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

[maggot]

The granularity of the spell system has always bothered me. Without getting into the "low magic/high magic" discussion, look at the cure line of spells and the transporation line of spells by the best spell a caster of each level can cast:

1st - Cure Light Wounds (d8+1)
2nd - Cure Light Wounds (d8+2)
3rd - Cure Moderate Wounds (2d8+3)
4th - Cure Moderate Wounds (2d8+4)
5th - Cure Serious Wounds (3d8+5)
6th - Cure Serious Wounds (3d8+6)
7th - Cure Critical Wounds (4d8+7)
8th - Cure Critical Wounds (4d8+8)
9th - Cure Critical Wounds (4d8+9) or perhaps Empowered Cure Serious (4.5d8+13.5)
10th -Cure Critical Wounds (4d8+10) or perhaps Empowered Cure Serious (4.5d8+15) or about 28 hp average [35 in the empowered case]
11th - Heal (110hp + all conditions)

Except for the fact there is a missing spell (cure fatal wounds?) at 9th, it scales rather nicely until 11th level where bam! you can cure 4 times as much and all conditions as well. Why is the cure curve so clunky? The same thing applies to the inflict/harm curve.

Now look at transport spells:
1st - Expeditious Retreat (run 30' more/round for 1 minute)
2nd - Expeditious Retreat (run 30' more/round for 2 minutes)
3rd - Levitate, Spider Climb, or Exp Retreat (so now you can bypass of climb checks)
4th - Same
5th - Fly (5 minutes at 60', or about 6000' if you hustle the whole time)
6th - Fly (6 minutes at 60', or about 7200')
7th - Dimension Door 680' or fly 8400'
8th - Dimension Door 720' or fly 9600' (a little under 2 miles in 8 minutes)
9th - Teleport 900miles

Does anyone else see the disconnect? Shouldn't Teleport at 9th level be more like 1 mile/level, and then have greater teleports with longer distances at higher levels?

Same applies to the "remove condition" series of spells: once you hit, raise dead (remove death) there is not much more room to move (just like once you hit teleport 900 miles, you

 

[VirgilCaine]

You mean "besides the 6th level forbiddance."

Don't forget Unhallow and Hallow, which can have a dimensional anchor spell applied to them, and that "areas of strong physical or magical energy can make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible."

Which would explain why Control Weather is a Sor/Wiz, Drd, AND Clr spell. And why BBEGs prefer lairs in earthquake zones, next to volcanoes, or near portals to elemental planes...

Edit:
You're forgetting maggot, that Teleport cannot take you anywhere you have not seen.

 

[blargney the second]

If you want to keep the d20 result important, just make sure that no total bonus ever becomes greater than +15 or so.

 

[DaveMage]

The granularity of the spell system has always bothered me.
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Does anyone else see the disconnect? Shouldn't Teleport at 9th level be more like 1 mile/level, and then have greater teleports with longer distances at higher levels?

Same applies to the "remove condition" series of spells: once you hit, raise dead (remove death) there is not much more room to move (just like once you hit teleport 900 miles, you

Definitely some disconnect, but, with the move spells, there is "overland flight" which lets you move up to 64 miles in an 8-hour period.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

In another vein, it could simply mean adding roleplaying complications to the use of a spell, like the example of shadow walk showed.

That example seemed to be a description of a lower level astral projection, minus the new body aspect. Astral projection lets you bounce into the Astral plane and then pick any other plane in which to jump into. Because you actually enter the Astral you can end up encountering astral denizens for your duration there until you choose your next destination.

Where astral projection maintains a higher level step above Cheiromancer's shadow walk is that with astral projection the PCs manifests new bodies with duplicates of all equipment on their bodies, meaning death of the new body doesn't cause actual death... A built-in free true resurrection as you will.

I'd recommend checking out e.g. the Iron Kingdoms Character Guide on how travel magic is handled there (a chance of an Infernal taking an interest in the travelling caster and attaching itself to the transport in progress)... .

Just wanted to say that Dark Sun also has something to bring to the table. In the Defilers and Preservers accessory spells that accessed the planes (etherealness, contact other plane) forced the caster to make a % roll for success. Even after casting the spell, success for linking to an Outer or Astral Plane was only at 96–100%! Plus if you rolled between 01–15 you were "Lost" in Dark Sun's barrier plane The Gray. All other % results were failure to link. To get out of The Gray, once per day you rolled you Int score or less on a % roll. If you failed you remain lost and The Gray saps your life permanently losing one point of Constitution per day.

