The whole #mudcore debate seems to presume that D&D or OSR high level play is bad. It's not. In fact it's amazing, if you know how to do it right.
#dnd #ttrpg #osr
Haven't finished watching yet, but like I said in the video comments, IMO D&D SUCKS at high level play in general, regardless of edition or variant of it. But the idea that old school D&D or the OSR specifically, is particularly bad at it is nonsense. If anything later editions of the game make the aspects of it (such as HP inflation) that make high level play suck even worse. So to single out the OSR just cuz it focuses on the only truly playable levels of play of the game is absurd.
There's a lot of things you could criticize the OSR for, but this one seems like silly nitpicking that's even worse in other versions or editions of the game.
For myself and my friends, Lvl 4-8 seemed to be the real sweet spot of the game for our characters. (Talking AD&D here) We played very few characters beyond 11-12th level. I don't recall ever having a character over 12th Level, although I might have had one go as high as 14. The character I considered my 'quintessential' character during those years I played off and on for a few years, and then he perished as an 8th Level Ranger in a home-brew version of Moria.
The problem for us was that we never stayed with a group of characters long enough to play 'high level.' It takes a looong time to get there, and honestly our attention spans weren't hardy enough to last it out before we got bored with a party and started over at 1st level .
It would be interesting to play some really high level characters at some point (15+) in an AD&D or 2E game.
Quote from: jmarso on March 22, 2023, 10:08:36 PM
The problem for us was that we never stayed with a group of characters long enough to play 'high level.'
My son complains that other players in our 5e Stonehell campaign keep making new PCs rather than stick with what they have, so his PC is now 14th level while newbies come in at 7th and everyone else is 7th-9th...
I do think most people who claim it "breaks," either had lousy DMs or never really played high level campaigns. We made full use of the BECMI rules for domains and had a blast. I've run two campaigns in BECMI that went into the 30+ level range, though we thought the Immortals rules were a mess and never played those.
For AD&D we've also done plenty of play above 10th level, mostly in an apocalyptic/journey to the Infernus campaign I wrote where PCs start at around 10th level. The combats can be harder to run, but if you have good players, it's a blast. We also had a great time playing the 2e module "A Paladin in Hell," which I think is probably the best high level module ever published by TSR for AD&D. In that game we were using criticals and the exploding dice mechanic and there were some truly epic moments, such as when a samurai PC did a "Smaug" on a Linnorm dragon, burying a bunch of arrows in it and killing it from afar.
I think there is a reason why OSE caps at 14th level and many other OSR or OSR-ish games only go up to 10th level.
Quote from: Persimmon on March 23, 2023, 09:37:54 AM
I do think most people who claim it "breaks," either had lousy DMs or never really played high level campaigns. We made full use of the BECMI rules for domains and had a blast. I've run two campaigns in BECMI that went into the 30+ level range, though we thought the Immortals rules were a mess and never played those.
It's a matter of taste. I never played much BECMI, but in AD&D1, things get geometrically more complicated as characters go up in level. Especially, characters end up with golf bags full of dozens of magic items they are juggling, and spellcasters have dozens of spells to track.
In many other systems, high power characters mostly just have higher stats. So it's a lot simpler to run.
I've preferred the simpler high-stat for feeling epic, while high-level D&D felt more bogged down.
Haven't watched yet, but high-level B/X is doable - a 14th level fighter is no crunchier than a 1st level one, and the thief is barely the same. Sure, the spellcasters are much more powerful and fiddly; it helps that in my house rules a 14th-level MU has basically 14 spells.
(also, while I'm using feats, mostly "power ups" are simply augmenting abilities a little).
Playing 5e, however, my players forgot most of their powers by level 10.
Quote from: Rhymer88 on March 23, 2023, 10:27:02 AM
I think there is a reason why OSE caps at 14th level and many other OSR or OSR-ish games only go up to 10th level.
Yeah, it's simply that Gavin Norman is obsessed with Moldvay/Cook and didn't like the Companion Set. He's pretty much said that straight up.
I think B/X in particular, but also Swords & Wizardry, scales fine because the spells & extra abilities are fairly limited, as are the magical items. If you add BECMI weapon mastery and other options, it's more fiddly, of course. We finished Necropolis for Swords & Wizardry over Christmas with PCs in the level 9-13 range and it ran fairly smoothly. In fact, the players enjoyed it so much that we'll be keeping those PCs for the even higher level Cyclopean Deeps campaign for S&W over the summer.
