Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

[Dwimmerlied]

It might serve us better in the future to not assume a game is either perfect or broken. Probably won't happen, but one can hope.

Now there's a bandwagon I can lay my hat of d02 on. I strongly agree.

 

[pemerton]

How is it that every piece of evidence given so far for the brokenness of the game is debatable?

Because different people have different experiences.

Back at Post 182, I suggested that the reason some people experience balance problems and that others don't is because of difference in playstyle, including differences in GMing techniques.

For a couple of pages there seemed to be some degree of agreement with this, but then the dynamic took a turn that from my point of view is curious: namely, a number of those who don't have balance issues started posting that those who do have balance issues are playing the game wrong, and in particular are using the wrong GMing techniques. There has also been a subtheme of suggesting that those who have balance issues are also not using different GMing techniques. (It's not clear to me how, at one and the same time, a GM can both be using the wrong techniques and using the same techniques as the person diagnosing error, but this is a pattern I have noticed on more than one of these threads.)

Most of my contributions to the thread since then have been to try and explain that there really are different playstyles, including different GMing techniques, that can produce different play experiences. I also have been trying to point out that some of those difference in technique and experience date back before 4e, and indeed before 3E, and indeed before 2nd ed AD&D, and aren't wildly deviant ways of playing the game. The D&D community has always been highly plural.

Role playing games are not games like chess or even like Magic. The shared fictional space complicates matters. Perceptions can vary wildly, and the game in question is one that is very open to interpretation.

There are also a variety of related issues that will have an impact on our perceptions of game balance including:

• How much of an impact character build and spell memorization should have
• What impact player skill should have on game play
• If certain character types should require more skilled play than others
• How we handle pacing and time
• If dramatic or causal logic takes precedence

<snip>

It's quite possible for the same rules to work well for one particular group, and not another. That doesn't necessarily mean that there is a play style or a rules issue. Rather there is a play style / rules mismatch.

I agree with all this. I see it as pretty consistent with what I said back in post 182.

I'm not all that interested in an argument. I get much more out of discussing the issue.

I prefer to discuss than argue.

But my experience on these boards over the past 5 or so years is that there is a recurring tendency for certain playstyles to be treated dismissively by a not-insignificant number of posters - using such words and phrases as "gamist", "gamey", "muchkin", "powergamer", "video-gamey", "player entitlement" or just "entitled", "tyranny of fun", "why do you even need a GM?", "rollplaying not roleplayin", and on this thread "inept" and "incompetent" and "cookie-cutter" and "deviating from the norms of the game".

I don't see why one particular group of posters, whose playstyle I have no reason to think is the majority (nor even necessarily the single most prominent), should get to define what counts as proper D&D play on a board that is one of the biggest D&D boards around. And even if take one particular iteration of the game, I don't see that either.

From my point of view, the position that many posters seems to have arrived at on this thread - namely, that 3E/PF relies for balance upon a high degree of GM oversight of resolution and framing of situations, having regard not just to thematic concerns but to features like relative mechanical capabilities of different characters and the GM's desires as to the sequence in which certain outcomes will occur - as confirming what I said back in post 182. Yet it continues to be presented, by some posters at least, as if those who are not interested in those techniques are just playing wrong. (It is also asserted, though, by at least some of those posters, that 3E/PF is a very flexible RPG. If it requires such a distinctive approach to GMing to work, I'm not sure where exactly its flexibility is meant to reside.)

While the plurality of the D&D playing base continues to be unrecognised by or an target of hostility for some posters, we will have debate as well as discussion.

 

[pemerton]

Well, the rules must be bad then, since they do not explicitly state they do not support a Farmer game, and that is a playstyle

<snip>

Some games do a very good job of indicating the style they aim for, and that's great - D&D could and should do more of that. But that doesn't mean the lack of an explicit statement they support a playstyle different from yours, or mine, means they are required to support every, or any, specific playstyle.

I think [MENTION=6695799]ImperatorK[/MENTION]'s point is that the sort of game he is looking for from PF/3E is not a farmer game, or anything like a farmer game, but a pretty generic heroic fantasy game of the sort that D&D presents itself as being able to provide. (For instance, look at the Foreword to Moldvay Basic.)

