The Gaming Den

virgileso wrote:If you find yourself in a group where all of your players make unoptimized characters, what do you do with them? Do you warn them of the danger, then proceed to TPK them until they start making characters worth a damn? Do you refuse to run a game until they make a character (or let you make) that won't trip onto its own sword? Do you pull your punches or hand them artifact swords, steadfastly refusing to call it 'D&D', instead calling it 'my campaign'?

Warn them they are not up to par. If they show any interest in doing something about it, help them fix themselves while preserving their concept. If they decide they want to try anyways, let them. Throw stock MOBs at them. They'll get slaughtered over and over. They'll whine you're setting out to do this on purpose. You show them the exact stock MOBs after the fact, making a point of illustrating how they're only at your level so as to be a routine encounter, and have not been changed at all. With special emphasis on how they should be able to handle 4 of these a day, every day without any significant risk. Bonus points if the MOBs are actually lower level.

Do not change anything, do not use higher level MOBs even though 40% of them are supposed to be, and just have them use basic abilities intelligently. So auto attackers just spam auto attack, creatures with a save or die/lose effect use that, etc. They don't even have to work well together. Bonus points if they're supposed to work well together.

It takes very little of this for any reasonable person to realize you aren't being a douchebag here, you're looking out for them. At which point they stop being stubborn and listen to you. And you stop holding back (use the harder enemies sometimes, enemies with teamwork, enemies that use their standard treasure share to help them do whatever...) and instead of getting slaughtered over and over, they actually get to accomplish things and fucking do stuff. There's actually a purpose to their existence within the game world.

Fuchs wrote:

violence in the media wrote:You know, I remember trying to do something like what Fuchs suggests back in 3.0. We eventually scrapped that plan when we realized that it was impossible and implausible to pull out all of the "you die, you lose, you're just fucked" effects in the game, especially above 10th level.

It's been working for me since 3E came out. So, it is not impossible. Implausible? I have a less implausible world to run, all things considered, if I use some "movie rules say you survive" than if I had to juggle all the raise dead spells and their impact on society. It's easier for me to accept a few PCs as being damned lucky than adjusting the world I play in to what it would look like given the possibilities magic offers.

My apologies, that should have said impossible and implausible for us. We wanted to use undead and beholders and mind flayers and NPC wizards and clerics without having to say "oops, strike that, this one has an auto-kill."

One of our biggest problems was the level loss from Raise Dead, which tended to start a death spiral. However, every one of the players in our group of 10 had their character die at least once, and many of them had it happen 2 or 3 times. Eventually, we just turned the level loss into an exp debt without the corresponding loss of effectiveness (level abilities). We were less concerned with the world-changing aspect of Raise Dead than with the functional problems of having the party regress in level. Now, we did try and extend the concept of Raise Dead to the rest of the world, so a lot of notable people tended to get back up after a viscious swording.

Roy wrote: Warn them they are not up to par. If they show any interest in doing something about it, help them fix themselves while preserving their concept. If they decide they want to try anyways, let them. Throw stock MOBs at them. They'll get slaughtered over and over.

Well good to know you value adhering to an arbitrary CR guideline over the enjoyment of your friends.

Because damn, scaling back those encounters is way too much work, if you don't like what they're doing, it's TPK time, Gygax style.

RandomCasualty2 wrote: Well good to know you value adhering to an arbitrary CR guideline over the enjoyment of your friends.

Because damn, scaling back those encounters is way too much work, if you don't like what they're doing, it's TPK time, Gygax style.

There's nothing wrong with allowing the PCs to fail, per se, as long as it's done in a fair manner.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

Roy wrote: Warn them they are not up to par. If they show any interest in doing something about it, help them fix themselves while preserving their concept. If they decide they want to try anyways, let them. Throw stock MOBs at them. They'll get slaughtered over and over.

Well good to know you value adhering to an arbitrary CR guideline over the enjoyment of your friends.

Because damn, scaling back those encounters is way too much work, if you don't like what they're doing, it's TPK time, Gygax style.

You know, there's another way to look at this. Considering the stock creatures in the MM are supposed to represent the standard (though I could have sworn I read "weakest" somewhere) representation of a given creature, you should be able to toss them in as needed without worring about it. Being able to use stock creatures without having to dumb them down lets the DM focus on other aspects of the plot and the adventure. Plus, players will know that they're facing inferior opponents--and it's hard to feel good about your character when you feel like they're kicking children around.

PhoneLobster wrote: So lets pretend for a second that just choosing not to use death SoD effects is even possible. It's a massive stretch that writes large chunks of the best spells off everyone's lists, sort of, since to pretend it's not a giant Oberoni house rule they are "still there" but no one is allowed to actually use them.

There are literally five death SoD spells in the 3.X core, and even less in the supplements. They also are far from being the best due to [Death] keyword, which allows to be imprevious to them, even you optimize DCs to high heaven. So, how the fuck this is "large chunks of the best spells"?
But let's say that you also meant the spells that make you effectively dead or worse permanently or for long stretches of time on a failed save. That's about six more core spells. Half of them are mind-affecting and, therefore, sucking against large number of opponents initially and against almost every opponent at high levels. One plainly sucks due to allowing two saves.
So, there are 11 core spells (3 of them at 9-th level), of which 3 are mind-affecting and 8 allow Fortitude saves, somewhere, meaning that you generally don't want to use them as your main weapon, unless yout DC is extremely high, easily outpacing monsters' Fort and such DCs result from optimization, therefore you don't want to use them if you are unoptimized.
The enemies usually have even less incentive to sling these spells, particularly if GM takes the cue on using spellcasters from the published adventures, as opposed to CharOp boards scenarios. Mook casters have serious problems presenting high enough DCs, even if the adventure is high enough level to feature mook casters with such spells.
Boss casters, who are not optimized into invincibility, cannot allow single-target spells that also can fail, at least until they have turned the tide with the battlefield control first, because there is usually one of them against multiple PCs.
In short, I don't find SoDs prevalent or indispensible to PCs in actual play. Multi-target debuffs, BC and SoLs (and spells that make you lose without save, but those appear at really high levels) are far better. Immeasurably better against hordes of grunts or lots of small encounters. But most BC, debuffs and SoLs (with exceptions of gems like Black Tentacles and Forcecage) must be backed up with physical damage, and do not, in fact, irrevocably decide the outcome, unless the battle is so intense that any additional advantage for one of the sides decides it. If PCs have a fairly significant advantage on their side, like they are supposed to have in most battles, 1-2 slowed, panicked or even paralyzed characters aren't going to spell their doom.
As about monsters with SoDs - all the low-CR ones can be fairly easily beaten without high risks, due to limitations of their attacks, unless the GM attempts dick moves, like surprising the party with basilisks within 30'. At higher levels you can prepare against them, as they tend to be one-trick ponies.

In short - your statement that SoDs are such an integral, unavoidable part of the game that not using them changes DnD in huge ways and using them defines the metagame is grossly and absurdly exaggerated, at least assuming lack of serious DC optimization on every spellcaster's part (particularly for levels before the moment, when PCs get to install revolving doors in their heaven).

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

Roy wrote: Warn them they are not up to par. If they show any interest in doing something about it, help them fix themselves while preserving their concept. If they decide they want to try anyways, let them. Throw stock MOBs at them. They'll get slaughtered over and over.

Well good to know you value adhering to an arbitrary CR guideline over the enjoyment of your friends.

Because damn, scaling back those encounters is way too much work, if you don't like what they're doing, it's TPK time, Gygax style.

No lazy fucker qualifies as my friend. If I say 'there's a fucking pit' you don't try to walk into the damn hole like a Lemming anyways. You avoid the fucking pit. And you certainly don't expect someone to cover that pit just so your dumb ass doesn't have to walk around. If your response to this is to say 'Hurk durk hurk?', pantomime the universal signal for retard, then step right in I'm going to do the Nelson laugh. And I'm going to invite others to join me, because Natural Selection in action is funny.

If I said nothing, and just let them get slaughtered then you'd have a point. But I am, so you don't.

Seriously. Did I wander onto the mother fucking Paizil forums by mistake? Or maybe GitP, or WotC, or one of the other Fail forums? Because I'm seeing exactly that sort of dumbfuckery over and over and over by people that should really know better.

violence in the media wrote:

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

Roy wrote: Warn them they are not up to par. If they show any interest in doing something about it, help them fix themselves while preserving their concept. If they decide they want to try anyways, let them. Throw stock MOBs at them. They'll get slaughtered over and over.

Well good to know you value adhering to an arbitrary CR guideline over the enjoyment of your friends.

Because damn, scaling back those encounters is way too much work, if you don't like what they're doing, it's TPK time, Gygax style.

You know, there's another way to look at this. Considering the stock creatures in the MM are supposed to represent the standard (though I could have sworn I read "weakest" somewhere) representation of a given creature, you should be able to toss them in as needed without worring about it. Being able to use stock creatures without having to dumb them down lets the DM focus on other aspects of the plot and the adventure. Plus, players will know that they're facing inferior opponents--and it's hard to feel good about your character when you feel like they're kicking children around.

This. PCs are already in the role of bullies by default, because almost everything they fight is weaker than them by a large margin. And this should not surprise you, as it's 4 level xs vs 1 level x or 4 level xs vs 4 level x - 4s or whatthefuck ever. So they're already doing a fair bit of gangbanging and kid beating as is... forcing the enemies to be further kidified because they can't even bully properly normally is made of Fail.

Ignoring FatR's long drug induced rant. You can tell he's under the influence of many illicit mind altering substances because he thinks there are so few win spells in the game.

You can also tell he's fucking high as a kite because he's still not understanding Iterative Probability. What is most telling though is he cannot even keep up with his horse jizz induced jibberings, as one of his earlier whines was something along the lines of 'use dumbfuck mobs of much lower level the Fighter can just walk up to and hurk durk auto attack' and yet here he is turning around and arguing against the dungeon he was just arguing for. Because 'Basilisk walks around the corner of the dungeon so it can actually use its abilities, which it does so' is somehow a douchebag move. Because it should totally appear in the open, a thousand feet away on an open field. Except oh wait, we're back to Fighter Fail. Make up your fucking mind.

violence in the media wrote: You know, there's another way to look at this. Considering the stock creatures in the MM are supposed to represent the standard (though I could have sworn I read "weakest" somewhere) representation of a given creature, you should be able to toss them in as needed without worring about it. Being able to use stock creatures without having to dumb them down lets the DM focus on other aspects of the plot and the adventure. Plus, players will know that they're facing inferior opponents--and it's hard to feel good about your character when you feel like they're kicking children around.

I cannot talk for levels 11-20, but at levels 1-10 I never felt any need to dumb monsters down. At most, I avoided specifically picking monsters to target a party's weak points, like ranged attack flyers against a primarily-melee party. There was a problem of debuff/battlefield control being definitely not optional against melee brute monsters (except for grunts) starting from level 6-7, even after attempts to houserule melee classes, but I've never encountered a problem of a balanced party being underpowered in general. Maybe because I eagerly advised players on how to make their favored concepts at least somewhat capable.

MartinHarper wrote:...4e is a game designed for sucky players and sucky DMs.

I don't know why this didn't occur to me before, but its right. At least partially... I mean, I want players to think intelligently about their character's actions and design, but at the same time if that learning hurdle is too high for a casual player to get over then there's a problem.

