TTRPGs: broken mechanics vs. abusive players

[pemerton]

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...".

One solution here would be magic-dispelling strikes, or adamantine strikes that can cut through anything, or similar.

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

This is a (roughly, allowing for mechanical differences) feature of Torchbearer.

 

[Maxperson]

But I'll be the first to say that combat isn't the only place I've seen rules get exploited into oblivion. I've had it up to here with darkvision shenanigans and guidance spam...

Do you run darkvision as written? Disadvantage on visual perception checks shuts that down pretty quickly. It only take a few blown important checks before the party starts to use light.

 

[James Gasik]

One solution here would be magic-dispelling strikes, or adamantine strikes that can cut through anything, or similar.

There's a lot of resistance however to giving non-casters abilities like this, however. There are people who want their Fighters to be "ordinary people in extraordinary situations".

 

[Maxperson]

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.

I agree with @Lanefan on this. There's force and Force. The latter is stronger in the same way that sandstone and granite are both rock, but granite is a lot stronger than sandstone.

 

[James Gasik]

Do you run darkvision as written? Disadvantage on visual perception checks shuts that down pretty quickly. It only take a few blown important checks before the party starts to use light.

I've had people on this forum claim that the disadvantage is barely a penalty at all to their players. I haven't seen this, but there are ways to get advantage on rolls fairly easily, so, at least by the rules presented, I could see a group that can optimize to the point that they could care less about needing light by the letter of the law, but they could still perhaps be confounded by not being able to perceive color, have difficulty reading, enemies with special senses, and most (but not all) forms of magical darkness.

All this tells me, however, is that darkvision isn't the problem; the problem is players who don't want to fiddle with needing a light source and are willing to go the extra mile to optimize it out of the game. Which is nothing new; we see the same thing with regards to tracking rations and encumbrance.

Simply put, there is very little about the game that a sufficiently motivated player can't trivialize if they so choose. So the question a DM has to ask themselves is, if you want to make fumbling around in the dark or tracking arrows an important part of the game, and your players are willing to make race/feat/class/spell choices to do an end run around such things, should you reassess if you and your group are on the same page or not?

I mean, I've seen this happen in real life; a DM wanted to use the optional encumbrance rules in his game, as well as track coin weights. One of the players made a Goliath Barbarian and offered to carry anything the players didn't need immediate access to. This went for three sessions before the DM decided to audit our sheets to make sure we were following the rules.

He was fairly put out by the result.

Or how back when I played AD&D, and coin weights were enforced, I was the only one in my group who would pick up copper pieces, because "they aren't worth carrying". Imagine if you will adventurers leaving thousands of copper coins laying on the ground until they finally got a bag of holding or something, lol.

 

[Maxperson]

I've had people on this forum claim that the disadvantage is barely a penalty at all to their players. I haven't seen this, but there are ways to get advantage on rolls fairly easily, so, at least by the rules presented, I could see a group that can optimize to the point that they could care less about needing light by the letter of the law, but they could still perhaps be confounded by not being able to perceive color, have difficulty reading, enemies with special senses, and most (but not all) forms of magical darkness.

All this tells me, however, is that darkvision isn't the problem; the problem is players who don't want to fiddle with needing a light source and are willing to go the extra mile to optimize it out of the game. Which is nothing new; we see the same thing with regards to tracking rations and encumbrance.

Simply put, there is very little about the game that a sufficiently motivated player can't trivialize if they so choose. So the question a DM has to ask themselves is, if you want to make fumbling around in the dark or tracking arrows an important part of the game, and your players are willing to make race/feat/class/spell choices to do an end run around such things, should you reassess if you and your group are on the same page or not?

I mean, I've seen this happen in real life; a DM wanted to use the optional encumbrance rules in his game, as well as track coin weights. One of the players made a Goliath Barbarian and offered to carry anything the players didn't need immediate access to. This went for three sessions before the DM decided to audit our sheets to make sure we were following the rules.

He was fairly put out by the result.

Or how back when I played AD&D, and coin weights were enforced, I was the only one in my group who would pick up copper pieces, because "they aren't worth carrying". Imagine if you will adventurers leaving thousands of copper coins laying on the ground until they finally got a bag of holding or something, lol.

I'm curious how they can guarantee advantage every second that they are in the darkness.

I remember leaving copper pieces behind when playing AD&D, though. At least once we started finding real treasure amounts and weren't scraping for every copper piece just to buy rations.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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

Welcome to the Pathfinder 2e Incapacitation spell trait. Which is worlds away from not being controversial with some people.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Or how back when I played AD&D, and coin weights were enforced, I was the only one in my group who would pick up copper pieces, because "they aren't worth carrying". Imagine if you will adventurers leaving thousands of copper coins laying on the ground until they finally got a bag of holding or something, lol.

I'll just note I'd be hard pressed to spend a whole bunch of time messing with pennies, and the situation is pretty analogous. Ten thousand pennies makes ten American dollars. If you think I'd be willing to haul around the former for the latter, you're dreaming.

(This has been a problem with the D&D gold standard since day one.)

 

[James Gasik]

I'm curious how they can guarantee advantage every second that they are in the darkness.

I remember leaving copper pieces behind when playing AD&D, though. At least once we started finding real treasure amounts and weren't scraping for every copper piece just to buy rations.

Not 100% sure myself, but let's just say it wouldn't surprise me if there was a way to pull it off.

 

[CleverNickName]

I'll just note I'd be hard pressed to spend a whole bunch of time messing with pennies, and the situation is pretty analogous. Ten thousand pennies makes ten American dollars. If you think I'd be willing to haul around the former for the latter, you're dreaming.

(This has been a problem with the D&D gold standard since day one.)

I don't know if it matters to the point you're making, but 10,000 pennies is $100USD, not $10.