D&D 5E (2014) Deal Breakers - Or woah, that is just too much

[Azurewraith]

That depends. Nachos with sliced jalapeno is awesome.

And cheese and salsa a bit of black pepper. Goes great with your pizza. Just make sure to be clear on the punishment for double dipping

 

[Desh-Rae-Halra]

Lanefan
"- encourage players to have a stable of characters and to cycle them in and out, with limited to no advancement while retired unless it's for a long time; for example this adventure I might be playing 5th-level Gloramir but after it's done I'm going to pull him for a few months downtime and either bring back 3rd-level Hrothgar for a run-out or roll up something new.
- make newly-rolled-up characters come in below the party average level
- let them die if things go that way. It's hard to advance in level when you're dead.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ah-that-is-just-too-much/page33#ixzz409eCJpSf


I get that you are talking about how to slow a campaign down, but the suggestions above (in my experience) contributed to people quitting a campaign.
So before I try and explain, progression seems to work best if the game remains enjoyable to the players.

Its only recently that our group has adopted a fast track/ milestone system for leveling up because the past campaigns were problematic in numerous ways
- GM would forget to give out xp, and/or didnt like calculating it. Several times in 2 different campaigns, when he finally tabulated the xp, people went up 2 levels and were almost half way to another.
- Combine this with "you come in at the lowest level of PC".

This is exactly what happened A character would die (Bob's) and then he wouldnt receive this back-xp, so he was 2 levels lower than everybody. Someone else's character dies (Mary's) and now her character level is the same as Bobs.
Being that Bob and Mary's characters dont come in with magic equipment, the are behind the rest of the party in many ways.
And being that the DM ritually put the party in encounters at CR +3, guess which characters keep dying?
So when your lower level character dies in the combat, you dont get the benefit of the xp and the gap slowly widens.

After my 5th character it wasnt worth it anymore.

Also, my GM gets all buttthurt if you want to change characters.

-

 

[Maxperson]

And cheese and salsa a bit of black pepper. Goes great with your pizza. Just make sure to be clear on the punishment for double dipping

I figured cheese was a given. Nachos! Salsa and pepper I can leave or take.

 

[JonnyP71]

If the only food on offer all contains cheese that's a deal breaker right there....

(Lactose intolerance ftw)

 

[Azurewraith]

If the only food on offer all contains cheese that's a deal breaker right there....

(Lactose intolerance ftw)

Normally have a selection of what I can "steal" work usually chocolate biccys cakes. Could allways get a kebab instead of pizza.

I should clarfy what I mean by steal i work in retail anything that gets "damaged out" is chucked in the bin or a staff member's bag.

 

[Flamestrike]

Lan-"8 years in and the highest-level PC in my current campaign is getting close to 10th, but 3 of those came from a lucky Deck effect"-efan

Hang on. This means that they advanced 5 levels from earnt XP... over 8 years of play, with 42-46 sessions per year?

That averages to nearly 2 years of real time, and around 70 sessions of play to advance a single level.

I find a level a month of real time works best personally (and DnD works to this expectation, with most groups getting in one session per week, with around 3-5 encounters per session, and around 4 such sessions to level.

No offence mate, but your group is an extreme outlier when it comes to level advancement. I personally could never play in a game with such slow level advancement.

 

[Tectuktitlay]

Lan-"8 years in and the highest-level PC in my current campaign is getting close to 10th, but 3 of those came from a lucky Deck effect"-efan

Hang on. This means that they advanced 5 levels from earnt XP... over 8 years of play, with 42-46 sessions per year?

That averages to nearly 2 years of real time, and around 70 sessions of play to advance a single level.

I find a level a month of real time works best personally (and DnD works to this expectation, with most groups getting in one session per week, with around 3-5 encounters per session, and around 4 such sessions to level.

No offence mate, but your group is an extreme outlier when it comes to level advancement. I personally could never play in a game with such slow level advancement.

Yeah. I also mean no offense to you, Lanefan, as I discuss all this stuff with you. In a great many ways, your experiences and games appear to be outliers, and sometimes quite extreme outliers. You are playing in a campaign where it has taken 1.6 years of play to advance each level through XP, in effectively a weekly game. So, based on your stated average of ~44 sessions a year, that means it takes a bit over 70 sessions to advance a single level. That is such an extreme outlier, I am not even sure where to place it, to be honest.

And by the way you speak, this sort of thing is the norm? It's wonderful that your experiences work for you, and hopefully bring you joy. But you probably do need to go into these discussions with the understanding that your experiences do appear to be the exception to a considerable amount of rules.

Yes. It means not sober.

There's lots of different degrees of drunk; you seem to be focusing on the more extreme where I'm looking at the mildly inebriated version. But any degree of non-sobriety can be defined as drunk.

In fact it is the same, unless you're using a much more limiting definition of drunk than I am.

Lan-"tonight's game was, after all that, unusually sober"-efan

Actually, I am using drunk as drunk is defined. I admit, I am terribly fond of using words as defined when I speak/write, so as to avoid confusion should anyone wonder what I mean by any given word. But in all seriousness, go look up the term drunk. In every dictionary, even. In all of them, it is defined as a state in which one's physical and mental faculties are impaired by an excess of alcoholic drink. Thus, when I say drunk, I actually do in fact mean intoxicated to a point that your faculties are impaired (even mildly impaired, but the metric is impaired). A light buzz-on is not drunk, since you are not impaired. Sorry, I thought that was clear. But for all future references if you are unsure of how I am using a word, then the baseline assumption should be I am using it as defined, unless I am obviously using slang.

And regardless, it seems to be that you and a couple others assume that consuming non-alcoholic drugs doesn't have the same large spread of nuanced degrees of how affected you as alcohol does. They do. They very much do. And people are functioning all around you every day, doing every manner of activity, on various non-prescription drugs (or prescription drugs taken recreationally, for that matter). And the vast majority of them? You have no bloody idea they are. So lumping them all together as a deal-breaker seems...extreme. And cognitively dissonant. Mostly, I was nitpicking to get you to think about that.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Personally, I can't even get into character until I've done a line of coke and a shot of vodka, preferably off a body part of a young woman who is no doubt making her father proud.

But you know, I play with Wall Street investment-types, and when in Rome...

 

[Azurewraith]

Personally, I can't even get into character until I've done a line of coke and a shot of vodka, preferably off a body part of a young woman who is no doubt making her father proud.

But you know, I play with Wall Street investment-types, and when in Rome...

I used to be like that then the coke just stopped helping now I have the blood of 70s rock n roll stars pumped straight into my heart. The come down is horrific but man the high is crazy its like your pushing the edges of the universe. Takes a good month to wear off as well. You should try it [emoji12]

 

[Mouseferatu]

One of these days, if I ever move to your town, I'll have to start a game with you in it. Two years? Hell, we're only just getting nicely started!

I appreciate the hypothetical offer, and I'm not saying I wouldn't be willing to give it a shot. But given that I strongly prefer

• A good-aligned and cooperative party
• Ongoing plot arc/arcs, rather than sandbox
• Minimizing dungeon crawls or treasure hunts
• Milestone-based (non-XP-based) advancement
• Roughly 4-6 sessions per level

I'm not convinced that I would be the best fit at your table.