D&D General Wizard vs Fighter - the math

[Vaalingrade]

Yes, those sort of things should be in play. But for a mass market game there absolutely should be mechanical consequences for combat, as building story consequences for every fight is hard and not something everyone will do.

Or, again combat as set piece, you only fight fights that have meaning.

Amount of attrition is. If you do better, you suffer less attritions. That's the whole point.

When your resources are set at 1 as per your suggestion of gritty rests, there's really no 'less attrition'. You're always going to be ground down. Or you just don't engage with your character's capabilities.

Is it fun to you go trough the motions knowing you can't lose?

Again, all that stuff you yourself should be in play. Just because you're not ground down and the story isn't going to be ruined by character death (the thing character death in all media does best!) doesn't mean you can't lose. You only 'can't lose' if you think death or attrition are the only consequences.

But also, some things can be fun without 'consequences'. Have you never run a session where you just curb stomp some chump enemies, showcasing your sweet powers in the process?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Or, again combat as set piece, you only fight fights that have meaning.

That cannot be the default assumption for D&D.

When your resources are set at 1 as per your suggestion of gritty rests, there's really no 'less attrition'. You're always going to be ground down. Or you just don't engage with your character's capabilities.

Just no. There is limited amount of challenges to overcome during given mission. It is up to the players how they allocate their resources to overcome them. This allows strategic play.

Again, all that stuff you yourself should be in play. Just because you're not ground down and the story isn't going to be ruined by character death (the thing character death in all media does best!) doesn't mean you can't lose. You only 'can't lose' if you think death or attrition are the only consequences.

Mechanical consequences. The rules must be build around the assumption of mechanical consequences.

But also, some things can be fun without 'consequences'. Have you never run a session where you just curb stomp some chump enemies, showcasing your sweet powers in the process?

Sure. Gets old really fast.

 

[Vaalingrade]

That cannot be the default assumption for D&D.

Why? And don't say tradition or use the fact that you like attrition.

Just no. There is limited amount of challenges to overcome during given mission. It is up to the players how they allocate their resources to overcome them. This allows strategic play.

That is logistical play and again, you're going to get ground down no matter what. It's the same amount of 'consequence' as the trolley problem.

Mechanical consequences. The rules must be build around the assumption of mechanical consequences.

Do they though? Especially since I'm constantly hearing about how characters shouldn't have mechanical capability and how it's a sin to 'look at your character sheet' or whatever. Gooses and ganders.

Also, other games find it very easy to not have mechanical consequences and I've never had problems just like... not killing or grinding characters in any game.

Sure. Gets old really fast.

So does counting beans so they can be taken away, and yet here we are.

I believe the term is 'combat as sport

 

[Bill Zebub]

Yeah, I've never had that because I if a DM every throws spite monsters at me, I walk and they don't get to DM for the group anymore.

Just out of curiosity, how is that the DM doesn't get to DM for the group if you are the one who walks?

 

[Oofta]

Just out of curiosity, how is that the DM doesn't get to DM for the group if you are the one who walks?

I've had people quit my game (and vice versa) because I wasn't the right DM for them, because being the right DM for everyone is not possible. The game went on and I had no problem recruiting, or retaining, new players.

Quitting a game or having someone quit isn't the end of the world, or the campaign. When players quit my game, usually the response from the rest of the group was "thank goodness".

 

[Vaalingrade]

Just out of curiosity, how is that the DM doesn't get to DM for the group if you are the one who walks?

Our whole group is basically DMs and party fouls mean we just never choose to play int your games anymore. It something crosses my line, it's likely to have crossed the others' too because we're all rather in agreement not to play adversarial.

 

[NotAYakk]

Nope. New DM time.

Sorry, why new DM here. I'll assume it is new DM time because the DM did something inappropriate.

Is it inappropriate for a hostile horde of 1000 orcs to exist?

Is it inappropriate for a DM to say, when players decide to charge a horde of 1000 orcs, to say "you all die"?

Is it inappropriate for a scouting force of dozens of orcs, if not dealt with, to be followed by a horde of 1000+ orcs a week later? Or that PCs defeating the scouting force and reporting the invasion being a possible solution to the problem?

That is logistical play and again, you're going to get ground down no matter what. It's the same amount of 'consequence' as the trolley problem.

Do you mean "if the PCs face an infinite line of foes, each capable of harming the PCs, they will eventually run out of resources" as "you're going to get ground down no matter what"?

In a given fight, the degree to which you use or lose resources will vary depending on what the characters can do and what they do do. You can choose to use 3 fireballs to kill a dozen rats, and you'll win the fight -- but you'll use a lot more resources than if you just stomped on them, even accounting for the rats sometimes managing to hit with a bite.

Entire classes in D&D are built around that assumption -- that you have a pile of resources you have to allocate over multiple encounters, and pick a good time to use the big guns and when to not use the big guns. Every single daily spell slot spellcaster has used this pattern since the game wasn't even called D&D.

In any case, my point is to use actual D&D mechanics.

Instead of using the basic unit of a D&D adventure as an encounter, make the basic unit the adventuring day (or, as I call it, the chapter).

You build Chapters. Adventures consist of Chapters. Chapters consist of Scenes. Scenes consist of Encounters. Encounters consist of Monsters.

(This is a simplification; all also contain terrain, reasons, motivations, etc.)

Chapters take a long rest to recover from. When designing a Chapter, the consequences of failing the chapter or ignoring it should be included. Why are the adventurers engaging the chapter? What happens if they don't? Why don't they take long rests in the middle of it?

Scenes takes a short rest to recover from. Similar questions apply, but here we have short rests instead of long delimiating it.

Sometimes you have a collection of Scene or Chapters with a timer, so no more than X short rests total, but let the PCs allocate the rests as they wish.

Encounters contain monsters. But you also have to think "why would the adventurers engage the monsters"? What happens if they don't engage the monsters? What happens if they start a fight, and they say "nevermind, I don't want to fight anymore"? Can they fight just one of the monsters in the encounter and ignore the rest - what makes the monsters "part of the same encounter"?

Sometimes you have one pool of monsters, and some possibility for PCs to split them up into different encounters or fight them all at once.

And on top of all of this, you can choose not to model the world in a PC-facing way and just have creatures doing stuff. But then you should expect the PCs to die a lot unless you are fudging it, because the kind of thing that PCs are doing in a realistic world results in character death. Sort of like how fighter pilots in an active war had average lifespans measured in hours.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Is it inappropriate for a DM to say, when players decide to charge a horde of 1000 orcs, to say "you all die"?

That one. There's the one.

And on top of all of this, you can choose not to model the world in a PC-facing way and just have creatures doing stuff. But then you should expect the PCs to die a lot unless you are fudging it, because the kind of thing that PCs are doing in a realistic world results in character death. Sort of like how fighter pilots in an active war had average lifespans measured in hours.

Yeah, I'm not going to do that. I'm telling a story, not modeling a world.

 

[overgeeked]

That's just normal behavior from other kinds of games; the TTRPG here is the thing asking for special treatment.

Most other games are competitive so it makes sense. TTRPGs are not competitive. A player bringing in that kind of strategy is making the game competitive, i.e. player vs referee. That's not how these games work.

 

[Pedantic]

Most other games are competitive so it makes sense. TTRPGs are not competitive. A player bringing in that kind of strategy is making the game competitive, i.e. player vs referee. That's not how these games work.

That's irrelevant. You can have tech cards in Spirit Island, a completely cooperative game, where you might opt into say a push power for your spirit to support the Ocean's Hungry Grasp, or a power to spawn Dahan because another spirit cares about them, or you might tech specifically to deal with the early speed of the Prussians.

It's special pleading for the TTRPG to argue that some strategies should be allowed but off-limits. The idea generally of a PC looking at their options and them deploying them to counter the expected set of problems is a really normal gameplay loop, and it's actually quite aberrant to offer abilities like that but not expect PCs to hunt down ways to combine them. I understand the edge optimization cases are frustrating, but they're not the fault of the player, that's a design problem.

It's like arguing one shouldn't deploy an infinitely recursive strategy in Slay the Spire; you can stumble into an infinite loop by accident without trying and if you can set up the conditions to use that kind of strategy, then it's an effective way to win that game. At some points in development such strategies were too easy to implement consistently, and the rules of the game where changed. Eventually it just became a thing you try and spot when a run allows for it and opt into if it makes sense.