The Difficulty in RPGs thread

[Fuchs]

I support Fuch's right to not waste time on people who have admitted they are going to pour his time down the sink. Only an insane person would argue that this is somehow douchey.

Everyone is going to pour your time down the sink. Everyone! All participants in games are there temporarily. The game is open ended, but eventually it will end. Maybe the game will keep going past the next session, maybe it will keep going past the session after that, but there will be a last session, and you don't necessarily know which session it's going to be.

Yes, sometime every game will end. But my current weekly campaign has been going on since before 3E came out, so I do tend to take the longer view. And I do tend to plan accordingly.

If you refuse to "waste time" on people who are going to leave you, you can't have any human relationships at all. The completely non-hyperbolic logical end of that line of thinking is to simply become a hermit and never play a game of D&D at all. That slope is extremely slippery, because every bit of time you invest in any kind of interaction with anyone is by definition going to be "poured down the sink", because all possible human relationships are temporary.

Holy crap, how did you assholes graduate from Kindergarten without mastering "basic sharing", "cooperation", "equal treatment", or fucking separation anxiety? This is basic socialization shit you're supposed to have mastered before the first grade. And you assholes are acting like it's some newfangled fringe theory you don't understand.

-Username17

I don't refuse to "waste time" on people who may leave the game. I refuse to spend more time on players who change characters randomly and then expect me to spend a lot of time to make sure they have the same background plots for the new character as the other players, whose characters have been going on for years. I'll try again to explain it to you:

I do the same prep time for each character, and it accumulates. As a result, after a few years, characters have a lot of time invested in their background and side plots. In order to bring a new character up to par I'd have to spend a lot more time on them than on the rest for quite some time. That's not going to happen. Each player gets X time spent on his character. If Player 4 resets his character, any time spent on his character is lost and his new character restarts at 0. That's not punishing, that's simply treating every player the same, and those who switch characters frequently suffering the consequences of that.

But yes, I admit that I have made the experience in the past that when a player keeps changing characters, I reach a point where I don't really expect any of his characters to last long and find it increasingly hard to force myself to invest time in said characters other than random improvised stuff during play. After a few times of getting burned you learn not to put your hand into the fire. Or, using your kindergarten analogy: If Timmy keeps breaking your toys some day you stop letting him borrow your toys. Even if Timmy sometimes gives them back perfectly fine.

And yes, I do find it makes a lot of difference if someone drops from the game because he married and now has less time to spend gaming and another changes character because he rolled a 1 instead of a 2.

[Fuchs]

The problem here seems that Fuchs is philosophically bothered by the possibility of unplanned PC death. It's kind of pointless to work on the actual numbers because as long as that chance is < 0, Fuchs will have a problem.

Something may also be happening is that Fuchs doesn't like how easy is to come back from the dead in D&D. I know for sure that in pretty much any game my group ran, coming back from the dead was much harder, if not impossible without some heavy MTPing. Starting with a setup like this, our way to deal with PC death was of course different from the one in a group following the default D&D assumptions.

I am not philosophically bothered, but the practical consequences of random PC death are not to my taste, since they are often unconvenient. It's one thing to deal with random events in game, it's another to suddenly have to free up a few more hours this week since Bob rolled a 1 on his save and now needs a new character. Bob not only wants to risk his time on a random roll, he wants to risk my time as well. I tend to want to minimize my possible losses in such situations.

Though I also found that I like game worlds without easy ways to resurrect people better, ever since back in the early 1990s, I realized that my character's response to a brother being taken hostage was "go ahead and kill him, we will resurrect him afterwards".

[Kaelik]

I don't refuse to "waste time" on people who may leave the game. I refuse to spend more time on players who change characters randomly and then expect me to spend a lot of time to make sure they have the same background plots for the new character as the other players, whose characters have been going on for years. I'll try again to explain it to you:

I do the same prep time for each character, and it accumulates. As a result, after a few years, characters have a lot of time invested in their background and side plots. In order to bring a new character up to par I'd have to spend a lot more time on them than on the rest for quite some time.

