Re: My point is no one should be at any level. - Edit 1
Before modification by Fanatic-Templar at 25/09/2012 03:48:20 AM
Anyway, since 'level' is a completely metagame and arbitrary term, there is no reason to fight grossly underleveled opponents unless the intended result is to show that they pose no challenge. So yes, if your desire is to provide terrible encounters, then D&D will allow you to fulfill your wishes. But it is not a flaw in the system that it allows you to accomplish your desired goal.
There are far better ways to avoid that than making advanced characters so tough they can survive anything short of having a house dropped on them. I mean, really, even with average hit dice rolls and no Con bonus a 10th level fighter has about 55 HP. That means if a 20th level fighter comes up and hits him 10 times with a sword, the 10th level character will probably still be standing: There is simply no way to kill an alert high level character quickly short of some kind of Deathspell.
55 hit points?
Assuming no strength bonus (except for the purpose of feat selection), no magic weapons, and no multiclassing (which is pretty contrary to the core ideal of 3rd Edition which I despised, but nevertheless) - incidentally, a single-classed fighter is one of the worst builds you can possibly conceive of at high levels - you can still get a two-handed sword (2d6 damage), and a selection of Core Rulebook feats, let's say Improved Critical, Power Attack, Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialisation, Greater Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Specialisation (for a total of 6 out of a 20th level fighter's 18-19 feats), this fighter would attack each round at +23/+18/+13/+8 and deal 2d6+6 damage with critical hits for double damage on on rolls of 17-20.
Being generous and giving your 10th level fighter the best armour available (but neither dex bonus nor magical protection) he would have 10+8(Full Plate and Mail)+4(Tower Shield)+1(Dodge feat)=23. with an average of 10(.5) on rolls, the 20th level fighter would hit for 33/28/23 and then miss with 18. With an average of 13 damage per hit (without counting criticals, which I remind you occur on confirmed rolls of 17+) that's 3x13 per round or 39, but if you use your Power Attack feat to give yourself a -5 to attacks, you will still strike twice on average, but with +10 damage to both of those attacks, for 23x2=46 damage, either way dropping your 10th level fighter in 2 rounds, assuming average rolls.
And this is a terrible, terrible build. Even the most inept player will have a stronger character at that level, if only because he'll have put points in Strength. Now if you want a fighter actually designed to deal damage, you can just go googling, 3rd Edition was adored for that kind of min-maxing.
In 4th Edition, there's a 19th level Fighter Power called Reaving Strike which deals 5xWeapon damage, so assuming no strength bonus and no magical weapons, the feats Power Attack and Weapon Focus for +3 damage, a two-handed sword (1d10 damage in this game) would deal 42.5 damage on average, only not one-hit killing the 10th level fighter because the lack of damage modifiers from strength [EDIT: Fail. I forgot Strength was added after the multiplication, so only the magic weapon bonuses would get multiplied] or magic somewhat cripples the multiplying effect of Reaving Strike. Although, by using an action point to act again, he could still use another Power to finish the job in that single round.
To be fair, a 10th level fighter in 4th Edition would have 69+Con hit points (79, in our example here) rather than 55. But also on the other hand, fighters are a class designed to absorb damage rather than deal it out.
It just makes things faster; anyone with the knowledge and desire to min/max and rules lawyer (which AD&D pratically encourages, IMHO,) will get there sooner or later, even if occasional bad rolls and/or decisions force them to through a couple characters first. How many people do you know who have "retired" how many characters simply because it was no longer any fun to play them?
Heh, actually we've never got there. I've told you already how it was when we were younger in 2nd Edition and early on in 3rd. 3rd Edition was where it got more stable, most games there ended eitehr because the players lost their character sheets, or because my DMing love goes more to the world-building than the actual campaign running and every once in a while I stop running games for seasons on end to design a new setting. My last 3rd Edition was going great when the Edition change happened. And the 4th Edition games I played were all one-shots to familiarise ourselves with the rules while I started building up my homebrewed stuff, which should be complete by the end of the year. In the meantime we've been playing the other DM's White Wolf stuff, Call of Cthulhu, or the LotR roleplaying game (which is the ongoing game I'm currently GMing). So yeah, I haven't had that experience yet
.Scaling is less an issue (up to a point...) than practical invulnerability to anything and everything NOT scaled. Same reason none of my BG fighters ever took that High Level Ability that autokills anything <12th level: By the time they were high enough to get HLAs, they autokilled everything <12th level unaided. In the real world, Patton could beat Rommel in North Africa, conquer Sicily and lead the Allies to victory at the Battle of the Bulge only to snap his neck falling off the seat in a minor car accident and be killed weeks after the war ended. Again, impossible in AD&D, because epic level characters are invulnerable to anything but other epic level characters.
But why would you want to run a game where a character dies from falling off his seat? I mean, I can accept that you would, but that's clearly an issue of personal preference, not an objective quality issue.
Yeah, I WOULD do that, except my parties are always so heavily stealth oriented fireballs have limited use. Even when I just sneak in a F/T and a straight class Thief it is bad enough, and by the time I get to SoA (or Tutu) I have a Stalker into the bargain, so I have to choose between three backstabs or nuking half my party along with the bad guys. I cannot do both, because Hide in Shadows/Move Silently rolls automatically fail in the presence of an enemy, so unless I can drop the fireball then race into position to backstab a moving target before exposure I must forego the fireball.
Yeah, I didn't have that problem since I didn't use Rogues (or Thieves, as I think they were actually called back in 2nd Ed). Instead, there was this one divination spell I seem to recall using to spot enemy groups and fire are of effect spells from outside their field of vision so they didn't react in time.