Older Editions and "Balance" when compared to 3.5

[Voadam]

Ok, for the overly pedantic:

Sleep is an autowin for any encounter which does not feature creatures specifically immune to the Sleep spell, which, from hit dice less than 1 to 4+1, the majority of creatures are NOT immune to sleep. While there might be situations in which sleep is not autowin, they are not in the majority.

Happy?

My point, which you keep missing, is that a wizard with Sleep will face one of the following three choices:

1. Autowin - the creatures all fall asleep.
2. Useless - the creautres are immune.
3. Mostly useless - the spell is already used and the wizard is reduced to plinking away with darts. If he actually gets into melee, he's got a life expectency closely related to small squishy things on busy highways.

And this is what you consider balanced design?

Want to go through the moathouse in Village of Hommlet with me and see how many encounters are "autowin"able by sleep?

It is hardly "overly pedantic" to point out that your idea of sleep as an autowin is simply wrong. And there is nothing the matter with being wrong, btw, so long as you are able to learn from it and stop making the same mistake.

And, from personal experience with playing many 1e magic-users, and from DMing many players playing the same, I can say that a 1st level magic-user armed with sleep faces more than the three choices you are able to see.

Heck, in 2e I played a diviner that managed quite well with no offensive spells at all!

D&D is not -- or, historically, has not been -- just a series of fights. Certainly it does not have to be, regardless of edition used.



RC

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Just so there is no shifting of goalposts or forgetting of the specific statement you were contesting with the Moathouse as your example.

Hussar was factually incorrect, an encounter with creatures subject to sleep could have more creatures in the encounter than a sleep spell will overcome.

His MU only autowins half of the encounters on the top level. He won two of the remaning three with a die roll and got 9 out of the 13 rats in the one he did not win outright.

In the dungeons he starts hitting things that sleep can't affect because of HD or immunities and many encounters have more affectable creatures than can be stopped by sleep.

On that surface level (typically when the party is level 1) the sleep spell is a big encounter autowin or at the very least a very big gun. Deeper down it becomes mostly a big gun for non undead and non bosses.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Yeah, but they are also filled with exhortations to ignore them.

Rule 0 and exhortations to common sense didn't exactly disappear in 1989. If saying, "Ignore this baseline when it seems like a good idea" means there is no baseline at all, then 3rd and 4th Edition don't have baselines, either.

I mean, wouldn't (say) CR and EL have worked (far) better with some direct advice to ignore the math when throwing on templates, if the result didn't seem right?

MM3.5, pg. 294: "Estimating CR: Assigning a challenge rating is a subjective judgment, not an exact science -- meaning that you have control over what the CR of a monster with class levels should be. If you find a class combination that improves a monster's capabilities significantly -- or not as significantly as this guideline supposes -- you should modify the CR as seems logical. Err on the side of over-estimating: If a monster has a higher Challenge Rating than it deserves, it's less likely to kill off an entire party than if you had erred in the other direction."

 

[Stormonu]

Also, considering sleep spell vs. the Moathouse, that's 16 encounters and 1 sleep spell the M-U has. Which one is he going to use it on? There's 13 where success is iffy and 5 that outright will have no effect.

He may autowin one, maybe two if the top level vs. dungeons are tackled with a rest between, but that's still an additional 14 encounters to survive.

 

[Odhanan]

Sleep an autowin in the Moathouse?

Now, when you reach that kind of silliness, you know it's time to let the point drop. Seriously.

 

[Odhanan]

I do not remember it saying all ELs should be close to APL.

Can someone look up and post the specifics please? I remember the 3.0 DMG suggesting a spread of suggested ELs with most hovering around APL but I remember the high end being very high like APL +5 or so to the point where avoiding/running away/negotiating/super prep should be preferred to straight on fighting.

It was beyond APL+4, at which point the book specifically advised to rarely use these types of encounters since the death of a PC at the very least was close to unavoidable, and there was a fine line between a challenge and a frustrating encounter, or somesuch. It's from memory, but I'm pretty sure I'm not far off the mark, since we've had these types of arguments on ENWorld about the CR/EL system about... a billion times before.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Just so there is no shifting of goalposts or forgetting of the specific statement you were contesting with the Moathouse as your example.

