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raifield posted:Voting stay pure and refrain as well. And then, there's the chance that the target would just roll really poorly on a saving throw and eat poo poo, since after hitting 11th level, wizards had a 1st level spell that could instantly kill a target. God I loved Chromatic Orb  Every edition of D&D has its own special bullshit and it's so fun to see how it changes from edition to edition.
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May 18, 2022 03:55
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Mages given time to prepare are the absolute worst enemy to fight. If you’re fighting mages and give them a head start you’re in for bad times. Legends of Ethshar has the best wizards. Wizardry can do literally anything. Also if you make even the smallest mistake it can have apocalyptic results. Like there’s a tower of eternal fire due to someone messing up a basic matchstick-tier fire spell.
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May 18, 2022 04:37
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We're two updates in and the level of  and  is off the charts.Then again, I didn't really expect anything else.
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May 18, 2022 07:39
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Oh hey. I actually had this game a billion years ago and other than remembering the map screen and 3d rendered state of the art character graphics I couldnt tell you a single drat thing about this game now.
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May 18, 2022 09:18
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Playing a Fighter in Baldur's Gate 2 I ended up facing a lot of assholes with Immunity to Magic Weapons buffs, no idea if that was something an actual wizard got to cast or if they just put it in the video game to annoy me in particular.
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May 18, 2022 11:00
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Black Robe posted:We're two updates in and the level of  I was excited for another update, but no, it's yet again a fighter vs. wizard slapfight. I did learn a lot about p&p 2e though (just having played EOB 1-3 and BG 1&2)
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May 18, 2022 13:23
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Gort posted:Playing a Fighter in Baldur's Gate 2 I ended up facing a lot of assholes with Immunity to Magic Weapons buffs, no idea if that was something an actual wizard got to cast or if they just put it in the video game to annoy me in particular. That's from the 1988 sourcebook, Dreams of the Red Wizards, which, naturally, covers the nation of Thay. 2e had a nasty habit of putting spells basically everywhere, to the point where, late in the edition's life, someone even put out a four-volume series, the Wizard's Spell Compendium, compiling all of them so you didn't need the friggin' Library of Congress in your den to have them all.
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May 18, 2022 15:18
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Major fights in Baldur's Gate 2 usually boiled down to the Fighters(and other melee) pummeling mooks while the casters slowly stripped the fifty layers of defensive spells the boss had rolling thanks to multiple Contingency spells firing off at the start of combat so the Fighters could then thump them too, and that's before you took mods like Ascension and Tactics into account. Don't forget to pack Glitterdust and Ruby Ray of Reversal. It was nice that you had access to all of the same spells, but man, I just did not have the patience needed to recast all of that stuff constantly. Edit: Also glad they didn't bother with material components. Having to cart around huge piles of gemstones to cast all of that stuff would have been horrible. Unoriginal One fucked around with this message at 15:50 on May 18, 2022 |
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May 18, 2022 15:45
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Unoriginal One posted:Having to cart around huge piles of gemstones to cast all of that stuff would have been horrible. Instead, we just carted them around regardless due to RPG Hoarding Instinct/I Might Need It Later syndrome.
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May 18, 2022 15:58
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Unoriginal One posted:Edit: Also glad they didn't bother with material components. Having to cart around huge piles of gemstones to cast all of that stuff would have been horrible. It's one of those mechanics I've always wondered if anyone ever actually used. I've never encountered a gaming group that didn't either abstract it("okay, casting a spell of this level costs you 10GP in material component costs" etc.) or just completely ignored. I assume the original developers must've used it, because otherwise why bother coming up with hundreds of material component combinations for various spells, but never anyone I've actually played with.
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May 18, 2022 16:01
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Last time I played a caster in D&D (5th) I just spent starter money on the component pouch that negates most of it unless it's really expensive. Still had to gather the stuff needed to cast Summon Familiar though, which took a couple of sessions from what I remember since it was like 100 gold or something. Otherwise it never came up.
