The Difficulty in RPGs thread

[RobbyPants]

I'm sorry but your players are probably just not that great. They can't deal with encounter after encounter of level appropriate or greater opponents played optimally.

So what if they lose.

<snip>

The "Hur Hur Imman Objectivist GM!" crowd responds to this problem with... no response at all. But it IS a problem and if you don't do something about it, sorry but your game WILL suck.

Sadly, that's actually not true. I've gotten into this with Roy several times in the past, and he literally believes that the answer is to school the players over and over until they learn, because if you don't, you are hurting the entire hobby. He believes that if I don't kill my player's PCs repeatedly with "objective difficulties" that I'm fucking up his game.

But yeah, I wish they had no response.

[Mistborn]

PhoneLobster stop doing the thing where you attempt to make an elegant refutation of points not included in it the OP.

So if you write up some encounters of "CR" and then put a party against them, the difference in strength of the encounters will be determined more by how the PCs abilities interact with monster abilities than how hard you play the monsters.

Alright hold it there. Why are you bringing CR into this, where did I claim that CR is some perfect measure of objective difficulty? I did not do that because that would be retarded.

We can say that when party A goes to the beach and fights a Water Elemental (CR 3) and party B goes to the same beach and faces a Giant Crab, we can say with reasonable certainty that party B faces an encounter that was objectively more difficult. As isp says even the "no objective difficulty" crowd acknowledge that one of those scenarios is harder than the other.

[Username17]

I feel completely comfortable in saying that the Monster Manual Orc is less powerful than a Nightwalker. Because essentially what I'm saying there is that in a featureless gray plane consisting of only the Orc and the Nightwalker measured only against each other one would be able to beat the other in combat. What I would not be comfortable saying is that an adventure where you killed a Nightwalker would have been more difficult to accomplish than an adventure where you killed an Orc.

See, at first when I read that my impression was that your stated position was so obviously stupid that you didn't really believe it and were just trolling the thread in the name of being an asshole. My first inclination thus was to simply call you a bunch of rude names and post an image macro.

But on reflection, it occurred to me that actually your position is a relatively common fallacy of unscientific reasoning, and that it was probably your actual position. I mean, you're still obviously wrong, but I feel I should refute your points logically rather than just telling you to go fuck yourself.

Your position is actually the Fallacy of Possible Proof: the idea that if something is theoretically possible that it must be true, or at the very least plausible. This is nonsense. Valid empirical statements must be plausible, not merely possible. And the latter in no way establishes the former.

While it is possible for an encounter with a Nightwalker to be no more difficult than an encounter with a basic Orc warrior, this is not remotely plausible. Similarly, it is possible that unicorns exist in the real world but we just haven't found them yet, but that is not plausible.

It is a game where literally anything is possible

Sure. But not everything is plausible. Claiming that because something and its negation are both possible that you can't make value judgments about its likely truth value is a fallacy. It's the Fallacy of Possible Proof, and you cannot appeal to it without blowing smoke up everyone's ass.

Stop it. Stop having opinions that are based on historically known and well defined errors in reasoning.

-Username17

[Wrathzog]

We can say that when party A goes to the beach and fights a Water Elemental (CR 3) and party B goes to the same beach and faces a Giant Crab, we can say with reasonable certainty that party B faces an encounter that was objectively more difficult. As isp says even the "no objective difficulty" crowd acknowledge that one of those scenarios is harder than the other.

No, actually, we can't say with reasonable certainty that either encounter would be more difficult because there's a still a lot of ambiguity and complexity in the scenario. Starting conditions are undefined (beyond Environment, which is the same, which is a good thing). You also have two different parties and neither of them are defined.

If you want to be able to compare encounters objectively, then you need to define basically everything with as little variance as you can get.
If your objective is to prove that a Giant Crab is tougher than a Medium Water Elemental, a better test would have been:
Party A (after a full rest) fighting a Medium Water Elemental on The Beach
Party A (after a full rest) fighting a Giant Crab on The Beach
Also, you're probably going to run more tests with Parties B-D in varying states of resource depletion (environment is unlikely to change).
And you'll probably end up with some data that says that most parties had a harder time with the Giant Crab because that guy is a beast and its got no business being CR 3.

And people bring up CR because that's about as good as you're going to get. No, it's not perfect... but that's just kind of a thing when you're comparing Low Level pieces of a Complex System that's run with Human Adjudication. At best, it's an educated guess and at it's worst, it's a giant fucking crab.

