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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdamos!mr-frog
From: mr-frog@sdamos.UUCP (Dave Pare)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Game Balance / High Level - Low Level
Message-ID: <26@sdamos.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Oct-84 23:21:31 EST
Article-I.D.: sdamos.26
Posted: Sun Oct 28 23:21:31 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Oct-84 00:47:41 EST
References: <3905@decwrl.UUCP> <1662@ucla-cs.ARPA>, <187@tilt.FUN> <1816@ucla-cs.ARPA>, <196@tilt.FUN>
Organization: Phonetics Lab, UC San Diego
Lines: 51

:

Regarding Ray Chen's article in favor of well balanced high level
games....

	MASSIVE PLUS POINTS!!!


I loved it.  He concisely and accurately stated how a good high
level game is run.  We have just such a campaign, and indeed,
it does work pretty much as he says.

The high level characters no longer run in "dungeons".  Basically,
either they are attacked, or they arrange to attack something.

Our characters do not go around trashing cities; we find that
it's best not to make any more enemies than possible.  We don't
go out of our way to find trouble.

Of course the enemies use really nasty magic items against us.
In addition, they also generally have new-and-exciting spells
which have nasty effects which are usually surprising and
sometimes fatal.

This one Sahuagin King (who was a 20th level ftr/mage) was being
attacked by this 20th level mage PC.  The PC mage, trying to gather
information on this Sahuagin king, found this fighter who claimed
to have a map with some sort of secret entrances to the Sahuagin's
castle.  The mage, after looking the fighter over (fighter was
4th, radiating small amounts of evil), took the map after paying
him some amount of gold.  The map was actually a trapped device,
a higher level version of "trap the soul", and the mage was tricked
into accepting the trigger device.  A full wish was used to transport
the device back to the Sahuagin king.

From this debacle, the saying arose "Beware of Sahuagin Kings
bearing Maps"...

That was one NPC which didn't simply wait to be attacked.  His
information sources revealed that he was being snooped on, and
he struck back before any attack took place.

The last point I want to make is that in our campaign, in general,
far more low level adventures are run than those which are high
level.  This is because high level games are really quite hard
to run.  The DM must be quite experienced, and it takes a lot more
work to get something whipped up for a 20th level game...


Dave Pare