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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6985367" data-attributes="member: 42582">I'll confine my reply to this bit of your post - partly because I think I've made my views about "narrative thread", "railroading" etc clear enough and so don't need to reiterate them; and partly because I think replying to this bit is on-topic for this thread.So, focusingon the Death Star as unwinnable. My basic problem with that is that it's not. At the end of the movie, the Death Star is beaten.Mutatis mutandis for a death knight, or ancient dragon, or whatever. Ultimately, in fatnasy fiction, these "unbeatable" creatures are defeated.Adapting that to RPGing, then, the question becmes - How can the players, via their PCs, replicate the feats of Luke Skywalker, Bard Bowman, etc?I see two main answers, refelcting broadly differing playstyles. There may be others, or intermediate/combo approaches, that I haven't thought of at the moment.(1) Winning the "unwinnable" fight requires the GM-specified MacGuffin (the info from the R2 unit, the arrow of slaying, etc). In this case, the mechanics of the Death Star or Smaug become very unimportant.(2) Winning the "unwinnable" fight is just the same as winning any other fight - so in D&D, it requires the players to reduce the enemy's hp to zero before the same thing happens to their PCs. In this case, the mechanics (in the richest sense of that term) are pretty fundamental, because they set the parameters within which the competion of hp attrition taks place. If the mechanics are wonky, things won't work out: get the maths for housecats wrong - eg two attacks for 1 plus 1-2 (with a like follow-on attack on a hit) - and it becomes as dangerous as a goblin with a shortsword or a hammer-wielding soldider, which is rather implausible; get the maths for Smaug wrong, and he withers under a round of concentrated bowfire.I feel that focusing on enviromental or tactical considerations doesn't really deal with this basic issue about the maths of hp attrition; and for people who feel they have this issue, pointing out that approach (1) doesn't have it doesn't really help either.That's not to say that WotC need to change anything: it seems to me that there is a widespread disparity of mechanical effectiveness across PC builds, perhaps at least loosely correlated with broader gameplaying experience, and it's probably reaosonable for WotC to assume that more experienced players who have some issues can sort it out - especially if they're already familiar with 4e! (Eg combine 4e's off-turn actions, auras and hp numbers with 5e's legendary action mechanics.)This is not contradicting anything I said, though - as I said, in my 4e game I statted up a phalanx of around 20 hobgoblins as a 3sq x 3sq swarm of level 15 or thereabouts, because I thought (i) that would provide a satisfying experience at the table, both mechanically (in that it would feel like a hobgoblin phalanx) and fictionally (in that it would produce the right sort of flavour for the game). And <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?319168-The-PCs-defeat-Calastryx-(and-get-up-to-some-other-hijinks)" target="_blank">it did</a>.But presumably sometimes the mechanics determine the world. Eg presumably, in your game, the question of whether this particular character can climb this particular cliff-face is answererd by making a check.And presumably if a 12th level fighter in your game came up against 20 hobgoblins, you would roll the dice to see what happens rather than just fiating it, wouldn't you (maths in sblocks below)? Or, if a 18th level wizard launched a meteor swarm against a band of orcs, I'm guessing you wouldn't do that simply through narrative fiat either.[sblock]Let's say a 12th level Champion has Plate+1, Shield+1, Sword+1, and Duelling and Defensive style, 20 STR and 18 CON: that's AC 23, 124 hp +18 from Second Wind makes 142; and 3 attacks per round with +10 to hit and 1d8+8 damage. 3/4 of hits kill a hobgoblin (roll of 3+ on d8 ensures 11 hp damage - crits up this ratio a little bit, but not much), and 13/20 attacks hit, so that's about 1.5 dead hobgoblins per round, or 12 rounds (+Action Surge) to kill 20 of them.The fighter suffers 8 attacks per round for 8 rounds (I'm assuming melee vs a phalanx), then 7, 5, 4, 2, 0 . That's 82 attacks all up. The hobgoblins have +3 to hit, so that's a 1 in 20 chance to hit. On a hit - which is a crit - their damage is 2d8+1, +4d6 due to their racial trait, or 24 hp damage. That's expected damage per attack of 1.2. So the fighter, from those 82 attacks, should take about 100 damage, which s/he can withstand.If the hobgoblins try to knock down the fighter, the fighter (assuming Athletics proficiency) has +9, vs +1 for the hobgoblins. So a 1 on 1 contest requires the fighter to roll 11 or less (for a result of 20 or less) vs the hobgoblins 20 to 10 (for a result of 21 or more): that's a 66/400 chance of success for a hobgoblin - so to get the fighter down, the hobgoblins (on average) have to make 6 attempts, which then (roughly) doubles their chance to hit until the fighter stands up on his/her next turn. In the early stages of the combat that is a reasonable tactic, as the hobgbolins can turn 2 rounds (16 attacks) into (effectively) 20 attacks worth of damage. But it then starts to become less effective. The hobgoblins need the equivalent of 35 extra attacks worth of damage to beat the fighter, and they won't get there: probably only about plus 17 or so rounds.If the hobgoblins knock the fighter prone and then grapple him/her so s/he can't get up, it looks perhaps a bit uglier for the fighter, but that will take about 36 of their attacks. The fighter's chance to hit then drops by about 2/3, which is only 1 hobgoblin per round, giving the hobgoblins more rounds and more attacks at advantage. But the fighter can just break free, which costs 1 or 2 round of killing hobgoblins - but they've spent about 4 rounds to bring the fighter down, so even if they do double damage in that 1 or 2 rounds I still think the fighter should come out on top.[/sblock]In the Iliad, Ares or Achilles or one of the other gods or major heroes can reasonably assume that the bulk of the soldiery will fall before them.So the idea that the PCs are somewhat unique in being demigods (or Conan-esque paragon-tier characters) is not something I find that absurd. I feel it has firm roots in the broader fantasy genre.I think focusing on the details of the fiction can become a distraction. As WotC showed when it released the Neverwinter campaign guide for 4e, you can layer new flavour over the same mechanics if you want to (eg in the Neverwinter game, the story elements progress from heroic to paragon - to use the 4e terminology - although mechancially it is all set between 1st and 10th level. One consequen ce of this is that Neverwinter monsters aren't genreally suitable for standard campaigns, becausse Neverwinter stats up a mindflayer as 10th level that in a standard campaign should be closer to 20th.)I think it is more helpful to focus on the dynamics of play at the table. In the context of this discussion, I would ask what is wrong with the players haveing some genral sense of what their PCs are capable of (which is, at least in part, expressed in mechancial terms)? Or, to flip it around, How does it improve the game if the players aren't confident - at least in general terms - of the threat posed by a band of orcs? I mean, you seem to be implying in your posts that the players, in your game, would have reasonable confidence that their PC couldn't defeat a band of orcs. So why do things become any worse for play if the players do have confidence that they could take on the band with at least some prsopect of success?</blockquote>

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