Four fixes for DCC

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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by cthulhudarren »

I thought the wizard staff only allows the casting of the spell a few times a day, not unlimited.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by Johann »

oncelor wrote:The main problem we had with spellburn was that the wizards burned 20 points and used this to max-out "Wizard Staff," which then gave them +2 on their main offensive spells.
When I look at spells with permanent effects - e.g. Arcane Affinity, Patron Bond, Wizard Staff etc. - it seems to me that no wizard would ever cast them without using the maximum amount of spellburn. These spells are effectively rituals and the results are far-reaching.

As such, they should probably be (re)balanced with this in mind.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by beermotor »

I think you're exactly right about what those spells were intended for and exactly wrong that they need to be "(re)balanced"... the point of the game is gonzo, not balance. To a certain extent, that was the point of The Original Game magic-user, too. The "balance" comes in the form of challenging play from the Judge. If you're just letting your player steamroll everything, then I think you've only got yourself to blame. Give them something CHALLENGING! that they can't steamroll. The guy w/ color spray / and area of effect heal is a great example, that's a very powerful combination. But so what? There are a million ways to counter that. Reflecting creatures, for example, or mindless/un-dead. A big part of the danger of an OSR game, also, is massed numbers of smaller creatures. This is where a lot of modules go wrong, I think... concentrating too much in one "big bad" enemy that gets overwhelmed and only have a few dice rolls to negate that. I think 20 1HD creatures is potentially a far deadlier opponent than 1 20HD creature, given the right set of immunities or area effects.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by Ravenheart87 »

^ This post is so awesome, that when I meet this guy I'm surely going to invite him for a couple of beers, roll up a few characters and then let him kill them all.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by beermotor »

I've also found that surprise and ranged attacks, including spells, are wayyyyy more potent against my players than melee combat. Warriors and dwarves are pretty tough toe-to-toe. But everybody's squishy from longbow range. I damn near TPKd my party in DotSK when they came out of the tomb and encountered the 6 or 8 archer guys. It took them several rounds to run up close enough to melee them, and by that time, a lot of people had been dropped. And last week, I pitted them against a 5th or 6th level warrior and his 5th level wizard companion, plus an elf of about 3rd or so. Between the lightning bolts and the archery, they almost had another TPK. Only saved by the cleric burning all his luck on a divine intervention request for an avenging angel to save them. It worked... but there'll be a price for that aid. :twisted:
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by Rythwold »

Excellent posts. The idea of adventuring being an arms race is all over Appendix N - especially in the Elric saga. I can think of lots of times he thinks he's got the right spell, the right demonic and elemental alliances, and then he has to face the panic of something he didn't account for coming out of no-where. Old school gaming can capture this really well.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by ragboy »

beermotor wrote:I've also found that surprise and ranged attacks, including spells, are wayyyyy more potent against my players than melee combat. Warriors and dwarves are pretty tough toe-to-toe. But everybody's squishy from longbow range. I damn near TPKd my party in DotSK when they came out of the tomb and encountered the 6 or 8 archer guys. It took them several rounds to run up close enough to melee them, and by that time, a lot of people had been dropped. And last week, I pitted them against a 5th or 6th level warrior and his 5th level wizard companion, plus an elf of about 3rd or so. Between the lightning bolts and the archery, they almost had another TPK. Only saved by the cleric burning all his luck on a divine intervention request for an avenging angel to save them. It worked... but there'll be a price for that aid. :twisted:
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by oncelor »

beermotor wrote: I bet he'd cry like a girl if you attacked him with about 20 small and quick mindless undead with no eyes. :shock:

What I'm saying is, I don't think it's unbalanced at all.
Sure, I've done this many times, but after a dozen sessions of doing this it has become a farce: blind creatures have become a running joke with the players. They know that I'm having them attacked by plant monsters or eyeless zombies or rock creatures or smoke-demons and shadowy-severed-hand-creatures (that was last session) just to balance "color spray."

