[D&D Design Discussion] Preserving the "Sweet Spot"

[Eltharon]

I see the Sweet Spot as a place where you can run most adventures. Even whimpy minions are still annoying, but characters can face off against more nasty beasts without being reduced to small floating atoms.

What would be nice, in my opinion, is a system that kept advancment more...subdued. As an example from other RPGs:
Warhammer RPG: Even at high levels, your character doesn't have alot of wounds (hp). A failed parry can cause an angry goblin to take down a knight (though its very unlikely)
GURPS: From what I can see, (i've never played it) HP and damge remain close enough to get the whole "one hit, kill" system, while keeping high level characters more powerful.

From looking at the two exaxples, I think the HP is the biggest non magical problem. (magic is a problem too, but I try and keep tranporting spells to a minimum)
With HP as an unchanging stat, then even high level characters are toned down to the exent where the basic minions they face doesnt have to be 12th level.

 

[Mark CMG]

To this I would add the ability to raise the dead - so three categories of spells - Travel spells, Raising the Dead, and Save or Die.

Strange, IMO, but "life restoring" magic and high-level divinations (although both are referenced above) are not ones I hear or read about a lot as being game breakers. Perhaps the gp cost for life-restoring spells offsets the benefit enough?


As another offbeat solution, one could be more lavish with XP penalties for high-level spells (and effects), thus keeping your PCs in the "sweet spot" by attrition.

 

[GlassJaw]

Great post Kid. I particularly liked this:

These things could be taken out of the spell lists and added to a category of "very rare" magics - powerful rituals, requiring unique and very rare components, etc. Maybe you can't Plane Shift - but you can find a portal that will allow you to traverse the planes. You can't Raise Dead - but you can quest to the land of the dead to bring your dead friend back (and in the meantime adopt rules systems that make death less common, perhaps).

What this does is not remove these elements from the game but move them from readily available to making them *gasp* story-based elements. Doing this puts the control back into the DM's hands.

And part of my motivation is to give control back to the DM. Instead of having to jump through flaming hoops to design around these types of spells (like trying to justify why a dungeon prevents teleporting for example), it allows him to introduce these things on his terms.

While this addresses part of what is being discussed in this thread, I still think there is an issue of number creep in the game.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

I've heard that for a lot of DMs the game starts to feel out of their control once spellcasters get to levels where "travel" spells come into play and then definitely feels unwieldy when "save or die" spells are most prevalent.

I'm currently DM'ing the "Shackled City" AP, and the characters are all about 6th level, and I know tghat the "Save or Die" mechanicsm WILL come up, and I'm dreading it. (The travel-spells, too, but not nearly as much, since Caulrdon is mostly a self-sustaining setting.)

And my fears were exacerbated when we had out last session of the high-level campaign I play in. We have in the party: 13th level Witch, 13th level Hexblade, 14th level Bard, and 15ht level Wizard. Most of us are "standard" adventurers; not "inefficient" by a long shot, but not "optimized" either. Except for the Wizard, who is optimized beyond compare.

What gets me the most? The player of the wizard is an AWESOME guy, but the CHARACTER is, as they say, "teh suck".

So, we have a fight with an adult green dragon (approx CR13, I would guess), who managed to surprise us, and get off his breath attack. No-one went down, but the Witch (me) and the Wizard were hurting. So far, so good; we seem pretty evenly matched vs. the dragon.

The wiard gets healed, the Hexbalde unleashes her aura of unluck, the Witch casts "Feeblemind" (her one big "power" spell; she's more of a utility character) which the creature saves against, and the Bard sings. Still OK.

The wizards casts "Disintegrate". (One of his many "Save or Die" spells.)

"Oh, well, he won't get past the SR", we think- until we do the math and realizes he pretty much AUTOMATICALLY exceeds it!

So... "Oh, well! He's a dragon. He can't fail that save!" And we look on as the "1" hits the table for the save.

And that's it.
A battle that was supposed to challenge the party (and probably WOULD have challenged 3/4's of the party normally!!) is now a note in the books, and an extremly unsatisfying enounter in my eyes. Extremely anti-climactic for all involved but the Wizard.

The DM pretty much stated "That's the last CR13 encoutner you guys will have". So now, to challenge one memeber of the party, he'll have to up the ante, which is that much more dangerous to us "lesser" members of the party.

I don't think anyone's in the "Wrong" here, it's just a frustrating situation, and one I as a DM will likely have to face in the next few months. (And yes, I could selectively "fudge", btu I'm not a fan of that solution.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

I think that I would do 3 things:

1) relocate some of the travel and divination (IE, 'skip the adventure' ) spells to higher levels. And make Teleport caster-only (IE, no taking your buddies with you, restricting taking your friends along to Greater Teleport. This keeps the exploration/discovery part of the game going for longer. For example, in my last homebrew game, I made Teleport a 6th level, caster-only spell, and Greater Teleport 8th level.

