High power scaling games shouldn't have 'lol no' abilities.

[zugschef]

your "lol no"-abilities function as a "you have to be this tall"-limiter and a tool for just skipping lower level stuff. as long as they stay with these two functions they're fine.

Skipping lower level stuff makes some kind of sense. But the "you have to be this tall" usage is just the same sort of stupid specious circular reasoning that says you have to have rogues so that your party can disarm traps and you need to have traps so that rogues have something to do.

no it's not stupid. if you, as a dm, want to prevent the pcs from just killing or destroying npcs, monsters, whatever because you need that stuff for your campaign, you hand out "lol no"-abilities. sometimes such a monster or npc without a "lol no"-ability might even lead to a tpk because you thought the pcs wouldn't attack him. and trapfinding is not a "you've got to be this tall"-thing. nobody fuckin' cares about traps, and even less people care about trapfinding, because level appropriate traps fucking kill rogues.

[PhoneLobster]

So long as an entire character isn't shut down by one monster, I don't care if that monster can shut down part of what a character can do; even if it's his main shtick.

Except... that its a group based game and making life hard for one character in some combats (presumably not the same one every time) is not altogether a bad thing. In fact it might even be a highly desirable thing, despite Lago's rather lame hand waving of "it doesn't shake up tactics because everyone else just does what they always do!".

And what's the alternative to lolno immunity? Nearly total immunity is... basically the same but a bit more complex to adjudicate. 50% immunity still massively cripples that one guy it effects, still makes him feel "shut down" in combat. And anything more than that is just "Hey lets remove all defensive abilities from the game", or close enough to that but with annoying adjudication of a bunch of lame 10% and 5% damage reductions.

[RobbyPants]

So long as an entire character isn't shut down by one monster, I don't care if that monster can shut down part of what a character can do; even if it's his main shtick.

Except... that its a group based game and making life hard for one character in some combats (presumably not the same one every time) is not altogether a bad thing. In fact it might even be a highly desirable thing, despite Lago's rather lame hand waving of "it doesn't shake up tactics because everyone else just does what they always do!".

I guess what I'm saying is, as a player, I don't want to have my PC so narrowly defined that a single immunity shuts me down. I'd like to have some backup shtick(s) so I can still do things. The nice thing is, it's trivially easy to come up with a narrow character concept and then to branch out in ways that are still quite thematic (ash and smoke powers for a pyromancer, snow, sleet, and wind powers for a cryomancer, weird spirit totems for a barbarian, etc).

I think you're right that the game can still function as a group game, but as a player, I'd still like to be having fun in any given combat. Honestly, I like being forced to mix things up a bit, so long as I have something I can do.

[infected slut princess]

Here's the thing people, you NEED to have "lol no" abilities for STORY PURPOSES.

Because it's totally bad-ass when someone unleashes a mega-attack that creates a massive explosion and should utterly destroy the enemy... but when the smoke clears, the enemy is standing there unscathed, because "lol no". That makes the enemy seem bad ass and it gets people more pumped up to defeat him.

Or when an enemy makes an attack on a PC and the PC just shrugs it off because "lol no", and the enemy says, "No... that's impossible!!!" Because that makes the player feel like his character is bad ass.

You NEED that kind of stuff.

[zugschef]

good point.

[Wrathzog]

In an alternate universe:

You unleash your mega-attack that should utterly destroy the enemy. The smoke clears, and the enemy general has become a steaming pile of meat. Well, that was kind of anti-climactic.

Enemy makes an attack on a PC and the PC dies because they didn't have Death Ward. Now they feel like a chump.

[John Magnum]

How the hell is it anticlimactic if you use your mega-attack and it actually works? It's not more climactic to spend more rounds doing DBZ powerups until anything does anything.

[tussock]

STORY PURPOSES

Fuck 'em. RPGs are not a pre-planned story to play out. RPG stories are what we tell about what happened after the fact.

The stories you get out of Death Ward, Heroes Feast, Mind Blank, Free Action, Protection From Evil, and True Sight are ones where the enemy either wastes some actions on stuff that can't work any more or they don't, between doing the remaining things you might care about.