If the wizard didn't have an 18 INT and a +2 bonus from his staff, I don't think this would be such a problem, since he would lose the spell 25% of the time rather than 5% of the time. At fifth level with his bonuses he's basically casting the spell as well as an average 10th level caster, which is why he's so much more powerful than the other 5th level characters in the party (most of whom have average, or worse than average, ability scores.)
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by cjoepar »

Don't lose sight of the fact that there is another facet of balance that this color spraying wizard upsets as well. Most people like to contribute more or less equally to the success of the party, regardless of what character they are playing. Having a wizard that can pretty much always blast away things and leaves the rest of the party standing there eating popcorn and watching the show is a balance problem of a different sort. Do you have a situation where if the wizard can't make it to a gaming session the rest of the party is going to really struggle through the encounters, more so than if someone else didn't show up? That's a balance problem then.

It sounds to me like this is a case of the perfect storm, where a lot of things just lined up to create this situation. I would try a few tricks to kill him off and if they don't work, maybe the local king hears about this guy and decides to recruit him into his service as a personal body guard. You know, maybe he makes him an offer he can't refuse, then you let the guy retire and try to move on. Sometimes things like that happen, and it doesn't really mean that the system is broken, just that everything lined up right in a way you couldn't foresee as the judge. Maybe you even hang onto the character sheet and bring him back as a villain down the road in a year or two.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by maxinstuff »

Create an anti-mage that can lock down wizards abilities. Remember enemies don't have to follow the same rules as characters. As soon as he sets off colour spray - BOOM - counterspell with something that makes him lose the spell for the day (ALL his spells at the top end of effect), cutting him off from his source of power. Force him to get a bit more creative.

'you reach out for magical energies and find nothing but emptyness.....'

Might make a good villain for your campaign. When wizards start getting captured and magical collars put on them to restrict their abilities and enslave them - then they will worry :)
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by oncelor »

beermotor wrote:I think you're exactly right about what those spells were intended for and exactly wrong that they need to be "(re)balanced"... the point of the game is gonzo, not balance. To a certain extent, that was the point of The Original Game magic-user, too. The "balance" comes in the form of challenging play from the Judge. If you're just letting your player steamroll everything, then I think you've only got yourself to blame. Give them something CHALLENGING! that they can't steamroll. The guy w/ color spray / and area of effect heal is a great example, that's a very powerful combination. But so what? There are a million ways to counter that. Reflecting creatures, for example, or mindless/un-dead. A big part of the danger of an OSR game, also, is massed numbers of smaller creatures. This is where a lot of modules go wrong, I think... concentrating too much in one "big bad" enemy that gets overwhelmed and only have a few dice rolls to negate that. I think 20 1HD creatures is potentially a far deadlier opponent than 1 20HD creature, given the right set of immunities or area effects.

Sure, mechanically I can invent any number of things to counter a player's super-cool ability. But mechanics aren't the problem. The two problems are:

1) I don't like having to single out a player for special challenge. I just don't like doing that. I've done it many times before: I've been DMing pretty much continuously for the last 30 years, and over the years have circumvented the powers of many-a-super-character. (I recall with particular distaste a 2nd edition D&D character named Api who had a psionic power called "Death Field," which was about as an unbalanced as it sounds.) I know how to do it. I've done it with this wizard many times already. But players inevitably know when this is happening to them, and they don't really like it. And I don't like doing it to them.

It's more interesting to me, and more fair to the wizard in this case, to bump the saving throws of monsters up and to introduce magic resistance to give a wider range of monsters a greater ability to resist "color spray" without making them completely impervious to it. The alternative, playing a game of eyeless-monster-of-the-week, seems kind of contrived and is, I think, not as generous to the player.

By the way, read the last result of "color spray": the result of 32+ affects even eyeless creatures! With 20 points of spellburn our wizard can be guaranteed this result whenever he needs it to stop all enemies within 200', eyes or no.

