Blue body paint, yellow contacts, taping your fingers together, putting on a Halloween costume tail, and eating lots of hard boiled eggs so you can drop some sulfur when you teleport.
I just happened to quote the wrong post. Too lazy to fix it.
Solo kills imply that the character is separated from the rest of the group; which happens when you're the scout or the character is apt to wander around looking for trouble.
Yes, so you reward that character's extra play time and extra spot light time with extra XP. Scouting falls into the "Sensible real world tactics that do bad things in the game", like economics and realistic physics.
Yes, but unlike economics systems that are minimal and physics a la carte, you can't simply force your players to play tactically stupid.
Players instinctively want to split up (Scooby Doo Phenomenon) and trying to shepherd them all into the same place unnecessarily is counterproductive and hurts the group's sense of immersion. As long as you've got them all together for the major encounters (or, at least, relatively together) you're going to be fine. Besides, XP is basically the only way to strongarm bad players into a) playing smart (hey, you had a good idea with the tying two ladders together to make a bridge, here's some bonus XP [that doesn't matter at all in the longrun but whatever]) and b) role-playing when their nature (read: munchkin) is contrary to that particular playing methodology (you managed to hold a conversation with me for 2 minutes without breaking character, you've earned 50 XP [which, oh my god, will totally not level you up before anyone else because I'm careful]).
Yes, but unlike economics systems that are minimal and physics a la carte, you can't simply force your players to play tactically stupid.
Players instinctively want to split up (Scooby Doo Phenomenon) and trying to shepherd them all into the same place unnecessarily is counterproductive and hurts the group's sense of immersion. As long as you've got them all together for the major encounters (or, at least, relatively together) you're going to be fine. Besides, XP is basically the only way to strongarm bad players into a) playing smart (hey, you had a good idea with the tying two ladders together to make a bridge, here's some bonus XP [that doesn't matter at all in the longrun but whatever]) and b) role-playing when their nature (read: munchkin) is contrary to that particular playing methodology (you managed to hold a conversation with me for 2 minutes without breaking character, you've earned 50 XP [which, oh my god, will totally not level you up before anyone else because I'm careful]).
There are two issues here: You are bribing people to conform to your idea of what is fun and second you are rewarding certain classes at the expense of others. If your "munchkin" sees that Rangers get bonus XP because they're being sent to scout what do you expect the outcome of that to be?
Really, to take 4e and complain that you should damage the group dynamic because "It's tactically sound" is to stand atop a mound of corpses while champion nonviolence to somebody who spanked their child. D&D has been moving further and further away from "real world" tactically sound play with each and every edition. It's one of those areas where I am firmly in the gamist camp.
My major problem is the ritual selling rules. It's basically retarded to have an item be a guaranteed loss to make (at least make it sell even if you don't want to encourage a ritual printing press). It doesn't help that I am an economics major.
I disagree with the idea that future rewards should be penalized if you really want to succeed at a skill challenge to sell an item. I understand that it has balance ramifications, but OTOH, the DM could probably convince the players to put it in a gold sink like a mount, or a keep, or something.
1. You must be a terrible econ student.
2. It is not retarded to have an item be a "guaranteed" loss to make. It takes a lot of time and effort to sell stuff, particularlly in (likely)negative sloping supply[it can also just be very low supply], very low demand scenario where no one but a select few are going to want magic items of any value and none of them are going to want one unless it was specifically made for them.
Now, since to everyone else, a magic item is only worth the residiuum that you get out of it when you disenchant the item, since the likelihood that that item is valuable to anyone else is amost nil and you need 5 disenchanted items to make the 1 single item that anyone orders specifically(and you still aren't making any profit, actually you are losing money at that point), you actually get to a point where 20% seems pretty reasonable if the merchant wants to make any profit.
Low Demand, Low Volume, low velocity, no commodity, highly variable values accross the few people who do want the items with bad substitution.
3. Skill challenges are encounters all to themselves and generate XP just like encounters do. If you want to RP a merchant you get to RP a merchant. You do not get to say "I am a merchant" and then use that to justify having wildly overpowered items throughout the adventure.
Wealth by level is there so that the game remains balanced. If you increase your wealth via a skill challenge, all the combat challenges are going to have to have reduced wealth to compensate for the increased wealth generated by the skill challenge. Why? Because if you don't, players will game the system to break it via wealth.
They are not interesting in roleplaying merchants, seeking out buyers for their magical wares accross mystic lands and then selling them the right item they need, making profit on the margins where others disenchant at a 5/1 ratio instead.
And if they are then there isn't a problem, because the skill challenges are what are driving their enjoyment of the game and they are generating wealth/level in a balanced manner.
I liked Modern's wealth system. Better than trying to keep track of every last copper piece or what have you, in my opinion.
Blue dot!
If it was anything like OWoD i would say i like it as well(I.E. ambiguous wealth), but that doesn't work as well in DnD.
However, they did partially do that when creating characters of >1 level. Where you get
1 Level +1 Item
1 Level item
1 level -1 item
Enough gold for a second level -1 item
As much mundane stuff as you would have/need.
Once you are past 2nd or 3rd level mundane costs except large purchaes(homes, ships etc) pretty much go away, and iirc, most DMs just ignore it at that point.
The rogue has to make a stealth check for opening the door, and for the movement.
Opening the door is a move action iirc and so unless your DM let you open the door and then wait still behind the door(the move action to work the mechanism) and then cross the distance you would need another action on the turn, more cover in the room for which to hide behind after you made your movement, or someone flanking the enemy in order to sneak attack.
Also you might need a feat or ability to allow you to move your full move instead of half move while sneaking.
If you can get close enough you ought to be able to use a power that lets you shift, since shifting is always 1 square regardless of movement type, you can shift silently and make that attack in the standard action.
