Per-Encounter/Per-Day Design and Gameplay Restrictions

[gizmo33]

It's fine to say, "Oh, find something constructive to do" but, I don't play a character to find something else to do. I play a character because I want to play THAT character. If I'm playing a rogue, I want to backstab something. If I wanted to be utterly useless, I'd play a bard.

Well actually, it seems that if you wanted to be utterly useless you have a range of choices, doesn't it?

Undead and constructs are a pretty logical choice for a timeless dungeon setting because they don't need things to sustain them like living creatures do. They seem like they would be pretty common hazards in the career of a dungeon crawler.

If the player thinks he's gaining something for his character by going into the undead/construct dungeon, then he can stop whining about it and do it. If it's not fun because he can't use his special powers, then AFAICT he has no good reason to be in the dungeon anyway. He should have decided on a different mission. Hopefully his DM isn't so much of a railroad DM that the player couldn't have chosen to be backstabbing living creatures instead.

I don't feel sorry for hyper-specialists and everyone should know that building a character around critical hits is going to have it's obvious weak spots. Specialist players have always brow-beat DMs into avoiding their weaknesses, and I suppose the "oh I'm not having fun" strategy is going to work because a DMs priority is often for players to have fun. Hence the effectiveness of guilt-trips.

 

[SteveC]

I wanted to chime in on the rogue issue. I'm currently playing in an undead heavy campaign, and one of the players is, naturally, playing a rogue. With the 3X splats, it's quite possible to play a rogue that's effective against undead, which is what he ended up doing.

The thing is, many of the options that made him effective in the game came from the PHB II and the Complete Scoundrel/Complete Champion. How many years did it take for those options to become available?

If 4E gives options (and I'm expecting these to be feats/talents), right out of the gate, to make a rogue effective against creatures that are resistant to sneak attack, that's a win in my book.

Nothing says you have to make your rogue that way, just that you have the option to be that way, without multiclassing.

Sounds like a net win for me...less complexity plus more choices...how could that not be a good thing?

--Steve

 

[Celebrim]

To be precise, he's going the obvious route when it comes to playing a rogue. If the obvious route leads to an unplayable character, that means the rules need work.

First, he gains my sympathy only if he's a first time player and doesn't see the shortcomings of what you say is the 'obvious route'. Secondly, a character built this way is hardly unplayable. It's quite the opposite. Weapon Finesse turns Dex into an uber-stat that does almost everything, especially in combination with sneak attack. You get improved initiative, improved to hit, and improved AC - plus is stacks with most of your rogue skills: tumble, move silently, hide, escape artist (for getting out of grapples), etc. If he went the halfling route, he could have a starting 20 Dex. Plus small size, up to now he might have had a better attack bonus than the party fighter. If he went the gnome route, he could have both an 18 Dex and an 18 Con. A build like that has alot of strengths. If the DM feeds the character a steady stream of things that can be critted, the character is likely to be fairly uber.

My question is just how deliberate was this build. I'm guessing he didn't just stumble on the build as a clueless newbie player who is taking the obvious route. Maybe he did, but I don't see any evidence of that.

 

[Celebrim]

The thing is, many of the options that made him effective in the game came from the PHB II and the Complete Scoundrel/Complete Champion. How many years did it take for those options to become available?

How many years did it take for all of 3.X's minor failings to become obvious? I agree that there needs to be a path for making a Rogue more effective in some areas if you want to do so. I'm not sure I agree that there should be no trade off in doing so.

Just as an example, one of the first things that annoyed me reading the 3.0 PH was that the Ranger had alot of options for choosing a favored enemy, but most of them made absolutely no sense at all. So one of my first house rules was that a Ranger could always crit his favored enemy, sneak attack it, and do the bonus damage regardless of whether the enemy was normally immune to criticals. Now 'right out of the box' you could play an undead hunter, just by playing a ranger and taking a favored enemy of undead. The trade off? Your favored enemy is undead rather than something else. But if your favored enemy is undead I figured you ought to be advantaged significantly. That was my take on the class. Other people jumped in different directions.

If 4E gives options (and I'm expecting these to be feats/talents), right out of the gate, to make a rogue effective against creatures that are resistant to sneak attack, that's a win in my book.

Me too.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

First, he gains my sympathy only if he's a first time player and doesn't see the shortcomings of what you say is the 'obvious route'.

Ahah. So, if a newbie player and his DM come to the game, create a rogue and run him through a dungeon filled with the walking dead, and decide that this situation sucks, you'll be willing to extend an "I'm sorry for you."

That'd be nice, but it probably doesn't help the fact that the newbie player has sad "Sod this, I'll go do something where I can have some fun."

Anecdotal evidence: Brand new player in a game run by an otherwise good DM. The DM gave him a choice of pregenerated characters to play; the player selected a rogue, which proceeded to be genuinely worthless throughout the one session the guy showed up for. He did not show up again.

 

[howandwhy99]

In summary, I prefer a challenge model that depends on what monsters I throw at my party, and not how often I throw them. It lets wizards and fighters both equally contribute to a fight, and it allows me to vary my encounters for my game, not to worry about balancing classes as I do it.

I prefer a challenge model where I never arbitrarily throw encounters at the party. I prefer a model where players attempt to choose the number of encounters.

3e has several problems, but the DM controlling player choices isn't one of them.

This is the same argument against the Ranger's Favored Enemy bonus. It makes no sense, IMO. The Ranger who is an orc-killer seeks out orcs to kill. DMs are in no way responsible for deciding who PCs will fight.

 

[Nifft]

The Ranger who is an orc-killer seeks out orcs to kill. DMs are in no way responsible for deciding who PCs will fight.

DMs are de facto responsible, though, because the DM is the one who answers this question:

"I kick in the door! Are there any orcs?"

Cheers, -- N

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

That's got to be the first time I've ever seen "does more damage" being described as "getting less one-dimensional".

 

[howandwhy99]

DMs are de facto responsible, though, because the DM is the one who answers this question:

"I kick in the door! Are there any orcs?"

Cheers, -- N

Try and open things up from a shoebox world view.

Are there orcs in the world? Yes. Is someone making a witchhunter, orc-killer, baby-kisser, whatever? Then make sure those are in your world and accessible to the PCs. Otherwise the character isn't going to make sense or will be useless until those creatures are accessible.

If I'm a witch hunter, I'm thinking I am playing the game to "hunt witches". The player seeks them out.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

Try and open things up from a shoebox world view.

Which, and I hate to bring this news to you, is not nearly as common a play style as you appear to believe.

Are there orcs in the world? Yes. Is someone making witchhunter, orc-killer, baby-kisser, whatever? Then make sure those are in your world and accessible to the PCs. Otherwise the character isn't going to make sense or will be useless until those creatures appear.

See the bolded line?

That is saying, with other words, that the DM is responsible for what the players encounter.