I once played a bard in a campaign who had very excellent charm and suggestion abilities. The DM knew this and so we fought undead, plant creatures, will-of-the-wisps, golems, drow elves, more undead, more plant creatures, a minor god, and finally there was a big final epic battle in which we fought... a vampiric drow necromancer leading more undead. All creatures that were immune to suggestion and charm by the game mechanics. Over 15 sessions my bard was able to use his signature charm person and suggestion abilities a total of zero times. Perhaps this tainted my opinion of DMs who target players' powerful special abilities by means of impervious monsters. :-)


2) The campaign world I'm running has existed as a sort of objective reality in my head for a long time. There's a dragon named Arconax who dwells in the rift in the swamp. There are frost giants, worshiped by one of the party members, in the frozen wastes of the planet Oceanus. There are cultists in the ruins along the Dark Lake. There are harpies and druids and bandits and goblins and elves and froglings and Atlanteans who live in this place and that place and who have all sorts of different relations to each other. I like my campaign world just as it is. I really don't want to have to replace all the creatures in my campaign world with variations on eyeless zombies just to address what should be some minor game-balance issue with a first level spell. If the players travel to the Isle of Very Small Snakes, they are going to find druids and velociraptors there because, darn it, that's what's on the Isle of Very Small Snakes; I'm not about to replace the velociraptors there with hordes of eyeless zombies -- eyeless zombies are just not what's on that island.


But don't misunderstand me: I really do like the gonzo aspect of DCC. It's one of the things I love about the system. If you read my account of the session in "Against the Giants," the round on which Idris, that super "color spray" wizard, rolled a natural 20 and neutralized dozens of giants was one of the best RPG moments I've ever had in one of my campaigns. But I get the sense from the game design that this gonzo aspect is supposed to be unpredictable and surprising, and maybe a little rare. The gonzo aspect has become a little too routine in our campaign because the 5th level wizard casts certain spells like a 10th level wizard. There is another wizard in the party who has recently reached 5th level, but, being average, he casts spells like a 5th level wizard, and there are no balance problems with him at all.


One of the other things I loved about DCC is the notion that players were to be afraid of magic. I think the idea of corruption and divine disapproval is really neat. I had the sense that this fear of magic was a countervailing mechanism to the gonzo capabilities of magic in the game. But this really hasn't been as countervailing as I'd hoped: corruption and divine disapproval have been more of a bookkeeping nuisance than a source of dread. I've never had players decide not to cast a spell because they were afraid that the negative consequences would be worse than the benefits, even when the benefits were very, very marginal indeed.

I would like it if players were more afraid to cast their more powerful spells. Perhaps wizards could choose between lesser and greater castings of a spell. Lesser castings would be limited in effect -- perhaps could have no result higher than 20+Spell Level -- and would offer the current sort of corruption penalty when rolling a '1'. Major castings (which would include any casting with spell burn, or with spell burn over a certain quantity perhaps) would be unlimited in effect, but would inflict more severe corruption on a roll of '1' -- corruption effects that the player would fear, and not just purple hair :-) This way the wizard could still sling two "color sprays" every round, but unless he really wanted to risk it he'd be limited to affecting a smaller number of creatures with a more manageable saving throw (viz. Will DC 21 -- which is still pretty high when you have to make two saves to avoid the spell effect) for most monsters. This would present a genuinely interesting choice for the players. The potential for gonzo effects would still be there, but they'd be a little more unusual and associated with greater risk.
Last edited by oncelor on Mon Jun 24, 2013 10:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by oncelor »

cthulhudarren wrote:I thought the wizard staff only allows the casting of the spell a few times a day, not unlimited.
He can store three "color sprays" in the staff, IIRC. After he rolls a '1' and loses the spell he uses these up and then casts a few more "color sprays" using spellburn, so the '1' does slow him down but doesn't really stop him.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by oncelor »

cjoepar wrote:Don't lose sight of the fact that there is another facet of balance that this color spraying wizard upsets as well. Most people like to contribute more or less equally to the success of the party, regardless of what character they are playing. Having a wizard that can pretty much always blast away things and leaves the rest of the party standing there eating popcorn and watching the show is a balance problem of a different sort. Do you have a situation where if the wizard can't make it to a gaming session the rest of the party is going to really struggle through the encounters, more so than if someone else didn't show up? That's a balance problem then.

