The Gaming Den

Gx1080 wrote:My opinion that is highly lame aside, the price for making everybody special is that nobody is.

It's kind of sad how many people do not understand a fucking children's movie.

Your nit-picking aside, the point still stands.

Gx1080 wrote:Your nit-picking aside, the point still stands.

Nitpicking? You didn't understand a children's movie, because its moral is the exact opposite of what you said. He says that and then the rest of the movie is the spotlight rotating between each character using their specialty to stand out despite the fact that they're all special.

Yes, nitpicking. Is just a phrase.

The point is, the fact that according to K, the only factor on the combat minigame is how the DM uses the monsters. If so, the combat minigame is a pointless excersise on dice rolling on the side of the players.

He has also said that "fuck you" monsters are a GOOD thing. So, the reason why the above is true is that the DM can decide what "fuck you" monsters put, and adventures should be a rotation between "fuck you" monsters so that everybody gets 5 minutes at the spotlight. Oh, and extra punishment for anybody who dared to optimize.

Which also is the point of "cooperative storytelling" Shadzar style. It doesn't matter whatever a game is even remotely balanced, or that some players can optimize better than others, the DM can just sandbag at convenience.

Now the phrase is gone. Happy?

Shadow Balls wrote: Again, the problem is not the nature of the lose condition, but the reaction to it. That and that's also going to annoy the players that are not inept, which is obviously undesirable.

This is not nearly so one-sided as you imagine. Min-maxers and munchkins can be just as immature at the table as basket-weavers, but as to why you insist that problems only come from basket-weavers, who are apparently universally attention-whores, you are completely unclear. You cater your games to people who game the system to stay on the high end of the level curve, and those who don't get killed repeatedly, and you're trying to say that the latter are somehow inferior because they prefer a different play-style than you. Now I am not K, and I will agree that immature players who can't conform to the play-style of the group are in the wrong group. But I disagree with you in that immature DMs who won't conform to the play-style of their players are also in the wrong group. The point is it's not "player entitlement" causing problems around the table, it's immaturity, which can come from anyone, be it a munchkin, basket-weaver, player, or DM, who is more concerned with getting their way than cooperating with the group for the best shared play experience.

None of that changes the fact that your example not only ignores the realities of an RPG, but also the exact examples of participation on the part of players who have lost a combat encounter which you quoted. When you and your buddies lose a fight, even if you are the only one who gets captured, you are still playing an RPG, and you can tell the DM, "I try to overhear the guards' conversation," or "I try to pull a Joker and provoke the guard into attacking me," or, "I try to seduce the guard," or, "I look around at the other prisoners, how many of them are there? I try to get them to help me break out," or whatever else your basket-weaving mind can think of. The only way the PC is unable to participate is if the DM arbitrarily denies the player all action ("There are no guards," "There are no other prisoners," "The bars are adamantine," "You remain unconscious indefinitely, OK?"), at which point non-participation is no longer the player's "fault" by any stretch of the imagination.

K wrote:When can the players choose which monsters they fight and which tactics those monsters use? Until they can do that, their success is entirely up to the DM.

No, it isn't. It is possible for the GM to throw the Tarrasque at a level 1 party, and it is possible for the GM to throw a pair of hobgoblins at a level 4 party, and in both cases the outcome of the battle is pretty much pre-determined. But it is also possible for the GM to make an encounter against which the PCs are fairly evenly matched, and to determine in advance roughly how they're going to be run, such that if the PCs don't adopt the correct strategy against them, they will most likely lose. In fact, the only reason I'm in favor of a potential non-death outcome of a fight is so that I can throw these kinds of encounters at my players more often without risking a TPK literally every single session.

Chamomile wrote:

K wrote:When can the players choose which monsters they fight and which tactics those monsters use? Until they can do that, their success is entirely up to the DM.

No, it isn't. It is possible for the GM to throw the Tarrasque at a level 1 party, and it is possible for the GM to throw a pair of hobgoblins at a level 4 party, and in both cases the outcome of the battle is pretty much pre-determined. But it is also possible for the GM to make an encounter against which the PCs are fairly evenly matched, and to determine in advance roughly how they're going to be run, such that if the PCs don't adopt the correct strategy against them, they will most likely lose. In fact, the only reason I'm in favor of a potential non-death outcome of a fight is so that I can throw these kinds of encounters at my players more often without risking a TPK literally every single session.