Fundamentally, it's just a much smaller range of potential stories. So is the world where there's some bullshit effect that everyone drops in round one because no one can resist it: that's only the story of who won initiative.

[Parthenon]

The thing I hate is lolno abilities that PCs are assumed to have but force unwanted gameplay styles. Like Death Ward for example. It's 1 minute per level to one PC, so it heavily encourages 5 minute workdays.

As in, with a game with loldie abilites like save or die death and lolno temporary defenses like Death Ward, you have:
[*]People don't bother with the lolno - Random PC death
Bullshit because you have to randomly pay for resurrections at inconvenient times.
[*]They have to use the lolno - Only one gameplay style possible- the 5 minute workday.
Bullshit because it limits the playstyles available and increases disparity between classes.
[*]They focus on being able to have all the lolnos - One PC spending all their money and character options on being able to expand the duration and effect to affect all the PCs for the whole day.
Bullshit because it forces one PC to be the HMwhore.

[Wrathzog]

How the hell is it anticlimactic if you use your mega-attack and it actually works? It's not more climactic to spend more rounds doing DBZ powerups until anything does anything.

It'd be like reading the last Harry Potter book and you get a chapter which is like, "Harry cast avada kedavra and then Voldemort was dead. The End."

Is that an interesting story?

Real Talk: How about we agree that either extreme sucks? Padded Sumo sucks but so does a game that revolves around rockets and rocket immunities.

[zugschef]

The thing I hate is lolno abilities that PCs are assumed to have but force unwanted gameplay styles. Like Death Ward for example. It's 1 minute per level to one PC, so it heavily encourages 5 minute workdays.

As in, with a game with loldie abilites like save or die death and lolno temporary defenses like Death Ward, you have:
[*]People don't bother with the lolno - Random PC death
Bullshit because you have to randomly pay for resurrections at inconvenient times.
[*]They have to use the lolno - Only one gameplay style possible- the 5 minute workday.
Bullshit because it limits the playstyles available and increases disparity between classes.
[*]They focus on being able to have all the lolnos - One PC spending all their money and character options on being able to expand the duration and effect to affect all the PCs for the whole day.
Bullshit because it forces one PC to be the HMwhore.

Actually that's not a problem of "lolno" per se, but of the specific "lolno's" duration. if death ward lasted 1h/level it would be a nice "this tall for the ride" and/or "skip mooks" ability.

[Omegonthesane]

How the hell is it anticlimactic if you use your mega-attack and it actually works? It's not more climactic to spend more rounds doing DBZ powerups until anything does anything.

It'd be like reading the last Harry Potter book and you get a chapter which is like, "Harry cast avada kedavra and then Voldemort was dead. The End."

Is that an interesting story?

Out of context no, but Harry using Avada Kedavra is something that demands huge character development and unlearning some of the lessons Dumbledore forced down his throat, so it can be a suitably epic payoff to an interesting story - especially if his internal monologue had implied that he didn't want to use it.

So, basically, yes, you absolutely can have interesting stories where IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZOR actually works.

The thing I hate is lolno abilities that PCs are assumed to have but force unwanted gameplay styles. Like Death Ward for example. It's 1 minute per level to one PC, so it heavily encourages 5 minute workdays.

As in, with a game with loldie abilites like save or die death and lolno temporary defenses like Death Ward, you have:
[*]People don't bother with the lolno - Random PC death
Bullshit because you have to randomly pay for resurrections at inconvenient times.
[*]They have to use the lolno - Only one gameplay style possible- the 5 minute workday.
Bullshit because it limits the playstyles available and increases disparity between classes.
[*]They focus on being able to have all the lolnos - One PC spending all their money and character options on being able to expand the duration and effect to affect all the PCs for the whole day.
Bullshit because it forces one PC to be the HMwhore.

Actually that's not a problem of "lolno" per se, but of the specific "lolno's" duration. if death ward lasted 1h/level it would be a nice "this tall for the ride" and/or "skip mooks" ability.

This - the 5-minute workday wouldn't be as prevalent if there weren't "lol no" buffs that had such a short duration. Having to save Divine Power cheese for the important fight is a much smaller deal than having to save Death Ward for the hopefully 5-minute interval when it comes up.

