Worst REAL house rules you've used

[Vknight]

I'm doing rolled stats and most of the players are ok with it but one player is insisting on this rule. Players that roll 17 or 18 on a stat have it lowered to 15 instead.
Despite the fact its rolled stats where your stats are added up and the total must be over 70. And its made things balanced the players with a 18 usually have a stat that is 5 or something.

[Kurald Galain]

Although I do always have the temptation to run a campaign about a bear invasion just to use gummi bears as minis...

A trick I once used in Paranoia is using M&Ms as miniatures. Because their colors match the security clearances in the game.

Of course, gameplay in Paranoia is much, ahem, happier than in D&D...

[Capt Spanner]

Another potential problem is players eating the miniatures when they're not supposed to (which doesn't usually happen with metal miniatures).

"Where did this army of orcs go?"

"Mmm... delicious!"

I feel there's a story here...

[jdolch]

Re-rolling initiative every turn. You think combat takes forever? Add re-drawing the initiative table every turn for a 6 person party, 8 mooks, and a boss to that.

You are not playing Shadowrun then. Yes we re-roll Initiative every round but we also need one (action packed) hour for one combat turn, so it's not actually all that often that we roll Initiative.

[GreatWyrmGold]

You are not playing Shadowrun then. Yes we re-roll Initiative every round but we also need one (action packed) hour for one combat turn, so it's not actually all that often that we roll Initiative.
Ah, Shadowrun. A game with many good ideas (especially settingwise), but flawed execution on so many things. I look forward to a chance to run a game in the Shadowrun universe with a less-quirky ruleset.

[Xethoras]

Back when we first started playing D&D 3.0 at 11 or so years our DM mostly gave XP for lasthitting. Better yet, player killing got you all the experience the killed player had accumulated. Fun times xD

[Knaight]

Ah, Shadowrun. A game with many good ideas (especially settingwise), but flawed execution on so many things. I look forward to a chance to run a game in the Shadowrun universe with a less-quirky ruleset.

There's always Shadowrun: Anarchy. It's a much lighter system built for the same setting, in a totally different style.

[Floret]

Ah, Shadowrun. A game with many good ideas (especially settingwise), but flawed execution on so many things. I look forward to a chance to run a game in the Shadowrun universe with a less-quirky ruleset.

You might wanna have a look at Shadowrun: Anarchy. It's in many ways Shadowrun light - and then there's some narrative rules, but ignoring them doesn't break anything if you're not keen on those. Though I have heard the German book I play after is more well-edited than the English one...

Worst houserule I keep using: Ignoring half the rules whenever I feel they get in the way.

Because honestly, that just points to us playing the wrong game system and is never quite fair in execution, no matter how much I try.

Edit: Ninjaed, but hey, double suggestion lends more credence, right?^^

[GreatWyrmGold]

There's always Shadowrun: Anarchy.

You might wanna have a look at Shadowrun: Anarchy.

Edit: Ninjaed, but hey, double suggestion lends more credence, right?^^
Sounds like something to look into, yeah. Thanks!

[Torpin]

you could use a wish to make any spell subject to permanency, the wizard used 3 wishes in one day
"i wish to roll a 20 on my next spell pen"
I wish the next creature i cast a spell on fails its saving throw
I wish this magic jar i just cast on the tarrasque was permanent.

[SodaQueen]

In my early days as a DM a new player convinced me to use critical fumble rules. I dropped it after the first combat because experienced warriors kept dropping their swords and stabbing themselves while none of the casters were affected at all.

I've had the grave misfortune to have been in a game or two since that have used crit fumbles (only for a single session each, and I wouldn't have joined if I had known) and that mixed in with the horror stories I've read here have only reinforced my opinion that critical fumbles are dumb and just the worst.

[Quertus]

you could use a wish to make any spell subject to permanency, the wizard used 3 wishes in one day
"i wish to roll a 20 on my next spell pen"
I wish the next creature i cast a spell on fails its saving throw
I wish this magic jar i just cast on the tarrasque was permanent.

But... Magic Jar is permanent. :smallconfused:

Or, at least, it was in 2e. :smalltongue:

[Torpin]

In my early days as a DM a new player convinced me to use critical fumble rules. I dropped it after the first combat because experienced warriors kept dropping their swords and stabbing themselves while none of the casters were affected at all.

I've had the grave misfortune to have been in a game or two since that have used crit fumbles (only for a single session each, and I wouldn't have joined if I had known) and that mixed in with the horror stories I've read here have only reinforced my opinion that critical fumbles are dumb and just the worst.

they are the worst because weapons users dont scale as well as casters and this scales negatively with the fighters

[GreatWyrmGold]

It's a shame that there isn't some kind of universal "spell roll" that we could apply critical fumbles too. Magical mishaps tend to be a lot more interesting than dropping a sword...

[Man_Over_Game]

I guess there's 5e's Wild Magic table?

Not always. Not every spell uses an attack roll.

However, a solution could be that if the target crits on their saving throw, they know exactly who cast it and what they were trying to cast. Might be grounds enough to give them advantage to attack the mage in question.

I don't mind critical fumbles too much, as long as they aren't life-threatening. 5% of the time, a god gets unlucky and can get hit by anyone, even a peasant child; saying that a warrior drops his weapon 5% of the time in active combat doesn't seem too unrealistic.

And that's exactly what I do in 5e. You crit fail, you just drop your weapon. I do have it set so that if your weapon requires two hands, you provoke an attack of opportunity to pull it out or to pick it up, which incentivizes players to utilize sidearms.

I still haven't found a solution I like when it comes to casting spells, though. Rolling a d100 every time you cast a spell just seems obnoxious.

[JNAProductions]

Not always. Not every spell uses an attack roll.

However, a solution could be that if the target crits on their saving throw, they know exactly who cast it and what they were trying to cast. Might be grounds enough to give them advantage to attack the mage in question.

I don't mind critical fumbles too much, as long as they aren't life-threatening. 5% of the time, a god gets unlucky and can get hit by anyone, even a peasant child; saying that a warrior drops his weapon 5% of the time in active combat doesn't seem too unrealistic.

And that's exactly what I do in 5e. You crit fail, you just drop your weapon. I do have it set so that if your weapon requires two hands, you provoke an attack of opportunity to pull it out or to pick it up, which incentivizes players to utilize sidearms.

I still haven't found a solution I like when it comes to casting spells, though. Rolling a d100 every time you cast a spell just seems obnoxious.

A 1st level Fighter has a 5% chance per round of dropping their weapon.

A 20th level Fighter has an 18.55% chance.

Why do they get worse at holding their weapon as they level?

[Man_Over_Game]

A 1st level Fighter has a 5% chance per round of dropping their weapon.

A 20th level Fighter has an 18.55% chance.

Why do they get worse at holding their weapon as they level?

They don't get worse; they get faster. They're also fighting superhuman monsters, usually stuff that can murder you before you can blink.


I guess it's also worth noting that I also make it so that weapons wielded in two hands are harder to drop (make an attack roll, DC 15 to hang on to your weapon), with the intent to give more reason to use the Versatile feature on a one-handed weapon.

[ATHATH]

They don't get worse; they get faster. They're also fighting superhuman monsters, usually stuff that can murder you before you can blink.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?303089-The-Guy-at-the-Gym-Fallacy

[Quertus]

You know, I'm actually a bit on board with this, at least in that I've never liked how there's no real cost or chance of mishap with using magic in D&D. Which is kind of silly because you're basically rewriting the fabric of reality; you think that would be really easy to mess up. I've been told that I would probably like Mage: The Ascension because it apparently does this much better.

I guess there's 5e's Wild Magic table?

Outside of Mage: The Ascension, very few Wizards are rewriting reality. D&D Mages are, as a rule, following the rules of reality. WoD Mages are rather unusual for actually rewriting the rules of reality - which rules!

OK, it's not quite "level".


They don't get worse; they get faster. They're also fighting superhuman monsters, usually stuff that can murder you before you can blink.


I guess it's also worth noting that I also make it so that weapons wielded in two hands are harder to drop (make an attack roll, DC 15 to hang on to your weapon), with the intent to give more reason to use the Versatile feature on a one-handed weapon.

I've been sparring with you since you could barely lift a sword. I can tell you're getting better, because you drop your sword much more often now. In fact, you almost drop it as often as the Master.

... Is an observation that should have the opportunity to be made by no-one.

[Durandu Ran]

I don’t personally mind crit fumbles, but our DM has us roll again on a natural 1 to confirm, so that lowers the fumble chance below 5%, and then rolls d% for the effect, so the negative effect isn’t always dropping the weapon. It sounds like some DMs make every natural 1 an instant weapon drop, which I would mind a lot more.

[Lalliman]

I like fumble rules that incorporate your opponent. If you roll a 1, the person you're attacking can make an opportunity attack / try to trip you / try to disarm you. That way they won't happen against a dummy, and a high-level character is unlikely to suffer from it against weak opponents. Unfortunately it's not that simple with ranged attacks.

[Cluedrew]

I've been sparring with you since you could barely lift a sword. I can tell you're getting better, because you drop your sword much more often now. In fact, you almost drop it as often as the Master.

... Is an observation that should have the opportunity to be made by no-one.This is the problem really. Critical fumbles are not based off of skill, but attack rate. And of course magic doesn't have this issue because why would a complex formula tapping into the occult forces and took years of study to learn be complex enough that trying to perform it while someone is physically hitting once every second or two be difficult enough that you might actually make a mistake?

"You have improved, the damage done by your magical miscasts is much more severe now." is also something that might best be avoided, but it makes a bit more sense than Quertus's line. A lot of fantasy stories involve some great mystic disaster, not so often from regular spells but still, there is a connection there. Unlike that epic fight in Lord of the Rings where Aragon dropped his sword while taking a swing at an orc and had to be saved by the horse lord who's name I forget while defending Helm's Deep. Because you know, that never happened.

[King of Nowhere]

In a game of AD&D 2e, one DM automatically gave each PC and NPC maximum die rolls for hit points. OK, that's completely balanced, since is just about doubles hit points for everybody. The only real effect is that it makes CON bonuses less important overall. [A fighter's CON bonus of +3 per die is a 30% increase (10 to 13) rather than a 55% increase (5.5 to 8.5).]

To keep things fair, he also made magical attacks -- fireballs and the like -- deal out maximum hp damage. OK, again, that makes sense. Double the characters' hp, double the damage from attacks. No real change, right?

But you still rolled for damage from weapons. This had the relative affect of reducing the damage from weapons, since the did the same damage to monsters with nearly doubled points.

I don't think the players with the paladin, fighter, or ranger ever figured out that their swords had been effectively dulled. I did, but my wife was the wizard and I was the wizard/ thief, so I had no objections.

actually, giving full hit dice does not mean doubling hit points, because there is the CON modifier that is not changed, and it helps fighters, because it makes hit dice more important over CON modifier. As an example, a wizard with +3 CON gets 5.5 hp per level, a fighter 8.5. With full hit dice, the wizard get 7, the fighter 13. It's a slight buff, and it favors martials, so it's ok. but yeah, spells with full damage make little sense.

[Christopher K.]

A DM in a short-lived 5e game I was in had us use 3d6 instead of a d20, and didn't bother to figure out what the impact on the system would be. My paladin never took damage thanks to bounded accuracy being stingy with to hit bonuses.

[EldritchWeaver]

I don’t personally mind crit fumbles, but our DM has us roll again on a natural 1 to confirm, so that lowers the fumble chance below 5%, and then rolls d% for the effect, so the negative effect isn’t always dropping the weapon. It sounds like some DMs make every natural 1 an instant weapon drop, which I would mind a lot more.

If the solution to "fumbles are annoying" is "let's have less fumbles", then this should be an indicator, that the real solution is "let's have no fumbles".

[Adrastos42]

I've been sparring with you since you could barely lift a sword. I can tell you're getting better, because you drop your sword much more often now. In fact, you almost drop it as often as the Master.

... Is an observation that should have the opportunity to be made by no-one.

Hmm. If crit fumbles have to be used, how would you feel about a fumble only happening if ALL (or possibly above X%, depends on balance) of your attack rolls that turn are a natural 1? That would vastly decrease the chance of it happening at higher levels, as would be expected.

Magic is, of course, another issue.

[EldritchWeaver]

Hmm. If crit fumbles have to be used, how would you feel about a fumble only happening if ALL (or possibly above X%, depends on balance) of your attack rolls that turn are a natural 1? That would vastly decrease the chance of it happening at higher levels, as would be expected.

Magic is, of course, another issue.

So a guy with five attacks (haste) has a chance of 0.0000003125 to suffer from a fumble. Even just two attacks push that to 0,0025. Which is 1:400. At this point you can just throw them out of the window. Also, anyone with natural attacks will benefit from this rule, as you can get at least 3 attacks already at level one.

[King of Nowhere]

I like fumble rules that incorporate your opponent. If you roll a 1, the person you're attacking can make an opportunity attack / try to trip you / try to disarm you. That way they won't happen against a dummy, and a high-level character is unlikely to suffer from it against weak opponents. Unfortunately it's not that simple with ranged attacks.

This. "dropping your weapon" isn't a common result in swordfighting - how often have you seen anyone ever do that? But going off-balance and opening yourself to the enemy is something that happens all the time.

So fumbling rules would be all right if the result of the fumble was anything from the opponent getting an attack of opportunity, a disarm attempt, or you getting an AC penalty, or getting a penalty for the next attack(s).
And it would make total sense that a more skilled fighter would suffer more of those consequences with more attacks per round. Have you ever actually sparred? I only did it very rarely, but even I know that to try and hit your opponent you must open yourself - to the point that a mutual kill is actually the most common result. Dual wielding and trying to actually hit with both weapons is even worse. I never managed to hit with the secondary weapon without getting hit myself (though that's partly because when i realized I was about to get it, I'd step forward to counterstrike. I knew my opponent was more skilled, so I was in the mindset "a mutual kill is a good result" and acted accordingly).
So, you attack more often, you also give more chances to a skilled opponent to take advantage from it.

Also, having a confirmation roll means that you are more likely to be punished for a misstep by a more armored opponent - one who is either very skilled himself, or one who's wearing enough metal that he can afford to ignore your sword hitting him while he steps up to skewer you. Again, pretty realistic.

The question is whether it is worth to have all the extra rule supplements and extra rolls for it.

[Cluedrew]

To Adrastos42: I remember a system that was described as 2d6+stat but was really Xd6+stat. It was not uncommon to get a bonus that had you rolling on 3d6 and some penalties will have you rolling 1d6. I once stacked things up to 5d6 but that is as high as I know it to go. Anyways, the point of this story is there was a system* that you auto missed on all ones. So even if your stat was high enough to hit on its own getting an extra die still improved your hit chances. By about 5/216 so it really wasn't worth spending resources on.

But that sort of thing has been done, not quite in this context. The main issue of going per-attack is that D&D does 1d20+stat. Maybe if you started with a twenty and had a increasing bonus die? So a non-combatant got 1d20+[small modifier], a half melee might get 1d20+1d6+modifier and the fighter might have 1d20+1d10+[large-modifier].

[JNAProductions]

For 5E, these are my fumble rules. I've never used 'em, but if players WANTED to, I would.

1) You can only fumble on the FIRST attack you make a round. This is to avoid punishing people for extra attacks.

2) Before a fumble actually occurs, roll a d6. If it is equal to or less than your proficiency bonus (which goes from +2 to +6) you don't fumble, you just miss. So as you level up, fumbles are less likely, and at level 17 and beyond, you never fumble. You can adjust the die size, if you want more or less odds of fumbling.

3) With every spell that targets an enemy, roll a d20. On a 1, you fumble, and the spell doesn't go off. However, you do not expend the spell slot.

4) When you fumble, you can choose from the following results if you're a weapon wielder:
-You provoke an AoO (only if within reach of an enemy)
-You drop your weapon
-You lose your next attack (only if you have multiple attacks and actually CAN lose one this turn)

And if you're a mage, you can choose from the following lists:
-You provoke an AoO (only if within reach of an enemy)
-You suffer magical backlash, unresistable damage equal to twice the spell level (cantrips count as .5)

Now, this does leave buffing, healing, and summoning untouched. I'm fine with buffing and healing being untouched-I want to support teamwork. But I do kinda want to make summons fumbleable, since they can attack pretty well. But, that's what I got.

Again-I've never used this, and I don't plan to. But I've thought on it.

[SimonMoon6]

And of course magic doesn't have this issue because why would a complex formula tapping into the occult forces and took years of study to learn be complex enough that trying to perform it while someone is physically hitting once every second or two be difficult enough that you might actually make a mistake?

To be fair, that's what the Concentration check is supposed to deal with. But while you might fail to cast a spell, you never accidentally drop your brain when you fail a Concentration check. Should Concentration checks have critical fumbles? Probably not; skills aren't designed with fumbles or critical hits in mind. But unfortunately, Concentration checks are too easy to make (and if they're hard, take a five foot step back first and you'll be fine).

I like the idea that I've seen in some game systems that each type of spell requires a different skill and to cast a spell, you have to succeed at a skill roll for that spell. Something like that would more easily support critical hits and critical fumbles, but ideally, this would be built into the game system from the ground up, with each spell having a listing for what happens if you roll a critical failure when you cast it.

Without rewriting all of D&D, I'd say that casters should have to make a Spellcraft check equal to the DC of the spell they're casting in order to succeed. Then, they can have critical fumbles, causing them to not only lose the spell (as they would from a failed check), but also to have some other negative effect (for example, Xd6 damage where X is the level of the spell).

[JMS]

I like the idea that I've seen in some game systems that each type of spell requires a different skill and to cast a spell, you have to succeed at a skill roll for that spell. Something like that would more easily support critical hits and critical fumbles, but ideally, this would be built into the game system from the ground up, with each spell having a listing for what happens if you roll a critical failure when you cast it.

Without rewriting all of D&D, I'd say that casters should have to make a Spellcraft check equal to the DC of the spell they're casting in order to succeed. Then, they can have critical fumbles, causing them to not only lose the spell (as they would from a failed check), but also to have some other negative effect (for example, Xd6 damage where X is the level of the spell).
Hey, just an idea, but maybe a wild magic system like the 5e sorc origin or spheres of power - http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/wild-magic

[GreatWyrmGold]

I've been sparring with you since you could barely lift a sword. I can tell you're getting better, because you drop your sword much more often now. In fact, you almost drop it as often as the Master.

But while you might fail to cast a spell, you never accidentally drop your brain when you fail a Concentration check.
Is it weird that I'm trying to think of ways to justify these things happening in my fantasy worlds?

[noob]

Augh I said the name of the elder ancients wrong and they like to unbrain people saying their name wrong!(justification for dropping your brain)

As for supersonic swords being hard to keep in your hand it makes sense and having nobody think "I am going to use a locked gauntlet or a lanyard" is something that can happen without everybody screaming constantly (for example it happens in harry potter: wands are weapons that people like to disarm yet nobody had the idea to use a locked gauntlet nor a lanyard)
+10 in strength means you muscles creates four times the amount of energy you had before.(since you can lift 4 times more) which means you can make your weapon move twice as fast.
In fact it is the only way to increase the kinetic energy of your swing since the weight of your body and the weight of your sword stood the same.
If attack throws represents how fast your are swinging your weapon around it can mean that +5 to attack throws double the speed of the weapon so every 5 levels you are moving your weapon twice as fast and possibly even more because your strength is raising too.
At level 20 the 60 strength fighter is swinging his weapon roughly 512 times faster than a person with 10 str and 0 bab(the average commoner so similar to a real life untrained human) so that fighter is indeed likely to be creating sonic booms with his sword and stuff it hits seems as if they were blown up by railguns.

[EldritchWeaver]

At level 20 the 60 strength fighter is swinging his weapon roughly 512 times faster than a person with 10 str and 0 bab(the average commoner so similar to a real life untrained human) so that fighter is indeed likely to be creating sonic booms with his sword and stuff it hits seems as if they were blown up by railguns.

And people complain that ToB/PoW are too anime...

[King of Nowhere]

+10 in strength means you muscles creates four times the amount of energy you had before.(since you can lift 4 times more) which means you can make your weapon move twice as fast.
In fact it is the only way to increase the kinetic energy of your swing since the weight of your body and the weight of your sword stood the same.
If attack throws represents how fast your are swinging your weapon around it can mean that +5 to attack throws double the speed of the weapon so every 5 levels you are moving your weapon twice as fast and possibly even more because your strength is raising too.
At level 20 the 60 strength fighter is swinging his weapon roughly 512 times faster than a person with 10 str and 0 bab(the average commoner so similar to a real life untrained human) so that fighter is indeed likely to be creating sonic booms with his sword and stuff it hits seems as if they were blown up by railguns.

well, a sword wielded by a high level fighter deals damage roughly akin to ten rifle bullets.
Your calculation looks dumb, but it actually would explain a lot. Including why dodge bonuses become irrelevant if not backed up by ridiculous armor. It's pretty hard to dodge a supersonic sword!

I'm almost tempted to make canon for my campaign world that high level people can make supersonic booms with their weapons :smallsmile:

EDIT: incidentallly, a quick googling revealed that real swords can impact at speeds a bit over 100 km/h at the tip, which is roughly one tenth the speed of sound.
Since it's already well established that high level people are superpowered, it's not even that ridiculous that a guy who could lift ten tons with his bare arms, could climb a very high tower, jump down over sharp rocks, climb back again and repeat the process three or four times and still be in decent fighting shape, the guy who can face a fire-breathing creature bigger than an elephant, with sharp teeth and claws and wings and scales harder than any metal, armed with a sword, and confidently expect to win, well, I'm ready to accept that this guy can also swing a sword some ten times faster than a regular dude, which means breaking the speed of sound at times.
It's official. the next time the barbarian rolls a 20 to hit, I'm going to announce a sonic boom. Purely for flavor.

[Knaight]

+10 in strength means you muscles creates four times the amount of energy you had before.(since you can lift 4 times more) which means you can make your weapon move twice as fast.
If you ignore air resistance, ergonomics, and basically everything other than a simplified physics model, sure. That said we do see strength differences in actual people and how they move things, for more applicable data; it suggests that you get far less than a square root of relative strength gain in speed.


In fact it is the only way to increase the kinetic energy of your swing since the weight of your body and the weight of your sword stood the same.
See my previous comment. Moving differently is a thing.


If attack throws represents how fast your are swinging your weapon around it can mean that +5 to attack throws double the speed of the weapon so every 5 levels you are moving your weapon twice as fast and possibly even more because your strength is raising too.
That's an incredibly dubious interpretation. Being more skilled often translates to moving faster by moving less, where less motion is wasted. This is particularly true given the way attack rolls explicitly don't represent one swing of the sword.


At level 20 the 60 strength fighter is swinging his weapon roughly 512 times faster than a person with 10 str and 0 bab(the average commoner so similar to a real life untrained human) so that fighter is indeed likely to be creating sonic booms with his sword and stuff it hits seems as if they were blown up by railguns.
60 strength is a bit of an exceptional case, but this doesn't really hold. Yes, you're 1024 times as strong, and should probably move on up to a heavier weapon, but assuming it perfectly gets even 32 times the weapon speed is some pretty excessive bad physics in D&D.

[Arbane]

One of the most universal bad house rules is that when a fighter tries to do something superhuman, out come the slide-rules and anatomy textbooks, but when a wizard does something superhuman with a spell, it's just 'yeah, sure'.

[Luccan]

One of the most universal bad house rules is that when a fighter tries to do something superhuman, out come the slide-rules and anatomy textbooks, but when a wizard does something superhuman with a spell, it's just 'yeah, sure'.

Especially if it's something explicitly possible by the rules that's changed for "realism"

[PhoenixPhyre]

One of the most universal bad house rules is that when a fighter tries to do something superhuman, out come the slide-rules and anatomy textbooks, but when a wizard does something superhuman with a spell, it's just 'yeah, sure'.


Especially if it's something explicitly possible by the rules that's changed for "realism"

I have to agree with this. "But realistically..." is too often the intro to something

a) fun destroying from a DM OR
b) loophole-seeking (and fun destroying) from a player

[Anonymouswizard]

One of the most universal bad house rules is that when a fighter tries to do something superhuman, out come the slide-rules and anatomy textbooks, but when a wizard does something superhuman with a spell, it's just 'yeah, sure'.

I've encountered so many problems with the opposite. I've tried to previously rule mages back to the point where they're doing the same things as mundanes just in a different way (generally in other systems than D&D, which will tend to have a lower ceiling on magical power anyway), and people complain when their mage isn't throwing out AoE fireballs or teleporting or the like. I love mages who's spells are generally single target, not too easy to pull off, and within what nonmagical party members can theoretically pull off. To take d6 Fantasy as an example, a spell that allowed you to pick locks as if you had 6D in the skill would be reasonable (as a focused starting character can pick that up), but one that allowed you to fly wouldn't be.

If you want big spells be prepared to use hours or days-long rituals for them, or be prepared to have to beat an insane casting difficulty. Because by the point you can pull them off reliably the party warrior can slice the wings off a fly.


Especially if it's something explicitly possible by the rules that's changed for "realism"

This, so much this. I've begun to explicitly change rules in the name of cool as a pushback. Sure, it might not be realistic that you can leap that chasm, but it would fly in a film and so I'll allow it.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This, so much this. I've begun to explicitly change rules in the name of cool as a pushback. Sure, it might not be realistic that you can leap that chasm, but it would fly in a film and so I'll allow it.

Being honest about what genre you're playing in makes a big difference. In a game about realistic WWII soldiers, realism is important. In a game of fantastic heroes in a fantastic world, cinematic stunts that evoke legendary heroes are the realism of the world. D&D's underlying physics engine is much more attuned to the rule of cool than to the rule of the real world.

[Anonymouswizard]

Being honest about what genre you're playing in makes a big difference. In a game about realistic WWII soldiers, realism is important. In a game of fantastic heroes in a fantastic world, cinematic stunts that evoke legendary heroes are the realism of the world. D&D's underlying physics engine is much more attuned to the rule of cool than to the rule of the real world.

True, although I've also found that when trying to emulate realism ruling in favour of cool still works, because people tend to underestimate what people can realistically do. But genre emulation is certainly more important than anything else.

Oh, here's one that annoyed me not because of the rule, but because of the presentation. I wanted to play a magic-weilding priest in a game of All Flesh Must be Eaten, but was banned because apparently we were going for realism.

Two sessions in, zombie that produced petrol from nothing and set it alight to make flame breath (uh)

Next session a zombie able to move so fast friction should have caused surfaces to heat up (uh.... suffice to say, no heated surfaces)

By the end of the game, literally teleporting zombies (which came after the worm made out of hundreds of zombies smashed together, but I wasn't there for that session, and some other weirdness we completely missed due to spending our entire time heading towards an industrial estate before building the strongest base we could)

So it was a case of 'realism for thee but not for me', which would have been fine if it had been established as that in the first place.

Oh, and I asked if Resources 5 would allow me to start with a portable science lab (because Resources gives you stuff worth approximately $X per level, I had something like $20000 worth which I reasoned was enough for some electical stuff and a bunch of tools for basic chemical analysis). Instead I was told I had cash, and then we didn't interact with any other living humans until the final session where we were straight up given equipment.

We later worked out exactly why I had this useless cash, I was the only person to put points into Resources and the GM was fearful of the stuff I'd think to start with (I honestly shouldn't have begun with the homemade railgun, he overestimates their power to an insane degree). That's right, the GM was so afraid of what I might do if I could efficiently investigate the zombies that he essentially made Resources into a trap option.

To be fair I later proved him right, when I got access to a big warehouse full of electronic and electrical components I immediately began rigging up experiments and in about five days learnt more about zombies than the military had in two years (turned out that you couldn't use pain to train them, although you could get them to spasm by connecting them up to a relatively low wattage). Imagine what I'd have done if I'd been able to efficiently investigat their rate of decay, determine in-depth phisological changes, and start investigating the abilities of 'special' zombies.

[icefractal]

I've tried to previously rule mages back to the point where they're doing the same things as mundanes just in a different way (generally in other systems than D&D, which will tend to have a lower ceiling on magical power anyway), and people complain when their mage isn't throwing out AoE fireballs or teleporting or the like.I'm kinda with your players TBH - "does the same stuff, but with different flavor text" doesn't sound like what I want out of a game.

[awa]

the trick isn't to make them do the same thing in different ways but make them do separate but equal things.

So for instance in my (home brew) games most casters are simply inferior at fighting tough human targets than warriors, but they have an edge when fighting supernatural foes.

So casters still feel like magic users but they dont overshadow warriors.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm kinda with your players TBH - "does the same stuff, but with different flavor text" doesn't sound like what I want out of a game.

Eh, it depends. The idea is the end result is the same, but how you achieve it is different. A rogue uses their lockpicks and other tools to get past a locked door, a mage uses a low-powered telekinesis spell to move about the mechanism.

In this case the idea is that magic is your tool. You're not doing exactly the same stuff, but the end result is in-scale with the mundanes. Using a different tool means you have different limitations, advantages, and loopholes, but at the end of the day you'll have the same rough list of things you're capable of. If the warrior can't fly and hit everybody in a 20ft radius neither can the wizard.

