So we might mess up, so what? Forked Thread: Fudging the Numbers in 3ed

[Cadfan]

I mostly agree with you.

But in the particular context of "messing up" by giving an NPC a particular ability score or other fundamental trait and then having it cause ripple effects all through the character, I'm not sure that there's much worth learning there. The only thing you'll learn from that is a lesson like "races with level adjustments can be really screwy, pay extra attention." That's a good lesson of the same kind as the lesson, "When riding your bicycle on the Autobahn, make sure to wear reflective clothing." Good advice, but better advice might be to stop doing that.

The lesson I learned from making NPCs in 3e was to stop making NPCs in 3e and start fudging their stats. Then 4e came along and agreed with me.

 

[nightwyrm]

Again, can't you fix it on the fly? What kind of serious math mistake would have to be made to make an entire encounter "go south"?

Fixing stuff on the fly requires you to at least know where the problem is. The DM makes a monster too hard and the players are complaining, is it because its hp is too high? its AC? its attack? its damage? its special abilities too powerful or recharge too often? or perhaps the terrain favours it too much? It might just be the cumulative effect of the entire campaign you're running.

It's hard to figure out exactly what's wrong when you're at the table running the game for 4, 5 other people. Sure, you can have the monster run away and end the encounter or maybe even reboot your campaign, but then your encounter/campaign (and definitely your game night) is already ruined. You might not even be able to tell what went wrong if the numbers behind the game system is not transparent. Effects can have multiple causes and one cause can create multiple effects. It's often not as simple as just changing a single number.

One thing to add, experimenting with campaigns is difficult at best. Campaigns don't start or end quick or often enough to give you a lot of feedback on what works and what doesn't. You turn to the internet and can get ideas there, but your group might be different enough that it may not apply.

 

[el-remmen]

Save DCs of a 3.0 Red Wizard with a Quickened Haste?

PS

I don't get this reference.

 

[el-remmen]

It's hard to figure out exactly what's wrong when you're at the table running the game for 4, 5 other people. .

You don't need to figure out exactly, you just need to have enough of a handle to squeak through in the moment. . . And if that doesn't work and you totally mess it up? Well, maybe in the long-run that does help you figure it out.

 

[el-remmen]

IME, things that make an encounter "go south" in 3.X include (a) Armor Class absurdly easy or absurdly difficult for PC's to hit, (b) DC's for special abilities are absurdly easy or absurdly difficult for PC's to hit, and (c) Saving throw bonuses make it absurdly easy or absurdly difficult for monsters to save against PC spells.

I've never had these issues. . . at least not really. I mean, unless you are running for a bunch of people whose character's you are totally unfamiliar with, how can you choose/create ACs that are so high they can't ever be hit?

And even if you did, let's say it was a dragon - on the fly someone could make a spot check to notice a "weak point" in the dragon's scales (for example) so that PCs purposefully aiming for that point have to hit a lower AC. . .

An example from my own game was a fight with a bulette, where I liked the old "they are vulnerable under their fin" thing - so I made it that whenever it was flanked the flanking opponents had a 25% chance of actually swinging/stabbing at the lower AC under the fin if they declared that was what they were going for.

 

[timbannock]

Not sure the context of the original quotes, but I'll say that fudging a couple points in the midst of combat wasn't a problem. In fact, I found that not fudging in the midst of combat led to combats that weren't fun at all.

However, fundamental changes like stat boosts from buff spells and such like that caused WAY bigger problems on the fly. Moreover, fudging a number for some kind of lasting rule -- i.e., I think Lightning Reflexes should give your REF saves a +4 bonus instead of a +2 bonus -- was difficult because it factored into so many other things (in this case, every NPC and monster in every scenario with that feat).

3.5's approach to monster rules = character rules made it difficult to change something for the players without it rippling over to monsters, too. Then balance was called into question. I'm not saying it's better, but 4e's monster rules =/= character rules means that you can balance the two without worrying about ripples across when a rule is changed. So, if I house rule that Feat XYZ gives a +4 instead of a +2, well then no monster has Feats in 4e, so I don't care. Balance might still be an issue that I have to think about, but there's a certain separation between character and monster rules that helps better define where changes are being made.

Moreover, "monster mathz" are spelled out explicitly in the 4e DMG (with ideas and notes on variation from this). 3.5 is really all over the board with its math, which is why some believe it is "swingier" or why they think many monsters don't accurately stack up to the CR they've been given.

Personally, I think 3.5 works swimmingly up until the teen levels. The problem is partly that a lot of +1s and +2s get factored into stats that are multiplied to get something else (hit points, skill points) and thus you have to figure out not that you gave a Naga a +2 to Int, but that you also gave him a +1 to all Int-based skills, a +X skill points to spend on skills, and a +Y to other abilities, attacks, special powers that operate off of Int. It's kind of tough without some planning time.

 

[Storminator]

Right, and then the campaign eventually ends (as all must do) and when you sit down to plan out the next one you think, "Hmmm, well the way I handled advancement/magical item distribution/encounter design, whatever. . . last time seems like a mistake - I wonder what other ways there are to handle the issue?"

Is that what you say? Or do you think something else was the problem? That's the crux. If you can figure out the mistake, you solve it and move forward. If you can't figure it out, for example thinking it was the spell-like ability of the high level monster that was the problem, or the terrain of the last encounter, then you won't get better, you'll get a different kind of screwed up, only with more house rules.

And then you either come up w/ something yourself, talk to your friends and/or fellow GMs, or come to ENworld or some other site and see what other people are doing. . . As long as fun is being had, its all good. . .

True, as long as it's fun, power on.

PS

 

[Storminator]

I don't get this reference.

It was pretty easy to pump up DCs to "unsavable" range with the Red Wizard PrC. Tack on a Quickened Haste, and a Red Wizard with initiative might autokill 2 PCs in the first round of combat. How do you fix that on the fly?

PS

 

[el-remmen]

It was pretty easy to pump up DCs to "unsavable" range with the Red Wizard PrC. Tack on a Quickened Haste, and a Red Wizard with initiative might autokill 2 PCs in the first round of combat. How do you fix that on the fly?

PS

I must admit, you don't. That's the kind of thing you hope you catch ahead of time. (Personally, I never used many PrCs I did not create/adapt myself).

And if you don't catch it ahead of time? Well, then next adventure or campaign or whatever, you either eliminate or tweak the PrC. Problem solved.

My whole point is - no mistake is the end of the world - and as you go along making your mistakes you get a better feel for what to look out for and how to correct them. I am taking a long view. . .

 

[Desdichado]

In my rather sharply biased opinion, hopefully the only mistake you realise from that exercise is the mistake of thinking that all those numbers you calculated for all your NPCs actually matter very much.

I play more than I run by a fair margin, and yet I very quickly got used to the ideas that there's no real need to stat out most NPCs unless you just really enjoy doing so. It's not hard to judge what DCs, ACs, Saves, Skill bonus, to hit bonuses, damage die, and a few special attacks, spells, or whatever, an NPC should have to give a good yet manageable challenge to the PCs without statting anything up at all.

To me, that's the inherent beauty of the system. It had all that available, and it was very forgiving, so that you could just pull stuff literally out of your ass (ok, not literally) and it would run just as well... if not considerably better, in fact... than heavily detailed and fully functionally built NPCs did.

Clearly a lot of people disagree with me, since prep time, system math anxiety and other issues are commonly cited problems with 3e, but honestly I've never understood why any of those things are problems, since that always seemed unnecessarily doing things the hard way.

:shrug:

Told you my opinion would be biased.