"Narrative Options" mechanical?

[Ahnehnois]

I'd argue a character could conceptualise their skill in their chosen profession in a similar fashion.

Skill bonus, BAB, and the like all fall under numbers that a character has at least some understanding of in my book.

 

[pemerton]

I find, once combat is joined, “resolving things with the orcs” becomes a tactical exercise, whether this is resolved quickly or requires extended time.

<snip>

If the Big Bad is just a different tactical exercise to resolve, then whether he is taken out with a single die roll or an extended tactical exercise, this is not, to me, “engaging with the fiction”. Engaging with the fiction means that the villain makes his monologue (without a player response of “Yeah, sure, while he’s yapping I waste him with my crossbow”). Encouraging engaging with the fiction may require providing character abilities (rather than rules-less role play) to resolve conflicts in manners other than physical or magical combat.

<snip>

And, when the Big Bad shows up, twirls his moustache and begins his monologue, it doesn’t matter whether he is interrupted with a Polymorph spell or a sword strike – the players (or one player) has “reframed the scene” from one where the fiction is engaged to a tactical combat exercise.

In talking about "engaging the scene" with the orcs, or the "big bad", I'm utterly taking it for granted that combat and other physical conflict is a site of roleplaying, expression of character etc. If that's not the case then combat has no place in a game where the point of play is to engage with the fiction.

What are RPGs that I think facilitate combat along these lines? The ones I know are RM, 4e and BW (all crunchy/tactical), plus the abstract less tactical systems in games like HeroWars/Quest or MHRP. RQ aspires to this, but in my view it doesn't have the mechanics to deliver precisely because it is so impervious to metagaming.

As the chickens cluck around, and the PC’s open the next door, neither the fighter nor the wizard has any control over what will be behind that door.

Well, that's not true if the wizard has another polymorph spell. More chickens. Or if the wizard has a teleport spell, s/he can teleport the party to a door with something more interesting behind it (perhaps using divination magic to locate said door).

I think this is the sort of stuff [MENTION=27570]sheadunne[/MENTION] is talking about, at least.

Assuming the wizard has two teleport spells, he can do the same with the Orcs. I don’t believe that was the intent of the Wizard example – it was “we’re out of here, encounter ended”. With that, I suggest the same intent should be assumed here if we are to have a valid comparison.

I explained the comparison I'm making upthread. RPGs with "abstract" scene resolution mechanics like MHRP, HW/Q, and (I suspect) FATE aren't heavily constrained by infiction geography in their action resolution. D&D is. So using abilities in D&D that radically change the geographic location of a PC (eg teleport) are likely to be scene-ending. Whereas in those other systems, they don't have to be.

That's all.

If you know ways to make D&D handle geographically separated PCs and opponents within a single scene, I'd like to hear it! As I mentioned upthread, I have tried this in 4e with limited success at best.

 

[pemerton]

Absolutely false. The character most certainly can and probably does know roughly how many hit points he has and how much damage effects are likely to cause him. Objects have hit points. An enterprising physicist in a d20 world could drop blocks of stone from varying heights and determine physical laws that explain how much hp and hardness the stone has and how much damage falls cause. A character probably doesn't have time to examine his own properties that way, but they are objective and observable to him and they work the same way. If he jumps off a cliff, the result is reproducible, and he can predict it if he periodically challenges himself. Is this abstract? Yes. Realistic? No. But there's nothing going on here outside of the character's awareness.

I have never played with anyone who treats hit points in this way, except perhaps as a comedic diversion a la OotS. Gygax himself explains something quite different in his AD&D rulebooks.

What I'm talking about is cases where, as with say your 4e martial powers or your 3e knight's challenge or your action points, etc., a player makes tactical choices that affect the character, but which the character is not aware of. Does a character know how much damage is needed to kill him? Probably. Does a character know that his knight can gain benefits from shouting a challenge to someone, but that those only work five times a day? I doubt it! That divorces the player's perspective from the character's, and pushes us from "roleplaying" towards "storygaming" (or whatever jargon you want to use).

