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View Full Version : Rambling about appropriate challenges, verisimilitude, lone wolf games, and new GMs.



Talakeal
2017-01-17, 02:46 AM
So, I got tired of the lack of gaming in my life and convinced my room mate to try running a solo campaign. He has experience as a player, but no real experience as a GM.

We start the first session, and it begins with my character receiving a summons from a local mob boss.

Now, every instinct is screaming "IT'S A TRAP!" but I don't want to be that guy who ignores adventure hooks, especially on the GM's first session.

The mob boss wants to hire me to guard a shipment of contraband from a rival gang.

Now, being a LG sort, I tell him that I am not interested in his job.

He tells me that he doesn't handle rejection well, and that if I refuse I will be sorry. A clear threat.

I tell him "I am not going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, if you want to threaten my life be up front about it and draw steel!"

So, here I am, a level 1 fighter, who has just challenged the mob boss, a level 3 rogue, to a duel.

Then, his bodyguards, both level 4 warriors, bum rush me.

Three turns later and we discover that the first session of the new game is also the last.

At this point I just kind of stare at the table thinking "What the hell?"

The GM tells me that he made them as weak as he could, but if they were any lower level they would never have risen to the position of leadership over the gang. And he isn't wrong.

Further he tells me that just because I am running a solo game without a party he can't justify nerfing the entire world down to my level. And again, he isn't wrong.

Then I ask what I was supposed to do? My character has absolutely no interest in working for a known criminal. He tells me that if that was the case I should have gone to the city guard and asked for their protection.

Its logical, but, I don't know, going to the city guard and begging them to save you? That just seems so ignoble and, well, humiliating.

Aren't PCs supposed to be heroes?


Again, I don't really know what I expect from this thread; just, feel free to post whatever advice / thoughts you have on the matter. Thanks for reading.

Fri
2017-01-17, 02:56 AM
If I'm the GM, I'm the one saying "What the hell."

Or more specifically, how the heck you two are gaming without confirming what the premise of the game, which is already important in normal game, and even more so in solo game.

Seriously, let me underline it. What. The. Hell.

It's like you're accepting vague invitation for a movie night without confirming anything. Then leave when you find out you're watching action movie but you dislike action movie. Of course there's no movie night, since you didn't confirm what movie you want to watch.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-01-17, 03:01 AM
I think making sure you're both on the same page as to the game's tone would have been an important step. I don't see anything inherently wrong with the way he played any of this, though, so long as he would have been willing to go along with anything you tried.

I think being a LG 1st level fighter doesn't mean you have to be suicidally brave and principled. You have to be willing to admit to the fact that you're a small fish right now. You have to be willing to approach problems cleverly. You have to be willing to take hits to your pride. Note, all of this is moot if the GM was just planning on railroading you, in which case all you can do is stop playing.

I'd suggest giving this another shot. This may well be the sort of game where you're remaking characters on a semi-regular basis until you find one that sticks. Consider even alternating DMs when a PC dies.

Vitruviansquid
2017-01-17, 03:15 AM
Really? You're meant to ask the GM whether the game he's about to run is going to be playable before you agree to participate?

Tengu_temp
2017-01-17, 03:43 AM
Really? You're meant to ask the GM whether the game he's about to run is going to be playable before you agree to participate?

You're meant to make sure you're both on the same page about what the game will be about. If the player expects a game about grand heroism, and the DM runs an opportunistic murderhobo campaign, then you have a problem. A problem that could be avoided if there was better communication before the whole thing started.

Vitruviansquid
2017-01-17, 03:48 AM
You're meant to make sure you're both on the same page about what the game will be about. If the player expects a game about grand heroism, and the DM runs an opportunistic murderhobo campaign, then you have a problem. A problem that could be avoided if there was better communication before the whole thing started.

I'm pretty sure it should go without saying that the player wants a game where he/she can do things like make decisions.

Fri
2017-01-17, 03:56 AM
I'm pretty sure it should go without saying that the player wants a game where he/she can do things like make decisions.

Let me point out just some part of differing premise the gm and player had in their mind here. Mind that, none of them are wrong, both can make good game, if both gm and player have the same idea.

1.GM thought a campaign where the player character would be fine with doing job for mob boss. Player made a character where it's unthinkable for him to doing job with mob boss.
2. GM thought a campaign where the player character is relatively weak in the world and it's normal for the player character to ask for help from the town guard. Player thought the town guard would be below him and asking for help from town guards is unheroic.

Lacco
2017-01-17, 04:08 AM
He has experience as a player, but no real experience as a GM.

Let's not miss this part.

I once persuaded 3 of my best players to GM one session. The best player came up with a story about dopplegangers, which would require huge amount of railroading ("then they go there and find this..."), centered on his DMPC (which was changed for a doppleganger, but we did not know it until we jumped through all hoops), had 0 decision points and he was very surprised when we unintentionally crashed by actually catching the doppleganger DMPC (which we were not supposed to do...).

The other players fared better, because I reviewed their prep material (they kept some spoilers to themselves, but presented the basic story), asked them questions, gave some advice and told them especially what not to do (second player originally had very similar plan - a underground boss gives the party a quest they would never accept - and they would attempt to kill the boss also; so we changed it and nice old man gave them the quest... and they found out he was secretly working for an underground boss...).

So, a good player does not necessarily make a good GM. I considered myself a good player, but when I started GMing, I was rather terrible. I had to work to become at least semi-competent.

My advice? Try again. Help him - show him where it went wrong. As Fri stated, he is most probably in the same state as you are - so try again, but this time work with the guy. Or switch the roles for one game, show him what to do (e.g. the pre-game talk about expectations, the character building where GM takes active part and asks about the possible story hooks...). And maybe ask him what game he wants to run, so you can make a character for that game.

kamikasei
2017-01-17, 04:09 AM
Your character was suicidally reckless. Your GM should probably have had the guards subdue rather than kill you, and contrived some way for the mob boss to compel your compliance (a geas, a threat to a loved one, etc.). Of course, you should both have been clearer on what kind of game you wanted to begin with.

Why did your character think it was better to say "you'll just have to kill me" rather than, say, taking the job and sabotaging the shipment? Working with the authorities to catch both gangs in a sting?

Why did the mob boss approach you if you were the type to completely reject a legitimate offer of work? Why would he try to force you into the job if you didn't want it? Why would he kill you for refusing rather than take measures to ensure you couldn't refuse? In short, how did your character end up in this situation to begin with?

NichG
2017-01-17, 04:27 AM
At the GM level (what he could have done):

Well, this was a sequence of mistakes. Your friend didn't adapt his ideas to an understanding of your character, much less spend any time feeling your character out or understanding what kinds of motives or behaviors you were going to exhibit. The result was a terribly mismatched plotline that he tried to brute force, and it broke.

He could have solved this by giving you a clue of what kind of scenario he was thinking of ahead of time, so you could have avoided making an LG character for this game. Since he didn't do that, it was on him to adapt the circumstances to you, which he also failed to do (though perhaps he didn't get the hint that you were reluctant so he thought it was going fine).

At a certain point, probably when you went to the mob lair, the game entered a dead end sequence. From there on, there was probably no way for both you and the GM to leave the situation without feeling that some kind of immersion-breaking thing had happened (or, here, a TPK). Basically, at that point he as a GM needed to be looking for outs, alternatives, or ways to minimize the compromise - but with the expectation that no matter what happened there would be some dissatisfaction with the session. Instead, he escalated under the mistaken impression that increasing pressure would increase compliance and force through the awkward scene (often new GMs think this works because it matches fiction, but it almost never works with players).

At that point, he was basically down to deus ex machinas to salvage the situation. The guards do nonlethal, you wake up in jail framed for a crime that was really committed by the mob, the game continues. You'd still likely be pissed off about the railroaded intro (but that was inevitable in some form at that point anyhow) but it'd be a clean slate and you'd have a couple good motives to pursue going forward. If your friend is a first time GM, having the flexibility to swing the intended plot 180 degrees and run something totally different on the fly may not be something he was capable of coming up with, but that kind of skill is what hopefully he'd eventually develop.

At the character level (what you could have done):

Ultimately, you pick your character, and not all character archetypes are equal. If you want to be able to salvage this kind of situation, you need to be ahead of the GM in terms of understanding what aspects of your chosen character might cause irreconcilable problems and take actions ahead of time to avoid going down dead-ends like this one. With a very strictly-defined character, this can become impossible. Sometimes the paladin has to nobly sacrifice themselves. Of course, here it happened 15 minutes in...

I tend towards playing very flexible characters because in part of the inevitability of situations like these. A rigid character has the problem that, going into a situation, their actions are already to a great degree decided, and everything that follows is an inevitability. Your character dying there was being very true to themself - their ideals were more valuable than their life and they stuck with that - but their personal truth wasn't one that could survive in that world.

A more flexible character could have played along then betrayed the mob boss, using the vulnerability created by the mob's reliance on them to make a move to wipe out the mob. But that means subsuming their expression of their ideals so as to better serve them in the long run (and of course this also runs the edge of ends vs means, etc). So, I tend towards flexible characters because that lets me pick up the slack if the GM writes himself into a corner or glitches out like this, and do what I need to do to make it work.

Satinavian
2017-01-17, 04:59 AM
Well, it was not a good hook for the character. That is a serious mistake and something DMs have to learn by adventures not played by their players.

Trying to use force to get someone into the adventure also is not a very good idea as characters and players will be not very motivated to actually fullfill the quest and will be motivated to somehow make the qustgiver pay for the pressure. It can be done and it can be good, butt most often it isn't.


Other than that i don't think the DM did anything wrong. In fact i would probably done the same. A mob boss does not do fair fights, dangerous criminals are often dangerous and starting a fight when the (more resourcefull and ruthless) opponent has a superior position is nothing but suicide. If a player things his character would sooner die than working for a criminal or even pretend to work for a criminal to sabotage him later, then so be it. It is his decision to make.
If i as DM know that i have such a character in a group, i would try to avoid situations where he will die if played consistantly with his ideals. But if i don't know it, well, too bad. I try to know the characters but if something like this happened at a convention or a spontanious game, i wouldn't save the character from his own death wish or stupidity.

Decisions are meaningful in games. Which means desastrous decisions must be allowed.

Darth Ultron
2017-01-17, 08:11 AM
The GM tells me that he made them as weak as he could, but if they were any lower level they would never have risen to the position of leadership over the gang. And he isn't wrong.

Further he tells me that just because I am running a solo game without a party he can't justify nerfing the entire world down to my level. And again, he isn't wrong.


Sounds wrong to me. You can have a weak leader ''chunky game mechanics wise'' and even more so ''combat wise''. For example Boss Hog could have been a 3rd level expert and the thugs 2nd level commoners.

But more to the point the DM was wrong having the Kingpin meet the 1st level character. See...The Kingpin does not meet nobodies, that is why he has a mob of underlings. So the PC should have been meeting with ''mob guy #7'', not the Kingpin (more like The Penguin in season one of Gotham).

So yes, a DM must ''nerf'' the world down to a PC's level. At most the PC should be meeting ''assistant under sub wanna be boss someday #7'', not the Kingpin of Crime at first level for any potential combat encounter.

Also ''high level mob guys'' can ''make mistakes'' to give a poor 1st level PC the advantage. The most common here is simple over confidence...where the mob guys attack one at a time...with their fists or such. They might also turn their backs or leave a weapon out and so on and so on.

And if the DM was stuck on ''the world must be high level and powerful'', that is when the DM also has the player have more then one character or starts at a higher level or gives the PC a powerful item and such.

And in general the ''forced game play'' where an NPC (aka DM) is a bad idea for a lot of groups and games. It can be fun....sometimes...but way too often it's just a bad way for one person to control another person for their own fun. And that is no fun for the person being controlled. And it's only worse when the character is weak and can't ''do'' anything about it. So, in a general sense, this type of game play should be avoided. After all for Boss Hog to bribe the character would be a much better way to go.......(in fact, to use Gotham, again, that storyline works great: have the bad guy and good guy team up for ''good'').

Grod_The_Giant
2017-01-17, 08:48 AM
It perhaps wasn't the best hook for your character, but... you DID draw on a crime boss, on his home turf, as a level 1 character. The consequences of that seem... fairly predictable. He said "I'll have revenge if you turn me down!" and you tried to skip straight to that climax. There were ample ways out without escalating the situation. I like to think that I'd have set things up in a different way, but I don't think I'd have had that be a winnable fight either.

ImNotTrevor
2017-01-17, 09:00 AM
This problem was, as most Talakeal problems are, a communication problem. (And, by extension, most problems at most tables are communication problems.)

I'm not gonna put blame on anyone in particular, either. Here are my suggestions for avoiding this breed of problem in the future (bearing in mind that some of these may or may not have happened, but I have no way of knowing):
1. Before building a character, talk to the GM about what kind of campaign they plan on having.

2. Players should build characters together, with the GM present. As a group, as much as possible. If you make Raznel the Barbarian who absolutely hates wizards and discover that the party also has Malcador The Inscrutable who is very proud of his wizardness then you have an immediate and glaring problem caused by lack of communication. Don't let that happen. Session 0 can be a great session.

3. There is no rule that says a player or GM can't pump the brakes on the action and say "woah, hold on, this doesn't seem to be the tone we agreed on/I planned for..." And there is also no rule that says after a mistake is made that isn't just a bad roll that the GM and player(s) can't agree on giving it a do-over now that we're clearer on some things and the person-to-person layer has been sorted out. (Especially a mistake like this. I would probably give my player a chance to reconfigure their thinking and then try it again)

GungHo
2017-01-17, 11:22 AM
What we've got here is a failure to communicate.

Talakeal
2017-01-17, 03:26 PM
The DM and I actually did talk about the campaign, a lot.

We just weren't quite on the same page; he was thinking The Godfather and I was thinking Yojimbo (Or For a Fistful of Dollars for you Americans, or Last Man Standing for you fans of 90s Bruce Willis).

In my mind part of the social contract is that the DM gives the PCs plot hooks. The PCs agree to find a justification for following the plot hooks, and the DM makes sure that the plot hooks lead to level appropriate challenges.

I was honestly expecting a choice as to whether or not I sided with or against the mob boss, and I expected that if I went against him he would be a bog standard "bandit captain" out of the monster manuals with common "bandits" for guards, a very tough but still winnable fight. That they would actually have PC levels, AND be several levels higher than me, caught me completely and utterly off guard.


Why did your character think it was better to say "you'll just have to kill me" rather than, say, taking the job and sabotaging the shipment? Working with the authorities to catch both gangs in a sting?

Honestly, that never occurred to me.

That doesn't really solve the problems, just delays them, and doesn't really get me anything. It just seems kind of bitchy and completely un-heroic.

kyoryu
2017-01-17, 03:37 PM
If I'm the GM, I'm the one saying "What the hell."

Or more specifically, how the heck you two are gaming without confirming what the premise of the game, which is already important in normal game, and even more so in solo game.

This. So much this. It's so much this, it's turned into a plural and is now "these".

Saying "Let's play D&D!" IS NOT ENOUGH. Ever. You need to figure out the basic concepts of what you're doing. Saying "let's play D&D!" is like saying "let's go see a movie!" without any further understanding, and then people don't understand why campaigns fall apart when one person is expecting Sleepless in Seattle and the other is expecting the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

ComaVision
2017-01-17, 03:46 PM
Honestly, that never occurred to me.

That doesn't really solve the problems, just delays them, and doesn't really get me anything. It just seems kind of bitchy and completely un-heroic.

If dying is "heroic" then I guess you succeeded in being a hero.

I don't think the DM did great here but you certainly could've not tried to get yourself immediately killed a little better. It actually sounds like you blatantly got your character killed. I'm pretty sure you'd die pretty quickly in one of my games too because threatening powerful people without any backup is just really, REALLY bad practice.

Talakeal
2017-01-17, 04:05 PM
If dying is "heroic" then I guess you succeeded in being a hero.

I don't think the DM did great here but you certainly could've not tried to get yourself immediately killed a little better. It actually sounds like you blatantly got your character killed. I'm pretty sure you'd die pretty quickly in one of my games too because threatening powerful people without any backup is just really, REALLY bad practice.

To be clear, he threatened me, I merely told him that if he was going to attack me he might as well get it over with.

But yeah, I had no idea that these guys were so powerful, I expected it to be a "level appropriate encounter".

Would you say the same thing if I had agreed to go on his job, and then the guys who were hijacking his shipment were also all fourth level?


If I had been playing intelligently or true to the character I would have simply left town as soon as I got the letter, I knew that no good could come of it, but I didn't want to give the DM too much of a headache on his first try and decided to go along with the plot instead.

ImNotTrevor
2017-01-17, 04:06 PM
Yeah, in a game like Apocalypse World or Dungeon World this whole thing would have ended very badly.

In the former, stuff WORSE than death would have happened. Granted, PCs are by default stronger than NPCs in that system, but really bad things would have come knocking even if you'd killed them all.
(The entire rest of the gang now hates you and wants you dead, for instance.)

It's also worth noting that talking about a campaign premise for a long time does not mean you've communicated well.
This is evidence of that.

BRC
2017-01-17, 04:21 PM
If your character balked at guarding contraband from a rival gang, then I'd say there was a pretty big miscommunication here. Like, as far as Shady Criminal Behavior goes, that's about as light as it gets, short of robin-hood style "Steal from the Rich to give to the Poor" type arrangements.

Unless the Contraband in question was something especially dangerous, and your character would rather see it destroyed?

Okay, breaking things down.

Failure Point #1: The Pre-Session Conversation. You wanted more of a "Fistful-of-Dollars" mercenary character, your GM assumed that meant you were down for being a criminal.
I can't place the blame on either side without getting more details, but either you didn't properly communicate that your character would not agree to helping criminals, or your GM didn't successfully communicate that his idea of "Mercenary Work" included working for Criminals. That said, I could see this mistake happening pretty easily.


Failure Point #2: The Plot Hook.
A GM should always be willing to throw away their plans, even if it means ending a session early. Considering this situation, once your character turned down the job, that should probably have been the end of it. While a Mob Boss making "An offer you can't refuse" is a classic, it only really makes sense where the service requested is one that the target is uniquely situated to provide. If he was just looking for some extra muscle, I don't think it makes sense for him to try to threaten you, unless you're the only swordsman in the city that he could hire.

Fault: GM. The correct move there is to say "Well, I have nothing else planned", end the session, and try again later. Threat makes no sense in this situation unless there is some context I am missing.

Failure Point #3: The Fight.
Just because it's POSSIBLE, doesn't mean the GM is required to make it a good idea. Had the GM done their job better, you wouldn't be in this situation, but you did directly challenge a mob boss and his goons to a fight under the assumption that, because they were there, you could take them.

Fault: Player. I'm going to side with the GM on this one, if a Mob Boss and his goons can get taken out by a lone 1st level character, they don't deserve their position in the underworld.


As I see it, the GM approached you with only one option: Take the Deal. You made a legitimate in-character decision, and rejected the deal. He then offered you a choice: Take the deal now, or suffer the Don's Wrath. You insisted on fighting the Don then and there.

Yes, the GM is obligated to give you appropriate encounters, but you passed up two options that could have led to appropriate encounters: Fighting the other gang, or dealing with whatever goons the don sends after you. The fight with the mob boss happened on your initiative, not the GM's.

ComaVision
2017-01-17, 04:26 PM
To be clear, he threatened me, I merely told him that if he was going to attack me he might as well get it over with.
Yeah, I got that he threatened you first, but I don't think, "Come at me bro" was a nonthreatening response.


But yeah, I had no idea that these guys were so powerful, I expected it to be a "level appropriate encounter".
I suppose I was unfair. It depends a lot on your group's culture and the game. In my groups, level 1s know they will not be able to challenge any faction leaders.


Would you say the same thing if I had agreed to go on his job, and then the guys who were hijacking his shipment were also all fourth level?
Probably not. I would expect an encounter he basically railroaded you to could be survived (whether by winning, escaping, or whatever).


If I had been playing intelligently or true to the character I would have simply left town as soon as I got the letter, I knew that no good could come of it, but I didn't want to give the DM too much of a headache on his first try and decided to go along with the plot instead.
That's a good intention but it makes me wonder why you didn't continue to adapt by not challenging the "quest giver".

kamikasei
2017-01-17, 04:32 PM
Honestly, that never occurred to me.

That doesn't really solve the problems, just delays them, and doesn't really get me anything. It just seems kind of bitchy and completely un-heroic.
...What problems doesn't it solve? You get to live, and you get to either screw over the criminal who strong-armed you, or actually bring him to justice, depending on what you and the authorities can come up with together. When someone you don't like threatens you to get you to do something you don't want to, one reaction is to tell them to get stuffed and deal with the consequences, but saying "yeah, sure" and making good use of the leverage they've now given you over them is perfectly heroic, and much more interesting.


To be clear, he threatened me, I merely told him that if he was going to attack me he might as well get it over with.
Calling a bluff only makes sense if you have reason to think the person's bluffing. And when dealing with someone like a crime boss, implying in front of their subordinates (or even just to them directly) that their threats are empty is a bad idea. At that point it becomes bad business and an affront to their pride to let you walk away.


But yeah, I had no idea that these guys were so powerful, I expected it to be a "level appropriate encounter".

Would you say the same thing if I had agreed to go on his job, and then the guys who were hijacking his shipment were also all fourth level?
Consider: the mob boss is hiring you to guard the shipment, so he expects you to be able to successfully defend it. He's allowing you in to a personal meeting with him, so he doesn't expect you to be able to defeat him and his guards.

It sounds like the core problem here is with this assumption that the DM will avoid throwing encounters at you above your level, which on one level is a reasonable assumption, but here is twisted into "I'm immune to getting myself into water too hot for me to handle" - you were level one, and these guys were only levels 3-4, quite low level in my book for an NPC of any importance or influence. The first suggestion I'd make is to be more cautious and more flexible in when you resort to violence, or urge potential enemies to do so, but the second would be to work with the DM to assess the threat posed by an NPC before deciding how to handle them - in character you should probably have had a good idea of how dangerous a fight you were getting yourself in to, which you as a player didn't seem to know.

Of course, since PCs are traditionally heedless of dangers to their own well-being, the proper thing for an NPC in this situation to do is to apply external leverage. A missed opportunity on the GM's part, there.

added:

I was honestly expecting a choice as to whether or not I sided with or against the mob boss, and I expected that if I went against him he would be a bog standard "bandit captain" out of the monster manuals with common "bandits" for guards, a very tough but still winnable fight. That they would actually have PC levels, AND be several levels higher than me, caught me completely and utterly off guard.
But it sounds like you got a choice; he said you'd "regret it", but that just means you have the plot complication of someone powerful being pissed with you, and possibly sending xp piñatas assassins after you down the line, or otherwise making your life complicated. You took "if you reject my offer, you'll regret it" and turned it into "fine, let's have it out right here and now", apparently expecting a duel? On top of the other problems with that, it's way out of line with what seems like a clearly set-up genre trope.

Tengu_temp
2017-01-17, 04:46 PM
Its logical, but, I don't know, going to the city guard and begging them to save you? That just seems so ignoble and, well, humiliating.

Aren't PCs supposed to be heroes?



That doesn't really solve the problems, just delays them, and doesn't really get me anything. It just seems kind of bitchy and completely un-heroic.

You're suicidally overconfident in the power of a single level 1 adventurer. If you want to play a powerful hero, ask the DM to let you start with a higher level character.

Also, frankly, this whole "looking for help is ignoble and everything but direct confrontation is unheroic" approach you have is a problem; an in-game one, and possibly a personal one.

Grod_The_Giant
2017-01-17, 06:21 PM
To be clear, he threatened me, I merely told him that if he was going to attack me he might as well get it over with.

But yeah, I had no idea that these guys were so powerful, I expected it to be a "level appropriate encounter".
I repeat, you were in a crime lord's place of power. Short of an explicit agreement with the DM, why on earth would you expect that?

Talakeal
2017-01-17, 06:39 PM
You're suicidally overconfident in the power of a single level 1 adventurer. If you want to play a powerful hero, ask the DM to let you start with a higher level character.

Also, frankly, this whole "looking for help is ignoble and everything but direct confrontation is unheroic" approach you have is a problem; an in-game one, and possibly a personal one.

When was the last time you saw an action movie where the protagonist went to the police and had them solve his problems for him? Sometimes they will go to the cops, find that the cops are corrupt / incompetent, and THEN handle the problem themselves (usually after their family was killed for a bit of cheap drama), but I can't think of any of the top of my head where going to the cops actually solves the problem.


I repeat, you were in a crime lord's place of power. Short of an explicit agreement with the DM, why on earth would you expect that?

Having bodyguards who are higher level than the boss is just weird, from both a gamist and a narrativist perspective. I can see having them be of a more martial class than the boss (even going so far as to make the boss an expert / aristocrat), but having the mooks be higher level than their master is just plain weird.



It sounds like the core problem here is with this assumption that the DM will avoid throwing encounters at you above your level, which on one level is a reasonable assumption, but here is twisted into "I'm immune to getting myself into water too hot for me to handle" - you were level one, and these guys were only levels 3-4, quite low level in my book for an NPC of any importance or influence. The first suggestion I'd make is to be more cautious and more flexible in when you resort to violence, or urge potential enemies to do so, but the second would be to work with the DM to assess the threat posed by an NPC before deciding how to handle them - in character you should probably have had a good idea of how dangerous a fight you were getting yourself in to, which you as a player didn't seem to know.

We are playing an e6 game, and when I DM I typically follow the Alexandrian guidelines:



So what have we learned so far? Almost everyone you have ever met is a 1st level character. The few exceptional people you’ve met are probably 2nd or 3rd level – they’re canny and experienced and can accomplish things that others find difficult or impossible.

If you know someone who’s 4th level, then you’re privileged to know one of the most talented people around: They’re a professional sports player. Or a brain surgeon. Or a rocket scientist.

If you know someone who’s 5th level, then you have the honor of knowing someone that will probably be written about in history books. Walter Payton. Michael Jordan. Albert Einstein. Isaac Newton. Miyamoto Musashi. William Shakespeare.

So when your D&D character hits 6th level, it means they’re literally superhuman: They are capable of achieving things that no human being has ever been capable of achieving. They have transcended the mortal plane and become a mythic hero.

So a level 4 fighter is someone who could, in my mind, be a member of a highly elite special forces unit in the payroll of a mighty emperor, earning fame and fortune in gladiatorial tournaments, or even becoming a minor warlord in their own right. IMO they aren't the kind of guys who hang around in a bar all day listening to some two-bit crime boss waiting for someone to start trouble.

Cluedrew
2017-01-17, 06:48 PM
Having bodyguards who are higher level than the boss is just weird, from both a gamist and a narrativist perspective. I can see having them be of a more martial class than the boss (even going so far as to make the boss an expert / aristocrat), but having the mooks be higher level than their master is just plain weird.Well in D&D level is very closely tied to combat strength and only very loosely tied to other types of power. The NPC classes go against this trend a bit but at the same time... I don't care what the boss's to-hit bonus is if he is not supposed to see combat. National leaders are probably level 1 as they have never seen combat.

kyoryu
2017-01-17, 06:50 PM
We are playing an e6 game, and when I DM I typically follow the Alexandrian guidelines:

I don't think those guidelines are anywhere near universal.

A lot of them were based on the idea "of course 3.x is realistic! Now let's back-calibrate everything appropriately to match expectations!"

kamikasei
2017-01-17, 07:08 PM
We are playing an e6 game
That's information that should be in the OP, as it changes the context a fair bit. I'd say running an E6 game with that interpretation of what levels mean is a bad idea for a first time GM, and my earlier advice about taking the measure of the people you're dealing with is doubly important here.


When was the last time you saw an action movie where the protagonist went to the police and had them solve his problems for him? Sometimes they will go to the cops, find that the cops are corrupt / incompetent, and THEN handle the problem themselves (usually after their family was killed for a bit of cheap drama), but I can't think of any of the top of my head where going to the cops actually solves the problem.
No, that's... okay, firstly, an RPG is not an action movie. Secondly, your character's behaviour should not be genre-savvy like that. Sure, there's a place for focusing on the approaches that fit the genre of the game you're playing, but assuming that there's no point dealing with the authorities - that's just making trouble for yourself. For one thing, if simply going to them would solve the problem completely, then how would this mob boss operate? It'd be reasonable to assume that any help they could offer would still involve heroic actions from your character - they demand a favour from you to help, or they want to use you to draw out the mob, etc. For another, if your LG character who wouldn't even think of getting mixed up with a criminal also won't even consider dealing with the guard, then the disconnect between you and your GM was larger than you realize.

edit: Also, hang on, no. This level thing is a red herring. If they had been the same level as you, and you're a lone character not in a party, then fighting 3-on-1 would still have been suicidally reckless (you describe it as "a very tough but still winnable fight", but IC it's a huge risk); chances are good you'd have died anyway. The problem is not that these enemies were tougher than you expected; the problem is that you escalated to immediate violence against the GM's expectations when it didn't make any sense to do so except on the assumption that any fight, including one you provoke for yourself, will be winnable.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-01-17, 07:20 PM
When was the last time you saw an action movie where the protagonist went to the police and had them solve his problems for him? Sometimes they will go to the cops, find that the cops are corrupt / incompetent, and THEN handle the problem themselves (usually after their family was killed for a bit of cheap drama), but I can't think of any of the top of my head where going to the cops actually solves the problem.

