I don't get the dislike of healing surges

[Hussar]

I guess he's been playing it wrong? Is that what you're saying? Your experiences are so much more right than his that you can't conceive of the way he group plays?

And yes, avoiding an encounter or resolving it without fighting is still an encounter. Worth XPs too.

Wow, way to miss the point.

Look at the math. It doesn't add up. I'm not saying he did it wrong. I'm saying that there is something here that is not being brought up that would allow him to actually do this on any regular basis. It has nothing to do with how I play.

1) "Contradictory" means "mutually opposed or inconsistent", not "mutually exclusionary". The fact is, we regularly went into encounters low on HP, and having gotten through one, continued to play through to yet another, etc., until we felt we could go no further. The decision point would be how far we thought we could go away from an area we had picked out to be a "safe" camp. This sometimes meant my Whip & ShSwd wielding Ftr/Rgr/Diviner/SpSword was the front-line fighter while we fought our way back because the main fighter was barely still in double-digit HPs.

How many PC's are you playing with? Because if you have only one character standing in the front, he dies. End of story. 3e bad guys just do that much damage.

2) If by "core healer", you mean "single class full divine caster", then no, we rarely had one. We had 2 different players at 2 different times play a Druid and a Favored Soul, and only for 2-3 months each...and we only had 2 gaming sessions per month max.

But, that's the point. If you're down to 20% HP after a fight, then the casters have to blow healing spells to keep you going. Why aren't you dying like flies if you actually go into combat at 20% HP?

 

[billd91]

Wow, way to miss the point.

Look at the math. It doesn't add up. I'm not saying he did it wrong. I'm saying that there is something here that is not being brought up that would allow him to actually do this on any regular basis. It has nothing to do with how I play.

You think the math doesn't add up. Me, I'm not so sure. I've seen parties, through good use of tactics and caution, turn modules that people complain about as meat grinders into near cakewalks. For that matter, I've also seen the reverse in which parties get taken apart by relatively weak encounters because they let their caution slip.

But I don't think it's particularly productive to keep hectoring DA because his results don't match your expectations.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

How many PC's are you playing with? Because if you have only one character standing in the front, he dies. End of story. 3e bad guys just do that much damage.

1 per player; 5-7 PCs on a given night, depending on who can or cannot attend.

But, that's the point. If you're down to 20% HP after a fight, then the casters have to blow healing spells to keep you going.

No you dont.

Why aren't you dying like flies if you actually go into combat at 20% HP?

Better tactics, like making the NPCs surrender, no "Nova-ing" means having nasty spells to use even in the 5th or 6th encounter? Multiclassing into warrior classes so common we have more HP than average? Luck of the dice?

I can't tell you with any specificity why our party wins a given combat others seem to think we shouldn't be able to- there are simply too many variables.

But my gut tells me it's the arcanists' spell hoarding. After just a few spells being cast, we'd typically have the worst of the foes on the ropes or down. The other NPCs usually don't have the offensive oomph to be a real threat to the meleers without support from the bigbads, so the arcanists turn miserly and the warriors play the odds.

 

[tomBitonti]

How many PC's are you playing with? Because if you have only one character standing in the front, he dies. End of story. 3e bad guys just do that much damage.

(Additional text omitted.)

I'd say, the key is to do as much as possible to control the encounter ground. In this sense, I mean all of the situation details, not just literally the ground on which the players stand (although that is a part of it).

One issue with 3E and 4E, at least in what seems to me to be typical play, is the mode of "open door" then "roll initiative". There seems to be no setup, no step of estimating the opponent, and little opportunity other than to accept the encounter in it's fixed setup. I see this in 4E, but it's there in 3E too, in both cases depending on how the GM is running the game.

To address your point, having one player standing up front, with a result of the opponents focusing on that player, is exactly the worse encounter setup. Unless the player up front is wired to explode, they'll probably die, and quickly at that, with little loss to the opponents.

But, for a cautious, or at least prepared and observant party, this should almost never happen. The players, understanding the danger of this mode of encounter, will work pretty hard to avoid it.

Also, there seems to be little attention to social engagement as a prelude to actual combat. Although, to be honest, I don't see that the rules support this very well.

Either way, that allows "encounters" to be resolved less often as up and up fights. And less often with fixed ground.

I do think the game will turn out differently if the players are not involved in the encounter setup. In that case, it becomes an issue that the GM must decide, and the GM will have to very carefully set the encounter difficulty, since they will be, in essence, doing an internal simulation of the encounter setup, for the players benefit.

TomB

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But, for a cautious, or at least prepared and observant party, this should almost never happen. The players, understanding the danger of this mode of encounter, will work pretty hard to avoid it.