[John Campbell]

Another potential problem is players eating the miniatures when they're not supposed to (which doesn't usually happen with metal miniatures).

"Where did this army of orcs go?"

"Mmm... delicious!"
There was a while we used Starbursts for enemies, and Peppermint Patties for larger enemies, and people got to eat their kills and keep the hides to count coup. That was a Shadowrun game, with the pure-support roles (like decker) farmed out to NPC hirelings, though, and basically everyone in the party could be relied on to drop at least one enemy a round. And the time the gunbunny one-shotted the sea serpent that the GM had represented with a whole string of Peppermint Patties, and so got to eat the entire encounter, I was too relieved that it was dead to be concerned about Elroy getting all the candy.

This did once result in me almost popping a lead mini in my mouth, though.


Not always. Not every spell uses an attack roll.

However, a solution could be that if the target crits on their saving throw, they know exactly who cast it and what they were trying to cast. Might be grounds enough to give them advantage to attack the mage in question.

I don't mind critical fumbles too much, as long as they aren't life-threatening. 5% of the time, a god gets unlucky and can get hit by anyone, even a peasant child; saying that a warrior drops his weapon 5% of the time in active combat doesn't seem too unrealistic.
So, basically every time the critical fumbles debate comes up on this forum, I repeat this same thing:

I've been an SCA heavy fighter for more than twenty years. I've made I don't know how many thousands of "attack rolls" in that time. And in all that time, I've dropped my sword in combat once.

(I was fighting two-sword (my worst form), against an opponent also fighting two-sword, and came down with an offside cut at the same time he came up with a cross-body block, and instead of blocking my blade, his block caught my pommel and just stripped the sword out of my hand and sent it arcing across the room. We both just kind of stopped and stared at it. SCA swords are supposed to have lanyards to keep that kind of thing from happening, but I don't bother putting them on unless marshals nag me about it, because that's literally the only time, in going on 24 years, that I've ever had any need for one.)

Critical fumbles in D&D suck, and that DMs are so desperately uncreative about the results doesn't help. But that's only part of the problem. That their frequency increases with skill instead of decreasing is another part. That they preferentially screw the mundane, who's getting the short end of the stick to start with, is another part. They're awful and bad and no one should use them ever.

It's not so bad in a dice-pool system like Shadowrun, where fumbles only happen on all-1s, and the mages have to make rolls too.

The former part means that a raw beginner, rolling only one die, will fumble 1 time in 6, but someone with an average skill fumbles only 1 in 216, and a world-class 6 skill fumbles a mere 1 time in 46,656. Still less often if you're specifically focusing on the action, in the form of adding pool dice to it, and on top of that you can buy them off with Karma Pool.

The latter part means that the guys who are gods walking the earth to begin with aren't immune to totally screwing up manipulating the fabric of reality, so their already-unfair advantage doesn't get even more unfair.

My group used the Paizo critical hit/fumble decks for half of one combat one time, after which the DM literally threw them in the trash and retconned all of the effects.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Being honest about what genre you're playing in makes a big difference. In a game about realistic WWII soldiers, realism is important. In a game of fantastic heroes in a fantastic world, cinematic stunts that evoke legendary heroes are the realism of the world. D&D's underlying physics engine is much more attuned to the rule of cool than to the rule of the real world.
The problem is that D&D is simultaneously trying to simulate the fantasy universes of Conan the Barbarian and Dr. Strange while making both title characters viable character concepts.



I'm kinda with your players TBH - "does the same stuff, but with different flavor text" doesn't sound like what I want out of a game.
Wizards kill orcs with fire, rangers with arrows. Same stuff, different flavor, right? If you're not going to segregate the game into the part where Regdar can do something, the part where Mialee can do something, etc, you're going to have the "problem" of different classes doing basically the same thing.
I mean, yeah, the example given was "wizard rolls dice to unlock door" compared to "rogue rolls dice to unlock door," but the only ways to avoid that are to either invent overly-complex rules for unlocking doors or let one automatically unlock the door (and sadly, it's probably going to be the one who can already bend reality, not the one specialized in lockpicking).

[awa]

ive heard one good idea to balance knock spell where using it is about as loud as just smashing the door to bits so that open locks is still the go to skill for sneaking.

That said i haven't actually ever played a game where unlocking doors quietly or otherwise was ever vital it simply never came up.

[John Campbell]

ive heard one good idea to balance knock spell where using it is about as loud as just smashing the door to bits so that open locks is still the go to skill for sneaking.

5E does that, thus making the spell worthless, like pretty much everything else in the spell list that isn't direct damage.

The thing is, knock doesn't need to be balanced. If the wizard wants to spend one of their sharply-limited spells per day to be able to do once what the rogue can do for free all day, every day, that's their lookout.

What needs to be balanced is the cheapness and ease of making or buying a magic item that lets you do it fifty times without touching your actual spell slots.

[Anonymouswizard]

Knock does need to be balanced, because in addition to resource use we also have to take into account resource regeneration.

D&D, especially 5e, tends to have resources regenerate fast. You get all your spells back at the end of the day. At low levels you get few enough slots that using a utility spell might be a significant choice, by the time mages become powerful the use of a first or second level spell to bypass an encounter is nothing.

Now if resources regenerate slowly then spells can be more powerful. If it takes a Mage days to regenerate their MP then a spell that spends half that MP should be big and impressive. But in D&D mages end up with so many spells that it's up to the GM to make sure that they don't hog the spotlight, especially when they can end up with six encounter ending spells per day.

Now my favorite version is where there's no MP or Slots, and magic is limited by not being too powerful, being incredibly difficult, or material components. Sure, in my settings spells theoretically exist which wipe cities off the map, but are either so difficult you won't be about l able to actually cast it, or take hundreds of mages chanting in unison in a magic circle for hours with precisely arranged material components. Getting a big spell off is a challenge that everybody can be involved in setting up.

[Lalliman]

The thing is, knock doesn't need to be balanced. If the wizard wants to spend one of their sharply-limited spells per day to be able to do once what the rogue can do for free all day, every day, that's their lookout.
Theoretically, sure. But how often do you have to pick several locks per day? It's more likely the DM will give you a variety of challenges, e.g. get through a locked door, get across a chasm, then convince a guy to do a thing. The rogue can pick locks all day, the barbarian can jump chasms all day, and the bard can swindle people all day, but the wizard can do all three better. He has limited uses, sure, but that doesn't matter when this is the whole challenge. I find that this kind of design just makes things harder on the DM. You have to expand the scope and length of challenges beyond what seems reasonable in order to prevent the wizard from being able to solo it. It's not fundamentally a bad idea, but (as the ironically-named Anonymouswizard said) it's easy to misalign how much a spell can do with how many can be cast day-in day-out.

[awa]

5E does that, thus making the spell worthless, like pretty much everything else in the spell list that isn't direct damage.

The thing is, knock doesn't need to be balanced. If the wizard wants to spend one of their sharply-limited spells per day to be able to do once what the rogue can do for free all day, every day, that's their lookout.

What needs to be balanced is the cheapness and ease of making or buying a magic item that lets you do it fifty times without touching your actual spell slots.

see my earlier point you simply dont see enough locked doors for it to matter, now ill admit i was thinking more about 3rd edition where the resource expenditure of the rouge was much higher and the resources expended by the wizard much lower. (ive never seen a game that required 50 locked doors to be opened)

part of the problem is they act as if locked doors are a scaling problem with ever increasing dcs but then provided a hard-counter that ignores that scaling. For 3rd edition the rogue has to spend an every increasing number of skill pts to keep his door opening skills relevant but the value of the wizards spell slot is ever decreasing as he get more gold and spells to spend.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The thing is, knock doesn't need to be balanced. If the wizard wants to spend one of their sharply-limited spells per day to be able to do once what the rogue can do for free all day, every day, that's their lookout.
I really don't like this line of logic.

First off, balancing "you can be awesome once per day" against "you can be mediocre all day" is a terrible idea and I don't know how it became D&D standard. Under ideal circumstances, everyone gets the same amount of usefulness, with one spreading it out evenly over the day and the other getting it in bursts, but this is dang near impossible to balance; if your party isn't doing just the right amount of stuff per day, the balance falls apart. It also relies on the assumption that doing the same amount of "stuff" is going to be equally fun whether it's being consistently kinda useful all day or taking the spotlight a few times to solve a problem all by yourself. Finally, even under ideal circumstances, it requires a lot more skill at balance than anyone working on D&D has ever displayed...with the exception of 4e, which (for all of its flaws) actually found a way to balance Conan and Gandalf. I look forward to WotC trying that again, only without all the aforementioned flaws.

Sorry for the tangent. Anyways, as a second point, unlocking doors is a rogue's "thing" (along with a few other, rarer kinds of challenges that wizards can also overcome with ease). Giving the wizard the ability to step in and stop the rogue from having their moment in the spotlight is stupid, especially since the rogue is one of the classes which is mediocre all day (and hence won't have many other natural spotlight opportunities). At least they can't also fight better than fighters, like they could in older editions.
Third, it's not just knock. I alluded to spells like invisibility and detect traps and snares which let the wizard solve the rogue's problems without any effort beyond a little planning and a spell slot or two—and probably better than the rogue. The wizard also has spells which can solve combat encounters; while charm person and glitterdust and whatnot aren't as bad as they were in (say) 3.5, casters still have access to plenty of spells which will have a bigger effect on the battle than any critical hit or sneak attack. In a game where a party is expected to consist of multiple classes fulfilling multiple roles, letting one class do things in another's role as well or better than that class kind of defeats the point.
Finally, your argument is that the spell doesn't need to be balanced because of its balancing features. You...might not have the best grasp on what "balance" generally encompasses.

[Quertus]

Wizards kill orcs with fire, rangers with arrows. Same stuff, different flavor, right? If you're not going to segregate the game into the part where Regdar can do something, the part where Mialee can do something, etc, you're going to have the "problem" of different classes doing basically the same thing.
I mean, yeah, the example given was "wizard rolls dice to unlock door" compared to "rogue rolls dice to unlock door," but the only ways to avoid that are to either invent overly-complex rules for unlocking doors or let one automatically unlock the door (and sadly, it's probably going to be the one who can already bend reality, not the one specialized in lockpicking).

So, curiously, the Knight and the Bishop are roughly equal pieces in chess, yet they don't do the same thing.

It is entirely possible to build things that are different but equal. Heck, just in combat, just in 3e, we've got buff, debuff, BFC, disarm, behead, SoD, grapple, theft, counter spell (technically possible by damage, theft, grapple, sunder, and spell), healing, movement, and conversion, on top of damage. And I'm probably missing some options. Lots of different. And we've plenty of tools to use to ratchet up (or down) the power level on these options to make most of them for within the table's balance range of equal. After all, a party of 3 will get different benefit from an AoE buff than a party of 15 will, even at otherwise the same table, so I'm glad of this toolkit.


I really don't like this line of logic.

First off, balancing "you can be awesome once per day" against "you can be mediocre all day" is a terrible idea and I don't know how it became D&D standard. Under ideal circumstances, everyone gets the same amount of usefulness, with one spreading it out evenly over the day and the other getting it in bursts, but this is dang near impossible to balance; if your party isn't doing just the right amount of stuff per day, the balance falls apart. It also relies on the assumption that doing the same amount of "stuff" is going to be equally fun whether it's being consistently kinda useful all day or taking the spotlight a few times to solve a problem all by yourself. Finally, even under ideal circumstances, it requires a lot more skill at balance than anyone working on D&D has ever displayed...with the exception of 4e, which (for all of its flaws) actually found a way to balance Conan and Gandalf. I look forward to WotC trying that again, only without all the aforementioned flaws.

Sorry for the tangent. Anyways, as a second point, unlocking doors is a rogue's "thing" (along with a few other, rarer kinds of challenges that wizards can also overcome with ease). Giving the wizard the ability to step in and stop the rogue from having their moment in the spotlight is stupid, especially since the rogue is one of the classes which is mediocre all day (and hence won't have many other natural spotlight opportunities). At least they can't also fight better than fighters, like they could in older editions.
Third, it's not just knock. I alluded to spells like invisibility and detect traps and snares which let the wizard solve the rogue's problems without any effort beyond a little planning and a spell slot or two—and probably better than the rogue. The wizard also has spells which can solve combat encounters; while charm person and glitterdust and whatnot aren't as bad as they were in (say) 3.5, casters still have access to plenty of spells which will have a bigger effect on the battle than any critical hit or sneak attack. In a game where a party is expected to consist of multiple classes fulfilling multiple roles, letting one class do things in another's role as well or better than that class kind of defeats the point.
Finally, your argument is that the spell doesn't need to be balanced because of its balancing features. You...might not have the best grasp on what "balance" generally encompasses.

Well, there's a lot here. I'll not go into full details, but, as I've said the many times that this has come up before, there are many factors to balance in the epic task of dealing with a lock: speed, noise, repeatability, failure rate, ability to be reversed, and after effects. The Barbarian totally has the Rogue outclassed for opening doors, in that they can do so all day long, and, with 2-handed power attacking - let alone übercharger shenanigans - lack the Rogue's failure rate.

The value of "at will" vs "1/day" will vary from table to table. Clearly, at your tables, they hold similar value; at mine, they do not. This is one of many reasons that I suggest making all spells etc into "at will" abilities, to make balancing them easier. If you want balance straight out of the gate. I don't. I much prefer the bay toolkit of 3e, and the option to balance to the table.

Also, is it horrible that the Rogue gets to spend skill points to invalidate my Harry Potter espy (sp?) and his use of Aloha Mora? Let alone how the Barbarian gets to invalidate it for free? Personally, I'm glad that the party isn't absolutely required to have exactly one cookie cutter configuration or be utterly unable to bypass the epic challenge of a locked door.

-----

I don't think 4e represents skill at balance, given that the numbers don't "just work". 4e represents an utterly skilless attempt at balance by mashing everything samey, and still failing utterly. Let's not see its like again.

-----

And then there's the proper balance of well-roundness to niche protection, and of "contribute" to "shine", which will vary from table to table. Clearly, you prefer a higher balance of niche protection and "shine", whereas I generally prefer well-rounded and contribute.

[Cluedrew]

On Knock: I'm going to mostly skip my problems with D&D's "magic=yes" thing except for this mention as it is much more general. My main issue with the rate based balancing is... things that enforce it tend to feel artificial. That wasn't the one I was going to talk about but the spell slot system feels so artificial and not part of the world and I don't really like it. The one I was going to talk about which I guess is the third problem is that the balancing then becomes focused on the person with less frequent but more potent resources.

In essence, it makes it the rogue job to not open doors, but to open doors that it isn't worth the wizard's spell slot to open. (This includes when the wizard didn't take knock for more important things... because if opening doors was really important I guess they would have taken knock.)

So yeah, feels kind of demeaning to me.

[Luccan]

On Knock: I'm going to mostly skip my problems with D&D's "magic=yes" thing except for this mention as it is much more general. My main issue with the rate based balancing is... things that enforce it tend to feel artificial. That wasn't the one I was going to talk about but the spell slot system feels so artificial and not part of the world and I don't really like it. The one I was going to talk about which I guess is the third problem is that the balancing then becomes focused on the person with less frequent but more potent resources.

In essence, it makes it the rogue job to not open doors, but to open doors that it isn't worth the wizard's spell slot to open. (This includes when the wizard didn't take knock for more important things... because if opening doors was really important I guess they would have taken knock.)

So yeah, feels kind of demeaning to me.

It's true that in the fiction of most settings "spells per day" doesn't seem to come into play. Strange when you consider it comes from Jack Vance stories, where preparing a limited number of spells and knowing how many you had prepared was very much a thing.

[awa]

My understanding though was that was built into the setting in a way d&d does not really do, and certainly not when it emulates other settings.

[Quertus]

On Knock: I'm going to mostly skip my problems with D&D's "magic=yes" thing except for this mention as it is much more general. My main issue with the rate based balancing is... things that enforce it tend to feel artificial. That wasn't the one I was going to talk about but the spell slot system feels so artificial and not part of the world and I don't really like it. The one I was going to talk about which I guess is the third problem is that the balancing then becomes focused on the person with less frequent but more potent resources.

In essence, it makes it the rogue job to not open doors, but to open doors that it isn't worth the wizard's spell slot to open. (This includes when the wizard didn't take knock for more important things... because if opening doors was really important I guess they would have taken knock.)

So yeah, feels kind of demeaning to me.

That's... Quite the interesting take. Definitely food for thought.

So, I'm the kind of person who almost based their life on the concept of "having more important things to do". That is, my senility seems a logical step from my absentmindedness, which was cultured from a desire to focus on what others weren't. Which had such fun repercussions as me never bothering to know the day or the year, because surely someone else knew that, so I'd dedicate my thoughts to other matters.

In other words, I don't vilify "having more important things to do" - quite the opposite, in fact.

In an RPG, then, the Wizard should have "more important things to do" than to step on the Rogue's toes. From my PoV, then, having "more important things to do" is a solution, not a problem.

Still, I suppose it becomes a problem if the Wizard is alone in having "more important things to do" - when does the Rogue ever have "more important things to do"?

Personally, my answer to that question is, the Rogue is the party's primary DPS - the Rogue has more important things to do than to buy a bunch of wands and pretend to be a Wizard, when he can just give his foes the "dead" condition.

Now, I'm all about having a backup plan, and letting the Wizard carry a scroll of Knock, just in case, and letting the Rogue carry a few scrolls / 1-4 charge wands, just in case, but it is generally suboptimal for either of their primary schticks to involve stepping on one another's toes.

That's my gut reaction, at least. Thoughts?

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's... Quite the interesting take. Definitely food for thought.

So, I'm the kind of person who almost based their life on the concept of "having more important things to do". That is, my senility seems a logical step from my absentmindedness, which was cultured from a desire to focus on what others weren't. Which had such fun repercussions as me never bothering to know the day or the year, because surely someone else knew that, so I'd dedicate my thoughts to other matters.

In other words, I don't vilify "having more important things to do" - quite the opposite, in fact.

In an RPG, then, the Wizard should have "more important things to do" than to step on the Rogue's toes. From my PoV, then, having "more important things to do" is a solution, not a problem.

Still, I suppose it becomes a problem if the Wizard is alone in having "more important things to do" - when does the Rogue ever have "more important things to do"?

Personally, my answer to that question is, the Rogue is the party's primary DPS - the Rogue has more important things to do than to buy a bunch of wands and pretend to be a Wizard, when he can just give his foes the "dead" condition.

Now, I'm all about having a backup plan, and letting the Wizard carry a scroll of Knock, just in case, and letting the Rogue carry a few scrolls / 1-4 charge wands, just in case, but it is generally suboptimal for either of their primary schticks to involve stepping on one another's toes.

That's my gut reaction, at least. Thoughts?

The problem is that the Wizard's MITTD (More Important Things to Do) include and supercede the best MITTD that the rogue can offer. Damage? Wizard can do both more and better (SoD spells bypass those pesky hit points). Utility? Anything the rogue can do, the Wizard can do better. Social? Need spells or diplomancy (often aided by spells) for that. Making/using items? A Wizard has better INT and can afford those extra skill points--rogues have other uses. Stealth? You guessed it, spells.

And the Wizard can do all those things without even significantly cutting into his own MITTD, which the rogue can't even begin to touch.

[awa]

part of this depends on play style and edition, third edition seem balanced around a small number of challenging encounters where a wizard really shines.

The more a party is forced to do in a day the less a caster can overshadow every one else. Which brings up other problems. Locks are a bad challenge either you can bypass them or you cant, and they only leave room for a single player to make die rolls with little room for creativity or really impute of any-kind.

[Anonymouswizard]

The problem is that the Wizard's MITTD (More Important Things to Do) include and supercede the best MITTD that the rogue can offer. Damage? Wizard can do both more and better (SoD spells bypass those pesky hit points). Utility? Anything the rogue can do, the Wizard can do better. Social? Need spells or diplomancy (often aided by spells) for that. Making/using items? A Wizard has better INT and can afford those extra skill points--rogues have other uses. Stealth? You guessed it, spells.

And the Wizard can do all those things without even significantly cutting into his own MITTD, which the rogue can't even begin to touch.

This is why I've grown to like the 5e Sorcerer. It's spell list allows it to pick a number of roles, but it's limited spells known means that the Sorcerer is keeping at the party power level at one or two things. The Sorcerer can, assuming they don't switch out spells for higher level ones, know three first level spells, two spells each of levels two through five, and one spell of levels six through nine. Even when swapping out they have to ask if they want to take low level utility spells, and even then there's a decent chance that there are still low level spells useful to your role.

So you've reached fifth level. Do you want fireball? Fly? Counterspell? Dispel Magic? Gaseous Form? Haste? Major Image? There's probably two or more of these that are useful to you, but are you willing to give up Shield, Comprehend Languages, or any of your other low level spells to get them?

That's the point at which the rogue being able to open locks is handy. You have no need to spend your precious spells known on knock even if opening locks is important, because opening locks isn't what you cover. The Rogue covers that and so you can happily take Enchance Ability over Knock. Every time you take a spell that does something the rogue does you're hurting your character, because you become worse at what you do.

And this is why I don't like the prepared casters. It's worst with Clerics and Druids, but even with Wizards you can just swap out spells as needed. Are locked doors going to be a problem, but the ceilings will all be low? Just prepare knock instead of fly. Of course you have access to knock, it's not like it cost you anything important, like spells known, only money.

Or to be a bit more specific, casters aren't a problem as long as they don't have access to too many spells. There are games like The Dark Eye, which has cut the number of starting spells a Mage got in half in order to better balance them (as even only with the AE to reliably cast a couple of spells a day Mages were just too good at solving problems). It's even worse when a game is designed with the idea that all or most of what a Mage will be doing is casting spells, as then either they're being better than everybody else (not fun for those not playing mages) or not able to do anything (not fun for the mage), and D&D is a major offender there.

So the short answer I have to this problem is that magic-users are too magic focused. Let's dial back on that, if we're using scholarly magic users let's increase the amount of focus Lore skills have in a game, or maybe we could have mages know a number of utility spells but have to use weapons for combat. Or potentially there is only combat magic, and utility spells don't exist.

If magic supplements a character's mundane skills without replacing them then mages aren't left with the choice of overshadowing or being useless. Imagine a wandering wizard with a focus on magical healing and divination, they probably also have some social skills, some knowledges, and maybe something like Survival as well as knowing mundane ways to treat wounds.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Or reduce the breadth of spell lists--make everybody choose a focused subset of spells. So if you're a pyromancer specialist, you'll struggle to learn very many arcane teleportation stuff. And if you're a teleportation specialist, you might find direct combat applications hard to come by.

Opportunity cost for everyone!

[awa]

both of those are good, either in part or together, though i particularly like emphasizing the lore aspect because knowing stuff is a major part of most caster archetypes as depicted in other mediums.

[vasilidor]

a though I just had, in order to fumble an attack in a d20 combat system, all attack roles granted by skill (or level increase) have to be a 1. so at level 1 your fighter has a 1 in 20 mischance, at level 6 a 1 in 400, at level 11 a 1 in 8000, level 16 1 in 160000. if even one of those roles is anything other than a 1, you just miss.
just a thought

[Lord Torath]

a though I just had, in order to fumble an attack in a d20 combat system, all attack roles granted by skill (or level increase) have to be a 1. so at level 1 your fighter has a 1 in 20 mischance, at level 6 a 1 in 400, at level 11 a 1 in 8000, level 16 1 in 160000. if even one of those roles is anything other than a 1, you just miss.
just a thoughtI think that very mechanic was discussed a page or two ago in this very thread.

Yes, here it is:
Hmm. If crit fumbles have to be used, how would you feel about a fumble only happening if ALL (or possibly above X%, depends on balance) of your attack rolls that turn are a natural 1? That would vastly decrease the chance of it happening at higher levels, as would be expected.

Magic is, of course, another issue.

[Arbane]

a though I just had, in order to fumble an attack in a d20 combat system, all attack roles granted by skill (or level increase) have to be a 1. so at level 1 your fighter has a 1 in 20 mischance, at level 6 a 1 in 400, at level 11 a 1 in 8000, level 16 1 in 160000. if even one of those roles is anything other than a 1, you just miss.
just a thought

Not bad, but that only works on full attacks. Single attacks remain as failtastic as ever.

[Quertus]

Locks are a bad challenge either you can bypass them or you cant, and they only leave room for a single player to make die rolls with little room for creativity or really impute of any-kind.

Og may not get lock to work, but Og make door break real good.

Who says that it's pass/fail, or that there's no room for creativity?

[awa]

breaking a door is bypassing it. Smashing it isn't creative or interesting and still comes down to the same binary either you can get through it or you cant.

[vasilidor]

ok, so if you roll a 1 on your single attack, you just roll again to see if it comes up with another 1, repeat until you get something other than a 1 or run out of attacks (these are not to hit rolls, just checks against a fumble)

[EldritchWeaver]

Then it just takes longer to break the door. Still binary.

[The Big Bear]

I’ve never really been a fan of being able to use a potion as a bonus action. I realize our DM does it because having to use a potion is usually an “oh s***” moment, but if someone is chugging a potion then they probably don’t have time to attack.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The value of "at will" vs "1/day" will vary from table to table. Clearly, at your tables, they hold similar value; at mine, they do not. This is one of many reasons that I suggest making all spells etc into "at will" abilities, to make balancing them easier. If you want balance straight out of the gate. I don't. I much prefer the bay toolkit of 3e, and the option to balance to the table.
First off, you're making a lot of assumptions, the worst being that anyone who points out the problems of balancing via Vancian mechanics is not only having trouble with those at the table, but having a very specific kind of trouble.
Second, I have yet to see a convincing argument for balance not being included in RPGs. This argument, that the DM can balance things at the table, is probably the worst one (yes, even below the "guy at the gym" fallacy). The DM can balance things themself, yes...but they can also make a whole new game system if they want. Aren't we paying the game designers at WotC to design a good game we want to play? Doesn't that mean it's bad if there's stuff the DMs have to fix themselves?
Third, you are entirely circumventing what I'm talking about, which is that the classes are designed with entirely different types of mechanics. The wizard gets to do incredible stuff, balanced only by how often they get to do stuff. The fighter gets to do stuff all day, but their stuff is only the kinds of stuff anyone can do, just better than those other people. That's the one thing I like about 4e; instead of designing each class in a vacuum, they made sure every class was being designed with the same general tools. We can argue if they went too far or not, but I'm glad they tried.


Also, is it horrible that the Rogue gets to spend skill points to invalidate my Harry Potter espy (sp?) and his use of Aloha Mora? Let alone how the Barbarian gets to invalidate it for free? Personally, I'm glad that the party isn't absolutely required to have exactly one cookie cutter configuration or be utterly unable to bypass the epic challenge of a locked door.
Personally, I think it's kind of dumb that the game was designed to have one-quarter of its party members specialize in locked doors, traps, etc...but if you're going to go with that, don't give other classes abilities that invalidate them. It would be like if the cleric was the primary healer class, but wizards and fighters and such got healing abilities, often ones which were more powerful than the cleric's healing.
Also, alohomora isn't a core part of the wizard's arsenal the way Open Lock is to the rogue. That's a pretty lousy equivalence. While equating the rogue unlocking doors to the barbarian knocking them down is better, it fails because A. there are endless situations where unlocking doors is better and B. nobody goes "We need a barbarian in the party so we can knock down doors and smash traps and stuff."


I don't think 4e represents skill at balance, given that the numbers don't "just work". 4e represents an utterly skilless attempt at balance by mashing everything samey, and still failing utterly. Let's not see its like again.

It is entirely possible to build things that are different but equal. Heck, just in combat, just in 3e, we've got buff, debuff, BFC, disarm, behead, SoD, grapple, theft, counter spell (technically possible by damage, theft, grapple, sunder, and spell), healing, movement, and conversion, on top of damage. And I'm probably missing some options. Lots of different. And we've plenty of tools to use to ratchet up (or down) the power level on these options to make most of them for within the table's balance range of equal. After all, a party of 3 will get different benefit from an AoE buff than a party of 15 will, even at otherwise the same table, so I'm glad of this toolkit.
Interesting. Are you saying that 4e doesn't include most or all of those options? Are you just saying you don't like the execution of powers? Or are you just saying that you don't like "the guy at the gym" having powers that are limited the same way spells are?
(Also, keep in mind that I'm comparing the skill used to balance 4e to the skill used to create the CoDzilla and the beastmaster ranger. It's a low bar.)


And then there's the proper balance of well-roundness to niche protection, and of "contribute" to "shine", which will vary from table to table. Clearly, you prefer a higher balance of niche protection and "shine", whereas I generally prefer well-rounded and contribute.
I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about here. Maybe I'd understand better if you explained why you think that unspecialized characters who don't get many moments to shine are good.



