D&D General Requesting permission to have something cool

[EzekielRaiden]

What laid the egg, wasn't a chicken.

The adventures are written for sub 15 levels.

Nobody said anything about untested or unsupported...

They certainly did, given:
(a) multiple people have spoken about how there aren't adventures (amongst other things) made for high-level play (aka unsupported)
(b) multiple people have spoken about how things break down and become unbalanced at high levels, and very specifically that (they claimed) players stop playing at those levels in part because players are at least subconsciously aware of things becoming wonky, IIRC around level 10-12 was the specific claim.

So yeah. Untested, clear balance issues; and unsupported, few to no written adventures.

What's the issue?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Be the change brother.

I mean I dont want to say it, but I'll say it.

I bet ChatGPT could get the ball rolling at this point, and thats assuming one is lazy and/or unmotivated enough to not do the leg work themselves.

How many gigs of data have been spewed this way and that on this forum alone regarding class design? Feats? RPG design or just game design in general? How many videos exist on this? Blogs? Other forums?

I would say there is a 0% chance this could not be done, and done well, if someone actually cared to apply themselves to do it.

And yet.

Mod Note:

I don’t want to say it but I’ll say it: “I don’t want to say it but I’ll say it” is usually a sign that the post that follows should either not be said or said with more artful rhetoric than calling people “lazy”. Do better going forward, please.

 

[Minigiant]

Depends on how you define "magic classes" WRT 4e. There were four definitively non-magic classes, the Martial ones (Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, Warlord). But Primal and Psionic both had classes in them (Barbarian and Monk respectively) that involved supernatural stuff without being "magical" as the term would usually be used, and Assassin (technically the only class with the Shadow power source) had a version (IIRC Executioner?) that was pretty much bereft of magical abilities. Wardens were kind of a weird edge case, as they had magical auras or transformations without doing anything particularly spell-like; more mystical than magical, if you get what I mean.

That's something like a quarter to a third of all 4e classes. More if you exclude some of the wonky (e.g. Vampire) classes, or frankly terrible classes that never should've been printed (Seeker), or ones that should've just been builds for other classes (e.g. Runepriest should have just been a Cleric subclass.)

Even in 4e there were more magic classes.

All the Arcane classes were magic.
All the Divine classes were magic.
All the Primal classes could be magic and the 4/5 were definitely so.
Psionic depends on whether you considered it magic .

So of the 4 main power sources, 74% were magic. 80% if you include Psionic.

For a game where people say "oh I like gritty fantasy" "I like low magic" and "I don't want magic items everywhere", WOTC keeps pumping out magic that gets bought up constantly in books.

---

That's what I don't get.

Why don't people who say "I want non-supernatural martials" complain about lack of non-supernatural player, monster, and dungeon support from WOTC, Paizo, and other 3PP who keep grinding out magic magic magic magic magic?

Well people other than @Micah Sweet.

 

[Reynard]

What laid the egg, wasn't a chicken.

The adventures are written for sub 15 levels.

Nobody said anything about untested or unsupported...

I think it is just that high level play is even more contextual than upper mid levels and the best person the design an adventure for a given high level group is that group's GM.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think it is just that high level play is even more contextual than upper mid levels and the best person the design an adventure for a given high level group is that group's GM.

Given the quality of ENWorld publishing, specifically during the 4e era when their APs ran for all 30 levels as I understood it, I think the evidence shows it's completely possible to write good, high-level adventures. It's just not something very many people seem to have an interest in doing.

 

[Minigiant]

I think it is just that high level play is even more contextual than upper mid levels and the best person the design an adventure for a given high level group is that group's GM.

It's more that since high level magic exists and low level spells become less vital to combat, high level adventure design is less about designing dungeons but designing organizations, locations, and factions.

It's a who different type of adventure. You can't design a level 16 adventure like a level 6 adventure unless you trap the PCs or tied magic to treasure.

 

[Reynard]

It's more that since high level magic exists and low level spells become less vital to combat, high level adventure design is less about designing dungeons but designing organizations, locations, and factions.

It's a who different type of adventure. You can't design a level 16 adventure like a level 6 adventure unless you trap the PCs or tied magic to treasure.

I don't think that is a hard truth. It might be true for a given group, but I have run 20th level dungeon crawls that work as well as 5th level ones because the group I was running it for wanted a 20th level dungeon crawl. That is, it was contextual. A different group might pour all of their effort into bypassing the dungeon crawl.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Having played and run a lot of Exalted, I feel that it is harder to design adventures for superpowered demigods. Characters have powers that let them bypass all sort of mundane challenges and conceptually it at some point becomes strained how there always seems to be some new world shattering super threat to challenge them. It's not that it cannot be done, but I totally get why it is less popular mode of play than relatively straightforward and more relatable adventures of low and medium power characters.

 

[jgsugden]

Sounds pretty mythical and epic.

It sounds cool until you realize I stole the spotlight. It was not my intent, and I paused the game to apologize to the other players for doing so.

 

[Cadence]

It sounds cool until you realize I stole the spotlight. It was not my intent, and I paused the game to apologize to the other players for doing so.

Lots of vital ally spell casting to make it work feels like some spotlight sharing to me - especially when it all works as planned.