However, you can also have the converse. Even in magical worlds, one blow from a sword, arrow or axe can fell even the mightiest. Bard taking out Smaug with a single arrow... the Death Star taken out by Luke's "one in a million" shot, and so on.
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Five-Minute Workday Article
- Thread starter Obryn
- Start date
However, you can also have the converse. Even in magical worlds, one blow from a sword, arrow or axe can fell even the mightiest. Bard taking out Smaug with a single arrow... the Death Star taken out by Luke's "one in a million" shot, and so on.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
thecasualoblivion said:
Great, so we agree that you don't have to get rid of Vancian casting in order to have good gameplay, just that maybe YOU, specifically, want to (and you're probably not alone!), and take the playtest as evidence you'll never be able to do that.
In the playtest, they're not giving you much choice about anything. I don't think you can extrapolate that to 5e's release with much reliability. I could cry about how my fighter must wear heavy armor and use a two-handed weapon and I have no choice, but I'm pretty sure 5e is going to give me the option to change equipment.
I have every confidence that those who don't like vancian magic will be able to swap it out. In fact, if you just time shift your daily rest to happen after every encounter, and put all your requisite monsters into each encounter (or have some sort of solo or super-solo encounter), you've just gotten rid of Daily magic with one easy rule.
That's without going into things like sorcerers or warlocks or psions or whatever who might not have vancian magic, and how no one is forcing you to play a wizard or a cleric (or allow them in your campaign), or new magic subsystems for all casters, or all the other potential awesomeness a modular system enables.
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But surely we don't want nuclear armed casters in a mixed adventuring party where each character is run by an individual player. A person who is making a time commitment to playing the game.
Pour
First Post
The 5MW rewards novas and resting, and thus replenishing powers to maintain an optimum level of resources. Make continuing adventuring as enticing as regaining starting resources. On a meta level, that’s really what leveling up is- you’re choosing to go out and are rewarded by becoming more powerful. Maybe we can shrink that down to encounter design, too, and have parties actually increase in morale/synergy/fate/potential/insight/favor/momentum the further they go instead of diminishing.
13th Age has a feature which allows you to pluck something from the next level (hp increase, new power, boosted defense, feat, etc) to incorporate into your current character after every game session, providing a much more gradual progression between levels. What if we took this into adventure design, that for each consecutive encounter faced, a PC was able to incorporate something from their next level? There isn’t a cap for this, and parties willing to push on for say 10 encounters straight would manage to effectively level twice (I suppose it varies just when they exhaust all potential level-based upgrades). If they chose a new resource, like a new spell or power, they’d immediately have access to it. When you extended rest, the whole thing resets, save the very first pick you made (for a maximum of maybe 1 permanent pick a game session).
Call it whatever you like in game terms, heroics, destiny, coupled with at-wills and class/theme framework, I think we retain the feel of any given character, believably increase their potential, increase excitement and desire to press on ahead, and provide another tactical option in lieu of resting.
Parties would actually have to weigh the pro’s and con’s of either pushing on ahead for +1, +2, hell edging +3 levels, or resting for the full resources of the current level. It kind of makes the 5MW a tactic, but not always the best one. Maybe the end bosses or late-adventure challenges are made easier through pushing ahead [from a standpoint of better hp, defenses, attack and select power options vs. fully regained resources at the current level]. That end boss or the last series of traps might be 5 levels higher than you (but after 8-10 encounters and 2 effective levels becomes more manageable). And because most of these choices aren’t permanent, pushing ahead allows everyone to tinker around with builds and options before having to decide on them.
13th Age has a feature which allows you to pluck something from the next level (hp increase, new power, boosted defense, feat, etc) to incorporate into your current character after every game session, providing a much more gradual progression between levels. What if we took this into adventure design, that for each consecutive encounter faced, a PC was able to incorporate something from their next level? There isn’t a cap for this, and parties willing to push on for say 10 encounters straight would manage to effectively level twice (I suppose it varies just when they exhaust all potential level-based upgrades). If they chose a new resource, like a new spell or power, they’d immediately have access to it. When you extended rest, the whole thing resets, save the very first pick you made (for a maximum of maybe 1 permanent pick a game session).
Call it whatever you like in game terms, heroics, destiny, coupled with at-wills and class/theme framework, I think we retain the feel of any given character, believably increase their potential, increase excitement and desire to press on ahead, and provide another tactical option in lieu of resting.