Greetings!
I have always enjoyed high-level D&D, whether the campaign was dealing with AD&D, 3E, or 5E. In every case, I have simply ramped up the opposition dial to 11. That's on a micro-tactical, mechanical level. High-level Player Characters do, of course, still set off on wilderness expeditions, and crawling into ancient crypts full of vampires, and go down into vast, subterranean fortresses full of all kinds of monsters.
Having said that, however, the campaign "Texture" also experiences a transition, a gradual transformation in flow, pacing, and dynamics. The Player Characters have typically become involved in very high positions within the local society and community. The Player Characters become drawn into diplomacy, rulership, raising, funding, and leading armies. Along with all of this, there are romances, marriages, children, illicit affairs, betrayals, assassination plots, and seeing to the various relationships of numerous family members, children, friends, and henchmen. Expanding from these dynamics, there are larger, "Big Picture" issues to deal with. Wars, rebuilding shattered allies, hosting allied refugee communities, invading enemies, resisting invaders, cultivating strategic resources, exploring strange, foreign lands, entertaining foreign ambassadors, engaging in political machinations, and more.
High-Level game play easily develops into complex, soap-opera-like episodes that often can take center-stage, and drive a campaign forward for many months or even years of real-time game sessions.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: Persimmon on March 23, 2023, 09:37:54 AM
I do think most people who claim it "breaks," either had lousy DMs or never really played high level campaigns.
This may or may not be true, but you can't really dispute the notion that most D&D rolls are based on a d20, so at some point the mathematics can get wonky. Really high bonuses without corresponding really high AC mean that you get continual auto-hit situations. When I think of D&D "breaking" that's what I think about. Certainly there are ways around this such as restructuring the combat tables to account for number creep, or challenging characters with different types of challenge such as level drain, but none of this is really dealt with in the rulebooks. (So there is a "High Level Campaigns" book in AD&D 2E, but such resources are few and far between.)
Quote from: SHARK on March 23, 2023, 10:42:55 PM
High-Level game play easily develops into complex, soap-opera-like episodes that often can take center-stage, and drive a campaign forward for many months or even years of real-time game sessions.
They can do this, and such campaigns are very different in style from low-level games. Again, not a lot of guidance is provided for such campaigns.
I have thought higher levels are really interesting in the abstract, but once I began DM-ing, I saw it as very frustrating and difficult because it was hard to anticipate the options I needed to plan for given the abilities of the player characters. I think you have to adopt a different mindset to get past that, but that is easier said than done.
Quote from: finarvyn on March 24, 2023, 09:34:56 AM
Quote from: Persimmon on March 23, 2023, 09:37:54 AM
I do think most people who claim it "breaks," either had lousy DMs or never really played high level campaigns.
This may or may not be true, but you can't really dispute the notion that most D&D rolls are based on a d20, so at some point the mathematics can get wonky. Really high bonuses without corresponding really high AC mean that you get continual auto-hit situations. When I think of D&D "breaking" that's what I think about. Certainly there are ways around this such as restructuring the combat tables to account for number creep, or challenging characters with different types of challenge such as level drain, but none of this is really dealt with in the rulebooks. (So there is a "High Level Campaigns" book in AD&D 2E, but such resources are few and far between.)
Quote from: SHARK on March 23, 2023, 10:42:55 PM
High-Level game play easily develops into complex, soap-opera-like episodes that often can take center-stage, and drive a campaign forward for many months or even years of real-time game sessions.
They can do this, and such campaigns are very different in style from low-level games. Again, not a lot of guidance is provided for such campaigns.
To me, it's common sense that you're changing the play style and type of foes. So 15th level characters aren't plowing through orcs; they're fighting devils, demons, and the like. Those kind of monsters usually have a very high (or low in AD&D) AC, lots of hit points, spell resistance, multiple and special attacks, etc. Hell, they can just keep gating in reinforcements. I think there's also a default assumption, at least in earlier editions of the game (I never played extensively beyond 2e), that by the time characters get to those levels, both they and the DM have figured things out. You don't need a bunch of specialized splat books telling you how to do it. Give me a few outlines for domain play and or mass combat and let me go.
