Critical Role Critical Role Episode #26 - spoilers!

5ekyu said:

Gotcha and thanks for the response.

To me, when the player asks for disadvantage on their own attacks to reflect their flaw, their intent and such was much more clearerly much more succintly reported to me than "feebly attack" or any amount of "rate the fear vs the attack in terms of" back and forth questioning could produce.

I dont feel its necessary or good for me to decide for him what "feebly" translates to or whether there is a will save that maybe he makes that then tells him (you over come it) or whatever you were seeing the will save accomplish.

If i choose to just tell him "describe without rules" then it comes down to me guessing what the level of issue they were shooting for was. Maybe i get it right. Maybe i dont.

But the key is if i were to do that i am drawing a huge honking line for them in how they portray giving into their flaw.

If they choose from set a (run away, take no actions, take normal actions etc) they get control of the exact outcome and resolution barring surprises or interruptions.

If the choose from set b (any mechanical change applied by a rule) the forfeit control and its my ball now and naybe they get the kind of change they sought or maybe they dont.

That division imo discourages them from taking a lot of options as it adds in the chance of an outcome their voluntary choice did not aim for.

I dont need to divorce my good players from the rules to manage rules lawyers at my table. Allowing the players more options does not diminish my control or authority. I find it does the opposite.

But, certainly for some groups at some tables it would be simpler and quicker for a player to just choose between the limited set of options under their control (take no action, run away, only take one swing out of two possible, etc etc etc) instead of trying any of the options which force the GM-player reconciliation of intent phase.

After all, if they just move up and declare "she just attacks once with her axe" that whole "what does feebly, fear vs attack" gets avoided.

Every table is different.

Click to expand...

Maybe lost in the example but I’m not advocating that players must choose to act from a limited menu. They can choose to do anything they want to do, and if I have questions, it’s so that I can faithfully apply the rules to execute their action as best as I can. Facilitate.

My player base includes a large mix of people (from kids to grognards), who have all sorts of expectations or traditions they bring with them to the table. I ask them, in the interest of expediency, and to maximize actual play time, to leave the rules to me and just focus on playing the character/the scenario. They agree, and that agreement enables an enjoyably paced game that moves through a lot of content. Of course there are other ways to pace a game, etc., I’m just talking about my tables.

But that agreement also sort of inoculates against weird situations like what happened in CR. I’m not saying it prevents character deaths, but it does ensure that all decisions and rulings are in good faith, and any deaths come as a result of a series of unfolding, preventable, events instead of quirks. That’s important to me because when a character dies, the player should not feel cheated or gypped.

I might have a very different perspective if I had a large audience though. Who can say. Probably they shouldn’t feel cheated either. That warrants some more thinking.

robus said:

I'm really confused. How does advantage produce results outside of the range of possible outcomes? It's advantage, it's not a bonus.

Click to expand...

Read the rest of the post you excerpted. The question is covered at length. Odds are part of expected outcomes.

I cannot explain the isdue of why taking voluntary disad is not analogous to taking voluntary advantage better than i have in the previous responses.

Perhaps others can.

But regardless, read the whole posts if you want more clarity.

5ekyu said:

Bawylie

There is one pice of your response that i will highlight as it shows a key difference

"I might skip a die roll and give a quick “your half-hearted, terrified assault is effortlessly knocked aside by the enemy as they bear down on you. What do you do?” In which case I’m giving them the portrayal of fear-via-feeble attack as a freebie and then giving them an action they can take “for realsies""

This is imo a key place, we part company and which if i were at your table we would have a post-game discusdion over if i had my way.

If in,my games a player expresses an interest in playing out a flaw with specific actual implications (ie they want an actual penalty) its not as a GM in my book my place to just throw that intent out with a fluff bit and put normal resolution as the outcome "for realsies."

If that was what you meant by that passage, then thst seems to me to be a case of GM not trying to resolve the players intent but to put thier own intent over the players choices.

That gets back to driving the players to avoid the GM-stsging as much as posdible with simpler choices.

If that was not what you meant, then thats fine but for me what the player intends their character to do is always "for realsies" and I as GM take that very seriously at my table as i asdume you do as well.

Click to expand...

I said “I might...” meaning that is a possible outcome.

But to be clear, if I am not sure about what a player intends to do, I ask them. In my role as adjudicator, I am committed to faithfully carrying out the action they declare.

As in the above example, if the player clarified that feeble attack was just a narrative demonstration of their fear, I would go with that but not charge them the action for it. Sometimes my players say they do things that are merely “color” or “flourish.” It’s important to me that I know the difference.