If you signed up for an action movie and the GM didn't then that's a source of your problems right there.

Arbane
2017-01-17, 08:26 PM
If you signed up for an action movie and the GM didn't then that's a source of your problems right there.

If you signed up for an action movie and you're playing a level one D&D scrub, that's also your problem right there. Try a different game where a beginning PC won't lose a fight with an angry housecat.

And solo games in D&D have a big glaring problem at any level - one blown save at the wrong time, and the game's over.

Fri
2017-01-17, 09:16 PM
On alexandrian guidelines:

1. It need to be taken with a lot grain of salt. It takes a whole lot of subjective assumption and RAW interpretation.

2. Even if it's taken in face value, in DnD, everyone being level one just means everyone including you can die in one hit. It might work better in other games, assuming level 1 are heroic fighters, where level 1 people can survive a house cat, but not in dnd.

Douglas
2017-01-17, 09:36 PM
A level 1 character is not an action movie hero, so how the plots of action movies go isn't really relevant. If you're playing a level 1 character, you're playing the rookie who might someday become an action movie hero, but he has to survive and learn first.

Lorsa
2017-01-18, 03:59 AM
This game broke down both at the player and the GM level.

Since you already started to discuss your various views on the situation, there is no reason the next one shouldn't be better.

What did you do for the rest of the evening? If it had been me, I would simply have tried again. Continue playing. Either same adventure, different character or same character, different adventure. Depending on who can change most easily.

Fri
2017-01-18, 04:10 AM
Yes. I need to reiterate that the game idea you have in your mind for your character could definitely work. But most likely not in default dnd. If you take the idea that everyone are level 1 in dnd, that doesn't mean everyone can be heroic fantasy character. It just means that everyone are squishy and can potentially be killed in one hit.

Misereor
2017-01-18, 07:23 AM
When was the last time you saw an action movie where the protagonist went to the police and had them solve his problems for him? Sometimes they will go to the cops, find that the cops are corrupt / incompetent, and THEN handle the problem themselves (usually after their family was killed for a bit of cheap drama), but I can't think of any of the top of my head where going to the cops actually solves the problem.

Second that. I tried it once, but the GM didn't appreciate me killing the cops' families.


And to adress the OP.
So? Think of it as a bit of pre-adventure drama to set the tone. Roll up another character and try again.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-18, 07:35 AM
If the OP is going to be doing a lot of solo play, might I recommend Scarlet Heroes (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/127180/Scarlet-Heroes?)? It's written for use with older versions of D&D but is specifically designed for one on one play. Plus, everything that Kevin Crawford puts out is absolutely top notch.

Darth Ultron
2017-01-18, 07:46 AM
If you signed up for an action movie and the GM didn't then that's a source of your problems right there.

Also note the type of action movie. A first level character is not ''James Bond'' or ''Borne'' or even ''John Mclaine'' , but more ''Paul Blat Mall Cop'' or ''Agent Cody Banks'' or ''Harry Potter (in book/movie 1). So again, the first level action hero does not meet the Kingpin of Crime.....he meets henchman number six or such.

The story should have been much more ''thug Joe'' who works for a boss under a boss under a boss for the big boss. Not the Big Boss.

Talakeal
2017-01-20, 11:07 PM
So, is D&D supposed to play out like a revenge fantasy? You start out small, weak, and bullied, but after a few sessions you are suddenly the biggest guys around and all but unstoppable.


Might this be the reason why so many PCs play violent sociopaths when they get to high level?

Darth Ultron
2017-01-20, 11:29 PM
So, is D&D supposed to play out like a revenge fantasy? You start out small, weak, and bullied, but after a few sessions you are suddenly the biggest guys around and all but unstoppable.


No? D&D metagame wise should not be a revenge fantasy. You can have such tings in the role play.

And you don't ''have'' to start out small. But if your character is small, the world around you must be small as well.

NichG
2017-01-20, 11:59 PM
So, is D&D supposed to play out like a revenge fantasy? You start out small, weak, and bullied, but after a few sessions you are suddenly the biggest guys around and all but unstoppable.

Might this be the reason why so many PCs play violent sociopaths when they get to high level?

I think thats more to do with the system encouraging the idea that success/failure = winning/losing a combat. If you win, that was the best possible outcome and it can't be considered bad for you. So if things are confusing or unclear or hard to interact with, the go-to solution is to identify someone involved with it and have a combat.

ImNotTrevor
2017-01-21, 07:59 AM
So, is D&D supposed to play out like a revenge fantasy? You start out small, weak, and bullied, but after a few sessions you are suddenly the biggest guys around and all but unstoppable.


Might this be the reason why so many PCs play violent sociopaths when they get to high level?

You seem somewhat salty about this. Correct me if I'm wrong, (and being salty is a 100% valid way to feel) but that's how this questio comes across, to me. Maybe it's because I'm slightly salty myself about wildly different things. (Like babies refusing to sleep and opting to scream all night instead)

D&D CAN be about revenge fantasy. If you want it to be.

But the problem here is that you and your DM did a lot of talking, but apparently little communicating. "Let's do a game about a mercenary wandering the countryside and taking jobs" tells me very little about what kind of game it is. Considering that Deadpool is one of the more famous mercenaries in media, and most other depictions of mercenaries in media are similarly amoral (Deathstroke, Deadshot, Boba Fett, Bane, Lobo, the list goes on).

The only group of fictional mercenaries I found to not be amoral (at least, of the ones I recognized) was the A team. And their inclusion on the list is questionable at best.

This is why you gotta talk about more than just the surface content. You have to say things like "I want to be a hero for hire, helping the everyman and keeping the innocent safe." That's a much more workable situation.

tensai_oni
2017-01-21, 08:32 AM
So, is D&D supposed to play out like a revenge fantasy? You start out small, weak, and bullied, but after a few sessions you are suddenly the biggest guys around and all but unstoppable.


Might this be the reason why so many PCs play violent sociopaths when they get to high level?

No.

Like others said, it can be a revenge fantasy, but doesn't have to be. And by default, it isn't.

Honestly, if you believe you should have an option to fight your way out of any encounter (including non-hostile encounters where you're not supposed to fight at all), and that it should always be a legit option in that you have a fair chance of winning and anything contrary to that means you are "small, weak and bullied", then the problem isn't with the game. The problem is with the player. What I am saying is, you need to adjust your attitude.

Satinavian
2017-01-21, 09:50 AM
There are many many many other kinds of stories with a martial protagonist who can't beat up everyone he meets and every group he meets all at once.
But usually those stories have the protagonist not starting impossible deadly fights from the get go. Even action hero characters usually have some sense of self preservation.


But there is a role that matches what your character did : the one of the annoying secondary character pissing off the big bad and getting stomped into the ground to show the viewers how dangerous the big bad actually is or how he fights.

Talakeal
2017-01-21, 02:38 PM
No.

Like others said, it can be a revenge fantasy, but doesn't have to be. And by default, it isn't.

Honestly, if you believe you should have an option to fight your way out of any encounter (including non-hostile encounters where you're not supposed to fight at all), and that it should always be a legit option in that you have a fair chance of winning and anything contrary to that means you are "small, weak and bullied", then the problem isn't with the game. The problem is with the player. What I am saying is, you need to adjust your attitude.

Why is that a problem attitude? Is Clint Eastwood really a "problem character" who has no place in fiction?

In the given situation it is literally being weak and bullied, people whom I have no chance to defeat call me in and threaten to kill me if I don't do their bitch-work. What else would you call that?


There are many many many other kinds of stories with a martial protagonist who can't beat up everyone he meets and every group he meets all at once.
But usually those stories have the protagonist not starting impossible deadly fights from the get go. Even action hero characters usually have some sense of self preservation.


But there is a role that matches what your character did : the one of the annoying secondary character pissing off the big bad and getting stomped into the ground to show the viewers how dangerous the big bad actually is or how he fights.

If the "big bad" was a level 3 rogue working as a small time crime boss than the campaign had some bigger issues. Its not like it was a dragon, or a demon, or a lich, or a dark lord, or a rampaging army of orcs. It was a middle aged man sitting behind the desk and two local street toughs, none of them with any visible weapons or armor.

Looking at the situation realistically, with no thought towards either narrative conventions or game mechanics, I think the fight could go either way. There are three of them, although due to the small room and the desk in the middle they can't all engage at once. My character has years of actual combat experience, has been trained by the best sword-masters money can buy, has exceptional natural ability scores, is covered head to toe in high quality arms and a full suit of armor, and initiated combat without any warning.




You seem somewhat salty about this. Correct me if I'm wrong, (and being salty is a 100% valid way to feel) but that's how this questio comes across, to me. Maybe it's because I'm slightly salty myself about wildly different things. (Like babies refusing to sleep and opting to scream all night instead)

D&D CAN be about revenge fantasy. If you want it to be.

But the problem here is that you and your DM did a lot of talking, but apparently little communicating. "Let's do a game about a mercenary wandering the countryside and taking jobs" tells me very little about what kind of game it is. Considering that Deadpool is one of the more famous mercenaries in media, and most other depictions of mercenaries in media are similarly amoral (Deathstroke, Deadshot, Boba Fett, Bane, Lobo, the list goes on).

The only group of fictional mercenaries I found to not be amoral (at least, of the ones I recognized) was the A team. And their inclusion on the list is questionable at best.

This is why you gotta talk about more than just the surface content. You have to say things like "I want to be a hero for hire, helping the everyman and keeping the innocent safe." That's a much more workable situation.

Yeah, I am kind of salty. The idea that the tone of the game should differ drastically based on level is, to me, pretty silly. If anything low levels should be easier as the players have yet to get comfortable with their character (and perhaps the game rules) and are still easing in to it. The idea that low levels should be a meat grinder where only the lucky and the paranoid survive might have worked in the old days when you rolled up a random character and dropped them into a dungeon, but now when I am spending hours upon hours detailing every aspect of the character it seems kind of stupid to kill them off before* the game begins.

But in this particular situation, what should have been communicated? Is it really that unusual to expect LG PCs to be able to fight back against evil people who threaten them? I gave the DM a full write-up of my character's background and personality; its not like I was acting in a surprising manner.

*Yeah, I actually died before the start of the game proper. For some reason the DM wanted to do a "flashback / prologue" to explain how my character got where they were.


edit: Also, hang on, no. This level thing is a red herring. If they had been the same level as you, and you're a lone character not in a party, then fighting 3-on-1 would still have been suicidally reckless (you describe it as "a very tough but still winnable fight", but IC it's a huge risk); chances are good you'd have died anyway. The problem is not that these enemies were tougher than you expected; the problem is that you escalated to immediate violence against the GM's expectations when it didn't make any sense to do so except on the assumption that any fight, including one you provoke for yourself, will be winnable.

I absolutely did not want to fight these guys; I took a good thirty minute break from the game trying to ponder if there was any way that I could avoid the fight. Honestly you are right though, it didn't matter if they were level one or one million, I didn't have any choice but to fight; I just assumed that the DM would at least throw me a bone and not force me into a unwinnable fight.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-21, 03:16 PM
In the given situation it is literally being weak and bullied, people whom I have no chance to defeat call me in and threaten to kill me if I don't do their bitch-work. What else would you call that?


<snip>

*Yeah, I actually died before the start of the game proper. For some reason the DM wanted to do a "flashback / prologue" to explain how my character got where they were.

I don't know . . . maybe a good backstory motivation to what your character is doing now?



I absolutely did not want to fight these guys; I took a good thirty minute break from the game trying to ponder if there was any way that I could avoid the fight. Honestly you are right though, it didn't matter if they were level one or one million, I didn't have any choice but to fight; I just assumed that the DM would at least throw me a bone and not force me into a unwinnable fight.

Then you shouldn't have. It's that simple, dude. It's like there's literally dozens of interesting things you could have done *besides* fighting, yet you're acting like the DM forced you into attacking. Heck, if this whole scenario is prologue, maybe it was the event that pushed your character into becoming the lawful good dude that he was conceived to be.

kamikasei
2017-01-21, 03:17 PM
So, is D&D supposed to play out like a revenge fantasy? You start out small, weak, and bullied, but after a few sessions you are suddenly the biggest guys around and all but unstoppable.

In the given situation it is literally being weak and bullied, people whom I have no chance to defeat call me in and threaten to kill me if I don't do their bitch-work. What else would you call that?
There's a lot to unpack here.

Firstly, you're already not playing D&D as it's "supposed" to be. The game you're describing changes a lot of the standard assumptions: solo instead of party play, E6 instead of a 1-20 level range, a premise that doesn't sound like it's about adventuring or dungeoneering... none of that is wrong, but all of it is something that isn't the game's default, and so requires some care in adapting the game to work for. So characterizing the comments you're getting on this fairly atypical setup as reflecting how D&D in general is "supposed" to play is a mistake, to start with.

But even setting that aside, the idea that people are telling you to play a "revenge fantasy" is a misreading of the thread. If I were playing in or running a game like you're describing, I'd certainly hope no one would feel "bullied". You'd be starting out as someone stronger than the average person, able to look after themselves better than most, but fully aware that the world is full of people and creatures that could squash you flat. You'd therefore be cautious and considered in pursuing your goals. You may have to absorb insults and indignities if you cross people who punch above your weight, but it's unlikely you'd be worrying about "revenge" once you get stronger. You'd have other problems by the time you could just roll back in and steal the high school jock's lunch money; rather than pursuing revenge once you're stronger, if someone incurs your wrath when you're low-level, you'd be more likely to use the resources available to you at the time to deal with the problem in some indirect way.

The kind of thing you're complaining about here is standard in a lot of fiction, such as noir - the put-upon main character being used by people with leverage over them. Most of those stories don't end in revenge, especially not "then I came back after a training montage and beat them up" revenge. Sometimes the main character manages to outwit the people pulling their strings. Sometimes karma catches up to them. Sometimes, the story ends with the MC simply walking away, their role in events complete and their character arc concluded.

In this case, I do think it was clumsily handled by your DM, but then again, he is brand new at the job. If a mob boss is going to call in (essentially) a mercenary who doesn't want to work for him, to do a job that it sounds like anyone with some combat ability could have done, that requires some justification: why does he want you, specifically to do this job? Why doesn't he get someone who'll actually be happy to do the work for the money? If there's some reason he absolutely must have you, then why wouldn't he work an angle? What sense does it make to hire someone who'll only work because you're threatening him? Why wouldn't he be prepared for you to fight, and have some way to subdue you and then compel your cooperation, if he really needed you to do the job? These are problems with the story, but characterizing it as bullying comes off as you distorting the situation into a shape that lets you justify being unreasonable in response.


My character has years of actual combat experience, has been trained by the best sword-masters money can buy, has exceptional natural ability scores, is covered head to toe in high quality arms and a full suit of armor, and initiated combat without any warning.
That does not sound like a first-level character to me. If that's what you want a first-level character to be, then you're probably using the wrong system.


I absolutely did not want to fight these guys; I took a good thirty minute break from the game trying to ponder if there was any way that I could avoid the fight. Honestly you are right though, it didn't matter if they were level one or one million, I didn't have any choice but to fight; I just assumed that the DM would at least throw me a bone and not force me into a unwinnable fight.
That's the opposite of what I said, though. In fact, it's really hard for me to believe you're sincerely offering this as an argument in good faith. You absolutely had a choice as to whether to fight. The DM didn't expect you to fight. Most people in this thread are telling you you shouldn't have fought. "If you don't do what I'm asking you'll be sorry" is not a direct, immediate threat which brooks no response but an immediate escalation to violence. You chose to escalate the situation. That was 100% a choice you made, that you didn't have to, and you need to own it.

If you took a thirty minute break from the game specifically to try to find a way not to fight and couldn't come up with "don't tell the guy 'hey, let's fight'", then yeah, this is an attitude problem. Your thinking is severely limited and you're constructing excuses to avoid introspection on the reasons why.

Thrudd
2017-01-21, 03:23 PM
This is clearly a situation of mismatched expectations. Neither party was entirely unreasonable, just not on the same page. However, I will say that for a lone 1st level D&D character, a "level appropriate challenge" is something like a single kobold. That is, assuming the rules are being followed, dice aren't being fudged, and the character isn't decked out with gear not normally possessed by 1st level characters.
He meant this to be the obvious "offer you can't refuse", you thought it was a scene to demonstrate your unwavering principles and how badass your character is. Woops.

Aside, D&D doesn't portray a wide variety of genre fiction. It is its own thing that only really does that one thing. It isn't an action movie simulator, that's for sure. It's a game of carefully planning, weighing choices, taking risks, living and dying by your wits and luck. Being outnumbered is always bad, that's why D&D generally works best with four or more PCs. A game has to be very carefully tailored if a lone, low level character is meant to survive for any amount of time, most of the challenges you normally find in D&D won't be appropriate.

If you're going to be a lone action hero in a D&D world, and you want it to play out like an action movie, I'd say you should start at level 10, facing challenges normally meant for a level 1 party of 4-6. I'd say an E6 world won't be a good choice for running that sort of game at all, since it's designed specifically to keep low level dangers dangerous for even the most powerful characters.

Talakeal, for your solo game you might want to try something like Fate or Feng Shui 2. Both are meant to simulate action movies, especially Feng Shui 2. It can easily work with a single PC rather than a party, and it's whole point is action heroes doing awesome stuff.

Grod_The_Giant
2017-01-21, 03:58 PM
Yeah, I am kind of salty. The idea that the tone of the game should differ drastically based on level is, to me, pretty silly.
Okay, I have to ask... have you played D&D, specifically, before? Because this basic idea is the fundamental core of the system-- it doesn't have to be a "violent revenge fantasy," but it is, almost by definition, a zero-to-hero game. You start off killing kobolds in a tunnel to save a few pesants, and end up killing demon lords in the Palace of Apocalypse to save the entire prime material plane. You should, theoretically, be faced with a similar amount of personal risk at all levels, with the main "training wheels" being a lower cost for failure.


Why is that a problem attitude? Is Clint Eastwood really a "problem character" who has no place in fiction?
While the Man with No Name is arguably an archtypical murderhobo, the key difference is that he's high level.


In the given situation it is literally being weak and bullied, people whom I have no chance to defeat call me in and threaten to kill me if I don't do their bitch-work. What else would you call that?
Noir?


Looking at the situation realistically, with no thought towards either narrative conventions or game mechanics, I think the fight could go either way. There are three of them, although due to the small room and the desk in the middle they can't all engage at once. My character has years of actual combat experience, has been trained by the best sword-masters money can buy, has exceptional natural ability scores, is covered head to toe in high quality arms and a full suit of armor, and initiated combat without any warning.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what those levels mean. Your level 1 character is not a veteran with years of experience and the best gear and training money can buy; those concepts are simply not supported by mechanics. You're only slightly better than the average recruit (a Warrior 1). Meanwhile, the mob boss and his enforces are; they have more levels than you, meaning a lot more experience with real violence and action. So narratively, it's more like... You're a guy who's had a few years of training and maybe a skirmish or two, verses a trio of hardened, bloody murderers who've schemed and killed their way to the top of the local dogpile and were confident enough to let a man with armor and weapons into their presence. You're practically within arms reach of all of them, and they're almost certainly on the alert for treachery because, you know, they're violent crooks and that's what they do. Now, admittedly, the DM could have communicated their toughness more clearly, but you were certainly taking a big risk.


But in this particular situation, what should have been communicated? Is it really that unusual to expect LG PCs to be able to fight back against evil people who threaten them? I gave the DM a full write-up of my character's background and personality; its not like I was acting in a surprising manner.
What should have been communicated is "you're not at the top of the pile; there are enemies out there much more dangerous than you, and you can't expect to win every fight." I would expect the encounter with a LG character to go something like:
"We want you to do this."
"Sorry, not my style."
"Do it or you'll be sorry."
"I reckon one of us will be." <Dramatic exit>

Especially if it's a prologue; sounds like the DM might have been trying to set up a future enemy.

Talakeal
2017-01-21, 04:14 PM
That's the opposite of what I said, though. In fact, it's really hard for me to believe you're sincerely offering this as an argument in good faith. You absolutely had a choice as to whether to fight. The DM didn't expect you to fight. Most people in this thread are telling you you shouldn't have fought. "If you don't do what I'm asking you'll be sorry" is not a direct, immediate threat which brooks no response but an immediate escalation to violence. You chose to escalate the situation. That was 100% a choice you made, that you didn't have to, and you need to own it.

If you took a thirty minute break from the game specifically to try to find a way not to fight and couldn't come up with "don't tell the guy 'hey, let's fight'", then yeah, this is an attitude problem. Your thinking is severely limited and you're constructing excuses to avoid introspection on the reasons why.

This is how I saw the situation:

My goals:

Not associate with criminals.
Not get anyone killed on my behalf.

So, the options I had:

A: Do what they say.
I am now helping evil people and proving to them that threatening me is the way to get my help.

B: Go run to the guards / team up with their enemies.
Aside from just being pathetic and humiliating, I am escalating the conflict and endangering people.

C: Refuse the offer.
Be attacked on his terms, and even if I survive since the boss won't put himself at risk I am just killing an endless wave of goons whom I have no grievance with.

D: Attack him directly.
As above, except that I am fighting him on my terms and can actually kill the guy giving the orders rather than flunkies.

E: Attack him indirectly.
This could work, although I am trained as a soldier not an assassin. But there is a lot of potential for escalation and collateral damage, and the idea of killing someone by poisoning their food or murdering them in their sleep just feels icky and un-fun to me.

F: Leave town.
This would be my first choice; but I knew that if I pulled this the GM would get mad at me OOC for ignoring his adventure hook, and it screws up the timeline as I am still in the town when the game starts. I was under the assumption that we were playing under what I thought was the default social contract of D&D: The players agree to be flexible enough to go on the adventure and the DM agrees to be flexible enough to have the adventure provide a "fair challenge".



This is clearly a situation of mismatched expectations. Neither party was entirely unreasonable, just not on the same page. However, I will say that for a lone 1st level D&D character, a "level appropriate challenge" is something like a single kobold. That is, assuming the rules are being followed, dice aren't being fudged, and the character isn't decked out with gear not normally possessed by 1st level characters.
He meant this to be the obvious "offer you can't refuse", you thought it was a scene to demonstrate your unwavering principles and how badass your character is. Woops.

Aside, D&D doesn't portray a wide variety of genre fiction. It is its own thing that only really does that one thing. It isn't an action movie simulator, that's for sure. It's a game of carefully planning, weighing choices, taking risks, living and dying by your wits and luck. Being outnumbered is always bad, that's why D&D generally works best with four or more PCs. A game has to be very carefully tailored if a lone, low level character is meant to survive for any amount of time, most of the challenges you normally find in D&D won't be appropriate.

If you're going to be a lone action hero in a D&D world, and you want it to play out like an action movie, I'd say you should start at level 10, facing challenges normally meant for a level 1 party of 4-6. I'd say an E6 world won't be a good choice for running that sort of game at all, since it's designed specifically to keep low level dangers dangerous for even the most powerful characters.

Talakeal, for your solo game you might want to try something like Fate or Feng Shui 2. Both are meant to simulate action movies, especially Feng Shui 2. It can easily work with a single PC rather than a party, and it's whole point is action heroes doing awesome stuff.

That's not what I want at all.

I don't want to play an invincible super-man, and I certainly don't want to emulate an action movie narrative.

RPGs for me are about character first; although fun tactical war-gamey combats are a nice diversion.

The games I run have always had the feel of a Conan story or a Spaghetti western, the characters are a bit larger than life but they aren't over the top gods of action.

kamikasei
2017-01-21, 05:11 PM
This is how I saw the situation:

My goals:

Not associate with criminals.
For the kind of game you were setting up, this is a pretty big stipulation. Was your DM aware of it?


B: Go run to the guards / team up with their enemies.
Aside from just being pathetic and humiliating, I am escalating the conflict and endangering people.
On the bolded part, there's no really gentle way to say this: get over it. This just makes you seem insecure and childish.

On the rest: that's not what "escalating the conflict" means. If IRL someone threatens to kill me and I go to the police, I haven't "escalated the conflict" more than if I attacked the person threatening me with a knife. As to "endangering people", frankly, that level of risk is unavoidable if you're doing any kind of adventuring.


C: Refuse the offer.
Be attacked on his terms, and even if I survive since the boss won't put himself at risk I am just killing an endless wave of goons whom I have no grievance with.[/quote]
If you're so determined not to get anyone killed, then work to talk the goons out of attacking you, or subdue them non-lethally.

That extends to the boss, by the way. You don't describe making any attempt to talk your way out of the situation, to imply that coercing you is more trouble than it's worth, that you have friends of your own who'll cause trouble if he messes with you... you went straight to attempted murder as your problem solving tool.

Overall, it sounds like you're holding your character to a very strict standard of behaviour that you don't actually have the strength, in character, to pull off. If you're going to refuse to have any dealings with criminals, and take on all kinds of indirect harm to others as your personal responsibility to prevent, and refuse to engage with lawful authorities or the politics of the underworld... you're most likely going to be dead before you do much adventuring, because you'll pick unnecessary fights and refuse to back down. Which is what happened!

It seems like you think a bunch of your choices here are just obvious common sense, but I'm telling you now that they're not, at all. If your character's going to be that uncompromising, you needed to communicate that much more clearly to the DM in advance, and the two of you needed to factor that in to your planning, both of where to take the game after it began, and how your character got to where they were. So starting out with you being pressured by a criminal wouldn't work, because you'd only accept an outcome where one of you died. No criminal would be likely to bother to pressure you, because you'd presumably have a reputation as a stubborn tool who didn't know what was good for him. All kinds of possible stories would be closed off, because you wouldn't, say, work with a jerk to stop a monster, or accept having to balance multiple undesirables to find the least bad outcome.


I was under the assumption that we were playing under what I thought was the default social contract of D&D: The players agree to be flexible enough to go on the adventure and the DM agrees to be flexible enough to have the adventure provide a "fair challenge".
This is not a card you get to play, here. Your flexibility extended to following the plot thread just enough to tie it in a knot. You chose to turn it in to a combat encounter that the DM hadn't intended; he wasn't then obligated to make that encounter easy.


That's not what I want at all.

I don't want to play an invincible super-man, and I certainly don't want to emulate an action movie narrative.

When was the last time you saw an action movie where the protagonist went to the police and had them solve his problems for him?
I'm beginning to see why your DM had difficulty understanding what you wanted out of the game. So far in this thread the impression you're giving me is that you'll contradict yourself freely rather than admit fault or error, which is anathema to clear communication.


The games I run have always had the feel of a Conan story or a Spaghetti western, the characters are a bit larger than life but they aren't over the top gods of action.
Conan is not a first level D&D character. I'm not any kind of expert on the spaghetti western genre, but I doubt most of its protagonists make sense as such, either. One thing that seems very clear in your muddled communication here is that you want to play characters who are more capable than the mechanics you're using represent.

Darth Ultron
2017-01-21, 06:08 PM
F: Leave town.
This would be my first choice; but I knew that if I pulled this the GM would get mad at me OOC for ignoring his adventure hook, and it screws up the timeline as I am still in the town when the game starts. I was under the assumption that we were playing under what I thought was the default social contract of D&D: The players agree to be flexible enough to go on the adventure and the DM agrees to be flexible enough to have the adventure provide a "fair challenge".


Now I'm a DM that never runs a game under any form of default social contract of D&D, especially one defined by others. I'm very clear about this up front and do have my own ''social contract'' for the players to follow.

And I get plenty of stranger players that lie an say ''ok'' when I tell them this, and then attempt to hide behind the wacky ''default social contract of D&D'' as defined by them. But I don't get ''mad'', as I knew it was coming. Maybe, they will get a warning though.



So, the options I had:



You might have missed a couple options:

G:Play along with the bad guys until you can figure a way out.

H:Change your character's personality. Sure you ''wanted'' to be a good guy, but how about just have your character ''snap'' and become evil. Even better ''fall toward evil and struggle to be good too''. You can get tons of good role play out of being the good guy in a mob, that has to be evil to fit in.

