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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 5662310" data-attributes="member: 1165">I can't support that kind of game design and story writing. The DR change in 3.x was an excellent change.You came up with a good change, but there were other ways around that issue too.Instead, parties tend to freak out without healers. Good TPK chances without healers. It's not different, it's just ... different details.I disagree with this. There is nothing preventing "unfair" challenges. The problem is that they're "unfair". DMs tend to shy away from using them. As long as it makes sense, and (in the interest of fairness) PCs have fair warning, then it's not a problem.If 3rd-level PCs sneak into the dragon's hoard and face a 15th-level solo, that's their fault. If they don't even make it because they stepped on a 10th-level monster summoning trap, that is also their fault. Either they didn't heed warnings, or the players weren't clever enough to deal with the problem. That hasn't changed.You're looking at a generational change, most of which have to do with story-telling and empowering players rather than rules. It has next to nothing to do with editions.You can fix that with inherent bonuses. Saves a lot of bookkeeping too. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Well, that was a tad glib. But in 2e, PCs went adventuring for loot and treasure. It's a little odd if they're not getting any.Sure you could make a trap into an encounter by itself. Failing skill challenges can deal damage on each failed check, they can summon monsters, etc. Most skill challenges will say something like "give XP as if facing 1-3 monsters of this level", leaving you free to toss in other traps (or monsters as you wish). Furthermore skill challenges give all PCs something to do in-game. While the rogue is disarming one part of the trap, the wizard is erasing runes and the fighter is using Athletics to push over a pillar or smashing that orb that keeps zapping the whole party.Part of the fun is figuring out what a character can do (out-of-game) and then the DM will hopefully make that possible in-game. (In short, if you didn't expect the fighter to want to push over a pillar, don't sweat it. Just pick a reasonable DC and step back.)A "plain" skill challenge is sort of like fighting endless hordes of zombies. Dangerous, perhaps, but not exciting. Like any encounter, the DM has to put work into making it fun. I guess this means I reject the notion that skill challenges aren't fun. Rather, like any other kind of encounter, they can be boring.Traps are usually designed as part of an encounter with monsters or NPCs, however, to give the rest of the PCs something to do while the rogue does his thing. (That was especially the case in later 3.x, when they didn't seem to have multi-role skill challenges yet.) The PCs could be taking on blaster traps while the rogue tries to disable the master control panel. Naturally that is protected by a stationary animated statue or a magic mouth that spits poison darts, so maybe the cleric needs to heal the rogue or the fighter needs to protect him, etc.Multiclassing still works. If you wanted to be a bard but pretending to be a wizard, multiclass into wizard, use some recognizable wizard spells, and use flavor text to "obscure" the rest of your abilities (eg their names). Given the thousands of powers out there (literally) there's no way the other players should see through that right away. In 2e, gaining a level took a long time. You gained free WP, and PCs gain free feats in 4e (every other level). The cost is the same. Indeed, the cost is less in 4e since it takes less time to gain a level (and therefore retrain a feat or just take a new one).This is something I agree with. I don't think it's a bad thing, since at least for the wizard the type of implement you use is a class feature, but it's something to take into account. An orb wizard can use a wand, it just prevents them from using a class ability - I'm pretty sure that's how it works anyway. It's certainly no barrier when it comes to other caster classes.That has nothing to do with the system. That's a setting issue. You can ban tieflings, warforged and vampires if you feel like it. (Only one of those is a core race.) 2e had books for undead PCs. About the only thing they were missing are warforged, and that's setting dependent. (What were those outsider/construct/undead PCs anyway?)Needs explanations <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Wizards can't cut your head off. Swordsmen can't surround you with a wall of fire and watch you cook to death.Good. That's boring.It was boring in 2e, even. I recall being in a 2e campaign (one of the last I was in, pretty sure it was the 2nd-last one), just starting out. Our only healer was a paladin who could heal 2 hp/day. We found so many healing potions all over the place (like a video game!) once the DM noticed how much the games bogged down...