Quote from: MGuy;586306Weighted Averages are not inherently intellectually dishonest. At best I can surmise that he is claiming tat he is using the averages dishonestly. As for why characters don't die so often in games I would believe that is because people don't want characters to die that often so they adjust the game to keep that from happening either consciously or subconsciously. Considering that I'd suspect most of the people speaking here on the subject are the type that side step the rules for fun then it is a no brainer as to why it doesn't come up. From my experience playing low levels "straight" can very often lead to unintended, unpreventable character death seeing as though about every character is one decent ambush or lucky crit away from death no save.

There is no side stepping.  No ignoring rules.  No fudging of the dice.  We literally broke it down for you, using basic math and the rules as they are written to explain why weighted averages are important and relevant.  If a creature only has a certain % chance of hitting a character, then factoring that percentage into the equation of analysis is not only honest, it's required.

Quote from: jibbajibba;586305So you say Gelantinous cubes are put there ot fuck up players I would say that there are things called gelantinous cubes somewhere but I have no need to encounter them because I have no intention of going into a smelly dangerous dungeon to risk my life over the vague notion of some treasure that might be there.

And I would say the cube is there to keep the dungeon from turning into a macabre version of Hoarders.  I.e, serving an important and believable purpose.

Quote from: MGuy;586306Weighted Averages are not inherently intellectually dishonest. At best I can surmise that he is claiming tat he is using the averages dishonestly. As for why characters don't die so often in games I would believe that is because people don't want characters to die that often so they adjust the game to keep that from happening either consciously or subconsciously. Considering that I'd suspect most of the people speaking here on the subject are the type that side step the rules for fun then it is a no brainer as to why it doesn't come up. From my experience playing low levels "straight" can very often lead to unintended, unpreventable character death seeing as though about every character is one decent ambush or lucky crit away from death no save.

As for whether or not you can "win" at DnD, yea, you do. Depending on how you define "winning" you can win in different ways at the same time. With some truly flexible definitions of winning you can win and lose at the same time.

I agree with the comments round the game being adjusted to play.

I ran a game for some 6-7 year olds last year. They had a ball I havd their characterts fighint goblins and wolves. I introduced a parry mechanic to keep them alive. We played for 4 hours no one died. I never cheated a roll or fudged and there were times when the danger was very real but ...

Some of the kids played with their dad afterwards. He used to be in our play grou when we were kids but game up after an overly long daliance with star fleet battles about 28 years ago. in his game the kids met a random encounter with a 3 wolves and they all died in the first combat.

The Wolves win initiative, it rolls a 20 you take 14 damage you are dead... etc

Now I had exactly the same situation and i turned it into a race where the kids on their cart had to outrun the wolves they had randomly encountered. The chase was exciting in itself but it acted as a buffer between the risk and the players actions

Quote from: Benoist;586291Fuck this thread is a trainwreck. Do you guys remember the actual topic of discussion?
Like... "people don't 'win' at D&D" or something? Hello? Bueller?

You "win" roleplaying games by accomplishing goals you're characters have set for themselves. Conversely you lose by being unable to accomplish your goals, and you can't do anything while you are dead.
 
GC is right about 2e. The books are so full of fuck yous to the players that it's clear they are supposed to fail. System shock, monsters who's entire purpose to look like something innocent then kill you, cursed items that randomly kill you, monster abilities that randomly kill you and other asociated Death no Save effects. Every step of the way the 2e rules hate you and want you to die in increasingly bullshit ways. Heck the chapter on horses goes into a long digression about how the horse merchants can cheats the PCs. Why? Fuck you that's why.

If your playing 2e you're only getting somewhere via varying amounts of debasing yourself for the DM. Thus the only winning move is not to play.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;586211In my groups this sort of stuff we be dscussed by the party well before combat. "look i have a spell that might give us an edge by increasing everyone's speed, but it carries the risk of death. If everyone assents I can prepare it and cast it at on an agreed upon signal should it look like the battle isn't going our way"

Of course it's in-character discussion... that's not really an issue, which is why I used Brendan the Wizard, not Brendan the Player (Assuming, for the sake of argument, that you aren't a wizard in real life; I'm certainly no Fighter). The character names aren't directly relevant.

