Aging as a Spell Cost

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Username17
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Aging as a Spell Cost

Post by Username17 »

In 2e some of the costs were changed and a lot of them were lowered, and, more importantly, the demi-human level limits were raised to the point where elves could become arch-mages, and at that point things were pretty much over because when you've got 500 years of lifespan or whatever to burn, handing over seven of them to have one of your wishes granted is pretty much a no-brainer.


Worse than that. Much worse. Remember that some of the NPC spellcasters include Metallic Dragons, who if you'll recall are immortal and gain power and caster levels from age. So why wouldn't a Gold Dragon raise your character? I mean, if he raises enough characters from the dead he gets an extra hit point per hit die bonus.

Of course, the entire concept of level limits for player races was pretty sketchy. In AD&D there was an optional rule that eliminated them, and I have literally never seen anyone not use that optional rule. As far as I know, in 2e using the level limits was the optional rule, and noone played with it. In short, I have never seen a game being played which had level limits for halflings.

Restricted classes and multiclass combinations yes, level limits no.

I suppose this might be known as the Arioch fallacy, the "I know my rules are broken, I just don't care" line, because I seem to say it an awful lot.


Hey, as long as you keep getting winners in Tic Tac Toe, why move on to RPS? I mean, that game comes up a draw one third of the time.

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Re: Poll: Do you play with Vile content?

Post by User3 »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1088624072[/unixtime]]
Of course, the entire concept of level limits for player races was pretty sketchy. In AD&D there was an optional rule that eliminated them, and I have literally never seen anyone not use that optional rule. As far as I know, in 2e using the level limits was the optional rule, and noone played with it. In short, I have never seen a game being played which had level limits for halflings.


Back in the day, when I played 1e without any conscious sense of irony, we at least paid lip service to the idea of level limits -- it wasn't unusual to see them exceeded by a level or two if you picked up a Wish or did the right favors for a god or whatever, but it was rare that we discarded them altogether.

The 1e games I've played in in the past half-decade have all adhered to them religiously (along with other things like the "elves cannot be raised from the dead" rule), because, after all, part of the fun of deliberately using an antiquated set of rules is abiding by them. Which led to the expected result: hardly anyone played demi-humans except for single- and multi-classed thieves, for whom adding a half-dozen wizard or fighter levels was a heck of a lot more worthwhile than speeding up a level progression that was mostly meaningless after 10th level anyway.

One of the interesting things we discovered about 1e in the process is that, while it's an astounding rattletrap of a game system, it does work without becoming completely, grossly unbalanced if you follow the rules as written. Or rather, it works for a while. It still gets fairly crazy at high levels (and it gets crazy even faster if you allow the Unearthed Arcana rules instead of banning them outright), but some of the craziness is muted due to the existence of actual risks and costs for some of the more notorious 3E tactics (getting killed and resurrected as a strategy, long-distance teleport ambushes, constant use of haste, etc. etc. etc.), the brutally hard spell acquisition rules for wizards (you still have a 15% chance to fail to learn a spell if you max out your intelligence, and you generally only get one roll EVER), and so on.

Of course, some of the craziness is not muted at all. And some of it is worse. And "following the rules as written" is easier said than done because just about everything in the game has its own unique rule or special case ... but there you go.

The dilemma the BoVD stuff faces is that it wants to be more worthwhile than regular stuff in exchange for a cost ... at a time when there are increasingly few costs that players actually care about. So either the BoVD stuff is just as good as other stuff, but has a meaningless cost that's essentially flavor text, or it's substantially better or worse with the same. I don't need to have my flavor text written for me for spells that are just as good, I don't want spells that are better than the norm and balanced largely by flavor text, and nobody will use spells that have costs that they can't minimize or evade. That means my use for the BoVD mechanics is limited, and none of the non-mechanical content is all that inspiring.

--d.
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Re: Poll: Do you play with Vile content?

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1088624072[/unixtime]]
Worse than that. Much worse. Remember that some of the NPC spellcasters include Metallic Dragons, who if you'll recall are immortal and gain power and caster levels from age. So why wouldn't a Gold Dragon raise your character? I mean, if he raises enough characters from the dead he gets an extra hit point per hit die bonus.

I'm not sure if dragons were immortal in 2E, but it really doesn't matter that much, because they're not something you even worry about. Sure, if a dragon wants to raise you then they can, but when you are going to encounter a dragon capable of casting a raise spell? Long after you've got a cleric capable of casting raise dead. So it hardly matters. Not like dragons are gonna be sitting in the middle of a town handing out raise spells anyway. Unless your PCs are playing as dragons (which 2E never had in mind) you won't have a problem.

What it does is keep temples from selling raise spells, which was its basic purpose, and it did that job well. The fact that there were some uber monsters out there that could possibly cast it without worrying about aging is pretty irrelevant. It also prevents PCs from haphazardly raising everyone. And it performs that purpose pretty well too.

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Re: Poll: Do you play with Vile content?

Post by Username17 »

RC wrote:Unless your PCs are playing as dragons (which 2E never had in mind) you won't have a problem.


Then you have a problem:

Image

Dragons were playable characters in 2e.

What it does is keep temples from selling raise spells, which was its basic purpose, and it did that job well.


That wasn't its stated purpose, and when the rules inclued NPCs who were encouraged to raise you for free by the age rules, it didn't really help that some other NPCs were arbitrarily encouraged to not cast it for you.

As long as there is anyone in the campaign world who is encouraged to raise you, what difference does it make? I mean, you could achieve the same effect with a rule "Most NPC Clerics are 8th level or less" - which in fact there was. If "most" NPCs won't or can't do it, what difference does it make? Raise Dead is retroactive, you only need to find one.

