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I've noticed a lot of people complaining about "power creep" and short combats (1-4 rounds) and the new classes being unnecessary.
Is it possible that people are just running things wrong?
First, I'll address power creep. I think wanting to be able to maximize, optimize, and build an engine of destruction is natural for a lot of people. I'm not sure why people are complaining about this to be honest. More options equal more ways to "break" the game BUT it also means more ways to RP and embrace the game. I don't think you can have a game that doesn't offer the ability to "Power game" that deals with combat on any regular basis.
Is it possible that some people are just terrible at building characters and hide behind statements like "it is a concept character/theme character" or " I wanted a character that was fun and not broken"?
I mean I've seen Bards and Sorcerer's who can literally avoid 50% or more of the combat in a scenario through convincing talk and a decent enough roll to back it up (yes the people I play with actually make you role play behind many of your rolls) but can dish out the butt whooping if need be.
Second, Short combats....
well I don't reckon that every combat should be 10+ rounds and tax your resources to a great extent but combats that go around 5-10 rounds probably aren't as rare as most people consider. I think perception vs stealth is forgotten a lot but probably not as much as GMs tending to forget that just because the party isn't stealthing that they don't have to roll a perception check for the bad guys in the next room.
A lot of enemies could easily TPK a party if it was prepared for them ahead of time. I think if you are dropping fireballs and lightning spells in one room that everything on the same level of a dungeon is probably now aware of you. It isn't like you are going to be walking into a room catching them unprepared for your arrival.
Also a matter of running a combat effectively.
I have faced incorporeal creatures that stand in the middle of a room and fight...even though they are "intelligent" undead...
I have faced NPCs who never use their summon spells or potions or magical items, who were standing in the middle of the room when we arrived even though we crushed four rooms of unsuspecting bad guys in a row all leading to his location.
on the flip side I have faced rogues who strike from the shadows with poison and flank and sneak attack while their wizard buddy entangles half of the party and snipers pick off the parties spell casters.
I have faced creatures that unhallowed an area seconds before the party arrives, drinks potions that make them harder to hit, turn invisible, and line up a good mass confusion spell before they summon nasties to smash people apart.
I think the real problem is a lot of people not taking the time to understand how things work and in extension how they work together. Tactics are left at the door. People complain if combat is too hard but complain just as much if it is too easy. People forget that a potion or wand can change the dynamic of combat and never stock up on their "unexpected circumstance toolkit". And finally, people want to be a jack of all trades with every character they have but also want to be a specialist so they feel that something is inherently wrong with the system when they can't be both.
As far as additional classes go...well I'm not really going to address that, people want different things and unfortunately a lot of people are "fantasy purest" aka "only like tolkien-esque high fantasy" and they are never going to be happy if the newest thing doesn't do exactly that. However, some of us love different options and non-traditional stuff. So it’s all tomato tohmahtoe type stuff in essence.
Thoughts?
PCs can have better tactics than the GM because each PC only has one character sheet to deal with, and they can put their heads together. The DM has to juggle multiple character sheets, each as complex as a PC sheet, while at the same time adjucating PC actions and everything else.
The fantasy purists/Tolkien fanboys can choose not to use the new material, so their argument hasn't a leg to stand on.
A lot of enemies could easily TPK a party if it was prepared for them ahead of time. I think if you are dropping fireballs and lightning spells in one room that everything on the same level of a dungeon is probably now aware of you. It isn't like you are going to be walking into a room catching them unprepared for your arrival.
And if the entire level knows about it, why don't they all converge and face the party at CR 42? (<-- totally made up number, but it is the answer to everything). This is a difficult line to walk between realism and adventure design. Paizo has even attempted to address this in some of their dungeon-crawl adventures. There are almost always arguments no matter where on this curve DMs end up.
While I agree with a lot of the things in your post, this one is just too much of a grey area. If players demand realism, then things must react, perception must be checked, and logical responses played out. If not, you can blissfully leave those encounters in their respective rooms and let the players approach them as they wish. If you fall in the middle realism gauge, then the rooms become "alerted" and the encounters more difficult, which may consequently completely change the pace of the adventure (good luck if your plot is also on a timer). There's no "doing it wrong" on that curve, just degrees of realism added to the game.
