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

[Sol.Dragonheart]

Perhaps if someone had suggested that a character should automatically be able to slay an opponent he engages when emerging from the shadows you'd have a point. That's not what's been suggested though. The complaint was that it was impossible to slay a level-appropriate foe with a sneak attack.

The way the original post reads, the poster seems to be complaining that a guard was not dispatched with ease/certaintity when the Rogue successfully gained the drop on his foe. I do not see why this would be an issue, as if the guard is a "level appropiate foe" he is capable of defending himself in an ambush from the PC, and should have a reasonable chance of survival.

As I mentioned, if built correctly, a Rogue would be capable of eliminating the guard, so I do not see why the task is being classified as "impossible". The Rogue would also have a chance of failing to complete his assignment, however.

It seems to me that the complaint originates from the idea that when attacking from concealment, with the advantage of surprise, that the probability of the targets termination should be almost certain, regardless of the power or level of the target, as to have a more "simulationist" approach.

I would argue against that conclusion, since this assumes that a surprise attack should have much greater advantages than other methods of attack that have the potential to be equally as devastating in the D&D system. If an assault from the concealed Rogue is that deadly, than so too should be the attack in the open from the raging, muscles corded Barbarian wielding a 25 LB Greataxe.

Your character may have great offensive abilities, however, that does not mean that other creatures do not have a defense capable of surviving those abilities, even when you might assume otherwise.

 

[roguerouge]

Perhaps if someone had suggested that a character should automatically be able to slay an opponent he engages when emerging from the shadows you'd have a point. That's not what's been suggested though. The complaint was that it was impossible to slay a level-appropriate foe with a sneak attack.

All right, OP, I have a question for you on your system: If you can one-shot kill from the shadows in your system, and rogues are the most likely to be able to accomplish that, how are you going to make things balanced for the fighter? The fighter's already trailing the CoDzilla and the wizard pretty badly, and now they are the most likely target for these rogues' one shot kills, being the ones standing guard while the coddled casters get their beauty sleep. What new toy do the fighters get to compensate?

 

[GeorgeFields]

I would argue against that conclusion, since this assumes that a surprise attack should have much greater advantages than other methods of attack that have the potential to be equally as devastating in the D&D system. If an assault from the concealed Rogue is that deadly, than so too should be the attack in the open from the raging, muscles corded Barbarian wielding a 25 LB Greataxe.

Your character may have great offensive abilities, however, that does not mean that other creatures do not have a defense capable of surviving those abilities, even when you might assume otherwise.

I'll have to disagree with you on this. What good is a defense if you are not even defending? Isn't that what a surprise attack is all about: getting to attack someone without any chance of defending?

In your examples, I've got a better chance of surviving the raging barbarian attack because I would be actively avoiding to be injured by dodging or parrying or whatever.

If I'm standing around doing nothing and get a dagger between the ribs from an attack I don't even know is coming, what am I going to do? Even if I were to survive the initial attack, I'm probably just going to lay there and bleed.

This situation is where the flaws of the hit point system is obvious. It doesn't matter if you've got 30 hp or 130 hp, an eight inch blade not defended against and between the ribs and into one or more vital organs is going to, at a minimum, take you out of the fight.

 

[Lizard]

Just one really quick note...a CR X opponent is supposed to be a challenge for a *party* of level X, consuming 1/4 of their resources. So complaining that they can't be one-shotted by one member of the party with reliability is, I think, misunderstanding the system.

I often run into the 'realism vs. challenge' problem. Realistically, the bulk of soldiers anyone meets should be Warrior-1. But if you want to have a 'realistic' number of guards/soldiers in a fortress, a party of level 5 or higher will go through them like a wheat thresher. So you make them higher level, and then you wonder why, statistically, every 5th level fighter in the kingdom is in this one fortress. So I try to use the 'mass of low level guards/tough-ass captain' model if I can make it make any kind of sense at all.