I don't want to use any jargon. It's roleplaying - as in, playing an RPG. 4e is an RPG. HeroWars/Quest and Burning Wheel are RPGs. They don't cease to be RPGs just because some of the mechanics are metagame. AD&D doesn't cease to be an RPG just because someone plays hit points as the game author characterised them rather than in the simulationist fashion you have described

In other words, not metagame.

Yes. I was deliberately contrasting level drain with standard save-granting effects in classic D&D.

The metagame aspect is when you start talking about experience and levels. I doubt the character understands why his hp go up so much. That's very much metagame, because experience and levels mean nothing to that character (unlike hp, which are very real to him).

Can't your hypothesised "physicist" do experiments with wights and vampires? Or, in 3E, with item creation. Work out how much gold has to be collected for someone with a 5% chance to hit plate and shield to increase that to a 10% chance?

In other word, what [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6703609]Mike Eagling[/MENTION] said.

Personally, just as I've never played with anyone who treats hit points as corresponding to an distinct component of the fiction, I've likewise never met anyone who treated classic D&D XP as anything but metagame (just as Gygax describes it).

EDIT:

They could realize that. But what does that mean if they can? What does a character think is happening when he shouts at someone one minute and gets an effect, and do the same thing a minute later and gets nothing? Over and over again. This is why you see people insisting that 4e characters (and other characters with nonmagical abilities with daily limits and such) cannot know these things, because if they can, the implications are nonsensical.

The difference is certainly not black and white, but a shade of gray. With hp, it's reasonable to think that a character could conceptualize hp as "this is how tough I am"; and we all do have a sense of that.

I don't see how it is any more bizarre to know that you can only do X once per 5 minutes, than it is to know that you can be shot by 5 arrows and survive but the 6th will kill you - which is what hp mean, on your characterisation of them.

Both are so bizarre relative to the human experience that I treat as the underlying framework for my own games that I can't meaningfully rank them for bizarreness.

 

[Balesir]

Because XP, in and of itself, does not have any effect in the game that a character could test or observe, and does not have any cause that the character could understand.

But, if they can have a sense of how relatively "close to death" they are, why not how "close to gaining (another) aliquot of capability"? The two are analogous, surely?

Actually, they probably could (see the thread a while back on things characters would be able to know about themselves; quite a bit as it turns out). They probably do have some sense of it, though determining an exact number would be very difficult because the effects of level are indirect and this is a very abstract line of thought for the character. Particularly spellcasters know that spells have levels, and can probably intuit some notion of character levels based on who gets spell access when.

I don't really see or require that they get exact numbers for any of these things - do you get a numerical sense of how fatigued you are? I certainly don't, and yet I get a reasonable sense of "how much" fatigue I have, nevertheless. So let's assume, for the purposes of this thought experiment, that they D&D character gets a similar gauge of their own "lifefulness".

They could realize that. But what does that mean if they can? What does a character think is happening when he shouts at someone one minute and gets an effect, and do the same thing a minute later and gets nothing? Over and over again. This is why you see people insisting that 4e characters (and other characters with nonmagical abilities with daily limits and such) cannot know these things, because if they can, the implications are nonsensical.

Human beings cannot know how many hit points they have left (because they never had any), so why is what a human is capable of relevant to these alien beings who not only have such things but are capable of assessing (roughly or exactly) what proportion of them they have left? The workings of an ability don't have to empirically discovered under such an alien scheme; the character can simply sense whether or not s/he currently has the capacity to use it or not. In much the same way that I know whether I am hungry or not, they will know if they have the ability to perform their "schtick" right now or not.

The difference is certainly not black and white, but a shade of gray. With hp, it's reasonable to think that a character could conceptualize hp as "this is how tough I am"; and we all do have a sense of that. With these other examples (powers and so on), I just don't see what a fantasy character could possibly understand them as being. It's not fatigue, or any other construct that would mean anything in the game world. It's the old "out of rage" problem. HP are simplified and overgenerous, but powers and the other martial character abilities under discussion here simply don't make sense at all.

