They did kinda fixed it in PF though. It is now 50 or half your HPs whichever is higher.
That's in PF?? I never saw that one. Where is it located?
Personally i don't like 'massive damage = death'... I prefer the 2E version of 1/2 HP in one blow, system shock or unconcious.
Unconcious is drama... death is... death.
That's in PF?? I never saw that one. Where is it located?
I want to thank everyone for their thoughts and input on this topic. I made my post thinking knowing that I held a minority view, and seeing the many people post who share a similar viewpoint was incredibly encouraging. Likewise, I appreciated the respectful tone from many of those who disagree with me.
I went into this thread knowing that I was opening myself up for criticism. I was actually surprised by the number of thoughtful responses that I received in return. With one exception, many who disagreed were able to recognize that people can have their fun in a lot of different ways. It led to a very collegiate atmosphere. Well, until the video game derail. ;)
Certain individuals aside, I think it says a lot about this awesome community that in a 200+ post thread on a potentially inflammatory topic, there was only one insult offered.
I do apologize to everyone for being silent for so long. For the first 50 to 100 posts, it was simply because I had nothing else to say. I'd opened up and said my peace in the first post. Any response to those who agreed would have amounted to a "+1," though I did favorite some posts. Any response to those who disagreed would have been a request to read my initial post more carefully.
As to the second hundred, I spent most of the weekend preparing for the new job I started today. So I came back to find the thread had 100+ posts.
I truly have enjoyed the discussion, though. It's been fun to see where everyone is coming from, and I picked up a few useful nuggets along the way. (For example, I really do need to have my characters run from battle. My next long term character is going to be a full caster and total coward. ^_^ )
I honestly don't see myself as wanting an "easy mode." I'd prefer minor encounters to be APL -1, regular encounters to be APL, and boss encounters to be APL +1 (+2 for really hard opponents). Every once in a long while, I'd appreciate a challenging APL +3. I figure that puts me exactly where Pathfinder is designed for. I very much like the idea of BillyGoat's "medium mode."
It's been pretty interesting to see the different definitions people have for Hard Mode. Even among the hardcore crowd, there are a lot of differing opinions and views. A lot of the fun in this thread has been seeing how the game gets expressed at different tables.
As I said in my initial post, I really don't want a game where the threat of death isn't there. I simply don't want a game where the threat of PERMANENT death isn't likely. And as has been pointed out already, I am a narrativist. In my ideal game, the dice are only there to add spice to the story.
I should also mention that I've only ever played Pathfinder at low level. If my party can survive the +2 CR baddy we left off with - and everyone including the GM agrees that it's either run away or TPK - then what's left of the party will soon hit level 7. Which will make it the highest level I've ever reached in Pathfinder. So resurrection spells have been nonexistent in my games so far. Also, our group is composed of two new players (Tactics? What are those?) and an experienced player with a very limited tolerance for coaching. So at least some of the difficulty really is just player ignorance. Optimized professional adventurers we are not.
It might be an optional rule, but the group I'm in does play with the triple 20 death rule. Our senior player insists on it. He says it adds realism, since otherwise a high level fighter could walk through a tribe of kobolds and kill every one of them without being in danger. (There's a reason I used that particular analogy.) He's rather partial to the 'Massive Damage' rule as well, though we aren't currently using it.
And to those who advised me to start looking around for other groups, I'm right there with you. I've recently joined two other groups who meet less regularly than my primary group. I do have fun with my primary GM, but I've been looking for groups who might be a better fit as well.
Oh, and Final Fantasy XIII was totally better than Final Fantasy XII. :p
Oh, and Final Fantasy XIII was totally better than Final Fantasy XII. :p
You've gasted my flabber miss and I don't appreciate it.
I thought 10 did the best job with summons out of any of them. 10 part 2 (for all that everyone hates it) presented a decent mechanic for a playable Summon. 12 tried to improve on that, but the summons were simply too weak to use, which was a big downside for me. 12 also presented an innovative approach to character turns that made it feel like half an action game and half an RPG. The problem was that it didn't get the mix right, and you were basically running around the battle field waiting to attack.
13 presented a new tactical twist with the ability to switch roles. It made waiting for your character to hit much more fun. The story and graphics were phenomenal. They were for 12 too- the storylines haven't been boring since 7 (except for X2). But 13 just had that something extra that made it special.
Basically, 13 succeeded almost everywhere that 12 tried to improve on. They took the triumphs of 12 and dramatically changed the parts that struggled.
So I can imagine that for anyone who really liked 12, 13 must have been awful. ;)
** spoiler omitted **
But the BEST PART of 12 was the fact that it was non-linear, you could explore places, and sidequests took place in different areas and all that jazz.
XIII is commonly derogatively named "Final Hallway XIII" for a reason.
That, and the plot was...odd to say the least. I can't really decide whether it was good or bad or just meh, it was just weird.
I liked XII's plot mostly because it was quite a bit different from the rest of the Final Fantasy games I've played (IV, VI, X, and XIII being the other ones. Yeah I never played more than 5 minutes of VII and never touched VIII, sue me) being more focused on the political interplay than a "save the world" plot, which I found was a refreshing change.
