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

[Saeviomagy]

[sarcasm]Oh yeah! I absolutely agree! I tried to play AD&D for over a decade and I could never finish an adventure because the frickin' combat system just didn't work! I mean, I thought I was having fun at the time, but now that you've pointed out how absolutely impossible it is for a system based on minute long rounds to be usable (let along enjoyable) I realize I was actually in horrible, excruciating, mind-numbing pain during all of those marathon AD&D sessions, and the feeling of euphoria was probably just some sort of psychological coping mechanism.[/sarcasm]

You make do with the tools at hand - and as long as you stuck with actions that were specified within the rulebooks, you were fine.

As soon as you tried anything else, you're like "Ok, so how many rounds does it take for me to do X?"

And then you go, "well, doing that takes a few seconds, and that takes a few seconds. And then moving over there takes a few seconds. Ok, so all up that takes less than 1/4 of the combat round".

And then you realise just how long a minute is.

As soon as you start thinking about ad&d, it starts falling to bits.

 

[Spatula]

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. Below are some passages by two past masters, Gary Gygax and David Cook, from the AD&D 1/2 Dungeon Masters Guides. Read and discuss:

ON COMBAT

Combat is divided into 1 minute period melee rounds, or simply rounds, in order to have reasonably manageable combat. “Manageable” applies both to the actions of the combatants and to the actual refereeing of such melees. It would be no great task to devise an elaborate set of rules for highly complex individual combats with rounds of but a few seconds length. 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.

But...
Ridiculously complicated unarmed combat rules,
Different damage for weapons, depending on the size of the target,
Different bonuses to hit for each and every weapon, depending on the armor worn by the target,
Weapon speed,
are the stuff of heroic fantasy? If anything, 3E's combat by the book is a lot simpler than 1E AD&D by the book (not that anyone actually played by the book back then, as it was so insanely complicated).

Also, complaining about how the current rules being too wargamey strays from the original intentions of a game, when that game originated as a wargame, is more than a little strange.

 

[DrZombie]

My opinion (worthless as it is) is that most people mix up two concepts : roleplaying and combat. To me, those two are totaly seperate, but at the same time connected. Yes, this is getting a bit zen here.

No matter what system you play, roleplaying doesn't change. Depending on your personal style, detailed systems might be preferable to vague systems. Personally, I like to have systems with a lot of skills to give some bones to your character. Wich is why I think the roleplaying part of DnD 3e is a lot better then 2nd edition.

Seperate from that is the combat system. Again, for me, the 3.5/3.5 system is less complicated, when you take it pure from the books. The concepts are not too difficult to understand, there are a few special attacks, and when you start playing from a low enough level the system will grow more complex by adding different feats, but in a smooth and gradual way. The combat system uses a clear D20 roll for all things except damage. Simple. The tactical combat system works well, players have a lot of options.

This is where the two parts get together. As a player, you can organise your character so that the combat style reflects his personality. In 2nd edition, all fighters were similar when you get down to the number-crunching. Not so in 3.5. Because of the various feat trees, you can have two fighters with a totally different style, different attacks, different tactics. Wich, to me, improves roleplaying.
Offcourse, the downside is that there ae players that just forget about roleplaying and just look for the "best" combo of feats. Well, too bad, and pity to them, for they don't know what they're missing. Is it worse then in 2nd edition? I don't think so, 2nd edition was famous for it's munchkinism, one of the reasons I started playing rolemaster.

Again, just my opinion, do with it as you like.

 

[hong]

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.

Ah ha ha ha ha ha!


*dies*

 

[Dogbrain]

The original intentions are completely irrelevant. This is not literature or religion or a national constitution.

Actually, it seems to be something on the order of a religion or national Constitution. I would vote for religion, since Names of Great Ones were invoked.

I don't see why you've included the alignment quote. If anything, 3e is closer to the ideal expressed there than 2e was, imho.

I found that rather odd, too. The 2d edition alignment approach was very much in opposition to the 1st edition alignment approach. In the 1st edition, "good" and "evil" were very nearly palpable and independent forces.

