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

[Hassassin]

I dunno. I think of swashbucklers in a tavern. One minute you're dueling a guy, and the next you're dropping a chandelier on his friends' heads.

That's an example of handling one encounter in CaS and one in (sort of) CaW manner, IMO. Also depends how easy those fights are, of course. Challenging someone to a duel you know you will win is a good CaW strategy.

 

[pemerton]

The sides don't need to be *exactly* evenly matched. The PC side just has to be able to win on their own merits, through tactical choices, regardless of how they found themselves in the situation. At least that's my interpretation.

I don't see how an "unbeatable" foe works in CaS, though.

By unbeatable do we mean literally unbeatable? In which case the options in CaS and CaW are the same - run, surrender, negotiate etc.

But if "unbeatable" really just means "challenging to beat" then both CaS and CaW can have unbeatable foes.

 

[Hassassin]

By unbeatable to we mean literally unbeatable? In which case the options in CaS and CaW are the same - run, surrender, negotiate etc.

But if "unbeatable" really just means "challenging to beat" then both CaS and CaW can have unbeatable foes.

I was thinking more like the witch king in LoTR, who could be killed by no man, or an immortal enemy that can only be trapped or bound in some way - maybe by dropping a mountain on top of it or tricking it into another plane.

But as I wrote, there are ways to make it work in CaS.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I was thinking more like the witch king in LoTR, who could be killed by no man, or an immortal enemy that can only be trapped or bound in some way - maybe by dropping a mountain on top of it or tricking it into another plane.

But as I wrote, there are ways to make it work in CaS.

That is how you make it work in CaS. Existing loopholes for that purpose. The Nazgul was set up to be beaten but simply look overwhelming. CaW to beat an unbeatable foe would be more like a pit trap planned in advance. Bury him and with luck even if he can't be slain it'll be a month before he digs himself out.

And CaS may be between mismatched sides, but the real mismatch (PCs win) isn't the same as the apparent mismatch (PCs face overwhelming odds).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That is how you make it work in CaS. Existing loopholes for that purpose. The Nazgul was set up to be beaten but simply look overwhelming. CaW to beat an unbeatable foe would be more like a pit trap planned in advance. Bury him and with luck even if he can't be slain it'll be a month before he digs himself out.

And CaS may be between mismatched sides, but the real mismatch (PCs win) isn't the same as the apparent mismatch (PCs face overwhelming odds).

There just isn't a clear dividing line. I suppose it is possible for a DM to exclude every conceivable way to thwart an enemy that doesn't involve using a power to hit him, but it is rather unlikely. In order to take away (or maybe more BY taking away) every other possible option you would really just about 'turn it into a board game'. There is thus really in an RPG no such thing as pure 'CaS' play. There is just more or less tactical sets of solutions vs more or less prepared ones, and even the most die-hard 'CaW' table is going to find the party out of other options and left duking it out with a foe at times, that doesn't turn said scenario into 'CaS'. Add on top of that what I pointed out earlier in the thread, that even the most die-hard DM has to put some bounds on at least what the NPCs can do, and I think you rapidly find that there are really just games that slant in one direction or the other. 4e generally puts the slant in the direction of "you're going to have to duke it out with someone at some point", but you certainly have a LOT of room to play in there.

 

[The Shaman]

That's an example of handling one encounter in CaS and one in (sort of) CaW manner, IMO.

No, I'm talking about the same encounter, which is why I think this is an interesting conceptual model but one which breaks down in practice - at least for those of us playing something other than D&D.

 

[Hassassin]

No, I'm talking about the same encounter, which is why I think this is an interesting conceptual model but one which breaks down in practice - at least for those of us playing something other than D&D.

Drawing stark lines between encounters wasn't really necessary before 4e. But, yeah, it's either CaS (nothing inherently CaW about using a chandelier as a weapon) or something in between.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No, I'm talking about the same encounter, which is why I think this is an interesting conceptual model but one which breaks down in practice - at least for those of us playing something other than D&D.

Yup, it is a perfectly fine model in terms of categorizing certain aspects of the game and maybe you can say some games slant in one direction or the other, but there's no easy way to really put a specific situation in one or the other cleanly.