I think the OP is correct about tactics, however, I think most players dislike when the GM runs the monsters and NPC's "like a PC". In other words if you make the players' opponents too smart or too tough they will complain that you aren't being fair. For instance if an NPC wizard unloads all of his best spells in the first few rounds or a kobold or goblin is just "too smart". Many players seem to feel that the GM is using his knowledge istead of what the NPC should know or do.
And, for the record, I feel that the game should be run a certain way or else things get all f'd up to be a serious design flaw.
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And, for the record, I feel that the game should be run a certain way or else things get all f'd up to be a serious design flaw.
Um ... not sure I agree with this statement. If folks play a game, ANY game, counter to the rules laid out for the game, then of course things are going to get f'ed up. That would not be design flaw.
For example, if you played Monopoly and decided that hotels actually had rent 10x as high as the listed amount, that on doubles you would move backwards, that if you landed on Free Parking you immediately went to Go and that if you played as the top hat you get two rolls per turn that would really mess up the game, but it has nothing to do with the design of the game.
The same holds for RPGs. It is entirely possible to completely screw up any game with additional rules, homebrewed concepts, modified rules, etc.
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As a game tactician who is also the primary GM I can tell you that if I ran my monsters with a full awareness of tactical expertise, I'd probably TPK my party in just about any significant encounter.
Here is my logic about this subject.
My player group is presumably aware that they are likely to encounter combat most of the time before combat actually occurs. My players are intelligent, rational people. All of them are college graduates and most of them are highly successful career IT professionals. They ain't dumb.
But they screw up tactics all the time.
I've gone back and reviewed the battlefield tactics of generals and other officers in a wide variety of historical battles, from Napoleon to Jeb Stuart and more. In the main what I see when I study the actual combat tactics employed in many, if not most, historical battles is that the general who wins is not usually the one who has the most brilliant tactical expertise, it's the general who screws up the least.
So my take on things is that I will mostly play my monsters at the same, or near the same, tactical level as my players. That way it's a more or less even battlefield. That means I will deliberately employ poor tactics on occasion, not because I don't know better, but because that makes the game more fun for the players and better reflects what I see actually occurring in the history of combat.
I mean some of the stuff I see in studying battles is quite shocking tactical ineptitude at the highest levels of military command. Mind blowing stuff sometimes.
I feel this thread is incredibly relevant to what I've been trying to accomplish on the boards for a good part of the last couple of years. LEt me see if I have an appropriate response...
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Is it possible that people are just running things wrong?
If your advice is the only evidence you have that other people are doing it wrong, then no.
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Alrighty time to weigh in. I feel the title is a bit provocative in the wrong manner though.
Yes people complain a lot about long fights, short fights, fights that crush them utterly because they didn't bother to do any number of a thousand things to mae it easier etc.
Really I think it comes down to the unfortunate fact that being a GM means being able to read your players. That means understanding the basic level of tactical aptitude. I've seen the gamut from players who can't remember very very basic rule tenants at the best of times to players with years of wargame experience single handedly crushing encounters with practically zero effort on their characters part.
And ultimately it's the GM's responsibility to put the effort to learn the game and increase their tactical ability as the players do. It's far easier to make good challenging encounters that specifically cater to a groups skill level when your own skill level is above the group's as a whole.
And you know it doesn't hurt to slowly push the difficulty up as the game progesses. Why? Mainly so that encounters can be allowed to become more interesting and provocative in all the right ways. Enemies are meant to get more dangerous as the game progresses they serve as measures for how strong the group has gotten not just in numbers but in overall skill.
And as a GM this let's me play wiht more toys. I mean you have infinite resources to draw from as a GM and you can only use a few at a time in order to keep the players happy. That's alright but I want a bigger toolbox please. Get better Mr. Ibuiltathemecharacterbasedonthrowingcustardpies I want to come up with thematic encounters with bomb throwing alchemist clowns in full S&M gear (sorry it's late and I'm tired). And I want them to be frustrating because it's more fun to conquer a hard fight and have your work acknowledged than it is to bat at some entities representing some arbitrary numbers.
And really, this to me all starts with the player. I don't think I've met anyone outside of high school who ran games before they player. If the player's get better the GM has the incentive to improve.
