|
| 17 people marked this as a favorite. |
While I appreciate removing the slowed condition from the dying rules, I cannot help but think that the wounded condition will make it even easier for a gang of determined enemies to beat down on a massively-AC-debuffed, dying PC in order to finish them off once and for all. That is a tactic I have been using in my playtest games to force TPKs, and the new wounded condition will make it even easier.
According to the playtest rulebook, "only the most vicious creatures focus on helpless foes rather than the more immediate threats around them," but then, how are PCs supposed to survive those vicious creatures exploiting the wounded condition?
By not doing that.
| 28 people marked this as a favorite. |
Wait... so... you've been going out of your way to have monsters TPK your players... then complaining about the amount of TPKs in the system? The rules pretty clearly tell you not to do this.
I see you didn't post the entire quote from the rulebook, either.
Adversaries typically stop attacking someone who’s knocked out. Even if a creature knows a fallen character might come back into the fight, only the most vicious creatures focus on helpless foes rather than the more immediate threats around them.
"Typically" means most monsters should ignore a dying character. That is the definition of "typical." If you have most monsters behave "viciously," you are not playing RAW.
Your choice of wording for "force TPKs" makes me wonder if you're even participating in the playtest in good faith at all.
| 21 people marked this as a favorite. |
I will never run monsters as "kill the downed PC for good, then move on to the ones who are still able and trying to hurt me" because it's both incredibly unrealistic to the point where I feel it breaks verisimilitude and actively makes the game less fun. It's literally the opposite of what I feel are the keys to good GMing- "Make it fun, and have it make sense."
I believe GMs should be explicitly instructed to not do this under any circumstances, given that the GM is free to ignore any rules or instructions via rule 0 anyway.
|
|
| 14 people marked this as a favorite. |
Perhaps certain monsters could have a "vicious" trait/tag to dictate whether or not they try to take down unconscious PCs?
No, since certain monsters might be vicious under some conditions and not vicious under other conditions. A dragon who's just there sitting on her hoard will act differently from a dragon whose hoard got stolen, her eggs got smashed by PCs and her precious meticulously built and furnished lair just got blown up by stone shape.
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
Like the biggest issue I have with "eliminating unconscious PCs" is - barring the monster having any special kind of senses, is it really going to stop in the middle of a life or death combat to determine whether the one who isn't moving anymore is dead or just incapacitated when it really does not make a difference in the near-term? I would say "telling the difference takes actions" and why would a baddie waste actions on this?
Like I'm not about to give every antagonist always-on "deathwatch" for free. Whether a PC is dead or simply dying is information I, as the GM, have but it's not information that NPCs should have.
|
Like the biggest issue I have with "eliminating unconscious PCs" is - barring the monster having any special kind of senses, is it really going to stop in the middle of a life or death combat to determine whether the one who isn't moving anymore is dead or just incapacitated when it really does not make a difference in the near-term? I would say "telling the difference takes actions" and why would a baddie waste actions on this?
Like I'm not about to give every antagonist always-on "deathwatch" for free. Whether a PC is dead or simply dying is information I, as the GM, have but it's not information that NPCs should have.
Agreed. The difference between intentionally killing a downed PC and focusing on incapacitating active PCs has metagame considerations as well. It's awful for a player to sit out the remainder of the game even if their fellow players go on to defeat the encounter. TPKs, while still not ideal, apply to the whole table.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think running monsters specifically targeting downed PCs rather than attempt to win the fight is a good tactic if the monsters goal is to weaken the PCs at the expense of their own lives, treating themselves more as RTS units, weakening an advancing force rather than individuals with goals of their own.
I have no doubt tactics like that are effective given NPCs offensive bias, but its very much winning through the metagame in which NPCs are disposable tools to weaken then defeat the PCs. Players will develop a hostile OOC reaction to those tactics unless rules enter the metagame that punish tactics like that from NPCs.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I believe it makes sense for mindless creatures like skeletons to keep attacking a downed target until it is dead. Otherwise, virtually every foe of any intelligence at all, even an animal, is smart enough to recognize that foes who are still standing are a bigger threat, and will move on to try to neutralize those remaining threats. In most circumstances, a dying PC should not be subject to further attacks except from stuff like area spells.
