthread mentioined, the modern Internet of charop did not exist. Knowledge communities of system mastery was limited to your table and your personal circle of friends, cross-pollinated with experiences shared at conventions and in chatting at the Friendly Local Gaming Store. (In a 3.0 campaign, my wife's high level barbarian was dominated every damn session by the vampires we were fighting, because none of us had studied the text of protection of evil well enough to notice its counter against mental control.

This ties into the anecdotes of 3.0's playtest, which IIRC didn't run past 12th level or so, and the classes playing their traditional D&D roles fighter/blaster wizard/healbot cleric/scout druid.

[AnonymousPepper]

In 2E this was true in a featureless-white-room sense, but the TSR line was that characters who were powerful enough to do things like kill Tiamat were too powerful to challenge, as DM you had screwed up, the PCs should retire into NPCdom and a new campaign should begin.

See, now this I can get behind. I get this logic. I even agree with the idea that once PCs can no longer be challenged by the GM, that should be the end of the game. Like, that's really sensible actually.

I think it should be spelled out a little more clearly, though, in places like that, because there's still just a certain arrogance and general disconnect in going "the PCs cannot defeat this NPC, it's too strong," if only on the grounds that a lot of people just see something like that as a challenge. Like me. If I had a better working knowledge of 2e, you can absolutely bet I'd try and create - just as a thought exercise, like people tend to do on here - a character that could solo Borys in his lair in a hypothetical one-shot game, just to see if I could; I've done things like that before*. And if it can be done as a thought exercise on a forum, somebody can and probably has tried to, maybe even succeeded in their attempt to, do it in a game.

Somebody once challenged me and a friend to ready up for a one-shot 3.PF campaign at level 20 simply called "Literally Cthulhu," which he said was exactly what it sounded like. I promptly created an artificer that, it turned out, not only was sufficient to solokill Cthulhu, but was also strong enough to continually beat the snot out of the actual boss of the campaign, Hastur, to the point that, to keep me from murdering it too, he had to give Hastur dweomerkeeper levels to get him (Su) Disjunction just so the Great Old One could *touch* me (Su Disjunction so I couldn't counterspell it, and abusing the fact that it was a deity to get it through my redundant selective antimagic fields, in case you were curious). This is the kind of thing I do for fun and minimal profit. I can't be the only person like that. Also, nice knowing you all: Hastur(3). :smallamused:

[johnbragg]

See, now this I can get behind. I get this logic.

IT was stated flat-out somewhere in the 2E DMG, which I no longer have.

[ericgrau]

See, now this I can get behind. I get this logic. I even agree with the idea that once PCs can no longer be challenged by the GM, that should be the end of the game. Like, that's really sensible actually.

I think it should be spelled out a little more clearly, though, in places like that, because there's still just a certain arrogance and general disconnect in going "the PCs cannot defeat this NPC, it's too strong," if only on the grounds that a lot of people just see something like that as a challenge.

There is also the issue that it's hard for a module to plan for what to do if you kill a plot important NPC too early. Optimization aside, this isn't the greatest in a system where lucky/unlucky rolls can defeat a lone foe. As can careful planning in such a freeform system. In a system where death is so easy no matter how strong you are, what the module needs to do instead is to have a cause that is bigger than any one individual which will at least partly continue on without him.

[Necroticplague]

See, now this I can get behind. I get this logic. I even agree with the idea that once PCs can no longer be challenged by the GM, that should be the end of the game. Like, that's really sensible actually.

Um, how is it possible for a DM to not be able to challenge his players? The sheer fact that the players have finite resources, while the DM has infinite resources, should make this impossible. Combined with the fact that the DM typically has much better information about the PCs than the PCs do about the world, and the fact that the PCs can only experience the world through the DMs description (thus meaning the DM can carefully control flow of information), it seams trivial for a DM to be able to challenge anyone simply by rigging scenarios against them without providing them with awareness of that fact.

[johnbragg]

I did mis-remember the level that 2E said was too high.

Perhaps adjust to "DM cannot challenge the players without stretching and snapping the credibilty of the campaign world."


Above 20th Level

Theoretically, there is no upper limit to character class levels (although there are racial
limitations). The material presented here takes characters only to 20th level--experience
has shown that player characters are most enjoyable when played within the 1-20 range.
Above 20th level, characters gain few additional powers and face even fewer truly
daunting adventures.