After a reasonable education, both theoretical and practical (and thus, at times, painful) I have a reasonable idea of "how tough I am" - but the concept (and also the reality, I am convinced through evidence) is nothing at all similar to "hit points".

A sword (or, more likely, a knife) used to attack me might impact upon my "toughness" in a whole variety of ways. Biomechanical damage (up to severing whole appendages), breaking the integrity of the cardiovascular system (resulting in bleeding that will result in my death if not stopped) and otherwise superficial damage that may result in shock (potentially fatal if not treated), infection (ditto) and physical impairment through pain are all possible. Losing "hit points", frankly, isn't.

If our D&D characters are so utterly different from us in the ways that their bodies receive and react to physical damage, why oh why must we assume that their mechanisms of fatigue, hunger, physical capability and physical incapacity are closely modelled on our own? This, I suggest, "makes no sense" (by which I mean it is inconsistent and without logical justification).

It seems to me that there are two supportable models, if we presume the use of "hit points" or their equivalent:

1) Hit points, and all similar game mechanical conceits, represent luck, divine favour, heroic capacity and other things that are intangible to the characters in the game world and exist only to regulate the running of the game in the external ("real") world.

2) The characters are actually quite alien to humankind, and we are free to invent whatever game-world physics and character capacities and capabilities (along with limits to those capabilities) we please.

To say that, arbitrarily, some of the characters' capabilities are quite alien to the evidence and experience of human existence while others "cannot" be different seems inconsistent, unreasonable and insupportable. To say that we like such a curious and ill-assorted mix would be entirely reasonable, but to insist that it cannot be otherwise is a stretch too far.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Both are so bizarre relative to the human experience that I treat as the underlying framework for my own games that I can't meaningfully rank them for bizarreness.

Well, they're both pretty bizarre.

It's roleplaying - as in, playing an RPG.

The term "rpg" is applied pretty broadly. However, I think that-regardless of what you call things-there is an important spectrum of narrative control, ranging between some games where a player is very strictly limited to his character's perspective and abilities, and games where the player has far-ranging narrative control and is not tied as tightly to his character (and is less concerned with "playing his role"). There is a difference. Call it what you will.

But, if they can have a sense of how relatively "close to death" they are, why not how "close to gaining (another) aliquot of capability"? The two are analogous, surely?

On some level, yes. I just happen to think that the effects of hit point damage could be understood easily, while the experience is unlikely to be understood, even though it is conceivably comprehensible. Again, shades of gray.

After a reasonable education, both theoretical and practical (and thus, at times, painful) I have a reasonable idea of "how tough I am" - but the concept (and also the reality, I am convinced through evidence) is nothing at all similar to "hit points".

True. None of the rules elements we might discuss are likely to map on to reality all that well.

If our D&D characters are so utterly different from us in the ways that their bodies receive and react to physical damage, why oh why must we assume that their mechanisms of fatigue, hunger, physical capability and physical incapacity are closely modelled on our own? This, I suggest, "makes no sense" (by which I mean it is inconsistent and without logical justification).

I don't think they need to be closely modeled to our own. However, I do think there has to be some (very minimal) standard for how closely. You may be arguing that hit points are actually below that standard (as I often do).

It seems to me that there are two supportable models, if we presume the use of "hit points" or their equivalent:
...
2) The characters are actually quite alien to humankind, and we are free to invent whatever game-world physics and character capacities and capabilities (along with limits to those capabilities) we please.

Yep. I'd say that's pretty much D&D right there. Crazy physics.

1) Hit points, and all similar game mechanical conceits, represent luck, divine favour, heroic capacity and other things that are intangible to the characters in the game world and exist only to regulate the running of the game in the external ("real") world.

Well, that's pretty mind-bending. There are games that I do read that way, but D&D definitely is not one of them.

To say that, arbitrarily, some of the characters' capabilities are quite alien to the evidence and experience of human existence while others "cannot" be different seems inconsistent, unreasonable and insupportable. To say that we like such a curious and ill-assorted mix would be entirely reasonable, but to insist that it cannot be otherwise is a stretch too far.

To say that hit points mean something and daily ability uses does involve setting an arbitrary bar for "reasonableness" somewhere. But I don't see how we can make or play a game (or have this discussion) without setting that bar somewhere. I think it's a pretty easy call, no debate required, to say that hit points are on one side of the reasonableness bar, and martial daily abilities are on the other side, but if your bar is different then that's that.

 

[Balesir]

To say that hit points mean something and daily ability uses does involve setting an arbitrary bar for "reasonableness" somewhere. But I don't see how we can make or play a game (or have this discussion) without setting that bar somewhere. I think it's a pretty easy call, no debate required, to say that hit points are on one side of the reasonableness bar, and martial daily abilities are on the other side, but if your bar is different then that's that.

I think the nub of my point is that not only does the bar have to be set at some height, but that different folks will have different perceptions of just how "high" various departures from "reality" are. To me, the hit points and the single-use-before-rest abilities and the xp and levels are really all pretty much the same height. Maybe it's because another game I regularly play does not use hit points (HârnMaster uses wounds that can disable, bleed, cause shock and get infected, but don't subtract from a general "hit point" pool at all), but all those mechanisms seem to be roughly equally far from "real world physics" (not to mention biology), to me. That's why, when I play D&D, I assume my number (2) possibility in my previous post.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

So are we looking to "equalization"? If the wizard can do it, the fighter must also be able to do it, so give an ability to one or remove it from the other?

Not precisely the same. But similar. If the Wizard can retreat from a combat with a Teleport without Error(or Teleport, Greater or whatever) as long as they prepare it in advance then maybe a fighter could have a lesser power that does a similar thing. Maybe he can intimate enemies into ignoring him when he runs away. Not as powerful, but similar. The Wizard can appear across the planet in an instant. Maybe the Fighter can move at 3 times normal overland travel rate and can avoid random encounters if he's by himself. Or maybe he's just famous enough that he's almost always offered a ride by roaming caravans or gets offered a teleport by traveling Wizards. He just has to walk to wherever they are so it isn't immediate like an actual Wizard.

So the players just resolve everything in the One True Way the GM has in mind? Maybe he can just send us an email telling us what our characters did.

I know this is a contentious point and some people really hate playing D&D like this. But for me, I'll say that the DM gets to frame the scene, the players get to decide the content of it.

It's similar to Improv acting games. The moderator says "Here's the scene, you are a traveling salesman who is attempting to sell XBox Ones door to door. The other guy is a walrus who already has a PS4. Oh, keep in mind that walrus's don't have hands. Right now you just like to look at your PS4."

The actors then proceed to decide on the actual dialog, the strategy they'll use to convince the Walrus and how the Walrus responds. However, it's against the spirit of improv to just give up on selling the XBox One and have a scene with you sitting in a bar drinking while completely ignoring the other actor on stage.

Similarly, I believe it is against the spirit of D&D to take what the DM gives you as a scene and say "I don't want to do that. I'm doing this instead".

Now we are into the question of adventure design - if the PC's are able to teleport, the adventure should not be neutralized by that ability. Teleporting away is not getting us past the Orcs to rescue the kidnapped villagers, though.

No, but teleporting PAST them into the room with the kidnapped prisoners and teleporting out with them before anyone notices is. Either way, teleport isn't really the point of the discussion, but rather "Narrative Options" of which the Wizard has many. Teleporting is just one tool amongst many.

