is this GM bad or am i just a wuss?

[pemerton]

I have noticed that we approach the game differently so we often don't agree on things. We have different styles of play.

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I play DnD for the role playing aspect. I don't want to play a tactical miniatures wargame. I like the aspect of having a character and seeing the characters develop and as a DM I like seeing my players develop their characters.

What that means to me is not just seeing it mechanically though that is part of it but seeing their personalities develop.

<snip>

I play with a guy who always has his character carry pepper because once he had found some in a treasure room and it saved his life with a dragon. But I secretly roll my eyes now on it because it is boring and predictable. Yes it can be a good tactic but why would every character from halfling rogue, barbarian orc fighter to dwarven scout have it.

Metagaming encourages this kind of play imo. The more you play the more it seems to be a trap of falling into certain standard operating procedures.

<snip>

I do like a little realism in my game so in real life a marine with 20 years in the field is going to be able to handle combat better then a new fresh out of bootcamp marine. But neither should be able to handle a fall better

I don't play a tactical skirmish game either. If you're interested, I say something about this in posts 262 and 278 on the "Is D&D about combat?" thread.

I don't think metagaming is at odds with roleplaying per se - the discussion of character building and setting/situation design in Burning Wheel (esp the new Adventure Burning) is close to the general sort of approach I like. The pepper thing I agree would be lame - happily, 4e's mechanics deal with this sort of issue fairly well.

As for the falling issue - doesn't a higher level PC have the benefit of more luck and divine grace? Which is why s/he can survive the fall?

 

[pemerton]

You can't discern the line easily, but it's been talked about at length in those very threads, and there are obviously people who agree that there is a line. Just because you cannot personally see the logic behind it, I find it odd it dismiss a line of thought that happens to be shared by many people who do see the logic.

<snip>

That's not to say that you're aggressively dismissing it (as others on this board often do), but your response totaled something along the lines of, "I don't see where to draw the line."

Well, I said "I personally find it hard to discern the line here. . . I'm not sure I see the difference." If others see a difference, well and good. I'm not dismissing them. I'm just suggesting that what counts as "problematic metagaming" is a pretty variable thing, and hence am agreeing with Pentius that responding to it by ingame penalties (like "I'm rolling 1d6 - on a 6 your PC dies") is probably not the best way to go about things.

 

[Elf Witch]

I don't play a tactical skirmish game either. If you're interested, I say something about this in posts 262 and 278 on the "Is D&D about combat?" thread.

I don't think metagaming is at odds with roleplaying per se - the discussion of character building and setting/situation design in Burning Wheel (esp the new Adventure Burning) is close to the general sort of approach I like. The pepper thing I agree would be lame - happily, 4e's mechanics deal with this sort of issue fairly well.

As for the falling issue - doesn't a higher level PC have the benefit of more luck and divine grace? Which is why s/he can survive the fall?

To be honest I am getting tired of DnD I am seeing so many issues especially at higher levels that really bother me.

I prefer fantasy role play but my favorite system is 3E Shadowrun. Some of the things I love about it is that certain threats are always a threat no matter how much karma you get to improve your character. For example falling from a 100 foot building without having things to slow your fall will cause you to reach terminal velocity and you will go splat no matter if you are a newbie or an experienced runner.

If you get surrounded by 20 Lonestar officers with weapons pointed at you. Not surrendering no matter what "level" you are is going to be suicide unless you get extremely lucky with your rolls to resist damage and they get extremely unlucky with their damage rolls. Which could also possibly happen as a newbie character. But the law of averages say it is not the smart thing to do.

Yes I can see the role playing point in DnD that a character falls and survives a fall that would have killed a lower level character. You can role play it out that they landed in hay or mud or even say divine grace must have happened. What I don't like is the metagaming thinking a head of time of this is not dangerous because I know I have X amount of hitpoints.

In the last session one of the character now has wings but he has not learned to fly. He went up 60 feet over a stone courtyard and was willing to try them out because he couldn't be killed because of his hitpoints. That is metagaming at some of its worst type. Why would he have thought this in character? Especially since he had fallen a lot less farther at second level and almost died the fall knocked him to -9.

All I am asking for is some role playing. Like being afraid of falling that distance and asking the party sorcerer to come help you by casting feather fall if things go bad. Or starting at something lower for your first flight.

 

[pemerton]

I've never played Shadowrun, but have GMed and played a lot of Rolemaster, which is notorious for its lack of D&D style hit points.

The hit point mechanics of 3E are just one reason why the game doesn't appeal to me much.

Even though Gygax talked about luck and divine grace in AD&D, I think most people think of hit points as "meat", but with something like a "level divisor" on damage taken from a given hit. Which explains why falling damage is such an issue - because there shouldn't be a "level divisor" on that.

Thirty years ago I think more people took the view that dragon breath etc was an issue too, because it shouldn't have a "level divisor" either - you can't parry or dodge a huge ball of fire! But it seems that over time people have become more comfortable with dragon breath than with falling.

Maybe 3E falling should be like poison? - stat damage rather than hit point damage. There's probably someone around here who's tried that out.

 

[S'mon]

It is the same thing with a superior force firing at you I don't care how much experience you have in combat standing with no cover and a 25 people with some training in guns firing at you are going to get hit. It is why I really dislike high level DnD games where the party can't be touched by normal things.

