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3 years ago ::
Sep 07, 2010 - 7:46AM
#11
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Date Joined:
Sep 12, 2007
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Something to bear in mind here is that while suboptimal tactics might might seem like "softballing it", the truth is that poor choices are going to happen all the time. So the question might not be, "Should I coup de grace because it is the optimal tactic?", but rather "Would this enemy coup de grace in this situation?"
Remember it is not about what the DM would do or knows. Sure the DM knows that the Uncouncious player is about to be saved by the Cleric who happens to be up in the initiative. But does the Troll know this? Would it attack the downed player?
Or sometimes the enemy just simply makes a poor choice. It happens. I sure seem to do it more often than I like. So if the Orc decides to attack the fighter that has him marked instead of the Squishy rogue who only has a few hit points left... It might be that the fighter just simply made the orc mad and orc's don't like that, tactics be damned! Is this "Soft Balling"?
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3 years ago ::
Sep 07, 2010 - 3:47PM
#12
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i appreciate the reasoned and thoughtful responses, despite the fact that i strongly disagree with your positions i still appreciate your polite responses.
mirtek, i think deserve is a poor choice of terms in your example with a rogue and a wizard.
i think we can safely assume that in your example the rogue is built in a fashion that would be generally agreed to be mechanically superior to the wizard. regardless of whatever anyone "deserves", unless you are "soft balling (we could use a better term for that)" the rogue will be more effective. not overwhelmingly more effective, but more effective none the less.
but what is the point of being more effective, of being better than, the wizard if it doesn't matter what character choices you make because the dm will just change everything to be easier to accomodate the weaker characters?
and why aren't you bored?
do we want to promote a style of game where people don't care? i view that as a recipe for long term failure. certainly people should simply stop looking at books and other resources for ways to improve their characters if it doesn't matter what choices they make. taken to an extreme (and adding that caveat to make clear i do not intend to set up a straw-man, but only to make a point), we don't even need to make remotely functional characters, or for that matter roll dice or have rules.
i mention all of this not only as a hypothetical, but because of a practical issue. most characters where i live are sub-optimal. not usually aggressively awful, but certainly a little on the weak side. however there is one person who has made a new level 11 ranger whose character is borderline useless. his to hit with twin strike (after we virtually forced him to take twin strike) at level 11 is +11. there are fights where he can only hit on a 20 and when he does it isn't a crit. should we all lose any comprehension of challenge to accommodate his inability to function?
what about the players who learn the rules and make good decisions, but are sitting at a table with people who dont bother to learn how to play beyond a most basic level and just sit there and use some bad at will attack all the time (to be clear, they are in fact ineffective. they do not have a character that is optimized to use a specific at will). for over a year we have sucked all the challenge out of our games if these players were at our tables.
for what seems the millionth time, it is a slow persons responsibility to speed up and not a fast persons responsibility to slow down. as long as you keep catering to the lowest common denominator quality of experience will only go down and no one will ever have an incentive to improve or get better.
finally, the serious players are the core of your community, we are the glue that holds this increasingly thankless enterprise together! but even if we were not, even if our ideas were in a minority, that would not mean we were wrong! and i absolutely guarantee that after a short adjustment period to having their decisions matter, the players who adopt their extreme laisez faire attitude would still find a way to have fun.
players don't deserve to win or lose. success in a module is not a players divine birthright. and if you dont have to work for it, it has a lot less meaning!
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3 years ago ::
Sep 07, 2010 - 3:55PM
#13
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i appreciate the reasoned and thoughtful responses, even if you guys are wrong about everything at least you are polite.
You know, posts like this make staying polite very hard.
i think we can safely assume that in your example the rogue is built in a fashion that would be generally agreed to be mechanically superior to the wizard. regardless of whatever anyone "deserves", unless you are "soft balling (we could use a better term for that)" the rogue will be more effective. not overwhelmingly more effective, but more effective none the less.
And even while softballing he'll be more effective. He'll mercilessly slaughter the monsters while the wizard will merely defeat the monsters.
but what is the point of being more effective, of being better than, the wizard if it doesn't matter what character choices you make because the dm will just change everything to be easier to accomodate the weaker characters?
Because you don't want to just prevail, you want to curbstomp?
and why aren't you bored?
Why should I? I as a player don't care much for combats, they're a necessity before the story can continue. If some powergamer at my table wins the battle for our side before I even need to act, all the better for me.