You are a lying bastard. This is what you said:

if a player wants the dice to fall where they may and risk his character dieing in every combat I will do that for his character - for his character only. I'll also tell him though that I'll not invest much in his character either

Not, that is not fucking not investing time after to catch them up. No one in the entire fucking world, least of all your players, actually cares about having less total time invested in that specific character. They care about the current rate of investment now, which you explicitly stated would be less.

You are now claiming you do something completely different, but you refuse to acknowledge what you actually said.

So either:

1) Clearly and explicitly state that you were completely full of shit when you said "if a player wants the dice to fall where they may and risk his character dieing in every combat I will do that for his character - for his character only. I'll also tell him though that I'll not invest much in his character either" and that doing that would be assholish and wrong, and you were completely wrong about that.

2) Stop lying by pretending you didn't say that.

The former Pope needed to either say:

1) Nazis were wrong, don't kill all the Jews.

or

2) Defend killing all the Jews.

You need to make the same choice, either defend the stupid thing you said early and stop pretending you didn't say it, or admit that what you said earlier was wrong. But this cowardly bullshit where you keep pretending that you never said it but refuse to ever admit that it was wrong is bullshit.

[Red_Rob]

With all this talk of failed saves equaling death, what is the actual lowest level spell that will outright kill you on a failed save? And what CR is the lowest CR monster with a save-or-die effect? I know people talk about "Save or dies start at level 1", but Color Spray or Sleep only take someone out of the fight, they do no long term damage unless the target's side loses the fight and they get ganked after. And I'm not talking turn-to-stone, polymorph or any of that other reversible crap. I mean actually dead-not-coming-back-short-of-raise-dead death. The earliest I can see is Phantasmal Killer, which allows 2 saves at level 4 to avoid it's effects. Cloudkill is level 5 and only kills creatures up to 6HD. Finger of Death is level freakin' 7! As regards monsters, the Cockatrice is CR3 which I guess is pretty low level for a Stone to Flesh, but that really seems to be an outlier. Most monster abilities that allow a save are some form of Fear, paralysis, or poison dealing ability damage.

I just don't see that failed saves are as deadly as people are making out.

[virgil]

Reversing petrification (Sor/Wiz 6) is appreciably more difficult than bringing someone back from the dead (Druid 4 or Cleric 5), so saying it doesn't count is wrong. I'd personally say that Blindness/Deafness (Sor/Wiz 2) is functionally a death sentence until the party happens to get a 5th level cleric.

A single crit from a greataxe will usually kill anyone with 15 or fewer hit points, which means CR 1/2 orcs enter the scene with death on the table. Closet trolls in general have this capability, especially the ones that deal their damage with one attack.

At level 4, fighting a level 7 wizard is possible, which is a very real chance of death from enervation comparable to a failed save. Even at level 1, a wight is only CR 3 and its attack will totally one-shot a PC. Power Word: Pain (Sor/Wiz 1) works as a SoD to low level players. Nitharit & Dark Reaver powder are both surprisingly cheap poisons (650gp & 300gp, respectively) can kill characters outright; especially since neutralize poison is as hard to get as raising the dead. We also have clerics with the Death domain at any level.

As for low level death monsters, we've got the basilisk (CR 5), cockatrice (CR 3), vargouille (CR 2), wight (CR 3), and sea hag (CR 4). This is from the MM from memory.

[Mistborn]

Also, yes, technically, someone could hit the 1 in a million chance and not die. Tautologically, I am not correct in stating that the guy will die. But anyone sane will say that once the odds reach winning the lottery territory you can assume safely that it will not happenin your lifetime even if you play weekly. Anyone with a shread of honesty and integrity would stop trying to ride this point.

Devour a phallus.

Over the course of forever the odds that one guy biting it approaches 1, but games don't last forever. Would you also dick over a player who says he may want to retire his character and make a new one at some point in the future?

