Hot take: Strongest creatures in the setting shouldn't just be clowned by PCs with no resistance.
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The dog on the left is such a strawman lol. Those who would say such a thing are few and far between. I know plenty of DMs and players who think the PCs’ combat encounters should be challenging and even lethal.
To be fair, starting at around level 13 it becomes more challenging to, well, challenge a party without having dragons and shit everywhere. You can almost not build encounters with “normal” enemies anymore.
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The dog on the left is such a strawman lol. Those who would say such a thing are few and far between. I know plenty of DMs and players who think the PCs’ combat encounters should be challenging and even lethal.
I mean this meme is built for strawmen that’s what it is
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I am not that much a D&D player, but doesn’t it a huge power scale meaning that in the lower levels, it’s fairly easy to design a you fucking loose encounter. And isn’t there The Tarasque who is basically a you fucking loose statblock
I am all for a choose your fight approach where you should definitely not mess with someone bigger/stronger especiully without a plan or a lot of explosives. However, I expect that PC can make it out of an ordinary fight (just make sure it’s not a target shooting practice and put 1-2 PC on the ground). Then if the 13th gen newborns vampire want to fight the 5th gen prince, not my problem if they have to burn their character sheet afterwards.
Finally, one of the best rpg out there is 10 candles where you know from scratch that everyone will die
And isn’t there The Tarasque who is basically a you fucking loose statblock
Mostly. They really bungled it in the 2014 statblock. Other editions gave it some combination of ranged attacks, regeneration, a way to cancel flight, and a burrow speed. In 2014, it had none of these. A level 5 Wizard could borrow a Repeating heavy crossbow from an Artificer, repeatedly cast Phantom Steed to stay out of its range, and take it down on its own. Or instead of a wizard, use an Aarakocra from Elemental Evil Player’s Companion with 2 levels in Rogue (so it can learn Cunning Action), and it will be able to fly faster than the Tarrasque. Unless you use Chase rules.
In 2024, they have a ranged attack and a burrow speed, and they’re significantly faster. It’s hard to just attack from a safe distance and they can always just head underground. But if you can get 150 feet in the air, you’re at an impasse where neither can hurt the other. And a high-level party has a lot of crazy tools at their disposal.
The problem isn’t enemies that are too hard or too easy. The problem is the GM not knowing ahead of time which it will be.
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The official charactersheet for Caine: https://64.media.tumblr.com/e06763afdbed16a49a0146a2282002a4/tumblr_n6pj41Ch1s1qhuazoo1_540.jpg
I like his weakness
Also shouldn’t his sire be Lilith, oh no wait he was cursed by God yeah.
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It is actually bad game design in the sense that there really isn’t a decent mechanic to escape monsters.
5.0 orcs, for example, had double the speed of the average PC with their dumbass free move action.
The solution is rolling disengage as a series of skill checks (like World of Darkness would…) but then you have to explain how, exactly, a dude in full plate escapes a dragon.
“Have you seen Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?”
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Meh, I can make a Swara bastet / Tremere abomination with ranks in Celerity and mage powers and cybernetic arms from that one Pentex supplement who can attack 30 times in Crinos (but that’s not a problem cuz I’m Metis with some pointless “story factor” drawback that has no effect on my combat capabilities) with enchanted plasma cannons, doing 300d aggravated before Cain gets his first action.
Caine congratulates you on making him laugh before killing you.
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Inspired by frustrating conversation I had. For those curious, that was the statblock of Caine, father of the vampires.
I feel like this is one of those “make sure people are on the same page before you start running the rpg”. I’ve had players react very badly to their characters being maimed and stuff (a fairly normal Dark Heresy event), but I’ve also had some players want a severe tacticool experience. And some people want cozy vibes with some dice rolling.
D&D does suffer from a lot of system/setting baggage as well as the expectation that the system works as well from level 1 to 20+.
I want to play shadowrun again, for all its flaws
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Inspired by frustrating conversation I had. For those curious, that was the statblock of Caine, father of the vampires.