Consummate skill and creativity are required to construct adventures for extremely
powerful characters (at least adventures that consist of more than just throwing bigger
and bigger monsters at the nearly unbeatable party). Very high level player characters
have so few limitations that every threat must be directed against the same weaknesses.
And there are only so many times a DM can kidnap friends and family, steal spell books,
or exile powerful lords before it becomes old hat.

Retirement: When characters reach the level where adventures are no longer a
challenge, players should be encouraged to retire them. Retired characters enter a "semiNPC"
state. The character sheets and all information are entrusted to the DM's care

[Eisfalken]

I don't think either extreme (anarchy vs DM tyranny) is particularly palatable. I firmly believe the DM's role is to moderate the game and intelligently apply the rules to the situations of the session with an eye to keeping the players happy. That was my original point, for what it's worth.

This. All of this.

[Cosi]

There is also the issue that it's hard for a module to plan for what to do if you kill a plot important NPC too early. Optimization aside, this isn't the greatest in a system where lucky/unlucky rolls can defeat a lone foe. As can careful planning in such a freeform system. In a system where death is so easy no matter how strong you are, what the module needs to do instead is to have a cause that is bigger than any one individual which will at least partly continue on without him.

That's because modules are inherently unstable. Even if the adventure can survive enemies dying at the wrong time, it's incredibly easy to go off the rails unless you actively try not to. Maybe the PCs think that the cultists (who the plot says are a front) are part of a larger organization. Maybe they take the MacGuffin from the first adventure and run off with it rather than progressing the intended plot. It is ... unlikely that people are going to stay on track for the next adventure through two adventures, let alone the half a dozen or so an adventure path has.

I think the better solution is to present an enemy instead of a plot. If the PCs are supposed to explore the abandoned mines, discover some weird runes, and go on a quest that ultimately leads to stopping Orcus's evil plan, that can go off the rails any number of ways. On the other hand, if there's a villain who's planning to summon Demogorgon, or unleash a deadly plague, or create a bunch of undead. If the module is a goal rather than a path, it's much harder to go off the rails, in no small part because the rails are a lot less strict.

[zergling.exe]

That's because modules are inherently unstable. Even if the adventure can survive enemies dying at the wrong time, it's incredibly easy to go off the rails unless you actively try not to. Maybe the PCs think that the cultists (who the plot says are a front) are part of a larger organization. Maybe they take the MacGuffin from the first adventure and run off with it rather than progressing the intended plot. It is ... unlikely that people are going to stay on track for the next adventure through two adventures, let alone the half a dozen or so an adventure path has.

I think the better solution is to present an enemy instead of a plot. If the PCs are supposed to explore the abandoned mines, discover some weird runes, and go on a quest that ultimately leads to stopping Orcus's evil plan, that can go off the rails any number of ways. On the other hand, if there's a villain who's planning to summon Demogorgon, or unleash a deadly plague, or create a bunch of undead. If the module is a goal rather than a path, it's much harder to go off the rails, in no small part because the rails are a lot less strict.

Not everyone acquires APs to be told 'Hey, here's this really cool goal, try and build an adventure around it!'. They get them more for 'Hey, here's an adventure we made for you to run your player's through!'.

The first one requires lots of effort on the DMs part to get things working. The second doesn't require much aside from adjucating the rules.

[ryu]

Not everyone acquires APs to be told 'Hey, here's this really cool goal, try and build an adventure around it!'. They get them more for 'Hey, here's an adventure we made for you to run your player's through!'.

The first one requires lots of effort on the DMs part to get things working. The second doesn't require much aside from adjucating the rules.

''The information networks you have access to say that this tyrannical villain in this location is both a blight on the general populace, and rich enough to be worth killing for all the self-interested neutral types. Commence planning how to murder him/getting strong enough to realistically murder him through standard murderhobo growth.''

It's not hard.

[zergling.exe]

''The information networks you have access to say that this tyrannical villain in this location is both a blight on the general populace, and rich enough to be worth killing for all the self-interested neutral types. Commence planning how to murder him/getting strong enough to realistically murder him through standard murderhobo growth.''

It's not hard.

That's still the DM having to build the adventure as opposed to just running what other people made.

[ryu]

That's still the DM having to build the adventure as opposed to just running what other people made.

