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

[T. Foster]

If you're completely removed from combat, then the DM should adjudicate the situation appropriately, probably allowing you to act once per segment instead of once per round.

assuming the character has a ready supply of stones (as ammo for his sling, perhaps), I'd probably allow him to pitch one stone per segment (10 per combat round, one every six seconds

Interesting that Ourph and I came up with the exact same ad-hoc ruling for this situation (and we didn't even have to consult each other or pop off a quick email to EGG! ). Ourph's answer is actualy better than mine, because he specifies (which I neglected to) that in order to get this "increased rate of fire" the character would need to be 'completely removed' from combat (i.e. not in melee range of anyone, not having missiles fired (or even potentially fired) at him, not the target (or even the potential target) of any enemy spell casters).

Once you brush aside your preconceptions of what you think you know because it's the way you played 20 years ago when you were 11 years old and actually read the rules for what they are, you'll be surprised that they really do work, they're not that hard, and with a judicious application of judgment and common sense (which were always assumed as necessary ingredients by EGG) just about anything is possible. It still may not be to your liking if you're someone who prefers more consistency and detail, it's perfectly possible to understand 1E and still prefer 3E, but to claim that 1E's rules don't work is just pure ignorance.

 

[WizarDru]

Interesting that you guys jump all over Ourph's example, and even when he explains it under the rules still argue and dispute it, while this blatant straw man is allowed to stand unmolested. If this is not just a completely fictional account and actually represents the kinds of things that used to happen in your games than I'm sorry to say that your old AD&D DM had absolutely no idea what he was doing, WizarDru. But don't feel bad, he wasn't the only one by any means (as this thread has shown).

And by 'you guys', I'm hoping you don't mean me, as I merely asked for clarification of what he was basing his example off of. Some folks tend to pull a number out of a hat and throw out outrageous examples: clearly Ourph didn't do that. It seemed like he had a specific idea in mind, so I wanted to hear about it.

That confused AD&D DM was me, at age 12, by the way. The example given was factual, but run at the segment level. You're right, if it had been run as a normal combat, then it probably should have played differently...but there are certainly no rules or suggestions as to exactly how. I just reread the AD&D PHB and DMG about combat, and was stunned how poorly organized and obtusely written it actually is. Few good definitions of information, data scattered all over the place and an example that really doesn't help much. In fact, the sample of play (as opposed to the sample combat) actually has a sequence where the rest of the party can't do anything for a solid minute while the one character has the spider land on her shoulder. The rest of the party has noticed the spider, but has to just stand around for a full round before they can do anything.

Of course, I also just discovered that you could actually attack multiple times per round, if you won suprise and initiative. I think. I freely admit that the confusing example and (IMHO) poorly organized information has led me to be sure that we probably didn't play according to the rules as written. Of course, I never really met anyone who actually played AD&D as written. Everyone had books of house rules, because they didn't agree with this rule or that.

All of which has little relevance on the topic at hand, of course. I'm not trying to convince anyone that AD&D couldn't sensibly handle situations. It could, because it was assumed that the DM would make things up on the fly. 3E also makes the base assumption that the rules aren't disassociated with common sense. Arguing over faults in either system is a butter-eating contest, as Homer Simpson might say.

None of which has a real bearing on whether or not D&D has 'lost it's way', a concept I'm still not clear on, frankly. Most gamers I know felt that D&D lost it's way with 2e, and didn't follow along for the ride. They left the hobby or went to other systems. Virtually every one I know felt that 3e was D&D 'returning to the fold', not the other way around. Heck, if D&D 3e hadn't been so well received, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

My group and players found that we had fun just fine with the game we played it...we just eventually realized that we had just as much fun with other systems as AD&D. And quite honestly, the only wrong way to play D&D was to not have fun, and we had plenty.

 

[hong]

Exactly correct. Althought using a fantasy movie as a basis for defining the term "plausible" seems a little strange to me.

Because, you know, D&D really IS meant to be a historical wargame simulation.

Now tell me about that funky Roger Bacon and his fireball spells, mang.


Hong "dying again" Ooi

 

[hong]

This may come as a shock, but considering that this (trying to throw stones across a room to hit a lever) is a non-combat action it shouldn't be judged as one and therefore doesn't follow the combat procedure of one "attack" per round/minute.

So, how many bow shots does an archer get?

