>>31464978

powers don't matter. No, don't get me wrong, advancement does feel pretty nice, but the real meat is interaction between characters and the world.

Generally, when PCs get powerful, i start introducing responsibility to them. Be it becoming barons, demigods or guild leaders, this gives them both the resources to do bigger things and people to care about.

>>31465336

This might be a good way to go about it, I'll pitch the idea to the DM.

>swept point on the end of a long straight sword completely ruining it for thrusting for no reason

>>31465783
The dude is already soloing armies, I doubt he gives a fuck.

Also what is /tg/'s thoughts on having a BBEG who is merely a fighter of such a level?

>>31465929

No problem with having a super beefy fighter as an antagonist, but make sure fighting him won't either be a boring straightforward slog or the wizard casting some bullshit spell and instantly solving the problem.

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It's been my experience that any GM who complains about their players' characters being "too powerful" is making one of three mistakes, that basically all branch from "making the game too simple":

1. Simple-minded/unrealistic NPCs.
2. Obstacles without conditions.
3. Singular outcomes.

For point 1, refer to the classic "Tucker's Kobolds" story for a primer on how to avoid this mistake. A combat opponent who single-mindedly attacks until dead isn't much of a challenge even for a low-powered party. A high-level party will be able to take on gods no problem if all that god does is charge dead ahead and auto-cast Call Lightning 3d4 times per round, scary as that might be to a party who's too stupid to cast Control Weather (which SOMEBODY should have their hands on by high level). Similarly, an economic or political NPC who gives the PCs what they want without any argument, regardless of whether or not doing so will disadvantage that NPC personally, makes social problems even easier.

If, on the other hand, the GM plays the NPCs like intelligent beings who want to survive and thrive and are kinda selfish dicks (like the PCs almost assuredly are), the players are gonna have a tough time running roughshod over the campaign. In non-magical settings, a half-dozen pissed off guys with ranged weapons stationed on the high ground at a chokehold will be almost impossible to overcome without creative tactics or wasting a lot of ammo. In a magic setting, as D&D 3.5 has shown us even mildly creative combinations of simple spells can have devastating effect on enemies, and there's no reason to assume the Archlich Merlinzar hasn't figured out the "book of Explosive Runes + Amanuensis" trick too.

>>31466599
And for social scenarios, anyone the high level party would have need to deal with will probably have similar or greater resources as the party, and the question arises of WHY exactly the merchant king of Veniceland should buy the party's seemingly endless supply of magically conjured daggers, or why he should sell them his unique uncut black diamond so that some smelly wizard can use it for enchanting his shitty staff. Threatening the local King to make him give you his +7 Sword of God-Slaying is kind of a bad move when, by applying crunch logic to fluff logic, that king and his advisers are former adventurers who were BETTER at it than your party and decided to retire and rule. If you're dealing with a high king and his court, you'd better face the fact that every one of his friends is a humanoid typhoon of destruction and even Chuckles the Jester is a 17th level Bard and can probably take your party 1 on 5 with his Phasing Motley of Magic Resist and +5 Scepter of Summon Celestial Songstresses.

For point 2, let's go with the Tucker's Kobolds example and consider that, yes, the players have to traverse a heavily fortified Kobold cavern. Whenever this scenario gets presented to /tg/, the tard powergamers among us make themselves known almost immediately by whining about how they'd just cast 50 instances of Cloudkill, or summon a portal to the Elemental Plane of Water and wait a week to drown out the cavern, or advance ten feet at a time, blow all their spell levels at anything that moves, then cast Rope Trick and sit on ass for eight hours until they can come out and cast more spells. That's because they're used to shitty GMs who present every obstacle like it's from a videogame, i.e. one with no conditions.

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>>31466612
"Go to that cavern and kill all those Kobolds" is an obstacle without condition. "Go to that cavern full of Kobolds and rescue the king's daughter, who they're planning to sacrifice at midnight on the full moon" is an obstacle WITH conditions, and invalidates 50% of powergamer strategies, 90% if the full moon is TONIGHT, and 99% if you're extra mean and give the Kobolds a decently powerful shaman to keep up some kind of anti-magic field around their soon-to-be sacrifice.

"Go destroy the Dark God Magpie the Sorrowful, patron of our enemies" is an obstacle without condition. "Go convince the Dark God Magpie the Sorrowful, patron of our enemies, to give US his favor instead" is an obstacle with condition, which has the added benefit of giving the GM a way to give the players choices and options. How will the players get this drear, ethereal being to help them? Do they need to make an exotic offering to him? Recover one of his stolen relics? Convince the Omni-Nymph Vulvae to go out with him? It's up to them, and generally trying to give the players obstacles with POSITIVE goals (helping someone or acquiring something legitimately, be it an item or support from another NPC, an alliance or trade agreement for examples) creates more interesting roleplay opportunities than obstacles with NEGATIVE outcomes (go kill x or steal y, at least without fitting these acts into some greater context). Even if the party is powerful enough to breeze through any of Magpie's conditions, it's still creating a challenge the players have to actually think on for a second to overcome rather than just rolling initiative and casting Finger of Death.

