TTRPGs: broken mechanics vs. abusive players

[Thomas Shey]

This is the problem. You simply can't have a complex game, unless you have a million pages of rules.

This is more dependent on a lot of independent rules than complexity, per se.

 

[Hussar]

Keywords worked pretty well in 4e to be honest. Although, they did get rather carried away and had too many. Could have cut about half of them. But, it did get the job done. It's like the earlier example I made about Bigby's Hand and Forcewall. They are both force spells. So, why are they treated differently? Heck, they're even pretty comparable in level. And, then you have things like Magic Missile, which, well, we have no idea exactly what they are.

On and on.

But, honestly, this is largely a problem after about 8th level or so in D&D. Before that, it generally isn't a huge issue.

 

[Anon Adderlan]

Rules are only broken insofar as they generated unintended results, and if a game designed to achieve results through tactical play and combining multiple feats and spells yet also allows (or worse requires) a DM to arbitrarily ignore the rules whenever it suits them in order to work then it's most certainly broken.

I can't speak for everybody but for me, this is the kind of stuff that I like my players to be doing. Better yet, cast creatively, as opposed to just stacking a bunch of buffs. Cast reduce on a bolder and slingshot it into an anti-magic field. Cast light on the front of a shield and blind your enemies... Dancing lights can be placed in midair beyond the edge of a cliff in the hopes that enemies will want to check it out, and then take a little tumble off the cliffs... etc. There's so many possibilities of different ways to cast stuff. I think conjuring usually places your conjuration in any square in a 30' radius. You can use this to place the conjured creature on the other side of a barrier, which can sometimes have uses. These are features not bugs IMO.

Same here, and my JoJo campaign wouldn't work without it.

First of all, there are rules issues that are extreme border cases, that mostly require someone actively hunting for them to encounter them. That's usually, really bluntly, a player problem, especially since it requires taking advantage of extreme odd combinations to work (but that produce unexpected and undesirable results when they do). Frankly, my opinion is that players who actively hunt out these are playing in bad faith, or alternatively playing a particular way that even pretty gamist players like myself find incompatible with what we're trying to do.

We need to stop vilifying playstyles like this.

Players are not abusive just because they enjoy taking advantage of winning combinations using the rules as written, and I find it hard to believe it's an extreme border case when MtG is based on exactly this premise and even more successful. Thankfully there are plenty of games which don't rely on this playstyle.

 

[Hussar]

Rules are only broken insofar as they generated unintended results, and if a game designed to achieve results through tactical play and combining multiple feats and spells yet also allows (or worse requires) a DM to arbitrarily ignore the rules whenever it suits them in order to work then it's most certainly broken.


Same here, and my JoJo campaign wouldn't work without it.


We need to stop vilifying playstyles like this.

Players are not abusive just because they enjoy taking advantage of winning combinations using the rules as written, and I find it hard to believe it's an extreme border case when MtG is based on exactly this premise and even more successful. Thankfully there are plenty of games which don't rely on this playstyle.

But, MtG is a competitive game where the point of play is winning. So, of course, coming up with winning combinations is part of the way to play. It would be somewhat silly otherwise.

Unless your game is competitive though, coming up with winning combinations, particularly ones that are obviously unintended by the spirit of the rules, just makes it not fun for the rest of the table. Additionally, you cannot win. The DM has unlimited resources. Even if you win this encounter, the DM will always win.

Every archmage daisy chains Simulacrum (cast Simulacrum on yourself and then have the simulacrum cast it on you and then have THAT one cast it on you so on and so forth). For a mere 15000 gp (a pittance for an archmage), I now have 10 18th level wizards at my command. Good luck to the party now.

Gee that was fun. Might as well just say rocks fall you all die. Because, no matter what loophole, combination or whatever you come up with, the DM can always do you one better.

 

[Thomas Shey]

We need to stop vilifying playstyles like this.

