Do the initiative rules discourage parley?

[Shadowdweller]

The party can:

1) Wake up the thieves and parley, then attack if it gets ugly, or
2) Just attack without parley.

As a GAME SYSTEM, D&D penalizes in many ways option 1). Tactically, it's always better to go with 2).

Err....isn't that the more realistic and logical way as well? I'm rather of the opinion that if you wake up the enemy to parley, you SHOULD suffer a tactical disadvantage.

Of course, if the party ISN'T willing to parley occasionally they really shouldn't maintain that nifty good alignment for very long either.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

The problem I have with parley isn't necessarily with the game system.

It's with a long string of DMs who, when we decide to actually begin talking to a monster / opponent, have them attack regardless of the superiority of our position.

This is compounded by the fact that, on many of these occasions, the monsters got a "surprise round" on us.

In other words, talking to the bad guys just delays the inevitable, and doesn't usually get us anywhere.

 

[Celebrim]

Refocus was replaced by Delay (which now works across rounds), not Ready. In effect, it is even better now, because you won't get beaten by some stupid rogue with Improved init who got initiative 29.

Which I pointed out in my post when I said,

"On the positive side, you never lose a turn getting refocused to people with extremely high initiative counts."

I'm not an expert on 3.5, as it just didn't seem to offer me enough advantage to be worth buying a whole new set of core books. However, I appreciate the clarification.

So, what you stated COULD be done, in reality, cannot be done according to the rules.

Ok, stop right there. I just gave you the exact location of the rule that allows you to take 20 on initiative (there words as well as mine) in the rule book. If you can't be bothered to read my citation of the rules, that isn't my problem, nor is it my problem when you decided to get all huffy about something as trivial as this.

It is a house rule if you give all readying characters an automatic 20 on their initiative.

Not only is that not even close to what I described, but it's not even the way my house ruling works. What I was trying to accomplish with the house ruling had nothing to do with letting anyone set thier initiative to the top of the order (something already explicitly handled by the rules), but rather with preventing characters from doing so (something which isn't handled by the rules). In other words, I was trying to come up with rulings that would give more of the feel of 'Freeze. Put your
hands on your head.", and house ruling or not there was more than one DM on the thread that found the idea reasonable.

But it is most certainly not a house rule to allow characters to take 20 on thier initiative in 3.0, and as I pointed out regarding the 3.5 rules (and was clarified by Staffan) the new rules effectively let you take better than 20 because the 3.5 rules let you delay until the top of the next initiative order. In other words, if you're an 8 dex cleric facing off against a 20 dex rouge with improved initiative who rolled a 20, you can still effectively set your new initiative to 30 by delaying through the turn and then going before the rogue. Neither the 3.0 or 3.5 version is a house rule. READ THE FREAKING RULES. All I was trying to do to you was explain who according to the official rules goes first whenever you get into a loop of two players waiting for the other to act, and how we might use the rules to handle a situation which is more complicated than is explicitly handled by the rules, but which would come up again and again in a 'police' style campaign.

Sheesh. I never expected to get rules lawyered in a freaking thread. Are you trying to prove how disfunctional of a gamer you are? Are we all DM's here or what?

Now, on to better things.

It's easy to come up with ideas for rules that would facillitate parley; for example, the ability to retain your "first strike" perogative even after speaking with a surprised enemy.

D&D doesn't haves rules like that.

As I pointed out at the beginning, D&D already would leave the sleeping rogues at a considerable disadvantage compared to standing, readied, armed PC's. I made some suggestions about how thet PC's might be able to retain an initiative advantage (though the system would at times cause trigger happy PC's to kill rogues that were trying to surrender, one could well argue that those are acceptable risks weighed against the 'right of the law officer to protect himself'). I made some suggestions about how the PC's might intimidate the rogues into a) not attacking and b) maintaining a posture (hands above your head where I can see them, get down on the ground) that would prevent them from gaining thier DEX bonus and presumably reduce the DC to spot when a rogue was readying a combat action.

But I want to carefully point out that the elaboration of the rules I'm making does not really apply to actual 'parley' , but rather to 'surrender'. I'm trying to show that the rules can encourage PC's to try to take prisoners. I'm not trying to show that the rules should or could ever allow the PC's to take up honest and fair negotiations between two sides - a real 'parley' - and still retain all the advantages of surprise. Tactically speaking in the real world, its always better to retain surprise than to start up a parley. What do you really what, some way to reserve surprise for use at a latter time when your opponents are not surprised? I'm sorry but I don't see that as realistic. The real problem with realism here IMO is not the initiative system, but the relative lacking of risk in engaging in combat. In real life, people engage in parley because even with surprise, fights are dangerous and have costs (and because people want to avoid them for moral reasons). In D&D, you have 'hit points' and lots of them relative to the capacity of weapons to do damage (especially after 4th level or so), and if you do die you can always 'raise dead'. So the risks of combat are greatly reduced.

