Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 3257093" data-attributes="member: 3146">Hmm. If I answer that, do I confess to having ranks in profession: powergamer? The long and the short of it is that 11th-13th 3.x characters would take on Snurre with only a few magic items between them by:A. Creating the most ridiculously multiclassed characters ever, borrowing from five splatbooks (with or without erratta, depending upon which version was more useful) in order to create characters who were powerful enough to succeed without magic items.B. Ridiculous rules exploits (if each pint of flaming oil does 1d6 damage, how much does a five  gallon barrel of flaming oil do? if I fling it at the BBG using Telekinesis? Answer--it doesn't matter against Snurre, but if you let each pint do 1d6, it does more damage than being immersed in boiling lava). C. All being spellcasters who could use long-term spells to partially make up for their lack of magic items. (The battle cleric, for instance, doesn't suffer nearly as much as the fighter or paladin from a lack of magic items; similarly, an arcane trickster can deal with a lack of magic items more easily than a single-classed rogue). I noticed a lot of this in RPGA living campaigns three years or so ago when they were either trying to be low-wealth or the characters were still recovering from spending levels 3-7 or so in a low-wealth environment.D. Clever strategy and tactics.E. Dull but effective strategy and tactics that capitalize on a gaping weakness of the creature (ie cast a widened entangle and a few evards' black tentacles spells, ray of enfeeble him, and then fly away from him while shooting him until he dies).The most likely answer is a combination of all of the above. In my experience, however, the more overmatched and underequipped the PCs feel, the more likely that A and B are going to figure prominently among their means of handling the situation.Of course, from what I remember, the answer would have been the same in earlier editions with the exception that there were a lot more ridiculous rules exploits to make because there were either only rules that the DM made up on the spot or there were five different sets of rules for any given situation, and one of them was bound to be exploitable.I think the long and the short of it is that you aren't really looking for a "toned down" game. From the sounds of this, you want a hopped up one where PCs can triumph over fire giants at 5th level and over Snurre at 10th level. 3.x definitely made a lot of monsters more lethal and more durable and thus upped the levels where they could be taken on. If you don't like D&D games past 11th level or so, then this could be a problem for you if you want to run all of the high level stories for low-mid level characters without changing any of the rules. It would be quite possible to get that effect by changing things up (if you give ogres the fire subtype and change their equipment, you could call them all fire giants and run the stories you want to run five or six levels lower than you would do when using fire giants, but that involves more work than running straight out of the book and leaves you with less room at the low end of the power scale, so while it's fine if you want to play one mod, if you want to start from 1st level and scale up traditionally, you'll be missing the mid levels).</blockquote>

Verification