My understanding though was that was built into the setting in a way d&d does not really do, and certainly not when it emulates other settings.
Which ties into a problem D&D has in general. Its setting tries to be as generic fantasy as possible, because it's trying to be an RPG anyone can get into, because it's going to be the first TRPG most people who try TRPGs will play. But at the same time, its mechanics (and some aspects of its setting, e.g. anything relating to the outer planes and their denizens) are very specific, because they have to be. But they don't back up the specific parts with enough setting material to make it make sense. There's no solid or consistent explanation for why spell slots exist, or the relationship between powerful outsiders and gods of similar alignment, or even what alignment is (that last one is mostly a case of inconsistency).
I'm not sure what the best solution is. There are two general paths I see; they could try to go a bit more modular and release alternate rules, a la 3.5's Unearthed Arcana, or they could lean into the ways their mechanics and whatnot make their fantasy world distinct from all the Middle Earth copycats. I'm a bit tired of Middle Earth copycats, so I'd like to go with the latter. In fact, I think I'll start a thread in the worldbilding subforum about it.




I like this idea, though I'd probably take it in the opposite direction. Give everyone some magic, perhaps like the Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight archetypes in 5e (or the monk, paladin, and ranger). Everyone specializes in one general portfolio of skills and magic.
The fighter can enhance his strength, teleport to foes, and maybe conjure weapons and armor in a pinch, but still backs it up with a core of martial skill; the rogue stealths normally, but with dozens of minor spells that can give them an edge in a pinch (along the lines of Corvo from Dishonored, the title character of RONIN, and other stealth game protagonists); clerics have various holy-themed spells passed down by the church and knowledge of all things profane and unpleasant; and so on. Mages in this kind of world would be like scientists or engineers, focusing on understanding magic on a deeper level than most; they would have a wider array of magic known and would be able to do stuff with magic (e.g, counterspelling), but would have fewer mundane skills.


[QUOTE=awa;23541176]breaking a door is bypassing it. Smashing it isn't creative or interesting and still comes down to the same binary either you can get through it or you cant.
Which is the problem with giving locked doors such an important role as challenges. Of course, generic combat challenges aren't a lot better; the only variable is how many hit points and spell slots you have left over. The combat can be designed to be more interesting (e.g, enemies escaping, or an objective other than "kill everyone with green skin"), but that option really isn't available for doors. Which, again, leads to me grumbling about why D&D has an entire role set aside for dealing with tasks that are almost impossible to make not binary pass/fail...

[awa]

Which is the problem with giving locked doors such an important role as challenges. Of course, generic combat challenges aren't a lot better; the only variable is how many hit points and spell slots you have left over. The combat can be designed to be more interesting (e.g, enemies escaping, or an objective other than "kill everyone with green skin"), but that option really isn't available for doors. Which, again, leads to me grumbling about why D&D has an entire role set aside for dealing with tasks that are almost impossible to make not binary pass/fail...

I would argue that while you could design a combat system like that, d&d has more nuisance when it wants to. Using clubs against skeletons, taking advantage of a zombies slow speed and mindless nature with rough terrain or environmental hazards. There are a lot of ways combat is far more complex then opening doors.

That said yeah doors are a bad challenge they just don't work well. There are things you could do with a door like encountering them while sneaking or with a time limit but these things don't come up often enough for the kind of investment it takes to be decent with doors. If lock picking was part of say a thievery skill that included trap disarming/making and pick-pocketing it would be fine at least in my opinion.

[Luccan]

The first thought that comes to me to make doors interesting is to make them unlock with a puzzle. That kinda defeats the niche protection that goes on with locks in-game, but honestly that's kind of a hold-over from when D&D was mainly dungeon crawls and getting the drop on an enemy could be necessary to win (thus lockpicking was better than breaking a door down). But, as the game has moved away from that, more people have also become able to handle the original thief/rogue tasks and rogues have obtained a wider set of abilities.

I mean, even back in the day a thief got a bunch of other abilities because they knew just being "the door guy" wasn't fun.

[Quertus]

@GWG - Wow, our play styles are even more dissimilar than I thought. That's awesome! It means that we get to disagree in even more dimensions, and I get to learn something. Based on your questions, it looks like you're looking to learn something, too. Excellent.

So, I'm probably going to seem to ignore a lot of the primary content of our discussion for the moment, because I'd like to hammer out our stances / PoV / experiences first. That is, I don't think we'll understand each other's answers to the main questions without understanding some of the surrounding details first. Hopefully that makes sense.

Or, at least, that's the goal, but, instead, I've been rambling randomly. Darth senility.



First off, you're making a lot of assumptions, the worst being that anyone who points out the problems of balancing via Vancian mechanics is not only having trouble with those at the table, but having a very specific kind of trouble.

...



Second, I have yet to see a convincing argument for balance not being included in RPGs. This argument, that the DM can balance things at the table, is probably the worst one (yes, even below the "guy at the gym" fallacy). The DM can balance things themself, yes...but they can also make a whole new game system if they want. Aren't we paying the game designers at WotC to design a good game we want to play? Doesn't that mean it's bad if there's stuff the DMs have to fix themselves?

Well, no. My stance is, the GM can keep his big nose out of it. The table should work to create the right balance range. "Never get into an arms race with your players, because they cannot win". The GM should* create a static difficulty, and let the players create appropriate characters for the level of challenges that they enjoy / for the table's balance range.

Let me put that another way. Thor is not balanced with Hawkeye. But I prefer a superheroes game that lets you play as Thor, or lets you play as Hawkeye - and, if your group doesn't care about balance, would even let you play Thor and Hawkeye in the same party. In point of fact, I played a sentient potted plant in a party with a Thor-like character, while the rest is the party was more "normal", and it was awesome.

A game with enforced balance could only do one of Thor or Hawkeye, and certainly could never have them in the same party. Allow for the greatest range of possible characters, and leave balance to the table, not the system.

Or are you saying that Thor and Hawkeye are not both valid superheroes?

To put it a third way, (character >) player > build > class. Chess may be nearly perfectly balanced, but a chess grand master playing against a nearly clueless 7-year-old is not going to be a balanced game. In order to have balanced contribution from unbalanced players, you need to have other dials to turn. Thankfully, 3e has a big'ol "character power" dial to turn, to allow everyone at the table to have fun.

To hit it from a fourth angle, a lot of game balance considerations make a lot of assumptions that may not be true any given table. For example, think about the value of buffs and debuffs (SoS and NSJS). Now, consider how those values change between the standard 4-man party, vs a solo adventurer, vs my preference double-digit players, each allowed to run up to 3 PCs. Consider how their value changes vs armies of fodder vs a single overpowering raid boss. If you've balanced things perfectly for a 4-man party fighting level-appropriate challenges, you'll find things out of balance at actual tables. Same for any other assumption under which you balanced the game.

And, for a 5th angle, the important part of game balance is subjective, not objective. Just because you believe that you've got the statistical value of casting healing magic vs bfc vs dealing damage calculated to be perfectly balanced, when you hit the groups that are so dumb that they believe you have to deal damage or you're not contributing, well, they'll have a very different take on how "balanced" your classes and abilities are.

Lastly, I ran into a GM who would harp on game balance, then first encounter TPK. Then rant about game balance, second encounter TPK. Then... Sigh. Clearly, not everyone has the same idea what "balance" means. You think I want some idiot setting my table's balance for me? No thank you.

So, in conclusion, let the individual table decide what they consider balanced, and give them the tools to build "balanced" characters.

Seen a compelling argument yet? Or do you not get what I'm saying?

* Yes, this is rather CaS. CaW gets more complicated.



Third, you are entirely circumventing what I'm talking about, which is that the classes are designed with entirely different types of mechanics. The wizard gets to do incredible stuff, balanced only by how often they get to do stuff. The fighter gets to do stuff all day, but their stuff is only the kinds of stuff anyone can do, just better than those other people. That's the one thing I like about 4e; instead of designing each class in a vacuum, they made sure every class was being designed with the same general tools. We can argue if they went too far or not, but I'm glad they tried.

"Having the same tools" is, IMO, a fail case. The fact that the Crusader plays differently than the, uh, senility, that other class from the same book (War something, I think), and that those play differently than a Psion, which plays differently than a Wizard, which plays differently than a Sorcerer, which plays differently than a Binder, which plays differently than a Warlock, which - etc etc etc - is, IMO, a good thing.

Just as I'm all about playing at different power levels, I'm also all about playing characters that feel different. I'm not interested in choosing between fifty shades of grey.


Personally, I think it's kind of dumb that the game was designed to have one-quarter of its party members specialize in locked doors, traps, etc...but if you're going to go with that, don't give other classes abilities that invalidate them. It would be like if the cleric was the primary healer class, but wizards and fighters and such got healing abilities, often ones which were more powerful than the cleric's healing.

The 3e Rogue is under no obligation to have a clue how to deal with a locked door.



Also, alohomora isn't a core part of the wizard's arsenal the way Open Lock is to the rogue.

Um, my Harry Potter clone would care to differ. As would my Diplomacy DPS Rogue.

The ability to open a locked door is a function of the concept, not the class.

If we had agreed to strict niche protection, and I said I was running Harry Potter, I would cry foul if you took ranks in Open Lock, because that is clearly my niche.

Obviously, Harry Potter and (insert some famous lock-opening thief here) could not adventure together in a strict niche protection party.


That's a pretty lousy equivalence. While equating the rogue unlocking doors to the barbarian knocking them down is better, it fails because A. there are endless situations where unlocking doors is better and B. nobody goes "We need a barbarian in the party so we can knock down doors and smash traps and stuff."


Interesting. Are you saying that 4e doesn't include most or all of those options? Are you just saying you don't like the execution of powers? Or are you just saying that you don't like "the guy at the gym" having powers that are limited the same way spells are?
(Also, keep in mind that I'm comparing the skill used to balance 4e to the skill used to create the CoDzilla and the beastmaster ranger. It's a low bar.)

Well, those bits you quoted don't exactly go together.

-----

You opened with the notion of making "deal damage with fire" and "deal damage with sword" be fundamentally the same thing. While I may agree that they are, I consider attempting to make classes more "samey" to be a fail state.

Everyone* should have the ability to deal with a locked door, but how they can deal with it should be roughly balanced, and present interesting questions.

Everyone should have the ability to deal with invisible foes, but how they can deal with it should be roughly balanced, and present interesting questions.

Everyone should have the ability to deal damage, but how they can deal it should be roughly balanced, and present interesting questions.

Damage, in particular, I prefer if everyone's character has several options to choose between, based on the situation and their objectives.

As for 4e... Rather than continue tbo9s, which had cool, different refresh styles, 4e choose to make everything samey. And still failed horrifically at giving groups balance.

So, again, **** the game designers trying to produce balance (especially at the cost of coolness) - give us coolness, and the tools to make balance for ourselves.

* Replace all instances of "everyone" with "most everyone"

-----

I played in a homebrew where you could play as anything from Thor to a sentient potted plant*. It was awesome. Balance is irrelevant to fun. Or, rather, balance is only as required the table makes it.

* Actually, you could play things outside those bounds, too.

-----

But what was I saying? Hmmm... I was trying to address that "balanced" doesn't need to mean "equal".

And also to hint at how impossible balancing truly interesting questions is. How effective does "striping your foe naked" (slight of hand + disarm) need to be for it to be balanced against dealing damage? How much of a character's resources should each consume? How effective should healing be compared to preventing damage in the first place with buffs / debuffs? How much of a character's resources should each consume?

Note that "striping naked" is ineffective against most monsters, and "healing" is ineffective against attacks that don't deal damage, and certain buffs and debuffs are ineffective against certain attacks.

Do you honestly believe that you can make a game this interesting balanced for my table, sight unseen? That, with our particular levels of skills and inclinations, we could take some random pre-built characters from you, which utilize the vast array of 3e combat options, and call our play experience "balanced"? Do you really have that level of hubris?

For something as complex as an RPG, I fear that balance is a much more personal matter than it is in chess. And, even in chess, I'll spot my opponent pieces to make a more balanced game.

-----

Nearly unrelated, but, no, neither I nor those I've gamed with have seen the diversity of actions in 4e as we have in 3e.


I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about here. Maybe I'd understand better if you explained why you think that unspecialized characters who don't get many moments to shine are good.

ShadowRun is the paragon of the "Shine" mentality. The Decker gets to Shine in cyberspace, because no one else can participate in that minigame. The Driver gets to Shine in diving, because no one else can participate in that minigame. The Shaman gets to Shine in the Astral, because no one else can participate in that minigame. It's "all spotlight, all the time", with no team effort at the tactical level. Cooperation exists almost entirely at the strategic level.

Similarly, there's a board game (or several, now that I think about it) I play where the players work as a group against the game, but each individual character can only fight monsters alone. There is no such thing as a group effort take down a monster.

Despite being a ****, I'm a cooperative sort of person (I'm batting for team Le, after all). I prefer challenges that we can work together to solve.

This sentiment - this desire to work together, rather than have one person take the spotlight and shine alone - is most often expressed by others, IME, as a dislike for SoD effects. Where, if they make the save, that contributed nothing; if they fail the save, them the damage that had been dealt contributed nothing.

Personally, much like how I think 4e is an idiotic attempt at game balance, I think that this particular gripe with SoD is among the most wrong-minded versions of caring about the spotlight and contribution.

If you haven't got a backup plan to deal with monsters that you can't defeat through HP damage, then, as Batman would say, "you're a ****ed fool".

-----

Anyway, point is, I believe that, most encounters, most characters should feel that they "contributed". "Shining", aka taking the spotlight, should be rarer.

Now, occasionally, you've got a really great group, like the BDH party, where everyone feels like they got to "Shine" in almost every encounter. And that's great, too, if you're after a shiny feel. But, sometimes, you want something dimmer. In those cases, "shine" is the enemy of "contribute", and I prefer the latter.


Which is the problem with giving locked doors such an important role as challenges. Of course, generic combat challenges aren't a lot better; the only variable is how many hit points and spell slots you have left over. The combat can be designed to be more interesting (e.g, enemies escaping, or an objective other than "kill everyone with green skin"), but that option really isn't available for doors. Which, again, leads to me grumbling about why D&D has an entire role set aside for dealing with tasks that are almost impossible to make not binary pass/fail...

There's nothing wrong with binary pass / fail. In 2e, you might roll well, and could get through the first locked door, but then roll poorly, and fail at the second. OK, now what? Suddenly, you have an interesting question to answer. Is this door worth the single Knock spell the party Wizard has memorized? Is it worth attracting attention by trying to break the door down? Is it likely that the Wizard will be alive for you to "come back to it later"? Is it worth the time to try to figure out what's on the other side of the door before answering these questions?

I'm not seeing the problem with binary pass / fail.

[Anonymouswizard]

I like this idea, though I'd probably take it in the opposite direction. Give everyone some magic, perhaps like the Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight archetypes in 5e (or the monk, paladin, and ranger). Everyone specializes in one general portfolio of skills and magic.
The fighter can enhance his strength, teleport to foes, and maybe conjure weapons and armor in a pinch, but still backs it up with a core of martial skill; the rogue stealths normally, but with dozens of minor spells that can give them an edge in a pinch (along the lines of Corvo from Dishonored, the title character of RONIN, and other stealth game protagonists); clerics have various holy-themed spells passed down by the church and knowledge of all things profane and unpleasant; and so on. Mages in this kind of world would be like scientists or engineers, focusing on understanding magic on a deeper level than most; they would have a wider array of magic known and would be able to do stuff with magic (e.g, counterspelling), but would have fewer mundane skills.

I mean, the end result is reducing the gap between 'minimum magic' and 'maximum magic', my preference is just towards bring the ceiling down a lot because I like such games. Although I'm totally not against non-scholarly magic users, because they're totally cool.

My homebrew game moves between having one magic using class which draws a handful of spells from a big list to many magic using classes with small lists, and I'm honestly leaning towards the latter. But as I said, raising the floor or lowering the ceiling has the same effect in practice.

[Luccan]

I actually don't care for setting each character up with magic without a choice. I like 5e, but I don't care for how more and more races are getting some form of inherent magic. That said, in 5e it would be pretty easy to set everyone who wants it up with magic at level 1. Just give everyone a free feat (and ban or alter Variant Humans so they don't start with two)*. If someone doesn't want magic, they can still obtain a useful ability.

*Edit: I suppose I should say, for those who don't know, there are two feats in 5e that pretty much anyone can take that give some kind of spell casting: Magic Initiate and Ritual Caster. Some races can also get racial casting feats.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I actually don't care for setting each character up with magic without a choice.
Why would that be a problem, especially with "magic" being defined so broadly as to encompass super-strength and other "mundane" powers?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Why would that be a problem, especially with "magic" being defined so broadly as to encompass super-strength and other "mundane" powers?

I'm totally on board with this "everybody is/does magic" idea. It makes things so much smoother to assume that while, yes, no real human can do X, fantasy people can do X as a matter of course because they're all suffused with magic. Not all people/creatures do organized magic (cast spells), but all the creatures from the most humble are (at least partially) magic.

With that foundation, the whole magic/mundane divide disappears and the only remaining question is how and how much magic you do/are. Dragon's flight? Magic, but not organized magic. Antimagic fields? Just stop organized magic, because the universe itself is magic so cutting off that is like turning off the (real world) strong force. Barbarian's Rage? Magic. Fighter's Action Surge? Magic. And it also explains the limited resources thing--going beyond "normal" capabilities requires drawing from limited supplies of energy which replenish relatively slowly and require rest. A hand-wave and an abstraction, to be sure, but much less of one than the purely mundane explanations.

[Unavenger]

I'm totally on board with this "everybody is/does magic" idea. It makes things so much smoother to assume that while, yes, no real human can do X, fantasy people can do X as a matter of course because they're all suffused with magic. Not all people/creatures do organized magic (cast spells), but all the creatures from the most humble are (at least partially) magic.

With that foundation, the whole magic/mundane divide disappears and the only remaining question is how and how much magic you do/are. Dragon's flight? Magic, but not organized magic. Antimagic fields? Just stop organized magic, because the universe itself is magic so cutting off that is like turning off the (real world) strong force. Barbarian's Rage? Magic. Fighter's Action Surge? Magic. And it also explains the limited resources thing--going beyond "normal" capabilities requires drawing from limited supplies of energy which replenish relatively slowly and require rest. A hand-wave and an abstraction, to be sure, but much less of one than the purely mundane explanations.

I think for most people, the problem is that they would rather their knights not go super saiyan, or at least not overtly super-saiyan. Badass Normal is an aesthetic that some people like, and telling people that it's a stupid aesthetic and they should go play a mage isn't particularly helpful.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think for most people, the problem is that they would rather their knights not go super saiyan, or at least not overtly super-saiyan. Badass Normal is an aesthetic that some people like, and telling people that it's a stupid aesthetic and they should go play a mage isn't particularly helpful.

But there's a big difference between being "normal" for the setting and being "normal" for earth. In this sense, superheroes (including the non-technically super-powered ones like batman) are magical--they do things that violate the laws of physics/biology. But they're "normal" (ie no super-power) heroes in their setting.

And being a mage (ie doing magic) is a completely different aesthetic than someone like the Hulk. Or even someone who does "impossible" things because they're just that darn good/have practiced that much. The problem is that if you say "the normal rules are X, but magic can break the rules" you inevitably end up with either magic in disguise (BA normals) or Guy at the Gym. Both are detrimental to world-building. Instead, magic is the rules. They're not Earth rules, but they're the rules of the fictional world you're in.

[awa]

It depends how far you push it.
Being able to heal from a stab wound with out 6 months of therapy and a permanent reduction in ability most people can get behind that kind of unrealistic.

Cutting people with wind pressure or stomping so hard you knock foes over is a lot more iffy but can work for superhuman non-magical people.

Non-magicaly teleporting or ridding an arrow you shot breaks most non-magical suspension of disbelief.

part of the problem is at least in third edition there is not really anything a non-magical person could do to compete with mid to high op casters by the late game because even the hulk can't compete their.

so for instance take one piece, most players would reject an assertion that the settings martial arts are non-magical when it lets them punch air or effectively fly. Or at a more extreme example dbz.

[Arbane]

I think for most people, the problem is that they would rather their knights not go super saiyan, or at least not overtly super-saiyan. Badass Normal is an aesthetic that some people like, and telling people that it's a stupid aesthetic and they should go play a mage isn't particularly helpful.

I've posted this before, but I think it explains the problem fairly well:



It's phrased in all kinds of different ways. Fighters shouldn't be too "anime". Or maybe Fighters should be more Conanesque. Or whatever. But it's actually really common that people think of a "Fighter" and they think of some fictional character who is like 4th level. Mad Martigan from Willow, Conan from Conan, Gimli from LotR, or whatever. That's their concept of a Fighter, and they don't want their character to do anything that character does not do.

Where this gets problematic is when it bumps right next to their next demand, that the party is hitting 5th level and they still want to be limited to a benchmark that is essentially 4th level. And while at that point you can in fact keep things kind of hobbling along with the same character with bigger numbers, after a few levels of that it becomes untenable. When the player is asking for their character to be archetypically identical to a 4th level concept and asking to be mechanically balanced with 9th level casters, you're up **** Creek.

That was the horrible revelation that was caused by the Tome Fighter. The harsh reality is that Mad Martigan is a 4th level character and the people who hold up Mad Martigan as the example are seriously not saying that they want higher level abilities that happen to be skinned as guts and luck, they are literally saying that they want to be quintessentially 4th level characters while being balanced with 9th level characters. It's an actually and actively contradictory thought pattern and there is no solution.

Contrariwise, the Tome Monk get accepted with hardly a blip. Some people quibble about it being overpowered. Some people even helpfully informed us that it was more powerful than a Core Monk. But people didn't tell us that any of it was out of theme. Because the Monk theme is one which can in fact continue growing until it's Goku. Similarly, "Wizard" is a character concept that just keeps growing forever. Your summoner summons electric rat, and then he summons a storm crow, and then he's summoning a thunder dragon. No one bats an eye at this poo poo.

But Fighter players seriously do get annoyed and even offended when their character can beat up an elephant with their bare hands. Also they get annoyed and offended when they notice that the other characters are more powerful than they are. It really is cognitive dissonance, and the solution is to force people to abandon the Fighter concept after a few levels. Mandatory PrCs is the only way to get people to accept their own character having level appropriate abilities at high level.
(Emphasis mine)

Actually, there is a solution, but nerfing spellcasters until they're at the power level of a real-world carnival fortune-teller is an unpopular rules-change.

[awa]

you can delay the problem of non-casters being overshadowed by giving characters broader powers Conan is an excellent example of this. He has max or near max stats across the board and is a master of almost every fighting style and skill. He a thief, a berserker, a leader of men a ranger he can do basically every thing. While some of his physical abilities are low superhuman the biggest thing is he can do every thing. Right now one of the martial problems is they are to focused (at least in third edition) they can do one thing really well (hopefully) but when that one thing is no good their out of luck.

because people always ignore this part of this idea, it still wont let them play with a really high level or highly optimized caster, but those are already a significant outlier in normal play

the second thing you can do which also works well for Conan is massive plot armor, a lot of these mundane characters are incredible ridiculously lucky. A solid for of meta currency reserved for martial could greatly aid them. Maybe the wizard can cast knock to open the door, but mundane might be able to spend a meta resource to say oh actually i found a key on the last guard that opens this door. The wizard may be able to nope an attack with an immediate action but the martial may be able to do the same with a luck pt.

Now again this wont let them play in the top tiers with out it getting ridiculous but if you combined the ideas it would let them be relevant in all but the most overpowered caster shenanigans.

The point is that the problem isn't Martial's teaming up with casters its that at least in third edition they did it badly.

[Anonymouswizard]

Why would that be a problem, especially with "magic" being defined so broadly as to encompass super-strength and other "mundane" powers?

This.

There is a difference between using magic and being magic, and the lines people draw seem to be really weird. 'I want to be a regular guy, but I don't want to spend time actually healing from sword wounds, just let me have it all back at the end of the day! Also I want to be able to have a burst of speed once every combat, but being able to lift a car would be too much'.

One of the things I like about The Dark Eye 5e is that it admits it's healing rules are much better than reality, and straight up says it's due to magic and nobody thinks it's weird in-setting. Just a nice little buff to those most likely to be on the front lines (although TDE mages are also much weaker than D&D mages, most combat spells will take 1/4 or more of a starting Mage's AE and it regenerates at one or two d6 a day).


Actually, there is a solution, but nerfing spellcasters until they're at the power level of a real-world carnival fortune-teller is an unpopular rules-change.

Yeah, I've tried going this far a couple of times, and when I make travelling entertainers I now tend to stay away from the common 'bard with a lute' trope as a consequence (acrobats are always good and justify a high DEX score, but I've also done a dedicated storyteller and have a magician planned). Even though I very rarely take magic away completely there seems to be a real problem getting people to accept a truly low magic setting.

[Luccan]

I feel I may have not been clear. Mundanes should be allowed to be superhuman, particularly at high levels. When done correctly, a game can do this without declaring they must be magical as would be understood in D&D. That's what I want to avoid. If you don't have wings and don't have magic, you might not be able to fly, but that doesn't mean you can't beat up an elephant with your bare hands, then haul its carcass across the desert. Because that's the exaggerated reality I want to reach playing a mundane. I want to be a BA "normal", in the sense that I want to go beyond the possible. But I don't want to be the Hulk because any functioning character concept must be magical (as understood in the context of the game). I actually think 5e solves a lot of these issues.

My complaint about too many inherently magical races in 5e was unrelated and more grouped around too many non-warrior races getting magical abilities for my liking. Makes building a mundane when I want to harder, because there are races I can't play (by RAW anyway).

[Talakeal]

I've posted this before, but I think it explains the problem fairly well:


(Emphasis mine)

Actually, there is a solution, but nerfing spellcasters until they're at the power level of a real-world carnival fortune-teller is an unpopular rules-change.

I agree with some of what he says, but he overstates it. Madmartigan is awesome, but I don't think he is either a 4th level character or an appropriate pinnacle for a mundane PC to aspire to.

Still, the sentiment that you can't keep the badass normal aesthetic and still be a high level player is often stated on the forum, but doesn't actually apply in any edition of D&D but 3.X or in D&D based fiction, yet people still act like it is some impossible hurdle that simply cannot be solved.

[Cluedrew]

I've been busy so a bit of a delay, but I have some replies.


Still, I suppose it becomes a problem if the Wizard is alone in having "more important things to do" - when does the Rogue ever have "more important things to do"?

Personally, my answer to that question is, the Rogue is the party's primary DPS - the Rogue has more important things to do than to buy a bunch of wands and pretend to be a Wizard, when he can just give his foes the "dead" condition.The first part is actually the core of the problem. Especially since locked doors are kind of a small things to begin with. For the second part... I thought you were describing the fighter for a moment. This is a separate issue but I would rather the rogue feel more like a thief. Their specialty being underworld contacts, figuring out ways into and out of places (for the whole party even) and conning treasures and favours out of people.

I think 100 ways to kill people is kind of a boring variety.


So the short answer I have to this problem is that magic-users are too magic focused. Let's dial back on that, if we're using scholarly magic users let's increase the amount of focus Lore skills have in a game, or maybe we could have mages know a number of utility spells but have to use weapons for combat. Or potentially there is only combat magic, and utility spells don't exist.Sort of like what I do in my system. In addition though spells become skill like. The per-day (or however long) limits come from the time, energy and materials the character has to put into using those skills. But it removes/reduces rate as a balancing factor which helps things.


I'm totally on board with this "everybody is/does magic" idea.I have discussed this with you before and am on board with the general idea. The only spin on my version is separating "the narrative definition of magic" (things that don't work in our world) and "magic as in spell casters". I believe we settled on fantastic last time it came up. Everyone is fantastic (here: of fantasy); the wizard is fantastic because they control magical forces, the fighter is fantastic because they can rip a spear out of their stomach and kill you with it, the assassin is fantastic because they can become effectively invisible with nothing more than dim lighting and a shabby cloak.

[Quertus]

The first part is actually the core of the problem. Especially since locked doors are kind of a small things to begin with. For the second part... I thought you were describing the fighter for a moment. This is a separate issue but I would rather the rogue feel more like a thief. Their specialty being underworld contacts, figuring out ways into and out of places (for the whole party even) and conning treasures and favours out of people.

Glad to hear that I understood your core idea.

In 3e, the Rogue is (or should be) the primary damage dealer in most parties. I agree that it's not the role most would choose the class for. But, statistically, that's what a good Rogue's "better things" look like.

In downtime, sure, the Rogue should probably not be using scrolls of Animate Dead, pretending to be a Necromancer - they (should) have better, Rogue things to do.

And, yes, the epic challenge of the locked door is clearly central to the game, which is why everyone harps on it so much.

[Arbane]

And, yes, the epic challenge of the locked door is clearly central to the game, which is why everyone harps on it so much.

We're talking about D&D, right? Skirmish wargaming in an underground menagerie? I dimly remember that locked (and trapped) doors are kind of common in it.

[Segev]

Still, the sentiment that you can't keep the badass normal aesthetic and still be a high level player is often stated on the forum, but doesn't actually apply in any edition of D&D but 3.X or in D&D based fiction, yet people still act like it is some impossible hurdle that simply cannot be solved.

I think part of the issue might be in defining "badass normal aesthetic."

Is Roanoa Zoro, from One Piece, a "badass normal?" He doesn't have chi or ki, he doesn't have a devil's fruit power, and even his "awesome" swords are just really good, solid metal that's razor sharp, not some sort of magical item.

