Justifying high level 'guards', 'pirates', 'soldiers', 'assassins', etc.

[S'mon]

You did not really adress it. Let's make another example: The PCs get drunk and start a brawl in an Inn. The town guards absolutely trash the PCs. They knock them around and out, and throw them into the jail for a day. It is no contest.
A day later, the mayor calls the heroes, and asks them to defend the town against a marauding ogre. The town guard can't handle the ogre, and will defend the twon while they go out and slay it.
Anyone in my group, and I suspect in other groups as well, would not accept this as anything other than an attempt by the mayor to kill the Pcs. If the guards can trash the PCs, then the PCs are not suited for tasks that could trash the guards.
Narratist this or that, even a play or novel needs internal logic. If the PCs can slay a dragon, and then in turn are bested by a drow patrol, barring special circumstances such as ambushes or special "dragonslayer" feats, tools or powers, then the drow patrol should manage to slay that dragon as well.

I'd be willing to accept this on a rock-paper-scissors basis. For instance, a dragon with an area-of-effect breath attack and good offense/defense can destroy an army, but is vulnerable in its lair to the lone hero or small band. Maybe the ogre can power attack & great cleave and easily kill guardsmen, but the PCs have better AC and hit points so the ogre is less effective against them. Arguably 3e handled this rather well while maintaining consistency.

 

[Fenes]

And by this logic, if Chelsea beats Arsenal by 2, and Arsenal beats Manchester United by 2, then Chelsea will beat Man U by 4? It's bull**** mate. We all have our good days and bad days as, I assume, do dragons and drow.

Mechanical relativism is an attempt to hide the predictability inherent in an absolutist interpretation of the levelling system.

Actually, sports is the best example. If Cheslea beats Arsenal soundly, and Arsenal beats MU soundly, then one can expect Chelsea to beat MU. Not 100% sure, of course. But such rankings do work in the real world, to the degree of being reliable indicators for decisions.

At the very least, good and bad days aside, one can assume that Chelsea is at least as good as MU, and not weaker.

I think your analogy is a bit off.

Basing their actions on "world mechanics" is absolutely gamist. It encourages metagame thinking.

I said "world mechanics", not game mechanics. "World physics" works as well as a term. The opposite of gamist, actually.

But you're right - players basing their actions on the knowledge that they are in a 'story' encourages a narrativist type of game, but it is the type of game I'm happy to play.

That could be seen as advocating the "He's got a name, so he's an important NPC" metgame thinking. If one would use your way of thinking and twisitng words around.

It's true that either can be seen as a fault, depending on your preference, but it is false to say that one is more like "living in a world" than the other.

I disgree.

 

[Fenes]

I'd be willing to accept this on a rock-paper-scissors basis. For instance, a dragon with an area-of-effect breath attack and good offense/defense can destroy an army, but is vulnerable in its lair to the lone hero or small band. Maybe the ogre can power attack & great cleave and easily kill guardsmen, but the PCs have better AC and hit points so the ogre is less effective against them. Arguably 3e handled this rather well while maintaining consistency.

That's why I added that this was without "rock paper scissors" effects. In a fight not affected by this - similar numbers of drows and PCs - and similar "level", both should be equally effective against the dragon.

 

[S'mon]

3E was coined as "Back to the Dungeon".

I was in favour of that, because I thought what Monte & co meant was that they wanted to get away from the 1990's plot/story-on-rails model of adventure design (I own an appalling example of this, Rogue Mistress for Stormbringer) and re-establish the dungeon crawl as a legitimate mode of play. I didn't realise it meant 20 levels of nothing but dungeon crawls - which is a regression back to something that never existed. 1e DMG has rules for D&D PCs entering Boot Hill and Gamma World. OD&D has encounter tables for ERB's Mars! Both were commonly used for all sorts of adventures, even if a mega-dungeon was often a unifying campaign element. Dungeons remained common at all levels of play, but were never the only thing you did.

 

[S'mon]

Actually, sports is the best example. If Cheslea beats Arsenal soundly, and Arsenal beats MU soundly, then one can expect Chelsea to beat MU. Not 100% sure, of course. But such rankings do work in the real world, to the degree of being reliable indicators for decisions.
.

Most team sports are designed to artificially level the playing field to keep things interesting, by making the outcome unpredictable. Those sports which more resemble actual warfare are better examples of predictability - American Football for instance seems less variable than football/soccer, and professional boxing is better again. In boxing, if A easily beats B, and B easily beats C, it would be very surprising for C to beat A.

 

[S'mon]

That's why I added that this was without "rock paper scissors" effects. In a fight not affected by this - similar numbers of drows and PCs - and similar "level", both should be equally effective against the dragon.

Oh, I agree 100%. I'm just thinking of the case where the King's Guards capture Conan and the King sends Conan to kill Thulsa Doom. It's easy enough to see ways that it's simultaneously true

(a) The King's guards en masse are tougher than Conan and
(b) Conan has a much better chance of killing Thulsa Doom than the King's guards do.

But if 5 guards easily beat up 5 PCs, it's hard to justify why those 5 guards can't take on the ogre instead of the PCs.

