G
Guest 6801328
Guest
Barbarian should follow up said stabbing with the question, "Is that guy dead?"
Yes!!!!
Barbarian should follow up said stabbing with the question, "Is that guy dead?"
Since, "build" in rogue terms usually refers to the character and it's **relevant traits strengths and weaknesses**, especially with its stats often highlighted, then it is essentially a synonym for character in this context.Great and interesting post. I'm keying on this at the end for a reason.
I think that everyone who has posted in this thread, so far, has articulated the same distinction (for the most part) with regards to PC/Player challenges.
I guess what I'm not sure I understand is how, in the excerpted fashion, this is any different that what [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] is saying when he articulates that a PC challenge is actually a build challenge? By investing resources into, for example, being a trap-finder?
Am I missing something? Or are you agreeing?
Exactly.Yes, but in an attempt to give the player so much of their due, you can end up missing a point that isn't so much about the player or the character, but is about adventure design.
The focus isn't on how the player makes all decisions for the character, both tactical and strategic. The point is that there are times when the adventure or challenge does an end run and goes for the player directly, bypassing the character and game mechanics.
Logic puzzles where the GM does not give hints via skill checks are one example. Social scenes where the GM bases entirely off what the player says, without using the system's social encounter resolution mechanics, would be another. Telling a player that their character can climb a 60' rope if the *player* can climb a 10' rope would be another.
Much of the point is that the player has already made strategic decisions in their character build. If you challenge the player directly, those decisions are voided! And that's not always cool.
We can easily construct a scenario that makes this obvious. We have one player who is a total mechanics, powergaming and logic rockstar, and has built himself a super-effective combat barbarian, with an Int of 6. We have another player who isn't such a grand with manipulating the rules, isn't stunning at logic puzzles, but has a wizard character with an Int of 18.
If you challenge these with the classic "One guard always tells the truth, the other always lies" logic puzzle, the barbarian player can get it easily, but the wizard player won't. But, within the story, the wizard should totally have figured it out before the problem was fully posed, while the barbarian should have gotten bored, shouted "TOO MUCH THINKY!!!" and tried to stab a guard.
Great and interesting post. I'm keying on this at the end for a reason.
I think that everyone who has posted in this thread, so far, has articulated the same distinction (for the most part) with regards to PC/Player challenges.
I guess what I'm not sure I understand is how, in the excerpted fashion, this is any different that what [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] is saying when he articulates that a PC challenge is actually a build challenge? By investing resources into, for example, being a trap-finder?
Am I missing something? Or are you agreeing?
Eh, in the sense that "facing the challenge" means the same thing as "deciding to do a certain thing a certain way," sure. But that wasn't what I was getting at. See, the player can decide actions, but the player doesn't decide to pass a skill DC, or decide to score a critical hit...those results come from luck, and are influenced by the numbers on the character sheet.But does that actually "challenge" anything? It seems to me the character, which in this case means the numbers associated with the character, are just a constraint on the player's actions. But the player is still facing the challenge.
Absolutely. I think it's important to have a mix of "Challenge the Player" and "Challenge the Character" (and also "Challenge the Party", which hasn't been discussed yet) in my adventures. I like to mix it up to keep the game fun and the players engaged.Maybe that's what some people see as "challenging the character"? If so, yeah that can be fun, too. But ideally it should be a risk-reward option, so that the "challenge" is in deciding whether or not to risk the dice roll, depending on your character sheet. "If you can push the onion over the bridge you'll get there quickly, but if you fail the roll you will lose the onion. Otherwise you can take the long way around, but you risk waking up the dragon. What do you do?"
If there's no real decision to be made, other than "who has the highest bonus to make this roll", it's just not very interesting. Nor is it challenging anybody or anything.
Should is the operative word here, I think, as it leaves open the possibility that the party could suffer a death depending on the circumstances. Some of those circumstances might reasonably include the players making unfortunate tactical decisions that increase the difficulty of the encounter beyond the system's expectations.
I think we should also note that a better word for "challenge rating" is "difficulty," in my opinion, which I believe would make it easier to avoid conflating the concepts of "challenge" and "difficulty," but it is what it is.
Sure but that also massively varies by player, whereas the characters stats remain constant. I would estimate that the majority of players are not particularly clever in combat and simply have their characters hit/cast/fire at the enemies until they win/lose.I think this greatly downplays the importance of the player's tactical choices (and strategic ones for that matter).
As I mentioned in my post, this is for a D&D 5e game, which means the DM calls for ability checks when the player has described a task for the character that has an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence for failure. If the outcome is certain and/or there's no meaningful consequence for failure, then the character simply fails or succeeds according to the judgment of the DM without a roll or often without reference to the character's ability scores.
Please let me know if you need additional information to render an opinion.
Well the challenge is an abstract value that only translates into difficulty when matched against a particular party - their level and number dramatically affecting the rated difficulty?
Sure but that also massively varies by player, whereas the characters stats remain constant. I would estimate that the majority of players are not particularly clever in combat and simply have their characters hit/cast/fire at the enemies until they win/lose.![]()
And if it massively varies by player, that says something about who is actually being challenged, right?
Of course I do. You have in fact, really given me no additional information. You have not defined when the GM will decide if something is "certain" and there is or is not a meaningful chance of failure, and when as such the GM will simply fail or succeed according to the judgment of the DM by a fiat call. Knowing what rules set or system you are using doesn't really tell me anything, as pretty much every rules set more sophisticated than the coin flip game ("World's Simplest RPG") has this "in the judgment of the GM" exception, that turns out to be more complex than the rules themselves.
For any two GMs, I can not predict how they will handle propositions like the following in the above scenario:
a) "I probe ahead with a 10' pole checking for pressure plates." - One GM may decide that I automatically find the pressure plate, trigger it, but can suffer no meaningful consequence for failure because by definition of the fiction I'm not in the path of the spear. But another GM may decide that I can't engage in that proposition without some chance of failure. One GM may in fact decide that I've offered an invalid proposition (because metagaming?) and replace my proposition with a Search check with the stakes set by the GM (find trap or set it off). The game rules don't specify which GM is right. I have my own preferences, but I can't prove that my preferences are more correct.
b) "I belly crawl along the floor next to the wall where the spiked alcoves are located" - This is much like the above, but with the addition of possibilities like the pressure plate does not take up the whole 5' square, and I can't know whether a GM will decide whether a belly crawling human takes up less space than a 5' square and thus can evade the pressure plate. The size of the pressure plates weren't described. Are they 1'x1' or 3'x3' or 5'x5'? The text doesn't specify, so different GMs if they were reading this module would come to different conclusions about the fictional positioning of the pressure plates. Different GMs will decide whether the spikes safely pass over my body or not based on their own perceptions about the spikes and their own interpretation as to whether my proposition is valid.
c) "I place my tower shield on the floor in the space between the alcoves, so that it forms a bridge across it. I then carefully crawl on the tower shield bridge, careful that the weight is on the shield, which is braced on either end by the stable part of the floor." Again, different DMs will decide whether this plan has a chance of failure or not, often based on nothing but their own whim or sense that I'm unfairly beating their exciting challenge. I've met DMs that would metagame against the PC's because they don't consider it fun if no one sets off the trap, setting high Dex checks on my attempt to crawl or otherwise giving me a chance of failure. Others would decide my tower shield wasn't a good enough or long enough bridge, etc. I've got no idea whether this will work until I have some experience with the GM, because all of this involves the DM's judgment by your own description.