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Why is it so important?
- Thread starter Treebore
- Start date
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
To me it mostly has to do with the fact that the groups I've played with want to get to the end of the "mission" whatever that may be(stop the cultists from destroying the world, save the mayors daughter, find the magic artifact, etc).
They will continue to seek this goal for a short while before they will give up due to being underpowered.
Assuming the formula in the DMG works the way it is supposed to, each encounter of CR=the average party level should use up 25% of the resources of the party(It never works out exactly that way, but lets assume it's true). What I've found is that a party is willing to go into a fight with maybe 50% of their resources, but any less than that and they wisely head back to rest.
If they fight a hard battle right away, they'll rest right after it. If they fight a lot of easy encounters in a row, they'll turn back after 5 or 6 encounters. The idea of the new system is that 80% of their resources is still enough that they aren't afraid to continue.
Sure, they aren't full, but do they want to risk the enemies raising their dead or hiring and summoning new guards while they are resting? Do they want to risk the fact that the kidnapped woman might be killed tonight? The answer, in most cases, is no. They'll push on with 80% resources.
On the other hand, I've seen groups not care whatsoever about the plot at all as soon as there is a serious risk of their own deaths: "I know that the evil cult kidnapped the woman and we heard they were going to sacrifice her. But we don't know WHEN they are going to sacrifice her, right? So it COULD be next week just as easily as today, right? And, we're all out of ALL our cure spells and the wizard has only 2 spells left. Frankly, I don't think we'll survive anyways. Let's rest for the night and hope she isn't dead when we get there."
My players don't WANT to metagame...but they'll do it when the system forces them to. They'd much rather their character be the heroes and press on, even in the face of danger...it's just that at a certain point the danger becomes so great they RELY on metagaming to get them through("The DM won't have them kill her tonight, since he put us up against so many hard encounters in a row, he must have expected us to rest the night before saving her").
I see nothing wrong with each encounter being one that could go either way and the PCs having the ability to fight 20 of them in the same day.
They will continue to seek this goal for a short while before they will give up due to being underpowered.
Assuming the formula in the DMG works the way it is supposed to, each encounter of CR=the average party level should use up 25% of the resources of the party(It never works out exactly that way, but lets assume it's true). What I've found is that a party is willing to go into a fight with maybe 50% of their resources, but any less than that and they wisely head back to rest.
If they fight a hard battle right away, they'll rest right after it. If they fight a lot of easy encounters in a row, they'll turn back after 5 or 6 encounters. The idea of the new system is that 80% of their resources is still enough that they aren't afraid to continue.
Sure, they aren't full, but do they want to risk the enemies raising their dead or hiring and summoning new guards while they are resting? Do they want to risk the fact that the kidnapped woman might be killed tonight? The answer, in most cases, is no. They'll push on with 80% resources.
On the other hand, I've seen groups not care whatsoever about the plot at all as soon as there is a serious risk of their own deaths: "I know that the evil cult kidnapped the woman and we heard they were going to sacrifice her. But we don't know WHEN they are going to sacrifice her, right? So it COULD be next week just as easily as today, right? And, we're all out of ALL our cure spells and the wizard has only 2 spells left. Frankly, I don't think we'll survive anyways. Let's rest for the night and hope she isn't dead when we get there."
My players don't WANT to metagame...but they'll do it when the system forces them to. They'd much rather their character be the heroes and press on, even in the face of danger...it's just that at a certain point the danger becomes so great they RELY on metagaming to get them through("The DM won't have them kill her tonight, since he put us up against so many hard encounters in a row, he must have expected us to rest the night before saving her").
I see nothing wrong with each encounter being one that could go either way and the PCs having the ability to fight 20 of them in the same day.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
I don't think the at will abilities will be anything like "just a crossbow". I believe they will be closer to what the reserve feats look like now. Where you can do 5d6 damage to a 5ft radius if you can cast 5th level spells. You get to keep your shtick(casting area of effect spells) without being overly powerful(you could have cast fireball, doing 9d6 damage to a 20 ft radius by using your good spell). However, it never drops to the level of "I have a 20% chance of doing 1d8 damage this round". You also aren't likely outdamaging the fighters or rogues when they do their thing.gizmo33 said:
"The fighter could go either way" fights are normally depend on decisions rather than resources. For instance, you know the enemy does 50 damage a round when attacking your fighter. The fighter has 30 hit points left. Do you attack hoping that you do enough damage to kill the enemy this round, preventing the fighter from dying? Or do you cast that healing spell on the fighter for 30 hit points to keep him up just ONE more round in the hopes that you can beat the enemy next round?
That battle is close. It COULD go either way. It would be nice if you had your once a day ability to hit the enemy AND heal the fighter at the same time but you can win the battle without it.
And I think most parties aren't going to worry about the different in power they have between 80% and 100% if it makes more sense in character for them to keep going.
Raven Crowking
First Post
Patryn of Elvenshae said:
Again, it worked for me, and it worked for those I played with. Of course, that might just be a difference in game focus happening there.
In my own house rules, I did include the means for magicians to store unused spell slots (so that if you didn't adventure for a week, you could potentially store the energy in your staff and cast spells memorized using that energy instead of the energy "bound" in memorization). It still limits you to the spells you have memorized, and allows for no more spellcasting overall, but allows you to plan your resources better, so that downtime becomes the means to store power for adventuring. It is also not unlimited. And I had to nerf quite a few spells to avoid them becoming runaways under such a system!
So, I recognize that more ability to use your spells to better effect would be a good thing, and if the per encounter abilities worked somewhat akin to that, I would be happy. I just think that the Vancian system has outperformed all competitors up to this point.
It is the speculation, considering all that could go wrong or right, that really bothers me.
RC
Aus_Snow said:Yes, in fact, I have.
I must have missed it then.
I have seen Dacileva post evidence that there are some people who do not enjoy playing a low level wizard because of the lack of spells.
I have seen you outright dismiss some of the posts (WotC and Usenet) and say that other sources aren't worth considering (UA) but I have seen no evidence that these should be dismissed outright as they have been. I am more than willing to listen to both sides of the arguement but I've only seen one side (on if these posts are evidence of a 'problem' or not).
You are correct that a lot fewer posters have voiced a complaint about the low level wizard "issue" than are regular posters on the board. You do make a good point in that the number of posters voicing the complaint should be taken into account because one (and only one) loud voice proclaiming there is a problem doesn't mean there really is one (doesn't mean there isn't as well - the sky may in fact be falling; but I will fully agree it's easier to take the issue seriously if 100 people are saying it rather than just one).
On the issue of the lack of posters complaining you can add one more poster to the complaint list - me. I hate playing low level wizards. A couple magic missles and a few Rays of Frost and I'm done for the day while we still have a couple more fights (my DM likes time constarints on missions). So... yeah... I dole out the spells so I have some left. I pull out a ranged weapon and try to roll well to conserve power but here I am being punished for doing what I am supposed to do (I'm supposed to be a spell caster and if I cast spells then I can't cast spells later).
Sign me up at around level 5 or 6 - where it is no longer a question of 'should I cast a spell so I can be effective later' but instead is 'what spell should I cast so I can be effective later'.
Why haven't I complained about this sooner? Two reasons... I lurked here for years but only signed up last year so I haven't given myself a lot of time to complain about it. As for complaining after I joined others have complained for me. I don't like posting a "Me Too!" message so there was no point until now.
So... Me Too!
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