[ishy]

I think the one pc / cohort / ac limit of death ward is worse.
I'd prefer a party wide death ward that was 1 round / lvl

[zugschef]

I think the one pc / cohort / ac limit of death ward is worse.

that's a problem, too. the mass versions come out at later levels which defeats the "this tall" and "skip mooks" functions. it's a real problem if the cleric says "lol no" and the other partymembers die. to solve this, some spells should be an aura centered on the caster like the paladin's aura of courage (cast out of combat, no splitting up), some should just work just like haste (cast in combat) and some should work like the teleports (cast out of combat, party can split up a little). (mass fly's mechanic should be dumped. it's offensively stupid.)

I think the one pc / cohort / ac limit of death ward is worse.
I'd prefer a party wide death ward that was 1 round / lvl

1 rd/lvl still kills you.

[Parthenon]

The thing I hate is lolno abilities that PCs are assumed to have but force unwanted gameplay styles. Like Death Ward for example.

Actually that's not a problem of "lolno" per se, but of the specific "lolno's" duration. if death ward lasted 1h/level it would be a nice "this tall for the ride" and/or "skip mooks" ability.

True to some extent, but theres still the problem of having multiple lolnos using up spell slots.

Tussock just gave a limited list of Death Ward, Heroes Feast, Mind Blank, Free Action, Protection From Evil, and True Sight. A level 13 Cleric gets 19 spell slots of level 3-7, and casting all the available lolnos on a party of 4 ignoring cohorts uses up 17 of these useful spell slots (or 14, forcing the party to stay in a 10ft radius), leaving only 2 left to use during the day (less than one combat), and thats pretending that you get enough at each level. It's basically forcing a 5 minute workday because all the spells are used up on lolnos.

How about making most lolnos a reactive action rather than a preparatory action. So with an immediate action they can convert an uncast spell slot to a lolno spell that defends the whole party for 1 round per level against the effect. Like with Clerics and Cure spells, but with all spells with a [lolno] tag.

You could then add other lolnos, from the basic low-level one of someone with a shield getting a lolno of being able to stop an attack to someone adjacent, to a wizard sensing an incoming teleportation and getting a weak lolno of as long as they are concentrating the teleport is paused and doesn't arrive until they stop concentrating. Even personal ones like a barbarians lolno that poison/spell/damage won't affect me until I allow it to.

[Omegonthesane]

How about making most lolnos a reactive action rather than a preparatory action. So with an immediate action they can convert an uncast spell slot to a lolno spell that defends the whole party for 1 round per level against the effect. Like with Clerics and Cure spells, but with all spells with a [lolno] tag.

You could then add other lolnos, from the basic low-level one of someone with a shield getting a lolno of being able to stop an attack to someone adjacent, to a wizard sensing an incoming teleportation and getting a weak lolno of as long as they are concentrating the teleport is paused and doesn't arrive until they stop concentrating. Even personal ones like a barbarians lolno that poison/spell/damage won't affect me until I allow it to.

I think this has been discussed in Exalted where they were called "perfect defences". At the very least, causing someone to lose a spell slot means that your lolno'd spell was not actually a total waste.

[RadiantPhoenix]

So, I'd go with lolnos being either:

• Nonextant
  or
• Something absolutely every PC class gets effectively always-on by the time it's expected.

Specifically, the cool ones (like flying) would be the latter, and the not-so-cool ones would be the former.

[zugschef]

So, I'd go with lolnos being either:

• Nonextant
  or
• Something absolutely every PC class gets effectively always-on by the time it's expected.

Specifically, the cool ones (like flying) would be the latter, and the not-so-cool ones would be the former.

boring.

