Quote from: Bill;761594Sometimes you need fireball; like when there are 30 ghasts paralyzing the heck out of the fighters.

That might be a bad example of utility, assuming fireball still explodes in a radius and paralysis impacts DEX saves...

Quote from: GnomeWorks;761556No, no, NO.

Fuck you, this is fucking bullshit.

When I make a fucking character, the effectiveness of that character should not be fucking dependent on the rest of the party make-up. I shouldn't have to ask myself, as a fighter: "am I going to be awesome, or some other asshole's fucking doll to dress up in fucking buffs and what-not?"

A fighter's thing is combat. End of fucking story. A fighter who goes into a fight, that is relatively high level, should just fucking own his opposition, unless up against crazy shit like dragons or armies or fucking gods. If there is a situation where the fighter has to look at a caster before a relatively standard fight and say, "Hey, are you going to buff me before this fight, or what?", that system immediately fucking fails.

The caster should be supplemental; a nice bonus, useful for making up for corners that the fighter has cut in his training. But if a wizard can just magic up a fucking combatant that is no-holds-barred better than the fighter PC, then your system has fucking failed, and fuck you for trying.

Where did I ever mention buffing the fighter? That's done better by the Bard or cleric. I explicitly said I would likely use misdirection cantrips, or field tilting spells (Web, Sleep etc) to give the fighter the advantage. Combat is his playground why would I want to mess in his sandbox? Unless he signals me given he would be the battle leader I assume?

It's called teamwork not shit on the fighter's fun.

Quote from: mcbobbo;761605That might be a bad example of utility, assuming fireball still explodes in a radius and paralysis impacts DEX saves...

In the playtest a paralyzed target automatically fails STR and DEX saves.

That has potential. Paralyze a high DEX opponent THEN fireball them.

Quote from: Omega;761495I may have a rather low opinion of Sac. But hands on testing shows that in this case he was correct. They balance out.

This is twice you've done this now.  Why feel the need to qualify your opinion of me before getting to the point?  Why not just say they balance out?  Are you afraid that if you don't put that qualifier up front, people will assume you and I are best buds or something?  And wouldn't that be indicitive of the character of the type of people you're talking to if they make that assumption?  After all, that's the same behavior TBP does that is constantly derided over here--if you don't specifically protest enough, then you're an ardent supporter of whatever doesn't happen to be popular with the "crowd".

Regarding 'balanced encounters', 3.x DMG indicated that encounters were supposed to cover a wide range, including (if memory serves) 5% that were 'overwhelming', which is probably CR 6+ over the current Average Party Level (APL).  So 'every encounter should be able to be beaten' was never a part of the game's core assumptions.

Regarding NEXT and challenges, three monsters have been released in preview; Nothic, Ochre Jelly, and Ogre.  The attack bonus for melee/ranged is +6 which is curious since they have a -1 Dex modifier and a +4 Strength modifier; I have no idea how attack bonuses are supposed to be calculated, but it seems a departure that they're both equally likely to hit.  All of these monsters are listed as CR 2; I'm not certain what that is INTENDED to mean, but clearly with the 7 HD and 59 hit points this bruiser is carrying, he's not intended to be just 50% likely to defeat a Fighter in single-combat.  Maybe their idea of CR is 'a 4-person party of this level will be able to defeat this monster in roughly 3 rounds' - Assuming 50% likely to hit for ~10 damage, that's pretty close...  It still seems like a big pile of hit points...

Which brings me to Wizards versus Fighters...  If monsters are supposed to be 'scary in melee fights' (which they usually are) and Fighters are supposed to be 'scary in melee fights' (which they usually are), Wizards need to not have access to 'Fighter substitutes'.  A charmed Ogre is probably as effective as a Fighter in terms of the party's effectiveness.  

Ultimately, having a wizard that doesn't cast spells at all (conserving them until they're necessary) and relying on the Fighter until things get 'hairy' isn't very satisfying.  If the Fighter is succeeding, then the Wizard is just sitting around doing nothing [useful]; if the Fighter is failing, then the Wizard handles the problem and the Fighter realizes that the 'problem' could have been dealt with by the Wizard at any time.  Now, maybe the Wizard can't solve EVERY problem EVERY day, but if he solves all the 'real' problems - the ones that a Fighter can't solve, the Fighter isn't really in the same 'game'.  

And even with restricted spells, there comes a point where you can justify ANYTHING through magic.  Even a low-level wizard can survive in the City of Brass despite the burning heat (protection from elements: fire), but the Fighter, tough as he is, just dies.  

