Dungeon construction: balancing difficulty and treasure?

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Magic with it's resistances is more swingy, a single Save or Die spell can instantly ruin a PCs day, or not even slow them down. I've watched Blinded PCs get lucky and just mow down enemies in melee (especially grappler PCs, blindness is barely even a speed bump), and watched high HT PCs flub and get Petrifried. It happens.

Side note: can you explain what you mean about grappler PCs? I thought grappling was still a DX-based roll against Wrestling/etc., affected by blindness as usual.

To your main point: yeah, bad luck happens, hence the importance of Bless and Luck. Even then it will sometimes happen three times in a row before Bless and/or Luck can be restored.

I was just reading about the Felltower session where eight out of nine 300-500 point delvers got TPKed by a beholder, and pondering whether I'd ever be ruthless with my own friends as players, and what it would take for me to expect that to still be a fun experience for everyone. (My conclusion: what it would take is graveyards/memorials--like arcade game high scores--so that the fact that Vryce went on 99 adventures and got up to 534 points before dying is still remembered as a victory, not a dead-end failure.)

So yes, agreed, bad things happen.

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Personally I hate 'rubberbanding', "Oh you're level 10 now so all enemies are increased in difficulty to meet your new power expectations". /snore

Let the PCs steamroll some foes and be brick walled by others. Build the 'dungeon' organically and let the game just flow. If you find the PCs are facerolling everything, then start slightly bumping stuff up until the game is running how your group likes it.

I despise rubberbanding, but my response is a little bit different than yours. To me, trying to tempt the players into going where the dangerous monsters (like beholders!) are by offering them more treasure is nothing at all like rubber banding. At least in the hack-and-slash game(s?) I am planning on running at first, even if a beholder made sense to me on level 1 of the dungeon (maybe because it wants ready access to the surface world?) I would not put it there--I would rewrite the beholder until it "made sense" for it to be buried deep on level 7-10 of the dungeon instead. Players who go that deep know they are asking for ridiculously overpowered monsters--they will go there only if they either (1) want the treasure, or (2) want the challenge.

Originally Posted by mburr0003

They are and they aren't. "Action economy" still bites them hard (being outnumbered by weaker enemies still drags PCs under, not to mention equal or more powerful foes), poor tactics can still kill decisively, and single crit hits can swing combat hard and fast.

In theory yes, weaker foes can still be a challenge, basically because of Lanchester's Laws as well as super-linearly-scaling options like working together on takedowns. In practice it looks like that threshold is waaaay up there. For instance, it looks like a starting 250 point druid has more than enough budget available to churn out his own horde of minions so that players outnumber most of the monsters, if they want to. Even regular starting-character Create Animal-16 (Swarm of Rats/Guard Dog) is pretty good when you've got the ability to maintain five to ten of them indefinitely and the ability to make more cheaply; by the time the druid gets up to Create Animal-20 and uses Beast-Seeker to observe some karkadanns, he'll be able to maintain five to ten karkadanns at a time indefinitely! I've seen some people say druid is weak but... [shake my head]

Anyway, my point is that there appear to be plenty of ways for delvers to magnify the effects of skill and beat swarms of enemies, starting with something as simple as a Smoke spell to impose uniform penalties on everybody (which favors those who already have ridiculously high skill, like Swashbucklers, as well as those who don't need to rely on DX-based skills, like wizards and druids). Edit: note that I don't necessarily expect my friends to realize that they can do these things at first--gaining skill at DFRPG will probably do more to boost their power than the money and points they earn will! That's what makes it a fun game.

So I'm not worried about delvers not being able to deal with deeper dungeon levels if they are smart.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Side note: can you explain what you mean about grappler PCs? I thought grappling was still a DX-based roll against Wrestling/etc., affected by blindness as usual.

