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Yes, but if there was a 5% chance every six seconds of falling, he'd be dead the first time he ever tried to walk the tightrope. A good acrobat is fine up right until there's a distraction, at which point there is a chance of failure.
From the player viewpoint, saying "I take 10" doesn't take away all tension unless the player knows the DC.
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Situation 1 - Party with a caster that has Invisibility, Fly and Brew Potion. These three, rather low level (below 10) abilities allow the party to completely negate the defense of any bandit camp, perimeter wall, or towering spire that isn't deliberately tailored to combat these abilities. Why fight your way through the castle when you can just fly up to the tower where the princess is imprisoned, grab her, and fly away?
Situation 2 - Detect Magic. As it says, detects magic. Consistently, quickly, for free and without fail. A player that says he's always detecting magic effectively neuters any magical traps, effects, and auras and finds any and all magic items. Making the player constantly say hes detecting magic quickly becomes cumbersome. When I GMed I ruled that the players still had to roll perception to find things, but this did not go well with the players.
I have had the same problems in the past. Nowadays, most gamers like the power and care little for the mystery. It is typically easy to fix these issues for those of us that care about story over building a character. Here is what I did.
Situation 1 = change ingredients for creating any magic item. I have done this with one simple item. The PCs need to find a magical ether to create an item. A certain number of applications are required to create such items and are used up in the creation process. I have not named it yet, but I will eventually find something fitting. Also, this ether is naturally occurring and is unpredictable. A rare and expensive unguent.
Situation 2 = Another rather simple change. I moved Detect Magic back to a first level spell. I absolutely agree with you that it is too powerful. And with the lack of ether, PCs cannot make 30 wands of this item nor do they ever find full wands of the spell itself in the treasures they discover.
Irrie.
Situation 1 - Party with a caster that has Invisibility, Fly and Brew Potion. These three, rather low level (below 10) abilities allow the party to completely negate the defense of any bandit camp, perimeter wall, or towering spire that isn't deliberately tailored to combat these abilities. Why fight your way through the castle when you can just fly up to the tower where the princess is imprisoned, grab her, and fly away?.
Options:
1 Make the players want to fight the enemies. If they want to fight them (for loot, or because they're despicable villains, or whatever) they won't be trying to avoid a battle and will enjoy it more.2 Use better defences. You can't fly up to the tower, grab the princess and fly away, unless her idiot captors have left her by an open window. There's a reason 'dungeons' is such a common fantasy trope - it stops the players being able to enter by any one of a dozen possible entrances. If the bandits are in a cave rather than a camp, the GM can stay in control, if that's really so important.
An archer with permanent True Seeing is also an option.
The second part of your quote is particularly disturbing in that it basically says that situation becomes irrelevant by level 7 and it mostly just boils down to what kind of powerful creature the party is fighting in the end. No more mysteries, no more sneaking into the thieves guild, no more minotaurs labyrinth. Just go here, kill X where X is a progressively harder and harder monster.
I am not saying the mysteries and sneaking around can not be done, but it will require more effort on your part as they level up. As an example they might fine one member of the thieves guild, and intimidate him into drawing a map of the place. They are not in immediate danger so taking 10 on sense motive is possible, and since it will likely be a mook I doubt his bluff check, if he even has ranks in it will fool them. They can also use spells that force him to tell the truth. Once they get the map, they just teleport directly to where they want to start from.
So the notice DC is flat 20 no matter what? He could be hiding behind a crate, standing in the middle of the room, or running around screaming bloody murder, its still 20? Sounds odd but ok.
Well if he is screaming the pinpoint DC drops by 20 so the notice DC won't matter that much. The primary function of the "notice" DC seems to be to depower invisibility in my opinion.
The guy that fell I think is the perfect illustration that no matter how good you are, how confident you are, failure is always possible. Eval Kenevial failed a lot, even on things he'd done before, and is noted as having broken every single bone in his body. And thats what makes daredevils interesting. We watch them because some part of us expects them to fail. If we KNOW that they're going to make the jump, how interesting is it really?
I never said failure wasn't possible while taking 10. Maybe the rope was not as sturdy as the other ropes, causing him to take an unknown -5 penalty. Maybe in his old age he lost some dex, and did not realize it. My point was only that taking 10 is still possible. A guy in one of my games tried to take 10 and set off one of the most interesting traps I have seen. :)
If the trap is 2 or 3 CR's above the party APL they could fail the check even if they are really good. Finding the trap is a easier.
