40% combat
10% exploration
20% story
10% planning (semi-roleplaying but often OOC)
5% proper roleplaying (pretty badly)
10% rules interpretation/looking up (unfortunately)
5% discussing other campaigns/games
|
Combat 10%
Roleplaying 70%
Traps and Puzzles 5%
Exploration 5%
Off-Topic Chit-Chat 10%
We rarely get into any significant combats. Our main focus is roleplaying and this usually generates enough non-combat tension for our group. We're a bunch of old-time roleplayers, so we like a bit of chit-chat and lots of roleplaying limelight.
Well, I go two ways on this:
Old Group Since '84
50% Roleplay
25% Combat
25% Other Stuff
This group has on occasion gone a whole Gaming Day with out rolling a dice in Combat! Awesome games. It is a large group with 10 Players if everyone makes the Game and 16 PCs/NPCs.
Younger Group (Not Age, but Running Time)
75% Combat
20% AARs (After Action Reports)
5% Roleplay
This group is ALL ABOUT the fight. They like it detailed, gritty and non stop!! Roleplaying is only done to facilitate the fight. This group also rocks and we have a great time. Some days, fights can go for over 4 hours. There are 7 Players and 10 PCs/NPCs.
The Old Timers are fairly optimized for combat but are well rounded with Skills to support their PCs. The Young Guns are full out combat bunnies and have just enough skills to make the few out of combat rolls they need.
The Old School games are usually Weekend or Entire Day Games. The Young Guns are usually 5 - 8 hour runs with some Friday Night or Saturdays thrown in for Epic Fights.
Have Fun out there!!
~ W ~
Combat is important, but not terribly interesting to me. Generally speaking I find character development and interaction (with NPCs and PCs) to be far more interesting. Combats that are not directly plot relevant irritate the hell out of me, which is a big part of the reason why I don't do well on dungeon crawls.
I'd say the average in percentages looks something like this:
65% Interaction/Roleplay
15% Exploring
20% Combat
Most other actions - e.g. planning, shopping, ect, tend to happen IC and just turn into more roleplay opportunity.
Interesting thread.
I run a play by post game thats been ongoing for about a year and a half ( Legacy of Fire ). Grid referenced tactical maps are often used for combats unless its trivial or obvious.
My group seem to not be sure what they like - when combat pops up, its obvious that excitement and interest increase, and based on that alone, combat seems to fill the most important role in the game. However, at the conclusion of LoF1 when asked about whether they wanted more or less combat, what they liked and disliked, they said they preferred the story over melee, and that melee could be a bit dull. Given that LoF2 is basically a dungeon crawl, this lead to some concerns over how well it would go down. But, LoF2 is now complete - and everyone enjoyed it, despite being melee heavy ( although they talked their way through some of the factions... )
As someone else has mentioned before I think its about how the melee occurs - if its an interesting unusual setup then my players really get into it, and love playing through the tactical consequences. On the other hand, mundane combat with say a wandering monster turns them off. Its got to the stage now where I don't bother with wandering monsters at all - and try to put some TLC into some cool feature monster from the random tables ( IE Chupacabra in LoF1 ), or add extra NPC's with some character dimension in to spice things up.
I think without combat, half of our game would become pointless, even though the group likes the story, they got heavily kitted for war ( there are almost no touchy feely skills / classes ) - the story wants to be king, but it needs the contrast of some melee to really show itself off. Sometimes you have to reach for weapons... I guess its something about needing a little dark to really appreciate how great the light is.
My group are not roleplayers - about the only time they will interact in character is when speaking with an NPC, intergroup chat is by default OOC - but they get a lot of satisfaction from debating how to handle situations, or trying to figure out who is up to what. Rarely a player will insult or smack down another in character ( although it can be hard to tell ! ) , the players arent a 100% group think entity, and there can be little doses of real friction.
As its a PBB I get time to write up nice NPC interactions and fill out the story - which is what the players like the most.. so they say.
Personally I would really enjoy running or playing a low/no combat game, but I am easy either way.
[...]If I want to move figures around on a board in a tactical fashion I would rather play chess.
S.
D&D 4th would do as well as chess.
At the tables where they dont have a place, they never had one to begin with so nothing has been lost. If a group demands everyone be good in combat, the switch to pathfinder didnt bring that about, it has to do with the group. I will definately admit I get frustrated with characters that are useless in combat even if they are useful elsewhere, because our group is pretty much all optimizers, and as such our dms tend to throw rather dangerous fights at us. When a character ends up not contributing it becomes very difficult.On top of that, if they have to explicately be protected it can be even more frustrating. If the story you want to tell is the fellowship protecting frodo, awesome, but that isnt every adventure, and it isnt every adventurer. The majority of self interested adventurers (in character) would cut dead weight loose pretty early in their careers before they get someone killed.
