Why the hate for "win buttons"?

[Quertus]

So, I often see posters complaining about "win buttons" - things that just work, and solve problems. Like how Invisibility says you just can't be seen, Flight says you can just bypass any obstacle, or the classic D&D Knock spell lets you just open any door, no skill roll, no risk.

Yes, these things just work. So what? Many - heck, most - games are based on abilities that just work. When the knight moves into the same space as the opposing pawn, it just captures the piece. When I set fire to the obsidian "O", it just turns into a portal. When I pass "Go", I just collect $200. Why do RPG players seen so loath to accept the concept of things that just work?

EDIT
Yes, this is the Playground, home of the Playgrounder Fallacy. And, yes, all of the abilities I listed are available in D&D 3e. But I hadn't actually intended to limit this to a 3e discussion.

Reasons I understand so far:

Inaccuracy - some "win" buttons shouldn't actually automatically succeed
exacerbates problems of what is in character vs what makes for a fun game
potentially jarring shift in granularity / level of abstraction*
may exacerbate problems from differences in opinion on correct level of granularity / what is "important".
humans are highly irrational beings, and get offput rather than accept logical solutions**


Reasons why win buttons get a (potentially-undeserved) bad rap:
Association with unbalanced characters in unbalanced games
system / setting disconnect
different people using different definitions of the phrase


* I personally feel that, like Indiana Jones shooting the master swordsman, this is a good thing, but I can see why others might not feel that way.
** I'd love to file this under "reasons why they get a bad rap", but, sadly, I don't think I can justify that.

[johnbragg]

So, I often see posters complaining about "win buttons" - things that just work, and solve problems. Like how Invisibility says you just can't be seen, Flight says you can just bypass any obstacle, or the classic D&D Knock spell lets you just open any door, no skill roll, no risk.

Yes, these things just work. So what? Many - heck, most - games are based on abilities that just work. When the knight moves into the same space as the opposing pawn, it just captures the piece. When I set fire to the obsidian "O", it just turns into a portal. When I pass "Go", I just collect $200. Why do RPG players seen so loath to accept the concept of things that just work?

Because it trivializes the drama. RPGs are story based games, and good stories are based on conflict. "I win" buttons solve the conflict instantly.

Good abilities make PCs (or antagonists) better at the conflict, without trivializing the conflict. Invisibility that only lasts until you attack gives an advantage, but unless the invisible rogue one-shots the sole target, that doesn't end the conflict.

If the conflict is securing the Doohickey of Destiny atop the Tower of Terror, mass flight trivializes most of the conflict.

Note that as power increases, things that were "I win" buttons often cease to be "I win" buttons.

[CharonsHelper]

I think it's also largely because a single rather small magical tool (ex: a single 2nd or 3rd spell slot for Invis & Fly respectively) totally trivialize all sorts of crazy martial skill.

[Actana]

If the enemy also has access to the same buttons, the game can easily turn into a paranoid scramble of checklist defenses against each one of them. Because being subject to one of those win buttons as a player isn't fun at all, and you can't necessarily always know which one of them you'll be facing ahead of time.

[Airk]

So, I often see posters complaining about "win buttons" - things that just work, and solve problems. Like how Invisibility says you just can't be seen, Flight says you can just bypass any obstacle, or the classic D&D Knock spell lets you just open any door, no skill roll, no risk.

Yes, these things just work. So what? Many - heck, most - games are based on abilities that just work. When the knight moves into the same space as the opposing pawn, it just captures the piece. When I set fire to the obsidian "O", it just turns into a portal. When I pass "Go", I just collect $200. Why do RPG players seen so loath to accept the concept of things that just work?

The actual problem here isn't that they are "win buttons" but rather, because they are tiny parts of one class that work better than an entire core concept of other classes. You would expect the generalist to have a lower chance of success than the specialist, but in this case the specialist (the rogue) has a lower chance of going unseen or opening a lock than the generalist (the wizard) who can cast a spell with 100% chance of success.

[CharonsHelper]

If the enemy also has access to the same buttons, the game can easily turn into a paranoid scramble of checklist defenses against each one of them. Because being subject to one of those win buttons as a player isn't fun at all, and you can't necessarily always know which one of them you'll be facing ahead of time.

This too.

It's not as bad for co-op games like D&D where most foes don't have access to them, but the general rule for PvP games is that abilities shouldn't only be fun to use, they should be fun to have them used against you. (Apparently a core design goal of League of Legends. Which is well designed - though eventually chased me away with its toxicity. :belkar:)

[Max_Killjoy]

Because ultra-effective "I win button" abilities strain the credibility of the worlds they often are shown existing in.

If invisibility spells are a thing, why aren't guard proceedures and secure building designs far more elaborate than the "just like the artist or writer thinks the world was like in some historical time/place" that we're almost always shown.

And if detect invisible stuff spells are also a thing, why is it that none of the guards or alarms are set up with that ability?

These sorts of "bypass stuff" / "I win" spells or extraordinary abilities invalidate a lot of complications that can stand in the character's way, and invalidate a lot of setting details that are bog standard in most settings because the worldbuilding skipped the "consider the implications" step and just went "rule of cool" and "rule of awesome", choosing surface aesthetics over deep verisimilitude.

Plus any cold-eyed examination of the worlds where these abilities exist reveals what should be a rapidly-escalating magical arms race.


In the setting and system I'm working on, I'm restricting magic to enhancing and/or duplicating things that can be done by other means -- so using the invisibility example, it will instead be a bonus on stealth.

[BRC]

So, I often see posters complaining about "win buttons" - things that just work, and solve problems. Like how Invisibility says you just can't be seen, Flight says you can just bypass any obstacle, or the classic D&D Knock spell lets you just open any door, no skill roll, no risk.

Yes, these things just work. So what? Many - heck, most - games are based on abilities that just work. When the knight moves into the same space as the opposing pawn, it just captures the piece. When I set fire to the obsidian "O", it just turns into a portal. When I pass "Go", I just collect $200. Why do RPG players seen so loath to accept the concept of things that just work?

The examples you give are not "Win" buttons, they're Tools.

A door just opens if you unlock it and open it. That's what it's supposed to do.


It's not that it "Just works", it's that it turns an obstacle into something trivial.


If you have a chasm that the PC's need to cross, that's supposed to be a challenge. If they can fly, then it's become trivialized. If there was a bridge over the chasm, then it was never an obstacle in the first place.


Stuff like Knock is especially grating because it is a single spell that replaces an entire class feature. A character being able to pick locks is a big deal. Picking Locks is like, one of 6 things the Rogue can do. Or, the wizard can prepare a spell, be better at picking locks than the rogue, and still do 12 other things.

[Ratguard]

I honestly don't know. It seems that people want every encounter and every obstacle to be a challenge, when it comes to spell casting a good GM should make certain that in most cases, the wizard doesn't have enough spells to overcome every obstacle that they face. I have always been a fan of doing more classic monster and adventure lay outs, where there are challenges the party may or may not be able to deal with, and the foes aren't always Skyrim levelled to always just be at a challenging level, but you may encounter a group of 6 goblins at level 3, or if you go to the same place at level 5 there will still be 6 goblins.

Wizards and Martials operate on different wave lengths. The wizard is there to usually deal with the most severe and threatening situations, but are limited like batteries that need recharging at the end of every day, whilst the martials act as the ones that deal with most of the chaff and without them the party will break down, because while the wizards are flashy, they still need the solar powered fighter that can just keep going.

Basically I think many people don't like the I win button because they have played in games, or heard about them, or though about games, where the wizard just wipes away any challenge on his own, where what should happen is a conservation of resources where the wizard doesn't try to steal the show and turn it into a 15 minute adventuring day. One of the greatest ways to avoid this from happening in my experience is to throw random encounters at the group, so the wizard always feels like he needs to conserve magic, because he doesn't know what the group might face next. He could spend it all on blasting through the orcish war party, but when they camp nearby at night, man hating ghouls have crawled out of a nearby cave system attracted by the scent of carrion.

[Quertus]

Wow, there's apparently a lot of different reasons why people hate on Erin Burris win buttons (darn autocorrect). And here I was, hoping this would be easy.

Hmmm... Let me start at the game design realism aspect.

I can see a chameleon power only giving you a bonus to stealth, but invisibility should make you impossible to see. Now, yes, this may translate into a bonus to stealth. Or less of a bonus vs dogs or other creatures with strong sense of scent. Or no bonus vs blind foes. Or an auto pass vs video cameras.

Similarly, I don't see flight giving you a bonus to athletics checks to climb walls, it just lets you succeed. Unless there's a strong wind or something.

So, there is some friction between simplicity and accuracy, and erring on the side of "it just works" isn't always completely accurate.

[Max_Killjoy]

I honestly don't know. It seems that people want every encounter and every obstacle to be a challenge, when it comes to spell casting a good GM should make certain that in most cases, the wizard doesn't have enough spells to overcome every obstacle that they face. I have always been a fan of doing more classic monster and adventure lay outs, where there are challenges the party may or may not be able to deal with, and the foes aren't always Skyrim levelled to always just be at a challenging level, but you may encounter a group of 6 goblins at level 3, or if you go to the same place at level 5 there will still be 6 goblins.


Arms race -- can the GM throw enough stuff at the party to overwhelm the caster or make them reluctant to cast freely?




Wizards and Martials operate on different wave lengths. The wizard is there to usually deal with the most severe and threatening situations, but are limited like batteries that need recharging at the end of every day, whilst the martials act as the ones that deal with most of the chaff and without them the party will break down, because while the wizards are flashy, they still need the solar powered fighter that can just keep going.


High potential to reduce martials to "those infantry assigned to guard the artillery and keep the enemy skirmishers away".




Basically I think many people don't like the I win button because they have played in games, or heard about them, or though about games, where the wizard just wipes away any challenge on his own, where what should happen is a conservation of resources where the wizard doesn't try to steal the show and turn it into a 15 minute adventuring day. One of the greatest ways to avoid this from happening in my experience is to throw random encounters at the group, so the wizard always feels like he needs to conserve magic, because he doesn't know what the group might face next. He could spend it all on blasting through the orcish war party, but when they camp nearby at night, man hating ghouls have crawled out of a nearby cave system attracted by the scent of carrion.


Inverts the game to have events built around countering the abilities of one or two characters for the sake of maintaining a veneer of balance, instead of establishing an actual balance point... or just admitting that the game is about casters and their sidekicks after a certain level.

[CharonsHelper]

Now, yes, this may translate into a bonus to stealth. Or less of a bonus vs dogs or other creatures with strong sense of scent. Or no bonus vs blind foes. Or an auto pass vs video cameras.

That was actually one of the unintentional changes between 3.5 & Pathfinder. In 3.5 Invis didn't help with Move Silently checks, so it was pretty easy to hear them and, combined with how the skill system worked, it was generally super easy to find the square that the wizard was in. (it also made the way for an illusionist to grab Move Silently as a class skill pretty awesome)

That was probably the worst balance offense of Pathfinder simplifying the skill system. (overall I prefer it, but it did result in a few warts)


Similarly, I don't see flight giving you a bonus to athletics checks to climb walls, it just lets you succeed. Unless there's a strong wind or something.

I will say - in both cases you're assuming that the abilities have to exist. Why does Invisibility have to exist as a low level ability which lasts for minutes? Why is that a requirement to playing an RPG?

Why does flying need to exist to enjoy an RPG?

[Max_Killjoy]

Wow, there's apparently a lot of different reasons why people hate on Erin Burris win buttons (darn autocorrect). And here I was, hoping this would be easy.

Hmmm... Let me start at the game design realism aspect.

I can see a chameleon power only giving you a bonus to stealth, but invisibility should make you impossible to see. Now, yes, this may translate into a bonus to stealth. Or less of a bonus vs dogs or other creatures with strong sense of scent. Or no bonus vs blind foes. Or an auto pass vs video cameras.

Similarly, I don't see flight giving you a bonus to athletics checks to climb walls, it just lets you succeed. Unless there's a strong wind or something.

So, there is some friction between simplicity and accuracy, and erring on the side of "it just works" isn't always completely accurate.

To be clear -- at least for what I'm designing, there will be no flight spell, and there will be no invisibility spell. So "gecko" and "chameleon" spells will be it.

This isn't a matter of using the same name with unfitting lesser effects, it's a matter of not having the effect or the spell of that name at all.

[Quertus]

Because it trivializes the drama. RPGs are story based games, and good stories are based on conflict. "I win" buttons solve the conflict instantly.

Good abilities make PCs (or antagonists) better at the conflict, without trivializing the conflict. Invisibility that only lasts until you attack gives an advantage, but unless the invisible rogue one-shots the sole target, that doesn't end the conflict.

If the conflict is securing the Doohickey of Destiny atop the Tower of Terror, mass flight trivializes most of the conflict.

Note that as power increases, things that were "I win" buttons often cease to be "I win" buttons.

Well, I'm going around in circles on this one, so, maybe if I try to type it out, someone can help me see a solution here.

Because my first response to this is, if my superhero can fly, the GM has failed if they intend a pit to be a dramatic conflict for my character.

But I hate for GMs to custom tailor content for the PCs. I want the pit to be there, I just want it to be neutral, "it's there because it's there", not because it's intended to have a dramatic conflict value of 3.7 or something.

So, instead, what? The GM should design interesting encounters, based on the expected range of capabilities of characters of that power level, and hope that they have the appropriate skills and system mastery that, on average, these challenges will produce the correct level of dramatic conflict?

That gets a little rough, when the range of abilities in a superhero game includes, well, pretty much anything.

It also feels like this runs the risk of clever PCs using their abilities in clever ways to trivialize all challenges, and it feels like this is a bad thing.

So I can't really say that I understand this problem well enough to add it to my "list of reasons I understand" list yet.

[Quertus]

I think it's also largely because a single rather small magical tool (ex: a single 2nd or 3rd spell slot for Invis & Fly respectively) totally trivialize all sorts of crazy martial skill.


The actual problem here isn't that they are "win buttons" but rather, because they are tiny parts of one class that work better than an entire core concept of other classes. You would expect the generalist to have a lower chance of success than the specialist, but in this case the specialist (the rogue) has a lower chance of going unseen or opening a lock than the generalist (the wizard) who can cast a spell with 100% chance of success.

Would it be fair to say that these two posts amount to, "it's not a problem with win buttons themselves, but with their distribution, and with game balance (especially in certain systems, like 3e D&D)"?


If the enemy also has access to the same buttons, the game can easily turn into a paranoid scramble of checklist defenses against each one of them. Because being subject to one of those win buttons as a player isn't fun at all, and you can't necessarily always know which one of them you'll be facing ahead of time.


This too.

It's not as bad for co-op games like D&D where most foes don't have access to them, but the general rule for PvP games is that abilities shouldn't only be fun to use, they should be fun to have them used against you. (Apparently a core design goal of League of Legends. Which is well designed - though eventually chased me away with its toxicity. :belkar:)

So, my superhero has flight and invisibility. Yours has teleport and disintegrate. Our team mate has self duplication and shapeshifting. And our opposition-of-the-week has 6 abilities chosen - perhaps intentionally, perhaps at random - from a pool of thousands. Yeah, hard to plan against. This sounds, to me, like "replay value". How is this a bad thing?

[bryce0lynch]

If the conflict is securing the Doohickey of Destiny atop the Tower of Terror, mass flight trivializes most of the conflict.

I note that this is one school of play. Another school of play would assert that the drama comes from the characters interaction with the world and DM induced drama, "my story", is not to be done because it takes agency away form the players and their characters. This school of play loves and embraces the I Win button.

The Combat as Sport/Combat as War essay explains this also.
ARG! Can't post links yet. Google Combat as Sport Combat as War and select the Hack & Slash link. It should be number 2.

[CharonsHelper]

Well, I'm going around in circles on this one, so, maybe if I try to type it out, someone can help me see a solution here.

Because my first response to this is, if my superhero can fly, the GM has failed if they intend a pit to be a dramatic conflict for my character.

But I hate for GMs to custom tailor content for the PCs. I want the pit to be there, I just want it to be neutral, "it's there because it's there", not because it's intended to have a dramatic conflict value of 3.7 or something.

So, instead, what? The GM should design interesting encounters, based on the expected range of capabilities of characters of that power level, and hope that they have the appropriate skills and system mastery that, on average, these challenges will produce the correct level of dramatic conflict?

That gets a little rough, when the range of abilities in a superhero game includes, well, pretty much anything.

It also feels like this runs the risk of clever PCs using their abilities in clever ways to trivialize all challenges, and it feels like this is a bad thing.

So I can't really say that I understand this problem well enough to add it to my "list of reasons I understand" list yet.

It really depends upon the system.

If the game has perfect flying be an easy ability to grab, then it shouldn't also make climbing and/or jumping something which requires significant resources to do well.

Both systems can work. In a superhero game it totally makes sense for flying to be a thing, but another hero probably wouldn't worry too much about putting points into 'mountain climbing'. If they don't want to fly, they'll just get Batman's ultimate grappling hook or something.

But if a system is designed around 'mountain climbing' being a significant investment, then a different character shouldn't be able to pull out 'flying' on a whim and invalidate both that character's investment & that entire part of the system.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Design your world based on what makes sense. Then go back and plan your adventures based on what the party can do.

Story says the artifact is on the top of the tower? Then that's where it is. But the party can fly? Okay, so you can't fit a dungeon crawl in; put an extra-strong boss up top, and maybe have some flying beasties nesting in the exterior. Setting says the murderer wouldn't have killed his victim face-to-face? Then that's what happened. But the party can use Speak with Dead? Okay, the mystery can't be a whodunit; maybe the challenge becomes proving it without easily-faked magic, or extracting the guy from hiding.

[gooddragon1]

If the enemy also has access to the same buttons, the game can easily turn into a paranoid scramble of checklist defenses against each one of them. Because being subject to one of those win buttons as a player isn't fun at all, and you can't necessarily always know which one of them you'll be facing ahead of time.

A good DM will make an encounter challenging and fun with those in mind. It's more difficult though.

[CharonsHelper]

So, my superhero has flight and invisibility. Yours has teleport and disintegrate. Our team mate has self duplication and shapeshifting. And our opposition-of-the-week has 6 abilities chosen - perhaps intentionally, perhaps at random - from a pool of thousands. Yeah, hard to plan against. This sounds, to me, like "replay value". How is this a bad thing?

No - the variety is a good thing.

But there needs to be interesting counter-play.

Ex: It can be cool if I have an ability which freezes an enemy for the next four rounds, but it totally sucks to be frozen for four rounds. It's just boring. So instead there should (at least for heroic level characters like the PCs) a way to push through being frozen for a cost, keeping it an effective ability without it just sucking the fun out of play for their foe.

[Max_Killjoy]

Are we talking about a superheros game, or a fantasy game, or some sort of mashup?

The entire context for this thread comes from a discussion of a fantasy setting and system, and now superheroes are being mixed in.

[BRC]

Well, I'm going around in circles on this one, so, maybe if I try to type it out, someone can help me see a solution here.

Because my first response to this is, if my superhero can fly, the GM has failed if they intend a pit to be a dramatic conflict for my character.

But I hate for GMs to custom tailor content for the PCs. I want the pit to be there, I just want it to be neutral, "it's there because it's there", not because it's intended to have a dramatic conflict value of 3.7 or something.

So, instead, what? The GM should design interesting encounters, based on the expected range of capabilities of characters of that power level, and hope that they have the appropriate skills and system mastery that, on average, these challenges will produce the correct level of dramatic conflict?

That gets a little rough, when the range of abilities in a superhero game includes, well, pretty much anything.

It also feels like this runs the risk of clever PCs using their abilities in clever ways to trivialize all challenges, and it feels like this is a bad thing.

So I can't really say that I understand this problem well enough to add it to my "list of reasons I understand" list yet.
A big part of it is how much it makes the GM work, and a bit of what I'll call The Dragonslayer Problem.

For the first bit. If the PC's can trivially bypass Pits, Locked Doors, and three-eyed ogres, then the GM's toolbox shrinks as far as their ability to make a fun adventure goes. Pits, Doors, and Ogres no longer count as challenges. They can still be around, but they're basically not a problem. Or (in the case with spells), they're a simple resource drain. Nothing fun really happens, you just mark off the resources as being spent and move on.

The most basic problem in RPGs is "How do we get from point A (Dungeon Entrance) to Point B (Treasure Vault)". The Dungeon itself is just a series of things that make that difficult. So, mobility powers like Flight or Passwall mean the GM loses a TON of straightforward-yet-solid options for making things difficult.
The Second Bit, i'll describe as follows:
Let's say a Player builds the Ultimate Dragonslayer. This character is a decently competent fighter against most
foes, but will totally crush any Dragons. That is the primary focus of the character. Any other abilities the character has are by-products of their incredible dragon slaying ability. Whenever a choice was given, the Player took the option that made them better at killing Dragons.

As such, the GM now has a dillemma.
1) If they use CR appropriate Dragons, then the fight is trivial. The Dragonslayer wins easily, and all you've done is taken up real-estate with dragons you knew would die.
2) If they use NO dragons, then the Dragonslayer wasted a bunch of their points, and is stuck with an underpowered character.
3) If they use an Overwhelming number/power of Dragons, then the Dragonslayer gets a proper challenge, and the rest of the party is useless.



"Win" buttons are an example of the Dragonslayer. They trivialize certain types of encounters, but often come with enough of an opportunity cost that the players suffer if the GM negates them. So, there's no good solution.

[Quertus]

Because ultra-effective "I win button" abilities strain the credibility of the worlds they often are shown existing in.

If invisibility spells are a thing, why aren't guard proceedures and secure building designs far more elaborate than the "just like the artist or writer thinks the world was like in some historical time/place" that we're almost always shown.

And if detect invisible stuff spells are also a thing, why is it that none of the guards or alarms are set up with that ability?

These sorts of "bypass stuff" / "I win" spells or extraordinary abilities invalidate a lot of complications that can stand in the character's way, and invalidate a lot of setting details that are bog standard in most settings because the worldbuilding skipped the "consider the implications" step and just went "rule of cool" and "rule of awesome", choosing surface aesthetics over deep verisimilitude.

Plus any cold-eyed examination of the worlds where these abilities exist reveals what should be a rapidly-escalating magical arms race.

Hmmm... I'm not sure how to categorize this problem. Is it...
It's not a problem with win buttons, it's a problem of the worlds that they are in not making sense;
It's that win buttons necessitate more thought on world building than most designers and GMs are willing to put in;
win buttons are a problem, because they are not compatible with the worlds people want to play in


A nuclear bomb can completely invalidate the combat armor modern troops wear. Yet they still wear it. Has the invention of nuclear weapons made this world's armies nonsensical?

If adventurers / superheroes / whatever the PCs are are supposed to be rare, IMO it can make sense that only a select few strongholds were built with the full expense of dealing with such capabilities. I haven't checked the blueprints or done the science, but I don't think my house was designed to withstand a determined tank, let alone a nuclear blast.

So why is it nonsensical for the PCs to be above and beyond what the world is equipped to deal with?


The examples you give are not "Win" buttons, they're Tools.

A door just opens if you unlock it and open it. That's what it's supposed to do.


It's not that it "Just works", it's that it turns an obstacle into something trivial.


If you have a chasm that the PC's need to cross, that's supposed to be a challenge. If they can fly, then it's become trivialized. If there was a bridge over the chasm, then it was never an obstacle in the first place.


Stuff like Knock is especially grating because it is a single spell that replaces an entire class feature. A character being able to pick locks is a big deal. Picking Locks is like, one of 6 things the Rogue can do. Or, the wizard can prepare a spell, be better at picking locks than the rogue, and still do 12 other things.

Why is a chasm "supposed to" be anything (besides a chasm, that is)? Why does it have to be an obstacle?

And I think you've misplaced your conjunctions: a Rogue can pick a lock, and do many other things; a Wizard can prepare Knock or spend that slot to do something else.

Still, this sounds like a game balance concern, not an inherent problem with win buttons. Or have I misunderstood your stance?

[Quertus]

I honestly don't know.

what should happen is a conservation of resources where the wizard doesn't try to steal the show and turn it into a 15 minute adventuring day. One of the greatest ways to avoid this from happening in my experience is to throw random encounters at the group, so the wizard always feels like he needs to conserve magic, because he doesn't know what the group might face next. He could spend it all on blasting through the orcish war party, but when they camp nearby at night, man hating ghouls have crawled out of a nearby cave system attracted by the scent of carrion.


I note that this is one school of play. Another school of play would assert that the drama comes from the characters interaction with the world and DM induced drama, "my story", is not to be done because it takes agency away form the players and their characters. This school of play loves and embraces the I Win button.

The Combat as Sport/Combat as War essay explains this also.
ARG! Can't post links yet. Google Combat as Sport Combat as War and select the Hack & Slash link. It should be number 2.


Design your world based on what makes sense. Then go back and plan your adventures based on what the party can do.

