Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8268924" data-attributes="member: 87792">And this is ironically both tied into one of my critiques of 5e and one reason why I find the insistance by OSR players that they have "skilled play" and "combat as war" to be incredibly ironic.In 5e the NPCs are all bullet sponges (59hp for an ogre - or for that matter a CR 1/2 monster by the DMG) and thanks to the Str/Dex rules there's not much difference in range or in melee. In 4e the fundamentals of tactics involve preventing the enemy from doing what they are good at by e.g. disengaging from the melee line and catching the enemy archers in melee while slowing down the fast moving enemies.Meanwhile your proposed OSR solution is to retreat, giving time for the enemy to regroup. Then trying to hold the enemies in a choke point that they know much better than you do. And they enemies also have time to call for help, preventing you defeating them in detail - and also possibly to get things like the boiling oil. Retreating to a choke point is therefore in a living world situation a desperate last resort because it lets the enemies play to their strengths and leaves you stuck. Meanwhile if you come to a room full of enemies that aren't actively waiting for you the appropriate answer should often be to Red Wedding those bastards. Shields are heavy, while polearms and bows are unwieldy. They shouldn't be in hand and probably won't be in reach. Preparation and tactics should matter greatly as should creating and seizing opportunities. If you absolutely can't go in and take advantage of the way the enemies are disorganised and unprepared then the game is locking you out of seizing opportunities and quite a lot of ways of taking them. If you have to stay in your battle lines it's much harder to create opportunities. And whenever you retreat to static defences you are surrendering the initiative and giving your opponents to create opportunities.Me too. But what good play is should vary a lot from character to character.Indeed. I understand why if you want a low effort, low skill means of visiting a world while never having your assumptions challenged your style can be fun. But for reasons I've outlined this low effort playstyle you advocate for ensures that I'm playing a tourist in the world. I'd rather the means and reward to actually inhabit someone who lives there.In any D&D characters start out with hit points that are basically a consequence free means of taking damage and a class. They start off as a significant cut above average over either 0th level characters or commoners depending on your edition - and that's just the ones who can't cast spells. Gandalf of course was a fifth level magic user.Oh, agreed. In GURPS I'm not necessarily playing a trainee superhero. Indeed in GURPS I'm probably not playing a trainee superhero and am giving the side-eye if the GM suggested GURPS supers because it's a poor match. In any version of D&D I basically have superpowers from first level for any class except the thief and I'm going to develop into a superhero.</blockquote>

Verification