Staple Spells Used against Genre Conventions

[reveal]

Arbitrary? It's completely modelled after real world conventions about war and interpersonal conflict. (Although modern conflict seems to be gravitating towards 'guerilla/terrorist' style tactics - which are smart because they work.)

This really bothers me. It seems me you are saying that war is "fair." War is NOT fair. War is brutal and ugly and while there are rules set in place by the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) and the Geneva Convention, it has been proven time and again that people do not always follow them.

If you want to inject your ideas of how conflict should be played out, that's your perogative; you're the DM. But if you're going to mix reality and fantasy, which you are doing, then you have to allow your players to bend/break the rules and you have to allow their enemies to do the same. That is only "fair."

"Love and War are the same thing, and stratagems and polity are as allowable in the one as in the other." - Miguel de Cervantes (1547 - 1616), Don Quixote (1605 -1615)

 

[barsoomcore]

I'm not going to resort to Pavlovian behavior modification when I can plainly communicate what I'm looking for.

Well, then, that's great. What was the point of this thread again?

The "fairness" idea section gets a full page in my House rules which is now several campaigns old. And honestly they've been following the principle of it more and more.

That's great. What was the point of this thread again?

I mean, I assumed you had a problem and were looking for advice and potential solutions. If everything's working fine, then, I'm pleased for you, but why did you ask for advice?

When someone goes to the trouble of reading your post, and answering your question, the ONLY appropriate response, no matter how incorrect you think the answer is, is "Thank you." If you then want to enter into a debate about what the right course might be, by all means, say so. But if you've already got the answers, why are you wasting my time asking for my input?

Arbitrary? It's completely modelled after real world conventions about war and interpersonal conflict.

I don't care if it's modelled after Star Trek scripts. It's still arbitrary. But it's your campaign, do as you please. I'm not trying to attack your rules. I'm just trying to answer your question. If you don't like my answers, you're free to ignore them.

 

[Darkness]

Re: Hold/Sleep > CDG

Usually I intend to have them surrender or flee.
Mechanically, the target can't act so the player can't tell what they are going to do, and thus press their advantage - against a foe they have already overcome.

I can see why they'd do that with hold person, with the victim getting a save per round and all, necessitating it that they act quickly... However, that only holds water if they're still fighting the victim's allies. Otherwise, they have no need to murder the victim.

Hm. First, not to turn this into another alignment debate, but if they repeatedly kill defenseless opponents they could just as easily have taken prisoner, their alignment should gradually erode to Neutral. Obviously, if they're Neutral already, this doesn't have much of an impact on them.
Second, if you don't want them to callously slaughter anyone who opposes them, give them a reason not to. For starters, you could talk to them out of game and tell them that you want heroic PCs, not callous commandos. But there are in-game incentives as well - e.g., information, ransom money or having a reputation as honorable (assuming this reputation occasionally has a tangible effect in-game). Also, let them reap what they sow - e.g., if one of them goes down, an enemy who knows of their reputation for callousness (which they should acquire with these tactics) then goes and hits him once more to make sure he's dead and not just unconscious. Don't forget to let this NPC express his reasons for doing so. Before they can kill him, that is.

Re: Entangle/Web/Grease/etc

First let me clarify that in situations where the party is at a disadvantage in straight up melee I'm fine with them evening the odds by switching to missile combat (i.e. vs. a collossal vermin or giants).

I try to run my combat so that any foe that understands that it at a significant disadvantage will try to surrender or flee. Under entangle fleeing is usually not an option.

Bringing up cowardize and honor at least hints that these tactics have some bearing on the heroism of the party.

Yep, it's cowardly (but certainly effective). Like the actions further above, this should gain them a negative reputation that bites them in the butt every now and then.
In any case, the opponents should really surrender when at such a disadvantage.

Re: Baleful Polymorph

I'm referring to turning an opponent into a toad and then following up with a lame sequence of killing the toad.

Alignment shift to neutral. Also, as mentioned above, give them incentives to take prisoners and make sure such behavior has negative side effects.

Re: Buffing and Debuffing

I mean buffing and debuffing to excess.

Well, not sure how to dissuade them from doing this. However, it can be beaten by tactics. If the fighter is buffed so much that he's invincible, a charm person spell can make him use his newfound powers against his friends. Rendering him ineffective is good too - e.g., blindness/deafness, hold person, entangle, confusion, etc. That is, show them that there can be tactical downsides to putting all your eggs in one basket (don't do it in every fight, of course, unless it's a reasonable course of action given the opposition's abilities). Maybe that'll make them reconsider overbuffing their fighters.

 

[jodyjohnson]

This really bothers me. It seems me you are saying that war is "fair." War is NOT fair. War is brutal and ugly and while there are rules set in place by the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) and the Geneva Convention, it has been proven time and again that people do not always follow them.

Modern real warfare is not "fair". And even ancient more noble wars have certainly been sanitized and romanticised. I'll agree about that.

However the existance of the various conventions indicate that there is some appeal for instilling fairness in war. And regardless of infractions, there is some benefit in world opinion for following them.

In addition, the romanticised and sanitized versions of war tells me that people don't want to sit around telling, watching, or creating (via RPG) tales of brutal and ugly conflict.

Our movie 'heros' are not shooting people in the back, or knocking them out then killing them, or certainly not disabling them in every conceivable way and then finishing the job. Our recreation involves tales of heroism in conflict.

But if you're going to mix reality and fantasy, which you are doing, then you have to allow your players to bend/break the rules and you have to allow their enemies to do the same. That is only "fair."

First, mixing fantasy and reality is generally tauted as versimilitude. I mix fantasy and reality all the time.

No where have I said that I would not allow players to break the 'rules'. I just made these conventions straight forward.

The line about 'if characters break convention then so should the bad guys' hits the crux. That's the whole point. It's a circular trap.

The bad guys break convention, the players follow suit.
The players break convention, the bad guys certainly follow suit.

The problem is the GAME won't work if the bad guys are always as brutally efficient as the players.

If you can't win by being honoralbe and brave, you try to win by being dishonorable and cowardly.

If you can't win by being dishonorable and cowardly, you try to win by being brutally dishonorable and exceedingly cowardly.

Etc.

End Quote:
"Sometimes you lose, and I can live with that." - a very rare adventurer.

 

[Vaxalon]

- Lethal weapon use is not to be combined with non-lethal (i.e. going lethal after building a pad of non-lethal when subduing creatures)

Here's a houserule to help with that.

Damage for lethal and nonlethal weapons are not counted separately. They both do hit point damage. Nonlethal weapons are different ONLY when the attack takes the enemy below 0 hp. If they are knocked below 0 hp by a nonlethal attack, then the creature is not dying, but unconscious. Recovery time depends on how far negative they are.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Normally I want my players to win or at least have fun losing.

For a while our game was sliding towards "smart" play rather than "role-playing" and certainly not sticking to genre (rather than heroic it was efficient).

What was really bothering me as a DM is to see spells that belong in the game and can be fun taken to their logical and efficient end - basically spells used against the conventions of the genre.

Examples:
Sleep/Hold spells followed by CDG.
Entangle vs. Melee brutes followed by cutting them down with ranged attacks.
Baleful Polymorph as a Save or Die (moreso in <3.5)
Curse/debuff in order to kill
Bless/buff in order to kill faster

Basically every spell becomes another tool to kill something as efficiently as possible. It just doesn't leave much variety in the story.

The trend lead me to institute a nebulous concept known as "fairness" by which the majority of creatures abided whenever they could - making the exceptions more remarkable.

In other words: "Guys, If you have to fight, I want you to fight stupid!". That's the gist of your rumble here.

If you said: "Don't always fight to kill, people" I would have agreed with you. You could bring laws into the game, like adventurers aren't allowed to just kill everyone, except when absolutely necessary. It's always more rewarding to incapacitate other people so the authorities can judge and punish them for their crimes.

But if they're going to kill the enemy, they might as well do it smart. Just hitting the enemy repeatedly with your weapon is nice for tank type barbarians and fighters. But others might want to play as if their character actually had that 12+ Int, and not just 3. So if you can, incapacitate the enemy and finish him off, entangle and then waste him with ranged attacks, turn him into all manner of bad shapes, take his protections down and yours up. It's the duty of an adventurer to take the other guy down as fast and efficiently as possible and return alive.

 

[jodyjohnson]

You could even do the unthinkable, and ask your players why they're doing things that way and what they think would encourage them to try playing the game your way instead.

Well first of all I already have done this and it seems to be working.

(You know, instead of just complaining about it on the internet to people who will never, ever be gaming with you. )

How else would we generate hundreds of new posts per day.

Well, then, that's great. What was the point of this thread again?

Getting some feedback on whether prodding, rewarding, or otherwise expecting players to abide by genre convention was too heavy handed, and as it's obvious correlary - 'Are there genre conventions?'.

So far it seems like there are conventions but that somehow they should not be overtly stated, and certainly not mandated (which I was not suggesting).

Or that according to Reveal, conventions are a fantasy; war is hell; and I'm playing in a fantasy world if I even consider some guidelines on actions.

edit: (not really what Reveal said - rhetorical over-simplification of the 'War is hell' sentiment and reality).

My other and pretty typical purpose is to let my campaign ideas be scrutinized, criticized, and generally debunked. Allowing that some of my 'genre conventions' are mere personal preference and thus expendable, and that there may be others I have overlooked.

Thinking out loud as it were.

 

[reveal]

In addition, the romanticised and sanitized versions of war tells me that people don't want to sit around telling, watching, or creating (via RPG) tales of brutal and ugly conflict.

Not true. Many countries have heroes that came out of war; some by being extremely brutal in their actions. As an example, Scotland has William Wallace. While trying to accomplish a noble deed, he didn't exactly resort to "fair" tactics.

Our movie 'heros' are not shooting people in the back, or knocking them out then killing them, or certainly not disabling them in every conceivable way and then finishing the job. Our recreation involves tales of heroism in conflict.

That should be changed to "YOUR movie 'heroes' are..." You are introducing an ideology that is your own, not mine and, possibly, not your players.

The problem is the GAME won't work if the bad guys are always as brutally efficient as the players.

Again, not true in every game. A LOT of DMs are very good at playing baddies who use tactics to their advantage. They do not cause the game to become unbalanced by doing so. Again, this should be "MY GAME won't work..."

If you can't win by being honoralbe and brave, you try to win by being dishonorable and cowardly.

If you can't win by being dishonorable and cowardly, you try to win by being brutally dishonorable and exceedingly cowardly.

Wash, rinse, repeat. Your definition of honor and bravery is different than mine.

By introducing your ideals of "fairness" into this campaign, you've essentialy made everyone a paladin. Everyone is expected to live by a certain set of rules and code of conduct. No one in the entire world can ever diverge from this set path in life. How is this fun again? *bleh*

 

[reveal]

Or that according to Reveal, conventions are a fantasy; war is hell; and I'm playing in a fantasy world if I even consider some guidelines on actions.

Don't you DARE put words in my mouth. I did NOT say that. I said there were guidelines but it's fantasy to expect everyone to follow them all the time.

I tell you what, the next time you are in some sort of military action, you tell me how fair it is and then you can put words in my mouth. But until you've been there, don't even start to feel you have the right to belittle my opinions.

 

[VirgilCaine]

What was really bothering me as a DM is to see spells that belong in the game and can be fun taken to their logical and efficient end - basically spells used against the conventions of the genre.
...

- Cursed or severely limited creatures are made so in order to avoid killing them (slow, blindness, exhaustion, etc.) except in the cases where it is necessary to bring the opponent down to the party's level (usually meaning that the effect isn't all that limiting).

- You don't bring a greatsword to a bar fight.

- No blindsiding. Warning should be given although not a lot of warning (and maybe the warning is implied).

- Avoid un-beatable combos; scry and teleport are allowed but not Buff/Scry/Teleport.

Is this too heavy handed?

Now, if my character has a specific thing against killing people, this makes sense. But in general, if someone is trying to kill me, I'm going for the throat/eyes/vulnerable spots with lethal force.

You don't bring a greatsword to a bar fight? Any PC of mine will stay out of the bar fight or quiet the place down rather than either immediately chop his opponents up or beat their heads in. Violence isn't something to be entered into lightly. Think Obi-Wan Kenobi here.

No blindsiding? So, what, no ambushing? You have to line up in formation or something?

Unbeatable combo? Scry+buff+teleport is not unbeatable, IMO, it's not very workable on PCs. A 1 hour casting time for 1 minute/lvl? observation? How can you make sure the targets have all their spells used up? If it's a nomadic person, how can you get enough information to get a pinpointed teleport?