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

[Inez Hull]

AB, I understand your frustration. This is one of the reasons our gaming group tends to go back to Rolemaster after a period of D&D (until the complexity of Rolemaster drives one of our players crazy and we eventually return to D&D!).

However, a very good solution to this situation exists in the suprise rules in The Black Company D20 sourcebook. Getting the jump on an opponent can allow you to take out opponents even more powerful than yourself given a well planned and executed ambush.

I disagree though that flaws in a system mean you need to shift sytem entirely. Houserules allow you to tailor a system into the game you want to play. If GURPS works fine for you though that's great, enjoy it!

 

[MichaelSomething]

I actually have the Red Hand of Doom Adventure on me. I even ran it, but not to completetion. Allow me to crunch the numbers and shed some light.

I'm going to assume the event where the rogue failed to kill the bell ringing guard was at Rhest. The guard there was not an a mook. The hobgoblin was a veteran. The Red Hand forces stationed in Rhest were not the rank and file mooks. They were guys who knew their way around the battlefield. The forces stationed there has an important mission; they had to protect a bunch of monster eggs. The monster in those eggs were powerful monsters which could turn the tide of battle. It's sort of like protecting a tank factory. You don't put in just any mook there. You put a guy who proven himself.

Now I'll list the exact stats of the guard.

Hobgoblin Veteran CR 3

Hobgoblin warrior 4
LE Meduim humaniod (goblinod)
Init +1;Senses darkvision 60ft; Listen +3, Spot +4
Languagses Common, Goblin

AC 19, touch 11, flat-footed 18
HP 26 (4HD)
Fort +6, Ref +2, Will +0

Speed 20ft. (4 squares)
Melee mwk longsword +8 (1d8+2/19-20)
Ranged mwk composite longbow +6 (1d8+2/x3)
Base Atk +4; Grp +6
Combat Gear 3 potions of cure moderate wounds

Abilities Str 14, Dex 13, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 9, Cha 8
Feats Alertness, Weaspon Focus (longsword)
Skills Intimidate +3, Listen +3, Move Silently -3, Spot +4
Possessions combat gear plus branded mail, heavy steel shield, mwk longsword, mwk composite longbow (+2 Str bonus) with 20 arrows

Hook Conditioned to follow orders: cruel espirt de corps. "We are the Red Hand! We do not know defeat!"

That was a lot of typing. Now, the important stats are the AC (19 regular and 18 flatfoot) and HP (26 hp).

I assuming your rogue would be between levels 5-7. That means the rogue would have 3d6 or 4d6 sneak attack. I'm guessing your rouge would do 1d8+3 pluse 4d6 for sneak attack. That averages out to 21 damage on a sneak attack. The hobgoblin has 26 hp. Assuming the sneak attack did less then average damage, the hobgoblin vet would have enough hp left to survive an AoO and go ring the bell.

A coup de grace attack could have added enough damage to score a 1-hit kill.

Of course, I am assuming a lot here. If there are any errors in my assumptions, please tell me.

 

[Fifth Element]

Yes, technically the term "Refocus" is a holdover term I use from 3.0, but the tactic still exists in 3.5 by using the delay action and delaying until initiative 20 of the following round:

It's just easier to say "refocus"...

Just to wrap up this tangent, I understand what you're saying but that seems an abusive interpretation of how the delay action works. It allows you a significant advantage in such a situation with no cost. You're not losing anything, which you would if the combat had actually started and you delayed. I guess the argument is that if you're just sitting there, combat has not started yet, and initiative is not rolled until you actually do something.

 

[Psion]

See, if I wanted to be able to kill a hobgoblin guard, I'd just throw in a rule that'd let me do that.

Admittedly, AB's list looks longer. But if I was looking for that, I think FantasyCraft would be my first choice.

 

[sinecure]

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.

You can do this in 2e AD&D too. I know we did. Things did get out of hand with all the additional books and the notion that they were all balanced. But it was the Skills & Powers stuff and the other Options books where I think the rules took over. It became less about roleplaying and more about playing a game like a boardgame. Those books made it too hard to track all that stuff when DMing. You had to let the players kind of do it instead. That seemed cool at first, but it quickly became all about the cool options. And they were all like candy for the players. Meaning they get cool stuff, but the coolness lasted about one or two times and then they got bored. Heck, sometimes they didn't even have the chance in game to use their power before they got bored and wanted something else. I just ditched it altogether. I've gone back to 2e however, so you can take my opinion with a grain of salt.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I actually have the Red Hand of Doom Adventure on me. I even ran it, but not to completetion. Allow me to crunch the numbers and shed some light.

I'm going to assume the event where the rogue failed to kill the bell ringing guard was at Rhest.

IIRC, this encounter wasn't at Rhest. It was at the bridge encounter which I believe was earlier in the module. Our goal was to destroy the bridge to keep the enemy army from crossing over.

