Author Topic: WLD: Most balanced campaign?  (Read 38406 times)

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Alastar

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #140 on: August 28, 2009, 12:34:22 PM »
For what it's worth, i have not spontaneously burst into flames after using the take 10 take 20 (3 take 10 1 take 20) houserule, and my players have not taken me to the pillori to decapitate me, so maybe you're just overreacting.

it's just how they designed the dungeon, with that in mind, so you fix it however you want.

If you don't want to, well, why are you running this campaign?

Ribusprissin

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #141 on: August 28, 2009, 01:28:53 PM »
Once more, just the first level of the Ghost Savage Progression.
Don't you have to finish your savage progression before you can take levels of classes?

The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #142 on: August 28, 2009, 01:32:38 PM »
Once more, just the first level of the Ghost Savage Progression.
Don't you have to finish your savage progression before you can take levels of classes?
The web progressions are explicitly allowed to freely multiclass
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The_Mad_Linguist

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #143 on: August 28, 2009, 01:34:28 PM »
For what it's worth, i have not spontaneously burst into flames after using the take 10 take 20 (3 take 10 1 take 20) houserule, and my players have not taken me to the pillori to decapitate me, so maybe you're just overreacting.

it's just how they designed the dungeon, with that in mind, so you fix it however you want.

If you don't want to, well, why are you running this campaign?
So, how are you handling players standing around  rolling until they get a20?
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Alastar

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #144 on: August 28, 2009, 02:02:33 PM »
For what it's worth, i have not spontaneously burst into flames after using the take 10 take 20 (3 take 10 1 take 20) houserule, and my players have not taken me to the pillori to decapitate me, so maybe you're just overreacting.

it's just how they designed the dungeon, with that in mind, so you fix it however you want.

If you don't want to, well, why are you running this campaign?
So, how are you handling players standing around  rolling until they get a20?

They can do that all they want :)  I'm more patient than they are though.... so they get bored after 5-6 rolls, and tyr to find another way in.

Alkaru

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #145 on: August 28, 2009, 03:54:58 PM »
I have no problems with house-ruling the campaign, that's why I was looking for suggestions for changes to better bring about the desired atmosphere.  However the wording of the stuff in the book about take 10 and take 20(and to a lesser extent various other bits of their suggested houserules), sometimes makes me feel as if I am reading a rant on a forum rather than text in an adventure.  It makes me sound like my mum to say it - but I just don't like their tone.  But after an initial twitch on the first read through - I went back and thought through the changes they were suggesting and still didn't like them.  I don't see any reason why WLD is any different to any other campaign in terms of needing some of these houserules.  As I said before they seem to have a more general issue with take 10/20, rather than it being suggested for this particular campaign, and therefore it's easy to ignore.

Also, I doubt my players would really care what I did with take 10/20 - limiting access to classes so they can't play the character they want is likely to use up all the available controversy.

PlzBreakMyCampaign

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #146 on: August 30, 2009, 04:29:59 AM »
Whoa some thread necromancy. I got busy at work and forgot about this one. Lets see. I stopped reading at about:
There is no real Caelic.
I know exactly who Caelic is.

So:
All i'm saying is: this dungeon is harsh
Also, as a dm, if you optimise, i'll optimise, the bosses are upgraded.
This is a pro comment. I assumed equal optimization was the normal (for player-dm balancing). If this is unusual I'll throw something in the OP.

Oh damn... there's actually an entry in the area e of WLD that says that the walls of the donjon cannot be penetrated by incorporeal creatures... it's kinda obscure, but they thought about it...

It'S actually more useful then harmful... the shadows and ghosts in there would rape you otherwise...
I thought I had this in the OP. But I didn't. Its updated.