Other possibilities are warlord powers that move you(though i think you would stil have to rule on it)
My major problem is the ritual selling rules. It's basically retarded to have an item be a guaranteed loss to make (at least make it sell even if you don't want to encourage a ritual printing press). It doesn't help that I am an economics major.
I disagree with the idea that future rewards should be penalized if you really want to succeed at a skill challenge to sell an item. I understand that it has balance ramifications, but OTOH, the DM could probably convince the players to put it in a gold sink like a mount, or a keep, or something.
1. You must be a terrible econ student.
I must be dumb, because I can't figure out how you think this is appropriate.
2. It is not retarded to have an item be a "guaranteed" loss to make. It takes a lot of time and effort to sell stuff, particularly in (likely)negative sloping supply[it can also just be very low supply], very low demand scenario where no one but a select few are going to want magic items of any value and none of them are going to want one unless it was specifically made for them.
It is retarded if you want a game world in which the last magic items made for sale was not made generations ago. If you can, by definition, not sell an item for profit to a merchant, then the only magic smiths in the world will do all their own selling. Except that selling is so fucking risky and hard, you would have to make an item for next to nothing to be worth it, which again, you cannot do by the rules.
Not to mention what the price of certain rituals says about their rarity. Cure disease is 360 gp market value, a warhorse is 680 gp. You'd have to make a lot of excuses about how rare level 6 magic users are to be able to justify why an army would have thousands of the latter without hundreds of the former.
It's a good balance mechanic, but it does not make economic sense unless your entire campaign world consists of scavengers picking over the bones of dead civilizations, and I'm honestly surprised you would even suggest it does.
Also, I believe it is the stated and official design policy that DND 4e is designed to be a solid game, and not a simulationist rule set, thus further validating my point that the rule is silly if you think of it.
Wealth by level is there so that the game remains balanced. If you increase your wealth via a skill challenge, all the combat challenges are going to have to have reduced wealth to compensate for the increased wealth generated by the skill challenge. Why? Because if you don't, players will game the system to break it via wealth.
They are not interesting in roleplaying merchants, seeking out buyers for their magical wares accross mystic lands and then selling them the right item they need, making profit on the margins where others disenchant at a 5/1 ratio instead.
And if they are then there isn't a problem, because the skill challenges are what are driving their enjoyment of the game and they are generating wealth/level in a balanced manner.
Balance can vary from campaign to campaign, you know. And again, I think the idea of a player held keep could have a lot of potential, and that easily absorbs all the extra gold and then more. If you make players spend 100k on a keep without intentionally giving them extra gold, then you actually go the other way and end up with underpowered characters.
1. Its relevant because you made it so when you made the argument to authority.
2. No, its not. And there are many instances, even in in a large mature economy such as the United States, where there are vast discrepencies between sell price and buy price.
2a. Points... of... Light
3. Yes, if players do not spend their money then it doesn't change game balance. Then again they might as well not have had the money anyway since they didn't spend it.
Also, I believe it is the stated and official design policy that DND 4e is designed to be a solid game, and not a simulationist rule set, thus further validating my point that the rule is silly if you think of it.
I am not sure why "DnD is not trying to be simulationist" makes the rule silly. Not only does the rule make sense for the economy its discussing, but forming the rule around balance makes it less silly than forming it around some imaginary large mature economy of wealthy NPCs trading magical items as near commodities.
I was thinking of structuring my campaign- should my players vote for D&D, which they probably never will- based kind of like a TV show, with each "episode" being either one-half of a level (5 encounters or so) or a full level.
Like a TV show, each episode would have an A and a B plot. The A plot is for the party, the B plot is for an individual character and his backstory, acting as a "side quest" for that character.
Call it Joss Whedon's Dungeons and Dragons, with lots of wisecracking and humorous dialogue.
The problem with solo things is that they eat up time. A lot. I remember a 3 hour RL D&D session in which my character did nothing but talk to a NPC, because the rogue and druid decided they'd try to kill some evil king on their own via stealth. That's not fun at all, for me and the other two at the table.
1. Its relevant because you made it so when you made the argument to authority.
Yeah, and even if you were right about the in-game economy, you'd still be a dick for your presentation, if nothing else.
2. No, its not. And there are many instances, even in in a large mature economy such as the United States, where there are vast discrepancies between sell price and buy price.
I'm not talking about the 20% sell price vs. 100% buy price for people who just want to get rid of extra shit they picked up off some orc warboss. I'm talking about how there are next to no ways any rational economic actor could decide to create a magical item for the purpose of selling it under the rules as written. This fact, combined with disenchantment, suggests a geometrically falling number of items in existence.
I'm willing to indulge in the possibility I am wrong. What real world markets would you say best correlate with the DND 4e ritual market in particular? Anything primarily fucked up by government regulations doesn't count.
2a. Points... of... Light
Yeah, and that's open to interpretation. Having a powerful and rich commerce hub surrounded by barbarians and monsters would still qualify as a "points of light" campaign, and I wouldn't find it unusual to have a large number of heroic level magical items and rituals among the elites and badasses in such a society. The PCs are still unique, the world is still mostly set upon by darkness, and magic is still not especially common.
3. Yes, if players do not spend their money then it doesn't change game balance. Then again they might as well not have had the money anyway since they didn't spend it.
Or if they spend it on things which don't affect core adventuring tasks (combat, skill challenges, etc). They won't carry their fucking keep into battle*, will they? Are you being deliberately dense?
*Presumably the DM would involve it in a battle at some point, but in the single battle or few battles it is used in, the DM can balance around it, without changing the balance of 100 dungeon battles to follow.
You know, I'm sure you're making good points, Gou, but when I see a post started like this I think "Wow, that guy's a dick", and skip to the next one. Just because you think you're right (and on the internet, everyone does) doesn't mean that a little effort towards civility would be misplaced.
Cleave is mainly for clearing out minion fodder is it not? It still would be very useful for that regardless of the exact damage it does then no?
