times they are a changen....

[jgbrowning]

The rules had a lot of thought put into them. It would be foolish to think you can just snip out some spell or ability and not have to change more. The rules may not be perfect, but off handed decisions are bound to be less reliable. If you have played with the normal rules for a good period of time, found a problem, and fixed it with a rule 0 that is thought out, you are doing a good job as a DM. If you knee jerk react to any abilty that seems powerful by banning or "nerfing" it, you are abusing rule 0. I don't see the quoted article as being any sort of personal attack on a person's DM style.

actually i think a lot of thought was put into the rules, but a lot of thought was left out of the rules as well...


anyway.. thanks to everyone who responded to this thread and i have to admit my opinion was not perhaps the most accurate of ones. I know i shouldn't shock you guys so much by being the only living human to admit holding an opinion that was not "more right" than another's on a internet forum, but dont bill me if you have medical bills from this post.

Anyway i think the rules allow min/maxing to be done eaisier than the other, but i've moved to also think that its mostly just because it is a better game design, and that the preponderance of min/maxing i see is done by people who, as gygax said, are doing everything the first time so are bound to make the mistakes of the past.

thanks for yer responses, guys

joe b. (cryptic master)

 

[Desdichado]

Um, I'm sorry, but "that passage" does not seem well defined. Which passage, exactly? Can you give a page reference? Barsoomcore over there is choimping at the bit looking for attributions....

I think not. I'm not going to comb through my DMG to find a passage to satisfy you, when I didn't even bring up "that passage" in the first place; I merely commented on it. Although, if I remember correctly, I'd check the last few pages of the "Running the Game" chapter -- it's probably in there.

EDIT: Actually, I forgot my DMG was sitting underneath a pile of stuff right here on my desk -- try page 95.

Don't design situations that make the PCs' divinations worthless -- design situations to take divinations into account. Assume that the cleric learns the identity of the king's murderer. That's fine, but the adventure is about apprehending him, not just identifying him, and it's especially important to stop him before he kills the queen as well.

In short -- don't do games that are different than the One True Way that we have dictated that you play. Or else.

 

[Forrester]

(From the DMG)
Don't design situations that make the PCs' divinations worthless -- design situations to take divinations into account. Assume that the cleric learns the identity of the king's murderer. That's fine, but the adventure is about apprehending him, not just identifying him, and it's especially important to stop him before he kills the queen as well.

So let's see what the PCs would do under Core Rules would do in this situation. I'm just doing this off the top of my head -- I'm sure that many out there will be able to improve on this.

Assume that it's an 11th level party trying to hunt down this murderer, whom we'll call Chumley.

Let's start with a Divination (which will work 81% of the time, more often if you have a cleric using the Luck power)

"Will the queen be safe if we do not increase her guard this week?"

and

"Will the queen be safe if we do not catch Chumley in the immediate future?"

Without a total bastard DM, these questions will inform the party about whether Chumley plans to make a dangerous attack on the Queen in the next week. Worse comes to worse, buy or scribe a few Divination scrolls and have some 1st level clerics read them in case the party's cleric's Divination gets busted by the small failure chance.

Let's assume that the Queen will be attacked in the next week. Time to break out the Commune, which has no limit on the amount of times cast per day, per week, or whatever.

"Is Chumley planning to use poison to kill the queen?"
"Does Chumley have an agent inside the palace?"
(If so, use Communes to determine who it is, of course.)
"Is Chumely planning to teleport in to kill the queen?"

. . . and so on. Three Communes later (a 300XP cost is a joke, and that's 33 questions!), the party pretty much knows EVERYTHING.

But maybe you've decided, as a DM, that the deity being spoken to can't look at Chumley's mental plans. (Why, I don't know. If the deity can peek into the future to answer Divinations, why can't he peek into a mind to determine plans?)

