The Difficulty in RPGs thread

[Red_Rob]

But why should death be the consequence to add tension? Why can't defeat suffice?

Who said death should be "the" consequence to add tension? Of course you can still be knocked out, taken prisoner, fail the mission or a host of other bad consequences during a game. Character death does have a few benefits above those from a tension perspective, however. Firstly that it can happen at almost any time, which makes even fights that are weighted in your favour tense. Secondly it doesn't actually cause the mission to fail, so one character could die and the group could still succeed. If there is a chance (even a very, very, small chance) that a character could die in any given fight, every combat grabs the players attention.

Or, would adding more of a punishment for failure add more tension and make for a better game? Like, lose a character and pay a fine?

I know you think you're creating some kind of reductio ad absurdum strawman here, but what you just described is basically poker. I don't know if you've noticed, but games where you risk actual monetary stakes on tests of skill and luck are pretty popular. So for all we know, having "Pro D&D" tournaments where you pay to enter and the best group gets a cash prize might be a runaway success.

[violence in the media]

But why should death be the consequence to add tension? Why can't defeat suffice? Or, would adding more of a punishment for failure add more tension and make for a better game? Like, lose a character and pay a fine? What about having the NPCs die at times to show how dangerous it is supposed to?

I don't know about anyone else, but my reluctance to endorse your viewpoint stems from situations where death is the most likely, or expected, rational outcome.

In the two game experiences I mentioned earlier in this thread, I don't see how you're going to get out of the owlbear defeat without anyone dying, and I don't see how a weapon that auto-kills on a crit is going to stop doing that when the target is a PC. And there are tons of other "you're fucked" situations that come up in games like that: kicked off a cliff into lava; thrown unprepared through a portal to a hostile plane; crushed and pinned under tons of rock in a cave-in; failed a save vs. a disintegrate beam; dimension door-ed off the side of a floating island thousands of feet above the ocean; getting your soul eaten by a devourer; being teleported into outer space; etc.

Sure, some characters can survive those things sometimes, but that's the point. Once all your defenses and countermeasures are exhausted (if you had any to begin with) and you have to face whatever the result is, there are situations where "not dead" will offend the sensibilities of some combination of other players and MC.

Removing a lot of those things from the game sounds really unsatisfying, if that's your solution. I don't want the entirety of my game experience to be some variation of bandits, battled in benign, bucolic environments, that have endless convenient excuses to leave my PC alive if they defeat me.

[Wrathzog]

Are you? There is a tremendous wealth of experiential proof that the death rate per encounter is less than 5%. I could explain why that is, but it sure the fuck isn't my fault that you don't know how probability works, and don't know how D&D works, so you think the existence of Finger of Death somehow equates to a 5% chance of death per encounter.

Now I remember why I put you on ignore.
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.

IMHO a "hardcore" game results in about one death every four levels.

[hahaOhWoW.jpg]
So, I've actually run games like this and if you want to talk about "Hardcore" try over one PC death per session on average with most of those being permanent. This was a campaign that somehow ran from level 6 to 12. We had one character who managed to make it through most of it until he stood on the wrong side of a Circle of Death and rolled in the single digits three times in a row.
The next encounter was the one that finally wiped the party (played straight from the Castle Ravenloft book).

[Kaelik]

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.

1 in 10 million is less likely than lots of things. But the entire point is that you are a fucking idiot and you are wrong.

You are less likely than 1 in 20 to die in any given encounter. Much less likely. That is the problem, you are an idiot.

1) Not every encounter, in fact, far less than 1 a day, even involves a save or die of any kind at all.

2) Even when save or dies do come up, they are subject to a lot of immunity. If you fight a Slaad that uses Finger of Death, and you cast Deathward, fuck that Slaad, you can roll straight ones and not give a shit.

3) Even when you face save or dies, you have a less than 1 in 20 chance of even being the target of the save or die. Everyone rolls init, if the party kills the thing before it goes, then it damn well doesn't even get to use it's ability.

4) If you do die, you might just be revived in literally the next standard action, because there are spells that immediately raise people.

5) You don't even know the rules. Two natural 20s don't necessarily equal a crit in the first place, and crit very rarely actually kills people.

You are an idiot, you are an idiot because you are claiming that you have a 1 in 20 chance of dying in each encounter because there exist spells that don't show up that often, that you can be immune to, that come as actions taken usually after you have had a chance to kill the enemy first.

