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Ameraaaaaa
2021-10-29, 06:21 AM
Personally i tend to think that it's best if your serving a tank role in a dnd party if you don't go overboard even if you aren't in a game with roles.

For example if you spend 80 points in mutants and masterminds you can become immune to all attacks targeting toughness. Obviously that's bad for you because it's unfair for the gm. Who now has to make every serious encounter have a enemy with a ability that doesn't target toughness.

So not just you've limited your gm's ability to design battles but you've basically wasted 80 points better spent elsewhere.

There's nothing with a tank in dnd by comparison (except if you go with a broken build.) Because 1 your not invulnerable and 2 you actually serve a role on the team.

That's just my opinion and examples tho. What about you?

Mastikator
2021-10-29, 07:28 AM
I think making yourself harder to kill is every PCs responsibility, the tank's job is to make their allies less likely to die either by making them harder to kill OR less likely to be targeted. Don't know much about Mutants and Masterminds but it sounds like if a hero is just making themselves very hard to defeat at a cost of utility/DPR then they may wasting their time. If your team mates are dying and you are not then you are not really "tanking".

MoiMagnus
2021-10-29, 07:45 AM
For example if you spend 80 points in mutants and masterminds you can become immune to all attacks targeting toughness. Obviously that's bad for you because it's unfair for the gm. Who now has to make every serious encounter have a enemy with a ability that doesn't target toughness.

So not just you've limited your gm's ability to design battles but you've basically wasted 80 points better spent elsewhere.

What you're describing here is far from exclusive to defensive abilities. If you had a character who spend all his creation points in "hypothetical RPG" to buy a "one-shot any enemy not immune to fire, at will", then it will also push the GM to only put enemies immune to fire (or at least every important enemy), making the creation points wasted.

The problem you're showing here is a problem about absolute abilities. And it affects both abilities that are absolute "de jure" (so immunities, one-shot, etc) and abilities that are absolute "de facto" (having an AC so high that no level-appropriate enemy can hit you).
=> Absolute abilities are IMO bad for the game. However, getting rid of absolute abilities usually require adding new layers of complexity (to have a more fine-grained approach), which might not be worth it if those abilities are expected to not be central to the gameplay.


What do you think of defensive abilities in rpgs

A lot of defensive abilities, including control, can really slow down combat and/or be frustrating to the player/GM (e.g stunlock). So I kinda hate them.

On the other hand, those same defensive abilities are also one of the major reasons why combat can be varied and interesting. Defensive abilities are not just about denying moves to your opponents, they are also about allowing you to do moves that would be "basically suicide" without those abilities. So I kinda love them too.

Xervous
2021-10-29, 07:50 AM
As someone developing and tuning a system the nature of defensive abilities is an involved topic.

The main rule is that one strategy should not be blindly dominant. Another is that hyper specialization is effective at ensuring the >90% success rate but is costly in other areas.

A narrow immunity is whatever. Enemies should not usually rely on one and only one mode of attack. Stacking explicit immunities isn’t possible, but effective statistical immunities or “close enough” numbers can render the character ludicrously durable.

The thing is durability on its own is worthless. 3.5e monk sucked partly because of this. Tanks need a reason to be targeted, a method for punishing enemies for not targeting them, or a means by which they prevent allies from being affected. An overly durable blob that offers no threat is little more than a moving wall you have to walk around. And yes, as a GM my monsters will walk around something they find they can’t damage that offers them no threat. But if that wall gets free slaps on anyone who attacks its allies, acts as a black hole of movement denial, or is heavily mitigating damage to its allies then there’s a reason for the monsters to consider engaging the tank.

The reality is that most games don’t provide much beyond Durable Frontliner. The most you can typically muster is a Bruiser who leverages its durability for more opportunities to do damage. If it’s the only choice for an enemy to attack the bruiser gets hit, but given the choice between bruiser and non bruiser a given enemy’s effort is generally going to be worth more spent on another player character. It’s fire emblem gameplay with fire emblem AI (before you apply the particulars of the encounter). Take shots at the squishiest targets available, or pool effort on the most certain kill. Bruisers diving into enemy formations are the most common way to ensure they end up getting targeted.

The durable access denying character is a functional wall that, with good positioning, makes it so killing the character is the fastest way to get to the party.

The retaliatory defender is really just a durable damage dealer with conditional triggers. If the damage is too high/frequent to ignore the enemies are best served ignoring the triggers and attacking the defender.

The mitigating defender is the numeric parallel to the access denying defender. Rather than denying permission to target, it denies permission to damage. Again this makes it so the fastest way through the party starts with killing the defender.

Immunities don’t necessarily mean you have to introduce some other way of threatening the tank. If there’s exploding acid zombies and the tank is acid immune, it’s not like the tank can stop all the zombies on its own. Tank being immune means don’t target the tank. If there’s no threat coming from the tank... immunity is somewhat irrelevant. Mr acid immune is busy not dying to the zombies while I, Mastermind McEvilpants, hold him off with a pinky to his forehead as my doomsday device ticks down. Do I send my fidget spinner drones to attack him, or the other heroes who will beat me in the tug of war to pull the shutoff lever?

Ameraaaaaa
2021-10-29, 07:55 AM
What you're describing here is far from exclusive to defensive abilities. If you had a character who spend all his creation points in "hypothetical RPG" to buy a "one-shot any enemy not immune to fire, at will", then it will also push the GM to only put enemies immune to fire (or at least every important enemy), making the creation points wasted.

The problem you're showing here is a problem about absolute abilities. And it affects both abilities that are absolute "de jure" (so immunities, one-shot, etc) and abilities that are absolute "de facto" (having an AC so high that no level-appropriate enemy can hit you).
=> Absolute abilities are IMO bad for the game. However, getting rid of absolute abilities usually require adding new layers of complexity (to have a more fine-grained approach), which might not be worth it if those abilities are expected to not be central to the gameplay.



A lot of defensive abilities, including control, can really slow down combat and/or be frustrating to the player/GM (e.g stunlock). So I kinda hate them.

On the other hand, those same defensive abilities are also one of the major reasons why combat can be varied and interesting. Defensive abilities are not just about denying moves to your opponents, they are also about allowing you to do moves that would be "basically suicide" without those abilities. So I kinda love them too.

Your right about absolute abilities. That's something i could never articulate before. A genuine thanks since this might help me in the future.

Also agree with the latter points as well. Being free to do suicidal things is pretty fun.

Lord Raziere
2021-10-29, 08:20 AM
I think making yourself harder to kill is every PCs responsibility, the tank's job is to make their allies less likely to die either by making them harder to kill OR less likely to be targeted. Don't know much about Mutants and Masterminds but it sounds like if a hero is just making themselves very hard to defeat at a cost of utility/DPR then they may wasting their time. If your team mates are dying and you are not then you are not really "tanking".

What they're talking about is the Immunity effect. basically its a power in MnM real useful for a lot of things, if you need a character that can survive in space without any air, food or water just put ten ranks in it and you can fight Freeza without an atmosphere.

80 ranks basically means your immune to any normal attack. does nothing for fortitude or will based attacks sure. thing is, a standard PL 10 MnM character only has 150 points, so thats more than half their allotment. now you can also become immune to fortitude and immune to will as two more immunity powers each worth 30 points, bringing up to 140 points spent out of 150, then spend those remaining on life support, and you basically can't die to anything......but you don't have any movement powers, no attack powers, no skills, nothing. you spent all those points to become immune to basically everything, congratulations your useless for anything except being a meat shield.

so yes your completely right, they are wasting their time. because yes your unharmable, too bad your too slow to protect anyone without any points spent in the travel powers to respond to a threat in time.

More realistically though you can 20 points on flight, 10 points on damage, 20 points on Will and Fortitude Defense, then a final 20 points into whatever it doesn't really matter and be a flying brick if a narrow one. thing is I still don't see how it protects everyone or invalidates normal damage, because even if you can fly 4 miles in 6 seconds, your still in a turn based order so the enemy would have their turn to target things other than you, supers tend to be more flashy and famous than adventurers so its possible for someone to have heard about their powers and plan around them, so really its not out of the question to plausibly do this. now you can use the Deflect power to defend people at range, but it doesn't defend against ranged attacks with area or perception extras, or against things that don't target dodge or parry, so really they can't defend against bombs, and toughness is a resistance check not a defense class like dodge/parry, so I don't think you can use toughness with Deflect, its something that works on active defenses to prevent damage and Toughness is something more passive, so you'd instead have to have......the Area extra, Area (Burst) Immunity (Toughness) 80.....would 160 points, which is above the 150 points that a stand PL10 game gets, but you could give it the Removable flaw to make be some object you wear that can be taken off putting it back to 80 point cost, but you would have a 30-foot sphere where everyone within is immune to toughness effects to protect everyone. But here is the hilarious thing: unless you take the selective extra, it makes the enemies immune to toughness resisted effects as well meaning NO ONE can hurt ANYONE within your sphere! I have made a pacifists dream.

Easy e
2021-10-29, 09:20 AM
I prefer a game where all characters have a defensive choice. So, if I a PC is targeted by an attack they can do something other than just subtract HP from their sheet.

However, I think that is a different subject from what you are talking about.

However, I think defensive abilities should exist as some player prefer to take a defensive character. Not everyone is focused on the "archetypes" we attribute to RPG games. Instead, they may want to play a pacifist or even just someone who likes to be a protector.

Telok
2021-10-29, 10:31 AM
The reality is that most games don’t provide much beyond Durable Frontliner. The most you can typically muster is a Bruiser who leverages its durability for more opportunities to do damage.

I'd say many mainstream class based games don't provide much beyond the Durable Frontliner concept. Point buy & other build-your-own systems by default allow you to avoid that problem.

Likewise, I've never found absolute immunities to be an issue in games where non-damage combat options are available & viable. It doesn't matter to me if the party fighter is immune to physical damage as long as four goblins can dogpile & pin, or an ogre can disarm & sit on him. Stuff like fire elementals being immune to fire has never made people complain "op elementals tpk us cuz immune".

However the issue of someone trying to create a "tank" style character and not having options that force opponents to engage with that "tankyness" is an issue. AD&D and D&D 4e did well on that point, but 3e & 5e generally have those abilities on non-fighter types or gated behind specific feats & weapons.

I don't have issues with abilities like "one-shot anything not immune to fire" or "autokill anything I can charge" in the systems I like to run. Sure, you can't plop down a t-rex in a clearing and have it be an "epic battle". But honestly it probably never was "epic battle" material to begin with. Combats the break the line of effect with terrain or other stuff, fights with piles of minions, encounters where reducing enemy hp to zero isn't the goal... all the stuff that makes encounters more than bags of hp bonking on each other will mitigate a super attack often enough that I'm not in danger of having a boring encounter.

Stonehead
2021-10-29, 10:41 AM
I like defensive abilities a lot. I think they do a lot for making different characters feel different. If I want to play a heroic knight in shining armor, but in combat all I do is hit and kill things, just like the evil hellknight, there's some disconnect there. Weird as it may sound at first, mechanics are a really good way to show a character's personality. "Show don't tell", and all that.

So, done right, defensive abilities are awesome. One issue that I haven't seen brought up yet though is that overpowered defensive abilities are a lot more disruptive than similarly overpowered offensive abilities. If you have a one-shot ability, you win the combat turn 1, then move on with the rest of the game. If you have invulnerability, combat drags on forever until you slowly chip away at all the enemies. Also, even with a one-shot attack, you can still lose on initiative, or be ambushed, or attacked by someone outside of your range, hit by a trap and so on. If you're invulnerable nothing, not even out-of-combat threats, concern you.

HumanFighter
2021-10-29, 05:08 PM
Defensive abilities in rpgs are always cool, they help you stay alive. My fav kind of defense ability is resistance or even outright immunity to falling damage. May not be that useful most of the time, but when it matters, it really matters, especially from very tall heights.

Does healing count as a defensive ability?

Also I like spells and abilities in games that outright increase your Defense/AC (either temporarily or permanently)

Concerning the matter of tanking, I always wondered if a Protect Other type Ability should have to be learned and acquired, or should it be something anyone can attempt to do, if the situation is right for it? I feel like a designated Tank character should always get an ability like this, within reason of course. Can't expect a normal human in heavy armor suddenly appear across the room to take a hit for the softy mage, now can we?

icefractal
2021-10-29, 07:01 PM
Obviously that's bad for you because it's unfair for the gm. Who now has to make every serious encounter have a enemy with a ability that doesn't target toughness. Has to? No, they do not. In fact, I'd say that in this hypothetical, the GM has made a serious error. They should either:

A) Disallow the ability. No shame in this, it's a lot better to do so up-front than stealth-nerfing in play.
B) Allow the ability, and not modify enemies to counter it. As a result, that PC will be impervious to some foes, including some "serious" ones. Not inherently a problem.
C) Allow the ability but lower the cost significantly and advise the player that most enemies will have ways around it. Therefore it becomes primarily a "ribbon" ability, which is fine if the cost is appropriate to that.

Saying "yes, you can spend 80 points and be immune to many attacks" and then actually making it so that the immunity is mostly meaningless is effectively lying to the players - don't do that.

HumanFighter
2021-10-29, 09:59 PM
Has to? No, they do not. In fact, I'd say that in this hypothetical, the GM has made a serious error. They should either:

A) Disallow the ability. No shame in this, it's a lot better to do so up-front than stealth-nerfing in play.
B) Allow the ability, and not modify enemies to counter it. As a result, that PC will be impervious to some foes, including some "serious" ones. Not inherently a problem.
C) Allow the ability but lower the cost significantly and advise the player that most enemies will have ways around it. Therefore it becomes primarily a "ribbon" ability, which is fine if the cost is appropriate to that.

Saying "yes, you can spend 80 points and be immune to many attacks" and then actually making it so that the immunity is mostly meaningless is effectively lying to the players - don't do that.

Games got problems, icefractal's got solutions. Well said :smallsmile:

Quertus
2021-10-31, 07:14 AM
Defensive abilities? Armor, dodge, soak, immunities, "saving throws" - fair to say that almost every character ever made has some defensive abilities. Kinda odd to imagine anyone other than the worst railroad GM who is explicit "not a fan".

Are full-on immunities "a problem"? Well, they might make a one-trick pony that was supposed to be threatening kinda sad, but I'd say that the problem was in the "supposed to", was in assigning them a role rather than allowing their actual role to evolve organically.

And it does make the game less fun for most people when defense >>> offense, and combat slows to a crawl (see also the pejorative "padded sumo combat").

Plus, a tank that enemies can just avoid/ignore, and kill their teammates, isn't really much of a tank.

So, obviously, the solution is to not make such anemic, ignorable tanks.

However, that's role-based thinking. An all-defense, no offense character is a perfectly reasonable character to roleplay. Maybe they're depressed about how people around them keep dieing. Maybe they're seeking "character growth" to actually protect their allies. Or play the character who's already had that "growth" - for example, IIRC, in Mutants and Masterminds (at least, the edition I played), "can take a hit for another" is an ability that costs a whopping 1 character point. Or look at Armus - his classic move is to open a fight by moving to place himself bodily between one of his allies and "the threat".

And, as a rule, GMs shouldn't change the foes / tailor them to the party. Having a character immune to fire fighting Fire Elementals doesn't break the story, it makes the story.

King of Nowhere
2021-10-31, 08:24 AM
defensive abilities are what makes the game interesting for me.
without defence, who goes first win. boooring. I like tanking.

But! I like the interplay of attack and defence. you try to increase your to-hit while I try to increase my AC. I try to increase my saving throws, and you try to increase your saving throw DC. Flat-out immunities are the opposite of that; there's no game, you are either vulnerable or you're not.

balancing attack and defence at my table shows a difference between immunity-based and number-based approach. martials can only hit you with weapons, you can buff your ac and they can buff their attack bonus, immunity to weapons would make them irrelevant. therefore, anything that's resembling an immunity to weapons - even a partial one, like starmantle - is a hard no. it would break the game.
on the other hand, magic has a lot more avenues of attack. you have three different saving throws to target, or you can target touch ac to deal hit point damage, or you can use effects that are weak but have virtually no counter. for this reason I am much more free in allowing immunity to some magical effects, because the caster can always target something else.
and it's almost like it's two different games. with a martial, you just have to pump your attack. with a caster, you have to figure out which avenues of attack are more likely to work against your target. described like this, the caster game looks much more interesting, but it must not be exaggerated. if there are too many different things that can be attacked or that they can be covered by immunity, attacking becomes a guessing game, and tanking becomes virtually impossible - you have to spread your build resources too thin to protect yourself from too many kinds of attacks.
as for the martial game, the description make it look boring - let's just compare your attack bonus to my AC - but at least in 3.x there are enough ways to gain circumstantial modifiers to both of those numbers that strategy in the fight matters, and this, again, keeps things interesting.

SimonMoon6
2021-10-31, 08:35 AM
Different defensive abilities provide different challenges.

I remember back in the late 80's when I discovered that it was better to be super-agile than it was to be invulnerable to injury (whether in an RPG or in the fictional stories on which an RPG is based).