[DSMatticus]

Using death ward/mind blank/etc/etc lolnos is an unnecessarily convoluted and guessing game-ish way to achieve the desired goal: making PC's and important NPC's more durable than one failed save. If you don't want rocket launcher tag between opposition of roughly equivalent power, then you don't build abilities that instantly blow up opposition of roughly equivalent power. You build abilities such that they move people along a status condition track (HP is just a really big such track), and people who are significantly weaker than you (or just get really unlucky) move further. Death Ward is just a numeric bonus to your defenses against abilities with a certain tag, or lets you ignore the intermediate effects of the "being necromanced" condition track, or something like that, and you can't collect all the conditional defenses like death ward because hardcap on activated defense abilities/resource limits (iffy, encourages 5 minute workday)/duration limits (less iffy, but still encourages "defense novaing" in certain circumstances).

It's really not fun to play "gotta catch 'em all" with immunity abilities, and then die instantly because you missed the one that would have stopped what the other dude was going to do OR win because you caught them all and the opponent can't do anything.

[tussock]

It also reduces the number of spell slots casters have available to win D&D with. It's not a coincidence that the +morale to character saves patch arrived in the form of another spell tax rather than a feat tax or table adjustment.

If you take away the spells that keep PCs alive, to automate the process, you need to take away people's spell slots in the base table. Which is what 5e is doing.


I disagree with defensive spells that don't work. It's bad enough carrying around Death Ward just in case something turns up with a Death effect, it's worse if it might not work even when the Death effect does come up. Also not a fan of translating every effect into damage of some form or another: crossbows are mechanically boring even when they're fluffed as magical rays of necrotic energy.

[FatR]

Here's the thing people, you NEED to have "lol no" abilities for STORY PURPOSES.

Because it's totally bad-ass when someone unleashes a mega-attack that creates a massive explosion and should utterly destroy the enemy... but when the smoke clears, the enemy is standing there unscathed, because "lol no". That makes the enemy seem bad ass and it gets people more pumped up to defeat him.

Or when an enemy makes an attack on a PC and the PC just shrugs it off because "lol no", and the enemy says, "No... that's impossible!!!" Because that makes the player feel like his character is bad ass.

You NEED that kind of stuff.

Here's where you are wrong: when in fiction a character effortlessly no-sells a strong attack, in 95% of cases it happens because the character in question sits far, far higher than his opponent on the power level ladder, not because the character has some specific immunity against this attack. And the probability of the whole scenario is directly proportional to how hard the difference in overall power level trumps tactics and options in a given universe.

[PhoneLobster]

Using death ward/mind blank/etc/etc lolnos is an unnecessarily convoluted and guessing game-ish way to achieve the desired goal: making PC's and important NPC's more durable than one failed save.

I think you've had the basic goal of lol-no defence abilities just sail right over your head there.

It's NOT to make them more durable.

It's VERY specifically to make them more durable to SOME things.

Because "more or less durable to different things" makes a more interesting and useful system than one where your only options are "less durable to everything" and "more durable to everything".

[DSMatticus]

It's VERY specifically to make them more durable to SOME things.

Because "more or less durable to different things" makes a more interesting and useful system than one where your only options are "less durable to everything" and "more durable to everything".

This is absolutely not what they do. Lolno defenses are binary. If you are the subject of Death Ward, it's not that you can take more hits from death effects (though you technically can - infinitely many), it is that death effects stop doing anything to you. If your stated goal is a system in which you can be more or less durable to certain things rather than just a checklist of immunities, lolnos fail miserably at that.

If your goal is that players can have attacks they are strong against (as opposed to simply not being productive targets for at all) and attacks they are weak against, then my suggestion actually does that and lolnos do not. And if the goal is that players live or die (or force a mutual default to more boring systems, like HP chip it to death) by playing gotta catch 'em all with immunities, then I think the goal is terrible because that's boring as shit.

Your game's defense system is supposed to provide characters with distinct strengths and weaknesses. Your game's lolnos are supposed to tier the playspace (so that the solution to certain problems genuinely cannot be measured in a number of level 1 commoners) and/or force characters to forego one of their shticks in order to employ another (which you have to be careful with, because as you add monsters and classes you may end up accidentally creating a matchup for which one side has no level appropriate actions they can take, and that is bad).

[PhoneLobster]

This is absolutely not what they do. Lolno defenses are binary.

Infinitely more durable IS more durable.

You don't get to just redefine "more durable" to not include the most durable you can be.

