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

[PeterWeller]

Perhaps not....but they do depict the dragon trampled by St. George's horse.

Itself often smaller than Saint George himself, and even with a suitably sized dragon, you're stretching your CR limits to the breaking point, and those are built around the assumption that an entire party is taking on the target, not just a single fighter. Of course, it was a miracle, and that could have a lot do with George's success.

Depends upon how Smaug is statted, and how many criticals there are.

RC

In D&D terms, how would you stat Smaug? He's pretty damn old and large enough to blot out the sun when he's on the wing. He's going to have at least 300 or so HP. Regular archers shooting regular arrows aren't going to make a dent in his HP. Are we houseruling our own rules for dragons here? Well, then we're doing more work than one houserule and some common sense.

Again, like I mentioned in the other thread, I'm not judging your ability to houserule 3E into a low magic system, nor am I judging your houserules as a game system. I'm merely pointing out that you're cutting out huge swaths of the MM that on their own aren't high magic, but they do need high magic to take them down as statted out in D&D. You can rewrite and restat them for sure, but that does become a lot more complex than you initially stated.

With 4E, on the other hand, we know that a (I think 7th, maybe higher) party can survive and perform well without a single magic item (November podcast). Right there, you know that 4E can pull off low magic item count campaigns better than 3E could, out of the box. We also know that epic worldbreaking spells are pretty much entirely out (no more wish spell), which means you have to do less mucking about with your spell casting classes to have them better fit low magic settings. Not only that, but the Warlock fits REH's wizards and sorcerers much better than any 3E Wizard or Sorcerer has.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Itself often smaller than Saint George himself, and even with a suitably sized dragon, you're stretching your CR limits to the breaking point, and those are built around the assumption that an entire party is taking on the target, not just a single fighter. Of course, it was a miracle, and that could have a lot do with George's success.

YMMV, but I'm thinking that, even in the system I described, this dragon can be slain:

In D&D terms, how would you stat Smaug? He's pretty damn old and large enough to blot out the sun when he's on the wing.

Ancalagon the Black was the greatest and mightiest of all dragons, large enough to blot out the sun when on the wing. Smaug was not as large.

Again, like I mentioned in the other thread, I'm not judging your ability to houserule 3E into a low magic system, nor am I judging your houserules as a game system. I'm merely pointing out that you're cutting out huge swaths of the MM that on their own aren't high magic, but they do need high magic to take them down as statted out in D&D.

In a low magic game, a human warrior should generally be unable to take out a T Rex on his own. Again, this is reflected by both Conan and Tarzan having to run from dinosaurs in their respective author's works.

With 4E, on the other hand, we know that a (I think 7th, maybe higher) party can survive and perform well without a single magic item (November podcast). Right there, you know that 4E can pull off low magic item count campaigns better than 3E could, out of the box.

And, when I say that you can do the same using my one houserule, you have exactly the same amount of evidence that the system works as advertised.

RC

 

[PeterWeller]

YMMV, but I'm thinking that, even in the system I described, this dragon can be slain:

True, but that doesn't really look like the dragon I imagined when I read the legend, nor does it look like the kind of Dragon whose death would be considered miraculous.

Ancalagon the Black was the greatest and mightiest of all dragons, large enough to blot out the sun when on the wing. Smaug was not as large.

Thanks for avoiding the question. Smaug is still frikking huge. Under 3E Dragon rules, any correct depiction of Smaug's size and age is going to create a Dragon well beyond the reach of a party under your houserules. You can play with the Dragon stats, but then you're adding in another houserule.

In a low magic game, a human warrior should generally be unable to take out a T Rex on his own. Again, this is reflected by both Conan and Tarzan having to run from dinosaurs in their respective author's works.

Which is kind of funny, since CR8 T-Rexes don't look like they'd be too great a challenge for a high level hero like Conan or Tarzan under your houserules, and I bet a party of mid to high level heroes could tackle one with little trouble.

And, when I say that you can do the same using my one houserule, you have exactly the same amount of evidence that the system works as advertised.

RC

Same amount of evidence, but not same quality. Sorry, but the words of Mearls, Noonan and co. carry more weight than your own. Even considering marketing, the words of game developers working on the game in question carry more weight than a guy on the internet.

Whether or not your house rules can or can't do that isn't the point, anyway. The point is you need your one houserule to make 3E low magic. It looks like with 4E, you won't even need to do that. And your one houserule isn't even really one houserule. You mentioned adjusting how spellcasters gain spell levels. That with the "one magic item per person" makes two houserules. Then there's the common sense part of the equation. That implies that you have to adjust what is a reasonable challenge, which means you have to move further from the baseline assumptions. There's more of a cascade effect to the game then you're letting on. From what we've seen about 4E, it doesn't sound like this is going to be the case. You can seriously limit the amount of magic items your party possesses, and they will still be able to take on challenges of their level. There are also those flavor changes and additions that seem like they will better serve a low magic setting, or one influenced by the worlds we've been bringing up as examples. I'm sure low magic works in 3E with your houserules, but my point is that low magic looks like it's going to work in 4E without them. Or, in other words, presuming you want to run a low magic D&D, you're going to have less work to do in 4E than you had to do in 3E, even if you really don't have to do a lot of work to make 3E low magic.