I see cleave mainly as a way for a fighter to deal with a non minion enemy while still being able to eliminate minions too close for the other player's AOEs. Which makes it extremely useful as long as it's doing 1 damage. So i fully agree.
Given that a Fighter can Mark any target that he attacks, is it not an easy way to Mark two opponents at once, assuming you manage to find two that are side by side?
Sure, minions and other swarms of foes (figurative, rather than literal) are more likely to be packed together for it to work, but that (and other multiple opponent attacks) were what struck me as using Mark to its greatest effect.
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First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
There are two issues here: You are bribing people to conform to your idea of what is fun and second you are rewarding certain classes at the expense of others. If your "munchkin" sees that Rangers get bonus XP because they're being sent to scout what do you expect the outcome of that to be?
Oh, don't worry, he's already figured that out and has begun trying to figure out how to get that XP himself. It's driving him completely batty, like a gerbil running its wheel so fast you can see smoke coming off the mounts.
I consider it a role-playing reward for the Ranger; he's doing something that suits the character's background, isn't doing it for glory (he almost never mentions to the group that he's found/fought/killed/looted anything), and it's no skin off my back to throw a few lurkers at him from time to time.
Really, to take 4e and complain that you should damage the group dynamic because "It's tactically sound" is to stand atop a mound of corpses while champion nonviolence to somebody who spanked their child. D&D has been moving further and further away from "real world" tactically sound play with each and every edition. It's one of those areas where I am firmly in the gamist camp.
I haven't changed the group dynamic at all. Take a level 4 Ranger and throw him against one or two level 4 lurkers sometime and tell me it's an easy encounter. For the record, you're completely backwards here: tactically sound play is the gamist camp (I'm here to participate in a combat simulation, thanks!) and rewarding someone for playing their role is only part of rewarding that gamist "I crave numbers" mindset if you feel like stretching reality to the point where the fifth dimension is bleeding into the third and fourth.
I'm glad you have a group of players who (apparently) don't suffer from Scooby Doo Syndrome. That must be great for you. That they pick up on and pursue every clue to reach their goals, also awesome. I'm afraid that sometimes my group must be dragged along by its ears because they're too busy sweating the details to notice the big picture. Without a carrot to dangle, what exactly am I supposed to do? Let them wander around aimlessly all night and then be pissed off because they didn't accomplish anything?
So sorry to have offended YOUR sensibilities, please don't take it personally when I attack the soapbox.
Cleave is mainly for clearing out minion fodder is it not? It still would be very useful for that regardless of the exact damage it does then no?
I see cleave mainly as a way for a fighter to deal with a non minion enemy while still being able to eliminate minions too close for the other player's AOEs. Which makes it extremely useful as long as it's doing 1 damage. So i fully agree.
Given that a Fighter can Mark any target that he attacks, is it not an easy way to Mark two opponents at once, assuming you manage to find two that are side by side?
Sure, minions and other swarms of foes (figurative, rather than literal) are more likely to be packed together for it to work, but that (and other multiple opponent attacks) were what struck me as using Mark to its greatest effect.
I was under the impression that a cleave attack only marks the primary target and Damages the secondary target as the effect. Pretty sure you only mark targets you had to make an attack roll against (regardless of if you hit or not).
Hrm, you're probably right. Now that I think about it, Mark does say that it effects enemies you attack, rather than just hit/damage, so they probably thought of this and made cleave simply damage another target, rather than require a second attack roll for this very reason.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I think it's kind of funny that people keep mapping capitalist economic motivations the creation of magical items. If you're able to craft a wonderous item that can change the world, chance are you're not really in it for the money. I imagine most magical items are crafted for specific persons or reasons.
Founding king of dynasty? He commissions a sword. It becomes a symbol of office.
Legendary thief? Needs an invisibility cloak. His legend spreads as the Wraith, able to steal anything.
Etc, etc. Magic items and their economy isn't about price; these things are, in many ways, priceless.
Well, they are, until someone gets ahold of one, can't find much of a use for it, and turns it into a glittering pile of dust.
A Priceless Treasure... until we found out its price.
Or they make many copies of it... A la NWN. Which clearly had factories that churned out magical swords and sweatshops full of Elven maidens with permanent hunches from producing all those Cloak of Elvenkind +1s that one found during their adventure.
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Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
edited July 2008
This is one of those things I really hate 3E for introducing.
Granted, there are two settings where it makes sense.
Edit: seriously, going from the awesomely fluff-texted unique items in BG2 to the mass-produced junk in NWN was the most infuriating thing ever.
Or they make many copies of it... A la NWN. Which clearly had factories that churned out magical swords and sweatshops full of Elven maidens with permanent hunches from producing all those Cloak of Elvenkind +1s that one found during their adventure.
This brings me back around to an idea someone had earlier in the thread: a factory churning out magic weapons that turns out to be run by a bad guy, with children's souls being used to power the weapons.
Is it possible now to turn the plot of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom into a Points of Light-style adventure?
Open at the end of the party's last adventure, where their patron or whatever is throwing a big party for them having killed the tarrasque or whatever. Eladrin noblewoman hires them to protect her on her way to Wherever, tiefling street rat offers to guide them through the wilderness around town. They hook onto a halfling convoy that ditches them in the wilderness (mean little jerks), and it's a skill challenge to survive falling down the mountain.
They find the village--where did the stones go?--and it's off to the creepy palace on the hill. (Tiefling ruin?) People seem pretty normal, and there's a merchant selling magic items dirt cheap. Then, the secret passage opens up, and the truth is revealed: the bad guy is using the kids as slave labor to mine for some incredible, lost superweapon that the Dragonborn squirreled away because it wasn't honorable to, you know, nuke the world. Some kid finally passes out from being worked half to death? Get the high priest down there, extract his soul, and use it to make a new magic weapon that can be sold to keep the mining operation/palace running.
Mine cart chase, hearts pulled out, cheering kids, the Raider's March, etc. You can even cut out the Willie/Short Round characters if you want to.
tl;dr: Temple of Doom is a dungeon crawl in movie form. Kinda.
Its almost like you should only get magic through adventuring or something.....
I don't think wotc was trying for an accurate economy, they just didn't want to let players find an infinite gold loophole. I know, "any DM worth his salt..." but they try to make it work as written. I think any good dm would require RP for all magic acquisitions, no stores except maybe reagents and potions. Suggested retail is just that, a suggestion.
I was thinking of structuring my campaign- should my players vote for D&D, which they probably never will- based kind of like a TV show, with each "episode" being either one-half of a level (5 encounters or so) or a full level.
Like a TV show, each episode would have an A and a B plot. The A plot is for the party, the B plot is for an individual character and his backstory, acting as a "side quest" for that character.
Call it Joss Whedon's Dungeons and Dragons, with lots of wisecracking and humorous dialogue.
There was a Dungeoncraft article a few years ago with exactly this idea. It's a very interesting concept.
The problem with solo things is that they eat up time. A lot. I remember a 3 hour RL D&D session in which my character did nothing but talk to a NPC, because the rogue and druid decided they'd try to kill some evil king on their own via stealth. That's not fun at all, for me and the other two at the table.
Yea, this is the Shadowrun "Matrix" problem. In older editions of that game when your hacker went to work (a throughly tactically strong idea) the rest of the group could go get some pizza, perhaps see a movie and not be missed or miss anything during the period.
The problem with solo things is that they eat up time. A lot. I remember a 3 hour RL D&D session in which my character did nothing but talk to a NPC, because the rogue and druid decided they'd try to kill some evil king on their own via stealth. That's not fun at all, for me and the other two at the table.
Yea, this is the Shadowrun "Matrix" problem. In older editions of that game when your hacker went to work (a throughly tactically strong idea) the rest of the group could go get some pizza, perhaps see a movie and not be missed or miss anything during the period.
That's when the DM has to think on his toes and create something else important for the rest of the party to do while the person hacks.
Like, say the enemies try to attack the hacker, or, there is a counter-hacker in a house a block away and the other players need to storm the house and silence the counter-hacker so your hacker can continue to hack unmolested.
The problem with solo things is that they eat up time. A lot. I remember a 3 hour RL D&D session in which my character did nothing but talk to a NPC, because the rogue and druid decided they'd try to kill some evil king on their own via stealth. That's not fun at all, for me and the other two at the table.
Yea, this is the Shadowrun "Matrix" problem. In older editions of that game when your hacker went to work (a throughly tactically strong idea) the rest of the group could go get some pizza, perhaps see a movie and not be missed or miss anything during the period.
That's when the DM has to think on his toes and create something else important for the rest of the party to do while the person hacks.
Like, say the enemies try to attack the hacker, or, there is a counter-hacker in a house a block away and the other players need to storm the house and silence the counter-hacker so your hacker can continue to hack unmolested.
The Dystopia mod for.... something .... is exactly this.
Oh, don't worry, he's already figured that out and has begun trying to figure out how to get that XP himself. It's driving him completely batty, like a gerbil running its wheel so fast you can see smoke coming off the mounts.
See my point is why the hell do you think he/she should spend their recreation time being driven batty? I play with my friends and this isn't something I would do to my friends if I wanted them to remain my friends.
I consider it a role-playing reward for the Ranger; he's doing something that suits the character's background, isn't doing it for glory (he almost never mentions to the group that he's found/fought/killed/looted anything), and it's no skin off my back to throw a few lurkers at him from time to time.
My point is what do the remaining players do for the hour or so that takes? File their nails? Read a book? The Ranger doesn't have to say anything IC or even OC, he's just spent an hour of everybodies recreation time being the only one of the players doing anything.
I haven't changed the group dynamic at all. Take a level 4 Ranger and throw him against one or two level 4 lurkers sometime and tell me it's an easy encounter. For the record, you're completely backwards here: tactically sound play is the gamist camp (I'm here to participate in a combat simulation, thanks!) and rewarding someone for playing their role is only part of rewarding that gamist "I crave numbers" mindset if you feel like stretching reality to the point where the fifth dimension is bleeding into the third and fourth.
I used gamist in contrast to a simulationist. You want real world tactics to work because that makes sense, that's simulationsist. I want to avoid 4/5th of the party being uninvolved in the game because that's boring as fuck for them and I want an involving game.
I'm glad you have a group of players who (apparently) don't suffer from Scooby Doo Syndrome. That must be great for you. That they pick up on and pursue every clue to reach their goals, also awesome. I'm afraid that sometimes my group must be dragged along by its ears because they're too busy sweating the details to notice the big picture. Without a carrot to dangle, what exactly am I supposed to do? Let them wander around aimlessly all night and then be pissed off because they didn't accomplish anything?
I treat them like adults and if we have this kind of problem we get together and talk about it. We are crazy.
So sorry to have offended YOUR sensibilities, please don't take it personally when I attack the soapbox.
I'm going to point out that there are two issues here: Solo time sinks and Bad Wrong Fun. While I agree that Solo time sinks is a personal preference because of the dynamics of it but you're the one attempting to bribe/cajole/punish your players into playing the game as you think it should be played.
That's when the DM has to think on his toes and create something else important for the rest of the party to do while the person hacks.
Like, say the enemies try to attack the hacker, or, there is a counter-hacker in a house a block away and the other players need to storm the house and silence the counter-hacker so your hacker can continue to hack unmolested.
Well in previous editions of the game even this didn't fix it since it went like this:
...because of the time differential between the real world and the Matrix. (A time differential that made complete sense but ended up scrapped because of what it did to the game.) They did fix this somewhat and last I played it wasn't anywhere near as bad in Shadowrun.
Introducing the Augmented Reality element did a lot towards fixing that part.
