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TheOneHawk
2013-08-17, 05:44 PM
There was recently a spammer who happened to have a thread title that could have been a good thread. A few people expressed disappointment that it wasn't actually a discussion on this topic, including myself, so I figured I'd start one up and ask for advice as a newbie DM on this very problem.

How do you maintain a sense of danger in the game without risking TPKing the party? As a side point, if some of your players are more OK with their characters dying than others, is it fair to hit them harder? Last question, does anyone have a way to make an impossible must retreat situation appear as such to the players so they don't try and fight an army of 50000 warriors at level 4?

Terraoblivion
2013-08-17, 05:56 PM
Make a game where there are things other than the death of the characters at stake. It's really just that simple. It does mean that a lot of typical encounters, storylines and even full approaches to the game common to D&D become impractical, though.

As an example of what I mean, in a Legends of the Wulin game I'm in that's set in a modern day martial arts academy rather than a more classic wuxia setting, we ended up joining a rebellion against the student council. There is a strictly enforced ban on killing and while maiming is technically allowed, it has to take place off school grounds and is politically very damaging to do, so we're essentially completely safe physically. However, if we lose we've not only expended a lot of our political capital for standing against the ideals of the student council president, she's also likely to start putting the program we rebelled against into effect. She will also have consolidated a lot of power, which we really think should be in the hands of somebody who is both less corrupt and more competent than she has shown herself to be so far.

Similarly, duels over political topics in Legends of the Five Rings can have drastic ramifications, even if they're only for first blood. The winner gets to be able to "prove" that their position is correct, which can make or break careers and shape political machinations to a high degree.

Tengu_temp
2013-08-17, 06:17 PM
PCs don't die normally, they just get knocked out or too heavily wounded to fight. They can die in rare circumstances, when it's dramatically appropriate, and of course if everyone gets taken out the enemies might decide to finish them off (though I've yet to see a TPK in any of my games).

Also, what Terra said. Have other stakes in your game than just "if we fail, we die".

tensai_oni
2013-08-17, 06:20 PM
Last question, does anyone have a way to make an impossible must retreat situation appear as such to the players so they don't try and fight an army of 50000 warriors at level 4?

OOC communication. In general, asking players if they're really sure they want to do something is how a game master lets them know that they are going to do something terribly stupid. Be more to the point if necessary - "guys, that's a really bad idea, if you do this you'll most likely die".

If they insist on following with an obviously suicidal plan anyway? Well, no cure for player stupidity.

Terraoblivion
2013-08-17, 06:26 PM
Another thought I had, about your last question. Give the players an out and a way to escape if the battle is going poorly so choosing to fight an uneven battle won't end in TPK if the odds assert themselves. We had this in a large scale L5R game I was in that was designed to be an absolute meatgrinder, with something like 65 of the 100'ish characters who joined over the course of it dying. Yet for all that, we almost always had the option to escape from a losing battle if we were willing to face the honor loss and survivors guilt. Not just that, the fights that didn't allow escape were clearly marked as such, making the stakes clear from the start.

I think that general principle will be useful in a lot of games, though the exact mechanics of how to ensure escape is possible depends on the system and the specific group. My experience also suggests that D&D is pretty terrible at allowing escapes.

Amphetryon
2013-08-17, 06:35 PM
PCs don't die normally, they just get knocked out or too heavily wounded to fight. They can die in rare circumstances, when it's dramatically appropriate, and of course if everyone gets taken out the enemies might decide to finish them off (though I've yet to see a TPK in any of my games).

Also, what Terra said. Have other stakes in your game than just "if we fail, we die".

I do not understand. Do the enemies in your games make the conscious decision that they wish to face the PCs at some time in the future? Are they somehow morally opposed to dispatching their own enemies with the lethal force it is presumed that PCs typically use in their own offense/defense?

Terraoblivion
2013-08-17, 06:41 PM
I do not understand. Do the enemies in your games make the conscious decision that they wish to face the PCs at some time in the future? Are they somehow morally opposed to dispatching their own enemies with the lethal force it is presumed that PCs typically use in their own offense/defense?

I think it's more meant to be a matter of luck, grit and general plot armor meaning that enemies who don't take the time to stop and slice the throats of everyone they kill, will end up leaving the PCs alive despite downing them. Honestly, it's still more realistic than people being hacked away at until they die in the middle of a fight, it's not really how actual battles go. It just happens to also preserve PC lives instead of killing them.

Really, the way a lot of systems present combat as a matter of chopping people up until they die where they stand is pretty ridiculous. It happens sometimes, of course, but most people who die are disabled and prevented from fighting way before they actually die. And if we're going for coolness over realism, there isn't really a reason not leave PCs wounded, but able to survive rather than killing them. Especially if the system hasn't got rules for wound infections and bleeding out.

tensai_oni
2013-08-17, 06:46 PM
I do not understand. Do the enemies in your games make the conscious decision that they wish to face the PCs at some time in the future? Are they somehow morally opposed to dispatching their own enemies with the lethal force it is presumed that PCs typically use in their own offense/defense?

Look at tabletop RPG from a non-DnD perspective. There's a lot of games where either nonlethal damage is assumed by default, both for players and NPCs (Mutants and Masterminds), and when the "taken out" condition is OOCly negotiated between parties in the conflict and rarely results in an actual kill (Legend of Wulin, Mouseguard/Burning Wheel).

Tengu_temp
2013-08-17, 06:47 PM
I think it's more meant to be a matter of luck, grit and general plot armor

This. PCs are special anyway, they are the main characters of their story. How often the hero survives wounds that would kill lesser men in movies, books, games, myths? The answer is: constantly.

Amphetryon
2013-08-17, 06:49 PM
I think it's more meant to be a matter of luck, grit and general plot armor meaning that enemies who don't take the time to stop and slice the throats of everyone they kill, will end up leaving the PCs alive despite downing them. Honestly, it's still more realistic than people being hacked away at until they die in the middle of a fight, it's not really how actual battles go. It just happens to also preserve PC lives instead of killing them.

Really, the way a lot of systems present combat as a matter of chopping people up until they die where they stand is pretty ridiculous. It happens sometimes, of course, but most people who die are disabled and prevented from fighting way before they actually die. And if we're going for coolness over realism, there isn't really a reason not leave PCs wounded, but able to survive rather than killing them. Especially if the system hasn't got rules for wound infections and bleeding out.
I would think the reason for killing them would have everything to do with maintaining verisimilitude. If you've got someone disabled or otherwise unable to continue to fight, and you don't dispatch them in a world where magical healing exists and the odds of infections or bleeding out are all but non-existent, you're either deliberately inviting that enemy to heal up and come back again, or you're lacking the foresight to know that's an incredibly reasonable outcome. Further, if none of the heroes are likely to die as a result of their adventures, there's no reason why adventuring would be a rare thing. In such a setting, high level Wizards, Druids, and Rangers should positively litter the world, in numbers that make the much-maligned 17th level retired adventurer-shopkeepers of Faerun seem trivial.

Mr Beer
2013-08-17, 06:51 PM
This. PCs are special anyway, they are the main characters of their story. How often the hero survives wounds that would kill lesser men in movies, books, games, myths? The answer is: constantly.

I remember reading a Conan story in which he was explicitly stated to have taken "enough wounds to kill 3 lesser men" or something along those lines. Instead of seeking urgent medical attention and bed rest, he was having a post-battle feast, with extra wine and a side order of lusty wenches.

Now that's a hero!

tensai_oni
2013-08-17, 06:54 PM
If you've got someone disabled or otherwise unable to continue to fight, and you don't dispatch them in a world where magical healing exists and the odds of infections or bleeding out are all but non-existent, you're either deliberately inviting that enemy to heal up and come back again, or you're lacking the foresight to know that's an incredibly reasonable outcome.

Or the enemy could just go "okay, this guy is down - I don't care if he's dead or just bleeding out, I won't stop and check because his friends are still fighting and pissed off now, I'd better smash their faces in first if I want to win and live".

Wasting an action to finish off a downed hero is NPC metagaming, like a cornered monster destroying its equipment just to spite the players so they don't get loot.


Further, if none of the heroes are likely to die as a result of their adventures, there's no reason why adventuring would be a rare thing. In such a setting, high level Wizards, Druids, and Rangers should positively litter the world, in numbers that make the much-maligned 17th level retired adventurer-shopkeepers of Faerun seem trivial.

That's IC, and OOC is OOC.

Drascin
2013-08-17, 06:56 PM
I would think the reason for killing them would have everything to do with maintaining verisimilitude. If you've got someone disabled or otherwise unable to continue to fight, and you don't dispatch them in a world where magical healing exists and the odds of infections or bleeding out are all but non-existent, you're either deliberately inviting that enemy to heal up and come back again, or you're lacking the foresight to know that's an incredibly reasonable outcome. Further, if none of the heroes are likely to die as a result of their adventures, there's no reason why adventuring would be a rare thing. In such a setting, high level Wizards, Druids, and Rangers should positively litter the world, in numbers that make the much-maligned 17th level retired adventurer-shopkeepers of Faerun seem trivial.

IC-OOC difference, man. That we as players know that the DM has made a rule that killing a character requires performing a coup-de-grace after reducing him to negatives (which thus most enemies won't do, because it's wasting a full turn and lowering all your defenses to go after someone who is NOT the people who are still trying to stab you in the gut) doesn't mean that for the characters it's any less life-threatening.