A GM's skill at ad lib becomes pretty important if a player imposes on the scene that "Only the Elixir of Erithamus can revive the niece from the foul enchantment she is under, and it is rumoured to be held in the horde of the Great Wyrm Dasalok high on Mount Avalakthan, half a world away".

This is true, but I don't think that this sort of player authority over backstory has ever been a widespread approach in D&D play. The only two versions of D&D that really have the mechanics to support it are 4e (with its super-quick monster build rules) and classic D&D (with its random charts). But classic D&D never even hints at this sort of play, putting a strong emphasis on GM authority over backstory and scene-framing; and 4e barely hints at it in the DMG (there is one sidebar by James Wyatt, but even there the example is of the player determining very locak backstory, about the trap on a statue and the treasure behind it) and the DMG2 suggests it as possible playstyle but without providing any significant support for how to handle it. (Unlike OGL Conan, for instance, there is no suggestion of rationing via a points system.)

What is this thing you call "the adventure"

If you have a better term for the series of events that unfold in play, I'm open to it.

In the post to which I replied you did not use the word "adventure" to denote the series of events that unfold in play.

Here is what you said: "Perhaps there is more to the adventure than immediate access to the King. I’m good with that, as a player." That is, the adventure to which you refer encompasses more than just the events which have unfolded in play. It encompasses events which haven't occurred yet, and it rules out certain events occurring (like meeting the king at this particular moment of play). Where does this adventure come from? Who conceived of it? Who is in charge of ensuring that the actual play at thet able conforms to it? My sense is that, at your table, the GM has primary responsibility for these things. That is why I regard your playstyle as an instance of "storytelling" play as I characterised that style at post 182. If I'm wrong, I'm happy to be corrected, but then if you're not playing in storyteller mode why would it matter whether the PCs meet the king now or later?

Oo! - how exciting and challenging - we made a die roll.

As I said upthread, it would be nice if you could discuss without feeling the need to make snide insults.

But it seems to me this really is the crux. There are some RPGers who regard mechanics as a necessary evil, mostly for resolving combat. There are other RPGers who regard mechanics as the key to RPG play - they are what distinguish it from storytelling (whether shared storytelling, or GM-authored storytelling), because they provide a system for distributing narrative authority in a regimented way which nevertheless produces surprising results.

Here are extracts from two actual play threads of mine - one is the conclusion to a skill challenge, the other a simple skill check:

With one check still needed to resolve the situation, I had Paldemar turn to Derrik once again, saying "You must have said something very serious, to so upset the Baron." Derrik's player was talking to the other players, and trying to decide what to do. He clearly wanted to fight. I asked him whether he really wanted to provoke Paldemar into attacking him. He said that he did. So he had Derrik reply to Paldemar, 'Yes, I did, Golthar". And made an Intimidate check. Which failed by one. So the skill challenge was over, but a failure - I described Paldemar/Golthar standing up, pickup up his staff from where it leaned against the wall behind him, and walking towards the door.

Now we use a houserule (perhaps, in light of DMG2, not so much a houserule as a precisification of a suggestion in that book) that a PC can spend an action point to make a secondary check to give another PC a +2 bonus, or a reroll, to a failed check. The player of the wizard PC spent an action point, and called out "Golthar, have you fixed the tear yet in your robe?" - this was a reference to the fact that the PCs had, on a much earlier occasion, found a bit of the hem of Paldemar's robe that had torn off in the ruins when he had had to flee the gelatinous cubes. I can't remember now whether I asked for an Intimidate check, or decided that this was an automatic +2 bonus for Derrik - but in any event, it turned the failure into a success. We ended the session by noting down everyone's location on the map of the Baron's great hall, and making initiative rolls. Next session will begin with the fight against Paldemar (which may or may not evolve into a fight with a catoblepas also - the players are a bit anxious that it may do so).

