Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;514495I hate the assassination tables, and simply refuse to use them. It feels too much like having a combat that takes place "off-screen", with the victim having a limited say in what happens to him. The mechanics for it just don't feel right for me.

It's totally fine by me. You're the DM at your own table. The "off-screen" comment isn't about the Assassination table on p.75 of the DMG though, is it? It seems to me you are referring to the Assassinations as described on p.20, which use the Spying rules on p.18, including the complexity of the task and the time it requires to accomplish, which is definitely a mean to simulate the planning, spying, etc. leading to an Assassination attempt "off camera", whether we are talking about Assassin NPCs hired by the party (cf. spies) or not.

Quote from: Benoist;514483Depends. Just dropping an Assassin of 9th level and beyond is actually something that isn't every day fare. These NPCs are exceedingly rare.

You can check out the section of Assassin hirelings p. 17-18 of the DMG. You will see there that the Grandfather of the Assassins will always have 28 followers of 2nd through 8th level as follows: 1 8th level, 2 7th level, 3 6th level, 4 5th level, 5 4th level, 6 3rd level, and 7 2nd level, to which you add a bunch of 1st level Assassins. The Guildmaster, likewise, may not get any Assassin under his employ of greater than 8th level.

To tackle a 13th level fighter, an Assassin (careful, planning people by nature, not insane, incompetent idiots) would need to feel confident he or she can take him in a fight. Any 8th level Assassin would only have a 20% chance of success of Assassination in a confrontation, assuming NEAR OPTIMUM conditions, i.e. the potential victim isn't wary, isn't taking any precautions, isn't guarded at all by his henchmen and hirelings (note: 13th level fighters have a minimum of 61 men at their disposal at any time, see Fighters followers p. 16 of the DMG). See the bottom of the Assassination table p.75 for said caveats.

Any Assassin under 8th level would never accept a contract involving such a powerful character. Which means our Assassin is one elite Assassin (Prime Assassin if he is 13th level, a freaking legend of Assassins himself), who would be payed extremely handsomely for the deed by extremely wealthy individuals who have one hell of a grudge against our Fighter.

What did the Fighter do to trigger such an Assassination attempt performed by a ultimate expert like this? If it's "just because", then I think the DM is being a dick and/or ignoring the context I just talked about. If the Fighter did something very specific, like slap a duke in front of the King or something that he knew would have extremely dire consequences, then he must be ready for them. Or at least be weary enough that he knows something is coming (thereby lowering the chances of Assassination on the table accordingly, from a base depending on the level of the Assassin, Assassins beyond 8th level being, again, exceedingly rare to come by).

If I was the DM, I would use this as an opportunity for development in the campaign. First, such an event would be triggered by the player, not me. That means his Fighter would have done something incredibly foolish or foolhardy to have a contract of that magnitude on his head. Second, I would actually make it into a scenario or some elements of the campaign by which the Fighter might learn that such a contract exists without knowing who hired the Assassin, who the Assassin is, leaving the Player and his companions deal with the investigation and set of precautions, maybe ambushing the Assassin or trying to figure out who he is, what his usual MO is, how he would go about his plan to reach the Fighter in his Stronghold, etc etc. That's awesome!

But to answer your question: if the DM just drops an Assassin like this "because" and I just die outright like this, yeah, I'll think the DM is a dick and/or an incompetent, not knowing the context I just talked about. If the DM is not an incompetent/dick, and that my character might be wary, planning stuff and so on, or entirely suprised because of my own carelessness, in which case... that's another matter entirely! I would have had to have made some huge mistakes to get myself in this situation, probably, to then fail at preparing myself and so on, to result in an instant death like this. And if it does occur... there's always the Cleric to bring me back so we can find out what the hell just happened. Another adventure! It never ends.

Well I chose 9th and 13th because I felt that you would have to be 13th level to merit the ammount of money it woudl cost to hire a 9th level assasin...

