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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 6150464" data-attributes="member: 8461">That's not an issue of Greyhawk having fewer high-level characters, it's an issue of you not citing your sources very well. You say that Greyhawk has fewer high-level NPCs than the Forgotten Realms; since you originally didn't offer any qualifiers to that statement, you pretty clearly referring to the two settings as a whole. Here's the thing: using just one of the earlier campaign setting products for Greyhawk - which not only has less development than later releases, but doesn't take into account the many, many adventures and sourcebooks also released for the setting - doesn't prove very much unto itself, since you're taking an extremely-specific snapshot of the setting and comparing it to a non-specific view of the Forgotten Realms to prove your point.Either take everything into account, across the entire product lines, or compare single instances of products with a similar focus that were released at similar times, so that you can at least try to approximate an apples-to-apples comparison.Presuming you meant that you were looking at the <a href="http://tsrinfo.net/archive/gh/gh-wogbox.htm" target="_blank">World of Greyhawk Fantasy Game Setting</a>, for instance, how many high-level characters does it list compared to the <a href="http://tsrinfo.net/archive/fr/frbox.htm" target="_blank">Forgotten Realms Campaign Set</a>?Sure, there are many other possible campaigns. I don't think that it's going too far outside of the baseline expectations of the D&D game to presume that most of those will have enemies with strategic and tactical options that are analogous to those of the PCs with some fairly substantive degree of frequency, rather than being exceptionally rare.Also, Eclavdra spends plenty of time above ground (e.g. in Dorakaa), so that's not a concern.Or perhaps everyone else isn't using the word wrong, and there's a reason that they think that.The above example with Greyhawk is a pretty good example. You make a blanket statement about one campaign in regards to another, based on...comparing one boxed set to (while it's never specified, that seems to default to) the entire other campaign world. That does seem to come off as insincere.Notice, in your first sentence here, you talk about "adventures" as opposed to "campaigns." Yes, D&D has adventures that are like that - no one is suggesting that it doesn't, or that such adventures won't be part of a campaign. But what's being suggested is a challenge to the notion that a campaign is made up totally, or even primarily, of such adventures as part of its default assumption (e.g. the assumption used when balancing the expected degree of balance - in terms of narrative options - between classes).Even Dave Arneson's original Blackmoor campaign ended with the PCs being driven out of Blackmoor by their enemies because they were so busy raiding the dungeons of Castle Blackmoor, for example, that they didn't pay attention to the political maneuvering in the surrounding lands (for more about this, I recommend Jon Peterson's excellent book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Playing-at-World-Jon-Peterson/dp/0615642047#" target="_blank">Playing at the World</a>).The reason the game doesn't talk about issues of "nova-ing" for spellcasters as being a regular upset for balance between characters is that it doesn't presume you're going to running a game of endless static set-pieces.The game doesn't break down because they're only part of what the game supports, not a majority of it. As stated previously, such adventures can be a viable part of the game - spellcasters deserve their time to shine too - but they're not the sum total of it.See above. Even Gary, in the 1E DMG, stated (in all caps, no less) that you can't have a stable campaign without effective time management.You raised the issue of such tactics leading to a TPK; I'm pointing out why that's not so.I'm not assuming anything about your players. I'm responding to the points you raised, nothing more.You're making a lot of presumptions here, even within the framework of just using 1E. By the time the PCs are at the level where scry-buff-teleport is an option, there are options for them to be on guard against it. These don't have to be active spells, since there are magic items, allied creatures, non-magical traps that can hinder attackers, and many more that can be done to foil such an attack. That's not even getting into anti-scrying measures.But those are the tactical options. There are strategic options here that can be employed within the context of the game world to stop it from getting to this point in the first place. Negotiations, bribes, political alliances (e.g. "if you attack me, my allies from Elysium will come after you"), hostages - all are ways that PCs can interact with NPCs in the game world without it becoming a matter of class (or other mechanical) balance issues...in other words, changing the narrative space that you're working within, and working within another.Finally, I'm not sure what you think the fireball issue proves, since if one can wipe out your magic-users, that'll be just as true in a dungeon as it is in a surprise attack on their camp.If they don't think that being ambushed is fun, then why don't they act at a strategic level to prevent it in the first place?I disagree; see above.</blockquote>

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