As a DM I am not a good tactician and I don't aspire to learn how to be one. Frankly, I DM because we always have less DMs than Players and it's fair that everyone takes his share behind the screen so that others can play. I often don't even read the combats in advance, just a short glance to see what minis I need to bring and 95% of my time preparing an adventure is spend on getting the stuff between the combats into my head. If you mind my style, feel that my battles are too easy (even when I don't actively softball, I am just not good at running monsters anyway) then feel free to be the DM instead (although better not for me, I don't think we would have much fun with each other) because I do it as a service to our little LFR community and not because it's a great job I'd die to be allowed to do. do we want to promote a style of game where people don't care?
The people do care, they simply care about different things than how to best defeat the monsters. The wizard player in my example obviously cares about being able to chitchat with NPCs in 5 different langues (2 base, 3 feat).
for what seems the millionth time, it is a slow persons responsibility to speed up and not a fast persons responsibility to slow down.
If they're at the same table it's the responsibility of both to meet in the middle. Preferably they simply should play at different tables with players sharing their own preferences.
This leaves only the question which should be used as the default assumption. And here I still say err on the side of the slow players. Even if a DM fails to recognize the boredom of the fast players and fails to hard ball the mod for them, then they have nothing lost but having had a mod that was overall too easy for them. And that's it, a closed case not carrying over to the next mod when it will be more to their liking. If a DM fails to understand how close a slow group is to disaster and kills a few of them, this might have no mechanical effects on the following mods they play, but it can have a lasting impact on the stories they had in mind for their PCs personality and further development.
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3 years ago ::
Sep 07, 2010 - 3:58PM
#14
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hmm, i think i need to clarify. i did not intend insult, and my position was not sarcastic. i do appreciate your candor and your polite replies. i am sorry if you took offense, that was not the intention. the "wrong about everything" comment was intended to express my disagreement with your position in a light hearted fashion through an absurd exageration.
since tone does not translate in text i realize i should have made a different choice of words. to that end i will edit the orriginal post.
thank-you for the rapid response mirtek, and your point about how the rogue would still proceed to dominate the encounter is actually at the crux of the matter. in the example presented, i assumed that there was a risk of failure in the hard ball version, and thus a challenge, while in the soft ball version whatever risk of failure is largely negated. it is true that the rogue may further dominate the encounter in a soft ball version, but the point was that the rogue gets robbed of the opportunity for challenge and a sense of accomplishment in order to accomodate the wizard.
i believe it is wrong to hold the rogues intersts as secondary in importance to the wizards, and this goes to the heart of the fundamental disagreement.
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3 years ago ::
Sep 07, 2010 - 4:18PM
#15
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hmm, i think i need to clarify. i did not intend insult, and my position was not sarcastic. i do appreciate your candor and your polite replies. i am sorry if you took offense, that was not the intention. the "wrong about everything" comment was intended to express my disagreement with your position in a light hearted fashion through an absurd exageration.
since tone does not translate in text i realize i should have made a different choice of words. to that end i will edit the orriginal post.
Wow, didn't expect that reaction. Maybe I also overreacted, in my defense it's kind of late here (1:15 a.m.) and I am currently tired and was just taking a last quick look at the boards before going to sleep. So I'd would say no harm done.
I respect both play stiles, I just have a different view on which one used as the default assumption causes the least harm. Maybe my opinion is currently skewed from my very last LFR mod being a quasi-TPK (3 of 6 dead, one making death saves for most of the encounter and the last two winning a fight they should have lost if not for the DM being shocked of how the battle turned out starting to soft ball them to victory. Really, 1[w]+10+1d6 (for flanking) for monsters in a 1-4 mod? That's what my striker will do at level 10! So mods like this becoming the norm scares me a little) PS: Thx to (technically improper) DME I once had a player (out of six) to ask the DM to just hardball only his character because he can take it and at the same time be softer on everyone else. PPS: Now I will withdraw until tomorrow after work, so at the moment no further answers from me,
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3 years ago ::
Sep 07, 2010 - 4:54PM
#16
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- Dragon Slayer
- If only he would apply himself
- Dammit Jim, this is Star Trek, not D&D!
Date Joined:
Jan 31, 2006
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but what is the point of being more effective, of being better than, the wizard if it doesn't matter what character choices you make because the dm will just change everything to be easier to accommodate the weaker characters?
What is the fantasy world's difficulty level? Think about that. What is the true difficulty level? If you go by the rules, it varies widely. An encounter should have anywhere from a PC level -2 to level +4 challenge level. That is a huge variety. We are told to vary that over the course of an adventure so you have easy challenges at times and at other times very difficult challenges. We are given an incredibly wide variety of monsters and traps. We could put together a cakewalk level 5 encounter or an incredibly difficult level 1 encounter - all using the rules.
