D&D is not a supers game.

[Mallus]

Random AD&D factoid (at least as best I recall it): even if you're using the "death's door" option, a single hit will still kill you if it drops you below zero in a single blow (there is an option within an option to make the "single blow" threshold -3).

Ah, like so much of the AD&D crunch, it's vaguely worded. The rules state unequivocally death occurs at -10 HP (DMG, p.82). Characters brought to 0 HP (optionally -3 "by the same blow") are at "death's door" and lose 1 HP per round until -10 is reached, at which point they "buy the Shire".

Character brought to 0 HP and below are seriously wounded. Regardless of healing, they're comatose for 1d6 turns, and at least 1 full week of bed rest. Unless you use the UA spell Death's Door, which permits immediate healing back to full functionality. The spell also reiterates "death's door" being between 0 and -9 HP.

Also, if the character is brought to -6 or below, they might suffer permanent scarring and/or limb loss.

What's unclear is the result of being reduced to - 4 through -9 HP in a single blow/attack. We always played it as "alive, but dying", because the rules explicitly state "dead = -10 HP", while assuming otherwise required an element of conjecture.

As for the larger issue of "superheroic feel" -- this topic always seems strange to me. Every edition of D&D starts to feel "superheroic" by about 9th level, give or take, and it has everything to do with the amount of player-controlled magic and nothing, at all, to do with hit points. Following from this, 3e/Pathfinder are the most "superheroic" versions of D&D, since their default assumptions involve the most magic under the most player control.

Having just played my 13th level Wind Oracle yesterday afternoon, I can say with confidence she'd qualify for both the X-Men and the Avengers.

 

[pemerton]

If I remember correctly (and it has been awhile), not in the beginning (low-level) of the books he doesn't.

Conan one-shots the lion in Tower of the Elephant - an "early Conan" story.

Ged one-shots the young dragons in chapter 5 or so of A Wizard of Earthsea - it is basically his first encounter after leaving the school of wizardry. What level you think someone is when they leave the school I don't know.

I've already stated numeroous times high level D&D is a super-heroic fantasy game in every edition.

I don't know what your criteria are for supheroic - The Phantom? Superman? - but I do know there are well-known fantasy characters who are able to one-shot dangerous monsters, as I've instanced.

Moldvay Basic tells me that a famous Magic-User is Merlin and a famous fighter Hercules. That makes me expect that my PC might at least resemble Ged (who in a Wizard of Earthsea is fairy clearly not on a par with Merlin) or Conan (who in Tower of the Elephant is clearly not on a par with Hercules). I gather the 2nd ed PHB gives similar examples.

There is a huge dissonance between those expectations and the actual play of a 1st level PC. (Especially but not only a 1st level MU.) My view is that every edition of the game since then has taken some steps - more or less modest - to reduce that dissonance and close the gap between the rhetoric and the actual mechanics of play.

I would be surprised if D&Dnext went back to OD&D standards for starting hit points. But then, I've been wrong before.

 

[pemerton]

What's unclear is the result of being reduced to - 4 through -9 HP in a single blow/attack. We always played it as "alive, but dying", because the rules explicitly state "dead = -10 HP", while assuming otherwise required an element of conjecture.

While accepting that it is fundamentally irrational to quibble over the details of AD&D rules interpretation, I'm still moved to ask: what, then, do you think the "zero (or -3 hp)" wording is doing, if anything?

I always assumed that if a single blow dropped you below zero (or below -3, if the option to the option is in play) that you die, but if it drops you only to zero (or to as much as -3, if the option to the option is in play) you are "at death's door", losing 1 hp per round, able to be revived by the Death's Door spell, killed by any blow that hits you, etc.

Having just played my 13th level Wind Oracle yesterday afternoon, I can say with confidence she'd qualify for both the X-Men and the Avengers.

What is a Wind Oracle? (I'm thinking Storm, but only because of your X-Men reference - and maybe Thor as the Avengers' equivalent?)

 

[Neonchameleon]

At low levels (1-3), which I have reiterated numerous times within the thread that I am speaking about, they very much are a threat.

It might help you to get your case across if you aren't on one hand talking about levels 1-3 and on the other mentioning ogre minions. They aren't levels 1-3. Hell, the lowest level ogre I can think of in any monster manual is a level 7 standard. So when you talk about ogre minions you are not talking about levels 1-3.

Did I ever claim all orcs were minions? Nope, I claimed some level 4 Orcs were miniions... which they are.

And an orc drudge in 4e would be statted up as an Orc Commoner 1 in 3.X. He's a drudge. And I've provided the actual meaning of the word Drudge. If you think that a Drudge isn't a type of commoner then we really disagree about the use of English.

Some 4e orcs are drudges. Do 3.X orcs have no commoners? Are they all warriors?

in 4e that fluff/fiction doesn't mean anything so why are you now trying to use it in some way to strengthen your own categorization of the monsters?

What do you mean that the fluff/fiction doesn't mean anything? The fiction/fluff tells you what to use and how to use it - it just has a different relationship to the game than it does in 3.X.

Again level 9 is not low level. They can one-shot, but are not guaranteed, upon a successful attack, of one-shotting like they are in 4e with minions. There's a different feel there.

Not much of one IME. You're basically rolling once for each as the to hit roll is a formality.

I mean the action of bringing your ability to stay in the fight up to the max it can be in an encounter by taking a 5 minute rest.

And here's the hit point disconnect - if they have one hit point they are still acting at full capacity.

Then I guess I'm not trying to present your PoV to others. The thing I'm wondering is if you can see why the mechanics of 4e can make some (let me clarify that in saying "some" I am not referenceing you) people feel like the game is drifting into the realm, of super heroics. If you're not even willing to entertain the fact that some people could honestly (and without any malice toward the game) feel that way, well then we can agree to disagree at this point because this discussion won't go anywhere prodiuctive.

