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3 years ago ::
Feb 02, 2010 - 10:52AM
#61
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But it's still something there should be a good reason to ignore.
"Because the players have stopped being scared" strikes me as a good reason.
It's funny. I tend to scare/threaten players quite frequently without ignoring specific advice from the DMG. Maybe it's because I use effective tactics or just because my dice are lucky, but I've killed (or knocked unconscious) more PCs in LFR than I can remember off the top of my head ... and I don't think I've ever used coup de grace in an LFR game.
Want to scare a party? Focus on the cleric first. Drag people off. Have that brute with a ton of hp ignore marks to go after the squishies in the back. The game is supposed to be fun, not an excuse for the DM to see how they can "win" by killing helpless PCs. Being helpless is bad enough for most characters, no reason to kick them while they're down.
On another note - does anyone have the bad guys knock PCs unconscious when they would otherwise die? I've done this more than once when the PCs were facing intelligent monsters that would have a reason to not kill the PCs then and there. This can be because they want slaves or "something to play with later". It's nothing official, but I rule that the person is out for the rest of the encounter and needs 5 minutes to wake up after. The penalty for dying in LFR isn't that great, but not being able to play the rest of the mod is annoying.
Allen.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 02, 2010 - 11:16AM
#62
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...
On another note - does anyone have the bad guys knock PCs unconscious when they would otherwise die? I've done this more than once when the PCs were facing intelligent monsters that would have a reason to not kill the PCs then and there. This can be because they want slaves or "something to play with later". It's nothing official, but I rule that the person is out for the rest of the encounter and needs 5 minutes to wake up after. The penalty for dying in LFR isn't that great, but not being able to play the rest of the mod is annoying.
At least one of the 1-4 mods specifically said to do this in the tactics section.
Well, the monsters had different motivations, so some of them knocked PCs unconscious and others killed the PCs. We had a TPK and it was kind of random luck whether you lived or not (based on which monster happened to land the killing blow). It was a little frustrating/weird that some PCs ended up unconscious while others got killed outright. (I'm a tad bitter because my PC died but most of the rest of the party came through completely unscathed even though we had a "TPK.") But at least it was the last encounter of the mod, so it wasn't a huge deal.
In another mod the tactics say that if the bad guys win, they kick the bodies down a pit and leave the PCs for dead. Then at least the party can finish the mod assuming that some of them survive the fall.
Lori Anderson
WotC Freelancer, LFR author
@LittleLorika
CALI3-3 The Agony of Almraiven (co-author)
NETH4-1 Containing Shadow (co-author)
CALI4-1 Plain of Stone Spiders (author)
QUES4-1 Liberation (co-author)
EPIC5-1 Plaguewrought Prism (co-author)
TotalCon: http://www.totalcon.com/RolePlaying.html
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3 years ago ::
Feb 02, 2010 - 12:29PM
#63
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- Senior Volunteer Community Lead
Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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But it's still something there should be a good reason to ignore.
"Because the players have stopped being scared" strikes me as a good reason.
It's not. It's a reason, certainly, but it's not a good reason. If you add "and want to be more scared", then absolutely, sure. But a convention DM going out of his way to CdG a table that hasn't asked for it when there are perfectly good other actions to take is doing things wrong. The game says not to do so. There are perfectly decent reasons not to do so, and the first and primary is that it's an action that can actively take away the fun of another person and/or cause hurt feelings.
I've got a home game where we always try to kill whoever's birthday it is. I think it just happened twice to someone, and stuck, so now it's what we do. In such a game, you'd see every CdG opportunity there possibly could be. Much like the table described earlier where all the creatures provoke to run over to do it.
But I'd never do that to some strangers I'm running for at a convention. I'd consider it on par with specifically fudging dice rolls to endanger a particular PC because I didn't like his build. Obviously it's less distasteful in one sense (normal combat option vs. "cheating"), but in another the fudged dice rolls probably don't actually kill someone (with all that means) in an obviously blatant "screw you" fashion.