I’m in no way saying I discard player intent arbitrarily or capriciously.

5ekyu said:

Read the rest of the post you excerpted. The question is covered at length. Odds are part of expected outcomes.

I cannot explain the isdue of why taking voluntary disad is not analogous to taking voluntary advantage better than i have in the previous responses.

Perhaps others can.

But regardless, read the whole posts if you want more clarity.

Click to expand...

I did - but I don't agree with your conclusion. Changing the range of probable outcomes is exactly what a player wants to do when they take advantage of disadvantage. Saying that they're only allowed to play within the original range of success probability (and not the entire range of possibility) seems like a constraint you're adding to make your argument stronger?

Bawylie said:

Maybe lost in the example but I’m not advocating that players must choose to act from a limited menu. They can choose to do anything they want to do, and if I have questions, it’s so that I can faithfully apply the rules to execute their action as best as I can. Facilitate.

My player base includes a large mix of people (from kids to grognards), who have all sorts of expectations or traditions they bring with them to the table. I ask them, in the interest of expediency, and to maximize actual play time, to leave the rules to me and just focus on playing the character/the scenario. They agree, and that agreement enables an enjoyably paced game that moves through a lot of content. Of course there are other ways to pace a game, etc., I’m just talking about my tables.

But that agreement also sort of inoculates against weird situations like what happened in CR. I’m not saying it prevents character deaths, but it does ensure that all decisions and rulings are in good faith, and any deaths come as a result of a series of unfolding, preventable, events instead of quirks. That’s important to me because when a character dies, the player should not feel cheated or gypped.

I might have a very different perspective if I had a large audience though. Who can say. Probably they shouldn’t feel cheated either. That warrants some more thinking.

Click to expand...

In the CR situation, iirc, the death wound up having nothing to do with the disadvantsge question. Iirc the attack chosen would have bern disad due to range anyway. So, i am not sure how this technique of yours would innoculate against that.

Right now my table are all long term players, tho a big gap in rule fu. But recent games had them along with first time rpg players. Having the experienced players not told to divorce rules from their actions did not make handling the rookie by "describe actions" (leave rules to me) any harder.

The opposite, she got to see the difference and seeing the way rules tied to actiins whether described using rules-lingo or not helped her to learn the mechanics by seeing them in plat, not all "in gm head".

But each table is different.

5ekyu said:

In the CR situation, iirc, the death wound up having nothing to do with the disadvantsge question. Iirc the attack chosen would have bern disad due to range anyway. So, i am not sure how this technique of yours would innoculate against that.

Right now my table are all long term players, tho a big gap in rule fu. But recent games had them along with first time rpg players. Having the experienced players not told to divorce rules from their actions did not make handling the rookie by "describe actions" (leave rules to me) any harder.

The opposite, she got to see the difference and seeing the way rules tied to actiins whether described using rules-lingo or not helped her to learn the mechanics by seeing them in plat, not all "in gm head".

But each table is different.

Click to expand...

That’s interesting!

IMX the number one reservation new players give is “but I don’t know how to play / there’s so many rules.” I sell them on trying it out by telling them the rules are for me to run the game and all you have to worry about is what your adventurer actually does.

Actually, I think the number one reservation might be “isn’t this for nerds?” LOL

robus said:

I did - but I don't agree with your conclusion. Changing the range of probable outcomes is exactly what a player wants to do when they take advantage of disadvantage. Saying that they're only allowed to play within the original range of success probability (and not the entire range of possibility) seems like a constraint you're adding to make your argument stronger?

Click to expand...

Ok maybe you presented the key to the the mis-understanding there - that bolded part.

In the example in case the player before choosing had basically a range of actions that produce probabilities of success between 9% and 75%. Their range was 0% to 75%.

By asking to take disadvantage, they asked to be allowed to select fromadditional options which produced success probabilities that were still between 0 and 75%. They could still choose "no dont take3 disad" and get 75% or they could choose the 50% or the various disad options at 44% and 25%.

So their range of options was still between 75% and 0 - they just had more items on the menu than before that are between 0 and 75%.

A character in the same circumstance wanting to add advantage is asking for a final range of something like 0 to 93% and that is asking for a change to the range of possible outcomes not just more options within the normal range of outcomes - probabilites speaking.

Again, if you character's strength lets you "insert verb from encumbrance" 250 lbs with no pentlay, you can voluntarily choose to carry less than that also with no penalty if you want to show "your character is weak in hot climates" due to a flaw. But you cannot just choose to carry more than 250lbs without penalty.