I.Double Agent. Go to the guards and offer to be an informant on the inside of the mob. Lots of role playing here

Zxky: Lets say you really, really, really must play the game in only the exact specified way you want to and you forgot to tell the DM beore the game started....well, no time like the present. Stand up, stop the game and say your mind.

Talakeal
2017-01-21, 06:09 PM
For the kind of game you were setting up, this is a pretty big stipulation. Was your DM aware of it?

Yes. Absolutely.


On the bolded part, there's no really gentle way to say this: get over it. This just makes you seem insecure and childish.

On the rest: that's not what "escalating the conflict" means. If IRL someone threatens to kill me and I go to the police, I haven't "escalated the conflict" more than if I attacked the person threatening me with a knife. As to "endangering people", frankly, that level of risk is unavoidable if you're doing any kind of adventuring.


Would you mind knocking off the name calling please?

For a regular person going to the police is reasonable. If your character concept is that you are a veteran warrior, experienced killer, and expert swordsman it really does kill the character concept if you need you to run and get help to deal with a couple of unarmed goons.

By escalating I mean involving more people. Right now it is just four people in the room; if we keep going for help it could easily turn into a squad of town militia raiding the gangs hideout and them calling in every thug and enforcer they can find to defend it.

Also, if he has fourth level bodyguards he should be able to make pretty short work of anything the town guards can throw against him.

As to the last part, what the heck? What sort of adventuring are you running where you are endangering your allies? I guess maybe if you are playing old school D&D where you bring a mob of expendable hirelings into the dungeon with you or pulling a Hobbit and riling up a slumbering dragon that you can't handle, but surely those are the exceptions rather than the norm? You really can't think of "any kind of adventuring" that doesn't pull random people into it and put them at risk?



If you're so determined not to get anyone killed, then work to talk the goons out of attacking you, or subdue them non-lethally.

That extends to the boss, by the way. You don't describe making any attempt to talk your way out of the situation, to imply that coercing you is more trouble than it's worth, that you have friends of your own who'll cause trouble if he messes with you... you went straight to attempted murder as your problem solving tool.

He already said that he would have me killed if I refused (and I had no reason to believe he was lying), so murder is already on the table.

Cha is my dump stat and I didn't put any skill points into social skills. I thought my chance of success was significantly higher in combat than in diplomacy.



Overall, it sounds like you're holding your character to a very strict standard of behaviour that you don't actually have the strength, in character, to pull off. If you're going to refuse to have any dealings with criminals, and take on all kinds of indirect harm to others as your personal responsibility to prevent, and refuse to engage with lawful authorities or the politics of the underworld... you're most likely going to be dead before you do much adventuring, because you'll pick unnecessary fights and refuse to back down. Which is what happened!

Been gaming for 25 years on both sides of the screen, never ran into this problem before. You can act like "having an overwhelming force of the opposite alignment bullies you into going on the adventure," is a normal everyday hazard for adventurers, but it was completely out of left field for me.

Also, I absolutely do not pick fights. Unless you think he was bluffing, which I saw no evidence of, he told me flat out that if I didn't work from him he would have me killed. Even in our modern society I am fairly certain that would qualify as self defense rather than picking a fight.


It seems like you think a bunch of your choices here are just obvious common sense, but I'm telling you now that they're not, at all. If your character's going to be that uncompromising, you needed to communicate that much more clearly to the DM in advance, and the two of you needed to factor that in to your planning, both of where to take the game after it began, and how your character got to where they were. So starting out with you being pressured by a criminal wouldn't work, because you'd only accept an outcome where one of you died. No criminal would be likely to bother to pressure you, because you'd presumably have a reputation as a stubborn tool who didn't know what was good for him. All kinds of possible stories would be closed off, because you wouldn't, say, work with a jerk to stop a monster, or accept having to balance multiple undesirables to find the least bad outcome.

The DM absolutely knew that was the type of character I was playing. We had a long conversation about it and I gave him a write-up of my character's personality and background before the game began.

And I was specifically trying to garner a reputation as a "stubborn tool who didn't know what was good for her," that is exactly why I didn't give in to their threats.

As for more complex plots, I am not opposed to them if they develop organically. This wasn't that situation.



This is not a card you get to play, here. Your flexibility extended to following the plot thread just enough to tie it in a knot. You chose to turn it in to a combat encounter that the DM hadn't intended; he wasn't then obligated to make that encounter easy.

Interesting. So you live in a black and white world where people are either all in or all out? They "don't get to play a card" if they go along with minor stuff but then back out when it gets too deep? If I agree not to tell me friends mom that they are smoking cigarettes in the school bathroom I also have keep my mouth shut when they confess to murder?

Why on Earth is the DM having the NPC threatening to kill my character if he doesn't want it to be a combat encounter? (The answer here, by the way, is blatant railroading. But that makes the DM look bad, so... I have no idea.)


I'm beginning to see why your DM had difficulty understanding what you wanted out of the game. So far in this thread the impression you're giving me is that you'll contradict yourself freely rather than admit fault or error, which is anathema to clear communication.

Again, please keep to a civil tone.

There is a world of difference between using an example of a character and wanting to emulate a genre. As we discussed in the "Narrative Causality" thread; you can have settings or characters independent of narrative. For example, look at First Blood or Gran Torino, movies about a stereotypical action movie protagonist in a movie that is certainly not your stereotypical action movie.

Likewise I want to play a character who is competent but not super-human. Beating up three thugs in a bar when you are armed and they aren't is not something I would blink an eye at if I heard about it in real life. On the other hand a level 10 D&D character shouldn't break a sweat fighting dozens of men in a pitched battle. Those are not the same thing.

There is no contradiction there.


Conan is not a first level D&D character. I'm not any kind of expert on the spaghetti western genre, but I doubt most of its protagonists make sense as such, either. One thing that seems very clear in your muddled communication here is that you want to play characters who are more capable than the mechanics you're using represent.

Again, not something that has ever been a problem before. The PHB makes it clear that anyone with levels in a PC class is a cut above the norm; point buy is significantly better than the standard array and they get maximum HP at first level for starters.

But really it doesn't matter what level I am, there is always a bigger fish.

If I was level 4 they could be level 12, if I was level 12 they could be level 20, if I was level 20 they could be level 30, if I was level 30 they could be gods, if I was a god they could be Pun-Pun.

If the DM is going to say "someone who is overwhelmingly powerful and of an opposite alignment to you tells you to work for them or die," you are going to have to either abandon your principles or die, regardless of what level you are at the time.


Okay, I have to ask... have you played D&D, specifically, before? Because this basic idea is the fundamental core of the system-- it doesn't have to be a "violent revenge fantasy," but it is, almost by definition, a zero-to-hero game. You start off killing kobolds in a tunnel to save a few pesants, and end up killing demon lords in the Palace of Apocalypse to save the entire prime material plane. You should, theoretically, be faced with a similar amount of personal risk at all levels, with the main "training wheels" being a lower cost for failure.


While the Man with No Name is arguably an archtypical murderhobo, the key difference is that he's high level.


Noir?


This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what those levels mean. Your level 1 character is not a veteran with years of experience and the best gear and training money can buy; those concepts are simply not supported by mechanics. You're only slightly better than the average recruit (a Warrior 1). Meanwhile, the mob boss and his enforces are; they have more levels than you, meaning a lot more experience with real violence and action. So narratively, it's more like... You're a guy who's had a few years of training and maybe a skirmish or two, verses a trio of hardened, bloody murderers who've schemed and killed their way to the top of the local dogpile and were confident enough to let a man with armor and weapons into their presence. You're practically within arms reach of all of them, and they're almost certainly on the alert for treachery because, you know, they're violent crooks and that's what they do. Now, admittedly, the DM could have communicated their toughness more clearly, but you were certainly taking a big risk.


What should have been communicated is "you're not at the top of the pile; there are enemies out there much more dangerous than you, and you can't expect to win every fight." I would expect the encounter with a LG character to go something like:
"We want you to do this."
"Sorry, not my style."
"Do it or you'll be sorry."
"I reckon one of us will be." <Dramatic exit>

Especially if it's a prologue; sounds like the DM might have been trying to set up a future enemy.

Yes, I have played D&D many times.

In general the world follows more or less the same progression; you start off facing weak enemies and then slowly work your way up to bigger enemies. There is no narrative reason why hired goons can't be first level NPCs, that's what the thugs and bandits in the MM are.

In my experience the DM does not send enemies at the PCs who are four times their level and three times their number against the party regardless of the party's size or level unless they are clumsily trying to railroad you or passive aggressively trying to tell you that they don't want to play anymore.

As I said above, it doesn't really matter what level I was at, there is always a bigger fish, and if the DM chooses to have that bigger fish come after you things can get dicey. The game doesn't matter either; I would have been just as screwed if we were playing Werewolf and I was up against 3 rank four Shadow Lords as a starting character.


H:Change your character's personality. Sure you ''wanted'' to be a good guy, but how about just have your character ''snap'' and become evil. Even better ''fall toward evil and struggle to be good too''. You can get tons of good role play out of being the good guy in a mob, that has to be evil to fit in.

Zxky: Lets say you really, really, really must play the game in only the exact specified way you want to and you forgot to tell the DM beore the game started....well, no time like the present. Stand up, stop the game and say your mind.

The game is over in either case. Frankly killing my character off at least ends it so I don't spend time and energy playing a game I don't want to play and then getting more and more frustrated.

I explicitly told the GM the character I wanted to play before the game started. I had a detailed personality and background laid out, everything up to having a floor plan of my home drawn out and a detailed inventory of all of my non adventuring possessions including furniture and clothing.

The DM created the game for my character, not the other way around. If he couldn't do that then he should have said something.

Thrudd
2017-01-21, 06:50 PM
That's not what I want at all.

I don't want to play an invincible super-man, and I certainly don't want to emulate an action movie narrative.

RPGs for me are about character first; although fun tactical war-gamey combats are a nice diversion.

The games I run have always had the feel of a Conan story or a Spaghetti western, the characters are a bit larger than life but they aren't over the top gods of action.

Forgive the assumption, but your statements about the type of movies you were expecting the game to emulate and this "When was the last time you saw an action movie where...", are what gave me that impression.

Also, Conan and spaghetti westerns are action movies. You're splitting hairs - those action movie systems don't have to be telling stories about invincible supermen, you can get hurt and killed in those games.

If you want a game and a character that's like a Conan movie or A Fistful of Dollars, you do want a movie-simulating game with an over-the top hero, just not quite as over-the-top as some. In "Fistful of Dollars", Clint Eastwood marches up, threatens and draws down on and kills four guys before any of them get off a shot. That's not a first level D&D character, in any representation of the rules.

I'm not saying you can't make D&D do what you want, with some tweaking. Or any game system, really. But when you say it's "character first", I would think that the primary rules content of D&D, which is combat of a more tactical than cinematic nature, doesn't really match that goal or expectation.

If you want a flexible, cinematic action game D6 system might catch that feel more, without having movie narrative structure baked into the rules. Maybe worth a look for your solo game. Although I know you weren't running this and you have your own system which I assume is tailored to run the sort of game you like.

I guess it's just what happens sometimes - as a player, the GM's idea of what the game should be doesn't always match yours.
You aren't unreasonable to want a game where you get to play as the badass action hero, but it's a bit unreasonable to think that would happen with a first level D&D character. He wasn't unreasonable to make the crime boss and his goons higher level than you - they didn't get into that position for no reason, and he didn't think you'd try to fight them alone. C'est la vie.

kamikasei
2017-01-21, 07:06 PM
Would you mind knocking off the name calling please?
...
Again, please keep to a civil tone.
Yeah, I'm done here. From your own description of the situation, I consider you to be the problem. You don't appear willing to hear that, and at this point I literally don't trust you to accurately report simple facts, so there's no point engaging with you further. I will just say:


He already said that he would have me killed if I refused (and I had no reason to believe he was lying), so murder is already on the table.
...
Unless you think he was bluffing, which I saw no evidence of, he told me flat out that if I didn't work from him he would have me killed. Even in our modern society I am fairly certain that would qualify as self defense rather than picking a fight.
...
Why on Earth is the DM having the NPC threatening to kill my character if he doesn't want it to be a combat encounter?
This is why I don't consider you a trustworthy source. In your own description of the exchange, the NPC did not "threaten to kill you". The idea that someone saying "if you don't do what I say, you'll be sorry" is legal grounds for you to use lethal force against them is waaaay off base and crosses the line from "attitude problems" to "you have serious misunderstandings about how the world works that may get you in trouble".


Interesting. So you live in a black and white world where people are either all in or all out? They "don't get to play a card" if they go along with minor stuff but then back out when it gets too deep? If I agree not to tell me friends mom that they are smoking cigarettes in the school bathroom I also have keep my mouth shut when they confess to murder?
And this. You don't get to complain about how inflexible the DM was when the entire story as you tell it is about your own inflexibility. You're really, really reaching in order to justify yourself in the face of entirely warranted (and frankly, fairly mild) criticism.

Talakeal
2017-01-21, 07:34 PM
Forgive the assumption, but your statements about the type of movies you were expecting the game to emulate and this "When was the last time you saw an action movie where...", are what gave me that impression.

Also, Conan and spaghetti westerns are action movies. You're splitting hairs - those action movie systems don't have to be telling stories about invincible supermen, you can get hurt and killed in those games.

If you want a game and a character that's like a Conan movie or A Fistful of Dollars, you do want a movie-simulating game with an over-the top hero, just not quite as over-the-top as some. In "Fistful of Dollars", Clint Eastwood marches up, threatens and draws down on and kills four guys before any of them get off a shot. That's not a first level D&D character, in any representation of the rules.

I'm not saying you can't make D&D do what you want, with some tweaking. Or any game system, really. But when you say it's "character first", I would think that the primary rules content of D&D, which is combat of a more tactical than cinematic nature, doesn't really match that goal or expectation.

If you want a flexible, cinematic action game D6 system might catch that feel more, without having movie narrative structure baked into the rules. Maybe worth a look for your solo game. Although I know you weren't running this and you have your own system which I assume is tailored to run the sort of game you like.

I guess it's just what happens sometimes - as a player, the GM's idea of what the game should be doesn't always match yours.
You aren't unreasonable to want a game where you get to play as the badass action hero, but it's a bit unreasonable to think that would happen with a first level D&D character. He wasn't unreasonable to make the crime boss and his goons higher level than you - they didn't get into that position for no reason, and he didn't think you'd try to fight them alone. C'est la vie.

We might be confusing terms here.

I don't like high level games and I don't like "narrativist" games.

I have never had any problem with low-mid level D&D giving me exactly the type of game I wanted.

I really don't think the game system is at fault; I am an experienced DM and a not so experienced player, the other guy is an experienced player and a not so experienced DM. We were both being precisely the wrong level of inflexible.

When I GM the players do random stupid stuff all the time. I have never ended the campaign over it. For example, the last game I ran involved the PCs massacring an entire town for, as far as I can tell, absolutely no reason. Now, it would be easy for me to justify ending the campaign by having an overwhelming force brought down on them to punish them for their crimes, but as that wouldn't be fun for anybody I am not, I am going to have the ramifications by an appropriately challenged adventure, and as I hold all the cards I can easily justify that response as well.


Honestly the hardest part about the whole thing is ignoring the impulse to take revenge on him the next time I am behind the screen. I wouldn't do it of course, but I am really tempted to have the consequences for stepping off the rails be a lethal fight with a force three times the party's size and four times their level.



Yeah, I'm done here.

Probably for the best. If someone thinks that a problem is 100% someone one person's fault or can't bring themselves to act as if the person they are talking to is capable of basic honesty there really isn't much point to trying to have a reasonable discussion.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-01-21, 07:41 PM
"The party must only encounter level appropriate things" is not a rule of D&D. It's a style of gameplay that fits some people. I, for one, would find that style of gameplay terribly boring. I prefer that some problems require clever solutions and outside the box thinking instead of constantly applying direct violence to it. I'm giving the DM the benefit of the doubt in saying that this relates to what he did instead of it being a clumsy railroading attempt.

What you should have discussed was if it was the kind of game where the DM lobs level appropriate encounters at you and you smack them out of the park, or if it's the kind of game where you have to pick and choose your battles carefully. The blame for not doing that is on both of you.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-21, 07:53 PM
<snip>
The game is over in either case. Frankly killing my character off at least ends it so I don't spend time and energy playing a game I don't want to play and then getting more and more frustrated.

I explicitly told the GM the character I wanted to play before the game started. I had a detailed personality and background laid out, everything up to having a floor plan of my home drawn out and a detailed inventory of all of my non adventuring possessions including furniture and clothing.

The DM created the game for my character, not the other way around. If he couldn't do that then he should have said something.

Aight, I think that bolded bit is super important, and frankly raises a bunch of red flags for me. If a player came to me with that level of detail, asking me to run a game for them, I would tell them flat out "no". There's no way any person that's not you can hew to the story you've already created for your character.

In my opinion you'd be better off writing a novel about that character, not playing him in a game of D&D.

Deophaun
2017-01-21, 08:03 PM
Okay, I have to ask... have you played D&D, specifically, before? Because this basic idea is the fundamental core of the system-- it doesn't have to be a "violent revenge fantasy," but it is, almost by definition, a zero-to-hero game.
4e can actually start you out as the BDH at level 1, as PCs clearly play by different rules than everyone else and have better survivability out of the gate. I believe the OP's assumption that you are a blooded veteran is stated to be a core assumption of the system.

Talakeal
2017-01-21, 08:39 PM
Aight, I think that bolded bit is super important, and frankly raises a bunch of red flags for me. If a player came to me with that level of detail, asking me to run a game for them, I would tell them flat out "no". There's no way any person that's not you can hew to the story you've already created for your character.

In my opinion you'd be better off writing a novel about that character, not playing him in a game of D&D.

Different styles I suppose. I always put a lot of effort and detail into my characters. This doesn't seem too unusual, all of the players in the last group I was in had similar levels of detail.

Also, writing a novel and playing an RPG are almost completely different experiences, writing doesn't really satisfy and of the itches that gaming does.

I have to say this is the first time I can recall someone complaining that a PC has too much detail or that one of the players should just go home and write a novel.


"The party must only encounter level appropriate things" is not a rule of D&D. It's a style of gameplay that fits some people. I, for one, would find that style of gameplay terribly boring. I prefer that some problems require clever solutions and outside the box thinking instead of constantly applying direct violence to it. I'm giving the DM the benefit of the doubt in saying that this relates to what he did instead of it being a clumsy railroading attempt.

What you should have discussed was if it was the kind of game where the DM lobs level appropriate encounters at you and you smack them out of the park, or if it's the kind of game where you have to pick and choose your battles carefully. The blame for not doing that is on both of you.

Don't go too far; winnable is not the same thing as easy.

I am sure if you asked my players they wouldn't consider me a pushover, I have "tucker's kobolded" them more than a few times and been called a cheater and a killer DM more times than I can count.

halfeye
2017-01-21, 09:39 PM
The games I run have always had the feel of a Conan story or a Spaghetti western, the characters are a bit larger than life but they aren't over the top gods of action.

You are having a giraffe!

Conan is totally an over the top god of action.

The man with no name is totally an over the top god of action.

Trinity is named for a god and plays the part.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-21, 10:54 PM
Different styles I suppose. I always put a lot of effort and detail into my characters. This doesn't seem too unusual, all of the players in the last group I was in had similar levels of detail.

Also, writing a novel and playing an RPG are almost completely different experiences, writing doesn't really satisfy and of the itches that gaming does.

I have to say this is the first time I can recall someone complaining that a PC has too much detail or that one of the players should just go home and write a novel.

I encourage my players to keep their backstory to one hundred words or less. I believe that the story is what emerges through play, not what you plan in advance. Perhaps if you look at your recent experience through that lens you might realize what actually happened with your game.

Thrudd
2017-01-21, 10:57 PM
We might be confusing terms here.

I don't like high level games and I don't like "narrativist" games.

I have never had any problem with low-mid level D&D giving me exactly the type of game I wanted.

I really don't think the game system is at fault; I am an experienced DM and a not so experienced player, the other guy is an experienced player and a not so experienced DM. We were both being precisely the wrong level of inflexible.

When I GM the players do random stupid stuff all the time. I have never ended the campaign over it. For example, the last game I ran involved the PCs massacring an entire town for, as far as I can tell, absolutely no reason. Now, it would be easy for me to justify ending the campaign by having an overwhelming force brought down on them to punish them for their crimes, but as that wouldn't be fun for anybody I am not, I am going to have the ramifications by an appropriately challenged adventure, and as I hold all the cards I can easily justify that response as well.



You must run D&D way differently from me. Of course, I've never played or ran 4e and I know that's an outlier to the other versions in many ways. But a lone first level character would have a very hard/impossible time surviving a straight up fight against three or four opponents, even if it was goblins or level 0 bandits.

I don't take "revenge" on my players or "punish" them, but if they get themselves into an unwinnable situation, they probably aren't going to win. In D&D, characters die if they screw up, or even just because of bad luck sometimes. They can roll up new characters or get resurrected. Played by the rules, I just don't see a first level D&D party coming off like action movie heroes. It's more survival/horror. Of course, house rules and rule/dice fudging can make anything possible, but that is the case with any system. So it isn't really the system which is able to give you the game you want, but the GM rigging the game to get the game he/she wants.

Talakeal
2017-01-22, 03:38 AM
So I just had a conversation with the DM in question. He confirmed that yes, while the NPC never used the words "I am going to murder you," he nakedly implied that he would have me killed if I turned down his offer. I asked the DM what he intended to happen, and he said that if I chose not to side with him he would, through a proxy, continually send level appropriate assassins after me who would level me up, and once I was stronger I would return and finish him off.

So, my assumptions weren't too far off base; he was going to send assassins to kill me and I would have to kill him to make them stop, I just failed to take into account that the assassins would be level appropriate foes while the mob boss wasn't (yet).


You are having a giraffe!

Conan is totally an over the top god of action.

The man with no name is totally an over the top god of action.

Trinity is named for a god and plays the part.

Degrees of success. Conan and the Man with No Name are certainly super competent, but they are still fundamentally human, and calling them "gods" is a bit of illustrative hyperbole. A level 10+ D&D character, on the other hand, is something else entirely.


I encourage my players to keep their backstory to one hundred words or less. I believe that the story is what emerges through play, not what you plan in advance. Perhaps if you look at your recent experience through that lens you might realize what actually happened with your game.

Which is?

Kind of confused by what you mean here, it seems like you are getting at something but I can't tell what it is. I think it might have helped if you had exceeded your own 100 word limit on post size. :smallbiggrin:

AFAICT the problem is inflexibility on both of our parts, and while there is certainly some correlation on the amount of character detail and how flexible they are, it is by no means a 1 to 1 thing. I can easily make a rigid and inflexible character with less than 100 words, heck the simple alignment, bond, ideal, and flaw that 5e requires from characters gave me more than enough rope to hang myself with, as none of my character's traits aside from these actually contributed to my demise.

Now, when you say a 100 word limit, are you strictly talking about backstory, or are you talking about all "character fluff"? If it is the latter, how do you stop players from further flushing out their characters?

If you could please elaborate I would love to hear it (not sarcasm). Because I really don't know how fleshing out my character's day job, or friends, or hairstyle, or how many changes of clothes she has in her closet has anything to do with how the story develops.

When you say "plan in advance," I think you might be reading more into what I said than I meant; I don't have any long term goals for my character or plans for the future.


You must run D&D way differently from me. Of course, I've never played or ran 4e and I know that's an outlier to the other versions in many ways. But a lone first level character would have a very hard/impossible time surviving a straight up fight against three or four opponents, even if it was goblins or level 0 bandits.

I don't take "revenge" on my players or "punish" them, but if they get themselves into an unwinnable situation, they probably aren't going to win. In D&D, characters die if they screw up, or even just because of bad luck sometimes. They can roll up new characters or get resurrected. Played by the rules, I just don't see a first level D&D party coming off like action movie heroes. It's more survival/horror. Of course, house rules and rule/dice fudging can make anything possible, but that is the case with any system. So it isn't really the system which is able to give you the game you want, but the GM rigging the game to get the game he/she wants.

I play by the rules and don't fudge dice. If anything I am a bit too inflexible on that front.

However, I suppose I do rig the game to get the outcome I want; when I am planning out the world I look at all plausible outcomes and choose the one that I think will be the most fun.

For example, in the original scenario it is plausible that the hired goons be virtually any level (although in my mind the higher level the less plausible it gets) so from the plausible possibilities I would choose the level range which is most likely to give the players a good challenge; not so low that they are a mere annoyance, but not so high that they are likely to bring the campaign to a sudden and pointless end.

Also, I don't think D&D is as hard as you are making it out to be. I mean sure, bad rolls are bad rolls, but I don't think many first level characters are going to have an impossible time against 3 1hd monsters; although low levels are pretty swingy and mages / rogues can die pretty quick if the monsters get the drop on them.

I really wish I could find that graph which compares character power over the course of the editions by how many orcs a first level fighter can take down. Anyone know what I am talking about?

jayem
2017-01-22, 08:26 AM
So, is D&D supposed to play out like a revenge fantasy? You start out small, weak, and bullied, but after a few sessions you are suddenly the biggest guys around and all but unstoppable.

Might this be the reason why so many PCs play violent sociopaths when they get to high level?

That's a symptom of violence/combat being the key written resolution factor and obstacle. Combined with the need for most stories to have something overcome, and to cover character improvements*.

If the games focused on musical ability as much as it did in combat, then you'd start of out-of-tune** and watching MTV, but after an appropriate number of sessions you'd have grown to be the biggest guys around and performing on MTV. Sound of Music the RPG.
If the games focused on climbing ability as much as it did in combat, then you'd start of low, weak, but after a few sessions you'd have grown to be on top of the world.
If the games focused on knowledge as much as it did in combat, then you'd start of with a lot to learn from University Professors but after a few sessions you'd have grown to be giving lectures to the Professors.


(The other obvious difference with a film, is that in most films you're seeing the game where the critical dice fell in the PC's favour (and where the GM's judgements likewise). The film where the A-team bad guys got lucky with their aim (and didn't target a bulletproof vest) isn't made, and would be as short as the game.

* You do have euthanasia stories, where the character starts strong and gets overwhelmed (but that would be a different feel), and no-growth stories like the A-Team (but even that's really a revenge fantasy, only with gaining a +50 homebuilt tank for the second act after being defeated in the first, rather than getting stronger) or the Man with no name (where he starts out a sociopath, and doesn't just charge against the families)
** Well, a level 1 character, so you'd perhaps be in a generic choir or non-charting band. But the point here was the lack of revenge.

Amphetryon
2017-01-22, 10:07 AM
D&D CAN be about revenge fantasy. If you want it to be.

But the problem here is that you and your DM did a lot of talking, but apparently little communicating. "Let's do a game about a mercenary wandering the countryside and taking jobs" tells me very little about what kind of game it is. Considering that Deadpool is one of the more famous mercenaries in media, and most other depictions of mercenaries in media are similarly amoral (Deathstroke, Deadshot, Boba Fett, Bane, Lobo, the list goes on).

The only group of fictional mercenaries I found to not be amoral (at least, of the ones I recognized) was the A team. And their inclusion on the list is questionable at best.

This is why you gotta talk about more than just the surface content. You have to say things like "I want to be a hero for hire, helping the everyman and keeping the innocent safe." That's a much more workable situation.

I know of one TV/movie-based Character who roughly fits the archetype the OP appears to be after: Robert McCall, in the 80s series 'The Equalizer.' (Apparently there was also a movie). Note, however, that he was a retired espionage agent, so pretty far removed from any 1st-level Character in any iteration of D&D that I know. If the OP set out with this sort of archetype in mind - and from my reading of the thread, he did - he was not designing a 1st-level Character. It is little wonder, to my mind, that this disconnect in expectations created a dissonant play experience for both the OP and his DM.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-22, 11:31 AM
So I just had a conversation with the DM in question. He confirmed that yes, while the NPC never used the words "I am going to murder you," he nakedly implied that he would have me killed if I turned down his offer. I asked the DM what he intended to happen, and he said that if I chose not to side with him he would, through a proxy, continually send level appropriate assassins after me who would level me up, and once I was stronger I would return and finish him off.

So, my assumptions weren't too far off base; he was going to send assassins to kill me and I would have to kill him to make them stop, I just failed to take into account that the assassins would be level appropriate foes while the mob boss wasn't (yet).



Degrees of success. Conan and the Man with No Name are certainly super competent, but they are still fundamentally human, and calling them "gods" is a bit of illustrative hyperbole. A level 10+ D&D character, on the other hand, is something else entirely.



Which is?