You might fail a save, and that save might be glitterdust, not finger of death, in which case you live.

[virgil]

You are an idiot, you are an idiot because you are claiming that you have a 1 in 20 chance of dying in each encounter because there exist spells that don't show up that often, that you can be immune to, that come as actions taken usually after you have had a chance to kill the enemy first.

You might fail a save, and that save might be glitterdust, not finger of death, in which case you live.

Freaky that there'd be the day I'd agree with Kaelik. Definitely a +1 from me on the gist of this point.

One element I'm noticing here is people quoting the chances of player death or even a TPK, citing stuff like 5%, 1%, or whatever. NOBODY here has that kind of precision in ascertaining encounter difficulty, and talking about setting encounters' death rate to 1% vs .01% is just so much talking out your arse.

In theory, we can retrofit the SGT, look at chances of single-round KOs, & possibly evaluate encounter distributions on top of that. THEN, we can make at least a vaguely educated opinion on a campaign's expected attrition rate. Last I checked, nobody's made this effort, so talking about it as a goal is just navel-gazing.

[Username17]

One element I'm noticing here is people quoting the chances of player death or even a TPK, citing stuff like 5%, 1%, or whatever. NOBODY here has that kind of precision in ascertaining encounter difficulty, and talking about setting encounters' death rate to 1% vs .01% is just so much talking out your arse.

Exactly. Not only are all these numbers asspulled to begin with, but they aren't even being used correctly. Wrathzog was fucking around with the chances of a character failing a saving throw, but he wasn't even accounting for the fact that he was talking about a character, who presumably comes as part of a party of four. Thus, even in his contrived scenarios, the chance that you were going to bite the bullet needed to be divided by 4, because that bullet could just as plausibly been aimed at a different character, which would be experientially different.

But really, it just doesn't fucking matter. All of the jerking off about numbers is just jerking off. It's a smoke screen to try to distract from the fact that Fuchs is tautologically wrong when he says that something that has a chance to occur necessarily will. If something has a chance to occur, it also has a chance to not occur. Period. If the chance to occur is anything less than 100%, then no amount of iterations of it will ever bring it to 100%. That's just indisputable mathematical fact.

But while Fuchs is definitely provably and provedly incorrect there, that doesn't fucking matter either, because even if he was right that the people who don't want to cheat would eventually stop playing because their characters died and apparently they live in a Chick Tract, that's still no excuse at all for the behavior he claims it inspires in him. If a player is definitely going to move out of town when the school year ends and you respond by passive aggressively refusing to integrate their character into the story in the here and now, you're being an asshole!

I mean seriously, look at this shit:

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

That's total douchebag behavior. The fact that the justification for this behavior is mathematically false doesn't make it any more or less bullshit. If we changed the scenario to one where the player actually would eventually leave the game in a deterministic fashion (active duty military, beginning or ending of school, temporary employment rotation, or whatever), it would still be shitting on someone for no god damned reason.

Of course, Fuchs keeps up with his mathematically challenged point of view to continue to try to justify his outrageously shitty behavior, this time on the other end:

Again, only some socially challenged guy like you would equate "not favoring one Player" with "punishing that player", or as you so eloquently state "being a flaming douche".

Huh? Yes, if you give everyone else a candy bar and don't give one to Bob, that is a net -1 candy bar for Bob. Also, it's totally being a fuckwad to Bob. This is not only simple mathematical tautology (getting less is the same as getting less!), it's the simplest Kindergarten lessons of human interaction. I am legitimately surprised that a grown man could seriously claim to not have learned the lesson "Only bring cupcakes if you have enough for all the children, because otherwise people will feel justified resentment." Did you fucking sleep through preschool? Were you raised by wolves? What the fuck?

-Username17

[Juton]

I'm not sure how often Kaelik see PCs drop. Having 1 PC drop per 40 encounters sounds about right. My old group usually played from level one so those deaths where skewed towards the lower end of the spectrum. But higher level PCs did die and some even died in such a way that they effectively couldn't be revived.

[RadiantPhoenix]

If a player is definitely going to move out of town when the school year ends and you respond by passive aggressively refusing to integrate their character into the story in the here and now, you're being an asshole!

I'm quoting this because I think it's the most important part of a very large post.

