Why must numbers go up?

[pemerton]

I want the game world to be populated by a large number of boars.

A boar doesn't represent much of a challenge to a high level PC.

I want the PC's to be challenged by boars throughout their careers.

I shall make boars level appropriate to the PC's to achieve this.

So in order to keep the math in the range we want it, there are now boars running
around that can kill owlbears, wyverns, and manticores.

Are there many people who play 4e this way?

The MM has two boars, a 6th level version which lives in the natural world and presumably represents your standard supertough wild boar. It's not as tough as a bear or owlbear, but it's not a lot weaker than one either.

Then there are thunderfury boars that live in the feywild and (presumably) are hunted by eladrin hunting parties. These are (mechanically) appropriate foes for mid-paragon PCs who might be hanging out with eladrin on the feywild. Are they tougher than owlbears? We don't really need to answer that question, because PCs who are fighting thundefury boars on the feywild won't be fighting ordinary owlbears, and the winterclaw owlbears they might be fighting are about the same level, and so no difference will be apparent that the story needs to accommodate.

But even for those players and GMs who assume that the numbers are a strict measure of ingame toughness as well as indicators of the metagame parameters for encounter design don't need to embrace any absurdities - the thunderfury boars that would eat all the world's bears are, after all, not in the world but in the feywild, where everything is tougher.

So who is running a 4e game in which the world is littered with manticores killed by boars, and in which demigods realise their epic destinies by killing these superboars?

 

[Hussar]

Agreed. The fundamental issue of the endless escalation has almost nothing to do with the
in-game economy and everything to do with a game designed to provide a challenge to a set
of probabilities on a sheet of paper rather than the person participating.
It is a simple MMOism.
I want the game world to be populated by a large number of boars.

A boar doesn't represent much of a challenge to a high level PC.

I want the PC's to be challenged by boars throughout their careers.

I shall make boars level appropriate to the PC's to achieve this.

So in order to keep the math in the range we want it, there are now boars running
around that can kill owlbears, wyverns, and manticores.

But, what if instead of boar, we use orc?

Now scaling is no problem at all. Orcs right from Basic D&D have been scaled for larger challenges. Chieftain's are treated as Bugbears and the like. 3e allowed you to use orcs pretty much exclusively if you wished.

Now, if for some bizarre reason, you have a plague of boars in your world and you want boars, well, there'd have to be a pretty interesting backstory to that to make it interesting. But, there are lots of creatures in the game that have scaled.

As far as giving an edition a pass for doing what came before, well, again, why criticise one specific edition and not all editions? Instead of complaining that 4e does something, like having scaled opponents, why not complain that D&D scales opponents? After all, D&D has ALWAYS scaled opponents according to the needs of the "story".

Isle of Dread has human natives that are basic humans. Isle of the Ape has human natives that are all high level barbarians. Is this realistic or fair? Or is it simply responding to the needs of the game?

 

[Garthanos]

Doug and Garthanos, I want to agree with both of you. GM narrative skill helps make the nonsense look more plausible by the lights of ingame and general genre logic. But the genre of D&D is pretty gonzo fantasy!

Well I guess you can do that we weren't massively in opposition... I have found D&D flexible enough that if I try for not gonzo I can get not gonzo.

 

[Hussar]

Well I guess you can do that we weren't massively in opposition... I have found D&D flexible enough that if I try for not gonzo I can get not gonzo.

All comes down to what you mean by gonzo I suppose. Multiple intelligent races, nearly every encounter featuring magic, multiple magic items per character, dozens, if not hundreds of combats over the course of a campaign. To me, that adds up to pretty gonzo. But, then again, I find almost all fantasy to be pretty gonzo.

'swhy I like it.

 

[pemerton]

I'm with Hussar on this one. It's gonzo, and it's good! (I also like 1990s Hong Kong martial arts and action films, and the 1981 version of Excalibur.)

 

[Garthanos]

and the 1981 version of Excalibur.)

See for me that was Mythic the king bound to the land and the lands a giant Totemic Dragon hurrah.

 

[billd91]

and the 1981 version of Excalibur.)

[digression]Ugh. I hated that movie. Really, really hated it.[/digression]

 

[Garthanos]

All comes down to what you mean by gonzo I suppose. Multiple intelligent races, nearly every encounter featuring magic, multiple magic items per character, dozens, if not hundreds of combats over the course of a campaign. To me, that adds up to pretty gonzo. But, then again, I find almost all fantasy to be pretty gonzo.

'swhy I like it.

Heh, I have been doing my own game world so long.. I occasionally forget. Mostly human centric.. elves are a genetically engineered human race (with a soul that mingrated from the fey realms they say). In 4e I flavor any race as either a mutant individual or something created in the last war or a human with unique gifts ...or some combination that suits the player in question, humans are incredibly magical race who has remade the world in the manner of there fantasies.... Auld worlders are humans who maintain the magical gifts as do elves but most modern humans are rather anti magicallly inclined culturally (in spite of there gifts), Most true healers were destroyed in a cataclysmic event a few generations back so the gift is rather strained. (Ritual healing aka true remove affliction/Wound style healing is being limited here not the inspirational battle field stuff of 4e ... which is mostly skinned in very martially fashion).

Magic items are more the do things variety ... even weapons have effects like never requiring sharpening or very resistant to breaking... or have a set skill level of there own which you easily outgrow... they probably have the binding enchantments that prevents you from being disarmed just like the magical saddles... but there also magic flying disks (with similar fields to keep on one them) and fire lances. For Auldworlders magic items are shrug no big deal.

 

[pemerton]

See for me that was Mythic the king bound to the land and the lands a giant Totemic Dragon hurrah.

I like that bit too. But it's also a movie in which the knights travel, eat and have sex wearing full plate. It's beautifully presented, thematically compelling gonzo. But when all's said and done, I still think it's gonzo.