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May 18, 2022 16:20
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PurpleXVI posted:It's one of those mechanics I've always wondered if anyone ever actually used. I've never encountered a gaming group that didn't either abstract it("okay, casting a spell of this level costs you 10GP in material component costs" etc.) or just completely ignored. I assume the original developers must've used it, because otherwise why bother coming up with hundreds of material component combinations for various spells, but never anyone I've actually played with. Traditionally, groups only really worry about material components in three ways, if at all: 1. If the spell has costly components and is cast only a few times per campaign (such as with Find Familiar). 2. If the spell is part of the Raise Dead family (which is why you always want diamonds on-hand). 3. Sometimes a DM will make sure the caster has their spell component pouch, which is assumed to just contain whatever. Interestingly, I think the recent Pathfinder video games may have caught some players off-guard in that, on top of requiring diamonds for resurrection spells, it also requires diamond dust for Restoration spells, which is not something Pathfinder groups often bother tracking.
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May 18, 2022 16:36
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PurpleXVI posted:It's one of those mechanics I've always wondered if anyone ever actually used. I've never encountered a gaming group that didn't either abstract it("okay, casting a spell of this level costs you 10GP in material component costs" etc.) or just completely ignored. I assume the original developers must've used it, because otherwise why bother coming up with hundreds of material component combinations for various spells, but never anyone I've actually played with. My DM back in college (early 2000s, playing AD&D 2E still) made us manage every single material component down to the last detail. We had to catalog everything we found, how much we used, all of it. It actually made me want to never play a caster again, to the point where I didn't touch one for about 15 years afterwards and only just started playing a caster in 5E.
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May 18, 2022 17:25
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Hell, there was a 2e wizard book (I want to say "Spells & Magic" but it's been a long while) that covered a bunch of wizarding life stuff outside of adventuring and one of the suggestions was, "Handwave components that don't have a big cost. If you really want to get into it, spend some money whenever you come back to town to get local kids to pick up bugs, cloth and leather scraps, and guano for you, and stop caring otherwise."
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May 18, 2022 17:28
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I'd certainly never want to play D&D actually tracking that stuff, any more than I really want to pore over every bit of encumbrance. I think there is a place for (more broad-strokes) material components and/or inventory fiddliness, e.g. in Torchbearer, which is about adventuring being a grimy, hazardous and fundamentally unwise activity that people only do if they're crazy or unable to otherwise function in regular society, and cares deeply about logistics on that level and, e.g., having to drop sacks of loot to fight or run away, needing to squirm through tight cave openings and what that pack does to that, and so on. In that kind of experience, the wizard having to source (and carry) the components to the handful of spells they can cast is apropos and meaningful and complements the story being told. D&D is, generally, doing something else.
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May 18, 2022 18:20
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Aren't 90% of spell components dumb jokes?
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May 18, 2022 19:08
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They are half that and half "Your mage has got to have a material components belt of pouch, or have trained themselves to operate without them and a spellbook, should they ever be imprisoned." which makes dealing with players slightly less hellish for the DM, and dealing with prisoners far more sane for the players. Or course many ulterior classes don't give a poo poo about any of that, but that's the DM's problem.
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May 18, 2022 19:14
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SirPhoebos posted:Aren't 90% of spell components dumb jokes? Some are jokes, others are historical references. The material components for certain spells are based on either their actual physical/chemical properties or historic usage by so-called practitioners of magic (alchemists, soothsayers, oracles, etc.). For example, bat guano (the component for fireball), is, in fact, highly flammable, and has been used since antiquity as a firestarter. Generally, the older the spell is, the more likely any material components are a history nerd deep cut rather than a dumb joke.
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May 18, 2022 19:48
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EclecticTastes posted:Some are jokes, others are historical references. The material components for certain spells are based on either their actual physical/chemical properties or historic usage by so-called practitioners of magic (alchemists, soothsayers, oracles, etc.). For example, bat guano (the component for fireball), is, in fact, highly flammable, and has been used since antiquity as a firestarter. Generally, the older the spell is, the more likely any material components are a history nerd deep cut rather than a dumb joke. I enjoyed the nod that the component for wall of fog is a few dried peas.
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May 19, 2022 00:42
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God I loved the spell components. Some of them made sense but definitely told you "this is why normal people aren't wizards because only wizards would eat this for a ten minute ability" while others made you go "so wait, every time I pay a wizard to do this level 1 spell they have to swallow a live carp? Why has nobody found a less bizarre way to do this?!" Also I didn't mean to partake in/start a Wizard Vs Fighter nerd fight! 
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May 19, 2022 01:15
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gently caress I'm sad I missed the Fighter vs. Wizard debate. To keep it brief, Purple was right in his original post when he said that if a fighter can interrupt a mage's first spell, the fighter wins. If he can't, it's about 60/40 to the mage depending on his spellbook. Feel free to ignore the rest of my rambling; it's mostly stuff that's already been gone over. A fight between any two class-levelled characters ends up being much more about who can eliminate luck in their fighting strategy to alpha-strike the gently caress out of their foe. A high-level fighter against anyone but another high-level fighter is going to have likely a negative to hit value on their weapon of choice, so that's half their job done right there (barring critical fails, which are an optional rule in 2e); the only work he has to put in is getting in range to smack their anus up through their esophagus. Then there's Prismatic Wall or Prismatic Sphere, for example, which don't give that much a poo poo how good your saves are. Even making all of them (2 of the 7 are save or die, and 2 more are save or get permanently hosed even if it doesn't kill you) you're looking at minimum 90 damage just to get to the bastard, and even a high-level fighter is gonna be pretty bloodied by that due to HP plateauing. Fighters' saves are good, but there are plenty of tools in the wizard's handbag that can obviate that with "even if the save is successful, this lesser effect still happens". It gets very messy and very swingy depending on the tactics used. But that's just ultra-high level, which you were never really meant to reach. At low levels the mage is beyond hosed if a fighter wants to excise his giblets, no matter how prepared he might be. Oh no, you've cast a spell that does maybe 5 damage to a hulking behemoth with up to 14 HP. You have at most 6, and his sword does 1-8 without strength or specialization bonuses. Say goodbye to your corporeal existence, no question. And at mid/high levels a fighter's saves and health (and assistance) outpace a wizard's tools generally. Smart mages can still pull it off, mind you, but it's quite difficult until you get to Ultimate Cosmic Power, and even then it's not a given. All that being said, yeah this is basically like the top situation where 2e fighter really bloody shines. They're goddamn murder machines one on one. Throw 20 tiny dudes at them instead and watch the dogpile rules end up nickel and diming them to death from a couple dozen nearly unavoidable dagger stabs while they desperately try to whittle down the numbers from round to round even with their increased number of attacks. Throw 'em at a midlevel mage? 50 different options on how to disable/erase a group in one round. Edit because I can't help myself: A lot of people when they think of wizards easily beating fighters in 2e with prep will be remembering the first assassin fight in Baldur's Gate 1. I know I remember that rear end in a top hat. You come into the courtyard, about to head into the tavern, and some cock announces that he's going to murder you for money and starts casting Mirror Image. If you don't disrupt it (probably with an arrow), you will die. If you do disrupt it, you kill him easily. But do you remember how many magic missiles he got per cast? 3? 4? Those correlate to a level of 5-8. You are level ONE, maybe two if you've hosed around enough on the way there. Add onto this that the videogame treats Mirror Image as basically a low-level Stoneskin rather that the chance to hit the real one you're supposed to have, and the fact that his AI is laser-targetted on murdering specifically you, which causes an instant game over even if Imoen would have easily killed him afterward, and it's a beyond unfair showing. Same kind of horseshit with the cleric assassin down in Nashkel if you go there without loving around. Make the save vs. spell against the initial Hold Person (or disrupt) or they will probably auto-hit you into the ground before your party can manage to defend you. Sure any party you've assembled by that point would easily take said cleric apart afterward, but the game don't care. PurpleXVI posted:It's one of those mechanics I've always wondered if anyone ever actually used. I've never encountered a gaming group that didn't either abstract it("okay, casting a spell of this level costs you 10GP in material component costs" etc.) or just completely ignored. I assume the original developers must've used it, because otherwise why bother coming up with hundreds of material component combinations for various spells, but never anyone I've actually played with. Tome of Magic, 1st level spell "Conjure Spell Component". Such a lifesaver. Just keep it in your spellbook, assume your wizard is casting it during any downtime days, and then all you have to worry about is ones that cost, like diamonds and such. Makes for a nice compromise between enforcing all spell components and destroying what was meant to be one of the wizard's moneysinks. Felinoid fucked around with this message at 20:58 on May 19, 2022 |
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May 19, 2022 20:03
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Mages trying to spell dmg kill fighters at low level are dumb. Hit them with Sleep or Hold Person and slit their throat at your leisure. Saves suck at low levels and the odds are in the caster’s favor.
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May 21, 2022 02:07
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Evil Fluffy posted:Mages trying to spell dmg kill fighters at low level are dumb. Hit them with Sleep or Hold Person and slit their throat at your leisure. Saves suck at low levels and the odds are in the caster’s favor. Sleep doesn't even allow a save. Talk about an easy victory. It alwasy bothered me that in 2e there was no saving throw penalty/bonus based on level difference. A level 10 fighter is just as likely to save against spell versus a level 5 spell cast by a level 10 wizard as he would against a level 9 spell cast by a level 20 wizard. Putting aside why a level 10 is up against a 20, that poor bugger shouldn't stand a chance.
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May 21, 2022 04:13
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JustJeff88 posted:Sleep doesn't even allow a save. Talk about an easy victory. I believe it was either Combat & Tactics or Spells & Magic that added that in, but one of the big issues with the Player's Option stuff, as much as I loved a lot of it conceptually, was that it was kind of hacked on to the system in really hard-to-recall and poorly formatted ways that suddenly turned a simple roll into something requiring that you check five tables because the underlying maths was less straightforward than stuff like attack roll resolutions or sometimes didn't even give a result without a table lookup.
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May 21, 2022 04:20
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PurpleXVI posted:I believe it was either Combat & Tactics or Spells & Magic that added that in, but one of the big issues with the Player's Option stuff, as much as I loved a lot of it conceptually, was that it was kind of hacked on to the system in really hard-to-recall and poorly formatted ways that suddenly turned a simple roll into something requiring that you check five tables because the underlying maths was less straightforward than stuff like attack roll resolutions or sometimes didn't even give a result without a table lookup. I had that book, and I remember it. It and... Spells & Magic? had some very good ideas, but trying to add them in at that point was like trying to butter a brick. I remember in Spells & Magic that there was a more flexible system of casting that involved physical fatigue to the caster for each spell cast. Thing is, the fatigue was incredible and even high-level mages casting 2nd-level spells would be seriously affected by it. High level mages casting a few high-level spells and lower level mages casting anything could just about kill themselves with a handful of spells. I did not then nor do I now like Vancian casting, but that was so bloody stupid to me. It reminded me of how Raistlin, in the dragonlance books, would get terribly sick and weak from casting while I would think 'in (2e) D&D, there's no casting fatigue' and be very confused by that. I realise now that it was flavour to highlight this anti-hero's terribly frail health, but apart from trying to get into university the 90s was all about D&D for me and I could cite most of the rules by heart.
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May 21, 2022 04:45
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I own this one, though it's been many a year since I played it and my memories are somewhat hazy. I recall finding the game a bit too clunky and buggy to stick with but I agree more should be done with it; it's one of those games with a great concept but a badly flawed execution.PurpleXVI posted:If you played 1st or 2nd edition D&D, you knew that when your Fighter hit his 9th level he was supposed to build a fort, hang that stuffed chimaera head over the fireplace, recruit a couple hundred noble men at arms and rule a region of the land. Possibly still adventuring, but now with some goons to set up a trebuchet and huck rocks at the enemy wizard from across the county. But in the D&D videogames of whatever stripe, we never really got that. Sure, Baldur's Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2 kind of played around with "ooo you have a fort ooo you get to maybe have someone whittle a stick for you and also there's the requisite siege sequence," but they never really committed to being a game about PC's at that level and with those responsibility. Even Birthright doesn't really go all the way with that, as it completely skips the part where you work your way up to 9th level before becoming a ruler. In fairness, making even ONE game well is expensive and time-consuming and you're asking for two interlocking games in one package. It's doable, but it's not cheap or easy and Birthright didn't quite manage it all.
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May 21, 2022 08:01
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PotatoManJack posted:I like this - win by just being a good dude So, basically, a nweismuller run.
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May 21, 2022 08:10
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DGM_2 posted:Even Birthright doesn't really go all the way with that, as it completely skips the part where you work your way up to 9th level before becoming a ruler. Birthright approaches the rulership differently, though. You can't become a Regent at all unless you have one of the divine bloodlines, so if you start as an average joe with none of those, well, your first job isn't to become 9th level... it's to find someone who has a bloodline and steal it, or convincing them to Invest you as their inheritor. It's perfectly possible for Birthright PC's to start with a bloodline and a domain right from level 1. Generally the canon regents of high level are the ones who are intended as obstacles further down the road, Awnshegh like the Vampire, the Raven, the Gorgon, the Lich, etc. or just unpleasant and ambitious untainted rulers like Gavin Tael of Ghoere. A lot, though not all, of the other regents around Cerilia are in the level 3 to 7 span. In base D&D, though, the thing about 9th level is that you can own land and rule people before then, even pay for a mercenary army if you can afford it, and at the same time you can be level 20 and never settle down, never attract anyone. At level 9, you're just a big-name hero, famous enough that if you do build a sanctum of some sort(at least as a Fighter. Paladins don't attract followers and Rangers attract a smaller group, 2d6, without a domain at all.), you automatically attract a group of folks looking to sign on with you. Clerics likewise gain followers with a domain, as do Thieves(but once again, a small gang like the Ranger's). Druids, Mages and Bards get nothing.
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May 21, 2022 08:33
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Not quite on that last point. Bards can build a stronghold at 9th just like fighters, but receive only 10d6 0-level soldiers for it. Mages get nothing, but are kind of expected to build a laboratory; their army is in magic items and spell research, and as usual all of it costs big money rather than being given. And druids...hoo boy that's a whole thing. Doesn't kick in until 12th, and you have to literally fight your way up the hierarchy just to earn the levels, nevermind the perks, but you become part of the ruling caste of druids (complete with a domain to watch over and levelled druid assistants, similar to a thief's hangers-on but improving with each step) and eventually the leader of the whole world's naturists at level 15. ...Then you give it all up to continue advancing as a "hierophant" druid, solitary once again. Bloody weird.
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May 21, 2022 16:59
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Felinoid posted:Not quite on that last point. Bards can build a stronghold at 9th just like fighters, but receive only 10d6 0-level soldiers for it. Mages get nothing, but are kind of expected to build a laboratory; their army is in magic items and spell research, and as usual all of it costs big money rather than being given. And druids...hoo boy that's a whole thing. Doesn't kick in until 12th, and you have to literally fight your way up the hierarchy just to earn the levels, nevermind the perks, but you become part of the ruling caste of druids (complete with a domain to watch over and levelled druid assistants, similar to a thief's hangers-on but improving with each step) and eventually the leader of the whole world's naturists at level 15. ...Then you give it all up to continue advancing as a "hierophant" druid, solitary once again. Bloody weird. Are birthright druids like druids elsewhere in 2e? Sweet Gary Gygax... druids weren't a very good class in 2e and their progression rules were utterly moronic. We completely ignored all of that.
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May 21, 2022 17:13
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I have long wondered how many people actually paid attention to stuff like the druid ritual combats for levels. Or even stuff like racial level limits. I certainly would not have, had it ever come up in my games.
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May 21, 2022 18:38
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JustJeff88 posted:Are birthright druids like druids elsewhere in 2e? Sweet Gary Gygax... druids weren't a very good class in 2e and their progression rules were utterly moronic. We completely ignored all of that. I don't know if Birthright handles it differently, this is just base 2e rules I'm talking about. malkav11 posted:I have long wondered how many people actually paid attention to stuff like the druid ritual combats for levels. Or even stuff like racial level limits. I certainly would not have, had it ever come up in my games. Racial level limits only ever really made sense in generational campaigns, to ensure that elves and dwarves didn't just jack literally all of the political power because they had centuries to build and keep their power and influence. The kind of campaign where sure humans could theoretically reach level 20, but you'd have to work hard to do that in just the 70 or so years of adventuring you can manage. The idea being that the longer-lived races may have more time to plot and scheme, but they don't have the flexibility to reach the level of raw power that reckless humans can attain, so the humies are constantly upending the table in their favor and then passing away, leaving a power vacuum for the others to slip into...until they're displaced yet again. Without that kind of elongated continuity, there's really no point to the restrictions, which is why those rules are immediately followed by optional rules for lessening or even eliminating them. (EDIT: And of course if you're just fine with elves and dwarves ruling everything, then gently caress it anyway.  )The druid ritual stuff is...sort of cultural, by which I mean "of its own specific culture". One of the things many people skip over, not realizing the magnitude of it, is "Priests of Specific Mythoi". If you skim it you can easily mistake it for the equivalent of cleric kits or specialist wizards, but in actuality it's basically permission to create entire new priest classes. "Clerics" and "Druids" are meant to simply be non-denominational holy men: those who derive their power from a general ideal (whether that be goodness or evilness or nature, or whatever else) rather than any actual divine source. Borrowing from everyone to serve everyone, so to speak. Being a priest of a specific god is something wholly different and can come with entirely different sets of rules, or a mix of same and different, or even look like a cookie-cutter copy by sheer coincidence. Many people choose that last for simplicity's sake, but you are free to make (with your DM) ANY kind of priest you want. For example, you could be the priest of a nature deity with many of the same powers as a Druid, but significantly different responsibilities. Instead of ritual combat to determine leadership, there could be less lethal or even non-combat contests (like an archery contest or a drinking contest), or perhaps a forum debate where the other druids vote on who they think was more persuasive. For that matter, if the deity is more chaotic in nature, there doesn't have to be any leadership constructs at all! Or imagine a new version of Turn Undead for a priest of a disease deity that turns "boring" undead or corpses into something that would make Papa Nurgle from Warhammer 40K beam with pride. Perhaps an elementalist priest who has shapechanging powers like a druid has, but can only turn into the elements, becoming a pond of water or a boulder or a stiff breeze once each per day. The possibilities, as with PnP in general, are limited only to your imagination and the DM's permission. Felinoid fucked around with this message at 19:18 on May 21, 2022 |
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May 21, 2022 19:11
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malkav11 posted:I have long wondered how many people actually paid attention to stuff like the druid ritual combats for levels. Or even stuff like racial level limits. I certainly would not have, had it ever come up in my games. I always enjoyed the way the BECMI boxed set D&D rules handled things like druids - they weren't a class per se, but a kind of prestige class that clerics could enter at a certain level. Same with things like the Cavalier and the Paladin. In that kind of a system, I honestly kinda dug the whole Ritual Druid Combat thing, because you knew that was the price you paid for getting the kickass new powers. Mind you, this was the same set of rules that had Elf as a class, so there are some flaws, I grant you
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May 21, 2022 19:45
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The racial class limits only make sense up to a point. I buy the point about elves and dwarves, but halflings get nailed for no reason.
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May 21, 2022 20:06
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Keldulas posted:The racial class limits only make sense up to a point. I buy the point about elves and dwarves, but halflings get nailed for no reason. Halflings get nailed in many other ways for little to no reason. The racial level limits are only one aspect of their seemingly intentionally bad design. But that's a sore point I probably shouldn't expand on in this thread.
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May 21, 2022 20:34
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Edit: Double post
JustJeff88 fucked around with this message at 21:00 on May 21, 2022 |
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May 21, 2022 20:53
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Class restrictions by race were utter bullshit, but I always understood why there were racial level limits - this was of course due to demihumans living somewhere between much longer than humans, much longer than humans or MUCH longer than humans. In practice, though, it doesn't really work narratively or mechanically. They should have, in my opinion, transposed into fantasy the real-life dynamic that exists in which humans are imperialistic, greedy, power-hungry and impetuous due to their relataively short lives, so they won't reach level 40+ barring shenanigans, and they die easily but breed like rats. Ultra-high levels can happen other races that live 2-7 times longer, but they are so much less populous that it evens out. A level 40 elven archmage that is 612 years old is going to flatten a level 18 human archmage, but if three level 18 human archmages take him on then I don't fancy his chances. This theme shows up in a lot of Tolkein-inspired fantasy settings (AHAB All Humans Are Bastards), but it could have been fleshed out mechanically. There was an optional rule where, at higher levels, each level took much longer in terms of experience. A well-meaning and better idea, but functionally it just punishes someone for being an elf mage rather than a human one. Same goes for Raise Dead not working on elves, but that's another discussion. Keldulas posted:The racial class limits only make sense up to a point. I buy the point about elves and dwarves, but halflings get nailed for no reason. Felinoid posted:Halflings get nailed in many other ways for little to no reason. The racial level limits are only one aspect of their seemingly intentionally bad design. But that's a sore point I probably shouldn't expand on in this thread. I don't buy the point about elves and dwarves as much, but I very much agree with you about halflings. They had the incredibly limited class selection of dwarves, who had it rought in the first place, with less racial advantages, penalties for size and utterly ridiculous level caps. Gnomes didn't have it much better, but at least they would be illusionists which had excellent multi-class options. Intentional or not, conscious or not, I'm all-but-certain that there was a 'short = weak' bias going on. DivineCoffeeBinge posted:I always enjoyed the way the BECMI boxed set D&D rules handled things like druids - they weren't a class per se, but a kind of prestige class that clerics could enter at a certain level. Same with things like the Cavalier and the Paladin. In that kind of a system, I honestly kinda dug the whole Ritual Druid Combat thing, because you knew that was the price you paid for getting the kickass new powers. I never really got to play pre-2e D&D, so I didn't know about that. Weren't illusionists also a sort of mage prestige class?
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May 21, 2022 21:00
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It's important to remember, I think, that in the Early Days of D&D it was generally considered less important that races be "balanced" and more important that they be "true to the way they were written by Tolkein and other fantasy authors." So elves can't be Raised because they're fundamentally ethereal creatures of spirit or whatever the gently caress Tolkein was banging on about, and they can't get charmed or paralyzed because some player waved a copy of a fantasy novel at Gygax and said "well look this elf was immune to being charmed so mine should be too" and they all get bonuses to longbows or whatever because that's how you get to be Legolas. Halflings suck at a bunch of stuff because halflings are Hobbits-but-we-can't-call-them-Hobbits-because-we'll-get-sued, so everything that Tolkein said Hobbits didn't do were things your halfling PC also, by extension, didn't do. Pretty sure level limits came about solely as a way for Gygax to be able to say "gently caress you, no" to players who said "okay I go off and study wizardry in seclusion for three hundred years" when he was trying to get them to adventure in dungeons, basically. "Game balance" was a concept that did not really exist as a concept in the early days of D&D (this is part of what I mean when I say that IMHO, 3rd Edition is the first edition of D&D/AD&D that was designed as an actual RPG as opposed to a tactical simulation with some roleplaying bolted on). The industry was vastly more interested in fidelity and verisimilitude - by which I mean, an elf can do the things you imagine elves doing, wizards can do things you imagine wizards doing, thieves are super important when you need traps taken care of and basically a waste of space otherwise, and so on and so forth. The thinking was never "we should make sure playing a cleric is as fun as playing a wizard so no one gets overshadowed" - it was "if you wanted to have fun you should have played a more appropriate character, now get with the Cure Serious Wounds, healbot." I mean, hell, remember that in the fabled Castle Greyhawk campaign that served as the basic proof of concept for D&D, way back in the mists of prehistory, Rob Kuntz (who played Robilar, one of the Important Dudes in that game) was getting impatient with waiting his turn when the game had a bunch of people in it, so he'd go over to Gygax's house and badger Gary for solo games, to the point where he rapidly outlevelled most other characters in the campaign because he was getting extra XP and treasure like every day. To quote the Greyhawk Wiki, "Robilar was also the first to enter Gygax's Temple of Elemental Evil, and trashed it from top to bottom, even freeing the demoness Zuggtmoy from her prison at the centre of the Temple. Kuntz later related that Gygax was very dismayed that his masterpiece dungeon had been destroyed by a single adventurer, and as punishment, Gygax had an army pursue Robilar all the way back to his castle, which Robilar was forced to abandon." You think they were writing poo poo like "game balance" into the rules? Man, they weren't even using a simple guideline like "maybe don't let one player have extra games every day so his PC outlevels everyone else" for crying out loud. If it comes before 3rd Edition, then stop thinking about poo poo like game balance. It was never a priority. It hadn't, in a very real sense, been invented yet.
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May 21, 2022 21:41
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Felinoid posted:
porque no los dos?
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May 21, 2022 21:45
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sb hermit posted:porque no los dos? It absolutely could be. Heck, my current campaign has a Ranger/Priest of Habbakuk (basically a repainted druid since we didn't want to go too in-depth), and so far the challenges he's faced have been a "pouncing" contest (shapeshift into big cats, go into the woods, and see who can stalk who first to initiate a fun tussle), and a "kindness" contest where he and a hippy flowerchild kind of druid lady competed to give the best gifts to the rest of the party (he managed a 2-1 win that included a rather inspired gift; it was heartwarming  ). I'd built the whole circle up and he got to choose who to challenge (each with their own choice of what the challenge would be, but he could only guess what they might be until he'd chosen an opponent) and it was interesting to see who he picked. To be honest, I'd expected him to pick the stoner plant-oriented druid instead of the really animal-oriented one, and the dwarven
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May 22, 2022 00:54
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