There are ways to address some of the disparity (for example, increasing DR for a Fighter would allow him to survive in a very hot environment), but conceptually the Fighter has some major limitations.  If that's justified because the Fighter is 'the best' at 'fighting', then there has to be some role protection there...  If Wizards or Clerics can 'out-fight' a Fighter (even 1/day) it can be a problem - because the Fighter isn't really as good in their 'domain' as they thought they were.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;761618Regarding 'balanced encounters', 3.x DMG indicated that encounters were supposed to cover a wide range, including (if memory serves) 5% that were 'overwhelming', which is probably CR 6+ over the current Average Party Level (APL).  So 'every encounter should be able to be beaten' was never a part of the game's core assumptions.

Is that actually shown out in any published series of adventures?

Quote from: deadDMwalking;761618Which brings me to Wizards versus Fighters...  If monsters are supposed to be 'scary in melee fights' (which they usually are) and Fighters are supposed to be 'scary in melee fights' (which they usually are), Wizards need to not have access to 'Fighter substitutes'.  A charmed Ogre is probably as effective as a Fighter in terms of the party's effectiveness.  

Depends on how you read the "Charm" spell.  I've always interpreted it as "you think you're friends now."  That doesn't mean that your new friend will start murdering his old friends.  It just ticks the reaction meter over to friendly.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;761618Ultimately, having a wizard that doesn't cast spells at all (conserving them until they're necessary) and relying on the Fighter until things get 'hairy' isn't very satisfying.  If the Fighter is succeeding, then the Wizard is just sitting around doing nothing [useful]; if the Fighter is failing, then the Wizard handles the problem and the Fighter realizes that the 'problem' could have been dealt with by the Wizard at any time.  Now, maybe the Wizard can't solve EVERY problem EVERY day, but if he solves all the 'real' problems - the ones that a Fighter can't solve, the Fighter isn't really in the same 'game'.  

And yet the wizard couldn't solve all of those other problems because he'd run out of spells.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;761618There are ways to address some of the disparity (for example, increasing DR for a Fighter would allow him to survive in a very hot environment), but conceptually the Fighter has some major limitations.  If that's justified because the Fighter is 'the best' at 'fighting', then there has to be some role protection there...  If Wizards or Clerics can 'out-fight' a Fighter (even 1/day) it can be a problem - because the Fighter isn't really as good in their 'domain' as they thought they were.

The Fighter's real strength is that they can continue operating at a constant level of effectiveness all day.  Wizards and Clerics can operate at a heightened level of effectiveness, but not constantly.

Of course, this works better in games where you don't just go through three or four fights, and fights take five or ten minutes to resolve rather than an hour.  If the game is balanced around the idea that the wizard/cleric can be casting every round, and their 'day' will 'end' right when they run out of spells, then you're correct.  And clearly having the wizard stuck lobbing darts round after round most of the time in an hour-long fight is boring...

Wizard vs. Fighter balance *works*, in the type of game that it was designed for.  In the Adventure Path/DragonLance scenario?  Not as much, IMO.

Quote from: robiswrong;761622Depends on how you read the "Charm" spell.  I've always interpreted it as "you think you're friends now."  That doesn't mean that your new friend will start murdering his old friends.  It just ticks the reaction meter over to friendly.

Also, to be nitpicky, I am pretty sure Ogre's don't count as Humanoids, they are Giants. So you would need Dominate Monster, which is a level 8 spell.

Quote from: jadrax;761628Also, to be nitpicky, I am pretty sure Ogre's don't count as Humanoids, they are Giants. So you would need Dominate Monster, which is a level 8 spell.

Don't have my 3.x books handy, but in TSR D&D Ogres could be charmed (they're the upper limit of "humanoid"), and they reacted as a friend, not a mind-controlled slave.

Charm person has always meant being friendly.  It is most assuredly not "dominate" or "control" person.

Also, we can extrapolate how the game was designed to be played by looking at where the emphasis is in the various rules.  So by looking at these, I am positive that D&D is very much a team game.  Party (heck just the use of that term shows this) success often hinges on being able to have each player recognize their strengths and weaknesses and compliment each other.  That's why we have classes to begin with.  Each class is specialized in a certain area.

It's also why I think D&D very much is designed to not have a 5mwd (at least in TSR era D&D).  In order to do that, you have to actively ignore much of the game rules, structure, or events in published materials.  The DMG has lots of information about how to stock and manage a dungeon, and every single adventure I can think of had random encounter tables for every section of it.

So I suppose you can disagree with me, and that's fine.  But I feel very strongly that the game was designed to be played as a team, and 5mwd should not be an occurrance.

For those interested, there is an interesting blogpost about how Charm Person has changed through the editions here:

http://deltasdnd.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/spells-through-ages-charm-person.html

Quote from: deadDMwalking;761618Regarding 'balanced encounters', 3.x DMG indicated that encounters were supposed to cover a wide range, including (if memory serves) 5% that were 'overwhelming', which is probably CR 6+ over the current Average Party Level (APL).  So 'every encounter should be able to be beaten' was never a part of the game's core assumptions.

So...  95 does not equal 100, that is true.  But 95% of the time is far from 'never'.

Quote from: mcbobbo;761643So...  95 does not equal 100, that is true.  But 95% of the time is far from 'never'.

Wait, what? What, exactly, is 95% of the time? That 5% (or whatever it was - no book at the moment) was overwhelming encounters. There was still a significant portion that were tougher than the party, a few more equal, and then far larger numbers weaker than the party. In actual practice these numbers weren't terribly different than a lot of TSR-era published material, or even than randomly generated results from the standard tables. Difficulties in 3.x sprang up around applying them rigidly, or worse, ignoring them altogether to create nothing but ECL=PL encounters. That's not really the fault of the rules themselves, however, as that explicitly isn't what they suggest.

Quote from: robiswrong;761622Is that actually shown out in any published series of adventures?

So, what...a published module isn't enough? We need a series of them?

Quote from: jadrax;761640For those interested, there is an interesting blogpost about how Charm Person has changed through the editions here:

http://deltasdnd.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/spells-through-ages-charm-person.html

Thanks for the link. Looks like it doesn't affect Ogres in AD&D; I guess I misremembered because I've been playing a lot of LL and ACKS lately, where it does.

Quote from: robiswrong;761622Is that actually shown out in any published series of adventures?

I believe that Sunless Citadel had a roper in it, somewhere.

The problem is that there was apparently a vocal community of people that freaked out about it. Their position seemed to be that if you have a system for figuring out how to balance encounters, why would you intentionally ignore it sometimes by using monsters that are going to overpower the party?

Most folks here, myself included, would say, "because the world isn't fair," but WotC seemed to cave and didn't do it again. So despite the fact that the DMG specifically recommends that 5% of encounters in an adventure be "overpowering," no other published adventure did that (to my knowledge, at any rate).

QuoteDepends on how you read the "Charm" spell.  I've always interpreted it as "you think you're friends now."  That doesn't mean that your new friend will start murdering his old friends.  It just ticks the reaction meter over to friendly.

So if you run into the ogre's friends, try to convince him to make them friendly towards you. If you run into things the ogre doesn't care about... "ogre, smash!"

Fighter substitute, either way.

QuoteAnd yet the wizard couldn't solve all of those other problems because he'd run out of spells.

If your design is such that the GM has to pay attention and intentionally set things up so that one PC runs out of the resource that makes their class cool so that the other guy has a chance to shine, you may want to reconsider your design.

Quote from: GnomeWorks;761667I believe that Sunless Citadel had a roper in it, somewhere.

The problem is that there was apparently a vocal community of people that freaked out about it. Their position seemed to be that if you have a system for figuring out how to balance encounters, why would you intentionally ignore it sometimes by using monsters that are going to overpower the party?

Most folks here, myself included, would say, "because the world isn't fair," but WotC seemed to cave and didn't do it again. So despite the fact that the DMG specifically recommends that 5% of encounters in an adventure be "overpowering," no other published adventure did that (to my knowledge, at any rate).

I wouldn't say "the world isn't fair."  That's sort of a dick move, just a little.  I'd say, "because it fits with the plot/area/habitat/background"

QuoteSo if you run into the ogre's friends, try to convince him to make them friendly towards you. If you run into things the ogre doesn't care about... "ogre, smash!"

Fighter substitute, either way.
.

Um...no.  Like we keep saying, being friends doesn't mean it does whatever you tell them.  Would your friends go try to fight a bull just because you asked?  And sure, send in the ogre to make friends with the other ogres.  But a) that's not replacing the fighter by any means because you're not actually fighting, and b) his friends aren't charmed, so they won't just automatically go along with it.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;761674I wouldn't say "the world isn't fair."  That's sort of a dick move, just a little.  I'd say, "because it fits with the plot/area/habitat/background"

Well, in this instance, it was a roper... not like those things really move all that much. It's not like they dropped in an ancient red and said, "have fun with that!"

But yes, with my "the world isn't fair" comment, I was trying to get at the notion that I put encounters in the world (or generate them by table) such that they make sense, PC level be damned.

QuoteWould your friends go try to fight a bull just because you asked?

Seems a bit more context-sensitive than that. I'm sure that you could convince a friendly ogre to go punch a bull in the face.

QuoteAnd sure, send in the ogre to make friends with the other ogres.  But a) that's not replacing the fighter by any means because you're not actually fighting, and b) his friends aren't charmed, so they won't just automatically go along with it.

Yes, exactly, you're not actually fighting a thing (or group of things) that you otherwise would have been if there weren't a wizard around.

And no, his friends aren't charmed, but having a charmed ogre probably makes the parley attempt a lot easier.