What the heck is "Unfun"?

[GreatLemur]

Wasn't this already addressed by a mod on this thread?

Well, yeah, I was kind of referring to Plane Sailing's ruling that the post wasn't trolling. My point is that even though it's a honest argument rather than an attempt to stir up trouble, the whole post is centered around an unhelpful and somewhat dishonest debate tactic.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well, yeah, I was kind of referring to Plane Sailing's ruling that the post wasn't trolling. My point is that even though it's a honest argument rather than an attempt to stir up trouble, the whole post is centered around an unhelpful and somewhat dishonest debate tactic.

Ah.

Well, it seemed to me that you had missed

If you think something is trolling, report it and the Mods will look at it (and this certainly isn't a trolling thread)

If it is just a subject you don't care about, ignore the thread and don't post in it.​

If that isn't the case, I apologize. However, I politely disagree with your statement about an unhelpful and somewhat dishonest debate technique.

 

[Gallo22]

Do your players generally only carry enough arrows for 5 rounds at level 16?

More likely, they have a bow which creates infinite arrows magically, or they have a magical quiver with an obscene payload, which needs to be tracked.

And they don't always attack with the full rapid shot, so it won't always be multiples of five. There's ordinary attacking, and there's multishot.

And of course if you can run out of arrows, and you're away from civilization, you'll need to salvage arrows after a combat if you can. Half the arrows you fired are reusable. So add that bookkeeping in.

I don't allow items like endless quivers of arrows or magic bows that fire infinite number of arrows. Neither would the group I game with enjoy such a thing. An occasional magic quiver may show up that hold 2 or 3 times the normal amount of arrows/bolts, but I don't get into endless bags, quivers, etc of holding...

I say this next part seriously and not mockingly at you Cadfan. How hard is it to add and subtact a few arrows in a fight. I've never had a character complain of this, ever. My players make a little check mark on a piece of paper and at the end of the fight know how many arrows have been used. I'll admit, in a big battle when the archer (or whomever) states he wants to collect arrows, bolts, etc..., more likely than not, I pretty much tell him he can fine 50% (sometimes more) of his arrow to retrieve... This is obviously to keep the flow of the game going and not make a roll for each arrow slow down play.

 

[Cadfan]

The players were actually timid to open doors. That's fun, both for DMs and players. And 3E/3.5 removed a lot of that actual player fear / indecisiveness.

I've always considered waiting for the rogue to check for traps, run a spot check, run a listen check, etc, etc, etc, on Every. Single. Door. to be one of the absolute worst aspects of D&D ever.

But I think this is a perfect place to note the difference between the straw man construction of my play style that kicked this thread off, and its reality. I don't mind there being danger opening the door. I don't mind it at all.

I just 1) want the "should we open the door" decision to take less time, and 2) want the penalties, while real, to not end the game for my character all based on that one door that most likely I have no choice but to open.

This is a place gameplay should be sped up, in my opinion, because it involves only part of the group, involves rolling against dangers that may not even exist, happens repeatedly, usually nothing is wrong, and only occasionally is there a catastrophe.

If you've set up a situation where players have to create a two minute door opening ritual and use it on every single door they find so that they don't get their characters killed on every tenth door where there's an actual trap, you've created a situation in which nine out of ten door openings are wastefully long. This doesn't raise tension in a meaningful way after the first 5 doors, and should be streamlined.

Faster resolution would make my objection less important, because the door opening ritual wouldn't be as long. And making the penalties less extreme than a dead character would let the players ignore the risk at times, and only search for traps on doors likely to be trapped, instead of every single door in the game.

 

[Sundragon2012]

Okay. You say that there's a segment of players out there who want to have adventures with no risk at all.

Prove it.

Show me posts from these people saying the things that you claim they believe. And not just one or two people - on the internet, you can find one or two people saying anything. Show me... say, half a dozen different people saying that they want risk-free adventures. Not just people saying they don't like save-or-die effects or whatever, but people saying that they want absolutely no risk in their adventures whatsoever, as you claim.

If there are so many of these people out there, it should be a simple matter for you to find half a dozen or so. So let's see the posts.

Look man, get the stick out of your rear and realize I am poking a bit of fun with the above post. I am a little frustrated with having the thread be about me instead of about my argument.

I need not prove anything or drag out a pile of posts from message boards with thousands of posting in this and various subjects related to 4e to satisfy you. Add an argument of your own demonstrating how terrible incorrect I am and we'll discuss that.

Feel free to post an opposing argument.

