Goodman Games

Is it an issue with fighter and mighty deeds at higher levels? It looks like they can do an unlimited amount of mighty deeds, which could be a show stopper or stealer. Is this an issue with higher level play?

I was thinking it may be. So I was thinking about upping the difficulty of every successful mighty deeds by 1 factor. So the first one of the day is 3+, the second one will be 4+ until successful, the third, 5+ until successful, etc.

Veterans, what say ye?

My suspicion is that this is a method to keep up with the Jones-Merlins...

That is, one of the issues people have long talked about with various incarnations of D&D is that at high levels, the Magic Users became the focus because they are so powerful.

But with the Might Deeds becoming more probable (your mighty deed die goes up so your chance of getting 3+ are greater as you rise in level) at higher levels, the Fighters might very well find ways to keep pace with those crazy wizards.

At least, that's how I saw it...

It is also *very* much a question of scale and scope. 10th lvl DCC warrior ≠ 10th level BECMI or AD&D or D&D edition X.

Rather, he is a nigh demi-god, conquering worlds across time and space. (Or whatever he feels up to.)

Think level 30+ in BECMI, and AD&D never really reached this tone of play for fighters. If Thor wants to disarm you, he probably can.

I'd be willing to guess that, per the DCC RPG, Conan probably never got above 6th or 7th level.

//H

Harley Stroh wrote:It is also *very* much a question of scale and scope. 10th lvl DCC warrior ≠ 10th level BECMI or AD&D or D&D edition X.

Rather, he is a nigh demi-god, conquering worlds across time and space. (Or whatever he feels up to.)

Think level 30+ in BECMI, and AD&D never really reached this tone of play for fighters. If Thor wants to disarm you, he probably can.

I'd be willing to guess that, per the DCC RPG, Conan probably never got above 6th or 7th level.

//H

Harley, this is very relevant for what I'm working on. Thank you.

Harley Stroh wrote:I'd be willing to guess that, per the DCC RPG, Conan probably never got above 6th or 7th level.

//H

Sounds like it takes a long time to level up then

THat's a positive in my book.

My gripe with Mighty Deeds being so easy at higher levels is that I hate repeating myself too much and trying to think up a new and interesting deed every time I attack will be tiresome.

mythfish wrote:My gripe with Mighty Deeds being so easy at higher levels is that I hate repeating myself too much and trying to think up a new and interesting deed every time I attack will be tiresome.

Just come up with different names for the same maneuvers. It's my favorite use for the Kung-Fu Style generator:

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate. ... ame=mamove

Deeds are still a big trade off damage-wise, aren't they? Your attack die isn't added to the damage roll if used for a Deed. Expect maybe I'm confused on that rule, as I can't find it now when I look. Did I invent that?

grinnock wrote:Deeds are still a big trade off damage-wise, aren't they? Your attack die isn't added to the damage roll if used for a Deed. Expect maybe I'm confused on that rule, as I can't find it now when I look. Did I invent that?

That is true! At high levels that is a lot of extra damage to trade off.

There are other ways to balance the Might Deeds of Arm. Say your level 2 warrior wants to knock a knight in plate down a flight of stairs. Well that task isn't very difficult. After all he's a biped, in heavy armor, and not a very powerful enemy.

Now say a lvl 5 warrior wants to try and push a Bassalisk off a cliff, well not only is this creature larger than the human knight; it is also possessing multiple legs and far more hit dice. This example is actually used in the book as needing a 6 or higher. As such a level 5 warrior (who throws a d7 deed die) only has a 2 in 7 chance of accomplishing in the task. Even a level 10 warrior still only has an 9 in 10 chance(1d10+4). That is of course, assuming they also hit (meaning the odds are actually lower).

[Edit- didn't finish my thought]

So that said, if you have a warrior who is constantly using his, mighty deed of arms, ability to break your encounters. Try and out plan him. If he likes knocking stuff into pits. Let him knock a demon into a pit filled with lava...which only makes the monster STRONGER. Or if he likes smashing down pillars, remind the party that pillars aren't just for decoration.

Remember that as a judge, it is your world. However that said you should always encourage your players to be creative.

I had an encounter once that I spent days setting up. I had all the enemies planned out to lead the party through a chase down tall smooth walled back alley (that could not be climbed). Forcing them to battle through a small gauntlet of traps and thugs to get to the leaders.

But even before they started chasing down the alley's to try and catch them. One of my players decided his character wanted to hide on the low building I had mentioned as part of flavor text I wrote. He then used that building to climb higher and higher. and so you can imagine where this is going. All the work I put into forcing them through a gauntlet was thrown to the wind by a clever rogues ability to drop in behind the leader and back stab him.

Edit 2

I noted a similar thread under rules discussion Here. Where the rule is explained in more detail. To summarize its all about the die roll. the +1 - +4 are modifiers to attack and damage only.

So a level 10 warrior has the same chance of success as a level 7.

PeelSeel2 wrote:

grinnock wrote:Deeds are still a big trade off damage-wise, aren't they? Your attack die isn't added to the damage roll if used for a Deed. Expect maybe I'm confused on that rule, as I can't find it now when I look. Did I invent that?

That is true! At high levels that is a lot of extra damage to trade off.

You don't give up the damage and attack bonuses from the deed die - see the example on page 88, it clearly shows the deed die adding to attack and damage while still having a successful bullrush deed.

I had also thought that you lost the damage bonus when doing a deed. I may make that a houserule.