I expect [any good DM] to ignore the random "walls are invulnerable and can never be broken" stuff.
I don't care either way. But that seems more like something the players would want. Yes it might theoretically be possible to borrow small holes to move around but also every monster capable would just attack the ceiling above you and have a quarter of the earth's mantle try to funnel on top of you. :(

Did you just admit there are places you can rest and not get attacked? PlzBreakMyFace is going to have to yell at you now.
You want me to break your face? I don't yell at people.  0:)

I will make a statement right now. The WLD is far easier for a Tier 1 party than a Tier 3 party. The difference between Tier 1s and 3s is greater than during normal D&D play.
Probably to the former. I just hope the tier 1's and tier 3's are closer in power level than they otherwise would be. Eh.

This dungeon DOES skew things more towards the lower tier classes, mostly because so much of it is arbitrary.  Saying "no rope trick, summoning is messed up, no phasing through walls, etc" doesn't hurt Fighters who can't do any of that stuff.  I'm not saying it suddenly makes Fighter uber or anything like that, just that most of the special tricks that Tier 1s use are arbitrarily nerfed, and a lot of things simply happen with no save or DC to stop them, meaning the usual Wizard type abilities that protect you do nothing.  As such, you're just very restricted towards "run up and smack it in the face and hope the trap doesn't kill you" as a playstyle, which loses a lot of Tier 1 strengths.  Classic Gygaxian DMing there.  The Tier 1s are still quite strong, but they're hit harder by the special rules than classic melees (though I personally think Rogues are screwed even more, as the lack of chosable loot really hurts them and many of the traps, such as the throne, ignore trapfinding anyway).

Really I'd say classic melees are hurt the least by the special rules there, though it still doesn't make them stronger than the really strong casters.  It just closes the gap a bit.
Mmmm

Right okay I just wanted to get some people away from the Idea that this is "the most balanced dungeon".
Ahem it has a question mark. I am by no means set. It was just to get the ball rolling.

@alkaru's list. Thats cool but I already listed what I thought was relevant. I think the key is the sort of Doom on nightmare mode (near continuous random encounters). Because lets face it - an optimized party is like a good Doom player. If the monsters don't keep popping up, you can just take your time and pwn everything.

side note analogy: the transition to nightmare mode is a hard one. Some people just want to wtfbbqpwn everything. However I find the absolute paranoia of never knowing when that next monster will sneak up and start tearing at you is a rush. I know this doesn't completely translate to DnD and ymmv
« Last Edit: August 30, 2009, 04:32:01 AM by PlzBreakMyCampaign »
[Spoiler]
Quote
An interesting read, nice to see a civil discussion
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And healed. Don't forget that.
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But if your greedy for more [Wish] for something that only effects you, like another class level or two that doesn't count against your ECL.
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Alkaru

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #147 on: September 01, 2009, 03:10:46 AM »
Wouldn't continous random encounters get kind of boring though?  You certainly want the PCs to feel the pressure, and have to worry about fights at potentially any moment, but even in such a combat biased campaign don't you need other things to do?

Korwin

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #148 on: September 01, 2009, 05:08:25 AM »
Whoa some thread necromancy. I got busy at work and forgot about this one. Lets see. I stopped reading at about:
There is no real Caelic.
I know exactly who Caelic is.

Why did you quote that? For the record: He is talking about real names not internet aliases.
As in: He was born with that name...

wackodraco

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #149 on: October 04, 2009, 04:14:15 AM »
Gonna chime in here; in my experience with the WLD (had a weekly game running it for a while on whim), it seems as though nothing really changes for the Tier system. Our party was a Half-Orc Warblade (Tiger Claw focused, TWF'd Kukris [Houserule made TWF actually worth it], using homebrew feat to apply warblade abilities to Wis instead of Int), a buffing and support focused Favored Soul, a Half-Elf Factotum (not super optimized; trapmonkey and combat support- ran a "shapeshifter" flavor and made heavy use of Alter Self et la.) and myself, playing a Transmuter with some etc (Planned for Master specialist, War Weaver, few others).