I think the only things I disliked about it were that Cid's character was a bit off in it, shirtless Vaan, and Basch, who while pretty cool and a good character in his own right I like to call "replaement Auron"., and those are just nitpicks.
While I agree the turn based/action hybrid wasn't quite perfect, it could have easily been improved on, and it was already quite workable.
In my eyes, XIII pretty much ruined any chance the Final Fantasy series had of changing from its linear, turn based roots, and the fact that it got not one, but TWO SEQUELS pretty much turned me off of Final Fantasy for good.
The fact that the XIII sequels have delayed "Versus XIII" which has in turn delayed Kingdom Hearts 3 (and I love that series and would like another installment I can play without buying 15 separate handhelds) have not helped matters.
I don't hate it nearly as much as I hate Dragon Age 2 (which I ironically find to be a good game on its own, unlike XIII imo), but it's up there on my list of "Gaming Travesties". Most of the list being comprised of my biggest peeve, wasted potential.
Statistically without a loaded die the chance of rolling three 20s in a row is not even 1/100.
It comes down to a 1/10,000 shot.
Setting aside the question of why a rule needs to exist if it usually does nothing and is occasionally very bad, let's talk probability:
Because of the way the XP system works, it takes about 20 encounters to level up. Suppose you have a party of five PC's and you run a 1-20 campaign. Now, suppose that during an average encounter, there are an average of 4 attack rolls made against each PC. If that sounds high, remember that the 3 20's equals death rule doesn't care how likely the attack was to hit in the first place; attacks that are almost certain to miss, like a -15 iterative or those of CR=APL-6 mooks, count just as much for this purpose as attacks that would normally "really" count. Then during your average campaign, a total of 20 level times 20 encounters per level times 4 attacks per PC per encounter times 5 PC's are made - in other words, the PC's are attacked 8000 times. On any given attack roll, the 3 20's = death rule has a 1/8000 probability of causing instant death, so the expected value of the number of times it will autokill a PC over the course of a campaign is 8000 * 1/8000 = 1.
In other words: the 3 20's = death rule autokills an average of one PC per campaign.
The original critical hit rule on a 20 came out of Empire of the Petal Throne (TSR 1975 iirc, or was it 1976? I don't have my copy at hand). The game was based on the original D&D rules with a totally alien background and a lot of fascinatingly different stuff. Iirc, on a "natural" 20 you did double damage. You rolled another 20 sided and a second 20 indicated death. One in 400 hits killed. It was widely house ruled into D&D games (along with Background Skills, etc.). That extra 20 sided in the new version of auto-death on a 20 greatly reduces the odds. But it's still there.
Which is pretty much in line with the reduced lethality of 3.x games. PCs are d@mn hard to kill these days. Really. In comparison to the original game (and 1E, Basic and 2E) that is. Of course PCs were pretty damn easy to generate in those days too. Roll 3d6 6 times in order (or % dice for EPT). Choose class. Roll HP. Choose alignment. Choose name. Buy starting equipment. Pick / roll spells (if you were a Magic User). Good to go in 5 or 10 minutes at most. A couple of hours can go by while generating a PF character. And that's if you're not too big into the backstory (which in the "old days" was largely "written" by events in game). Attachment to PCs was not that strong back in the day largely, imo, because the player didn't invest that much time creating the character. He didn't spend any real time plotting his advancement either. Today, it's different. Generating a 3.x PC takes so much time you feel like you know him. Well. That makes arbitrary or "meaningless" death harder to take.
My game is somewhat deadlier than vanilla PF / 3.x. My players and I like it that way. Death is more likely. Resurrection less so. But we all know that going in which makes the increased lethality acceptable, even desirable. Still nothing compared to the early years though :) Ahem, this is for Mystically Inclined :) One of my favorite games (besides D&D / PF) is Traveller. In the original version you could die before finishing character generation. Not joking. We used to generate characters as a kind of separate game (especially when the Mercenary and High Guard supplements came out). And combat was brutally realistic. Get shot with a pistol. And die. Original, lethal old, D&D was positively easy in comparison.
I think it is all good ("easy" or "hard" games). It just depends on the groups preferences, expectations, and the game system.
|
I find the discussion on triple 20's to be VERY funny. Let's get it into proportion - it would happen once every 8,000 (different) rolls. It's so unlikely that it only came up ONCE in my experience, and I have been roleplaying for about 12 years now (when it did come up, it was when a PC who was weaponless, with 3 hp, pinned down by a brown bear and getting ready to die, shouted angrily "I stab at his eyes with my fingers!" and rolled three nat 20's, killing the bear instantly. Hardly a negative exprience I'd say).
About the actual subject of the thread - I don't usualy fudge rolls and I tend to make combat pretty darned hard in my games as a GM, but then again I also use the hero points subsystem to allow players to avoid death roughly once per adventure. That way a lot of the REALLY random deaths are avoided. I really like my games to be story oriented, but I think fights are really more fun when they are challenging and there's actual tension around the table. Not every fight should be lethal (most of them are there to make the players feel good with their characters and to maybe dwindle their resources before a more serious fight), but I also can't really agree that character death should ONLY happen when the player decides it's the right time for it to happen.
