My only question about the details you choose to give, i.e. the floor being too clean for a dungeon or supports being weak, is what good is Dungeoneering then? =P I only ask because I am under the impression that THOSE kind of details are exactly what dungeoneering does.
But otherwise I agree, as a new player, short descriptions that get things going are nice. If I want more detail, I can ask. If I don't, maybe my character is quite tunnel focused on their mission at hand, I can bypass it.
For me, all skills are for when the player actively does something. Dungeoneering - finding North underground, finding extra info if the player chooses to look for it, and lots more of course.
But most of the extra details are made up on the spot, or are spread across a wide range of skills, to avoid 'I walk 5 feet and roll Perception'
My only question about the details you choose to give, i.e. the floor being too clean for a dungeon or supports being weak, is what good is Dungeoneering then? =P I only ask because I am under the impression that THOSE kind of details are exactly what dungeoneering does.
But otherwise I agree, as a new player, short descriptions that get things going are nice. If I want more detail, I can ask. If I don't, maybe my character is quite tunnel focused on their mission at hand, I can bypass it.
For me, all skills are for when the player actively does something. Dungeoneering - finding North underground, finding extra info if the player chooses to look for it, and lots more of course.
But most of the extra details are made up on the spot, or are spread across a wide range of skills, to avoid 'I walk 5 feet and roll Perception'
Dungeoneering also covers a large range of monster lore in 3.X. But noticing those details are really more a "how hard are you looking?" and "okay you're looking hard enough that you might want to roll Spot now."
Of course this is one of those things that D&D has never really handled well: division of labor between skills (or calling out when more than one skill can be appropriate).
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
edited July 2013
I will say, about my level of detail desired, that even then I like to be bendable when the inevitable shake-up happens.
And yes, I do have more time to prep than some, and yes, I do have players with which it is important to know where the hinges are. It has come up at least twice, as has the need to destroy/lockpick/force a door, and oh so much more. Basically, if there's set dressing, I might as well know everything about it, because the chances of it being used or abused is higher than it not.
I will also note that the player who demands this level of detail (written down or at least thought about) happens to be my wife.
Kalnaur on
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I would generally treat Dungeoneering (or something similar) like this:
Me: "The floors here have odd scuff marks on them, and the wall looks slightly off."
Player: "I'll examine the scuff marks and the wall." *Rolls Dungeoneering* "25."
Me: "This appears to be a movable wall. Judging by the placement of the scuff marks, you're fairly sure it rotates. If you pushed hard enough on the south edge you could probably get it to move."
And then someone else can make a Thievery check if they want to see if there are traps, an Athletics check to see if they can push it, etc. I kind of look at it like I'm presenting a screen in an adventure game and giving the players things to click on with their skill checks.
The players in my Gamma World PbP excel at this. I provide a description of the scene, and I can usually expect them to think of at least one thing they want to investigate further. On almost every occasion this has done something to noticeably change an encounter, or even sometimes avoid an encounter completely.
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
edited July 2013
In my head, perception allows you to see the scuffs on the dungeon floor. Dungeoneering allows you to know what probably/possibly caused them, be it monster tracks or a sliding wall.
More to the point, I see Dungeoneering as Nature but for subterranean and man-made structures.
Kalnaur on
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
And in Next (since this is the Next thread) things will work ... pretty much the same way. DMs will present descriptions, players will roll skill checks, descriptions will get more detailed. This is what was so disappointing (though completely expected) about the livestream session. It sounded like every game of D&D that has ever come before it, except with a kind of boring adventure. Every experience that group had has already been had. The new rules made no palpable difference.
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
edited July 2013
Perhaps that is what has bothered me so much to date: with 4th, at least, the rules have a cogent and concrete reason to not only exist but guide and assist and then get out of the way when needed. All Next's design seems to do with numbers is toss them about haphazardly. They don't seem to be intended as a guide or even as mechanics, but as simply numbers for the sake of them. A, "this looks good here" kind of approach to the math and skeleton of the game.
Kalnaur on
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
4E was much leaner in terms of what numbers applied where.
3E design was a perfect example of what I call "storm of numbers" design. Just a billion related-but-different modifiers that either stacked or didn't and could add up to insane values if you really tried. In a lot of ways, 3rd seemed to deliberately throw a ton of numbers out to obscure the system underneath.
Because I'm really enjoying the latest one: Nemesis
TL;DR: We usually have me and two players. One day we had a third player. They waited half the game to get to show up, I immediately critted their character to near death, and they spent the rest of the session unconscious and not contributing. They never came back. Teehee.
The meat of the story seems to be about players deciding who their "real" nemesis is, in spite of the DM's later attempts to shift focus elsewhere, (and why, really? why not just go with it and let them have Topek the Orc as the new Big Bad?) but the above portion really got to me.
Douchebag DM? Sure, maybe, yeah... Yes, it's kinda crappy to have someone show up for a game and spend the vast majority of it sitting out. We could harp on that all afternoon, I think, but the larger part of this is the system that told him "it's not just okay, but expected to have this happen." Massive crit numbers are all well and good until someone spends the evening not doing a damned thing, or they spend the evening making character #2, or the BBEG goes down at the top of turn one like a prom queen with a couple wine coolers.
This is no different than SoD, except that in this case, the player didn't even get the minor agency of a saving throw before being taken out of the game. It's been a couple packets since I looked at Next, but the combat designs seemed to favor this brand of "high damage/low hit points" swingy combat, which I cannot say I'm ready to line up and buy.
If my role play is hindered by rolling to play, then I'd prefer the rolls play right, instead of steam-rolling play-night.
This is no different than SoD, except that in this case, the player didn't even get the minor agency of a saving throw before being taken out of the game. It's been a couple packets since I looked at Next, but the combat designs seemed to favor this brand of "high damage/low hit points" swingy combat, which I cannot say I'm ready to line up and buy.
Yeah, that's definitley a feather in 4th's hat over other editions of D&D; having characters who get taken out by a kobold's sling certainly does suck.
Hell even in 4th it could be problematic; during the darksun encounters season, a trio of dust devils went faster then the party in innitiative and dropped a pile of blasts on us, knocking 4 out of 6 characters into negative hps.