Once again: home game or you know the players or folks come in asking for a challenge? Or you ask them at the start, asking if they want the extra challenge? Absolutely, go nuts.
Keith Richmond
Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
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3 years ago ::
Feb 02, 2010 - 1:15PM
#64
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I think control/choice one of the biggest driving factors in whether a PC death is acceptable/fun to the players or not. This same argument is why people are so frustrated about getting stun-locked. Fun stops happening when the player (and the party) has absolutely no way to do anything to help their situation. [We like to *play* D&D, not sit at a table and write down how many hit points we lost this turn, round after round.]
I've had characters die tons of times. If my character died because I (or my party) was being stupid or brave or the monster got in a really lucky shot, then it's not as big a deal because at least I had some sort of choice in the matter. (Maybe the cleric asked if I needed healing the round before and I turned it down because I wasn't even bloodied yet, maybe my squishy striker ran into the middle of a bunch of guys to pull off a really cool combo, maybe my PC at 5 HP heroically/stupidly ran in to save the prisoners, etc.) I did something risky and it resulted in my character's death. Fine.
But once I'm down and dying (or permanently unconscious because of drow poison), I personally no longer have any say about what happens to my character. Perhaps my party can still save me (heal me, stabilize me, try to keep the bad guys off of me, etc.), but there's not always something useful the party can do to help. Maybe other party members have been stunned, teleported to another dimension, are too far away to help, the monsters all go before the party does, etc. CdG is especially un-cool if the party is doing everything they can to prevent the monsters from doing it (marking, getting in the way, presenting the monster with other targets, etc.) and the DM decides to do it anyway. As others have pointed out - it's not that hard for a DM to kill a PC.
If a DM has a personal grudge against PC X, then they can easily spend an entire mod throwing everything they have at that PC (including using stupid tactics like provoking from the entire rest of the party just to get to this PC), and they'll inevitably kill the PC. Not hard. But it's also not fun for any of the players at the table (the one PC feels ganged up on and the other PCs are bored that they're not in any danger). CdGing a character just to try to kill someone is not cool and breaks the "my job is to make sure everyone has fun" conventant between the DM and the players.
I'm not saying that no one should ever CdG. There are certainly times and places for it (like the monster has no other good action). Some monsters tactics even involve CdGing. [I forget any specific examples, but I remember hearing about monsters that heal when they kill a PC or get an action point or something.]
Again - the big thing is choice and the PCs feeling like they can control what happens to their characters during the game. I played in the 3.5 Eberron campaign and had a character die at the beginning of the mod in a way that neither I nor any of my party members had any control over whatsoever. My character basically auto-died before the mod even began. She was sleeping on a boat traveling to where the mod actually started, got surprise attacked by a 5-headed hydra (a wandering monster that had nothing to do with the rest of the mod), and my PC's dead body was dragged off underwater before most of the party had had time to wake up or react. It's not even like my party could go save me or rescue my body because the hydra had already vanished. I don't think I rolled a single die during that mod. It's not a lot of fun to play for 15 minutes and then have to sit around for hours and watch the rest of the game. (And I don't think the rest of the players had as much fun either since they really struggled without one of the party members.)
Obviously that's an extreme case, but no one wants to die because of things they have absolutely no control over. The same situation could happen in LFR if the monsters win initiative, pile damage on a PC and knock them out, and then all rush over to CdG them. It's not a competition between players and the DM or between DMs (who can kill the most PCs). It's supposed to be fun. If your players think getting kicked while they're down is enjoyable, then go for it. If not...
Lori Anderson
WotC Freelancer, LFR author
@LittleLorika
CALI3-3 The Agony of Almraiven (co-author)
NETH4-1 Containing Shadow (co-author)
CALI4-1 Plain of Stone Spiders (author)
QUES4-1 Liberation (co-author)
EPIC5-1 Plaguewrought Prism (co-author)
TotalCon: http://www.totalcon.com/RolePlaying.html
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3 years ago ::
Feb 02, 2010 - 1:34PM
#65
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Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
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It's a reason, certainly, but it's not a good reason. If you add "and want to be more scared", then absolutely, sure. But a convention DM going out of his way to CdG a table that hasn't asked for it when there are perfectly good other actions to take is doing things wrong.
