Arcana Unearthed: Pro's and Con's

[ascendance]

To a certain degree, but as both a DM and player I find it a bit kludgey to have the battle settings constantly tinkered with so that characters are intentionally deterred from using optimal tactics.

What you call kludgey, I call interesting

 

[d4]

In D&D, a 1st level mage has a good chance of getting killed by a housecat.

In D&D, a 1st level anything has a good chance of getting killed on a critical hit by virtually anything.

In D&D, a 5th level anything has a good chance of getting killed by the average fireball if he or she fails his save.

In D&D, a 10th level cleric can almost always force a character to save or die.

what exactly do you mean by killed? according to my copy of the PHB, death doesn't occur until -10 hit points.

a housecat does get 3 attack per round, but the last one is at a -1 to the attack roll, and each hit causes only one hit point of damage. the average 1st level mage has 4 hit points, assuming he has no Con bonus. chances are the mage will thwack the cat before it drops him.

the average 1st level fighter, paladin, or barbarian is going to have at least 10 hit points (12 in the case of the barbarian, and i've never seen a fighter PC without a Con bonus yet), meaning it takes at least 20 points of damage to kill one with one crit. there are very few weapons in the PHB capable of dealing that much on their own, and even then, it is extremely unlikely to roll that high (for example, there's only a one in 100 chance of rolling 20 damage on a crit with a bastard sword or a heavy crossbow).

the average fireball tossed by a 5th-level wizard does 5d6, which averages 17.5 points of damage. if someone failed their save, they'd still need to have less than 8 hit points to be killed outright by an average fireball. at 5th level, i'd assume everyone has more than 8 hit points.

yes, D&D's hit point system does make the game much less lethal. thank goodness -- that's why i play it.

 

[Felon]

Well, duh. Of course it's the best spell if you're only interested in what it's good at - that's a bit of a tautology, isn't it?

No, I don't think you're getting the point, and I find that odd since what I'm saying is hardly novel. Perhaps I'm being unclear, and if so I apologize. Plainly stated, Fireball does better direct damage than the majority of other DD spells, and that includes higher-level spells. Even discounting multiple targets, a Fireball outdamages Melf's Acid Arrow and most other single-target ranged touch attacks. And when taking into account multiple targets, Fireball routinely inflicts a greater total of damage than other area effect spells like Ice Storm and Chain Lightning (and that's not taking metamagic into account). In short, only a few DD spells dish it out like Fireball, and that's why I was dismayed to see Monte include it in AU's spell list. Guess he thought players couldn't imagine life without it.

But maybe I tend to run into people who are interested in playing things other than 'the blaster', I don't know.

That could be.

Now that's just wacky - you assume that there is a set of "optimal tactics" that is good for all places and all opposing forces, when there is no such thing. Read any book on the subject.

I'd rather just rely on practical experience. In D&D there is a standard optimal tactic, and that is direct damage. I applaud the clever tactical employment of spells like Summon Monster and Stinking Cloud, but the name of the game is eliminating as many of the opposition's hit points as rapidly as possible. Crushing your foes beneath a wave of damage is the most reliable and effective tactic in most situations.

What you call kludgey, I call interesting

Again, I'll endeavor to be more clear. It's interesting when it's the exception, not the norm. When characters are constantly put in situations where they're denied their most effective assets, it feels contrived and it rapidly starts to chafe the players' nerves

 

[Bagpuss]

the average 1st level fighter, paladin, or barbarian is going to have at least 10 hit points (12 in the case of the barbarian, and i've never seen a fighter PC without a Con bonus yet), meaning it takes at least 20 points of damage to kill one with one crit. there are very few weapons in the PHB capable of dealing that much on their own, and even then, it is extremely unlikely to roll that high (for example, there's only a one in 100 chance of rolling 20 damage on a crit with a bastard sword or a heavy crossbow).

Yeah but a CR 1 Orc with its greataxe can do it thanks to its x3 modifier and Strength bonus. Then it's no pie for you!

I agree that at the low levels D&D is reasonably lethal, but your talk of "Save or Die" is silly.

Cyberpunk you get shot in the head (1 in 10 chance) then you are almost certainly dead, no mater how skilled your character is.
Flashing Blades the same, and the same is true for countless other historical, modern day or non-fantasy based games. Your increase in experience has very little effect on how easy it is to die. D&D it makes a big difference, which is not necessarily a bad thing, nor a good thing, just a different style of play.

 

[Psion]

I am not on the AU bashing bandwagon. And I know how to spell "nor". However, really have to call you on this:

None of those games are more lethal than D&D.

This is, flat out, wrong. By design D&D is less lethal than multiple of these games. In D&D, the average encounter is explicitly designed not to have a chance to be lethal, but to consume party resources. Check out the DMG if you don't beleive me. It discussed this explicitly.

