[Very Long] Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War: a Key Difference in D&D Play Styles...

[ExploderWizard]

Cardinal Richelieu

You mean that fine upstanding cleric of the people?

Watch/read again. Richelieu is merely an antagonist. Milady DeWinter is the source of all evil.

 

[GSHamster]

Huh? Isn't "needs of the many outway the needs of the one" the defintion of Lawful Good? Isn't heroic self-sacrifice for the cause heroic?

Not getting your point here.

Sorry for not being clearer. As [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION] said, sacrificing the one for the many is only heroic if you are the one (ie Spock). If the "one" is someone else, then it is not heroic.

CaW groups prefer fighting when the odds are overwhelmingly on their side. They like setting up the battlefield to ensure this. But that means that, when faced with a fight where the odds are more indeterminate, they often retreat to buy time to set up the battlefield.

In my experience, this tends to a mindset where the PCs are willing to sacrifice others, as the "costs of war". Arguably, they may even be right. If the PCs attack and are beaten, then everyone is worse off.

I just found that in CaW groups, everyone was very cautious, and it was hard to act heroicly. Kind of honestly, there's a reason paladins have the whole "Lawful Stupid" stigma. I think that's because the paladin's heroic mindset conflicts with the pragmatic mindset of the rest of the CaW group.

In a CaS group, the outcome is more determined by the fight itself, rather than the factors leading up to the fight. Thus the group is more willing to engage in fights, to confront the villains, to act heroically, without needing to retreat and set up the battlefield first. I find that style of play to be more cinematic and heroic than CaW.

 

[billd91]

CaW groups prefer fighting when the odds are overwhelmingly on their side. They like setting up the battlefield to ensure this. But that means that, when faced with a fight where the odds are more indeterminate, they often retreat to buy time to set up the battlefield.

<snip>

I just found that in CaW groups, everyone was very cautious, and it was hard to act heroicly. Kind of honestly, there's a reason paladins have the whole "Lawful Stupid" stigma. I think that's because the paladin's heroic mindset conflicts with the pragmatic mindset of the rest of the CaW group.

This can be a result, but it isn't the only one. There comes a point when reasonable precautions have been taken and you may have to enter a fight without overwhelming odds in your favor. In fact, you might be fighting long odds simply because it was the best you could do and delaying further will just worsen those odds.

In a CaS group, the outcome is more determined by the fight itself, rather than the factors leading up to the fight. Thus the group is more willing to engage in fights, to confront the villains, to act heroically, without needing to retreat and set up the battlefield first. I find that style of play to be more cinematic and heroic than CaW.

In a CaW group, the outcome could certainly be determined mostly or even entirely by the fight as well. It's just that there could be other extenuating factors. As a result, I find the game play a lot more satisfying and rewarding of different methods and levels of heroism rather than just going mano a mano in the fight of the day.

 

[JonWake]

One of the key features of a system that supports CaW play is the ability to get in over your head unexpectedly. I'm not going to shout about 'lethality', as that I think that's a straw man. There aren't too many games that are designed to be instantly lethal if a character gets in over their head. But let me define my terms.

Getting in over your head, or over committing, happens when a player's expectations of an encounter turns out to be untrue. This is typically, but not limited to, engaging with an enemy you're certain you've got the advantage and finding the tables turned either through bad luck or poor reconnaissance. What was certain in one round is now uncertain, the kobold you just cornered stabs you in the thigh and spews poison in your face.

It is the potential for this sudden turn of events that gives the players in CaW their jollies. Knowing that at any moment things can go pear-shaped, that their best laid plans might collapse with enemy contact is what keeps the players invested in stacking the deck. Because they know that even a stacked deck has a few jokers.

(I apologize for the metaphor.)

Balance, at least on an encounter to encounter basis, severely undermines this style of play. Balance is predicated on statistical predictability. It's based on equalizing the enemies against the protagonists so that a certain pattern of play emerges. Having a steady pattern allows players to make the most use of their tactical and system mastery, it keeps the flow of play moving along certain predictable vectors.