A super-agile character is allowed to simply dodge every attack and nobody minds because, well, he *could* have been hit and injured. But an invulnerable character has to constantly be put in situations where he gets hurt despite being invulnerable just to show that he can be hurt. A story where an invulnerable character never gets hurt tends to be viewed as boring (even if there are ways to stop such a character without injury, such as grapples or entanglement). So an invulnerable character will paradoxically be injured more often than an agile character.

A lot of seminal comics also tended to make it seem as if an agile and skilled character (like Captain America or Spider-Man) would always beat a strong and tough character (even if in the real world, the opposite is probably true), so RPGs based on comics have tended to go along with this idea.

Satinavian
2021-10-31, 11:36 AM
I agree somewhat. To much defense resulting in invulnerability is bad. Nothing is as counterintuitive than to realize that each side has at least one participant that the other side can't harm no matter what they roll or what strategy they use and the only possible end to the fight, provided people continue to fight, is that those two people are the only ones left standig and still not being able to hurt each other. Even if only one side has someone invulnerable that means that the other side simply can't win and should stop fighting because coninuing can only result in defeat.

But defensive measures that make someone hard but not impossible to defeat are fine as are narrow immunities that can be worked around.

icefractal
2021-10-31, 02:14 PM
Even if only one side has someone invulnerable that means that the other side simply can't win and should stop fighting because coninuing can only result in defeat.Well that depends on their objectives, and on how much offense the invulnerable person can deliver.

If the non-invulnerable side is just trying to escape, then reducing their pursuers to one person will at least let most of them escape, even if the invulnerable one is also fast.

If it's to destroy the other side as a fighting force - reducing it to one survivor will be a pretty big change.

If it's to take control of something, then it depends on how much offense the invulnerable survivor can output - if the other side can just defend against that long enough to do what they came for, they win.

And that's in addition to the fact that tactics like tying up the invulnerable foe or trapping them in a pit become much easier once it's many vs one.

Quertus
2021-10-31, 05:15 PM
defensive abilities are what makes the game interesting for me.
without defence, who goes first win. boooring. I like tanking.

But! I like the interplay of attack and defence. you try to increase your to-hit while I try to increase my AC. I try to increase my saving throws, and you try to increase your saving throw DC. Flat-out immunities are the opposite of that; there's no game, you are either vulnerable or you're not.

balancing attack and defence at my table shows a difference between immunity-based and number-based approach. martials can only hit you with weapons, you can buff your ac and they can buff their attack bonus, immunity to weapons would make them irrelevant. therefore, anything that's resembling an immunity to weapons - even a partial one, like starmantle - is a hard no. it would break the game.
on the other hand, magic has a lot more avenues of attack. you have three different saving throws to target, or you can target touch ac to deal hit point damage, or you can use effects that are weak but have virtually no counter. for this reason I am much more free in allowing immunity to some magical effects, because the caster can always target something else.
and it's almost like it's two different games. with a martial, you just have to pump your attack. with a caster, you have to figure out which avenues of attack are more likely to work against your target. described like this, the caster game looks much more interesting, but it must not be exaggerated. if there are too many different things that can be attacked or that they can be covered by immunity, attacking becomes a guessing game, and tanking becomes virtually impossible - you have to spread your build resources too thin to protect yourself from too many kinds of attacks.
as for the martial game, the description make it look boring - let's just compare your attack bonus to my AC - but at least in 3.x there are enough ways to gain circumstantial modifiers to both of those numbers that strategy in the fight matters, and this, again, keeps things interesting.

Very interesting.

On the one hand, I greatly agree with this, at least as one perspective.

On the other hand…

For martials, I like to advocate them *not* falling into the trap of only having one button to push. In largely 3e parlance, being able to trip, disarm, disable, move, manipulate, grapple, choke out, suffocate? I think *I* could do all of that (and more) IRL; if my RPG muggle cannot, or the player cannot think to, it's a problem. And, with a few tools, tying up, drugging, setting on fire, and dis-arming (or dis-legging, or beheading, or…) are among the possibilities.

For Wizards… while I like/love… the *existence* of that "so many tools, which is optimal?" minigame… Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, does his best to "cheat" that game, with knowledge skills / experience, and spells that optimize how much information he gains. Of course, that just adds to how bloody useless he is, while he's gathering information rather than accomplishing something. :smallwink:

So, I guess I prefer a game that doesn't get broken by the odd immunity, even if it is "immune to muggle damage".

Anonymouswizard
2021-10-31, 06:51 PM
Has to? No, they do not. In fact, I'd say that in this hypothetical, the GM has made a serious error. They should either:

A) Disallow the ability. No shame in this, it's a lot better to do so up-front than stealth-nerfing in play.
B) Allow the ability, and not modify enemies to counter it. As a result, that PC will be impervious to some foes, including some "serious" ones. Not inherently a problem.
C) Allow the ability but lower the cost significantly and advise the player that most enemies will have ways around it. Therefore it becomes primarily a "ribbon" ability, which is fine if the cost is appropriate to that.

Saying "yes, you can spend 80 points and be immune to many attacks" and then actually making it so that the immunity is mostly meaningless is effectively lying to the players - don't do that.

To be fair, M&M is very much designed with the idea that the players and GM will have a running discussion during character creation to make sure that nobody's breaking the game. So any GM that fits allow such things had better be ready to make it matter, but not too much.

Although in practice people just pump Toughness instead of buying outright immunity.

On the other hand, IIRC there are ways around the trinity of Fort/Will/Tough immunity. If they've not invested in Dodge/Parry I believe that RAW you can target some powers towards those (it's how I'd use Affliction to build things like nets) and I think of you can hit things like offensive teleportation still works. If a party had one or more characters with Inventor, Artificer, or Ritualist it could be an interesting thing to throw at them and just see what workarounds they come up with. Just make sure that their attacks aren't any real trouble for the PCs but cause lots of destruction (something like Damage 4 with five stackings of the Area modifier).

But yeah, the interesting defensive powers are going to generally be things like creating walls, temporary defensive boosts, or immunities that open up new options (like the previously mentioned immunity to falling damage). Nothing wrong with straight up damage negation, but if it's all you have you're going to end up relatively boring to play.

King of Nowhere
2021-10-31, 06:53 PM
Very interesting.

On the one hand, I greatly agree with this, at least as one perspective.

On the other hand…

For martials, I like to advocate them *not* falling into the trap of only having one button to push. In largely 3e parlance, being able to trip, disarm, disable, move, manipulate, grapple, choke out, suffocate? I think *I* could do all of that (and more) IRL; if my RPG muggle cannot, or the player cannot think to, it's a problem. And, with a few tools, tying up, drugging, setting on fire, and dis-arming (or dis-legging, or beheading, or…) are among the possibilities.

i can agree in theory, but in 3.x all those tools are suboptimal unless you are built for it. but what's much worse in my book, most of them would be extremely hard to adjudicate. and they would risk being game-breaker, or extremely annoying.

take, for example, the classic martial vs caster. at my table, with our level of optimization and our general guidelines of what's allowed and what's not, the caster has a lot of options. but the martial can deal a lot of damage if he manages to get close.
so, the caster can try to target the martial's worst save with a save-or-die. which could end the fight immediately, or it may fail1. and if it fails, the martial can get close and the caster's in trouble. Or, the caster can use crowd control and keep the distance and wear the martial down. which is most likely to work in the long run, but it will occupy the caster full time, in which case the martial is still contributing to the fight by keeping the enemy caster fully occupied2.
this equilibrium ensures that, despite the caster-martial disparity, everyone can contribute in a team fight. we all like this point of equilibrium, and we try to keep it.

now, let's assume that I allow the caster to get starmantle. now the caster will take half damage from the martial, and there's nothing the martial can do - besides dealing double damage.
now the caster can effectively ignore the martial, and the martial has become ineffective. that's a problem. so now the martial will start looking for other options...
grapple is flat-out negated by freedom of movement, which everyone has at high levels. which is ok, because grapple has some very annoying mechanics that nobody wants to look up in detail, and with grapple allowed the martial would be able to shut down the caster big time - which, again, would be a problem, we want the caster to be vulnerable, but "incapacitated as soon as an enemy gets in melee" would be too harsh.
Then there's trip. Trip gives one a penalty to movement, which prevents the caster from keeping the distance - or forces them to burn a quickened dimension door. it also gives -4 to AC. but if the martial is incapable of hurting the caster, then tripping is irrelevant.
Disarm? the caster has no use for a weapon. But maybe you can take away the spell component pouch? Ok, this has two possible outcomes: 1) the caster is shut down forever. any martial that touch a caster can "disarm" the caster and shut him down hard. Which we'd find too punitive for the caster. 2) Every smart caster travels with half a dozen spell component pouches in different parts of their body, rendering the whole "disarm" manuever pointless - unless successfully executed a half dozen times.
Manipulate, choke? i guess they would count as grappling. so, negated. if they weren't, again, we'd be forced to use annoying grapple mechanics. But assume instead that they are not. So the martial says "I try to grab the caster and strangle him". Ok, now what? What do I ask him to roll? What should the caster roll for defence? While I like players thinking outside the box, in combat having to come up with mechanics on the fly is not a good outcome, and it's virtually indistinguishable from dm-may-i? either i rule that the opposed roll uses something that favors the martial, in which case the caster is gone. or i use something that favors the caster, in which case the manuever is useless. or i roll a 50-50, in which case the whole character builds are made moot.


1 at equal level and optimization, the martial can be expected to pass the saving throw between half and one-quarter of the times. there's also the fact that the weak save of martials is will, and most will-based save-or-die do allow immunity, so the caster would have to guess which immunity the fighter may or may not have. But a basic protection from evil is so commonplace, nobody tries to dominate person in high level combat anymore. except maybe after dispelling.
2 the martial will have access to see invisibility, flight and other stuff, so that the caster can't just fly out of reach and ignore the martial altogether. a smart martial will keep forcing the caster to spend actions to stay out of reach. Again, that's part of the op equilibrium that we worked to build

All this to say that in years of gaming we have fine-tuned combat to a point that we like, and throwing a wrench in it would have bad effects. Either the new strategy would be ineffective, or it would be game-breaking, or it would be yet-another-thing-that-people-have-to-remember-to-prepare-against.
It's much more convenient to agree on keeping the equilibrium by banning/changing everything that would break it, then it would be to break the game and then try to glue the pieces back together.

Satinavian
2021-11-01, 02:30 AM
Well that depends on their objectives, and on how much offense the invulnerable person can deliver.

If the non-invulnerable side is just trying to escape, then reducing their pursuers to one person will at least let most of them escape, even if the invulnerable one is also fast.

If it's to destroy the other side as a fighting force - reducing it to one survivor will be a pretty big change.

If it's to take control of something, then it depends on how much offense the invulnerable survivor can output - if the other side can just defend against that long enough to do what they came for, they win.
Yes, there are some cases where continue fighting might be sensible. But imho those rarely come about organically. Most fights are about control a place or a thing or possibly because people hate each other but really enough to throw away their lives just to hurt some of the other side.


And that's in addition to the fact that tactics like tying up the invulnerable foe or trapping them in a pit become much easier once it's many vs one.That would be true if this invulnerability is only about physical damage and can be worked around. I am more thinking of situations where the person is also invulnerabe to all negative status effects the other party could try to apply and can't be shut down either even with superior numbers.

Quertus
2021-11-01, 09:14 AM
i can agree in theory, but in 3.x all those tools are suboptimal unless you are built for it.

We're on the same page.

Except… I have no problem with sometimes asking someone to use a suboptimal tactic. Or, rather, with sometimes having a normally suboptimal tactic being situationally optimal.


but what's much worse in my book, most of them would be extremely hard to adjudicate.

Agreed, "extremely hard to adjudicate" is bad.

Although… while 3e is suboptimal in this regard, I don't think I agree that it's "extremely hard to adjudicate".


and they would risk being game-breaker, or extremely annoying.

In some systems, yes, some of them are. (3e grappling certainly is annoying).


take, for example, the classic martial vs caster. at my table,

Well, I can't really grok that, as I'm not into PvP.

If the wizard takes ˝ damage from the monsters, they have twice as long to guess what immunities the monster has. If, you know, the Fighter hasn't already killed it. Not really a big deal at my tables.

If the monster takes ˝ damage from the Fighter, it's that much more important for the Wizard to guess correctly how to shut it down. Or for the Fighter to either not be a one trick pony, or for it to be a really good trick. Not really a big deal at my tables.

If the Fighter takes ˝ damage from the monsters… yay?


this equilibrium ensures that, despite the caster-martial disparity, everyone can contribute in a team fight. we all like this point of equilibrium, and we try to keep it.

If it works, and y'all like it, OK. But I'll not say it's anywhere close to "required", IME, in order to let everyone contribute.

-----

In 3e parlance, "choke out" would be a grapple that targets the suffocation rules, rather than the damage rules.

"Manipulate" includes "I push you off the bridge", "I steal your hat", "I pull your hat down over your eyes", etc.

-----


All this to say that in years of gaming we have fine-tuned combat to a point that we like, and throwing a wrench in it would have bad effects. Either the new strategy would be ineffective, or it would be game-breaking, or it would be yet-another-thing-that-people-have-to-remember-to-prepare-against.
It's much more convenient to agree on keeping the equilibrium by banning/changing everything that would break it, then it would be to break the game and then try to glue the pieces back together.

If that works for y'all, great, I guess? It's a little odd for me, thinking in terms of the infinite variety of, say, MtG, and hearing someone reducing it to chess, to limited playing pieces with a set pattern of balance.

Yes, my old Benalish Hero is one more thing for a modern MtG player to have to analyze… but, to me, that's the fun of the game!

If y'all truly prefer to play chess with your 16 approved MtG cards on a side, then have fun with that. I just may struggle to understand why you would choose that particular flavor of fun.

King of Nowhere
2021-11-01, 03:21 PM
We're on the same page.

Well, I can't really grok that, as I'm not into PvP.


not pvp, but PvNPC. my campaign, especially at high level, involves a lot of fighting other opponents with pc class levels. the general premise is that there are several power groups (religions, nations, maybe even secret societies) and they all can call on a bunch of high level people.
monsters are still there, but they are rarely a threat at high level. anything that cannot defend themselves properly against scry-and-die tactics is not a credible threat at high level.





If that works for y'all, great, I guess? It's a little odd for me, thinking in terms of the infinite variety of, say, MtG, and hearing someone reducing it to chess, to limited playing pieces with a set pattern of balance.

Yes, my old Benalish Hero is one more thing for a modern MtG player to have to analyze… but, to me, that's the fun of the game!

If y'all truly prefer to play chess with your 16 approved MtG cards on a side, then have fun with that. I just may struggle to understand why you would choose that particular flavor of fun.
there is still a lot of variety. Trip and disarm are still on the table. grappling is still available, if someone dispels the freedom of movement. the vast majority of spells are still available.
the main rule of thumb for what's allowed and what's not is simple: nothing can screw up too badly a character of equivalent level without allowing for defence or counterplay. that still leaves open most options. everything with a saving throw: negates is kosher. everything that grants a numerical buff is allowed, provided the buff is not too huge. same goes everything that inflicts a numerical penalty. hit point damage is fine, as long as it's not enough to one-shot your average opponent.

it's a lot more variety than if people were allowed to play uberchargers and mailmen. in which case, everyone would be forced to play uberchargers and mailmen to keep up, and whoever acts first would kill the opponent.

NichG
2021-11-01, 03:48 PM
I don't think tournament 1v1 PvP is a context I would ever care about as far as tabletop gaming. Whether one PC could kill another with impunity isn't really relevant to actual play.

As far as defensive abilities, I'd say that things which let a character control the flow of events while keeping them moving are fine, but things which let a character create stalemates or slow things down can cause problems at a meta level of just being very boring to play out. There should always be some kind of timer counting down towards 'this situation will be resolved'.

icefractal
2021-11-01, 04:40 PM
I don't think tournament 1v1 PvP is a context I would ever care about as far as tabletop gaming. Whether one PC could kill another with impunity isn't really relevant to actual play.
If PCs and NPCs play by the same rules then it's relevant to actual play, in that most players don't enjoy their PCs being taken out of the fight with no chance to resist.

For example, I will gladly sacrifice the ability to cast Shivering Touch in exchange for not needing defenses against Shivering Touch on every single PC. I'll give up the ability to know any foe's secrets in exchange for being able to have secrets myself (personal house-rule / ruling: Simulacrum does not have the original's memories beyond what could be considered "public knowledge"). And so forth.

King of Nowhere
2021-11-01, 06:36 PM
If PCs and NPCs play by the same rules then it's relevant to actual play, in that most players don't enjoy their PCs being taken out of the fight with no chance to resist.

For example, I will gladly sacrifice the ability to cast Shivering Touch in exchange for not needing defenses against Shivering Touch on every single PC. I'll give up the ability to know any foe's secrets in exchange for being able to have secrets myself (personal house-rule / ruling: Simulacrum does not have the original's memories beyond what could be considered "public knowledge"). And so forth.

thanks for extrapolating on my behalf!

