K wrote:
Every DM choice is biased. I mean, do your intelligent enemies always kill the poorly armored Wizard first, or do you target the fighter because he's the only one who can take a Troll attack and not explode? Do your enemies concentrate fire on one character to drop that one, or do they spread out attacks? Do your enemies intelligently lay traps and ambushes, or do you decide for RP reasons that they charge?
While it's true that every DM's choices may well vary for how he controls the monsters, I wouldn't necessarily say they're biased. I generally try to run monsters how I believe they would act. Mindless creatures will just attack the closest threat. If they're smart enough to know about magic, and the wizard happens to leave himself open, then hell yeah, they're gonna try to shred him. If he's left unguarded in the open, that's the PCs own stupidity for doing so.
As for the DM's level of tactics, that likely has to do with his knowledge of the game. A newbie DM that's not very tactic savvy will likely run modules easier than one good at strategy games. This isn't bias, so much as the fact that the DM's skill also matters to the game.
But that doesn't mean the DM should be deliberately pulling punches. That only means that the DM's best tactical effort just isn't as good as other people's might be. As with any tactical game, some people are better than others, and that applies to DMs as well.
And before we lose the forest from the trees. Consider the fact that you may avoid the room the troll is in entirely. The point isn't necessarily that every rendition of the Sunless Citadel will be equally difficult, because it won't be. The point is that choices made in the adventure can impact your chances of success.
So I pose this question to you. Lets take two groups:
- Group A has their wizard safely in the back of the group and uses good teamwork. The entire party is a group of well optimized characters.
- Group B has their wizard rush the enemy headlong with a torch alongside the barbarian. Their barbarian has also chosen to dual wield daggers without the Two weapon fighting feat cause he thought it'd be cool.
If the DM and adventure are both constant in both games, which group would you bet your money on as most likely to die? If you put your money on group A, you're admitting there's some degree of skill to the game.
Can you honestly say that both these groups have an equal chance of survival?
You can't even run a published adventure without making hundreds of choices that affect how the combats unfold, or judgement calls about whether spurious ideas or tactics will be allowed a chance of success. I mean, just because a Balor has been placed in a room means you could play it easy by Fireballing for three rounds or play it hard by Blasphemying for three rounds, and success or failure of the party is decided by those decisions.
True, but like I said, if you're acting unbiasedly, you should use the balor's deadliest attacks here. A bunch of guys walk in who are decked out in gem studded armor and have more orbiting ioun stones than a solar system model... You may want to start to bust out your best stuff. As the DM, you're playing a super intelligent monster with absolutely no reason to take it easy on the characters.
It's only bias if the DM decides to have this monster take it easy, or if he has the balor act on information it does not have.
Can you be biased by helping out the PCs? Sure. Do you have to be? No.
RPG players don't have that luxury of actual immortality to figure out the script, especially considering that the scripting is going to be improvised by a human each and every time. What they need is plot immortality so that they feel like heroes when they play the game.... otherwise the whole point of the exercise is meaningless.
Granted, RPGs need to be easier than some video games for that reason, but that doens't mean you have to hand them immortality. Some video games have a hardcore mode where you get one life, your character is deleted. In Super Mario Bros, if you lost all your lives, you got sent back to the beginning of the game. The concept that you get infinite retries isn't always true of every game.
As echo said, if death isn't an acceptable outcome for PCs, why have it in the game at all? Why are monsters tossing out fingers of death if PCs are not supposed to die? If anything, that only hurts the illusion of risk you're trying to create if the PCs know that it could cast finger of death, but didn't. Do medusas in your game wear a veil when they fight PCs so their petrifying gaze is nullified? I don't get it.