 

[Nail]

IWe are talking about a situation where a party of PC's (for example) sneaks up on a band of thieves (equally high level, not mooks a la the James Bond example).

The party can:

1) Wake up the thieves and parley, then attack if it gets ugly, or
2) Just attack without parley.

As a GAME SYSTEM, D&D penalizes in many ways option 1). Tactically, it's always better to go with 2).

And why would option #1 ever be a good idea, regardless of gaming system? Hello?

Typically (that is: in movies, books, etc), if you've sneaked up on a sleeping band of theives, you jump them and knock them out/tie them up. THEN you parley.....err, rather, you interogate.

You don't wake them up first!

 

[Celebrim]

The problem I have with parley isn't necessarily with the game system.

It's with a long string of DMs who, when we decide to actually begin talking to a monster / opponent, have them attack regardless of the superiority of our position.

This is compounded by the fact that, on many of these occasions, the monsters got a "surprise round" on us.

In other words, talking to the bad guys just delays the inevitable, and doesn't usually get us anywhere.

That is precisely my point. I thing years of this sort of poor DMing have lead to a culture in D&D which simply doesn't on the whole (I'm sure many campaigns differ) where talking to the monsters doesn't lead to good things. In fact, in my experience, talking to the monsters just annoys the other players because they are afraid that they will lose the oppurtunity for treasure and experience if I actually talk my way out of the fight. I've actually successfully negotiated a settlement with monsters before, only to have players decide to fight anyway because they know that there is actually little risk (and potential reward) for doing so. This is yet another reason that parley rarely happens in D&D for reasons that have nothing to do with the initiative system.

And while we are speaking of poor DMing, have you ever noticed that monsters are never terrified of the PC's, and that 9 times in 10 if you do parley, the DM will RP the monsters as arrogant and surly and the monsters will act as if they have the superior negotiating position - even if the monster is something like a goblin who ought to be well aware that well armed parties of humans moving around in dungeons are typically things to be feared? This is yet another thing that keeps PC's from parleying, because by experience they've learned that the DM is not going to let them get a better deal than they would get if they just slaughtered the monster.

 

[Nail]

Tactically speaking in the real world, its always better to retain surprise than to start up a parley.

Exactly!

The real problem with realism here IMO is not the initiative system, but the relative lacking of risk in engaging in combat.

Bingo.

Going back to the "surprised sleeping weakling hob" example, for a moment: Sure the Hobo could win initiative some fraction of the time. The real questions are: "Does he want to?" and "Will he be able to survive the counter attack?" For the described Hobo, the answer to both questions is most likely "No".

 

[KarinsDad]

The problem I have with parley isn't necessarily with the game system.

It's with a long string of DMs who, when we decide to actually begin talking to a monster / opponent, have them attack regardless of the superiority of our position.

This is compounded by the fact that, on many of these occasions, the monsters got a "surprise round" on us.

In other words, talking to the bad guys just delays the inevitable, and doesn't usually get us anywhere.

An interesting observation. We had a situation where the psionic bad gal came up to the group in an inn and asked the two PC Psions to come with her. The PC Psions refused and although they were talking to her, one of them did a Minklink with the PC Cleric.

The NPC Psion said "So be it" (noting the psionic display) and Dimension Doored away and combat started.

After the battle, the player of the PC who did the Minklink wondered why she decided to fight so quickly. As DM, I did not tell him (because he would not know what the psionic bad gal was thinking), but my thought processes at the time was that she was ready for a fight and when the PC started using psionics, she responded (no different than an NPC Wizard responding if a PC Wizard cast a spell).

It did not occur to me as DM to give her a PsiCraft roll to determine which power was manifested and maybe decide to not fight. As DMs and players, we do tend to be stuck in our mode of fight at the first sign of threat or conflict.

Food for thought for future games.

 

[KarinsDad]

Going back to the "surprised sleeping weakling hob" example, for a moment: Sure the Hobo could win initiative some fraction of the time. The real questions are: "Does he want to?" and "Will he be able to survive the counter attack?" For the described Hobo, the answer to both questions is most likely "No".

You are making an assumption on the motivations of the Hobo on your first question.

The issue also is not "would he do it?", it is "could he do it?". The fact that the game mechanics allows for unrealistic events (outside the realm of magic) is the issue.

 

[Nail]

You are making an assumption on the motivations of the Hobo on your first question.

And intrinsic to the pathetic hobo-ness implied in the example, I might add.

The issue also is not "would he do it?", it is "could he do it?". The fact that the game mechanics allows for unrealistic events (outside the realm of magic) is the issue.

So, you are saying that it is an Unrealistic Event for a pathetic hobo to act before the PCs, if the PCs "give up" the surprise round by attempting to talk (or parley)?

Why? Your assertion is not a given.

 

[Nail]

Food for thought for future games.

Good example and point, Karinsdad.

And frankly, DMs misjudge situations too. Perhaps the Psion-ess should have done a Psi-check. She didn't. (shrug) Sometimes it works out that way.