So what's gold gonna be for?

[Irda Ranger]

Or we could have a game where PCs are simple at the start, even providing package deals for players who want to avoid the small amount of initial char gen, but which increases in complexity as characters go up levels.

Y'know, like 3e D&D.

That's just as bad. Whether you spend 2 hours at character creation or "just" an hour every time you level up, you're still "wasting your time" on "stuff that doesn't matter."

That's really how I feel. Every minute spent thinking about the rules "as rules" is a minute wasted. I could have spend that minute "in the game", doing "stuff that matters", like "killing orcs."

I hope 4e allows me to spend as little time as humanly possible on character design and character sheet maintenance.

 

[Irda Ranger]

This is where not having a mundance cash->personal power conversion gets really wierd. Without such a conversion high level characters don't get any benefit from mundane wealth. This means that a lvl 15 character who is the king of some place is no more powerful than a lvl 15 wanderer. If anything, because he has a kingdom to defend, he is weaker. In the same sense than a helpless dependent is a disadvantage in GURPS. All the resources his kingdom produces... are meaningless in the calculus of a world where personal power trumps raving hordes. If you want titles of nobility to mean things in DnD, you *need* a way to convert mundane wealth (taxes) to real power (which, in DnD, is largely equivalent to adventuring gear).

First, you spell "weird" incorrectly. Sorry; it's the drafter in me.

Second, I really disagree that there's no benefit from "mundane wealth." That's 100% dependent on the campaign you want to play in. As a for instance, a 15th level King is more powerful than a 15th level wanderer in most situations other than one-on-one combat. A King can simply have the wanderer arrested, or killed, or have his assets seized and his family arrested. The 15th level wanderer is a bit like Rambo (he has more options for fighting back than a 1st level Commoner), but that doesn't make him immune to the power of the King's "mundane" wealth.

Also, imagine a setting where the PC's are the heroes of "the Realm", and they learn than HORDE of demons / orcs / whatever are about to descend on their fair land. No matter how powerful they are, they can't win against 10,000 opponents without the aid of an army; you only get 4 attacks per round. Even if your PC is unkillable from the point-of-view of the common orc warrior, 100 orcs can pin you while the other 9,900 sack the city and rape all the villagers.

The whole "four encounters per day" and "fight a monster equal to your party's CR" and all that other b-s that 3e has mind-washed the community with has really been poisonous to a lot of people's ability to see a larger context. Sometimes "mundane" wealth is more powerful than any 9th level spell. Sometimes you need an army.

I'm not saying that everyone needs to play that way (I'm sorry for Doug McCrae being forced to be a Innkeeper), but some of us do. We like the larger context than "kill things; take stuff; upgrade longsword." That just seems like a very small world to me. I hope 4e comes back to the larger context, because 3e has just about ruined my type of gaming.

 

[WayneLigon]

1) The game assumes you're optimized. If you don't x magic item by level y, you are going to get your clock cleaned. I don't think someone should have to sacrifice, well, effectiveness for playing sub-optimally. Reminds me of the party whose only healer was a Cleric2/Pal3 and whose only caster was a Sor2/rogue3 (choices made because it fit their character) and they got their clocks cleaned regularly because the DM threw standard 5th level challenges at them.

The game also assumes you have a DM who is not a secret clockwork mechanism only pretending to be human. If they got their clocks cleaned, it's because the GM isn't doing his job, which is to provide an exciting play experience while at the same time watching the other spinning plates to make sure they don't crash.

It all depends on the GMing. Right now, we're in the middle of an Eberron campaign. They're 12th level, facing EL 12h-14 challenges. They have no pure arcane caster, no pure rogue, and no pure fighter. Their A#1 best magic weapon is a +2 Holy longsword and their best defensive item is a Ring of Protection +2. We don't suffer regular TPKs because I keep a careful watch on what resources they have and I pay attention to how well or badly they do in various encounters.

 

[Nifft]

I eschew Pangeas, so ships have always been pretty important in my settings, and the interesting places don't have handy shuttles going back and forth, so procuring a ship and crew is usually a priority for PCs by about 6th level or so.

Okay, so we're talking a skirmish-scale schooner rather than a gargantuan galleon... cool, yeah, those should run about the same price range as a Carpet of Flying, give or take a factor of two.

Re item breaking, the condition track is a good idea I think. I've avoided fumbles in 3e because they screw high-level characters with many attacks – in 4e that may not be a problem. [...] But I never used it then because it was always a pain to look up that table.

My thinking is similar. I don't want any extra tables, just something like:
- "You cracked your sword!"
- "The tip of your blade has snapped off! The remaining portion is sharp but no longer well balanced."
- "You could use a new sword."

... so the player has ample warning and can grab a new one off one of his vanquished foes.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Kraydak]

First, you spell "weird" incorrectly. Sorry; it's the drafter in me.