I look again after sleeping and immediately see it includes the attack die in every roll in the example. Sleep is an amazing thing. I'm not sure if I want to make what I thought a house rule or not, I don't really want to stomp on anyone being descriptive in combat.

Re-reading Mighty Deeds, I see where the damage still adds in.

Having run my first session, killing 8 out of 20 characters, and looking at the XP curve, I am just not going to worry about it at higher levels.

Thanks everyone for your replies!

grinnock wrote:Deeds are still a big trade off damage-wise, aren't they? Your attack die isn't added to the damage roll if used for a Deed. Expect maybe I'm confused on that rule, as I can't find it now when I look. Did I invent that?

That was an interpretation of the Beta rules that was bandied about here for a while. It was the "standard" interpretation until corrected a few weeks later, IIRC.

grinnock wrote:I look again after sleeping and immediately see it includes the attack die in every roll in the example. Sleep is an amazing thing. I'm not sure if I want to make what I thought a house rule or not, I don't really want to stomp on anyone being descriptive in combat.

That's one of the things that I like about the Deeds: it encourages warriors/dwarves to be more descriptive in combat. Because they get to roll their extra die for every attack and any roll might get you a 3+, then it encourages warriors to attempt a Deed with each attack. There should never be a time when the warrior/dwarf says, "I attack the orc." Each attack should sound something like, "I swing my warhammer at the orc's chest to knock him off balance and drive him away from the cleric" or "I jab my spear at the orc's sword arm to make him drop his sword." Every attack should be interesting because you never know when you're going to get that 3+. That's why I'm not going to use a default Deed's list unless the player creates one for his character. Otherwise, if the player isn't taking the time to make combat interesting, then why should I?

Harley Stroh wrote:It is also *very* much a question of scale and scope. 10th lvl DCC warrior ≠ 10th level BECMI or AD&D or D&D edition X.
<snip>
I'd be willing to guess that, per the DCC RPG, Conan probably never got above 6th or 7th level.

I think that the question of scale will take a while for folks to get used to in the DCC rpg.

OD&D was designed so that 4th was impressive and 8th much more so, and Conan was probably in the 6th-8th level range depending on your scale. AD&D brought levels up to 20 so suddenly Conan becomes 18th to 20th level. 3E/4E brought about an "epic" range up to 30 so I guess Conan would have to scale appropriately.

We're just going to have to play DCC a while in order to get a good feel for what a level really represents. Having a "Conan equals 6th or 7th level" guideline helps a lot, though!

I'm just going to chip in with this:

Lots of folks keep referring to the MDoA ("Deed") as something for getting the fighter types to be more descriptive. What it actually does is encourage them to be more involved and do more than just hack a foe.

Don't just whittle away hp from your enemies -- make something happen!

grinnock wrote:Deeds are still a big trade off damage-wise, aren't they? Your attack die isn't added to the damage roll if used for a Deed. Expect maybe I'm confused on that rule, as I can't find it now when I look. Did I invent that?

I think you invented that. The deed die adds to both attack and damage.

I can live with that, and I know my players will love it. Thanks!

I've only run the introductory adventure for 0-level characters so far (read my impressions here), but I'm leaning towards keeping the tradeoff of the beta rules (mighty deed vs. extra damage, possibly even extra accuracy as well).

Of course, a successful deed would then have to be really powerful (along the lines of a 5+ in the Mighty Deeds examples in the Combat chapter). Such deeds would be game-changers (e.g. pushing an ogre over a cliff) and might inspire the party to plan accordingly (e.g. by luring the ogre to the cliff in the first place).

I'm flaky about creating new mighty deeds, and it would help if there were guidelines for how to build them. For example, a 7+ is obviously better than a 3+ but how so, and what do all the intermediary results (+4, +5, and +6) grant you? The Disarm mighty deed is a good example. It's quite involved. The trouble stems from there being so many variables you could use in a mighy deed.

I'd really have no clue how to scale/create them.

Have you had a chance to run some games yet? Don't overthink Mighty Deeds - they should require NO work from the judge. It's up to the PLAYER to define them. Every time the warrior lands a strike, he should be describing his attack and what he attempts with the mighty deed.

For some players, this is really hard. They're not imaginative in how they think of attacks, or they're stuck on 3E feats as a way to run their fighter, or something else. Some players never "get it" and they continually forget to declare their Mighty Deed.

But for most players, they gradually "get it" and then start to really love Mighty Deeds. On every single attack, they define a special move. Usually they figure out to attempt different moves at different times (this one's a trip, this one's a disarm!). Eventually they may settle into a rhythm with a couple preferred moves.

At low levels there are only a couple possible results from a Deed (they're rolling d3 or d4 and trying to get 3+) so you really only have 1 or 2 possible results from every Deed. By the time the characters start to approach 3rd or 4th level, you have a sense of what the fighter tends to attempt, and you can start determining how that ability might scale. But remember: it is the PLAYER'S job to declare what he tries to do. All you have to do is think through, "okay, he needs to be 3rd level to try this version of it and 4th level to try this other version" (since the Deed results roughly correlate with level based on the deed die). You will have many sessions of game play between each level-up, so there's plenty of time to think and scale...

Put my players in the not getting it camp for Mighty Deeds! The only one who would is playing a spellcaster.

reverenddak wrote:

mythfish wrote:My gripe with Mighty Deeds being so easy at higher levels is that I hate repeating myself too much and trying to think up a new and interesting deed every time I attack will be tiresome.

Just come up with different names for the same maneuvers. It's my favorite use for the Kung-Fu Style generator:

http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate. ... ame=mamove

Very cool. Thanks for the link.