That and eliminating the time differential. Though it still has the issue that if the hacker really goes off and hacks it's going to eat up solo time but then again Shadowrun is a little more geared towards everybody having something to do in solo time. Typically you have a "gather intel" stage which everybody should have some way of participating in.
I really do love the AR stuff though. It means your hacker can hack in combat and not be off in their own little sandbox but actually an asset to the group.
I'm not talking about the 20% sell price vs. 100% buy price for people who just want to get rid of extra shit they picked up off some orc warboss. I'm talking about how there are next to no ways any rational economic actor could decide to create a magical item for the purpose of selling it under the rules as written. This fact, combined with disenchantment, suggests a geometrically falling number of items in existence.
I'm willing to indulge in the possibility I am wrong. What real world markets would you say best correlate with the DND 4e ritual market in particular? Anything primarily fucked up by government regulations doesn't count.
1/5 ratio:
Antique markets.
Pawn Shopes.
Video Games.[A mass produced, high volume, low price market where its near impossible to resell and trade in value is pennies on the dollar]
Production Costs/Sale Costs:
Excessive Luxuary Goods
Solar Panels
Fusion Reactors
OICW
Public services.
And yea, you are right. There is no way, any rational economic actor would decide to create a magical item for the purpose of selling it under the rules as written because sometimes that shit just doesn't work. No rational actor will create gold plated toilets for the purpose of selling them because its retarded. Great, you have established that magic items don't get made unless someone specificially orders it.
No, the number of magic items in the economy is not shrinking. Magic items sitting in an orcs den are effectively magic items not in the economy. Magic items not in the economy are irrelevant. Magic items are brought from the ruins into the current society and either melted down to make new magic items, or(if you spend enough time), resold where in both instances they effectively leave the economy again(since anyone who buys a magic item is unlikely to ever sell it).
Yeah, and that's open to interpretation. Having a powerful and rich commerce hub surrounded by barbarians and monsters would still qualify as a "points of light" campaign, and I wouldn't find it unusual to have a large number of heroic level magical items and rituals among the elites and badasses in such a society. The PCs are still unique, the world is still mostly set upon by darkness, and magic is still not especially common.
But whose buying these items? How do they get to the market? How do they know about the market? Are there not more beneficial things that they can purchase with their money rather than a +1 sword?[like a couple hundred minions eating for a year]
Adventurers are few and far between.
Or if they spend it on things which don't affect core adventuring tasks (combat, skill challenges, etc). They won't carry their fucking keep into battle*, will they? Are you being deliberately dense?
*Presumably the DM would involve it in a battle at some point, but in the single battle or few battles it is used in, the DM can balance around it, without changing the balance of 100 dungeon battles to follow.
If they don't spend their money on things that affect the core adventuring task then its the same as if they didn't spend it at all. This is why economists don't talk about the money that granny has stuffed in her matress(Except maybe to figure out how to entice her to put it in a bank and make it relevant). Because its irrelevant with zero velocity.
Then there is another problem in that now you have to have your merchants price discriminate against smart players at some points and not in others. Which is to say your merchants have to be completely illogical. In order to have your people spend the gold on something outside the core adventuring set and keep the money they have for magical items at the right level, you are goin to have to increase the price of the magical items until they have spent the money elsewhere and then lower the prices again. Which is retarded.
You aren't changing the balance of 100 dungeon battles to follow. Wealth is balanced with itself, it is not balanced with how hard the fight was. Encounters do not give you wealth because you defeated monsters, but because they are the mechanic by which wealth is injected to fulfill the player wealth balance.
See my point is why the hell do you think he/she should spend their recreation time being driven batty? I play with my friends and this isn't something I would do to my friends if I wanted them to remain my friends.
Because if it wasn't one set of numbers, it'd be another. Open your DMG to the player archetypes and look at the power gamer. That is him. His obsession is the numbers. If he quits because he can't handle not getting the most numbers, that's fine. We lived together for 3 years, our friendship has certainly weathered worse than his being dissatisfied with me as a DM.
My point is what do the remaining players do for the hour or so that takes? File their nails? Read a book? The Ranger doesn't have to say anything IC or even OC, he's just spent an hour of everybodies recreation time being the only one of the players doing anything.
Hour? What? Have you even played 4e? For a smart Striker who is prepared 1v1 or even 1v3 combat takes less than 10 minutes. Heck, I have no problem carrying on the role of the innkeeper the rest of the party is questioning while the Ranger fights off the street thugs who have taken offense to the party's "uninvited interest." It's not like watching dice (or, better yet, trusting the player to relay frankly the results of his rolls) burns up the part of the cerebral cortex that controls conversational skills.
I used gamist in contrast to a simulationist. You want real world tactics to work because that makes sense, that's simulationsist. I want to avoid 4/5th of the party being uninvolved in the game because that's boring as fuck for them and I want an involving game.
My group has never once complained about how I'm doing a bad job as DM. I tried being a player in the last couple of D&D campaigns and people got frustrated and tired quickly because they weren't having as much fun as "When Ardent GMed that last Star Wars campaign." Not my intention (raising the bar, that is), but I went out and did it and now I have to deal with consequences. I'm an Instigator as a player (also in the DMG) and I'm careful about not ruining a GM's carefully laid plans because I've ridden that seat a lot. My players aren't necessarily that way. They will Scooby Doo if they want to.
I treat them like adults and if we have this kind of problem we get together and talk about it. We are crazy.
Indeed. I work, live and interact in the Neverneverland that is the military, and my group is a charming cross-section of Lost Boys and Girls. Wall-to-wall Counseling has long proven itself to be the most effective method of instruction, but it's sadly unavailable to me at role-playing sessions.
I'm going to point out that there are two issues here: Solo time sinks and Bad Wrong Fun. While I agree that Solo time sinks is a personal preference because of the dynamics of it but you're the one attempting to bribe/cajole/punish your players into playing the game as you think it should be played.
