combat in mid- to high-level AD&Dv3.5

[Mary K. Kuhner]

I've recently run a couple of games in v3.5. One thing that
really bugged me as a GM:

My husband, running _Shackled City_ for 4th level PCs, just did a
"boss fight" which was quite exciting: the PCs got lucky with Web
just in time to save their asses, had trouble with the boss even after
he got out of the web, hit each other with alchemist's fire and
tanglefoot bags, did some tense combat-healing stunts to get
the main fighter up, manuvered for critical flanking bonuses, etc.

About six months ago I ran _City of the Spider Queen_, which
starts at 10th and goes up from there. Interesting fights of this
sort barely ever happened; most fights were settled in 1 round,
generally with a stereotyped PC strategy, and often before most
of the opponents had any actions.

My player really likes the "neat toys" aspects of high-level play,
but I am bored to death by the combat. There is no use spending
a lot of time coming up with strategies for NPCs who are all dead
before they can act....but when this does not happen, frequently
the PCs are all dead before *they* can act. This is not exciting
either.

How do people generate interesting situations at these levels?
What can be done about the combats getting shorter and shorter until
they are essentially decided as soon as they start? Toward the
end of _Spider Queen_ it was not even worth setting out the
miniatures.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[gleichman]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
How do people generate interesting situations at these levels?
What can be done about the combats getting shorter and shorter until
they are essentially decided as soon as they start? Toward the
end of _Spider Queen_ it was not even worth setting out the
miniatures.

I wish I could directly answer your questions, but I haven't played D&D in
decades (except on the computer). Something of a pity, because I love
answering these questions about systems that I do use, like HERO and Age of
Heroes of course- the latter just doesn't have this problem :)

But maybe I can help by walking through it as if I was addressing a new game
system I had just played. As I remember, you're very good at this yourself-
but baring a D&D expert coming along...

So excuse the basic questions here:

Are these battles actually over in a single turn or are they just 'decided'
in that first turn? From your post, I'm expecting it's the former.

Are your players plotting and pulling off ambushes or are they winning in up
front battles?

Are the victories driven by specific spells? Has melee/ranged damage
increased to the point where that's the decisive arm? Are specific classes
given you a problem or does all them add to it?

[Peter Knutsen]

gleichman wrote:
[...]

Post by gleichman
Are these battles actually over in a single turn or are they just 'decided'
in that first turn? From your post, I'm expecting it's the former.

Rupert Boleyn has told me, numerous times, that in D&D 3rd Edition
combat, characters sometimes lose hit points much faster than I tend to
assume. I believe this aspect is the exact same as what you call "the
pace of decision".

Post by gleichman
Are your players plotting and pulling off ambushes or are they winning in up
front battles?
Are the victories driven by specific spells? Has melee/ranged damage
increased to the point where that's the decisive arm? Are specific classes
given you a problem or does all them add to it?

Those are good questions.

[gleichman]

Post by Peter Knutsen
Rupert Boleyn has told me, numerous times, that in D&D 3rd Edition
combat, characters sometimes lose hit points much faster than I tend to
assume. I believe this aspect is the exact same as what you call "the
pace of decision".

I had thought to be the case when I read over the 3rd edition rules
when they first came out. Between an increase in number of attacks plus
feats- the whole thing looked to significant increase the ratio between
damage and HP.

I was... disappointed and would be to have it confirmed. That's not the
point of D&D style play IME.

And Yes, I've called this Pace of Decision in the past. I just recently
wrote a not short article explaining it in some detail. I think I'll
re-post it here after some light editing...

[Rupert Boleyn]

Post by gleichman

Post by Peter Knutsen
Rupert Boleyn has told me, numerous times, that in D&D 3rd Edition
combat, characters sometimes lose hit points much faster than I tend to
assume. I believe this aspect is the exact same as what you call "the
pace of decision".

I had thought to be the case when I read over the 3rd edition rules
when they first came out. Between an increase in number of attacks plus
feats- the whole thing looked to significant increase the ratio between
damage and HP.

It's true.

Our D&D 3.x game recently concluded, with the PCs at 24th
level. From this, and other campaigns I've been in or run that didn't
reach as high, I can say that at low levels D&D3.x isn't very different
from other versions of D&D - one or two good rolls and a character is down
or dead.

Like earlier versions this fades as you go up levels, but you
never get the combats you used to get, where it was strictly a battle of
attrition. From there, things diverge rapidly from the old way - while in
previous versions a clever party could arrange a one-shot KO on some
opponents, generally combats didn't shorten at higher levels. In 3.x they
become very short, even when they are between two prepared groups. If one
side gets the drop on the other, the ambushed party's only sensible course
of action is to retreat using teleports or similar, and to do so
_immediately_. Even in the middle levels D&D3.x's combat is so fast that
if you think you are doing badly you must retreat right then and there -
you'll never get a chance to fight through and come back.

Should anyone be contemplating playing in a D&D game of any length my main
advice would be - have a clear idea what your character's path will be
(and pre-design it and check that it doesn't suck), and arrange for the
highest Con you can - you can never have too many hit points.

Post by gleichman
I was... disappointed and would be to have it confirmed. That's not the
point of D&D style play IME.

Mine either. The campaigns were fun, but I found the need to have all the
prep 'right' every time wearing as a player and I'm not sorry we've
moved to other games, which is unusual for me when a campaign I liked
ends. As a GM the workload to challenge a high level party is very high,
and if you don't do it all you're doing is providing the players with some
target practice, which is a waste of everyone's time in a game like D&D,
IMO.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by gleichman
Are these battles actually over in a single turn or are they just 'decided'
in that first turn? From your post, I'm expecting it's the former.

Usually over. Occasionally "it's all over but the shouting" meaning
that a few henchmen are still around, but hopelessly outgunned and
outnumbered.

Post by gleichman
Are your players plotting and pulling off ambushes or are they winning in up
front battles?

It's a mix. Often the ambush requires very little plotting: for
example, if you can become invisible and intangible and sweep through
the castle looking for a fight, you should succeed in ambushing just
about anyone except perhaps the heavily defended leadership.

Post by gleichman
Are the victories driven by specific spells? Has melee/ranged damage
increased to the point where that's the decisive arm? Are specific classes
given you a problem or does all them add to it?

A variety of things happen. Melee damage is so high that high-end
fighters often drop one another in a round. For a missile specialist,
so is missile damage. Spell damage is even higher: the sorceror
in _Spider Queen_ turned out to be able to do 56d6 in a round, though
he only ever did it once all campaign (I think the player was keeping
that as an ace in the hole, and no, I don't know exactly how he
did it). There is no one ability that I could ban to solve the
problem, or believe me, I'd have banned it. (Banning Teleport at
least prevented the PCs from "solving" the module from the center
out, which would have been even less satisfactory.)

In many cases the NPCs could reciprocate, though they seldom
had the PCs' range of capabilities; but that just replaces a total
wipeout of the NPCs with a wipeout of the PCs.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[gleichman]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
A variety of things happen. Melee damage is so high that high-end
fighters often drop one another in a round. For a missile specialist,

<boggle>

It will take me a while to pick my jaw up off the floor. That is so
counter to original D&D design concepts (except for the spell part)
that all I can do is stare.

Walk through an example of how high-end fighters kill each other in a
single round for me please. I'm thinking it has to be due to applied
buffs or the like.

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by gleichman

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
A variety of things happen. Melee damage is so high that high-end
fighters often drop one another in a round. For a missile specialist,

<boggle>
It will take me a while to pick my jaw up off the floor. That is so
counter to original D&D design concepts (except for the spell part)
that all I can do is stare.

I remember that Mary has reported, on previous occasions, that her
husband (Jon?) is very fond of looking for extremely high-powered
combinations of choices (I imagine this is a combination of crunchy bits
and tactics), and then keeping them in reserve until they are needed.

Post by gleichman
Walk through an example of how high-end fighters kill each other in a
single round for me please. I'm thinking it has to be due to applied
buffs or the like.

I know less about D&D3 than Mary, but one chance is that all high level
characters get extra attacks, provided that they decide to make "full
round attacks", as opposed to taking a move action during the round
(either before or after making their single attack).

At 6th level, a Fighter (or Paladin or Ranger or Barbarian) gets a
second attack, although the attack bonus is 5 less compared to the first
attack. His standard "Base Attack Bonus" (BAB) is +6, so the second
attack is at +1. On top of this goes STR bonus, a +1 bonus from the
Weapon Focus feat (I believe most 6th level "melee warriors" have taken
Weapon Focus), and any bonus from the weapon (i.e. if it is "masterwork"
or has a magical plus).

At 11th level, Fighters (and similar classes) have three attacks at +11,
+6 and +1. At 16th level, they get a fourth attack, for a total of +16,
+11, +6 and +1.

Clerics and Rogues and similar classes get attack bonuses more slowly,
and classes such as Wizards get them even more slowly.

I've always tended to assume that these secondary and tertiary attacks
were of limited usefulness in balanced fights, since they'll often be
unable to "penetrate" the AC of equivalent-level foes, and therefore
they seem to me to be mostly useful when you are mowing down lower-level
foes such as Kobolds (with no character classes).


But let us see what Mary (and Doug, and others who use D&D3) has to say...

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by gleichman
Walk through an example of how high-end fighters kill each other in a
single round for me please. I'm thinking it has to be due to applied
buffs or the like.

Bear in mind that I have never built or played a high-level fighter,
so I may make a few mistakes.

Start with 18 or 19 strength, and add a couple of level-based stat
increases, and Bull's Strength. Use a two-handed weapon so that you
get 1.5 x your Strength bonus to damage, and stack on the fighter
feats that add to damage. Add a magic weapon. It's easy to get a
high total: my fourth level fighter does 2d6+8 and he is not
maximal for his level.

Then, add the Power Attack feat which lets you trade to-hit for
damage, and with a 2-hand weapon you get 2 pts damage per 1 pt
to-hit, up to a fairly high maximum (depending on how many feats
you spend on it). You can at least get +10 this way, if you
can afford -5 to hit, and you can.)

(You might miss, but to-hit usually increases faster than AC.
My 4th level PC can easily hit his own AC; he is +11 to hit and
only needs to hit AC18, so he can spare some points for Power Attack.)

An Enlarge Person will add a bit more damage, and give you
reach, which is very useful.

At high level you probably get 3 attacks/round, and Haste will
add one. Or you could reduce the damage a bit and go double
weapon. You may not be able to Power Attack on the later
attacks for fear of missing (though my player did anyway, and
he is smart so probably it did pay off).

Then, do something to increase your crit range. (At least these
don't stack anymore in 3.5 as they did in 3.0--unless you find
something in a splatbook that lets you do it.) But you should
be critting on a roll of 17+ or so, and with four attacks the
chance of a crit is pretty good.

It's fairly easy to get 100+ points of damage/round. Most of
this is *not* buffing spells, though buffing spells can make it
worse.

I don't recall the archer version. It's more dependent on
prestiege classes and the like, but also more effective since
if you don't need 100 points to kill one target, you can spread
the arrows out and kill three. (Jon says you can't reliably
get 100 points with an archer, but 50-60 is doable. Mages, goodbye.)

(Thanks to Jon for correcting various errors in this.)

As you can see, it's a lot of different things, not just one
thing. You improve number of attacks, damage per attack,
and chance of a critical, and they multiply.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Stephen McIlvenna]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by gleichman
Walk through an example of how high-end fighters kill each other in a
single round for me please. I'm thinking it has to be due to applied
buffs or the like.

Bear in mind that I have never built or played a high-level fighter,
so I may make a few mistakes.

<big snip>

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
(Thanks to Jon for correcting various errors in this.)
As you can see, it's a lot of different things, not just one
thing. You improve number of attacks, damage per attack,
and chance of a critical, and they multiply.

The key things to note, I think, about this strategy are:
1. Most of it is skill and feat based (so, with the exception of the odd
Bull's Strength or Enlarge, can't be dispelled or anti-magicked away).
2. It works because AC lags so far behind Attack Bonus at higher levels
(Does this compare to Saving Throws lagging behind high Spell DCs?).

Some variations of d20 have a level based Defence Bonus to AC that helps a
little, but not a lot. The best option we could come up with (remembering
this was only with 10-12th level characters) was the use of Blur, etc so
that fighters had a good chance of missing despite their high attacks; or
Mobility, Reach combos that kept the target moving and reduced the
opportunity to be on the receiving end of full-round attacks.

Stephen
http://www.btinternet.com/~s.mci/

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
<big snip>

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
(Thanks to Jon for correcting various errors in this.)
As you can see, it's a lot of different things, not just one
thing. You improve number of attacks, damage per attack,
and chance of a critical, and they multiply.

1. Most of it is skill and feat based (so, with the exception of the odd
Bull's Strength or Enlarge, can't be dispelled or anti-magicked away).
2. It works because AC lags so far behind Attack Bonus at higher levels

Is this actually the case? D&D3 offers several different "types" of AC
bonus, and has clear rules which say that different types of bonuses
stack with each other. For instance there's the Armour bonus and the
Shield bonus. Armour can give up to 8 points of non-magical AC, plus 5
points of magical AC on top of that. Non-magical shields can only give
an AC bonus of 2 (for a large shield), but on top of that you can have a
further 5 points of magical shield AC. Thirdly there's the Deflection
type of AC bonus. I don't know how high that can go, but a good guess
would be +5.

Other types of AC bonuses can probably be ignored, because they (e.g.
the Dodge bonuses) are of very small magnitude.

The DEX bonus to AC is probably among those that can be ignored, because
it seems to me to almost be the case that for each extra non-magical AC
bonus that a suit of armour gives, it allows you to utilize one point
less of DEX-derived AC bonus.

But still, is it actually true that AC lags behind attack bonus, *if*
the characters follow wise "stacking" procedures when chosing their
equipment?

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
(Does this compare to Saving Throws lagging behind high Spell DCs?).
Some variations of d20 have a level based Defence Bonus to AC that helps a
little, but not a lot. The best option we could come up with (remembering

Usually the intent behind such systems, which include Spycraft and the
d20-based Star Wars system, is that the level-derived AC bonus is
intended to compensate the character for not wearing armour, since
armour (at least not heavy armour) is not in-genre.

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
this was only with 10-12th level characters) was the use of Blur, etc so
that fighters had a good chance of missing despite their high attacks; or
Mobility, Reach combos that kept the target moving and reduced the
opportunity to be on the receiving end of full-round attacks.

[gleichman]

But still, is it actually true that AC lags behind attack bonus, *if* the
characters follow wise "stacking" procedures when chosing their equipment?

I would think that the modules and even monster manuels would reflect this
in their designs by handing out such gear to NPCs as a regular matter. After
all, if it's required to maintain balanced- it's required to maintain
balance. However this doesn't (at my first glance) seem to be the case. This
is to say nothing of forcing the campaign rather quickly into a magic rich
enviroment. Nor does it account for the fact that there are also off-setting
magical gear to increase one's offense both to hit and in damage output.

Also, while there are equipment based methods to raise one's AC- there is
little one can do to offset the increase in damage output as as characters
raise in level. Here too the natural advance in offense is significantly
higher than the advance in defense.

[Stephen McIlvenna]

But still, is it actually true that AC lags behind attack bonus, *if* the
characters follow wise "stacking" procedures when chosing their equipment?

I think so (certainly in my experience). For most opportunities to
stack-onto-AC there is a similar opportunity to stack-onto-Attack
(enhancement of the weapon, morale bonus, insight bonus, luck bonus,
circumstance bonus to the attacker, etc).

Assuming that these modifiers do cancel out, at every level you still get an
increase to Base Attack Bonus (well, every level for fighter-types), but
your base Armour / Shield bonus is pretty much fixed with the gear you
happen to wear. I'm not sure when it happens, but there is definitely a
point where hit points become much, much more important than AC.

Stephen
http://www.btinternet.com/~s.mci/

[Mary K. Kuhner]

But still, is it actually true that AC lags behind attack bonus, *if* the
characters follow wise "stacking" procedures when chosing their equipment?

I have seen Jon get armor classes that the NPCs in modules can't hit, but
I have never seen him make a character his own characters couldn't hit,
and fairly readily. It's easier to increase to-hit than AC. As someone
else said, for every equipment-based or spell-based bonus to AC there is
a potential corresponding one to to-hit, and to-hit also goes up with level
whereas AC does not.

When my current PCs were fourth the high AC was 22 and the high to-hit
was +11 (50% chance to hit) with no spells or other backing. In my
experience this gets worse with level, not better.