Players get attached to characters, and they don't want thier characters to die 0 that's what makes death so interesting. I had an old campaign, about 4 years ago. The players in that campaign forgot almost everything about it, but they certainly remember the time one of the characters got eaten by a dinosaur, and it's a fun memory for them, meaning that overall, the death there helped create more fun and a better experience.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Seriously: That rule makes nothing better. Death should happen sometimes even without it, and utterly pointless deaths like that, while realistic, are stupid and cruel. It is a holdout of the old Simulationist style, and works directly against both the narrativist and gamist styles of play. It is close cousins with differing AC against specific types of armour, the reactions of NPCs seeing that someone has a poisoned weapon (50% of attacking, really? WTH, man?), encumbrance for material components, and so on. While some still play that game, I don't, and to be honest, few others do either in this day and age. Requiescat in pacem, autokill on triple 20.
The statistics of triple 20 are not in a player's favor. Yes, it is 1:8000. But considering how many attacks are rolled AGAINST players it is quite possible that this occurs.
I have personally rolled three 20s in a row a least a few times in the last year on both sides of the screen. My group has had discussions about the triple 20 house rule and we are happy we do not use it since it would have resulted in at least a couple arbitrary deaths by creatures that could normally not harm the PCs much.
Summary: The GM rolls thousands of times a year against players. It means that at least once a year there is actually a decent chance that three 20's in a row will occur.
- Gauss
|
|
The statistics of triple 20 are against players, yes. I suppose by what you said you don't only play with great frequency but also roll a TON of attacking dice each session... over the last adventure I played (Edge of Anarchy) I rolled maybe a total of 200 attacks against players. Can't see rolling anywhere near 8000 attacks in the entire adventure path.
Also, if you rolled triple 20's numerous times... that is a statistical anomaly, don't expect it to keep hapening.
My point remains - the rule is nearly meaningless. If once per two or three adventure paths a character dies randomly... well, I see it as a memorable experience the player will talk of in years to come. Again though, this barely matters because my point is that people seem very passionate about a rule that barely matters.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
"One time I died because the random number generator said I died."
Quite a memorable experience, I'm sure that's a story I'll be telling my grandkids
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Um... three 20s = death is a horrible rule. Really reminds me of Rolemaster where the only really important roll when a hit was generated was the critical result(s) where a 66 or 00 resulted in automatic death regardless of how minor the critical was supposed to be... But in Rolemaster (Tablemaster to some... but Deathmaster to me) It was never a question of IF you would die, but rather a question of WHEN you will die.
Separately though it sort of ruins the game when a GM is revealed to be fudging to keep PCs alive. It takes ALL the tension out of combat and turns combat into a yawn fest where it would be better just to skip combat and just say "You slaughter all the bad guys" rather than waste the considerable time it takes just to get past it.
|
"One time I died because the random number generator said I died."
Quite a memorable experience, I'm sure that's a story I'll be telling my grandkids
Well, if you don't put any story behind it, that pretty much describes ANY melee death in the game.
I personally like the rule, since it makes even the most minor of minions have some small degree of threat. Because sometimes, even the mook manages to get in a lucky shot.
|
I typically use the Hero Point system to negate some of the randomness to dice rolls. Players can burn a point to change the course of something going dreadfully wrong.
That's my favorite option. As a GM, I get to 'cheat' whenever I want, by just saying, 'oh, there were two more that just showed up' if a fight is going too easy or something. Giving the player the awesome power to reroll a single die roll per session or whatever isn't going to unbalance the GM/Player power balance, since the GM remains pretty much omnipotent.
Giving the players a hero point or action point every now and then is like a millionaire flipping a homeless dude a quarter on the way to his Maserati.
Mutants & Masterminds had the funky idea of making GM Fiat an actual thing, in which the GM decides that the super-villain needs to make a roll that he botched, or make a dramatic escape to be seen again in the climactic end match, even if he didn't have a power / escape option available (or retroactively have some sort of prepared workaround for something the GM didn't think of, even if the super-genius bad-guy would have...), by handing out Action Points to the PCs in that specific case, as a sort of 'bribe' to the players when the GM is obviously 'cheating' to sustain the narrative. I thought it was kind of a cool concept in a funny sort of 'meta' way, since it codified something that already was happening (GMs cheating to save a villain for a later fight or avoid a 'cheap' anticlimactic insta-gib because of a crappy roll) and built a mechanic around it.
M&M Hero Points also allow all sorts of other options, such as re-using an expended power, or pushing a power to do something it normally doesn't do, or simulating the effects of a feat you don't have for 1 round, which fit the super-hero genre (in which super-folk are constantly pulling off stunts they never have before and might never use again...).
Because sometimes, even the mook manages to get in a lucky shot.
Example?
"One time I died because the random number generator said I died."
