power level of C&C versus D&D 3rd edition?

[SavageRobby]

I was the CK. And I didn't use CLs at all. Using CLs at low levels, didn't make success rare -- it made it almost impossible. Without a CL and an associated Prime, a PC has a roughly 15% chance to succeed at an action (i.e., rolling an 18 or better). That came up quite often for us, in a really unfun, way.

Conversely, a Level 1 character has roughly 25% chance to succeed at a task when an associated Prime is involved, which created another whole set of problems for my group. Basically, all non-class dependent stats becamed dump stats, and any action unrelated to a Prime was left unattempted at lower levels. And why not? This is the kind of play that the system rewards mechanically.

I only have the characters make SIEGE rolls if the outcome is in doubt. For example (unlike normal D&D, either 1e or 3x), if a Ranger is tracking, unless there is something unusual about the tracks (rain, funky terrain, a deliberate attempt to hide them, etc), I'd rule that the Ranger's tracking was successful - no roll necessary. This is what the rulebook suggests, and what I found works best - for exactly the reasons you mentioned. When approached like this, and using the character's class and background to determine where a character's competencies are, most C&C characters are better at skills than 3x characters.


I think if you look at similar levels, then C&C characters will probably be a tad more powerful, although that will depend quite a bit on whether the DM uses the SIEGE engine to allows feat-like actions and other player fun, or whether characters are more 1e like, limited to the powers of their class and that alone.

But if you look at similar XP amounts, 3x characters will be more powerful than C&C characters, since they level far more quickly. At 50,001 xp, a 3x PC will be 10th level, while his C&C counterpart (assuming single-classed) will only be 6th level in most classes (a Rogue will be 7th level). At 100,0001 XP, a 3x character is 14th level, while C&C characters range from 7th-9th level. That is quite a power difference.

 

[kaomera]

I was the CK. And I didn't use CLs at all. Using CLs at low levels, didn't make success rare -- it made it almost impossible. Without a CL and an associated Prime, a PC has a roughly 15% chance to succeed at an action (i.e., rolling an 18 or better). That came up quite often for us, in a really unfun, way.

I had a somewhat similar experience, but it simply encouraged me not to call for SIEGE checks. As SavageRobby said: "only have the characters make SIEGE rolls if the outcome is in doubt". Personally, I'd go one step further: only have the players roll if randomizing the outcome would make the game more fun... However I've found (and I'm not trying to make a general statement about anyone else's play, this is just from personal experience) that players familiar with 3e tend to want to roll the dice. So it becomes a balancing act for the CK in that you don't want to ignore the SIEGE system completely, and you want to give the players the opportunity to do what they came to the table for and "huck some dice", but at the same time the game is more fun if you generally let them get away with a lot.

Personally I was lucky in that C&C's rules-lite approach meshed very well with my Dming / CKing style, allowing me to pick up the slack pretty easily. I even felt that after a while a few of my players had picked up on the way things where working and it encouraged them to try some more "flashy" (or outrageous...) maneuvers, because they wanted that opportunity to roll for it (and knew they could fall back on more basic / less risky stuff if things went bad).

I try and think of it in light of 1e AD&D Thief skills: your chance of success may be small, but what you're trying to accomplish is also pretty cool. The Thief doesn't have to roll to move quietly, he rolls to move silently. So if he makes his roll there should be no chance of a sentry hearing his approach, but if he fails the roll it should not automatically mean that he is heard. At least that's my approach / rationalization...

 

[Treebore]

I was the CK. And I didn't use CLs at all. Using CLs at low levels, didn't make success rare -- it made it almost impossible. Without a CL and an associated Prime, a PC has a roughly 15% chance to succeed at an action (i.e., rolling an 18 or better). That came up quite often for us, in a really unfun, way.

Conversely, a Level 1 character has roughly 25% chance to succeed at a task when an associated Prime is involved, which created another whole set of problems for my group. Basically, all non-class dependent stats becamed dump stats, and any action unrelated to a Prime was left unattempted at lower levels. And why not? This is the kind of play that the system rewards mechanically.

Part of me likes that (it keeps players from doing some stupid stuff) but part of me intensely disliked it as an adventure without risks and populated with mechanically one-dimensional characters isn't very much fun (or wasn't very much fun for our group).

Like the others say, only have a roll made if its going to be significant to what is going on.

Plus I also had "issues", especially with skill related stuff. So in the spirit of my "anything goes" attitude I just said the PC's had the skills listed for their equivelant class in 3E. So anything that is on that skill list, and/or part of their class description, is treated as a Prime.

Now that I have two years of experience running the system I am going to give a narrower definition to class skills. Still there are "skills" that I am going to give to every class. Such as I am going back to "Perception", which groups spot, search, and listen under one skill.

Acrobatics is going to cover Climb, jump, tumble, etc...

Still, I think I am going to allow the Thief and Assassin to have their ton of skills. Still not sure how much I'll cut it down, though.


Thats one of the reasons I like C&C so much, when I find something I don't like I fix it. Usually I fix it by drawing on my experience running other game systems. 3E, GURPS, Shadworun, L5R, and even older editions of D&D. I often lift rules wholesale from them. Like I don't like how C&C does not address armor stacking. So I lifted the rule from 3E.

All I know is, now that I am fully comfortable with C&C, we spend very little time reading the rules, except for spell and magic item descriptions. Combat isn't slow. The game isn't interrupted for a few minutes while a rule is looked up for clarity, etc...

The game moves. None of the starting and stopping I have happen with other systems, we stay "immersed" in what is going on. I finally have my ideal rules for playing D&D.

 

[tankschmidt]

I try and think of it in light of 1e AD&D Thief skills: your chance of success may be small, but what you're trying to accomplish is also pretty cool. The Thief doesn't have to roll to move quietly, he rolls to move silently. So if he makes his roll there should be no chance of a sentry hearing his approach, but if he fails the roll it should not automatically mean that he is heard. At least that's my approach / rationalization...

