Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4400001" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's simply false to say that mechanics are irrelevant to this.Compare RM and HARP. The 15-minute work-day is a huge issue in mid-to-high level RM, for at least 2 reasons: *Character's Power Points increase at about 5 per level, but their best spells cost about their level in PPs to cast. Therefore, the higher the level the relatively  more expensive it becomes to use one's best spells, but anything less than the best risks not being good enough for an encounter that is challenging to the party. Power Point multipliers and Spell adders offer one way of dealing with this, but they have their own problems (eg the Christmas-tree syndrome). *Teleport is a 10th level spell, and therefore available (via overcasting) from somewhere around 7th level or so. More on this below.HARP, on the other hand, has mechanics very clearly intended to reduce the problem. Because higher level spells suffer scaling penalties (roughly, higher level spells are simply low-level spells with additional PPs spent to add options/increase effect, and each extra PP spent in this way gives a -5 penalty to the d100 casting roll), there is an incentive not to always use one's highest-level spell, because it may not land (being cast at a penalty). I haven't played enough HARP to know if this fix works, but it is an obvious attempt to address the 15-minute day via mechanical means.Teleport is a huge issue, and it means that the BBEG can't retaliate against a retreating party. In my last high-magic RM game, the PCs were members of the most powerful wizards guild in the land, and also were powerful agents of the Emperor. They therefore had accomodation in two virtually-impregnable locations: the Tower of High Sorcery (yes, the concept was stolen from Dragonlance) and the Imperial palace. Teleporting back to such a location prevents retaliation.In any event, as Mustrum Ridcully points out, such retaliation is (from the metagame perspective) ineffectual:The whole post was excellent, but the above bits are key, I think. In any game system where some players' fun (eg Wizards) depends upon per-day resources (ie Vancian spells) and other players fun (eg Fighters) depends upon a balancing assumption that players in the first group are not always using those resources, and in addition the whole playgroup's fun depends upon the party not dying, near-ineradicable tensions emerge of the sort that Mustrum indicates: encounters become boring, especially for the Wizards who sit on the sidelines (and the Fighters can also tell that the only reason these encounters are challenging them is because the Wizards are holding back - the old "Green Lantern & Green Arrow" problem); or the party dies; or the 15-minute day ensues, to the benefit of Wizards, the detriment of Fighters, and the death (in many cases) of verisimilitude.In my high-level RM games, two solutions have emerged. In the game mentioned above, everyone plays a wizard (and thus all play the 15-minute day). Verisimilitude was preserved when the game was a tomb-looting one, as tombs stay put and are fairly static over time. When the story changed to a "hunt-the-bad-guy in his demiplane" scenario, the game eventually came to an end with a TPK as the 15-minute day prevention measures (both time pressures and anti-teleport mechanics that had been implemented) made play unworkable.The alternative solution (in the current game) has been to play only Fighters, some of whom have self-buffing capabilities (which are not as Power Point intensive), with the healer and the diviner as NPCs (who therefore don't have any metagame influence on the play) and the only PC Wizard our best player from the rules-mastery point of view, who is therefore able to play effectively even when unable to optimise his Power Point use vs rest time.This is, in effect, a variant form of retaliation against the players: mechanically optimise your play and your PCs will lose ingame. It suffers from the problems Mustrum has pointed out: if the encounters are such as to make a PC win without resting possible, then from the players' point of view they risk being boring encounters.Furthermore, I think it is an indictment of a roleplaying system that, if it is played in a mechanically optimal fashion, then the story is compromised. In the best RPGs the mechanics facilitate the story, they don't push against it (eg by encouraging the 15-minute workday).In my experience most players want to play, not watch.I've never played a campaign in which the passage of ingame time was a limiting factor on PCs' adventuring careers. If they do get old, it is only at high level, when rejuvenation magic becomes available.Obviously I'm agreed, but an extra point: even in non-combat encounters, if they are to be challenging to the Wizards then they will require those Wizards to spend resources (CHA buff spells, Suggestion spells, mind-reading spells etc). My RM games are quite heavy in non-combat encounters, but this does not make the 15-minute workday disappear.Of course 20th-level Wizards don't normally cast high-level spells to deal with city guards or horse traders, but these are not the sort of non-combat encounters my players are interested in.</blockquote>

Verification