Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mythmere1" data-source="post: 2035677" data-attributes="member: 26563">I'll take Henry's post as the one addressing and exemplifying most of these responses.My point with the story of what I was doing prior to C&C was that these activities weren't immersion for the sake of immersion (which would be nostalgic), but as a tool to recapture the story form - which I didn't realize at the time.They were all a cut above, but usually in only a couple of respects.  Nor were they superhuman (with the exception, I think, of Beowulf and Sir Gawain and Elric, whom you don't mention).  It may indeed be a matter of degree, as you address below.  Consider, though, Cugel the Clever and many others of Vance's characters.  Consider the characters of fairy tales: Jack and the Beanstalk, seven at a blow, and many others.  Most importantly, consider that these characters didn't fight monsters that presented the vast threat of high level monsters in 3E.  The threats were personally dangerous, but not world-threatening.  Elric, Legolas and Aragorn confronted such threats, but didn't stand toe to toe with them in combat - they either exploited a weakness or evaded the threat by guile. This is true, although it's not just numbers, it's the proliferation of superhuman traits as well as the relative power.  As you point out, the heroes vastly exceeded normal people even in 1E.  Yet I think the spread is greater: in 3E, the characters increase their ability scores.  They become personally more "super" in ways that aren't just linked to hit points and to hit bonuses.Rules, quantity of rules, and the effect thereof are a definite distinction, and add or subtract different good qualities of each game.  In addition, however, such differences as adding ability scores tend to push one game and the other toward a different "feel" as well.  By this, I don't mean the plot of the story - nor do I mean that either game system can't be used in the other folkloric formula (see Necromancer's successful invocation of the 1E feel using 3E rules.  I mean that each game system nudges the game toward a particular mode of heroism that's emblematic of different styles of story evolution.As to 2E, I refer to the fact that DMs are strongly encouraged not to kill the characters, unlike 1E and 3E.</blockquote>

Verification