WOTC's research on gaming groups

[hong]

hong, I don't know how this became a prestige class debate, but here goes nothing. . .

Here is another example, from your guildmage example above. . . the player comes to me and says he is interested in this guildmage PrC - and you say, well the guildmages of such and such don't get those abilities they get these [<---insert some other PrC] - because of the nature of the guild or the setting or whatever, would you still allow the Guildmage PrC?

Well, if I'm thinking that guildmages get _these_ abilities as opposed to _those_ abilities, I would say that I've implicitly accepted that there is a place for _a_ guildmage prestige class in my campaign. So yes, I would allow a guildmage PrC. The question then becomes, is the _player_ still willing to play a guildmage after I've made these changes to the published class so that it fits in with my world. If he is, then there's no problem; if he isn't, then that's something for us to resolve.

In practice though, if I've actually got to the stage of saying that guildmages get these abilities and not those abilities, I've probably already got most of the class statted out in my mind. In which case, I would have alerted my player to the fact that I've got a custom PrC that he might be interested in. This helps to prevent the situation where someone wants to play a PrC that definitely doesn't exist in the campaign.

Finally, I don't think a "guildmage" is such a specific concept that I would have to go to the trouble of tweaking published classes to make them fit my game. Maybe if the guild I had in mind specialised in some narrow aspect of magic, like summoning or boom spells or whatnot. But that isn't quite what I was talking about.

 

[hong]

Re: .

The Shadow Dancer, and the Dwarven Defender were a power gaming nightmare.

The dwarven defender isn't that great at high levels, because being a tank fighter is a thankless task when you get that far. Not being able to move around to avoid enemies just makes it worse. Let's stick around and let the dragon with the +50 grapple check and the Snatch feat chew my head off! What fun!

 

[jmucchiello]

Finally, I don't think a "guildmage" is such a specific concept that I would have to go to the trouble of tweaking published classes to make them fit my game. Maybe if the guild I had in mind specialised in some narrow aspect of magic, like summoning or boom spells or whatnot. But that isn't quite what I was talking about.

Actually, I think you and Nemmerle are talking about two different things. For you a campaign world is fluid. The farther the players are from something the less reality it has. So someone comes to you and says I want a guildmage of waterdeep kind of prc to attain. You look at your world map and say "I haven't done much with Splith. Let's put the guild there."

OTOH, nemmerle has an a priori campaign world. It exists. It's history has been written. If something never occured to the DM/creator it cannot ever exist:

The city of Splith was founded in 1934 (old reckonning) and has withstood precisely three sieges in the last 500 years. At no time have the mages of that city needed to band together publically and form a guild. A secret mageguild is there, but it's only for enchanter specialists and unless someone tells him about it he cannot take the class.

This is how I view the two of you going back and forth. You want to create an environment where you and your players have fun. Nemmerle wants to create a world and show it to his players.

Different strokes.

 

[hong]

Actually, I think you and Nemmerle are talking about two different things.

You may be right. However:

Splith

Spiff.

Spliff

Spiff.

Spliff

SPIFF


Thank you.

 

[Telgian]

Spiffy?

Telgian.

 

[Kamard]

Spliff would be a funnier place to live though, I think.

...

 

[DDK]

Yeah, but if there is no such thing as the "Archmage of Spliff"...

-snip-

...within the guidelines for elves and blade-singers as laid down by me DM, arbitrator of the setting.

Oh dear God... Hell must've frozen over... I'm in complete agreeance with nemmerle...

Someone fetch a doctor, my body is reacting badly to the news

One of the key reasons I feel my last group broke up was because I lost control to the players. It was my own doing and none of their fault in what happened, but in so doing, it became less of a roleplaying game and more of game playing game.

What I mean is that the focus shifted from the character to the characters stats. The final straw for me was when a player sent me an email describing why he deserved to get a PrC (he wasn't sure because I had made rumblings about a lack of roleplaying). He listed three incidents where he had roleplayed for all of a combined five minutes of time in which he had gotten only the basic of basic hints and clues and advice and thought that constituted a reasonable amount of roleplaying to justify getting the PrC, considering there was no roleplaying prerequisite for it and he had all the system prereq's for it.

In fact... that is why I quit as the DM. I simply couldn't bring myself to award the player the PrC since I didn't feel he deserved it based on what his character had done in game. And there I was, feeling like poop because everyone felt I was being unfair.

So now my stance is NO PrC's can be gained by player choice, only by in character action. In other words, nobody comes to me and says, "Hey, I want the X PrC". They roleplay and I determine what PrC is appropriate and when it is ready to be gained and then offer it as an option which can be taken or not. At least, that's the theory, I'm yet to put it into practice since, when I put this to my players, they all ran screaming...

 

[hong]

They roleplay and I determine what PrC is appropriate and when it is ready to be gained and then offer it as an option which can be taken or not. At least, that's the theory, I'm yet to put it into practice since, when I put this to my players, they all ran screaming...

"We had to kill the campaign in order to save it"?


Hong "an interesting strategy" Ooi

 

[DDK]

Plethora of Prestigious Pulp (was... some other topic, I've forgotten about...)

These possibilities don't seem very likely to me. You don't need that many people to form a guild, and for a large city (population > 20,000) it doesn't seem that unreasonable that there would be at least a dozen or so wizards who would be willing to band together to carry out research or other wizardly duties.

Guilds form for a reason and each guild, like any 'club', gains it's quirks over time. They usually start with a certain philosophy, like for instance the masons, and they usually have active political connections either through their interests or simply as a default of being powerful people who have enough influence and money to be able to form an official guild (there are taxes, tithes and licences after all and there needs be a meeting place; if you've ever tried to form a non-profit organization, you'll understand just how friggin difficult it is and just how much money you need to do it).

Given that a new guild is likely not to have the resources or tradition required to be able to teach members such things as arcane secrets, they're not likely to have a PrC attached to them either. Therefore it is most likely that the older, more powerful guilds are the ones that enable members to gain certain prestige classes, and even then, such tutelage would be an honour most likely only given to those who earn it in some way.

Now, I don't know about you, but all of this seems highly specific to a setting and the interpretation of that setting by the DM. I agree that PrC's can be adapted, however the plethora of PrC's out there tends to put the power into the players hands rather than the DM's. This is a social issue, not a game system one. So to me, the fact that I'm pressured by players, and the fact that I want to have a fun game, which requires happy, fulfilled players, means that the more PrC's that are on the market, the LESS choice I have in how my game is run.

Essentially, to be a good DM these days, you have to be an ogre, ready to club players into submission, IMO. Otherwise the players take over and nobody ends up happy. This is why I now understand some peoples preference for 2nd ed. DM'ing 2nd ed, despite all its inadequacies, sure was a helluva lot easier.

 

[hong]

Re: Plethora of Prestigious Pulp (was... some other topic, I've forgotten about...)

Essentially, to be a good DM these days, you have to be an ogre, ready to club players into submission, IMO.

If you really think that, I think you're just a bad DM.