Doing away with "Bigger Fish" problem.

[Mostlyjoe]

I don't understand the issue, either. I reread the OP and don't see any explanation of the actual problem, just that there's some issue that needs to be resolved.

The problem as best as I can describe it that the accelerated curve of the math causes a very artifical inflation of NPC stats and values. So to keep the players challenged suddenly a higher level monsters turns it's interest to them, which sounds fine, but gets wonky when you want to deal with say an established lower level group.

So the solutions are:

A. Monsters that had no reason to care about you previously (Big Red Dragon) suddenly show up to challenge the PCs often with shakey/badly established motivations.

B. There are tiers among the NPC population that you suddenly didn't know about before. Big Boss General Drow and his personal guard show up. In video game terms its like the boss behind the boss.

or

C. Existing NPCs suddenly get far more powerful than they previously were establsihed to be because they scaled up with the party.

The issue has to do with how this can sometimes become very bizarre in a game if handled badly. There are exceptions and some adventures give reasonable explinations as to the scale up, but sometimes they really don't. There in lies the Bigger Fish, the arbitray escalation of difficulity in a campaign to match the PCs.

I was just trying to figure out ways they can mechanically offset or delay this issue while presenting a nice gradiant of challenges for the characters.

 

[KidSnide]

Here's the issue:

If the PCs gain power at a reasonable rate, early threats become obsolete over time (often a good thing). Then middle career threats become obsolete, and -- if the game goes long enough -- it's hard to threaten the PCs without resorting to some of the most unusual creatures in the world. You can wrap up a campaign in this configuration with an epic climax, but it's hard to keep it going without turning the world into silly-town.

There are some solutions to this, but they create their own problems:

- If you scale up all the enemies with the PCs, you get the Oblivion or the World of Warcraft situation, where the world is either filled with bizarrely powerful and unusual wandering monsters or the territory is now plagued with "abyssal" spiders that look just like the weaker forest spiders but are now super-strong.

- If you keep the scaling flat, you get low-level PCs that can affect Orcus and high-level PCs who are in threatened by an orc. You get an equally silly result and kill the sense of progress.

It's worth noting that 4e made some progress towards this with the Solo/Elite/Standard/Minion/Swarm concept. The same monster could interact with different level PCs with different stats. First level characters could fight a single ogre as a solo while higher level paragons fight ogre minions or swarms of ogres. The same monsters continue to populate the game world (and act as useful encounters), but you feel progress because now you're fighting 20 ogres by yourself when you used to have to gang up to take out one. That's a nice idea, but 4e's implementation required a crap-load of re-stating and killed the sensible-if-not-strictly-required idea that a creatures stats represent objective facts in the gameworld and not merely a method by which a certain set of PCs can interact with that creature.

What I'd love to see from D&DN is a system where the "to hit" math is a lot flatter than 4e but not completely flat and the "damage / hit point" math is only somewhat flatter than 4e. That way, a 10th level character is still a lot more powerful than the orcs he fought at levels 1-3, but a hundred orcs are still a danger if the rest of his party isn't there to back him up. Similarly, a 3rd level NPC ally armed with a suitably magical weapon could get a lucky hit on Orcus, but it would take a hundred lucky hits for Orcus to be seriously injured. In other words, I would like to see the Solo/Standard/Minion/Swarm interaction, but without needing special rules to make it work.

(Of course, I don't mind if some special rules are available for mass combat. I just don't want them to be necessary to make the interaction work.)

-KS

 

[1Mac]

Wouldn't part of the solution be to keep the math fairly flat, but to give higher-level characters more powers that do something besides add bonuses to certain checks?

Also:

If the townsfolk, the town guard, that wizard who sold you your lvl1 wand for way too much, that band of orcs in the hills all level with you, then either you're not gaining much power, or somehow everyone is managing to gain equal power to you. Either system makes progression rather silly, the former, you're really getting nowhere. The latter, no matter how far you get, you're still at risk of being bested by the same guys you already beat.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand the attraction of "flat" systems.

This sounds like a "bigger fish" system, not a flat system.