Kind of confused by what you mean here, it seems like you are getting at something but I can't tell what it is. I think it might have helped if you had exceeded your own 100 word limit on post size. :smallbiggrin:

AFAICT the problem is inflexibility on both of our parts, and while there is certainly some correlation on the amount of character detail and how flexible they are, it is by no means a 1 to 1 thing. I can easily make a rigid and inflexible character with less than 100 words, heck the simple alignment, bond, ideal, and flaw that 5e requires from characters gave me more than enough rope to hang myself with, as none of my character's traits aside from these actually contributed to my demise.

Now, when you say a 100 word limit, are you strictly talking about backstory, or are you talking about all "character fluff"? If it is the latter, how do you stop players from further flushing out their characters?

If you could please elaborate I would love to hear it (not sarcasm). Because I really don't know how fleshing out my character's day job, or friends, or hairstyle, or how many changes of clothes she has in her closet has anything to do with how the story develops.

When you say "plan in advance," I think you might be reading more into what I said than I meant; I don't have any long term goals for my character or plans for the future.



I play by the rules and don't fudge dice. If anything I am a bit too inflexible on that front.

However, I suppose I do rig the game to get the outcome I want; when I am planning out the world I look at all plausible outcomes and choose the one that I think will be the most fun.

For example, in the original scenario it is plausible that the hired goons be virtually any level (although in my mind the higher level the less plausible it gets) so from the plausible possibilities I would choose the level range which is most likely to give the players a good challenge; not so low that they are a mere annoyance, but not so high that they are likely to bring the campaign to a sudden and pointless end.

Also, I don't think D&D is as hard as you are making it out to be. I mean sure, bad rolls are bad rolls, but I don't think many first level characters are going to have an impossible time against 3 1hd monsters; although low levels are pretty swingy and mages / rogues can die pretty quick if the monsters get the drop on them.

I really wish I could find that graph which compares character power over the course of the editions by how many orcs a first level fighter can take down. Anyone know what I am talking about?

So, here's the deal, dude: you post something on an internet elf-game forum expecting to get a bunch of people clucking sympathetically and telling you how awful your DM was for killing your character. Instead, at best, you get a large number of people telling you that it sounds like a failure to communicate expectations on both parts, and at worst there's an equally large number of people saying that your character kinda got what he deserved. Despite this you do the internet equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears, shouting lalalalala and doubling down on your original thesis, despite overwhelming opinions to the contrary.

Here's kinda what I think should be your take away from what people have said here:

*E6 D&D -- and indeed, most versions of D&D -- are probably not that well suited to solo play. People have suggested other types of games that might be better suited to the style of play you'd like.

*Combat is not always the answer. Sometimes you're going to find yourself in situations where you've got to do something other than fight.

*Communication of expectations is pretty critical. At best it sounds like you and your DM were on different pages regarding this.

Talakeal
2017-01-22, 01:48 PM
I know of one TV/movie-based Character who roughly fits the archetype the OP appears to be after: Robert McCall, in the 80s series 'The Equalizer.' (Apparently there was also a movie). Note, however, that he was a retired espionage agent, so pretty far removed from any 1st-level Character in any iteration of D&D that I know. If the OP set out with this sort of archetype in mind - and from my reading of the thread, he did - he was not designing a 1st-level Character. It is little wonder, to my mind, that this disconnect in expectations created a dissonant play experience for both the OP and his DM.

I haven't seen the TV series, but I have seen the Denzel Washington movie and that is almost exactly what I was going for.

Admittedly though, he is quite a bit older and more experienced than my character. I assumed we would be starting with local street thugs and working my way up to the elite Russian kill squad though.


So, here's the deal, dude: you post something on an internet elf-game forum expecting to get a bunch of people clucking sympathetically and telling you how awful your DM was for killing your character. Instead, at best, you get a large number of people telling you that it sounds like a failure to communicate expectations on both parts, and at worst there's an equally large number of people saying that your character kinda got what he deserved. Despite this you do the internet equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears, shouting lalalalala and doubling down on your original thesis, despite overwhelming opinions to the contrary.

Here's kinda what I think should be your take away from what people have said here:

*E6 D&D -- and indeed, most versions of D&D -- are probably not that well suited to solo play. People have suggested other types of games that might be better suited to the style of play you'd like.

*Combat is not always the answer. Sometimes you're going to find yourself in situations where you've got to do something other than fight.

*Communication of expectations is pretty critical. At best it sounds like you and your DM were on different pages regarding this.

As I said in my OP, neither myself nor my DM were entirely right or wrong. And I said I didn't know what I expected from the thread, mostly just looking for a place to vent, but the internet is not a good place for garnering sympathy. Admittedly I am not a big fan of name calling or people insinuating that I am a liar, but its ok to disagree with me.

Personally I think the problem is inflexibility; I wasn't willing to distort my character concept to match the DM's plot and the DM wasn't willing to have swap up the order of the plot so that the "mid-boss" could be taken out early. As I said in my OP, I don't think either of us was exactly wrong or clearly in the right.

I am really am curious though, about what you mean by communication. Earlier you said it was having too much character description that is the problem, so it apparently isn't that sort of communication. What type of communication do you mean? Serious question, not trying to trick you are something so I can argue, genuinely curious about what form this communication should have taken, especially in the light that you think I already gave too much information about the things that I consider relevant.

Thrudd
2017-01-22, 03:29 PM
This has been brought up before, but I think there might be a disconnect between "character concept" and how the game actually works. Your character concept was that of a veteran who would be superior to most ordinary "street goons" he runs into. However, you also knew you were playing D&D with a first level character. So, you maybe expected that the DM would mold the world to match your expectation for how the character should perform - if your character has +1 to combat and 10 hp, then the average bad guys you should face, in order to feel appropriately skilled relative to them according to your concept, would need to have 1 or 2 hp and like -3 in combat and deal maybe 1-2 damage per attack. But, as a long time DM, you surely knew that the most common low level enemies are not generally that weak, at least according to the books. A 1st level fighter has only a marginal advantage over the lowest level NPCs and monsters. Is that how you make your low level games operate the way you like, by adjusting the stats of the world around the characters to make sure they are always sufficiently superior? Not saying that is wrong, but it would be one reason why people like me are confused about how this solo character was expected to work out. If I went into a solo game with a 1st level character, I would be paranoid as all hell, regardless of my stats or class or background.


It seems like it might have made more sense if you asked your friend to start the game as a higher level character, because A.) you're going to be solo and a 1st level character is extremely fragile, and B.) your concept implies a character that has more skill than a 1st level character has.

Is it right for players to expect a GM to manipulate and adjust the game world, and possibly even the game rules, in order too accommodate their character concept? I don't think this would be something you can expect automatically. It requires discussion and agreement beforehand. More likely, the GM has a game they want to run (since that is generally much more work than creating a single character), and the players need to adjust their expectations to fit the rules and the world the GM is presenting to them. This issue is complicated by the fact that not all players and GMs have strong understanding of the game rules or how various changes and concepts will interact and affect the overall experience. So a request might be granted without understanding that the result isn't going to be what anyone really wanted. That's just experience.

Also, after playing with one GM for a long time, you may be used to certain house rules or homebrew expectations and get surprised when you join a new group or someone new becomes GM and they don't have those expectations. I think that's a common thing. I've heard many people talk about D&D, or other systems, explaining "what the game is like" and what they expect from it, not realizing that most of what they describe has nothing to do with the actual game system and is mostly derived from the unique way their group interprets and adjusts the rules.

The only way we can meaningfully talk about "what a system can/can't do" is to talk about the rules as written - that's the actual system. This is where disagreements show up. For games like D&D, the rules as written have been abandoned so long ago by so many groups that a lot of people don't even know what the actual game is like, and might not even realize that. That is not a judgment of the game or the practice of changing it, just an observation. Since we all house rule and change things to different degrees, we are usually, in effect, talking about completely different game systems with similar mechanics. Like nearly but not-quite fully intelligible dialects of a language family.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-22, 03:37 PM
I haven't seen the TV series, but I have seen the Denzel Washington movie and that is almost exactly what I was going for.

Admittedly though, he is quite a bit older and more experienced than my character. I assumed we would be starting with local street thugs and working my way up to the elite Russian kill squad though.



As I said in my OP, neither myself nor my DM were entirely right or wrong. And I said I didn't know what I expected from the thread, mostly just looking for a place to vent, but the internet is not a good place for garnering sympathy. Admittedly I am not a big fan of name calling or people insinuating that I am a liar, but its ok to disagree with me.

Personally I think the problem is inflexibility; I wasn't willing to distort my character concept to match the DM's plot and the DM wasn't willing to have swap up the order of the plot so that the "mid-boss" could be taken out early. As I said in my OP, I don't think either of us was exactly wrong or clearly in the right.

I am really am curious though, about what you mean by communication. Earlier you said it was having too much character description that is the problem, so it apparently isn't that sort of communication. What type of communication do you mean? Serious question, not trying to trick you are something so I can argue, genuinely curious about what form this communication should have taken, especially in the light that you think I already gave too much information about the things that I consider relevant.

You honestly think that drawing the floorplan for a 1st level character's house, or making an inventory of what's in the cupboard, is relevant to a game of D&D? If so, we're obviously playing very different games.

Talakeal
2017-01-22, 05:08 PM
You honestly think that drawing the floorplan for a 1st level character's house, or making an inventory of what's in the cupboard, is relevant to a game of D&D? If so, we're obviously playing very different games.

Probably not, but it is fun for me, and I can't see how it could possibly hurt the game, and I certainly don't see how it played a part in my character dying.

But it really depends on the group; the last group I was part of was almost purely social and we rarely even rolled dice, most of the game was spent simply talking in character or working on side projects rather than a storyline. Over the entire course of the game I would say we probably spent more time and effort coordinating our outfits than we did in combat.


This has been brought up before, but I think there might be a disconnect between "character concept" and how the game actually works. Your character concept was that of a veteran who would be superior to most ordinary "street goons" he runs into. However, you also knew you were playing D&D with a first level character. So, you maybe expected that the DM would mold the world to match your expectation for how the character should perform - if your character has +1 to combat and 10 hp, then the average bad guys you should face, in order to feel appropriately skilled relative to them according to your concept, would need to have 1 or 2 hp and like -3 in combat and deal maybe 1-2 damage per attack. But, as a long time DM, you surely knew that the most common low level enemies are not generally that weak, at least according to the books. A 1st level fighter has only a marginal advantage over the lowest level NPCs and monsters. Is that how you make your low level games operate the way you like, by adjusting the stats of the world around the characters to make sure they are always sufficiently superior? Not saying that is wrong, but it would be one reason why people like me are confused about how this solo character was expected to work out. If I went into a solo game with a 1st level character, I would be paranoid as all hell, regardless of my stats or class or background.


It seems like it might have made more sense if you asked your friend to start the game as a higher level character, because A.) you're going to be solo and a 1st level character is extremely fragile, and B.) your concept implies a character that has more skill than a 1st level character has.

Is it right for players to expect a GM to manipulate and adjust the game world, and possibly even the game rules, in order too accommodate their character concept? I don't think this would be something you can expect automatically. It requires discussion and agreement beforehand. More likely, the GM has a game they want to run (since that is generally much more work than creating a single character), and the players need to adjust their expectations to fit the rules and the world the GM is presenting to them. This issue is complicated by the fact that not all players and GMs have strong understanding of the game rules or how various changes and concepts will interact and affect the overall experience. So a request might be granted without understanding that the result isn't going to be what anyone really wanted. That's just experience.

Also, after playing with one GM for a long time, you may be used to certain house rules or homebrew expectations and get surprised when you join a new group or someone new becomes GM and they don't have those expectations. I think that's a common thing. I've heard many people talk about D&D, or other systems, explaining "what the game is like" and what they expect from it, not realizing that most of what they describe has nothing to do with the actual game system and is mostly derived from the unique way their group interprets and adjusts the rules.

The only way we can meaningfully talk about "what a system can/can't do" is to talk about the rules as written - that's the actual system. This is where disagreements show up. For games like D&D, the rules as written have been abandoned so long ago by so many groups that a lot of people don't even know what the actual game is like, and might not even realize that. That is not a judgment of the game or the practice of changing it, just an observation. Since we all house rule and change things to different degrees, we are usually, in effect, talking about completely different game systems with similar mechanics. Like nearly but not-quite fully intelligible dialects of a language family.

I think you are misunderstanding me, the position you are ascribing to me is almost the complete opposite of what I am trying to say.

I am not talking about house rules at all.

I absolutely don't think the DM needs to warp the rules or the world. In fact, I would take a pretty hard stance saying that the DM shouldn't do that, and might go so far as to say such a DM was cheating.

In this case, though, the default bandits are CR 1/8 enemies. It isn't breaking the rules to use the default enemies against a PC.

For example, if you send level 1 PCs out to hunt some goblins, imo, most people would expect MM default goblins, not a party of great goblin heroes with half a dozen class levels.


Edit: As an aside, does 3E actually have human stats anywhere? I am trying to look up what exactly the defaults are, but I can't find them the 3.5MM unlike every other edition.

Thrudd
2017-01-22, 05:59 PM
Probably not, but it is fun for me, and I can't see how it could possibly hurt the game, and I certainly don't see how it played a part in my character dying.

But it really depends on the group; the last group I was part of was almost purely social and we rarely even rolled dice, most of the game was spent simply talking in character or working on side projects rather than a storyline. Over the entire course of the game I would say we probably spent more time and effort coordinating our outfits than we did in combat.



I am not talking about house rules at all.

I absolutely don't think the DM needs to warp the rules or the world. In fact, I would take a pretty hard stance saying that the DM shouldn't do that, and might go so far as to say such a DM was cheating.

In this case, though, the default bandits are CR 1/8 enemies. It isn't breaking the rules to use the default enemies against a PC.

For example, if you send level 1 PCs out to hunt some goblins, imo most people would expect MM default goblins, not a party of great goblin heroes with half a dozen class levels.

That's true, you don't expect powerful enemies sent against a level 1 character. The issue in your game was a disconnect between "challenge" and "quest giver" that was as much the result of an inexperienced DM using amateur/railroad tactics as it was you making a poor tactical decision (to fight when clearly outnumbered). However, I think even if they had been standard level 1 bandits, you would have had a good chance of losing the fight, unless your character had advantages not typical of level 1 characters.

In general, a bandit is what, 1d8 HP, probably 12 or 13 AC, +1 to hit armed with weapons dealing 1d6-1d8. Even one of those guys, or one goblin, can potentially kill a character with lucky rolls. As the DM, how would you make sure your lone player felt sufficiently awesome, when there are substantial odds that even a single weak enemy will take them out?

I'm not saying you should or shouldn't fudge things, but the reality of how the game works, at least when I play it, is that these level one characters are very fragile and even "level appropriate" challenges for them can result in their deaths. In a party, characters dropping is mitigated by the odds that there will be allies who survive and can help them: the survivability of those low levels increases quite a bit due to teamwork. With a lone character, that safety net is missing. One bad roll and it's all over. If I'm a player of a lone 1st level character, I'm not seeing the logic that arrives at the conclusion that a fight in which I am outnumbered - even by one kobold or giant rat - could possibly have good odds for me.

Talakeal
2017-01-22, 06:13 PM
That's true, you don't expect powerful enemies sent against a level 1 character. The issue in your game was a disconnect between "challenge" and "quest giver" that was as much the result of an inexperienced DM using amateur/railroad tactics as it was you making a poor tactical decision (to fight when clearly outnumbered). However, I think even if they had been standard level 1 bandits, you would have had a good chance of losing the fight, unless your character had advantages not typical of level 1 characters.

In general, a bandit is what, 1d8 HP, probably 12 or 13 AC, +1 to hit armed with weapons dealing 1d6-1d8. Even one of those guys, or one goblin, can potentially kill a character with lucky rolls. As the DM, how would you make sure your lone player felt sufficiently awesome, when there are substantial odds that even a single weak enemy will take them out?

I'm not saying you should or shouldn't fudge things, but the reality of how the game works, at least when I play it, is that these level one characters are very fragile and even "level appropriate" challenges for them can result in their deaths. In a party, characters dropping is mitigated by the odds that there will be allies who survive and can help them: the survivability of those low levels increases quite a bit due to teamwork. With a lone character, that safety net is missing. One bad roll and it's all over. If I'm a player of a lone 1st level character, I'm not seeing the logic that arrives at the conclusion that a fight in which I am outnumbered - even by one kobold or giant rat - could possibly have good odds for me.

Completely agree. As I said in my OP, it would still have been a very hard but still winnable fight had they been CR 1 bandits like I expected.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-22, 06:26 PM
Completely agree. As I said in my OP, it would still have been a very hard but still winnable fight had they been CR 1 bandits like I expected.

Er, I don't think that's what he's saying, man. You might want to reread the previous post, especially the last sentence.

Thrudd
2017-01-22, 06:36 PM
Completely agree. As I said in my OP, it would still have been a very hard but still winnable fight had they been CR 1 bandits like I expected.

I don't know what your gear and abilities were like - maybe if I had +4 on initiative, +4 to hit and damage, full plate or equivalent AC, and full fighter HP at first level with a Con bonus added in, or a barbarian with ability to rage, plus all the other good scores - maybe then I would think I actually had a chance of not getting killed. Otherwise, I'm assuming each of those bandits is just about equally as skilled as I am, and two against one is definitely going to go poorly for me. I wouldn't voluntarily enter into that fight.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-01-22, 06:49 PM
I am really am curious though, about what you mean by communication. Earlier you said it was having too much character description that is the problem, so it apparently isn't that sort of communication. What type of communication do you mean? Serious question, not trying to trick you are something so I can argue, genuinely curious about what form this communication should have taken, especially in the light that you think I already gave too much information about the things that I consider relevant.

I don't know if it's what he means, but personally I think you and your GM failed to communicate your opinions on this statement:

"It is the job of the DM to make certain to only introduce you to antagonistic NPCs that you are capable of immediately beating in a fight."

I think, and I'm sorry if I'm misrepresenting you, that you agree with that statement and your GM didn't.

Talakeal
2017-01-22, 07:27 PM
Er, I don't think that's what he's saying, man. You might want to reread the previous post, especially the last sentence.


I don't know what your gear and abilities were like - maybe if I had +4 on initiative, +4 to hit and damage, full plate or equivalent AC, and full fighter HP at first level with a Con bonus added in, or a barbarian with ability to rage, plus all the other good scores - maybe then I would think I actually had a chance of not getting killed. Otherwise, I'm assuming each of those bandits is just about equally as skilled as I am, and two against one is definitely going to go poorly for me. I wouldn't voluntarily enter into that fight.

I think you guys are underestimating a level 1 fighter.

I can't find the 3E stats for human NPCs, but going up against orcs, goblins, kobolds, or zombies my character will win a 3 on 1 fight more often than not. I can post the build if you really want, but it is a pretty basic sword and board human fighter.

Still, not a tactically advisable situation, and one that I only entered into because I felt my back was against the wall.


I don't know if it's what he means, but personally I think you and your GM failed to communicate your opinions on this statement:

"It is the job of the DM to make certain to only introduce you to antagonistic NPCs that you are capable of immediately beating in a fight."

I think, and I'm sorry if I'm misrepresenting you, that you agree with that statement and your GM didn't.

No, I don't agree with that statement, it is way too broad.

Now, if the DM puts you in (or expects you to put yourself in) a situation where they want you dead and you can't realistically run away the DM should (barring weird circumstances) make sure that it is a fight with a reasonable chance of victory.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-01-22, 07:45 PM
No, I don't agree with that statement, it is way too broad.

Now, if the DM puts you in (or expects you to put yourself in) a situation where they want you dead and you can't realistically run away the DM should (barring weird circumstances) make sure that it is a fight with a reasonable chance of victory.

I think the "(or expects you to put yourself in)" clause is the sticking point, then. I think most people would agree that the DM just laughing and throwing impossible encounters at you out of the blue is poor form, (unless it's from a random table or something). But I think it's unreasonable to expect that the DM will protect you from what they think you might do.

On the other side of things I would also question that you have a responsibility to follow the DM's plot hooks at all. If you have a major unsolvable problem on your hands then skipping town is totally a viable option in my book. As is a LG character straight up refusing to meet with a mob boss at all.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-22, 07:50 PM
I think you guys are underestimating a level 1 fighter.

I can't find the 3E stats for human NPCs, but going up against orcs, goblins, kobolds, or zombies my character will win a 3 on 1 fight more often than not. I can post the build if you really want, but it is a pretty basic sword and board human fighter.

Still, not a tactically advisable situation, and one that I only entered into because I felt my back was against the wall.

I'm not super familiar with 3e, but your statement doesn't really sound correct to me. I'd be interested in the opinion of someone else who plays a lot of 3e.




No, I don't agree with that statement, it is way too broad.

Now, if the DM puts you in (or expects you to put yourself in) a situation where they want you dead and you can't realistically run away the DM should (barring weird circumstances) make sure that it is a fight with a reasonable chance of victory.

So, here's part of what I was saying about a failure of communication: this thread is chock full of posters telling you that there were plenty of ways of getting out of this situation without a fight, yet you ignore them time after time, insisting that combat was the only way of getting out of the situation.

MonochromeTiger
2017-01-22, 07:52 PM
I think you guys are underestimating a level 1 fighter.

I can't find the 3E stats for human NPCs, but going up against orcs, goblins, kobolds, or zombies my character will win a 3 on 1 fight more often than not. I can post the build if you really want, but it is a pretty basic sword and board human fighter.

I think you're underestimating various NPC enemies. Yes they're going to do badly if they just sit still and let you beat on them but actually taking advantage of their numbers will get rid of some advantages unless you're playing them off as practically unarmored under-equipped nuisances for your level 1 fighter to kill in one hit.

They have 3 attacks to your 1, they have the ability to flank you which you completely lack, and they can block you in so that attempts to move around are risking attacks of opportunity.



Still, not a tactically advisable situation, and one that I only entered into because I felt my back was against the wall.

As people pointed out as far back as the first and second pages your back was not against the wall. You yourself admitted you thought turning the crime boss down would result in assassins being sent after you; assassins that would likely be sent in small numbers and with enough time for a new DM to make them reasonable encounters for a lone level 1 character. Yet somehow you made the assumption that a crime boss would willingly be in the same room as someone they're trying to coerce without very good reason to feel confident about their safety.



No, I don't agree with that statement, it is way too broad.

Now, if the DM puts you in (or expects you to put yourself in) a situation where they want you dead and you can't realistically run away the DM should (barring weird circumstances) make sure that it is a fight with a reasonable chance of victory.

Except the DM in this case did not put you in that situation and if the rest of the thread is any indicator jumping to the notion that you can just mow down the local organized crime leadership and their personal guards is far from the clear predicted response. In your own words you thought this enemy was a "mid-boss", that is not something you just up and fight at level 1 while outnumbered in a location they control; by all logic your character committed suicide by jumping straight to a fight with an unknown number of enemies in the crime boss' employ. Your DM did not mess up by presenting a challenge that you would have to deal with later, or by attempting to set up the plot so you have a reason to fight them; your DM messed up by thinking your character would have a hint of self preservation and not be fueled by pure "but I'm the hero."

Throughout the thread you've been phrasing things as though your response was completely normal and reasonable. You've contradicted yourself multiple times. You've jumped to accept and welcome interpretations you thought agreed with you while turning away dissenting opinions. If you are not looking for disagreement or other views wouldn't it be better to find people you know will agree instead of going on to a heavily D&D focused forum and expecting people to agree with your complaints?

Talakeal
2017-01-22, 08:18 PM
I think you're underestimating various NPC enemies. Yes they're going to do badly if they just sit still and let you beat on them but actually taking advantage of their numbers will get rid of some advantages unless you're playing them off as practically unarmored under-equipped nuisances for your level 1 fighter to kill in one hit.

They have 3 attacks to your 1, they have the ability to flank you which you completely lack, and they can block you in so that attempts to move around are risking attacks of opportunity.

Depends on the field of battle. Flanking can be negated as easily as moving into a corner or a doorway, and AoO can be negated with five foot steps.

I said over and over again that it wouldn't be a cake walk, but in a white room scenario my character would win more often than not.



As people pointed out as far back as the first and second pages your back was not against the wall. You yourself admitted you thought turning the crime boss down would result in assassins being sent after you; assassins that would likely be sent in small numbers and with enough time for a new DM to make them reasonable encounters for a lone level 1 character. Yet somehow you made the assumption that a crime boss would willingly be in the same room as someone they're trying to coerce without very good reason to feel confident about their safety.

Except the DM in this case did not put you in that situation and if the rest of the thread is any indicator jumping to the notion that you can just mow down the local organized crime leadership and their personal guards is far from the clear predicted response. In your own words you thought this enemy was a "mid-boss", that is not something you just up and fight at level 1 while outnumbered in a location they control; by all logic your character committed suicide by jumping straight to a fight with an unknown number of enemies in the crime boss' employ. Your DM did not mess up by presenting a challenge that you would have to deal with later, or by attempting to set up the plot so you have a reason to fight them; your DM messed up by thinking your character would have a hint of self preservation and not be fueled by pure "but I'm the hero."



I never said that I thought he was a mid-boss or that he would send reasonably CRed assassins after me. I said I talked to the DM and that was what he intended.

At the time I personally thought it was going to be a Fist full of Dollars situation where two mob bosses were going to play me against one another and that I would be killed one or both of them by the end of the session.

And I said I felt that my back was against the wall. My assumption was that he would make good on his word and try and have me killed (which was correct), that I would stand a better chance in a 3 on 1 direct fight than being bushwhacked by an unknown number of assailants at some point in the future, and that the mob boss' level of help was of a more or less uniform level (which still confuses me, if he has level 4 guards why can he only muster level 1 hit-men?).




Throughout the thread you've been phrasing things as though your response was completely normal and reasonable. You've contradicted yourself multiple times. You've jumped to accept and welcome interpretations you thought agreed with you while turning away dissenting opinions. If you are not looking for disagreement or other views wouldn't it be better to find people you know will agree instead of going on to a heavily D&D focused forum and expecting people to agree with your complaints?

I have said over and over again that I made mistakes and that my DM wasn't totally off base, starting in the very first post.

Now, I do get frustrated at people who call me names, accuse me of lying, or assume that I was either 100% wrong or 100% right in the situation. I am fully willing to accept that, ultimately, I was acting under false impressions and I could have chosen to back down at any point but instead chose to stick to my principles (both IC and OOC).

Out of curiosity, what does it being a heavily D&D focused forum have to do with anything? My complaints were not with the game's rules but with the situation, which could have happened with virtually any RPG system. If anything I am sticking up for D&D in this thread, saying that the CR system does in fact work and that the game is reasonably playable at low levels.

Thrudd
2017-01-22, 08:22 PM
I think you guys are underestimating a level 1 fighter.

I can't find the 3E stats for human NPCs, but going up against orcs, goblins, kobolds, or zombies my character will win a 3 on 1 fight more often than not. I can post the build if you really want, but it is a pretty basic sword and board human fighter.

Still, not a tactically advisable situation, and one that I only entered into because I felt my back was against the wall.



Maybe you're just used to having luckier dice, or nicer DMs, than I am. lol

Talakeal
2017-01-22, 08:34 PM
I'm not super familiar with 3e, but your statement doesn't really sound correct to me. I'd be interested in the opinion of someone else who plays a lot of 3e.

I will start a thread on it.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?512845-3-5-level-1-fighter-vs-3-orcs&p=21627590#post21627590


So, here's part of what I was saying about a failure of communication: this thread is chock full of posters telling you that there were plenty of ways of getting out of this situation without a fight, yet you ignore them time after time, insisting that combat was the only way of getting out of the situation.

Honestly that might be a failure of communication between me and the forum rather than me and my DM.

He asked me not to ignore the adventure hook, and said that no matter which path I pursued I would be in a life or death fight against gang members. The DM was giving me the choice of which gang members I fought, but not which order I fought them in (which was the real breakdown of communication I suppose).


I think the "(or expects you to put yourself in)" clause is the sticking point, then. I think most people would agree that the DM just laughing and throwing impossible encounters at you out of the blue is poor form, (unless it's from a random table or something). But I think it's unreasonable to expect that the DM will protect you from what they think you might do.

On the other side of things I would also question that you have a responsibility to follow the DM's plot hooks at all. If you have a major unsolvable problem on your hands then skipping town is totally a viable option in my book. As is a LG character straight up refusing to meet with a mob boss at all.

Yeah, that is kind of the core of the issue. The DM has had trouble in the past with PCs ignoring his adventure hooks and he asked me OOC before the game to do my best to follow them. I absolutely would have refused to meet with the mob boss or left town if not for that.


