tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post1509678317944665035..comments2024-03-18T07:25:03.802-07:00Comments on Against The Wicked City: Your Demon Lord Doesn't Need That Many Hit DiceJoseph Manolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-34135664722688463712016-04-15T14:20:35.260-07:002016-04-15T14:20:35.260-07:00Ancient evils slumbering in lost cities are a slig...Ancient evils slumbering in lost cities are a slightly special case, I think - I think they fill the same functional space as non-sentient puzzle encounters - "solve this or die" - rather than serving as adversaries.<br /><br />I think Kyana's point about the Lady of Pain not being statted is especially relevant - the only things it's worth statting are the things the PCs are going to take on on a vaguely equal footing; if you want to tell a story about a being that will Just Beat You in its area of competence being defeated by the PCs through stealth/trickery/negotiation/exploiting its weakness to vanilla extract/running away then it's probably clearer not to stat it at all, isn't it?<br />Jacobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11292062128781092862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-82558555146974706832016-04-15T03:54:54.786-07:002016-04-15T03:54:54.786-07:00Oh, absolutely - it's the 'full-package de...Oh, absolutely - it's the 'full-package deal' monsters, the ones with full-spectrum dominance, that are the real problem. One adventure I read recently had an effectively unkillable giant worm-monster in an enormous pit, so deep that it could only reach a small portion of its several-hundred-foot length out of the top. Stupid PCs could fight it and die, wary PCs could sneak around outside its threat radius, and clever PCs could trick it into smashing a whole bunch of dangerous magical stuff nearby on their behalf. I thought that was a great idea. I was a bit less sold on the mega-baddie in the next book, though, who was a mecha-lich of such outstanding lethality that the writers had to warp the whole plot in order to keep him out of the picture until the PCs hit level 17...Joseph Manolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-40111747522311497692016-04-15T03:43:01.368-07:002016-04-15T03:43:01.368-07:00I understand where you're coming from, and I c...I understand where you're coming from, and I certainly wouldn't want to suggest that my own personal preferences - which are definitely for a more 'grounded' setting - are inherently more valid than anyone else's. But power levels in D&D are so arbitrary that what the triumphs of the PCs 'mean' is more a matter of GM framing than anything else. If your setting is built around a bunch of ancient 'big-name' threats, then, yes, it would be a bit silly for the PCs to simply knock them down like ninepins. But that's not the only way to build a setting, and in fact there are strong advantages to *not* doing so, as each mega-baddie then creates a kind of 'no-fly-zone' around themselves within which it's very difficult to actually have adventures. Having a couple of Invincible Ancient Evils slumbering in lost cities here and there is a genre classic for a reason, and one I've got absolutely nothing against: PCs stupid enough to wake up Cthulhu *should* get eaten alive. But having them all over the damn place just clutters up your map with no-go areas for no real reason, and it's just as possible to run a Conan-style game in which the world is just full of random, colourful, dangerous *stuff* which the PCs can trick, rob, run away from, or murder to their heart's content without the sense that they've just destroyed one of the lynch-pins of the setting by doing so.<br /><br />The Lady of Pain is a really interesting example, because she exists precisely in order to preserve Sigil as a place where low-level adventures can happen. Classically, the Outer Planes were only for very high-level characters, because everything that lived there was so hostile and deadly; but by having an effectively-invincible being hanging around Sigil, dedicated to ensuring that everyone plays nice and keeps the peace, the writers were able to preserve it as an adventure-friendly location even with all those Pit Fiends wandering around. She is, essentially, a super-powerful character who exists to keep all the other super-powerful characters at bay. If she's been a *proactive* super-powerful character, determined to bend all of Sigil's inhabitants to her will, then it would be as much of an adventure-free zone as the stronghold of any other godlike being...Joseph Manolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-74923414952081078802016-04-15T03:21:22.108-07:002016-04-15T03:21:22.108-07:00I think there's a lot you can do with a monste...I think there's a lot you can do with a monster that the PCs can't hope to oppose in a fight, but can work against by sneaking around.<br /><br />"This monster is a level gazillion fighter, with a million hitpoints and the ability to splat you in one round in melee" makes for quite an interesting adversary - there are lots of ways you can effectively oppose it, you just have to avoid coming into combat with it while doing so.<br /><br />"This monster is a level gazillion wizard, able to use spells to find out where you are and what you are doing and to stop you" is much less harder to tell interesting stories with, I suspect.<br /><br />Jacobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11292062128781092862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-38860249081423168582016-04-15T02:49:24.059-07:002016-04-15T02:49:24.059-07:00It's entirely true that power comes in lots of...It's entirely true that power comes in lots of forms other than 'giant stacks of hit points', and a really rigorous analysis would compare average damage outputs and spell-like abilities and which magic items PCs are assumed to have access to at each level in each edition and all sorts of other things besides; but the point I'm trying to make is actually a lot simpler than that. Older D&D editions had a relatively 'flat' power distribution compared to the newer ones, in which the gap between the monsters and PCs at the bottom of the heap and the monsters and PCs at the top of the heap was much smaller than it later became. All I'm suggesting is that this helped to keep things more grounded, and thus more gameable, because a monster your PCs can actually threaten and be threatened by is much more useful than one that just sits around in hell being boringly invincible.