Manual of the Planes: The Evolution of Rules Complexity

[Sir Brennen]

Right, like I said, the mechanics suck... They should be greatly simplified, but they should still reflect the fact that you're in a place where mind is more important than matter.

Why? Just to be consistent with the way a previous edition did it in a supplemental book published several years after the core rulebooks? When many adventures were already had in the Astral without even more pimped out spellcasters?

As I said, rules which make mental characters more powerful and penalize physical characters is really unbalanced, and not fun for the non-mental characters.

4E has some nice rules for allowing Intelligence to play a part in planar adventures already. See the section under Mutability in MoP, and the rules for letting characters influence unstable regions.

 

[Lizard]

Well, here's how I see it. A lot of 4e rules are based around how the old rules worked in actual play.

For example, healing times. Yes, it's idiotic/bizarre that all wounds are healed after you nap. But in actual 3.x play, after any fight, players would break out the thousands of potions of CLW and wands of ditto they carried around. No real adventuring party beyond 5th level or so ever began a day at less than full hit points. So 4e abstracted all this out and turned it into "Screw it, you're healed, whatever." (The problem is that they never SAID "We're abstracting the process of using minor curative potions/spells", leaving it appearing as if the game world has only two states: Fully Healed and Dead As A Doornail.)

In terms of flight -- would any party every fly faster than the slowest member on the Astral? In combat, the higher speed would be a boon, but for day to day travel, you'd fly as fast as Doofus The 3 Int Dwarf. So 4e simplified this to a fixed flight speed. Much less flavorful and interesting, but the gameplay experience is similar. (Except for wizards in Astral Combat, who can no longer skedaddle at ridiculous rates, I suppose...)

 

[Lizard]

To me, using extreme environments becomes somewhat boring because they wind up being entirely binary. Either you're not prepped for it and you die. Or, you're prepped for it and pretty much ignore it for the duration of the adventure, which means that it might as well not be there in the first place.

I'd prefer to make planes memorable based on who you meet and what you do, rather than what you see or how you feel. It's much more imediate to players, IMO, when they meet a horde of devils bearing down on them rather than, "well, we're in Hell, everyone got their Planar Protection Sunblock on?"

YMMV and all that of course.

OTOH, the feeling of "Oh, , we must head for HELL ITSELF!", and the time spent gearing up/researching/preparing helps make the game feel real -- you're getting ready for a major foray into a place where most mortals instantly die, this isn't the same as trekking down to the sewers for a quick scuffle with some dire rats. I like the "Lewis&Clark" feeling of kitting out for a trip to hell/the elemental planes/whatever. Being able to ignore/minimize the effects of the trip is a reward for careful planning and research.

 

[el-remmen]

To me, using extreme environments becomes somewhat boring because they wind up being entirely binary. Either you're not prepped for it and you die. Or, you're prepped for it and pretty much ignore it for the duration of the adventure, which means that it might as well not be there in the first place.

This is not my experience - and I mean that from the POV of someone who enjoys using Earth-like "extreme" environments, and has never had an adventure occur in Hell or other "extreme" plane.

 

[mmu1]

I guess, in the end, it depends on how much mechanics you need to make a place different. And everyone's going to have a different answer to that one. Take the Hell example. Is Hell different because of the fire and brimstone, or because of who you're going to meet?

After all, it's not like Dante needed a suite of spells to protect him on his journey. Neither did the various Greeks who headed down there either.

To me, using extreme environments becomes somewhat boring because they wind up being entirely binary. Either you're not prepped for it and you die. Or, you're prepped for it and pretty much ignore it for the duration of the adventure, which means that it might as well not be there in the first place.

I'd prefer to make planes memorable based on who you meet and what you do, rather than what you see or how you feel. It's much more imediate to players, IMO, when they meet a horde of devils bearing down on them rather than, "well, we're in Hell, everyone got their Planar Protection Sunblock on?"

YMMV and all that of course.

Hell, fire and brimstone were just generic examples of things that are non-negotiable.