Situation 2 = Another rather simple change. I moved Detect Magic back to a first level spell. I absolutely agree with you that it is too powerful. And with the lack of ether, PCs cannot make 30 wands of this item nor do they ever find full wands of the spell itself in the treasures they discover.
Irrie.
Not really. The "problem" is that people learn their GM's. So if one GM has an illusion spell up they know the wall is not really there. Another one might figure out there is an invisible person. Another might know the GM has a trap there.
Those are some very specific complaints that GM's come with. For the players to know exactly what you are up to they must have noticed a pattern, even if the GM denies it.
**OP**
Bad GMs are bad.
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The invisibility/fly combo was happening as low as level 3 since the potions only cost 750 a pop its very doable. By level 4 the sorcerer was able to make his own. That means that from now on all quests have to be underground to prevent the fly in fly out tactic. Or they have to have some sort of magic field that negates either effect.
Consuming 1,050 gp worth of magical items at a time is a hard pill to swallow for 3rd level characters.
As far as the invisibility bonus itself, its not just 20 its +20. Meaning that a character with 0 Stealth taking 10 (I wouldn't let him, but thats the halfway point) gets a roll of 30. In order for a wall guard to to have a 50% chance of spotting them they have to have a perception score of 20. The pre-generated NPCs at level 6 and 7 have Perceptions of +10 meaning only a 5% chance to spot, and thats assuming the player flies close by and its broad daylight.
This is basically the entire point of being invisible.
Detect Magic and Taking 10 do take "extra time", but not from the players perspective. Thats what makes them damaging in my opinion at least having to declare or roll a die gets annoying and they stop doing it leaving them vulnerable. Sure you can have time sensitivity in game but how meticulous and draining would that be. I like and use the idea of you have X number of days to complete the quest or the princess dies or if you sleep in the dungeon the bad stuff happens. But for these abilities you would literally have to keep track of the seconds of the day. Or arbitrarily declare that too much time is being taken.
Take 10 doesn't take any extra time. It just means you're being conservative about it. You're willingly accepting the low-end of average (10-11) to avoid rolling horribly low. It also speeds up gameplay for the GM. When I'm GMing, it's a hell of a lot easier to assume the orcs in the camp are taking 10 on their Perception checks. If I insisted that every Stealth/Perception combination be rolled, then not only would that take forever, but it would also pretty much assure that Stealth doesn't work (because you will roll badly, or one of the twelve enemies nearby will roll really well).
Detect magic can be circumvented By X thickness of Y but that's not always a viable option. Most chests or doors with magic traps aren't 3 feet thick. Magic items aren't often going to be in a lead box. Many dungeons aren't constructed by epic level wizards such as a dragon's lair, a giant's castle, or a city sewer. And many permanent effects such as The Endless Corridor (which has a soft spot in my heart) are just completely out in the open and I haven't been able to find anything that masks the presence of a magic aura. While a GM could say that detect magic doesn't work for one reason or another, that's little more than just saying "no".
Magic Aura is a thing. A low level thing. A low level, cheap thing. Given its 1 day/level duration, it even gets significant discounts if you want to make it a permanent magic item effect.
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The invisibility/fly combo was happening as low as level 3 since the potions only cost 750 a pop its very doable. By level 4 the sorcerer was able to make his own. That means that from now on all quests have to be underground to prevent the fly in fly out tactic. Or they have to have some sort of magic field that negates either effect.They haven't invented the iron bar in your world? A couple of those across the windows should keep invisible flying wizards out quite nicely. Or just make the windows smaller. If you know that it's possible for people to become invisible and fly, why would you put big open windows in your tower?
Behold. GM thinking in progress. :D
The second part of your quote is particularly disturbing in that it basically says that situation becomes irrelevant by level 7 and it mostly just boils down to what kind of powerful creature the party is fighting in the end. No more mysteries, no more sneaking into the thieves guild, no more minotaurs labyrinth. Just go here, kill X where X is a progressively harder and harder monster.