Yep. It was apparently "overly pedantic" to point out that sleep didn't autowin every encounter, or every encounter a 1st level m-u was likely to encounter, when those were proposed. And, still, as you say, the contested point was "factually incorrect".

And it is not simply that "an encounter with creatures subject to sleep could have more creatures in the encounter than a sleep spell will overcome" -- all it requries is that they are not bunched in a group.

For example, I generously listed the giant frogs as an autowin, because it is conceivable that a DM might have them all bunched up in a group.....although that seems unlikely to me. Likewise, the rats are not necessarily bunched up, nor any of the humanoid encounters.

I also ignored the bit in the DMG about sleep spells, because it isn't necessarily clear how the DM will adjudicate that, which also affects the frog encounter (turning it from an autowin to a likely win).

So, again, I was giving the module the most generous reading possible for Hussar to be correct. And he was still "factually incorrect".

(Is there some other kind of incorrect, btw? Does this mean anything other than "wrong"?)

It is clearly and obviously true that, in 1e at least, our poor magic-user better not travel alone. Even with a Ring of Automatic Sleep At the Start of Each Encounter, he fails to trump the other classes.

The sleep spell is useful to the party, but the magic-user needs the party if he wishes to survive. And sleep is not an autowin for what he is likely to encounter, even if he can somehow take those encounters one at a time, regain the sleep spell between each encounter, always win initiative, and never get surprised.

Anyone who thinks differently will have a short-lived magic-user in 1e.

Also, considering sleep spell vs. the Moathouse, that's 16 encounters and 1 sleep spell the M-U has. Which one is he going to use it on? There's 13 where success is iffy and 5 that outright will have no effect.

So, what you're saying is that situations in which sleep is not autowin are in the majority?

Sleep an autowin in the Moathouse?

Now, when you reach that kind of silliness, you know it's time to let the point drop. Seriously.

It was a silly idea long before we got to the Moathouse.



RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Rule 0 and exhortations to common sense didn't exactly disappear in 1989. If saying, "Ignore this baseline when it seems like a good idea" means there is no baseline at all, then 3rd and 4th Edition don't have baselines, either.

Yup.

And thanks for the quote from the 3.5 mm; I never picked one up (stayed at 3e). Was that in 3e too? Mine is not easily at hand right now.


RC

 

[JRRNeiklot]

For sleep to work on any intelligent creature, ALL of them must be affected. If even one of them is not, all he has to do is slap the others around. Then the mus spell pretty much only gives the rest of the party a free round of actions. Potent, certainly, but hardly autowin. But I tend to ignore any sentence with the word "win" pertaining to D&D anyway.

 

[Hussar]

Sigh.

I really didn't want to come back in here.

It appears that my point has been missed by RC's mischaracterization of what I said.

What I actually said is that the MU would autowin ONE encounter and then spend the rest of the time plinking away with darts (Ie. being pretty much completely inneffective).

This is considered balanced design? I win once and then ride the pines while the rest of the group acts until such time as they graciously decide to rest and let me get my one spell back?

Nowhere did I say anything about soloing modules. My entire point was that the wizard, in the group, gets to press the I Win button once and then be pretty much completely inneffective until such time as he gets to recharge his I Win button again.

That's not balanced, IMO. Balanced would mean that he would have several options available to him at all times, none of which are I Win and none of which are, "I sit in the corner and cower".

Just popping in to clarify a point that was very obviously missed.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Sigh.

What I actually said is that the MU would autowin ONE encounter and then spend the rest of the time plinking away with darts (Ie. being pretty much completely inneffective).

This is considered balanced design? I win once and then ride the pines while the rest of the group acts until such time as they graciously decide to rest and let me get my one spell back?


That's not balanced, IMO. Balanced would mean that he would have several options available to him at all times, none of which are I Win and none of which are, "I sit in the corner and cower".

A magic user is hardly ineffective. A first level magic user has the exact same chance to hit as a 4th level thief and ONE less than a 3rd level cleric or a 2nd level fighter. That's hardly ineffective.