NichG
2021-11-02, 12:15 AM
If PCs and NPCs play by the same rules then it's relevant to actual play, in that most players don't enjoy their PCs being taken out of the fight with no chance to resist.

For example, I will gladly sacrifice the ability to cast Shivering Touch in exchange for not needing defenses against Shivering Touch on every single PC. I'll give up the ability to know any foe's secrets in exchange for being able to have secrets myself (personal house-rule / ruling: Simulacrum does not have the original's memories beyond what could be considered "public knowledge"). And so forth.

4v4 can be quite different than 1v1. Encounters you prepare for can be quite different than 'two people are dropped into a featureless plain and try to kill each-other', not to mention encounters which you either engage in or avoid on the basis of understanding your limits relative to the enemy's abilities. Encounters can have goals that aren't the complete destruction of the other side, and those goals can be approached from different directions by different participants. Additionally, NPCs don't have to be equal level or equal in resource budget to PCs, they don't have to be encountered in the same numbers, they're not obligated to be optimized to whatever the standard of the established meta is, they may or may not know as much about the PCs as the PCs know about them at the time when they enter into an adversarial relationship, etc. And NPCs generally won't all be using the same rules as PCs anyhow - monsters may share a mechanical basis, but usually they pull from different ability sets and their numbers are distributed differently than either an unoptimized or optimized PC.

Also, a fundamental difference at the meta level is that in a PvP situation it's going to feel unfair if both sides have an unequal chance to win, but in a PvE scenario the enemies are generally supposed to lose - the matchups should be unequal 95%+ of the time. Depending on the table, it can be the players' responsibility to ensure that (not taking on adversaries who are their equals) or the GM's (preparing appropriate encounters for the party) or both.

icefractal
2021-11-02, 01:18 AM
4v4 can be quite different than 1v1.Oh definitely, but not in favor of DNS (death/defeat, no save) attacks being less annoying to the PCs - more annoying, if anything.

Let's say you have four PCs vs four foes. It's pretty likely at least one PC will get DNS'd in the first round if both sides are using them. And while that might not be a problem to the ultimate outcome - in that the PCs end up winning anyway - I can say from experience that the player who didn't get to even act is probably not having a good time. And if by bad luck it happens 2x-3x in a row, they're really going to get annoyed.

Likewise alternate win conditions can swing either way, prior knowledge can swing either way, and the "with no counter" thing means that even lower level NPCs could still take out a PC with it.

Now there's also this:
they're not obligated to be optimized to whatever the standard of the established meta isBut it kind of sounds like suggesting the NPCs obligingly line up to get shot, and refrain from shooting back too hard?

I'm not saying they need to scale to the PCs (in fact they shouldn't), but things like "there's an extremely effective strategy all the PCs are using, but apparently nobody else in the world realizes it's possible" make the NPCs seem dim more than they make the PCs seem awesome.

NichG
2021-11-02, 05:00 AM
Oh definitely, but not in favor of DNS (death/defeat, no save) attacks being less annoying to the PCs - more annoying, if anything.

Let's say you have four PCs vs four foes. It's pretty likely at least one PC will get DNS'd in the first round if both sides are using them. And while that might not be a problem to the ultimate outcome - in that the PCs end up winning anyway - I can say from experience that the player who didn't get to even act is probably not having a good time. And if by bad luck it happens 2x-3x in a row, they're really going to get annoyed.

If you're designing around groups rather than individuals, you can have it so that any single character might be susceptible to a hard shutdown alone, but together no member of the group can be shutdown. E.g. a glass cannon caster can be one shot by a full attack from a martial, but if the system has effective mechanics for area control or protection, the caster isn't a viable target during the alpha strike because of another character involved in the situation covering their weakness.

Or you don't make it about lining up in ranks and rolling initiative. The guy who would be hard-countered by the martial can be somewhere else doing something else in parallel that doesn't expose them to their kryptonite.



Now there's also this:But it kind of sounds like suggesting the NPCs obligingly line up to get shot, and refrain from shooting back too hard?

I'm not saying they need to scale to the PCs (in fact they shouldn't), but things like "there's an extremely effective strategy all the PCs are using, but apparently nobody else in the world realizes it's possible" make the NPCs seem dim more than they make the PCs seem awesome.

This is the effective reality in any game that involves a party that isn't dead by the 10th encounter. It might be crass to outright admit it, but every functional table is using some kind of way of making enemies oppose the PCs in situations where they have little to no chance of victory. Maybe it's because they underestimate the PCs, or maybe they're being discarded as fodder by a callous boss, or maybe they're non-sentient, or maybe they're fighting for their lives against a home invasion and don't have a choice, but most encounters must be unequal in games predicated on fights to the death.

A lot of what makes it palatable is supported by suspension of disbelief that becomes weakened when you start thinking of NPCs in character as if they see the world like players do out of character. Questions like 'why did you level in Commoner rather than Wizard?' are meta, and if you adopt that as a default way of looking at the fiction it can be very limiting.

NPCs don't have to know what options are possible. NPCs don't have to be eligible for every option, even if there aren't mechanical restrictions.
NPCs cannot choose their race and stats and background.
NPCs don't have to be able to access every spell or item arbitrarily, on the basis of what makes for a good build.
NPCs need not be aware that there are things called levels, feats, stats, etc to the degree that they can distinguish what particular form of training or study or selectiveness leads to the most powerful builds.
NPCs don't need to think like people with literal access to the true written rules of physics and an extensive community who spends decades theorycrafting builds.

So with that in mind, if e.g. most warriors in a setting aren't uberchargers that shouldn't be immersion breaking.

Satinavian
2021-11-02, 05:30 AM
This is the effective reality in any game that involves a party that isn't dead by the 10th encounter. It might be crass to outright admit it, but every functional table is using some kind of way of making enemies oppose the PCs in situations where they have little to no chance of victory. Maybe it's because they underestimate the PCs, or maybe they're being discarded as fodder by a callous boss, or maybe they're non-sentient, or maybe they're fighting for their lives against a home invasion and don't have a choice, but most encounters must be unequal in games predicated on fights to the death.I honestly prefer enemies just being weaker instead of being stupid. Other complication might apply nenetheless.


A lot of what makes it palatable is supported by suspension of disbelief that becomes weakened when you start thinking of NPCs in character as if they see the world like players do out of character. Questions like 'why did you level in Commoner rather than Wizard?' are meta, and if you adopt that as a default way of looking at the fiction it can be very limiting.No, thinking of NPCs in character works fine and makes for believable NPC behavior lifting up the whole setting.

If something breaks when NPCs act rationally, then something is already broken and likely needs to be nerfed or changed.

NichG
2021-11-02, 05:46 AM
I honestly prefer enemies just being weaker instead of being stupid. Other complication might apply nenetheless.
No, thinking of NPCs in character works fine and makes for believable NPC behavior lifting up the whole setting.

Just to confirm: you're asserting that believing that NPCs should have the same knowledge and mindset that players do makes the NPC behavior more believable?

Quertus
2021-11-02, 06:55 AM
For example, I will gladly sacrifice the ability to cast Shivering Touch in exchange for not needing defenses against Shivering Touch on every single PC. I'll give up the ability to know any foe's secrets in exchange for being able to have secrets myself (personal house-rule / ruling: Simulacrum does not have the original's memories beyond what could be considered "public knowledge"). And so forth.

So… what you're saying is… you love defensive abilities so much, you'll house rule in even more? :smallbiggrin:


not pvp, but PvNPC. my campaign, especially at high level, involves a lot of fighting other opponents with pc class levels. the general premise is that there are several power groups (religions, nations, maybe even secret societies) and they all can call on a bunch of high level people.

Huh. My "PvNPC" play is usually… more political, less physical. So I'm… a bit out of my element here.


monsters are still there, but they are rarely a threat at high level. anything that cannot defend themselves properly against scry-and-die tactics is not a credible threat at high level.

You… keep scry-and-die, invalidating most content?


. grappling is still available, if someone dispels the freedom of movement.

You… keep freedom of movement (good call, nobody likes to be grappled)… but… claim it's still viable post-dispel… while not claiming damage is viable post dispel of "˝ damage"?


hit point damage is fine, as long as it's not enough to one-shot your average opponent.

But enough to one-shot the Necropolitan Wizard would be fine. So… how would a Necropolitan Wizard survive in your game?


It's a lot more variety than if people were allowed to play uberchargers and mailmen. in which case, everyone would be forced to play uberchargers and mailmen to keep up, and whoever acts first would kill the opponent.

Is it?

It's a lot less variety than in a PvE scenario, even with mailmen and übercharger on the table.

I've run a huge variety of characters who could survive mailmen and übercharger builds. I'd happily wager on having dominating strategies over what you picture as a samey environment if you opened things up.


Oh definitely, but not in favor of DNS (death/defeat, no save) attacks being less annoying to the PCs - more annoying, if anything.

Let's say you have four PCs vs four foes. It's pretty likely at least one PC will get DNS'd in the first round if both sides are using them. And while that might not be a problem to the ultimate outcome - in that the PCs end up winning anyway - I can say from experience that the player who didn't get to even act is probably not having a good time. And if by bad luck it happens 2x-3x in a row, they're really going to get annoyed.

Eh, "playing multiple characters", "hopping into party NPC", or even "playing the enemy" can remedy this, IME.


Likewise alternate win conditions can swing either way, prior knowledge can swing either way,

Although technically true, the trope of "playing the underdog" and "playing a fun game" tends to shift that in favor of the PCs.


and the "with no counter" thing means that even lower level NPCs could still take out a PC with it.

Although technically true, can you really name anything in D&D that doesn't have a counter?


Now there's also this:But it kind of sounds like suggesting the NPCs obligingly line up to get shot, and refrain from shooting back too hard?

I'm not saying they need to scale to the PCs (in fact they shouldn't), but things like "there's an extremely effective strategy all the PCs are using, but apparently nobody else in the world realizes it's possible" make the NPCs seem dim more than they make the PCs seem awesome.

Actually, it makes them seem realistic.

Do you have any idea what D&D characters looked like back in 2e and earlier, before the internet? Ridiculously suboptimal, that's what! Just not using one strategy? Ho boy, that's absolutely crazy optimized compared to how real tables built.

I would love to get the federal funding to conduct experiments on what kind of characters children raised in isolation, with no access to Internet, produced after decades of exposure to 3e.


If you're designing around groups rather than individuals, you can have it so that any single character might be susceptible to a hard shutdown alone, but together no member of the group can be shutdown. E.g. a glass cannon caster can be one shot by a full attack from a martial, but if the system has effective mechanics for area control or protection, the caster isn't a viable target during the alpha strike because of another character involved in the situation covering their weakness.

Or you don't make it about lining up in ranks and rolling initiative. The guy who would be hard-countered by the martial can be somewhere else doing something else in parallel that doesn't expose them to their kryptonite.

This requires teamwork and planning, and isn't available in "kick in the door" style play.


This is the effective reality in any game that involves a party that isn't dead by the 10th encounter. It might be crass to outright admit it, but every functional table is using some kind of way of making enemies oppose the PCs in situations where they have little to no chance of victory. Maybe it's because they underestimate the PCs, or maybe they're being discarded as fodder by a callous boss, or maybe they're non-sentient, or maybe they're fighting for their lives against a home invasion and don't have a choice, but most encounters must be unequal in games predicated on fights to the death.

There was a style of game I ran, where the party was constantly set up to fail. I made the adventure very hard, but ended the session on the "how will the PCs survive this?" cliffhanger, giving the players time to think up a winning strategy, making their characters seem like big heroes for overcoming things that looked impossible (especially to me).

As should be obvious, this works for players who respond to challenge by getting creative, rather than getting frustrated.

I doubt my "rule of zero" style, where I explicitly designed puzzles for which I saw zero solutions, would be terrible popular in a modern gaming environment, but it had its moments.


A lot of what makes it palatable is supported by suspension of disbelief that becomes weakened when you start thinking of NPCs in character as if they see the world like players do out of character. Questions like 'why did you level in Commoner rather than Wizard?' are meta, and if you adopt that as a default way of looking at the fiction it can be very limiting.

NPCs don't have to know what options are possible. NPCs don't have to be eligible for every option, even if there aren't mechanical restrictions.
NPCs cannot choose their race and stats and background.
NPCs don't have to be able to access every spell or item arbitrarily, on the basis of what makes for a good build.
NPCs need not be aware that there are things called levels, feats, stats, etc to the degree that they can distinguish what particular form of training or study or selectiveness leads to the most powerful builds.
NPCs don't need to think like people with literal access to the true written rules of physics and an extensive community who spends decades theorycrafting builds.

So with that in mind, if e.g. most warriors in a setting aren't uberchargers that shouldn't be immersion breaking.

I mean, I'm kinda a fan of this for PCs, too. In that not every PC at my tables has Freedom of Movement, or is otherwise samey. They don't all have perfect knowledge of how to optimize themselves. And I, personally, like the variety of builds I see.

Satinavian
2021-11-02, 07:22 AM
Just to confirm: you're asserting that believing that NPCs should have the same knowledge and mindset that players do makes the NPC behavior more believable?
No, the NPCs should have the same knowledge and mindset as the PCs while the GMs plays them the same way as the players do.

If a tactic is appropriate to be used by PCs considering their understanding of the world, that tactic is likely also appropriate for NPCs. And if it is obviously superior, it will have been widely adopted.

NichG
2021-11-02, 08:48 AM
No, the NPCs should have the same knowledge and mindset as the PCs while the GMs plays them the same way as the players do.

If a tactic is appropriate to be used by PCs considering their understanding of the world, that tactic is likely also appropriate for NPCs. And if it is obviously superior, it will have been widely adopted.

'Be born human, because the extra feat is much better than infravision and a +2'? 'Make your core stat a 17 rather than an 18 in order to be efficient with point buy'? 'Start Lawful to dip a level of Monk for Wis to AC and two levels of Paladin for Cha to saves, which you can convert to Wis to AC with a feat, then go to Rokugan for the Akodo PrC that gives you Wis again to attack, then become a Cleric of a deity that gives the Envy domain for eventual Limited Wish access and use Persistent Spell and nightsticks to be permanently buffed...'

These things aren't in-character concepts or capabilities. Someone could do that sequence of implausible things, but 'this NPC didn't do all that, so I'm going to feel like they have the idiot ball' is absurd.

Satinavian
2021-11-02, 09:22 AM
'Be born human, because the extra feat is much better than infravision and a +2'? 'Make your core stat a 17 rather than an 18 in order to be efficient with point buy'?
Those are indeed not in-character decisions to make


'Start Lawful to dip a level of Monk for Wis to AC and two levels of Paladin for Cha to saves, which you can convert to Wis to AC with a feat, then go to Rokugan for the Akodo PrC that gives you Wis again to attack, then become a Cleric of a deity that gives the Envy domain for eventual Limited Wish access and use Persistent Spell and nightsticks to be permanently buffed...'
But these might actually be.

"The monks have a technique that allows the strong minded to be protected as if wearing armor. You need proper self disciplin and to follow a rigid code to learn that. Many people go to the monks only for a short time to master that technique and then do something else because it is that useful.

Similar for all the rest. Why would NPCs not copy nightstick persist tricks to be permanently buffed ? If divine metamegic is a thing and nightsticks are a thing then combining them is a no-brainer even in-universe for NPCs. In fact most higher level clerics that don't abuse nighsticks would probably seen as utter morons if that trick works.

NichG
2021-11-02, 11:00 AM
Those are indeed not in-character decisions to make

But these might actually be.

"The monks have a technique that allows the strong minded to be protected as if wearing armor. You need proper self disciplin and to follow a rigid code to learn that. Many people go to the monks only for a short time to master that technique and then do something else because it is that useful.

Similar for all the rest. Why would NPCs not copy nightstick persist tricks to be permanently buffed ? If divine metamegic is a thing and nightsticks are a thing then combining them is a no-brainer even in-universe for NPCs. In fact most higher level clerics that don't abuse nighsticks would probably seen as utter morons if that trick works.

This all boils down to what you choose for the act of gaining a class level or feat to correspond to in-character. If it's a willful, fully informed choice: 'you get one of these discrete things and then you will never be able to learn any more tricks until you are at such and such a level of power, here's the catalog and what you need to do to get them' then that's one thing. If on the other hand feats are an abstraction to represent tricks or inclinations or even forms of granted power, it can easily be the case that a person cannot choose to take divine metamagic: persistent spell as a voluntary in-character action. They can study clerical magic and how spells can be modified and so on, and maybe some people who do that figure out how to persist spells and an even smaller fraction figure out how to feed the power requirements via channeling divine power, but it need not be something that is easy to duplicate.

I think its a far better default to assume that things can be much murkier in-character than what players get to see and how they interact with the game world, because it avoids being forced into a very meta, LitRPG way of looking at the fiction even when that's not the particular experience you're going for in a particular game. An NPC isn't an idiot for not taking the route of being a SAD Wis-to-everything DMM persist Cleric in order to be the best warrior in the land, that route was never something that was actually feasible for them to discover. Just as there might be particular best sets of skills and practices and childhood experiences and so on for a person to become a highly successful professional in real life, but life is messy, people will rarely follow such paths perfectly, and starting points and details of life experiences differ enough that there's no one recipe.