I know that people want RPGing to be players defeating objective challenges, but it just isn't.

If it's a battle that is beatable (but victory is not assured), the DM is still controlling the monster and deciding which tactics to use and that means controlling which player choices are meaningful.

For example, let's say you are running a pit fiend. He's supposed to be super smart and he has Spellcraft. Is he going to melee the Fighter who is covered in magic armor, or is he going to melee the unarmored Wizard and drop him in one round? Is he going to stay at range and use spells, rendering the melee Fighter powerless and the Wizard's spells more useful? Is he going to teleport away when he loses a quarter of his HP only to come back completely regenerated some rounds later, taking advantage of his ability to burn out PC resources at no cost to himself? Is he going to stay at extreme range and just Fireball the PCs, kiting them like MMO mobs?

What constitutes "smart tactics" is completely at the whim of the DM, making anything other than a "no contest" fight into an exercise in DM agency. I mean, people usually end up with an RP excuse like "well, he's bloodthirsty so he melees" for choosing tactics that favor or kill certain players, but at the end of the day it's the DM who chooses who gets targeted.

Of course, that doesn't mean that there aren't single PC tactics that can win the fight like a save or die or a charger build that can kill a pit fiend in one attack, but at that point it was always a no contest fight and the danger was an illusion.

...You Lost Me wrote:This is for A Man in Black, it's the Shadow Balls quote that you responded to originally, emphasis mine.

And alternative failure conditions would not make any difference. The basket weavers would whine that they have to sit out because their inept character got killed off with one punch and "had to sit out of the adventure until they got raised or replaced", and the basket weavers would still whine because their inept character got knocked out in one punch and "had to sit out of the adventure until someone stormed the prison they were being kept in". Either way the problem is that the inept character is easily defeated, and that they blame anyone but themselves for that defeat. Changing what defeating and being defeated means makes no difference at all here.

Perhaps I'm reading that wrong, but it seems to me that his point was that getting knocked out and getting killed with result in the same amount of complaining. Now if you're arguing something else (and you definitely seem to be), you really shouldn't have quoted him and talked about strawmanning. It seems like a legit point if there ever was one.

Yes, my point was that triggering the failure conditions will cause the basket weavers to whine, even if it is their fault, regardless of what those failure conditions are. And that by making it something other than death, you are giving them legitimacy they do not deserve. Not to mention keeping them out of the game longer.

A Man In Black wrote:You are reading that wrong, and I am attacking that nonsense (and it has appeared elsewhere in the thread). He is saying that being captured would happen in the same circumstances, and both are equally disruptive to play. They wouldn't both happen in the same circumstances: dying would happen every time Captain Basketweaver got hit, and kidnapping/arrest would only happen when the entire party was forced from combat without the opportunity to save Captain Basketweaver. The latter is a TPK, and a prison scene is preferable to "Welp. So much for that party."

Dying: Whenever Captain Basketweaver is hit and then not Revenanced/Revivified within a minute a level.
Captured: Whenever Captain Basketweaver is hit and then Dimension Doored off the field.

I'd say both are about equally likely assuming the first group was aiming to kill and the second to capture.

Stubbazubba wrote:

Shadow Balls wrote: Again, the problem is not the nature of the lose condition, but the reaction to it. That and that's also going to annoy the players that are not inept, which is obviously undesirable.

This is not nearly so one-sided as you imagine. Min-maxers and munchkins can be just as immature at the table as basket-weavers, but as to why you insist that problems only come from basket-weavers, who are apparently universally attention-whores, you are completely unclear. You cater your games to people who game the system to stay on the high end of the level curve, and those who don't get killed repeatedly, and you're trying to say that the latter are somehow inferior because they prefer a different play-style than you. Now I am not K, and I will agree that immature players who can't conform to the play-style of the group are in the wrong group. But I disagree with you in that immature DMs who won't conform to the play-style of their players are also in the wrong group. The point is it's not "player entitlement" causing problems around the table, it's immaturity, which can come from anyone, be it a munchkin, basket-weaver, player, or DM, who is more concerned with getting their way than cooperating with the group for the best shared play experience.