<br /><br />(See also: Deathlords and elder Sidereals in Exalted.)Joseph Manolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-51665183750217727682016-04-14T20:17:08.259-07:002016-04-14T20:17:08.259-07:00[I would like to say beforehand that this is only ...[I would like to say beforehand that this is only my opinion and I don't wish to impose it on anybody.]<br /><br />I agree that there should be a lot of creatures on-scale with PC, but should those creatures really be big-names demons, gods and dragons? If adventures with on-scale big-name creatures see them falling one after another, as it tend to happen on middle-higher levels of adventuring, any sense of grand achievements eventually might be lost ('oh, yeah, another ancient god') and such creatures would become no different than unnamed owlbears. <br /><br />I think that if DM decides to make such big names on-scale with PC, the pacing of such enemies through adventures/campaign should be be of more concern than challenge they present, so on-scale big names won't wear themselves too thin too quickly.<br /><br />As for question on how useful hypothetical Lazari is going to be if King of Thousand Eyes is out of PC reach, I would like to recall Sigil of Planescape (AD&D 2nd edition) setting, where the biggest name (Lady of Pain) didn't even have any stats and was entirely out of league of any PC even if PC had godlike powers. Still, it was a wonderful setting with a lot to do, so I don't think that being off-scale would automatically reduce the usefulness of King and his kingdom.Kyanahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12992025061183651850noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-72695278032165490992016-04-14T16:30:16.055-07:002016-04-14T16:30:16.055-07:00Well, it depends what roles you want them to play ...Well, it depends what roles you want them to play in your campaign. The further up the power-scale you push things, the more they distort the setting around themselves, and the harder it is for PCs to meaningfully interact with them. As I mention in the post, I *do* think there's a place in games for beasties which are effectively invincible; but it's not a big place, and you don't need very many of them to fill it. What you do need lots and lots and lots of is creatures who are roughly on the same scale as the PCs, and can thus be fought, tricked, bargained with, allied with, evaded, and generally interacted with in-game. <br /><br />I mean, if the power of the King of the Thousand Eyes is completely off-the-scale in comparison with the PCs, then that quite drastically reduces the usefulness of his kingdom as a location for having adventures in, doesn't it?Joseph Manolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05387275537008858939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-10733729507098259502016-04-14T14:36:14.526-07:002016-04-14T14:36:14.526-07:00If almost all big-names demons/dragons/gods are co...If almost all big-names demons/dragons/gods are comparable with PCs in terms of vulnerability, won't it lead to situation where the reputation of those horrors is paper-thin? When King of Thousand Eyes oppressed realm of Lazari for hundreds of years, slaying heroes at mass, and then band of PCs came and (even if with some struggle) killed him? Just like they killed those six ancient dragons before, an elder beholder-emperor and several grand demons? Kyanahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12992025061183651850noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-392427526916288536.post-18092751368685624232016-04-14T14:23:05.183-07:002016-04-14T14:23:05.183-07:00Power isn't one-dimensional.
For example, it...Power isn't one-dimensional. <br /><br />For example, it's easy for attack and defence scaling differently to make a big difference. A game in which my PC and that owlbear are of roughly equal power, and a fight between us will be decided in two or three rounds, or even in one with a critical hit, and a game in which we're of roughly equal power and it will take us 10 rounds of hacking to settle things, with plenty of opportunities for whoever thinks they're going to lose to run, feel rather different. WoW, for example, gives its big bads hundreds or thousands of times as many HP as its PCs, but their damage output is often comparable. My impression of D&D is that defence has tended to scale much faster than attack as you level, which is one of the things that has contributed to the "Golden zone" effect between levels, say, 3 and 8 - below that fights tend to be too fast and random, too far above that they become too long and protracted (although I suspect it extends further up than this, and other problems cut in first).<br /> <br />Another obvious multidimensional effect is different sorts of power - the infamous linear warrior, quadratic wizard problem, for example. Again, this contributes to golden zone effects, probably even more sharply.<br /><br />My impression is that later editions of D&D have tended to handle both these a bit better than earlier ones, but still have issues with both of them. From what I've heard, these sorts of things were something 4th ed did a noticeably better job of than other editions, but only by radically changing what D&D looked like in other ways. Which I guess is unsurprising – if you're working on building a more gamist game, you're going to care more about balance and less about other things.Jacobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11292062128781092862noreply@blogger.com