D&D 5E Low CRs and "Boring" Monsters: Ogre

[Bigsta]

They aren't mutually exclusive. It's not one or the other. You can be playing the greatest role playing game in your life, but if you toss out all role playing elements as soon as combat starts and play the inhabitants as game pieces, then at that point you're no longer playing an RPG. You're playing a board game, as per what a boardgame is defined as.

This implication that one must suffer if you do the other makes zero sense to me. I don't know where this idea started that makes people feel like the role playing has to stop when combat starts, or that monsters/NPCs sit in a stasis until the PCs show up like they are in pause mode, but it's a shame. It's why we keep having threads about people complaining the game is broken or it sucks because monsters/npcs can't do anything if it's not listed as a defined power, or that encounters were way too easy because the DM ran them like a game piece that didn't do anything in the game outside of the actual encounter. (For example, if a monster lair is attacked by the PCs, and the monsters are alerted, the monsters will do activities even if they aren't part of an encounter. The game world doesn't go on pause because the PCs want to take a rest. That sort of thing).

So you're saying it's possible to go from playing the "correct way" (role playing) during the social pillar to playing the "incorrect way" (board game) during the combat pillar.

So badwrongfun, got it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

What I'm about to say isn't related directly to Tony's point but...
Clearly in at least some ways 5E is more complex than 4E

I was comparing 3e to 4e complexity, then 4e to 5e tactical depth/combat speed, so yeah, "orthagonal" I think they call it.... but....

Evaluating simplicity isn't simple.

Heh, it really isn't.

You might judge a game 'simple,' because you find it easy to learn or easy to play.
But, you might find it easy because it's familiar, or intuitive, or clear, or limited in scope, or catering to a preference, or confirming a bias, or interesting/fun enough that you enjoy the effort of learning it, or because you have a knowledgeable/talented player teaching it to you - presumably among many other possibilities.

D&D has always been complex and rarely (and only in specific elements) been at all intuitive.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

[MENTION=6793093]Jeff Albertson[/MENTION], of all the posts of mine that you've laughed at (now 150+? I'm in the top 20 for laughs on the XP stats page, and no one else thinks I'm funny!), this has to be the strangest. It's a purely factual correction of the availability of some 4e material:

Oh, I think you're pretty droll when you want to be. I'm sure you've made me laugh before one more than one occasion.

 

[Sacrosanct]

So you're saying it's possible to go from playing the "correct way" (role playing) during the social pillar to playing the "incorrect way" (board game) during the combat pillar.

So badwrongfun, got it.

Oh please. Obviously you haven't been reading any of these threads because I've addressed that probably a dozen times now. There is no "right" or "wrong way", there just is. You're either doing it, or you're not. Like I said earlier in my analogy, buying a race car and telling people you're a race car driver despite never actually racing the car doesn't mean anyone is accusing you of badwrongfun for pointing out how you're not actually a race car driver. So if you aren't engaging in the elements that makes a TTRPG different from a boardgame, then you're not playing a TTRPG. That's not WRONG, or BAD, or anything else if your group is having fun. But it's not playing a TTRPG at that point either.

I am soooo tired of people slinging out the whole "badwrongfun accusation" to anyone who happens to be pointing out that someone's opinion or personal feelings aren't fact. No one has the right to change how things are defined and then call out other people as being the bad ones when it's pointed out. And not every disagreement is an insult or pejorative. It just is. So if you (general you) are going to deviate from how the game is expected and designed to be played, take ownership of that instead of trying to blame it on anyone else who is pointing that out. There's nothing wrong with playing D&D like a boardgame if that's what you want. No one ever said it was. But saying you're doing something you're not doesn't make it suddenly true. If I like to throw the ball around a baseball field, but don't use bats in our game, then I'm not playing baseball. That doesn't mean I'm engaging in badwrongfun. That means I'm not playing baseball as it's defined.