Yep.

 

[Hussar]

1 per player; 5-7 PCs on a given night, depending on who can or cannot attend.

Ahh, now here we get to a decent point. So, on any given night, you have more PC's than are standard, almost to the point of having twice as many PC's as presumed. I assume your DM did not alter the module to suit that fact.

So, right off the bat, your party is about 1-3 levels higher than the presumed party average, depending on how many show up that night. Or, to put it another way, any EL par encounter is now an easy encounter.

And, just as a wild guess, I'd say you die rolled all your characters and, if you actually converted them to point buy, even the weakest would still be well higher than 25 point buy. Likely well into the 30's.

Again, that bumps your effective party level by at least one level.

No you dont.

Yes, you do. Heck, the designers DESIGNED it so that you do. 4 EL par encounters is meant to be the upper limit of an adventuring day. That 5th one is SUPPOSED to kill PC's. If you are regularly going into encounters at 20% of resources, then you are supposed to be losing PC's.

Better tactics, like making the NPCs surrender,

How do you do that?

no "Nova-ing" means having nasty spells to use even in the 5th or 6th encounter? Multiclassing into warrior classes so common we have more HP than average? Luck of the dice?

If you're multiclassing into warrior classes, then at 5th or 6th level, you don't HAVE any nasty spells to use. You've got second level spells at best.

I can't tell you with any specificity why our party wins a given combat others seem to think we shouldn't be able to- there are simply too many variables.

But my gut tells me it's the arcanists' spell hoarding. After just a few spells being cast, we'd typically have the worst of the foes on the ropes or down. The other NPCs usually don't have the offensive oomph to be a real threat to the meleers without support from the bigbads, so the arcanists turn miserly and the warriors play the odds.

I think the fact that you have a large sized party, and likely were making characters with very high point buy value made the largest difference.

 

[BryonD]

Yes, BryonD, the level of immersion you seem to be positing has never occurred at any table I've participated in. The idea that the game should "play like we're in a novel" where the players never break immersion, where every decision is 100% in-character with no meta-game concerns is a mythical beast as far as I'm concerned.

Ok, so the point here is, you and I are having such radically different experiences that we can't really comment on each other. And, that doesn't contradict my position but it DOES contradict yours.

I've played with way too many people to believe that I'm the outlier here. Doesn't matter how old or where or in what circumstance. At no point have I ever seen a group for any real length of time, achieve the immersion that you're talking about.

Ok, I won't claim you are an "outlier" here. But this is not a case where one or the other of us must be an outlier.

I've played with enough groups to know that I'm also not an outlier. But I'll also readily agree that I don't know the minds of the people I've gamed with. It could even be that some people at the same table have different perceptions.

But I'll give you one telling example. When 3E came out I had recently changed jobs. A new co-worker of mine and a long time gamer friend of his joined my first 3E game. After a few months both of them came to me to express just how much they were enjoying the game and both made comments specifically saying that my D&D games were completely unlike any other game that they had ever played in. And they described in terms that made it clear that they were talking about exactly this point. The depth and richness of being *IN* the story was new to them and they loved it.

What does that anecdote show? Well, it proves there are people out there with your experience. It still surprises me after all this time to hear that you are one of them. But, it is not news to me that they are out there. And it also demonstrates that those people can discover more and go "holy crap, that's awesome!" It doesn't say anything about proportions or "outliers", but it allows that BOTH can be true. Hell, it demonstrates that to some finite amount both ARE true.

4e has all sorts of issues as well.

It just doesn't really have THIS issue.

See, that's the classic "confusing personal preference for objective truth" thing.

You statement would be true if you had said "It just doesn't really have THIS issue for the way Hussar plays"

I know you have seen me say numerous times before that I find 3E does 4E style VASTLY better than 4E does 3E style. It now seems clear that for all that time you were playing 3E, you were playing in what I would now call "4E style". Which is cool. I've got no debate with that whatsoever. Play what, and how, you like.

That is one of the reasons I've said WotC can't just crank out 5E and put this genie back in the bottle. They use to have 3E fans playing both "3E style" and "4E style". Now they have lost a lot of "3E style fans". But while 3E did "4E style" well, 4E does "4E style" excellent. So those two groups will not easily go back together. The genie is flying free now.

This point also brings to my mind the debate we had some months ago regarding online play. I was saying that I enjoyed online play but there were aspects of face to face play that I'd never seen captured by online. You said (as I recall, please correct me as needed) that you agreed there were pluses and minuses to online, but that the fundamental quality of the experience was unchanged. We never agreed on that. But , in this light, I can see how that would be true. Take out the sense of depth and a lot of what online is missing melts away.

