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A character dies because the bad guy got a critical and one-shotted them? Because the dice rolled a completely random number and the GM chooses to interpret this as "you're instantly dead even though you did nothing wrong"? Because the adventuring party is too low level to cast/purchase a Raise Dead spell?No.
Just... no.
But why not? If you're OK with players learning from the consequences of events in the game, why not learn that "combat is deadly" so they learn other ways of resolving conflicts? Or learn that combat is war, something to resort to, not sport?
Ultimately, these are just play style preferences and not a single one is better for the game overall or the gaming industry than any other. There are times that people forget this in online debates, but that's the underlying truth. Hardass consequences or softball story, neither ruins the game save when that's the style you prefer.
I empathize with your point about not wanting to forbid fudging. I will do it from time to time because, like anything else I'm bringing to the game as GM, whether adventure or dice rolls, are subject to final editing by me. The dice are just another input and I will knock damage down a bit if I think it's just too unseemly. But that's my preferred style of play. And, in about 30 years of GMing, I think it has been pretty successful for me.
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Mystically Inclined:
How do you think the DM feels when your character walks into the lovingly crafted BBEG fight and a character trivializes the encounter through either a freakishly lucky crit or the BBEG fails a crucial save against something like hold person in the first round?
I'd suggest that in order to keep your DM happy - you should put your best foot forward and nudge your d20... no, my fighter didn't crit with his longbow, it was a little wide... or no, I added up my concentration check wrong - turns out I didn't cast successfully.
It's a facetious comment and argument, but still holds in this case. Would you as a player fudge your own rolls to allow for a more cinematic and enjoyable fight with the main villain of a campaign? - I mean after all the experienced enemy with an indomitable will and an iron jaw shouldn't be forced to suffer from the randomness of the die roll should he?
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To me, Hard Mode is every encounter at APL+4 or greater without much- if ever- a chance to rest or recooperate. Such would grow annoying to me very quickly.
On the other hand, not fudging the dice to me is just.. playing the d20 system.
By all means, if you and your players enjoy *however* you are playing then keep it up! Don't let anyone on the boards come and tell you all you are doing it wrong.
For me though? I want the dice to tell the tale. Did the bad guy get 1 shotted? GO PC's!. Did the PC get one shotted! Go NPC!
Did the DM decide it wasn't a memorable way to die so he fudged the die?
err. why are we playing d20 again?
I mean no disrespect. Honestly. I am genuinely confused. If you are going to roll the dice Then decide if you are going to accept them or not- are we even playing Pathfinder anymore? Why bother with all the character sheets and expensive books? We can sit down, make character concepts then sit around on the couch and talk it all out. I could see that being very fun. Again, no sarcasm. It could, depending on the skill of the Storyteller, be very heroic and interesting and cinematic. It could be extremely engaging.
But it wouldn't be Pathfinder.
Pathfinder is a game based on rolling a die to determine the success or failure if any given venture. Want to bluff the guard? Roll the die. Want to seduce the barmaid? Roll the die. Want to murder the High Cultist Poombah guy? Roll the die.
Sure- there is RP involved. Rp should be involved to determine where you are going and why you are doing what you are doing. Success and failure though is the purvue of the relative bonuses and penalties applied to the d20. We put alot of work into making characters and figuring out ways to be effective.
And all that work is for naught if the DM is just going to scratch his chin and say "nah. I don't want you to die yet."
Again I ask.. Why bother with this rules heavy system if the DM is just going to neuter it on a whim? And make no mistake- saving a PC or NPC for any reason at any time is just a whim. You are just deciding when they live or die. (afterall, if you save him now just to "let the die" kill him later on you are in effect deciding when they live or die.)
I truly don't understand that mentality.
I play D&D and by extention, Pathfinder, because I want a die roll to determine success or failure. I WANT to die if the rolls dictate I die. I want to die if its because I got flanked by two shadows in an encounter that no one would have remembered otherwise. (we remember it now, RIP that rogue.) I want to die if its a super cinematic where in an effort to bring the bell tower down on the BBEG we actually bring it down on ourselves, killing half the group in the process only to have the BBEG pick off every single surviving member- save one. (who escaped by the skin of his teeth). (RIP everyone in that group cept the Fighter. And the cleric, who chose to be resurrected and in so doing changed his character greatly due to what he saw would happen to him in the afterlife if he kept on as he had been.)
I've died twice in the current group and I've loved every minute of it. One was not memorable except for the fact that I died. The other was extremely cinematic- the makings of the beginning of a movie the rest of which would involve the surviving member going after the BBEG to make them pay for what they did. (which the fighter did in fact do).
What if the DM had decided to let the rogue live? What if he had decided to fudge the tower so we all laughed and lived and curbstomped the bad guy afterward?
The campaign would be very very different today, thats what. We play a game based on the d20. Whether you die in an unmemorable side quest crypt by a mob -2 your CR to an unfortunate roll of the dice or in a narrow corridor martyring yourself for the survival of the group.