It's this very attribute of a balanced system that harms the CaW playstyle. When the players can see the gears under the hood, they can reliably predict their success level with any given encounter. A group of 1st level 4e characters will know that an ogre will be a lethal threat, a pair of kobolds a likely non-issue. In a true CaW game, the players must know that even a one-armed midget with palsy gets a lucky shot in now and again, and Goliath can be dropped with a sling stone on a good day.

This uncertainty, this 'swingyness', if you want to call it that, is essential to CaW play.

It's also completely unfair.

Intentionally so. There's no 'fairness' in a CaW game, there's only a line of consequence. As long as the thread of consequences follow logically from each other, the game is preserved.

NOTE: This lack of balance and fairness is not a bad thing. The value of this is entirely dependent on what you're looking for in a game.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

From my perspective, I don't really care about either CaW or CaS. Or to be more productive about it, I suppose that I'm quite willing to use either technique towards the primary goal, which is to somewhat replicate the tone and events of a high fantasy novel or movie, within the RPG medium. That means that knowing what is a fair fight is more important than having one. Moreover, this extends to the players as well. Then you tack on the requirement that we are older, have kids, don't want Fantasy Vietnam--that is, the players need some room to screw up without bringing the whole thing down like a house of cards.

One of the key things that 4E brings to the table when you choose to run it as a sandbox, no default encounter balance, is that encounters that aren't winnable are seldom immediately fatal. This would seem to be something that would be valuable to all but the most hardcore of the CaW fans. (That is, those that go with the idea that if you get into a fight without knowing you can win, you've already "lost".) And in fairness to 4E and its critics, it is easy to run 4E as a sandbox if you already know how, but nothing in the rules teaches you how to do so.

Ideally, then, for my purposes, combat length would scale up or down as warranted. If the players work hard and get information that lets them know not to tangle yet with the red dragon in the cave, then they don't go there. But if they do go there, the conflict/tension is: A.) Do they recognize they are outmatched in time to run? B.) What do they risk losing while running? In other words, the time we want to spend is less about the fight itself and more about the conflict. OTOH, if this is a fight they can win, then we don't mind going into slow motion and playing it out. That's back to high fantasy. And some orcs met along would get brushed aside.

This would seem to suggest that one way to handle supporting both styles in a single game would be to make the default resolution "conflict resolution" similar to many Indie games, and only drill down into the task resolution options for the fights that are either "fair" for the CaS fans or "critical" for the CaW fans. Different tables would, of course, pick different times to so drill down. (4E hinted at this divide a bit with skill challenges, but Skill Challenges Version 1.0 fell far short of their potential in this regard.) Conflict resolution can give you faster, more meaningful resolution in the CaW sense in an unfair fight, because it is so often about defining the stakes instead of modeling the process.

 

[haakon1]

I never played Boot Hill, but didn't it have the same firearms system as Top Secret? Definitely primitive games, though not as whacked as my beloved Gamma World.

I don't remember how Top Secret worked. If I recall correctly, how we did Boot Hill was 1d6 damage, 1d10 wound location (0 = head, 8-9= upper torso, 7 = left arm, 6 = right arm, 5-4 = lower torso, 1-2-3 = legs). Head shots were +2 damage, upper torso +1, shotguns were +1 damage, and derringers were -1 damage. 6 or more damage with a single shot was a kill shot, so you had a pretty decent chance of dying everytime you were shot!

That made "casual" play very deadly CaS where you literally used up several characters in a session (they took less than 5 minutes to create), but campaign play was very deadly CaW, where you tried like heck to avoid combat and took any advantage you could get if you had to fight.

Encounter powers 'recharge' (though recharge has a specific jargon meaning in 4e that only aplies to monster powers that recharge in combat) with a short rest. A character starts with 2 at-will, 1 encounter, and 1 daily, and gains dailies and encounters as it levels. Encounter powers never constitute 'most' of those power, but they do form a nice core of less-powerful limitted-use powers.