I've seen this argument before, and I think it has tremendous validity at a lot of tables. If the majority of the group are combat optimizers, the difficulty of the combat encounters is ratcheted up and non-optimized characters either can't survive or can't contribute. If you are the odd man out I can see the need to bend and change your style and optimize. But what if you have a mixed table, like mine is? At my current table, of seven players, we only have one who is a dedicated optimizer, a couple of others who do it to some extent, and a few others who don't choose to take the time/don't have the experience and familiarity with the rules to really optimize well. I still ratchet up the encounters to challenge the combat beasts, but haven't noticed a lot of undue character deaths or "dead weight" issues. Perhaps this is because even the non-optimizers generally play pretty smart tactically and find their ways to contribute.
I will admit to getting frustrated with one player in our last campaign, when I was playing rather than GMing. He was playing a barbarian with extremely high strength and extremely low charisma, min-maxed as far as he could. Unfortunately he then made character build and equipment choices that made him far less of a combat beast than he could have been (tried to be a grappling specialist which didn't work because we ended up fighting mostly stuff much too big and strong to grapple, and insisted on using a longbow rather than thrown weapons for reasons that still escape me). As he was our only real melee specialist it grated to see him plink away with his bow or futilely try and grapple the bugbear monk, rather than take advantage of his insane strength by throwing a spear right through the bad guys and then closing to bash away with his greatsword. In fairness, he was trying for a concept he thought would be devastating and it just didn't work out. Our frustration, however, was usually more with his tactical choices than with his stats and potential combat effectiveness.
IRL I'd roll my eyes at your character choice ... in game I would wait a couple of fights and then in game tell you that I appreciate that you started your life as a catburglar and while that is occasionally useful it's time to at least start training to use magic devices so you can throw around some spells instead of hitting air while the rest of us are getting stabbed and beaten out there. Adventuring is not the same thing as being a thief ...
Your background is yours to decide, but it takes dogged metagaming to stay useless ... and I'm not a fan of metagaming.
I'm not sure I really understand metagaming quite the way you seem to. I have always kind of defined it as using knowledge that you as a player have but that your character would not to improve your character's efforts in the game. For example, using the fact that you have read the entire Bestiary and memorized it to make sure your character exploits the weaknesses of every monster he faces, even if there would be no way for your character to know those weaknesses. Or using the fact that in real life you have an engineering background to develop effective strategies to besiege a castle when your character doesn't have any ranks in knowledge engineering. You seem to be working off a completely different definition. Perhaps you can explain what you mean by your use of metagaming?
I agree with you that if the vast majority of the encounters you are facing are combat encounters and a player absolutely refuses to improve their combat abilities, that player is being kind of obnoxious and pig-headed. A large part of why I started this thread was to get a feel for whether the majority of games were dominated by combat to the extent that non-combat specialists would be discouraged and/or considered a hindrance to the party. You have clearly answered for your group, for which I thank you. I note, however that there is a pretty wide variety of responses on this thread, including some who say they have little combat at all in their games. That encourages me, frankly, as it means there is probably a good game out there for every player, no matter what their style of play.
I run a play by post game thats been ongoing for about a year and a half ( Legacy of Fire ). Grid referenced tactical maps are often used for combats unless its trivial or obvious.My group seem to not be sure what they like - when combat pops up, its obvious that excitement and interest increase, and based on that alone, combat seems to fill the most important role in the game. However, at the conclusion of LoF1 when asked about whether they wanted more or less combat, what they liked and disliked, they said they preferred the story over melee, and that melee could be a bit dull. Given that LoF2 is basically a dungeon crawl, this lead to some concerns over how well it would go down. But, LoF2 is now complete - and everyone enjoyed it, despite being melee heavy ( although they talked their way through some of the factions... )
I am not sure how much this applies to your situation, but in pbp I've noticed combat is a two-edged sword, as it were.
- On one hand, combat demands that people will show up and post. In pbp, it is often the only time people are required to post (and in a particular order). People pay more attention to combat and thus to the pbp thread because they need to know what happens and see what it's their turn. Often the guy who forgets to check in will check in during combat at least.