Let me preface this by saying that I can't remember the last time I CdGed a PC when there were other options for the creature to do.
However, particularly as PCs get higher level and CdG damage doesn't scale with their hit points, I'm considering doing this more often.
The particular situation that led to this thought was a squishy melee striker who charged into combat, got dropped, got healed, stood up on his next turn and attacked, got dropped again on one of the enemy's turns and then repeated that cycle at least once more (having been dropped to unconsciousness at least three times in this combat, perhaps four, by the time it was over).
I generally don't attack players when they're down, but I think that when their behavior indicates a reliance on the expectation that they're safe when unconscious, there's a need to disabuse them of that notion. In most instances, a single CdG is equivalent to the enemy skipping a turn--the damage isn't enough to kill the PC and it'll get wiped when they're healed--so I think its primary use is as a shot across the bow, indicating that getting out of danger should be a priority.
Sure, going after the healer is always an option, but when the striker has lower health, lower defenses and is right next to you, he's a much nicer target.
And, yes, I've posted before that I prefer to have intelligent enemies knock someone into "unconsciousness until a short rest" than true death, but I think the larger issue is that taking CdG off the table (and more importantly, having PCs be aware that you have taken CdG off the table) hinders the creation of any tension in combat.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 02, 2010 - 3:09PM
#66
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Date Joined:
Jul 16, 2002
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But it's still something there should be a good reason to ignore.
"Because the players have stopped being scared" strikes me as a good reason.
I think the implicit threat of a CdG is more important than the actual CdG. It's when players start assuming that they're safe when unconscious that you need to start doing an occasional CdG to wake them up.
The D&D combat system could be described as an awful lot of time and energy spent on not killing PCs, while at the same time making them think they're at risk of death.
Part of that shared fiction is players behaving as though a PC lying unconscious next to a bad guy or staying in melee combat with single-digit hps are bad things. At the point that players stop worrying about things like that, because they're counting on the DM moving on after dropping them (and the cleric will have them right back up on his turn), is when the DM needs to bring some fear back.
Worse, if players start not fearing CdGs because they would need to take at least three of them to get down to negative bloodied (or worst of all, appreciating them, because any damage that doesn't kill an unconscious PC is wasted), the DM might need to start actively attempting to kill the PC as a final option, though I can't say I've ever seen it get that far.
If at no point in the adventure were the players worried that they might fail or be killed, either the DM or the adventure author (and likely both) have failed. CdG is just one tool in a DM's arsenal to help achieve that, and the more the players understand that it's a viable tool, the less the DM actually has to use it.
And all this brings up a great point. Especially as it pertains to at least one race: Warforged (I think they're LFR legal, aren't they?). Warforged can't die unless you hack at their unconcious body (or for some reason they are taking a penalty to their death saves). Talk about fearless players. Warforged players should be put on notice every now and again so they know that yes, they can die also. That is, of course, unless they aren't LFR legal.
(this is partly tongue in cheek, BTW)
Sorry WOTC, you lost me with Essentials. So where I used to buy every book that came out, now I will be very choosy about what I buy. Can we just get back to real 4e? Check out the 4e Conversion Wiki. 1. Wizards fight dirty. They hit their enemies in the NADs. -- Dragon9 2. A barbarian hits people with his axe. A warlord hits people with his barbarian. 3. Boo-freakin'-hoo, ya light-slingin' finger-wigglers. -- MrCelcius in response to the Cleric's Healer's Lore nerf
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3 years ago ::
Feb 02, 2010 - 9:14PM
#67
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Date Joined:
Oct 19, 2008
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While the derail is there:
I have been known to ask players if they would like the mean/deadly/extra crunchy version, but there is a trick to that which I am fairly sure ixibat was using as well. I would never ask just any table this and I would not do it with every adventure. I am fairly sure the adventure in question was a special. Those are high risk, high reward and tend to attract players that are there to be challenged. There is many a table that will actually enjoy "nightmare mode" in a special. Its a judgement call to ask at all, but if a table gives you the idea they might like it, I see no problem in the question. You will have to of course explain what makes up the extra crunchy mode.