Quite a memorable experience, I'm sure that's a story I'll be telling my grandkids
OK - lets go with that using an example of an 'insta-death' in my own Kingmaker campaign. The PCs were tracking down a barbarian werewolf and discovered him in their own castle (!). 2 groups of 2PCs rush to the scene and the werewolf bursts out of his room and, raging, in hybrid form, charges the cleric PC (also the Baron of the land) rolls a 20 with his great axe, confirms and rolls near max damage bring the cleric PC from full hp to dead.
Terrible right? I shouldn't have 'let' that happen! I've ruined everyone's fun!
Ha. If I had players who didn't trust me maybe. Instead I have awesome players with whom I have developed years of trust - earning it by consistently running a fair and fun game.
Instead the players, after capturing the werewolf, call in some favours and go into some serious debt (not money wise - just in future 'considerations' from a powerful cleric of a LG deity even they don't know what they have let themselves in for) to bring the cleric PC back (they were 5th level at the time so a Raise Dead was usually out of the question) then put the murderer on trial! This took up 2 sessions (10 hours) of play with the players loving every minute! What?! But I ruined the game! How could this have happened?!
Get a GM you trust - or earn the trust of your players through hard work, good, fair adjudicating and running a fun game.
Oh one last note - the player whose PC died? My best friend for the last 20+ years and his reaction was a shrug and 'Damn. S**t happens.' He then, after being raised played 3 more sessions with a -2 level adjustment and was still a cornerstone of the party in combat. We have a standing house rule that negative levels disappear after you gain a new level so he finally got 6th level and is back to full power.
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Had a DM running an introductory campaign at the local college. Anyone could join in, and whoever showed was who played.
Had one girl spend the first two hours of the night rolling up her druid character. She gets introduced to the party and we go on into the party camping for the night. On her watch, the DM rolls a troll encounter.
Spotting the troll, our fresh face charges it with her scimitar, waking everyone up with her warning. On the trolls turn, with a target right in front, it claw claw rends. He rolls damage, adds it up, and announces it.
I lean over, look at her HP, and say 'Negative twenty. She's dead.'
The girl never came back.
Because sometimes, even the mook manages to get in a lucky shot.
Example?
Fantasy fiction tends to more dramatic deaths. And if a mook kills somebody important in a book (or in mythology) he ends up not being a mook after that. The usual explanation is that he was really somebody after all.
Game wise, how much experience is the typical high level hero worth to a low level nobody character? I suspect they level up after that, collect a reward and "become somebody". Just like fiction and myth :)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The girl never came back.
Sounds like you protected the RPG community by keeping away a fake roleplayer who really just wanted to play WOW.
As with most of these things, I think it's all things in moderation. I don't usually fudge die rolls because I think it weakens respect for the mechanics; if everybody's dying all the time, then either something is wrong with the mechanics or wrong with the way I as GM am designing challenges, and then in either case it's time to chat with the players about how to fix it. Given in my games death is extremely rare, and most often occurs when player tactics crumble.
I've always hated save-or-die mechanics and usually avoid them, except for massive damage saves (which are overcomable and rare at least in my games). (As an aside, I also hate don't-save-or-nothing mechanics. I like spells to always accomplish something, with a saving throw limiting but not negating its effect, but never to be a instant-win button.) A SOD in my game might show up rarely at a high stakes moment, where I've done my best to make players well aware.
I don't design fights to be death traps (if anything I admit some of my fights are too easy, although not by intent either). But if the party is in a bad way due to lousy luck or lousy tactics, I remind them it is okay to beat a hasty retreat and will not get in their way of that (as long as it makes sense). I might even enable it, depending. If they choose to fight regardless of the stakes, after they've been made crystal clear, and then they die, then that was the risk they knowingly took.
In some games I have a "one free raise" rule. First time you die, it's easy for the party to find a way to get back to life. But there are consequences--you agree with the god that saw your way back to the land of the living to accomplish something, for example. Or perhaps you take a scar or permanent injury, as a reminder of your ordeal. Or whatever makes the most sense of the story. I also make it as clear as I possibly can that the second time won't be as easy. And again, people don't often die in my games so this normally isn't a problem that upsets my players, to the best of my knowledge.
I wouldn't play a game, personally, if it was highly likely my character was to die every single encounter. Frankly, I'd find a game like that boring because, accepting that my character could die any second, I wouldn't bother putting any energy into the character's personality or development because I wouldn't want to get attached.
And often the stakes which push me into the game and make me excited are those other than death--the risk of failing to save the kidnap victim, failing to find the macguffin, failing to protect the town, failing to eat the delicious chocolatey cake, whatever. A good game to me isn't one where people go, "Oh no, what if I die?" It is one where people go, "oh no, what if we don't get to see what happens next?" Death can be boring if it becomes commonplace and you're just always rolling up characters; a good story with death or other high stakes is far more desirable.
And mind I probably wouldn't play a game where it was impossible to die (unless it was like, Planescape: Torment or something) because I'd rather there be some sense of danger--it is an adventure after all.
TL;DR: All things in moderation, including PC death and ways of managing high and low stakes. Find a balance, be fair, and most of all have fun.