Pick random monsters of appropriate CR and check that they won't likely randomly TPK people. If all you want is a simple thing without much effort involved you can literally knock this out in the span of less than an hour, and have more stability and less contrivance of adventure for it.

[elonin]

With the mishmash of rules and more groups using dragon as a research, I'd expect that 2nd edition had more loopholes for allowing rule bending.

[AnonymousPepper]

Um, how is it possible for a DM to not be able to challenge his players? The sheer fact that the players have finite resources, while the DM has infinite resources, should make this impossible. Combined with the fact that the DM typically has much better information about the PCs than the PCs do about the world, and the fact that the PCs can only experience the world through the DMs description (thus meaning the DM can carefully control flow of information), it seams trivial for a DM to be able to challenge anyone simply by rigging scenarios against them without providing them with awareness of that fact.

Technically speaking, a GM could challenge players forever by invoking rule zero whenever they do something that could remove the challenge. But realistically, especially with tier 1 and 0 classes in play, gameplay will reach a point where the party - or at least the party wizard - is simply unable to be challenged by anything that has stats in any kind of logically consistent manner (even things like an Aleax or an Ice Assassin that are literally exact copies of the PC, because the PC will know how to play their character better than the GM would by that point in the game). And that's just with a perfect GM.

With an imperfect one, as perfect ones are in short supply, that point will be reached sooner, as they run out of ideas.

[Quertus]

IME, 2e parties were pretty much guaranteed to lack balance, while 3.x parties are sometimes balanced, sometimes not. However, the size of that imbalance is orders of magnitude larger in 3.x than in 2e.

One 2e game I was in, a 15th (or so) level fighter dealt 2 damage. Of course, when I checked his sheet, I discovered that was because he was only dealing his weapon damage, and not adding in his bonuses - from specialization, a +5 weapon, or the girdle of giant strength he was wearing. So adding it all up, and writing "+19" after his weapon damage was all it took to make his character balanced.

Again IME (as a "Johnny" who independently invented lore + regenerate + thicket basilisk), 2e did not have nearly as many exploits as 3.x. A few good ones, like a lack of stacking rules, the grappling rules, KO punches, body swapping with magic jar, lethal poisons, and even cooler polymorph rules, but nowhere near the variety and frequency you can find in 3.x.


Um, how is it possible for a DM to not be able to challenge his players?

Well, one group I talked to had just this problem. The DM could no longer challenge one of the characters, so he had it ascend to godhood. The character? A rather low-op 7th level character. Needless to say, I didn't play with them much - they couldn't have handled the culture shock.

[Incanur]

In 3.x, the idea that certain entities effectively can't lose to the PCs makes sense based on the mechanics. Anything the PCs can do, NPCs can do first and probably better. At the higher end, just look salient divine abilities, specifically Alter Reality. It's almost rule 0, the ability. Realistically, the gods look out for their own interests and you can't defeat one of them without the aid of another deity or something similar. The same goes for high-level NPCs, dragons, and so on, though, depending on the details, luck could be more of a factor here.

[Seward]

Won't help. Blasphemy isn't language-dependent, so your ability to hear it is irrelevant. It effects all creatures in the area. Silence might work, but that's a bit more gray than would be safe to rely on (days it protects against sonic effects, but it doesn't say how).

Silence works on blasphemy. Blasphemy has (sonic) in its descriptors. (sonic) spells don't work in a silence field, full stop.

Which is one reason my L13 oracle made damn sure he could quicken silence spells, since in Pathfinder that's the only way to cast the spell in combat anymore (it takes a full round to cast, and only lasts rounds/level), and most times you need a blasphemy defense it's because a bunch of outsiders either teleported in or used their vast skill points+spells to get close to a party before anybody noticed and buffed.

I don't find "you can't kill the NPC" very often. What I see much more often is "you fail your objective if you murder-hobo the NPC". Yeah, they're dead but you failed. I remember spending one whole fight casting breath of life on NPCs because our party magus kept killing outright folks in what was essentially a barroom brawl.

[Necroticplague]

Silence works on blasphemy. Blasphemy has (sonic) in its descriptors. (sonic) spells don't work in a silence field, full stop.

Where it say that last part? It says it provides protection against sonic spells, but it irritatingly fails to explain how or what kind, and it seems a bit of a stretch to extend that to immunity.

[Job]

Where it say that last part? It says it provides protection against sonic spells, but it irritatingly fails to explain how or what kind, and it seems a bit of a stretch to extend that to immunity.