 

[Bigsta]

Oh please. Obviously you haven't been reading any of these threads because I've addressed that probably a dozen times now. There is no "right" or "wrong way", there just is. You're either doing it, or you're not. Like I said earlier in my analogy, buying a race car and telling people you're a race car driver despite never actually racing the car doesn't mean anyone is accusing you of badwrongfun for pointing out how you're not actually a race car driver. So if you aren't engaging in the elements that makes a TTRPG different from a boardgame, then you're not playing a TTRPG. That's not WRONG, or BAD, or anything else if your group is having fun. But it's not playing a TTRPG at that point either.

I am soooo tired of people slinging out the whole "badwrongfun accusation" to anyone who happens to be pointing out that someone's opinion or personal feelings aren't fact. No one has the right to change how things are defined and then call out other people as being the bad ones when it's pointed out. And not every disagreement is an insult or pejorative. It just is. So if you (general you) are going to deviate from how the game is expected and designed to be played, take ownership of that instead of trying to blame it on anyone else who is pointing that out. There's nothing wrong with playing D&D like a boardgame if that's what you want. No one ever said it was. But saying you're doing something you're not doesn't make it suddenly true. If I like to throw the ball around a baseball field, but don't use bats in our game, then I'm not playing baseball. That doesn't mean I'm engaging in badwrongfun. That means I'm not playing baseball as it's defined.

So badwrongfun, got it.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Lots snipped except your summary.

As Hemlock showed (and contrary to what I had assumed) a party of four 1st level PCs (well, four simple martial PCs) at full health have a better than average chance to take on a CR2 Bandit Captain. And we know a Bandit Captain obliterates an Ogre 100% of the time with 60% health remaining. So we can assume that a party of 4 1st level PCs (at least four simple martial PCs) would destroy an Ogre. I'd be interested to have Hemlock run a simple cage match fight.

You don't really need me to do it--just take the script (https://repl.it/EnFq/14) and run "evalGroup [ogre] [champion1;champion1;rogue1;rogue1]" instead of "evalGroup [banditCaptain] [champion1;champion1;rogue1;rogue1]".

But since I'm here anyway, here are the results:

Kitty the Proto-Champion Brawler and Robin Hood the Proto-Champion Brawler and Maid Marian the Rogue and John the Rogue win 100 out of 100 matches against Splatt the Ogre, with 3.74 members still alive on average

And by "alive" it means "over 0 HP", so some of the "dead" PCs are actually just unconscious. The odds could obviously be improved if the PCs fought smarter but even if they just hammer anyway there's only a 25% chance of someone dropping to 0 HP.

 

[Sacrosanct]

So badwrongfun, got it.

Luckily this forum has a tool how to handle people who have no intention of having an honest conversation with other people.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

This implication that one must suffer if you do the other makes zero sense to me. I don't know where this idea started that makes people feel like the role playing has to stop when combat starts, or that monsters/NPCs sit in a stasis until the PCs show up like they are in pause mode, but it's a shame. It's why we keep having threads about people complaining the game is broken or it sucks because monsters/npcs can't do anything if it's not listed as a defined power, or that encounters were way too easy because the DM ran them like a game piece that didn't do anything in the game outside of the actual encounter. (For example, if a monster lair is attacked by the PCs, and the monsters are alerted, the monsters will do activities even if they aren't part of an encounter. The game world doesn't go on pause because the PCs want to take a rest. That sort of thing).

I blame cyclic initiative for a lot of things, but among them, I blame cyclic initiative for introducing the idea that combat is a special mode of gameplay where everything ceases to be organic and becomes rigidly regimented. If some players or DMs feel that everything in combat has to be based on combat turns and stat blocks, I feel that cyclic initiative is likely to be responsible for at least part of that.

At my table I've seen players fall in and out of combat thinking during combat (sometimes a Mexican standoff develops and lasts for hours of in-game time; sometimes they start talking to their adversaries trying to negotiate a cease-fire) and I don't think it would or could happen so often if I were using vanilla PHB initiative.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I blame cyclic initiative for a lot of things, but among them, I blame cyclic initiative for introducing the idea that combat is a special mode of gameplay where everything ceases to be organic and becomes rigidly regimented. If some players or DMs feel that everything in combat has to be based on combat turns and stat blocks, I feel that cyclic initiative is likely to be responsible for at least part of that.