We play a game based on the die. If you are playing d20, let the d20 make the decisions. I truly don't understand why you'd bother with all the books and paper and such if you are just going to ignore them.
-S
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Also, usually a PC's triple crit is against a mook, not a boss. But every triple crit rolled against the PC's kills an actual PC.
But why not? If you're OK with players learning from the consequences of events in the game, why not learn that "combat is deadly" so they learn other ways of resolving conflicts? Or learn that combat is war, something to resort to, not sport?
There are ways of making combat deadly that add actual strategy or depth.
Creating a house rule that just says "Each time you fight you have a .1% chance of randomly dropping dead" is not one of them.
we could add in random lightening strikes and buses at street corners to the wandering monster tables, just to appease yang.
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This thread sounds familiar!
Mystic, you may benefit from the Raising The Stakes alternate rules. Specifically, "The Death Flag" rule.
And as usual, this thread is going the exact same way as its predecessor.
we could add in random lightening strikes and buses at street corners to the wandering monster tables, just to appease yang.
I have zero idea what this is supposed to mean or what you're trying to say or what you think it was that I said.
sarcasm
Yes but your sarcasm suggests that you think Roberta thinks that the idea of completely random death is a good thing.sarcasm
No, then that would be appeasing, not sarcasting
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Evidently my name has become so associated with sarcasm that when I speak normally it gets read as sarcasm instead.
Here, allow me to make my position less ambiguous:
Three 20's = death is a genius rule that is completely unbiased between PC's and NPC's because I don't know what context is, also if you don't want to autodie to it then obviously you should just never fight anything ever, also fighters aren't allowed to do things other than fight, also if you think this is dumb then you are a dumb babby and not a real roleplayer, also also also the three 20's = death rule is good for the game because
No, then that would be appeasing, not sarcasting
Uh-huh. Lemme know when you want to start using actual words or making sense.
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It is good, it's a part of the game. You pay to he rezzed or you create another character.No its not a part of the game. Its a house rule. I can pretty much promise you, you will not find a core rule that says 3 nat 20 = insta death.
Where in the hell did you get that from?
Nobody said anything about three crits. Do you understand what game you are playing?
You can die by the dice very easily and it is a part of the rules.
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I havent read anything about the triple 20 rule until this thread, maybe I just missed it/skipped those threads.
it's not a rule, so it's really pointless to debate. Some people think it's a good idea, let them.
I havent read anything about the triple 20 rule until this thread, maybe I just missed it/skipped those threads.
it's not a rule, so it's really pointless to debate. Some people think it's a good idea, let them.
the triple 20 rule was developed by a powermad grognard who knew he made mores rolls than his PCs as a way of scoring a cheap kill with one of his mooks when he rolled behind the screen.
As a general rule; our "hard mode" is crits are automatically confirmed, so if you roll a 20 (or 18,19 whatever) you crit. We use the crit deck.
three 20s in a row on the same target is so rare, it would seem like a pointless death, im sure it would eventually happen, but IMO, rolling too much just slows down the flow of combat, either you crit or you do not.
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Unless you homebrew, dieing by the dice is part of the default. There are ways to bring your character back so it's not a big deal. Nothing in Pathfinder is guaranteed and if you don't like to die at all then you either need to find a DM who is willing to homebrew or find a different game entirely.
Every game is a homebrew.
That's just how it is.
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Dying isn't hard mode.
Comedy is hard mode.
Dying isn't hard mode.
Comedy is hard mode.
This makes me think of a Dungeon adventure from 8 to 10 years ago. "The devil box" I think it was called.
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Cool. Glad you enjoy your game.
I will say I do find it boring if I am not worried I might die/fail. And I have a solo game I run for my wife where it is pretty much understood she won't die, because that is what she wants.
I don't enjoy running that game as much as I enjoy running for the whole group, but I do like running a solo game and spending time with her, so I accommodate. And when she plays with the larger group, she understands she might die, and although that isn't her ideal game, she likes playing in that game so she accommodates.
All of us are advocating for play styles on here because we want the game to be as close to how we like to play as possible, and things can be changed that impact how available our play style is.
I think it is much easier to make the game less deadly as a house rule than as a set rule. To much nerfing makes the game less "heroic" feeling for the rest of us.
So I am glad you enjoy your game, good job advocating for it, I respectfully disagree with the goal.
Great comments everybody! Very interesting to see how others view the game.
Like many things in Pathfinder, variety is the spice of life. I don't want to always play on Hard mode, but I don't want to always play on Easy mode either. I think one of the most important parts of being a game master is knowing when to push the players and when to let them feel invincible. Too much of either and the game becomes frustrating or boring.
In terms of dice, our group rolls out in the open. When I GM, I may alter monster tactics, but once a roll needs to be made, the dice decide. With that said, if I want to direct the story, I generally won't call for a roll. Often some rolls (such as diplomacy checks) will have a subtle effect rather then deciding the outcome of a situation. I don't enjoy save or die type play however, so I tell my players up front that stuff like hold person/coup de grace tactics will be frowned upon.
