Power Scales

[Maxus]

Some backstory, in bulletpoints:

-I was thinking about how people were arguing against Animate Dead in 4e because it'd break 'The Economy of Actions' by giving casters a second character.

-Then I thought, "What's wrong with that? You could give non-casters extra actions as they level up."

-That reminded me of the idea that DnD 3.5 would treat its non-casters better if the non-casters got, for example, super-strength and faster-than-an-eyeblink speed. I also got reminded of anime.

And that's got me thinking that maybe it's possible to make a basic system, and then have some rules to modify how characters grow and what they're capable of at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20. So that way you can make a game where people at level 5 are low-level members of an organization, and people at level 15 are the high-ups. And it'd allow you to make a game where at level 5, you're at peak up human ability, so as you gain levels, you'll go beyond normal human limits.

Heck, it might even let you make a game like God of War, where you're strong enough to jerk Collossal statues off-balance, outgrapple minotaurs, and do things like snatch the eye out of a cyclops and yank the wings off of harpies.

So, yeah, I'm thinking there's different power scales people assume, and that there's a lot of misunderstandings that result from things like Frank saying that being able to burninate an entire army at level 15 is a level-appropriate thing to do (something that makes people go, "Whaa-huh?" in my experience.)

Am I making sense on this? Anyway, I'm thinking a list of the different power scales and how'd they affect gameplay would be something interesting to see.

[Judging__Eagle]

There was this dude named Beowulf. Which is like, bear and wulf, and you know how awesome bears are, and how awesome wolves are. So could you imagine a dude, who's both bear and wolf? Yeah, super awesome.

And he was soooo good at swimming that he swam across a small bit of ocean from a ship to the beach. All he wore was a chain shirt and his clothing and his shield and sword and belt and weapons. Typical stuff for when you need to swim across the ocean.

Not only that, but he was swimming to race an other guy, you know, for fun and fought a sea serpent b/c it was bugging him while he was swimming.

The fight with the serpent made him lose a race against the other dude who was also in a chain shirt and with weapons (Beowulf only raced against dudes who were at least as hardcore as himself) and also swimming. Which made Beowulf mad, b/c he lost, but he thought it was awesome that he killed a sea serpent. So he didn't care so much.

Then this one time, Beowulf wrestled a supernatural ogre named Grendel and Beowulf was soooo strong, that he when the ogre ran away, Beowulf was holding his arm... and shoulder. The ogre dieded b/c of this.

Then, this other time. Beowulf went swimming in a giant lake that this ogre lived in to make sure that he was dead.

So, then, this other time; Beowulf took a deep breath and jumped into a lake. He explored the lake and found Grendel's underwater house-mansion. So he went inside and looked for Grendel, and he found Grendel dead on his bed.

What Beowulf didn't expect was that Grendel's mom would be there and she was piiissed that Beowulf had killed her son.

Well, Beowulf wasn't gonna stand for no shit from no one's mom, so he sliced at her with his sword. Except it melted when it hit her head!

So he had to run away and look for a new sword, and he did in Grendel's house and he then went back and killed that Ogre's mom with the new sword that he found.

And he did that all without taking a second breath once.

Since he was you know, Beowulf.

[CatharzGodfoot]

No, you're not making a lot of sense.

Are you saying that a game could have variable power scales such that in one game level 10 means 'I can destroy an entire army', and in another it means 'I can best almost anyone in a fair duel [with the exception of 10th or higher level characters]'?

Or are you suggesting that a game could have specific levels which say 'you are now at least this tall'?



As for the zombies, people are just looking at them the wrong way. For one, a single zombie is pretty lame. If you're going to have zombies, you should have a zombie horde. A zombie horde is an area effect like an incendiary cloud, except you can take actions to move it, and it can be damaged. Other minions are way tougher to balance, but things like mounts and zombie hordes are almost trivially easy.

[Username17]

The only real difficulty of having mounts and hordes is finding a numeric base such that weaker units stay somewhere recognizable on the RNG with stronger units while still being noticeably weaker over all.

-Username17

[Maxus]

No, you're not making a lot of sense.

Are you saying that a game could have variable power scales such that in one game level 10 means 'I can destroy an entire army', and in another it means 'I can best almost anyone in a fair duel [with the exception of 10th or higher level characters]'?

Pretty much, yeah.

