D&D 5E Helping melee combat to be more competitive to ranged.

[FormerlyHemlock]

So you skip right to the levels where you get Seeming or do you start at level 1?

As it happens, Disguise Self is available from level 1 and is one of my favorite spells. The Disguise Kit proficiency is pretty cool too. Even just carrying a greatsword or a pair of scimitars that you can't really use proficiently can be a way of disguising your nature.

I didn't think I had to spell it out but apparently I do.

 

[smbakeresq]

As it happens, Disguise Self is available from level 1 and is one of my favorite spells. The Disguise Kit proficiency is pretty cool too. Even just carrying a greatsword or a pair of scimitars that you can't really use proficiently can be a way of disguising your nature.

I didn't think I had to spell it out but apparently I do.

So you use a first level spell to disguise your wizard as a fighter in the hope that the creatures you are in combat with wont notice you not fighting, not using your weapons, and in the back lines and therefore wont target you? You think that would hide you in the 70 gnoll example we have been talking about? The same gnolls who wont care and will target you anyway?

Can you spell WASTED SPELL?

I bet your DM picks you up in his car to make sure you get to the game.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

So you use a first level spell to disguise your wizard as a fighter in the hope that the creatures you are in combat with wont notice you not fighting, not using your weapons, and in the back lines and therefore wont target you? You think that would hide you in the 70 gnoll example we have been talking about? The same gnolls who wont care and will target you anyway?

Can you spell WASTED SPELL?

I bet your DM picks you up in his car to make sure you get to the game.

Wow. That seems a bit harsh.

Seeing as the spell lasts an hour, there's a fair chance that it might have been cast with a more general application than just a single encounter. But my guess would be, based on your reaction, that you would view it as a useless spell regardless. It gets a lot of quite creative use in our campaigns. Plus in a combat a ruse generally only needs to work for a round or two to be effective.

 

[Caliban]

Wow. That seems a bit harsh.

That's the only way he knows how to be. Read his other posts.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

It's not a videogame thing. It's a "I just want to play a hero doing hero stuff" thing.

And I have no complaints about balance, no.

(Nor do I think that the encumbrance variant rules are there to balance anything but some players' desire for encumbrance rules against those of us who don't want to be bothered.)

Although it might not be a video-game thing, I think it's a similar approach, but for different reasons, perhaps.

4e really pushed the approach that it's all about the main event, the combats, the actions, or important scenes. Forget the ones in between. The travel is boring, encumbrance and resource management is boring, etc.

The video-game approach (at least to me) is more about "winning" by getting more abilities, more treasure, killing more things, etc. This isn't the case with all video games, obviously, and they often handle them with different approaches.

I don't see anything wrong with that, it's one style of playing. Much as you can have a movie, a mini-series, or a series. There's a lot more character development in a series that lasts for a dozen or more episodes a season, and over several seasons. It's not necessarily better, just different, but appeals to a different group.

To me a "hero doing hero things" is much more about the journey and overcoming the mundane part of life. My campaigns are what most would consider low to mid-level, the last one took over two years to get to 8th level (meeting weekly). And that one moved quite a bit quicker than most (since I/we were new to 5e and its progression). For us the progression is more along the lines of accomplishing missions and overcoming challenges than gaining new abilities. Encumbrance and resources provide some constant challenges that impact the rest of the campaign when you take them into account.

If I were running the APs, or adventures like that I probably wouldn't want to worry about them either. But my campaigns tend to run years with the same characters, and I like them to be grounded in the reality of everyday life in that world. It gives their actions and decisions, along with the gold they find, more meaning. I think they spent 6 or 8 weeks in some catacombs alone. Their reactions when they finally found their way back out (they didn't do much mapping...) was priceless.

 

[pemerton]

They wont all rush in either

since there are 70 gnolls, all of whom should likely be equipped with longbows, there's no reason to think that martial warriors can stop them all, or that the gnolls wouldn't simply fire arrows over the warriors at the cleric.

How do we know they won't all rush in? How do we know that the gnolls will shoot arrows over the warriors?