[Foxwarrior]

For a specific, not entirely implausible example, Parties A and B are Aquatic Elves, approaching the beach from deep in the ocean. They can kite the giant crab but cannot kite the water elemental, because the water elemental is fast underwater.

Or, since you said that the two monsters were fought by different parties, party B could leave the crab to their Barbarian/(Celerity? Domain) Cleric, while party A is snuck up on by the water elemental and loses its halfling before winning.

[zugschef]

the first problem with "objectivity" in an rpg is that no group plays with the exact same rules or interpretation of the rules. as long as you cannot establish a rule set which will be used and interpreted in exactly the same way by every single group, you cannot have objective guidelines for difficulty. you'd need a league for the game with at least semi-professional MCs and everything which goes with that...

[Mistborn]

Oh for the love of

As a general rule the Giant Fucking Crab is a more difficult monster than the Medium Water Elemental, that was supposed to be a fairly uncontroversial statement. Why, why do you do this, this thing you are doing where you refuse to concede any fucking points in the most retarded way possible. This is going to be just like the CR 3 Vrock thing or the only fighters have armies thing isn't it.

This is why these threads are always so unbearable.

[Kaelik]

Alright hold it there. Why are you bringing CR into this, where did I claim that CR is some perfect measure of objective difficulty? I did not do that because that would be retarded.

We can say that when party A goes to the beach and fights a Water Elemental (CR 3) and party B goes to the same beach and faces a Giant Crab, we can say with reasonable certainty that party B faces an encounter that was objectively more difficult. As isp says even the "no objective difficulty" crowd acknowledge that one of those scenarios is harder than the other.

No we can't. Because whether the Water Elemental or the Crab is harder is determined by the parties composition. A Subjective element. So even though objectively, the Crab should probably be a higher CR, it still remains the case that the entirely subjective interactions between party composition and enemy composition can and often does make a bigger difference than the "Objective difficulty" of the opposition.

As a general rule the Giant Fucking Crab is a more difficult monster than the Medium Water Elemental, that was supposed to be a fairly uncontroversial statement.

But here is the point, the fact that the Giant Crab is generally more difficult is completely meaningless when we are talking about how subjective difficulty creates a wider range. The Giant Crab is generally tougher, but by that we mean against more parties than not, it is harder.

But all those parties to which the elemental is tougher still exist, and D&D is actually played in specific. So the point is the subjective difficulty of party composition often makes the giant crab easier than the Water Elemental.

[Wrathzog]

As a general rule the Giant Fucking Crab is a more difficult monster than the Medium Water Elemental, that was supposed to be a fairly uncontroversial statement.

No one's actually disagreeing about Giant Crab vs. Water Elemental. What I've been trying to get at is that not all comparisons are going to be that simple. Let's replace Water Elemental with a Level 3 Wizard.
Which is the bigger threat?
(Answer: It depends)

This is why these threads are always so unbearable.

If that's what you wanna think, mang.

[Dean]

While it is possible for an encounter with a Nightwalker to be no more difficult than an encounter with a basic Orc warrior, this is not remotely plausible.

I will disagree and so will you. There is a man I work with who tells me about his D&D game every week. He told me at length about how he and his 7th level party totally killed a Horned Devil, a monster the same CR as a Nightwalker, and they did it because of some Pirate ship they have that they used to shoot it down or some bullshit. That is a story I was told only 3 weeks ago. If he'd told me he killed an Orc I would have had no ability to actually determine whether that was harder than the encounter he had or not. Not only is this "remotely plausible" I can guarantee you can walk into any game shop in the world and ask the table of local nerds the last time they killed a huge monster and maybe 1 time out of 6 you'll hear about the time they killed something way out of their league through bullshit, crazy, and fiat.
Now Nightwalkers and Orcs are about as far apart in power as you could hope. And I would be comfortable saying that against the same party or in the same scenario a Nightwalker will pretty much always be a tougher opponent than an Orc. But given the astonishing lack of information about scenario, party makeup, power level, rule interpretations, or DM when someone tells me "I killed X monster last night or beat X mission" my ability to guess it's difficulty is incredibly minute.
I might compare someones story of winning a D&D mission to winning a hand of blackjack over a friends house. But without informing me how many other players their were, what their hand, the bets, or the field was like, and with the Dealer who they are dating occasionally handing them cards based on her feelings at the time. I can still say that showing an Ace is better than showing a 6 in general, but in that game who the fuck knows.

[Whatever]

Wait, I thought we were considering those as possible challenges for the same party. If you're comparing Frodo fighting an Orc to Gandalf fighting a Balrog, then what the actual fuck.