Wanting the system to be even more boomy (while players are more crunchy) is a recipe for disaster.
0
Options
oxybeEntei is appaled and disappointed in youRegistered Userregular
part of the problem is how D&D treats combat, and challenge, for the most part.
it is, for the most part, a binary state: alive or dead.
very rarely does it haves options that aren't neither. i know that a GM can pull their punches, but the game doesn't give you many options that are immediately obvious.
there's also the fact that combat in D&D tends to be a "you go at it until one side stops moving" affair. running away beyond a simple disengage from an adjacent enemy in D&D is typically a hard thing to do and will more then often put you in a position to take even more hurt then actively sitting there and trading blows.
next also puts a much greater emphasis on strategy rather then tactics so unless you've got a retreat plan or two baked in, the deadliness of combat will probably mean you can't change tactics mid-fight... you stick to your guns or it'll descend into chaos pretty quickly.
so yeah, the whole "deadliness" is a bit more of an issue then a simple high damage/low HP thing, but i'll admit: it sure doesn't help remedy the bad-ness of it all.
you can read my collected ravings at oxybesothertumbr.tumblr.com
-Weather Badge
0
Options
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I'm also not a fan of "deadly for the sake of reasons". If a game is going to kick my ass, I should be able to see it coming, not get blindsided and sidelined within the first 15 minutes because of a lucky dice roll.
There's challenge and then there's punishment, and Next seems to ly lean towards the latter.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
Hell even in 4th it could be problematic; during the darksun encounters season, a trio of dust devils went faster then the party in innitiative and dropped a pile of blasts on us, knocking 4 out of 6 characters into negative hps.
That is an infamous encounter from that season. It really should just result in a TPK given the instructions and other factors with those monsters. That was just shitty as fuck design work.
Hell even in 4th it could be problematic; during the darksun encounters season, a trio of dust devils went faster then the party in innitiative and dropped a pile of blasts on us, knocking 4 out of 6 characters into negative hps.
That is an infamous encounter from that season. It really should just result in a TPK given the instructions and other factors with those monsters. That was just shitty as fuck design work.
Theres been a few encounters like that to be honest. About a season or two ago I ran one that involved the players facing off against a Naga (as well as some other meh creatures). As the players were approaching on a raft, the thing fired off it's breath weapon (causing considerable trauma to the group) and much to my shock and horror It ~immediately~ recharged.
I couldn't in good conscience use it (though knocking the ridiculously op PHB1 bow ranger into roll up a new character land was sorely tempting). If I had, the party would have wiped for sure and because it was an encounter I couldn't do a route 2 on that simply wasn't an option.
Point is: players getting destroyed when they didn't make any mistakes is not good game design.
0
Options
oxybeEntei is appaled and disappointed in youRegistered Userregular
i wouldn't call it punishment, at least not in any traditional or sense.
punishment would imply that you are doing a behavior that is undesirable and that some power is trying to correct you.
but what behaviour would this be calling undesirable? being bad at rolling for stats/HP? having a low armor class/monsters being good at roll attacks? not being able to roll a saving throw? these aren't things that are under the control of the player.
i guess it could simply be punishing you for deciding to play the game, but i don't think a developer would be that... short sighted. demon/dark souls was challenging and while it did punish you with death, it was a death you deserved. you saw it coming and you fucked up or did something stupid. now i'll also admit i didn't like those games, but i can give credit where credit is due. they were hard as fuck but virtually every death was your own fault.
part of the problem is that they seem to be designing a lot of things in a void.
this is a ghoul, it does ghoul-like things. this is a dragon, it does dragon-like things.
but neither seem to be done as part of the whole, as though it's one element in the whole of the game. which is why we get things like the ghoul, which seems to be a TPK willing to happen (barring the critter catching the idiot ball)
as for bullshit designed encounters there is simply no excuse for it. i can see it slipping under the rug of the initial design, but a few "in the wild" playtests should make this show up.
you can read my collected ravings at oxybesothertumbr.tumblr.com
The way I see it with the naga, I think what happened was that the designers attempted a down grade on a paragon tier creature, while forgetting that characters in their teens will have a lot more abilities for soaking damage and/or recovering HP's then characters in the low heroics (this was a level 2 party that was squaring off against a level 5 elite controller and some of it's allies.)
Which sort of leads me into the other annoying bit about 4th: monsters hit super often, and can often down characters in two or three hits. I get that they modeled 4th on MMORPGs and it certainly makes for more exciting games, but it gets really bad when you have a party of 4 or less trying to hack through an encounter and it being a pure grind.
We started with maps in 1e then when we played 2e we dropped the maps and loved it, it was very odd going back to maps in 3e but it was worth it for the rule streamlining an fun in character building. 4e made combat interesting again, but I hope 5e will finally give us that story driven 2e game with streamlined mechanics and the option to have an interesting combat when it suits us.
You have the opposite definition of grind then most people.
Monsters hit often because PCs hit often and they both do considerable damage so a simple fight doesn't take ten rounds to resolve.
To clarify what I mean by grind: the game loses any sort of sense of finesse or flexibility and boils down to pure mechanical flowchart consisting of:
1. Target monster A with most efficient attack.
2. Is monster A dead? if yes then go to step 3 If no repeat action 1.
3. Target monster B with most efficient attack.
While I have no desire to see the game go back to the halcyon days of 1e when players would spend 20 minutes resolving combat with a trio of chainmail wearing orcs and relying on attack spam to get the unmodified 16 or better that they needed, is it too much to ask that monster need to roll better then an 8 to strike the average party member with their go to attack?
Some middle ground would be nice is all I'm saying.
That's super easy to tune though. You just apply a flat AC bonus to everybody and there you go, done. You'll have much longer fights but that's pretty much the price you're going to pay for what you want.