So, assuming the character has a ready supply of stones (as ammo for his sling, perhaps), I'd probably allow him to pitch one stone per segment (10 per combat round, one every six seconds -- which might seem a little slow but remember he has to aim a bit, and if there's a fight going on elsewhere in the room there's probably lots of noise and distractions, bad lighting (lots of moving shadows), etc. so this doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me).

Irrelevant. I am sure you know why already.


Hong "come back MSB, all is forgiven" Ooi

 

[Ourph]

That confused AD&D DM was me, at age 12, by the way. The example given was factual, but run at the segment level. You're right, if it had been run as a normal combat, then it probably should have played differently...but there are certainly no rules or suggestions as to exactly how. I just reread the AD&D PHB and DMG about combat, and was stunned how poorly organized and obtusely written it actually is. Few good definitions of information, data scattered all over the place and an example that really doesn't help much. In fact, the sample of play (as opposed to the sample combat) actually has a sequence where the rest of the party can't do anything for a solid minute while the one character has the spider land on her shoulder. The rest of the party has noticed the spider, but has to just stand around for a full round before they can do anything.

Hey Dru, don't feel bad, from what I know a lot of people were in the same boat at age 12, me included. A thread at DF (in the Classic D&D forum) brought up an interesting point.

Basic D&D was a perfect intro game for kids just getting into RPGs. It contained most of the core concepts of AD&D, but left out a lot of the details while simplifying and streamlining some of the systems. If you played and got to understand Basic really well, moving to AD&D was a lot less confusing. It also meant you were better prepared to pick and choose which parts of AD&D you wanted to use, because you had a stripped down version of the game to compare the advanced version to.

Unfortunately, a lot of kids either skipped Basic or graduated too soon. A lot of this can be blamed on the way TSR marketed the two games. The general point of view was that Basic was a "kids game" and "advanced" meant "better". What 12 year old thinks he needs to play a "kids game"?

If TSR had done a better job of explaining that Basic D&D was the stripped down, easy to learn, easy to teach, easy to tweak version of the game and AD&D was the more complex version for people who liked more "crunch" (in much the same way that SJG markets GURPS and GURPS-lite), I think a lot of people who were confused by the various rules and organization of AD&D might have made the choice to start with or stick with Basic.

If current D&D has "lost its way" in any form, it's in making the same mistake as TSR when it comes to an intro game for the hobby. It's taken 4 years to bring a "Basic" game to the market, and instead of being a stripped down version of the game, its more or less a "starter kit". Starter kits have their place, but they're not a replacement for having a less "crunchy" alternative (IMO).

 

[Saeviomagy]

To each his own. I use 10 second rounds, because that's how rounds are broken down in the B/X rules. I guess my point echoes what Umbran said earlier. A round is a round. How can the amount of "real" time be that much of a factor when all actions in combat are adjudicated by the round, instead of by the minute?

Because it matters for external things. Because it matters for conception. If everything is done in rounds AND rounds are never defined as a period of time AND there are NO hard measurements in the games mechanics, then things work just fine - you can tell the player doing something complex that it takes a combat round to do and not worry about how long it actually took. Otherwise sooner or later you'll need to estimate something from real-world experience (especially with the generous lack of rules in ad&d) and then you're stuck, because the guy who was running across a football pitch takes the same amount of time to do it as the guy baking a muffin...

If someone was playing out an AD&D combat in front of me, there'd be no way for me to tell whether they were using 6 second, 10 second, 1 minute, 2 minute or 2.58 minute rounds until the combat ended and the DM informed everyone how much time had passed. :\

Unless someone's using a missile weapon and takes 2.58 minutes to line up a shot...

Like it or not, every version of D&D has used hard measurements for distance, which means they need hard measurements for time. And once you've got that, those hard measurements need to make sense if you want any consistency.

As others are wont to say quite often around here, "Sounds like a player problem, not a rules problem to me."

Yeah, players which actually want to picture a scenario in their heads will have a problem when the system cannot support anything resembling the real world.

 

[Saeviomagy]

2) in a situation of surprise, the unsurprised party is able
to make attacks upon the surprised party as if each segment were a full round (i.e. someone who normally gains a potentially telling blow once every minute will in a surprise situation gain one every 6 seconds). In other words, the rules recognize that there are exceptional circumstances in which the normal combat procedure shouldn't apply and a character should be able to gain potentially telling blows more than just once or twice in a minute's time, and provides guidance for dealing with them.