If I wasn't trying to bribe/cajole/punish(?) my players into playing the game as I want it to be played, I wouldn't be having fun. Despite the way I GM games, my players like it and appreciate that I will let them go on their inane tangents while I figure out how to get them back into the actual plot arc being explored at that moment. It creates a very real sense of immersion because I don't artificially place walls around them, but then I don't let them go wandering around into that very disturbing "sandbox" approach that always ends in disappointment because you never feel as though you've actually accomplished anything because you never set goals.
Posts
Blue body paint, yellow contacts, taping your fingers together, putting on a Halloween costume tail, and eating lots of hard boiled eggs so you can drop some sulfur when you teleport.
Players instinctively want to split up (Scooby Doo Phenomenon) and trying to shepherd them all into the same place unnecessarily is counterproductive and hurts the group's sense of immersion. As long as you've got them all together for the major encounters (or, at least, relatively together) you're going to be fine. Besides, XP is basically the only way to strongarm bad players into a) playing smart (hey, you had a good idea with the tying two ladders together to make a bridge, here's some bonus XP [that doesn't matter at all in the longrun but whatever]) and b) role-playing when their nature (read: munchkin) is contrary to that particular playing methodology (you managed to hold a conversation with me for 2 minutes without breaking character, you've earned 50 XP [which, oh my god, will totally not level you up before anyone else because I'm careful]).
Due to the minimization of getting eaten by things.
Of course, I grew up gaming with settings like Dark Sun, so not thinking tends to be a very bad idea.
Well, when two species really love each other...
EDIt
A little late I know
Really, to take 4e and complain that you should damage the group dynamic because "It's tactically sound" is to stand atop a mound of corpses while champion nonviolence to somebody who spanked their child. D&D has been moving further and further away from "real world" tactically sound play with each and every edition. It's one of those areas where I am firmly in the gamist camp.
1. You must be a terrible econ student.
2. It is not retarded to have an item be a "guaranteed" loss to make. It takes a lot of time and effort to sell stuff, particularlly in (likely)negative sloping supply[it can also just be very low supply], very low demand scenario where no one but a select few are going to want magic items of any value and none of them are going to want one unless it was specifically made for them.
Now, since to everyone else, a magic item is only worth the residiuum that you get out of it when you disenchant the item, since the likelihood that that item is valuable to anyone else is amost nil and you need 5 disenchanted items to make the 1 single item that anyone orders specifically(and you still aren't making any profit, actually you are losing money at that point), you actually get to a point where 20% seems pretty reasonable if the merchant wants to make any profit.
Low Demand, Low Volume, low velocity, no commodity, highly variable values accross the few people who do want the items with bad substitution.
3. Skill challenges are encounters all to themselves and generate XP just like encounters do. If you want to RP a merchant you get to RP a merchant. You do not get to say "I am a merchant" and then use that to justify having wildly overpowered items throughout the adventure.
Wealth by level is there so that the game remains balanced. If you increase your wealth via a skill challenge, all the combat challenges are going to have to have reduced wealth to compensate for the increased wealth generated by the skill challenge. Why? Because if you don't, players will game the system to break it via wealth.
They are not interesting in roleplaying merchants, seeking out buyers for their magical wares accross mystic lands and then selling them the right item they need, making profit on the margins where others disenchant at a 5/1 ratio instead.
And if they are then there isn't a problem, because the skill challenges are what are driving their enjoyment of the game and they are generating wealth/level in a balanced manner.
If it was anything like OWoD i would say i like it as well(I.E. ambiguous wealth), but that doesn't work as well in DnD.
However, they did partially do that when creating characters of >1 level. Where you get
1 Level +1 Item
1 Level item
1 level -1 item
Enough gold for a second level -1 item
As much mundane stuff as you would have/need.
Once you are past 2nd or 3rd level mundane costs except large purchaes(homes, ships etc) pretty much go away, and iirc, most DMs just ignore it at that point.
The rogue has to make a stealth check for opening the door, and for the movement.
Opening the door is a move action iirc and so unless your DM let you open the door and then wait still behind the door(the move action to work the mechanism) and then cross the distance you would need another action on the turn, more cover in the room for which to hide behind after you made your movement, or someone flanking the enemy in order to sneak attack.
Also you might need a feat or ability to allow you to move your full move instead of half move while sneaking.
If you can get close enough you ought to be able to use a power that lets you shift, since shifting is always 1 square regardless of movement type, you can shift silently and make that attack in the standard action.
Other possibilities are warlord powers that move you(though i think you would stil have to rule on it)
That is how i see it at least.
I must be dumb, because I can't figure out how you think this is appropriate.
It is retarded if you want a game world in which the last magic items made for sale was not made generations ago. If you can, by definition, not sell an item for profit to a merchant, then the only magic smiths in the world will do all their own selling. Except that selling is so fucking risky and hard, you would have to make an item for next to nothing to be worth it, which again, you cannot do by the rules.
Not to mention what the price of certain rituals says about their rarity. Cure disease is 360 gp market value, a warhorse is 680 gp. You'd have to make a lot of excuses about how rare level 6 magic users are to be able to justify why an army would have thousands of the latter without hundreds of the former.
It's a good balance mechanic, but it does not make economic sense unless your entire campaign world consists of scavengers picking over the bones of dead civilizations, and I'm honestly surprised you would even suggest it does.
Also, I believe it is the stated and official design policy that DND 4e is designed to be a solid game, and not a simulationist rule set, thus further validating my point that the rule is silly if you think of it.
Balance can vary from campaign to campaign, you know. And again, I think the idea of a player held keep could have a lot of potential, and that easily absorbs all the extra gold and then more. If you make players spend 100k on a keep without intentionally giving them extra gold, then you actually go the other way and end up with underpowered characters.
1. Its relevant because you made it so when you made the argument to authority.
2. No, its not. And there are many instances, even in in a large mature economy such as the United States, where there are vast discrepencies between sell price and buy price.