[Wrathzog]

One element I'm noticing here is people quoting the chances of player death or even a TPK, citing stuff like 5%, 1%, or whatever. NOBODY here has that kind of precision in ascertaining encounter difficulty, and talking about setting encounters' death rate to 1% vs .01% is just so much talking out your arse.

I haven't said anything about encounter design. Kaelik brought up encounters because he's an idiot grasping for straws. I'm working off of Frank's allusion to "Winning the Lottery" which I associated with a single d20 roll for a Saving throw (winning the lottery in this case is death) because those are both singular, measurable instances of chance and that makes them comparable events.
I'm even skewing the odds against my argument because I'm using 1 in 10 million as opposed to 1 in 50 million for the chances of winning the lottery and I'm assuming that the PC in question is completely OFF THE RNG in regards to that particular di roll. Frank can even change the scenario to "the odds of hitting a particular character" and I don't even care that he's making THAT a di roll instead of there being a more intelligent decision making process for picking a target because it actually changes nothing about how unlikely winning the lottery is vs. getting killed in D&D.

But hey, seriously, who here has won the lottery?

Anyone die in D&D? *Raises hand*

I just want the Hyperbole to die.

[Username17]

I haven't said anything about encounter design. Kaelik brought up encounters because he's an idiot grasping for straws. I'm working off of Frank's allusion to "Winning the Lottery" which I associated with a single d20 roll for a Saving throw (winning the lottery in this case is death) because those are both singular, measurable instances of chance and that makes them comparable events.

What the hell is wrong with you?

We've already gone over why this is a stupid fucking analogy repeatedly. We've already gone over why your analogy doesn't mean shitfuck. Repeatedly. Shut the fuck up until you have something that isn't retarded to say.

An analogy to a lottery ticket isn't "making a saving throw", it's "the enemy attempts to cast finger of death". But you know what? That doesn't give you a 1 in 20 chance of dying, that gives you a 1 in 80 chance of dying, because there are three other people it is just as likely to target, you twat. Actually, considerably less than that, because spellcasting can be interrupted or preempted with extreme face stabbing, people can and do cast death ward when they are at high enough levels that finger of death is a problem, and so on and so forth.

But you know what? It doesn't fucking matter. Actual numbers are not the fucking point, which is why I didn't fucking give any in the first fucking place, you twat. The entire point is that Fuchs' statement that an event that can happen is an event that will happen is pants on head retarded. The lottery ticket is simply a simple and obvious way of conveying that simple and obvious fact. And if you weren't pants on head retarded yourself, you'd fucking realize that and move the fuck on instead of drooling your threadshitting all over this already way too fucking long thread.

Whether an event is .0000000001 or .999999999 likely to occur doesn't matter. Because the statement that it is necessarily going to happen is still false. We can handle this entirely with variables, and we have done so, because Fuchs is wrong for every possible X. Having you shit all over this thread about nitpickings about specific numeric probabilities that you are pulling out of your actual ass and are also by the way totally wrong about because you're a twat doesn't help anything. It simply distracts from the fundamental point that no matter what numbers you plug in, Fuchs is still wrong.

You're being a nitpicking asshole, who is wrong, in defense of absolutely nothing. I hope you are proud of yourself, asshole.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

The entire point is that you are making the exact fucking hyperbole that you are whining against.

The chance of actually dying in a given encounter is drastically less that 1 in 20. It is less than 1%. No it isn't literally exactly the same chance as winning the lottery, but who fucking cares.

The entire point is that Fuchs just fucking said that anything that can happen will, and Frank responded to it by pointing out that there are in fact different probabilities and some of them actually demonstrate things that can happen often don't.

Now, the part where you claim the chance to die in a given encounter is 1 in 20 is complete and utter horseshit. You can't get around that by claiming it is the chance of failing a save, because Frank's lottery number wasn't about the chances of failing a save, it was about the chances of dying in a given encounter, because that was the thing Fuchs said was inevitable, and therefore the thing that would have a probability X.

So either:

1) Admit that you are comparing a completely unrelated number to Frank's number, IE, I have 5 apples, and you only have a 30% of chance of making that jump, therefore I jumped further than you.

2) Actually try to argue that the chances of actually dying in a given encounter are substantially greater than the chances of winning the lottery.

