Have We Lost Our Way? Two masters on combat and alignment

[Celtavian]

re

The original intentions of D&D have more to do with the people playing the game than the rules. DMs who allow their players to run roughshod over them applying the rules as though they were adamant tenets handed down by WotC, the god of D&D, have the most problems. I have always run my games with the idea that it is an open-ended, adventure roleplaying game, not a highly codified war game with strict parameters. I haven't had any trouble having fun with any ruleset as long I made sure to not allow my player's to run over me with their choices.

No matter the edition, the biggest problem any edition of D&D rules suffers is a DM and players who don't have the same tastes in gaming. This causes a huge amount of friction that leads to a poor gaming session lacking the fundamental ingredient for a good game: fun.

If the DM and the players have a good relationship and enjoy gaming with each other, the rules become irrelevant as the DM and players work together to create the best possible gaming experience. That is how I see it.

 

[MarkAHart]

Combat complexity

1st edition combat stressed and was designed primarly for attrition. If a group of adventurers met a monster, they basically had to beat on it until they knocked all the hit points off its body...there weren't any options beyond that. There were fewer options for combat tactics based on positioning.

The current 3.0 and 3.5 rules provide bountiful tactical options, many of which are organized around positioning and cooperative tactics (such as flanking). There are critical hits, nonlethal damage, and other options for beating monsters other than brute attrition (although that remains an option, of course).

 

[Mr. Kaze]

The game has evolved this way because, quite simply, it's easier to put together a scenario that ends in roughly preordained amount of bloodshed and brutality than it is to put together a really interesting and compelling fantasy story -- especially when you've got all of those darn players running all over the world!

I guess the really telling thing for me about combat (since that's got the most rules on it at the moment) is that it looks like Gary's disagreeing with David... "It is not in the best interests of an adventure game, however, to delve too deeply into cut and thrust, parry and riposte." vs. "Combats should be more like, “One orc ducks under the table jabbing at your legs with his sword. The other tries to make a flying tackle, but misses and sprawls to the floor in the middle of the party!”

Me, I'm a fan of saying things like "The half-golem ex-troll chief grabs you by your arms, rips your arms off, and gnaws upon your head for a total of 4 hits and 68 points of damage..." but that has consequences for the characters above and beyond being a really cool fight description. Bad consequences if the character can't regnerate those arms -- so I have to use such flavored descriptions sparingly. If you look at David's example, both of the Orcs missed. Nobody was knocked prone. Nobody had their legs cut out from under them. While it reads better than "Move to under table, swing, miss; Bull rush nobody in particular, botch, trip self, prone," David's also avoiding the consequences of the orcs being in the combat. As Gary observed: "The location of a hit or wound, the sort of damage done, sprains, breaks, and dislocations are not the stuff of heroic fantasy." -- which is why ripping arms off is best reserved for characters that can grow them back.

But I do think that sorcerors tossing out a fireball and meandering 30' every 6 seconds really de-cinema-fies the magic system compared to high-level multi-weapon fighters only getting a single swing if they've taken a move action as part of their 6 seconds. But I'll trust that the playtesters thought about that and couldn't come up with a better idea and just accept it as part of the rules. <shrug />

::Kaze (whips out the Godslayer of Hit Points and hacks your BBEG into a fine kibble! ...See what kind of limitations narrative combats have? )

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

On combat:

Well, I think the new system evolved for those people who wanted a chance to make their characters unique, be able to do speactacular things and not have to rely on a DM making up a ruling on eht spot, which would then devolve into an argument like "If my fighter has an 18/93 Strength and can lift a boulder, then why can't he grab the orc and throw him into the other orcs?" "Because I'm the DM and I said so!" I think the system can be complex if you want it to be, but it is also easy to pare down to basics if you an your group want to house rule it down. I like the way it has been done in 3e. Its been said before, but I'll say it again, options, and I will add consistency to that as well. When Bull Rushing was some thing adjudicated by the DM only, one group might play it totally different from another making moving between groups more difficult.