Story says the artifact is on the top of the tower? Then that's where it is. But the party can fly? Okay, so you can't fit a dungeon crawl in; put an extra-strong boss up top, and maybe have some flying beasties nesting in the exterior. Setting says the murderer wouldn't have killed his victim face-to-face? Then that's what happened. But the party can use Speak with Dead? Okay, the mystery can't be a whodunit; maybe the challenge becomes proving it without easily-faked magic, or extracting the guy from hiding.

I think that I not only agree with these posts, but they may help explain my PoV and why I am having a hard time seeing the problem in the first place.

[Anymage]

One of the greatest ways to avoid this from happening in my experience is to throw random encounters at the group, so the wizard always feels like he needs to conserve magic, because he doesn't know what the group might face next. He could spend it all on blasting through the orcish war party, but when they camp nearby at night, man hating ghouls have crawled out of a nearby cave system attracted by the scent of carrion.

Which edition do you want to look at this from? Specifically, do you want me to laugh at your ghouls from the safety of my rope trick, or do you want me to laugh at them from the safety of my tiny hut?

If I can Nova with most of my resources and still hold a few back to create an unbreachable safe space to rest, balance by fatigue goes out the window. (Plus, while these martials may be able to swing all day long, I wonder how long their hp pools will hold out.)


So, my superhero has flight and invisibility. Yours has teleport and disintegrate. Our team mate has self duplication and shapeshifting. And our opposition-of-the-week has 6 abilities chosen - perhaps intentionally, perhaps at random - from a pool of thousands. Yeah, hard to plan against. This sounds, to me, like "replay value". How is this a bad thing?

One or two special abilities are okay. Some like flight or teleportation might be trickier to work around than others like invisibility, super strength, or a charm gaze, but it's cool if a character has a shtick. It's having to account for books full of such things that becomes a major headache.

(There's also the issue of guaranteed success on a power - my invisible wizard is automatically invisible no matter his prior stealth skill - vs. a more general sneak power that needs to be combined with pre-existing stealth skills to get a nigh-unbeatable result.)


Design your world based on what makes sense. Then go back and plan your adventures based on what the party can do.

Story says the artifact is on the top of the tower? Then that's where it is. But the party can fly? Okay, so you can't fit a dungeon crawl in; put an extra-strong boss up top, and maybe have some flying beasties nesting in the exterior. Setting says the murderer wouldn't have killed his victim face-to-face? Then that's what happened. But the party can use Speak with Dead? Okay, the mystery can't be a whodunit; maybe the challenge becomes proving it without easily-faked magic, or extracting the guy from hiding.

Cast all your buffs before flying up the tower, and feel free to nova with everything other than the one slot you're holding back to teleport home with.

Summon an invisible stalker to track down the hiding murderer.

Last Quertus topic, I asked him to give six adventure ideas that couldn't be solved only by listing off spells. 99% of the time, this can be done without even leaving core. If you're so confident that there exist interesting adventure ideas that are not trivialized by the hundreds of pages of published spells out there, list six of your own and let's see how well they hold up.

[Quertus]

Arms race -- can the GM throw enough stuff at the party to overwhelm the caster or make them reluctant to cast freely?

High potential to reduce martials to "those infantry assigned to guard the artillery and keep the enemy skirmishers away".

Inverts the game to have events built around countering the abilities of one or two characters for the sake of maintaining a veneer of balance, instead of establishing an actual balance point... or just admitting that the game is about casters and their sidekicks after a certain level.

This is hard for me to process. For me, D&D was always about extended forays, where resource management - rations, torches, arrows, spells - was central to what the game was. Changing that, as you said, changes the balance point.

And fighters being infantry guarding the artillery sounds fairly accurate, from a wargame perspective. Pity that the artillery only gets to fire thrice in a 50-turn battle, though.


That was actually one of the unintentional changes between 3.5 & Pathfinder. In 3.5 Invis didn't help with Move Silently checks, so it was pretty easy to hear them and, combined with how the skill system worked, it was generally super easy to find the square that the wizard was in. (it also made the way for an illusionist to grab Move Silently as a class skill pretty awesome)

That was probably the worst balance offense of Pathfinder simplifying the skill system. (overall I prefer it, but it did result in a few warts)

I will say - in both cases you're assuming that the abilities have to exist. Why does Invisibility have to exist as a low level ability which lasts for minutes? Why is that a requirement to playing an RPG?

Why does flying need to exist to enjoy an RPG?

Um... don't get me wrong, I personally love win buttons (they make for fewer points of failure in a plan, and they make it harder for a GM to disguise ****ing with the party), but I'm not sure how you're reading into anything I wrote that they need to exist to enjoy an RPG.


To be clear -- at least for what I'm designing, there will be no flight spell, and there will be no invisibility spell. So "gecko" and "chameleon" spells will be it.

This isn't a matter of using the same name with unfitting lesser effects, it's a matter of not having the effect or the spell of that name at all.

Ah, gotcha. Still, the point stands of whether you are going to have the effectiveness of the ability change based on the observer, or whether it favors simplicity and just gives a static bonus.

Also, know your players. Are you just designing the game for a few of your friends, and, if so, do they, unlike me, not have a preference for win buttons?

[Darth Ultron]

Is not the problem that it makes the game too easy, removes challenges, and makes the game too short.

The ''expectation'' of the game is a bit like ''everything will be a challenge'' and nothing will be ''easy or hard'', but always ''in the middle''. Sadly, in 3X and Pathfinder this is even written into the rules.

So not only is ''everything''' not to be too hard from the characters, everything also can't be too easy.

And it does greatly shorten the ''expected game'' when an obstacle that should have taken at least a couple minutes is by passed in seconds.

And there is the player bit where the player with the ''win button' has all the fun, while the rest of the players just hang around.

Of course, any DM can Fix a Win, no problem.....but this brings up the weird quirk of lots of modern DM's: They don't fell they can 'fix' or even 'do' anything in a game without approval from the players. Often you see this where a DM feels they must be ready to defend themselves from the hostile players at any second by saying and hiding behind things like ''commonly agreed situations'' or more generally ''common sense'', but most accurately ''what will the players believe or fall for''.

So if it makes sense and the players agree that the hobgoblins would post a guard on their captured princess prisoner, then the DM is free to do it.

But then enter the win button problem. The DM makes a canyon, and the players ''win button''across in one round. A normal DM can do, well anything they want...but the 'other' Dm has their hands tied. They can only do makes sense and the players agree to, and the player will never, ever agree to anything that might cause them trouble or effect their 'win'. So in short, this type of DM ''can't'' do anything. They just have to sit back and let the players ''win win'' along the whole game.

[Max_Killjoy]

Hmmm... I'm not sure how to categorize this problem. Is it...

It's not a problem with win buttons, it's a problem of the worlds that they are in not making sense;
It's that win buttons necessitate more thought on world building than most designers and GMs are willing to put in;
win buttons are a problem, because they are not compatible with the worlds people want to play in






A nuclear bomb can completely invalidate the combat armor modern troops wear. Yet they still wear it. Has the invention of nuclear weapons made this world's armies nonsensical?

If adventurers / superheroes / whatever the PCs are are supposed to be rare, IMO it can make sense that only a select few strongholds were built with the full expense of dealing with such capabilities. I haven't checked the blueprints or done the science, but I don't think my house was designed to withstand a determined tank, let alone a nuclear blast.


Your house is also not a fortress, castle, or strongpoint in the sort of quasi-medieval setting portrayed as the default for the game/system that was being discussed in the threads where the question at the core of this thread first came up. Nor is your house a modern sealed bunker designed to deal with heavy weapons and WMD.

And if the best analogy for spellcasters in your game and setting is "nuclear weapons", then you've probably just made a case for a point you didn't intend to support.

All those conventional forces ("martial characters") aren't obsolete... as long as no one actually uses nuclear weapons. The moment the nukes ("tier 1 mage characters a la D&D 3e and later") are pulled out by one side, then everything else is dwarfed and largely pointless, and the war comes down to either "the one side with nukes wins" or "everyone nukes each other, the world is dead". The only defenses are massive overwhelming first strike, or massive investment in highly specialized defenses that struggle to keep up.

Congratulations, you've just Tippyversed the setting... which has kinda been one of the sticking points against these uber-casters all along.




So why is it nonsensical for the PCs to be above and beyond what the world is equipped to deal with?


Again, what sort of setting and game are we talking about? Conflating a fantasy game with a superhero game is going to end in setting and game implosion, unless it's being done VERY deliberately from the start.

If you're really playing fantasy superhero, than it looks more like a comic book setting with fantasy trappings, and the "martial" characters are balanced around having their own clearly inhuman abilities to match up with the "casters" and other sorts.

That is not the sort of setting or game or aesthetic that D&D is trying to sell or present (whatever it's system ends up resulting in if followed to its logical end point).

[BWR]

The short answer is that anything that trivializes encounters is not fun for people who like a challenge. The imbalance between what is being thrown at a party and the tools they have available is the core of the issue.

I don't consider things like Invisibility, Fly Teleport, etc. win buttons. Part of the point of D&D is that things that were challenging when you were weaker cease to be so when you get more powerful. A group of base goblins isn't much of a challenge to a 10th level party, and a small cliff shouldn't be one either. If you are trying to run D&D in the same way at 1st and 20th, then you have misunderstood the game design. If a supposedly challenging situation can be solved by casting Teleport it isn't an adventure worth mentioning for a party with that spell.
Of course many of the things I consider 'win buttons', like ridiculously optimized characters are no doubt considered acceptable by other people.

[Tinkerer]

I think that the real problem isn't when a player has a Win Button. In fact I would argue that each character should have a Win Button. If that problem comes up then that player with that Win Button has it cased. The problem comes up when a character has all of the Win Buttons, or at least a superfluous quantity of them. Honestly I haven't seen the hatred for Win Buttons that you apparently have, usually when people disparage them it's usually due to the aforementioned case that a generalist with a Win Button (who has dozens of other Win Buttons) will smash a specialist without one. And that's pretty messed up.

[Max_Killjoy]

Ah, gotcha. Still, the point stands of whether you are going to have the effectiveness of the ability change based on the observer, or whether it favors simplicity and just gives a static bonus.


If a literal "camouflage" or "chameleon" spell spell only affects visual elements, then the effect would only apply to visual observation -- but it wouldn't change based on the observer... the observer's particulars are in the observer, not the spell. One of the things I can't stand about how some games handle complex effects is that they try to embed all sorts of nested/overlapping/conflicting conditionals in the spells or skills themselves based on who is being targeted... every spell effectively becomes its own little miniature rules set.

And a blind observer doesn't get a bonus against the spell for being blind; they might get a bonus on hearing checks, but that's entirely dependent on their sense of hearing, not something special about being blind.




Also, know your players. Are you just designing the game for a few of your friends, and, if so, do they, unlike me, not have a preference for win buttons?

I'm designing it with the intent of it being playable, and not just by a local table.

[Jay R]

The problem is the mistaken belief that challenges for first level characters should still be challenges for higher level players.

A wall is an obstacle for a party to work around - until everybody has flight. Then a good DM stops using walls as obstacles.

A locked door is an obstacle for a low-level party - until they have enough Knock spells. After that the good DM shouldn't try to use locks as an obstacle

Similarly, once a party had Invisibility, it should work to eliminate some problems. That's what it's for. But they should often have to hide in places with dusty floors, dry leaves on the ground, or deep mud.

You wouldn't send six goblins after a sixth level party. So don't use first level obstacles against them either.

[halfeye]

So, I often see posters complaining about "win buttons" - things that just work, and solve problems. Like how Invisibility says you just can't be seen, Flight says you can just bypass any obstacle, or the classic D&D Knock spell lets you just open any door, no skill roll, no risk.

Yes, these things just work. So what? Many - heck, most - games are based on abilities that just work. When the knight moves into the same space as the opposing pawn, it just captures the piece. When I set fire to the obsidian "O", it just turns into a portal. When I pass "Go", I just collect $200. Why do RPG players seen so loath to accept the concept of things that just work?

EDIT
Yes, this is the Playground, home of the Playgrounder Fallacy. And, yes, all of the abilities I listed are available in D&D 3e. But I hadn't actually intended to limit this to a 3e discussion.

Reasons I understand so far:

Inaccuracy - some "win" buttons shouldn't actually automatically succeed


Reasons why win buttons get a (potentially-undeserved) bad rap:


Association with unbalanced characters in unbalanced games


Because an actual win button means game over, you win. Which, if you were enjoying the game so far, is bad

[Jay R]

If the easy spell wins the game, the problem isn't the spell. The problem is the DM.

A Knock spell unlocks the door between the party and the treasure – but also unlocks the pit beneath them, or the cage of the powerful monster – or the overhead trap.

The ability to see the invisible should be part of the protection on any castle that expects to be attacked by third levels or above.

That inviting back wall that looks so easy to fly over without being seen? On the other side of it is the guards’ archery range.

The party using invisibility and flight to attack their enemies should be occasionally attacked by enemies with invisibility and flight.

The DM should increase the level of the challenges to match the party’s abilities.

[BRC]

The problem is the mistaken belief that challenges for first level characters should still be challenges for higher level players.

A wall is an obstacle for a party to work around - until everybody has flight. Then a good DM stops using walls as obstacles.

A locked door is an obstacle for a low-level party - until they have enough Knock spells. After that the good DM shouldn't try to use locks as an obstacle

Similarly, once a party had Invisibility, it should work to eliminate some problems. That's what it's for. But they should often have to hide in places with dusty floors, dry leaves on the ground, or deep mud.

You wouldn't send six goblins after a sixth level party. So don't use first level obstacles against them either.

Except that unlike Monsters, where you can replace six Goblins with six Ogres, other obstacles don't scale the same way.

A low level party has to deal with Walls, doors, and Goblins. Eventually, they get access to stuff like Flight, Knock, and Fireball. which trivialize those problems.


Well, as GM, you can replace Goblins with Ogres. But there's no good replacement for Walls and Doors.Doors you can't Knock? Walls you can't fly over? These utility spells let you bypass everything except Fights, and so adventures become increasingly combat focused. The final form is the infamous "Scry and Die", where you just teleport the party directly to the boss.

Personally,I like the step 5e took. Buff spells like invisibility and Flight become very expensive to cast on more than one person, so while you still get some utility out of it, it's very costly to use them to let the whole party bypass an obstacle.

[Draconi Redfir]

What sounds better to you? A story about the hero who was faced against overhwelming odds, surrounded by goblins, one against a thousand, and took them all on with his trusty sword and sheild, battling for two days and nights with no sleep, until finally the last goblin fell, and the hero walked away, battered and broken, his sword shining in blood with the sunrise.

or a story about a hero who was faced against overhwelming odds, surrounded by goblins, one against a thousand... so he case a single "Mega XL" fireball around himself, killed all of them in two secconds, and flew away without a scratch?

[Anymage]

The problem is the mistaken belief that challenges for first level characters should still be challenges for higher level players.

A wall is an obstacle for a party to work around - until everybody has flight. Then a good DM stops using walls as obstacles.

A locked door is an obstacle for a low-level party - until they have enough Knock spells. After that the good DM shouldn't try to use locks as an obstacle

Similarly, once a party had Invisibility, it should work to eliminate some problems. That's what it's for. But they should often have to hide in places with dusty floors, dry leaves on the ground, or deep mud.

You wouldn't send six goblins after a sixth level party. So don't use first level obstacles against them either.

Evidently this is going to become my thing.

If the solution is to create adventures that aren't invalidated by the hundreds of pages of published spells, let's see you offer up six that I can't trivialize by just listing off spells and/or items. Let's see how well this advice works in practice instead of a generic "git gud" sense.

[Knaight]

For one thing, there's the potential for "win buttons" to conflict, and run smack into the whole immovable object vs. irresistible force thing, so at least having a way to resolve that is pretty much a minimum need (e.g. the ranking system in Cypher, where if you have a blade that cuts anything and an impenetrable force field you just look at the ranks, and whichever is higher gets its effect). In D&D specifically though the problem is that some classes get absolutely massive piles of "win buttons", and some classes get next to none. Full casters without thematic limitations stand out in particular, as they usually have powers comparable to several entire teams of superheroes all jammed together.

[FreddyNoNose]

Because ultra-effective "I win button" abilities strain the credibility of the worlds they often are shown existing in.

If invisibility spells are a thing, why aren't guard proceedures and secure building designs far more elaborate than the "just like the artist or writer thinks the world was like in some historical time/place" that we're almost always shown.

And if detect invisible stuff spells are also a thing, why is it that none of the guards or alarms are set up with that ability?

These sorts of "bypass stuff" / "I win" spells or extraordinary abilities invalidate a lot of complications that can stand in the character's way, and invalidate a lot of setting details that are bog standard in most settings because the worldbuilding skipped the "consider the implications" step and just went "rule of cool" and "rule of awesome", choosing surface aesthetics over deep verisimilitude.

Plus any cold-eyed examination of the worlds where these abilities exist reveals what should be a rapidly-escalating magical arms race.


In the setting and system I'm working on, I'm restricting magic to enhancing and/or duplicating things that can be done by other means -- so using the invisibility example, it will instead be a bonus on stealth.

I agree. Makes things unbelievable and makes it appear more gamey that worldly. It is like when you hear people on the forum say "The group found a way to defeat __INSERT_MODULE__ without any combat with __INSERT_CREATIVE_NON_COMBAT+SOLUTION__ which when you read about them are unlikely to work in a more appropriately thought out game. Note: If you are doing co-op narrative it doesn't matter.

[Tanarii]

IMX the problem isn't "I win" buttons. The problem arises when:
1) "I win" buttons don't have sufficient resource cost relative to the total amount of challenges to be faced in a day. Often this is most noticeable in 5 minute work days. But also if the only challenges that will be faced are ones the "I win" button can win, and no other kind of challenges.
2) Some players have "I win" buttons that do another players schtick, do it better, and there isn't a sufficient resource cost associated with it.

It's fine if a game has a wizard that can win a single combat + a single non-combat encounter per day with their "I win" button, then their fall back abilities are relatively weak. What's not fine is if they can cast a variety of spells, in sufficient quantity to affect the outcome of all expected encounters / events, and have far more affect than the other members of the party.

[Mastikator]

Except that unlike Monsters, where you can replace six Goblins with six Ogres, other obstacles don't scale the same way.

A low level party has to deal with Walls, doors, and Goblins. Eventually, they get access to stuff like Flight, Knock, and Fireball. which trivialize those problems.


Well, as GM, you can replace Goblins with Ogres. But there's no good replacement for Walls and Doors.Doors you can't Knock? Walls you can't fly over? These utility spells let you bypass everything except Fights, and so adventures become increasingly combat focused. The final form is the infamous "Scry and Die", where you just teleport the party directly to the boss.

Personally,I like the step 5e took. Buff spells like invisibility and Flight become very expensive to cast on more than one person, so while you still get some utility out of it, it's very costly to use them to let the whole party bypass an obstacle.

Barricaded doors can not be knocked, strong winds can interfere with flight, jagged rocks can present a danger to those who fly and fail. Dispel magic can make you fall to your demise if you're attempting to fly in combat. And of course when there's an "invisibility" spell there's usually a "see invisibility" spell too.

To be sure it does trivialize a lot of obstacles

[PersonMan]

Evidently this is going to become my thing.

If the solution is to create adventures that aren't invalidated by the hundreds of pages of published spells, let's see you offer up six that I can't trivialize by just listing off spells and/or items. Let's see how well this advice works in practice instead of a generic "git gud" sense.

Though it runs the risk of becoming exceptionally convoluted, wouldn't it be perfectly legitimate to build an adventure like this? That is, to do rounds of "oh but X spell solves it" until you close off all these spells?

Like:

Murder mystery! Killed stabbed the dude in the office.

Aha, [spell to communicate with the dead]!

Alright, then the killer was behind the victim!

[General divination]

Then the killer must be resistant to it!

And so on. Possibly kept vague, so that instead of having a mundane man with a knife, you basically sculpt the Super-Killer based on what spells you find ways around, and which you let be useful.

Plus, there's also the whole theory-practice divide in spells known. If a game lets you have 10 spells on a mage, you as a GM need to worry about those 10 spells*, not all 9,102 printed ones, when creating an adventure for your party.

*And any others they can get a hold of, of course.

[Max_Killjoy]

Divination is a perfect example of a general class of spoiler powers.

Once the PCs have access to divination, the GM must be exceedingly careful and subtle to fend off moments where you've either eliminated all sorts of mystery plots as unusable elements in the game... or you're transparently ****-blocking every attempt to use divination with little gotchas and deceptions and tricks and half-truths and whatnot. At which point the players will justifiably say "why did you even let me take this power if you were never going to let it do anything useful?"

[FreddyNoNose]

The problem is the mistaken belief that challenges for first level characters should still be challenges for higher level players.

A wall is an obstacle for a party to work around - until everybody has flight. Then a good DM stops using walls as obstacles.

A locked door is an obstacle for a low-level party - until they have enough Knock spells. After that the good DM shouldn't try to use locks as an obstacle

Similarly, once a party had Invisibility, it should work to eliminate some problems. That's what it's for. But they should often have to hide in places with dusty floors, dry leaves on the ground, or deep mud.

You wouldn't send six goblins after a sixth level party. So don't use first level obstacles against them either.

Well that is a bit simplistic. Casting a knock spell to open a door costs a resource. That is useful.

You could send 100 or 200 goblins against them.

[FreddyNoNose]

Submitted for your approval:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ueTRaYTwg

[Quertus]

Because an actual win button means game over, you win. Which, if you were enjoying the game so far, is bad

And spending 3 hours gumming your meal because you lack the win button of teeth isn't.

If the players are having fun and applying a win button to rob themselves of their fun, that's on them. Just like any other time a player robs a player of fun.

Now, should it be on the system to provide niche protection, and otherwise limit players' ability to rob themselves and other players of fun? That's open to a lot of debate. Personally, I side with versatility and contribution over niche protection, and I side with treating players like adults and trusting their ability to work together to create a fun game over hamstringing them to protect the game from the players.

Still, I must admit, there are times when what is perfectly reasonable in character is less fun for the game. Do win buttons exacerbate this problem? Probably. I may never have experienced it, but I can see it being a problem. I'll add it to the list of answers I understand.


If the easy spell wins the game, the problem isn't the spell. The problem is the DM.

The party using invisibility and flight to attack their enemies should be occasionally attacked by enemies with invisibility and flight.

The DM should increase the level of the challenges to match the party’s abilities.

I agree, in that I'm on the side of building GM skills, including encounter design, and that harder challenges should be, well, harder.

If invisibility and flight are part of the game, I'd contend that the opposition should occasionally use them, regardless of whether or not the PCs do.


What sounds better to you? A story about the hero who was faced against overhwelming odds, surrounded by goblins, one against a thousand, and took them all on with his trusty sword and sheild, battling for two days and nights with no sleep, until finally the last goblin fell, and the hero walked away, battered and broken, his sword shining in blood with the sunrise.

or a story about a hero who was faced against overhwelming odds, surrounded by goblins, one against a thousand... so he case a single "Mega XL" fireball around himself, killed all of them in two secconds, and flew away without a scratch?

Um, the second one, because it sounds more believable? and a lot more enjoyable to play than rolling enough dice to kill 1,000 men one at a time...


Evidently this is going to become my thing.

If the solution is to create adventures that aren't invalidated by the hundreds of pages of published spells, let's see you offer up six that I can't trivialize by just listing off spells and/or items. Let's see how well this advice works in practice instead of a generic "git gud" sense.

I'll open with my "keep the One Ring safe until the elves finish creating a suitable furnace in which to destroy it" scenario. Do I need to add in the details?


For one thing, there's the potential for "win buttons" to conflict, and run smack into the whole immovable object vs. irresistible force thing, so at least having a way to resolve that is pretty much a minimum need (e.g. the ranking system in Cypher, where if you have a blade that cuts anything and an impenetrable force field you just look at the ranks, and whichever is higher gets its effect). In D&D specifically though the problem is that some classes get absolutely massive piles of "win buttons", and some classes get next to none. Full casters without thematic limitations stand out in particular, as they usually have powers comparable to several entire teams of superheroes all jammed together.

Well, that just sounds like bad definitions of not actually infinity being thrown around on the playground. Oh, wait, I mean the schoolyard, not GitP.

And I've already got that some systems that use win buttons fail at balance.


I agree. Makes things unbelievable and makes it appear more gamey that worldly. It is like when you hear people on the forum say "The group found a way to defeat __INSERT_MODULE__ without any combat with __INSERT_CREATIVE_NON_COMBAT+SOLUTION__ which when you read about them are unlikely to work in a more appropriately thought out game. Note: If you are doing co-op narrative it doesn't matter.

So... we destroyed one of the planets, so that they could never be in alignment, thus preventing the ritual that would cause the apocalypse. How is this indicative of a poorly designed system?