Terraoblivion
2013-08-17, 06:57 PM
I would think the reason for killing them would have everything to do with maintaining verisimilitude. If you've got someone disabled or otherwise unable to continue to fight, and you don't dispatch them in a world where magical healing exists and the odds of infections or bleeding out are all but non-existent, you're either deliberately inviting that enemy to heal up and come back again, or you're lacking the foresight to know that's an incredibly reasonable outcome.

So it's more sensible to stop trying to prevent their allies from opposing you to slit their throat just in case instead of waiting until you win and then dealing with the bodies? :smallconfused:

For that matter, in a lot of cases, the survival of your enemy is immaterial, they're just an obstacle to your goal. A raiding party isn't there to kill people, but to steal something or break something or scare somebody with a show of force, stopping to kill just slows you down and risks getting caught by reinforcement. Not just that, not everyone is the kind of unempathetic psychopath who kills enemies who have lost the ability to effectively oppose you, rather than simply driving them off, taking them captive or even just ignoring them.

Also, like Tengu points out, you're not playing random saps, you're playing the main characters of a story and part of being a main character is that you happen to survive to keep that role. Think about it this way, in a gritty war movie where people die left and right, but the main character survives several close calls the causality isn't that it sure was fortunate that the guy we focused on happened to survive, but rather that he gets focused on because he's the guy who happened to do so and who can thus serve the purpose of the focus of the story.

Tengu_temp
2013-08-17, 06:59 PM
Further, if none of the heroes are likely to die as a result of their adventures, there's no reason why adventuring would be a rare thing. In such a setting, high level Wizards, Druids, and Rangers should positively litter the world, in numbers that make the much-maligned 17th level retired adventurer-shopkeepers of Faerun seem trivial.

The protection PCs have is an OOC thing due to the fact that they're player characters in an RPG, not an actual in-world thing. Like I said, PCs are special.

And if someone decides to do some dumb, purposely suicidal things "because I know I won't die no matter what", they might find out that suddenly this protection no longer applies to them.

Amphetryon
2013-08-17, 07:01 PM
Or the enemy could just go "okay, this guy is down - I don't care if he's dead or just bleeding out, I won't stop and check because his friends are still fighting and pissed off now, I'd better smash their faces in first if I want to win and live".

Wasting an action to finish off a downed hero is NPC metagaming, like a cornered monster destroying its equipment just to spite the players so they don't get loot.So, the bad guys don't fight tactically enough to cut the heroes off from each other or focus fire, despite the fact that 'divide and conquer' is standard battlefield strategy for PCs and other fighting units? Why not? How did they get to their position of power using sub-par tactics and strategies? They can't ALL have just inherited their position from their tactically competent relatives within the past several days.




That's IC, and OOC is OOC.

IC or OOC, it's still directly impacting verisimilitude, which was the argument I was making. Unless it's your opinion that having the number of adventuring parties in a setting not accurately reflect the risks (or lack thereof) inherent to the setting is somehow not impacting verisimilitude, in which case we're going to have to agree to disagree.

Drascin
2013-08-17, 07:06 PM
So, the bad guys don't fight tactically enough to cut the heroes off from each other or focus fire, despite the fact that 'divide and conquer' is standard battlefield strategy for PCs and other fighting units? Why not? How did they get to their position of power using sub-par tactics and strategies? They can't ALL have just inherited their position from their tactically competent relatives within the past several days.



...and this has anything to do with what we're discussing why, exactly?

No, seriously, you're tackling an entirely different topic.

Optimal tactics is you focus fire on the most dangerous person on the enemy team until that person is down and then proceed to remove the next threat. Stupid tactics is wasting time walking up to a person that has already been removed from the combat and giving their friends free shots at you "just in case", because, remember, according to verisimilitude characters don't know they have hit points.

You're basically saying that a guy stopping in the middle of a fight to crouch and slit a dude's throat despite two other dudes trying to stab at him because he knows he can take it is less verisimilitude-breaking than him continuing to fight the people who he is currently parrying so that they don't run him through, just because the person playing him knows he can afford taking the hits due to the OOC hitpoint mechanic.

I have no idea how to argue against this position because it makes absolutely no sense to me.

tensai_oni
2013-08-17, 07:07 PM
So, the bad guys don't fight tactically enough to cut the heroes off from each other or focus fire, despite the fact that 'divide and conquer' is standard battlefield strategy for PCs and other fighting units? Why not? How did they get to their position of power using sub-par tactics and strategies? They can't ALL have just inherited their position from their tactically competent relatives within the past several days.

How is "don't bother wasting time by standing still, checking if the downed person is still alive, and if they are - waste even more time by finishing them off" a sub-par tactic? It's perfectly natural and tactically sound to focus on people who are, you know, still up and fighting.

Slipperychicken
2013-08-17, 07:07 PM
My experience also suggests that D&D is pretty terrible at allowing escapes.

I think that's kind of realistic. If you're slugging a guy, then turn and try to run, and he chooses to pursue you? You're almost certain to get beaten down unless you're lucky, have great skill at escaping, and/or have much better endurance. Otherwise, you'd need to buy time by knocking him down first.

Terraoblivion
2013-08-17, 07:07 PM
So, the bad guys don't fight tactically enough to cut the heroes off from each other or focus fire, despite the fact that 'divide and conquer' is standard battlefield strategy for PCs and other fighting units? Why not? How did they get to their position of power using sub-par tactics and strategies? They can't ALL have just inherited their position from their tactically competent relatives within the past several days.

Divide and conquer doesn't mean that the other parts of the enemy formation cease to exist until you focus on them. They'll be less effective due to having their formation broken, but they're still doing stuff that demand attention. So unless every single opponent not only manage to isolate a PC completely, but also cares more about killing them than achieving any kind of clearly defined goal, stopping to kill downed PCs is not only a risk, but quite likely to also be utterly irrelevant for what they're trying to achieve.

Also, it doesn't impact verisimilitude. If an author said they had an interesting story to tell and it turned out to be a disjointed sequence of seeming main characters dying random deaths, it wouldn't come off any more realistic than if they chose to focus on the one person who actually achieved something, instead it just comes off as bad writing. And in a roleplaying setting where there isn't an omnipotent author who can set things up to make sure the people are being focused on are the ones who have an interesting story, fudging to make that the case is necessary to achieve the same end. Saying that it hurts verisimilitude is to quite simply not get either fiction or RPing.

And slipperychicken, if people managing to escape from fights is unrealistic, then everything from medieval warfare to brawls between gangs are unrealistic. You know how people surviving breaking ranks and running in terror was a pretty common part of warfare back when melee was still used and most brawls end with one side running off rather than hurt until incapable of offering resistance, right?

kamikasei
2013-08-17, 07:08 PM
Amphetyron appears to be arguing that having enemies down the entire party and then walk away without making sure they're dead (or taking them prisoner, or otherwise imposing consequences beyond simple defeat) is unrealistic. Others appear to be arguing that it's perfectly possible for one or more members of a party to be downed without dying and the party as a whole win, end combat, or escape with the downed in tow. These positions are not incompatible.

IC or OOC, it's still directly impacting verisimilitude, which was the argument I was making.
No. If the PCs have plot armour making them less likely to die, that doesn't mean that adventurers in general are observably less likely to die such that it'll affect people's career choices in the setting. The fact that, for example, D&D PCs might use a given level of point-buy does not mean that the world should be populated by NPCs with good stats.

Slipperychicken
2013-08-17, 07:10 PM
Also, it doesn't impact verisimilitude. If an author said they had an interesting story to tell and it turned out to be a disjointed sequence of seeming main characters dying random deaths, it wouldn't come off any more realistic than if they chose to focus on the one person who actually achieved something, instead it just comes off as bad writing.

http://schmoesknow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/hbo-bringing-back-game-of-thrones-for-a-third-chapter.jpeg

I like it, anyway..

Tengu_temp
2013-08-17, 07:11 PM
So, the bad guys don't fight tactically enough to cut the heroes off from each other or focus fire, despite the fact that 'divide and conquer' is standard battlefield strategy for PCs and other fighting units? Why not? How did they get to their position of power using sub-par tactics and strategies? They can't ALL have just inherited their position from their tactically competent relatives within the past several days.


I'd like to point out that coup-de-gracing people during battle, while the fighting is still going on, is something that was extremely rare in real life, much less actual stories. It's always reserved for when the fighting is over, because wasting time killing a disabled enemy when his friends are still standing and near is the definition of sub-par tactics.


IC or OOC, it's still directly impacting verisimilitude, which was the argument I was making.

DND, and most RPGs in general, already have dozens of rules hurting verisimilitude way more than treating PCs as the main characters in a story. Hell, I'd say doing the latter actually reinforces verisimilitude, because most RPGs are supposed to simulate some kind of fantasy story and not grrr pure realism grrr.

Terraoblivion
2013-08-17, 07:12 PM
http://schmoesknow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/hbo-bringing-back-game-of-thrones-for-a-third-chapter.jpeg

Dude, you do realize that most point of view characters survive and that most of the ones who die are pretty major ones? Not just that, there have been characters who have had consistent focus and attention right from the start who are still alive and getting focus and attention, right?

Not just that, if you look at the actual deaths they pretty clearly serve narrative and thematic purposes and are hardly random. A lot of them are even easy to predict as being likely due to heavy build-up, including what are probably the two most famous and supposedly shocking.

Amphetryon
2013-08-17, 07:12 PM
...and this has anything to do with what we're discussing why, exactly?

No, seriously, you're tackling an entirely different topic.