 

[Mostlyjoe]

The issue is you want to represent growing power without completely invalidating weaker foes, especially using teamwork against you. I would have caused it the Bigger Fish Dilemma, but there is more than two issues and options at play here.

Flattening the math can help, but you also have to address other things like NPC cooperation, what exactly is a level 20 whatever?

Tiers help visualize PC power but there doesn't seem to be any math to X Heroic Tier = Y Paragon, etc. Maybe adding that to the NPC/Monster math might help GMs resolve it.

Being a Solo or Elite critter changes your game math, but can you do away with the titles and 'snap on' bonuses and instead of thinking about what a foes would look at from level 1 to 20. Just what does a level 20 Orc Horde look like vs a few level 1 Orc foes?

 

[Mostlyjoe]

Something hit me:

Themes for monsters! In this case instead of something overly gamy as Solo or Elite you instead gain themes like Gang Leader, Expert, Warlord, Sorcerer, etc that work like templetes but don't just add generic bonuses to stat/skill. I'd LOVE to see monsters get fully fleshed out optional themes for taking a generic monster of level X and then turning them into a linch pin of a new organization, or an assassin out to get you, etc.

 

[BobTheNob]

Every time someone mentions "level scaling", my mind goes straight back to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. If anyone has played it, you're familiar with the problem that level-scaling mechanics brought about. At low levels you'd run into packs of wolves, maybe a bandit. At higher levels, the world was practically FILLED with roving packs of powerful necromancers and there was rarely a moment you weren't being attacked by a who troop of some of the most powerful beings in the world.

Level as a representation of power is also a representation of rarity(not to be confused with MLP), there aren't many 20th+ level things in the world. There's one or two liches, a handful of dragons, and maybe a dozen adventurers of similar power to you.

If the townsfolk, the town guard, that wizard who sold you your lvl1 wand for way too much, that band of orcs in the hills all level with you, then either you're not gaining much power, or somehow everyone is managing to gain equal power to you. Either system makes progression rather silly, the former, you're really getting nowhere. The latter, no matter how far you get, you're still at risk of being bested by the same guys you already beat.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand the attraction of "flat" systems.

I remember in Oblivion there was a cave full of bandits I couldnt clear, so I said to myself "Thats ok, I will come back when I have some levels and better gear" (reasonable expectation). So I did. This time the bandits were better geared and hit harder, and I still couldnt clear the cave.

So I went out and gained some more levels and even BETTER gear, and went back again, only to find them equipped with glass weapons and armor and thoroughly handing me my $%#^&.

This is when I uninstalled Oblivion. All other considerations aside, its lack of capability to reward level advanced was, in my mind, simply unforgivable. Perhaps the worst design mistake in gaming history given how great the rest of the game was.

So, In this sense we are playing an RPG and reward growth is necessary.I HATE when that growth is just different types of orcs, that sux. At level 20 when I see an orc, I want to feel like "Heh, I fight dragons...orc means nothing to me", not "Orcs were simple at level one and there even more challenging now!". Changing the nature of the monsters you face is a great way of letting the characters appreciate that they have moved on.

That said, I do want it flattened out a little bit. I will probably be contrary to most, but if there is a 10 level gap, I still want the creature to be, perhaps not feared, but respected. You never saw Strider yawn and say "Horde of Orcs, and before breakfast, how rude!". No, He drew his weapon and steeled himself against a foe he new was a threat, even if they were well below him.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think you can largely eliminate (or at least mitigate) the Bigger Fish issue by limiting the growth of attack bonuses and defenses (+5 at most, I think). Increasing damage, hp, and options is fine IMO because lower level creatures can still have an effect and/or contribute.

If you want to avoid Orcus being overcome by an army of low level beings (and really, when would Orcus be facing an entire army by his lonesome?) just give him sufficient DR to make the damage of low level creatures inconsequential. However, a powerful threat (such as a dinosaur) would be capable of being handled by a sizable low-level group of guards, albeit with significant losses. Those low-level guards also couldn't be ignored by high level PCs (at least in sufficient numbers). All of that, I think, would lend to a more realistic setting.