 

[WizarDru]

"Since this isn’t a combat game, the rules are not ultra-detailed, defining the exact effect of every blow, the subtle differences between obscure weapons, the location of every piece of armor on the body, or the horrifying results of an actual sword fight. Too many rules 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.” . . . "

BWA-HA-HA-HA-HAA!

Best Post EVAR!

LOL!

....

Wait...was he serious, there?

(coughs) Oh. Ahem.

Seriously, the intent of the rules was to facilitate a game that recreated the heroic fantasy tales that the game's authors enjoyed. Playing battles that brought to mind the tales of Tolkien, Moorcock, Leiber, Vance and others, using a codified set of rules. D&D is an evolution from a set of miniatures combat rules. Removing the combat information from any edition of the game would remove more than half of it's material, at least, possibly far more than that (not just the combat chapters, but combat-based spells, statistics on monsters, details on weapons, armor and equipment and on and on). And unless Gary was referring to Tunnels and Trolls, and placed it in the AD&D book by mistake, I think he's confused as to what constitutes complicated. I mean, have you looked at all the tables, charts and crazy timing calculations? It boggled me as a kid, and it still does, to some extent. I also happen to think that a bunch of systems that did the kind of detailed combt that Gary dislikes came out almost in direct response to D&D's system, and did it well. GURPS comes to mind, for one.

D&D isn't JUST a combat game, but if Zeb expected me to swallow the notion that D&D isn't about Combat...well, he's got another think coming. The individual emphasis on combat may vary wildly, but the main task of the game under Basic and AD&D was to resolve combat, and facilitate a larger environment to give excuses to set up combat. That it could grow to be so much more is a testament to the power of the ideas involved, and the delivery of it.

That aside, what the original intent of D&D was is not relevant to me. I'm not the same person that I was 25 years ago....why should my game be the same? 25 years ago, we had characters who'd go into an inn and ask an NPC what his class and level were, and what his alignment was. The previous designers and I have different tastes in gaming, and different opinions of what works best in an RPG.

I respect folks like EGG and Zeb for their contributions...but that doesn't mean that I agree with them on the topic of how to play D&D.

And as for the 'abstract' versus 'detailed' issue: 'making it up as you go along' is fun sometimes, and not fun other times. That detailed combat Zeb describes is nothing more than a story hung onto a die roll. Unless you have a consistent mechanic to fall back on, it's really just DM fiat by another name. If that's your playstyle, then more power to you. I prefer having the mechanics at my back. There was no way to accurately guess how that combat would play out in 2e...in 3e, we have mechanics for all of it, and ways to tell who would be best at actually accomplishing it. Both approaches are valid, but I think 3e is much more elegant and consistent, particularly in the portability of knowledge.

 

[dcollins]

Some characters—the paladin, in particular—possess a limited ability to detect alignments, particularly good and evil. Even this power has more limitations than the player is likely to consider. The ability to detect evil is really only useful to spot characters or creatures with evil intentions or those who are so thoroughly corrupted that they are evil to the core, not just the evil aspect of an alignment.

Just because a fighter is chaotic evil doesn’t mean he can be detected as a source of evil while he is having a drink at the tavern. He may have no particularly evil intentions at that moment. At the other end of the spectrum, a powerful, evil cleric may have committed so many foul and hideous deeds that the aura of evil hangs inescapably over him.

I'll just point out that this conception of alignment (specifically, how detect alignment works) was an aberration that existed only in 2nd Ed. That's not how it worked in 1st Ed. (note this is the one point in he thread no 1st Ed. quote exists to bolster), and it was scrubbed from 3rd Ed. as well. One of the sizeable train of poorly-considered tinkerings done in 2nd Ed.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

It depends on you, your gaming group, and the style of play you enjoy. The "number crunching" and combat heavy feats offered in many d20 products are there for flavor and enhancement of combat, but there's no hard and fast rule that says your games should include combat every session. The roleplaying aspect of games comes from the group itself, not the rulebooks. The rules are there for issues with game mechanics only. Use them at your discretion.

 

[jasper]

IF i remember my rules right. Know Alignment gave you the alignment of a person. But in the dmg it mention that a pc had to around 7th level to give off an exact reading.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Ah ha ha ha ha ha!


*dies*

Poor Hong, I'll miss him. At least he died laughing.