I play to see what happens, and if someone dies... that's what happens. And then we see what happens next.

I'm interested in how you see "willingness" working in the game world, from the character's point of view. For you, is "resisting magic" an innate property that characters can turn on and off? Or can characters tell the difference between different spells, and selectively choose to resist?

I've always viewed magic resistance as being on or off, because being selective implies that, in the setting, non-wizard characters can tell the difference between "good" and "bad" magic.

To get back to Pendrogast and Medwen, the rest of the party has a completely different conversation if they know Pendrogast cast a non-hostile spell and Medwen died, than if they just knew that Pendrogast cast a spell on Medwen and had to take Pendrogast's word for it.

Quote from: Lord Mistborn;586311You "win" roleplaying games by accomplishing goals you're characters have set for themselves. Conversely you lose by being unable to accomplish your goals, and you can't do anything while you are dead.
 
GC is right about 2e. The books are so full of fuck yous to the players that it's clear they are supposed to fail. System shock, monsters who's entire purpose to look like something innocent then kill you, cursed items that randomly kill you, monster abilities that randomly kill you and other asociated Death no Save effects. Every step of the way the 2e rules hate you and want you to die in increasingly bullshit ways. Heck the chapter on horses goes into a long digression about how the horse merchants can cheats the PCs. Why? Fuck you that's why.

If your playing 2e you're only getting somewhere via varying amounts of debasing yourself for the DM. Thus the only winning move is not to play.

How would you know.  Didn't you say you never had any significant experience playing 2e?

Quote from: Mr. GC;586210And if you're casting a spell with any drawback, it had better be amazing or it doesn't get used. Haste does not qualify, so either you use Haste with no drawback or you do not use Haste.

Any drawback whatsoever?  Maybe something like Gardens and Greengrocers would be a better game for you.

Quote from: Mr. GC;586289Go take a look at your older edition books and I mean really look. There's entire enemies, and entire enemy types that only exist for fucking with you and turning something that was normally harmless into yet another thing trying to kill you. They invented monsters such as the Cloaker, the Mimic, and the Gelatinous Cube which literally amount to everything in the room trying to kill you including the room itself.

...

The game itself goes out of its way to shut down deductive reasoning, logic, and intelligent play.

I'd like to take this comment and apply it more directly to the 'winning' in D&D.  

Take an enemy like a Gas Spore and a Beholder.  The first is designed to look exactly like a Beholder, so that you can't tell them apart.  One is very deadly, and is likely to kill at least one party member, so misidentifying one is bad.  You could shoot it from a distance (if possible) and then run if it doesn't explode, but that's not always a possibility.  

Winning in D&D means overcoming the challenges that the characters face.  In some editions of D&D, success was arbitrary, and didn't always rely on player choices.  While not everyone actually played that way, the rules themselves tended to encourage it.  The fact that most people appear not to use System Shock for haste is an example of groups changing the rule to make the game 'more enjoyable'.  This 'arbitrary death' stuff is a big problem if you want player choices and character abilities to matter.  

If you make good choices and you overcome challenges through intelligent play, that's fun for me.  Some people prefer the illusion that their choices matter, and trust the DM to 'fix any problems' like an undesireable result.  I don't like that playstyle for myself - but it relies in part on not knowing that it's happening.  If the DM tells you 'you don't die in a teleport accident', unless the roll was on the table, you can't know if he fudged the result or not.  Believing that you exposed yourself to danger (even if it was all an illusion) can be stimulating, which seems to be where some of the attraction for that kind of game comes from.  

Some people refer to it as 'DM Pity' or 'Magical Tea Party', but from INSIDE the game, you probably can't see it.  It looks like things are responding to choices and abilities, and unless you know the DM notes and/or rolls, you can't be sure that you aren't lucky or smart.  It's hard to be proud of your 'contribution' when success was assured (even if it didn't look like it).  

