Play Your Way to 20: More Changes Announced for AL

CapnZapp

Legend
One of the major selling points of playing high level is that you get to use all these awesome abilities that you spent so long building up on your character. It's just awful to have a DM arbitrarily negate those hard-earned features. DMs who say "no" to clear-cut character abilities like that are usually power-tripping DMs who try to control everything.
Sure, but that's not the argument.

The argument is: "WotC, stop handing out absolutes".

Immunity to the Fear condition makes perfect mechanical sense.

But immunity to the common sense concept of "fear" can and will shut down stories.

Don't blame DMs for struggling how to cope. Don't reduce this to near-insulting levels with "DMs saying no to clear-cut abilities".

Fear immunity might be "clear-cut" but it can still be very bad for storytelling.
 

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CapnZapp

Legend
The obvious solutions present themselves:

- "you're immune to fear from sources with a CR five above your level"
- "you're immune to fear from non-epic sources (CR 20 and below)
- "gods have the ability to reduce all mortal immunities into mere resistance"

That's just three quick ones.

Now, I know 5E is supposed to be a simple game, and I fully understand why they didn't complicate things.

But they could at least add a short paragraph about epic threats in the DMG - even something as simple as "epic monsters can break every rule at the DMs discretion", if only to have something to show to the ruleslawyers to shut them down.
 

RCanine

First Post
Wow, this thread went off on an interesting tangent after I already had a question. How closely are those Durlag's AOs related to Balder's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast? I re-played through that this year.

Immunity to the common sense concept of "fear" can and will shut down stories.

Don't blame DMs for struggling how to cope. Don't reduce this to near-insulting levels with "DMs saying no to clear-cut abilities".

Fear immunity might be "clear-cut" but it can still be very bad for storytelling.

This is currently my biggest problem with 5E, and why I'm not really interested in playing it past level 8 or so. Although WotC got the math more-or-less right this time around (PC AC being the exception IMO), these "immune to plot" abilities make it really tough to tell a story without explicitly customizing it to your party. This makes AL design hard, but even planning a home campaign where all of your players don't have a 100% attendance rate can be challenging.
 

warfteiner

First Post
The Durlag adventures are seasonal (5-08 and 5-09) at tier 3. I originally set out to link them MUCH more closely to the original video game setting, but ran into a few hurdles:

  • the video game had HUGE numbers of dopplegangers
  • dopplegangers are not always appropriate as 'standard' enemies
  • there were traps every ten feet (in some spaces), but generally no less than every 40 feet
  • the biggest impact of the Tower was for lore-hounds, and was not enjoyed by combat-players as it felt like a thankless "grind"

I took some of the tones and cue from the video game and mixed in references from some of the old 1e and 2e print materials. There's still a good chunk of dwarven history, but the traps should feel more central to the encounter/ area instead of "here's a bunch of monsters, and oh look poison darts and you're dead now"-gotcha situations (let's be honest; the Gygaxian deathtraps have a place but that place should not be every ten feet!). The 'payoff' for this actually comes in 5-09 so I really do hope that people play both parts!

As with a couple other recent design projects, I wanted these adventures to be equally rewarding for both the lore-driven players as well as the mechanic-driven players (combat! kill! kill!).

My AO, on the other hand... strap in. ;) It takes place after the events of the season 2 epic, DDEP2 Mulmaster Undone. Those events are summarized in the adventure but even those spoilers shouldn't detract from people that have not played through that epic adventure.
 

RCanine

First Post
  • the video game had HUGE numbers of dopplegangers
  • dopplegangers are not always appropriate as 'standard' enemies
  • there were traps every ten feet (in some spaces), but generally no less than every 40 feet
  • the biggest impact of the Tower was for lore-hounds, and was not enjoyed by combat-players as it felt like a thankless "grind"

Oh man, don't I know it. That was, IMO, one of the worst parts of the game, although the treasure was great. And yeah, traps are really easy to do poorly, both in CRPGs and table top.
 

warfteiner

First Post
Well.... there will be plenty of traps, don't worry about that. I also included some DM direction on:

- how trap-heavy the adventure is, and how to adjust for the table's needs
- how to swap traps as-needed, including rules, damage scales, and suggestions
- how to handle "death traps"

Really, a trap should supplement and enhance an encounter or environment - not become divisive and game-ending.
 

