To all the other "simulationists" out there...

[mhensley]

The players reacted more by thinking "What's the logical thing for an adventurer to do?" rather than "What's the logical thing to do according to the rules?"

Ironically this is exactly the reasoning pushing me towards Gurps. D&D has, with every edition change, required players to think more and more with an eye towards the game rules and less towards how a real person would react in a given situation. When I first started playing D&D back in the dark ages, if someone asked how to play I would just tell them not to worry as only the DM needed to know all the rules (and this was a big reason I switched from wargames to rpgs). The DM will tell you what is happening and you just say what you want to do. Try doing that in 3e or 4e and people will be rolling their eyes at you and calling you a noob because you don't understand flanks or AOO's.

 

[Plane Sailing]

This is general D&D related rather than 4e specific, so I've moved it into General.

 

[Lacyon]

Which is another irritation. Realisticly, do you really need all that special training or whatever to decide to hit the enemy in the legs instead of the chest or whatever?

No, you need all that training to get a game effect of "loses X hp per round" or "cuts speed in half". Any hit that we want to describe as being in the leg is. We just don't muck about with "fiddly bits" such as continued hp loss or speed decreases unless someone has a game effect that describes it in a neat, packaged way.

I just don't need to roll that many extra dice, or learn that many extra rules, just to model game mechanically every detail of an attack. For most attacks, we assume the loss of blood is already factored into the hp damage the attack first did. For most attacks that don't disable the target, we assume they didn't sever any important muscles - if they did, a more "realistic" model to me is that most of the time, that guy who just got his artery severed isn't in the fight anymore.

Not for me. I like for the players to have more control. I like for them to be able to decide where and how the enemy is hit instead of letting it all ride on the DM. It gives them more freedom and chances to be both strategic and creative.

Sure. My players don't have to rely on me to tell them everything either. Heck, for all I care, each and every one of them can imagine the hit differently and we can just stick to game terminology of "hits" "misses" and "hp damage".

I'm not trying to sell you on D&D here, you seem pretty happy with what you've got and I'm glad of it. I only take issue with things like "D&D characters can't stop a Hobgoblin from moving past them" when they clearly can.

 

[roguerouge]

The guard stood there, unaware of the rogue, looking out over the surrounding area. But what could the rogue do? His only option was a sneak attack. So he did it, inflicting a nice chunk of damage. But the guard wasn't killed, and on his next action, he rang the bell.

The player became very frustrated, and rightfully so. The guard was a mook. A nobody. A "red shirt". But as we looked over his stats, there was no way the rogue could have eliminated him silently.

Put me down for a bit of bad DMing or bad player prep.

Bad player prep: The player sees himself as an invisible blade in the night... and doesn't pack a garotte? I don't care if he's not proficient in it: we're talking a flat-footed AC here and there's pretty specific rules for garottes that make them worthwhile in this exact scenario. (And ringing the bell while you're strangling to death? Any DM who makes his NPC do this on the very first action's going to have to have an awfully plausible reason.)

Bad DM: A guard in a tower for an army encampment has a very poor assignment: cold, high up in the winds, with minimal shelter, and massive boredom. This post is going to be handled by a Warrior 1 or a Warrior 2. If your PCs are going into or behind enemy lines, the PC rogue ought to be able to take down his man.

Let me revise that statement. At this point in that adventure, you should have started at 6th level and become 7th level (or 5th and 6th, but with modules you should always err on the side of caution.) So if he's 7th level, he should have 1d6 + 4d6 + STR + Weapon bonus: or 17 damage ON AVERAGE plus the STR and weapon bonus. (And that's assuming this alleged knife in the shadows PC is not packing Con poison or a garotte or a stone with silence cast on it by the cleric.) But even by the best case scenario, any warrior 1 or 2 in the world is going down after that.

Now, because it's a badly written adventure with a rigid DM, it's actually got 26 hp. So the PC has shivved him for 3/4 of his hit points despite everything going wrong from the player, DM and module author: wrong weapon, didn't take a round to guarantee the initiative win, no silence spell, no poison, failed the initiative roll, not a mook, and a DM who sent the wrong signals to the player.

[SBLOCK]
(Hint: if there's a dragon circling the area and it's the advance force of an army guarding a key maneuver point, it might not be a mook in the tower!) [/SBLOCK]

I mean, don't get me wrong: I hope GURPS or your system or whatever works for you and I'm sorry that you're obviously frustrated. But I'm going to have join the chorus that's chanting that the fault's in ourselves, not in the system on this one. That's not to say that you're right or wrong about the system, but the example you're using is not selling it for me.

 

[roguerouge]

He could have been a weak little nobody in 3rd edition too, but the DM made him level appropriate.

No system in the world is mistake-proof, pardon my strong language. If a single guard of an entire army a level-appropriate encounter, the PCs ought to run now and avoid the rush hour, 'cause that army is going to walk all over the world.

