OOTS #1212 - The Discussion Thread

[danielxcutter]

I’ve never really liked the concept of level-scaling, frankly, unless there’s a good reason - if I’m getting a harder challenge, I want it to be firing rainbow lasers from its armpits from orbit while I throw miniature suns in response, not the same challenge with bigger levels than earlier because that defeats the entire purpose of leveling up.

[KorvinStarmast]

Am I the only one who felt that the more serious JK Rowling attempted to be, the lower the quality of the writing?
_snip_
Le sigh. Like the "Rocky" series, Rowling started strong and then went downhill.

No, you were not the only one. Had she hired a competent editor that might have been mitigated ...

So you're better off running away from enemies whenever possible until you can turn them into cards and not gain experience in the process.

Reminds me of 3@30 attempts in Diablo (original game)

This is the kind of ridiculous stupidity that makes me absolutely love video gamers who push the edge cases. "Low-level but very competent insomniac"?! I haven't laughed like this since the time I read about the invincible cleaning bot in Deus Ex! :)

Try to do a 3@30 with a Beyond Naked Mage in Original Diablo. I think Arnim was the first player to get that to level 50, which is taking it farther than necessary. (Variant Play)

[Jason]

The way to have a good play through of Oblivion is to build your character carefully so they level up, but not too quickly, pick which set of quests you are going to resolve, then do just those and win the game before you go much above level 20. Then start a new game, build a different character, and take a different set of quests, until you've seen them all in multiple games.
Otherwise, yeah, things get a bit silly at the upper levels, or you might build a character that gets completely outpaced by the monsters.
But what other game has Picard, Boromir, and General Zod as unique NPCs, with Wonder Woman playing half of the world's orcs and Nords?

[Worldsong]

My memory is hazy, but I don’t think you needed to kill all the trolls to complete the quest? Couldn’t a rogue sneak past them to get the brush and leave? I don’t know, I don’t have the patience to play rogues.

The game was designed with the idea that a stealth-based character could get by without having to do a lot of face-to-face combat, but they didn't always manage to make it work. In the specific case of that quest I think you could just run past the trolls... Although if I remember correctly one or two were practically squatting on top of the brush.

Fights against boss-like NPCs in particular were nigh-impossible to deal with as a rogue.

I’ve never really liked the concept of level-scaling, frankly, unless there’s a good reason - if I’m getting a harder challenge, I want it to be firing rainbow lasers from its armpits from orbit while I throw miniature suns in response, not the same challenge with bigger levels than earlier because that defeats the entire purpose of leveling up.

I do think Bethesda learned something from Oblivion, since it's successor, Skyrim, appears to use soft scaling instead. From what I can remember at higher levels bandits aren't going to pose a serious challenge (unless you get mobbed), even if in absolute terms they're still stronger than before.

Giants, however, are still going to launch you 100 meters into the air.

[Shining Wrath]

Oh god I remember that. My brothers and I played Oblivion quite a bit. Not as much as the more dedicated fans, who as far as I understand it could spend hundreds of hours with mods and stuff, but we completed all the big questlines at least. We rather quickly realized that it would be better if we didn't level up beyond a certain point.



For Oblivion a big issue lay in how the progression system worked. You had skills and attributes: skills affected specific abilities while attributes governed skills and overall stats (Blade is a skill which increases the effectiveness of fighting with swords, Strength governs Blade and also increases overall melee damage). Upon character creation you'd choose a bunch of skills to be counted as major skills: major skills increase faster and raising them gives you the experience needed to level. Levelling up allows you to increase your attributes.

On paper this is a nice and interactive system where you become stronger in the things you focus on. In practice it had three main flaws: one, attributes and skills cap at 100. Two, aside from a little bit of health based on your Endurance attribute levelling only serves to increase your attributes. Three, I don't know what system NPCs used but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the same.