The invoker-wizard also came through the gate, in order to Thunderwave some elementals into the lava, but this turned out to expose him to their vicious melee and he, too, got cut down. In desperate straits as he lay on the ground next to his Gate (he was brought back to consciousness via some sort of healing effect), being hacked down by fire archons, he spoke a prayer to Erathis (one of his patron deities). After speaking the prayer, and after the player succeeded at a Hard Religion check, as the PC looked up into the rock cleft high above him, he saw a duergar standing on a ledge looking down. The PC already knew that the duergar revere Erathis (as well as Asmodeus). The duergar gave the Deep Speech hand sign for "I will offer you aid", and the PC replied with the sign for "The dues will be paid". The duergar then dropped a potion vial down to the PC. (I had already decided that I could place a duergar in the cleft if I wanted some sort of 3rd-party intervention into the fight. The successful prayer was the trigger for implementing that prior decision.)

Now I don't know exactly how your game proceeds, or what sorts of things you and those you play with find engaging in a fantasy RPG.

But for me, succesfully goading your nemesis - the king's advisor who is secretly the evil wizard leading the goblin hordes - into showing his hand and turning on you in front of the Baron and all the assembled worthies of the town - is not "Oo - we made a die roll!" It is the climax of a tense and gripping confrontation in which the PCs try to be polite to the Baron without conceding any information or influence to their nemesis. And because the player who made that check was the player of the fighter (the dwarf of action mentioned upthread), it also represented a type of commitment to the ultimate priority of deeds (or, if you prefer, violence) over words - which in the context of D&D has a certain aesthetic aptness to it.

Likewise, the resolution of a PC's desperate prayer to a god, while lying on his back in danger of being killed by fire elementals, in the form of a gift from a mysterious duergar benefactor, in circumstances in which the PCs' relationship to the duergar is friendly but still uncertain, is not "Oo - we made a die roll!" It's a dramatic moment that opens up new prospects for the direction of play.

In a game in which these sorts of outcomes weren't resolved via die roll, how else would it be done? One answer is via Fate Points or similar - participants can simply deploy their resources and declare outcomes. 4e doesn't have much of this except for action points, which let those who spend them gain additional actions within the action economy, and some rituals, which have automatic effects if the money is spent. 3E has lots of these, namely, spells. But I don't see that declaring a spell effect has a type of excitement about it that random resolution lacks.

The other way would be that one participant - perhaps the GM - is empowered to decide whether the dramatic thing happens or not. Is this what you prefer?

And the player attempt at diplomacy which fails is, to me, learning via play (rather than learning by someone telling us) that the Chamberlain is not admitting us to see the King.

This implies to me that you are happy for the GM to just decide that. Combined with your apparent dislike of dice-based action resolution, it implies that you (sometimes? generally?) prefer that the GM decide this rather than that it be resolved in some fashion via action resolution mechanics.

That is a pretty standard outlook for storyteller play, and it fits with the idea that the GM has "an adventure" - a sequence of events that is predetermined prior to play - with which you, the player, are happy to go along.

Why does it always come back to this. Let's shout it out HEY OUT THERE! HAS ANYONE EVER PLAYED A GAME WHERE YOUR TRAVEL TIME DETERMINES WHETHER YOU ARRIVE AT A KEY LOCATION LONG BEFORE, OR WELL AFTER, THE ADVENTURE AT THAT LOCATION? No? Me neither.

[MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] and at least one other poster replied affirmatively to this. I agree with LostSoul that this is exactly what Gygax was talking about when he emphasised the importance of time-keeping in a campaign. (One sign I'm not running a Gyagxian campaign? The passage of time in my campaign is nothing but colour.)

DC Heroes is an example of a game that expressly instructs the GM to use the mechanics to plot travel times, and if the PCs don't have enough speed to get to the villain in time then the city is blown up the villain's mega-bomb. And one time when I put forward the idea that, in my game, there is no failure off-screen (which is pretty much the opposite of DC Heroes) I got a bunch of posters telling me that that was a terrible way to run a game, and that it was absolutely crucial that the villains be on a timer that can lead to the PCs failing due to poor time-management by their players.

If we are going to play by the "XP earned" model, then my definite preference is actual, planned, relevant encounters, not random wandering monsters.

That's fine, but not everyone plays like this. In the sort of play that makes ingame time an important player resource, working out how to deal with wandering monsters so that they don't cost you time is a key player skill.

I think that 3E, as written (and 2nd ed AD&D also), is in two minds about the importance of time. It has spell durations that in many cases are pretty much cut-and-pasted from the Gygaxian texts. But in Gygaxian play these durations mattered, because the GM was keeping tight track of time (generally in terms of turns elapsed) and the players were playing aginst the GM's clock. These days I think many more tables are much more relaxed about the passage of time and tend to let the GM handwave it (there are no tables for time spent exploring like those found in both classic D&D and D&Dnext, for instance), yet the durations are still there as if time mattered. This difference in the later editions is a victory for mere colour over action resolution. And this is why, even though some of the gametext is the same, I don't agree that 3E by default is much the same game as classic D&D (although much of the marketing of 3E was designed to suggest the contrary).

The fact the players feel a need to speak to the Chamberlain implies it has been decided one must access the King through the Chamberlain, and cannot simply stroll in at his leisure. The game, the adventure, call it what you will, does not take place in a vacuum.

Well, how has that come about. Perhaps the group is playing a module, and the module begins by specifying that all the PCs are on their way to visit the Chamberlain to seek access to the king?

Or, perhaps a player used Streetwise or Gather Information or History or Knowledge (Nobility) or some other relevant skill to learn that the Chamberlain handles the king's diary.

Or, perhaps the GM just said to the players "It's common knowledge that if you want to meet the king you have to go through the Chamberlain."

These are different scenarios, involving different play experiences. But none is about a consequence of action resolution. They are all about GM authority over backstory and scene-framing.

Another possibility, that would make the Chamberlain's presence a consequence of action resolution, would be if the players were engaged in a skill challenge to meet the king, and a result of a check had them meeting the Chamberlain (given that the Chamberlain is being obstructive rather than helpful, we can assume it was a failed check). But I don't think this is what most posters discussing the Chamberlain have had in mind. Up until now I've been assuming that we are talking about backstory and scene-framing.

Whereas the GM deciding that the Chamberlian won't help, because it's not time yet in the adventure for the PCs to meet the king, is more than scene-framing - it's also narrating scene outcome. And it's not just backstory - it's also narrating the actual events of play. As I mentioned upthread, it's colour. With a good GM, who is very evocative of the relevant colour, this sort of thing can be fun, but I very much prefer it for one-offs only - and within that preference I have a strong sub-preference for CoC. It's not a way I want to (or am capable of) GMing, and not a way I want to play in a campaign or regular game.

Who says the GM framed it? Why cant the players decide their PC's will attend upon the Chamberlain to seek an audience with the King?

Of course they can, but as a general rule in D&D there is no action resolution mechanic they can deploy to actually make this decision come true. They are dependent upon the GM framing the scene. At many tables the GM might frame another scene instead, of course ("On your way to the balance you bump into a haughty courtesan . . .").

Action resolution mechanics that bridge time and geography in such a way as to take these sorts of things out of the GM's hands are still reasonably novel and sophisticated, I think. (For instance, a teleport spell in D&D has always allowed the players to declare that their PCs exit a scene, but it gives them no power to dictate what is waiting for those PCs when they turn up at their destination - that is in the GM's hands.)

I think we may differ on even what sceneframing means. It appears to cover including a Chamberlain, but in your view not his attitude or willingness to listen to diplomacy. To me, these are also reasonably elements of sceneframing.

<snip>

Comparing to combat, I would expect the opposition comes predefined with attacks and defenses, and that these are not set by a PC who rolls to impose his will that the Orcs are wearing loincloths rather than chain mail, and wielding daggers rather than greatswords. Just as I would expect the attitude of the Orcs comes pre-defined, and is not set as gentle, friendly explorers by a PC diplomacy check.

The question is not whether the NPC's have personality, but who gives it to them - the GM defining, say, that" unfriendly bordering on hostile to visitors" Chamberlain, or the player rolling to make that crusty exterior hide a heart of gold and a deep respect for adventurers.

We also apparently have different working definitions of backstory.