What about Sanji? He is, in a lot of ways, a quintessential monk.

Both are capable of insanely potent feats of strength and dexterity, let alone endurance.

D&D 3e and PF offer the "Extraordinary Ability" category of powers/features/etc., denoted by (Ex), which is expressly beyond "normal, real-world" rules of physics and biology but is also expressly not magical in any way insofar as D&D is concerned.

Batman, when portrayed in ensemble stories, and Robin in Teen Titans, are probably in the 7-13th level range, with both being able to do things that no real human could do. Or, at the least, no real human could do all of them. (Heck, Robin puts his foot through concrete with a flying kick when he wants to, and is expressly not superhumanly strong.)

[Quertus]

We're talking about D&D, right? Skirmish wargaming in an underground menagerie? I dimly remember that locked (and trapped) doors are kind of common in it.

They certainly used to be, back in the Golden Age of gaming. These days... the only locked door outside a published module I, as a player, remember seeing PCs bypass in the past decade was on a corrupt mayor's house.

Of course, that may be a bigger commentary on my senility than on the prevalence & importance of locked doors...


D&D 3e and PF offer the "Extraordinary Ability" category of powers/features/etc., denoted by (Ex), which is expressly beyond "normal, real-world" rules of physics and biology but is also expressly not magical in any way insofar as D&D is concerned.

Do note that, in 2e, your completely "Ex" creatures - including elves, IIRC - will get sick and die if brought to a low-magic world (like this one was statted out to be).

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think part of the issue might be in defining "badass normal aesthetic."

Is Roanoa Zoro, from One Piece, a "badass normal?" He doesn't have chi or ki, he doesn't have a devil's fruit power, and even his "awesome" swords are just really good, solid metal that's razor sharp, not some sort of magical item.

What about Sanji? He is, in a lot of ways, a quintessential monk.

Both are capable of insanely potent feats of strength and dexterity, let alone endurance.

D&D 3e and PF offer the "Extraordinary Ability" category of powers/features/etc., denoted by (Ex), which is expressly beyond "normal, real-world" rules of physics and biology but is also expressly not magical in any way insofar as D&D is concerned.

Batman, when portrayed in ensemble stories, and Robin in Teen Titans, are probably in the 7-13th level range, with both being able to do things that no real human could do. Or, at the least, no real human could do all of them. (Heck, Robin puts his foot through concrete with a flying kick when he wants to, and is expressly not superhumanly strong.)

This is my issue. As I see it, there are levels of "fantastic" powers.

Level 0: Normal Earth human capabilities, as a package. So Usain Bolt is a level 0 runner, but someone who was as fast as Usain Bolt but was also an olympic power-lifter and a super-genius would be pushing the boundaries.

Level 1: "Non-powered superheroes"/BA Normals. These do things that normal earth humans can't do--they're tougher, faster, smarter, etc. as a package. They survive things that it's unlikely a human can, but they're not special or using explicit powers in universe. It's just that normal people in the fiction can reach levels not found in earth humans. Most Action Heroes (Die Hard, Mission Impossible), for me are in this category.

Level 2: Explicit super powers. These are things that in-fiction people can't normally do. These break into a few major (overlapping) categories:
2a: Tech powers. Iron Man. Artificers. Their powers come from their gear, not their own selves. They wear "magic".
2b: Intrinsic powers. Superman. Most Marvel/DCU heroes, especially X-men. Their powers are innately part of them and manifest as packages of related abilities. They are "magic"/fantastic.
2c: Spell-casting. Wizards, Dr. Strange. Harry Potter. They gain their power by actively casting spells or other direct magic. They do "magic".

I see low level "normal" characters in the 1 range mostly, although things like Rage or Evasion cross the line into 2b for me personally. They're things that normal people in fiction can't do, but the character can. By mid-levels, everyone in D&D is firmly into level 2, will-they-or-nil-they.

[Talakeal]

This is my issue. As I see it, there are levels of "fantastic" powers.

Level 0: Normal Earth human capabilities, as a package. So Usain Bolt is a level 0 runner, but someone who was as fast as Usain Bolt but was also an olympic power-lifter and a super-genius would be pushing the boundaries.

Level 1: "Non-powered superheroes"/BA Normals. These do things that normal earth humans can't do--they're tougher, faster, smarter, etc. as a package. They survive things that it's unlikely a human can, but they're not special or using explicit powers in universe. It's just that normal people in the fiction can reach levels not found in earth humans. Most Action Heroes (Die Hard, Mission Impossible), for me are in this category.

Level 2: Explicit super powers. These are things that in-fiction people can't normally do. These break into a few major (overlapping) categories:
2a: Tech powers. Iron Man. Artificers. Their powers come from their gear, not their own selves. They wear "magic".
2b: Intrinsic powers. Superman. Most Marvel/DCU heroes, especially X-men. Their powers are innately part of them and manifest as packages of related abilities. They are "magic"/fantastic.
2c: Spell-casting. Wizards, Dr. Strange. Harry Potter. They gain their power by actively casting spells or other direct magic. They do "magic".

I see low level "normal" characters in the 1 range mostly, although things like Rage or Evasion cross the line into 2b for me personally. They're things that normal people in fiction can't do, but the character can. By mid-levels, everyone in D&D is firmly into level 2, will-they-or-nil-they.

Also note that due to the prevalance of magic items even the most mundane characters in d&d are in class 2a by high levels anyway, which makes the whole discussion feel kind of moot.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Also note that do to the prevalance of magic items even the most mundane characters in d&d are in class 2a by high levels anyway, which makes the whole discussion feel kind of moot.

Especially in non 5e editions (and even 5e as played rather than as designed). But yes.

[Anonymouswizard]

This is one of the reasons I like running science fiction so much. Even though I adore hard science it's so nice to just throw it out of the window and handwave unrealistic stuff as tech.

How'd he survive a plasma bolt to the face? Force field!

How'd he lift a car? Cybernetic arms! (And back)

Why do players get to choose between killing enemies and knocking them out? Of course blasters have a stun setting! (No, the pew pew noises are not optional)

How'd he disassemble something in three seconds? Nanobots! (Seriously, it's my go to handwave for weird stuff)

[PhoenixPhyre]

This is one of the reasons I like running science fiction so much. Even though I adore hard science it's so nice to just throw it out of the window and handwave unrealistic stuff as tech.

How'd he survive a plasma bolt to the face? Force field!

How'd he lift a car? Cybernetic arms! (And back)

Why do players get to choose between killing enemies and knocking them out? Of course blasters have a stun setting! (No, the pew pew noises are not optional)

How'd he disassemble something in three seconds? Nanobots! (Seriously, it's my go to handwave for weird stuff)

In my hierarchy of "fantasticness", all of those (except maybe stunning) are examples of a level 2a (tech super-power) if not common everywhere or a level 1 power (if standard issue). Every "fantastic" (sci-fi or fantasy) piece of fiction (including anything that's not ultra-hard sci-fi) fits on that spectrum. Sci-fi's version of 2b is often either cyborgization or mutants or other such woo. For 2c you frequently see psionics or "nanites" or other technobabble (Babylon 5's technomages operate on this principle). It's magic by a different name.

[Anonymouswizard]

In my hierarchy of "fantasticness", all of those (except maybe stunning) are examples of a level 2a (tech super-power) if not common everywhere or a level 1 power (if standard issue). Every "fantastic" (sci-fi or fantasy) piece of fiction (including anything that's not ultra-hard sci-fi) fits on that spectrum. Sci-fi's version of 2b is often either cyborgization or mutants or other such woo. For 2c you frequently see psionics or "nanites" or other technobabble (Babylon 5's technomages operate on this principle). It's magic by a different name.

Yes, but as long as you sick to 2a most players won't view it as magic, and the view is important here. Especially with 1, I've met people who'd cry foul if a Fighter wasn't a 'guy at the gym with a cool sword' but well happily play a cyborg gunslinger with a personal force field.

[Arbane]

This is my issue. As I see it, there are levels of "fantastic" powers.

Level 0: Normal Earth human capabilities, as a package. So Usain Bolt is a level 0 runner, but someone who was as fast as Usain Bolt but was also an olympic power-lifter and a super-genius would be pushing the boundaries.

Level 1: "Non-powered superheroes"/BA Normals. These do things that normal earth humans can't do--they're tougher, faster, smarter, etc. as a package. They survive things that it's unlikely a human can, but they're not special or using explicit powers in universe. It's just that normal people in the fiction can reach levels not found in earth humans. Most Action Heroes (Die Hard, Mission Impossible), for me are in this category.

Level 2: Explicit super powers. These are things that in-fiction people can't normally do. These break into a few major (overlapping) categories:
2a: Tech powers. Iron Man. Artificers. Their powers come from their gear, not their own selves. They wear "magic".
2b: Intrinsic powers. Superman. Most Marvel/DCU heroes, especially X-men. Their powers are innately part of them and manifest as packages of related abilities. They are "magic"/fantastic.
2c: Spell-casting. Wizards, Dr. Strange. Harry Potter. They gain their power by actively casting spells or other direct magic. They do "magic".

I see low level "normal" characters in the 1 range mostly, although things like Rage or Evasion cross the line into 2b for me personally. They're things that normal people in fiction can't do, but the character can. By mid-levels, everyone in D&D is firmly into level 2, will-they-or-nil-they.

You can add in a level 1.5 for people who aren't supposed to be 'super', but can still do things impossible in real life, like pretty much everyone in Irish mythology or the wilder kung-fu movies.

[noob]

So real life space rockets fits under 2a?(people can not normally use a space rocket)

[vasilidor]

I feel that Die Hard is more realistic than you give it credit for. it falls under the heading of normal person in extraordinary circumstances to me. A real life navy seal or similarly trained person could have pulled it off. most people seem to underestimate what real people are capable of.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You can add in a level 1.5 for people who aren't supposed to be 'super', but can still do things impossible in real life, like pretty much everyone in Irish mythology or the wilder kung-fu movies.

That's level 1 (except for the wilder parts of Irish myth which are clearly class 2--the heroes are clearly not "normal people" in the setting). And a lot of wire-fu movies invoke mystical concepts that, while not explicitly magical, are decidedly non-"normal".


I feel that Die Hard is more realistic than you give it credit for. it falls under the heading of normal person in extraordinary circumstances to me. A real life navy seal or similarly trained person could have pulled it off. most people seem to underestimate what real people are capable of.

I'll admit that I've never seen Die Hard. Most of the Action Hero genre has massive quantities of plot armor and rapid healing/pain tolerance. Still within the (relaxed) bounds of "that looks plausible/not too totally implausible" and "not flashy magic" to fit in the (loose) boundaries of case 1.


So real life space rockets fits under 2a?(people can not normally use a space rocket)

From the perspective of the common man? They're not far off. From a more objective stand-point, rockets use well-understood/replicable technology that works in real life (by definition). Thus, it can only be case 0. Both case 1 and 2 involve things that aren't possible in real life. Iron Man, by counter-example, uses tech that's way beyond the norm and that sets at defiance our current understanding of physics in the real world. While it's not "magic" in-universe, it's certainly beyond the possibilities of our universe. It's "fantastic technology."

My numbering/categorization system (labeling them "levels", etc) may be a bit misleading--they're more like a venn diagram/set theory thing. Case 0 is the background--almost all fiction starts with real life and then tweaks things (adds magic, removes some tech, adds super tech, adds super powers, etc). Much (but not all) adventure-type fiction stacks case 1 and case 2--the protagonists (or other significant figures) can do more/survive more/be bigger than life even outside their "fantastic" specialty. We ignore things like water purification, etc. Then they add a source of "powers" from group 2.

[Arbane]

most people seem to underestimate what real people are capable of.

Yup. A 'normal' person with training, talent and determination can
memorize pi to 40,000 digits,
walk a tightrope over niagra falls - with a snack break in the middle,
do impossible-seeming pickpocketing,
shoot a bow and arrow with their toes while doing a handstand.
Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. In D&D3.5, a game where the combat goes to 11 and the magic goes to 9001, the skill system barely makes it to 8.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yup. A 'normal' person with training, talent and determination can
memorize pi to 40,000 digits,
walk a tightrope over niagra falls - with a snack break in the middle,
do impossible-seeming pickpocketing,
shoot a bow and arrow with their toes while doing a handstand.
Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. In D&D3.5, a game where the combat goes to 11 and the magic goes to 9001, the skill system barely makes it to 8.

But can one person do all of those? A high-level rogue can. And I'd say that most of those people are decidedly not in the center of the applicable bell curves in talent.

Doing any one or two "impossible" things (meaning things outside the norm for most of humanity) is still within case 0. It's when you step into things that are physically impossible or just merely highly improbable (someone who is setting records across multiple olympic sports while also being a genius-level physicist/mathematician/etc from a young age despite little formal training) that you approach the (squishy) line to case 1.

[Arbane]

Richard Feynman, Jean-Claude Van Damme, or Sir Francis Burton?

Doubt any of them were in double-digits levels...

[Anonymouswizard]

How about we add a level 0.5: does not exceed known human abilities, but has attained a high level in an improbable number.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Richard Feynman, Jean-Claude Van Damme, or Sir Francis Burton?

Doubt any of them were in double-digits levels...

You have people doing subsets of those feats. With significant technological and training support. Being able to do 3 disparate things at high levels is more of a feat (in my eyes) than doing 1 thing at an extreme level.

Even Feynman (who was very good at what he did) wasn't world-class in all (or even most of those things). And he's well to the right edge of the bell curve in a lot of ways.

I'm not defending how low-powered the skill system in D&D (any edition) is. You're right. Real life is much more "fantastic" than most make it out to be. That's (part of) why the Guy at the Gym concept is so irksome to me. Things that DMs say are "unrealistic" are commonplace in real life--life is very unrealistic. Full of crazy coincidences.

But many things that PCs do just flat out break the laws of (mostly) biology as we know them. Shrugging off a hit (or even a near miss) from a giant. Tanking a dragon's breath. Killing a dragon with daggers. Falling off a mountain and walking away. Multiple times a day. Evasion. Making 8 effective hits in 6 seconds while also running up to 30 feet (action surge + full movement). Firing 8 crossbow bolts in 6 seconds (action surge + crossbow expert, 5e). Etc.

These are the things that cross over into case 1 or case 2 (depending on how you see things).

[PhoenixPhyre]

How about we add a level 0.5: does not exceed known human abilities, but has attained a high level in an improbable number.

Those were the ones I said were borderline. So calling it level 0.5 works for me. I don't think these categories are hard-edged either. More like phases of matter--solid vs liquid isn't a clear-cut line either, but as general categories it works fine.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Still, the sentiment that you can't keep the badass normal aesthetic and still be a high level player is often stated on the forum, but doesn't actually apply in any edition of D&D but 3.X or in D&D based fiction, yet people still act like it is some impossible hurdle that simply cannot be solved.
The problem is, it really can't be.
Batman has no business fighting supervillains who can punch out Superman, and (AFAIK) he usually doesn't, because he isn't a moron. Batman's role in storylines where the entire Justice League takes on Doomsday or whatever usually revolves more around his abilities as a strategist and/or the resources he provides. Few players are interested in playing a support character, and fewer are interested in having their front-line fighter transition to that role as their mundane fighting skills become less and less relevant.
Sure, you could inflate the numbers until Batman punches as hard as Superman, but then you'd run into other issues. If Batman is a "badass normal," and if Superman's strength and nigh-invulnerability make him a high-level fighter (let's ignore his other powers for now), then the Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern and so on are like high-level casters. The variety of problems those two can solve is immense. The Green Lantern can create just about anything, while the Martian Manhunter can read minds, shapeshift, and do some other stuff. (I'm not really a DC guy. Or a comic book guy.) Even if Superman is better at punching Doomsday, the Martian and Lantern are going to outshine him overall if they're using their abilities intelligently and the problems they handle are more complex than "Doomsday is beating people up in Latveria!"
Of course, Superman has other abilities that let him keep up with Green Lantern and the Martian Manhunter, abilities which I specifically said I was ignoring. He has super-senses, super-speed, heat vision, flight, super-weaving, etc etc. The Martian Manhunter might be able to read the mind of a goon to figure out what supervillain they need to find, and the Green Lantern can catch the villain in a cage, but they need Superman's super-ears to find the villain. (Probably. Let's go with that.)

I'm struggling to think of Badass Normals who fought alongside superhumans as equals without relying on support skills (leadership, intuition, heart, etc) to do so. The only ones that come to mind are Hawkeye and Black Widow, and...well, it's kinda questionable if they count as "equals" to gods, prototype super-soldiers, and technological marvels.



We're talking about D&D, right? Skirmish wargaming in an underground menagerie? I dimly remember that locked (and trapped) doors are kind of common in it.
D&D was once just a skirmish wargame in underground menageries, but it's grown past that. And, quite frankly, the skirmish-wargame aspects are the parts that have aged the worst. D&D is still clunkier and shallower than most computer wargames, for the simple reason that you need to roll the dice and keep track of the rules yourself. For TRPGs to flourish, they need to focus on what they provide that Starcraft, Diablo, and Civilization can't. That requires thinking outside the combat arena, which is a problem for characters mechanically defined by hitting things harder and harder.
If you stick to combat, you probably could make high-level fighters strong enough to compete with the battlefield control, mass-blasting, and Save-or-Die effects that high-level casters can throw around...but good luck at finding ways to translate Regdar's definitely-not-superhuman fighting-numbers into solutions for literally anything else. Movement? Social challenges? Traps? Those are the domain of rogues and casters (teleport, charm person, find traps and snares), not fighters.

[LordCdrMilitant]

How about the player fluffs they're character however they want; within the confines of the setting's themes.

Separation of crunch and fluff and all that.

There's no mandate that fighters be magically empowered or anything.

[Talakeal]

@Greatwyrmgolddragon:

D&D is not DC comics.

Saying that green arrow cant really stand up to Supermans foes is not the same thing as saying a level 17 AD&D fighter is not a great asset to the parry when battling an ancient red dragon or that Raistlin can take on a Goddess in a spell duel but still needs Caramon around to lead his armies and protect him from mundane threats when he is exhausted and out of spells.

[Talakeal]

How about the player fluffs they're character however they want; within the confines of the setting's themes.

Separation of crunch and fluff and all that.

There's no mandate that fighters be magically empowered or anything.

It can ruin the immersion for some people if the aesthetics dont match up. To some players your gritty badass action movie hero being able to compete with their supernatural demigod who can channel the power of the heavens to smite mortal armies completely ruins the fantasy, just like captain hobo would ruin yours.

[Cluedrew]

This is my issue. As I see it, there are levels of "fantastic" powers.I agree with the general concepts of increasingly fantastic powered characters. I think it might be a bit to course at this time but for now I think I only one distinction I would like to add.


2b: Intrinsic powers. Superman. Most Marvel/DCU heroes, especially X-men. Their powers are innately part of them and manifest as packages of related abilities. They are "magic"/fantastic.Here there are actually two main sub-sub-categories that I think are important.
2bi: "Injected Powers" Most of the examples you gave are in this group. The powers exist as kind of a switch, most superheroes have a power injected into a normal person. Superman got it at birth, the X-men have it when the X-gene activates and Spiderman got it in the lab accident.
2bii: "Refined Powers" More action movie (and anime) characters, they were a normal person but grew a little bit. (Generally some sort of training.) And a little bit more and so on until that is definitely not humanly possible, but it follows the same ark of what a human could learn.

That (2bii) is I believe the category we are looking for.


D&D is still clunkier and shallower than most computer wargames, for the simple reason that you need to roll the dice and keep track of the rules yourself.For the record, actual table-top war games (War Machine/Hordes being my favourite) also blow D&D out of the water in this regard. First because there rule-sets are better designed for it and because they don't have to deal with tactical/narrative conflicts because they don't worry about the narrative side. So if you are coming to D&D for that... I think you are wasting your time. (On the other hand if you are still having fun...)

[PhoenixPhyre]

Here there are actually two main sub-sub-categories that I think are important.
2bi: "Injected Powers" Most of the examples you gave are in this group. The powers exist as kind of a switch, most superheroes have a power injected into a normal person. Superman got it at birth, the X-men have it when the X-gene activates and Spiderman got it in the lab accident.
2bii: "Refined Powers" More action movie (and anime) characters, they were a normal person but grew a little bit. (Generally some sort of training.) And a little bit more and so on until that is definitely not humanly possible, but it follows the same ark of what a human could learn.

That (2bii) is I believe the category we are looking for.


I can agree with this.

And yes, we've gone a bit far afield and this probably(?) deserves a new thread if we want to continue categorizing types of fantastic powers.

[LordCdrMilitant]

It can ruin the immersion for some people if the aesthetics dont match up. To some players your gritty badass action movie hero being able to compete with their supernatural demigod who can channel the power of the heavens to smite mortal armies completely ruins the fantasy, just like captain hobo would ruin yours.

This is both specifically a session-0 problem ["within the confines of the established setting" -- you should be playing a character appropriate to the campaign, which, if it's about superheroes should also be a superhero, for example] and definitely a problem of the player with the supernatural demigod; players are always on mechanically equal footing with each other. If the action movie hero doesn't think he should compete with the demigod, then he can tier himself down; but the demigod cannot tier down the other player because he wants to be super all-powerful.

That said, there's no reason a gritty badass with skill, discipline, and resolve cannot be fighting on the same tier as a demigod, it's simply a matter of fluff.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This is both specifically a session-0 problem ["within the confines of the established setting" -- you should be playing a character appropriate to the campaign, which, if it's about superheroes should also be a superhero, for example] and definitely a problem of the player with the supernatural demigod; players are always on mechanically equal footing with each other. If the action movie hero doesn't think he should compete with the demigod, then he can tier himself down; but the demigod cannot tier down the other player because he wants to be super all-powerful.

That's not the complaint. It's a verisimilitude issue--how is the normal dude keeping up with the demigod in fiction? Not from a mechanical standpoint, but from a fictional one? To many people (myself included), this strains my willing suspension of disbelief and smacks of nothing but authorial fiat. It's one of my big issues with superhero ensemble movies. No, Hawkeye isn't on par with Thor, no matter what the authors say.

[LordCdrMilitant]

That's not the complaint. It's a verisimilitude issue--how is the normal dude keeping up with the demigod in fiction? Not from a mechanical standpoint, but from a fictional one? To many people (myself included), this strains my willing suspension of disbelief and smacks of nothing but authorial fiat. It's one of my big issues with superhero ensemble movies. No, Hawkeye isn't on par with Thor, no matter what the authors say.

Discipline, Skill, and Resolve. There's plenty of stories about mortal men standing up to supernatural horrors, etc. and winning.

If the game's atmosphere isn't one for ordinary heroism; then that should have been established at session 0. If the game's atmosphere is, though, then it's definitely a player problem if the demigod player is going "I should have buffs, or you should nerf the gritty badass player, because it strains my character concept that I'm so supernaturally empowered nothing can keep up with me".

[PhoenixPhyre]

Discipline, Skill, and Resolve. There's plenty of stories about mortal men standing up to supernatural horrors, etc. and winning.


Those can let you
a) fly
b) survive a direct hit from a dragon's breath
c) cut holes in reality to go elsewhere
d) survive in an environment made of elemental fire
e) etc?

Not without breaking the world into a thousand contradictory fragments. Not for me.

In all those "mortal beats supernatural" stories and faery tales, they do so using trickery and carefully selected weaknesses (tricking the vampire into the sunlight, etc). That doesn't work for 99.999999999999999999% of the stories commonly found in D&D games, especially not if there is also someone in the party that can legitimately in-fiction go toe-to-toe with the bad thing. It's entirely inapposite.



If the game's atmosphere isn't one for ordinary heroism; then that should have been established at session 0. If the game's atmosphere is, though, then it's definitely a player problem if the demigod player is going "I should have buffs, or you should nerf the gritty badass player, because it strains my character concept that I'm so supernaturally empowered nothing can keep up with me".

"We're playing D&D 3e" is enough to tell you that "ordinary heroism" just ain't gonna cut it. Because even a level 5 character is super-human just by nature of their resilience and damage-soaking potential.

Again, we're not talking about mechanics. We're talking about thematics. If a solitary ordinary man can punch out a dragon...then why are dragons so feared? Either the dragon isn't that powerful in fiction! or the ordinary man...isn't. Those are your options. There isn't another option.

[Segev]

My claim is that you can, for a given setting, declare that "badass normal" goes well beyond Batman's physical capability. I again cite One Piece, because it's just a good example.

High level "mundane" characters (i.e. non-casters who are not using magical techniques other than the items they wear) can still be ludicrously strong, durable, and capable of feats that would fit right in with the Justice League.

[awa]

Discipline, Skill, and Resolve. There's plenty of stories about mortal men standing up to supernatural horrors, etc. and winning.

If the game's atmosphere isn't one for ordinary heroism; then that should have been established at session 0. If the game's atmosphere is, though, then it's definitely a player problem if the demigod player is going "I should have buffs, or you should nerf the gritty badass player, because it strains my character concept that I'm so supernaturally empowered nothing can keep up with me".

think of it another way most of the players make elite solider guys wearing body armor and carrying sniper rifles. Then one guy make an 11 year old with a sling shot. who insists he just a normal kid with no special training, when asked why he is just as strong as the grown soldiers it because he knows how to use his strength effectively implying the soldiers dont. When his sling shot is just as effective as their guns he says its because he aims for his targets weak spots implying the soldiers dont, when asked how an 11 year old with no training is just as good as shot as a veteran solider much older it again implies hes better then they are.

That's where the problem can come in when the odd man out wont match the groups collective power. This is a bigger problem in a game like mutants and mastermind where fluff and mechanics are linked differently.

In the same way some writers keep insisting batman is a better then this or that other hero because he does it all without powers. That's fine in a written work but in a shared rpg that kind of one-ups men-ship can get annoying.

Of course it works both ways if you stick bat man on a time with wonder woman, goku, and thor and batman keep insisting that he just as good in a straight up fight because none of them really know how to fight.

It would also be annoying if superman showed up on a team with green arrow, daredevil, and Conan and was upset that he wasn't better then them. But it would be a different kind of problem.

edit realized you weren't saying quite what i thought you were saying


My claim is that you can, for a given setting, declare that "badass normal" goes well beyond Batman's physical capability. I again cite One Piece, because it's just a good example.

High level "mundane" characters (i.e. non-casters who are not using magical techniques other than the items they wear) can still be ludicrously strong, durable, and capable of feats that would fit right in with the Justice League.

you can do this but its rare in western fiction to push this very far that's why things like tome of battle get called to "anime" because of things like one piece where mortal martial arts break physics harder than western media tends to do.

[Talakeal]

This is both specifically a session-0 problem ["within the confines of the established setting" -- you should be playing a character appropriate to the campaign, which, if it's about superheroes should also be a superhero, for example] and definitely a problem of the player with the supernatural demigod; players are always on mechanically equal footing with each other. If the action movie hero doesn't think he should compete with the demigod, then he can tier himself down; but the demigod cannot tier down the other player because he wants to be super all-powerful.

That said, there's no reason a gritty badass with skill, discipline, and resolve cannot be fighting on the same tier as a demigod, it's simply a matter of fluff.

Preaching to the converted here, I am just telling you what I have been hearing from the "other side" after several years of advocating for "badass normal" characters in the endless magic vs melee debates that envelop these forums. And as Phoenixphyre says, it is more a problem of fluff, suspension of disbelief, and player ego/fantasy than a mechanical issue.

[Arbane]

Preaching to the converted here, I am just telling you what I have been hearing from the "other side" after several years of advocating for "badass normal" characters in the endless magic vs melee debates that envelop these forums. And as Phoenixphyre says, it is more a problem of fluff, suspension of disbelief, and player ego/fantasy than a mechanical issue.

"If the rogue can't sneak into the Underworld and steal a soul back out to the land of the living, maybe the wizard shouldn't be building their own pocket universe."

[Segev]

think of it another way most of the players make elite solider guys wearing body armor and carrying sniper rifles. Then one guy make an 11 year old with a sling shot. who insists he just a normal kid with no special training, when asked why he is just as strong as the grown soldiers it because he knows how to use his strength effectively implying the soldiers dont. When his sling shot is just as effective as their guns he says its because he aims for his targets weak spots implying the soldiers dont, when asked how an 11 year old with no training is just as good as shot as a veteran solider much older it again implies hes better then they are.

It need not imply that the soldiers don't know how to fight. Only that the 11-year-old is a major prodigy who can keep up with the grown soldiers. Maybe he'll surpass them one day, given his obvious talents, but he hasn't, yet. He's only as good as they are.

Note that giving him a gun doesn't suddenly make him better than the soldiers, so perhaps he's just that good with a slingshot, but not with all weapons. Give him time and training and again, he might surpass them with the gun, but he hasn't yet (as evidenced by him not having stats that do more damage with the gun than the soldiers trained with it).

The kid claiming he is "just a normal kid with no special training" is either mistaken or lying, obviously, because he clearly isn't since he can keep up with those soldiers. Either he has loads of special training and is lying about it or doesn't realize it, or he has amazing natural talents which, again, he's lying about or doesn't know are anything special.

