D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[Minigiant]

I like the starting adventure. It is a great idea. But I really do not see it being a problem for players to understand. Maybe it's just me, or rather, my experience, that lets me understand how the DM is structuring it a bit more innately.

The issue is not the DM understanding how the world works but the players understanding how the world works.

If the players understand that If they long rest after two easy or medium encounters, they will be attacked in their sleep twice in order to extend and number of encounters there's no problem if they are okay with it

If the players don't know that the DM is going to attack them in their sleep if they long rest early but not attacked him to sleep if they long rest after many encounters, that might create a problem.

It's about to DM and the players both being in tuned and the decisions of the world encounter system.

This wasn't a problem in older editions because there wasn't a design based around a certain amount of encounters.

I think this 5e decision might require a new Session 0 question.

How many encounters per adventuring day do you prefer? 1-2. 3-4. 5-6. 7-8 9-10. Variety.

Do you want the encounter per day preference to be enforced by a rest variant, the DM's actions, or by the world's movements?

 

[Scott Christian]

The issue is not the DM understanding how the world works but the players understanding how the world works.

Sorry. I read my last post and it wasn't clear. I meant me as a player, understanding how the DM is working their world. It has been very clear, no matter which DM I have had. But maybe that is just a testament to the DMs I play with.

If the players understand that If they long rest after two easy or medium encounters, they will be attacked in their sleep twice in order to extend and number of encounters there's no problem if they are okay with it

If the players don't know that the DM is going to attack them in their sleep if they long rest early but not attacked him to sleep if they long rest after many encounters, that might create a problem.

It's about to DM and the players both being in tuned and the decisions of the world encounter system.

I don't know what a world encounter system is, or a game that says after x number of encounters the group will rest or be attacked again. I know D&D, which runs on the DM supposition that they build a living, breathing world that has its own internal logic. The story determines the rests, not a system. The system tells everyone what a rest does.

I think this 5e decision might require a new Session 0 question.

How many encounters per adventuring day do you prefer? 1-2. 3-4. 5-6. 7-8 9-10. Variety.

Do you want the encounter per day preference to be enforced by a rest variant, the DM's actions, or by the world's movements?

I have never met a player in any of the years I've played that wants that question. They want to tell a collective story, and in that story, sometimes people have to fight, fight, and keep fighting. And at other times, they fight, rest, fight, rest.

This is like asking how many encounters do you want at each session, and how many RP encounters, and how many exploration encounters. It is not a question for the players. The DM creates the world. The players interact and help create the story within that world.

 

[Mort]

If the players don't know that the DM is going to attack them in their sleep if they long rest early but not attacked him to sleep if they long rest after many encounters, that might create a problem.

It's a long thread so I may have missed it, but has ANYONE suggested this is a good or even acceptable method? It's so heavy handed, I can't see many (any?) players tolerating it at all.

The DM can dictate the pace of play by adventure design (making it clear where resting could result in consequences, or random encounters, etc. many different ways) and/or some common house rules such as only 2 short rests between long rests and only 1 long rest per adventuring day (You can "rest" more than that if you want, but you don't get the game benefits).

 

[Minigiant]

It's a long thread so I may have missed it, but has ANYONE suggested this is a good or even acceptable method? It's so heavy handed, I can't see many (any?) players tolerating it at all.

No it this thread. But if seen many times, some times on this forum, of DMs always dropping wandering monsters on you if you rest too quickly.

Many times.

 

[Mort]

No it this thread. But if seen many times, some times on this forum, of DMs always dropping wandering monsters on you if you rest too quickly.

Many times.

I've certainly seen wandering monsters promoted as means to enforce pace of play. But I've seen it as a random wandering monster roll every x amount of time (resting or not). Never as a, you rest too often you get a monster (but never as long as you rest "just right.")

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The main reason I say that is because calling it "cheating" is a bit of a loaded term. To me, cheating would be breaking the rules or fudging the dice constantly behind the screen to get the results you want.

Does that mean that a single instance of, say, a player using a loaded die to guarantee a 20 is not cheating, because a single instance cannot be "constantly"?

I find this requirement that it be a long, sustained, pervasive pattern unwarranted. Even a single instance of deception or misrepresentation can qualify as "cheating." And yes, it is a loaded term. That's kind of the point. It's highlighting how there is a shell game being played here, that things are being presented as though they were something that they aren't.

Consider this: if adding extra enemies to an adventure is cheating, then every time a DM has rolled on the wandering monster table, they've been cheating! These monsters are presented as being in addition to the other monsters already present, and very rarely does an adventure (or monster manual, as they've had terrain-based wandering monster tables in the past) say "oh by the way, each of these results may only be encountered once").

But that's not what the random monster rolls do. The random monster rolls replace encounters that had to be built by hand. It isn't the GM choosing to insert monsters that weren't there; it is them correctly using the encounter design and creation tools. That's like saying that rolling damage is cheating; it cannot be, that is how non-fixed-damage things work.

Inserting extra monsters that weren't there or rewriting the stats of monsters that are there, simply because you feel like they should be, not because you're using the rules, however, would not be using the rules as designed. Like...pretty much literally not that.

It's sometimes written right into the adventure that infinite monsters exist, such as Undermountain, where in addition to the many gates that things could blunder into, Halaster has been known to kidnap monsters for his dungeon, and his apprentices have even created monsters that wander the dungeon!

Then they have, as I said, done the work to explain that this is possible. Have they also done the work to explain why these allegedly infinite monsters don't just destroy the players instantaneously? Because that's kind of the double-edged sword here. How can there ever be safety enough for even fifteen minutes' rest, let alone eight hours?

Because the DM creates the world, they could easily write the ability to add monsters out of nowhere in it's lore (hey it only takes one Fiend on the Material Plane 24 hours to start summoning more of it's kind, you know!), and this is true for canon worlds as well.

But do you not see exactly why this isn't done? Beyond the above problem of "okay so...how is it that the opposition doesn't just win everything forever?" you get the problem of negated stakes. An enemy with infinite, always-accessible, always-refillable reserves cannot lose anything. Infinity minus one is still infinity. No amount of (finite) subtraction or division can turn the concept of infinity into any finite number, let alone zero. In using such a nuclear flyswatter, you have created a dramatically worse problem in its place.

To me it feels like cheating, but I'm not going to outright say it is, because from another point of view, it's simply a tool in the DM's toolbox. And a tool isn't bad or good innately- it comes down to how it's employed.

So a player secretly bringing loaded dice is not bad or good, it comes down to how those loaded dice are employed?

 

[Scott Christian]

No it this thread. But if seen many times, some times on this forum, of DMs always dropping wandering monsters on you if you rest too quickly.

Many times.

I've certainly seen wandering monsters promoted as means to enforce pace of play.

Reading this just reinforces my idea that some people need DMs that will do the prep work. I have never, in my 30 years, seen this from a DM with experience. It has, and is always, based on the story. I haven't seen this promoted by any DM on this thread either. What I have seen is: "You rest in the middle of a temple, and the cognizant antagonist knows you're there - things change. You do get attacked - because they know how magic works too."

 

[Scott Christian]

Then they have, as I said, done the work to explain that this is possible. Have they also done the work to explain why these allegedly infinite monsters don't just destroy the players instantaneously? Because that's kind of the double-edged sword here. How can there ever be safety enough for even fifteen minutes' rest, let alone eight hours?

C'mon. You know the answer to this. It is a collective storytelling experience. Sometimes the protagonists don't know everything that goes on. This "behind the curtain" can make players, in their rhetorical echo-chambers, question every DM move. Or, they can trust their DM is doing what they feel is consistent with their world, their PCs' actions, and the story.

I guess when there is no DM trust, there is always a problem.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The story determines the rests, not a system. The system tells everyone what a rest does.

If only folks had taken that attitude with systems that were actually designed to clearly tell you what things do, and left the storytelling for you to figure out.

This is like asking how many encounters do you want at each session, and how many RP encounters, and how many exploration encounters. It is not a question for the players. The DM creates the world. The players interact and help create the story within that world.

Wish more DMs had an interest in the second clause of that last sentence. I find far too many these days have little to no interest in having player involvement in story-creation. It's the DM's world. The players just happen to witness it, and maybe pick which of two pre-constructed alternate timelines gets promoted to canon.

Reading this just reinforces my idea that some people need DMs that will do the prep work. I have never, in my 30 years, seen this from a DM with experience. It has, and is always, based on the story. I haven't seen this promoted by any DM on this thread either. What I have seen is: "You rest in the middle of a temple, and the cognizant antagonist knows you're there - things change. You do get attacked - because they know how magic works too."

This "random monsters are there to enforce the expected rest cycle" thing has absolutely been advocated many times on this very forum, and indirectly referenced in this thread. It's why someone (Oofta, I think?) referred to resting too frequently as an "exploit" that needed to be quashed. Random monster encounters are that "quash that exploit" mechanic.

C'mon. You know the answer to this. It is a collective storytelling experience. Sometimes the protagonists don't know everything that goes on. This "behind the curtain" can make players, in their rhetorical echo-chambers, question every DM move. Or, they can trust their DM is doing what they feel is consistent with their world, their PCs' actions, and the story.

I guess when there is no DM trust, there is always a problem.

It's not a matter of trust. It's a matter of making sense of what's been said. The person I quoted explicitly used the word "infinite" to refer to the reserves which could be drawn upon. That's a nuclear flyswatter if I've ever heard of one. Truly infinite reserves, which can be brought in by portals at a moment's notice, from opponents with a vested interest in ensuring the party fails at their goals? Then the party will lose. The only other option is that the opposition are either so lazy, stupid, or arrogant that they never choose to bring in these reinforcements (which boggles the mind that they could have acquired such forces but be so incapable of using them...while still somehow being a threat), or they are abiding by some rule completely outside the narrative which prevents them from using their actually infinite reserves, meaning, we're right back to where we were, the problem of finite reserves that can only be deployed under valid circumstances, completely defeating the whole point of this nuclear option.

I'm not the one who used the word "infinite." The person I replied to did. It was not presented as hyperbole. If I was supposed to understand it as an exaggeration, that was very poorly communicated.

 

[FrogReaver]

Sure but if you're going after that crime boss who's to say if he had 6 thugs or 8? If you suddenly have a fiend (and the crime boss was not secretly a fiend or in league with them) that would change the story. But a couple extra goombas? Forget about it.

Good grief. Gotta stop playing Cyberpunk.

Presumably the skilled player would suss out how many thugs there were before engaging?

If so then at that point you are altering the story to change the encounter.