Bad rolls generally don't have lasting consequences. In a recent game, a low level character got taken out by a long bow crit in the first round of a difficult combat. The player was really enjoying the PC and wanted to keep playing, so we basically brought the character back as the avenging twin brother. At later levels, a raise dead isn't that much of a burden.
A player who told me they would not tell me their hit point total upon being asked for it would be told to leave the game. I don't have time to play stupid power games with my players, and even if I was inclined to cheat for them, they aren't going to change that by 'hiding' information to which I am entitled as the arbiter of the game.
That said, I don't cheat for my players. Most of them still have their original characters. All of them have in some fashion or another, played a different character at some point in the game. Not a single one of them thinks that their character is somehow sacrosanct to me, even if the loss of that character would cause them to leave the game. Ultimately, we're playing a game, and one that has possible long reaching consequences within the game. If someone can't handle dealing with those consequences, then there are other games we might be able to play together, but RPGs don't seem to be one they're cut out for.
I don't consider that 'hard' mode.
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I think it's a common misconception to believe the game is about rolling dice. Dice are wonderful randomizers but they are there to force players to adapt to situations.
What the game is really about is choice:
Do I try and hit the baddie or do I pull my injured friend out of the fire?
Do I spend some spell-slots so we can fly over this challenge, or do I save them for if more of those bloody skeletons come crawling out of the walls again?
Do we arrest the villain so he can answer for his crimes, or do we murder him here because he killed the party henchmen and taunted us?
THOSE are the game. The Dice Rolling is just gambling, you can stack the deck in your favor, but rolling the dice is just watching to see if you made a good choice or a bad one.
In my games, I don't fudge either for or against the PCs. To me the part of the fun is adapting the story the whims of the dice. My players know this and plan accordingly. It's improv at its best, and the rest is making decisions based on situations created by previous choices and the whims of the dice.
That said, I wouldn't call my games hard mode. I do prompt my players if they're sure they want to take a course of action and tell them what likely consequences might be. They can go ahead with their crazy plans in spite of that, but they rarely act ignorantly and with good teamwork rarely lose a PC.
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I have a GM who wants to know our hp before he does damage to us. He's terrified of killing us. Recently, we had a player (new) TRY to die and the GM refused to let him. He dropped the PC to 1 hp in a fight and then came up with a way to keep the bad guy from attacking further. He had good story reason for it, though. Ok, fine.
Later in the same session, the same PC finds another opportunity to die and takes it by instigating a combat. The PC is still at 1 hp, and finally the GM relents and has him hit into the negatives. However, he stabilized and was allowed to leave.
Not once in nearly 9 levels of play has anyone in our group gone unconscious in combat except that night. It's boring. I already know that we will win every single encounter, whether we try or not. My hp, ac, etc, just are completely irrelevant.
I played in PFS tonight for the first time and the entire party went KO after trying VERY hard to take down a bad guy who was absolutely too tough for us. Guess what? We won due to our fighter being disarmed by the boss and blinded due to darkness. He grabs his flask of alchemist fire and hurls it, scoring a lucky hit on the boss before the boss retaliates with his own pc dropping strike.
Now everyone in my group is bleeding to death, making stabilization checks, surrounded by darkness and at the mercy of a killer....who burns to death from the alchemist fire before getting to us.
We all make our stabilization checks and awake later...
THAT'S how you end an adventure. If the GM had been fudging dice rolls (and considering how strong the boss was it would have been great if he had) we would have been able to handle that fight waaaaaaay easier. But he didn't. He did role play the villain, and it was good. It was a hard won battle that no one at that table will soon forget.
I loved every minute of it. And honest to goodness, I thought I'd be rolling up a new character that night. If every encounter goes that way? Man, I'd like it but you know, it's a matter of time before you die. But having a few encounters coming down to the pure roll of the dice and hoping against hope...That's where suspense, luck, despair, and most importantly, memories come into play.
I think that to be a successful gm requires learning the fine balance of when to fudge dice and when not to. Many GM's would have modified those rolls and this one didn't and for that, I'm glad. But maybe my next session I'll appreciate a modified roll in a much less dire circumstance. Again- skill as a GM factors in here. And finally, maybe since it was PFS the GM couldn't fudge any rolls. By not doing so, it created a heck of a lot of suspense.
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On character deaths.
One day, several years ago, i accidentally killed a players character while he wasnt there. Killed many other characters, never meant to kill any but if you wanted a safe life you could have stayed in town and become a carpenter. Since I didnt think it was fair to have killed him while the player wasnt on watch, I brought him back (free of charge). They went onmanother quest and on their way back, on a random encounter, he died... again. But this time the player was there. And he loved his charscter. It was Cailan, the free warrior who goes where his heart wanders and beloved leaderetc etc etc. Do you know what happened next? He rolled another character. 15 years of gaming under the belt and that is the only character i have EVER seen brought back to life after a fight. And the only reason that happened was because the player was absent (i tried to save him then with a compulsion but the other players countered that spell). By and large my players see death as the opportunity to try something new. Building character is one of the fun aspects of the game to us. I dont want to tell other people how to play but to encourage you to see the positive side of a characters death even if its death is meaningless.
