TOPIC: I'm really surprised how many groups run on Normal

jedibcg wrote: Kirk remember you were DMing the puzzle side. There are people that play TD just for the puzzles and don't care about the combat so want it done as easily as possible. I don't know this to be true but I bet there are more normal runs on puzzle than combat.

I did mean to mention that, yes I noticed it less on the combat side (where I was a training coach) but still noticed it there as well.

Kirk Bauer wrote:

jedibcg wrote: Kirk remember you were DMing the puzzle side. There are people that play TD just for the puzzles and don't care about the combat so want it done as easily as possible. I don't know this to be true but I bet there are more normal runs on puzzle than combat.

I did mean to mention that, yes I noticed it less on the combat side (where I was a training coach) but still noticed it there as well.

i asked some people..their response was"we dont want to die"....at least until the last room

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote:

jedibcg wrote: Kirk remember you were DMing the puzzle side. There are people that play TD just for the puzzles and don't care about the combat so want it done as easily as possible. I don't know this to be true but I bet there are more normal runs on puzzle than combat.

I did mean to mention that, yes I noticed it less on the combat side (where I was a training coach) but still noticed it there as well.

i asked some people..their response was"we dont want to die"....at least until the last room

Yeah, exactly. But as a result they end up kill monsters in 1-2 rounds and almost everybody hits every attack. Back to my original point, the fear of dying reduces their potential for fun IMO.

I would consider running harder than Normal but probably won't for a few reasons.

First, I'm not very good at sliding. I usually play a ranger and have recently built into a ranged build because I'm terrible at sliding 2 pucks. I'm sure I'd get better if I could practice regularly but doing something a few times a year doesn't really allow any muscle memory. Even sliding a single puck I tend to under slide cause I'm afraid of hitting the backstop. My build next year (after I finish my ring of heroism) will have me at +11 to hit with ranged attacks.

Another reason is because the last couple of years (this one especially) the DM's have been slower at calculating damage and getting our sliders back. Our whole group would need some serious damage output to overcome that.

And finally because most of the friends in my group don't really get into token buying so they only have what they have gotten in the few packs they have bought over the years. My one buddy this year went to GamingETC and dropped about $50 on reds so he is a little better off than the rest of them.

Matthew Naikelis wrote: Another reason is because the last couple of years (this one especially) the DM's have been slower at calculating damage and getting our sliders back. Our whole group would need some serious damage output to overcome that.

This is part of my original point, though. If you are over-powered then typically most of your slides will hit, slowing down the rounds of combats.

If you are less over-powered then you hit less which means each round goes quicker. Yes you take more damage but you also get to slide more and, in my opinion, have more fun.

Matthew Naikelis wrote: My one buddy this year went to GamingETC and dropped about $50 on reds so he is a little better off than the rest of them.

Ouch, their prices are crazy BTW, next time tell him to shop ahead of time (not just a plug for my token store, any of the token stores will beat their prices .

Legion wrote: We have a group of ten that run every year and have just started into the area of higher-end tokens. We've talked about doing harder runs, and moved up to Hardcore last year. This year we considered doing Nightmare, but one of our group was in a GT run this year and was freaked out about how close his group came to dying (especially being better kitted out than us).

We crushed both dungeons. Matter of fact, in SG we won initiative and killed every monster before they got to attack. We got a nice complement from one GM: "That's the most consistent damage output I've ever seen. The Sneak Attack was the only thing over 17 damage, but everyone hit. Everyone."

I think next year we'll run Nightmare...

Blame room 1 of SG for my fear. You know our normal group of 10 have no physical coordination. You and I would have been fine with all our hitpoints, but we likely would have had people die in that room (or we would have blown through a significant part of the healing from the druid and cleric since we weren't allowed to use any of our gear for bonuses to healing until after the room was resolved). Mainly I just didn't want people dying that quickly. I didn't realize on hardcore we'd wind up just strolling through. We knew going in that nightmare was going to be made more difficult, but it feels like there is now a large gap between hardcore and nightmare.

Kirk Bauer wrote:

Matthew Naikelis wrote: Another reason is because the last couple of years (this one especially) the DM's have been slower at calculating damage and getting our sliders back. Our whole group would need some serious damage output to overcome that.

This is part of my original point, though. If you are over-powered then typically most of your slides will hit, slowing down the rounds of combats.

If you are less over-powered then you hit less which means each round goes quicker. Yes you take more damage but you also get to slide more and, in my opinion, have more fun.