Now, if success isn't assured, and smart play is required - enemies are played intelligently and rolls are in the open - winning an encounter can be something to be proud of.  It doesn't have to be - nor should it be - about making other people feel bad, but there's nothing wrong with trying to do well at the game.  

If someone is a 'bad player' and they don't contribute, it's okay for them to feel a little bad - maybe they'll learn something.  You think everyone knows how to use a 10-foot pole the first time they walk into a dungeon?  But they can learn from a master.  Once they learn, they can apply that same tactic, often with great success.  

An effective character shouldn't behave less effectively to make other people feel better.  That's my point and has been for this entire conversation.  If one player is consistently 'showing up' another player, rather than just assume the effective one 'is a dick', we need to look at the player that isn't contributing, too, and see why.  Is he making stupid choices?  Does he not understand his options?  Is his character fundamentally flawed (such as the rules prevent him from being effective).  Those things aren't the effective player's fault, so he shouldn't bear the blame for them.  

It's just that in Sacro's rant, not enough information was given to determine if the player he was complaining about is really a dick or if Sacro (or whoever inspired the rant) is just a bad player incapable of making an effective character capable of contributing to the group.  If he is incapable, it might not even be his fault - could be the rules, could be the DM, could be other players being a dick...  But making that determination requires more information.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;586314How would you know.  Didn't you say you never had any significant experience playing 2e?

I read the books. That was enough to tell me that anyone who willingly plays such a game must either enjoy lol random deaths. Either that or they have a bad case of Stockholm syndrome for their DM.

Quote from: MGuy;586306As for why characters don't die so often in games I would believe that is because people don't want characters to die that often so they adjust the game to keep that from happening either consciously or subconsciously. Considering that I'd suspect most of the people speaking here on the subject are the type that side step the rules for fun then it is a no brainer as to why it doesn't come up. From my experience playing low levels "straight" can very often lead to unintended, unpreventable character death seeing as though about every character is one decent ambush or lucky crit away from death no save.

Yep, we agree.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;586280Anyone who has 90% of their characters dying in 1-2 encounters in ANY edition should really evaluate what the hell they are doing, or what the hell the DM is doing.  Seeing as how hundreds of thousands of players managed just fine for decades tells me that it isn't a game design issue.

3d6 in order = most characters are worthless, especially with class selection based on stats. Add in non maxed HP at level 1 and death at 0 HP and OHKOs even on Fighters were incredibly common.

Either you can kill them yourself or the game will quickly do it for you.

Quote from: Bill;586285Seriously? You never played with a competent dm?

I have gmd and played in more 1e/2e games than I can remember, and NEVER did 90 percent of the characters die in 1-2 sessions. 1 death in 10-20 sessions...maybe.

You were a victim of a gm that was either a novice, a sadist, or an idiot.

Given the propensity for those here to ignore rules that are not convenient for them that's probably due to ignoring the rule that says "People die when they are killed".

1st level Fighter falls into a 10 foot pit. 35% chance he dies in one hit. That's about the weakest trap imaginable, on the highest HP guy... you know, since that's so meaningful.

Quote from: jibbajibba;586290Your language is wrong and so is confusing .
In 2e and prior a 1HD monster does not get a + to hit.
It has a target number based on the oponents AC aganst a to hit AC 0 of 20. So if your point is that a typical 1st level 1e figther has an AC of 4 so the monster needs a 16 to hit so effectively has +4 then its 'correct' although expressed very badly so as to be effectively wrong.

Yes, and when talking about + to hit, and not THAC0 it's obvious what system is being discussed.

When this is followed by "in older editions, you have more fights per level and so more chances someone is hit 1-2 times and dies" this addresses older editions. This should also go without saying, but to hit/AC scaled slower in older editions. The total range was about two dozen numbers. In 3.5 it's closer to a hundred.

QuoteIn ealy D&D you get most of your xp for treasure. If a party of 5 1st level Pcs kill 8 goblins to find treasure worth 2000gp sure they get 25 x 8 or 200 xp for the goblins but they get 2000 xp for the gold and they get that even if they don't kill the goblins just put them to sleep or make then run away or whatever.
So in early D&D you can advance in levels by killing hundreds of monsters but statistically its very unlikely.

