Rich's campaign is the opposite of mine!

[Talya]

I am running a PbP game in which the players spent some time in a mercenary company. They were engaged in a huge battle effort for a while. They were level 2ish with a rather high point buy (40), and were surrounded by average soldiers on both sides, so of course they shone like superheroes.

Now, in their unit, I specified that there were a number (unspecified, for my convenience) of NPC soldiers, that I woud from here on in refer to as "redshirts." They could feel free, if they wanted to address one, to make up a name on the spot for the redshirt so that I didn't have to do it. In the event myself or a player ever named a redshirt, the named redshirt would die horribly soon afterward, so I didn't need to ever remember them again.

Having a name was a horrible fate for those NPCs...nothing at all like in Order of the Stick.

[TigerHunter]

....
You're evil.
I like you.

[Lord_Butters_I]

In my campaigns I will frequently rename npcs on the spot because I can't remember the old name. One redshirt changed names six times in one session, eventually the PCs would just refer to him as "NPC"

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

....
You're evil.
I like you.

Seconded...

[Tredrick]

....
You're evil.
I like you.

Look at that outfit she's wearing. Did you seriously need to read the post to know she is evil?

[Scarab83]

I am running a PbP game in which the players spent some time in a mercenary company. They were engaged in a huge battle effort for a while. They were level 2ish with a rather high point buy (40), and were surrounded by average soldiers on both sides, so of course they shone like superheroes.

Now, in their unit, I specified that there were a number (unspecified, for my convenience) of NPC soldiers, that I woud from here on in refer to as "redshirts." They could feel free, if they wanted to address one, to make up a name on the spot for the redshirt so that I didn't have to do it. In the event myself or a player ever named a redshirt, the named redshirt would die horribly soon afterward, so I didn't need to ever remember them again.

Having a name was a horrible fate for those NPCs...nothing at all like in Order of the Stick.

How well has that "40 point buy superhero" business been received by your players? I'm thinking of attempting to run a game and I'm trying to get ideas. Does it make them invested in their characters more? Does it make any of them bored, like nothing is a challenge?

[mockingbyrd7]

Look at that outfit she's wearing. Did you seriously need to read the post to know she is evil?

LOL!

Oh, and thirded. :smallamused:

[Raltar]

How well has that "40 point buy superhero" business been received by your players? I'm thinking of attempting to run a game and I'm trying to get ideas. Does it make them invested in their characters more? Does it make any of them bored, like nothing is a challenge?


I am one of her players. I don't think it's had a really big difference on the game as a whole. Except we had a half-orc fighter and a halfling sorceror take out like...50 enemies as the rest of us retreated. The halfling didn't do much except cast grease a few times and I think he was killed by the half-orc's critical fumble. I could go check, but I'm pretty lazy like that. In the end, they both died, along with a cleric, but I don't think the cleric did much because he was brought to negative hps in the battle before, then was healed by the druid. It was a rather...silly thing of him to do in any case.

Anyway, we haven't done a whole lot of combat yet. Besides the war in the begining, we had an encounter with 3 ashworms(after we leveled to level 3) and it seemed that the samurai would have been pretty dead if the battle lasted much longer than it did. But yeah, in the end, I haven't noticed a serious difference than other lower point buy games I have played.

[Lemur]

In such a situation, I'd make a point of naming every redshirt I could, and remembering each one's name. Then, at some point in the campaign, I'd make a dramatic (and obviously drawn out) speech about how I'd never forget them, and that their heroic sacrifices wouldn't be in vain.

Also, I would give many of them really bizarre names, like Goonga, Headbolt, Gimmick, or Professor Waters.

[Kaerbek]

Look at that outfit she's wearing. Did you seriously need to read the post to know she is evil?

Look at that outfit she's wearing. Did you seriously think she needs to be evil to be likeable??? xD

[Renx]

Mm... just evil enough to be crunchy. ^_^

[Yehomer]

A few times my DM asked us to choose names for redshirts. So one time we had Cannon and Fodder, and another time Bebop, Rocks and Teddy :D I think some of them actually survived though :X

[Capt'n Ironbrow]

My group have gotten to the point where there's actually a few of us in charge of seperate groups of redshirts (a count's military, a starting order of templars, a city's defensive legion and it's reconnaissance unit)... we usually only name the officers and NCO's or the 4-5 grunts we take along with us on an adventure... It just happens to be so that the one we give a hero's name (from some or other media) is the first (and usually only one) to get killed... redshirt NCO's happen to die a lot during their first assignment (though there's two chaps in the Count's military and temple order who survived a great deal of adventures and are now 2nd in commands)...

the chap in charge of the recon unit has taken the trouble to name ALL 50 of his subordinates...

[Talya]

Anyway, we haven't done a whole lot of combat yet. Besides the war in the begining, we had an encounter with 3 ashworms(after we leveled to level 3) and it seemed that the samurai would have been pretty dead if the battle lasted much longer than it did. But yeah, in the end, I haven't noticed a serious difference than other lower point buy games I have played.

I'd like to point out that the "pretty dead" samurai is an OA samurai, not the horrid CW samurai.

And he's a warblade, too.

Anyway, the half-orc fighter and the halfling sorceror took out somewhere between 20 and 25 enemy warriors at a 15' bottleneck before the fighter finally bit it.

[truemane]

How well has that "40 point buy superhero" business been received by your players? I'm thinking of attempting to run a game and I'm trying to get ideas. Does it make them invested in their characters more? Does it make any of them bored, like nothing is a challenge?