On instant death
It always bugged me that there is a spell for regrowing limbs but no specific rules on losing said limbs. You cant sunder an arm, criticals dont chop hands off. No monsters have the special abilitiex "tear limb off like an angry Chewbacca". So when i roll 3 twenties on my pcs, thats what happens. Its not permanent (its certainly an inconvenient) and it adds a bit of roleplay value. I dare say it also brings table stories "Remember when that dire rat bit your fingers off and you couldnt even hold a sword anymore. Yeah it was awesome, we where too poor for regenerats so instead we went on a quest for a prothesis. Having a magical stone hand was awesome, i'll never forget that character".
On Fudging rolls
I fudge rolls... there i said it, Wow it feels so much better once ive admitted it, its like this great burden has suddenly been lifted. All kidding aside, as a GM i feel that it is my job to tell a good story. To tell that story my heroes need to live (at least one of them) to fight another day and my villains need to be fearsome. The heroes need to feel like they live on the edge of a precipice. Sometimes I fudge vor the heroes, sometime i fudge for the villain, Maybe my necromancer didnt make his save vs his stinking cloud but i need him to so he gets a free pass, at least this round. Maybe i just rolled max damage on an area of effect spell that all my pcs failed their save, no real harm in saying 22 instead of 48.
House rules are there to be discussed at the beggining of a campaign, not when they suddenly become inconvenient to us.
All this being said, thr first rule of D&D is that everyone participating be having fun. So have fun and try t avoid table drama. Thank you for reading through all those grammatical errors
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See, I'm hearing the reason to do a hit point check is to cheat for the players, and not kill them. when I call for a hit point check, I could be doing any of the following.
1. Reaffirming my picture of the scenario is correct to my NPCs. Do they see bloody ragged heroes? Fresh unwounded warriors, despite having been in fierce melee?
2. Choosing my next target. Are the PCs fighting a merciful swordsman, or someone trying to teach them a lesson rather than kill? He's going for the stronger looking ones. Are the PCs fighting someone ruthless and bastardish? He's going for the guy at 2hp.
3. Making sure the players are paying attention. I let players track a lot of information on their own without looking over their shoulders. If they aren't producing that information when I ask for it, they need to know that they have a responsibility to the game.
4. Probably going to kill someone, and want to describe their falling in heroic terms, or call for massive damage checks, or whatever else is based on their hit points remaining.
What I'm not doing is going to put up with players stalling the game to try to power struggle. Either you trust me to run the game fairly, or you don't. If you don't, then find a DM you do trust, because I don't want you there. It will lessen both of our fun, which is the exact opposite of what this game is supposed to be.
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I have a GM who wants to know our hp before he does damage to us. He's terrified of killing us. Recently, we had a player (new) TRY to die and the GM refused to let him. He dropped the PC to 1 hp in a fight and then came up with a way to keep the bad guy from attacking further. He had good story reason for it, though. Ok, fine.
Later in the same session, the same PC finds another opportunity to die and takes it by instigating a combat. The PC is still at 1 hp, and finally the GM relents and has him hit into the negatives. However, he stabilized and was allowed to leave.
Not once in nearly 9 levels of play has anyone in our group gone unconscious in combat except that night. It's boring. I already know that we will win every single encounter, whether we try or not. My hp, ac, etc, just are completely irrelevant...
And what did your GM say, when you sat down with him and chatted about it?
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See, I'm hearing the reason to do a hit point check is to cheat for the players, and not kill them. when I call for a hit point check, I could be doing any of the following.
1. Reaffirming my picture of the scenario is correct to my NPCs. Do they see bloody ragged heroes? Fresh unwounded warriors, despite having been in fierce melee?
2. Choosing my next target. Are the PCs fighting a merciful swordsman, or someone trying to teach them a lesson rather than kill? He's going for the stronger looking ones. Are the PCs fighting someone ruthless and bastardish? He's going for the guy at 2hp.
3. Making sure the players are paying attention. I let players track a lot of information on their own without looking over their shoulders. If they aren't producing that information when I ask for it, they need to know that they have a responsibility to the game.
4. Probably going to kill someone, and want to describe their falling in heroic terms, or call for massive damage checks, or whatever else is based on their hit points remaining.
What I'm not doing is going to put up with players stalling the game to try to power struggle. Either you trust me to run the game fairly, or you don't. If you don't, then find a DM you do trust, because I don't want you there. It will lessen both of our fun, which is the exact opposite of what this game is supposed to be.
Well, you're kind of ignoring the fact that the player was asked for his hit point total after damage had been rolled but before it's announced. The only reason a GM would insist on knowing hp before declaring damage is to fudge one way or the other - or to make their own power play and prove their dominance.
If a GM has no time for power games, as you say you don't, they're not going to buy into one by saying, "No, you tell me first!" They're going to roll damage and tell you how much. If the GM asks for the purposes of describing and the player says "How much did I take?", why wouldn't the GM just tell them unless he's playing his own little power game?
