Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8687598" data-attributes="member: 93670">I don't remember playing ad&d2e or 3.5 with a "stack of character sheets.  It wasn't all DCC funnel type play back then.  There are tons & tons of minor & major magic items to improve survival & dialup the badass dial for a PC even before starting to homebrew custom ones. The risks that d&d once had provided room for all those toys to show up at a rate that continually improved.[spoiler="Take this bit from the ad&d 2e dmgpg115"]Monty Haul Campaigns At the other extreme, the problems of too much treasure are not so easily solved. Here players may enjoy the game—and why not? Their characters are doing quite well. They have sufficient money and magic to best any situation the DM can devise. However, the DM seldom has the same enjoyment. He is faced with the task of topping the last lucrative adventure. Hemust make each adventure a greater challenge than the last. While this is true for all DMs, it is grossly exaggerated for theDM who has given out too much: How do you top the adventure where the fighter got the Hammer of Thor or some equally valuable item? Invariably, the players reach a point where they, too, become frustrated. Everything is the same—”Oh, we did this before,” or “Ho-hum. Another Sword of Instant Monster Destruction.” Soon there are no challenges left, because the characters have earned everything in the book! Fixing such a situation is far from easy. The first thing to do is to stop giving out so much treasure in future adventures. Even this isn’t as simple as it sounds, since players have already had their expectations built up. Imagine playing for months or years in a world where you routinely find 5 magical items and tens of thousands of gold pieces each adventure and then, one day, finding only two or three magical items and a thousand gold pieces! Still, painful as it may be for players, cutting back on future treasure hauls is a must. The second part of the fix is far more difficult—remove from the campaign some of what has already been given. Most players won’t voluntarily surrender their goods and equipment just because the DM made a mistake. The DM must be inventive, resorting to new and bizarre taxes, accidents, theft, and anything else he can think of. Use a given method only once and be sure to allow the characters a fair chance. Nothing will upset and anger players more than having their characters jerked about like a dog on a chain.[/spoiler]There was a loophole with that bolded bit.  An item that used charges without recovering them as was the norm was a self correcting problem. The self correcting problem even explains the presence of super powerful magic items with multiple options that might use more than one chargeNo it does not.  The system having rules that create room for the existence of monsters that are dangerous in ways that require the players to consider them a serious threat at any level does nothing of the sort.  D&d is a team game and those monsters reinforce that aspect.   What they do to fighters is require a fighter to consider the threat those monsters pose to everyone & act as part of a team rather than carelessly soloing near a bunch of players they treat like sidekicks expected to fend for themselves while doing the same with no concern for each other's contributions.In some encounters that teamwork will mean that the fighter needs to get in the way of the troll that wants to go flatten squishy allies rather than ignoring the comparably low cr troll to go flatten the bbeg... The fighter is "all about fighting" while keeping said troll from flattening a squishier party member there because everyone realizes the bbeg is the secondary threat in the fight for now. In other  encounters in other encounters it means that the fighter needs the support of their allies to run up to & fight the dragon at great risk because it's greater risk for anyone else to do so. The fighter is "all about fighting" by taking a risk nobody else can while everyone else is all about something else by supporting said fighter with something else.  In still other encounters it means that the fighter is thrilled to have a party member use some ability to keep the troll out of reach while the fighter gives a bunch of dangerous (to other pcs) trash monsters an excuse to gather up for an aoe.  The fighter is "all about fighting" there by making sure someone on the team can aoe down a bunch of trash right now rather than letting all that trash meaningfully endanger squishier types.In fact it only "runs afoul of the conception that Fighters are supposed to be all about fighting" if you define "fighting" as being able to treat every fight like <a href="https://www.pcgamer.com/world-of-warcraft-pandaren-reaches-level-90-without-leaving-starting-zone/" target="_blank">this guy</a>.</blockquote>

Verification