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I would argue that it isn't what high level martials get to do. Let's compare the same fighter at different levels. Let's assume this fighter rolled an 18 and therefore starts with 20 STR (if you'd rather, we could instead assume a 6th level fighter that used the array and put their ASIs into...

TBH, I feel like that's mostly on the DM. The players might treat the world like a cardboard veneer, despite the DM presenting a dynamic living world. But it can still be a living world without the players. In that case, it only lives in one mind (the DMs), but it's still alive.

I mean, maybe, but it's kind of the DMs job not to drop the ball like that, right? If the DM does, the world is no longer a vibrant living place. It's a bunch of cardboard veneers that are a barely there facimile of a living world.

I agree that challenge involves a risk of failure. That said, failure comes in many forms. Take the following example. A merchant has some McGuffin that the party needs. He wants a sum that is more or less the total wealth of the party. Unless the party does something foolish, acquiring the...

To me, that doesn't read as competitive/antagonistic at all. They were literally discussing this stuff in front of the DM, essentially giving him a heads up as to what their plans were. If they wanted an unfair advantage, they could have just as easily planned elsewhere and dropped it on him in...

We definitely have different group dynamics. :) I would say there's a difference between a competitive sports game between competing teams, and a friendly sports match between friends. In a friendly match, you might still be competitive, but you shouldn't be willing to do anything just to win...

For those of you who say that your players don't care about story consequences, why have a story at all? I realize that the story in these games is emergent, but that's still a story. It would be far less work to run the game as a series of skirmishes or old-school dungeon delve sans over world...

If I were to add them in right now, they'd hate it. Most of us didn't use things like level drain back when they were in the rules. Which is why I would never do that to them, even if I personally liked level drain. In my group, we're perfectly adept at challenging the table, including high...

So your poll specifically listed level draining under challenge? Or did it just say challenge? Because there's a BIG difference. You're establishing a false dichotomy. You can still lose without level drain being involved. I mean, come on. You're telling me that all of you who like...

You prefer swingy games. Okay. I think you're putting the cart before the horse in the rest of your post. The game isn't less swingy so that they can have encounter guidelines. 3e was a wildly swingy game but it had tight encounter guidelines (going even so far as to prescribe wealth by level)...

I don't want to take out the fall on hard times piece. Hard to understand how you took that when in my next paragraph I describe setbacks that are literally falling on hard times. I am reframing the fall on hard times piece from being defined by losing levels and items to story setbacks. I...

I still disagree with your premise, that it's easier to make a hard game easy, than it is to make an easy game hard. Some people did assert that to be the case, but they didn't give much to support it beyond their own opinions. I showed how you can make an easy game hard. Add in the features I...

Well, the argument has been for it to be in the game by default, which kind of means it is being forced on folks, whether they like it or not. At the very least, they have to opt out as a group, and that entails not being able to use certain creatures, unless alternate stat blocks are added...

Right, I would liken level drain to a video game where you lose significant progress when you fail (Rogue-likes). Once you've achieved significant progress, it can be extremely stressful. Which can be fun in its own way, but is also a massive turn off for some. In Rogue, once you die that's...

It invalidates your progress by literally removing the progress. Yes, I wouldn't play in such a game. If you like it, that's fine too. I wasn't saying otherwise. I was explaining why I believe a majority of gamers don't want those effects in their games. Not why those groups that do like them...

IDK, he was the one who responded to me saying that sometimes 6 orcs are a breeze for his party and sometimes 6 orcs are a near TPK. I was responding to that. I see nothing wrong with a sandbox style game, but concepts like too easy or hard make even less sense in that environment. As you say...

Those characters are the same in the same sense that twins are the same. In other words, they may be indistinguishable to some people, but fundamentally they're not the same. If twin A dies, twin B living doesn't mean that twin A is still alive. Twin A is dead, obviously.

Making it to the end of a campaign with a character isn't an assumption that can be made in the games I play in either. Of the campaigns I've made it to the end of in the past 10+ years, there are only two character of mine that I can recall who made it all the way. That's out of a lot of...

So you're saying that the same exact character, same sheet, same everything, is dead at one table but they take him to another table and he's alive? Or do you mean that they make a similar character with the same name and personality, and play them at different tables? The former sounds like...

So, when this happens, do you note what the difference was? Perhaps in the former case you couldn't roll above a 5? Perhaps in the latter case you rolled half a dozen crits in the same encounter? Maybe I'm confusing you with a different poster, but weren't you the one who just claimed to have...