D&D 5E Fighting Truly Massive Creatures...

[TornadoCreator]

In another thread this was brought up and it prompted me to ask this question... how do you do fighting on a truly massive scale?

When the players are fighting huge flying Dragons, a giant Colossus, or something truly massive like the Tarrasque; how do you do it?

The fighter can hardly use his sword to hurt these things. The rogue stabbing a colossus in the big toe, no matter how sneeky she is will never be more than an annoyance. The barbarian can swing his greataxe all day, to the Tarrasque he may as well be hitting him gently with a teaspoon. So how do you resolve this? How do you make the stats on the page match what's happening in the battle. Sure casting spells works, a huge fireball is still a huge fireball; but how do you justify the fighter slaying a massive dragon with what is essentially a toothpick from the Dragons perspective?

I'd be interested to hear peoples input on this as I rarely run high level campaigns precisely because of this disconnect. And advice or ideas on how to mesh mechanics and theme, in something that remains internally consistent and at least pseudo-realistic would be great. Thanks.

 

[Aoirorentsu]

I'd look to the awesome game Shadow of Colossus (and, I guess, Dragon's Dogma, though I haven't played it) as a guide: the fighter and rogue need to identify it's Inevitable One Weak Point (tm), get there (climbing on it's body, etc), then hitting that spot with all they've got (I'd let it auto-crit because it'll take several rounds to get there, probably).

More generally, just fyi, even a toothpick can be deadly if it's a Magical Toothpick of Stabbery +2 - most of the gargantuan monsters have some sort of damage resistance to reflect that it's just really hard to hurt something that big.

In general, I think you're right: these aren't fights, they're challenges to the characters' skills (skill challenges, if you will) that involve violence.

 

[TornadoCreator]

Yeah, I was thinking about the likes of Shadow of Colossus or the God Of War series; I'd be tempted to do something similar to that at least once. It'd certainly make Athletics and Acrobatics into more valuable skills...

I still wonder how a melee fighter would ever fight a dragon though. Surely the intelligent dragon would stay flying well out of sword range, and would simply swoop low enough to breath fire on them repeatedly. This is something that always made me question why people would often forget to bring ranged weapons in earlier editions, thankfully my players quickly learned that a bow always is a good idea.

 

[DEFCON 1]

This is a prime example of the eternal dichotomy found within Dungeons & Dragons. Fantasy versus Reality, Magic versus Physics, Story versus Gameplay. Every single player falls at different points along each of those spectrums, and there's no real discussion capable of being had about what is correct. Thus every player and table just focuses on one thing, while handwaving something else away.

In this regard... the "massive creature" combat scenario... every DM at some point will handwave something away. Usually I think it tends to be the "realty" of the game world in order to allow for the game part of D&D to have focus. The easiest way to show this is that most game statistics for ancient dragons don't include stats for dragons jumping up and landing on the PCs. Because if they did, the "reality" would be instant death by crushing damage or suffocation, or at the very minimum the PCs would be pinned and unable to do anything for the entirety of the combat... thus rendering the game part of D&D moot. Many DMs realize that despite how natural and logical that kind of action would be for an intelligent, several-ton creature... that pretty much ends encounters. So gameplay takes the focus and that kind of logical action of an ancient dragon never seems to be taken with any frequency. Instead, the dragon flies around breathing on people or trying to bite them instead.

By the same token... we have the arguments as to how "magical" or "nonmagical" the non-spellcasting classes are. Is the 17th level Fighter "magical"? Should those PCs only be able to accomplish things that can be explained by "real-world" physics? Some players say Yes, some say No. As a result, should a Fighter of any level that is "mundane" (and beholden to real-world physics) be able to do *any* damage whatsoever to a massive creature just by stabbing it with what is essentially a toothpick? Some DMs will say no... and some will handwave away the physics at that moment in time just to actually make the encounter interesting or possible. Even right after arguing Character A can't do X, Y or Z because they don't have the capability to do that in "reality". A Warlord Fighter can't be allowed to "shout someone's wounds closed"... but then is allowed to spend rounds hacking away at the foot of an ancient dragon and eventually killing it.

Everyone has differing temperments about that kind of stuff. And there truly is no right or wrong. Because one person's questioning as to why so many people die and stay dead despite the ubiquity of resurrection magic, or why reality hasn't been uncharacteristically altered due to the prevalence of Wish spells at some people's disposals... is another person's questioning how a game construct like 'Hit Points' is meant to align with a story construct of 'each hit causes a physical wound', wherein an accomplished swordsman is thus somehow able to take seven to ten wounds from an actual greataxe, and yet still not die.

It's handwaved. Every single one that doesn't align to the player's fantasy of how their game world is supposed to behave.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

...and the thing about "handwaiving" is this; if it's fun for everyone at the table, the who cares?

