Li Shenron
Legend
Back to the topic of high-level play, some sparse thoughts...
a) What is the real purpose of scaling the numbers up? IMHO it is that of making previously challenging monsters progressively easier, and previously impossible monsters merely challenging. But the important thing is, how does your game's choice of scaling result in a certain "level range" of challenging monsters, because you won't normally even fight monsters above that level (it would be an impossible encounter) or below that level (it would be a trivial encounter). If you take edition X and such "challenging level range" is large, then you have quite a lot more options on monsters to use (to different degrees of encounter difficulties) compared to an edition Y where the resulting range is narrow.
b) In lieu of point a), I want to know if the game handles well putting together weak monsters in large numbers. It's my own pet peeve, but I really would like sometimes to have a battle against a small horde (not mass battles! just think the PCs against e.g. 20-30 critters). This depends on scaling and other things.
c) For me, complexity is a must, not in the sense that running the game should be complicated, but just that playing the characters should involve more thinking than just rolling the dice. I don't know maybe flying combats, enemies with a thousands immunities and just one weakness... I can understand that some gamers don't like this and want a simpler game at every level, but I also think that without complexity high level is an illusion: e.g. if you want to fight demigods, you only need your PCs to be on par with them, but if you don't bother with extra complexity then both the PC and the demigod could be mechanically at level 1 plus wacky fluff.
d) Another debatable thing here... I would like high-level heroes to be mostly unconcerned with low-level problems like food, housing, short-distance travel, illumination and the big one: money. Yes that's it, I've said it... I don't want high-level heroes to bother with treasure unless it contains a truly significant item (i.e. big magic item). I want them to be beyond the point when they need to count the gp, either because they have collected enough treasure to be able to buy anything (except what cannot be bought but can only be found, because at this magnitude of power useful magic items are only really rare, and don't come with a price tag) or because they are concerned with purposes that go beyond wealth.
e) I certainly want options like "Kings & Castles" but this is hard... I'd like high-level PC#1 to be able to just assume he can build a castle, own lands, open a merchant business or something else, without bothering how much it would cost (and it may not even cost e.g. lands could be a gift from the King for your deeds) or how much it would make you gain (e.g. those lands generating revenue). If point d) is valid, then it doesn't matter to define costs and revenues, they stay in the background. So I would like player of PC#1 to be required to invest only her time and effort to define by himself what her PC is doing with his downtime businesses, and bring his proposals to the table for the DM to approve (and occasionally the DM could decide or roll what happens to those castle and land, perhaps using them to provide adventure hooks). In exchange for the effort, the PC#1 could get some benefits in the form e.g. of information, henchmen, mundane equipment, transportation, messaging/delivery services etc. with the DM finding guidelines in the DMG on what to grant, on what scale and how often (and maybe even some random events tables). All of this while PC#2 played by another one who is not interested, can just say he spends all treasure in beer & whores, and not feel like he is penalized. I'd like the whole thing to work as "you get from it what you put into it", without directly influencing the PC's power during combat. This requires the game to reach a point when economy is detached from personal (combat) power, as in point d).
a) What is the real purpose of scaling the numbers up? IMHO it is that of making previously challenging monsters progressively easier, and previously impossible monsters merely challenging. But the important thing is, how does your game's choice of scaling result in a certain "level range" of challenging monsters, because you won't normally even fight monsters above that level (it would be an impossible encounter) or below that level (it would be a trivial encounter). If you take edition X and such "challenging level range" is large, then you have quite a lot more options on monsters to use (to different degrees of encounter difficulties) compared to an edition Y where the resulting range is narrow.
b) In lieu of point a), I want to know if the game handles well putting together weak monsters in large numbers. It's my own pet peeve, but I really would like sometimes to have a battle against a small horde (not mass battles! just think the PCs against e.g. 20-30 critters). This depends on scaling and other things.
c) For me, complexity is a must, not in the sense that running the game should be complicated, but just that playing the characters should involve more thinking than just rolling the dice. I don't know maybe flying combats, enemies with a thousands immunities and just one weakness... I can understand that some gamers don't like this and want a simpler game at every level, but I also think that without complexity high level is an illusion: e.g. if you want to fight demigods, you only need your PCs to be on par with them, but if you don't bother with extra complexity then both the PC and the demigod could be mechanically at level 1 plus wacky fluff.
d) Another debatable thing here... I would like high-level heroes to be mostly unconcerned with low-level problems like food, housing, short-distance travel, illumination and the big one: money. Yes that's it, I've said it... I don't want high-level heroes to bother with treasure unless it contains a truly significant item (i.e. big magic item). I want them to be beyond the point when they need to count the gp, either because they have collected enough treasure to be able to buy anything (except what cannot be bought but can only be found, because at this magnitude of power useful magic items are only really rare, and don't come with a price tag) or because they are concerned with purposes that go beyond wealth.
e) I certainly want options like "Kings & Castles" but this is hard... I'd like high-level PC#1 to be able to just assume he can build a castle, own lands, open a merchant business or something else, without bothering how much it would cost (and it may not even cost e.g. lands could be a gift from the King for your deeds) or how much it would make you gain (e.g. those lands generating revenue). If point d) is valid, then it doesn't matter to define costs and revenues, they stay in the background. So I would like player of PC#1 to be required to invest only her time and effort to define by himself what her PC is doing with his downtime businesses, and bring his proposals to the table for the DM to approve (and occasionally the DM could decide or roll what happens to those castle and land, perhaps using them to provide adventure hooks). In exchange for the effort, the PC#1 could get some benefits in the form e.g. of information, henchmen, mundane equipment, transportation, messaging/delivery services etc. with the DM finding guidelines in the DMG on what to grant, on what scale and how often (and maybe even some random events tables). All of this while PC#2 played by another one who is not interested, can just say he spends all treasure in beer & whores, and not feel like he is penalized. I'd like the whole thing to work as "you get from it what you put into it", without directly influencing the PC's power during combat. This requires the game to reach a point when economy is detached from personal (combat) power, as in point d).
