According to French legend the Tarasque wasnt killed outright instead St Martha (cleric) subdued it with holy water, tied her girdle to it and led it into town where she handed it over to the townsfolk.
And this is a positive thing to you?
Before the dark age, how many Fantasy stories ended with a Shaggy Dog story of the heroes dead out somewhere, having accomplished nothing?
Which does it without killing players and even allowing a win.
Who said 100 pages? There's plenty of good combat systems and schemes that are not 100 pages.
Which abandons the core of the playstyle.
Maybe make sure they're the ones who, in-character, get targeted with paralysis effects?
How else does a good DM gain experience points, if not by inducing rage-quits?
Funny but I don't think it's that simple. I killed a PC last game simply by not bluffing when I laid out the stakes. The players are chasing a bbeg into an eldritch machine that involves undead. Long story short I told them flat out that if they go down while in there they simply skip past death saves & outright die . Most of the players acted logically but the one who died decided that the most effective solution was to recklessly feystep past the front line to start 1v1 the bbeg while cut off from the rest of the party stuck behind the front line mooks & choosing to stay there even as his HP was whittled away. When the player dropped like 2 or 3 rounds into the fight the player turned to me and was surprised when "$PCName is dead, I guess they could raise dead.. later" was the shrugged answer to the player asking "well what now, can he healing word me?". I didn't even do all that much damage to the PC with monsters, maybe 15-25 of the PC's 60-80ish HP, the rest was because the downed player had previously encouraged a caster to drop fireballs on him to get the most number of targets.
As an Old School Method gamer I do think feeling and acting out those feelings is a positive thing, yes.
THIS is the major problem with "popular fiction content": it's mostly just happy fluff and the heroes always win and live happily ever after. And sure people will sit down to watch Batman or Ironman AUTOMATICALLY "save the day" every single time. That is just people. Of course, there is content with downer endings.
Very true! See the point: The players do not always win.
I just picked a number....
Well, yes, that is what I'm talking about: abandoning that playstlye.
Well, the DM could just play foes even with average intelligence and tactics; and just follow the rules too.
Most people want more people to come to the hobby, not storm out of it in a rage.
People who are trying to play D&D.
I feel like this is usually expressed as the very popular lie: 'you can do anything'.
Including things that waste your time and make you not want to do it again, apparently.
Again, a bold strategy.
So the entire argument is a non-starter. Great.
Yeah, we call the dithering "analysis paralysis", frequently accompanied by asking for clarification of exactly what's going on at the start of their turn. Every turn. It's followed closely by spell amnesia where the caster needs to reread every spell before casting. Doesn't matter if they actually have the spell slot to cast the spell available. Don't forget one-die-at-time-itis where that two-weapon battlemaster fighter Knocks someone prone with their first attack so they have advantage, action surge to get five attacks that round and then roll 1 die at a time. Bonus if they have a flametongue weapon and must roll weapon and fire damage separately while using a calculator to add all their numbers.
If, I guess, most people just want random players to fill game seats, sure.
It's not a "lie" in a good RPG with the right play stlye.
Great?
LOL. As I was reading your first paragraph, my blood pressure was just steadily climbing. Aaaugh.
This is, I believe, a result of a bad habit among DMs and Module designers of the traitorous NPC. Where many of the NPC turn on the party and this is extended by DMs to combat NPCs. The idea is to create a recurring villain but the execution is lacking since the it encourages a "kill 'em all let God sort it out " attitude among the players that reduces the engagement with the world.
In the adventure I'm running right now, one of the wandering monster possibilities in the forest is a hunting party of half a dozen Orcs. They're out hunting game animals to augment the diet for people at the main base (the PCs' initial goal), and if on sighting or encountering the PCs even one of the Orcs is able to flee back to base to report, the PCs' job just got a lot more difficult as the place will be on high alert: there's invaders in the woods.
Sure, I never said it wasn't possible to have such a scenario, more that it is strange (IMO) for player to always think that is the case and become bound and determined to kill everything for the fear something might come back to "get them" later on.
No. The Orcs are hunting game, the PCs are more or less hunting Orc as part of dealing with a bigger threat.
A single Orc, yes. They travel in groups, though, as adventurers aren't the only dange rin the woods.
Given that the PCs' mission is, in part, to take out the Orcs (ultimately it's to take out the boss behind them, but the Orcs are in the way), that would be a very unexpected outcome.
yeah if the PCs are in hostile territory I’d expect stealth with the main objective being avoid the hunting party and carry on to the Base - stealth check resolves encounter, move on.
