Why must numbers go up?

[billd91]

So, I would argue that it is worth asking the question, "how much value dos doing all the extra math add to the enjoyment of the game?"

I'm increasingly convinced that adding the extra math detracts from the game and alienates it from its roots - speaking of D&D at any rate.

 

[AllisterH]

Well I'll be the voice of dissent.

I *LIKE* the fact that straight up higher level monsters (and PCs in 4e sans gear) are just plain not hittable by lower level critters/PCs assuming the higher level individuals are aware of the opposing lower level threat....

For my group, it gives us a reason why people hunt/look for higher level adventurers and are willing to pay them the relatively exorbitant amounts. I think it was in one of the early DRAGONS or somewhere else where we saw the "how much would it cost to purchase the services of a X-level fighter" and the prices didn't make sense AT ALL given the difference between fighters of different levels back then....

I personally was never happy that a 20th level fighter was no better at avoiding actual attacks than he was at 1st level. And yeah, I never really considered the excess HP as an aspect of "dodging" but more of luck and plain old hardiness (a.k.a why a 20th level fighter could survive a fall from a higher level than a 1st level fighter)

 

[Plane Sailing]

I was thinking of games which had very little to no story-related rewards. Something where the player's character sheet remains the same throughout the game with very few to no changes, other than maybe changes in hit/health points during injury and healing, and stuff from failed saving throws.

Hey, I wonder if Call of Cthulhu could come into this category? Often played as one-shots, in a campaign it is almost always a case of how slowly does your character deteriorate rather than advance!

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

I can see this argument in retrospect, all though, in my opinion (and its an opinion only), the trend that started in 3E (abilities, skills, AC etc. all tended to scale directly with HD) became much stronger and clearer in 4E.

I'm inclined to agree - the integration of half level with attacks and defences, and the ability to easily scale things up and down.

This is more or less true, but not of the orcs. By mid-level to high level, 1 HD creatures needed 20's to hit everyone, and had more or less become mooks to be slaughtered that did not represent threats except in the 100's. However, scaling up only as far as the 3+1 HD bugbear tended to remain a least something of a challenge throughout the likely scope of a campaign.

You're right of course. We had a mob attack houserule which helped, and that was swaying my thinking wrt Orcs!

The more I play, the more I realize that not everything in 3e was an actual improvement from 1e. If I went back to 1e, there would be concepts I'd want to take with me, but I'm beginning to see various things that were dropped or changed that 1e should have retained.

Me too (even if it were a different subset!)

Cheers

 

[Badwe]

why not roll d30s? because d30+45 != d20+50, while you may have the same average, you've got a higher and lower top end and therefore a greater variance. The underlying concept of the d20 is that +/-1 = 5% change in your odds.

A lot of people rightly point out the traps you can fall into, as a DM, by simply relying on advancement to entice your players, but there's also a failure to acknowledge what comes along side it. Things like paragon paths and prestige classes and epic destinies legitimately change how your character functions. you gain more options, options that don't HAVE to be (but could be at your choosing) Fireball Mk2.

But again, it comes down to the DM. if you're taking your players on a railroad and sending them encounters of level+1, level+2, then the boss level+3 every time, it's not going to feel very unique from level to level. It might be more apparent in a sandbox or a giant dungeon where the players can go up and down floors and feel the difficulty changing as they go.

It's possible another RPGism is at work here: getting XP. many times players feel obligated to complete every encounter in order to get maximum XP. I'll be trying something new in the coming months as i send my players into H3: "Pyramid of Shadows". in addition to imposing a time limit to complete the dungeon, i'll be giving them the XP to all the encounters they missed at the conclusion of the module. This way, every battle will feel like a choice and there's a greater chance they'll barge into a more difficult fight in order to save time.

 

[Enclave]

You can certainly do this but in many cases picking on the little kids to flex your muscles doesn't feel very heroic. This is one of the disadvantages of the number bloat/ scaled world treadmill system.

Hit points did a fine job of power scaling in early D&D. Overall defenses improved somewhat but there was more of a feeling about meaningful improvement going on.

