Realism is in the Eye of the Beholder
Seriously, guys.
Pathfinder and D&D in general is based off the assumption that although physical laws exist, narrative can find a way around those physical laws.
So the 7th level brigand can survive a fall from a cliff? Narrative demands that the villain the heroes just assume is dead will come back to haunt them. He's not uber-tough, he's uber-lucky ("What the - but we saw him fall! How did you survive?" "Aha! But when I fell, there was a tree just beneath me I managed to snag, and became lodged in the branches!"). If you feel that actions like this are silly because by RAW you can jump off a cliff onto hard rocks and survive if there is nothing to slow and break your fall, treat such prepared circumstances not as a fall but as a coup-de-grace from falling. The rules are written the way they are so that the characters can survive, there being not much fun in role-playing a corpse (unless they are undead).
Thus a game like Pathfinder gives respect to 'reality' (a low-level person would die from the fall) but also gives respect to 'heroism' (the high level character that took a dreadful risk survives). Thus, the fall/sword-thrust/dragon's breath can be deadly, but the hero can survive it by fluky circumstance, skill and daring.
In respect of 'superheroic' stats, yes, the rules of the game allow for laws-of-physics defying feats. After all, it's a heroic game, and it is allowing for amazing levels of training and the daring and will to succeed to overcome such barriers. So what if no person in our world can swing a tree like a club? We are talking a man with muscles on his muscles, having received a magic boost to his strength and wearing magic strength enhancers, and with a will of iron to boot. Maybe they help the ground stay stable under him, it doesn't matter because the narrative says he can do this, we can temporarily suspend the laws of physics. We get away with 'its a fluke' because we respect the laws of physics the rest of the time.
I've played some games that felt very realistic and 'gritty' to me with very high-level, 'super-heroic' characters. What makes the difference is not the crunch telling you that the fighter can survive the fall off the great tower, but the player and the DM both agreeing it would be a really bad idea to fall right now. Gaming requires a suspension of disbelief, so is it that much to extend that disbelief not just to the world around us but to the rules of the game also, up until the point here they are invoked? Then, narrative takes over, and luck, skill and circumstance save the hero.
Cool, so then can i get a saving throw vs Coup-de-grace ??
Maybe a saving throw ever round for suffocation, till i fail a save ??
Do not look at me that way, i am being serious.
Cool, so then can i get a saving throw vs Coup-de-grace ??
Maybe a saving throw ever round for suffocation, till i fail a save ??
Do not look at me that way, i am being serious.
Maybe - ask your GM..
The chief argument I have here is this: When it comes to realism, Pathfinder's reward mechanisms don't support it, and trying to make Pathfinder support it is more work than picking up another game system.
Emphasis his.
This is a point that isn't made often enough. I'm not talking about facetiously suggesting "if you don't like it play another game." As someone who plays lots of different systems, I honestly think some are better at specific styles of play than others. Pathfinder RPG is not the only RPG engine, and I don't think the designers intend it to be. As RPG engines go, "specialized" is the word I would use, and it seems like folly to try and apply its rules universally.
I've nearly burnt out trying to fix D&D or d20 or 3.5 or Pathfinder before, and each time the solution is to go off and play something else for a while. A new game with different rules scratches a different itch (often the realism itch). After all that, I find myself coming back to 3.pf to experience its strengths rather than lament its weaknesses.
Caveat: E6 works pretty well if you want a middle-path to choose. It seems like it might be less work than changing systems (for a certain type of game). I'm going to be running some campaigns in that play-style soon, I will be better able to convey its strengths and weaknesses once I have done so.
Like I said, your issue is that you don't want to play a fantasy game.
You don't.
You don't want humans with more then human capabilities. You don't want heroes and champions and larger then life characters. Hey, that's fine.
But D&D is a fantasy roleplaying game. And that's not what you want.
Damn! I hadn't realized the definition of fantasy was so limited! I'll have to go into my library and reclassify the majority of my fantasy books as something else now. Where would you suggest, Prof?
Sarcasm aside, there are lots of different types of fantasy, and I believe PF, with tweaks and houseruling, is capable of supporting all of them to give people the experience they want. That's been my whole point all along with regard to realism. One size doesn't fit all. Do what you need to and change or tweak what you need to to make the game fun and immersive for your group.
And FYI, I would posit that I probably am more of an expert on what I want than you, and as I have been playing D&D/PF for more than thirty years, I would further posit that it is indeed what I want to play.
Didn't Prof. Cirno have a kick where he kept pointing out that not everything fantastic is magical? Guess no one listened.I think the real problem is that people are ok with wizards, clerics, druids, or other casters being fantastic in their fantasy game.
