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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4588263" data-attributes="member: 54707">It ain't the job of the DM to do this Jas. It's the job of the players. That's something that keeps getting missed. But as to whether or not a fella, or a team, becomes a mere set of statistics, that depends upon them. Not you. How clever, tough, and creative they are.  You've got to let your players grow up, take real risks, be real heroes.  The DM can't plot out heroism on a graph, and just because a player chooses a Paragon path or an Epic destiny doesn't mean there's anything epic about him, or that he'll ever do one truly heroic thing in his life. It's how a man behaves in the heat of the fire, not how he behaves in the balanced and comforting waters of the hot springs that makes the difference between a hero and a guy sporting a longknife and a funny name.And of course not every fight is heroic. As I said. Sometimes you're just doing your job. But let them fight the dragon too, the real monster. The thing they know can kill them, the thing that will kill them unless they do their very, very best. How sad, that even in a game, where little is really risked (unless you count the ideals that men hold most true in their own hearts) the idea must be held in the back of the mind, "you know, if it weren't for the statistics, I'd have been a real hero?" Out of the womb of statistics, how many people ever grow a hero? Maybe, just maybe, you don't grow a hero by following the odds, maybe, just maybe, you grow a hero by forgetting the odds.But as to whether they can do it, and they can if they really try, they employ techniques that assure they do as much as they can the right way, and assure the enemy makes as many mistakes as they can encourage him to make in the meantime. They don't just fight hard, and valiantly, and with determination. <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/245940-tactical-repertoire.html" target="_blank">They also fight with cleverness, craftily, and with purpose.</a> Anything can be killed if you go about it the right way. Including the idea that the fight must be fair, just because it seems impossible.What I'm saying is that even in a game you can't grow real heroes out artificial mechanics and pre-plotted career paths. Just like you can't grow magic out of the number of pluses and minuses you employ.You have to let people risk the dangerous thing, do the hard thing, actually be heroic. You can't write heroism into the script, and you can't write it into a person with mere words and attribute scores and character powers. It comes when a fella is far less concerned with whether his fight is "fair and balanced or not," and instead is far more concerned with what he's fighting for, not who he's fighting against.Be that kind of fellow and sooner or later you'll become heroic. Be concerned about the odds and the balance and and whether you're man enough for the risk and you'll end up distinguished merely by your statistical limitations.</blockquote>

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