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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5962755" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Your ideas aren't incoherent in themselves. For me, the incoherence is in the overall design picture that is presented.</p><p></p><p>A big part of the definition of a D&D PC is his/her combat capability. And a big part of the action resolution rules are combat resolution rules - this is especially true in the playtest, for example, which has virtually nothing else.</p><p></p><p>When the game looks like that, surely the combat rules are there to be used, aren't they?</p><p></p><p>In classic (pre-3E) D&D, it's true that <em>some</em> combats were meant to be avoided - namely, wandering monster fights. But there were action resolution rules to support this (reaction rolls and evasion checks). And the expectation was still that players <em>would</em> be taking their PCs into combat in due course, namely, against the placed monsters whose treasures they wanted to loot.</p><p></p><p>But (as I've posted in another thread recently) there are pressures on classic D&D that tend to push towards fighting even the wandering monsters - at the story level, if the reason for fighting the placed monsters is that they're wickd and dangerous, doesn't that rationale apply to the wandering ones too?, and at the metagame level, if combat is the most mechanical satisfaction that the game provides, then why willingly hold back?</p><p></p><p>The upshot of this sort of approach is the 2nd ed and 3E XP rules, which favour combat over treasure as a source of character advancement.</p><p></p><p>If players are meant to be doing something with their PCs other than fight, then it needs mechanics to support it. And (unlike the AD&D evasion and reaction mechanics, in my view at least) I think those mechanics should be interesting and exciting to engage. They should offer something like the same range of options - both at the story level and the mechanical play level - as does combat.</p><p></p><p>I don't think that you can achieve the goal of reducing combat as an attractive mechanical option simply by making the stakes higher (eg by limiting healing). That just sounds like a way to make it more exciting!</p><p></p><p>If non-combat conflict resolution makes sense in story terms, and is mechanically attractive, then you won't need to worry about limiting healing.</p><p></p><p>And even if you do achieve this goal, if combat is still about hit point ablation, then hit point depletion will continue to be a significant feature of it. Even if you limit out-of-combat healing, you might still want liberal incombat healing in order to support the dynamics of exciting combat. For example, in 4e terms, you might keep everything the same but halve everyone's surges - suddenly, fewer combats per rest, but not necessarily an imperative to the 15 minute day if non-combat conflict resolution is foregrounded as a meaningful option.</p><p></p><p>4e has a tendency to treat healing surges as a resource in non-combat resolution also, so you would have to think about that as part of your design of non-combat resolution.</p><p></p><p>But the other thing you would have to do is radically change the default GM advice and scenario design. D&D has always presented as the default stakes - both for combat and non-combat - "win or die". In combat, losers die. In social negotiations, losers die too (eg a bad reaction roll leads to attack, not the spreading of rude stories). When you fail a climb check, you fall and die (it's not just that you don't get to the top in time).</p><p></p><p>Nothing about the playtest suggests that the designers of D&Dnext are looking at changing this at all (the medusa encounter is where they might have shown a different trajectory, and they don't). While the stakes are always mortal ones, players will rationally enough always be ready to have their PCs resort to violence. When the action resolution rules are robust only when violence is resorted to, players will also rationally enough have their PCs default to violence. The net combination is a game in which one of the 3 pillars <em>will</em> predominate, in my view.</p><p></p><p>For reasons that got thrashed out in Hussar's old "Is D&D about combat" thread, I wouldn't go that far. I don't think the game you describe has to be <em>about</em> combat, because combat might be a means to the expression of something else.</p><p></p><p>But otherwise you are right about what I'm saying - if you want players to take non-combat options for conflict resolution seriously, you have to provide them, make them robust and not dependent upon GM fiat, and make the fun and worthwhile (ie not all stakes are "win or die").</p><p></p><p>I think Burning Wheel does a pretty good job of showing how you can do this in a fantasy RPG.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5962755, member: 42582"] Your ideas aren't incoherent in themselves. For me, the incoherence is in the overall design picture that is presented. A big part of the definition of a D&D PC is his/her combat capability. And a big part of the action resolution rules are combat resolution rules - this is especially true in the playtest, for example, which has virtually nothing else. When the game looks like that, surely the combat rules are there to be used, aren't they? In classic (pre-3E) D&D, it's true that [I]some[/I] combats were meant to be avoided - namely, wandering monster fights. But there were action resolution rules to support this (reaction rolls and evasion checks). And the expectation was still that players [I]would[/I] be taking their PCs into combat in due course, namely, against the placed monsters whose treasures they wanted to loot. But (as I've posted in another thread recently) there are pressures on classic D&D that tend to push towards fighting even the wandering monsters - at the story level, if the reason for fighting the placed monsters is that they're wickd and dangerous, doesn't that rationale apply to the wandering ones too?, and at the metagame level, if combat is the most mechanical satisfaction that the game provides, then why willingly hold back? The upshot of this sort of approach is the 2nd ed and 3E XP rules, which favour combat over treasure as a source of character advancement. If players are meant to be doing something with their PCs other than fight, then it needs mechanics to support it. And (unlike the AD&D evasion and reaction mechanics, in my view at least) I think those mechanics should be interesting and exciting to engage. They should offer something like the same range of options - both at the story level and the mechanical play level - as does combat. I don't think that you can achieve the goal of reducing combat as an attractive mechanical option simply by making the stakes higher (eg by limiting healing). That just sounds like a way to make it more exciting! If non-combat conflict resolution makes sense in story terms, and is mechanically attractive, then you won't need to worry about limiting healing. And even if you do achieve this goal, if combat is still about hit point ablation, then hit point depletion will continue to be a significant feature of it. Even if you limit out-of-combat healing, you might still want liberal incombat healing in order to support the dynamics of exciting combat. For example, in 4e terms, you might keep everything the same but halve everyone's surges - suddenly, fewer combats per rest, but not necessarily an imperative to the 15 minute day if non-combat conflict resolution is foregrounded as a meaningful option. 4e has a tendency to treat healing surges as a resource in non-combat resolution also, so you would have to think about that as part of your design of non-combat resolution. But the other thing you would have to do is radically change the default GM advice and scenario design. D&D has always presented as the default stakes - both for combat and non-combat - "win or die". In combat, losers die. In social negotiations, losers die too (eg a bad reaction roll leads to attack, not the spreading of rude stories). When you fail a climb check, you fall and die (it's not just that you don't get to the top in time). Nothing about the playtest suggests that the designers of D&Dnext are looking at changing this at all (the medusa encounter is where they might have shown a different trajectory, and they don't). While the stakes are always mortal ones, players will rationally enough always be ready to have their PCs resort to violence. When the action resolution rules are robust only when violence is resorted to, players will also rationally enough have their PCs default to violence. The net combination is a game in which one of the 3 pillars [I]will[/I] predominate, in my view. For reasons that got thrashed out in Hussar's old "Is D&D about combat" thread, I wouldn't go that far. I don't think the game you describe has to be [I]about[/I] combat, because combat might be a means to the expression of something else. But otherwise you are right about what I'm saying - if you want players to take non-combat options for conflict resolution seriously, you have to provide them, make them robust and not dependent upon GM fiat, and make the fun and worthwhile (ie not all stakes are "win or die"). I think Burning Wheel does a pretty good job of showing how you can do this in a fantasy RPG. [/QUOTE]
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