And lolnos aren't specifically about "tiering". That's a complete false assumption and fabrication. Some pokemon are flat out immune to certain types of attack. It's NICE and it DOES produce "distinct strengths and weaknesses" and it is utterly unrelated to "tiering".

If your goal is that players can have attacks they are strong against (as opposed to simply not being productive targets for at all)

And why the hell wouldn't it be your goal to sometimes make some targets flat out non-productive targets for some kinds of attacks. Flat out. Without needless "well you deal 1% damage, you might do that right?" math involved?

In fact the REVERSE assumption is the insane one, the idea that you WOULDN'T want to sometimes make targets genuinely non-productive targets for some kinds of attacks is SO fucking out there you better stop hand waving with unfounded blatant assumptions like that and explain yourself. Thoroughly.

And if the goal is that players live or die (or force a mutual default to more boring systems, like HP chip it to death) by playing gotta catch 'em all with immunities, then I just presented a strawman to go with those crazy assumption fries

There fixed that for you.

[DSMatticus]

Infinitely more durable IS more durable.

You don't get to just redefine "more durable" to not include the most durable you can be.

You are arguing that the difference between +10 HP and +infinity HP is a matter of being able to absorb more hits before you die in the latter than the former. That is true, but it's not really interesting or relevant. The not-retarded way of thinking of it is that in the case of the former, you absorb more hits and in the case of the latter you no longer interact with the HP subsystem at all. Someone who gets to run whiteout over the HP box on their character sheet is very 'durable' as a measure of hits they can take. And doors are very 'durable' with respect to dominate monster, but nobody says that because that is a weird and stupid way to describe or conceptualize what's going on.

Though, even if I were arguing the technicality instead of the point, I absolutely think durable is the incorrect terminology. Durability reflects the ability to withstand deterioration, and it is definitionally true that if you can endure infinitely many hits before failing, then each hit represents literally zero progress towards any failure. There is no deterioration.

And lolnos aren't specifically about "tiering". That's a complete false assumption and fabrication. Some pokemon are flat out immune to certain types of attack. It's NICE and it DOES produce "distinct strengths and weaknesses" and it is utterly unrelated to "tiering".

We are not talking about pokemon, because in pokemon you play six characters and the type system serves the purpose of making you choose six different characters. And it mostly does that without lolnos, because type penalties are super painful. In D&D you play one dude whose abilities all probably have a common theme, and if the game has an ability that lets someone pick up immunity to your theme you are just fucked. The firemage being able to ignore fire immunity against level appropriate challenges is not optional.

And why the hell wouldn't it be your goal to sometimes make some targets flat out non-productive targets for some kinds of attacks. Flat out.

You're going to want to pay a little closer attention. Most (but not all) of that rant is in the context of class abilities (i.e., things anyone with the appropriate levels can access). And no, I do not think PC classes should ever be able to make themself immune to broad groups of level appropriate abilities that may be employed against them (i.e. death ward).

Here's why: members of team monster generally have less diverse powersets than a PC, and PC parties are generally more diverse than the monsters that will show up in an encounter together. If hardcounters are standard abilities in your game, that favors the PC's because team monster is both easier to shutdown and team PC has access to a greater breadth of abilities. And that's boring. It's super boring to win fights because you had the abilities necessary to make the outcome of a fight a foregone conclusion. And it's really, really boring if the lolnos are protecting you from OHKO's and your failure to collect them means you go down like a mook.

If you want to make constructs immune to fear effects because whatever, that's fine on the contingency that any class that dishes out fear effects also has level appropriate abilities that will affect a construct, or gets the ability to be so incredibly scary that they can scare things that are incapable of fear. But lolnos as part of standard combat tactics/prep is just really fucking bad in every way. It does not feel satisfying to point your finger at the BBEG and watch him explode (unless for some reason that was statistically unlikely, as opposed to the expected outcome on a hit). It does not feel satisfying to switch to weaker abilities against the most powerful opponents because all your goodstuff is being cockblocked. Being able to ignore mooks is great and makes you feel like you've advanced, but being able to ignore the stuff you're supposed to take seriously is anticlimactic and makes the whole encounter pointless.