Pre-grab yes, but once they make the grab, most grapple checks (wrench limb, takedown, pin, choke hold, judo throw, etc) are not affect by Blindness. I've watched a blinded wrestler take All-Out Attack and with their Wrestling skill 20 just ignore the fact that they were blind and faceroll melee foes (granted, said foes were fodder and the main BBEG failed their defense against the grab, at which point it was all over save for the mangling, but that's how it goes sometimes).

Note, they were built to accommodate taking AOAs; having a good DR, High Pain Threshold, and very high HP, so it was a side-effect they'd kinda taken into account without explicitly taking Blindness into account.

Of course I've also watched a Swashbuckler "ignore" the fact that they were blinded based on having Broadsword 25, so that's an artifact of high skill rather than anything else.

Even then it will sometimes happen three times in a row before Bless and/or Luck can be restored.

Yes, exactly. That's why I like to hand out Impulse Points and allow Impulse Buys. Despite running a "gritty and deadly leaning" game, my PCs can edge up to the abyss and survive based on a combination of skill and luck.

And sometimes they end missions with a few Impulse Points left over for the next mission (which they bank and save for extra daring stuff).

(My conclusion: what it would take is graveyards/memorials--like arcade game high scores--so that the fact that Vryce went on 99 adventures and got up to 534 points before dying is still remembered as a victory, not a dead-end failure.)

That's exactly the playstyle that Peter and his group are doing, hard chances, inevitable death, but great stories.

I despise rubberbanding, but my response is a little bit different than yours. To me, trying to tempt the players into going where the dangerous monsters (like beholders!) are by offering them more treasure is nothing at all like rubber banding.

True, it's not rubberbanding when the hard foes were that hard all along and when the "upper levels of the dungeon" are replenished with weak scrub foes. But it's something I've seen in hex crawls, cleared areas repopulating with harder foes because "the PCs are stronger now".

Players who go that deep know they are asking for ridiculously overpowered monsters--they will go there only if they either (1) want the treasure, or (2) want the challenge.

And this is why I don't run mega-dungeons... they never feel organic to me, they always end up feeling like Diablo (which is fine, I enjoyed playing Diablo, but I don't want to play or run a non-computer rpg set in Diablo).

Create Animal-20 and uses Beast-Seeker to observe some karkadanns, he'll be able to maintain five to ten karkadanns at a time indefinitely! I've seen some people say druid is weak but... [shake my head]

When the Druid gets to skill 30+ sure. Keep in mind Primeval never before visited by civilized people (+5 Nature's Strength) should be just as rare as Despoiled -5 is (open pit mines, nature having been killed off by civilization's waste).

For the most part Druids end up sucking down -2/-3 for their entire adventuring careers*, so said Druid "casually maintaining 5-10 karkandans" should have a skill of 33-35 in Create Animal, which is pretty dang high.


* This is why most people complain that Druids are weak, okay, it's one reason they complain. Lack of healing, lack of direct damage, being utility/support casters, etc. Most Players don't like playing the "minion master" style PC, especially when the GM runs all the NPCs. Some GMs let the 'minion masters" run their own Allies and Summons... I do not.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

That's exactly the playstyle that Peter and his group are doing, hard chances, inevitable death, but great stories.

What attracts me about this is that most games/campaigns IME eventually die to real life anyway. Ending a PC's story with a "high score" of sorts and a story about how they died seems superior to most other ways I've seen campaigns end; it's not even that dissimilar from the good endings I've seen where the GM narrates a Happily Ever After for the party as a whole. ("And after your planet is conquered by space orcs because you told the elves to lift the Interdict, you escape into space and become moderately-successful space merchants and valued members of your refugee colony. The End.")

True, it's not rubberbanding when the hard foes were that hard all along and when the "upper levels of the dungeon" are replenished with weak scrub foes. But it's something I've seen in hex crawls, cleared areas repopulating with harder foes because "the PCs are stronger now".

Yeah, I find that kind of thing deeply inappropriate, although I don't necessarily mind if they repopulate with harder foes because (like XCOM: UFO Defense) an actively invading series of enemy waves was in the cards all along regardless of what PCs did.