We can look at the campaign world. LFR is fairly heroic, meaning the heroes should prevail most of the time. It is not a dark and gritty world where evil prevails.
We can look at popular media. Most movies have a couple of fairly easy challenges where the heroes prove themselves or discover their capabilities and how to work together. They often have a very difficult final fight (often assisted by something beyond themselves, such as a magic item or allies).
We can look at the table and gauge how players react. Run one table through a series of very difficult encounters/adventures and they become frustrated. They aren't being heroes. They feel like they are failing. It doesn't matter if they built for heavy optimization or only for RP, the emotional response is the same. While a thrilling victory is awesome, and even a close call that ends in failure can be satisfying, the vast majority of time failure is not fun. Most players understand, at least in retrospect, that some failure is to be treasured because it makes victory very sweet. All of them seem to understand that repeated frustration is not what they want. You can check many adventure threads and see that the person bemoaning how unfair a mod is will in other threads say LFR should be harder. The switch can flip just like that from "challenge me" to "this is unfair".
What do players deserve? What are they entitled to as LFR players? Do they deserve some static definition of challenge? Do the players sign up with some legal document to a certain level of challenge? If so, where is it stated? Should it be?
In general I find that very few players want a static definition. They want one custom to their needs. They don't want to feel the challenge is not there, nor do they want to be softballed, but they want the game to provide them with an appropriate challenge. Appropriate to them (regardless of how they built their PCs), appropriate to the adventure at hand (easier if the stakes are low), and appropriate to the situation (thrilling when the monsters are iconic).
The perfect first battle is usually in their minds different than the perfect end battle when they meet a hated foe. But, they still don't want frustration in the end fight. They want to feel challenged, damaged, and to pull through the crucible of fire... but they want a good chance to succeed. The want to see that light at the end of the tunnel most if not all of the time. Across an adventure they often want to finish and say something like "that one battle was pretty tough". They might even want to, from time to time, say "I thought we were dead!"
Players are often very happy to cakewalk adventures - surprisingly so. Though most will say they want to be challenged they seem to be incredibly happy when they obliterate what should be hard foes. They actually want that to happen from time-to-time. At least, those are my experiences in living and organized play. In home campaigns they want an even easier time, I find, because there is more of a desire to explore story and repeated failure tends to hurt story.
When I look at all of this, the appropriate challenge level is derived on the spot, based on a number of factors (the tone of the adventure, the tier of play, the desires of the tables, the design of the adventure, the types of foes, etc.). A custom challenge, even one that makes a cakewalk for the optimized PC one day and a thrilling adventure for the non-optimized casual player, are all valid and are, in fact, desired.
Follow my blog and Twitter feed with Dark Sun campaign design and DM tips! Dark Sun's Ashes of Athas Campaign is now available for home play (PM me with your e-mail to order the campaign adventures).
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3 years ago ::
Sep 08, 2010 - 6:59AM
#17
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Date Joined:
Aug 10, 2007
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i mention all of this not only as a hypothetical, but because of a practical issue. most characters where i live are sub-optimal. not usually aggressively awful, but certainly a little on the weak side. however there is one person who has made a new level 11 ranger whose character is borderline useless. his to hit with twin strike (after we virtually forced him to take twin strike) at level 11 is +11. there are fights where he can only hit on a 20 and when he does it isn't a crit. should we all lose any comprehension of challenge to accommodate his inability to function?
The first (and most important) question: Is everyone having fun? If the answer is "yes," then there's no problem here.  If the answer is "no", then address the problem.
Option A: The player who only hits on 20 is not having fun because he misses all the time. 
Solution A: Some people learn through experience. This is a good chance to offer some build-advice for the player to improve his character's mechanics.
Option B: You are not having fun because you feel "a man down" going into combats.
Solution B: You know this going in. Communicate this to the DM privately. (Hey, I know we have 6 players, but the ranger player is sub-optimized and will not likely contribute much to combat. Can you use the scaling for 5 players so that the rest of us have an appropriate challenge?) The helps the DM use DME to "modify the adventure to provide an appropriate challenge for the players." This results in an appropriate challenge for the rest of the players, without demanding the ranger-player sacrifice his fun-level.
what about the players who learn the rules and make good decisions, but are sitting at a table with people who dont bother to learn how to play beyond a most basic level and just sit there and use some bad at will attack all the time (to be clear, they are in fact ineffective. they do not have a character that is optimized to use a specific at will). for over a year we have sucked all the challenge out of our games if these players were at our tables.
See Option B above.