- On the other hand, if someone disappears from combat or doesn't post promptly, it bogs down the game horribly. People don't know what to do, the Gm has to try to hunt down the player... or even worse, it's the GM who disappears, and the entire party is SOL. If a GM has a busy day, and the party is not in combat, the party can entertain themselves by roleplaying with each other. If the the party is in combat and the GM can't post with some regularity, the whole thing shuts down. If posting is simply slow--then you end up in pbp often spending DAYS on a single scene that in the gameworld took a few minutes tops. Most pbps I've been in have died, or at least suffered a serious stalling, in the middle of combat, because either a player or the GM failed to participate.
The playing limitations of pbp--that you do not have a captive audience, that essentially people come and go to the thread--makes the balance of combat with other events an even more major quandary than at a physical table.
I imagine your game benefited from part one and didn't suffer badly from part 2, but still sensed the "event bottleneck" that is combat via pbp.
You know... I find it hard to have perspective, and I bet Lathiira (one of my players) could answer this better.
But I would say it's probably
25% combat
20% exploration
30% roleplay and story
25% player planning, rules talk, analysis, puzzles, traps, etc.
Pretty much this. Our group gets bored if in say a 4 hour session that combat "mechanics" takes anymore than about an hour. If I want to move figures around on a board in a tactical fashion I would rather play chess.
S.
Actually, some of my players (and I) also play miniatures wargames, and there is a fair amount of overlap between the two hobbies. As I said at the beginning, I had always thought that we had a pretty combat-heavy group, as almost everyone really enjoys the fights, particularly coming up with effective tactics, but reading these boards had led me to question that assumption. What I'm finding in this thread is that we seem to be about average, or trending just slightly toward being combat-heavy. However, there are a lot of groups who both have significantly more emphasis on combat than we do (which I suspected when I began this thread) and an awful lot, like yours, who seem to emphasize it considerably less (which I am a bit surprised by, based on the arguments I see in other threads). I like the variety!
in which the only thing at stake is whether the imaginary cowboy shoots the imaginary Indian, as anything other than what it is - a frivolousThe problem is the people who want to play farmer and veterinarian while you just want to enjoy a nice frivolous game of Cowboys and Indians.
It's kinda tough on the suspense of disbelief.
I don't think anoyone is talking about playing farmer or veterinarian. More like catburglar or boxman or sage or healer or any of a number of fantasy archetypes that aren't necessarily good at combat. The question is whether those are still viable character concepts at most tables or whether the system has become so combat-centric as to make them not viable.
Interesting thread.
I run a play by post game thats been ongoing for about a year and a half ( Legacy of Fire ). Grid referenced tactical maps are often used for combats unless its trivial or obvious.
My group seem to not be sure what they like - when combat pops up, its obvious that excitement and interest increase, and based on that alone, combat seems to fill the most important role in the game. However, at the conclusion of LoF1 when asked about whether they wanted more or less combat, what they liked and disliked, they said they preferred the story over melee, and that melee could be a bit dull. Given that LoF2 is basically a dungeon crawl, this lead to some concerns over how well it would go down. But, LoF2 is now complete - and everyone enjoyed it, despite being melee heavy ( although they talked their way through some of the factions... )
As someone else has mentioned before I think its about how the melee occurs - if its an interesting unusual setup then my players really get into it, and love playing through the tactical consequences. On the other hand, mundane combat with say a wandering monster turns them off. Its got to the stage now where I don't bother with wandering monsters at all - and try to put some TLC into some cool feature monster from the random tables ( IE Chupacabra in LoF1 ), or add extra NPC's with some character dimension in to spice things up.
I think without combat, half of our game would become pointless, even though the group likes the story, they got heavily kitted for war ( there are almost no touchy feely skills / classes ) - the story wants to be king, but it needs the contrast of some melee to really show itself off. Sometimes you have to reach for weapons... I guess its something about needing a little dark to really appreciate how great the light is.
My group are not roleplayers - about the only time they will interact in character is when speaking with an NPC, intergroup chat is by default OOC - but they get a lot of satisfaction from debating how to handle...
Interesting. Your folks seem to get an adrenalin rush from combat and enjoy it when it is happening, but after the fact say they would like less of it. I've noticed the same from a couple of my players.
Your players also, despite their preferences, recognize the importance of optimizing for combat.