And this is why I don't run mega-dungeons... they never feel organic to me, they always end up feeling like Diablo (which is fine, I enjoyed playing Diablo, but I don't want to play or run a non-computer rpg set in Diablo).

That makes sense! I have promised my friends a Diablo-like experience with DFRPG so we can try out the system, but if we like it that probably won't last for longer than a few dungeon crawls--as you say, pure dungeon crawls start feeling empty pretty quickly. Like the woods in Sondheim's musical Into The Woods, dungeons are where you go to be transformed and empowered (or dead), but why you do it and what happens because you did are ultimately of interest too.

Dungeons (and hexcrawls if I ran those) are also the only place I would use levelled difficulty and treasure proportionate to dungeon level. Everything else is wilderness play or town play, which means any monster in any quantity is fair game as long as it's realistic.

When the Druid gets to skill 30+ sure. Keep in mind Primeval never before visited by civilized people (+5 Nature's Strength) should be just as rare as Despoiled -5 is (open pit mines, nature having been killed off by civilization's waste).

For the most part Druids end up sucking down -2/-3 for their entire adventuring careers*, so said Druid "casually maintaining 5-10 karkandans" should have a skill of 33-35 in Create Animal, which is pretty dang high.

Create Animal has a cost of 2 * (1+SM) to cast, half that per minute to maintain. Karkadanns have SM +1, so like cave bears they cost 2 FP per minute to maintain. SM 0 rat swarms, black bears, chimpanzees, etc. cost 1 FP per minute to maintain. Ergo a druid with Create Animal-20 can maintain as many black bears or rat swarms as he can cast, even in underground dungeons (-1 to Nature's Strength), and in forests/etc. (no penalty to Nature's Strength) he can maintain as many SM +1 karkadanns or cave bears as he can cast. So, probably at least 5 without issues, while still leaving room for other spells like Wind Storm and Spark Storm as needed.

Am I missing something?

Edit to add: since Lanchester's Laws predict that combat strength scales (mostly) as the square of quantity, five bears is about 25x as powerful as one bear, or in other words a knight, a swashbuckler, a cleric, and five karkadanns (i.e. effectively trading a druid for five animals) is roughly four times as powerful as the knight, the swashbuckler, and the cleric alone even if we count each karkadann as only 60% of a PC and pretend the druid can't do anything else. [(3+5*0.6)^2/3^2 = 4] Adding another swashbuckler would be only 4^2/3^2 about twice as powerful--the summoner is a bigger force multiplier.

Of course in DFRPG power is not that linear, but I think that actually works out to the druid's advantage, because the nasty trappiness of DF dungeons means that you'd much rather have a conjured rat swarm run face-first into a lurking jelly instead of one of the swashbucklers, and you'd rather have a druid-conjured-and-possessed chimpanzee walk through the spooky-looking corridor to see what's in the rooms beyond than have a PC do it. (Then you cast the appropriate spells to deal with whatever kills the chimpanzee.)

Note that other PCs can infuse the druid with extra FP while this exploration is going on, so the druid doesn't actually have to stick to SM 0 creatures. Even at skill 17 you can afford to spend 3 FP on conjuring a SM +1 creature and 5 more on possessing it (maintenance costs 1 and 2 respectively) if you're getting infusions of FP from the Recovery Energy-20 wizard or cleric.

This is why most people complain that Druids are weak, okay, it's one reason they complain. Lack of healing, lack of direct damage, being utility/support casters, etc. Most Players don't like playing the "minion master" style PC, especially when the GM runs all the NPCs. Some GMs let the 'minion masters" run their own Allies and Summons... I do not.

