Does anyone do non-overpowered anymore?

[Hardhead]

Of course people do. I have players that just take feats and don't hunt for the best ones. We play fighters and rangers well past sixth level and few people take prestige classes. They give away magical items, even the rare and powerful ones. Soon a few of them will have high levels then ACs.

Of course! However, you can't really do it with WotC. Therefore, I've stopped buying WotC products and just mostly get 3rd party stuff now. Last thing I bought was the 3.5 core rules, but the last thing before that was the BoVD. I have one player that still buys new WotC books, and I occasionally allow stuff out of those books, but the days when I said "everything from WotC is OK" are LONG gone.

They've actually done a complete 180 on their design philosophy since the big names left (or were fired). Instead of balancing stuff without role-playing restrictions, now they give out extra power for taking a PrC or whatever. They even admit doing this in the BoED! In the long run, I'm betting it'll hurt their sales. But maybe I'm just hoping.

 

[Henry]

In fact, I know quite a few people who play earlier versions of D&D, and consider any other versions as pale imitations of the real thing.

Try playing a Fighter who has 3 hit points at first level, and whose party cleric knows NO spells, and whose wizard can charm person or cast a single magic missile ONCE per day.

Now THAT's low powered.

 

[Desdichado]

Does anybody do non-overpowered gaming anymore? I'm working on a campaign where the Fighter is a Prestige class. The core classes are all comparable to the Warrior or the Noble in the DMG. There is power to be had in this world, but the PCs don't automatically get a fast-track to the biggest and baddest character classes. Is this so unusual that I might as well pack up and move to the center star of Orion's belt?

You're implication that anyone playing the "standard" game is overpowered is insulting. You'd be better off asking "Does anyone play low powered gaming anymore." Answer: yes, lots.

I don't like your solution much, though. I prefer to just keep it at lower levels. Numion's scorn notwithstanding. That's my one atavism from earlier editions, which for the most part I wasn't happy with. I still consider anything over 10th level to be very high.

 

[Gothmog]

You can make it a lot of fun and very challenging but D&D magic-laden tactics created a setting and a very particular style of play that was... I'm not sure if I can really put it into words... perhaps just hard to identify with? Or one that has just gotten a little grating over the years. It's very... D&D. Scry-Buff-Teleport, easy Resurrection & Improved Invisibility-Fly-Bombard are just a few examples. High level battles that were over very fast and were highly initiative dependent just didn't possess that... Epic Battle! feel to them. And then there is the impact of magic on a campaign setting which is a whole other matter...

Magic became (for us) perhaps just a little too versitile and too effective in some respects. And there is a trap where you can begin to identify yourself more by what you have and less with who you are. This problem is obviously one that is shared by others in the thread by the looks of it. I tried to alieviate some of this by encouraging players to set a long-term "character" goal for themselves... To use all that power, wealth and influence they've accumulated over their careers to create something in the campaign that will outlast the character who made it (and not just to accumulate power for power's sake). This has proven very successfully in the past and it can be quite rewarding for players who often remember their achievements of a particular character even when they can't quite remember the character who did them...

Very well stated- this is exactly what I was trying to say. Magic in D&D doesn't feel like magic from myth and literature- it feels like a game. There is no sense of wonder, no mystery, its simply a tool almost like technology. Because its taken for granted, players develop a reliance on it rather than on looking for alternative methods for solving a problem because it is so potent and reliable in every situation. And once players have found that the scry/buff/teleport or Imp. Invis/Fly/Bomber mage works, they rely on those tactics to the exclusion of all other things. I'll admit that as a DM, I would much rather think about interesting characters and plots in my game than searching rulebooks for ways to foil the latest l33t spell/magic item combo the players have discovered. Blah, extremely boring and predictable.

The problem is that D&D characters are so reliant on magic under the core rules that in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening, you have to reduce the power level of the game. Although I haven't restricted PCs to just NPC classes, I ended up making magic items much more rare, slowing down the spellcasting progression to 1 spell level every 3 leves of the class, editing the spell lists and making a cap of 6th level spells, and reducing the frequency of monsters. And you know what? I haven't seen the problem of player mental laziness in quite a while. While I occasionally enjoy the high-magic one-shot for its simple "wahoo" factor, I can't take it seriously because its impossible to identify with a character with that kind of power and who view themselves as their set of equipment or spells rather than as an individual with a personality and goals. Again, I'm not saying all high-powered play is like this, but IME in the last 22 years I have been gaming, probably a good 80% is. There isn't any right or wrong way to do things regardig power level, but I think that there is something to the arguement that D&D is overpowered and encourages a dependence on magic. Some people want to try and correct what we see as a problem, not a feature of the game- and to do that the basic assumptions and system of the game have to be modified.