Although teleport SHOULDN'T disrupt adventures, it often does. Many DMs do not consider the ability to teleport when designing an adventure. Mainly because they steal ideas from movies, tv, novels, comic books. Many of which don't have teleporting protagonists. Especially if you've been running the game since the PCs were low level. You grow to expect that they can't do that until the level that they can.

Really? To walk through a door? Every corridor is 10' wide to facilitate this? Did you have weapons out, or sheathed? Are you wearing shields (which make your hands less useful for that touch).

Our DMs have always ruled that any sort of contact counted as touching. So, you just put the back of your hand holding a sword against someone. And each person just has to be touching someone else, so in a 5 ft wide hallway, we just all touched the person in front of us, creating a chain and teleported.

"roll up new characters" is not the end of an adventuring success story in my view. If you need to spend actions to get into position, you are working with action resolution. Seems like a good hint to the orcs that the scrawny spellcaster is going to do something - should we be ready to disrupt it? Maybe this is a good time for a Bull Rush if they're trying to get into some odd formation. Of course, if you can take three other characters and you were hoping to also get those two prisoners home, that Teleport seems less beneficial, somehow.

It isn't the end of success. But the Wizard always escaped while the rest of us died. It's just an advantage he had over everyone else.

It might be. But I really dislike playing games where dumb creatures have an exhaustive knowledge of spells and how to disrupt them. When I play orcs, it's often: "That guy just did some magic stuff that hurt a lot! Let's smash his head in until he stops casting that magic at us."

The idea that most orcs would be "That over there, good man, is what we call a Wizard. When they cast spells they need absolute concentration. So if you wait to hit them just as they open their mouth, it's possible you can distract him enough so he can't finish his spell." It's just too much strategy and patience for brutal orcs.

Even if I was to use those tactics, however. We always make sure there is one of our allies in a straight line between the orcs and our wizard to prevent charges. Or the Wizard is invisible, has mirror image up, or any number of other protections. Even if he is hit, most concentration checks can be made on a natural 1 for the average damage of enemies.

So, basically, if we remove all of the actions that could be taken to prevent spellcasters from casting, nothing prevents them from casting. Oh, and we need some new rules to make the spellcasters less powerful! Will we actually use these rules, or will we ignore them as well and be surprised spellcasters are still overpowered?

If those rules are useful, we'll use them. However, when you are fighting an encounter against a bunch of Oozes, they will not use any of those rules. They are require intelligent, strategic enemies to even attempt them. Over half of them require the enemy to be a spellcaster.

All of whom played exactly the same way, apparently.

No, there were a lot of variation. But on this point everyone agreed. Disrupting spellcasters was close to useless and a waste of your action.

I rarely see Counterspells. Silence? Very frequent - but not "on someone" for the reasons you note.

Yeah, this was a point of some contention amongst DMs. What happens when a silence appears in a point of space(where there's no save), putting a Wizard in silence AS he is casting the spell.

Some people pointed out that a readied action happens before the action that triggered it so maybe the Wizard hadn't started casting his spell yet when the silence goes up, allowing him to cast the spell later in the combat when he wasn't in silence(though we ruled it still used up their standard action).

This was argued for mainly because many people felt that Silence was way too powerful if it was considered to disrupt the spell and make the caster lose it. Mainly because amongst the options of disrupting spellcasters it appeared to be easily the most powerful: Using Dispel Magic required a caster level check to succeed at a counter spell and it was specifically designed to stop magic. Doing damage allowed a concentration check, using the exact same spell to counter required having the same exact spell prepared. All of the options had a chance to fail except casting silence on a point nearby an enemy caster as he was casting.

We jointly agreed that the other options might as well not exist if we were going to allow that. So, everyone agreed that stopping someone from casting the spell but leaving it in their memory was at least reasonable.

Still, no one really used it however, because it was better to have the enemy dead than have them silenced.

So, basically, "let's use this tactic when it serves no useful purpose, but not when it would actually be useful". Great. Again, lets remove a whole bunch of effective options and complain that the ineffective ones we kept aren't working. Not to say that Pathfinder's streamlining of these combat maneuvers was not welcome - they needed the improvement.

The problem is, it NEVER had a useful purpose. Which mainly has to do with the math in 3.5e. Most relatively powergamed groups of PCs can easily do enough damage to kill one monster of CR=their level(and probably 1 or 2 levels higher) without blinking. Although, if one of the party members wasted their action NOT doing damage then the monster would survive long enough to attack.

Gotta say, I can't see four thinking people deciding that, although this approach means we don't routinely get beaten, bludgeoned and cut, it takes longer, so we'll just suck up the beating so we can get done quicker. Of course, I would also be OK deciding that, with the target grappled and having little or no chance at escape, "With the enemy grappled, you are able to make short work of him." Mind you, my games do not feature enemies with "30 hp" tattoooed on their foreheads either.

The characters never decided this, the players did. They hated the hour or two of real time it took to play out these combats.

I just gave an example of hitpoints. The point is that most enemies have low hitpoints for their CR. If you follow the EL guidelines when crafting encounters, it almost always involves the enemies dying in no time at all. At least, when the PCs attack and do damage instead of delaying the battle with non-damaging actions like Sunder, Grapple, Counterspelling, etc.

My monsters don't have 30 hps on their foreheads either. That's precisely the problem. As the DM, I'm keeping track of them and thinking "Wow...if they had just attacked instead of grappling, this battle would be over already with one or two good hits from the fighter. But he's the one grappling." We discussed it one day, since nearly all my players were also Living Greyhawk DMs and we all felt it was kind of an issue since we spent so much time resolving grapples that didn't help the players at all. That conversation bled over to us as players where we'd pretty much complain at anyone who attempted a grapple to stop and just kill the monster already so we didn't have to wait as long to resolve the battle. The real problem with grapple is that the monster with LOTS of hitpoints are the Huge or larger creatures. Those are the ones that are going to survive a couple of rounds of attacks and therefore would be the most beneficial to grapple. Those are precisely the same creatures that were impossible to succeed at grappling.

I remember one battle in particular where a Wizard thought he was so awesome. He cast a spell which had a huge area of effect which did something like 1d6 points of damage to enemies while in it. Then cast another spell which caused people to trip and fall if they moved more than 10 feet during their turn and had to roll balance checks to get up. But since it had that effect on everyone, he asked none of the other PCs to enter it. We fought a couple of more enemies while we waiting for them to leave the AOE, but eventually, they were the only ones left and he insisted we don't engage them and just let them die.

The DM was getting super frustrated because each round he was accomplishing nothing. He rolled to see which ones got up that turn, most of which failed and marked down 3 points of damage amongst 50 or so hitpoints. The problem is, he couldn't just skip to the end of the encounter because it was obvious that they were going to eventually reach the edge of the AOE with enough health to at least get one or two good hits in before they died. It was just a matter of how fast they got there, which order they arrived in, etc.

If the opponent can just hit him and he's down, then I agree - why would he grapple? But, if the wizard easily hits in melee, the fighter should be going to town on this guy anyway.

I'm not sure what your point is. Sure, the fighter will likely hit him a bunch and do a lot of damage. He likely won't kill him in one hit however. Though, in 3.5e everything had so few hitpoints that nobody used a polymorph spell anyways. It was either hit someone with a Force Orb for nearly half their health in damage or attempt a polymorph spell and see if it worked.

The wizard holding a dagger and a wand/scroll doesn't have a hand free for somatic gestures either, so I dont see a lot of wizards drawing weapons. I do see a lot watch the flow of the fight (delay) until a reason to use a spell comes along.

All I can say is that the average Wizard holds a dagger/staff in one hand and nothing in the other in our games. If they needed a wand, they'd draw one as a minor action. No big deal. You keep the weapon in your hand just in case you need to make AOOs. You may not have the best chance to hit but if you only have a 50% chance of stopping a grapple, it's better than nothing as one grapple pretty much removes your character from the game.

It does, thanks.

Glad to hear it. I find "There are more orcs" perfectly acceptable compared to "The orcs are a well trained swat team for taking down Wizards and when a Wizard shows up, they all know precisely the way to take him down and their primary goal becomes ignoring everyone except the Wizard to make sure he doesn't cast spells."

Go ahead and follow us right back to the settlement. Of course, you are leaving your own lair unguarded while you chase us into an area unlikely to be friendly to Orcs.

Sure. Though that's not likely the point. It's likely that one of them either runs faster than one of the PCs or one of them has a bow or casts spells to shoot at the PCs. Then the retreat doesn't last until civilization. It lasts until 200 feet away from the cave entrance when the last of the PCs dies to bow fire.

7th level PC's - which spell(s) are you using , and what all spells are you carrying?

Ugh, this is why I stopped playing 3.5e. Because I hate building NPCs. When I build 7th level PCs, I don't even choose half their feats. Or at least I'll just pick the absolute most obvious ones. These are fighters. I likely took Weapon Focus, Weapon Spec, Combat Reflexes, Dodge for the Orcs.

I don't often pay any attention to what spells and feats my players have. My opinion is that monsters don't change simply because the PCs took a particular feat or spell. I don't build monsters to defeat them. Could I build monsters specifically for defeating Wizards? Sure. Do I want to? No. Do I think it should be necessary to target one class above all others? Nope.

I'm not pulling out specific spell examples. The specifics simply don't matter. It's the concept that does. I can tell you that not one wizard in our games at level 7 has less than 23 Int. Starting with 20 Int, putting the point for 4 in and having a +2 int item(or even a +4 int item by that point) is likely. They also likely have spell focus. Anyone who started at only an 18 Int is laughed at for being underpowered.

Seems more like the GM didn't consider the weaknesses of the opponent in light of his party's strengths. What does the wizard do if the save fails, or if there is another encounter? I suspect, also, that for every bad FORT CR 11 monster, we can find quite a few with spell resistance, magic immunities, etc. that render the wizard much less effective. And that's OK - he got to shine against the one with weak FORT saves, so it's someone else's turn in the spotlight!

Keep in mind the Wizard has many, many tools in their toolbox. I just assume that any enemy I use, the Wizard will have at least one spell that works just fine against them. Orb of Force goes right through all spell resistance, doesn't require a save and does huge amounts of damage. In battles where Wizards are forced to resort to it, they are ONLY equal in power to the rest of the group. And this only happens in about 1 in 20 battles.

As for considering the strengths of the PCs. Yep, I spent most of my DMing during those years running Living Greyhawk where the adventures are written by someone else and were designed to be played by any group of PCs. We weren't allowed to change the monsters....so I ran what I had.

As I recall, Stoneskin was not cheap, so it was not used universally. And spells had casting times - if I used speed factors, I definitely also used casting times.

Yep, stoneskin cost money. Some of our DMs enforced it. Either way, it was 10 gp or something and in most of our campaigns, that's what we picked up from the chump change of the average encounter.

As for casting times, the casting time of a spell was equal to its level. If I remember correctly, a Longsword had a speed factor of 4 or 5. Basically, every spell that was less than 4th level was faster than the average weapon. And that required that the enemy be close enough to swing their weapon on you during their turn. If I remember correctly, moving added to your initiative.

Grappled, then pinned, then tied up. Enemy defeated. "defeated" need not mean "killed". In the encounter I was referring to, the creature could be dragged to a pool and drowned.

Yeah. Though pinned characters were not helpless and therefore couldn't be tied up. Pinned only lasted a round. It wasn't really fair to the enemies to allow one pin to defeat them. Though, if their grapple check was bad enough, it's certainly possible they'll never escape.

So why is the theme "kill", rather than "defeat", the monsters? What is our actual goal, and why does it require their deaths?

