Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Trials and Tribulations of a Leaderless Game

So, last night-that would be Monday evening, I suppose, though it's somewhat seeing as how I pen this in the wee hours of the morning-I took part in the game wherein I am a player. We were faced with a Long Fight in a pokemon stylized battle. But the significant element of the battle was that, like the battle before, we were without a leader. That is, our healing consisted of a single potion of vitality (each), Second Wind, and whatever other personal heals we had availible (which to the best of my knowledge was "none.")

Frankly, it was awesome-part of the reason we were able to win (sort of: technically we had to stop mid-fight since the DM had to head to bed, but it's clear that we're going to nuke the enemy before it acts again) is because of ridiculous terrain features (and myself, the overpowered this-should-seriously-be-nerfed-but-no-not-really-because-I-don't-want-to-suck forced movement user). The other half is probably due to the Monty Haul style of treasure usage for the campaign.

Sadly, we didn't make it out unscathed-the party avenger bit the dust when in phase three, a plant based pokemon (I told you it was a pokemon stylized battle didn't I?) used a really nasty "Unconscious (Save Ends)" attack. With all the Coup De Graces going on, there was really nothing we could do to save her. Not sure we could have had we had a leader though.

My thoughts on the matter are that, you can really quite wildly reduce the overall difficulty level of monsters just by removing healing from the game-or rather, severely limiting it. It creates such a tremendously different play experience, which can be refreshing if you've gotten tired of the "Defender drops to 0, healer drops a Healing Word" style of play. But the flip side is, everything is suddenly a lot more lethal, making the game ultimately more swingy.

Kind of reminds me of 3rd edition.

No comments:

Post a Comment