Fighters vs. Spellcasters (a case for fighters.)

[Kursk]

On Forums on 3.5, usually the topic of fighters and spellcasters (more narrowly wizards) with the most people saying that fighters are low tier and don't do as well while magic-users dominate etc.

I dealt with that as soon as 3.X came out. Reinstated disparate XP charts.

 

[N'raac]

Given that the Epic Dragon will likely trash everything level 20 or below in melee combat, do you think turning a pebble into one is a bad thing?

For 20 minutes? For an 8^th level spell? No, not really. I would also suggest, however, that one might consider a ruling that any Polymorph into an Epic anything needs an Epic Polymorph.

Why should I have to adopt PF's rules for Polymorph if there is nothing wrong with the polymorph spell?

No one has claimed that any game is perfect. As far as I can recall, you are the only one who suggests that is a remotely reasonable expectation. We can’t get the law perfect after centuries and thousands of times the resources a game designer has – why would we expect a game can be perfect?

 

[pemerton]

I've played for years with secret backstory in and out of the dungeon and the popularity of Paizo's APs makes me think I am hardly alone.

Of course you're not. But I see APs as a pretty central example of storyteller play. The GM (drawing upon the authored material) sets the "BBEG" from the start, and the basic storyline for the campaign is specified in advance.

I am not sure why you would assume I (or others) are not still using this sort of technique both in and out of the dungeon

<snip>

But the same techniques one learns in managing PC information in a dungeon works just as well for the most part out of the dungeon and a good DM is going to learn how to manage information out of the dungeon.

I'm not sure how much weight you mean to put on the idea that the GM is the one managing information.

In his PHB, Gygax emphasises that the players should be managing information, and Lewis Pulsipher is big on this too. That's what Detection spells, ESP etc were for (and this is why intelligent swords had detection abilities, what potions of treasure finding and wands of metal detection were for, etc).

What happens in the chamberlain scenario if the wizard PC first uses ESP to scan for the king's magic-detectors, before chancing a Charm spell?

At least as it has been expounded in this thread, so much of the situation is under the GM's control, that I don't really see how the players are expected to be able to acquire the secret backstory through their own devices. It really does look like a case of "GM management of information".

I do get the feeling that some of us here have had very bad experiences with DMs and that is coloring this debate.

I'm not sure what you mean. I'm sure that some experiences that you regard as being great GMing would be juged by me as bad. That's a natural consequence of the existence of different styles and different preferences.

Certainly in the past I've found that some players seem to enjoy GMing that I regard as horrible.

 

[Wicht]

In his PHB, Gygax emphasises that the players should be managing information, and Lewis Pulsipher is big on this too.

I think you are using a different meaning for "manage information," than I intended. Naturally the player should be managing the information that he knows, and players should be seeking to acquire and retain information. But the DM manages the distribution of information, and learning how to distribute information via scenes, dialogue, and supplying the information gleaned through investigations both magical and non-magical is one of the skills of DMing that one should seek to obtain. This managing of the distribution of information is what was meant.

 

[TwoSix]

There you go - how hard was it to fit the issue into PC backgrounds. All we need is a link to Ares (or change the deity to someone there is a link to), and we are off to the races. Linking the adventure to the PC's is hardly, however, unique to Indie play.

Yes, but in indie play the character's reaction to this sequence is the point of play. In Lanefan's game, any connection of that sort would be a happy accident. I can't remember an old school adventure that actually cared WHY the PCs were involved.

 

[Wicht]

Yes, but in indie play the character's reaction to this sequence is the point of play. In Lanefan's game, any connection of that sort would be a happy accident. I can't remember an old school adventure that actually cared WHY the PCs were involved.

Part of that was so that the modules could be more easily plopped down into any number of campaigns.

 

[pemerton]

if combat skills only solve combat problems, and social skills solve both combat and non-combat problems, now the combatant is truly worthless.

I'm not 100% sure I follow this contrast between combat and non-combat problems. Who decides that a problem is combat or non-combat? If it's the players, then they can deploy whatever resources they think are appropriate.

For instance, in my last session the PCs had received a vision that a star - an emissary from Ulban - had fallen to earth, and opened a portal to the location in question to check it out. I assumed that they might start by scouting, or talking, but in fact they charged straight into combat. What sort of challenge was that? The players decided. (And for all I know, it may turn back into a social challenge before the situation is resolved.)

The fact that the PC’s cannot persuade the Chamberlain (assuming they would normally be able to, based on their fictional positioning) screams, to me, that something special IS going on – there must be some special circumstances, something in the background, something which is preventing their success. This does not mean the player must be told what that is, nor that the PC has a flash of clairvoyance to explain it.

<snip>

a series of actions possible to deal with the obstinate chamberlain. In my view, they need not be actions which can immediately be taken in the scene with the chamberlain to immediately succeed. Retrench and try a different approach to achieve the goal, rather than expect the King’s Nephew to be attacked outside the palace so you can defend him and get to see the King.