Optimal tactics is you focus fire on the most dangerous person on the enemy team until that person is down and then proceed to remove the next threat. Stupid tactics is wasting time walking up to a person that has already been removed from the combat and giving their friends free shots at you "just in case", because, remember, according to verisimilitude characters don't know they have hit points.

You're basically saying that a guy stopping in the middle of a fight to crouch and slit a dude's throat despite two other dudes trying to stab at him because he knows he can take it is less verisimilitude-breaking than him continuing to fight the people who he is currently parrying so that they don't run him through, just because the person playing him knows he can afford taking the hits due to the OOC hitpoint mechanic.

I have no idea how to argue against this position because it makes absolutely no sense to me.
It has to do with maintaining a sense of danger in the game. Which part of that was not clear from my post, or are folks simply using the concept of "danger in the game" in some way that is entirely foreign to me?

ETA: Why do folks continue to use "coup de grace during the combat," which is a phrase I didn't use, as an argument against the notion that you don't leave downed enemies to walk away after they're beaten? I mean, leaving aside the plethora of ways that an enemy spellcaster could trivialize the concept with a well-timed AoE spell of some sort, why can't the bad guys, you know, win from time to time? Why can't their attacks be strong enough to knock someone from "I have a couple HP left" territory into "-10 (or -CON)" in one shot? Are they deliberately pulling punches when someone's injured? If so, why, given that D&D's combat system allows a person with 1 HP to hit them back just as hard as that PC would were his HP at full? If not, what sort of tactics and attacks are being used to consistently fail to deliver 20 or so HP damage?

Drascin
2013-08-17, 07:16 PM
It has to do with maintaining a sense of danger in the game. Which part of that was not clear from my post.

The part where you started talking about verisimilitude instead.

Danger and verisimilitude are sort of entirely different things. Hence the confusion.

kamikasei
2013-08-17, 07:16 PM
It has to do with maintaining a sense of danger in the game. Which part of that was not clear from my post.
How what you said follows logically from your stated goal, and why you don't regard any of the responses made (which you seem to be pretty much ignoring rather than engaging with) as relevant. That's the part that wasn't clear.

It would help if you clarified whether you're talking about enemies disabling the entire PC party, at which point you think it's only reasonable that those enemies then finish them off decisively, or whether you're saying enemies should always continue to confirm the kill on every PC as soon as that PC is downed, and that standard enemy tactics prevent PCs from regrouping, retrieving their wounded, and withdrawing once a fight turns against them. At the moment a lot of talking past each other seems to be going on.

Amphetryon
2013-08-17, 07:21 PM
How what you said follows logically from your stated goal, and why you don't regard any of the responses made (which you seem to be pretty much ignoring rather than engaging with) as relevant. That's the part that wasn't clear.

It would help if you clarified whether you're talking about enemies disabling the entire PC party, at which point you think it's only reasonable that those enemies then finish them off decisively, or whether you're saying enemies should always continue to confirm the kill on every PC as soon as that PC is downed, and that standard enemy tactics prevent PCs from regrouping, retrieving their wounded, and withdrawing once a fight turns against them. At the moment a lot of talking past each other seems to be going on.
Please see clarification, above.

tasw
2013-08-17, 07:28 PM
So it's more sensible to stop trying to prevent their allies from opposing you to slit their throat just in case instead of waiting until you win and then dealing with the bodies? :smallconfused:



Why are all your bad guys outnumbered by the good guys? Its usually the other way around. Or at least equal numbers.

And in either case not taking the extra action to finish off your opponent and make sure his healer buddy cant get him back on his feet and sticking a knife in your back because you ignored him for a few rounds is just stupidity on display.

kamikasei
2013-08-17, 07:29 PM
Your clarification a) mostly confirms that yes, you're talking about the entire party being downed and then left unmolested, which isn't what anyone responding to you appears to be talking about, and b) pretty much amounts to saying "the approaches you've described are hard to do in D&D". In other games (such as those people have mentioned - M&M, LotW, L5R) it's pretty trivial to say that, yes, that attack took you out of the fight without killing you, and no, there's not really any good tactical reason for the enemy to focus on making sure you actually die rather than focusing on your friends who are still fighting.

The reason people are talking about coup de grace in combat is because you seem to be completely excluding the middle wherein some PCs are downed without dying but the party as a whole survives.

As to "why can't the enemies win sometimes" - they can. Just not against the PCs in a game that people want to continue. You seem to have completely abandoned the original question - how to create a sense of danger without TPKs. Or you think that if the PCs happen to win, or at least survive, all their fights that this breaks verisimilitude because it means adventurers are seen to be invincible in the setting. Hence why people say you're blurring IC and OOC.

Terraoblivion
2013-08-17, 07:30 PM
It has to do with maintaining a sense of danger in the game. Which part of that was not clear from my post, or are folks simply using the concept of "danger in the game" in some way that is entirely foreign to me?

ETA: Why do folks continue to use "coup de grace during the combat," which is a phrase I didn't use, as an argument against the notion that you don't leave downed enemies to walk away after they're beaten? I mean, leaving aside the plethora of ways that an enemy spellcaster could trivialize the concept with a well-timed AoE spell of some sort, why can't the bad guys, you know, win from time to time? Why can't their attacks be strong enough to knock someone from "I have a couple HP left" territory into "-10 (or -CON)" in one shot? Are they deliberately pulling punches when someone's injured? If so, why, given that D&D's combat system allows a person with 1 HP to hit them back just as hard as that PC would were his HP at full? If not, what sort of tactics and attacks are being used to consistently fail to deliver 20 or so HP damage?

Because D&D's arbitrary deaths are a weird relic of its wargaming roots and just ignoring the part where people are definitely dead if they get below an arbitrary threshold is more conducive to an interesting narrative. Basically, nobody is saying enemies are holding back, it's the weird insistence of D&D on defining death and doing it in such a short threshold from operating at peak efficiency that makes it come off like that.

Also, why do enemies have to obsess over killing everyone they beat? Unless they believe that they're going to come after them again or are part of an organization meaningfully and seriously opposing said enemies there isn't really any reason to. Not just that, most enemies belonging to sentient races are likely to have some degree of empathy and quite frequently also concern for their reputation, making them not want to be psychopaths who take the extra effort to make sure everyone is dead.

Drascin
2013-08-17, 07:37 PM
ETA: Why do folks continue to use "coup de grace during the combat," which is a phrase I didn't use, as an argument against the notion that you don't leave downed enemies to walk away after they're beaten?

Because this is the first time you've spelled as such. Your first post made it sound more like the sound tactics is to absolutely kill everyone while they're in combat. Which honestly is silly. The only reason most of the time people die in D&D games is because the negative hit point buffer is extremely small, so unconscious and dead are almost the same thing, not because enemies go explicitly for it.

As for the requiring a coup-de-grace thing, that was just my first suggestion for an easy way to reduce the silliness of "boom, dead, make a new character" out of nowhere without letting the characters escape danger - because if everyone goes down, chances are it's a TPK.


I mean, leaving aside the plethora of ways that an enemy spellcaster could trivialize the concept with a well-timed AoE spell of some sort, why can't the bad guys, you know, win from time to time?

Because then the campaign sort of ends? I mean, a proper TPK means either new game or DM assupll most of the time. Speaking as a DM, it's a huge pain in the butt to get your party killed over nothing of importance.


Why can't their attacks be strong enough to knock someone from "I have a couple HP left" territory into "-10 (or -CON)" in one shot? Are they deliberately pulling punches when someone's injured? If so, why, given that D&D's combat system allows a person with 1 HP to hit them back just as hard as that PC would were his HP at full?

Again, notice that what I did from moment one was give a suggestion of a rules change to allow a feeling that the fight is moving and the characters are getting beaten up while reducing the risk of TPK. Which is mostly what the OP asked for. He wants to reduce the TPKs, not increase them.

So that was my minimum change suggestion - make it so that even if an attack sends you to -50 HP, you don't fully die for real until someone takes the time to finish you off. If he showed interest or agreement on this I could give him my full set of reduced lethality rules, but just that little thing has surprisingly noticeable effects.

Tengu_temp
2013-08-17, 07:40 PM
Why are all your bad guys outnumbered by the good guys? Its usually the other way around. Or at least equal numbers.

What. I don't see where she even implied this is the case.


And in either case not taking the extra action to finish off your opponent and make sure his healer buddy cant get him back on his feet because you ignored him for a few rounds is just stupidity on display.

This should be the case only for enemies who are smart enough to use such tactics (orcs and such are rarely that smart, you know), who know you have a healer who is able to raise unconscious allies back into the fight, and in games where such instant high-level healing powers actually exist (not all RPGs are DND). And a lot of the time, I see those enemies going for the healer instead.

tasw
2013-08-17, 07:40 PM
You dont have to use coup de grace with all its drawbacks. Attacks against helpless opponents automatically do max damage which should be more then enough to put an opponent from -1 to dead and still allow your character a movement action, or attacks against other enemies in the same round if he has multiple attacks.

tasw
2013-08-17, 07:42 PM
This should be the case only for enemies who are smart enough to use such tactics (orcs and such are rarely that smart, you know), who know you have a healer who is able to raise unconscious allies back into the fight, and in games where such instant high-level healing powers actually exist (not all RPGs are DND). And a lot of the time, I see those enemies going for the healer instead.

Any game with healing magic would apply to my point not just D&D. And any enemy not smart enough to use tactics even that basic would be far, far below human intellect. Orcs are absolutely smart enough to know to do that.