At my table I've seen players fall in and out of combat thinking during combat (sometimes a Mexican standoff develops and lasts for hours of in-game time; sometimes they start talking to their adversaries trying to negotiate a cease-fire) and I don't think it would or could happen so often if I were using vanilla PHB initiative.

There's probably a lot of truth to this, and I use my own houserule initiative system*, but even with RAW initiative, I get the impression often that monsters/NPCs can't interact with the environment around them unless it specifically states so in the statblock. For me, that's half the fun. That's how you end up with swinging from the chandalier, flipping tables--all the heroic actions from movies. Why can't the ogre kick over his firepit at the PCs, creating an obstacle? Why can't the goblins attack the rope bridge, forcing the PCs on it to make DEX saves? Why can't orcs form a phalanx of pikemen in front of the orc archers? Why can't the ogre grapple the PC and throw him into the alligator swamp? that sort of thing.

*the way I handle initiative is that we all roll like normal. Let's say I got a 14 for my monsters. I call out, "Anyone above 14 can go." Then I do my turn, then everyone else goes. I find it just so much faster. Yes, it impacts things like effects that end/start at "end of your turn", but so far that's never been a major deal or impact to the flow of combat.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

There's probably a lot of truth to this, and I use my own houserule initiative system*, but even with RAW initiative, I get the impression often that monsters/NPCs can't interact with the environment around them unless it specifically states so in the statblock. For me, that's half the fun. That's how you end up with swinging from the chandalier, flipping tables--all the heroic actions from movies. Why can't the ogre kick over his firepit at the PCs, creating an obstacle? Why can't the goblins attack the rope bridge, forcing the PCs on it to make DEX saves? Why can't orcs form a phalanx of pikemen in front of the orc archers? Why can't the ogre grapple the PC and throw him into the alligator swamp? that sort of thing.

I think it's because cyclic initiative and the format of the MM causes people to start thinking in board game terms. They're no longer thinking, "Oh, this is an ogre who was in his home with his ogre buddies eating a rotten cow five seconds ago and is now looking at a bunch of heavily-armed ugly humans who just kicked down his door." They're thinking, "It's my turn to Attack/Dash/Disengage/etc."

The kicker is that I think it's really quite difficult to think in combat turns and also think in roleplaying terms. It's natural to say, "Oh, this ogre grimaces at his ogre buddy and then they each pick up one end of the table and hurl it at the PCs," but because that quite-natural interaction is complicated when you translate it into discretized combat turns ("I grimace at the other ogre and Ready an action to hurl the table as soon as he does likewise"?), it is no longer a natural thing to do if combat turns are your basic unit of interaction. And I think that can easily bleed over even into actions which could be expressed as a discrete action, like "I grimace at my buddy and then throw a cow head at the humans" because combat turns bias you towards thinking of each character/monster in isolation, with everyone else being frozen in time until your "turn" is over. It's no longer natural to grimace at your buddy unless he can roll his eyes appreciatively or grimace back.

It takes a fair amount of mental sophistication for a player or DM to translate "take combat turns separately" back into "all of this stuff is actually happening at the same time, and the isolation is just a formality, and you guys are grimacing and interacting with each other throughout." Those who haven't fully internalized that sophistication will tend to steer themselves into action declarations which make sense in discretized combat turns, especially the actions that are designed to be taken during combat turns like Attack/Dash/Disengage/etc. "It's my turn" doesn't mean "it's my turn to do anything," it means "it's my turn to choose from a list of things that can be done in a single combat turn." When was the last time you saw someone playing with cyclic initiative declare an action that would take more than one combat turn to resolve? "I'm picking the lock." "I'm still picking the lock."

Coming from AD&D, cyclic initiative is the worst thing about 5E, and the thing I'm gladdest that I fixed.