[RandomCasualty2]

-Then I thought, "What's wrong with that? You could give non-casters extra actions as they level up."

Extra actions are generally bad for the game.

They take longer to resolve, which is bad, they increase damage output by a multiple, which means thte level you get the extra action is a huge jump.

If there's one thing I've learned about game design, it's that extra actions are inherently bad. Whether it's the other PCs getting bored while one character goes through his 3rd time stop round, or the straight up nuking capacity of 3.0 haste, I haven't really seen anything redeemable about extra actions.

You don't want to have casters balanced on more powerful single actions versus melee characters with more actions. If you do that, then you just can't make a fighter/mage without breaking the game. It's a good idea to have everyone on the same system, and I'm convinced that more powerful actions is better than more actions, simply because more actions take much longer to resolve. I'd like to throw out a single big damage attack rather than roll a bunch of crap attacks.

[Judging__Eagle]

Turn the Zombies into a Swarm?

The DMG2 had possibly one single useful article, and it was about how to make a swarm out of Medium or Large creatures.

I've used the Swarm Template on 'hordes' of Troglodytes to make them tougher for lvl 6 PCs to fight.

It works okay. The funny thing is that the fighters/melee's best tactic is to dance up to the enemy and power-attack for full, then fall back. Since cleave/great cleave doesn't work on a swarm. Just standing there also works, since your a melee-type so soaking the 5d6 damage per round shouldn't be too bad, but you better have some friends who are able to really put the hurt on the swarm. With their huge amount of HP, they're still a threat.

I want to try a swarm of Zombie Wyverns on my PCs; that would be pretty awesome. Swarms of Orges would also be interesting.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Not a swarm. Swarm mechanics are really fucked up, for example the targeting restrictions and (as you said) lack of cleavability. It really need a 'mob' type or subtype.

[K]

The easiest solution is to make summoned monsters a direct function of the controlling character's class features.

So, when your owlbear zombie attacks, it uses an attack appropriate to your level (and not its level) and costs one of your actions since you must concentrate to control it. You could even have some sympathetic magic BS happen where you take damage when the monster is damaged.

I've been toying with unit rules where your zombie horde just uses AoE attacks for your level and individual monsters die as the horde takes damage. As individual members die, the AoE on the attack gets smaller.

[NoDot]

Not only that, but he was swimming to race an other guy, you know, for fun and fought a sea serpent b/c it was bugging him while he was swimming.

The fight with the serpent made him lose a race against the other dude who was also in a chain shirt and with weapons (Beowulf only raced against dudes who were at least as hardcore as himself) and also swimming. Which made Beowulf mad, b/c he lost, but he thought it was awesome that he killed a sea serpent. So he didn't care so much.

Correction: NINE Sea Serpents of some sort. All in one night.

Apparently, that area was quite safe after that.

So he had to run away and look for a new sword, and he did in Grendel's house and he then went back and killed that Ogre's mom with the new sword that he found.

A sword made by (and presumably for) the giants.

[JonSetanta]

So, when your owlbear zombie attacks, it uses an attack appropriate to your level (and not its level) and costs one of your actions since you must concentrate to control it. You could even have some sympathetic magic BS happen where you take damage when the monster is damaged.

I've been toying with unit rules where your zombie horde just uses AoE attacks for your level and individual monsters die as the horde takes damage. As individual members die, the AoE on the attack gets smaller.

This looks like a good solution.
It might be a 'fix' for the disappointing lack of summoning in 4e, even.

It might also help towards correcting the eternal Polymorph blunder.
The sympathetic magic concept of redirected damage could apply to the caster/shapechanger, allowing greater HP as a changed form but damage that exceeds the caster's normal maximum when they change back will put them down for the count.

[angelfromanotherpin]

There was this dude named Beowulf. Which is like, bear and wulf, and you know how awesome bears are, and how awesome wolves are. So could you imagine a dude, who's both bear and wolf? Yeah, super awesome.

There's considerable debate over what the etymology of Beowulf is, but the majority opinion is that it means 'bee-wolf,' which is just a bear.

Other interpretations (thanks, wikipedia) include:
• A mistranslation of the name of Bödvar, a hero who also took the bear as his totem.
• Beowa-wulf, or a wolf of the Germanic wheat-god Beowa.
• One fellow suggests that it means 'woodpecker,' but this seems to be reaching, as it's based on the Old Dutch 'biewolf.'