Legends and Lore - Nod To Realism

[BryonD]

Heh.

Those examples that you see, are they done by characters who have deliberately been designed to do them? IOW, the player has taken the Improved Bull Rush feat (and associated feats) in order to be able to do this? Which means that they actually aren't "thinking outside the box" since their character is specifically designed to include bull rushing in their box.

Interesting claim for someone who likes to demand iron clad evidence of things.....

I can not recall anyone every playing a character with IBR.

Again, I disagree. I see bull rushing happening, or whatever non-standard action for that matter, when it would be appropriate and believable in the fiction of the game. There's a guy standing near a window, pushing him out that window isn't really too much of a stretch. It's something that happens all the time in genre fiction. So, I don't want it to be limited to the Bull Rushing specialist.

Cool, we agree. And it isn't in my game + it is not overly easy and is awesome and heroic when achieved. I love it.

Because that's where I get kind of bogged down in 3e. Trying anything that is non-standard is just so punishing. Success at a bull rush is not particularly high. You need a target that is significantly weaker than you (very limiting), plus probably a charge (which is a point I do like) to have any real chance of success. If the target is equal to you in strength, your odds of success are just so low that the cost of the attempt (possibly two AOO's, one at +4, plus granting the other guy a full attack at +4) means that I never saw it attempted.

What did you do to make it more palatable? Or were your players simply not concerned with the odds? Or, was the only time you saw bull rushes when they were done by characters who specialized in it?

Well, first I don't spend a lot of time getting hung up on this stuff. As I've said before, it comes down to the "being in the novel" mindset. The player's bull rush when they want to bull rush. Yeah, they don't ever bull rush stone giants. I'm ok with that. But they do bull rush foes and they sometimes fail and they sometimes succeed. You presumption of failure is, ime, flawed from a practical point of view, and also, COMPLETELY IMO, flawed from a being in the spirit of forget the math a be a HERO point of view.

I can think of one element I'll concede to you and that is Action Points. I do use those. And I do know that I've seen them used in conjunction with BR. But I've also seen them without.

 

[BryonD]

That I actually kinda agree with. I know that I had toyed with the idea in 3e with simply allowing PC's to regain all their HP after each encounter, simply because that was what was happening anyway in my games - they typically used healing wands.

So, porting in 4e style healing surges into a 3e game would probably not be all that difficult.

Trailblazer nods to this a bit as well.

 

[Hussar]

You presumption of failure is, ime, flawed from a practical point of view, and also, COMPLETELY IMO, flawed from a being in the spirit of forget the math a be a HERO point of view.

Ahh, your players didn't care about the odds. Fair enough.

On a practical level though? Given equal strengths, I've got a 50:50 chance of success. A bit better with a charge. 50:50 to move someone back 5 feet vs giving up 1 automatic AOO, 1 more AOO at +4 when I stand up and a full attack at +4? That's not good enough for me. It's simply not worth it.

Yeah, it's easy enough to say, "forget about the math!" but, after the first failure and getting your ass handed to you, I'm thinking most players are pretty rational actors and are going to remember that bull rushing=really bad idea. But, then again, I've never seen anyone play who completely forgets the math. I've never played that way, nor could I to be honest.

I KNOW what the math says. For me to be true to my character, who is also trained in combat, HE knows what the math says in this system. Bull rush=high chance of failure with very high penalties for failure vs my standard attack routine which equals moderate chance of failure with no penalties. Not a hard decision to make.

 

[BryonD]

Yeah, it's easy enough to say, "forget about the math!" but, after the first failure and getting your ass handed to you, I'm thinking most players are pretty rational actors and are going to remember that bull rushing=really bad idea.

Shrug. Again, it works plenty often enough. It also fails enough to (A) be reasonably "nodding to realism" and (B) make those successes heroic and awesome.

Most players I've gamed with are pretty fun intensive actors and what they remember is that time a great roll on a bull rush saved the day and if you want a fun "rush" during your game then Bull Rush, in the right time and place, amongst plenty of other optional tactics, equals an awesome idea.

Again, you are framing everything as if it were doomed. It doesn't work out that way.

 

[FireLance]

Sure, I see your objection and have given some thought to that problem in regards to a narrative-first ruleset. The component, which exists in all types of RPGs, that mitigates the problem is that the GM describes the actual results. A player can only explain what they are attempting, the consequences of the action are in the GM's purview. This is problematic with rulesets that dictate mechanical results as a given and then, as if to add insult to injury, tack on a set narrative to those mechanics. This is why RPG rulesets that go too far in trying to curtail the role of the GM tend to bring about such controversy, IMO.

Possibly, but the flipside is that game systems that require the DM to decide on the results each time the player takes an action (as opposed to simply applying a ruleset) also place quite a great burden on the DM.

Just to cite an example, I doubt that I would ever voluntarily run a game of White Wolf's Mage because every time a PC wanted to use magic, I would have to decide which schools were involved and to what extent. Admittedly, it could simply be because I've only given the system a cursory glance through, but coming as I did from a D&D background, I didn't even feel like giving the system a chance because it seemed like a lot of effort to do what, in D&D, would essentially boil down to: I use Spell X.