The adventure was "kill low level gangers for a few levels, then kill crime boss." I would have ended up either fighting this crime bosses flunkies or the rival crime bosses flunkies and then ended up either killing this crime boss or his rival crime boss. The only thing I misunderstood was that it was supposed to be a multi-level adventure and I was "skipping ahead".

MonochromeTiger
2017-01-22, 08:46 PM
Depends on the field of battle. Flanking can be negated as easily as moving into a corner or a doorway, and AoO can be negated with five foot steps.

I said over and over again that it wouldn't be a cake walk, but in a white room scenario my character would win more often than not.

Why, if I may ask, would it ever be a "white room scenario" unless it had been specifically engineered as such? Initiative and surprise can easily remove your go into a corner plan. Five foot steps are only good if that frees you up completely without giving room for your enemies to just move and keep attacking. Even then it's still 3 attacks and 3 sets of health to your 1; more attacks if the enemies have natural attacks that can be used without dropping a manufactured weapon.



I never said that I thought he was a mid-boss or that he would send reasonably CRed assassins after me. I said I talked to the DM and that was what he intended.

You referred to the fight as a "mid boss" while saying the DM was partially at fault for not making the encounter reasonable for you at the time. A direct quote as follows:
"Personally I think the problem is inflexibility; I wasn't willing to distort my character concept to match the DM's plot and the DM wasn't willing to have swap up the order of the plot so that the "mid-boss" could be taken out early. As I said in my OP, I don't think either of us was exactly wrong or clearly in the right."

Ignoring that it's not the DM's job to make a fight easier for someone who gets in over their heads by their own actions, nor is it the DM's job to "swap up the order of the plot" for you to kill something you logically won't be killing outside of a string of natural 20s from you and natural 1s from all of them.



At the time I personally thought it was going to be a Fist full of Dollars situation where two mob bosses were going to play me against one another and that I would be killed one or both of them by the end of the session.

I still find your reliance on movies as an indicator of how things will work odd when it's not an RPG specifically built to work like a movie. You are contacted to do a job, likely meaning your would-be employer is unable or unwilling to devote the resources for that job. You are met by the leader of a criminal organization, almost certainly meaning they do not consider you a threat to them or they would never be in the same room as you. The obvious options are accept the job then leave because they clearly aren't risking the resources on a middleman that are better spent elsewhere, or decline the job and leave because they clearly aren't risking the resources on a middleman aside from expendable killers who are little more than an attempt to save face.



And I said I felt that my back was against the wall. My assumption was that he would make good on his word and try and have me killed (which was correct), that I would stand a better chance in a 3 on 1 direct fight than being bushwhacked by an unknown number of assailants at some point in the future, and that the mob boss' level of help was of a more or less uniform level (which still confuses me, if he has level 4 guards why can he only muster level 1 hit-men?).

Assassins have the job of killing people, guards have the job of making sure specific people aren't killed. Much like how you don't go into a meeting with someone you're not confident you can beat hiring assassins who are better at their job than your guards are at theirs is showing a massive death wish.

Your assassins are going to be out doing their job away from you for who knows how long and can easily question their orders or their rank and turn on you. Your guards are right near you the entire time and you have ample opportunity to find out how they tick and ensure their loyalty. This is especially true when you send expendable assassins to deal with what is basically a nobody instead of sending the best you have to waste their time when there are bigger threats to deal with.



Out of curiosity, what does it being a heavily D&D focused forum have to do with anything? My complaints were not with the game's rules but with the situation, which could have happened with virtually any RPG system. If anything I am sticking up for D&D in this thread, saying that the CR system does in fact work and that the game is reasonably playable at low levels.

It has to do with the fact that there are plenty of people here who can and likely will point out personal experiences and views where you would be wrong. Going here to complain is asking a bunch of people who have likely had "problem players" or "bad experiences" with people who acted similarly to you and expecting sympathy.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-01-22, 08:56 PM
He asked me not to ignore the adventure hook, and said that no matter which path I pursued I would be in a life or death fight against gang members. The DM was giving me the choice of which gang members I fought, but not which order I fought them in (which was the real breakdown of communication I suppose).

Yeah, that is kind of the core of the issue. The DM has had trouble in the past with PCs ignoring his adventure hooks and he asked me OOC before the game to do my best to follow them. I absolutely would have refused to meet with the mob boss or left town if not for that.

The adventure was "kill low level gangers for a few levels, then kill crime boss." I would have ended up either fighting this crime bosses flunkies or the rival crime bosses flunkies and then ended up either killing this crime boss or his rival crime boss. The only thing I misunderstood was that it was supposed to be a multi-level adventure and I was "skipping ahead".

Okay, I better see where you're coming from now. I have a much bigger problem with this if the plot was on rails to that degree. If you're not free to go where you want and do what you want then (the DM should stop DMing), but also the DM has a much bigger responsibility to hold your hand and make sure you don't get in over your head.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-22, 09:09 PM
Okay, I better see where you're coming from now. I have a much bigger problem with this if the plot was on rails to that degree. If you're not free to go where you want and do what you want then (the DM should stop DMing), but also the DM has a much bigger responsibility to hold your hand and make sure you don't get in over your head.


Don't forget that the OP stated the encounter was a prologue to the actual adventure, so it had to be railroaded to a certain degree.

Talakeal
2017-01-22, 09:44 PM
Don't forget that the OP stated the encounter was a prologue to the actual adventure, so it had to be railroaded to a certain degree.

Honestly that makes it even weirder IMO.

The whole premise was that my character had been a soldier in her youth but was now retired and had been living a peaceful life in a distant land for the last ten years having lost her taste for the horrors of war.

Then the DM flashes back to me first arriving in the city, fresh from battle and with a raging case of battle fatigue, only to immediately have me set upon by the local mob. I have absolutely no idea why my character was supposed to have decided to settle down and make a peaceful life for herself if her first experience in town was to be set upon by the local mob.


It has to do with the fact that there are plenty of people here who can and likely will point out personal experiences and views where you would be wrong. Going here to complain is asking a bunch of people who have likely had "problem players" or "bad experiences" with people who acted similarly to you and expecting sympathy.

Damn those problem players who refuse to perform evil acts, put to much detail into their character's backstory, and prioritize RP over winning combats. Truly the scourge of the gaming community I say.


You referred to the fight as a "mid boss" while saying the DM was partially at fault for not making the encounter reasonable for you at the time. A direct quote as follows:
"Personally I think the problem is inflexibility; I wasn't willing to distort my character concept to match the DM's plot and the DM wasn't willing to have swap up the order of the plot so that the "mid-boss" could be taken out early. As I said in my OP, I don't think either of us was exactly wrong or clearly in the right."

Ignoring that it's not the DM's job to make a fight easier for someone who gets in over their heads by their own actions, nor is it the DM's job to "swap up the order of the plot" for you to kill something you logically won't be killing outside of a string of natural 20s from you and natural 1s from all of them.

Do note that that is an after the fact description on my part. At the time I assumed he was just another encounter, I had no idea the DM was planning on "saving him for later".


Why, if I may ask, would it ever be a "white room scenario" unless it had been specifically engineered as such? Initiative and surprise can easily remove your go into a corner plan.

Yes, initiative and surprise can indeed ruin your day, which is exactly why I chose to initiate a fight on my terms rather than wait for an assassin to get the drop on me when I least expected it.

MonochromeTiger
2017-01-22, 09:58 PM
Honestly that makes it even weirder IMO.

The whole premise was that my character had been a soldier in her youth but was now retired and had been living a peaceful life in a distant land for the last ten years having lost her taste for the horrors of war.

Then the DM flashes back to me first arriving in the city, fresh from battle and with a raging case of battle fatigue, only to immediately have me set upon by the local mob. I have absolutely no idea why my character was supposed to have decided to settle down and make a peaceful life for herself if her first experience in town was to be set upon by the local mob.

Did you perhaps not fully convey that your character was going to be some combat experienced veteran who has no time for petty criminals to your less experienced DM and wait for a response before thinking things would work a certain way?



Damn those problem players who refuse to perform evil acts, put to much detail into their character's backstory, and prioritize RP over winning combats. Truly the scourge of the gaming community I say.

You mean those problem players who refuse to think of any solution but "fight and try not to die" when presented with what should be a difficult opponent? The ones who expect everything to be level 1 when they are unless they're explicitly told "this is a dragon" or "this is a crime boss who can keep large numbers of people under his control." The ones who then complain about it online instead of discussing their differing expectations with their DM and moving on.



Do note that that is an after the fact description on my part. At the time I assumed he was just another encounter, I had no idea the DM was planning on "saving him for later".

Again, I seriously question your assumption that the leader of a criminal organization would be just another encounter.

Talakeal
2017-01-22, 10:13 PM
Did you perhaps not fully convey that your character was going to be some combat experienced veteran who has no time for petty criminals to your less experienced DM and wait for a response before thinking things would work a certain way?

Who ever said anything about not having time for petty criminals? Also, if they are "petty criminals" why should I assume they are such a big threat?

I told him all of that. Could you please tell me what response I should have been waiting for or how I assumed things would work a certain way?


You mean those problem players who refuse to think of any solution but "fight and try not to die" when presented with what should be a difficult opponent? The ones who expect everything to be level 1 when they are unless they're explicitly told "this is a dragon" or "this is a crime boss who can keep large numbers of people under his control." The ones who then complain about it online instead of discussing their differing expectations with their DM and moving on.

I am actually more concerned about the people who complain online about other people complaining online.


In all honesty though, I actually have a way bigger problem with players who try and overthink encounters than under-think them. I can't count the number of times the players ended up royally screwing themselves over with an overly complex plan. For example, sneaking past a guardian to avoid a fight and then not thinking about what happens if they need to fall back, using someone who isn't expendable as bait, or refusing to ask the friendly sage for advice because you think he might be an enemy spy.

MonochromeTiger
2017-01-22, 10:40 PM
Who ever said anything about not having time for petty criminals? Also, if they are "petty criminals" why should I assume they are such a big threat?

I told him all of that. Could you please tell me what response I should have been waiting for or how I assumed things would work a certain way?

Any response. Any explanation of the differing views. It's not complex, talk through what you see happening and ask the DM how they see things happening and work out a middleground you both enjoy. Instead it appears you just expected it to work a certain way and were expected to work a different way and wound up working at cross purposes.



In all honesty though, I actually have a way bigger problem with players who try and overthink encounters than under-think them. I can't count the number of times the players ended up royally screwing themselves over with an overly complex plan. For example, sneaking past a guardian to avoid a fight and then not thinking about what happens if they need to fall back, using someone who isn't expendable as bait, or refusing to ask the friendly sage for advice because you think he might be an enemy spy.

You mean overthinking like "I can't go to the guards because they'll all be useless or corrupt. I'll have to deal with this now on my own"?

Lorsa
2017-01-23, 02:37 AM
To Talakeal:

I know what has been bugging me about this thread ever since the beginning.

On several other threads, you have tried to paint yourself as mostly a roleplayer, making only choices and actions based on immersion into the world and the personality of the character.

However, this seems to have been the opposite case. Unless you were playing some form of suicidal character.

Perhaps the backstory is the fault here; but being a level 1 character means the character should know they're not that good. Sure, in E6 they're a little bit better, but still not that good.

So, based on that, being in the headquarters of a crime boss meeting the boss himself should have been terrifying for your character. Even if she was not shaking with fear, standing up to them should be the least of her concerns.

The only thing that seems plausible that it should be on the characters mind, regardless of alignment, should've been to get out of the situation alive. Anything else can be solved later.

Taking the decision to attack can only be seen as a meta-game decision; either as an IC response of the OOC problem of being railroaded, or as an "I don't think the DM should present non-level appropriate encounters, therefore these must be beatable".

As a player, what you SHOULD have done, is to act as someone who is way over her head, with death just around the corner. If you have a problem with railroading, you need to bring it up OOC.

GungHo
2017-01-23, 10:39 AM
I am really am curious though, about what you mean by communication. Earlier you said it was having too much character description that is the problem, so it apparently isn't that sort of communication. What type of communication do you mean? Serious question, not trying to trick you are something so I can argue, genuinely curious about what form this communication should have taken, especially in the light that you think I already gave too much information about the things that I consider relevant.
How about "dear DM, what kind of game are you wanting to run, because the guy I have does XYZ and enjoys long walks on the beach, is this going to be a good fit or do I need to get another guy?" or "dear player, the game I am running is this and it involves crime drama, so you might want to roll an ABC who likes playing the knockout game", because clearly neither of you bothered doing that. He showed up wearing football pads and you brought a tennis racket and you both decided, apparently without a word, "let's give full contact tennis a chance" and you got creamed. That is the communication problem.

Faily
2017-01-23, 11:01 AM
At the time I personally thought it was going to be a Fist full of Dollars situation where two mob bosses were going to play me against one another and that I would be killed one or both of them by the end of the session.


So rather than do what they did A Fist Full of Dollars/Yojimbo, which was to "play along" and then play the two mob bosses for fools, get the last laugh and have the criminals eliminate eachother, you... attack them while outnumbered without any advantages whatsoever? Lawful Good doesn't mean you can't be smart about this, you know.

You know, for one mentioning these kind of movies as your examples, you're not doing a very good job of following the example of the movies...

Fri
2017-01-23, 12:57 PM
Yeah, the most interesting part of this is you... have a fistful of dollar and yojimbo as your example and... have you actually ever watched those movies? Main characters from either movies are definitely not someone who will insult mob boss and fight an obviously outnumbered battle. They play along and trick and prepare things for their advantage. You at least know the premise of yojimbo is the main character visit a town with two crime boss, and pretend to join one of them to make make them fight each others right? Because he knows he definitely can't take any of them by brute force, so he has to trick them? Sure he dispatch three bandit by himself to show off, but the point is, he knows he's outmatched and he uses trickery and deception to get rid the town from the two opposing bandit clan. Both of them are definitely the type who knows when they shouldn't fight.

Studoku
2017-01-23, 01:07 PM
Edit: As an aside, does 3E actually have human stats anywhere? I am trying to look up what exactly the defaults are, but I can't find them the 3.5MM unlike every other edition.
The SRD has basic stats for most of the non-human player races as level 1 warriors. Oddly enough, not humans, but would you agree a standard array lvl 1 warrior with the weapon focus and toughness feats would be appropriate?

Douglas
2017-01-23, 01:57 PM
(which still confuses me, if he has level 4 guards why can he only muster level 1 hit-men?).
Because he only has so many of them to go around and you are not his only problem. Those level 4 guards are for his personal protection, the most important job he's got. They aren't there to guard against you, they're there to guard against anyone and everyone who might try to take him out, which likely includes other people with access to level 4 minions who know he's a hard target.

He probably also has a number of level 2 and 3 guys to do his tougher dirty work, but they have other jobs right now. You're a newcomer with no established importance in the mob boss's eyes, he'll send the bottom tier thugs who have nothing more important to do, until you prove that killing you takes more than that.

Talakeal
2017-01-23, 07:19 PM
The SRD has basic stats for most of the non-human player races as level 1 warriors. Oddly enough, not humans, but would you agree a standard array lvl 1 warrior with the weapon focus and toughness feats would be appropriate?

Appropriate for what? As stats for common thugs? About right, that was more less what I had been fighting up until that point.


So rather than do what they did A Fist Full of Dollars/Yojimbo, which was to "play along" and then play the two mob bosses for fools, get the last laugh and have the criminals eliminate eachother, you... attack them while outnumbered without any advantages whatsoever? Lawful Good doesn't mean you can't be smart about this, you know.

You know, for one mentioning these kind of movies as your examples, you're not doing a very good job of following the example of the movies...

I said that is what I thought the DM was setting up, not what I was basing my character on.

My character is a good deal more stubborn and less mercenary than The man with no name.

Although I am fairly certain he can, and does, win several fights where he is outnumbered by three to one or more throughout the course of the movie.


To Talakeal:

I know what has been bugging me about this thread ever since the beginning.

On several other threads, you have tried to paint yourself as mostly a roleplayer, making only choices and actions based on immersion into the world and the personality of the character.

However, this seems to have been the opposite case. Unless you were playing some form of suicidal character.

Perhaps the backstory is the fault here; but being a level 1 character means the character should know they're not that good. Sure, in E6 they're a little bit better, but still not that good.

So, based on that, being in the headquarters of a crime boss meeting the boss himself should have been terrifying for your character. Even if she was not shaking with fear, standing up to them should be the least of her concerns.

The only thing that seems plausible that it should be on the characters mind, regardless of alignment, should've been to get out of the situation alive. Anything else can be solved later.

Taking the decision to attack can only be seen as a meta-game decision; either as an IC response of the OOC problem of being railroaded, or as an "I don't think the DM should present non-level appropriate encounters, therefore these must be beatable".

As a player, what you SHOULD have done, is to act as someone who is way over her head, with death just around the corner. If you have a problem with railroading, you need to bring it up OOC.

Of course I was afraid, there is fear and uncertainty every time you go into battle, but you have to use that fear to your advantage rather than letting it control you.

I had no reason to believe these guys were anything other than common hoodlums. They had no visible weapons or armor and no indication that they had anh real training or battle experiance other than surviving street fights and extorting shop-keepers. They had me outnumbered, sure, but I had already killed more than twice as many of their ilk.

From a logical perspective my goal is to avoid combat. I couldnt just leave (and that was for metagame reasons) and If I accepted his job (which would involve battling rival gang members) he would have continued leaning on me as he has learned that I am someone who is both competent and succeptible to bullies. If I refuse he keeps sending assassins after me until one of us is dead, and I have no reason to believe the hitmen will be any less competent and numerous than those I am currently fighting, and they will certainly attack me when I am not ready or in a way I am not trained to defend against.

We are also trying out some rudimentery RP mechanics (as discussed in the other thread) and my character's vice is stubborn and flaw is self sacrificing. So even if my character was asked point blank: Would you rather die or kill / get an innocent killed she would have chosen death.

I really wanted to play and already agreed that I would put up with some railroading from a new DM, so lashing out and ending the campaign for metagame reasons was thr furthest thing from my mind.




Also, about the too much backstory for a level one character thing; I am of the oppinion that anyone with PC levels is rare and that the vast majority of the world are "level zero commoners". This is probably a holdover from coming up in AD&D but that is how me and my group have always played.

Furthermore, levels in D&D are kind of weird and kind of a gamist construct to begin with. By RAW the first few levels go by FAST. If I had played nice and spent a mere few weeks hanging around town fighting gangbangers I would have been level three or four within a few weeks. So if It is more or less pick your poison, have a background that explains your skills and be under powered based on your level of training for the first few levels, or ignore background and training and have no explanation for where their skills came from and be overpowered for your background for the rest of the game.

Amphetryon
2017-01-23, 07:31 PM
Also, about the too much backstory for a level one character thing; I am of the oppinion that anyone with PC levels is rare and that the vast majority of the world are "level zero commoners". This is probably a holdover from coming up in AD&D but that is how me and my group have always played.

Furthermore, levels in D&D are kind of weird and kind of a gamist construct to begin with. By RAW the first few levels go by FAST. If I had played nice and spent a mere few weeks hanging around town fighting gangbangers I would have been level three or four within a few weeks. So if It is more or less pick your poison, have a background that explains your skills and be under powered based on your level of training for the first few levels, or ignore background and training and have no explanation for where their skills came from and be overpowered for your background for the rest of the game.

Leaving the other points to be addressed again by others, virtually every person responding in this thread has advised that your opinion on the way levels work does not jibe with the game you were playing. Repeating your opinion that levels work differently is not likely to change this.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-23, 07:54 PM
Also, about the too much backstory for a level one character thing; I am of the oppinion that anyone with PC levels is rare and that the vast majority of the world are "level zero commoners". This is probably a holdover from coming up in AD&D but that is how me and my group have always played.

As someone extremely active in the OSR movement *and* having cut my teeth as a youngster on B/X and 1e, I can guarantee you that being first level in older games is *not* a sign of being a superhuman warrior, regardless of the proportion of 1st level characters to 0-level characters. Your assertion that it is otherwise is absurd EDIT: since you're essentially claiming that 1st level AD&D characters are tougher than 1st level characters in 3-5e, which is demonstrably false.

As to extensive backstories, it is my opinion that the story brought to life by playing an RPG is based upon what happens through the game, not what the player -- or even the DM -- plans in advance. That's all just prologue. Furthermore, I also believe that investing heavily in a character's backstory is setting oneself up for disappointment when your character trajectory does not go as planned. I would rather have PCs start out with minimal backstory and flesh out their character and their motivatons during play, rather than create an extremely detailed character that turns out to be inflexible during the actual game.

Protip: Guess which one of the above examples sounds like your character.

Talakeal
2017-01-23, 08:11 PM
As someone extremely active in the OSR movement *and* having cut my teeth as a youngster on B/X and 1e, I can guarantee you that being first level in older games is *not* a sign of being a superhuman warrior, regardless of the proportion of 1st level characters to 0-level characters. Your assertion that it is otherwise is absurd.

As to extensive backstories, it is my opinion that the story brought to life by playing an RPG is based upon what happens through the game, not what the player -- or even the DM -- plans in advance. That's all just prologue. Furthermore, I also believe that investing heavily in a character's backstory is setting oneself up for disappointment when your character trajectory does not go as planned. I would rather have PCs start out with minimal backstory and flesh out their character and their motivatons during play, rather than create an extremely detailed character that turns out to be inflexible during the actual game.

Protip: Guess which one of the above examples sounds like your character.

How do you get from "rich kid who was trained by an expensive tutor and then spent a couple years as a soldier on the losing side of a war" to super human warrior?

Also sure how there is any connection between backstory and trajectory going as planned.

As for the last bit, that is totally a matter of preferance. I would be bored to tears playing the way you describe, but that is just my oppinion. In my experiance DMs prefer players with some initiative because they actually take some of the burden off of the DM instead of just sitting back with their mouth open like baby birds waiting to be spoon fed the plot and then complaining when they get bored.

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about paladins? Because in most D&D editions they are not allowed to associate with evil characters or conduct themselves in a dishonorable manner, which would have constrained them every bit as much as my RPing a character's personality would.

Talakeal
2017-01-23, 10:46 PM
EDIT: since you're essentially claiming that 1st level AD&D characters are tougher than 1st level characters in 3-5e, which is demonstrably false.


Leaving the other points to be addressed again by others, virtually every person responding in this thread has advised that your opinion on the way levels work does not jibe with the game you were playing. Repeating your opinion that levels work differently is not likely to change this.

I am not saying that earlier editions had stronger characters, I am saying that there has been a demographic shift over time so that the world in general has more characters with more class levels.

For example, in AD&D the 9th level fighter gets followers. He has one 5-7th level lieutenant, and 10-30 first level elite troops that form his personal guard. All of the rest of his troops are 0th level soldiers. The implies to me that simply being a soldier for a few years does not mean you are higher than first level and that you must be a pretty special person to have multiple fourth level fighters as your bodyguard.

But yeah, this is all opinion. I am sure there is evidence on both sides as the game was played and written over decades by thousands of people, AFAIK you won't find one definitive source which lists exactly what a level represents.


Also, when you say "the game you were playing," do you mean Dungeons and Dragons or my DM's specific campaign? If it is the former see above, if it is the latter, he did read my character background and ok it, never making any objection to the fact that I was too competent for a first level character, so that claim is pretty clearly baseless.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-01-23, 11:35 PM
I do agree that in AD&D the assumption was that the vast majority of the world were 0th level characters who could never gain xp and people with actual class levels were special people.

I certainly wouldn't want to take a 3 on 1 fight at level 1 in AD&D either, though, even if they were 0th level NPCs.

Talakeal
2017-01-23, 11:57 PM
I do agree that in AD&D the assumption was that the vast majority of the world were 0th level characters who could never gain xp and people with actual class levels were special people.

I certainly wouldn't want to take a 3 on 1 fight at level 1 in AD&D either, though, even if they were 0th level NPCs.

Totally agree, it is terrible odds, but at least it was realistically possible to come out on top.

But, I felt that my back was against the wall and my choices were to betray my character's morals, fight these guys on their terms, or fight these guys on my term and I chose the latter.

Lorsa
2017-01-24, 02:31 AM
Of course I was afraid, there is fear and uncertainty every time you go into battle, but you have to use that fear to your advantage rather than letting it control you.

On a first reading, I was thinking "sure, of course you have to use fear to your advantage", but on second thought I can't help but think; how? I'm not sure there is any way of using your own fear to your advantage? How do you go about doing that in practice?



I had no reason to believe these guys were anything other than common hoodlums. They had no visible weapons or armor and no indication that they had anh real training or battle experiance other than surviving street fights and extorting shop-keepers. They had me outnumbered, sure, but I had already killed more than twice as many of their ilk.

I think here is a big part of the problem. You and your GM obviously have very different world expectations (which is why the word verisimilitude is in the title I guess?). However, your OP states "he wasn't wrong", so why you are stubbornly still sticking to your view I don't understand.

See, in my mind, a crime boss is most of all interesting in one thing; survival. They would never, NEVER, under any circumstances, have a meeting with some new unknown random gal without knowing for sure they have the upper hand. Why would they?

So, if they let you meet them, armed even, the guards there HAS to be really awesome. Certainly good enough to take you out. The only other reason would be if he had underestimated you (but since your character knows she is pretty much a greenhorn, that can't be the case).

By all accounts and purposes, for SURE that is a fight set up to be almost unwinnable for your. That is what your character should have thought in my mind (and it seems also in your GMs mind). These kind of discrepancies are hard to do much about though, unless you start talking with your GM how you view situations and what you think before making decisions.



From a logical perspective my goal is to avoid combat. I couldnt just leave (and that was for metagame reasons) and If I accepted his job (which would involve battling rival gang members) he would have continued leaning on me as he has learned that I am someone who is both competent and succeptible to bullies. If I refuse he keeps sending assassins after me until one of us is dead, and I have no reason to believe the hitmen will be any less competent and numerous than those I am currently fighting, and they will certainly attack me when I am not ready or in a way I am not trained to defend against.

From a logical perspective, your goal was to avoid that combat specifically. It was going to kill your for sure, whereas other combats in the future were more open. I mean, your character is faced with two options:

1) Play along and look for a way to solve the situation later
2) Die

There are very few characters I've played which would pick the second option, no matter how furious they might be. Option 1 is always better; it gives you the opportunity to actually DO something. Later on, you might get the possibility of stopping this crime boss (a good thing), maybe even stop a rival crime gang (a good thing), or give you the possibility of fleeing town before his thugs can get you (a survival thing).

I don't understand why your character wouldn't look for the best possible opportunity to stop this guy's operation. This one obviously wasn't it, but by working for him and learning about his gang, you can eventually set up a situation more to your advantage.



We are also trying out some rudimentery RP mechanics (as discussed in the other thread) and my character's vice is stubborn and flaw is self sacrificing. So even if my character was asked point blank: Would you rather die or kill / get an innocent killed she would have chosen death.

But there were no innocents on the line here, was it?

Anyway, I think this would be a case then for why your RP mechanics doesn't really do what you want them to do. Even a character who is stubborn and self-sacrificing should, in my mind, look for a way to get the best out of a bad situation. Simply dying really isn't that.



I really wanted to play and already agreed that I would put up with some railroading from a new DM, so lashing out and ending the campaign for metagame reasons was thr furthest thing from my mind.

Alright. So why DID you lash out and end the campaign? Because you saw your character as 100% uncompromising? Because you and your GM have different expectations on the personal protection a crime boss has?



Furthermore, levels in D&D are kind of weird and kind of a gamist construct to begin with. By RAW the first few levels go by FAST. If I had played nice and spent a mere few weeks hanging around town fighting gangbangers I would have been level three or four within a few weeks. So if It is more or less pick your poison, have a background that explains your skills and be under powered based on your level of training for the first few levels, or ignore background and training and have no explanation for where their skills came from and be overpowered for your background for the rest of the game.

This is part of the reason why your statement of "I have fought twice the number of these (crime boss hoodlum) kind of guys and came out on top" falls a part. If that has been the case, you wouldn't be level 1 anymore, would you?

A level 1 character is someone who has never been in a battle. Or if they have, it was one in a large group where at most they managed to get a hit in on a goblin or something. They're newbies, not veterans. If you DO make them into veterans, they should be experienced enough to know that their skills really suck (as someone who was fighting gangbangers for a few weeks would be twice as good).

SaintRidley
2017-01-24, 03:22 AM
Aren't PCs supposed to be heroes?

You're level 1. You're not a hero just yet.

Zombimode
2017-01-24, 03:23 AM
Edit: As an aside, does 3E actually have human stats anywhere? I am trying to look up what exactly the defaults are, but I can't find them the 3.5MM unlike every other edition.

Yes, they are in the DMG. I think it has stats for all classes (including npc classes) of all Levels.

It doesn't tell you when to you which statblock, of course.

