In high level and epic level combat, good Lord, yes! The amount of power that is generally unleashed in two rounds of upper level combat is astounding. Although I generally like the changes to DR in 3.5, I have to wonder a little bit because the amount of time you have to figure out exactly what permutation of DR (material? alignment? both?) is sometimes astoundingly short. Although I enjoy combat, yes, I find the tendency to hit hard and fast almost irresistable, because hesitation can be deadly. In another thread, someone mentioned a Mystic Theurge who tossed a Fireball at a red dragon. We all had a good chuckle over that, but at the same time it does lead one to ponder how unforgiving combat can be. It was a mistake, sure. Should it have been a lethal one? Hard to say.
Is D&D unforgiving of mistakes in combat?
jerichothebard
First Post
Quasqueton said:
hmmm... I have the exact opposite problem. My players are constantly taking prisoners. The Monk is especially good at it, of course.
I suppose it's my fault - my insistance on having a plot to my games, means they are always trying to uncover the plot...
"Why are these people stalking us?"
"Let's ask them..."
jtb
Nightchilde-2
First Post
Henry said:In Feng Shui or Exalted, I would expect the stalwart hero to lean over to his sidekick and say, "Ok, you take the left 45, and I'll take the right 50."
Especially if there's an Abyssal in the party with Glorious Carnage Typhoon. OUr Abyssal waded into a room of 16 extras, won initiative and the next part I described was him standing atop a pile of body parts and covered with blood. It was vicious.
But I digress...
My group will retreat. Sure. After all but one character goes down.
The Story of the Anthill.
Once, early on in my last campaign, the party ran across a random encounter...giant ants. Two workers, two soldiers. Instead of leaving them alone, they attacked. They finally chased off the ants, but only after severe damage.
Would they leave well enough alone? No. "We follow the ant back to its' anthill." They let the ant go into the mound and, cleverly, decide to go up to the mound and drop a burning lantern into the hill.
Before they can do so, out come two more soldiers and I got a hundred or so of 'em waiting in the wings. Well, to shorten this story, five PCs get dropped to negative hit points and the spell-slinger (a sorcerer variant) has to drag the rest of the party a safe distance away..one by one...and basically proceeds to deplete their healing potions supplies.
And the best part? As soon as the cleric healed everyone up, they actually wanted to go back and clear out the rest of the nest. I "advised" them against doing so.
It was sad.
derelictjay
Explorer
That sounds like my group of players (but I did have one player who liked some intel before he smashed the door down), but I've come to espect this from them and design encounters around this attitude, sometimes to take advantage of it and other times to lessen the blow (and my players always surprise me with how they react).
And about players who won't give up on a losing proposition let them. In many cases the players trying to play a character concept, and that player believes the character wouldn't back down, even with certain demise. For most player is a concious decision to stand there and fight, and if they survive its all that much more sweeter.
Oh yeah, combat sould be unforgiving of mistakes, to forgive a mistake often cheapens the feel of the game, and usually when that happens it loses some of its appeal.
And about players who won't give up on a losing proposition let them. In many cases the players trying to play a character concept, and that player believes the character wouldn't back down, even with certain demise. For most player is a concious decision to stand there and fight, and if they survive its all that much more sweeter.
Oh yeah, combat sould be unforgiving of mistakes, to forgive a mistake often cheapens the feel of the game, and usually when that happens it loses some of its appeal.
wedgeski
Adventurer
There's also the inevitable meta-thinking that goes on. Players know that good DM's will give them adventures which will be challenging but not insurmountable, and this kind of thinking leads them into overconfidence. As Henry says, the DM *must* make it clear when an encounter is above the level that the players would normally expect to face - "The monk laughs off your blow as if he's seen it a thousand times, and attacks"; "The monk's blows cut through your defenses like butter - nothing in your repertoire seems to have any effect". Etc.
Rel
Liquid Awesome
Henry said:
Henry, I don't dispute your assertions in the way you probably meant them, but as counter-examples I suggest that you read and/or watch Band of Brothers if you haven't already. The story of Easy Company is full of situations where they attacked a much larger force and, through surprise, audacity and pure grit, won the day. In particular their assault on the artillery at Brecourt Manor on D-Day where 12 men attacked an entrenched unit of 50, including machine gun enplacements, suffering only one killed. Also, their attack on a dike in Holland where a group of 35 men (not all of whom attacked at once) managed to rout TWO COMPANIES of SS troops (over 200 men) who even knew the Americans were there!
One thing that I've noted is that, unlike real life, D&D opponents seldom have an accute morale failure whereupon a large group of them will simply fail to act effectively when they are taken off guard by the PC's. This could somewhat be an artifact of the hit point system in D&D where, in many cases, a single blow is highly unlikely to kill an opponent and is certainly not going to incapacitate them. Therefore, why should they surrender if they think they have a chance of winning the fight?
scholz
First Post
I think there is a sort of conditioning by negative reinforcement here. (Or is it punishment, I always get those mixed up).
If the players learn that leaving NPCs or Monsters alive means facing them in combat again (with greater resources) then they will not do it.
If they learn that running away means getting chased, or giving the bad guys a chance to heal up, they might not.
The question remains how to (in a sensible fashion) get combats to be resolved in the players favor doing both of those things.
Here are some crazy ideas...
1. (Vanquish) Character who make a successful diplomacy or intimidate check. (There will be some correlation between their level of health, your HD compared to their etc..) If you succeed your opponent is made into temporary henchmen. Healing, feeding and otherwsie taking care of them may convert them into permanent ones. This would definitely make it in your interest to give them a chance to surrender and join you. It would almost always be superior to simply killing them, since you get both the xp for defeating them, and their help against the next opponent. Even if you fail, it will give the opponents an opportunity to flee if they can.
