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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5416496" data-attributes="member: 80487">That is NOT the same as "doing nothing"!It is points scored in the game for overcoming difficulties in the way. The difficulty assessment includes challenge to player thought as well as to character powers, potential for bypassing difficulties as well as for bashing them down head-on.The objectives are always wealth in some sense.If Mighty Joe Younger sacks Brooklyn with the assistance of an army, that is not suddenly a totally different thing from sacking the Dungeon of Despair with a handful of men at arms.If Old Nick gets the Bilderbungians to buy a thousand barrels of beer, that is not suddenly a totally different thing from getting Frix the Fence to buy a sack of gems, miscellaneous magic potions and a sword +1.The question is whether the feat was a worthy challenge. Otherwise, it gets pro-rated, or may even be worth nothing. D&D is supposed to be a game of adventure, not of piddling quotidian chores -- regardless of the character's level. How did Nick acquire the beer? What did it take to make the sale?Setting a "gold piece" value on treasures is usually convenient, but not necessary to their basic function. Real wealth is not always easily monetized. A desirable marriage can be a treasure for reasons peculiar to an individual (i.e., out of keeping with the wider market). The rescue of a child might be worth all the money in the world to a parent, but that does not mean it's worth infinite experience points!Why do you claim that one does not?You score points, as in other games, by attaining an objective. That is the test, regardless of how you go about it. You don't score points by just "trying", regardless of how you go about it.Get the ball through the goal = bring the treasure home.There is reasonable skepticism -- then there is being a Flat Earther. You know what? If you won't believe the testimony of however many people telling you now, or the evidence of however many hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people having played the game, then you can go ahead and try it yourself.If YOU caused a henchman's death, then indeed you may end up lonely for a while. There are penalties to reaction rolls when you get a reputation for replenishing your strength by plunging your soul-draining black blade into your companions' guts!You consider this undesirable? You prefer that "henchmen" should be disposable figures, consequently trivial to secure? Fine, then. Simply set up price lists for higher-level hirelings."I'll take ten Lords a-leaping, a dozen Patriarchs prancing, and a Wizard in a pear tree."That's baloney in the old D&D that has henchmen in the first place.I'm a second-level magic-user, newly minted "evoker" with 2,501 x.p.. I take on as henchman a 1st-level fighter, Sharl, with 0 x.p.. She accompanies me on all my adventures, getting the same share of treasure as me but at only half the x.p. value.The result? Assuming no death or level drain, I make Wizard (11th) another 372,500 x.p. later. That's a net 186,250 x.p. for Sharl, making her midway through Superhero (8th).If I'm stingier with shares, then the gap will be greater. If she undertakes adventures unaccompanied by me, though, then obviously she can (except under your rule, of course) get additional x.p. and  so catch up. She might even get full x.p. value.Of course, she always gets points to herself for monsters slain single-handedly.If need be, we can "slum" at upper dungeon levels a little, giving me in proportion fewer experience points so she can catch up.Considering that (constitution bonuses aside) she is likely to have on average 44 hit points at 8th vs. my 27.5 at 11th, and usually a better armor class, it seems rather more likely that I must watch out for things that only she can handle. For instance, an 8th-level m-u's lightning bolt does on average 28 points without a save (or 14 if I make it).The original tournament characters for G1-2-3 range from 9th to 14th level.When Sharl is a Lord (9th), it would certainly seem meet to me for her to have independence appropriate to her station. She can become a peer, and so free a spot for another henchman. Being higher level myself, I may attract candidates above 1st level.Between the general doubling of x.p. requirements per level up to "name", and the pro-rating that makes full value increasingly rare afterward, it is not too hard too catch up with the high-level bunch.False. 45 minutes is quick for 4e in my experience. It's the longest combat Mike Mornard reports ever encountering in Gygax's game -- and IIRC that involved henchmen and hirelings as well as hundreds of orcs (which might be the greater drag in 4e).Nine or ten players at a table in old D&D is not the drag that even eight seem to be in 4e.No.We don't need a complicated abstract simulation of talking, because we can actually talk quite easily.That's how we play the whole dang game! We talk with one another.There's a thing called "role-playing" in which I act as if I were Baron Ald. I pursue Ald's interests with Ald's resources as if they were my own.Dave Arneson, who invented the fantasy role-playing game, and Gary Gygax, who revised it into D&D, were good at that. Dave for instance didn't use artificial "rules" to get away in a helicopter with the treasury of a banana republic in a "Braunstein" game.He "role-played" his way from student pamphleteer to beating every political party, intelligence agency and army and winning the game. The helicopter even let him meet his special victory condition of distributing handbills far and wide...</blockquote>

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