Grimoire Spotlight - The Encounter System

[Ghostwheel]

So after looking at some of the peripheral parts of the Grimoire system, now we'll look at the encounter system as summarized here.

Some of the benefits to this system:
[*]It yields consistent result.
[*]Doesn't randomly screw players like the CR system does.
[*]Standardizes encounters for easy creation on the fly.
[*]Matches the capabilities of players.
[*]Quick and simple to use.
[*]The turn of Team Monster is very fast, allowing the action to return to the players.
[*]Doesn't autokill characters or use effects that are incredibly frustrating.
[*]Primary means of death for both sides is damage.

I haven't completely written this up in a proper format, but you can get the basic idea from the page. In an encounter, you have one "normal" for every player, and then can break down or build up other monsters based on the number of PCs. One solo is equal to two elites which is equal to four normals which are equal to sixteen minions. On average, monsters should die in four rounds when characters miss around 1/2 the time, while players should die approximately in eight rounds when the monsters also miss half the time.

The table gives the basic skeleton for the stats of monsters, and after that DMs can customize specific monsters with flavorful abilities that fit the flavor. As I said, I still need to add it to the sourcebook and add lots of examples of monsters, but having playtested it heavily, it works as advertised, along with the potential for incredibly challenging encounters with the right tactics without auto-killing the PCs.

Thus, four PCs would have around four normals (and the system is stable enough to bring in another or take away one, though it'll be appropriately harder or easier), and each one will have around 400 HP, an AC of 48, +41 to attacks against AC, will do around 80 damage per round if all attacks hit (if they have multiple attacks), have DCs at around 33, and will have +23 to saves. One can give specific things (reflex, attack, fortitude, AC, etc) up to +/-3, but since the RNG is as centered as it is, giving more than that can wildly change the system.

One complaint that's been mentioned is that monsters don't really get out-of-combat abilities under this system, to which I say... if you want to give them such abilities, feel free to do so--at your own peril. However, you can easily make some of the out of combat abilities into combat ones; for example, if you have an evil necromancer against 5 PCs, he might come in (let's say he's an Elite) along with a zombie bodyguard (a normal) and 8 raised skeletons (minions) who tag along. An inventive/creative DM can always find ways to add such things to the system.

One of the interesting advantages to this system is that it can handle even lower power levels of combat--simply adjust the HP. I've found that fighter-level characters require around a 50% cut in the HP of monsters to continue not-dying. On the other hand, if the PCs are especially well-built, nothing apart from HP need be changed. Add extra HP (25% or so in many cases) and the encounter becomes tougher.

[ubernoob]

First thing that caught my eye:
The difference between hp for 'optimized' groups and 'unoptimized' groups is that the HP of monsters just doubles for optimized groups for no real reason.

If your players are dumpster diving to deal large amounts of damage and kill things in one round, this is because they want to deal large amounts of damage and kill things in one round.

So yeah, you're straight up saying "Don't try to be good at my job in my game or I will flat out double the challenges because you're not supposed to be good."

I'm not even going to read the rest of the system when you flat out tell the DM to adjust numbers out of their ass because the PCs are 'optimized' or some shit.

Fuck you. If I was dumpster diving to be good at damage, I want my attacks to actually kill things.

[Ghostwheel]

There's actually an excellent reason for HP to increase. Why, you ask? So that encounters will be challenging rather than a cakewalk. If you're looking for a cakewalk, go play a wizard, or alternatively don't use this system and ask the DM to set you up against only commoners from now on.

That said, I think I'm just going to say this now; please be constructive in your critiques ("this sucks" doesn't really help much) or I'll simply ignore the specific post that contains nothing but complaints.

Thanks

[ubernoob]

There's actually an excellent reason for HP to increase. Why, you ask? So that encounters will be challenging rather than a cakewalk. If you're looking for a cakewalk, go play a wizard, or alternatively don't use this system and ask the DM to set you up against only commoners from now on.

That said, I think I'm just going to say this now; please be constructive in your critiques ("this sucks" doesn't really help much) or I'll simply ignore the specific post that contains nothing but complaints.

Thanks

No. You are 100% wrong. Optimizers do NOT want a hard game. They specifically spend time looking up cheat codes in order to make the game less hard. That is the entire reason people optimize. They want the game to be easier, but don't want to just ask the DM to throw easier encounters. That is 100% the reason.