By saying that because someone is standing looking stupid for an entire minute while they're surprised, you can suddenly shoot a bow at 10 times the rate you could before?

 

[D+1]

Read and discuss:

I read NOTHING in there that is inconsistent with the rules and intentions of 3rd Edition. Rules Lawyer, Monty Haul, ROLLplayers, etc. These are terms that predate 3E, even predating 1E/AD&D.

Example:

This takes description, timing, strategy, humor, and (perhaps most important of all) knowing when to use the rules and when to bend them.

It doesn't say, "It takes knowing when the game HAS too many rules, period." It takes knowing when to adhere to them religiously in the first place instead of using your imagination. 3E is no more or less immune to misuse and abuse than previous versions. "The Rules" will never save a failing D&D game (I'VE never seen it) - but they sure can kill it quickly enough when unthinkingly, badly applied. Same applies for combat as alignment. Alignment suffers not from being a bad system, but from CONSTANTLY being misunderstood in it's very purpose in existing in the first place and badly exercised in the second.

 

[s/LaSH]

Have we lost our way?

Or have many of the followers of the pioneers said, "Hey, look over there, that valley looks kinda nice, why don't we go over there instead of going to the valley the pioneers went to"?

Personally, I like the nature of the recent, quicker-round rules; I think "I hit him with my sword" appeals to the impatience of the modern mind more than "I engage him in combat, which is guaranteed to take several minutes no matter how brilliantly I perform".

The 6-second round is a facilitator. You can have a combat that lasts for an hour - it's just not too likely (it's likelier when truly massive ACs come to the table, though). You can also have a combat that lasts thirty seconds and is decided by a lucky swing or two (reason why I'm playing a druid instead of my sohei now - vile crit-scoring minotaur). That's freedom you just don't have under minute-rounds, which are guaranteed to last a few minutes (unless, by some coincidence, you decide matters in round 1, in which case you're excused to say it took a single swing of your mighty axe).

Is that freedom necessary? Is it even a good thing? I think so, others may not.

All in all, though, there are plenty of logical concerns that can be taken with the one-minute round. They can be easily explained - but the question has to be asked first, and it doesn't have to be asked with six-second rounds. The only timing problem with a six-second round is that aforementioned 26-attack lethal Elf - which boils down to perhaps four actions per second. Pretend, for a moment, you're swinging a chain around your head. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. There are morons (or, perhaps, trained warriors facing a minor martial prodigy, as PCs are) walking up to you at the time. What happens? Something pretty painful for the morons/trained warriors, and you could cause an awful lot of havoc in six seconds.

And frankly, fiction demands warriors with the ability to hurt their enemies very badly, very quickly. If Conan, not a truly legendary fighter for all his coolness, has a trademark on slicing someone's belly and taking off his friend's swordhand with the same swing, I'll be in great trouble. At higher levels, when fighters can supposedly compete favourably with people who can call up demons with a word, immolate small army units, and step between worlds to visit their friends for tea, I would expect their combat style to become ridiculously extraordinary, compatible with the extraordinary individuals in our modern world who can draw and fire a gun between frames of a TV camera, or the duellist maestro who can strike a man four times before he can react.

That's my opinion on the combat matter. I think my way's best for what I like, and I think it makes more sense than other ways. But I don't think other ways are unworkable.

On the topic of alignment, I'm... of many minds. Most of the time I like to concentrate on the difference between good and evil, and leaven it with healthy servings of free choice and moral grayness; order and chaos are secondary to the good/evil divide in my mind. On the other hand, the theory that there are (at least) 9 semisecret philisophical societies which collectively encompass everyone on the planet is something which needs picking up and turning into a proper setting one day. That could be quite cool...

 

[CCamfield]

Personally,

- I think one minute rounds are unreasonably long. Yes, maybe it would take a while to get a telling blow in melee combat. But the movement that characters uninvolved in direct combat should be able to do in a minute (e.g. running up to attack, running up to the wall of a castle, etc) is so huge that it makes the round comical

- Too many rules? If you want action like David Cook described, then yes, I think so. I can much more easily imagine the orcs' actions in a game with less complicated and restrictive rules, like Feng Shui, than I can in 3rd edition D&D, with attacks of opportunity and the like

- I don't like alignment