Lord Raziere
2021-11-02, 11:26 AM
I think its a far better default to assume that things can be much murkier in-character than what players get to see and how they interact with the game world, because it avoids being forced into a very meta, LitRPG way of looking at the fiction even when that's not the particular experience you're going for in a particular game. An NPC isn't an idiot for not taking the route of being a SAD Wis-to-everything DMM persist Cleric in order to be the best warrior in the land, that route was never something that was actually feasible for them to discover. Just as there might be particular best sets of skills and practices and childhood experiences and so on for a person to become a highly successful professional in real life, but life is messy, people will rarely follow such paths perfectly, and starting points and details of life experiences differ enough that there's no one recipe.

Agreed.

Like every time I see that litrpg meta reasoning taken seriously rather than as a joke, it never feels right. its too clean, too much like clockwork to actually be life as I know it, it breaks my sense of verisimilitude.

Quertus
2021-11-02, 12:10 PM
"litrpg"? What's this then, eh?

icefractal
2021-11-02, 12:56 PM
See to me, it's "PCs face-roll supposedly equal opposition by being the only ones who can fully utilize what's available" that feels like an Isekai premise.

And why are all the examples micro-optimization? That's not what the thread was about and not something that the players would likely notice the presence or absence of (IC, there's little observable difference between an optimized goblin sharpshooter and one who's just higher level). This is about tactics which completely shut down equally strong foes with no chance to resist. And things like "are NPCs aware that scry-n-die exists?"

As far as PCs winning - yeah, they generally do. Because, for example, they attack an organization's weak points and are therefore engaging opposition weaker than them, even if the org as a whole is stronger. PCs cutting a swath through weaker foes is just fine. Weaker foes. It isn't necessary that an Xth level PC can trivially defeat an Xth level NPC.

NichG
2021-11-02, 01:36 PM
"litrpg"? What's this then, eh?

Fiction with the premise that some sort of tabletop RPG rules system is in-character visible either to the protagonist or to everyone in the world, and then extrapolating from there. Often involves a 'look how different society and people's psychology would be if they literally saw their stats and chose their levelups and knew that those things were driven by XP and such', including things like parents or governments having the de facto authority to choose how children/citizens level, all the sociopaths coming out of the woodwork when they discover that killing directly grants power, etc. The level of coherency in the systems in the fiction varies a lot, as does the degree of connection between the random level up/skill up spam and the actual abilities of the character in the story.


See to me, it's "PCs face-roll supposedly equal opposition by being the only ones who can fully utilize what's available" that feels like an Isekai premise.

And why are all the examples micro-optimization? That's not what the thread was about and not something that the players would likely notice the presence or absence of (IC, there's little observable difference between an optimized goblin sharpshooter and one who's just higher level). This is about tactics which completely shut down equally strong foes with no chance to resist. And things like "are NPCs aware that scry-n-die exists?"

It's part of the practical difference that usually resolves the question of 'why don't the PCs only have a 1% chance to still be alive after 8 fights?'. One part of PC advantage comes from the practical fact that the player is working on that one character over a period of months, whereas whatever opposition they face might not even have 10 minutes of mechanical consideration from the DM.

In terms of broad strokes, I'd maintain that you can both run a consistent setting in which scry-n-die is a standard thing, and a consistent setting in which it doesn't happen, both with the same underlying system in which scry-n-die is mechanically permitted. If wizards are demographically rare, then while there are likely assassin organizations or large governments which have scry-n-die as a tool in their arsenal, it's not going to be something that every opponent the PCs face should be assumed to be using. Go up against a high level wizard, it's on the table. Go up against a dragon cult, maybe yes maybe no. Go up against someone who was primarily an academic mage but then ended up finding part of a ritual to become a deity (with unspecified but probably apocalyptic side-effects) and needs to be stopped, they may very well think of scry and die as a possibility but then mess up the execution by virtue of not actually having a lifetime of combat experience or seeing the world through the lens of 'how do I kill this target?'. Maybe they think it's enough to scry on the target and teleport to them and attack, without actually timing the attack well, pre-buffing in a way that actually lets them win, etc. Or they even start to set up for it but get cold feet when their divinations return solid 'woe' about the prospect.



As far as PCs winning - yeah, they generally do. Because, for example, they attack an organization's weak points and are therefore engaging opposition weaker than them, even if the org as a whole is stronger. PCs cutting a swath through weaker foes is just fine. Weaker foes. It isn't necessary that an Xth level PC can trivially defeat an Xth level NPC.

It's not really necessary that an Xth level PC be equally matched against an Xth level NPC either. Level is a meta concept, and while there are potential in-character visible signifiers of it such as different spells becoming available at the same time, that's part of where choosing how to interpret the abstractions of the game comes in.

King of Nowhere
2021-11-02, 04:38 PM
Make your core stat a 17 rather than an 18 in order to be efficient with point buy'? 'Start Lawful to dip a level of Monk for Wis to AC and two levels of Paladin for Cha to saves, which you can convert to Wis to AC with a feat, then go to Rokugan for the Akodo PrC that gives you Wis again to attack, then become a Cleric of a deity that gives the Envy domain for eventual Limited Wish access and use Persistent Spell and nightsticks to be permanently buffed...'

These things aren't in-character concepts or capabilities. Someone could do that sequence of implausible things, but 'this NPC didn't do all that, so I'm going to feel like they have the idiot ball' is absurd.

those things are not in-character decisions that people make. people train and study and exercice, and the levels are an abstraction to represent the skills they gain for it. just like people don't move in discrete 5-foot steps, but it's an abstraction we use to represent movement with the limited resources of pen and paper.

as a rule of thumb, putting effort into fighting efficiently equates to build optimization. having trained a lot, or having fought a lot, equates to higher level. and being naturally gifted equates to higher base stats. A "dumb brute" opponent may have a higher level, but not be optimized. A skilled strategist, or a character who pursued power single-mindedly, will have an optimized build and will generally be a boss.

A hero is only as cool as his opponents. if the hero will just roflstomp all the enemies, the story is not engaging.
Presenting an enemy team that's just as strong as the party, and let the party work out how to best strategize to counter them, how to best prepare, how to manuever to gain the advantage, this tends to produce memorable fights and compelling stories.
and if things go poorly, there are several escape strategies and there are resurrection spells. my campaign assumes that both will be used occasionally.
"the first time we fought them, they kicked our asses and we had to flee. The second time we were better prepared, it was a close thing, we won but they managed to escape. The third time we really got the drop on them, we defeated them hard and we looted them! now they lost their best gear, and they'll be much less of a threat in the future". This is the kind of stuff that you remember years back. not "i killed this guy with a single sword move after he dealt 2d6+5 damage".



You… keep scry-and-die, invalidating most content?

teleportation exhist, and divination spells exhist. can't really avoid the exhistence of scry-and-die. but there are many ways to counter that. Every powerful nation or church will have a few bunkers that are completely impervious to that kind of tactic. even lesser organization and powerful individuals will have lesser strongholds that, while not impervious, will at least hold a few rounds, giving you the time to teleport to safety.
It's really a case of "this strategy stems naturally from the rules of the game, so everyone who wants to play in the major league must be able to defend from that".

You… keep freedom of movement (good call, nobody likes to be grappled)… but… claim it's still viable post-dispel… while not claiming damage is viable post dispel of "˝ damage"?
an opponent of your level can't screw you up too badly without granting you some reasonable chance at defence.
a wizard being mostly immune to damage is a single opponent screwing you up badly without you being able to do anything against it.
a wizard dispelling your freedom of movement enabling his fellow fighter to grapply you is TWO different opponents working together to screw you up. Of course if multiple strong opponents gangpile on you, you'll be in a bad predicament; this doesn't break anything.
I suppose a single opponent could do it; a wizard summoning a big critter and then quicken dispelling your freedom of movement, enabling the big critter to grapple you. But at the time this becomes possible, you can easily be expected to have a tattoo of still dimension door or something similar.

Ultimately, what we decide to limit and what we accept goes case-by-case. sometimes we fight with a new strategy, and after the fight we say "that stuff was too powerful. let's agree to never use it again and pretend it didn't exhist".
I'm sure there are strategies that we never officially limited that could break our table. if we encounter them and we see them becoming a problem, we may decide to do something about those too. before you raise the point, if they are strategies in which pcs or npcs invested build resources, free retraining will be available


But enough to one-shot the Necropolitan Wizard would be fine. So… how would a Necropolitan Wizard survive in your game?
Is a necropolitan somebody with no con score?
the average wizard in my campaign, especially with level-appropriate con buffs, can generally survive a round of full attack from a fighter of the same level, if he's not unlucky. he won't be in a good shape afterwards, granted.
i have no necropolitans in my campaign world, but if a player wanted to add them i'd be willing to trade them some increased offensive powers for it. with the caveat "those high level npcs you are likely to fight at high level will KNOW you are frail and they WILL try to exploit it". You can defend with teamplay and preparation, same as always.

frankly, it seems you are arguing for the sake of being contrary, because you are arguing from different angles.
first you chide icefractal for being "too defensive" for not wanting shivering touch in his game. a single low level spell with no saving throw that will kill without defence most opponents in the game.
and in the same post you chide me for being too aggressive because a wizard with a low CON score may get one-shot by an equally-leveled opponent.
on the same post, you appear to argue against removing an insta-kill, no defence low level spell, and then you appear to argue in favor of removing the ability to deal 100 damage with a full attack at high level. so, what are you actually trying to argue?

Quertus
2021-11-02, 08:19 PM
frankly, it seems you are arguing for the sake of being contrary, because you are arguing from different angles.
first you chide icefractal for being "too defensive" for not wanting shivering touch in his game. a single low level spell with no saving throw that will kill without defence most opponents in the game.
and in the same post you chide me for being too aggressive because a wizard with a low CON score may get one-shot by an equally-leveled opponent.
on the same post, you appear to argue against removing an insta-kill, no defence low level spell, and then you appear to argue in favor of removing the ability to deal 100 damage with a full attack at high level. so, what are you actually trying to argue?

Oh, you've got me all wrong.

A) I'm not arguing. I opened with "I'm out of my element here" - any opinion I express, I *expect* to be refuted. But that was mostly a lot of confused questions, not opinions (other than "kudos on keeping freedom of movement").

B) I wasn't "chiding" icefractal, I was… I'll go with "agreeing with them, humorously". (I'd have to check if I *actually* agreed with their choices, or just didn't disagree)

C) the undead Wizard is a specific example of a general balance issue. And, if I read you right, your response would be generalized as, "make some concessions to general rules in the name of balance, warn the player of the potential issues, and that it's their responsibility to deal with those issues".

I'm not so much arguing that you're wrong, as giving you the opportunity to present how you're right. Sure, if your response sounds like nonsense to my ears, or has obvious (or only seeming) inconsistencies, I'll let you know. But, to my ignorant eyes, your response sounds pretty dang reasonable.

It's not my style, nor is it what I'd have done if told to make "your style", but, other than wanting to dig in more on freedom of movement vs ˝ damage, it sounds reasonable.

(In the broader scope, yes, I do oppose unnecessary restrictions on general principle. So I do question how much time you spend evaluating how many "illegal" builds could compete with the other "illegal" builds, to actually know whether the number of valid, competitive builds you've allowed is optimized or suboptimal, or how many builds would be competitive but illegal. Or whether you don't care about maximizing choice past "enough". Or whether you realize there might be better answers given your values, that you would have accepted initially, but find that the cost of change is too high to switch now. That's the kind of questions that interest me. But, as a said, for the realm of how you implement PC vs NPC, you make a lot of sense.)

Cluedrew
2021-11-02, 09:09 PM
I remember back in the late 80's when I discovered that it was better to be super-agile than it was to be invulnerable to injury (whether in an RPG or in the fictional stories on which an RPG is based).Funnily enough, this might be true between super-tough and invulnerable as well. If you are merely super-tough, then you will get a lot of cosmetic injuries, but the plot will never really go out of the way to get you really injured. Invulnerable just sounds like a challenge.

Jay R
2021-11-02, 10:20 PM
It's the GM's job to help the players design interesting, playable characters that can have suspense in the game. Especially in superhero games, this process starts before character creation does.

A few years ago, I ran a Champions game. Here are some relevant quotes from the Introduction I sent out to all players before they began designing their characters.


I am beginning an early Silver Age campaign. The characters will not be as powerful as you are used to, and the villains will be similarly de-powered. Because I wish characters to take the kinds of risks that comic book characters actually take, I guarantee that your character will not die. Bad things may happen, but they will not be permanent.

[Note: you are not immortal, and I cannot save you from your own stupidity. If you choose to dive into a volcano or a vat of acid, I can’t save you. But the normal run of comic book adventures is not going to do you in. Spider-Man does not, in fact, get shot to death in the comics. Take risks to save people. Really. That’s what heroes do.]

...

These are early Silver Age characters, which means that they have difficulties and weaknesses. Don’t try to make a character who can survive anything. The team books of the time leaned on the weaknesses of each character, allowing other heroes to rescue the one in trouble. (Kryptonite was extremely common in Justice League stories, for instance.) You may assume that I will arrange to take each of you out of the action occasionally, for story purposes. Don’t make me have to drop a mountain on you to do it.

...

I know most of the ways to try to build a character worth much more than the rules intend. If you come up with such a strategy, I will congratulate you on your cleverness and ruthlessly disallow it.

I also included several specific rules. No aliens, no magic, no gods, no god-related power, etc. But you could get an exception to any one rule (most of them, anyway). This was not to prevent them, but to make such characters unique.


You may break a maximum of one of these rules, and only with my permission. Only one of you may break any given rule. (So one of you may have magic, and another may be an alien, but there will be no magic alien, and only one magician and one alien.) For that reason, you must tell us all which rule you wish to be the exception to. If nobody else claims it in two days (and if it’s an exception I’ll allow at all) then you may have it. Some rule-exceptions I will not allow at all, and some I will impose restrictions on. Tell me what you want to do, and I will help you find the best way. But when we’re done, the character will be less powerful than you’re used to, and with greater weaknesses.

...

11. The character must have at least one reasonably common weakness – a Vulnerability or Susceptibility, or a conditional PD and ED. I must have a way that I can take the character out quickly, for plot purposes. He or she might take double damage from fire like J’onn J’onzz, or be vulnerable to Kryptonite like Superman, or his defenses might be in a shield that doesn’t block everything like Captain America. (No exceptions to this rule allowed.)

...

14. I will add a –1/4 limitation of my own choice to any power of 60 or more active points. I will add a –1/2 limitation to any power of 80 or more active points. I will add limitations adding up to at least –3/4 to any power of 105 or more active points. I will decide on a case-by-case basis how much Limitation I will give any powers much above that level. These limitations will be chosen specifically to keep them fun and valuable, while limiting their ability to screw up my plans, so I will not tell you why I chose them. You may or may not know what this limitation is at the start of play. Limitations I choose are likely to include side effects, gestures, restrainable, Reduced by Range or Reduced Penetration, Gradual Effect, Extra Time, or something else that gives me as GM an opportunity to prevent their use at specific moments for story purposes. (If this rule is your exception, only one power is an exception to it.)

15. No power may have over 45 Real Points (how much it costs after adjustments for Advantages and Limitations). For instance, you may have a 100 Active Cost power, but you will need to give it Limitations totaling –3/4, so that after it gets my –1/2 Limitation, it will only cost 44 points. Powers in an Elemental Control or Multipower will be treated as stand-alone powers for purposes of this rule. Note that this is separate from the above rule, so you cannot have an exception to both. If you choose rule 14 as your exception, then you still must get every power down to 45 real points. If you choose this rule as your exception, only one power may exceed 45 real points.

If these rules make your character conception impossible, talk to me. That may mean the character conception cannot be used for this game, or we may find a work-around that meets your goals and mine together.

But the essential tool to prevent a single extreme power was very basic. The PCs were restricted to 225 points. You can't afford to put too many points in defense for a 225-point character.

Nobody complained about the rules. I helped one player design his character, and completely designed another player's, based on his verbal description. I did have to veto one very clever design to get way too much power.

Satinavian
2021-11-03, 01:54 AM
I think its a far better default to assume that things can be much murkier in-character than what players get to see and how they interact with the game world, because it avoids being forced into a very meta, LitRPG way of looking at the fiction even when that's not the particular experience you're going for in a particular game. An NPC isn't an idiot for not taking the route of being a SAD Wis-to-everything DMM persist Cleric in order to be the best warrior in the land, that route was never something that was actually feasible for them to discover. Just as there might be particular best sets of skills and practices and childhood experiences and so on for a person to become a highly successful professional in real life, but life is messy, people will rarely follow such paths perfectly, and starting points and details of life experiences differ enough that there's no one recipe.
Sure, the rules are not literally what the people in the world see, they are only some abstraction. But what really happens does map to the rules so when people learn the secrets of persisting spells instead of turning, that means they actually take that feat.