In any case, plans are rarely completely mental in nature, anyway. Do you think that Chumley hasn't spoken to ANYONE about his plans? You can ask God about whom Chumley has spoken to. You can ask God what weapons Chumley is preparing. You can ask God whether Chumley has any hired goons.

And so on, and so on . . . if Commune won't work, bust out Contact Other Plane. Buy a (too cheap) scroll of Discern Location, which I think should be available, supposedly, in your nearest Small City.

I dunno . . . I just don't see this little plot working. What am I missing?

(By the way, who cares if the Queen does bite it? Buy her a Scroll of True Resurrection for 9000 gold. Are you telling me that a king doesn't have 9000 gold to spare?)

I'm sure that folks out there who have abused the Commune spell can give better suggestions than these about how to foil Chumley. One thing is certain: under Core Rules, not only should it be easy for a King to foil Chumley, he shouldn't give a whether he foils Chumley or not. Not when it's so easy to come back from the dead.

 

[jgbrowning]

yep

I dunno . . . I just don't see this little plot working. What am I missing?

(By the way, who cares if the Queen does bite it? Buy her a Scroll of True Resurrection for 9000 gold. Are you telling me that a king doesn't have 9000 gold to spare?)

I'm sure that folks out there who have abused the Commune spell can give better suggestions than these about how to foil Chumley. One thing is certain: under Core Rules, not only should it be easy for a King to foil Chumley, he shouldn't give a whether he foils Chumley or not. Not when it's so easy to come back from the dead.

agree with you, but there are certain types of situations that are obviously NOT to be played out using the DnD rules. I know.. I know... but if you want to play them anyway make them a low-level affair.

i think people are running into a conceptual barrier between a magical and non-magical world. in a magical world stupid things like plots to kill the queen wouldn't occur (not at least successfully! ) without the heavy use of magic by the other side.

magic just changes everything and its a bitch ta get yer head wrapped around what would really happen.

anywhoo... my obligatory .0002$ (compounded daily at 25% intrest for the next 6 months)

joe b.

 

[Piratecat]

Welcome to a magical world. By the way, Forrester, I had missed some of your previous comments; I expect politeness from everyone on this thread, not just LokiDR.

I see a couple of holes in your example. For one, using communes to find an agent in a place as big as a castle is probably impossible, so long as it isn't anyone high profile. There are hundreds of people in a castle between servants, staff and guards. Multiple agents make this even more interesting.

In addition, the ability to use commune to find out Chumley's plan is only as good as your imagination. Maybe Chumley intends to summon a demon to take her out, or sneak in himself in the guise of a maid. As long as you can out-imagine the players and come up with a fun plan, they'll have a hard time guessing it.

Don't forget that divinations aren't perfect. As soon as the bad guy changes his plan, previous divinations become invalid. The PCs may well act on old information.

Also, if scrolls of true resurrection are so easy to get in your game, there are lots of similar items that Chumley can use to assure that the queen stays dead. You don't even need wacky high-powered spells, either. For one easy one, he can kill her and animate the body; I believe that stops any resurrections until the zombie is tracked down and destroyed. And if someone is going to the trouble to kill the queen, they'll probably invest in a method to grab her soul after death and keep it safely tucked away.

Meanwhile, Chumley has been using his divinations too, of course. By doing so, he can find out what the PCs are up to and when it's safe for him to strike. Then he launches a diversionary attack, and grabs the queen while the PCs are distracted saving her. *shrug* I can think of a dozen ways to make this adventure challenging and fun, divinations or no.

Is it a low-level, divination-free who-done-it? Nope. But whether or not your example is flawed by predicating the use of super-high-level divinations, it can still be a fun time for the players and the DM. And really, that's what I'm interested in, not reaching some sort of "perfect who-done-it" adventure concept.

I know you disagree with me, but I look at the high level group in my game right now. Do divinations ruin the game? No, they make it better. Are the players having fun? Yes. Am I? Yes. Are there still lots of surprises? Yes. So the horror story you depict just isn't realistic, at least not with my group.

