Musings on the "I Win" Button

[Doug McCrae]

Story was not as important as it is now, the story was the result of the PC's actions rather than something they discovered along the way. The upshot of this is that climaxes are not really preplanned events, but rather self-creating based on the ebb and flow of gameplay. And if you look at the old school mega-dungeon style of play you can see that there is no real ending in sight and in such an environment you really limit the IWB's ability to short circuit a carefully planned storyline or mounds of hard work.

There have always been BBEGs, boss monsters, end-of-level baddies, whatever you want to call them. Hill giant chiefs, evil high priests and the like. I can't think of a single Gygax dungeon that doesn't have a Nosnra or an Acererak or some such. When the players fight one of these dudes, it's a climax, even if you're running the most open sandbox ever.

It really isn't unplanned. When the DM sets up a dungeon, it's pretty clear where the Big Fights are. This isn't to say that a random encounter with some nameless will-o-wisps can't get out of hand and end up in a TPK, but it's not the fight the players are anticipating.

Sure, there's no final end in a mega-dungeon but there are lots of little endings.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Garthanos,

Looking back, I see that I am sorta all over the board with this discussion, talking both of the changes between 1e and later editions as well as the game I am currently playing (RCFG). For the record, there are mechanical options for combat in the 1e DMG, but that doesn't really help the players (esp. if they follow the 1e advice). I would certainly agree that 1e could use some help in this area, although I believe that the resolution speed of fights mitigates against this to some large degree.

One of my goals in writing RCFG was to fuse the faster resolution of earlier games with the mechanical richness of later games. The degree to which that goal has been achieved is, of course, open to debate.

I do like several of the general ideas in 4e, but I am strongly averse to how those ideas are manifested in the game system in too many cases to actually run the game. Thus, RCFG has a "shake it off" mechanism that allows PCs to restore some hit points after a 5-minute rest, but the mechanic is (IMO anyway) very different from 4e healing surges.


RC

 

[Kishin]

While forcecage is powerful, and probably should have some sort of defense available, trapping your foe in an impenetrable, immobile cube for 2 hours/level is a far cry from defeating them, particularly if they have friends.

Possibly true, but turning them into a glass statue and then kicking them over is.

Or an ice sculpture.

Or hitting the entire enemy party with a spell that HALVES their number of actions, and letting the economy of actions take over as your party slaughters them.

Or use dimensional shuffle to repeatedly avoid their biggest attack.

Or any number of a hundred things a Wizard can do at high levels in 3.5E.

Maybe "I WIN" button is a mispresentation, and it should just be called the "NO" button. Or the "MOTHER MAY I".

 

[UngeheuerLich]

umm what magic picklock?
Alter knock so that i now boosts thievery or arcana....and change it to 1 minute if that helps somebody. See in the movies this never takes that long... in fact in the movies regular lock picking is just a few seconds.


well the escape component was hidden by the word retreat.

The picklock you enchanted with the powder you created beforehand with your custom made ritual.

I honestly believe, Rituals are the answer to the we win button. It however should be the effort of the party to make such custom made "we-win" rituals work.

the thief, even if he can´t kill the BBEG can sneak up at night and get the hair from his comb. The Druid can gather the rare flower. The Ranger has to track and hunt down the phase spider to get its heart. And the Fighter has to challenge the BBEG.

So it will be the effort of the whole party. And honestly i believe those kind of rituals don´t belong into the PHB book. Those are custom made.

The only thing i would wish for was the notion, that every Ritual can be reversed to destroy the effect of others. (Even Raise dead) And a more obvious notion, that you can invent Rituals with approval of your DM.

 

[Garthanos]

Sorry if you thought the game I was referring to was 1e AD&D. As noted in my sig, I play RCFG. I figured that I'd hyped it enough that I didn't have to say that again. My fault.


RC

Quick update your sig so it actually spells out what it means... then give it a tag line as a simiplified expression of its design goals. ... It will make it much more informative.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I hate having no recourse but to carve every hit point off of something. Save or dies, and no save or dies keep the game interesting.

The thing is that if you can kill something in one attack, you always do that. There's no reason not to use the quickest, most effective way of defeating an enemy.

