Jeff Wilder
First Post
Then let's do it. You run the troll, I'll run four 5th-level fighters, all Core. 40-by-40 room. Best of five. For each fighter you kill, I'll give you $20. For each troll I kill, I get $15.
Why do we have such different experiences?
- Thread starter Hussar
- Start date
That's not actual play experience, that's a staged fight. Go reread what I said earlier.
Edit: And my actual play experience does not include a lone troll in a 40'x40' room. That'd be a really stupid place for a lone hunter to be hanging around, waiting to get killed by a group of PCs. Unless maybe he was waiting in ambush at the entrance to the room*, but even that's unlikely. There are plenty of better hunting spots in the typical dungeon. Not many of my dungeons even include 40' rooms, that's huge.
*He'll have heard the PCs clanking down the corridor and have a readied action to attack the first PC into the room, then full attack next round, quite likely on a flatfooted PC - IME the typical Fighter-5 only has a +1 init mod, since Fighters rarely take Improved Init.
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Jeff Wilder
First Post
I did. Paraphrased, it was, "If everything -- and I do mean everything -- goes the troll's way, it's dangerous." Earlier, again paraphrased, was, "Since my players don't know how to use tactics (or perhaps just don't want to know how), trolls are dangerous."
I certainly concede both those points. You win the thread.
What I said was, "I wouldn't beat _your_ 5th level Fighters" - in some arbitrary 'fair' setup. But If I was GMing a typical dungeon crawl, the troll is going to be playing to its obvious strengths, ensuring that it can get into melee easily in a confined space. That can be circumvented through smart play by a mixed ability group - invisible Rogue PC scouts and locates troll, Wizard throws in a fireball - but 4 Ftr-5s don't have that option.
You don't seem to understand the difference between (1) actual play, where players are operating in a fog of ignorance and there are nasty monsters on their home terrain, and (2) abstract number crunching.
As for everything going the troll's way - sometimes things go the player's way; but to kill the PCs the monsters only have to be lucky once; to not die, the PCs have to be lucky every time. So IMO you can discount the times when luck favoured the PCs, if the PCs only get killed in 1/3 or 1/4 of all CR-balanced encounters the players still won't be happy.
Noumenon
First Post
The thread's a little off track so I went back to summarize the thing. Why do we have different experiences about what's broken in D&D?
If we could have our profiles link to our results on this scale, we might understand each other better. For example, in my dispute about sorcerers with Beginning of the End, I'm speaking as someone who has only DMed sorcerers from levels 8-10, so they have more than ten fireballs a day. I run short modules with about eight combats in them, and usually no way to keep the party from resting. I have six weeks to prep, so I would like to have few, overdesigned combats over multiple, attriting combats. If he DMs every night after play practice throwing solitary goblin zombies at 3rd-level characters, his sorcerers might actually run out of spells at some point.
I know the survey idea has been tried before but I didn't really understand the motivation and there were way too many questions on that one. Also it would be much handier if anyone you were arguing with, you could click their profile and see what kind of games they run.
- different wealth/level (really, magic items/level)
- modules vs homebrew
- classed humanoids vs big monsters
- casualness of players
- play style: seeing any diplomacy/combat?
- level range played at -- low, mid, high
- how long campaigns last
- whether people play by or even know the RAW
- Tolkien DM vs tombrobber DM
- the RPGA DM as chicken inspector
- frequency of play -- six weeks to prep?
- whether the players and DM cooperate to work around the fragility of the system
- high challenge vs low challenge resulting in more resting
If we could have our profiles link to our results on this scale, we might understand each other better. For example, in my dispute about sorcerers with Beginning of the End, I'm speaking as someone who has only DMed sorcerers from levels 8-10, so they have more than ten fireballs a day. I run short modules with about eight combats in them, and usually no way to keep the party from resting. I have six weeks to prep, so I would like to have few, overdesigned combats over multiple, attriting combats. If he DMs every night after play practice throwing solitary goblin zombies at 3rd-level characters, his sorcerers might actually run out of spells at some point.
I know the survey idea has been tried before but I didn't really understand the motivation and there were way too many questions on that one. Also it would be much handier if anyone you were arguing with, you could click their profile and see what kind of games they run.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
I would add another factor: point buy vs rolled stats
I've been watching the Pathfinder Beta discussions and trying to wrap my brain around some of the debates people have with the problems perceived to be in 3.5. And while doing so, I realized that the difference between the two complicates matters, and not in the way I expect most people would think.
Back in ealier 3.x discussions here on ENWorld, there was a lot of back-and-forth about point buy vs rolled stats and point buy aficionados lauding the balanced nature of the characters and potentially unbalanced randomly rolled ones. To a certain extent, that's true. You don't have the potential for really wild differences. But I find that point buy can strain the D&D system.
Whenever later era debates came up about single-attribute dependent (SAD) vs multiple attribute dependent (MAD) characters, the gulf between good and bad saves, or super-spellcasters vs irrelevant fighters, minmaxers vs non-minmaxers, the decision to use point buy to generate characters can exacerbate every one of these issues by allowing the player to accentuate their primary stat beyond the expectations of most randomly rolled characters. The character may, as a result, be less well-rounded and have more save vulnerabilities, but can be laser-focused on their offense.
I won't say that point buy is the cause of any of the issues I've listed in the above paragraph, just that it exacerbates them. I'd be fairly curious to learn, of the people who have found 3.5 the most problematic or least problematic, who uses point buy and who rolls their stats. It might be that the difference is less significant than the others we've discussed in this thread, but I'd be curious to see how it correlates...
(though apparently not curious enough to fork the thread and create a poll
)
catsclaw227
First Post
I have not read anywhere that the designers state that 4e only supports one style of play. Can you point me in that direction?
Also, the DMG has many places where it emphasizes that campaigns can come in many flavors, and the infamous pg 42 flat out exists to help support multiple styles of play.
Page 42 exists solely to give the DM the mechanical tools necessary to adjudicate actions which require a check and have the potential to cause hit point damage but are otherwise not covered by the rules. It is no different than the chart that shows what a given monster's stats should be based on role and level. Page 42 is neat and all, but let's not make it something it isn't.
catsclaw227
First Post
I agree with this (though maybe not the "solely" part). And we aren't necessarily disagreeing my point, so maybe I should have worded my statement a bit better.
Page 42's existence helps support multiple styles of play.
It can help with dealing with circumstances that fit narrativist or gamist play, and possibly simulationist play as well.
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