When your weapons won't beat the enemy?

[Rechan]

I recently watched a movie that really drove home a point for me.

In it, of the monsters the characters faced, 50% were slew only because the characters took things in their environment, put them together, and lured/caught the monster in a giant set-piece and that destroyed it. Yes, the characters had weapons, but they only hampered the foes they faced due to the foes' sheer SIZE and material makeup.

The final monster could only be bested by the MacGuffin, used in a specific manner.

I loved it in the movie. Characters where wildly swinging on ropes as the environment shifted, or they were suddenly on the edges of dropoffs and desperate! They had to think fast, and things fell into place. They used things just lying around that weren't Obviously The Solution until they looked around and went "What can I do?!"

You also see this in tons of media, from the airtank in Jaws, to Hercules causing a cave in to best the Hydra.

But the thing is, I rarely if never see this in RPGs. Anything out there can be beaten with your weapons/spells. If it can't, you just need to get higher plusses, or the DM is just throwing something way outside of your level to be "realistic"/make you run away.

This also doesn't help that players will do one of three things, no matter the situation: Hit it with sticks until it dies, run away, or hit it with sticks until you get a TPK and then they get mad at you.

How do you use giant setpieces/improvisational environment deathtraps, in an RPG?

How do you let the players know "You simply cannot use your equipment/abilities alone to best this threat" before they TPK? Or "You need the Macguffin to beat this thing"?

How do you telegraph to the players that things in the environment or the macguffin can be used to best the enemy, without straight out saying, "Use This Thing"?

And what rules do you use, when you do it?

 

[Hawke]

How do you let the players know "You simply cannot use your equipment/abilities alone to best this threat" before they TPK? Or "You need the Macguffin to beat this thing"?

How do you telegraph to the players that things in the environment or the macguffin can be used to best the enemy, without straight out saying, "Use This Thing"?

I was sort of thinking about this a bunch recently. Early on in my campaign we lacked a rogue or thievery training. As a result I went traps light. A player had to drop out and was replaced by another that played a rogue. As I phased in traps as a possible issue in addition to enemies, it was a tough shift for the players who suddenly were receiving information about the room (clues) that wasn't given before.

I was considering the environmental stuff as my next "phase-in" and how I could do it better this time. The problem with phasing in, is if you make a note but it doesn't pan out the first time, they ignore it subsequently. If you make every clue always pan it, out's a bit too easy.

I find overall, it was tougher adding traps to the existing game than it would be if I had been consistent from the start.

Good thread, eager to read others suggestions.

 

[Barastrondo]

I'm a little leery of these situations in gaming because it's a potential GM trap: it can become an exercise in frustration if the players are trying to find the one correct way to damage the opponent instead of innovating their own potential ways to damage the opponent. One is a guessing game, the other is more players trying out things they want to do.

Of course, the trouble is that just hitting things with the powers on your character sheet is often what players want to do. So I think it's necessary to personalize some of the terrain options. The armored juggernaut of a fighter probably won't think to swing from a chandelier, and will be hesitant to even try if it's pointed out to them. On the other hand, he might think to topple over a mighty statue with a giant weapon of its own. Have multiple options available, and see if you can't make at least one each that fits the personality and aptitudes of each character (or player).

I know that 4e marketing may have overused the word "cool," but the bona fide best way to get players to do this kind of thing is to give them things that they think are cool to do. It probably takes getting personal on that. No improvisational deathtrap will succeed if it doesn't fit your players' instincts.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

Im very honest with my players that out right combat isnt always the way to beat a foe.
So my players know to looks for ways to beat a seemingly impossible foe. Especially one too powerful for them to logically beat.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

But the thing is, I rarely if never see this in RPGs. Anything out there can be beaten with your weapons/spells. If it can't, you just need to get higher plusses, or the DM is just throwing something way outside of your level to be "realistic"/make you run away.

This also doesn't help that players will do one of three things, no matter the situation: Hit it with sticks until it dies, run away, or hit it with sticks until you get a TPK and then they get mad at you.

let me tell you about when me and my 2 friends made a DM rewrite his adventure...it was gen con 01...the game dead lands (a wild west fantasy horror game.

the whole adventure was a serise of mistakes on our part, I was a gunslinger, another character a spell caster (huckster) and the 3rd a hyrib of the two (hexslinger).

the end of the adventure the GM warned us we were screwed becuse we did everything wrong. the climatic fight was with a hanging judge... the closest thing that system has to a lich. It can only be hurt by lawmens bullets. We all new this out of game, and none of us are lawmen. If we had followed the 'correct' path we would already be deputized...but we didn't and we were not...

So the Dm set the whole scean we thought it was going to have a bad ending. the bad guy invunrable to our attacks the fight started real bad...my gunslinger dazed and hurt and everyone dying around the 3 of us the GM asked "Do you just want to call it"

we agreed we wanted to be killed, and I made an off hand comment about too bad we didn't know why our bullets were not working...so the spell caster said "I can spend an action to make you feel better" and I smiled and "Oh please do"

end of the story: we beat it... now for how. He was on the steps of the court house, and right next to him was the statue of blind justice, one hand with a sword held point down, the other with scales...the hybrid slinger mage had a power to knock him down, the caster had one to drag...they both held there actions and did it right before my turn...then I shot the arm droping the sword on to his neck...a weapon of a lawman was close enough for the DM

afterwards I asked what his weakness is, and the GM never new each judge was suppose to have 1 'other' way to kill them.

he said he had to go back through every moment of his adventure and set up for the next time crazy PCs go the way we did...

 

[Gilladian]

Occasionally my PC's have used improvisational methods to kill a monster, but I don't know that I'm really eager to have them do it a lot.

Once a rogue dragged a set of silk sheets around half the dungeon, eventually using one of them as a net to sling over a monster (yeth hound?), blinding it, and then setting the sheet on fire. He got a bit of extra damage that way, and penalized the monster's attack for a round or two.

That was fine, and it was fun.

But later in the same campaign, the same player was wanting to get repeated, large bonuses for using environmental objects in absurd ways. It became almost a running "push the DM" to see what he and the others could think up. It made my head ache.

Instead, what I try to do is describe the party's NORMAL actions as involving the terrain they're in. When a PC crits, it might be because they not only hit the monster, but cause a dead tree limb to fall on him, or he falls, hits his head on a rock, and dies of concussion. The players and I both prefer that in the long run.

 

[Umbran]

But the thing is, I rarely if never see this in RPGs.

I think what you're talking about has some genre-specific aspects.

In many fantasy games, what the characters have is the cutting edge of what's available in terms of technology. In generic medieval fantasy, there isn't anything out there better than the swords the characters wield, and the magic they have at hand - it is not very plausible that much else of use is lying around.

In contemporary games, the setting is different - there's technology and useful materials lying around all over the place. The players and genre expect that useful things can be found in the environment.

Superhero games actually use the teamwork trope a lot - a group of individuals just beating on the super-villain often isn't sufficient. They have to pull together and use their powers in new ways, and materials at hand that they didn't carry in with them.

There's also a game-design element here. Some games have character abilities tightly defined. Other games give players and GMs more leeway in interpretation. Tight definition gives consistency, which is good. Loose definition gives room for improvisation.

 

[Starbuck_II]

I was sort of thinking about this a bunch recently. Early on in my campaign we lacked a rogue or thievery training. As a result I went traps light. A player had to drop out and was replaced by another that played a rogue. As I phased in traps as a possible issue in addition to enemies, it was a tough shift for the players who suddenly were receiving information about the room (clues) that wasn't given before.

Doesn't that punish the party for getting rogue if you add more traps when they get a rogue?

 

[drothgery]

I recently watched a movie that really drove home a point for me.

In it, of the monsters the characters faced, 50% were slew only because the characters took things in their environment, put them together, and lured/caught the monster in a giant set-piece and that destroyed it. Yes, the characters had weapons, but they only hampered the foes they faced due to the foes' sheer SIZE and material makeup.

The final monster could only be bested by the MacGuffin, used in a specific manner.

...

But the thing is, I rarely if never see this in RPGs. Anything out there can be beaten with your weapons/spells. If it can't, you just need to get higher plusses, or the DM is just throwing something way outside of your level to be "realistic"/make you run away.

Probably worth noting is that the rules in D&D -- especially in 3e and 4e -- strongly encourage characters to pick a shtick and stick with it. Which means that D&D characters are almost always specialists when it comes to combat, whereas many fictional characters are generalists. So even if a character's preferred weapon or preferred type of spells are less effective against an opponent, that character's still probably enough better with them that switching to something else is not a good idea.

When you have a fictional character who is all about swordfighting when it comes to combat, then that's how he fights and you rarely, if ever, see him doing otherwise and any climatic battle scense that character is involved in will allow that character to use their go-to combat style.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

The first thing that came to mind are the terrain powers introduced in DMG2.

I think the best way to get this kind of action is to use the carrot rather than the stick, and make the terrain power so useful that they would be crazy not to use it.

The players could eventually kill the beast repeatedly hitting it, or they could drop a pile of rocks on it for 10d10 damage and immobilize and ongoing 10 damage (save ends both).