(And don't you have "more fun" knowing that you overcame challenge X with your optimal character, making up for the mechanical drawbacks of the weaker characters?)
as long as you keep catering to the lowest common denominator quality of experience will only go down and no one will ever have an incentive to improve or get better.
By whose standards? The first step is to recognize that not all players look for the same elements when determining what makes a "fun" game! It sounds like you value tactical combats heavily when determining whether an adventure is fun, but perhaps other members of your community do not. If/when they do, make yourself a resource to help find the middle ground between their "D&D fun-factor" and your mechanically effective character-building ability. Everyone wins!
players don't deserve to win or lose. success in a module is not a players divine birthright.
The "possibility of success" should always be an option for every adventure, every group of characters. It will be harder for some than others, but remember that "success = combat win" is not true for every player.
Dan Anderson
@EpicUthrac
Living Forgotten Realms Calimshan Writing Director
Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
Meet me at TotalConfusion:
http://www.totalcon.com/RolePlaying.html
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3 years ago ::
Sep 08, 2010 - 11:25AM
#18
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it is true that the rogue may further dominate the encounter in a soft ball version, but the point was that the rogue gets robbed of the opportunity for challenge and a sense of accomplishment
One thing I thought about is: do we actually know what the rogue wants? If I see someone who goes above and beyond to maximize his attack bonus I would assume that he likes to hit very often. If I see someone who goes above and beyond to maximize his defenses, I would assume that he doesn't like to be hit.
If I now react with "wow, this PC looks effective, I better up the challenge", am I not robbing him of his intended result? If I just increase the attack bonus or pretend to have rolled higher numbers to still hit the maxed defenses PC, where's the point in maxing defenses in the first place? If I challenge the maxed attack bonus with higher defenses on the monsters, why should he have bothered to get such a high attack bonus? in order to accomodate the wizard.
i believe it is wrong to hold the rogues intersts as secondary in importance to the wizards, and this goes to the heart of the fundamental disagreement.
If possible one should try to identify the player's styles in advance and group them accordingly. If that's not possible I try to think which one would suffer more from having his interests ignores. At worst the rogue walks away from the table with having slaughtered his opponents too easily. It may not what he would have preferred, but at least he got to flaunt his combat progress. At worst I accidentally kill the wizard PC, and put a spoke in the developing story the player imagined for his PC.
In praxis I would try to give the rogue player a higher challenge if he asks for it (to the best of my limited tactical ability) while going softer on the wizard at the same time. IMHO there's also an important difference between wanting to be challenged and being happy when one gets it and wanting to be challenged and still being unhappy when one gets it as long as not everyone else is forced to to be challenged in the same way (aka why does he get the same reward despite having an easier time? Because you asked for a harder time for yourself and he for a softer time for himself, that all).
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3 years ago ::
Sep 08, 2010 - 12:14PM
#19
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Date Joined:
Jul 22, 2008
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IMHO there's also an important difference between wanting to be challenged and being happy when one gets it and wanting to be challenged and still being unhappy when one gets it as long as not everyone else is forced to to be challenged in the same way (aka why does he get the same reward despite having an easier time? Because you asked for a harder time for yourself and he for a softer time for himself, that all).
This is precisely why I keep DME to a minimum when I run LFR games.
Even in a smallish gaming group, the composition of LFR tables is inherently random, and I'm certainly not in a position to know the likes and dislikes of every player. I just try to tell the story as effectively as I can and apply the rules as fairly as I can. In terms of targeting downed PCs, and so on, the DMG does a decent job of explaining how monsters are expected to behave (ie. avoid coup de grace, but take no special precautions to avoid downed PCs in area effects, etc.)
I think there is little point in trying to figure out every player's desires for game difficulty because you'll probably get it wrong for somebody anyway. From my experience, the players will come to expect a certain level of difficulty based on their choice of PC. If a party full of overpowered PCs wants to clear every encounter in two rounds, then so be it; I'll be annoyed if player participation is unequal because of this, but I won't change the rules. In contrast, if a low-tier party with no leader wants to play up, they should know that they risk a TPK; I won't change the rules just because the party chose to make the game more difficult for themselves.
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3 years ago ::
Sep 08, 2010 - 12:44PM
#20
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- Dragon Slayer
- If only he would apply himself
- Dammit Jim, this is Star Trek, not D&D!
Date Joined:
Jan 31, 2006
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I don't think anyone in favor of DME is advocating letting a weak table that plays high have an easy time of it. Choices have repercussions - they should just be reasonable given the various factors.
Follow my blog and Twitter feed with Dark Sun campaign design and DM tips! Dark Sun's Ashes of Athas Campaign is now available for home play (PM me with your e-mail to order the campaign adventures).
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