From the Silence spell description: "Creatures in an area of a silence spell are immune to sonic or language-based attacks, spells, and effects. (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/silence.html)"

[Necroticplague]

From the Silence spell description: "Creatures in an area of a silence spell are immune to sonic or language-based attacks, spells, and effects. (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/silence.html)"

Ah. There's the confusion. I was reading the dnd 3.5 version, where that line is instead


This spell provides a defense against sonic or language-based attacks.
Which is far less comprehensive because A: it only includes attacks, not also "spells and effects" and B: only says it provides protection against, not immunity to.

[Seward]

Well, I did play quite a bit of 3.5, in Organized Play and levels where Blasphemy was both common and brutal (the most common way to get it is the half-fiend template which mixes badly with stuff that advances at 3-4 hit die per level), so lots of different GMs, and I visited other regions where playstyles and rules interpretations varied quite a bit.

Not once did I see anybody question that Silence gave you immunity to any kind of sonic effect. They all interpreted "protects you from" as exactly that. The spell has no qualifiers or exceptions. But I guess somebody must have found it ambiguous because both you and the Pathfinder writers noticed that it was vague and the Pathfinder authors did something about it. Given how significantly the spell was nerfed (1 round instead of standard action, lasts 1r/level instead of 1min/level) in terms of action economy, it was the least they could do.

[gmt119x]

That's because modules are inherently unstable ... I think the better solution is to present an enemy instead of a plot.

Very well said. First, I tend to be the DM and tend to use a modified 1e with house rules. Each version of the game has made some changes I like, but generally, I hate how each version has dumbed things down more and more to try to prevent rules-abuses with more rules. Second, I am careful about what I allow my villains to do since I think it is just game design stupidity to not allow the players to do the same at some point. Third, making a character more powerful just by using stat buffs is incrredibly unimaginative and heavy-handed on the DM's part.

Fourth, it is way too easy to make or destroy magic items (that's another case of the game designers coming up with something and then going "Oops, we need to be able to counter that"). I have changed Enchant an Item and Permanence to both be third level spells. This makes it pretty simple for more characters to be able to make, but they still risk losing a CON point each time Permanence is cast (to make a wand of fireballs just requires Enchant an Item and then multiple fireball spells but to make a +1 longsword requires an expensive sword that is to be enchanted, Enchanted An Item, Enchanted Weapon and two Permanence spells - one to make the Enchanted Weapon effect be continuous and another to lock in the overall enchantment). What I really like is that this is a simple but risky way to get magic items in to play and it requires a party of lower level characters to work together to get it done while providing a way for magic items to be fairly common as a replacement for what we do with ttechnology.

Fifth I use a modified character tree system since characters can get killed and I generally don't provide resurection options : it makes any risks the players take more real and any sacrifices a character makes so very much more memorable (I had a game where a player took quick action to save the party even though he knew it would almost guarentee that character's death - he took me aside to talk out what he wanted to try first). Those are times my players still talk about.

In my campaign, I have detailed the most powerful characters with motives and a general outline of stats and abilities (its just not worth it to go in to too much detail unless it is going to impact the campaign in some way). They have henchmen who have henchmen, etc. To make things more interesting, I try to treat these NPCs as if they were real people. In fact, it helps me if I think of a character as if it were Nikola Tesla, or Cardinal Richelieu or Vladimir Putin for instance that have been put in to game stats.

The stats aren't what is really important, its what those stats allow the character to do. Here are several example characters...

1) My version of Rajaat is NOT tougher because of stats that are way higher than anyone else, but because he uses his abilities so much more intelligently. Unlike somebody who is just given uber-power, he had to experimeent to figure out how to do something in the first place. My reviseed Rajaat has links to Air, Earth, Fire and Water Elemental planes. He created the process that allows the sorceror kings to grant priestly spells so it makes sense that he would have found a way to do something similar himself, right? Essentially while mastering psionics and magic he used Psychic Surgery to split his personality in to 5 parts. 4 of them were essentially multiclassed Templar-Psionicists of 24th level that could each function as an elemental cleric (linked to air, fire, earth and water). The remaining persona focused on developing defiler magic (he never acquired druidic or preserver skills because his interest was in the destruction of the existing order so he could then return things to the halflings) and functioned as a 19th level mage in that.

ok, so that might be a "modest" stat block of such a powerful character, but think about it: what would a team of 4 elemental priest-psionicists be able to do if working together and they could each either attempt to absorb or disrupt magic being cast against them, or, they could use their own magic all the way up to psionic-enchantments against their opponents? Then throw in a defiler for heavy hitting attacks. Oh, and Rajaat would have made sure that he could grant himself priest spells while limiting the process for his champions so that they could not: he gave them those powers, why would he ever allow them to be equal to him, and, since the plan from the very beginning was to eventually get rid of them too he made sure that each champion was three times more susceptible to magic cast by him than they would be to magic cast by anyone else against them... duh!