The result being that if you focused on being a blademaster you'd hit your peak between level 10 and 15. 100 Blade, 100 Strength. Your sword attacks wouldn't become any stronger after that aside from finding better equipment and there's also a cap to that. So for a couple of levels you'd be the king and cut everything down... and then you hit level 40 and you really feel how for the last 20-30 levels your damage hasn't been going up but the health of the NPCs definitely has. Even if you know how to get the most out of your levels fights would still drag on and on.

My brother, who focused on magic, managed to avoid this by using a loop of self-enhancing spells: cast a spell to increase your magicka, use the increased magicka to cast a spell which increases magicka even further, rinse and repeat until he has a massive amount of magicka. Then cast an offensive spell which consumes more magicka than you could ever hope to have if you aren't abusing this feedback loop and blow everything up.

Me, who focused on melee combat, ended up spending most of my time running backwards swinging my weapon at NPCs who took ages to kill.

You bring pain to my life. As someone who has always liked the idea of "know the person's true name, gain power over them" a la Earthsea (and many others), the fail that is Truenamer is still a sore point, decades later. And what you describe is exactly why the Truenamer class was broken - it got harder for you to do basic things as you leveled up.

[danielxcutter]

I don’t think scaling does work, really, unless there’s a good reason. Maybe the BBEG is connected to the main plot artifact so it levels up the more you do, but that random slime should not be any stronger now than it was ten levels earlier.

[RatElemental]

Doesn't Antilife Shell and Detect Life only work on/against so callled creatures?
At any rate, no, acknowledging that plants are kinda-sorta alive, but otherwise more like rope (i.e. some inferior brand of „inanimate life”) does not make me particularlly comfortable. Also, the points you make would be a lot more reassuring were it not for the folks 'round here trying to convince me that plants are indeed inanimate and they are more like glaciers than animals (granted, I'm simplifying a bit, but still) or that gnoring the fact that plant perception
is a thing is all right.

I was actually mistaken, there's no such thing as a detect life spell, and antilife shell indeed only works on creatures. Plants aren't "sorta alive" though. They are alive, just not something you typically have to worry about in a fight. This is the point I've been trying to make, in DnD being alive is completely removed from whether or not you are a creature, sapient, aware of your surroundings or capable of motion. Just one more checkbox on a list of properties any given thing may or may not have.

As for ignoring the fact that plants perceive things, the speak with plants spell specifically says plants do have limited awareness of their surroundings. If they had no such perception at all then using the spell to talk to them would be rather fruitless.

As for Animal Crossing, I have no idea how that works, but no, I don't necessarily like the sound of what you're saying. That being said, plants tend to have it rougher, so animals require a lot less advocacy from my part, specifically.

In animal crossing some plants are furniture too (wall planters and such). Basically every item in the game falls into one of a few categories: Trash, Tools, Furniture, Food, Clothes, Wallpaper and Carpet. Trash can't really do anything except be crafted into something else, and lowers your house and town score if it's sitting around. Tools can be equipped in your hands and usually do something when you press A. Furniture can be placed and has a 3D model for when you do so. Clothes can be worn. Wallpaper and Carpet can be used to change the look of the wall or floor in your house.

Besides items there are NPCs, the various villagers and special visitors your island/town can receive. Finally there's rocks, trees, flowers and weeds, which are sorta like special versions of furniture in that they can be placed (except for rocks) and have a 3D model when placed, but typically have some special rules for how more of them show up. For most of them it's whenever you bury the aforementioned food items (which is mostly just the types of fruit the trees grow).

I don’t think scaling does work, really, unless there’s a good reason. Maybe the BBEG is connected to the main plot artifact so it levels up the more you do, but that random slime should not be any stronger now than it was ten levels earlier.

In most of the Bethesda style open world games, scaling comes in the form of getting more powerful creatures from a predefined leveled list. Bandit lords instead of bandits, blighted alits instead of regular alits, alpha deathclaws instead of regular ones, etc. Even in Oblivion there was some of that going on, though it was mostly just scaling stats of base creature up.