Sure, starting points are different, as are ambitions. There are certainly many clerics who are not particularly interesten in having buffs run all day long because what they actually use is mostly instantanious anyway. And most NPCs certainly don't have any reason to strife particularly much for fighting powers and won't be optimized for that. But those NPCs that are most likely to be involved in fights with PCs usually do.
All the rest is equal for PCs and NPCs. If I introduce some new restrictions on taking powers/feats/dips, why can players take them for their PCs ? I don't buy in this PCs are special suff. If NPC have to jump through several hoops to get some particular option, PCs should have to as well. And there are more than enough games out there that run "you have to find a willing trainer to learn anything of note". But if that is not true for PCs, why should it be for NPCs ?


The PCs naturally have the most spotlight in every game. Their build and how they progress do somewhat set a standard how progression in the world works. NPCs only get different starting points, aims and likely number of points, but otherwise they are built exactly the as if they were PCs.


I am not argueing for litRPG. And if i were trying to play that way, i certainly would not use D&D with its rules that strain worldbuilding at basically every single moment. Not that i am actually playing much D&D anyway.

NichG
2021-11-03, 05:27 AM
Sure, the rules are not literally what the people in the world see, they are only some abstraction. But what really happens does map to the rules so when people learn the secrets of persisting spells instead of turning, that means they actually take that feat.

Sure, starting points are different, as are ambitions. There are certainly many clerics who are not particularly interesten in having buffs run all day long because what they actually use is mostly instantanious anyway. And most NPCs certainly don't have any reason to strife particularly much for fighting powers and won't be optimized for that. But those NPCs that are most likely to be involved in fights with PCs usually do.
All the rest is equal for PCs and NPCs. If I introduce some new restrictions on taking powers/feats/dips, why can players take them for their PCs ? I don't buy in this PCs are special suff. If NPC have to jump through several hoops to get some particular option, PCs should have to as well. And there are more than enough games out there that run "you have to find a willing trainer to learn anything of note". But if that is not true for PCs, why should it be for NPCs ?

The PCs naturally have the most spotlight in every game. Their build and how they progress do somewhat set a standard how progression in the world works. NPCs only get different starting points, aims and likely number of points, but otherwise they are built exactly the as if they were PCs.

I am not argueing for litRPG. And if i were trying to play that way, i certainly would not use D&D with its rules that strain worldbuilding at basically every single moment. Not that i am actually playing much D&D anyway.

It all comes down to how you choose to interpret the abstraction of deciding on a character build. I'm not arguing that one choice or the other is wrong, but I'm saying that it appears to me that the choice you've decided to make is sharply limiting the kind of fiction you're able to find believable even to the limit of forcing it into that sort of Tippyverse/LitRPG genre, and I don't think you're actually getting much in exchange for that restriction. To me a suboptimal NPC can just be someone who didn't discover a secret and complicated path to power which may well be locked from them by circumstances of birth, rather than someone who is willfully and actively making dumb choices. The same way I might look back at medieval alchemists drinking mercury to try to achieve immortality and laugh at how silly that was, I also know that it took thousands of years before we became able to actually verify and prove that we know better than that.

Consider the implications of a world actively being anti-LitRPG in terms of mechanics awareness while sort of having LitRPG physics. That is to say, there are feats and stats and such, but no one in the world can name their feats or skills or stats. No one can tell the difference between a person avoiding a blow because their Dex was 2 points higher and a person avoiding the same blow because they had the Dodge feat. No one can tell that sometimes a course of military training fails to take on someone because they've already filled their feat slots with Skill Focus(Profession Farmer) as a kid, or that on inducting someone into a particular PrC-granting organization some people just end up not getting the powers out of it that others do (because they didn't technically meet some prerequisite, and the organization's testing procedures can't actually tell between someone rolling well on a Knowledge check, having a high Int, or actually having the requisite number of skill ranks). Imagine having to blind-build a character, maybe starting at Lv3 with some choices already made, but not actually being able to look at the sheet or know what the precise numbers are, and if you happen to choose an invalid feat or level then something else just steps in and makes another choice (which you don't get to see) to replace the invalid thing you tried to take.

Or think about the first character you (or people in general) make in a new system they've never played before, ideally one that has just come out recently so there's not a bunch of theorycraft online they can read up on. Those characters to me constitute a reasonable baseline of what NPCs can be expected to have; if an NPC has a build as good as an introductory sword-and-board or blaster wizard, they made the same choices in their one build they ever get to play as some new player made - stuff that looks reasonable on the face of it and moves in their direction of interest. It's not an upper limit of optimization that an NPC could end up with, but any argument about holding the idiot ball because they're suboptimal I'm going to compare to a baseline like that - do I know someone who might have put together this build and play it? If the build is as good as that, then I'm going to say that the person's position as a player with access to the true rules and an internet full of people discussing the game (again from the perspective of knowing the true rules) and so on is biasing their viewpoint, like a modern person looking at a medieval society and saying 'how can you be so dumb as to try to bleed out illness and not use proper sanitation?'.

PCs are divinely inspired by beings from outside of their reality. They get to receive guidance from entities who not only know the truth of how the world works, but can aggregate the knowledge and experience of millions of lifetimes to chart precise paths through that morass and can even chat with the laws of reality to ask if their ideas will work the way they think or even negotiate for favorable interpretations. The GM has the power to give that advantage and more to NPCs as well if they choose, and they may well choose to do so for some NPCs, but the distinction I draw is that this isn't something that the NPC has the in-character power to choose, just like it's not a PC's fault if their player decided that they wanted to not take things like Knock and Invisibility in order to avoid stepping on another player's niche.

In the end, it's the players' choice as to how divinely inspired they want their characters to be. I don't think their choice as to that question should force the world into a different level of optimization. A player could choose to throw together a low-op build or spend a lot of effort tuning a high-op build and both choices are valid and are given to them to make, not to the GM. If the players want their characters to be special chosen ones, the freedom to tune their build is a tool by which they can express that desire. Outside of that, the world is the world and is free to be low-op, high-op, or any mixture, without any of those being particularly implausible choices.

Satinavian
2021-11-03, 08:43 AM
Or think about the first character you (or people in general) make in a new system they've never played before, ideally one that has just come out recently so there's not a bunch of theorycraft online they can read up on. Those characters to me constitute a reasonable baseline of what NPCs can be expected to have; if an NPC has a build as good as an introductory sword-and-board or blaster wizard, they made the same choices in their one build they ever get to play as some new player made - stuff that looks reasonable on the face of it and moves in their direction of interest. It's not an upper limit of optimization that an NPC could end up with, but any argument about holding the idiot ball because they're suboptimal I'm going to compare to a baseline like that - do I know someone who might have put together this build and play it? If the build is as good as that, then I'm going to say that the person's position as a player with access to the true rules and an internet full of people discussing the game (again from the perspective of knowing the true rules) and so on is biasing their viewpoint, like a modern person looking at a medieval society and saying 'how can you be so dumb as to try to bleed out illness and not use proper sanitation?'.I generally don't rely on internet theory crafting for my characters nor do the people i play with. Part of that might be linked to "playing other games and not actually D&D" and differing community culture.

I agree that an NPC that is optimized as much as some regular PC is optimized enough. It doesn't have to reach intenet theorycrafting levels because those are generally not achieved by PCs either.


In the end, it's the players' choice as to how divinely inspired they want their characters to be. I don't think their choice as to that question should force the world into a different level of optimization. A player could choose to throw together a low-op build or spend a lot of effort tuning a high-op build and both choices are valid and are given to them to make, not to the GM. If the players want their characters to be special chosen ones, the freedom to tune their build is a tool by which they can express that desire. Outside of that, the world is the world and is free to be low-op, high-op, or any mixture, without any of those being particularly implausible choices.Nope. If someone comes with a build that is significantly more optimized than the table expectation they are told to cut it out and build a more appropriate one. The same might actually happen with some particularly weak build. The range of acceptable builds tend to use similar tricks and tools as the NPCs.

NichG
2021-11-03, 09:08 AM
I generally don't rely on internet theory crafting for my characters nor do the people i play with. Part of that might be linked to "playing other games and not actually D&D" and differing community culture.

I agree that an NPC that is optimized as much as some regular PC is optimized enough. It doesn't have to reach intenet theorycrafting levels because those are generally not achieved by PCs either.


Not just some regular PC, but the first PC an average player would make in any given system. E g. the choices made before they have any particular system experience from having tried out things yet.

If we're talking D&D that might mean 2h power attack strength barbarian, but not the whole lion totem + leap attack + spirited charge + shock trooper combo. That might mean picking spells because of how interesting their potential seems without e.g. adjusting for the distribution of saves and immunities expected of endgame foes (example here, my first D&D character was illusion-based, specifically favoring the Image line of spells rather than things like greater invisibility; campaign BBEG was a lich, oh well). That might mean toying with divinations but probably not playing 20 questions every morning to prepare optimal buffs. And it might mean not knowing about obscure but OP spells and combos (e.g. stuff like shivering touch).

Not to mention that organizational optimization is fundamentally different than individual optimization. The best core feat for an army of Lv1 characters to take turns out to be Diehard.

Satinavian
2021-11-03, 09:45 AM
Honestly, i think the difference between "my first character in a system" and "a later character in that system when i have experience" is not noticably big as far as optimization goes. Sure, i won't know a new system that well, but when i do, i generally also go for quirky and weak cobos because i have the knowledge to make them work and shun the stuff i think of as borderline gamebreaking powerful. But for a first character i generally do want effectiveness and also generally am able to get it. There are many systems where my very first character ended up being the most powerful i ever played there.

The cool and obviously powerful options tend to get picked by the first characters. Later they become boring no-brainers and a sign of bad taste. That is, if they are not nerfed by houserule or just forbidden per gentlemen's agreement anyway.


I don't ever see superoptimized PCs at any of the tables i play on. But the optimization level that does actually see play, is fitting for NPCs as well.


And it might mean not knowing about obscure but OP spells and combos (e.g. stuff like shivering touch).
If i were to run D&D, I probably would probably just ban shivering touch.
The alternative would be to have it recognized as a very powerful spell that can be used to kill many otherwise extremely robust individuals and spread like wildfire to the point that it is now as common as fireball or haste and even many non-casters have items to use it on particularly resilient foes if they are confident, they can land it.
What won't happen is "Nearly everyone ignores this spell but the PC uses it because it is so effective".

Humans and other sentients are really good at copying. If something workes well, it won't stay "obscure", if it is not forcefully kept secret.

King of Nowhere
2021-11-03, 02:49 PM
(In the broader scope, yes, I do oppose unnecessary restrictions on general principle. So I do question how much time you spend evaluating how many "illegal" builds could compete with the other "illegal" builds, to actually know whether the number of valid, competitive builds you've allowed is optimized or suboptimal, or how many builds would be competitive but illegal. Or whether you don't care about maximizing choice past "enough". Or whether you realize there might be better answers given your values, that you would have accepted initially, but find that the cost of change is too high to switch now. That's the kind of questions that interest me. But, as a said, for the realm of how you implement PC vs NPC, you make a lot of sense.)

yeah, knowing you i kinda suspected you just wanted to probe to provoke a discussion, but i had to be sure of what you were aiming at. I should have mentioned it as a possibility, though


regarding your last round of questions, it's a lot more theoretical than we ever did. we never sit around a table to decide which level of optimization we wanted to play; rather, we started to play and we mostly coalesced around a certain level. it was a byproduct of the history of our group, which i tried to summarize in short, but it's still long enough that i compress it under spoiler.

Among the group I'm the best optimizer; I am nowhere near the level of people doing it competitively in the forum, but my skill level is rare among "normal" players. i like to optimize some, but I don't like to push things to the extreme; when i have a build with certain highlights that's good at what it does, I stop there; I don't like making it cheesy good, or narrowly overspecialized to chase that last bonus.
Then there is another guy who's good at optimizing, though he focuses mostly on wizards. He like to push optimization to the limit, and since he plays wizards he tends to create problems by being too strong and we sometimes have to rein him in. But if he gets too broken, he acknowledges it and spontaneously nerf himself.
Then there is a guy who's pretty bad at optimizing, but a great roleplayer. He often chases "shiny" builds, that are often rather ineffective. He was the previous DM with this group.
And finally there are three more people with low optimization skill. It's not that they aren't willing to invest some time into it, they all occasionally look up stuff on the internet, but they aren't willing to invest enough time and effort to become really good at it - and who can blame them, with the amount of stuff 3.x has to offer?

and the first campaign we played together, we were with the former DM, and we didn't have a target for optimization. most people were too inexperienced for it anyway.
to avoid outclassing the new players, i made a monk tank with focus on battlefield control.
the wizard optimizer started with int 20 and went past 30 before 10th level.
the other guys started with standard simple builds, which got gradually modified with input from the two optimizers.
we also tried to help the dm, as his opponents were often rather weak, but a player can't build a boss monster for the dm or give hints to use it, so it wasn't too effective.

as we reached high level, my monk was nigh-invulnerable.
The wizard was perhaps even more invulnerable than the monk thanks to shapechange sheanigans. he also could one-shot anything, with the possible exception of my monk.
the other players were reasonably strong.
fighting was balanced enough, though. the wizard saved his spell slots for major bosses, letting the rest of the party take the spotlight most times, and the monk had a lot of fun jumping among enemies and tripping everyone who tried to move, but with low damage output he depended on cooperation from the rest of the party. we went through a really broken combat phase when the wizard was able to solve virtually anything by himself with shapechange (AC over 60, SR over 30, saving throws good enough to resist almost anything, and a plethora of immunities), but he decided to lose it as side effect of a ritual that gave him other minor powers.
the dm had no idea how to challenge us, though. it was a good campaign and we all enjoyed it, but we missed having opponents we could take seriously. At some point i was cheering everytime something managed to hurt me :smallbiggrin:.

then we started a new campaign, with me as dm, the one we're currently playing. and for this campaign i tried to set up in advance some loose guidelines for what power level we'd be aiming at. because the old campaign had seen a slow power creep over time as everyone learned the game better, and i didn't want this one to escalate into a player vs dm optimization arms race. the rest of the party liked the idea of having some clear boundaries. And sometimes a new problem would arise, and after adjudicating it some way, that specific adjudication would be included into a shared docuent for everyone's reference, so the list of what's allowed and what's not and what's changed grows every time someone brings in some new source.
and of course, the first principle is that what goes for pcs goes for npcs too, so the document is not just a list of stuff that the players aren't allowed to do, but also a list of stuff that the players don't have to worry about. always when there is doubt on allowing something i ask them "would you be ok with this thing being used against you?"
the power level was basically a meeting point of restraining the wizard guy a bit, while helping the other players some. if it was just for me i'd nerf a bit harder, but it's still a level i'm comfortable with - and within my skill to challenge the party without using deus ex machina. the wizard guy is still playing a wizard with 30+ int before level 10, and he's still asking for new toys; I'm trying to contain him while allowing as much as possible. Things improved when he agreed to ban the twin spell feat - turns out a lot of spells are ok by themselves, but become broken if you can spam 4 in one round, as he was building to do. with that, i could allow many more spells. if he chafes a bit at the restrictions, he's the first to agree it's more fun to play if your opponents can put up some fight. as for the other players, they've always trusted us as the more skilled optimizers to adjudicate the hard mechanical stuff. they all have their build concept and a general idea for it, though they occasionally ask for some help in making it more effective or filling some feats.
so, that's the story of how we arrived at our current power level equilibrium. we didn't consciously choose it; rather, we stumbled our way close enough to it by trial and error. but once we got close enough, we recognize it as something that would work for all of us, and we did consciously choose to uphold it. and by now we're used to that power level as "normal" or "ideal"; if we had to build new characters from zero without restrictions, we'd probably gravitate around it. but without some hard limitations, we'd start up the power creep again, and we've already experienced from the previous campaign that this is a less satisfying outcome.

NichG
2021-11-03, 05:56 PM
If i were to run D&D, I probably would probably just ban shivering touch.


Sure, completely reasonable. Or turn it into a penalty like Ray of Enfeeblement, which is probably what was originally intended given that the effect has a listed duration and the text talks about the Dexterity loss persisting as long as the person keeps shivering, but writes it as damage which doesn't work that way.



The alternative would be to have it recognized as a very powerful spell that can be used to kill many otherwise extremely robust individuals and spread like wildfire to the point that it is now as common as fireball or haste and even many non-casters have items to use it on particularly resilient foes if they are confident, they can land it.
What won't happen is "Nearly everyone ignores this spell but the PC uses it because it is so effective".

Humans and other sentients are really good at copying. If something workes well, it won't stay "obscure", if it is not forcefully kept secret.

I can see other alternatives. For example, spells in general may be impossible to copy just on sight alone and reinvention can be very hard. This would be supported by the fact that even learning a spell from a different caster's spellbook requires a potentially difficult check, and there are no specific mechanics letting you learn a spell by seeing someone else cast it, or even to guarantee the ability to reinvent a particular spell. And so just because something exists and would be beneficial to spread doesn't mean that it will spread.