Heroic fantasy vs dark gritty fantasy.
Give me heroic fantasy every time.
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It’s never the real god, just a physical avatar. There’s still a lot of Batman vs Superman narrative horseshit in the idea though
“Oh you surprised the guy who moves faster than most speedsters and can hear and see everything around him. Sure, okay, then he leaves and throws an asteroid he found within half a second from orbit before you’re done blinking”
DnD avatars don’t really scale that hard but neither do PCs so all of those fights revolve around the avatar being stupid or using a McGuffin
D&D 3.5 characters can scale pretty high
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Inspired by frustrating conversation I had. For those curious, that was the statblock of Caine, father of the vampires.
No one actually plays dnd like that though…
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Beat the campaign by forcing the DM to explain the logistics of how the monsters find their daily calories
A wizard did it.
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I mean this meme is built for strawmen that’s what it is
And brother, I brought matches.
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May be few and far between but I can vouch for it; I had a party like that whom I hated DMing or playing with in their games. Myself though I am as you said someone who prefers the challenge; both exist in large numbers.
Yep had a player like that. Would also be upset if he couldn’t do literally anything he wanted.
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A wizard did it.
This is Pathfinder, kiddo, we don’t play around with silly D&D handwaves: Which wizard, and why?
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If you ain’t dying, you ain’t trying.
Win if you can, lose if you must, but always TPK.
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Inspired by frustrating conversation I had. For those curious, that was the statblock of Caine, father of the vampires.
You say that, but IIRC there are official DnD statements that gods do not have statblocks because they are too powerful for mortals to even try to fight. They renamed the Tiamat statblock to Aspect of Tiamat for precisely this reason.
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I am not that much a D&D player, but doesn’t it a huge power scale meaning that in the lower levels, it’s fairly easy to design a you fucking loose encounter. And isn’t there The Tarasque who is basically a you fucking loose statblock
I am all for a choose your fight approach where you should definitely not mess with someone bigger/stronger especiully without a plan or a lot of explosives. However, I expect that PC can make it out of an ordinary fight (just make sure it’s not a target shooting practice and put 1-2 PC on the ground). Then if the 13th gen newborns vampire want to fight the 5th gen prince, not my problem if they have to burn their character sheet afterwards.
Finally, one of the best rpg out there is 10 candles where you know from scratch that everyone will die
Things I have learned in 4 decades of DMing:
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There is no encounter that cannot be cheesed by creative players
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Same creative players will also party wipe by doing stupid things like trying to run on lava
It’s basically impossible to accurately scale encounters beyond astrology and good wishes. I’ve seen a party of 6th levels get wiped by seven starving goblins in a tower.
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Inspired by frustrating conversation I had. For those curious, that was the statblock of Caine, father of the vampires.
Old. Funny but repeated too often. I don’t like DnD but even if they once gave stats to Cthulhu, I wouldn’t name a game to be better. Why one? On which criteria?
Also: I like World of Darkness. I have Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changelin, and many add ons. But let’s be honest (and troll a bit): Vampire the Masquerade is just a simulation of puberty. The system, when it was released, was awesome but it is way to crunchy for today’s standards.
If one should bash DnD, then do it with style with modern games: Blades in the Dark, Fate, Dungeon World, Ironsworn,… whatever from this century.
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D&D 3.5 characters can scale pretty high
Not on a Superman or Wonder Woman level but I think you could make a strong argument that Wish fixes (or breaks) everything by itself.
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Not on a Superman or Wonder Woman level but I think you could make a strong argument that Wish fixes (or breaks) everything by itself.
My character that got most close to broken was a Master Of Many Forms druid, though I was playing with a group with two well skilled min-maxers who were ridiculous from the outset at level 3
Wish can’t make you great, it can’t do much more than the equivalent of about half a level, you need a broken character design from the start
Of course there’s also support for epic level progression taking you beyond level 20. A druid at level 20 could face an army and win
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