Yep, I understand.
What does it mean to "Challenge the Character"?
Yep, I understand.
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
Yes, combat tends to have a lot of dice rolling. But imagine a combat where nobody was ABLE to do anything except use their default attack. No movement, no dodging, no spellcasting, no special abilities. On each player’s turn their only option is to roll their attacks.
Is that challenging? Or interesting? (Maybe it is the first time, once, as a novelty.)
Now imagine, more easily because we see it all the time, including in official adventures, an analogous thing happening in non-combat pillars.
Is that challenging? Or interesting? (Maybe it is the first time, once, as a novelty.)
Now imagine, more easily because we see it all the time, including in official adventures, an analogous thing happening in non-combat pillars.
Celebrim
Legend
I think it is self evident that in a typical combat we are somewhere in the middle of a spectrum between "pure player challenge" and "pure character challenge". The player's choices matter. It also matters greatly which character they are playing.
I will offer a test. It is a pure player challenge when it doesn't matter what character they are playing - a 1st level character can overcome the challenge as well as a 10th level character. The indestructible door which only opens if a riddle is answered is an example. If the player can solve the riddle, they get through the door with a 1st level character.
So what is combat like? Well, it's obviously not a pure player challenge! For a given challenge rating, regardless of how skilled the player, there is some character too low of level to reliably win the encounter. While, at the same time, even a nominally skilled tactician will, with a much higher level (or much better optimized) character, breeze through the encounter without any difficulty.
So, for the most part, I tend to see combat - though it is not purely a character challenge - as being closer to being a character challenge than it is a player challenge. The player's input matters and sometimes matters a great deal, but simple high level character abilities (big numbers) will suffice.
OK but all of those additional things are still prescribed character options. The player is choosing from a menu of character actions (most of the time, sometimes players get creative but mostly they stick with their preferred approaches).
I’m not sure whether I’m making an interesting point, but to me I find that combats (not just in my own games) devolve into stats vs stats. Perhaps it’s an aspect of TotM (and one reason I adopted the Roshambo system, to try and encourage my players to make more interesting choices)? Perhaps I’m finally getting bored of my campaign...
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
I simply don't recognize character challenge at all, except in the fictional sense. The challenge is always to the player with the character being a tool the player can apply as needed to overcome it. But of course there are no guarantees that the tools at hand will be enough to achieve victory.
Celebrim
Legend
It's easy to say that when the examples are drawn from play in a typically complex PnP RPG with a typical scenario, since such examples will be typically complex and take place within an even more complex context.
Which is why I have provided simplistic examples.
Earlier I provided an example of a hypothetical "Choose Your own Adventure" book, where I described to different pages that might occur in that book.
Do you recognize a fundamental distinction between those two pages?
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
Sure, and the game provides a lot more...a lot more...character options for combat than it does for the other pillars. So it should be no surprise that actions other than "roll a d20" tend to be prescribed in combat, and improvised out of combat.
I’m not sure whether I’m making an interesting point, but to me I find that combats (not just in my own games) devolve into stats vs stats. Perhaps it’s an aspect of TotM (and one reason I adopted the Roshambo system, to try and encourage my players to make more interesting choices)? Perhaps I’m finally getting bored of my campaign...
It may be that your players are now sufficiently expert in 5e combat that you aren't seeing the variation between expert and inexpert play, and therefore aren't noticing the other decisions. DMs who offer 1-dimensional combats probably also see little variation.
FWIW, I think the Roshambo system is especially intriguing, although not quite fully debugged (last time I looked).
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
If you're referring to the exchange between you and 5ekyu, I'm afraid that it may lack sufficient context for me to pick up on it as that poster has me blocked, so I skipped the post. I went back to read it, but unfortunately don't see where you're coming from. In any case I would say if the outcome of the situation is unknown and the player can affect the outcome through his or her choices, then we have a ourselves a challenge for that player. If the player can't affect anything by his or her choices or the outcome is known then we don't have a challenge. It's at best random number generation or narration.
I will not take the position that the character is challenged (except in a fictional sense) or that both player and character are challenged. That is a canard in my view, a way for some people to say they don't like riddles or puzzles or thinking through complex situations and prefer to outsource it to a random number generator. Or in some cases it's made by DMs who may be too agreeable or anti-authoritarian to feel comfortable being the judge of the efficacy of a player's ideas.
I get it. I used to make this same "challenge the character, not the player" argument back when I played D&D 4e chiefly, I believe, because I was enamored with skill challenges. Clearly I did not think it through. But I've since learned.
Celebrim
Legend
[MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]: Yeah, I sometimes forget just how divided up and compartmentalized these boards have become. I can't blame anyone - I have my own list of people I silenced because I found them too distracting - but it is a shame just what the forums have become. Half the people I cared to talk with have packed up and left, a few have gotten themselves banned from the boards, and I've gotten a blacklist longer than I ever imagined I'd have. (Getting put on other people's blacklist was never very surprising, though a goodly portion of those people have gotten themselves evicted by the admins as well.)
One uncanny experience I have had many of time in these forums is the realization that I have been in an argument where I thought the point of contention was one thing, but then I was made to realize that in fact it was a proxy argument for something else.
I don't have a lot of interest in proxy arguments.
One uncanny experience I have had many of time in these forums is the realization that I have been in an argument where I thought the point of contention was one thing, but then I was made to realize that in fact it was a proxy argument for something else.
I don't have a lot of interest in proxy arguments.
Hussar
Legend
/me Raises Hand!
Yup, I'm very much in the mechanics camp. Sure, player fictional positioning is part of it too, but, for me, the more important part would be the mechanical resolution. To the point where [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]'s entire trap could be bypassed by a Perception roll that the player calls for.
Heck, I have a PC in my group right now with the Observant feat (is that the right one that bumps your passive perception?) and an insane Passive Perception score. This trap wouldn't even be a challenge, I'd just go ahead and tell him he sees everything and how to avoid it because the character has the scores that allow for that.
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