But are we going to let the character who heads off a cliff to simply hang there in midair defying the laws of physics simply because they never studied law like in a Warner Bros. cartoon?
Um, I believe that's called Air Walk, sir. Maybe you shouldn't play with magic.
In real life people can withstand incredible things either through training or by some rare luck. I find it almost hilarious how much people complain about the martial classes trying to accomplish feats that push the human limits, but it's okay for the one with magic to do pretty much everything; it makes one wonder if all the complaint threads that the wizard is too powerful or the fighter is too weak at higher levels might be some what related...
@Dork Lord:
The "trap" is this: starting a thread about a style-of-play issue that will invariably devolve into 2+ people bickering about how the other's style is "wrong". This will occur even if every single person in the thread agrees 100%.
I am not accusing you of trolling. I used to start threads like this because I enjoyed starting conversations. I know you wanted to see an intellectual discussion about realism in RPGs. I give you the benefit of the doubt, you surely had good intentions.
It turns out a lot of people on the forums want to express their ideas, but they can only do so in an adversarial tone. Evidence: look at the last ten posts.
Do the posters answer the OP question about preference? Or do they pick apart others' expression of their preferences, sometimes without even expressing their own? The urge to one-up is too strong.
So, I say simply and with actual respect for you: It's a trap. The whole thread is a trap, and you're caught in it. I guess I am too. It's like a car accident, I can't look away.
Um, I believe that's called Air Walk, sir. Maybe you shouldn't play with magic.
Well, then that's not simply because they never studied law, is it?
I think, as others have said, physics is being confused with verisimilitude.
Again, no, not really. I would say that displaying a certain amount of real-world, reasonable to the layman, physics is a subset of the game's verisimilitude. Verisimilitude and realism would be broader terms that would incorporate lots of narrower elements, including physics, psychology, economics, geography, and so on.
Well, then that's not simply because they never studied law, is it?
Right you are sir; and who's to say a warrior who's training against liches and dragons doesn't have something unnatural if not magical going on in their bodies that causes them to stronger and tougher than any human being on our planet? Really all I'm saying is that when you're willing to allow wizards to conjure something from nothing (Which is just outright impossible) and put holes in the universe, taking away the ability of a martial player to push his limits is just being unfair and selective.
The real question is, if we had low-level magic in our world that could never ever equate to the high level magic of the fantasy world, would you just outright decide that such attempts result in automatic failure?
I'd say as much as it's fun for your group.That sounds simple and reasonable until you have someone from Camp A and someone from Camp B in the same group.
Well, If there is a conflict in the group, then the best start is probably to sit with both parties and have a talk to find some common ground, no?
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Well, If there is a conflict in the group, then the best start is probably to sit with both parties and have a talk to find some common ground, no?
I'd say as much as it's fun for your group.That sounds simple and reasonable until you have someone from Camp A and someone from Camp B in the same group.
Pfft. No. Obviously you have to yell and scream and call each other names. Poo flinging optional.
I would say that real world physics, psychology, economics, geography, etc. have nothing but an accidental place in fantasy. In most of fantasy, the guiding principle is "is it cool?", not "would it work in the real world?"
Think about any action flick or science fiction flick. Can a guy really fall 300 feet and live. I saw several guys do that in the movie "Avatar". That movie would not have been as cool as it was if the movie was concerned with real world physics. Fantasy always does that.
If I wanted a game bound by real world physics, it wouldn't be fantasy.
The fantasy is, in part, defined by its specific exceptions to physics and reality. Would the characters falling 300 feet in Avatar be as interesting or cool or even fulfill their role in the movie if we thought everyone could do it? It's not merely "is it cool?". It's also what's cool that stands out from normality. Without the normal baseline, what have you got? The coolness of feats of fantasy defy normal expectations.
D&D/PF is not medieval grit. It's heroic fantasy. It's over-the-top, defined primarily by genre convention, not realism. A guy swinging around a hundred-pound sword is not a violation of genre convention. D&D is closer to gnomes hurling earth elementals out of catapults than "Jim died of dysentery."
It's definitely inclined that way, but ultimately it is what you make it. You can play a 'gritty' game in Pathfinder, or a High Fantasy game, or a Sword & Sorcery game.
D&D/PF is not medieval grit. It's heroic fantasy. It's over-the-top, defined primarily by genre convention, not realism.It's definitely inclined that way, but ultimately it is what you make it. You can play a 'gritty' game in Pathfinder, or a High Fantasy game, or a Sword & Sorcery game.
You can play just about any genre in just about any game system. That doesn't mean some systems aren't better suited to some genres.
If, as the original poster indicates, aspects of Pathfinder overly strain his disbelief suspenders, he should consider trying a different game engine, or house-ruling Pathfinder to be more in line with what floats his boat.
Not all game engines require 1000+ pages of Core Rulebooks, Game Master Guides and Advanced Player Guides to show all their options.
Pathfinder retains a lot of 'dubious concept inheritance'. Hit points amalgamating luck and health points is a significant one.
I admire a lot of things about D&D 4th; their segregating out of hit points and action points is one. Paying more attention to average damage dealt by a character of level X versus hit points of an opponent of challenge rating Y is another.
(And yes, saying anything kind about D&D 4th on this forum is EvilBadWrong, and likely proof that I calculate the kinetic energy of kicked puppies....*grin*)
Um, you're seeing a personal attack in my suggesting that Pathfinder won't make you happy, but other things will?If that isn't the kind of player behavior you want to see, play a different game...but don't expect people who are happy with Pathfinder to join you in that different game.Funny, I thought Pathfinder was a game that could cater to a wide variety of players. Apparently it only caters to a specific playstyle and if you don't like it, "go play a different game". You're getting pretty close to making personal attacks. That's not the purpose of this thread, let alone these boards.