IMO those who want a removal of save or die effects (which include save or petrify, sleep, hold, polymorph and all deadly poisons and their perspective carriers such as giant scorpions, snakes, and certain monsters) want far less challenge that is appropriate for a supposedly heroic fantasy game. Removing these effects will alter the nature of the game dramatically and remove quite a few creatures from the game as well because they are too dangerous.

Those who don't want to deal with resource management whether it is arrows, rations, ropes, ie survival materials don't want a game with much versimilitude and much less challenge than those who do IMO.

Those who believe the DM is somehow abliged to make every character concept a reality in his game and that sticking to the atmophere of a setting is unfair and unfun is IMO totally off base and ridiculous. There is a gigantic thread in the gleemax forums about this, feel free to look it up on your own.



Sundragon

 

[Imp]

So what do you do with magic (silver/cold iron/whatever) arrows, then, handwave those too? You can easily wind up right back where you started.

It isn't always worth it to enforce bookkeeping, but there are always situations where keeping track of something or other does have a real impact on how things turn out. Encumbrance? Ballpark it... unless suddenly there's water in the dungeon, that starts to rise, or you're hanging from a rope for dear life... Food? Sometimes an issue! Arrows? Well, if mister hero intends to singlehandedly stop the goblin horde he had better have enough little pointies; but in a 3-round skirmish in the middle of town, eh.

The only thing I'm categorically not a fan of in D&D is abstract wealth. I tried when I was flirting with True20, but no. Unless you are completely ignoring the "kill things and take their stuff" angle for something story-based, every treasure hoard should make you quantifiably richer, it's a big part of it.

 

[Sundragon2012]

Well, yeah, I was kind of referring to Plane Sailing's ruling that the post wasn't trolling. My point is that even though it's a honest argument rather than an attempt to stir up trouble, the whole post is centered around an unhelpful and somewhat dishonest debate tactic.

Do you have an opposing point of view?

Would you like to add something beyond an analysis of my OP?



Sundragon

 

[cildarith]

Do your players generally only carry enough arrows for 5 rounds at level 16?

More likely, they have a bow which creates infinite arrows magically, or they have a magical quiver with an obscene payload, which needs to be tracked.

And they don't always attack with the full rapid shot, so it won't always be multiples of five. There's ordinary attacking, and there's multishot.

And of course if you can run out of arrows, and you're away from civilization, you'll need to salvage arrows after a combat if you can. Half the arrows you fired are reusable. So add that bookkeeping in.

Math. It is soooo hard. All that addition and subtraction. Most unfun. Brain. Hurtz. Waaah!!!111

 

[KarinsDad]

QFT, sir. There are plenty of challenging, scary monsters (demons, devils, dragons) without having to fall back on poorly designed creatures with strictly METAGAME abilities like level-drain. Creatures like this, along with the Rust Monster, and my least favorite, the Ethereal Filcher, have no other purpose other than to screw PCs.

I can scare my PCs with any number of creatures; I love using weak monsters like kobolds and hobgoblins with tactics that strike terror into their hearts. But those metagame monsters exist solely for the purpose of shortcutting; they are the ultimate "lazy DM's" path to 'challenging' players. Instead, however, all they do is actively encourage an adversarial relationship between DMs and PCs.

Except that kolbold and hobgoblin "tactics that strike terror into their hearts" really don't. Mostly, that's hit point damage. Maybe a little poison. Even a thunderstone against the PC Wizard is merely inconvenient.

Yawn.

The vast majority of DND combat is hit point damage.

It is critical for the game system to have mechanics that actually do strike terror into the hearts of players and to do this effectively, there has to be game mechanics for damage other than hit point damage. And, the game mechanics should be designed to make it difficult to repair that damage (unlike 3E/3.5). Not impossible, but difficult (like going on a quest).

Level Drain (the 1E/2E version) did scare players.

Ability Drain (1E/2E) where getting it back was not simplying praying for the proper spell did this.

4E needs some "scary stuff".

It has nothing to do with DM laziness. That's a total strawman.

Note: a section on good NPC tactics in the DMG would be helpful. Even hit point damage can be daunting if properly run. But, hit point damage really doesn't strike terror into anyone's hearts. It's too pedestrian and commonplace to do so.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The opening post would have been much improved if, instead of paraphrasing, the OP had provided exact quotes. This would have demonstrated that people are genuinely saying it's unfun unless they have 7 foot long, 8 inch wide swords and no risk of failure.

Observe the master at work. Emulate him.