They're not ok with fighters being fantastic in their fantasy game.
That's why fighters are so often put in such a bad place. It' really hypocritical, but no small number of people will nod and say "No, see, fighters should be bad, because they're jocks." They won't use those exact statements, but that's completely the meaning behind them.
And the most ironic twist is, in 99% of stories out there, it's the fighting man who's the protagonist. Beowulf rips off Grendel's arm and defeats the dragon, not his wizard buddy. Merlin and Gandalf were advisors, they didn't charge into battle throwing fireballs left and right. How many greek or roman myths involve old bearded men reading spellbooks before casting Charm Person on their foes to do all the killing for them?
Ancient myth is steeped in legendary heroes of extreme martial wisdom who constantly perform extra-ordinary feats of power, exulting in the hard earned victory, and yet we're told to assume that D&D fighters are just ordinary men who never do anything supernatural?
I, for one, have never been one to talk down the fighter. In fact, I think fighters are pretty awesome without bending the laws of reality until they can't be recognized.
Lots of interesting stuff refuting Bill Dunn and arguing that the mechanics of Pathfinder reward a partiular style of play.
Tag-teaming in for Bill. I think the point you are making is completely valid for your style of play. Surely you aren't saying all of us need to play Pathfinder that way, are you? Or that if we play it differently then we aren't playing D&D/PF anymore?
I agree with Bill, the reward of the game for us is being the protagonists/heroes in a great story. Everybody likes leveling up and getting cool stuff and new abilities, but for us that's not the point of the game. The point of the game for us is putting the smackdown on the BBEG/rescuing the fair maiden/outsmarting the evil genius or whatever the objective of the current adventure is. The rest is gravy. YMMV.
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.....<Good Stuff>Sir, with this common sense you are spoiling us...
Wouldn't want to do that! Already have two spoiled kids at home. I'll work to use less common sense and more hyperbolic vitriol and overblown rhetoric from now on. :)
The rules are written the way they are so that the characters can survive, there being not much fun in role-playing a corpse (unless they are undead).
One of the great attractions of D&D/PF, IMHO, is the adrenaline rush that comes from facing character death on a regular basis, not knowing which fight could be your last. Yes, character death can be heart-wrenching, but fro me, it needs to happen occasionally or the game loses a lot of its spice. I would maintain that a character isn't really a hero unless he/she is risking his/her life. If they know they are going to win, and there is no chance of death, that ain't heroic.
With regard to the specific case of long falls, I don't really have a problem with a character ocasionally surviving, via a fluke, something like that. Luck exists, after all, and it can make for a great story. What I have a problem with, and what breaks immersion for me, is players deciding to have their character deliberately jump off a huge cliff, knowing that the rules allow them to do so with no chance of dying. Escaping a dangerous situation by sheer luck can be heroic. Doing something incredibly stupid and suicidal because your metagaming self knows that your character will survive it, isn't heroic, it's just, well, stupid. And in our game, characters sometimes die when they do stupid things. We wouldn't have it any other way.
One of the great attractions of D&D/PF, IMHO, is the adrenaline rush that comes from facing character death on a regular basis, not knowing which fight could be your last. Yes, character death can be heart-wrenching, but fro me, it needs to happen occasionally or the game loses a lot of its spice. I would maintain that a character isn't really a hero unless he/she is risking his/her life. If they know they are going to win, and there is no chance of death, that ain't heroic.The rules are written the way they are so that the characters can survive, there being not much fun in role-playing a corpse (unless they are undead).
The danger of death is good ... actually happening a lot, is bad.
With regard to the specific case of long falls, I don't really have a problem with a character ocasionally surviving, via a fluke, something like that. Luck exists, after all, and it can make for a great story. What I have a problem with, and what breaks immersion for me, is players deciding to have their character deliberately jump off a huge cliff, knowing that the rules allow them to do so with no chance of dying.
So ... players being jerks is the problem here? Just treat any deliberate act of self-destruction as a suicide attempt, and explain to them that they are about to do the equivelant of a self-coup-de-grace.
Escaping a dangerous situation by sheer luck can be heroic. Doing something incredibly stupid and suicidal because your metagaming self knows that your character will survive it, isn't heroic, it's just, well, stupid. And in our game, characters sometimes die when they do stupid things. We wouldn't have it any other way.
Ah, Darwin, chlorinator of the gene-pool!
One of the great attractions of D&D/PF, IMHO, is the adrenaline rush that comes from facing character death on a regular basis, not knowing which fight could be your last. Yes, character death can be heart-wrenching, but fro me, it needs to happen occasionally or the game loses a lot of its spice. I would maintain that a character isn't really a hero unless he/she is risking his/her life. If they know they are going to win, and there is no chance of death, that ain't heroic.The rules are written the way they are so that the characters can survive, there being not much fun in role-playing a corpse (unless they are undead).