<snip>

I am not interested in the “Player Omniscience” indie style seems to presuppose. If that is a prerequisite to Indie style – AND I AM NOT SURE IT IS – then I want no part of Indie style.

That's fine. I want no part of storyteller style, so we've worked out what I already knew from earlier threads, namely, that we are looking different things in RPGing.

I'm not sure why you use phrases like "flash of clairvoyance" or "player omniscience" - I've given pretty detailed discussion upthread of secret backstory and its relationship to scene framing and action resolution (including via discussion of the duke example in the 4e DMG). There is no conflict between secret backstory and "indie" style. But there is conflict between resolution turning on secret fictional positioning which the players can't discover and act upon, and "indie" style.

If I was framing the PCs into an interaction with the mad chamberlain, I (i) would already be confident that a mad chamberlain actually connected to some already-established thematic concern for the game, and (ii) would be expecting the interaction itself to provide the players with the opportunity to recover some of that secret backstory via interacting with the chamberlain.

Let’s say instead that the chamberlain is greedy and we offer him a bribe to get a bonus. Is there no risk that will be discovered, even if successful, with negative repercussions against the characters, or is it just a free bonus?

It's a bonus. It's not free - the players spend a resource to get it (namely, stuff on their equipment lists). In 4e the rule is that 1/10 the cost of an item of the PC's level is a +2 bonus - for 5th level PCs, that would be +2 for spending 100 gp.

If the bribe was paid but the skill check nevertheless failed, that is when discovery might kick in. Or another option would be to allow the PCs to turn a failure into a success at the cost of being discovered by a 3rd party.

those complications are natural outgrowths of the strengths and limitations of the spells.

I think what we keep coming back to is that some concepts are just so remote, so foreign that its difficult to digest without exposure. Just something as simple as "genre logic" at the expense of "causal logic" is jarring to folks whose entire gaming paradigm is predicated open simulation of process and coupled cause and effect.

I think we have here an instance of Manbearcat's point.

No one disputes that getting in trouble for offering (or paying) a bribe; or charming an officer of the king's household; or drawing swords in the king's palace; might naturally cause trouble. But equally they might not. How do we work out whether or not these natural consequences come home to roost? In "indie" style, these consequences are inserted by the GM as results of failed check in order to preserve and consolidate genre and them while also complicating the players' attempts to impact the ingame situation via their PCs.

You can, perhaps, gather intel on the Chamberlain or make other contacts in the course of the scene. At a minimum, you now know something is up with the Chamberlain and can decide how best to investigate this. If such a scene is impossible in Indie Play, then to me that is a weakness in the playstyle.

By "weakness" I assume that you mean "reason you don't want to play it". For me it's not a weakness; it's a strengththat the focus of the game is on the matters that the players have established as their concerns that they want to engage via their PCs.

So why is a Chamberlain who cannot be persuaded to allow you to see the King so appalling? I suspect because you can’t get to see the King.

If the players' goal in the scene is to meet the king, and an obstructionist chamberlain is one of the obstacles they have to work around, that could be interesting. Working around that obstacle might include enchanting the Chamberlain, or bribing him, or distracting him, or anything else that seems fun and feasible. It wouldn't include having no choice but to give up, exit the situation, and go out on a backstory hunt to find a way of dealing with the Chamberlain. At that point we have a GM-driven game (the focus of play is the chamberlain, who was introduced as an important story element by the GM), not a player-driven game (the players cared about the king, not the chamberlain).

Did the roll succeed? The GM concludes and that decides the issue.

Huh? The roll succeeding or not is a rules issue, not a GM decision. And the consequence was set by the player, not the GM. To me, this is a matter of some impotance.

it seems like tossing out scene ideas until I hit one we have a shot at success in is “Mother May I” gaming, to at least the same extent as having to ask if I may use my skills.

I don't follow this. I'm not sure who you are envisaging "tossing out scene ideas", nor what exactly think the process is.

I generally don't have trouble framing scenes where my players can have an impact via their PCs and the action resolution rules. I follow their cues in framing scenes that they are interested in. And I fill in backstory and details in ways that resond to their cues and interests as they unfold over the course of resolution ("Schroedinger's backstory including NPCs"). I don't see what's particularly Mother-May-I aboout it. In fact, I tend to find it's something of the opposite.

There you go - how hard was it to fit the issue into PC backgrounds. All we need is a link to Ares (or change the deity to someone there is a link to), and we are off to the races. Linking the adventure to the PC's is hardly, however, unique to Indie play.

This idea that you can make the plot "fit" the PCs' backgrounds - and that nothing else has to change after we file off one set of serial numbers and right on another - is at odds with the style I prefer.

Another example of contrast - there is a style of adventure design where the players are hunting a McGuffin and the bulk of the adventure is a series of essentially obstacles that are unrelated in any deep thematic way to the players' goals or the McGuffin. (In fact, that's pretty much inherent to the notion of a McGuffin.) I hate that sort of thing. In my ideal every moment of the adventure should point towards the thematic stakes, and be more than just a procedural obstacle.