What you are talking about here is backstory - what sort of gear are the orcs wearing? what is the personality of the NPC? I've already made it clear that I run a game in which the GM has default - though far from total - authority over backstory, and in which the players do not have the resources to make the sorts of changes to backstory that you are talking about here.

Sceneframing, as I use the term (and I didn't make it up - I learned it from reading the texts and posts of game designers who design games that take a strong and deliberate approach to sceneframing), means the GM establishing a situation, within the fiction, which (i) confronts the PCs with some sort of opposition or antagonism, and (ii) invites the players to take steps, within the rules of the game, to resolve that conflict. Generally this involves the action resolution mechanics, though in the right circumstances it can all be "say yes" - in a social encounter, this will play out as free-form roleplaying.

The reason I would not run the Chamberlain encounter, as described, in my game; and would not enjoy it as a player; is because it satisfies (i), and purports to satisfy (ii), but this second thing is in fact an illusion. The players in fact do not have a chance to resolve the conflict by taking steps within the rules of the game. Their only option is, in fact, to have their PCs leave the scene and look for some other way of persuading the Chamberlain or getting to the king.

To start, trust that the GM is not out to screw over the player characters

I take this as pretty much proving my point that talk of "trust" gets us nowhere. Because I am not primarily concerned about the fate of my PC. I am concerned about my fate as a player. I want to have a fun time. As a GM, I want my players to have a fun time. The fate of their PCs in the fiction is quite secondary to that - for instance, I could spend hours narrating how great a life their PCs are living - that would hardly be screwing over the PCs - but would seem to make for a pretty unfun session.

If you meant "trust that the GM is not out to screw over the players", that's a pretty low threshold and not enough for me. The GM who prescripts a game may be intending that the players will be able to see their PCs do cool things in due course. But that is not what I want from a game. I want to play my PC from the get go. I'm not interested in scenes that are nothing more than background dumps or colour being dressed up as action scenes.

Regardless of the methodology, the difficulty of success must be set somehow. The attitude of the target seems a valid component in setting that difficulty

This is a non-sequitur. For instance, in 4e the default approach is to set the difficulty by looking at a chart. And the attitude then factors into determining what is feasible from the point of view of fictional positioning, and also what sorts of consequences are to be narrated for a failed check.

I don't deny that it is possible to have a system in which the ingame fiction of the Chamberlain's initial attitude sets the probabilistic likelihood of the players' mechanical success. 3E is such a system. But there are plenty of other systems available for doing that, while taking account of initial attitude in some other dimension of resolution.

So if I gain 3 levels, the Chamberlain moves from Unfriendly to Hostile? Funny how everyone was so much happier when we were first level!

I have no idea what you are talking about here. You are using 3E terminology that has no relevance to the 4e skill challenge rules, and then layering something additional - I'm not sure exactly what - on top of that.

Or it is an example of an NPC not prepared to listen to diplomacy.

<snip>

Sadly, you can't get closed captioning with the game mechanics typed in.

I indicated in my playstyle what the episode in question would correspond to. Obviously in your game it might be the result of a different process of resolution. So you are correct that there is no one-to-one mapping of mechanics and system to fiction (this is one thing that makes a Story Hour very different from an Actual Play thread). But that does not mean I resile from the claim I made about my playstyle. And I assume that you are not suggesting that I am mistaken in explaining how, in my playstyle, an episode of this sort would come to occur.

Now, that model involves all the characters - much better balanced, IMO, than "I make a diplomacy roll while the other guys watch and we win".

All you're telling me there is that your game of choice has poor social encounter resolution rules, because they are too boring to be used when the stakes are high and the drama real (and if the stakes are low or there is no drama, then who cares?). Therefore, the GM, in order to deliver an exciting game, has to push matters in another direction. Which raises the question, why frame a social encounter in the first place if the game's resolution mechanics don't support it?

Colour, plus perhaps a bit of backstory download.

You comment regularly about "fail forward". To me, failure to get past the Chamberlain to see the King is not "loss", it is "move forward".

"Fail forward", or "no whiffing" - a technique strongly advocated by Ron Edwards and Luke Crane - has no application to the situation in which the PCs meet the Chamberlain, try to get him to admit them to an audience with the king, and fail, all because the GM has decided that this is how the matter will unfold.