The danger of death is good ... actually happening a lot, is bad.
With regard to the specific case of long falls, I don't really have a problem with a character ocasionally surviving, via a fluke, something like that. Luck exists, after all, and it can make for a great story. What I have a problem with, and what breaks immersion for me, is players deciding to have their character deliberately jump off a huge cliff, knowing that the rules allow them to do so with no chance of dying.So ... players being jerks is the problem here? Just treat any deliberate act of self-destruction as a suicide attempt, and explain to them that they are about to do the equivelant of a self-coup-de-grace.
Escaping a dangerous situation by sheer luck can be heroic. Doing something incredibly stupid and suicidal because your metagaming self knows that your character will survive it, isn't heroic, it's just, well, stupid. And in our game, characters sometimes die when they do stupid things. We wouldn't have it any other way.Ah, Darwin, chlorinator of the gene-pool!
Agree with all your points here. How often does that happen on these boards?
Rarely sir - I salute you!
I agree with Bill, the reward of the game for us is being the protagonists/heroes in a great story. Everybody likes leveling up and getting cool stuff and new abilities, but for us that's not the point of the game. The point of the game for us is putting the smackdown on the BBEG/rescuing the fair maiden/outsmarting the evil genius or whatever the objective of the current adventure is. The rest is gravy. YMMV.
Note the distinction below. There is more than one reward mechanism at work. I'll make it harder to miss. :)
The exact mix between the two varies from group to group.
So, clearly your GM reward mechanisms trump the game rewards. This is, in my experience, a minority case that happens with groups that have played together for a few years with very little change up between players.
One of the great attractions of D&D/PF, IMHO, is the adrenaline rush that comes from facing character death on a regular basis, not knowing which fight could be your last. Yes, character death can be heart-wrenching, but fro me, it needs to happen occasionally or the game loses a lot of its spice. I would maintain that a character isn't really a hero unless he/she is risking his/her life. If they know they are going to win, and there is no chance of death, that ain't heroic.
With regard to the specific case of long falls, I don't really have a problem with a character ocasionally surviving, via a fluke, something like that. Luck exists, after all, and it can make for a great story. What I have a problem with, and what breaks immersion for me, is players deciding to have their character deliberately jump off a huge cliff, knowing that the rules allow them to do so with no chance of dying. Escaping a dangerous situation by sheer luck can be heroic. Doing something incredibly stupid and suicidal because your metagaming self knows that your character will survive it, isn't heroic, it's just, well, stupid. And in our game, characters sometimes die when they do stupid things. We wouldn't have it any other way.
Hmmm, that's actually one of the things I dislike about D&D, how the threat of character death just isn't real enough for the players. There's a lot of the 'Eh, ten arrows is no biggy, I still have 55 hp left!' and sure eventually someone might crit you for 60hp and drop you but compared to other games PC's just don't quite feel as mortal. Level based systems make it even more so.
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Whether you call it realism or verisimilitude what you are looking at is the match between rule-system and fantasy world.
Any rule-system will create a world. If we could somehow or another program a computer up with the pathfinder rules and a world simulation and run history forward a few hundred years *something* would pop out at the end.
It would be very different to our world. I think our problem lies in the fact that fantasy worlds tend to be based on a medieval version of Earth with magic thrown in at the end.
Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with average-ish people being able to survive 50' falls. You just wouldn't bother imprisoning them in tall towers.
I often find it instructive to look at a situation from the other point of view to adventurers. If you are an Ogre living in the forest, how do you survive? If you are a the local ruler living in your castle somewhere, how do you stay safe?
One answer that I don't like, incidentally, is that the whole world operates at circa 2nd to 3rd level, because PCs overtake them too easily. I'm not running a super-hero game. I don't mind characters rising to be more powerful than the general population, but not after just a few weeks.
IMO, early versions of D&D were low-fantasy, and thus closer to our medieval world than the later versions and Pathfinder. Although some things still didn't make sense, there were fewer of them. We have moved to a high-fantasy rule set, but we still have a low fantasy world. The good thing, however, is that we're all playing in it, so hopefully we'll start to drive these inconsistencies out (like the whole polymorph business that started in 3.5).
Either that or in time we'll end up with a pen and paper version of World of Warcraft.
Richard
D&D was never low fantasy, it was just far harsher on the "wizards are allowed to be cool, screw everyone else" thought process.
That's the thing. D&D was low fantasy...for thieves, and fighters. Wizards? D&D has never been low fantasy if you're a wizard. That's the problem.
