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What happened to Morale?
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<blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 7465351" data-attributes="member: 6777737"><p>IMX, not many people used morale in AD&D, and one of the common complaints was that DMs that did use it would use it to be rather mean to the PCs. This was, after all, before DM vs PC mentality was challenged and dispelled by 3e and 4e, and a lot of groups played the game in adversarial ways that resulted in not a lot of fun. That is, use it to deny treasure and XP to the PCs, or use it to <em>constantly</em> harass the PCs if they so much as let one creature escape ("Remember that one goblin? Well, there's <em>another</em> ambush overnight in your camp! This goblin is friends with every goblin ever and they're all going to hunt you down for the 50 gp reward from the treasure you let him get away with!"). It got especially unpleasant if you had the monsters surrender and a Paladin (code violation!) or other good-aligned (alignment shift!) characters were in the party. It could then be used by DMs to simply burden the party with the unappealing logistics of prisoner management when the only equipment most adventuring parties carry to help with that was several coils of rope. Nobody wants to play Detentions & Detainees. It's Orc babies all over again, except now you're likely to get stabbed in the back at random!</p><p></p><p>Further, the rule sometimes lead to paradoxical situations where the NPCs would or wouldn't flee because of die rolls and, again, it kind of harmed the game. When 10% of the bandits are killed and suddenly they panic even though they're protecting their only hideout and treasure hoard, but you exterminate 80% of the kobolds and the last few choose to die to protect an empty forest clearning, it just didn't always work sensibly. Sure, maybe that's realistic for creatures to make bad choices, but it doesn't really <em>aid the narrative</em> that the DM might be trying to present.</p><p></p><p>The rule itself was basically fine mechanically, but, IMO, since the rule easily led to toxic play styles and it didn't do anything the DM couldn't decide without rolling dice, it was dropped.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bacon Bits, post: 7465351, member: 6777737"] IMX, not many people used morale in AD&D, and one of the common complaints was that DMs that did use it would use it to be rather mean to the PCs. This was, after all, before DM vs PC mentality was challenged and dispelled by 3e and 4e, and a lot of groups played the game in adversarial ways that resulted in not a lot of fun. That is, use it to deny treasure and XP to the PCs, or use it to [I]constantly[/I] harass the PCs if they so much as let one creature escape ("Remember that one goblin? Well, there's [I]another[/I] ambush overnight in your camp! This goblin is friends with every goblin ever and they're all going to hunt you down for the 50 gp reward from the treasure you let him get away with!"). It got especially unpleasant if you had the monsters surrender and a Paladin (code violation!) or other good-aligned (alignment shift!) characters were in the party. It could then be used by DMs to simply burden the party with the unappealing logistics of prisoner management when the only equipment most adventuring parties carry to help with that was several coils of rope. Nobody wants to play Detentions & Detainees. It's Orc babies all over again, except now you're likely to get stabbed in the back at random! Further, the rule sometimes lead to paradoxical situations where the NPCs would or wouldn't flee because of die rolls and, again, it kind of harmed the game. When 10% of the bandits are killed and suddenly they panic even though they're protecting their only hideout and treasure hoard, but you exterminate 80% of the kobolds and the last few choose to die to protect an empty forest clearning, it just didn't always work sensibly. Sure, maybe that's realistic for creatures to make bad choices, but it doesn't really [I]aid the narrative[/I] that the DM might be trying to present. The rule itself was basically fine mechanically, but, IMO, since the rule easily led to toxic play styles and it didn't do anything the DM couldn't decide without rolling dice, it was dropped. [/QUOTE]
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