Our game table tends to manage about 8-10 encounters per adventuring day on average, would be my guess. I am not sure there is a real default here.
That, to me, is actually a very high figure for typical 3
rd Ed. There, I believe the default is that a “typical” encounter will use up about 20% of the party’s resources, so 4 encounters is the implied norm (5 would be tough, using up all the party’s resources).
However, I see nothing wrong with having some encounters that are ore trivial – they don’t use 20% of the party’s resources unless the spellcasters immediately default to “Nova Mode” and the players don’t get to metagame the assumption that “this will be a challenging encounter meant to erode 20% of our resources, so it will be simple if we use 45% with the expectation we will rest after an encounter or two”.
This is definitely where playstyle comes in – spellcasters tend to be sprinters. They can get a lot done very quickly, but they exhaust their resources equally quickly. Martial characters tend to be marathon runners – they don’t get any one job done as rapidly, but they can keep going at that steady pace for the entire day.
4e, from what little I know, leveled this – everyone gets some powers only usable once a day, others usable once per encounter and others used at will, as many times as they want. That reduces Nova tactics. You could use up all your dailies – and why shouldn’t you if you can freely rest after each encounter – but you can use your encounter powers as many times a day as you have encounters and your at-wills never run out. So resource management is, as I read it, simplified, and variations in the need for resource management across classes sharply reduced or eliminated.
Depends on the parameters. In most single-fight tests, I do think wizards will shine a little brighter. In an actual adventuring day, it evens out. I would be more interested in a test that pitted a party against a true set of CR appropriate dungeon encounters than a duel in which you have 1 wizard and I have one fighter.
Whatever the result of the test, I expect it will be classified as “not realistic” by those not concurring with the results – because it will not match the reality of their actual experiences under someone else’s playstyle.
My (and a lot of other people's) playstyle isn't supported by the game. That's a problem with the mechanics.
No, it really isn’t. It is a problem with the mechanics, in my view, only if the game explicitly promises to support a specific playstyle and fails to deliver. A Toon game with mechanics encouraging sombre introspection and slow, steady-paced, well planned encounters would be a problem, as would Call of Cthulhu mechanics encouraging over the top feats of derring-do.
Otherwise, it is a problem of a playstyle being less than compatible with the specific mechanics of this game. That is why we have yet to find the One Game to Rule Them All.
The broader the game becomes, the less its mechanics will be customized to any one playstyle, right up to generic systems that tend to need lots of optional rules to suit a variety of genre and playstyle expectations. It’s almost cliché that, when you try to make everyone happy, nobody likes it.
Diplomacy is about changing attitude. Making the Pope Helpful does not convince him he's an atheist. That would be more a use for Bluff. you are trying to convince him of something that's not true.
But we are asserting that making the Chamberlain let you in to see the King is about changing his attitude. Maybe you’re better off not seeing the King, as he is in a bad mood and of volatile temper, so a Hostile Chamberlain will send you right in:
“Sorry, Your Majesty, I tried to dissuade them but they insisted and, after all, Law and Tradition demands you receive them if they invoke their rights in that regard, just as Law and Tradition permits you, in your sole discretion, to have them torn to shreds by the Palace Hyenas. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, commoners!”
Whereas a Friendly Chamberlain might deny entry to the King precisely because he knows what will happen – but speaking ill of the King’s decisions is treason punishable by death, so he can’t just TELL the PC’s or it’s he who will be feeding the hyenas, so he summarily dismisses them, knowing it’s for their own good – “Lucky Commoners, not having to deal with this. They will never know how close they came to death this day. If I must be though of as an ill-mannered officious clod, then so be it – better that than more pointless deaths at the King’s hands.”
Convincing the Pope that he's an atheist? Of course it's going to be very hard. Short of (if not) an Epic check.
So is it, or isn’t it, possible using diplomacy to convert the Pope to a different religion (be it atheism, Buddhism or whatever? And is it always open to the PC’s to try with a chance of success, or is it not? Is the GM prohibited from applying the specific rule that says not every task can be accomplished in a minute, or is that rule to be ignored? And, once again, what rule says that the target is required to listen to the PC’s for however long it will take for them to get their Diplomacy check?
We are establishing here whether it is an absolute that the players can always attempt, and not with a DC set so high that it cannot succeed, or whether it is a matter of degree, with the DC so high for some tasks that they are simply not possible. Whether the specific Chamberlain example appropriately fits in that box or not depends on far too many factors to assess, so my objective here is first to establish whether it is an absolute that the PC must have the possibility of success by his chosen approach.
Maybe you do that. I don't. I set the DCs at appropriate and reasonable numbers. Convincing the chamberlain to let them see the king would be a DC from 15 (Friendly) to 30 (Helpful) if assumed he's Indifferent. If he's Unfriendly then it's 25-40. As per the rules.
