[D&D Design Discussion] Preserving the "Sweet Spot"

[jmucchiello]

Travel spells are awful in one respect: it makes designing encounters (particularly encounters intended to repeat) anywhere other than the main dungeon a waste of time.

On the way back maybe. You can't teleport somewhere you haven't been (reliably). So you can have all manner of encounters on the way to a new destination. No, it's Wind Walk not Teleport that makes "road" encounters obsolete.

They also make it impossible to guess how long a party will take to finish an adventure and interact with the world again...if the dramatics of the story make it desireable that the Orcs invade 2 days before the PC's return to town, such that the party finds a battlefront where there shouldn't be one, travel spells become downright annoying.

Actually I find this works better the other way around. You put the Orc army one day out of town. If the party had hopped on horses and rode out the west gate they'd have found out the orcs were invading. Instead they teleport away and no one is warned of the orc invasion the next morning. The fact that you characterize this change in how teleport affects your storytelling as annoying is too me a lack of experience with teleport. If you just play it as written, you will eventually discover how to handle teleport, anticipate it better, and find new ways to tell your stories where they take teleport into account.

Commune is going up in level next campaign. Period. I don't mind a party paying for it to be cast in town, but having the ability to cast it in the field is a bit much unless you're bloody high level.

Fickle gods solve commune cold. Also, doesn't commune still say that higher powers don't like getting a telephone call each morning any more? If the party is overusing commune, eventually the deity remind the cleric which way their relationship is pointed. The cleric is the servant, right? Uppity servants are often chastised by their masters.

 

[Stalker0]

I don't get this argument of skills scaling with DCs....in general, DCs don't scale that much.

Jump...static dcs.
Swim....static dcs.
Climb....static dcs.
Tumble....static dcs.
Spot...static dcs...

Wait!! Before you throw the book at me for the last one, keep in mind that while yes spot vs hide will often scale with level...the standard roll a spot check to see something should be relatively static. But even so, only certain classes get hide as a class skill. A guy with max ranks in spot and a high wisdom should see most hidden characters, even high level ones.

At high level play, most ordinary skill checks should become automatic. That's the point!! Your heroes, you don't fail at doing the routine. That's why they can do the extraordinary.

If players find skill checks boring, then in my mind that's the players fault. Sure, a high level guy can open a lock in his sleep. Well then do it!! A fight breaks out in the room, you want to look cool, open that lock while fighting the monster at the same time.

Disabling a device is easy you say. Well...try changing the mechanisms of the device to your own triggering system, so you can turn an opponents device against him.

The benefit of high level is that players shouldn't worry about the small stuff, so they can set their imaginations loose on the big stuff. Go wild I say. I mean, if a -20 if all it takes to let you do impossible things, start doing the impossible.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Oh, come on. Use of the open lock skill implies a mechanical aspect and/or a physical interaction that was wholly lacking in that "challenge". Using Open Locks to solve word riddles is just ridiculous. If you seriously consider that a "puzzle lock", then Bilbo could've used Open Locks against Gollum in the riddle game.

Did you even see the [ ] I put in there?

*sigh* *shakes head* I know it is a can of worms issue, I was being playful.

 

[jmucchiello]

At high level play, most ordinary skill checks should become automatic. That's the point!! Your heroes, you don't fail at doing the routine. That's why they can do the extraordinary.

I'm not alone!!! Bless you, Stalker0. They do the extraordinary. That's what I've missed in my argument. Heroes don't do the ordinary. They do the extraordinary. Most excellent.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

At high level play, most ordinary skill checks should become automatic. That's the point!! Your heroes, you don't fail at doing the routine. That's why they can do the extraordinary.

If you think success should be automatic, you're in the wrong thread. Period. This is me, politely showing the high level fans the door, again.

If you don't think success should be automatic, at any level of play throughout the planned campaign, and you would like to discuss ways to preserve that feel of the game during which success is not automatic, this is the proper thread for that discussion.

Observe the difference between discussions of design changes versus discussions of whether or not the problem exists at all, or how much fun you're having in your high-level game.

There are plenty of folks here-- friends of mine, apparently-- who have remained sufficiently on-topic that we shouldn't have to put up with any more thread-jacking.

 

[Stalker0]

If you think success should be automatic, you're in the wrong thread. Period. This is me, politely showing the high level fans the door, again.

If you don't think success should be automatic, at any level of play throughout the planned campaign, and you would like to discuss ways to preserve that feel of the game during which success is not automatic, this is the proper thread for that discussion.

Observe the difference between discussions of design changes versus discussions of whether or not the problem exists at all, or how much fun you're having in your high-level game.

There are plenty of folks here-- friends of mine, apparently-- who have remained sufficiently on-topic that we shouldn't have to put up with any more thread-jacking.

Wow, I actually didn't intend to threadjack...my point was that one way to stay in the sweet spot is with players actions. At low level, fighting an orc is a challenge. At 6th level, still in the sweet spot, its not. Opening a simple lock is a challenge at 1st level, not at 5th. Now once you get to 15-16th level, there aren't any locks that are a challenge, unless something weird is going on. However, the players themselves can make it a challenge, and an exciting one, but using their imagination to do the job more heroically. In this way, you don't need higher and higher dcs to challenge the players, some of the job is on their shoulders as well.