I've always enjoyed high level play so maybe I'm just an outlier. And I've often had good players to work with so we really never had issues.
Quote from: Persimmon on March 24, 2023, 12:28:47 PM
To me, it's common sense that you're changing the play style and type of foes. So 15th level characters aren't plowing through orcs; they're fighting devils, demons, and the like. Those kind of monsters usually have a very high (or low in AD&D) AC, lots of hit points, spell resistance, multiple and special attacks, etc. Hell, they can just keep gating in reinforcements. I think there's also a default assumption, at least in earlier editions of the game (I never played extensively beyond 2e), that by the time characters get to those levels, both they and the DM have figured things out. You don't need a bunch of specialized splat books telling you how to do it. Give me a few outlines for domain play and or mass combat and let me go.
I've always enjoyed high level play so maybe I'm just an outlier. And I've often had good players to work with so we really never had issues.
Well, part of the reason that high level WotC D&D play is messed up, even still somewhat in 5E, because of how saves scale. I think sometimes people project that experience back onto their memories of earlier D&D, or in some cases just assume it without any prior experience of those earlier editions.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on March 24, 2023, 12:48:48 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on March 24, 2023, 12:28:47 PM
To me, it's common sense that you're changing the play style and type of foes. So 15th level characters aren't plowing through orcs; they're fighting devils, demons, and the like. Those kind of monsters usually have a very high (or low in AD&D) AC, lots of hit points, spell resistance, multiple and special attacks, etc. Hell, they can just keep gating in reinforcements. I think there's also a default assumption, at least in earlier editions of the game (I never played extensively beyond 2e), that by the time characters get to those levels, both they and the DM have figured things out. You don't need a bunch of specialized splat books telling you how to do it. Give me a few outlines for domain play and or mass combat and let me go.
I've always enjoyed high level play so maybe I'm just an outlier. And I've often had good players to work with so we really never had issues.
Well, part of the reason that high level WotC D&D play is messed up, even still somewhat in 5E, because of how saves scale. I think sometimes people project that experience back onto their memories of earlier D&D, or in some cases just assume it without any prior experience of those earlier editions.
I can't comment on save scaling in 5e, but I do know that some don't like C&C for the reason that saves are tied to the level of attack. So, unlike in AD&D or OD&D, the attack level matters so if you're facing equally or more powerful foes, your saves are still going to be tough. This ups the lethality factor quite a bit. I don't mind this so much, but my players do, so they prefer Swords & Wizardry, where your saves are going to be pretty easy at the high levels. But since we use a pretty brutal crit system, the lethality is there.
Quote from: GamerforHire on March 24, 2023, 09:47:43 AM
I have thought higher levels are really interesting in the abstract, but once I began DM-ing, I saw it as very frustrating and difficult because it was hard to anticipate the options I needed to plan for given the abilities of the player characters. I think you have to adopt a different mindset to get past that, but that is easier said than done.
Yeah. I think this goes with what I said about complexity. The sheer number of abilities with all the spells and caddies full of magic items can be difficult to anticipate.
I think a bigger issue than scaling in combat is the added options for PCs to completely circumvent encounters. For example, use scrying/spying to see all the defenses, then teleport to the end and nuke the boss with an alpha strike. I remember a high-level AD&D1 adventure where there was a castle to defend with constant Detect Magic from gangs of mages. Since the druid's changed shape didn't register, though, he could scout - and the rest of the party all got in a Portable Hole that he put in his pocket before transforming. So we just skipped past all the castle defenses. If it hadn't been for that loophole, though, there's no way we could have fought through the defenses.
Quote from: SHARK on March 23, 2023, 10:42:55 PM
Having said that, however, the campaign "Texture" also experiences a transition, a gradual transformation in flow, pacing, and dynamics. The Player Characters have typically become involved in very high positions within the local society and community. The Player Characters become drawn into diplomacy, rulership, raising, funding, and leading armies. Along with all of this, there are romances, marriages, children, illicit affairs, betrayals, assassination plots, and seeing to the various relationships of numerous family members, children, friends, and henchmen.