We played a bit of Iron Heroes, where AC does go up with level, but it's
meant to be a heroes-versus-mooks system and I didn't get a good feel for
how it would work with high levels on both sides. I somehow didn't care
for it, despite several nice aspects--the magic-like skill extensions are
very good.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[gleichman]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
We played a bit of Iron Heroes, where AC does go up with level, but it's
meant to be a heroes-versus-mooks system and I didn't get a good feel for
how it would work with high levels on both sides. I somehow didn't care
for it, despite several nice aspects--the magic-like skill extensions are
very good.

It's not sounding like you're caring much for D&D 3.5 either, it may be time
for a lesser of evils :)

I spoke to one of my old players who's done a fair amount of D&D since I
moved away, he agrees with your report on the nature of high level D&D
combat. His experience is that high level battles are over except for the
whimpering of the losers in a single round, decided basically by initiative.
The real-time to resolve it however was significant, so running that round
(and preping for it) takes a while.

The basic problem is one of stacking, sadly that sort of stacking seems to
be the primary design concept of the system. Without ripping it apart, he
saw no solution for you.

All this makes me wonder why anyone would play the game. I guess there's a
feeling of power in such quick victories, and a sense of skill in managing
all the stacking.

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by gleichman

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
We played a bit of Iron Heroes, where AC does go up with level, but it's
meant to be a heroes-versus-mooks system and I didn't get a good feel for
how it would work with high levels on both sides. I somehow didn't care
for it, despite several nice aspects--the magic-like skill extensions are
very good.

It's not sounding like you're caring much for D&D 3.5 either, it may be time
for a lesser of evils :)

However, Jon sounds as if he is very fun of crunchy bits, and there just
isn't a lot of places to go, apart from D&D 3/3.5, if that is what you like.

Most RPG rules systems are made by GMs, and for GMs, and therefore are
very light on crunchy bits.

Post by gleichman
I spoke to one of my old players who's done a fair amount of D&D since I
moved away, he agrees with your report on the nature of high level D&D
combat. His experience is that high level battles are over except for the
whimpering of the losers in a single round, decided basically by initiative.
The real-time to resolve it however was significant, so running that round
(and preping for it) takes a while.
The basic problem is one of stacking, sadly that sort of stacking seems to
be the primary design concept of the system. Without ripping it apart, he
saw no solution for you.

My impression is that the designers made very careful decisions in order
to ensure that stacking was controlled by rules, rather than by ad hoc
decisons made by the GM.

Post by gleichman
All this makes me wonder why anyone would play the game. I guess there's a
feeling of power in such quick victories, and a sense of skill in managing
all the stacking.

I'm not entirely sure about the former, but the later part makes a lot
of sense. A lot of people are like that.

[n***@wimp.freeuk.com]

Post by Peter Knutsen
However, Jon sounds as if he is very fun of crunchy bits, and there just
isn't a lot of places to go, apart from D&D 3/3.5, if that is what you like.
Most RPG rules systems are made by GMs, and for GMs, and therefore are
very light on crunchy bits.

If you're interested in non-D&D crunchiness, take a look at Burning
Wheel. Lots of crunch (lots and lots of crunch), quite a few k00l
p0werz in the form of the Trait system, and a very tactical subsytems
for combat and social conflict. Combat leads to incapacitations quite
quickly, while actual deaths are rare.

Skill-based system, no levels, few magical items. Characters have
Beliefs and Instincts which flag up topics of interest to the GM.
Frex, if a character has the Belief "I will restore the honour of my
family," it says something about where the player wants the game to go.


I'm not a fanboy, though: BW is too crunchy for my tastes. But it may
be suitable for Jon.

Neil.

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by n***@wimp.freeuk.com

Post by Peter Knutsen
However, Jon sounds as if he is very fun of crunchy bits, and there just
isn't a lot of places to go, apart from D&D 3/3.5, if that is what you like.
Most RPG rules systems are made by GMs, and for GMs, and therefore are
very light on crunchy bits.

If you're interested in non-D&D crunchiness, take a look at Burning
Wheel. Lots of crunch (lots and lots of crunch), quite a few k00l

I'm not talking about crunch, I'm talking about crunchy bits.

Post by n***@wimp.freeuk.com
p0werz in the form of the Trait system, and a very tactical subsytems

Where? The rule books are on loan to Klaus Mogensen, but I don't recall
*any* crunchy bits in the trait system, just a lot of very vague text.

Post by n***@wimp.freeuk.com
for combat and social conflict. Combat leads to incapacitations quite
quickly, while actual deaths are rare.
Skill-based system, no levels, few magical items. Characters have
Beliefs and Instincts which flag up topics of interest to the GM.
Frex, if a character has the Belief "I will restore the honour of my
family," it says something about where the player wants the game to go.
I'm not a fanboy, though: BW is too crunchy for my tastes. But it may
be suitable for Jon.

Crunch =! crunchy bits.

[gleichman]

Post by Peter Knutsen
Crunch =! crunchy bits.

I've been out of touch, what's the difference?

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by gleichman

Post by Peter Knutsen
Crunch =! crunchy bits.

I've been out of touch, what's the difference?

I don't know what "crunch" means, and therefore I try to discourage the
use of the term. Terms that are ill-defined do no good, and often do harm.

The term "crunchy bits" was coined by Robin D. Laws, and probably first
used in the book "Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering".

A crunchy bit is a player-selectable ability (i.e. one that not all
player characters have) which works according to rules, with no (or at
the most very little) "GM discretion" involved.

Crunchy bits shift power from the GM and to the players. It is therefore
my assertion that the reason that few RPG rules systems contain crunchy
bits is that most RPG rules systems are designed by GMs and for GMs,
rather than by players and for players.

Examples of crunchy bits are the "schticks" from Feng Shui, and Feats
from D&D 3/3.5.

Many RPG spells also qualify as crunchy bits, as do magic items with
well-defined abilities (D&D3, again, is good at this).

Thus one can say that my claim that RPGs tend to lack crunchy bits is
wrong, and that I should instead claim that RPGs tend to offer crunchy
bits to some character concepts (spellcasters) and not to others.

Feng Shui tried to change that by introducing crunchy bits to characters
whose concept was combat (I don't think one could say that Feng Shui
succeeded), and D&D3 succeeded in changing it, by offering a huge amount
of combat-relevant Feats and giving the Fighter character class the
ability to chose a huge amount of them (11, by the time 20th level is
reached, IIRC).

The sad thing is that the phenomenon doesn't seem to have spread to
non-d20 systems.


I haven't actively attempted to fill Sagatafl with crunchy bits,
although I have always enjoyed putting them in whenever I thought of any.

With the Action Movie RPG, it's different. I'm actively trying to cram
it full of crunchy bits, even going "over the top" sometimes, with the
intent of seeing how it works out in play (especially in terms of
whether it does any harm to the brand of "immersion" that I value).

The inspiration for this, crunchy bits everywhere, comes from the
Spycraft systems, especially the new Spycraft 2.0, which also seems to
be intent upon crunchy bittifying the non-combat aspects of the game.

[Indiana Joe]

Post by Peter Knutsen
A crunchy bit is a player-selectable ability (i.e. one that not all
player characters have) which works according to rules, with no (or
at the most very little) "GM discretion" involved.

Hero System would be an example of an extremely crunchy system. There
are ways to model most powers mechanically. There are some things that
it does not model well, but those issues can be dealt with during
character creation instead of during play.

[David Alex Lamb]

Post by Indiana Joe

Post by Peter Knutsen
A crunchy bit is a player-selectable ability (i.e. one that not all
player characters have) which works according to rules, with no (or
at the most very little) "GM discretion" involved.

Hero System would be an example of an extremely crunchy system. There
are ways to model most powers mechanically.

Hmm. I thought Hero was full of situations where GM approval was required.
That is, a player could create a fun character by the rulebook, only to find
it edited to death by the GM. I'm quite happy to believe that *some* parts
were "crunchy bits".

[gleichman]

Post by David Alex Lamb
Hmm. I thought Hero was full of situations where GM approval was required.
That is, a player could create a fun character by the rulebook, only to find
it edited to death by the GM. I'm quite happy to believe that *some* parts
were "crunchy bits".

Very few games disallow the GM from editing whatever he wishes.

Despite this, IMO HERO works best when the GM accepts/rejects/edits
submitted characters such that they fit into world for which they are
created. HERO is a system without much in the way of bounds and standards-
such things have to come from somewhere and as with most things a single
vision is best.

[David Alex Lamb]

Post by gleichman

Post by David Alex Lamb
Hmm. I thought Hero was full of situations where GM approval was required.
That is, a player could create a fun character by the rulebook, only to find
it edited to death by the GM. I'm quite happy to believe that *some* parts
were "crunchy bits".

Very few games disallow the GM from editing whatever he wishes.
Despite this, IMO HERO works best when the GM accepts/rejects/edits
submitted characters such that they fit into world for which they are
created. HERO is a system without much in the way of bounds and standards-
such things have to come from somewhere and as with most things a single
vision is best.

Well, that means the rules don't really have "crunchy bits" in the sense Peter
listed, right?

[gleichman]

Post by David Alex Lamb
Well, that means the rules don't really have "crunchy bits" in the sense Peter
listed, right?

True enough.

However I wonder if that element of the definition owes more to Peter than
to the original source.

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by gleichman

Post by David Alex Lamb
Well, that means the rules don't really have "crunchy bits" in the sense Peter
listed, right?

True enough.
However I wonder if that element of the definition owes more to Peter than
to the original source.

The original source is here:
<
http://www.amazon.com/Robins-Laws-Good-Game-Mastering/dp/1556346298/sr=8-1/qid=1161900092/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7783210-1382361?ie=UTF8&s=books
< http://tinyurl.com/yyxl72 >

And here as an e-book:
< http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG30-3009 >



You wrote something in another post, which seems to no longer be on my
Usenet server, about Age of Heroes also being "written for players", in
spite of lacking crunchy bits.

Well, that is true. Crunchy bits aren't the only way to create a better
GM/player power balance. It's really all about thorough rules, with
crunchy bits just being one method of making thorough rules.

What it boils down to is that crunchy bits are *fun* for *many* players.
Ignoring, of course, the kind of player who'd rather suck up to the GM
than deal with an objective rules system.

Robin D. Laws suggests that the crunchy bit aspect of D&D3 is one reason
for its great popularity. I'll say that he is *underestimating* that
aspect, and that the focus on crunchy bits is the *primary* reason for
why D&D3 succeeded in bringing so many ex-roleplayers back to the hobby.
People who left the hobby because they were sick and tired of the "GM is
god" meme.

The sad thing is, now they are all sitting inside the d20 ghetto,
convinced that it is the only place where they can have crunchy bits to
play with (and to a lesser extent also that the "GM is god" meme is
universal outside of the d20 ghetto).

[Erol K. Bayburt]

Post by David Alex Lamb

Post by gleichman

Post by David Alex Lamb
Hmm. I thought Hero was full of situations where GM approval was required.
That is, a player could create a fun character by the rulebook, only to find
it edited to death by the GM. I'm quite happy to believe that *some* parts
were "crunchy bits".

Very few games disallow the GM from editing whatever he wishes.
Despite this, IMO HERO works best when the GM accepts/rejects/edits
submitted characters such that they fit into world for which they are
created. HERO is a system without much in the way of bounds and standards-
such things have to come from somewhere and as with most things a single
vision is best.

Well, that means the rules don't really have "crunchy bits" in the sense Peter
listed, right?

It seems to me that we're overlooking a distinction between what's
allowed when creating a character vs what's allowed in play. Once a
HERO character has been approved, his Powers and abilities mostly work
as "crunchy bits" - the rules describe how they work, with relatively
little room for GM handwaving to stretch or restrict what they can do.
(Although there are the "special effects" that different GMs invoke to
a greater or lesser extent.)

OTOH HERO gives the GM much more ability to discriminate between
players wrt to what characters they're allowed; roughly the equivalent
of a hypothetical DMG rule that the DM should feel free to deny (e.g.)
a prestige class to a player he fears will abuse it, while allowing
that class to his other players.

[David Alex Lamb]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
It seems to me that we're overlooking a distinction between what's
allowed when creating a character vs what's allowed in play.

Nice observation. I do think Peter Knutsen means both situations, but I'm not
sure. Crunchy-in-play seems by far the most important to me -- but I feel the
pain of someone who spends a while making up a neat by-the-rules character
only to find it banned. I don't mind banned-in-advance, e.g "no psionics" for
some D&D games.

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by David Alex Lamb

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
It seems to me that we're overlooking a distinction between what's
allowed when creating a character vs what's allowed in play.

Nice observation. I do think Peter Knutsen means both situations, but I'm not

Yes. I want the GM to follow the rules during the campaign. If he is
unhappy about them, then he is free to use his foresight, intelligence
and wisdom to write down a list of house rules before the campaign
begins. If he lacks foresight, intelligence and wisdom, he's (at best)
on the wrong side of the GM's screen.

But I also care greatly about character creation. As evidence, I offer
the fact that character creation takes up a huge amount of page count in
every one of the three RPG rules systems that I have designed.

As far as I'm concerned, flexibility is a *rules* issue. The "GM who
uses an inflexible character creation rules systme but who is eminently
approchable about players who wish non-standard characters" might as
well not exist.

I'll never *get* that far. I'll ask the GM what rules system he is
using. If he mentions a rules system which I know to not be among the
top 20% (if not top 5%) most flexible in existence, I'll decline the
invitation to join his campaign. Hence I'll never find out. It strikes
me as insane for a flexibly minded GM to chose an inflexible character
creation system. Insane and self-contradictory.

Post by David Alex Lamb
sure. Crunchy-in-play seems by far the most important to me -- but I feel the
pain of someone who spends a while making up a neat by-the-rules character
only to find it banned. I don't mind banned-in-advance, e.g "no psionics" for
some D&D games.

Banned-in-advance is fine by me, as long as what is left un-banned
allows for sufficient capabilitistic variety.

However, many GMs are control-freaks, and usually they are have enough
low cunning to realize that their dirty job becomes easier the more they
ban. Hence, they ban without inhibition.

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by Indiana Joe

Post by Peter Knutsen
A crunchy bit is a player-selectable ability (i.e. one that not all
player characters have) which works according to rules, with no (or
at the most very little) "GM discretion" involved.

Hero System would be an example of an extremely crunchy system. There

I'll argue that Hero System doesn't contain any crunchy bits. At best,
it is a system that allows the players to build their own crunchy bits.

But even that gets problematic, because in theory the GM must *approve*
any player-built power.

The defining characteristic of crunchy bits is that players just
*choose* them, ad then inform the GM of their choice - then later again,
during the session, they inform the GM that they *use* their crunchy
bits. Nowhere is the GM empowered to protest, interfere, or interpret
the rules. Nor do the players ask for permission, not even implicitly.

Upon reaching 4th level, a player playing a Fighter in a D&D3 campaign
does not ask the GM for permission to take the "Weapon Specialization"
Feat. He just takes it, writing it down on his character sheet.

Post by Indiana Joe
are ways to model most powers mechanically. There are some things that
it does not model well, but those issues can be dealt with during
character creation instead of during play.

As I've said before, crunch =! crunchy bits.

No doubt Hero System fits most people's definition of "crunchy" (I don't
have one, same way I don't have a definition of "munchkin" or
"narrativist", or other terms which serve no gainful purpose).

But at best the only crunchy bits it contains are the example powers in
the side bars of the core book, and similar example powers in the
supplements. And even then, the GM still needs to *opinioate* on any
given power, before a player can put it on his character sheet. The GM
may, for instance, disagree about the value of an Advantage or
Limitation (thinking that a -1/2 should be changed to a -1/4 or a -3/4).

In theory, a GM could sit down with Hero System and build many hundreds
of pre-approved crunchy bits. Or he could go through all the example
powers in the core book and 1-2 supplements and modify them so that they
have his approval.

But in practice, I doubt that anybody uses the system that way.

[gleichman]

Post by Peter Knutsen
Crunchy bits shift power from the GM and to the players. It is therefore
my assertion that the reason that few RPG rules systems contain crunchy
bits is that most RPG rules systems are designed by GMs and for GMs,
rather than by players and for players.

I think your assertion is incorrect. AoH, which I believe you state lacks
such bits was very much a Player for Player design. Additionally the claim
that they shift power from the GM to the Players any more than traditional
resolution systems seems unsupportable to me.

Nor do I share your implied opinion that this concept is automatically a
good thing. It tends to produce some of the worst results in traditional rpg
design- unexpected and unbalanced power escalations as the bits interact.

[Beowulf Bolt]

Post by Peter Knutsen
With the Action Movie RPG, it's different. I'm actively trying to cram
it full of crunchy bits, even going "over the top" sometimes, with the
intent of seeing how it works out in play (especially in terms of
whether it does any harm to the brand of "immersion" that I value).

