Our adventuring group had a near TPK last session. Chibby has earned his name as the Killer DM. His dice know no remorse.
My character was hit with a Maze spell. I don’t believe there is was a saving through. If there was, I failed. Upon returning from the Maze spell a few rounds later, I was hit by 2-3 mobs and killed before I could even act. I was shocked.
In my opinion, the game is broken at these high levels (we’re on level 12). I can be hit by things that I cannot defend against, and can take so much damage in a single round that I can’t act either. It was lame.
No offense to Chibby, he’s a fine DM. I just think the game is broken.
At higher levels, things stop being a combat and more of a “who can trick who faster”. I didn’t feel involved or like I was playing a game at all. I just got to watch, tick a few numbers of my sheet and watch my HP dip to -19 all before my initiative came up.
I long for 4th edition where this concept seems to have been eliminated (as far as I can tell).
I agree, I am just curious to see how successful they were at attaining their goal. Hopefully very.
Oh well, looks like the first batch of books has been delivered to the WotC office, so -THEY- get to play with the real rule books.
Now that they are out I wonder how long it will be before PDFs are leaked onto the interwebs. I will admit, I will JUMP at the chance to get my hands on them so I can start playing for real. I would feel bad about that, but I already have 2 PHBs, 1 DMG, 1MM, and Keep on the Shadowfell preordered, and I can not think of anything that would make me cancel that, certianly not a PDF. Esp since I am going to be banning laptops from my tanle, I am sick of looking at laptops instead of my players.
… I am sick of looking at laptops instead of my players.
I can understand this. Chibby uses his laptop to DM and it’s a useful tool. However, the same laptop in the hands of Chibby while he’s a player is a crap shoot. Too easy to surf when the game slows down or during breaks where youtube videos are shown and it’s hard to get the game on track.
I am guilty of this as well and try to leave my laptop off of the gaming table.
That said, I do wish there was a way for me to manage my character on my laptop that wasn’t such a PITA to use. Heroforge is decent, but it frought with bugs.
Yeah, the game is definitely a bit borked at higher level. This is probably our first time really playing through the upper levels. My lack of experience in that arena combined with the insta-lethality of some abilities makes for an un-fun time. What’s fun about someone being blinded or stunned without a save? What’s fun or interesting about sitting at the table doing nothing for 30 minutes as 3 rounds of combat slowly scroll by?
That combat sucked Jimbo. I apparently can’t run smart baddies like I want to without royally screwing the players. This week should be better.
Speaking of which, anyone have any recommendations on running 15-20th level adventures without having to fudge the dice?
Speaking of which, anyone have any recommendations on running 15-20th level adventures without having to fudge the dice?
The brief answer (since I don’t have time for a long winded one) is to use more baddies of lower level as opposed to solo style baddies. Pay attention to EL and not CR. Even then, there are issues...if there weren’t we wouldn’t be seeing a 4e release.
Yea, I had forgotten about the youtube vids, heh I have 1 player who surfs adult sites when it is not his turn! Let me tell you when he says “wow” it gets a lot more attention than it does when I do!:)
Those are just a few of the many reasons I am disallowing them.
As far as DMing higher level players goes, you just made me realize that in 7-8ish years of playing 3x I have NEVER ran a campaign in the double digits and only ever PCed in one, and it started out at level 17 or 18, can not remember which.
From what I have seen higher level campaigns break down into either no challenge or instakills. There does not seem to be a lot of happy middle ground.
Yeah, I hate DMing high level. I’m running Pathfinder and we are starting book 4 and the save or die stuff is starting to come into play. I also hate the prep time. Everytime there is a caster, or a monster with spell like abilities, I have to spend a lot of time looking up stuff. Then some spells are included in the stat block but some aren’t and I have to carefully determine which is which. Ugh, its like doing boring homework.
I’m probably going to skip book 5 after this one and go directly to book 6, so that the group can finish by June 6. Once 4e comes out, I’m done DMing 3.5.
I should mention I am running Age of Worms. There is a general lack of low level mobs to throw at the party. I was looking to avoid having to put too much effort into retooling things but I may have to.
I really love D&D but I feel like I’ve been missing out on a huge aspect that I never realized I hated.
I use the d20srd website and copy and paste stuff right into a word doc to get a similar effect as the encounter pages in the Dungeon adventures. It works like a charm. Then I use etools to make the bbeg that need levels and whatnot and drop that stat block into the encounter sheet. I then copy and paste spell descriptions into the document as well. I save each encounter separately and have some standby bad guys on sheets (Emerald claw party and other reoccuring bad things in my campaign).
The whole thing gets printed for game day. I have always disallowed laptops at the table even when I was in the army and the only books we had were on the laptops.
Heck, cut and paste is the only way I can do it. I even clip cool art that inspired the encounter and hang it over the screen at the beginning of the encounter.
For preset encounters I also store the mini’s in a seperate little box (deck screw boxes)for that specific encounter. set up for a new encounter is done in the time it takes everyone to roll initiative (no kidding). For off the wall or unlanned encounters we take a fiver to grab a pop or something while I set up the table (everyone has to leave the table - they come back to their seats ready to focus and get it going on).
As for planning without the lethality… age old, who knows. at wil powers and encounters powers…
I also hate the prep time. Everytime there is a caster, or a monster with spell like abilities, I have to spend a lot of time looking up stuff. Then some spells are included in the stat block but some aren’t and I have to carefully determine which is which. Ugh, its like doing boring homework.
I’ve never minded high level play (but I do hate epic) but high level DMing is a problem. The prep time for 3.5 in general is longer than the actual time spent playing, and as the levels go up, so does the prep time. By the time my players had hit roughly lvl 15, I spent at least twice the amount of gaming time doing prep.
When my long running campaign started to hit the higher levels I took the gloves off. I sent my party against my most powerful creations Dread Warriors, Star-Spawn, Astral Shredders. Remember at high levels the PC’s can either find a way to kill it or at least run away from it.
I had no problem preping monsters and enemies for higher levels my problem came in simply ran out of adventuring ideas. The only major goal left for the campaign was to kill the Ancient Soul Locked, Vampire Lord and save the world from vampiric enslavement. I knew how the story would end but I had no ideas left for the couple chapters before the climax.
Personally I loved high level in 2nd edition better than 3rd. Some of my players have wanted to get to that point so they can feel like gods from time to time. For me being the consumate DM for my group, the size and scope of everything at higher levels in 3rd edition can quickly spiral out of control.
The other side to this to, for me anyway, we only play once a week on a weeknight no less, for 4 hours tops (kids, jobs, etc.). At 18th level an encounter (ONE encounter) can literally last the entire session.
The other side to this to, for me anyway, we only play once a week on a weeknight no less, for 4 hours tops (kids, jobs, etc.). At 18th level an encounter (ONE encounter) can literally last the entire session.
I know what you mean. We had a fight in our Age of Worms game against a Black Dragon that took up the entire session.
The problem with save or die isn’t necessarily the lethality. At high levels especially, death isn’t an end as it is a temporary condition. And yes, it’s definitely not fun to sit out of an encounter because your character just got unlucky at the beginning and dropped on round 2.
The real problem is the disparity between Good saves and Bad saves. A spell with a will save DC powerful enough to challenge the wizard’s will is going to plaster any poor fighter or rogue unlucky enough to get hit with it. And if you drop the DC so that the fighter-types have a chance of passing it, then it’s going to be something the casters are just going to laugh off. In my (and apparently others’) play experience, these numbers line up nicely in the middle levels of the game, where the disparity between Good Saves and Bad Saves is enough to be meaningful, but not so great that it spells doom for people with Bad saves.