 

[pemerton]

Naturally the player should be managing the information that he knows, and players should be seeking to acquire and retain information. But the DM manages the distribution of information, and learning how to distribute information via scenes, dialogue, and supplying the information gleaned through investigations both magical and non-magical is one of the skills of DMing that one should seek to obtain.

In classic D&D play of the sort that Gygax describes in his PHB, the GM desn't distribute information. The GM designs a setting with stuff in it that the players might benefit from knowing about. It is up to the players to then acquire that information (eg via detection spells).

Once you are talking about the GM distributing information via scenes, dialogue clues etc - hugely important for CoC play, for instance - then I think you are well into the domain of storyteller play. It is predominantly the GM who is driving ingame events, in virtue of the information that s/he reveals. Dispensing that information, and making sure the players have access to it (eg The Alexandrian's "3 clue" rule), also becomes quite important to pacing.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think we have here an instance of Manbearcat's point.

No one disputes that getting in trouble for offering (or paying) a bribe; or charming an officer of the king's household; or drawing swords in the king's palace; might naturally cause trouble. But equally they might not. How do we work out whether or not these natural consequences come home to roost? In "indie" style, these consequences are inserted by the GM as results of failed check in order to preserve and consolidate genre and them while also complicating the players' attempts to impact the ingame situation via their PCs.

By "weakness" I assume that you mean "reason you don't want to play it". For me it's not a weakness; it's a strengththat the focus of the game is on the matters that the players have established as their concerns that they want to engage via their PCs.

If the players' goal in the scene is to meet the king, and an obstructionist chamberlain is one of the obstacles they have to work around, that could be interesting. Working around that obstacle might include enchanting the Chamberlain, or bribing him, or distracting him, or anything else that seems fun and feasible. It wouldn't include having no choice but to give up, exit the situation, and go out on a backstory hunt to find a way of dealing with the Chamberlain. At that point we have a GM-driven game (the focus of play is the chamberlain, who was introduced as an important story element by the GM), not a player-driven game (the players cared about the king, not the chamberlain).

To be sure. I've seen quite a bit of posts as of late that just confirm the above quote. We keep coming to the same points:

- I don't like causal logic being subordinate to genre logic.
- I don't like players having access to backstory-shaping device nor means to establish fictional elements that are insured against GM veto.
- I want scenarios where the GM has sole access to the backstory information that reveals the immediate thematic relevance of the scene on hand.
- It is the GMs role to assert finality of conflict resolution.

Sure. That is all fine. That is no problem at all. Those are all principles of a certain mode of play (one I'm quite familiar with and have GMed aplenty). But that isn't the only mode of play.

Although I'm uncertain as of yet how it will play out, I am certain of what the reactions will be (similar to the Shrodinger's Gorge) when I post my group's play post of the chamberlain/king scene. It will assuredly be protests related to all of the principles outlined above. Which is fine. I would rather have candid analysis than milquetoast equivocation.

 

[Aenghus]

DMs and players can have a variety of different goals and preferences of different strengths. Some people have very narrow and specific preferences, others can enjoy a variety of styles. IMO calling someone a "good DM" isn't an absolute, it's a subjective measure, generally with respect to how closely the game he or she runs matches the ajudicator's personal preferences. Some DM skills may be transferable to different game styles, but conversely instincts good for one style may be detrimental to another.

The degree to which DMs facilitate player goals is a strong litmus test for game style. Some DMs don't pay any attention to player goals, and so don't facilitate them. There may be DM provided plots to follow, or a sandbox world to explore, so player goals based on those elements may be viable.

Other games may make player goals of primary importance in play. This doesn't necessarily mean it's all wish fulfillment, as the appropriate player goals for this sort of play are likely different to viable goals in more DM-driven games. Players may want their PCs to struggle to achieve something and fail. Goals in such a game may be very personal, such as the evolution of PC personality due to deals made or broken, and sacrifices made or refused

In my experience most games fall somewhere between these two stools. Players get a limited amout of personal plot.

The above can lead to differences in pacing and scene framing between game styles based on the different goals being pursued.

In totally DM-plot games, the DM can focus strongly on scenes relevant to the plot, to facilitate player chances of advancing the plot. The DM may or may not shortcut scenes irrelevant to the plot.

In sandbox-type games the DM may deliberately try not to edit scenes, so as to avoid railroading them - the players may suffer a lot of failures and roadblocks if they are unlucky in their choices of direction (which are often random in this sort of game).

In a more player-centric game, the DM may focus on scenes relevant to the agreed-on goals on the game, and downplay scenes irrelevant to those goals. I've seen a lot of scenes where the players waste game time and resources pursuing the impossible because they don't know its (currently) impossible and the DM is unwilling to just come out and tell them that.

Also, depending on the tastes of those involved, the game may be slow-paced with lots of diversions and red herrings, or fast-paced with scenes that don't advance the play goals skipped or narrated but not detailed. The faster style of play is increasingly attractive to people with less free time, who know what they want from the game and how to ask for it.