Kenshi, from Isekai Sekichi ga Monogatari (or War On Geminar, in the English title), insists for a time that his talents and skills are nothing special, despite gross evidence to the contrary, but that's because a) he grew up with his brother, Tenchi, and his aunts (Tenchi's immortal space goddess wives), and b) he had his mind meddled with to eliminate awareness that hte more fantastical elements of his upbringing were anything worth mentioning (likely by Washu).

He's not lying, but he is mistaken. And everybody knows he's flat-out wrong, because it's painfuly obvious that he's outrageously overly strong and skilled for somebody of his age.

So the 11-year-old isn't insulting anybody unless he's trying to deliberately insist that the adults with whom he keeps up are pathetically weak adults. They may take it as an insult, but more likely, they'll say, "Yeah, right, pull the other one," as the kid keeps insisting he's "normal" with "no special training."

And Edward Elric was trained by "just a passing housewife."

[awa]

the kid doesn't say anything the player does. If all the characters are supposed to be the best of the best and one character is just as good despite serious handicaps it makes all the other look that much worse.

[Segev]

the kid doesn't say anything the player does. If all the characters are supposed to be the best of the best and one character is just as good despite serious handicaps it makes all the other look that much worse.

See, that's just the player being dumb, and the GM and the other players should scoff at him (or just say "no").

[awa]

its an extreme example to make a point but more subtle example do show up. How is your explicitly mundane martial artist able to fight alongside my cyborg martial artist? well I guess my guy normal guy is just that much better then yours.

Though I'm now kinda uncertain on how this tangent came about or how it relates to the original question, so take it as an isolated argument that one character can make another look bad by how they fluff their crunch rather than any commentary on a larger issue because I no longer remember what that larger issue was and recognize i am prone on fixating on a specific tree while ignoring the forest around it.

[Talakeal]

its an extreme example to make a point but more subtle example do show up. How is your explicitly mundane martial artist able to fight alongside my cyborg martial artist? well I guess my guy normal guy is just that much better then yours.

Though I'm now kinda uncertain on how this tangent came about or how it relates to the original question, so take it as an isolated argument that one character can make another look bad by how they fluff their crunch rather than any commentary on a larger issue because I no longer remember what that larger issue was and recognize i am prone on fixating on a specific tree while ignoring the forest around it.

Yeah, the normal guy is just better trained / focused / experianced / determined / naturally gifted than the cyborg.

Is it really that bad? I mean, its no different than playing a character with an ECL in D&D or practically anything in a point buy system.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah, the normal guy is just better trained / focused / experianced / determined / naturally gifted than the cyborg.

Is it really that bad? I mean, its no different than playing a character with an ECL in D&D or practically anything in a point buy system.

Training/focus/experience/determination/talent only go so far (on Earth anyway). Natural laws are harsh taskmasters. When the cyborg is bench-pressing semi trucks (because his body is reinforced to actually handle that) and the "normal" guy comes and does the same...there's something wrong. Either with the fiction or with the mechanics. There's a mismatch there.

And if TFEDT can do that, then you have a Charles Atlas Superpower, which is still fantastic. In my classification system (with the addendum) you'd be a 2b(ii) super, which is still a super-power. There is no "bad*** normal" who is actually normal, not in D&D terms. Because the cap is so far above Earth-human that you need some source of fantastic power to keep up with the big boys.

Really, anyone who says they're "normal" and is keeping up with the out-right super-powered is either
a) lying (to themselves or to others)
b) ignorant
c) a victim of bad worldbuilding.

LA is a game balance mechanism, not a fictional one. They're not really comparable in my eyes.

[Cluedrew]

And yes, we've gone a bit far afield and this probably(?) deserves a new thread if we want to continue categorizing types of fantastic powers.I'm in favour of creating a new thread. If someone (say me or whoever beats me to it) create a new thread about this topic, who would jump to it?

[Talakeal]

Really, anyone who says they're "normal" and is keeping up with the out-right super-powered is either
a) lying (to themselves or to others)
b) ignorant
c) a victim of bad worldbuilding.

Could you clarify this? Because it reads like you are saying that all supers beat all normals in all situations, which is clearly not what you meant.


LA is a game balance mechanism, not a fictional one. They're not really comparable in my eyes.

Ok, so do you not believe that a character's "level" is supposed to represent their training and experience? And that the game designers feel that, say, an ECL4 creature is roughly as powerful with five levels worth of training and experience as a standard character would be with nine levels of experience?


Why could you not have a game where, say, a rookie super hero is comparable to a veteran normal?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Could you clarify this? Because it reads like you are saying that all supers beat all normals in all situations, which is clearly not what you meant.


I'm speaking here (and consistently have been) about physically impossible feats (for normals). Things that are forbidden by physics, biology, and chemistry. Things like bench-pressing a semi. Or running at supersonic speeds. Or firing 8 crossbow bolts from one crossbow in 6 seconds while running 30+ feet (to name something a high-level 5e fighter can do easily). Things that (some) supers can do casually but no human being (on Earth) should ever be able to do. Anyone capable of these feats is a super, whether they believe they are or not. My benchmark is that anyone above case 0, including the majority of action heroes, has "super powers" as seen from our universe. The distinction between cases 1 and 2 is that case 1 are normal for the fictional universe, while even someone in-universe would see case 2 as being a "super power."



Ok, so do you not believe that a character's "level" is supposed to represent their training and experience? And that the game designers feel that, say, an ECL4 creature is roughly as powerful with five levels worth of training and experience as a standard character would be with nine levels of experience?

Why could you not have a game where, say, a rookie super hero is comparable to a veteran normal?

Trying to be that simulationist creates incoherencies and reifies classes and levels (in the context of 3e D&D). I don't do that. Yes, there are broad "power bands". But they're not so clear. And you can't (in-universe) simply compare things like that. Doing so causes all sorts of issues with world-building and cuts out a huge amount of the possibility space. You can no longer have expert sages who are not also more durable than average and more skilled with weapons (again in the context of 3e D&D).

Classes and levels (and "power levels" however measured in various point-buy systems) are merely a game UI device in their entirety. That's the only way it makes sense. Pushing them to the fictional level is internally inconsistent.

If you haven't noticed, I reject all RPG rulesets as anything other than an attempt at a fun game. Trying to take any other game system's rules seriously as a simulation of the underlying "natural law" of the setting is doomed to failure and creates more problems than it solves. The game rules are a way of helping the players (including a GM if such exists) translate certain actions/decisions/events between the fictional layer and the player level in a way that helps people have fun. Everything else is an emergent, ephemeral property of a particular game at a particular table, nothing more.

[awa]

Yeah, the normal guy is just better trained / focused / experianced / determined / naturally gifted than the cyborg.

Is it really that bad? I mean, its no different than playing a character with an ECL in D&D or practically anything in a point buy system.



It can cause problems because a lot of people who want to bring a normal into explicitly superpower setting want to show off how special they are in a system where they can actually be mechanically better. If two heroes do something equally heroic then the one who does so with the most disadvantages is the more impressive. 1 mech destroying another mech is nothing special a martial artist destroying a mech is very impressive.

Their are tons of batman comics by lesser writers where they go into so much detail about how much better a hero bat man is because he does all the stuff he does without powers. Sometimes explicitly stating that if batman got a hold of their special tool he would be just so much better. Green lanterns ring is the one that comes most obviously to mind. In a book this can work but in an rpg this kind of special snowflake stuff can get real annoying real fast.

Ecl and point buy are bad analogies because both affect the crunch while this is about one player using the fluff to make their character look better by one upping the other players.

Exactly how much of a problem this is can vary based on the degree of disconnect their is and how obnoxious the player is about it. In d&d where most everything is stated and using better gear gives you mechanical bonuses this is really hard to do unless your dm lets you break a rule. In a system like mutants and masterminds where you can apply what ever fluff you want to your crunch the problem can be a lot bigger unless the dm puts their foot down.




Why could you not have a game where, say, a rookie super hero is comparable to a veteran normal?

see this is fine this generally is not the problem

[Quertus]

Really, anyone who says they're "normal" and is keeping up with the out-right super-powered is either
a) lying (to themselves or to others)
b) ignorant
c) a victim of bad worldbuilding.

Well, back in 2e D&D, my character Armus could exceed the performance of "superheroes" as a (weaker than) "normal human" by
A) choosing to hit the enemy spellcaster, disrupting their spell, rather than attacking the minions like the superheroes were doing
B) use tools, like rope and poison (and, later, actual magical items) to great effect
C) choose to equip new part members (unarmed rescued prisoners) with weapons
D) open combat by moving in front of someone tougher than himself
E) use the grappling rules

And that is how, as a 1st level "Commoner", Armus was out-performing superheroes. Character > Player > Build > Class, even in 2e.


D&D was once just a skirmish wargame in underground menageries, but it's grown past that. And, quite frankly, the skirmish-wargame aspects are the parts that have aged the worst. D&D is still clunkier and shallower than most computer wargames, for the simple reason that you need to roll the dice and keep track of the rules yourself. For TRPGs to flourish, they need to focus on what they provide that Starcraft, Diablo, and Civilization can't. That requires thinking outside the combat arena,


For the record, actual table-top war games (War Machine/Hordes being my favourite) also blow D&D out of the water in this regard. First because there rule-sets are better designed for it and because they don't have to deal with tactical/narrative conflicts because they don't worry about the narrative side. So if you are coming to D&D for that... I think you are wasting your time. (On the other hand if you are still having fun...)

Yeah, the reason/ways D&D combat is better than Starcraft, Diablo, and Civilization (nice list, btw!) is the same reason/ways that it's better than War Machine/Hordes, Battletech, and MtG: because there's an "outside the box" to think in (legally, that is - sure, you could win a MtG tournament by killing your opponents), a "rule 0" to encourage a GM to come up with rulings for things that aren't explicitly covered in the rules.


That requires thinking outside the combat arena, which is a problem for characters mechanically defined by hitting things harder and harder.
If you stick to combat, you probably could make high-level fighters strong enough to compete with the battlefield control, mass-blasting, and Save-or-Die effects that high-level casters can throw around...but good luck at finding ways to translate Regdar's definitely-not-superhuman fighting-numbers into solutions for literally anything else. Movement? Social challenges? Traps? Those are the domain of rogues and casters (teleport, charm person, find traps and snares), not fighters.

Funny thing, thinking is exactly what's required. Idiots trying to convince the vegetarian to eat a steak, or using a fem fatale to seduce a gay man, aren't going to get as far with their +30 to diplomacy as the Fighter with a -2 penalty who chooses the correct tactic. And let's not even get into the idiots using Charm to make enemies of everyone.

Also, if there aren't preexisting portals to various planes / the infinite staircase / mundane rituals / so many other solutions to getting to another plane without a Spellcaster, most of which exist straight out the box in D&D, then it's a world-building problem, IMO. Because D&D has got you covered.

And it's the same for most such challenges.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Well, back in 2e D&D, my character Armus could exceed the performance of "superheroes" as a (weaker than) "normal human" by
A) choosing to hit the enemy spellcaster, disrupting their spell, rather than attacking the minions like the superheroes were doing
B) use tools, like rope and poison (and, later, actual magical items) to great effect
C) choose to equip new part members (unarmed rescued prisoners) with weapons
D) open combat by moving in front of someone tougher than himself
E) use the grappling rules

And that is how, as a 1st level "Commoner", Armus was out-performing superheroes. Character > Player > Build > Class, even in 2e.


Not responsive. You're comparing apples to quasars. You're playing better rather than doing things that are impossible on Earth. You're talking at the game level, not the fictional level. I'm strictly speaking of two characters doing the same task in the same (or functionally identical) ways but where the task should be impossible for one character due to established in-universe physical law.

[Quertus]

Not responsive. You're comparing apples to quasars. You're playing better rather than doing things that are impossible on Earth. You're talking at the game level, not the fictional level. I'm strictly speaking of two characters doing the same task in the same (or functionally identical) ways but where the task should be impossible for one character due to established in-universe physical law.

Oh, absolutely. I'm saying that this is what "Commoner beats superhero" or "Commoner successfully in as party with superheroes" looks like, not "Batman survives Superman's punch, because guts". Armus would have totally gotten roflstomped by the superheroes in his party (EDIT - at least until he got a ****ton of cool magic items, and probably even then), but he inconsistently outperformed them through superior tactics.

[Talakeal]

I'm speaking here (and consistently have been) about physically impossible feats (for normals). Things that are forbidden by physics, biology, and chemistry. Things like bench-pressing a semi. Or running at supersonic speeds. Or firing 8 crossbow bolts from one crossbow in 6 seconds while running 30+ feet (to name something a high-level 5e fighter can do easily). Things that (some) supers can do casually but no human being (on Earth) should ever be able to do. Anyone capable of these feats is a super, whether they believe they are or not. My benchmark is that anyone above case 0, including the majority of action heroes, has "super powers" as seen from our universe. The distinction between cases 1 and 2 is that case 1 are normal for the fictional universe, while even someone in-universe would see case 2 as being a "super power."



Trying to be that simulationist creates incoherencies and reifies classes and levels (in the context of 3e D&D). I don't do that. Yes, there are broad "power bands". But they're not so clear. And you can't (in-universe) simply compare things like that. Doing so causes all sorts of issues with world-building and cuts out a huge amount of the possibility space. You can no longer have expert sages who are not also more durable than average and more skilled with weapons (again in the context of 3e D&D).

Classes and levels (and "power levels" however measured in various point-buy systems) are merely a game UI device in their entirety. That's the only way it makes sense. Pushing them to the fictional level is internally inconsistent.

If you haven't noticed, I reject all RPG rulesets as anything other than an attempt at a fun game. Trying to take any other game system's rules seriously as a simulation of the underlying "natural law" of the setting is doomed to failure and creates more problems than it solves. The game rules are a way of helping the players (including a GM if such exists) translate certain actions/decisions/events between the fictional layer and the player level in a way that helps people have fun. Everything else is an emergent, ephemeral property of a particular game at a particular table, nothing more.

I dont think we actually disagree on anything.

I just got the impression that you actually felt the opposite way when you used HP (one of the most abstract and inconsistent systems in any RPG) as a justification for why high level d&d fighters were neccesarily super powered.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I dont think we actually disagree on anything.

I just got the impression that you actually felt the opposite way when you used HP (one of the most abstract and inconsistent systems in any RPG) as a justification for why high level d&d fighters were neccesarily super powered.

It's not HP itself. It's what "having lots of health" implies about the characters in-fiction. It's normal for a high-level character to tank a dragon's breath and come out not that much worse for wear. That's something that is impossible under any sane understanding of what a dragon's breath would be. Or a rogue standing in the middle of a fireball and not getting singed. Or a barbarian shrugging off a fall from orbit (if raging) starting in the mid-levels. (20d6 is only 120 damage max, average 70, which is only 35 after rage resistance. That's survivable quite early.)

Plus the whole "heals completely after a good night's rest"--that's a category 1 superpower all by itself (category 1 because it's normal for the world as a whole, not just PCs). Not to mention all the special things they can do--even a beginner is firing 1 crossbow bolt every 6 seconds without a feat or special training, which is decidedly not possible for a human on earth. A level 2 fighter can burst up to to 2 shots in 6 seconds or more with a feat. And that's in 5e, which is lower-power than 4e (where people are explicitly magical from the get-go and get more so as they go) or 3e.

There is no "mundane" in D&D. It's just not part of the game, never has been (since AD&D at least). There are people who try to twist the system and ignore huge chunks to allow for "normals", but they're just normal by comparison to the more overt supers.

[Unavenger]

I've posted this before, but I think it explains the problem fairly well:

But it's actually really common that people think of a "Fighter" and they think of some fictional character who is like 4th level. Mad Martigan from Willow, Conan from Conan, Gimli from LotR, or whatever. That's their concept of a Fighter, and they don't want their character to do anything that character does not do.

Actually, there is a solution, but nerfing spellcasters until they're at the power level of a real-world carnival fortune-teller is an unpopular rules-change.

Uhm.

I don't know Mad Martigan at all or Conan well enough to comment on him, but Legolas and Gimli's competition to see who can take down more CR 1/3 enemies (or sometimes CR 7, but that still only counts as one! (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elephant.htm)) takes them into the hundreds. And that's not counting the fact that Legolas and Gimli aren't the most exceptional nonmagical characters, heck, even in the setting (ah yes excuse me while I fend off nine super-powerful wraith dealios with a torch, cure the wound made by a sword forged out of pure death, win an impromptu duel with the guy who just killed the knight-captain of Gondor, and then diplomacy the guy who told my ancestor to go and do one) let alone in any published work ever.

There's nothing at all that stops nonmagical, but really goddamn awesome, characters competing up until fairly high levels. Sure, if by "Fighter" you're thinking "Someone who does nothing but bash someone with a stick until they fall over" then you're going to end up with a character who is neither powerful enough to compete past low levels, nor particularly compelling. But what I want to know is: what's going on past level 4 that, say, Aragorn or Legolas (screw Gimli, he isn't as cool) can't compete with? Let's look at level 3 spells: I'm seeing... basically Animate Dead and Fly. Maybe Dispel Magic in a setting that defines magic as being impervious to sword-related destruction. Most of the other stuff, while not directly replicable, can basically be done otherwise. You'll notice that Animate Dead and Fly don't even appear on the same list, implying that what we're basically saying is that Cleric and Wizard can't compete with each other (and druid is stuffed no matter what).

Personally, if I were going to be going on an uncertain journey, I'd take Aragorn over almost any 5th-level wizard; probably over any 7th-level wizard too (7th-level wizards still can't charm undead, mind) although sufficient cheese-weaseling with Polymorph is probably enough to change that. It's not until raise dead and overland flight come online (although again for different classes and again not for druid) that I'm seriously considering swapping Aragorn - who is still not the archetypal Best Possible Fighter - for a wizard of that level.

Mundane could have done fine up to the late teen levels if Wizards of the Coast had wanted them to. Instead we get bonus feats, a pitiful buff to a couple of stats (with added drawback!) or extra damage against anything you flank.

EDIT: Also there's the very real fact that D&D (as well as Wizards' other famous production, Magic) is very, very, very high-powered compared to a lot of settings. There are certainly settings where mages aren't "at the power level of a real-world carnival fortune-teller" but you'll still find Gielinor's most powerful magi occasionally running away from archers while their economy-bending High Alchemy spell is rivalled by people who are really good at smithing. Hell, even in Magic, you run across wizards who aren't able to take down a knight. In Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, you get wizards/psykers who are near-enough just as vulnerable to getting shot as the next guy (in the case of wyrdvane psykers, more so) and so on, and so forth. "Magic rules" isn't a universal problem.

[Arbane]

Well, back in 2e D&D, my character Armus could exceed the performance of "superheroes" as a (weaker than) "normal human" by
A) choosing to hit the enemy spellcaster, disrupting their spell, rather than attacking the minions like the superheroes were doing
B) use tools, like rope and poison (and, later, actual magical items) to great effect
C) choose to equip new part members (unarmed rescued prisoners) with weapons
D) open combat by moving in front of someone tougher than himself
E) use the grappling rules


D) Someone tougher on your team? That sounds like a tactically inadvisable move.
E) If you've successfully used AD&D grappling rules, YOU are the 'superhero', not your character.


But what I want to know is: what's going on past level 4 that, say, Aragorn or Legolas (screw Gimli, he isn't as cool) can't compete with? Let's look at level 3 spells: I'm seeing... basically Animate Dead and Fly. Maybe Dispel Magic in a setting that defines magic as being impervious to sword-related destruction. Most of the other stuff, while not directly replicable, can basically be done otherwise. You'll notice that Animate Dead and Fly don't even appear on the same list, implying that what we're basically saying is that Cleric and Wizard can't compete with each other (and druid is stuffed no matter what).

Curious as to what your definition of 'compete with' is. Sure, given an arbitrarily high number of hitpoints, skill points, and BAB a fighter/ranger/whatever can make things get dead effectively, but, in my 3rd ed PHB, leaving aside spells for damage, buffs, debuffs (DEATH is the best debuff after all), and anything that could theoretically be done with a skill roll or just SHEER TOUGHNESS...

Detect Thoughts
Rope Trick
Clairvoyance
Tongues
Water Breathing

Cure X Wounds
Make Whole
Meld into Stone
Remove Curse
Speak With Dead

...and that's leaving out an awful lot of stuff that would be 'I can do this in 6 hours, or the wizard can do it in 6 seconds.'

Yeah, most other RPGs I've seen don't have NEARLY as huge a caster disparity as D&D3.X had.

[Unavenger]

Detect Thoughts
Rope Trick
Clairvoyance
Tongues
Water Breathing

Cure X Wounds
Make Whole
Meld into Stone
Remove Curse
Speak With Dead

...and that's leaving out an awful lot of stuff that would be 'I can do this in 6 hours, or the wizard can do it in 6 seconds.'

Yeah, most other RPGs I've seen don't have NEARLY as huge a caster disparity as D&D3.X had.

Sense motive, hide, spot/hide/MS, speak language, constitution checks, heal if heal actually let you heal people, craft, hide, heal, any skill that could be used for investigation. These all seem like reasonable stuff that you should be able to achieve mostly by being hard enough.

The point isn't necessarily that Aragorn can talk to the dead (he can't), it's that he can look around the area that the Rohirrim killed a bunch of orcs in and work out almost exactly what happened to Merry and Pippin without having to do so. Speak with Dead isn't usually a result, it's a method. Aragorn uses a different method (investigating the area around the battlefield) and gets the same result (finds out what happened to the hobbits). So, thank you for helping me prove my point!

EDIT: Also, the main reason that mundane characters in 3.5 suck is less that they don't get magic and more that they struggle to do things that I can do really easily. For example, in real life I'm trained (as in I have some actual instruction, not just ability), with a number of skill points that I'd say is my minimum listed in parentheses, in Appraise (1), Autohypnosis (2), Balance (2), Bluff (1), Climb (2), Concentration (2), Craft (Alchemy 3*, Drawing 1, Electronics 2, Mechanical 2), Handle Animal (1), Heal (5), Jump (2), Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering 4, Geography 2, History 3, Local 1, Nature 4, Religion 4), Perform (Act 2, Dance 1, Keyboard 2, Oratory 1, Strings 1, Sing 1), Profession (Various), Ride (1), Survival (2), Swim (3), Tumble (2) and Use Rope (1), and I'm not sure that this is unusual, but it's enough to mark me as at least a third-level rogue on its own. So I don't buy that "Mundane" is a fourth-level character concept when "Unavenger" is a third-level character (obviously I'm a feat rogue, and blew my combat feats on something trivial, because I don't think I do 2d6 extra points of damage when flanking). Maybe I took rapid shot, which is why I can fire a bow more than once every six freaking seconds, which always struck me as terrible for a half-decent archer.

*Incidentally non-casters not being able to mix up a standard solution of acid always annoyed me.

[vasilidor]

You can watch the willow movie on youtube now. I recommend it. *goes to youtube to do precisely that*

[DavidSh]

The point isn't necessarily that Aragorn can talk to the dead (he can't), ...


I love to nit-pick, so I will point out that Aragorn did talk to the Dead at Erech, after taking the Paths of the Dead. I think it was pretty much one-sided, though, telling them what to do to fulfill their oath.

[Unavenger]

I love to nit-pick, so I will point out that Aragorn did talk to the Dead at Erech, after taking the Paths of the Dead. I think it was pretty much one-sided, though, telling them what to do to fulfill their oath.

I mean, I assume it's not magical to talk to undead, especially the kind of undead who can show up and start murdering the forces of Mordor, but okay, well played. Consider my nit thoroughly picked.

[Lalliman]

EDIT: Also, the main reason that mundane characters in 3.5 suck is less that they don't get magic and more that they struggle to do things that I can do really easily.
This has always been my biggest problem with 3.5. A trained swordsman can't even attempt to disarm his opponent without invariably leaving himself open to a free counterattack, unless he's of above-average intelligence and has spent a significant chunk of his training specifically on disarming-practice. And the same mentality applies to everything you can do in combat that isn't standing still and making normal attacks. God, am I glad to be rid of that game.

Has very little to do with the discussion or the thread, I just wanted to concur on that complaint.

[awa]

one of the things that bugged me along that vein was when they introduced a new ability that allowed you to do something with a feat thus making it impossible to do without the feat, when before it logically fell under the skill system or would have just been something you could do.

[Cluedrew]

EDIT: Also, the main reason that mundane characters in 3.5 suck is less that they don't get magic and more that they struggle to do things that I can do really easily.
Has very little to do with the discussion or the thread, I just wanted to concur on that complaint.On the other side I think this is one of the three main roots of caster/martial. Which I have pegged as: Limiting martial|mundane characters to things on grounds of realism; Underestimating what someone can realistically do; Not limiting casters at all, just keep on piling things up because a wizard did it.

Those are the core problems, I think the first is the most reasonable to have in certain contexts (not kitchen sink action fantasy) the second is a mistake* and the third... that sort of just because magic should generally be limited to background elements.

* Which I think might come from historical "combat focused" versions of the game. Plus the Mermaid Problem awa mention, which I think here might come from trying to apply spell design to normal human abilities... but I just thought of that part.

[awa]

maybe my brain is just glitching on me, but i dont recall mentioning a mermaid, and if its a general term/phrase i'm not familiar with it.

[Quertus]

D) Someone tougher on your team? That sounds like a tactically inadvisable move.
E) If you've successfully used AD&D grappling rules, YOU are the 'superhero', not your character.

D) sure does, doesn't it? Yet it's this level of tactical brilliance that baffles most everyone I tell this to, and makes me realize that it is possible to play a character smarter than yourself (because, playing Armus, I often did things on instinct, and, after the fact, asked myself *wtf was that, and how the **** did it work?", only in retrospect understanding Armus' strategy.) I've still had 0 takers on Playgrounders positing why it was a brilliant plan, (but one saying that, while they have a theory, hearing the answer would likely be less cool than it being an unanswered mystery).

E) lol, right. It's questionable if anyone would claim that Armus was successful at grappling. He is statistically terrible, after all. He just was losing the grapple more slowly than the rest of the party was winning the main combat, now skewed more heavily in their favor.


maybe my brain is just glitching on me, but i dont recall mentioning a mermaid, and if its a general term/phrase i'm not familiar with it.

The "Air-breathing Mermaid Problem" refers specifically to a feat that allowed water-breathing creatures to breathe air, thereby making the mermaid, who did not have that feat, suddenly unable to breathe air, as it had at most tables before that feat was printed. More generally, it refers to any time an ability something should logically have being gated behind a requisite feat. I believe that includes things like feats to let you perform combat maneuvers competently or without an AoO.

So, Playground, did I get that right?

[Unavenger]

The "Air-breathing Mermaid Problem" refers specifically to a feat that allowed water-breathing creatures to breathe air, thereby making the mermaid, who did not have that feat, suddenly unable to breathe air, as it had at most tables before that feat was printed. More generally, it refers to any time an ability something should logically have being gated behind a requisite feat. I believe that includes things like feats to let you perform combat maneuvers competently or without an AoO.

So, Playground, did I get that right?

I believe that the air-breathing ability is hypothetical, but yes: the idea is that by providing an ability that allows you to do X, you imply that X isn't a thing that people can do in general - which is a problem if the thing in question is breathe air.

[awa]

got it i wasn't familiar with the reference so yes that was basically what i was talking about

[Lalliman]

one of the things that bugged me along that vein was when they introduced a new ability that allowed you to do something with a feat thus making it impossible to do without the feat, when before it logically fell under the skill system or would have just been something you could do.
My favourite is the Body Bludgeon Rage Power from Pathfinder, which allows you to use a smaller enemy who you're grappling as a weapon. Common sense says it should be possible anyways, but by virtue of this power's existence it's possible only to the level 10+ barbarians who have it. This situation even came up in a Pathfinder game I played. I gladly refrained from telling them about Body Bludgeon.

[Segev]

I'm in favour of creating a new thread. If someone (say me or whoever beats me to it) create a new thread about this topic, who would jump to it?

I would! Though a link to it in this thread would probably be a good idea.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I would! Though a link to it in this thread would probably be a good idea.


I'm in favour of creating a new thread. If someone (say me or whoever beats me to it) create a new thread about this topic, who would jump to it?

Thread created. I reposted a slightly altered version of my initial post (with the categories) as a conversation starter--it doesn't have to be all about that.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?575723-Types-of-quot-Fantastic-quot-Powers

[Talakeal]

Uhm.

I don't know Mad Martigan at all or Conan well enough to comment on him, but Legolas and Gimli's competition to see who can take down more CR 1/3 enemies (or sometimes CR 7, but that still only counts as one! (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elephant.htm)) takes them into the hundreds. And that's not counting the fact that Legolas and Gimli aren't the most exceptional nonmagical characters, heck, even in the setting (ah yes excuse me while I fend off nine super-powerful wraith dealios with a torch, cure the wound made by a sword forged out of pure death, win an impromptu duel with the guy who just killed the knight-captain of Gondor, and then diplomacy the guy who told my ancestor to go and do one) let alone in any published work ever.