 

[GeorgeFields]

It really depends on your GM. That said, you'll probably need:

GURPS Basic Set Characters
GURPS Basic Set Campaigns (There is a lot of stuff in there for players)
GURPS Magic (If your GM is using the standard spell system.)
GURPS Powers (Great book for helping you understand supernatural abilities, alternate magic systems, psionics, etc.)
GURPS Martial Arts (Adds a ton of combat options. It's not just about oriental styles.)

GURPS Fantasy (Despite the name, isn't really needed.)

Thanks for the list. Once I'm done reading (and liking) the Characters book, I'll start looking for the others.

 

[Azgulor]

I see.

Well, the only way I can respond to that is by repeating something I said earlier. If the guard was meant to be a "mook" and insignificant, then the guard should have had far fewer hit points, which means that he would have been able to be killed in the manner you are describing.

The higher level and the more hit points a creature has, the more "script immunity" it has from being killed off in such a way. By making the hobgoblin guard more than just a simple Warrior 1 or Warrior 2, the DM basically made him an important NPC. Important NPCs (and PCs) in D&D simply cannot die in such an inglorious way.

As far as I'm concerned, though, you've won your argument. D&D does not model real combat.

Except defining a guard as a mook is just another form of DM fiat. Mook rules certainly support certain styles of play, but they aren't suitable to all styles of play.

D20 & OGL variants have handled the issue in a variety of ways, typically through a lowering of the Massive Damage Threshold.

D&D models superheroic fantasy and is effectively its own genre of fantasy. And it works for that genre.

When people were critical of not being able to run certain styles of games, I seem to recall countless cries of "find another game - that ain't D&D", "D&D supports cinematic play", "D&D isn't simulationist", etc., etc. Someone posts that they agree with that sentiment and that there is room for multiple games in someone's library and at someone's gaming table and what do we get? Six pages of people arguing how D&D supports a genre and play style it's not designed to emulate.

4e is good for some people.

3.x is good for some people.

GURPS is good for some people.

(Now sit down for this one...)

There may, just possibly, be overlap amongst the groups! Holy crap, someone might play all 3 games!?!

The announcement of 4e D&D sucks if for no other reason than it's impossible to discuss RPGs in this forum without it devolving into system/edition wars of one form or another.

Bleh.

 

[VannATLC]

Edit: Meh.

 

[Remathilis]

I think there is a sub-point to be made in this argument.

The simplest fix to Ashrym's example would be to decrease the NPC's hp. Most everyone agrees this is the preferred Scenario. However, if it hasn't been made clear: ASHRYM WASN'T THE DM! He was a player witnessing the attack. He had no control over the scenario, but it left a bad taste in his mouth. As a long time thief/rogue player, I can see why. The flavor reason for granting the thief/rogue backstab/sneak attack was so a rogue could quietly dispatch a guard while sneaking around. He doesn't get boatloads of attacks like a fighter, or easy to finish-you-off spells like a mage. He gets SA. That is his only tool to deal with a sentry.

The problem is, that SA didn't (by the rules) deal enough damage to finish the guard. So all those hide/move silently rolls were wasted. All the player's clever intuition came to naught. He could've got the same results by charging the gate, fighter wielding his blade and wizard fireballing the belltower.

Sub Problem: A rogue doesn't do enough damage to reasonably dispose of a foe that is within his CR range effectively.

There is a reason for this, of course. D&D is a team sport. If a rogue could one shot, one kill most foes, he wouldn't need other PCs. However, his SA damage is just far enough behind the hp curve that it never works as advertised: it cannot silence a sentry before he can call the alarm.

And as bad as SA was, backstab in 1e/2e was worse (5dX damage at 13th level? there is no foe that's going to drop that a simple sword blow wouldn't anyway...)

For some, its a feature, not a bug that rogues can't solo-kill. For others (like Ashrym) its maddening to know there was no real chance of success with that chosen tactic, all the planning and forethought be damned.

So what do we do? Do we fix SA to solo kill? Do we fix hp to make the game less lethal? Do we leave as is? And what do we do if we're NOT the DM and we're the one who gets slaughtered because the combined total of your SA damage =/= your foe's hp and your now screwed?

Ashrym solved the problem by going to GURPS. Kudos to him. He also mentioned he likes D&D for the opposite reason: No kobold rogue will solo-kill him before he can roll for init. Cuts both ways. 4e looks to try to fix that, but we don't know until June.

Meanwhile, it would behoove rogue players to remember that an SA is not a killing blow, but an opening salvo. The road to Hell is paved in the bones of rogues who thought xd6 damage would be enough. When all else fails, call the mage and make sure he has invisibility...

 

[roguerouge]

How do you perform a trip maneuver with a sword in one hand, and a shield in the other as an AoO without dropping either?

You can't perform a trip with a sword.

What, you can't stick your foot out? An unarmed attack need not be hand-based; it includes knees, kicks, head-butts, etc.

Edit: Eh. It's been dealt with.