The girl never came back.Sounds like you protected the RPG community by keeping away a fake roleplayer who really just wanted to play WOW.
Precisely.
On a more serious note, I don't think that was handled incorrectly insofar as the dying went. The creature rolled, it hit, it killed her, that's how the game works.
However for a first encounter in the game with 1st level characters, a do-over wouldn't exactly ruin anything.
Rules cause adaptation. If this is a thing, canny players will focus on ways to avoid being attacked at all. They will often retreat, generally use divinations all the time, and kill even potential enemies quickly and instantly given the slightest chance. They will avoid fighting many enemies when they can murder one. At least one will make a diplomancer. A different, decidedly unheroic, playstyle.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The girl never came back.Sounds like you protected the RPG community by keeping away a fake roleplayer who really just wanted to play WOW.Precisely.
On a more serious note, I don't think that was handled incorrectly insofar as the dying went. The creature rolled, it hit, it killed her, that's how the game works.
However for a first encounter in the game with 1st level characters, a do-over wouldn't exactly ruin anything.
But perhaps the GM didn't need to throw a troll at a completely green player that had spent a good couple of hours making a PC, and was assuming it's a game about heroes (silly fool player). That girl couldn't have had any idea about the stats of a troll and how bad an idea it was to charge it. Why not surprise another PC on lone watch and let that player model a correct response (ie anything but charging in solo) rather than just smashing a completely inexperienced player?
Dogs learn by having their snouts shoved in their poop. People (even gamers!) are not dogs - we can learn in other ways.
Just my 2 cp.
Dogs frequently EAT poop. And barf. And two-month dead birds, and all sorts of generally yucky stuff. Shoving their snouts into poop may not teach them what you hope. Nor may trolls ripping a first character teach gamers what you think.
|
|
Rules cause adaptation. If this is a thing, canny players will focus on ways to avoid being attacked at all. They will often retreat, generally use divinations all the time, and kill even potential enemies quickly and instantly given the slightest chance. They will avoid fighting many enemies when they can murder one. At least one will make a diplomancer. A different, decidedly unheroic, playstyle.
Again, you seem to be giving WWWAAAAYYY yoo much wegiht for a 1/8000 chance thing. You know what? in real life, when you are driving a car, there's a greater risk than 1/8000 of death. That dosen't make you (as a canny person :P) to focus on ways to avoid driving.
Be serious - adventurers are people who adopted a lifestyle of risks. If what they have to fear out of an encounter is a 1/8000 chance of death, then you are going to easy on them to start with.
|
|
"One time I died because the random number generator said I died."
Quite a memorable experience, I'm sure that's a story I'll be telling my grandkids
As others pointed out that could just happen from normal dice rolls anyway.
Did you ever play Poker? did you ever had that one super annoying game where you were playing your cards right and went all in with your full house just to find out someone else had a royal flush? you did evreything right, the world champions of proffesional poker would have done the same thing, but the "random card generator" (aka deck) said you lost, so you did.That's annoying, you lost despite doing everythig right... and that's the game you'll still be talking about years later.
Yes, "My 8th level unstoppable barbarian was stabbed to death by a kobold" is quite the story. Groups capable of roleplaying could also make a lot of this situation. And let me assure you... after you roll the first 20 and then the second... you'll get like 5 seconds while rolling the third where everyone at the table would be holding thier breaths. And the best part of it is? 19 out of every 20 times this happens, no PC will even die (except if the usual critical hit kills her anyway), and you got some intense, fun moments in the game and everything was O.K eventualy.
I would have hoped that Smaug would have been a BBEG run by the DM... and that the player who was running Bard the Bowman would have been smiling and high-fiving his fellow players ;)
Rules cause adaptation. If this is a thing, canny players will focus on ways to avoid being attacked at all. They will often retreat, generally use divinations all the time, and kill even potential enemies quickly and instantly given the slightest chance. They will avoid fighting many enemies when they can murder one. At least one will make a diplomancer. A different, decidedly unheroic, playstyle.Again, you seem to be giving WWWAAAAYYY yoo much wegiht for a 1/8000 chance thing. You know what? in real life, when you are driving a car, there's a greater risk than 1/8000 of death. That dosen't make you (as a canny person :P) to focus on ways to avoid driving.
Be serious - adventurers are people who adopted a lifestyle of risks. If what they have to fear out of an encounter is a 1/8000 chance of death, then you are going to easy on them to start with.
First off, no, driving is not more than a 1/8000 chance of death. Furthermore, it is far from something you can't affect. Drive when not drunk, drive during daytime, and so on. So, people don't avoid driving because of an 1/8000 risk of death, they avoid HAVING that 1/8000 risk whatsoever, by driving safely. Just for your information: If it was 1/8000 no matter what you did, someone driving to work and back every day of the week would die after, ON AVERAGE, twenty years. I seem to recall that serious injuries in traffic accidents are more than five times as common as deaths, so this simple driver would get seriously injured due to traffic accidents EVERY FOURTH YEAR, again, on average. Allow me to doubt that figure VERY MUCH.