I think your a lot of your frustrations are summed up in this statement. The problem seems to stem from the fact that people expect the game to simulate realistic heroes all the way up to 20th level, which simply isn't what the game was designed for. Take a moment to read this fantastic article that gives a good explanation (keep in mind that it was written back in 3rd ed, but its points still hold true). The short version is that the game transitions through several extremely different types of play across the 1 to 20 spectrum, and you should calibrate your expectations accordingly. The game is a great simulator of reality for the first five or so levels. After that, characters have literally become superhuman, so your storytelling and adventure design has to reflect this.
On another note, there has been a lot of discussion (and frustration) about the take 10 rule. In my experience, the best way to train the PCs not to always take 10 is simply to not tell them the DC for the check in question. The PCs can, of course, make educated guesses based on what they know and what's printed in the book, but they don't always have all the information about a given situation (and they don't always know that they don't have all the information). If you mix it up so that sometimes the "take 10" check succeeds and sometimes it fails (with consequences), they'll be much more hesitant about using it all the time.
As an example, say a player needs to swim across a river. They can tell it has a strong current, and there are some rocks. The table says rough water is DC 15, and they guess the rocks probably add +2, for a total DC of 17. The swimmer is 2nd level, is trained, and has a 16 strength for a skill bonus of +8 (2 ranks, +3 class skill, +3 Str). He decides to take 10 for a total result of 18. However, he couldn't see the snarl of grasses and weeds below the surface that grab at his limbs. They increase the DC by another 2, making it a DC 19. His check fails and he begins to founder. This kind of thinking can be applied to almost any skill check. The important thing is to mix it up (sometimes the river can just be a river; it's important to let them succeed now and then so they can feel good about their skills), and not to kill them outright with this kind of thing. In this example, he only failed the check by 1, so he makes no progress but doesn't start to drown. However, he will actually have to roll his check if he wants to progress, and then there is a chance of more serious failure.
Pclark if 3rd level characters are blowing the type of money on potions what type of permanent gear did they have at 3rd level. By that level I expect one magic weapon, but not if you are blowing 750 on potions, and that is about the time shadows come into play.
They are also my main reason for getting a magic weapon as quickly as possible.
It's a bad idea to try and stop the PCs from using their abilities in a clever way. Instead, think about how the other side would react and challenge the party to overcome that.
This is something I have done before. The players can normally think of a counter. Like I said before the GM is only one person. The players have him outnumbered so it is easier for them to come up with ideas.
Some quests and adventures take place in cityscapes, wilderness, or other wide open areas. I have yet to see an entire city or encampment that is completely enclosed in iron bars nor can I justify making one.
If you're suggesting that quest lines involving these kinds of terrain should cease to exist past level 3, well then I see a severely limiting flaw in the game's design.
All 'fly + invisibility' means is that the goal of 'get past the surrounding wall' becomes relatively trivial. Any more complicated goal remains a challenge - wipe out the bandits, break into the safe, find out where the soldiers are keeping the prisoners, kidnap the earl...
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Let's say they have to get into the bandit camp, rescue a prisoner from a cage in the big tent in the middle, and get out. In order to get a party of four in there, you'll need multiple fly and invisibility spells. Then you're in the tent, trying to open the lock of a cage and defeat the guards. By the time that's done, the original spell durations will have expired and you'll need to get your entire party flying and invisible again, and do the same for the prisoner(s) in order to escape. Do you want to use up that many potions? And because you didn't murder your way in there, the whole of the rest of the camp can be attacking you by this time if they were alerted.
And if they do manage to work out a way to do it all without a fight? Let them. If they don't want to fight the bandits, why force them?
Interesting article Foot. I do have the expectation of a smoother progression than what occurs. What I gather from the article is you can't have a campaign where the players progress from 1-20. Each phase has to have its own specific mindset. So 1 whole campaign would be between level 1-5 and it would have the more human challenges. 5-10 you design a campaign for super heroes fighting super villains and all of the human challenges are removed. 10-15 is what? Extraplanar where they aren't even dealing with the problems of the material world anymore, and 15+ they're practically fighting gods and cosmic beings? Its hard for me to wrap my head around because every frame of reference I have seems to be between 1-10.
