The problem with D&D

[S'mon]

What am I missing that a F20 can walk though hundreds of W1s without noticing them?

Leaving aside Achilles' Damage Reduction from being dipped in the magic river, only 8 mooks can surround him each round, if there's a 2nd rank with longspears (but 1st rank have short weapons) then yes theoretically he can receive a lot of attacks. In practice Achilles can maneuver to keep the number of attacks well short of the theoretical maximum, especially in confined quarters like city streets. And these spear carriers aren't zombies, they're unlikely to maintain morale after the first few dozen have been Great Cleaved in under a minute.
Even a 2e F20 could reliably kill a couple hundred F1 opponents, but at least it'd take him a good while.

 

[Hussar]

Leaving aside Achilles' Damage Reduction from being dipped in the magic river, only 8 mooks can surround him each round, if there's a 2nd rank with longspears (but 1st rank have short weapons) then yes theoretically he can receive a lot of attacks. In practice Achilles can maneuver to keep the number of attacks well short of the theoretical maximum, especially in confined quarters like city streets. And these spear carriers aren't zombies, they're unlikely to maintain morale after the first few dozen have been Great Cleaved in under a minute.
Even a 2e F20 could reliably kill a couple hundred F1 opponents, but at least it'd take him a good while.

Ah, I propose the Mob rules from DMG2. Now your Achilles dies. Quickly. A mob of humans has 120 hp and a +40 (ish) grapple check. They grapple, pin and crush Achilles to death. Don't have to worry about maneuvering since mobs can fit into any 5 foot square, just like a swarm.

Actually, in 1e a 15th level character was epic. He could single handedly obliterate pretty much any non-unique creature in a single round. Even by 10th level, there was very, very little that could seriously threaten a PC. 2e beefed up a number of the critters, but, still didn't beef up their damage/round.

Now, if there was one situation where the RAW demographics would not apply, it would be the Illiad. Never mind that "RAW demographics" isn't even a rule, but a group of suggestions for randomly generating a country. The demographics rules were never remotely intended to model something like this.

 

[shilsen]

Leaving aside Achilles' Damage Reduction from being dipped in the magic river...

[Pedant]Actually, if we're talking about the Iliad, then the above isn't an issue at all. The Iliad has no reference to Achilles having been dipped in the Styx or immune to damage in any way. He is wounded and bleeds in Iliad, albeit not seriously. The whole "dipped in the Styx" story is from a different tradition than Homer.[/pedant]

I return you to your previous discussion.

 

[painandgreed]

Leaving aside Achilles' Damage Reduction from being dipped in the magic river, only 8 mooks can surround him each round, if there's a 2nd rank with longspears (but 1st rank have short weapons) then yes theoretically he can receive a lot of attacks. In practice Achilles can maneuver to keep the number of attacks well short of the theoretical maximum, especially in confined quarters like city streets. And these spear carriers aren't zombies, they're unlikely to maintain morale after the first few dozen have been Great Cleaved in under a minute.
Even a 2e F20 could reliably kill a couple hundred F1 opponents, but at least it'd take him a good while.

Still don't see it. You have our fighter 20 run towards the troop lines which are just under five short bow range increments from the walls (250'). Warrior 1s armed with longspears and short swords run up and surround the F20 at a distance to two squares three ranks deep (40 warriors) with others milling about. 21 W1 archers are within range and fire and do 1d6 damage. Let's say they're onto of the city wall to avoid LOS issues.

Round 1: 1d6 damage

Our F20 steps foward taking 4 AoO and kills the three people in range. W1 repostion around him and get 16 more attacks doing 1d6 damage and 23 archers fire doing 1d6.

Round 2: 3d6 total, 3 dead mooks

Our F20 drops his sword and picks up a longspear off the dead guys and kills 16 and takes a five foot step fo. 8 warriors run up with short swords and attack. Everybody else backs up and forms ranks 3 squares away. 25 archers fire and do 1d6.

Round 3: 4d6 total, 19 dead mooks

Our F20 decides to stop playing around and pulls out his latest WMD, the spiked chain. He kills the 8 guys around him and steps 5' forward. 27 archers fire doing 2d6 damage (including some fractional attacks from earlier).

Round 4: 6d6, 27 dead mooks

Our F20 is now surrounded by mooks 15 ' away two deep. He moves up 10' (225' from wall) and attacks. He kills 8 mooks. 31 archers fire along with 8 AoO for 2 d6 damage.

Round 5: 8d6, 35 dead mooks

Our f20 repeats and kills 8 more and takes 2d6 more damage from 35 archers and 8 AoO and is now 215' from the wall.

Round 6: 10d6, 43 dead mooks

At this point, 10% losses, we could wonder about morale, but I can't find any of the D&D morale rules on the online SRD. Can somebody inform me what they are? Also, can anybody help with the F20 efficiency in killing mooks if they surround him several ranks deep at a distance of 15'? Otherwise, we continue.

Our f20 repeats and kills 8 more and takes 2d6 more damage from 39 archers and 8 AoO and is now 205' from the wall.

Round 7: 12d6, 51 dead mooks

Our f20 repeats and kills 8 more and takes 3d6 more damage from 43 archers and 8 AoO and is now 195' from the wall.

Round 8: 15d6, 59 dead mooks

Our f20 repeats and kills 8 more and takes 3d6 more damage from 47 archers and 8 AoO and is now 185' from the wall.