The constraint that you cannot do "more" than your character stats and rules indicate by choice is in the rules, not something invented by me. the idea of doing less voluntarily is there also.

if the character weants to change their range from 0-75% into 0-93% they can do so with inspiration, help, etc etc. its not free.

But players can do less for free all the time through the rules, so why get hung up on telling them "no you cannot do less "this way" when they have much more limiting choices they can do without your permission as GM? It makes no sense and thats the real difference.

if i have failed to explain this well enough for you, oh well. Doubt i can do any better.

Bawylie said:

That’s interesting!

IMX the number one reservation new players give is “but I don’t know how to play / there’s so many rules.” I sell them on trying it out by telling them the rules are for me to run the game and all you have to worry about is what your adventurer actually does.

Actually, I think the number one reservation might be “isn’t this for nerds?” LOL

Click to expand...

For new players concerned with the rules issue - i tell them the same thing - as i said - she described her characters actions and i handled the rules.

i just didn't see any need to impose that on the other players who did know the rules. that let her see " i rush up and wail on the demon" for her rogue and Jim's "i rush up 60' using my bonus action dash and use my attack with my rapier" to both result in "character moves 60' and attacks while other characters move 30' and attacks" and so she learned by observing that her character was moving 60' due to a bonus action (eventually.) She would not have known that or been able to learn that in play had i told everyone to not use rules in descriptions - unless i chose to hit her with it when i did her resolutions which was clearly not gonna make her game more fun.

[Note thats an adjusted for inflation example - the game wasn't 5e as i recall but was like 3.5 which was a bit more crunchy bits than 5e in many cases and so needed a bit more TLC from the Gm for newbies, IMO]

5ekyu said:

For new players concerned with the rules issue - i tell them the same thing - as i said - she described her characters actions and i handled the rules.

i just didn't see any need to impose that on the other players who did know the rules. that let her see " i rush up and wail on the demon" for her rogue and Jim's "i rush up 60' using my bonus action dash and use my attack with my rapier" to both result in "character moves 60' and attacks while other characters move 30' and attacks" and so she learned by observing that her character was moving 60' due to a bonus action (eventually.) She would not have known that or been able to learn that in play had i told everyone to not use rules in descriptions - unless i chose to hit her with it when i did her resolutions which was clearly not gonna make her game more fun.

[Note thats an adjusted for inflation example - the game wasn't 5e as i recall but was like 3.5 which was a bit more crunchy bits than 5e in many cases and so needed a bit more TLC from the Gm for newbies, IMO]

Click to expand...

No joke re 3.5. Running that game is basically WHY my house rule exists.

My dwarven barbarian's flaw is that he is a horrible liar and doesn't realize it. I elected to have him take a -5 penalty to his deception instead of the +1 he would normally have for a 13 Charisma.

My svirfneblin wizard was a drow wizard's slave and spent years expecting to be killed at any moment before he escaped and became an adventurer. When the party encountered drow and again later when they encountered driders, his first priority was hiding so that they did not know he existed - until he had a chance to exact revenge and finish off the encounters.

Back in the 1E days I had a fighter dual classed to wizard that had been born the son of a Thayvian noble. Due to a helm of opposite alignment, he went on to become a heroic adventurer and freedom fighter, but he lived in terror that his father would find him, remove the helm's effects and bring him back into the fold of evil. When the PCs encountered a Red Wizard in a side encounter, I decided that the character would do everything possible to kill it so that it could not report his location. When it teleported away, my character sidetracked the entire campaign for weeks with an obsession of tracking it down, confirming it had not revealed his location and then killing it...

Taking disadvantage when your character is afraid of something is good roleplaying. As Matt, I'd have probably told her that we'd give Lorenzo a free intimidate check to frighten her rather than make it automatic disadvantage, but I'd simultaneously have given her inspiration just for suggesting it.

As for the encounter - They're 5th level. They faced off against what appears to be a level 9+ Hexblade (which would be CR 3), a level 5+ wizard (CR 2), a druid, 2 thugs and a barbarian. If the barbarian and druid were also 5th level-ish (CR 2) and the thugs were MM thugs (CR 1/2), the encounter would have been under the threshold for a deadly encounter (2250 xp versus 2750 for deadly). It was not an unfair encounter based upon abilities exhibited.

I'm curious whether we've seen the last of Molly or if we'll see a new party member.