 

[mmadsen]

The way the original post reads, the poster seems to be complaining that a guard was not dispatched with ease/certaintity when the Rogue successfully gained the drop on his foe. I do not see why this would be an issue, as if the guard is a "level appropiate foe" he is capable of defending himself in an ambush from the PC, and should have a reasonable chance of survival.

The original poster's complaint was that it was impossible for the Rogue to dispatch the unsuspecting guard with one attack. That impossibility strains credibility, because we know people die when their throats get slit.

For game-play reasons, I agree that it shouldn't be trivial for a rogue to defeat a level-appropriate foe, but I feel that the challenge should be in getting the drop on that foe, not in rolling high enough damage once that foe is caught unawares.

If an assault from the concealed Rogue is that deadly, than so too should be the attack in the open from the raging, muscles corded Barbarian wielding a 25 LB Greataxe.

An attack with a 25-pound axe should have no chance of hitting, but it should presumably be quite deadly if somehow it did land squarely -- say, in an execution.

This points to the central oddity of D&D's combat system: it uses ablative hit points, which seem to measure toughness, because they absorb damage from hits, where we actually expect the character to be avoiding a hit entirely, via dodging, parrying, etc.

 

[mmadsen]

If you can one-shot kill from the shadows in your system, and rogues are the most likely to be able to accomplish that, how are you going to make things balanced for the fighter?

I'm not the original poster, but we can definitely give rogues a chance at a one-shot kill without having to give fighters a "new toy" to compensate. After all, we can give rogues a chance at a one-shot kill without making them any more powerful.

As I've already pointed out, a one-shot kill is inordinately difficult in D&D, because D&D uses ablative hit points. If you want a character to survive three or four shots in a hit-point system, you look at how much damage an attack does, and you give that character three or four times as many hit-points. That makes a one-shot kill not just improbable but impossible -- unless you add on rules to make it possible to do four times average damage, which critical hits and sneak attacks try to do.

The obvious way around this is to use something other than hit points. That's what the assassin's death attack does. It's usable less often than a typical sneak attack -- it requires three rounds of studying the victim -- but it goes against a Fortitude save. The rogue's sneak attack could simply work like this; in fact, it's odd that it doesn't, since it's conceptually the exact same thing: sneaking up on someone and striking them somewhere vulnerable.

Of course, skipping hit points feels like a bit of a kludge, but we can work with them a bit. For instance, what if we increased sneak-attack dice to d10 or d12 -- but they only applied that extra damage if it was enough to kill the target? Instead of doing an extra 14 points of damage, a sneak attack might have the potential to do an extra 22 points, but if those extra points don't drop the guard below 0, it means he did manage to squirm, and he didn't take a blade to the kidney.

Or we could change the whole notion of hit points, so that they're not about ability to absorb damage at all, but about ability to avoid damage -- explicitly -- and we let characters use hit points against the to-hit roll. Then hits would be less common, but they'd hurt, which strains credibility much less.

 

[Korgoth]

Just one really quick note...a CR X opponent is supposed to be a challenge for a *party* of level X, consuming 1/4 of their resources. So complaining that they can't be one-shotted by one member of the party with reliability is, I think, misunderstanding the system.

I often run into the 'realism vs. challenge' problem. Realistically, the bulk of soldiers anyone meets should be Warrior-1. But if you want to have a 'realistic' number of guards/soldiers in a fortress, a party of level 5 or higher will go through them like a wheat thresher. So you make them higher level, and then you wonder why, statistically, every 5th level fighter in the kingdom is in this one fortress. So I try to use the 'mass of low level guards/tough-ass captain' model if I can make it make any kind of sense at all.

You're right. Personally, I don't even understand the point of punishing the players for having levelled up their characters. If you make it to 5th level, you should cut a swath through the extras. If you can't, what's the point!