You want them to be effective without making the game stupid. 4e goes too far in the "stupid" direction, but its a tension that is difficult to resolve.

virgileso wrote:If you find yourself in a group where all of your players make unoptimized characters, what do you do with them?

I generally have players design character concepts and then walk them through some basic optimization of the design execution. Also, I use custom/tweaked PrCs to cover gaps where a concept is cool but the current books are lacking in effective options to make it happen. Say, for example, most monks.

My encounters apparently are very hard; I generally scale them to where the players feel like if they fuck up, they'll die. They may not always be the case but its a palpable feel around the table; the tension makes players pay attention and give each other smart advice both in play and future design.

That said, I recently moved and the hardcore group that I left is now a bunch of softies. I ran a 4e game that ended in a TPK because after several hand-holding instances of how the combat system worked and how I have played wargames for fucking ever, a player still had his character leave a tight tunnel to engage a large group of goblins, who then simply piled on him and took him out, leaving the rest of the group to die as the felled character was the cleric.

It was a dumb move and all the players realized it... after the fact.

So... I guess I'm saying that even if I weaken the opposition I tend to not weaken their tactics, or at least play them against type. The players learn better tactics and as they progress they naturally begin to see why Power Attack is better than Combat Expertise.

I also allow character redesigns if it becomes clear that a player sees errors in their unoptimized character they want to correct. That's a HUGE help since so long as there's no game-ending TPK, the player can look at their felled weakly character and reflect on how to make them more effective based on what just took them out.

Can't we all just play to have fun?

Fuck you. We play to win, fucker.

mean_liar wrote:Fuck you. We play to win, fucker.

Lulz.

violence in the media wrote:My apologies, that should have said impossible and implausible for us. We wanted to use undead and beholders and mind flayers and NPC wizards and clerics without having to say "oops, strike that, this one has an auto-kill."

One of our biggest problems was the level loss from Raise Dead, which tended to start a death spiral. However, every one of the players in our group of 10 had their character die at least once, and many of them had it happen 2 or 3 times. Eventually, we just turned the level loss into an exp debt without the corresponding loss of effectiveness (level abilities). We were less concerned with the world-changing aspect of Raise Dead than with the functional problems of having the party regress in level. Now, we did try and extend the concept of Raise Dead to the rest of the world, so a lot of notable people tended to get back up after a viscious swording.

I'd have dropped the level loss completely. No exp debt, nothing. It'll happen anyway at higher levels, once the better resurrection spells appear, so I don't see a point in hindering lower-level characters with level loss.

I use NPC wizards, and clerics - though I don't see the point in SoD spells if I can achieve the same outcome - victory - with non-lethal spells. Why use phantasmal killer with its dual saves if a dominate person is more effective by not only being harder to save against (only have one save) but also by giving you an instant ally? Why, in the lower levels, not use sleep? I found a multitude of - quite logical - ways to use non-lethal spells instead of lethal spells.

Yet another example of 'exactly the opposite of what the author intended' aka Paizil Brand Fail. Good job.

Roy wrote: No lazy fucker qualifies as my friend.

Lazy would be refusing to fine tune your encounters for your party, because you just want to use monsters out of the book. So you'd rather just TPK the party rather than actually try to balance encounters for them.

It's one thing if you have a PC whining that the other PCs are better and he doesn't take suggestions to make himself better. I mean, that's his fault. But if the entire group happens to be playing weak characters, then you as the DM should adapt to that.

I mean, if your PCs are min/max gods, do you change the difficulty at all, or does the game become a total cakewalk for them?

If I said nothing, and just let them get slaughtered then you'd have a point. But I am, so you don't.

I don't excuse stupid play, but at the same time I think the adventure should be possible for the characters that you give it to, otherwise the DM shouldn't have given them that adventure. Seriously, how hard is it to just design your adventurers for PCs 1 or 2 levels lower? Is that all that fucking hard that you have to kill every one of your PCs to prevent it? I mean, it's easier to design adventures for weaker PCs. So wtf is your problem? Why is being underpowered such blasphemy to you that it's punished by TPK?