[chuckle] Since the GM ultimately resolves everything anyway, I-as-a-player absolutely don't mind if the GM "runs my allies" as long as the bears obey when I say "recklessly charge those guys and knock them down, i.e. Move and Attack/Slam!" If the GM wants to move the pieces and roll the dice I'm fine with that, although as a GM I'm more inclined to make the player do it for me.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Edit to add: since Lanchester's Laws predict that combat strength scales (mostly) as the square of quantity, five bears is about 25x as powerful as one bear.

As long as all the bears are able to attack and the enemy isn't using area damage, at least. In a choke where only one bear can attack at a time, five bears is only 5x as powerful.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Anthony

As long as all the bears are able to attack and the enemy isn't using area damage, at least. In a choke where only one bear can attack at a time, five bears is only 5x as powerful.

Yep, that's why "(mostly)". If your force can't bring all its power to bear (no pun intended), that's when Lanchester's Linear Law applies. Ditto when the other side has attacks such as artillery or D&D Fireballs which scale in power with your troop density.

Lanchester's Square Law applies for direct combat such as riflemen firing at individual targets, and small-scale melee combat.

When there's a mix, as in modern military warfare, some analysts compromise and scale their estimates of power as the 3/2 power of quantity.

But the recon capabilities a druid brings to the table are arguably even more valuable than combat power in a game like Dungeon Fantasy. Wizard Eye is great but sometimes it's nice for your scouting element to have hands, and even better if your scouting element is something that a lurking stealthy monster like a jelly would want to eat just as badly as it wants to eat the PCs.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

That makes sense! I have promised my friends a Diablo-like experience with DFRPG so we can try out the system, but if we like it that probably won't last for longer than a few dungeon crawls--as you say, pure dungeon crawls start feeling empty pretty quickly.

Some people like them, but I need that "social/politics" side, even as a GM or I get bored with the campaign.

I could never run a Felltower as long as Peter has, I'd have gotten bored before the PCs were 'done' with the initial Caves Of Chaos.

Am I missing something?

No, that was on my end, forgetting it's 1/2 for maintenance.

Also, I never quite realized they had Create Animal... I mean I saw it, but my brain was still working under the "casters lost all the Creates" mentality so didn't really give it thought (Create Servant/Brute/Mount in Illusions).

... druid-conjured-and-possessed chimpanzee...

If the Druid knows of such creatures. The last "Druid"* in one of my games (not a DF/RPG) games knew of nothing that didn't live in the middle north of the USA, as that was the only area he'd ever experienced... so there were no savanna lions, polar bears, karkadanns, alligators, hippos, etc.

* Granted they weren't a DF/RPG Druid either, so they weren't limited to mundane animals when they "create animaled'", just animals they knew off, could "beast summon", or dreamed up and created experimentally... (that last one ended horrifically for them more times than not).

Even at skill 17 you can afford to spend 3 FP on conjuring a SM +1 creature and 5 more on possessing it (maintenance costs 1 and 2 respectively) if you're getting infusions of FP from the Recovery Energy-20 wizard or cleric.

If they aren't using that FP on themselves, and then you're looking at resting, constantly for Recover Energy to work... (baring Energy Reserve, but again I find Wizards and Clerics are usually powering their own maintained spells).

Since the GM ultimately resolves everything anyway, I-as-a-player absolutely don't mind if the GM "runs my allies" as long as the bears obey when I say "recklessly charge those guys and knock them down, i.e. Move and Attack/Slam!" If the GM wants to move the pieces and roll the dice I'm fine with that, although as a GM I'm more inclined to make the player do it for me.

For Created Animals, sure, for Allies, no. Not even the Summoned version of Allies. Allies are friends, not mentally controlled minions (I mean unless they are, see Undead minions and Golems).

Heck... I'm generally of mind to say no even with Created Animals... but then I'd be refluffing how Create Animal works slightly.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Some people like them, but I need that "social/politics" side, even as a GM or I get bored with the campaign.

I could never run a Felltower as long as Peter has, I'd have gotten bored before the PCs were 'done' with the initial Caves Of Chaos.