The rest of your post is entirely situational and I can certainly get a 13th level fighter to hire any NPC and of course being a complete bastard that I am I would never do any of this but if I did you can bet that as soon as the guy was dead he would know that the guy that killed him was that guy he hired last month that he was never quite sure of.

I was really juxtaposing the assasination tables as a PC feat with the assassination table being used against PCs to highlight it's broken-ness.

Also you have to remember a lot of people use the assasination table as a assasin;s supprise attack and it is fails you still deal damage so a poisoned knife still initiates a save or die roll....

But it was an aside

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;514495I hate the assassination tables, and simply refuse to use them. It feels too much like having a combat that takes place "off-screen", with the victim having a limited say in what happens to him. It's a near-"auto-kill", and unbalanced as hell for a non-magical attack. The mechanics for it just don't feel right for me.

If my players want to assassinate someone in 1e, they have to track down their quarry, hide in shadows, move silently, and then get themselves into a position where they backstab the fucker with a poisoned blade. Roll that d20.

No assassination tables in my game. Period. :pundit:

agreed

Quote from: jibbajibba;514501Well I chose 9th and 13th because I felt that you would have to be 13th level to merit the ammount of money it woudl cost to hire a 9th level assasin...

The rest of your post is entirely situational and I can certainly get a 13th level fighter to hire any NPC and of course being a complete bastard that I am I would never do any of this but if I did you can bet that as soon as the guy was dead he would know that the guy that killed him was that guy he hired last month that he was never quite sure of.

I was really juxtaposing the assasination tables as a PC feat with the assassination table being used against PCs to highlight it's broken-ness.

Also you have to remember a lot of people use the assasination table as a assasin;s supprise attack and it is fails you still deal damage so a poisoned knife still initiates a save or die roll....

But it was an aside

Well it seems to me you are talking about different things at once now. Your initial example was pretty clear to me: you were talking about a 13th level Fighter getting killed outright by some Assassin NPC in the course of the campaign. That's what I understood anyway.

Now you seem to be saying that another PC hired the Assassin to kill the 13th level Fighter PC. This is predicated on the notion said hiring PC knows about such an Assassin NPC, and that the Assassin NPC accepts the contract, none of which are automatic or obvious in my campaign.

And then you seem to be talking about Assassination as the ability for an Assassin Player Character to kill a target, which is altogether different, and yes will depend on a host of factors including being able to surprise said opponent, and THEN when that succeeds having the chances of Assassination modified by all the caveats explained at the bottom of the Assassination table on p. 75 of the DMG. It's a type of scenario that will enormously depend on the precise circumstances of it occurring in game, for instance when we are talking of PCs exploring a dungeon where the inhabitants may know of the existence of intruders, have systems of alarm, chiefs with henchmen and bodyguards, and so on so forth.

So I'm a bit confused as to the type of situation you are talking about. It seems to me you're talking about all and none of them at the same time, while to me, looking at the rules of the Assassin class in the PH, on p. 75 of the DMG, and on pages 18-20 of the same book regarding "off camera" Assassination and Spying attempts, this is very dependant on the exact nature of the scenario considered, and the DM's adjudication thereof.

In any case. Sure, you do whatever you want with your campaign. I don't find Assassinations especially off balance in my games.

Quote from: Benoist;514505Well it seems to me you are talking about different things at once now. Your initial example was pretty clear to me: you were talking about a 13th level Fighter getting killed outright by some Assassin NPC in the course of the campaign. That's what I understood anyway.

Now you seem to be saying that another PC hired the Assassin to kill the 13th level Fighter PC. This is predicated on the notion said hiring PC knows about such an Assassin NPC, and that the Assassin NPC accepts the contract, none of which are automatic or obvious in my campaign.

And then you seem to be talking about Assassination as the ability for an Assassin Player Character to kill a target, which is altogether different, and yes will depend on a host of factors including being able to surprise said opponent, and THEN when that succeeds having the chances of Assassination modified by all the caveats explained at the bottom of the Assassination table on p. 75 of the DMG. It's a type of scenario that will enormously depend on the precise circumstances of it occurring in game, especially when we are talking of PCs exploring a dungeon where the inhabitants may know of the existence of intruders, have systems of alarm, chiefs with henchmen and bodyguards, and so on so forth.