These are all interesting possibilities -- but I'd note that they aren't tied to being high level. Low-power characters can still have high positions - just within a smaller scale of community. So they could be the most respected patrons of a local village, and become involved in raising and funding militia for local defense, becoming involved with the local leaders, and so forth. These sort of plots were a feature of several of my relatively low-power RuneQuest and HarnMaster campaigns.
I had a recent-ish D&D campaign that was similar, where the community was a small band of apocalypse survivors (similar to The Walking Dead). With civilization fallen from a plague of dragons, the PCs were the protectors of their own small band.
I've only ever touched on the edges of high level D&D play (12th level in AD&D) but the biggest issue I had was feeling disconnected from the game. At high level, play starts to lose its resemblance to real life and it's harder for me to feel connected to and care about the characters.
When I run high-level campaigns, I typically use BECMI / Rules Cyclopedia.
For me, the way to run these campaigns is to
1. Involve PCs that are more than simply adventurers. They are barons, dukes, or generals, and their objectives are not simply to crawl through dungeons and gather loot. They will be involved in fighting full-scale wars, protecting the realm from awesome creatures (dragons, et. al.), or rescuing a prince / princess. The PCs will be engaged in diplomacy, statecraft, and tournament.
2. utilize mass battle rules. I love the War Machine and Sea Machine in the BECMI set.
3. Domain management (in the Campaign Set).
Encounters against deadly foes will not be drawn-out affairs. You either dispatch the ancient dragon quickly, or you die.
But I have also used AD&D for some high-level stuff as well. The "Lich Lords" module is awesome--not easy to run, but rewarding.
Quote from: MerrillWeathermay on March 24, 2023, 06:16:40 PM
When I run high-level campaigns, I typically use BECMI / Rules Cyclopedia.
For me, the way to run these campaigns is to
1. Involve PCs that are more than simply adventurers. They are barons, dukes, or generals, and their objectives are not simply to crawl through dungeons and gather loot. They will be involved in fighting full-scale wars, protecting the realm from awesome creatures (dragons, et. al.), or rescuing a prince / princess. The PCs will be engaged in diplomacy, statecraft, and tournament.
2. utilize mass battle rules. I love the War Machine and Sea Machine in the BECMI set.
3. Domain management (in the Campaign Set).
Encounters against deadly foes will not be drawn-out affairs. You either dispatch the ancient dragon quickly, or you die.
But I have also used AD&D for some high-level stuff as well. The "Lich Lords" module is awesome--not easy to run, but rewarding.
Excellent points. And I think the War Machine is better than the Battle system rules for mass combat and can easily be used for other editions of D&D. There are super simple mass combat rules in Swords & Wizardry, but we haven't tried them yet.
High level campaigns are the best. All the players know their characters and each other's stories so well, and the setting itself. Play goes from local at low levels, nation-wide at mid levels, and outer planar at high levels. Challenges ramp up with the player's abilities. OSR play is fantastic at it.
While I like 5e, it is terrible at mid level and beyond, combats become drudgery, the numbers are so out of whack that it is virtually impossible to moderate the game.
I've run high level games in AD&D 2e, 3.0, and 3.5. The system definitely fights you at high levels- you can't easily put a bunch of monsters in the room and have a solid and meaningful encounter as you can at low levels, winning initiative is extremely impactful, and by the default rules a powerful hero or villain will only rarely be rendered actually dead. Further, there's incredible impacts to worldbuilding- things can buff and teleport in to the PCs, which the PCs can also do, limited wish is very disruptive, and wish even moreso, and there's reasonably bullshit combo spells and things which allow multiple actions or immunity to entire classes of threats. Ground can be created and destroyed, castles are a sucker's game, etc.
You can, and should, fix all of these. Can you smear something on the wall to disallow teleportation in? Or teleportation out? Are there certain specific wishes that are well understood to not work? Are castles built in a way that disallows trivial magical destruction, and armed with battlements that are somewhat effective against flying troops?
Then there's mechanical system oddities. Dispel magic in AD&D is a pile of dispel checks versus a bunch of different target numbers, spells have extremely harsh effects and the progression of saves in OSR games indicates that they will only rarely take effect- exacerbating the "rocket tag" complaint, as a save-or-die is balanced around bouncing off the high level party but will sometimes kill like three dudes who can't roll above 2. Scenarios where combat is a give and take become very rare, and combat becomes easy to enter into and escape from- until there's no escape for some reason.