[Darth Ultron]

Except that unlike Monsters, where you can replace six Goblins with six Ogres, other obstacles don't scale the same way.

A low level party has to deal with Walls, doors, and Goblins. Eventually, they get access to stuff like Flight, Knock, and Fireball. which trivialize those problems.


Well, as GM, you can replace Goblins with Ogres. But there's no good replacement for Walls and Doors.Doors you can't Knock? Walls you can't fly over? These utility spells let you bypass everything except Fights, and so adventures become increasingly combat focused. The final form is the infamous "Scry and Die", where you just teleport the party directly to the boss.


This is not true in most editions of D&D (at least 0 to 3 E). It is easy for a DM to scale things up. Now granted, most rules don't really ''explain'' this all that well, and do only give a couple examples....and leave the rest for the DM to Custom Create stuff.

Knock does not effect a ton of stuff. Just put portcullis over a door...and knock is much less useful. Have a door held closed with a weighted rope..knock has no effect.

Sure you can 'fly' over a wall of worked stone on the ground. You can't as easily 'fly over' say a Dome of Force or Air. Not to mention anti flying missiles.

A lot of stuff is an easy Win, but a clever DM can counter anything.

I still say the problem comes from the fact that many DM's won't or feel they can't counter anything the players do. It's bad enough there are DM's that ''play using the rules only'' and think they must ''fight the players rule by rule to prove who knows the game rules better! Ha!''. But there are many DM's that feel they ''can't'' do anything.

Take Teleport. The PC group gets to the level where they get this spell. Immediately they are like ''we wait for it to get darkz and then teleport over and rob the bank and teleport out! How much treasurez did we get?"

As DM, I'd just say ''your teleport spell is expended, but you don't teleport...nothing seems to happen." If the players were lucky. FR is full of spells and magic items, and one is the Welcoming Teleport Ward, that shifts a teleport to another location...like an underground pool of acid. But even if something was not in the rules I could still say, well, ''anything'' else happens.

[Lord Raziere]

ok, imagine a shonen hero.

imagine his quest. imagine him going forth to fight things and he is good at it, but he constantly gets injured, and those moments are awesome because he pulls through right? he goes "I can take the pain! I'm a badass because of what I can withstand to get to my dream! nothing worth doing is easy!" and so on. he trains and trains and no matter what, there are still challenges and he still has to have the tenacity to withstand the beatdowns and the determination to keep going despite the problems. its all about the journey, and the journey is long, hard, and full of awesome moments, full of heartwarming moments, moments of sacrifice, moments of risk, moments of hilarity, because you don't have the perfect solution for anything so the results of all your imperfect solutions are better for wrapping anything up neatly. the journey is long but he eventually gets to the destination having learned a lot.

I win buttons? are when Saitama suddenly comes in and kills the enemy in one punch, while the other hero stops in his tracks is like "HOW DID YOU DO THAT!?" and Saitama is like "I just punched him" as if its nothing special then walks away and the first hero is left feeling empty as he could not possibly compare to that power, when he had trained for so long and yet its solved just like that, and all those moments that could've come from the journey, are lost.

I Win buttons? Destination Trash. Its taking short easy street to lame central. if you can so easily solve these things, they are not worth doing. if a wizard can so easily win at adventuring and make it all easy, I'd rather retire my character and not play. I don't want this bull about "using the I win buttons for more drama." I want I Win button-free drama. If I want to play Superman or One Punch Man whose victories are assured and the drama is from stuff around that, I'll let you know, but I'm not interested in playing those kinds of characters. I don't want any stupid "oh this guy can do instantly solve this better than me" drama, SCREW THAT HARD. LONG AND HARD. I have character concepts that are more important than I Win buttons!

I want my problems to not be solved in an instant. I WANT my problems to be long and hard and complicated and whatnot. I win buttons get in the way of that, because whats an adventure if your going to be non-adventurous by using an I win button? wheres the risk? wheres the journey? which is what really matters here! If I wanted an roleplay where I won at everything and didn't have any risk, I'd just play by myself and not introduce any risk at all. I mean if your going to press the I Win button anyways, why bother with dice? why bother with chance or roleplaying games at all? I Win buttons just an unnecessarily convoluted way of achieving what every mary sue fan fiction writer does with ease without even trying.

[NichG]

Ultimately this comes down to choosing a particular granularity at which gameplay happens, and sticking with it.

If we take the chess example, the granularity of gameplay is moving a piece. We don't ask what happens at smaller scales than moving a piece - there's no question of whether the knight is feeling brave that day, or has the bishop stubbed his toe and moves to the wrong spot, or whatever. Above that granularity scale however, the resolution of things is up to the interaction between elements of the scenario (the relative positioning of pieces), and the challenge of the game is to use control at the scale of individual moves to exert control over the flow of the whole board position.

If there were a move in chess that, for example, captured multiple pieces at once, or that said 'each player can remove one enemy piece of their choice other than the kings at one point during the game', those are of course rules that a game could have, but would operate at a somewhat different granularity than the rest of the chess game because they bypass the idea of using the compound effects of individual moves of pieces to find a way to get the board state you want.

If we go to a tabletop RPG, there are many different scales of things that could go on in a given campaign. Depending on players' likes and dislikes, DM's attitude, character level, etc, some of these things are to be resolved in detail and some can be glossed over. You could play out every 10 minute interval of a journey through the wilderness as if it were just a gigantic dungeon, but it'd be pointlessly tedious to do so, so instead you usually abstract such travel into a few abstract challenges and handwave the rest. Similarly, you could just say for an encounter 'the party is above the difficulty of this encounter so you win and move on' for very easy encounters. But if you were to say 'this boss fight is a bit over the party EL, so a random one of you dies, you use 4 potions, you're down to 25% hitpoints, but you win' that would be an inappropriate place to abstract things away - the granularity of most tabletop RPGs assumes that such combats will be played out in detail, and that that's often where the meat of the game is.

Things that are 'win buttons' are usually things which implicitly change the granularity of the game without actually saying that's what they're doing. Teleport replaces weeks of travel that could be filled with random encounters, discoveries, etc with an atomic ('indivisible' here, not 'explosive') action 'I go there'. Invisibility (mostly) replaces the detailed resolution of looking for hiding places, navigating past each guard, making distractions, avoiding sight lines, etc with the atomic action 'I infiltrate the location'. Group no-save-just-lose effects replace the back and forth of combat, positioning, etc with an initiative roll (D&D specific perhaps).

If that's consistently the level of abstraction you use for the campaign, that's fine. You can run a game that resolves every second of a sword duel, or a game that treats a day-long clash between armies as a single 'action' taken by the heads of state. But if you're fighting that 1 second interval sword duel and suddenly an ability gets used that switches things to company-scale mass melee that makes the rest of your duel irrelevant, its jarring and creates problems. Especially if the ability to change the level of abstraction belongs to some players but not others. Not to mention that an increase in abstraction means that there had better be meaningful complexity ready to go at that higher level of abstraction, or there won't actually be any game content to play through.

[Lord Raziere]

If that's consistently the level of abstraction you use for the campaign, that's fine. You can run a game that resolves every second of a sword duel, or a game that treats a day-long clash between armies as a single 'action' taken by the heads of state. But if you're fighting that 1 second interval sword duel and suddenly an ability gets used that switches things to company-scale mass melee that makes the rest of your duel irrelevant, its jarring and creates problems. Especially if the ability to change the level of abstraction belongs to some players but not others. Not to mention that an increase in abstraction means that there had better be meaningful complexity ready to go at that higher level of abstraction, or there won't actually be any game content to play through.

Exactly.

if my character is meant for complex duels between swashbucklers and whatnot, going all turn based strategy commander on the battle will make me understandably upset. its about the journey of swashbuckling, the every stroke and parry of the blade, not the outcome,that important yes, but so is that there be swashbuckling, that I play out the parry, the thrust, the dance of blades itself! roleplaying is not just about the destination, the success, its about the process of getting to that success! I don't want that process to go away, I don't want it all to just be one binary of whether I win or lose. I want to experience it step by step, every clash of the blade. for if I abstracted it out so that I just win instantly.....its just skipping stuff, and the only point to skipping stuff is if its not important. therefore why use a skip option on something important?

[Amphetryon]

"I Win" buttons are another type of "puzzle encounter" design, IMO. They turn encounters into binary results where access to the button robs encounters of dramatic tension, while lack of access often leads to frustration on one side or the other of the GM screen (for games with that type of setup).

Honestly, the "I Win" buttons can frustrate a GM when used properly, too. Typically, this is because the GM was not considering the button when designing the encounter, rendering what was expected to be a complex scenario into a trivial inconvenience. I've even seen times where the "I Win" button caused a party to bypass material they needed for their agendas, forcing the GM to scramble to find another way to get the materials to the Characters.

[Cluedrew]

To Quertus: Have you every played a character that doesn't have win buttons in a party where the other characters do? Any they know how to use them? (Remembering Quertus's inspiration.)

On Knight vs Mage: OK, having magic is more realistic than having really high stamina? I'm not even sure that is super human stamina to fight for 48 hours. At full strength it definitely would, but the maybe the knight was exhausted and it took him 10 minutes to fell the last goblin.

[Anymage]

Though it runs the risk of becoming exceptionally convoluted, wouldn't it be perfectly legitimate to build an adventure like this? That is, to do rounds of "oh but X spell solves it" until you close off all these spells?

A bit of quick searching tells that there are a bit under 400 Wiz/Sor spells in core alone. I'd guess that adding the rest of the spell list brings you somewhere in the 500-600 range. If you want to pore over that many spells every time you want to put together an adventure, more power to you. And if you want to include additional books there, good luck.


I'll open with my "keep the One Ring safe until the elves finish creating a suitable furnace in which to destroy it" scenario. Do I need to add in the details?

I'm not trying to take this up with you. Just trying to get everybody who says "just throw level-appropriate challenges at them" to think about what that would actually entail. Many of them would not be much good in the DM's chair.

To answer your question, though, extended rope tricks and/or magnificent mansions are good ways to hide out. Outside of core, not much is safer than genesising your own private plane. Or as mentioned in your last thread, there are ways to safely destroy The One Ring without needing Mount Doom at all.

I do want to step back and raise a point to you personally, though. One of the big problems with D&D wizards, clerics, and their ilk is that spells known ranges from relatively cheap to automatic. If we were talking about, say, a non-mage WoD game, there's be two things changing the equation. You're encouraged to have a theme to your powers, and the fact that powers cost XP means that one guy can't have a ginormous bag of tricks.

"Guaranteed to pick any normal lock, and gets a roll to pick an otherwise unpickable lock" is not an intrinsically bad power, especially if there's an opportunity cost to pick it up and it's a thief type character power. The Knock spell is a little annoying for not needing a role, especially in a game where the supposed ideal lock pickers will still need to roll. The bigger problem is that it's one of many broad powers given to the wizard, and that the cost for a wizard to find and scribe a copy is usually rather small.

If you'd rather talk about a game where the thief type has to spend XP buying the knock power, and it's more explicitly in their idiom, that'd be a different discussion than one where it's an easily scribed wizard spell. I don't know how much you want to go in that direction, though.

[Koo Rehtorb]

The reason why they're a bad thing in a game like 3e is that they require very little thought on the part of the player, are freely accessible, and succeed automatically. Depending on how common they are they potentially trivialize the entire game.

I'm going to post a move the wizard in Dungeon World has.


Ritual

When you draw on a place of power to create a magical effect, tell the GM what you’re trying to achieve. Ritual effects are always possible, but the GM will give you one to four of the following conditions:

It’s going to take days/weeks/months.
First you must _________________.
You’ll need help from ____________.
It will require a lot of money.
The best you can do is a lesser version, unreliable and limited.
You and your allies will risk danger from __________.
You’ll have to disenchant _________________ to do it.

This is a better way to do the whole unlimited magical power shtick.

[Draconi Redfir]

ok, imagine a shonen hero.

imagine his quest. imagine him going forth to fight things and he is good at it, but he constantly gets injured, and those moments are awesome because he pulls through right? he goes "I can take the pain! I'm a badass because of what I can withstand to get to my dream! nothing worth doing is easy!" and so on. he trains and trains and no matter what, there are still challenges and he still has to have the tenacity to withstand the beatdowns and the determination to keep going despite the problems. its all about the journey, and the journey is long, hard, and full of awesome moments, full of heartwarming moments, moments of sacrifice, moments of risk, moments of hilarity, because you don't have the perfect solution for anything so the results of all your imperfect solutions are better for wrapping anything up neatly. the journey is long but he eventually gets to the destination having learned a lot.

I win buttons? are when Saitama suddenly comes in and kills the enemy in one punch, while the other hero stops in his tracks is like "HOW DID YOU DO THAT!?" and Saitama is like "I just punched him" as if its nothing special then walks away and the first hero is left feeling empty as he could not possibly compare to that power, when he had trained for so long and yet its solved just like that, and all those moments that could've come from the journey, are lost.

I Win buttons? Destination Trash. Its taking short easy street to lame central. if you can so easily solve these things, they are not worth doing. if a wizard can so easily win at adventuring and make it all easy, I'd rather retire my character and not play. I don't want this bull about "using the I win buttons for more drama." I want I Win button-free drama. If I want to play Superman or One Punch Man whose victories are assured and the drama is from stuff around that, I'll let you know, but I'm not interested in playing those kinds of characters. I don't want any stupid "oh this guy can do instantly solve this better than me" drama, SCREW THAT HARD. LONG AND HARD. I have character concepts that are more important than I Win buttons!

I want my problems to not be solved in an instant. I WANT my problems to be long and hard and complicated and whatnot. I win buttons get in the way of that, because whats an adventure if your going to be non-adventurous by using an I win button? wheres the risk? wheres the journey? which is what really matters here! If I wanted an roleplay where I won at everything and didn't have any risk, I'd just play by myself and not introduce any risk at all. I mean if your going to press the I Win button anyways, why bother with dice? why bother with chance or roleplaying games at all? I Win buttons just an unnecessarily convoluted way of achieving what every mary sue fan fiction writer does with ease without even trying.

Everything this guy said ^

[Mechalich]

I win buttons? are when Saitama suddenly comes in and kills the enemy in one punch, while the other hero stops in his tracks is like "HOW DID YOU DO THAT!?" and Saitama is like "I just punched him" as if its nothing special then walks away and the first hero is left feeling empty as he could not possibly compare to that power, when he had trained for so long and yet its solved just like that, and all those moments that could've come from the journey, are lost.


To expand on this, One Punch Man often has Genos - who is in fact very powerful and can take on a lot - fight enemies before Saitama and engage in an epic cyborg brawl that looks really cool and has a high production budget and a lot of dramatic tension. Genos subsequently loses - usually with several of his limbs scattered across the field and Saitama comes in an beats the enemy in one punch and makes everything Genos has done look incredibly silly. That of course, is the joke, and it's fine for the gag comedy series that is One Punch Man, but if you try to play the same encounter straight up - where one hero goes twenty rounds with the big bad only to lose in epic fashion and then another hero comes in and finishes him in a single move - you look stupid (many shounen series actually do this, and indeed do look stupid and One Punch Man exists in part to send up such practices).

This area is one of the big differences between single-player video games and tabletop. In video games it is often desirable for it to be possible to power game or break-the-game in some fashion so the challenges and even boss fights become easy. After all, in a single-player rpg, the battles are nothing more than an obstacle to overcome, and at some extremes (cough, Xenosaga, cough) nothing more than fillers between the cutscenes. Losing just means you have to reload, and that actually means close loses, where you just almost won, are the worst kind, because that means your best strategy is to play out the battle again and hope for a few percent extra somewhere, which can result in a lot of wasted time. It's much more efficient to lose big - meaning you need to go grind some more - or win easily - knowing you can safely move ahead.

By contrast, in Table-top battles are a major source of drama and you want them to be epic and awesome and close and involve innovative tactics and crazy maneuvers and cunning quips. If encounters resolve with a single player making a single move that removes all tension there's nothing memorable about that at all.

[Quertus]

ok, imagine a shonen hero.

imagine his quest. imagine him going forth to fight things and he is good at it, but he constantly gets injured, and those moments are awesome because he pulls through right? he goes "I can take the pain! I'm a badass because of what I can withstand to get to my dream! nothing worth doing is easy!" and so on. he trains and trains and no matter what, there are still challenges and he still has to have the tenacity to withstand the beatdowns and the determination to keep going despite the problems. its all about the journey, and the journey is long, hard, and full of awesome moments, full of heartwarming moments, moments of sacrifice, moments of risk, moments of hilarity, because you don't have the perfect solution for anything so the results of all your imperfect solutions are better for wrapping anything up neatly. the journey is long but he eventually gets to the destination having learned a lot.

I win buttons? are when Saitama suddenly comes in and kills the enemy in one punch, while the other hero stops in his tracks is like "HOW DID YOU DO THAT!?" and Saitama is like "I just punched him" as if its nothing special then walks away and the first hero is left feeling empty as he could not possibly compare to that power, when he had trained for so long and yet its solved just like that, and all those moments that could've come from the journey, are lost.

I Win buttons? Destination Trash. Its taking short easy street to lame central. if you can so easily solve these things, they are not worth doing. if a wizard can so easily win at adventuring and make it all easy, I'd rather retire my character and not play. I don't want this bull about "using the I win buttons for more drama." I want I Win button-free drama. If I want to play Superman or One Punch Man whose victories are assured and the drama is from stuff around that, I'll let you know, but I'm not interested in playing those kinds of characters. I don't want any stupid "oh this guy can do instantly solve this better than me" drama, SCREW THAT HARD. LONG AND HARD. I have character concepts that are more important than I Win buttons!

I want my problems to not be solved in an instant. I WANT my problems to be long and hard and complicated and whatnot. I win buttons get in the way of that, because whats an adventure if your going to be non-adventurous by using an I win button? wheres the risk? wheres the journey? which is what really matters here! If I wanted an roleplay where I won at everything and didn't have any risk, I'd just play by myself and not introduce any risk at all. I mean if your going to press the I Win button anyways, why bother with dice? why bother with chance or roleplaying games at all? I Win buttons just an unnecessarily convoluted way of achieving what every mary sue fan fiction writer does with ease without even trying.

This seems a better argument for what I call Hard Mode than it does an argument against win buttons. Except that Hard Mode doesn't care if someone else is One Punch Man.

Actually, I'm opposed to the whole idea of caring what anyone else brought on principle, which might be why I suspect I've probably missed your point.


Ultimately this comes down to choosing a particular granularity at which gameplay happens, and sticking with it.

If we take the chess example, the granularity of gameplay is moving a piece. We don't ask what happens at smaller scales than moving a piece - there's no question of whether the knight is feeling brave that day, or has the bishop stubbed his toe and moves to the wrong spot, or whatever. Above that granularity scale however, the resolution of things is up to the interaction between elements of the scenario (the relative positioning of pieces), and the challenge of the game is to use control at the scale of individual moves to exert control over the flow of the whole board position.

If there were a move in chess that, for example, captured multiple pieces at once, or that said 'each player can remove one enemy piece of their choice other than the kings at one point during the game', those are of course rules that a game could have, but would operate at a somewhat different granularity than the rest of the chess game because they bypass the idea of using the compound effects of individual moves of pieces to find a way to get the board state you want.

If we go to a tabletop RPG, there are many different scales of things that could go on in a given campaign. Depending on players' likes and dislikes, DM's attitude, character level, etc, some of these things are to be resolved in detail and some can be glossed over. You could play out every 10 minute interval of a journey through the wilderness as if it were just a gigantic dungeon, but it'd be pointlessly tedious to do so, so instead you usually abstract such travel into a few abstract challenges and handwave the rest. Similarly, you could just say for an encounter 'the party is above the difficulty of this encounter so you win and move on' for very easy encounters. But if you were to say 'this boss fight is a bit over the party EL, so a random one of you dies, you use 4 potions, you're down to 25% hitpoints, but you win' that would be an inappropriate place to abstract things away - the granularity of most tabletop RPGs assumes that such combats will be played out in detail, and that that's often where the meat of the game is.

Things that are 'win buttons' are usually things which implicitly change the granularity of the game without actually saying that's what they're doing. Teleport replaces weeks of travel that could be filled with random encounters, discoveries, etc with an atomic ('indivisible' here, not 'explosive') action 'I go there'. Invisibility (mostly) replaces the detailed resolution of looking for hiding places, navigating past each guard, making distractions, avoiding sight lines, etc with the atomic action 'I infiltrate the location'. Group no-save-just-lose effects replace the back and forth of combat, positioning, etc with an initiative roll (D&D specific perhaps).

If that's consistently the level of abstraction you use for the campaign, that's fine. You can run a game that resolves every second of a sword duel, or a game that treats a day-long clash between armies as a single 'action' taken by the heads of state. But if you're fighting that 1 second interval sword duel and suddenly an ability gets used that switches things to company-scale mass melee that makes the rest of your duel irrelevant, its jarring and creates problems. Especially if the ability to change the level of abstraction belongs to some players but not others. Not to mention that an increase in abstraction means that there had better be meaningful complexity ready to go at that higher level of abstraction, or there won't actually be any game content to play through.

This is bloody brilliant! Thank you. I'll add that to the list of reasons I understand.


Exactly.

if my character is meant for complex duels between swashbucklers and whatnot, going all turn based strategy commander on the battle will make me understandably upset. its about the journey of swashbuckling, the every stroke and parry of the blade, not the outcome,that important yes, but so is that there be swashbuckling, that I play out the parry, the thrust, the dance of blades itself! roleplaying is not just about the destination, the success, its about the process of getting to that success! I don't want that process to go away, I don't want it all to just be one binary of whether I win or lose. I want to experience it step by step, every clash of the blade. for if I abstracted it out so that I just win instantly.....its just skipping stuff, and the only point to skipping stuff is if its not important. therefore why use a skip option on something important?

Hmmm... Players with different opinions on what's important? Should that be it's own entry in my list? I'm not sure.

Players will always have different things they want out of a game. I guess win buttons could exacerbate the problem.


"I Win" buttons are another type of "puzzle encounter" design, IMO. They turn encounters into binary results where access to the button robs encounters of dramatic tension, while lack of access often leads to frustration on one side or the other of the GM screen (for games with that type of setup).

Honestly, the "I Win" buttons can frustrate a GM when used properly, too. Typically, this is because the GM was not considering the button when designing the encounter, rendering what was expected to be a complex scenario into a trivial inconvenience. I've even seen times where the "I Win" button caused a party to bypass material they needed for their agendas, forcing the GM to scramble to find another way to get the materials to the Characters.

That just sounds like bad encounter design to me. Rule of 3, and all that.


To Quertus: Have you every played a character that doesn't have win buttons in a party where the other characters do? Any they know how to use them? (Remembering Quertus's inspiration.)

Hahaha, fair question. Um... Yes. A few times. IMO, it's nice to have someone in the party who can drop a nuke when the standard guns just aren't cutting it. Whether that nuke is a Knock spell, a phone call to someone of Importance, or a literal nuke.


On Knight vs Mage: OK, having magic is more realistic than having really high stamina? I'm not even sure that is super human stamina to fight for 48 hours. At full strength it definitely would, but the maybe the knight was exhausted and it took him 10 minutes to fell the last goblin.

I don't use words I haven't heard IRL, but that v word, or internal consistency, if you prefer that over "realistic", but yes. Because it's not just fight for 48 hours, but also kill 1,000 opponents in a stand-up fight. Afaik*, the record of conformed one man kills in a single melee engagement is over 200, but that was one at a time, and without being spotted. I hate Batman, because I cannot believe that he had survived all his encounters. He is only ever hit by a stay bullet when it makes for a "good story". That makes it a horrible story. I would almost certainly hate the story of this knight, too, unless there was some reason I could find it believable.

* I am not an expert on the subject, that's just pulling from what little I know.

[Lord Raziere]

This seems a better argument for what I call Hard Mode than it does an argument against win buttons. Except that Hard Mode doesn't care if someone else is One Punch Man.

Actually, I'm opposed to the whole idea of caring what anyone else brought on principle, which might be why I suspect I've probably missed your point.