Yes, but barring things like centaurs with 1,000,000 gold gems you're not going to get very much treasure from killing most monsters. It's also 1: Likely that rule on million gold gems will be ignored as not convenient. 2: Will be ignored on everything else because it's listed as optional in 2nd.

There's also the small problem of affording those training costs to actually take your new level.

Quote from: mcbobbo;586287If, and only if, there is any reasonable expectation of death.  You are aware of this position, but you keep behaving like you aren't.

Yes, I assume we are talking about the actual rules when discussing the actual rules. Otherwise you can just as easily say the Orc the group is fighting (because you know a group like this would die to something stupid) cannot kill the party either.

QuoteThis might be true in 2nd, if you played it like 3rd.  But almost certainly isn't in 1st due to the only RAW support being a FAQ entry about the changes from 1st to 2nd.

1st also had system shock and similar text for it and Haste. I just haven't been fucked to look because people need to shut the fuck up about that tangent already.

QuoteYou're arguing just to argue, as evidenced by your unwillingness to adapt to even the slightest point of view change.  Try it some time.  It won't kill you, and might earn you some friends.

Nope. I'm not changing my stance because I haven't been given any reason to change it. An example reason would be being presented with a better alternative.

QuoteYou get that I'm okay with this, right?  It is a game of danger, and death is a part of that.  It's the entire point of combat, for example.

Yes, yes, playing older editions is an exercise of DM vs Player paranoia. This is not in contention.

QuoteYou clearly know enough about gaming to understand the context, and I'm not going to justify this intellectual dishonesty with a response.  Sorry.

Standard dodge. Duly noted.

QuoteLikely is a factor that should be viewed from your character's eyes.  Not your own.

You've been making a lot of arguments based on intellectual superiority.  Let's put that to the test.  Click this link and tell me how long it takes you to determine whether or not a swamp actually has trees in it:

https://www.google.com/search?q=swamp&tbm=isch

When you're done, I think you owe some folks an apology.

Right. And the characters are looking out at this swamp, that used to be a city before it got flooded and they aren't seeing any fucking trees for at least a half mile in all directions. So if we base it on what the characters can see, "not fucking likely" changes to "most definitely not".

QuoteBreathe.  Your brain needs more oxygen.  You honestly can't think of a single other factor under the chromatic dragon system that would dictate how the scenario would play out?  I'm going to keep you in suspense on this one, I think.

An empty useless post and a dodge then? You should complete the trifecta by discussing potential new avatars for yourself.

QuoteYou're still setting up a double standard where the players use metagame knowledge but the GM does not.

Because it's metagame to work out what enemies they've just found out about can do or will likely do? Oh wait, it's not. It is metagame for them to find out about a group they aren't aware exists yet. Up until the party attacked, they were accomplishing their own objectives which are in no particular order:

1: Guarding the item required to keep the services of an otherwise unwilling ally safe.
2: Breeding more melee death machines.
3: Generic knowledge/power/money motivations of various sorts.

QuoteNope. That's actually what I'd usually do.  I only use the big guns when they're necessary.  Metagame on me, and I metagame on you, because you'll stop as soon as it dawns on you that I'm in the driver's seat.  IME, anyway.

Ah yes because knowing anything at all about the world you live in is metagaming.

So playing with you is like...

Me: I drop a coin to let the party know it's safe.
You: OMG METAGAMING HOW DARE YOU UNDERSTAND GRAVITY!

QuoteYeah, in fact it is.  It's called adventure, and there's risk involved.  Your style of play limits the risks to the point where success is almost assured, and I find that amaturish.  Rather like fishing with dynamite.

Right. Well you have your "risk", where you get bombed with arrows and boulders for a dozen consecutive rounds while being unable to fight back with anything but your terrible ranged attacks before you can even attempt to join the fight. Me? I'm going to call certain, suicidal death to the stupidest of things not a "risk", as risk implies that the negative outcome is uncertain.