This whole tangent is pointless, Fuchs knows he's being an asshole. He knows hypothetical death guy will be upset about being shoved out of the plot. that's why he's doing it so the guy will either leave or "correct" his behavior. Fuchs is a terrible DM and that's what terrible DMs do, they punish players for not accepting their playstyle.

[Red_Rob]

Reversing petrification (Sor/Wiz 6) is appreciably more difficult than bringing someone back from the dead (Druid 4 or Cleric 5), so saying it doesn't count is wrong. I'd personally say that Blindness/Deafness (Sor/Wiz 2) is functionally a death sentence until the party happens to get a 5th level cleric.

The "only death" criteria was because petrification, polymorph, blindness et al can all be undone without any side effects or limitations, unlike raise dead which has a time limit and costs a level. If you get petrified it sucks, but the party can still haul you back to civilization and fix you up good as new with the application of a chunk of gold.

A single crit from a greataxe will usually kill anyone with 15 or fewer hit points, which means CR 1/2 orcs enter the scene with death on the table. Closet trolls in general have this capability, especially the ones that deal their damage with one attack.

I was specifically talking about save effects, as people seemed to be basing their math on the "1 in 20" chance of failing a save each encounter. Although, on this note, I'd class an Orc with a Greataxe as way out of whack offensively with other CR½ options. They are a statistical outlier, not the norm.

At level 4, fighting a level 7 wizard is possible, which is a very real chance of death from enervation comparable to a failed save. Even at level 1, a wight is only CR 3 and its attack will totally one-shot a PC. Power Word: Pain (Sor/Wiz 1) works as a SoD to low level players. Nitharit & Dark Reaver powder are both surprisingly cheap poisons (650gp & 300gp, respectively) can kill characters outright; especially since neutralize poison is as hard to get as raising the dead. We also have clerics with the Death domain at any level.

Okay, so we have Enervation. That's a 4th level spell that can kill a character 3 levels lower than the lowest level caster. As regards Power word Pain, theres a pretty convincing argument that was an error with Power word Distract and the levels were switched. And out of the whole poison list you found 2 that can be lethal, one of which is ingested. I think if anything this is underscoring the fact that "make a save or you die" is going to be a vanishingly rare occurence at lower levels.

As for low level death monsters, we've got the basilisk (CR 5), cockatrice (CR 3), vargouille (CR 2), wight (CR 3), and sea hag (CR 4). This is from the MM from memory.

The basilisk and cockatrice are petrifiers - see above. The Vargouille requires you to fail a save against paralzation, then fail a save against the kiss, and then the transformation is stopped by sunlight or cure disease. The Wight is only really deadly to level 1 characters, whilst the Hag doesn't have any SoD effect as far as I can see?

My point was never that these effects don't exist, it's that they are a rare occurence. I think this has proved that point.

[zugschef]

Once I've called a friend of mine an asshole. Somehow he was above telling me that it wasn't true that I'm greatful for him being there for me because I once called him an asshole.

[virgil]

The "only death" criteria was because petrification, polymorph, blindness et al can all be undone without any side effects or limitations, unlike raise dead which has a time limit and costs a level. If you get petrified it sucks, but the party can still haul you back to civilization and fix you up good as new with the application of a chunk of gold.

Your party member just had their weight at least doubled, which is no easy feat to just drag home. Once going home is required, the PC has to sit out the rest of the adventure; which is arguably worse than dying, because then you can at least make a new character to jump in.

I was specifically talking about save effects, as people seemed to be basing their math on the "1 in 20" chance of failing a save each encounter. Although, on this note, I'd class an Orc with a Greataxe as way out of whack offensively with other CR½ options. They are a statistical outlier, not the norm.

Bull. Most players aren't failing only on a natural 20 anyway, and it's already been established any 'math' in this debate is slathered in crap. Even with 3.5 orcs with a falchion, they're killing non-fighters three times as often as compared to one with a greataxe. We also have dwarves one-shotting those same people. Anyone with a freakin' pick is a danger. So just dismissing the orc is dishonest at best.