Setting books sometimes have stats for typical NPCs (Eberron is good with that).

Satinavian
2017-01-24, 04:08 AM
For example, in AD&D the 9th level fighter gets followers. He has one 5-7th level lieutenant, and 10-30 first level elite troops that form his personal guard. All of the rest of his troops are 0th level soldiers. The implies to me that simply being a soldier for a few years does not mean you are higher than first level and that you must be a pretty special person to have multiple fourth level fighters as your bodyguard.I remember. (Well, mostly. I distinctly don't remember lv 0 followers but that might be a version thing)

Do you also remember, what the 9th level thief gets ? Something like a thiefs guild that runs the organized crime in a small town. Try to turn it around : An established local criminal ogranization might be headed by a lv 9 thief. Lvel 5-7 thiefs are not even local crime bosses. At best they are second/third in command and run a subsidiary. Even those could have competent lv. 3-4 underling bodyguards and only at the botton you will find lv 1 cutpurses.

So even if you come in with AD&D expectations, how would you ever assume that the crime boss is low level and only has at most lv 1 bodyguards ?

Lacco
2017-01-24, 06:36 AM
On a first reading, I was thinking "sure, of course you have to use fear to your advantage", but on second thought I can't help but think; how? I'm not sure there is any way of using your own fear to your advantage? How do you go about doing that in practice?

...you run faster because fear & *redacted to not provide advertisement to an energy drink* give you wings? :smallsmile:


I mean, your character is faced with two options:

1) Play along and look for a way to solve the situation later
2) Die

There are very few characters I've played which would pick the second option, no matter how furious they might be.

While I agree with the following paragraph you wrote, there are certain characters that would pick the second options in certain situations. Heroic sacrifice, against all odds, that kind of thing (and I would applaud them). GM's task in this case, is to provide the opportunity to die the most heroic death (with fireworks and other special effects) - maybe even slaying the original guy he attacked in the last moment.


Alright. So why DID you lash out and end the campaign? Because you saw your character as 100% uncompromising? Because you and your GM have different expectations on the personal protection a crime boss has?

From my point of view, he did not get the payoff he expected. Heroic death, self-sacrifice, killing the boss and then dying heroically... well, he set his character specifically for heroic death and he received standard one. That's... unsatisfactory at least.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-24, 06:57 AM
From my point of view, he did not get the payoff he expected. Heroic death, self-sacrifice, killing the boss and then dying heroically... well, he set his character specifically for heroic death and he received standard one. That's... unsatisfactory at least.

Note that here, though, the "payoff he expected" wasn't to die heroically but to beat up all the bad guys. That's kinda what this whole thread is about, and why it's also full of people trying to suggest, either subtly or in ALL CAPS, that *maybe* his expectations were a little unrealistic and he could have gone about things differently.

Lacco
2017-01-24, 07:25 AM
Note that here, though, the "payoff he expected" wasn't to die heroically but to beat up all the bad guys. That's kinda what this whole thread is about, and why it's also full of people trying to suggest, either subtly or in ALL CAPS, that *maybe* his expectations were a little unrealistic and he could have gone about things differently.

I forgot to put a smiley at the end :smallsmile:.

For me, what players put on character sheet tells me what kinds of stories they want to play. A player that puts "stubborn" and "self-sacrificing" wants to play games which provide him with opportunity to triumph through sheer perseverance, while sacrificing himself for greater good/friends/love/whatever.

Maybe it was little too fast, but overall - he did sacrifice himself (to make everyone's lives better via killing the crime boss... although he only attempted - but he could have made a grand statement by that) but the "stubborn" part yielded no payoff whatsoever.

And I agree with you on most points (can't judge the ones related to levels, since I play levelless games) and especially with Lorsa's views.

I would only add he chose a wrong system for this kind of game/for the kind of stories he wants from what he wrote. Seeing "stubborn" was a "vice" and self-sacrificing was a flaw, these worked as their names suggest (I assume point of these vices/flaws is basically getting him into trouble) - but it seems OP's perception of these were more of "qualities". That could work with a system, where he could have picked "stubborn" quality that gives him a possible edge (e.g. keeping him alive just for one more turn to finish off the crime boss) and e.g. self-sacrificing that gives him better starting character if he dies by meaningful self-sacrifice. In that case, the payoff would be there.

All in all, mistakes were made and I am terrible person because instead of providing comfort and approval he asked for I provide advice :smallsmile:

JustIgnoreMe
2017-01-24, 08:59 AM
They had me outnumbered, sure, but I had already killed more than twice as many of their ilk.
You had an unrealistic expectation of what a level 1 fighter could do.

If I write into my backstory that my level 1 fighter had personally killed 20 dragons single-handed, that doesn't mean my character is actually capable of it, and I have no cause to be upset when my character can't replicate the feat in game.

Thrudd
2017-01-24, 10:37 AM
A 1st level character is "Special", but their specialness at this point is due to the potential to become great. In AD&D, as pointed out, most people in the world are level 0 and can never gain levels at all, being a PC class means you could potentially become a hero.
The mechanical facts of a 1st level character are that they have little to no actual skill or ability advantage over the average level 0 man-at-arms. Maybe a 5% advantage in combat (if a fighter), slightly better saving throws, and a couple more HP.

georgie_leech
2017-01-24, 01:34 PM
But, I felt that my back was against the wall and my choices were to betray my character's morals, fight these guys on their terms, or fight these guys on my term and I chose the latter.

Quibble, deciding to start the combat isn't the same thing as fighting on your terms. You attacked 3v1 before establishing relative threat levels in a location chosen by the people you're trying to attack. That's like the opposite of fighting on your terms. The whole point of a crime boss inviting you to a location, instead of just walking up to you in an alley somewhere, is to put you in a position where they have power.

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 01:40 PM
On a first reading, I was thinking "sure, of course you have to use fear to your advantage", but on second thought I can't help but think; how? I'm not sure there is any way of using your own fear to your advantage? How do you go about doing that in practice?)

Adrenaline improves physical strength and allows one to overcome many of their survival instincts. Proper motivation is key to performance in all areas, one just needs to learn how to transform emotions into motivations.



I think here is a big part of the problem. You and your GM obviously have very different world expectations (which is why the word verisimilitude is in the title I guess?). However, your OP states "he wasn't wrong", so why you are stubbornly still sticking to your view I don't understand.

He wasn't wrong. Neither was I. It is subjective.

Its like if you said "I hate pizza," and then I said "I love pizza!" but then people tried to argue that no, you are wrong, pizza is objectively a good food and that anyone who doesn't care for it is crazy.

It is possible for a gang leader to have level 1 body guards. It is possible for a gang leader to have level 4 body guards. It is possible for a gang leader to have level 12 bodyguards. If you are playing in the city of Union it is possible for a gang leader to have level 30+ bodyguards. None of these set-ups are wrong.

I personally feel that the game master should, from these possibilities, choose the one that will make for the best game, which is usually the one closest in level to the PCs. My DM feels that he should be true to his vision of the game world and show that this guy is indeed a big-shot and choose the higher level possibility. Neither one of us is right or wrong, they are just different gaming styles.


See, in my mind, a crime boss is most of all interesting in one thing; survival. They would never, NEVER, under any circumstances, have a meeting with some new unknown random gal without knowing for sure they have the upper hand. Why would they?

So, if they let you meet them, armed even, the guards there HAS to be really awesome. Certainly good enough to take you out. The only other reason would be if he had underestimated you (but since your character knows she is pretty much a greenhorn, that can't be the case).

By all accounts and purposes, for SURE that is a fight set up to be almost unwinnable for your. That is what your character should have thought in my mind (and it seems also in your GMs mind). These kind of discrepancies are hard to do much about though, unless you start talking with your GM how you view situations and what you think before making decisions.

Think about this in real life for a second. If you smuggle a gun into a meeting with a mob boss and then suddenly pull it out and start shooting people, there is a good chance you will kill him. Does that mean that a mob boss would never meet with anyone?

My line of thinking was that he wanted to talk, not fight, and didn't think I would try and attack him on the spot (clearly the DM didn't either). Most people don't; regardless of capability most people would either take him up on his offer or run and hide imo. My character was uncompromising and at that point more than a little bit crazy, that's not something he should have expected.

And you know what? I actually expected him to be higher level than his guards so I tried to take the guards out first, if I had focused fire on the boss I would have actually killed him before the guards took me down, so whatever security he had it clearly wasn't enough. (It was actually really frustrating, I rolled a nat 20 on all three of my attack rolls that combat only to flub the confirmation roll. If I had been targeting the gang leader one or two of those crits would have gone through, and with his 3d6 HP that would have been enough to take him out).




But there were no innocents on the line here, was it?

Here, no. But if I had called in the cops I am sure some of them would have been put in the line of fire at some point, and if I had taken him up on his offer I am sure he would have me taking part in increasingly criminal activities.



From a logical perspective, your goal was to avoid that combat specifically. It was going to kill your for sure, whereas other combats in the future were more open. I mean, your character is faced with two options:

1) Play along and look for a way to solve the situation later
2) Die

There are very few characters I've played which would pick the second option, no matter how furious they might be. Option 1 is always better; it gives you the opportunity to actually DO something. Later on, you might get the possibility of stopping this crime boss (a good thing), maybe even stop a rival crime gang (a good thing), or give you the possibility of fleeing town before his thugs can get you (a survival thing).

I don't understand why your character wouldn't look for the best possible opportunity to stop this guy's operation. This one obviously wasn't it, but by working for him and learning about his gang, you can eventually set up a situation more to your advantage.

What you are saying makes perfect sense IF you know all of the factors; I didn't.

Hindsight is 20 / 20. In character I assumed these were just more common thugs. OOC I assumed it would be a level appropriate fight. I had no reason to assume these guys were super deadly expert killers until after it was too late.

Also, at this point my character isn't perfectly rational. She is more than a little traumatized, having spent the last couple of years on the losing side of a war in which she saw almost everyone she had known or loved killed, her homeland burned to ashes, the ideals she fought for torn down, and the organization she was a part of torn to pieces. She doesn't want to fight anymore, but doesn't know how to do anything else.

I still have no idea why the DM thought it would be a good idea to try and force such a character to go on an adventure, especially one that required subtlety and social manipulation; apparently he doesn't either, when I asked him he shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't have a reason he was just making it up as he went along because it felt right at the time.




Alright. So why DID you lash out and end the campaign? Because you saw your character as 100% uncompromising? Because you and your GM have different expectations on the personal protection a crime boss has?.

Because I expected a level appropriate encounter. I thought I would probably win the fight.



This is part of the reason why your statement of "I have fought twice the number of these (crime boss hoodlum) kind of guys and came out on top" falls a part. If that has been the case, you wouldn't be level 1 anymore, would you?

Well, we hadn't calculated XP yet. But no, I don't think six 1HD enemies is quite enough to level up.



A level 1 character is someone who has never been in a battle. Or if they have, it was one in a large group where at most they managed to get a hit in on a goblin or something. They're newbies, not veterans. If you DO make them into veterans, they should be experienced enough to know that their skills really suck (as someone who was fighting gangbangers for a few weeks would be twice as good).

Yeah, the level system does not make a whole lot of sense. That is why I always look at it as a gamist abstraction rather than a concrete description of reality.

The PHB describes level 1 fighters as an elite force. It also says that before taking on a PC class one must spend years training and working towards it and compares it to needing to finish medical school becoming a doctor.

But, by RAW, you just have to spend a couple of days killing kobolds and giant rats and then suddenly you are eligible to take a level of any class you want, even ones which make no sense. Heck, wizards start significantly older than other classes to represent years of study, but instead you can somehow learn to be a wizard by simply punching a few goblins. How does it work? Who knows?



I remember. (Well, mostly. I distinctly don't remember lv 0 followers but that might be a version thing)

Do you also remember, what the 9th level thief gets ? Something like a thiefs guild that runs the organized crime in a small town. Try to turn it around : An established local criminal ogranization might be headed by a lv 9 thief. Lvel 5-7 thiefs are not even local crime bosses. At best they are second/third in command and run a subsidiary. Even those could have competent lv. 3-4 underling bodyguards and only at the botton you will find lv 1 cutpurses.

So even if you come in with AD&D expectations, how would you ever assume that the crime boss is low level and only has at most lv 1 bodyguards ?

Honestly I never had a game with a tenth level thief in it. That is extremely weird and random, a thief can have 4 level 1 followers or 24 level 8 followers. Everyone talks about how the fighter is the class who gains an army as a class feature, but I am pretty sure an average thief's gang will mop the floor with the average fighter's army.

But still, just because a level 10 thief gets a gang that doesn't mean every gang leader is a tenth level thief. Any hoodlum with a modicum of talent or charisma can put together a band of like minded thugs, I mean surely all of those 1 HD pirates, bandits, thugs, and slavers in the Monster Manual don't just wander around leaderless until they are high enough level to attract the attention of a tenth level thief.

But no, that wasn't my point, I brought up AD&D as a defense that being a retired soldier doesn't automatically mean you are higher than first level, not to justify my assumption that the DM would throw level appropriate foes at me. That's more of a meta-game line of thinking that doesn't base itself off of any edition of D&D or any other RPG.

If I was running a game and it was supposed to be about gaining strength to overthrow a powerful villain I would make that abundantly clear to the players and provide some reasonable means of them evading the villain's wrath for the time at hand. I don't think I have ever played with a DM before who just through us into a world with all sorts of levels of antagonists and just said "sink or swim" regardless of game or edition.


You had an unrealistic expectation of what a level 1 fighter could do.

If I write into my backstory that my level 1 fighter had personally killed 20 dragons single-handed, that doesn't mean my character is actually capable of it, and I have no cause to be upset when my character can't replicate the feat in game.

That wasn't backstory, that was ingame.

Very sorry, I guess I did misrepresent what happened in my IP for the sake of brevity. Extremely sorry about that, I simply didn't think the setup was relevant at the time, I didn't mean to deceive anyone.

We had actually started the game, run one encounter, and then the DM said he was feeling sick and asked if we could put the game on hold and start again tomorrow. The proto-session involved me being robbed by half a dozen gangers as I was coming into town and defeating them, and then the next session began with the leader of their rival gang summoning me and telling me that since I demonstrated such skill in dispatching his rivals that I would work for him from now on.


A 1st level character is "Special", but their specialness at this point is due to the potential to become great. In AD&D, as pointed out, most people in the world are level 0 and can never gain levels at all, being a PC class means you could potentially become a hero.
The mechanical facts of a 1st level character are that they have little to no actual skill or ability advantage over the average level 0 man-at-arms. Maybe a 5% advantage in combat (if a fighter), slightly better saving throws, and a couple more HP.

By RAW Level 1 fighters have a bonus feat, 10+con HP, 6d4x10 gp, and use 4d6 drop the lowest ability scores*. Level 1 warriors do not get a bonus feat, have a d8+con HP, 3d4x10gp, and use 3d6 for ability scores**.

*Or a generous PB or elite array
** Or standard array

georgie_leech
2017-01-24, 01:46 PM
By RAW Level 1 fighters have a bonus feat, 10+con HP, 6d4x10 gp, and use 4d6 drop the lowest ability scores*. Level 1 warriors do not get a bonus feat, have a d8+con HP, 3d4x10gp, and use 3d6 for ability scores**.

*Or a generous PB or elite array
** Or standard array

And there were three of them. Meaning you fought against 3d8+3×CON HP, 12d4×10 gp, and three sets of the standard array. That also has three attacks to your one.

Knaight
2017-01-24, 01:51 PM
I personally feel that the game master should, from these possibilities, choose the one that will make for the best game, which is usually the one closest in level to the PCs. My DM feels that he should be true to his vision of the game world and show that this guy is indeed a big-shot and choose the higher level possibility. Neither one of us is right or wrong, they are just different gaming styles.

Yeah, no. This is a ridiculously high spin way of putting things, that among other things implies that the method you don't like is a deliberate choice to make for a worse game. A less spun way to put the positions would be this:
GM: To make the best game by having a consistent game world and making options more meaningful.
You: To make the best game by modifying the individual encounters within the game such that they provide an interesting challenge.

That you weren't on the same page here isn't a good thing, but the particular manner in which you aren't on the same page isn't that you wanted the best game and the GM decided to sacrifice game quality to preserve their setting.

JustIgnoreMe
2017-01-24, 02:36 PM
Oh look, more relevant information that wasn't in the initial post and completely changes things.

Storytime on how you took down six 1HD humans in a single encounter, please. -edit- Because that should have torn you apart. 6 on 1, level 1 vs level 1.

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 02:39 PM
Yeah, no. This is a ridiculously high spin way of putting things, that among other things implies that the method you don't like is a deliberate choice to make for a worse game. A less spun way to put the positions would be this:
GM: To make the best game by having a consistent game world and making options more meaningful.
You: To make the best game by modifying the individual encounters within the game such that they provide an interesting challenge.

That you weren't on the same page here isn't a good thing, but the particular manner in which you aren't on the same page isn't that you wanted the best game and the GM decided to sacrifice game quality to preserve their setting.

Sorry if I phrased that wrong. I was using game as in "gamist" vs. "simulationist," I was pretty much trying to say exactly what you said.

And ultimately I would actually come down on the side of the GM in your example if I had to choose between the two, but that is rarely the case.






And there were three of them. Meaning you fought against 3d8+3×CON HP, 12d4×10 gp, and three sets of the standard array. That also has three attacks to your one.

Yeah, but if the warriors need a 20 to hit the fighter and the fighter needs a 12 to hit them the fighter is still going to be putting out 3x the damage. Equipment, feats, and ability scores matter a lot when you get toward the extreme ends of the d20 curve.



Oh look, more relevant information that wasn't in the initial post and completely changes things.

Storytime on how you took down six 1HD humans in a single encounter, please. -edit- Because that should have torn you apart. 6 on 1, level 1 vs level 1.


As I said, I am really sorry, I didn't see how that information was at all relevant to my point, (I still don't see how it completely changes anything), and no one wants to read a 10,000+ word post where I spell out exactly every detail incase it becomes relevant three pages down the line.


It was pretty simple though, I fought defensively so they could only hit me on a 20 and I moved into a position where they could only engage me a few at a time.

JustIgnoreMe
2017-01-24, 02:47 PM
It changes things because we now see your "Three to one, I can take them" attitude in a completely different light! How can you not see that?

Faily
2017-01-24, 02:58 PM
It changes things because we now see your "Three to one, I can take them" attitude in a completely different light! How can you not see that?

It's just another episode of the world of Talakeal. A bizarre place where these odd problems keep happening again and again, but our protagonist is never to blame.


TBH, I find it very curious how you seem to be saying that you agree that you and the GM were both on different pages on what you wanted to play... so why the creation of this thread? Is it to troll or just try to find someone who (so far against the odds) believes that you were completely in the right and your GM was a horrible-mean person to do this to you?

JustIgnoreMe
2017-01-24, 03:11 PM
Given that in the other thread people have shown it's practically impossible for a 1st level fighter to take down 3 orcs, and the D20 encounter calculator says 6 level 1 enemies is an unbeatable encounter for a level 1 character (earning 1800 xp if you somehow manage)... Yeah, "I fought defensively and could only be hit on a 20" doesn't explain it.

Either you weren't fighting CR1 humans (reskinned kobolds maybe?), or you had a fantastic terrain advantage (narrow alleyway, no opponents with range or reach), or your DM (through inexperience or design) messed up the combat. Either way, that initial opening combat (which is perfect for a Yojimbo/Man With No Name opening) gave you the wrong impression of your vulnerability in an E6 campaign.

Or perhaps you learned the wrong lesson from the initial encounter. Perhaps it was to show you how much your chance of success depended on positioning, terrain, tactics, and bumbling enemies.

Lorsa
2017-01-24, 03:40 PM
Adrenaline improves physical strength and allows one to overcome many of their survival instincts. Proper motivation is key to performance in all areas, one just needs to learn how to transform emotions into motivations.

Sure, adrenaline is the ****. However, I'm not sure anyone who is really afraid can think "yeah, this is great, all this adrenaline SURE will make me win the fight!". If they do, they aren't that afraid to begin with. Adrenaline-imbued fear makes you act on instinct, which usually means trying to run away, not making articulate sentences challenging people to a duel.

In any case, none of that is represented in the D&D mechanics. But sure, if your character thought "wow, I am really afraid, so let's use that fear to better take down my foes!", I'm not going to argue.



He wasn't wrong. Neither was I. It is subjective.

Except one persons subjective opinion has an objective impact on the game world.



Its like if you said "I hate pizza," and then I said "I love pizza!" but then people tried to argue that no, you are wrong, pizza is objectively a good food and that anyone who doesn't care for it is crazy.

I don't really think it's like pizza at all. The argument is "which of these two assumptions is the most plausible", or even "since there are many assumptions, why did your character assume the easiest possible challenge?".



It is possible for a gang leader to have level 1 body guards. It is possible for a gang leader to have level 4 body guards. It is possible for a gang leader to have level 12 bodyguards. If you are playing in the city of Union it is possible for a gang leader to have level 30+ bodyguards. None of these set-ups are wrong.

I personally feel that the game master should, from these possibilities, choose the one that will make for the best game, which is usually the one closest in level to the PCs. My DM feels that he should be true to his vision of the game world and show that this guy is indeed a big-shot and choose the higher level possibility. Neither one of us is right or wrong, they are just different gaming styles.

I'm not sure it IS possible for a crime gang leader to have level 1 body guards. It would strain my disbelief just a bit too much. If it was a really small-time gang leader sure, but then I wouldn't really care about any repercussions he might send my way anyway. My point is; a gang leader usually has some of his better goons as bodyguards for uncertain meetings.

In any case, basing your decision on your idea is a pure meta-game decision. It couldn't have been what your character thought (which is why I claim your decision was a meta-game one, not an IC one).



Think about this in real life for a second. If you smuggle a gun into a meeting with a mob boss and then suddenly pull it out and start shooting people, there is a good chance you will kill him. Does that mean that a mob boss would never meet with anyone?

No, it means he pats people down before meeting with them. Sure, it's possible to smuggle in a gun. It's a moot point though, since you didn't mention any smuggling of weapons, but was clearly armed anyway. So I can only conclude he was aware of it and took it into account when choosing his safety measures.



My line of thinking was that he wanted to talk, not fight, and didn't think I would try and attack him on the spot (clearly the DM didn't either). Most people don't; regardless of capability most people would either take him up on his offer or run and hide imo. My character was uncompromising and at that point more than a little bit crazy, that's not something he should have expected.

Yep, and that would be fine if you had been level 4. Probably then you could've concluded that the boss was underestimating you and thus not prepared for an assault. I've had plenty of set ups that ended up this way for my PCs (with them killing someone who wasn't prepared for it).



And you know what? I actually expected him to be higher level than his guards so I tried to take the guards out first, if I had focused fire on the boss I would have actually killed him before the guards took me down, so whatever security he had it clearly wasn't enough. (It was actually really frustrating, I rolled a nat 20 on all three of my attack rolls that combat only to flub the confirmation roll. If I had been targeting the gang leader one or two of those crits would have gone through, and with his 3d6 HP that would have been enough to take him out).

Sure, luck favors the bold and all that. Still doesn't change the fact that your decision was a bit... strange (from a purely in-character viewpoint).



Here, no. But if I had called in the cops I am sure some of them would have been put in the line of fire at some point, and if I had taken him up on his offer I am sure he would have me taking part in increasingly criminal activities.

Could be that they'd be put in the line of fire. Could also be that they're competent and can handle it, and are just lacking the information of the where his secret lair might be (which your character could've supplied).

Also, even if you would be forced to take part in increasingly criminal activities, you'd also gradually improve your odds of killing him (by sheet probability of multiple run-ins and waiting for the right time).




What you are saying makes perfect sense IF you know all of the factors; I didn't.

Hindsight is 20 / 20. In character I assumed these were just more common thugs. OOC I assumed it would be a level appropriate fight. I had no reason to assume these guys were super deadly expert killers until after it was too late.

I can certainly understand the OOC assumption. It's a valid playstyle and something you need to check with your GM before play.

I can't understand the IC assumption though. It just seems odd to me and mostly influenced by your OOC one. At most, I can see how your character wouldn't have any clue at all how strong the thugs were, as she didn't have much experience with the criminal underworld. So why not wait and gather some intelligence before jumping into a fight you have no idea the odds of?



Also, at this point my character isn't perfectly rational. She is more than a little traumatized, having spent the last couple of years on the losing side of a war in which she saw almost everyone she had known or loved killed, her homeland burned to ashes, the ideals she fought for torn down, and the organization she was a part of torn to pieces. She doesn't want to fight anymore, but doesn't know how to do anything else.

I still have no idea why the DM thought it would be a good idea to try and force such a character to go on an adventure, especially one that required subtlety and social manipulation; apparently he doesn't either, when I asked him he shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't have a reason he was just making it up as he went along because it felt right at the time.

And this I agree with. I don't think the GM did a great job; I certainly would have chosen a very different type of adventure.



Because I expected a level appropriate encounter. I thought I would probably win the fight.

As I said, an OOC meta-game reason.



Well, we hadn't calculated XP yet. But no, I don't think six 1HD enemies is quite enough to level up.

Well, if they truly were CR 1/2, you'd have 900 XP, which is 100 XP from level 2. But still, that's a very narrow assumption. Easier would be "maybe if I had beaten up a lot of these guys I'd be higher level".



Yeah, the level system does not make a whole lot of sense. That is why I always look at it as a gamist abstraction rather than a concrete description of reality.

The PHB describes level 1 fighters as an elite force. It also says that before taking on a PC class one must spend years training and working towards it and compares it to needing to finish medical school becoming a doctor.

But, by RAW, you just have to spend a couple of days killing kobolds and giant rats and then suddenly you are eligible to take a level of any class you want, even ones which make no sense. Heck, wizards start significantly older than other classes to represent years of study, but instead you can somehow learn to be a wizard by simply punching a few goblins. How does it work? Who knows?

When the fluff doesn't fit the mechanics, one has to find some form of middle ground where it doesn't strain disbelief to assume the mechanics can work to model the world.

I would never assume that a level 1 fighter was an elite force. That just doesn't fit with the mechanics in any way. I'd assume that a level 1 character is someone with a "special spark", pretty much almost identical to a level 1 warrior just a tiny bit better but with the potential to become great.

Level 1's are generally newbie characters with great potential. Nothing more, nothing less.

awa
2017-01-24, 03:43 PM
Given that in the other thread people have shown it's practically impossible for a 1st level fighter to take down 3 orcs, and the D20 encounter calculator says 6 level 1 enemies is an unbeatable encounter for a level 1 character (earning 1800 xp if you somehow manage)... Yeah, "I fought defensively and could only be hit on a 20" doesn't explain it.

Either you weren't fighting CR1 humans (reskinned kobolds maybe?), or you had a fantastic terrain advantage (narrow alleyway, no opponents with range or reach), or your DM (through inexperience or design) messed up the combat. Either way, that initial opening combat (which is perfect for a Yojimbo/Man With No Name opening) gave you the wrong impression of your vulnerability in an E6 campaign.

Or perhaps you learned the wrong lesson from the initial encounter. Perhaps it was to show you how much your chance of success depended on positioning, terrain, tactics, and bumbling enemies.

To be fair an orc has an extra +2 hit on an otherwise identical warrior and CR is not a good guideline for what can actually happen in game.

It is easily possible to optimize a fighter to get his ac so high that a lot of low level monsters cant hit you
Chain shirt 4, shield 2, defensive fighting 2, worm tail belt 2, dex 2, just off the top of my head
We have an ac of 22
Human warriors with a 12 str and 1 Bab need 20s to hit,
If they were built as thugs not soldiers its possible they had weaker weapons and subpar armor making this an easy fight. If as he said he had the terrain advantage.

"I would never assume that a level 1 fighter was an elite force. That just doesn't fit with the mechanics in any way. I'd assume that a level 1 character is someone with a "special spark", pretty much almost identical to a level 1 warrior just a tiny bit better but with the potential to become great."

It rarely fits the mechanics, but occasionally and inconsistently the game does say that a typically soldier is a level 1 commoner that either runs away or falls over in pain after taking a single point of damage. In that scenario a level 1 fighter can be considered an elite soldier. Of course the game more commonly disagrees with that view by the examples they give if not explicitly.

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 03:47 PM
It's just another episode of the world of Talakeal. A bizarre place where these odd problems keep happening again and again, but our protagonist is never to blame.

TBH, I find it very curious how you seem to be saying that you agree that you and the GM were both on different pages on what you wanted to play... so why the creation of this thread? Is it to troll or just try to find someone who (so far against the odds) believes that you were completely in the right and your GM was a horrible-mean person to do this to you?