I also agree with your point on random encounters sometimes seeming pointless distractions. I too, have done away with them in some campaigns I've run. In the game I'm running now, however, Kingmaker, exploration is a major part of the game and random encounters are an integral part of that (very fun AP, by the way). I try to make the random encounters more interesting by rolling them up ahead of time and developing them a bit to make them tactically interesting or linked into the story.
a) 10% off-topic chit chat of what did go on since last week
b) 10% role-playing
c) 10% exploration
d) 40% conocting a plan to counter a threat with all types of misunderstanding/crazy ideas/rules discussion that will utlimately go wrong
e) 30% frenzied all out combat because of d)Needless to say we need a long time to crawl through the AP's (currently Bastards of Erebus).
Yeah, that's us too. (Though we are playing Kingmaker and a homebrew setting rather than BoE.)
It varies, but normally it's roughly something like this:
30-50% combat
20-30% role-playing
20-30% exploration
5-10% chit-chat/smoke breaks
5-10% pizza time, dudes
We're happy enough.
I've found this thread quite interesting. I thought I'd add my two cents... Our gaming time breaks down into something like this:
35% puzzles/challenges
25% combat
20% roleplaying
15% exploration
5% explaining prototypes and suggestion
While combat is still important, it's never the most important. Maybe it's because we have a lot of fans of the Zelda and Soul Reaver, but they really like short puzzles that can be bypassed when they're too hard. It could also be that we have an alternative social system that works similar to combat (mechanically). Players still defeat their foes, but having ongoing rivals and foiling each others schemes (the foes vs players that is) seems to have a better effect them a dead forgotten body.
I'm not saying the other way is wrong, I've had some fun times hack-and-slashing. I know of many games that have long term playability with mostly combat. I know there are other systems that may be better for this, but we're all really fond of using Pathfinder.
If social interaction had mechanics similar to combat, perhaps there would be more games with people participating instead of a lone "face-man". It'd also be great if the people releasing puzzle books focused more on teaching how to create good puzzles and less on "here's a puzzle, if your players bypass it, get furious because it's wasted".
I love combat and having players battle through foes... we just like the other stuff a little more. :p
D&D 4th would do as well as chess.[...]If I want to move figures around on a board in a tactical fashion I would rather play chess.
S.
As would Pathfinder.
I've found this thread quite interesting. I thought I'd add my two cents... Our gaming time breaks down into something like this:
35% puzzles/challenges
25% combat
20% roleplaying
15% exploration
5% explaining prototypes and suggestionWhile combat is still important, it's never the most important. Maybe it's because we have a lot of fans of the Zelda and Soul Reaver, but they really like short puzzles that can be bypassed when they're too hard. It could also be that we have an alternative social system that works similar to combat (mechanically). Players still defeat their foes, but having ongoing rivals and foiling each others schemes (the foes vs players that is) seems to have a better effect them a dead forgotten body.
I'm not saying the other way is wrong, I've had some fun times hack-and-slashing. I know of many games that have long term playability with mostly combat. I know there are other systems that may be better for this, but we're all really fond of using Pathfinder.
If social interaction had mechanics similar to combat, perhaps there would be more games with people participating instead of a lone "face-man". It'd also be great if the people releasing puzzle books focused more on teaching how to create good puzzles and less on "here's a puzzle, if your players bypass it, get furious because it's wasted".
I love combat and having players battle through foes... we just like the other stuff a little more. :p
Interesting. Haven't seen quite that emphasis on puzzles from many groups. I like them, too, and was a big fan of the old Dungeon magazine Challenge of Champions series as an occasional break from the usual dungeon crawls and deadly combats. As a group, however, puzzles sometimes lead to trouble, as the riddles and puzzles I or my fellow GMs design that seemed blindingly obvious to us when we designed them, frequently stump the players completely. To forestall the obvious question, we have several really bright people in my group, some with lots of fancy initials after their names. Puzzles are just tricky that way. How do you deal with it when a plot-crucial puzzle or riddle has the group completely flummoxed?
As would Pathfinder.D&D 4th would do as well as chess.[...]If I want to move figures around on a board in a tactical fashion I would rather play chess.
S.Can I make a request that we don't have this argument again?
Pretty please?
Hell, no; at least not until my PF archer can use a move action to teleport, an standard action to move and attack (pushing 3 enemies 15' back) and finally use an inmediate action to shift 2 squares (j/k).
