Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5882936" data-attributes="member: 42582">Speaking for my own part, my interest in D&Dnext is a bit like Balesir's: I'm curious to see what will be in it, and whether it will be a viable and coherent system.I think, if it is to be viable and coherent, there must be some limits on what can and can't be done with it."Levels", in D&D, have typically meant (i) better attacks (whether weapons or spells), (ii) better resilience (AC and hp), and (iii) tougher challenges.At a certain point, the PCs typically have had attacks strong enough to fell dinosaurs and dragons (as measured in the mechanics of the game), and have been resilient enough to survive impossible falls, point-blank dragon fire, and the like. In AD&D it is not impossible for a high level fighter to confront and defeat an army of 100 or more goblins, kobolds or mercenaries in 15 or so minutes of fighting (using the 1 attack per round per level rules when facing foes with < 1 HD).Not in B/X or AD&D, as written - let alone 3E or 4e - is it possible to conceive of a 15th or 20th level PC as "just like an ordinary person, only more talented". I'm not saying one therefore has to assume that they have muscles (literally) of steel and huge layers of meat. But they are "chosen", or blessed, or insanely lucky, or something similar, and therefore superheroically capable, in terms of the exploits they can undertake.If people are running "ordinary heroes" campaigns with 15th or 20th level PCs, it seems that they must either (i) changing the mechanics or (ii) ignoring parts of the mechanics: for example, ruling that PCs die from 100' falls (10d6 is not fatal damage for the typical 15th level PC, except perhaps a magic-user), or from being shot by 12 NPC archers (ditto 12d6 with attack rolls needed for each die), even though the mechanics say that they can survive.In 2nd ed AD&D and 3E, the massive damage rules (a mechanical change) will make a difference to some of these cases - some falls, some breath weapons, etc will trigger massive damage saves - but not others - 12 separate arrow attacks, for example, will not trigger a massive damage save.If D&Dnext is going to support "ordinary heroes" play for the full 10 or 20 levels of the game (I'd be surprised if they go for 30 levels this time around), but also support the same sort of play as one gets from using prior editions' high level rules as written, the only straightforward way I can see to do it is via some sort of "reflavouring" toggle: when you press the "ordinary heroes" button, then your 10th level opponents are well-trained soldiers, whereas when you push the "Silmarillion" button, your 10th level opponents are Balrogs.It's seems likely that there would have to be some changes to these opponents other than merely reflavouring - perhaps 10th level Balrogs have a few mechanical abilities that 10th level soldiers lack - and therefore perhaps some changes to the mechanical abilities of the PCs when toggles are switched. (Maybe the pool of feats or spells to choose from is different depending which toggle is pushed.)But the changes can't be very extensive - eg whole new realms of PC building can't be opened up or shut down by pushing the toggle, and whole new action resolution techniques can't be opened up or shut down by pushing the toggle - or else we won't be talking about a modular system anymore, but simply multiple games being published side-by-side by the one publisher.[MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] have better ideas than me about how these "tier" toggles might work.</blockquote>

Verification