This group played very much like a normal party- prebuff from the favored soul, open the door, tank charges and lighter combat role moves in to flank while Arcane sets up control and divine runs support, occasional patch healing. Perhaps best off at our level (6) was the warblade; his encounter maneuvers were always relevant and always ready to go. As were the Factotum's similar encounter abilities, the two of them handled a few fights on their own due to difficult circumstances. However, in the end, the Favored Soul and Transmuter REALLY ran the show; without combat buffs, the melees went down like cake and didn't really do much to enemies. During a tough boss battle (don't remember what encounter), the Favored Soul went CoDzilla and smashed Tokyo in a method consistent with a buffing focused divine caster.

A lot of the changes that the WLD suggests aren't always relevant; the lack of teleportation/rope trick/summons seems like it was to prevent the abuses of such by both players and DMs. For every nerf to Tier 1s, there is an equal if not worse nerf to others- not being able to use some of the most broken spells doesn't really hurt T1s too much, where the Take 10/Take 20 rules hurt lower tiers a LOT more. That is to say, the mean power of each class is reduced roughly an equal amount by this. The same holds true for rest issues with the melee types- HP recovery and Ability Recovery from rest are important if you've been in melee. Even worse is the fact that when we did roll random encounters while resting, the Factotum or Warblade were usually on watch and took the first few rounds of combat without support and were set back much more. In the one instance that the Transmuter was caught with an encounter, they locked down with two control spells (Celerity) and woke the rest of the party up at their leisure.

All in all, WLD doesn't change the environment and class dynamic too much; it simply weakens everyone a bit. The game itself is certainly restricting, but that seems like it's not truly directed at any one class or any metagame construct such as Tiers.
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A Man In Black

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #150 on: October 04, 2009, 09:00:26 AM »
-nevermind-
« Last Edit: October 04, 2009, 09:15:04 AM by A Man In Black »

PlzBreakMyCampaign

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #151 on: October 06, 2009, 12:00:31 PM »
Some good points in there. Firstly, remember just as no one plays RAW, this thread was concerned with only specific aspects of the WLD house rules while purposely not using others. On first glance it doesn't seem like your party was very optimized. Not that it was bad, but it still seemed pretty normal. I like that. However this thread was concerned with mainly nerfing Tier ones.

For every nerf to Tier 1s, there is an equal if not worse nerf to others- not being able to use some of the most broken spells doesn't really hurt T1s too much, where the Take 10/Take 20 rules hurt lower tiers a LOT more. That is to say, the mean power of each class is reduced roughly an equal amount by this.
This is one of those house rules ignored in this thread. Hopefully that means that the bottom got no such nerf while the top still did.

The same holds true for rest issues with the melee types- HP recovery and Ability Recovery from rest are important if you've been in melee. Even worse is the fact that when we did roll random encounters while resting, the Factotum or Warblade were usually on watch and took the first few rounds of combat without support and were set back much more. In the one instance that the Transmuter was caught with an encounter, they locked down with two control spells (Celerity) and woke the rest of the party up at their leisure.
I don't know where I stand on that whole no-BC possible ruling. I see the arguments made by others both for and against it. It does smell of arbitrariness but it would nerf the top and not effect the bottom that much.

If you leave your poor non-casters out in the cold while you let the casters snooze it up then I definitely would expect them to feel the pain. It might be the more 'normal' thing to do but it doesn't feel very fair. Also if you have access to healing I would think that a mere 1hp/level would not make that much difference as far as natural healing goes.
[Spoiler]
Quote
An interesting read, nice to see a civil discussion
The point of Spell Resistance is to make it harder to get buffed.
And healed. Don't forget that.
Huge amounts of people are fuckwits. That doesn't mean that fuckwit is a valid lifestyle.
[/Spoiler]

Old Geezer's Law of Hobby Taste: The more objectively inconsequential a hobby is, the more disagreements within the community will be expressed in outrageously insulting, overblown, and ludicrously emotionally laden terms.

