The ethics of ... death

[Guest 85555]

Well, since we're talking about D&D, low odds of survival is not a design goal. After all, D&D is about heroic fantasy. Everything else lines up with that. It's been quite a few editions since we had disposable characters for the first three levels.
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Perhaps in D&D it isnt. I wont argue that this may not be the case. I am not so sure it is as far in the direction of survivability you are shooting for though.

Personally I think opinions on this are more varied than many people suspect and that the best approach is to enable groups to dial lethality up or down. There are still people who like the oldschool lethality. We are currently experiencing an explosion of products built around some of these sensibilities. It is not the majority of players but it also is not insignificant. And many of them are looking forward to the next edition.

 

[Ahnehnois]

It's been quite a few editions since we had disposable characters for the first three levels.

A 3e or PF character is still pretty vulnerable at low levels. A basic orc can realistically kill any 1st level character (wizard or fighter) with a good hit. An appropriately advanced orc power attacking with a decent weapon can kill a wizard in one critical hit through pretty much his entire career. Characters are somewhat disposable. "Heroic" does not mean "invincible".

If you flip a coin twice and both times it comes up heads, it is no longer 50:50 that the next flip is heads.

This is exactly the fallacy we are trying to debunk. No matter how many times you flip the coin, the next one is always purely random. You can get fifteen heads in a row, and the next flip is still 50/50 to be heads or tails. Assuming the coin is fair. If you see your players roll fifteen 20's in a row, you may want to check their dice.

Ninja'd on that I guess.

Now, if you consider several unflipped coins at once, the more coins you have, the greater the chance that at least one of them will be heads. That much is fair.

 

[Ahnehnois]

In all of those movies, how many of the peasants say "Hey, we should go hire some adventurers like we did last Spring when that other monster showed up"? Those same movies tend not to portray monsters as a common threat....

How many movies are there where the entire Monster Manual worth of monsters even exists? D&D is a high fantasy game. Exact numbers of creatures are left for you to determine, but it's clear, as I stated, that there is a race of Medusas. That may be hundreds, thousands, or even millions, but it's definitely more than there were in any movie that has one (that I'm aware of).

To wit:

A medusa is indistinguishable from a normal human at distances greater than 30 feet (or closer, if its face is concealed). The creature often wears garments that enhance its body while hiding its face behind a hood or veil.

A typical medusa is 5 to 6 feet tall and about the same weight as a human.

Medusas speak Common.

but you stating Nraac Monster are so common the peasants can give you the latin name and its ecology.

No, I'm not. I'm stating that peasants have a general idea of what many monsters are and why they are dangerous. I think that a peasant who sees a tarantula knows that it is a spider and may bite you, even if they have never seen one before. They may overestimate or underestimate the true danger (tarantulas actually aren't all that dangerous), but they have some idea. That does not mean that they know the Latin name and ecology and can write a paper on spider mating behaviors. It merely means that they possess common knowledge that is relevant to their lives.

Similarly, I think that a commoner who sees a cockatrice knows that it is probably not a natural bird and that you should not touch it. Do they know what the word "petrification" means? Can they spell it? Perhaps not. That's not the point.

The RAW are written with PC and adventure in mind

Indeed. Which is why I conclude that my adventurous PCs do not need advanced academic knowledge to know basic things like "banshees kill you when they scream". That's common knowledge, especially for people who do adventure for a living.

 

[N'raac]

I assume when your players encounter a bear, you explain that it is a "large animal with fur" unless they make a trained Knowledge (Nature) check?

To some extent, we are back to the "HD as rarity" issue embedded in the Monster ID rules. I believe there is a case to be made for identifying some creatures which are not "monsters" for this purpose. That said, would each PC be able to look at a creature charging from the underbrush and ID it as a black or brown bear, male or female, and whether it is full grown, aged or just a cub? And which animals? Does that character equally recognize a narwhal, an elephant and the difference between an African or Indian elephant, or batrachian or dromedary camel?

Whether one agrees with them or not, the Knowledge rules set out how creature identification is resolved. If you want to vary that ("everyone knows what a goblin is"), then you are doing just that - varying the rules.

We've also deviated a long way from "Everyone knows Banshees kill you with a scream that Death Ward can block".

Well, it shows which characters know common knowledge (i.e. all of them). What knowledge counts as common is not described. So yes, it was of some assistance in proving my point.

