Level Awareness

[thenobledrake]

Gorbacz wrote:

Or you can open the Bestiary and face a funny situation where on the meta level, you know exactly what's the level of a drider, but that NPC guard is a mystery and a enigma.

The problem is as old as D&D is and has no good solution.

To be honest, I don't think the problem would exist if the first generation of rules writers didn't label a player knowing what words and numbers are in the books as "forbidden knowledge"

Even as certain versions of the game over the years tried to re-define "meta-gaming" as thinking in game terms (i.e. "we can definitely defeat that monster in front of our characters because the adventure planning and encounter building guidelines given to GMs are about building winnable encounters") rather than just knowing details about the game (i.e. "that's an ooze, so my character shouldn't touch it"), it has managed to maintain it's original, rooted in antagonistic player/GM relationship definition - despite that particular style of play and "GM, you must always keep your players in line and remind them who is boss" attitude being generally accepted as a thing to leave in the past.

...I'll stop myself before I go on yet another rant about how the general "meta-gaming means this, and meta-gaming is inherently bad and should be avoided" attitude basically labels every GM as an undesirable player... try to keep those down to only 1 or 2 a year these days.

[Gorbacz]

Wait, it's D&D, antagonistic relationship and an iron meta-wall between the players and the MASTER is given.

Granted, Pathfinder 2e has begun to sliiiiightly erode it (failing forward? APG backgrounds where the GM picks something for you?) but it's still a very 80s/90s game when it comes to where narrative control is.

[Unicore]

Personally, it feels like that antagonism is more of a legacy choice thing, rather than the game runs best this way, thing. GMs are probably also used to having to reign in casters who had out of control narrative power in previous versions of the game and that is much less true now as well.

[Gorbacz]

Yep. The single biggest 3.5/PF1 problem was not Rogues or skills or full attacks. It was the fact that on the meta-level it was a game where one person tells you how the world looks like, what you can do, how the world reacts with players having no influence/control over the narrative on the meta level while on the game level you had characters who could by the rules blow up the narrative and take complete control over it.

Looking from today's perspective, that's the most self-defeating setup for a narrative game you could imagine.

[KrispyXIV]

Gorbacz wrote:

Yep. The single biggest 3.5/PF1 problem was not Rogues or skills or full attacks. It was the fact that on the meta-level it was a game where one person tells you how the world looks like, what you can do, how the world reacts with players having no influence/control over the narrative on the meta level while on the game level you had characters who could by the rules blow up the narrative and take complete control over it.

Looking from today's perspective, that's the most self-defeating setup for a narrative game you could imagine.

I love the game Structure of Pathfinder and narrative options offered by Golariom, but my GMing style is heavily influenced by my experience with narrative systems like FATE, Star Wars (FFG), L5R, Save Worlds, etc.

Competitive RPGing does no one any favors. The GM should be providing opposition and narrative feedback, as well as the bones of the story - but the GM wins when everyone has fun. The point of strong opposition and difficulty is to create tension and make triumphs feel triumphant, not to defeat the players.

Practices that make either side of the equation particularly antagonistic are definitely old fashioned and not helpful.

[Loreguard]

Unicore wrote:

I wander into a scroll shop.

Me: I'd like to buy a scroll that will reliably put a troll to sleep if I catch it off guard.

Store owner: Just a regular troll?

Me: Yes a regular troll, but I don't want to pay for too much now, I'm not trying to put a dragon to sleep after all.

Are we supposed to pretend like there are not very specific numbers associated to power in world that characters would be interacting with? Especially those characters who would be testing out their power every day, often multiple times a day?

If you answer this questions with a yes, we should pretend like this information is not noticeable to PCs, then at the very least, the burden is on you as a GM to make the system you use instead one that is player friendly, or else you are cultivating an environment hostile to your spell casters and your players will react accordingly.

When you cast a spell from a scroll it uses your DC, since you cast it, so if you can put a scroll or dragon to sleep, in part is largely dependent on you.

But as far as incapacitation levels, and levels of spells, I would say that spell levels probably kind of exist as somewhat known tiers of power that people gain access to.

I don't necessarily think it would be inappropriate for spellcasters to talk about second level spells, or third level spells. However, it is easy to imagine they might have other terms used in that particular industry chose, but it really isn't that important to necessarily know the exact word used.

