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Old 04-14-2022, 06:46 PM   #21
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Default Re: [DF] Dragonlance

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Depends on what you're going for. For me, I'm leaning WAY into the alignment. Dragons are color-coded for your convenience. Moons rule wizards. I made an excel spreadsheet which tracks the moons based on the circle-chart from the 1e handbook. It shows waxing waning, high, low, and each conjunction. It'll even roll the D8s if you want.

The thing I really wanted to emulate for alignment-based rules in wizards, though, was that black-robes rise to power faster while white gained more power in the long run.
Alignment is one of those things that IMHO doesn't really transfer to GURPS very well. For example, Pirates are (generally) Chaotic Evil but in GURPS they, odds are, will have Code of Honor (Pirate) which D&D would consider a Lawful Trait.

The Dragon article "For King and Country" (Dragon #101 Sept 1985) explored going with a trait system and the reasons the alignment tended to have issues.
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Old 04-14-2022, 09:06 PM   #22
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Default Re: [DF] Dragonlance

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As the Gamespy article "Magic & Memories: The Complete History of Dungeons & Dragons - Part III" relates D&D during 2Ed became highly Balkanized with settings like Forgotten Realms and Planescape having every widening and incompatible rule systems.

The Complete (insert name of class here) Handbooks just aggravated the problem.
The same happened in 3e though: in some groups, players came brandishing random poorly-playtested third-party supliments. If you leveraged the loopholes (or cross-referenced multiple books from different sources) you could do all kinds of strange things. And in every edition of D&D there are all kinds of house rules and eccentric readings of the core books.
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Old 04-14-2022, 10:10 PM   #23
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Default Re: [DF] Dragonlance

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Same goes for Knight of Solamnia: 3 different classes for the same character archetype.. And for what I remember the Knight of the Rose was basically OP.
All Knights in 2e started with 2d10 hit points at first levels. Knights of the Sword were basically fighters, Crown were clerics (and in 1e had d8s for hit dice), and Rose were Paladins. They had to move through the orders, with level, stat and roleplayed mission and behaviour requirements. I'm not sure that, for the XP cost and likely hit to the stats that mattered in adventuring that they were particularly over-powered.
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Old 04-15-2022, 05:07 AM   #24
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Default Re: [DF] Dragonlance

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The same happened in 3e though: in some groups, players came brandishing random poorly-playtested third-party supliments. If you leveraged the loopholes (or cross-referenced multiple books from different sources) you could do all kinds of strange things. And in every edition of D&D there are all kinds of house rules and eccentric readings of the core books.
But some of the problems were from a straight reading of the rules.

As the wiki (with references) points out Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers suggestions of requiring "heroes to spend $40+ per point for “guild training” before they can “level up” and gain new abilities" is a majorly bad idea as demonstrated by AD&D1e's 1500 gp/level/week (DMG1e pg 86) "Once a character has points which are equal to or greater than the minimum number necessary to move upward in experience level, no further experience points can be gained until the character actually gains the new level."

The Dragon #97 (May 1985) article "Only Train When You Gain" outlined why this was (and is) a bad idea: "The DM, who sees that he is losing the players’ interest, realizes he must do something. It is at this point that he takes the first step toward a Monty Haul campaign. Whether from the players’ urgings to do something and stop being "“unfair",” or as the DM’s own idea, the next group of orcs the characters kill happened to be guarding a chest full of 8,000 gp, instead of the normal copper or silver, and a magic item that can be sold for additional gold. By some coincidence, this is just enough money to pay for everyone’s training."

"If gold is given away in large amounts, magic generally flows much more freely as well, allowing characters to grow ultra-powerful and creating a Monty-Haul campaign that quickly becomes tiresome for both DM and players". Wise GMs should just ignore this idea as it was bad was dropped in AD&D2 (1989) for a reason.

Why somebody thought suggesting a GURPSifyed rule that resulted into so many broken campaigns that it was abandoned over 20 years ago is beyond me.
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Old 04-15-2022, 09:30 AM   #25
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Default Re: [DF] Dragonlance

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Alignment is one of those things that IMHO doesn't really transfer to GURPS very well. For example, Pirates are (generally) Chaotic Evil but in GURPS they, odds are, will have Code of Honor (Pirate) which D&D would consider a Lawful Trait.
I disagree. Simply use it as written. Acknowledge that it's not a great system to begin with. Embrace its flaws and move on.

It's like using steel pieces to buy steel armor. Makes no sense. Totally usable.
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Old 04-15-2022, 10:36 AM   #26
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It is beyond my ability to understand human mind why one would use obsolete, abusable, fictional and nonsensical concepts like "classes", "allignment" and "levels" in a system that left them in the dust decades ago.. (see also Cyberpunk 2077).