Okay, so we have Enervation. That's a 4th level spell that can kill a character 3 levels lower than the lowest level caster. As regards Power word Pain, theres a pretty convincing argument that was an error with Power word Distract and the levels were switched. And out of the whole poison list you found 2 that can be lethal, one of which is ingested. I think if anything this is underscoring the fact that "make a save or you die" is going to be a vanishingly rare occurence at lower levels.

Enervation can crit, so it's still a real danger at higher levels. We also have pretty much any negative energy wielder that hits players a plurality of times. And no, you don't get to pull out the RAI for spells on this. The list of poisons in the core book isn't exactly huge, and with 6 attributes and unconsciousness, two restrictions will give you a tiny list regardless. There are only seven expensive poisons, and 4 risk death, ONE anti-wizard poison, two anti-cleric/druid poisons...

The Wight is only really deadly to level 1 characters, whilst the Hag doesn't have any SoD effect as far as I can see?

For the sea hag, learn to read; even their gaze attack can do as much damage as petrification. Obviously, a wight will never crit on their single attack in the combat against a level 2 character.

My point was never that these effects don't exist, it's that they are a rare occurence. I think this has proved that point.

Translation: So long as we stick to your overly narrow definitions, sudden and largely unpreventable death is rare.

[MGuy]

Look Fuchs already admitted, essentially, that he just hates random death just because. Whatever reasons or bullshit he's throwing out now is just that, bullshit. All of his explanations for his reasons are just bullshit as well.

He says he does it because time issues (prep time or whatever). That's bullshit because there are any number of other things that will fuck up his railroad that he's fully willing to deal with.

He says that the characters will always die so he's taking the long view (specifying years of play). If his campaigns are really that damn long then that is PLENTY of time to integrate a new character or even for the party to just up and decide to do something else like revive a downed character. In fact if he's playing for years at a time then it should be EASIER to rationalize allowing character death because you know your games last for a long damn time and you don't have the ever present risk of things breaking down in a week that people like me have to deal with.

He says that people who want to be able to die are going to pour his time down the sink. Ok what does he do when people randomly leave, quit, want to take their character in a new direction? What happens when a character gets his memory wiped and desires to do something else? What happens to a character that decides revenge isn't worth it and gives up his vengeance quest? For fucks sakes what happens when a player decides randomly, when he loses a battle, he wants to go ahead and die without giving any prior warning just because the situation is dramatic enough?

TL DR Fuchs just hates when people die so he just doesn't let it happen. No real reason beyond that exists for him.

[Kaelik]

Virgil, alot of your comments come down to "If you fight something much stronger than you specifically designed to kill you, you might die" Color me unsurprised and uncaring.

Now, vargouilles are super easy to avoid dying to.

But the thing to remember about team monster is that they come on gaze attacks.

You can just choose not to be subject to gaze attacks, so the basilisk is only dangerous if you are going to die from it biting you, which is unlikely.

Or the Cockatrice, you can just avoiding being bitten, because that is it's only attack you can total defense it.

[Red_Rob]

Virgil, my point was only that a failed save / crit does not, the vast majority of the time, result in death at the levels where Raise Dead is not available to the party. Yes, there are some monsters that can inflict it. But here are some of the statements I was referring to:

Comparing the odds of something that has less than a .0000001% chance of happening with something with at least a 5% chance of happening seems kind of unfair.

Protip: 1 in 10+ MILLION is still way less likely than 1 in 20 or 1 in 400, both of which are completely realistic numbers for events that can totally kill a character. Running those numbers multiple times in sequence only makes it MORE LIKELY that a character dies in a given scenario even given that that character is OFF THE RNG and requires a natural 1 or two natural 20's to confirm a crit.

