Wizards in 4E have been 'neutered' argument...

[Nifft]

Sounds like the DM above was railroaded by the player, not the other way around.

Finding the projected image/secret door? Clever.
Rules-lawyering the ring/rod/disintegrate? Discourteous.
Badgering the DM into the spellbook and extra XP? Jerkish.

Agreed.

Being able to manage the kind of players who make good hams involves being able to stomp down the egos of the charismatic, in such a way that they enjoy it.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Sounds like the DM above was railroaded by the player, not the other way around.

Finding the projected image/secret door? Clever.
Rules-lawyering the ring/rod/disintegrate? Discourteous.
Badgering the DM into the spellbook and extra XP? Jerkish.

Yep. Welcome to group who taught me how D&D was supposed to be played. That player is the one who invited me to the group to try it.

We sometimes thought he was a jerk. But then again, the prevailing opinion was that our DM at the time was way too easily manipulated. Meanwhile the player was the most crafty amongst us and able to get whatever he wanted.

There's another story about the same DM. She apparently didn't know that the +1 part of a +1 weapon added to both to hit and damage(which she really should have, she had been running the game for a while), she thought it was to hit only. A different player bet her that it was both and if he won he could bring in any character he wanted to with "basic equipment". She saw no problem with this. He proved her wrong. He created a character who came from a far away kingdom he made up(our DM regularly let us add on to her world in order to make up backgrounds for our characters as long as it didn't effect anything already established in the game). He apparently had a Dragon Mount, and a +5 Sword and +5 Armor at level 1. He told the DM that everyone from that country who was in the military had that as standard equipment. And she had lost the bet fair and square.

So she let him have it. I never heard what happened to it as that happened before I joined the group and he had already switched characters by the time I joined. Still, that was pretty much standard for the group...if you outsmarted the DM, you could have whatever you wanted because the DM played by the letter of the rules as well as "realism" when the rules were silent. Make a logical enough argument using "realism" and you could have whatever you wanted.

It's actually one of the reasons I liked 3e and now 4e so much. There were a lot more rules and therefore a lot less times someone could appeal to the DM using "logic" and "realism" in order to get whatever they wanted.

And in an effort to stay on topic...it's the reason I like the nerfing of Wizards because their rules rely less on balancing the game with logic and instead balance the game with numbers. It's too easy to use a Wish spell to get yourself completely and utterly broken if you can convince the DM of it. It isn't nearly as easy to use Fireball for the same purpose.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

But it could have been avoided by the DM simply placing a "lock" on the secret door at any time. When the Knock spell was cast, the Wizard teleports out. A 3 silver dead bolt could have saved the adventure. Safety first, kids.

I'm fairly certain he had a knock spell prepared. Everyone always does. Which I suppose is kind of the point. Wizards ALWAYS have a way around whatever you plan.

 

[Votan]

And to add insult to injury, the player asked where the Wizard's spellbook was and the DM said "Not here, she left it elsewhere" and the player went on a tirade about how "No Wizard leaves their spellbook out of reach, besides, we had evidence that she'd been here for multiple days and she had been casting spells during that time. She needed her spellbook to rememorize the spells." Until the DM was forced to agree, that yes...the spellbook was in the room. Which he then promptly picked up and due to the XP for GP rule from 1e gained 4 levels just by picking it up(he convinced the DM that each spell in the book should be assigned the GP value of a scroll of that spell, since they essentially WERE scrolls).

Two options:

1) The spellbook was on the wizard (in a pouch of holding) and is now a fine spray of dust.

2) No wizard planning to teleport away (as an evasive action) would ever have the spellbook lying around (to be seized). It'd be elsewhere in a locked vault or secreted in a place that only the wizard knew.

Wow. I am amazed that worked . . .

 

[billd91]

But then again, the prevailing opinion was that our DM at the time was way too easily manipulated. Meanwhile the player was the most crafty amongst us and able to get whatever he wanted.

I think this is why your example really doesn't say much about how the wizard always has a way around the DM's plans. The impression I got was that the DM was too easily manipulated by a clever player willing to weasel the ref into agreeing to whatever he wanted, not that the player waltzed through the encounter because he was a wizard.

The specific situation may have involved a wizard, but I can see a number of ways the situation could have been manipulated into an easy win with other PC classes.

 

[Herschel]

I'm fairly certain he had a knock spell prepared. Everyone always does. Which I suppose is kind of the point. Wizards ALWAYS have a way around whatever you plan.

Very true, but that three silver dead bolt makes an awfully nice alarm that someone is coming, especially if they've left the scrying area.

 

[Harlekin]

This is the key to why it works differently. Most encounters of EL=Average Party Level or lower are actually so easy that they don't use up significant resources. The book says that EL=APL should use up 20% resources. In a good group they don't use up anywhere near that amount.

Most EL=APL encounters can be defeated entirely by non-casters without using any magic items. The worst that happens is that the party is forced to use a couple of charges of their Wand of Cure Light Wounds at the end of the combat. 4 charges from one of 3 Wands the party is carrying is less than 1% of the party's resources.