If someone is One Punch Man in one's game, there is no hard mode- which is not the right term, because I'm not talking about hard mode when I say these things, this is just a normal game, your weird personal terms for these just confuse the issue. Just a question: "would my time be better spent just waiting for Saitama to one punch it?" if the answer is invariably yes, then my character has no purpose. to try and solve things without the One Punch Man right beside you would mean you'd have to be monumentally stupid. While if One Punch Man holds back from solving a problem with their one punching, the One Punch Man is monumentally stupid.

these characters exist in the same world. you can't say that one person is on hard mode and another isn't. easy mode and hard mode are two different worlds. physics doesn't change from one person to the next. nor does a problem happen to only person and not the other. if a problem is happening to one person in the party, that is the entire parties problem. so by default any problem of the non-One Punch Man character is a problem of the One Punch Man character because they are in the same party, facing the same problems together. and if its a problem that can be better solved if One Punch Man did his thing- then there is no point in trying myself. One Punch Man has got it. there is no point to opening the door if One Punch Man can do a punch so destructive that it kills everyone in the room while destroying the door. there is no quest, if I have a friend that bypasses everything that makes a quest a quest. and if the GM does the stupidest thing possible and goes along with this, encourages One Punch Man to keep solving things like this? then its not my game anymore. I'm out.

there is nothing to earn if you have someone who is right beside you that is stronger than you ever imagined you could ever be. because that person has proven that all your hard work will never amount to what they're doing right now. they've discovered something more efficient, so the less efficient thing is now garbage. if my character is a pyromancer and the other guy is an everythingmancer, I'm no longer viable, I'm just an idiot for specializing. I don't want hard mode, because hard mode is being an idiot. I want things to be challenge without me having to hold back. I win buttons take away that challenge.

Again, nothing worth doing is easy. If the easiest/best way to solve my problems is just to sit back and let someone else solve it instantly- then its not worth it. If One Punch Man is in the game, then nothing is, because the easiest way to solve all my problems is to just do nothing to force One Punch Man to solve it themselves. There is no point to even try.

Edit: lets a put a name to this problem: Goku Syndrome. because y'know what the big problem with DBZ was? only Goku could solve anything and the arcs basically amounted to waiting for him to show up and solve it. TFS has a line to sum it all up:
Abridged Cell to Vegeta: "Next time, why don't you remember your place like the rest of them... and wait for Goku."

[Faily]

I'm not sure if the One Punch Man-examples here really work well for the discussion, considering that the series is supposed to be making fun of a lot of shounen-tropes.

And for the record, Shounen-style struggling and adventures isn't for everyone (and I say this as someone who likes to get her shounen-anime fix). Not every obstacle or fight needs to be a 10+ episodes long struggle with deep discussions on emotions and feelings... and thank goodness for that.

As a player, it's a different kind of rush when your party totally gets the drop on the enemy and wipes the floor with them easy-peasy. It's fun to occassionally feel like your planning, teamwork or just that lucky spell-choice paid off so spectacularly that the opponent didn't stand a chance. From both sides of the GM-screen, such encounters often end with a good laugh and can often be a fun memory to look back on. As a player, I also like the feeling that my character is becoming more powerful than they were... a locked door, or a MacGuffin at the top of a tower, might have been challenges before, but as they advance, they move past that.


As for the Knight and Mage-narratives above: In the case of the Knight facing down goblins for 2 days in combat... that to me sounds like the climax of a story for that character. While in the case of the Mage, it reads more to me like a "a display of power" on the road to whatever challenges lie ahead.

And I would also say that challenges vary from character to character, from group to group, and from story to story. For some, the challenge is "how to we cross to the other side of this chasm", while for others the challenges can be a test of morals and values.

In the end, there is no wrong way to go about it as long as everyone at the table is having fun with the challenges the game is providing, whether they can be defeated easily with the use of the right spell or a lucky die-roll, or requires hours and hours of blood, sweat, and tears.

[SirBellias]

Depends on the game.

If D&D, a Win Button that overlaps with a specialists skills renders them useless. Not completely useless, granted, but useless in a place where only one of any given role is expected. There's probably some stuff about the DM adapting the situation to the skill sets of the characters, but that would make too much sense. A wizard being better at hiding than the rogue doesn't let the rogue have any time in the spotlight.

In Apocalypse World and others, most "Win Buttons" start more problems than end them, so they aren't an issue.

[Lord Raziere]

yeah, yeah real inspiring and optimistic Faily, but I'm not here to talk about things going right, in character or out of character.

the reason I talk about this is because there is a problem and its called "I Win buttons" which are detrimental to my fun. he asked why people hate them. I answer. whether I Win buttons works for Faily's or Quertus's table has nothing to do with it. there is no point to saying "but in my experience it works" because its not about your experiences, because it doesn't work for the people who hate them, which is what the thread is about. Because I'm never going to play with you, never going to care what you find fun, never going to care how much your going to say why you like it.

Because you asked why I hate it, and I'm answering. I already understand why you like it, I don't need explanations for why you like it. Mostly because I don't care. I'm here to tell YOU why I DON'T, because you asked, and therefore implying that you don't understand.

Simply put: I don't like I Win Buttons because I'm player, not an extra in someones elses story, and I Win Buttons get in the way of that and therefore get discarded. You might say "but I wait I have solutions to have fun with I Win Buttons!" and again I state: I. DON'T. CARE. I already have a solution to that. Its called "not allowing I Win Buttons or One Punch Man into my games." it works quite well, because a vast majority of players see the restriction as pretty reasonable and have no problems with making a character who is nowhere near as powerful as anything Quertus likes to play, because guess what, a vast majority of character concepts work without needing them, and are in fact enhanced by their absence.

[Max_Killjoy]

yeah, yeah real inspiring and optimistic Faily, but I'm not here to talk about things going right, in character or out of character.

the reason I talk about this is because there is a problem and its called "I Win buttons" which are detrimental to my fun. he asked why people hate them. I answer. whether I Win buttons works for Faily's or Quertus's table has nothing to do with it. there is no point to saying "but in my experience it works" because its not about your experiences, because it doesn't work for the people who hate them, which is what the thread is about. Because I'm never going to play with you, never going to care what you find fun, never going to care how much your going to say why you like it.

Because you asked why I hate it, and I'm answering. I already understand why you like it, I don't need explanations for why you like it. Mostly because I don't care. I'm here to tell YOU why I DON'T, because you asked, and therefore implying that you don't understand.

Simply put: I don't like I Win Buttons because I'm player, not an extra in someones elses story, and I Win Buttons get in the way of that and therefore get discarded. You might say "but I wait I have solutions to have fun with I Win Buttons!" and again I state: I. DON'T. CARE. I already have a solution to that. Its called "not allowing I Win Buttons or One Punch Man into my games." it works quite well, because a vast majority of players see the restriction as pretty reasonable and have no problems with making a character who is nowhere near as powerful as anything Quertus likes to play, because guess what, a vast majority of character concepts work without needing them, and are in fact enhanced by their absence.


My experience so far is that I'm not which is more trouble, more likely to make the game less fun for the rest of the table... the player who wants other PCs to by the extras for their PC... or the player who wants their PC to be the extra.

[D+1]

So, I often see posters complaining about "win buttons" - things that just work, and solve problems.
It is not a crime for PC's to be good at something. It is also actually the intended goal for the PC's to win - A LOT. But REPEATED, EASY victory is unsatisfying. "Having is not always so pleasing a thing as wanting. It is not logical - but it is often true." - Spock

[Cluedrew]

This seems a better argument for what I call Hard Mode than it does an argument against win buttons. Except that Hard Mode doesn't care if someone else is One Punch Man.
Hahaha, fair question. Um... Yes. A few times. IMO, it's nice to have someone in the party who can drop a nuke when the standard guns just aren't cutting it. Whether that nuke is a Knock spell, a phone call to someone of Importance, or a literal nuke.You know I think that these little bits (combined with what I know from the hard mode thread) kind of gets at what the disconnect is. Which is, most people get a little upset when they are rendered obsolete. I don't know if this makes you the least competitive person I have ever met or what. I'm running out of time, as I wrote this post out of order, but I do feel there is a disconnect here and I'll try to hone in on it tomorrow.


I don't use words I haven't heard IRL, but that v word, or internal consistency, if you prefer that over "realistic", but yes.Well... I have to raise a metaphorical eyebrow everyone claims a thing involving magic is realistic. As for internal consistency, internally consistency to what? The grievously imbalance world of 3.5e, as per the Playgrounder's Fallacy? Sure, as much as I think that was just bad design. A more Kung Fu centered story? No, not in the slightest.


In Apocalypse World and others, most "Win Buttons" start more problems than end them, so they aren't an issue.That's not called winning, that's escalation.

[Pex]

Cynical answer:

Because DMs have all the power. Whenever a player's character gets some power the DM feels he is losing his. When a character's ability forces the DM to have a bad guy behave a certain way instead of the DM's way, or even worse, affect the DM's dice roll, that's the player telling the DM what to do and some DMs cannot stand it. I've witnessed it. I've even been that player with a DM who got upset I had an ability that made a monster reroll its attack roll when it was a Natural 20 originally.

Less cynical but still happens:

Some DMs can't or won't adapt their adventure design to accommodate a character's new ability. They hate flying because they can't use chasms anymore. They hate teleport because they can no longer have a 3 week journey of fluff random encounters when the players want to get to their quest already or get back to home base. These DMs resent not being able to use their staple set-ups, so they take it out on the abilities that cause this and call them broken.

[Max_Killjoy]

Cynical answer:

Because DMs have all the power. Whenever a player's character gets some power the DM feels he is losing his. When a character's ability forces the DM to have a bad guy behave a certain way instead of the DM's way, or even worse, affect the DM's dice roll, that's the player telling the DM what to do and some DMs cannot stand it. I've witnessed it. I've even been that player with a DM who got upset I had an ability that made a monster reroll its attack roll when it was a Natural 20 originally.

Less cynical but still happens:

Some DMs can't or won't adapt their adventure design to accommodate a character's new ability. They hate flying because they can't use chasms anymore. They hate teleport because they can no longer have a 3 week journey of fluff random encounters when the players want to get to their quest already or get back to home base. These DMs resent not being able to use their staple set-ups, so they take it out on the abilities that cause this and call them broken.

Yeah, that's totally it (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-290204.html).

[Telok]

Another way to think about the character abilities often called "win buttons" is that the conversation is really about the concept of fairness, and perhaps a little bit about trust. It's not about what particular instances of exact abilities and situations are fair or unfair, but the concept of fairness as part of a game system, the behaivior of the players, and peoples individual experiences.

Flying, teleporting, invisible, no-doors, mind-control, divination abilities are part of some of our games. In supers games nobody complains, anyone can have them and everyone is expecting them. It's considered fair. Likewise with an all wizard (or all fighter) D&D party, no complaints because everyone considers it equal and fair. Note also that when everything is considered fair there is no requirement for people to trust others to behave appropriately because nobody has an 'unfair' advantage.

Move down to something D&D-like, with a party of fighters and one mage. If you consider the game to be fair (through any mechanisim, be it dice mechanics, rules, the setting, random encounters, resource management, by design or by accident) there are still no complaints. Even if the mage can fly and turn invisible, if for any reason it's "fair" then people don't complain about "win buttons". In addition, if the group trusts whomever is playing the mage character to 'play nice with others' then that group will not complain. These people, accustomed to playing with others who do not abuse any flaws in a game to be 'unfair' or to impede the enjoyment of their fellow players, will also generally not complain about "win buttons".

So I would suggest that character abilities that are referred to as 'win buttons' are just character abilities in games. What people are really talking about is perceived unfairness. That's a particularly difficult issue because we all have different experiences and expectations, which can lead to very different ideas of fairness in games.

[Mutazoia]

None of the things the OP listed are "I win" buttons.

An 'I win" button is a race/class/spell combo that allows the character to excell in every situation with out breaking a sweat. The majic combo that lets a character defeat any foe almost instantly, with little to no damage to themselves and/or come out on top in every non-combat situation.

An "I win" button is power gaming taken to the Nth degree, and generally tends to make the game less enjoyable for everyone else at the table, because that character overshadows everyone and everything else, to the point where a DM has to either increase the DC of the entier world to slow down that character (thus making the world way too lethal for the rest of the party) or ban that character (and have to listen to the player whine about it).

[Satinavian]

It really depends upon the system.

If the game has perfect flying be an easy ability to grab, then it shouldn't also make climbing and/or jumping something which requires significant resources to do well.

Both systems can work. In a superhero game it totally makes sense for flying to be a thing, but another hero probably wouldn't worry too much about putting points into 'mountain climbing'. If they don't want to fly, they'll just get Batman's ultimate grappling hook or something.

But if a system is designed around 'mountain climbing' being a significant investment, then a different character shouldn't be able to pull out 'flying' on a whim and invalidate both that character's investment & that entire part of the system.
That is basically the core of it.

The "Win buttons" are not bad at all. They are just cool abilities and tools. Auto-success is not bad either, it just makes them reliable tools you can count on if you make your plans.

It is when they solve problems which DMs envision as central challanges or other players want to be a central pillar of a viable character specialisation build. The latter is also one of the roots for complaints about the auto win - if it is supposed to be a core feature of bossible builds, there needs to be room for improvements over the levels.



So overall, it comes down to "people disagree/ have different preferrences over what the game is about"

[Draconi Redfir]

i think it really boils down to "all easy all the time is boring"

like if you hacked dark souls enough to make it so that you never died, never took damage, never fell off cliffs, never took any status effects like poison or whatever, and all enemies and bosses died in one hit, then that wouldn't be a fun game at all. it would quickly get boring and eventually the only thing you would be doing is wasting your own time for no reason.

[Max Caysey]

So, I often see posters complaining about "win buttons" - things that just work, and solve problems. Like how Invisibility says you just can't be seen, Flight says you can just bypass any obstacle, or the classic D&D Knock spell lets you just open any door, no skill roll, no risk.

Yes, these things just work. So what? Many - heck, most - games are based on abilities that just work. When the knight moves into the same space as the opposing pawn, it just captures the piece. When I set fire to the obsidian "O", it just turns into a portal. When I pass "Go", I just collect $200. Why do RPG players seen so loath to accept the concept of things that just work?

EDIT
Yes, this is the Playground, home of the Playgrounder Fallacy. And, yes, all of the abilities I listed are available in D&D 3e. But I hadn't actually intended to limit this to a 3e discussion.

Reasons I understand so far:

Inaccuracy - some "win" buttons shouldn't actually automatically succeed
exacerbates problems of what is in character vs what makes for a fun game


Reasons why win buttons get a (potentially-undeserved) bad rap:
Association with unbalanced characters in unbalanced games


A real "Press enter to win"- button automatically solves your problem - automatically (usually also instantaneously)! Thus meaning removing any challenge. Is that fun? For most situations not!

It the button only gives you a strong advantage, then its not a real win-button.


Neither invisibility (you can spot an invisibly creature (the presence of, at least), with a dc20 spot check), nor fly are win-buttons. A win button might be gating in something from the ELH. Your point is seems is that most are not win-buttons and you would be correct.

[goto124]

Vancian casting, that wizards have only so many slots to fit their spells in, was supposed to be a balancing point. A rogue can pick any number of locks, a wizard can cast Knock only a few times, and those slots can't be used for other spells.

I seem to recall that there was an explanation for why Vancian casting is in fact not a balacing point, but it escapes me...

[Earthwalker]

If adventurers / superheroes / whatever the PCs are are supposed to be rare, IMO it can make sense that only a select few strongholds were built with the full expense of dealing with such capabilities. I haven't checked the blueprints or done the science, but I don't think my house was designed to withstand a determined tank, let alone a nuclear blast.

So why is it nonsensical for the PCs to be above and beyond what the world is equipped to deal with?

See how the presence of “win” button changes assumptions about the world you are playing in.
Here Adventurers are rare and as such them having win buttons doesn’t mean the world automatically grow to counter them.
If you have players that don’t like that assumption then suddenly win buttons become a problem.

I don’t hate win buttons but I do have a strong dislike for 5d chess. (Thanks for Max_killjoy for the term 5d chess, I think it was Max that first said it) The game has I win buttons so GMs change your adventure design to counter them. (I think that has been said on this thread)
Player – I use “I Win”
GM – I counter with “Counter I win”
Player – I counter with “Counter Counter I Win”
GM – I counter with “Counter Counter Counter I Win”
I don’t enjoy that style of game. I win buttons encourage that style of game.
I don’t hate “I Win” buttons but I just don’t need them. For me it’s not fun looking through loads of books finding I win buttons or worse as a GM HAVING to look for “Counter I Win” buttons.

[Aneurin]

I don't like win buttons because, frankly, they're utterly pointless.

Let's look at Dungeons and Dragons here since, well, this topic seems to have become all about Dungeons and Dragons.

First of all, let's ask why these win buttons were built in to the system in the first place. I'll admit to being baffled by Knock's existence, but things like Teleport, Dimension Door, and the various Flight spells seem to have been included to get around travel - to avoid it. Presumably because the game designers considered it boring since they were making a game built around brutally killing things and taking their stuff.

Fine, right? Just use a spell to skip the boring stuff?

Except... why bother? If your players aren't enjoying something, don't do it any more. If your players find travelling and random encounters boring, just gloss over it - there's no point in making them use a spell or whatever to do it! If they don't want to do your dungeon crawl, and elect to scry-and-die the final boss instead, maybe stop using dungeon crawls.

On top of that (but largely secondary to my main reasoning above), now that you have those avoid-the-boring-bits spells, which were, I strongly suspect, only thought about in terms of "how can we make this more effective at avoiding X boring bit", your players also have a wealth of new not-necessarily-rules-as-intended tactical options which, since the game as a whole didn't properly account for them, make the PCs a great deal stronger than intended - and, since D&D all but punishes sub-optimal choices all but forces the players to employ them.

So in the end, these "win" buttons have a.) failed at their basic purpose, since there was never a need for them, and b.) provided a much-stronger-than-standard set of tactical options which the PCs are all but forced to take if they want to be "competitive" or whatever.

[Darth Ultron]

Less cynical but still happens:

Some DMs can't or won't adapt their adventure design to accommodate a character's new ability. They hate flying because they can't use chasms anymore. They hate teleport because they can no longer have a 3 week journey of fluff random encounters when the players want to get to their quest already or get back to home base. These DMs resent not being able to use their staple set-ups, so they take it out on the abilities that cause this and call them broken.

This is the big one I see. The DM does not want to do the ''power race'' vs the players.

Most often the DM simply can't handle the ''up'' in power. It changes the game too much and forces the DM to pay attention. Like the DM does not want to say ''Castle Doom is warded against teleport'', because then his bad guy NPC can't teleport there either. And the DM is not creative enough to work around that and take things up to the next level...or they just don't want too.

Very common too is the DM that does not want to change their ''perfect'' world. They wrote down X, and don't want to change it just as the characters have a ability.

The worst is the DM who ''won't change things'' as they are stuck in the player corner. They know the players won't like anything they do to make the game 'hard' or even 'a challenge' so they just sit back, half under the table, and say ''you guys win again''.

[johnbragg]

I seem to recall that there was an explanation for why Vancian casting is in fact not a balacing point, but it escapes me...

Scrolls and wands in 3X. More exactly, the pricing of magic items and gold-magic transparency. Spell slots, which had been rare, could now be effectively purchased with gold, which tends to be plentiful.


I don't like win buttons because, frankly, they're utterly pointless.

Let's look at Dungeons and Dragons here since, well, this topic seems to have become all about Dungeons and Dragons.

First of all, let's ask why these win buttons were built in to the system in the first place. I'll admit to being baffled by Knock's existence, but things like Teleport, Dimension Door, and the various Flight spells seem to have been included to get around travel - to avoid it.

I think it's more accurate to say they were put in because they were things magic-users in fantasy stories had been able to do. BAck in 1st edition there were "PArt Water" and "Sticks to Snakes" so you could play Moses.

[Cluedrew]

So the disconnect, basically it has to do with overshadowing. I've only played one game where, due to a variety factors, I was a fraction the strength of the other characters. It was a co-op game and really I was more the only one who wasn't overpowered, so we did fine. Still it wasn't fun, struggling with all my might just to make a contribution. And by a contribution I mean hitting a room early so I could take down an enemy or two before the ranger showed up and started taking down 3-6 a turn.

Not having a chance at winning in a competitive game is frustrating, not being able to contribute in a cooperative game is frustrating. And nothing makes it harder to contribute than other players (or characters) having so much more ability to do things that they have to hold back for you to have a shot. Especially when you trying gives the team less chance of success than letting the button get pushed.

[Zale]

I feel like these sorts of things are mostly negative when they're uneven and unexpected- one one person is God-Man the Omnipotent and the other is Sir Absolot the Stab Knight.

In some games everyone has crazy game breaking power and this it's mostly fine. Nobilis, for example, would cheerily accept Saitama from One Punch Man as a normal character.

I wouldn't dream of attempting to challenge my Nobilis players with something I'd use on a D&D character. Most of them wouldn't be challenged if I asked them to all travel to the moon. Sure, some of them might have to try harder than others, but at least a few of them would just jump really hard or turn into a ladder or something.

The fun is mostly finding out how people will apply their particular brand of Win-Button to the situation.

[Darth Ultron]

So the disconnect, basically it has to do with overshadowing. I've only played one game where, due to a variety factors, I was a fraction the strength of the other characters. It was a co-op game and really I was more the only one who wasn't overpowered, so we did fine. Still it wasn't fun, struggling with all my might just to make a contribution. And by a contribution I mean hitting a room early so I could take down an enemy or two before the ranger showed up and started taking down 3-6 a turn.

Not having a chance at winning in a competitive game is frustrating, not being able to contribute in a cooperative game is frustrating. And nothing makes it harder to contribute than other players (or characters) having so much more ability to do things that they have to hold back for you to have a shot. Especially when you trying gives the team less chance of success than letting the button get pushed.

This is more Party Balance and DM Type then a ''win button''.

It's also a more ''if your just playing a by-the-numbers combat roll playing game''. And sure, lots of people like to play like that. They have ''a kind of fun'' counting every point of damage done as some sort of meter of the fun level of the game to them...or something.

But it's only for that sort of game. If your playing say, a role playing adventure, then it does not matter how many ''numbers of damage'' you do a round.

Though the big problem does come up when the DM is a by-the-numbers combat roll playing game type DM. Then it's a numbers game and all the numbers matter.

[malachi]

So the disconnect, basically it has to do with overshadowing. I've only played one game where, due to a variety factors, I was a fraction the strength of the other characters. It was a co-op game and really I was more the only one who wasn't overpowered, so we did fine. Still it wasn't fun, struggling with all my might just to make a contribution. And by a contribution I mean hitting a room early so I could take down an enemy or two before the ranger showed up and started taking down 3-6 a turn.

Not having a chance at winning in a competitive game is frustrating, not being able to contribute in a cooperative game is frustrating. And nothing makes it harder to contribute than other players (or characters) having so much more ability to do things that they have to hold back for you to have a shot. Especially when you trying gives the team less chance of success than letting the button get pushed.


This is more Party Balance and DM Type then a ''win button''.

It's also a more ''if your just playing a by-the-numbers combat roll playing game''. And sure, lots of people like to play like that. They have ''a kind of fun'' counting every point of damage done as some sort of meter of the fun level of the game to them...or something.

But it's only for that sort of game. If your playing say, a role playing adventure, then it does not matter how many ''numbers of damage'' you do a round.

Though the big problem does come up when the DM is a by-the-numbers combat roll playing game type DM. Then it's a numbers game and all the numbers matter.

(Working off of 5e balance assumptions; I assume they're not too far off from 3.5)
If the game design says conflicts should be split between combat (where Wizard A uses 1 or 2 of their 20-ish spells to conquer single-handedly), social (where Wizard A uses 1 or 2 of their 20-ish spells to conquer single-handedly), or exploration (where Wizard A uses 1 or 2 of their 20-ish spells to conquer single-handedly), and the game design says there should be 6-8 encounters a day, that means that a single wizard is invalidating the rest of the party (even if Wizard A is using 2 spells in each encounter, that's only 16 of their 20-ish spells).

The first problem I see with win buttons is the existence of a single character possessing a multitude of 'win buttons'. The second is that in order to react to a single character (or even a party) with access to all of those 'win buttons', a GM has to look into tactics (and often worldbuilding) beyond things which make sense from our cultural upbringing.

If the world has a decent number of people who can cast Charm, how does a GM design a government so that PCs can't just sow chaos and destruction right from lvl 1? Or, rather, how do cash-strapped governments (i.e. all of them) plan to counter a tactic that would be clearly employed by highly-powerful individuals (PCs) and enemy organizations / nations?

If the world has a small number of people who can turn invisible, fly, and mind control anyone who happens to discover them, how do governments and organizations defend against that? How is a GM supposed to wrap their head around what this will look like when they find out, 6 sessions in, that the party can do that every day (while still having the resources of 3 more characters)?

[Max_Killjoy]

(Working off of 5e balance assumptions; I assume they're not too far off from 3.5)
If the game design says conflicts should be split between combat (where Wizard A uses 1 or 2 of their 20-ish spells to conquer single-handedly), social (where Wizard A uses 1 or 2 of their 20-ish spells to conquer single-handedly), or exploration (where Wizard A uses 1 or 2 of their 20-ish spells to conquer single-handedly), and the game design says there should be 6-8 encounters a day, that means that a single wizard is invalidating the rest of the party (even if Wizard A is using 2 spells in each encounter, that's only 16 of their 20-ish spells).