Those are the most atrocius ways to arrange and balance gameplay and party dynamics.
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Old 04-15-2022, 12:06 PM   #27
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Default Re: [DF] Dragonlance

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It is beyond my ability to understand human mind why one would use obsolete, abusable, fictional and nonsensical concepts like "classes", "allignment" and "levels" in a system that left them in the dust decades ago.. (see also Cyberpunk 2077).

Those are the most atrocius ways to arrange and balance gameplay and party dynamics.
While I totally agree, "classes" and "levels" are an easy way to get people into the game. Various MMOs have tried open skills system like GURPS and they tend to feature on the Youtube Death of a game series.

The problem is it creates the situation of why don't high level character to go low level are and just one shot all the things causing issues for the locals?

For example, in WOW I took a Draenei Death Knight back to the Draenei starting zone when the Death Knight first appeared to level up the secondary skills (First aid, herbs, and potions). The DK was OP back then and having a Draenei as one just cranked up the OP factor to 11 even at level. In a low level zone it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

"For King and Country" explained that "alignment" was a quick way to address the issue of why players were killing what often as not were thinking creatures - if your character didn't 'put them down' odds are it would "wreak whatever havoc it possibly could on society until it was destroyed."

"In the real world, good and evil are invented concepts. Societies label their own values as good, and those of the enemy (or the threatening or the unknown) as evil."

Threads like gamegrene's When The Moral Compass Goes Haywire show how the very concept of alignment breaks down in anything resembling a "realistic" campaign.

Even the most "Evil" villains in of history generally did not set out to be the opposite of what they knew was right and good. They were the "heroes" of their own "story".

Traits such those used in GURPS give both the players and DM a better idea of what a character's behavior might be. In GURPS terms Vlad Tepes Dracula had Bloodlust (Turks, Boyars, 'Criminals'); Code of Honor (Pirate); Honesty; Intolerance, Turks; Sadism (9); Sense of Duty (to 'honest' people of Walachia); Vow (Uphold the faith/protect Walachia). Doesn't that give you a much better picture of how to handle him than simply saying CE or perhaps LE?
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Old 04-15-2022, 12:39 PM   #28
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Default Re: [DF] Dragonlance

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The problem is it creates the situation of why don't high level character to go low level are and just one shot all the things causing issues for the locals?
Eh, you just gate things by total xp, not level. The real problem is that RPGs can handle balance issues with a GM, and MMOs can't, so they need to balance everything through the character creation system, and the difficulty of balancing depends on how many interactions you're looking at. For example, let's say a level-based system grants a character 6 choices between two powers, and you have two classes. That means you have a total of 128 possible combinations. Now, merge those two and eliminate the level-gating so you have a character with 6 total powers out of 24. That's 134,596 possible combinations.
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Old 04-15-2022, 05:39 PM   #29
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Eh, you just gate things by total xp, not level. The real problem is that RPGs can handle balance issues with a GM, and MMOs can't, so they need to balance everything through the character creation system, and the difficulty of balancing depends on how many interactions you're looking at. For example, let's say a level-based system grants a character 6 choices between two powers, and you have two classes. That means you have a total of 128 possible combinations. Now, merge those two and eliminate the level-gating so you have a character with 6 total powers out of 24. That's 134,596 possible combinations.
The thing with relying on the GM to handle balance issues is you can have adventures where the GM has to constantly play "nanny" to keep the party from becoming a bloody smear.

Take, Queen of the Demonweb Pits (Q1) for example. The very idea that a Level 10–14 party could take on what amounts to a goddess is jaw dropping unreal.

Lolth is insane enough with just the stats in the book: AC -10 (yes negative 10; AC 10 is very roughly akin to Dodge 8)/ - 2; 88 HP; had what amounts to a Toxic attack and a Binding attack. Magic resist of 70% (roughly between MR 11 and 12 based on the percentage); "able to heal herself at will, up to thrice/day"; "not affected by weapons which are not magical, silver does her no harm (unless enchanted to at least +1), and cold, electrical and gas attack forms cause only one-half damage." Then there were all the Clerical (35 at 16 level) and Magic-User (25 at 14th level) spells she could cast. And she had psionic abilities of 266 on top of all that. ("minor devotions of body equilibrium, clairvoyance, domination, and the major sciences of dimension walking, mind bar, molecular rearrangement, and probability travel". All at 16th level of ability/experience)

Throw in the powers form Dieties and Demigods and even a level 20 party that faced her would be lucky to survive the encounter even if they were at full strength (which given what else was there they wouldn't be).
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Old 04-15-2022, 05:59 PM   #30
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Take, Queen of the Demonweb Pits (Q1) for example. The very idea that a Level 10–14 party could take on what amounts to a goddess is jaw dropping unreal. Lolth is insane enough with just the stats in the book: AC -10
Lolth as written would be in danger of going down in a single round against a level 10-14 party. You underestimate just how powerful high level AD&D characters were.
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