So recently I read this article.
http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2
TL;DR: It explains how 5th level characters are actually individuals who are at the peak of human ability and how the expectations of the system actual model real world conventions (though he does explain that 3.5 is still a flawed system).
Anyways, this got me thinking, if 5th level adventurers are the peak of what humanity is capable of, then does that mean that 5th level mages are rare enough that the world wouldn't have any real ways of dealing with them?
Like, would the king have anti-magic protection if the most a mage is capable of in the eyes of commoners is cheap parlor tricks and a magic missile?
Would someone capable of maintaining these AMF's even bother serving under such nobility when they're already more powerful than the bulk of the population?
Also, would that mean that anyone with enough ranks in a skill would be comparable to the gods?Assume 3.PF for this discussion.
>(though he does explain that 3.5 is still a flawed system).
Sorry, don't care about the rest of your post, because you've implied there's a perfect system and I want to know what it is.
>>48073785
Calm down chief.
This isn't another "hurr, 3.PF is bad" thread, I'm genuinely asking a question on how the world would deal with people who are level 6 and beyond when level 5 is assumed to be the cutoff for what most people are capable of.
>>48073785
Did you honestly just show up in this thread just because someone claimed that 3.PF wasn't perfect?
Christ alive, you'd think that 3.PFags like you would get used to it considering where we are, especially when the topic wasn't about edition wars faggotry in the first place.
>>48074152
>Christ alive, you'd think that 3.PFags like you would get used to it considering where we are
Are you trying to imply something too? It seems like the entire point of your post was just to make a hypocritical assertion. Yes, you handful of 3.5 haters are an annoying nuisance that try to pop up in every thread (even one's that aren't even discussing D&D at all), so why do you suddenly feel like you should get upset about someone complaining about the incessant "3.5 has flaws, never play it, play this more flawed game instead" braying that goes on? If you hate the reaction, hate the initiator.
As far as OP goes, it's a topic that falls under the E6 banner, and the best literary example of it is Jack Vance's Lyonesse Trilogy, where wizards are plot devices as much as they are characters due to their rarity and power. Even the exceptional (and intelligent) fighters are able to shape the world by being that much better than the ordinary person.
In many ways, it becomes more like a superhero setting than a fantasy one, and if often makes sense to carry over some of those conventions, like secret identities and bases, super leagues, and potentially the question of registration.
>>48074303
>why do you suddenly feel like you should get upset about someone complaining about the incessant "3.5 has flaws, never play it, play this more flawed game instead" braying that goes on?
Because you're preemptively going on the defensive over a comment said in passing that has nothing to do with the topic being discussed.
Also, you can't really call the haters a handful if you're this quick to throw down over something so small. If anything, 3.PFags are the minority since most 3.PFags you see nowadays are either spergs or some flavor of THAT GUY and people learn to distance themselves from their faggotry.
With that being said, it is annoying when either side injects their faggotry into threads that have nothing to do with D&D or derail the thread just to get into yet another edition war with one another.
Anyways, to get back on topic, would that mean that defenses against magic are rare or would there be some sort of internal balancing keeping a wizard from, for the sake of example, assassinating kings since people wouldn't think an invisible mage as possible or worth protecting against?
This is why the Alexandrian is shit:
>Breaking down a simple wooden door – like the doors you might find inside a typical house – is a DC 13 check. This means that the average person (with a +0 Strength modifier) will succeed at breaking open the door about 40% of the time. This means that one or two strong kicks from just about anybody will kick the door open.
>This matches our real life experience: Interior doors just aren’t that sturdy.
>Next, let’s take a look at something sturdier. For example, a well-made front door with its deadbolt secured. This would be a DC 18 check in D&D (for a “good wooden door”). This is a lot harder to bust open: The average person will only have a 10% of knocking it open on the first attempt. It’s going to typically take five or six really solid kicks for the average person to get through such a door.
>Again: This matches our real life experience. Front doors are strong, but the fact that they’re not impervious to breaking-and-entering is evidenced by thousands of burglaries every year.
This. This stupid shit right here.
>>48073750
>http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2
There are some serious problems with this logic, especially when it comes to opposed rolls.
Take the game of Chess. Presumably, if you wanted to model a chess match in DnD, you'd have the two players roll their appropriate Int based chess skill in opposition,and the higher roll wins.
