Roles in Roleplaying Games

[pemerton]

I'm not sure I follow your point ...

In my example, once the cat had been unleashed, there was no taking back the result (unless the cat rolled very poorly).

The moment would have been much less exciting if the player could have decided after they had their cat pounce that the worker wasn't killed.

At least in part this seems to raise an orthogonal issue, namely, who gets to play the cat - player, or GM?

4e tends to answer "the player", but there are some exceptions - Druidically summoned creatures with their instinctive actions, and the Quasit in the recent BoVD preview.

I've never played Sorcerer, but in that game I understand that the PCs' demons are always NPCs, to be played by the GM when the opportunity arises.

The point being, that there are ways to get the excitiement of the unexpectedly dead prisoner without making lethal damage the mechanical default - namely, by allocating responsibility for playing the various characters in the game in the right way.

 

[tomBitonti]

At least in part this seems to raise an orthogonal issue, namely, who gets to play the cat - player, or GM?

4e tends to answer "the player", but there are some exceptions - Druidically summoned creatures with their instinctive actions, and the Quasit in the recent BoVD preview.

I've never played Sorcerer, but in that game I understand that the PCs' demons are always NPCs, to be played by the GM when the opportunity arises.

The point being, that there are ways to get the excitiement of the unexpectedly dead prisoner without making lethal damage the mechanical default - namely, by allocating responsibility for playing the various characters in the game in the right way.

In our games, having an animal companion do something unusual requires a handle animal check.

The problem was not the default; the player could have restrained their companion, or done a check to avoid lethal damage. But the player acted without thinking, with an unintended consequence.

I think you could say that was the player, not the character; not sure how to respond to that. But, it seems within bounds for a player to act reflexively to handle an escaping opponent, and mix that up with a helpless prisoner.

In some cases, I'd allow a Wisdom check to have the player reconsider. Whether to allow such a check for an experienced player is an interesting question.

TomB

 

[Bluenose]

4E's method of allowing the PC 100% control over that outcome (if that's indeed the RAW) without difficulty or AoO is not any better in terms of simulating the real-life difficulty of trying to knock out an opponent who is trying very hard to kill you.

Is it harder in real life? If 0 hit points isn't "You're dead/dying", but, "You have to stop fighting", then there will be people who lose fights yet survive. Which is hardly less true to reality.

 

[LurkAway]

In 4e it's not the PC who has the control, it is the player. It's just one example of 4e granting players a degree of narrative control over aspects of the gameworld other than their PCs.

That's true, but I feel it's "nitpicky" in the sense that, in actor stance, that distinction isn't relevant to the context. In 4E, I could choose subdual or lethal but I can't choose as player to not to know the outcome as thru the eyes of the PC.

Is it harder in real life? If 0 hit points isn't "You're dead/dying", but, "You have to stop fighting", then there will be people who lose fights yet survive. Which is hardly less true to reality.

I'm not sure I understand the question or 0 hp has to do with being more or less difficult to do subdual damage. In real life, I'm not sure what "you have to stop fighting" means. I think you can knock out or disable or disarm an opponent before they had the reached the point that they were too exhausted or wounded to continue fighting. If you knocked them out, that would cause them to stop fighting, but if you didn't knock them out, they would keep fighting. Anyway, can anyone here show that historical real-life sword fights usually end when one opponent "has to stop fighting" rather than getting impaled, stabbed, or slashed, dying instantly or fatally?

 

[Hussar]

There is a different way to obtain drama. This is an example from one of the games that I play in:

The players are infiltrating an enemy base. We approach a simple worker, with my character using intimidate to convince him to surrender. I go for a fearful result, and roll high, leading to the worker surrendering, but being scared out of his wits.

And, of course, this took the full ten rounds to accomplish while the simple worker did not struggle.

We interrogate the prisoner, and are distracted by discussions of what to do next. None of us say that we are watching the prisoner, who promptly bolts.

So, now we're in house rules territory since intimidated targets stay that way while in your presence and for some minutes afterwards. Intimidated targets don't "promptly bolt".

The Druid of the party, who has an large cat animal companion, has her cat chase down and pounce on the fleeing man (who hasn't yet gone very far). She isn't thinking about how rake damage is lethal: The poor worker is torn apart and killed.

One of the great moments from our game. We very much didn't want to kill the worker.

TomB

So, because of the rules, you failed at what you wanted to do, partially because your DM didn't follow the rules of the game. And this is meant as a reason why the 3e rules support taking prisoners so well?

Me, I like it better when the drama of the game isn't dictated to my by game designers. However, I've seen more than a few people here who are more than willing to let game designers tell them what should and should not be dramatic in their game.

Certainly not to my taste anymore.