The exception of course is when an enemy specifically has a vendetta against them, but that's pretty rare.
I don't think I really have anything to say that hasn't been said by 8 other posters in this thread in some form or another, but yeah. Come on.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I believe it makes sense for mindless creatures like skeletons to keep attacking a downed target until it is dead.
I can see that, but "mindless" creatures who are in a sense programmed should have it in their programming to move on to the next one once the last one stops moving.
It should also be possible for conscious PCs to distract zombies and their ilk pretty easily.
Wait... so... you've been going out of your way to have monsters TPK your players... then complaining about the amount of TPKs in the system? The rules pretty clearly tell you not to do this.
I see you didn't post the entire quote from the rulebook, either.
Adversaries typically stop attacking someone who’s knocked out. Even if a creature knows a fallen character might come back into the fight, only the most vicious creatures focus on helpless foes rather than the more immediate threats around them."Typically" means most monsters should ignore a dying character. That is the definition of "typical." If you have most monsters behave "viciously," you are not playing RAW.
Your choice of wording for "force TPKs" makes me wonder if you're even participating in the playtest in good faith at all.
Nice catch. It seems like some folks didn't read that and had inflated TPK reports as a result.
I guess for some folks the shrooms those Goblins were on in part 1 didn't make them careless (as the adventure suggested), I guess it made them extremely vicious tactical geniuses.
|
|
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
Even in real life animals finish kills unless they are so confident that they just want to play and they are hoping their prey comes back to consciousness.
No, they really don't. In "real life" an animal facing extant threats that has managed to drop one of its foes will, if hunting for food, grab the downed victim and run like hell, not stopping to check if it's actually dead until they feel safe. If attempting to drive off attackers, they immediately turn to the next threat and attack it as well. The only time an animal will actually finish a kill is when they are not currently being attacked or under threat of same.
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
Playing dead is something even some animals do to get other animals to leave them alone.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Leaving what's fun for the PCs aside for a moment, why are NPCs are surviving when they use the "finish off" tactic and are dying when they don't use this tactic? Where are the mechanics that actually show that continuing to attack a downed opponent is a bad idea instead of a suggestion that doing so breaks the encounter?
In addition, Colette's reported extreme whack-a-mole, which would suggest that the PCs' opponents would notice that leaving the PCs unconscious is not enough.
Going after downed PCs is a thing my groups have frowned upon since 3.5E. I mean, you can do it. Sure. I guess.
But aside some a few instances (downed PCs gets caught in AoE or monster was using an ability that hits twice, first shot took down pc then other shot lands, etc), going after downed PCs is just plain dirty pool.
Are there exceptions, ya. Is it the rule? Not really.
Any game, no matter the edition, gets real deadly, real fast when the DM plays that way.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I had a DM that played monsters where they would rather give their life to kill a downed enemy then deal with a living threat. We don't play with him anymore. '
It just doesn't make sense from a tactical stand point. You deal with the threats first not the person laying on the ground. There are only a few situations I can imagine that would work like that. one such scenario I can think of is an intelligent and evil character that can get an easy kill and plan to flee and come back later to finish the job.
A party that is obviously overwhelmed and the monster can't reach anyone that's still functioning so might as well I guess.
A monster that specifically wants to carry the body away to eat it which it should probably just grab the body and run and finish it later.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Attacking downed enemies is downright stupid and counterproductive.
Especially for intelligent foes.
1. You lose an action that could down another character or reduce it's treat vs. you.
2. When you kill downed PC you are removing relative harmless action option from PCs that is going to be to heal downed comrade.
If they have no one to tend to, they WILL use action to hurt you.