A munchkin is a cheater. Of course you should kick cheaters from your group. That goes without saying. A min maxer is simply someone making the most of limited resources. Often they are simply an inferior form of optimizer, but they're still easy to deal with as their characters are one trick ponies.

Basket weavers on the other hand are attention whores. I do believe I explained why already, but I will do so again. They make their characters weak intentionally and refuse help because this draws attention, and then they insist that having an incompetent character makes them better roleplayers which is also an attention grab, and then they try to story lawyer their way to victory because they lack any actual abilities that would allow them to succeed at anything, even and especially those things that they are supposed to be good at. And if the party responds by trying to protect the basket weaver from themselves? Attention. A basket weaver is a powergamer that can't be fucked to actually learn how to powergame. Not only does that make them the worst kind, but it takes your basket weaver style argument and sinks it like a battleship.

While it is true that I prefer gaming for people that know what they are doing, that does not change the fact that average games with average enemies still slap basket weavers up and down the battlefield.

Interestingly enough, I ran an all basket weaver party once. It consisted of them being entirely unable to accomplish anything at all, despite their opponents being very weak and poorly played and entirely uninteresting from any sort of tactical standpoint. One of the PCs died to a Lightning Bolt, of all things and then had the nerve to claim I was being rough with them. It wasn't even the one that died that was complaining!

After about 4 or 5 iterations in which they faced weak, unoptimized enemies that were often lower level than them and I had to make up increasingly improbable reasons as to why the enemy broke off the engagement when they were winning I called it off. Never again.

None of that changes the fact that your example not only ignores the realities of an RPG, but also the exact examples of participation on the part of players who have lost a combat encounter which you quoted. When you and your buddies lose a fight, even if you are the only one who gets captured, you are still playing an RPG, and you can tell the DM, "I try to overhear the guards' conversation," or "I try to pull a Joker and provoke the guard into attacking me," or, "I try to seduce the guard," or, "I look around at the other prisoners, how many of them are there? I try to get them to help me break out," or whatever else your basket-weaving mind can think of. The only way the PC is unable to participate is if the DM arbitrarily denies the player all action ("There are no guards," "There are no other prisoners," "The bars are adamantine," "You remain unconscious indefinitely, OK?"), at which point non-participation is no longer the player's "fault" by any stretch of the imagination.

No meaningful participation is the same as no participation from any functional standpoint. I did not bother to spell this out as I assumed that everyone involved understood basic intellectual and optimization principles. None of that changes the fact that the guys who beat you when you were in a much better position now have you in a much worse one.

Shadow Balls wrote:Dying: Whenever Captain Basketweaver is hit and then not Revenanced/Revivified within a minute a level.
Captured: Whenever Captain Basketweaver is hit and then Dimension Doored off the field.

I'd say both are about equally likely assuming the first group was aiming to kill and the second to capture.

Then you take out the effects which exist to turn incapacitation into death or removal from the game, like quick coups de grace or "unconscious is willing". 3e Plane Shift and "unconscious is willing" paired with teleport effects is just as toxic as defeated-is-dead and for the same reasons, but they're much more easily excised from the game.

Not only that, but Captain Basketweaver is killed in the lethal game unless the enemy makes extra effort to not do so, while he is only kidnapped in the non-lethal game if the enemy takes extra efforts while under fire to do so. That is a major difference.

Also, "being knocked out doesn't magically teleport you to a prison" wasn't attacking a strawman.

Shadow Balls wrote:A munchkin is a cheater. Of course you should kick cheaters from your group. That goes without saying. A min maxer is simply someone making the most of limited resources. Often they are simply an inferior form of optimizer, but they're still easy to deal with as their characters are one trick ponies.

Deal with? Why are you trying to deal with your PCs like some kind of mob boss trying to insulate his protection racket?

Basket weavers on the other hand are attention whores. I do believe I explained why already, but I will do so again. They make their characters weak intentionally and refuse help because this draws attention, and then they insist that having an incompetent character makes them better roleplayers which is also an attention grab, and then they try to story lawyer their way to victory because they lack any actual abilities that would allow them to succeed at anything, even and especially those things that they are supposed to be good at. And if the party responds by trying to protect the basket weaver from themselves? Attention. A basket weaver is a powergamer that can't be fucked to actually learn how to powergame. Not only does that make them the worst kind, but it takes your basket weaver style argument and sinks it like a battleship.