Me? I just give bigger creatures more HP's and use "simulated physics" with regards to the beastie attacking the PC's...but usually not the other way around. In other words, if the ogre smacks the gnome with his massive tree-club for almost maximum damage, I'll have the gnome "fly back 20', smacking against the wall; you take a total of 14 points of damage from it all"; so maybe the club did 10 and hitting the wall did 4 more, who cares? It looked cool and made sense. The gnome then chucks her dagger at the ogre and "it hits the ogre in the shin for 2 points...he doesn't even notice as he keeps his attention focused on the barbarian in front of him now". Yes, the ogre "technically" took damage, but the amount in comparison to his maximum HP and his size vs the dagger would make the hit virtually unnoticed.

So, all the "handwaving", or, in less condescending tone, "DM adjudication", is what is expected in a game of make-believe and magic. As long as it's fun now and won't cause future games to be less-fun... just go with it! I DM my 5e games with what I call "consistent inconsistency". Basically, I will describe what happens, apply rules (or not), or otherwise "change stuff" on a case by case, situation by situation, basis. So after a few levels, that gnome get's hit again by a different ogre for the same amount of damage... the gnome isn't thrown back 20'; she "gives with the blow and slides backwards a bit, still on her feet...the ogre looks a bit surprised and glances at his club as if it was it's fault". But I DM this for everything in the game...so my players know what to expect and aren't caught totally off-guard.

The players have a lot to do with this play style; if you have huffy players who want to somehow "win D&D" by the numbers/book, then they will be complaining no matter what you do. If you have players that don't trust you as a DM, they won't have as much fun. If you have players who can't handle anything 'bad' happening to their character, you'll get complaining when something does. But if you have good, mature and socially well adapted players...5e is, IMHO, an excellent RPG system to play.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[TornadoCreator]

Very well said there DEFCON 1, I think you've summed up the entire concept of roleplaying a D&D in a single post there with remarkable elegance.

I guess my limit for "handwaving" is quite low, I like to think it makes for more tense and interesting games; but you're right this is the very essence of 'Your Milage May Vary'.

 

[S_Dalsgaard]

If it is big, you just stab it more.

 

[TornadoCreator]

[MENTION=45197]pming[/MENTION]

Yeah, I take a similar approach to describing actions in my games too. Like you say it's case by case and very situational. My big problem is I have two players now that tend to be quite dry rollplayers rather than roleplayers. They're the type to just say, "I draw my sword and charge the dragon", then start rolling dice. No description of how, no indication that they're avoiding or have even considered the possibility of being sat on by the 100 tonne fire-breathing monster of doom. They just act as if the dragon will stand there and chomp at them with it's teeth, in ways they can parry or deflect using their sword and shield... and that's a problem for immersion I find.

Now the other 4 players are far more capable of being creative in their roleplaying, but it feels like I'm basically telling the two "hack 'n slashers" that they're playing the game wrong all the time and I've started avoiding difficult to describe situation to accommodate their lack of creativity and that's making the game less fun for everyone I think.

Hense this thread. Maybe something will jump out to help these encounters run better.

 

[wedgeski]

Truly enormous creatures are potential battle arenas unto themselves: every part of the creature can be an encounter or (in 4E parlance) a skill challenge.

Imagine the war-oliphaunts at the Pelennor Fields in Peter Jackson's RotK. Sure, Legolas is a super-hero and takes one out himself, but look at all the things he does along the way: grabs a tusk to swing up, clambers up the body (using arrows other people had fired into the beast), balances on its hind quarters, takes out the dudes with his bow, engages in melee with a couple of mercs, swings down to slice the ropes holding the cupola, then traverses the spine of the beast to shoot it in the head and surf his way down the trunk to avoid a nasty fall.

Stick something like that in the middle of a larger battle, with the PC's tasked to seek out and destroy the oliphaunts, then give them whatever clues they need to take the beast out. Sure hit-point attrition will work, but you don't have 25 rounds to spare, and meantime look at all the damage the mages riding the thing are doing, etc...

 

[DEFCON 1]

...and the thing about "handwaiving" is this; if it's fun for everyone at the table, the who cares?

Therein lies the real point. Since every single player and ever single table is different... "who cares?" is the attitude we all really need to adopt in order to play the game. Unfortunately, when it comes to the actual game rules... that's easier said than done.

If it wasn't... we wouldn't feel the need to ask the community questions about our own personal rulings and rules, nor would we get so bent out of shape when WotC writes rules whose in-game "story" or "fluff" goes against how we like our games to be. Complete overnight hit point recovery... "damage on a miss"... non-magical influencing of other creature's actions and decisions... etc. etc. etc. Just a few of the rules the game has or has had that have caused no end of consternation. So much so that players willingly stop playing the game altogether because it's no longer the game they want or thought it should be.

That's the kind of passion D&D inspires in people. So much so that we get defensive when the things in the game that mean so much to us are considered completely trivial or stupid to someone else in the thread. And why the arguments are had.