In conclusion, in the situation you describe, if they're not trying to fudge, it is the GM "stalling the game to try to power struggle". Just announce the damn damage, power tripper!
I don't want to play my game on Hard Mode.From reading your post, it actually sounds not so much like you don't want to play on "Hard Mode" (i.e., increased challenge), but more like you don't want random risks that are completely separate from the "challenge" or "difficulty".
This is why personally, I'm okay with fudging a little bit in favor of a brand-new player in PFS games, but pretty much exclusively to filter out random, meaningless kills.
For instance, a certain halfling barbarian in a certain 1st-level-only PFS scenario only threatens on a natural 20, but a crit would deal 3d10+21 or an average of about 36 damage. Not even a 16 CON barbarian survives that. I will never let that happen to a new player. A player who is just finding out what Pathfinder is and runs into that will decide "Okay, so this Pathfinder thing is a game ultimately you win or lose based on someone else's dice, no matter what you do; no thanks" and they don't come back. They're not going to look at it as the exception, they're going to see it as the norm.
Once they're not "new" anymore, and/or they're higher than level 1 and therefore probably out of "crit = auto-death" range, then it's up to them to keep themselves alive. But as far as random, un-preventable death goes? I'm with you: that's not fun (at least for a beginner) so I won't let that happen. You can't not be squishy at 1st level, so I won't let a newbie get punished for that fact.
Yeah, I know that scenario and that happened to me when I DMed it. He failed his confirmation roll.
Personally, this is what I aim for when I DM and like to have when I play, I like to have Agency and be Heroic. I want to know that my actions have a shot at affecting what goes on. If I got that going, I am pretty happy. I ran a game where people wanted to make characters who leveled 1 to 20. I like a story, so the death thing became a little bit of an issue. Characters got central to the story, my players were invested in their characters and what was happening in the story. Death, instead of your character is gone, became well, why you were dead bad stuff went down on the things you care about.
It worked, they didn't want to die.
Mystically Inclined:
How do you think the DM feels when your character walks into the lovingly crafted BBEG fight and a character trivializes the encounter through either a freakishly lucky crit or the BBEG fails a crucial save against something like hold person in the first round?
I'd suggest that in order to keep your DM happy - you should put your best foot forward and nudge your d20... no, my fighter didn't crit with his longbow, it was a little wide... or no, I added up my concentration check wrong - turns out I didn't cast successfully.
It's a facetious comment and argument, but still holds in this case. Would you as a player fudge your own rolls to allow for a more cinematic and enjoyable fight with the main villain of a campaign? - I mean after all the experienced enemy with an indomitable will and an iron jaw shouldn't be forced to suffer from the randomness of the die roll should he?
I think I have only fudged a die roll twice. When I was DMing a friend of mine was having a VERY bad day (wife just left him, she was crazy though, so good times) and was looking forward to playing. At the opening round, I threw some die and I would have killed his character. The structure of the encounter would have had him sit out for a very long time. He just took some arbitrary damage instead.
I rarely get to play, but someone stepped up to the DM plate. They made a good boss encounter. They were proud of it. He showed me afterwards, it was good. Good exposition and description everyone was in to it, I snagged a loaded musket at the start of the round. Rolled a critical hit and the damage I would have done was around 50hp. His BBEG was dead, in the first round. I knew this, instead, I hit, but failed the confirmation, he got to have his guy be scary and my friends (And I) had fun fighting it. I had the fun of blasting him with a musket and charging in. I wanted him to feel the fun of DMing, so I get the chance to play more, but to learn why I like it.
Is that something I would do again for him, probably not, but dice and the game are fun and are their to facilitate a social interaction. Sometimes, I can find a reason where the social interaction my trump the dice or the game.
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A player who told me they would not tell me their hit point total upon being asked for it would be told to leave the game. I don't have time to play stupid power games with my players, and even if I was inclined to cheat for them, they aren't going to change that by 'hiding' information to which I am entitled as the arbiter of the game.
*points* Player entitlement! Player entitlement!
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I don't fudge rolls nor do I want them fudged on me.
Whether it takes me five minutes or five hours to create a character, I always go into the game knowing that my character could die at any time and I am perfectly happy with that. My brain contains a vast array of concepts that are just standing in line, waiting to be called upon when need be.
Same goes when I am DMing. Doesn't matter how long it takes me to create a BBEG, if you guys blow through it then I applaud you for your work.
I don't fudge rolls nor do I want them fudged on me.
Whether it takes me five minutes or five hours to create a character, I always go into the game knowing that my character could die at any time and I am perfectly happy with that. My brain contains a vast array of concepts that are just standing in line, waiting to be called upon when need be.
Same goes when I am DMing. Doesn't matter how long it takes me to create a BBEG, if you guys blow through it then I applaud you for your work.
Wow, I totally agree with Shallowsoul here.
