RPG Combat: Sport or War?

The Crimson Binome · Oct 17, 2017

Aenghus said:
But D&D has hit points and there has been no agreement on what they mean and how they work from the earliest days. Massive dragons can fly in D&D, breaking the laws of physics, and don't automatically kill PCs if they pounce on them even if they weigh tons. Because it's a game, not a physics simulator.

That you do not understand what Hit Points represent speaks only to your own lack of understanding. The system would be to blame only if no consistent solution existed.

The attack of a creature, even if it is simply trying to crush someone with its bodym is subsumed into the abstraction of minute-long combat rounds. I assure you that more than one individual has met their fate as a multi-ton corpse was dropped on them.

Aenghus said:
My players don't want to play the "drop rocks on hapless foes game" whatever that is, they want to play D&D with the copious, and detailed rules in many, many rulebooks. If I tried to enforce a "read the mind of the DM or die" style of play on my players I would be a terrible DM and deserve them walking out on me, which is what would happen. Attempts to force players into styles of play they don't want seldom end well.

If they really wanted to play D&D, then they would know that the DM is supposed to adjudicate the outcome of every action, only consulting dice when the outcome is uncertain. If you failed to account for the actual reality of the game world, and forced every interaction through a narrow interpretation of the game mechanics, then you would be a "terrible DM", as you put it.

Jhaelen · Oct 17, 2017

Saelorn said:
In an even fight - a fair fight, where both sides are equally matched - the chance of victory is fifty percent. And, given the nature of monster-filled dungeons, the losing side is dead.

If it takes ten encounters to gain a level, and the chance of your side surviving an encounter is fifty percent, then nobody has ever made it to level nine (where they could pick up Raise Dead) because the odds are worse than one in an octillion. If we want characters to reach level nine, and we don't want them to get there after just eight encounters, then we need those encounters to be biased in favor of the players in some way. We don't want fights where there's a fifty percent chance of a TPK. We want fights where's much closer to a five percent chance of a TPK. We want encounters that are balanced rather than fair.

The practical difference between combat as sport, and combat as war, is that the former delegates the burden of achieving the desired balance squarely on the DM; the latter puts it on the players. In a game with sport combat (like 4E), the DM is obligated to contrive a scenario where the party will encounter monsters that can put up a respectable show, but which are nevertheless unlikely to overpower the party. In a game with war combat, the players take responsibility for avoiding deadly encounters, by dropping rocks on the enemy and sneaking past the dragon instead of engaging it.

Obviously, it can cause problems if everyone isn't on the same page. If you like sport combat, then avoiding fights and crushing your enemy with traps is a waste of your time at the table, because you want to be fighting. If you like war combat, then all of your planning and scheming is wasted because the DM is going to contrive a balanced encounter anyway.

Why can't I grant XP for this post?!
You're eloquently stating something I've been trying to point out much less effectively in countless posts over the years.

I don't really have much to add, except to point out that this is closely related to the reason I no longer grant XP (for defeating combat encounters) in D&D. I'm perfectly fine with players coming up with ways to circumvent, avoid, or effectively negate combat encounters. Ultimately, they're just saving everyone time by concentrating on their story goals.
If it comes to a fight, I prefer it to be meaningful, which usually translates into a 'challenging' encounter. And when I say 'challenging', I mean a combat that has a (very) low chance to result in the death of one or more characters, but a high chance of characters going down at some point.
There's never a good reason for 'filler' encounters. There are more elegant ways to model 'attrition', if you consider it important.
As you may have guessed, I'm a fan of D&D 4e's style of dynamic tactical combat encounters. They can be fun in their own right. But they shouldn't dominate every session (unless that's what the players prefer).
So, it really makes sense for me to let the party level up whenever it's appropriate considering the storyline.