% success for Inner/Ethereal plane was 66–100, and % lost in The Gray was 01–08. All other % results were failure to link. Elemental clerics do not have to roll failure checks to connect to their patron element.

Similarly, Dark Sun players and DMs have long complained about magic that made the harsh world simply a background element rather than the hazard it should be. Particularly teleport, this spell especially makes travel through the desert a nonissue. However, on the bright side for this discussion the create water, and create food and water spells were removed from universal cleric access and restricted to water clerics only. In a desert world, this is pretty dramatic.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Interesting thread. I'm bookmarking it to examine in light of my own rules revisions.

RC

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

The granularity of the spell system has always bothered me. /snip/

Does anyone else see the disconnect? Shouldn't Teleport at 9th level be more like 1 mile/level, and then have greater teleports with longer distances at higher levels?

Same applies to the "remove condition" series of spells: once you hit, raise dead (remove death) there is not much more room to move (just like once you hit teleport 900 miles, you

Looks like you had more to say, but it doesn't matter. You NAILED it.

There is a HUGE difference in scale/granularity at 9th level and above.

 

[BryonD]

That is a good point.

And the follow-up that he started toward was an implication that linear scaling of these higher end spells may be part of the problem as well.

 

[Lanefan]

I think we need rules that encourage players to develop a broader range of competencies rather than to intensify a few competencies. This would bring about fewer automatic successes (since PCs wouldnt max particular competencies into the stratosphere, or at least not so quickly) but PCs would still get gamist cookies (new competencies) at regular intervals. The d20 would be more relevant for a longer period of the campaign. ...snip...

That's my primary suggestion for preserving the sweet spot: Find ways of encouraging broad advancement and slowing narrow advancement.

Which leads to - and augments - a corollary problem that also impacts the sweet spot: characters who can do everything by themselves and thus do not need the rest of the party. At the 3-9 range, that's already been broadly defined as the sweet spot in most editions, the PC's *need* each others' abilities. The wizards can't fight, but their spells are useful. The thief can't cure, but nobody else can sneak. And so on; thus the party has a built-in reason to stay together and at least try to get along. But at higher levels, with what you suggest, the PC's abilities would start bleeding over into the realms of other classes. Combine that with multiclassing (and don't get me started on that) and the inter-reliance is gone as each PC can to some extent do everything.

My suggestion here would be almost the opposite: make it harder if not impossible to gain abilities your class would not normally have, and really hack back on multiclassing...all to keep that inter-reliance that makes a party more than just a random collection of one-man bands. People won't like this - it cuts back on character design freedom, for one thing - but I think it adds to the "sweetness", if that makes sense.

Lanefan

 

[Slobber Monster]

The problem I see with a lot of the discussion about skill modifiers and DC's is that people are only taking into account very narrowly defined situations.

The common example given so far is Open Lock, where the highest DC lock in the PH is 40. So if your lock opening specialist has a +30 total modifier at high level, in a site based adventure he doesn't need to bother rolling to bypass a locked door in a quiet situation. A player who hasn't specialized in Open Locks has _no_ chance of bypassing the door (let's forget about magic for a moment, just for the sake of discussion), and the obstacle has become either trivial or impossible depending on party composition. The only way to force uncertainty for the skill specialist is to push the task further away from the dabbler, until the dabbling becomes irrelevant.

But I think this is the wrong way to approach it. Rather than scaling the base DC's indefinitely as levels go up, the better approach is to create _messier_ situations which bring multiple skills and abilities into play. Keep some opportunities around for the dabblers to better their position or solve a problem via the use of skill checks which fall into normal DC ranges. Pump the DC's of the really hard stuff for the specialists not by increasing the base DC, but by adding difficult circumstances.

A high level rogue shouldn't be sweating over spending a few minutes bypassing a well crafted lock in a static site. She should be racing against the clock to open a compartment holding a magical time bomb on a swaying ship in a raging storm while her allies fight off a horde of demons. The lock itsself would be the same DC 40 lock she picked 5 levels ago, but now she has to make DC 15 Concentration checks before trying and the Open Lock DC has been bumped with a +2 circumstance bonus due to conditions. If she's a truly uber unlocker then she could even add +20 to the DC to do it as a Move action so she can take a stab at a harrassing demon.

But that's just how the rogue would solve the problem. The situation can still be constructed so that other abilities will also do the trick. I guess it does require a lot of work constructing situations, especially compared to designing site-based adventures. So maybe it doesn't extend what some people are looking for as a sweet spot. But I still think skills work fine, and the bigger problem is their frequent obsolescence by magic.