It comes down to a choice about how to interpret the free spells characters get on level-up. One interpretation would have it as if the character in-character has a menu of all of the things they could possibly learn (or even just based on knowing the name or vague things about the spell) and may choose freely from that menu. Another interpretation is that the free spell is an abstraction of the character's own experimentation or even social connections such as receiving spells from teachers or colleagues, and that while players can pick whatever for that spell, in-character its not perfectly clear what the character will get in advance and NPCs can't just submit 'I want to learn that spell I heard of that kills dragons by making them shiver' and end up with Shivering Touch.

Again, I'm not trying to argue that either interpretation is the correct one. I'm arguing that giving yourself the ability to accept either interpretation makes it possible to find a broader range of fictional worlds plausible. So what I'm arguing for is the flexibility of mind to find reasons 'why this could make sense' rather than to pre-decide that it must be one way and all other ways are dissonant.

Satinavian
2021-11-04, 02:00 AM
It comes down to a choice about how to interpret the free spells characters get on level-up. One interpretation would have it as if the character in-character has a menu of all of the things they could possibly learn (or even just based on knowing the name or vague things about the spell) and may choose freely from that menu. Another interpretation is that the free spell is an abstraction of the character's own experimentation or even social connections such as receiving spells from teachers or colleagues, and that while players can pick whatever for that spell, in-character its not perfectly clear what the character will get in advance and NPCs can't just submit 'I want to learn that spell I heard of that kills dragons by making them shiver' and end up with Shivering Touch.
If the free spells come from connection/collegues, that means they those that are actually widespread and get exchanged. If wizards get spells via free experimentation, i don't see a reason why NPCs should consistently get worse spells than PCs. Not doing the "the pc gets shivering touch and other wizards don't because it is atually the pc who invented shivering touch" routine by default.

I mean, if it were Ars Magica or some other system with proper spell crafting and research rules, i would let pcs have the monolopy on really good spells they research. But i also would give the NPC custom spells of similar efficiency but tailer made for their needs as well.

NichG
2021-11-04, 03:04 AM
If the free spells come from connection/collegues, that means they those that are actually widespread and get exchanged. If wizards get spells via free experimentation, i don't see a reason why NPCs should consistently get worse spells than PCs. Not doing the "the pc gets shivering touch and other wizards don't because it is atually the pc who invented shivering touch" routine by default.


Not consistently worse, just not precisely controllable, which is actually how it worked in older editions. So someone could e.g. research ability damage magic as their thing, but maybe they'd end up with Bestow Curse or Ray of Exhaustion, and only the guy who stubbornly wanted a Cold spell would end up with Shivering Touch. Because research is like that, you often don't get exactly what you set out to achieve.

It was more that way in older editions but was streamlined for meta reasons of giving players more control over what they play. As a 1ed wizard you rolled for your starting spells. But just like rolled stats -> point buy, it's an abstraction which you can choose how to interpret from the character point of view.

Again, the point isn't 'this is the correct interpretation'. The point is that trying overly hard to find reasons to conclude that things don't make sense doesn't really give any benefit and just reduces the space of games you can enjoy. If you find it dissonant, at some point that's just a self-created problem. Rather than trying to find reasons why it could be incoherent, it's more useful to try to find ways it can be coherent.

Satinavian
2021-11-04, 03:33 AM
If research results are effectly random aside from a chosen theme, that doesn't give PCs better spells than NPCs, they might end up with lots of duds as likely.

Quertus
2021-11-05, 07:56 AM
yeah, knowing you i kinda suspected you just wanted to probe to provoke a discussion, but i had to be sure of what you were aiming at. I should have mentioned it as a possibility, though

Well, PvNPC is pretty… "theoretical", pretty outside my main experience. So I'm not much of a dance partner here.

End of the day, cost/benefit analysis says, basically, if it's not broke, don't fix it. I think that there are probably other ranges your group could play in, and other sets of rules that y'all would enjoy that would give broader ranges.

But what you've got makes a lot of sense, and, so long as it works for you, great.

If it ever doesn't, don't worry, just rethink things from scratch, and you should be able to see other valid rules sets to explore.

Senility willing, I'll circle back to… or just ask now - why you feel completely shutting down a grapple build with Freedom of Movement (but accepting "a Wizard can fix it") is acceptable, but slowing down mundane damage (even though "a Wizard can fix it") isn't. That's the only part of your logic that I don't get here.


If the free spells come from connection/collegues, that means they those that are actually widespread and get exchanged. If wizards get spells via free experimentation, i don't see a reason why NPCs should consistently get worse spells than PCs. Not doing the "the pc gets shivering touch and other wizards don't because it is atually the pc who invented shivering touch" routine by default.

I mean, if it were Ars Magica or some other system with proper spell crafting and research rules, i would let pcs have the monolopy on really good spells they research. But i also would give the NPC custom spells of similar efficiency but tailer made for their needs as well.


If research results are effectly random aside from a chosen theme, that doesn't give PCs better spells than NPCs, they might end up with lots of duds as likely.

Sure. The PCs might have a lot of dud spells (and abilities). Realistically (versimilitudinally?).

But, if that's not what people find fun to play, then is it wrong that they get to RP the one successful researcher? The one favored student of the grand Master, who learned the fabled Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique? The one genius who figured out the Wuxi Finger Hold?

Why does everyone need to be as "shiny" as the PCs?

Look at Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named. For decades, across countless tables, when there was something to research, Quertus stuck with the research. The spotlight went one way, and Quertus went another. I doubt there's another PC like him in all the world. And he's researched custom spells likely similarly beyond the comprehension of others.

Do I consider his spells optimal? Yes, after a fashion. Do my other PCs use his loadout? Not at all.

Is Shivering Touch banned at my tables? No. Does everyone take it? No. In fact, it's rarely touched. Not unlike how players at my tables still pick "Fighter", and some GMs (including ones I've played with) nerf Monk.

People are dumb. And good roleplayers get this. In character, it makes perfect sense that only the PCs are Batman, or only a very rare few beings ever think to learn that exact combination of talents that gives them a 2-20 crit range, even with 3.0 Vorpal on the table.

Balance and gameplay are trickier topics.

I run "PC vs monster", so my concerns are different. "Why hasn't someone else already handled this?" Answer: because they're not Batman, they didn't learn the fabled Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique. They're just not that cool. It works both for world-building, and for making the PCs shine as the stars of the game.

For PC vs NPC, your balance concerns are somewhat different. "Why haven't only 1/1,000 of our parties survived past 10 encounters?" I can only assume the answer is, "because the NPCs just aren't that cool". That the PCs have some advantage over the NPCs. And if your group chooses, "we're the guys with Shivering Touch", or "we actually practiced the wand disarming spell", as their advantage (or one of them), every time? It's a little samey for my taste, but is it really wrong?

For gameplay… I prefer variety, I want to see the PCs doing different things. Of course, I also prefer characters made individually over a cookie cutter party. So it's a matter of taste, how samey and predictable people prefer their games to be.

For world-building, for realism, for role-playing, for spotlight focus, for balance, for gameplay, I can see reasons to let the wookie win. And your reason for not is because… you cannot imagine a world where only the Red Baron thought to attack from above, where only one team used U-boat tech, where only Tony Stark can build mini arc reactors and Ironman suits, where only the PCs have Shivering Touch?

That's… fair from a mechanical perspective. Shivering Touch should, by RAW, be easy to pick up.

But, by RAW, so should Tier 1 classes. Yet players and NPCs alike still take levels in Fighter (and Noble, and Commoner).

So, do you really have a consistent reason, that takes into account all the suboptimal PC Fighters out there, to insist that everyone and their apprentice should know Shivering Touch? Or is it possible that people make suboptimal choices all the time?

Satinavian
2021-11-05, 08:42 AM
Sure. The PCs might have a lot of dud spells (and abilities). Realistically (versimilitudinally?).

But, if that's not what people find fun to play, then is it wrong that they get to RP the one successful researcher? The one favored student of the grand Master, who learned the fabled Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique? The one genius who figured out the Wuxi Finger Hold?

Why does everyone need to be as "shiny" as the PCs?Because that is where the balance point of the game is. If the game provides wizards and a player does not want to play "a" wizard but a super special genius wizard who has better spells than the regular ones, then I either tell him off or (if the system is flexible enough as most are) want build ressources paying for this.



I doubt there's another PC like him in all the world. Really ? I have seen research obsessed academic wizards by the dozen. He seems roughly as special as a barbarian obsessed with strength training all the time. Where did you get the idea that this is somehow special ?


So, do you really have a consistent reason, that takes into account all the suboptimal PC Fighters out there, to insist that everyone and their apprentice should know Shivering Touch? Or is it possible that people make suboptimal choices all the time?Wizards are all above average intelligent. And professionals. They should make their important career decisions with a bit more rereach and foresight than the guy building suboptimal fighters. And certainly not everyone should know shivering touch, i said only that it should be as common as fireball or haste. Which also not every single wizard has.

King of Nowhere
2021-11-05, 04:55 PM
e.

Senility willing, I'll circle back to… or just ask now - why you feel completely shutting down a grapple build with Freedom of Movement (but accepting "a Wizard can fix it") is acceptable, but slowing down mundane damage (even though "a Wizard can fix it") isn't. That's the only part of your logic that I don't get here.


i suppose i could rationalize it in many ways: from the rarity of grapple build, to how annoying are grapple mechanics, to how instead mundane damage is a fighter's only resource.

but ultimately, all the fine points come down to "we evolved this way"



Sure. The PCs might have a lot of dud spells (and abilities). Realistically (versimilitudinally?).

But, if that's not what people find fun to play, then is it wrong that they get to RP the one successful researcher? The one favored student of the grand Master, who learned the fabled Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique? The one genius who figured out the Wuxi Finger Hold?

Why does everyone need to be as "shiny" as the PCs?

People are dumb. And good roleplayers get this. In character, it makes perfect sense that only the PCs are Batman, or only a very rare few beings ever think to learn that exact combination of talents that gives them a 2-20 crit range, even with 3.0 Vorpal on the table.

So, do you really have a consistent reason, that takes into account all the suboptimal PC Fighters out there, to insist that everyone and their apprentice should know Shivering Touch? Or is it possible that people make suboptimal choices all the time?
nothing wrong with being the guy who discovers new stuff. but within limits.

at least at my table, pcs are expected to become the strongest people around, but not to the point that they can roflstomp everyone else. and in the same way, a pc researcher is expected to figure out stuff nobody else did, but not to the point that he's making major breakthrough in every field.
So yes, pcs are that one successful researchers. and their secret ability gives them an edge. it doesn't let them dominate.

as for people being stupid and suboptimal... the problem is that people can see what each other are doing. look at the history of warfare: whenever someone invented a new tactic, they would steamroll their opponents for a few years - and then the opponents would start using the same tactic, or they would figure out a counter. whenever someone invented a new weapon, everyone else managed to get their hands on some of that, and reverse engineer it.

so, you can be the guy who invents shivering touch, and then you go around slaying some dragons with it. then someone will know you have this overpowered new spell. next thing, some researcher that's just a bit less brilliant than you will get as much information as possible on how you do it, and will manage to replicate the spell himself. A few people will manage it, and at some point one of them will sell the formula. In a few more years, everyone is spamming shivering touches. In another few more years, somebody will have figured out "protection from shivering touch".
those that don't, don't survive. warfare is a competitive world.

So, pcs get to have special tricks that push a bit against the edge of what's acceptable power level. and npc bosses also gets to have their special tricks, else they would not be so dangerous. and regular npcs follow the normal rules and don't get any special trick. minibosses get less special tricks. only end-campaign bosses can get as much special stuff as the players.
it's a matter of shades. the pcs are special, but not "godlike among peons" special. and npcs are expected to learn from what they see happening around them

Mordar
2021-11-05, 06:19 PM
When I saw the thread title, I had a fairly different expectation of the topic. I did not equate "defensive abilities" with tanking, and definitely not passive attributes (AC, immunities, saves, etc).

I was thinking more along the lines of skills/abilities you used to be defensive (read as: offset offensive actions against you): parry, dodge, block, riposte, those kinds of things.

I've personally always enjoyed games that let you choose how you use your combat prowess. To put it in D&D terms, I would prefer systems that let you put part of your BAB towards your AC...sacrifice your attack to parry/riposte...use your dodge skill to avoid an attack and give you +2 to hit (or advantage, whatever) on your next attack against the creature that just attacked you.

RoleMaster and EarthDawn both made good use of these, and that's one of (many) reasons I really enjoyed those systems.

The MMOification of D&D certainly shifts the focus to "how to punish opponents that don't attack the tank", and thus really changes the conversation.

- M

Quertus
2021-11-05, 08:16 PM
Because that is where the balance point of the game is. If the game provides wizards and a player does not want to play "a" wizard but a super special genius wizard who has better spells than the regular ones, then I either tell him off or (if the system is flexible enough as most are) want build ressources paying for this.

Is it? Do parties TPK on half their missions against NPCs? Or is the balance point tipped in the PCs' favor?


Really ? I have seen research obsessed academic wizards by the dozen. He seems roughly as special as a barbarian obsessed with strength training all the time. Where did you get the idea that this is somehow special ?

Really.

When the Strength-obsessed Barbarian leaves the party - and the campaign - to test the health benefits of Kale, when he leaves his new party and his new campaign to work out with Hans and Frans… when he leaves his new new new new new new new new new new new new new new party when he encounters a keto diet master? And does this across countless campaigns across countless tables?

Then that barbarian can talk about being as dedicated to strength training as Quertus is to research.

I've not seen that level of dedication. And, in the modern environment of hating on characters from other tables or other campaigns, even if someone does try to create such a character, do you really think such a character can be played?


Wizards are all above average intelligent. And professionals. They should make their important career decisions with a bit more rereach and foresight than the guy building suboptimal fighters. And certainly not everyone should know shivering touch, i said only that it should be as common as fireball or haste. Which also not every single wizard has.

I'm guessing you're not used to geniuses building Fighters, then. Of even smart, college educated, professionals building Fighters.


i suppose i could rationalize it in many ways: from the rarity of grapple build, to how annoying are grapple mechanics, to how instead mundane damage is a fighter's only resource.

but ultimately, all the fine points come down to "we evolved this way".

Good answer.


nothing wrong with being the guy who discovers new stuff. but within limits.

at least at my table, pcs are expected to become the strongest people around, but not to the point that they can roflstomp everyone else. and in the same way, a pc researcher is expected to figure out stuff nobody else did, but not to the point that he's making major breakthrough in every field.
So yes, pcs are that one successful researchers. and their secret ability gives them an edge. it doesn't let them dominate.

If tables can be dominated by a single, low-level spell, I shutter to think how totally roflstomp powned they'd be by a true genius.




as for people being stupid and suboptimal... the problem is that people can see what each other are doing. look at the history of warfare: whenever someone invented a new tactic, they would steamroll their opponents for a few years - and then the opponents would start using the same tactic, or they would figure out a counter. whenever someone invented a new weapon, everyone else managed to get their hands on some of that, and reverse engineer it.

so, you can be the guy who invents shivering touch, and then you go around slaying some dragons with it. then someone will know you have this overpowered new spell. next thing, some researcher that's just a bit less brilliant than you will get as much information as possible on how you do it, and will manage to replicate the spell himself. A few people will manage it, and at some point one of them will sell the formula. In a few more years, everyone is spamming shivering touches. In another few more years, somebody will have figured out "protection from shivering touch".
those that don't, don't survive. warfare is a competitive world.

So, pcs get to have special tricks that push a bit against the edge of what's acceptable power level. and npc bosses also gets to have their special tricks, else they would not be so dangerous. and regular npcs follow the normal rules and don't get any special trick. minibosses get less special tricks. only end-campaign bosses can get as much special stuff as the players.
it's a matter of shades. the pcs are special, but not "godlike among peons" special. and npcs are expected to learn from what they see happening around them

"Armus moves to position himself between one of his party members (who has better defenses than Armus) and the foes"

You've "seen me do it", what have you learned?

King of Nowhere
2021-11-06, 07:48 AM
If tables can be dominated by a single, low-level spell, I shutter to think how totally roflstomp powned they'd be by a true genius.


it's not a single low level spell. it's a spell that will defeat almost any foe without any kind of counterplay. as for a "true genius", we had a lot of those in the real world. some of them even managed to do the "total roflstomp pown" thing for a while. then everyone adapted.

but regarding the point of the "true genius" that solves every problem by researching a new spell for it, i can lean on someone more qualified to explain the problems with the approach: the sanderson's laws of magic. I think you may enjoy the read if you're not familiar with them. they are meant for writing books, but they focus on worldbuilding aeasily apply to roleplaying games.



Sanderson's First Law

An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic. (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/)

If characters (especially viewpoint characters) solve a problem by use of magic, the reader should be made to understand how that magic works. Otherwise, the magic can constitute a deus ex machina.