PS dumbshit, I won the lottery. It was the lottery at the local bakesale, where the odds were approximately 1 in 500 based on tickets sold. Hey, fuck you, the lottery doesn't mean some specific number outside of context, so when you try as hard as you can to strip Frank's statement of context, IE, that things can in fact not happen, even when their is a chance they will, you are left with a completely worthless statement.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Also, Fuchs is using a different definition of "die" than most people.

A failed save against Finger of Death is not the same thing as death in Fuchs language, because you can come back from it.

[Kaelik]

Also, Fuchs is using a different definition of "die" than most people.

A failed save against Finger of Death is not the same thing as death in Fuchs language, because you can come back from it.

Yes, and when he said he won't invest much in their character he really meant that he would invest the exact same amount as everyone else.

I think you are being too charitable in believing his completely bullshit lies to save face.

[nockermensch]

PS dumbshit, I won the lottery. It was the lottery at the local bakesale, where the odds were approximately 1 in 500 based on tickets sold.

When no one was looking, Kaelik won forty cakes. He won 40 cakes. That's as many as four tens. And that's delicious.


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.

[Kaelik]

When no one was looking, Kaelik won forty cakes. He won 40 cakes. That's as many as four tens. And that's delicious.

Actually, when relatively speaking, lots of people were looking, Kaelik won one cake. He won 1 cake. That's as many as one tenth of ten cakes. And that's delicious.

[Mistborn]

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.

Then I'm going to have to play him a sad song on the worlds smallest violin because unanticipated things happen in RPGs.

That is literally the point of RPGs. To have unanticipated things happen.

Deal. With. It.

[...You Lost Me]

I think (just think) that's supposed to be a >0 in your post. nocker.

[Wrathzog]

What the hell is wrong with you?

Hyperbole. That's all. If you'd used a more reasonable comparison like "Get Ball Cancer," I'd have had no issues with it.

Fuchs, you should probably bail, dawg. This place ain't got nothing for you.

[Kaelik]

What the hell is wrong with you?

Hyperbole. That's all. If you'd used a more reasonable comparison like "Get Ball Cancer," I'd have had no issues with it.

So just to be clear, if someone said: "It is literally impossible for killing someone to be a bad thing" you would oppose someone giving as an example of killing someone being a bad thing the holocaust, because it accurately and completely proves the point they were making without being hyperbole?

Seriously dumbshit, the point was that a chance of something happening does not equal it happening, that point can be made with the lottery as well as anything. In fact, Frank also made exactly the same point with an example in the exact opposite direction, by using Robilar.

[nockermensch]

I think (just think) that's supposed to be a >0 in your post. nocker.

ouch! My bad.

Then I'm going to have to play him a sad song on the worlds smallest violin because unanticipated things happen in RPGs.

That is literally the point of RPGs. To have unanticipated things happen.

Deal. With. It.

This actually sounds less badass than it did on your head. Because it seems that Fuchs has dealt with the problem, to the satisfaction of his group. The No PC dies without the player actually wanting it is also a solution to D&D's difficulty problem.

I'll grant that this is not the default solution, or even the "common" solution, but it seems to be the one that serves his group. It's similar enough to some of the solutions that we already tested here, like "no deaths that don't fit into a narrative" that I could probably roll with it.


This is where I'll go on a tangent here and point that kind of idiotic discussion is a direct result of bad game design and bad marketing (up to this day people aren't even sure of what kind of game D&D is) joining forces to deliver a big steaming cup of cognitive dissonance called "D&D" to people everywhere.

But despite this historical failure to deliver, the promise behind D&D (play heroic adventures!) is strong enough that people coming from different angles have looked really hard at the unplayable mess and "resolved" the incomplete product in different ways. My group in the 90s, having read LotR and watched Records of Lodoss War got into D&D and "solved it" to produce results consistent with high fantasy campaigns. Had we read Fritz Leiber instead Tolkien (or watched Slayers before Lodoss) our solutions would probably had been different.

[PoliteNewb]

Huh? Yes, if you give everyone else a candy bar and don't give one to Bob, that is a net -1 candy bar for Bob. Also, it's totally being a fuckwad to Bob. This is not only simple mathematical tautology (getting less is the same as getting less!), it's the simplest Kindergarten lessons of human interaction. I am legitimately surprised that a grown man could seriously claim to not have learned the lesson "Only bring cupcakes if you have enough for all the children, because otherwise people will feel justified resentment." Did you fucking sleep through preschool? Were you raised by wolves? What the fuck?

