NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5311406" data-attributes="member: 5143">I think this is the key point.  I agree with pretty much everything you say except that I don't think there should ever be an all or nothing choice.It's bad encounter design to have a pit of lava that immediately kills whoever touches it.  If it does a reasonable amount of damage that isn't significantly more than the powers the PCs have, it's ok.There shouldn't be creatures immune to anything unless the thing they are immune to is so rare as to barely effect anyone.  There should be a resistance or interesting effect for using something on a creature.  And the resistance or effect needs to be small enough to make something harder without making it overwhelming.  I like the idea that if your entire party does fire damage than an encounter that is normally level 15 becomes level 16 or 17 in approximate difficulty.  I dislike the idea that because of character choices that the combat becomes a near guaranteed TPK.  I also dislike the other way around, where due to character "creativity" or choices that they can turn a difficult combat into an immediate win.I don't consider a combat that you can "win" by saying the right thing an actual combat.  I consider it a skill challenge that happens to coincide with a possible combat.  The PCs get XP for the skill challenge OR from the combat, not both.  If I've written something up to be a combat, it's because whatever they are fighting is not able to be reasoned with.  In which case, I want it to be a challenge.  Which means it isn't won too easily by either side.Really, this should apply to almost any player choice.  Whether made before the game as part of character creation, magic items you pick up, or decisions made on the fly during battle.  Your effectiveness shouldn't change more than 30% in either direction.This is the reason I hated restrictions like "no sneak attacks on undead" and various immunities; because often, they were reducing your damage by 50-100%.4e is closer to my ideals, but it isn't perfect.  There's still too many immunities in the game.  And I just don't like the idea of people adding more immunities for the sake of "realism".I'm not sure this is true.  I know that we recently fought a swarm in D&D Encounters and there were a LOT of new players there.  Not a single one of them had any inkling that the swarm took less damage from melee or ranged attacks.  And the DM didn't describe any difference in our attacks from melee and AoE.  So, the only reason the new players figured it out is that I told them.  Mainly because we were losing so badly and the one person in the group who had AoE attacks was using them on the non-swarm targets.Also, somewhat related, I was playing a Brawler Fighter and was attempting to grab the swarm in the same combat.  Our DM at the time ruled that it could be grabbed but because it was a swarm it was allowed to leave the grab at any time without rolling or spending an action.  Which somewhat relegated me to a second string character for the combat(since the nasty enemy was the swarm and I was attempting to do the defender thing and keep it away from the rest of the party by holding it in place).I think that the fact that the character was already taking half damage from all my attacks was bad enough, there didn't need to be any MORE restrictions on my character.  Especially considering both my utility power and one of my encounter powers said "Target: One grabbed creature".  Also, my daily required I grab a creature and move it.  He wasn't allowing me to move the swarm either.  It reduced my character entirely to basic attacks(since the benefit of my at-wills were both useless against a single swarm and the other enemies were out of range).</blockquote>

Verification