D&D 5E Combat as war, sport, or ??

[Lanefan]

So, when this happens, do you note what the difference was?

Perhaps in the former case you couldn't roll above a 5? Perhaps in the latter case you rolled half a dozen crits in the same encounter?

Maybe I'm confusing you with a different poster, but weren't you the one who just claimed to have 38 years of experience? No offense, but this post reads like weaponized incompetence on your part. Like in those 38 years you couldn't figure out how to estimate the difficulty of an encounter. Frankly, I find that a little hard to believe.

Yes, RNG is always a factor. I prefer it that way. I would think, given your stated preferences, that you would prefer it that way too. However, as DMs with some experience, it's not that difficult to get a feel for how challenging an encounter will be on average.

Indeed. What I'm saying is that "average" can be made up of a tight range or a loose one; and I'm used to it being quite loose to very loose. Put another way, if you run the same combat ten times and get pretty much the same result every time, that's a tight range around the average; where if the results are widely different each time that's a loose range around the average.

I prefer a loose range, but it does mean not always knowing what to expect from any given combat.

If the elder dragon rolls nothing but 1s and the players roll nothing but 20s then they may steamroll it. And if the players roll nothing but 1s and the lone kobold rolls nothing but 20s it may steamroll them. (Obviously abilities that are save for half change this a bit, but let's leave those aside for the sake of simplicity.) However, we can pretty safely assume that for a 4th level party the elder dragon will most likely result in a TPK if engaged directly, whereas the kobold will probably pose a trivial encounter.

After we've played a session or three, we can probably start to get a feel as to how the party is performing relative to the encounter building guidelines. If they're over performing we can increase the challenge a bit (this doesn't even have to be additional creatures; it might simply be something like terrain that favors the monsters). If they're under performing, we can reduce the challenge.

Maybe I'm off base and the guys I game with and I are gaming geniuses who managed to crack a code that no one else has managed. I strongly doubt it though. I'm pretty sure that any DM with a modicum of experience under their belt can manage the same. For those DMs who aren't experienced enough, setting the guidelines on the easier end of the scale is a good idea, because they can gradually learn to get a feel for the system without accidentally slaughtering their parties.

If the game gives encounter building guidelines, those guidelines have to assume a tight range around the average in order to be of any use at all. Those guidelines also have to assume the game will be run "as intended" e.g. with a party of x-number of characters using y-rules (and in the case of 5e, without z, a, b and c options).

Those assumptions all too often just don't hold up once the dice hit the table. End result: other thanin the very vaguest of ways, the presence of encounter guidelines only serves to lead the DM up the garden path.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I am way too conflicted on this... I hate the level drain effect, BUT i like the caution the fear of it had. I can throw whights that 'perm hp until SR' damage all day and not I nor any of my players are that worried.

The line I think is the long rest. If something can be completely erased by a long rest, and it doesn't kill you outright, it's just not that threatening. And in 5e, almost everything falls into that basket.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The protagonist play you mention isn't actively supported by the rules taking on some of the weight involved for the gm, it's just a backronym type label that tries to explain their failure to support the gm at anything else. Even if protagonist play was actively supported by the rules it raises serious questions how any gm with multiple players could run a game with multiple protagonists & no pressure for players to think as a group.

If the game were structured as some kind of asymmetrical war game it would at least provide a logical foundation for how multiple protagonists can exist at one table. 5e cuts off that structure by taking so many efforts to minimize & outright eliminate the tactical elements present in war games & even ttrpgs though so even that hypothetical foundation for the concept is resting over desert sands.
I get what you are trying to explain, but it's not a thing 5e supports as a ruleset

I think you are over focusing on protagonist as a singular thing. The party as a whole is the protagonist and is it usually done by table agreement. This is really the basis of trad story focused gaming. Of the kind played by the likes of Critical Role. The in-game rules support comes from the tools the game gives the players characters to survive the in-game challenges. From more it points, to resource recovery mechanics.
4e where the characters were, big damn action heroes most supported this kind of play in the D&D space and TSR D&D the least because in the TSR era the characters had to scrounge the needed resources from the presented world in the form of henchmen, magic items, potions and so forth and this resulted in a more operational mode - what @Aldarc refers to as survival horror (Matt Colville agrees him) Though I view survival horror as a more narrower focus, i.e. as something with actual horror genre aspects.
From what I can gather, Colville and @Aldarc would consider running the Red Star Tractor works scenario from ASL as survival horror but I would prefer a different term (even if I am not sure what that term should be) hence my expression of that style as "operational".
If on the other hand, if you enter the campaign with the backstory that one of the characters is the true and rightful heir of Gondor with any kind of reasonable expectation of seeing that happen then you are tending in a more protagonist (or story) mode.
I want to avoid the direct use of story or narrative because in the rpg space those terms have been appropriated by games that mechanically support character development and degrees of authorship by the players of those characters.
In D&D the authorship is in the hands of the DM, but also some casual playstyles where the players expect the characters to "Step up" to combat challenges but the idea of a satisfying narrative is secondary or non-existent also fall (in my view) into the category of protagonist play.

Finally, this is also in my view a table agenda, in the 2e era groups achieved this end by DM force with almost no support from the rules as written.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Agreed. Game categories are fluid.

In the case of 5e, I think that it can be disappointing for those who want more of the survival and exploration side of the game that OSR-engages, made worse by the vestiges of these elements in 5e, albeit serving a more perfunctory or vestigial role. The game culture, as a whole, has moved past this but it still teases its past playstyles in order to appeal to TRADITION! I believe that Colville talks about this in the video you mentioned.

I think that you are correct to characterise the operational style as vestigial in 5e. The rule elements are there but the stated procedures are incomplete, and it is really only viable over the lowest levels. 1 to 3 for sure and possibly to level 5, may be 7 at a stretch.
Though for that style may be level 5 is where you begin domain management. It would be necessary to completely abandon the given advancement rules and replace with something that slows level advancement down to a suitable pace.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Right, I would liken level drain to a video game where you lose significant progress when you fail (Rogue-likes). Once you've achieved significant progress, it can be extremely stressful. Which can be fun in its own way, but is also a massive turn off for some.

In Rogue, once you die that's game over. Doesn't matter if you've been playing 6 minutes or 6 hours. You're back to square one. This essentially ratchets up the tension the longer you play, because the longer you play the more invested time you have to lose. That said, from what I hear some folks play these types of games not to win but to find out how their character dies. For them, it might not be stressful, since their not so invested in their progress.

In Souls games, you get a second chance. If you die, you drop all of your souls (which are both used for leveling up and as currency) and go back to the last checkpoint. If you manage to return to where you died and pick up your souls, you lose no progress. On the other hand, if you you die before that, they're gone. It makes for tense "corpse runs", but generally less stressful gameplay than Rogue. For the record, I quite like Souls games.

Then you have games like the Fallout series, which let you save almost anywhere. As long as you remember to save (or autosave) you lose almost nothing when you die. Maybe a few minutes of progress. And if you're the type of person who dislikes losing progress, you quickly learn to save often. You can definitely still have tense moments in these types of games, particularly during a chaotic combat, but overall I would say it's less than what you get with the previous two.

I wouldn't mind level drain as much if it were more Souls-like. For example, if you slay the monster you get your levels back. 4e did something along these lines with the rust monster, where a destroyed magic item left behind residuum that could be used to craft new items. Maybe the residuum could end up in its belly, so that you need to hunt it down if it eats your magic item and escapes. But I wouldn't want to go back to old-school level drain (et al) because I feel like it had more downsides than upsides (though being scary/tedious was a strong suit for it).

Actually, I rather like the idea of killing the level-draining creature to get the energy back. Sounds neat.

That being said, I love rogue-likes, and have no problem losing progress in a video game or my PC in D&D. You do your best and you take your chances.

 

[overgeeked]

A game is best when it's designed for the play base. That might mean one specialized tool. It might mean lots of tools. Depends on the game. Designing the game to be less fun for the player base is a strategy where pretty much everyone loses.

And that's where we run into trouble. See my poll about what's fun. The second most picked option is challenge. So a lot of people find challenge to be one of the main reasons why they play.

These two statements are at odds: 1) For something to be challenging there has to be a risk of failure, and; 2) Winning is fun, losing is not.

If you can't lose, there's no challenge. If you lose, it's no fun. So you have to always win for it to be fun...which means there's no challenge. If there's no risk of losing, winning is meaningless.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Indeed. What I'm saying is that "average" can be made up of a tight range or a loose one; and I'm used to it being quite loose to very loose. Put another way, if you run the same combat ten times and get pretty much the same result every time, that's a tight range around the average; where if the results are widely different each time that's a loose range around the average.

I prefer a loose range, but it does mean not always knowing what to expect from any given combat.

If the game gives encounter building guidelines, those guidelines have to assume a tight range around the average in order to be of any use at all. Those guidelines also have to assume the game will be run "as intended" e.g. with a party of x-number of characters using y-rules (and in the case of 5e, without z, a, b and c options).

Those assumptions all too often just don't hold up once the dice hit the table. End result: other thanin the very vaguest of ways, the presence of encounter guidelines only serves to lead the DM up the garden path.

You prefer swingy games. Okay.

I think you're putting the cart before the horse in the rest of your post. The game isn't less swingy so that they can have encounter guidelines. 3e was a wildly swingy game but it had tight encounter guidelines (going even so far as to prescribe wealth by level). The encounter guidelines were simply not always accurately predictive.

Encounter guidelines do work better in a less swingy game. That said, 5e is moderately swingy. Not as swingy as 3e, but significantly more swingy than 4e (which had the most accurate encounter guidelines out of any edition by a wide margin, IMO).

Ultimately, encounter guidelines are just that: guidelines. If you have a brain, you can choose whether to walk the "garden path" as you so put it, or march into the underbrush. If you slavishly follow the guidelines believing that you can't diverge from the beaten path, that's on you my friend.

 

[Lanefan]

Right, I would liken level drain to a video game where you lose significant progress when you fail (Rogue-likes). Once you've achieved significant progress, it can be extremely stressful. Which can be fun in its own way, but is also a massive turn off for some.

In Rogue, once you die that's game over. Doesn't matter if you've been playing 6 minutes or 6 hours. You're back to square one. This essentially ratchets up the tension the longer you play, because the longer you play the more invested time you have to lose. That said, from what I hear some folks play these types of games not to win but to find out how their character dies. For them, it might not be stressful, since their not so invested in their progress.

I see D&D as being quite a bit Rogue-like for any individual character, except with occasional save-games (i.e. revival from death, de-petrification from stoning, etc.) possible at mid-level and above.

Meanwhile the main protagonist - the party - carries on, even though its membersip might slowly be turning over as it goes along.

 

[Fanaelialae]

And that's where we run into trouble. See my poll about what's fun. The second most picked option is challenge. So a lot of people find challenge to be one of the main reasons why they play.

These two statements are at odds: 1) For something to be challenging there has to be a risk of failure, and; 2) Winning is fun, losing is not.

If you can't lose, there's no challenge. If you lose, it's no fun. So you have to always win for it to be fun...which means there's no challenge. If there's no risk of losing, winning is meaningless.

So your poll specifically listed level draining under challenge? Or did it just say challenge? Because there's a BIG difference.

You're establishing a false dichotomy. You can still lose without level drain being involved.

I mean, come on. You're telling me that all of you who like "challenge" included level drain in every single adventure? Because I find that very unlikely. Presumably, if you did not, you found some way to challenge the party without constantly resorting to level drain.

 

[overgeeked]

I mean, come on.

Sigh. I’m tired of your bad faith nonsense. Tschüss.