It sounds to me like this is a case of the perfect storm, where a lot of things just lined up to create this situation. I would try a few tricks to kill him off and if they don't work, maybe the local king hears about this guy and decides to recruit him into his service as a personal body guard. You know, maybe he makes him an offer he can't refuse, then you let the guy retire and try to move on. Sometimes things like that happen, and it doesn't really mean that the system is broken, just that everything lined up right in a way you couldn't foresee as the judge. Maybe you even hang onto the character sheet and bring him back as a villain down the road in a year or two.
That's right. For instance, I have to make sure I don't throw too many undead at the party because in fights against undead the two thieves in the party end up feeling pretty useless, since I don't allow most critical hit results to work against undead. But if I use lots of undead against the wizard to counter his "color spray," I still don't give the thieves much to do during combat.

I don't really want to make him retire his character if I don't have to. The guy really loves this character; for instance, he's learned a bunch of phrases in Welsh so that "Idris the Welsh Wizard" can speak properly in character. I have made him aware that reputation of Idris' great power is spreading, with the natural result that intelligent monsters might preferentially target him over other characters.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by oncelor »

maxinstuff wrote:Create an anti-mage that can lock down wizards abilities. Remember enemies don't have to follow the same rules as characters. As soon as he sets off colour spray - BOOM - counterspell with something that makes him lose the spell for the day (ALL his spells at the top end of effect), cutting him off from his source of power. Force him to get a bit more creative.

'you reach out for magical energies and find nothing but emptyness.....'

Might make a good villain for your campaign. When wizards start getting captured and magical collars put on them to restrict their abilities and enslave them - then they will worry :)
I have started making "counter-spell" ala "dispel magic" a more standard ability for monsters. This doesn't feel too contrived since it works against all the casters in the party, and it gives the wizard a chance to cast his spell still. Also it has an old school feel to it -- I remember fondly that duels between high level AD&D magic users typically opened with several rounds of repeated castings of "dispel magic."

I've used anti-magic zones too, but these aren't good long-term solutions, I think.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by maxinstuff »

Rest assured that in the fullness of time - the corruptive properties of magic catch up with you.

Maybe not today or tomorrow - but eventually.

He should be fearing for his soul.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by beermotor »

oncelor wrote:
beermotor wrote: I bet he'd cry like a girl if you attacked him with about 20 small and quick mindless undead with no eyes. :shock:

What I'm saying is, I don't think it's unbalanced at all.
Sure, I've done this many times, but after a dozen sessions of doing this it has become a farce: blind creatures have become a running joke with the players. They know that I'm having them attacked by plant monsters or eyeless zombies or rock creatures or smoke-demons and shadowy-severed-hand-creatures (that was last session) just to balance "color spray."

If the wizard didn't have an 18 INT and a +2 bonus from his staff, I don't think this would be such a problem, since he would lose the spell 25% of the time rather than 5% of the time. At fifth level with his bonuses he's basically casting the spell as well as an average 10th level caster, which is why he's so much more powerful than the other 5th level characters in the party (most of whom have average, or worse than average, ability scores.)
Hmm, if you've done this dozens of time and haven't killed the guy yet, maybe I'm just not understanding. Another thought is, a guy THAT powerful is a big juicy target. A couple Thieves from the shadows, backstabbing, should eliminate the problem.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

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oncelor wrote: Sure, mechanically I can invent any number of things to counter a player's super-cool ability. But mechanics aren't the problem. The two problems are:

1) I don't like having to single out a player for special challenge. I just don't like doing that. I've done it many times before: I've been DMing pretty much continuously for the last 30 years, and over the years have circumvented the powers of many-a-super-character. (I recall with particular distaste a 2nd edition D&D character named Api who had a psionic power called "Death Field," which was about as an unbalanced as it sounds.) I know how to do it. I've done it with this wizard many times already. But players inevitably know when this is happening to them, and they don't really like it. And I don't like doing it to them.
I think I see your problem. But, I'm not suggesting you make something just to kill this guy and that's it. Like it or not, he IS the main character in the party, the main character of the story. So now you've got to figure out a way to deal with that in a way that's fun for both you and him. And your point about the old DM not allowing the bard to ever use his charm stuff is well taken, I'm not suggesting that you always attack him with eyeless/mindless/whatever stuff. I guess I misread you, wasn't sure if you'd simply not thought of that or not.

