Game balance and 3rd edition implications

[Kaodi]

*scratches head*

Well, perhaps you are right, but it's still kind of up in the air. Theoretically, we could of fought them while mounted, but even at that level, as has been been the topic of a whole thread, horses are notoriously easy to kill. Especially when your enemy is riding velociraptors which may use their attack actions to rip your horse apart. So, if you don't go in mounted, and the giant monster pops out of the trees, on command (domesticated t-rex?), you would have to at least spend a turn returning to your horse and mounting, by which time the t-rex is upon you, and you're screwed anyway. We've had some rough encounters in this campaign, where we *all* came within a round of dying, and came through, but the one in particular was a climactic final battle, which we only won through because our opponent had to squeeze through a space that was too small, and we managed to use tactics and spells to finish it off.
I think the problem with balance is that it can be difficult to tell exactly how dangerous an encounter is unless you use a lot of metagame knowledge, and have an excellent knowledge of what monsters can and cannot do. If you see a huge red dragon at that level, " Run! " is probably the first thought that comes to mind. If you see a huge walking lizard, and forget that he has an obscene grapple modifier which practically gives him auto-kill for the first things he attacks, then you might think that an encounter that is certain death may be just really deadly.

 

[Sanguinemetaldawn]

You can't throw stalagtites around like giant boulders. I find the very concept rediculous. What, did they break the thing off the celing, then all heave ho together to toss it at the roper while it sat there watching them? How far can you throw one of those things?

It seems to me that the 1st edition guy's idea wasn't smart or clever, in and of itself.

It was certainly more clever than the standard 3E assumption: "I attack it repeatedly with my weapon until it dies"

It actually went like this:
-they get the stalactite
-strongest character in the group either drinks potion or recieves spell making him stronger
-picks up the stalactite as wizard character uses a force spell to assist with the weight, I think Levitate
-he charges the Roper with the stalactite, hurling it at said beast as he reaches it. The attack required rolls from both the fighter and the mage who was assisting with the Levitate, with a penalty for the improvised weapon.

In short, it took 2 spells, three characters, two rounds, and two attack rolls to make a single attack, which could have easily crapped out on a bad roll. As it was, quick creative thinking, teamwork, and a bit of luck dealt the deathblow to the creature.

The Roper was in melee with at least one other character, as well as chomping on another who was paralyzed due to strength damage at the time.

And "for the record", I didn't particularly like the idea myself until the whole thing started to come together; my amicability had nothing to do with it.

You presume quite a lot: about my attitude, about what the attack entailed, and what I allow in my game.



I find it instructive that you decide the idea is ridiculous and wouldn't allow it before you even heard how it was to be done.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

It was certainly more clever than the standard 3E assumption: "I attack it repeatedly with my weapon until it dies"

That seems more like the 1e paradigm that I saw over the course of a decade running and playing the game. Most 1e combat sessions I was ever witness to went like "I swing at it. DO I hit?" "Nope. It swings at you and...hits. 8 points of damage." "OK, I'll swing at it again. Do I hit?" "Yep." "OK, I do 7 points of damage." "OK it swings at you..." and so on and so on. It was very rare for a player to try anything fancy. Mostly, this seemed to be because there was nothing in the game itself to encourage such stuff.

I'm sure someone will make a smarmy remark about how I must have been gaming with unimaginative cretins, but I really didn't. I gamed with a wide variety of people, especially in D&D's late 70s/early 80s heyday, and anytime a game came along that specifically mentioned ways to do fancy combat maneuvers, those players would go to town with them. I also saw a good bit of house ruling to put such stuff into D&D. So my theory is that the game will encourage players to do more if more is codified that they can do within the rules of the game. A lot of people say they like to "wing it" on these boards, but I rarely ran across anyone who really enjoyed gaming that way in any of the groups I ran across in real life.

 

[Barak]

That seems more like the 1e paradigm that I saw over the course of a decade running and playing the game. Most 1e combat sessions I was ever witness to went like "I swing at it. DO I hit?" "Nope. It swings at you and...hits. 8 points of damage." "OK, I'll swing at it again. Do I hit?" "Yep." "OK, I do 7 points of damage." "OK it swings at you..." and so on and so on. It was very rare for a player to try anything fancy. Mostly, this seemed to be because there was nothing in the game itself to encourage such stuff.

I'm sure someone will make a smarmy remark about how I must have been gaming with unimaginative cretins, but I really didn't. I gamed with a wide variety of people, especially in D&D's late 70s/early 80s heyday, and anytime a game came along that specifically mentioned ways to do fancy combat maneuvers, those players would go to town with them. I also saw a good bit of house ruling to put such stuff into D&D. So my theory is that the game will encourage players to do more if more is codified that they can do within the rules of the game. A lot of people say they like to "wing it" on these boards, but I rarely ran across anyone who really enjoyed gaming that way in any of the groups I ran across in real life.

That's because most such games end up with the "Mother may I?" problem, which is a lot more annoying than complaints about balance ever will be.

 

[Shemeska]

I don't think the problem lies with 3rd edition. It lies with some of the people you picked up with the advent of 3rd edition.

It's not an edition thing, it's a player experience thing more likely. Any given 1e player is going to likely have decades more experience in playing DnD than the average player who started in 3e. There's no edition specific monopoly on the themes of 'think for yourself' or 'come up with creative solutions to difficult encounters', rather it's more experienced players having learned from their experience.