I am roughly a 2,000 FIDE player. That's "very strong amateur" level. It makes me good enough to crush a patzer who never plays 100% of the time. I have 35 games against grandmaster level players in my tournament career. I've lost every single one.
If we're talking a d20 roll against someone, well, the patzer is probably +0. No skills, no appropriate stats. To ensure a win every time, and I've played literally hundreds, maybe even a thousand games against rank amateurs in my little class I give on Fridays, I would need a modifier of at least +19, which makes me a 6th-7th level character or so if I've perfectly minmaxed as a chessplayer. And I'm not some towering genius either.
A GM would be higher still, since even with my +20 or so, I never win, his is that much higher.
>>48074485
What's wrong with it?
Doors aren't impossible to break down and the average person might only be rocking a +1 to STR.
>>48073785
fuck OFF
>>48074578
This asshole thinks "a well-made front door with its deadbolt secured" is "going to typically take five or six really solid kicks for the average person to get through" and that burglars just noisily barge down doors like that BOOM BOOM CRASH copypasta.
>>48074485
WEll, I could say my frpnt door would take more than 10 kicks. But it's a steel door, steel frame and like 3 locks. For some reason the previous owner was paranoid. But i've live in places where the door could be kicked down no problem.
>>48074566
You're assuming that a game of chess in D&D would be just one roll though.
If we're assuming "very strong amateur," you'd probably have something like a +6 or +7 to your roll, which means that most of the time, you'd always be able to produce the better move than your opponent, though they might also get maybe a good move in every couple of turns depending on how the die rolls.
A GM, by comparison would probably have a +12 or a +13 to their skill goes way beyond the skill of the average player, which means that in a series of rolls, they'd be making more good moves than you though you might get a good move in every so often, depending on the roll.
Granted, rolling dozens of times to simulate an actual chess game is tedius and would probably require dozens, if not hundreds, of rolls but the point still stands.
>>48074612
I mean, the average person probably wouldn't know the correct way to kick down a door, nor would have the strength to do so in one kick.
That and if we're talking about breaking and entering, that would be an entirely different skill altogether and has nothing to do with the example.
>>48073785
ORE Reign.
Getto Recko, mato!
>>48074456
Sorry, you wanted to go back on topic, but I'm not going to really let you go when you decided to run your mouth like that.
> If anything, 3.PFags are the minority since most 3.PFags you see nowadays are either spergs or some flavor of THAT GUY and people learn to distance themselves from their faggotry.
Or, they discuss the game like normal people, either in random threads or the PF general. By definition, the haters are spergs and flavors of THAT GUY, because they've got something that compels them to shitpost at every opportunity about a popular game, largely only because it's popular. You can't try to paint people that like a game one color, and ignore a group that's literally defined by how much they hate.
>With that being said, it is annoying when either side injects their faggotry into threads that have nothing to do with D&D or derail the thread just to get into yet another edition war with one another.
It's also annoying when people have to walk on eggshells in order to avoid setting off the haters. You can't even say 3.PF is a good system anymore without setting off someone, and OP felt like he needed to include some off-handed remark about how 3.5 isn't perfect just so you and your friends wouldn't get upset.
What's really upsetting is that these trolls are so dedicated, that people are starting to become less inclined to talk about the system freely because of them, and that's exactly the sort of thing that encourages other trolls to try and spam shitposts about any game they personally don't like.
And, wizards would have to basically police themselves. If a wizard tries to assassinate a king, they're going to likely upset another wizard that wanted that king to remain alive. That's why even if there were only ten wizards in the world, they would likely always have to worry about their actions.
>>48074485
But this is correct.
As a home renovator, one of our guilty pleasures is tearing the crap out of old houses (safely of course) with boot, bar, or sledge.
An interior door doesn't just blow off it's hinges when you kick it. The door itself breaks. The hinges and lock generally stay intact and after a few good kicks, the rest of the door fractures and falls away. So a good kick or two to obliterate an interior door is accurate.
A solid front door...yeah unless you're going after the lock and deadbolt with a sledge in an attempt to break it from the doorframe, that fucker will laugh at you all day, everyday. Forget it, if the door is steel reinforced.
Kicking down a door is fun movie shit. You want to knock a real door down, you'll use pic related.
>>48074781
>Or, they discuss the game like normal people, either in random threads or the PF general. By definition, the haters are spergs and flavors of THAT GUY, because they've got something that compels them to shitpost at every opportunity about a popular game, largely only because it's popular. You can't try to paint people that like a game one color, and ignore a group that's literally defined by how much they hate.