2. (Morale Checks) Whenever combat begins, for each critical hit, and at the death of any team mate, roll a will save for the combatants (based on the CR of the opponents DC=10+/- the difference in CR). If they fail, then they are shaken, the second occasion makes them frightened. If the opponent gets shaken or firghtened, then they move up on the scale. Now this might force people to back off, and force them to roleplay the situation. Some players may reject to this, they like to think morale is only an NPC thing (that could work as well).
3. (Surrender or truce) If the bad guys offer reasonable terms of surrender or truce, and stick to them, the players might also do that. Using AU's rules for Oaths and such things can expedite such solutions.
4. (Mercy Points) Like Hero points or Action Points. A player can grant mercy (life, escape, capture, etc..) to a fallen foe. This gives the player a 'ercy point' which they can then play whenever they need it. So day one the party encounters a troop of orcs, and easily brings most of them to neg hps, they show mercy and heal them up to a couple hps each and tells them to get out of the king's wood. This gives them a 'mercy point'. Day three they run afoul of an nasty troll, he knocks the cleric to negative hps... The play the mercy card and ask the troll if they can retreat to take care of their priest. The troll fearing the human gods, allows them to retreat but promises no such mercy later. These would have to be played in appropriate ways in the game and not abused, just like hero points or action points. But they could work.
Anyway there are some ideas.
If the players learn that leaving NPCs or Monsters alive means facing them in combat again (with greater resources) then they will not do it.
If they learn that running away means getting chased, or giving the bad guys a chance to heal up, they might not.
The question remains how to (in a sensible fashion) get combats to be resolved in the players favor doing both of those things.
Here are some crazy ideas...
1. (Vanquish) Character who make a successful diplomacy or intimidate check. (There will be some correlation between their level of health, your HD compared to their etc..) If you succeed your opponent is made into temporary henchmen. Healing, feeding and otherwsie taking care of them may convert them into permanent ones. This would definitely make it in your interest to give them a chance to surrender and join you. It would almost always be superior to simply killing them, since you get both the xp for defeating them, and their help against the next opponent. Even if you fail, it will give the opponents an opportunity to flee if they can.
2. (Morale Checks) Whenever combat begins, for each critical hit, and at the death of any team mate, roll a will save for the combatants (based on the CR of the opponents DC=10+/- the difference in CR). If they fail, then they are shaken, the second occasion makes them frightened. If the opponent gets shaken or firghtened, then they move up on the scale. Now this might force people to back off, and force them to roleplay the situation. Some players may reject to this, they like to think morale is only an NPC thing (that could work as well).
3. (Surrender or truce) If the bad guys offer reasonable terms of surrender or truce, and stick to them, the players might also do that. Using AU's rules for Oaths and such things can expedite such solutions.
4. (Mercy Points) Like Hero points or Action Points. A player can grant mercy (life, escape, capture, etc..) to a fallen foe. This gives the player a 'ercy point' which they can then play whenever they need it. So day one the party encounters a troop of orcs, and easily brings most of them to neg hps, they show mercy and heal them up to a couple hps each and tells them to get out of the king's wood. This gives them a 'mercy point'. Day three they run afoul of an nasty troll, he knocks the cleric to negative hps... The play the mercy card and ask the troll if they can retreat to take care of their priest. The troll fearing the human gods, allows them to retreat but promises no such mercy later. These would have to be played in appropriate ways in the game and not abused, just like hero points or action points. But they could work.
Anyway there are some ideas.
StalkingBlue
First Post
Quasqueton said:
And did the players realise they were being given a chance to flee? In normal circumstances trying to run from a monk isn't a smart tactic. The monk will usually outrun you.
StalkingBlue
First Post
To answer the initial post, I can think of three things inherent in DnD that combined make the level of risk of a combat encounter hard to judge for players:
1. Power increases geometrically not linearly with combat power doubling roughly every two levels/CRs, which makes for staggering power disparities over the level/CR1-20 range; and
2. Class levels can be, and often are, added to NPCs and to many types of monsters, which makes judging the difficulty of an encounter from its visual appearance a dangerous thing.
These two things contribute to groups stumbling into combat when the smarter move would have been not to engage, which is likely to be very deadly because
3. Unless you have instant-travel magic at your disposal, the combat rules don't support withdrawing from combat too well. Typically armoured melee characters who withdraw from melee will still be within the enemy line's charge range the next round, etc.
1. Power increases geometrically not linearly with combat power doubling roughly every two levels/CRs, which makes for staggering power disparities over the level/CR1-20 range; and
2. Class levels can be, and often are, added to NPCs and to many types of monsters, which makes judging the difficulty of an encounter from its visual appearance a dangerous thing.
These two things contribute to groups stumbling into combat when the smarter move would have been not to engage, which is likely to be very deadly because
3. Unless you have instant-travel magic at your disposal, the combat rules don't support withdrawing from combat too well. Typically armoured melee characters who withdraw from melee will still be within the enemy line's charge range the next round, etc.
Rel
Liquid Awesome
StalkingBlue said:
Indeed. The only time I've ever been involved in a TPK (I was a player), was when we entered an encampment of Dragon Men (of some sort). It was supposed to be a stealth mission to quietly kill one guy who had betrayed us, but things went wrong. We got into a pitched battle that we stood little chance of winning. We lost.
After the TPK, the GM asked us why we didn't run after half the party was down. We commented that it was obvious to us that we couldn't escape since the enemy was faster than us AND could fly. The GM basically said, "Oh, I hadn't considered that."
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