There's nothing at all that stops nonmagical, but really goddamn awesome, characters competing up until fairly high levels. Sure, if by "Fighter" you're thinking "Someone who does nothing but bash someone with a stick until they fall over" then you're going to end up with a character who is neither powerful enough to compete past low levels, nor particularly compelling. But what I want to know is: what's going on past level 4 that, say, Aragorn or Legolas (screw Gimli, he isn't as cool) can't compete with? Let's look at level 3 spells: I'm seeing... basically Animate Dead and Fly. Maybe Dispel Magic in a setting that defines magic as being impervious to sword-related destruction. Most of the other stuff, while not directly replicable, can basically be done otherwise. You'll notice that Animate Dead and Fly don't even appear on the same list, implying that what we're basically saying is that Cleric and Wizard can't compete with each other (and druid is stuffed no matter what).

Personally, if I were going to be going on an uncertain journey, I'd take Aragorn over almost any 5th-level wizard; probably over any 7th-level wizard too (7th-level wizards still can't charm undead, mind) although sufficient cheese-weaseling with Polymorph is probably enough to change that. It's not until raise dead and overland flight come online (although again for different classes and again not for druid) that I'm seriously considering swapping Aragorn - who is still not the archetypal Best Possible Fighter - for a wizard of that level.

Mundane could have done fine up to the late teen levels if Wizards of the Coast had wanted them to. Instead we get bonus feats, a pitiful buff to a couple of stats (with added drawback!) or extra damage against anything you flank.

EDIT: Also there's the very real fact that D&D (as well as Wizards' other famous production, Magic) is very, very, very high-powered compared to a lot of settings. There are certainly settings where mages aren't "at the power level of a real-world carnival fortune-teller" but you'll still find Gielinor's most powerful magi occasionally running away from archers while their economy-bending High Alchemy spell is rivalled by people who are really good at smithing. Hell, even in Magic, you run across wizards who aren't able to take down a knight. In Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, you get wizards/psykers who are near-enough just as vulnerable to getting shot as the next guy (in the case of wyrdvane psykers, more so) and so on, and so forth. "Magic rules" isn't a universal problem.

This. So totally this. Also watch Willow.




It's not HP itself. It's what "having lots of health" implies about the characters in-fiction. It's normal for a high-level character to tank a dragon's breath and come out not that much worse for wear. That's something that is impossible under any sane understanding of what a dragon's breath would be. Or a rogue standing in the middle of a fireball and not getting singed. Or a barbarian shrugging off a fall from orbit (if raging) starting in the mid-levels. (20d6 is only 120 damage max, average 70, which is only 35 after rage resistance. That's survivable quite early.)

Plus the whole "heals completely after a good night's rest"--that's a category 1 superpower all by itself (category 1 because it's normal for the world as a whole, not just PCs). Not to mention all the special things they can do--even a beginner is firing 1 crossbow bolt every 6 seconds without a feat or special training, which is decidedly not possible for a human on earth. A level 2 fighter can burst up to to 2 shots in 6 seconds or more with a feat. And that's in 5e, which is lower-power than 4e (where people are explicitly magical from the get-go and get more so as they go) or 3e.

There is no "mundane" in D&D. It's just not part of the game, never has been (since AD&D at least). There are people who try to twist the system and ignore huge chunks to allow for "normals", but they're just normal by comparison to the more overt supers.

Ok, so this is where my disconnect is coming from:

You say you don't expect a games crunch to mirror the fiction of the world, but then choose to use HP, what is imo one of the most abstract and incoherent systems in gaming, as proof that within the fiction of D&D high level mundanes are super-human.

I cut my teeth on AD&D and the Dragonlance novels, and I never got the impression from any of it that high level characters were somehow super-humanly tough like Superman or Wolverine, and indeed I can think of a few times in the fiction where high level martials were taken out by a relatively mundane cause (eg. Tanis, the protagonist of Dragonlance, eventually dies from a single stab wound from a mook when he gets distracted in battle). I always pictured HP from levelling up as a mixture of skill at avoiding damage, grit, and no small amount of plot armor, and I seem to recall a few articles in Dragon magazine and maybe an early DMG pretty much stating this as the design intention.

Also, AD&D had unavoidable death rules, where if someone was in a situation where there was no conceivable way a real person could survive you just ignored the HP rules and went straight to dead.

There was some weirdness, like healing times taking longer as you level up, but it was easy enough to just ignore.

3.X changed a lot of this, inflating HP and healing times while keeping damage numbers relatively stable and removing unavoidable death, but I could still just chalk it up to game mechanics rather than changing the fiction of the world (although I will admit 4E with its healing surges was a bit too much for me to suspend my disbelief for, but so was pretty much everything in that edition).

Also, people use the "surviving a fall from orbit" thing as proof that high level characters are default super human, and I don't really buy it. I personally just think of it is either a bad rule or maybe, more likely, physics in D&D just works differently. Damage fails to increase beyond 200ft (so the "from orbit" part is just hyperbole when they mean 200') and doesn't take size into account; a bug will die from a 200 foot fall while a whale will survive, quite the opposite of how things work in the real world. Furthermore the damage is more or less linear*, and commoners are actually MORE likely to die from falls than they are in real life.


*Although I have heard people say that though falling speed is non-linear, the force of impact is perfectly linear with the distance fallen, I lack the physics know how to say one way or the other for certain.

[Cluedrew]

This. So totally this. Also watch Willow.What is Willow and why should I watch it?


*Although I have heard people say that though falling speed is non-linear, the force of impact is perfectly linear with the distance fallen, I lack the physics know how to say one way or the other for certain.Falling speed is linear with time (acceleration due to gravity is constant if we ignore are resistance) so I think it might actually be sub-linear with distance because if you double the distance you are going faster and therefore have less time to speed up. Impact force is linear with acceleration (F=ma) and I think acceleration is effectively linear with speed when you hit something immovable like the ground. So I don't think so but I guess you might have to do some math to be sure.

[Talakeal]

What is Willow and why should I watch it?

I highly underappreciated fantasy film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_(film)

I bring it up because Unavenger said he has no idea who Madmartigan was.

[The Random NPC]

I highly underappreciated fantasy film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_(film)

I bring it up because Unavenger said he has no idea who Madmartigan was.

Did you know there's a book series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Moon_(novel))?

[Talakeal]

Did you know there's a book series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Moon_(novel))?

Yes, but I am reluctant to read it, I am told that it randomly kills off half of the characters from the film (Madmartigan included) within the first few pages.

[Cluedrew]

I highly underappreciated fantasy film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_(film)Oh, I actually know that one, from a game based off of the movie... I believe the game was completely mediocre.

[Talakeal]

So, to get this thread back on track, here are the house rules I was trying out for my current hex-crawl campaign that have been described by multiple people as absolutely horrible:


1: 3/5 players are new not just to this system but gaming in general. As a result all characters are to be described to me in narrative terms and then I handle the mechanics of character creation.


2: At the end of each session every player reaches into an envelope and draws out a rumor written on a piece of paper. Something they hear about in town to provide flavor for the setting and to give them hints about where to go in the wilderness to find the adventures.


3: Every day spent traveling in the wilderness the party draws a random encounter card appropriate to the terrain type. Before drawing they roll a survival check, on an extreme success they get a beneficial encounter, on a moderate success they get a curiosity that is neither dangerous or beneficial, on a moderate failure they are attacked by an appropriate CR monster or have a minor mishap such as getting bitten by a snake or caught in a storm, and on an extreme failure they are attacked by a deadly CR encounter.


4: I do not play with permanent player death. Instead dead PCs are merely knocked out until they are healed to a positive HP total.


5: If the party receives a TPK they are instead scattered and will regroup later back in town. Each player must roll 2d6 and consult the following table to see what misfortune befell them while lost and alone in the wild:

2: Lose all treasure and equipment on your person
3: The mental strain and trauma causes a random mild derangement
4 Character is captured and their allies must either pay a random or go on a rescue mission
5 Lose one random piece of equipment
6 Lose all money currently on your person
7 Lose half of all money currently on your person
8 Suffer a -2 to a random ability score for the next session due to a debilitating injury
9 Unable to use a random limb for the next session due to a crippling injury
10 As 8 but the injury is permanent until treated with magic or a highly skilled healer
11 As 9 but the injury is permanent until treated with magic or a highly skilled healer
12 The character is cursed. They suffer from the effects of a random debilitating spell until the curse can be lifted

[Lalliman]

So, to get this thread back on track, here are the house rules I was trying out for my current hex-crawl campaign that have been described by multiple people as absolutely horrible:
Number 1 is definitely a bad idea. I can see it making sense in a game as complicated and optimisation-reliant as D&D 3e, but in that case the better way to ease new players would be to play a different game.

Number 2 sounds like a fun campaign element, I don't know why people are complaining about that.

Numbers 3 to 5 are perfectly good on their own, except I think they combine poorly. If there is absolutely no risk of character detriment except in the case of a TPK, random combat encounters are nothing but a waste of time. I would look into applying these detriments when an individual character "dies" rather than only on a TPK.

[GreatWyrmGold]

@Greatwyrmgolddragon:

D&D is not DC comics.

Saying that green arrow cant really stand up to Supermans foes is not the same thing as saying a level 17 AD&D fighter is not a great asset to the parry when battling an ancient red dragon or that Raistlin can take on a Goddess in a spell duel but still needs Caramon around to lead his armies and protect him from mundane threats when he is exhausted and out of spells.
Wow, you really missed the point.
First off, whatever the novels say, high-level D&D casters don't generally need fighters to defend themselves if they're careful. Second, Caramon leading Raistlin's armies is basically equivalent to Batman assisting the JLA with his strategic abilities, because, thirdly, you missed the dang point! I was using the JLA as examples of one badass normal and a bunch of people with extreme powers; it's debatable if high-level casters are JLA-level (while there are certainly enough potentially-broken spells for me to say they're comparable, I can see the argument either way), but the details of the argument don't really change if I talk about the JLA, the Avengers, or the Fellowship of the Ring. The JLA just has a bunch of indisputable world-shakers and an indisputable badass normal.



My claim is that you can, for a given setting, declare that "badass normal" goes well beyond Batman's physical capability.
Which is already beyond what real people are capable of doing.



think of it another way most of the players make elite solider guys wearing body armor and carrying sniper rifles. Then one guy make an 11 year old with a sling shot. who insists he just a normal kid with no special training, when asked why he is just as strong as the grown soldiers it because he knows how to use his strength effectively implying the soldiers dont.
I'm confused at how this even remotely relates to the wizard-versus-fighter thing. Unless you're saying that fighters have to be worse than wizards, because fighters are worse than wizards?



Yeah, the reason/ways D&D combat is better than Starcraft, Diablo, and Civilization (nice list, btw!) is the same reason/ways that it's better than War Machine/Hordes, Battletech, and MtG: because there's an "outside the box" to think in (legally, that is - sure, you could win a MtG tournament by killing your opponents), a "rule 0" to encourage a GM to come up with rulings for things that aren't explicitly covered in the rules.
Once you're in combat, there's not a lot of planning to be done...and what plans you can come up with on the fly generally rely on magic (e.g, using earthquake or something to knock down a wall). Sure, you can plan to bring a ballista to shoot down a dragon or something, but that's an out-of-combat problem.

[qupte]Funny thing, thinking is exactly what's required. Idiots trying to convince the vegetarian to eat a steak, or using a fem fatale to seduce a gay man, aren't going to get as far with their +30 to diplomacy as the Fighter with a -2 penalty who chooses the correct tactic. And let's not even get into the idiots using Charm to make enemies of everyone.
Also, if there aren't preexisting portals to various planes / the infinite staircase / mundane rituals / so many other solutions to getting to another plane without a Spellcaster, most of which exist straight out the box in D&D, then it's a world-building problem, IMO. Because D&D has got you covered.
And it's the same for most such challenges.[/QUOTE]
I have no idea what you're on about.



On the other side I think this is one of the three main roots of caster/martial. Which I have pegged as: Limiting martial|mundane characters to things on grounds of realism; Underestimating what someone can realistically do; Not limiting casters at all, just keep on piling things up because a wizard did it.
It's unrealistic to let non-magical characters do X, and it's apparently genre-inappropriate to limit magical characters in how they do Y. That's...not an invalid setting design paradigm. Not one I'd recommend, but it's internally consistent. It's how Exalted works, for instance. But this breaks down on a game design evel when magical and nonmagical characters are supposed to be competing at the same level.
People talk about how nonmagical characters in D&D can compete with the ridiculous powers given to magicians. My question is, why isn't that in the books? If fighters are supposed to command armies (or at least give tactical advice to the party), why aren't they given any abilities that let them do so? Without such abilities being in the books, you can't give credit to WotC for solving the problem, because they didn't. Aside from the obviously-questionable utility of abilities not designed to be useful by the game (e.g, trapfinding), there's nothing that stops Raistlin from being able to command his own armies.
That's the thing, really. Spellcasters are allowed to do everything that mundanes are, and usually better if they know the right spell. Non-spellcasters have to wait around for the spellcasters to run into one of the few limitations put on magic, ie antimagic fields or running out of spell slots or something, and hope the spellcaster doesn't have some way around this problem.




I always pictured HP from levelling up as a mixture of skill at avoiding damage, grit, and no small amount of plot armor, and I seem to recall a few articles in Dragon magazine and maybe an early DMG pretty much stating this as the design intention.
...
(...4E with its healing surges was a bit too much for me to suspend my disbelief for...)
Why? If you're willing to accept that HP is just an abstract measurement of how much you can avoid taking damage, why are abstract methods of recovering it so weird?

[awa]

great wyrm gold I wasn't responding to anything you said so no it doesn't have anything to with wizards not inherently.

[Talakeal]

Why? If you're willing to accept that HP is just an abstract measurement of how much you can avoid taking damage, why are abstract methods of recovering it so weird?

As I said, HP is the most disassociated part of most editions of D&D, and I was barely tolerating it, 4E turned that up to 11 and it was just too much for me. Everyone has a breaking point, mine is somewhere between the 3.X version of HP and the 4E one.

[Talakeal]

It's unrealistic to let non-magical characters do X, and it's apparently genre-inappropriate to limit magical characters in how they do Y. That's...not an invalid setting design paradigm. Not one I'd recommend, but it's internally consistent. It's how Exalted works, for instance. But this breaks down on a game design evel when magical and nonmagical characters are supposed to be competing at the same level.
People talk about how nonmagical characters in D&D can compete with the ridiculous powers given to magicians. My question is, why isn't that in the books? If fighters are supposed to command armies (or at least give tactical advice to the party), why aren't they given any abilities that let them do so? Without such abilities being in the books, you can't give credit to WotC for solving the problem, because they didn't. Aside from the obviously-questionable utility of abilities not designed to be useful by the game (e.g, trapfinding), there's nothing that stops Raistlin from being able to command his own armies.
That's the thing, really. Spellcasters are allowed to do everything that mundanes are, and usually better if they know the right spell. Non-spellcasters have to wait around for the spellcasters to run into one of the few limitations put on magic, ie antimagic fields or running out of spell slots or something, and hope the spellcaster doesn't have some way around this problem.

In AD&D being able to lead an army was a fighter class feature.

Honestly though, it shouldn't be. Leadership is just one of many mundane skills that ANY character should be able to pick up that are very useful. Its not just that "fighters suck" (although they do, atleast in 3.X) but rather all mundane skills are completely rendered redundant by magic.


Also, AD&D wizards had some pretty serious drawbacks. It was ridiculously easy to disrupt their spells, and I legitimately think an all wizard party would get stomped by a more balanced party in AD&D at any level, certainly at low levels and possibly all the way up to 20, depending on how you interpret some of the rules.



Number 1 is definitely a bad idea. I can see it making sense in a game as complicated and optimisation-reliant as D&D 3e, but in that case the better way to ease new players would be to play a different game.

Number 2 sounds like a fun campaign element, I don't know why people are complaining about that.

Numbers 3 to 5 are perfectly good on their own, except I think they combine poorly. If there is absolutely no risk of character detriment except in the case of a TPK, random combat encounters are nothing but a waste of time. I would look into applying these detriments when an individual character "dies" rather than only on a TPK.

I actually first mentioned this idea for #1 here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?503811-Questionarre-for-new-players-PEACH). Nobody seemed to have a problem with it. Nobody in my group had a problem with it either until one of the players realized this system couldn't give him starting stats below 8 or above 16, so he would have had the same problem with 5e point buy.

As for random encounters, they are mostly a pacing mechanism to stop the PCs from returning to town after every single fights.

Also, maybe I am just weird / sheltered, but in my experience player death is a non-issue. In my 25 years of gaming I can count the number of deaths which haven't been quickly undone by resurrection magic on one hand.

[Arbane]

So, to get this thread back on track, here are the house rules I was trying out for my current hex-crawl campaign that have been described by multiple people as absolutely horrible:


Maybe take a look at the RPG Ryuutama? It is made for hex-crawl/travel games, and vastly simpler than D&D 3.X.

[Mordante]

Worst Rule I actually played with: All PCs gain the same amount of XP, no matter what they do in the game. Infuriatingly unfair, removes the most effective motivational tool a GM has and it is just plain lazy. I got better, though.

In every party I’ve been this was the rule. Not sure if I would ever join a party where a GM gives different XP for every player.

In DnD parties I play after a while the GM says at the end of session. You all lvl up.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Honestly though, it shouldn't be. Leadership is just one of many mundane skills that ANY character should be able to pick up that are very useful. Its not just that "fighters suck" (although they do, atleast in 3.X) but rather all mundane skills are completely rendered redundant by magic.
In a game where half of the party is expected to mostly do without magic, this is a problem. A problem I was describing, and which people were refuting (in part) by saying that fighters were supposed to command the wizard's armies. (Which would still put the wizard on top, since they aren't the fighter's armies, but that's a separate issue.)


Also, AD&D wizards had some pretty serious drawbacks. It was ridiculously easy to disrupt their spells, and I legitimately think an all wizard party would get stomped by a more balanced party in AD&D at any level, certainly at low levels and possibly all the way up to 20, depending on how you interpret some of the rules.
I'll take your word for it, I guess.

[Talakeal]

I'll take your word for it, I guess.

In 2E AD&D wizards did not receive bonus spells for high intelligence, did not receive more than 2 bonus hp per level for high con, and just getting their scrolls took up most of their "wbl" budget.

Fighters on the other hand got leadership skills and a free army, could move and attack with their full attack bonus (depending on which weapons and splats you were using between 3-7 attacks per round at high level), and made their saving throws on a roll of 2-5, which means with moderately high stats and / or a moderately good ring of protection they would make every save on 2+. Also ranged weapons weren't terrible.

Furthermore wizards could not move at all during a turn they intended to cast, lost their dex to AC while casting, and most high level spells were extremely slow. If a wizard was hit (not damaged but hit) by any attack they automatically lost the spell. There was no concentration mechanic, and at the DM's discretion they simply can't cast in distracting conditions like rough weather or while falling.

I am sure there were some TO tricks that wizards could pull off to break the game, but we didn't know about them because it was mostly pre-internet. But given the above, I would be amazed if a party of all casters would fare better than one who had a few meat shields to protect them while they got their spells off.

[Anonymouswizard]

In 2E AD&D wizards did not receive bonus spells for high intelligence, did not receive more than 2 bonus hp per level for high con, and just getting their scrolls took up most of their "wbl" budget.

Fighters on the other hand got leadership skills and a free army, could move and attack with their full attack bonus (depending on which weapons and splats you were using between 3-7 attacks per round at high level), and made their saving throws on a roll of 2-5, which means with moderately high stats and / or a moderately good ring of protection they would make every save on 2+. Also ranged weapons weren't terrible.

Furthermore wizards could not move at all during a turn they intended to cast, lost their dex to AC while casting, and most high level spells were extremely slow. If a wizard was hit (not damaged but hit) by any attack they automatically lost the spell. There was no concentration mechanic, and at the DM's discretion they simply can't cast in distracting conditions like rough weather or while falling.

I am sure there were some TO tricks that wizards could pull off to break the game, but we didn't know about them because it was mostly pre-internet. But given the above, I would be amazed if a party of all casters would fare better than one who had a few meat shields to protect them while they got their spells off.

Note that priests recieve bonus spells for high Wisdom, but they tend to be low-level slots for PC-level scores, and at least means you get more than one casting of Cure Light Wounds at 1st level. But they also didn't get the highest level of magic.

In actual fact Priests were kind of the best characters. 2/3 attack bonus, so good enough to fight with weapons, good spell progression with a unique spell list, and with special powers depending on the deity.

Missed out on Thief Skills and Warrior followers though, which would be important at the levels they come into play (originally meant to be the point you transitioned into a more wargame format).

Actually, I think D&D should make the 'leading armies' bit more important, maybe even make it a key component of 6th Edition. Lots of games allow me to be a hero with a sword, but I can't think of any where having an army of followers is really central. Most games which alllow you to have followers make it more of the 'small squad of redshirts' variety, or maybe a single sidekick.

[noob]

Note that priests recieve bonus spells for high Wisdom, but they tend to be low-level slots for PC-level scores, and at least means you get more than one casting of Cure Light Wounds at 1st level. But they also didn't get the highest level of magic.

In actual fact Priests were kind of the best characters. 2/3 attack bonus, so good enough to fight with weapons, good spell progression with a unique spell list, and with special powers depending on the deity.

Missed out on Thief Skills and Warrior followers though, which would be important at the levels they come into play (originally meant to be the point you transitioned into a more wargame format).

Actually, I think D&D should make the 'leading armies' bit more important, maybe even make it a key component of 6th Edition. Lots of games allow me to be a hero with a sword, but I can't think of any where having an army of followers is really central. Most games which alllow you to have followers make it more of the 'small squad of redshirts' variety, or maybe a single sidekick.
actually in 5e you have so much money that hiring armies becomes reasonable and since you can not do much else with your money I find quite weird there is not more 5e players with armies especially since it counters most monsters through sheer dakka and that if the opponent gets and army you probably have better spells to kill their army than your opponent thus making dnd 5e lopsided in the player favor if they start using armies unless you start having stupidly big enemies armies that are so gigantic that the sum of the loot and of the crs from that army would make you get in epic levels if they were a thing or armies of powerful enemies(like 500 titans who makes their supplies appear out of thin air).

[Lalliman]

I actually first mentioned this idea for #1 here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?503811-Questionarre-for-new-players-PEACH). Nobody seemed to have a problem with it. Nobody in my group had a problem with it either until one of the players realized this system couldn't give him starting stats below 8 or above 16, so he would have had the same problem with 5e point buy.
Then why did you cite it as a rule that has "been described by multiple people as absolutely horrible"?

In general, why are you now defending the rules when I was just agreeing with what you'd seemingly already admitted?


In every party I’ve been this was the rule. Not sure if I would ever join a party where a GM gives different XP for every player.

In DnD parties I play after a while the GM says at the end of session. You all lvl up.
That was a two-month old comment, son. People have already bombarded the poster with that very response.

[Talakeal]

Then why did you cite it as a rule that has "been described by multiple people as absolutely horrible"?

In general, why are you now defending the rules when I was just agreeing with what you'd seemingly already admitted?

I am mostly just making conversation to try and pull this conversation away from the martial vs. caster debate that engulfs is forum.

I am personally on the fence sbout these rules, I thiught they were good ideas when I implemented them but have seen a lot of negstive feedback since, some of which I agree with some of which I dont.

I just thought it was wierd that I didnt get a lot of negative forum feedback before I i plemented the rule but am getting a lot of t after.

I suppose I could try and remember some of my previous DMs house rules if we want something undisputsbly horrible to talk about, that guy was really really bad.

[Anonymouswizard]

actually in 5e you have so much money that hiring armies becomes reasonable and since you can not do much else with your money I find quite weird there is not more 5e players with armies especially since it counters most monsters through sheer dakka and that if the opponent gets and army you probably have better spells to kill their army than your opponent thus making dnd 5e lopsided in the player favor if they start using armies unless you start having stupidly big enemies armies that are so gigantic that the sum of the loot and of the crs from that army would make you get in epic levels if they were a thing or armies of powerful enemies(like 500 titans who makes their supplies appear out of thin air).

Yes, but it's not really central. Let me explain.

Part of the assumption before 3.5 was that characters were adventuring for wealth and power, and this was reflected in the rules. I first encountered this in my dad's old BECM boxed sets, but those are long gone, and so I shall go to my copy of the 2e PhB. The 'adventuring phase' of a characters life is assumed to be up until 8th level, but after that phase is over. You've hit the level of personal power and wealth where you can reasonably claim land and build a castle to rule from.

First off, let's start with the 'generic character', the good old Fighter. At 9th level it is assumed that the fighter has enough fame that people want to follow him, and as such when be builds a stronghold and attracts both everyday soldiers and a personal guard. In oD&D it was assumed that you'd use the Chainmail rules to simulate this army taking to the field, with party-based adventures being a rare occurance (and even then probably using some of your personal guard instead of hired swords). Interestingly it assumes those with more personal power will have less political power, both Paladins (who I think get squat here) and Rangers are worse off in the followers department than Fighters, and Priests and Wizards don't get them at all. In 5e you can hire an army, but there's nothing making it a core feature of the game besides having nothing better to do.

Now I believe these rules were mainly ignored in favour of more adventuring, because mass battle rules weren't a thing in the corebook, but there were attempts to make this kind of play more of a thing (I believe there were three different sets published during 2e's run, including the system in Birthright). One of the sad bits about 3.X and 5e is that they have quite a few of those strategic level spells but none of the armies they were supposed to support (although some of those spells are still broken). Mirage Arcana makes a lot more sense with armies in play, as do massive AoE effects like Meteor Swarm. But all the way from 0e to 2e I can see the idea that a Fighter getting an army is an important thing.

Now back to BECM. I remember there reaching 9/10th level gave your character a choice. They could remain a wanderer, in which case they got a set of benefits (I believe wandering Fighters could become Paladins, Knights, or Avengers, but landed Fighters couldn't), or they could build a stronghold and enter the politcal game (including getting followers for Fighters and I believe Thieves). It was an interesting idea.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'll say that mass combat scenarios (or hiring a horde of mercenaries) is something I'm glad went away. It's a right royal pain to run at the table. I have yet to see any decent mass-combat rules that preserve the fiction as well as give the players agency without slowing everything down to a crawl.

[noob]

Yes, but it's not really central. Let me explain.

Part of the assumption before 3.5 was that characters were adventuring for wealth and power, and this was reflected in the rules. I first encountered this in my dad's old BECM boxed sets, but those are long gone, and so I shall go to my copy of the 2e PhB. The 'adventuring phase' of a characters life is assumed to be up until 8th level, but after that phase is over. You've hit the level of personal power and wealth where you can reasonably claim land and build a castle to rule from.

First off, let's start with the 'generic character', the good old Fighter. At 9th level it is assumed that the fighter has enough fame that people want to follow him, and as such when be builds a stronghold and attracts both everyday soldiers and a personal guard. In oD&D it was assumed that you'd use the Chainmail rules to simulate this army taking to the field, with party-based adventures being a rare occurance (and even then probably using some of your personal guard instead of hired swords). Interestingly it assumes those with more personal power will have less political power, both Paladins (who I think get squat here) and Rangers are worse off in the followers department than Fighters, and Priests and Wizards don't get them at all. In 5e you can hire an army, but there's nothing making it a core feature of the game besides having nothing better to do.

Now I believe these rules were mainly ignored in favour of more adventuring, because mass battle rules weren't a thing in the corebook, but there were attempts to make this kind of play more of a thing (I believe there were three different sets published during 2e's run, including the system in Birthright). One of the sad bits about 3.X and 5e is that they have quite a few of those strategic level spells but none of the armies they were supposed to support (although some of those spells are still broken). Mirage Arcana makes a lot more sense with armies in play, as do massive AoE effects like Meteor Swarm. But all the way from 0e to 2e I can see the idea that a Fighter getting an army is an important thing.

Now back to BECM. I remember there reaching 9/10th level gave your character a choice. They could remain a wanderer, in which case they got a set of benefits (I believe wandering Fighters could become Paladins, Knights, or Avengers, but landed Fighters couldn't), or they could build a stronghold and enter the politcal game (including getting followers for Fighters and I believe Thieves). It was an interesting idea.

Well that do not change that it is weird that there is not more 5e players who thinks "Oh I have a giant pile of loot and thousands of gold. Maybe I should start recruiting an army"
In 3.5 I do think "maybe an army will be good here" but then I ponder a bit more and think "it would shatter as glass and not even hit the opponent once so I am going to use a distraction army with tons of fake soldiers and some partially real critters among them"
In 5e an army is not a distraction but an actual danger that most of the monsters from the monster manuals are unable to counter properly.
In 5e thanks to bounded accuracy and low maximum armor armies are more powerful than they ever have been before.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Well that do not change that it is weird that there is not more 5e players who thinks "Oh I have a giant pile of loot and thousands of gold. Maybe I should start recruiting an army"
In 3.5 I do think "maybe an army will be good here" but then I ponder a bit more and think "it would shatter as glass and not even hit the opponent once so I am going to use a distraction army with tons of fake soldiers and some partially real critters among them"
In 5e an army is not a distraction but an actual danger that most of the monsters from the monster manuals are unable to counter properly.
In 5e thanks to bounded accuracy and low maximum armor armies are more powerful than they ever have been before.