If I know a GM fudged to keep me alive it ruins the game for me, if I am low level then the character should be dead and what I do from then on is almost a lie.
If i was high level then it seems the GM thinks so little of me that I would really complain about spending a bit o' gold.
Either way, not my brand of fun. I like to play pathfinder, in Pathfinder there is a chance my character dies, please do not take that away.
On the other side, when I GM I roll, what happens, happens.
[[Mind you I mostly play PFS so that may be a tad different.]]
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Reading posts on these boards is all the comedy gold I need for any given day.
Some context. I've been playing with the same group for about a decade now. I and another good friend of mine are the group's primary GMs. We were co-workers and are friends outside of work and gaming. In the context of the game we collaborate a lot. I make minis and terrain that he uses, he builds NPCs and monsters for my games, we both use maps the other has drawn, it's a very collaborative environment and I feel both of us appreciate the friendship of the other in a deep and meaningful way.
As part of this, each of us know the proclivities and habits of the other, especially when gaming. We talk about it a lot. Each has had an impact on the other's gaming style. We have each learned from the other. And one thing that we both know, kid about and discuss at length is his tendency to be "soft" and my tendency to be "killer." I kill characters fairly regularly in my campaigns. He almost never does. When he does kill a character, it is almost always MY character because he knows I can handle it. I don't kill characters because I like it, nor do I kill characters because "the story demands it". I kill characters because adventuring is a dangerous occupation and the world can be a deadly place if you aren't very, very careful.
What I find interesting is that our group enjoys BOTH playstyles. In fact I think one reason that our group enjoys both is that they know that they can experience both. If they always played in a game where they knew they weren't going to die, they'd probably get tired of it. If they always played in a game where they knew that if they didn't work together as a team and prepare properly for a boss fight that they might all die, they'd probably get tired of that too. But they can rest up from the pressure in his games, and experience the challenge of real consequences in mine.
So, anyway, all of that was to lead to this.
So in the context of how "hard" the game should be played, I make a comment above about how my GM is too soft and has a tendency to fudge damage rolls during combat based on knowing how many hit points characters have. So I don't tell him how many hit points my character has so that he can't deliberately avoid killing my character.
And immediately the "player entitlement" crowd, or the "GM/player power struggle" crowd leaps forward beating their chests in blazing self-righeousness: "If MY player ever did that, I'd kick his ass away from my table!"
LOL, I love it. It's like comedy central on a daily basis. It's like you guys don't actually play with friends or have any sense whatsoever of reasonable human social interaction.
The GM in question and I know what's going on. He knows that I know he's going to fudge, and I know that he knows I'm going to make him do it straight. It's a sort of friendly game of tug of war between us where I'm encouraging him to be a bit more "hard" when he KNOWS that he's generally too soft, because we've talked about it at length.
By the same token, when I am the GM, he does the same sorts of things about my GM actions.
It's actually part of the fun we have gaming. And the group we play with are in the know too. "C'mon man! Kill him! You know he'd do it to you! Haha!"
Based on some of the comments made here I get this image of games where there is this constant stream of players coming to the tables of some GMs and a constant stream of players with heads bowed, character sheet clutched in trembling hands, leaving a trail of forlorn gaming dice behind as they accept their just banishment from the halls of gaming perfection.
Love this stuff. Keep it up.
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As can be said for 99% of the other threads...
Whatever works for you and your group.
-Vaz
Yep, exactly. If you want to play "Candyland" and call it Pathfinder and your group is happy with that, hey, it's all about your group having the most fun.
Sometimes my group just plays "Twister" and calls it a night. It's all good.
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While responding to another post on another forum, this topic really crystallized for me.
In the relatively short time that I've been a member of these forums, I've across an underlying attitude that I just flat out disagree with. There seem to be a segment of people who get offended if their GM fudges a dice roll to help a player out. They'll say things like player choices don't matter if there aren't consequences or if there's not a chance of death, the game gets boring. A perfect example is the "instant death on three straight 20's" rule.
I'd like to quickly point out that this is why I don't make up rules like "three 20s = insta-dead", critical fumble rules, etc.
Meanwhile, there is a segment of GMs who view themselves as impartial arbiters. They are the judges between the players and the opposing forces. If the opposing force outwits the players, or the dice just flat out dictate the death of a character, then it was simply meant to be. The dice will dictate what the dice will dictate, and GMs are helpless to change that. Today I even learned the phrase "sanctity of the dice," which was certainly a new one on me.
I won't say sanctity but I do appreciate the impartial fairness of the dice. I've found fairness is very important in the trust between a player and a GM, and fudging dice leads to mistrust and can lead to hurt or resentful feelings later on (this is especially true if a PC dies and you let them die after fudging for another PC earlier in the campaign, because even if they were "asking for it" {such as a level 3 insisting to find and melee a great wyrm} they'll feel favoritism).
There are GMs who view themselves as impartial judges between players and the opposing forces. To those GMs I say impartial? YOU designed the encounter! There are GMs who are helpless to change the dictates of the dice. To those GMs I say helpless? You are the one interpreting the dice. Those random numbers are without meaning or value. YOU give them value. The decision isn't out of your hands. You're the person who is making the decision.