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>>31466624
Point 3 is the thing that really makes it hardest on the GM. Consider rescuing the princess from the Kobolds. Pretend whether the princess lives or dies has no affect on the party beyond the king not paying them. That's a scenario with a singular outcome. But let's break the scenario down and consider the three MAJOR possible outcomes:

a) The heroes save the princess.
b) The princess is killed, but the Kobolds are not able to complete their sacrificial ritual.
c) The princess is killed, and the Kobolds finish their sacrificial ritual.

Three outcomes that branch out the story three ways. If a), then everyone's happy, the party is rewarded, hey maybe the king even decides to give them some land and a stronghold they can start to build. But let's say b), that would leave the king heartbroken, and while he may or may not directly blame the players for his daughter's death, it's going to affect the poor guy in the future if the party has some need of him. Might even leave an opening for that creepy brother of his who's been eying the throne. If c), congrats, the players now have both a crestfallen former ally who isn't much use in the future AND a new foe in the demon those Kobolds were performing this ritual to summon. And none of these scenarios should be viewed as a simple reward/punishment, but an opportunity for greater roleplaying and expanding the players' influence on the world. If a), then they may eventually become the leaders of their own small nation and take a greater hand in the political structure of the world. If b), then it'll be up to them to decide if they should protect the kingdom while the king is in his depression, or leave it to its fate, which could have wide-reaching impact on the political and economic structure of the setting. If c), the players are now dealing with extra-dimensional forces, which leads into the typical high-level endgame: fighting or becoming gods.

>>31464978
Watch Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Power escalation can go just as far as you want, including giving the players a weapon that's literally bigger than the observable universe.

I would say a lot more, but this guy:
>>31466599
Tackled it down.

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>>31466663
Consider poor ol' Magpie the Sorrowful again. Maybe the party makes that sacrifice to him. Maybe it's not enough to make him ignore his old followers, but it IS enough that he'll not take sides in the battle and try to neutralize any outside interference from other gods the enemy might worship, which is a pretty big help. Maybe the party recovers his stolen artifact. Maybe that artifact is so shiny it compels the dark god to completely shun the other side and give his full support to the PCs' allies. Maybe you somehow convince that Omninymph to go out with Magpie. Maybe now he's unfortunately too distracted to give his favor either way DURING the battle, but that at least puts both armies on somewhat equal footing and afterwards Magpie's so grateful to the party he grants them some personal favor.

In conclusion, the biggest reason a lot of campaigns don't scale with the players is because they're still dealing with the EXACT SAME SHIT they were dealing with at level one. Exterminating a roomful of rats at level 1 isn't really all that different from exterminating a roomful of archviles at level 15. Rolling charisma to make the local mayor give you a chicken isn't that much different from rolling charisma to make Zeus give you a wagonload of his thunderbolts. But if, instead, the GM makes the players react to the game world and make the game world react to them in ways that create unique scenarios, then no matter what level the players are they'll always FEEL like they're being challenged because they'll have to think about the challenges presented.

And always remember that an intelligent NPC can ALWAYS fuck with the party, no matter how many resources they have at their disposal, if they need that NPC to cooperate with them.

>>31465929
I find it unrealistic. I can't conceive how a guy skilled enough to beat armies all by himself can possibly not have an extreme social power by weighing on the fact that he is a powerful asset in order to achieve whatever his goals are. And goals he must have, else he wouldn't be a BBEG.

>>31464978
Depending on the system, higher "levels" can just get straight out silly, be it for escalating modifiers or new abilities that warp gameplay somewhat fierce.

I'm not sure if the thread is still up, but just yesterday a GM for a Rogue Trader game complained about his psyker being too powerful, because he could pass all his "do magic stuff" without incurring any penalties anymore. That can often be the case, especially when certain actions have a risk inherent to them, but the huge numbers outright dash those risks.

On the other hand, higher level play often introduces new and "bigger" abilities, which many GMs find hard to transition to. Trust me, I've been there with a game of PF that went from lvl 5 to lvl 20. The higher levels completely changed the whole scope of the game and it felt like I had to learn the same system all over again.
This can also feel weird on the players side, when tactics they have used for the bigger part of their adventure suddenly become useless.

