D&D General GM's are you bored of your combat and is it because you made it boring?

[Helldritch]

Helldritch

It was the dragon lord Saga. And let me save you a read, it was tedious. Even die-hard mystara fans will admit that that entire Trilogy was dull. You never get a feeling that the hero is ever in danger. I read the first one and had to force myself to finish the last two. There's a reason the book's aren't canon.

Strange, I did love them. A friend lend them to me a decade or two ago. Maybe the fact that I have a fast reading pace saved me from boredome. But yes the hero was never in danger. It was more the mystery surounding the hero that was interesting and the draconic view/society that I liked. It was good enough to inspire the Draconomicon and the Council of Wyrms supplement.

 

[ClaytonCross]

So I updated the rules with some changes, clarifications, and I added #6 as homebrew systems in part because of the discussion of the moral system for NPCs freaking out being a note but not a functional system in the DMG. I also added it because some of the posts seem to suggest home brew without the words. While I figure "homebrew" is a dirty word for some and pushing it into a separate bullet keeps a line for those poeple. I also recognize perhaps a number of us were hard against it when we know very well most tables use some and it can make running a game more fun for the GM. There are a few comets above that section that could be achived with homebrew or without homebrew. I am separating #6 specificity as systems where your adding an entire mechanic. The Special actions bullet is an attempt to describe us of universal homebrew as its own mechanic in that if an NPC can do it an a player character can do it, its now a system not just an ability for a specific monster.

 

[nevin]

Sparta lost to the Romans because Romans were way more numerous than them. The Greek impressed the Romans so much (via Spartans) that they adopted their gods and cultures.

Call the "deadly contest" the way you want, the result were the same. And yes they were not the only ones. The Akkadians were rumored to do the same thing as were the Babylonians.

For the last part you're right. There are some example of humans taking care of the injured and deformed. I never said that (deadly contest and weeding out the week) this was systematic. It is only in modern/enlightment society that helping the injured and deformed became systematic (and that is a good thing). Neanderthal were particularly good at that from recent digs. As long as they could still do some chores to help the tribe they would be cared for.

And calling me ignorant about history and archeology is blunt and shows your arrogance and self entitlement. I live with an historian (my wife) and she is handicaped (muscular dystrophia). I have a Bachelor's degree at a university and one of my pet peeve is exactly history and archeology (and quantum physics. Go figure...). For long time, my wife was sure that I was a student in archeology and history because I was attending some of her classes and I was discussing medieval society with her teachers (I was not registered, I just had the permission to attend because I happened to knew the sons of one of her teacher). So nope, I am far from being ignorant.

no Sparta lost to Rome because Athens and Sparta beat each other down. If thing had gone a bit differently Athens would have rules the Mediterranean and the Rome we know would never have existed. until their war with Sparta and the pandemic that happened during it Athens was the dominate naval power in the region. Even Rome Couldn't match them

 

[Puddles]

Another thing that has been toying in my mind, is the notion of setting difficult challenges for yourself as the DM to accomplish during a combat.

We've already talked about establishing the motivations of your enemies, and this covers a lot of the same ground, but there is something extra I want to add: what if the thing your enemies are trying to do, is actually pretty difficult and will require all your skill as a tactician?

I'll give an example.

In my last session, I ran a combat between the 3 level 1 PCs, who faced a trio of Goblin Wolfriders on the top of a rocky hill in the frozen tundra.

The goal of the goblins was as follows: To isolate one of the party, catch them in a net, and make off with them in tow.

The reason I particularly enjoyed this combat is because that goal was really hard for me to achieve. I tried to use all my cunning and was nearly successful, but in the end I failed. I played it as follows:

I equipped one of my goblins with a net and a harpoon, and the other two with the standard shortbow and scimitar and approached from the north. I stayed just out of 65ft, weaving between the crags, allowing me to pepper them with arrows whilst staying in cover and being too far for them to engage. I then sent the two wolfriders with bows round to the west to draw them out, and the netter round the east. My players fell for my bait, the bard and rogue went after the 2 with bows, while the druid tried to attack the netter with her sling.

The druid was now isolated, so I sprang my trap, all three wolfriders dashed towards the druid. One of the archers was unfortunately (for me) decapitated by an attack of opportunity made by the Rogue who had hidden behind a crag, but the other two got in close and flanked the druid. I successfully threw a net over her, and then scarpered, dragging the druid with me.

The druid's quick wits saved her, as she was being dragged she grabbed a sharpened rock on the floor which I ruled gave advantage to her next strength check to break free. She cut her way out the net and gave her kidnapper a mighty wallop with her quarter staff as it fled with the other.