I'm having a hard time quantifying percentages for our group. Sometimes we have all combat sessions. Sometimes we have all roleplaying sessions. It just depends on where we are in the overall story. We used to have very few combats, but ever since we dumped the minis we've been able to get through more fights faster and still have extra time to roleplay, so that really changed the balance. So did switching to a much smaller group. Right now we've got just two players and a DM. That definitely gives us more time for in game character development. If I had to pin it down I'd guess about
30% combat
20% puzzles/exploration
30% roleplay
20% chit-chat/interruption/breaks
We're working on getting the number of interruptions down, but the kidlet has issues with not wanting to stay in bed, so it's currently a significant fraction of game time spent tucking him back in.
I'm having a hard time quantifying percentages for our group. Sometimes we have all combat sessions. Sometimes we have all roleplaying sessions. It just depends on where we are in the overall story. We used to have very few combats, but ever since we dumped the minis we've been able to get through more fights faster and still have extra time to roleplay, so that really changed the balance. So did switching to a much smaller group. Right now we've got just two players and a DM. That definitely gives us more time for in game character development. If I had to pin it down I'd guess about
30% combat
20% puzzles/exploration
30% roleplay
20% chit-chat/interruption/breaksWe're working on getting the number of interruptions down, but the kidlet has issues with not wanting to stay in bed, so it's currently a significant fraction of game time spent tucking him back in.
Interesting. I found that minis actually speeds up combat, since it eliminated the need to visualize what is going on, removed the inevitable differences in opinion about what is being described, and best of all pretty much eliminated arguments about what a particular character can and can't do in a specific situation. YMMV.
On the other hand, smaller group definitely leads to quicker combats.
Been there and done that with the kids. The good news is that they grow out of that stage relatively fast (I know it seems like forever). Now (ages 13 and 11), they are usually playing with us, at least until bedtime. Having practically grown up at the table watching everyone else play, they are actually pretty good players. Of course one is a budding powergamer, and the other has all the makings of a rules lawyer, but at least gaming is a real family activity. Something to look forward to.
What is the OP asking? "How important is combat?" is a totally different question than "How much combat?"
And the OP mentions that most of the posts here on the forums are all about combat and very few are about roleplaying, which is true.
There's a reason for that: Almost every time we pick up our dice (any dice, any number of sides) we're doing so because of combat. Almost any time we crack the book to look up a rule, we're doing so for combat. Almost any time we cast a spell, we're casting it in combat or in preparation for combat or to heal up after combat. Almost any time we purchase equipment, magical or otherwise, we're gearing up for combat.
In fact (I haven't counted this and compiled statistics, so this is a WAG), I would say that approximately 90% of the rules in the entire Core book and 99% of the rules in the Bestiary are about combat.
Furthermore, combat is complex. Making a Diplomacy check to gather critical information is a single roll with a simple DC and a simple modifier. Roll, compare, done - now move on with the story. But combat is not like that. It's tons of rules, tons of rolls, tons of interactions between things that often were not even meant to interact.
Because of all that rules-complexity surrounding combat, and the nearly infinite combinations of rule miscibility, there are nearly infinite ideas that arise and are fodder for forums debate. Not only that, but given that 10 people reading the same paragraph in the book seem to come up with 11 different interpretations (yes, there's always that one guy who even contradicts his own arguments), these debates can rage on and on and on.
We can debate endlessly whether feat X with spell Y works against monster Z. And sometimes (fairly often, actually) the thread just wears out and shuffles off to oblivion without the participants ever reaching a consensus.
On the other hand, debating about whether Count Dooku will reveal the battlestation plans if we roll a DC 30 Diplomacy check can be handled in a two-post thread - but the rules to actually kill him in combat are an entirely different matter.
This is why combat is so disproportionately prevalent in these forums.
***********************************************************************
To anser the OP's question, combat is extremely important. So much so that D&D and Pathfinder have devoted tens of thousands of pages of rules books devoted to resolving combat. In-game, successful combat means the PCs live, failed combat often means the PCs die.
Comparatively, very little rules-book material is written on non-combat rules, and in-game, successful non-combat rolls usually gain the PCs a little info or a little gear (or just a little role-playing enjoyment with no in-game benefit whatsoever), while failed non-combat rolls usually mean the PCs just need to find some other way to get what they wanted. Failed non-combat rolls almost never mean the PCs die. At most, they usually mean the PCs waste a little time or money.
That's a HUGE difference in how important combat is.
As far as how much time we spend on combat, even that has two answers:
Our PCs spend a few minutes each adventuring day in combat. It's a tiny (but vitally important and viscerally dangerous) part of their lives. The other 99.7% of their day is spent in non-combat stuff.
But our gaming group spends probably 60% of the time in combat (though I've never really clocked it to be sure). Of the remaining 40%, maybe half of that is spent getting to combat, cleaning/fixing up after combat, and preparing for the next combat, including leveling up, preparing spells, shopping for gear, etc.