Edit: In 4e that is. This would be a nightmare in other systems because AC isn't level driven or standardized at all.
i wouldn't call it punishment, at least not in any traditional or sense.
punishment would imply that you are doing a behavior that is undesirable and that some power is trying to correct you.
but what behaviour would this be calling undesirable? being bad at rolling for stats/HP? having a low armor class/monsters being good at roll attacks? not being able to roll a saving throw? these aren't things that are under the control of the player.
i guess it could simply be punishing you for deciding to play the game, but i don't think a developer would be that... short sighted. demon/dark souls was challenging and while it did punish you with death, it was a death you deserved. you saw it coming and you fucked up or did something stupid. now i'll also admit i didn't like those games, but i can give credit where credit is due. they were hard as fuck but virtually every death was your own fault.
part of the problem is that they seem to be designing a lot of things in a void.
this is a ghoul, it does ghoul-like things. this is a dragon, it does dragon-like things.
but neither seem to be done as part of the whole, as though it's one element in the whole of the game. which is why we get things like the ghoul, which seems to be a TPK willing to happen (barring the critter catching the idiot ball)
as for bullshit designed encounters there is simply no excuse for it. i can see it slipping under the rug of the initial design, but a few "in the wild" playtests should make this show up.
With the design of Dark or Demon Souls, the deaths are fair, part of the contract signed (so to speak) between player and designer: they made games where you must be aware and careful at all times, otherwise you die.
However, for this example, punishing games are games that break their own rules, or otherwise set you up for failure; this is not uncommon in games that are badly designed. You are punished not for doing a behavior that is undesirable, but rather by the inability of a designer to design a good game. You are, in effect, being punished by the other person's undesirable actions.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
+2
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
You have the opposite definition of grind then most people.
Monsters hit often because PCs hit often and they both do considerable damage so a simple fight doesn't take ten rounds to resolve.
To clarify what I mean by grind: the game loses any sort of sense of finesse or flexibility and boils down to pure mechanical flowchart consisting of:
1. Target monster A with most efficient attack.
2. Is monster A dead? if yes then go to step 3 If no repeat action 1.
3. Target monster B with most efficient attack.
While I have no desire to see the game go back to the halcyon days of 1e when players would spend 20 minutes resolving combat with a trio of chainmail wearing orcs and relying on attack spam to get the unmodified 16 or better that they needed, is it too much to ask that monster need to roll better then an 8 to strike the average party member with their go to attack?
Some middle ground would be nice is all I'm saying.
The problem is that players powers are far in excess of monsters, especially when you get into paragon and epic. In reality your average monster has only one or two actions - tops - to do jack shit to the players. It will be dead after that or disabled in some manner (therefore rendered ineffective). Monsters thus need to hit as hard up front as they can and not "Cat scratch" players, which was what the original problems with paragon tier and epic tier were. When a creature needs to survive 5 rounds of agonizing repeatedly disable all the players so they have no actions roulette, slowly cat scratching them down until they are JUST bloodied - the system is flawed. It's so badly flawed, that it literally becomes an exercise in overdesigning every encounter to eek out every single round possible.
I can tell you, from years of direct experience in 4E before they finally fixed the maths that this was painful game design. For example in Sorrow of Heaven, I realized my players had absolutely no ability to deal with flying monsters. This was a big "Aha" moment, because again I was designing encounters to actually be more than speed bumps so every single round a monster lived was one it could actually have a chance of hurting a player character. Bear in mind, we're talking of damage numbers going from 7-22 HP to maybe inflicting 50HP or so. On PCs who were packing upwards of 140+ HP minimum by epic tier. Yes, that's how completely fucking terrible monsters were.
I once ran an encounter with a Marilith, not one but TWO Eye of Chaos Beholders, a bunch of minions (forget which) and a Balor. This was an EL 33 or so encounter for a 27th level party. The net result was a two hour long combat that resulted in three PCs being bloodied.
This was a satisfying result.
I mean just comprehend that. I am satisfied with a 2 hour long combat in an Party Level+6 encounter that sufficiently bothered the players enough that three of them were bloodied by the end of it. I had to literally use every single technique - terrain, traps, flying monsters, the ridiculous riposte ability of the marilith - to buy sufficient time for these creatures to scratch down enough HP to be a challenge. Was this fun? Yeah actually, it was for the players actually because it was a pretty interesting and (at the time) challenging encounter. How long in people time did engineering this specific scenario take on my part? About eight fucking hours. I customized the monsters, I customized the terrain, I wrote a custom trap, I specifically thought about every aspect of the encounter - in short I basically engineered every single last aspect of the combat.
Then MM3 rolled along.
The very first, and I mean very very first encounter with only MM3 monsters, with an encounter that equalled their party level was amazing. 3 PCs were bloodied, 1 wasn't bloodied and the last stood on 1 HP. The monsters damage, their abilities to soak up conditions to still perform meaningful actions and their fantastically designed powers for epic tier ripped the party apart. It represented everything that an epic encounter should have been. It was exciting! It was dynamic! The average encounter was suddenly relevant again! The first real EL+3 encounter I gave them was a slaughter - in a good way. PCs were put on the desperate end of the stick, needing to fight for their lives against the much more powerful Catastrophic Dragons - people went down, heroic rescues needed to be made and most importantly I was designing interesting challenging encounters without spending 4+ hours trying to engineer them into some kind of "false" sense of challenge.
The fact is, when both sides hit one another very hard and quickly, it's a more exciting, dynamic and interesting game. Defenders are relevant, a single turn of a stun/daze is a huge game changer to be saved when you need it, not thrown out just because as it isn't even remotely relevant to the outcome and so on. Additionally it means combats end at a decent clip because nobody gets into a complacent "I just swing and hit him until he dies" because using anything else is irrelevant to the actual outcome. The actual tangible effects of the "Increase the damage considerably" option are most felt in paragon and epic tier, which is where it's actually important. PCs out of position or in difficult circumstances can literally be "pounced on" by monsters, who can deal real damage increasing the tactical relevance of the game. In Sorrow of Heaven pre-MM3, even if I caught the wizard out of position I couldn't deal any significant damage. Post-MM3 I could reduce him from full HP to bloodied (or dead) in one round. Same with the defender, pre-MM3 you could just come and get it (or the improved version of it), then sit there without a single threat. Post-MM3 this was the fastest possible way to say "Kill me" because even if only a handful of the attacks hit you died.