Maybe they're berserker gnolls. Maybe they've all sworn a blood-oath to Yeenoghu to tear the defiler limb-from-limb, and so the first thing they do is charge the cleric, with sneering disregard for his/her petty spirit guardians.

For my part, given what I enjoy about the game and what I know my players enjoy about the game, I'd be as likely to set up that sort of scenario as one in which the PCs engage in a hit-and-run skirmish with 70 ranger-like gnolls.

And in any event, Spirit Guardians doesn't seem to render the caster immobile. Maybe in [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]'s scenario the cleric was using the spell as a mobile aura to cut down gnolls - that seems like a reasonable sort of tactic for an 8th level PC. It was other posters - eg [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION], [MENTION=6834463]happyhermit[/MENTION] - who seemed to assume that the shredding of 70 gnolls by the spell meant that the gnolls charged mindlessly into a stationary aura.

(I've also just noticed that 5e gnolls seem to be particularly unclever - 6 INT - whereas in AD&D they were low-average (ie 5 to 10 INT), and in 4e they tended to be at least 8 INT. Presumably this put some upper limit on their inferential ability.)

Think about it. The Gnolls are faced with a clearly visible spell of a small radius, they watch their brethren being "shredded" while accomplishing nothing.

How do you know this is what happened? Eg how do you know what the bulk of the gnolls could see? And how do you know that they thought their brethren accomplished nothing - maybe dying in pursuit of a blood oath against the defiler cleric is the greatest glory a gnoll can accomplish?

in anything like an even reasonably realistic TTRPG, it will always be possible to set up situations where ranged is a more reasonable option.

I assume that, by "reasonable", you mean "efficient" or perhaps "effective".

But I'm not sure why that is your metric of reasonableness. Even in the real world, for many people the scope of what is reasonable does not overlap with the scope of what is efficient or effective. The lack of overlap would be even greater in a fantasy world, I imagine.

**************************

Having written all of the above before reading [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION]'s post 880, I see that I wasn't too far off the mark:

This enables the Cleric to catch plenty of them by simply moving forward ten feet or so. So it's no surprise many were caught, either by charging into the field or by being too close.

<snip>

I had placed four approach tunnels one of which came out in the chamber's ceiling.

<snip>

The Cleric positioned himself so that no (or few) Gnolls could pass him by, if we include the 15 ft radius from the spell. He did so by moving right underneath the opening in the ceiling - making it rain dead and dying Gnolls all over the place.

large intelligent groups (humanoids) almost always have "back row" options, especially against a smaller force

Gnolls are INT 6 - so not all that bright. And why will they almost always have "back row" options? How do we know that Yeenoghu has not geased this group of gnolls to attack only with fang and claw, so that they can feel the enemy's flesh under their nails and taste the enemy's blood on their tongues?

For me, at least, it is a game of fantasy before it is a game of military simulations.

 

[pemerton]

D&D has become combat, combat, combat rest to get abilities back, combat, combat, combat, need long rest so lets get out of the dungeon and come back with no repercussions.

<snip>

I think some of this is because people only play in shops

<snip>

Players want it to be like computer games

<snip>

D&D was never like that

Are you talking about yourself? In which case I'm sorry you don't enjoy your games of D&D.

Or are you ralking about other people? In which case, which ones? And who in this thread do you think you're talking aboug? And also, what is wrong with combat in D&D?

Also, what sorts of repercussions do you have in mind? What are your win/lose conditions for D&D, and how do you think different sorts of play should be rewarded/penalised in relation to those conditions?

It was never intended that way. It was designed as an immersive experience, wherein your PC lived in that world day to day with that world limitations.

This doesn't describe D&D as it is presented by Gygax in his PBH and DMG.

For instance - because he assumed that play was very frequent (multiple sessions per week), he suggested an abstract system for the passing of time (1 day in the real world = 1 day in the game world - DMG p 37) together with an abstract system for living expenses (100 gp per level per month - DMG p 25), unless the PC was engaged in some bit of action (eg wilderness travel, spell research) that expressly takes up a set amount of ingame time.

