Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="T. Foster" data-source="post: 3371424" data-attributes="member: 16574">Not sure why this thread is labeled with the "1E/2E/OD&D" tag since the complaints and examples seem to apply mostly to the current edition, but since the tag lured me into reading the thread and I'm here anyway, I might as well respond:This is a matter of perspective, and is helped by thinking of a narrower spread of levels than what the current edition assumes. Most folks are and always will be 0-level, and even a 'lowly' 1st level character is exceptional (or at least shows the potential to become exceptional); by 4th level a character is a 'hero' -- able to do things normal men could barely dream of, instantly recognized in his home-base town, and probably at least known of by the rulers of the land; by 8th level a character is a 'superhero,' a legendary figure of the sort who comes along once in a generation (or perhaps a 'patriarch' -- the head of his church for an entire nation or region); higher levels, while theoretically possible, are even more rare and legendary -- yeah the rulebooks include 9th level spells that require an 18th level magic-user to cast, but that doesn't mean the world is full of 18th+ level magic-users -- perhaps one of these comes along once a century, or even once a millennium, and are remembered long after their passing (or ascendancy to godhead). So yeah, the power disparity is real, but it's only a problem if you view it from the perspective of a more-or-less even distribution of all 20 levels running around an interacting together -- only characters of 1st-4th level should be roaming around town interacting with 0-level city guards and saving the village; characters of 5th-8th level should be roaming around the wilderness interacting with barons and generals and saving the nation, characters of 9th-12th level should be roaming around the halls of power interacting with kings and emperors and saving the world, and characters of 13th+ levels should be roaming the planes of existence, interacting with the gods themselves, and saving the universe.The purpose of the class system isn't to be restrictive, it's to provide an easily accessible hook in the form of an archetype to enable the player to begin playing the game immediately without having to invent a bunch of pre-game backstory. For higher level characters or more experienced or dedicated players the class system doesn't need to serve as a straitjacket to creativity -- the player and ref are free to work together to customize the character and make it more well-rounded, and can deviate from the examples in the book as they please. As for making the classes in new books better or more attractive than previous classes to tempt people into buying the new books, yeah you may have a point there (thinks about the 1E UA barbarian and cavalier who could both be fairly described as "like a fighter, only better"), but that only matters if you let yourself be a slave to the official. The official material is always going to add new complications and power-ups to the game, because that's how they keep people buying books, but no one says you have to use them -- the game remains perfectly viable and playable with only the core books (heck, it's perfectly viable and playable using only the original boxed set from 1974!).The XP system is an abstraction, a  metonymy or synecdoche in which one type of activity (monster-slaying and treasure-gathering) serves for the whole of the character's training, practice, education, and other means of self-improvement. The reason for this is obvious -- monster-slaying and treasure-gathering are what the game is about, and are at least ostensibly the most fun, whereas all that other stuff is less fun, so it's shunted off to the background and abstracted away. Of course the character is assumed to be doing all those things too -- that's what all the enforced downtime built into the rules is there for -- and it's only a lack of understanding that assumes that because we only see the character doing one type of activity ("adventuring" -- killing monsters and gathering treasures) that that's all he's doing.I agree with this completely. Gygax went with a d20-based system (rather than the previous 2d6 based system) for combat and saving throws in D&D because he wanted a flat probability distribution and (I suspect, though he's never confirmed this) heavy random element, but retained d6 and d% based rolls in most other areas. The move towards using d20 for everything for the sake of consistency is, IMO, a mistake. (And, FWIW, one of my long-standing house-rule projects is an attempt to move D&D back to 2d6-based rolls for combat and saving throws -- but that's a tough battle against a very ingrained tradition.)I already covered most of my response to this in my response to #1 above -- yeah, the breakpoints are real, so understand them and embrace them. A 7th level character shouldn't be having the same types of adventures as a 2nd level character only having an easier time of it, he should be facing completely different kinds of challenges. That said, I personally feel that after the 2nd breakpoint (at or around 12th level) the game generally ceases to be interesting and characters should be retired to NPC status, perhaps brought out of retirement on rare occasions for world-saving epic adventures, but not played week-to-week. So it's kind of a Catch-22 -- you win the game by gaining experience for your character and going up in levels, but the reward for winning is that the character is no fun to play anymore so you have to retire him and start over with a new character rather than keeping the one you liked. This is a real issue, and one I haven't quite worked out to my personal satisfaction yet (the obvious answer is to drastically slow down the leveling rate, or even remove leveling entirely and have characters stay at 7th level (or whatever other 'sweet spot' point) forever, but neither of those are satisfying to me -- a completely stagnant game is no more appealing to me than a superhero game).This, frankly, just isn't the way magic works in the assumed D&D cosmology. It's not necessarily inferior or superior to what you're suggesting, just different. Magic in D&D follows certain laws (which I think might be spelled out a bit in the AD&D PH or DMG; they're spelled out in much more detailed manner in Mythus Magick for the Dangerous Journeys game) that are formulated for use and exploitation by mortals into discrete "spells" with specific effects. The way to create a new magical effect isn't to customize or modify the existing spells, but to use the magical principles to formulate entirely new spells (which may have elements in common with the previously extant spells). D&D allows this (or at least the old versions did, and I assume the current one still does) through its rules for magical research -- by investing time and money characters can create new spells and magical effects. If this flavor doesn't work for you (and it seems it doesn't) all I can suggest is to cut out the D&D magic system and replace it with something else, either from another rpg or with something of your own devising.</blockquote>

Verification