Ooops, thanks. I'm sure I'll forget

Second, I really disagree that there's no benefit from "mundane wealth." That's 100% dependent on the campaign you want to play in. As a for instance, a 15th level King is more powerful than a 15th level wanderer in most situations other than one-on-one combat. A King can simply have the wanderer arrested, or killed, or have his assets seized and his family arrested. The 15th level wanderer is a bit like Rambo (he has more options for fighting back than a 1st level Commoner), but that doesn't make him immune to the power of the King's "mundane" wealth.

Explain to me how "mundane" (meaning low level) forces will arrest or kill a lvl 15 character. His family, maybe, but that leaves the entire kingdom open to vengeance.

Also, imagine a setting where the PC's are the heroes of "the Realm", and they learn than HORDE of demons / orcs / whatever are about to descend on their fair land. No matter how powerful they are, they can't win against 10,000 opponents without the aid of an army; you only get 4 attacks per round. Even if your PC is unkillable from the point-of-view of the common orc warrior, 100 orcs can pin you while the other 9,900 sack the city and rape all the villagers.

The whole "four encounters per day" and "fight a monster equal to your party's CR" and all that other b-s that 3e has mind-washed the community with has really been poisonous to a lot of people's ability to see a larger context. Sometimes "mundane" wealth is more powerful than any 9th level spell. Sometimes you need an army.

In a fight between a lvl 15 adventuring party and *every* CR3- in the entire world, the smart money is on the lvl 15s. As long as the CR3-s don't engage in reproduction, of course, which would result in a stalemate until the adventurers died of old age (CR3-=no xp/worthy=no gaining access to longevity magic). It would be a long battle, involving many retreats to sleep and reload spells, but the victor is clear.

 

[pemerton]

Either you curb what magic you can buy on the open market, which opens up other spending options at higher levels or you accept the fact that PCs won't spend large sums of money on anything else, no matter how much they may want to.

Isn't there another option, of changing magic so that the mechanical advantage of purchasing magic items does not radically outstrip the advantages of other forms of expenditure.

A simple example: the typical cost of a bribe should not be out of whack of the typical cost of a wand of charm person.

A more complex example: the expenditure required to maintain a healer servitor in one's stronghold shouldn't be out of whack with the cost of a wand of cure light wounds.

And an inference: if nothing non-magical can give the mechanical advantage of a +6 sword, then (on this line of thinking) there should be no +6 swords in the game.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Gold isn't for anything. It doesn't exist in Lord of the Rings type games.

Ever read "The Hobbit" ? Gold is a motivator for a lot of that book.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Explain to me how "mundane" (meaning low level) forces will arrest or kill a lvl 15 character. His family, maybe, but that leaves the entire kingdom open to vengeance.

Probably the same way a chubby rent-a-cop arrests Chuck Norris - Chucks lets him put the cuffs on because, even though he could kill the rotund fool with one hand, the consequences of such an action are unacceptable. As a simple example, my wife's 8th level assassin character in my current campaign can kill any Guardsman in Waterdeep, but she isn't interested in banishment from the city, so she doesn't.

But that's neither really here nor there; I already conceded that the 15th level "Man with no name" really is a bit of a loose wrecking ball - but that's the difference between "The King can do nothing" and "the King can really piss me off."

In a fight between a lvl 15 adventuring party and *every* CR3- in the entire world, the smart money is on the lvl 15s. As long as the CR3-s don't engage in reproduction, of course, which would result in a stalemate until the adventurers died of old age (CR3-=no xp/worthy=no gaining access to longevity magic). It would be a long battle, involving many retreats to sleep and reload spells, but the victor is clear.

You totally missed my point. The 15th level group simply can't kill all the orcs before the orcs totally sack, loot, rape and pillage their way through the Kingdom. It just doesn't matter that the PC's can kill them eventually ("Just hold still, darn it!"), the PC's simply don't have enough hours in the day to do it themselves.

And what is this "Rest and reload spells" you speak of? Are the Orcs giving the PC's a break to recup out of some sense of fair play, or are the PC's Teleporting away to safety for 8 hours, leaving the Kingdom defenseless in the mean time?

 

[Reynard]

You totally missed my point. The 15th level group simply can't kill all the orcs before the orcs totally sack, loot, rape and pillage their way through the Kingdom. It just doesn't matter that the PC's can kill them eventually ("Just hold still, darn it!"), the PC's simply don't have enough hours in the day to do it themselves.

And what is this "Rest and reload spells" you speak of? Are the Orcs giving the PC's a break to recup out of some sense of fair play, or are the PC's Teleporting away to safety for 8 hours, leaving the Kingdom defenseless in the mean time?

I want to run this now -- a 15th level party takes exception to existence of a nation and decides to do something about it.

 

[AllisterH]

And most adventures didn't sell well in the 3.0/3.5 era. Does that mean D&D players no longer went on adventures (ie, sales figures don't necessarily prove anything here).

It's my experiences that D&D campaigns, regardless of edition, either moved away from straight dungeoncrawls as the PC's leveled, or they ended and the group started over.

Still, given how "poorly" Birthright did in 2E, I'd be surprised if players are actually interested in that.

Make no mistake, the Birthright rules on running a kingdom and how to run a game like that are VERY well done but it just seems like few were interested in that.