To get fully back on topic, I repeat what others have said, its high level magic that's the "problem." A high level fighter, no matter how strong, no matter how many attack he gets, is still a fighter. He just does more damage, maybe can attack more enemies, but he's still just a fighter. However a wizard can stop time, make wishes, summon unspeakable horrors, raise the dead, etc.

My group is now 11th level, and it really doesn't feel high level because we have no wizards or clerics. So while we are all pretty powerful, the type of game we are playing hasn't changed. The game only changes with spells like teleport, commune, raise the dead, etc as others have mentioned. Take these kinds of spells out, and the gameplay remains relatively the same.

Another "problem" as I see it, is that 3rd edition is a slave to formulaic progressions. A barb gets +1 bab every level, a fighter gets a feat every other level, etc. The problem with this is it makes classes hard to tweak to adjust for level differences. A high level barb needs a ton of magic items to compete against high level magic because all his class is given him is some more rages and some DR. If there were high level feats or class abilities that could actually give fighters magical abilities like energy resistances for example, they wouldn't need as much magic to do their jobs. This would allow the sweet spot ideal a little longer I believe, fighter types would have magic items but not be so very dependent on them like they are at high levels.

 

[mmadsen]

If you think success should be automatic, you're in the wrong thread. Period. This is me, politely showing the high level fans the door, again.

If you don't think success should be automatic, at any level of play throughout the planned campaign, and you would like to discuss ways to preserve that feel of the game during which success is not automatic, this is the proper thread for that discussion.

I don't understand your complaint -- and I thought I was "on your side" as I read the thread up until now.

A high-level character should be able to easily -- even automatically -- overcome many obstacles that are serious challenges to lower-level characters. The mighty-thewed barbarian should climb right up the cliff face, the king of thieves should pick a lock behind his back while debating his captors, the brave knight should smite footmen left and right while working his way through the fray to the enemy champion.

Those challenges aren't challenges any more -- and they demonstrate the hero's abilities.

Other challenges should rise to match the hero's abilities, but not every, or most, challenges. That's where we get to an almost "low magic" argument, because the best climber, swimmer, jumper, lockpicker, etc. is redundant next to a wizard with the right spell.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Well, how about making skill progress slower? Don't simply cap it, but make it harder, or more expensive, to raise a skill by another level after a character has arrived at a certain level of competence. The linear progress in skills is the reason why skills sky-rocket, at least through normal means. Either install some kind of check a character has to pass every time he wants to put a rank in a skill, which gets progrssively harder the higher he wants to go, or make it cost more skill points to go up a rank after some point. Make that point 5 ranks in any given skill if you want to start early, or 8 ranks if you want to start a bit later, to curb the high-level effect.

Additionally, limit the amount of magic that can add to your skill ranks, maybe as a function of how many skill ranks the character has in the skill by himself. Like saying "No magic can do more than double the natural competence of a person" or somesuch.

Problem is that, at some point, you either cap the game by a certain level, or you'll have to redesign a lot of the other stuff, too, like combat stats, magic, etc, if you want to keep the sweet spot beyond 10th level. And while I realize you already published your own take on d20 with Grim Tales, I was under the impression that you wanted to keep this thought experiment within the confines of the SRD, right?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

If there were high level feats or class abilities that could actually give fighters magical abilities like energy resistances for example, they wouldn't need as much magic to do their jobs. This would allow the sweet spot ideal a little longer I believe, fighter types would have magic items but not be so very dependent on them like they are at high levels.

I don't think this solves any "save or die" situation. Something that a lot of higher level LG players do with their characters is to acquire every save boost as possible. The best way to hold off save or die situations is to make sure your Fort, Will, or Ref saves are sky high. Cloaks of resistance, vests of resistance, frequent multiclassing to grab to +2 saves at 1st-levels, all are popular items for high level characters purely because of save or die events.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I don't understand your complaint -- and I thought I was "on your side" as I read the thread up until now.

Ok, let me explain it like this.

If I start a thread titled, "Who Loves Apple Pie? Let's Swap Recipes!"

then I might expect a robust discussion on the thickness or flakiness of the crust, whether or not cinnamon and/or sugar is involved, and whether or not to serve the pie hot or cold, with or without ice cream.

But for the most part, I expect folks participating in the thread to agree on the basics of apple pie, and to come to the thread with recipes in hand.

What I don't want to happen is for folks to come into the thread with suppositions about why I happen to like apple pie, or to tell me how awesome their cherry pie is, and then to have the temerity to show up without so much as a recipe for cherry pie, despite the fact that I wouldn't eat the goddamn nasty thing anyway.

I hope that puts the thread into the perspective I attempted in the first post.

---

The d20 system uses a d20 die as its means of conflict resolution. At its heart, it is a Gamist system.

As levels increase, one of two things happens:

1) The d20 becomes less and less relevant as a means of conflict resolution. Other (non-Gamist) means of conflict resolution come to the forefront.

or

2) The relevance of the d20 is preserved by scaling the DCs (and challenges in other forms) in proportion to the heroes. This kills verisimilitude-- the world should not adapt to accomodate the heroes.

A low to mid levels the d20 mechanic is preserved AND there is a sense of verisimilitude in the challenges the heroes face. This is the definition of the "sweet spot."