This may come out sounding rather accusatory, but it really isn’t intended to be that way. I am just looking for information in an attempt to make a game that people like. I am likely to become a co-GM for a group. We will probably alternate with various missions, roughly analogous to a short module or couple of long scenarios. As is not uncommon for some gamers, the group is a mix of people. We have a couple that are fairly new to gaming (other than MMORPG’s), a couple more that are fairly introverted and will probably never actually say if they don’t like something, and at least 1 guy that is so easy going and adaptable I’m pretty sure he would enjoy almost any style of gaming. So although I have tried, I really don’t feel like I’ve gotten any constructive feedback from these folks.
I played with these folks a few times last year and there were some oddities about the game. (At least the seemed like oddities to me.) The current GM (he will be moving, hence the replacement) had some things that seemed ‘typical’ for him Everyone seemed to like the game, but I don’t know if they’ve never been exposed to anything different, if they have and appreciate those things, or if they just don’t want to say anything that sounded unsupportive.
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He will have an army following say Rommel’s desert tactics from WW2, if you as a player happen to notice that you can set up an ambush for where you know a unit should be moving. Even though there is no way for the PC to have any of that info or even guess the unit will be there.
Say 5 years ago there was a movie/novel/greek saga that had some monster whose life was tied to an artifact spear. Toward the end of the movie the hero snaps the spear shaft and it weakened the monster enough for the hero to defeat it. If you happen to have seen the movie, recognize it from his description of the creature, and break the shaft it becomes an easy fight. If not, then it was nearly impossible. After the fight he told us how we could have easily beaten it. “How would we have figured that out? Well you were losing anyway, you could have just started trying different things. We were trying things, but breaking the only weapon that had so far managed to damage it would never have made the list. Well it would if you had seen the movie. We didn’t see the movie. Yep, that makes it harder…”
I will say this really kinda bugged me, but most of the group seemed to think it was just humorous.
I’m not certain, but I think he is trying to encourage creative tactics and ‘outside the box’ solutions instead of just direct combat. But it wasn’t doing that for me.
If I happen to know and recognize the RL thing he based this on, it is easy. If not, there is really no way to figure it out.
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Elder Earth Elemental doesn’t use earth glide, just slowly stomps across the field absorbing spells and arrows. Almost dead by the time it is in melee.
Undead demon possessed dragon doesn’t use flying, mobility, spells, or breath fire. Just closes to melee and lets the party flank it.
Warrior bad guy challenges the whole party. Even with plenty of time and knowing he is fighting multiple opponents, doesn’t have his shaman buff him or even use any of his own buff potions.
I can see every once in a while someone will be insanely arrogant or totally misjudge the players. But most of them even when they are losing?
These are all experienced, at least moderately intelligent, successful bad guys using really stupid tactics. How did they become the BBEG if they are that stupid?
I think his reasoning here is to allow the party to feel more powerful because they’ve defeated an APL+6 monster. But it doesn’t do that for me. All I can think is “Yeah but we only beat it because it was suddenly and inexplicably idiotic.” It’s not like we tricked it into making a poor choice. There was never any intention of it behaving intelligently.
This didn’t really bother me, but it didn’t give me a positive feeling either. To me it wasn’t an APL+6 encounter since the creature wasn’t using all its capabilities/resources including smart tactics. This where some of the inexperienced players come in. I don’t think most of them realized what the monster should/could have been doing and how it would have torn us up if it had.
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Early in the game we were finding multiple weapons, most of which were not used against us. They were just found.
By 4th level the sorc had a +3 equivalent weapon. The rest had better. The caster build cleric was mostly using his weapon in combat because he the weapon was so powerful he was more successful as a martial than a caster. By 6th level or so most of the characters had the same weapon they would be using at campaign end of level 15.
I’ve never been a big fan of the ‘Monty Haul’ game since later there is nothing much to look forward to getting later. I know some people like this. But this seemed pretty extreme to me.
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Would you as a player or GM like these in your games. If many of you say you would, I will try to include things like that in mine. If not, I probably won’t unless/until the players tell me otherwise.
