schuetz@via.DEC (Chris Schuetz - VIA System Manager 381-2647) (10/12/84)
There was a recent rebuttal about some DM's haveing too much concern to kill off a 7th level mage that took months to develop. MONTHS !?! If you're really role-playing, you're talking about characters that take YEARS to develop. My cleric has finally reached 8th level after 4 years of playing. We just lost our 8th level fighter that has been around for 5 years! You bet that we tried everything that we could think of to restore him (even though he wasn't quite dead yet), even took up 4 sessions to do it. We were so desparate that we let the mages of the defeated army try something, much to our regret. What they ended up doing is summoning a demon to kill of the rest of us. Of course they didn't have nearly the power to control him, and the first thing he did was wipe them all out (and our friend's body too). Then our party was stuck with dealing with the demon (successfully too, thanks to some VERY lucky rolls. We didn't have nearly the strength to battle him in earnest). So don't expect any sympathy from us when you lose your precious 7th level character after 2 months of playing :-) I do agree that nasty fatal item are unnecessary, however. A good DM can use subtler means to bring a character into line. (Having the church send him off for a year in a monastery to do penance comes to mind. How would you like to have to give up your character for a year of character time? I'd think that you'd change your ways instead.) Instead of magic items, lets hear about some more traps and trick or puzzles to use. /Chris decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-via!schuetz
rick@uwmacc.UUCP (the absurdist) (10/15/84)
In article <3905@decwrl.UUCP> schuetz@via.DEC (Chris Schuetz - VIA System Manager 381-2647) writes: >There was a recent rebuttal about some DM's having too much concern to kill >off a 7th level mage that took months to develop. > >MONTHS !?! If you're really role-playing, you're talking about characters >that take YEARS to develop. My cleric has finally reached 8th level after >4 years of playing. The catch here is the phrase, "really role-playing". Under what system? Nobody plays the game exactly by "the book" unless they're Gary Gygax, and can simply say "This is what the rules mean no matter what they say." (Watch him ref at GenCon sometime, if you get the chance). A long time ago, Glenn Blacow published an article in _Different_Worlds_ outlining various styles of FRP gaming. One such style is the power-gamer; he/she is in it for the gold, experience, goodies, levels, etc. There are a lot of power-gaming refs out there, too. If everyone is having fun, great : most sets of rules adapt easily to this style of play. The multitude of TSR rules sets for ** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR PREFIX ** D&D are especially suited for this, but almost any other game stretches in this fashion also. You sound like you are happy with characters that take a long time to develop; this is fine. There are other kicks in FRP : the inter- actions with other characters, development of a personality in your own characters, getting caught up in the DM's world & story, trying to play small-unit tactics with medieval weapons & magic, etc. The small- unit tactics kick may be irrelevant to the person who is "into" his character's life; another person may play a multitude of relatively non-personalized characters because their kick is from the wonders of the game master's imagination. The trouble comes in mixing players and/or characters who come from different styles. This generally results in (1) one player being unhappy at all the unexpected nasty things happening to his/her character, and (2) everybody else despising the newcomer because they "don't know how to play." Most people don't even recognize what the problem is. So, when you get a new player, explain to him what "average" PCs have happen to them: how fast they go up levels, what goodies they have, and so on. Then either bend their PCs to fit, or clone off new PCs at an appropriate level to fit in with your other players, or make them start from scratch as you see fit. For the record, my favorite character was a 60-year old man in a Villains and Vigilante game, who could move objects weighing up to several ounces with telekinesis, and could toss a mental disintegration ray that was about as powerful as the average handgun in that game (but MENTAL rays use up power points). Powerful he was not; I just enjoyed the campaign and the philosophy that my PC evolved to deal with being a geriatric superhero. -- "I'm good at what I do. But what I do, isn't very nice." -- Wolverine Rick Keir -- MicroComputer Information Center, MACC 1210 West Dayton St/U Wisconsin Madison/Mad WI 53706 {allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!rick
srt@ucla-cs.UUCP (10/17/84)
I think magical items of the sort posted are perfectly legitimate for many
reasons:
(1) If you've got powerful characters, it is probably because you handed out
a lot of nice magic. This gives characters instant death potential
against their opponents. It is only fair that some of the items they
find have instant death potential against them.
(2) Powerful characters should have plenty of ways to detect cursed items or
to counter their effects. If they kill themselves off through stupidity
or laxity, then they didn't deserve to be high-level.
(3) The spice of role-playing is risk. These magic items put some risk in to
the lives of high-level characters, who may not otherwise be challenged.
(4) I don't buy the theory that such items would not exist because no one
would make them. Perhaps no one would make such an item intentionally
(though I doubt that too), but suppose magic item creation has a 1 in
10 success ratio (seems reasonable) and that 7 of the other 9 are cursed?
Or suppose that magic items tend to `go bad' over time, so that the magic
items you find lying in dungeons deep are likely to be bad. Or imagine
that magic items are powered by chained demons from another plane, and
as time goes on, many of them manage to pervert the magic that binds them.
And so on, and so on. No problem justifying bad magic.
It all comes down to a question of balance and reasonability. Cursed magic
items should not be out of line with the power level of your campaign, and
they should be justified within your framework of magic. So why not?
