What's with high-powered campaigns?

[Akrasia]

Deep, that.

Yes.

Seriously, whatever hong mocks, take serioursly. Seriously. I am being totally serious.

 

[Nellisir]

What is really a high-powered campaign? Isn't it so that the DM gives PCs something more or better than normal because the adventure is more difficult?

So my question, why aren't we ever looking forward to play a low-powered campaign? I mean adventures where you are less powerful than the challenges you have to face...

By the latter definition, all my campaigns are low-powered, despite having above-standard-power characters.
As a DM, I like to keep the players on the edge of their seats. I like situations that are outside of the norm -- I'm not a "day in the life" campaign sort of DM. I like campaign that are bigger than life, and bigger than ordinary, and that requires above normal characters.

If an encounter is less powerful than the characters, then they get less XP for it...and a creeping sensation that that was just too easy....

Cheers
Nell.

 

[Desdichado]

The group I'm in doesn't like low-level campaigns. Why? It's because we can't do anything. We fight a couple of creatures and need to rest. A trap is sprung and we spend a large amount of resources on that simple potion of moderate wounds. Although not necessarily true depending on the campaign/character, but I've found that my group likes to do more different things. They like to have more options. They like a variety. It is simply not possible at low levels.

I love low level. And I don't buy your argument at all. You can make the same skill checks, you have the same combat options, you can do the same roleplaying, and if you're creative, you can come up with the same out of the box solutions that aren't strictly covered by the rules at any level in the game. And, if the challenges are scaled appropriately, the chance of success and consequences of failure should be roughly equivalent. The only thing you've got at higher level are bigger numbers, more feats and more spells.

 

[Piratecat]

I don't like to play characters with scores below 10 and like 1 or 2 16+ scores, so I don't make my players play anything I wouldn't play.

Interestingly enough, I dislike playing a character who *doesn't* have at least one score below 10. My ideal PC would have an 8 and maybe a 9.

I find that I like D&D at all levels. For me, the excitement of low level is that you're always courting death. That makes the game very exciting for me.

 

[Li Shenron]

The reason why I think my players would like to have enchanced stats is to have more tactical versitility.

That would be true only if the players actually chose to enhance stats other than their primary one or two, but IMXP it doesn't happen.
A Fighter with mid-high Charisma has more tactical versatility, a Fighter with guaranteed 18 in Strength doesn't IMHO. At best a player would put the extra points in Constitution.

This is especially true of a fighter who ends up with 1 skill point per level, or a wizard who needs a 20 to hit with either a melee or ranged weapon, etc. As a player it's annoying to come up to an encounter and think, "well I'd like to negotiate but no one speaks sylvan. Our rogue made a character that was a good spotter (spot/listen/search) and con artist (disguise/appraise/bluff/sense motive/sleight of hand/escape artist) so he can't even attempt to hide to ambush them.

These are good points, and the reason why I have given bonus feats or extra class skills or skill points. However it's not written in the Bible that the party should be able to do everything...

I'd like to lay down a trap, but my character with an int of 8 would never think to attempt that.

GONG! (The sound of a gong rebounds in my empty head...) This sentence of yours suggests something important about why we want boosted PCs. We have come to believe that a PC with Int 8 is dumb. I think we should still remember that the original idea behind stats is that 10.5 is the human average: this means that 50% of the human population has Int 10 or lower. Neverthless we're so used at playing only uber-character that we think Int 8 is bordering with subnormal I think a related problem is that we forgot the meaning of low-stats.

In addition, it's very hard to use some character concepts with low stats. A fighter that used to be a professional blacksmith? That's pretty much hard to do at low stats without also hurting your ability to fulfill your party role. A monk who is a master of languages? Also tough to do. Actually, if you use a low stat (like 25 point buy) you're going to have a hard time making an effective tactical monk at all.

Another thing we got used to is min-maxing. What makes you think that the only way to play a good blacksmith is to max out the craft skill? Why should every ranger max out Hide, Move Silently and Survival? Can't you live with something less than maximum? We must have very different ideas about the meaning of "versatility"

Sorry if it seems like I'm picking all from your post, obviously I've nothing against you it's just that you seem to represent the general trend of gamers. That of course includes myself as well

 

[Narfellus]

low level

Just to chime in, i run (and love) low to mid level campaigns (12th at the highest). I'm running an underdark Midnight campaign now with two guys, and they WANTED to start at 10th level. So fine, they wanted more powerful characters from the get go, that's not a problem. In fact, we were experimenting with a house-ruled point based system, and the duergar druid turned out considerably stronger than the halforc werebat (i think the druid player actually did his character wrong, as he has WAY too many spell points and hit points). Nevertheless, i was able to adjust the adventures to compensate for the unbalanced level of power. In fact, it has been fun because they have been sufficiently challenged, with very little help from other outside magic influences to fall back on. The druid can heal, and he can cast up to 5th level magic ( i capped it at 5th in this campaign, only the legates can cast higher) but because there are only 2 of these guys up against fomorians, derro hordes, aboleths, fire giants, and more, they needed every edge they could get. But i still want to power him down, and then adjust the enemies accordingly.