It's only due to slight variations on luck and the difficulty of individual monsters that parties have to cast any spells at all against encounters of this difficulty. It gives the Wizards the freedom to just stand there was delay for the entire encounter without worry.

That is pretty much my theory. And it would explain why different people on this board have very different play experiences with 3.5.

I also have the hypothesis that many gamers that came up through 1st and 2nd edition stuck with their "old ways" of designing encounters.

Some people feel like encounters at the EL=APL level are a little too easy. If you don't have to cast any spells at all, where is the difficulty? You might as well not bother spending the 30 minutes running the combat because it's easier to mark 20 damage on the fighter and say you win. At least, that's how a lot of players feel. My friends included.

You need to use EL=APL+3 or higher encounters for it to feel like you needed to use a real amount of resources to survive. It feels like a fight for your life if you needed to cast 2 disintegration spells and 3 fireballs in the same combat while at the same time the Cleric needed to cast a Heal, 2 Cure Critical Wounds and a Cure Serious.

This is when we have the most fun...it feels like we ALL need to pull together and use our abilities or we'll lose. Which is why fighting more than 2 or 3 combats of that difficulty a day were next to impossible. Sometimes more than 1 was next to impossible.

I agree that these kind of fights can be fun, but IME they have a bad effect on the game overall. They force the dreaded 15 min adventurers day, they necessitate well-built characters, and they foster a DM vs players atmosphere.
Personally I prefer adventure design that leaves place for quirky PCs, inefficient strategies chosen for RP reasons, and many encounters between rests.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

I agree that these kind of fights can be fun, but IME they have a bad effect on the game overall. They force the dreaded 15 min adventurers day, they necessitate well-built characters, and they foster a DM vs players atmosphere.
Personally I prefer adventure design that leaves place for quirky PCs, inefficient strategies chosen for RP reasons, and many encounters between rests.

There really isn't much middle ground with 3E. Its either trivial or nail biting intense, sometimes both.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What would you attribute your lack of PC death to? I'm totally not trying to be snarky here. When I ran the World's Largest Dungeon (which is pretty similar to RttToEE) I was whacking a PC about every 3 sessions. I had one player, by the end of 80 sessions of the campaign, on his SIXTH PC.

How did you manage it? Could it have been the DM? Did your DM roll in the open (I know that increased my lethality considerably)?

I know you're not being snarky!

Its not the DMs- of that I'm sure. Our core group has, besides me, 4 other guys who have DMed adventures for the group, each with an individual playstyle. At least one is a completely by-the-book type- no fudging either way. Most- except me- favor a PHB only or PHB + Completes only type game, sans Psionics or anything like that, and minimal stuff (if anything) from extraneous campaign sourcebooks. Usually, monster races are not allowed and alternative class features & templates are not used. Sometimes, PHB classes or races get excluded, like Paladins and Halflings. 3PP stuff is right out. Dragon magazine & the DCv1 aren't used very often, and you can usually forget PHB2, Unearthed Arcana and all that stuff. (All- again- except me.)

This doesn't mean, though, that PC builds are simple or cookie-cutter- especially in my case. My Dex-based Monk with a polearm and my Mage-Brute both were run in that core group.

Without the vast array of later-developed feats, spells and gear, the main factors in survivability have to be, IMHO:

• A strong preference for PC builds- solo or multiclassed- including warrior classes. Most builds are with base classes (regardless of role) only, as well.
• Our generally stingy playstyle when it comes to spell use.

The preference for warrior classes in PC builds means we have better than average HP, AC and BAB on a per-PC basis.

That we all tend to use spells like they're gold and not sand means that we generally have a little surprise left in store when most parties wouldn't.

We use magic to get a situation under control, then let our melee prowess carry the battle. Simply put, we get the upper hand, then slog it out, depending on our HP, AC and BAB to finish off our foes. Now, our combats typically lasted much longer than the 3-4 rounds that so many people talk about, but when our casters stop casting, our foes are usually not landing a lot of high-damage blows anymore, and it starts looking like a back-alley beatdown. With things under control, the casters stop casting...and sometimes even lend a hand with the odd crossbow bolt or thrown dagger. Or coup-de-grace.

IF something oddball happens, the magic came out again.

And because we're so stingy, even if a random encounter pops up or a rest-time raid occurs, we still have magic at our disposal.

This actually goes back to the kind of stuff I was trying to get at in my ill-fated, poorly worded thread from last year,
SPR: Quantification of the "Theurge-style" PrCls.

As was correctly pointed out in that thread by many others, there are certain things only high-level magic can do.

However, in my experience (over the 12 years in this group, playing 2Ed and 3.X, along with 11 more years prior experience with my Wiz-o-phile buddy), sometimes a lot of low-level magic- judiciously used- in accord with the right tactics and equipment can achieve the same goals, just not as quickly and efficiently.

Our party got through RttToEE with few, if any, divine spells of level 3 or higher. We didn't have the big massive heals, but we had slews of minor ones- the party was rarely at 100%, but we seldom got below 25%- and we had only one Wizard slinging big combat spells.

 

[pawsplay]

There really isn't much middle ground with 3E. Its either trivial or nail biting intense, sometimes both.

Well, there's little middle ground in edition comparisons, at any rate.