 

[Rogue Agent]

Yeah. In fact I think basically instead of considering a dichotomy in action resolution I'd think more about strategic vs tactical. 'CaW' is just really mostly discussing the strategic/operational level of play where you plan and implement operations against your foes. 'CaS' deals more with the low level tactical fighting parts. At least this is certainly true in a system like 4e where you can't easily bypass the standard combat mechanics.

I think it is true in 4E, but I don't think it's inherent to the concept. I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but I think conflating tactical/CaS and strategic/CaW is a mistake.

For an example of what a CaS approach to strategic play would look like, consider the Descent boardgame: Each scenario is meant to be a "fair fight" (even chances of each side winning) and the game is tightly constrained to RAW, but the scenarios are still mostly strategic in nature (with multiple tactical encounters that can be approached and managed in a variety of ways).

It's not too difficult to similarly imagine a CaW approach to tactical play, although I don't have a convenient example of that.

Under this reading - which I feel is perhaps taking the OP too literally - we then need a third option, which describes non-CaW combat between sides that are not evenly matched.

I suspect the name for that is either "Killer DM" or "Cakewalk", depending on which way you go.

I'm not saying that a CaS approach can never have foes weaker or more powerful than the PCs: But if your primary mode of play to the degree that it can be described as your preference is unbalanced encounters in a set-up where players can't modify their odds of success by thinking outside of the mechanical box in which that balance is determined... well, you're looking at a lot of dead PCs or a campaign with no real challenge.

No, I'm talking about the same encounter, which is why I think this is an interesting conceptual model but one which breaks down in practice - at least for those of us playing something other than D&D.

I think the distinction is that in CaW it's possible to drop the chandelier and potentially do more damage than the mechanical balance of the game normally allows. But that doesn't mean that you will drop the chandelier. You might do some other out-of-the-box stunt entirely. Or maybe you'll just play this encounter straight.

(In CaS you could also potentially drop the chandelier. But the damage you could do with the chandelier would be channeled through the Limited Damage Expressions on page 42 to make sure that it didn't exceed proper mechanical limits. Gotta keep things balanced/fair after all.)

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I agree with the second of these paragraphs. But I've never had the sort of experience you describe in the first of these paragraphs.

That's the thing. Some players just don't respond correctly to giving them a scenario and letting them do what they want. Letting them do what they want will inevitably degrade into an attempt to take over the city and kill the city guard ending in their own deaths....or it'll end with them not wanting to leave the tavern because no one has offered them enough riches to buy a +5 sword at first level to go on a mission.

Like the group of Rifts players that literally fled the DIMENSION to get away from the plot hook so they could open their own bar and run Gladiatorial matches.

What you describe doesn't strike me primarily as CaW vs CaS, as opposed to a big mismatch between player and GM expectations for the game.

It's related because, if I've gotten this from the OP, CaW is characterized by setting up a scenario and then leaving it to the PCs to solve it any way they want.

So, you say "The opposing army has 1000 soldiers, 200 of them are camped to the north, 200 to the east, and 600 to the south. How do you beat their army?" The answer from some players is "It can't be done. There's too many of them. I can fight maybe 5 at a time." Others say "Alright, we can do this, we sneak in invisibly and poison their water supply."

It is ALSO related to expectations because some players have an expectation that things either work in a CaW or CaS way. In the above scenario, the group that expects it to work in a CaS way might hire an army to make a distraction while they sneak around and attack the commander, figuring that the DM will arrange it so they have a fair fight against just the commander and an appropriate amount of body guards.

But if the DM runs the game in a different way than his players expect, you run into these issues.

For instance, if the DM arranged to have a spellcaster around who can see invisible and spots the party then has a battle against appropriate odds with just the 5 people on watch might really annoy a group expecting to succeed on their cool idea and kill off the opposing army without a fight.

A group of people expecting CaS play who hired the army to lure away the army expecting an appropriate fight and instead finding half the army in reserve who kill all the PCs without much of a fight can be equally annoyed.

After all, the social contract involved in CaS play is that when combat does happens, it happens against appropriate forces that have a roughly equal(always slanted towards the PCs) chance of winning and tactics will influence the results.