From: seawasp@vm2.cis.pitt.edu (Sea Wasp)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Level limits
Keywords: four-way balance
Date: 18 Dec 92 14:20:12 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh
Originator: seawasp@unixd1.cis.pitt.edu

In article <1992Dec18.061531.11632@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> kjenks@gothamcity.jsc.nasa.gov writes:
>Spurred on by a private e-mail discussion, I've decided to inflict
>my arrogant, anthropocentric views on the rest of you....
>
>The level limits on non-humans are there purely for game balance.  If
>there are no limits, every player would choose a non-human character --

	I beg to differ. I have NO level limits, class limits, or race
limits. However, the largest proportion of player characters is in the
human category.

	Anyone who is role-playing  will choose a character which is
what they want to play. If that's human, then they choose human. If
elf, elf, if dragon, dragon. Now, certainly, if all of your players
are ONLY interested in how powerful they can make themselves initially,
then human MAY not be the way to  go (the only advantage humans have
stat-wise in my world is a substantial luck bonus -- that's the edge that
made them dominant, plus of course their breeding speed). But then,
in my completely godlike opinion, your players are missing the point
of ROLE playing.

	But if they have fun, what's the problem?

>penalty) on starting statistics.  The "racial limits" on stats are so
>high that they only restrict an amazingly high roll (usually).

	Oh yeah... I have no stat limits for races, either....

>you can survive to 5th level or so, you are basically immune to every
>single minor incident which normally kills people.  A house fire, a
>farming accident, a knife in the back, a disabling disease -- none of
>these will even slow down a 5th level Adventurer.

	This is one of the bad quirks of the game system. A PLAYER CHARACTER
will enjoy some "destiny" protection -- I'm not, in general, going to allow
a PC to die of a house fire or the clap -- but adventurers, as a group,
aren't immune to being hit by burning beams in a fire, run over by a wagon,
or the black plague. The Arduin HP system makes everyone MUCH more even --
with average constitution, a 0-level human still has 24 hit points, and a
5th level fighter with an 18 con will have 48... but at 6th he'll have 49,
and so to get to, say, 88 HP, he'll have to get to 45th level...

>I can't buy the story that "elves live longer, therefore they should be
>unlimited in level."

	Why not? If you live forever, even if you only learn in a thousand
years what a human learns in one, in a million years you'll still have learned
what any human could in ten lifetimes.

	Your description below shows that your reasoning is that it will
upset the mythical Beast Game Balance.

>levels of clericism and magic use.  The really powerful spells (in
>AD&D1), including Wish, Limited Wish, Alter Reality, Resurrection,
>Gate, and Restoration, cause magical aging in the caster.  As a game
>casting.  However, if an elf (or half elf) gets to be high enough level
>to cast one of these, particularly Wish or Limited Wish, the magical
>aging is nowhere near as much a deterrant

	We already went through this.  So give the Elves an appropriate
equivalent penalty -- loss of hit points, temporary bad luck for a week,
drop in Con score. Whoop-te-do.

>finely balanced set of tools for maintaining the campaign.  If you
>change that balance without thinking carefully about the implications,
>you endanger your campaign in the long run.

	Poppycock. You'd think such effects would have shown themselves
sometime in the past 14 years, wouldn't you? I never noticed them.

>Like the precentage of magical items sized for or specific to non-human
>races.

	Most magical items size themselves to fit anything within a
reasonable range of sizes, unless the creator of the item intended 
that no one else would wear it...


                                 Sea Wasp
                                   /^\
                                   ;;;
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd