Ponderings on my DMing style

[Roy]

To Surgo: The narrative process in that case is a known constant, aka you win everything forever. If you've already won, why play?

You don't know what the future of the story holds. At all. "Not dying" is a tiny part of that.

Nothing bad happens to you, so you succeed. The moment you decide what you're going to do, you already know you've won.

Beat down the entire orc empire? Yeah sure, you do that.

Find your long lost mother, who may or may not be dead? Yup, you auto win.

Solo a balor with a spoon? Auto win, because you can't die amirite?

Oh and don't try to mention other brands of failure. As those are worse than death, and you've already proven death isn't a threat...

[Blicero]

I suspect, for Roy, "never failing" means that the PC's will always, always, always succeed, because of DM fiat if necessary, even if they do something totally stupid, like singlehandedly attacking the orcish empire at 2nd level.

Whereas, for mean liar and others (including myself), "never failing" might mean more like "not overly penalizing players for horrible luck with the death of a character that they've had for 5 months and love as if 'twas their firstborn." Permanently dying in a random encounter because you rolled three 1s in a row sucks; permanently dying in the climactic boss battle so that your friends might succeed can be pretty epic. But if my players decided to tackle the orcish empire at 2nd level, they would almost be guaranteed to fail and die, no matter what.

[Roy]

It's called slippery slope. You're already ignoring bad luck, why not bad tactics as well? After all good enough luck could let you totally take on the orc empire, so anything less than that is bad.

Not to mention the bitching that will follow when you choose to ignore Steve's perceived bad luck but not Sam's.

Whereas if you let the dice fall where they may, the players may curse themselves, or luck, but their fate was in their hands. None of this Deus Ex Machina fail.

[The Man Who Killed Death]

I suspect, for Roy, "never failing" means that the PC's will always, always, always succeed, because of DM fiat if necessary, even if they do something totally stupid, like singlehandedly attacking the orcish empire at 2nd level.

Whereas, for mean liar and others (including myself), "never failing" might mean more like "not overly penalizing players for horrible luck with the death of a character that they've had for 5 months and love as if 'twas their firstborn." Permanently dying in a random encounter because you rolled three 1s in a row sucks; permanently dying in the climactic boss battle so that your friends might succeed can be pretty epic. But if my players decided to tackle the orcish empire at 2nd level, they would almost be guaranteed to fail and die, no matter what.

Precisely, which is why Roy is being stubborn and retarded about this.

He thinks just because some people don't master a game system and might make a mistake or two while planning an encounter (or the d20 rolls several too many 1's or 20's) and doesn't want the characters to die because of that mistake means they will fudge all rolls and make the characters win everything.

Obviously this is not the case and he has issues believing not everyone is like him and thinks that D&D has nothing to do with story and everything to do with battle simulation. Yes, some people do play D&D like a tactical war game. Others, however like to use it as a medium to tell stories.

[A Man In Black]

It's called slippery slope.

Man, I see a lot of people call "fallacy!" on other peoples' arguments, rightly or wrongly. This is the first time I've seen someone call it on himself, though.

[Blicero]

I guess I'd rather penalize players for things they have control over (their actions) rather than things they don't have control over (the whims of the Dice Gods).

As I personally witnessed in a campaign I ran a couple of years ago when, because of a combination of tricky fights, bad luck, and bad decisions, one player ended up having an average of one character per level, in a campaign that spanned twelve level increases, it can totally destroy the consistency of the story if the PCs are just supposed to randomly welcome new people to their group whenever someone dies.

And, contrary to some opinions, I'm not sure if Raise Dead spells are really that easily available. At early levels, characters are looking at the difficulty of even finding a high level cleric, depending on what "power level" their world is at. And, if they do, they'll probably have to deal with being in debt just to afford the diamonds. Economically speaking, it is often far more viable just to loot a dead PCs body and sell the stuff then welcome the new character when s(he) arrives.

Personally, I let dead PCs, by virtue of having levels in a Heroic Class, be revived with a Heal check so long as it is done within 5+Con mod rounds and their bodies aren't totally mangled. This generally means that I don't have to pull creatures' punches in combat, while still having a non-dismissable chance of permanent death.

[Starmaker]

I remember someone on the old wotc forums saying, "No matter what, I refrain from killing my players. The characters, though, are fair game."

Anyway, the Internet is proof enough that it's quite possible to be a total failure and still not die. HPs are very much an abstraction. There's no in-world justification why a healing spell can't glue a severed head back where it belongs. And a game that has no ways to fail other than dying ain't worth playing in the first place. I ran and played tens of one-on-one games, it was an assumption that the PC is not going to die and no one has ever tried to abuse that fact.

[Fuchs]

I remember someone on the old wotc forums saying, "No matter what, I refrain from killing my players. The characters, though, are fair game."

Anyway, the Internet is proof enough that it's quite possible to be a total failure and still not die. HPs are very much an abstraction. There's no in-world justification why a healing spell can't glue a severed head back where it belongs. And a game that has no ways to fail other than dying ain't worth playing in the first place. I ran and played tens of one-on-one games, it was an assumption that the PC is not going to die and no one has ever tried to abuse that fact.

Good point. Failing doesn't have to mean death.

[RobbyPants]

It's called slippery slope.

Man, I see a lot of people call "fallacy!" on other peoples' arguments, rightly or wrongly. This is the first time I've seen someone call it on himself, though.

Damn, you beat me to it.

[Roy]

Precisely, which is why Roy is being stubborn and retarded about this.

He thinks just because some people don't master a game system and might make a mistake or two while planning an encounter (or the d20 rolls several too many 1's or 20's) and doesn't want the characters to die because of that mistake means they will fudge all rolls and make the characters win everything.

Obviously this is not the case and he has issues believing not everyone is like him and thinks that D&D has nothing to do with story and everything to do with battle simulation. Yes, some people do play D&D like a tactical war game. Others, however like to use it as a medium to tell stories.

Could you be any more retarded about this?

Let me recount the ways in which you fail:

1: It doesn't take system mastery. Someone who hasn't mastered the system is also running easier encounters on the grounds they aren't having the enemies use their full potential. This results in things like the mind flayer you just yawn and hit twice to kill instead of the mind flayer that you could still kill in two hits, but good luck doing that as the mind flayer has many you can't hit me abilities. Same mind flayer but one is a dumbass mob, and one is a hyper intelligent brain eating thing.

2: Learn what slippery slope is. Once you start cheating for immortality there's going to be a huge whiny bitch fest when you stop.

3: Learn what Oberoni is. Here's a hint: Unless you're a dumbfuck hack writer, or perhaps are working on children's entertainment 'telling a story' does not require 'you can't lose, ever, because you're the protagonist'. Nor does not cheating on dice rolls automatically make it a tactical war game, and even if it is a tactical war game that still in no way inhibits the telling of stories. But then again as 'storyteller' is really just the politically correct way of saying 'railroading hack job' as evidenced by Vampire and friends I really shouldn't be surprised at all you think that the only way to tell a story is 'you can't lose, ever because you're the protagonist'.

And that's even if you don't just Revivify it all away. Which you can totally do, as long as the cause of death is something Raise Dead can bring you back from. Which means you get yourself something that blocks death effects and you don't have a lot to worry about.

But regardless, one does not hurk durk auto attack their way past a Balor, or even a Hamatula. It requires some actual strategy and tactics, and given that level 3-5 is about what such paragons of teamwork as the US NAVY SEALS and the MARINES would be in a D&D context it is not asking too much to expect people to think. It is asking too much to expect them to not do so. Especially since that sideways rapes immersion, ruining your story strawman. Why a strawman you ask? Well first of all if you really wanted a story you'd have no problem with competent opposition as that makes the story better, and second it's obvious you're just hiding behind the ROLEplayer sign to get plot immortality while playing some gimp.

Man, I see a lot of people call "fallacy!" on other peoples' arguments, rightly or wrongly. This is the first time I've seen someone call it on himself, though.

I ask you the same question. Could you be any more retarded? However there is little reason to elaborate, as it is quite obvious why you fail at life.

I remember someone on the old wotc forums saying, "No matter what, I refrain from killing my players. The characters, though, are fair game."

Anyway, the Internet is proof enough that it's quite possible to be a total failure and still not die. HPs are very much an abstraction. There's no in-world justification why a healing spell can't glue a severed head back where it belongs. And a game that has no ways to fail other than dying ain't worth playing in the first place. I ran and played tens of one-on-one games, it was an assumption that the PC is not going to die and no one has ever tried to abuse that fact.

You do not fail quite yet. However we have been over this, and it's already been established the other ways of failing are worse.

Let's see...

Sundertarded: Costs more than death to fix, without the option to just make a new character if you choose.

Losing limbs: Also costs more than death to fix. Higher level too, seriously losing a hand is something that takes four levels longer to fix than losing your life, and again doesn't offer the option to ditch your forcibly gimped character if you want.

Captured: Congrats, you lose all your gear, and now have to fight against the same force that easily took you down at full power while holding back at a fraction of your own power. This means your character either rots away, or gets skullfucked by DM power tripping. You are literally better off having the DM tell you a Balor sodomizes your level 1 character despite the fact it's kind of ON FIRE than having them captured by a fair and legitimate authority.

What the fuck man? How can you possibly think any of this is a viable alternative?

[Username17]

Fix your Quote Tags!

In general, Roy is correct. If you aren't going to enforce the possibility of losing on people if they are unlucky or make poor choices, then the die rolls and choices the players make are completely meaningless. People have to be able to fail if success is to mean anything at all.

However, there is one thing I want to take issue with:

Sundertarded: Costs more than death to fix, without the option to just make a new character if you choose.

God dammit Roy! We've been over this: sundered magic items are not specifically unfixable according to the actual rules in 3rd edition. We have anecdotal evidence that various members of the design teams think that magic items are unfixable once broken, but the rules on Crafting do not actually say that anywhere.

Please stop saying that something is worse than a death sentence simply on the grounds that you have personally made up a rule that makes it worse than a death sentence.

Seriously, we've been over this: the actual rules do not say that the Craft skill can't repair a broken magic sword (they do say that you can't fix it with the mend spell for what that is worth); and the actual rules seriously do tell you to give out extra treasure to players ho have lost gear.

I understand that you feel butt hurt about the WBL rules and don't actually reward failure with replacement items. But that stance of yours does not change those rules. The rules are that sundering items is a profoundly temporary setback - like ability damage poison it is likely to weaken you for a few encounters but has no long-term effects. That makes sundering a magic item a very plausible thing to do to a player to hurt them in a tangible but temporary fashion. Much better than draining some charges from a heal stick handing out some hit point damage.

-Username17

[Roy]

Yes, because taking a few weeks off to repair your Broken Sword of Wang +9,001 to get a... masterwork sword is totally worth it, and completely fixes the power loss not having the uber sword imposed. Except oh wait, it doesn't do any of that. Fail.

We've also been over why DM skull fuck power tripping is a bad thing. So I don't know why you keep defending sundertards.

By the way, you're wrong anyways.

A damaged object remains fully functional until the item’s hit points are reduced to 0, at which point it is destroyed.

Damaged (but not destroyed) objects can be repaired with the Craft skill.

Item is destroyed, you can't fix it. Period, full stop. If the item doesn't hit critical existence failure, you mark off a few charges of the repair stick (and your DM is a total douchebag who should die in a fire for being a sundertard). So it's not actually any different at all, except that you have a less intelligent DM.

[A Man In Black]

I ask you the same question. Could you be any more retarded? However there is little reason to elaborate, as it is quite obvious why you fail at life.

Yes, I could be more retarded. For example, I could be conflating immortality with immunity to setback.

Good thing I'm not doing anything retarded like that.

[Roy]

I ask you the same question. Could you be any more retarded? However there is little reason to elaborate, as it is quite obvious why you fail at life.

Yes, I could be more retarded. For example, I could be conflating immortality with immunity to setback.

Good thing I'm not doing anything retarded like that.

[virgil]

You can also mend a broken magic weapon, suit of armor, or shield if it is one that you could make. Doing so costs half the XP, half the raw materials, and half the time it would take to craft that item in the first place.

Similar text exists within the Craft Ring and Craft Wondrous Item feats.

[Roy]

You can also mend a broken magic weapon, suit of armor, or shield if it is one that you could make. Doing so costs half the XP, half the raw materials, and half the time it would take to craft that item in the first place.

Similar text exists within the Craft Ring and Craft Wondrous Item feats.

So what then? You have a magical, but still broken sword since you can't actually fix the sword?

Or hell, let's say we humor you and say that the Craft rules (frank's argument) are wrong and that's right.

Ok. Cost of death = 1k gold.

Basic +1 sword = 2k gold. Half of that is... *drumrolls* 1k gold!

Which means even losing the most basic of items is just as bad as dying (with the added caveat that at any level where a +1 sword is level appropriate, they could break your face with less effort) and anything more than that is worse. It only goes up to 100 times worse than death instead of 200 times, but as my argument is 'a fate worse than death' it only needs to be 1% worse for me to be right, and it totally does that.

And this is without getting into the fact breaking things that are not weapons, shields, and armor is so easy a dumbass mook could do it... so that thing that would never have a chance of killing you, can still do worse than killing you.

Much like 4.Fail Skill Challenges, (ctrl + a) > delete is the only valid solution.

[Username17]

By the way, you're wrong anyways.

A damaged object remains fully functional until the item’s hit points are reduced to 0, at which point it is destroyed.

Damaged (but not destroyed) objects can be repaired with the Craft skill.

Where are those quotes from? I'm looking at the Craft Rules on page 71 of the PHB and I see nothing of the sort.

-Username17

[Roy]

By the way, you're wrong anyways.

A damaged object remains fully functional until the item’s hit points are reduced to 0, at which point it is destroyed.

Damaged (but not destroyed) objects can be repaired with the Craft skill.

Where are those quotes from? I'm looking at the Craft Rules on page 71 of the PHB and I see nothing of the sort.