No, I saw it in the "go play another game" comment. Perhaps I overreacted. My apologies.
Should a world based on myths and legends be dominated by real world physics? Well, if a guy with a 40 strength picks up an ancient gold dragon, should he sink into the ground?
If the Hulk picks up a battleship, does he sink into the ground?
When it comes to fantasy, physics is for the small minded.No, it's really not. What we want is for our every-day understanding of physics to be generally reflected in our games. It is, in fact, necessary in a typical table-top game. Computer games have it easy. They define exactly what the physics of the game are because they have to define how the the elements move and react to the other objects around them. But for our table-top games to make sense in our own heads, we have to incorporate what we know of everyday physics. We don't have any other physics model that will automatically be applied.
Of course, the average layman's concept of physics is limited to very basic stuff. Will they think about the Hulk sinking into the ground if he picks up a battleship? Or the likelihood that the battleship will simply break apart if he tries? Probably not. We make allowances for the fantastic in our physics model because it's specifically cool to do so and we're not going to sweat it that much. But are we going to let the character who heads off a cliff to simply hang there in midair defying the laws of physics simply because they never studied law like in a Warner Bros. cartoon? Not unless we're specifically playing Toon.
So myths and legends aren't dominated by physics but they sure are informed by them. And they should be. We just don't want to sweat too many details.
I really like what Bill seems to be saying here, which has been the point I've really been trying to make all along. I may not be as good at expressing my points and ideas as others.
I have no issue with characters doing fantastic things as long as the rules support it (well maybe aside from that lava thing... I think at the very least the rules for "swimming" in lava should be expanded to account for the other penalties one would face when attempting to do that). It's when people have the "well there's no rule against it even though common sense would dictate this would be impossible or impossible without heavy penalties" attitude that I start to twitch.
Warned it’s a trap and then people stumble right in anyways… :)
Anyhow, my two bits is, yes, I see your point. Some things strike us as enormously ridiculous but the idea has always been the DM is supposed to make up the difference. If you survive a charge by a guy with a lance because you have enough hit points than the proper description shouldn’t involve you getting skewered in the chest. Instead you probably leapt out of the way at the last second but hit the ground hard enough to sprain your arm...or whatever. Something like that.
Same for the fall. If a character somehow survived a 200ft fall then it probably wasn’t a straight fall. He must have rolled downhill part of the way, caught some handholds, whatever. If it was a sheer fall, no getting around it…well, standard DM practice in my day (2e) was add modifiers until you get the desired result. A dead fall from 200ft onto the jagged rocks below would be grounds for some seriously deadly modifiers.
Me…as DM, I’d go the other way. Explain the situation in a way that kind of makes sense and move on. If a character survives a dragon’s fire…then don’t describe the scene as him or her taking it full in the face.
I can dig this PoV as well, honestly... though how would you survive a naked human diving into the lava and doing the backstroke for 3 rounds?
Also, yeah, as someone said, the high levels are basically demi-gods. The characters are the equivalent of Hercules or Wonder Woman. Their capabilities are well beyond the scope of normal human beings. In fact, isn’t the general rule that most NPCs in the world, even experienced warriors, are only level ones or twos? So even a Lvl 8 is someone well beyond an average human’s capabilities. We often think of Lvl 1 as meaning rookie but I don’t think it’s supposed to mean that. I think even a Lvl 1 is a supposed to be someone of rare ability.
Not according to the Gamemastery Guide. Even the Beggar is a level 2 NPC. A typical City Watch Guard is level 3, the Watch Captain is level 7, a typical Knight is level 8 and even a Princess is level 8. Heck, a King is level 16... and that's your -typical- King.
I simply cannot look at the game that way. On a very basic level, things have to make sense to me.
Wait... nonmagical humans? T-Rexes? I got every reference but that one. o.O
It's not a matter of how you look at it. It's a matter of how the game is. If you don't like the game, fine, but it is what it is, and it's not what it's not.
D&D/PF is not medieval grit. It's heroic fantasy. It's over-the-top, defined primarily by genre convention, not realism. A guy swinging around a hundred-pound sword is not a violation of genre convention. D&D is closer to gnomes hurling earth elementals out of catapults than "Jim died of dysentery."
And the T-Rex thing deals with the CR system as a definition for how powerful a player is. It's been changed a bit, but in 3.5, by definition, a 20th-level human Fighter with no magical ability at all is supposed to be as powerful as sixty-four T-Rexes. By the Pathfinder revision, that's probably more like 32 or 48, but still, a high-level muggle is not Bob the Watch Captain, level 20. They're superhuman. In fact, their strength scores alone mark them as such; you can have a fairly low-level, nonmagical human who's stronger than an ogre. That's not an ordinary mortal.
This is a game whose root lore includes the Ulster Cycles, which has swords that lop off mountaintops and Cuchulain goes Super Saiyan. Really, the system's tame in comparison.
Funny, I thought Pathfinder was a game that could cater to a wide variety of players. Apparently it only caters to a specific playstyle and if you don't like it, "go play a different game". You're getting pretty close to making personal attacks. That's not the purpose of this thread, let alone these boards."A variety of players" and "everyone" are two entirely different things. Yes, 3.5/PF are designed to cater to a variety, but at it's core, it's a game of heroic fantasy. Heroic fantasy is not a gritty, realistic, or historically accurate genre; it's pulp....
I see what you're saying. As a side note though, how would that 20th level Fighter fare with none of his magical gear? The gear is really what makes a non-caster fantastic, especially at higher levels.