Pretty much anything smarter then a fish would know to do that. Actually even fish are pretty vicious about finishing when they have prey wounded.

Tengu_temp
2013-08-17, 07:45 PM
1. You're talking about DND 3e specifically, this is a general RPG forum.
2. When you have only 1-3 attacks per round, spending one of them to hack at a guy who is either dead already or taken out, but either way no longer a threat, is not a sensible thing to do when you could attack someone still standing instead.


Any game with healing magic would apply to my point not just D&D. And any enemy not smart enough to use tactics even that basic would be far, far below human intellect. Orcs are absolutely smart enough to know to do that.

Pretty much anything smarter then a fish would know to do that. Actually even fish are pretty vicious about finishing when they have prey wounded.

You're overestimating the intelligence of the average human, much less a creature that's on average much dumber than a human. Also do note that combat is extremely chaotic and you rarely can see everything that's going on with perfect clarity.

Drascin
2013-08-17, 07:46 PM
Any game with healing magic would apply to my point not just D&D. And any enemy not smart enough to use tactics even that basic would be far, far below human intellect. Orcs are absolutely smart enough to know to do that.

Pretty much anything smarter then a fish would know to do that. Actually even fish are pretty vicious about finishing when they have prey wounded.

As Tengu said, though, going for the healer first is actually better tactics than all that if at all possible, though.

There's a reason being the healer is the most high-risk job in a party, and it's not because enemies are dumb :smalltongue: At least in games where in-combat healing isn't just wasting your action.

Which honestly most of the time doesn't include D&D. Really. Until Heal, having someone actually healing during battle is really pretty much wasting actions. Finishing enemies off because you fear someone will heal them back up is just silly if you're playing D&D.

Terraoblivion
2013-08-17, 07:47 PM
You dont have to use coup de grace with all its drawbacks. Attacks against helpless opponents automatically do max damage which should be more then enough to put an opponent from -1 to dead and still allow your character a movement action, or attacks against other enemies in the same round if he has multiple attacks.

That is still spending a turn to kill somebody who is not resisting in any way. Quibbling over the exact details of the rules of how to do so is rather missing the point.


Any game with healing magic would apply to my point not just D&D. And any enemy not smart enough to use tactics even that basic would be far, far below human intellect. Orcs are absolutely smart enough to know to do that.

Pretty much anything smarter then a fish would know to do that. Actually even fish are pretty vicious about finishing when they have prey wounded.

That depends on the timescale said healing magic operates on, along with a lack of wound penalties for heavily wounded characters.

Also, dude, most creatures and people don't care about finishing enemies off. Some do, terrorists out to spread as much fear and chaos as possible, for example, or predators looking for a meal. But this is not a universal constant of all conflict. I mean, I seem to notice that in nature programs the wildebeest don't hunt a wounded lion down after fending off an attack, they just protect the young and move on. Similarly, I seem to recall the concept of prisoners of war and the absolutely massive numbers of them taken in even in the most brutal of major battles, such as the 300,000 Germans who surrendered at Stalingrad.

And, yes, as Tengu said, it depends on having that kind of coherent overview of the situation to make decisions like that in a split second while somebody is trying to stab you with a sword.

kamikasei
2013-08-17, 07:48 PM
Answering the OP directly:

How do you maintain a sense of danger in the game without risking TPKing the party?
Wound penalties help. If all that damage means is that a number on your sheet goes down, but you remain at full fighting fitness until you're completely out of the fight, it can feel abstract and encourage you to give every fight your all. If, over the course of a fight, damage incurred makes you less effective, that can enhance the sense that you're in trouble and encourage you to get the hell out of there.

As a side point, if some of your players are more OK with their characters dying than others, is it fair to hit them harder?
Yes. It's something that should probably be negotiated with the group, but if player A is strongly attached to his character while player B is okay with hers dying and happy to replace her if necessary, it's fair to give character A stronger plot armour. It's giving both players what they want and what they're okay with the other getting, so it can't be considered unfair. Of course, if player A starts taking it for granted that his character is functionally immortal and treats player B's as lesser or incompetent, that's a problem. IC, both should consider themselves at equal risk.

Last question, does anyone have a way to make an impossible must retreat situation appear as such to the players so they don't try and fight an army of 50000 warriors at level 4?
Telling them up front, at the start of the game, that it'll be possible for them to get in over their heads helps. Some games and groups do have an expectation that the party will be fed bite-sized chunks of combat regardless of how much they actually bite off. Beyond that, it's a matter of managing expectations, a tricky balance to strike between making someone sound like a challenge who they'll feel accomplished to have beaten and making them sound like someone out of their league. Again, being up front about the fact that the latter exists and that you don't want every appearance of such to turn into a tangential white whale hunt can help.

Amphetryon
2013-08-17, 07:55 PM
Because this is the first time you've spelled as such. Your first post made it sound more like the sound tactics is to absolutely kill everyone while they're in combat. Which honestly is silly. The only reason most of the time people die in D&D games is because the negative hit point buffer is extremely small, so unconscious and dead are almost the same thing, not because enemies go explicitly for it.

As for the requiring a coup-de-grace thing, that was just my first suggestion for an easy way to reduce the silliness of "boom, dead, make a new character" out of nowhere without letting the characters escape danger - because if everyone goes down, chances are it's a TPK.



Because then the campaign sort of ends? I mean, a proper TPK means either new game or DM assupll most of the time. Speaking as a DM, it's a huge pain in the butt to get your party killed over nothing of importance.



Again, notice that what I did from moment one was give a suggestion of a rules change to allow a feeling that the fight is moving and the characters are getting beaten up while reducing the risk of TPK. Which is mostly what the OP asked for. He wants to reduce the TPKs, not increase them.

So that was my minimum change suggestion - make it so that even if an attack sends you to -50 HP, you don't fully die for real until someone takes the time to finish you off. If he showed interest or agreement on this I could give him my full set of reduced lethality rules, but just that little thing has surprisingly noticeable effects.So, you assumed facts not in evidence (that I was talking about a tactic which I never did until forced to specify that I wasn't actually talking about it) in order to poke holes in the position I wasn't holding. . . .

And the rest of your response here indicates that we have a vast enough difference of opinion over what constitutes "a sense of danger" in the game that the best we can hope for is to continue talking past each other, as our experiences and expectations do not appear to mesh at all.

ETA:

As Tengu said, though, going for the healer first is actually better tactics than all that if at all possible, though.Given his stated position that PCs rarely die (unless, apparently, they start to believe that they're unlikely to die), why would you bring a healer into battle, and why would targeting said healer make a difference?

Thrudd
2013-08-17, 07:57 PM
There was recently a spammer who happened to have a thread title that could have been a good thread. A few people expressed disappointment that it wasn't actually a discussion on this topic, including myself, so I figured I'd start one up and ask for advice as a newbie DM on this very problem.

How do you maintain a sense of danger in the game without risking TPKing the party? As a side point, if some of your players are more OK with their characters dying than others, is it fair to hit them harder? Last question, does anyone have a way to make an impossible must retreat situation appear as such to the players so they don't try and fight an army of 50000 warriors at level 4?

Why not risk TPK? That's the greatest sense of danger. Any other motivation will require your players be invested enough in the game world to actually care about what happens to, say, a village full of innocent people, or the captured princess, or whatever. I would set expectations at the beginning of the campaign regarding the possibility of character death. If you do not intend to fudge dice rolls on their behalf, make sure they know that.
For a campaign where character death is not an option, I would require all the players to create a background/history which includes some serious dramatic hooks as well as clearly defined personality and motivations. The players need to be in agreement to treat these things seriously, so when you tell them their characters' family is in danger, or their lover has been kidnapped, they treat it as seriously as though their own life in in danger. Through play, you will need to introduce new dramatic elements that they should become serious about, as well, you can't have their mothers getting attacked in every adventure. They need to actually care about their home town, their NPC friends, an in-game patron or mentor, etc. NPC friends are a good way to create danger, but this becomes predictable after a while, like "red shirts". Eventually, they will be aware that any NPC who befriends them is at risk of dying, and just won't be attached or surprised if it happens. In a really big, epic campaign, the entire world might be at stake and the players' failure may mean that the campaign is over and the game world destroyed.
Unless they are serious about roleplaying and can suspend their disbelief and metagame awareness, the only danger is the risk of PC death. If they are not daunted by an army of 50,000 warriors because they know you won't kill off their characters, your players are not suspending their disbelief. Second to player death would be equipment loss. Some optional consequences for being defeated could be that they are unconscious and stripped of their possessions, armor or weapon gets broken, or they themselves are captured, imprisoned or lost and need to be rescued or escape without any resources.

OC communication at the beginning and throughout the game are important to establish the expectations regarding these things, you need to adjust the consequences based on you and your players' preferences regarding roleplaying in general. They might feel it is fun to be invincible heroes who can do anything with no consequences, but if that isn't fun for you then there needs to be some compromise.

kamikasei
2013-08-17, 07:59 PM
So, you assumed facts not in evidence (that I was talking about a tactic which I never did until forced to specify that I wasn't actually talking about it) in order to poke holes in the position I wasn't holding. . . .
Pot. Kettle. Your first response in the thread was very sweeping - roughly, "do enemies in your games explicitly choose to face the PCs again after defeating them?". If you start out with statements that broad, it's up to you to make clear that you're actually speaking about much more limited scenarios. If you assume the most exaggerated scenario to support your argument and then ignore the clear signs others are talking about more limited and common situations in their responses to you, it's a bit much to complain that you're being misconstrued rather than acknowledge that you're not making yourself clear.

Given his stated position that PCs rarely die (unless, apparently, they start to believe that they're unlikely to die), why would you bring a healer into battle, and why would targeting said healer make a difference?
Because the PCs don't know they "rarely die". As far as they know, they're lucky. Just like absolutely anyone anywhere doesn't consider themselves to "rarely die" - they just know they haven't died yet. So they take precautions to keep it that way. The enemies, in turn, don't know they're fighting PCs, they're just fighting.

You really seem to be having serious trouble separating the OOC fact that the GM doesn't want to kill the PCs if it can be avoided from the IC knowledge the PCs have that they're going in to dangerous situations and have no special protection compared to anyone else.

Amphetryon
2013-08-17, 08:02 PM
Pot. Kettle. Your first response in the thread was very sweeping - "do enemies in your games explicitly choose to face the PCs again after defeating them?". If you start out with statements that broad, it's up to you to make clear that you're actually speaking about much more limited scenarios. If you assume the most exaggerated scenario to support your argument and then ignore the clear signs others are talking about more limited and common situations in their responses to you, it's a bit much to complain that you're being misconstrued rather than acknowledge that you're not making yourself clear.
If you're going to pretend my words are within your quotations, could you do me the kindness of actually quoting my words, which were less sweeping than your paraphrase?

Terraoblivion
2013-08-17, 08:03 PM
So, you assumed facts not in evidence (that I was talking about a tactic which I never did until forced to specify that I wasn't actually talking about it) in order to poke holes in the position I wasn't holding. . . .

Because you were talking about tactics. What you do after the battle is over is not tactics, it's decisions that are possibly informed by an overarching strategy or setting up tactical considerations for further confrontations. Tactics are specifically about the decisions of how to act in a direct conflict, typically used about military battles. Not just that, a lot of what you said didn't make a whole lot of sense in the context of something happening after the battle was over, such as using divide and conquer tactics.


ETA:
Given his stated position that PCs rarely die (unless, apparently, they start to believe that they're unlikely to die), why would you bring a healer into battle, and why would targeting said healer make a difference?

Because getting taken out so you're no longer in a position to fight, means that you lose whatever the fight was about. The village gets raided, the murderer gets away, the opposing army takes you captive. Whatever. Consequences don't have to be death and being incapacitated and incapable of fighting on, means that you have no means to prevent those consequences any longer.

kamikasei
2013-08-17, 08:03 PM
If you're going to pretend my words are within your quotations, could you do me the kindness of actually quoting my words, which were less sweeping than your paraphrase?
Edited. More response added, too.

...Actually, I'd really like you to explain how:

Do the enemies in your games make the conscious decision that they wish to face the PCs at some time in the future?
...is in any substantive way less sweeping than:

"do enemies in your games explicitly choose to face the PCs again after defeating them?"
As it stands this looks a lot like nitpicking rather than engaging with actual arguments.

Thrudd
2013-08-17, 08:22 PM
Just as an aside about this whole "coup de gras" thing with bad guys finishing off downed characters...that really depends on the enemy, doesn't it? In D&D fantasy world, monster races are meant to be pretty brutal. Tolkien's orcs, the basis for the monstrous humanoids races of D&D, were flesh eaters and took pleasure in mutilating bodies. They flung the severed heads of defeated Gondor soldiers with catapults over Minas Tirith's walls, for just one example. If the PC's all fell before a group of enemies like this, TPK would be totally expected. Likewise if they were defeated by one of any number of the brutal savage monsters that populate the D&D monster manual. Will a chimera or a manticore or a dragon not simply eat a party of fallen opponents at their leisure? Definately. If the players know this, I think there will be an adequate sense of danger when they are faced with these types of opponents.

tensai_oni
2013-08-17, 08:46 PM
There is a difference between a TPK where enemies have all PCs defeated and at their leisure decide to kill them, and a situation where one (just one) PC gets downed, and rather than deciding to do the sensible thing and shift the attack to remaining PCs, an enemy decides to finish off a player character.

The former is acceptable, the latter is just being petty.

Still, give me fun over realism any day. If player characters are killed off, the game is over. It's better to have them live somehow and deal with consequences of their failure. It's up to the game master to have a situation where players care about something and don't want to lose if it means that something is lost. This was pretty much always the case for games I've been in, so it can't be too hard.

Amphetryon
2013-08-17, 09:02 PM
There is a difference between a TPK where enemies have all PCs defeated and at their leisure decide to kill them, and a situation where one (just one) PC gets downed, and rather than deciding to do the sensible thing and shift the attack to remaining PCs, an enemy decides to finish off a player character.

The former is acceptable, the latter is just being petty.


Or, an enemy decides that, rather than taking the time to check to see if the downed PC is just faking it in order to catch the other side by surprise and possibly kill one or more of their number (or ignoring this possibility at all, in defiance of sense and probably precedent), he can take the same time to finish him off instead.

Potayto, potahto, apparently.

awa
2013-08-17, 09:10 PM
except in lord of the rings every time the fellowship (or a part of it anyways) was defeated at least one person was taken captive.

So even vicious evil monsters can take people captive. Instead of the game ending the next adventure is escape from the dungeon.

of course a manticore is about as big as a lion so you could just have it eat a horse and wander off it already got dinner the unconscious guys are now irrelevant. or it could drag them back to its lair to feed to it's young conveniently giving the party one last chance to escape and so on.

Thrudd
2013-08-17, 09:30 PM
Yes, I wouldn't have opponents finish off a PC while other PC's were still threatening, they should be able to pull their friends to safety. But I won't pull punches on the damage rolls, either, or fudge the dying checks. If someone takes enough damage in one hit to drop to -10, them's the breaks.
It is completely up to the group how they want to do this, everyone just needs to agree or be aware of the game's expectations. DM needs to create a compelling situation and the players need to be willing to engage the game world. If players are heavily invested in their characters and backgrounds and like to roleplay seriously, and the campaign is designed around the characers' stories, then the DM is not going to kill them off. They will treat things that are dangerous for the characters as such and act appropriately, even though they know OC that their PC's will not die until is is dramtically appropriate (and probably agreed upon by both player and DM).
If you are running a more-or-less sandbox game played as a simulation of a fantasy environment, the characters need not be anyone special to start with. They become special through their success in the game. Memorable characters who lived and died in various tragic, heroic, or even comedic ways will be remembered fondly and spoken of around the table. The game isn't over if a character dies, you just make a new one and keep playing (if the original one doesn't get resurrected). The only penalty may be that you lose a level or two. As long as everyone has this expectation to start with and agrees to have fun with it, killing characters isn't an issue.

jedipotter
2013-08-17, 09:31 PM
How do you maintain a sense of danger in the game without risking TPKing the party? As a side point, if some of your players are more OK with their characters dying than others, is it fair to hit them harder? Last question, does anyone have a way to make an impossible must retreat situation appear as such to the players so they don't try and fight an army of 50000 warriors at level 4?

Run a deadly game. Drop the whole modern idea that the RPG is some beautiful collaborative storytelling spotlight for special snowflakes, and make it more a hardcore group experience for survival and victory.

A lot of games, especially ones like D&D 3E or even more so 4E, have a very safe-for-kids slapstick feel. Where it is like ''oh, the orc hits you with his club on the shoulder and you fall in the dirt and get dirty...haha''. Well, don't run the game that way. Don't allow free healing, or more so things like healing surges. Don't let the character's rest. Target the character's items. Have foes use intelligent tactics.

This gives a great sense of danger.....

tasw
2013-08-17, 09:40 PM
1. You're talking about DND 3e specifically, this is a general RPG forum.

Actually NO I'm not. Warhammer roleplaying (all the versions) dark heresy (all the versions) pretty much any White Wolf game but mundanes, the vast majority of the D20 clones over the years, star wars games, and most of the indy games ALL have some way between rounds for an incapacitated character to get back into the fight between rounds.

The list of games without such a thing is much, much shorter then the list of games with them.

And it would still be illogical not to finish an enemy even in those games without it. Unless the bad guy takes the time to stop and do a first aid check on the downed character how would he reasonably know that character is out of the fight for good rather then just temporarily stunned, knocked out or faking it ?






2. When you have only 1-3 attacks per round, spending one of them to hack at a guy who is either dead already or taken out, but either way no longer a threat, is not a sensible thing to do when you could attack someone still standing instead.

No its absolutely the ONLY sensible thing to do. You never want to turn your back on a potential threat in a real combat situation and thats exactly what your advocating the bad guys do. Its sheer day 1 of training tactical stupidity, and its the best way to get yourself dead in a fight.




You're overestimating the intelligence of the average human, much less a creature that's on average much dumber than a human. Also do note that combat is extremely chaotic and you rarely can see everything that's going on with perfect clarity.

LOL making sure a guy who just tried to murder you is actually dead instead of turning your back on him and hoping for the best doesnt require a genius. Just that your not a total moron.

And your right, you cant tell the tactical situation with total clarity, ever. So you deal absolutely for sure with the known target in front of you before exposing your back on it and trying to understand the rest of the battlefield and decide your next action.


Run a deadly game. Drop the whole modern idea that the RPG is some beautiful collaborative storytelling spotlight for special snowflakes, and make it more a hardcore group experience for survival and victory.

A lot of games, especially ones like D&D 3E or even more so 4E, have a very safe-for-kids slapstick feel. Where it is like ''oh, the orc hits you with his club on the shoulder and you fall in the dirt and get dirty...haha''. Well, don't run the game that way. Don't allow free healing, or more so things like healing surges. Don't let the character's rest. Target the character's items. Have foes use intelligent tactics.

This gives a great sense of danger.....

Best way to run a game, hands down. If your players are too comfortable with your kid gloves to run from an army then you have that army kill them.

Next time, they're characters will run.


That is still spending a turn to kill somebody who is not resisting in any way. Quibbling over the exact details of the rules of how to do so is rather missing the point..

Actually when we're talking about the logic of how an enemies action economy dictate their choices in a fight the exact rules for said action economy matter a great deal.




That depends on the timescale said healing magic operates on, along with a lack of wound penalties for heavily wounded characters.

And in the majority of RPG's healing magic is basically instant, many technological devices of healing in sci-fi settings are basically instant, and wound penalties are slight or non-existent.

But the penalties dont really matter. Would you rather have someone with a -4 attacking you from a flank or no one attacking you at all? Seems like an easy choice to me.


Also, dude, most creatures and people don't care about finishing enemies off..

In the real world when you shoot someone down or stab or beat them with a club until they are unconscious their friend isnt going to come around with a magic wand and have them back in action at 100% effectiveness seconds after they fall, barring you intervening somehow. In most cases without immediate medical attention they will simply stay down until they bleed out or die from shock. Thats almost never the case in RPG's.



I mean, I seem to notice that in nature programs the wildebeest don't hunt a wounded lion down after fending off an attack, they just protect the young and move on.

You ever notice what happens when the LION wins the fight?

Now if your PC's are picking a fight with Bambi maybe you have a point. Although its not rare for herbivores that knock a predator down to gore and stamp with thier hooves over and over either. They just dont usually show that part on TV. Check youtube.




Similarly, I seem to recall the concept of prisoners of war and the absolutely massive numbers of them taken in even in the most brutal of major battles, such as the 300,000 Germans who surrendered at Stalingrad.

Those guys surrendered, they werent shot unconscious and then given medical attention and taken prisoner. Medical attention for enemy soldiers who were wounded was astoundingly rare from any side in that war in fact. Especially on the Russian front.

And most of those German prisoners wound up being starved or worked to death in POW camps. Others were just executed later.

Taking prisoners isnt an act of mercy. Its a way to encourage other enemies to give up a losing fight rather then going down fighting to the end and inflicting more casualties on the winning force then necessary.




And, yes, as Tengu said, it depends on having that kind of coherent overview of the situation to make decisions like that in a split second while somebody is trying to stab you with a sword.

Unless your outnumbered your opponent is down. No one is trying to stab you with a sword. They are fighting your comrades while you step back and finish your foe out of range and deciding how best to flank an enemy to help your side.

Slipperychicken
2013-08-17, 09:47 PM
Also, why do enemies have to obsess over killing everyone they beat?

"He who fights and runs away, may live to fight another day."

nedz
2013-08-17, 09:48 PM
Run a deadly game. Drop the whole modern idea that the RPG is some beautiful collaborative storytelling spotlight for special snowflakes, and make it more a hardcore group experience for survival and victory.

A lot of games, especially ones like D&D 3E or even more so 4E, have a very safe-for-kids slapstick feel. Where it is like ''oh, the orc hits you with his club on the shoulder and you fall in the dirt and get dirty...haha''. Well, don't run the game that way. Don't allow free healing, or more so things like healing surges. Don't let the character's rest. Target the character's items. Have foes use intelligent tactics.

This gives a great sense of danger.....

this, well almost.

The special snowflake thing is at least 30 years old, so hardly modern — at least in terms of the history of RPGs — but this is just nitpicking.

I routinely have situations where the PCs are defeated, but I don't have TPKs. This is because the PCs have options to exit the field, and take them, not because I'm wearing kid gloves.

jedipotter
2013-08-17, 10:14 PM
this, well almost.

The special snowflake thing is at least 30 years old, so hardly modern — at least in terms of the history of RPGs — but this is just nitpicking.

I routinely have situations where the PCs are defeated, but I don't have TPKs. This is because the PCs have options to exit the field, and take them, not because I'm wearing kid gloves.

Well, the true trick of a master GM is to have the danger threaten the character, but not quite get them or kill them. Once the players know that ''loss'' is on the table, they will react accordingly.

tasw
2013-08-17, 10:18 PM
Well, the true trick of a master GM is to have the danger threaten the character, but not quite get them or kill them. Once the players know that ''loss'' is on the table, they will react accordingly.

I completely disagree. I run sandbox games where the PC's arent heroes inherently (half of them seem to be flat out evil, or at best uncaring and narcissistic, but i guess thats neither here nor there).

The PC's may become important heroes by surviving many dangerous adventures and doing heroic things. But they sure as heck dont start out that way. And when a PC dies it means he didnt have enough of the gods favor, or just flat out couldnt cut the mustard enough to become a hero.

I cant stand the sense of entitlement that special snowflake games breeds in players and campaigns.

TuggyNE
2013-08-17, 11:26 PM
Why are all your bad guys outnumbered by the good guys? Its usually the other way around. Or at least equal numbers.

Usually the PCs have the advantage (by superior skill, equipment, or magic), whether or not raw number of combatants is in their favor. This is easily verifiable by determining how often PCs are killed; if you TPK less often than every other fight, you probably have the advantage more often than not.


You dont have to use coup de grace with all its drawbacks. Attacks against helpless opponents automatically do max damage which should be more then enough to put an opponent from -1 to dead and still allow your character a movement action, or attacks against other enemies in the same round if he has multiple attacks.

They do? In what ruleset?

Slipperychicken
2013-08-17, 11:39 PM
They do? In what ruleset?

Maybe he houserules critical hits to be max damage, so the CDG-autocrit works that way in his games?

TuggyNE
2013-08-18, 12:18 AM
Maybe he houserules critical hits to be max damage, so the CDG-autocrit works that way in his games?

… and then also houserules CDG to not require a full-round AoO-provoking action? Yeah, could be, I guess!

kamikasei
2013-08-18, 06:04 AM
Run a deadly game.
Since this completely ignores the "...without risking a TPK" part of the OP's question, it's useless. Indeed, more than one poster seems to be ignoring what the OP was actually asking for to ride their "kill all the PCs" hobby horse.

Saph
2013-08-18, 06:54 AM
In the long term, the only really reliable way to create a sense of danger for the PCs is for the PCs to actually be in danger. You can try to fake it via deception (the GM tells the players that their characters can die, but fudges to prevent it) or pretence (the players try to act like they're in danger even when they know they're not) but IMO these approaches end up causing more problems than they solve.

However, as pointed out, "danger" doesn't have to mean "danger of losing the character". You can threaten something the PCs care about instead. (NB: this only works if the PCs actually do care about something in the gameworld other than themselves.)

In my experience the easiest and most effective way to keep characters around while still having a sense of risk is to make the stakes something other than life or death, ie don't run a combat-heavy game. Ways to do this include:

Investigation games: object is to solve the mystery
Low-lethality fights: duels or conflicts are to first blood/submission, not death
Political games: the stakes are social status/political position
Weird settings: fights don't actually end up with one side dead for whatever reason (virtual reality, dreamworlds, etc)
So it's completely possible to have a sense of danger/risk without dead PCs.

What does not work is running a combat-heavy high-body-count game where the PCs can't die, and then expecting the PCs to feel threatened. If the consequence of losing is death, but PC's aren't allowed to die, there are no stakes. You're basically playing Grand Theft Auto, where you can go on a mass-murder spree across the city, get gunned down by the police, then pop right back out of the hospital and do it all over again – the idea of a "sense of danger" is ridiculous.

In my experience, D&D works very badly as a "PCs can't die" game, due to its wargame roots. It's combat-heavy by design, and assumes by default that the stakes of a battle are life and death. You can run a D&D campaign with plot-shielded PCs, but other systems do it much better.

jedipotter
2013-08-18, 07:47 AM
Since this completely ignores the "...without risking a TPK" part of the OP's question, it's useless. Indeed, more than one poster seems to be ignoring what the OP was actually asking for to ride their "kill all the PCs" hobby horse.

Well, a deadly game does not equal TPK. As a TPK is killing the whole party. A deadly game will often kill one character at a time.

Lots of games play on 'safe mode', everyone agrees that character's can't loose, get overly hurt or die. And while that can be fun, it often makes the sense of danger bland. When the player knows nothing bad will happen, they just don't care.

Telok
2013-08-18, 07:54 AM
Saph you are a breath for fresh, calm, reasonable, air in this thread. Unfortunately my game murder-hobos for PCs. At least that's what they'd call themselves if it came up, I'd call them the Keystone Kops in a meat grinder.


Investigation games: object is to solve the mystery
Low-lethality fights: duels or conflicts are to first blood/submission, not death
Political games: the stakes are social status/political position
Weird settings: fights don't actually end up with one side dead for whatever reason (virtual reality, dreamworlds, etc)
So it's completely possible to have a sense of danger/risk without dead PCs.

Investigation? They almost burned down the evidence while complaining that they couldn't track footprints across busy cobblestone streets. And forget buying someone a beer to loosen his tongue, they'll drag him into the alley and beat the information out of him.

Duels? The last person who won a knitting contest in my game Fireballed the clue-containing reward, her competitor, and half the spectators.

Politics? They dissed the king in front of his castellan, two pages, and the advisor/wizard. They almost murdered a mayor because he didn't like them and refused to pay them for a two weeks late delivery after other people did the delivery when the PCs didn't show up on time.

Weirdness... I haven't tried that yet. Perhaps I'll curse them with something or have a magician test thier fighting ability in a dream. But frankly thier inability to come with a few basic illusionary and invisible walls or simple magical darkness does not make me hopeful.

I'm running out of ideas here. Even them trying to get past an army trench at night resulted in two PC deaths because they wouldn't stop standing around and fighting everything to the death. The one person who jumped the trench and walked past the lights into the darkness got away scott free. I've been reduced to throwing things that can kill them at the party just to keep a mild tension up. Keystone Kops in a meat grinder.

Sigh.

Amphetryon
2013-08-18, 07:59 AM
Well, a deadly game does not equal TPK. As a TPK is killing the whole party. A deadly game will often kill one character at a time.

Lots of games play on 'safe mode', everyone agrees that character's can't lose, get overly hurt or die. And while that can be fun, it often makes the sense of danger bland. When the player knows nothing bad will happen, they just don't care.Exactly. Unfortunately, if you crank the stakes up too high, such that Players feel obligated to know what their backup Character is every week (and have an idea for what the Character after that is), they don't care much, either, because there's no attachment to the Characters.

kamikasei
2013-08-18, 08:10 AM
Lots of games play on 'safe mode', everyone agrees that character's can't loose, get overly hurt or die. And while that can be fun, it often makes the sense of danger bland. When the player knows nothing bad will happen, they just don't care.
Which is exactly why several people have been suggesting threatening things other than the PCs' lives. No one has asked for or proposed a "safe mode" game. On the other hand, the people complaining about how undangerous Games These Days are have consistently been hung up on threatening the characters' physical well being as the only way to provide challenge and engagement.

jedipotter
2013-08-18, 08:16 AM
Exactly. Unfortunately, if you crank the stakes up too high, such that Players feel obligated to know what their backup Character is every week (and have an idea for what the Character after that is), they don't care much, either, because there's no attachment to the Characters.

The idea is to focus the players the other way: Make them care about thier character and not want them to die. You don't want them to throw away thier characters.

Slipperychicken
2013-08-18, 10:30 AM
Exactly. Unfortunately, if you crank the stakes up too high, such that Players feel obligated to know what their backup Character is every week (and have an idea for what the Character after that is), they don't care much, either, because there's no attachment to the Characters.

I haven't played such a high-lethality game, but I imagine players would care partly out of determination (i.e. "I'm not gonna die this time. This time, I'm gonna win!"), partly out of sympathy for a beloved character ("Grognak is freakin' awesome. I won't let him die!").

TheOneHawk
2013-08-18, 10:41 AM
This thread has a bunch of great stuff in it, thanks guys! :)

One thing I think is key in a death is a possibility game is the ability to take down a PC in a really dangerous fight, maybe two, but not kill the party. How do you walk that line?

kamikasei
2013-08-18, 10:47 AM
One thing I think is key in a death is a possibility game is the ability to take down a PC in a really dangerous fight, maybe two, but not kill the party. How do you walk that line?
Once PCs start dying, it gets harder for the ones left to win. They'll want a way to end the fight, but it shouldn't be something they can use on a whim. Either make the enemies willing to accept surrender - and make surrender something that isn't going to be completely disastrous, just bad - or give the PCs some expensive way to open a window for retreat, so that they can suffer a defeat but get away to lick their wounds and figure out how to compensate for wasting their chance or alerting the enemies to their plans or whatever. The latter comes with its own fine line to walk, though, between making it possible for them to break away from a fight that's turned into a rout, and giving them license to pick any fight with impunity knowing that they have a surefire escape option.

awa
2013-08-18, 01:41 PM
The idea is to focus the players the other way: Make them care about thier character and not want them to die. You don't want them to throw away thier characters.


I haven't played such a high-lethality game, but I imagine players would care partly out of determination (i.e. "I'm not gonna die this time. This time, I'm gonna win!"), partly out of sympathy for a beloved character ("Grognak is freakin' awesome. I won't let him die!").


Thing is if the characters die frequently enough then there is no incentive to care about anything other then having the biggest numbers. Exactly how frequent is to frequent varies from person to person.
Why bother role-playing a guy your only going to have one session he stop being a person and more a replaceable set of stats any time spent on his back story is time wasted.

Saph
2013-08-18, 02:22 PM
Thing is if the characters die frequently enough then there is no incentive to care about anything other then having the biggest numbers.

Actually, in my experience this isn't what happens.

I've played both high-danger and low-danger games, and in both cases some players roleplayed and developed their PCs and put lots of effort into them, while others treated them as nothing more than stacks of numbers and discarded them whenever they got bored.

Some players tend to care about their PCs, others don't. Changing the type of game doesn't alter that, IMO.

SimonMoon6
2013-08-18, 04:02 PM
I'm okay with establishing peril in a non-D&D game. But in a standard D&D game, every combat seems to have one of three possibilities:

(1) None of the PCs die.
(2) TPK. (All the PCs die).

And that's it. Now, you might ask, what about:

(3) Some PCs live, some PCs die.

But that NEVER happens. Even when it does. Because death is just a tax on your resources. Pay for a true res and you're back to perfect health. And, in my ideal world, (3) should be a real possibility, something to be scared of. Granted, at low level, this could still happen, but blah, who cares about low level stuff?

So basically, it's either (1) or (2). Either nobody can die, or we take the whole campaign with us. Either way we win (sort of).

I'm also annoyed that no unpleasant status can "stick" to a PC. You can't be permanently cursed, turned to stone, polymorphed, deafened, blinded, etc, without an instant cure. Now, I'm not saying that I want my PC to be permanently turned to stone or blinded, but there should be some peril.

For example, in myths, Medusa was a terrifying monster who would turn you to stone *automatically* with a gaze and that's the end of you. In D&D, a medusa has a wimpy (maybe DC 14? I'm not looking it up) fort save gaze that even if you fail it, you just get someone to fix you later. Medusas are not a perilous monster to fight in D&D, despite Medusa herself being quite scary in mythology. Maybe if it's so easy to fix, the DC should be a lot higher? Maybe PCs should have to worry about avoiding her gaze instead of saying, "Oh, well, I'm a multi-classed fighter with a cloak of resistance. I only fail on a 1."

nedz
2013-08-18, 04:31 PM
I think you have to educate your players by designing encounters where the bad guys opponents manage to escape when things look bad for them.

You could even try using hit and run tactics against them since a lot of the get out tricks are similar.

Amphetryon
2013-08-18, 04:46 PM
I think you have to educate your players by designing encounters where the bad guys opponents manage to escape when things look bad for them.

You could even try using hit and run tactics against them since a lot of the get out tricks are similar.

Would the Players find such tactics dangerous, or merely bothersome? I suspect a random poll of internet Players would get both responses, with various gradations besides.

Totally Guy
2013-08-18, 05:13 PM
I'm also annoyed that no unpleasant status can "stick" to a PC. You can't be permanently cursed, turned to stone, polymorphed, deafened, blinded, etc, without an instant cure.

Check out Torchbearer or Mouse Guard. We had a thread on Torchbearer a few weeks ago. In those games it is a hassle and a half to recover from everything. From fear and exhaustion to injuries and sickness, they just stick to you. You have to really work your character just for a shot at recovery.

Not quite turned to stone but they're the things you are forced to continue to play with.

nedz
2013-08-18, 06:41 PM
Would the Players find such tactics dangerous, or merely bothersome? I suspect a random poll of internet Players would get both responses, with various gradations besides.

Well the only response which matters is the group in question, whom I don't know obviously. But my point was to show, rather than tell, them how to bug out.

Lorsa
2013-08-19, 04:26 AM
There are two ways which most likely have been mentioned here. Either you have something very important that is at stake that the characters care about to such an extent that they feel an imminent sense of danger. If failure means the death of your friends and loved ones rather than simply yourself then you'll be all the more invested in the outcome.

The other way is to cheat. Have the characters becoming hurt enough to feel that the next hit will surely down them and when the epic swing of doom is about to hit them... you roll very poorly! Obviously you can't overdo this, and sometimes one character might go down (but enough to be saved). If you give the other players X rounds to save their friend then even if the rest of the fight isn't nearly as hard they'll still feel a sense of panic.

What you want to aim for is a "**** **** **** ****!" feeling and then the "omg I can't believe we made it!".

Driderman
2013-08-19, 05:10 AM
For my part, when I (rarely) GM, I tend to have a two-fold approach.
First off, as already mentioned numerous times, I put something other than the the PCs physical wellbeing (although often that as well) at risk: Lose this battle, and the suspect gets away, you lose access to an important clue, demotion, etc.

Secondly, I only pull my punches if I've ****ed up with the power level of the antagonists. Otherwise, the dice roll as they roll. Since I don't really play any systems that demand character-death upon being downed, this works just fine. Knowing that combat can be risky makes the players come up with better plans instead of harebrained "I fireball the inn"-type schemes :smallbiggrin:

Angel Bob
2013-08-19, 08:30 AM
My group consists of pretty casual players. They come up with ingenious solutions to problems, which have turned my attempts at a serious story into a farce involving clouds of hallucinatory smoke, dwarves picking locks with their beards, and a broken teapot. It's kind of hard to take a campaign like that seriously...

...at least until our latest encounter, which reminded them of their characters' mortality. The trouble started when the group was separated from their party cleric and then decided to face a new encounter anyway. I sent after them a front line of "fire spirits" (leveled-down fire elementals from the 4E MM3), with artillery support from some (MM3 revamped) blazing skeletons. What the PCs didn't immediately understand was that the chamber was also packing a flame jet trap. Anyway, the "fire spirits" turned out to have an automatic-damage ability (whenever they were hit by an attack, each adjacent enemy took 5 fire damage); this ability wore away at the fighter's hit points (already reduced because he fell two stories through a hole), and he was dropped by a blazing skeleton. The party ranger just barely managed to get him back on his feet.

Led by the avenger's instructions and the elementalist's sheer damage capabilities, they cut down the spirits and charged forth to engage the blazing skeletons... and that's when the flame jets erupted, catching nearly all of them in an inferno. The fighter dropped again, and since he was a dragonborn in full plate armor, the elf avenger didn't manage his Strength check to pull him out of the trap's range before it erupted again. Now, by 4E RAW, it's pretty hard to die. You either have to fail three death saving throws, be subject to an effect that kills instantly, or be reduced to an HP value equal to -50% of your health. This fighter had 64 HP, meaning he would be dead at -32. The flame trap, as the dice gods would have it, rolled just enough damage to bring him down to... -31. With ongoing 5 fire damage.

Knowing that the fighter would die at the start of his next turn if they couldn't rescue him from the trap and put out the flames consuming him, the party was quite worried and had to really work to save him. I'll confess I was a little lenient, but ultimately the ranger and avenger (both elves) managed to yank him out of the danger zone, while the elementalist called forth water from the Elemental Chaos that I ruled could put out the flames. Then the ranger managed her Heal check to stabilize him -- just as the elementalist was caught in a flame trap and dropped as well.

Lesson learned? Without the cleric around, the party is all too easy to kill. This has got the players acting more cautiously, and the DM eager for blood... :smalltongue:

tasw
2013-08-20, 12:21 AM
… and then also houserules CDG to not require a full-round AoO-provoking action? Yeah, could be, I guess!

They're not playing D&D remember? Nitpicking D&D rules isnt relevant.

Good you missed that incredibly fundamental part of the debate though. Feel smarter now?

tasw
2013-08-20, 12:28 AM
Which is exactly why several people have been suggesting threatening things other than the PCs' lives.

But that requires PLAYERS who give a crap. Over 20 years at least half the people I've gamed with wouldnt bat an eye if their home village was destroyed. Theres a reason they left that dump. They're playing to kill some monsters, get rich, and save/conquer the world (while having more then a few RL beers and or other recreational drugs). Whats one crappy village?

SOP is to the shoot the hostage in the last 2 groups, and some them were heavy RP'ers.

All that story threat stuff requires players to choose to constantly give into it each session. And some players just dont want to. Thats not what they are gaming for.

TuggyNE
2013-08-20, 01:32 AM
They're not playing D&D remember? Nitpicking D&D rules isnt relevant.

Good you missed that incredibly fundamental part of the debate though. Feel smarter now?

Smarter? No, but as far as I can tell after skimming back through the thread, I missed that "incredibly fundamental" part of the debate chiefly because it was never actually stated, and also because a number of posts assumed a D&Dish context, as is quite common. (I am slightly amused also to note that someone replied to one of your earlier posts in the thread to admonish you similarly.)

Enlighten me, though: what game actually does have coup-de-grace rules and helpless-allows-auto-max-damage rules that are separate? If there is such a game, sure, my remarks wouldn't apply, but otherwise any game in which coup-de-grace rules are a thing would seem to exclude auto-max-damage, and vice versa… at least without houserules, as stated.

jedipotter
2013-08-20, 06:50 AM
(3) Some PCs live, some PCs die.

But that NEVER happens.

Kinda odd then that I kill one character a game then. Sure they can be brought back to life, but we use to ye old 2e rule that your Con equals your number of lives. And, quite often, the death happens far from home...so the characters can't just pack up and go home in a second. This is always a fun as so many players think that time stops when a character dies. And often trying to escape leaves the characters way open to attack (''Ok, the two of you lift up Dor's 270 pound body...oh and the three demons right next to you attack")

Plus it is not so hard to get rid of a body. Most monsters will eat the body...

kyoryu
2013-08-20, 02:54 PM
I'll drop this here:

http://io9.com/why-you-should-never-write-action-scenes-into-your-tent-511712234

I agree with pretty much everything said - the way to maintain a sense of danger is to have *actual danger*. If there's no danger, then players will quickly figure that out.

There's a bunch of ways to do this. The obvious is "kill characters". This works in some games, and works best when players may have multiple characters to take out some of the sting. Also, it's best to do this in games where players have greater control and freedom over where they go and what they do - then, the results will be because of their decisions, not the encounter that you decided they were going to go up against next.

But really, for most games that's not an option. You're not going to kill characters on a regular basis. Just acknowledge that and move on with it. If you doubt me, ask yourself how many sessions you typically go between character deaths. Let's say you're running pretty high lethality (by modern standards) and kill a character every ten sessions. Great. That means that if you have four players, they can expect a death once every 40 sessions. How many games actually last that long? So no, it's not a real threat in most games, and I'm not even arguing it should be. I'm just suggesting that we all acknowledge that it's generally *not* a real danger, and not pretend that it is.

The other solution (and, really, killing characters is just an obvious example of this) is to threaten, damage, or remove things that the players care about. Note that I said *players*, not characters.

Again, this works best if you give players *real* freedom to make decisions, for two reasons:

1) If they're making decisions that have impact, they're less likely to just go "meh, whatever" to those decisions, and wait for the next planned encounter
2) By giving them freedom to do things, they can set their own goals and work to achieve them. That means they *invest* in them, and investment is the key to getting players to care about things. They'll care far more about the cake shop they set up in some tiny village than they do the main capital of the kingdom - because it's *their* cake shop, and because *they* made it, and *they* put their resources into it, and *they* have plans and hopes for it.

Without those things, you're telling the players what they should care about, and that rarely works. In those cases, the only things they'll care about are their character and equipment, which means you're really limited to threatening those things.

And never zip past something the players are enjoying or drilling into to get on with "the real plot". If the players are showing interest and engagement, *use that*.

This is the big problem with big GM plots, NPCs, villains, and the like - the GM cares about them because *he* invested in them, and often doesn't get that the *players* could give a crap, because *they* have not invested in that plot/NPC/whatever.

Which is another useful tool, actually - giving the players some level of ability to help with world-creation at some level. Whether it's just names of NPCs, or more information about them, or whatever. By simple virtue of naming the NPC, and especially if they can come up with some basic info/background on them, they'll be *invested* in that NPC, and care about that NPC far more than the NPC you would have made up.

Having players help a person/group/town/whatever, and actually *see* the results of that can be a boost in investment as well. There's psychological studies done on this kind of stuff - people will generally view more favorably those that they have helped.

Also, sometimes it just helps to have an OOC conversation with the players, and figure out what things they enjoy and want to do, and then steer the game that way. Also, keep an eye on the players and the general energy of the room - see what the players respond to, what engages in their interest. Let them invest in the world.

So make real danger - help the players invest in the game emotionally, and then make real, viable threats against those things. And for the threat to be viable, that means that sometimes they have to lose.

SimonMoon6
2013-08-20, 08:02 PM
Which is another useful tool, actually - giving the players some level of ability to help with world-creation at some level. Whether it's just names of NPCs, or more information about them, or whatever. By simple virtue of naming the NPC, and especially if they can come up with some basic info/background on them, they'll be *invested* in that NPC, and care about that NPC far more than the NPC you would have made up.

That reminds me of my old 1st edition AD&D campaign from many years ago. Each of the players had some NPCs following them around that they could control in combat (not outside of combat though). So, they felt a bit possessive of these NPCs. So, naturally, one way to add peril to a situation would be to kill off one of these NPCs.

I remember the paladin's player complaining that his NPCs ended up getting killed off all the time while the cleric's player managed to get two of his NPCs up to a moderate level (they had started at 1st level).

Slipperychicken
2013-08-20, 08:07 PM
One thing I think is key in a death is a possibility game is the ability to take down a PC in a really dangerous fight, maybe two, but not kill the party. How do you walk that line?

You can always start a whole new party in the same campaign setting. Even set on the same mission as the old one. Maybe they encounter some consequences of the last party's exploits :smallbiggrin:

kyoryu
2013-08-20, 08:41 PM
So, naturally, one way to add peril to a situation would be to kill off one of these NPCs.

The follower NPC idea is a good one. But killing off the NPCs doesn't add peril. It removes it.

Tension and peril are all about "what will happen?" or "will the bad thing happen?". When you kill the NPC, you've answered the question.

If you *threaten* the NPC, now you've created peril and tension, because the player doesn't know what's going to happen, and cares about the outcome. But the threat has to be real, otherwise the player will realize that it's an illusion, and the outcome was never in doubt.

That's why the "action scene" article I linked to points out that good action scenes aren't about "will the hero die". We know he won't. It's forty minutes into the two-hour movie, so we know the hero won't die. So we've got to have another question that we *don't* know the answer to. Otherwise there's no tension - just spectacle.

Amphetryon
2013-08-21, 06:16 AM
This thread has a bunch of great stuff in it, thanks guys! :)

One thing I think is key in a death is a possibility game is the ability to take down a PC in a really dangerous fight, maybe two, but not kill the party. How do you walk that line?

Have the NPCs offer the chance for the PCs to surrender and be taken prisoner after X number of PCs is dead. Have a mutual enemy appear. Have Gandalf and his cavalry (assuming the equivalent has already been introduced into the campaign, or at leasst hinted at) appear at daybreak, just as things start to look bleak.