But armies can't usually go most places since they depend on concentrated firepower on a single target against high-power threats. And armies and dungeons (or caves, or all the usual places adventures really happen, not white rooms of infinite expanse) don't go together well. There's this pesky thing called defeat in detail.

All of these assumptions assume the worst possible tactics and scenario for the monsters and perfect tactics and morale for the army. Neither of which have a place in the fiction.

[noob]

But armies can't usually go most places since they depend on concentrated firepower on a single target against high-power threats. And armies and dungeons (or caves, or all the usual places adventures really happen, not white rooms of infinite expanse) don't go together well. There's this pesky thing called defeat in detail.

All of these assumptions assume the worst possible tactics and scenario for the monsters and perfect tactics and morale for the army. Neither of which have a place in the fiction.
No it just assume you hire 800 soldiers with the highest ranged weapons so that any monster who gets within the range where they can use their own weapon gets in major trouble and you can acquire as well as catapults to siege the dungeons.
I mean only suicidal people enters dungeon.
If the dungeon is underground you can start blocking the entries (from a distance for example by sending carts full of heavy stuff toward the entries) with if possible as many soldiers as possible placed so that they have line of fire in the entry while having the adventurers with teleport ready to act where the biggest monster tries to get out(and everyone getting ready to shoot and manage to have clear lines of fire to the entry for most people) and once the entries are blocked you start planning some stuff for killing everything inside such as earthquake over and over for long periods of time(and you might have used earthquake at the start of blocking the entries).

And trust me soldiers have a good moral if they know they can get resurrected and that each monster they meet gets instagibbed by arrows.

[The Glyphstone]

No it just assume you hire 800 soldiers with the highest ranged weapons so that any monster who gets within the range where they can use their own weapon gets in major trouble and you can acquire as well as catapults to siege the dungeons.
I mean only suicidal people enters dungeon.
If the dungeon is underground you can start blocking the entries(from a distance for example by sending carts full of heavy stuff toward the entries) while having the adventurers with teleport ready to act where the biggest monster tries to get out(and everyone getting ready to shoot and manage to have clear lines of fire to the entry for most people) and once the entries are blocked you start planning some stuff for killing everything inside such as earthquake over and over for long periods of time(and you might have used earthquake at the start of blocking the entries).

Doesn't collapsing the dungeon make it harder to get the treasure? You're going to need to keep paying those armies, after all.

[PhoenixPhyre]

No it just assume you hire 800 soldiers with the highest ranged weapons so that any monster who gets within the range where they can use their own weapon gets in major trouble and you can acquire as well as catapults to siege the dungeons.
I mean only suicidal people enters dungeon.
If the dungeon is underground you can start blocking the entries(from a distance for example by sending carts full of heavy stuff toward the entries) while having the adventurers with teleport ready to act where the biggest monster tries to get out(and everyone getting ready to shoot and manage to have clear lines of fire to the entry for most people) and once the entries are blocked you start planning some stuff for killing everything inside such as earthquake over and over for long periods of time(and you might have used earthquake at the start of blocking the entries).

But can you move those into position yesterday because the princess is going to get eaten today? And armies are big, loud, and obvious. You're denying the monsters any agency--they just have to sit there and watch an army march up over the course of days, building siege engines, etc. A dragon can use hit-and-run tactics to wipe your army out (hint--you can't have them all ready to go all the time, humans need sleep). And you're unlikely to be able to approach a lair quite so simply (armies don't handle mountain ranges without passes very elegantly. Or volcanoes. Or glaciers. Or trackless deserts). And the list goes on. You're assuming perfect conditions for the army and absolute idiocy for the monsters.

Oh, and that the surrounding communities have 800 soldiers, trained with the best ranged weapons (and with those weapons) available for casual hire. This is rarely the case even in the FR. Most of the places the adventures happen are out of the way, forgotten areas with minimal civilized inhabitants. I can't think of a single published adventure that happens somewhere where hiring (and equipping and feeding) 800 soldiers is anywhere near feasible. Soldiers don't come from kiosks, after all.

Edit: and resurrecting 400 soldiers (estimated losses in a more real scenario) requires a crap-ton of diamonds and spell slots. You're looking at 1 rez/high-level cleric/day, and even Resurrection (7th level) doesn't replace missing limbs or vital organs which a dragon's breath would totally destroy. You need true resurrection for that.

And your army is useless against a single wraith. Or a bullette. Or anything that can do hit-and-run tactics in a forest. Or...the list goes on.

[noob]

Doesn't collapsing the dungeon make it harder to get the treasure? You're going to need to keep paying those armies, after all.

It is harder but since most of the treasures have an absurd value it is likely you can get minimum wages workers to do the job(and since you have a caster you can make sure they do not take the gold for themselves with stuff like zone of truth and the fact that people often knows casters can do stuff like that)

Basically as long as you do not meet burrowing creatures you are going to be fine and you could argue that burrowing creatures suffer particularly from earthquakes.


(hint--you can't have them all ready to go all the time, humans need sleep). And you're unlikely to be able to approach a lair quite so simply (armies don't handle mountain ranges without passes very elegantly. Or volcanoes. Or glaciers. Or trackless deserts). And the list goes on. You're assuming perfect conditions for the army and absolute idiocy for the monsters.
A bunch of commoners can already kill a dragon so of course 200 soldiers can: flying makes you a big dumb target and if the dragon is not flying then it is too slow for hit and run and the breath of a dragon is terribly short ranged: basically dragons are the creatures the best countered ever by armies.
and armies while not being elegant according to the rules if a monster peeks his head and that the soliders spots the monster the monster dies to a hail of arrows: there is no rule saying that walking slowly reduce your odds of doing critical strikes.



Oh, and that the surrounding communities have 800 soldiers, trained with the best ranged weapons (and with those weapons) available for casual hire. This is rarely the case even in the FR. Most of the places the adventures happen are out of the way, forgotten areas with minimal civilized inhabitants. I can't think of a single published adventure that happens somewhere where hiring (and equipping and feeding) 800 soldiers is anywhere near feasible. Soldiers don't come from kiosks, after all.
Which is why I spoke of recruiting armies: you walk around and gather armies and manage supply lines(try to make them hard to predict) and if someones tries to stealthily attack your supply lines you have adventurers with teleport which can bring in some soldiers too as well as divination spells and the enemies can not be in really big groups if they want to go undetected by you.



And your army is useless against a single wraith. Or a bullette. Or anything that can do hit-and-run tactics in a forest. Or...the list goes on.
Why do you not burn forests?
Gasp I understood you are playing heroes and not adventurers.
I play adventurers and with players playing adventurers.
The kind of people who thinks "why is there is even an option on firestorm to not burn vegetation. It is not like if we ever wanted to not burn a tree!"

[Anonymouswizard]

I'll say that mass combat scenarios (or hiring a horde of mercenaries) is something I'm glad went away. It's a right royal pain to run at the table. I have yet to see any decent mass-combat rules that preserve the fiction as well as give the players agency without slowing everything down to a crawl.

On the one hand, in the concept of adventuring I completely agree with you. Although I'd love to see hired swords be more of a thing again (and plan to have a few if I ever play 5e again, purely because of the lack of value in gold), in terms of going into the dungeon and bringing your 100+2d20 followers alongside you it's just not worth the trouble.

Which means we likely won't see it in 6e.

However, I maintain the idea of an RPG based around leading groups of people is a good idea. Savage Worlds is a step in the right direction, being designed to run bkirmishes including 50-odd combatants relatively smoothly, but I think we can go beyond that. I am working on the vague idea, because I've had plans for a fantasy game where the PCs are leading a mercenary company and fighting in wars, and one of the things I had to do was cut out the personal scale combat almost entirely. There's rules for dueling, and a PC's stats will affect how formations fight, but D&D-style battles aren't a thing because the focus is elsewhere. Instead there's rules for logistics, supply trains, and forraging, scouting ahead, formations, unit cohesion, unit morale, walking wounded, captives, and other things more suitable for warfare. It's more like a Wargame/RPG hybrid, but I'm trying to swing more towards the latter end of the spectrum and going a bit more narrative (one of the ideas is that units itself aren't incredibly detailed, instead of '200 conscripted archers' you might have a unit of untrained ranged skirmishers at half strength).

[awa]

also you have to pay your soldiers for the time it takes to get to any engagement and all the support staff needed to feed and maintain an army. This is a trick you could pull off maybe once and then all that gold will be spent.

I mean its certainly possible to use an army otherwise armies wouldn't exist but its incredibly trivial to design a dungeon/ adventure that renders an army useless.

Your entire army of archers might get eaten the first time their is a sudden unexpected storm making archery impossible.

[noob]

also you have to pay your soldiers for the time it takes to get to any engagement and all the support staff needed to feed and maintain an army. This is a trick you could pull off maybe once and then all that gold will be spent.

I mean its certainly possible to use an army otherwise armies wouldn't exist but its incredibly trivial to design a dungeon/ adventure that renders an army useless.

Your entire army of archers might get eaten the first time their is a sudden unexpected storm making archery impossible.
there is a spell called weather control.
Even better it is cast able by Druid, Clerics And wizards.

And since gold have absurdly high values and that adventurers gets tons of it then it is rather likely that you can keep that army especially if it increase the number of monsters since it means that the amount of treasure augments since treasure is per monster.
Also if you decide "I am going to kill all the dragons foolish enough to attack the peasants" then you are probably doing a lot more good than by saving 3 hostages.(and you get more gold from that)

[PhoenixPhyre]

A bunch of commoners can already kill a dragon so of course 200 soldiers can: flying makes you a big dumb target and if the dragon is not flying then it is too slow for hit and run and the breath of a dragon is terribly short ranged: basically dragons are the creatures the best countered ever by armies.
and armies while not being elegant according to the rules if a monster peeks his head and that the soliders spots the monster the monster dies to a hail of arrows: there is no rule saying that walking slowly reduce your odds of doing critical strikes.

Which is why I spoke of recruiting armies: you walk around and gather armies and manage supply lines(try to make them hard to predict) and if someones tries to stealthily attack your supply lines you have adventurers with teleport which can bring in some soldiers too as well as divination spells and the enemies can not be in really big groups if they want to go undetected by you.

At that point you're not playing D&D. You're playing a completely different game.

And you're resting very hard on rules that don't say what you think they do. Stock commoners cannot kill a dragon. They hit only on a 20, dealing 1d4 flat damage, only from melee (only proficient in clubs). The dragon can simply sit 10' up and toast them all at his leisure.

You're also ignoring the whole time-pressure thing. Recruiting takes time (lots of time if you have to travel to do so and wait for your (very slow) army to catch up). It takes a huge amount of resources as well. Let's do the math:

800 soldiers (your number) is bare minimum 1600 gp/day (2gp/day for a skilled hireling, and soldiers are skilled). Add in 1gp/soldier/day for rations/accommodations, plus a minimum 50 gp (heavy crossbow)/soldier flat, you're looking at the following:

Day 1: 42,400 gp just to get off the ground. More for spell-casters, drovers, oxen, etc. And if you want them to actually have armor or ammo, you're paying even more.
Day 2+: 2400 gp/day bare minimum.

Considering the best an army can do is probably 15 miles per day (not being roman legions or moving over nice terrain), a 2-day out/2-day siege/2-day back trip would cost a bare minimum of 54,400 gp. Likely costs are going to be triple or quadruple that. And if you have to hire laborers (and feed them, and transport them), you've eaten all your profits. And the princess you came to rescue was dead 3 days ago.

Edit: and more likely you're spending months burning cash while the evil rituals go unhindered and news spreads of these adventurers building an army before you even start. Giving them plenty of time to prepare/move/finish their evil plots.

[noob]

At that point you're not playing D&D. You're playing a completely different game.

And you're resting very hard on rules that don't say what you think they do. Stock commoners cannot kill a dragon. They hit only on a 20, dealing 1d4 flat damage, only from melee (only proficient in clubs). The dragon can simply sit 10' up and toast them all at his leisure.

You're also ignoring the whole time-pressure thing. Recruiting takes time (lots of time if you have to travel to do so and wait for your (very slow) army to catch up). It takes a huge amount of resources as well. Let's do the math:

800 soldiers (your number) is bare minimum 1600 gp/day (2gp/day for a skilled hireling, and soldiers are skilled). Add in 1gp/soldier/day for rations/accommodations, plus a minimum 50 gp (heavy crossbow)/soldier flat, you're looking at the following:

Day 1: 42,400 gp just to get off the ground. More for spell-casters, drovers, oxen, etc. And if you want them to actually have armor or ammo, you're paying even more.
Day 2+: 2400 gp/day bare minimum.

Considering the best an army can do is probably 15 miles per day (not being roman legions or moving over nice terrain), a 2-day out/2-day siege/2-day back trip would cost a bare minimum of 54,400 gp. Likely costs are going to be triple or quadruple that. And if you have to hire laborers (and feed them, and transport them), you've eaten all your profits. And the princess you came to rescue was dead 3 days ago.
1: Armor barely change anything against monsters so the armor part is useless.
2: By destroying all the easy to destroy dungeons I help the kingdom probably way more than by saving the princess especially since by not saving the princess the evil vizier will come into power and evil vizier always have been better at managing kingdoms than regular royalty.
3:Since there is very high amounts of armor on most high level monsters then skilled soldiers do not get significantly better than unskilled hirelings.
4: the longuest range weapon is the longbow and not the heavy crossbow(although it does not change the cost)
5: in fact that total amount of gold is in fact rather low relatively to the gold you can have at that level and if you manage chaining the dungeons fast enough you can probably get good return on your investment.

[awa]

you are making huge assumption about how easy to destroy dungeons are and how close they are to your recruitment grounds.

and yes control weather is a thing which means that the monsters can do it to.

You keep assuming the monsters are entirely static just waiting for you to kill them.

[PhoenixPhyre]

1: Armor barely change anything against monsters so the armor part is useless.
2: By destroying all the easy to destroy dungeons I help the kingdom probably way more than by saving the princess especially since by not saving the princess the evil vizier will come into power and evil vizier always have been better at managing kingdoms than regular royalty.
3:Since there is very high amounts of armor on most high level monsters then skilled soldiers do not get significantly better than unskilled hirelings.
4: the longuest range weapon is the longbow and not the heavy crossbow(although it does not change the cost)
5: in fact that total amount of gold is in fact rather low relatively to the gold you can have at that level and if you manage chaining the dungeons fast enough you can probably get good return on your investment.

1. The minimum is just the cost of the weapon.
2. No. You get outlawed for not saving the princess and the real army comes and whoops your butt.
3. You need them to be skilled just to have proficiency in the weapons. Without that, they're not much use (longbows make poor clubs).
4. Irrelevant, as you say.
5. By the time you're level 17+ (which is what you need for this), you have better things to do than hit up dungeons for petty cash. You don't have nearly this amount of cash by level 11 (unless you're running a monte haul campaign). And remember, you're hauling around hundreds of soldiers for months for even the nearest ones. The proper figure is probably orders of magnitudes higher than that. And none will be recoverable, since you can't even loot the dungeon after you earthquake it. And earthquake doesn't do what you think it does--it destroys structures and puts small cracks in the ground. It doesn't collapse deeply-buried underground caves (unless the DM is being generous).
6. You're also attracting lots of local attention--very few lords are going to look favorably on private armies in their territories. And they already have most of a monopoly on the large bodies of trained soldiers and gear. So no.
7. And you're still assuming absolutely no agency on the part of the monsters/evil beings. They just sit there and wait for you to arrive. More likely, you show up and bombard an empty dungeon, while they snuck out the back 3 weeks before you arrived with all their loot.

[awa]

It is trivial to design dungeons in a way to render an army so impractical that its more liability than benefit or just give the other guys an army big enough to make it a fair fight.

So the only way i could see this being an actual problem is with an adventure path where the dm is unwilling to deviate (that said while i haven't played many adventure paths how many of them give the players the time to find and hire 800 soldiers)

[noob]

2. No. You get outlawed for not saving the princess and the real army comes and whoops your butt.

Why would that happen?
I did not sign any contract saying I had to save the princess.

[PhoenixPhyre]

It is trivial to design dungeons in a way to render an army so impractical that its more liability than benefit or just give the other guys an army big enough to make it a fair fight.

So the only way i could see this being an actual problem is with an adventure path where the dm is unwilling to deviate (that said while i haven't played many adventure paths how many of them give the players the time to find and hire 800 soldiers)

For 5e, I can't think of one where you have the time, resources, or opportunity to find and hire any non-trivial number of soldiers. Not to mention that only the most recent adventure (Mad Mage) even goes beyond level 17 in the first place, the level at which this becomes even remotely doable. And they don't give tons of treasure either; certainly not enough to carry out a plan like this. Or have freely-available dungeons with signs that say "only morons here, come and loot us at your pleasure".


Why would that happen?
I did not sign any contract saying I had to save the princess.

Contracts? Kings don't need contracts. They have armies. Already built, trained, and equipped armies. And more importantly, armies that have competent commanders and logistic trains. Things you don't have. You don't have an army, you have a rabble. And no, those "demonstrations" have the same flaws as your argument--they rely on best-case for the wizard and worst-case for the army. And the example spells are only examples, not some fixed nature of things.

5e does not run by some almighty RAW. The rules (on the DM side) are merely suggestions. You can't weaponize them unless the DM lets you. You're also metagaming horribly (depending on knowing all the details of all the monster stat-blocks). So no.

I'll stop here, since this is far off-topic.

[awa]

you realize the dm controls the npc wizards not you right?
I would be very much surprised if their is a rule that says dm are not allowed to change wizard spells around.

edit seems the thing i was commenting on has been edited out so never mind

[Anonymouswizard]

also you have to pay your soldiers for the time it takes to get to any engagement and all the support staff needed to feed and maintain an army. This is a trick you could pull off maybe once and then all that gold will be spent.

I mean its certainly possible to use an army otherwise armies wouldn't exist but its incredibly trivial to design a dungeon/ adventure that renders an army useless.

Your entire army of archers might get eaten the first time their is a sudden unexpected storm making archery impossible.

True, but if we're going into a dungeon we're not using an army.

More reasonable for a dungeon is 2-5 mercenaries/PC, and a handful of other hirelings and/or donkeys. Working with level 5 PCs, let's assume two lvl 1-2 Mercenaries per PC (2d8HP, +2 proficiency bonus, 12 STR or DEX), equipped witb short swords, spears, and shortbows, as well as one donkey per PC and a hireling to tend to every two Donkies. Assuming 5PCs this gives us ten mercenaries, five donkeys, and three donkey-handlers. The mercenaries have the following jobs: keeping watch (possibly alongside a PC) during the night, protecting the squishies in battle, and providing supporting fire or spearing from the second line. The cost should be about 25gp a day plus supplies, if we assume it takes a week to get to the site, a week to get back, and a week to raid it that means we need to make ~600gp in loot to make a profit, which seems more than reasonable for a 5th level party.

Now if you're raising an army you normally have an objective that requires an army. If you're trying to defeat a dragon you're probably paying your army in shares of the loot, which means you just have to worry about supplies (see if you can deduct the cost of the loot before splitting it up), if you're trying to conquer a region you're betting that the long term benefits of owning it will outweigh the costs of raising an army (plus you might use the immediate proceeds of capturing a region to pay the army to keep fighting).

This is why land is so important. Land gives income that you can use to either raise armies or hire mercenaries (there's arguments in favour of either for what characters would do). This is why players running a mercenary company would be playing a very different game to dungeon raiders, looking for contracts to fight in wars and the like to get enough money to keep going.

EDIT: a note on professional armies, they aren't certain to exist in most settings. Many monarchs will be able to raise an army fairly quickly, as their nobility will raise regiments and have them join the army, but a large standing army is unlikely. However the monarch will have enough professional soldiers to beat you up if you try raising an army on their lands, and the infrastructure that if they catch wind of you trying to raise an army elsewhere they can likely raise a larger army.

Although the D&D tech level is at just the right point for standing armies to be a thing, so it'll depend on how the government is sturctured. There will likely still be a need to raise regiments to fill out numbers, but also enough professional soldiers to be ready to fight quickly, and it could certainly be centrally organised rather than a job of the aristocracy.

[noob]

For 5e, I can't think of one where you have the time, resources, or opportunity to find and hire any non-trivial number of soldiers. Not to mention that only the most recent adventure (Mad Mage) even goes beyond level 17 in the first place, the level at which this becomes even remotely doable. And they don't give tons of treasure either; certainly not enough to carry out a plan like this. Or have freely-available dungeons with signs that say "only morons here, come and loot us at your pleasure".



Contracts? Kings don't need contracts. They have armies. Already built, trained, and equipped armies.


Anyway I am glad I have an army to fight: there is a thread about how a lone player wizard can annihilate an army(the npc wizards do not picks their own spells in fact most monsters lacks the ability to change their own spells) and from the killed army I will get tons of loot and equipment for my army.
And also it does not makes sense: why would the king attack the adventurers as if he excepted the adventurers to save the princess: it can only mean that he did not rely on his own best adventurers which means that his best adventurers are less strong than you and so will not have an easy time protecting their army from you.
I was speaking of liability: I can not be responsible for not saving the princess if I never told I would do that not signed any contract promising to save the princess it is why I spoke of contract: I never signed any contract saying I would save any princess.

Since the king was outlawing me on the basis that I did not save the princess I never said I would save then I can probably also kill the king since it is probably an evil aligned king(he is trying to kill someone which never did anything against him) and then grab the throne.

anyway why would the king ever excepted me to save the princess while what I did previously was burning forests with creatures and filling the dungeons with toxic fumes from some kinds of wood which burns in an horrible way.

[Kurald Galain]

Your entire army of archers might get eaten the first time their is a sudden unexpected storm making archery impossible.

Why would it? A storm would give disadvantage, and everybody knows disad doesn't stack. So adding more bad conditions to the battle doesn't actually hamper the army.

That's the fun part of bounded acc: there are actual rules about DCs and modifiers and ad/disad that counter most of your arguments. It's fine that you choose not to play that way, but by the rules it would absolutely work.

[noob]

Why would it? A storm would give disadvantage, and everybody knows disad doesn't stack. So adding more bad conditions to the battle doesn't actually hamper the army.

That's the fun part of bounded acc: there are actual rules about DCs and modifiers and ad/disad that counter most of your arguments. It's fine that you choose not to play that way, but by the rules it would absolutely work.

I think he was referring to 3.5 rules about winds.

[awa]

Why would it? A storm would give disadvantage, and everybody knows disad doesn't stack. So adding more bad conditions to the battle doesn't actually hamper the army.

That's the fun part of bounded acc: there are actual rules about DCs and modifiers and ad/disad that counter most of your arguments. It's fine that you choose not to play that way, but by the rules it would absolutely work.

luckily 5th edition is a system designed to allow the dm to make judgment calls and they are entirely in their right to say the combination of wind and really heavy rain is so bad no archery.

The rules aren't intended to be a straight jacket these problems usually come up when you treat them like they are.

[PhoenixPhyre]

luckily 5th edition is a system designed to allow the dm to make judgment calls and they are entirely in their right to say the combination of wind and really heavy rain is so bad no archery.

The rules aren't intended to be a straight jacket these problems usually come up when you treat them like they are.

Exactly. The rules (on the DM side) are more like the pirate's code. In this case, the DM has by the books full control over whether an action succeeds or fails. 5e's basic rules go:

1) DM describes a scenario.
2) Player describes an attempted action.
2a) DM decides how to resolve the attempt using the mechanics if necessary.
2b) Resolution based on decided pattern
3) GOTO 1 with changes based on success or failure.

The mechanics are explicitly, word of god, not the final arbiter. In fact, they're there as suggestions for a default set of resolution mechanics, but if other things make more sense or would be more fun, you'd be breaking the real rules not to follow that more sensible/fun alternative.

[The Random NPC]

Exactly. The rules (on the DM side) are more like the pirate's code. In this case, the DM has by the books full control over whether an action succeeds or fails. 5e's basic rules go:

1) DM describes a scenario.
2) Player describes an attempted action.
2a) DM decides how to resolve the attempt using the mechanics if necessary.
2b) Resolution based on decided pattern
3) GOTO 1 with changes based on success or failure.

The mechanics are explicitly, word of god, not the final arbiter. In fact, they're there as suggestions for a default set of resolution mechanics, but if other things make more sense or would be more fun, you'd be breaking the real rules not to follow that more sensible/fun alternative.

No! Bad PheonixPhyre! You do not use GOTO in this manner. SHAME!

[noob]

You could use a while(people can still meet up periodically and have interest in the game and nothing more important to do)
{
The gming loop which usually involve more jokes, food and discussions than actions in the game
}

[PhoenixPhyre]

You could use a while(people can still meet up periodically and have interest in the game and nothing more important to do)
{
The gming loop which usually involve more jokes, food and discussions than actions in the game
}


No! Bad PheonixPhyre! You do not use GOTO in this manner. SHAME!

Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

[Anonymouswizard]

No! Bad PheonixPhyre! You do not use GOTO in this manner. SHAME!

Yep, it should be:

cin >> player;

cin >> action;

bool gameplay = true;

int booksthrown = 0;

while (gameplay == true) {
oooo bool actionreasonable = checkAction(action);

oooo if (actionreasonable == true)
oooooooo resolve.Rules(action);
oooo else {
oooooooo reaction = checkPlayer(player);
oooooooo if (reaction == contradicting) {
oooooooooooo throwBook();
oooooooooooo booksthrown++;
oooooooo }
oooo }

oooo if (playersLeave == true)
oooooooo return 0;
}

I see somebody made the same joke while I was writing... shouldn't have dropped coding after first year.

EDIT: fixed whitespace.

[noob]

Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

I did not intend to make you feel guilt.
I am sorry.
If you are programming in binary then you probably use jumps which are just like gotos.
And binary have one advantage: it is faster than many of the programming languages.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I did not intend to make you feel guilt.
I am sorry.
If you are programming in binary then you probably use jumps which are just like gotos.
And binary have one advantage: it is faster than many of the programming languages.

No, no. I said they were the BASIC rules, I just forgot to capitalize properly. Thus, since GOTO is perfectly legal and valid in (some variants of) BASIC, what wrote was perfectly fine. Really! Truly!

[Quertus]

Well, I think the discussion of armies certainly qualifies for bad house rules worthy of this thread.

My questions are,

1) are there any established 5e random encounter tables (in the DMG, in an adventurer path, etc) that contain entries that would significantly threaten a 800-archer army, let alone one backed by PCs?

2) would any of these random encounter tables support paying 1600-2400+ gp/day to maintain the army, let alone make a profit?

3) shouldn't it be "your really popular army that's been actively making the kingdom safe goes and kills the king's no-good loafing army when said king's army fails to protect the princess, as a precursor to your toppling the established monarchy and ascension to the throne"? Be a fan of the PCs.

@Talakeal - yes, let's hear your old GMs rules. That sounds much more on-topic.

[Lalliman]

I am mostly just making conversation to try and pull this conversation away from the martial vs. caster debate that engulfs is forum.

I am personally on the fence sbout these rules, I thiught they were good ideas when I implemented them but have seen a lot of negstive feedback since, some of which I agree with some of which I dont.

I just thought it was wierd that I didnt get a lot of negative forum feedback before I i plemented the rule but am getting a lot of t after.

I suppose I could try and remember some of my previous DMs house rules if we want something undisputsbly horrible to talk about, that guy was really really bad.
Right. Sorry if that was standoffish, I was cranky when I wrote that.

I do think rules 2-5 are good, the only thing that throws them off is that the penalties only occur on a TPK. If player death is a non-issue, then I consider that as a problem that needs solving. Removing death as a possibility ironically solves the problem because it allows the GM to increase the difficulty and introduce serious consequences, without disrupting the campaign and the group by killing characters. But it only works if the penalties are applied when a character would normally die. If consequences occur only on a TPK, then only encounters difficult enough to cause a potential PTK have stakes. (Barring those with additional objectives, which won't always be present.)

[Talakeal]

@Talakeal - yes, let's hear your old GMs rules. That sounds much more on-topic.

I will do my best to remember, I have actively blocked out most of that campaign and it was several years ago. It is also hard to seperate house rules from the DM just being a jackass as he was a very dishonest fellow who looked for any excuse to berate his players, up to and including changing the rules on us mid game and then claiming they had always been that way.


Lets see:

To hit and damage dice must be rolled at the same time.

If you need a natural 20 to hit you cannot attempt to confirm the hit.

Players may not confer with one another, at all, during character creation, all characters must be created in a vacuum.

Players may not show one another their character sheets.

Players may not make copies of their character sheets or bring them home.

A communal pool of dice is kept in the middle of the table for all players to roll openly from. Dice must be returned to the pool after each roll.

Armor check penalties were not to be listed as modifers on the character sheet.

Players were not allowed to use the term "hit piints" at the table as it encouraged metagaming.

Not paying arbitary tithes or taxes to npcs was both chaotic and evil and worthy of a death sentance.

It took a standard action to take your hand off of or onto a two handed weapon, which means it takes a mage with a quarterstaff three rounds to cast a spell with a somantic component.