So you do not experience it. I don't dispute that. I do find it a bit of a shame, but if you are having a blast then that is all that matters.

So now we are done to the point of: Do you REALLY reject my claims? Are you incapable of accepting the idea that I'm telling the truth.

"4E just doesn't really have THIS issue." - for Hussar's style.
4E has this issue TERMINALLY for Bryon's style.

Can you accept that?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ahh, now here we get to a decent point. So, on any given night, you have more PC's than are standard, almost to the point of having twice as many PC's as presumed. I assume your DM did not alter the module to suit that fact.

Your assumption would be incorrect.

In fact, part of the reason we took as long as we did was so the DM- a guy with more than a decade's experience behind the screen- could take time to alter encounter strengths upward. (In addition, even though largeish, given that the party consisted of a Ftr and a Wizard partnered with builds like a Ftr with 2 Clc levels, a Rog with 1 Sorc level, a Brb/Drd, a multiclassed Monk and my Ftr/Rgr/Div/SpSwd, it's not like these were all optimized PCs.)

It's not like his guy pulled punches, either. We almost lost the party's "legitimate businessman" to drowning after he got paralyzed by some critter (a Hag? I don't recall) and fell in the water. My Ftr/Rgr/Div/SpSwd was the only PC in the party with ranks in Swimming...

And, just as a wild guess, I'd say you die rolled all your characters

The DM didn't care whether we used point buy or not. I rolled my Ftr/Rgr/Div/SpSword's stats, but I know at least 2 guys used point buy.

Yes, you do.

No, you really don't. You're talking theory, I'm talking what actually happened. We burned healing spells if and when we felt it necessary, not when game designer statistics predicted we should.

How do you do that?

Roleplay, a good roll on a skill like Bluff, etc.

If you're multiclassing into warrior classes, then at 5th or 6th level, you don't HAVE any nasty spells to use.

There was one single classed Wizard in the party, played by a guy who plays single classed Wizards 89%+ of the time I've gamed with him since 1985. Most optimizers could probably recite his spell list by memory.

Nearly everyone else had warrior class levels, including the divine casters, except for the 2 short-timers.

I think the fact that you have a large sized party, and likely were making characters with very high point buy value made the largest difference.

And I have shown your assumptions are not really justified enough to support this theory.

 

[Griego]

[MENTION=19675]Dannyalcatraz[/MENTION], I'm still not buying it. Sorry.

 

[BryonD]

Yes, BryonD, the level of immersion you seem to be positing has never occurred at any table I've participated in. The idea that the game should "play like we're in a novel" where the players never break immersion, where every decision is 100% in-character with no meta-game concerns is a mythical beast as far as I'm concerned.

Sorry to re-quote, I've been guilty of that a few times lately. But I just had a "wait a minute" moment.

I know that the whole "4E is WoW" and "4E is a board game" debate is touchy, but...

I enjoy WoW (well, I used to until I quit a couple years ago) and I enjoy fantasy board games with a dash of RPG (Descent, etc). But if you asked me what the one real differences is between those and RPGs, it would absolutely be the immersion. The "in a novel" model is what takes these things to a whole new realm. (no pun intended)

If you were to take that away then, to me, ANY RPG would instantly become JUST WoW or JUST a board game. So the connection there in my mind is actually quite strengthened by this line of reasoning.

But the connection is NOT to say that 4E = Wow or 4E = a boardgame. I still don't buy that because if I WERE to play 4E, I'd be focusing on the things that make it different. And, of course, I just have to deal with the short comings.

But when someone says those shortcoming don't exist to them and that they saw 3E as no different, then suddenly it seems to me that their experience for BOTH 3E and 4E was a hell of a lot like what I consider to be the experience of WoW. Now, just as I don't experience D&D the same, I have no reason to claim that these people experience WoW the same.

But if Peter's D&D experience is insignificantly different than Paul's WoW experience, then it is completely reasonable for Paul to describe Peter's D&D experience as being "just like WoW" upon having it described to him.

This also fits into the whole "too much work" argument. As you know, I've continuously challenged that idea because I love spending time prepping for game. It is vastly fun and I never get the idea of "work". But that "fun" comes entirely from seeing that immersive world growing and being detailed, like a painting appearing on a blank sheet. If it were not for that massively enjoyable aspect of it, I would find it completely not worthwhile. It is a night and day difference. I'd never consider doing that for my "WoW-style" experience.

You have, without a doubt, caused me to revise my assessment. In the end this comes back to the same point I've made many times before. Specifically: We are playing such radically different experiences that it is pointless to try to compare them. But even that point appears to have been grossly understated.