As far as chance of death is concerned: If someone wants to have a random chance of death I think of stuff like the odds for axe crits at lower levels or failed saves.

The suggestion is that every scenario involves multiple saves and failing any of them leads to death. I'm just pointing out that isn't actually representative of most games. Only a very few enemies have the capability to kill on a failed save / crit. If character death was as big a problem as Fuchs or Wrathzog are making out it would be the major talking point on every gaming board instead of Wizards>Fighters or how the crafting system sucks. The fact it has only come up on these boards before once to my memory in the last 4 or so years suggests it isn't the hot topic they seem to think.

[wotmaniac]

I'm just pointing out that isn't actually representative of most games.

I've finally come to a particular realization -- Fuchs has asserted the claim that his current game has been running ~15 years (at least). That, on its face, should immediately draw attention to itself as being highly unusual; which would also seem to indicate that there are also other strange things going on. Hell, this isn't just an anomaly -- this is flat-out fucking freaky*.
That being the case, I'm not sure how relevant his experience is in relation to how normal games are played.


*(I suspect that Fuchs' game isn't a weekly thing; or if it is, then it's only for a few weeks at a time, separated my several months of something else. Whether my suspicion is correct or not, that still means that his gaming group has outlived the average marriage and the amount of time it takes to raise a functioning human being -- which means that they've probably got quite the echo-chamber going on .... )

[Maj]

If character death was as big a problem as Fuchs or Wrathzog are making out it would be the major talking point on every gaming board instead of Wizards>Fighters or how the crafting system sucks. The fact it has only come up on these boards before once to my memory in the last 4 or so years suggests it isn't the hot topic they seem to think.

My memory wants to say it's come up more than that, and every time it comes up, the thread gets stupid. If it doesn't come up much on other message boards, I think it's because a lot of players never know. As demonstrated by Fuch's persistence, it's obviously not something that is easily put into words.

Whatever reasons or bullshit he's throwing out now is just that, bullshit.All of his reasons are just bullshit as well.

The idea of even having an acceptable answer is off the table, so of course anything said is bullshit. This entire thread is 22 pages of bullshit.

I don't like the color brown. Why? Because.
I don't like random character death. Why? Because.

And there is absolutely nothing that any of you can say to change my mind because I give no fucks. And really - neither do you.

[Wrathzog]

Only a very few enemies have the capability to kill on a failed save / crit. If character death was as big a problem as Fuchs or Wrathzog are making out it would be the major talking point on every gaming board

Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't think character death is a problem at all (refer to: every time I bring up how often I kill players in my games). What's most likely is that most of us are in groups that support the play-style that we enjoy the most (or at least can tolerate), so the issue doesn't come up because it's already been fixed at a higher level.

If we wanted to have a real conversation about this, we could start talking about how much of an impact a DM has on the difficulty (and Lethality) of the game through how they design and run encounters... but that seems unlikely so whatever.

-e-
ADDING WORDS -e-and more words

[Fuchs]

The GM is the single most important and deciding factor on the difficulty and lethality of a D&D game. Just by picking the enemies from the CR list he can make the game a meat grinder, or a cake walk. Then, deciding which enemy goes after which PC, he can decide if a PC lives or dies. If a GM plays focus firing enemies he just upped the lethality, if he plays "go after the tank, ignore the squishies" he cuddles players.

[zugschef]

The GM is the single most important and deciding factor on the difficulty and lethality of a D&D game. Just by picking the enemies from the CR list he can make the game a meat grinder, or a cake walk. Then, deciding which enemy goes after which PC, he can decide if a PC lives or dies. If a GM plays focus firing enemies he just upped the lethality, if he plays "go after the tank, ignore the squishies" he cuddles players.

well, this is indisputable fact.

[Fuchs]

Incidentally, it also makes random character death a bit less than random, unless the GM decides on tactics and especially targetting at random. I've used the "let's roll to see who the Monster goes after" method myself several times to avoid some bias.