Only by using the Stormwind Fallacy. If a basket-weaver was a Druid, they would not be underpowered, or if they played Tome Monk, etc., as you yourself have pointed out. Just because you take roleplaying options doesn't mean you can't also be effective at what you do. It's not 100% optimizing, but that is rarely necessary, unless that's the game the players and the DM all want, otherwise, it's just your dick DM trying to teach you how to play his game. Again, an immature basket-weaver, like the one you describe, is a problem, the same way an immature anything is, up to and including the aforementioned dick DM.

No meaningful participation is the same as no participation from any functional standpoint. I did not bother to spell this out as I assumed that everyone involved understood basic intellectual and optimization principles.

You clearly don't; optimization means that you maximize utility given an often arbitrary set of constraints; if you are stripped of all your gear and in a prison cell you can't break out of, then your optimal choice is to capitalize on your social skills to either manipulate the guard or the other prisoners into bringing you one step closer to escape. That's optimization, right there. Of course it's not 'optimal' to be in that situation in the first place, but that's not what optimization means. Optimization is context-dependent. If you can change the context you could always have infinite utility, but that's not what optimization means!

Furthermore, the distinction between meaningful and non-meaningful participation is still largely in the hands of the DM. If he throws a Tarrasque at a level 3 party, there is no meaningful participation, even from the most powerful classes, or the players who are "applying the most effort." If he throws a boss with a bunch of SR at your level 4 party of casters, all of a sudden their participation becomes much less meaningful compared to their ability to affect melee monsters, etc., etc. This goes to explain K's point about spotlight-rotating; traps exist to give the rogues spotlight, monsters have different strengths and weaknesses to make different classes more effective against them. The DM can always choose encounters such that certain classes are shut down, even level-appropriate, unbroken classes. If, after being captured, or in any other scenario, the PCs cannot functionally contribute whatsoever, that is largely the DM's fault. The system might share the blame, as in the case of the Core Monk, where there are very, very few encounters which play to its strengths (because it has none), but largely, the DM chooses the encounters to rotate that spotlight time, and in the case of the captured defeat condition, contributing at a reduced rate temporarily is a perfectly acceptable alternative to having your character removed from the game. It's the same idea as Ability damage, which exists and works just fine; you keep playing, but not quite as powerful as you were, for a time. It's a temporary setback, like a defeat or failure should be, except at dramatically appropriate moments when life or death should be hanging on the line and you know it.

A Man In Black wrote:

Shadow Balls wrote:Dying: Whenever Captain Basketweaver is hit and then not Revenanced/Revivified within a minute a level.
Captured: Whenever Captain Basketweaver is hit and then Dimension Doored off the field.

I'd say both are about equally likely assuming the first group was aiming to kill and the second to capture.

Then you take out the effects which exist to turn incapacitation into death or removal from the game, like quick coups de grace or "unconscious is willing". 3e Plane Shift and "unconscious is willing" paired with teleport effects is just as toxic as defeated-is-dead and for the same reasons, but they're much more easily excised from the game.

Not only that, but Captain Basketweaver is killed in the lethal game unless the enemy makes extra effort to not do so, while he is only kidnapped in the non-lethal game if the enemy takes extra efforts while under fire to do so. That is a major difference.

Also, "being knocked out doesn't magically teleport you to a prison" wasn't attacking a strawman.

Which leaves you with... enemies that nicely ask you if they can sacrifice you to their dark gods? I am not sure which is more stupid right now - the basket weaver arguments, or yours. I am not sure if there is a difference.

If Captain Basket Weaver dies, you have a minute a level to raise him cheap and easy. It is only if that doesn't happen that he does not get raised and has to sit out for a while. If Captain Basket Weaver gets snatched up, you have far less time to react to that. That means that if Captain Basket Weaver dies and stays dead, it's because no one deemed him worth the effort to raise. Now this isn't very surprising given the circumstances, but if they couldn't be bothered to throw two Standard actions on him what makes you think they're going to be breaking him out of a capture scenario even if you get past the fact he'd be sitting out longer even if they did come and break him out?