 

[Sanguinemetaldawn]

Anyway... essentially, it seemed like this particular encounter was kind of unbalanced. If we had known it was a t-rex, maybe we could of blasted it from afar and worn it down before it got to us... but using that knowledge would of been cheating. So, we essentially had a monster that would kill whoever it got to first, with zero chance of survival. And a t-rex is CR 8, so theoretically, it should of been an appropriate challenge... But like I said, in this situation it seemed worse than a save-or-die spell. It was die-or-die. And this was the first encounter of this adventure.
Now, I don't blame the DM, I think it was kind of poor design on the part of the adventure. Am I being one of those whiny people, or in that kind of situation is it something for genuine concern?

Well, first, toss that idea of balance. Balance has got nothing to do with it. If your opponents have a T-Rex, they have one, thats all there is to it. (As a DM I would be asking myself things like, how do they feed this behemoth? How do they control it, etc.)
Putting those concerns aside...

I am curious, did you think of trying to use the TRex against its ostensible masters? Perhaps a druid spell or the like? Did you consider trying to lure it into the stand of trees and use the trees to confound the TRex, while attacking it? Obviously you can't negotiate with the thing.

Basically, if you didn't consider those things, you are not playing as skillfully as you could.

From what you say it sounds like you went by the 3E book: attack and attack again. This is exactly what I am talking about. In an encounter like that, I would have automatically assumed a hit by the TRex is the equivalent of instant death (though I know it probably isn't). Personally, faced with that situation, I would be worried about the damger of something being severed, a la Sword of Sharpness. I would have then tried something like I suggested above.

Instead people assume they are "supposed to be able to beat it", and if they can't, they think its a DM grudge monster or something. I mean seriously, is life fair? Is every encounter you make in real life designed to give you victory? Gimme a break. You gotta drop your entire set of assumptions that you go into an encounter with.


Also, once swallowed, you aren't automatically dead (or you shouldn't be). Did you have a dagger or a similar short weapon? In such case I would have tried cutting my way out. Difficult being pinned inside this thing's muscular gullet? Certainly. Being burned by digestive acids as you cut? No doubt.

Those aren't reasons not to try.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I find it instructive that you decide the idea is ridiculous and wouldn't allow it before you even heard how it was to be done.

Instructive? In any case, you are right. I find it silly and it would never wash in my game. At the very best, they would be attempting to do it and the roper, with average intelligence, would decide to use its 50 foot reach to stop their plan by grappling them all.

 

[Sanguinemetaldawn]

That seems more like the 1e paradigm that I saw over the course of a decade running and playing the game. Most 1e combat sessions I was ever witness to went like "I swing at it. DO I hit?" "Nope. It swings at you and...hits. 8 points of damage." "OK, I'll swing at it again. Do I hit?" "Yep." "OK, I do 7 points of damage." "OK it swings at you..." and so on and so on. It was very rare for a player to try anything fancy. Mostly, this seemed to be because there was nothing in the game itself to encourage such stuff.

I definitely agree with that...up to a point.
That point was reached either:

1) when we were in a combat that was clearly going to end very badly

2) we were faced with an encounter that was clearly going to end badly if we tried the regular stuff

I don't know, I definitely agree that the structure of 1st Ed didn't explicitly enable these things, but that was no reason not to ask the DM. What do you have to lose by trying? Its true that its dependent on the DM, but thats the difference between good DMing and poor DMing.

I mean 1st Edition rules are bare bones, of course you had to improvise rules for things not spelled out in the book. The given material serves as a foundation for play, not as a cage. Of course, inconsistent DM rulings that were consistent only in their unfriendliness to the players were a problem, but thats more of a problem with the DM.


I mean, thats the whole point of creative play: to break out of the rules, to come up with clever solutions no one wrote a rule for. The only limit is your imagination and skill, not what some fool wrote in a rulebook.

What an oppressive way of playing. I couldn't stand playing in a game like that. I'd revolt, and either demand a new DM or leave the group. No game at all is better than a game like that.

 

[tzor]

I've been a player since 1E AD&D, so I suppose I'm probably old school on the comments.

Balanced was never to me about us vs them. (There is a balance based on us vs them in my mind which states if they are really powerful then it should be "balanced" by more XP and or treasure.) Balance was always about classes side by side being able to equaly contribute. Given the non uniform progressions of the classes you needed a course in differential equations to even start to discuss whether or not 1E was "balanced."

What you describe is more predictability than balance. Or to put it in 1E speak what is the range of encounters for a given level in a dungeon? Everything too close to the perfectly matched CR for the party makes the game dull. Some of the best games I've played in had their prequils, where we encountered things well above our level and we were smart enough to sneak away. A good campaign once had us searching for a baby black dragon and a bad search check got us to the underwater lair of a very large sleeping adult blue dragon.

We snuck away at the time, but the joke whenever we were wondering what to do was.
"Well we cam always kill the Blue Dragon." Then one day we decided to do just that. We swam to the lair, to find the dragon still sleeping. We attacked it with a vengence, until we noticed that the Draco liche was getting really pissed off at the adventurers who were hacking on it's former scales. Fun times they were indeed.

I'm not sure that it's 3E fault. I think it's the video and PC game mentality that has grown up over the years that has presented worlds that perfectly scale up with the characters. You know what the levels of each area are and you progress through them in a logical manner, getting the right level of encounter every time. The rules of 3E in and of itself allow for as much variety as that of 1E. The mindset of other games, however becomes the significant factor.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

So you are playing with different people now? Its always about the people. I bet if you played a game of 3Ed with your old group you wouldn't have some of these issues.

I have these issues in 3e with with 1e players, but in 1e, it never comes up, either with 3e players, or 1e players. 3e does indeed foster an attitude of balanced encounters. While there may have been a hint of that in 1e, 3e is permeated with it.