Stun/Paralysis effects

[Celebrim]

Later we bluffed our way past a group of 4 minotaur thralls only to walk into a room of 5 flayers. . . we ran like scared little schoolgirls. . . they probably coulda tracked us by the trail of urine a feces we left behind. . .

I don't know if this was your intention, but some would say you'd just composed an argument that not only attacked itself, but scored a critical.

I'd be one of them.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

That sounds like a really good idea, although I would try to come up with some kind of reward structure for defeating the party. I'm just a jerk that way

Heh. I also think letting the player of an inactive PC run a monster or NPC could be cool.

In the very best campaign I've been in (MarauderX's), the players care about what the other PCs do, root for the other PCs, and *do* appreciate watching the story unfold. It's like if you're an actor on a really good show, you'll enjoy watching the scenes that you aren't in -- as long as the spotlight comes around to you sometimes. We all sat around and watched the arcane trickster do her bodyhopping Sneak Attacking slaughter. It was great fun to watch. We were all basically inactive (stupid Black Tentacles) while the bard fought a death knight and two liches. Watching that scene play out was just incredible. The other players had nothing to do except watch when my druid destroyed an army with Control Winds, but I think they enjoyed the scene. And the rogues have had scenes on their own that are sometimes fun to watch for the awesomeness, and sometimes for the sheer gall. In that group, nobody would ever walk away from the table if their PC was incapacitated.

But in other games, I can see the value in "Hey, here's something else you can do while your PC is out of the action." Not only for Paralysis/Stun, but for times when the rogue is off scouting on his own. Hand the minis and stats for the bugbear guards to the other players... "Roll Spot checks."

 

[rkanodia]

But in other games, I can see the value in "Hey, here's something else you can do while your PC is out of the action." Not only for Paralysis/Stun, but for times when the rogue is off scouting on his own. Hand the minis and stats for the bugbear guards to the other players... "Roll Spot checks."

When I think more about it, I think that an incentive system for doing well as the monsters would only be fair for scenes that are laid out ahead of time with only one PC active. Otherwise, every time a TPK was coming, the players would fall all over themselves to get killed first so they could get in on the inevitable bonuses. Or at least my players would

 

[Grog]

Not only do I think that it hasn't been made, but I do not think it can be made because one's emotional responce to something ('I find this boring.') is entirely subjective.

What one finds boring is indeed subjective, but whether or not one is actually playing the game can be judged objectively. Does it really matter if a player, after failing a saving throw against a save-or-die attack in round 1 of a combat, stays at the table to watch his friends fight it out or goes off to play Wii? Either way, he's not playing the game.

But that's just the problem, death or unconsciousness don't occur at or near the end of an encounter. (Although, to be honest, most ordinary encounters IME only last 3 rounds or so, so everything after the initiative roll can be deamed 'near the end'.) The frost giant can critical, the troll can bite and rend, all four hobgoblins can make thier roll and turn the low level wizard into a pin cushion, and suddenly a fight which still on paper leans to the PCs involves one less actively participating member. In fact, the above involves less participation than a save or die, because it can (and does) occur without a saving throw and indeed on occassion even without rolling initiative.

The examples you give above are all corner cases that don't happen very often (and 4E appears to be trying to make them happen even less often by doing things like boosting the hit points of 1st level characters - this is a good thing IMO).

At high levels, save-or-die isn't a corner case - it happens all the time.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Not only do I think that it hasn't been made, but I do not think it can be made because one's emotional responce to something ('I find this boring.') is entirely subjective. But, if you think you can draw a line above which everyone will find something exciting and below which everyone will find something boring, feel free. Don't however be suprised if someone else think's your line is unreasonable.



But, I find rolling the dice to be boring. If I'd tried to hit something for 10 rounds and failed, you'd bet I'd probably be unsatisfied with my game experience. I'm competitive, and like most gamers I want to experience some measure of success.



Actually, I think most players would respond to a run of bad luck worse than they would to a difficult challenge. RPG players are superstitious about thier dice because they fear bad luck. I've seen players hit a run of bad luck and respond with real life anguish and depression. I've seen alot more respond to it by cheating.

But more to the point, this goes back to what I'm saying. That the real heart of the complaint with 'Save or Condition' isn't the 'condition', but rather the 'save'. It's too easy to lose with too big of consequences compared to the rest of the play style encouraged by D&D. You wouldn't find the same complaint with CoC because people expect to lose.

TANGENT ALERT:
But why do you not find the complaint? Probably because people that complain about it will give up playing the game. I know this is the case in my group, where several older members had CoC experience, and while they absolutely liked some of the adventure story-lines and the investigation parts, the inevitable defeat and loss of characters went on their nerves. They compensated for a while with over-equipping their PCs with heavy arms, but in the end, this was totally disruptive to the whole flavor of the game.
In some ways, that's the opposite reaction as "Save or Die". As you put it, the whole Save or Die aspects works against the base "feeling" of the game. You're a hero, you can withstand a lot of resistance. Except you don't, once SoD enters the game. In CoC, you're a weak investigator, powerless against the Elder Gods. Except if you arm yourself to the teeths, you might survive.

Both is disruptive. In case of CoC, there is a limit to what the rules can do to avoid you trying to disrupt the game. It's probably best to play a different game if you do this too often. But in D&D, it's clearly the mechanic that causes the disruption. So remove the mechanic.

 

[Celebrim]

Both is disruptive. In case of CoC, there is a limit to what the rules can do to avoid you trying to disrupt the game. It's probably best to play a different game if you do this too often. But in D&D, it's clearly the mechanic that causes the disruption. So remove the mechanic.

I agree with you that to a certain extent a person's personality will determine what sort of game experiences that a person gravitates too. Obviously, a person concerned that they can't be successful often enough in D&D is probably going to get very disgusted with CoC. Presumably its possible that people who really love CoC can't tolerate the sometimes campy, cheesy, high heroics of D&D and the seemingly impossible things hit points allow you to do (like ignore a man with a crossbow pointed at you, or fall 200' on to rocks and then run away at top speed immediately).

And I agree that people gravitate to the game experiences that they enjoy, and obviously (since I described it) I agree that 'Save or Die' works against D&D's default experience, and I agree that D&D's default experience is quite fun. And, in full disclosure, I'm the sort - either as a player or DM - that has a much higher tolerance for PC's scrapping to get buy, running scared of monsters, and generally living in a world where they aren't necessarily the most dangerous thing that exists. Or at least, I have more tolerance of that sort of thing than some.

But removing the mechanic is IMO, no solution at all. Because, as I've described and as the 4E designers obviously seem to recognize, the problem is bigger than 'Save or Die'. The problem is 'Save or Condition'. It goes right around the hit point mechanic. The obvious easy thing to do is get rid of the mechanic, but I think that as an inevitable consequence of play conditions are going to show up. If they don't, the game being played is rather shallow and I think becomes uninteresting faster. I'm not sure I can think of a single mature RPG system that didn't have conditions. I certainly can't think of a single peice of fantasy literature where the heroes don't suffer from various conditions, or where Wizards can't impose conditions on thier foes.

No, the real solution is _fix the problem_. Removing conditions doesn't fix the problem. It just creates new ones.

 

[Celebrim]

Let me pause a moment to look back at how far we have come in our thinking, for better or worse.

In the 1st edition DMG, Gygax spends a rather lengthy section justifying the saving throw mechanic to his readers. The thesis of the section is in it is middle, as is this:

Yet because the player character is all-important, he or she must always - or nearly always - have a chance, no matter how small, of somehow escaping what otherwise would be inevitable destruction.

To either side of that, Gygax develops a long argument justifying the saving throw mechanic. But not once in the long argument does Gygax deal with justifying how harsh it is. Rather, Gygax's focus is on justifying that characters should have a chance of escaping an ill effect at all. I think people would do well to consider why that is.

I think answer is that saving throws are unique to the literary experience of RPGs. They don't really occur in an obvious way in literature. Something either happens, or it doesn't. If a protangonist escapes the curse/spell/hardship, it is explained as some special circumstance - often cunningly devised - to advert the disaster. But in D&D, you get saving throw versus a fireball even if you are naked in the middle of an empty room and the fireball detonates right on top of you. You can actually be made to look at a medusa, and not turn to stone. And because you don't 'take 10' on a saving throw, the guy partially hidden behind a chair 10' away might actually take more of the force of the blast than you do. If part of the attraction of D&D is being in a fantasy story, where do saving throws occur in fantasy stories? Protagonists in literature tend not to save, but to evade. This is the focus of Gygax's explanation - not on defending how harsh saving throws are, but defending how generous they are.

I think we've become so used to RPG's and thier mechanics, that the hardest thing for a game to do is offend our sense of disbelief.

If we were to write to a modern audience, it would probably never occur to us to justify how generous a saving throw is. We'd spend all of our time justifying how harsh they are that they provide an oppurtunity for failure at all. The 4E designers seem to think that the solution is to remove the oppurtunity for failure entirely, completing RPG's departure from literature and reality into its own realm with its own entirely internally justified rules and logic - like most any other game. To me, this makes RPG's into something more like rpG's rather than RPg's. It transform the game experience into something that is for me more similar to playing CivII or Starcraft wear I manage abstract resources than to one which is more like imaginative play or reading a story.

Now, I'm not saying this change on its own does that. I'm saying that this change is part of a larger trend.

I really think that there are ways to do both. I think you can have a 'Save or Die' mechanic AND still have highly survivable heroes that live to fight another day.

I'm somewhat mystified by the trend personally. The fact that Balrogs needed to be CR 20 mystifies me. I once heard a young player (by that I mean in his 20's) talking about the game and he said, "It doesn't become good until after level 20, that's when you can access the good powers." It seems as if the trend is to judge something absolutely rather relative to its context. By this I mean, people seem offended that they have less absolute success than some theoretical characters in someone elses campaign. "Those characters are more powerful than we are, it's not fair." "Those characters have bigger swords than we do, it's not fair." "Those characters can face bigger foes than we can, it's not fair." I'm competitive, but not in that way. I think the game is beginning to load the dice in favor of success, to the point that it comes easily. I don't judge my character in comparison to some other person's campaign. I judge the character by what he has went through to get where he is. If I know that what I've accomplished has been hard, then it is satisfying. There are campaigns where I was more excited by my +2 sword, than I was by the +5 weapon in a different campaign. All the numbers are really meaningless. In fact, my experience learning the game tended toward, "Tougher than thou.", in as much as all players took pride in the fact that thier DM was bigger Rat B@stard than anyone elses DMing so long as he was 'tough but fair', and anyone from a campaign where things seemed to have come more easily was disdained. It took me till college to appreciate a high heroic game as something other than 'Monte Haul' and childish, and that only because the game concerned itself with truly adult matters and not so much with combat. If it hadn't, I think I'd still see it the way I look back on my first attempts at age 12 to dungeon master.

Now it seems like the pendalum has swung to wear anyone who expects hardship is disdained.

Well, I'm 'old skewl'.

 

[Plane Sailing]

If we were to write to a modern audience, it would probably never occur to us to justify how generous a saving throw is. We'd spend all of our time justifying how harsh they are that they provide an oppurtunity for failure at all. The 4E designers seem to think that the solution is to remove the oppurtunity for failure entirely,

But on the other hand, the 4e designers have removed saving throws from the game... so your argument doesn't work here, as they have removed the opportunity for success (at saving throw) rather than removed the opportunity for failure entirely.

I'm also astonished that you don't seem to recognise the distinction between player involvement and PC involvement that has been made earlier in this thread. It seems to me and most of the other participants in the thread to be a very useful (and true) distinction which is germane to the topic at hand.

Regards

 

[Midknightsun]

I don't know if this was your intention, but some would say you'd just composed an argument that not only attacked itself, but scored a critical.

I'd be one of them.

Okay. . . I'll bite. Perhaps I am an idiot, which has yet to be disproven, but could you help me understand how I attacked myself here? I seriously am not seeing it.

 

[Dausuul]

<deleted by author after realizing it didn't really apply>