3. If you show no mercy to knocked down foes, in the event that you lose the battle vs. PCs you reduce the chance to be merely captured and spared as PCs will then most probably execute you out of revenge for your coup de grace of their comrade.
I can see zombies just wanting to right away eat whoever they finally down. Goos too. I have to agree that "mindless" monsters have no interest in self-preservation would just focus on the one person for good.
Yeah I'f I told a golem that I controlled to crush that person I could see it just doing that well after the person is dead.
As a GM I'd try to avoid aiming at dying PCs unless I was in a depressive episode, and when I am I don't generally have the energy to run a game anyway.
One time I did do that the player still complained about it years later. Years. You people don't have the same experiences?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As a GM I'd try to avoid aiming at dying PCs unless I was in a depressive episode, and when I am I don't generally have the energy to run a game anyway.
One time I did do that the player still complained about it years later. Years. You people don't have the same experiences?
I have never went out of my way to kill a PC really. I have killed them usually when they do something real dumb and usually they say I took it harder then they did.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I can see zombies just wanting to right away eat whoever they finally down. Goos too. I have to agree that "mindless" monsters have no interest in self-preservation would just focus on the one person for good.
But does a mindless creature even have the capacity to understand if a downed creature is unconscious or dead?
|
|
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
If all it takes for the dying rules to crumble apart is for a GM to decide, "Hmmm, maybe these enemies are vicious, and they are quite tired of PCs coming back from seeming defeat," then that is a very flimsy balancing point for the dying rules.
Spending a Hero Point as part of heroic recovery actually removes the dying condition. That is easy to miss, and I certainly missed it. Maybe this is not as bad as I first thought.Wounded condition. Not dying condition. Of course, heroic recovery removes both. I think that is a very important saving grace in update 1.3.
There's no crumbling, that's pretty much working as intended. IF your intent is to be deadly, which not all fights are nor should be.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If all it takes for the dying rules to crumble apart is for a GM to decide, "Hmmm, maybe these enemies are vicious," then that is a very flimsy balancing point for the dying rules.
I would expect that the "vicious" aspect of certain individual creatures would be listed in their statblock tactics section, such as "Gronz the Mutilator is a vicious combatant, and if he knocks out a PC, he makes sure they don't come back by executing them before he moves on to the next opponent.", or if it applies to a whole species, it would probably be listed in their monster entry in the Bestiary. In the absence of any such language, I would assume any creature follows the general text of "Adversaries typically stop attacking someone who’s knocked out."
I can see zombies just wanting to right away eat whoever they finally down. Goos too. I have to agree that "mindless" monsters have no interest in self-preservation would just focus on the one person for good.But does a mindless creature even have the capacity to understand if a downed creature is unconscious or dead?
Probably not.
Unconscious or dead is not really relevant to "I want to wrap this body inside my gelatinous cube body and melt it down" thought pattern. Zombies are not really "trying" to kill you, you dying is just a side-effect of your innards being removed and eaten.
This is all solved by not thinking of the game like it's a game, which I've brought up before. In reality if an enemy falls you'd move onto the next one, there's no reason to worry about someone who is on the floor vs someone who could stab you. Now if you see that person get up and the same creature faces the same PC again he MIGHT be like him "Hmm didn't I take that guy down already?" only then could I MAYBE see any enemy attacking a downed opponent.
Now this would still only be true if there was no one else attacking said creature or near him what so ever. As again the creature isn't going to go "It doesn't matter if I'm hit because I've got HP to spare. Lemme attack this guy to really make sure he's dead".
| 10 people marked this as a favorite. |
Taking the game as if your an AI who has to follow the letter of the rules and do your best to try and eliminate the party while keeping in set parameters is absolutely the wrong way to run a table top RPG by my definition. Its a story telling game and dm and players are suppose to work together. That said actual game design should still be solid even with that caveat. However if the DM wants to kill some players he's going to kill some players no matter what he's running.