The ethics of ... death

[JamesonCourage]

I do believe this is objectively poor game design.

Why? Why isn't it preference, if design choices are based on preference or play style?

Let's be crystal clear here. You are claiming that a monster for D&D, designed in such a way that it will almost certainly kill at least one PC in any given encounter is a perfectly acceptable design.

If the goal is to create a monster that is that dangerous, then yes. I'd say that's good design.

No monster is ever designed that way. Well, that's not true. SoD monsters kinda are, but, that's because they are poorly designed, not because that's intentional.

If it's not intentional, that's probably poor design, yes.

Show me a single monsters, outside of monsters with SOD, which you would consider to fit the design: "Will probably kill at least one PC in any encounter, regardless of PC level."

I've made monsters like that for my game, when it fits the myth of the monster. I also don't 100% know the motivations of the designers of any other RPG, so I can't comment on it very adequately.

But, this goes for any mechanic that isn't a monster, too. Walking into a Sphere of Annihilation, falling onto lava, falling from enough distance, etc. are all things that I think a lot of people are okay with being "you die, no roll." Monsters might fall into that category in some rare circumstances, too, if you're going for that feel with the monster. I'm not sure how you can say any of the non-monster effects are objectively poor design when some people would actively like to see them, and thus I can't see how you can say it's objectively poor design for monsters.

Isn't this all based on preference? That's not a bad way to judge the game, obviously, but to say it's objective? That just doesn't make sense. As always, play what you like

 

[Balesir]

Sorry, [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], but this just has to be a matter of preference. Some folks like games of chance, some like games of skill - it has always been that way and I'd lay money that it always will be

For myself, games of chance make me highly uncomfortable. I think it's because, through upbringing or whatever, I equate losing with being unskilled and thus with being a dunce. Placing myself in a situation in which I might be labelled (if only by myself) clueless and a dunce at random is not something I like to do. That's not to say I can't take a modicum of randomness; as long as it's only part of the picture and ideally I can affect the odds substantially by my actions, it's fine. But pure chance I find at once uncomfortable and boring. The 'boring' I think is pretty acceptable, but the 'uncomfortable' I can't help but find irrational and rather a weakness (in that it removes some activities I might otherwise find fun).

As far as D&D is concerned, I think there is an element of "bad design" in mixing pure chance instances (SoD) with competitive incentives largely based on skill. The problem with this is that it manages to put people like me off (because of the pure luck instances) while also putting off those who dislike the concentration and "work" required for a game involving mental skill.

 

[Ahnehnois]

As far as D&D is concerned, I think there is an element of "bad design" in mixing pure chance instances (SoD) with competitive incentives largely based on skill.

I don't buy this dichotomy you're setting up. There are ample elements of skill involved in SoD situations; designing characters with good save bonuses and other defenses, avoiding surprise and anticipating encounters, recognizing the threat, countering it in various ways. The roll itself is chance, but the application of the ability is hardly "pure chance".

Conversely, essentially any D&D battle involves numerous dice rolls. Typically their results will be "average", but it is entirely possible for a battle involving only attack rolls and hp to be decided by luck, and many such battles do not involve a whole lot of skill.

Also, if you're not into games of luck (which is fine; I'm not big into emphasizing that element either), you must really hate rolling for ability scores. Is that "bad design" as far as D&D is concerned?

 

[Hussar]

That's true. However, if they really did not like success or failure being predetermined, they would be against any kind of system that predetermined their success as well (say, one which posits encounters that they are expected to win). An SoD is a great way of avoiding predetermined outcomes.

How is it a great way of avoiding predetermined outcomes? An Area of Effect SOD effect against 4 or more PC's is almost 100% likely (about 95% actually) to kill at least one PC. That's about as predetermined as you can get.

Note, a red dragon vs an appropriate level party likely won't result in PC fatality. Granted, bombing 1st level parties will, but, that's not quite what I said. I said against ANY level party. Red Dragon vs appropriate level won't result in fatalities most of the time. That's because dragons are well designed.

Also, if you're not into games of luck (which is fine; I'm not big into emphasizing that element either), you must really hate rolling for ability scores. Is that "bad design" as far as D&D is concerned?

Rolling for ability scores would be fine except for the human element. For one, baked right into the mechanics is the "hopeless character" clause, meaning that it's not truly random. But, for another, most people cheat when die rolling characters. I've seen far too many die rolled characters to believe that it's straight die rolls. There's a reason that point buy is standard in 3e organized play and standard in all 4e play.

