Re: Ravenloft - OOC Chat #1
PvP out of familiarity, nothing more. :) People who play with me know it's something I avoid when it's not character-breaking to do so.
So, none of the following is a critique of this game or anything, I'm just talking game design and rules issues, which is something I enjoy doing. ^_^
I recall a podcast a friend shared with me, with an interview with one of the developers of 3.x. The discussion was about the linear fighter/quadratic mage issue (which was acknowledged as a real thing by the designer). The developer explained that 3.x was callibrated with the idea of '4 combat encounters a day' (which might seem like a lot, but...dungeons...). So a mage could, if they desired, use their best stuff in the first fight...but be less and less effective as the day wore on. So conservation and some tactical choices was the key.
However, once people get into more serious roleplaying than 'kill things and take their stuff', I notice that the 4 encounters a day tends to go out the window.
That's when what I refer to as spelldump takes place. The mage is far more likely to simply blow through their best stuff when an encounter happens. No fault to them, it makes sense (in character and out of character). And without the conservation of resources being necessary, it's not a problem. Combine that with the issue of 'mages become more and more effective than fighters/rogues as the levels go up' and it ends up with the fighters and rogues getting a little sidelined.
This can become even more exaggerated on PbP games, where there are often lengthily periods between fights. ^_^ Often the fights aren't 'random encounters' (fights take so long on PbP that GM's tend not to push them too much) - they're storyline stuff, so they come up less frequently.
Toss onto that the lack of magic items in PbP games - this is something I've noticed - and it becomes even MORE exaggerated.
Nobody wants what used to be called a Monty Haul game, where people are festooned with magic items like a Christmas tree. There's even a trend toward having 'low magic campaigns', where people are supposed to survive on their wits and skills. I love that idea, myself (there's a reason I prefer Anima to D&D).
But D&D was designed with magic items in mind. Take them away, or drastically reduce their frequency, and you end up with fifth and sixth level fighters swinging away at enemies they can't really hurt very well any more, while mages are fireballing and lightning-bolting (and succeeding). You end up with higher-level characters with the same armor class as they had three-four levels ago, which doesn't hurt the mages as much but REALLY hurts everyone else. The fighters are using weapons that aren't growing as much in damage or ability while the mages...well, you get the idea.
Lack of magic items would be a bigger problem for mages, as well if they had to conserve resources…but if they don't, spelldump takes care of that issue very nicely. ^_^
All of which can add up to the non-casters being significantly less functional in fights than the casters. NOT a GM problem, not a player problem. It's a design problem (all games have issues of some kind or another). And often it's not that important - these days, I tend to make up characters for 3.5 games without any care for them being super-effective because I know there are going to be characters in the group who are (if I cared for that, Violet would have been VERY differently made/set-up, and likely have branched into some kind of prestige class by this point).
I'm in it for the RP, really. ^_^
This message was last edited by the player at 11:38, Wed 10 Apr.