When the party levels, the whole rest of the world shouldn't level up right along with them. This happens in video games, too. "You gained a level, so now all goblins you fight will be 1 level higher as well." "Well then why the heck did I even bother gaining a level?"

Unless there is some reason why the hobgoblin equivalent of Delta Force is sitting around a guard tower, I'm calling "poor adventure design" on this one.

 

[Fifth Element]

The original poster's complaint was that it was impossible for the Rogue to dispatch the unsuspecting guard with one attack.

Almost. The OP's original complaint was that specific rogue could not one-shot that specific guard. This appears to have been based on the assumption that the guard was a mook. It also appears that assumption was faulty. Give the rogue another d6 sneak attack die, take a couple of warrior levels off the guard, and there you go.

 

[Celebrim]

When the party levels, the whole rest of the world shouldn't level up right along with them. This happens in video games, too. "You gained a level, so now all goblins you fight will be 1 level higher as well." "Well then why the heck did I even bother gaining a level?"

Diablo really popularized this design. The game was designed such that it played more or less the same at every level. If you had 100 hp and your enemies did 10 damage, then when you had 200 hp your enemies did 20 damage. If you had a defence of 50 when your foes had an attack of 40, then when you had a defence of 100, your foes would have an attack of 90 - so that you'd have the same relative advantage. The fluff changed, the numbers got bigger, and it upped the kewl but it was basically you versus fallen ones, skeletons, and zombies the whole way by design. All games depend to a certain extent on the illusion of success, but Diablo is entirely dependent on it because for all the markers of success that Diablo famously provides and dangles, you never achieve anything.

This has always bothered me. For a RPG-lite like Diablo, I can see why they do it (limited size of the game universe, no political depth, no emmersion, etc.) and obviously they've been fantastically successful. But no one has ever accused Diablo of alot of depth at anything but mechanical design.

I personally hate it when it shows up in PnP games. If there are hordes of low level mooks running around, where did they go after I level up? Likewise, don't hype up how empowered the 1st level characters are, if you are also going to have literal armies of 6th+ level creatures roaming around (somewhere other than the Nine Hells) then we are still capable of facing little more than rats and housecats. I don't care how many powers you dump on a 1st level character, if you bump up average humanoid opponents to 6th-8th level its pretty much illuisionism. Where where these armies back when the PC's were 1st level? If they weren't around, why weren't the 6th-8th level good guys taking the PC's job? Who needs a 1st level hero in a world of 6HD orcs, gnolls, and kobolds? At some point on the ocean voyage after the dragon turtles, rocs, kraken, and so forth have been beat off, you have to ask yourself, "Just how do ships make this voyage when the PC's aren't around?" or "Why are we such wierdness magnets anyway? Do we have an aura of tastiness that draws every leviathan from 500 miles around just so we can be served up XP?"

 

[Korgoth]

I had the same problem with Dungeon Siege. No matter how bad@ss my guy (and friends) became, everything became exactly as bad@ss at the same time. The cool swag that you could find that seemed to do awesome damage when you found it (but you didn't have high enough strength to use at the time) turned out to be absolutely pedestrian when you got that strength, because everything stood in such perfect equilibrium. You could never really get ahead of the curve, though you could fall behind it if you neglected to pick up treasure. But the game was always the same as the very first screen where you are literally a poop-encrusted peasant swinging a rake or hayfork at the invading "trogs". Stupidly, there were still "trogs" to deal with later on, but the ones who attacked you early on were obligingly 1st level, whereas the ones you faced when you were legendary were all trogs of similarly legendary caliber.

Of course, if you run D&D this way it is worse because there are more save or die effects at higher levels (and if you're running 3.x or later, the saves vs those effects are actually scaled as well!), so there are more chances to just straight up bite it. Therefore you're actually punished for gaining levels.

Funny, for all the talk about Old School D&D being so hard core and mean to the players and everything, at least it was possible to cut a swath through a horde of mooks back then. As if having attained a higher level was actually, you know, a reward or something.