I'd dislike needing most real world knowledge in order to know the enemy's weaknesses. If it was something that is fairly common however (like knowing that a unit of archers protected by a unit of infantry tends to work better than a unit of archers on its own,) that's okay.
Having to have seen a particular movie - that strikes me as unfair and encouraging people to think out of character rather than in character.
Powerful monsters with bad tactics - sometimes, this can work. The party running into a very powerful monster that's at 25% of its health or under the affect of a negative spell/condition - that can be fun. Makes the campaign world seem more real rather than all monsters are always encountered at 100% health.
Early powerful magic weapons - this I actually do like. Especially if it is random or something that is hard won. If the players decide to risk their characters' lives, and happen to succeed, they should get that awesome magic weapon.
Having powerful magic items often simply fall into the characters' laps I don't like.
The first sounds frustrating.
The second is okay if it's some way over-CR'd monster that if it was smart, it could rock your world. Since an Earth Elemental really isn't one of those (it's just a big beat stick), it should be played soemwhat intelligently.
The third I can take or leave. One of my GMs LOVES giving every player some powerful item early on. My 5th level Paladin has an Adamantine +1 Holy Vorpal Scythe, the Rogue has a Robe of Eyes, the Ninja has a Ring of Greater Invisibility, the Hunter/Medium has Celestial Armor with some other unique pluses, and so on.
Of course, he scales up the challenge based on those and the over-large party size (we have 8 or 9 people in the party). Last big encounter was 22 werewolves, which is what leveled us to 5th.
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As a DM/GM, I love to have the players "think outside of the box", and I would have no problem using something like a monster that is tied to a specific weapon, and, like your example, have the monster be weakened by breaking it.
HOWEVER...
I would NEVER rely on knowledge of that fact be with the player having seen a movie, read a book, or whatever. I would drop clues into the game that hint or make mention of the monster having a vulnerability, and how to exploit that vulnerability; so then, if the characters decide to fight such a monster without having done any information gathering on it, then having a tougher fight is on them.
The being said, I would not just place such a monster or foe in an adventure randomly or on the fly. The hints or rumors I mentioned would be spread about the game-world before the characters ever even think about going to the place where such a foe makes his lair.
I play my monsters and foes of the party intelligently (well, as intelligent as their INT score anyway), but sometimes, I do "dumb-down" a foe, just to keep things interesting.
As for giving out magical items, well, I tend to run relatively low magic games. So I don't start handing out magical equipment until the characters are at least 4th level (e.g. +1 weapons and/or armor, single use low-powered items, and the like), though sometimes I will do so as early as 3rd level. And even though I run 2nd Edition AD&D now, I did this back when I ran Pathfinder and 3rd Edition as well.
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1) I don't dislike the theory, but I would hate needing real world knowledge to figure things out. Giving characters a reason to put skill points in Knowledge skills, however, is always good. So let them figure out such things with an *in-character* Knowledge History check, if they otherwise like this mechanic.
2) As others have said, this can be good if used occasionally. Especially if it is foreshadowing for when they will fight a similar monster later that uses its full arsenal. But as standard practice it would get old fast.
3) I tend to prefer low magic. Having said that, take a look at some of the scaling item rules in Unchained. Essentially, you can give them a low-powered magic item at the beginning that is upgradeable (but requiring sidequests to unlock) and becomes super-awesome. That allows them to bond with their equipment, and feel like it is special without it being gamebreaking out of the gate.
On the first point I think I appreciate it when things I might recognize pop up in a campaign, and as a GM I love cameo's of both people and things... The setback that you mentioned that 'if you haven't seen it then there's no way to figure it out' is only true in certain systems. There's a lot of systems out there where a little divination magic or some knowledge rolls will produce useful information. In a system that doesnt use rolls to handle that mechanic, it is kinda the gm's job to offer up an npc spreading legends or a book lying around that someone who knew something was on to something and so this manual with some bookmarked pages provides some useful clues... Kinda like indiana jones following his father's journal to locate him when he got into trouble.