In contrast, in Cyberpunk and in Twilight 2000, any conflict with lethal weapons has a very real possibilty of leaving a character permanently injured or dead. It is a whole different paradigm.

In D&D, a 1st level anything has a good chance of getting killed on a critical hit by virtually anything.

A 1st level character has maximum hit point. Most CR 1 encounters do maybe 1d6 or 1d8 points of damage for an average around 4, 8 on a critical. Typical weapons only threat on a 20, and given an AC of 15 or so, only crit on 25% of threats. Most characters will not be knocked into negatives by such a hit, and even those who are will only be at -4 or less.

Contrast this with twilight 2000 where any hit is likely to disable or kill.

In D&D, a 5th level anything has a good chance of getting killed by the average fireball if he or she fails his save.

A 5th level character has, on the average (assuming 10 con -- a conservative assumption in most games) 14 (wizard) to 37 (barbarian) hp, and the average fireball at 5th level does 17.5. Even the wizard will only be knocked to -4 on a failure, easily in "saving range". A barbarian suffers less than half HP loss. Your assertion is false.

Consider that in games like twilight 2000, every gunshot can do a comparable or worse amount of damage compared to their damage capacity and has a magazine full of these things with automatic fire as an option. A fifth level wizard might have two fireballs.

In D&D, a 10th level cleric can almost always force a character to save or die.

By which time raise dead and death ward are available.

D&D is a very, very lethal game. Contrary to popular belief, hit points don't make a game any less lethal.

False. The fact that HP are so large in comparison to the average damage is precisely the reason that D&D is less lethal than other games. Again, by design.

As for how this pertains to AU: obviously Monte felt that he wanted something in which ressurection magic was a little more inacessible than the all-too-generous D&D, but he obviously did not want to make it into Cyberpunk or Twilight 2000.

 

[drnuncheon]

I'd rather just rely on practical experience. In D&D there is a standard optimal tactic, and that is direct damage. I applaud the clever tactical employment of spells like Summon Monster and Stinking Cloud, but the name of the game is eliminating as many of the opposition's hit points as rapidly as possible. Crushing your foes beneath a wave of damage is the most reliable and effective tactic in most situations.

Then I guess you'd better have more than one way to crush your foes beneath a wave of damage, hadn't you? For those situations where setting off a fireball is not the best alternative? That's all I'm saying - you shouldn't expect to always be able to use a fireball, especially not to maximum effect, unless your DM is only throwing a single type of situation at you: large clusters of foes in open space (that aren't immune to fire, that you want to kill instead of capture/disperse/whatever, etc).

I know one of my players learned his lesson when he started chucking around icebursts (same idea as fireball - area effect damage) in close quarters, and was doing more damage to his own side than he was to the enemy. (Thank you, Spell Focus.) When you're in a situation where it can be used - great. He swept the deck of a ship clean of opposition. But assuming that you can and should always use it means that either a) you're going to get youself in trouble, or b) you don't have much variety in encounters.

J

 

[Felon]

By which time raise dead and death ward are available.

Not to mention that Hero points can specifically be used to prevent death due to a failed saving throw against a save-or-die effect, thus reducing the lethality of D&D combat even further in AU.

 

[ascendance]

I guess my opinion of D&D is slightly colored because we only had one multiclassed cleric in my longest running game, and in the last game I played, I was a the only healer as a bard. Why yes, that would just about increase the lethality of the game many times

I find though, that the only reason why players tend to live in D&D is that DMs give the party chances. Most of the time, rather than delivering the killing blow to a dying opponent, monsters move on to fight something else. I find people drop all the time, if not exactly die.

I also find that the psychology and expectation in D&D is to fight virtually everything (since it gives XP and drops treasure). That, in and of itself, may make D20 more lethal than many other games I've played.

The paradox in D&D seems to be that it is very easy to drop people, but since that it takes a willful action to reduce someone dropped to death, DMs rarely kill characters outright.

Maybe I have just tended to play D&D in a very skewed way

 

[RobNJ]

I don't mind the fanboy attack but if you break it down, what else is Monte providing? Does he have an SRD? Does he allow easy to use open content or are there lots of little restrictions here and there?

There is some stuff that's unequivocally open content, and the rest--I'm paraphrasing what I remember Monte saying here so don't rely on me in place of an official statement--is available, if you ask, and talk to him about it.

Color would have been nice, but I'd much rather have what we have, black and white, than I would not have it. And the odds are that it wouldn't have been financially viable to do it in color.

Incidentally, for those who complain about the SRD stuff being "regurgitated" in this book, I am unmoved. I don't want to have to have a Player's Handbook at the table when I'm playing this game and, now, I don't have to. It's not because I find the PHB so horribly odious, it's just that it's a fairly large book, and I would rather not flip back and forth between AU and the PHB.

 

[buzz]

Edit: duplicated post.