To say that you can't have a full campaign from 1-20 isn't quite right, I think. Many DMs on the message boards, myself included, have done it. But to do so requires that you recognize that this involves changing from one power level to a very different one. A level one player character isn't a greenhorn novice, he's a professional. A level five character is someone for the history books, by real world standards. Past that he becomes something superhuman - a mythic hero whose power grows until, by level 20, he is one step short of godhood.
A campaign can hold all of these stages of play, and each play can be every bit as meaningful as the last, so long as you recognize it for what it is, and design your campaign accordingly. That means a lot of things for your game design. It means you probably want to transition from static dungeon crawls to dynamic, non-linear adventures. It means giving the players long term, proactive goals and the means to fulfill them. It doesn't have to mean extraplanar travel, but that is a possibility.
The other option is closer to what you said: find your sweet spot, and play in that level range. For some people that means running an E6 game. For others, it means playing in the 8-12 range. A small few like the demi-god status of the 15-20 range.
Whichever you choose, learning to handle these challenges is a process. No one should expect you to be a great DM on your first session (or even your 20th). All of us have had our fair share of disastrous adventures. A lot of good advice has been thrown around on this thread. Listen, digest, compartmentalize. You'll do just fine.
As for the fly/invis problem you're having, your earlier takeaway was exactly right. Design the adventure such that the group doesn't want to avoid the nymph's glade/hag's marsh/mountain shrine. Maybe something they need/want is there, or they're pursuing someone that goes there. If you're worried about the party bypassing encounters that you worked hard to design, don't despair! You can usually insert that encounter somewhere else later, and the party won't ever know. In fact, sometimes you come across looking particularly clever.
As a general design rule, I tend to spent two thirds of my time working on the conceptual part of the adventure (figuring out general storyline, NPC personalities, motiviations and likely reactions, figuring out the historical/geographic significance of relevant things and how they affect the adventure at hand, etc.) and only 1/3 on the nitty gritty mechanical stuff. Once you have some experience, it becomes fairly easy flesh out the details on the fly, which has the added benefit of making it easier to react when the PCs do something unexpected that bypasses what would have been your hard work.
If your PCs are level 4-5, they're not all flying unless they're spending a huge amount on potions. And they're not all invisible unless more potions and/or the wizard has used all his 2nd level spell slots. So they fly over the palisade at night and land in the camp.
Now where's the storeroom/prison? That building? Or maybe that one, the one with the guards and the stout door. Shush. Yes, you two in the armour. Shush. What? I can't hear you whispering. Oh-oh, dogs. Come on, quickly. <clang, clank>.
Wizard takes out 2 Warrior 1 guards with Sleep (DC 15 vs +0 Will has a 49% chance to take both), rogue stealths up and dispatches them with CdG. Both are now visible. Rogue checks for traps. It's dark, of course, lit only by the dim lantern over the door, so he gets, say, -5 to the attempt unless he wants to show a light. Does he now want to Take 10 (5 ranks+4 (dex) + 3 (class skill) +2 (rogue) +2 (MW kit) = +16, for a roll of 21. Typical EL4 trap DC is 20-25; any magic trap is 25+; a Glyph of Warding is DC28. So Take 10 is very risky. The wizard or cleric could cast Detect Magic, but it has verbal components and doesn't tell you much. Meanwhile the dogs are sniffing about.
So let's assume that a) the rogue finds the trap, b) he disarms it silently, c) he unlocks the door (again, Take 10 probably isn't going to work), d) they evade the dogs, e) the cleric and fighter make it to the door without waking the neighbourhood (Stealth mod approx -2 due to MW armour and lowish Dex; Take 10 = 8 or 28 depending on whether you're listening or looking; a dog has Perception +8). Now what's behind the door? More guards? Could be a noisy fight. Cleric casts Silence just in case.
...and so it goes. They still need to deal with the contents of the storeroom/prison (if this is the right building) and then get out before the alarm is raised. And how do they get out? No Fly or Invisibility left. Maybe they should have used those 2nd and 3rd level slots for something else.
Looks balanced to me.
Another thing. If you have a problem with Take 10 being too on-off (in that it always works or always fails), try Take 2d6+3 (=5-15). It's the same average with a fairly minimal chance of anything remotely extreme, so covers most of the situations where a character is doing something routine.
