Quote from: Rincewind1;498533Bollocks. Pundit likes Amber, he can't be against character backstories - and they are imo important for immersion, as they are the moment to flesh the character out.

Haha, yeah. Immersion.  "My parents treated me kindly." "You were just a TINY BABY, you can't DO THAT."

QuoteFirst of all, you mistake "allowing wizards to be slightly more powerful" with "letting them become overlords of humanity riding fellow players like bitches".

That's the proposal, essentially. Right?

QuoteBut let's say that the spellcaster has magic that allows him for some really powerful spells, compared to what the rest of the party can do, but he retains a low hit dice of DnD wizard.

Hit dice are not the main means of high level D&D3 spellcaster protection even  before this change.

QuoteObviously, term "glass cannon" comes to mind. And if you see an enemy party - you send out your rogue with a poison - tipped arrow  to take the enemy's wizard out.

You can't see the wizard, he's invisible. Or an illusion.  And he can see your rogue. And poison doesn't do anything to hinder his spell use. And he's immune to arrows all day. And anyway, he saw you first.

QuoteRemember that adventurer's aren't some random morons running around - they are people who live in the world for quite some time. They know what their wizard is capable of - they will want to take other's side wizard out first.

Like I say, reducing all combats to "whose wizard can get a spell off first" seems like boring combats to me.

But if that's what you're after and you don't think that would be boring, go ahead.

I think it would be boring as hell.

QuoteYou can hinder the wizard in other ways - perhaps drawing upon the very arcane power is dangerous, as it can render the user mad?

Wait, what?! I thought the whole point of this exercise was to make spellcasters more powerful.

If you want to try to balance spellcasting in other ways, I'm all for it. As...everything I've posted in the thread has shown.

QuoteYou call these things problems, I call them opportunities. I'm trying to advice Werekoala  that an imbalanced party is not equal to a bad party.

No, it's true, clearly you don't find it boring to show up to a game and sit there doing dick-all while we wait with bated breath to see if the spellcasters' initiative rolls work out in our favor. I do.

See JDCorley, the problem is now - I can take such a party, and they will have a terrific game. Because I'm a good GM, and mechanics are my bitch, not I am theirs. So I can put a 20th level wizard at the lead of 1st level party, and they'll all still have a blast. And for the last time - I had written"let the Wizards be more powerful then warriors", not "Let the wizards be the cruel overlords of the party". Check it.

Heck, you know what, maybe I'll even write such a scenario after I'm finished with my current work, just to showcase that it can be done.

Take this rule and hammer it into your head, whenever you care about anything else I posted or not. Srsly.


Mechanics will never substitute for good GMing

I agree, I assume all the proposed games we're talking about had good GMs, so I don't know what the hell that has to do with anything whatsoever related to the topic.

And actually a high-level wizard leading a low-level party seems like a good way to get what you want, so...good for you, I guess?  But it really works better when a wizard level and a non-wizard level are equivalent, so you can gauge exactly how much more powerful the wizard you want is. It sounds like there's a point at which it's too powerful?

Quote from: Werekoala;498066Clearly my brain got scrambled a bit by our most recent Edition Warz thread, but an idea popped into my head that I think might work.

One of the things about D&D is the eternal problem of character's HP increasing to the point that lower-level critters are no longer a credible threat. Now I know you can do the "always fighting orcs" tactic of just buffing up the orcs, but what about if the characters leveled but didn't get any more HP - like, ever - except maybe through magic items or spells (so temporary or subject to being damaged/lost)?

That way (seems to me) you'd have characters whose powers grew over time, but whe were still fragile enough that you could run a "gritty" campaign with all orcs all the time (or skellies or whatever) and keep the danger levels high without having 20HD zombies or something being needed to pose any kind of threat. You'd have the added bonus of PCs being able to cut through swathes of low-level baddies as their powers/spells/abilites increased, but it would also "keep them honest" in that they wouldn't do it with impunity.

Additionally, this does away with some of the head-scratching that comes along with wondering how gaining experience makes a person as tough as a Sherman Tank eventually.

Think that might work?

One of my systems uses something along this line.

HP starting is a little higher, but fighters gain only 2-5 per lev, down to 1-2 per lev for mages.  

I added a 'use protection ability' and a 'potential protection' to each armor.   Bascially, fighters gain 1 point of 'use protection' per 3 levels (3, 6, 9, 12).  Clerics got it 1 per 4 levels, thief types one per 5 levels.  So a 6th level fighter may have only 23 hp on average, but if they are wearing armor, they have what is called these days a Damage reduction of 2 from most attacks per attack.