Optimizers want an easy game. Period. The people who don't optimize either are too stupid to (these people outnumber the 'optimizers' by a good margin) or actually want a difficult game.

I'm dead serious. If you think someone is an optimizer, that means that they want an easy game with the cheat codes on. That's the entire point of making a strong character. Arbitrarily bumping up the difficulty when someone specifically and deliberately asked for easy mode is a dick move.

As with every other thing, you are addressing a DMing problem with (stupid) rules changes.

Learn to communicate with your players. THEN come ask us to redesign your system. Until you learn that cooperative storytelling is actually cooperative, we cannot help you.

[Ghostwheel]

Hrmmm, speaking as an optimizer, I don't think that that's exactly what optimizers want.

As an optimizer, I want to make sure I'm not left behind. I want to feel cool. I want to see big numbers. I want to play something I spent an hour building just perfectly to fit together exactly the abilities I wanted. I want to find cool new synergies that people hadn't though of before, and exploit them so my character will be made of unadulterated awesome.

However, an easy encounter is far from what I want. I want my character to fight hard. I want my character to be ripped apart. Beaten. Bruised. Broken. Fight for his life, shouting and screaming all the way. And I want him to win by the skin of his teeth with adrenaline pumping through my veins and my hands shaking with excitement.

I'm an optimizer. I optimize to rogue-level. I have made DMs who don't really understand the game frustrated, and I feel frustrated when I blow through encounters. But I don't want to easy road.

Now, you might be right with some people. Who knows, some people might not want much of a challenge. (When I don't want one, I play a caster. Funny how I never play casters anymore...)

But saying something that broad about all optimizers? That's an overgeneralization.

[ubernoob]

No, you are wrong. You are also stupid. Every fucking build on that page worth a damn was created by someone other than you. Every single one. The fact that you have actually looked these up means that at some point you wanted easy mode.

Go take an introduction to psychology class, stop with the self deception, and own up. You are an 'optimizer' as a player because you want easy mode. As a DM, you create houserules that make the players unable to do shit because as a DM you want easy mode(thinking up an adventure not invalidated by teleport is hard).

You want Easy Mode 100% of the time. Stop lying.

[Ghostwheel]

Ooooh, that "ignore" button looks shiny.
*presses*

[ubernoob]

Ooooh, that "ignore" button looks shiny.
*presses*

This is an incredibly passive aggressive post. I'd much prefer if you'd be honest about your feelings. How is your mother?

[Red_Rob]

Ghost, you might not like Uber's tone but you haven't really addressed his point. You say you want to optimise, which involves at its base level making a character that is more powerful than a non-optimised character. You then say you want difficult encounters. So, you are saying you want a game where the vast majority of characters fail and only a few builds can struggle through?

The point of optimising is to invest more time to make a more powerful character. If I was playing a game in which the players had worked long and hard to come up with an awesome suite of abilities that synergised well, and the GM said "well, I've just doubled all the monsters hp to compensate!" I'd feel like I'd wasted my time.

[Ghostwheel]

Sure, but on the other hand, check out the second bullet-point of my design goals. I optimize for myself, not so that I'll be better than other people or so I'll be able to tout that I'm better than them and make them feel like crap or so encounters will be easy. I'd expect encounters to be harder because I'm better--but on the other hand I'm building the system so that the difference in power between people who completely optimize grimoire-class characters as high as they can go and people who don't isn't that incredibly big--all of 25%.

Why would you feel as though you wasted your time? I don't think I would in your shoes. In the end though it comes down to playing styles, I think, and you might just not have too much fun under the Grimoire system. That said, I've talked to ... I think around a few-dozen people now in a number of places, and the design goals that the system brings along on top of the philosophy that comes with the combat system appealed to a majority of them (and appeals to me), so I'm not convinced that keeping it this way is a bad thing.

[ubernoob]

Sure, but on the other hand, check out the second bullet-point of my design goals. I optimize for myself, not so that I'll be better than other people or so I'll be able to tout that I'm better than them and make them feel like crap or so encounters will be easy. I'd expect encounters to be harder because I'm better--but on the other hand I'm building the system so that the difference in power between people who completely optimize grimoire-class characters as high as they can go and people who don't isn't that incredibly big--all of 25%.