That's why stuff like <snippage> cost of living <snippage> food costs at the taverns <snippage> and basically everything outside of actual combat was put in

<snip>

The level of detail in D&D is far greater than videogames, but it requires your group to immerse.

Some RPGers do cost-of-living far more immsersively than what Gygax suggests - eg the player actually declares what his/her PC is spending money on.

But some RPGers - or even the same ones, at other times or in other moods, don't care. If the real action is (say) negotiating with the gods for the fate of the world, the cost of a pint down at the local probably isn't such a big thing to focus on. And might even distract from immersion in the action of the game.

Also, you didn't answer my question about what RPGs you play besides D&D. There are RPGs out there with far more detail than D&D (I mentioned Rolemaster as one). Given the sort of game you seem to prefer, I'm surprised you haven't tried one of these.

Also, given how experienced you are with the game, you do know that encumbrance was an optional rule in Moldvay Basic, don't you?

for DM's, get a copy of City of Skulls (IIRC) from about 25 years ago. They have a reputation system in there that I have used for years, for the trouble the PC's cause for the BBEG they get reputation points. At certain point levels the BBEG sends out a "hit squad" to deal with the problem, which is the PC's. This way the random encounters are not really random, they fit in with the story.

Good for you - I'm glad you have a system for mechanising NPC reactions that you like.

Before City of Skulls was published, back in the mid-80s, I was running an Oriental Adventures game that has honour rules which resemble a reputation mechanic. So I'm familiar with the concept.

I've also thought a bit over the decades about how to set up encounters, and whether or not I want "random" ones. I probably settled on my current preferred approach around the tmie City of Skulls was published, or not too much later.

the World of Warcraft crowd, they don't want to be bothered with it, they want it hand waived all away. But then those same people come here and complain about things in the ruleset while never bothering to use the whole ruleset to balance stuff out. Its a meta game issue on how people play.

Who in this thread has identified as part of the "World of Warcraft crowd"? No one that I recall.

More generally, when someone posts about wanting melee combat to be mechanically competitive with ranged combat, I think it's more helpful to engage with them about the mechanics of those respective attack forms. They're probably not looking to be to that they don't really know how to play D&D properly. Even if it seems that they play it a different way from how yuo do, or enjoying different bits of the experience.

 

[pemerton]

Although it might not be a video-game thing, I think it's a similar approach, but for different reasons, perhaps.

4e really pushed the approach that it's all about the main event, the combats, the actions, or important scenes. Forget the ones in between. The travel is boring, encumbrance and resource management is boring, etc.

The video-game approach (at least to me) is more about "winning" by getting more abilities, more treasure, killing more things, etc.

<snip>

To me a "hero doing hero things" is much more about the journey and overcoming the mundane part of life.

<snip>

If I were running the APs, or adventures like that I probably wouldn't want to worry about them either. But my campaigns tend to run years with the same characters

With all due respect, I think most of this is just overgeneralisation from your own case.

For instance: I don't run APs. I run in "scene framing"/"indie" style. And I don't worry about encumbrance., or ammunition (If the players in my games want to keep track of it for their PCs, that's up to them.) I've been running my games like this for around 30 years. In that time I've never played a video game, so I don't think those are to blame.

I also have no idea what you think is the connection between "focusing on important scenes" and "winning by getting more abilities". Especially in the context of 4e, where - as is well-known - getting more abilities is not intended to change the fudnamental maths of the game, because it uses level-scaled DCs, bonuses and effects. So in 4e "focusing on important scenes" produces character development, including "more abiliities", as the character progress through the tiers of play. I'm not sure where you see the "winning", unless you win conditions for RPGing are "have a good time", in which case I feel sorry for any losers out there.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

But... if they don't have longbows, then they're not "regular gnolls."

Longbows are kind of fundamental to the 5E gnoll's tactical identity. They're not as mobile as orcs (no Aggressive), and not as heavily-armored as hobgoblins. Gnolls are the "quickly-reproducing versatile horde attacker with low AC and high HP" creature.