If you wanted to model your underworld on Hades, then you'd better put in rules for what happens if you come in contact with the waters of Styx. On the other hand, if you want your devils to be the kind that carry pitchforks, then the rivers of brimstone are key.

Constant environmental damage is lame, but there's a big difference between taking a blanket 30 points of fire damage anywhere on the plane, and meaningful and well-thought out environmental hazards.

I don't think all exotic locations need special rules (even if most can benefit from them, if they're not overly complicated and don't bog things down), but I think there are certain places which are alien enough that IMO things simply can't work the same as they do back home - not unless you want the setting to feel like a movie made for the Sci-Fi channel.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

OTOH, the feeling of "Oh, , we must head for HELL ITSELF!", and the time spent gearing up/researching/preparing helps make the game feel real -- you're getting ready for a major foray into a place where most mortals instantly die, this isn't the same as trekking down to the sewers for a quick scuffle with some dire rats. I like the "Lewis&Clark" feeling of kitting out for a trip to hell/the elemental planes/whatever. Being able to ignore/minimize the effects of the trip is a reward for careful planning and research.

There are different ways to bring research into the game - you don't necessarily need to invest into Resist Energy (or worse: "Avoid Planar Effects" or what the spell was called in 3e). It could also be about:
- How do we get there? (Assuming you don't have one of the high level rituals available)
- What will we meet there? (Especially what kind of enemies will we encounter?)
- How do we get away? (Assuming you don't have one of the high level rituals available)

Some of this research might just be a skill check, others might even be its own adventure - find the legendary library of the Emerald Flame Adepts and find either a book describing a planar portal to your destination, or find a scroll that teleports you there? (BUt don't forget the scroll that gets you back )

 

[Stalker0]

Right, like I said, the mechanics suck... They should be greatly simplified, but they should still reflect the fact that you're in a place where mind is more important than matter.

And herein lies the great conundrum of pen and paper roleplay. Because we are not machines, there is only so much room for complexity into any game system before it becomes unplayable to most humans.

However complexity leads to more "realism" and it leads to more diversity (such as the potential for the "mind over matter" plane you desired).

Every system cuts the line somewhere. On this particular topic, 1e went with more complex mechanics, 4e went with simplier execution. The reverse happens in other places.

This is one of those areas that is a wonderful change for some, and horrible for others. That will happen in every edition.

 

[RodneyThompson]

OTOH, the feeling of "Oh, , we must head for HELL ITSELF!", and the time spent gearing up/researching/preparing helps make the game feel real -- you're getting ready for a major foray into a place where most mortals instantly die, this isn't the same as trekking down to the sewers for a quick scuffle with some dire rats. I like the "Lewis&Clark" feeling of kitting out for a trip to hell/the elemental planes/whatever. Being able to ignore/minimize the effects of the trip is a reward for careful planning and research.

I think there's definitely something there, but I think I personally prefer that as a part of the adventure itself, not a standard across planar adventuring. What I mean by that is, if you (as DM) want to give the players they Lewis and Clark feeling of planar adventuring, you should make it a part of the adventure (or, perhaps more appropriately, the adventure before you go to the plane in question).

For example, in our last campaign our party had to go into a giant, underground Dwarven necropolis. That necropolis had a warding on it to keep out graverobbers that aged living beings at an astronomical rate. In order to get inside and survive, we had to hunt down a witch to stock up on potions that temporarily turned us into undead. Those in hand, we were able to go to the necropolis and complete out goal.