As cited numerous times above, common knowledge is clearly defined as "anything that has a DC of 10 or below". Identifying a monster is clearly defined as having a DC of 10 + HD. I think that's described pretty explicitly, assuming one takes the time to actually read the words. The bigger issue is probably the lack of re-rolls. Perhaps a character who has lots of time to sit back and reflect should be permitted a "take 20" on the knowledge check. Oh, NOW I remember! Just like we sometimes draw a blank on someone's name when we see them at the store, only to remember when we wake up at 3 AM.

And about the fuzzy math. Kinda sorta. If you flip a coin twice and both times it comes up heads, it is no longer 50:50 that the next flip is heads. Or am I getting my math all screwed up here? It's been a really long time since I did stats.

No. The odds of the coin flipping heads or tails is always 50/50. The odds of four consecutive flips coming up heads is 6.25%. If you have flipped 3 heads, the odds of the fourth flip being heads is 50%.

If the PC needs to roll 11+ to save, and has already saved 3 times, he still has a 50% chance of making the fourth save. He's beaten the odds on the first three.

 

[Ahnehnois]

To some extent, we are back to the "HD as rarity" issue embedded in the Monster ID rules. I believe there is a case to be made for identifying some creatures which are not "monsters" for this purpose.

I think there's a case to be made for some creatures that are.

For example, if you've played Baldur's Gate, you may remember a field of statues full of basilisks, and a halfling village nearby. I think every halfling in that village knows exactly what a basilisk is, even if their general knowledge of magical beasts is not great.

That said, would each PC be able to look at a creature charging from the underbrush and ID it as a black or brown bear, male or female, and whether it is full grown, aged or just a cub?

No, but who needs to? All you need to know is that it's a godless killing machine. I don't care whether my bodak is a medium one or a large one either. I just care that it's an undead with a death gaze that dies in sunlight.

Of course, if it's a brown bear, the DC to identify it is 2 higher than if it's black. Two bears attack you at once and you can conceivably go "hey, watch out for that black bear and its grapple attack, and what the hell is that brown thing?". This is the system you're defending.

And which animals? Does that character equally recognize a narwhal, an elephant and the difference between an African or Indian elephant, or batrachian or dromedary camel?

Probably not. Again, that's not the point. The question is whether a character can recognize a monster that does live near them and its basic threat level, not whether they are a scholar of zoology.

As cited numerous times above, common knowledge is clearly defined as "anything that has a DC of 10 or below".

That's circular reasoning. A DC 10 knowledge check can get you common knowledge, which is anything of DC 10 or below. That tells us nothing.

There's nothing in that that says a DM can't define common knowledge to include things like which monsters are likely to have instant death abilities.

 

[Guest 85555]

I think this raises a lot of good points about knowledge issues and probably extenda beyond SoD (for example knowing vulverabilities of monsters that are immune to a number of attack types). I suppose a lot of it also does come down to campaign style. I used to run a lot of Ravenloft campaigns and a key part of the ravenloft setting, largely explored in the Van Richten guides, is the monster hunt. Discovering the threats vulnerability and past was central to investigating these monsters. S you could have a whole adventure just trying to figure out the specific history and vulnerabilities of a single flesh golem, ghost, vampire or werewolf. Because most players know the MM, for ravenloft thye started treating a lot of individual monsters as unique in terms of vulnerabilities (you can't count on every vampire being killed bya stake through the heart or every werewolf being vulnerable to silver). It is kind of the reverse of the problem being observed for regular campaigns.

Using HD as the basis for how difficult it is to know a creatures' weakesses never really seemed like a good idea to me. And 3E's ever increasing DCs, make it hard to have a world where the peasants can know the basics (because the dcs need to be able to challenege pcs as well)----hopefully the flatter math of 5E alleviates this issue a bit. You alsmost want each monster to have a specific DC. Presumably the GM has the entry or stats in front of him, so it is no harder than having to look up the creature's HD.

 

[Ahnehnois]

You [almost] want each monster to have a specific DC. Presumably the GM has the entry or stats in front of him, so it is no harder than having to look up the creature's HD.

Some 3.5 monster books had those entries where it gave you specific information for a Knowledge check to reveal. I do not think it would be terribly hard, given that amount of detail, to assign DCs (or more aptly, base DCs and circumstantial modifiers) to each monster.