I'm baffled why, if you're trying to test out the rules for mob attacks, you'd purposefully take away the thing that allows them all to make mob attacks. I can only conjecture from your words above that you somehow didn't know that 5E gnolls come with longbows.

Edit: It's also kind of weird that you take a spell which calls for the appearance of demonic or angelic protectors and rule that it's visually just a "slight shimmer". The spell text says, "They flit around you to a distance of 15 feet for the duration. If you are good or neutral, their spectral form appears angelic or fey (your choice). If you are evil, they appear fiendish." But fine, okay, you modified Spirit Guardians for your campaign, whatever.

Hordes of well-played range-equipped creatures are murder on Tier II/III PCs who aren't specifically prepared to counter them. The experiment you ran led you to a conclusion diametrically opposite the truth.

I agree that hordes of well-played (range-equipped) creatures are murder on PCs.

But in general, I don't consider longbows fundamental to gnolls. Of course, my gnolls have been equipped and used the same basic tactics since AD&D, so just because the MM says they have longbows doesn't make it so.

Perhaps the gnolls in his world don't use longbows either?

Gnolls are one of several humanoid races in my world (including kobolds, troglodytes, and lizard folk) that are both bipedal and quadrupedal. Their armor and weapon design (which varies widely with the race's skill in mining and weapon smithing) is based on this feature. Javelins and spears are common.

I've always treated gnolls as a bit like barbarians, and the gnoll's rampage ability not only plays into that, but also indicates that a ranged weapon is not their favored tactic anyway. I like the Gnoll Flesh Gnawer's sudden rush ability in VGtM, and the general description is also how I would generally perceive a knoll in any event.

I also added pack tactics to my gnolls, because I model their tactics off of hyenas.

The last thing I think of with gnolls is a longbow.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

With all due respect, I think most of this is just overgeneralisation from your own case.

For instance: I don't run APs. I run in "scene framing"/"indie" style. And I don't worry about encumbrance., or ammunition (If the players in my games want to keep track of it for their PCs, that's up to them.) I've been running my games like this for around 30 years. In that time I've never played a video game, so I don't think those are to blame.

I also have no idea what you think is the connection between "focusing on important scenes" and "winning by getting more abilities". Especially in the context of 4e, where - as is well-known - getting more abilities is not intended to change the fudnamental maths of the game, because it uses level-scaled DCs, bonuses and effects. So in 4e "focusing on important scenes" produces character development, including "more abiliities", as the character progress through the tiers of play. I'm not sure where you see the "winning", unless you win conditions for RPGing are "have a good time", in which case I feel sorry for any losers out there.

Yes, I'll admit it's a generalization. It wasn't intended to be all-inclusive, and it's obviously my perception.

4e had level-scaled DCs, but an endless number of new abilities. Progress in part is equated to gaining new abilities. The APs are designed to be played in a relatively short period of time, say 3-6 months, and the game time is often even shorter, but the characters typically rise from 1st to 15th level in that period. That is, the focus of the game seems to be on gaining more levels and abilities.

Those are also things that I (perhaps wrongly) equate to video games, where most games that call themselves RPGs equate RPG with being able to gain experience and improve your character with...more abilities.

Not every game follows those patterns, obviously. Not even every video game.

Video games borrow a lot from RPGs, and RPG design has also borrowed a lot from video game design, as well as other areas (I think 4e shows more signs of MtG than video games, myself).

I play very few video games, and that's only in the last few years, and I gravitate toward games that don't have these styles. Most of them, though, are what my daughter decides we'd like to play. But I don't have to play video games to see their influence, because not only designers, but the players themselves bring a different approach.

The focusing on important scenes approach isn't always related to faster level advancement, or gaining more abilities. But those that like to level up quickly and gain abilities quickly tend to like that approach because they don't spend time either not moving forward to those goals, or using the abilities they've gained (which tend to focus on combat). Encumbrance and ammunition are also commonly dropped in those situations for the same reasons, they don't contribute to their goals.

I suppose that's the real answer, if encumbrance and ammunition makes the game more interesting for you, and you enjoy that sort of grounding in the more mundane aspects of adventuring, then it can be a lot of fun.