2a. Points... of... Light
3. Yes, if players do not spend their money then it doesn't change game balance. Then again they might as well not have had the money anyway since they didn't spend it.
I am not sure why "DnD is not trying to be simulationist" makes the rule silly. Not only does the rule make sense for the economy its discussing, but forming the rule around balance makes it less silly than forming it around some imaginary large mature economy of wealthy NPCs trading magical items as near commodities.
Like a TV show, each episode would have an A and a B plot. The A plot is for the party, the B plot is for an individual character and his backstory, acting as a "side quest" for that character.
Call it Joss Whedon's Dungeons and Dragons, with lots of wisecracking and humorous dialogue.
Yeah, and even if you were right about the in-game economy, you'd still be a dick for your presentation, if nothing else.
I'm not talking about the 20% sell price vs. 100% buy price for people who just want to get rid of extra shit they picked up off some orc warboss. I'm talking about how there are next to no ways any rational economic actor could decide to create a magical item for the purpose of selling it under the rules as written. This fact, combined with disenchantment, suggests a geometrically falling number of items in existence.
I'm willing to indulge in the possibility I am wrong. What real world markets would you say best correlate with the DND 4e ritual market in particular? Anything primarily fucked up by government regulations doesn't count.
Yeah, and that's open to interpretation. Having a powerful and rich commerce hub surrounded by barbarians and monsters would still qualify as a "points of light" campaign, and I wouldn't find it unusual to have a large number of heroic level magical items and rituals among the elites and badasses in such a society. The PCs are still unique, the world is still mostly set upon by darkness, and magic is still not especially common.
Or if they spend it on things which don't affect core adventuring tasks (combat, skill challenges, etc). They won't carry their fucking keep into battle*, will they? Are you being deliberately dense?
*Presumably the DM would involve it in a battle at some point, but in the single battle or few battles it is used in, the DM can balance around it, without changing the balance of 100 dungeon battles to follow.
You know, I'm sure you're making good points, Gou, but when I see a post started like this I think "Wow, that guy's a dick", and skip to the next one. Just because you think you're right (and on the internet, everyone does) doesn't mean that a little effort towards civility would be misplaced.
Given that a Fighter can Mark any target that he attacks, is it not an easy way to Mark two opponents at once, assuming you manage to find two that are side by side?
Sure, minions and other swarms of foes (figurative, rather than literal) are more likely to be packed together for it to work, but that (and other multiple opponent attacks) were what struck me as using Mark to its greatest effect.
I consider it a role-playing reward for the Ranger; he's doing something that suits the character's background, isn't doing it for glory (he almost never mentions to the group that he's found/fought/killed/looted anything), and it's no skin off my back to throw a few lurkers at him from time to time.
I haven't changed the group dynamic at all. Take a level 4 Ranger and throw him against one or two level 4 lurkers sometime and tell me it's an easy encounter. For the record, you're completely backwards here: tactically sound play is the gamist camp (I'm here to participate in a combat simulation, thanks!) and rewarding someone for playing their role is only part of rewarding that gamist "I crave numbers" mindset if you feel like stretching reality to the point where the fifth dimension is bleeding into the third and fourth.
I'm glad you have a group of players who (apparently) don't suffer from Scooby Doo Syndrome. That must be great for you. That they pick up on and pursue every clue to reach their goals, also awesome. I'm afraid that sometimes my group must be dragged along by its ears because they're too busy sweating the details to notice the big picture. Without a carrot to dangle, what exactly am I supposed to do? Let them wander around aimlessly all night and then be pissed off because they didn't accomplish anything?
So sorry to have offended YOUR sensibilities, please don't take it personally when I attack the soapbox.
I was under the impression that a cleave attack only marks the primary target and Damages the secondary target as the effect. Pretty sure you only mark targets you had to make an attack roll against (regardless of if you hit or not).
Founding king of dynasty? He commissions a sword. It becomes a symbol of office.
Legendary thief? Needs an invisibility cloak. His legend spreads as the Wraith, able to steal anything.
Etc, etc. Magic items and their economy isn't about price; these things are, in many ways, priceless.
Well, they are, until someone gets ahold of one, can't find much of a use for it, and turns it into a glittering pile of dust.
A Priceless Treasure... until we found out its price.
Granted, there are two settings where it makes sense.
Edit: seriously, going from the awesomely fluff-texted unique items in BG2 to the mass-produced junk in NWN was the most infuriating thing ever.
This brings me back around to an idea someone had earlier in the thread: a factory churning out magic weapons that turns out to be run by a bad guy, with children's souls being used to power the weapons.
Is it possible now to turn the plot of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom into a Points of Light-style adventure?
Open at the end of the party's last adventure, where their patron or whatever is throwing a big party for them having killed the tarrasque or whatever. Eladrin noblewoman hires them to protect her on her way to Wherever, tiefling street rat offers to guide them through the wilderness around town. They hook onto a halfling convoy that ditches them in the wilderness (mean little jerks), and it's a skill challenge to survive falling down the mountain.
They find the village--where did the stones go?--and it's off to the creepy palace on the hill. (Tiefling ruin?) People seem pretty normal, and there's a merchant selling magic items dirt cheap. Then, the secret passage opens up, and the truth is revealed: the bad guy is using the kids as slave labor to mine for some incredible, lost superweapon that the Dragonborn squirreled away because it wasn't honorable to, you know, nuke the world. Some kid finally passes out from being worked half to death? Get the high priest down there, extract his soul, and use it to make a new magic weapon that can be sold to keep the mining operation/palace running.
Mine cart chase, hearts pulled out, cheering kids, the Raider's March, etc. You can even cut out the Willie/Short Round characters if you want to.
tl;dr: Temple of Doom is a dungeon crawl in movie form. Kinda.