 

[iblis]

Standard D&D characters are not weak, but neverthless the tendence of gaming groups is to want to play so called "high-powered campaigns", and the PHB/DMG/UA suggest for example alternate score generation methods to have more powerful characters.

I don't find that to be so. Only some players want high-powered characters some of the time. Sometimes, they/we prefer low-powered stuff.

I confess that I have also given the PCs something extra (bonus feats or skills) or used point-buy with up to 32 points. But sometimes I wonder what's whole point of it? What is really a high-powered campaign? Isn't it so that the DM gives PCs something more or better than normal because the adventure is more difficult? Or is it actually a lame attempt to pursue the exact opposite, an easier game because you are more powerful? I wonder this because soo many people around this very board seem to run/play adventures with boosted characters, but it doesn't sound like the monsters are boosted up as well, or are they?

Personally, I believe the system is close enough to balanced to not warrant breaking it irredeemably by adding lots of power-ups constantly...or any ever really. The whole point of it? Hmm...ego stroking? Nah, I don't know. It baffles me.

A few players I've gamed with were quite obsessed by computer games and I think they learned from those to have more fun if their characters had an easy time in every battle, bashing everything with ease and minimal strategy. In a way, it seemed like they believed that the more experience they had in a game, the more they were entitled to be powerful... shouldn't it be the other way around? Normally, the more experienced you are in any hobby (or work), the hardest challenges you are looking for to be more satisfied.

Exactly. I tend to be crueler, as GM, to experienced players. Not so it actually unbalances play; in fact it probably balances play. I also expect, and get, the same from other GMs when I'm a player, because I've been playing for a fair while.

So my question, why aren't we ever looking forward to play a low-powered campaign? I mean adventures where you are less powerful than the challenges you have to face...

Ah now, then players might have to think and plan and work together. Tut!

 

[hong]

I love low level. And I don't buy your argument at all. You can make the same skill checks, you have the same combat options,

No you don't. Just off the top of my head, at low levels, you can't

- fly
- teleport
- polymorph (except in a very limited fashion)
- cast most divinations
- cast most instakill spells
- recover rapidly from most types of damage except hit points

From a more strategic/campaign design viewpoint, you also can't go up against a big group of low-HD mooks and slaughter them with impunity.

These are the things that differentiate low-level from high-level play. They've been hashed out innumerable times before. Whether or not you LIKE these things is, of course, something else entirely. But to claim that you have just as many tactical options at low as at high levels is just wrong. If that was the case, you wouldn't have people complaining about how high levels isn't the game they want to play either.

 

[The_Gneech]

I prefer to start the game with higher stats and then not hand out buff items. I've ranted before on how D&D has an "equipment makes the man" problem, and I still feel that way. I know that D&D isn't a Fantasy Literature Simulator, but it does have roots in fantasy literature ... and generally speaking fantasy heroes might have one or two unique items, but they don't stock up on tons of different ones. I think it's kinda silly, in the context of heroic fantasy, for everyone to have stats in the 8 - 16 range, and then get amulets/rings/gloves/cloaks of "+4 to this, that, or the other thing."

I also think the phaerimm are kinda silly. But that's just a coincidence.

-The Gneech

 

[GlassJaw]

Great thread. Lots of interesting comments.

Can't you live with something less than maximum?

I think this sums up the high-powered mentality. High-powered campaigns are more concerned about stats and the numbers than low-powered campaigns. It's just the nature of d20 and 3.x. WotC caters to the player that wants to kill everything the fastest.

I used to get on the soapbox about how each style of play is valid and all that stuff, blah, blah, blah. No more. In my experience, high-power play is different. Very different. The motivations of the players (not the characters) are different. High-powered games are about stats. They have to be because in order to keep up with the inherent CR of the system, you have to have your abilities maxed out or have the shiny new widget just to be effective.

Low-magic/low-powered games are different. Toning down the power creep, magic, and items changes the game dramatically. You no longer need and accountant to maintain you character sheet. The feel of the game changes. My RPG holy grail right now is to get to a point as a DM (and as a group) where the stats and numbers are secondary (or at least complementary) to the storyline and campaign itself.

I've been in an ongoing high-powered campaign for the past 2 years now. The reliance on crunch is so prevalent, especially at the higher levels, is pretty shocking. The system feeds itself. The higher the level, the more crunch that's available and needed. It's essentially a power struggle between the players and the DM with respect to challenging the characters. And when we do encounter a challenge, some players aren't pleased when we don't just roll over it. What happens then? Hit the books. What new buff spell can I use or what item can I get for next time? Rinse and repeat. Yawn.

The group I'm in doesn't like low-level campaigns. Why? It's because we can't do anything

'Nuff said.