So I'm a bit confused as to the type of situation you are talking about. It seems to me you're talking about all and none of them at the same time, while to me, looking at the rules of the Assassin class in the PH, on p. 75 of thet DMG, and on pages 18-20 of the same book regarding "off camera" Assassination and Spying attempts, this is very dependant on the exact nature of the scenario considered, and the DM's adjudication thereof.

Sorry Ben I am using shorthand and not explaining myself. Apologies when I get out of work sometimes I am just used to condensing all my explanations because we all knwo what we are talking about.

You are exactly right I was talking about a13th level PC being killed by a 9th level assassin using the assasination table on page 75.

I was talking about a 9th level assassin and a 13th level PC because I felt that a 13th level PC woudl likely have made enough enemies to merit the attention of a 9th level assassination contract.

I am holding the assasination table up as an example of a broken rule that is worse than anything you see in 4e. Instant kill an entire subsystem separate to combat is a pretty odd design choice

Quote from: jibbajibba;514508Sorry Ben I am using shorthand and not explaining myself. Apologies when I get out of work sometimes I am just used to condensing all my explanations because we all knwo what we are talking about.

You are exactly right I was talking about a13th level PC being killed by a 9th level assassin using the assasination table on page 75.

I was talking about a 9th level assassin and a 13th level PC because I felt that a 13th level PC woudl likely have made enough enemies to merit the attention of a 9th level assassination contract.

OK I see what you mean now. Yeah, I think my post earlier was spot on, actually: to me it'll really depend on the particulars of the campaign and what triggered the assassination attempt itself, whether I had a chance to be aware of it before hand or not, if that leads to a whole series of investigations and complications which would allow us uncover the identity of the assassin and his masters, why it happened and so on, what happens when I am raised from the dead etc.

Quote from: jibbajibba;514508I am holding the assasination table up as an example of a broken rule that is worse than anything you see in 4e. Instant kill an entire subsystem separate to combat is a pretty odd design choice

OK.

Not me. It's not "broken" to me because (1) there are many mitigating factors to its actual efficiency in each particular scenario, and (2) I can use it in a way that doesn't destroy the game, and quite the opposite, adds layers of complications to it which lead to new adventures, new stuff going on, as I explained in my post earlier, which is cool in my book. But then, I'm no 4e guy, and the whole "rules balance" thing is total bullshit to me.

To clarify - 1e Assassination is not "broken" and 3e Diplomacy is "broken"?

Quote from: Rum Cove;514524To clarify - 1e Assassination is not "broken" and 3e Diplomacy is "broken"?

1e Assassination isn't "broken" to me. Others have talked about Diplomacy in 3e. Not me. I just pointed out that I never liked the 3e skills defined by edges rather than center.

You know, in AD&D, there isn't that much daylight between 9th and 13th level statswise. Except for casters. I'd say a 9th level assassin ought to have a 1 in 5 chance of dropping the (unassisted by similar-level PCs) 13th level fighter without using the tables, and roleplaying it all out.

Quote from: jibbajibba;514473No in my game you had 12 hit points the goblins had 6 and everything did 1d6 damage + Body bonus.

My game system is far too simple to satisfy professional gamers

But perhaps not to simple to satisfy the causal gamers that most of the big games like D&D ignore these days preferring to design for the hobbyist who wants hundreds of pages of rules. My point is that I see nothing unprofessional about the game design -- unless your target audience is Gamist players looking for another 500 pages of complex rules.  

QuoteYou have to remember I am quite happy asking my players as they sit down what genre, style of game, system requirements and core mechanic they want and then ad-libbing the entire game system as we go along.

Personally, I don't think anyone who can't do that deserves the title of "game designer."

