TOPIC: "Magical Fire" - Can we do better?

Cliff wrote:

Fiddy wrote:

Rob F wrote: Well it's kind of a no win for TD. On one hand they've got people not happy with Nightmare being so easy, so sounds like they decided to try and adjust on the fly to increase the difficulty and then they wind up with different people unhappy because their Tokens don't work. At least I'm guessing that's what happened. I think Nightmare should be a lot harder and if they need to "moisten" or "magical fire" everyone to make it more challenging then I say go for it.

TD added Epic difficulty for those people that find Nightmare too easy. Telling people to play on Epic should be the answer if they find Nightmare too easy. Nightmare shouldn't be made more difficult just because some people are finding it too easy. Widening the gap between Hardcore and Nightmare impacts significantly more people.

I agree that Epic is the way to go if you need to feel more challenged in the dungeons. My issue is trying to get an Epic run arranged - especially at Gen Con. I'm not sure how many Epic runs happened over the past weekend, but I could not any Epic runs to do. I hope this is because Epic is relatively new and that we will see more Epic runs happening in the future.

Step 1. Make Epic available at all cons
Step 2. Look for organized Epic runs here.

FWIW, one of our groups one shotted the swamp hag anyhow

Our turkey leg group killed it in 2, first Turkey legs, then thrown gravy.

The final monster took 3 or 4 rounds I believe.

Fiddy makes a very good point. If you make NM harder, than affects a lot more players than making Epic harder.

If players cant play Epic, they will likely play NM with their epic gear.

Also, I loved the responsiveness of the team on making Epic harder mid day Thursday.

Agree with everyone's sentiments on the issue at hand. To me it is very annoying to have a $2k token that was intended to help in situations exactly like this, be useless. Another possible solution is to implement damage subtypes as mentioned but clearly define what level of token can be applied to reduce damage. Like say magical fire can only be reduced by UR+ tokens while eldritch fire can only be reduced by eldritch+ items. Just my 0.02.

We had "moist" damage in our group as well but I assumed that it was just the GM being cheeky and applied damage reduction as if it were normal damage.

I mean ultimately each player is tracking their own HP - the GM in any given room has no way to account for your starting or ending HP. If you think the "magical fire isn't fire" rule is bull-plop, then apply your damage reduction or don't. IMHO what's important is that you play the game the way that is most fun for you without ruining it for anyone else.

Steven Hunter wrote: We had "moist" damage in our group as well but I assumed that it was just the GM being cheeky and applied damage reduction as if it were normal damage.

I mean ultimately each player is tracking their own HP - the GM in any given room has no way to account for your starting or ending HP. If you think the "magical fire isn't fire" rule is bull-plop, then apply your damage reduction or don't. IMHO what's important is that you play the game the way that is most fun for you without ruining it for anyone else.

Agree on both counts!

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Steven Hunter wrote: We had "moist" damage in our group as well but I assumed that it was just the GM being cheeky and applied damage reduction as if it were normal damage.

I mean ultimately each player is tracking their own HP - the GM in any given room has no way to account for your starting or ending HP. If you think the "magical fire isn't fire" rule is bull-plop, then apply your damage reduction or don't. IMHO what's important is that you play the game the way that is most fun for you without ruining it for anyone else.

Agree on both counts!

I don’t - if some players follow the rules and others don’t it becomes impossible for td to evaluate the tuning of a room. Players who cheat say its fine - those who don’t say it’s too hard - what to do?

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Steven Hunter wrote: We had "moist" damage in our group as well but I assumed that it was just the GM being cheeky and applied damage reduction as if it were normal damage.

I mean ultimately each player is tracking their own HP - the GM in any given room has no way to account for your starting or ending HP. If you think the "magical fire isn't fire" rule is bull-plop, then apply your damage reduction or don't. IMHO what's important is that you play the game the way that is most fun for you without ruining it for anyone else.

Agree on both counts!

I don’t - if some players follow the rules and others don’t it becomes impossible for td to evaluate the tuning of a room. Players who cheat say its fine - those who don’t say it’s too hard - what to do?

I suppose that is a fair criticism. The alternative is to play by the rules you disagree with and then discuss them afterward.

Part of the reason I don’t play Grind is that I don’t like tokens I’ve spent a lot money on to simply be invalidated. I could simply have played on Normal or Non Lethal even without spending any money on tokens. It sure would save me a lot of money.

Bob Chasan wrote: Part of the reason I don’t play Grind is that I don’t like tokens I’ve spent a lot money on to simply be invalidated. I could simply have played on Normal or Non Lethal even without spending any money on tokens. It sure would save me a lot of money.

Yes Incognito loves it when you play Grind and play Non-Lethal.

Agree completely (don't nerf our tokens with module syntax). Best to have that fire be 10 Fire and 10 Force.

Ed

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Steven Hunter wrote: We had "moist" damage in our group as well but I assumed that it was just the GM being cheeky and applied damage reduction as if it were normal damage.

I mean ultimately each player is tracking their own HP - the GM in any given room has no way to account for your starting or ending HP. If you think the "magical fire isn't fire" rule is bull-plop, then apply your damage reduction or don't. IMHO what's important is that you play the game the way that is most fun for you without ruining it for anyone else.

Agree on both counts!

I don’t - if some players follow the rules and others don’t it becomes impossible for td to evaluate the tuning of a room. Players who cheat say its fine - those who don’t say it’s too hard - what to do?

I can see your point about TD's need to balance play for the players that *do* adhere to the rules completely. Fair enough.

But a sufficiently equipped player can also throw off the balance just as easily while completely following the rules. For instance a couple of years ago we had a tricked-out Cleric in our party who could basically heal for more than 20 HP multiple times. In kinda made our normal run into a non-leathal run.

And hell, I've lost paper clips without noticing and just had to guess what my HP was...

Unless I hear eldritch I assume it can be resisted by a token. Even push can be mitigated somewhat by the cricket.

What if magical fire was dr only to the lower of spell and fire? Not 10 fire and 10 spell (of which I resist 8 fire and 4 spell) but 20 spell fire damage that I would resist 4 of since I have both 8 fire and 4 spell. Just an idea. I know a few years back I really appreciated resisting all the melee damage from a wyrm and all the fire damage when it chose to attack me, I actually decided to not even bother in the water bath as the dr covered the melee fire retribution damage at the level I was at.