Stubbazubba wrote:

Shadow Balls wrote:A munchkin is a cheater. Of course you should kick cheaters from your group. That goes without saying. A min maxer is simply someone making the most of limited resources. Often they are simply an inferior form of optimizer, but they're still easy to deal with as their characters are one trick ponies.

Deal with? Why are you trying to deal with your PCs like some kind of mob boss trying to insulate his protection racket?

When someone claims that types of players other than basket weavers can be problems, pointing out that they are not problems and wouldn't be a big deal if they were problems is called a rebuttal. Though do continue with the ridiculous misunderstandings. They are very entertaining.

Only by using the Stormwind Fallacy. If a basket-weaver was a Druid, they would not be underpowered, or if they played Tome Monk, etc., as you yourself have pointed out. Just because you take roleplaying options doesn't mean you can't also be effective at what you do. It's not 100% optimizing, but that is rarely necessary, unless that's the game the players and the DM all want, otherwise, it's just your dick DM trying to teach you how to play his game. Again, an immature basket-weaver, like the one you describe, is a problem, the same way an immature anything is, up to and including the aforementioned dick DM.

Basket weaver =/= roleplayer. There were no gales blowing, other than an odd whooshing sound over your head.

You clearly don't; optimization means that you maximize utility given an often arbitrary set of constraints; if you are stripped of all your gear and in a prison cell you can't break out of, then your optimal choice is to capitalize on your social skills to either manipulate the guard or the other prisoners into bringing you one step closer to escape. That's optimization, right there. Of course it's not 'optimal' to be in that situation in the first place, but that's not what optimization means. Optimization is context-dependent. If you can change the context you could always have infinite utility, but that's not what optimization means!

Which clearly didn't help when you and your party encountered them. Of course, it's also as (il)logical as the rest of your arguments.

Furthermore, the distinction between meaningful and non-meaningful participation is still largely in the hands of the DM. If he throws a Tarrasque at a level 3 party, there is no meaningful participation, even from the most powerful classes, or the players who are "applying the most effort." If he throws a boss with a bunch of SR at your level 4 party of casters, all of a sudden their participation becomes much less meaningful compared to their ability to affect melee monsters, etc., etc.

...Or they just cast Glitterdust, which is what they would do anyways.

This goes to explain K's point about spotlight-rotating; traps exist to give the rogues spotlight, monsters have different strengths and weaknesses to make different classes more effective against them. The DM can always choose encounters such that certain classes are shut down, even level-appropriate, unbroken classes.

It's interesting you say that, given just how bad Rogues are at traps. But none of that has anything to do with this topic, and is even more irrelevant than all of this talk about alternate and more severe failure conditions.

If, after being captured, or in any other scenario, the PCs cannot functionally contribute whatsoever, that is largely the DM's fault.

Yes, damn that DM! It's all his fault that the encounter that defeated 4 of you and captured 1 is impossible for that 1, who is now at a crippling disadvantage to defeat!

The only part of that he can fairly be blamed for is not simply killing your character so you could get back into the game faster.

The system might share the blame, as in the case of the Core Monk, where there are very, very few encounters which play to its strengths (because it has none), but largely, the DM chooses the encounters to rotate that spotlight time, and in the case of the captured defeat condition, contributing at a reduced rate temporarily is a perfectly acceptable alternative to having your character removed from the game. It's the same idea as Ability damage, which exists and works just fine; you keep playing, but not quite as powerful as you were, for a time. It's a temporary setback, like a defeat or failure should be, except at dramatically appropriate moments when life or death should be hanging on the line and you know it.

Interestingly enough, the effective characters do not need a personal babysitter in order to function. Interestingly enough, the effective characters find ways to be useful in a variety of situations. Now I know that thing called putting some thought and effort into it is hard for you, but it really is not a difficult concept.

There is also no comparison between getting captured = no gear, no spells, and party size 4-6 times smaller vs the same guys that beat you down at full power on their own turf and something like ability damage which even if you cannot easily cure it does not hinder to nearly the same extent. And let's face it, having an answer to ability damage is just something any mid or high level party worth anything does.

Shadow Balls wrote:Which leaves you with... enemies that nicely ask you if they can sacrifice you to their dark gods? I am not sure which is more stupid right now - the basket weaver arguments, or yours. I am not sure if there is a difference.