That leaves us about 20% of our gaming time for role-playing our characters (though we also role-play them during combat, so there is some overlap here) and for interacting with NPCs to further the story line.
More or less.
What is the OP asking? "How important is combat?" is a totally different question than "How much combat?"
and lots of other intersting stuff.
Thanks for your perspective. To answer your opening question, what I am trying to get at is how important is combat, but I do believe how important something is gets reflected to some extent in how much time groups spend on it. The variety of responses received would seem to bear that out.
To expand on that a bit and summarize the thread, I think most (but not all) posters have acknowledged that combat is important. But there is a lot of difference of opinion on just how important it is. Is it just one of many important aspects of the game (lots of support for that view)? Is it first among equals (lots of support for that view as well)? Is it the most important aspect by far (some support for this as well, and you seem to fall in that category, if I may characterize your post)?
My only agenda, if you can call it such, is to find out what others experience is, with no interest in passing judgment on the way anyone prefers to play. I'm actually pretty encouraged by the responses, which show a pretty wide variety of styles of play, indicating to me that in the PF community at large there are games available for people who are interested in developing characters that are not optimized for combat or even necessarily very good at it. That player may not be welcome at the combat-heavy tables, but they should be able to find somewhere to play.
Your point about the rules is well-taken, but I think if you go back through you'll find you overestimated the amount of the rules that are related purely to combat. Haven't done a page count and am not about to now, but I would be very surprised if more than 60% of the Core Rulebook is directly combat-related, and think it is likely more like 50%. Still more than any other aspect, to be sure, for the reasons you have stated well, but not 90%.
Your point about the rules is well-taken, but I think if you go back through you'll find you overestimated the amount of the rules that are related purely to combat. Haven't done a page count and am not about to now, but I would be very surprised if more than 60% of the Core Rulebook is directly combat-related, and think it is likely more like 50%. Still more than any other aspect, to be sure, for the reasons you have stated well, but not 90%.
What do you mean directly combat related? I would argue that most of the class features, feats, equipment, spells and magic sections are combat related. I would also consider the majority of the gamemastering, and magic items sections as combat related (how to set up, run and reward a combat encounter). How much of the rules isnt usable in combat? Maybe a couple of skills and feats and a handful of class features. In terms of actual rules content I think the 90% mark is pretty accurate.
I'm not sure I really understand metagaming quite the way you seem to. I have always kind of defined it as using knowledge that you as a player have but that your character would not to improve your character's efforts in the game.The coolness of the character is entirely in your head, it's metagame knowledge. Whereas the effectiveness of your character is in game knowledge.
A preference to develop burglary skills to the complete exclusion of more survival oriented skills useful to an adventurer (which is what a character generally is, and from which he experiences most character growth) requires a reason ... when the only reason is metagame then you are metagaming.
Now of course taken to the extreme this requires characters to be fully optimized ... but the world isn't black and white. This is about believability, basic competence in combat is all I ask, not optimization ... incompetence in combat is only acceptable if the campaign is designed around making it believable for that character.
Interesting definition (or at least proposed example) of metagaming that I have to say I haven't run across before.
I think you misunderstand me a bit. It's not about playing a cool character at everyone else's expense. I've seen examples of that and don't approve. For example, the guy who insists on playing a chaotic evil thief in a party when everyone else is lawful or neutral good and then gets upset when the other characters tell him to clean up his act or get lost.
What I'm trying to get at is whether combat so dominates the game that every character concept must be proficient in combat to be acceptable. You've answered pretty clearly for your game that you expect everyone to be at least competent in combat. I appreciate your comment that they don't need to be optimized, just competent.
To be honest, that is true of our game to a large extent, too. It is a rare character that we create that can't at least hold his own, and most can do far better than that in combat. I personally enjoy combat a lot, and pretty much all of my characters are, if not combat optimized, at least pretty damn good at it. That said, I have seen many examples of very successful and valuable characters over the thirty plus years I've been playing that frankly, were combat wimps. I've also known some very good players that really don't enjoy or aen't interested in the combat aspect of RPGs at all and either aren't very good at it, or deliberately create characters that try to stay out of it as much as possible. I think we've heard from some similar players in this thread, whose games have very little combat, from which I extrapolate that non-combat focused characters can be successful in many campaigns, even if they aren't in yours.