I'd like to stress that when playing a 'grittier' RPG system, you have less freedom, in a way: Since combat is lethal, it's something that must be avoided at all cost. Players _must_ come up with ways to overcome their opposition by means other than open combat, otherwise your campaign is going to be short-lived.

pemerton · Oct 17, 2017

Shasarak said:
I guess this probably my biggest problem with viewing Combat as Sport; when rocks fall someone asks "so why is that so dangerous".

No. Someone asks "Why is a rock more dangerous than a sword?"

pemerton · Oct 17, 2017

Jhaelen said:
I'd like to stress that when playing a 'grittier' RPG system, you have less freedom, in a way: Since combat is lethal, it's something that must be avoided at all cost. Players _must_ come up with ways to overcome their opposition by means other than open combat, otherwise your campaign is going to be short-lived.

For me, this illustrates the point I've been making upthread, to [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION], [MENTION=94143]Shasarak[/MENTION] and [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION].

In a genuinely grim & gritty RPG, ambushing someone with a sword, or a crossbow, should be (more-or-less) as dangerous as dropping a rock on them. It's purely an artefact of D&D's mechanics, which rates a sword at d8 or d10 but leaves the rating of a boulder to the GM, that results in a fighter being unable to kill someone in a weapon ambush but able- at least at the tables of those GMs mentioned - to kill someone with a boulder ambush.

Which once again relates back to [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION]'s point, that the effectiveness of the boulder vs the sword turns primarily on end-running around the damage rules. It's entirely an artefact of mechanics, not of "narrative first". In a "narrative first" game involving people of "flesh and bone" (to quote [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]), an ambush with a sword or bow should be capable of lethality. (And in games like RuneQuest, Rolemaster, Burning Wheel, etc - ie with broadly simulationist action resolution mechanics - it is.)

But D&D chooses to subordinate lethality and grittiness to heroics, via the hit point mechanic. That design choice having been made, why should boulders - of all things - be exempt from it?

The Crimson Binome · Oct 17, 2017

pemerton said:
No. Someone asks "Why is a rock more dangerous than a sword?"

Because a falling boulder imparts several orders of magnitude more force than a swung sword, and swords aren't actually all that lethal to someone wearing armor.

pemerton said:
In a genuinely grim & gritty RPG, ambushing someone with a sword, or a crossbow, should be (more-or-less) as dangerous as dropping a rock on them.
[...]
But D&D chooses to subordinate lethality and grittiness to heroics, via the hit point mechanic. That design choice having been made, why should boulders - of all things - be exempt from it?

"Grim and gritty" is a matter of degrees. D&D is less gritty than GURPS, and Hit Points are a big part of that, sure. That doesn't give D&D carte blanche to just throw physics out the window, though. Even if a high-level fighter is heroic enough that they can shrug off being run through with a pike (as an absolutely extreme example of what you could do with a weapon against an unaware target), that doesn't necessarily mean they're heroic enough to survive being crushed by a ten-thousand pound boulder.

I've seen movies where someone was still up and fighting with ten arrows in their back, and the tone of the story meant that it was dramatic rather than comical, but that tone would not have survived a ten-thousand pound boulder. You can only suspend disbelief so far before it breaks, and that's well beyond the limit.

Boulders aren't exempt from the fantastic physics of a D&D world, but they have a much stronger starting position.

pemerton · Oct 17, 2017

Saelorn said:
Even if a high-level fighter is heroic enough that they can shrug off being run through with a pike (as an absolutely extreme example of what you could do with a weapon against an unaware target), that doesn't necessarily mean they're heroic enough to survive being crushed by a ten-thousand pound boulder.

This is the first time the boulder has been specified as weighing 10,000 lb.

How is your average D&D character using this as a combat weapon? While the character is mucking about with levers and blocks, what stops the target of this boulder attack just walking up and stabbing them?

And in any event, even a 10,000 lb boulder on your foot is only going to break your foot. It's not going to kill you. Admittedly I'm neither a martial artist nor a rock artist, but I don't see that it's significantly easier to kill a person using a 10,000 lb than (say) a two-handed sword.