No, it leaves you with enemies that have to wipe out the entire party to sacrifice you to the dark gods. Also, it means that any combat which is not with enemies who have the explicit agenda of kidnapping a single person will not give you a result of "Player sits out for a period exceeding a single combat."

If Captain Basket Weaver dies, you have a minute a level to raise him cheap and easy. It is only if that doesn't happen that he does not get raised and has to sit out for a while. If Captain Basket Weaver gets snatched up, you have far less time to react to that. That means that if Captain Basket Weaver dies and stays dead, it's because no one deemed him worth the effort to raise. Now this isn't very surprising given the circumstances, but if they couldn't be bothered to throw two Standard actions on him what makes you think they're going to be breaking him out of a capture scenario even if you get past the fact he'd be sitting out longer even if they did come and break him out?

The easy revival patched into 3e is a (kludgy) way of implementing reduced lethality. I'd like to see it taken further than that.

A Man In Black wrote:

Shadow Balls wrote:Which leaves you with... enemies that nicely ask you if they can sacrifice you to their dark gods? I am not sure which is more stupid right now - the basket weaver arguments, or yours. I am not sure if there is a difference.

No, it leaves you with enemies that have to wipe out the entire party to sacrifice you to the dark gods. Also, it means that any combat which is not with enemies who have the explicit agenda of kidnapping a single person will not give you a result of "Player sits out for a period exceeding a single combat."

Or they just kill you. Because the nonlethal bullshit is in fact bullshit. But again, that is not the point.

The easy revival patched into 3e is a (kludgy) way of implementing reduced lethality. I'd like to see it taken further than that.

I'll ignore that this is even more on topic and ask why you would possibly want to remove the consequences of a given action, particularly since given the track record so far of the anti deathers you would probably do it the Paizo way.

Shadow Balls wrote:Or they just kill you. Because the nonlethal bullshit is in fact bullshit. But again, that is not the point.

I'll ignore that this is even more on topic and ask why you would possibly want to remove the consequences of a given action, particularly since given the track record so far of the anti deathers you would probably do it the Paizo way.

It's stupid because it's stupid. I see.

The last two games I've run, death was explicitly off the table as an RNG result. Anything that would kill drops you more or less nonfatally. Nobody really had a problem with it, and in the second they were happier that I could run tougher encounters because I didn't have to worry about killing people. It was easier to maintain the illusion of challenge, because the failure condition wasn't as drastic and thus I could more easily hit them with it.

What's the Paizo way, anyway?

K wrote: What constitutes "smart tactics" is completely at the whim of the DM, making anything other than a "no contest" fight into an exercise in DM agency. I mean, people usually end up with an RP excuse like "well, he's bloodthirsty so he melees" for choosing tactics that favor or kill certain players, but at the end of the day it's the DM who chooses who gets targeted.

Smarter DMs can run smarter monsters with better tactics. That's true, but isn't particularly relevant. The goal isn't to set a game where any two groups playing Keep on the Shadowfell experience the same level of challenge. Challenge is going to vary from DM to DM based on the DM's own tactical know-how.

The goal is that the DM should be running the monster as a roleplaying encounter where monsters act as they would in their best interest. It's bad DMing to run your encounters from a metagaming standpoint where the adversaries act with the character's best wishes in mind. If you're opting to toss a fireball because you think it's your best tactical move, then fine. If you're doing that specifically because you know the tactic is ineffective and want to make the pit fiend ineffective, then that's not a good DMing practice, because you're not properly playing the monsters as they should be played.

There has to be a cognitive divide between DM and NPC, and quite frankly, I don't think you're capable of doing that. As a DM, you don't want the PCs to die, but when you're playing a pit fiend trying to kill them, then you have to understand that the pit fiend absolutely does want them to die. And it's your job as DM to play the pit fiend that way.

Swordslinger wrote:The goal is that the DM should be running the monster as a roleplaying encounter where monsters act as they would in their best interest.

And the GM chooses the monsters and the interests, so there's not going to be a murderous, tactically-inclined pit fiend unless the party can handle that.

A Man In Black wrote: And the GM chooses the monsters and the interests, so there's not going to be a murderous, tactically-inclined pit fiend unless the party can handle that.

Says who?