For a special, you bet. And it's all in the phrasing too. I shouldn't assume ibixat was handling it poorly; sorry! If a DM asks me if they want to ramp up the challenge, that's awesome, particularly in that context.
I like your list of crunchy tactics. I have gotten great effects by dragging a down PC out of healing range. Throwing in the occasional "holy crap" is an awesome way to get people out of the rut, and a CdG is definitely one of those.
I asked my table about it during the second day of the BI, I explained the Kill you method was simply I will not stop hitting you when you're down, I will focus fire like a player would, I will treat my NPC's like a party of adventurers and run them ruthlessly, OR I can play them like tactics would describe in the tactics layout and not hit a downed PC unless I have no other viable targets etc. Death is still an option in that version, just in the "I kill you" version, you may actually die before the end of the first monster group to win initiative if they are capable of doing it.
For the final fight I do believe I had them thinking they were all going to die and lose, but they still managed to pull through in the end, several of them at 0 surges and nothing but at wills remaining.
Blah blah blah
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3 years ago ::
Feb 02, 2010 - 9:46PM
#68
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I asked my table about it during the second day of the BI, I explained the Kill you method was simply I will not stop hitting you when you're down, I will focus fire like a player would, I will treat my NPC's like a party of adventurers and run them ruthlessly, OR I can play them like tactics would describe in the tactics layout and not hit a downed PC unless I have no other viable targets etc. Death is still an option in that version, just in the "I kill you" version, you may actually die before the end of the first monster group to win initiative if they are capable of doing it.
For the final fight I do believe I had them thinking they were all going to die and lose, but they still managed to pull through in the end, several of them at 0 surges and nothing but at wills remaining.
I'm pretty sure I was playing at ibixat's table Saturday in the BI(Elven wizard), and I voted against a straight up kill you for sure action, to me as a player thats just not fun. I enjoy a good challenge and the fear of death. Like he said in the last encounter I was starting to believe we were not going to make it but somehow we were able to pull it out. It was tense and a lot of fun. The one encounter with the ranger at first didn't look too bad...until the ranger got pwned. Then it was like heh those monster's are a little scary 
I also played the P2 special at Alphastream1's table Saturday morning and frankly in the one fight he didn't need to CdG and there was several opportunities for him to do so. In fact I was very certain I was going to die at one point, but thanks to the heroic actions of the battle cleric I lived, and in the end was able to save his butt too!
Re the thread: I personally don't think there's a lot of need to CdG players, if a monster doesn't have any other actions thats fine. Once (10th level) my paladin had someone marked, I got hit with a unconcious (save ends) and the party beat the guy I had marked down to less hit points than my mark does. The DM pretty much had little option but to CdG me, and I was fine with it. I lived but regardless found the actions there acceptable.
Ben
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3 years ago ::
Feb 02, 2010 - 9:49PM
#69
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Date Joined:
Oct 19, 2008
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Yep you were at my table I beleive, the double grasping javelin of doom from the melee ranger in the second fight and our amazing distraction at the nextdoor table....
Good times.
Blah blah blah
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3 years ago ::
Feb 02, 2010 - 9:52PM
#70
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hehe Yeah grasping javalin probably needs some nerf of some sort but thats another thread, and the distraction from the adjacent table was quite enjoyable...generally don't expect something like that at a gamer con...
And btw I felt a little bad when I slept your dragon...kinda takes away some of the dm's fun...but I think you still ended up running that encounter where we got a great challenge.
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