>says the 3IDF who came into a thread just to bitch
>>48074781
>wizards need to self police themselves
As a Wizard player in a pf I can attest to this, after I hit level 7 the world was starting to bend, not to mention I'm playing a necromancer, so the issue was only magnified by my undead creations.
Lord help me me and the gm had discussed it and we both agreed I needed to lay off eneveration because I kept raping the boss monsters so hard. I mean we had a good laugh about it but still, Wizards are op if you even mildly know what your doing.
And don't even get me started on the necrocrafts I made.
>>48074814
>This is correct.
>But it's not.
Okay.
>>48074781
>You can't try to paint people that like a game one color, and ignore a group that's literally defined by how much they hate.
I can when most of my personal experience with 3.PFags, both on and off the web, came down to either power gamers who would come in with a T1 class when the GM wanted a T3/T4 game or rules lawyers who would force the game to a grinding halt every time the GM dares to go outside of the rules, just to look up a rule that likely will never come up in the future just to gain a minor benefit for the current situation.
At the risk of paraphrasing copypasta, not all 3.PFags are THAT GUYS but a disturbing number of them come from 3.PF, and this perception paints the system in a bad light due to the fact that it encourages this sort of mindset, albeit semi-unintentionally.
>You can't even say 3.PF is a good system anymore without setting off someone, and OP felt like he needed to include some off-handed remark about how 3.5 isn't perfect just so you and your friends wouldn't get upset.
3.PF isn't a good system, and we have over a decade of articles, graphs, and testimonials to prove that it was designed under flawed logic that led to a flawed game.
You can say that you like 3.PF all you want but don't try and say it's a good game just because you find it appealing.
Sometimes, I watch the Super Mario Bros. movie or play Superman 64 with some friends but I wouldn't necessarily claim that either of those things don't have glaring design flaws, let alone are actually good.
I came here, seriously interested in answer to OP's question. I received 3.ed and PF shitposting.
Fuck you all retards, kill yourself and take yours /systemedition warfare to grave.
On the other side, would raising common level help with power inflation?
For example assuming that lvl 1 are novices, lvl 5 professionals and level 10 is an elite?
>>48074877
Please, you troll. It's a good system, with decades of articles, graphs, and testimonials that "prove" that while it's a game with a few problems, it is still great. Genre-defining great. Industry-saving-and-expanding great.
You don't agree because you don't recognize the good parts of the system anymore, thanks to you being so tainted by your hatred, colored by your limited experience.
You're too biased at this point, especially if you think you have any "proof" that can somehow dissipate all the acclaim the games received over the past decade. Aside from you treating your tastes as objective truths, you also make the mistake of holding 3.PF up to a higher standard than just about any other game. For every complaint you can list about it, you can find a comparable one in every other game, and somehow you've got the gall to think that you're working on "proof" rather than just "opinion" when you don't shitpost about every other game..
In your opinion it's not a great game, but that's it, regardless of how much you want to pretend otherwise and to try and compare 3.5 to Superman 64.
Have you ever tried to actually play Superman 64?
If anything, 3.5 is more like Mario 64. It's a game that's aged, but for it's time it was revolutionary, a logical next step in a great series that later served to help develop amazing games that followed it. While it has its glitches, flaws, and design issues, it still remains a classic that people revisit and remix, and speed runs are still posted to this very day.
I personally don't even like Mario 64 all that much. But, when I compare it to other 3D platformers, it still manages to hold up even though there's later entries in that genre that I prefer. I hold the minimum of respect necessary that if someone tells me they fired up Mario 64 and played it over the weekend, I'm not going to leap down their throats and try and explain to them how much I don't like certain glitches and bugs and sloppy levels.
>>48074612
>burglars just noisily barge down doors like that BOOM BOOM CRASH copypasta.
You bet your ass they can and will just bust in wherever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Cullotta
>In 1979, Spilotro assembled a group of thieves and murderers, including Wayne Matecki, Laurence Neumann, Ernie Davino, and Leo Cardino. Cullotta was the leader, operating in Las Vegas. The group became known as the "Hole in the Wall Gang" because of its habit of smashing a hole through the exterior walls and ceilings of buildings during burglaries
Also, even a well built door is only as strong as its frame. In order for a door to be secure, everything has to be reinforced and anchored. The average front door on any given house is not.