That's a great point, Kaomera. Since C&C by the book doesn't use opposed checks, most CK's would only allow the enemies a wisdom check to hear a thief if the thief first failed his move silently check.

Thats one of the reasons I like C&C so much, when I find something I don't like I fix it.

That's a good mantra to have with C&C. Let me give you an example that's relevant to the discussion at hand. My group toyed around with setting the challenge base in C&C at different numbers instead of 12 and 18, even going so far as 10 and 15 briefly. In the end, however, we found we prefer to play as written. If you are like jdrakah and think the CB's are too high to hit, try playing a couple weeks at 11 and 16 and see if you like it. It certainly won't break the game.

 

[Treebore]

That's a great point, Kaomera. Since C&C by the book doesn't use opposed checks, most CK's would only allow the enemies a wisdom check to hear a thief if the thief first failed his move silently check.



That's a good mantra to have with C&C. Let me give you an example that's relevant to the discussion at hand. My group toyed around with setting the challenge base in C&C at different numbers instead of 12 and 18, even going so far as 10 and 15 briefly. In the end, however, we found we prefer to play as written. If you are like jdrakah and think the CB's are too high to hit, try playing a couple weeks at 11 and 16 and see if you like it. It certainly won't break the game.

C&C does use an "opposed roll". IT just isn't done with each character making a roll and the highest roll wins. Instead the HD of the "opponent" is used to modify the final TN.

So the WIS check of the guard will be modified by the HD of the thief, since the Thief's skill directly effects how silently they move.

So opposed roles are not done in the same manner as 3E, but it is "opposed" because the HD/LVL of the opponent is used as a modifier for the CL.

So in your thief/guard example, say the guard is 3 HD, WIS Prime, and the Thief is 4, DEX PRime and has a 14 (+1). The final TN will be TN 12 + 5, due to the Thief's LVL and +1 DEX bonus. So the guard must roll better than a 17 on a D20, and gets to add his HD to his roll. If he had a WIS bonus he could add that as well.

This assumes there are no other factors. Such as maybe the guard laid out broken glass in certain areas, or caltrops, etc... If such things were done the CK can handle it a couple of ways. Either make the Thief roll to successfully bypass the obstacles, or reflect this added difficulty for the Thief by giving the guard an additional +2 bonus to his check.

So to say that C&C doesn't use an opposed roll is technically wrong, they just don't use an opposed roll in the same manner as 3E. The HD is used as the "opposition" . For further clarification on what I am talking about you can read paragraphs 9 and 10 of "Attributes & The Game" on page 109 to 110 of the PH (second printing).

Unless of course you understood all of this and I was wrong to think you may not have.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

Something Like Pun-pun is possible in D&D, while not supposed to be played it could be. Imagine a character with just about every ability in the game! Ever! If that isnt a huge power level gape I dont know what one is.

 

[S'mon]

Re C&C task resolution, I'm not finding it *that* hard to succeed.

A typical example: DEX-16 Rogue-1 tries to sneak up on orc using move silently.

The task is CL 1 vs a Prime attribute, DEX, for CC 13. The PC rolls d20 +1 (level) + 2 (DEX bonus), needs 10+ to succeed, or a 55% chance. That's a lot better than a 1e Thief's ca 15% chance to move silently.

 

[tankschmidt]

So opposed roles are not done in the same manner as 3E, but it is "opposed" because the HD/LVL of the opponent is used as a modifier for the CL.

I can see your point, but in my book an opposed roll requires two dice to be thrown, like a grapple check in C&C. Actually, I did not know that I should have added the thief's dexterity modifier to the the CL for the guard's wisdom check. That's a good rule.

 

[kaomera]

The task is CL 1 vs a Prime attribute, DEX, for CC 13. The PC rolls d20 +1 (level) + 2 (DEX bonus), needs 10+ to succeed, or a 55% chance. That's a lot better than a 1e Thief's ca 15% chance to move silently.

I think that the general concern is that non-prime (50% of your abilities if you're human, 66% otherwise...) or out-of-class checks are too hard to make. (And a 45% chance of failure can still be pretty bad if the CK is calling for a whole lot of checks.)

3.5 is set up to allow the players to roll the dice a lot, and still succeed most of the time. Ability bonuses are higher, "level bonuses" (ie: skill ranks) are higher, and there are a number of other bonuses available. Some DCs will be higher than a typical CC, but there tends to be more variation both upwards and down. C&C is meant to be GMed differently, with a lot fewer die rolls.

Personally I like the results better, in that the PCs are going to generally be able to do more, but I can understand why not everyone is down with the C&C style... I dig rules-light, but a lot of players (including DMs) want more specifics. Just saying "I'm good at Dex stuff" isn't enough, they want specific skills to be good and/or bad at, to help develop their character. Certainly you could add such details to a C&C character, and I think any good CK should encourage and reward such thinking (at least to the extent that you aren't trodding on the other players / characters "thing"s), but that brings up the second place where I think a lot of gamers just want more detail: Sometimes it's nice to have more specific things laid out in the rules. "This is how you go about doing X, this is what you roll, and this is what you can do to make your character better at X."

 

[Treebore]

I can see your point, but in my book an opposed roll requires two dice to be thrown, like a grapple check in C&C. Actually, I did not know that I should have added the thief's dexterity modifier to the the CL for the guard's wisdom check. That's a good rule.

Right, its not an opposed roll in the classic manner of rolling dice for both, but it is opposed in that the HD/LVL is used to modify the roll. I believe that is even how it is described somewhere in the PH.

So using the HD/LVL of the "opponent" represents the opposition of this opponent.