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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6863221" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think I've already made clear how unuseful I find the terminology and how muddled I find the thinking in that thread.First, there is absolutely nothing in my games that guarantees fights will be fair.  This is just another example of you conflating ideas that are independent of one another.  So lets just for the sake of argument say that a fair fight between giant bees and the current party was say 30 bees, and they find a hive of 600 giant bees.  Now, I'm not sure where they are going to find that anywhere on the prime material plane, because I'm not sure that there is anywhere on the prime material where giant flowers occur in sufficient numbers to have a single colony of 600 giant bees.  But for the sake of argument lets say such a place exists or the PC's have been victimized by a shrink ray or something of the sort.Now, if it really is 600 giant bees, elaborate tricksy battle plans would be stupid. The PC's would be hard pressed to come up with any plan that was such a force multiplier that it would allow them to defeat that many bees and still get the honey.  We're talking a hive that might be 1 million cubic feet in size, filled with enough bees to kill a small army.  There might be decent stealth or diplomacy plans that they could try: "Invisibility to Vermin", "Speak with Vermin", or they could try contacting a Bee Spirit and negotiating a settlement with the Queen, or what not.  Heck, Craft (Apiarist) might be the single most useful thing that they could have on the character sheet.  (Well, next to Empathy (Vermin) or the Vermin Friend feat, which might not only make getting the honey trivial, but having them moving on with a small army of bees.)  But forget any short term assymetric warfare.  This is a hive big enough that its adding 4 or more new bees per day to replace loses.  Perhaps if they had powerful magical options (cloudkill?), then they might have something.  But then, if they had powerful magic options, they probably wouldn't need an overly elaborate plan.And to be frank, if you are now stating that your game is normally played out with foes equivalent to 600 bees whom you carefully track during battle, I'm calling bollocks.  Why the heck would I do or think that?  The PC's are part owners of a warship, with like 120 mercenary pirates aboard it, and 20 siege engines.  How do you think they got here?  My game doesn't even have a 'Leadership' feat, because retainers, henchmen, and hirelings are expected to be acquired through play and RP - not allocation of game resources.  If the PC's had wanted to bring 25 marines from the ship along, they probably could have done that.  If they had the resources to manage that at 1st level, I'm fine with that.  But to be frank, if they'd brought 25 marines along, they'd already have lost half of them, and they'd spend so many healing resources trying to keep the mooks alive, that it would have threatened their ability to protect themselves.  And they'd not be able to rely on the cleric for food and water, so logistics might be worse.  At some point, a character is enough levels below you that they cease to be an assistant and become a dependent.So in other words you are fine with what doesn't actually happen in your campaign, but busy assuming that my play is not characterized by what actually does happen in my campaign.  And you don't yet have the slightest bit of cognitive dissonance?  Be honest here.  When have you actually planned and placed on the map encounters with foes that are 12, 15, even 20 CR's above the players current level?  My players are - and know they are by now - always just one ignored "sign" that says, "Danger: This Way" from a TPK.  If they'd decided to go investigate the dragon's lair they passed a few game days ago, they'd all be dead now.  And frankly, there isn't a nice neat plan that they have the resources to implement that lets them multiple their force to the point that's not true.  One game assumption that I find holds up well, is that if there was an obvious clever plan for defeating an enemy, it would have been implemented by someone else years or decades ago and they'd now have the treasure.  They want to kill a fully mature dragon, well they are just going to wait until they have the resources to make a plan feasible.  As 4th level characters, they were down in a dungeon with multiple CR 20 encounter areas. One wrong opened door could have meant a TPK.  (The correct way to navigate the dungeon was open no doors at all, and only go into the rooms where the doors were open following in the footsteps of the BBEG, which they figured out... then promptly opened a door when they got confused and lost half the party.)   As 2nd level characters, they were in a Dungeon that had a dracolich in it.  I told my players as the game began that they should not expect everything in the world to be things they could realistically defeat.  Session #1 one of the campaign say the PC's put in a scenario where they were seaside and a 25' tidal wave inundated the city, where if they had been like, "I'm going to sit here and watch", we'd probably TPK'd in the first 10 minutes. Now be honest here, do you really do this and to this extent? Not in the freaking slightest.  I haven't the foggiest idea.  If that was really true, why bother leveling up?  Why bother getting gear?  Why bother even have rules, because before having 18 Con doesn't matter, every situation has to come down completely to "DM says that's the way things happen."  For example, Sir Gorinthar decided to play the dumb hero and solo charge the BBEG - a 18th level Wizard - and the BBEG's minions at 8th level.  He took a lightning bolt and a finger of death to the chest, and despite two saving throws (also ability score dependent) he took 86 damage, and then thought better of his plan.  But had we even two less CON, he'd probably not survived that rash act.  (The funny thing is, this act scared the BBEG down to his core.  You could think of it as Voldemort throwing avadra kadavra at Harry Potter, and him not dying.  Who is this guy that can survive magic of that potency?  The BBEG does not know the level of his foes.  Since we've accomplished our goal here, best beat a hasty retreat before he comes back.)Ability scores matter, even in sand boxes.  And "combat as war vs. combat as sport" isn't even a real thing.</blockquote>

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