Players are not abusive just because they enjoy taking advantage of winning combinations using the rules as written, and I find it hard to believe it's an extreme border case when MtG is based on exactly this premise and even more successful. Thankfully there are plenty of games which don't rely on this playstyle.

The problem is any game with enough moving parts will have some of those pieces. Its endemic in superhero games.

But they're not there for people to build combinations that disrupt the game with. They're either errors or alternatively unavoidable side effects of serving other purposes in the game.

Magic the Gathering is a competitive card game. People aren't particularly expected to pay attention to other people's experience there. In RPGs that's part of the play cycle.

(And note I'm both moderately tolerant of power gaming and very much gamist in my play style. But that's not an unlimited justification for people to chronically do actively disruptive things in a game just because they enjoy it, any more than its acceptable to play the "but I'm only playing in character" card.)

 

[pemerton]

A lot of the problem with these sorts of spells, it seems to me, is that they work too reliably. If things like Speak With Dead required rolls to work or carried any kind of risk, the party might be inclined to save it until after mundane skills had been tried.

If only there had been a version of D&D that dealt with this issue . . .

 

[The Shadow]

If only there had been a version of D&D that dealt with this issue . . .

I assume you're referring to 4e? My experience with it is nearly nil, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.

 

[pemerton]

I assume you're referring to 4e? My experience with it is nearly nil, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Yes I am.

I've GMed quite a bit of 4e D&D. And find myself frequently amused by comments about how such-and-such with D&D might be fixed, where 4e set out the fix.

This isn't a dig at you, to be clear - more like a wry and slightly wistful remembrance of what was . . .

EDIT:
In case it's of interest - the concrete thing I'm referring to is the Speak with Dead ritual in the PHB, which require a Religion check to determine the number of questions, and flags the possibility of the GM gating answers behind a skill challenge. The DMG provides an example of how such a skill challenge might be run.

 

[Hussar]

Yes I am.

I've GMed quite a bit of 4e D&D. And find myself frequently amused by comments about how such-and-such with D&D might be fixed, where 4e set out the fix.

This isn't a dig at you, to be clear - more like a wry and slightly wistful remembrance of what was . . .

EDIT:
In case it's of interest - the concrete thing I'm referring to is the Speak with Dead ritual in the PHB, which require a Religion check to determine the number of questions, and flags the possibility of the GM gating answers behind a skill challenge. The DMG provides an example of how such a skill challenge might be run.

It is rather unfortunate that so much of what 4e set out for D&D is now covered in 4e cooties and ignored.

Yes, absolutely, 4e wasn't perfect. There were definite things I would like to see changed in 4e and some of the 5e changes - such as combat pacing - I do see as an improvement.

But, there was so much baby left in that bathwater.

 

[James Gasik]

Which you know, some spells are designed to do, but they usually have caveats. Sleet Storm can keep enemies at bay for a few turns, as can Web. Hypnotic Pattern wears off if someone takes damage, that sort of thing. But as you get higher level, you got spells that basically say "yeah there's no way to get around this for 95% of enemies, so if the players use a spell slot for this they win."

I just wanted to add to this comment; I don't think this is a problem entirely in of itself. Sure, the idea that the game claims you can have an all-martial party and it's AOK, but can be doomed to an ignominious death because some jackhat casts Forecage on them is more than a little obnoxious; sure, hopefully by this point the DM will realize maybe they shouldn't use that spell against the players, or offer them magic items to overcome it if they have no other means, but not all DM's believe their game should be tailored to a given set of PC's. The books really should have a caveat here, like, "you can play with whatever characters you like, but...".

The greater issue isn't that a spellcaster can use a precious high level slot to trivialize an encounter as much as you don't know which encounter will be turned into a turkey shoot. Watching the party obliterate 7 zombies isn't a big deal, fantastic.

Watching them steamroll an epic encounter you spent a few hours assembling and then high-fiving each other about how easy that was? That's just plain demoralizing.

I wonder if some spells should have a "this does not work against monsters of a CR X higher than the spellcaster".