Are you putting the rules for this online the way you are with
Sagaftl? (I am in the advanced pre-prep for a cinematic campaign and am
shopping around for systems [currently favouring a modified form of
Feng-Shui, but it isn't that good a fit for what I want to do.].)

Biff

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by Beowulf Bolt

Post by Peter Knutsen
With the Action Movie RPG, it's different. I'm actively trying to cram
it full of crunchy bits, even going "over the top" sometimes, with the
intent of seeing how it works out in play (especially in terms of
whether it does any harm to the brand of "immersion" that I value).

Are you putting the rules for this online the way you are with

Yes. In fact, a primitive 36-page draft is available in the Files
section of the RPG-Create mailing list, and I have a more elaborate 78
page document on my hard drive, which I'll probably upload soon, after
polishing it a bit.

I'm not sure whether the alpha test document will be made available to
non-subscribers, but the beta test will (and of course the v1.0 doc
after the beta playtest). However, all that are some months into the future.

Post by Beowulf Bolt
Sagaftl? (I am in the advanced pre-prep for a cinematic campaign and am

Sagatafl.

Post by Beowulf Bolt
shopping around for systems [currently favouring a modified form of
Feng-Shui, but it isn't that good a fit for what I want to do.].)

The Action Movie RPG isn't really like Feng Shui at all, except for the
use of action points during combat.

Imagine something like Spycraft 2.0. Then remove character levels. Also
remove the horribly flat d20. Replace d20-style character classes with
ones more akin to Rolemaster's, controlling only the cost of abilities,
without forcing any unwanted abilities upon the player. Hence there's no
multiclassing and no prestige classes, not because they cramp the GM's
ability to lord it over the players, but because they aren't needed in
order for players to get what they might want.


My first design, Multiclass RPG, can fairly be described as an attempt
at "AD&D done right".

My second (still incomplete), Sagatafl, can with even greater fairness
be described as an attempt at "GURPS done right" (although with many
influences from the freeware system Quest FRP v2.1, which in itself is
clearly an attempt at "AD&D done right").

The Action Movie RPG is "Spycraft 2.0 done right", pretty much. The
focus is largely the same, on modern era campaigns with a mixture of
combat and non-combat conflict.

[Beowulf Bolt]

Post by Peter Knutsen

Post by Beowulf Bolt
Sagaftl?

Sagatafl.

Mea culpa. ;)

Post by Peter Knutsen

Post by Beowulf Bolt
shopping around for systems [currently favouring a modified form of
Feng-Shui, but it isn't that good a fit for what I want to do.].)

The Action Movie RPG isn't really like Feng Shui at all, except for
the use of action points during combat.

That's fine. I'm not really looking for something Feng Shui-esque,
but something to model a more modern-day cinematic-style campaign.

Of the systems I own, I've considered (and rejected) Theatrix,
Millennium's End, James Bond, On The Edge, FUDGE and a few others. I've
only settled on Feng Shui heretofore for it's mechanical simplicity and
some stylistic elements, not because it makes a particularly good match
for the campaign (which I don't expect to have much wire-fu,
f'rinstance).

Since I don't expect this campaign to take place within a year or so
(if it happens at all), I have lots of time to keep considering other
options.

Biff

[Peter Knutsen]

[Beowulf:]

Post by Beowulf Bolt

Post by Peter Knutsen

Post by Beowulf Bolt
shopping around for systems [currently favouring a modified form of
Feng-Shui, but it isn't that good a fit for what I want to do.].)

The Action Movie RPG isn't really like Feng Shui at all, except for
the use of action points during combat.

That's fine. I'm not really looking for something Feng Shui-esque,
but something to model a more modern-day cinematic-style campaign.

Well, Action Movie RPG is intended for campaigns with very skilled (even
high-powered) PCs. Just like Sagatafl is.

But I'm not sure what you mean by "cinematic".

You might also check out another post I wrote in here, in which I
contrasted the style of Feng Shui with the intended style of AM RPG.

Post by Beowulf Bolt
Of the systems I own, I've considered (and rejected) Theatrix,
Millennium's End, James Bond, On The Edge, FUDGE and a few others. I've
only settled on Feng Shui heretofore for it's mechanical simplicity and

As with my other systems, the goal of Action Movie RPG is to have
relatively simple in-play rules. However, I care too much about the
characters, especially when it comes to capabilitistic individuality, to
be able (or willing) to design (or use) something as simle as FUDGE or
Feng Shui.

Character creation, as I wrote in the post to which you replied, offers
a wealth of options. Not only a large number of "binary" skills, but
also inborn Gifts, Contacts, and so-called Backgrounds, and a (modest)
number of special traits to simulate various character concepts.

There's also a huge number of character subtype (classes). I had 41
yesterday, and an idea for a 42th (centered around Hero System-style
Cramming, heavily inspired by Jarod from "The Pretender), but now I've
gone and added not only the 42nd character "subtype" but also a 43rd.

I do, however, believe that I'm done now, when it comes to character
subtypes. I'm fairly certain I've covered everything that is appropriate
for the section of the action movie genre that I really care about
(which is everything except the least realistic).

The subtypes divides into 3 types. 11 are Combat subtypes, 18 are
Skilled subtypes and 14 are Special subtypes, ones that get benefits
that doesn't pertain to combat or to the use of non-combat skills.

One thing I'm fairly proud of is the division of almost everything into
8 skills (each with from 8 to 16 subskills). Two combat skills and six
non-combat skills: Melee Combat, Ranged Combat, Charm, Investigative,
Medical, Military, Stealth, Technial.

Any other skill is a Fluff skill and hence very cheap to buy, because
(in the Action Movie RPG) paradigm, it shouldn't cost very many points
to give your character a hobby, even if the hobby is to be a world class
rock star or a brilliant computer game designer. Any skill that can be
presumed to be of little use during adventuring is a Fluff skill.

Another feature is the lack of synergies between attributes and skills.
I've trimmed the traditional RPG system attribute list down to those
five which I believe will frequently be used for "direct rolls" - I even
use the term "saving throw" instead of "attribute" in the rules text:
Health, Perception, Reflexes, Will and Wits.

Traits like Strength, Beauty and Charisma are handled via Gifts.
Dexterity and Agility Gifts orignally weren't going to be in the sysem
at all (since there'd be no point to it), but I later decided to offer
them up as very cheap Gifts anyway, clearly marked with "this probably
won't make any difference"-warning signs.

The lack of attribute-skill synergy results in a system with much less
realism (because players can make self-contradictory characters), but
that's what I've felt like trying to do. In the end, AM RPG is a serious
system - just less serious than Sagatafl.

Post by Beowulf Bolt
some stylistic elements, not because it makes a particularly good match
for the campaign (which I don't expect to have much wire-fu,
f'rinstance).

Action Movie RPG can't do wire-fu either (if I understand the term
correctly), but there will be core rules provisions for relatively
modest supernatural powers, such as Ki usage or faqir-style metabolism
control.

Post by Beowulf Bolt
Since I don't expect this campaign to take place within a year or so
(if it happens at all), I have lots of time to keep considering other
options.

I'd be surprised if the beta test document isn't ready before the end of
2007. Compared to Sagatafl, Action Movie RPG is a much simpler system.

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by Peter Knutsen
There's also a huge number of character subtype (classes). I had 41
yesterday, and an idea for a 42th (centered around Hero System-style
Cramming, heavily inspired by Jarod from "The Pretender), but now I've
gone and added not only the 42nd character "subtype" but also a 43rd.
I do, however, believe that I'm done now, when it comes to character
subtypes. I'm fairly certain I've covered everything that is appropriate
for the section of the action movie genre that I really care about
(which is everything except the least realistic).

In case somebody is curious, here's the full list of character types:

Combat/Melee
Combat/Ranged
-
Combat/Acrobat
Combat/Archaic
Combat/Basic
Combat/Berzerker
Combat/Soldier
Combat/Style
Combat/Swashbuckler
Combat/Unarmed
Combat/Weapon Master


Skilled/Charm
Skilled/Investigative
Skilled/Medical
Skilled/Military
Skilled/Stealth
Skilled/Technical
-
Skilled/Fluff
Skilled/Generalist
-
Skilled/Amnesiac
Skilled/Assistant
Skilled/Chameleon
Skilled/Crammer
Skilled/Educated
Skilled/Expert
Skilled/Learner
Skilled/Maestro
Skilled/Motivator
Skilled/Veteran


Special/Agent
Special/Cool
Special/Driven
Special/Feral
Special/Fixer
Special/Gifted
Special/Ghost
Special/Icon
Special/Ki
Special/Lucky
Special/Near-Perfect
Special/Rich
Special/Saver
Special/Tough

(The older document, available in the Files section of the RPG-Create
mailing list, contains a rather lower number of subtypes)

[n***@wimp.freeuk.com]

Post by Peter Knutsen

Post by n***@wimp.freeuk.com
If you're interested in non-D&D crunchiness, take a look at Burning
Wheel. Lots of crunch (lots and lots of crunch), quite a few k00l

I'm not talking about crunch, I'm talking about crunchy bits.

I use the two terms as synonyms (as I think others do): a system with
many crunchy bits is a system with lots of crunch.

Post by Peter Knutsen

Post by n***@wimp.freeuk.com
p0werz in the form of the Trait system, and a very tactical subsytems

Where? The rule books are on loan to Klaus Mogensen, but I don't recall
*any* crunchy bits in the trait system, just a lot of very vague text.

Many of the traits have specific game-altering rules in them. For
instance (and working from memory), "The Killer" gives additional dice
for ranged combat and additional actions in melee combat, "Fearless"
reduces Hesitation (i.e. Stun), and "Poised" allows rerolls of many
social interaction skills if you don't like the first result.

Overall, the game has rules that govern many aspects of the game and
the GM is expected to abide by those rules, thus limiting their ability
to rule by fiat (reading between the lines, I think this is in response
to GMs that abused their power). In many cases, the Traits modify or
supercede the standard rules in the book. Given the emphasis on
mechanical resolution, it seems that Traits can have a significant
effect on the outcomes.

Neil.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by n***@wimp.freeuk.com
Characters have
Beliefs and Instincts which flag up topics of interest to the GM.
Frex, if a character has the Belief "I will restore the honour of my
family," it says something about where the player wants the game to go.

This sort of thing solves a problem we don't have, and tends
to get in the way as a result. But it's often easy to remove, so
not a barrier to using a system.

What do you mean by "crunchy", though? Violent? Effective?
I think Jon is more into "intricate" and "fully mechanically
represented"--the kind of thing you can crunch on a calculator.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[n***@wimp.freeuk.com]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by n***@wimp.freeuk.com
Characters have
Beliefs and Instincts which flag up topics of interest to the GM.
Frex, if a character has the Belief "I will restore the honour of my
family," it says something about where the player wants the game to go.

This sort of thing solves a problem we don't have, and tends
to get in the way as a result. But it's often easy to remove, so
not a barrier to using a system.

I'm glad you don't have this problem.

However, Beliefs in BW are tied into the reward system: acting in
accordance with a Belief generates Artha (i.e. minor Fate Points), so
you'd have to come up with an alternative trigger for distributing
Artha if you dropped Beliefs.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
What do you mean by "crunchy", though? Violent? Effective?
I think Jon is more into "intricate" and "fully mechanically
represented"--the kind of thing you can crunch on a calculator.

Intricate and mechanical, mainly. See my reply to Peter elsewhere.

If you want to see what BW's like, take a look at their website. Two
chapters of the rulebook are for download at
<http://www.burningwheel.org/wiki/index.php?title=Downloads#Burning_Wheel>.
One is the core rules, the other is the Duel of Wits subsystem for
social conflicts.

Ranged and melee combat follow a similar pattern to the DoW. You have
a palette of actions available (see the "Fight Matrix" download for a
summary for melee); you script what you'll be trying to do in the next
few volleys; volley by volley, you reveal what you've scripted and hope
that events haven't overtaken your plans. It adds a level of tactics
to these high-stakes conflics that's absent from many systems. (The
rules also allow these conflicts to be resolved via single rolls, if
that's what you want).

Neil.

[gleichman]

Post by n***@wimp.freeuk.com
It adds a level of tactics
to these high-stakes conflics that's absent from many systems. (The
rules also allow these conflicts to be resolved via single rolls, if
that's what you want).

Assuming the descriptions of the game I've read are accurate...

Burning Wheel basically took the old failed Action Matrix system of games
like Top Secret and En Garde! and married it to the concept of pre-plotted
movement from war-gaming. In this case however, it attempts to one up most
of those wargame designs by requiring you to pre-plot in blocks of three
rounds.

Generally pre-plot was something of a failure in wargame design. Some people
liked it (I was murder with it, too much so- couldn't find people to play
me) and most IME did not. As a result many games with pre-plotted movement
included options for 'Free Movement'. Seems from the quote above that BW
also has a type of escape hatch.


BTW, different people have different concepts of what tactics consist of. In
my own for example the high profile elements of the BW system aren't
tactical at all. Instead they are an example of strategy where key elements
of success are determined not by game conditions or simulated in-game
character skill, but by 'out-thinking' your opponent in the meta-game.
Basically a overdone rock-scissors-paper game.

[Beowulf Bolt]

Post by gleichman
Assuming the descriptions of the game I've read are accurate...
Burning Wheel basically took the old failed Action Matrix system of
games like Top Secret and En Garde! and married it to the concept of
pre-plotted movement from war-gaming. In this case however, it
attempts to one up most of those wargame designs by requiring you to
pre-plot in blocks of three rounds.

[...snippage]

Post by gleichman
Basically a overdone rock-scissors-paper game.

What I've read of this *seems* interesting, but I really haven't
encountered anyone who has used this for any protracted campaign.
Anyone have such experience with it, and if so, how well did it work?

I am a little hesitant to buy it based upon the little I've read and
heard for the very reason espoused by Brian (that it would be little
more than RPS in the end).

Biff

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by gleichman
Generally pre-plot was something of a failure in wargame design. Some people
liked it (I was murder with it, too much so- couldn't find people to play
me) and most IME did not. As a result many games with pre-plotted movement
included options for 'Free Movement'. Seems from the quote above that BW
also has a type of escape hatch.

I used to play a lot of Star Fleet Battles and have to class myself
with the "most did not" group.... It felt like doing needlework
while wearing mittens. Challenging, certainly, but not all that fun.

Post by gleichman
BTW, different people have different concepts of what tactics consist of. In
my own for example the high profile elements of the BW system aren't
tactical at all. Instead they are an example of strategy where key elements
of success are determined not by game conditions or simulated in-game
character skill, but by 'out-thinking' your opponent in the meta-game.
Basically a overdone rock-scissors-paper game.

I only really enjoy combat tactics if I can think about them in-
character. I love v3's flanking and sneak attack rules, because my
character and I are thinking much the same way--how can I get into
position to deliver a souped-up strike, without letting my foe get
an extra chance to hit me? It's very direct, even though flanking
is somewhat abstract (characters do not actually have a facing, but
if they have foes 180 degrees apart, they are flanked).

I did not do well at all with Torg's action-cards mechanic because
there was so much distance between the card management I was doing
and what my character was doing. I think a pre-plot would give
me similar problems. Card management is, I think, a kind of pre-plot
in that you have to predict future need to make correct decisions
about the card you play right now.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Gary Johnson]

Post by Peter Knutsen

Post by Stephen McIlvenna
2. It works because AC lags so far behind Attack Bonus at higher levels

Is this actually the case? D&D3 offers several different "types" of AC
bonus, and has clear rules which say that different types of bonuses
stack with each other. For instance there's the Armour bonus and the
Shield bonus. Armour can give up to 8 points of non-magical AC, plus 5
points of magical AC on top of that. Non-magical shields can only give
an AC bonus of 2 (for a large shield), but on top of that you can have a
further 5 points of magical shield AC. Thirdly there's the Deflection
type of AC bonus. I don't know how high that can go, but a good guess
would be +5.

IME, most character builds find maintaining a high AC compromises other
aspects of the build - particularly the ability to deal damage. Also, some
monsters can routinely hit characters with ACs in the mid-30s because they
have many hit dice (and thus a substantial base attack bonus) and they are
very big (large or huge size, and thus a substantial strength bonus), and
that makes getting a high AC less valuable. "If I'm going to get hit
anyway, I only need enough AC that the secondary and tertiary attacks have
a decent chance of missing." IME, that makes getting an AC in the high 20s
the goal.