Yep, absolutely, I want someone to say I am 100% right, that is why I specifically say over and over again that we both made mistakes and neither one of us was entirely in the wrong.

I don't know why I started the thread (I said as much in my IP), I was just really upset / disappointed with how the situation turned out and I just wanted to talk about it. And as I said, it is ok to disagree with me, but when people call me a liar or say that I don't really hold the opinions I claim to that gets a bit frustrated and puts me on the defensive.

I assure you, if people were attacking the DM instead of me and attributing his actions to dishonesty or malice rather than GM noobishness / inflexibility I would be defending him just as hard, probably harder.

How would it be a troll post? Like, I don't even see the criteria for it being trolling.


Given that in the other thread people have shown it's practically impossible for a 1st level fighter to take down 3 orcs, and the D20 encounter calculator says 6 level 1 enemies is an unbeatable encounter for a level 1 character (earning 1800 xp if you somehow manage)... Yeah, "I fought defensively and could only be hit on a 20" doesn't explain it.

Either you weren't fighting CR1 humans (reskinned kobolds maybe?), or you had a fantastic terrain advantage (narrow alleyway, no opponents with range or reach), or your DM (through inexperience or design) messed up the combat. Either way, that initial opening combat (which is perfect for a Yojimbo/Man With No Name opening) gave you the wrong impression of your vulnerability in an E6 campaign.

Or perhaps you learned the wrong lesson from the initial encounter. Perhaps it was to show you how much your chance of success depended on positioning, terrain, tactics, and bumbling enemies.

Level 1 NPC classes are not CR 1, and even if they were the encounter calculator kind of breaks down at very low or high levels or when multiple enemies are involved (the DMG says as much).


I can't find the stats for warriors, so let's just say they are rogues.

They have a 15 AC and a +2 to hit.

I have chainmail, a tower shield, shield focus, and a 14 dex. That means that my AC is 22, meaning they need a nat 20 to hit me unless they can flank or charge me me (and if they can I can fight defensively to negate that bonus).

Meanwhile I have a +4 attack bonus, meaning I hit them half the time.

They have 7 hp, I have 12 HP. They are doing (assuming they can all attack, which they can't) 1.65 damage per round (meaning I can survive 8 rounds).

But I am doing an average of 4.25 damage a round, meaning I kill one of them every other round.

Assuming average rolls they will inflict 11 HP of damage on me before I kill the last one, which means I will barely squeak out a victory the majority of the time. But again, that is assuming they can all attack me at once, but if I am standing in a position that doesn't allow this it becomes pretty easy.

But they weren't rogues (who start with class abilities, the elite array, and MW weapons), but instead either 1hd humanoids or level 1 warriors.

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 04:06 PM
Sure, adrenaline is the ****. However, I'm not sure anyone who is really afraid can think "yeah, this is great, all this adrenaline SURE will make me win the fight!". If they do, they aren't that afraid to begin with. Adrenaline-imbued fear makes you act on instinct, which usually means trying to run away, not making articulate sentences challenging people to a duel.

That's part of my character's background. I was educated by monks rather than soldiers, they told me to control my emotions in battle, although I kind of took away the opposite lesson that they intended to teach. No mechanics, just RP.



In any case, basing your decision on your idea is a pure meta-game decision. It couldn't have been what your character thought (which is why I claim your decision was a meta-game one, not an IC one).

I can't understand the IC assumption though. It just seems odd to me and mostly influenced by your OOC one. At most, I can see how your character wouldn't have any clue at all how strong the thugs were, as she didn't have much experience with the criminal underworld. So why not wait and gather some intelligence before jumping into a fight you have no idea the odds of?

Well, if they truly were CR 1/2, you'd have 900 XP, which is 100 XP from level 2. But still, that's a very narrow assumption. Easier would be "maybe if I had beaten up a lot of these guys I'd be higher level".

Levels, CR, and XP are totally meta-game constructs. My character would have no reason to assume beating up a few random gangers would suddenly double my combat effectiveness when a lifetime of training has not.

IC my rationale is something like unarmored people normally die (or get taken out of the fight) when hit with a sword, and people in armor generally do not. I have a bastard sword, shield, and a full suit of mail, they have no visible weapons or armor. I have the element of surprise and can probably take them out before they can surround and overbear me.

If I wait for him to come after me, the element of surprise will be on his side and he will likely hit me while I am unarmed and unarmored, meaning I will likely be dead or taken out of the fight before I can even identify my attacker. Especially if he decides to simply poison me or kill me in my sleep.

The idea that his assassins would be nice first level encounters who would attack me one at a time in fair little bundles of XP is, to me, the one that involves significantly more meta-gaming.



I would never assume that a level 1 fighter was an elite force. That just doesn't fit with the mechanics in any way. I'd assume that a level 1 character is someone with a "special spark", pretty much almost identical to a level 1 warrior just a tiny bit better but with the potential to become great.

Level 1's are generally newbie characters with great potential. Nothing more, nothing less.

Different assumptions. In 3.X that is probably more correct, but as I said I still built my conception of the world in AD&D. 2E PHB page 37 and 38 specifically calls level 1 fighters "Elite Units" and page 34 says that you should have years of training under your belt before you get your first level in a PC class.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-24, 04:07 PM
<snip>
Then, his bodyguards, both level 4 warriors, bum rush me.




<snip>
But they weren't rogues (who start with class abilities, the elite array, and MW weapons), but instead either 1hd humanoids or level 1 warriors.

Huh. Is that so.

JustIgnoreMe
2017-01-24, 04:12 PM
And again, more information arrives. You didn't specify the 6 you killed were CR 1/2 NPC class nobodies. The boss and his guards were PC-classed, yes? So when you thought you had fought six similar enemies at once and won convincingly, you were massively underestimating what you were facing.

-edit- my mistake, you specified the 4th level bodyguards were warriors, not fighters.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-24, 04:13 PM
That's part of my character's background. I was educated by monks rather than soldiers, they told me to control my emotions in battle, although I kind of took away the opposite lesson that they intended to teach. No mechanics, just RP.




Levels, CR, and XP are totally meta-game constructs. My character would have no reason to assume beating up a few random gangers would suddenly double my combat effectiveness when a lifetime of training has not.

IC my rationale is something like unarmored people normally die (or get taken out of the fight) when hit with a sword, and people in armor generally do not. I have a bastard sword, shield, and a full suit of mail, they have no visible weapons or armor. I have the element of surprise and can probably take them out before they can surround and overbear me.

If I wait for him to come after me, the element of surprise will be on his side and he will likely hit me while I am unarmed and unarmored, meaning I will likely be dead or taken out of the fight before I can even identify my attacker. Especially if he decides to simply poison me or kill me in my sleep.

The idea that his assassins would be nice first level encounters who would attack me one at a time in fair little bundles of XP is, to me, the one that involves significantly more meta-gaming.


<looks at thread title>As opposed, you mean, to the assumption that the crime boss and his two bodyguards would be a level appropriate challenge?



Different assumptions. In 3.X that is probably more correct, but as I said I still built my conception of the world in AD&D. 2E PHB page 37 and 38 specifically calls level 1 fighters "Elite Units" and page 34 says that you should have years of training under your belt before you get your first level in a PC class.

Aight, let's just unpick this a little bit. Level 1 fighters *are* elite units, when compared to mercenaries, the vast majority of which are 0-level humans. This is an artifact of the wargaming roots of D&D, and instead of implying that 1st level fighters are Green Beret caliber special forces it means they've had more training than conscripted peasants. When you read the "years of training" you should be thinking "as a squire, digging out stables and fencing with wooden swords", not "years spent in the trenches". Also, note that in AD&D terms "Veteran" mercenaries are considered to be 1st level fighters.

awa
2017-01-24, 04:13 PM
Different assumptions. In 3.X that is probably more correct, but as I said I still built my conception of the world in AD&D. 2E PHB page 37 and 38 specifically calls level 1 fighters "Elite Units" and page 34 says that you should have years of training under your belt before you get your first level in a PC class.

It might say that but if you look at actual 2nd edition adventures the levels were all over the place and a mob boss could as others have pointed out easily be level 9. Not to mention level 1 second edition characters were super fragile, much more so then third edition characters who start with max hp.

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 04:25 PM
Huh. Is that so.

Yes, yes it is, I never claimed any different.

The six guys I killed were level 1.

The two guys who killed me were level 4.

I had no indication that there was a massive difference between the guys, they were just described to me as gangsters.


And again, more information arrives. You didn't specify the 6 you killed were CR 1/2 NPC class nobodies. The boss and his guards were PC-classed, yes? So when you thought you had fought six similar enemies at once and won convincingly, you were massively underestimating what you were facing.

-edit- my mistake, you specified the 4th level bodyguards were warriors, not fighters.

I am trying to include all of the relevant details, I am not trying to deceive anyone.

Do you really expect me to spend two or three hours writing out every possible detail of the game just because it could become relevant? Would anyone actually want to read such a monstrous post?


It might say that but if you look at actual 2nd edition adventures the levels were all over the place and a mob boss could as others have pointed out easily be level 9. Not to mention level 1 second edition characters were super fragile, much more so then third edition characters who start with max hp.

Levels in every edition are all over the place, every author brings their own assumptions to the game.

I am not saying that they are wrong, merely that I was not wrong for saying my character had a few years of combat experience under her belt and still calling her level 1.

awa
2017-01-24, 04:28 PM
I'm just disagreeing with saying its a second edition mind set that tripped you up because the problem would have been even greater using that system.

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 04:32 PM
I'm just disagreeing with saying its a second edition mind set that tripped you up because the problem would have been even greater using that system.

Nothing "tripped me up". I believe it is perfectly appropriate to have a former soldier as a first level character. My DM believes it is perfectly appropriate to have a former soldier as a first level character. There is no problem there.

People in this forum are saying that it is inappropriate to have a former soldier as a first level character as first level means that one has to be a "complete newbie".

I am responding by providing textual support for my interpretation.

D&D levels and what they represent are all over the place; I am not saying that any one interpretation is wrong.

Hell, I had one DM who insisted that an average foot soldier was a 16th level fighter and that the generals were all high epic. We all snickered about the silliness of it after the game, but none of us ever insisted that he was "doing it wrong" for making a campaign world that run on such high powered assumptions.

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 04:37 PM
<looks at thread title>As opposed, you mean, to the assumption that the crime boss and his two bodyguards would be a level appropriate challenge?

What does this even mean?

OOC I assumed that both would be level appropriate challenges.

IC I assumed that fighting them upfront would be an easier fight than allowing his assassins to ambush me at a time and place of their choosing.

Assuming that killing a couple of assassins would magically double my fighting ability is a completely meta-game concept and didn't factor into my in character reasoning at all.

Thrudd
2017-01-24, 05:19 PM
In the end, it doesn't matter how you describe a character's background. The mechanical facts of the game determine a character's overall combat performance. If there's a logical disconnect between the background and the actual game performance, that's something the player will have to get their head around.

It is true, a 3e character with feats and high ability scores and optimized gear is better off, compared to the NPCs of that edition, than was possible for the typical 1st level fighter of AD&D (assuming you didn't roll 18/90's strength). Even so, fighting multiple opponents alone isn't a winning prospect without significant situational tactical advantages, as we've seen.

thirdkingdom
2017-01-24, 05:40 PM
Yes, yes it is, I never claimed any different.

The six guys I killed were level 1.

The two guys who killed me were level 4.

I had no indication that there was a massive difference between the guys, they were just described to me as gangsters.



I am trying to include all of the relevant details, I am not trying to deceive anyone.

Do you really expect me to spend two or three hours writing out every possible detail of the game just because it could become relevant? Would anyone actually want to read such a monstrous post?



Levels in every edition are all over the place, every author brings their own assumptions to the game.

I am not saying that they are wrong, merely that I was not wrong for saying my character had a few years of combat experience under her belt and still calling her level 1.

Challenge Accepted


"Hey guys, I've gotten the itch to be a player again so started playing in a solo E6 game recently with a first-time DM who's had experience as a player but never running games. Something happened in our first real session that really bummed me out, and I just wanted to share it here to see what you guys think. I'm playing a Lawful Good fighter, <optimized in this manner>, and upon newly arriving in this town was set upon by six low-level criminals. By dint of my armor and intelligent use of the terrain I was able to defeat them all, and so apparently garnered the attention of a rival crime boss who wanted to recruit me for his nefarious purposes."

"He send some goons to bring me to him and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Or so he thought! Even though it was pretty clear that my DM really didn't expect me to fight I decided it was the best option available to my character, who I had decided that in addition to the stainless steel cutlery set I had loving picked out and added to the detailed house plan I drew was also a stubborn and upright soul who would never work for a gangster. Having just been victorious over a half dozen flunkies I figured that I I could take out the crime boss and his two bodyguards. Imagine my surprise when it turned out the bodyguards were 4th level Warriors and they ended up killing my character! Now I'm pretty bummed about it, because I put a lot of effort into the backstory of my character and don't think its fair that the DM made the encounter so tough."

I think that covers all the high points, honestly.

JustIgnoreMe
2017-01-24, 05:41 PM
Let's put this another way.

Imagine you're a mob boss with an enemy who is also a mob boss.

A stranger just walked into town and killed 6 of your enemy's mobsters without breaking a sweat.

When meeting with this stranger, do you choose bodyguards who are:

A) Less capable than the 6 mobsters the stranger killed without breaking a sweat;

B) Exactly as capable as the 6 mobsters the stranger killed without breaking a sweat; or

C) Significanly more capable than the 6 mobsters the stranger killed without breaking a sweat?

Here's a clue: the answer's always going to be C), especially if you know nothing about the stranger and have no leverage over her.

8 NPC levels in 2 guys instead of 6 NPC levels in 6 guys. The boss himself would probably have been better staying out of the fight: why own a dog and bark yourself?

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 06:02 PM
Challenge Accepted


"Hey guys, I've gotten the itch to be a player again so started playing in a solo E6 game recently with a first-time DM who's had experience as a player but never running games. Something happened in our first real session that really bummed me out, and I just wanted to share it here to see what you guys think. I'm playing a Lawful Good fighter, <optimized in this manner>, and upon newly arriving in this town was set upon by six low-level criminals. By dint of my armor and intelligent use of the terrain I was able to defeat them all, and so apparently garnered the attention of a rival crime boss who wanted to recruit me for his nefarious purposes."

"He send some goons to bring me to him and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Or so he thought! Even though it was pretty clear that my DM really didn't expect me to fight I decided it was the best option available to my character, who I had decided that in addition to the stainless steel cutlery set I had loving picked out and added to the detailed house plan I drew was also a stubborn and upright soul who would never work for a gangster. Having just been victorious over a half dozen flunkies I figured that I I could take out the crime boss and his two bodyguards. Imagine my surprise when it turned out the bodyguards were 4th level Warriors and they ended up killing my character! Now I'm pretty bummed about it, because I put a lot of effort into the backstory of my character and don't think its fair that the DM made the encounter so tough."

I think that covers all the high points, honestly.

Sure it does, but there are also multitudes of points that it doesnt cover, and you never know if one of those points becomes relevant over the course of three pages of conversation.

I didnt think the aborted half session was relevant to my initial story so i didnt include it, just like your summary doesnt include lots of other points that might become relevant, like that between the fights I traded my saddle for a healing potion.

Also, your summary leaves out the fact that this was a prequel to the actual campaign. My character did not have a house at this point, or any possessions at all save for the gear from my military kit that I was trying to sell off.

NichG
2017-01-24, 08:27 PM
D&D levels and what they represent are all over the place; I am not saying that any one interpretation is wrong.


If you take actions because you believe in a particular interpretation over others, you can no longer claim 'they're all the same'. In this case, your interpretation (or rather, your belief that your interpretation was predictive of what would happen) got your character killed.

That makes it, in this situation, regardless of anything you or your GM might have said or discussed beforehand, objectively wrong.

All of the debate about older editions and levels of veterancy and so on can, at most, explain why you believed this incorrect thing. But the facts are, in the world you were playing in, mob bosses have Lv4 bodyguards. And your mistake was assuming that your beliefs and assumptions could be taken as true without any uncertainty or effort to verify them. You acted without knowledge, and paid the price.

kyoryu
2017-01-24, 09:16 PM
I also want to take about "Encounters should be level appropriate".

It's a fairly reasonable statement to say that combat encounters that the GM forces on you should be level appropriate.

However, I think it's a bit silly to argue that combat that a PC initiates must be level appropriate. If you're near the King's Elite Guard of Legendary Eliteness as a level 1 PC or equivalent, it's a bit silly to assert that all of a sudden the best warriors in the realm should be defeatable by a level 1 PC.

It's kind of a corollary of the Chunky Salsa rule - if you do things that logically result in your death, you die. If you choose to stand at Ground Zero of a nuclear blast, you die.

If you choose to challenge the most dangerous warriors around, and you're mechanically Not That, then you're probably going to lose. And I'm okay with that.

I'm not saying that this situation *necessarily* falls under that category, just that I disagree with the premise that any combat that a PC initiates must be winnable.

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 09:16 PM
If you take actions because you believe in a particular interpretation over others, you can no longer claim 'they're all the same'. In this case, your interpretation (or rather, your belief that your interpretation was predictive of what would happen) got your character killed.

That makes it, in this situation, regardless of anything you or your GM might have said or discussed beforehand, objectively wrong.

All of the debate about older editions and levels of veterancy and so on can, at most, explain why you believed this incorrect thing. But the facts are, in the world you were playing in, mob bosses have Lv4 bodyguards. And your mistake was assuming that your beliefs and assumptions could be taken as true without any uncertainty or effort to verify them. You acted without knowledge, and paid the price.

That's ridiculous.

Mob bosses CAN have guards of any level and the DM decided that that particular mob boss had level 4 guards.

I thought it was weird that a level 1 antagonist had level 4 guards, just like I would find it weird that a level 4 antagonist would have level four guards, but neither of us made any assumption that all mob bosses have guards of any particular level.

Not that it matters or that my estimation of their quality have anything to do with it*. It doesn't matter if they were level 1, level 4, or level 700,000,000,000, my character has better odds in a straight fight when I am armed and armored than if they attack me when I am not expecting it.

The only misunderstanding that played into my death was that my assumption that we lived in a consistent world where if someone really wants someone else dead they will put their best men on the job rather than just saying "Whelp, you level four guys just sit here and chill, gonna send the level 1 guys to take care of my business, even though I already know the level one guys aren't up to it in a straight fight."

Now, hypothetically, if the body guards had been level 1, and I decided to just tell them to pike it and walk away. Then the DM had rolled a bunch of dice behind the screen and announced "sorry, the mob boss hired an assassin and he sneak attacked you in your sleep. You are killed instantly," what sort of conversation would we be having?

*:The DM actually said I could do a take-back after I learned how powerful they are and I told him it doesn't matter, I am not going to work for him under duress, and no matter what level his men are I am going to have better odds of defeating them face to face than in an ambush.


I also want to take about "Encounters should be level appropriate".

It's a fairly reasonable statement to say that combat encounters that the GM forces on you should be level appropriate.

However, I think it's a bit silly to argue that combat that a PC initiates must be level appropriate. If you're near the King's Elite Guard of Legendary Eliteness as a level 1 PC or equivalent, it's a bit silly to assert that all of a sudden the best warriors in the realm should be defeatable by a level 1 PC.

It's kind of a corollary of the Chunky Salsa rule - if you do things that logically result in your death, you die. If you choose to stand at Ground Zero of a nuclear blast, you die.

Agreed. However in this particular case the DM put him in my path as an antagonist and he told me that if I left he would come after me and the DM asked me not to leave town for meta-game reasons.

Douglas
2017-01-24, 09:52 PM
The only misunderstanding that played into my death was that my assumption that we lived in a consistent world where if someone really wants someone else dead they will put their best men on the job rather than just saying "Whelp, you level four guys just sit here and chill, gonna send the level 1 guys to take care of my business, even though I already know the level one guys aren't up to it in a straight fight."
I think that interpretation is making some baseless assumptions. Chief among them that this mob boss "really wants you dead" - that is, that your death is high on his priorities list.

In general, a competent leader of a sizable organization is going to put his best people on his most important jobs. What is a mob boss's #1 most important job? Keeping himself alive. You've mentioned he's got a rival mob boss, said rival could potentially send a level 4 assassin after him at any time. Sending one of his level 4 guards after you would leave him vulnerable to that.

NichG
2017-01-24, 10:06 PM
That's ridiculous.

Mob bosses CAN have guards of any level and the DM decided that that particular mob boss had level 4 guards.

I thought it was weird that a level 1 antagonist had level 4 guards, just like I would find it weird that a level 4 antagonist would have level four guards, but neither of us made any assumption that all mob bosses have guards of any particular level.

You implicitly assumed this when you made the judgement that your best chance was to win. The DM implicitly assumed something when he set the levels of his NPCs. Neither of you had correct knowledge about the assumptions of the other.

In that kind of situation, you are ultimately betting on your mental model of the other person at the table in order to evaluate for yourself what action to take (since that is what in the end determines the level of the guards). In this case, you bet wrong. Time to adjust your mental model.

Or, next time, you can be aware that your mental model can be wrong regardless of how strongly you believe in it, and take actions to verify it first before committing to something with large consequences.



Now, hypothetically, if the body guards had been level 1, and I decided to just tell them to pike it and walk away. Then the DM had rolled a bunch of dice behind the screen and announced "sorry, the mob boss hired an assassin and he sneak attacked you in your sleep. You are killed instantly," what sort of conversation would we be having?


If you told me 'my character went to a public inn, took no precautions, and slept with the window open, because it would be unreasonable for the DM to kill my character offscreen and I don't think my DM would do that' I'd tell you the same thing - you had an assumption about how things were, and even if you can come up with arguments that would justify that assumption, in that case it turned out to be false and your character died because of it.

Whether your DM was doing a good job or a bad job is totally separate from the question of whether a given belief or assumption is factually correct or incorrect. Ultimately, you can't control the actions of other people, just your own. When you act in a way that assumes the other person will act exactly as you predict, things can go wrong when your prediction is bad. So rather than saying 'my prediction was wrong because the other person did a bad thing', you should adjust your beliefs and say 'sometimes people don't do what I expect, I should take that into account and consider that possibility when I choose what I will do'.

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 10:22 PM
Or, next time, you can be aware that your mental model can be wrong regardless of how strongly you believe in it, and take actions to verify it first before committing to something with large consequences.

Care to give an example of how I should have verified it in that situation?

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 10:36 PM
I think that interpretation is making some baseless assumptions. Chief among them that this mob boss "really wants you dead" - that is, that your death is high on his priorities list.

In general, a competent leader of a sizable organization is going to put his best people on his most important jobs. What is a mob boss's #1 most important job? Keeping himself alive. You've mentioned he's got a rival mob boss, said rival could potentially send a level 4 assassin after him at any time. Sending one of his level 4 guards after you would leave him vulnerable to that.

Yeah, like I said there are a lot of details which I left out of the story for the sake of brevity. I am kind of reluctant to admit this as there are several posters who are apparently looking to "prove me a liar" so that they can safely discount any and every statement I make.

But, what the hell, I guess that is what the ignore button is for:



So I came into town and killed six gang members. Called the guards and went on my way. I went to a merchant, sold my saddle, bought a healing potion, and rented a room at a boarding house. The next morning I got a letter from someone inviting me to a private meeting at a local bar. I asked around town and found out that the man was one of two major crime families that operated in the city, both of which are equally powerful and locked in a stalemate, and that the bar he invited me to was a well known front for the crime family's meeting place.
So I went to the meeting rather than leaving town (against all of my better judgment) and was told by the man I was meeting with (let's call him Mr. X) that the head of the rival gang (Let's call him Mr. Y) was furious as someone had killed six of his men, including his son, and that he had put a huge contract out on the unknown killer's head. Mr. X had done some snooping (apparently his daughter was having an affair with Mr. Y's late son) and found out that I was the one who killed Mr. Y's son.
Mr. X told me that he was currently the only person who knew I was involved. He congratulated me on killing Mr. Y's men, but said that he couldn't tolerate a powerful rogue agent in town. If I were to work for him, he could protect me, and more importantly, forget that I had anything to do with the death of Mr Y's son. To prove my loyalty, he knew Mr. Y's men were going to raid a caravan of illicit goods he was smuggling into the city, and if I could kill the ambushers I would have earned my place in his gang.
Of course, Mr. X doesn't take rejection well, and if I don't kill those men, he will have no choice to let Mr Y know exactly who it was who killed his son and where to find him. Mr. Y is a very powerful and vengeful man, and once that information gets out Mr. Y will be sending his best hit-men (along with every bounty hunter and sell sword in town) directly towards my back.

NichG
2017-01-24, 10:43 PM
Care to give an example of how I should have verified it in that situation?

Sure, here's a set of things you could have potentially done. I'll start with new ones, then go to repeats of things that have been said before in this thread.

New approaches:

- Upon receiving the invitation, Gather Information (mechanically or via RP) about the organization you're being invited to meet. How powerful are they, who are the important forces, what are they known for, if the guards aren't doing something then why? In-character, this is sensible preparation for a potentially dangerous situation you're going into. Metagame, this forces the DM to commit to these details beforehand, making them less likely to be arbitrary.

- During the meeting, ask lots of questions. Understand why you've been invited here, why you specifically, what they want, what they're offering, what they're threatening. They'll be cagey, but questions are free. Metagame, this can help you get a feeling for where the DM thinks this scenario is going. You can literally, in-character, ask 'how do you see this playing out?'.
-- Additionally, though unrelated to information gathering, if the DM hasn't thought things through well enough, by asking an incisive question you can sometimes wield uncertainty to get NPCs to back down where they would otherwise be uncompromising or unreasonable. I mention it because its a weapon you can use to attack in this situation without much threat of death or irreversible escalation. In other words, this is a way to fight back without 100% committing to a battle you might lose.

- Upon the meeting beginning to go sour, ask questions of the DM such as 'how strong do these guys seem?' and 'how are they moving/holding themselves?' and so on. There is a game mechanic in D&D for this in the form of the fairly obscure Martial Lore skill and some associated feats, but there's a good chance the DM will give you some kind of hint even without it. In-character, this helps close the gap between what you know/believe OOC and what your character should know from living in the world. Metagame, again this forces the DM to solidify details before they become crucial, and also gives the DM opportunity to think twice in terms of questions of consistency. It can also cue the DM ahead of time that you are seeing this as a battle situation.

- In general, you were arguing in favor of character initiative as a way to enrich gaming. This is a good chance to do something like that. You recognized that the DM needed you to bite on this hook for game to go forward, and that leaving town would stonewall him. So use that initiative and take a third option, again designed to approach the situation from a better position (less uncertainty, more strength). When receiving the offer, rather than going along with it or just leaving, do something that forces them to take risks in order to meet with you - for example, choosing a neutral location for the meeting, or just dropping a response by letter in return - and use that to get a better sense of what they want and how they go about getting it. Force them to show their hand to gauge your strength, rather than being forced to show your hand in order to gauge their strength.

Old approaches:

- As has been suggested many times, delay the fight by pretending to play along with their plans until you have a better sense of the opposition. You turned this plan down because of strong, untested assumptions you made about how the DM's world works. However, this plan offers a fairly low element of risk and many opportunities to turn it around at your leisure, so given the absence of concrete information it has a lower cost for making an error than a plan where being incorrect means that you die.

- As has been suggested many times, take the risk with turning them down and walking away. In both cases you don't know what strength will be brought to bear against you, but in one case if you're wrong then you immediately die (which happened). In the other case, you might still die, but you have a greater span of time to get a grasp on the situation and adjust things to your benefit. Metagame, if the DM has them leap up and attack you after you turn down the offer, they're more likely to be intended-to-be-fought and level appropriate than if you surprise the DM by spontaneously attacking them. If the DM doesn't have them attack you, you are in a situation with many more options that don't come down to a direct test of strength against an adversary of unknown strength (go into hiding, leave town, team up with the guards, set a reverse-ambush for the assassins you rightfully expected would be coming)

Edit: Also, critical to all of these things. Seriously listen to the hints you receive, and if they contradict your expectations go with what you hear and not what you think makes sense. Obtaining information is useless if you aren't prepared to act differently because of it.

Thrudd
2017-01-24, 11:10 PM
Yeah, like I said there are a lot of details which I left out of the story for the sake of brevity. I am kind of reluctant to admit this as there are several posters who are apparently looking to "prove me a liar" so that they can safely discount any and every statement I make.