On Alignment: Perfect! Thanks for posting it. I don't think 3e necessarily handles it differently, but it does not say it quite so eloquently and therefore there has been a lot of debate about what is the "right" and "wrong" way to apply alignment.

 

[JDJarvis]

Sometimes I feel like we have strayed too far from the original intentions of D&D/AD&D with the wargame/tactics/number crunching embodied in 3/3.5.

I guess we really haven't strayed all that far in the points raised. To use the passages quoted and with all respect to thier original authors:

Since it is not in the best interests of an adventure game, however, to delve too deeply into cut and thrust, parry and riposte . The location of a hit or wound, the sort of damage done, sprains, breaks, and dislocations are not the stuff of heroic fantasy. The reasons for this are manifold and 3e has not done this in any extreme manner.

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The mechanics of combat or the details of the injury caused by some horrible weapon are not the key to heroic fantasy and adventure games. It is the character, how he or she somehow escapes—or fails to escape—the mortal threat which is important to the enjoyment and longevity of the game and has thankfully be preserved in the still abstract nature of wounds within the combat resolution used by 3e.
---
Too many rules inflexibly arbitrated do indeed slow down play (taking away from the real adventure) and restrict imagination. How much fun is it when a character, ready to try an amazing and heroic deed, is told, “You can’t do that because it’s against the rules.” instead of being given the chance to attempt the act with the resolution of the deed being determined by a fairly solid framework of rules.

The trick to making combat vivid is to be less concerned with the rules than with what is happening at each instant of play. If combat is only “I hit. I miss. I hit again,” then something is missing. Combats should be more like, “One orc ducks under the table jabbing at your legs with his sword. The other tries to make a flying tackle, but misses and sprawls to the floor in the middle of the party!” This takes description, timing, strategy, humor, and (perhaps most important of all) knowing when to use the rules and when to bend them. The description of such heroic action is not mandated by the rules but most certainly implied by the very nature of the relationship of player and DM where it is up to the DM to provide the details that make the adventures and campaign setting come alive.

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A chaotic good ranger may be on the verge of changing alignment—one more cold-blooded deed and over the edge he goes, but he doesn’t know that. He still thinks he is chaotic good through and through. . . . which is supported by the 3e alignment system where the DM notes the PCs alignment as stated by the player and it is then up to the player to also prove they are of that alignment through the manner in which the PC is played.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

What Gygax is probably talking about in '79 DMG were the systems that proliferated after D&D's initial success. There were cries of 'realistic damage system!' and 'no more silly hit points and one-sword-swing-a-minute combat!' (Yes, I know they missed the point entirely). You can't imagine the huge amounts of rules these things had. It would make a dedicated Rolemaster GM weep in his cornflakes. There were systems that did indeed track where on your body you got hit. Even the front and back had different damage rates. One system had it where specific organs took damage. It was insane. None of them prospered.

[Old Man Murchenson] Pah, you think you kids have rules now? Bah! We had real rules, men's rules, iron rules. DM's would come to your house and beat you with thorny rods if you didn't use weapon speed factors and house rules that broke things down by segment! [/Old Man Murchenson]

This exactly accurate. Us old-timers remember these arguments - to drag Gary's statements here and try to apply them to 3e's still very abstract system is to miss the point of his original articles entirely. He was arguing against far more complex rules than 3.0 ruleset.

It was also Gary trying to defend the 1 minute round, which was and is a tough sell.

On alignment issues, I tend to prefer the "detect evil intent" method of looking at detect evil.

 

[Ourph]

1st edition combat stressed and was designed primarly for attrition. If a group of adventurers met a monster, they basically had to beat on it until they knocked all the hit points off its body...there weren't any options beyond that. There were fewer options for combat tactics based on positioning.