There is literally no benefit to having monsters that cat scratch. It doesn't work. They have to do substantial and effective damage and it must be front loaded. They are only going to live - at most - 1 or 2 rounds. Unless you want that drawn out by making your players frustrated at constantly denying them actions or huge ridiculous penalties to make them useless, you need to make that damage hit as hard as possible for the few rounds they will be alive. The game is so much better for this that I recommend anyone see how the logic behind the damage really works out at paragon/epic. Additionally, in contrast to heroic where the newer damage (though mostly abilities) makes PCs really fear death, by paragon/epic dying becomes more of a speed bump or even utterly irrelevant (by epic). Ever noticed all those epic destinies with "When you die..." in them? That's because epic tier was designed with death being a speed bump as a clear consideration: Except that the way they designed monsters made death the most unlikely event possible.
That's a lot of text, but it's good text. I'm normally not on the DM side of things, although maybe I should try it out.
what a happy day it is
0
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I will say though, that encounters like the Dust Devils from Dark Sun are just incredibly absolutely badly designed. There is a distinct line between making an encounter challenging by having the monsters potentially have great damage output and effectively rendering an encounter impossible. The primary problem with the Dust Devil encounter is that these monsters are whacky for their levels, they do extreme amounts of damage in comparison to other level 3 monsters and they do so in an AoE. In an encounter that specifically starts by bunching the players up, obscuring their vision and THEN almost certainly dropping a surprise round on them. That's just really bad encounter design and the guy who wrote it should feel bad.
It's only partly relevant to the discussion, but I don't know where else to vent. Just had our year+ running Pathfinder game fall apart after too much whining on another player and my part regarding save-or-die and silver bullet mechanics.
Carrion Crown spoilers, in case anyone cares:
We're halfway through the third module, and each one has had a classic monster-type of the module.
First was undead, which were of course immune to the normal stuff (invalidating one character entirely), and included a first level very few magic item fight with incorporeal undead (I stabbed it to death with a +1 arrow, which was our only magic item, as non-magic weapons can't possibly hurt them)
Second mod was golem-themed, which made our new sorcerer feel right at home (or worthless, one of the two). Random encounter style rust monsters and basilisks gave "flavor". At least the rust-monsters had some nice foreshadowing; the basilisk was literally just in a big open room full of water.
This third mod was all werewolves...up until the game-ending point of an undead incorporeal werewolf that magic jars at will. Based on our knowledge checks it's not a shapeshifter (subtype), so we don't "know" about it's DR 10/silver. So it takes (Damage - 10) / 2 actual damage. We put a decent hurting on it until one of us inevitably failed our will save to be magic jar'd. Yes we should have had protection from evil to prevent it, but we didn't and none of us wanted to play the "beat each party member senseless until only one is left and hopefully he can maybe kill the thing before they fail their DC18 save" game. There was also an army of werewolves bearing down on us from upstairs, and there are no minions in Pathfinder.
Two of us were capable of playing the institutional player-knowledge based game that this adventure path called for, but the others simply weren't able to, and none of us were particularly interested in that level of party optimization. I could see the adventure path being quite fun for a team of players and DM that really want to go that route, but for us (with no cleric or wizard for most of it), the binary "you brought the magic bullet or you didn't" style of play was just not fun. Why should the game be nigh-unplayable if someone wants to play a druid (largely nerfed compared to 3/3.5) or inquisitor?
It's a real shame because the DM is a great character actor, and put a lot of prep work into the game. There were moments where we were immersed so far that the mechanics didn't matter, and then everything would come crashing down as soon as we didn't have the right boxes checkmarked.
firewulf on
0
Options
oxybeEntei is appaled and disappointed in youRegistered Userregular
looks like this week Mike Mearls doesn't have anything to do so he hijacks James Wyatt's "wandering monsters" column.
i really don't care for D&D's default fluff mainly because it's often simply forgettable. not good, not bad, just... there and taking up word count. there are a few gems and stinkers but for the most part i ignore it.
what really annoyed me about the monster lore parts in old eds is that the fluff is not seen, but heard.
and that's not really what you want to do to a player.
i like to think of it as synonymous the magic sword problem. i'm told that "muckbuster" is a legendary sword that slew a thousand goblins and was used to free the town of Bumblemuck from their tiny, tiny iron fist and i should be in awe of it's presence. mechanically, however, it's just a +1 sword and acts like my old sword only slightly better and shows no signs as to why i should jizz my pants from being in it's vicinity.
sure you can hype it up as much as you like, but once the player starts interacting with it the facade is gone. it's no longer a thing of myth and wonder... it's vendor trash. or worse, vendor trash you can't get rid of because of story reasons.
monsters are the same way. unless you're planning on having the PCs interact with them for more then a few seconds, all that fluff is pointless... i really is. it might give a DM a hook or two, but "goblins like to eat cat meat" is not something players would notice unless they spend an inordinate amount of time in goblin society rather then their inordinate amount of time in goblin entrails. if you're going to throw a bunch of fluff my way, don't just write the fluff and then tack on a monster. let the abilities of the critter write the fluff for you or make damn sure you make the mechanics fit with the fluff.
going with the ettercap mearls is talking about
Spider Shepherds: Ettercaps are spider shepherds. They tend to spiders, feed them, and watch over them in the same manner a shepherd watches over a flock of sheep. They watch over spiders in much the same way that treants watch over forests. They are creatures of the natural world that lair in deep forests, where they quietly dispose of creatures that wander into their areas. Through a Forest Darkly: Ettercaps delight in silently killing explorers, travelers, and homesteaders. They have no desire to live in harmony with nature. Rather, they prefer to despoil civilized lands and turn nature into a wild, out of control garden choked with spiders, webs, and sinister predators. A forest infested with ettercaps becomes a dark, gloomy place choked with webs and a variety of giant insects. After all, giant spiders feed on other giant bugs (flies and so on). Devourers of Pixies: Ettercaps specifically seek to capture pixies and, to a lesser extent, other small, winged fey in their webs. They covet pixie dust, and they collect it to sell to hags and other evil folk. Ettercaps also feed captive fey to their spiders, helping them grow to tremendous size. An ettercap takes pride in its herd and views the largest of its spiders as its pride and joy. Killing an ettercap's spiders is a sure way to enrage it. Aranea: Ettercaps that consume enough fey flesh become creatures of magic themselves, gaining the powers of an aranea. Webs: Ettercaps can shoot webs like a weapon, but they prefer to use their webbing to make tools and items.