Why would you feel as though you wasted your time? I don't think I would in your shoes. In the end though it comes down to playing styles, I think, and you might just not have too much fun under the Grimoire system. That said, I've talked to ... I think around a few-dozen people now in a number of places, and the design goals that the system brings along on top of the philosophy that comes with the combat system appealed to a majority of them (and appeals to me), so I'm not convinced that keeping it this way is a bad thing.

If your damage output increases 25% and monster hp increases 100% then you are objectively dealing a smaller percentage of the monster's hit points than if you had not completely wasted the time to optimize.

Fuck off.

[Ghostwheel]

If your damage output increases 25% and monster hp increases 100% then you are objectively dealing a smaller percentage of the monster's hit points than if you had not completely wasted the time to optimize.

On a whim when I woke up I decided to check your post. And...

Oh. Ooooh. Talk about lack of communication. You really should ask about things before making assumptions--remember, I still haven't written it all pretty and nice as of yet, as I mentioned in the first post. You really should ask me what I mean by such things.

By "unoptimized parties" in there, cutting HP by half, I actually mean parties using classes such as the Swashbuckler, Fighter, Samurai, Paladin, and Ranger. You know, classes that suck (are fighter-level). The actual increase in damage (AND THUS IN MONSTER HP) if characters super-optimize is 25%. So at level 20, a fighter-level party faces monsters with 200 HP, a regular grimoire party faces monsters with 400 HP, and if the DM feels as though the party is having a cakewalk and they're complaining that things are too easy, he should raise the HP of normals to 500. The point is that the system can cater to fighter-level parties for people who want to play the Pampers "I'm a big kid now" version of grimoire and dislike how strong grimoire level characters are (example: a grimoire soulknife adds 18d8 to damage by level 20 to more than one attack per round).

So... yeah. Actually asking clarification for things is good. You should try it sometime. And now back to ignoring ^_^

[ubernoob]

# For more optimized groups, increase the HP of monsters by around 25%
# For unoptimized groups, decrease the HP of monsters by around 50%

Now, you changed it since I last checked, but this actually makes the problem worse. Instead of making the hp go up 200% from what it was for the unoptimized group, you now have it go up 250%.

So yeah, you still have not addressed my complaints at all.

[For Valor]

This would be better written as "change the HP as you feel it necessary in order for the monsters to keep up with the players."

There's perfect granularity in that, and it allows for the DM to make his decisions based on not only optimization, but also tactical choices ("I choose to run in circles! I choose to use my at-will all the time!").

But at that point, you might as well just say "Not all players are the same. If parties are getting creamed or are walking all over the opposition, feel free to cheat. Suggested ways to cheat are:
#Increasing/Decreasing HP
#Increasing/Decreasing Base Saves
#Increasing/Decreasing Damage Dealt"

[Ghostwheel]

Sure, you could say that, though in theory with how the numbers are on the RNG and how stable the damage and HP of players is often, the only thing that actually needs changing is the HP

[Username17]

If someone optimizes to do more damage, they want to reduce enemy life bars faster. If someone optimizes for defense, they want to last longer in combat. If you adjust the monster stats to make the combat lengths and danger level that you prefer as the MC, you are robbing the players' actions of meaning. You are robbing the players of agency. Again.

Every time I tune in to one of your posts, I am again struck in the face with the fact that your house rules are so wrongheaded that they aren't even wrong. Your fundamental problem is that you are unwilling to accept the input of the other people at the table, and you're trying to find rules that will make the players behave in a sufficiently cowed and railroaded manner. That shit is fucking meaningless.

Players wanting to do something different than what you expected is not a rules issue. It's not even a problem, but if it was, not amount of fucking with the rules is going to make it go away.

Stop coming up with new rules. All the way. Just, top writing. All of this garbage is garbage. And it's going to continue being garbage until you come to terms with what it is that player agency actually means. Don't write any more rules, don't make any more posts defending the rules you have already written. Go to IMHO and start a discussion thread about what Player Agency means. When you've gotten a handle on that, then and only then will you be ready to actually concept up actual rules that could be judged as being good or bad.

-Username17

[violence in the media]

I'm kind of wondering why you bothered with hit point accounting at all? Why not just arbitrarily declare that Monster X will live for 3 rounds, Monster Y will live for 5, and Boss Z lives for 10?

I can only conclude that you keep trying to hide all of your rail-roady bullshit in rules obfuscation because you somehow know your players would flip out if you were explicit about your desires and intentions.