 

[Bluenose]

I'm not sure I understand the question or 0 hp has to do with being more or less difficult to do subdual damage. In real life, I'm not sure what "you have to stop fighting" means. I think you can knock out or disable or disarm an opponent before they had the reached the point that they were too exhausted or wounded to continue fighting. If you knocked them out, that would cause them to stop fighting, but if you didn't knock them out, they would keep fighting. Anyway, can anyone here show that historical real-life sword fights usually end when one opponent "has to stop fighting" rather than getting impaled, stabbed, or slashed, dying instantly or fatally?

In every edition of D&D, being reduced to 0 hit points means you can't fight any more unless something is done to get you back into the combat. If this is interpreted as dead/dying/unconscious then you run into a problem. A significant percentage of real fights end with someone giving up. That's observable in medieval literature, whether it's histories about the life and deeds of some individual emphasising their prowess in battle and how they overthrow and capture some enemy, or a battle description where the number and rank of prisoners (and whether they're wounded) is recorded. It's observable in renaissance dueling, where one memoirist mentions how he had to concede a duel because his eye was closing up and he couldn't see properly, after being head-butted at one point. Or there's a Napoleonic memoir, a French cavalry officer describing winning a fight with a Prussian one after they'd both ended up pummeling each other on the ground in the mud and snow. Morale, making someone give up, wins at least as many fights as knocking someone unconscious or killing them. Giving up because you're injured before being unconscious is hardly rare at all.

I'm still not persuaded that it's harder to use a weapon to injure someone non-fatally than it is to use it with lethal intent. I see no reason for a penalty, and never did. There's a lot of games which get by without one, without it detracting from their simulationist nature.

 

[pemerton]

That's true, but I feel it's "nitpicky" in the sense that, in actor stance, that distinction isn't relevant to the context. In 4E, I could choose subdual or lethal but I can't choose as player to not to know the outcome as thru the eyes of the PC.

Knowing or not knowing the outcome as a player doesn't seem relevant to actor stance.

Playing my PC in actor stance, in 4e, I decide whether or not to attempt killing or subdual based on the percpetions, beliefs, desires etc of my PC (ie without metagaming). My adoption of actor stance isn't impeded by the fact that the rules guarantee my PC's decision will succeed.

Here is a parallel situation from classic D&D. In "real life", were I casting a spell, there is always a chance I would sneeze and spoil my words and gestures. But in the game, I (as a player) know that, out of combat, my PC's attempt at spell casting will always succeed. This needn't impede adopting actor stance either.

 

[LurkAway]

Knowing or not knowing the outcome as a player doesn't seem relevant to actor stance.

Playing my PC in actor stance, in 4e, I decide whether or not to attempt killing or subdual based on the percpetions, beliefs, desires etc of my PC (ie without metagaming). My adoption of actor stance isn't impeded by the fact that the rules guarantee my PC's decision will succeed.

Then we're talking about 2 entirely different things.

 

[LurkAway]

In every edition of D&D, being reduced to 0 hit points means you can't fight any more unless something is done to get you back into the combat. If this is interpreted as dead/dying/unconscious then you run into a problem. A significant percentage of real fights end with someone giving up.

I would be very curious to know how many groups actually play this way, because I haven't heard of it being the norm at all IME.

I'm still not persuaded that it's harder to use a weapon to injure someone non-fatally than it is to use it with lethal intent. I see no reason for a penalty, and never did. There's a lot of games which get by without one, without it detracting from their simulationist nature.

I have no strong opinion one way or another. I find it strange that some people look to real-life for justification, then pick and choose what they want to support what they would do anyway in the game.

 

[pemerton]

Then we're talking about 2 entirely different things.

What are you talking about? I'm talking about actor stance:

In Actor stance, a person determines a character's decisions and actions using only knowledge and perceptions that the character would have.​

Playing in actor stance isn't impeded by the player knowing that the mechanics guarantee that a PC's attempted action will succeed.

Besides the examples I've already given, another one could be given drawing on the jump rules from 3E. In 3E there are no fumble rules for skills, so a character with a +X bonus to jump is guaranteed to be able to clear Y feet with a running broad jump. (I don't know the rules off-hand for correlating X and Y.) So suppose my PC has to decide whether or not to jump over a terribly deep chasm that is only Y feet wide. I (as my PC) am confident that I have a pretty good chance of clearing the chasm - in practice, I never jump fewer than Y feet. So I decide to try the jump! Is it an impedence of adopting actor stance that in the real world even the best jumper might have a chance (however small) of misstepping at the threshold and falling down the chasm, whereas the action resolution mechanics guarantee that I (as my PC) will succeed? I don't think so.

As long as the player doesn't rely upon his/her knowlege of the mechanical determinism in deciding what his/her PC does, there need be no departure from actor stance.