Casters are adjusted by basically making spells above first level more difficult to cast with a spell success roll.  So when a caster first gets the ability to cast a spell, it was basically a crapshoot if it would work.  Spells below the casters get easier and easier based on how far below the caster's level they are.  So at level 5, fireball is a 50% chance of working...changes the dynamic of combat, etc, when the artillery is hit or miss.  By the time the mage is level 7, it has a 60% chance of working, at level 9, that fireball (or any third level spell) has an 80% chance of working....you can see how this changes the dynamic, as that wall of armor called a fighter becomes a lot more important when the spell might or might not work.

Character backstory is absolutely fine, before the campaign starts, as long as it is approved by the GM, who's authority is absolute.
There is no immersion before the campaign begins, by definition, since immersion only happens in play.  Duh.

RPGPundit

Interesting theory, so if we've been playing for a few sessions and I musingly say, "I think my guy should have a brother," I've destroyed the hobby? Or will there be some tattered remnants left?

Quote from: JDCorley;499027Interesting theory, so if we've been playing for a few sessions and I musingly say, "I think my guy should have a brother," I've destroyed the hobby? Or will there be some tattered remnants left?

To me - no, unless it'd break the campaign in some way, and it is important for your character.

Come on Corley. Pundit is an extremist, after all. You know that. The difference is, you can call him an extremist and call on his bullshit extremism at times, and he will not crank out the banhammer 'cos you insulted him, as he could. And that's why I like his style.

The difference between who and what? I don' get it.

Quote from: JDCorley;499027Interesting theory, so if we've been playing for a few sessions and I musingly say, "I think my guy should have a brother," I've destroyed the hobby? Or will there be some tattered remnants left?

In my opinion this sort of thing is usually fine, so long as it doesn't lead to inconsistencies (and GM approval is particularly important to me when things are proposed during play). You aren't going to be able to think of everything about your character and some stuff will come up during play (do I have any business connections in this city? What is my father's occupation).

If you said "My character should have a brother" in my game, I'd tell you your character probably needs to have a conversation with his parents. Depending on their age and other factors, he could have a brother in 9 months. No guarantees - might be a sister.

Kaldric has given the only non-swine answer. The rest of you are forever story gamers. Report for your tattoo.

Quote from: JDCorley;499318Kaldric has given the only non-swine answer. The rest of you are forever story gamers. Report for your tattoo.

Actually I did that after like, first three posts here .

I got my tattoo back when they published Dragonlance. I just don't like that kind of game as much, so play it rarely, and run rarelier.

Quote from: Kaldric;499262If you said "My character should have a brother" in my game, I'd tell you your character probably needs to have a conversation with his parents. Depending on their age and other factors, he could have a brother in 9 months. No guarantees - might be a sister.

Good answer!

Less jokingly, though, its not really for the player to decide after the game starts whether he has a brother or not.  If there's some goddamned reason, he could suggest it, and the GM is the one who would say yes or no to that.  
To give a different sort of example, the PC might be at a fancy dinner party, and conversation turns to riding.  The player could certainly ask the GM "it would make sense that my upper class character could be into showjumping, right?".  The Gm would then decide if that was the case.

The other side of that is that the GM can, of course, impose backstory on the player.  Though again, as a question of etiquette, he may sometimes want to ask the player what he thinks about it; and the GM should NOT impose any backstory that would actually radically oblige the player to change how he's RPed the character until that time.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Werekoala;498066Clearly my brain got scrambled a bit by our most recent Edition Warz thread, but an idea popped into my head that I think might work.

One of the things about D&D is the eternal problem of character's HP increasing to the point that lower-level critters are no longer a credible threat. Now I know you can do the "always fighting orcs" tactic of just buffing up the orcs, but what about if the characters leveled but didn't get any more HP - like, ever - except maybe through magic items or spells (so temporary or subject to being damaged/lost)?

That way (seems to me) you'd have characters whose powers grew over time, but whe were still fragile enough that you could run a "gritty" campaign with all orcs all the time (or skellies or whatever) and keep the danger levels high without having 20HD zombies or something being needed to pose any kind of threat. You'd have the added bonus of PCs being able to cut through swathes of low-level baddies as their powers/spells/abilites increased, but it would also "keep them honest" in that they wouldn't do it with impunity.

Additionally, this does away with some of the head-scratching that comes along with wondering how gaining experience makes a person as tough as a Sherman Tank eventually.

Think that might work?

Haven't read the whole thread but isn't there something called E6 based on a similar concept? The one that's like 3x but it stops at 6 and you keep getting feats?