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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!princeton!down!tilt!chenr
From: chenr@tilt.FUN (The 1200 baud hacker)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Game Balance / High Level - Low Level
Message-ID: <196@tilt.FUN>
Date: Sat, 27-Oct-84 03:06:16 EST
Article-I.D.: tilt.196
Posted: Sat Oct 27 03:06:16 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Oct-84 04:40:38 EST
References: <3905@decwrl.UUCP> <1662@ucla-cs.ARPA>, <187@tilt.FUN> <1816@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Organization: Princeton University EECS Dept
Lines: 101

> The problem with running a high power campaign - say twentieth level
> or so - is that it becomes impossible to properly balance the
> campaign.  At a certain point characters become invicible for all
> practical purposes, and the campaign goes rapidly downhill because
> the players are no longer challenged.  Of course, this can happen
> in any campaign that lasts long enough, but it happens a LOT more
> quickly in a campaign that starts out at a high level.

Sigh.  See <187@tilt.FUN>.  It is NOT impossible to properly balance
a 20th+ level campaign.  I know.  I've played in several.  The trick is
to do a good job of balancing the power.  If you make the monsters/NPC's
intelligent and powerful, making the game challenging is no problem at
all, believe me.

Of course, one of the things you have to do is to be willing to hype the AD&D
monsters, realizing that the AD&D monsters aren't geared for 20th level play.
Basically, it boils down to playing the NPC/monsters like PC's.  (i.e. assume
that they are reasonably intelligent, crafting, cunning, etc.)

First of all, you let a monster, if it's intelligent and is physically capable
of using a magic item, use decent magic items that it may have in its
treasure.  There's no reason why a dragon that can cast spells shouldn't
use its rod of absorption or wear a ring of wizardry on its claw, say.
Likewise, if a vampire has a +5 cloak in its hoard, let it wear the darn
thing.  I sure would, if I were the vampire.  I hate dying.

Second, you should assume that if a monster's been alive for a long
time, there's a reason why it hasn't fallen prey to a wandering party
of adventurers before.  Thus, dragons, demons, etc. should become more
powerful.  I mean, if 10 fifth level characters can clobber your
average huge ancient red dragon with say, a 75% loss rate (which I
don't think is too out of line), red dragons would have died out a long
time ago.  So you make the "book" dragons the stupid cannon-fodder
dragons, and you make the ones that have been around a while larger,
stronger, and more intelligent.  (i.e. don't make the stupid thing
breathe just because your dice tell you to.  A dragon should know how
to fight well instinctively, it's been bred in for eons.)  Also, give
it an intelligent setup for its lair.  A dragon's only had a few
centuries or so to work one out and is supposed to be fairly
intelligent, even if it's only a "book" dragon.

Third, hype your gods.  The book gods are great for playing against 4th
level characters, but against 20th, forget it.  What DM's I know do is
to interpret the "book" gods as the capabilities of their manisfestations
on the prime material plane.  On the other hand, just try and tackle Odin
on his own plane, just try...  It's a good (and not entirely fun) way to die.

Fourth, let your NPC's do anything the PC's can do -- at least.  If your
PC's have special items, let your NPC's have special items, too.  (As a
matter of fact, that makes for some fun adventures.  We've had plenty
that were inspired by greed.  That is, PC's found out about a neat
item an NPC had and went through hell and high water to take it away from
him.  Then there was the one inspired by the staff of destruction (as in
it DESTROYED things as per the spell, destruction) simply because we
wanted revenge on anybody that tacky and gross enough to actually USE one
in battle.  We pulled off one of the great con jobs of all time for that
one.)

As the characters become more and more powerful, you should find that
random battles occur less and less (thus taking some of the strain off
the DM's brain).  PC's become powerful enough so that they don't just
go off hunting for treasure.  Sure, trashing a city is easy, but it's
boring, and it can lead to 20 NPC's out for blood -- yours.

High-level D&D, if done well, is more challenging than low-level D&D for
the following reasons.  First, each PC has more options open to him
in terms of the things he can do.  This generally makes life more fun.
Second, usually, you get less and less sure about the capabilities of the
thing that you're going to run up against.  All you know is that it's going
to be POWERFUL, you don't know what kind of special gimmicks/tricks it's
got up it's sleeve.  Remember, the NPC/monster, like the PC, has more
options open to it, too.  Third, things happen faster.  More things happen in
a round so you really have to work together as a team -- or you die.  Fast.

One last comment:  the problem with high-level D&D isn't the fact that it's
high level, it's the fact that most people can't handle high-level D&D well.
Many DM's aren't creative enough, or simply experienced enough to run a high
level campaign well.  It's easy to balance the power of a 4th-level campaign,
just look in your handy-dandy Monster Manual (tm :-) for a more powerful
monster to use.  Balancing a 20th level campaign takes a little more energy
because there's less out there in terms of easy reference materials and ideas.
Also, most players aren't used to handling that much power.  They either do
stupid things and run wild (leading to death in a well-run campaign) or they
don't learn how to work well as a team (leading to death in a well-run
campaign).  The most successful groups I've ever played in were marked not
so much by raw power but by teamwork.  Everybody knew what to do in a crunch.
When 5 10th level characters took out a Balrog (a much-hyped type V demon),
they did so because they worked well together as a team.  Five 15th level
characters working not so well together would have died.  As a matter of
fact, this happened in another adventure, when 8 of the most powerful PC's
got together to go look for something.  We got severely abused.  Later on,
two of us used to working together as a team went back and zipped right
through things.


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