Unfortunately far too many GM's see player success as something wrong with the system rather than the way they're running it. They get kneejerky and start banning things and rewriting thigns to the point where the house rule book for the campaign is as big as the core book itself. Or they focus on one or two problem characters and work hard to counter them without dealing with the more subtle problem of asking why they're succeeding. Is it because you continue to use the same tactics and enemy and this character fighting for his life has adapted to survive? IS it because you spent hours writing up a masterful backstory and world the players will never get to fully explore but rendered your boss fights and encounters down to 4v1 blender fests where your mighty warlord is straight up annihilated in a flurry of action advantage.
So really GM's have to just improve their mechanical sense. That doesn't mean learning all the splatbooks but understanding the basics. It means understanding how the game works on a basica level. Once you understand that then the only splatbooks you honestly have to worry about are those that take up too much time or honestly truly break these fundamental assumptions.
Second, Short combats....
well I don't reckon that every combat should be 10+ rounds and tax your resources to a great extent but combats that go around 5-10 rounds probably aren't as rare as most people consider. I think perception vs stealth is forgotten a lot but probably not as much as GMs tending to forget that just because the party isn't stealthing that they don't have to roll a perception check for the bad guys in the next room.A lot of enemies could easily TPK a party if it was prepared for them ahead of time. I think if you are dropping fireballs and lightning spells in one room that everything on the same level of a dungeon is probably now aware of you. It isn't like you are going to be walking into a room catching them unprepared for your arrival.
With the CR system its pretty hard to TPK a well built party even if the enemy is aware without going to the higher ends of the "reasonable" encounter scale, or abusing flaws in the CR system. A prepared adventuring party can take down buffs and defenses of the enemy faster than he can keep them up, if you boost the numbers of enemies you have to reduce the individual CR or increase the XP budget for the encounter. Lower CRs means the enemy might fail to reach thresholds to actually harm the PCs. It becomes a story of action economy vs having capable enough monsters. Lower the mooks too far and they die to an AoE effect. Make it one solo or a pair and they get focesed down with action economy. When it comes right down to it, expending resources on an alpha strike actually conserves resources since you have such short combats. A high level wizard or sorcerer is hardly going to run out of spells in a normal adventuring day if played that way (often 1 spell 1 encounter can happen, if its the right spell that is).
I wouldn’t say “wrong”. Are they having fun? Then it’s not wrong. But if you’re not playing as the devs envisioned, and then constantly coming here to complain that the rules are all wrong, then the problem is with your playstyle. Just understand that D&D is a LARGE sandbox, and you are given the go-ahead to play the game quite a bit different than envisioned.
BUT, once out there on the fringe, even if quite a few others have joined you, I think complaining that the devs/rules don’t fully mesh with your playstyle is a bit, well …‘wrong”. Your "fun" is not wrong, your playstyle is not wrong- what's wrong is expecting the majority to play your way.
So, if you play “hyper optimized, use every source even if it’s not really suited for the AP, high point buy, dumping like crazy, every magic item is available, rest after every combat, blowing away the standard AP encounter in just two rounds, rocket tag” and you are having fun- Kudo’s to you. The sandbox that is D&D and PF has room for you. But it wasn’t built for you.
Thus trying to get the rules changed so that the rules better reflect your fringe style (which I would not enjoy at all, and I don’t think most would) is unfair.
And, for the record, I feel that the game should be run a certain way or else things get all f'd up to be a serious design flaw.Um ... not sure I agree with this statement. If folks play a game, ANY game, counter to the rules laid out for the game, then of course things are going to get f'ed up. That would not be design flaw.
I think the problem Zhayne is referring to is that its a little restrictive. For example the encounter based design in pathfinder or the WBL design maybe? 15 minute adventuring day can blow up in your face, and so can playing someone who's modest or running a low magic game(inversely, a Monty Haul game can more literally explode in some ways!). You really can run it wrong and there are consequences, and in turn it becomes your job to rebalance them in some manner that may not be entirely spelled out if at all.
Everything in these games is a relative experience. I wouldn't say that you're wrong. I would say that your experience differs from mine and everyone else's. I have had many, many, many players in the past 30 years I have ran games who have absolutely no idea about tactics or what gear they're carrying at the time (about which I will remind them). That, my friend, is the norm and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I find that I get more fun out of watching the PCs outsmart me, out-fight me and simply thwart my attempt at squashing them at every turn. And they do it quite well.