Comic Genesis Forums

Kerry Skydancer wrote:I thought this was their old game and characters, basically. They didn't make up high-level characters so much as reactivate some that they hadn't played in years.

Presuming Ben followed the wealth-by-level guidelines when handing out treasure in the previous game, then - I think they both work out about the same.

This'll be my last post for the night before bed, I should of been there hours ago, but the UTLT (now Goblin Hollow) archives would not let me rest.

SirBob wrote:*does some figuring*

Yo know, assuming that Ben is following the standard wealth guidelines for pregenerated characters, our cheerful hell-pixie has to be at least a 12th-level character.

Ben runs a pretty high-level game, does he?

(This has been your random moment of geekery for the day.)

the 2 cents from the 22 year old 'old fogie' in the gaming world. From the way they described everything I think that's a pre-3E game, ben is old enough it might of even been a first ed. or basic game.

Back in those days the treasure tables were not based on your level, if you went the 100% random method for encounter treasure, the way most DM's I knew did it, you'd figure out how much/what kind of treasure the monster was likely to have, then you'd roll dice a few times on a chart to see what your players ended up with. The better stuff, like Tinkerhell's little toy, was rarer than most, but you still had the same chance to get a Vorpal scyth on the magic item tables at first level as you did at 20th.

Secondly, in 2ed, or worse 1st, or got forbid, Basic, it took forever, and by forever I mean *FOREVER* to get to a high level. While 3E follows a 1000 multiplied by curent level to get to your next, all the others requiredyou to DOUBLE your experance before getting a new level. So if you played someone from first level to say tenth, that was someone you had played a for likely a year or more of weekly games. That makes for a lot of rolls on treasure tables.

And that is even assuming you survived long enough to make it to tenth.. *Sighs longingly for the days when someone who had made it all the way to fifth level was given respect, and sits in my rocking chair carving a chunk of wood and talking about how good and easy you young'ins have it..*

Zjon wrote:Secondly, in 2ed, or worse 1st, or got forbid, Basic, it took forever, and by forever I mean *FOREVER* to get to a high level. While 3E follows a 1000 multiplied by curent level to get to your next, all the others requiredyou to DOUBLE your experance before getting a new level. So if you played someone from first level to say tenth, that was someone you had played a for likely a year or more of weekly games. That makes for a lot of rolls on treasure tables.

Sure, but there's actual design philosophy at work here, not just pleasing the kiddies. They did some studies, and discovered that hardcore players who managed to keep a single campaign going for years and years and years and claw their way up from 1st to 20th level the hard way represented less than 1% of their actual user base. A real, average campaign was found to last about one year - real-time. So they tuned the new advancement rates so that you could reasonably go from 1st level to 20th level in about fifty sessions - i.e., one year of weekly gaming.

(More precisely, it's 13.33 typical encounters per character level, but the mathematical details are beside the point.)

They had to choose between pleasing the hardcore grognards, and writing the material so that the average "by-the-book" player could actually make use of it, rather than just look at it knowing that they'd never in their entire lives have a character who's buff enough to handle the really cool stuff. Guess which one is the smart money?

Mmm, vorpal scythe, makes for impressive immagery, but unless you have a may to increaces the crit range not that good. It crits on 20,for x4, which is a mess of dammage, at a decent level enough to trigger death by massive pottetnially. Vorpal would have been so much better on something like a kukri, scimitar, or even a sword/dagger. With 18/19-20 crit ranges the fact that they have a meager x2 crit doesn't matter when you're lopping off a head.

This moment of dorkery has been brought to you by somone who plays too much D&D.

Dragoon The Griffin wrote:Mmm, vorpal scythe, makes for impressive immagery, but unless you have a may to increaces the crit range not that good. It crits on 20,for x4, which is a mess of dammage, at a decent level enough to trigger death by massive pottetnially. Vorpal would have been so much better on something like a kukri, scimitar, or even a sword/dagger. With 18/19-20 crit ranges the fact that they have a meager x2 crit doesn't matter when you're lopping off a head.

This moment of dorkery has been brought to you by somone who plays too much D&D.

Ok, old fogie time again. In those days there was no official critical hits in the rules. Vorpal wepins were feared becasue on a roll of a 20, they killed you. Period. Two and a half years of work on a char all gone in a sincle roll. You might of gotten a save, but I am pretty sure that rule was optional.

The old editions were very deadly.

**takes off old fogie hat**

I saw the November 3 strip. Hm. The little warrior will need a tunic displaying her coat of arms. May I suggest?

http://www.hottopic.com/store/product.a ... TEM=279662

Roberto the Dane

Roberto the Dane wrote:I saw the November 3 strip. Hm. The little warrior will need a tunic displaying her coat of arms. May I suggest?

http://www.hottopic.com/store/product.a ... TEM=279662

Roberto the Dane

Geez, was that Ralph's inspiration for making Penny a fairy?

Zjon wrote:Ok, old fogie time again. In those days there was no official critical hits in the rules. Vorpal wepins were feared becasue on a roll of a 20, they killed you. Period. Two and a half years of work on a char all gone in a sincle roll. You might of gotten a save, but I am pretty sure that rule was optional.

The old editions were very deadly.

**takes off old fogie hat**

Yeah, the Gygaxian school of challenge design was really something. It's kinda understandable how the "take one step, search for traps; take one step, search for traps" style of gameplay got to be so popular.

(I fondly recall a certain module where if you successfully disarm a particular dungeon trap, the act of so doing automatically triggers another trap that kills whoever messed with it - no save. According to the text, the only way to find the second trap is to explicitly state that you're checking the first trap for traps. Yes, you have to explicitly check the trap for trap, or else you die.)