An orc soldier and a minotaur might both have AC 5 but there isn't any doubt about what the tougher challenge is. Even though that 1st level fighter has an equal chance to land a solid hit on either target the orc is by far an easier fight. When he gains a few levels, our fighter will be able to hit that AC 5 with greater frequency and possibly be tough enough to face that minotaur.

Non super-scaling defenses also allow lower level monsters to remain useful foes for a longer period in the campaign. Early D&D orcs in sufficient numbers are still a credible threat to a mid to high level party.

When world scaling gets to a point that two entities cannot meaningfully interact with each other due to level discrepancy, there is kind of problem going on.

One thing you can do as a DM though is plan things out differently.

Don't build encounters based on what level the players are. Rather, build the guards and such based on what they should be in the position they hold.

If your players try to raid a throne room when they're in heroic levels, they should be expecting to encounter guards that are at high paragon levels, maybe even low epic levels.

Make the enemies realistically powerful for their job.

Sure this puts a lot more risk on your players, but they'll learn that they cannot take on anything they want at any level they want.

Course, this style of DMing takes a lot more prep work as you're basically letting the players dictate where the story goes rather than you dictating the story you want to tell. I've found though that players often enjoy this far more than them playing an epic storyline that you came up with.

I know I'm probably not explaining this well enough though. But I have it totally pictured in my mind

See, for one thing, the prep work for this sort of campaign is pretty much you pre-building the sorts of guards, assassins, creatures, ect... your players will encounter in certain parts of your world. After you create all that, then you just make minor tweaks as the game progresses. Now yes, this is a LOT of work for a DM and most wouldn't want to go through with all that work, but I've found it makes the world seem more real and alive.

I personally was going to start building a world of this sort once Dark Sun was released. I don't expect to be ready to DM a Dark Sun campaign for months after the campaign guide is released, hell maybe even a year (depending how busy I am)

 

[Ariosto]

A few 1E AD&D games I played in back in the day resembled this.

At that point, I think it would be fair to say, "This is not Advanced Dungeons & Dragons!" Screw calling it "just bad D&D". That simplistically gives a few game mechanics supreme importance, when elements at least as fundamental -- addressed at length in the Dungeon Masters Guide -- have been cast aside.

I just would like to be able to do cool things but not always have to chalk it up to the new +X thingamawhatsit of smiting that I recently received... but its even worse when I have to ditch that a few levels later just so that I can grab the next one so I can keep pace.

That got started with "numbers going up" generally.

In the original D&D set, the only combat bonus from a stat was +1 to hit with missiles for dexterity 13+. The best magical weapon/armor/shield bonus was +3, and armor and shield did not "stack". A fighter of level 16 and up had a +12 bonus to hit over a first-level character (+2 at levels 4-6, +5 at 7-9, +7 at 10-12, +9 at 13-15).

In 1st ed. AD&D, 18/00 strength gave +3 to hit and +6 to damage in melee. Dexterity 18-20 gave +3 to hit with missiles and +4 on defense (AC and some saves). Magical armament went up to +5, and armor and shield "stacked". I see no "by the book" limit of the AC range to -10. A fighter got basically +1 per level, through level 17.

The greater supply of pluses amounts to a sort of "bonus inflation", like currency inflation in real life.

The magic gear past +3 was not common in 1st ed. AD&D, at least per the DMG -- I estimate 8% of armor and shields, 6% of swords, 1% of miscellaneous weapons. Even +3 items were very rare, but so were such monsters as iron golems. Rare or not, their more general effects had become less impressive in proportion to bonuses from non-magical means.

"Upgrades" nonetheless remained part of the fun for a lot of folks. Having acquired a sword +2, one might give one's sword +1 (itself a famous blade) to a favored henchman. A +1 luck blade or flame tongue might be even more treasured than the "plain" +2 -- and an intelligent sword with special powers could be an NPC in itself.