Now actual character level, or monster level, I'm less inclined to believe people would have quantified down to a numeric or discrete value.

I however don't really have an issue with as a GM passing on an 'impression' that this opponent is a significant threat, or perhaps for instance saying they appear to be a potentially overwhelming threat. I think such an interpretation could be gotten by an individual, either via normal perception, or via a recall knowledge action/activity, depending on what makes sense and helps the story-line. These aspects should be visible if not otherwise obscured by a creature/opponents ability of some sort, by reading all the little things you notice about how someone carries themselves. How they hold their weapon, how alert they appear.

So you can say, coming to know their level may seem to be metagaming. But if that knowledge reflects your ability to perceive their abilities, it may be completely reasonable and within the scope and character for the character, so should not be treated as inappropriate.

Granted, that opens the door for creatures with abilities to make themselves appear more (or less) dangerous than they really are. And that would be something you could have fun with.

[MaxAstro]

It's also worth mentioning that in character, there's not necessarily such a thing as "just a regular troll", and the variations can be impossible to confirm experimentally.

For example - that big strong troll that is leading the others might be vulnerable to the same sleep spell as his minions if he just has the elite adjustment... but if he was instead rebuilt at a higher level he won't be. The stats are going to be very, very similar between those two trolls, though, and from an "in game" perspective, they will look like the same troll.

[Artificial 20]

I think part of the issue is a lack of visual feedback, creating a notion that nothing but the numbers can provide such awareness.

Imagine a military fantasy where the elite PC squad are gunning through evil human opposition with conventional rifles. They're doing well against standard troops, then an enemy elite squad arrives, all touting superior weapons and armour. The PCs' shots dent or deflect off of their defences and require sustained hits to overwhelm a target, where the regular troops went down from one or two clean hits. Starting to struggle against such opposition, the PC squad decides to switch to the rare and costly armour piercing ammunition they carry for just such a situation as this one. With this improved level of offence, they're able to take down their opponents with less difficulty and progress, until they run into a tank. Standard bullets spark off this thing with the effectiveness of buzzing flies, and even their AP ammo scores ugly pocks in the armour plating, but doesn't penetrate through and do damage on a very meaningful scale. The PC squad swiftly resort to their biggest ace up the sleeve, some providing cover while others unpack and load their portable rocket launcher. They only carry a few rounds, but each packs a mighty punch, and with maybe a couple rockets the tank's armour is blasted open and the insides are blown apart.

None of this is to say that an ace or lucky shot from a lesser weapon can never do telling damage against tougher targets, but you might be able to imagine firing a handgun at a battle tank is usually an act of desperation rather than a strategy with a viable probability of success.

If you imagined that without knowing the precise kinetic energy, ballistic force, explosive yield and so forth of the weapons involved, which are all represented via numbers in military specifications, you've grasped certain offensive calibres being needed to overpower certain defensive thresholds.

[gnoams]

The thing is that this is a game. You might be a player at one table and GM at another. You can't expect your players not to read the rules. You can expect over time that players will learn what the numbers are, especially if they GM a lot. I have sat down at a table and happened to encounter a monster that I had just used in the game I was GMing the night before. If you think looking up stats is cheating... well you're going to run into players that know a dire wolf is a level 3 creature with ac18 without having to look up anything. So do these knowledgeable players just get a bonus? Do you expect them to pretend they don't know the numbers and intentionally make bad decisions? Or do you let the less knowledgeable players know the same information so everyone's on the same playing field?

Another point of contention I have: I hear a lot of people say oh, just look at the creature, you should be able to guess its worst save/relative power/etc. Hmm, lets look at that dire wolf- fort is it's highest, will and reflex the same. Interesting, lets look at a normal wolf- reflex is its highest, fort lower, and will lowest. Huh, go figure, the two wolves are completely different. Relative power, well the dire wolf is bigger so it's stronger? check. But then we can look at a huge animated stone statue and compare it to a large animated stone golem. One is just a bigger stone statue, so it's stronger right? nope, 4 levels lower than the smaller one. Without system knowledge, you'll be wrong as often as you're right when trying to make guesses based upon appearance or common sense.