I think what I'm suggesting is, take a moment and think about the character-as-character. What does he value, love? Attack that with something he can't just obliterate with his color spray. Have a very powerful demon abduct the character's love, hold it ransom in exchange for the wizard's staff or some other artifact that will allow the demon to conquer some kingdom or something. Introduce a little bit of moral dilemma for the character: does he give up his power to save his love? Does he fight the demon and risk the death of his love? Does he give up his power knowing that the demon will slaughter thousands of innocents? Does he sell his own soul in exchange for his love's safety (and, interestingly, what does that actually mean mechanically within the game)?

In my experience, fun for me is to have my players sweating and bitching just before they finally survive/win. I want them to feel like they worked, hard, or got really, really lucky, in overcoming the odds they were confronted with. Along the way, some of the characters are going to die, and I hope they're attached enough that they fondly remember them and sing songs about them and write poems and build monuments and all of that crap. I also want them to think a bit about racial identity, religion, what it means to be good or evil, altruistic or selfish, how that fits into society, etc. I want it the game to have a high degree of verisimilitude. Whether I succeed or not I don't know (we use Lego figs for God's sake wtf am I talking about) but that's my sort of unstated goal. I also want them to have fun doing these things, so I don't want to beat them over the head about it. Sometimes I succeed with that and sometimes not, ultimately the game's about the players (mostly) so you have to kind of play to your audience some. I think you get that.
One of the other things I loved about DCC is the notion that players were to be afraid of magic. I think the idea of corruption and divine disapproval is really neat. ... I've never had players decide not to cast a spell because they were afraid that the negative consequences would be worse than the benefits, even when the benefits were very, very marginal indeed.

I would like it if players were more afraid to cast their more powerful spells.
So you've got to make it that way. :-) I always liked the idea from MERP that using spells of any sort invited dark forces to notice you from far away, and corruption to seep into your soul, that sort of thing. This guy's going around blasting everything in sight with rainbows, that's going to catch a lot of attention unless you're in San Francisco during the Pride Parade. Eventually something dark and nasty is going to take an interest in this upstart 5th level wizard. Maybe it's a for-real 10th level wizard who senses a powerful rival coming up. Maybe he'd like to eliminate the competition. Or maybe he wants to steal the guy's power. Or maybe rival kingdoms want to enslave er, uh, I mean, "recruit," Rainbow-man for their own armies. He's like a nuclear device in a world where they can't be built. That's astronomically valuable.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by cthulhudarren »

oncelor wrote:
cthulhudarren wrote:I thought the wizard staff only allows the casting of the spell a few times a day, not unlimited.
He can store three "color sprays" in the staff, IIRC. After he rolls a '1' and loses the spell he uses these up and then casts a few more "color sprays" using spellburn, so the '1' does slow him down but doesn't really stop him.
Oh, I would put a stop to spellburn allowing him to recast. Does this character have a patron? :twisted:

How about sending assassins, poison, tsunamis, earthquakes, locusts!!!!
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by The Venomous Pao »

With regard to the super powerful staff, you might want to take a look at the section called "Ire of the Gods" on p. 365. It suggests that characters who wield magic items of a certain power level ("+2 enchantment or better" and "any extremely powerful staff" are specific identifiers) draw a Luck penalty of -1 to -4 so long as the item is wielded.

Now, I'm not saying you should hose the guy for making an incredibly powerful tool that threatens the greater powers and tears at the fabric of the universe. But the rules seem in favor of it :)

A significant Luck penalty sucks in general. When combined with a fumble and a corruption roll it could solve (or at least alleviate) your issue pretty quickly.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by cthulhudarren »

The Venomous Pao wrote:With regard to the super powerful staff, you might want to take a look at the section called "Ire of the Gods" on p. 365. It suggests that characters who wield magic items of a certain power level ("+2 enchantment or better" and "any extremely powerful staff" are specific identifiers) draw a Luck penalty of -1 to -4 so long as the item is wielded.