>>48075048
> On the other side, would raising common level help with power inflation?
Betray America.Use d6 instead of d20
>>48075092
>US
>walls
I think that in a world where live monster made of RAPE and PAIN you would consider using more sturdy materials than plywood.
>>48075129
Still question is about d20, I know that it is not the best tool to do it, and for more power level equality I should choose something else, such as WFRP or BRP.
>>48075059
>somehow you've got the gall to think that you're working on "proof" rather than just "opinion" when you don't shitpost about every other game.
I can show you the math that shows how boned a martial is once he leaps past 5th level on.
Though since I recognize you from other threads, you'll just claim that hard math is still an opinion and has no basis on the game.
>It's a good system, with decades of articles, graphs, and testimonials that "prove" that while it's a game with a few problems, it is still great.
3.PF was only good because it murdered off most of the competition when it came out a few years ago.
There's a reason why so many RPGs that came out around that time had something like "powered by d20" or shit to that effect, if you weren't a derivative of third edition, you were basically dead in the water.
I mean, Cal of Duty was industry-saving-and-expanding too but nobody would claim that the precedents it set were good for the industry as a whole.
>Have you ever tried to actually play Superman 64?
Yes, I have.
The controls are slippier than an eel in a butter factory, the combat is shit, the objectives are either flying through rings, picking up cars, killing tornados, or exploring some facility with some of the worse attack animations ever seen.
That and it has 2P modes, which suck just as much as the rest of the game, which not many people know about apparently.
But I digress.
>If anything, 3.5 is more like Mario 64.
No.
>While it has its glitches, flaws, and design issues, it still remains a classic that people revisit and remix, and speed runs are still posted to this very day.
The difference is, you won't really deal with most of those glitches or flaws or design issues whenever you play the Super Mario 64 normally.
That and the issues with Super Mario 64 weren't intentionally added to the game either.
>>48073750
They wouldn't handle it. You would need level 6+ wizards to create some kind of regulation, to policy and fight aginast and stop wizards, or wizardry would be banned. Sooner or later someone would realize "what if that kid downtown decides to burn the fucking city hall for fun and giggles?"
Wizard Slayers would become a standard "class", anti-magic fields and no magic zones would become more predominant. Beholders would get a lot of clout, by the single fact that they stare to wizards and they become moot. Even if the other classes are all overpowered in the eyes of commoners and "nameless" NPCs, spellcasters can actually cause area damage that could be calculate in thousands or millions (not onyl wizards). And angry cleric with enough power could raise fucking dead people. Druids could cause storms to destoy the infrastructure of entire cities: "So you like agriculture? No!" Acid and stone everywhere. Now it's all woodland. And woodland is a shitty place to have crops or animals (protip: you can't).
So, wizards wouldbe stopped (think inquisition) or an entire armyof wizards whou create some kind of group to policy rangressing wizards, or, wizards would run the show.
>>48073750
That's odd. I was under the impression that,
Level 5=average adventurer
Level 11=legendary hero (King Arthur, Hercules, etc)
Level 20=demigod
>>48075266
>No.
Yes.
You've got stupid ideas, and you live on a series of fallacies, like comparing it to Call of Duty and Superman 64 because you think hyperbole can substitute as an argument.
>3.PF was only good because it murdered off most of the competition when it came out a few years ago.
Cart before the horse. 3.PF murdered off most of the competition because it was good. Maybe not the best, but there certainly wasn't any "Halo-killers" or "WoW-killers" until 5e finally appeared on the market. Even if you don't like those two games, you have to respect that in their specific genres (FPS and MMORPG), they were easily in the top ranks of titles.
I get it, you want to pretend you can justify your shitposting purely because you exaggerate how important your minute complaints are, but that's not how it works. Your complaints always look at tiny parts of a giant system, one of the largest ever.
It's a game that you just don't like. That's all. You've got your reasons, sure, but they only really matter to you, and that's probably why you get so upset.
>>48075358
>3.PF murdered off most of the competition because it was good.
No, WotC systematically killed off any project that could rival third edition just so it'd be released without any major competition.
Then they shotgunned supplements so no new games could get a foot in the door without being in direct competition with something related to 3.PF as a whole, which worked but at the cost of the system's already mediocre quality.
Finally, they built the game under ivory tower design so that it required time and dedication to play effectively and prevented most people from traveling outside of 3.PF by under the idea that every RPG requires the same amount of system mastery to play as 3.PF.