For example, it can take ~55K of character wealth to get an AC in the
mid-30s:

Full Plate +3 = 10650 gp
Heavy Shield +3 = 9170 gp
Ring of Protection +3 = 18000 gp
Amulet of Natural Armour +3 = 18000 gp
Longsword +1 = 2315 gp
Total = 58135 gp

AC = 10 + 11 (full plate) + 5 (shield) + 3 (deflection) + 3 (natural
armour) +1 (Dex bonus) = 33

That's a substantial outlay of wealth - IIRC, it would be most if not all
of a 10th level character's expected wealth. It would be more reasonable
to assume the character's wealth gets spread more evenly between defensive
and offensive magic items, possibly as follows:

Full plate +2 = 5650
Heavy shield +2 = 4170
Ring of Protection +2 = 8000
Amulet of Health +2 = 4000
Belt of Strength +4 = 16000
Longsword +3 = 18315
Total = 58135 gp

This character has AC 27 and a to hit of +21/+16 (+10 BAB + 6 Str
(starting 16, 2 stat increases, +4 belt of Strength) +2 greater weapon
focus + 3 magic weapon). By comparison, the defensive build had AC 33 and
a to hit of +17/+12.

The "standard" build hits themselves most of the time with their first
attack, and half the time with their second attack, which they hit the
"defensive" build a little less than half the time with the first attack.
Conversely, the "defensive" build hits the offensive build about half the
time with the first attack.

What makes the situation uneven is that the "standard" build does on
average 4 more damage per hit (1d8 + 3 magic +6 strength +2 weapon
specialisation = average 16 versus 1d8 + 1 magic + 4 strength + 2 weapon
specialisation = average 12) and has 10 more hit points (because of the
amulet of health). Factor in that most spellcasting buffs improve to hit
and not AC, and the "standard" build's additional damage should see them
come out the winner.

Against opponents with lower AC, such as another "standard" build", once
they start being buffed they can start to power attack for more damage
without adversely affecting their chance to hit. Also, if they're really
serious about damage, they would be using a two-handed weapon. A
greatsword wielding "standard" build would still have +21 to hit, but
would be doing on average an extra 9 damage on average (2d6 + 3 magic + 9
strength + 2 weapon specialisation = 21 average). Their AC would drop to
24 (assuming they spend the money allocated to the shield on an extra +1
to their full plate), so the "defensive" build will hit them more often -
but I'm still confident the two-weapon fighter has a reliable advantage.

Again IME, you're more likely to see high AC characters among the
Dex-based low-damage builds, such as rogues or monks. Dex-based builds are
more attractive for high-AC characters because it results in high touch AC
characters as well, which reduces the danger of being hit by
grapple-monsters, ray spells, and incorporeal touch attacks. Those builds
take advantage of the range of bonus types available, particularly bonuses
provided by magic spells.

For example, my wife's Living Greyhawk monk 5/tattooed monk 9 build has a
starting AC of 34 (IIRC) and a touch AC of 27. She can then use a class
ability to alter self into a lizardwoman (+5 natural armour = AC 39), and
when pushed use another class ability to gain a +5 dodge bonus for 9
rounds (= AC 44, touch AC 32). That pushes her character's AC high enough
that some opponents can only hit on natural 20s. However, she's had to
work hard with a monk build to get as much damage as she doees: her damage
is 2d8+2, +1d6+1 when she has time to activate a class ability, +9 when
smiting, for an average of 15 damage, 24 when pulling out all the stops.
By comparison, a friend's paladin/pious templar build has what I consider
typical AC (high 20s), routinely averages 30+ damage before using any
class abilities like smite evil, and has a much better threat range (17-20
instead of 20).

I think this post has rambled a bit, but I hope it gives some feel for the
mechanics of the trade-off between AC, to hit and damage.

Cheers,

Gary Johnson

[gleichman]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
As you can see, it's a lot of different things, not just one
thing. You improve number of attacks, damage per attack,
and chance of a critical, and they multiply.

I knew back when 3rd first came out that they had significantly increased
the damage output of melee and ranged attacks. I wondered at the time why
they thought that was a good idea. I didn't take the time to add it up, but
given what you've detailed here, it's much worse than I first believed.
Things aren't helped by the lack of significant methods to increase one's
own defense either.

Maybe those more expert in 3.5 D&D will have some suggestions. I'm reduced
to "burn it down and find better".

Along that line...

1. Go back to a earlier version of D&D.
2. Try Iron Heroes, Iron Gauntlets, True 20 or even Hackmaster (the last is
a joke, but maybe not as big of one as it should be).

If using published modules, such a choice may be troublesome- but no more so
I think then fixing 3.5. I've had great success in using one systems modules
for different games in the past.

Heck, given how huge and complex the interactions are in modern D&D, I'm
thinking Age of Heroes is a simpler game system.

[Peter Knutsen]

gleichman wrote:
[...]

Post by gleichman
Heck, given how huge and complex the interactions are in modern D&D, I'm
thinking Age of Heroes is a simpler game system.

Age of Heroes is very light on crunchy bits, whereas they are one of the
primary selling point of D&D3/3.5.

[gleichman]

Post by Peter Knutsen
[...]

Post by gleichman
Heck, given how huge and complex the interactions are in modern D&D, I'm
thinking Age of Heroes is a simpler game system.

Age of Heroes is very light on crunchy bits, whereas they are one of the
primary selling point of D&D3/3.5.

The idea that AoH is a simplier game than 3.5, with a slower Pace of
Decision (given Mary's 1 round average combat experience) is....

I'm not sure what it is.

[Jeff Heikkinen]

Chances are suprisingly good that Mary K. Kuhner was not wearing pants

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
At high level you probably get 3 attacks/round, and Haste will
add one. Or you could reduce the damage a bit and go double
weapon. You may not be able to Power Attack on the later
attacks for fear of missing (though my player did anyway, and
he is smart so probably it did pay off).

Well, here's a big part of the problem. Read Power Attack. You can't
just use it on one of your attacks then drop it for the others:

========================
On your action, ***before making attack rolls for a round***, you may
choose to subtract a number from all melee attack rolls and add the same
number to all melee damage rolls. This number may not exceed your base
attack bonus. ***The penalty on attacks and bonus on damage apply until
your next turn.***
========================

This keeps the attack penalty meaningful, when making full attacks.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Jeff Heikkinen
Chances are suprisingly good that Mary K. Kuhner was not wearing pants

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
You may not be able to Power Attack on the later
attacks for fear of missing (though my player did anyway, and
he is smart so probably it did pay off).

Well, here's a big part of the problem. Read Power Attack. You can't

[snip]

You'll note I said "but my player did anyway." Apparently he did
it because it was required by the rules, not because it was optimal,
but the outcome was still that Power Attack produced more average
damage than non-Power Attack--otherwise he wouldn't have used it.
He knows the rules better than I do.

I have not, myself, had a character with Power Attack and multiple
attacks yet. I like to play v3.5 at 4th and 5th levels, which for
me are the "sweet spot" where combat is tactically interesting.
I'll report on my experiences with _SCAP_ when we get past that
point--we have an agreement, for the SCAP game, that we aren't going
to respect my usual preference not to have my characters advance
past 6th. We'll see what happens, but I expect either TPK or
campaign abandonment by 10th.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Rupert Boleyn]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
At high level you probably get 3 attacks/round, and Haste will
add one. Or you could reduce the damage a bit and go double
weapon. You may not be able to Power Attack on the later
attacks for fear of missing (though my player did anyway, and
he is smart so probably it did pay off).

I'm not sure if I'm reading you right, but you can't actually change your
level of Power Attack in a round once it's set. However, at high levels
unless your opponent has a stupidly high AC 5-10 level of Power Attack
makes sense despite the likely miss with your last attack.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
Then, do something to increase your crit range. (At least these don't
stack anymore in 3.5 as they did in 3.0--unless you find something in a
splatbook that lets you do it.) But you should be critting on a roll of
17+ or so, and with four attacks the chance of a crit is pretty good.

The only WotC enhancement that stacks that I'm aware of that stacks
doesn't imporve your crit range, but merely gives a +4 bonus to your
confirmation roll.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
It's fairly easy to get 100+ points of damage/round. Most of this is
*not* buffing spells, though buffing spells can make it worse.

A high level cleric is comparable - ours used Righteous Might for the size
increase and the +4 Str. On top of Str 18 and a +6 belt that's Str 28, for
+13 damage with his longspear (that does 2d6+5 for being large and
magical, with a 20-foot reach). A fighter would probably not be enlarged,
but would be just as strong, would have a two-handed sword, for the same
base damage (but no reach), and would have all the specialisation feats,
for another +4 or +6 damage (depending on level). That's about 2d6+22 for
the fighter. A barbarian would do even more, because his rage gives a
strength bonus and that gets the x1.5 multiplier. At 16th+ level they get
four attacks a round, and haste gives a 5th, at the best bonus. assuming
four hits with a 5-point PA that's about 120 points of damage, easily.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I don't recall the archer version. It's more dependent on prestiege
classes and the like, but also more effective since if you don't need
100 points to kill one target, you can spread the arrows out and kill
three. (Jon says you can't reliably get 100 points with an archer, but
50-60 is doable. Mages, goodbye.)

With haste and Rapid Shot you can get six shots a round at 16th+ level,
three at your full bonus (assuming the right feats), and you can ignore
all cover and all but full concealment, as well as range penalties. With a
decent bow and high strength that's 6 x 1d8+16 for a fighter who
specialises in archery, so 100-odd points a round is doable.

As for wizards, a maximised or empowered Disintegrate plus a Quickened
Cone of Cold (this requires you're 18th+ level) will do (at 18th level)
either (6 x 2 x 18) + (3.5 x 15) = 268.5 or (3.5 x 2 x 18 x 1.5) + (3.5 x
15) = 241.5 damage on average - and the Disintegrate can critical for
double damage. However, as most high-end monsters have good Fort save,
and/or Spell Resistance, the Disintegrate will tend to do only 30 or 26.25
points, or nothing at all. Dominate Monster is a better show-stopper than
raw damage if the opponent is susceptible to mind-affecting spells, IME.

[Gary Johnson]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I've recently run a couple of games in v3.5. One thing that

<snip of two examples>

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
My player really likes the "neat toys" aspects of high-level play, but I
am bored to death by the combat. There is no use spending a lot of time
coming up with strategies for NPCs who are all dead before they can
act....but when this does not happen, frequently the PCs are all dead
before *they* can act. This is not exciting either.
How do people generate interesting situations at these levels? What can
be done about the combats getting shorter and shorter until they are
essentially decided as soon as they start? Toward the end of _Spider
Queen_ it was not even worth setting out the miniatures.

Hi, Mary. How much do you want to tinker with D&D mechanics? For example,
when I was running my last D&D campaign (4th to 18th level - 85 sessions
of play), I implemented a number of house rules to try and emulate some of
the features of lower-level play at higher levels, such as "characters
miss reasonably often with some of their attacks" and "characters tend not
to die from one failed save".

* I introduced a Base Defence Bonus that added to AC. This made secondary
and tertiary attacks missed more often, plus it reduced the benefit of
power attacking.

* I changed "save or die" effects into "save or take lots of damage"
effects, along the lines of the change to the Disintegrate spell from 3.0
edition to 3.5 edition. This made failing one saving throw less dramatic.

I also made changes that reduced the likelihood of rapid death in combat.

* I didn't use the Death from Massive Damage rule, where characters who
take 50+ hit points in one attack must make a DC 15 Fort save or die.

* I extended both the range of negative hit points on which the character
is disabled (that is, the character is still conscious and can do things -
including surrender) and the range of negative hit points on which the
character is unconscious and dying. This reduced the risk of going from
positive hit points straight to dead at -10 hit points or more.

Finally, I also emphasised non-mechanic setting elements that reduced the
importance of killing opponents.

* Many opponents surrendered and ransomed themselves with some of their
equipment rather than fight to the death.

* Some opponents were "interaction only" opponents, where the characters
had to persuade them to work with them or figure out a way to work around
them, and beating them up wouldn't solve the problems.

The cumulative effect of these changes seemed to influence how the players
approached the game, as they internalised the new assumptions presented by
the rules changes and by the way NPCs acted in the game setting. A fuller
version of these changes is available on my website at
http://www.uq.net.au/~zzjohnsg/potestasdnd.htm, if you're interested, and
a summary of what happened during play is available at
http://www.uq.net.au/~zzjohnsg/campaign/adventures.htm .

For a second perspective, I also run relatively high-level Living Greyhawk
scenarios (for Average Party Levels of 10 and 12) approximately one a
month. When working with those pre-written scenarios, I tend not to worry
about the characters blowing through an encounter too easily - Living
Greyhawk parties are assembled on a game-by-game basis, so I often run
games for parties with sub-optimal combinations of classes, abilities, and
resources.

As a general "thinking-aloud" observation, I think it's common to find
that player skill has less of an impact than the randomness of the d20
roll at lower levels than at higher levels, but that higher level play is
more risky if players aren't very skilled because the increased power of
the opponents reduces the impact on them of the randomness of the d20
roll. In other words, players who aren't good at working with the game
system will start to struggle with higher level play because of the impact
of "save or die" effects and of opponents getting to hit their too-low AC
with all attacks - in that case, I recommend modifying the game system to
ameliorate those effects.

On the other hand, skilled players can lead to the problem you've
described, where the players are "too good" at using their character
abilities to defeat their opponents. In that case, you could modify the
game system to ameliorate those effects - but it's probably just going to
lead to a new plateau point, as the players learn how to use the revised
rules to get back their one-round-kill strategy. If the players aren't
willing to change their play style to accommodate your preference (such
as having their characters try to persuade opponents not to attack them
instead of having their characters kill them all and take their stuff),
t's probably better to modify the challenges presented to the characters
so that combat is less important in play.

Cheers,

Gary Johnson

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Gary Johnson
Hi, Mary. How much do you want to tinker with D&D mechanics? For example,
when I was running my last D&D campaign (4th to 18th level - 85 sessions
of play), I implemented a number of house rules to try and emulate some of
the features of lower-level play at higher levels, such as "characters
miss reasonably often with some of their attacks" and "characters tend not
to die from one failed save".

We're relying on modules because our lives are too busy for
game prep now, so house rules that remove things are okay to a point,
but ones that require developing new subsystems are not very good.
And too many house rules can render the NPC spell lists and combat
tactics in the module either useless or impossible.

We never got to high level with Iron Heroes, but it does do some of
what you describe for your house rules. Maybe I should give it
another look. Its tone annoys me, but perhaps I can learn the rules and
discard the tone.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Gary Johnson]

Post by Gary Johnson
Hi, Mary. How much do you want to tinker with D&D mechanics? For
example, when I was running my last D&D campaign (4th to 18th level -
85 sessions of play), I implemented a number of house rules to try and
emulate some of the features of lower-level play at higher levels, such
as "characters miss reasonably often with some of their attacks" and
"characters tend not to die from one failed save".

We're relying on modules because our lives are too busy for game prep
now, so house rules that remove things are okay to a point, but ones
that require developing new subsystems are not very good. And too many
house rules can render the NPC spell lists and combat tactics in the
module either useless or impossible.

Hmm ... if that's the case, you really do need to be able to play "out of
the box". I was taking published modules and spending a couple of hours at
most (usually 1-2 hours) adapting them so that opponents were consistent
with my houserules - most of the houserules changed spell effects, not
character design elements, and the big character design change was the
Base Defence Bonus to AC, which I could manage for non-character levelled
opponents by adding the BDB to their AC on scratch paper (with the
exception of creatures who got huge natural armour in the core rules to
make their AC competitive, like dragons, though I had a workaround for
that as well) - but from what you write, even that sort of game prep time
commitment may be too much.

We never got to high level with Iron Heroes, but it does do some of what
you describe for your house rules. Maybe I should give it another look.
Its tone annoys me, but perhaps I can learn the rules and discard the
tone.

I think the big limitation with Iron Heroes is that it's not very
compatible with standard D&D scenarios as written, so if you're not
playing Iron Heroes scenarios the problem of adaptability comes into play
again. Iron Heroes is designed so that the characters are as powerful as
standard D&D characters when it comes to fighting opponents, but don't
have to have magic items to achieve that power level. If Iron Heroes
characters are placed in a standard D&D scenario in a standard D&D
setting, where they can get magic items by killing their opponents and
taking their stuff, they become even more powerful than standard D&D
characters of their level - exacerbating some of the problems you've
previously mentioned.

Cheers,

Gary Johnson

[Stephen McIlvenna]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
How do people generate interesting situations at these levels?
What can be done about the combats getting shorter and shorter until
they are essentially decided as soon as they start? Toward the
end of _Spider Queen_ it was not even worth setting out the
miniatures.

Does magic tend to be the overwhelming factor that leads to unsatisfactory
combat? I seem to vaguely recall some of your older posts about 'City of the
Spider Queen' which described lots of scry / teleport / mass damage
combinations.

