Musings on the "I Win" Button

[Nifft]

Early Warlord design seems to have had some "WE WIN" powers, like Lead the Attack.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Raven Crowking]

There is no "I win" button. Using spells or other unusual abilities creatively is a tactical and imaginative challenge as much, if not more so, than battlefield maneuvering.

This.

 

[Raven Crowking]

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.

Esp. if the "BBEG" you forcecaged turns out to be the minion of the real BBEG, who is now stomping on you because you've used all your spells.

 

[AllisterH]

I'm a fan of the "We win" button and perhaps the best example of that is from ironically 3.5

From Tome of Battle: Book of the Nine Swords 9th level White Raven Manoeuver.

"War Master's Charge"

This manoeuver, theoretically, is one of the most powerful/damaging one action option in the game. However, it requires crazy level amounts of coordination between allies.

The only problem is that it really is hard to find good options like that in the game.

As an aside, needless to say, I'm with Exploderwizard. Once 3e got rid of the relatively random nature of spell AND item acquisition that was a hallmark of pre 3e D&D, spells and items naturally got out of hand.

I always come back to this but Knock isn't a big deal in 1e/2e when you only have 4 2nd level slots and only have a 80% chance to learn a spell and can only know in total 11 2nd level slots....

Knock is a problem when you can whip out a wand with 50 charges pretty much on demand at frankly, ridiculously low price.

 

[ExploderWizard]

To answer in order

1.) Our group for a long time wasn't big into "dungeons", so most adventures were short "hideout/minion/boss" style excursions (kinda like the Delves today, but with a purpose).

2.) 2e. 1d10+casting time-dex mod per round. Declare action before init is rolled.

Fighters were just there to stop quick baddies from stabbing mages while mages descimated foes with fire & lightning. Sure, the fighter might get the killing blow, but he probably did less than 20% of the total damage to the foe.

OK, short excursion adventures= frequent recharges, no problem.

How did fighters "stop" spell disruption unless they both went first and killed the threats in one shot?

 

[Jack99]

There is no "I win" button. Using spells or other unusual abilities creatively is a tactical and imaginative challenge as much, if not more so, than battlefield maneuvering.

Nonsense It's called FROSTSHOCK!

 

[Garthanos]

Esp. if the "BBEG" you forcecaged turns out to be the minion of the real BBEG, who is now stomping on you because you've used all your spells.

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

 

[Garthanos]

I wonder whether it would be possible to re-introduce the "I win" button, but in a way that would avoid the two problems mentioned earlier. For example:

1. "We Win": The idea here is that a spell might make the wizard good, but it makes another character better. It is not a new idea - even in 3E, there were some suggestions that knock should give a bonus to Open Lock checks, while invisibility should give a bonus to Hide checks. So, even though a wizard could cast these spells to open locks and sneak around if there was no rogue in the party, he would be better off if there was a rogue, and he used them to improve the rogue's ability instead.

2. The Narrative Win: Here, the "I win" button becomes a plot point, not a challenge. The wizard can, with a single spell, kill the BBEG in one round. However, before he can do that, he need to find the BBEG's true name. And he needs to find a rare component to power the spell. And he needs to fight through the BBEG's minions and henchmen before he can get close enough to kill him. And the party doesn't get any XP for killing the BBEG, except maybe XP for completing a quest. The lower the risk, the lower the reward, and in any case, they should have earned enough XP in the process of fulfilling all the conditions for casting the "I win" spell.

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Both ideas are interesting... and both come under the category of turning it in to "We Win!" can it still become an anticlimax? Maybe but with everybody contributed to it... its more of a Lord of the Rings anticlimax.

 

[Oni]

As I've mentioned elsewhere I've been reading through the archive of posts at Grognardia as well as poking around at some other OSR related sites. What's interesting is that doing so has cast the idea of the "I win" button (hereafter known as the IWB) in new light for me.

I think one of the primary problems with the IWB is that when your adventure is set up in story like fashion, that builds to climaxes that the IWB is an anti-climax. The DM makes an effort to give his PC's some big final confrontation only to have all of his work blown out of the water. So you end up with the notion that the IWB is the destroyer of stories and all the DM's hard work, and if you are running your game in such a fashion that's probably not far off the mark.

The other big problem is one of character balance, other players grew resentful of the casting classes, the wizard in particular because it steps on their toes. One of the primary balancing factors of casters is the issue of resource management, and if they are allowed to routinely circumvent this drawback (i.e. the 5 minute work day) then they will routinely be able to use their IWB whenever it is convenient for them, and in effect doing their companions jobs more efficiently than the companions themselves can do them.

Now what does this have to do with the OSR? Well for me its a reminder that the game was initially intended for a different style of play than what is most common now. 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. The other thing to consider, is that the dungeon is treated as living environment, a place in which time really means something, it seems to me that this should strongly discourage the 5 minute work day. Resting in the dungeon itself is a dangerous prospect and the preparation of spells is a slow task that does not bear interruption. Taking the time to retreat to safety means that the dungeon as a living environment has time to respond to the adventurers, the longer they are absent, the more of their work is undone and the less headway they will be able to make on their return. If you consider these factors it becomes apparent that as the game was originally conceived that the IWB was much less of a factor.

And just a note to finish up on, I'm in no way an old school expert, having only started gaming in 1998. These are mostly other peoples' thoughts regurgitated through the lens of my own experience. I'm sure more those more knowledgeable than myself will be along to confirm, clarify, or utterly refute what I've said, but the above is my current thought on the matter.

 

[Ourph]

I don't miss the "I win" button. I don't want it back in any form. I think the focus on overcoming opponents solely through HP attrition (and things that modify the effectiveness of HP attrition) is one of the best things about 4e and I will be very disappointed if WotC ever start offering options to circumvent that standard.