Factoring items into balance flawed?

[Counterspin]

You realize he's talking about Living Greyhawk, where the GMs have to play by RAW right, MisterWhodat?

 

[Deep Blue 9000]

I've always loved throwing players in prison and watching them try to escape. It's practically a sacred-cow. First thing they always do is try to find their gear. And of course, in previous editions it was pretty much required that you give 'em a good shot at getting it fairly soon after escaping. After all, they needed it.

I had hoped I could run an encounter where all that lovely loot was sent off to His Most Puissant Uberness and the PC's be left to contend with whatever they could pick off the bodies of their captors (at least until they got revenge on HMPU and got their orginal gear back).

Doesn't look like that will be the case...

Think about it this way. Having all your gear constitutes 99% of the game. If you balance encounters for PCs without gear, you are have appropriate difficulty for that 1% and make the other 99% too easy. You can still play games with regular gear, but the DM has to adjust the encounters accordingly. Now isn't it better to only adjust 1% of encounters as opposed to 99%?

 

[Dragonblade]

This is exactly why i'm hesitant to take Cleave/Great Cleave. Cleave MIGHT be useful in fights as I level up, but Great Cleave? By the time i'm high enough level to take it, it will be useless to me in the vast majority of fights.

This is one of my core complaints about 3e. Class design that doesn't give you anything cool until its too late to matter.

For example, the Monk's DR at 20th level. Useless. By the time you are 20th level you'll almost never fight anything that cannot overcome your DR.

That ability would be much more effective and enjoyable at say 10th level when you still might fight things that cannot overcome it.

 

[Dragonblade]

This is directed to Mike's comment, not Dragonblade's.

I hope that this is not the way to remove magic items. My preference is that it is possible to throw slightly less powerful monsters at the players if they don't have the expected gear. Mike's suggestion doesn't work when the gear varies per player, or where the lack of gear is temporary.

This relates to a deficiency in 3.5E, which is the failure of players to "size up" opponents. This is a use of Sense Motive which is wildly underused.

I see what you are saying. And I agree with you in the scenario where the players have been captured and have to escape. It would be easier to be able to compensate for loss of player magic items by shifting down their opponents instead of just arbitrarily giving them the bonuses they would have had from their items.

Hopefully, the system will be transparent enough to work both ways.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The OP is saying that the default for D&D should be zero magic items. A DM that lets his players have so much as a dagger +1 is indulging in Monty Haul-ism. He is, of course, WRONG.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I never really understood this mentality. If you want your 15th level characters to run into 20 Ogres for the slaughter you can always do that. I'm sure you can do the same thing in 4e (or any other edition). Will it be a challenge for the players? Probably not (and that's why you get very little experience for it). But there should be times when Cleave and Great Cleave prove useful. In my campaigns the party gets use out of those Feats as I throw many different types/CR encounters at them.

You see, you don't understand "this mentality" (whatever that means precisely), because, no snark intended, you didn't actually read what I was asking for.

I'm specifically asking for guidelines to tell me when, if ever, 20 Ogres will be the equivalent challenge for 5 level X PCs, to 20 Goblins for 5 level 1 PCs. Do you see what I'm asking for here? I want guidelines that suggest the transition of monster from "elite" to "normal" to "minion", and I want to be able to build a challenge with a fight that is mostly minions. If it's not a challenge, then that's not what I'm asking for.

I see from your second post that you remain confused about this. I like encounters with large numbers of "relatively weak" monsters that are still challenging. 3E was very very bad at providing this (the CR system falling apart exponentially with any encounter involving more than about six things, in my experience), in my opinion. I hope 4E will be better at this sort of thing, because it happens a lot in the sort of fiction I like, and in the sort of campaigns I'd like to run.

Hella_Tellah - Sorry, too many implied (or outright) playstyle/gm insults in there, I'm not going to argue with you about 3E encouraging precisely balanced encounters. We both know that it did. Most of the time, in my experience, that one got a really "exciting" fight in 3E out of a pre-gen adventure, it was because the CR of the monster was grotesquely out-of-whack (which was not uncommon).

Shroomy - I may be misremembering, but most of the older monsters seemed to be vulnerable to things that they weren't in 3E, and you could always just y'know, not use monsters which were immune to things the party didn't have.

 

[Kzach]

Think about it this way. Having all your gear constitutes 99% of the game. If you balance encounters for PCs without gear, you are have appropriate difficulty for that 1% and make the other 99% too easy. You can still play games with regular gear, but the DM has to adjust the encounters accordingly. Now isn't it better to only adjust 1% of encounters as opposed to 99%?

Well, actually, this ties in with another problem I've always had with previous editions and was hoping to do away with in 4E.

The problem being players running around in full gear all the time, no matter where they are or what they're doing. Call me pedantic, but it's unrealistic.

If items are merely desirable rather than necessary, then I feel you get a greater sense of realism in your games by having players less afraid to lock their gear in tavern's strongbox in their room and relax downstairs to wine, women & song.

Which is of course when you introduce the party to Brutus, the 6'7" tall, broad-shouldered, beer-bellied, grizzled, toothless woodsman who "...don'ts likes 'venturers messin' ups his woods..." and is a regular at the bar

But if there's a reliance on items, players sleep in their gear and if they're forced to take it off, then they use bags of holding which they stash in their underpants which they've trapped with Fire Trap.

 

[Mortellan]

Yes, sadly loss of magic gear ranks even higher on my player's list than character death. 4E will not end this dependance despite them being the first to address it. Only a complete magicless campaign can do this.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

I'm not going to argue with you about 3E encouraging precisely balanced encounters. We both know that it did.

3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide, page 49, table 3-2: Encounter Difficulty. The DMG advises the DM that only 50% of encounters should be set at the party's level. Fully 20% of encounters should be with creatures or groups with an EL above party level, and they should have to run away from 5% of all encounters. 30% of all encounters are supposed to be "easy", whether due to extenuating circumstances or because the creatures' EL is lower than the party's level.

I don't see 3rd edition encouraging perfectly balanced encounters at all. I see it providing tools to make balanced encounters and encouraging the DM to break that balance regularly.

 

[DreamChaser]

IF only 3 items grant bonuses

AND

the levels at which said bonuses are factored into the math are explicit

THEN

adjusting for these three items can be done by:
1) giving flat bonuses to the heroes
2) giving flat penalties to the monsters
3) reducing the challenges to match the level that matches the effective level of the party once the numeric bonuses are reduced.


With regards to the other 6 types of items:

Versatility contributes to power but it is not the same thing as power. This is why wizards don't universally beat out sorcerers.

As a poster above pointed out, new ways of acting require you to make choices.

If I have 2 times that give me new movement options (1 option each) and require a move action.

AND

I have 2 items that give me new attack options (1 option each) and require a standard action

THEN

I have become more versatile in the options I have available. This in a way increases my power but it is actually just as easy to track and account for. My power has increased in scope but not necessarily in degree.

A major exception to this is any item that would allow extra actions in a round. This increases both power AND versatility.

So, I personally feel that the basic premise of this thread's opening post is flawed. Because we are being told that there is complete transparency in the mathematical items and the other items do specific things, it is actually easier to track in past editions, and if you can track it, you can account for it to increase or decrease the amount of items.

DC