Most of our d20 games focused on characters from about 3rd to 12th levels,
so I don't have much experience of the really high end of play. We also
tended to shy away from dedicated magic users, preferring rogues, fighters,
rangers, etc with maybe a few cleric levels to boost abilities. The only
real skew I noted at higher levels was that high Attack Bonuses soon made
Armour Class almost irrelevant and lots of Hit Points the main defensive
attribute.

I've never been a fan of what might be called the 'default' mode of D&D, by
which I mean increasingly scaling the CR of encounters to match the party,
wandering (random) encounters with little story relevance, the dominance of
save-or-you're-dead (or -incapacitated) spells, an assumption of regular
character death. My games were more likely to feature skirmishes with
low-level foes (thugs who drop or flee after a few hits) or duels with
skilled bosses (with disarms, trips, etc often deciding matters rather than
an outright kill).

Like all parts of the game, different players, of course, have different
tastes when it comes to fight encounters. Combat is certainly an area where
the chosen game mechanics strongly effect play, but even a system like D&D
can be made to work if you know which bits you like and steer clear of those
you don't. (Assuming all players and GM recognise and agree on those
preferences).

Stephen
http://www.btinternet.com/~s.mci/

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I've recently run a couple of games in v3.5. One thing that
My husband, running _Shackled City_ for 4th level PCs, just did a
"boss fight" which was quite exciting: the PCs got lucky with Web
just in time to save their asses, had trouble with the boss even after

Some weeks ago, there was a thread in rec.games.frp.dnd about the web
spell. Some felt that it was overpowered. Various house rules were proposed.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
he got out of the web, hit each other with alchemist's fire and
tanglefoot bags, did some tense combat-healing stunts to get
the main fighter up, manuvered for critical flanking bonuses, etc.
About six months ago I ran _City of the Spider Queen_, which
starts at 10th and goes up from there. Interesting fights of this
sort barely ever happened; most fights were settled in 1 round,
generally with a stereotyped PC strategy, and often before most
of the opponents had any actions.
My player really likes the "neat toys" aspects of high-level play,

Is it the crunchy bits that your players like?

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
but I am bored to death by the combat. There is no use spending
a lot of time coming up with strategies for NPCs who are all dead
before they can act....but when this does not happen, frequently
the PCs are all dead before *they* can act. This is not exciting
either.
How do people generate interesting situations at these levels?
What can be done about the combats getting shorter and shorter until
they are essentially decided as soon as they start? Toward the
end of _Spider Queen_ it was not even worth setting out the
miniatures.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Peter Knutsen

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
My player really likes the "neat toys" aspects of high-level play,

Is it the crunchy bits that your players like?

I'm afraid I don't understand this question.

He likes the prestiege classes and splatbook spells, feats and
items--it's neophilia as much as anything else, I think. He
likes to see rules suddenly interact in novel ways. (I don't,
generally speaking, when I'm GMing!) He likes to get to see
high-level spells and abilities, and those lower-level ones that
really come into their own later on. He likes to see how
combat balance and so forth shift with level. (I.e. he knows
how to set up the items and pre-cast spells for a party below
the level at which Disjunction becomes a major issue, but how
does his strategy have to change when Disjunction starts to become
common?)

Unfortunately, while I appreciate his enjoyment, the resulting
game isn't interesting to me at all. The decisionmaking all happens
when I'm not even there, while he is picking his classes, spells
and items. In play, it's just--splat!

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Peter Knutsen

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
My player really likes the "neat toys" aspects of high-level play,

Is it the crunchy bits that your players like?

I'm afraid I don't understand this question.

"Crunchy bits" is a specific term, used by RPG designers, to refer to
character abilities that work according to rules, with little or no GM
"discretion" involved. Such abilities do not have to be internal to the
character, as the term also covers equipment, such as magic items, with
special abilities.

[s***@sonic.net]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I've recently run a couple of games in v3.5. One thing that

<SNIP>

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
How do people generate interesting situations at these levels?
What can be done about the combats getting shorter and shorter until
they are essentially decided as soon as they start? Toward the
end of _Spider Queen_ it was not even worth setting out the
miniatures.

I don't believe that you *CAN* fix the problem without either changing
the rules or sub-optimizing the party/tactics.

Once "scry - buff - attack w/ 1st-strike-advantage" (and similar sequences,
q.v. "Teleport" et al.) become viable, the only way (IMHO) to fix matters
is to introduce systems to offset such sequences... illusions that fool
scrying; insta-buff spells on tap; etc. Or, of course, have no mages (or
mages (and Clerics) who don't have buff spells), etc...

I think new systems is the way to go.

Why should a roving band of adventurers be able to apply overwhelming force
as a viable strategy against a foe that includes both higher numbers AND
higher-level opponents, *AND* that has had years or even decades to build
their defenses? Answer: the systems and mechanics of D&D favor "raiding
party" (aka "adventurer") strategies. Fix for that: new systems/mechanics
etc, that entrenched defenders can use against adventurers.

Think of it as the "castle" (dungeon) having magical defenses akin to its
physical defenses. Invent some daylong ritual that mages can conduct for
the rogues & fighters such that the next time they yell "tally ho!" (a free
action) they get a +8 to-hit bonus & 3d4 rounds of "Haste," but only within
the confines of the castle (or dungeon). Maybe invoke a "teleport confusion"
effect, such that who TP's is automatically Confused for 2d6 rounds (Will
save for half duration). Etc.

[DougL]

Post by s***@sonic.net
Once "scry - buff - attack w/ 1st-strike-advantage" (and similar sequences,
q.v. "Teleport" et al.) become viable, the only way (IMHO) to fix matters
is to introduce systems to offset such sequences... illusions that fool
scrying; insta-buff spells on tap; etc. Or, of course, have no mages (or
mages (and Clerics) who don't have buff spells), etc...

Forbiddance is available one spell level after teleport, has permanent
duration, effects a large area, is hard to dispel, and makes
scry/buff/teleport fail universally.

Strangely even LONG before anyone got teleport in my game it had been
widely mentioned that EVERY major fortress/city, and most ruined
fortresses had a substantial underground area covered by a forbiddance.

Hallow/Unhallow can also wreck havoc on Scry/Buff/Teleporters. (You can
attach Dimentional Anchor to an Unhallow or Hallow at level 9, which is
the same level that is required to cast teleport!)

There are also various illusions and counter-scrying spells in the
standard rules. You can permanent Mord. Private Sanctuary; or pay
someone else to cast it, and scrying simply fails.

Heck, Scry/Buff/Teleport fails against a lousy ROPE TRICK! 2nd level
spell, but you're not on this plane of existence while sleeping.
Parties often sleep in Rope Tricks while in the field starting before
they can cast teleport at all. Why don't their foes ever do this?

Post by s***@sonic.net
I think new systems is the way to go.

I don't. I think you need to build your world with an awareness that
the really worthwhile targets have defenses. This is actually an easy
one to defend against. Heck, by level 17-20 private demi-planes (with
properties advantaging the defenders) aren't an unreasonable defensive
measure. But Detect Scrying is lower level than teleport and has a 24
hour duration and detects ALL scrying attempts, often giving a vision
and range and bearing on the scryer. You really wanna scry on everyone
you oppose?

The only rule you need is that since you weren't in the same area as
the target prior to teleporting you don't get a surprise round. That
and noticing that BtB scrying sensors can be spotted by a DC 20 Int
Check.

Post by s***@sonic.net
Why should a roving band of adventurers be able to apply overwhelming force
as a viable strategy against a foe that includes both higher numbers AND
higher-level opponents, *AND* that has had years or even decades to build
their defenses? Answer: the systems and mechanics of D&D favor "raiding
party" (aka "adventurer") strategies. Fix for that: new systems/mechanics
etc, that entrenched defenders can use against adventurers.

Only if you ignore the mechanics that don't favor the raiders and
assume that no one bothers to defend against the obvious attack.

You try to scry on someone when he's asleep, scry fails. It almost
always will against even a 8th level party that's moderately paranoid,
why the heck should it work against CR10+ boss monsters?

Scry/Buff/Teleport works against minor henchthings and has about a 1-3
level window where it sometimes works against bosses.

My PC's have never had it work against a boss (it does work, and work
well against many lower CR foes), and they ALL have precausions that
make sure it won't work well on them when they're at home. And every
one of them uses a different set of precausions.

Post by s***@sonic.net
Think of it as the "castle" (dungeon) having magical defenses akin to its
physical defenses. Invent some daylong ritual that mages can conduct for
the rogues & fighters such that the next time they yell "tally ho!" (a free
action) they get a +8 to-hit bonus & 3d4 rounds of "Haste," but only within
the confines of the castle (or dungeon). Maybe invoke a "teleport confusion"
effect, such that who TP's is automatically Confused for 2d6 rounds (Will
save for half duration). Etc.

Teleport confusion is too harsh, confusion often makes you attack
friends, stunned or something similar would work. But is unneeded
unless your oponnents are often are always sleeping in the open, and
why should they EVER do so?

Scry/Buff/Teleport works only on the thoughroughly unprepared or
substantially lower level.

DougL

[Gary Johnson]

The only rule you need is that since you weren't in the same area as the
target prior to teleporting you don't get a surprise round. That and
noticing that BtB scrying sensors can be spotted by a DC 20 Int Check.

The Spell Compendium has the Anticipate Teleport and Greater Anticipate
Teleport spells (3rd and 6th level, IIRC) with long durations (1
hour/caster level, possibly a flat 24 hours). The effect of the spells is
that when someone teleports near the target, the target is warned and
their arrival is delayed by 1 or 3 rounds, depending on which spell was
cast. That gives the target time to prepare or escape.

Cheers,

Gary Johnson

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Gary Johnson

The only rule you need is that since you weren't in the same area as the
target prior to teleporting you don't get a surprise round. That and
noticing that BtB scrying sensors can be spotted by a DC 20 Int Check.

The Spell Compendium has the Anticipate Teleport and Greater Anticipate
Teleport spells (3rd and 6th level, IIRC) with long durations (1
hour/caster level, possibly a flat 24 hours). The effect of the spells is
that when someone teleports near the target, the target is warned and
their arrival is delayed by 1 or 3 rounds, depending on which spell was
cast. That gives the target time to prepare or escape.

That sounds more germane. We didn't find that the loss of the
surprise round was sufficient at all.

Teleport raises a couple of issues:

Any soft but valuable targets in the enemy ranks have to be fully
protected *all the time* (assuming divination magic can be used to
find them). They can never be away from their screening forces.
They can never be without their magical defenses, or they will lose
if a key enemy gets initiative, even without surprise.

There is no defense in depth. You can't harry and weaken the
foe, you have no time to concentrate force in response, if you
want to be able to react you must have pre-prepared reaction
forces which do not take time to mobilize.

If your defensive reactions are expensive (using up magic
items, etc) they can be exhausted by a series of feints. The
scry-spotting ability can either lead to a series of responses
to false alarms which will eventually deplete all of your
expendible resources (as well as reducing your acuteness of
response, if we're being at all realistic here) or lead to
"We scry on them a few times every day till the time we
don't see a response--that's the time they didn't detect our
Scry--then we Teleport."

Giving a few rounds to counter-Teleport or cast defenses or
concentrate forces could help quite a bit. It's important
not to allow any Teleport-like abilities which let the wizard
Teleport someone else in--I worry about summoned demons--
or the attackers can again deplete the defender's resources
without risk.

Of course the NPCs can do this too. It's a very short
campaign if they do. We had a module encounter which was
basically PCs vs PCs, though the enemy didn't have the
real magic items; even so, it was nearly a total party kill,
and that was at medium levels. At high levels I think it
would be "Roll a d20, low roller dies, on a genuine tie
everyone dies".

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[gleichman]

Post by DougL
Scry/Buff/Teleport works only on the thoughroughly unprepared or
substantially lower level.
DougL

I watching this exchange with some interest and would like to toss a
random comment out: It appears to me that the counter-spells is
basically a method of removing offensive toys.

This brings up a number of questions.

1. Why provide the players such cool offensive tools if they have such
a limited range of viable targets?

2. If the effect is basically negation of an attack Strategy, why
include them in the rules as such specific options. If it was a math
equation it is nothing more than dropping out common terms and
expending a few spell slots- seems simpler to me to just reduce the
spell slots and remove the offending spells.

I can think of answers for the above, but I would like to see yours.

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by gleichman
I watching this exchange with some interest and would like to toss a
random comment out: It appears to me that the counter-spells is
basically a method of removing offensive toys.
This brings up a number of questions.
1. Why provide the players such cool offensive tools if they have such
a limited range of viable targets?

It could be the case that the people who designed those D&D3 crunchy
bits made mistakes, due to insufficient rules engineering skill, and
ended up making something that was far too good. Realizing their
mistake, they then made up countermeasures.

I often find myself needing to design some kind of crunchy bit, with the
twin goals of making it cool/useful *and* not over-powerful.

The concept of Speak With Dead spells, for instance, can have extreme
world consequences if not handled with care. However, I did not find it
at all difficult to devise a rules subsystem that strikes the correct
usefulness balance.

Post by gleichman
2. If the effect is basically negation of an attack Strategy, why
include them in the rules as such specific options. If it was a math

I'm not sure that this is what the designers of D&D3 thought, and it is
probably also an unrealistic assumption to make about the kind of world
that emerges from the D&D3 rules, but it may be the case that the
countermeasures to the spells in question are rare, in world terms.

For instance, they may for all I know exist only on the spell list of a
single class (e.g. Druid) and thus be unavailable to characters of other
classes (e.g. Wizards/Sorcerers and Clerics).

Of course, if the countermeasure spells are of sufficient strategic
value than all serious organizations would take steps to have a subset
of their members multiclass into the required class, even if those
members then suffer the indignity of diminished personal prowess
(spellcasters in D&D3 should generally not multiclass), relative to
their same-level single-classed peers.

Post by gleichman
equation it is nothing more than dropping out common terms and
expending a few spell slots- seems simpler to me to just reduce the
spell slots and remove the offending spells.

A fantasy setting with scrying magic is, everything else being equal,
*richer* than one without scrying magic.

There are types of spells that simply do not work well in games, and
thus should be understood as being "lost in translation" when one moves
from passively consumed written fantasy fiction to interactive fantasy
fiction. Just not a whole lot of types.

Post by gleichman
I can think of answers for the above, but I would like to see yours.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Peter Knutsen
The concept of Speak With Dead spells, for instance, can have extreme
world consequences if not handled with care. However, I did not find it
at all difficult to devise a rules subsystem that strikes the correct
usefulness balance.

The setting of Monte Cook's _Arcanus Unearthed_ has a class called
"akashics" who specialize in tapping into the Universal Memory. I
ran a couple of packaged adventures for this system (it's a D&Dv3
variant). In all of them, the module authors clearly had trouble
internalizing the consequence of having high-level akashics around.
"No one knows who built the towering ruins of..." Um, looking at
the target number table, any 10th level akashic who wants to know
*will* know.

You end up having to invent dozens of different things which confuse
akashic recall, and the whole gameworld starts to feel a bit flimsy
as a result.

I ran an adventure mostly of my own devising, and I had trouble with
this too. I hadn't realized how important "No one knows exactly what
happened in the past" is to my design of scenarios!

Speak with Dead seems like a similar, though more limited, problem.
How did you handle it? .v3 Bardic Knowledge is another troublemaker.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by Peter Knutsen
The concept of Speak With Dead spells, for instance, can have extreme
world consequences if not handled with care. However, I did not find it
at all difficult to devise a rules subsystem that strikes the correct
usefulness balance.

The setting of Monte Cook's _Arcanus Unearthed_ has a class called
"akashics" who specialize in tapping into the Universal Memory. I

I'll have to write up something vaguely simila:, a Remember Past Lives
inborn Power, for Celtic characters on Ärth. That's one thing I'm not
looking forward to.

I'm hoping I can get much of the way by just letting characters with
that Power "remember" skills from past lives, but once it becomes time
for me to actually sit down and create those rules, I'll probably find
that to be insufficient and unsatisfactory.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
ran a couple of packaged adventures for this system (it's a D&Dv3
variant). In all of them, the module authors clearly had trouble
internalizing the consequence of having high-level akashics around.

Consequences of the magic rules isn't something that D&D has ever been
famous for. The Eberron setting might be the official exception (I don't
know, I'm just guessing), and going by "DougL"s posts in
rec.games.frp.dnd he is also quite good about extrapolating from the rules.

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
"No one knows who built the towering ruins of..." Um, looking at
the target number table, any 10th level akashic who wants to know
*will* know.
You end up having to invent dozens of different things which confuse
akashic recall, and the whole gameworld starts to feel a bit flimsy
as a result.
I ran an adventure mostly of my own devising, and I had trouble with
this too. I hadn't realized how important "No one knows exactly what
happened in the past" is to my design of scenarios!
Speak with Dead seems like a similar, though more limited, problem.
How did you handle it? .v3 Bardic Knowledge is another troublemaker.