It removes the random element which plays all sorts of silly buggers with the game math. But, if you don't believe me that people cheat, take the character sheets that you have in your current campaign of all your players and add up their point buy value. The majority will be 30 point buy or more. Meaning those die rolled characters are about one level ahead of a point buy character.

Which is fine, once you factor that into campaign design, but, it also means more work for the DM.

 

[Guest 85555]

How is it a great way of avoiding predetermined outcomes? An Area of Effect SOD effect against 4 or more PC's is almost 100% likely (about 95% actually) to kill at least one PC. That's about as predetermined as you can get.

i haven't crunched the numbers so perhaps you are right but could you show your math and edition here. There are differences in saves between editions. Part levels are also going to be a factor as saves improve over time.

 

[Guest 85555]

I don't buy this dichotomy you're setting up. There are ample elements of skill involved in SoD situations; designing characters with good save bonuses and other defenses, avoiding surprise and anticipating encounters, recognizing the threat, countering it in various ways. The roll itself is chance, but the application of the ability is hardly "pure chance".

Conversely, essentially any D&D battle involves numerous dice rolls. Typically their results will be "average", but it is entirely possible for a battle involving only attack rolls and hp to be decided by luck, and many such battles do not involve a whole lot of skill.

Also, if you're not into games of luck (which is fine; I'm not big into emphasizing that element either), you must really hate rolling for ability scores. Is that "bad design" as far as D&D is concerned?

yeah, d&d has always been a pretty good mix of luck and skill. I can see not liking SoD, but this particular claim to bad design is just another case of preference (in this case stating it fails to meet two types of preference). And going the opposite way would have a similar affect (if you remove SoD it fails to meet the preferences of folks like me and ahnenhois, both people who enjoy chance and work/mental skill).

 

[Ahnehnois]

How is it a great way of avoiding predetermined outcomes? An Area of Effect SOD effect against 4 or more PC's is almost 100% likely (about 95% actually) to kill at least one PC. That's about as predetermined as you can get.

The "predetermined outcome" I was referring to is routine victory by the PCs that uses 20% of their use-limited resources.

That said, how is an area SoD going to kill that many PCs? Given the PCs' ability to spot the creature before it is in range, the party's likely behavior of splitting up (casters and ranged fighters really shouldn't be anywhere near), and the reasonable likelihood of PCs being able to identify the creature and respond to its ability, it is not exactly a given that anyone will die. Even if you just take the save math, many of these DCs are quite low for their intended level. If you were to throw an SoD monster against a character of any level, there are a number of examples where characters would be under virtually no danger. You'd have to do a lot to support that statement.

Note, a red dragon vs an appropriate level party likely won't result in PC fatality. Granted, bombing 1st level parties will, but, that's not quite what I said. I said against ANY level party. Red Dragon vs appropriate level won't result in fatalities most of the time. That's because dragons are well designed.

This is wrong on a few levels. First off, a red dragon against an "appropriate level" party is quite likely to kill a PC (or TPK them) if played to its intelligence. The same is true of many highly intelligent monsters, like liches or some of the better outsiders. Often, they are not played that way.

Second, like several monsters in the Monster Manual, there are dragons well past CR 20, which means that the core game posits monsters that a party of the maximum level allowed by the core rules could not reasonably be expected to defeat. A great wyrm red dragon should kill an entire party of any characters you build without using the epic rules. So yes, there are monsters that are built to kill PCs.

 

[Hussar]

BRG - take the following example.

AD&D PC with 10 HP is successfully hit by a snake which has a SOD poison attack (pretty standard in AD&D) three times. The PC has a 50/50 chance of making his save. This character now dies 7/8 times or 87.5% of the time. And the chances actually don't significantly change even if you double his chance of saving. If he saves 75% of the time, he still dies 60% of the time in this scenario.

Now, the same PC his hit three times by a monster that does d8 points of damage. The chances of this PC outright dying are 12.5% (three hits doing either 7 or 8 points/hit to drive the PC into -10), gets dropped into negatives about 60% of the time and walks away about 20% of the time.

So, yes, save or die significantly reduces the randomness of an encounter. To the tune that the same encounter is now EIGHT TIMES more likely to kill the PC.

Now, multiply this by a save or die area attack, like a medusa or a bodak, and the chances of a PC dying in any given round are about 80% (give or take). It actually makes more sense for the party to retreat and face the medusa one at a time.