My plan had failed, but I had managed to take her a good 80ft and left her with quite a few cuts and bruises (and a dented ego). I had a lot of fun trying to pull it off though!

The point being, a lot of the time the goals we set the enemies often just revolve around killing the party members, but one way to give the DM a more enjoyable combat is for the goal to be something else, and something hard to achieve.

A few examples off the top of my head would be to try and steal rations, supplies or gold off the players. Perhaps you could be trying to lure the players into a valley or some other dangerous position. Or perhaps, one of your enemies carries an important item (like a message), and you are trying to break through the players' battle line and get that 1 enemy to safety beyond.

If the players are savvy, they will eventually cotton on to what the enemies are up to and go out their way to stop it, and that in turn can lead to both you and the players having to think tactically and create really memorable combats.

The last point is with the example goals listed above, you might notice that none of them have an absolute fail state for the players. If the DM wins, it doesn't mean the party are wiped out, or some other game ending state, and that's a good thing because it means you as a DM don't necessarily need to hold back any punches when trying to pull off these harebrained schemes.

Hope that gives you some food for thought!

 

[Helldritch]

no Sparta lost to Rome because Athens and Sparta beat each other down. If thing had gone a bit differently Athens would have rules the Mediterranean and the Rome we know would never have existed. until their war with Sparta and the pandemic that happened during it Athens was the dominate naval power in the region. Even Rome Couldn't match them

You kinda prove my point. They beat each other so much that Rome was able to beat them with superior numbers. The events leading to the Roman supremacy over the Greek is irrelevant as they (the Romans) won exactly because they had the numbers for them. And even with that, the Greek's resistance was so strong that they imprinted their culture and warfare knowledge on the Romans.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Call the "deadly contest" the way you want, the result were the same. And yes they were not the only ones. The Akkadians were rumored to do the same thing as were the Babylonians.

RUMOURED.

Come on. RUMOURED. It's all bloody rumours. Find an account from a society, written by that society, where they actually did the thing. Or better yet, find archaeological evidence. Funny how there never is any of either, eh?

Probably because it didn't actually happen! Maybe I'm wrong, but let's see some evidence, not trash-talk from some Athenian prat or whoever.

You say you're not ignorant, and maybe you aren't, but why then repeat dodgy rumours with substantiation or qualification? Like, let's look at Herodotus. The Father of History of the Father of Lies, depending on who you ask. Dude is either his direct experience (very valuable first-hand accounts) or metric tons of rumours. To him tell it, no-one ever took a city by siege, ever. There's always an exotic/romantic tale about how people snuck into a city, or there was a traitor, or whatever. I love Herodotus but he's full of nonsense. Half of what he's saying is probably totally true, and half of it is probably complete bollocks. And we don't know which without other evidence, and that's true of most "rumours".

The Spartans were a failed state from pretty much day 1.

They enslaved a much larger population (something rarely but not never seen in history before/since), and then had to refocus their entire society into violently oppressing that slave population (and no I don't agree that a better word is "serf", but that's a whole other discussion). Pretty much every decision they made comes back to "Oh crap there are so many of them, we gotta keep them from revolting!", whether it's their military machine (which was largely used to suppress said slave revolts), to allowing women to own property (which was necessary with the professional military taking the men away full-time), to the use of exposure (which was part of the propaganda machine that kept them fanatic).

And don't make me start talking about the 700 Thespians, either, who history loves to ignore. "300" my arse.

They managed to stop oppressing the slaves long enough to have one moment of glory, and history forever acts like they were amazing, when in fact they were idiots who happened to be useful in one particular situation.

As long as they could still do some chores to help the tribe they would be cared for.

I don't think there's any evidence to support that, that I'm aware of. Explanations like this fail to account for that fact that they're humans, and so very much bound by emotion and often irrational beliefs, rather than cold calculus. In reality there are going to have been situations where people who could do tasks were ditched because they were unpopular and/or the situation was desperate, and people who were almost entirely useless were kept because they were beloved and/or sacred.

There's a temptation, I think, to see the stone age/bronze age as a sort "post-apocalypse", but studies on actual H-G tribes tend to suggest it was more edenic than apocalyptic most of the time.

 

[Helldritch]

They managed to stop oppressing the slaves long enough to have one moment of glory, and history forever acts like they were amazing, when in fact they were idiots who happened to be useful in one particular situation.

Strange that when history does not suit you or your POV, you dismiss it. But when it suits you... Well...
Rumors go both ways I guess. But I'll stick to the partially proven classic explanations if you don't mind. I think it's better than just theories based on the assumptions that everything said was a lie. After all, the Romans did accounted their battles with the Greeks. Were the Spartans parangon of virtues? Of course not.

I don't think there's any evidence to support that, that I'm aware of. Explanations like this fail to account for that fact that they're humans, and so very much bound by emotion and often irrational beliefs, rather than cold calculus. In reality there are going to have been situations where people who could do tasks were ditched because they were unpopular and/or the situation was desperate, and people who were almost entirely useless were kept because they were beloved and/or sacred.

Never said the contrary. Fully agree on that. Humans are humans after all. For good or bad, they're humans.

There's a temptation, I think, to see the stone age/bronze age as a sort "post-apocalypse", but studies on actual H-G tribes tend to suggest it was more edenic than apocalyptic most of the time.

And there is the other temptation to see the garden of eden side of stone/bronze age where humans had no ruler and only have to live off the land and other utter non sense. You were victims of wild predators, other tribes and until the coming of agriculture, you were not sure to have food for the winter... And when you had reserves, you'd better be ready to defend those reserves with your lives. Yep, Great Times...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And there is the other temptation to see the garden of eden side of stone/bronze age where humans had no ruler and only have to live off the land and other utter non sense. You were victims of wild predators, other tribes and until the coming of agriculture, you were not sure to have food for the winter... And when you had reserves, you'd better be ready to defend those reserves with your lives. Yep, Great Times...

You say "great times" sarcastically, but literally all the scientific evidence we have suggests that hunter-gatherers were larger, healthier, lived longer, had much more free time, and were less worn-down/damaged by their lifestyle than early agricultural peoples. It took thousands of years for agriculture to even bring food/health/growth levels up to near H-G ones, and it still hasn't got back to 20-hour weeks. That's science, dude.

I agree that people can go too far, of course! There are some hysterical novels about the neolithic and paleolithic which do get way too edenic, particularly, and yes, the old "whoops we don't have any food" is probably part of how agriculture got started (because some tribes were already on routes where they planted food expecting it to be grown by the time they came back around, so could expand from that to "why not just plant more and stick around?").

There's very little scientific evidence to support the kind of warfare over reserves you're describing though. What evidence there is suggests warfare became drastically more common with agriculture, and that before that, warfare was typically low-intensity and not about "reserves", but rather about who is allowed to hunt where and so on. Didn't mean it it didn't get nasty, but it's a different kind of thing to later warfare, and doesn't seem common.

Strange that when history does not suit you or your POV, you dismiss it. But when it suits you...

Examples? I can't see anything I've written which doesn't have multiple historical sources and/or hard archaeological evidence. If you can't provide any examples, that's not a fair thing to say.

 

[Helldritch]

You say "great times" sarcastically, but literally all the scientific evidence we have suggests that hunter-gatherers were larger, healthier, lived longer, had much more free time, and were less worn-down/damaged by their lifestyle than early agricultural peoples. It took thousands of years for agriculture to even bring food/health/growth levels up to near H-G ones, and it still hasn't got back to 20-hour weeks. That's science, dude.

So far, a few examples have shown what you said. But so far, the evidence is that the H-G had relatively short lives. I have Atikameks friends and their HG habits takes up more than 20 hours per week. More like 60... and we are in modern times. They showed how it was done to anthropologists of our university. Crafting clothes, (especially winter clothes) is not so easy. Hunting isn't always successful. So fishing is of utmost importance. H-G was a lot of work but one thing's for sure. Diabetes was not a concern. Humanity came close to extinction during the H-G times, there was a PBS archeological show on that. Less than 10,000 humans were on earth from what I remember.

There's very little scientific evidence to support the kind of warfare over reserves you're describing though. What evidence there is suggests warfare became drastically more common with agriculture, and that before that, warfare was typically low-intensity and not about "reserves", but rather about who is allowed to hunt where and so on. Didn't mean it it didn't get nasty, but it's a different kind of thing to later warfare, and doesn't seem common.

Warfare comes in all sizes and shapes. If you compare our wars with H-G warfare...

Examples? I can't see anything I've written which doesn't have multiple historical sources and/or hard archaeological evidence. If you can't provide any examples, that's not a fair thing to say.

You did demeaned the Spartan and their society. If they were the morons you described, they would never have stood against Athene. By ignoring their achievements, you did exactly what I said. Were they saints? Nope. But they were not morrons. Fair enough?

Edit: The vast majority of the time I respect your opinion and I really like your interventions (and more often than not, fully agree with them). But saying things you said in this thread about historical facts (or at least what is and is still considered historical facts) is just a wee bit too much for me to let go.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:

We know that topic drift is a thing, but this whole line about Spartans and such is... rather far from the original topic of the thread. Can you bring it back around to vague relevance, please folks? Thanks.