At least according to those who played in or watched the campaign, one of the best games I ever ran was basically made up as I went along. The very first version of Marvel Universe "comics" detailing marvel heroes in 12 issues was being punished in the early 1980s. By the time the first four or five issues were out, people wanted to play these characters. However, they did not want to convert them to Champions or the like, they just wanted to play them. I told everyone interest to bring percentile dice and be ready to play their favorite (already covered in the issues out) Marvel character.

We played a weekly game at the comic shop I co-owned for three or four months and people had a blast. The game system we used could be summed up as "You want to roll high on the percentile dice."  TSR's Marvel Superheroes was out by the time we wanted to do superheroes again, but this worked and worked well -- and I was making up everything but the character descriptions as I went along.

Quote from: RandallS;514534But perhaps not to simple to satisfy the causal gamers that most of the big games like D&D ignore these days preferring to design for the hobbyist who wants hundreds of pages of rules. My point is that I see nothing unprofessional about the game design -- unless your target audience is Gamist players looking for another 500 pages of complex rules.  



Personally, I don't think anyone who can't do that deserves the title of "game designer."

At least according to those who played in or watched the campaign, one of the best games I ever ran was basically made up as I went along. The very first version of Marvel Universe "comics" detailing marvel heroes in 12 issues was being punished in the early 1980s. By the time the first four or five issues were out, people wanted to play these characters. However, they did not want to convert them to Champions or the like, they just wanted to play them. I told everyone interest to bring percentile dice and be ready to play their favorite (already covered in the issues out) Marvel character.

We played a weekly game at the comic shop I co-owned for three or four months and people had a blast. The game system we used could be summed up as "You want to roll high on the percentile dice."  TSR's Marvel Superheroes was out by the time we wanted to do superheroes again, but this worked and worked well -- and I was making up everything but the character descriptions as I went along.

Totally agree

I am working on a fantasy heartbreaker but that is more complex as I am building everything from toolboxes to be included in the game.

Quote from: beejazz;514405I'm certain a rules system can't *cover* everything (and that's fine; we have GMs for a reason), but it doesn't absolutely have to "break down." Also, where a system "breaks down" (if it does) matters. D&D breaking down a little outside the dungeon is fine because the dungeon is what it was built for. If 3x broke down after level 20 I'd be fine with it because it was really only built as a 20-level game. And so on.

It should have rules for everything characters could reasonably expect to find themselves doing; beyond that, it should have the skeleton to construct additional parts if needed.

Frex, Shadowrun doesn't have an explicit cookery mechanic. But, what it does have is rules for trivial actions ("I read the cooking time and put it in the microwave for that long.") and adding new skills if required (Personally, I'd break cooking into prep and presentation skills, and require a minimum of 1 hit in prep for cooking from a packet, 2 for following a recipe, and 3 for cooking from scratch, with higher only being good for foodies. Scoring less presentation hits than prep hits means it looks crap, more means it looks great).

If anything, I'd say that the lack of methods of extrapolation would be what defines a "storygame" as opposed to an "RPG", for me. If there are only mechanics for what the game wants you to do, and no way to break outside of that, it's a "storygame".

Quote from: beejazz;514232So would you agree that 3x was not built for low levels only (given the wide breadth of high level material) but still included content that would be useless at high levels (toughness)

Well, yes. Who the fuck thinks the stat block for Orcus is widely useful in a 1st level campaign?

QuoteIs there a case to be made that a game shouldn't be filled with content useless to a context it appears to be built for?

You mean is there a case for AD&D not to have stat blocks for vanilla orcs because they aren't a significant threat to 15th level characters? No. I don't think there is a case for that.

Quoteor ridiculously powerful at high levels (diplomacy)?

Diplomacy, in specific, is -- as I have said multiple times in this thread -- a fundamentally broken rule at a conceptual level. Because of the fundamental brokenness it becomes ridiculously powerful at very low levels. (IOW, it can break the back of an E6 campaign without anyone even trying to do it.)