@Dork Lord:
** spoiler omitted **
Thank you for that. This thread was beginning to give me ulcers I was so stressed out. I apologize for the implication that I was being accused of something. I assure you, you are correct that all I wanted was an in depth discussion about this topic since it had been derailing other threads for the last month or two.
It's definitely inclined that way, but ultimately it is what you make it. You can play a 'gritty' game in Pathfinder, or a High Fantasy game, or a Sword & Sorcery game.
You can try to get grit, but ultimately, unless you're passing a lot of houserules, you're not gonna get very gritty. Pathfinder doesn't really have very good rules for dysentery, or natural gear breakage from use, or anything to really make survival at all challenging, or long-term ramifications for injury besides death, or sanity, or any sort of creeping dark corruption, or dismemberment, or wounds that take more than a nap to fix. It just doesn't have any of these gritty elements that make other systems so much more suitable to that end.
I see what you're saying. As a side note though, how would that 20th level Fighter fare with none of his magical gear? The gear is really what makes a non-caster fantastic, especially at higher levels.
Now you're pointing out another glaring problem in the game, but that character's still probably pushing the double digits in T-Rex count and they're still overtly superhuman.
"Realism" is a word that (in roleplaying context) usually doesn't mean realism. If "realism" meant realism in forum discussions like this, then proponents of realism in DnD would have argued that characters who can regularly fight CR 5+ DnD monsters and not, well, die, should not only be able, say, to simply fall from 200 ft. and not suffer any crippling injury, but to fall from 200 ft. and remain utterly unharmed. Because that's what is actually closer to realistic for beings of such superhuman might. Instead, "realism" generally means "keeping player characters down", or "keeping parts of the world arbitrarily low-fantasy", or something in between.
It's definitely inclined that way, but ultimately it is what you make it. You can play a 'gritty' game in Pathfinder, or a High Fantasy game, or a Sword & Sorcery game.You can try to get grit, but ultimately, unless you're passing a lot of houserules, you're not gonna get very gritty. Pathfinder doesn't really have very good rules for dysentery, or natural gear breakage from use, or anything to really make survival at all challenging, or long-term ramifications for injury besides death, or sanity, or any sort of creeping dark corruption, or dismemberment, or wounds that take more than a nap to fix. It just doesn't have any of these gritty elements that make other systems so much more suitable to that end.
Grit != real world detail.
Grit = a verisimilitude of the effect of minor details, grey morality, harsh practicalities of life and the like. It doesn't matter if Pathfinder does not have detailed rules for dysentery, what matters is the acknowledgement of the existence of dirt and disease. It does not matter if the rules are there for the characters to be taking care of their gear, cleaning their wounds, meeting war veterans with missing limbs, or seeing people dying of malnutrition.
Grit is not about going into turgid rules of limitless detail. Grit is a feel about the game, the genre, the way the characters act and the way the world is presented. The detail can in fact be counter-productive by slowing down the pace of play and losing the narrative in the face of mounting bookkeeping. It's like the rule of horror - the best horror is not described in detail, it is inferred from the lack of it.
That is why I say you can run and play in a gritty game of D&D/Pathfinder. In fact, the gritty games of such tend to be the most memorable ...
Grit != real world detail.
Grit = a verisimilitude of the effect of minor details, grey morality, harsh practicalities of life and the like. It doesn't matter if Pathfinder does not have detailed rules for dysentery, what matters is the acknowledgement of the existence of dirt and disease. It does not matter if the rules are there for the characters to be taking care of their gear, cleaning their wounds, meeting war veterans with missing limbs, or seeing people dying of malnutrition.
Grit is not about going into turgid rules of limitless detail. Grit is a feel about the game, the genre, the way the characters act and the way the world is presented. The detail can in fact be counter-productive by slowing down the pace of play and losing the narrative in the face of mounting bookkeeping. It's like the rule of horror - the best horror is not described in detail, it is inferred from the lack of it.
That is why I say you can run and play in a gritty game of D&D/Pathfinder. In fact, the gritty games of such tend to be the most memorable ...
And I've done a great deal of roleplay with no rules at all.
Pathfinder rules do not support grit, and in fact actively oppose it. You can try thinking, "Okay, high falls are dangerous and injuries can take a long time to heal and may have serious long-term consequences," all you want, but the fact is, that 30' fall isn't dangerous and it will heal up without consequence within a few days. If you can get that gritty feel out of Pathfinder, more power to you, but that feel is in spite of a system that's actively working against it.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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"Realism" is a word that (in roleplaying context) usually doesn't mean realism. If "realism" meant realism in forum discussions like this, then proponents of realism in DnD would have argued that characters who can regularly fight CR 5+ DnD monsters and not, well, die, should not only be able, say, to simply fall from 200 ft. and not suffer any crippling injury, but to fall from 200 ft. and remain utterly unharmed. Because that's what is actually closer to realistic for beings of such superhuman might. Instead, "realism" generally means "keeping player characters down", or "keeping parts of the world arbitrarily low-fantasy", or something in between.
This reminds me of the description of the duel between Gregor Clegane and the Prince of Dorne in George Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" trilogy. Clegane is known as "the Mountain that Rides" and is ludicrously strong and tough, almost unbeatable in combat, so much so that most people wouldn't even try. His sword is so heavy most people can barely lift it.
This series, I would content, is pretty much the sine qua non of gritty fantasy. However, in the duel...
In the next book, Gregor does eventually die from the poison,
And he's probably a bit over 7 feet tall, probably a muscular 300+ pounds.
In other words, his head would about come up to the codpiece on a D&D ogre, a monster that's using a club the size of a small tree, that could shatter concrete with its fists to say nothing of its weapon. Arrows that would perforate a knight on horseback would bounce off of an ogre's breastplate, and even if they got through or hit an unarmored spot would have to pierce hide as thick as old leather, and even getting through that would only stick into muscle tissue a foot thick, never getting close to anything vital. Blows that would shatter human bone would be more likely to notch your sword or axe when the hit the osseous girders making up the ogre's skeleton.
Realistically, there is no way on God's green earth aside from some form of ambush/trap disabling it first that any human being with medieval tech would have a prayer of beating this monster.
And yet it's the kind of creature that *LOW*-level D&D PCs gang take down regularly. And it is the runty kid brother of bigger and badder versions of itself that would punk it into next Tuesday.
Realistically, Large creatures should be extremely difficult for human-sized foes to beat, and anything Huge or bigger should be virtually impossible.
Grit != real world detail.
Grit = a verisimilitude of the effect of minor details, grey morality, harsh practicalities of life and the like. It doesn't matter if Pathfinder does not have detailed rules for dysentery, what matters is the acknowledgement of the existence of dirt and disease. It does not matter if the rules are there for the characters to be taking care of their gear, cleaning their wounds, meeting war veterans with missing limbs, or seeing people dying of malnutrition.
Grit is not about going into turgid rules of limitless detail. Grit is a feel about the game, the genre, the way the characters act and the way the world is presented. The detail can in fact be counter-productive by slowing down the pace of play and losing the narrative in the face of mounting bookkeeping. It's like the rule of horror - the best horror is not described in detail, it is inferred from the lack of it.
That is why I say you can run and play in a gritty game of D&D/Pathfinder. In fact, the gritty games of such tend to be the most memorable ...
And I've done a great deal of roleplay with no rules at all.
Pathfinder rules do not support grit, and in fact actively oppose it. You can try thinking, "Okay, high falls are dangerous and injuries can take a long time to heal and may have serious long-term consequences," all you want, but the fact is, that 30' fall isn't dangerous and it will heal up without consequence within a few days. If you can get that gritty feel out of Pathfinder, more power to you, but that feel is in spite of a system that's actively working against it.
Works for me, is all I can say. I understand where you are coming from, but seriously, it isn't all in the rules. It also depends on the levels at which you are playing, and the nature of the game you are in, and ultimately how the player treats it.
Works for me, is all I can say. I understand where you are coming from, but seriously, it isn't all in the rules. It also depends on the levels at which you are playing, and the nature of the game you are in, and ultimately how the player treats it.
Again, I've done a great deal of roleplay without any rules at all. However, if you're going to use rules in your roleplay, why bother with rules that actively oppose the kind of roleplay you're going for, instead of the many, many available rules that actively support it at various weights?
Works for me, is all I can say. I understand where you are coming from, but seriously, it isn't all in the rules. It also depends on the levels at which you are playing, and the nature of the game you are in, and ultimately how the player treats it.Again, I've done a great deal of roleplay without any rules at all. However, if you're going to use rules in your roleplay, why bother with rules that actively oppose the kind of roleplay you're going for, instead of the many, many available rules that actively support it at various weights?
If somebody else is doing something you don't think should/could be done with the game of their choice and having fun that way with no issues whatsoever, why tell them they are wrong to do that and it shouldn't be done that way?
After thirty years of RPGs I have played plenty of systems both high fantasy and high realism, and I haven't found it to make a gnat's ass worth of difference to how I play save in the kinds of characters that the rules allowed me to build mechanically to my own satisfaction. You are trying to argue rationally about something that comes down to a matter of taste, and taste is not rational. I like a 'gritty' game of Pathfinder. Why do I have to justify it?
The word I think being sought for is not 'realism' but verisimilitude - the internal consistency of the imagined world in the game we play, and it's consistency with the world around us. The world around us doesn't have wizards and dragons, but we can suspend disbelief because of our experience does include shops a people, and the concept of swords and that hitting people with them hurts.
You should always bear in mind that hit points are not health points - they are a combination of health, toughness, skill and luck. A two hundred foot fall from a cliff is normally lethal to the average man, and yet people have survived such: you hit a tree on the way down, or the place where you fell was above a sharply inclined scree slope, or the cliff just wasn't vertical and you skidded and bounced down a series of break-falls. That fall off a sky-scraper was broken by the shop awning far below you, and the crate of peaches bellow that (you are covered in peach purée, but you are alive).
You can go further into legend as levels rise - heroes like Achilles who was all but invulnerable, or Hercules who could wrestle an elephant, or Gandalf who didn't stay dead. Because you started as human, you can appreciate these changes, the verisimilitude is maintained by the systems internal consistency.
This, this, this, this some more, and also this. And if someone doesn't get it yet, they need to keep re-reading this until they do.
If somebody else is doing something you don't think should/could be done with the game of their choice and having fun that way with no issues whatsoever, why tell them they are wrong to do that and it shouldn't be done that way?
After thirty years of RPGs I have played plenty of systems both high fantasy and high realism, and I haven't found it to make a gnat's ass worth of difference to how I play save in the kinds of characters that the rules allowed me to build mechanically to my own satisfaction. You are trying to argue rationally about something that comes down to a matter of taste, and taste is not rational. I like a 'gritty' game of Pathfinder. Why do I have to justify it?
A screwdriver is a bad tool for driving a nail. Yes, you can drive a nail with a screwdriver, yes you have every right to drive a nail with a screwdriver, but there are better tools designed to do the job and which do said job better.
I never said you were wrong for driving the nail with the screwdriver, but a hammer is the better tool for the job.