[zugschef]

Incidentally, it also makes random character death a bit less than random, unless the GM decides on tactics and especially targetting at random. I've used the "let's roll to see who the Monster goes after" method myself several times to avoid some bias.

the way i see it the monster's motivation tells you after which party member it would go after. if it doesn't, you didn't spend enough time thinking about it.

[Fuchs]

Incidentally, it also makes random character death a bit less than random, unless the GM decides on tactics and especially targetting at random. I've used the "let's roll to see who the Monster goes after" method myself several times to avoid some bias.

the way i see it the monster's motivation tells you after which party member it would go after. if it doesn't, you didn't spend enough time thinking about it.

That just confirms what I was saying - if the GM picking the monster and its motivation decides who it targets, a death resulting from the fight is not that random.

[zugschef]

Incidentally, it also makes random character death a bit less than random, unless the GM decides on tactics and especially targetting at random. I've used the "let's roll to see who the Monster goes after" method myself several times to avoid some bias.

the way i see it the monster's motivation tells you after which party member it would go after. if it doesn't, you didn't spend enough time thinking about it.

That just confirms what I was saying - if the GM picking the monster and its motivation decides who it targets, a death resulting from the fight is not that random.

while that's correct, my intended message was that rolling dice in order to randomly determine which party member is attacked, seems dickish. i mean, your players sure as hell aren't stupid and will take enemy motivation into account, but by using a rng to decide which player to attack, you render all of their planning and precautions pointless.

[Fuchs]

the way i see it the monster's motivation tells you after which party member it would go after. if it doesn't, you didn't spend enough time thinking about it.

That just confirms what I was saying - if the GM picking the monster and its motivation decides who it targets, a death resulting from the fight is not that random.

while that's correct, my intended message was that rolling dice in order to randomly determine which party member is attacked, seems dickish. i mean, your players sure as hell aren't stupid and will take enemy motivation into account, but by using a rng to decide which player to attack, you render all of their planning and precautions pointless.

There's always a way to bullshit a reason for any decision - who knows which enemy has an undying hatred for spellcasters or knights, for example, other than the GM, unless the Players deliberatedly try to gather such Information, which they rarely do for enemies they don't know about yet.

I found adding random chance to such decisions, be it for truly random target acquisition, or to decide (skill check or such) whether or not the enemy gains some insight into the PC's strengths and weaknesses, can help run things smoother.

Otherwise there could be a little bit of doubt whether or not the decision to focus fire on the mage was fair or if the GM selected enemies who did that deliberately to take down the mage. Especially with players who do not trust each other.

[zugschef]

There's always a way to bullshit a reason for any decision - who knows which enemy has an undying hatred for spellcasters or knights, for example, other than the GM, unless the Players deliberatedly try to gather such Information, which they rarely do for enemies they don't know about yet.

that's not necessarily a reason for this monster or npc to go after their hated subject first. it actually could be the opposite. and on top of that, humans have the weird tendency to find patterns in completely random sequences. unless you use your rng openly in front of your players to determine the first victim, they will recognize a pattern whether it was determined randomly or not.

btw, if you don't always use a rng for this purpose, the players sure as hell will detect a pattern based on the fact that you sometimes use a random method and sometimes not. of course, always determining the first victim by chance, is extremely gamistic (and pretty retarded if you want to have a coherent story).[/i]

[Fuchs]

that's not necessarily a reason for this monster or npc to go after their hated subject first. it actually could be the opposite. and on top of that, humans have the weird tendency to find patterns in completely random sequences. unless you use your rng openly in front of your players to determine the first victim, they will recognize a pattern whether it was determined randomly or not.

You can always create an in-character reason for a particular target choice.

People make up patterns where none are too. But my point remains simple: As long as the GM picks targets and tactics non-randomly, his bias play an even greater role with regards to lethality.

[Red_Rob]

We usually use dice to determine the target of unintelligent monsters. Usually it's weighted if some targets are less appealing - further away, more threatening etc.