In Sagatafl, there is a Speak With Dead spell for each spell level,
except the 1st and perhaps the 2nd (it's been a while since I worked on
the Sagatafl spell lists).

The higher level the spell is, the more "build points" it gives you.

You pay a certain number of build points depending on how long ago the
death occured. You pay more if you don't have the body, or aren't at the
burial site, or aren't at the site of death. Any unspent points gives
you the license to ask questions of the spirit of the decased, with
simple questions costing 1 point each and complex question costing
(IIRC) 4 points each. Going by memory, the lowest level spell (3rd
level) might give 2 build points (quite feeble), and the highest level
spell (6th) 10 build points.

If you try to summon a dead spirit more than once, it costs more and
more build points for each time. There may also be a similar "tax" for
spirits that have been summoned before even if not by you but by
somebody else, to reduce acces to spirits who are in "high demand".

I'm not entirely happy having to use this kind of semi-complex "build"
system for spells (I use it with shapechange magic too), but I expect
that it will work fairly well in-play.

Of course the limitations I've put in doesn't do much to limit the
solution of ordinary murder mysteries at all. If you want to kill
somebody and get away with it, you need to keep your identity secret
from the victim as you kill him. - Or else you need to rely on nobody in
the community having learned Necromancy spells (it being an unpopular
"Realm" or school of magic, this isn't an entirely unsafe bet) and on
nobody having inborn Speak With Dead Powers (these powers are rare, but
can show up anywhere, although probably more commonly in some cultures
than others).

The limitations do help to preserve larger setting mysteries, such as
whether Stonehenge was originally erected on Ireland and then magically
moved to Britain, or whether magic was used when the Egyptian Pyramids
were built.

Speak With Dead spells are slow to cast, IIRC with a Cast Cycle time of
either 1 or 6 Minutes per roll (and with a rule of thumb that if you
need more rolls than the spell's level, you're taking a serious Fumble
risk, although this does not quite hold for 5th or 6th lvl spells).

There's a variant of the spells in which the caster enters a trance-like
state and actually "speaks" on behalf of the deceased. That's very
unsettling to watch and to listen to (Necromancy has enough PR problems
as it is), and as variant spells they are common only in some cultures,
but you do get a few more "build points". IIRC the normal spell exists
at levels 3-6, and the variant spells at levels 2-6, meaning that the
variant 6th level spell might (IIRC) give 12-14 "build points", which is
fairly powerful.

One could also invent a variant with much longer casting time (1 Hour
per roll), in exchange for more "build points". I don't think anybody on
Ärth has done that, but it is something that PCs could do if they're
very eager to delve into the past.


As for Bardic Knowledge in D&D3, while reading the rules for it I've
never been struck by any sense of concern. I think it sounds like a neat
ability, and if I get the chance to play in a D&D 3.5 campaign some day
I'd be quite interested in playing a class with such an ability, either
a straight Bard, or a class from Unearthed Arcana called the Cloistered
Cleric. I'm not foreseeing any troubles.

Have you had any specific problems with Bardic Knowledge, in the
campaign you GM? If not, what are your main worries?

[Peter Knutsen]

Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
[...]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
Speak with Dead seems like a similar, though more limited, problem.

I've already answered this in another post...

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
How did you handle it? .v3 Bardic Knowledge is another troublemaker.

...But I'd like to again ask you to share your experiences with the D&D3
Bardic Knowledge ability. I am using a somewhat similar ability in the
Action Movie RPG, so it would be useful to know what the problems are.


In AM RPG, the Knowledge and Science skills are designated as "fluff"
skills, which means they are very cheap to buy. Once you buy a level in
any skill, you then assign levels to the subskills under it. Thus, if
you buy Science 4, you can assign 4 to Chemistry, 3 to Physics, 2 to
Mathematics and 1 to Geology.

Unlike non-Fluff skills, the division of Knowledge and Science into
subskills is not definite. I'll strive to provide a good list of
subskills, but the players should be (reasonably) free to invent
subskills of their own, including combination subskills.

Where does that leave the "font-of-knowledge" character concept, the one
so common in movies? That was exactly my thought, so I invented a
borderline kludgy rule to simulate it. For a somewhat higher point cost
(relative to the retail purchase of Knowledge or Science skill), a
character may have the same skill level in all Science subskills or all
Knowledge subskills. This trait is called Education (Science or
Knowledge) and is suitable for characters with extensive formal or
informal education.

I expect the Education option to be quite popular with players. Some
will have characters concepts where the regular way of buying Knowledge
or Science skill fits perfectly (because the character needs only a few
subskills). Others again need to have high values in specific subskills,
and Educations only go up to 6 (8 with Gifts) which is good but
certainly not spectacular by cinematic standards (Monk, Reed Richards,
or even MacGyver to a lesser extent e.g.). Apart from those two types of
character concepts, Educations will be the quick, easy and fairly cheap
(for low levels of Education anyway) method for giving one's character a
general level of knowledge. Certainly, most of the kinds of characters
I'd tend to play would go for Eduation, rather than purchasing specific
Knowledge or Science subskills.


Hence, I'd like to know about any problems with that type of mechanic,
before playtesting starts. AM RPG's Education doesn't match D&D3's
Bardic Knowledge exactly, but it's kinda the same ballpark.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by Peter Knutsen

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
How did you handle it? .v3 Bardic Knowledge is another troublemaker.

...But I'd like to again ask you to share your experiences with the D&D3
Bardic Knowledge ability. I am using a somewhat similar ability in the
Action Movie RPG, so it would be useful to know what the problems are.

It shares with the v3 social skills the fact that "offense" *very*
rapidly outstrips "defense". A sufficiently focused high level bard
will practically always make the roll. And the rules are quite open-ended
about what you can use it to find out.

Want to blackmail someone? Want to *find* someone? Long-lost heirs?
Missing artifacts? Fugitives? Secret back ways into the fortress?
Do you need to know where the One Ring has gotten to?

I suspect most groups come to a quiet agreement that it doesn't really
do what it says it does, or else don't do any kind of social or
investigative scenarios after mid-levels.

The akashic (same problem) in my Arcanus game encountered a drowned
city with no apparent cultural connections to anything in the gameworld,
because the module author didn't think it would matter--how could
the PCs figure out anything about its history? This was a serious
pain to GM. Later she started getting interested in the history of
the dramojh, and we found multiple instances of "We believe such and
such happens, but no one really knows." Well, *she* could really
know, easily.

Total pain in the ass it was. Even when I made up scenarios myself
I found it hard to be prepared for a PC to whom the whole backstory
was an open book immediately.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[David Alex Lamb]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
It shares with the v3 social skills the fact that "offense" *very*
rapidly outstrips "defense". A sufficiently focused high level bard
will practically always make the roll. And the rules are quite open-ended
about what you can use it to find out.
Want to blackmail someone? Want to *find* someone? Long-lost heirs?
Missing artifacts? Fugitives? Secret back ways into the fortress?
Do you need to know where the One Ring has gotten to?

The SRD says it's for "local notable people, legendary items, or noteworthy
places". Doesn't that somewhat limit what people can use it for? I'd be
inclined to say that an ordinary fortress isn't noteworthy, and most people
aren't notable. For the One Ring, however, I agree that DC 30 may not be high
enough.

[Indiana Joe]

Post by David Alex Lamb

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
It shares with the v3 social skills the fact that "offense" *very*
rapidly outstrips "defense". A sufficiently focused high level bard
will practically always make the roll. And the rules are quite open-ended
about what you can use it to find out.
Want to blackmail someone? Want to *find* someone? Long-lost heirs?
Missing artifacts? Fugitives? Secret back ways into the fortress?
Do you need to know where the One Ring has gotten to?

The SRD says it's for "local notable people, legendary items, or noteworthy
places". Doesn't that somewhat limit what people can use it for? I'd be
inclined to say that an ordinary fortress isn't noteworthy, and most people
aren't notable. For the One Ring, however, I agree that DC 30 may not be high
enough.

Also, Bardic Knowledge deals with legends - not the most specific
source, even if it is accurate. A successful roll should give a clue,
nothing more. Some things would be truly unknown.

[Erol K. Bayburt]

On Wed, 25 Oct 2006 06:52:23 -0400, Indiana Joe

Post by Indiana Joe

Post by David Alex Lamb

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
It shares with the v3 social skills the fact that "offense" *very*
rapidly outstrips "defense". A sufficiently focused high level bard
will practically always make the roll. And the rules are quite open-ended
about what you can use it to find out.
Want to blackmail someone? Want to *find* someone? Long-lost heirs?
Missing artifacts? Fugitives? Secret back ways into the fortress?
Do you need to know where the One Ring has gotten to?

The SRD says it's for "local notable people, legendary items, or noteworthy
places". Doesn't that somewhat limit what people can use it for? I'd be
inclined to say that an ordinary fortress isn't noteworthy, and most people
aren't notable. For the One Ring, however, I agree that DC 30 may not be high
enough.

Also, Bardic Knowledge deals with legends - not the most specific
source, even if it is accurate. A successful roll should give a clue,
nothing more. Some things would be truly unknown.

At what point does this shade into "a quiet agreement that it [bardic
knowledge] doesn't really do what it says it does"?

I'd also like to see a bit more by way of formal guidelines. Maybe:
"The base chance of a random piece of information being noteworthy
enough for bardic knowledge to find is 50%, no matter how well the
bard rolls. The DM should feel free to raise this chance to 100% for
some pieces of information, or to reduce it to 0% for others, when
designing and running scenarios." IOW, information has a base 50%
"miss chance" against being known, with no miss chance for certain
non-secrets and total cover for things that are truely *secret* rather
than merely obscure.

[Indiana Joe]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
On Wed, 25 Oct 2006 06:52:23 -0400, Indiana Joe

Post by Indiana Joe
Also, Bardic Knowledge deals with legends - not the most specific
source, even if it is accurate. A successful roll should give a clue,
nothing more. Some things would be truly unknown.

At what point does this shade into "a quiet agreement that it [bardic
knowledge] doesn't really do what it says it does"?

It's, "bardic knowledge", not, "omniscience". I think the problem is
that the DCs on the table in the core rules are too low for some of the
given examples.

[Peter Knutsen]

Erol K. Bayburt wrote:
[...]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
"The base chance of a random piece of information being noteworthy
enough for bardic knowledge to find is 50%, no matter how well the
bard rolls. The DM should feel free to raise this chance to 100% for
some pieces of information, or to reduce it to 0% for others, when
designing and running scenarios." IOW, information has a base 50%
"miss chance" against being known, with no miss chance for certain
non-secrets and total cover for things that are truely *secret* rather
than merely obscure.

I don't like this mechanic, because it completely ignores the fact that
the character is numerically described on his or her character sheet.

[Erol K. Bayburt]

On Fri, 27 Oct 2006 00:18:34 +0200, Peter Knutsen

Post by Peter Knutsen
[...]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
"The base chance of a random piece of information being noteworthy
enough for bardic knowledge to find is 50%, no matter how well the
bard rolls. The DM should feel free to raise this chance to 100% for
some pieces of information, or to reduce it to 0% for others, when
designing and running scenarios." IOW, information has a base 50%
"miss chance" against being known, with no miss chance for certain
non-secrets and total cover for things that are truely *secret* rather
than merely obscure.

I don't like this mechanic, because it completely ignores the fact that
the character is numerically described on his or her character sheet.

Not liking it is of course your privledge. However, I will point out
that the chance of a bard character knowing a piece of information
isn't solely a function of the numbers on his or her character sheet.
The rest of the game world - including the numbers used to describe
various aspects of the game world - affects this chance as well.

[DougL]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
On Fri, 27 Oct 2006 00:18:34 +0200, Peter Knutsen

Post by Peter Knutsen
[...]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
"The base chance of a random piece of information being noteworthy
enough for bardic knowledge to find is 50%, no matter how well the
bard rolls. The DM should feel free to raise this chance to 100% for
some pieces of information, or to reduce it to 0% for others, when
designing and running scenarios." IOW, information has a base 50%
"miss chance" against being known, with no miss chance for certain
non-secrets and total cover for things that are truely *secret* rather
than merely obscure.

I don't like this mechanic, because it completely ignores the fact that
the character is numerically described on his or her character sheet.

Not liking it is of course your privledge. However, I will point out
that the chance of a bard character knowing a piece of information
isn't solely a function of the numbers on his or her character sheet.
The rest of the game world - including the numbers used to describe
various aspects of the game world - affects this chance as well.

But whether a particular person is a notable local, a particular item
legendary, or a particular place noteworthy is NOT RANDOM. It either is
or it isn't one of those things. Making the point that Bardic Knowledge
won't tell you all about Joe the Obscure is fine, offering to roll dice
to see if Bardic Knowledge could tell you about Joe the Obscure is
lame.

If something fits into Bardic Knowledge then I can use Bardic
Knowledge, without a 50% miss chance; if it isn't then I can't use
Bardic Knowledge, not even with a 50% miss chance.

High level Bards know ALL the songs and stories, the question is did
this make it into ANY of the songs and stories.

In any case given the numbers of more or less immortal Gods, Outsiders,
and Undead littering the world lost knowledge doesn't typically make
any real sense in D&D land, so I'm fairly careful to limit my use of
such things as a plot point, "No one Knows how X was done" is
evocotive, but not plausible in the setting.Magic has changed the world
so that X can no longer be done is much more reasonable given that a
fair percentage of high level adventures involve someone trying to
change the world in ways that make something possible/impossible.

DougL

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by DougL
In any case given the numbers of more or less immortal Gods, Outsiders,
and Undead littering the world lost knowledge doesn't typically make
any real sense in D&D land, so I'm fairly careful to limit my use of
such things as a plot point, "No one Knows how X was done" is
evocotive, but not plausible in the setting.Magic has changed the world
so that X can no longer be done is much more reasonable given that a
fair percentage of high level adventures involve someone trying to
change the world in ways that make something possible/impossible.

I wrote a novel last summer in the setting where my Kyris games were
set (though not based on game events at all) and ran into this
issue in interesting ways. The game backstory holds that a mortal
man made himself the god Manakhtar, Son of the Sun. The PCs in the
various games never knew (nor tried hard to find out) how he did
this, or who he was beforehand, so it worked pretty well to say
"No one knows."

The novel protagonists turned out to care a lot about this question.
I didn't want to have game-sounding limitations on what they could
do, so I eventually decided to write all of their attempts to find
out, and if they found out, so be it. By the end of the novel I
understood quite well why the method wasn't widely known, and why
Speak with Dead etc. didn't help; and the characters felt they
understood well enough for their purposes. But I had no way to
know it would come out like that.

I got horribly spoiled writing about this: I could allow the magic
to be much more fluid and finely tuned to the characters than a
feasible RPG system would allow. It was hard to go back to RPG
rules. It would be cool to have that kind of quality in RPG magic,
but I can't imagine being able to handle the workload.

One interesting bit was that I've never liked v3.5 metamagic, and
Kyris never had any. The novel did, as it turned out: specifically,
the more skilled people were able to elide gestures and words from
their simpler spells, and the protagonist of part II, a young mage
impressed by this, spent a lot of time trying to master the trick.
But if I try to go backwards from what I wrote to get mechanics, they
don't look usable to me at all.

(The novel is currently being looked at by various literary agents. I
have collected three "This has some really nice aspects, I'm sorry I
can't represent it" letters, which are encouraging, but no takers
yet.)

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Del Rio]

Post by Peter Knutsen

Post by gleichman
I watching this exchange with some interest and would like to toss a
random comment out: It appears to me that the counter-spells is
basically a method of removing offensive toys.
This brings up a number of questions.
1. Why provide the players such cool offensive tools if they have such
a limited range of viable targets?

It could be the case that the people who designed those D&D3 crunchy
bits made mistakes, due to insufficient rules engineering skill, and
ended up making something that was far too good. Realizing their
mistake, they then made up countermeasures.

In this respect, D&D 3.X merely perpetuated the
mistakes of AD&D.

The Scry/Buff/Teleport assassination trick was a common
thing in my 1st ed. campaign 15 years ago, until I
performed a radical ablation of the offending spell
list.

Post by Peter Knutsen
The concept of Speak With Dead spells, for instance, can have extreme
world consequences if not handled with care. However, I did not find it
at all difficult to devise a rules subsystem that strikes the correct
usefulness balance.

Ubiquitous information gathering magic was another paradigm-
breaking issue.

I tossed the lot: magical long distance transportation
& communication and magical information gathering. The
campaign was better for it.