Second, avoiding 1/8000 risks of death is precisely what I see when people play. I did not speculate, I have seen it rather frequently. Players today often take a very long-term approach to playing: They map out their full twenty levels of advancement from the start, they make lists of magic equipment and when to buy or craft them, and so on. When they do, it also becomes a serious consideration that they can expect to die after around 8000 attacks made against them. I have seen many draw the consequences of that.
Dogs frequently EAT poop. And barf. And two-month dead birds, and all sorts of generally yucky stuff. Shoving their snouts into poop may not teach them what you hope. Nor may trolls ripping a first character teach gamers what you think.
Lol having never actually shoved a dog's nose in its poop, I'm certainly aware that there are other ways to teach them stuff. I think we're making the same point :)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The girl never came back.Sounds like you protected the RPG community by keeping away a fake roleplayer who really just wanted to play WOW.
Or more likely scared away a potential player by not giving them the chance to learn how the game works.
One shot a a first level character in the player's first ever game? That is just about the worst introduction you can get to a hobby, and one of the worst example of DMing I have heard of.
Read the Iliad. Achilles had quite an annoying death, I'd say.Because sometimes, even the mook manages to get in a lucky shot.Example?
Paris was a mook?
(Someone else talked about Smaug, and the HBO series turned me off ASOIAF.)
Jiggy: Thank you! ^_^ Things are going great so far.
JohnB: Roberta tends to use sarcasm to make her points. Going by her previous posts in this thread, she was making the same point you are.
Rynjin: Huh. You know, I'd never thought much about the strict storyline in FF XII. That actually IS pretty unusual compared to some of the previous games. But now that I think about it, 10 was a lot like that too, and my favorite games in the series are 1, 7, 10, and 13. So with 7 excepted, I guess it's not an issue for me. But this definitely puts some light on why people are fans of 8 and 12.
I thought XIII 2 was pretty good, unlike XIII. And of course, VIII is by far the best story of the bunch.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Read the Iliad. Achilles had quite an annoying death, I'd say.Because sometimes, even the mook manages to get in a lucky shot.Example?Paris was a mook?
(Someone else talked about Smaug, and the HBO series turned me off ASOIAF.)
Achilles was a BBEG a psychopathic murder hobo.... Hector was the true tragic hero in that story.
LOL... this might be a fun thread.
I am one of those players who feels that without consequences, achievements don't mean much. I don't want the GM to fudge or go easy on my characters. In fact one of the very, very few disagreements I have with our group's other main GM is that he is too easy on us. Here's a fairly typical exchange:
GM: "The ogre swings his club, what's your AC?"
Me: "21"
GM: "Really, 21?"
Me: "Yep, no time to buff for this fight, so 21."
GM: "How many hit points do you have?"
Me: "More than zero."
GM: "Come on, what do you have?"
Me: "Roll your damage and I'll tell you."
GM: "But I don't want to kill you!"If my character dies, they die. Doesn't happen much, and I can deal with it when it does.
But I get your point Mystically Inclined. I just think that the right way to deal with it is to manage the encounters more accurately so that you don't have to fudge the dice to keep the characters alive.
Part of that, in my games, is that I consistently remind my players that running away is no shame. Even if they leave a PC behind, it's better than a TPK. But then they all say (whether they truly believe it or not) that they want the game to be real and threats to have teeth.
I think the game is pretty survivable as it is when you give the players the right sort of encounters, or when the players aren't afraid to run.
Walk through the valley of death and fear no dice rolls.
I like a hard game, I run hard games.
Rules cause adaptation. If this is a thing, canny players will focus on ways to avoid being attacked at all. They will often retreat, generally use divinations all the time, and kill even potential enemies quickly and instantly given the slightest chance. They will avoid fighting many enemies when they can murder one. At least one will make a diplomancer. A different, decidedly unheroic, playstyle.Again, you seem to be giving WWWAAAAYYY yoo much wegiht for a 1/8000 chance thing. You know what? in real life, when you are driving a car, there's a greater risk than 1/8000 of death. That dosen't make you (as a canny person :P) to focus on ways to avoid driving.
Be serious - adventurers are people who adopted a lifestyle of risks. If what they have to fear out of an encounter is a 1/8000 chance of death, then you are going to easy on them to start with.
First off, no, driving is not more than a 1/8000 chance of death. Furthermore, it is far from something you can't affect. Drive when not drunk, drive during daytime, and so on. So, people don't avoid driving because of an 1/8000 risk of death, they avoid HAVING that 1/8000 risk whatsoever, by driving safely. Just for your information: If it was 1/8000 no matter what you did, someone driving to work and back every day of the week would die after, ON AVERAGE, twenty years. I seem to recall that serious injuries in traffic accidents are more than five times as common as deaths, so this simple driver would get seriously injured due to traffic accidents EVERY FOURTH YEAR, again, on average. Allow me to doubt that figure VERY MUCH.