Now, I'm not saying you should hose the guy for making an incredibly powerful tool that threatens the greater powers and tears at the fabric of the universe. But the rules seem in favor of it :)

A significant Luck penalty sucks in general. When combined with a fumble and a corruption roll it could solve (or at least alleviate) your issue pretty quickly.
Excellent point!
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

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beermotor wrote: Hmm, if you've done this dozens of time and haven't killed the guy yet, maybe I'm just not understanding. Another thought is, a guy THAT powerful is a big juicy target. A couple Thieves from the shadows, backstabbing, should eliminate the problem.
He's been killed in combat a couple times, but death in combat only seems to be a minor inconvenience: one of the clerics inevitably heals any fallen character within the 1 round / level limit, and the "Restore Vitality" spell removes any of the permanent damage. I am planning on addressing both these items with house-rules (negative HPs, ability damage from dying cannot be healed with "restore vitality.") Though I don't mind having monsters identify targets of particular threat, or for powerful characters to develop the attention of powerful rivals, I really don't like singling out characters and marking them for death.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

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beermotor wrote:
oncelor wrote: Like it or not, he IS the main character in the party, the main character of the story. So now you've got to figure out a way to deal with that in a way that's fun for both you and him.
Thanks for the good suggestions!

He does have a patron: Marcus Tertius, www.goodman-games.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=42226. I'm going to introduce Tertius' old nemesis, the archdemon Jabal, into the plot soon. I think I'll say that the 32+ results on the "color sprays" have raised his attention.
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by oncelor »

maxinstuff wrote:Rest assured that in the fullness of time - the corruptive properties of magic catch up with you.
Maybe not today or tomorrow - but eventually.
He should be fearing for his soul.
I agree with the sentiment, and he has racked-up half-a-dozen corruption results, but after about 250 hours of playing DCC with a wizard who is absolutely unafraid of slinging as many spells as he can (he used "magic missile" to hunt frogs for dinner) he still hasn't seen a corruption result that is anything other than a social inconvenience (blue skin, extra-long arms, etc.)
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by beermotor »

oncelor wrote:
beermotor wrote: Hmm, if you've done this dozens of time and haven't killed the guy yet, maybe I'm just not understanding. Another thought is, a guy THAT powerful is a big juicy target. A couple Thieves from the shadows, backstabbing, should eliminate the problem.
He's been killed in combat a couple times, but death in combat only seems to be a minor inconvenience: one of the clerics inevitably heals any fallen character within the 1 round / level limit, and the "Restore Vitality" spell removes any of the permanent damage. I am planning on addressing both these items with house-rules (negative HPs, ability damage from dying cannot be healed with "restore vitality.") Though I don't mind having monsters identify targets of particular threat, or for powerful characters to develop the attention of powerful rivals, I really don't like singling out characters and marking them for death.
I really like your idea on negative hps. I will be using that if it comes up. Maybe a way to limit Restore Vitality is to require some epic quest by the cleric just to make it work. Like, 1 year of fasting in the mountains. Or something similarly arduous.
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Skyscraper
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Re: Four fixes for DCC

Post by Skyscraper »

This is a great thread, because people do not agree :) (but politely)

I think there are distinct problems here, namely:

A) the ones you initially stated:

1) balance spotty, elves are more powerful than wizards. I have little experience on this one, but it seems to me that the argument one poster made about elves having to live with their ability scores, whereas wizards will be chosen among those that have above average intelligence, seems to be pretty spot on. Of course, an 18 STR/18 INT elf might end up being stronger than an 18 INT wizard if he additionally rolls up the right spells. But will it change anything, really? Will this elf do so much with his sword and resistance to sleep? This seems to me to have little significance, if any.

2) spellburn overpowered. I agree with you. I have limited in-game experience yet, but I think that the spellburn results allow for spectacular unbalanced results. Some may not like it. On these boards, people have been saying essentially "no, there is no balance issue, the wizard will be weak after he spellburns, wizards that use too much power will attract unwanted attention, etc... etc..." I have not been convinced by these arguments. We all know that the purpose is not to spellburn at every encounter: when he needs it, e.g. in an important fight, the wizard has the possibility of going nova. No one else can do that. Thus, spellburn is overpowered, because no other class can achieve that level of success. However, I like that wizards can go nova, once in a while. I've just started an online game (here on these boards), and I chose to play a fighter knowing full well that the most powerful class can be the wizard. I am not looking to be as powerful as everybody else. That is my purpose in a strategy board game. That is not my purpose in an RPG.