 

[TiQuinn]

Well, I was going to run my next group through an Orc and Pie campaign, but I decided afterwards that it might be overpowered. Need to rethink it.

 

[Piratecat]

Just don't use any templates on the pie, and you should be okay.

 

[diaglo]

In fact, I know quite a few people who play earlier versions of D&D, and consider any other versions as pale imitations of the real thing.

Try playing a Fighter who has 3 hit points at first level, and whose party cleric knows NO spells, and whose wizard can charm person or cast a single magic missile ONCE per day.

Now THAT's low powered.

you know some too. please, give them my name at email addy.

in about a month or so, i'm kicking off a new face-to-face campaign. for some reason WotC rejected my campaign submission. i know it was better than Eberron ever hoped to be. anyway here is the website:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ToneTG/

 

[howandwhy99]

Hi,

I am actually one of the players in Diaglo's group and am avidly looking forward to the game. Judging by the initial campaign and character creation document, it will be vastly lower in "player rule-power" than pretty much 3rd Edition could ever hope to be. I think the fun will be in a way similar to Paranoia. Meaning, I suspect character death will be far more frequent, but play will be more free form. Plus, "focusing on the rules" will be all but gone. We should move at a pretty quick clip and get quite a bit more done in less time.

The other side of the coin is an alternately run 3.5 Edition game that will have all of the mass amount of rules the system brings with it (i.e. feats, skills, class abilites, combat maneuvers, and far more spells). More information means more to know and quickly recall, but the game gives players more options (rulewise). I think it's more powerful for players, but I don't think it necessarily means more powerful PCs.

That said, I'm one of the hopeful DM's petitioning to run the game opposite of Diaglo. I'm planning on a harshly environmental game with grim and gritty feel high-CR combats, but which keeps player money levels at the suggested levels.

Regardless of who runs the second game though, the group should see first hand what original D&D was like to play and the differences in a 3.5 game. Quite the learning experience for all involved. Being a story-loving player who prefers flavor over crunch, I can't quite say yet which will be my favorite.

To stay somewhat on topic, I'm guessing that the initial poster could read along in (I'm sure) our soon to be written storyhours.

 

[barsoomcore]

Barsoomcore I'd like to say I really appreciate the efforts of your great experiment and was at one time excited to try something similar.

Well, uh, sheesh. Thanks.

Just a quick question due to my interest: How did you balance the escalation of attack bonuses with the static nature of AC, which for the most part is pretty heavily dependent on magic in the higher levels in order to keep pace.

A couple of ways. First off, I nerfed armour by reducing the AC bonus it supplies and increasing the Dex penalty. In addition, I took heavy armour proficiency away from all classes.

On Barsoom, only wimps wear armour.

Second, I added a bunch of feats to enable pretty much any character to drastically improve their AC. There's two that allow characters to apply other stat bonuses: Canny Defense (Int) and Reckless Abandon (Cha). And there's another feat, Step Aside, that allows characters to apply their base Reflex Save to their AC. All of these stack, of course, and all are lost when Dex bonus is lost -- which makes 4 levels of Rogue (Uncanny Dodge!) almost mandatory for anyone serious about combat.

Rogues are actually much more serious combatants on Barsoom -- they still don't have the hit points but they can be SO hard to hit that they do well.

Basically, I wanted a system that rewarded smart, agile, charismatic characters. Because that's cool.

Balancing encounters is more of an art than a science for me anyway, so hand-tooling everything is fine. I'll do a certain amount of tweaking on the spot if I realise I've misjudged something.

So far it's worked great. My players wear no armour, jump all over the battlefield and have a good time. Their AC scales as they increase in level (either by acquiring new feats, or taking Step Aside, which DOES improve their AC on a level basis), and tougher bad guys tend to have higher ACs. It's cool.

 

[AeroDm]

I enjoy low powered games... but they are rarely low powered. There are few magic items and little arcane magic, but people are still quite powerful. Additionally, I like giving players the option to have a lot of abilities that make them cool rather than overpowered.