Often this meant that the quickest way for a fighter to defeat an enemy was to attack it for damage over and over again.

The quickest way for a Wizard to kill an enemy was with a Save or Die spell or a Save or Suck spell.

It caused a divide in the effectiveness of classes. Wizard defeats the enemy in one round, 2 at the most. The rest of the party combined defeats the enemy in 3 or 4 rounds. Also, the Wizard isn't really HELPING the party by doing this. He is merely playing his own game. If the party gets a couple of lucky crits and takes down the monster in 2 rounds while it gets 2 good saves against the Wizard's Save or Die, the Wizard's spell did nothing at all, likely. If the party manages to get the enemy down to 2 hitpoints only for the enemy to fail its save against the next Save or Die spell, all of their damage was completely worthless and unneeded.

And the divide gets bigger the more hitpoints the enemy has. Ironically, the more hitpoints a creature has the more dangerous and powerful it should seem. But the more likely that the battle will end in a failed Save or Die.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Often this meant that the quickest way for a fighter to defeat an enemy was to attack it for damage over and over again.

The quickest way for a Wizard to kill an enemy was with a Save or Die spell or a Save or Suck spell.

You know, while I'm (obviously) a fan of 4E, I'm also a big proponent of optional rule sets. I'd love to see a 4E Unearthed Arcana with lots of "plug-ins"--even some that are highly complicated or game-changing--for people who want to tweak the 4E experience. I firmly believe that the baseline needs to err on the side of balance, but optional systems, as long as they're called out as being potentially uneven, don't need to.

So it'd be cool, I think, if a 4E optional system re-introduced "save or die/suck" powers. Because of the new power array, it could give them to all classes, not just wizards--so it would still maintain the class balance, at least in a purely relative sense. (Maybe design it so that only daily powers have "SoD/S" effects, so they won't be flying in every battle.) Of course, it'd have to give them to monsters, too. This would make PC mortality rate skyrocket, and make every battle "swingy." I'm glad they didn't go that route for the base system--but I think it'd make for a fantastic optional sub-system.

 

[Thunderfoot]

And this bad guy rescue is supposedly not Deus Ex Machina for your plot?....

Doesn't have to be - sometimes parties need to learn three very valuable lessons, the BBEG isn't always what he/she/it appears; never commit all of you resources to one goal; he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day (I still don't get why some players feel DMs won't give them challenges, they aren't ready for. Real life doesn't scale it's battles, why should a fantasy world?)

 

[Nifft]

The thing is that if you can kill something in one attack, you always do that. There's no reason not to use the quickest, most effective way of defeating an enemy.
(...)
The quickest way for a Wizard to kill an enemy was with a Save or Die spell or a Save or Suck spell.

Yep yep yep. And unfortunately, the best option for most monsters was throwing their own Save-or-Die effects, so combat became a game of individual initiative and saving throws, rather than group tactics -- or really, rather than any tactics, other than how to deal with high SR critters.

It caused a divide in the effectiveness of classes. Wizard defeats the enemy in one round, 2 at the most. The rest of the party combined defeats the enemy in 3 or 4 rounds. Also, the Wizard isn't really HELPING the party by doing this. He is merely playing his own game.

Yeah. Outside of flanking, each PC was generally playing his own game. 4e's done a great job of making the smallest combat unit a party, rather than a PC.

Cheers, -- N

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

I would argue that sleep is more of a "We win" than an "I win" - the other players get to contribute by making coup de grace critical hit after coup de grace critical hit on the helpless opponent(s).

Glad you made the distinction. That similarly would make all the save-or-lose spells of 3E "we win" buttons, since you need friends to finish the job. Or at least to finish the job quickly. Take the psionic power Brain lock. Requires concentration, will save or enemy can't act as long as you concentrate. By your definition, that would be classified as "we win." Battle's basically over if it was a single BBEG, but the psion needs a helping hand to finish the encounter.

So the only true "I win" spells are drawn from a fairly small list -- Baleful Polymorph, Finger of Death, Phantasmal Killer, Flesh to Stone, etc... Even something like Solipsism, which leaves an enemy standing there inactive and helpless (or Hold Person, for a core example) is still "we win."

So....ban about a dozen spells and problem solved?