Otherwise, the whole campaign degenerates into a
high-level magical cat-and-mouse game between the party
and any really powerful entities they've pissed off.
And once that starts, it never ends - that's what the
campaign will always be from that point forward, and it
becomes more and more abstract and disconnected from
its roots.

[Peter Knutsen]

Post by Del Rio

Post by Peter Knutsen
It could be the case that the people who designed those D&D3 crunchy
bits made mistakes, due to insufficient rules engineering skill, and
ended up making something that was far too good. Realizing their
mistake, they then made up countermeasures.

In this respect, D&D 3.X merely perpetuated the
mistakes of AD&D.

Doesn't surprise me.

Post by Del Rio
The Scry/Buff/Teleport assassination trick was a common
thing in my 1st ed. campaign 15 years ago, until I
performed a radical ablation of the offending spell
list.

Post by Peter Knutsen
The concept of Speak With Dead spells, for instance, can have extreme
world consequences if not handled with care. However, I did not find it
at all difficult to devise a rules subsystem that strikes the correct
usefulness balance.

Ubiquitous information gathering magic was another paradigm-
breaking issue.

Some time ago, Erol started a thread over in rec.games.frp.dnd about
running a D&D3 campaign in a world in which certain kinds of magic
wasn't possible. I recall that he talked about travel magic, e.g. Fly
and Teleport, but I can't remember if scrying and other long-distance
recon magics were also included.

As for me, I'm opposed to Superman-style flight. It's "loud" and
blatant, in the wrong kind of way. On Ärth, if you want to fly, you have
to shapechange into a bird (or conjure up an Air Elemental and have it
carry you).

Post by Del Rio
I tossed the lot: magical long distance transportation
& communication and magical information gathering. The
campaign was better for it.

Some form of remote viewing *is* in genre, though.

Post by Del Rio
Otherwise, the whole campaign degenerates into a
high-level magical cat-and-mouse game between the party
and any really powerful entities they've pissed off.
And once that starts, it never ends - that's what the
campaign will always be from that point forward, and it
becomes more and more abstract and disconnected from
its roots.

That can be unfortunate, yes. But I think that in many cases, the
problem arises from "one spell"-think, as in having one spell (often low
level, or at least relatively low level) which does X, instead of having
a series of spells which do X, with higher level spells in the series
doing X better.

Remove Disease is a fairly obvious example. One spell for *any* disease?
It sounds absurd, but that has got to be the correct interpretation,
given the lack of a higher-level spell. This kind of one-spell'ism is
also an unreasonably strong temptation for world designers and GMs to
invent things (in this case diseases) which are somehow immune or exempt.

Back to scrying...

In D&D3, you could have a 3rd level spell, called Scry I, and then a 2nd
level spell called Protection From Scrying I, which can be trumped by a
6th level spell called Scry II. The counter to this is Protection from
Scrying II, which can be trumped by a 9th level spell called Scrying
III, which again cannot penetrate the 8th level spell Protection from
Scrying III.

Yes, this *is* an arms race, but notice that it isn't an *endless* arms
race.

If it fails to work well, and/or if it produces massive un-fun, it is
because D&D3 is really a system for generalist spellcasters. In systems
which do not favour generalists, it becomes safe to assume that not all
one's enemies have Protection from Scrying spells (certaily not the more
powerful spells in the series), and also that not all one's enemies have
Scrying spells either.

Systems which do not favour generalists are fairly common, in fact,
almost to the point where D&D3 can be said to be the abnormality: Ars
Magica, Hero System or Sagatafl are just some examples.

GURPS sorts of straddles the line, but in this case I'd say that it
fails the criterion, in that one cannot with any certainty rely on a
specific enemy not having the scrying spell, or the spell that protects
from scrying, simply because GURPS requires such a fairly trivial
character creation/advencement currency investment to acquire the
ability (a single character point) at a useful level.

Returning to D&D3, character levels serve to make things too
predictable, as well. In systems without character levels, characters
can have spent their "points" in almost any number of ways. You cannot
know anything much with any degree of certainty. However, if Protection
from Scrying II is a 6th level spell for Wizards/Sorcerers, then you are
making a *mistake* by assuming that a specific 11th level Wizard does
not know it.

Contrast this with a Hero System character built on 100+100 points. Or
an Ars Magica "magi" whose "gauntlet" is a decade in the past. Going at
it realistically, you're not a suicidal maniac if you gamble on that
specific character *not* having scrying countermeasures.

Or take Sagatafl. Here (a bit like in Ars Magica), the more you know
about your enemy, the more you can "predict". If he has skill in the
Diviniation "school" then you can pretty safely rely on him having
Scrying spells. He might not, but that'd be statistically odd (and once
you've done unto him, he can quickly rectify the situation so that you
won't be able to do unto him again). If he has skill in the Metamagic
"school" then you can pretty safely rely on him having
Scrying-Countermeasure spells. If you don't know, then that's something
for you to try to find out. With 24 "schools" of magic, exceedingly few
characters have a useful skill level in all of them.

Ars Magica differs, however, in that spells are expensive to acquire
(formulaic spells, anyway. Spontaneous spells are usually too weak to be
useful, so we'll ignore those), meaning that there's a fair chance that
even an Intellego expert won't have the one spell that protects from
scrying. Then again, if he's the paranoid "The Diedne might return
tomorrow, so we must be prepared!" type, he probably will know that one
spell. But if so, you'd probably know about his reputation for paranoid
preparation.

Executive summary: "One-spell"-think is bad. Magic systems that favour
generalist spellcasters are bad.

[Erol K. Bayburt]

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 04:21:39 +0200, Peter Knutsen

Post by Peter Knutsen
Some time ago, Erol started a thread over in rec.games.frp.dnd about
running a D&D3 campaign in a world in which certain kinds of magic
wasn't possible. I recall that he talked about travel magic, e.g. Fly
and Teleport, but I can't remember if scrying and other long-distance
recon magics were also included.

1. September 28th - about 3 weeks ago. Not *that* long ago even by
internet time.

2. I just proposed getting rid of travel magic, not scrying and info
spells too.

Post by Peter Knutsen
As for me, I'm opposed to Superman-style flight. It's "loud" and
blatant, in the wrong kind of way. On Ärth, if you want to fly, you have
to shapechange into a bird (or conjure up an Air Elemental and have it
carry you).

That was my though, too. "Yes, mortal magic will allow you to fly like
a bird. But it will not allow you to fly like the gods - and certainly
not like the gods of the Pantheon of Justice. Not like the Bearer of
the Green Light. Not like the Thoughtful Doppleganger Who Hunts Men.
Not like the Captain of Marvels. And *certainly* not like the
Paladin-Bard of the Three Secret Names, who is a hero even unto the
gods."

Teleport-type magic, OTOH, isn't loud in the wrong kind of way, but it
is a terribly powerful ability.

[gleichman]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 04:21:39 +0200, Peter Knutsen
Teleport-type magic, OTOH, isn't loud in the wrong kind of way, but it
is a terribly powerful ability.

I'm of the same opinion and don't think that D&D loses much when the
Teleport magic is removed or seriously limited. I have the same viewpoint
with all 'movement' magic be it flying or anything else. Most campaigns
worlds are improved when travel remains difficult.

This viewpoint is clearly seen in AoH which is very limited in movement
magics. I do have scrying magic as it's core to certain types of magical
myth that I wished to keep. However without the movement assistance to take
advantage of it, it isn't so commanding.

If Teleport and the like is the most serious problem facing Mary, I think
they can best be resolved by removing them from the game. Which is basically
what common counter spells do anyway.

[Erol K. Bayburt]

On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 06:20:47 -0500, "gleichman"

Post by gleichman
I'm of the same opinion and don't think that D&D loses much when the
Teleport magic is removed or seriously limited. I have the same viewpoint
with all 'movement' magic be it flying or anything else. Most campaigns
worlds are improved when travel remains difficult.

If nothing else, slow travel makes the game world bigger without
needing to physically increase its size. And high-level characters
become rarer without having to reduce their numbers.

Post by gleichman
This viewpoint is clearly seen in AoH which is very limited in movement
magics. I do have scrying magic as it's core to certain types of magical
myth that I wished to keep. However without the movement assistance to take
advantage of it, it isn't so commanding.

That was my thought too: Scrying and info spells can still be an
annoyance, but they're much less of a problem without magical movement
to take advantage of the info.

And as you say, it's "in character" for many magical worlds.

[gleichman]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
That was my thought too: Scrying and info spells can still be an
annoyance, but they're much less of a problem without magical movement
to take advantage of the info.
And as you say, it's "in character" for many magical worlds.

I have an entire class (Seer) who's focus is information style spells.
The tend to be short ranged (in space and time) and often produce vague
or partial results- but they're there.

Interestingly enough, none (with one exception in one adventure) of the
players have ever selected it for their character.

My wife ran one when we went back to KC for a special event game with
the other GM who runs this system. The character was rather high level,
and the impact on the course of the game was very significant indeed.
But even with this example, and the passing of year and more- no one
has selected the class.

In our case I think it's because few of the players good enough to make
solid use of the abilities are willing to run what is in their eyes a
"support character".

Makes me wonder if successful D&D games are driven by a similar
mindset. "Passwall? Beh, I want to toss fireballs!".

In the case of AoH, I think such a stance is more rational however.
Seers can't toss fireballs at all. In D&D you can mix support and
battle magic without problem (other than limited spell slots).

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by gleichman
I have an entire class (Seer) who's focus is information style spells.
The tend to be short ranged (in space and time) and often produce vague
or partial results- but they're there.
Makes me wonder if successful D&D games are driven by a similar
mindset. "Passwall? Beh, I want to toss fireballs!".

It could also be an uneasy feeling that you may break the game.
I went for years without playing enchanters or telepaths, even
though I was intrigued by the idea and thought I could do it
fairly well, because I suspected it would be too hard for the GM
to deal with.

I finally got to try it in Shadowrun (with GM permission) and
he managed, but it *was* hard. And she was a very cautious
telepath, especially after she poked around in the decker's mind
at the Wrong Moment.

I would feel the same way about a really powerful divinationalist,
especially if any foreknowledge was involved.

I currently have a v3.5 wizard who has both very high Diplomacy and
an affinity for enchantment spells. We have an agreement about
the likelihood that this will break the module.... It hasn't yet,
but I expect it will eventually. Already one of the clear differences
between that game and its sibling is that my PCs have had much
better information about what they're getting into (with the notable
exception of the current scenario, where they struck too soon and
are paying for it) than the other PCs.

I think that high level v3.5 has the interesting trait that
maximized and well-backed Diplomacy should, by the book, allow you
to talk anyone into anything. This would be only slightly more
satisfying than being able to kill anyone at your convenience--
not really a game either way. I presume most people don't play it
as written.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[gleichman]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
It could also be an uneasy feeling that you may break the game.
I went for years without playing enchanters or telepaths, even
though I was intrigued by the idea and thought I could do it
fairly well, because I suspected it would be too hard for the GM
to deal with.

I could see how that could be an issue in D&D, or most other rpgs in fact.
However no one has really worried about breaking something in AoH for a long
time. And if they find something, they typically do it with much glee.

Last time was polymorph others for Witches. They turned everyone into frogs,
packed them up and had the wizard (who has a self only transform into a
large bird) fly them away. Result in a small change in spell description
afterwards.

In this case, I really think it's avoiding a "Support Character". There are
no Primary PCs who are Healers either although much effort is given to
attaining an NPC one often even at very significant costs. NPC Seers however
are very uninterested in being bought.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by gleichman
I'm of the same opinion and don't think that D&D loses much when the
Teleport magic is removed or seriously limited. I have the same viewpoint
with all 'movement' magic be it flying or anything else. Most campaigns
worlds are improved when travel remains difficult.

I'm inclined to agree. The "commuter world" where everything is
pretty close to everything else, and there are no blank areas on
anyone's maps, isn't as evocative to me as the usual limited-travel
fantasy setting.

Post by gleichman
If Teleport and the like is the most serious problem facing Mary, I think
they can best be resolved by removing them from the game. Which is basically
what common counter spells do anyway.

They were devastating problems in _Return to the Temple of Elemental
Evil_ some years ago, but since then we have tended to restrict them
heavily. In the _SCAP_ game Jon is currently running, he uses the
_Star Trek_ transporter version of Teleport (you visibly appear many
rounds before you can do anything) because the module relies on its
presence, but for most of our games we ban it completely.

But there are a lot of ways to come in contact with the enemy while
you are at 100% combat readiness and they are not, and the results
become more and more lopsided with level. Passwall. In some
situations, simple Invisibility. Polymorphing into earth elementals,
or air elementals, or xorns. Wind Walk. Astral or ethereal travel.
Polymorphing into a very big or very small form. Impersonation.
At some point I start to feel that the movement rate is not the
big issue; the big issue is the enormous imbalance between 100%
prep and less than 100%.

The change in v3.5 which weakens Haste actually made this a little
worse. The NPCs in _Spider Queen_ used to be set up, if they got
an action at all, to drink a potion of Haste and then do something
useful. It made things slightly less unbalanced, but now the spell
does not work that way, and if they drink the potion, odds are they
will never get another action.

There's also an issue that if there are 50 types of attack, and
50 specific defenses--even if each one is a perfect defense--
the defender must have enormously better resources than the
attacker or the attacker will usually win by picking an attack at
random.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Del Rio]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
But there are a lot of ways to come in contact with the enemy while
you are at 100% combat readiness and they are not, and the results
become more and more lopsided with level. Passwall. In some
situations, simple Invisibility. Polymorphing into earth elementals,
or air elementals, or xorns. Wind Walk. Astral or ethereal travel.
Polymorphing into a very big or very small form. Impersonation.
At some point I start to feel that the movement rate is not the
big issue; the big issue is the enormous imbalance between 100%
prep and less than 100%.
The change in v3.5 which weakens Haste actually made this a little
worse. The NPCs in _Spider Queen_ used to be set up, if they got
an action at all, to drink a potion of Haste and then do something
useful. It made things slightly less unbalanced, but now the spell
does not work that way, and if they drink the potion, odds are they
will never get another action.
There's also an issue that if there are 50 types of attack, and
50 specific defenses--even if each one is a perfect defense--
the defender must have enormously better resources than the
attacker or the attacker will usually win by picking an attack at
random.

These are all good points and in fact is one of the
reasons that I'm looking for a "D&D lite" system, that
has less emphasis on magic.

In the meanwhile I'm trying to keep the lid on things
while continuing to use D&D through a combination of:

1. very limited number of wizards
2. almost all are specialists
3. strong societal prejudice against arcane magic
4. editing of spell lists

[gleichman]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
But there are a lot of ways to come in contact with the enemy while
you are at 100% combat readiness and they are not, and the results
become more and more lopsided with level. Passwall. In some
situations, simple Invisibility. Polymorphing into earth elementals,
or air elementals, or xorns. Wind Walk. Astral or ethereal travel.
Polymorphing into a very big or very small form. Impersonation.
At some point I start to feel that the movement rate is not the
big issue; the big issue is the enormous imbalance between 100%
prep and less than 100%.

Ah yes. I've been so far away from old AD&D that I had nearly forgotten
it. Going down the list for AoH it reads like who's who of imbalancing,
non-genre and thus "not appearing in this game" credits.

-Passwall- Nope

-Invisibilty- Nope. Some limited condition cloaking- self only with a
couple classes. There is one rather special but currently lost artifact
in my Campaign however :)

-Polymorphing- Limited to few classes, to self, and as to form (a few
specific natural animals).

-Wind Walk- Nope

-Astral or Ethereal- Nope, expect by means of rare and dangerous
gateways (to and from).

-Impersonation- Possible, but limited self-only magical aid for it (one
of 20 or so classes).

-Pre Combat Buffs- Nope.

I found removing all that was required if the game was to focus on
interesting battles. As always, what's not in the rules is as important
as what is.

That's a huge list to yank out of D&D and it almost feels as if you'd
be yanking it's soul with it. I'm interested in seeing what some of our
D&D experts say.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by gleichman
-Polymorphing- Limited to few classes, to self, and as to form (a few
specific natural animals).

I had a player in one of my early D&D-variant games who played a
half-ogre Druid, a really big tough guy. He eventually gained the
power to choose one animal to be able to turn into. We were all
waiting to hear what he picked. He grinned and said, "I'm a big
tough guy already, so I'm going to turn into a...gecko."

My gosh, it was useful. I've seldom seen a player get more use
out of something so simple. He could stick to walls and ceilings,
hide in pockets or on someone's trouser leg, enter almost any
building with ease, participate in the party's standard "impress
the yokels" stunt where a half-ogre would suddenly appear "from
nowhere" in a puff of smoke, vanish from pursuit....