Now, if the wizard does this systematically, it would be problematic. It has not been my experience, and others have proposed ways to mitigate this: if the wizard spellburns 10 points every other fight, I think the fights are too spaced-apart :)

3) game not deadly enough: I don't share your experience here. The funnel, I assume, everyone agrees is quite deadly. But then, after, level 1 and level 2 play (my own experience is limited to those levels) are pretty deadly, as the cleric needs to heal a fallen character within 1-2 rounds, meaning he needs to SUCCESSFULLY cast his healing on the character within that time frame. If two characters fall on the same round, the cleric can't miss one of his heals or else it's up to sister Luck to decide on the character's fate. And if the cleric falls... Well. Good luck. I don't know about you guys, but in a tabletop game where I am judge, I have 3 level 1 PCs, and the thief has 5 hit points and the cleric, 8. Last game, they had their hands full against brigands doing 1d6 damage each round.

4) ability drain is a nightmare to handle: I agree with you, and I really like the poster in this thread that said that he gave -1 to all rolls for each 3 points of ability drain (and used poker chips to identify that penalty). Quick and dirty result, I will try this rule.

B) Broken combinations
This is the +10 healing color spray situation. This game opens the door to this kind of wonky outcome. That, and completely suboptimal combination (e.g. the 4 INT elf with the mercurial result "kill-a-friend-when-you-cast" on his most interesting spell).

I know some people will argue that the +10 healing color spray is not broken. Okay, call it what you will :) The very discussion on this thread is pretty revealing to me. People are going out of their way imagining ways to kill the character, retire it, steal his staff, or otherwise bend the story to accommodate that power. You can call it otherwise than broken if you feel the game works well with such a power, I won't argue with you. But the bottom line is: other classes, other characters, do not have access to this type of power; and the power requires the game to bend to it, otherwise the PLAYERS do not have fun playing the game. To me, that's broken.

I recall a PC in my campaign 20 years ago who had a super-powerful magic item combination. A fighter-magic-user with an artifact axe that dealt tons of damage, plus a girdle of giant strength and gauntlets of ogre power (that stacked in AD&D, per the rules). Well, he came into battles invisible, flying, with a globe of invulnerability, and he was just wayyy stronger than the other party members. I had to design encounters around him. But even then, he just shined much more than others. I didn't want to penalise him too much, so I ruled that his axe would do less damage. The guy did NOT appreciate that. I mean NOT :) I though he would see through the wisdom of the rule, for the benefit of all. Forget it. He was angry at me (even if we were close friends).

I honestly do not know how to handle this. Maybe the other players do not care that much. As DM or judge, I sometimes feel it is my responsibility that some level of balance exists in my game. If one PC systematically outshines the others, I admit that I don't like it as a judge (it probably goes through better with me as a player).

You are stuck in a tough spot. Maybe you could open a frank discussion with your players to see what they think about it, including that player of course, but others also. The kind that goes "we are in a game for everyone to have some fun, and the dice have yielded a combination that presently allows you to win many fights rather easily, unless I stuff it with the blind undead of the week. How do you all feel about that? Does it affect your enjoyment of the game? If so, would you like us to consider solutions to this? Mr. Player of the +10 Healing Color Spray wizard, please speak first, because this is your character and I respect your attachment to him."

You can propose an heroic retirement, e.g. you will play an in-game contest where he needs to confront enemies in a test to become head of the wizard order. I.e. make him fight his way out of the campaign.

The discussion, and proposal to ease the way out for the PC, is presently my best proposal, although I understand how imperfect it is.
Maledict Brothbreath, level 4 warrior, STR 16 (+2) AGI 7 (-1) STA 12 PER 9 INT 10 LUCK 15 (+1), AC: 16 Refl: +1 Fort: +2 Will: +1; lawful; Armor of the Lion and Lily's Blade.

Brother Sufferus, level 4 cleric, STR 13 (+1) AGI 15 (+1) STA 11 PER 13 (+1) INT 10 LUCK 9, AC: 11 (13 if wounded, 15 if down to half hit points), Refl: +3 Fort: +2 Will: +3, chaotic, Robe of the Faith, Scourge of the Maimed One, Darts of Pain.
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