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Re: Poll: Do you play with Vile content?

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1088639204[/unixtime]]
Dragons were playable characters in 2e.

Yeah, by an optional book that was published way after the core rules. I'm aware of that and the council of wyrms boxed set, but if you're playing that obviously you house rule it. But when the aging was created it was never intended for PCs to play dragons.



If "most" NPCs won't or can't do it, what difference does it make? Raise Dead is retroactive, you only need to find one.


You'll always have NPCs who can do it, but how accessible they are is always going to be tough, and if they'll aid you in the first place. Sure when you have gods in your world they can pretty much do it at will too, but they don't because they usually just don't care that much about the PCs. And the same could be true of the dragon. The average metallic isn't going to be living among humans resurrecting them. And remember that only a relatively old dragon can cast those spells in the first place, and the dragon probably doesn't want to be bothered with all of the problems of some random adventuring party.

I mean in all my years of playing I think I've met a metallic dragon once in like 10 years. For the most part that's about the same frequency as divine intervention.

And even if you do encounter a metallic there's nothing saying if it'll be old enough, or willing to help you. I mean hell, when you're a cleric and you have a god, he's always got the power to resurrect your companions, and he's someone you serve. Yet he just sits up there and sadistically grins at you. Now, you're approaching some dragon you've never met before and asking for help. I mean really, how good are your chances of walking out of there without getting thoroughly ripped off? Dragons are really greedy too.
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Re: Poll: Do you play with Vile content?

Post by Username17 »

You'll always have NPCs who can do it, but how accessible they are is always going to be tough, and if they'll aid you in the first place.


...and thus the aging rule accomplishes no more and no less than the rule that most NPC Clerics are 8th level or less.

Which means that it is completely pointless - there is already a rule that already makes it arbitrarily difficult to find someone who will raise your party. There doesn't need to be a second rule that also makes it arbitrarily difficult to find someone who will raise you.

In AD&D and its variants, 9th level is a big deal - it's the level where you supposedly get yourself a house and an army and are able to retire as Lord of the Land. There doesn't need to be any additional rules that make a 9th level character reticent to help you, because you are already essentially petitioning the direct favor of the head of state.

If there is no 9th level Cleric, or the resident 9th level Cleric can't be bothered to see you, that is already entirely in keeping with the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons NPC Level Paradigm - so any other rule that says "these characters are unlikely to help you" is superfluous. The rule that they are unlikely to exist and unlikely to be bothered to talk to you are already in the game.

So aging didn't do anything. Except that there were immortal races and even races who gained power from age who were playable characters (especially in Planescape, where it's like half the races). Aging had no effect on the game, except that occassionally it caused the game to break into a zillion pieces.

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Re: Poll: Do you play with Vile content?

Post by RandomCasualty »

Yeah, aging didnt' work well with noncore stuff.

But as for raising people, I strongly disagree. Making 8th level clerics rare was a world decision, not a rules decision, and it had a huge impact on your game world.

If you're part of a temple sooner or later you're going to work your way up the heirarchy by asking "ok, you're only level 7, whose your boss?" So eventually you get to the top. So you make a huge and limiting decision in your world by having only 8th level clerics. Now your religions are all weak.

Putting aging in there doesn't really limit your world much, unless you wanted to use a non-core immortal campaign, but we don't care that much about that. It's like claiming something in the quintessential fighter screws up the core 3.5 rules and calling a core rule bad for that reason. When you begin to say stuff like that people will ask for whatever it is you are smoking.

Obviously the people who thought of that non-core stuff should have put in a fix themselves for a problem that exists only when you're playing a dragon or an outsider.

Aging lets you run a high level world like Forgotten Realms and still have it so that not everyone is automatically raised. The alternative, simply saying that everyone is under 8th level is pretty stupid, as it means no religion actually has a high cleric, and there's a possibility for all these awesome cleric spells only nobody gets them. The "it exists, but yet it actually doesn't" method of controlling spells sucks. I'd much rather have a limitation built into the spell.

Even if some of the immortal races can get around it, I really don't care much, because unless my PCs are playing immortal races it doesn't matter a heck of a lot. If they want to try to convince some great wyrm to help them, then best of luck to them, but really if they're that powerful that the great wyrm actually would help them, then they can probably get a cleric to give up a year or two to bring them back.
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Re: Poll: Do you play with Vile content?

Post by Username17 »

So you make a huge and limiting decision in your world by having only 8th level clerics. Now your religions are all weak.


Weak? That was the presentation of old school D&D. 20th level just didn't happen. Legendary "Epic" characters from 3rd edition had AD&D write-ups as 11th level characters. The Circle of Eight contained nobody over 20th.

3rd edition has seen a tremendous amount of level inflation, in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, a 9th level character was supposed to be able to assume that they were (or could become) head of fvcking state by force of arms.

8th level wasn't weak, it was strong. Monster charts in the core rules didn't even exist for characters above level 10. Your relative place in the universe was worth about twice as many levels as your place is held by a 3rd edition level.

That's what the rules really said. And unless you played in Forgotten Realms (land of level inflation - and draconic PCs), that's how it was. Go back and look at the old stuff again, you have write-ups for "Knightly Orders" led by 4th level Fighters.

Yeah, in 3rd edition terms that's "weak" - but that's the power level the core books told you to expect.

Putting aging in there doesn't really limit your world much, unless you wanted to use a non-core immortal campaign, but we don't care that much about that.


Right. So we don't care about Forgotten Realms or Planescape, we only care about Greyhawk, for whom this is not an issue because it follows the suggested level structure...

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