capping D&D at 5th level?

[Warren Okuma]

And we all play by the book because it was given to us from Heaven by Gygax to WotC and it is holy writ.

Nah, just sic the cats on the rats and the ravens and the small 20 lb. dogs on the cats and the peasants will be safe.

Nah, I do it because it is hilarious. Get a house cat and train it to be an attack cat and then buff it up with mage armor and the like... very amusing and cheap.

Also if I wanted reality I would run Gurps.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Don't forget Bull's Strength.

 

[Warren Okuma]

Don't forget Bull's Strength.

Typical Buffs: "For that vile wee beastie..."

1st level Buffs: Magic fang (Druid), Mage armor (cat now has an AC of 18, Wiz), Shield of faith (cat has an AC of 20, Cleric).

I mean in what other game system is a buffed battle trained house cat a viable concept. That's why DnD is cool. When you see orcs run screaming from a house cat you know you are playing in a fun game system.

The cat never lasts to third level. And when it dies... soup.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Typical Buffs: "For that vile wee beastie..."

1st level Buffs: Magic fang (Druid), Mage armor (cat now has an AC of 18, Wiz), Shield of faith (cat has an AC of 20, Cleric).

I mean in what other game system is a buffed battle trained house cat a viable concept. That's why DnD is cool. When you see orcs run screaming from a house cat you know you are playing in a fun game system.

The cat never lasts to third level. And when it dies... soup.

You sir, have that strange, sick, and twisted sense of humor that I find in people that I call friends

But surely, there must be a way to get more mileage out of a cat than just third level, but then again, he's er...solid waste before anyone can get animal growth

 

[Warren Okuma]

You sir, have that strange, sick, and twisted sense of humor that I find in people that I call friends

But surely, there must be a way to get more mileage out of a cat than just third level, but then again, he's er...solid waste before anyone can get animal growth

Thank you.

 

[Cergorach]

Am i the only one that can imagine a furrball from hell that drops from the rafters on your head, first scratching out your eyes and then ripping open your juggular? I'm not talking about a kitten or a fat overfed pussycat from todays society, i'm talking about the lean mean 'house' cats that were in medieval villages, the kind that had to hunt to survive...

Most cats and dogs don't have a kill mentality, they have a play mentality. The 20lb. 'house' dogs that are trained to kill tend to bite humans and that gets them killed fast, so very few owners train their dog that way, most treat their pets as living stuffed animals.

I read the mentioned article, it was an eye opener. Not because it professed some truth about how Albert is a 5th level character, but because it shifted the D&D scope and made it believable. If level one through five is the human condition and level six is or aproaches demigod status (Hercules for example), that gives a whole new perspective on monsters and high level play. High CR monsters would be extremely rare and so would high level magic (very few could even produce a fireball), it doesn't stroke with what the 3E and 3.5E coor books tell us about level distribution, but i find it very interesting.

I don't think that capping at 5th level is very a good idea unless you intend to run a very gritty campaign where the PCs never rise above the masses. Imagine that a level 10 character is to Einstein what Einstein is to us (assuming everyone here is 1st level).

 

[Darklone]

Most cats and dogs don't have a kill mentality, they have a play mentality. The 20lb. 'house' dogs that are trained to kill tend to bite humans and that gets them killed fast, so very few owners train their dog that way, most treat their pets as living stuffed animals.

Friend of mine has a cat... no idea how often we clued that cat together yet. She's a fighter. And a killer. She'd attack a car if she thought it would be a target.

That cat is a real softie if you pet her, but I wouldn't want to have to fight her.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Keep in mind that D&D evolved from a miniatures mass combat system. A "significant success" did d6 damage against a "Warrior Unit" with d6 HPs over the course of a minute is a reasonable fudge to keep a combat moving when you have an absurdly large number of miniatures to push around, by modern RPG standards.

This fudge does not necessarily make much literal sense at the mass combat level, and it becomes very strange when pushed down to the "squad level skirmish" level which we are used to in RPGs.

In the mass combat view, elite units could have 2d6 HPs or even 3d6 HPs, which is just saying that almost never "die" from a single bad round. That would be true if you were thinking of a "unit" as 100 men. 10 or 20 men might be casualties in one minute, but an elite unit could keep fighting with 40%-50% of the men healthy.

Another thing is that "dying" is a very abstract thing in a mass combat system. It really means "this unit has suffered enough casualties that it is too ineffective to bother tracking for the rest of this battle". A dead "unit" might be a group of 100 men with 10 dead and 30 wounded, but because of uninspired leadership they all just flee to the hills -- remove the miniature from the board now.

 

[Korgoth]

Aren't some of these actually arguments for re-writing the Monster Manual's animal entries, rather than for starting PCs at 6th level?

I can tell you how cats are statted in any campaign I run: 1 hp, strike for 0 damage.

Yes, the cat can still kill mice. The game doesn't model stuff that small. Assume that "nanodamage" is all rounded down.

 

[Warren Okuma]

Am i the only one that can imagine a furrball from hell that drops from the rafters on your head, first scratching out your eyes and then ripping open your juggular? I'm not talking about a kitten or a fat overfed pussycat from todays society, i'm talking about the lean mean 'house' cats that were in medieval villages, the kind that had to hunt to survive...

You are the only one. There are millions of house cats world wide and I cannot find a single case of a house cat killing a human being.

Although making the argument that house cats are effective man-killers warms my heart.

Most cats and dogs don't have a kill mentality, they have a play mentality. The 20lb. 'house' dogs that are trained to kill tend to bite humans and that gets them killed fast, so very few owners train their dog that way, most treat their pets as living stuffed animals.

Feral cats do. And they do attack people, however I cannot find a single case of a feral house cat killing a human being.

I read the mentioned article, it was an eye opener. Not because it professed some truth about how Albert is a 5th level character, but because it shifted the D&D scope and made it believable. If level one through five is the human condition and level six is or aproaches demigod status (Hercules for example), that gives a whole new perspective on monsters and high level play. High CR monsters would be extremely rare and so would high level magic (very few could even produce a fireball), it doesn't stroke with what the 3E and 3.5E coor books tell us about level distribution, but i find it very interesting.

I read the article and use the animal standard. Anyone with any contact with animals seem to be at least 5th level. Matadors get hit, people running with the bulls, rodeo clowns all are at lest 5th level according to the rules. Nah, Bow hunters (my friend's brother takes down bears with one shot) and knife hunters (people like my cousin he hunts boars with knives) seem to be 5th+ level under the rules.

On Herc...

Let's see... he fought the Nemean Lion let's call it a dire lion at CR 5, 9 or 17. If you think Herc fought a standard dire lion, CR 5, So to defeat it he needed to be at least 5th+ level. He choked it to death, so he was a monk (pankration). The wuss Herc could be CR5, but going after it solo... more like 7th+ level. But if the lion was a advanced dire lion, herc might be 19th+ level. If it was legendary... yow.

The Lernean Hydra, a nine headed critter. CR 8, ah, but it had poison... so CR 9? Ah, but he had a torch bearer to assist him. So Level 10th maybe.

Cerberus he wrestled into submission. Does anyone have the CR for Cerberus? I suspect it's pretty high...

You see the weakness of the article is combat.

I don't think that capping at 5th level is very a good idea unless you intend to run a very gritty campaign where the PCs never rise above the masses. Imagine that a level 10 character is to Einstein what Einstein is to us (assuming everyone here is 1st level).

No, not quite. Not in combat. In skills yes, in combat no.