Instead of straight number bloat, a high level fighter might have several abilities to represent his increased ability to deal and avoid damage. In addition to more damage and hp, he might have abilities that allow him to reroll attacks, as well as abilities that force his attackers to reroll (dodging the attack). Of course, he could also have different abilities, such as allowing him to disarm an opponent or even make multiple at-will attacks for a round.

 

[Jack Daniel]

What if there were a certain level limit beyond which players could not advance, while they remained on the Prime Material Plane? Imagine a fantasy cosmology whereby nothing living in the mortal realm could be more powerful than, let's say, 10th level. If player characters want to advance beyond that point, they must transcend mortal existence: they must seek out other planes, other realms, mythic underworlds (i.e. dungeons) and otherworlds and afterlives and fairylands and alternate dimensions where all of the powerful and godlike beings dwell.

While the player characters remain in these other realms, they can progress to whatever level exists in that realm. Maybe beings in they feywild can reach 20th level and access amazing high magic of yore. Maybe beings in the heavens can reach 30th level and hobnob with the gods. So long as you remain on that plane of existence, you maintain your power... but if you travel back to a lesser realm, you drop back to the highest possible level for that realm, because you have to limit yourself to exist there.

A party of heroes adventures until they reach 10th level. They become mighty archwizards and noble lords and high-priests and guildmasters-of-thieves. Then they hear a rumor of a portal to the fey realm, where even greater treasures and magicks than they have now might be found. So they travel there, and they find that their power grows: they stay until they reach 15th level, at which point they travel back to the mortal realm... and discover that they're back at 10th level so long they remain on the material plane. None of the powerful magic really works in the mortal realm. But when they travel back into the feywild again, they're suddenly able to pick up where they left off, 15th level, and they stay sometime longer, fighting magical legends and working up to 20th level. Then they learn of a transcendent ritual that can transport one's consciousness to the outer planes, where it's possible to commune with the gods and assist their battle against the demons and devils of the lower hells....

This way, the "bigger fish" are effectively siloed off in their own separate fishtanks. Artificial and gamey, perhaps, but it does have its antecedents in myth and legend. The rules in other realms are just different. People don't age in faery realms. The gods must often take mortal form to descend to earth. And there is nothing more world-shatteringly epic than some schmuck evil sorcerer trying to break the rules by summoning a 30th level evil god directly into the mortal realm....

 

[kitsune9]

The catch is just how 'flat' does the math need to be to pull this off?

You bring up a good issue. If we took BAB for example, the math for a fighter is just fine the way it is, for others, they want to see is +1/2 levels, others +1/3 levels to every range to where no one gets a BAB at all (some other system exists for stacking modifiers on hitting AC).

While it's cool that an orc will have "staying" power against a 5th level character, then we have to accept that a group of 1st level PC's will have "staying" power against that large orc chieftain. We could create a disparity of power though in which we have two power scales--one for PC's and NPC's, and the other for monsters.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I like Kid Snide's analysis, and prefer the previously suggested ideas that attack bonuses scale relatively slowly (but some) while hit points and damage scale faster. That's for basic attack/defense.

Another way that would help, is to more stringently model something that D&D has haphazardly done all along: Give higher level creatures more ways besides attacks/defense or simple combat mobility to reflect their greater power and skill. Due to skills, special abilities, etc. an army of orcs will have a very difficult time pinning down, say, a 10th level fighter. Sure, once they do, they'll gradually wear him down. Give that fighter some good battlefield mobility, to escape in the first place. And then he has the skills to hide, or outdistance pursuit, or any number of such things. Or he has magic items that help.

Not that every character or creature has to be able to do this. Maybe an old sage is just an old man when it comes to getting away. But at least think about all the common characters and situations, and provide options in the game that help them evade signficantly less powerful foes, more or less at will (at least for a time). Then structure these things such that they don't work all that well against equal or greater level challenges.

That latter part is the tricky one, as you have to provide most creatures ways of nullifying the lower-level options. A low-level mage can expeditious retreat his way out of kobolds or goblins easily. Yet, if he tries that same thing with a troll, it will buy him a bit of time, but not solve the issue permanently.