I don't think wotc was trying for an accurate economy, they just didn't want to let players find an infinite gold loophole. I know, "any DM worth his salt..." but they try to make it work as written. I think any good dm would require RP for all magic acquisitions, no stores except maybe reagents and potions. Suggested retail is just that, a suggestion.
Heck yea, they wouldn't be very versatile otherwise
There was a Dungeoncraft article a few years ago with exactly this idea. It's a very interesting concept.
Yea, this is the Shadowrun "Matrix" problem. In older editions of that game when your hacker went to work (a throughly tactically strong idea) the rest of the group could go get some pizza, perhaps see a movie and not be missed or miss anything during the period.
That's when the DM has to think on his toes and create something else important for the rest of the party to do while the person hacks.
Like, say the enemies try to attack the hacker, or, there is a counter-hacker in a house a block away and the other players need to storm the house and silence the counter-hacker so your hacker can continue to hack unmolested.
The Dystopia mod for.... something .... is exactly this.
See my point is why the hell do you think he/she should spend their recreation time being driven batty? I play with my friends and this isn't something I would do to my friends if I wanted them to remain my friends.
My point is what do the remaining players do for the hour or so that takes? File their nails? Read a book? The Ranger doesn't have to say anything IC or even OC, he's just spent an hour of everybodies recreation time being the only one of the players doing anything.
I used gamist in contrast to a simulationist. You want real world tactics to work because that makes sense, that's simulationsist. I want to avoid 4/5th of the party being uninvolved in the game because that's boring as fuck for them and I want an involving game.
I treat them like adults and if we have this kind of problem we get together and talk about it. We are crazy.
I'm going to point out that there are two issues here: Solo time sinks and Bad Wrong Fun. While I agree that Solo time sinks is a personal preference because of the dynamics of it but you're the one attempting to bribe/cajole/punish your players into playing the game as you think it should be played.
Party
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Party
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
Hacker
...because of the time differential between the real world and the Matrix. (A time differential that made complete sense but ended up scrapped because of what it did to the game.) They did fix this somewhat and last I played it wasn't anywhere near as bad in Shadowrun.
I love that game so much.
DA: Sounds like the system was quite flawed then, glad they worked on fixing it.
I really do love the AR stuff though. It means your hacker can hack in combat and not be off in their own little sandbox but actually an asset to the group.
1/5 ratio:
Antique markets.
Pawn Shopes.
Video Games.[A mass produced, high volume, low price market where its near impossible to resell and trade in value is pennies on the dollar]
Production Costs/Sale Costs:
Excessive Luxuary Goods
Solar Panels
Fusion Reactors
OICW
Public services.
And yea, you are right. There is no way, any rational economic actor would decide to create a magical item for the purpose of selling it under the rules as written because sometimes that shit just doesn't work. No rational actor will create gold plated toilets for the purpose of selling them because its retarded. Great, you have established that magic items don't get made unless someone specificially orders it.
No, the number of magic items in the economy is not shrinking. Magic items sitting in an orcs den are effectively magic items not in the economy. Magic items not in the economy are irrelevant. Magic items are brought from the ruins into the current society and either melted down to make new magic items, or(if you spend enough time), resold where in both instances they effectively leave the economy again(since anyone who buys a magic item is unlikely to ever sell it).
But whose buying these items? How do they get to the market? How do they know about the market? Are there not more beneficial things that they can purchase with their money rather than a +1 sword?[like a couple hundred minions eating for a year]
Adventurers are few and far between.
If they don't spend their money on things that affect the core adventuring task then its the same as if they didn't spend it at all. This is why economists don't talk about the money that granny has stuffed in her matress(Except maybe to figure out how to entice her to put it in a bank and make it relevant). Because its irrelevant with zero velocity.
Then there is another problem in that now you have to have your merchants price discriminate against smart players at some points and not in others. Which is to say your merchants have to be completely illogical. In order to have your people spend the gold on something outside the core adventuring set and keep the money they have for magical items at the right level, you are goin to have to increase the price of the magical items until they have spent the money elsewhere and then lower the prices again. Which is retarded.
You aren't changing the balance of 100 dungeon battles to follow. Wealth is balanced with itself, it is not balanced with how hard the fight was. Encounters do not give you wealth because you defeated monsters, but because they are the mechanic by which wealth is injected to fulfill the player wealth balance.
Hour? What? Have you even played 4e? For a smart Striker who is prepared 1v1 or even 1v3 combat takes less than 10 minutes. Heck, I have no problem carrying on the role of the innkeeper the rest of the party is questioning while the Ranger fights off the street thugs who have taken offense to the party's "uninvited interest." It's not like watching dice (or, better yet, trusting the player to relay frankly the results of his rolls) burns up the part of the cerebral cortex that controls conversational skills.
My group has never once complained about how I'm doing a bad job as DM. I tried being a player in the last couple of D&D campaigns and people got frustrated and tired quickly because they weren't having as much fun as "When Ardent GMed that last Star Wars campaign." Not my intention (raising the bar, that is), but I went out and did it and now I have to deal with consequences. I'm an Instigator as a player (also in the DMG) and I'm careful about not ruining a GM's carefully laid plans because I've ridden that seat a lot. My players aren't necessarily that way. They will Scooby Doo if they want to.
Indeed. I work, live and interact in the Neverneverland that is the military, and my group is a charming cross-section of Lost Boys and Girls. Wall-to-wall Counseling has long proven itself to be the most effective method of instruction, but it's sadly unavailable to me at role-playing sessions.
If I wasn't trying to bribe/cajole/punish(?) my players into playing the game as I want it to be played, I wouldn't be having fun. Despite the way I GM games, my players like it and appreciate that I will let them go on their inane tangents while I figure out how to get them back into the actual plot arc being explored at that moment. It creates a very real sense of immersion because I don't artificially place walls around them, but then I don't let them go wandering around into that very disturbing "sandbox" approach that always ends in disappointment because you never feel as though you've actually accomplished anything because you never set goals.