Basically it sounds like what you're saying is, "you either play D&D my way, or I'm going to TPK you all with an impossible adventure."

Cataclysmic Fail is Fucking Cataclysmic. The DM is already running the entire world minus 4-6 people along with all that entails. YOU, the useless lazy douchebag, are trying to make HIS life harder, and are accusing HIM of being what you are. Displacement much?

Also, learn to fucking read.

RC2, give up. It's pointless.

Psychic Robot wrote:RC2, give up. It's pointless.

Obvious Troll is Obvious.

Suggesting that someone put an end to a (one-sided) flamewar is trolling?

Psychic Robot wrote:Suggesting that someone put an end to a (one-sided) flamewar is trolling?

Putting a deliberately ambiguous content like that with no substance that makes out as if utter Logic Fail and Deevolution of the forums was somehow good and desirable is.

Roy wrote:The DM is already running the entire world minus 4-6 people along with all that entails. YOU, the useless lazy douchebag, are trying to make HIS life harder, and are accusing HIM of being what you are. Displacement much?

Ok great. So then if the PC goes forward and makes some obscene min/max monster that breaks the CR guidelines (really fucking easy to do), then the DM should also TPK him as well for making his life harder? Cause seriously, the more powerful PC parties are tougher to deal with than the weak ones. A powerful PC may break my entire adventure with one weird spell use he thought of and then totally make my life harder. And that's way more work to try to plug all the possible creative spell use loopholes from breaking my plots. Maybe I should just kill him too?

I mean sure, we can solve all our game problems by just TPKing our PCs. Fucking brilliant! Why didn't I think of that before? Oh wait, Gygax beat me to that idea. So lets all embrace Gygax fail as our primary DMing style.

You don't like what your players do, just fucking kill 'em.

The nerve of those fuckers. Thinking they came to your game to have fun... Wow. Fuck them. Die you bastards. D&D is serious fucking business. Don't fuck around.

Fuchs wrote: I'd have dropped the level loss completely. No exp debt, nothing. It'll happen anyway at higher levels, once the better resurrection spells appear, so I don't see a point in hindering lower-level characters with level loss.

Oh, we eventually did drop it. It only stuck around because we wanted some penalty for death. But by the time the game progressed to having 1 PC die per fight, simply due to the damage and effects being thrown around, we elected to dispense with it.

I use NPC wizards, and clerics - though I don't see the point in SoD spells if I can achieve the same outcome - victory - with non-lethal spells. Why use phantasmal killer with its dual saves if a dominate person is more effective by not only being harder to save against (only have one save) but also by giving you an instant ally? Why, in the lower levels, not use sleep? I found a multitude of - quite logical - ways to use non-lethal spells instead of lethal spells.

Oh, you can certainly use non-lethal spells. But when the enemy outnumbers the PC party, action economy can dictate that it sometimes makes sense for one of them to coup-de-gras whoever just got held or put to sleep. If you have 10 PCs + assorted henchmen and companions, you don't need to spare all of them, even if you're going for the capture. Again though, capture doesn't often make sense in D&D, as an enemy that can capture the party is one that they probably had no hope of beating in the first place.

I beg to differ. If you can kill someone you can capture them as well - I cannot be the only one who used nets, spells, poison or other means to immobilize the PCs, then club them senseless, that's a staple of so many books and movies.

Fuchs wrote:I beg to differ. If you can kill someone you can capture them as well - I cannot be the only one who used nets, spells, poison or other means to immobilize the PCs, then club them senseless, that's a staple of so many books and movies.

Depending on the motive you don't even need to capture. Say you want to assassinate the town mayor, kidnap the princess, or steal the McGuffin. All you need to do is disable the characters long enough to achieve the goal.

Now let's get back to the quirks of 4E.