Emphasis added. An appropriate and reasonable number to the GM which is a number the PC’s are not capable of rolling may be perceived as inappropriate and unreasonable for that reason, which is exactly why we are having this lengthy debate.
Where does it say that a Friendly or Helpful Chamberlain will admit PC’s to see the King? It says his attitude has become Friendly or Helpful. The base DC’s set by the skill are also to be modified by favourable or unfavourable conditions. Is a commoner seeking an audience with the king with no appointment, no noble blood, no connection to the King’s Court and no legal right to see the King, not dressed in appropriate Court attire and clearly bearing arms, using the right tools, or operating under conditions that hamper performance? An uncooperative audience is a specific example of “circumstances that make the task harder”, so clearly the possibility the target of a diplomacy check is uncooperative exists.
So I should be upset that Toon does not support my Call of Cthulhu fix, or that in Call of Cthulhu, my guys keep going insane.
Clearly the mechanics must be flawed J
Either that, or your playstyle is badwrongfun!
I'm complaining about just one out of the many elements of the game. I would be more happy if that element wasn't flawed.
And others would be less happy. There is a balancing act here. Frankly, if a game designer picks the exact mechanics that I think best, making me a rabid supporter of his game, and for every gamer like me that he impresses, he loses 100 other sales because way more people hate those mechanics, he’s not making a very sharp business choice.
Now, maybe locking up 1% of the market is better than competing for the other 99% against 1,000 competitors, but RPG’s are already a niche market, so the smaller the customer base for the general product, the less viable a more specialized market becomes. Indie products are commonly Indie
because they appeal to a very small customer base, so they can’t generate the sales to go beyond Indie.
Wizard + Druid + 2 Clerics vs. 4 Fighters. Doesn't the clerical healing add a lot of durability (especially if they can cast heal)? Even more so if there are multiple combats on the same day?
Who is suggesting 4 fighters? I think those defending the fighter are defending a party with several skill sets being more viable than one with fewer skill sets.
Would the comparison be easier and more stark if it was a caster party being run through and a non-caster party, say Barbarian+Fighter+Monk+Rogue versus Cleric+Druid+Sorcerer+Wizard or something like that? Or would that make it too hard to come up with an adventure that wasn't prejudiced one way or the other?
I’d think the comparison should be “spellcasters only” and “balanced party”.
One guideline I have for my own game is that if I as DM can't think of (at least) three different ways for the PCs to deal with a problem, it's probably a single-point-of-failure roadblock and needs to be rethought.
Repeated as an excellent guideline. There should be multiple means of resolving the challenge. I stress that this does not mean there may be approaches, even seeming obvious and viable approaches, that will not resolve this specific challenge.
Players, lacking the DM point of view, often don't see some or all viable solutions due to various reasons such as imperfect information, having a bad day, misunderstandings, poor communication, missing players, or not being invested in the problem and wanting to go somewhere else.
Conversely, they often come up with completely unanticipated solutions, some of which are so good they just work, some of which have varying chances of success and some of which aren't viable.
Sometimes they come up with something that shouldn't strictly work due to hidden info they aren't privy to, but is so awesome it's worth changing the setup so that it does work.
I find that too many failures drains the morale of players, and may indicate a lack of understanding of the true situation and perhaps a need to discuss things OOC.
All very true. The players also need to recognize that the fact their first attempt doesn’t work is not a sign the GM is out to get them, but a signal that there is more to the challenge than may have first met the eye.
If getting an audience with the King were trivial, would I describe the room and ask what you do, rather than describe your arrival at the room, reception by the Chamberlain and passing through the room as you are ushered in to meet with the King? Probably not. Just as I won’t play out three weeks of travel, asking you for a nightly watch order, daily scouting routines, etc. even though nothing is going to happen. Instead, “after three weeks travel with nothing noteworthy occurring” suffices.
The idea of "Shcroedinger's NPC", as it has been labelled, is that the GM fills in the details of the NPC's personality - or, if the PCs are trying to locate an NPC of the relevant sort then perhaps even the details of his/her existence - not in advance of pla,y nor via mere fiat or random roll in the course of play, but rather in the course of play in response to action resolution attempts by the players. I quoted Paul Czege on this upthread. I have linked upthread to the Kas example from my own game.
Here is another example, involving the PCs at a dinner party with a Baron and his family and advisors. The Baron's personality was not determined by me in advance accept in the broadest of outlines - he cares for his niece, trusts his advisor and is proud of his family. (All pretty stock-standard stuff.) The details emerged in play
So can I as a player announce that my underworld contacts, very familiar with the goings-on in the Barony, have told me that the Baron is REALLY just using his niece to access his dead brother’s estate (she will conveniently disappear when the time is right, he’s seen to that!), or has this element which you have set in advance fixed and unalterable by the PC’s? Again, I’m looking to establish whether it is an absolute that anything not established clearly through play (such as whether that care for the niece is truly genuine or has all been guided by intricate estate rules), or whether some details are set in stone beforehand, and cannot later be altered.
For instance, at one point - in response to some player's check giving effect to what their PC was doing in the fiction, I had the Baron reply "I am a man of action!" The player of the fighter then took the opportunity to reply to this by emphasising that he, too, was a man (well, dwarf) of action - and thereby got to make an Athletics check (one of his better skills) to establish it as true in the fiction that the Baron did recognise the dwarf as a like-minded, action-oriented individual.
OK – could someone have, instead, said “no he isn’t, but he thinks himself to be one, so even the slightest act of prowess will impress him, being at or above what he can achieve, which he considers the pinnacle of achievement?”, thereby making it much easier to impress the Baron, or was his “man of action” ability already set and unalterable? Deciding he is a Man of Action during the meal, rather than in pre-game prep, still seems like a GM decision.
A secondary effect, but for me also quite desirable, of this sort of play is that it discourages excessive time spent on planning and preparation, and encourages players to achieve their goals by engaging and shaping the scenes that are framed. So more of playtime is spent actually resolving things than planning how to resolve things. I think this is one significant difference between Gygaxian and "indie" play. (Not the only one, obviously.)p
I don’t think advance prep vs ad lib is a major difference that has been suggested between the two, although I do agree that, where details are determined by player rolls, advance preparation clearly moves aside. But I doubt the players could have determined that, actually, the Barony lacks a Baron as the last Baron passed away without an heir three years ago, then roll to be appointed to the job, thereby retroactively removing the Baron and his niece before they could meet him. Some details, I believe, are pre-established even in Indie play.
Yes. I explained upthread why, for my playstyle, this is a terrible mechanic - because it forces me simply to fiat whether or not the player suffers a huge (-10) check penalty; and why I therefore prefer a skill challenge approach, where my choice as to present the chamberlain as impatient and leavning, or impatient but listening, changes the fiction - in the way just explained with respect to "Schroedinger's NPC" but doesn't change the prospects of success for the player.
It seems to me that this is hair-splitting semantics. In either case, you will ultimately have to set the difficulty of success, will you not? Or is every NPC a cardboard cutout on which the PC’s have the exact same, always predictable and certain, probability of being able to impose their will upon?
Who is in charge of the "credibility test"? - which, I cannot emphasise enough, is an issue of genre credibiity (a literary/critical notion), not ingame causal credibility (a scientific/physical notion). The table as a whole should have a shared understanding about genre; the player is free to make their case; in the end, the GM - as custodian of scene-framing - has to make the final call, as part of the GM's general role in ensuring that players aren't forced to take responsibility for providing their own antagonism (an intolerable conflict of interest given their responsibility for playing their PCs).
Thank you – that, I believe, is the question which has been asked repeatedly. I will take the liberty of rephrasing the statement that “the GM has to make the final call” as “the GM is the ultimate arbiter”. I believe the two convey exactly the same end result.
Not a whole slew of tricks. One trick; "Carefully arbitrate", unless we include ensuring that all the rules are followed, including inconvenient ones, as a trick.
Well, that does depend on the Real World System we’re using, doesn’t it? In a rules-light system, a single “Carefully arbitrate” skill likely is sufficient. In a more granular system, I think we need “rules knowledge”, “player psychology”, “analyze playstyles”, “present arguments”, “diplomatic arbitration” and a host of other skills. J
In fact, what follows (but I'm too lazy to type) is a discussion of ways a DM can reign in power as well as a discussion on trust.
To me, trust is the big one. The players need to be able to trust the GM, and the GM to trust the players. When that trust is lost, the game falls apart, regardless of playstyle. Even in a game which places the GM as an adversary to the players, both sides need to trust the other is following the rules.
Yeah I said this very thing upthread. In fact, how I read it is that it was a trend which was increasing since the onset of 3rd edition; the earlier splatbooks specifically mentioned DMs need to consider what is appropriate for their games, and while I think its open to speculation why its harder to find such references there in later-published stuff, its still there, enshrined in the rules and very clear.
Of course, if the options presented aren’t going to be used, sales are likely to go down. Here again, I think there is a group style issue, in that some will use all official materials, others will reserve the right to pull some aspects if they become unbalanced, still others will only allow aspects as specifically reviewed and accepted, and some will adopt a “core only, no exceptions” approach.
If the results in my games of adopting outside material were endless bickering and very unbalanced, no fun games, I'd be restricting the material myself (and our group typically runs with a "actual publisher material only, very rare exceptions, something found to be unbalanced will be removed" approach). I've seen a few cases where concern was raised about something being unbalanced, often coming to nothing either due to self-regulation (it wasn't used in a manner that could become unbalancing) or being modified by group consensus.