Never mind that take 10 is supposed to be on-off and that it's supposed to reduce the number of die rolls, not complicate them further.... ; )
Never mind that take 10 is supposed to be on-off and that it's supposed to reduce the number of die rolls, not complicate them further.... ; )
It's certainly supposed to reduce the number of die rolls, but I doubt it's meant to be on-off. That just leads to metagaming. For example, if you know (CRB p 94) that an Average Lock is DC 25, you'll take 10 if your DisDev mod is +15 or more. Which then leads to the GM (who knows that the rogue gets +16) puts in Slightly-Better-Than-Average locks at DC27. And so on.
What the 2d6+3 models well is the slight variation that will happen, so you can very confidently do the easy stuff, will fail the hard stuff and aren't on that knife edge in the middle.
They didn't. They came across a few masterworks, but not much that was magical. I think they had a wand of burning hands, maybe a ring of protection. They were fighting mostly terrestrials (humanoids, animals, magical beasts) and still mopping the floor with them anyway.
Pclark if 3rd level characters are blowing the type of money on potions what type of permanent gear did they have at 3rd level. By that level I expect one magic weapon, but not if you are blowing 750 on potions, and that is about the time shadows come into play.
They are also my main reason for getting a magic weapon as quickly as possible.
If they dont have them, they should be easier to deal with, and what types of encounters are they mopping the floor with. They can take on CR 2 and 3 encounters. Even the occasional CR 4 and CR 5 is ok.
I'm talking about city walls, perimeter defenses. The buildings themselves, yeah I've got you, iron bars. But the transit from the outer wall to the Widget Storeroom, just nullified.
You are going to have to specify. Before we were discussing castles. If they are trying to gain access to a city why not just walk in? 3 minutes is not enough time to fly across an entire city so both fly and invis should expire. How are they getting to the widget so easily even if they use invis to get past front guards. I am assuming the room would be lock and have a guard/guardian of some sort. They also need to get back out of the area, and the city. You might want to give us a detailed example. For now it seems like you are handwaving time away so that 3 minute potion is lasting a lot longer than it should.
Take for example a bandit camp, something that is inevitably out in the open terrain. Its typical defenses would be setup to deter a retaliatory martial force and so it would most likely have wooden barricades, a gate, and a couple watch standers patrolling the perimeter. Since its a bandit camp, implying multiple bandits, such a quest would be solidly in the 3-5 range even just using the 1/2 CR Warrior NPCs.
It can be in the range, but it would not have to be, and yes if ALL of guard measure up to a CR 3 it will be easy. APL=CR are supposed to be easy. The entire quest should not even have a set CR. Even a CR 5 will not provide a challenge if all of the XP is split up among many 1/2 CR opponents. That may be the problem here. In the example I give you above each room was at least a CR 2 if not higher. The fight with the trap and the ghoul with class levels was a CR 6 or 7 by itself, and it was not even the boss fight.
If you can think of any such scenes where it wouldn't work without resorting to "there's a magic there just because". Then I'm willing to listen. That's actually what I'm here for.
Neither the city scenario nor the other scenarios have to be that easy.
One thing you also have to realize is this, once the party is level 5 you will need casters as bosses. A martial will get trounced most of the time due to action economy. At least have a martial with caster backup.You don't need magic "just because". In the game world you need magic to counter magic, so it would make sense the someone hire or ally with a caster. The caster himself could be the one the in charge of things.
If your don't want to use a "caster" then outsiders work well since they have SLA's. Other monsters with special abilities work also.
I will go with a fey in a forest. Let's say the fey is very powerful, but the PC's need an audience with her because she has the widget they need. Her servants are openly hostile, but can be talked down. So the PC's can talk or fight. Now you can't use the invisible+fly combo because knowing she is in the forest, and knowing exactly where she is are too different things, and knowing exactly where is she are too different things. There is also the problem of visibility in a forest.
Nobody is searching an entire forest in 3 minutes. Even if they use survival and they follow a trail it will take more than 3 minutes especially if they are moving at half speed so they wont take penalties.
That is just the enviroment alone before you have to deal with the fey underlings or whoever is under the control of the widget-fey.
The mountain has a similar issue. The creature/widget may be in a cave on the mountain. Then that cave could lead to a network of caves. Unless they have unlimited invis and fly, they won't be skipping to the end, and someone could always made the perception check to notice them. So now they have wasted their potions, and they don't have any permanent gear.