I think that is healthy for the game and the hobby overall. I would hate to see the evolution of D&D/PF lead to a situation where an entire group of players didn't think the characters they preferred to play would be accepted, so they left for other systems.
What do you mean directly combat related? I would argue that most of the class features, feats, equipment, spells and magic sections are combat related. I would also consider the majority of the gamemastering, and magic items sections as combat related (how to set up, run and reward a combat encounter). How much of the rules isnt usable in combat? Maybe a couple of skills and feats and a handful of class features. In terms of actual rules content I think the 90% mark is pretty accurate.Your point about the rules is well-taken, but I think if you go back through you'll find you overestimated the amount of the rules that are related purely to combat. Haven't done a page count and am not about to now, but I would be very surprised if more than 60% of the Core Rulebook is directly combat-related, and think it is likely more like 50%. Still more than any other aspect, to be sure, for the reasons you have stated well, but not 90%.
I would just point out virtually the entire skill section of the core rulebooks, the fact that many spells aren't combat-related, or at least aren't usable only in combat (and spells take up a huge portion of the book), major portions of the character development rules, entire sections on traps and non-combat encounter design, all the non-combat equipment described etc. I concede that there is a lot of combat stuff in there, but 90% is a pretty steep number that I don't think is met. Pointless to argue in any event, as it is a factual question that someone else can answer, as I have no intention of going through the Core Rulebook line by line and coming up with a definitive answer. Be my guest if you'd like and I'll bet you a beer (or wine if you prefer) of your choice that it comes to less than 90%. But, hell I'd probably buy you a beer as a fellow gamer anyway if ever we should meet.
Interesting. Haven't seen quite that emphasis on puzzles from many groups. I like them, too, and was a big fan of the old Dungeon magazine Challenge of Champions series as an occasional break from the usual dungeon crawls and deadly combats. As a group, however, puzzles sometimes lead to trouble, as the riddles and puzzles I or my fellow GMs design that seemed blindingly obvious to us when we designed them, frequently stump the players completely. To forestall the obvious question, we have several really bright people in my group, some with lots of fancy initials after their names. Puzzles are just tricky that way. How do you deal with it when a plot-crucial puzzle or riddle has the group completely flummoxed?
I felt like I might be driving this discussion off topic, so I started a new thread to respond to your question here.
EDIT: Link fixed... not sure what happened to the first post.
Combat 10%
Roleplaying 70%
Traps and Puzzles 5%
Exploration 5%
Off-Topic Chit-Chat 10%We rarely get into any significant combats. Our main focus is roleplaying and this usually generates enough non-combat tension for our group. We're a bunch of old-time roleplayers, so we like a bit of chit-chat and lots of roleplaying limelight.
I would actually prefer more combat in our game. I like the tactical aspect. Sometimes the attitude that good role-playing is overwrought angst and bringing to light the darkest aspects of your character, can be really boring and dangerously close to emo.... Some days I am happy to kill the bad-guys take their stuff and rescue the princess.
What annoys me is the texting, web-surfing or way off topic chat in game.
heres my group's game makeup (i'm just a player, not the dm)
10% social encounters/excuse pseudoplot advancement (if any)
60% combat
30% getting ready for the next combat encounter
I would actually prefer more combat in our game. I like the tactical aspect. Sometimes the attitude that good role-playing is overwrought angst and bringing to light the darkest aspects of your character, can be really boring and dangerously close to emo.... Some days I am happy to kill the bad-guys take their stuff and rescue the princess.
What annoys me is the texting, web-surfing or way off topic chat in game.
I SO agree with you about the angsty roleplaying. I admit, I went through that phase when I was new to the game. And then I got over it. Just because bad things happen to your character doesn't mean they have to be angsty about it. There's a whole range of emotional responses that are appropriate any one of which would be way more interesting....Not that it can't work once in a while, but mostly it's way too overplayed.
I SO agree with you about the angsty roleplaying. I admit, I went through that phase when I was new to the game. And then I got over it. Just because bad things happen to your character doesn't mean they have to be angsty about it. There's a whole range of emotional responses that are appropriate any one of which would be way more interesting....Not that it can't work once in a while, but mostly it's way too overplayed.
I would actually prefer more combat in our game. I like the tactical aspect. Sometimes the attitude that good role-playing is overwrought angst and bringing to light the darkest aspects of your character, can be really boring and dangerously close to emo.... Some days I am happy to kill the bad-guys take their stuff and rescue the princess.
What annoys me is the texting, web-surfing or way off topic chat in game.