And which is it anyways? Should the party be Leeroy Jenkins in every dungeon, or is the party supposed to be playing cautious and careful? Make up your fucking mind.

QuoteAgain, you just told the guy being nice to you to go fuck off.  And then you'll cry that you're an outsider.

That's anti-social, dude.

Lolwut. Only in your deluded mind.

QuoteWithout fiat, you'd be right.  But once again, in older editions, fiat was in the rulebook.

Right. And we've been over why success = ability to perform oral sex on the DM is bad design already, so let's move on shall we?

Quote from: mcbobbo;586292From what I remember of my 2e days, dragons were NOT for fighting.  You'd better show some respect, or find an escape route in that situation.

However, with 3e came a sharp rise of the concept that 'if you put it in front of me, I should be able to beat it'.

In older editions dragon breath was a OHKO. Still, it played the same. You either got very prepared and then fought them or you did not fight them. Escape routes do not exist when dealing with something that moves several times your speed, often via movement modes you cannot access.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;586293Yes, you should do that.  And then tell us just how many 1 HD monsters in those books had +4 or +5 bonuses to hit (let alone +10).  And tell us how many of those 1 HD monsters had XP values of 40 (not that you got most of your xp from monster values anyway, but you were already told that and you continue to ignore it).

Only if you stop willfully misinterpreting my posts. Since that will never happen I need not do anything about your false claim save laugh at it.

Quote from: mcbobbo;586302I googled this claim, and I can't find anyone else that holds your view.  In fact, if you put quotes around it, this thread is the only source that google can find.

Do you find it significant that a concept such as weighted averages hasn't been challenged for intellectual dishonesty in any place that google can find it?

Because I do.

I suck at Math.  More of a verbal guy, always have been.  So I won't try and approach your claims, but reiterating them might go better if you appeal to some kind of authority.  Got one?

Most tabletop gamers are stupid. This is why I am very selective about who I game with as I loathe stupid people on principle.

You don't see it contested much in general because in a long chain of iterations things will average out. In an MMO you just calculate misses and crits into your DPS calcs because you're going to be beating on things a while, etc. In a less luck based game, such as almost anything that isn't tabletop the degree of variation isn't high enough for weighted averages to throw things off much even in small sample sizes. In a small sample size, such as the 1-2 round duration of D&D combats where luck is the primary or sole factor? Yeah, claiming the guy with a 50% chance of doing 20 damage never kills the guy with 20 HP in one hit is a fucking lie. A very obvious and marked lie.

Quote from: jibbajibba;586305You are not approaching the game as I would approach it.
You are working top down I am working bottom up. By this I mean you are looking at it as a game where as I am looking at it as a character in a role. So you say Gelantinous cubes are put there ot fuck up players I would say that there are things called gelantinous cubes somewhere but I have no need to encounter them because I have no intention of going into a smelly dangerous dungeon to risk my life over the vague notion of some treasure that might be there.

I'm looking at the game as it was actually designed. Older edition rulebooks specifically tell you your character knows what you do. Which means when something seems safe isn't, that's meant to fuck with you, the player.

And sure, you can say you'll never go in a dungeon and that might even let you avoid cubes... but then what are you doing? Older editions were very dungeon centric, so you are practically choosing not to play the game at that point. And while that's probably a good idea...

QuoteI solve all in game problems from the perspective of my character without looking at the meta game. its why i find old school 10 foot pole play a bit daft because every PC knows the same set of professional adventurer tactics.

Basic emergent gameplay in action. Also, they were doing it wrong. Everyone knows you use 11 foot poles so when the DM tries to fuck with 10 foot pole users you get to say "Nuh uh, no you didn't shoot me!"

QuoteI don't think those things make the game though. You can play D&D easily without those things and you have no need to change anything. You can play a rational logical heavy roleplay low level game with D&D and it works well.
I agree that a rebalancing of the classes would help give wizards more options at low levels and limit them later, nerf clerics etc but the core game is still playable .

You'd have to remove around, oh...