My brother, who focused on magic, managed to avoid this by using a loop of self-enhancing spells: cast a spell to increase your magicka, use the increased magicka to cast a spell which increases magicka even further, rinse and repeat until he has a massive amount of magicka. Then cast an offensive spell which consumes more magicka than you could ever hope to have if you aren't abusing this feedback loop and blow everything up.

The true route to cheese nirvana in Oblivion is one second drain health 100 spells. With a duration of 1 second they're cheap as dirt but anything with less than 100 health instantly dies. Add 3 seconds of weakness to magicka when you get to higher levels and then cast it multiple times on things to turn it into drain health 200 for 1 second, then 400, then 800, and so on. Put it on a dagger if you're a melee build instead.

[Fyraltari]

I do think Bethesda learned something from Oblivion, since it's successor, Skyrim, appears to use soft scaling instead. From what I can remember at higher levels bandits aren't going to pose a serious challenge (unless you get mobbed), even if in absolute terms they're still stronger than before.

Yeah but since your character levels each time you increase any ten skills and the monsters scaling always mean more health and more damage, you end up with another problem:

Spoiler: namely

Show

And, of course, in Skyrim it’s the assassins that are overpowered and the mages who can’t keep up.

Giants, however, are still going to launch you 100 meters into the air.

Okay, but that will never not be funny.

I don’t think scaling does work, really, unless there’s a good reason. Maybe the BBEG is connected to the main plot artifact so it levels up the more you do, but that random slime should not be any stronger now than it was ten levels earlier.

That’s actually the excuse given for the soft scaling back in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, as time passes, the power of Dagoth Ur and his minions increases.

[CriticalFailure]

True name magic is awesome but very hard to gamify.

[RatElemental]

True name magic is awesome but very hard to gamify.

I dunno, I've seen some pretty good versions of it.

[danielxcutter]

The main problem is that they made the DC twice as high as could feasibly achieved with skill ranks. Which is ludicrously stupid and only made worse with incredibly bad editing and underpowered abilities.

[Jason]

Yeah but since your character levels each time you increase any ten skills...

It's not any 10 skills, it's 10 increases in the favored skills that you selected at character creation. So if you want slow leveling up you select favored skills that you won't actually be using much, like all the magic skills if you're a fighter type, or if your a mage you select heavy and light armor and never wear any, or athletics and you never jump. That slows the pace of leveling to the point that you can finish the game before things get too ridiculous.
That is. If having to game the game in the first place isn't too ridiculous.

[Throknor]

There's nothing especially privileged about sixteenths, but you left a lot out anyway:

3 barleycorns - 12 inches - 3 feet - 5 1/2 yards - 4 rods (poles or perches) - 10 chains - 8 furlongs - 3 miles - 1 league

Obligatory:

The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

[Metastachydium]

I was actually mistaken, there's no such thing as a detect life spell, and antilife shell indeed only works on creatures. Plants aren't "sorta alive" though. They are alive, just not something you typically have to worry about in a fight. This is the point I've been trying to make, in DnD being alive is completely removed from whether or not you are a creature, sapient, aware of your surroundings or capable of motion. Just one more checkbox on a list of properties any given thing may or may not have.

I would not worry too much about sponges, most echinoderms, cnidarians that cannot sting and all those nice little arthropods who just mind their own business (butterflies, phytophagous shield bugs, small dipterans and the like) in a fight, and yet, harmless, inedible animals are not singled out as objects, even if they are completely sessile. This is the kind of little, mostly unnoticed conceptual bias I can't really get behind.

As for ignoring the fact that plants perceive things, the speak with plants spell specifically says plants do have limited awareness of their surroundings. If they had no such perception at all then using the spell to talk to them would be rather fruitless.

Weren't you the one who brought up the little fact that non-blood sucking psycho plants lack Wisdom and Charisma scores? Apparently, „[a]ny creature that can perceive its environment in any fashion has at least 1 point of Wisdom.”