It doesn't. Kill might be the wrong word. "Fight a combat" might be a better one. The point is that it's a battle scene and Polymorph is less a battle spell and more an interesting utility spell. I'd like spells like this to be changed to longer casting times so that the idea of Wizards turning people into other things remains but it being used as the answer to a combat situation goes away.

Pretty sure that's why we got Diplomacy skills - to avoid the GM just neutralizing parley attempts, we get a "you have a chance - roll the dice" mechanic instead. "The monsters refuse to parley" is no more acceptable, as a universal issue, than "there's anti-magic fields everywhere", in my view. Your spell can fail because of good saves, spell resistance or immunity to certain spells or effects, as well.

Diplomacy shouldn't work against people who don't want to talk to you. It isn't magic. No matter what you say, orcs aren't going to stop hurting you because you yell out some words.

I understand the rules explicitly allowed changing attitudes in combat. It was the butt of many a joke because of it. I once played a character explicitly to show how stupid this was. When you can make a DC 40 on a 1 on the die you can make the DC 25 to turn a hostile creature indifferent without rolling. If you roll high enough, you can make them friendly.

Though, that didn't stop nearly EVERY DM I played under with that character from saying "What? Show me where in the rules it says that! Really? It says that...that's stupid. I didn't think you could force creatures who are valiantly trying to kill you to stop simply because you said 'Stop! Please!' Wait, I'm allowed to apply circumstance modifiers to your roll, right? They aren't just hostile, they are extremely hostile. You get -20 to your roll."

I was in agreement with them really, I shouldn't be able to force an NPC to do what I want, no matter what I roll. I can influence them as long as it's reasonable and in the right setting. But yelling out something in 6 seconds that makes enemies stop attacking you is unlikely at best.

But, if every encounter must be played out as a combat slog, then why be surprised that players gravitate to abilities that cut those slogs short? It seems like half your comments above gripe about combat taking too long and the rest are complaints about things that shorten them.

I'm not surprised. I understand that people want the quickest, most efficient way to win as possible. I want to do that when I play. Well, mostly. I normally play blaster mages who use fireballs and magic missiles, despite them being "bad" choices since it is more satisfying to me to blow enemies up rather than turn them into bunnies.

However, the point is that the game should feel satisfying for everyone. Part of the DM and the systems job is to make sure that happens. Players would love the ability to snap their fingers and have all the enemies on the battlefield drop dead. It would be so much easier. However, the system should be designed to make sure that doesn't happen and there is some risk involved in fighting a combat. When the system fails, the DM should also be attempting that goal.

I want a system that runs combat fast but doesn't end in one round so that combat feels like something happened during it but doesn't use up very much real life time. So far 5e is doing that for me. Battles go 3-4 rounds on a regular basis instead of the 1-2 that 3.5e combats lasted. Because of this they feel most substantive in terms of story while still taking 20 minutes instead of 60 minutes.

It does that mainly by removing options like sunder, grapple, counterspelling, concentration checks, AOOs and the like which were bogging down the rules. Grappling still exists, but it's something you only want to do in very specific circumstances.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think the nub of my point is that not only does the bar have to be set at some height, but that different folks will have different perceptions of just how "high" various departures from "reality" are.

Fair enough.

That's why, when I play D&D, I assume my number (2) possibility in my previous post.

Well, either way is going to be replete with problems, given the hodgepodge system that is D&D.

 

[Balesir]

Well, either way is going to be replete with problems, given the hodgepodge system that is D&D.

Well, it finally worked well for me with 4E, but I fully acknowledge that not everybody found that.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Well, it finally worked well for me with 4E, but I fully acknowledge that not everybody found that.

Let's take hit points and falling as the easy example.

If hp are tangible and characters understand them, it raises a whole set of questions about what characters know regarding their levels and the unrealistic-ness of hp. If hp are not tangible and characters don't understand them, it begs the question of why the 20th level fighter is at all afraid of falls, when in fact his survival is a reliable outcome.

Either way, it's problematic.