2) double the XP required to level

3) At the midpoint between each level, the PC gets a bonus feat

This keeps the feeling of progress, and allows more feats (and I think feats are one of the funnest parts of D&D 3.X), but stretches out the midpart of the game.

Ken

 

[SpiralBound]

If you feel that characters are advancing in levels and powers too quickly and are rapidly leaving your definition of the "sweet spot", then there's a real simple solution to this:

Lower the XP rewards & slow down the handing out of new spells, magic items, magical weapons, etc. Don't "punish" the players and suck out all the fun, but even a 1/2 or 1/4 reduction in the XP and the rate or power of magical treasure encountered will do wonders. Also, sprinkle in more adventures that don't directly have loads of XP-granting results. If you compare running sessions that always end with a big combat to running 2-3 sessions with character and setting driven events of investigation, exploration, and intrique, with the finale session of that adventure or chapter of the adventure being a climatic battle, then you'll see large differences in the rate that players advance and thus the game will stay in the sweet spot longer.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

You know, we must have different groups...my players just LOVE it when the bad guy rolls a 1 on a save.

And keep in mind, there are much lower level spells that effectively end encounters if the bad guy can't make his save. Glitterdust and Stinking Cloud, for example.

The wizards casts "Disintegrate". (One of his many "Save or Die" spells.)

"Oh, well, he won't get past the SR", we think- until we do the math and realizes he pretty much AUTOMATICALLY exceeds it!

So... "Oh, well! He's a dragon. He can't fail that save!" And we look on as the "1" hits the table for the save.

And that's it.
A battle that was supposed to challenge the party (and probably WOULD have challenged 3/4's of the party normally!!) is now a note in the books, and an extremly unsatisfying enounter in my eyes. Extremely anti-climactic for all involved but the Wizard.

QUOTE]

 

[GlassJaw]

Strange, IMO, but "life restoring" magic and high-level divinations (although both are referenced above) are not ones I hear or read about a lot as being game breakers.

How is the consequence of death not a major design decision for any rules system?

Same goes for divinations. I've read MANY modules in which the author details at length either how to address the casting of such spells or how some factor within the module prevents their usage. Gaining instant knowledge, whether through asking some divine being a direct question, scrying, etc is a potential pain in the arse for the DM, especially if they are trying to keep something a secret or want something to be revealed later in the story.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Is the goal to extend the time spent playing 1-10, or is the goal to extend the sweet spot so that it continues into later levels?

I guess I would say the goal is to extend the feel of "sweet spot" play for as long as possible, ideally for as long as you expect the campaign to last, which could be indefinitely.

That's obviously a different and much greater challenge than what I've actually presented, which is simply to sustain it for a finite period, roughly equal to the lifespan of a normal (1-20, non-epic) game.

This could be accomplished by capping those "wahoo" areas, while leaving the other bits intact (which a lot of people already do).

This is what I have done in my current campaign: Before play even began, I did the following:

1) Banned Divination unless the questions were asked to me in downtime (so I could prepare mysterious answers)

2) No Teleport.

3) No Raise Dead.

Now, as it turns out, we're now approaching 10th level and I am prepared to relax these somewhat-- Teleport along ley lines/power nexuses only, or with serious consequences (post-teleport confusion), for example; and Raise Dead only if the PCs cast it themselves (it is not a service that can be bought).

I don't mind Teleport if it is used as a means of travel, and not the preferred battle strategy.

I don't mind Raise Dead if it is restricted to "climactic" play.

I'll also echo what someone else said above-- I think typical high-level D&D play is a genre unto itself, without any familiar literary analog. I think that's why I have such a hard time getting into it.

 

[the Jester]

I think that high-level dnd is a fundamentally different game than low-level is. If everyone enjoys that game, then high-level campaigns can continue to be fun without much tweaking. This requires a sort of mental adjustment from fantasy-style gaming to supers-style gaming, really; after all, high-level pcs in 3e can fly, have amazing superhuman abilities, etc, etc.

The easiest way to enlarge the sweet spot if you don't like the transition from fantasy to WHEEEE!!!!! is prolly simply to slow down the rate at which you award xps. Otherwise, eliminating some key spells and abilities might do the trick (really, take out teleportation and rez magic and you're halfway there). In fact, trimming the spell lists to a few spells per level is one of the techniques that I used in setting up a low-magic experiment that I ran a while back.