Pauper

That guy, who does that thing.
The obvious solutions present themselves:

- "you're immune to fear from sources with a CR five above your level"
- "you're immune to fear from non-epic sources (CR 20 and below)
- "gods have the ability to reduce all mortal immunities into mere resistance"

AL, despite DM Empowerment, has never suggested that DMs have the authority to modify the game's rules as printed in the allowed rules sources. However, if a monster in an adventure is listed with the ability to bypass or ignore a given PC ability, that would certainly take precedence in an AL game. I suspect there will be a lot of these sorts of 'designer fiat' effects in Tier 4 modules, for example, monsters being able to 'sidestep' or otherwise get around the Forcecage spell.

--
Pauper
 

NeverLucky

First Post
I'm not opposed to having specific anti-immunity effects written into an adventure or monster when the situation really warrants it. If it's really a once-in-a-millennium elder god arising type of situation, and fear is an important element of its design, then sure, having "this even affects creatures that normally can't be frightened" in its frighten ability might be a good idea. I do, however, oppose the idea that negating player abilities should be routine, or is even necessary in tier 3/tier 4 play.

Part of the challenge for high level adventure design is that they should adapt to high level character capabilities; the fun of playing high level characters is that you have access to all these tools and abilities that you never had at lower levels. High level play shouldn't devolve down to feeling just like low level play, but with bigger numbers; players should feel like they have a lot more power and agency at high levels, and if sometimes that allows them to circumvent what would otherwise be a difficult encounter, so be it.

Phlan1-3 (tier 3) is an example of a high level adventure that fails to rise to the challenge. Much of the adventure could have been solved by the players casting spells like Scrying and Teleport (disclaimer: I did not read that adventure, I only played it), which would cut away a large portion of the adventure. Worse yet, the adventure suggests that wilderness travel and survival should be a significant challenge for the characters, which is laughable for characters that can potentially cast spells like Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion. It felt like a tier 1 adventure scaled up for tier 3, which just doesn't work. And you shouldn't try to fix an adventure like this by taking away player abilities until the challenges become challenging; at that point, why even bother playing tier 3? The way to write high level adventures isn't to say no until the same low level content becomes challenging again.

DDEX3-16 (tier 3), on the other hand, shows the right way to write high level adventures. It's an adventure where you can use your high level awesome abilities, but no one spell is just going to solve everything unilaterally. There are a lot of challenging encounters, and you might be able to defeat one or two of them with your awesome trick, but there's more where that came from, and you're time constrained enough that you probably can't spam your trick every fight. The challenges are epic and feel nothing like what you'd see at lower levels.
 


CapnZapp

Legend
I'm not opposed to having specific anti-immunity effects written into an adventure or monster when the situation really warrants it. If it's really a once-in-a-millennium elder god arising type of situation, and fear is an important element of its design, then sure, having "this even affects creatures that normally can't be frightened" in its frighten ability might be a good idea. I do, however, oppose the idea that negating player abilities should be routine, or is even necessary in tier 3/tier 4 play.

Part of the challenge for high level adventure design is that they should adapt to high level character capabilities; the fun of playing high level characters is that you have access to all these tools and abilities that you never had at lower levels. High level play shouldn't devolve down to feeling just like low level play, but with bigger numbers; players should feel like they have a lot more power and agency at high levels, and if sometimes that allows them to circumvent what would otherwise be a difficult encounter, so be it.

Phlan1-3 (tier 3) is an example of a high level adventure that fails to rise to the challenge. Much of the adventure could have been solved by the players casting spells like Scrying and Teleport (disclaimer: I did not read that adventure, I only played it), which would cut away a large portion of the adventure. Worse yet, the adventure suggests that wilderness travel and survival should be a significant challenge for the characters, which is laughable for characters that can potentially cast spells like Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion. It felt like a tier 1 adventure scaled up for tier 3, which just doesn't work. And you shouldn't try to fix an adventure like this by taking away player abilities until the challenges become challenging; at that point, why even bother playing tier 3? The way to write high level adventures isn't to say no until the same low level content becomes challenging again.

DDEX3-16 (tier 3), on the other hand, shows the right way to write high level adventures. It's an adventure where you can use your high level awesome abilities, but no one spell is just going to solve everything unilaterally. There are a lot of challenging encounters, and you might be able to defeat one or two of them with your awesome trick, but there's more where that came from, and you're time constrained enough that you probably can't spam your trick every fight. The challenges are epic and feel nothing like what you'd see at lower levels.
An excellent summary. Every D&D epic adventure author should read this, AL or no AL.

Am especially pleased because I was about to reply "neat recommendation, will check out" when it turns out 3-16 was the one I've already found and incorporated in my home OotA campaign. Yes we are in full agreement it's epic and not merely faux-epic :)
 

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