This is wrong on a few levels. First off, a red dragon against an "appropriate level" party is quite likely to kill a PC (or TPK them) if played to its intelligence. The same is true of many highly intelligent monsters, like liches or some of the better outsiders. Often, they are not played that way.

Actually this is only really true of "caster" monsters and it's because high level casters are far, far more broken than anything else in the game. Any high level monster which doesn't have high level casting abilities is not all that likely to kill PC's.

Second, like several monsters in the Monster Manual, there are dragons well past CR 20, which means that the core game posits monsters that a party of the maximum level allowed by the core rules could not reasonably be expected to defeat. A great wyrm red dragon should kill an entire party of any characters you build without using the epic rules. So yes, there are monsters that are built to kill PCs.

Note, Epic rules are part of the SRD now and are core. But, beside that, I'd point out that an Elder Wyrm Red (the largest creature in the MM) is CR 26. Not impossible for a 20th level party of 4 PC's, although extremely difficult. The solution here would be to have outside assistance - henchmen or NPC's, to bring the party up to power to take on the dragon.

And let's be honest here, no DM worth his salt is going to bomb an elder wyrm red dragon on the party before they are ready to take it on. Might as well declare "rocks fall everyone dies."

 

[pemerton]

if it's just killable, it's less working to just walk up and punch it directly in the throat.

<snip>

there are many ways to motivate players. But players quickly latch onto those. The idea of the amnesiac orphan wander PC has become a trope for a reason: because players know lazy GMs will often use friends and family against them.

To me the first of these issues reflects more on action resolution mechanics than any default bloodthirstiness among players. If the game has effective non-combat action resolution whereby players can achieve outcomes for their PCs with a degree of finality, then in my experience players will choose those options where they make sense within the fiction.

The second issue reflects something different that [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] mentioned upthread - why are the players playing the game, and how is the GM responding to that? Presumably the players want to experience a fiction in which their PCs face (and typically overcome) dramatic challenges. Defending friends and family is part of that. Part of good GMing is incorporating those sorts of stakes into the game in a way that makes the players pleased that they came up with such dramatically interesting backstories for their PCs. (For instance, don't kill off friends and family offscreen.)

I don't think save-or-die reduces possible choices into noise. It seems to me that save-or-die works on a strategic level. They create a cost (facing a save-or-die situation) to going into a tactical situation unprepared. Thus you will want to gather information as to how to prepare for those upcoming tactical situations.

Gathering as much intelligence on each tactical situation in the real world is an important thing. And, while it can be cool to put a lot of resources to it occasionally in game, encouraging the PCs to always go through the exercise, just in case there's a creature with a SoD effect, will not have a salutary effect on game play.

<snip>

If SoD is common, the players become paranoid, and won't go *anywhere* until they've done their checks. And this is D&D not, "cast lots of divinations to see what'll kill us today if we don't have the right buffs handy".

My own experience here fits with what Umbran says. A system that makes information, and similar strategic considerations, the key to success in action resolution, can very easily lead to a playstyle in which play bogs down into divination, and then using the right suite of buffs to make the actual encounter a cakewalk. I have encountered this particularly in high level (ie level 10+) Rolemaster.

A feature of 4e that I very much enjoy is that it shifts much of the locus of choice out of the "exploration" phase of play and into the "action resolution" phase of play. Toning down SoD is part of that, I think.

To me "PC's can't die" and "PC's can't die without having a fair chance at survival" are both valid styles. I just don't think they should be mandatory; a good set of rules allows for wide variation on basic tenents of the game like this.

I think that's a very big ask for a given set of RPG rules, unless you are going to deal with the issue via supplementing a basically gritty ruleset with GM fudging, or player "fudging" using Fate Points etc.

I would hope most people who play 3e (or derivatives) would understand that CR/EL and "rules" of that ilk shouldn't exist, and would not object to DMs who ignore them.

To say that CRs are pointless is not to say that the DM shouldn't pick a level of challenge that is appropriate for his style of play. I'm merely saying that CRs are not helpful in doing that.

I don't know whether or not you count 4e as a "derivative of 3E" in this respect. It has encounter level rules, and as a GM I find them quite helpful. I'm pretty sure that my players expect me to have regard to them in building encounters. (Of course they are not the only thing relevant to building encounters in 4e; the various GM advice books discuss other relevant "mechanical" considerations, like terrain, NPC/monster roles, and obviously story considerations are very important too.)

I do think that the idea of "balanced" encounters is toxic to good gaming.

That's the problem with CRs. They are self-justifying. You can't really know how unnecessary they are until you try playing a game where they're ignored and see that it works.