[PhoneLobster]

PhoneLobster stop doing the thing where you attempt to make an elegant refutation of points not included in it the OP.

...It is entirely possible for the MC have the monsters use whatever tactics have the best chance of defeating the players. The players can then defeat those monsters and say "We legitimately won this encounter."...

...The fact the most gamers, most of the Den apparently play with spineless MCs that have challenges that might beat the players, immediately nerfed to triviality does not in any way make the potential for objective difficulty not a thing....

...In fact objective difficulty is what allows player agency to exist... In order for the players to have agency in order to have a Game and not just a cooperative storytelling exercise, those choices need to matter.

You flat out said "Hard mode exists, you guys are weaklings for not using it all the time, you need to use it or players don't have hard mode and everything they do is BAD WRONG FUN!".

On a more sane note...

Sadly, that's actually not true. I've gotten into this with Roy several times in the past, and he literally believes that the answer is to school the players over and over until they learn

That's rather what I meant by having no response. To them the repeated undesirable game ending bad results ARE in fact the desired response. To them the problem isn't a problem it's a solution... only it's not... it's actually a problem, they're just oblivious stubborn assholes using excuses about elitism to cover their gaping inadequacies as GMs. Which, all in all is not a job so hard you should be fucking it up THAT much.

[Mistborn]

You flat out said "Hard mode exists, you guys are weaklings for not using it all the time, you need to use it or players don't have hard mode and everything they do is BAD WRONG FUN!".

No no, your projecting again. If a level 10 party faces a howler and the DM has the howler uses the best possible tactics for beating the party it's still going to fucking lose, that doesn't the party did not legitimately win that fight. That encounter had an objective difficulty too. (it was just easy as fuck)

What I was referring to was more along the lines of the DM fudging the Dragons save because otherwise the party would all die. (or the DM fudging the BBEGs save vs death because having him die before acting would be "anti-climactic.")

[PhoneLobster]

So you are actually going to peddle nonsense and pretend you WEREN'T trying to pull a direct Elensar and demand that you need more proper risk of game ending events to have a better ongoing game?

I call bullshit that was flat out what you were talking about in your OP and STILL are talking about when you espouse the terror of the DM doing something desperate to prevent a surprise TPK from a Dragon as if it were a BAD thing to avoid a surprise TPK by whatever damn means you need to.

[K]

Howlers go up to 18 HD, so that "we fought a Howler last night" shit can get pretty fierce with the right feat selection and those Outsider HD. I could see a 10th level party not winning a fight like that.

Also, any scenario where the Howler can Howl for hours like in a dense fog area or forest or something could lead to a days-long encounter that ends with PC deaths. It's got twice the movement of an average PC and Rogue stealth skills, so in the right situation I could see that taking out a party if the DM ruled that the howling is a free action (the ability does not specify what kind of action it is, but it makes no sense if you default to the standard action every round for an hour to get the effect).

It's also an all Ex ability monster. It'd be pretty nasty in a dead magic zone if the party didn't have armored weapon-users. The party of 10th level archivists, druids, and wizards are going to be sad pandas.

So once again, it comes down to relative challenges and not objective ones.

[Mistborn]

I call bullshit that was flat out what you were talking about in your OP and STILL are talking about when you espouse the terror of the DM doing something desperate to prevent a surprise TPK from a Dragon as if it were a BAD thing to avoid a surprise TPK by whatever damn means you need to.

No, fuck you.

If don't honor the dice when they produce "bad" results than rolling them in the first place was completely pointless.

[PhoneLobster]

You "honor" the dice to prevent them being "meaningless" when they generate the utterly undesirable result of "Your game is now over your characters are all dead your story is ended for no reason!".

"Honor"?

What about the players? the game? Story? hell even "Objective" Fun? No, you only "honor" dice, bad dragon CRs and a probably unintentional GM choice of a poorly CRed opponent. Or in otherwords you "honor" stupid unimportant stuff and shit all over your game and your players to do it.

That is EXACTLY what I've been saying you are saying and what you were denying you were saying and it is A STUPID THING FOR YOU TO BE SAYING.

Bad game ending results are BAD FOR THE GAME. Pretty much the DEFINITIVE bad for the game that anything can even be. They should not even be there. They should be minimized by every means possible if they are there.

You have stated from the first post you actively demand the removal of MULTIPLE methods of minimizing or avoiding game ending results and their ilk. You have stated you demand "optimized objective game play" of opponents, whatever the hell that even means all factors considered. You have stated you demand that in one of the only situations where fudging is genuinely a highly viable and desirable option you think it is the source of all evil.