how much of that do you think will be represented in the creature's actual stat block?
now, don't get me wrong, i don't have a raging hate for fluff, but all things in it's place and IMO, monster fluff is some of the few monster-related things i don't want in the monster manual.
i would like it in the DMG though. a discussion on non-human civilizations and their place in the world, now different genres can treat the same monster (goblins can be a faceless mook, comic relief or a race of creepy comedic sociopaths depending on the genre). basically how to bring the monster to life as part of the world rather then simply another set piece for the pcs to kick down.
leave the MM for critter stat blocks and let me make my own stories for them. i don't mind having some world building advice when it comes to monsters, but i would like that to be with the rest of the world building advice: the DMG.
you can read my collected ravings at oxybesothertumbr.tumblr.com
Initial Impression: Why the fuck is their pride in their spider herd under Devourers of Pixies and not Spider Shepherds? Oh wait, this is back to the thing again, isn't it? I can't wait for a new round of "Hunt the rule!"
I disagree Ox. While insane levels of detail isn't good, the extremely brief descriptions that are common to fourth edition monsters is somewhat frustrating to me as DM since it means I have less information on the creatures habits, culture and behavior, all things that help with world building and can be fun for players to mess around with.
Afterall, the game is supposed to be about more then just numbers.
I think having the fluff with the monster in the manual is ok.
But I wish the DMG would spend more time on how to build a coherent and self-consistent setting with all of these monsters in it. Because that's one the things that took me years and years to pull off as a DM; having dragons and girallons in a setting with a mages academy and not having it feel like a bunch of ill-fitting zones.
I think the main thing to take away from ox's post is that the mechanics should tell the story. I mean you can have descriptive content for sure, but if it doesn't line up with the related mechanics then it's meaningless. If I'm fighting a creature with six arms, each of which wields a dangerous blade, and mechanically it makes one attack per round for standard damage, then something is amiss. The narrative and mechanics have created a disparity in my experience of the game, and that actually lessens the experience compared to either one by itself. If I just heard a narrative about the creature, and responded with narrative, there's no problem. If I battle a vague, barely-described creature that makes one attack per round, then there's not really anything amiss (and I fill in holes with my imagination). But when the content doesn't match up properly, the game is actually weaker for having attempted it.
If you find this topic interesting, check out these Extra Credits videos:
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
+1
Options
KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
edited July 2013
I Extra Credits.
Also, While the early 4th ed books had too little fluff (for some folks), For me the Monster Vault texts had too much, taking up the valuable space that another monster stat block could have gone.
Now don't get me wrong, some fluff is a grand thing, but too much is well, too much. Then again, I've seen this ideological split before. Some folks love making their own versions of monsters but desire more base fluff to base the mechanics on. Some need that fluff and don't really care about the quantity or variety of monsters, but instead just want really juicy story bits because that's how they build campaigns. Some could make monsters, but would rather have more monsters pre-made, for whatever reasons. Some would like the game designers to butt out of their story and get back to number crunching for them. Most sit somewhere in between. The problem really does seem to be that there is no compromise that will please everyone.
That said, as Sauce brings up if a monster fluffs and looks super bad-ass, but it's numbers don't match up . . . it becomes disheartening. Regardless of the amount of fluff, if the fluffy bits do not support the mechanics, and the mechanics do not support the fluffy bits, then there is something wrong with the game.
Kalnaur on
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
I like the fluff, but what you don't do is put stuff like "oh and their bite causes paralysis" in only fluff sections.
Fluff helps me incorporate or ignore. Anything mechanical needs to be codified and in a concise form.
Not only does this make things manageable for the DM, but it also encourages the mechanics to be more flavourable because if they aren't there "it doesn't count." For example, you give a dragon a mechanical attack for their breath weapon because a dragon that doesn't have any stat block for spewing fire on a bunch of adventurers but only mentions "fire-breathing" in the fluff is not yet a dragon.
+1
Options
AntimatterDevo Was RightGates of SteelRegistered Userregular
Previous editions of Gamma World had the unfortunate habit of hiding extremely important information about monsters in very innocuous “Mutation” entries following the basic stats. For example, you might remember that the arks are the dog-people who wear leather armor and carry spiked clubs… but I’ll bet you don’t remember that they had powers of life leech, telekinesis, and weather control! If you got into a tussle with a pack of arks, the GM had to remember to go look up those mutations and use them, which makes for a very different encounter than you might expect from the basic description of the monster. This time around, we can describe crazy mutations like those as monster powers and make sure they’re right where the GM can find them.
Previous editions of Gamma World had the unfortunate habit of hiding extremely important information about monsters in very innocuous “Mutation” entries following the basic stats. For example, you might remember that the arks are the dog-people who wear leather armor and carry spiked clubs… but I’ll bet you don’t remember that they had powers of life leech, telekinesis, and weather control! If you got into a tussle with a pack of arks, the GM had to remember to go look up those mutations and use them, which makes for a very different encounter than you might expect from the basic description of the monster. This time around, we can describe crazy mutations like those as monster powers and make sure they’re right where the GM can find them.
I have to wonder what happened behind the scenes at WotC to cause this. The complete tonal shift and utter refusal to acknowledge the previous edition is almost like something you'd see out of a religious schism.
Posts
For me, all skills are for when the player actively does something. Dungeoneering - finding North underground, finding extra info if the player chooses to look for it, and lots more of course.
But most of the extra details are made up on the spot, or are spread across a wide range of skills, to avoid 'I walk 5 feet and roll Perception'
Dungeoneering also covers a large range of monster lore in 3.X. But noticing those details are really more a "how hard are you looking?" and "okay you're looking hard enough that you might want to roll Spot now."
Of course this is one of those things that D&D has never really handled well: division of labor between skills (or calling out when more than one skill can be appropriate).