-Username17

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.h ... dHitPoints

[A Man In Black]

Ok. Cost of death = 1k gold.

So what the fuck, you're arguing 3e over 4e here?

You can bundle up all your arguments and use them all against 3e, since nobody stays dead, they just buy a rez. In fact, you're even arguing against any setback worse than a 1k rez. 3e is retarded exactly the same way.

Let's take all the insults (or hilariously failed image hotlinks that were intended to be insults, anyway) as read and cut to the actual talking. What setbacks are allowed and which aren't? Why? How would you implement that in the rules?

[Roy]

Ok. Cost of death = 1k gold.

So what the fuck, you're arguing 3e over 4e here?

You can bundle up all your arguments and use them all against 3e, since nobody stays dead, they just buy a rez. In fact, you're even arguing against any setback worse than a 1k rez. 3e is retarded exactly the same way.

Let's take all the insults as read and cut to the actual talking. What setbacks are allowed and which aren't? Why? How would you implement that in the rules?

Dude, what the fuck? Are you even pretending to read what I write anymore?

Whatever you're smoking should be globally banned.

[A Man In Black]

incoherent rambling

I suppose I should have known better.

Fix your Quote Tags!

In general, Roy is correct. If you aren't going to enforce the possibility of losing on people if they are unlucky or make poor choices, then the die rolls and choices the players make are completely meaningless. People have to be able to fail if success is to mean anything at all.

What happens when you remove the luck, though? If the only way people can fail is if they make the wrong decision(s), failure is still a possibility and making choices is still meaningful. Eliminating dice means that there's no impersonal source of failure, but I don't see how (for example) pure MTP is completely lacking in meaningful choices.

[Username17]

What happens when you remove the luck, though? If the only way people can fail is if they make the wrong decision(s), failure is still a possibility and making choices is still meaningful. Eliminating dice means that there's no impersonal source of failure, but I don't see how (for example) pure MTP is completely lacking in meaningful choices.

Then you're playing the game "Guess the number I am thinking of."

That's a shitty game.

-Username17

[The Man Who Killed Death]

Stuff that assumes you mean something different than you typed.

You are assuming that just because the DM corrects a mistake he made by allowing a character to stay alive (not necessarily "win" as you keep saying) when the character should have died means that it will happen each and every time, or for different circumstances. Pretty much everyone else who posted on this thread, from what I've read, doesn't let the PC's auto-win everything, they just use their position as the storyteller to not let bad luck or bad encounter-planning to get in the way of their story. Sometimes that means letting a character survive when they should have died because the player was invested in that character a lot, or was an integral part of the story's near future, or because the DM fucked up in one way or another.

I'm not saying character's should auto-win or be immune to death, but this is a game. Sometimes it is best to bend the rules so that everybody enjoys themselves better. Especially when it wasn't that player's fault that something happened. In the group I play in character's die fairly often, and that works for us.

Regardless, believe it or not, there are ways you can ignore the rules that doesn't mean the PC's auto-win everything or cause a slippery slope to lead to that. Anybody who is bullied into letting the PC's run the game needs to grow a pair and remind the players who was put in the position of DM.

Your mindset works in some situations and groups, but don't act like your mindset is the only one that works. Not everybody thinks and plays D&D the same way, so just keep an open mind that sometimes it is best to ignore the rules from time to time, but only when that means the majority is having more fun. Because that what the game is about, having fun.

[Roy]

incoherent rambling

I suppose I should have known better.

Funny you should say that.

Here's a quick recap.

Roy: Sundertardation is fucked. *examples given, obviously from 3.x as 4.Fail prices are different, and there are no sundertards there*. Just like 4.Fail Skill Challenges, the only solution is to delete that entire rules section.

A Man In Black: So what the fuck, you're arguing 3e over 4e here?

You can bundle up all your arguments and use them all against 3e, since nobody stays dead, they just buy a rez. In fact, you're even arguing against any setback worse than a 1k rez. 3e is retarded exactly the same way.

Your argument did not address my own, but nice try.

And to the other guy...

Or you could, you know, encourage the narrativist types to pay attention, think critically, and, perhaps, read the fucking rules from time to time.

I used to play with one charming lady that thought her presence as a roleplayer was such hot shit that actually learning and applying the rules was beneath her. Do not encourage that sort of crap.

[A Man In Black]

Then you're playing the game "Guess the number I am thinking of."

That's a shitty game.

You're already playing "guess the number I am thinking of" when you sit down at the table for non-MTP games. It's just that if you guess the wrong number, you have a 60% chance to fail instead of a 40% chance to fail. We already trust the GM to be fair (or else there's no game anyway), so why do we need a random number generator on top of that? I can see lots of good reasons to have a random number generator, but I don't see it as strictly necessary, since all the target numbers are set by GM fiat anyway.