In animal crossing some plants are furniture too (wall planters and such). Basically every item in the game falls into one of a few categories: Trash, Tools, Furniture, Food, Clothes, Wallpaper and Carpet. Trash can't really do anything except be crafted into something else, and lowers your house and town score if it's sitting around. Tools can be equipped in your hands and usually do something when you press A. Furniture can be placed and has a 3D model for when you do so. Clothes can be worn. Wallpaper and Carpet can be used to change the look of the wall or floor in your house.

Besides items there are NPCs, the various villagers and special visitors your island/town can receive. Finally there's rocks, trees, flowers and weeds, which are sorta like special versions of furniture in that they can be placed (except for rocks) and have a 3D model when placed, but typically have some special rules for how more of them show up. For most of them it's whenever you bury the aforementioned food items (which is mostly just the types of fruit the trees grow).

That's kind of like Sims, then, I guess. That one also has an implicit distinction between stuff like potted plants, shrubs and trees that one can scatter around a lot and which cannot be interacted with on the one side, and planted vegetation that needs tending, gets happy if cared for and can be talked to. As long as they are not explicitly called furniture or inanimate, I don't mind that all that much, though.

[bunsen_h]

If I'm being honest, these don't exactly sound like good systems.

Sword of Fargoal was an early dungeon-crawler video game -- pretty basic by modern standards, but state-of-the-art in its day. Once I'd mastered some winning strategies, it wasn't a challenge any more, so I started looking for ways to keep it interesting just a little longer.

A reworked version is available for iDevices. I don't know how advanced it is. Somewhere on that site, it's possible to download Linux source for a slightly-updated version of the original game, with improved graphics but little functional improvement IIRC.

[Fyraltari]

It's not any 10 skills, it's 10 increases in the favored skills that you selected at character creation. So if you want slow leveling up you select favored skills that you won't actually be using much, like all the magic skills if you're a fighter type, or if your a mage you select heavy and light armor and never wear any, or athletics and you never jump. That slows the pace of leveling to the point that you can finish the game before things get too ridiculous.
That is. If having to game the game in the first place isn't too ridiculous.

There are no favored skills in Skyrim...

[Riftwolf]

But what other game has Picard, Boromir, and General Zod as unique NPCs, with Wonder Woman playing half of the world's orcs and Nords?

That brings up one of the most daunting prospects in all of gaming;
For one of the quests you have to keep Sean Bean alive. In front of a hellgate. And he's wearing a brown robe.

[Rogar Demonblud]

That would be a challenge, yes.

[Malacandra]

Obligatory:

Grandpa may be fine with forty rods to the hogshead as a measuring system, but that fuel consumption would disgrace a battleship (something over 100 gallons to the mile :D ).

[Jasdoif]

I do think Bethesda learned something from Oblivion, since it's successor, Skyrim, appears to use soft scaling instead. From what I can remember at higher levels bandits aren't going to pose a serious challenge (unless you get mobbed), even if in absolute terms they're still stronger than before.

Yeah but since your character levels each time you increase any ten skills

No, actually; though of course it's an understandable assumption since Morrowind and Oblivion did it that way. But in Skyrim, it's basically XP each time you increase a skill, with the amount of XP larger with higher skills; and the amount of XP needed for each level increases. So it's more forgiving with raising skills you hardly ever use.

[Snuffbear]

[...] Reminds me of 3@30 attempts in Diablo (original game)

What is "3 @ 30"?

[RatElemental]

I would not worry too much about sponges, most echinoderms, cnidarians that cannot sting and all those nice little arthropods who just mind their own business (butterflies, phytophagous shield bugs, small dipterans and the like) in a fight, and yet, harmless, inedible animals are not singled out as objects, even if they are completely sessile. This is the kind of little, mostly unnoticed conceptual bias I can't really get behind.

As far as game rules are concerned, sponges and the like simply do not exist. At best they are scenery as far as the rules are concerned, no one ever put pen to paper statting out sponges or non-monstrous insects. I do know of one module that has a swarm of flies mechanically treated as a trap though. I suspect sponges would be given the same treatment non-creature plants get.