And yes, I do have more time to prep than some, and yes, I do have players with which it is important to know where the hinges are. It has come up at least twice, as has the need to destroy/lockpick/force a door, and oh so much more. Basically, if there's set dressing, I might as well know everything about it, because the chances of it being used or abused is higher than it not.
I will also note that the player who demands this level of detail (written down or at least thought about) happens to be my wife.
Me: "The floors here have odd scuff marks on them, and the wall looks slightly off."
Player: "I'll examine the scuff marks and the wall." *Rolls Dungeoneering* "25."
Me: "This appears to be a movable wall. Judging by the placement of the scuff marks, you're fairly sure it rotates. If you pushed hard enough on the south edge you could probably get it to move."
And then someone else can make a Thievery check if they want to see if there are traps, an Athletics check to see if they can push it, etc. I kind of look at it like I'm presenting a screen in an adventure game and giving the players things to click on with their skill checks.
The players in my Gamma World PbP excel at this. I provide a description of the scene, and I can usually expect them to think of at least one thing they want to investigate further. On almost every occasion this has done something to noticeably change an encounter, or even sometimes avoid an encounter completely.
More to the point, I see Dungeoneering as Nature but for subterranean and man-made structures.
And in Next (since this is the Next thread) things will work ... pretty much the same way. DMs will present descriptions, players will roll skill checks, descriptions will get more detailed. This is what was so disappointing (though completely expected) about the livestream session. It sounded like every game of D&D that has ever come before it, except with a kind of boring adventure. Every experience that group had has already been had. The new rules made no palpable difference.
3E design was a perfect example of what I call "storm of numbers" design. Just a billion related-but-different modifiers that either stacked or didn't and could add up to insane values if you really tried. In a lot of ways, 3rd seemed to deliberately throw a ton of numbers out to obscure the system underneath.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Because I'm really enjoying the latest one: Nemesis
TL;DR: We usually have me and two players. One day we had a third player. They waited half the game to get to show up, I immediately critted their character to near death, and they spent the rest of the session unconscious and not contributing. They never came back. Teehee.
The meat of the story seems to be about players deciding who their "real" nemesis is, in spite of the DM's later attempts to shift focus elsewhere, (and why, really? why not just go with it and let them have Topek the Orc as the new Big Bad?) but the above portion really got to me.
Douchebag DM? Sure, maybe, yeah... Yes, it's kinda crappy to have someone show up for a game and spend the vast majority of it sitting out. We could harp on that all afternoon, I think, but the larger part of this is the system that told him "it's not just okay, but expected to have this happen." Massive crit numbers are all well and good until someone spends the evening not doing a damned thing, or they spend the evening making character #2, or the BBEG goes down at the top of turn one like a prom queen with a couple wine coolers.
This is no different than SoD, except that in this case, the player didn't even get the minor agency of a saving throw before being taken out of the game. It's been a couple packets since I looked at Next, but the combat designs seemed to favor this brand of "high damage/low hit points" swingy combat, which I cannot say I'm ready to line up and buy.
Yeah, that's definitley a feather in 4th's hat over other editions of D&D; having characters who get taken out by a kobold's sling certainly does suck.
Hell even in 4th it could be problematic; during the darksun encounters season, a trio of dust devils went faster then the party in innitiative and dropped a pile of blasts on us, knocking 4 out of 6 characters into negative hps.
Wanting the system to be even more boomy (while players are more crunchy) is a recipe for disaster.
it is, for the most part, a binary state: alive or dead.
very rarely does it haves options that aren't neither. i know that a GM can pull their punches, but the game doesn't give you many options that are immediately obvious.
there's also the fact that combat in D&D tends to be a "you go at it until one side stops moving" affair. running away beyond a simple disengage from an adjacent enemy in D&D is typically a hard thing to do and will more then often put you in a position to take even more hurt then actively sitting there and trading blows.
next also puts a much greater emphasis on strategy rather then tactics so unless you've got a retreat plan or two baked in, the deadliness of combat will probably mean you can't change tactics mid-fight... you stick to your guns or it'll descend into chaos pretty quickly.
so yeah, the whole "deadliness" is a bit more of an issue then a simple high damage/low HP thing, but i'll admit: it sure doesn't help remedy the bad-ness of it all.
There's challenge and then there's punishment, and Next seems to
That is an infamous encounter from that season. It really should just result in a TPK given the instructions and other factors with those monsters. That was just shitty as fuck design work.
Theres been a few encounters like that to be honest. About a season or two ago I ran one that involved the players facing off against a Naga (as well as some other meh creatures). As the players were approaching on a raft, the thing fired off it's breath weapon (causing considerable trauma to the group) and much to my shock and horror It ~immediately~ recharged.
I couldn't in good conscience use it (though knocking the ridiculously op PHB1 bow ranger into roll up a new character land was sorely tempting). If I had, the party would have wiped for sure and because it was an encounter I couldn't do a route 2 on that simply wasn't an option.
Point is: players getting destroyed when they didn't make any mistakes is not good game design.
punishment would imply that you are doing a behavior that is undesirable and that some power is trying to correct you.
but what behaviour would this be calling undesirable? being bad at rolling for stats/HP? having a low armor class/monsters being good at roll attacks? not being able to roll a saving throw? these aren't things that are under the control of the player.
i guess it could simply be punishing you for deciding to play the game, but i don't think a developer would be that... short sighted. demon/dark souls was challenging and while it did punish you with death, it was a death you deserved. you saw it coming and you fucked up or did something stupid. now i'll also admit i didn't like those games, but i can give credit where credit is due. they were hard as fuck but virtually every death was your own fault.
part of the problem is that they seem to be designing a lot of things in a void.
this is a ghoul, it does ghoul-like things. this is a dragon, it does dragon-like things.
but neither seem to be done as part of the whole, as though it's one element in the whole of the game. which is why we get things like the ghoul, which seems to be a TPK willing to happen (barring the critter catching the idiot ball)
as for bullshit designed encounters there is simply no excuse for it. i can see it slipping under the rug of the initial design, but a few "in the wild" playtests should make this show up.