Though I'd also say that a dark backdrop to a heroic fantasy story is not gritty and if the PCs don't have to contend with the challenges of the "gritty" backdrop, it's just a paint job on heroic fantasy and not actual grit. There's nothing wrong with it, but it is by no means a gritty game in the same way as dropping truly horrific Lovecraftian monstrosities that the PCs fight at great risk in a D&D game is still not CoC-style horror; it's heroic fantasy adventures with a horror backdrop. And most "science fiction" is not, in fact, science fiction, but rather adventures and dramas and romances and action stories set in space.
Not according to the Gamemastery Guide. Even the Beggar is a level 2 NPC. A typical City Watch Guard is level 3, the Watch Captain is level 7, a typical Knight is level 8 and even a Princess is level 8. Heck, a King is level 16... and that's your -typical- King.
The characters for Golarion are higher level because Golarion is a land of higher level fantasy. The problem isn't the game, it's the world. If you want a world closer to ours in terms of power, you're going to have to level down the world. Golarion has people who deal with tieflings and wizards and orcs on a regular basis, nobility is going to have to be stronger than normal humans if they're ever going to survive in that kind of world. There's the ice queen/white witch who came from another world just chilling with her own kingdom in Golarion... I'm not sure how much I've mentioned this but seriously E6... If you want a gritty, tactical game, power down the world.
Pathfinder's rules don't actively oppose gritty at low levels, it's the higher levels where it gets ridiculous.
Though I'd also say that a dark backdrop to a heroic fantasy story is not gritty and if the PCs don't have to contend with the challenges of the "gritty" backdrop, it's just a paint job on heroic fantasy and not actual grit.
I think therin lies our disagreement - we have a different definition of what 'grit' actually is. To me it is largely in the fluff, not the crunch. For you it has to be crunch-supported. That's fine by me.
E6
I have no side in this particular issue, but I will say that E6 is my preferred solution for when I want a fantasy game that is not also a superhero game.
Pathfinder RPG, taken as written, is definitely a super-hero-team game, and a very good one. That's not always what I want, and it is very useful to have the E6 trick around when I don't want to have everyone learn a new system.
@Dork Lord: really, if you keep getting hung up on the lava-like thing, go to the Unearthed Arcana and use Wound/Vitality points for your HP figures.
In brief: wounds are real, physical damage, and vitality is your "staying power and combat luck, etc" (essentially it's the HP and he hit die that get rolled and added up every level). Certain types of scenarios actually apply damage against your wounds and bypass the vitality entirely. Of note: swimming in lava, falling damage, and any other things that you'd deem "unrealistic" to have a character survive from easily and/or unscathed. Critical Hits also get applied directly against wounds as well.
The prime factor in using this, critical hits and 'realistic' damage WILL kill people outright fast since there are far fewer Wound points than Vitality by far. I think wounds = con score or something, and vitality = HP as normally figured.
So ... yeah. If you take more damage than con value on a crit - you die. If you fall and take damage like that - you die. If you dive into lava and take damage like that - you die.
Again - I *promise* if you play w/a Wound/Vitality distinction your characters will NEVER EVEN CONSIDER taking a swim in the lava.
:-D
Not according to the Gamemastery Guide. Even the Beggar is a level 2 NPC. A typical City Watch Guard is level 3, the Watch Captain is level 7, a typical Knight is level 8 and even a Princess is level 8. Heck, a King is level 16... and that's your -typical- King.
Golarion, particularly when examined in combination with APs, is not a mechanically consistent setting. The same group of goons can be all level 2 because it is second adventure in the path or all level 8 because it is the sixth one. Wimps and covards can have the same level as PCs who waded through rivers of blood to get there. A lot of established setting NPCs have metric tons of virtual levels that exist only during interactions with PCs, but do not impact the world otherwise. Demographics/economics make as little sense as ever, since 3.0. And societies/lands are based solely on the rule of cool, pretty much ignoring verissimilitude whenever it conflicts with the desired flavor. So you have, for example, demons marching in hordes against the borders of the human lands and facing human armies in conventional battles, even though all of them can, you know, teleport.
That's, by the way, is the main reason I never bought into Golarion.
Taking a swim in a lava lake is like cutting your own throat: you die automatically. Being dropped into a lava-lake and surviving means you landed on the few solid bits floating on the surface and got away with severe burns.
I think therin lies our disagreement - we have a different definition of what 'grit' actually is. To me it is largely in the fluff, not the crunch. For you it has to be crunch-supported. That's fine by me.
"Your character will never have to directly contend with starvation even though everyone else in the world does" is a major fluff aspect.
There are huge differences in the fluff that keep a game from being truly gritty (rather than heroic painted grey) when the heroes don't have to contend with those background issues that get painted on like dismemberment or disease.
Taking a swim in a lava lake is like cutting your own throat: you die automatically. Being dropped into a lava-lake and surviving means you landed on the few solid bits floating on the surface and got away with severe burns.
Are you aware of just how hot and toxic lava is? Landing on those "solid bits" and surviving is every bit as unreasonable as falling right in and living to tell about it. Convection kills.
I think therin lies our disagreement - we have a different definition of what 'grit' actually is. To me it is largely in the fluff, not the crunch. For you it has to be crunch-supported. That's fine by me."Your character will never have to directly contend with starvation even though everyone else in the world does" is a major fluff aspect.
There are huge differences in the fluff that keep a game from being truly gritty (rather than heroic painted grey) when the heroes don't have to contend with those background issues that get painted on like dismemberment or disease.
They don't know that they don't, though. The players may not know that there are no special rules for that in the adventure, or of the DM's making. Hence the characters act as if they were.
Taking a swim in a lava lake is like cutting your own throat: you die automatically. Being dropped into a lava-lake and surviving means you landed on the few solid bits floating on the surface and got away with severe burns.Are you aware of just how hot and toxic lava is? Landing on those "solid bits" and surviving is every bit as unreasonable as falling right in and living to tell about it. Convection kills.