Needless to say, it also remains broken at high levels.

It's also pretty much irrelevant to the discussion of spherical cows, because it clearly isn't a spherical cow: Everyone agrees the rule is broken. The only people who don't are people who refuse to use the rule as written. Anyone actually using the Diplomacy rules will find them broken; there's nothing situational about it. The only thing that varies by situation is how OFTEN you find them broken.

Quote from: beejazz;514244I can't speak to most RPG mechanics, as there is more out there than I've read. But my experience with 3x is that the game breaks down at sufficiently high levels. It's a common experience and complaint, from what I've heard.

I would argue that, broadly speaking, this is true. My experience is that around 12th level the PCs start getting the resources to aggressively take control of encounter pacing, which allows the spellcasters to begin dominating play.

By 15th level, the spellcasters have achieved significant superiority as long as they can keep their goals sufficiently focused. And around this time, the second big problem rears its head: The range between the haves and have-nots on the key stats -- attack rolls, AC, saving throws -- exceeds 10 points, which means that you can either:

(a) Challenge one set of PCs while making it a cake-walk for the other; or
(b) Challenge one set of PCs while making it impossible for the other

The spellcaster-vs-mundane problem arises because 2E abandoned the high-level campaign structures that had been present in the game since OD&D. Reintroduce these structures and most of the problems disappear (partly because the spellcasters can't focus their resources; mostly because the non-spellcasters get to keep their high-level toys).

The Epic Level Handbook tried to solve the bonus-differentiation problem by locking in the differentiation at 20th level and maintaining it. But this failed partly because (a) it was applying the cap too late; and (b) it did nothing to control the specialized accumulation of magic items (which meant that differentiation in bonuses would continue to expand).

One method is to use one of the E(X) system caps. (A properly structured E12 or E15 would give you most of the high level play from the core rulebooks while avoiding some of the most problematic elements.) Another would be to come in around 10th level and lock in the bonus differentiation (i.e., people keep improving but they all improve at the same rate from that point forward) on the key stats.

Quote from: Windjammer;514206I had stated that the real estate values and real estate arrangements on a Monopoly board are part of the rules in a sense that scenario design is not.

And I'm not really clear how you're concluding that. Are you really under the impression that the Caves of Chaos don't play differently if you swap out all the orcs for ogres and then redraw the map so that it has a different layout?

Let me put it another way: Go play an RPG without a scenario. You'll have just as much luck with that as you would playing Monopoly without a board.

Let me put it a third way: The rules and board of Monopoly constitute a complete package that you can play. The rules of an RPG are functionally incomplete: You need a scenario in order to use them.

Let me put it a fourth way: I can take Basic D&D + B2 Keep on the Borderlands and I can swap out module B2 and replace it with B3 Palace of the Silver Princess. In similar fashion, I can take the rules of Monopoly + the board of Monopoly and I can swap out the board.  In both cases, the result will be a different game (or possibly the same game will play out in a very different way; depending on how you want to define your terms).

Let's say I replace it with a board in the shape of a figure 8; and when you reach the intersection in the middle of the board you can choose which direction you go. Or maybe I make a board in the shape of a plus sign and you can go out into each spoke and then you have to come back. Those are radical changes. But maybe I just change all the properties and their values. Maybe instead of similarly-colored properties being grouped together, I scatter them across the board. Maybe I just make the board bigger; or make it smaller (so that you pass Go more often). Those are smaller changes, but they're still going to have a significant impact on how the game plays out.

As a random note, it occurs to me that awesome fluff can make up for bad mechanics.  I'm far more willing to work with junk mechanics with writing that inspires me to want to make them work than with mediocre mechanics and dull writing.

Quote from: B.T.;514564As a random note, it occurs to me that awesome fluff can make up for bad mechanics.  I'm far more willing to work with junk mechanics with writing that inspires me to want to make them work than with mediocre mechanics and dull writing.

Same here, as my life-long love/hate affair with Rifts attests.