Dragon Editorial: Fearless

[Stormtalon]

Last Sunday I came this close to generating a TPK for my 4th and 5th level PCs when they went up against a pair of harpies. Round 1, the harpies started to sing. Everyone failed their saving throws except the warmage, who just kept firing at them while they tried to take down the party. If he had failed one or the other of his saves, they'd have all been toast. Of course, I use action points, so they could have started burning off action points to get additional saves, but I do that for exactly the reason that D&D is too lethal.

Yeah, harpies almost caused a TPK for me a while back as well. Think I had 2 harpies plus the higher-powered one from the MM as their leader. The party was doing fine as they had a bard countersinging -- until the lead harpy got a lethal crit on the bard with her +1 composite frost longbow.

The only member of the party to make their will save turned out to be the druid's animal companion: a dire wolverine -- he'd already been wounded and thus was in one of those nasty rages. That was the only thing that saved them.

The bard player was, well, actually overjoyed that she had to roll up a new character. She sorta hated her bard....

 

[MaelStorm]

I'm glad it works for you, but I just can't be that kind and gentle as a DM, and I refuse to use kid gloves on my PCs. So I've mostly taken death out of my game. That way, there's no real way for the PCs to escape their suffering and torture, and when they fail, they have to live with the repercussions of their failures. I won't even kill them at lower levels, since that means they can avoid serious attachment to their PCs until much later and won't be as affected when horrible things happen to them. It would be akin to just handing them a "get out of jail free" card, or more precisely, a "your PC is dead so nothing bad can happen to him any more" card. Hell, no! I've sometimes had players saying that it would just be much kinder of me to just kill their PCs, and I've even considered it a few times, but I just wouldn't be able to enjoy a game that soft. Maybe I'm just mean and hardcore.

I like yer attitude. And rolling a new character every game is meh...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

In all seriousness, that's how it started for my group!

The PCs were going through healing wands like PEZ dispensers, which motivated me to eliminate "speed bump" attrition encounters and focus on fewer but tougher encounters. This in turn inspired us to tinker with per/encounter abilities and self healing and all kinds of weird stuff that is strangely echoed in 4e.

We're a bit less enthusiastic on house-rulings such things, but when we first discussed the per encounter paradigmn of 4E on this forum (you might remember the "Why is it important..." thread, that I will not link to here to avoid dread thread necromancy ), I noticed that thanks to loads of Wands of Cure Light Wounds, higher level D&D already makes hit points into a per encounter resource.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

I noticed that thanks to loads of Wands of Cure Light Wounds, higher level D&D already makes hit points into a per encounter resource.

In your experience, is that a 3E innovation or has it always been that way?
It was my experience that wands and staves were used more cautiously in earlier editions, because they weren't easily made and there wasn't the assumption they were for sale.

I did really like the design of the Basic Set's Staff of Healing -- Cure Light Wounds (1d6+1) once per day per person, with no charges used up.

 

[shilsen]

We do it also. We call the mechanic "Wand of Cure Light Wounds".

You old fogey! You need to upgrade. It's called the Wand of Lesser Vigor now

I assume that PCs have enough of those to heal themselves and I don't even charge them for the wands right now.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It's called the Wand of Lesser Vigor now

Yeah, we considered that. But CLWs seem to go a little quicker (~5 points of healing per round instead of 1), even if a little more expensive (twice as much?). And while we allow the WotC "splats" usually, we don't use it as heavily as the core stuff. (But don't let that fool you into believing we're not power-gaming. )

In your experience, is that a 3E innovation or has it always been that way?
It was my experience that wands and staves were used more cautiously in earlier editions, because they weren't easily made and there wasn't the assumption they were for sale.

I did really like the design of the Basic Set's Staff of Healing -- Cure Light Wounds (1d6+1) once per day per person, with no charges used up.

I haven't played D&D before 3rd edition. But I think it's a 3E "innovation".
And as I said, I think it wasn't entirely intentional. The costs of a Ring of Regeneration are so out of proportion to the cost of even loads of Cure Light Wound Wands, that I don't think the designers really saw what their magical item guidelines implied. Even with the added benefit of reattaching or regrowing limbs, the cost of the Ring can't be justified in light of the wand costs.

My question regarding this is whether it was a good "innovation" or a bad one?
And I really don't know. With the advent of action points, I sometimes believe we "forgot" the intention of hit points, since we're using new mechanics that on a very basic level do the same as the older one. Hit Points, Action Points, Healing Surges, Reserve Points, Karma Points, are all "points of avoiding nasty things happening to my PC".
Hit points were used against avoiding "nasty weapon killing my PC", and for some reasons it was deemed appropriate that some kinds of magic can bypass this nastiness buffer. But way later in the evolution of D&D, people add action points or reroll mechanics to provide a nastiness buffer against spells (and other effects that are not based on hp).

On the other hand, different types of nastiness buffers might be interesting. You could have "Combat Hit Points", "Social Hit Points", "Research Hit Points", "Travelling Hit Points", and depending on a characters focus, you would have different counts for each of them.

Maybe one should start smaller. One general buffer type might be enough. That's what Torg did with its "Possiblities". You used them for rerolls, buying off damage or paying for special powers...

 

[Dragonblade]

That's either an allusion to, or direct plagiarism from, Go Rin No Sho (Book of Five Rings). "Death is a feather, duty is a mountain."

(Given what I think about Jordan, I submit that it's the latter.)

I'm not sure what you're implying here. But by all accounts Jordan was a man of impeccable character.

Jordan was extremely well read, and was always open about the influences in the Wheel of Time. He has always said in numerous interviews that the entire series is an amalgam of real world myths and cultures throughout history. Thats one reason the series has such resonance with so many fans.

Of course he probably got it from the Book of Five Rings. Jordan's never said otherwise, AFAIK. So what?

 

[Doug McCrae]

You old fogey! You need to upgrade. It's called the Wand of Lesser Vigor now

For some reason I like to stick with the good ol' CLW. My group never upgraded to Lesser Vigor.

<- Old school.

 

[Doug McCrae]

In your experience, is that a 3E innovation or has it always been that way?

It's a 3e thing.

Though in most of the mid-level or higher games of 1e and 2e I was in, players cheated and gave themselves Rings of Regeneration to avoid the problem. Man, there were some Xmas trees back then. No wealth by level guidelines can lead to some pretty bad munchkinry.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

For some reason I like to stick with the good ol' CLW. My group never upgraded to Lesser Vigor.

<- Old school.

If you're not burning through at least 3 CLW wands per session, it's not D&D!