The first problem I see with win buttons is the existence of a single character possessing a multitude of 'win buttons'. The second is that in order to react to a single character (or even a party) with access to all of those 'win buttons', a GM has to look into tactics (and often worldbuilding) beyond things which make sense from our cultural upbringing.

If the world has a decent number of people who can cast Charm, how does a GM design a government so that PCs can't just sow chaos and destruction right from lvl 1? Or, rather, how do cash-strapped governments (i.e. all of them) plan to counter a tactic that would be clearly employed by highly-powerful individuals (PCs) and enemy organizations / nations?

If the world has a small number of people who can turn invisible, fly, and mind control anyone who happens to discover them, how do governments and organizations defend against that? How is a GM supposed to wrap their head around what this will look like when they find out, 6 sessions in, that the party can do that every day (while still having the resources of 3 more characters)?

Thus getting back to the system / setting disconnect that I mentioned upthread.

Ever notice how rarely game settings -- especially "high fantasy" settings -- follow through with the implications of the powers given to PCs and their enemies, allies, etc?

[CharonsHelper]

Ever notice how rarely game settings -- especially "high fantasy" settings -- follow through with the implications of the powers given to PCs and their enemies, allies, etc?

Such things can be okay if the PCs & their foes are the EXTREMELY RARE cases of those who have those abilities so that it makes sense if most aren't ready for it, but it makes no sense when such things are known quantities.

Ex: It would make sense if villains hadn't prepared for Hercules' strength being able to overcome their defenses. Because - he's the only one with that kind of strength.

[Max_Killjoy]

Such things can be okay if the PCs & their foes are the EXTREMELY RARE cases of those who have those abilities so that it makes sense if most aren't ready for it, but it makes no sense when such things are known quantities.

Even if they're rare, one has to wonder (OK, I have to wonder, at least) why there isn't a "conspiracy of casters" using their illusions, shape-changing, mind manipulation, etc, spells to control the various rulers of the world. Every ruler would need the highest level caster he could bring in, and would never really know if he was the one in control, or the caster was. It would only take a few dozen casters of even moderate level, and that would be a "very rare" rate even in the population of say 1400 BCE Europe.

[Jormengand]

I think it's more accurate to say they were put in because they were things magic-users in fantasy stories had been able to do. BAck in 1st edition there were "PArt Water" and "Sticks to Snakes" so you could play Moses.

3.5 still has Part Water (in stormwrack) though I can't remember if it's still called that.



The main problem I have with "I win" buttons is the following:

(Party 1: Barbarian, Rogue, Paladin, Ranger)
DM: *Spends a while designing module* "Okay, so, as previously discussed, you've reached the evil king's fortress. You see the main door up in front of you."
Ranger: Okay, I'll send my animal companion to prowl around and see if there are any other doors.
*Search-related dialogue*
DM: Okay, you find a back door.
All: We sneak around to the back.
*Hide/MS-related dialogue*
DM: You manage to just about sneak around, but one of the guards goes over to investigate.
Rogue: I try to keep him talking...
Ranger: ...and I'll sneak up behind him to give you the flank.
*Bluff/Hide/MS-related dialogue*
DM: Okay, you succeed.
Rogue: I knock him out.
DM: Okay, he's clean unconscious. Now, you get a good look at the door...
*Module continues*

(Party 2: Wizard, 3 other poor schmucks)
DM: *Spends a while designing module* "Okay, so, as previously discussed, you've reached the evil king's fortress. You see the main door up in front of you."
Wizard: I irresistible scrying the king.
DM: Okay, you can see the king's room.
Wizard: I turn invisible and greater teleport into the king's room.
Wizard: I cast irresistible phantasmal killer on the king.
DM: He dies.
Wizard: I greater teleport back to the rebel leader and inform him of my success.
DM: *Tears up notes about guard patrols, traps, and the layout of most of the fortress*
Fighter: Uh, well, I start walking back to the rebel base...
DM: Okay, well, give me a moment to come up with a new module, guys...

[Broken Twin]

Given the arguments put forth in this thread, I think the issue is less "I win" buttons as a whole, and more "I win" buttons obsoleting other player's characters or the expected power level of the game. The 'knock' spell vs lock-picking rogues is an excellent example, in 3.5 especially. You could devote multiple skill points, class features, and even feats into becoming the ultimate lock-picker... or the resident spellcaster could pick up a single cheap spell.

Granted, the Rogue could just max UMD and pick up a wand of Knock... but that still obliterates his concept. I think the major problem stems from 3.5's desire to satisfy such a massive range of play styles and power levels. You can't put (Marvel comics) Doctor Strange and (Assassin's Creed) Altaïr on the same team without the latter feeling useless the vast majority of the time. Need to tail someone? Scry them. Kill someone? Fry them. Enter a secure complex? Teleport in. Outside of scenarios specifically designed by the GM to lock down the caster, there's nothing the assassin can do that the caster can't do better.

To be fair, this is a problem I've only consistently encountered playing 3.5/P. 5E went a long way to mitigate the problem, and none of the other systems I've played has had such a massive power disparity between players (barring maybe WoD).

[PhoenixPhyre]

To be fair, this is a problem I've only consistently encountered playing 3.5/P. 5E went a long way to mitigate the problem, and none of the other systems I've played has had such a massive power disparity between players (barring maybe WoD).

And the ways that 5e mitigated most of it are some of the most-hated changes (or so at least it seems to me):

Concentration limits on spell-casting removes a lot of the buff-play (and the scaling on fly means that it's a lot harder to move more than one and you're vulnerable to arrows).
Scrying and teleport both gained explicit limitations and burn high-level slots which are much more rare
Bounded Accuracy means that failure is still on the table for almost everyone and can't really be optimized away.
Very few save-or-dies means scry-and-die doesn't work nearly as well.
Invisibility doesn't make you un-spottable, it just makes it easier to hide and gives advantage on an attack.


Basically, the "I Win" buttons have been heavily reduced in potency and have gained built-in counters and actual resource costs. It's not a perfect balance, but it's significantly better.

[Tinkerer]

This is more Party Balance and DM Type then a ''win button''.

It's also a more ''if your just playing a by-the-numbers combat roll playing game''. And sure, lots of people like to play like that. They have ''a kind of fun'' counting every point of damage done as some sort of meter of the fun level of the game to them...or something.

But it's only for that sort of game. If your playing say, a role playing adventure, then it does not matter how many ''numbers of damage'' you do a round.

Though the big problem does come up when the DM is a by-the-numbers combat roll playing game type DM. Then it's a numbers game and all the numbers matter.

Unfortunately in a number of systems this is untrue. Of course the example which springs to mind is 3.5 where there are a number of Win Buttons for social situations. The most obvious example is 3.5 with the Glibness spell (which while it's intended to be used on a bard, where it would make sense re: team cohesion, can be cheesed onto a wizard fairly easily). Or in places like Exalted, although that system is based entirely around the concept of Win Buttons so it's much more forgivable there.

No in a lot of systems Win Buttons exist for any type of situation from combat to social to exploration. It's not simply a matter of "role-playing vs roll-playing", it's a problem of having a high level character who has spent his whole life mastering an ability only to have another character come along and blow them out of the water with no chance to resist because the game designers thought that aspect of the game wasn't interesting enough.

Feel sorry for the poor locksmiths in D&D where maybe, just maybe, they can slow down a 1st or 2nd level character for a round or two because beyond that point the characters have a win button for locks.

[Tanarii]

Feel sorry for the poor locksmiths in D&D where maybe, just maybe, they can slow down a 1st or 2nd level character for a round or two because beyond that point the characters have a win button for locks.That matches IRL before electronic locks. Mechanical locks are primarily there to deter the lazy, unskilled, or even just as indicators that something isn't intended to be entered. Anything less than a safe with a dial lock or a bolt from the inside isn't going to stop someone who is half-skilled at picking locks. If it has a keyhole, it can be done given enough time.

What matters is if you can do it fast. In D&D terms, that'd be making a single check vs taking 20 (3e) or automatic success for taking ten times as long (5e).

Of you could just try to open it quicker with a few solid shoulders/kicks, or instantly by using a Knock spell. At the cost of alerting everything around you that you're there.

Actions and choices should have consequences. A lot of things that are seen as 'I win' buttons (typically spells, but not always) are done so because the DM isn't enforcing any kind of consequence. Be it from creatures getting upset about mental domination, to getting upset about being Intimidated/Decieved (once it comes to light) instead of Persuaded, to a resource (spell) being burned to bypass a challenge. I mean, if someone uses a Fly spell to get the party across a chasm, as opposed to a strong guy leaping it and securing a rope so others can crawl across, that's one less spell that can be used for other things.

[Pex]

Even if they're rare, one has to wonder (OK, I have to wonder, at least) why there isn't a "conspiracy of casters" using their illusions, shape-changing, mind manipulation, etc, spells to control the various rulers of the world. Every ruler would need the highest level caster he could bring in, and would never really know if he was the one in control, or the caster was. It would only take a few dozen casters of even moderate level, and that would be a "very rare" rate even in the population of say 1400 BCE Europe.

1) Deus Ex Machina - It's part of the god of magic's job to prevent this

2) In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the Muggle Prime Minister was incredulous of why Fudge and the Ministry Of Magic can't just solve their problems easily because they have magic they can do anything. Fudge responds that the other side has magic too. In this case, all the mages trying to take over get in each other's way preventing any from succeeding so eventually they find another way. That's why they're always the Vizier to be the power behind the throne. A few just have to be King anyway, so they need a long term plan. To achieve that they first need to become a lich. They would have gotten away with it if it were not for those meddlesome adventurers.



(Party 2: Wizard, 3 other poor schmucks)
DM: *Spends a while designing module* "Okay, so, as previously discussed, you've reached the evil king's fortress. You see the main door up in front of you."
Wizard: I irresistible scrying the king.
DM: Okay, you can see the king's room.
Wizard: I turn invisible and greater teleport into the king's room.
Wizard: I cast irresistible phantasmal killer on the king.
DM: He dies.
Wizard: I greater teleport back to the rebel leader and inform him of my success.
DM: *Tears up notes about guard patrols, traps, and the layout of most of the fortress*
Fighter: Uh, well, I start walking back to the rebel base...
DM: Okay, well, give me a moment to come up with a new module, guys...

The problem is not Greater Teleport, Scrying, etc. The problem is the DM wrote a level 5 adventure for a level 13 party. Try Scrying or using Greater Teleport to get into the lich-king's lair.

[Max_Killjoy]

1) Deus Ex Machina - It's part of the god of magic's job to prevent this


DEM is considered a trite cliche and to-be-avoided trope for many reasons that don't need repeating yet again... "the gods won't let you" just might be the cheapest, flimsiest, laziest excuse possible for why settings don't follow through on the implications of elements within. It can just be thrown at anything anyone doesn't want to have happen in the setting, with no reasoning or logic, just "sorry, god says no". It's not something most players would let a GM get away with for long, so why should the authors of a setting get away with it either?




2) In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the Muggle Prime Minister was incredulous of why Fudge and the Ministry Of Magic can't just solve their problems easily because they have magic they can do anything. Fudge responds that the other side has magic too. In this case, all the mages trying to take over get in each other's way preventing any from succeeding so eventually they find another way. That's why they're always the Vizier to be the power behind the throne. A few just have to be King anyway, so they need a long term plan. To achieve that they first need to become a lich. They would have gotten away with it if it were not for those meddlesome adventurers.


So the powerful casters are always at odds and would never, never, ever decide to conspire and collaborate?

And using your example, Voldy's cronies wouldn't have seized control of the mortal government had they won the war instead of Harry and Co?

[CharonsHelper]

2) In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the Muggle Prime Minister was incredulous of why Fudge and the Ministry Of Magic can't just solve their problems easily because they have magic they can do anything. Fudge responds that the other side has magic too. In this case, all the mages trying to take over get in each other's way preventing any from succeeding so eventually they find another way. That's why they're always the Vizier to be the power behind the throne. A few just have to be King anyway, so they need a long term plan. To achieve that they first need to become a lich. They would have gotten away with it if it were not for those meddlesome adventurers.


Harry Potter should never be used as a good example of world-building.

I like Harry Potter. It's a lot of fun, and Rowling is the current master of pacing (which I personally find much more difficult than world-building). And her world & characters are fun to visit.

However - her world-building is total crap. There are a ridiculous number of easy to find discrepancies which are riddling her world.

Even "because magic" doesn't fix it all, because her books have various internal inconsistencies.

[VoxRationis]

Feel sorry for the poor locksmiths in D&D where maybe, just maybe, they can slow down a 1st or 2nd level character for a round or two because beyond that point the characters have a win button for locks.

I think Knock gets a lot of unfair criticism here. While having an auto-lockpick is extremely useful, think of it the other way around--would it be really fair for a 0-level NPC far removed in time and space to be able to defeat a powerful wizard? For the terrible lich to slaughter the guardians of his desired object, dispel all the wards and traps, unravel the cryptic clues in order to find the thing in the first place, and then try the door and go "Huh, it's locked"?

More appropriately to normal play, the thing with Knock is that it's perhaps one of the least practical spells to prepare, because it does at a cost what the rogue can do for free. Preparing Knock means you didn't prepare Summon Swarm, or Invisibility, or Protection from Arrows, and you may well regret that choice later. If you need that Protection from Arrows later to not die to a firing squad in the next encounter, you've traded victory over living opponents for a victory over an inanimate object, one which the party rogue could easily have given you without that trade. And an "I Win" button for one scenario that comes at a cost that gives you loss in another scenario isn't an imbalance, but a trade-off.

I suppose, part of the problem with these spells and abilities is that they come with an assumption, the assumption that you will be moving through an environment filled with obstacles of varied kinds, and it's the aggregate of successes that determines total success. That is to say, in a well-designed dungeon environment, where not being able to bypass a lock obliges you to either find a key or find another (likely more guarded) way in, having Knock, or even an ability to pick locks at all, comes at a cost but gives you a reward, and neither cost nor reward are absolute. That's good design--choices have meaning, but it isn't the case where one choice is absolutely better and the other one means absolute failure. But if you take those same mechanics and, say, put them into a more story-based environment (that is, an environment where obstacles and resources are purely those which would be relevant to a plot synopsis), where a single obstacle stands between the PCs and success (say, the lock on the grand vizier's safe which holds evidence of his perfidy), the cost becomes minimal and the choices cease being meaningful.

[Max_Killjoy]

Harry Potter should never be used as a good example of world-building.

I like Harry Potter. It's a lot of fun, and Rowling is the current master of pacing (which I personally find much more difficult than world-building). And her world & characters are fun to visit.

However - her world-building is total crap. There are a ridiculous number of easy to find discrepancies which are riddling her world.

Even "because magic" doesn't fix it all, because her books have various internal inconsistencies.

Yeah, I don't even know where I'd begin making an RPG out of that world, and she's as much as said that she doesn't want an RPG made because it would codify and quantify a lot of things she wants left vague and seemingly contradictory.

Magic in the Potterverse seems to very much run on narrative and emotional principles, not on logic -- that is, symbolism and sympathy and contagion and emotional content are the literal metaphysics of magic in that world.

[CharonsHelper]

More appropriately to normal play, the thing with Knock is that it's perhaps one of the least practical spells to prepare, because it does at a cost what the rogue can do for free. Preparing Knock means you didn't prepare Summon Swarm, or Invisibility, or Protection from Arrows, and you may well regret that choice later.

By mid levels you can just grab a wand of Knock pretty cheaply.

[Quertus]

i think it really boils down to "all easy all the time is boring"

like if you hacked dark souls enough to make it so that you never died, never took damage, never fell off cliffs, never took any status effects like poison or whatever, and all enemies and bosses died in one hit, then that wouldn't be a fun game at all. it would quickly get boring and eventually the only thing you would be doing is wasting your own time for no reason.

So, not a problem with Erin Burris win buttons per se, only with having too many?


A real "Press enter to win"- button automatically solves your problem - automatically (usually also instantaneously)! Thus meaning removing any challenge. Is that fun? For most situations not!

It the button only gives you a strong advantage, then its not a real win-button.

Neither invisibility (you can spot an invisibly creature (the presence of, at least), with a dc20 spot check), nor fly are win-buttons. A win button might be gating in something from the ELH. Your point is seems is that most are not win-buttons and you would be correct.

Well, that's a 3e specific implementation of invisibility. But, apparently, not everyone agrees on the definition of what constitutes a win button. I should add that to the list of why win buttons may receive undue flak.

I suppose it's also a question of encounter design: does unbeatable invisibility let you win the encounter, or does it just provide you with a large advantage?


See how the presence of “win” button changes assumptions about the world you are playing in.
Here Adventurers are rare and as such them having win buttons doesn’t mean the world automatically grow to counter them.
If you have players that don’t like that assumption then suddenly win buttons become a problem.

And if the players don't like the assumption of money being used in a modern setting, that's tough. A setting is what it is. Sometimes, the players have input on that; sometimes, they don't. If the setting is inconsistent - for any reason, not just because of common-yet-unaccounted-for Erin Burris win buttons - that's on the setting developer(s).


I don’t hate win buttons but I do have a strong dislike for 5d chess. (Thanks for Max_killjoy for the term 5d chess, I think it was Max that first said it) The game has I win buttons so GMs change your adventure design to counter them. (I think that has been said on this thread)
Player – I use “I Win”
GM – I counter with “Counter I win”
Player – I counter with “Counter Counter I Win”
GM – I counter with “Counter Counter Counter I Win”
I don’t enjoy that style of game. I win buttons encourage that style of game.
I don’t hate “I Win” buttons but I just don’t need them. For me it’s not fun looking through loads of books finding I win buttons or worse as a GM HAVING to look for “Counter I Win” buttons.

The GM, as a rule, shouldn't use counters in the first place. "Never get into an arms race with your players, because they cannot win".


So the disconnect, basically it has to do with overshadowing. I've only played one game where, due to a variety factors, I was a fraction the strength of the other characters. It was a co-op game and really I was more the only one who wasn't overpowered, so we did fine. Still it wasn't fun, struggling with all my might just to make a contribution. And by a contribution I mean hitting a room early so I could take down an enemy or two before the ranger showed up and started taking down 3-6 a turn.

Not having a chance at winning in a competitive game is frustrating, not being able to contribute in a cooperative game is frustrating. And nothing makes it harder to contribute than other players (or characters) having so much more ability to do things that they have to hold back for you to have a shot. Especially when you trying gives the team less chance of success than letting the button get pushed.

See, I enjoy struggling with all my might to contribute. I intentionally built numerous suboptimal Magic decks, and played then in tournaments. It was great fun!

And that's why we play the game, for fun, right?


This is more Party Balance and DM Type then a ''win button''.

It's also a more ''if your just playing a by-the-numbers combat roll playing game''. And sure, lots of people like to play like that. They have ''a kind of fun'' counting every point of damage done as some sort of meter of the fun level of the game to them...or something.

But it's only for that sort of game. If your playing say, a role playing adventure, then it does not matter how many ''numbers of damage'' you do a round.

Though the big problem does come up when the DM is a by-the-numbers combat roll playing game type DM. Then it's a numbers game and all the numbers matter.

I'm a war gamer. I love me some "by the numbers" combat.

But I play RPGs because they are so much more. That doesn't invalidate the numbers part, it adds to it.


(Working off of 5e balance assumptions; I assume they're not too far off from 3.5)
If the game design says conflicts should be split between combat (where Wizard A uses 1 or 2 of their 20-ish spells to conquer single-handedly), social (where Wizard A uses 1 or 2 of their 20-ish spells to conquer single-handedly), or exploration (where Wizard A uses 1 or 2 of their 20-ish spells to conquer single-handedly), and the game design says there should be 6-8 encounters a day, that means that a single wizard is invalidating the rest of the party (even if Wizard A is using 2 spells in each encounter, that's only 16 of their 20-ish spells).

The first problem I see with win buttons is the existence of a single character possessing a multitude of 'win buttons'. The second is that in order to react to a single character (or even a party) with access to all of those 'win buttons', a GM has to look into tactics (and often worldbuilding) beyond things which make sense from our cultural upbringing.

If the world has a decent number of people who can cast Charm, how does a GM design a government so that PCs can't just sow chaos and destruction right from lvl 1? Or, rather, how do cash-strapped governments (i.e. all of them) plan to counter a tactic that would be clearly employed by highly-powerful individuals (PCs) and enemy organizations / nations?

If the world has a small number of people who can turn invisible, fly, and mind control anyone who happens to discover them, how do governments and organizations defend against that? How is a GM supposed to wrap their head around what this will look like when they find out, 6 sessions in, that the party can do that every day (while still having the resources of 3 more characters)?

The game balance issue is a problem, but it isn't an inherent problem of Erin Burris.

Oddly, even though I have friends in high places and in the bank, I'm not just swimming in money or controlling the government. Charm Person isn't all that.


Thus getting back to the system / setting disconnect that I mentioned upthread.

Ever notice how rarely game settings -- especially "high fantasy" settings -- follow through with the implications of the powers given to PCs and their enemies, allies, etc?

So, "system / setting disconnect" is what your going with? Ok. I'll add it to my list.

On second thought, you can have system / setting mismatch without having win buttons. This is just a perfectly reasonable reason to hate system / setting mismatch, and, by throwing the baby out with the bath water, win buttons are just an unfortunate casualty of war.


The main problem I have with "I win" buttons is the following:

(Party 1: Barbarian, Rogue, Paladin, Ranger)
DM: *Spends a while designing module* "Okay, so, as previously discussed, you've reached the evil king's fortress. You see the main door up in front of you."
Ranger: Okay, I'll send my animal companion to prowl around and see if there are any other doors.
*Search-related dialogue*
DM: Okay, you find a back door.
All: We sneak around to the back.
*Hide/MS-related dialogue*
DM: You manage to just about sneak around, but one of the guards goes over to investigate.
Rogue: I try to keep him talking...
Ranger: ...and I'll sneak up behind him to give you the flank.
*Bluff/Hide/MS-related dialogue*
DM: Okay, you succeed.
Rogue: I knock him out.
DM: Okay, he's clean unconscious. Now, you get a good look at the door...
*Module continues*

(Party 2: Wizard, 3 other poor schmucks)
DM: *Spends a while designing module* "Okay, so, as previously discussed, you've reached the evil king's fortress. You see the main door up in front of you."
Wizard: I irresistible scrying the king.
DM: Okay, you can see the king's room.
Wizard: I turn invisible and greater teleport into the king's room.
Wizard: I cast irresistible phantasmal killer on the king.
DM: He dies.
Wizard: I greater teleport back to the rebel leader and inform him of my success.
DM: *Tears up notes about guard patrols, traps, and the layout of most of the fortress*
Fighter: Uh, well, I start walking back to the rebel base...
DM: Okay, well, give me a moment to come up with a new module, guys...

This sounds like a lack of GM skills, and the GM not making an adventure / plot suitable to the game.


Given the arguments put forth in this thread, I think the issue is less "I win" buttons as a whole, and more "I win" buttons obsoleting other player's characters or the expected power level of the game. The 'knock' spell vs lock-picking rogues is an excellent example, in 3.5 especially.

Yeah, the Rogue could just take some skill ranks, and pick locks all day, totally making my alohomora / Knock wizard obsolete

[digiman619]

See, I enjoy struggling with all my might to contribute. I intentionally built numerous suboptimal Magic decks, and played then in tournaments. It was great fun!

And that's why we play the game, for fun, right?
I think I figured out your problem; you have Dwarf Fortress 'fun' while the rest of us are concerned with normal fun.

[Knaight]

Divination is a perfect example of a general class of spoiler powers.

Once the PCs have access to divination, the GM must be exceedingly careful and subtle to fend off moments where you've either eliminated all sorts of mystery plots as unusable elements in the game... or you're transparently ****-blocking every attempt to use divination with little gotchas and deceptions and tricks and half-truths and whatnot. At which point the players will justifiably say "why did you even let me take this power if you were never going to let it do anything useful?"

It's also an example of a class of powers that are usually character defining in the literature - someone with a few limited divination powers is a seer or an oracle, a significant figure with powers that make them important. Said powers are usually both less potent than D&D divination and less controlled, and almost certainly don't show up in the context of "Besides being able to create material from nothing, throw around fast and effective battle magic, raise the dead, and summon creatures from other realms I have divination powers".

[Lord Raziere]

I think I figured out your problem; you have Dwarf Fortress 'fun' while the rest of us are concerned with normal fun.