Which sort of leads me into the other annoying bit about 4th: monsters hit super often, and can often down characters in two or three hits. I get that they modeled 4th on MMORPGs and it certainly makes for more exciting games, but it gets really bad when you have a party of 4 or less trying to hack through an encounter and it being a pure grind.
Monsters hit often because PCs hit often and they both do considerable damage so a simple fight doesn't take ten rounds to resolve.
To clarify what I mean by grind: the game loses any sort of sense of finesse or flexibility and boils down to pure mechanical flowchart consisting of:
1. Target monster A with most efficient attack.
2. Is monster A dead? if yes then go to step 3 If no repeat action 1.
3. Target monster B with most efficient attack.
While I have no desire to see the game go back to the halcyon days of 1e when players would spend 20 minutes resolving combat with a trio of chainmail wearing orcs and relying on attack spam to get the unmodified 16 or better that they needed, is it too much to ask that monster need to roll better then an 8 to strike the average party member with their go to attack?
Some middle ground would be nice is all I'm saying.
Edit: In 4e that is. This would be a nightmare in other systems because AC isn't level driven or standardized at all.
With the design of Dark or Demon Souls, the deaths are fair, part of the contract signed (so to speak) between player and designer: they made games where you must be aware and careful at all times, otherwise you die.
However, for this example, punishing games are games that break their own rules, or otherwise set you up for failure; this is not uncommon in games that are badly designed. You are punished not for doing a behavior that is undesirable, but rather by the inability of a designer to design a good game. You are, in effect, being punished by the other person's undesirable actions.
The problem is that players powers are far in excess of monsters, especially when you get into paragon and epic. In reality your average monster has only one or two actions - tops - to do jack shit to the players. It will be dead after that or disabled in some manner (therefore rendered ineffective). Monsters thus need to hit as hard up front as they can and not "Cat scratch" players, which was what the original problems with paragon tier and epic tier were. When a creature needs to survive 5 rounds of agonizing repeatedly disable all the players so they have no actions roulette, slowly cat scratching them down until they are JUST bloodied - the system is flawed. It's so badly flawed, that it literally becomes an exercise in overdesigning every encounter to eek out every single round possible.
I can tell you, from years of direct experience in 4E before they finally fixed the maths that this was painful game design. For example in Sorrow of Heaven, I realized my players had absolutely no ability to deal with flying monsters. This was a big "Aha" moment, because again I was designing encounters to actually be more than speed bumps so every single round a monster lived was one it could actually have a chance of hurting a player character. Bear in mind, we're talking of damage numbers going from 7-22 HP to maybe inflicting 50HP or so. On PCs who were packing upwards of 140+ HP minimum by epic tier. Yes, that's how completely fucking terrible monsters were.
I once ran an encounter with a Marilith, not one but TWO Eye of Chaos Beholders, a bunch of minions (forget which) and a Balor. This was an EL 33 or so encounter for a 27th level party. The net result was a two hour long combat that resulted in three PCs being bloodied.
This was a satisfying result.
I mean just comprehend that. I am satisfied with a 2 hour long combat in an Party Level+6 encounter that sufficiently bothered the players enough that three of them were bloodied by the end of it. I had to literally use every single technique - terrain, traps, flying monsters, the ridiculous riposte ability of the marilith - to buy sufficient time for these creatures to scratch down enough HP to be a challenge. Was this fun? Yeah actually, it was for the players actually because it was a pretty interesting and (at the time) challenging encounter. How long in people time did engineering this specific scenario take on my part? About eight fucking hours. I customized the monsters, I customized the terrain, I wrote a custom trap, I specifically thought about every aspect of the encounter - in short I basically engineered every single last aspect of the combat.
Then MM3 rolled along.
The very first, and I mean very very first encounter with only MM3 monsters, with an encounter that equalled their party level was amazing. 3 PCs were bloodied, 1 wasn't bloodied and the last stood on 1 HP. The monsters damage, their abilities to soak up conditions to still perform meaningful actions and their fantastically designed powers for epic tier ripped the party apart. It represented everything that an epic encounter should have been. It was exciting! It was dynamic! The average encounter was suddenly relevant again! The first real EL+3 encounter I gave them was a slaughter - in a good way. PCs were put on the desperate end of the stick, needing to fight for their lives against the much more powerful Catastrophic Dragons - people went down, heroic rescues needed to be made and most importantly I was designing interesting challenging encounters without spending 4+ hours trying to engineer them into some kind of "false" sense of challenge.
The fact is, when both sides hit one another very hard and quickly, it's a more exciting, dynamic and interesting game. Defenders are relevant, a single turn of a stun/daze is a huge game changer to be saved when you need it, not thrown out just because as it isn't even remotely relevant to the outcome and so on. Additionally it means combats end at a decent clip because nobody gets into a complacent "I just swing and hit him until he dies" because using anything else is irrelevant to the actual outcome. The actual tangible effects of the "Increase the damage considerably" option are most felt in paragon and epic tier, which is where it's actually important. PCs out of position or in difficult circumstances can literally be "pounced on" by monsters, who can deal real damage increasing the tactical relevance of the game. In Sorrow of Heaven pre-MM3, even if I caught the wizard out of position I couldn't deal any significant damage. Post-MM3 I could reduce him from full HP to bloodied (or dead) in one round. Same with the defender, pre-MM3 you could just come and get it (or the improved version of it), then sit there without a single threat. Post-MM3 this was the fastest possible way to say "Kill me" because even if only a handful of the attacks hit you died.
There is literally no benefit to having monsters that cat scratch. It doesn't work. They have to do substantial and effective damage and it must be front loaded. They are only going to live - at most - 1 or 2 rounds. Unless you want that drawn out by making your players frustrated at constantly denying them actions or huge ridiculous penalties to make them useless, you need to make that damage hit as hard as possible for the few rounds they will be alive. The game is so much better for this that I recommend anyone see how the logic behind the damage really works out at paragon/epic. Additionally, in contrast to heroic where the newer damage (though mostly abilities) makes PCs really fear death, by paragon/epic dying becomes more of a speed bump or even utterly irrelevant (by epic). Ever noticed all those epic destinies with "When you die..." in them? That's because epic tier was designed with death being a speed bump as a clear consideration: Except that the way they designed monsters made death the most unlikely event possible.