For example, I think most people probably have an idea of what a red dragon is, but might be relatively clueless about a Thoqqua. After all, the latter lives on the Plane of Fire; it's not exactly a common sight. Meanwhile, red dragons are charismatic, interact frequently with humans, and can travel a long way, so there is every reason for them to be well known in most parts.

Regional and contextual differences matter. A human kingdom's inhabitants might not be able to distinguish the dwarven subraces, but if they live near mountains and trade with hill dwarves or go to war with duergar, then maybe that knowledge gets disseminated better.

The monster itself has a say in this as well. I would guess that liches are not well known since they tend to be reclusive (and are associated with the god of secrets in the core Greyhawk setting); their entry even suggests that unknowing adventurers may mistake their paralyzing touch for an SoD. Conversely, big dumb monsters like a purple worm are not exactly known for subtlety, and they make for an interesting story that likely gets shared a lot.

 

[LostSoul]

Here is an interesting blog post on the implied game world (for AD&D).

For starters you get smacked over the head with how desperate life must be even inside the few “inhabited” zones of the implied world. For you see with every encounter rolled in such areas, there is a full 25% chance that the random encounter table should be utterly ignored and a patrol encountered instead.

...

The sheer frequency of meeting such heavily-powered up bands—hell even a mid-level party would find the standard issue patrol of normal men a tough go--inside the settled environs sends a strong message that this is a world right on the knife's edge.

Not only is civilization an obsessively-patrolled armed camp, it is also damn sparse.​

 

[JamesonCourage]

Well, since we're talking about D&D, low odds of survival is not a design goal.

I think this depends on what one wants out of the game. Neither of us can speak about the goals of the designers with any real authority, but we're talking about SOD as a well designed mechanic, not SOD in the context of D&D and Hussar's view on it.

After all, D&D is about heroic fantasy.

Mine was never, ever that way, and I never remember reading that it was supposed to be exclusively that way (or that way at all, really) in my 3.5 books.

And, designing mechanics for "heroic fantasy" is designing towards a specific preference (one I don't share). You can try to objectively measure whether or not mechanics meet that goal, but that goal was most certainly set by an initial preference, which is anything but objective.

Everything else lines up with that.

What? How do you figure? There's always been other Save of Lose spells (Hold Person, Dominate, paralyzing poison, Otto's Irresistible Dance, etc.) that completely bypass HP and end the PC's ability to be "heroic". It's been a strong and present part of D&D. I'm not saying it's objectively good (or bad), but I am disputing your "nothing else is like SOD in D&D" assertion.

It's been quite a few editions since we had disposable characters for the first three levels.

Well, that's still D&D. You know, D&D has "disposable characters" in it. It's not always "heroic fantasy", like what you're advocating for.

And about the fuzzy math. Kinda sorta. If you flip a coin twice and both times it comes up heads, it is no longer 50:50 that the next flip is heads.

Yes, it is.

Or am I getting my math all screwed up here? It's been a really long time since I did stats.

Probably / statistics can get muddy. I wouldn't want to bet that the coin will flip to be heads 5 times in a row, but between each flip, the chance is about 50/50. I think statistically, it won't end up as heads five times in a row, but the probability between each flip is roughly 50/50? I'm not sure on the wording, but the math is in there. The Gambler's Fallacy explains it better: [sblock]

[h=2]An example: coin-tossing[/h]The gambler's fallacy can be illustrated by considering the repeated toss of a fair coin. With a fair coin, the outcomes in different tosses are statistically independent and the probability of getting heads on a single toss is exactly ¹⁄₂ (one in two). It follows that the probability of getting two heads in two tosses is ¹⁄₄ (one in four) and the probability of getting three heads in three tosses is ¹⁄₈ (one in eight).

Now suppose that we have just tossed four heads in a row, so that if the next coin toss were also to come up heads, it would complete a run of five successive heads. Since the probability of a run of five successive heads is only ¹⁄₃₂ (one in thirty-two), a person subject to the gambler's fallacy might believe that this next flip was less likely to be heads than to be tails. However, this is not correct, and is a manifestation of the gambler's fallacy; the event of 5 heads in a row and the event of "first 4 heads, then a tails" are equally likely, each having probability ¹⁄₃₂. While a run of five heads is only ¹⁄₃₂ = 0.03125, it is only that before the coin is first tossed. After the first four tosses the results are no longer unknown, so their probabilities are 1. Reasoning that it is more likely that the next toss will be a tail than a head due to the past tosses, that a run of luck in the past somehow influences the odds in the future, is the fallacy.

[h=2]Explaining why the probability is 1/2 for a fair coin[/h]
We can see from the above that, if one flips a fair coin 21 times, then the probability of 21 heads is 1 in 2,097,152. However, the probability of flipping a head after having already flipped 20 heads in a row is simply 1⁄2. This is an application of Bayes' theorem.

This can also be seen without knowing that 20 heads have occurred for certain (without applying of Bayes' theorem). Consider the following two probabilities, assuming a fair coin:

• probability of 20 heads, then 1 tail = 0.520 × 0.5 = 0.521
• probability of 20 heads, then 1 head = 0.520 × 0.5 = 0.521

The probability of getting 20 heads then 1 tail, and the probability of getting 20 heads then another head are both 1 in 2,097,152. Therefore, it is equally likely to flip 21 heads as it is to flip 20 heads and then 1 tail when flipping a fair coin 21 times. Furthermore, these two probabilities are equally as likely as any other 21-flip combinations that can be obtained (there are 2,097,152 total); all 21-flip combinations will have probabilities equal to 0.521, or 1 in 2,097,152. From these observations, there is no reason to assume at any point that a change of luck is warranted based on prior trials (flips), because every outcome observed will always have been as likely as the other outcomes that were not observed for that particular trial, given a fair coin. Therefore, just as Bayes' theorem shows, the result of each trial comes down to the base probability of the fair coin: 1⁄2.

[/sblock]
As always, play what you like

 

[N'raac]

I think there's a case to be made for some creatures that are.

For example, if you've played Baldur's Gate, you may remember a field of statues full of basilisks, and a halfling village nearby. I think every halfling in that village knows exactly what a basilisk is, even if their general knowledge of magical beasts is not great.

If the field is full of basilisks, my question has to be how the halflings have survived this long. An average of 45 hp, AC 16, bite with +8 for 4 - 11 damage should be more than enough to kill lots of nhalflings, before getting into that DC 13 petrification gaze.

The fact that a computer game sets a silly scenario does not mean I find that an appropriate baseline for a game world.

No, but who needs to? All you need to know is that it's a godless killing machine. I don't care whether my bodak is a medium one or a large one either. I just care that it's an undead with a death gaze that dies in sunlight.

And are bodaks as well known and well studied as bears? I could see bears having a reduced DC, or applying a flat (and reduced) DC for common animals. But I could also see bumping the DC up, not down, for more rare creatures.

Of course, if it's a brown bear, the DC to identify it is 2 higher than if it's black. Two bears attack you at once and you can conceivably go "hey, watch out for that black bear and its grapple attack, and what the hell is that brown thing?". This is the system you're defending.

Quick, which ones climb trees better? And I have already pointed out the issue with variable HD changing the DC of even the same monster.

That's circular reasoning. A DC 10 knowledge check can get you common knowledge, which is anything of DC 10 or below. That tells us nothing.

It tells us monster identification is not common knowledge.

There's nothing in that that says a DM can't define common knowledge to include things like which monsters are likely to have instant death abilities.

Nothing says the DM can't define all wizards as having pink spots. That doesn't set what the actual rules are. If the abilities and weaknesses of beasts like the Bodak are common knowledge, why bother with knowledge skills at all?

Using HD as the basis for how difficult it is to know a creatures' weakesses never really seemed like a good idea to me. And 3E's ever increasing DCs, make it hard to have a world where the peasants can know the basics (because the dcs need to be able to challenege pcs as well)----hopefully the flatter math of 5E alleviates this issue a bit. You alsmost want each monster to have a specific DC. Presumably the GM has the entry or stats in front of him, so it is no harder than having to look up the creature's HD.

I think "by HD" has a game basis, in that it makes more powerful monsters, faced by PC's with better skills, harder to ID. But that isn't an essential component. I would not be putting Bodaks at DC 10 if we were assigning difficulties, though. It also seems like there should be some possibility of misinformation such as Old Wive's Tales.

One of the more fun characters I recall was designed specifically to NOT be knowledgeable about everything he ran across - but he sure knew his tales.

"Och, a Pixie - let's tear off its wings and make it take us to its pot of gold."

"How do I face the Umber Hulk? Like any TRUE warrior - I look it straight in the eye, showing I don't fear it!"

[Still amazed I got a saving throw in that fight - the '1' I rolled sure felt right...]