I think you're very wise to limit this. The very worst v3.5 rules
abuses I've seen involve the designers' inability to keep track of
all the ways the rules might break if the PC turns into this
or that monster. For example, v3.5 tries to prevent anyone from
ever casting more than 1 spell/round, which I think is a very
good change. But they missed one monster, and there's the loophole!

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[gleichman]

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
There's also an issue that if there are 50 types of attack, and
50 specific defenses--even if each one is a perfect defense--
the defender must have enormously better resources than the
attacker or the attacker will usually win by picking an attack at
random.

Strong agreement with you on this point unless those defenses are
always on and of unlimited duration.

The use of spells slots and expendable resources for them are basically
useless. Even if you did apply the all- you'd have nothing left with to
fight a simple up front attack.

[Del Rio]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
2. I just proposed getting rid of travel magic, not scrying and info
spells too.

C'mon! Go for the gold!

And scratch instantaneous long distance communications
spells too! ;-)

[David Alex Lamb]

Post by Peter Knutsen
Remove Disease is a fairly obvious example. One spell for *any* disease?
It sounds absurd, but that has got to be the correct interpretation,
given the lack of a higher-level spell. This kind of one-spell'ism is
also an unreasonably strong temptation for world designers and GMs to
invent things (in this case diseases) which are somehow immune or exempt.

I'd much prefer something with levels of nastiness for poisons and diseases,
where you needed either higher level spells to fix them, or some kind of
diagnosis skill or spell to reduce the level of effective nastiness.

There are a number of things in D&D like this, where the system sweeps a whole
issue under the rug with a single feature, probably because the designer
decided it was unfun. Speak Language, for example, is nearly useless when
everyone speaks Common and Tongues is readily available at reasonably low
level (7, I think, if it's a 4th level spell).

I imagine most systems are like this -- though from all the messages over the
years, I suspect Peter's Sagatafl is less subject to it than many others.

[Jeff Heikkinen]

Chances are suprisingly good that David Alex Lamb was not wearing pants

Post by David Alex Lamb

Post by Peter Knutsen
Remove Disease is a fairly obvious example. One spell for *any* disease?
It sounds absurd, but that has got to be the correct interpretation,
given the lack of a higher-level spell. This kind of one-spell'ism is
also an unreasonably strong temptation for world designers and GMs to
invent things (in this case diseases) which are somehow immune or exempt.

I'd much prefer something with levels of nastiness for poisons and diseases,
where you needed either higher level spells to fix them, or some kind of
diagnosis skill or spell to reduce the level of effective nastiness.

Diseases do have different levels of nastiness in D&D. They have three
moving parts, of which the easiest and most logical to use as a measure
of difficulty for curing is the save DC. Arcana Evolved (a d20 variant
by Monte Cook) takes advantage of this feature to make these spells not
automatic; the caster has to make a check, based on his or her level, to
remove a disease. If I recall correctly, failure means the caster can't
cure that particular person until he or she gains a level. This is a
fairly simple way, using only features the system already has anyway, to
get some scaling into spells like this even when there's only one such
spell.

[Del Rio]

Post by David Alex Lamb
There are a number of things in D&D like this, where the system sweeps a whole
issue under the rug with a single feature, probably because the designer
decided it was unfun. Speak Language, for example, is nearly useless when
everyone speaks Common and Tongues is readily available at reasonably low
level (7, I think, if it's a 4th level spell).

Agreed, the default setting is that way to simplify it
for people who don't want to care about those things.
For playing groups that do want to care about such
things, elimination of Common is easy enough. In my
most recent campaign, I have a "trade language" which
is a mish-mash of words from most of the major
languages of the campaign. It is robust enough to let
characters discuss important matters like directions &
distances, shelter, weather, dangers, quality & prices,
etc. Not much else.

Also, I let people take a half rank in a langauage by
spending 1 point in it: enough to let them speak a
pigin/broken version of it, enough to communicate basic
concepts.

[gleichman]

It could be the case that the people who designed those D&D3 crunchy bits
made mistakes, due to insufficient rules engineering skill, and ended up
making something that was far too good. Realizing their mistake, they then
made up countermeasures.

A rather sad judgement in respect to a game with as lengthy of a development
cycle and as much playtest as D&D. One that I wouldn't rush to easily.

Were the counter spells added in later in 3rd edition, or are they in the
core books?

[DougL]

Post by gleichman

It could be the case that the people who designed those D&D3 crunchy bits
made mistakes, due to insufficient rules engineering skill, and ended up
making something that was far too good. Realizing their mistake, they then
made up countermeasures.

A rather sad judgement in respect to a game with as lengthy of a development
cycle and as much playtest as D&D. One that I wouldn't rush to easily.
Were the counter spells added in later in 3rd edition, or are they in the
core books?

Everything I listed is Core, someone else mentioned "anticipate
teleport" which is splat.

DougL

[gleichman]

Post by DougL

Post by gleichman

It could be the case that the people who designed those D&D3 crunchy bits
made mistakes, due to insufficient rules engineering skill, and ended up
making something that was far too good. Realizing their mistake, they then
made up countermeasures.

A rather sad judgement in respect to a game with as lengthy of a development
cycle and as much playtest as D&D. One that I wouldn't rush to easily.
Were the counter spells added in later in 3rd edition, or are they in the
core books?

Everything I listed is Core, someone else mentioned "anticipate
teleport" which is splat.

I think it likely then that Peter's judgement is correct. The designer must
have wanted the result, at least in part.

[Ken Arromdee]

Post by Peter Knutsen
The concept of Speak With Dead spells, for instance, can have extreme
world consequences if not handled with care. However, I did not find it
at all difficult to devise a rules subsystem that strikes the correct
usefulness balance.

The group I'm in, which is at around level 17-18 now, briefly flirted with
using speak with dead. It turned out to be mostly useless, because the
corpse gets a saving throw as if the creature were alive, and anything you
want to use it on tends to have very good saving throws.

[DougL]

Post by gleichman

Post by DougL
Scry/Buff/Teleport works only on the thoughroughly unprepared or
substantially lower level.
DougL

I watching this exchange with some interest and would like to toss a
random comment out: It appears to me that the counter-spells is
basically a method of removing offensive toys.
This brings up a number of questions.
1. Why provide the players such cool offensive tools if they have such
a limited range of viable targets?

1) Both sets of spells have other uses. Teleports allow my current
party to have three people who own their own towns and live in those
towns while a fourth has two different wizard's towers. Yet they can
still get togather on short notice. Also you can teleport to NEAR the
goal and walk in, that works fine. Scry also has uses other than "get
their location now so we can attack in 10 seconds".

2) There are viable targets and it is GOOD to sometimes let level 10+
characters stomp all over fairly tough foes to show that they are
really bad-asses. Most of the defenses are either just ways to sleep
safely or are fairly static. My current group of PCs have killed foes
theoretically much much tougher than their entire party by good
planning and teleport vs. a melee brute style monster that didn't have
any access to the defenses.

3) There are monsters with such powers, letting PCs have them also
balances that some.

Post by gleichman
2. If the effect is basically negation of an attack Strategy, why
include them in the rules as such specific options. If it was a math
equation it is nothing more than dropping out common terms and
expending a few spell slots- seems simpler to me to just reduce the
spell slots and remove the offending spells.

4) The existence of defenses and attacks limit both side's options
some. Mostly (but not entirely) in bad ways, but the effect is not to
completely cancel out. Removal is non-trivial since being better at
transport magic is almost the only significant advantage
Wizards/Sorcerers have over Clerics at high levels, and it wouldn't be
good for Sorcerers to be globally grossely inferior.

Post by gleichman
I can think of answers for the above, but I would like to see yours.

I'll add some general comments on the thread:

A) Mary is right, to the extent that there is a problem it is mostly
with buffs and the improvement in abilities for someone at 100%
preparation vs. someone with only spells they can keep up all the time.
IMAO buffs and defensive spells (if any) should all have durations that
make keeping them always on as practical as having them up for one
battle only. But this would require a near complete redesign of the
magic system. (Which on page count basically IS the system, I think D&D
spends more pages on spells and magic items than every other rule other
than monster stats combined.)

B) IMAO module's make the problems worse, those I've seen typically
have the monsters spread out for no particular reason. Putting out
scouts and guards makes sense, but the scouts and guards getting out a
warning (or disappearing entirely) should have consequences. Most
modules the Enemies don't use their own resources to try to do unto
others but do it first. They don't persue, they don't use their own
Scry/Buff/Teleport attacks, they don't deploy like they're expecting
trouble even if the PCs have been picking at their defenses for weeks
(they may replace the guards, and where they get volunteers for THAT
mystifies me).

C) As someone mentioned multiple attack methods vs. multiple defense
methods favor the attacker even if defense against any one attack is
technically easier than the attack. This gets worse at high level D&D
play as attack methods multiply, most defenses DO help against multiple
attacks, but even so, defense gets harder and harder.

D) As others have pointed out Diplomacy by the book is broken far worse
than any spell in the core rules. At high levels a "rushed" diplomacy
check can convert ANYTHING you can communicate with to helpful if you
can roll a 60 (50 for Hostile => Friendly, -10 for rushed). I can do
this with nothing but core and a viable single classed character within
the wealth guidelines by level 21.

Lesser effects at lesser levels are also bad. Friendly is often as good
as Helpful if all you want is to bypass something. Heck, a focused
level 4 human NPC bard with the standard elite array and gear allowance
can have +24 diplomacy modifier, improved to +26 if he can get off one
spell, if she's not in combat she can take 10 and thus make 36 with no
penalty for rushed, resulting in hostile and unfriendly going to
friendly and everyone else turning helpful. Except for some odd reason
these rules don't work at all on PCs. (Hint for game designers: Rules
for social interactions are good, but if your social interaction rules
don't work for PCs they're probably not suitable for NPCs either!)

Some houserules are obviously needed even for fairly low level play.

But my experience is that typical high level D&D combats take more than
3 rounds (sometimes less, but sometimes much more), I just don't see
one round kills. I suspect much of this is that I tend to use custom
built classed monsters for foes or monsters advanced to a higher size
category, and their AC and saves are often MUCH higher than by the book
monsters of the same CR. (Different set of problems, don't get me
started on the rules for the CR of advanced and classed monsters.) Both
BtB monsters and other humanoids tend to go down much faster (aka
within one round) unless they have large numbers of low level
henchthings to hide amoung or behind. Give the monsters permanent
boosting items and lack of time for prep matters a lot less.

DougL

[Erol K. Bayburt]

Post by DougL

Post by gleichman

Post by DougL
Scry/Buff/Teleport works only on the thoughroughly unprepared or
substantially lower level.
DougL

I watching this exchange with some interest and would like to toss a
random comment out: It appears to me that the counter-spells is
basically a method of removing offensive toys.
This brings up a number of questions.
1. Why provide the players such cool offensive tools if they have such
a limited range of viable targets?

1) Both sets of spells have other uses. Teleports allow my current
party to have three people who own their own towns and live in those
towns while a fourth has two different wizard's towers. Yet they can
still get togather on short notice. Also you can teleport to NEAR the
goal and walk in, that works fine. Scry also has uses other than "get
their location now so we can attack in 10 seconds".

This is a valid reason for wanting to have teleport spells. OTOH not
wanting this sort of effect in ones game world is a good reason to not
have teleport spells.

Post by DougL
2) There are viable targets and it is GOOD to sometimes let level 10+
characters stomp all over fairly tough foes to show that they are
really bad-asses. Most of the defenses are either just ways to sleep
safely or are fairly static. My current group of PCs have killed foes
theoretically much much tougher than their entire party by good
planning and teleport vs. a melee brute style monster that didn't have
any access to the defenses.

Some of us see this last point as a huge bug rather than a feature.

The tough foes will *have* to have & use the defenses, or else they'll
go extinct. IOW, in a logically-run game-world there won't be any of
those "viable targets."

Limiting important NPCs to those who have and use the anti-teleport
defenses will result in an odd and variety-impoverished world. It will
be an especially odd-looking world if the anti-teleport defenses
require behavior that looks bizarrely paranoid to the uninitiated.

My preference for teleport-defenses, in a game where teleport exists,
is that the "defenses" actually be weaknesses in the means of
teleportation. Mary mentioned using a Star Trek transporter type
delay, and that's what I do too:

Teleport in my "Broken Worlds" campaign takes up to 10 minutes, during
which time the clock is running on buffs, and during which time there
is a visible "teleport sparkle" at the destination. (The teleporting
characters are moving through the Maze spell dimension during this
time.)

The teleport sparkle is always visible, even if the teleporters are
invisible, and so the most likely result is for ordinary guards to
spot the incoming teleport and set up a hot reception. And I allow
guards who set up and wait for the teleporters to get a suprise round.

The point is to make the buff-teleport attack less desirable by giving
the defenders a big advantage - *even when the defenders have little
or no magical support*

YMMV but I hatehatehate the D&Dism that "Magic is Trumps; only magic
can counter magic, and the only really viable defense against a
magical attack is a magical defense."

[gleichman]

Post by Erol K. Bayburt

Post by DougL
1) Both sets of spells have other uses. Teleports allow my current
party to have three people who own their own towns and live in those
towns while a fourth has two different wizard's towers. Yet they can
still get togather on short notice. Also you can teleport to NEAR the
goal and walk in, that works fine. Scry also has uses other than "get
their location now so we can attack in 10 seconds".

This is a valid reason for wanting to have teleport spells. OTOH not
wanting this sort of effect in ones game world is a good reason to not
have teleport spells.

Or to make them difficult to use, and limited to certain epic locations. Say
a Stonehenge like site.

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
Some of us see this last point as a huge bug rather than a feature.

I agree here with all your points.

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
YMMV but I hatehatehate the D&Dism that "Magic is Trumps; only magic
can counter magic, and the only really viable defense against a
magical attack is a magical defense."

A common concept in a number game designs. But I share your viewpoint here
and generally made certain that the non-magical classes in AoH had a method
of defending themselves from magic.

[Mary K. Kuhner]

Post by gleichman

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
YMMV but I hatehatehate the D&Dism that "Magic is Trumps; only magic
can counter magic, and the only really viable defense against a
magical attack is a magical defense."

A common concept in a number game designs. But I share your viewpoint here
and generally made certain that the non-magical classes in AoH had a method
of defending themselves from magic.

AD&Dv3 is actually a substantial improvement over its predecessors
in this regard, and Iron Heroes even more so. That's one of the
reasons I'm still willing to play v3 (if we keep the level low
enough). Iron Heros has cinematic but non-magical extensions to
many skills which give non-mages a lot of useful options.

I really enjoyed the non-magic counters to magic in our Shadowrun
campaign, but I no longer remember how many of those were homebrew
and how many were system (first edition). The corporation we were
fighting had beautiful ivy-covered internal atriums because
live plants stop astral travel.

Mary Kuhner ***@eskimo.com

[Erol K. Bayburt]

On Wed, 25 Oct 2006 21:05:24 +0000 (UTC),

Post by Mary K. Kuhner

Post by gleichman

Post by Erol K. Bayburt
YMMV but I hatehatehate the D&Dism that "Magic is Trumps; only magic
can counter magic, and the only really viable defense against a
magical attack is a magical defense."

A common concept in a number game designs. But I share your viewpoint here
and generally made certain that the non-magical classes in AoH had a method
of defending themselves from magic.

AD&Dv3 is actually a substantial improvement over its predecessors
in this regard, and Iron Heroes even more so. That's one of the
reasons I'm still willing to play v3 (if we keep the level low
enough). Iron Heros has cinematic but non-magical extensions to
many skills which give non-mages a lot of useful options.

Yes, 3e D&D is an improvement over earlier editions wrt "Magic is
Trumps." But I still get the impression that the game designers
begrudge allowing puny non-spellcasters to overcome magic, even in the
places where the rules specifically allow it. And a lot of house rule
proposals for fixing various magic-caused problems seem to come down
to "add more magic!"

Post by Mary K. Kuhner
I really enjoyed the non-magic counters to magic in our Shadowrun
campaign, but I no longer remember how many of those were homebrew
and how many were system (first edition). The corporation we were
fighting had beautiful ivy-covered internal atriums because
live plants stop astral travel.

I know I deliberately try to create non-magical counters when writing
house rules for defenses against magic. I also try to make the
counters aesthetically pleasing - like your Shadowrun ivy-covered
atriums vs, say, painting the inside of a room with human blood to
prevent astral intrusions.

HERO makes a point that defenses ought to be 1/5th to 1/10th as
expensive as the attacks defended against. I think something like this
needs to be applied not just to points or other game-mechanized
resources, but also to the amount of *attention* that characters (PCs
and NPCs) need to pay to defense vs magical attacks. Having to be
highly obsessed with defense vs magical assaults is warping, IMO.