I see your point, but when the premise is "hey, why don't we try out Dungeon Fantasy next week?" the emphasis is more on the system (i.e. gameworld physics) and the game, not the gameworld. (It has been more than a week but I'm getting close to ready!)

Things like "what can you do in town?" and "what good are Armorer and Diplomacy?" are definitely in scope, but the trial run is definitely not intended as a "campaign" or a setting. If it goes well maybe it will become something more.

If it gives birth to a campaign, in need of a setting, I will probably set it on Earth so I can steal geography and historical tidbits from Google Maps and Wikipedia, and so players can easily read up on the same even when the GM isn't present.

Also, I never quite realized they had Create Animal... I mean I saw it, but my brain was still working under the "casters lost all the Creates" mentality so didn't really give it thought (Create Servant/Brute/Mount in Illusions).

Phantom still exists too, although you have to get it up to skill-25 before it becomes free to maintain. Still, at that point every creature you create is up to ST 25/DX 25 and basically immune to basic damage under 15ish points... not a bad way for a starting wizard to spend his first 24 points (if he started with Magery 6).

If the Druid knows of such creatures. The last "Druid"* in one of my games (not a DF/RPG) games knew of nothing that didn't live in the middle north of the USA, as that was the only area he'd ever experienced... so there were no savanna lions, polar bears, karkadanns, alligators, hippos, etc.

Right, that's why I keep mentioning spells like Beast Seeker/Beast Summoning, and the fact that even common animals that everybody has seen like rats and horses are still pretty good. Even if he can't research + view (via Beast Seeker) exotic animals, even if he's stuck to nothing but rat swarms and guard dogs and horses, a Conjure Animals-20 (or -17) druid is still going to pull his weight in both recon and combat.

If they aren't using that FP on themselves, and then you're looking at resting, constantly for Recover Energy to work... (baring Energy Reserve, but again I find Wizards and Clerics are usually powering their own maintained spells).

We'll see how it works out when the players actually play the game, but they're pretty savvy, and I expect them to do better than I have in my pre-planning, not worse. Starting wizards and clerics can definitely maintain some good maintained spells, but you can maintain some pretty awesome free spells and still regain energy to funnel to other PCs.

(Case in point: the Fit cleric I made can cast Sanctuary, and then regain 18 FP an hour despite being in low Sanctity, while paying only 5 FP an hour for the Sanctuary itself. That synergizes with Healing Slumber to allow another PC to regain 24 FP an hour (12 FP, 12 Energy Reserve, despite low Sanctity/Mana) plus 1 HP an hour if needed.)

For Created Animals, sure, for Allies, no. Not even the Summoned version of Allies. Allies are friends, not mentally controlled minions (I mean unless they are, see Undead minions and Golems).

By "for allies, no," I think you are saying you'd never let a player control allies, right? Not that you'd never object to a GM controlling them, or would never allow them to Move and Attack (Slam).

As a player I don't care who rolls the dice for them and makes detailed decisions, as long as they obey me when I tell them to knock down the enemies.

Further clarification: in this context when I said "allies" previously I meant Created Animals. I didn't even realize you might be talking about GURPS "Allies." Even when I ran/played GURPS I basically ignored all the Allies rules--the CP-heavy rules for creating Allies don't appeal to me--and in DFRPG they don't technically exist at all.

[sir_pudding]

Create Animal is a spell and therefore vulnerable to Dispel Magic. I always give opposition casters this spell (and other hard countering spells).

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Create Animal is a spell and therefore vulnerable to Dispel Magic. I always give opposition casters this spell (and other hard countering spells).

Sure, that makes sense. (Same reason PCs take Dispel Magic so they can dispel Missile Shield on dragons, right?)

Off topic for this thread: why druids are still good despite that fact
(sorry I can't figure out how to spoiler/collapse)

You'll still get plenty of benefit out of:

(1) generating animals for recon via Rider Within/Beast Possession, without having to risk a PC. Wizard Eye can do a similar job (or augment!) but it's still good to have a physical presence to trigger things like ambushes or certain kinds of traps.