The DMG (Yes even the beloved 3E DMG) actually encourages DMs to put in encounters that the party can't handle from time to time, specifically designed that the party is supposed to avoid them. It also encourages you to use some close fights. Not every fight is supposed to be a sure win.

A little bad luck, and yeah, you could be getting the bad end of an encounter with a monster. Especially in a game as swingy as 3E, that's very possible. People could die. Parties could die.

Swordslinger wrote:The DMG (Yes even the beloved 3E DMG) actually encourages DMs to put in encounters that the party can't handle from time to time, specifically designed that the party is supposed to avoid them. It also encourages you to use some close fights. Not every fight is supposed to be a sure win.

Avoiding a fight is handling a fight. It's not good for the game for challenges to be "You guessed wrong how to handle this? Then rocks fall and everyone dies."

A Man In Black wrote: Avoiding a fight is handling a fight. It's not good for the game for challenges to be "You guessed wrong how to handle this? Then rocks fall and everyone dies."

The DM can't always predict what PCs will do, so there's a chance that the PCs run into an encounter they can't handle. And whether this happens or not all the DM's fault. The PCs should get options with how to deal with the encounter. Yes, sometimes they may do something stupid, get unlucky, whatever. And yes they may have some people die. If they're unlucky and make bad decisions, they may all die.

That's just part of the game.

I hate this whole "blame the DM for everything" bullshit. The DM didn't force you to rush that great dragon head on at level 5, you did as PCs. And if you died because of it, well whatever... you learned something, didn't you?

Something the game needs: A game-mechanical way for the PCs to determine when something is over their heads. Maybe it can even tie in to {the/a better} intimidate mechanic!

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Something the game needs: A game-mechanical way for the PCs to determine when something is over their heads. Maybe it can even tie in to {the/a better} intimidate mechanic!

Didn't one of the splatbooks have that as a use for Sense Motive?

Swordslinger wrote:The DM can't always predict what PCs will do, so there's a chance that the PCs run into an encounter they can't handle. And whether this happens or not all the DM's fault. The PCs should get options with how to deal with the encounter. Yes, sometimes they may do something stupid, get unlucky, whatever. And yes they may have some people die. If they're unlucky and make bad decisions, they may all die.

That's just part of the game.

Or, you could redesign the game so that the default defeat condition is something less than homicide, so that it isn't part of the game.

I'm unhappy that the game puts such a burden on the GM, but I don't think GMs saying "Fuck it, that's unfair, so let the dice fall where they may" makes for good games.

A Man In Black wrote: Or, you could redesign the game so that the default defeat condition is something less than homicide, so that it isn't part of the game.

There's certainly an argument to be made for making D&D less deadly, especially 3E and prior editions. D&D also suffers (mostly due to the battlemap influence) of making it notoriously difficult to run away once battle has started.

However, there are some points when the story pretty much calls for some kind of death. If you end up getting defeated by ghouls, hydras or other vicious creatures, they're probably just going to tear you apart and eat you. Death is just going to be a logical unavoidable consequence sometimes.

Swordslinger wrote:

A Man In Black wrote: Or, you could redesign the game so that the default defeat condition is something less than homicide, so that it isn't part of the game.

There's certainly an argument to be made for making D&D less deadly, especially 3E and prior editions. D&D also suffers (mostly due to the battlemap influence) of making it notoriously difficult to run away once battle has started.

However, there are some points when the story pretty much calls for some kind of death. If you end up getting defeated by ghouls, hydras or other vicious creatures, they're probably just going to tear you apart and eat you. Death is just going to be a logical unavoidable consequence sometimes.

I don't know..... I mean, "drag your unconscious body back to their lair to eat later/feed someone else/eat you somewhere in peace" is just as reasonable, and it gives PCs a chance to escape.

Of course, in anything less than a TPK situation you don't even need that. The enemies will just turn and focus on the standing enemies after a PC drops.

K wrote: Of course, in anything less than a TPK situation you don't even need that. The enemies will just turn and focus on the standing enemies after a PC drops.

Well yes, assuming you allow in your combat system for a high probability of a PC being dropped but alive, like in 4E, then TPKs are about the only situations you have to worry about in general, but you have to accept it as a possible outcome, even if it's a rare one.

Gelatinous cubes ain't gonna be taking prisoners dude.