Very, thank you. But let's face it, if Mr Incredible had succumbed to heat and toxic gases in the scene where he fights the first spherical robot, the film would have sucked (my kids love that film). Verisimilitude does not have to be realistic, it just has to be consistent.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Not according to the Gamemastery Guide. Even the Beggar is a level 2 NPC. A typical City Watch Guard is level 3, the Watch Captain is level 7, a typical Knight is level 8 and even a Princess is level 8. Heck, a King is level 16... and that's your -typical- King.Golarion, particularly when examined in combination with APs, is not a mechanically consistent setting. The same group of goons can be all level 2 because it is second adventure in the path or all level 8 because it is the sixth one. Wimps and covards can have the same level as PCs who waded through rivers of blood to get there. A lot of established setting NPCs have metric tons of virtual levels that exist only during interactions with PCs, but do not impact the world otherwise. Demographics/economics make as little sense as ever, since 3.0. And societies/lands are based solely on the rule of cool, pretty much ignoring verissimilitude whenever it conflicts with the desired flavor. So you have, for example, demons marching in hordes against the borders of the human lands and facing human armies in conventional battles, even though all of them can, you know, teleport.
That's, by the way, is the main reason I never bought into Golarion.
Except they can't, you know, teleport outside the borders of their own country, given the hedging in of that country by the Wardstones.
So they can't attack out of the barrier. They can attack right AT the barrier, but that means their teleporting is kind of irrelevant except for use in movement TO or FROM the battle zone, since the battle zone itself is static in position.
If the "good guy" armies invaded into the Worldwound, they could certainly teleport around the invading army and not engage it... but at some point said army would presumably arrive at some target of value to the demon armies, who would then have the option of teleporting away and letting the good guy army sack and take what they want or else meeting them in battle.
The demons will always have a mobility advantage WITHIN the Worldwound, but they won't necessarily have a communication and coordination advantage that would allow them to make optimal use of it, given their inherently super-ultra-mega chaotic nature.
If you're referring to the microtactical use of teleport within a battle, by the demon armies OR by the good guy armies... well, the flavor text simply states that they fight battles against each other. It doesn't really get into specific tactics at a granular level. The demon armies can teleport, and use all manner of other spell-like abilities. An invading good guy army will have its own buckets full of magical abilities. The battles between the two are precisely as "conventional" as you want to imagine them to be on both sides. Demons teleporting in and dropping rocks on the regular armies below? Sure. Squad tactics for soldiers with the Teleport Sense feat from the Campaign Setting to predict the arrival of teleporters and ready attacks against them? Sure. It's all good.
The campaign fluff of Golarion in no way suggests that demons don't use their teleportation to advantage; it simply places a boundary limit on WHERE the demon armies can use it (inside the Wardstones). This boundary limit prevents the demon armies from simply teleporting into every undefended hamlet and village across the planet and eating everyone they find. The good guy armies can't be leapfrogged as long as the Wardstones remain intact.
So, the demon armies' choices are to teleport around inside the barrier fighting and eating one another (which the flavor text suggests happens quite a bit), or to attack at the borderlands, which is where the good guy armies are. If the demon armies want to break the barrier, the good guys protect it. They are stipulated in the campaign setting as being almost unable to affect the barrier themselves. They've had a few minor successes, but never a significant breach, and all of them involving some significant process. It's not like they're just walking along the barrier looking for an unlocked door and that any point of exit is as good as any other. They have to WORK AT IT in one place to try to drive their way through.
So, if they want to be able to get out and destroy the world (which they do), first they need to break out of the barrier. When they try, the good guys meet them in combat. They can either run away and give up their attempt, presumably also surrendering their (for lack of a better term) "MacGuffin drilling equipment" and having to start the process all over, or they can defend their point of attack and try to press the breach.
In other words, if they want to accomplish their escape, at some point they have to, you know, engage the enemy in combat. If your teleportation destinations are constrained (which for the demon-armies in Golarion they are), then Being able to teleport doesn't exempt you from having to actually FIGHT to defeat an enemy.
Taking a swim in a lava lake is like cutting your own throat: you die automatically. Being dropped into a lava-lake and surviving means you landed on the few solid bits floating on the surface and got away with severe burns.
That's the only thing I was suggesting in my lava example. The player I insta-killed in the game I ran years ago died because he stripped naked and dove into the lava, metagaming that since he had plenty of hitpoints, he could swim around for a few rounds and then come out, alive and having proven how badass he was.
@Speaker: Yeah, I did like the wound points in Star Wars. I don't think I'd have crits go through to wounds, but blatantly stupid things like jumping into lava or having one's throat slit should.
I said earlier that RPGs are reward engines for specific styles of play.
What you get out of your game experience is the overlap between the kinds of rewards that your RPG supports and the kind of rewards that your GM supports.
There are groups where the GM rewards dwarf the RPG mechanical rewards. These groups could run a nuanced gritty fantasy based off of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (where the aim is to get the right people married to each other, the dead king reanimate, and in general combine the tropes of Jane Austen and R. E. Howard), using a rulebook that was made up of random pages from D&D 1st edition, RIFTS and Amber Diceless and make it work.
Pathfinder mechanically rewards accumulating gold, converting it into stat and combat bonuses, and killing things that have more gold to convert into ever larger stat and combat bonuses.
What is the CR of successfully negotiating a peace treaty? How much XP does it give?
What kind of XPs do you give to a female character who gives up her true love to marry a man twice her age, settling a feudal border dispute? Or does she cease being an interesting character because she's now a home-maker and suckling babes, rather than stabbing ogres in the gizzard with a gigantic pig sticker?