But, what the hell, I guess that is what the ignore button is for:



So I came into town and killed six gang members. Called the guards and went on my way. I went to a merchant, sold my saddle, bought a healing potion, and rented a room at a boarding house. The next morning I got a letter from someone inviting me to a private meeting at a local bar. I asked around town and found out that the man was one of two major crime families that operated in the city, both of which are equally powerful and locked in a stalemate, and that the bar he invited me to was a well known front for the crime family's meeting place.
So I went to the meeting rather than leaving town (against all of my better judgment) and was told by the man I was meeting with (let's call him Mr. X) that the head of the rival gang (Let's call him Mr. Y) was furious as someone had killed six of his men, including his son, and that he had put a huge contract out on the unknown killer's head. Mr. X had done some snooping (apparently his daughter was having an affair with Mr. Y's late son) and found out that I was the one who killed Mr. Y's son.
Mr. X told me that he was currently the only person who knew I was involved. He congratulated me on killing Mr. Y's men, but said that he couldn't tolerate a powerful rogue agent in town. If I were to work for him, he could protect me, and more importantly, forget that I had anything to do with the death of Mr Y's son. To prove my loyalty, he knew Mr. Y's men were going to raid a caravan of illicit goods he was smuggling into the city, and if I could kill the ambushers I would have earned my place in his gang.
Of course, Mr. X doesn't take rejection well, and if I don't kill those men, he will have no choice to let Mr Y know exactly who it was who killed his son and where to find him. Mr. Y is a very powerful and vengeful man, and once that information gets out Mr. Y will be sending his best hit-men (along with every bounty hunter and sell sword in town) directly towards my back.


Why didn't you adopt the motive of Sanjuro in Yojimbo? I get that you didn't want to be as mercenary as the Man with no name, but you could have seen this as a chance to start weakening the gangs. I would have agreed to undertake the mission, but I'd need him to send some of his men with me. How do you know how many ambushers there would be? And hopefully some of them will get killed in the fighting, as well.
Or, additionally, covertly inform the authorities that an illicit shipment is coming to town and try to arrange for them be there after the ambush. Both gangs are weakened, you didn't help anyone break the law (and hopefully you managed to get out of there without getting arrested yourself). If Mr. X gets suspicious about how the authorities knew about the shipment, you can imply that Mr Y's gang clearly knew about it, too, they must have a snitch. Maybe you should poke around their hangouts, since they don't know who you are yet, and see if you can find out who it is..then start spreading rumors among Y's men that there is a snitch in their ranks. Go back to Mr. X, and tell him that someone in Y's gang knows that the snitch is in X's gang - that's how they knew about the shipment in the first place. Hopefully X now trusts you to find out who X's snitch is. You can circulate among his men and start discreetly spreading blame around. Now both gangs have people eyeing their own ranks with suspicion. Hopefully a fight breaks out as people start turning on each other.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-01-24, 11:23 PM
An often overlooked option is just surrendering if you're getting your ass beat.

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 11:33 PM
Why didn't you adopt the motive of Sanjuro in Yojimbo? I get that you didn't want to be as mercenary as the Man with no name, but you could have seen this as a chance to start weakening the gangs. I would have agreed to undertake the mission, but I'd need him to send some of his men with me. How do you know how many ambushers there would be? And hopefully some of them will get killed in the fighting, as well.
Or, additionally, covertly inform the authorities that an illicit shipment is coming to town and try to arrange for them be there after the ambush. Both gangs are weakened, you didn't help anyone break the law (and hopefully you managed to get out of there without getting arrested yourself). If Mr. X gets suspicious about how the authorities knew about the shipment, you can imply that Mr Y's gang clearly knew about it, too, they must have a snitch. Maybe you should poke around their hangouts, since they don't know who you are yet, and see if you can find out who it is..then start spreading rumors among Y's men that there is a snitch in their ranks. Go back to Mr. X, and tell him that someone in Y's gang knows that the snitch is in X's gang - that's how they knew about the shipment in the first place. Hopefully X now trusts you to find out who X's snitch is. You can circulate among his men and start discreetly spreading blame around. Now both gangs have people eyeing their own ranks with suspicion. Hopefully a fight breaks out as people start turning on each other.

That might have worked, although I seriously doubt I had the ability to pull it off, 8 cha and no ranks in bluff, gather information, or any related skills. But I don't see how I couldn't have done it without compromising my integrity or my principles at some point. And overall, it just sounds so pointless and tedious. Lots of risk, lots of effort, and for what?

And you know, that might be the root of the problem; I had no reason to give two spits about the gangs or their turf war IC or OOC, and just wanted to get the situation over and done with as fast as possible so that I could get on with the actual game.

Thanks for the insight into my own motivation!

Thrudd
2017-01-24, 11:39 PM
That might have worked, although I seriously doubt I had the ability to pull it off, 8 cha and no ranks in bluff, gather information, or any related skills. But I don't see how I couldn't have done it without compromising my integrity or my principles at some point. And overall, it just sounds so pointless and tedious. Lots of risk, lots of effort, and for what?

And you know, that might be the root of the problem; I had no reason to give two spits about the gangs or their turf war IC or OOC, and just wanted to get the situation over and done with as fast as possible so that I could get on with the actual game.

Thanks for the insight into my own motivation!

I thought the gang war was the actual point of the game? Like, you had discussed with the GM that you wanted to do a Yojimbo type scenario. Did I misread that from the early posts? Confused. Anyway, it's all over now.

Talakeal
2017-01-24, 11:50 PM
I thought the gang war was the actual point of the game? Like, you had discussed with the GM that you wanted to do a Yojimbo type scenario. Did I misread that from the early posts? Confused. Anyway, it's all over now.

No, not at all. I said that I assumed the DM was running an adventure based on Yojimbo. I had no desire to do such, and if the DM had actually been planning to run the campaign around that concept I never would have agreed to play.

Thrudd
2017-01-25, 12:09 AM
No, not at all. I said that I assumed the DM was running an adventure based on Yojimbo. I had no desire to do such, and if the DM had actually been planning to run the campaign around that concept I never would have agreed to play.
Ohh. Well, then I guess it's a good thing you got out of it.

JustIgnoreMe
2017-01-25, 03:41 AM
But, what the hell, I guess that is what the ignore button is for:

You know, until you said that, I never thought that my username might come across as a hostile suggestion: that people who dislike hearing what I say should just press a button and mute me. Perhaps you already have and will never see this. Oh well.


So I came into town and killed six gang members. Called the guards and went on my way. I went to a merchant, sold my saddle, bought a healing potion, and rented a room at a boarding house. The next morning I got a letter from someone inviting me to a private meeting at a local bar. I asked around town and found out that the man was one of two major crime families that operated in the city, both of which are equally powerful and locked in a stalemate, and that the bar he invited me to was a well known front for the crime family's meeting place.
So I went to the meeting rather than leaving town (against all of my better judgment) and was told by the man I was meeting with (let's call him Mr. X) that the head of the rival gang (Let's call him Mr. Y) was furious as someone had killed six of his men, including his son, and that he had put a huge contract out on the unknown killer's head. Mr. X had done some snooping (apparently his daughter was having an affair with Mr. Y's late son) and found out that I was the one who killed Mr. Y's son.
Mr. X told me that he was currently the only person who knew I was involved. He congratulated me on killing Mr. Y's men, but said that he couldn't tolerate a powerful rogue agent in town. If I were to work for him, he could protect me, and more importantly, forget that I had anything to do with the death of Mr Y's son. To prove my loyalty, he knew Mr. Y's men were going to raid a caravan of illicit goods he was smuggling into the city, and if I could kill the ambushers I would have earned my place in his gang.
Of course, Mr. X doesn't take rejection well, and if I don't kill those men, he will have no choice to let Mr Y know exactly who it was who killed his son and where to find him. Mr. Y is a very powerful and vengeful man, and once that information gets out Mr. Y will be sending his best hit-men (along with every bounty hunter and sell sword in town) directly towards my back.


I had no reason to give two spits about the gangs or their turf war IC or OOC,

You killed Mister Y's son. That is a very good IC reason to give a damn about the gangs, and I am surprised that you and your character did not see it that way.


So I came into town and killed six gang members. Called the guards and went on my way.

I thought you'd previously said that you didn't want to go to the local law enforcement. If the local law enforcers were aware that you had killed these six, then sooner or later they would have found out that Mister Y was furious about it and had put a bounty on the head of the man responsible. The cops might have been a very good source of information.


and just wanted to get the situation over and done with as fast as possible so that I could get on with the actual game.

This was the "actual game". Hic Rhodus; hic salta.

Earthwalker
2017-01-25, 08:13 AM
Very much enjoyed reading this thread and the opinions put forward.
Also as an example of how different people see the same situation differently.

I am afraid I have no advice to give but I do have some questions for the Original Poster.

Given how badly this session ended...

What have you learned from this experience ?
If presented with the same situation what would you do differently to find a better outcome ?

Lorsa
2017-01-26, 04:40 AM
Yeah, like I said there are a lot of details which I left out of the story for the sake of brevity. I am kind of reluctant to admit this as there are several posters who are apparently looking to "prove me a liar" so that they can safely discount any and every statement I make.

But, what the hell, I guess that is what the ignore button is for:



So I came into town and killed six gang members. Called the guards and went on my way. I went to a merchant, sold my saddle, bought a healing potion, and rented a room at a boarding house. The next morning I got a letter from someone inviting me to a private meeting at a local bar. I asked around town and found out that the man was one of two major crime families that operated in the city, both of which are equally powerful and locked in a stalemate, and that the bar he invited me to was a well known front for the crime family's meeting place.
So I went to the meeting rather than leaving town (against all of my better judgment) and was told by the man I was meeting with (let's call him Mr. X) that the head of the rival gang (Let's call him Mr. Y) was furious as someone had killed six of his men, including his son, and that he had put a huge contract out on the unknown killer's head. Mr. X had done some snooping (apparently his daughter was having an affair with Mr. Y's late son) and found out that I was the one who killed Mr. Y's son.
Mr. X told me that he was currently the only person who knew I was involved. He congratulated me on killing Mr. Y's men, but said that he couldn't tolerate a powerful rogue agent in town. If I were to work for him, he could protect me, and more importantly, forget that I had anything to do with the death of Mr Y's son. To prove my loyalty, he knew Mr. Y's men were going to raid a caravan of illicit goods he was smuggling into the city, and if I could kill the ambushers I would have earned my place in his gang.
Of course, Mr. X doesn't take rejection well, and if I don't kill those men, he will have no choice to let Mr Y know exactly who it was who killed his son and where to find him. Mr. Y is a very powerful and vengeful man, and once that information gets out Mr. Y will be sending his best hit-men (along with every bounty hunter and sell sword in town) directly towards my back.


Who are these several posters who are trying to prove you a liar? If you want to make such objective accusations, why not do them directly?

But you are right, if you don't like what people say you can always ignore them. That's the power of the internet.

I've never thought you were a liar, and see little point in trying to prove you such. You do seem to have an issue however, where you can write rather long posts but still fail to provide information that is very useful for judging the situation. For example, that it is an E6 D&D (3.5e?) game is something that would be really nice to have right away. This story of how you got to be invited to the meeting of Mr. X and what he threatened your character with is also important. Not to mention the information that your character is on the depressive side.

Looking to keep a post short is a good thing for sure, compressing information is certainly a goal to strive for. However, it should not be at the expensive of loosing useful information. Judging what is useful or not and compressing it is a skill in itself though.

My goal here is really to help you have a better game next time around. As I said in my first post, I think this game failed both at the GM and the player level. However, I can't talk with your GM to make him change his mind, I can only talk with you, to help you improve and see where you went wrong.

If you don't WANT to improve that's your prerogative. All we want is to try and help you have a better game by working with the only thing at our disposal; you.

This is why we challenge the way you viewed the situation, and your assumptions about it. For example, since Mr. X isn't threatening with his own assassins, making comparisons between them and the current threat is really not valid. He is threatening with Mr. Y's assassins, a person whose goons you've already killed by the half-dozen.

It has been said before, but maybe you need to hear it again; the GM didn't do a good job. However, this was a new GM, so that is understandable.

You said yourself that YOU, the PLAYER, could live with some railroading, and tried to "bite the hook" so to speak with going to this meeting rather than skipping it. However, you seemed to have stopped halfway, follow the GM's adventure only so far. Why did you suddenly stop going along with the adventure hooks?

It seems to me as your reason is that you played a character with uncompromising beliefs, one of them being never to work with criminals. So while you, as player, could do some compromises with your game for the sake of this new GM, your character could not.

Maybe this is really what you need to change for the next game. Accept that as it's a new GM who is still learning, there will be a large measure of railroading, or that the adventure can't be tailored to your character, so make a character who is good at compromising. It doesn't have to be an evil or neutral character, in fact I suggest it isn't, but make a good character who is more flexible.

In fact, I have rarely seen uncompromising characters working out very well in a game. You are right that the only time they actually CAN work is in a lone wolf solo game, as in groups they're the group dynamic killer. However, even in solo games, they need to be very powerful in order for their uncompromising nature not to lead them to a quick death.

I've GMed a solo game in modern times where the player had a character that could go to a meeting with a mob boss unarmed and come out on top (by assaulting one of the guards, take his pistol and then doing a quick succession of head shots). Then again the character had 3 attacks per round, where most people only have one.

My suggestion is thus to play another game with the GM. Make a character who is more flexible, go along with the story and think of your gaming in the long run. Talk to the GM what works well and what doesn't. In a year or two your games should hopefully be better.

Satinavian
2017-01-26, 07:21 AM
In fact, I have rarely seen uncompromising characters working out very well in a game. You are right that the only time they actually CAN work is in a lone wolf solo game, as in groups they're the group dynamic killer. However, even in solo games, they need to be very powerful in order for their uncompromising nature not to lead them to a quick death.Oh, i have seen it work out rather well quite often. To make it work, it is absolutely neccessary that everyone else knows about the uncompromising nature.

Also, just because a character is uncompromising, it doesn't become his personal story. Other characters working around him are typical, sometimes even going into slapstick territory. But uncompromising in itself is not the problem.

NichG
2017-01-26, 08:04 AM
Oh, i have seen it work out rather well quite often. To make it work, it is absolutely neccessary that everyone else knows about the uncompromising nature.

More than this: it's necessary that everyone else is actively on board with it. If one person is thinking 'I don't really want to deal with this but I'm not going to tell them not to', that's a problem waiting to happen.

JustIgnoreMe
2017-01-26, 08:22 AM
Of course, Mr. X doesn't take rejection well, and if I don't kill those men, he will have no choice to let Mr Y know exactly who it was who killed his son and where to find him. Mr. Y is a very powerful and vengeful man, and once that information gets out Mr. Y will be sending his best hit-men (along with every bounty hunter and sell sword in town) directly towards my back.


Mr. X isn't threatening with his own assassins, making comparisons between them and the current threat is really not valid. He is threatening with Mr. Y's assassins, a person whose goons you've already killed by the half-dozen.

Here is the crux of it. Do you really think that Mr Y will instantly believe Mr X when Mr X names you as the killer? Mr X and Mr Y are bitter enemies: Mr Y is probably already blaming Mr X's organisation. Mr X was, to an extent, bluffing: he has no control over Mr Y's assassins. And then...


I tell him "I am not going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, if you want to threaten my life be up front about it and draw steel!"

You threatened him. In his own place, in front of two of his men. And remember, you have every reason to believe the two bodyguards you can see are more deadly than the 6 thugs you already killed.

Talakeal
2017-01-28, 12:07 PM
You threatened him. In his own place, in front of two of his men. And remember, you have every reason to believe the two bodyguards you can see are more deadly than the 6 thugs you already killed.

Sure, I expected them to be more powerful, just not THAT much more powerful, each of them could have single handedly taken out dozens of such thugs.

I didnt "threaten" him, he threatened me and I attacked him.


You killed Mister Y's son. That is a very good IC reason to give a damn about the gangs, and I am surprised that you and your character did not see it that way.


This was the "actual game". Hic Rhodus; hic salta.

No, it gives me motivation to leave town. Avoiding something because it is dangerous doesnt mean one cares about it.

Context does matter, it was a prelude to the game I actually wanted to play where my actions were pre ordained and my character was not the same person that I wanted to play.

I almost certainly would not have made the same decisions if I had ten years to make connections to the town and recover from the horrors of war.

Earthwalker
2017-02-01, 07:19 AM
Very much enjoyed reading this thread and the opinions put forward.
Also as an example of how different people see the same situation differently.

I am afraid I have no advice to give but I do have some questions for the Original Poster.

Given how badly this session ended...

What have you learned from this experience ?
If presented with the same situation what would you do differently to find a better outcome ?


I think the OP has all the answer they are going to get.
I was just hoping for an answer to my questions and maybe to also ask has raising this thread helped ?

Talakeal
2017-02-06, 02:56 PM
I think the OP has all the answer they are going to get.
I was just hoping for an answer to my questions and maybe to also ask has raising this thread helped ?

Not really no; as I said in my OP I don't think either of us were exactly wrong, and if given the same situation I would do the exact same thing; I would rather not play than play an inconsistent character and my character would rather die than compromise her principles or endanger others.

I am still kind of curious as to how people would have reacted if I had been a paladin rather than a fighter and the choice had been "fall or die".

I imagine the answers would be completely different as my "It's not my fault, I am just doing what the dice say my character would do!" thread and Khi'Khi's "Character, combat, and sub-optimal choices" have illustrated that most people are fine with characters limits that are imposed by the rules but not by player choice.

Thrawn4
2017-02-06, 05:17 PM
Not really no; as I said in my OP I don't think either of us were exactly wrong, and if given the same situation I would do the exact same thing; I would rather not play than play an inconsistent character and my character would rather die than compromise her principles or endanger others.

I am still kind of curious as to how people would have reacted if I had been a paladin rather than a fighter and the choice had been "fall or die".

I imagine the answers would be completely different as my "It's not my fault, I am just doing what the dice say my character would do!" thread and Khi'Khi's "Character, combat, and sub-optimal choices" have illustrated that most people are fine with characters limits that are imposed by the rules but not by player choice.
Allocating blame wouldn't solve anything anyway. I suggest you both try again and make sure that you have the same expectations, so you can have a lot of fun. It was a simple misunderstanding and that shouldn't stop you from trying again.

However, for future reference, there are two things a very experienced DM might have done to prevent things from escalating (again, one cannot blame an inexperienced DM for not knowing every technique):
1. It is very important to convey vital information, and this includes an appropriate discription that explains the situation sufficiently. If the guards had turned into draco-liches, you would have been even more disappointed because nothing hinted to this. Then again, you expected some punks that you can wipe the floor with because you did not know that they were elite warriors (level 4 in E6) far above your paygrade - and I suspect the reason is that the DM did not hint to information that this organization is powerful enough to hire fighters who could wipe out half of the city.
Long story short: A good DM gives enough information to avoid these misundestandings, but this can be very very difficult because people have different preconceptions.
2. Right before the battle, I would have asked you OOC whether you realize that your behaviour IC might very well end this campaign. Yes, it is clunky, but unless I expect you to kill yourself off for no reason, I might suspect that we are not on the same page, meaning we have an OOC issue that cannot be solved IC.
Sometimes it's useful to pause the game if there is an issue.

thirdkingdom
2017-02-06, 08:10 PM
Not really no; as I said in my OP I don't think either of us were exactly wrong, and if given the same situation I would do the exact same thing; I would rather not play than play an inconsistent character and my character would rather die than compromise her principles or endanger others.

I am still kind of curious as to how people would have reacted if I had been a paladin rather than a fighter and the choice had been "fall or die".

I imagine the answers would be completely different as my "It's not my fault, I am just doing what the dice say my character would do!" thread and Khi'Khi's "Character, combat, and sub-optimal choices" have illustrated that most people are fine with characters limits that are imposed by the rules but not by player choice.

Okay, I'm still not sure why you've got it stuck in your head that the choice your character had was binary, but here goes:

Crime Boss: "I was impressed with your showing against my competitor's minions. Join me, and the two of us shall rule this town together! Refuse, and I will be forced to tell my competitor just who it was that slew his son!

Paladin: "Never! I serve the holy and righteous St. Gygax, and have sworn to fight tyranny and oppression wherever it exists! You, sir, are the sort of petty tyrant that I am bound to stand against!"

Crime Boss: "Eh, I've been called worse. It was nice meeting you, and I hope you tell Gary hello when you see him on the other side!"

Paladin leaves.

Now, if I was running this game the following discussion would take place once the paladin has left:

Crime Boss: "That uppity fellow might well play right into our hands! You two," he says, pointing at two of his best grifters, "I want you to try and dig up everything you can on our friend: where he is staying, if he has any friends or relatives in town, what he likes for breakfast, etc. I also want round the clock surveillance on him, in teams of two, but don't be see. I'll give you gentlemen a week to see what you can dig up before we tell the other boss who it was responsible for the death of his son. If we're smart about this we can use the fool to eliminate the competition!" He takes a sip of wine. "It's been years since I corrupted a paladin," he says, smirking.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-02-07, 12:42 AM
I am still kind of curious as to how people would have reacted if I had been a paladin rather than a fighter and the choice had been "fall or die".

I imagine the answers would be completely different as my "It's not my fault, I am just doing what the dice say my character would do!" thread and Khi'Khi's "Character, combat, and sub-optimal choices" have illustrated that most people are fine with characters limits that are imposed by the rules but not by player choice.

I don't have a particular problem with "fall or die" as a general concept. Obviously it can run into problematic specifics, but it doesn't have to. The DM shouldn't be setting out to force that particular situation (and it wouldn't have been the case in this case even if you were a paladin), it should arise organically. The DM should also be willing (as in all things) to accept plausible alternatives if the player finds one that the DM hadn't envisioned.

But yeah, I don't have a problem with it. I don't see a paladin falling as being the end of the world. It doesn't mean they're damned for all eternity, are a bad person now, or even that they can't atone for it and become a paladin again in the future. An ideal code of conduct runs into the realities of an imperfect world all the time and making compromises on principles just has to happen sometimes if you want to be able to function.

Thrudd
2017-02-07, 10:36 AM
Ultimately, the most surprising thing about the situation to me was the strict adherence to a specific characterization of a first level character that had never been played before, which went to the extent of refusal to play the prepared game because the character "wouldn't do that". This characterization, of course, is completely in the player's head and can alter course at any time, especially at the very beginning of the game.

The DM didn't recognize the player's character preference nor his absolute dedication to portraying that character in an uncompromising way, and designed an adventure which the player felt his character wouldn't participate in.

The player didn't see that the DM did not understand his uncompromising playing style and dedication to the character personality he had written, and was surprized when his refusal to compromise resulted in character death and the end of the game.

Aneurin
2017-02-07, 01:54 PM
After reading this, I have to ask; why when, after a thirty minute break at the start of the session, you couldn't come up with a better option than "attack the mob boss" did you not ask the GM what they expected at this point?

It sounds like the entire situation could have been resolved by you just saying "Hey, I'm kind of stuck here. I want to go along with your plothooks and everything, but this just isn't something my character would do. Can you help me out here?"

Because - and, I'll admit, I'm just guessing based on what you've told us about the game, your character and the GM's conversations with you - I'm pretty sure the answer would have gone something like this:

"Well, I kind of expect your character to refuse, possibly tossing out a pithy one-liner, and then go on to face the consequences of being a stubborn fool who doesn't know what's good for her,"

...and from there have a clean-up-this-rotten-town arc, and fast-forward to when your character's a pillar of the community in a nice, peaceful town for the game-proper.

I could be wrong. That's just what I'd do, really, given that information and the situation were I GMing.

Talakeal
2017-02-08, 10:47 AM
After reading this, I have to ask; why when, after a thirty minute break at the start of the session, you couldn't come up with a better option than "attack the mob boss" did you not ask the GM what they expected at this point?

It sounds like the entire situation could have been resolved by you just saying "Hey, I'm kind of stuck here. I want to go along with your plothooks and everything, but this just isn't something my character would do. Can you help me out here?"

Because - and, I'll admit, I'm just guessing based on what you've told us about the game, your character and the GM's conversations with you - I'm pretty sure the answer would have gone something like this:

"Well, I kind of expect your character to refuse, possibly tossing out a pithy one-liner, and then go on to face the consequences of being a stubborn fool who doesn't know what's good for her,"

...and from there have a clean-up-this-rotten-town arc, and fast-forward to when your character's a pillar of the community in a nice, peaceful town for the game-proper.

I could be wrong. That's just what I'd do, really, given that information and the situation were I GMing.

Thats a oong arc though, I had no idea (or frankly no interest) that we would be spending an entire arc in the prelude.


Okay, I'm still not sure why you've got it stuck in your head that the choice your character had was binary, but here goes:

Crime Boss: "I was impressed with your showing against my competitor's minions. Join me, and the two of us shall rule this town together! Refuse, and I will be forced to tell my competitor just who it was that slew his son!

Paladin: "Never! I serve the holy and righteous St. Gygax, and have sworn to fight tyranny and oppression wherever it exists! You, sir, are the sort of petty tyrant that I am bound to stand against!"

Crime Boss: "Eh, I've been called worse. It was nice meeting you, and I hope you tell Gary hello when you see him on the other side!"

Paladin leaves.

Now, if I was running this game the following discussion would take place once the paladin has left:

Crime Boss: "That uppity fellow might well play right into our hands! You two," he says, pointing at two of his best grifters, "I want you to try and dig up everything you can on our friend: where he is staying, if he has any friends or relatives in town, what he likes for breakfast, etc. I also want round the clock surveillance on him, in teams of two, but don't be see. I'll give you gentlemen a week to see what you can dig up before we tell the other boss who it was responsible for the death of his son. If we're smart about this we can use the fool to eliminate the competition!" He takes a sip of wine. "It's been years since I corrupted a paladin," he says, smirking.

I have been assuming that the problem was me refusing to compromise my character and the DM refusing to compromise the setting.

It may be that it was simply a tactical mistake on my part; I assumed that guys who have a pair of level four flunkies at their disposal could also find a competent assassin to avenge a dead sun, and I felt I would have a better shot fighting them then and there then waiting for a sneak attack when I am at ym most vulnerable. It turned out that this was wrong.

It also means that the problem is less about campaig consistency than stepping off the rails, as the only reason I can see why guys with multiple level four minions couldnt scrape together the funds to have their som avenged is because one is sticking to planned encounters and the other is not.

JustIgnoreMe
2017-02-08, 02:50 PM
You're mixing up Mr X and Mr Y again. They hate each other and want to kill each other. You killed Mr Y's son, and don't know what level his assassin(s) would have been. You were potentially Mr X's ally, and (now) know he had two Level 4 bodyguards. You have no reason to suspect Mr X would have bothered to send assassins after you, ever.

Jay R
2017-02-08, 03:32 PM
First of all, I have a real problem with setting up an adventure in which a Lawful Good character is supposed to work for a mob boss. And I'd spend time talking about that if the DM had written to us. But he didn't; the player did. So that's the side to focus on.


Its logical, but, I don't know, going to the city guard and begging them to save you? That just seems so ignoble and, well, humiliating.

Aren't PCs supposed to be heroes?

Yes, but not powerful enough at first level to take on a mob boss and his guards. Go to the town guards. Don't beg them to save you. Instead, bring them important information you can use to help lead them to the mob boss.

This will almost undoubtedly lead to an adventure in which you and some guardsmen take on a gang. You won't be alone, but you will have an adventure in which your character gets a reasonable challenge.

But a 1st level attacking the first higher-level character he's ever seen, when the enemy can call for help and the PC can't? That's poor tactics.

D'Artagnan is a hero, but he asked the musketeers to help him get to London. Robin Hood is a hero, but he asked for help from all the other archers of Sherwood. Nick Fury is a hero, but he assembled the Avengers.

Harry Potter didn't just go attack Voldemort; he looked for the horcruxes first. The Pevensies didn't just attack the White Witch; they joined Aslan's army. Frodo didn't challenge Sauron to a duel, he snuck around to destroy the ring.

"Lawful Good" doesn't mean "Lawful Stupid".

And "Hero" doesn't mean charging head-on into anything regardless of the odds. It means finding a way to overcome great odds.

Koo Rehtorb
2017-02-08, 03:50 PM
I do totally agree that the DM made plenty of bad decisions in this as well and maybe that hasn't always been made clear enough in this thread.

But the DM isn't the one posting here.

Talakeal
2017-02-08, 08:11 PM
You're mixing up Mr X and Mr Y again. They hate each other and want to kill each other. You killed Mr Y's son, and don't know what level his assassin(s) would have been. You were potentially Mr X's ally, and (now) know he had two Level 4 bodyguards. You have no reason to suspect Mr X would have bothered to send assassins after you, ever.

No, but Mr X and Mr Y were evenly matched, and Mr X told me that if I didnt help him he would tell Mr Y that I was the one who killed his son, and Mr Y would do everything in his power to have me killed.

The DM told me ooc that he was not bluffing.