Must every possible approach be guaranteed a possibility of success? Also no, at least IMO. You appear to have locked in on "meeting the King" being the only possible next step (or "lose the game", I suppose). I don't see it that way. Perhaps there are ways to access the King without persuading the Chamberlain, other means of persuading the Chamberlain, or means of accomplishing the PC's goals (not defined in our scenario) without achieving the objective of meeting the King.

None of this is "fail forward" either. Fail forward means, roughly, that you succeed at your task but fail at your intent. So your suggestion upthread, that the PCs persuade the Chamberlain to admit them to the king, but in circumstances in which the king is going to feed them to the royal hyenas (was it?), would be a good example of "fail forward" on a failed Diplomacy check against the Chamberlain. Now the scene keeps going, and the challenge facing the PCs is to persuade the king to spare them (or, perhaps, to deal with the hyenas).

In the typical D&D combat, the GM does not simply tell the players that their PCs cut their way through their foes with no losses.

Actually, I would consider doing just that where the combat itself is trivial.

Sure. That is why I referred to the typical D&D combat.

Or a reskinned Stoneskin spell, or an effect provided by a Lightsaber Parry special ability of a Jedi Knight, or a special feat...

Sure, but these are all variations on the attack rules (except for Stoneskin which is damage mitigation - I was intending to exclude that via my reference to "parrying without detriment"). None of them is analgous to the GM, by fiating, declaring that the attack misses. Which was the point I was making. I have never heard of that approach being taken in D&D combat (which isn't to say that it hasn't been by someone somewhere at some time). Whereas unless I'm misreading you, you are positing that as a resolution option out of combat.

In combat, an enemy can flee. To avoid diplomacy, one can walk away.

What is the equivalent, in social encounters, to the OA against the fleeing enemy? Different social resolution systems can have different ways of handling this, but good ones don't just let one party walk away without cost - otherwise the action resolution system isn't actually producing binding changs to the fiction.

should there be a disagreement as to the precise results, whose desires prevail? Does the GM have the right to override the player, or does the player have the final say over the GM?

I don't understand the question. I ask the player which PC he would like me to frame into the next scene - the dead one (which will therefore require some backstory introduction to get the PC into the next scene - in all cases this has been worked through with the player in question) or a new one? Where do you see scope for disagreement? What does it even mean to disagree with a player's answer to the question "Which PC I framing into the next scene for you to play?"

 

[Wicht]

Your suggestion that no one traveling astrally can cast any other 9th level magic is interesting, but less supportable since there is no discussion of any casting restriction under the spell effect.

I didn't say, once in the plane you can't cast spells. I said, or meant to be saying, that a single 9th level spell cannot be used to create multiple 9th level effects, such as Wish. Each additional spell cast in the Astral Plane must be cast of its own merit, but a wizard could certainly cast other 9th level spells after.

 

[Wicht]

A fully charged Luckblade contains three wishes. I believe that can serve as a source for Wishes.

Yes, but for the Astral Projection spell to then create an item with three wishes, you are actually saying the Astral Projection spell is more powerful than the Wish spell, than three Wish spells put together in fact, which is unreasonable. Therefore I agree with you that the Luck Blade is the source for the wishes, albeit the original Luck Blade.

 

[Hussar]

Don't forget the giant worm and a city under siege in the middle of the desert by nomads*.

*They got tired of nobody wanting to talk to them.

ROTFLMAO. My ears are burning.

 

[Hussar]

How is it that every piece of evidence given so far for the brokenness of the game is debatable?

I take a much more cynical approach. Every piece of evidence for brokenness is debatable because people presume that admitting any flaw in a system means that the entire system is flawed. Which is basically just another form of edition warring with a funny set of glasses.

Never mind that these EXACT same criticisms were made LONG before 4e was even a gleam in anyone's eye. I mean, I posted a thread from 2003 with these exact same criticisms.

What baffles me is why we even need to debate that the system has flaws in it instead of simply accepting that the flaws exist and then proposing various fixes and then debating the various merits of the fixes.

Instead, I get told I'm an incompetent DM for having these flaws exist in the game at all, and if I would just start playing Amateur Game Designer for every single game element, I'd have no problems at all.