I see how some people could consider 4e a low powered superhero game. What I don't see is how they can see it as more so than 3.X or AD&D. Except that not everyone got superpowers (or crypto-superpowers like Batman) in 3.X.

And yet until 4e it was possible to have a gritty low-level game, for those who wanted it. So you can choose to ignore D&D but for some/many it worked fine for that until recently.

From memory, it worked badly. If I wanted a gritty low level game I'd reach for GURPS or WHFRP - the two games I cut my RPG teeth on. But if the DM chooses not to use minions at low level (a perfectly acceptable choice) then fights get very brutal. For instance the Kobold level 1 skirmisher (quickblade I think?) does +2 damage for every square they shifted that turn before attacking, and can shift up to four squares in a turn. I think that means that unless you've shut the kobold down they are doing d6+11 damage per attack, and with a four square shift you can get to whoever you want and flank them. With kobolds with more than 20 hit points doing that amount of damage it can get very scary very fast.

So you're saying for the game to work correctly I need to purchase more books... and disregard the books I initially bought. That sucks. To answer your question I was, until recently, using any monster in the online Adventure Tools... are they updated to the new specs? If not I don't see why I would have to go out and buy more books to get the game to the corrected point for combats.

The monsters aren't updated - they are printed as they are in the source material. The Monster Vault monsters more or less replace the MM1 monsters for 90+% of the monsters you are ever going to use - filter your search to Monster Vault, Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, the Dark Sun Creature Catalog, and the MM 3. And honestly there's enough awesome in the two Monster Vaults that most of the time I just use them - I've said in the past that they are the best two monster manuals produced for any edition of D&D and stand by it. (Yes, I own the 2E Monstrous Manual).

And yes it does suck. As a rule 4e is the only edition of D&D where every book to come out (with the single exception of the PHB3) has been significantly better than the previous one in that line (not to say that I don't have a lot of time for e.g. the Bo9S). And knowing which published monsters to use and avoid is something that shouldn't have been needed but is very useful.

 

[Mallus]

... what, then, do you think the "zero (or -3 hp)" wording is doing, if anything?

Confusing the issue, and nothing more. Gygax had this wonderful tendency to use "decorative specifics" in his rules texts. I liken this to the preferred usage of concrete language in poetry!

I always assumed that if a single blow dropped you below zero (or below -3, if the option to the option is in play) that you die, but if it drops you only to zero (or to as much as -3, if the option to the option is in play) you are "at death's door", losing 1 hp per round, able to be revived by the Death's Door spell, killed by any blow that hits you, etc.

My reading of the rule is based on the low odds of being reduced to exactly zero HP by an attack. Why bother establishing the "death's door" condition and subsequent mechanics for something that is, statistically speaking, a corner case? The intent of rule is clear, but the use of 0 HP as the boundary impedes that. Therefore it should be ignored.

The 0 to -3 range makes more sense, but even so, since death is clearly defined as -10 HP or lower, I find the most sensible reading is extend Death's Door to -9. Or at least that's the way all my old AD&D DM's did it.

Playing "but what did he mean" is half, well, some, of the fun with AD&D.

What is a Wind Oracle?

Oracle is a Pathfinder base class from the Advanced Players Guide. Spontaneous divine casters with various Supernatural abilities based on their chosen "mystery" ie, theme/power source.

Mechanically, she resembles absolutely nothing found in the works of Tolkien, Howard, or Moorcock. The works of Stan Lee are another story...

 

[Celestian]

Just played another session of #dndnext and one thing I noticed was that an ogre's max damage was less than a 1st level dwarven fighters max damage. The same ogre has a LOT more health (80something) while the fighter was much lower.

Something on this scale is out of wack. I lean towards thinking that the fighter does to much damage and the fighter and ogre have to much health.

 

[Mallus]

Just played another session of #dndnext and one thing I noticed was that an ogre's max damage was less than a 1st level dwarven fighters max damage.

It's the same in AD&D.

A standard ogre's maximum damage is 10. A dwarven fighter with exceptional STR and or weapon specialization from Unearthed Arcana can get well over 10 (16, I think: 8 max battle axe + 5 from a 18/91-99 STR + 3 from double-specialization).

A dwarven fighter with any static positive damage modifier will have a higher mean, and usually higher average, damage output than the ogre.

I mean, how common was it to play a single-classed AD&D fighter without a plus to damage?

 

[Argyle King]

Conan one-shots nearly everything he fights - soldiers, assassins, pirates, were-hyenas, etc. You can't emulate Conan in a game without one-shotting 4 to 8 guys a round!

I'd argue that Conan's world doesn't use D&D style hitpoints. Yes, I completely agree that Conan is b.a., but you also have to consider that (in my opinion) combat in Conan's world is more deadly than the typical D&D campaign as presented by today's version of the game.

 

[Hussar]

I'd argue that Conan's world doesn't use D&D style hitpoints. Yes, I completely agree that Conan is b.a., but you also have to consider that (in my opinion) combat in Conan's world is more deadly than the typical D&D campaign as presented by today's version of the game.

I dunno.

How often does Conan die?

I'd say 4e combat is far, far more lethal to the protagonists than Conan combat is.

 

[Mercutio01]

I dunno.

How often does Conan die?

I'd say 4e combat is far, far more lethal to the protagonists than Conan combat is.

That's because Conan has script immunity. Ask many of his adventuring comrades the same question and you'll get a lot of "No answer. He's dead."

In any case, I'm done trying to convert anyone, and I hope most of us have got it out of our systems.