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That's the thing. D&D was low fantasy...for thieves, and fighters. Wizards? D&D has never been low fantasy if you're a wizard. That's the problem.
I don't agree - I think it was low fantasy for wizards too. 1st ed emphasised very little spell use at early levels plus making it very difficult for wizards to find new spells for their books. Magic items were pretty rare too and creating them - well, I don't know anyone who ever did it in my 1st ed days.
Realism has its place.If it was exerted to the way you suggest, you'd have very few people with long attachments to thier characters as the table death rate would probably about 75 to 80 percent per adventure.
Not at all. My post had nothing to do with mortality rates, just with consistency.
Consistency, incidentally, also allows players to think their way around problems in a "real-world" sense rather than a "gaming" sense. In other words, instead of thinking "what sort of ability / spell am I supposed to use to get past this problem", they can instead puzzle out such things as "how does that ogre know who it's supposed to let past and how does it deal with invisibility".
Richard
I agree with Bill, the reward of the game for us is being the protagonists/heroes in a great story. Everybody likes leveling up and getting cool stuff and new abilities, but for us that's not the point of the game. The point of the game for us is putting the smackdown on the BBEG/rescuing the fair maiden/outsmarting the evil genius or whatever the objective of the current adventure is. The rest is gravy. YMMV.Note the distinction below. There is more than one reward mechanism at work. I'll make it harder to miss. :)
The exact mix between the two varies from group to group.
So, clearly your GM reward mechanisms trump the game rewards. This is, in my experience, a minority case that happens with groups that have played together for a few years with very little change up between players.
As I indicated, I was only speaking for our game. However, I think there are more than a few of us old geezers around, judging from the heavy reaction to geezer threads here and the posts I read on all threads. And I don't think that style of play is confined just to those of us old enough to really remember disco. Hard to say who is the majority and the minority. I do agree with you that the system may encourage more mechanical rewards now, but I don't think it mandates it. It's flexible enough for multiple play styles.
One of the great attractions of D&D/PF, IMHO, is the adrenaline rush that comes from facing character death on a regular basis, not knowing which fight could be your last. Yes, character death can be heart-wrenching, but fro me, it needs to happen occasionally or the game loses a lot of its spice. I would maintain that a character isn't really a hero unless he/she is risking his/her life. If they know they are going to win, and there is no chance of death, that ain't heroic.
With regard to the specific case of long falls, I don't really have a problem with a character ocasionally surviving, via a fluke, something like that. Luck exists, after all, and it can make for a great story. What I have a problem with, and what breaks immersion for me, is players deciding to have their character deliberately jump off a huge cliff, knowing that the rules allow them to do so with no chance of dying. Escaping a dangerous situation by sheer luck can be heroic. Doing something incredibly stupid and suicidal because your metagaming self knows that your character will survive it, isn't heroic, it's just, well, stupid. And in our game, characters sometimes die when they do stupid things. We wouldn't have it any other way.
Hmmm, that's actually one of the things I dislike about D&D, how the threat of character death just isn't real enough for the players. There's a lot of the 'Eh, ten arrows is no biggy, I still have 55 hp left!' and sure eventually someone might crit you for 60hp and drop you but compared to other games PC's just don't quite feel as mortal. Level based systems make it even more so.
I didn't even want to touch realism in the combat system here in this thread, as that is not what the OP really was after when he started it, in my opinion. Throughout all editions of D&D combat has been highly unrealistic in comparison to real combat with medieval weapons, something readily acknowledged by the developers. You have to do a lot of mental gymnastics with the fluff to make it even seem realistic (hits aren't really hits, but rather blows that glance off and wear down your endurance, etc.). I don't bother. I just try not to think about it outside the context of the game. The system is the way it is because a lot of people find it more fun that way.
There are a lot of games out there with more realistic combat systems, and they generally do result in a lot more character death (and cosequently more caution about entering combat), and I do play them and enjoy them. Within it's own limits, though, you can easily make D&D/PF combat potentially deadly as well. You may not die from a single arrow (realistic), but the archer can still put you down through accumulated damage. End result is the same - threat of death, combined with attachment to character, equals adrenaline rush and good times. Dying repeatedly isn't much fun, but narrow escapes when you know that your character could die at any moment sure are.
HP has always been an abstraction. Always.
Crack open your earliest D&D book, you'll find Gary saying that HP is an abstraction.
Besides, Conan survived being crucified - a fighter can shrug off an arrow or two.
I thought he died.
He did die... horribly... mortally.
Why he didn't just didn't concentrate hard enough to evoke the Flame Cloak of Zodax thereby burning the tethers binding him (and the Tree of Woe too) in a single round action is beyond me.
At least, in the movie.