Or, to put it another way, 3e has become the same as 1e - The Game That Shalt Not Be Criticized.

 

[N'raac]

Project to the astral plane . Have one of your friends meet you there via Plane Shift. Greater Teleport to him and let him take possession of the wish results -- if the results are even physical -- good uses of stuff like this is knowledge, visions, inherent bonuses in your friends, etc. 25k in cash is OK if you need something to cover some bills or something, but it's not anything to write home about.

Here we go again…

Plane shift – you are within 5 – 500 miles of your destination. Greater Teleport – “In addition, you need not have seen the destination, but in that case you must have at least a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting. If you attempt to teleport with insufficient information (or with misleading information), you disappear and simply reappear in your original location.”

How will you obtain the reliable description of the random arrival point of your friend (and how precise is your arrival point from the Astral Plane)?

And, again, my simple ruling – when the Astral Projecting character returns back to his body, the manifested body and all related gear vanishes. There can be only one set of gear in play at any given time. Done.

While yours is a perfectly fine house-rule, 3.5's version of Astral Projection simply says you create copies of equipment. The problem with non-specific ambiguous language is you get a lousy specification. The problem with lousy specifications is misaligned expectations.

This is where rulings are required. I don’t think we can get rulings for every possible interaction into the actual rules in a physically possible size, and each new publication geometrically increases the number of interactions requiring ruling.

How is it that every piece of evidence given so far for the brokenness of the game is debatable?

I don’t see how else we could get 100 pages into the thread!

Because different people have different experiences.

YUP!


I have seen a few comments on other games that actually state flat out that it would be difficult or impossible to fully simulate the genre without some elements that are at least potentially unbalance/broken. This is a common comment for Supers games.

Some games* explicitly acknowledge that the flexibility of their game system comes at the price that broken, or potentially broken, combinations exist, and perhaps even abound. Those games generally place the final call on the GM, but note that all of the players have a responsibility to the game, not to find broken combos and wreck the game. True “systems mastery” is bringing the vision of the character to life in an interesting and enjoyable way, not breaking the game so it is no fun for most or all of the participants.

Perhaps D&D needs a similar intro paragraph to clarify that the object of the game is not to create overpowered concepts through tortuous character builds.

Hero System and Mutants & Masterminds are two I’m familiar with, both of which try to highlight the abilities more likely to create problems in at least some games.

 

[Ranes]

1. Grab an Luckblade.
2. Cast Astral Projection.
3. Use up the wishes.
4. Dismiss Astral Projection.
5. Repeat steps 2-4.
6. ???
7. Profit.

Incidentally, I don't see how this works. Once you've used up the Luck Blade's three wishes on the Astral Plane, they're also gone from the original Luck Blade.

"If the traveler's astral form employs magic items with a limited number of uses (such as potions, scrolls and wands), the uses are expended on the real items as well as on the astral copies."

MotP, p49

 

[Nagol]

Here we go again…

Plane shift – you are within 5 – 500 miles of your destination. Greater Teleport – “In addition, you need not have seen the destination, but in that case you must have at least a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting. If you attempt to teleport with insufficient information (or with misleading information), you disappear and simply reappear in your original location.”

How will you obtain the reliable description of the random arrival point of your friend (and how precise is your arrival point from the Astral Plane)?

We're dealing with 17+ level characters. Discern Location, Scrying, Greater Scrying, having the target adjust the environment to be somewhat identifiable and communicating the description via Telepathic Bond or Sending -- I can keep going, you you'll gt the drift I'm sure.

And, again, my simple ruling – when the Astral Projecting character returns back to his body, the manifested body and all related gear vanishes. There can be only one set of gear in play at any given time. Done.

I don't think anyone's been saying the manifested gear remains. Just that the effects caused while manifesting continue to exist (unlike glamour in Pendragon where almost all the effects revert when the glamour fades including death and injury) and effects drawn from the copies of gear have no effect on the original. So if the Fighter had his manifested sword sundered, the original remains whole. If the Ranger fires his full complement of manifested arrows, he awakes to a find his quiver still full.

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