Matthew Naikelis wrote: My one buddy this year went to GamingETC and dropped about $50 on reds so he is a little better off than the rest of them.

Ouch, their prices are crazy BTW, next time tell him to shop ahead of time (not just a plug for my token store, any of the token stores will beat their prices .

Yeah I told him they would be expensive but the reason he went shopping at the con was cause he left his tokens at home accidentally.

In response to your other comment, I was +9 to hit this year and was missing on 14's against the drow elf in the spider cave. Not sure if the GM was just calculating wrong or read my to-hit bonus incorrectly, or that monsters AC was actually that high.

We seriously thought about it on our Sable run. We had 3 newbies but 2 of them were decently kitted out (fighter and dwarf fighter who both had +1 blood maces and AC around 20, shirts of simplicity, couple of ion stones, etc etc etc). We decided not to but at the end we were asking ourselves if we should have done hard. I think better information about the difficulty of hardcore versus normal might help alot. Something like hardcore is 50% harder and party with everyone having at least rare tokens should be able to make it to the last room. (I am just making up what the guideline should be, I have no clue as to the actual levels.) From what I see on my limited exposure. A party with multiple 5th levels, half the party having some ultra rare's and everyone else being pretty well equipped should be at hardcore, less than that should stay at normal. Is this a pretty good estimate?

Agreed on having clearer differentiation between the difficulty levels. I went back to the 'how to play page', and while it notes some guidelines about playing higher difficulties, most of that section seems to be on Exp accrual, which lacks a lot of context, and won't necessarily apply to many players (who just go for the adventure, not the ongoing 'character/profile building' aspects).

Finding out that the higher difficulties also reduced the number of attempts before losing out on treasure also makes me a bit wary of going higher (as a newer player); I believe we lost out on all of the treasure rooms due to mistakes (the lava floor), falling short on time (the mushrooms), or being eaten by spiders.

In terms of risk/reward, I appreciate a challenge, but when spending as much as it costs to participate (especially if we go for multiple runs next time), stacking the deck against ourselves loses some of that appeal.

Perhaps it'd take people out of their immersion a bit, but a clearer guideline as to additional rewards and quantifying the other differences between difficulties might help people better understand. It needn't even be a set in stone situation, but something to help people (especially newer players) make an informed choice. "Hardcore: an average +3 to enemy AC, 25% more hp, 50% more push/trap damage, one bonus treasure. Nightmare: average +10 to enemy AC, 75% more hp, 100% more push/trap damage, 2 bonus treasures", something that quantifies how much actually harder it is (numbers obviously pulled right from... the air around me).

Attending the True Dungeon 101, and later talking to some regular players certainly helped as well, but as much as I'd like to dip my toe into Hardcore, I'd be hard pressed not to default to Normal unless I were lucky enough to be in a pre-arranged party (or stumble into one by chance) that was loaded with veterans.

I know that I was one of those players who were afraid to up play my games. I even had a few Ultra Rares and was reded out. My group didn't have as many tokens though so it was more important to survive to see and experience the rooms (remember, this was back when if you died you were escorted out of the room) I ended up with this nightmare party that talked me and the rest of my group into going up. They promised to heal us if we needed it but we ended up having a blast and I haven't looked back since.

For what it's worth, our group should probably be doing Hardcore usually. However, we seem to get about 50-60% newbies every year, so want to make it easy for them. This also means that about half of our new players stumble around like dorks and don't learn their characters, which results in things like the bard not doing lore checks and the last-minute wizard not casting spells or understanding what a dagger of arcane luck does.

HOWEVER

Into the Underdark is a great example of exactly why even our 'veteran' team won't up to Hardcore - the last two rooms in it were ridiculously difficult and the mind flayer in particular seemed impossible to beat without sheer luck on the to-hit rolls. I can't even imagine how bad that room would have been for first-timers with two or three rolls of tokens each.

Toran wrote: Into the Underdark is a great example of exactly why even our 'veteran' team won't up to Hardcore - the last two rooms in it were ridiculously difficult and the mind flayer in particular seemed impossible to beat without sheer luck on the to-hit rolls. I can't even imagine how bad that room would have been for first-timers with two or three rolls of tokens each.

I'm not sure it was all that hard. On our Green with Envy run, we did Underdark Combat with only common and uncommon tokens. And we did it on Hardcore. Up until the final room nobody had died and we defeated 3 out of the 4 monsters. Now in the final room many people died and we ran out of time, but that's the final room so no biggie, right? In fact I think it was intentionally hard as part of the story between the two dungeons.