 

[jgbrowning]

personally

i'd just scry, teleport and kill kill kill. and if i cant scry him, his use of magic falls under the "taking away PC's divanation abilities"..

its almost a Catch-22.



joe b.

 

[Saeviomagy]

And you think chumley is just going to sit and wait while the king is brought back? Or that he's totally discounted the possibility that the players are after him and using divination magic or....

Building a party of assassins is going to be quite similar to building a party of adventurers (after all, often they're one and the same). It's not impossible to overcome these problems. Just like it's not impossible for the PC's to not be slaughtered in their sleep. Unless you're the sort of DM who doesn't let the players know anything about the world they're in, or control their own environment.

But beyond all that, it's fine if you've said, right at the beginning, "the following spells will be changed ...", or even "divination spells in general may not work as written - if you think this'll matter to your character please have a word before it becomes a problem". It's NOT alright to simply change them when the player thinks up something you didn't. It's no fun, as a player, to say to your DM "My character <insert reasonable action as defined by the rules>", and have the DM say "No, he doesn't. Suddenly that doesn't work. Oh, and as punishment for trying, your familiar dies, please lose 1500 XP". You may not intend it forrester, but it is sounding like that's the approach you endorse.

 

[Piratecat]

One other fun example:

PCs use divinations to find out that Chumley intends to teleport in to kill the Queen.

Chumley uses divinations to ask, "Do any of my enemies know I intend to teleport in and try to kill the queen?" He learns yes, so he changes his plan. Maybe he sets up a decoy; maybe he uses a diversion; maybe he impersonates a guard and ends up infiltrating the queen's private sector. Maybe he starts killing innocents to draw the pcs out of the castle. You name it. And all the while, the PCs are wondering, "Why did our divination fail?"

 

[jgbrowning]

heheh

One other fun example:

PCs use divinations to find out that Chumley intends to teleport in to kill the Queen.

Chumley uses divinations to ask, "Do any of my enemies know I intend to teleport in and try to kill the queen?" He learns yes, so he changes his plan. Maybe he sets up a decoy; maybe he uses a diversion; maybe he impersonates a guard and ends up infiltrating the queen's private sector. Maybe he starts killing innocents to draw the pcs out of the castle. You name it. And all the while, the PCs are wondering, "Why did our divination fail?"

thats what I like to do!

only problem is that sometimes it can be hard to convince the PC's that i didn't "cheat." oh well...

joe b.

 

[William Ronald]

I think that there are any number of effective ways to impede divination spells within the rules. Besides magic items, there is always a possibility of using a red herring. Also, a deity can legitimately say "Uncertain" or "Cannot be determined at this time." (Relatively few D&D deities are truly omniscient.)

Thus, someone can use spells or devices to block divinations. Or set someone up as an assassin, make sure the heroes find them, and then have them lower their guard. There are many ways to prevent a divination from working, including having little information to work with or someone using a false identity. (If the real Chumley -- who is loyal to the Queen - is tied up in a basement somewhere, asking a question about how Chumley plans to kill the Queen will not work very well.)

Indeed, a high level wizard could use a wish or limited wish to make sure that all divinations concerning him are transferred to someone else ... and vice versa. (Imagine the irritation of the PCs when they find out they were actually asking questions not about an enemy but a stablehand .... or worse, the Queen's horse. "That would explain some of the strange answers I have been getting. I wondered why Chumley would want two new pairs of shoes.")

Rule 0 is something that can be used by DMs, but I believe a DM should discuss why he is doing it. The idea is that everyone has fun... players as well as DMs. I think a campaign generally succeeds as a cooperative effort. (In my campaign, my fellow DMs and I are willing to listen to someone's concerns. I want my players to have fun. Not to worship me. )

With that said, I am a bit disappointed at the way this thread is going. There is a little bit too much animosity. Reasonable people can hold different opinions.