Yes. Fun comes in many flavors beyond Quertus's. and some flavors are more appropriate to some settings than others- I wouldn't have breakfast food for dinner, or desert for lunch, now would I? I love playing Dark Souls 3 and proving that I'm hard enough to beat the bosses and be a hardcore dark souls player, but would I wish that upon my fellow players in a tabletop roleplaying game? HELL NO! that game requires you know what your doing and properly allocate your stats and equipment just to succeed, with little room for alternate styles or anything suboptimal. which is not good for something like a roleplaying game where the only real limit is your imagination, so you should be free to come up with whatever you want as long as you can make it make sense- "suboptimal" and "optimal" shouldn't even be terms that can be applied to roleplaying because that just gets in the way of the character concept you can imagine and play, why limit yourself to whether or not its effective? just come up with the thing you want to play, imagine it being effective, boom its effective because its what you want to play, because your the player.

this is because competitive, mechanical talk of using an I Win button or whether something is optimal/suboptimal is just plain the wrong flavor, the wrong meal for Roleplaying Time to me. If you want to talk the effectiveness of my dark souls character or a videogame, I'm all ears, the hard mode gameplay is half the point, and with a videogame I can't use my imagination to make my character different or expand the world, its fixed and programmed so imagination and roleplaying matters little if at all. these two flavors of fun don't go together. you can't enjoy a good train ride and build a sandcastle at the same time. you can't have your cake and eat it to. a cake may be fun to look at, and it may be fun to eat, but you can't do both. I Win Buttons? eating the adventure cake. you can't have adventure and I Win buttons at the same time, either you enjoy the adventure or have the fun of using the I win button and thus eat the cake, and oh look the cake is gone, who would've thought?

[Mechalich]

More appropriately to normal play, the thing with Knock is that it's perhaps one of the least practical spells to prepare, because it does at a cost what the rogue can do for free. Preparing Knock means you didn't prepare Summon Swarm, or Invisibility, or Protection from Arrows, and you may well regret that choice later. If you need that Protection from Arrows later to not die to a firing squad in the next encounter, you've traded victory over living opponents for a victory over an inanimate object, one which the party rogue could easily have given you without that trade. And an "I Win" button for one scenario that comes at a cost that gives you loss in another scenario isn't an imbalance, but a trade-off.


This is a problem with Vancian casting, specifically, in that the limiting resource is time, and time limits are extremely difficult to enforce in tabletop play. The 'go all day' nature of martial powers in D&D only matters if you throw sufficient encounters in a day at a party such that the spellcasters are legitimately forced to conserve resources or they will run out. Unfortunately in 3.X the math of this almost never works out - HP bloat means that Save or Suck 'I win' approaches are massively more efficient than say blasting or combat healing. Additionally spells like rope trick make it extremely difficult to enforce continued adventuring anyway, which is why people talk about the five minute adventuring day. Finally, the reality is that sending in waves of weak encounters interspersed with the big ones to allow martials to shine because they might make dozens of attacks per day while the wizards mostly plink with crossbows unless a significant enemy shows up simply doesn't work at tabletop because the encounters take to long to actually run. This is a contrast to D&D video games like Baldur's Gate - which are full of piddling encounters where you utilize your martial front line and keep the spellcasters back, but the amount of time it would take to play through a single major BGII dungeon at an actual table (like the red dragon's Fierkraag or whatever he was named) is immense.

[Max_Killjoy]

It's also an example of a class of powers that are usually character defining in the literature - someone with a few limited divination powers is a seer or an oracle, a significant figure with powers that make them important. Said powers are usually both less potent than D&D divination and less controlled, and almost certainly don't show up in the context of "Besides being able to create material from nothing, throw around fast and effective battle magic, raise the dead, and summon creatures from other realms I have divination powers".

I would suspect that in many settings, an adventurer with any sort of real divination powers would have to struggle to keep them hidden, lest some king or priesthood force them out of the adventuring life and into one of servitude to a palace or temple.

[King of Nowhere]

Long thread, didn't read it all, so maybe someone already posted this, but:
that's what happens when a hero is too powerful (http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/GodManVsThePurpleBeetle_3147.png).
Where's the fun in playing like that?

But, more serious and elaborate answer: it is fun to solve challenges in creative ways. to put your mind against the task and finally figure out how to do it. Having an "I win" button removes the challenge, and as such the fun in it. Of course, skilled and clever gamers will then make greater challenges where the "I win" buttons are merely tools that can complete some small subset of the problem, which overall cannot be solved in a simple way. And hey, as much as it is a challenge to weave and sell baskets and try to save 1 cp per day so that one day you'll be able to afford a real weapon to defend your hamlet from a small goblin band, it is also not an entertaining challenge. So in the end everyone finds his level of power and the kind of challenges he want to face.

The problem is when a rule revision or new spell or whatnot makes somebody's favourite challenge suddenly trivial. It's like breaking someone's favourite game. It's like, you like doing puzzles, and you have this great puzzle you are soo loking forward to complete, and overnight someone sneaks into your home, finishes the puzzle, and glues all the pieces together so that it cannot be undone. It's not nice to a llot of gamers

[Pex]

DEM is considered a trite cliche and to-be-avoided trope for many reasons that don't need repeating yet again... "the gods won't let you" just might be the cheapest, flimsiest, laziest excuse possible for why settings don't follow through on the implications of elements within. It can just be thrown at anything anyone doesn't want to have happen in the setting, with no reasoning or logic, just "sorry, god says no". It's not something most players would let a GM get away with for long, so why should the authors of a setting get away with it either?




So the powerful casters are always at odds and would never, never, ever decide to conspire and collaborate?

And using your example, Voldy's cronies wouldn't have seized control of the mortal government had they won the war instead of Harry and Co?

Wizards have egos.

Everyone was afraid of Voldemort, including the Death Eaters. As soon as Voldemort was dead they fled instead of trying to keep power.



Harry Potter should never be used as a good example of world-building.

I like Harry Potter. It's a lot of fun, and Rowling is the current master of pacing (which I personally find much more difficult than world-building). And her world & characters are fun to visit.

However - her world-building is total crap. There are a ridiculous number of easy to find discrepancies which are riddling her world.

Even "because magic" doesn't fix it all, because her books have various internal inconsistencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

[Max_Killjoy]

Wizards have egos.
Everyone was afraid of Voldemort, including the Death Eaters. As soon as Voldemort was dead they fled instead of trying to keep power.


However... my question was based on the hypothetical premise that Voldy won -- had that happened, I'd consider it very likely that someone in his array of crony wizards would have moved to secretly seize control of the mundane government "from the shadows" via magical means.

[Cluedrew]

It's also a more ''if your just playing a by-the-numbers combat roll playing game''. And sure, lots of people like to play like that. They have ''a kind of fun'' counting every point of damage done as some sort of meter of the fun level of the game to them...or something.

But it's only for that sort of game. If your playing say, a role playing adventure, then it does not matter how many ''numbers of damage'' you do a round.Really, I thought all this time posting back and forth would give you a better picture of me. The issue was that nothing I did could contribute to the adventure. When the only things my character can do are half baked versions of what other people can do (well I had a few tricks that were my own, but they rarely came up even while looking for opportunities to do so), it is hard to contribute. Sure I can banter with the best of them, but when the going got tough, where tough is really any sort of challenge, I had to sigh and start looking for some place where I would be able to make some small contribution, because small was really the best I could help for.

Sure I managed to still have fun, there is a reason I kept playing that game. But to say it wasn't an issue or that the game would have been no more fun without it. I strongly disagree.

[Faily]

The problem is not Greater Teleport, Scrying, etc. The problem is the DM wrote a level 5 adventure for a level 13 party. Try Scrying or using Greater Teleport to get into the lich-king's lair.

This. So very much.

[Max_Killjoy]

The problem is not Greater Teleport, Scrying, etc. The problem is the DM wrote a level 5 adventure for a level 13 party. Try Scrying or using Greater Teleport to get into the lich-king's lair.


If by "13th level adventure" you mean a game of ever escalating "Yes I can" vs "no you can't", as the caster PC and caster NPC duel it out over whether the player or DM has a more encyclopedic knowledge of the endless published spells and who guessed right in their prep and enchantment and shopping trips to Rings And Wands And Things ( The store for all your enchanted item needs! TM ) and who happens to have what attack/advance power vs who has what spoiler/defense power... then sure, why not.

[NichG]

I feel like anything that centers around disagreements in motive between small numbers of individuals (regardless of their level) isn't really stable as a high level plot. But at the same time I've found it hard to get players to accept that e.g. killing the king doesn't eliminate the reasons why there was a war in the first place. Any single point of failure will fail against a diverse enough set of options and abilities, so plots that are built on single points of failure won't work once the options and abilities on the table become sufficiently diverse.

In my mind, an example of a legitimate adventure for e.g. a group of Lv20 primary casters would be something like 'The sun is going out. In 3 years, crops will no longer grow. In 10 years, the world will freeze. What do you do?' And, underlying that, it wouldn't be because there's a hostile actor like an Elder Evil actively turning the sun off, but rather it would just be that what the sun needs to keep existing is no longer there (the sun god no longer has believers and has lost the power to make the sun rise, the sun has reached the end of its natural lifespan, etc).

That Lv20 party has options that let them take meaningful actions in the face of that plot, but not many options to just outright solve it. They can make a demiplane with genesis or a Gate to another plane of existence and evacuate people, but evacuating an entire world is not a trivial thing to do. They could work to turn the entire world undead so that it doesn't need a sun, but again that's a fairly involved endeavor if they want those undead to be sentient and sane and have a high quality of unlife. They could try to restore belief in the sun god, or become a new sun god themselves, or create a new sun via magical means, but again its all fairly involved and not easily one-shot solvable. Most of these plans will also involve the powerful factions and forces in the world resisting the PCs, so it also turns things around - the job of the Lv20 party isn't to find and attack the point of failure, its to be so good at what they do that they manage not to be the point of failure in an important extended endeavor that depends on them.

It's definitely not everyone's cup of tea.

[Lord Raziere]

The problem is not Greater Teleport, Scrying, etc. The problem is the DM wrote a level 5 adventure for a level 13 party. Try Scrying or using Greater Teleport to get into the lich-king's lair.

Yes we know DnD is horribly over-designed with I Win buttons to the point where people think this is acceptable for some reason. I on the other hand, do not accept the normalization of such nonsense.

[Pex]

However... my question was based on the hypothetical premise that Voldy won -- had that happened, I'd consider it very likely that someone in his array of crony wizards would have moved to secretly seize control of the mundane government "from the shadows" via magical means.

Had he won he and the Death Eaters would have killed all Muggle Britain, put an end to The Secrecy, and there would be a world war of them against the Muggles and the rest of Wizardry who didn't join them.

[Max_Killjoy]

Had he won he and the Death Eaters would have killed all Muggle Britain, put an end to The Secrecy, and there would be a world war of them against the Muggles and the rest of Wizardry who didn't join them.

I never got the impression that he intended to Kill All Muggles -- just to maintain absolute blood and cultural separation from them, and elevate Wizards to rulership, by whatever means necessary.

[Darth Ultron]

Really, I thought all this time posting back and forth would give you a better picture of me. The issue was that nothing I did could contribute to the adventure. When the only things my character can do are half baked versions of what other people can do (well I had a few tricks that were my own, but they rarely came up even while looking for opportunities to do so), it is hard to contribute. Sure I can banter with the best of them, but when the going got tough, where tough is really any sort of challenge, I had to sigh and start looking for some place where I would be able to make some small contribution, because small was really the best I could help for.

Sure I managed to still have fun, there is a reason I kept playing that game. But to say it wasn't an issue or that the game would have been no more fun without it. I strongly disagree.

Well, I'm talking in general, not about you.

Though your example was all about combat, or more so mechanics. Though it's every typical of many modern games: a player feels they can't contribute to the game as they have no mechanical way to do so. It's the problem of the character does not have the ability ''skillful speaking'' so they can't role play talking to an orc king.

It's also why ''win buttons' are problems in some games as players feel they can only do something if their character has mechanical support


If by "13th level adventure" you mean a game of ever escalating "Yes I can" vs "no you can't", as the caster PC and caster NPC duel it out over whether the player or DM has a more encyclopedic knowledge of the endless published spells and who guessed right in their prep....

This is exactly what many think the game is and should be.

[Lord Raziere]

This is exactly what many think the game is and should be.

and since when was this a good thing?

I didn't get into roleplaying to watch Gandalf and Saruman get into an eternal Counterspell War. Screw that.

[Anymage]

The problem is not Greater Teleport, Scrying, etc. The problem is the DM wrote a level 5 adventure for a level 13 party. Try Scrying or using Greater Teleport to get into the lich-king's lair.


This is exactly what many think the game is and should be.

I'll ask again the same question that nobody except Quertus has even bothered to touch on. Give me six "thirteenth level adventures" that meet the following conditions:

-Doesn't arbitrarily nullify PC abilities, either through digging through books for counters or arbitrarily declaring that certain abilities don't work. I could make a dungeon suitable for any level PCs by covering the whole thing in an antimagic field, but that kind of goes against the spirit of what you claim to want.

-Has room for the fighter and the rogue to do more than watch the wizard and cleric look cool, and doesn't fall apart utterly if the wizard is replaced by a warmage and the cleric gets replaced by a healer.

-Cannot be trivially solved by just listing off spells and items.

If it's so easy for a good DM to think up level appropriate challenges for high level casters, have at it.

Edit: Just saw this.


In my mind, an example of a legitimate adventure for e.g. a group of Lv20 primary casters would be something like 'The sun is going out. In 3 years, crops will no longer grow. In 10 years, the world will freeze. What do you do?' And, underlying that, it wouldn't be because there's a hostile actor like an Elder Evil actively turning the sun off, but rather it would just be that what the sun needs to keep existing is no longer there (the sun god no longer has believers and has lost the power to make the sun rise, the sun has reached the end of its natural lifespan, etc).

Create Food and Water spells, magic items of Daylight, and moral sensibilities that think that letting everybody who isn't personally handy to them die means that there's a lot more unguarded treasure in the world. Plus, this fails the "what do you do if the wizard and cleric get replaced by a warmage and healer" test.

[NichG]

Create Food and Water spells, magic items of Daylight, and moral sensibilities that think that letting everybody who isn't personally handy to them die means that there's a lot more unguarded treasure in the world. Plus, this fails the "what do you do if the wizard and cleric get replaced by a warmage and healer" test.

Congratulations, despite being Lv20 you've managed to save approximately the population of a small town, in a way that requires you to spend the rest of your existences specifically taking care of those peoples' needs on a daily basis. A group of Lv20 adventurers can do much, much better than this. There's no question as to whether the Lv20 characters can survive the sun going out, the question is whether they can significantly impact the outcome of that scenario. At this scale, saving 500 people or saving 5 people is basically the same thing. Can you save 50 million? Given 10 years, a group of Lv20 wizards should be able to.

Anyhow, making characters that are specifically constructed not to care about the premise of an adventure isn't the same thing as successfully completing the adventure, and has nothing at all to do with the subject of win buttons. You can 'solve' any adventure or situation in a game this way. 'My character is a nihilist and doesn't care what happens to himself or others'.

[goto124]

Plus, this fails the "what do you do if the wizard and cleric get replaced by a warmage and healer" test.

Tell me more about this test.

[Frozen_Feet]

Tell me more about this test.

Uh, it's very simple.

Someone makes a claim: "this is a level X scenario". You then take two different parties: first with Wizard and Cleric of level X, and second with Warmage and Healer of level X.

If the scenario is not solvable by both parties, it cannot be fairly labeled as level X.

The test mostly serves to draw attention to how the level system in D&D doesn't properly measure anything, and how the entire concept of "level X scenario" warps depending on which character classes you use as benchmarks for what it means.

[NichG]

The test mostly serves to draw attention to how the level system in D&D doesn't properly measure anything, and how the entire concept of "level X scenario" warps depending on which character classes you use as benchmarks for what it means.

I'm not trying to assert anything about the precision of using only the level system to judge appropriateness of an adventure in D&D, which is why I specified primary casters in my post.

[Telok]

The party's future selves (rather the worse for wear) teleport in, hand them a black bone key, and tell them to rescue Strahd from Ravenloft in order to... And then things came out of the edges under colors and ate them before they could finish the sentence. One of their future selves used a miracle or wish to send the party to a safe place. They are now standing in a ruined temple in a jungle somewhere holding the key to something. They must journey to Ravenloft, jailbreak Strahd, convince him to help, figure out what's going on, and use the key.

People (in fact most all living creatures) have stopped dying. It turns out that the results are somewhat unpleasant and if people don't start dying again there are going to be some famines soon. The fact that your morning bacon keeps moving even after it is cooked is a bit unsettling too. The party must journey to the end of the world and enter the Underworld, the domain of Death and the afterlife, open the gates of Death's palace and put things right. Note that in this setting the "great wheel" cosmology is not used, it bears more resemblance to the ancient Greek myths. The Underworld is not another plane to be plane shifted to, yet neither is it wholly within the mortal realm where things like walking and teleporting get you places.

The emperor has gone nuts. He started raving about dopplegangers and brain suckers, murdered his wife and child in front of the court, and has retreated to the Imperial Citadel defended by the elite Spellguard Warriors. Every day more weird and frightening edicts are issued and frankly people have gotten a little worried. As heroes of the realm your party has been summoned by the Lord Chancellor to investigate. Unfortunately there was a fight right before you arrived. The meeting room is smoking rubble, the dead bodies include two dopplegangers, a rhakshasa, and an ogre mage. There are no non-monster corpses, the fight was over before the guards arrived, the Lord Chancellor and several nobles are missing, and this morning's edict was that all adventurers have to wear ducks on pain of death. Good luck.

[Anymage]

I'm not trying to assert anything about the precision of using only the level system to judge appropriateness of an adventure in D&D, which is why I specified primary casters in my post.

And I covered the "warmage and healer replace wizard and cleric" point because it was part of the requirements I posted when asking people who claimed that the solution was to give "high level adventures". I can't fault you for not knowing my expectations that I'd post after you did, but I wanted to acknowledge that someone did put an idea out there. And cover how trivial it would be for standard adventurers (who, if we're being honest, all tend towards at least a little murderhoboism) to deal with all their problems by rattling off an appropriate spell.

And while it's possible to let high level D&D casters go free in a super sandboxy way, they tend to radically reshape the world while doing so. For a less snarky, murderhoboy response to your idea, the PCs could get to work building arcologies like in the base tippyverse. If that level of modern urbanization is possible with only a handful of spells/items, though, it feeds into Max's point that someone else should have done some of these world-changing things long ago.

[Satinavian]

and since when was this a good thing?

I didn't get into roleplaying to watch Gandalf and Saruman get into an eternal Counterspell War. Screw that.Because other people got into roleplaying for exactly that kind of thing.
D&D is a horrible mashup of everything people were perceived as wanting to play in the early years. That is why it tries both at once. Which doesn't work.

But the solution can't be to force your sword and scorcery preference on other players with different preferrence. It is not any more your D&D than it is their D&D.

There are many many more specialised games out there for all of you. But if you can't find people for Hârnmaster with reduced magic and Quertus can't find people for Ars Magica and you both settle for the established compromise kitchensink that is D&D, you should not complain that there are elements in there that doen't match your taste.

[Anymage]

The party's future selves (rather the worse for wear) teleport in, hand them a black bone key, and tell them to rescue Strahd from Ravenloft in order to... And then things came out of the edges under colors and ate them before they could finish the sentence. One of their future selves used a miracle or wish to send the party to a safe place. They are now standing in a ruined temple in a jungle somewhere holding the key to something. They must journey to Ravenloft, jailbreak Strahd, convince him to help, figure out what's going on, and use the key.

Contact Other Plane to ask an appropriate god for more details. Plane Shift to Ravenloft, Command Undead on Strahd, Gate everyone back out, and do whatever the appropriate god said to do.

(I'm aware Ravenloft explicitly nopes several of those steps. One of the conditions I explicitly stated was that no PC abilities be arbitrarily nullified.)


People (in fact most all living creatures) have stopped dying. It turns out that the results are somewhat unpleasant and if people don't start dying again there are going to be some famines soon. The fact that your morning bacon keeps moving even after it is cooked is a bit unsettling too. The party must journey to the end of the world and enter the Underworld, the domain of Death and the afterlife, open the gates of Death's palace and put things right. Note that in this setting the "great wheel" cosmology is not used, it bears more resemblance to the ancient Greek myths. The Underworld is not another plane to be plane shifted to, yet neither is it wholly within the mortal realm where things like walking and teleporting get you places.

Teleport as close as possible to the gate to this place that's somehow neither part of the normal world nor part of another plane, in spite of the fact that that "places that are not part of the normal world" is kind of the definition of other planes in D&D. Flight and invisibility make the rest of your trip uneventful. Then all you need is a few well-placed disintegrate spells.


The emperor has gone nuts. He started raving about dopplegangers and brain suckers, murdered his wife and child in front of the court, and has retreated to the Imperial Citadel defended by the elite Spellguard Warriors. Every day more weird and frightening edicts are issued and frankly people have gotten a little worried. As heroes of the realm your party has been summoned by the Lord Chancellor to investigate. Unfortunately there was a fight right before you arrived. The meeting room is smoking rubble, the dead bodies include two dopplegangers, a rhakshasa, and an ogre mage. There are no non-monster corpses, the fight was over before the guards arrived, the Lord Chancellor and several nobles are missing, and this morning's edict was that all adventurers have to wear ducks on pain of death. Good luck.

True Seeing to spot the infiltrators instantly. Assuming the elite spellguard warriors are casters powerful enough to even come close to your level, have a friendly chat with whoever's guarding the emperor's room and remind them that they can cast True Seeing too. Also that Heal helps with mental debilities.

Then the options boil down to the emperor being restored with one spell and protected with another, the emperor is a fraud and is immediately spotted by a bunch of high level casters, or the spellguards are frauds too and the adventure immediately degenerates into a caster fight. The last option has the most adventure potential, but even it is really only "how do we kill these enemy spellcasters", which turns into asking whether the players or DMs have put more time into memorizing which spells explicitly short-circuit which other spells.

[Zale]

I'm beginning to wonder if we should just move this thread to the 3.5e subsection so no one is decieved when they come in expecting the discussion to not be, "why wizards are better than non-wizards, part 1 of 65". :p

I had actually hoped to see some design debate, maybe referencing how different games involve abilities that just unilaterally function.

[VoxRationis]

Because other people got into roleplaying for exactly that kind of thing.
D&D is a horrible mashup of everything people were perceived as wanting to play in the early years. That is why it tries both at once. Which doesn't work.

But the solution can't be to force your sword and scorcery preference on other players with different preferrence. It is not any more your D&D than it is their D&D.

There are many many more specialised games out there for all of you. But if you can't find people for Hârnmaster with reduced magic and Quertus can't find people for Ars Magica and you both settle for the established compromise kitchensink that is D&D, you should not complain that there are elements in there that doen't match your taste.

That charge gets laid on the low-op, low-magic types a lot, but the high-op, high-magic types rarely offer such concessions in kind. There are a lot of threads here either explicitly or implicitly attempting to force the "Ars Magica" D&D, as you put it, on people: "These are basic needed items," "you're not playing right if you can't do such-and-such damage in a hit," etc. And there's no end of complaining about the sword-and-sorcery elements that remain in the game.

[NichG]

And I covered the "warmage and healer replace wizard and cleric" point because it was part of the requirements I posted when asking people who claimed that the solution was to give "high level adventures". I can't fault you for not knowing my expectations that I'd post after you did, but I wanted to acknowledge that someone did put an idea out there. And cover how trivial it would be for standard adventurers (who, if we're being honest, all tend towards at least a little murderhoboism) to deal with all their problems by rattling off an appropriate spell.

And while it's possible to let high level D&D casters go free in a super sandboxy way, they tend to radically reshape the world while doing so. For a less snarky, murderhoboy response to your idea, the PCs could get to work building arcologies like in the base tippyverse. If that level of modern urbanization is possible with only a handful of spells/items, though, it feeds into Max's point that someone else should have done some of these world-changing things long ago.

Well I mean, if we're talking about characters who are basically beyond gods - and that's what I think of when I think about the highest power levels (putting aside actual numerical 'level' here) - reshaping the world is kind of the relevant scale of story at that point. And you can do a lot with games and plotlines centered around reshaping the world in various ways. I would consider a campaign about building the Tippyverse to be a reasonable extended premise at that level. You could definitely squeeze at least 20-30 sessions out of exploring what happens when you actually try to go about setting those things up properly, and how the world reacts to that process.

I've run campaigns about deciding whether fate should exist, about shattering and rebuilding history, about determining the balance between narrative and physical causality, about deciding how to organize the afterlife when there was an excess of souls from exponential population growth, about freeing the nature of divinity from its subservience to belief, etc. They all involve reshaping the world in some way, and they all worked with characters who were basically at or above the watermark of Lv20 D&D wizards. And those tensions and motivations lasted more than just one session with a group consisting of several people with a passing familiarity for theoretical optimization (one campaign involved at one point one of these players achieving a CL of 38 and among other things building a spell engine to terraform a planet, all in an E6 game). So it can definitely be done, and it doesn't necessarily fall apart or dissolve under a few spells. But for such a thing to work, everything really has to be constructed around a vast, systemic scale.