I've only gotten to 4th level, I think. Seems like we have 1 daily utility and 1 daily attack, everything else is encounter powers (reloading each combat) or at-will. Well, we also have several "item dailies" now -- it's actually getting a bit confusing to shuffle all the pages of different printouts for that stuff.

Healing up to full between serious encounters is not anything new. In 3.x, it became common practice to use comparatively cheap items like Wands of CLW to heal fully between combats. But it was rarely a good idea to go into fights badly wounded in any ed. Between-combat healing in 4e consumes character resources - additional resource management, and a way of modeling wounds beyond immediate ones.

It may have been a "common practice", but I never actually saw this behavior in 3e/3.5e. I've run 4 campaigns (three of them years long) and played with two other DM's, and I never saw the Wand of CLW thing.

How did I prevent that? My players have only dealt with two magic-item dealers in all my campaigns, and those stores had specific inventories that don't turn over much, working like a small used book store before the Internet, rather than running "any item for gold" places that work like Amazon.

In my high level (5th-8th level) email campaign, I actually let them meet a Wizard (a retired PC of about 14th level) who Teleports around the world dealing in magic, which opens up the ability to request and buy magic items (with a time lag). But nobody wants a Wand of CLW so far.

Using an attack power with the weapon keyword is not, in any concievable way shape or form 'casting a spell.' In 4e, a 'spell' is quite specifically an arcane power, and typically use implements rather than weapons. In 3.x and earlier, a spell is typified by using verbal, somatic and/or material components to effect some supernatural change. In AD&D, spells were also notable for being 'memorized.' Only wizards prepare spells in 4e. The prayers and exploits you're refering to have none of those things in common with spells. Clearly, they are not spells.
. . .
Then again, if you are so mis-informed as to consider Divine Challenge or Wolf Pack Tactics 'spells,' you probably shouldn't comment on it in public, either.

To me, Encounter and Daily Powers work pretty much like spells.

 

[haakon1]

Then you tack on the requirement that we are older, have kids, don't want Fantasy Vietnam--that is, the players need some room to screw up without bringing the whole thing down like a house of cards.

Our mileage definitely varies. I love RECON, which is precisely Fantasy Vietnam.

One of the key things that 4E brings to the table when you choose to run it as a sandbox, no default encounter balance, is that encounters that aren't winnable are seldom immediately fatal.

Agreed. It's easier to correct for bad rolls/bad scouting when you start out with what, 3x the hit points of earlier editions? The grind is intended to lower PC casualties, I would guess.

I'm not sure if it's possible to write a single edition with both "grind combat" (plenty of time to correct for bad luck/misinterpretation of the odds) and "save or die" or "old style Boot Hill combat" -- 1d6 damage, 6 is just dead -- so you'd better try your darnedest not to get shot!

Both are too extreme for most people, I think, but some folks want the extremes -- and perhaps the folks in the middle like a mix of "grinds" and "save or dies"?

 

[FireLance]

I'm not sure if it's possible to write a single edition with both "grind combat" (plenty of time to correct for bad luck/misinterpretation of the odds) and "save or die" or "old style Boot Hill combat" -- 1d6 damage, 6 is just dead -- so you'd better try your darnedest not to get shot!

IMO, the simplest way to do this is to have both "grind" monsters and "save or die" monsters - clearly labelled in some manner so that a DM doesn't use something that he doesn't want by mistake!