(2) having decoys/meat shields to keep PCs safer against things that aren't enemy spellcasters, like lurking Jellies.

(3) eating enemy actions in combat on multiple Dispel Magic attempts.

(4) overbearing/trampling/attacks from animals to knock enemies prone and/or damage them.

Ergo, Druid is far from the weakest profession--even if they had nothing but the Animal college they'd be perfectly fine even at frequent -1 to -3 penalties for Nature's Strength. They don't have nothing but the Animal college, so if your point is that you shouldn't go all-in on nothing but Conjure Animals, I agree! Pollen Cloud, Earth Vision, Resist Cold, Resist Lightning, Mystic Mist, Seek Earth, Shape Earth, Swimming, Instant Neutralize Poison, Windstorm, Lightning, Spark Storm, etc. all look like strong choices to me.

Plus there's all the fun non-magical things you can do like throw nets on monsters, camouflage the party, expound hidden lore (elementals, faeries, or nature spirits), poison weapons with multiple doses of monster drool, etc.

Druids seem really neat. I'd rate them in the top six professions I'd want in my adventuring party, along with cleric, wizard, swashbuckler, scout, and bard.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Things like "what can you do in town?" and "what good are Armorer and Diplomacy?" are definitely in scope, but the trial run is definitely not intended as a "campaign" or a setting. If it goes well maybe it will become something more.

Just a warning, DFRPG doesn't handle the "what good are social skills" question well, you will want to expand on their usage (and expand on "in town actions" even if you keep it a little 'handwavy') and your Players may want you to expand on "what good are crafting skills" but I recommend keeping them exactly as they are in DFRPG, that will keep the PCs focused on adventuring, not setting up a business in the big city and never leaving again.

I keep seeing Players trying to pull "but what if we rented access to our fabulous magical tomes and spellbooks we've recovered instead if selling them" and I keep having to shut them down with the Sage's Guild... no, there is no "making money outside of adventuring".

But, if a slice of life fantasy is what you and your crew want, then by all means, expand on the crafting skills.

(Case in point: the Fit cleric I made can cast Sanctuary, and then regain 18 FP an hour despite being in low Sanctity, while paying only 5 FP an hour for the Sanctuary itself. That synergizes with Healing Slumber to allow another PC to regain 24 FP an hour (12 FP, 12 Energy Reserve, despite low Sanctity/Mana) plus 1 HP an hour if needed.)

Be wary allowing FP recovery methods to stack. There are reasons that GURPS Basic doesn't allow it. I know DFRPG opened the door to it, but that's always the first house rule I have to crack down on.

By "for allies, no," I think you are saying you'd never let a player control allies, right?

That and that Allies don't necessary do what you orde them to.

Created minions? Sure, but Allies* have their own motivations... and as I'm just remembering aren't in DFPRG for simplicity. *sigh* So many things have to be ported back into DFRPG to make it whole.

* As do Hirelings.

Even when I ran/played GURPS I basically ignored all the Allies rules--the CP-heavy rules for creating Allies don't appeal to me--and in DFRPG they don't technically exist at all.

Allies can be pretty inexpensive, but for a more "pure pointless slaying and looting" DFPRG campaign, I'd still implement Allies, I'd just use Peter Dell'Orto's Felltower Ally house rules, they don't scale with the PCs and have a flat cost. You'll still get PCs buying Acolyte sidekicks to through down emergency healing* or aid the PC Cleric rituals, and Apprentices to have utility spells and toss around cheap 1-2d fireballs. It's kinda rare anyone buys any other Allies, but a Player of mine likes to buy Ally fighters to 'meatshield' for his squishy Wizards (mostly to 'ensure' there is a speedbump near their Wizard in case of ambushes).


* especially on the main Cleric when they accidentally drop.