Similarly, for a planar adventure, I could see a great two-adventure combo being something like this: The players have to go to Phlegethos, the Fouth Hell, to reach a location called the Molten Citadel, inside which their enemy awaits. While Phlegethos itself isn't instantly lethal to the heroes, the Molten Citadel may be a place of such death and flame that mortals cannot survive there unaided. The DM would then pick two or three things that the PCs need to do before they can go to the Citadel; perhaps they need to gather potions that turn their skins into protection against the hellfire in the Citadel, and maybe the wizard has to obtain a staff that transforms his spells with the Fire keyword into Hellfire spells, allowing him to use them to damage the creatures within the Citadel. Maybe the heroes learn that some monsters can strip away their potions' protectiveness, so they need to wear armor with a special property that kicks in to temporarily protect them until they quaff another potion. Maybe the heat of the Citadel distorts the air so much that they cannot see the path in front of them, so they must obtain the Compass of Melora to cool the air around them and show them the way to their enemies. The adventure then becomes to gather these protective items, and gives you that Lewis & Clark feeling without also just feeling like just another shopping trip. Once these items are in hand, the PCs can then travel the Phlegethos and have their adventure in the Molten Citadel.

Obviously, that example is one locale on a plane, not a whole plane. I picked a citadel on Phlegethos because it is "Going to Hell." You could just as well make it an entire Astral domain that has these properties, or a huge swath of the Elemental Chaos, etc.

There is sort of this question about whether this makes "what your stuff can do" more important than "what you can do" but I think that, for one or two adventures in a campaign, this shouldn't be a problem. Similarly, one or two of the "items" could be replaced by a very specific ritual, which the party's ritual caster(s) would need to hunt down before they could venture to the Citadel. That would be a little more "Hey, look what I can do now!" for that player, too, which is pretty neat.

 

[James McMurray]

I ran a 4e adventure that took place in the negative material plane with homebrewed subjective gravity rules in place. The result was that PCs who could control themselves (i.e. had a high wisdom) would often use it to their advantage. Those who could not would pick a down and stick with it.

It was definitely more complex than "everyone flies at 1/2" but it was nowhere near unplayable. Count me in the ranks of those who prefer their planes be very different from each other, and not just in flavor text. Heck, you should have seen our fight in the Far Realms.

For those interested, the adventure and the rules we used are linked in my sig in the epic campaign section. It starts with "Ambushed!" under Pool Hunters, but the negative plane stuff doesn't come in until Breaking In and Out, and culminates in a final major battle in Revenge is Sweet.

A snippet of the rules (DC and damage taken straight from pg. 42):

Movement in the negative material plane is done by choosing a direction as down and then walking along a surface or falling in a straight line. A DC 21 wisdom check lets you move in any direction. Failure means you fall in a random direction and take 3d12 damage if you hit something. Success lets you move your speed, or faster by adding 2 to the DC for each extra square. No check is required if there’s something you instinctively recognize as a floor, and the inhabitants of the fortress have lived there long enough that it’s normal for them as long as they stay on a solid surface for the entire move.

 

[Lizard]

At the risk of thread drift, let me note there's a lot of rose-colored glasses when people look back at the "Good old days" of "simpler rules where you just sat down and PLAYED and you were free to do all the whacky things you wanted without a 'feat' or a 'power' or whatever". The fact is, those memories tend to be due not to the rules being simpler, but to them being so complex player groups ignored the vast majority of them. (Weapon type vs. Armor class, anyone? Wizards rolling for starting spells? For god's sake, the unarmed combat rules?) Not to mention different rules systems for everything -- percentile thieves skills. Listening at doors (but not anywhere else). Surprise. SEGMENTS!

And the whole "We could just do what we wanted" idea tended to mean:
a)There were no rules for it, so no, you couldn't do it. Fighters could not climb walls; only thieves could, and that was that. Clerics could not use a bladed weapon, period. Etc.

b)Every DM had his own personal, idiosyncratic, and often constantly changing house rules/set of guidelines which determined what happened when you went outside the scope of the rules, and there were constant, endless, arguments. Further, games where you had to describe your characters actions ("Tell me HOW you're searching for traps!") instead of assuming your character was, in fact, better trained than you turned into nightmares of having to second- and triple- guess the DM and it didn't matter if Fingers the Thief was 18th level, if YOU couldn't describe how to disable whatever the DM had plucked from Grimtooth's, you were toast.

The best thing about "old school" games was the sense of scope, style, and wonderment. The rules themselves -- especially if we're talking AD&D until Third Edition -- were, let us say, sub par.