What consequences are there to breaking your oath before God to serve your feudal lord in full troth, to love all that he loves, to fight at his command? I know, swearing fealty gets in the way of parties acting as free-roving adventurers, solving problems by killing things...
What consequences are there to that feudal lord for sending you on a known suicide mission so that he can marry your soon-to-be widow? How does this alter XPs given? What magic items will help you progress through this story? (Note that the suicide mission is merely a sideline...it's assumed the PC, having 'protagonist' stamped on his forehead, will come back and be an inconvenient pain in the arse.)
Except they can't, you know, teleport outside the borders of their own country, given the hedging in of that country by the Wardstones.
Wardstones were established after demons appeared in force (and not by uber-powerful precursors), they were stated to be breached at certain points in time, they were stated to let non-unnoticeable number of leakers through. And, IIRC, the campaign book isn't even clear on what exactly they do.
And one major (in hundreds) demonic breach - given their mobility and that their main schtick is brutalizing people for the evulz - is sufficient to cause devastation at least comparable to Black Death across the world, unless said world is well-covered by casters scrying&frying threats to their domains or comparably potent entities. Which, at the very least, makes the setting rather unhospitable for low-level adventurers, by putting them out of business.
Grit != real world detail.
Grit = a verisimilitude of the effect of minor details, grey morality, harsh practicalities of life and the like. It doesn't matter if Pathfinder does not have detailed rules for dysentery, what matters is the acknowledgement of the existence of dirt and disease. It does not matter if the rules are there for the characters to be taking care of their gear, cleaning their wounds, meeting war veterans with missing limbs, or seeing people dying of malnutrition.
Grit is not about going into turgid rules of limitless detail. Grit is a feel about the game, the genre, the way the characters act and the way the world is presented. The detail can in fact be counter-productive by slowing down the pace of play and losing the narrative in the face of mounting bookkeeping. It's like the rule of horror - the best horror is not described in detail, it is inferred from the lack of it.
That is why I say you can run and play in a gritty game of D&D/Pathfinder. In fact, the gritty games of such tend to be the most memorable ...
ACTUALLY...
Grit =
1. small hard particles of material, such as dirt, sand, or shavings, often arising from grinding; also known as "swarf"
2. a (mainly) small-town nationwide newspaper often delivered by young boys on bicycle, with origins in the same town as the Little League Baseball world series
3. the abrasive material on sandpaper, also called "grain"
4. a vegetarian restaurant in Athens, Georgia
5. a personality trait marked by perseverance and passion for long-term goals
Grits =
1. a corn-based food common in the Southern US, made of ground hominy
2. a Christian hip-hop group
3. something you can kiss if you don't like this post
True Grit =
1. a pretty good movie starring John Wayne (not his real name)
2. a worse movie starring Jeff Bridges
3. a Glen Campbell album
4. the mascot of the University of Maryland, Baltimore
Gritty =
1. full of grit
2. spirited, resolute, or unyielding
Nitty-gritty =
1. the finer details; the "nuts and bolts" or the "brass tacks"
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band =
1. an American country-folk-rock band founded in Long Beach, CA in 1966
Other than that, I suppose Dabbler has it about right.
That's the only thing I was suggesting in my lava example. The player I insta-killed in the game I ran years ago died because he stripped naked and dove into the lava, metagaming that since he had plenty of hitpoints, he could swim around for a few rounds and then come out, alive and having proven how badass he was.
Ah, I see ... the player rolled a natural '1' on his Wisdom check!
@Malachi, ROFL.
And one major (in hundreds) demonic breach - given their mobility and that their main schtick is brutalizing people for the evulz - is sufficient to cause devastation at least comparable to Black Death across the world, unless said world is well-covered by casters scrying&frying threats to their domains or comparably potent entities. Which, at the very least, makes the setting rather unhospitable for low-level adventurers, by putting them out of business.
Yes, a major breakout from the world wound would be horrible. Sounds like an adventure path. It also doesn't change the fact that if you're going to criticize a setting for being internally inconsistent, you really ought to actually know the setting.
Of course high level casters, both arcane and divine, have the means to alert themselves, sometimes in advance, to existential threats. It's why scry and die tactics wouldn't really work.
How exactly does a Diviner's Cabal protecting themselves, and, purely by necessity, the rest of the world, from cataclysmic, world ending, extra-planar invasions affect low-level characters at all?
I get it. You don't like the Golarion setting. I don't use it either. But the problems that it has, are not the problems you think it has.
Not according to the Gamemastery Guide. Even the Beggar is a level 2 NPC. A typical City Watch Guard is level 3, the Watch Captain is level 7, a typical Knight is level 8 and even a Princess is level 8. Heck, a King is level 16... and that's your -typical- King.Golarion, particularly when examined in combination with APs, is not a mechanically consistent setting. The same group of goons can be all level 2 because it is second adventure in the path or all level 8 because it is the sixth one. Wimps and covards can have the same level as PCs who waded through rivers of blood to get there. A lot of established setting NPCs have metric tons of virtual levels that exist only during interactions with PCs, but do not impact the world otherwise. Demographics/economics make as little sense as ever, since 3.0. And societies/lands are based solely on the rule of cool, pretty much ignoring verissimilitude whenever it conflicts with the desired flavor. So you have, for example, demons marching in hordes against the borders of the human lands and facing human armies in conventional battles, even though all of them can, you know, teleport.
That's, by the way, is the main reason I never bought into Golarion.
That's a problem that has always plagued D&D. Have you looked at the rosters of NPCs from Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms? From any edition?
Although to be fair, killing monsters isn't the only way to earn XP. It's just the most easily codified. XP is given out for over-coming challenges. NPCs face challenges too, not all of them have to be combat. Trade negotiations, arresting drunks, knightly tournaments, peace treaties, etc. All sorts of things can get the NPCs of the world to higher levels.