Round 9: 18d6, 67 dead mooks

Sufficient to say, that at this rate, the F20 dies assaulting the city and we haven't even dealt with how to climb the wall yet. If the mooks position themselves to block his movement and allow the archers to fire, they will win. The F20 needs to move through the mooks, so his option is to ignore the mooks and overrun through them. This is straight F20 strength verus mooks strength or dex. Which unless the F20 has a str of 50, he has a chance of failing, but we'll assume he makes all checks. Even then, he can only take a 30' movement and no attacks. He would clear 30' of the 250' and suffer AoO and archer fire. Which is 28 AoO a round from mooks on ground plus 20 archer attacks plus 12 more ever round. It will take him 8 rounds to reach the wall. That's 660 attacks and 33d6 damage from natural 20's. He is still at the base of the wall.

 

[green slime]

Morale no longer exists in DnD. It was done away with in the 3.0 edition. It is entirely left to DM whim, how fanatical a creature is.

On the other hand, units of trained soldiers are capable of extreme acts of sacrifice, if they sincerely believe that there is a purpose to their sacrifice.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Or, round one, 100 first level wizards cast magic missile, fighter drops dead. (Let's face it, how many fighters have a broach of shielding when they can have a necklace of +6 con or natural armor?)

 

[papastebu]

Papabestu and Urban Knight,

If either of you (or anyone else, for that matter) sees something that you think of as rude, we ask you to use the "report a post" feature - just click on the exclamation point icon at the bottom of the problematic post.

The one thing we ask that you not do is get confrontational. "Calling out" a person on their behavior usually results in the escalation of tensions, and a derailing of the thread. So please, no more head-to-head.

If you've got a question about this, please feel free to e-mail any of the moderators - our addresses are in a thread stickied to the top of the Meta Forum.

My apologies to anyone I may have offended. I admit I got ticked off by the wording of the OP. I should get a grip, I guess.

Can, uh, anybody help me get back into my straight-jacket? Really, it came undone by itself.

 

[Xini]

Xini,

I'm completely unclear as to what it is you're looking for; your initial post was labeled 1e/2e/ODnD, but didn't have any relation to it; you enumerated problems you have with the game, but didn't ask if anyone else shared your problem or how they solved it; your listed problems are aimed at the game system and the publisher, though later in the thread you say you have capricious DMs that ruin your game; you say you and a friend want to switch, but everyone else can't be bothered, though you don't say if it's because they enjoy the game more than you do or if it's because they're lazy; you describe your dilemma but don't ask anything of us: help, advice or otherwise.

Yeah the tab labelling was me being inattentive to detail and not reading that the tab didn't include 3rd ed. Sorry to all those who were confused or "duped" by this.

What is it you want?

A game system which represents the cinematic style of a fighter struggling to cope with wounds and the chaos of combat without being alive on minute and dead the next. Apply such example to the rest of D&D and I guess you could say that my problem is basically that D&D is a very polarised system with little middle ground and no encouragement to try to cope but only to kick down the next door, kill the ugly thing and then loot the body (which strangely is seemingly never frowned upon even by paladins).

Advice on alternative systems?

The more options the merrier this old fashioned munchkin (not the same as the newer twinking meaning) is.

Opinions on what changes a future edition may incorporate?
Anecdotes on how others have gotten their groups to change systems?

Either of these would also be nice.

A space to vent your frustration?

Partially I guess but I'm really just looking for a healthy discussion with other roleplayers. I thought that this place would be the best first call really. I hadn't counted on what level of offence would be caused or the particular style of this board, hence I'm taking suggestions more than posting more on the facets I see as problematic.

Because after 4 pages I still don't know, and I still feel like asking you why you play it if you dislike it so much, and to let me know who the guy is with your arm behind your back forcing you to play: I'll get him to stop.

That's a fair comment. I'd hate to lose the time with friends and I am a long time roleplayer but it seems that groups are becoming more stressed and angsty about rules etc and I'd like to revamp the rules into something which is more intuitive and flexible to allow for everyone to play what king of character they want to (within reason and limits as always). I'm after peace.

That depends upon the manner of their suggestion.

Well the first would be to go further into the problems with "unlimited" magic and the suspension of disbelief & reasoning.

Asking how other people solved similar issues, instead of scripting a litany of charges presented as fact, will generally be better recieved.

More flies with honey than vinegar, and all that.

Well yeah. I'm not always diplomatic due to being more cerebral than interpersonal, forgive my abrupt nature and sometimes caustic styling.

Welcome to the boards.

Cheers. It's actually been very informative and enlightening. Yes there has been a little heat here but I hope that no prides are wounded beyond repair. Personally I think that this has been most useful.

PS. I may go further into other points still but I'd have to try to collect my thoughts into a coherent and easy to follow post as I seem to be misunderstood quite a bit and that has not helped in the ol' diplomacy checks

 

[Xini]

Or, round one, 100 first level wizards cast magic missile, fighter drops dead. (Let's face it, how many fighters have a broach of shielding when they can have a necklace of +6 con or natural armor?)

I think that even wizards admit that this spell is overpowered and "broken". I think the reasoning for keeping it was said to be "so low level arcane spell casters have something to do"!!

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I'm not always diplomatic due to being more cerebral than interpersonal...

I'm sometimes far too intelligent to bother with the trivialities of social etiquette, too.