Why was morale removed from the game?

[Man in the Funny Hat]

And this is perfect example of why there were morale rules. To help the DM maintain a smidgen of impartiality. A mechanical aid to sidestep personal bias, or to provide an answer when he wasn't sure.

Every DM I've ever spoken with about morale rules from pre-3E editions will almost immediately admit (intentionally or not) that they are not constrained by the morale rules as to when to make the check or even IF they will make the check. This means that morale rules - at least anecdotally speaking - have exactly squat to do with impartiality. If you want to claim that YOU use a set of morale rules without fail and precisely as written then you can claim that for YOU they are impartial, unbiased, and your own indecision is rendered IRRELEVANT since the morale rules determine FOR you what will happen. However, if you ever forget to check morale precisely when the morale rules dictate, if you alter the results to fit your DM's judgement of what's sensible or to mitigate the positive/negative overall effect it might have on a given encounter, etc. ... why then those morale rules are just one more plainly biased tool that you as a DM use to engineer the outcomes that YOU want to see. To be impartially applied you have to use them EXACTLY as written and use them EVERY time. IME, virtually noone can ever honestly claim that.

 

[Oni]

Every DM I've ever spoken with about morale rules from pre-3E editions will almost immediately admit (intentionally or not) that they are not constrained by the morale rules as to when to make the check or even IF they will make the check. This means that morale rules - at least anecdotally speaking - have exactly squat to do with impartiality. If you want to claim that YOU use a set of morale rules without fail and precisely as written then you can claim that for YOU they are impartial, unbiased, and your own indecision is rendered IRRELEVANT since the morale rules determine FOR you what will happen. However, if you ever forget to check morale precisely when the morale rules dictate, if you alter the results to fit your DM's judgement of what's sensible or to mitigate the positive/negative overall effect it might have on a given encounter, etc. ... why then those morale rules are just one more plainly biased tool that you as a DM use to engineer the outcomes that YOU want to see. To be impartially applied you have to use them EXACTLY as written and use them EVERY time. IME, virtually noone can ever honestly claim that.

You'll note that I said a smidgen of impartiality, which may not be the most accurate language, but phrased it so for lack of a better term. No DM can claim complete impartiality, at least none that I've ever played with, but there are times when a DM wants to remove himself from the equation. Presumably if a DM has chosen to use the morale rules in a then he isn't going to immediately turn around and contradict results that he doesn't like, in that case he needn't have used them at all.

In my own personal experience DMing I have turned to the dice to play arbiter when I felt I might be biased. I think it's a healthy thing for a game group to know that sometimes things just happen, and not everything solely because the DM thought it should. Also it's nice to be surprised sometimes.

Maybe maintaining the illusion of impartiality would have been a better way of phrasing it. The DM can't be 100% impartial all the time, but he can be sometimes. It should feel like he's always impartial though, IMHO, that's something worth cultivating.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well, this thread is about the morale rules in D&D. Since RCFG is not D&D why should the core assumptions of RCFG matter within the context of this thread?

I would argue that RCFG has a lot more in common with D&D (original definition) than, say, 4e does. Yet I cheerfully agree that 4e s D&D.

D&D the game, D&D the brand, two different things.

RCFG is not D&D the brand. I thought we were talking about the game (which also encompases Pathfinder, OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, etc.).

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

The assumption I meant is that strength would be an effective intimidating factor to a skilled opponent.

It would not.

If I'm sizing someone up, the sheer musculature of the guy is not really on the list. How he carries his shoulders and his foot positions matter WAY more, for example. Where his eyes go is important. And I've only got 2 years of sissy suburban training under my belt. The average soldier, goblin raider, crazy cultist who makes a habit of fighting adventurers, and so on... they're going to have even more understanding than I do since fighting is actually their way of life.

Cool.

I have four years of service with the US Army. If the "average soldier" has "even more understanding" than you do, I suppose you'll have to accept that I know what I'm talking about.