[Knaight]

There are many many more specialised games out there for all of you. But if you can't find people for Hârnmaster with reduced magic and Quertus can't find people for Ars Magica and you both settle for the established compromise kitchensink that is D&D, you should not complain that there are elements in there that doen't match your taste.

Ars Magica has significantly toned down magic compared to D&D.

[Anymage]

So it can definitely be done, and it doesn't necessarily fall apart or dissolve under a few spells. But for such a thing to work, everything really has to be constructed around a vast, systemic scale.

Breaking away from D&D, it's possible to have interesting adventures in power levels from Ars Magica to Exalted to Nobilis. (Although, it's worth mentioning, all of those settings have characters more specialized than "generic magic man/generic holy magic man". Godlike power is one thing if the campaign is set up to handle it, but characters are more interesting when their powers are themed than when their powers are vast grab-bags.) Scale and sometimes numbers can be tricky to work out, but it's doable.

This gets back to the point of win buttons, though. Immortal rogues who can defeat any mortal lock are workable. (Whether by the wording of the power, or because the power provides a big enough bonus to power through anything of less than immortal scale.) Ditto for immortal crafters who can make locks that can stymie any mortal. Ideally each character would have a limited set of themed powers, although "limited" is relative when talking about godlike creatures. When players have easy access to such a broad, strong set of powers, though, it becomes crazy hard to properly challenge them. Both in terms of lateral thinking requirements, and in terms of making sure there isn't a win button that trivializes something you thought was important.

Which is why I throw down my six plot gauntlet. When someone says "just give level-appropriate adventures", I want to see how up to the job they are themselves.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Everything really leads back to the fact that D&D is at war with its foundations. Things that made sense for a dungeon crawler with a strict set of assumptions break when transplanted to a nearly completely different system with a nearly completely different set of assumptions.

[Frozen_Feet]

Responding to the initial post, it is a bad, BAD idea to conflate "win buttons" with "things that just work".

When running and crafting my games, they are full of things that "just work". If the players decide to, for example, build their tent on high ground, set a campfire, lay some traps etc., that just happens. The actual difficulty for the players is knowing enough to make those decisions to begin with.

This is pretty different from a "win button". To me, in context of of RPGs, a "win button" is any decision or strategy which transparently lets you dominate the game.

Knock, which was given as an example, does not qualify as a win button. Yes, it opens a door automatically... but you rarely know if you encounter a locked door, or how many, or whether there's anything important behind it. There are cases where a bunch of lockpicks and a skilled user are flatly superior to Knock.

An actual example of a "win button" would be Miracle. It allows you to literally ask your god to ensure you win a battle.

Win buttons are undesireable, because they remove player skill from the game and make the outcome apparent way before it actually happens. The mere presence of a win button means that suspense is only possible if someone opts to not push it.

Meanwhile, you can have arbitrarily many things that "just work", provided it can't be told beforehand which option or string of options is most optimal. Take rock scissors paper as an example. A rock beats scissors, it just does, but you can't tell before hand if there will be scissors. This necessitates thought, metagaming and skill.

In the same vein, strings of abilities that "just work" are acceptable if there's paper for each rock, and scissors for each paper. D20 D&D's design failure is that it contains nukes.

[Blymurkla]

Erin Burris?

[Satinavian]

That charge gets laid on the low-op, low-magic types a lot, but the high-op, high-magic types rarely offer such concessions in kind. There are a lot of threads here either explicitly or implicitly attempting to force the "Ars Magica" D&D, as you put it, on people: "These are basic needed items," "you're not playing right if you can't do such-and-such damage in a hit," etc. And there's no end of complaining about the sword-and-sorcery elements that remain in the game.It is a compromise system and no one is really happy with it.

But i would nearly always say that the side who wants to throw out stuff the other side likes and uses a lot, is in the wrong. I would be as sceptical about people who want to get rid of e.g. barbarian rage (because being angry and not thinking should not be a good strategy), paladins (because no one likes those holyer than you guys) or animal companians (because really, minions are just annoying), when other people really like it.


Ars Magica has significantly toned down magic compared to D&D.
I know.

But the mundane stuff is even more towned done. Mundane magic discrepancy is a core setting assumption, not only something that arises due to unwanted rule interactions. And the actual stuff that happens, the plots and the methods the PCs use rarely use classical swordfighting stuff (which, coincidently is handled with one of the more boring and lackluster combat systems in existence), but it revolves a lot about clever mages crafting custom spells, managing rare spell rssouces and investigating spell interactions while making complicated multistep scheemes to get stuff done that is usually out of bounds for the straightforward approach.

This discussion is not so much about power, it is about versatility and utility and nature of plot/challanges.

Until recently we were talking about "invisibility" and "knock". Do you think that people who have a problem with such spells would be happy with the nearly unlimited versatility of an Ars Magica freeform mage, even his power ceiling would be lower than that of a high level D&D caster ?

[NichG]

Breaking away from D&D, it's possible to have interesting adventures in power levels from Ars Magica to Exalted to Nobilis. (Although, it's worth mentioning, all of those settings have characters more specialized than "generic magic man/generic holy magic man". Godlike power is one thing if the campaign is set up to handle it, but characters are more interesting when their powers are themed than when their powers are vast grab-bags.) Scale and sometimes numbers can be tricky to work out, but it's doable.

This gets back to the point of win buttons, though. Immortal rogues who can defeat any mortal lock are workable. (Whether by the wording of the power, or because the power provides a big enough bonus to power through anything of less than immortal scale.) Ditto for immortal crafters who can make locks that can stymie any mortal. Ideally each character would have a limited set of themed powers, although "limited" is relative when talking about godlike creatures. When players have easy access to such a broad, strong set of powers, though, it becomes crazy hard to properly challenge them. Both in terms of lateral thinking requirements, and in terms of making sure there isn't a win button that trivializes something you thought was important.

Which is why I throw down my six plot gauntlet. When someone says "just give level-appropriate adventures", I want to see how up to the job they are themselves.

Since you bring up Nobilis, I'd say that's pretty much the best way to get experience in this sort of thing. Any Nobilis character can basically do any thing, but just at a price (in terms of miracle points, but also socially in terms of what consequences will follow from rocking the boat of reality). So if you get a feel for what remains meaningful despite the only barrier standing in the way of things being an absence of knowledge or an absence of the will to just do it, then you're set for making things that are interesting regardless of power level.

[Satinavian]

(Although, it's worth mentioning, all of those settings have characters more specialized than "generic magic man/generic holy magic man". That is a thing i personally prefer too.

I actually quite dislike D&D magic. They never really could make their specialized casters actually special without designing a completely new class around it - which obviously will never happen for most of the possible concepts. Ideally you would want to be able to make things like a Dread Necro or a Beguiler just by taking the right feats/class features/spells in a standard wizard progression. And you should need to specialize somehow.
Closest they ever got are the Spheres of Power, but that still has too much old edition baggage to be really fun.

[Mutazoia]

I'm beginning to wonder if we should just move this thread to the 3.5e subsection so no one is decieved when they come in expecting the discussion to not be, "why wizards are better than non-wizards, part 1 of 65". :p

I had actually hoped to see some design debate, maybe referencing how different games involve abilities that just unilaterally function.

Eh.

Design debates can easily (and quite often do) devolve into edition/system wars. For example, I often point out how 3.X threw the balance out with the bath water when WoTC copy/pasta'd 2nd Ed on top of their pre-existing RPG, when they should have just kept their exisiting system completely intact, and just re-named it Dungeons and Dragons, with out grandfathering in ANYTHING from 2nd ed. And usually, quite quickly, I get flamed [or as close to it as someone can with out actually violating the rules] for it, because people LOVE their God mages.

[Mechalich]

This discussion is not so much about power, it is about versatility and utility and nature of plot/challanges.

Until recently we were talking about "invisibility" and "knock". Do you think that people who have a problem with such spells would be happy with the nearly unlimited versatility of an Ars Magica freeform mage, even his power ceiling would be lower than that of a high level D&D caster ?

Well, it depends on what the game is trying to over, both in terms of gameplay questions and in terms of worldbuilding questions.

For example, Mage: the Ascension offers a magic system that is (potentially) one of limitless power and versatility. It also explicitly acknowledges that, within this system the only people who matter are the awakened, a five-digit number of people out of 6+ billion humans on the planet. The masses may have the power to collectively ruin your day via paradox (and even that's mostly a consequence of competing worldviews among the mages themselves) but they are individually nothing compared to what you can do even at fairly lower levels given some reasonable prep time. So the gameplay setup accepts that, when you play MtA you are playing a mage, period, and the mortals are not important. That's fine, it's a workable gameplay setup.

However, that setup has worldbuilding consequences. In the universe of MtA (ie. the oWoD) the awakened are simply better than sleepers. They a literally enlightened sub-population who can see more of the truth than anyone else. Mage lives matter more than those of the masses. This leads to some inherent grimdarkness and nasty philosophical issues that are only somewhat mitigated by Paradox (settings that don't have such mitigation, like Exalted, crank the grimdark to eleven). MtA is, thankfully, fairly open about this and spills a lot of ink trying to grapple with the issue and have the world at least sort of make sense. It mostly works, but you still had to essentially banish all the masters and archmasters to other dimensions in order to prevent them from cracking the world like an egg because they have 5-6 dots in any of the spheres (and Mage Revised, in acknowledgment of this problem went and did just that).

D&D has the problem that not only does it have a huge gameplay imbalance - in that the various classes aren't comparable at all at supposedly equivalent amounts of XP such that martials can't handle the same sorts of things casters can, there's also a huge worldbuilding imbalance in that very few attempts to design worlds for D&D gameplay grapple at all with the full implications of what casters in the mid to high levels can actually do. The exception is Planescape, which just comes out and says, that with this much magic nothing makes sense, engage in a philosophical war to try an impose and explanation upon it while having crazy Dr. Strange-style escapades. That's fine if that's what you want to do but it is also basically an admission that building a functional fantasy world that retains decent verisimilitude using D&D mechanics is essentially impossible. That's a problem because that is something a lot of people who use Table-Top RPGs would like very much to do.

[Darth Ultron]

I'll ask again the same question that nobody except Quertus has even bothered to touch on. Give me six "thirteenth level adventures" that meet the following conditions:

-Doesn't arbitrarily nullify PC abilities, either through digging through books for counters or arbitrarily declaring that certain abilities don't work. I could make a dungeon suitable for any level PCs by covering the whole thing in an antimagic field, but that kind of goes against the spirit of what you claim to want.

-Has room for the fighter and the rogue to do more than watch the wizard and cleric look cool, and doesn't fall apart utterly if the wizard is replaced by a warmage and the cleric gets replaced by a healer.

-Cannot be trivially solved by just listing off spells and items.

If it's so easy for a good DM to think up level appropriate challenges for high level casters, have at it.


1.Well, it's going to be tricky if your going to arbitrarily say what is right or wrong to do. For example, putting the adventure underwater, in space or on another plane will greatly effect everyone's abilities. But you might just say that is wrong

And counters are half of the point. So it can't be done if your just arbitrarily going to say ''you can't use them''. It's like saying ''no doors in the game world can be locked'' and it's silly.

2.Guess this depends ''what'' your going to accept each class doing.

3.Well this one is easy.

A good example might be: A deep, dark, underwater, free floating earth motes on the 11th layer of the Abyss. The 3E and on Abyss is a bit tame, but it's still a bad place (I use the more 2E version where it's a nightmare wrapped up in a horror movie of your characters death.). So we have another plane, underwater (plus note pressure), darkness, and my favorite of three dimensions.

It's a huge challenge for the 13th level characters. Though note it's ''just an adventure'' and not a ''campaign'', so this is NOT in any way shape or form the type of thing where the DM will tell the players about the setting and then the players will make up super special specialized characters to fit that setting like a glove. This is more ''players have a group of high level characters that go on adventures together''. And, furthermore, it is also NOT the type of adventure where the after the adventure starts and the gameplay reveals the characters need to go to the Abyss because of the plot; that the players can pause the game and take time to super specialize their characters to the setting.

So it's open portal, characters go through with no super special exploits in one round and the adventure continues. Just to note, the friendly portal caster will give each character two potions of water breathing so they don't just 'die' on the other side of the portal...

We could make a whole thread if you really want to go through like 13 of them...but you will need to change the ''demands''.

[Max_Killjoy]

Well, it depends on what the game is trying to cover, both in terms of gameplay questions and in terms of worldbuilding questions.

For example, Mage: the Ascension offers a magic system that is (potentially) one of limitless power and versatility. It also explicitly acknowledges that, within this system the only people who matter are the awakened, a five-digit number of people out of 6+ billion humans on the planet. The masses may have the power to collectively ruin your day via paradox (and even that's mostly a consequence of competing worldviews among the mages themselves) but they are individually nothing compared to what you can do even at fairly lower levels given some reasonable prep time. So the gameplay setup accepts that, when you play MtA you are playing a mage, period, and the mortals are not important. That's fine, it's a workable gameplay setup.

However, that setup has worldbuilding consequences. In the universe of MtA (ie. the oWoD) the awakened are simply better than sleepers. They a literally enlightened sub-population who can see more of the truth than anyone else. Mage lives matter more than those of the masses. This leads to some inherent grimdarkness and nasty philosophical issues that are only somewhat mitigated by Paradox (settings that don't have such mitigation, like Exalted, crank the grimdark to eleven). MtA is, thankfully, fairly open about this and spills a lot of ink trying to grapple with the issue and have the world at least sort of make sense. It mostly works, but you still had to essentially banish all the masters and archmasters to other dimensions in order to prevent them from cracking the world like an egg because they have 5-6 dots in any of the spheres (and Mage Revised, in acknowledgment of this problem went and did just that).

D&D has the problem that not only does it have a huge gameplay imbalance - in that the various classes aren't comparable at all at supposedly equivalent amounts of XP such that martials can't handle the same sorts of things casters can, there's also a huge worldbuilding imbalance in that very few attempts to design worlds for D&D gameplay grapple at all with the full implications of what casters in the mid to high levels can actually do. The exception is Planescape, which just comes out and says, that with this much magic nothing makes sense, engage in a philosophical war to try an impose and explanation upon it while having crazy Dr. Strange-style escapades. That's fine if that's what you want to do but it is also basically an admission that building a functional fantasy world that retains decent verisimilitude using D&D mechanics is essentially impossible. That's a problem because that is something a lot of people who use Table-Top RPGs would like very much to do.


This hits what I was going to post about it being inaccurate and not so helpful when some posters say "But casters are unbalanced in Mage and Ars Magica too!" Yes, they are, but that's all you're playing -- both address the god-mage vs mundane split by openly acknowledging it, and telling you "play a caster".

And unlike most (not all) settings for D&D-like games, the worldbuilding at least attempts to integrate and extrapolate from the presence of these powerful casters.

In general, many other games actually take one of the optional solutions to the mess:



tone down magic and magic-users to not break the worldbuilding or invalidate "mundane" characters
admit that the game is fantasy superheros and make everyone superhuman whatever the label on their abilities might happen to say
treat magic as an NPC thing, and make all PCs "mundane" with maybe only minor access to magic
make all PCs "supermagic" and leave the "mundane" to NPCs
etc


So much of the incoherence (actual, not Edwardian) in D&D -- and the resulting tension and argument and hand-wringing -- comes from the refusal to decide what it actually is and go down that road... trying to be everything to everyone leaves it functionally as nothing to anyone.

[Pex]

If by "13th level adventure" you mean a game of ever escalating "Yes I can" vs "no you can't", as the caster PC and caster NPC duel it out over whether the player or DM has a more encyclopedic knowledge of the endless published spells and who guessed right in their prep and enchantment and shopping trips to Rings And Wands And Things ( The store for all your enchanted item needs! TM ) and who happens to have what attack/advance power vs who has what spoiler/defense power... then sure, why not.


Yes we know DnD is horribly over-designed with I Win buttons to the point where people think this is acceptable for some reason. I on the other hand, do not accept the normalization of such nonsense.

I.e. you resent having to change your staple formulas of adventure design. Apparently you want level 5 type adventures throughout the campaign. That's your prerogative, but that's an issue of your personal taste not the fault of the game. Try a different game system or use the E6 home brew.

However, it answers the thread topic.

[Jormengand]

The problem is not Greater Teleport, Scrying, etc. The problem is the DM wrote a level 5 adventure for a level 13 party. Try Scrying or using Greater Teleport to get into the lich-king's lair.
This sounds like a lack of GM skills, and the GM not making an adventure / plot suitable to the game.

Either the Lich King has hosers for those spells (which to its eternal cosmic credit the DMG tells you not to do), or the wizard does it anyway. If the Lich King does have those spells, the game goes something like this:

DM: You approach the fortress of the DREAD LICH KING! The walls ar...
Wizard: Greater teleport.
DM: You can't, nya-na-na-na-nya-na.
DM: The walls are enchanted to be impenetra...
Wizard: Greater dispel magic.
Wizard: Disintegrate.
Wizard: Another greater dispel magic.
Wizard: Greater teleport.
Wizard: Irresistible Halt Undead.
Wizard: Disintegrate.
Wizard: Another disintegrate.
Wizard: Another disintegrate.
DM: Yeah he dies.
Wizard: Greater teleport.

And anyway, why does D&D need hosers for those spells? Oh, right, because they're dumb and stupid.


I.e. you resent having to change your staple formulas of adventure design. Apparently you want level 5 type adventures throughout the campaign. That's your prerogative, but that's an issue of your personal taste not the fault of the game. Try a different game system or use the E6 home brew.

However, it answers the thread topic.

I mean, I want adventures where one side doesn't automatically defeat the other by applying an iota of common sense. I want epic threats without "I cast Kill God at it" ending said epic threat in one round.

I want my earth-shattering abominations to require teamwork and tactics to beat, not "Lookit, I won."

[Max_Killjoy]

I.e. you resent having to change your staple formulas of adventure design. Apparently you want level 5 type adventures throughout the campaign. That's your prerogative, but that's an issue of your personal taste not the fault of the game. Try a different game system or use the E6 home brew.

However, it answers the thread topic.

"It's not bad car design if the engine stalls when making left turns, it's the driver's fault for making left turns."

And nevermind that each session resolving in a casters' duel of spell-counterspell oneupmanship really stretches any useful meaning of "adventure".

I guess if you enjoy having the player and GM "match wits" with the PC and NPC serving as little more than mind-space chess pieced, and consider it a "feature" rather than a bug, and consider intricate knowledge of every spell ever published and all the mini-ruleset situationals on how they interact and overlap "player skill", then sure, why not, you do you.

But if that's the case, just admit it, and don't bother with anyone playing anything other than a caster, and don't bother with anything other than the actual 5d chess... don't waste your time with martial classes, or that trip to the battle space, or naming towns or merchants, or any of that pesky stuff. Just go straight for the 5d board game, and design around that.

[Satinavian]

"It's not bad car design if the engine stalls when making left turns, it's the driver's fault for making left turns."Not the designers fault that your car swims like a rock, it is your fault using it as if it was a boat.

[Max_Killjoy]

Not the designers fault that your car swims like a rock, it is your fault using it as if it was a boat.

Yeah, totally my bad for expecting an RPG to be an RPG, and not a bunch of fluff tacked on to a mindspace version of a bad CCG.

Really, it just gets back to D&D being pushed (sometimes by the marketing, almost always by a chuck of its fans) as a kitchen-sink universal fantasy system. The equivalent of promoting a vehicle as a car, and a boat, and a plane, and rocketship, and a horse... it ends up not working very well as any of them... it stalls when it turns left, and despite being promoted as a boat, it sinks unless everyone gets out and agrees to swim alongside propping it up.

[Quertus]

But, more serious and elaborate answer: it is fun to solve challenges in creative ways. to put your mind against the task and finally figure out how to do it. Having an "I win" button removes the challenge, and as such the fun in it. Of course, skilled and clever gamers will then make greater challenges where the "I win" buttons are merely tools that can complete some small subset of the problem, which overall cannot be solved in a simple way. And hey, as much as it is a challenge to weave and sell baskets and try to save 1 cp per day so that one day you'll be able to afford a real weapon to defend your hamlet from a small goblin band, it is also not an entertaining challenge. So in the end everyone finds his level of power and the kind of challenges he want to face.

The problem is when a rule revision or new spell or whatnot makes somebody's favourite challenge suddenly trivial. It's like breaking someone's favourite game. It's like, you like doing puzzles, and you have this great puzzle you are soo loking forward to complete, and overnight someone sneaks into your home, finishes the puzzle, and glues all the pieces together so that it cannot be undone. It's not nice to a llot of gamers

Things fall apart. The center does not hold.

Things change. People grow. What once was a challenge, like standing up or saying "mama" become easy, then trivial. How can I have sympathy for those in a game of growth that hate growth?

Placing win buttons at certain points along the path seems a pretty clear way of saying, this is trivial now. The game is no longer about this struggle. Stop holding on to the past.

If you want something to always be a challenge, choose a system that does not involve character growth, and does not provide win buttons for that specific task.

So... character/gameplay expectation / system mismatch?


It's the problem of the character does not have the ability ''skillful speaking'' so they can't role play talking to an orc king.

Um, it's called role-playing. If my character isn't good at talking, I shouldn't talk like he's good at talking. And, even if I do, the GM should ignore that, and respond to my statistics, not my player skill.

But, if the game doesn't quantify charisma, and the character concept doesn't negate the strategy (good luck getting Quertus to give a terse reply, for example) then, yes, anyone can talk.


The emperor has gone nuts. He started raving about dopplegangers and brain suckers, murdered his wife and child in front of the court, and has retreated to the Imperial Citadel defended by the elite Spellguard Warriors. Every day more weird and frightening edicts are issued and frankly people have gotten a little worried.

Ravings of a madman? Murder his wife & child? Paranoid retreat in a time of peace? That's to be expected. Weird laws? Now we're worried.

I think I might want to ignore the obvious plot hook, and check the water supply...

while wearing a duck, of course :smallwink:


I'm beginning to wonder if we should just move this thread to the 3.5e subsection so no one is decieved when they come in expecting the discussion to not be, "why wizards are better than non-wizards, part 1 of 65". :p

I had actually hoped to see some design debate, maybe referencing how different games involve abilities that just unilaterally function.

Please, feel free to initiate such enlightened discourse! I'm just trying to get a handle on people's reasoning on this topic.


That charge gets laid on the low-op, low-magic types a lot, but the high-op, high-magic types rarely offer such concessions in kind. There are a lot of threads here either explicitly or implicitly attempting to force the "Ars Magica" D&D, as you put it, on people: "These are basic needed items," "you're not playing right if you can't do such-and-such damage in a hit," etc. And there's no end of complaining about the sword-and-sorcery elements that remain in the game.

So... "trap options" are a feature?


Responding to the initial post, it is a bad, BAD idea to conflate "win buttons" with "things that just work".

When running and crafting my games, they are full of things that "just work". If the players decide to, for example, build their tent on high ground, set a campfire, lay some traps etc., that just happens. The actual difficulty for the players is knowing enough to make those decisions to begin with.

This is pretty different from a "win button". To me, in context of of RPGs, a "win button" is any decision or strategy which transparently lets you dominate the game.

Knock, which was given as an example, does not qualify as a win button. Yes, it opens a door automatically... but you rarely know if you encounter a locked door, or how many, or whether there's anything important behind it. There are cases where a bunch of lockpicks and a skilled user are flatly superior to Knock.

An actual example of a "win button" would be Miracle. It allows you to literally ask your god to ensure you win a battle.

Win buttons are undesireable, because they remove player skill from the game and make the outcome apparent way before it actually happens. The mere presence of a win button means that suspense is only possible if someone opts to not push it.

Meanwhile, you can have arbitrarily many things that "just work", provided it can't be told beforehand which option or string of options is most optimal. Take rock scissors paper as an example. A rock beats scissors, it just does, but you can't tell before hand if there will be scissors. This necessitates thought, metagaming and skill.

In the same vein, strings of abilities that "just work" are acceptable if there's paper for each rock, and scissors for each paper. D20 D&D's design failure is that it contains nukes.

Erin Burris win buttons are only ok if you can play 5d chess with them? I think I agree with the rest - and maybe even with that point, but it's not something I expected to hear.

Or does utilizing a bag of flour not count as playing 5d chess?


Erin Burris?

"win buttons". Darn autocorrect.

[Quertus]

Either the Lich King has hosers for those spells (which to its eternal cosmic credit the DMG tells you not to do), or the wizard does it anyway. If the Lich King does have those spells, the game goes something like this:

DM: You approach the fortress of the DREAD LICH KING! The walls ar...
Wizard: Greater teleport.
DM: You can't, nya-na-na-na-nya-na.
DM: The walls are enchanted to be impenetra...
Wizard: Greater dispel magic.
Wizard: Disintegrate.
Wizard: Another greater dispel magic.
Wizard: Greater teleport.
Wizard: Irresistible Halt Undead.
Wizard: Disintegrate.
Wizard: Another disintegrate.
Wizard: Another disintegrate.
DM: Yeah he dies.
Wizard: Greater teleport.