Second, avoiding 1/8000 risks of death is precisely what I see when people play. I did not speculate, I have seen it rather frequently. Players today often take a very long-term approach to playing: They map out their full twenty levels of advancement from the start, they make lists of magic equipment and when to buy or craft them, and so on. When they do, it also becomes a...
Maybe, the experienced drivers with plenty in their favour can take ten, the crazy/reckless/drunk/high are always rolling the dice (often on penalties).
|
And having to start from the beginning of a mission/checkpoint/whatever is also losing by that logic. It's just less losing, and it's a necessary mitigation since I know that pretty much every extant genre of game would either be non-existent or significantly changed (mostly for the worst) if you had to start the game over when you died.
S~%#, could you IMAGINE having to start over, say, Final Fantasy X every time you got a Game Over?
THINK ABOUT THAT. IT'S HORRIFYING.
But this approach to the question is quite selfish, which I think is quite a bit of the problem in these discussions.
It isn't just your game. There are 4 people involved in the game, and generally they didn't all die.
And, if you are a group that enjoys creating a narrative, or in a broader context, a canon for the world you are playing in, the Retcon that come with video gaming is rather jarring for the group, even if one person likes it.
One of my favorite games is Skyrim. It has a great story, and in the narrative of the story, the character never dies. Sure, when you are playing they die, but you just retcon to a save point and continue with the undying hero.
Which is fine, because you are only retconning yourself.
In a group game with a narrative, the show goes on if there are other players alive to continue.
If the entire group wants to run a "low death" or "high death" game, great, everyone is on board and everyone is happy. But if there is one player who refuses to get on board...well...that causes problems.
It isn't about which way is right or wrong to play. It is about what group you are in, and adapting to the that expectation. I personally prefer "the dice are what they are" groups where death happens if it makes logical sense, and becomes part of the story.
If you don't, you aren't wrong, but you may be in the the wrong group.
Just popping in to suggest an alternative to the 3x20s rule we use at our table... it reverse scales with PC levels, so inexperienced PCs are more at risk than higher level ones which is kind of what would be expected.
It goes like this.
You roll a 20...
Roll another dice, if you miss, your initial damage is resolved normally.
If you hit, you do max damage.
If you roll another 20, note one lot of max damage and roll again,
Note this is a loop point.
If you miss, player takes normal damage plus any "saved" max damage prior in the sequence of rolls.
If you hit, player takes max damage plus any "saved" max damage
If you roll another 20, add a max damage to your save total, roll again and go back to the loop point.
We affectionately refer to this method as "Roll over and over"
Examples:
Say you have a standard non magical d8 damage weapon, no strength bonus, only crits on a 20 etc to keep it simple.
roll 19 (hit) - d8 damage
roll 20 & 2 (miss) - d8 damage
roll 20 & 19 (hit) - 8 damage
roll 20 & 20 & 2 - d8 + 8 damage
roll 20 & 20 & 19 - 8 + 8 damage
roll 20 & 20 & 20 & 2 - d8 + 16 damage
roll 20 & 20 & 20 & 19 - 8 + 16 damage
roll 20 & 20 & 20 & 2 - d8 + 16 damage
roll 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 & 2 - d8 + 24 damage
roll 20 & 20 & 20 & 20 & 19 - 8 + 24 damage
so the damage increases with each successive 20 but doesn't always mean outright death (low levels are more in danger due to their inexperience in combat reflected by their low health pools, whereas more experienced PCs can take the damage once or twice, and critting still means something in the combat scheme of things).
And we also say that the 20 rolled must hit, if it's a miss, you can't crit and just do normal damage. (i.e. 20+ modifiers must beat the target to be able to crit).
We also dont multiple up strength bonuses, extra dice (back stab) etc, just the base weapon dice get "maxed" and accumulated.
And yeah, after 5 successive 20's, the dice becomes banned from play :P
So far, I haven't banned a single dice and we have been doing this for close to 10 years.
Then again, there's always one guy...:
I truly don't appreciate it when people ever-so-politely 'suggest' that Pathfinder (and in fact, table top RPGs period) aren't for me simply because I advocate a different play style. "Don't like it hard? Maybe this game isn't for you. Why don't you try a nice video game instead? I hear those are easy. I wouldn't know, though. I don't play them." Nice.
Being that one guy. Let me at first apologize as that was not my intent. Now let me explain it so you can know where I am coming from.
I have played in my life All edition D&D, Pathfinder*, Legend of the Five Rings*, Rifts*, Champions*, Iron Kingdoms*, Dark Hersey, Deathwatch, various WoD, Star Frontiers, Gama World, Star Wars(D6 and d20), Dead lands(Weird and Wasted), Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Top Secret, Marvel Super Heroes, Alternity, 7th Sea, Chill, Exalted, Scion, Boot Hill, Brave New World and atleast a dozen more that I can't remember right now.(the ones with a * are games I am currently playing)
I have played and enjoyed many different styles of play also. I have perferences but who does not?
So with my experiences I realize that each game system has it's own stregnth and weaknesses when it comes to play style. They also comes with different expecations. I merely suggested other games for you to try outside of Pathfinder.
As to the video games suggestion...I don't where you see I don't play them? I don't now...but for a period in my life when I had no group I played the heck out of the old SSI D&D games and Baldur's Gate.
My suggestion stems from the fact that it seemed to me with the house rule you stated your problems with your group. I don't know what your situration is...but if there is no other groups in your area than video games are a ok subsitution.
As for trying out other games systems that would increase the number of people you would consider playing with and a similair play style you might enjoy...or if you were to introduce a your current group to a game you might find they can enjoy a 'Easy Mode' game as well...once you get by the expecation that comes with D&D.
Pathfinder is probably my go to game. It is my favorite of many systems I play...but it is hardly the only game out there.
Again I apolgize if my prior or this posty offends you.
Rules cause adaptation. If this is a thing, canny players will focus on ways to avoid being attacked at all. They will often retreat, generally use divinations all the time, and kill even potential enemies quickly and instantly given the slightest chance. They will avoid fighting many enemies when they can murder one. At least one will make a diplomancer. A different, decidedly unheroic, playstyle.
I guess it is how one defines Heroic...
To me a hero who outwits, aviods unneccessary bloodshed, who when engaged in combat does so knowing full well they may die is just as heroic than someone who might makes right, kills everything in the room with even the the slightest hint of confrontation, and enages in combat with a lesser degree of risk to themselves.
It is a holdout of the old Simulationist style, and works directly against both the narrativist and gamist styles of play.
Putting it this way, you make it sound like a very very good thing.
And, you may have misused the word "old" (by using it at all) - unless you were truly making a distinction between "old simulationist" and "simulationist"...
First and foremost, i would like to paraphrase Extra Creditz by saying, games don't have to be fun, they have to be engaging.
Nonetheless fun is one way of player engagement.
I think, unless the players are gluttons for punishment and/or agree to a more "Dark Souls" approach to the game, PC death should only come at the players own fault, bad calls should be what takes them out, not purely random chance. I'm saying "not purely" because if we remove the possibility of bad consequences because of random chance, we might as well remove dice from the game. If a lucky crit would instantly kill a PC, fudge the result so it only sends him into negative HP, if his teammates refuse or are unable to help him, then- if necessary- fudge his Fort roll to stabilize.
If the PC takes an attack that, while not putting him to -HP yet would be powerful enough to kill him if it hit again, and the player decides to stay in range of that attack, even if he could move to safety in his next turn, yeah, I'd probably let him take the full force of the next hit and possibly kill him.
That's how i handle it in my games, and my players tend to agree with it. In our last session i had the players fight a few crypt things and they teleported them into a different area, filled with mummies, crypt things and troll skeletons and the only way out was an unknown staircase (which might have held who knows what more) and a secret door they were not aware of. I knew if i had let all of the monsters they were faced with attack at once and not fudge any rolls, i would have TPKed them, but it really wasn't their fault that they got stranded in the middle of a monster horde.
Now other people will disagree and I say more power to them. Some people might like an unforgiving game, where you can die through sheer unlucky rolls. I think that's fine (and seeing how i am a guy who constantly wants to try out different characters, i woud not even mind trying such a game out as a player) as long as all players agree with the GM, that this is what the game should be like.
Others might not want the gsme to be challenging at all, rather an interactive story, with the dice only providing randomized resolution of encounters. Not at all my thing but, again, if everyone at the table agrees to this, go right ahead.
Everyone has a personal taste in this, and no one is wrong. It's just a game, and everyone should play it as they like to. This shouldn't even be a discussion.
Rules cause adaptation. If this is a thing, canny players will focus on ways to avoid being attacked at all. They will often retreat, generally use divinations all the time, and kill even potential enemies quickly and instantly given the slightest chance. They will avoid fighting many enemies when they can murder one. At least one will make a diplomancer. A different, decidedly unheroic, playstyle.I guess it is how one defines Heroic...
To me a hero who outwits, aviods unneccessary bloodshed, who when engaged in combat does so knowing full well they may die is just as heroic than someone who might makes right, kills everything in the room with even the the slightest hint of confrontation, and enages in combat with a lesser degree of risk to themselves.
I never said anyone avoided bloodshed. "Hmmm, these three satyrs were seen two days ago together with some unknown person, which we have no description of. They live outside the dungeon, and we may need to pass this way then. So, not knowing their capability, nor whether they are hostile, it is better if we kill them without making ourselves known to them first. Three maximized fireballs to start with then?" is what I am talking about, as is "The mayor seems like a good sort, but it would be safer for usto have my geased servant at his post. Anyone who sees a reason to let him live?"
Not what I would call heroic.
It is a holdout of the old Simulationist style, and works directly against both the narrativist and gamist styles of play.Putting it this way, you make it sound like a very very good thing.
And, you may have misused the word "old" (by using it at all) - unless you were truly making a distinction between "old simulationist" and "simulationist"...
No. I stand by my words. Simulationist games were the root and egg of our hobby. We should acknowledge that. Still, it is a far rarer type of game today - and third edition was a very big step away from it. So, yes, OLD simulationist style. You enjoy that, more power to you.