I'm not a big fan of powerful monster bad tactics, though I have used it myself as a gm from time to time. If you know the system really well and know all the different ways to break it, sometimes its bad hat to unleash an enemy that can tactically obliterate a party (say, mosquito swarms against a party with no AOE attack in pathfinder for example... you cant kill them, you cant outrun them...) So sometimes you have to do that, but I'd prefer knowing the monster well enough ahead of time to know what its capable of so that you dont run into a situation where you have to dumb it down to be survivable. Sign me up for 'do a little more homework on the enemy before you put it in the game' on this point. I agree that defeating a monster that's not being foolish is way more rewarding than defeating a monster that's capable of overkill but not really showing up with its A-game
Monty haul is my middle name. I'll admit that both as a player and as a gm I prefer getting past the 'scrounging up the cool loot' as fast as humanly possible so that I can get on to the real meat of a campaign. As a gm I'm so much more interested in the character development that happens after the basest of motivations that I basically am fine with giving characters big bucks right outta the gate just so the campaign can get to 'ok... you're rich... what's next... why did you want to get rich.... what did you plan on doing after you got rich... what's your character actually about once he's not about... just getting rich? So I'm a pretty unabashed monty haul man meself. If a player's goal is 'I want to get rich' and thats it? Well. I've been gaming for 28 years. Such motivations are pretty boring for me. Anymore I just need more out of my players and party members.
On the flip side, if your players *don't* really have a goal past getting rich so they can get more murderkillstompy, so they can get more rich so they can get more murderkillstompy, et cetera, et cetera... ad nauseum ad infinitum.. well... that's horribly boring for me too so in those cases I'd prefer a campaign where the money just doesnt flow as much, since there's not really a point to it. On the other hand if that's all the campaign is going to be about I might be better off walkin in the first place.
Clarifications.
His things related to real world stuff.
He has stated (in regards to other topics) that he doesn't like the 'just roll a knowledge check and you know all about it' kind of thing. He wants the characters to figure things out, not just be told by a die roll. I sorta see where he's trying to go, but I don't think he is getting there.
As far as I could tell, any level of knowledge/diplomacy check or any thing we could think of to have our characters ask NPC's made no difference. You pretty much had to be aware of the real world thing he was basing it on. We never caught any clues/hints to those type of things. I can't say whether or not the GM might have given us some if we had asked just the right questions, but I can say we asked dozens of questions that covered everything we could think of and got nothing.
I actually don't see anything wrong with having bad guys occasionally use bad tactics. This guy massively underestimates the PC's, that guy is actually insane level egomaniac and refuses to consider the PC's a threat, he's just a stupider than usual example of the race, etc...
This seemed to be the usual for the GM. The final fight of every sub-section was always way over APL then was beatable only because it didn't use all of it's capabilities. Felt kinda lame to me. {shrug}
They did not really 'win' the powerful magic items. They just 'happened' to find the spear (from the first example) guarded by nothing and it was nearly mandatory to complete the first mission. The murdered uncle of the guy that hired them just happened to have a complete collection of every evocation spell in all the books that he just cave to the party's 3rd level evoker. By 5th level the cleric had a +4 equiv intelligent holy weapon dedicated to his god in the treasure chest of a mid level lieutenant. Things like that.
I do kinda like the concept of the scaling magic items, but this was before that book was out. I will probably look into adding that into my missions.
Some of the PC's had a significant motivation for the campaign. Genocidal hatred of the primary opponent type, wanted to get the fame/cash/contacts to start a powerful mercenary guild, become a world famous hero so could take over the council back home, etc... Yeah the 2 newer guys didn't have much other than 'become powerful' but that isn't uncommon for new players.
For whatever reason they were all working for a given noble (whom they were starting to suspect was not as nice a guy as they originally believed). There were plots going on.
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Ok what I'm seeing is the real world tie-ins is ok if there is a way the characters can find out or at least get clues in-game.
The stupid tactics is ok if used occasionally.
A lot of people seem to like the powerful magic items early.
Thanks folks.