Personally, I'd even say that you're fortunate to quit at mid to high levels, because most systems fall apart after that (not all mind you, just most).

>>31466761
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevalier_Bayard

The man personally fought off large amounts of soldiers and died doing such. The most he became was good luck charm for the kings of France, never actually raising much above being a mere gendarme.

>>31466873
The exception confirming the rule?

Less snarkily, there are lots of highly unrealistic things that actually happened. But most of the time, they don't make for a good story. I think.

>>31466761
You can't gain social power if you keep killing everyone armies instead of socializing.

Also the goal is obviously to die a worthy death in battle, but being so high leveled means that even armies aren't enough but he keeps doing it in order to try to create heroes who may become strong enough to slay him

>>31467097
Fair point, but this doesn't make a BBEG. I mean, he's not Evil; he just have a skewed vision of honor (or not, depending on the setting and personal opinions).

>>31465336
Sucks pretty hard that, as a DM, I am horrible in the field of adding meat to characters and NPCs but i'm the only one who's read extensively on the rules.

>>31467241
Just give each character a freshly baked ham.

>>31467241
It makes me feel like a failure to be honest...Is there any quicker way to figuring out how to improve on this? I mean, along with this, i've got to get my Players to start actually voicing their characters because it feels one dimensional.

>>31467206
He could still easily be the main antagonist for the players in the end. Given that the dude is likely slaughtering his way through anything that even tries to put up a fight, which really isn't good for anyone in most settings.

>>31467284
Welp, you're right. I spoke too hastily.

>>31467291
Pretty easy to get the players into the whole story too.
>old lady says her son went off into battle a while back and hasn't written home yet, wants you to investigate
>party finds battlefield, entire battalion of the Kingdom's troops slaughtered
>the only corpses are those of the troops
>not even signs of any other sizeable force
>all the wounds look pretty much the same
>rumors float around about a swordsman who was responsible for a number of things from saving a town from an army of bandits/orcs/filltheblank to slaughtering the elite guard of the local noble to cutting down an dragon/airship/somethingequallybigandimprobableforasolemantofight

>>31464978
Too powerful? I don't believe that is a thing.

Though I suppose if the demi-gods are concerning themselves in the affairs of mortals that their actions may seem tedious and boring, thus they should be learning to concern themselves with the affairs of their kind.
If they're fighting goblins for some trinket at the time that they hit these levels then that's a problem. They should be battling kingdoms which may have less power than the party but extensively more resources.

They should begin having their affairs meddled with by those of equal power jealous of the new meat on the pantheon, or the party themselves should be plunged into celestial politics if they're at that point.

>>31465336

Has the idea as well.

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>>31467241
Did somebody say "fleshing out PCs"? Cuz I just have what you need for that.

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>>31467343
Oh and, fleshing out NPCs?
Well, Apocalypse World has something for that, too, just check the GMing section under Fronts! Hell, just read the whole GMing section!

>>31467336

i always wanted an Actraiser PnP after watching that Gamecenter CX episode.

You are a godly dude flying in the sky helping humans build their civilization. When trouble arrives, you hop off your comfy cloud and go punch that trouble in its ugly face(s).

I think my GM plans on herding our little group towards making the jump from EotE to AoR if we get too powerful.

It doesn't matter how powerful your characters get, you're still gonna run like a scared bitch from Imperial walkers and star destroyers.

A good way to solve this problem, at least in some systems, bearing in mind your players, it to make the game less about combat.

Yes any single member of the party might kill a soldier from insert bad guy kingdom here, hell as a party they might even be able to kill hundreds. But the bad guys will always have more, and if the party intends to fight their way to the throne, well they're going to have to slog through endless hordes of enemies, and few have such endurance. Of course as mentioned by >>31466612 a power gamer might more quickly reach the source.


Even then, what does killing evil kingdom's nobility solve?
In the short term a quest is solved, yay woo, grab their expensive shit and leave.
And then the infighting begins in the power vacuum. Lack of any semblance of order in the kingdom vanishes, crime, disease and wizards un-restrained by any type of law run a muck. And then it spills over to the nearby kingdoms.

And suddenly solving the problem with brute force alone has brought about dozens of more problems, and destabilized the entire region.

Ways to solve it or prevent it to begin with?
Maybe topple the evil guys by bringing about a rebellion placing its leaders of the crown, which of course can lead to many different outcomes and follow ups. Or maybe turning the bbeg's generals against him, and then through the support of another kingdom lead their armies in to reign in the chaos. Which may start making other smaller kingdoms in the area uncomfortable at the pc's favored kingdom's territorial gains. Tons of opportunities for non-combat plots, yet plenty of combat opportunities for the combat lovers of the group.