It was successful sure, but only because WotC had such a stranglehold on the hobby and proceeded to fuck over an entire generation of players under false presumptions on how ttRPGs operate as a whole.
It's respectful as a business but poor as both a game and as an influence.
>>48075246
> Still question is about d20,
It is mathematically unavoidable to use 19 or 20 points to differentiate unreachable levels of skills if you use 1d20+modifiers.
If you want to make 6th level character one step above the 1st level, you have to either change the die (to 1d6+modifiers) or increase the maximum of skill points (to 3 + triple character level). There is no way around this.
In first case there is only 2.78% chance to have a draw between 1st level and 6th level (and no chance of 1st level winning).
In second case, the chance of 1st level winning is 2.5% (1.25% draw), compared to 26.25% winning (3.75% draw) in regular case.
>>48075356
Hercules was a demigod. Very explicitly a demigod.
>>48075650
>No, WotC systematically killed off any project that could rival third edition just so it'd be released without any major competition.
Really? That sounds like paranoid conjecture. Oh fuck, it is. Hell, the entirety of your post is just the sort of insane ideas that come out of silly kids trying to rationalize why a game they don't understand is more popular than the games they like.
Look, I get it. You think you're on a crusade to save the world from a "bad" system. You want to blame every problem player, every game you've had cancelled, every little complaint you can imagine on this virtual Satan you've erected in your mind.
So, you're just here to lie, spread insane conspiracy theories, belittle anyone who has taste different from yourself, and generally just shitpost because you think you can "save" people from something you don't like, despite more people liking this system than all but one other.
It's a good system. Lots of great ideas, different ways to play, there's so many pieces to mix and choose as you like, and all built on the d20 core which is a solid foundation with easy and transparent math that made it popular for homebrewing. It's got its flaws, but when all is said and done, anyone with half a brain can pick it up and have a good time, just like with any popular system.
You're going to complain forever about this sixteen-plus year old game, and all because you're stupid enough to have fallen for your own delusions.
>>48074612
I mean that's often correct on both counts. A large percentage of burglaries are just crash in, take shit, sell it to a pawn shop for beer money. Neither professional nor intended to be repeated consistently.
Can't we all just chill? And answer op's question?
DX
>>48073750
I read an article in an old Dungeon magazine that went through Gandalf's abilities and said that he was likely around level 5-8 in D&D terms, and effectively came to the same conclusion as here-- Player perception of levels is way off the mark. Granted, this was more like 2e-- and that edition was made for slower leveling and games that effectively never went past twelve.
>>48075794
> Oh fuck, it is.
Not him, but it's a valid business strategy. Get out of your reality-resistant cocoon.
>>48075856
OP's question is boring.
Also, he didn't even specify the world. Is it modern, or medieval Europe, or Roman Empire? Too vague to answer.
>>48075794
>That sounds like paranoid conjecture.
The reasons why most projects back then never reached the same level of popularity as 3.PF during its height is the same reasons why most TCGs never reach the same level of popularity as MtG, outside of TCGs based anime like YGO or Vanguard.
WotC is like the Activision of tabletop gaming dude, they make mediocre games that still make bank because nobody else has the strength to challenge their stranglehold on the industry and the few companies that could are either overseas or have worse PR than they do.
>>48073750
>How would the world handle level 6+ mages if the majority of people are level 0-1?
see: Eberron
Anyone with a a PC class at level 1, or an NPC class above level 3, is exceptional in that setting.
>>48075880
>Also, he didn't even specify the world. Is it modern, or medieval Europe, or Roman Empire? Too vague to answer.
What's the difference?
That's a flimsy justification to bring your edition war bullshit into another thread.
>>48075964
> What's the difference?
Romans might worship Wizards
Christians will attempt to purge Wizards
Modern world can surpass all but the best Wizards.
> your edition war
Wat.
>>48075985
To quote from the OP.
>does that mean that 5th level mages are rare enough that the world wouldn't have any real ways of dealing with them?
The question asks if the world would have defenses against magic if 5th level is considered the peak of their ability.
To put in another way, would a king have magic defenses in his castle if the worst he encounters are stage magicians who perform card tricks or saw people in half?
Also, I assumed you were a shitposter when you said the question was boring just becuase it didn't mention a specific setting, which largely doesn't matter in this context.