Next you will claim that turning a TPK into a soft defeat like capture, giving a do over, or making low to no cost resurrection and such available are all bad things too.

Because you know, all of those would let people continue to play a game they have maybe spent years investing in, and hell THAT would be such a BAD thing!

[Mistborn]

PL wat r u doing, PL stahp.

Please read the posts that you are responding to, if you want to throw a big tantrum about how me and Sunic are big meanie-heads do it in a different thread. We can get Lago too and he can tell you all about how what people want is not what will make them happy.

[Wrathzog]

So, what are your thoughts about something like Edge in After Sundown? If there was an actual in-game mechanic/resource for getting out of shit-situations, would that be more palpable?

[Dean]

So, what are your thoughts about something like Edge in After Sundown? If there was an actual in-game mechanic/resource for getting out of shit-situations, would that be more palpable?

I too am interested in this. In my house games I include a few Hero Point/Edge style systems to make unintentional death much less likely. I'm curious how Mistborn or Infected feel about when the system itself says "You shouldn't die". Is that cool because that's playing by the system or not cool because it's intellectually offensive.

[Fuchs]

It's internet tough guy again, desperately trying to get hardcore cred by ranting about "objectively difficult D&D encounters". And still missing that if a GM actually plays to kill a party, the party only survives if the GM is less competent than the players.

[Red_Rob]

It's internet tough guy again, desperately trying to get hardcore cred by ranting about "objectively difficult D&D encounters". And still missing that if a GM actually plays to kill a party, the party only survives if the GM is less competent than the players.

Okay, can you respond to the actual points Misty is raising rather than some strawman version? He's actually been pretty restrained and coherent so far. Here are his positions:

Any scenario where all the scenery, treasure, monsters and the general tactics for those monsters have all been generated before the players begin to interact with it has an objective difficulty.

He has defined "objective difficulty" as the DM setting up the challenges prior to the game and not altering those during the game except as an in-world response to player actions. Here's his second position:

If don't honor the dice when they produce "bad" results than rolling them in the first place was completely pointless.

Now it so happens that both of these seem reasonable to me. I mean, obviously the "objective" thing only goes so far, due to the points already raised, but ultimately I don't think it matters that much. People like to measure themselves against challenges, and because everyone is different everyone has their own "subjective difficulty" level against any challenge. It still feels good to achieve something knowing that you did so due to your own choices and abilities, regardless of whether the choices and abilities available to you made it easier or harder.

Games where the DM fudges things are less fun for me. It feels like I'm wasting my time coming up with clever tactics and plans, because if we fuck up the DM will just fudge it so we succeed "by the skin of our teeth". That takes the tension out of it for me.

[PhoneLobster]

Okay, can you respond to the actual points Misty is raising rather than some strawman version? He's actually been pretty restrained and coherent so far.

He SPECIFICALLY stated that fudging to prevent a Dragon (famous poster boy for poor CR) getting a "lucky roll" that caused a total TPK was a BAD THING.

That is not a strawman, it looks like one because it is so fucking extreme. But he actually flat out said that, so stop being a fucking moron and falling for his evasive "I NEVER SAID THAT STOP TALKING ABOUT WHAT I SAID MEANIE HEADS!" technique.

Pay fucking attention. Every damn thing I've said about him is right and the refusal to fudge in THAT circumstance is flat out proof of it. He simply has an agenda where in he refuses to use adaptive GMing even in the outright worst scenario.

[Red_Rob]

It doesn't matter what the enemy is. Facing a single goblin you could roll 1's for every attack and the goblin could get a string of lucky crits. The point is whether you should ever fudge rolls to save the players or not.

That's not to say that the GM shouldn't set challenges appropriate to the PC's level or signpost difficult encounters, but part of having your actions mean anything is not having things change to accomodate them after the fact.

Admittedly, in cases of GM or designer fuckup creating an encounter that is way too difficult, you have a problem, although that problem lessens as you get a better feel for the system. Ideally a game should have robust enough escape mechanics that an overhard encounter is not an automatic TPK, but even then I would prefer the GM verbally tell us he made a mistake and then agree a solution than have the enemy "forget" to use half it's powers or suddenly have all our attacks crit. Players are suprisingly good at spotting when overly hard enemies suddenly start failing rolls and several of the players I've spoken to have said it lessens their enjoyment of the game.

[hogarth]

My two cents:

If the campaign has an interesting story, I want the gameplay to be relatively easy so that I can finish the story without too many annoying interruptions.

If the campaign has a lame story, I want the gameplay to be relatively challenging so that I can at least get some entertainment out of "survival mode" rather than "story mode".