Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="mlund" data-source="post: 5974180" data-attributes="member: 50304">My friends are playing a game. For it to capture their dramatic and competitive interests there must always be a possibility of failure and success. It doesn't have to be a statistically significant chance of failure all the time, but they appreciate the fact that if their character wanders off alone naked into a den of ravenous, crazed weasels they could get eaten. It makes the fact that they chose to wear armor, pick combat tactics, and work as a team seem meaningful to them.That doesn't mean challenges are statistically significant risk to TPK. It just means that if they roll badly, plan poorly, and execute poorly they feel like things are dangerous for their characters.Of course, being openly encouraged by the game system to just take a nap and go back to square one directly undermines this for them.The challenge in most cases is simply keeping as many resources as you can preserve and avoiding unnecessary situations where things could snow-ball (cascade character failure after the healer goes down, etc.).Ah, there in lies the rub. I, the dictatorial DM, will decide when and where their adventuring day ends. After a few "dangerous" encounters (I'm still confused as to where the "danger" is if there's not risk involved) have been met by off-loading daily renewable resources the players head for the exits - because their characters have no reason to take unnecessary risks.I'm not really interested in overlooking design flaws just because I can paper over them myself. The rules give incentive to rest. The module puts a slew of rats 20' next to a bunch of kobold guards deliberately monitoring the pit-trap the party just fell into. The monster entry for both even says that they respond to the pit activating and fall upon the characters. They chew threw a bunch of party resources and the players want to pack up and go home. If that's not supposed to happen then the game is doing it wrong. Yes, I can fix it. No, that doesn't make it OK.One of two things:1.) Exactly what happened 8 hours before they tried it. (I mean, it's a dungeon crawl. Nobody questions dungeon ecology.)2.) So much defensive mobilization and organization that they might as well stay home. (I mean, it's a war-zone. Once you've lost the element of surprise your spec-ops is doomed.)Which goes back to the old Combat As Sport vs. Combat As War chestnut, I suppose.My players were more disappointed in the lost of XP really, but either resource is always just around the corner anyway. It isn't like they need to meet a quota on Kobold skulls to pay their rent.The best solution, IMO, is for competing one more encounter today to have more value than completing one more encounter tomorrow, and then they weigh the perceived risk vs. the perceived reward.What does it cost a player to rest their character if the DM isn't inventing sticks to punish them with? They don't lose time in the real world. What does it gain them if they press on? Nothing, currently.I disagree. To some extent the 15MAD is more tolerated at low levels because fragility and scarcity are plainly built into the system. The 15MAD started to wear thin in play-groups I experienced in 3E somewhere around level 3-5. It's a matter of resource-management and when your wizard can only spend his daily spells in 50% increments everyone understands the variance is going to be high.Amen.The same can be said in macro for the rules system itself. DM's can paper over blast-rest-blast as much as they want, it doesn't change that the system has a mechanical incentive problem that needed to be papered over ad hoc.- Marty Lund</blockquote>

Verification