Sorry your thread is getting shit on, OP. I once heard a DM at a convention once talk about how to deal with something like this. He used the term "escalation". Each city should probably have a court wizard or something similar that would be pretty powerful or have archers trained in killing magicians.
If that fails, have a wandering high level magician be conveniently in town next time your PCs start to cause trouble and have him shut them down.
Normal people can't deal with them but the DM should be able to come up with something to counter them.
>>48075856
>DX
die
I think I prefer how WoD does this. No levels, just attributes and skill points. Top human potential = 5 dots, great = 4, good = 3, average = 2, weak = 1.
>>48073785
Basic Role-Playing
>>48073750
Mages are a bad example; get a few people with Bow n Arrows to ambush them (at that level anyway) problem solved.
>>48073750
>then does that mean that 5th level mages are rare enough that the world wouldn't have any real ways of dealing with them?
Depends on the system I guess, but if you don't have hitpoint growth per level, it becomes a lot easier to balance. Wizards can't just do whatever they want, because while they're powerful and can potentially raze cities, all it takes is a knife in the back or a stray arrow and they're dead.
Again, that doesn't really work with D&D's retarded "there's a magic for anything" setup, but it works for settings where magic isn't as flexible. i.e., if you're a pyromancer, you can manipulate and perhaps create flames, but you can't just suddenly fly and regenerate limbs. If you're a telepath, you can read minds and perhaps influence them, but you can't just "convince" bullets to stop in the air. If you're a necromancer, you can raise skeletons and cast curses, but you can't shoot lightning out of your ass or teleport, etc.
>>48076253
>what is Protection from Arrows
>>48076274
>Ambush
>>48076307
>Divination Wizards
>>48076322
>exceptions to the general rule
>>48076345
Because non-divination wizards can't cheese the game using divination
>>48076322
>Level 5 Divination Wizards
>>48076366
In Pathfinder, they cannot ever be surprised and get bonuses to their initiative based on their level.
>>48076357
They can't do it reliably. Spells have limited durations and limited slots. It's really stupid how people think that wizards will always be prepared and always have the silver bullet just because the spells exist.
>>48073750
So many problems are fixed if you eliminate escalating hit points. Instead, each character should have a fixed HP value derived from 2 or more stats that does not change unless the stats it's connected to increase.
This is why Basic Roleplaying will always be better than D&D because D&D is wedded to this ridiculous HP system.
>>48076377
Still wouldn't make that Protection From Arrows last forever, or let a lone level 5 wizard defeat 6 or so ambushers.
>>48076379
The beauty of it though, they don't need to do it reliably, they just need to do it once and make sure to have it in their pocket just in case it happens again.
>>48076445
It would allow the wizard time to turn invisible and then fly away.
>>48076508
>Level 5
>>48076445
What you mean 'last forever?'
The wizard is not gonna stall anything when he could flame any enemy to death.
>>48075918
>i don't like WotC
That's really all you've said, and all you'll ever really continue to say.
>>48075358
Get the fuck out of this thread you massive fucking autist.
>>48075874
Let's say he was 10th level, just to make all the numbers easier.
In LotR, Gandalf was head and shoulders above everyone else, who were mostly low-level fighters.
In a world filled with 10th level wizards and clerics, he's be unexceptional in terms of power level.
In real life, if someone reaches 10th level as a favored soul, we sill worship him 2,000 years later.
What makes a character powerful isn't so much their objective power and abilities, but rather how those abilities compare to others in the setting.
>>48077027
Yeah. I've been trying to play by that principle for years, but it's hard breaking players away from their conceptions of what's powerful and what's not, even when those things are completely not the case in a given game.
>>48077027
Wouldn't Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli be at least in double digits?Also Liv Tyler, The Ring Wraiths and that one head Orc
>>48074781
>wah wah you want to stay on topic but i won't let you because I'm a little bitch
Hey guys.
Guys.
I don't like roleplaying, fluff, story, or immersion.
I like playing RPGs because I enjoy tweaking the numbers and seeing how well I can do in encounters, and I find the flexibility in RPG rules (compared to computer RPGs) allows me to metagame the rules and see if I can bend the rules to my advantage too, in order to further do well in encounters.
>>48075794
Even if it wasn't intentionaland it was at lest in partit's what happened.