 

[JonWake]

There's a lot of poo-pooing save or die effects, and mostly that's because of a changing game play philosophy that's emerged in the past fifteen years or so.
Save or die used to be the last line of defense, a chance to keep your character alive when you didn't plan the encounter properly. Most of the save or die effects were based on some easily defended attack in-game. A gaze effect could be blocked by a mirrored shield, touch spells by keeping your distance, power word spells by plugging your ears. You, the player, were expected to react to these things in character. If you didn't, the save was your last chance.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is a very interesting post. It's not how I'd DM personally but it seems like a very interesting say to go about reconciling the two sides. What this post reminded me of, however, was this incredibly awesome blog post by a screen writer:

Kung Fu Monkey: Writing: Action Scenes

Summary: having a fight scene in which the only thing that is at stake is "will the main character die or not" is boring in film since the audience KNOWS that the main character isn't going to die halfway through the movie. So, what's better is to have other stuff be at stake during a fight since the audience has no idea if the hero is going to lose those other things that are at stake since the story can continue if the hero wins or loses those other things.

This same logic applies to RPGs. If the main thing that's at stake in a RPG fight is "will there be a TPK or not" then either you've going to have a whole lot of PC deaths (more than even the most neck-beared grognard would probably want) or you're going to have a whole lot of boring combats during with nothing is at stake. And even if you have a risk of a TPK in every fight, whole swathes of combat can still be boring if it has become clear which side is going to win.

If you could have fights in which interesting things are at stake in combat in which it's clear which side's stronger at any given point in the fight, that'd do a lot of reconcile the CaS/CaW sides since the CaS sides could do fun tactical stuff all the time, even if it's clear who's going to win the fight (either due to the initial set-up or due to what's gone on during the first few rounds of combat).

Let's brainstorm some ideas!

There's no way that the PCs can beat the Tyrannosaur! It's just too big! And if we run it's just too fast! How can we run and keep it from chasing all of us down?

The goblin guards are no match for us awesome heroes, but they're going to light the signal fire to bring a thousand goblins down on our heads! How can we stop them?

Help! There's a thousand goblins coming on down on our heads! We're all going to die! What can we do? Let's try to grab a hostage an negotiate our way out!

Ha! Ha! That wolf is dead meat! Let's all go kill it! Silly wolf! ON NO! There's wolves eating our pack mules! Go away wolves!

Stuff like that. Basically what you need to do is give the opposition a way to give the party a headache that PERSISTS AFTER THE END OF COMBAT (logistics and resource tracking is one way of doing this, but not the only one, healing surge draining critters can do this as well) and is hard to get rid of (i.e. persists longer than 24 hours would be ideal) and also give the PCs tools to do useful things in combat that they cannot hope to win so that there is something interesting at stake in any combat even if it's clear which side is going to win if there's a fight to the death.

Just speaking for myself what I found was that a game where the PCs are fairly durable and the focus is not so much on the trivia of rations and healing potions and where taking big risks is at least fathomable for the players because they can gauge what they can and cannot accomplish and their plans are not so likely to be unraveled by a single die toss is a nice tool here. Giving the DM a good bit of control over built-in PC agency helps too. I think 4e actually did this really well.

You can have an overwhelmingly powerful enemy and still know that there's a decent chance you can run his gauntlet. Crazy risks in the midst of action sequences aren't hanging on the thread of your measly 2 digit supply of hit points and potion bottles. You can focus on the stakes that are put in place by the structure of the narrative to a higher degree. Tools exist to allow the DM to provide other minor threats that serve to contrast and emphasize the more interesting stakes (things like minions and just the general fact that a few standard monsters will be an obstacle but not a brick wall if the players are even modestly competent).

Of course all of this really puts a requirement on the DM to exercise creativity in the area of plot and narrative in ways that you just don't find in most D&D stuff. Sadly the WotC devs seem blissfully ignorant of this dimension of the game (and some other related aspects as well that are kind of OT here). Its odd really, they seem to have produced a game squarely aimed at this kind of play mechanically, and I read stuff like Chris Perkin's columns where he seems to get it thoroughly, yet the presentation of the game and adventure/setting material that has been supplied with it has rarely shown any hint that its creators were even aware of this. Lately I think they've perhaps started to wake up to it, but clearly too little too late and now we'll be dumped back into the Gygaxian maze just when it might have gotten interesting. Ah well...