Frank, when you talk like this it seriously makes me wonder how you get by in modern society.

We tell children "if you don't have enough to share with everyone, don't bring any for anyone" because they are children. What you refer to as "justified resentment" is actually childish selfishness. Kids think "If so-and-so gets one, I should too! It's not faaaaaiiiir!" and throw a tantrum. Adults realize that just because Bob gets a cupcake (or a candy bar, or whatever), it does not mean you are automatically entitled to one too. Because life is not a kindergarten birthday party.

Seriously, I want to know...when you go out to the bar with a party of coworkers, do you honestly feel that if you buy Jimbo a beer, you are therefore obligated to buy ALL of your coworkers a beer, or be dubbed a douche? Maybe Jimbo is a little short this week, or maybe he helped you move your piano, or maybe you just plain like him better. Maybe you secretly want to get into Jimbo's pants. The point is, in a social setting, you are allowed to spend your time and money where it will do the most good, in your point of view.
D&D is no different; when players come over to play, there is no expectation that you will treat them all identically, regardless of their behavior. If a guy comes over to my house and acts like a dick, he will be thrown out, even if I let all the other players stay. If one dude barely pays attention to the game and spends most of the night on his iphone, I am going to give up on trying to involve his character in the RP scenes (and he probably won't be invited back).

The reason that kindergarten kids are told to "share with everyone" has nothing to do with fairness; it has to do with avoiding tantrums. "Share with everyone" is not in fact fair; having to give a cupcake to little Timmy Thompson, who beats up your kid sister and says you smell like farts, is actually cruel and unfair. But schools do it because it is easier for the teachers.
When kids grow up, they realize that not everybody gets the same stuff, and they deal with that. Ideally, they tailor their behavior to get the kind of rewards they want (which can include going elsewhere, if someone is not giving them what they want).

Despite repeatedly claiming that Fuchs wants to throw tantrums, you seem to be the one advocating that Bob throw a tantrum just because he didn't get a fucking candy bar and Jimbo did. That is not adult behavior, it's kindergartener behavior, and I don't want it at my table. You are seriously advocating acting like a toddler as if this were in some way desirable.

Here, I'll give you another example, which is even more pointed. If we're all gaming at my house, people who chip in money for beer can drink that beer. If they don't, people drink my beer at my sufferance, or do without beer. If you not only refuse to pay for beer, but in fact tell me that if I give you beer you will pour it down the fucking sink, you are not getting any beer.

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.

[wotmaniac]

@PoliteNewb



He's talking about a setting in which the base expectation actually is that, barring inappropriate behavior, everyone should be receiving equatable treatment. Fuchs isn't talking about admonishing disruptive behavior; he's intentionally making it a point to ignore someone who's only "offense" is that he actually wants <gasp> a particular part of the rules to apply to his character if indeed the appropriate conditions have been fairly met. Frank's analogy is spot-on.

And now you've gone and abused the analogy. Even given the above, I'm still perfectly in line if I happen to cover another players share of the pizza bill while not covering anyone else's -- but that's 2 completely unrelated things.

[Username17]

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.



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

[wotmaniac]

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.

[Fuchs]

Of course, Fuchs keeps up with his mathematically challenged point of view to continue to try to justify his outrageously shitty behavior, this time on the other end:

Again, only some socially challenged guy like you would equate "not favoring one Player" with "punishing that player", or as you so eloquently state "being a flaming douche".

Huh? Yes, if you give everyone else a candy bar and don't give one to Bob, that is a net -1 candy bar for Bob. Also, it's totally being a fuckwad to Bob. This is not only simple mathematical tautology (getting less is the same as getting less!), it's the simplest Kindergarten lessons of human interaction. I am legitimately surprised that a grown man could seriously claim to not have learned the lesson "Only bring cupcakes if you have enough for all the children, because otherwise people will feel justified resentment." Did you fucking sleep through preschool? Were you raised by wolves? What the fuck?

-Username17

Using your example, I give everyone a box of candy bars at the start of the campaign so everyone can get one per session, but player number 4 will randomly throw his box away at some point and then expect a new box. I stated multiple times that mathematically, people who frequently replace chracters will end up with less total DM work on their specific current character than those who stick with one character since DM work accumulates. I thought you understood math.

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.

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.