Unintended(?) Consequence of No More X-Mas Tree?

[Raven Crowking]

Not so easy if:
1) Your party is not in town and
2) Your teammates are not, in fact, forced to rest and want to do something else while you're just stuck recovering your lost HP.

Yeah, it's tough having to make choices and face consequences......

(1) If not in town, then either you have to keep going at less than full (happens to Conan all the time...sometimes it means he had to run from picts and hole up somewhere!) until you can find a safe place to rest, or it means that you have to rest and risk interuption. Roll a few dice, and if there is no interuption, then it takes only a few die rolls longer than if you were in town.

(2) Well, sucks to be you, then. OTOH, if your teammates know that the same sort of waiting will apply to them, players often work together. If not, well, have a backup character. In a low-magic world, it is often useful to have henchmen for just this reason.

Again, this represents the 1e experience using 3e rules very, very well.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

What do you do about Fly + Protection from Arrows? and Fly + Improved Invisibility?

Can you be more specific in your question?

RC

 

[Njall]

Well, I don't assume that characters automatically need to fully recover hit points, which is where we differ.

I'd agree if they had any chance to avoid or defend against a blow aside from HP, at higher levels.
However said 20th level fighter will have 110+ 40 = 150 HP without magic items, on average, assuming he has a 14 Con.
This means he'd better have as much HP as he can when he enters combat, because if he doesn't, he's not going to face more than 1, maybe 2 (CR 9) opponents before he needs to rest for 3/4 days. Or, well... rest forever.

Conan, when tired, tends to plow on until dropped. He recovers whenever he gets the chance (and spends more days carousing than he would need to with strict bed rest).

RC

Yes, but he doesn't die in combat because he's tired.
A fighter that's "tired" ( no more HP ) in D&D dies.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'd agree if they had any chance to avoid or defend against a blow aside from HP, at higher levels.
However said 20th level fighter will have 110+ 40 = 150 HP without magic items, on average, assuming he has a 14 Con.
This means he'd better have as much HP as he can when he enters combat, because if he doesn't, he's not going to face more than 1, maybe 2 (CR 9) opponents before he needs to rest for 3/4 days. Or, well... rest forever.

Excepting, of course, that in the low-magic campaign world, you are generally using much lower CR foes. Indeed, this is a world in which level 20 characters are so powerful, that they are generally heads of state and dealing with other things than just knocking in doors & taking stuff. At this point, there's more XP to be had from story awards than from monsters.

Yes, but he doesn't die in combat because he's tired.
A fighter that's "tired" ( no more HP ) in D&D dies.

Well, first off, when the D&D guy dies, it's due to more than being "tired".

Secondly, Conan simply doesn't die in any of the REH stories....although REH does have stories where his heroes do die, and where they can be laid up due to injuries. Indeed, in one of the Howard stories, Conan is crucified, and he is definitely in need of nursing back to health thereafter.

RC

 

[Njall]

Yeah, it's tough having to make choices and face consequences......

(1) If not in town, then either you have to keep going at less than full (happens to Conan all the time...sometimes it means he had to run from picts and hole up somewhere!) until you can find a safe place to rest, or it means that you have to rest and risk interuption. Roll a few dice, and if there is no interuption, then it takes only a few die rolls longer than if you were in town.

Keep going is not an option.
As I said earlier, assume 150 as average HP ( 20th level fighter with 14 con).
I'm using an Ice Giant ( CR 9 ) as his opponent.
Average damage every round is 23x80% + 23x55%= 31.5.
So you can face an opponent in combat for 4 rounds before you die.
If you risk, rest and are interrupted, quite simply, you're dead ( since you're in combat, again ).
Rinse and repeat for each and every fight in the dungeon.

(2) Well, sucks to be you, then. OTOH, if your teammates know that the same sort of waiting will apply to them, players often work together. If not, well, have a backup character. In a low-magic world, it is often useful to have henchmen for just this reason.

Again, this represents the 1e experience using 3e rules very, very well.

RC

If it "sucks to be you", then the game is not working.
Even more if you're a front line fighter, and you're supposed to take punishment more than the rest of the party.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Keep going is not an option.
As I said earlier, assume 150 as average HP ( 20th level fighter with 14 con).
I'm using an Ice Giant ( CR 9 ) as his opponent.
Average damage every round is 23x80% + 23x55%= 31.5.
So you can face an opponent in combat for 4 rounds before you die.
If you risk, rest and are interrupted, quite simply, you're dead ( since you're in combat, again ).
Rinse and repeat for each and every fight in the dungeon.

Yes, if you don't use that old common sense I mentioned earlier, you might have some problems. If you do use common sense, as I suggested earlier, then you won't set up an inescapable deathtrap.

But, then, I can set up an inescapable deathtrap without using houserules, so I fail to see the difference.

If it "sucks to be you", then the game is not working.
Even more if you're a front line fighter, and you're supposed to take punishment more than the rest of the party.