 

[roguerouge]

IIRC, this encounter wasn't at Rhest. It was at the bridge encounter which I believe was earlier in the module. Our goal was to destroy the bridge to keep the enemy army from crossing over.

Okay, this is more evidence for a bad DM issue, 'cause he definitely changed the module or the players didn't hear him right, or both.

1. There are no bells in those towers. On page 33, the hobgoblins are to "shout a warning to their comrades" or fire an arrow into their camp to warn them.

So, the DM made the encounter more difficult by adding bells. The main encampment is more than 100 feet away, making that a -10 to the listen check to hear the shout of warning. The hound is approximately 70 feet away (40' up, 30' across) for a -7 to their listen check (for a total Listen mod of +0) and the other guard is 40 feet away, for a -4 to the listen check for a total modifier of +0.

So the simple addition of a bell makes it much more likely that these separated foes will act with perfect coordination.

To sum up: your DM did change the module, significantly, but when called out on the issue, he hid behind the module and began blaming the system.

(And let's say your player killed the guard. Did he have a plan to climb down 40 feet, cross past the hound, and climb up 40 feet before the other guard noticed the absence? I'm just curious.)

2. The description text states on page 32: "A powerfully build hound with glowing red eyes and short ruddy fur sits watchfully near either end of the bridge." This is the first clue-hammer that this might be an elite force, not one populated with mooks.

3. The very next sentence: "Yet the most impressive creatures present is certainly the sleek and menacing green dragon that perches on the roof of the northwestern watchtower on the far side of the gorge." A dragon is a big clue-hammer that this is an elite force.

So, you've got tougher than normal guards. It's ALSO a cinematic trope to have an extended, silent, frantic struggle between the guard and the infiltrator, in addition to the quick silent slit throat convention. The player misjudged which cinematic convention was going to be operating here.

I'll repeat: no system is mistake-proof. The DM made a mistake. The players misevaluated the narrative. GURPS won't solve the problem of making mistakes. And emotionally, that's what you really want here.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Okay, this is more evidence for a bad DM issue...

Interesting. Thanks for checking that out.

Still, the real problem wasn't the encounter or the DM situation. It was the problem that a one hit kill is impossible (on a foe of similar level) in D&D.

It was just this situation that made us accutely aware of it, and how much it bothered us.

 

[delericho]

Okay, this is more evidence for a bad DM issue, 'cause he definitely changed the module or the players didn't hear him right, or both.

1. There are no bells in those towers. On page 33, the hobgoblins are to "shout a warning to their comrades" or fire an arrow into their camp to warn them.

To sum up: your DM did change the module, significantly, but when called out on the issue, he hid behind the module and began blaming the system.

Yep, to all.

So, you've got tougher than normal guards. It's ALSO a cinematic trope to have an extended, silent, frantic struggle between the guard and the infiltrator, in addition to the quick silent slit throat convention. The player misjudged which cinematic convention was going to be operating here.

True. It's perhaps worth noting also that 'cinematic conventions' are a feature of narrativist, not simulationist, play.

 

[Lizard]

Interesting. Thanks for checking that out.

Still, the real problem wasn't the encounter or the DM situation. It was the problem that a one hit kill is impossible (on a foe of similar level) in D&D.

It was just this situation that made us accutely aware of it, and how much it bothered us.

This is only a problem if you don't mind your PC being taken down with one hit.

And it's not impossible -- it's impossible (or unlikely) with a single-classed rogue against a high-hit point (grunt, fighter, thug) type foe.

In a recent game, we had three party members be taken OOC in one round by a basilisk. That's a "one hit kill".

In another session, an assassin with a high hide score had the requisite three rounds to "observe" a PC, and would have one-shotted him if he hadn't made his save. Metagame, we knew he was there, but in-game, we didn't know and couldn't have seen him if we had known.

The "deadly blade in the night" isn't the rogue; it's the assassin. If the player in question wanted that feature, he was taking the wrong class -- akin to wanting to play a scholarly, nerdish spell-caster and picking sorceror over wizard. (As for the 'assassins are all eeeevil' rule, that's easy to change -- making a modified assassin class and calling them 'bounty hunters' or 'bringers of justice' or what-not is pretty simple.)

D&D *does* make one-shot-kills of same-level opponents difficult, but this is to spare high-level PCs the general ignominy of death by a single bad roll. Whether this is a good idea or not depends on the game world. I admit to liking that, in Rolemaster, while it was RARE for a powerful character to die to a weak one, it wasn't *impossible*, and that kobold with the rusty knife could keep making that open-ended roll and wrack up the 'E' Criticals....

(BTW, having played GURPS for several years, I can tell you that while it's easy to have someone be *dying* in GURPS, it's hard for them to *die* if they have any kind of HT (at least in G3). I remember the PCs constantly hacking at a downed foe and he *kept* *making* *his* *HT* *check*. It was painful.)