I really liked the ideas that @
Libramarian talked about in post #167. Good stuff there.
I'd be interested in any comments on post 164, and/or the episodes of play that are linked to.
OK.
I’m having a hard time following the details of what went on because of the amount of 4ed-specific terminology. Both of my 4ed characters were heroic tier fighters and if you get much beyond that my knowledge gets a lot spottier.
From what I can follow that seems like some good examples of smart play. The set-up for Torog’s appearance sounds like CaW play, while there are also a lot of examples of solid CaS tactics. In general I love combat that takes place around interesting and unique terrain as it can shove players out of their comfort zone. While 4ed tends to cater to CaS more than CaW in the original CaS/CaW thread I heard too many story about 4ed players using tactics that would make the Black Company proud (including some with weird combinations of magic items that lead to the players winning a fight without making a single attack roll to make me think that you can’t CaW the hell out of 4ed.
One aspect of 4ed skills that are on display here that I don’t like is how open-ended the skills are. I prefer skill systems that nail down really precisely what skills can do in narrative terms (ACKS proficiencies do this well despite being a bit blander than I’d like) so players can plan around what their skills can do. However, just about every RPG out there has very open-ended skills, including lots of old school as all hell games, so nothing specific to 4ed there.
I really like what 1ed D&D does with spells in that it really nails down exactly what the spells are doing in narrative terms (especially with the addendum in the DMG) so it’s easy for the DM to adjudicate the PCs doing clever things. For example I want to know exactly HOW the succumbus is going to screw with the PCs’ heads. Kiss (full helm!)? Voice (wax in ears!)? Telepathy (break out the lead sheets!). That sort of thing.
A lot of 4ed abilities don’t really do that, they give you the consequences of a power being used without giving me a clear idea of exactly what’s happening to do that, which makes it hard to use those abilities off-label, but then you can say the same about a lot of 0ed spells so that’s not really specific to 4ed either.
Because you were saying that Combat as War people liked options. When you look at the AD&D fighter there aren't mechanical options. You can't even easily change your weapons. Which means that the AD&D fighter should be the exemplar of the class you hate the most. From which I can conclude that either
a: You think that CaW should only be undertaken by spellcasters
b: This isn't actually a consideration and CaW is just a battle flag.
Often lack of options helps get the creativity going. I’ve run a lot of D&D with students over the years and I just don’t have time to teach them the rules so I hand them pre-gens, give them a 5 minute spiel, field questions and help them select spells for 5 minutes and then they’re at the door of the dungeon.
They don’t know what their options are. The fighters don’t know there are just rules to hit stuff. The thieves don’t know what their thief skills are (I just put “you’re good at doing sneaky stuff like a thief”). Because they don’t have any real options on their character sheet they instead have to look at the environment and manipulate it, which sparks a lot of creativity.
On the other hand it helps to have SOMETHING to work with. I’ve had far better results with “you’re a dude with a sword, ten foot pole and a cow” than “you’re a dude with a sword.” And yeah, this is where 1ed fighters get a bit short changed as you point out. When you get to high level the CaW tactics start focusing more and more on spells (poor fighters) and magic items (equally shared) which leaves them a bit out in the cold, which is something that wouldn’t happen in my theoretical ideal D&D edition.
More like "we want cheap curb stomps of the enemy and would yowl to high heaven if high level NPC mages were to take CaW seriously and start scrying for bands of adventurers and then sticking up wanted posters with rewards once they hit third level".
Depends. One of my favorite campaigns was a Ravenloft one in which the DM managed to enforce Murphey’s Law in such a way that half of the sessions ended with us thinking “oh God, what a mess we made of everything, it was all our fault.”
But even if the CaW is completely one sided, curb stomping stupid NPCs CaW can be just as fun as curb stomping them CaS style (using perfect tactics against dumb NPCs) and high-fiving each other. Don’t think enjoying beating NPCs and hating when they beat you is exclusive to any one playstyle
What I've seen way too many times in D&D is:
A) In 1/2E - Good planning, good play, bad rolls so TPK anyway. I just don't get how this is supposed to be fun. It sucks. Everyone's game is over because the designers set up a game which is really swing-y with lots of instant death.
B) In 3.XE - Good planning, good play, bad rolls means one PC is effectively useless for an entire combat (almost never seen this in 4E because of the narrower ranges involved and the fact that you can usually choose to target NADs or the like).
For the 1/2ed one, if you’re guaranteed victory for having good planning and good play then that leeches out some of the gambling-style excitement. For example in poker you can have calculated the stats perfectly and still get beaten anyway, which is part of what makes the game fun.
For the 3ed one. Been then, seen that, poor poor poor scout/rogue.
Actually, I've just worked out why the playstyle claimed by the advocates of so-called Combat as War sticks in my throat so badly.
On the one side you have a large, powerful, and slow to react force. That is expected to play in a manner that is approximately fair because otherwise it could wipe out the individuals concerned. On the other hand you have a small and well armed but tiny force trying to win by any means necessary where any means necessary explicitly mentioned (in this thread alone) includes collapsing living quarters and burning down the entire forest the enemies live in.
This isn't warfare. Warfare almost invariably has rules like the Geneva Convention - or the rule that once a breach has been made you surrender. Collapsing dungeons and burning down forests puts you well into the realms of Terrorism.
Good point. Maybe Combat as Duel vs. Combat as Terrorism would’ve been better? The reason I chose “Combat as Sport” as the term was because of conversation on Tobold’s blog (tobolds.blogspot.com) a looooooong while back about MMORPGs in which he said that he liked battlefields because they were like a game of soccer (even playing field etc. etc.) while open world PvP in MMORPGs was too much like war and war isn’t fun. I just translated the thinking over to PnP RPGs.
Guerilla combat vs. swashbuckling combat works too. There’s a reason why I chose the Princess Bride duel for the CaS example to go along with Indy shoots the guy with the sword as the CaW example.
Ooof, this threads too long. Three more pages and I should’ve gone to bed half an hour ago.
Anyway, one last thought, after thinking over some stuff in reaction to this thread I’m going to try to come at this from another angle: basically looking at things from the point of view of task resolution instead of overall play style.