25%-35% or more of the monsters that exist just to fuck with you.
Another 25%ish that exist just to kill people quickly or instantly in some non counterable way.
Around 40% of the items.
100% of the traps.
Around 80% of the mentality...

Once you remove that aspect, there's not much left.

Quote from: MGuy;586306Weighted Averages are not inherently intellectually dishonest. At best I can surmise that he is claiming that he is using the averages dishonestly. As for why characters don't die so often in games I would believe that is because people don't want characters to die that often so they adjust the game to keep that from happening either consciously or subconsciously. Considering that I'd suspect most of the people speaking here on the subject are the type that side step the rules for fun then it is a no brainer as to why it doesn't come up. From my experience playing low levels "straight" can very often lead to unintended, unpreventable character death seeing as though about every character is one decent ambush or lucky crit away from death no save.

As for whether or not you can "win" at DnD, yea, you do. Depending on how you define "winning" you can win in different ways at the same time. With some truly flexible definitions of winning you can win and lose at the same time.

OMG, stop disagreeing with me me, you're supposed to stay in my head and shut up! :rotfl:

Yes MGuy, they still think I'm you.

Quote from: Lord Mistborn;586311You "win" roleplaying games by accomplishing goals you're characters have set for themselves. Conversely you lose by being unable to accomplish your goals, and you can't do anything while you are dead.
 
GC is right about 2e. The books are so full of fuck yous to the players that it's clear they are supposed to fail. System shock, monsters who's entire purpose to look like something innocent then kill you, cursed items that randomly kill you, monster abilities that randomly kill you and other asociated Death no Save effects. Every step of the way the 2e rules hate you and want you to die in increasingly bullshit ways. Heck the chapter on horses goes into a long digression about how the horse merchants can cheats the PCs. Why? Fuck you that's why.

If your playing 2e you're only getting somewhere via varying amounts of debasing yourself for the DM. Thus the only winning move is not to play.

So you have actually played 2e? And the players died all the time?

It's not the system, its the dm.

I suggest finding a good dm; it makes all the difference.

In all fairness, the dm may have simply been inexperienced.

Quote from: jibbajibba;586310I agree with the comments round the game being adjusted to play.

I ran a game for some 6-7 year olds last year. They had a ball I havd their characterts fighint goblins and wolves. I introduced a parry mechanic to keep them alive. We played for 4 hours no one died. I never cheated a roll or fudged and there were times when the danger was very real but ...

Some of the kids played with their dad afterwards. He used to be in our play grou when we were kids but game up after an overly long daliance with star fleet battles about 28 years ago. in his game the kids met a random encounter with a 3 wolves and they all died in the first combat.

The Wolves win initiative, it rolls a 20 you take 14 damage you are dead... etc

Now I had exactly the same situation and i turned it into a race where the kids on their cart had to outrun the wolves they had randomly encountered. The chase was exciting in itself but it acted as a buffer between the risk and the players actions

Personally I don't like heroes dying in un-heroic ways. I've had games where that has happened before and it is unsatisfying for the whole table. I've had PCs die to random encounters, the wilderness, poisons/diseases, along with the regular times when they just die from a regular encounter. I can count the number of TPKs I've actually had in a game on a single hand but the number of player deaths are too many for me to count.

I've developed a pseudo rule for my 3rd ed games at this point. I always give characters auto stabilization, I don't let them get straight up killed from any attack, and as long as they are playing competently I won't let their character's ignorance get them killed.This rule only applies from levels 1 - 3 where players don't have many abilities, are seriously one orc charge attack from death at all times, and have only shaky control of the plot. After that I let the dice fall where they may.

When I play I find many GMs to be far more forgiving then I am in all but games that are meant to be high risk, easy fatality games. However even in more "realistic" games I find that GMs will generally try to hand PCs an out. Now while I'm not sure if Mr. GC's numbers are correct or not (as I haven't played 1e and don't own/have access to the books) I do believe that he is arguing with a crowd that very actively sidesteps the rules for profit. So while older edition rules may or may not be meant to kill you (I'd always been told that the rules promote total GM control and player punishments as was intended by the writers) I'm sure that the players here most likely ignored that kind of stuff, or sidestepped it, to make their game work.

