On Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:40:33 +0000 (UTC),
mkkuhner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>In article <eo1u13h5i39tddltrk5nmbmtn3uk2rmn23@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>Erol K. Bayburt <ErolB1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>Hm. What are the necessary defenses in 3.x? Boosts to AC, boosts to
>>the three saves, resistance/immunity to the five "energy" types (fire,
>>cold, sonic, acid, electricity), resistance/immunity to poison. What
>>others?
>
>You need to be able to deal with:
>
>Touch-attack level drain and stat drain (no saves!). This could
>either be ungodly touch AC, or death magic immunity.
The "defenses" I've seen to this one have been along the lines of "the
GM uses these attacks sparingly, and only against parties with quick
and easy access to Restoration."
I'm tempted to house-rule that *drains* simply don't exist, that the
worst case is stat and level *damage*, which "heals" at the rate of 1
point or negative level per day (or possibly even faster, for "lesser"
forms).
But then I find "only powerful magic can fix this" afflictions to be
really annoying in general.
>
>Invisibility, especially improved invisibility, and darkness.
>(These may not be "defenses" per se but they behave similarly.)
Yeah.
>
>Save-to-half effects where half damage will kill you--particularly
>a problem for mages. The usual approach is to somehow get Uncanny
>Dodge.
I think a combination of two memes are at work here: "Mages must be
wimps; they have a powerful offense, and so must be 'eggshells armed
with sledgehammers' in order to be balanced." And "It should be
possible for a well-placed blow to take down even the mightest hero
(or monster) with one shot. If a figure can't be taken down that way,
it's cheating."
>
>My PCs also always seem to need specific charm and fear defenses,
>as the Will saves are never high enough to be certain, and the
>high-level charms are devastating. We have come very close to
>losing PCs to the half-orc fighter already, and it only gets worse
>with level. And the mentalist wizard can take out the rest of the
>party without their even knowing that something is wrong.
In the read-only literature, high level types seem to be naturally
immune to charm & fear effects, or at least highly resistant. In the
worst case, a high level type will attack friends at a much lower
effective level if charmed to do so.
Part of the problem, IMO, is that D&D really doesn't have "high level"
in the sense of "no longer can be treated as a mook." The concept of
"there's always a bigger fish" has been exaggerated into "there's
always someone who can treat you as a speed bump."
I've occasionally toyed with the idea of a "reverse massive damage"
rule, e.g. that a character can never take more than 50 pts per round,
rather than 50 points giving a chance of instant death no matter how
high the hit point total. I've never been able to come up with one
that worked to my satisfaction, but I'd like to see, as a general
design philosophy if not necessarily a hard-coded rule, the concept
that an Nth level character can never be taken down in less than N/3
rounds, no matter *how* powerful the forces attacking him.
I know this would annoy the believers in "a single
sufficiently-well-placed blow should be able to take out even the
mightest of characters," but that belief annoys *me*
--
Erol K. Bayburt
ErolB1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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