There is a game system for angst and its called WOD :-)
It really depends on the game. I’d say my average AD&D 2e games were maybe 20% combat while Pathfinder tends to be considerably higher as the system itself feels geared more towards tactical combat. The Call of Cthulhu games I’ve played hardly have any combat and the freeform games I’ve played online have basically none. (Admittedly none of those have been fantasy-based; fantasy tends to call for constant danger and adventure more more than most genres.)
In my mind, the more rules, the more combat, as most rules are combat related. Since Pathfinder tends to be on the heavier side of the rules equation, I would imagine on average its players are more combat oriented. I think it’s a system that attracts people who like to fuss over creating an optimal build and then play them in battle. Indeed, it’s one of the first RPGs I’ve ever played, where the players are often keenly interested in what others players ‘builds’ are and how they’ll effect combat strategy. As others mentioned, a less than optimally built character in a Pathfinder game is often not especially welcome, since if you can’t fight well, what’s your point?
And I’m not saying one approach is intrinsically better than another, although I do have my own preference. I find combat boring, no matter how in-depth or how many options I have. But there’s certainly nothing wrong with playing Pathfinder or DND largely as a combat simulator. That’s what the mechanics are there for, after all. Indeed most RPGs are combat systems -- the rest is basically playing make-believe and you don‘t really need many rules for that beyond common agreement.
(Although, in agreement with some of the above posters, bad make-believe can be much more annoying than any combat scenario. Combat is basically just an advanced game of Risk and while it can be boring, it's never actively irritating. Being forced to endure bad storytelling however can drain your very will to live...)
(Although, in agreement with some of the above posters, bad make-believe can be much more annoying than any combat scenario. Combat is basically just an advanced game of Risk and while it can be boring, it's never actively irritating. Being forced to endure bad storytelling however can drain your very will to live...)
Totally disagree. I can engage Kid Emo the Anti-Hero. In fact, I can even RP out my actual disappointment with him. Stick me at a table of crappy roleplayers and it doesn't strictly speaking limit me; I just have fun doing my own thing. Besides, a lot of bad RP is merely fear about embarrassment, and if one person takes the leap, others follow.
On the other hand, six hours of a bunch of cliches doing things in a basement that'd make Peckinpah blanch? It doesn't sit well on my conscience and is little more than a video game that makes you solve a math problem every few minutes. I'd much rather be playing an actual video game.
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My group tends to trend as follows:
50% of the table yaks about anime 50% of the time.
The other 50% of the table (I'm in this crowd) bit**s about the other 50% yakking about anime during that same 50% of the time.
35% Combat
15% Roleplaying
I'm being a little bit facetious, but...only a little bit.
My group tends to trend as follows:
50% of the table yaks about anime 50% of the time.
The other 50% of the table (I'm in this crowd) bit**s about the other 50% yakking about anime during that same 50% of the time.
35% Combat
15% RoleplayingI'm being a little bit facetious, but...only a little bit.
We used to have this problem with WOW, since several of the players were deeply addicted and would rather spend their time rehashing the previous night's WOW action rather than playing the game at hand. Fortunately the WOW addiction slowly died out.
(Although, in agreement with some of the above posters, bad make-believe can be much more annoying than any combat scenario. Combat is basically just an advanced game of Risk and while it can be boring, it's never actively irritating. Being forced to endure bad storytelling however can drain your very will to live...)Totally disagree. I can engage Kid Emo the Anti-Hero. In fact, I can even RP out my actual disappointment with him. Stick me at a table of crappy roleplayers and it doesn't strictly speaking limit me; I just have fun doing my own thing. Besides, a lot of bad RP is merely fear about embarrassment, and if one person takes the leap, others follow.
On the other hand, six hours of a bunch of cliches doing things in a basement that'd make Peckinpah blanch? It doesn't sit well on my conscience and is little more than a video game that makes you solve a math problem every few minutes. I'd much rather be playing an actual video game.
I agree that I don't have too much problem with bad roleplaying, so long as an honest effort is being made. The only problem I have is with the occasional spotlight-hogging roleplayer who wants to dominate every roleplaying situation and doesn't let others have their chance.
Combat is usually the last resort when the PCs are unable to win the NPCs to their side. Actions have consequences and killing things often have dire consequences. On the other hand, sometimes there is no other way to enforce your will. I run sandboxy games, so I leave plenty of options open to players. Sometimes they take advantage of that and sometimes they go for the more direct route.
40% Planning
30% Interacting with NPCs
20% Combat
10% Chatter/Munching/Various