[Ghostwheel]

Shtuff

That's nice. You might have better luck in convincing me of things if you took the time to understand my perspective (serious questions are always good ) and tried to talk to me from my base viewpoint. I'm always happy to try to explain specific points of how I view things, but just telling me "it's wrong" and giving reasons that don't speak to me, regardless of how valid they may be in your opinion, won't do much. (Much in the same way that, say, telling an agnostic scientist that a god exist because there's a bible won't really matter to him, while giving him actual scientific data from scientific studies and proving to him in a scientific manner the existence of a god is much more likely to convince him. Or her for that matter )

[For Valor]

My friend, you need to understand something...

Your statement was, "I optimize because it's fun and I still want combat to be hard." The people on these forums are saying "You're a minority. People don't optimize because just because it's fun. They optimize so they can win hardcore."

And if 4/6 posters on this thread say you're an exception to the rule (the 2/6 is you and me), then you're a goddamn exception to the rule. So do take a hint. This accounting for optimization isn't something players will like. If you're doing it, just understand that you ARE going to be railroading your players.

That's all there is to say.

[Ghostwheel]

I think you might be misattributing--I'm not really being aggressive whatsoever. It's just that none of the arguments speak to me as a player or designer.

And while people might say that I'm a minority, I could say the same thing about them. The posters here often have intelligent discussions and insights (which is why I was encouraged to post here originally), but compared to the majority of other forums and discussion places on the Internet they're also a minority in many of their views which may or may not be skewed for a number of reasons.

Plus, I'm not in anyone's head but my own; I don't know what "all" optimizers want. I know what I want, and cater to what I would get excited about, and what I would find incredibly fun. It's alright if that doesn't appeal to anyone--after all, we're all dissimilar. But that also doesn't make me objectively wrong, and the population on this forum isn't exactly a diverse enough collection of individuals to use as a sample for the entire population.

[Zinegata]

Will Denners please stop making good points and then invalidating them by saying outright untrue things about the OP? Because really, it just proves you're intolerant asshats who jump on people who bring up ideas... probably because it shows what a bunch of lazy bums you actually are.

And no, it doesn't matter if Ghostwheel is an "exception". There are people who do, in fact, like uber hardmode where the only way to survive is to be optimized. That's why Japanese players invented No Alert, No Kill, Speedruns. That's why Koreans practice to have 300 actions per minute in Starcraft. That's why the Russians developed Jagged Alliance 2 Wildfire.

The issue really is arbitrarily changing the HP based on party power level. That's not something that you can really systemize. That's simply a person's own particular DM style. As long as it works for the group, it doesn't make said DM a bad person.

[ubernoob]

Will Denners please stop making good points and then invalidating them by saying outright untrue things about the OP?

Nothing said has been untrue. You cannot simply declare a statement made by someone else to be untrue without any sort of backing.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Will Denners please stop making good points and then invalidating them by saying outright untrue things about the OP?

Nothing said has been untrue. You cannot simply declare a statement made by someone else to be untrue without any sort of backing.

[Jilocasin]

The issue really is arbitrarily changing the HP based on party power level. That's not something that you can really systemize. That's simply a person's own particular DM style.

This is the heart of the matter right here. There can be no standard rubric for determining how much a character is optimizing and even if there were not everyone in the group is going to optimize to the same degree. If three players suck or don't care and one player doesn't suck and doesn't care increasing the HP of any given monster cannot be the solution. It extends the life expectancy of the monster but it doesn't extend the survivability of lower powered characters. I understand the idea you have that grimoire classes are automatically a seven (or whatever) and with optimization you get them to an 8. I don't actually believe it, but I accept that that is the idea. But even if that happens to be true, the only thing that increasing the HP of monsters does is increase the chance of critical existence failure of the bad players. The good ones will feel it less or not at all. Also I may as well chime in and say that when I optimize, which is often, I do so because I want my character to be super badass. If every character has the super secret class feature "level appropriate challenges will always be equally challenging" I feel like any mechanical work I put into my character is for absolutely nothing.

[ubernoob]

Off topic

Will Denners please stop making good points and then invalidating them by saying outright untrue things about the OP?

Nothing said has been untrue. You cannot simply declare a statement made by someone else to be untrue without any sort of backing.

Considering that Frank and I did back up our declarations, I don't see how this image is appropriate. Zine simply declared them false without any backing.