Actually, I have to kind of agree with them here to a degree. It is indeed possible to be impartial. I can play a game of chess with myself and attempt to win on both sides without showing favoritism to either side.
Likewise, I design a lot of encounters. I generally keep them within the expected standards of the game with some few exceptions. I root for the party. I want them to succeed. But I don't engineer it that way. I believe - very firmly - that it is a greater honor to them to not rig the game in their favor.
There are players and GMs who think the game isn't fun without a chance of death. To them I say okay, I actually get this one. You've played the epic slayer of dragons and you've gotten bored with it. But I haven't slayed the dragon yet. My character hasn't been the invulnerable superman waltzing effortlessly through tribes of low level kobolds. I'm not bored with it. I'm actually looking forward to it. And meanwhile, having the character that I've lovingly crafted killed because someone got a lucky crit, or some low level peon rolled three 20's ISN'T fun to me. That's not a challenge. That's just cruel.
Here's the thing. If you don't want any challenge you can have your character erect stick figures back in town and cleave your way through them heroically as a child at play would. It lets you slay lots of kobolds like a superman without breaking a sweat and you can do it daily. The problem is, over in a real adventure, bad guys are using things like metal weapons and they want to kill you. And I'm not going to dumb down encounters because it robs my players of their sense of pride and satisfaction. The only reason people feel gratification from defeating the dragon is because the dragon is hard and they could have been killed. Not because the dragon was made out of paper mache with boffing sticks for claws and teeth.
However, you also illustrate why I don't use stupid rules like multiple-20s = worse effect than a critical. Partially because there's no basis for it but mostly because it doesn't really add anything to the game and favors likelihood of making NPCs kill PCs more often (statistically there are going to be countless more NPCs during your given game than PCs and thus the likelihood of such a special occasion occurring vs a PC is much higher and more meaningful than an NPC).
Am I saying that there should be no death in Pathfinder? No. That would actually be a fairly interesting campaign world, but no. That's not what I'm saying. My problem is with the sheer Randomness of these kinds of death.
A character dies because a player got stupid with them? The player learns better tactics. A character dies because a player didn't take slay living into account when they dumped Wisdom? The player learns how to design characters better. The player improves. The player grows. A character dies because the role playing demanded it? The player gets to tell the story of their character's epic death, or the fitting epilogue matched to their character's personality and choices. And in the end, the player chooses this death. They could have overridden their character's personality long enough to save the character's hide if the player had really wanted to.
Critical hits are part of the tactics though. There are even several monsters in the game who specifically have feats like Improved Critical or greater threat ranges on their attacks. My brother's alchemist got obliterated when he challenged a bugbear with a greataxe to melee and the bugbear scored a critical (it was his own fault be we were proud of his brave if foolish demise). Roleplaying does not demand player death. It should include the option, but I don't think it should demand it. In his case he decided he wanted his dwarf to challenge the bugbear barbarian because he was a dwarf and the other was a goblinoid champion of sorts and the ol' boy bit off more than he could chew. But he wasn't required to do so, he merely did so.
Meanwhile the critical hit aspect is a tactical consideration. Just yesterday I played in a game that had a random encounter with like 4 bugbears and an ogre. Several of the bugbears were wielding longspears and spiked gauntlets, the ogre was wielding a longspear and spiked gauntlets, and some of the bugbears were wielding shields and battle axes. We were a party of 5 2nd level characters. This was a really nasty random encounter (but it was legit). During the fight my wizard sized up a tactical target and decided to grease the ogre's longspear to remove his reach and critical opportunity. A x3 crit from the ogre would have surely slaughtered anyone in question so it had to go (the ogre spent the rest of the fight trying to pick up his spear and making the occasional spiked gauntlet attack). After that a scroll of burning disarm caught another bugbear by surprise (the one with the spear) and he made his save and threw down his weapon which allowed the party's archer to get up off the ground (the bugbear had tripped him).
But thus far the only really random death I've heard about is your triple-20s commentary. Which isn't part of the rules. If you're complaining that such additions are stupid I sincerely agree with you 100%. As Roberta said, it's arbitrary and dumb.
A character dies because the bad guy got a critical and one-shotted them? Because the dice rolled a completely random number and the GM chooses to interpret this as "you're instantly dead even though you did nothing wrong"? Because the adventuring party is too low level to cast/purchase a Raise Dead spell?
No.
Just... no.
I can't agree with this fully. We recently lost a PC in yesturday's game the week before. We lost him to a gnoll's critical hit with a spear during an AoO for him moving. Critical hits in 3.x/PF aren't instant death but they can quickly result in death. Of course you have to test for a critical hit (the confirmation roll) which means even if you roll a natural 20 then you still have to test vs their AC to see if it was anything more than a simple hit (which favors increasing your AC). I have no problem with being 1-shot from a nasty critical hit.