Even a quick perusal of 1st edition AD&D combat rules reveals that that statement is untrue. In 1st edition, combatants actually had FACING, which meant (among other things) that combatants had a "back". Since most monsters/NPCs/PCs don't have eyes in the back of their head, being at someone's "back" had a slew of combat specific benefits (no Dex modifier to AC, no shield modifier, the Thief gets to use his "backstab", etc.). Facing also impacted the use of shields. If you were attacking from an opponent's non-shield side, they didn't receive their shield bonus to AC.

If anything, positioning was more important in a system that didn't assume a combatant was basically a 360 degree set of eyes, arms and weapons.

As far as the "losing our way" question. Let me quote from Tom Moldvay in the Basic D&D rulebook (pg. B15) "Most adventures should not take more than a few hours of game time". I recently re-read that sentence and it left me stunned for several seconds. "Wow" I thought to myself, "How did we ever get from a system where a whole adventure (i.e. several combats, exploration, travel time, etc.) takes 2-3 hours to a system where a single combat can take upwards of an hour even at low levels?".

At the very least, IMO, the "way" has been either lost or discarded. In either case, it's a shame.

 

[rogueattorney]

I guess the really telling thing for me about combat (since that's got the most rules on it at the moment) is that it looks like Gary's disagreeing with David... "It is not in the best interests of an adventure game, however, to delve too deeply into cut and thrust, parry and riposte." vs. "Combats should be more like, “One orc ducks under the table jabbing at your legs with his sword. The other tries to make a flying tackle, but misses and sprawls to the floor in the middle of the party!”

And anyone who's even briefly read the 1e and 2e DMG's knows this is hardly the only place where Mr. Gygax and Mr. Cook differ. Where 1e and 2e have their mechanical similarities, there are some very different underlying philosophies behind the games. But that's hardly here nor there.

On topic... D&D combat has always had its tension between the desire to be abstract, not bogging the game down in motion by motion moves, while also wanting to be a decent simulation of a fight. In some of the Q&A's with G.G., he's said that, if anything, he'd want to make AD&D even more abstract, removing the weapon v. AC table (which he never used) and the clumsy non-weapon combat system (which he didn't write and never liked). So he's quite obviously in the abstract camp. Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Supplement on the other hand had a very detailed hit-placement system.

2e scrapped a lot of the war-game-y portions of AD&D (in effect turning 2e combat into Basic D&D combat with a d10 for initiative instead of a d6) resulting in a less tactics oriented system - probably having the opposite effect of what Dave Cook wanted. My personal experience was that there was a lot more "initiative, hit roll, damage roll" type combat in 2e than in 1e. 1e had a lot more nuance to surprise, initiative, flanking, warding with spears, etc. I add some 1e influenced rules to my Basic D&D games (primarily a brutally primitive weapon speed and, what you might anachronistically call an "attack of opportunity lite" rule) to spice combat up a bit.

3e, of course, has gone a completely different direction with things, by fully fleshing out combat manuevers. Personally it's a little too much for me. I've never quite digested the whole thing. To me, it falls too far over the simulation fence. I get the same kind of feeling running a D&D combat now (especially with all the counters and grids) that I did when I was playing Battletech back in the 90's. Which isn't an entirely bad thing. Just very different.

I think the problem lies more with me than the game. I just can't quite get the battle off the table and into my head, if that makes any sense. And I don't know the rules well enough to do the combat without the counters. If I were pressed to DM the game, it would quickly devolve back into an O(A)D&D style combat out of habit and affinity.

R.A.

 

[Remathilis]

To loose ones way implies that the way is the only way to do this, and that this is the best way.

I think we've evolved, not strayed.

 

[Dogbrain]

Sometimes I feel like we have strayed too far from the original intentions of D&D/AD&D with the wargame/tactics/number crunching embodied in 3/3.5

A deliciously ironic complaint, given that the ORIGINAL INTENTIONS of D&D were that you would use the Chainmail wargaming rules for all combat.