That was no "necessity to keep up," though. It was not -- as in 4e -- a matter of more or less maintaining a certain chance to hit versus "level appropriate" foes. Neither, therefore, was it routinely a matter of foes so many levels away being invulnerable. Hit chances, damage rolls, hit point totals, special abilities, numbers of combatants, local conditions and goals of parties combined in various ways to create varied challenges.

 

[Chrono22]

How much of this is due to game designers being lazy and/or deliberately creating a simplified ruleset to attract newbies into the hobby?

Well, I wouldn't say that's why it is the case. Having an expansive system and a simple ruleset aren't mutually exclusive. The closer the terms, definitions, and concepts of the rules/system mirror conventional language/reality, the more intuitive the system can be. Anyone can roleplay. Little children do it without rules from when they are toddlers up.

I'd say it isn't a matter of the writers being lazy- it's just that, as much as game designers toute themselves as being creative and imaginative, we aren't. Very little has changed in how people play DnD in 30 years. Very little has changed about how people approach RPGs since their conception. Narrative control has shifted somewhat in the players' direction, but I figure that is more a function of slow-acting democracy than anything deliberate.

 

[billd91]

I see no "by the book" limit of the AC range to -10.

It's my recollection that the hard limit on AC at -10 came with 2e. There were a few exceptions, all intended to be very powerful opponents.

That was no "necessity to keep up," though. It was not -- as in 4e -- a matter of more or less maintaining a certain chance to hit versus "level appropriate" foes.

I agree with this. While it was cool to have a more powerful weapon, a girdle of giant strength, yadda yadda, and obtaining it was a powerful ambition, it wasn't strictly necessary. About the highest plus I ever recall "needing" was a +3 for iron golems or certain spirit/undead creatures in OA. And the 3x games significantly softened that particular issue by going to DR rather than total invulnerability.

3e's main mistake on this topic, I believe, wasn't making improved weapons and other gear a necessity either. It was making that strategy a realizable one by making it so easy to fashion or otherwise buy improved magical gear. The ability to pursue that strategy made it a dominating one, even if not strictly necessary.

 

[Ariosto]

In earlier D&D, a fighter attacked. That's ALL he did because it was always the best thing to do. Push? Swing from the chandelier? Why? It's been said in this thread, the AC's of the opponents went up a LOT slower than your straight up offense. Choosing to do anything other than attack the AC was a tactically inferior choice.

Why should a push or swing from a chandelier not "attack the AC"?

People indeed do so, and that is indeed a common means of resolution in my experience. That some other factor might serve has sweet nothing to do with what is or is not a "tactically inferior choice". An attacker's "to hit" roll of 13+ or a target's "to save" roll of 9+ are exactly the same probability.

It's the DM's job to set that probability, just as it is in WotC's designs.

Overbearing can be as effective using later approaches (DMG, Dragon, UA) as it was in the very first D&D FAQ. The books offer factors covering a wide range of actual tactical considerations from ancient and medieval warfare, and -- although the focus is explicitly not on lengthy blow-by-blow simulation of battles -- those factors are not in any way exhaustive limits on what is possible.

What is possible comes first, in the imagination. Abstract mechanical "rules" are useful exactly insofar as they conform to that conveniently for implementation in the game.

It seems to be the fashion to turn that completely backwards and upside down. One possible consequence of such a topsy-turvy view is players considering their options limited to making such moves as one might make in a game of checkers or in playing a hand of cards. "Off the menu" becomes "not permitted".

However, with a broader range of number, all increasing at different rates depending on a number of factors, you gain a broader spectrum of tactics to choose from.

Unencumbered by the view that only a very few numbers are "legitimate", an old-style referee has access to the broadest range possible -- and so the players have the broadest possible spectrum of tactics from which to choose.

If what one really wants is to spend a real hour working out the details of an imaginary incident of less than a minute, then that is certainly as possible in old D&D as in, say, Amber Diceless. It is not really the expected or designed-for desire, though, any more than in a typical adventure movie, TV show, comic book or novel. Fast action, rapidly decisive in the development of events, is what the designers had in mind.

There are games designed especially to produce such prolonged combats, but the most prominent ones may not be so well suited to "old fashioned" pacing.