If they're standing completely static before a firing squad then they'll eventually get hit, the appropriate rules there involve helpless targets, coup de gras etc.

But if they're trying not to get hit then it's completely plausible that 25 people firing at them could all miss. This happens all the time IRL, happened to my wife's grandfather in WW2 as I recall. 2 German soldiers blundered into his US infantry platoon, the whole platoon opened fire on them, no cover, attack by surprise. AIR 1 German was hit, and the other ran away and escaped unscathed.

 

[S'mon]

I prefer fantasy role play but my favorite system is 3E Shadowrun. Some of the things I love about it is that certain threats are always a threat no matter how much karma you get to improve your character. For example falling from a 100 foot building without having things to slow your fall will cause you to reach terminal velocity and you will go splat no matter if you are a newbie or an experienced runner.

Terminal velocity is reached after falling around 270'.

 

[S'mon]

I've never played Shadowrun, but have GMed and played a lot of Rolemaster, which is notorious for its lack of D&D style hit points.

The hit point mechanics of 3E are just one reason why the game doesn't appeal to me much.

Even though Gygax talked about luck and divine grace in AD&D, I think most people think of hit points as "meat", but with something like a "level divisor" on damage taken from a given hit. Which explains why falling damage is such an issue - because there shouldn't be a "level divisor" on that.

Thirty years ago I think more people took the view that dragon breath etc was an issue too, because it shouldn't have a "level divisor" either - you can't parry or dodge a huge ball of fire! But it seems that over time people have become more comfortable with dragon breath than with falling.

Maybe 3E falling should be like poison? - stat damage rather than hit point damage. There's probably someone around here who's tried that out.

I do find the absence of risk (though not the absence of certain death) from high drops to be a problem in 4e. 3e has the massive damage save at 50 hp which helps a lot in keeping an element of risk. It's also a problem with NPCs, eg IMC a goblin underboss fell 40' from the top of a tower and the 4d10 damage barely scratched him. Maybe an attack vs Fort that inflicts broken bones (eg Slowed until you get 1 extended rest per 20' fallen) might work.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Well, I said "I personally find it hard to discern the line here. . . I'm not sure I see the difference." If others see a difference, well and good. I'm not dismissing them. I'm just suggesting that what counts as "problematic metagaming" is a pretty variable thing, and hence am agreeing with Pentius that responding to it by ingame penalties (like "I'm rolling 1d6 - on a 6 your PC dies") is probably not the best way to go about things.

I think you're incorrect in making a blanket statement that it's probably not the best way. I still hold that it'll depend on the group. If you, as the GM (and the majority of your players), feel that metagaming is cheating, and you express this view, and tell the players the consequences of cheating, I think it'll work for the right groups. It's no different to me than saying, "if I see you fudge a die roll, there's a 1 in 6 chance you have a fatal heart attack... and your character will be unwilling to be raised." For the right group, it'll work. For others, it won't.

I'm not arguing whether or not metagaming is a variable thing. I've addressed that.

As always, play what you like

 

[Elf Witch]

If they're standing completely static before a firing squad then they'll eventually get hit, the appropriate rules there involve helpless targets, coup de gras etc.

But if they're trying not to get hit then it's completely plausible that 25 people firing at them could all miss. This happens all the time IRL, happened to my wife's grandfather in WW2 as I recall. 2 German soldiers blundered into his US infantry platoon, the whole platoon opened fire on them, no cover, attack by surprise. AIR 1 German was hit, and the other ran away and escaped unscathed.

I know that that can happen. And even in Shadowrun that can happen. They shooters can roll low and the person being shot rolls really well on his defense roll and stages the damage down.

But it is not a guarantee and it should be a scary tense encounter that you have to think twice about.

In most DnD games I have played in crossbows are limited to a d6 or a d8 if its heavy. So a high level character with a lot of hitpoints can be shot with a lot of bolts and not die. If you make most city guardsmen third level they are not even going to be able to hit a high level character unless they crit.

So you start seeing these arrogant PCs thumbing their noses at the local guards because they know that they can't be hurt. The only solution the DM has then is to raise the guards level.

So power escalation starts making the arms race look tame in comparison.

I guess what I want is to see character become more competent but not become demigods where a lone fighter can wade through 100 orcs. A game where people tell of the legend of Bob the world's greatest swordsmen who never lost a fight but died because he grabbed the evil King and threw both of them off a cliff.

 

[pemerton]

I do find the absence of risk (though not the absence of certain death) from high drops to be a problem in 4e.

<snip>

Maybe an attack vs Fort that inflicts broken bones (eg Slowed until you get 1 extended rest per 20' fallen) might work.

I think falling is something where I'd be happy to let the player's use page 42 - eg if they throw or push an enemy over a cliff, then they can get more than just the base damage, but conditions as well.

In my game recently the PCs ran a behemoth over a waterfall as part of a plan for butchering it to provide meat to a city short on supplies. I treated that as a skill challenge.

If the behemoth had inadvertently fallen over a cliff in a real combat then I would have applied the falling rules as normal, but also narrated the event in such a way as to make its survival plausible in the fiction. I see the role of the skill challenge, or page 42, being to give the players a chance to rule out my offering such a narrative, and therefore to rule out the fall being resolved simply via the standard rules.