Mind you, the system you have in mind could be a happy medium - more flexible than standard D&D, more concrete guidelines than standard Mage. You might even be able to retain the iconic spells as standard effects which could be varied by an additional or a harder check. Want a fireball that only targets enemies, or which doesn't burn up the papers in the library or set fire to the deck of the ship everyone is fighting on? Maybe the Arcana DC goes up by 2 to 4 points.

 

[Mark CMG]

Possibly, but the flipside is that game systems that require the DM to decide on the results each time the player takes an action (as opposed to simply applying a ruleset) also place quite a great burden on the DM.

Just to cite an example, I doubt that I would ever voluntarily run a game of White Wolf's Mage because every time a PC wanted to use magic, I would have to decide which schools were involved and to what extent. Admittedly, it could simply be because I've only given the system a cursory glance through, but coming as I did from a D&D background, I didn't even feel like giving the system a chance because it seemed like a lot of effort to do what, in D&D, would essentially boil down to: I use Spell X.

Mind you, the system you have in mind could be a happy medium - more flexible than standard D&D, more concrete guidelines than standard Mage. You might even be able to retain the iconic spells as standard effects which could be varied by an additional or a harder check. Want a fireball that only targets enemies, or which doesn't burn up the papers in the library or set fire to the deck of the ship everyone is fighting on? Maybe the Arcana DC goes up by 2 to 4 points.

I don't think of it so much as a burden as allowing the GM to provide consistency as it applies to an individual setting, and I don't simply mean consistency of a single setting from GM to GM but rather the setting as the GM wishes to present it in the singular gaming group experience. While a ruleset can help provide mechanical consistency over the course of a campaign, if the rules are tied to narrative cues as professed by the combination of setting, GM oversight, and player invention, that consistency becomes a framework for making sure the rules don't contradict themselves as well. This allows the game, any RPG, to provide a more immersive experience within a given setting rather than creating an environment where players look for to the rules to predetermine their options, in turn opening up the world of possibilities in any given moment. This engenders a gaming mentality where players think in terms of their interface with the game as character in an environment rather than merely numbers to be weighed against the situational numbers the game presents regardless of setting or GM.

 

[Gentlegamer]

A player can only explain what they are attempting, the consequences of the action are in the GM's purview.

That is exactly how I first learned to play D&D.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Are you suggesting that 3E, as-is, does not leave room for surges?

I would certainly agree with you that the game does not presume them and was not built with them in mind.

But playing a stable, functional, and reasonably balanced game of RAW 3E with surges as a single house rule would not be difficult at all if one was so inclined.

If all you wanted was the surges, sure, you could do that. If you want the narrative pacing mechanism that surges are the central part of, no, it would take a bit more work.

Now, I don't see much point in having the surges unless you also want the narrative pacing. When I developed a house rule for Fantasy Hero that was all but "surges" in concept, something like the 4E pacing was definitely what I had in mind. And I got to "surges" after trying a bunch of other things that didn't work. (My implementation wasn't nearly as elegant as 4E surges, but then that was me working alone with a single group. )

There might be something else majorly useful in the surges that I'm not aware of, though.

 

[Tovec]

On a practical level though? Given equal strengths, I've got a 50:50 chance of success. A bit better with a charge. 50:50 to move someone back 5 feet vs giving up 1 automatic AOO, 1 more AOO at +4 when I stand up and a full attack at +4? That's not good enough for me. It's simply not worth it.

The presumption was that character A who has no implements randomly charges character B and attempts to knock them out the window?

How much of a chance would YOU like if I did that to you? 100?

Also, if they're both unarmed then there is no AOO. Have to be armed for that.

Plus, you are forgetting if they did it during surprise round. Just saying.

 

[Hussar]

The presumption was that character A who has no implements randomly charges character B and attempts to knock them out the window?

How much of a chance would YOU like if I did that to you? 100?

Also, if they're both unarmed then there is no AOO. Have to be armed for that.

Plus, you are forgetting if they did it during surprise round. Just saying.

I'd like a lot better than 50:50 considering the consequences for failure.

Look, we'll flip a coin. If you win, I give you five dollars. But, before we flip, I get to punch you in the mouth. Plus, if you fail I get to kick you in the nads and the step on your ankle while you're on the ground.

Fair deal? Didn't think so. The reward is nowhere near good enough for the risk.

Your quibbles are just that, quibbles. You're actually arguing my point for me by reducing the number of possible times it would succeed - need an unarmed opponent, need surprise, etc.

And, let's not forget, that this is actually LESS attractive the higher level my character is. The odds don't really change because it's stat, not level based, but now I'm giving up additional attacks or actions to do something that has a low chance of success and high penalties.

Now, obviously my players are different than BryonD's. I have no idea how to motivate people to be quite frankly that unaware of the game. Look, if the opponent is one size larger than you, you might as well not even bother trying. It's got both the size bonus against you and in all likelihood stronger than you. If your character is small, you might as well forget about it at all. Even if the opponent is medium, many medium creatures have a fairly high strength score. A base orc has a 17 Str - +3 to it's base check. Even against this, you're not much better than 50% at best. And probably lower.

Again, the chance of success just isn't worth it. I've never actually seen bull rush used in 3e. Apparently BryonD has, but, again, his case is very different than mine because his players are, in my mind anyway, not rational actors. That or they like rolling up new characters a lot.

This basically illustrates why I have such a problem with process based Simulation. It makes any action that is not expressly permitted so difficult that it's just not worth it and players IME don't even try.