Two handed weapons are allowed because they are unrealistic.

Composite bows are not allowed for a starting character as they are too powerful.

Plate armor does not exist as it is anachronistic to the time period of the game.

Most direct damage spells such as magic missile, scorching ray, fireball, and lightning bolt are banned as they are too powerful.

Attacking a creature without damage reduction provkes attacks of opportunity from creatures with damage reduction.

Players may not take attacks of opportunity.

Five foot steps provoke attacks of opportnity from npcs.

Players may not look up rules in the book during the game.

The cosmopolitan feat is banned.

You may not attack an npc during their monolgue, you may not ready an action during a monologue because that is an in combat only action.

Tower shields automatically encumber their bearers.

Tower shields may not be used for cover.

Evasion does not work in an enclosed space.

You may not split the party, including sending the rogue ahead to scout.

Magic items may not be bought or sold for gold.

No gnomes.

Weapon and shield specialization are banned.

Several core classes were banned, I cant remember which ones for sure but I know monks were on the list.

Players are not allowed to purchase mundane items like rope or survival gear, instead you have a backpack which contains whatever the DM thinks is appropriate at the moment.

Searching takes ten minutes per five foot square.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I will do my best to remember, I have actively blocked out most of that campaign and it was several years ago. It is also hard to seperate house rules from the DM just being a jackass as he was a very dishonest fellow who looked for any excuse to berate his players, up to and including changing the rules on us mid game and then claiming they had always been that way.


Lets see:

To hit and damage dice must be rolled at the same time.

If you need a natural 20 to hit you cannot attempt to confirm the hit.

Players may not confer with one another, at all, during character creation, all characters must be created in a vacuum.

Players may not show one another their character sheets.

Players may not make copies of their character sheets or bring them home.

A communal pool of dice is kept in the middle of the table for all players to roll openly from. Dice must be returned to the pool after each roll.

Armor check penalties were not to be listed as modifers on the character sheet.

Players were not allowed to use the term "hit piints" at the table as it encouraged metagaming.

Not paying arbitary tithes or taxes to npcs was both chaotic and evil and worthy of a death sentance.

It took a standard action to take your hand off of or onto a two handed weapon, which means it takes a mage with a quarterstaff three rounds to cast a spell with a somantic component.

Two handed weapons are allowed because they are unrealistic.

Composite bows are not allowed for a starting character as they are too powerful.

Plate armor does not exist as it is anachronistic to the time period of the game.

Most direct damage spells such as magic missile, scorching ray, fireball, and lightning bolt are banned as they are too powerful.

Attacking a creature without damage reduction provkes attacks of opportunity from creatures with damage reduction.

Players may not take attacks of opportunity.

Five foot steps provoke attacks of opportnity from npcs.

Players may not look up rules in the book during the game.

The cosmopolitan feat is banned.

You may not attack an npc during their monolgue, you may not ready an action during a monologue because that is an in combat only action.

Tower shields automatically encumber their bearers.

Tower shields may not be used for cover.

Evasion does not work in an enclosed space.

You may not split the party, including sending the rogue ahead to scout.

Magic items may not be bought or sold for gold.

No gnomes.

Weapon and shield specialization are banned.

Several core classes were banned, I cant remember which ones for sure but I know monks were on the list.

Players are not allowed to purchase mundane items like rope or survival gear, instead you have a backpack which contains whatever the DM thinks is appropriate at the moment.

Searching takes ten minutes per five foot square.

Were all of these revealed at once? If so, why did you play? If not...why did you stay? That sounds acutely painful.

I had a DM who believed that (in a multi-table environment in a shared world)
a) using Pathfinder crit fumble/crit hit decks was a good idea in 5e.
b) using only one of each kind of deck was a good idea.

He also had a home-brewed system of spell-learning--even sorcerers had restricted schools and had to find teachers to learn spells. And there was a % chance (starting at 20% IIRC for "adjacent" schools) that you couldn't get the spell you wanted. At all. Ever.

[Talakeal]

Were all of these revealed at once? If so, why did you play? If not...why did you stay? That sounds acutely painful.

I had a DM who believed that (in a multi-table environment in a shared world)
a) using Pathfinder crit fumble/crit hit decks was a good idea in 5e.
b) using only one of each kind of deck was a good idea.

He also had a home-brewed system of spell-learning--even sorcerers had restricted schools and had to find teachers to learn spells. And there was a % chance (starting at 20% IIRC for "adjacent" schools) that you couldn't get the spell you wanted. At all. Ever.

No, not at all. The DM had a nasty habit of changing the rules on us and then insisting that is the way it had always been, hence why I said its hard to tell legit house rules from random DM Dickery.

I stayed because I am pretty bad at confrontations and the DM and I where both players in an (absolutely amazinf five star) Mage campaign and I didnt want to disrupt that game with conflict. Once the Mage campaign ended I was out of there pretty fast.

[Segev]

Players may not confer with one another, at all, during character creation, all characters must be created in a vacuum.This one seems stupid as a DM. It only hurts his ability to run a game. What was his reason (official and/or hidden, if you can discern the latter) for it? i.e., what do you think made him want this rule?


Armor check penalties were not to be listed as modifers on the character sheet....why? A lot of the rules leading up to this are obviously "anti-cheating" rules. He doesn't trust his players not to fudge dice. But recording armor check penalties would help players AVOID forgetting them, whether by accident or "accident." So...what was his purpose here? What did he think this accomplished for him?


Not paying arbitary tithes or taxes to npcs was both chaotic and evil and worthy of a death sentance.Did he tell you what these tithes were and to whom to pay them, or was this a guessing game of "best hope I bought my right to live and didn't keep too much/give it to the wrong NPCs?"


It took a standard action to take your hand off of or onto a two handed weapon, which means it takes a mage with a quarterstaff three rounds to cast a spell with a somantic component.And this is when casters stopped carrying weapons!


Players may not look up rules in the book during the game.In a vacuum, this is not entirely unreasonable. "Keep the game moving." But yeah, this mostly sounds like "don't argue with my arbitrary and inconsistent declarations" in this case.


You may not attack an npc during their monolgue, you may not ready an action during a monologue because that is an in combat only action."I attack him."
"No, you don't. he's monologuing."
"Yes, I do. See? I rolled a 20, and another 20 to confirm."
"You didn't even pick up dice! And you can't do that?"
"Hey, guys, the NPC is dead! Let's loot his body. I found his +5 shirt of never-staining!"
"What? No! He doesn't have that! And you didn't attack him, because you can't!"

((Sorry, just imagining the players proceeding to narrate the game and ignore this DM entirely while they describe what they do makes me smile.))


Players are not allowed to purchase mundane items like rope or survival gear, instead you have a backpack which contains whatever the DM thinks is appropriate at the moment.Did the backpack ever have what you needed in it? Or did its constantly-changing contents only ever include things that were useless for the moment?


Searching takes ten minutes per five foot square.At which point I shrug and take 20 on all search checks, insisting I search every square of the floor, walls, and ceiling. What do I care as a player if that takes 20 hours in game; it takes 15 seconds of me smirking at the DM and another 5 minutes of him whining about it, IRL.


Yeah, this guy was a control freak who didn't know how to run a game, it sounds like.

[lightningcat]

If you need a natural 20 to hit you cannot attempt to confirm the hit.

Plate armor does not exist as it is anachronistic to the time period of the game.

No gnomes.


I have used all of these at various points, but I make it known at the start of the campaign. In one campaign I banned all non-humans, because that was a major part of the story. Of course, the "no gnomes" rule is always in effect when I run.

[Talakeal]

I have used all of these at various points, but I make it known at the start of the campaign. In one campaign I banned all non-humans, because that was a major part of the story. Of course, the "no gnomes" rule is always in effect when I run.


No gnomes is a VERY common house rule in my experiance.


This one seems stupid as a DM. It only hurts his ability to run a game. What was his reason (official and/or hidden, if you can discern the latter) for it? i.e., what do you think made him want this rule?

...why? A lot of the rules leading up to this are obviously "anti-cheating" rules. He doesn't trust his players not to fudge dice. But recording armor check penalties would help players AVOID forgetting them, whether by accident or "accident." So...what was his purpose here? What did he think this accomplished for him?

Did he tell you what these tithes were and to whom to pay them, or was this a guessing game of "best hope I bought my right to live and didn't keep too much/give it to the wrong NPCs?"

And this is when casters stopped carrying weapons!

In a vacuum, this is not entirely unreasonable. "Keep the game moving." But yeah, this mostly sounds like "don't argue with my arbitrary and inconsistent declarations" in this case.

"I attack him."
"No, you don't. he's monologuing."
"Yes, I do. See? I rolled a 20, and another 20 to confirm."
"You didn't even pick up dice! And you can't do that?"
"Hey, guys, the NPC is dead! Let's loot his body. I found his +5 shirt of never-staining!"
"What? No! He doesn't have that! And you didn't attack him, because you can't!"

((Sorry, just imagining the players proceeding to narrate the game and ignore this DM entirely while they describe what they do makes me smile.))

Did the backpack ever have what you needed in it? Or did its constantly-changing contents only ever include things that were useless for the moment?

At which point I shrug and take 20 on all search checks, insisting I search every square of the floor, walls, and ceiling. What do I care as a player if that takes 20 hours in game; it takes 15 seconds of me smirking at the DM and another 5 minutes of him whining about it, IRL.


Yeah, this guy was a control freak who didn't know how to run a game, it sounds like.

Most of his rules were just enabling him to be a control freak. He also had a compulsive need to criticise or correct people, and if he went more than twenty minutes or so without an opportunity to do so arising he would invent one.

The creating characters in a vacuum was nominaly so that people would make what they want rather than giving in to peer pressure or cresting an optimized party for power gaming purposes. In truth I think it was just so he had an excuse to bully us and act like it was our fault when our chsracter created conflict by not fitting in with the rest of the group.

[Segev]

Of course, the "no gnomes" rule is always in effect when I run.

But...my dart-specialist troll needs them for ammo!

https://www.pinterest.com/dudaagg/caçador-de-trolls/

[Luccan]

No gnomes.


The least reasonable houserule I've seen :smalltongue:. I'm only sort of joking.

Seriously, what's that armor one about? They're almost all unreasonable, but that seems to directly sabotage what they were going for.

[Resileaf]

Seriously, what's that armor one about? They're almost all unreasonable, but that seems to directly sabotage what they were going for.

If I had to guess, it's so the GM can arbitrarily decide that the armor penalty makes them fail a check whenever he wants.
"Oh, you want to climb that wall to pursue the thief? Well despite having +10 on your check, you armor penalty makes you barely fail and you can't do it."

[Talakeal]

The least reasonable houserule I've seen :smalltongue:. I'm only sort of joking.

Seriously, what's that armor one about? They're almost all unreasonable, but that seems to directly sabotage what they were going for.

I am assuming it was because I presented him with my new character sheet, which was the most basic vanilla fighter possible, and he needed to find something to criticize.

[Resileaf]

I am assuming it was because I presented him with my new character sheet, which was the most basic vanilla fighter possible, and he needed to find something to criticise about it.

Oh my god, that's even worse than what I said.
What a clown of a GM you got.

[Hunter Noventa]

Wow that list is outright awful Talakael. The only slightly reasonable rules could be the lack of Gnomes and the lack of Full Plate. The former, personal preference or whatever. But the latter only if the GM is consistent about the time period....which I'm absolutely certain this GM was not.

I've only gamed with a handful of DMs and they've all been pretty nice, so I guess I'm lucky in that regard.

[The Glyphstone]

I'm pretty sure letting Talakeal into this thread is cheating. There's a very good reason they have become synonymous with posting from the parallel dimension of Bizarro Gaming World, where everything is backwards and terrible GMs/players/houserules are the near-universal norm instead of the exception.

[Talakeal]

I just remembered a few more:

Ememies could take attacks of opportunity against PCs they couldnt see, even if blinded.

Attacks of opportunity cannot be used to disarm, grapple, etc.

We had to declare all of the specifics of every action before rolling a dice. Like, we could be going back and forth trading blows with a dragon for twenty turns, but we would get chewed out if we didnt announce "I am taking a standard attack with my longsword against the red dragon in front of me," before tossing the dice.

We were not allowed to use maps or miniatures.

The above was to prevent us from slipping into a "tactical wargaming" mindset where we would lose sit of RP. Eventually he softened his stance when it simply became too confusing to tell where everything was, and he relented and let us use a map, but with the understanding that it was "not to scale" which meant that invariably the players were always just out of range of the enemy and the enemy was always just in range of the PCs.

Oh, and we were NOT allowed to move our own miniatures under any circumstances. Only the DM could touch the models.

[Arbane]

Hey, Talakeal, did that GM also ban antimony and dolphins? :smallbiggrin:

(And was he as obnoxious as a player as he was as a GM?)

[Talakeal]

Hey, Talakeal, did that GM also ban antimony and dolphins? :smallbiggrin:

(And was he as obnoxious as a player as he was as a GM?)

Not to my knowledge. What is that a referance to?

He was similar, a know it all control freak, but since he was playing a know it all control freak character I just chalked it up to RP. And my character is a lot less bothered by other people than I a,, so as long as I stayed in character we kept the butting of heads to a minimum.

[Marywn]

I do remember a DM only making me make wis saves for no absolute reason, and if I failed then I lost a turn. Needless to say, I stopped playing with that dm.

[Arbane]

Not to my knowledge. What is that a referance to?

Trekkin's hilarawful ignoramus know-it-all contrarian control-freak GM. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do)

[Talakeal]

Another really bad house rule from an otherwise good DM:

Normally all XP was split evenly amongst the participants, however if one player killed a monster by themself (as in did 100 percent of the damage to it) they got double XP for it, and this XP was NOT split with the rest of the party.

As a result we were constantly at one anothers throats, trying to find ways to solo monsters tactics be damned, and always making sure to get hits in on everyone elses solo kills so that they wouldnt pull too far ahead.

Not a great rule to begin with, absolutely disasterous and counter productive to use with a group of middle schoolers whom you are trying to teach the value of teamwork to.

[Quertus]

I'm pretty sure letting Talakeal into this thread is cheating.

Lol. But it's the best kind of cheating.


This one seems stupid as a DM. It only hurts his ability to run a game. What was his reason (official and/or hidden, if you can discern the latter) for it? i.e., what do you think made him want this rule?

Yeah, this guy was a control freak who didn't know how to run a game, it sounds like.


The creating characters in a vacuum was nominaly so that people would make what they want rather than giving in to peer pressure or cresting an optimized party for power gaming purposes. In truth I think it was just so he had an excuse to bully us and act like it was our fault when our chsracter created conflict by not fitting in with the rest of the group.

See, I agree with this rule. Far better to make what you like and make it work than play something you don't like.

Then again, I happen to enjoy the "wtf do we to make this group of characters work" minigame.

Having an "unbalanced" party of characters made in a vacuum doesn't make the game harder to run per se. Having statistically unbalanced characters (even if created together) can make CaS harder - but that can be remedied simply by stating an expected power level. Not having certain roles covered means that the party has to be creative in how they approach problems - or the blaster Wizard may have to learn Knock to make up for the lack of a rogue.

Characters not fitting in with the rest of the group is largely handled IME by a proper session 0. And, from my limited experience with creating characters as a group, what isn't covered by a good session 0 also isn't covered by creating characters as a group.

So, despite your GM's insanity, character mismatch is on him, and his lack of proper session 0.

[Talakeal]

@ Quertus: How do you define session 0? How I define it, a session where the group gets together and discusses what they want from the campaign and pitches character ideas, is exactly what he was forbidding.

I personally dont mind power disparity, but I do like to feel special, and if someone shows up with a character that is very similar to mine I wont have a good time.

Likewise alighnment issues are a bitch for party cohesion, and I am not sure what can be done when one person showsmup to the table player Tony Montana while another brins Frank Castle.

[Quertus]

Another really bad house rule from an otherwise good DM:

Normally all XP was split evenly amongst the participants, however if one player killed a monster by themself (as in did 100 percent of the damage to it) they got double XP for it, and this XP was NOT split with the rest of the party.

As a result we were constantly at one anothers throats, trying to find ways to solo monsters tactics be damned, and always making sure to get hits in on everyone elses solo kills so that they wouldnt pull too far ahead.

Not a great rule to begin with, absolutely disasterous and counter productive to use with a group of middle schoolers whom you are trying to teach the value of teamwork to.

Um, are you sure that this GM was trying to teach teamwork? And, if he was, that this rule wasn't your test?

[Quertus]

@ Quertus: How do you define session 0? How I define it, a session where the group gets together and discusses what they want from the campaign and pitches character ideas, is exactly what he was forbidding.

I personally dont mind power disparity, but I do like to feel special, and if someone shows up with a character that is very similar to mine I wont have a good time.

Likewise alighnment issues are a bitch for party cohesion, and I am not sure what can be done when one person showsmup to the table player Tony Montana while another brins Frank Castle.

Interesting. Session 0 is where the GM dictates (or the group decides) what the game is about, what the criteria for character creation are, etc.

So, for example, "create a 7th level D&D 3e character who is either noble of character or mercenary, findable, and known to be in the city of X" (translation - the adventure involves the officials of the city attempting to hire heroes for a noble quest)

Qualifications on valid personality get specified in session 0, same as qualifications on valid races, valid books, valid power level, etc.

"First level (2e), you two were friends growing up" was the extent of the criteria for the party of the Paladin, the Assassin, the Undead Hunter, his dear friend the Undead Master, and my character. That's my classic example of "session 0 fail".

-----

Wanting your character to feel special certainly can be a good reason to discuss classes/roles before the game. However, Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named, would, IMO, feel special, even in a group of Wizards, because he has custom spells, custom items, unique tactics, distinct verbiage, a definite style, a unique perspective, and ample history. So, perhaps, such a setup could Incentivize one to make what they care about about their character be things that aren't limited to class.

Then again, I might enjoy an adventure where everyone brought tactically inept world hopping academia mage characters...

-----

Alignment is the worst thing to happen to role-playing in the history of RPGs.

Issues of morality are, IMO, one if the best things in an RPG. Quertus doesn't have an army of the Undead, not because he's good, but because the people he adventures with are. Armus had to hide much of what he was doing from the party, to "protect them from the truths that would destroy them". I've run characters who knew who they could turn to to get things done in ways that they didn't want to ask too many questions about (sometimes, the first hint was from their reaction to something like my character making their own food). I've enjoyed plenty of in-character debates where some characters morality or upbringing or traditions or religion forbade them from doing certain things. Heck, I've even run the "dark soul" evil abomination who, curiously enough, was aghast at the party's immortality, and desperately trying to get these "good" characters to stop murdering other sentient beings.

These differences can produce some of the best interactions in an RPG. It just depends on the table.

[Talakeal]

Um, are you sure that this GM was trying to teach teamwork? And, if he was, that this rule wasn't your test?

Its actually a printed optional rule on page 70 of the DMG. I assume the DM's own group had just always used it and he never questioned it or thought about whether or not it would be a good idea when teaching a bunch of socially awkward middle schoolers how to play D&D.

Also, the DMG explicitly says the award should not be applied if the solo combat took place at the expense of the rest of the party, so I guess that's a double fail.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Its actually a printed optional rule on page 70 of the DMG. I assume the DM's own group had just always used it and he never questioned it or thought about whether or not it would be a good idea when teaching a bunch of socially awkward middle schoolers how to play D&D.


I help oversee a middle school D&D club, as well as DM a high school one. Why in the world would you make their normally brainless, cats on meth behavior (and my middle schoolers aren't bad kids) worse by doing such a transparently stupid thing? Some people just like to watch the world burn I guess...

[ATHATH]

I'm pretty sure letting Talakeal into this thread is cheating. There's a very good reason they have become synonymous with posting from the parallel dimension of Bizarro Gaming World, where everything is backwards and terrible GMs/players/houserules are the near-universal norm instead of the exception.
Is there a list/compedium of these Bizarro stories? I'd like to read them (if I haven't already).

[Quertus]

So, I've had loads of GMs make loads of utterly stupid "rules", but, being senile, I couldn't really remember them. But, talking to Talakeal has reminded me of several:

Multiple (!) GMs had a house rule that involved tables of scenarios and alignments. If the scenario came up, and you didn't do what the table indicated, then you weren't role-playing your character correctly.

One GM was slightly more "advanced" than that, and his tables included things like race and gender, too.

I can amazingly only remember one GM who would actively (and completely) take over one PC's side in a debate, turning them into a NPC / GMPC / GM mouthpiece for the duration.

Invisibility could be applied to objects, at which point its duration was "permanent".

Many, many GMs I've had played with "hats pants on head stupidity" - if you didn't specify every detail of exactly how you were doing something, they'd fill in the blanks with the dumbest possible answer.

And, my personal favorite: if you beat up the GM in the parking lot, it didn't happen. Best. Retcon. Mechanic. Ever. And definitely demonstrated the power of teamwork. Didn't happen more than twice (that I'm aware of).

[Quertus]

Is there a list/compedium of these Bizarro stories? I'd like to read them (if I haven't already).

I've realized that one of the joys of being senile is, I can read them (and various threads I've participated in) again for the first time.

[Pelle]

To hit and damage dice must be rolled at the same time.


That doesn't need to be a rule, most sane people do that anyways...

[Anonymouswizard]

Attacks of opportunity cannot be used to disarm, grapple, etc.

I tend to run with this when using AoOs, just because it makes everything simpler. I can see the argument from the simulationist standpoint, but combat already eats up enough time as it is.


We had to declare all of the specifics of every action before rolling a dice. Like, we could be going back and forth trading blows with a dragon for twenty turns, but we would get chewed out if we didnt announce "I am taking a standard attack with my longsword against the red dragon in front of me," before tossing the dice.

Uh.....

Okay, I wouldn't allow you to roll the dice and then declare your action, but at the same time I wouldn't go quite that far. I'd probably allow somebody to apply Power Attack post roll but before finding out if they hit, for example.


We were not allowed to use maps or miniatures.

The above was to prevent us from slipping into a "tactical wargaming" mindset where we would lose sit of RP. Eventually he softened his stance when it simply became too confusing to tell where everything was, and he relented and let us use a map, but with the understanding that it was "not to scale" which meant that invariably the players were always just out of range of the enemy and the enemy was always just in range of the PCs.

Oh, and we were NOT allowed to move our own miniatures under any circumstances. Only the DM could touch the models.

Ouch.

I've mean, I've used 'rough maps' before, but that's mainly so everybody knows who's closest to all, and always in situations where we were well within everybody's short range (barring melee weapons). I've also used theatre of the mind before, but again we tended to assume everybody was within their short range unless it was a wilderness encounter (in which case characters might end up shooting at long range for a few turns, depending on the setting).

[hotflungwok]

And, my personal favorite: if you beat up the GM in the parking lot, it didn't happen. Best. Retcon. Mechanic. Ever. And definitely demonstrated the power of teamwork. Didn't happen more than twice (that I'm aware of).
Did it have to be in the parking lot? Would the front yard work too?

[Quertus]

Did it have to be in the parking lot? Would the front yard work too?

Theoretically, I suppose. But given my preference for games with double-digit players, said front yard could be argued to be a parking lot at that point.

[hotflungwok]

Theoretically, I suppose. But given my preference for games with double-digit players, said front yard could be argued to be a parking lot at that point.
Did a majority of the double digit number of players have to participate, or was a simple minority enough?

[Quertus]

Did a majority of the double digit number of players have to participate, or was a simple minority enough?

I suppose it might vary by GM as to what constitutes a quorum. Curiously, I've never done the 3e-RAW level of research into the science of the a**-kicking. :smalltongue:

[hotflungwok]

While we're complaining about DMs, I've got a few memorable ones.

One DM I played with (fairly briefly) ran a 2nd ed game that was at the same time monty haul and utterly deadly. He would hand out powerful stuff and then most of the time just kill the characters that had them cuz they were too powerful.

For example, our fighter found a sword that had charges each day, he could use them to deal something like 1d10 additional damage each with no limit on the number of charges that could be spent at one time. After one shotting a demon with it, by using all the charges at once, the DM killed his character outright while we were traveling the session after. Giant earth elementals pulled him underground suddenly, with no chance for any of us to do anything about it, and his naked dead body was spit out after a few rounds. One player had his brand new character killed the round he made his first appearance, hit by a save or die poison crossbow bolt. I think between all of us we went through a good 20 characters in 2ish months of play.

Most of the time the group ended up with the magic items from the dead player, so we accumulated a bag of holding full of magic items we couldn't use, and would just pass them out when a new character joined us. He destroyed the bag of holding by declaring that some metal ingots we picked up while looting were all magnetic lodestone, and when they were put together they got much heavier, taking the bag over it's weight limit. When we responded that we had quest items in the bag, and now we couldn't actually finish the thing we'd been trying to do the whole game, he told us it was our fault and we would have to pay the price when it was discovered that we lost the items.

I ended up leaving the game after he told me my cleric was able to cast too many spells, even though I was using the cleric list from the book, and gave me an edited list of about 20 spells total, most of which were useless.

[hotflungwok]

Another DM ran the railroadiest game ever, and also the most perverted. Any important NPC we met was in the middle of sex or a blow job or was showering. They also all happened to wield god like powers, and could do anything he wanted them to do. Almost all of them could cast Wish, even some of the fighters. If he wanted something to happen 'for the story', that's what happened, to the point of telling you how your character acted or what they said.

He would radically alter the game without warning, like the time my character got interested in a woman he met at a royal ball type event. We met, talked, danced, and then after I left I said it would be interesting to start a relationship with her in the game. He goes 'Thats great. 10 years pass, and you now have a kid.' The whole group went WHOA HANG ON, but he wouldn't let it go. Courtship, marriage, and childbirth happened in the blink of an eye, while the other characters sat around and did nothing for 10 years.

One of my friends playing in the game is very blessed in the chest department, and the DM would give her character bonus XP whenever she laughed or did anything that caused any amount of jiggle.

One time he wanted my character to get captured by some dark elves, so he said I had to make 20 saving throws or fall unconscious. Somehow I didn't make all of them, and was captured. Of course, after he was captured, the DM spent a good 10 minutes describing how my character was hung from ceiling with barbed wire tied to his arms and gangraped. I quit afterwards, and the DM couldn't understand why any of that would bother an experienced gamer like myself.

[vasilidor]

I am currently thinking of a pathfinder game where all non casters and all classes stated to be warriors get simple weapon proficiency light armors and a warrior tradition as described in spheres of might. does that sound like a bad house rule?

[Lalliman]

I am currently thinking of a pathfinder game where all non casters and all classes stated to be warriors get simple weapon proficiency light armors and a warrior tradition as described in spheres of might. does that sound like a bad house rule?
In addition to what they normally get, or instead of? Because any warrior-like character would already have simple weapons and light armour at the very least.

[vasilidor]

this would be in replacement of. warrior traditions in spheres of might generally come with 4-7 weapons, a couple abilities that are probably straight up better than feats and sometimes medium and heavy armor.

[Lalliman]

this would be in replacement of. warrior traditions in spheres of might generally come with 4-7 weapons, a couple abilities that are probably straight up better than feats and sometimes medium and heavy armor.
Sounds fair, as long as the players know up-front.

[stack]

In addition to what they normally get, or instead of? Because any warrior-like character would already have simple weapons and light armour at the very least.

For example, the tradition for being a stereotypical knight gives you medium and heavy armor, shields, a several weapons (though deficient in ranged options), and your choice of abilities to be a leader, better with shields, or have mounted combat skills. One focused on being roguish gives typical rogue weapons, weapon finesse, and poison making. Basically, you pick your theme and get what you need to get started up front.

[vasilidor]

thanks for the feedback.

[Knaight]

For example, the tradition for being a stereotypical knight gives you medium and heavy armor, shields, a several weapons (though deficient in ranged options), and your choice of abilities to be a leader, better with shields, or have mounted combat skills. One focused on being roguish gives typical rogue weapons, weapon finesse, and poison making. Basically, you pick your theme and get what you need to get started up front.

One of the suggested ways to handle this I've seen elsewhere is a particular way to split up combat skills. Basically, the really abstracted way of doing it is one skill: Fight (BAB is pretty analogous here). A common split below that is something like Melee, Ranged, Unarmed, Thrown, and below that is specific weapon categories. An alternate though is to work with categories, but in a more archetypal fashion. "Knightly weapons" could be a skill, covering a range of mostly melee weapons and also unarmed combat. "Samurai weapons" could be a skill, covering bows, spears, swords, and daggers especially. "Roguish weapons" would cover mostly knives, small swords, bows, slings, and saps. So on and so forth. Generally you'd just pick one of these skills and it ends up working out sort of like a proficiency model, but characters can have more than one. For instance Dunk/Tall Duncan (of Dunk and Egg) would be modeled with a high skill in Street Fighting (knives, sticks, unarmed) and a somewhat lower skill in Knightly Weapons (swords, shields, and lances mostly).

In a D&D context I'd probably specify every core weapon with proficiencies, and then add something to the effect of "and others that fit with these", and likely make sure I have both profession categories (knightly weapons, soldier's weapons, street weapons, monk weapons) and racial categories (elven weapons, dwarven weapons).