Carrion Crown spoilers, in case anyone cares:
First was undead, which were of course immune to the normal stuff (invalidating one character entirely), and included a first level very few magic item fight with incorporeal undead (I stabbed it to death with a +1 arrow, which was our only magic item, as non-magic weapons can't possibly hurt them)
Second mod was golem-themed, which made our new sorcerer feel right at home (or worthless, one of the two). Random encounter style rust monsters and basilisks gave "flavor". At least the rust-monsters had some nice foreshadowing; the basilisk was literally just in a big open room full of water.
This third mod was all werewolves...up until the game-ending point of an undead incorporeal werewolf that magic jars at will. Based on our knowledge checks it's not a shapeshifter (subtype), so we don't "know" about it's DR 10/silver. So it takes (Damage - 10) / 2 actual damage. We put a decent hurting on it until one of us inevitably failed our will save to be magic jar'd. Yes we should have had protection from evil to prevent it, but we didn't and none of us wanted to play the "beat each party member senseless until only one is left and hopefully he can maybe kill the thing before they fail their DC18 save" game. There was also an army of werewolves bearing down on us from upstairs, and there are no minions in Pathfinder.
Two of us were capable of playing the institutional player-knowledge based game that this adventure path called for, but the others simply weren't able to, and none of us were particularly interested in that level of party optimization. I could see the adventure path being quite fun for a team of players and DM that really want to go that route, but for us (with no cleric or wizard for most of it), the binary "you brought the magic bullet or you didn't" style of play was just not fun. Why should the game be nigh-unplayable if someone wants to play a druid (largely nerfed compared to 3/3.5) or inquisitor?
It's a real shame because the DM is a great character actor, and put a lot of prep work into the game. There were moments where we were immersed so far that the mechanics didn't matter, and then everything would come crashing down as soon as we didn't have the right boxes checkmarked.
sorta.
all in all, for me it's a resounding "meh".
i really don't care for D&D's default fluff mainly because it's often simply forgettable. not good, not bad, just... there and taking up word count. there are a few gems and stinkers but for the most part i ignore it.
what really annoyed me about the monster lore parts in old eds is that the fluff is not seen, but heard.
and that's not really what you want to do to a player.
i like to think of it as synonymous the magic sword problem. i'm told that "muckbuster" is a legendary sword that slew a thousand goblins and was used to free the town of Bumblemuck from their tiny, tiny iron fist and i should be in awe of it's presence. mechanically, however, it's just a +1 sword and acts like my old sword only slightly better and shows no signs as to why i should jizz my pants from being in it's vicinity.
sure you can hype it up as much as you like, but once the player starts interacting with it the facade is gone. it's no longer a thing of myth and wonder... it's vendor trash. or worse, vendor trash you can't get rid of because of story reasons.
monsters are the same way. unless you're planning on having the PCs interact with them for more then a few seconds, all that fluff is pointless... i really is. it might give a DM a hook or two, but "goblins like to eat cat meat" is not something players would notice unless they spend an inordinate amount of time in goblin society rather then their inordinate amount of time in goblin entrails. if you're going to throw a bunch of fluff my way, don't just write the fluff and then tack on a monster. let the abilities of the critter write the fluff for you or make damn sure you make the mechanics fit with the fluff.
going with the ettercap mearls is talking about
how much of that do you think will be represented in the creature's actual stat block?
now, don't get me wrong, i don't have a raging hate for fluff, but all things in it's place and IMO, monster fluff is some of the few monster-related things i don't want in the monster manual.
i would like it in the DMG though. a discussion on non-human civilizations and their place in the world, now different genres can treat the same monster (goblins can be a faceless mook, comic relief or a race of creepy comedic sociopaths depending on the genre). basically how to bring the monster to life as part of the world rather then simply another set piece for the pcs to kick down.
leave the MM for critter stat blocks and let me make my own stories for them. i don't mind having some world building advice when it comes to monsters, but i would like that to be with the rest of the world building advice: the DMG.
Afterall, the game is supposed to be about more then just numbers.
But I wish the DMG would spend more time on how to build a coherent and self-consistent setting with all of these monsters in it. Because that's one the things that took me years and years to pull off as a DM; having dragons and girallons in a setting with a mages academy and not having it feel like a bunch of ill-fitting zones.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
If you find this topic interesting, check out these Extra Credits videos:
Narrative Mechanics
Mechanics as Metaphor pt1
Mechanics as Metaphor pt2
Also, While the early 4th ed books had too little fluff (for some folks), For me the Monster Vault texts had too much, taking up the valuable space that another monster stat block could have gone.
Now don't get me wrong, some fluff is a grand thing, but too much is well, too much. Then again, I've seen this ideological split before. Some folks love making their own versions of monsters but desire more base fluff to base the mechanics on. Some need that fluff and don't really care about the quantity or variety of monsters, but instead just want really juicy story bits because that's how they build campaigns. Some could make monsters, but would rather have more monsters pre-made, for whatever reasons. Some would like the game designers to butt out of their story and get back to number crunching for them. Most sit somewhere in between. The problem really does seem to be that there is no compromise that will please everyone.
That said, as Sauce brings up if a monster fluffs and looks super bad-ass, but it's numbers don't match up . . . it becomes disheartening. Regardless of the amount of fluff, if the fluffy bits do not support the mechanics, and the mechanics do not support the fluffy bits, then there is something wrong with the game.
Fluff helps me incorporate or ignore. Anything mechanical needs to be codified and in a concise form.
Not only does this make things manageable for the DM, but it also encourages the mechanics to be more flavourable because if they aren't there "it doesn't count." For example, you give a dragon a mechanical attack for their breath weapon because a dragon that doesn't have any stat block for spewing fire on a bunch of adventurers but only mentions "fire-breathing" in the fluff is not yet a dragon.
"We did something right? DIDN'T HAPPEN."
I wonder if it's cold marketing tactics or weird emotional denial that is making them pretend 4e didn't happen?
I'm going to say a bit of both.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar