PDA

View Full Version : [3.P] How much crowd control ruins the game's fun?



Endarire
2010-10-23, 08:23 PM
Core is broken, and we've talked about this for a good, long time (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=171898). One of the reasons cited, probably in another thread, was the abundance of crowd control that comes around level 7.

D&D is largely a team game. We know that casters get lots of options, and lots more than non-casters.

One of my friends lamented that casters contain fights so easily. Round 1 and maybe 2 are "the fight" and the rest is mop-up.

As a Wizard player, I love crowd control. Blasting is boring and even cliche for casters. (Just about every video game has casters as blasters, perhaps with some minor utility.) I admit that casting one spell then putting the party on auto-attack is not necessarily fun for them.

How contained can a fight get before things are no longer fun for you? For your party? For the DM?

Dimers
2010-10-24, 01:09 AM
I combine a high tolerance for boredom with mild paranoia. An enemy force that's merely stuck in place, taking a -7 to every attack, and standing between PC rogues and fighters ... well, they could also be stunned, dominated, sickened and charmed, so I've got a lot of work left to do.

Somehow I bet I'll be a statistical outlier regarding this question.

Endarire
2010-10-24, 02:42 AM
I prefer enemies to be controlled. In online games, battling stuns and CC is what makes the game more than hit 'n' run or a blitz.

Logalmier
2010-10-24, 11:58 AM
I play a wizard that uses crowd control a lot, and for my group at least, it has never impeded with the other players enjoyment. To me the whole points of crowd control is to make your enemies easy to clean up for your allies, which I think is more fun for the other players then just killing everything outright. In the immortal words of Treantmonk: "That's the point - you're God after all, let the mortals have their victory."

Kalaska'Agathas
2010-10-24, 12:25 PM
I think it depends entirely on the composition of the party. If your party consists primarily of Single Target Melee Damage Dealers or Single Target Melee Tanks it can become too much when either the Damage Dealers become unnecessary to winning the battle or when the Tanks become unnecessary for keeping everyone alive. For example, if the targets are reduced to helplessness, and all that is necessary to 'mop up' is a Coup de Grace which even the stereotypical Squishy Wizard can administer, then perhaps the CC has gone a little too far. In my experience, combat has to be risky to be exciting and fun, so eliminating all the risk does necessarily start to make it un-fun.

But, there's a flip side to this. I was in a Pathfinder game in which our party of three (Ranger, Summoner, and me, the Wizard) were attacked by Yetis. The ranger was about to get charged by both of the enemies which would likely kill him in a matter of rounds. I then dropped a Black Tentacles in order to keep them off of our Archer Ranger - which in a way removed them as a threat (they were grappled) but didn't do so in such a way that they were absolutely no threat (it became a race to see if we could drop them before they broke the grapple). That combat was fun and exciting, and the crowd control was not out of hand.

Psyren
2010-10-24, 12:34 PM
A good rule of thumb is to stop before your party feels useless. If your rogue gets to roll a bagful of d6s, he wont care that his target has been paralyzed or rendered comatose first; he's still getting to do what he got into the game to do. You should also be wary of bogging down combat with numerous summons.

ryuteki
2010-10-24, 04:47 PM
My group has an issue with Black Tentacles simply because of the sheer number of dice that need to be rolled on the Wizard's turn. It is more effective than Web in most cases, esp. vs casters, but it really adds some tedium to the round if you have more than one or two targets in the AoE. We've therefore stopped using it against mook fields, and hold it in reserve against casters, just to avoid bogging the game down.

AslanCross
2010-10-24, 05:10 PM
I think most crowd control spells are fine. There are a couple, however, that are really annoying to deal with: Solid Fog and Black Tentacles. Black Tentacles slows down the game due to the whole bunch of dice rolling; I often just have the wizard roll one grapple check and one damage roll and roll the monsters individually.

Solid Fog is just annoying because it prevents ranged attacks, so it slows down everything.

Thrawn183
2010-10-24, 05:30 PM
I think it depends on the party composition. If you have single melee guy, then he's going to want a lot of help when faced with masses of giants or dire animals. If you have four melee guys,I would recommend only one or two crowd control spells.

Callista
2010-10-24, 06:34 PM
With my current wizard being the most flexible spellcaster in the group (we have a warlock and a healing-focused cleric), I've been mostly doing utility and strategy kinds of spells. We're still low-level; so while I could be doing a lot of damage on my own, I don't have to because the fighter types are still quite strong and can pretty much take down the enemies without my help. With a relatively low-level wizard, I've done a lot more good with spells like Detect Thoughts, Spider Climb, Mage Hand, Invisibility, Haste, etc.--things that make life in general easier for the party and help us get information that we need. At this point I'm more of an intelligence agent than a blaster.

If she lives to higher levels, I'll probably focus on things like countering enemy magic and hampering enemies so that the fighters can hit them. It's a pleasant change from playing a sorcerer who just basically fireballs anything in the way; I liked that well enough, but I do like the strategy. I think I'm going to be lagging half a level behind from scribing enough scrolls to always have just the right spell available, though.

The best kind of crowd control is the kind you do that lets the rest of the party kick the snot out of the monsters, while you sit safely at the back and think, "Yep, they couldn't have done that without me."

Godless_Paladin
2010-10-24, 06:37 PM
Crowd control spells have never ruined the game's fun for me, and believe me, I play with groups who know how to use battlefield control.

There are just so many counters and counter-counters, unless everyone is just playing core-only Fighters or something. In a game where all sides optimize, you can see things swing around. A save or lose gets eaten by a Concentration check. A movement stopping spell meets an anklet of translocation. Scouts can zig-zag charge past obstacles with a skill trick. And so on and so forth. This is part of why I get miffed when people want to balance things down to the Fighter... by contrast, those fights are so very boring.

true_shinken
2010-10-24, 06:38 PM
Crowd control spells have never ruined the game's fun for me, and believe me, I play with groups who know how to use battlefield control.

There are just so many counters and counter-counters, unless everyone is just playing core-only Fighters or something.

:smallfrown:
When you are talking about a party of fullcasters, it doesn't really matter.

true_shinken
2010-10-24, 06:40 PM
Eh, we play pretty much any class Tier 1-3. And sometimes a Rogue or something. And monsters are generally pretty good already.

Seeing how martial adepts are still limited to clean up the work of tier 1s, I don't see your point.

Godless_Paladin
2010-10-24, 06:42 PM
Seeing how martial adepts are still limited to clean up the work of tier 1s, I don't see your point.

There are many ways to counteract battlefield control spells, and not just for pure casters. Battlefield control spells are certainly effective, but not game enders when both sides are playing smart.

true_shinken
2010-10-24, 06:45 PM
There are many ways to counteract battlefield control spells, and not just for pure casters.

For example, if you dip a level of Cleric (something done so often there's a handbook just for dipping Cleric 1), you can pick up the Travel domain and get straight out of Solid Fog.

And monsters? They can fly, burrow, cast spells... all kinds of things.

Except Wizards will usually have maxed knowledge and will know exactly what spell will shut down the enemy. It is very common that they end a fight with a single spell, reducing you to '4e mode' - spamming needless attacks just to drop the enemy hp.

Godless_Paladin
2010-10-24, 06:47 PM
Except Wizards will usually have maxed knowledge and will know exactly what spell will shut down the enemy. It is very common that they end a fight with a single spell, reducing you to '4e mode' - spamming needless attacks just to drop the enemy hp.

Think of it this way for monsters. Not everything is knowable from a knowledge check.

1) Many have customizable aspects, like sorcerer or cleric spellcasting. If you want, you can even move their feats or skills around (even skill tricks!). What spells the monster prepared makes a big difference.

2) There can be multiple monsters that complement each other on a team. You don't always have to fight only one monster at a time.

3) Additionally, you can have more interesting encounter formats than simply "There is an orc in a room guarding a pie." There's often something more going on in our fights that complicates matters.

4) In reality, you're not going to always have the exact right spell prepared, especially if you tossed out stuff like Celerity and Polymorph.

5) Make intelligent monsters use items! And tactics!

6) They can also take class levels. Why have just another medusa when you could have a Medusa Paladin of Thrane?

7) Don't forget advancement and templates!

true_shinken
2010-10-24, 06:52 PM
Stuff
So at the very least, crowd control give the DM a lot of extra work to do otherwise the combat part of the game is ruined to anyone that is not a fullcaster.

Godless_Paladin
2010-10-24, 06:53 PM
So at the very least, crowd control give the DM a lot of extra work to do otherwise the combat part of the game is ruined to anyone that is not a fullcaster.

Extra work? You ought to do all or most of that stuff anyways. Where's the extra work?

Look...

If you make a dragon, you need to pick out its feats and spells known. And then it has items in its hoard that you're giving out for loot. And maybe you have a plot going on in your game. And maybe the dragon has minions. I don't think these things are too outlandish to expect...

I never really thought running "there's a generic orc in a room guarding a pie" was ideal DM material. YMMV.

Kobolds set traps and attack you through murder holes, they don't line up for you. Things like that. It's not "a lot of extra work" it's "not being a lazy DM" IMHO.

Crow
2010-10-24, 07:07 PM
Except Wizards will usually have maxed knowledge and will know exactly what spell will shut down the enemy. It is very common that they end a fight with a single spell, reducing you to '4e mode' - spamming needless attacks just to drop the enemy hp.

I think you've been spending too much time in wizard discussion threads.

Zeful
2010-10-24, 07:18 PM
Crowd control spells have never ruined the game's fun for me, and believe me, I play with groups who know how to use battlefield control.

There are just so many counters and counter-counters, unless everyone is just playing core-only Fighters or something. In a game where all sides optimize, you can see things swing around. A save or lose gets eaten by a Concentration check. A movement stopping spell meets an anklet of translocation. Scouts can zig-zag charge past obstacles with a skill trick. And so on and so forth. This is part of why I get miffed when people want to balance things down to the Fighter... by contrast, those fights are so very boring.

Just to point something out, most attempts to un-break 3.5 are about giving non-casters more options rather than limiting casters. And what limiting of casters is done, is done out of sheer necessity. Several spells are simply broken at outset (celerity anyone) and either cannot be fixed (celerity again, most versions of polymorph) or aren't worth it to make them balanced.

Godless_Paladin
2010-10-24, 07:20 PM
This is part of why I get miffed when people want to balance things down to the Fighter...


Just to point something out, most attempts to un-break 3.5 are about giving non-casters more options rather than limiting casters. And what limiting of casters is done, is done out of sheer necessity. Several spells are simply broken at outset (celerity anyone) and either cannot be fixed (celerity again, most versions of polymorph) or aren't worth it to make them balanced.

Okay? I didn't say anything about those people. I wholly support such efforts and indeed regularly participate in them. In fact, in another thread on the first page of this forum I was just defending someone who was being attacked for banning Celerity from their game. Sooo... what are you getting at?

There are also people who think that things should be balanced down to the level of the Fighter or Monk or that the game should be about standing there and slinging attack/damage rolls back and forth until someone falls over. As I said, those are the ones I get miffed at. No one else was mentioned. :smallconfused:

I would be a sad panda if all I got to do was stand there and roll attack/damage rolls back and forth. :smallfrown:

Tyndmyr
2010-10-24, 07:37 PM
So at the very least, crowd control give the DM a lot of extra work to do otherwise the combat part of the game is ruined to anyone that is not a fullcaster.

No. It forces them to write good encounters. All the above stuff is good general stuff, and encounters without any of it are basically meatbags who charge and attack. Meh. Encounters like that get old quickly, even for fighters that essentially do the same thing. Possibly even especially for them.

The biggest problem with CC, as I see it, are people who use the same shtick every time, or who use it in such a way that it hampers instead of helping the party. Variety keeps combats more entertaining, and it really, really isn't worth CCing an extra mob if in doing so you leave the melee guys in a horrible spot.

Godless_Paladin
2010-10-24, 07:43 PM
No. It forces them to write good encounters. All the above stuff is good general stuff, and encounters without any of it are basically meatbags who charge and attack. Meh. Encounters like that get old quickly, even for fighters that essentially do the same thing. Possibly even especially for them. Exactly my point. :smallsmile:

Crowd control will absolutely screw over mindless meatbags who haven't figured out any deeper tactics than build up a huge attack/damage bonus, charge in a straight line on even terrain, and attack a grounded, solid, singular foe in plain sight.

But I would argue that those people actually contribute more to ruining the game than crowd control does, because it creates an unfun dynamic. Either the brainless one-trick ubercharger gets his charge off, kills the enemy instantly, and no one else has any fun... or someone uses any of the many obvious counters to such ham-handed tactics and the ubercharger feels useless and he doesn't have any fun. That's what I call a lose-lose situation.

thompur
2010-10-24, 07:47 PM
Think of it this way for monsters. Not everything is knowable from a knowledge check.

1) Many have customizable aspects, like sorcerer or cleric spellcasting. If you want, you can even move their feats or skills around (even skill tricks!). What spells the monster prepared makes a big difference.

2) There can be multiple monsters that complement each other on a team. You don't always have to fight only one monster at a time.

3) Additionally, you can have more interesting encounter formats than simply "There is an orc in a room guarding a pie." There's often something more going on in our fights that complicates matters.

4) In reality, you're not going to always have the exact right spell prepared, especially if you tossed out stuff like Celerity and Polymorph.

5) Make intelligent monsters use items! And tactics!

6) They can also take class levels. Why have just another medusa when you could have a Medusa Paladin of Thrane?

7) Don't forget advancement and templates!

Wait! Wha...What...What KIND of pie?

Godless_Paladin
2010-10-24, 07:47 PM
Wait! Wha...What...What KIND of pie?

It is a lemon meringue pie. Its tantalizing smell wafts through the stone chamber, mixing with the pungent scent of unwashed orc.

jumpet
2010-10-24, 07:54 PM
IMO There is a time and place for everything. Just because crowd control might be effective, doesn't mean you need to use it. At times it can be extremely frustrating for everyone (including the player that had their PC cast it), because it draws out a combat's game time unneccessarily. Sometimes its better to hack, blast, sod or whatever ... just get it over with quickly.

Also crowd control that causes you to lose line of sight to opponents can often be to the party's detriment. ie walls, fogs etc

Callista
2010-10-24, 08:02 PM
It is a lemon meringue pie. Its tantalizing smell wafts through the stone chamber, mixing with the pungent scent of unwashed orc.Ewww!... Curse you, I was attempting to eat dinner!

If that were my party, someone would throw the pie at the orc and then blow up the room, at which point a couple of us would get killed trying to flee the collapsing building.

Seriously, though, if you've got casters, the enemy should have them, too; and if it's done right the casters will pretty much neutralize each other. Plus, at high levels, most everybody will have access to magic, whether that's spells, items, or special abilities.

And the brokenness that's left over after all of that? Well, if you're playing the wizard, then you should know better than to min-max to any kind of ridiculous degree. It's not fun for you because everything's too easy; it's not fun for the party because they don't get to fight too; and it's not fun for the DM because he has to try to balance all of this.

I don't consider the quadratic wizard/linear fighter thing an issue, though. It may be possible to break the system, but it's not inevitable. If you avoid the cheese, your game stays balanced.

Godless_Paladin
2010-10-24, 08:40 PM
Ewww!... Curse you, I was attempting to eat dinner! My will save is high enough that I'll take my chances with Bestow Curse.

In any case, I thought this was a good quote from the mirror thread:


As a player, I've used crowd control as a wizard and made good use of the wizard when I'm a mundane.
As a DM, I've had crowd control spells destroy "overpowering" encounters.
I've also seen our entire party teleport-ganked by a rival adventuring party. You don't realize how devastating Forcecage, Solid Fog, Cloudkill, Rock to Mud, and Mud to Rock can be until they're used to lock down your entire party in one turn.

Having seen crowd control from all angles, I can say that it adds a tactical element to the game that is entirely necessary for it to be fun.

As a person who has also seen such things from so-called crowd control spells... I completely agree with strider here.

Tvtyrant
2010-10-24, 08:50 PM
None. The best enemies are Aberrations and Outsiders, and they do it back to you :smallcool:

JK, while my favorite opponents tend to be resistant to CC, its also important to note that there are lots of encounters where it would be completely boring if you didn't have CC. For instance, fighting Rogue/Stealth types is awful without glitterdust. Seriously, its like Whack a mole. "Freaking Hide in Plain Sight! Stand there and Die!"

Kalaska'Agathas
2010-10-24, 09:22 PM
It is a lemon meringue pie. Its tantalizing smell wafts through the stone chamber, mixing with the pungent scent of unwashed orc.

I roll to disbelieve the pie.

*****

While I will acknowledge that the Wizard and his compatriots are the kings of CC why is it unacceptable for the Wizard to be using Black Tentacles and slowing down combat when a focused grappler would do the same? Or a chain-gun tripper doing lockdown? Or are those battlefield control as well (I think they are, at any rate).

Perhaps battlefield control is more fun than the standard "I stand there and hit it with my pointy stick"? That's what I'm starting to think, reading this thread.

Callista
2010-10-24, 09:56 PM
Well, if you're going to be using those strategies, then you need to know ahead of time just how they work so you can make the rolls and do the math quickly.

herrhauptmann
2010-10-25, 12:17 AM
While I will acknowledge that the Wizard and his compatriots are the kings of CC why is it unacceptable for the Wizard to be using Black Tentacles and slowing down combat when a focused grappler would do the same? Or a chain-gun tripper doing lockdown? Or are those battlefield control as well (I think they are, at any rate).

Because melee can't have nice things, and a chainwielding maniac with lockdown is "just a one trick pony" while it's perfectly acceptable for the wizard to do "full lockdown, followed by complete debuff" of the enemy each fight. The difference? The fighter does it round after round, the wizard only needs to do it once per encounter.
Ergo, it's dull and predictable for the fighter to do it, even though the rest of the party still needs to contribute to ensure victory. But it's okay for the wizard because he's Batman/God.

No, I don't actually believe that. It's just a summation of some arguments I see, for the lockdown fighter, and for the crowd controlling wizard.

Honestly, crowd control is necessary. If the wizard is doing it to the point that the warriors could be replaced by commoners wielding scythes, then he's doing too much. If he wants everyone to keep having fun, perhaps he should alternate between party buffing/ enemy debuff/ crowd control. Since all that would take too many spells, perhaps choose 2 (I'd probably take first and third...)
If there's no crowd control, the game can become boring as it's just a matter of chipping away at HP. (My first few games were extremely boring because that's all the fights were.) That fact remains, even if there's an ubercharger in the party. Because it then becomes a matter of waiting for the ubercharger to get 10ft between him and the enemy for jumping charge (perhaps more if the charger has reach), at which point the enemy is dead. If there's more enemies still alive (and no greatcleave), the ubercharger will likely get very hurt on his next turn. But if he's still up, he'll use momentum swing on everyone in range. Also not fun.

It seems to me that optimizing so that your characters go to 11, leads to less fun for everyone involved, especially if someone else in the party was unwilling or unable to optimize, so their character is stuck at a Tier 3-4 power level, regardless of their classes.

Killer Angel
2010-10-25, 03:52 AM
As a Wizard player, I love crowd control. Blasting is boring and even cliche for casters. (Just about every video game has casters as blasters, perhaps with some minor utility.) I admit that casting one spell then putting the party on auto-attack is not necessarily fun for them.


I'm with you for the love of CC, but the absence of fun for the group is relative.
With crowd control, your meleers still have to kill the enemies. With Save or Die/suck, they don't.
With powerful direct damage (orbs empowered twinned) they don't.
And sometime, your powerful CC spell lets you gain only one round.


The most fun with crowd control? Play a Spellguard of Silverymoon and start casting things like Black Tentacles, with selective target... your fighter will thank you! :smallsmile: