DMs: Fight to Win or Fight for Fun?

[ThirdWizard]

Wow, I'd say roughly 1/4 of humanoid enemies attempt an escape in my game. Most of them don't make it, mind you, as the PCs have learned to deal with it. By the way, this still hasn't taught the PCs to run away when it is in their best interest. Even when they know someone is going to die if they fight. Usually the barbarian, heh.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I try to play intelligent foes. When a CDG is warranted, a CDG is taken.

But I don't allow CDGs when someone else is in the same square as the target. Just a house-rule, I guess, but RAW is sort of stupid that there's not a whole lot you can do to stop a CDG other than hope you hit and do enough damage to kill the attacker. Not very heroic. There's no reason to take a tactical disadvantage to try and protect your friends if nothing you do is going to save them. Standing over your friend brandishing your sword is just as effective as standing on the other side of the ghoul and fighting ANOTHER ghoul, but happening to be in threat with the first ghoul to casually backhand him. Better, actually, as then you're in striking range of two ghouls instead of one.

Call it a heroism bonus.

Most of my intelligent foes flee or surrender if there's no hope. This tends to happen to spellcasters alot, who are often well-defended by mooks and spells, and might have full HP but no spells as the fight is drawing to its conclusion. What right-minded feeb with a dagger is going to throw himself at a frothing horde of do-gooders when he has no spells left?

If a spell has taken out the frontline tank in round 1 and the kobold is in reach ... well, yea ... that's why the guy playing the wizard has to think before he casts.

--fje

 

[Terwox]

I'm not sure what I'd have done, it depends on some missing info.

I know for sure I'd say something to the other PCs that the ghoul was gonna CDG next time around -- unless the ghoul was feigning that it wouldn't, but CDG is a full round action that takes some time to line up as the theory goes, so the PC's would know what was gonna happen.

Further, if somebody stood over their fallen comrade's body to protect them, I'd give the comrade a +8AC (+4 total w/ being prone...) and give the defender a -4AC, as they're spending more time protecting the fallen than themselves. That is, if somebody chose to do that sort of thing... call them circumstance modifiers.

If the ghoul dropped the guy and nobody ran over to defend him, I'd certainly whack the fallen. If the group was very anti-death, BiggusGeekus' suggestion for hamstringing/dismemberment is excellent as well.

 

[ForceUser]

If the group was very anti-death, BiggusGeekus' suggestion for hamstringing/dismemberment is excellent as well.

I don't care if the group is anti-death--as DM, I'm not. If they want to play in a campaign w/out the risk of death, they don't want to play in my campaign. No risk, no reward.

 

[Kelleris]

I must admit - I'm terrified of that happening in my group, QD, because I've had that same feeling when I've been a player. For all the folks that say "don't be mean to PCs" I'd counter with "please be mean to my PC". The moment you lose the fear of character death, the moment you lose some of the fun of the game. Again - in my opinion.

I don't care if the group is anti-death--as DM, I'm not. If they want to play in a campaign w/out the risk of death, they don't want to play in my campaign. No risk, no reward.

Since when is being "mean" and presenting "risk" equivalent to being willing to kill people? This attitude always annoys me, because I always start feeling a little guilty for not killing people when people take such pride in their willingness to do so. I'm probably just being neurotic, but in any case it's simply not true that you have to be willing to kill people to make sure they're risking something in every battle. There're plenty of things they can lose due to failure in battle or elsewhere, from face to the entire campaign, without killing them.

To take a recent example from my campaign, my players' 7th-level characters were recently beaten back by an aboleth and its bugbear mercenaries. They were actually at almost no risk of death since the aboleth had very good reasons for beating them back while keeping them alive, so the evening consisted of a running battle through areas drenched in illusions that played out as a bluff on the aboleth's part to get the party to believe they were facing overwhelming odds (instead of the actual pretty tough odds) before the party reached the objective (a wellspring of disease their trying to purify).

I did eventually succeed, after much roleplaying on behalf of the players, in convincing them to retreat. As a result, they're now in hot water with their time commitments because another plot thread with a deadline is bearing down on them, and the disease fount problem is still unsolved. This was their primary risk in choosing to attack when they did, and they knew it. They lost, there was risk (and they lost something), I was even pretty mean to them in the way I horribly abused the aboleth's illusion-creating powers, but nobody had to die.

As I see it, there are only two bad points on this little spectrum, and they both involve convincing your players that nothing they do is relevant. You can do that by removing all risk of failure (and failure =/= death), or by removing all possibility for success by gunning for the PCs and enjoying it when you down one of them for no other reason than that it validates your status as a tough DM. But pretending that someone who doesn't kill PCs is automatically removing all risk of failure from the game is silly, and it gets on my nerves.

 

[swrushing]

Keeping in mind that I am running an above average intelligent creature who realizes the fight is a lost cause, I would definitely NOT have opted for a CDG.

"take one down with me" is not a good sign of being a smart adversary. All it really shows is a vindictive streak. Was there no better/smarter action(s) the creature, when faced with a helpless foe, could come up with? Citing high int followed by a "take one down with me when i go" choice seems to be highlighting a MISMATCH between stats and play, not a match.

My INT 13 varmint would have grabbed the paralyzed foe and setup a CDG. he would have then offered to spare the life of the helpless victim in exchange for getting away. Its a hostage situation. Do the heroes want to let the bad guy go, keep their friend alive and still take the temple, or do thewy want to risk seeing their friend die in order to kill the last or last two varmints?

Not only does this make sense in terms of "an intelligent adversary when things are bad taking desperate actions" but it also works on several story levels too.

1. The (all important to some) "threat of death to keep things interesting" comes up as a big whammy, driving the drama of the scene's climax.

2. This scene now winds up putting the death of PC issue firmly in the hands of the characters. ("failed a save then cdg follows" is really putting the whole death thing on the dice, not on the characters.) A character doesn't die because the Gm made a (questionable to some) decision to just kill him after a failed save, but because the characters decided to let him die. That should take some of the heat off the GM.

3. It really sets the villain's trait of "intelligent adversary" up front and shows it off. This creature thinks and does not just keep bashing until his hitpoints are gone. (As an aside, i find opportunities to get the players out of the mindset of "beat them until hit points are gone" play to be a good thing.)

4. Finally, it creates the possibility of this villain getting away and coming back. A recurring character is usually a nice touch and much better than just another dead one.

To my style of gaming and way of thinking, assuming your campaign isn't the sort where being "dead" is just a littloe more inconvenient than being hurt cuz it takes bigger spells to "fix" you when you are dead, a helpless character is an opportunity and a dead character is wasted potential.

So the CDG would be a choice i would normally not take as it would be aji-keshi, potential destroying. Sometimes it could be taken but doing so would be, for me, admitting a flub, a setup where i should have been able to do better, but for some reason didn't.

I doin't get where people get so happy and warm over killing PCs when they are a GM. Any Gm can kill characters anytime. Its not hard when you control the entire universe, right?

Killing is easy and it ends easy. There are so many more interesting things that you can do to live characters.

The facts:

1) This was an intelligent (Int 13) creature. (And since my Int is 7, I'm already playing over my head when running this guy.)

2) The party had already mowed through many of the undead's buddies. The proverbial writing was on the wall. The PCs would "win", eventually.

3) The party was engaged in plundering the undead creatures' burial chamber. Their home, so to speak.

4) The undead creature saw an opportunity to "take one of the invaders down with him" and took it.

5) Other than the CDG-delivering (badly wounded = 4 hp) undead, there was only one other undead creature still standing (out of an orginal grouping of six).

 

[ForceUser]

But pretending that someone who doesn't kill PCs is automatically removing all risk of failure from the game is silly, and it gets on my nerves.

Let me tell you what gets on my nerves--a DM who's unwilling to kill PCs. A DM shouldn't be gunning for them, or waiting for them to make one tiny error so he can drop the hammer, but he should be willing to play his monsters to the hilt, and he should unhesitantly kill PCs when the situation warrants, because that's what his villains would do. If as a player I can sense that the DM is holding back or playing with kid gloves when he should be eviscerating my character because I did something dumb or got unlucky, then that DM loses all credibility with me as a storyteller, and the game loses a lot of its enjoyment. YMMV.

 

[coyote6]

My INT 13 varmint would have grabbed the paralyzed foe and setup a CDG. he would have then offered to spare the life of the helpless victim in exchange for getting away. Its a hostage situation.

That's exactly what I was thinking -- "Drop your weapons/leave now/do the macarena, or your fried DIES!"

(Of course, the RAW don't techinically allow for this -- you can't Ready a coup de grace, since it's a full round action. In this case, the RAW should bend to meet reality, dramatic tension, and fun -- if you could've CDG'd someone, you should be able to ready to CDG them, as a full-round action.)

 

[Kelleris]

To my style of gaming and way of thinking, assuming your campaign isn't the sort where being "dead" is just a littloe more inconvenient than being hurt cuz it takes bigger spells to "fix" you when you are dead, a helpless character is an opportunity and a dead character is wasted potential.

Exactly. Or to take the "hamstringing instead of CdG'ing" example. What if the players are on a time deadline, and the slower character will create a choice between splitting the party up in some way and potentially missing something very important? That, to me, is a much more interesting situation for all concerned than having to rustle up another raise dead spell. Put enough of those kinds of choices and penalties into your game and your players will start to think you're quite the RBDM even if you average roughly one PC kill every 2 years, as I do.

Let me tell you what gets on my nerves--a DM who's unwilling to kill PCs. A DM shouldn't be gunning for them, or waiting for them to make one tiny error so he can drop the hammer, but he should be willing to play his monsters to the hilt, and he should unhesitantly kill PCs when the situation warrants, because that's what his villains would do. If as a player I can sense that the DM is holding back or playing with kid gloves when he should be eviscerating my character because I did something dumb or got unlucky, then that DM loses all credibility with me as a storyteller, and the game loses a lot of its enjoyment. YMMV.

I'm not completely unwilling to kill PCs, that's too far over on the "no risk of failure" side, on my view. But I only do it if it's the only plausible option, and I generally wish I could have found a better way to inflict an appropriate penalty, and resolve to do better in the future.

 

[swrushing]

Yeah, whether its a house rule or not, i tend to play that "if you can do it, you can threaten to do it" logic. DnD really has no solid rules for the standoff situation, so i tend to count that as something I the Gm have to handle on my own.

EDIT: Basically, i see the init system and actions thing as a mechanical aide to help run combats smoothly and not as a straightjacket intended to force us to allow silly things because they are RAW and forbid reasonbale things because they are not explicitly covered in RAW.

EDIT: "I followed the RAW to the letter" is much MUCH less important to me than "the events and actions seemed reasonable to everyone involved".

Now, as for the protecting the CDG guy, I tend to allow an AoO hit nto require a concentration check if the action requires a degree of attention, focus or precision that would be interrupted by being hit and injured. The line under concentration ". In general, if an action wouldn’t normally provoke an attack of opportunity, you need not make a Concentration check to avoid being distracted." seems to me to leave a fairly wide level of "GM OPTION" and normally i do put things like CDG into the mix of things that would require a concentration check to complete.

If the AoO hits, and the concentration check fails, I will allow a normal hit vs a helpless target. if the Concentration check succeeds, its a CDG.