Weren't you the one who brought up the little fact that non-blood sucking psycho plants lack Wisdom and Charisma scores? Apparently, „[a]ny creature that can perceive its environment in any fashion has at least 1 point of Wisdom.”

You need both charisma and wisdom to be a creature, if you lack one of the two you still aren't one. And it's not true you have at least 1 point, the capacity to perceive your surroundings is the difference between having a wisdom score at all and having it as a nonability, you can still have 0 wisdom.

[Riftwolf]

As far as game rules are concerned, sponges and the like simply do not exist. At best they are scenery as far as the rules are concerned, no one ever put pen to paper statting out sponges or non-monstrous insects. I do know of one module that has a swarm of flies mechanically treated as a trap though. I suspect sponges would be given the same treatment non-creature plants get.



You need both charisma and wisdom to be a creature, if you lack one of the two you still aren't one. And it's not true you have at least 1 point, the capacity to perceive your surroundings is the difference between having a wisdom score at all and having it as a nonability, you can still have 0 wisdom.

See now I want to stat up a Tarrasques Gut Flora.

[Jaziggy]

There's nothing especially privileged about sixteenths, but you left a lot out anyway:

3 barleycorns - 12 inches - 3 feet - 5 1/2 yards - 4 rods (poles or perches) - 10 chains - 8 furlongs - 3 miles - 1 league

(I have seen railway signs quote the distance to the terminus in miles and chains)

And any culture that can't see why it is simply better to have coins for a quarter penny, half penny, penny, three pence, six pence, 12 pence (one shilling), two shillings, two and a half shillings, five shillings (seldom used), ten shillings, twenty shillings (one pound) and twenty-one shillings (one guinea)... is beyond redemption.

Amazing. Thank you for sharing this lunacy with the world.

[Worldsong]

Yeah but since your character levels each time you increase any ten skills and the monsters scaling always mean more health and more damage, you end up with another problem:

Spoiler: namely

Show

Oddly enough I never really encountered that problem. Then again maybe I'm just such a violent person that even when I make a crafting character I still spend enough time committing acts of vandalism and homicide that I keep up with the enemies.

Except those elite draugr that can use shouts. Those are always a pain for me.

And, of course, in Skyrim it’s the assassins that are overpowered and the mages who can’t keep up.

"Let's give the stealth people a x15 multiplier for sneak attacks. What could go wrong?"

Okay, but that will never not be funny.

This is very true. One of the best memes Skyrim has ever spawned.


The couriers have even turned it to their advantage.

[Ruck]

Assassin/Thief was the most fun I had in Skyrim. Just forward rolling everywhere and pickpocketing or killing people as needed. The funniest was when I had to go into some Forsworn cave and beat their leader, but instead of fighting everyone i just sneaked in, pickpocketed the briar heart straight out of his chest, and sneaked back out.

[KorvinStarmast]

What is "3 @ 30"?

Trying to kill Diablo in Hell Difficulty without going over 30th level. You'd end up killing him at 17th or so by taking short cuts (MP game, not solo) to get to down behind Cain's shack and trying to avoid as many enemies as possible, then in the mid to high 20's knock him off in Nightmare, and then in Hell Diff. If you spent too much time and effort clearing levels you'd level up before you got your "third dot" for killing him in Hell difficulty. It's been...uh, years... since I did one.
One time I did it with a load of firewalls stacked on each other and a 'bow of the bear" that kept knocking him back into the fire walls.
Not sure how people did it in Hellfire (I never played that expansion) as that game had a bunch of triple immunes that weren't in the original game.

[Shining Wrath]

See now I want to stat up a Tarrasques Gut Flora.

Those are normally called "people".

[Jaziggy]

Those are normally called "people".

New Adventure Sourcebook "Escape From the Terrasque: No, Really. FROM the Terrasque"

[Fyraltari]

New Adventure Sourcebook "Escape From the Terrasque: No, Really. FROM the Terrasque"

There are two ways out of here and neither is fun.