On the importance of mechanical consistency

[BRC]

I'm currently in an investigation-based E6 campaign.
One case involved the Animate Dead spell (A murder victim had been animated into a zombie and then sent to "Commit suicide", with the caster taking off the spell immediately afterwards).

Because of this the party's forensic wizard knew that we were dealing with an especially powerful Cleric or Wizard, since only the most powerful spellcasters in this setting would have access to the spell (He ended up being a Wizard with access to a 4th level spell somehow, but the campaign wasn't about combat, and we got him to turn himself in. That's not important).

This was fine, and it worked for the game, however it got me thinking, is this sort of mechanical consistency important in all games?

Consider the following archetypal scenario: An evil necromancer has set up in a nearby ruin, animating skeletons to defend him. That's about as generic as a fantasy adventure hook can get, and I'm sure you can all imagine it: Evil necromancer wearing his evil robes with some sword-wielding skeletons.

Going by Defaults, the Human Warrior skeleton (The generic Skeleton minion everybody is picturing) is CR 1/3. In order to Animate them, the Evil Necromancer must be at least 5th level. Assuming the Necromancer in question is a Wizard (as your Archetypical Evil Necromancer is usually depicted as a robe-wearing spellcaster rather than an armor-wearing Cleric) he must be at least 7th level in order to animate his bodyguards.

Pretend for a moment that the CR system isn't a huge joke. A party for whom a 7th level character is a good boss fight (lets go with 4th or 5th level) is also a party that won't be challenged by CR 1/3 skeletons.

Okay, that's not entirely true. According to the Encounter Calculator if the Necromancer sent all 28 of his skeletons at the PCs all at once it would be a CR6 encounter, a fine fight for 4 ECL 5 characters, but from a gameplay perspective such an encounter would be a miserable and unwieldy experience for all involved. Besides, I'm not sure I trust the Encounter Calculator, Challenge ratings don't scale all that well.

Sending in two waves of 14 skeletons works out a little better with two CR4 encounters, but once again 18 combatants in a fight is unwieldy.

My point is that, according to RAW, the iconic scenario of a Necromancer in his tower guarded by skeletons doesn't fit very well within DnD if you demand mechanical consistency, which is to say If you demand that the necromancer actually be able to animate those skeletons.

Which was an overly-long and roundabout way of asking my central question. How important do you believe mechanical consistency is in terms of running a game. Not just when it comes to dice being rolled, but when it comes to building backstory and setting up the world?

[Grod_The_Giant]

I tend to handwave a lot of that sort of thing. I mean, yes, rulings should be consistent, but my group and I have never really worried too much about modelling things exactly through game rules. Not everyone will agree with us on that one, but it's certainly a valid point of view. Particularly if no-one's that rules-savy, or that "into" verisimilitude.

Other people, groups with a lot of rules mastery, will just work harder. Maybe the necromancer is using some sort of early-access trick to cast animate dead. Maybe they make him a Death Master (arcane casting, Animate Dead as a second level spell). Maybe they dig up some official "animate dead" ritual thing. Or maybe they take a standard wizard 7 but use fancier skeletons, or some sort of mob template to handle armies of undead more easily.

[watchwood]

There are rules for fighting mobs, that tend to simplify that sort of thing by a lot. The other option is to summon fewer and more powerful creatures.

[shylocke]

Kinda hard to do a convincing zombie suicide because the spell automatically rots the body. Kinda like how animate skeleton makes the skeleton step out of the old.body.

[BWR]

It's terribly vague question. Mechanics should serve the game and story in that order, and sometimes things are a bit iffy.

As for the problem of lots of opponents, I've reduced most opponent-heavy encounters to some simple mob rules: a few active individuals with a lot of Aid Another (which I have ruled autosucceeds and applies to ranged attacks as well) from the rest.

Say you have 20 goblins fighting the PCs: rather than roll 20 attack rolls I just assume that you have e.g. 4 'leaders' each with 4 subordinates who use the Aid Another to grant +8 to attack or AC to their leader. You reduce the number of rolls, you have increased the chances of PCs being hit or missing their target, and all you have to keep track of is hp and positioning (which can admittedly be a pain). This works for situatiosn where you have multiple opponents that are individually significantly weaker than the PCs, and works very well if the leader is somewhat closer to the PCs in power (want to full Power Attack as well as using full Improved Combat Expertise - fine, just have lots of minions with weapons and reach weapons to support you). In situations where you have many opponents that are near the PC's power level, these rules will probably just make the enemies less dangerous.

[OldTrees1]

My point is that, according to RAW, the iconic scenario of a Necromancer in his tower guarded by skeletons doesn't fit very well within DnD if you demand mechanical consistency, which is to say If you demand that the necromancer actually be able to animate those skeletons.

Which was an overly-long and roundabout way of asking my central question. How important do you believe mechanical consistency is in terms of running a game. Not just when it comes to dice being rolled, but when it comes to building backstory and setting up the world?

I am very mechanically focused. So I do consider mechanical consistency to be very important.

However a 7th level Boss summoning 1st level minions is mechanically inconsistent unless there are special circumstances. A 7th level Boss will be facing 4th-5th level PCs which means the minions ought to be 2nd-3rd level minions.

So I view mechanical consistency to be important enough to use during worldbuilding even when it means correcting mechanical inconsistencies in RAW.

Mechanical consistency is part of and is evaluated by its contribution to verisimilitude.

[Absol197]

Not an answer to your question, but a solution to the problem you brought up.

In my current campaign, "racial hit dice" don't exist, and creatures with an Int score of -, 1, or 2 have all their levels in the Instinctual class. It has d8 hit die, full BAB, good Fort and Ref, and gives 2 +Wis skill points, but not in any Int or Cha based skills (except Intimidate).

The important thing is I've made it so that a necromancer chooses how many hit dice he gives to each undead he aNimates. If he can animate 10 HD of undead, he could make 10 1 HD undead, or could make 2 5 HD undead. This gives necromancer villains some leeway to have fewer minions that are stronger, rather than a horde of useless minions. They can also add additional templates for the cost of HD they can animate.

Hopefully some food for thought!

[Yukitsu]

In an investigative setting, mechanical consistency is 100% needed. I prefer it in other settings, but I don't really think you need it.

[Yorrin]

I'm on the side of mechanical consistency. I've actually run the 1st level skeleton-infested ruins type of encounter several times with different groups. But the way I handle that is that the Necromancer in question is not using commoner skeles for combat purposes, he's using them as 1- cheap labor and 2- to scare away villagers from his real research. So he's usually absent when the PCs first encounter the skeles, and as the PCs get up closer to an appropriate level they'll start to encounter stronger undead and eventually the big bad himself. This is usually parallel with some other plot so that they don't get bored of undead fighting and so they can focus on something other than "where's the necromancer?"

[Urpriest]

This is really a general problem, though. The average fantasy necromancer with hordes of skeletons is generally more powerful than a 7th level Wizard (at least in terms of their role in the setting), not less. Just like the average stereotypical BBEG is much more powerful than the army of orcs the protagonists battle through to face them.

The general issue is that large armies of flunkies are a fantasy trope, but they just don't work in D&D given how characters scale. This is because D&D is not actually a game about generic fantasy tropes, it's a game about dungeonpunk swat teams. Make a plot that makes sense for a dungeonpunk swat team, and suddenly the game mechanics are on your side.