RC

 

[pawsplay]

Canis has a good point about sizing up opponents. This gets back to the "menace" check of how much of a percieved threat the char is. And as pawsplay mentions, it varies from character type as to what the nature of it would be.


Back to pawsplay, if you envision your half-orc barbarian as played by Don Knotts, then yes, your description makes sense.

I envisioned mine as played Sabretooth. Heck, I even photoshoppped the winter scene picture from the xmen movie. I wasn't literally thinking sabretooth, but I modeled the look on him, and some of the bad-assedy elements of him from the comics. Though a little less evil, since mine wasn't purely a homicidal psychopath.

I think Sabretooth is an intimidating individual. So I expected some elements of that in my PC.

And Sabretooth has a high Charisma. If you base your image on a charismatic character, but you do not make him charismatic, there's the problem. of course he won't measure up.

 

[Starfox]

And Sabretooth has a high Charisma. If you base your image on a charismatic character, but you do not make him charismatic, there's the problem. of course he won't measure up.

The bottom line seems to be that Charisma is many things - just look at the skills it influences. Intimidation, Bluff, Diplomacy, Handle Animal, Disguise - some of these Sabretooth would suck at, some he'd be good at. In 3.0, a Ghoul had a 14 Charisma, which annoyed some of our more social players to no end - to them Charisma was "their" attribute and all about being nice and pretty.

When I do my own games, I distance skills and attributes. Saying that 6 attributes govern every skill is to broad. And especially in 4E, with attributes tied so closely to class - you can almost say that the skills too are tied to class and just drop the attributes.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Not really. Picture him played by Barney Fife, but with muscles. Do I have the ability to incinerate him with a fireball? If so, why would I find him intimidating? I would consider him dangerous. Dangerous is not the same as intimidating. Guns are scary. If I hand a gun to my four year old son, he becomes very scary and I become scared, but that doesn't make my son intimidating.

If a character is simply scary and that causes people to run away or try to kill them, that's not intimidation. That's people making the expected, rational choices. Intimidation is used to convince people to do something other than what their natural reaction would be.

So I don't need to roll Intimidate in your campaign when I am threatening someone with my magic or blood-stained axe?

Well, in that case it's fine with me.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Cool.

I have four years of service with the US Army. If the "average soldier" has "even more understanding" than you do, I suppose you'll have to accept that I know what I'm talking about.




RC

Fair enough. I'd love to hear some justification from an experienced perspective for strength as intimidation, then. Honestly, I don't know anyone with a lot of skill in hand-to-hand or melee fighting who would find high strength as relevant as other factors. Sure, it's nice to have, but it's not intrinsically scary.

I've intimidated people with my size. I've intimidated them by understanding their fears (Wisdom-based skill combined with some performance). I've intimidated them with my intellect (Knowledge skills or raw Int check). I've intimidated them by showing off what were actually fairly paltry weapons skills (BAB). Despite once having a solid linebacker build (and currently having the mid-30s remains thereof), I've never intimidated anyone with my strength who wasn't the proverbial 90lb weakling.

 

[pawsplay]

So I don't need to roll Intimidate in your campaign when I am threatening someone with my magic or blood-stained axe?

Well, in that case it's fine with me.

Pretty much. Intimidate is a trained skill, and it comes out when someone skilled in it wishes to influence a situation.

 

[pawsplay]

The bottom line seems to be that Charisma is many things - just look at the skills it influences. Intimidation, Bluff, Diplomacy, Handle Animal, Disguise - some of these Sabretooth would suck at, some he'd be good at.

Actually, I'm pretty sure examples could be furnished at him succeeding at at each one of those skills at moderate difficulty. Sabretooth is probably a miminum of Cha 12, I'd peg him around 14 in most games, and he probably has some sort of feat that makes him especially scary, like Daunting Presence or Skill Focus (Intimidate) or such. He's attempted at least a few rushed Diplomacy attempts with Wolverine, and while it didn't work, I think it would be hard to argue he sucked at it. Let's face it, Sabretooth is cool, cool enough to rate an above average Cha.