>>48077181
It's pretty hard to measure them in objective terms because they very rarely display their abilities except in the subjective environment of fighting an enemy of unknown level. If those orks are levels 1-3 generally? I think Legolas at level 5 is sensible, with Gandalf somewhere around 6 or 7. And there's hardly any reason why the enemies would be higher level than that, by the books.It's also a lot easier to compare D&D 2e to LOTR than it is for 3.X, because you don't have the weird assumptions that magic item per level curving, freebie spells for wizards, and the later experience rules tend to throw into the mix.
>>48076560
50 minutes of invisibility and 5 minutes of flight?
Yeah, good luck catching that as a Level 1 anything. And I think it says something that you have to stage all these goddamn assassination attempts in the same day to even have a chance at accomplishing anything, plus it's not like every caster ever's going to intentionally put themselves on the world's shitlist. Maybe that weird antimagic cult.
>>48077293
You know, I can't say I really see the appeal, but if people do enjoy that kind of play and you play in groups with similar tastes, more power to 'em. People who spout on and on about "ROLEPLAY not ROLLPLAY" and looking down on people for their badwrongfun are pretentious assholes and I'm glad I don't have to game with them
>>48077601
I'd be less annoyed with those kinds of people if that argument was anything more than idiots being apologists for obviously bad design.
>>48073750
Take any anon. Take him to the club. Force him to watch an alpha pick up that girl who anon liked, thats your answer.
>>48076274
It's DR 10, up to 50 points total. That'll protect you from the first 10 or so arrows (assuming Strength 12 and Point Blank Shot for 1d8+2, average 6 damage per arrow, assume one misses)... then the other 10 to 20 finish you off.
And remember, this is assuming the Divination wizard that can't be surprised and has an initiative bonus. Most wizards won't even have that active when they get surprised rounded to death.
>>48076653
So you got the two behind that bush... what about the other 18 scattered all around you?
>>48077449
>And I think it says something that you have to stage all these goddamn assassination attempts in the same day to even have a chance at accomplishing anything
Well.. yeah. It say that a 5th level character in a world of level 1 NPC classes is fucking powerful. The point isn't that it would be easy to kill the mage, the point is that it wouldn't be impossible, because at 5th level even a full caster simply doesn't have the massive list of world-breaking effects that a higher level mage has access to.
In this world we're talking about, a rogue 5th level mage is something you round up a mercenary band to take down, just like a rampaging CR 5 monster. It's hard, and people will die, but it can be done.
>>48073750
>It explains how 5th level characters are actually individuals who are at the peak of human ability and how the expectations of the system actual model real world conventions (though he does explain that 3.5 is still a flawed system).
>Anyways, this got me thinking, if 5th level adventurers are the peak of what humanity is capable of, then does that mean that 5th level mages are rare enough that the world wouldn't have any real ways of dealing with them?
5th level adventures are the peak of what real world humanity is capable of.
D&D simply doesn't follow this model, and goes to much higher power levels. Like X-Men, Avengers, or DBZ.
>>48073814
It's not.
It's telling you that when you model characters from real life, they're all level 5 and below.
D&D has lots of characters beyond level 5. But those characters have already surpassed "what is realistically possible".
IE: Bitching that fighters can't have nice things because it's not realistic makes no sense when the fighter isn't realistic either.
>>48076665
I can show how fucked the math is and how this makes 3.PF a poorly designed game. I can also explain how WotC managed to make it a successful game in spite of its mediocrity.
All you can do is plug your ears, say "nuh-uh," and claim how objective facts are subjective opinion just because you cannot disprove it.
>>48084994
No, all you can show is how you obsess about nonissues, and then demand people to take you seriously.
>>48073750
Chemists, computer surveillance programs, and electricians exist in the real world. 6th level wizards ain't shit, besides Explosive Runes shenanigans.
>>48085075
>plug ears
>"nuh-uh"
>your objective facts are subjective opinions
Welp, three for three.
Look at me, I'm Nostradamus.
>>48085075
And all you can do is go into unrelated threads and shit them up by screeching like an autistic child who dropped their pudding the second anyone says anything that even looks like complaining about 3.PF.
But of course, you won't go into the main thread about 3.PF because you know that even the worst posters there will tell you to fuck off for posting fallacy-ridden garbage like you always do.
You are a worse poster than Virt ever was.
>>48081790
The Monk is obviously magical and yet it blows horse cock. It's not an issue of realism that keeps Fighters and Monks down, it's an unwillingness to design appropriate abilities because the game designers blow dick at their job.