The only thing that really matters is how high you want "normal" people to go in your world. Which that really means is at what point do the PCs start becoming a truly major force. If the city watch is 3rd level with a few 5th level captains, then the player's start becoming potent bullies around 6th level. If the average guardsman is level 1 and the captains are level 3, then a 4th level character is already greatly feared or respected around town.
Different people have different expectations. I think Golarion tends to support higher level play precisely because there are a fair number of reasonably high level NPCs around. It's a good idea to peg where the important NPCs of a world will be in your game. If you want your characters to retire as kings at 10th level, then maybe the king is only a 9th level aristocrat with 5th level elite guards. Every game and group is different, and different power levels appeal to different people.
What is the CR of successfully negotiating a peace treaty? How much XP does it give?
CR equals APL.
What kind of XPs do you give to a female character who gives up her true love to marry a man twice her age, settling a feudal border dispute? Or does she cease being an interesting character because she's now a home-maker and suckling babes, rather than stabbing ogres in the gizzard with a gigantic pig sticker?
If the latter question is a consequence of the former's actions, it doesn't matter. She's now an NPC. Otherwise, no XP. Individual characters get Action Points instead.
What consequences are there to breaking your oath before God to serve your feudal lord in full troth, to love all that he loves, to fight at his command?
With that lord's domain, the oathbreaker becomes an an outlaw. Consequently, the character can be killed on sight.
What consequences are there to that feudal lord for sending you on a known suicide mission so that he can marry your soon-to-be widow? How does this alter XPs given? What magic items will help you progress through this story?
1. Depends on if the characters live. If they do, we get to re-enact Ulysses "greeting" his wife's suitors.
2. Characters get extra XP for killing the feudal lord and his minions. The character targeted by the plot gets an Action Point.
3. Too many variables to answer sensibly.
:)
Mark L. Chance | Spes Magna Games
I found an article awhile back that reset my perceptions of the d20 system in regards to reality. Part of the problem is the trend of people to stat up their favorite characters from movies and literature as level 20...or at least 15th.
THe article make a very solid proposal that the problems with realism in d20 based systems is not the mechanics, it is the scope of the characters. Going on to suggest that characters such as Aragorn are not actually very high level despite some perceptions (placing that august figure at around 5th level).
This carries that up until passing 5th level the mechanics hold a reasonable similarity to reality. 6th level and beyond have exceeded "normal human" range and entered heroic or legendary scopes.
THe article was D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations by Justin Alexander.
http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html
-Weylin
That article, plus "E6" slightly Pathfinderized can trim the "wuxia" style over the top things that happen later in campaigns.
I like Pathfinder for what it is, which is a very nice cleanup of the best version of the Gygaxian D&D to ever be published. I still prefer different game engines for other games, including 'realistic' medievaloid adventure with rare magic.
Different horses for different courses.
One of the side effects of the D&D mechanics:
If a 7th level Duke declares a 13th level adventurer to be an outlaw, it's all but impossible for the forces under the Duke's command to actually threaten said 13th level adventurer with justice.
I think the term you're looking for is "absurdly powerful".
Wuxia characters are often absurdly powerful, but not all absurdly powerful characters are wuxia.
I think that the term 'wuxia' is used because it is a specific genre that is accepted to be absurdly powerful.
Also, 'absurdly powerful' is open to interpretation on what absurd means to each individual. Describing a power level as 'wuxia' allows an interpersonal specification that mere absurdity does not. Absurd could be, to someone, the first level, wherein a person playing a mundane instrument can effect the outcome of a martial contest.
"Summon Instrument"
"I summon my pipe organ. It should arrive right...about...THERE". (points to the grid square where the ogre is.)
*whistles innocently*
The temptation to Inspire Competence in someone else's Intimidate check by playing the soundtrack for Deliverance is nigh irresistible at times..
But now we've drifted from realism to "Bards Need Nerfing". :)
"Summon Instrument"
"I summon my pipe organ. It should arrive right...about...THERE". (points to the grid square where the ogre is.)
*whistles innocently*
Pipe-organ? Come on, get it right - grand piano!
**CRASH!**
That's how it's done.
It's a trap.
Sorry, I was busy role-playing on Sunday and couldn't make it.
While on the surface I generally agree that, absent some in-game, supernatural explanation, the world in D&D/Pathfinder/whatever should generally behave as the real world does. The problem is that not everyone's perception of "realisitic" is created equal. If you try to adhere too closely to real-work physics, then everything breaks.
Take the superhero genre, for example. Strongy McStongman could never lift a ship or an airplane. Even if we assume there was some place on the vehicle that he could apply sufficient force to move the required mass, his feet would simply sink into the ground. As magic feet are not generally considered one of McStrongman's powers, we're left with genre conventions to explain why this does not happen.
Likewise, a lightning bolt in D&D would behave very differently depending on the electrical conductivity of the environment. But that isn't fun (or even playable), so physics get ignored.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: Your perception of reality (or mine, or anyone's) probably isn't sufficiently "correct" to make D&D "realisitic," nor would you want it to be. Therefore, the best we can hope for is agreement on what makes for an optimal model of reality for the purposes of the game, but no one's view can be said to be truly "realisitic."
Demographics/economics make as little sense as ever, since 3.0.
Correct.
But who cares? In the real world, we often can't make sense of the economics, except perhaps in retrospect (and often not even then!). I understand the temptation to try, but the best you can hope for is "realistic enough for me." If Golarion doesn't scratch that itch for you, that's cool, but we should all remember that trying to come up with a completely realistic campaign setting is a fool's errand.