srt@ucla-cs.UUCP (10/24/84)
The problem with running a high power campaign - say twentieth level
or so - is that it becomes impossible to properly balance the
campaign. At a certain point characters become invicible for all
practical purposes, and the campaign goes rapidly downhill because
the players are no longer challenged. Of course, this can happen
in any campaign that lasts long enough, but it happens a LOT more
quickly in a campaign that starts out at a high level.
What are the benefits of having a high power campaign? It comes
down to one thing: more magic. Magic-users have a wider variety
of spells and everyone has a wider variety of magic items. A side
effect of this is that everyone is harder to kill and hence feels
comfortable attacking more potent enemies. Then a vicious cycle
starts. To make the enemy more challenging, the DM gives him more
powerful treasure. The PCs win the battle, garnish the treasure,
and so on. Still, having the magic available is fun and interesting.
So what's a DM to do?
My solution is to make more magic available at lower levels, and
to retard level advancement somewhat. The magic I make available is
usually specialized and fairly weak (but not one shot). I counter-
act the plethora of magic by retarding level advancement. This keeps
characters vulnerable and increases their enjoyment of the games.
I think this is a reasonable approach. Letting characters advance
into the high-level spin is silly. How many fantasy works can you
cite where a character can attack a dragon with impunity? Yet that
is precisely the situation that occurs in many poorly managed FRP
runs.
Scott R. Turner
UCLA Computer Science Department
3531 Boelter Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90024
ARPA: srt@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA
UUCP: ...!{cepu,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!srtchenr@tilt.FUN (The 1200 baud hacker) (10/27/84)
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chenr@tilt.FUN (The 1200 baud hacker) (10/27/84)
> The problem with running a high power campaign - say twentieth level > or so - is that it becomes impossible to properly balance the > campaign. At a certain point characters become invicible for all > practical purposes, and the campaign goes rapidly downhill because > the players are no longer challenged. Of course, this can happen > in any campaign that lasts long enough, but it happens a LOT more > quickly in a campaign that starts out at a high level. Sigh. See <187@tilt.FUN>. It is NOT impossible to properly balance a 20th+ level campaign. I know. I've played in several. The trick is to do a good job of balancing the power. If you make the monsters/NPC's intelligent and powerful, making the game challenging is no problem at all, believe me. Of course, one of the things you have to do is to be willing to hype the AD&D monsters, realizing that the AD&D monsters aren't geared for 20th level play. Basically, it boils down to playing the NPC/monsters like PC's. (i.e. assume that they are reasonably intelligent, crafting, cunning, etc.) First of all, you let a monster, if it's intelligent and is physically capable of using a magic item, use decent magic items that it may have in its treasure. There's no reason why a dragon that can cast spells shouldn't use its rod of absorption or wear a ring of wizardry on its claw, say. Likewise, if a vampire has a +5 cloak in its hoard, let it wear the darn thing. I sure would, if I were the vampire. I hate dying. Second, you should assume that if a monster's been alive for a long time, there's a reason why it hasn't fallen prey to a wandering party of adventurers before. Thus, dragons, demons, etc. should become more powerful. I mean, if 10 fifth level characters can clobber your average huge ancient red dragon with say, a 75% loss rate (which I don't think is too out of line), red dragons would have died out a long time ago. So you make the "book" dragons the stupid cannon-fodder dragons, and you make the ones that have been around a while larger, stronger, and more intelligent. (i.e. don't make the stupid thing breathe just because your dice tell you to. A dragon should know how to fight well instinctively, it's been bred in for eons.) Also, give it an intelligent setup for its lair. A dragon's only had a few centuries or so to work one out and is supposed to be fairly intelligent, even if it's only a "book" dragon. Third, hype your gods. The book gods are great for playing against 4th level characters, but against 20th, forget it. What DM's I know do is to interpret the "book" gods as the capabilities of their manisfestations on the prime material plane. On the other hand, just try and tackle Odin on his own plane, just try... It's a good (and not entirely fun) way to die. Fourth, let your NPC's do anything the PC's can do -- at least. If your PC's have special items, let your NPC's have special items, too. (As a matter of fact, that makes for some fun adventures. We've had plenty that were inspired by greed. That is, PC's found out about a neat item an NPC had and went through hell and high water to take it away from him. Then there was the one inspired by the staff of destruction (as in it DESTROYED things as per the spell, destruction) simply because we wanted revenge on anybody that tacky and gross enough to actually USE one in battle. We pulled off one of the great con jobs of all time for that one.) As the characters become more and more powerful, you should find that random battles occur less and less (thus taking some of the strain off the DM's brain). PC's become powerful enough so that they don't just go off hunting for treasure. Sure, trashing a city is easy, but it's boring, and it can lead to 20 NPC's out for blood -- yours. High-level D&D, if done well, is more challenging than low-level D&D for the following reasons. First, each PC has more options open to him in terms of the things he can do. This generally makes life more fun. Second, usually, you get less and less sure about the capabilities of the thing that you're going to run up against. All you know is that it's going to be POWERFUL, you don't know what kind of special gimmicks/tricks it's got up it's sleeve. Remember, the NPC/monster, like the PC, has more options open to it, too. Third, things happen faster. More things happen in a round so you really have to work together as a team -- or you die. Fast. One last comment: the problem with high-level D&D isn't the fact that it's high level, it's the fact that most people can't handle high-level D&D well. Many DM's aren't creative enough, or simply experienced enough to run a high level campaign well. It's easy to balance the power of a 4th-level campaign, just look in your handy-dandy Monster Manual (tm :-) for a more powerful monster to use. Balancing a 20th level campaign takes a little more energy because there's less out there in terms of easy reference materials and ideas. Also, most players aren't used to handling that much power. They either do stupid things and run wild (leading to death in a well-run campaign) or they don't learn how to work well as a team (leading to death in a well-run campaign). The most successful groups I've ever played in were marked not so much by raw power but by teamwork. Everybody knew what to do in a crunch. When 5 10th level characters took out a Balrog (a much-hyped type V demon), they did so because they worked well together as a team. Five 15th level characters working not so well together would have died. As a matter of fact, this happened in another adventure, when 8 of the most powerful PC's got together to go look for something. We got severely abused. Later on, two of us used to working together as a team went back and zipped right through things. ---- The preceding message was brought to you by -- Ray Chen princeton!tilt!chenr
mr-frog@sdamos.UUCP (Dave Pare) (10/29/84)
: Regarding Ray Chen's article in favor of well balanced high level games.... MASSIVE PLUS POINTS!!! I loved it. He concisely and accurately stated how a good high level game is run. We have just such a campaign, and indeed, it does work pretty much as he says. The high level characters no longer run in "dungeons". Basically, either they are attacked, or they arrange to attack something. Our characters do not go around trashing cities; we find that it's best not to make any more enemies than possible. We don't go out of our way to find trouble. Of course the enemies use really nasty magic items against us. In addition, they also generally have new-and-exciting spells which have nasty effects which are usually surprising and sometimes fatal. This one Sahuagin King (who was a 20th level ftr/mage) was being attacked by this 20th level mage PC. The PC mage, trying to gather information on this Sahuagin king, found this fighter who claimed to have a map with some sort of secret entrances to the Sahuagin's castle. The mage, after looking the fighter over (fighter was 4th, radiating small amounts of evil), took the map after paying him some amount of gold. The map was actually a trapped device, a higher level version of "trap the soul", and the mage was tricked into accepting the trigger device. A full wish was used to transport the device back to the Sahuagin king. From this debacle, the saying arose "Beware of Sahuagin Kings bearing Maps"... That was one NPC which didn't simply wait to be attacked. His information sources revealed that he was being snooped on, and he struck back before any attack took place. The last point I want to make is that in our campaign, in general, far more low level adventures are run than those which are high level. This is because high level games are really quite hard to run. The DM must be quite experienced, and it takes a lot more work to get something whipped up for a 20th level game... Dave Pare
sps@drusd.UUCP (10/30/84)
Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site houxe.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site drusd.UUCP Message-ID: <1142@drusd.UUCP> Date: Tue, 30-Oct-84 13:53:20 EST e / High Level - Low Level Lines: 30 I agree, high-level games can be fun when well played. I also agree that such games are extremely taxing on the DM. At higher levels, the fun of the game comes from PC/NPC interactions, NOT from "hack and slash." Unless the DM is a great actor, capable of playing dozens of parts in the same session, the game loses its luster. Creating all these NPC, and fleshing them out to high levels with fully developed personalities, requires time and imagination. If the PCs happen to take a "path" other than what the DM planned, the DM is faced with the frustration of lost effort, and the task of creating new NPCs "on the fly." One solution, creating a different game situation, is for the DM to revert to the role of moderator. The DM creates a "world." Then has two or more parties running around in it. Assign each player a city, or other suitable locale, to flesh out with characters and mythos. The DM then coordinates the various locales and player interactions for consistancy with established guidelines. The DM may retain some of the locales, or mythos, for his/her own play. The game then becomes truly "Role Playing," with character interactions taking on the prime aspect. Steve Shapland, aka Amlwch, Lord of the Karpian Dragons 11655 Logan St. Northglenn, CO 80233 drusd!sps
mike@whuxl.UUCP (BALDWIN) (11/01/84)
I too must agree that high level games are not only feasible, but can be very
enjoyable. I do, however, enjoy the challenge of getting there much more than
actually being there. Having reached the peaks of power of their given
profession, I prefer to either retire my characters or start a political
career(I've always wanted to rule some small country as a dictator{benevolent o
course!}). I have found that many involved in high level play do so because
they are incapable of recognizing a reasonable end to their character's
career, and so through irrational loyalty continue to play the same old tired
character(please don't mistake me, this is certainly not a universal phenomena)
I prefer to think of a high level campaign as the last icing on the cake to
finish up my character's adventuring properly, but then each to his/her own.
Ryerson Schwark
aka
Siren, Mistress of the Gates of Chaos