Challenge in Sandboxes

[Talakeal]

Nope, I remember this being pretty tricky for us since only one of us (not my character in that one) was able to pull off the full Wish. I don't remember the numbers exactly but I think the drain was more of an issue than the DC - it was something like 10d10 slow healing damage per cast, halved if you beat the DC by 10+, and 'take drain as lethal' was worth a +10.

Isn't it just easier to create tomes at that point?

[NichG]

Isn't it just easier to create tomes at that point?

Wish to create magical items directly has additional XP costs, which then further increase the DC and drain. For +5 tomes, that's 11000xp (137500/12.5), which is +110 to the DC. I think the maximum bonus you get for taking as long as you like to cast (barring things like rituals cast over multiple years) is something like +35 (I don't have access to Advanced d20 magic right now so I can't confirm this, but actually that might be high). So at that point if you can survive the drain, it's better to just cast the five Wishes in a row. However, I think there are more clever things than that using metamagic (which just adds to the DC, so you can metamagic up Wish to your heart's content if you can pay the price and hit the expanded DC). So a Twinned Repeat Wish gets you a +4 inherent at the cost of 7 spell levels = +35 to the DC. I don't remember if that's how we did it though.

Spoiler: Slayers d20 casting Wish at Lv12 math

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Casting check is a Fort save, but there are various class features and optional modifiers you can use to fiddle with it.

Start as a Loremaster, prestige into (Slayers) Sorceror from Lv6 on. This means a base Fort save of +3, but also gives +5 to casting checks from a Loremaster secret, +7 to casting Wish from Sorceror levels. It might be worth fitting in two levels of standard D&D Paladin to get +Cha to saves and the good fort save, which would sacrifice one Sorceror level and one Loremaster level, but that definitely wasn't what this player did. For reference, that would give a base Fort save of +6, +5 casting from Loremaster, +6 casting from Sorc, and +Cha mod to the fort save.

For feats, take Great Fortitude (Slayers d20 variant feat, +4 to Fort saves but you have to eat like crazy), Spell Mastery (+5 to cast specific spells), Magical Blood (+2 to casting checks).

Coop-cast with another two casters to gain 1/2 their CL to the save each = +12

Name and Incant = +10

Use a 10kgp material component = +10

Use a focus = +2

Take drain as lethal = +10

So if you have (with items) a +5 modifier from Constitution and a +5 from Charisma and a +5 resistance bonus from an item, that gets you to a +87 to cast Wish in one round for the Paladin build, which has a chance of success (but failures are painful). I think there's probably some pre-buffing I'm missing here to close the gap a bit further.

[Talakeal]

So, ugh.

Remember what I said about the older players poisoning the well with newer players?

Well, we interviewed a new player into the group, and one of the younger and less drama free players warned him "Talakeal will kill your character and then get mad at you for dying.

Which is, like, so damn out of the blue; apparently she has been holding a serious grudge for two years over something that never happened?

Like, it was literally impossible for them to die in my last campaign and there were zero player deaths, and the closest I ever got to getting mad at them for "dying" was when they decided they wouldn't even try and fight the monsters and instead just grab the treasure and let the monsters beat on them until they got a "free teleport back to town".


New game hasn't even started yet and its already of a great start.

FML.

No. Rubber banding challenges renders dice and decisions meaningless.

In theory yes, but not in any implementation I have ever actually seen. Normally it just serves to minimize the tendency of the rich to get richer and the poor to get power, creating more of a graduated curve.

[Squire Doodad]

So, ugh.

Remember what I said about the older players poisoning the well with newer players?

Alternative solution: Move across the country, change your name, grow a mustache and enroll in a witness protection program. Then, you can finally get a new party. This is the best idea ever and nothing can go wrong.

In theory yes, but not in any implementation I have ever actually seen. Normally it just serves to minimize the tendency of the rich to get richer and the poor to get power, creating more of a graduated curve.

Can I get two of those?

[Cluedrew]

Spoiler: System stuff

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[Just go back to the original post.]

I don't think anyone replied to this and I think this is a pretty good design doc and that should be said.

New game hasn't even started yet and its already of a great start.

My same recommendation applies: Don't run it.

[Duff]

As noted, there's no point running a sandbox if the players aren't interested in playing pro-active characters. If the PCs are just going to sit there until something pokes them with a stick, to get them to move, you may as well be running a more typical campaign where the party does the next adventure in the series.

A sandbox works best as a dialogue
Party - "We want to do this"
GM - "Here's your first step on an adventure to do that". The adventure might then be a normal adventure with all the attrition and tension you want. And, just like in a normal campaign, pulling out or failing the adventure is likely to have consequences. I'll give an example of a small scale sandbox below, and contrast it with a non-sandbox game but first...

D&D is a system that is particularly bad for sandbox games. In fact, it's a system that's pretty bad for almost all narrative structures other than "here's a dungeon, go kill stuff". So, my advice would be "don't use D&D" if you want to run a sandbox game. One of the main problems is that if you have five different possible adventures available that would challenge a 5th level party, well, once they finish one of these adventures, the party is no longer 5th level, so the other adventures (that they might then go on, if they are still relevant) can no longer challenge them.

As far as "going nova" and the "fifteen minute day", well, to me that has nothing to do with sandbox adventures. If one plot thread leads the party to investigate a dungeon, then it's just the same (for the most part) as if they had been railroaded into finding the dungeon. If they can beat it by using up all their daily resources and then taking a nap, then they can do that regardless of whether they chose to be here or were forced to be here. The problem here is simply adventure design. Dungeons are bad for precisely this reason (which is another reason to avoid using D&D since the presumption here is that adventures lead to dungeons since "Dungeons" is in the name of the game). But the issue can be managed by putting time pressures on the party. They need to have a reason to do things in a timely fashion. This can be difficult to get right in a D&D setting since the PCs will probably expect to take a nap after fighting every single orc and so they may fail the adventure rather spectacularly if (a) they are not given evidence that makes them realize that they need to hurry or (b) they are put in a situation where they have to use up their resources early on and therefore can't be expected to continue. Resource management is the problem. Games with a lot of resource management (like D&D) are just hard to work with as a DM/GM.

I'd contend that D&D is neither better nor worse for sandbox play than any other where characters' abilities increase by a similar amount. The less the character's abilities change, the less re-tweaking will be needed, but you always have to either re-balance adventures regularly or have the tempo of play where you're always fleshing out an adventure after the party has accepted it. Even if you're running a game where the character's numbers don't change much, their motivations will and their knowledge will. A sandbox always requires you to be building the world in front of the characters.
But I will say that the quicker it is to build an engaging adventure suitable for the party, the easier it is to sandbox.


Now, an example of a sandbox type game with a small scale setting...

Session 0.1
GM "I want to run a sandbox type game of my homebrew where your goal will be to build and defend your village. Are you in?"
Party "Yes"
"OK, I'll give you a basic layout of the village. You've got orcs in the north threatening, a range of strong personalities in the village with different goals, We'll start just after a hard winter so the spring will be hungry until summer starts to provide some fresh harvests and the hard winter means when the thaw gets up into the hills there'll probably be some flooding. Work out what general kinds of characters you want to play now and we'll have a look at them next session.

Session 0.2
Introduce the major NPCs, show the map and the players discuss their characters. Characters get tweaked. Relationships to each other and NPCs are fleshed out.
NPCs and the village might also get tweaked if it seems like a good idea.
GM provides a more concrete list of resources and challenges. The level of detail here is a matter of taste. Do you say "You have 437 roofing nails" or "You're short of roofing nails"
GM "What do you want to do first?
Party discusses amongst themselves. "We want to go and see how the orcs are faired over the winter and see if they're getting ready to raid this way"
GM goes and prepares an adventure "The recon of the orcs"

Session 1
You've decided to check out the Orcs. Here's the map of the lands in the direction of the orcs. How are you traveling?
Session 8
We're going to raid the orcs for food. We'll take the foresters with us as guides and soldiers. GM prepares "Raiding the Orcs"
Session 47. The food problem has been addressed. The flood has not.
GM "You're awakened by the thunder of the river in full spate. Clearly the thaw has reached up into the mountains and your village is being threatened. What do you do?"

Or for the same setting but non sandbox...
Session 0.1 - This can more easily be combined with 0.2
GM "I want to run a non-sandbox type game of my homebrew where your goal will be to build and defend your village. Are you in?"
Party "Yes"
"OK, I'll give you a basic layout of the village. You've got orcs in the north threatening, a range of strong personalities in the village with different goals, We'll start just after a hard winter so the spring will be hungry until summer starts to provide some fresh harvests and the hard winter means when the thaw gets up into the hills there'll probably be some flooding. Work out what general kinds of characters you want to play now and we'll have a look at them next session. (more optional - you can just run the threats and opportunities at them one at a time if you want)

Session 0.2 -
Introduce the major NPCs, show the map and the players discuss their characters. Characters get tweaked. Relationships to each other and NPCs are fleshed out.
NPCs and the village might also get tweaked if it seems like a good idea.
GM provides a more concrete list of resources and challenges. The level of detail here is a matter of taste. Do you say "You have 437 roofing nails" or "You're short of roofing nails"
Or not. This can be cut down to a really basic "this is the village, these are the important people"
GM "The village leader tells you the first job of the spring is to go and check out the orcs"
They might then need to go a write that, but they might have written it last year and it's still probably good

Session 1
Here's the map of the lands in the direction of the orcs. How are you traveling?