Ideally, the magic is explained to the reader before it is used to resolve a conflict. Much like a sword or a large sum of money, magic is a useful tool. Understanding the tools available to a character helps the reader understand the character's actions. It avoids questions like, "Where did he get that?" or "How did he do that?"

"Mysterious magic" (or "soft magic"), which has no clearly defined rules, should, in genre fantasy, not solve problems, although it may create them.


Sanderson's Second Law

The limitations of a magic system are more interesting than its capabilities. What the magic can't do is more interesting than what it can. (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-second-law/)
Great limitations on magic systems will do many things, they will for example create struggle. It'll make characters work for their goals and if the magic system is limited it’ll make the character have to be more clever.
An excellent magic system will also create tension, as the outcome is not obvious and makes the whole scene appear more dramatic.
It can also create depth in the characters and the system alike.


Sanderson's Third Law

Expand on what you have already, before you add something new. (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-third-law-of-magic/)
"A brilliant magic system for a book is less often one with a thousand different powers and abilities -- and is more often a magic system with relatively few powers that the author has considered in depth."
Extrapolation
It is important to consider the effects that a magic will have on a world. If for example your magic can create food out of thin air, what will that cause, what will happen? How will it affect trade, politics, warfare, education and social norms? Asking these questions and working out what effects your magic system will add depth to your world.
Tying your powers together thematically is an important part of worldbuilding and expands the world, rather than adding to it.

The first law explains why a character that will research spells to solve any problem is bad. this is a guy whose answer to any solution is to press an "i win" button. if he lacks that button, he'll hole himself up for a while, and come out with another "i win this situation too" button. this is not a "true genius". this is a guy with an informed ability. where is the tension in that? how is the resolution satisfying?
still from that essay:

From the beginnings of the fantasy genre, its biggest criticism has been that it has no consistency.
“The only rule is, make up a new rule any time you need one!”
Fantasy doesn’t have to be about stories where the authors simply make up whatever they need. Still, I think that it is a criticism we fantasy writers need to be aware of and wary regarding. If we simply let ourselves develop new rules every time our characters are in danger, we will end up creating fiction that is not only unfulfilling and unexciting, but just plain bad.
swap "author" with "player", it's still valid. "i cast a spell, therefore i win", how is that a fulfilling or exciting way to overcome an obstacle?

this ties also in the second law. A character than can do everything... how is that exciting to play? how is that interesting, if your answer to everything is "i have a spell for exactly this"? or "i wade into the fight and win because i'm invincible"? what's interesting is to have limitations and to overcome them.

finally, what kind of campaign world will that produce, where everyone will keep inventing new rules as they go along?
the third law applies less to magic, and it's more the reason my campaigns tend to focus on a few locations and groups. if you follow the "fantasy kitchen sink" approach, you get a story that's not cohesive. your campaign becomes "you go to place A, fight enemy X. Then you go to place B, fight enemy Y". it's also among the reasons i hate shared universes, crossovers, and all those other things where everyone keeps introducing new plot elements without ever figuring out how they fit into the whole. it makes for a shallow world. It can captivate an audience only as long as they don't stop to think things through.

those laws make sense; upon first reading them, i recognized they were things i always realized on some level, even before seeing them clearly expressed. sanderson uses them, and he's credited as one of the best worldbuilders of this generation.
I never understand why so many

one last point, not connected to sanderson laws but to your idea that players should get all the cool things and the rest of the world shouldn't: what happens when - by virtue of being the only ones allowed to have cool things - your players are so powerful, they face virtually no opposition (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodModeSue)?
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/GodManVsThePurpleBeetle_3147.png
this is good for a chuckle, but it's not my idea of a compelling campaign. but it's what happens if we follow your premise to the end

NichG
2021-11-06, 08:52 AM
Those issues are solved by first establishing the freedom of things to be suboptimal without being unbelievable. Then, you let the table decide the level of challenge that is desired.

If in fact roflstomping the opposition is boring to everyone, then players who do not feel bound to optimize above all else can choose to play more challenging premises, or go all out on optimization and take on things beyond their level. But that only works when you don't take the mindset of those things being forced choices.

You also gain the other side of the coin. Sometimes a player really doesn't want to be challenged or does just want a power fantasy or wants some elements of the game to stop providing friction against the things they're actually interested in, or even just disagrees with the GM about what is compelling. In which case, they can choose to play in that corner of the space of possibilities.

This is harmed by adopting ideals like 'dramatic tension is an inherent good' or 'things should be balanced' or 'its bad form not to optimize as much as you're capable of' or judging characters that are played in terms of quality of fiction rather than if the player is enjoying it. That sort of thing allows external factors to hinder that ability for the table to find it's own level. Now when someone publishes Shivering Ray it's a problem to be solved rather than an opportunity that you can take or leave. When the players happen to win easily it now hurts verisimilitude or indicates imbalance even if the players actually enjoyed it.

Now if the players win easily and are bored, sure, address that. But putting the ideal first is like saying 'if you aren't bored by this, something is wrong with you'. Why do that?

King of Nowhere
2021-11-06, 01:42 PM
Now if the players win easily and are bored, sure, address that. But putting the ideal first is like saying 'if you aren't bored by this, something is wrong with you'. Why do that?

because the vast majority of people don't like winning too easily. sure, there are exceptions, but it's a pretty assumption to start working around

NichG
2021-11-06, 02:35 PM
because the vast majority of people don't like winning too easily. sure, there are exceptions, but it's a pretty assumption to start working around

Doesn't hold up if you look at the various complaints and GM troubles threads we see around, nor if you look at the behavior of people who do self-defense min-maxing.

There are lots of reasons people play. Challenge is a possible one, but not universal by any means. Love of traditional dramatic structure exists, but is not universal by any means. Love of flawed characters exists, but is not universal by any means. You can find many examples of people on these fora asking for different things than just that.

All of these things can be useful as tools in order to craft a gameplay experience, but not all tools are appropriate at all times and in all contexts. When you change a tool that you have the ability to deploy or not as appropriate into an ideal that you're constrained by to always follow, you lose out.

Quertus
2021-11-06, 08:47 PM
stuff

There's a lot of interesting stuff there; senility willing, I'll go back and read over a lot of it again, out of context. But, in context, all I can hear is that I haven't gotten my point across. So let me try again.

The type of "genius" I was talking about wasn't Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, the "there's an app for this" Wizard (who, like a certain dwarven Cleric, never seems to have the correct app available when it's needed). It was more like this:



"Armus moves to position himself between one of his party members (who has better defenses than Armus) and the foes"

You've "seen me do it", what have you learned?

It's been years, and the Playground hasn't given me a good answer to this simple question. Can you? Can you answer how Armus, my (in 3e parlance) "Commoner with items", wins fights?

You claimed that, if the PCs had tech, it would spread. Well, tell me what Armus' tech is, so that others can copy it.

And this is easy mode, compared to "the party killed a Dragon -> logic leaps aplenty -> suddenly everyone has Shivering Touch".

Wars involve lots of participants, and, with any luck, lots of survivors, at least on your own side. D&D parties, OTOH, have a much more reasonable expectation of silencing witnesses, and of their opponents not knowing why this particular group seems to see so much success. And that's even before biases, like the OP Tainted Sorcerer Arcane Spellcaster BFC build under a GM who only thinks in terms of "damage dealt", and thinks that the BFC character isn't contributing.

So, the much simpler question, where what he's doing seems visible to eyewitnesses, witnesses that are allowed to survive, and can be passed on: Armus moves to protect an ally (with superior defenses, not that that's visible) when hostilities seem likely. What tech can you glean?

Satinavian
2021-11-07, 05:50 AM
Is it? Do parties TPK on half their missions against NPCs? Or is the balance point tipped in the PCs' favor?As I already said, that is achieved best by the NPCs just being weaker not by the NPCs being artificially stupid. Fewer levels, XP, whatever the system uses for progression or fewer numbers are more than enough the achieve consistent PC victory.


Really.

When the Strength-obsessed Barbarian leaves the party - and the campaign - to test the health benefits of Kale, when he leaves his new party and his new campaign to work out with Hans and FransÂ… when he leaves his new new new new new new new new new new new new new new party when he encounters a keto diet master? And does this across countless campaigns across countless tables?

Then that barbarian can talk about being as dedicated to strength training as Quertus is to research.I have enough characters seen leaving a party to do their own thing. I also have seen episodic play with ever chainging groups and the characters doing their thing in the downtime. I also have seen characters make the campaign about their own thing in sandboxe,

What i haveN't seen is a character who always leaves the group mid-adventure and still gets to start over new adventures all the time. Well, at least the introduction before he leaves again. But that would be a pretty toxic character, wouldn't it ?



I've not seen that level of dedication. And, in the modern environment of hating on characters from other tables or other campaigns, even if someone does try to create such a character, do you really think such a character can be played?See above. I don't think Quertus is particularly more dedicated than most of those others. He could theoretically be more toxic but i am not sure that is the case. He seems still the archetypical researcher doing his thing.

Quertus
2021-11-09, 09:20 AM
As I already said, that is achieved best by the NPCs just being weaker not by the NPCs being artificially stupid. Fewer levels, XP, whatever the system uses for progression or fewer numbers are more than enough the achieve consistent PC victory.

Artificially stupid? No, I'd say you're trying to make NPCs artificially smart.

What's the best tennis racket? Now, go down to the local tennis court, and see what portion of players are using that racket.

What's the best handgun? Now, go to the firing range, and see what portion of people are using that firearm.

People just aren't optimal.

But it's not wrong for players to want to play the rare few people who are.

Not that I and my players always play so optimally, mind - I'm just saying other people choosing to do so, because that's what they enjoy, isn't wrong.

But world-building that believes NPCs will take such optimal choices with unrealistic frequency, OTOH, is wrong.


I have enough characters seen leaving a party to do their own thing. I also have seen episodic play with ever chainging groups and the characters doing their thing in the downtime. I also have seen characters make the campaign about their own thing in sandboxe,

What i haveN't seen is a character who always leaves the group mid-adventure and still gets to start over new adventures all the time. Well, at least the introduction before he leaves again. But that would be a pretty toxic character, wouldn't it ?

See above. I don't think Quertus is particularly more dedicated than most of those others. He could theoretically be more toxic but i am not sure that is the case. He seems still the archetypical researcher doing his thing.

Lol. "You know there might be a problem when…" the fan favorite, my most requested character, sounds toxic.

Like you said, you haven't seen characters so dedicated to research as to leave the spotlight over it getting to get back into new games. So you've not seen another PC like him, one who actually had the opportunity to do that much "research that takes you out of the game" in game.

That's why I doubt that there's another PC like him.

Also… were this single-author fiction, it wouldn't be "leaving to do their own thing", so much as "researching the secrets that let the protagonist win" most of the time. Thankfully, RPGs don't have to follow such narrative contrivances, and Quertus researching "the health benefits of Kale" (or, rather, researching the unique magical secrets the GM included for generally stupid reasons) took him out of the campaign.

But that's *why* D&D Wizards joined in "adventures" to explore dangerous dungeons from the beginnings of Dungeons and Dragons: to learn long-lost magical secrets. So that's what Quertus does.

Satinavian
2021-11-09, 09:42 AM
Artificially stupid? No, I'd say you're trying to make NPCs artificially smart.Seems like we disagree about that.


Lol. "You know there might be a problem when…" the fan favorite, my most requested character, sounds toxic.That is why i wrote i was not sure that actually is the case. I can't imagine Quertus being beloved and also that loner guy who leaves all the time because he has no interest in the group or the adventure.


Like you said, you haven't seen characters so dedicated to research as to leave the spotlight over it getting to get back into new games. So you've not seen another PC like him, one who actually had the opportunity to do that much "research that takes you out of the game" in game.Oh no, you misunderstood. I have seen a couple of them. Leaving the game to do research, getting played later. that is not so rare.

But i have not one who made it a habbit instead of a rare occurance to leave games midgame. But in most cases that research is a downtime activity. It is rare that something can't wait until the general situation is more under control and research easier and still takes so much time that the group must move on without the character.

And i would see such a character as toxic. A player should not bring a character to the table when he expects that "First we have character introductions, than engage with the advendure hook and the NPCs a bit and then I switch characters" or something like that.



Also… were this single-author fiction, it wouldn't be "leaving to do their own thing", so much as "researching the secrets that let the protagonist win" most of the time. Thankfully, RPGs don't have to follow such narrative contrivances, and Quertus researching "the health benefits of Kale" (or, rather, researching the unique magical secrets the GM included for generally stupid reasons) took him out of the campaign.So was the stuff you researched relevant to the game or a side activity that does not actually demand you leaving or did Quertus just went and left the group and you played someone else ? Which is it ?

And yes. Research is the archetypical wizard motivation. How can you think it is something rare when all the other archetypical wizards are suppossed to do the same ?
If i have research minded magical characters in a group then pretty much every magical secret some GM introduces (and many many GMs have regretted putting in things that they can't properly explain when someone takes a closer look) gets researched. How do all those character do less research than Quertus ?

icefractal
2021-11-09, 05:34 PM
Regarding "artificial stupidity" vs "artificial smartness" -
Personally at least, I've never been assuming that all or even most NPCs use the same tactics as the PCs. I'm just assuming that some of them do. That if the PCs are using an effective tactic which only requires combining a couple spells, they're probably not the only ones in the whole world to think of doing so. And that if the PCs are cutting a swath through all opposition and on a path to become the powers that be, they're likely to eventually come in conflict with the current powers that be, who by virtue of surviving this long would be more likely to be "clued in" to effective tactics.

Unless that's part of the premise of the game, in which case I'm totally fine with it. Like say -
A few centuries ago, a group of gods, immortals, and the rulers of powerful nations came together and decided they wanted the world to be more stable (or static and easy to control, to view it less charitably). To this end, they wiped out all mention of the most "destabilizing" knowledge - anything that prevents a medieval stasis from working - and have inquisitors out to purge any "corruption" (say, a Sorcerer spontaneously learning forbidden spells). The PCs are rebels against this, either because they want to overthrow it or just for their own survival, and are thus rediscovering that forbidden knowledge.

Something like that sounds fun, and in that premise it makes sense that the PCs are asymmetrical. I just dislike "The PCs are ordinary people, honest ... except somehow they're the only people who can put two and two together."

Quertus
2021-11-09, 05:54 PM
it's not a single low level spell. it's a spell that will defeat almost any foe without any kind of counterplay. as for a "true genius", we had a lot of those in the real world. some of them even managed to do the "total roflstomp pown" thing for a while. then everyone adapted.

but regarding the point of the "true genius" that solves every problem by researching a new spell for it, i can lean on someone more qualified to explain the problems with the approach: the sanderson's laws of magic. I think you may enjoy the read if you're not familiar with them. they are meant for writing books, but they focus on worldbuilding aeasily apply to roleplaying games.

The first law explains why a character that will research spells to solve any problem is bad. this is a guy whose answer to any solution is to press an "i win" button. if he lacks that button, he'll hole himself up for a while, and come out with another "i win this situation too" button. this is not a "true genius". this is a guy with an informed ability. where is the tension in that? how is the resolution satisfying?
still from that essay:

swap "author" with "player", it's still valid. "i cast a spell, therefore i win", how is that a fulfilling or exciting way to overcome an obstacle?

this ties also in the second law. A character than can do everything... how is that exciting to play? how is that interesting, if your answer to everything is "i have a spell for exactly this"? or "i wade into the fight and win because i'm invincible"? what's interesting is to have limitations and to overcome them.

finally, what kind of campaign world will that produce, where everyone will keep inventing new rules as they go along?
the third law applies less to magic, and it's more the reason my campaigns tend to focus on a few locations and groups. if you follow the "fantasy kitchen sink" approach, you get a story that's not cohesive. your campaign becomes "you go to place A, fight enemy X. Then you go to place B, fight enemy Y". it's also among the reasons i hate shared universes, crossovers, and all those other things where everyone keeps introducing new plot elements without ever figuring out how they fit into the whole. it makes for a shallow world. It can captivate an audience only as long as they don't stop to think things through.

those laws make sense; upon first reading them, i recognized they were things i always realized on some level, even before seeing them clearly expressed. sanderson uses them, and he's credited as one of the best worldbuilders of this generation.
I never understand why so many

one last point, not connected to sanderson laws but to your idea that players should get all the cool things and the rest of the world shouldn't: what happens when - by virtue of being the only ones allowed to have cool things - your players are so powerful, they face virtually no opposition (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodModeSue)?
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/GodManVsThePurpleBeetle_3147.png
this is good for a chuckle, but it's not my idea of a compelling campaign. but it's what happens if we follow your premise to the end

So I've had some time to think about this, out of the context of a true genius like I was describing. And, well, I'm pretty sure I fall on the opposite side on this one in several places.

"The first law explains why a character that will research spells to solve any problem is bad. this is a guy whose answer to any solution is to press an "i win" button. if he lacks that button, he'll hole himself up for a while, and come out with another "i win this situation too" button."

