Higher level characters ONLY fight orcs

[pauljathome]

And I think it's a little disingenuous to take the last half of that sentence out of context and then presume that it will be only true in the most literal and limiting of senses. I imagine anyone posting on a D&D message board probably has enough context to know exactly what Rob meant there.

.

I honestly didn't intend my post to be a troll or disingenuous. I apologize if it came across as such.

As I've said elsewhere, I am concerned that they're flattening the power curve TOO much for my tastes. And going rather far from the games roots and from part of what makes it D&D to me. And so I probably overreacted to that statement.

 

[Boarstorm]

The proposal for 5E is this: What if we got rid of most of the attack and defense scaling, and instead relied on hit points and damage for the vast majority of level difference?

It's my understanding from recent articles that that is exactly the route they're exploring right now.

 

[pauljathome]

You don't have to flatten the power curve to make orcs viable at high level.

Sure you do.

Forget game mechanics completely for a second.

In Pathfinder, for example, essentially no size army of level 1 orcs is a threat to a group of 10th level PCs. The horde of Orcs MAY be a threat to the town the PCs are defending but not to the PCs. Given enough time, the PCs will just kill them all with hit and run tactics using fireballs, whirlwind attacks, etc etc.

In my old AD&D days we were playing through the Descent into the Deeps set of modules. In one of the "side quests" towards the end we (a group in the low teens IIRC) were supposed to defend a keep against an army of several thousand humanoids (all considerably tougher than orcs). We spent about 10 minutes doing the math and decided that we won . Our kill rate was high enough that it wasn't even a contest.

L1 Orcs being viable opponents to L10 PCs is pretty much the definition of flattening the power curve.

 

[Dausuul]

L1 Orcs being viable opponents to L10 PCs is pretty much the definition of flattening the power curve.

Your examples are not about the flatness or steepness of the power curve; they're about a system that can't handle certain level gaps, so the whole concept of a "power curve" breaks down and ceases to apply. If the PCs can take on an unlimited number of foes, that implies one of two things:

1. The power curve has broken down, OR
2. The PCs are infinitely powerful and cannot be challenged by anything at all.

Actually, infinitely powerful PCs still break the power curve, so really it's just #1.

That's part of why I used 4E as the basis for my examples; the power curve in 4E is more robust, although even there it starts to crumble when faced with a 12-level gap.

 

[howandwhy99]

Orcs, quite obviously, are the only monster in D&DN.

Learn to love 'em. There'll be a 300-page "orc manual" coming out as core.

 

[Gryph]

Be wary though, this can be a two edged sword. You dont want your campaign to develop "Oblivion Syndrome" where as players level, everything around them just gets tougher, and regardless of how many levels they gain, the number of orcs they can kill in a round never improves.

True. As I level up I want to fight bigger bands of orcs led by a few better leader types.

First level we fight 3 to 5 orc grunts. 5th level we fight a dozen orcs led by a level 3 orc warrior. By level 10 we might face a 50 orc warband led by a level 8 war chief and several level 3 chieftans and a couple of shaman for good measure.

I do miss that aspect of 1e where humanoids became warbands/villages with higher level leaders when you faced them at higher levels.

 

[Endur]

So Rob's point actually gives rise to an interesting cleave rule or great cleave rule.

Suppose I hit target x for 90. target x has 13 hit points and dies. Instead of wasting the remaining 77 damage, what if I applied that automatically to another adjacent target as a cleave for 77?

 

[Henry]

I honestly didn't intend my post to be a troll or disingenuous. I apologize if it came across as such.

As I've said elsewhere, I am concerned that they're flattening the power curve TOO much for my tastes. And going rather far from the games roots and from part of what makes it D&D to me. And so I probably overreacted to that statement.

If anything, flattening the power curve would take the game MORE back to its roots than my experience with 3E (and to a lesser extent, 4E). I still remember pretty well-equipped 10th characters from 1E that I had with ACs equivalent of 20 or 21, with only 50 or 60 hit points, and an average damage of 1d8+11 or so. They still held up pretty well against those giants with their 8 Hit dice, THACOs of 10 or so, and 2d8 damage.

 

[Henry]

Orcs, quite obviously, are the only monster in D&DN.

Learn to love 'em. There'll be a 300-page "orc manual" coming out as core.

Exactly. Next's new title will be "Orcs and Ogres", or O 'n O for short. ONO will be the top hit of 2013.

DM: We're playing 5E tonight!
Player: Oh, No!
DM: Exactly! Grab your 3d6!

More seriously, I don't mind seeing certain monsters have a wider range of usefulness, but I also don't want to see the same orcs from 1st level making an appearance at 10th as a challenge. 5th, OK. maybe 7th, but after that point they shouldn't be the same threat without some kind of boost.

 

[trancejeremy]

I honestly didn't intend my post to be a troll or disingenuous. I apologize if it came across as such.

As I've said elsewhere, I am concerned that they're flattening the power curve TOO much for my tastes. And going rather far from the games roots and from part of what makes it D&D to me. And so I probably overreacted to that statement.

No, I think you are absolutely correct. I really don't think high level characters should be fighting orcs, be they super-orcs or simply huge bands of them. They should be fighting more fantastical monsters, IMHO.

I play Lord of the Rings Online. Due to the nature of its license, you fight a lot of orcs. You fight orcs at low levels, middle levels, and level cap. Along with goblins, wargs, bears, boars and wolves.

I am sick to death of fighting orcs, goblins, wargs, bears, boars and wolves.

Besides the lack of variety, it doesn't make you feel like you are getting tougher. The opposite, actually. In the tutorial area (or former one) you a starting character and here you were, mowing down goblins left and right. You felt heroic.

Then 50 levels later, you're in Moria, You're still fighting goblins. Only this time they are tougher. They disarm you every single fight (probably once a minute) so not only are the fights longer, they're more annoying. Rather than making more exciting and tougher monsters, they just gave them more hit points and a bunch of debuffs. Challenging? No. Fun? No. Quick and easy to do, yes.

The same thing goes in D&D. You started off fighting orcs, but when you hit high level, are you still fighting them? No, you've moved on to Giants. Different types of giants, working up the scale.

Strictly speaking, they aren't that different from orcs - monstrous humans. But they felt a lot different. You could make an Orc with the same stats as a Stone Giant, but it's simply a lot more fun fighting a Stone Giant than an orc with Stone Giant stats.