ELs, balance, and metagaming

[Henry]

What hasn't been covered is the fact of IN-character knowledge. All people who live in a certain world should know that there are some monsters you just don't tangle with, and the DM should do his job of communicating this either before or at worst DURING the opening of an encounter with such things.

"You all know the legend of the Many-Eyed-Beast that killed the great hero Lex of Hillsfar. Something that was once only in tales told at the council meetings stands before you now in living flesh..."

Or for a first level character:

"A massive creature sits at the table, as you watch it from hiding. The thing bears a striking resemblance to an OGER, what your Mum used to call them, and scare you to bed at night. It's said these things can rip a leg off a grown man..."

 

[jgbrowning]

What hasn't been covered is the fact of IN-character knowledge. All people who live in a certain world should know that there are some monsters you just don't tangle with, and the DM should do his job of communicating this either before or at worst DURING the opening of an encounter with such things.

"You all know the legend of the Many-Eyed-Beast that killed the great hero Lex of Hillsfar. Something that was once only in tales told at the council meetings stands before you now in living flesh..."

Or for a first level character:

"A massive creature sits at the table, as you watch it from hiding. The thing bears a striking resemblance to an OGER, what your Mum used to call them, and scare you to bed at night. It's said these things can rip a leg off a grown man..."

yep, its always bothered me. a simple knowledge (monsters) skill would help bunches. course i think all classes should get more skills than they get and a certain % must be spent on knowledge (whatever) skills. Would make sense, IMHO.

joe b.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Hmmm...

..that I have seen being done in a few books already, latest one in the Monsternomicon of Iron Kingdoms fame. There it's called Creature Lore, runs on Intelligence, and is a class skill for bards, sorcerers and wizards. And to nearly each monster in that book, they had a few Creature Lore entries rated Common, Uncommon, Rare and Obscure, telling you on a successful check what your PC knows about the creature. Pretty neat, if I may say so

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Re: Hmmm...

Sounds like a really lame idea to me. You end up codifying in skill points and rolls something that really doesn't fit the mechanic very well.

If Thorgar the fighter/barbarian fought a band of trolls that had wandered in from a far away swamp and lost all of his group except one on the way into town, he probably knows what trolls are and what they're like. He may even have noticed that all of them got up again except the one the wizard burned to a crisp with his fireball. However, Thorgar only has int 9 and Creature Lore is a cross class skill for him, he can't get a rank this level (only half of one). Consequently, when he and his new companions meet the band of trolls on the way out of town, according to the rules, Thorgar ought to act as if he knew nothing about these monsters--especially if he rolls poorly on the check. His new companion the cleric won't know anything about them either despite having tended the wounds of farmers and merchants who escaped from them and heard their reports--he's not any good at monster lore (it's not a class skill and he only gets 2 skill points/level so he can be good at concentration and know about his religion or trolls but not both) and trolls are unusual around here. It just ends up being silly.

Now I've seen people use a level check mechanic (d20+character level) which might be good in such situations (d20+character level+int bonus) in order for characters to know about monsters they haven't faced before. But the knowledge skill mechanic is entirely the wrong mechanic for this.

..that I have seen being done in a few books already, latest one in the Monsternomicon of Iron Kingdoms fame. There it's called Creature Lore, runs on Intelligence, and is a class skill for bards, sorcerers and wizards. And to nearly each monster in that book, they had a few Creature Lore entries rated Common, Uncommon, Rare and Obscure, telling you on a successful check what your PC knows about the creature. Pretty neat, if I may say so

 

[Tewligan]

Re: Re: Hmmm...

If Thorgar the fighter/barbarian fought a band of trolls that had wandered in from a far away swamp and lost all of his group except one on the way into town, he probably knows what trolls are and what they're like. He may even have noticed that all of them got up again except the one the wizard burned to a crisp with his fireball. However, Thorgar only has int 9 and Creature Lore is a cross class skill for him, he can't get a rank this level (only half of one). Consequently, when he and his new companions meet the band of trolls on the way out of town, according to the rules, Thorgar ought to act as if he knew nothing about these monsters--especially if he rolls poorly on the check.

Feh, that's a ridiculous assumption. The Creature Lore skill would obviously only be used for things you may have heard of, but not actually experienced. Of course you can use information that you've actually experienced in-game without a Knowledge check. Are you required to make Knowledge checks to act on information that an NPC has given you in a conversation?

 

[Ranes]

JG, I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate on your thoughts here on the thread. I hope you didn't take my post as a flame; it wasn't intended that way. I did use the word "curiosity" as soon as possible and ended with a reference to me possibly having "missed something". I wasn't being sarcastic. I've been working on my game today and thinking about the points you raised. Unfortunately though, I haven't been able to reply until now.

I see what you're talking about. I suppose D&D is more vulnerable to the problem than other game systems (that I'm aware of), especially with templates and advanced versions of beasties. Thanks. You've given me good game-food for thought today.

I share other posters' lack of confidence in a Knowledge skill solution.

It seems to me that this whole issue is at least as much a test of a DM's skill - not only in designing an encounter but in the way it is staged or presented - as it is a test of the players' ability to trust in the DM and to play in character as much as possible. Scanning back over the posts, I think Victim sums it up with, "Once a certain threshold is crossed, there is usually no clear distinction between the tough fight that the characters can win, and the fight that they need to run from."

I'm no 3E expert but is this always the case, "once a certain threshold is crossed"? To my mind, the encounter the players' characters should run from is one the players know their characters should run from, allowing the encounter to take on the dynamic of successful resolution being measured by survival (players keeping their wits and making use of the escape hatch their trustworthy DM has presented them).

If the encounter is one the players' characters believe they could win, they should have a chance of doing so. There is the "difficult-if-handled-incorrectly" class of encounter.

If the DM has prepared an encounter he knows the characters would think they could overcome when in fact they couldn't possibly do so (because beastie x has n levels of sorcerer up its sleeve or whatever) and there's no clue to the players that something is unusual, that's a bad encounter.

Players should believe three things: if they are stupid, they should die. If they are unlucky, they may die. If they can't trust their DM, they should get another game; they will not be punished for thinking in character (which doesn't mean to say that they won't die).

All right, there has to be a hint of metagame. There is a tacit agreement between the DM and the players that the game is going to last longer than the time it took them to roll up their characters. Is that so different from the unspoken agreement with film maker and audience that the star of the movie isn't going to be dispatched in the opening scene?

All of this, may I add, is my own insignificant opinion. I apologise if any of it strikes anyone as anything dogmatic.

I'll keep an eye on how my players react to encounters over time and bear posters' comments here in mind every time I work on an encounter. I just hope that, at some point, one of their characters says, "I don't like the smell of this. We should leave." And she's right. Then if everyone else disagrees with her, I can do a TPK and claim it was all their fault.

As if I'd do such a thing...

 

[Geoff Watson]

Re: Re: ELs, balance, and metagaming

Death before dishonor.

"We can't outrun them, so we may as well fight." is the usual reason.

Geoff.

 

[Umbran]

Re: Re: Re: ELs, balance, and metagaming

"We can't outrun them, so we may as well fight." is the usual reason.

Or, to recast a quote for a different genre:

"Cellulose heroes feel no pain."

 

[Ranes]

Are you sure that isn't 'celluloid'? Or am I missing something else?

 

[Umbran]

Are you sure that isn't 'celluloid'? Or am I missing something else?

That's why I said it was "recast". Going from the celluloid of the movie, to the cellulose of the (paper) character sheet...

A joke is like a frog. If you dissect it, you understand how it works, but it's dead afterwards.