Parties would actually have to weigh the pro’s and con’s of either pushing on ahead for +1, +2, hell edging +3 levels, or resting for the full resources of the current level. It kind of makes the 5MW a tactic, but not always the best one. Maybe the end bosses or late-adventure challenges are made easier through pushing ahead [from a standpoint of better hp, defenses, attack and select power options vs. fully regained resources at the current level]. That end boss or the last series of traps might be 5 levels higher than you (but after 8-10 encounters and 2 effective levels becomes more manageable). And because most of these choices aren’t permanent, pushing ahead allows everyone to tinker around with builds and options before having to decide on them.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
It does exactly avoid wha I want it to avoid. No, it cannot fix the 15 minute adventuring day, but you cannot fix that entirely, since there can always be perfectly valid story reasons why there is only one single combat in the entire day - there may simply nothing more to kill around.
But it deals exactly with the problem that the adventure day really creates - imbalance in favor of those that have powerful daily resources.
As I said in the post you quoted.
Ah, but that would imply you made spellcasting particularly strong so that the targets could be dealt with a few enchantment spells. That also indicates a mechanical reason.
Of course, there can be "story magic" that deals with certain things, like "you must cast this ritual to beat the uberdemon of gore and utter destruction" - that's hardly a regular fight and probably not even covered by the regular spellcasting rules.
But let's say you have story reasons. Do you need the mechanics to force spellcaster dominace by default in case of a 15 minute adventuring day?Do you think that is how things have to be in every story or in a majority of stories that only involve a single fight in 24 hours?
Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
Well, have you seen the module that does? Have you seen the devs say that they will provide such a module? The post sounds otherwise. I mean, why bother telling us they won't have a fix for this and expect the DM to handle it if there will be a module for that. They did, after all, tell us about the tactical and narrative combat modules when people were concerned about the lack of maneuvers and tactical depth.
Of course currently we could all guess, so consider this as a remark to the Devs: "Hey, please make sure you don't overlook this for us lazy DMs that don't want to fix your balance problems."
Keep Vancian Magic.
Make sure every non-spellcaster also has his daily resources. If that requires giving the Fighter twice the Hit Dice and 1 extra action per level, that's okay. I am just not interested in going back to the days of 15 minute adventure days dominated by spellcasters. I can deal with the 15 minute adventure days and mobile operation bases and wandering monsters and princesses being eaten by dragons because the party advanced too slow. But not the imbalance in favor of the only ones that have dailies.
I believe the devs have stated that they want to support the playstyle of all editions via module. I have not seen all the modules therefore I cannot rule out support for the 4E playstyle. Apparently at least one poster has seen all the modules since he has said in no uncertain terms that there will not be support.
MarkB
Legend
The L&L article makes it pretty clear that they're building the core around a concept of allocating resources and encounters on a daily basis. Any modules that are added on must necessarily build upon that core and be compatible with it.
That makes it a pretty tall order to build a module which takes a different approach to resource management, and an even taller one to then make that module compatible with other modules that the same group might want to use.
Modular design only goes so far.
I didn't say otherwise.
Pre-3Ed, D&D had at least one mechanism to do that- the assassination tables- but those went away.
1) in fairness, in the Darkness novels, magic of that scale was what we would term Ritual magic.
2) It's hard to use a nuke in a small space- see Pre-3Ed fireball or lightning slingers.
3) I never had an issue with it, on either side of the issue, so clearly, "we don't want" is non-universal.
My main problem was your closing statement, the part I quoted.
The rest of that post? That doesn't bug me one bit, and I've been on both sides of that equation.
No such mechanical reason is implied. When a legend or myth is told a certain way, the storyteller is not thinking in terms of "mechanics", just the story.
When elements from that story- and those like it- are used in game, the mechanics to support them are being created for the purpose of emulating the story. See Chaosium's original Stormbringer game, in which Melniboneans and Pan Tangians were the baddest spellcasters around, bar none- just like in the books- so the odds of you getting to play one were 1-3%. (If you think D&D PCs overshadow their warrior compatriots, give that game a shot.)
The trick of playing a Vancian caster has always been- Pre-3Ed- having the right spells for the job. A wizard who preps a bunch of cold spells may find himself using his crossbow more often than he'd like if he's facing foes resistant or immune to the effects of cold. In that case, where is his system-forced dominance?
If the caster is an Illusionist in a warren of Wights, where is his system-forced dominance?
Every PC's effectiveness is measured within the context of how the environment provided by the DM interacts with all the little decisions made by players (both meta- PC creation & advancement- and campaign).
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