Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 6986570" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I trimmed down your post for the sake of clarity and space. Sure, it is. However, I don't think that the approach has the negative connotation that you seem to be implying. I don't really see any limitation in the players' choice due to the "MacGuffin". I also don't really see it as a MacGuffin so much as a bit of lore relevant to the game, but that's a rather semantic matter. Well th example I gave is straight out of the published adventure "Out of the Abyss". I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but there is an encounter with Demogorgon early in the adventure. The PCs are of course free to react however they like, but the expectation (and rightly so) is that they get out of dodge before Demogorgon notices them. Well, no, it need not be a TPK at stake. If the PCs foolishly attack Demogorgon, it can simply be narrated that the last thing they see is a giant tentacle crashing down on them, and then they wake up along the shore of the lake a little further down from the town, which is burning from the demon's rampage.The adventure makes it very clear that you should describe things to encourage the PCs to flee. Just because there is a clearly superior choice to be made does not mean that the players' choice has been removed. They can go right ahead and make the stupid choice if they like. And they need not be punished severely for their failure. In the original discussion, the amount of creatures varied as each person involved tried to make their point, of course. My comments were made with the idea that a horde consisted of hundreds or thousands of individuals. Your 160 member horde is at the outer edge of what I think is feasible. I think that for truly high level characters, I'd be more inclined to roll it out and see what happened. Your example used 4E terms and expectations, so perhaps I'm wrong, but I'd equate 15th level in 4E with 10th level in 5E. To me, that's still within the realm of mortal hero that I don't want defeating armies. I despised the codified tiers of 4E. I want to decide what scope my players will have in the world at any given level. So this is total opinion, and I think we just view things differently. The horde. 5 PCs attacking and killing a horde of orcs....meaning hundreds of enemies. To me, that is out of hand. It involves the players making the decision to attack based on the mechanics of the game more than the characters making the decision based on the world in whcih they exist. Your example where your PCs defeated 160 hobgoblins pushes things a bit for me. I by no means am saying it is wrong, just that I wouldn't do that in my game. I would expect the PCs to have to engage such a large number of enemies in a different way than simply a straightforward conflict. The fact that 4E had a mechanical means for you to make the encounter more manageable by clumping the enemies into swarms is cool for those who would like to do that. But just because it can be done mechanically doesn't mean I want to do it. But this is now more about differing themes or play styles, which is a bit different from the original discussion about tactics and environment as tools to help make monsters more effective. I agree that it gives the DM a bit more control over the game, yes. As for the decisions being harder for the players.....on one hand, that is exactly what I am going for. That does not mean that I am asking them to make these decision in a vacuum. I give them information and they make the decision accordingly. My goal is that they decide based on that information more so than on what they as players know of monster stats and other game mechanics. But I do not expect such meta-knowledge to be removed entirely, just that it be secondary. Now, the fact that their decision is harder does not inhibit play in any way, so if that is your concern, then I would disagree. Yes. I would hint in some way at the existence of a powerful group of orcs, or what have you. What you are describing in this sense is the exact kind of thing I try to achieve....the fiction shaping things. No. Essentially, the DM determines a DC for the check. That right there is the DM deciding by fiat how likely or unlikely a task is. The DM may take several factors into consideration....weather, the surface of the cliff, time pressure, etc.....all of which are fictional elements. The fiction determines the DC, which then determines the likelihood of teh cliff being climbed.You could choose to frame it that way, certainly. You could also just say that despite the presence of handholds, the PC is unable to position himself to best use them. Or that the sea spray from teh nearby ocean has made the rocks slippery....or any other reason that is present. It's a matter of preference how you describe the outcome of a skill check. This doesn't change that the initial DC is determined by the DM. Do you determine such a DC in some way other than how I described above? Yes, this is why I said I would probably wait and see what the players did before having the tractor beam come into play. I didn't ever say it exhausted the range of possible discussion, nor was it the only option I offered. The original discussion was about a scenario where a group of high CR monsters were soundly defeated by a group of PCs that were low for the threat level the monsters posed. The discussion was about how to address this. Considering the description of the encounter, it seemed that terrain perfectly favored the PCs, and that the supposedly intelligent and formidable villains waltzed into range for the PCs to utterly destroy them before they themselves could use any of their rather potent abilities. Many posters offered ideas about how to change the monsters' stat blocks in order to make them more effective. I said yes, you can do that, but my first step would be to mitigate this through encounter design and NPC behavior. I don't even see how anyone could disagree that terrain and tactics should perhaps be considered in such a case as a first step. You could have given the villains a nuke and it wouldn't have mattered....they were barely able to act. I'd even go so far as to say that in that specific example, if any other outcome was desired, then environment and tactics MUST be the first step. So it's hard to see how my advice was not sound. But again, this was in another thread and another discussion....here, this seems a bit off topic and that the discussion is a bit different. My view is not a binary one, as you seem to think. I don't think that mechanical elements or considerations should be abandoned. Nor should narrative elements or tactical and environmental elements. My view is that the mechanics are there to simulate the fiction. They serve the fiction. My fiction does not serve the mechanics. Hence, when mechanics take too strong of a role in the game, I consider it a case of the tail wagging the dog. However, I think the lines between two topics are blurring. Mechanics versus narration in how I prefer my game to be presented to players and for them to make decisions for their PCs, and the other discussion of monster abilities and tactics/environment and how each impacts monster efficacy.</blockquote>

Verification