Quote from: Mr. GC;586289In order for play to not be luck based the player must have the means and ability to make intelligent, informed choices and have those choices influence the outcome.

I'm totally with you here. The GM needs to provide enough information for players to base decisions on. When I ran a group through Isle of Dread back in 81, I made sure to describe things in manner that made such choice possible. The territory of the T-Rex was littered with  its tracks, remains of its kills, and poop. Players knew that there was something big, carnivorous, and scary in that area.

Quote from: Mr. GC;586289Go take a look at your older edition books and I mean really look. There's entire enemies, and entire enemy types that only exist for fucking with you and turning something that was normally harmless into yet another thing trying to kill you. They invented monsters such as the Cloaker, the Mimic, and the Gelatinous Cube which literally amount to everything in the room trying to kill you including the room itself.

Then you look at the items and for every 1-2 designed to help you in some way there is 1 that looks just like the others and passes off as them until it actually counts... and then it kills you.

The game itself goes out of its way to shut down deductive reasoning, logic, and intelligent play.

The world is not a predictable place. In any edition you can encounter something that fucks with logic and answer will be " because magic".
If you want a logically based, scientifically oriented world without weird shit then why the hell are you playing D&D at all?  

The problem with a great many newer players is that they just take the game far too seriously. So my fighting man found what looked like a cool spear and when he fought the yeti, the thing stabbed him in the back, and he died. Oops lol. So I roll up another guy and play some more. Big fucking deal. Its a game, you win some you lose some.

Quote from: Mr. GC;586289Contrast to say... 3.5.

You can deduce very quickly that dragons will beat the hell out of you. Perhaps not every dragon will fight, but those you are fighting you'd better kill quickly or they will kill you quickly. There's not any enemies that look just like them but are actually easy kills, and while some dragons can assume a less harmful seeming form there are also means of countering that and realizing that you are, in fact dealing with a dragon.

At low levels play is pure luck based because everyone, from the Wizard to the Fighter to the Dwarf Barbarian who is raging die in 1-2 hits and can't really do anything about it but beyond that you get enough HP and abilities so that choices matter, decisions matter, play matters.

And so there is a remarkable difference between the party that gets even a general idea of what they are facing, extrapolates the rest then has the means and methods of dealing with all the common expected threats that means and some general purpose stuff to round it out and the party that thinks Leeroy Jenkins is a good rolemodel only to find to their dismay they don't just respawn as a ghost somewhere with damaged equipment.

Oh certainly because rust monsters, oozes, slimes, and cursed items don't exist in 3.5. :rolleyes:

The most powerful offensive item in 3.5 is a cursed item dseigned to "fuck with the players".  Dust of Sneezing & Choking.  Oh yeah, it looks just like dust of dissapearance then hah hah you are screwed. Arm yourself with a necklace of adaptation and its pure monster killing goodness.

Anyway, rules edition doesn't have much to do with intelligent play. In old school games sometimes we played smart, and sometimes stupid when we didn't want to be burdened with thinking. One can do the same thing in 3.5 or any other system.

Quote from: Mr. GC;5863203d6 in order = most characters are worthless, especially with class selection based on stats. Add in non maxed HP at level 1 and death at 0 HP and OHKOs even on Fighters were incredibly common.

Either you can kill them yourself or the game will quickly do it for you.

SMH

3d6 in order for 6 stats was not a method anyone really used.  An "expert" on older editions would know this.  Almost everyone played with 4d6 drop the lowest, or 3d6 12 times and assigned the best six.

Keep digging

QuoteOnly if you stop willfully misinterpreting my posts. Since that will never happen I need not do anything about your false claim save laugh at it.

Heh, for a guy who has several times in this post alone accused others of dodging, I can't help not you're doing the same thing.  You said in older editions a +4 or +5 to his was the norm.  You also said 40xp value for a 1 HD monster is the value.  Show me.  How is that misinterpreting you?

Look dude, either put up, or shut up.