Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6203423" data-attributes="member: 42582">This may be one point of difference in play experience. My experience, playing both D&D with Vancian casting and Rolemaster with spell point casting, is that at a certain point (somewhere around 7th or so level) the casters no longer get to "be special on occasion". They have a whole lot of special, which among other things gives them a good deal of influence over when they go off and rest for another occasion.Of course, this phenomenon (not as something that occurs at every table, but as a recognised topic of debate) is well known.Another well known phenomenon, which when it is experienced tends to reduce the disparity between "sometimes special" caster and "always on" fighters, is hit point attrition: fighters run out of hp and depend upon the miracle-worker healers to get them back.If I try to think about a combat encounter which would tend to avoid these phenomena, the first thing I think of is a fight with a modest number of noticably lower-level opponents: the fighters can handle them without facing much risk, and they're too weak to be worth busting out the spells for.I think these sorts of encounters were part of classic D&D play. I tend not to like them, simply because they are "filler" rather than dramatic. And as I think I've already indicated, I prefer a game with higher stakes and more dramatic pressure. I prefer that the difference between caster and fighter be one of means, and of particular capability (the fighter is stronger, the wizard better at setting fire to things without matches), then of overall scope and effectiveness.Not in my experience. I find it tends to proudce turtling and a reluctance on the part of players to hurl their PCs into the ingame situation. And together with this comes an emphasis on recon and prep (transition scenes of various sorst) - the PCs become like special agents, where success or failure is determined not in the field but in the warroom beforehand, and if anything interesting or unexpected happens in the field then something has already gone wrong. Whereas I prefer that the focus of play at the table be on the actual situations in which the PCs are engaged in conflict (action scenes), and that the decisions made there be the ones that count.It seems to me there are at least two matters being discussed here.One is about "investing in" a character. In my preferred approach to play the GM absolutely does not do this. So while it makes sense to talk about deprotagonising the players, it wouldn't make sense to talk about deprotagonising the GM. The function of the GM's play of protagonists is to put pressure on the players via their PCs; but the players are not trying to put pressure on the GM! They are trying to pursue their characters' agendas.The other, which I think was Ahnehnois's issue, is about the GM drawing on the rules. I agree that the GM needs to draw on the game's mechanical resources to put pressure on the players, but the dynamic is different. The GM - at least in my style of play - is not deploying the action resolution rules to realise his/her goals in play. The GM, in framing a conflict, has already mostly got his/her NPCs where s/he wants them. At that point the action resolution rules become relevant for adjudicating the confict with the PCs.This means that spells such as Transmute Rock to Mud, or Teleport, or Stone Shape, or various divinations, are far less significant on the GM's side. The GM doesn't need to deploy spells to give his/her NPCs access to backstory, or to locations. S/he can just use his/her authority over backstory and sceneframing.So for the GM effects like TRtM or Charm or Invis are powerful action resolution tools - Charm/Dominate will hit the players' action economy pretty hard; and Invis is strong for lurking. But if an NPC uses fly or invis to flee the scene, that might thwart the players (depending on what the PCs' goals are) but doesn't otherwise change the dynamic of GM-putting-pressure-on-players.I used the word "Calvinball" to explicitly draw the link to  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s posts upthread. If you want to give me a preferred canonical characterisatin I'm happy to use it. I offered a lengthier description in some of my own posts upthread - "secret backstory drawn upon by the GM to change the PCs' fictional positioning in ways that (i) affect action resolution that (ii) are unknown to the players" - but no one replied to those elements of my posts.As for the issue of "punishing the player", my concern is what I've articulated upthread: that the player tries to engage the scene using his/he PC's schtick, and comes unstuck not because of some overt aspect of the conflict that speaks to the reason the PCs are there, but because of some unknown, non-thematically driven element of backstory that is a procedura rather than a dramatic obstacle.Examples to illustrate the contrast: Charming or Dominating the chamberlain doesn't work because he is really a starspawn in disguise, whose warped mind reflects mind-affecting effects back on the caster. That's probably pretty awesome, as the stakes for the players in engagine with the chamberlain and the king are suddenly raised to a whole new level, involving strange alien entities trying to subvert the government of the kingdom.Whereas Charming or Dominating the chamberlain doesn't work because the king's guards come out an arrest the PC for impropoer magic-use. A procedural obstacle that doesn't drive the drama forwar. (The replacement lizardman guard turning up unexpectedly is another example like this.)What counts as dramatic vs merely procedural is of course context relative. If the encounter with the chamberlain is a dramatic last-ditch attempt to reach the king, and the players know of the risk of being detected but choose to run that risk, then being caught out and arrested would raise the dramatic stakes. But in those circumstances, if I was participating in the game either as player or GM I would expect the issue of discovery to be resolved according to the action resolution mechanics and not simply by GM fiat or extrapolation. This is exactly the sort of situation where "say yes or roll the dice" comes into play - at the moment of crunch the dice get rolled.As  [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] said, what "basic playstyle the game was meant for" is part of what is up for grabs. For instance, some people say that 3E/PF is designed for a heavily GM-driven style of play, and that it is meant to be played the same as AD&D and B/X. But when I played AD&D I didn't play it as heavily GM-driven. And upthread I've set out my interpretation of some of the key DMG passages, a being concerned with GM authority over situation, backstory and adjudication of fictional positioning, rather than over outcomes as such.So, for me, if it's true that 3E/PF does require heavy GM-driving to work, then it is not supporting the same playstyle as classic D&D.In the post you replied to, I was responding to Ahnehnois's suggestion that the main cause of fighter/caster balance issues is charop exploits to get infinite wishes.I think these charop exploits are basically irrelevant to understanding why some groups have fighter/caster issues.</blockquote>

Verification