More Funny than Humble[Spoiler]
Quote from: PlzBreakMyCampaign
Your a shifter... you have all you ever need.
It blows MoMF out of the water

But if your greedy for more [Wish] for something that only effects you, like another class level or two that doesn't count against your ECL.
Quote from: hungryhungryhippo987
Yes, I'm the 3.0 "Masters of the Wild" shifter, the awesome kind. My favorite form to take is Force Dragon. Yes, I am immortal ... My character is hands down the coolest guy in the campaign and there is nothing I could possibly want.
PBMC gets a cookie for DotA r

JaronK

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #152 on: October 06, 2009, 09:21:00 PM »
One class that we've found was incredibly good in WLD was the Crusader.  The endless free healing was INCREDIBLE when dealing with all the rediculously damaging traps, especially when combined with their "no, I don't want to die of HP damage" abilities.  I imagine a Dread Necromancer could have similar benefits when combined with a high HP class, but the Crusader was invaluable.

Meanwhile, our skillmonkeys have been useless.  The trap DCs are just too high for it to matter... sending in the Crusaders (yeah, we have two now) and letting them just suck up the traps and heal has been far more successful than trying to find the traps.

JaronK

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #153 on: October 07, 2009, 08:17:58 AM »
Do you let your crusaders heal by attacking walls, etc? AFAIK Martial Spirit doesn't specify a successful melee attack against an "enemy", just a successful melee attack. Blows the RAI wide open, and I'm not allowed to use it in my group, but I think it's RAW, well enough.

In that case, crusaders rock pretty good.

Anklebite

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #154 on: October 07, 2009, 12:49:32 PM »
or just have the two  crusaders make unarmed subdual attacks against eachother.
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wackodraco

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #155 on: October 07, 2009, 05:17:26 PM »
This is one of those house rules ignored in this thread. Hopefully that means that the bottom got no such nerf while the top still did.

Well, yes, but our gaming group (and by extension my arguement) took the rules as the WLD presents them and doesn't adjust them for what's "fair" according to a metagame concept. If you take the rules AS WLD ADJUSTS THEM for their campaign setting, which we did, it seems as though nerfs were across the board, not focused on anyone in particular. A nerf to spells for casters, a nerf to skills for skillmonkeys, and lack of magic-marts for melee types.

I don't know where I stand on that whole no-BC possible ruling. I see the arguments made by others both for and against it. It does smell of arbitrariness but it would nerf the top and not effect the bottom that much.
I disagree. It affects the bottom a lot more than the top. It makes combat much more deadly to the PCs and in turn results in more injury to those less able to deal with it.

If you leave your poor non-casters out in the cold while you let the casters snooze it up then I definitely would expect them to feel the pain. It might be the more 'normal' thing to do but it doesn't feel very fair. Also if you have access to healing I would think that a mere 1hp/level would not make that much difference as far as natural healing goes.
Didn't happen that way. That is to say, we rested and took watch in shifts- it just seemed that more encounters occurred when the melees were on watch. This was from rolling on the table for random encounters as suggested in the WLD; basically an issue of streakiness in the dice. No, 1hp/level isn't a huge deal, but the refreshing of daily abilities and daily use items is a big deal. I know for a fact that the warblade had a belt of healing that he used religiously; refreshing that was vital to his survival just as refreshing spells was to my transmuter.
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JaronK

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Re: WLD: Most balanced campaign?
« Reply #156 on: October 07, 2009, 05:58:19 PM »
Do you let your crusaders heal by attacking walls, etc? AFAIK Martial Spirit doesn't specify a successful melee attack against an "enemy", just a successful melee attack. Blows the RAI wide open, and I'm not allowed to use it in my group, but I think it's RAW, well enough.

In that case, crusaders rock pretty good.

It says opponent, so the Crusaders spar off each other with foam swords that they brought for the purpose.  And yeah, this game is so deadly the DM totally doesn't mind stunts like that.  I would definitely say that Crusaders are one class that shines a lot in WLD.  Skillmonkeys don't seem to have house rules against them, it's just that the DCs are so high that even Factotums struggle to make them.

JaronK