But again you cite the non-existent "interpreted as instantly dead" thing. So I'm wondering if your rant includes some things you wouldn't actually have a real problem with if not for being angry over some poorly devised house rule.
Please don't punish me for something I can't control. Take my character captive. Find a way to get the character Raised and hit me with some negative levels. Introduce a Deus Ex Machina for a last minute save. Set the character at 1 hp above death and stabilize them. Give me an alternate character to play until mine can get back in the game. Do whatever you have to do, but don't make me take the character that I've spent hours building/creating a backstory for and toss it in the trash.
I don't want to play my game on Hard Mode. It's not fun. It's not entertaining. It's not exciting. It just sucks.
Unfortunately I can't agree with a lot of this. In many cases it's just not practical for enemies to take a PC hostage. Nor would I auto stabilize PCs. It just feels dirty to me and removes the excitement and sense of dread about being on the edge of death. To me it cheapens the feeling of success when there is no option for failure.
As can be said for 99% of the other threads...
Whatever works for you and your group.
-Vaz
Yep, exactly. If you want to play "Candyland" and call it Pathfinder and your group is happy with that, hey, it's all about your group having the most fun.
Sometimes my group just plays "Twister" and calls it a night. It's all good.
One point upon which we agree. Different strokes for different folks.
Glad I amuse you. You'd still get kicked from the game for acting like that, and I don't care if your 'greater context' displays this is an appropriate social interaction for your group. Your original post displayed a player who refused his DM information to which the DM is entitled. I'm not here commenting on your game, I'm here sharing about mine. That sort of "nuh uh" attitude isn't ok at my table. It's ok at yours, or it's a in-joke at yours, or some other such that makes it acceptable. Fantastic. May sharing our differing experiences and approaches better the gaming community at large.
Even if it's just a few chuckles on your side of the computer.
Edit: Also, I agree with Ashiel. Possibly a first.
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I won't say sanctity but I do appreciate the impartial fairness of the dice. I've found fairness is very important in the trust between a player and a GM, and fudging dice leads to mistrust and can lead to hurt or resentful feelings later on (this is especially true if a PC dies and you let them die after fudging for another PC earlier in the campaign, because even if they were "asking for it" {such as a level 3 insisting to find and melee a great wyrm} they'll feel favoritism).
I have never experienced this. So, maybe in your group but it is not a universal constant.
The impression given is that your group has distrustful, atagonist GM/PC relationships with competing, fragile egos.
To be honest, my group don't try to figure out if the GM has fudged or not so we'll never know.
I think, if I played a game and a fellow player was second-guessing the GM and trying to figure out if he fudging dice or not... I'd get sick of that player way before I got sick of the GM.
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Actually, I have to kind of agree with them here to a degree. It is indeed possible to be impartial. I can play a game of chess with myself and attempt to win on both sides without showing favoritism to either side.
Likewise, I design a lot of encounters. I generally keep them within the expected standards of the game with some few exceptions. I root for the party. I want them to succeed. But I don't engineer it that way. I believe - very firmly - that it is a greater honor to them to not rig the game in their favor.
And that is your interpretation of the rules.
You are interpreting things... Even your definition of 'expected standards of the game' is probably up for debate.
Everyone homebrews.
Here's the thing. If you don't want any challenge you can have your character erect stick figures back in town and cleave your way through them heroically as a child at play would. It lets you slay lots of kobolds like a superman without breaking a sweat and you can do it daily. The problem is, over in a real adventure, bad guys are using things like metal weapons and they want to kill you. And I'm not going to dumb down encounters because it robs my players of their sense of pride and satisfaction. The only reason people feel gratification from defeating the dragon is because the dragon is hard and they could have been killed. Not because the dragon was made out of paper mache with boffing sticks for claws and teeth.
Psychic powers are awesome. And make-believe.
That may be the only reason you and your group might find dragon-slaying satisfying but... your playstyle is not the playstyle.
Meanwhile the critical hit aspect is a tactical consideration. Just yesterday I played in a game that had a random encounter with like 4 bugbears and an ogre. Several of the bugbears were wielding longspears and spiked gauntlets, the ogre was wielding a longspear and spiked gauntlets, and some of the bugbears were wielding shields and battle axes.
This is a great example of playstyle variety.
For me, I would regard it as super-metagame-tastic to have random ogres (intelligence 6) and bgbears (intelligence 10) employing tactics like reach-weapon+spiked-gauntlets to create a zone of death and would actually find it more tactically interesting to allow my 2nd level PCs the option of getting inside their reach.
So, you do homebrew, you do have playstyle.
That's great but it doesn't mean you should make easy assumptions about what others enjoy, what others find satisfying or how others respond emotionally to gaming circumstances.
I think it was fairly clear that the OP was advocating their playstyle in response to a feeling that a different playstyle was more commonly advocated on the Paizo forums.
And this thread has proved her right so far, the hard-mode (as he/she sees it) advocates are out in force once again.
It is nice to see that we have such variety, I guess that means we are all more likely to find games which suit our own individual enjoyment.