No...."Sucks to be you" is perfectly feasable in a working game. In fact, if the players know very well that it might suck to be them, they might work together better to avoid those sorts of situations. And, when he heals and goes out again with the party who wouldn't wait, the fighter can tell the others "Sucks to be you" when he chooses not to take more punishment than the rest of the party.

Player dynamics fall under the social contract of the players, not the rules of the game.

RC

 

[LostSoul]

Can you be more specific in your question?

I ran a low-magic game way back when 3.0 first came out. When the Wizard got Fly + Improved Invisibility, I could not challenge the Wizard without overwhelming the other two PCs (a Fighter/Paladin and a homebrew Rogueish kinda guy).

A high-level, low-magic game (even with Wizards at 1/2 level) will see Wizards with Fly and Protection from Arrows. Normal dudes have no way to trouble him; he's got enough 2nd level spells to ignore a lot of those attacks. If he can get Shot on the Run, then he will be untouchable in an Obscuring Mist.

The question is: how do you balance encounters against a Wizard in a low-magic, high-level game, even if Wizards progress at 1/2 the normal rate? Encounters that threaten the Wizard will chew up the other classes.

 

[Njall]

Excepting, of course, that in the low-magic campaign world, you are generally using much lower CR foes. Indeed, this is a world in which level 20 characters are so powerful, that they are generally heads of state and dealing with other things than just knocking in doors & taking stuff. At this point, there's more XP to be had from story awards than from monsters.

So, wait...are you really saying "well, at 20th level you don't fight, so it doesn't matter that anything can beat the crap out of you"?
This has no implication when discussing game balance.
I took a 20th level character as an example not because it was advantageous to me, but because he had better odds at surviving against a monster than a 15th level one.

Anyway, since the CR 9 seemed to be too strong for him, wanna try it with a CR 7 opponent? The problem is that CR 7 opponents have so few HP ( take, for example, a Chimaera...it has 76 HP ) and low AC that either your party kills them in a second ( if you're in a party ) or they deal you a significant amount of damage in a round...
take the aforementioned Chimaera....:
average damage is :
11x50% + 8.5x50%+ 8.5x50%+ (5.5x40%)x2= 18.4 damage/round. 8 round/day against a single chimaera at lvl 20 before you die.
But it has 76 HP: this means that if you win initiative, your party can kill it before it gets its chance to act. Put more than 1 chimaera, and your fighter will take 18.4...well, you know where this is going.

Well, first off, when the D&D guy dies, it's due to more than being "tired".

Well, when a D&D guy dies, under these rules, is for being "tired" from yesterday...:/
(Usually, you only recover 1Hp/level/day when adventuring, so recovering may take a bit... in other words, you'll end up losing more HP/day than you can recover.)

Secondly, Conan simply doesn't die in any of the REH stories....although REH does have stories where his heroes do die, and where they can be laid up due to injuries. Indeed, in one of the Howard stories, Conan is crucified, and he is definitely in need of nursing back to health thereafter.

RC

Yeah, because he's physically injured.
After he fights, however, unless he suffered real wounds, he doesn't need to be healed.

 

[Njall]

Yes, if you don't use that old common sense I mentioned earlier, you might have some problems. If you do use common sense, as I suggested earlier, then you won't set up an inescapable deathtrap.

But, then, I can set up an inescapable deathtrap without using houserules, so I fail to see the difference.

care to make a specific example with a monster taken straight from the MM?
Not about the deathtrap, that's easy. I mean, of a challenge that would be balanced for high level characters without magic?

No...."Sucks to be you" is perfectly feasable in a working game. In fact, if the players know very well that it might suck to be them, they might work together better to avoid those sorts of situations. And, when he heals and goes out again with the party who wouldn't wait, the fighter can tell the others "Sucks to be you" when he chooses not to take more punishment than the rest of the party.

Player dynamics fall under the social contract of the players, not the rules of the game.

RC

This is metagaming.
If my character is resting in bed, why should he be bothered if the rest of the party rests or does something else?

 

[DreamChaser]

However, now that they've filled in a lot of the variables with static numbers or smaller amounts of variation, you'll find that all parts of the rules will talk to each other more often and with more certainty. Thus, it will be even harder to make changes to the rules without causing the house of cards to fall down.

I actually agree with you're whole post except this last part.

I think the fact that the rules communicate "with more certainty" with each other will make it easier to see the effects of your changes.

Since, all characters have a similar baseline (BAB, Defenses), we can see immediately what the effect of, say, giving wizards an extra die of damage on an at will attack or reducing the efficacy of their spells.

In 3x, most of us lacked the mathematics skillz to reflect the difference in relative output between a 12th level sorcerer and a 12th level fighter. Now, with mutliple attacks being a talent kind of thing (rather than automatic), it should be simpler.

More importantly, because the x-mas tree lights are going out, it will be a safer assumption to go into a case of scaling magical items with an attitude of ceteras parabus (all else equal).

As someone else commented, wizards don't suffer nearly as much from a lack of magical items as fighters do in 3e. This seems as though it won't be the case in 4e.

DC