 

[Fenes]

I also think there's a fundamental difference in how we approach an adventure. I don't see an adventure as a series of encounters. I do not even see it as a series of challenges. I see it as a bundle of NPCs and their goals and means. If any encounter occurs it is a result of the actions and reactions in game, not the result of an encounter design.

If the PCs manage to foil the plots of the BBEG without a battle, then that's not a problem for me. If they manage to kill the BBEG in a fight in 1 round that's also ok for me.

 

[Snoweel]

ROTFLMAO!!!!

Laughing at your own joke? How indulgent.

I have a friend who works for Australian MoD. I wonder if he knows Snoweel.

Let's keep the personal speculation to a minimum shall we? We'd all hate this thread to be closed.

This is a big change from 3e, but it's still very different from making City Guards 3rd level Soldiers when the PCs are 3rd and 10th level Soldiers when the PCs are 10th.

It is indeed. Thankfully nobody in this thread has been advocating such a strawman.

I don't understand where the reward comes from, though? If I have x10 hp and do x10 damage but the same pirates now have x10 hp and do x10 damage, why should I feel rewarded? Where's the cookie?

There is no cookie if it was a straight one-for-one increase for both parties.

Yet another strawman S'men?

Actually, sports is the best example. If Cheslea beats Arsenal soundly, and Arsenal beats MU soundly, then one can expect Chelsea to beat MU.

Not at all. The results of one game mean very little in the grand scheme of things. That's why the league is nearly always won by the best team but a cup almost never is (cups featuring knock-out games).

Not 100% sure, of course. But such rankings do work in the real world, to the degree of being reliable indicators for decisions.

The results of one game a reliable indicator of the relative strengths of each team? Rubbish.

At the very least, good and bad days aside, one can assume that Chelsea is at least as good as MU, and not weaker.

Once again, rubbish. Hull beat Arsenal away the other day. Does that say anything about the relative strengths of the two teams? All it says is that Hull has the possibility of beating Arsenal away.

If they played again tomorrow at the same venue I'd have my house on Arsenal (don't worry, it's a rental) if they were paying evens.

And no bookie in the world would offer odds like that.

I said "world mechanics", not game mechanics. "World physics" works as well as a term.

Yet you said "mechanics". A Freudian slip?

How do levels have anything to do with world physics? They are an abstract concept representing likelihood of achievement.

That could be seen as advocating the "He's got a name, so he's an important NPC" metgame thinking. If one would use your way of thinking and twisitng words around.

No twisting involved mate. That's exactly what I'm advocating and that's why I said it "can be seen as a fault, depending on your preference". I know some people like to play as though their characters were subject to the same impersonal random chance we are in real life but that's hardly how things work in any other entertainment medium.

Fortune might favour the bold (especially so in movies and books) but in real life, if you continually risk your life you will end up dead.

The reward: risk ratio is far higher for the PCs than it is for anyone else in the universe. So they should already know they're in a story.

Tangential to this is the fact that if the PCs decide that unimportant NPC #237 is important to the story then he just might be.

I'm flexible. I like plot twists as much as the players do. I'm willing to rework something if the players give me a good idea.

Most team sports are designed to artificially level the playing field to keep things interesting, by making the outcome unpredictable. Those sports which more resemble actual warfare are better examples of predictability - American Football for instance seems less variable than football/soccer, and professional boxing is better again. In boxing, if A easily beats B, and B easily beats C, it would be very surprising for C to beat A.

Excellent point.

But you neglect to mention what would happen if A narrowly beat B on points, and B only just got a split decision over C?

C has beaten A on many occasions. Even more so in a team sport.

I also think there's a fundamental difference in how we approach an adventure. I don't see an adventure as a series of encounters. I do not even see it as a series of challenges. I see it as a bundle of NPCs and their goals and means.

This sounds more like a plot than an adventure.

The adventure is what happens when your PCs interact with the plot.

And encounters are what happens when they interact with places and characters described therein.

Don't start trying to claim "creative highground" or whatever it is you're doing. It's a form of 'Alpha-geeking', and if you want to play that game I'll concede without a fight.

If any encounter occurs it is a result of the actions and reactions in game, not the result of an encounter design.

Ah... so... encounter design = railroading?

Wow. Your elaborate game, with its undesigned encounters is just so... superior.

Encounter design has nothing to do with why the encounter occurs, it is concerned with how the encounter will play out. ie. will it be worth rolling dice for or not?

If the PCs manage to foil the plots of the BBEG without a battle, then that's not a problem for me.

I've got no problem with this but I'd prefer a boss fight somewhere between the middle and the end of the adventure. Whether that's with the BBEG, his henchmen or someone avenging his downfall doesn't matter so much, but I like a bit of combat with my D&D.

If they manage to kill the BBEG in a fight in 1 round that's also ok for me.

I've always found this sort of thing a terrible anticlimax.

It's been enough to make rewrite the rest of the adventure to cause an appropriately climactic climax.

 

[Fenes]

Ah well, twisting words again. Coupled with the arrogant barb earlier in the thread that called everyone dumb for not liking 4E, it's time to do another small step in improving my EN World experience, and add Snoweel to my ignore list before the thread degenrates.

 

[Snoweel]

Got nothing?

lol