And for the record, I agree that it isn't hard to do low magic in 3E, but to do the kind of low magic I want to do, I take a completely different route from your houserules. Also, I think the one item per person rule is a little artificial, but that might just be a product of presentation. I trust in your ability to make it flow in game.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Thanks for avoiding the question. Smaug is still frikking huge. Under 3E Dragon rules, any correct depiction of Smaug's size and age is going to create a Dragon well beyond the reach of a party under your houserules. You can play with the Dragon stats, but then you're adding in another houserule.

Sorry, but I don't have my copy of The Hobbit on me at the momment, and I don't trust my memory to be more accurate than yours of St. George's dragon or the various threats Conan faced.

Frankly, I don't think that there's anything in the book that mandates Smaug as being larger than size Huge. He doesn't cast spells (the "dragonspell" Tolkein talks about, presumably, could be modelled better with ranks in Bluff, Diplomacy, and Sense Motive). He causes fear, but not enough to drive the defenders of Long Lake away. If we looked at the book, we could probably deduce a close number, based on how many archers "make their save". Certainly, he doesn't have as many hit points as an Old D&D Red Dragon.

So, while you might be able to say that D&D 3e doesn't model Smaug well, that is a far cry from being able to model low fantasy well, with a minimum of house rules. And, I am betting, with the right templates you could get a pretty close handle on Smaug as well (although you'd probably have to dive into 3rd party sources for templates).

Finally, is modifying a monster to create a unique individual creating a house rule?


RC

 

[PeterWeller]

Finally, is modifying a monster to create a unique individual creating a house rule?


RC

No, but in this case, aren't you modifying a monster not to create a unique individual so much as your adjusting what a dragon can and can't do under D&D? Is Smaug really an atypical dragon that has to be uniquely modeled, or are we just using Smaug as an example of what kinds of dragons one might expect in a world that's still low magic?

Again, none of this is really the point, you'd rather focus on weighing your more encyclopedic knowledge of source materials to knock at ancillary examples than address the point that 4E appears to require less work than 3E when you want to play in a low magic, or Sword & Sorcery style setting. Sorry my memory of stories I read fifteen or more years ago hasn't really stood up to time, but that doesn't affect that with 3E you need your houserules to make a low magic game. 4E's drastically lessened reliance on the Christmas Tree as the baseline assumption appears to make it immediately better at providing a low magic experience.

 

[med stud]

(...)Frankly, I don't think that there's anything in the book that mandates Smaug as being larger than size Huge. (...)

He strikes down the governors mansion (described as a stone building) with one strike of his tail. I would say that he is either Colossal or the governor lived in a very small house.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

4E's drastically lessened reliance on the Christmas Tree as the baseline assumption appears to make it immediately better at providing a low magic experience.

I don't know about you, but I'd not view a game that gets rid of the dependancy on magic items by integrating more effects right into the character classes as good at providing a "low-magic experience", really. Making characters intrinsically more powerful in order to keep them from depending on magical items too much while keeping the monster abilities on a similar baseline to 3.X (only a bit different in execution) is simply shifting focus from external power source to internal power source.

 

[Imp]

I don't know about you, but I'd not view a game that gets rid of the dependancy on magic items by integrating more effects right into the character classes as good at providing a "low-magic experience", really. Making characters intrinsically more powerful in order to keep them from depending on magical items too much while keeping the monster abilities on a similar baseline to 3.X (only a bit different in execution) is simply shifting focus from external power source to internal power source.

Depends on the effect. If it's stat and save bonuses how would you tell? Low-magic / high-magic is not the same axis as cinematic / grim-and-gritty.

(speaks a fan of low-magic, cinematic games)

 

[PeterWeller]

As long as it isn't causing your blade to burst into flames and other such flashy and overtly magical powers, I don't see giving fighters stuff to put them on par with wizards a causing problem with low magic.

 

[Hussar]

I don't know about you, but I'd not view a game that gets rid of the dependancy on magic items by integrating more effects right into the character classes as good at providing a "low-magic experience", really. Making characters intrinsically more powerful in order to keep them from depending on magical items too much while keeping the monster abilities on a similar baseline to 3.X (only a bit different in execution) is simply shifting focus from external power source to internal power source.

As the others have said, it depends. A fighter ability, for example, to add +4 to his crit confirmation roll is hardly a low magic breaker, to use a feat example from 3e.

Actually, thinking about it, feats are probably the best source to look at. If you incorporate a number of the non-inherently magic feats into the base class as abilities, you can create a much more powerful base class without losing the low magic feel. Self healing can be handled as a "second wind" mechanic. Damage can be increased fairly easily. Even movement possibilities crop up with stuff like faster climbing or better swimming.

Okay, straight out flight is impossible, but, being able to jump really high or swing from a vine works just as well. An ability that lets the player declare that there is a convenient thing to swing from would do the trick and fit nicely into the idea of low magic, cinematic.

This is just spitballing right now, but, I'm thinking that with a modicum of thought, you could easily work what we've seen of 4e into a low magic setting. Not all elements, of course. But many.