Soft Rant

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Soft Rant

(account deleted) 14 Nov 2011 09:16

Taken from Bill Bisco's opinions:

1. A significant fun part of D&D is the challenge. Players should optimize their characters for effectiveness and the DM should work to make challenges appropriate for the level of effectiveness of the characters.

Soft's opinion: Effectiveness =/= Overkill. The DM should not have to work for hours to play the arms race with overkill PCs. Consider that the DM has to gauge the entire party based upon its strongest member and not its weakest. The weakest is out in the cold, and as of this date the weakest is the "effective" character.

2. A DM should not punish characters for employing strategies or tactics that the DM did envision rather the DM should roll with it and try to make future encounters overcome that vulnerability if necessary.

Soft's opinion: I agree with this statement entirely. I feel zero loss when the pcs kill my beautiful Jets.

3. A DM should not "railroad" or force players toward a specific goal, hints and encouragement are fine, and the DM should improvise as the players choose to go places and take actions that the DM did not originally envision, that's where a lot of the fun of D&D is.

Soft's opinion: This is extremely hard for me to do only because of…the first point of this post.

4. Players should police themselves according to the Gentleman's Agreement rather than DMs trying to put lots of fixes to an imperfect system

Soft's opinion: E6 tier 3 gestalt with a few common sense house rules (like sneak attack stacking and such) makes the CR+2 system work I have found. Bill trusts players too much. Players love to sit on "hidden power". I'd rather have a PC using 100% of his power all of the time instead of sitting on a nuclear bomb and thinking he is kind for not using it.

5. Allowable material should generally be broad and Campaigns should avoid playing "Mother May I" as much as possible

Soft's opinion: If you cannot make your concept in an E6 tier 3 gestalt game, you are overdoing it.

6. All alignments are allowed, and characters should generally be allowed to do as they wish, the DM should never say "But your character wouldn't do that"

Soft's opinion: DMs should say that, but not enforce it. I'm sorry, but the paladin gets the ability to see evil for a reason. Evil characters can be played right, but most are not. I'd rather have a lawful stupid Paladin then a stupid evil Necromancer.

7. PVP and stealing are allowed only if there are good story reasons for it and the players are mature enough for it, "just playing my character" is not a justified reason or salvageable character archetype for a team game

Soft's opinion: This directly conflicts with point 6 Bill, and shame on you for that. Nothing makes the PCs special to each other. We need to vote on this one to say the least. This is why I voted for Protomas over Bill. At least Protomas tried to address this early.

8. Character death and TPKs have to be a possibility for danger to mean anything and with Action Points and methods of raising the dead, there should be plenty of opportunity for success

Soft's opinion: I don't even know where to begin with this as I feel alot of the players have already violated the gentleman's agreement. The game is dangerous for some, but not for others. In order to be dangerous for those others, it is now lethal to the some.

9. DMs can choose to disallow certain characters or players just as players can choose not to play with certain DMs, fair is fair, but such decisions should be made with good reason.

Soft's opinion: I do not agree with this statement for anything other than level requirements. What's probably gonna happen if I take this at face value is me having my own games for tier 3s and under. I suspect the (cough cough asshats cough) who decided to play tier 1s (optimized no less) will complain about this as the level disparity becomes insane.

10. Above all the DM and the players should aim to have the most collective fun as possible.

Soft's opinion: Above all the DM and the players should aim to be fair to one another.

So, I've noticed the more I DM, the more my character falls behind…wow, what a great way to reward DMs.

Last edited on 14 Nov 2011 10:04 by (account deleted) Show more

Re: Soft Rant

Farr1s 14 Nov 2011 10:22

"I feel alot of the players have already violated the gentleman's agreement. The game is dangerous for some, but not for others. In order to be dangerous for those others, it is now lethal to the some."

I agree with this but I am not eager for ppl to start infighting about what breaks the game and what doesn't a mere month or whatever after the site was started. :/

Maybe someone could run some games that are specifically for non-optimized characters? I don't know how you could enforce it tho. I know that as a beginner the level of expertise required to play at this site is really daunting. I thought I had a good build for my cleric that would be fun but when I asked which Prc's to aim for none of the stuff I had planned was even suggested so now I am stuck choosing between doing what I think might be fun and doing what will help me stay competitive with the other characters.

I think that the dominance of a few very powerful characters may have the unintended side effect of driving off beginners or causing the game to become homogenized with everyone picking a few powerful builds and nobody taking any chances to be creative or do something just for the hell of it.

Again I am just a beginner though and I am still enjoying myself immensely playing here.

Re: Soft Rant

(account deleted) 14 Nov 2011 11:16

"Again I am just a beginner though and I am still enjoying myself immensely playing here."

I am not a beginner and have seen games fall apart for many of these reasons. Bill and the council need to step up their game.

My character is no exception to being optimized. However, I at least have the courtesy to tell Bill ahead of time what my character can do that may be questionable. I am not accusing any of the newer players with trying to break the system…it just breaks on its own.

Some of the old-school players seem to be breaking it just to push buttons.

My main frustration lies in not being able to gauge encounters any more. I could run a game every night if the CR worked correctly.

Re: Soft Rant

Farr1s 14 Nov 2011 11:23

Are there going to be any more e6 games? I was thinking about creating a new character for them and just trying to figure out what works on my own.

Re: Soft Rant

(account deleted) 14 Nov 2011 11:46

I have not seen the other E6 dms in a while. I was thinking about making my own city.

Part of what brought this thread and others of mine were from after reading Bill's descriptions about how the original Black Marches splintered. I am surprised he let things get this far without addressing these issues further. Some people dismiss my heavy tier mentality, but I view it as a nice starting point to crushing what I call "hidden" PC power.

Are you really being threatened in character when you are immune to most things or can spot them from a mile away?

Long story short, don't play the arms race with the DM…he always wins.

Last edited on 14 Nov 2011 11:47 by (account deleted) Show more

Re: Soft Rant

Ichai 14 Nov 2011 11:53

I'm not going to address the points in order, mostly because many of them have the same issue as their root.

So, first and easiest issue to deal with: DMs falling behind.
I suggest that when a DM runs a full-length session (not the short, single player ones), they should get an xp reward with commensurate gp. I'd suggest that the reward be a percentage of their preferred character's xp, possibly 5% of the total.

Second issue: Challenge ratings
This one is becoming quite a problem as the level gap increases. There are a few ways to fix it, though each have their own problems.
The first would be to restrict the applicants to each session to a specific level range. This has the problem of certain level ranges being neglected, or creating vastly more work for the DMs.
The second idea would be to lower the allowed number of players per session. This has similar problems to the first in that certain players will ninja the sessions, or more games will be needed, creating far more work.
A third way is to simply make the lower level PCs gain power when a certain threshold of higher levels are reached. For example, when we get 5 PCs at level 7, every PC below level 4 would be increased to level 4. I have a bit of a bad feeling about that one though, but I can't really verbalize why.

The game is dangerous for some, but not for others. In order to be dangerous for those others, it is now lethal to the some.

I fully agree with this, but for different reasons. Again, the problem is the level gap. If you're taking ECL 2 characters into a game designed for well-built 6s, of course they're going to risk death at every step. The solution in that case would be my first, restrict the level range.
I'll post more on this one if I think of it.

Third issue: PVP/Stealing/Party Conflict
I have no problem with party conflict in theory. In practice however, it invariably generates OOC conflict and drama. Equally invariably, the ones who start the party conflict get their asses handed to them by a united force of other PCs, and then cry foul. Think long and hard before allowing PK and player theft in your games.

Fourth issue: Railroading.
I'm fairly ambivalent on this. Most of the time, it's a very poor DM tactic and turns out horribly. However, it can be well used by a gifted DM, and provide an exciting and fulfilling game. I'd say this one's fine, just be careful when using it.

I'll post again later, when I've had time to think about the other points.

Re: Soft Rant

Farr1s 14 Nov 2011 12:00

Again I pretty much know jack shit about this stuff and am learning it by the seat of my pants but Ichai seems to have some good ideas, obviously when I brought my lvl. 1 cleric on an adventure with a bunch of lvl 4's and 5's i shouldn't be too surprised that he almost got one-shotted by goblins, but unfortunately I don't see anyone rushing to DM any level 1-4 only games at least in the past week I have been playing.

Re: Soft Rant

Ichai 14 Nov 2011 12:00

Sitting on power.

You keep throwing that term around without really defining it. The problem I have with the concept is that not every 'tier 1' class is overpowered. It's dependant on the PC's build. A wizard who focuses on transmutation buffs isn't sitting on power just because they aren't using conjuration cheese. That's their build, they don't have the option to use the overpowered conjuration, so not using it is not 'sitting on power'. And before you claim that's not what you meant, I used a similar example in chat and you stated that because the PC was eligible for the overpowered options, the act of not taking them was in itself sitting on power. So basically, Tier 1 is damned if they do, damned if they don't.

And yes, I know you're advocating for removing Tier 1, but it'll never happen. Turns out, people like playing wizards.

Re: Soft Rant

(account deleted) 14 Nov 2011 12:26

Turns out, WoTC came to that same conclusion, so they went and made beguilers, dread necros, and warmages. It's like they somehow understood that wizards were too good.

Then, WoTC decided to release a book of 9 swords. The book had nothing to do with swords so the wizard players ranted about how unfair it was.

I have zero sympathy for wizards and their players….

Re: Soft Rant

Kajhera 14 Nov 2011 12:59

1. The worst issue with this, is that we're letting a very wide level range into our games. If you take a look at characters within their level range:
5-7: Mali, Sidhe, Bor, Altharid, Baltasar Farris: Well, Farris just got here, so I haven't seen for the most part; his healing's very helpful though. Presuming it gets a chance to be utilized. The others, function quite effectively in relation to each other thus far. Ichai - I'd like you to please submit custom items as requests though. Don't just assume the magic item creation guidelines apply.
3-4: Seeker, Rinzle, Hector, Rydia, Three: I think these guys are doing alright.
1-2: No one really stays here long enough to tell, for the most part. Mekoti and Gato have managed to stay there 2 adventures and the balance between them is fine.

Sitting on Power: Tactically, wizards are supposed to be the 'heavy artillery with expensive ammo'. Having a nuclear bomb (or book full of explosive runes) and not using it is precisely what they're designed to do. It has an opportunity cost - use it once, you get limited in the future… It's when you start bypassing this limit by unusual means, things get hairy.

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Player of Sidhe Spellweaver, Mekoti

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