D&D General What *is* D&D? (mild movie spoilers)

[Micah Sweet]

I believe that your experience with Mystara was low magic. The fact that most other players’ experience with Mystara was high magic suggests that your experience is an outlier.

The Grand Duchy of Karameikos was the 3rd D&D product I purchased. The 5th was the Principalities of Glantri, a sourcebook in which virtually NPC was a wizard, and many were high level.

I fondly remember the Mystara boxed sets I owned:

• Dawn of the Emperors, about Thyatis and Alphatia - very high magic;
• Voyages of the Princess Ark - very high magic;
• the Hollow World - high magic
• Wrath of the Immortals - spaceships, science fiction, many many immortals, high magic.

Your claim that Mystara isn’t high magic just isn’t consistent at all with my experience of Mystara.

The core of the setting, as expressed in the core books, is what I'm talking about. Thank you for at least acknowledging that as opposed to trying to gaslight me.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Rings of Power was pretty good, though hardly perfect. The Lord of the Rings trilogy is still my favorite D&D movie, as much as I also like the new one.

Where there's a whip
There's a way!
Left, right,
Left, right,
Left, right.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Don’t forget they put the Dragonborn and Tiefling in the 4e PHB because they were races they owned. I wouldn’t be surprised if the One PHB includes more of those, maybe Tabaxi and Aarakocra since they showed up in the movie.

WotC doesn't own catfolk in general though. That scene with the fish and the holy warrior could just as easily have come straight out of Steve Jackson's Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

 

[Minigiant]

How differently we feel! To me the movie feels like low-level play, full stop. In 5E terms Edgin feels like a Mastermind 3, Holga feels like a Fighter 8 (rageless Barbarian ~= Fighter), Simon feels a bit like an Artificer 6 or a Sorcerer 4, and Doric feels like a variant Druid 6 with expanded wildshape instead of spellcasting.

I don't get high-level vibes from anyone but Zenk.

The enemies and stakes were high level.

But the movie look like the major criticism of D&D it had for 30 years: High level Characters* play and look like Low Level Characters

*Except for the casters.

That's the whole divide right there. Some people are used to D&D being low level all over whereas other prefer high and low level stuff mixed around.

 

[Mort]

The enemies and stakes were high level.

But the movie look like the major criticism of D&D it had for 30 years: High level Characters* play and look like Low Level Characters

*Except for the casters.

That's the whole divide right there. Some people are used to D&D being low level all over whereas other prefer high and low level stuff mixed around.

Holga, actually seemed like a high level barbarian to me - she goes through all foes (high level, low level doesn't matter) like tissue paper and barely shows a scratch. Of course with Barbarians, that's kind of level independent - that's their schtick at level 1 onward.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The enemies and stakes were high level.

But the movie look like the major criticism of D&D it had for 30 years: High level Characters* play and look like Low Level Characters

*Except for the casters.

That's the whole divide right there. Some people are used to D&D being low level all over whereas other prefer high and low level stuff mixed around.

Eh. Most of the adventure was about them trying to get through a door.

As for enemies, the guards were fairly normal humans, outmatched by Holga. They avoided the intellect devourers, ran from the dragon and the displacer beast, and let Zenk handle the Thayan assassins. Sofina missed (deliberately?) with her meteor swarm and then they ganged up on her and beat her with a magic-suppressing bracelet.

They weren't even planning on fighting Sofina in the first place.

If you accept that players don't need to have near-100% chance of victory, you can run these kinds of adventures at low level. If the players decide to go back and not only stop Sofina's plot, but decide to stick around and fight the 17th level wizard in melee, well, hopefully they have good dice. It's certainly not impossible to beat a lone wizard who relies mostly on evocations, but someone could die--fortunately you have a resurrection item right there.

I have thrown a tougher problem than this at 3rd level characters--they had a chance to back out but I was pleasantly surprised to find that they won, through smart play akin to Kira invisibly sneaking on the antimagic bracelet--and much tougher problems at parties of 5th-9th levels.

So no, this is still a fairly typical adventure for low-level characters (say a mix of 3rd-6th level) in my eyes. I'm prepping to run it for a bunch of starting characters in DFRPG. (Confidential wisdom is that DFRPG starting characters are somewhat equivalent to 5th level D&D characters. I would personally say 8th but most people seem to disagree.)

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Holga, actually seemed like a high level barbarian to me - she goes through all foes (high level, low level doesn't matter) like tissue paper and barely shows a scratch. Of course with Barbarians, that's kind of level independent - that's their schtick at level 1 onward.

She's too impressed with Zenk to feel high level. "I'm glad he's on our side!" she says, implicitly acknowledging that he's going through the Thayan assassins like she goes through regular human guards. That's what makes her feel 8th-ish level to me. She's a step above normal but a step down from Zenk.

"Barely shows a scratch" is true of all of the protagonists. I think it's the plot armor interpretation of HP.

 

[Minigiant]

I think Micah is saying that there's a valid reason why they

Eh. Most of the adventure was about them trying to get through a door.

As for enemies, the guards were fairly normal humans, outmatched by Holga. They avoided the intellect devourers, ran from the dragon and the displacer beast, and let Zenk handle the Thayan assassins. Sofina missed (definitely?) with her meteor swarm and then they ganged up on her and beat her with a magic-suppressing bracelet.

They weren't even planning on fighting Sofina in the first place.

If you accept that players don't need to have near-100% chance if victory, you can run these kinds of adventures at low level. If the players decide to go back and not only stop Sofina's plot, but decide to stick around and fight the 17th level wizard in melee, well, hopefully they have good dice. It's certainly not impossible to beat a lone wizard who relies mostly on evocations, but someone could die--fortunately you have a resurrection item right there.

I have thrown a tougher problem than this at 3rd level characters--they had a chance to back out but I was pleasantly surprised to find that they won, through smart play akin to Kira invisibly sneaking on the antimagic bracelet--and much tougher problems at parties of 5th-9th levels.

So no, this is still a fairly typical adventure for low-level characters (say a mix of 3rd-6th level) in my eyes. I'm prepping to run it for a bunch of starting characters in DFRPG. (Confidential wisdom is that DFRPG starting characters are somewhat equivalent to 5th level D&D characters. I would personally say 8th but most people seem to disagree.)

Running the movie at low level is 100% choo choo railroading with a DMPC.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Running the movie at low level is 100% choo choo railroading with a DMPC.

I have no idea what you're talking about here. The high-level NPC in question (Zenk) isn't even in most of the movie. He's just part of an optional sidequest. If the players e.g. follow the treasure carriages straight to the treasure chamber under the arena, they'll never even meet Zenk.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have no idea what you're talking about here. The high-level NPC in question (Zenk) isn't even in most of the movie. He's just part of an optional sidequest. If the players e.g. follow the treasure carriages straight to the treasure chamber under the arena, they'll never even meet Zenk.

Funny how the quest to get the Helm of Disjunction turned out to be completely pointless, since the treasure wasn't even in there. Reminded me of the Canto Bight sequence in the Last Jedi is a way, although it was certainly better done.