I have experience with systems that do not have encounter building guidelines, and that make it hard to assess monster/NPC challenge level (Rolemaster is an instance of such a game). One feature of 4e that I very much enjoy is that it is superior in this respect - it makes encounter buidling, levelling monsters/NPCs up and down, etc much easier, with far more predicatable results.

A very wide range of RPGs use the idea of "balanced" encounters (ie mathematical predictability in encounter building): not just 3E and 4e D&D, but also much more free-formy games like HeroWars/Quest, and also The Dying Earth (both by Robin Laws - hardly a toxic RPG designer!). Don Turnbull tried to introduce the idea into classic D&D via his MonsterMark, but had to contend with the swinginess of pre-4e D&D monsters resulting from factors like SoD, immunity to normal weapons, etc.

I also don't really see how you think that a GM is going to "pick a level of challenge that is appropriate" while eschewing the notion of "balanced" encounters. Once we have the notion of a spectrum of degrees of challenge, on which the GM is to find the appropriate point for his/her game, we also have the notion of a "balanced" encounter, namely one whose degree of challenges fits with some designated "balance point".

 

[Balesir]

I don't buy this dichotomy you're setting up.

Well, as I have already said, it's not absolute, but then very little is. But it is noticeable - vide the number of debates it brings about.

There are ample elements of skill involved in SoD situations;

OK, let's break them down, shall we?

designing characters with good save bonuses and other defenses,

Before 3.x this simply amounts to choosing a class. IIRC Clerics had the best save vs. death - so presumably an all-cleric party was expected?? In the later editions you had more scope to "build" for defences - but with three saves/NADs plus AC to cover you had to nerf other areas quite badly to get good in them all (although one of the PCs in the 4E game I run has been built this way).

avoiding surprise

Again, prior to 3.x the rule for surprise was "the party is surprised on a 1 or 2". How do you avoid that? Well, of course, there is a way, and IME it was actually quite common, but I'll come back to that.

and anticipating encounters,

In the "regular" dungeon this was only really possible with magic - and then only to the extent the DM wanted to let it be (part of the wider point I'll make later).

recognizing the threat,

Yep, good old "old school" play - "memorise the MM or you're toast". Some folks like it - good on 'em.

countering it in various ways.

Right - this gets to the widest argument I have here. How do you avoid surprise, anticipate encounters or counter dangerous/SoD abilities when no edition has had actual explicit rules for doing any of this? Easy - you play "blag the DM". More formally, you invite the DM to use their power to improvise additional rules on the spot to allow the regular rule (if any) to be bypassed or to allow priviledges of information or exemption from power effects that are not a part of the normal rules. If you can get the DM to like what you are proposing - because it fits their conception of what is "realistic" or it fits their conception of what is "cool" or it fits some other criteria they have for what they want included in the game - you get to play by new and different rules. If you can't persuade the DM to like what you propose, you're SOL.

"But, this is a game of skill!" you might say. Sure it is - but (a) it's not part of the game as written, really, just a surrogate game that many found to play instead in the early days, and (b) it's a game that's so old and tired that, despite enjoying it for a few years when it was new, I really gave up on some time around 1981.

The roll itself is chance, but the application of the ability is hardly "pure chance".

True - you can use your "Blag the DM" skill to see if you can get the base rules changed (see above).

Conversely, essentially any D&D battle involves numerous dice rolls. Typically their results will be "average", but it is entirely possible for a battle involving only attack rolls and hp to be decided by luck, and many such battles do not involve a whole lot of skill.

If you have few hit points you need to be extremely careful, if you have lots you can be a bit more adventurous; there's the most basic application of skill right there. The point is that there are things that are written into the game that you can do to mitigate the risk. Absent significant DM license, with SoD there seldom is. Another comment was made about "starting out of range of the SoD effect"; with line of sight effects or in a "dungeon" that's usually not a real option.

Also, if you're not into games of luck (which is fine; I'm not big into emphasizing that element either), you must really hate rolling for ability scores. Is that "bad design" as far as D&D is concerned?

Look again; I didn't say that any randomisation is bad - just that which creates a "you lost" situation with no opportunity to avoid it (in play). Characteristic generation is different; it sets up the resources that you will have to work with in play, but it doesn't lead to "you're dead" (except, maybe, in Traveller!). That said, I do prefer point buy for D&D, but I wouldn't refuse to play just because it was a "roll stats" game. And HârnMaster games are positively enhanced by attribute rolling (because the aim of play is very different).