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!srtmr-frog@sdamos.UUCP (Dave Pare) (10/17/84)
: The key line in that last article was "in line with the power level of your campaign." I would certainly agree, were I a PC in that system, that if I had wands of disintegrate-no-save, or delayed blast fireball (no save), or power word stun (no save), or practically anything with no save that the DM would be reasonable (under your stipulation of "power level") to include items which would kill PC's with no save. How many people run games like this? Not too many. Many people do have spells which identify items from a distance (you don't have to put the item on to figure out what it does) but these spells are around sixth level. We generally don't muck around with items until we can get them back to be "identified" by high level mages, however those DM's who delight in inflicting obnoxious devices on players would be the very types who would not have NPC mages around to do analizes so that the "instant death" devices would not "go to waste". A long time ago we used to have those items in dungeons, but we quickly found that since the players always had the items identified, they got some pretty gross devices -- you could always instead of attacking a monster, throw a "robe of blending" on him and push the button... Dave Pare
chenr@tilt.FUN (The 1200 baud hacker) (10/20/84)
> I think magical items of the sort posted are perfectly legitimate for many > reasons: > > (1) If you've got powerful characters, it is probably because you handed out > a lot of nice magic. This gives characters instant death potential > against their opponents. It is only fair that some of the items they > find have instant death potential against them. I agree that nasty magic items have their place. However, a DM shouldn't need nasty items to control a campaign, or even an obnoxious character. Too many people have bought E. Gary Gygax's claim that high- level D&D is un-balanced, unchallenging D&D. Nothing could be further from the truth. High-level D&D, when done right, can be not only just as challenging, but also more exciting than low-level D&D. The key, of course, is realizing that power is relative. A person, upon entering the campaign I play in, was ranting about, "How can you have world that's full of 20th-level characters? If I'm 20th level, I could go destroy a city..." The following conversation then took place. DM: "Before you go off destroying any cities, think first. How many 20th level characters are there living in that city?" PC: "Ummm." DM: "And what will they do once they find out you trashed the city they live in?" PC: "Ummm. Hunt me down and kill me?" DM: "Riiiggggghhhhtt." The trick is to not let the player-characters get too powerful relative to the campaign. The lazy way out is to keep PCs from getting powerful at all. The creative way out is to make up a world that is more powerful than the PCs in it, and to juggle the balance of power to make sure that no one gets the upper hand. After all, a world dominated by Algathroth the Magnificent, even if he is an NPC, is going get really boring. With regards to a battle, there's no reason to punish PCs for possesing items that have "instant death" capability, just give NPCs items with the same capabilities, or be intelligent and creative enough to allow for the possiblity of defences against such items and give them to some of the NPCs. It is true that high-level battles tend to be shorter, but as a rule, this is a result of a "time-compression" due to the fact that high-level PCs can *do* much more in a round than low-level PCs. The amount of subjective time remains about the same, you're just fighting with fractions of rounds being important and not just rounds. Nasty magic items have their place: the normal risk of life. There have been lots of good arguments explaining why a nasty magic item might be created, so I won't repeat them. But don't use them as "control" devices. You can control PCs very well without them. ---- The preceding message was brought to you by -- Ray Chen princeton!tilt!chenr
jfw@mit-eddie.UUCP (John Woods) (10/29/84)
On Nasty Magic Items:
Generally, my characters are the "cowardly psychopathic" types, and I have
in fact managed to do quite well even in dungeons which were famous for
slaughtering huge numbers of excessively powerful characters, mostly by
taking risks only when I can fudge the odds WAY in my favor. My characters
usually avoid powerful-looking, unknown magic items, and there have been
adventures when the glory hogs wound up as hamburger...
In my worlds, magic tends to be scarce, and a fair amount of it is bad (you
see, there are these magic users who feel that abuse of magic is a really
bad thing -- and this way, they ensure that!). What do you do if you want
to be careful? Every major city has a Sages' Guild (you can even rent a
Sage, if you are willing to put up with less than top-notch quality), and
while Mages (that is capital-Em) are not cheap, and often resent the waste
of their time, that extra few thousand GP you spend *would* buy a nice pile
of Eye-of-Newt, now, wouldn't it...
A phrase that many FRPers chant, over and over, like a mantra, is
"Play Balance". A world which is balanced is a world which can be enjoyuable.
I prefer balance at the low-power, long-duration campaign level; others
prefer Monty Haul campaigns with instant {riches,death} galore.
I've easily said too much. Bye...
--
John Woods, Charles River Data Systems
decvax!frog!john, mit-eddie!jfw, JFW%mit-ccc@MIT-XX
When your puppy goes off in another room,
is it because of the explosive charge?dave@uwvax.UUCP (Dave Cohrs) (10/29/84)
> My characters > usually avoid powerful-looking, unknown magic items, and there have been > adventures when the glory hogs wound up as hamburger... Listen to that man! Don't ever trust an innocent looking deck of cards. It's a major blow to ones-self to see a promising M-U die when his sticks all blow up (something which occurred this past weekend). The wimpy characters that didn't touch the thing lived (and left the area). The rest of us blew up. Argh!!!!!! -- (Bug? What bug? That's a feature!) Dave Cohrs ...!{allegra,heurikon,ihnp4,seismo,uwm-evax}!dave dave@wisc-rsch.arpa