Well, in the classic Fighter / Wizard divide, if the iconic Fighter cannot deal with the problem by reducing its HP to 0, the Fighter responds with, "I lose this situation, too".

In an RPG, I lean much more towards, "problems should be solvable, eventually, if the party cares, and tries" than, "all problems should be forever unsolvable".

Yeah, sure, it's a spectrum. But, in an RPG, how often is it fun to say, "no, we can never find the BBEG - and, even if we could, we can never hurt him. Nor can we ever close the portal he opened, or remove the Taint that the creatures from that portal have spread."? I lean really heavily on the "solvable problems" side, where, if the party has problems, they should generally be able to find solutions. Plural. Not just throw up their hands and say, "it's impossible".

RPGs are different than single author fiction. They have different needs. Sanderson's "laws of magic", at least as you interpret and apply them, seems to me to be a place where those needs may diverge.

" "i cast a spell, therefore i win", how is that a fulfilling or exciting way to overcome an obstacle?"

Careful with that line of thought. "I move a chess piece, therefore I win." "I roll a die, therefore I win." "I stab it, therefore I win." I can think of a lot of things that have less game to them than spells (in most systems). Go too far down this rabbit hole, and the logical outcome may be that the only possible fulfilling game is MtG, but where the cards change, and the rules sounds more like "but since it's an even Tuesday, the crescent moon means that all Demir beasts and birds retain the 'menace' rules of Halloween." "No, sorry, we need a DNA test to prove that that rule applies to you."

Quertus
2021-11-09, 10:03 PM
That is why i wrote i was not sure that actually is the case. I can't imagine Quertus being beloved

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, is my most popular character among players. His popularity among characters… is neither superlative, not universal. He even has a defensive dwoemer that became known as "protection from slaps".


and also that loner guy who leaves all the time because he has no interest in the group or the adventure.

Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes. :smallwink:

Not *no* interest in the group or the adventure. Just often less interest than would be necessary to pass up a "once in a lifetime" research opportunity.


I can either… stick with you guys, and hunt down some Orc that I don't really care about… or stay here, and learn the secrets of channeling moonlight from the recovering goddess we just saved, during the brief period she'll be earthbound? Um… is that really a choice? Have fun with that Orc!


Oh no, you misunderstood. I have seen a couple of them. Leaving the game to do research, getting played later. that is not so rare.

But i have not one who made it a habbit instead of a rare occurance to leave games midgame. But in most cases that research is a downtime activity. It is rare that something can't wait until the general situation is more under control and research easier and still takes so much time that the group must move on without the character. .

I guess it's a matter of perspective, whether one says Quertus "made it a habit", or whether he's just the lucky lottery winner who happened across oh so many such scenes.


And i would see such a character as toxic. A player should not bring a character to the table when he expects that "First we have character introductions, than engage with the advendure hook and the NPCs a bit and then I switch characters" or something like that..

Expect? No, I wouldn't say I ever *expected* Quertus to leave. (Well, not counting that one time I took over as GM, read the module, and said, "well, if this plays through like I expect, then this is the scene where Quertus leaves the adventure.")

But, apparently, a lot of my GMs predate TV tropes, or any other source of brainwashing narrative structures where all available research opportunities must be tied into the main plot, and the eventual victory of the protagonist.


So was the stuff you researched relevant to the game or a side activity that does not actually demand you leaving or did Quertus just went and left the group and you played someone else ? Which is it ?

Mu?

The stuff Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, researched often seemed plot-relevant, but, generally, when it necessitated his removal from the spotlight, in fact was not.

Eh, that's not quite right.

Sometimes, the lost culture / recovering goddess / alien spaceship / whatever was the plot… and then the rest of the party moved on to the next plot, while Quertus stayed behind to continue research into what the old plot could teach.

Sometimes, time travel / alternate power sources / unstable portals / whatever were central to the plot (or "were the plot"), but, for whatever reason (usually, GM was an idiot railroader, who not only could not conceptualize anything but their one right answer to how the story could and must go, but also couldn't grok the concept of "studying","investigation", or "learning" possibly having any value) never imagined anyone would ever want to learn about them, and couldn't make "learning about the plot" fit into the plot.


And yes. Research is the archetypical wizard motivation. How can you think it is something rare when all the other archetypical wizards are suppossed to do the same ?

Because they don't? They metagame, and stick with the adventure, passing up research opportunities, or they don't get the opportunity to join new games after they leave.


If i have research minded magical characters in a group then pretty much every magical secret some GM introduces (and many many GMs have regretted putting in things that they can't properly explain when someone takes a closer look) gets researched. How do all those character do less research than Quertus ?

I'm claiming that they're less dedicated to research. Which, actually, the claim should probably more accurately be, you're less dedicated to depicting them as dedicated to research if you're unwilling to leave the campaign, repeatedly, in order for them to pursue their research.

I'm claiming that there probably is only one Quertus, only one Wizard depicted as so dedicated to research as to leave countless parties under countless GMs to pursue research opportunities.

To answer the question you asked, though, the answer is "trivially": Quertus researched every magical secret *multiple* GMs put down, on top of his numerous "once in a lifetime" research opportunities, on top of his own personal research projects, across numerous worlds and realities.


Regarding "artificial stupidity" vs "artificial smartness" -
Personally at least, I've never been assuming that all or even most NPCs use the same tactics as the PCs. I'm just assuming that some of them do. That if the PCs are using an effective tactic which only requires combining a couple spells, they're probably not the only ones in the whole world to think of doing so. And that if the PCs are cutting a swath through all opposition and on a path to become the powers that be, they're likely to eventually come in conflict with the current powers that be, who by virtue of surviving this long would be more likely to be "clued in" to effective tactics.

Unless that's part of the premise of the game, in which case I'm totally fine with it. Like say -
A few centuries ago, a group of gods, immortals, and the rulers of powerful nations came together and decided they wanted the world to be more stable (or static and easy to control, to view it less charitably). To this end, they wiped out all mention of the most "destabilizing" knowledge - anything that prevents a medieval stasis from working - and have inquisitors out to purge any "corruption" (say, a Sorcerer spontaneously learning forbidden spells). The PCs are rebels against this, either because they want to overthrow it or just for their own survival, and are thus rediscovering that forbidden knowledge.

Something like that sounds fun, and in that premise it makes sense that the PCs are asymmetrical. I just dislike "The PCs are ordinary people, honest ... except somehow they're the only people who can put two and two together."

Ignoring how many of them are dead, if Einstein, Hawkins, daVinci, Darwin, and Quertus got together, would you really find it odd if they had ideas ordinary people didn't? I'm not claiming that the PCs are "ordinary people" - quite the opposite, in fact.

Or do you, you know, always play yourself / "everyman" as your PC?

Do I own the best tennis racket? No. Do I own the best handgun? Debatable. But, if I'm playing Warhammer, do I expect my fellow PCs to be Space Marines rather than, say, Joe Average janitors? Absolutely.

If I invent a new spell in D&D, or in ShadowRun, do I expect to see anyone else using that spell? Absolutely not. (And, even though Quertus has shared "Quertus's Spell Star" with several Wizards (mostly other PCs, but a few NPCs as well), where expecting imitation might be reasonable, I've still never seen anyone else cast it.)

And, lastly, even the vaunted Playground has failed to demonstrate the capacity to learn from and imitate Armus' tech. So I cannot accept claims that such imitation is easy. Heck, I built Quertus based on my confusion that people could play the same game for years (or decades!) and still be clueless, still fail to comprehend or even imitate even the most basic concepts and strategies of the game.

So, if I - no, if an immortal Lich - were to travel to the Earth of, say, 10,000 years ago, and start shooting people to death with modern firearms, do you really believe that people would quickly learn to put sulfur and bat guano together to make gunpowder, and fight firearms with firearms? It's just putting together a couple of things, right? Surely this Lich isn't the only one in the world to think of it, right?

My experience with humans leads me to believe that the answer is that no, they wouldn't. A genocidal Lich would certainly be impetus to innovate, but I suspect that their innovations would more and better follow their own existing tech trees than to suddenly successfully imitate the Lich's tech.

Satinavian
2021-11-10, 02:39 AM
Not *no* interest in the group or the adventure. Just often less interest than would be necessary to pass up a "once in a lifetime" research opportunity.


I can either… stick with you guys, and hunt down some Orc that I don't really care about… or stay here, and learn the secrets of channeling moonlight from the recovering goddess we just saved, during the brief period she'll be earthbound? Um… is that really a choice? Have fun with that Orc!
Yes, seems completely normal and something i have seen dozens of times. Not every wizard/wizard equivalent is a researcher but those who are tend to always choose research in such a situation.


But, apparently, a lot of my GMs predate TV tropes, or any other source of brainwashing narrative structures where all available research opportunities must be tied into the main plot, and the eventual victory of the protagonist.I don't research opportunities tied to the main plot that often. What i see more often are research opportunities that can be researched without abandoning the main plot. Because the GM expected them researches when he wrote the adventure. Because that is what a couple of his PCs would have done as well.


Sometimes, time travel / alternate power sources / unstable portals / whatever were central to the plot (or "were the plot"), but, for whatever reason (usually, GM was an idiot railroader, who not only could not conceptualize anything but their one right answer to how the story could and must go, but also couldn't grok the concept of "studying","investigation", or "learning" possibly having any value) never imagined anyone would ever want to learn about them, and couldn't make "learning about the plot" fit into the plot.If there is any difference in our experiences irt is probably this. In my gaming circle researching PCs are incredibly common and GMs generally expect research. So with the same amount of research done, the need to leave a group behind arises less often.


To answer the question you asked, though, the answer is "trivially": Quertus researched every magical secret *multiple* GMs put down, on top of his numerous "once in a lifetime" research opportunities, on top of his own personal research projects, across numerous worlds and realities.And to sum it up, that is not special, it is something i have seen dozens of times. Well, at least without the world hopping as most campaigns here don't allow that and GMs sharing worlds is more common.

Slipjig
2021-11-12, 01:27 PM
Wow, Quertus (the character) sounds like somebody who wouldn't get invited to go on many second adventures. "Hey guys, I'm leaving you in the lurch again! Have fun risking your lives saving the world while I study how Grey Oozes reproduce!"

Mordar
2021-11-12, 02:16 PM
Wow, Quertus (the character) sounds like somebody who wouldn't get invited to go on many second adventures. "Hey guys, I'm leaving you in the lurch again! Have fun risking your lives saving the world while I study how Grey Oozes reproduce!"

Funny, I've always thought of D&D characters as more of the "I'm in it for the money", with a helping of "I'm here to save the princess/dragon/kidnapped child/whatever" and an occasional sprinkle of "Have fun storming the castle/Hooray we saved the town" thrown in.

Saving the world was more for those superhero games.

- M

Ignimortis
2021-11-12, 03:17 PM
I like being tanky. I tend to like systems with soaking damage best, since they usually let you build something that has a double layer of defenses (first you gotta hit, then you gotta pierce my armor/Fortitude/whatever). Being able to take an assault rifle burst to the chest is exhilarating.

As for "if you get tanky enough to ignore everything, the GM just won't use those things at all", there are two solutions. 1) Your GM builds the world and the enemies organically, so that sometimes, your "immune to everything" schtick catches someone by surprise. 2) Build enough tankiness to deal with most threats, but not the biggest ones. If you can tank the average weapon/attack just fine, it doesn't have to mean you can survive anything. You can tank ARs, but can you survive a 20mm shell? You can take a swipe from a giant's club, but what about focused dragonbreath? Etc, etc.

Tanking, though, is a more complex beast. I haven't seen any TTRPG that supported outright videogame tanking, because aggro systems aren't usually a thing, and enemies tend to resist attempts to goad them into fighting the most beefy opponent. So tanking usually works in three ways:

Kill/CC everyone before they get to hurt your teammates. Simple, but rarely works due to how turns are structured in most games. Early SR editions and specific multi-target 3.5/PF1 D&D builds being an exception.
Intercept attacks and take them onto yourself. Usually has severe limits so that you don't dash around the battlefield, turning your own soak into the whole party's soak.
Be enough of a threat that everyone goes "oh man we gotta deal with this one first". Also doesn't always work, but when it does, you know that at least you got respect.

None of these are as easy or as convenient as videogame tanking, but it can provide neat opportunities to show off and provide chardev. I once jumped on a grenade for a squishy mage, and earned a lot of goodwill through that.

Quertus
2021-11-12, 05:35 PM
Wow, Quertus (the character) sounds like somebody who wouldn't get invited to go on many second adventures. "Hey guys, I'm leaving you in the lurch again! Have fun risking your lives saving the world while I study how Grey Oozes reproduce!"


Funny, I've always thought of D&D characters as more of the "I'm in it for the money", with a helping of "I'm here to save the princess/dragon/kidnapped child/whatever" and an occasional sprinkle of "Have fun storming the castle/Hooray we saved the town" thrown in.

Saving the world was more for those superhero games.

- M

Hilariously, Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, has (helped) save over 100 worlds - largely *because* of bailing on parties when given the choice between "research" and "lesser stakes". Funny how useful "knowing stuff" can be.

Additionally, by constantly bailing, he knows lots of parties. Funny how useful "knowing a guy" can be.

(Also, Quertus typically borders on being "The Load" - him leaving the party "in the lurch" would be not unlike Hawkeye leaving the Avengers in the lurch.)

Satinavian
2021-11-15, 08:13 AM
Additionally, by constantly bailing, he knows lots of parties. Funny how useful "knowing a guy" can be.
OK, I'll bite.

How is that ever useful in game when the only PCs you will be able to reach are those whose players are sitting at the table ?

NichG
2021-11-15, 10:40 AM
OK, I'll bite.

How is that ever useful in game when the only PCs you will be able to reach are those whose players are sitting at the table ?

That kind of thing has come up for me in the context of a gaming club where people were in each other's games and there was some sense of wanting to connect them. Had a game take a very sharp turn when a group of characters found the name of a PC from another campaign in a comic book and on the basis of eerie coincidences attempted a summoning.

Xervous
2021-11-15, 10:54 AM
I like being tanky. I tend to like systems with soaking damage best, since they usually let you build something that has a double layer of defenses (first you gotta hit, then you gotta pierce my armor/Fortitude/whatever). Being able to take an assault rifle burst to the chest is exhilarating.

As for "if you get tanky enough to ignore everything, the GM just won't use those things at all", there are two solutions.

Overlooking the third solution where the system math dictates that sustaining omnidirectional immunity bankrupts your point budget leaving you as a piece of scenery that lacks the means for influencing most scenes.

Ignimortis
2021-11-15, 12:01 PM
Overlooking the third solution where the system math dictates that sustaining omnidirectional immunity bankrupts your point budget leaving you as a piece of scenery that lacks the means for influencing most scenes.

That's what the second solution tends to work with, usually. Not sure if there's a system where you technically can get a high resistance to everything, but lowering it to pay for other abilities won't actually pay enough.

Quertus
2021-11-16, 01:49 PM
OK, I'll bite.

How is that ever useful in game when the only PCs you will be able to reach are those whose players are sitting at the table ?

You've made a huge assumption there. Or maybe two.

Let's say that, IRL, "the PCs" consist of the few of us involved in this conversation. But every single Playgrounder was, in one or more "campaigns" (threads) a PC.

If this conversation turns to, say, "the nature of Evil", there's a certain PC, not currently in this campaign, that it'd make an awful lot of sense to summon.

Now, if that PC is played by the same player as one of us currently active in this adventure, it's a lot easier from the table's PoV, I'll grant you. But I've seen systems where some of the characters explicitly had "create background NPCs to help" powers, and… fate? (The one with the skill pyramid) has "allies" (or some such) as one of the skills to roll. When I tried to understand that system by writing Quertus in it, "allies" was his "top of the pyramid" (with "lore" and… maybe "wealth" as his second tier attributes (yes, "Magic" was a tertiary ability for my signature academia mage)).

So it's… atypical thinking for a D&D mindset. Which is why Quertus can do things most D&D characters can't. Which is why he could save so many worlds.

And that's even before "a Wizard did it", and Quertus just straight-up summons aid, not unlike



That kind of thing has come up for me in the context of a gaming club where people were in each other's games and there was some sense of wanting to connect them. Had a game take a very sharp turn when a group of characters found the name of a PC from another campaign in a comic book and on the basis of eerie coincidences attempted a summoning.


So, yeah. Quertus has great magical power, used poorly, and great knowledge and contacts, used well. I've been lucky enough to have some GMs skilled enough to recognize that characters having a past (as opposed to playing pieces with blank slates) is a good thing, and to allow characters to leverage that past at logical junctures.

Sometimes, the relevant portions of that past involved things that happened at that table and/or with those players; other times, it did not. But good GMs know how to work with material that isn't 100% their own (because the alternative is railroaders who should go write single author fiction), and some can even extend that to events that happened outside their game actually being potentially important.

So I'd say, "the only PCs you will be able to reach are those whose players are sitting at the table" a) is a symptom of a problem; b) isn't as limiting as you might think if Quertus knows dozens of PCs not actively involved in the current campaign that fit that description.