2) one low level villain got six carefully chosen familiars. He was normally a 5th level mage but those familiars meant that he could now function as an 11th level mage (and cast 6th level spells in my revised system). The problem for the villain was that the loss of any one familiar severely hurt him (he would lose 4 of his real levels) and the loss of another would kill him. Note: the prohibition in the rules against having more than one familiar was to prvent people from having all the advantages of multiple familiars without taking on the risks of having multiple familiars. That's just a lazy way to try to keep things under control on the part of the game designers. Good DMs and players don't want things to get out of control because then its not fun anymore.

3) One drow fighter mage opponent had a ring of non-detection/fire-resistance/mind-blank/vampiric regeneration, a longsword of wounding and four troll bodyguards. A long time before the players meet him, he had nicked each of the trolls with his sword when they were passed out so he continuously regenerated 4hp/round and his firrer-resistance meant the PCs wouldn't be able to trivially counter that.

4) One dwarven master smith had become permanently affected by a potion of invulnerability when two potions randomly interacted (the point is that this is magic so there is a certain randomness to it even if your characters can figure out the general process). That gave the player the idea to very carefully reepeat that to potions of fire, air, earth and water elemental control. There were huge risks each time and the dwarf almost died twice even with careful precautions. The outcome is that the character now works with elemental minions (they work willingly with him) to make incredible items.

5) One villain had been a normal human 3rd level mage, but evil psionicists had experimented on him using Psychic Surgery, splice and Psychic Surgery to basically give him Psych surgery as a wild-talent. They used Psychic Surgery, Splice and Domination on him to make him permanently obedient to them. Their goal was to have a vessel they could take control of that conveniently gave them access to disciplines they wanted to use as they experimented on other creatures. At the same time, this gave them a layer of protection against something going wrong. His masters were working to use Domination and Convergence to have an army of mind-linked servants as well as a collection of useful psionic-item tools. He was unable to get free of their domination, but when they were killed, he was free. In the mean time they had been able to give him Psychic Clone, Fabricate/Create Object, Vampiric Youthfulness, Telekinetic Absorbtion, Split Personality, Receptacle, Appraise, Splice, Regeneration, Convergence, Empower, Telepathy as well as psionic attack and defense skills along with all the pre-requisite psionic powers.

6) One Beholder was experimented on to give it the powers of a Deepspawn, mage and psionicist, but did not have to give up its central eye (that eye becomes incapacitated for d10 turns after a spellcasting attempt even if it fails).

7) One elf mage/thief/psionicist used several wishes and a polymorph other on himself to be transformed in to a Great Wyrm Radiant Dragon while preserving his personality and allowing him to choose the innate magic that his dragon form would be able to use each day and keeping his class abilities (thief skills only usable when he shape changes in to humanoid form).

[Thane of Fife]

But still. I mean. If it has stats, you can kill it, and Borys is no exception; I can't imagine that there weren't tricks in 2e that were just as broken as anything that exists in 3e. Honestly, I can't say I'm particularly a fan of out-and-out saying that the PCs should lose. Mostly because I find it funny on the grounds that if you tell a group of players that they can't do something because they're just not able to, they can and will, without fail, figure out a way to do it.

The 90's were kind of the era of metaplot (though there is still some of that), and as such, I think sourcebooks and adventures tended to be written with the expectation that stuff in previous adventures and sourcebooks had already happened. As such, adventures tended to be pretty railroady because you don't want to allow the players to do something that will invalidate the books you write later.

I'm not familiar with the book you're referring to, but I'd guess that it's less the authors were thinking that the players couldn't kills Borys, or even that the adventure would be better if they didn't, but rather something of a clumsy statement that, "You can do this, but you'll be off the rails and on your own."

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: Thread Necromancy