If the target is asleep, for instance, it seems that stabbing them through the chest with a sword or spear is probably as easy as making a 10,000 lb boulder roll or drop onto them.

EDIT: by my maths, a 10,000 lb boulder is around 5' in diameter. It's not going to be especially easy to move, or to guide once it starts rolling.

Bedrockgames · Oct 17, 2017

I'd like to see both sides in this argument re-read the 1E DMG from cover to cover without doing so to score points in this debate. I think a lot of us form opinions around arguments online, and start to project that onto these books. Just commenting because I haven't posted here in a while, but it seems like this conversation was still going on years ago when I left (honestly one of the reasons I don't post here much is because of this conversation overtaking so many discussions). Read the 1E DMG again and take it on its own terms, not in terms of getting it to support a point of view gamers fight over right now.

billd91 · Oct 17, 2017

pemerton said:
For me, this illustrates the point I've been making upthread, to [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION], [MENTION=94143]Shasarak[/MENTION] and [MENTION=3400]billd91[/MENTION].

In a genuinely grim & gritty RPG, ambushing someone with a sword, or a crossbow, should be (more-or-less) as dangerous as dropping a rock on them. It's purely an artefact of D&D's mechanics, which rates a sword at d8 or d10 but leaves the rating of a boulder to the GM, that results in a fighter being unable to kill someone in a weapon ambush but able- at least at the tables of those GMs mentioned - to kill someone with a boulder ambush.

Which once again relates back to [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION]'s point, that the effectiveness of the boulder vs the sword turns primarily on end-running around the damage rules. It's entirely an artefact of mechanics, not of "narrative first". In a "narrative first" game involving people of "flesh and bone" (to quote [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]), an ambush with a sword or bow should be capable of lethality. (And in games like RuneQuest, Rolemaster, Burning Wheel, etc - ie with broadly simulationist action resolution mechanics - it is.)

But D&D chooses to subordinate lethality and grittiness to heroics, via the hit point mechanic. That design choice having been made, why should boulders - of all things - be exempt from it?

And in a genuinely grim and gritty (and more realistic) RPG, ambushes with swords and crossbows would still not be 100% at killing the enemy yet leave the PC vulnerable to just as grim and gritty a retaliation. That's one element you're missing in all this focus on damage mechanics. It's not simply an issue of deadliness, but also of minimizing exposure to risk by eliminating it or reducing its duration. If Conan lurks above, ready to lever or push the boulder onto the monster as it comes out of its lair, he's reducing his vulnerability. And even if he doesn't outright kill it but just injures it, he still reduces his risk of death when he closes in to finish the fight.

Gandalf minimizes the risk of the fellowship by breaking the bridge. Tarzan minimizes his risk by staying out of the lion's reach until he can close off its path. Luke tries to avoid close combat with the rancor like the plague. The ents flood Isengard to reduce their risk. The ewoks are full of nasty tricks to take out stormtroopers. Kobolds lay traps galore. The Dwarves in Crusade trap the expected battlefield to reduce the mobility of the Tuigan horde. The in-genre and related genre examples go on and on.

Derren · Oct 17, 2017

FrogReaver said:
This is untrue. Why would a smart player ever engage in a combat as sport type combat in a combat as war game? I can't find any reason to ever do so.

The number 1 reason to do stupid things. Honor.
Closely followed by number 2. Being a Hero.

FrogReaver · Oct 17, 2017

Derren said:
The number 1 reason to do stupid things. Honor.
Closely followed by number 2. Being a Hero.

If you are playing a character concerned with honor and being a hero then you won't have combat as war.

RPG Combat: Sport or War?

Lewis Pulsipher

The Crimson Binome

Hero

Jhaelen

First Post

pemerton

Legend

pemerton

Legend

The Crimson Binome

Hero

pemerton

Legend

Bedrockgames

Legend

billd91

Not your screen monkey (he/him)

Derren

Hero

FrogReaver

As long as i get to be the frog

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