(I hope I don't get burned at the stake for comparing 2e to a video game!)They might complain now. There's been a generational shift in the way games have been played.As for the second, you can certainly do that in 4e. Praxton has lots of levels, so much higher defenses. The PCs need really high rolls to hit him. They'd certainly need to use different tactics if they want to threaten him at all at low levels. In 2e, monster ACs and hit points were usually quite poor (then again, so were PCs), so perhaps immunity to non/low-magic weapons were a way to preserve powerful creatures.Seems like a bit of a player issue. But far more of a story issue; I think the player had a point there that requiring the PCs to find the story artifacts is bad writing. There should always be another way. If you have an adventure where you must make a Survival check (for instance) or you can never find the bad guys, that adventure would suffer from justifiably bad writing.If the villain is so powerful, and he knows the PCs are both dangerous and much weaker than him, then why isn't he going to off them himself? If you can't explain that, part of the adventure needs rewriting. Is he busy? On another plane? Doesn't he have assistants of nearly equal level to be doing stuff, or is this an epic villain and heroic flunkies.It seems to me you're trying to run a 2e adventure now, but it was written years and years ago, and obviously cannot keep up with the cultural and generational changes. You need to do more work to fix that adventure's problems.Wizards tapping out really early is a bad thing. It was part of the 5 minute adventuring day mindset, and it existed in 2e too (a bit less since the other PCs weren't much more resilient). PET PEEVE ALERT: For some reasons, this happens to wizards in every RPG novel too. No wizard can cast more than three spells a day. You can find out their level if they're casting Magic Missile (amateur) or Meteor Swarm (epic), but no novel wizard can cast more than three spells a day. (I wish there was a trope to describe this.)You can still use caster NPCs. They're still different. I never understand how someone can look at the wizard's spell list in 4e and think that's not different from a fighter. Wizards can't mark, they don't deal great damage, but they can make you kill your friends and teleport away when someone gets too close.On equipment issues you have the right of it. Of course, the PC can sell the magic axe for something more useful to them. That's easier with the Disenchant Magic Item and item creation rituals; you don't even have to go back to town, you just need to spend time. Hiding in a room, while your buddies fearfully cover the doors/gaps, hoping no one interrupts while the caster is busy. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'm only really looking at Dark Sun right now, but did take a look at Dragon Mountain recently. I was amused to find that 1st-level minion kobolds can be a threat due to their mobbing ability plus aid another in 4e. It's ridiculous, and wouldn't come up much, but if 8 kobolds surrounded a PC and 7 use aid another, the remaining kobold gets a +21 bonus to hit (not the expected +14, add another +1 per kobold due to the mobbing trait). It's even better if you tweak them to get the same bonus to damage.Which is easy when the first time the PCs run into the kobolds they face 15 kobolds per PC. (Also preserves the flavor of wizards utterly destroying vast clumps of low-defense minions.)In Dragon Mountain 2e, while kobolds didn't get this ability for free, they obviously playtested/theorycrafted the adventure, and suggested pretty much the same thing. (Heck, that adventure might be responsible for the kobold Mob Attack ability in 4e. Why wasn't that in 3e?)Sure.And as you can see, not only does this make the monster tough, it also gives PCs without the artifacts a way of dealing with it. And if worse comes to worse, they can just accept they'll deal less damage and attack anyway. Not a smart strategy, but doable <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I've accidentally TPK'ed the PCs thrice in 4e, but since none of them were "planned overwhelming encounters" I just made "rules errors" so they simply "almost" died.In one case the PCs were even smart. They saw the villain, a necromancer, seemingly by himself, on a sand dune over the Silt Sea - obviously a prepared position. He was doing a ritual. One PC wanted to wait until he died of thirst (they'd kill anyone trying to resupply him) but they (correctly) concluded the ritual would make him much more powerful and so attacked. They ended up walking into a trap, naturally. There were creatures burrowed in the sand that gave him warning and dished out damage, while another powerful creature (his mount) unburrowed itself, trampled over the PCs (fortunately it kept missing) and then the necromancer started dishing out the hurt. The end result: one PC survived, at 3 hit points, when he finally killed the necro. Then he started triggering Second Winds <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> He actually lived due to a few math errors on my part. The battle was actually "fair" according to the XP budget (I think level +3).Twice they ended up stringing two encounters together; once by accident, and once because the NPCs planned for things that way. In the latter case, if I hadn't "accidentally" forgotten the rules on a regenerating power the PCs were using, they would have all died.There was a near (but fair) near-TPK when they fought a tembo. It was delevelled and still massacred them. The reduced healing aura didn't help.I think people get the impression that killing PCs in 4e is harder because it's harder to do so accidentally. A crit from a 1st-level orc isn't likely to kill a 1st-level PC in one hit, but it's certainly doable.That's not a 4e issue. At all. You allowing anything into your game is the flavor issue here. You didn't have to allow wilden (weird), invoker (non-core), warforged (setting specific), artificer (should have been setting specific, was back in 3.5), minotaur (not in the PH1), battlemind (non-core), revenant (non-core) and a vampire (non-core and a terrible class for about a hundred reasons).And the wizard player likes this? Really? How is that good for the game? Those novel wizards are wimps, I tell ya. I think that's a case of nostalgia run amok.</blockquote>

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