Processing out of game stuff is hard, and most systems in the day didn't offer enough support directly. Supplements required you to piece together how to run the keep, and did the player want to play sim city or populous? If you had some players that didn't engage with that, they would tune out for portions of that game play. These days this is easier, as there are better systems you can glue in to things.
I think it's absolutely worth all that though- I've never started a game that I didn't assume would go for a long time and a high level. But I totally understand why there would be people who don't want all that. The world described by high level D&D is pretty alien, after all.
3e/PF is the only D&D edition I've found where high level really doesn't work. 1e-2e is fine, as is BECMI of course. 4e 11-20 is fine; 21-30 gets painfully slow, but still works. 5e I actually find is great for high level play. It's a lot more constrained than earlier editions. Stuff like "20 Vrock Demons attack!" can get a bit slow to resolve as some WoTC monsters are just bags of hit points, but overall I can run it like high level AD&D and it works fine. I've run a couple 5e campaigns up to 20th and beyond, both were fun. The Wilderlands sandbox game was especially great.
You play Godbound.
Alternatively, make tools for people to dial up or down the craziness of their campaign as much as they want. You want Dragon Ball? Okay, just pick these options. You want Conan? Okay, pick those options.
I've decided to take a more adversarial stance in this thread! This should liven the thread up a bit. Here's my argument:
Most of the OSR has great support for midlevel play, and not much support for traditional highlevel play
I'm going to define "traditional high level play" as stuff you would see if your AD&D campaign went to max level- past 18 in all versions. In this worlds, the party has access to coming back to life, combat involves getting through stoneskin, project image, and protections such as "I'm actually on the ethereal plane", "I'm immune to non-magical weaponry", "I only take 1 point of damage from sources that are not magical and bludgeoning", etc. The exact protections vary from version to version and depending on which high level casters are around, but generally they require being removed via dispels or blown through via certain special powerful attacks. Additionally, high level parties and their enemies can transit between anywhere pretty fast. The party likely has at least one pocket plane that is their own, assuming they haven't made alliances with some actual good faction on some version of heaven to hang out in if they need. Enemies have similar protections and capabilities.
While old games have this- OD&D going to 36, AD&D being well defined to 20 and with rules for beyond, in both versions- not many OSR games do. I struggle to think of a single OSR game where Prismatic Spray is on the table, to say nothing of Timestop, or the full set of Power Words. Most games have some alternate epic-style advancement starting between 8th and 14th level, some way to access things that go beyond the normal set of powers.
So what do we mean by high level? If it means "the PCs have a large ability to interact with the world and are well known to the powerbases of that world, or are their own powerbase", then I think OSR does fine. There are much better campaign-level rules in OSR products than actual old games, and they are generally better than what you'll find in new modern games as well. AD&D told you that you could build a castle; ACKS gives you the rules for that, 5ed replaces that with Action Surge.
But that's not all of high level play. The really imaginative, open ended, and world-distorting powers, spells, and often monsters, are generally omitted from OSR rules. I think OSR caps out at midlevel play with good support for the players pulling some levers that effect the powerbases of the world, but doesn't do high level the same way that AD&D did, or even that 3.X and 5e take stabs at.
Quote from: VisionStorm on March 22, 2023, 05:14:11 PM
Haven't finished watching yet, but like I said in the video comments, IMO D&D SUCKS at high level play in general, regardless of edition or variant of it. But the idea that old school D&D or the OSR specifically, is particularly bad at it is nonsense. If anything later editions of the game make the aspects of it (such as HP inflation) that make high level play suck even worse. So to single out the OSR just cuz it focuses on the only truly playable levels of play of the game is absurd.
There's a lot of things you could criticize the OSR for, but this one seems like silly nitpicking that's even worse in other versions or editions of the game.
My point in the video, however, is that the OSR is generally very good for high level play. And of course some OSR games are more great at it than others.
(1) I wish more RPGs cut things off around 10th level. I love the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, but like B/X more because the high level stuff isn't there at all. I'd love to buy a RC (or 5E player's handbook, or whatever) with only material needed for characters through level 10. The stuff for levels 11-20 could be in a "high level handbook" or some such.
(2) I've tinkered with the notion of adding levels in between the existing ones. Allows for characters to "level up" faster without really gaining power faster.
Quote from: finarvyn on March 28, 2023, 09:14:47 AM
(1) I wish more RPGs cut things off around 10th level. I love the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, but like B/X more because the high level stuff isn't there at all. I'd love to buy a RC (or 5E player's handbook, or whatever) with only material needed for characters through level 10. The stuff for levels 11-20 could be in a "high level handbook" or some such.
(2) I've tinkered with the notion of adding levels in between the existing ones. Allows for characters to "level up" faster without really gaining power faster.
I think there are so many things tied up into leveling pace and power, that it has to be examined as a package in every game that uses them. I don't mind higher levels in a game where I'm not going to use them (much), as long as they are well thought out. It sets some boundaries for the campaign. Plus, there comes a point in every leveling system where any additional levels are "tacked on". That's true no matter how you design it, though the design can move the point up or down. For example, I don't think there's a problem having 36 levels in RC. There's not a problem having a name level in the 9-11 range in RC. There's not a problem tacking on levels after name level (especially with some of the options added in). There is, however a disconnect the way all of those things interact in RC.
Which makes it funny you should mention adding levels in between. I took roughly the scope of RC, compressed it into 24 levels, but spread out more evenly. There's no "name" level. However, classes stop at level 24, even if the leveling doesn't. (You get things after 24, just not the core things the class gives. And leveling is pretty darn slow in the upper reaches.) However, my equivalent of "Hit dice" only improve on the odd levels, and there are other things that take 2 to 4 levels that would only take 1 or 2 in RC.
In other words, I built the "in between" levels as the default. Nothing would stop a GM who wanted less leveling from simply combining every 2 levels into 1 level each, and slowing the XP progression accordingly. It's just easier that way than it is to try to stick the levels into a game already compressed.
Quote from: finarvyn on March 28, 2023, 09:14:47 AM
(1) I wish more RPGs cut things off around 10th level. I love the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, but like B/X more because the high level stuff isn't there at all. I'd love to buy a RC (or 5E player's handbook, or whatever) with only material needed for characters through level 10. The stuff for levels 11-20 could be in a "high level handbook" or some such.
(2) I've tinkered with the notion of adding levels in between the existing ones. Allows for characters to "level up" faster without really gaining power faster.
Why not just buy Old School Essentials? It cuts off at level 14.
Quote from: Persimmon on March 28, 2023, 09:57:35 AM
Why not just buy Old School Essentials? It cuts off at level 14.
ACKS too. Level 1-14 B/X cuts off at level 6 spells and is good for the OD&D feel, avoiding the god-level spells Gygax introduced in the Greyhawk supplement. You're definitely 'high level' at 9th-14th, but not a god.
Err, which notable old school products don't cut off between 10th and 14th level? ACKS is mostly just to 14, worlds without number is 10, hyperborea is 14, a whole lot of them end there. That's actually my earlier contention in the thread, OSR doesn't actually have many systems that even get to classical high level play, they cap out at mid level and then provide a bunch of rules to do important mid level things (instead of just handwaving "you can build a keep" as actual old D&D did).
Quote from: Venka on March 28, 2023, 02:08:59 PM
Err, which notable old school products don't cut off between 10th and 14th level? ACKS is mostly just to 14, worlds without number is 10, hyperborea is 14, a whole lot of them end there.
Labyrinth Lord goes to 20 with level 7-9 spells.
BFRPG goes to 20 but with a BX or OD&D style level 6 spell cap.
OSRIC is AD&D 1e and so has level 7-9 spells and no level limit AIR.
Swords & Wizardry goes to level 20 with levels 7-9 spells and has several published adventures for PCs above level 12.
Unsure whether OSRIC is really doing it's own thing separate from AD&D1e, but that's at least two and maybe three!
Quote from: Venka on March 28, 2023, 02:08:59 PM
Err, which notable old school products don't cut off between 10th and 14th level? ACKS is mostly just to 14, worlds without number is 10, hyperborea is 14, a whole lot of them end there. That's actually my earlier contention in the thread, OSR doesn't actually have many systems that even get to classical high level play, they cap out at mid level and then provide a bunch of rules to do important mid level things (instead of just handwaving "you can build a keep" as actual old D&D did).
All of my games have no real level limit. However, I do establish that a 15th level character is very powerful and rare.