First off, you're the DM. You control all Time and Space. There's no possible way that your players can get too powerful. You can ALWAYS make a challenge.

Does it make them more invested in their characters? Sometimes. It depends on the Player. Some people like playing superheroes, and some like playing more average folks. I tend to run mine at lower poit buys. 32 most often. Enough to have one great attribute and couple of pretty good ones.

It's mosty the MAD classes that benefit from high point buys. Wizards and Sorcerors and (to a lesser extent) Clerics and Rogues and Barbarians are always going have the same attribute really high and the real as good as they can manage.

Personally, I'd go with a lower point buy. Then, at least, you can spot the powergamers because they'll complain they can't have more.

[Quietus]

First off, you're the DM. You control all Time and Space. There's no possible way that your players can get too powerful. You can ALWAYS make a challenge.

Does it make them more invested in their characters? Sometimes. It depends on the Player. Some people like playing superheroes, and some like playing more average folks. I tend to run mine at lower poit buys. 32 most often. Enough to have one great attribute and couple of pretty good ones.

It's mosty the MAD classes that benefit from high point buys. Wizards and Sorcerors and (to a lesser extent) Clerics and Rogues and Barbarians are always going have the same attribute really high and the real as good as they can manage.

Personally, I'd go with a lower point buy. Then, at least, you can spot the powergamers because they'll complain they can't have more.

Really, the biggest difference with such a high point buy is that someone will increase that 16 to an 18. Ultimately, that really doesn't matter in the long run - 16 is plenty, 18 is just gravy. The powergamers will complain no matter how many points you give them, unless you give... what was it, 96, I think, that gives six 18's?

Okay, okay, that might be stretching it a BIT...

[Yakk]

Higher stats boost offense more than defense.

A higher strength boosts damage per hit by 1x to 1.5x, to-hit by 1x.

A higher con boosts HP per level by 1x.

A higher dex boosts AC by 1x, or to hit by 1x.

Average damage per hit with a 2HS and no str is 7. Average with 18 str is 13 -- 86% damage boost.

Average HP for a 10 con L 2 fighter is 15.5. Average for an 18 con L 2 fighter is 23.5 -- 52% HP boost.

Net effect of +8 con +8 strength: 19% survivability drop, and the attacker hits more often.

If the attacker power attacks for -4/+8 that's +200% damage for the same hit chance -- or a 49% survivability drop!

The same is true in a few other areas -- your offense grows faster than your defense does as stats grow.

This is one of the reasons why players max out their offensive stats with a smaller point buy.

I guess, having maxed out their offensive stats, a player might have points left over to spend on defensive stats -- thus resulting in a higher point buy making defensive stats more important.

Practically, this will also boost melee characters at lower levels relative to casters -- which causes the caster balance problem (weaker at low levels, stronger at high levels) to be magnified.

[Talya]

Higher point buys make Paladins and even Monks far more viable than they would be under lower point buys. A fighter can get by maxing strength and constitution and ignore everything else, and end up a very good fighter. A paladin, to be just as effective, needs Strength, Constitution, and Charisma just as high as the fighter needs strength and constitution, and also needs Wisdom of at least 14. Furthermore, as you level, the fighter can boost strength an constitution as they wish, where a paladin needs to make sure charisma stays high as well.

Monks have it even worse, needing strength, dexterity, constitution, and wisdom.

[Fawkes]

Once, my DM included an important NPC who had lost his leg in combat. Unwilling to commit his name to memory, I simply took to calling him "Limpy."

I think Limpy ended up getting left behind on a battlefield.

[Yakk]

True. :) MAD classes get more benefit from more points, especially if you cap stats at 18. But you could just cap stats at 14 and use normal point buy for the same effect.

Note that your fix also doesn't deal with the leveling aspect of the problem.

[Twilight Jack]

Reading both the original post and many of the replies, I realize that I am altogether too invested in my NPCs when I run games. You people are mean.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just tend to flesh out even the most incidental NPCs if it is at all possible to do so without taking up more time than the character merits. I go for a certain sense of verisimilitude in my games and have managed to make players upset when I've whacked relatively minor NPC shopkeepers, who had no purpose in the plot, but had a great personality and some good lines and jokes.

EDIT: The worst example of this that comes to mind in a D&D game is when I ran a war of my own. During the second act of the campaign, I put the characters in charge of an entire squadron (about 5 platoons or 150-200 soldiers, all told), and went out of my way to ensure that every soldier in the squadron had a name, a distinguishing feature, an alignment, and a personality. As the characters led this force, they quickly realized that any time they spoke to a soldier, they were actually talking to a person. I didn't make a big production out of it, just made a point of never letting them speak to a soldier without dropping at least a single detail that gave that person texture and presence. As the war progressed and battles were fought, the net effect was that casualties were more than just numbers. Every soldier who died was a young man who wasn't going home. It definitely had an effect on how the players planned for battles. They fought to win and sacrificed lives when they had to, but they didn't view their soldiers as faceless resources, that's for sure.

[Rhuna_Coppermane]

Huh. My character in my husband's game started the campaign with a platoon of what the other players assumed were redshirts. Well, they all survived the first adventure and leveled up pretty handily (I worked very had at my tactics to keep them all alive, and it worked). Said character is evil, too.

Granted, she is a low-level officer in the Elvish army and was put in charge of an Omega Platoon in the hopes that she'd screw up and die, so whipping them into shape and keeping them all alive is in her best interests. (Having a core group of people who are fanatically loyal to her woun't hurt, either.)