And anyway, why does D&D need hosers for those spells? Oh, right, because they're dumb and stupid.

I mean, I want adventures where one side doesn't automatically defeat the other by applying an iota of common sense. I want epic threats without "I cast Kill God at it" ending said epic threat in one round.

I want my earth-shattering abominations to require teamwork and tactics to beat, not "Lookit, I won."

A lich king whose defenses can be entirely trivialized by published* spells is an idiot. He deserves his defeat.

But what did that have to do with win buttons?

* one who loses when surprised by the capabilities of custom spells much less so, IMO.


You know I think that these little bits (combined with what I know from the hard mode thread) kind of gets at what the disconnect is. Which is, most people get a little upset when they are rendered obsolete. I don't know if this makes you the least competitive person I have ever met or what. I'm running out of time, as I wrote this post out of order, but I do feel there is a disconnect here and I'll try to hone in on it tomorrow.

Competitive? I may be a ****, but, no, that's not a type of **** I am.


Well... I have to raise a metaphorical eyebrow everyone claims a thing involving magic is realistic. As for internal consistency, internally consistency to what? The grievously imbalance world of 3.5e, as per the Playgrounder's Fallacy? Sure, as much as I think that was just bad design. A more Kung Fu centered story? No, not in the slightest.

Never let it be said that I claimed magic was unrealistic. :smallwink: But internal consistency was closer to what I was aiming for.

Kung fu? Sure, I enjoy killing half of China with a single fighter in Dynasty Warriors. But - and perhaps I was just hallucinating this - but I thought that the post I was responding to had the protagonist be a knight. I don't know any systems or stories where a mortal knight could manage such a feat. Although that may just be indicative of the dearth of my experience with such stories / systems.

EDIT: nope, it said "hero". Yes, there are some settings where such a hero would be internally consistent. At which point either would make for a valid story.

[Realms of Chaos]

The crux of the issue, in my personal opinion, is that "win buttons" create additional burdens of communication and campaign creation.

Communication: High efficiency is not a problem in and of itself. In high-lethality (like shadowrun), where even a single (un)lucky shot might quality as a "win button", players can get a feel for the risks and approach missions in a conservative manner. It becomes a part of the fun and suspense. On the opposite side of the spectrum, games that offer godlike power (like exalted) lets everyone throw around their weight and gives enough counters and dodges for many "win buttons" to allow for counter-play. For games that are neither "gritty" nor "epic fantasy", however, there's a lot of wiggle room. Many players come looking for different things and the game system and the game system might not have an intrinsic reputation for certain types of games. If players come looking for a power fantasy, they want to use the "win buttons" but might feel cheated if the enemy wins a race by teleporting a nation away or spams some spell or ability that keeps them stunlocked. Conversely, players looking for a grittier feel may feel cheated when all of their clever planning is trampled by a teammate who goes with "easy mode".

For all of the Flak that I gave the game back in the day, D&D 4e was a masterpiece of handling this hurdle. By giving (approximately) equivalent mechanics to all players and using fundamentally different mechanics for enemies (such as minions), that game was able to signpost its intentions from a mile away. To get the versatility that a system like Pathfinder offers, however, you end up with ambiguity. The question "How would you like to join my Pathfinder/3.5 Game?" generally tells players FAR less than "How would you like to join my Paranoia Game?". Unless the players and the DM know each other particularly well, the coexistence of "gritty" mechanics and "win buttons" for both players and enemies means that these people need to communicate. While that might seem obvious, many people drawn to this talk-heavy game are ironically anti-social in most settings so... yeah, the ambiguity makes things hard for poor communicators.

Campaign Creation: This is a bit more obvious, as mentioned in the rest of the thread. Most campaign worlds are "generic fantasy setting + magic" instead of "what fantasy civilizations would look like if magic was a prevalent force". People still buy very expensive locks in spite of "knock" existing, sentry tunnels don't include regular "splash floors" with lengthy puddles to catch invisible characters, and so forth. Beyond "the world" being naive to "win buttons", however, the tasks given to players may share that obliviousness. Some missions (especially mysteries) either shouldn't exist in a world with magic or are easily solved with one or two win-buttons (giving the appearance that the player[s] with "win buttons" are dominating). Further, a campaign may re-use similar challenges too often (allowing the same player to keep dominating) or fail to incorporate a wide-enough array of challenges to give everyone a chance to shine (and character-campaign fitness is odd in that it can be a campaign design OR player communication problem).

This comes up for a variety of reasons. Maybe the DM/GM is using a pre-made adventure that didn't account for later supplements. Maybe they designed this the adventure/campaign well in advance and forgot to account for the existence of one or more "win buttons". Some DM/GMs feel pressured to let their entire campaign unravel instead of compensating behind the scenes... if the rules even allow for that. While the lack of counter-play for "win buttons" is typically brought up in the context of PC vs. PC or PC vs. NPC, it can have real implications for unwary GMs...

GM: Lord Grimmerford cackles madly, vowing vengeance before vanishing into the...
Player 1: Wait, I have my prepared action. The moment he tries to escape, I'm going to pound him with Infinite Heartache to stop him.
GM: Well... Lord Grimmerford has immunity to physical attacks.
Player 1: It isn't a physical attack. I checked. Plus, it only "imitates" paralysis so no worries about immunity there.
GM: Lord Grimmerford's invisible minions uncloak themselves and ready their halberds to...
Player 2: Invisible minions? i have Sight of the Faerie active. That should have pierced all invisibility.
GM: ...I meant to say that they teleport into the area.
Player 3: After I put a dimensional barrier around the whole throne room? Unlikely.
GM: Fine. Player 1 strikes at Lord Grimmerford, his blade passing through like thin air as the illusion vanishes.
Player 2: Sight of the Faerie. I'd see illusions as well.
GM: ...You stun-lock the dude until he is dust and paste. If you'll pardon me, I need to burn some notes and write a new campaign.

If any of that looks like inept GMing... that's kind of the point. When newer DMs or GMs start a game with veteran players, they may overlook a few abilities that players have access to. If these abilities allow for reasonable counterplay, an unskilled DM or GM can improvise on the fly and fudge things with a bit of subtlety. When players "trap" that DM in with "win buttons" that the game has no obvious counters for, however... there's often quite a bit of pressure to let the story unravel rather than taking the "disruptive" player aside, institute a mid-game ban, or (heavens forbid) invoke GM Fiat/Rule 0. It can create some really unpleasant pressure for new DMs to remember every single "win button" at all times or else risk having their game implode. Between that pressure and the number of stories that simply don't work because of common "win buttons", you get some additional hate for the "win buttons". When you get better, this (mostly) stops becoming a problem. You think of interesting ways around "impossible challenges". Some DMs would gladly allow players to slay Lord Grimmerford in the example above as a reward for their cleverness and delight in seeing how that impacts ongoing events rather than clinging to him as the BBEG. Until you reach that point in proficiency, however, the presence of "win buttons" can "ruin" campaigns for some newer GMs.

The Final Summation: If a game system hands out "win buttons" to players fairly evenly, "win buttons" aren't a problem with a system. Failing that, you shouldn't have problems if you have a good leader and your group communicates well... though that is NOT a compliment for a game system. If you don't allow for some level of counter-play and/or only some players get these "win buttons", some percentage of the audience is going to have a problem with your system (though that can probably be said for anything, so eh...)

[Max_Killjoy]

Things fall apart. The center does not hold.

Things change. People grow. What once was a challenge, like standing up or saying "mama" become easy, then trivial. How can I have sympathy for those in a game of growth that hate growth?


Do you realize how condescending this comes across?

Taken at face value, that post is nothing more or less than calling anyone who doesn't "progress" to the sort of hardcore-gamist, spell-counterspell, 5d board game, "Dwarf-Fortress fun" gaming that you personally enjoy... an RPG infant.

It absolutely comes across as "when are you going to leave behind the diapers and training wheels, and git gud?"


And then (it seems) you wonder why you can't get any traction for your ideas?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Do you realize who condescending this comes across?

Taken at face value, that post is nothing more or less than calling anyone who doesn't "progress" to the sort of hardcore-gamist, spell-counterspell, 5d board game, "Dwarf-Fortress fun" gaming that you personally enjoy... an RPG infant.

It absolutely comes across as "when are you going to leave behind the diapers and training wheels, and git gud?"

And then (it seems) you wonder why you can't get any traction for your ideas?

Very much agreed.

Specific to D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder, remember that the whole 5D-chess counters-to-counter-counters thing is a mostly-unintended consequence of the complexity and number of interacting pieces (spells and feats, mostly). That is, promoting that style of play is taking the game from its intended (and supported) realm of dungeons, loot, and fantastic team adventures and putting it somewhere that is only supported for the favored few builds (not even classes, builds of classes) that have the capabilities to engage it. Any system will break if you push it too far beyond its capabilities. Fate doesn't do "gritty tactical combat" very well, nor should it have to. D&D doesn't do "5D-chess" very well, neither in rules nor in settings. If you play it as it seems to have been intended, most of the perceived imbalance and flaws are at least muted.

In my opinion, most of the campaign/setting/game-breaking spells, feats, and interactions should be flat out removed or nerfed heavily. That, or split the game. D&D stays dungeons, adventurers, etc. The new game takes all the exploits and makes a system around them. Both can be fun, but mixing them brings heartache.

D&D should be more clear what type of game it's trying to be. 4e did a good job of being clear but few liked the implementation (mostly because of hearsay). 5e has tried to be looser while still being better than 3.X. Most of the "I Win" buttons are gone or are much more situational. That's for the best, I think. The buttons that are left (wish, I'm looking at you) are a legacy of the old days and really should be toned-down or removed.

[Max_Killjoy]

Very much agreed.

Specific to D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder, remember that the whole 5D-chess counters-to-counter-counters thing is a mostly-unintended consequence of the complexity and number of interacting pieces (spells and feats, mostly). That is, promoting that style of play is taking the game from its intended (and supported) realm of dungeons, loot, and fantastic team adventures and putting it somewhere that is only supported for the favored few builds (not even classes, builds of classes) that have the capabilities to engage it. Any system will break if you push it too far beyond its capabilities. Fate doesn't do "gritty tactical combat" very well, nor should it have to. D&D doesn't do "5D-chess" very well, neither in rules nor in settings. If you play it as it seems to have been intended, most of the perceived imbalance and flaws are at least muted.

In my opinion, most of the campaign/setting/game-breaking spells, feats, and interactions should be flat out removed or nerfed heavily. That, or split the game. D&D stays dungeons, adventurers, etc. The new game takes all the exploits and makes a system around them. Both can be fun, but mixing them brings heartache.

D&D should be more clear what type of game it's trying to be. 4e did a good job of being clear but few liked the implementation (mostly because of hearsay). 5e has tried to be looser while still being better than 3.X. Most of the "I Win" buttons are gone or are much more situational. That's for the best, I think. The buttons that are left (wish, I'm looking at you) are a legacy of the old days and really should be toned-down or removed.


Would that make 3.x the original fantasy heartbreaker? :smallwink:

Seriously, though, I think there's some merit to the idea of splitting the next edition of D&D into two games... "dungeons, adventures, etc" as one, and "dueling exploits, 5d screwjob" as the other.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Would that make 3.x the original fantasy heartbreaker? :smallwink:

Seriously, though, I think there's some merit to the idea of splitting the next edition of D&D into two games... "dungeons, adventures, etc" as one, and "dueling exploits, 5d screwjob" as the other.

Maybe "Dungeons and Dragons" and "Mages and Munchkins"? Or is that too close to the other MM game? "Wizards and (reality) Warping? "5D Chess, RPG edition?"

Note: none of these are serious suggestions.

[Anymage]

A good example might be: A deep, dark, underwater, free floating earth motes on the 11th layer of the Abyss. The 3E and on Abyss is a bit tame, but it's still a bad place (I use the more 2E version where it's a nightmare wrapped up in a horror movie of your characters death.). So we have another plane, underwater (plus note pressure), darkness, and my favorite of three dimensions.

...

So it's open portal, characters go through with no super special exploits in one round and the adventure continues. Just to note, the friendly portal caster will give each character two potions of water breathing so they don't just 'die' on the other side of the portal...

What are we expected to do here? So far all you've told me is to hang around, and hope I had a light spell handy (for the darkness) and an acid resistance item (since it's a liquid layer of the abyss). Wait until it's late enough that we can all hop into a rope trick, rest for the night and pick new spells, then plane shift home.


We could make a whole thread if you really want to go through like 13 of them...but you will need to change the ''demands''.

Uhm. Spells have their stated effects without "nope, you don't" counters in place. A fighter/rogue/wizard/cleric group gives the fighter and rogue something to do other than watch the real characters do all the work, and a fighter/rogue/warmage/healer party isn't immediately hosed.

If you have a hard time thinking up adventures that can't be trivialized with a few well-placed spells, that's my point.


I.e. you resent having to change your staple formulas of adventure design. Apparently you want level 5 type adventures throughout the campaign. That's your prerogative, but that's an issue of your personal taste not the fault of the game. Try a different game system or use the E6 home brew.

However, it answers the thread topic.

Since you're still sticking to "stop giving level 5 adventures" without giving your own spin on what a "level 13" adventure would look like, I think it's safe to assume you're just stirring **** here.


Very much agreed.

Specific to D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder, remember that the whole 5D-chess counters-to-counter-counters thing is a mostly-unintended consequence of the complexity and number of interacting pieces (spells and feats, mostly).

Some of the abilities are problematic in and of themselves. (See how they tried to make an end run around Polymorph in late 3.5) Other times, it's how so many options got piled into certain characters that broke the system. A warblade, beguiler, warmage, and healer better mimics the basic game's assumptions while still giving everybody strong flavor and their own niche.

Players want their can-know-all-the-spells wizards in D&D. But while part of the problem here is absolute effects (again, a superior rogue who can pick all normal locks is fine, but I also want superior locks that can stymie all normal rogues, and a fair way to adjudicate superior rogue vs. superior lock), the bigger problem is when one character can access such a wide range of clear answers.

[Satinavian]

Would that make 3.x the original fantasy heartbreaker? :smallwink:

Seriously, though, I think there's some merit to the idea of splitting the next edition of D&D into two games... "dungeons, adventures, etc" as one, and "dueling exploits, 5d screwjob" as the other.
D&D may be the oldest, but is certainly not a particulaerly good RPG.

The reason it keeps being dominant is that it is well known and has thus a really large pool of active and former players. Who might join a new group without needing to learn a new system.

That is also the reason why all the people who are not happy with the kitchen sink approach stick to the game and would rather have other styles removed but keep the brand (and the player pool) than switching to a more specialized system.


And that is why those discussions never lead anywhere. No one is willing to give up the things that make D&D fun for him but always willing to send others with incompatible styles away, claiming the "real D&D" for its own preference.

D&D won't ever change. Trying to force a single style with 4E failed spectacularly. They will never try that again.

[Darth Ultron]

Um, it's called role-playing. If my character isn't good at talking, I shouldn't talk like he's good at talking. And, even if I do, the GM should ignore that, and respond to my statistics, not my player skill.


But note that even without all sorts of mechanical talking benefits....a character in an RPG can still talk. And you don't need the skill ''come up with a clever idea'' to come up with a clever idea.


What are we expected to do here? So far all you've told me is to hang around, and hope I had a light spell handy (for the darkness) and an acid resistance item (since it's a liquid layer of the abyss). Wait until it's late enough that we can all hop into a rope trick, rest for the night and pick new spells, then plane shift home.


Well, this would be say the second act of an adventure ''get the Orb of Light from the Evil Stronghold''. Like I said, this would really need a whole thread so I can explain everything in minute detail.



Uhm. Spells have their stated effects without "nope, you don't" counters in place. A fighter/rogue/wizard/cleric group gives the fighter and rogue something to do other than watch the real characters do all the work, and a fighter/rogue/warmage/healer party isn't immediately hosed.

If you have a hard time thinking up adventures that can't be trivialized with a few well-placed spells, that's my point.

It's not hard at all.

The big thing to break is the hostile player reaction of ''well if the DM does X, I will do Y to ''win'' ''.....

[Lord Raziere]

Things fall apart. The center does not hold.

Things change. People grow. What once was a challenge, like standing up or saying "mama" become easy, then trivial. How can I have sympathy for those in a game of growth that hate growth?


Says the person unwilling to accept that their playstyle isn't universal and stubbornly clings to their view despite long discussions about how flawed it is. this is not only arrogant and condescending to people who argue against you, its hypocritical. you supposedly start these threads to understand yet when we explain, you don't accept our views and grow to accept that you'll never convince us to be like you, because making people try to be like you then saying their children for being like you is not how humanity or being a good person works. I respond because you ask, its your fault if you do not like or accept the answer and therefore do not grow. The fact that you say such a thing says more about you than it does about us.

[Max_Killjoy]

Says the person unwilling to accept that their playstyle isn't universal and stubbornly clings to their view despite long discussions about how flawed it is. this is not only arrogant and condescending to people who argue against you, its hypocritical. you supposedly start these threads to understand yet when we explain, you don't accept our views and grow to accept that you'll never convince us to be like you, because making people try to be like you then saying their children for being like you is not how humanity or being a good person works. I respond because you ask, its your fault if you do not like or accept the answer and therefore do not grow. The fact that you say such a thing says more about you than it does about us.


I don't think anyone has to ditch what they find fun. We can try to understand what other gamers enjoy and why they enjoy it, and have different tastes, without changing what we like or demanding that they change what they like.

What gets me irked is that these discussions repeatedly start out as "I don't understand, please explain your point of view", and then it seems like the veneer quickly peels off, and one side seems to be saying instead "Why do so many of you refuse to become an elite gamer like me and enjoy the high-skill game style I enjoy?"

And when I'm feeling irked and insulted and like I'm dealing with condescension... the knives come out.

[Pex]

Either the Lich King has hosers for those spells (which to its eternal cosmic credit the DMG tells you not to do), or the wizard does it anyway. If the Lich King does have those spells, the game goes something like this:

DM: You approach the fortress of the DREAD LICH KING! The walls ar...
Wizard: Greater teleport.
DM: You can't, nya-na-na-na-nya-na.
DM: The walls are enchanted to be impenetra...
Wizard: Greater dispel magic.
Wizard: Disintegrate.
Wizard: Another greater dispel magic.
Wizard: Greater teleport.
Wizard: Irresistible Halt Undead.
Wizard: Disintegrate.
Wizard: Another disintegrate.
Wizard: Another disintegrate.
DM: Yeah he dies.
Wizard: Greater teleport.

And anyway, why does D&D need hosers for those spells? Oh, right, because they're dumb and stupid.



I mean, I want adventures where one side doesn't automatically defeat the other by applying an iota of common sense. I want epic threats without "I cast Kill God at it" ending said epic threat in one round.

I want my earth-shattering abominations to require teamwork and tactics to beat, not "Lookit, I won."

If you haven't been inside the lair before how could you teleport into it? Specially enchanted walls aren't needed. Plus there's the Forbiddance spell which the lich can access by either being a divine caster himself, made a deal to have someone cast it for him, used Wish. Certainly the lich is capable of protecting his lair from being scryed upon as well. How are you preparing so many Disintegrates and Greater Dispel Magic? You do that every day? You will never roll low or even a 1 on the dispel attempt and thus fail? The lich will never make his saving throw against Disintegrate? In 5E he even has Legendary saves and thus autosuceeds on three saving throws a day.

It is far from an automatic win.




Since you're still sticking to "stop giving level 5 adventures" without giving your own spin on what a "level 13" adventure would look like, I think it's safe to assume you're just stirring **** here.



It's metaphorical.

It means when the party has access to higher level abilities stop resenting what used to be challenging obstacles no longer are, which I already explained. When the party can teleport regularly don't be so upset they no longer need to deal with three game weeks of traveling encounters going to their quest or back to home base. Design encounters keeping in mind the abilities the party has.

If you can't stop resenting it. If the increase in power level as characters progress just drives you up the wall in whatever lack of justification bothers you, I can't make you like what you don't like. Play something else then. Admit to yourself your taste is incompatible with a particular game system. That doesn't make the particular game system a horrible game that ruins everything.
It's just not for you.

But it still answers the thread topic.

[Jormengand]

A lich king whose defenses can be entirely trivialized by published* spells is an idiot. He deserves his defeat.

But what did that have to do with win buttons?

A lich king whose defences can be entirely trivialised by published spells is a lich king.


If you haven't been inside the lair before how could you teleport into it? Specially enchanted walls aren't needed. Plus there's the Forbiddance spell which the lich can access by either being a divine caster himself, made a deal to have someone cast it for him, used Wish. Certainly the lich is capable of protecting his lair from being scryed upon as well. How are you preparing so many Disintegrates and Greater Dispel Magic? You do that every day? You will never roll low or even a 1 on the dispel attempt and thus fail? The lich will never make his saving throw against Disintegrate? In 5E he even has Legendary saves and thus autosuceeds on three saving throws a day.

It is far from an automatic win.

"In addition, you need not have seen the destination". And if the lich is wishing for a spell you can just dispel then something's already gone wrong. The reason I use multiple disintegrates is taking into account that he might save. In 5E everything is different and a lot of the stuff that's an "I win button" stops being.

[Jay R]

Why didn't the lich king use the same spells on the party earlier? Or just Greater Teleport away as soon as somebody entered his lair - possibly with a contingency spell? You're assuming that powerful magic only exists on one side. By definition, no spell equally available to both sides can make the encounter one-sided and trivial.

There is a conversation from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:

"But for heaven's sake-- you're wizards! You can do magic! Surely you can sort out -- well--anything!"

Scrimgeour turned slowly on the spot and exchanged an incredulous look with Fudge, who really did manage a smile this time as he said kindly, "The trouble is, the other side can do magic too, Prime Minister."

[Max_Killjoy]

Why didn't the lich king use the same spells on the party earlier? Or just Greater Teleport away as soon as somebody entered his lair - possibly with a contingency spell? You're assuming that powerful magic only exists on one side. By definition, no spell equally available to both sides can make the encounter one-sided and trivial.


Which really doesn't change the whole "who can get the last 5d chess move in and nail the other guy with something he didn't Batman-prep for" problem.

("Batman-prep", as in the ridiculous way in which Batman as depicted hanging with demigods and world-splitters in his JLA appearances ALWAYS was prepared for WHATEVER happened and ALWAYS had a hidden counter up his sleeve because he ALWAYS had already out-thought his opponents, expecting their moves before they even knew that they wanted to make moves against Batman. Because he's Batman. :smalltongue:)

If that's really what people find fun in their RPGs, then more power to them (in more ways than one I guess), but it's certainly not what many others (including me) want, and I think I'm not alone in resenting and rejecting the outright assertion by a few posters that "5d chess counter-counter-counter-spells" is somehow "grownup RPGs for people who've learned how to play" or that accomplishment at such a style is a single-axis progression with "newb" at one end and "elite gamer" at the other.

Even with D&D 3.x and its kin, that style of play was never the design intent for ANY character level -- it's purely an unforeseen emergent property of the complexity and lack of forethought by the designers and publishers. That doesn't make it badwrongfun, but it does make the "git gud, learn 2 play newb" condescension even more ridiculous.




There is a conversation from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:


That conversation was already referenced upthread.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Why didn't the lich king use the same spells on the party earlier? Or just Greater Teleport away as soon as somebody entered his lair - possibly with a contingency spell? You're assuming that powerful magic only exists on one side. By definition, no spell equally available to both sides can make the encounter one-sided and trivial.

There is a conversation from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:

This isn't an answer. This is an additional problem.

In addition to these spells potentially making the game too easy, it also either makes the setting nonsense because the PCs are the only ones taking advantage of these tactics. Or the game ends because the lich king saw some upstart adventurers making problems for him and teleported on top of them and killed them all at an inopportune moment.

[Max_Killjoy]

This isn't an answer. This is an additional problem.

In addition to these spells potentially making the game too easy, it also either makes the setting nonsense because the PCs are the only ones taking advantage of these tactics. Or the game ends because the lich king saw some upstart adventurers making problems for him and teleported on top of them and killed them all at an inopportune moment.

Indeed... if the PCs can "scry and die" the lich king... why can't the lich king "scry and die" the PCs, or anyone else rising up as a potential threat?

[CharonsHelper]

Indeed... if the PCs can "scry and die" the lich king... why can't the lich king "scry and die" the PCs, or anyone else rising up as a potential threat?

Not to mention using divination spell craziness to figure out that the PCs would be a threat to him back when they were level 6ish.

[BRC]

The other thing about 5 dimensional chess is that, when you get to the end, it's boring. Like, really boring.

"We teleport in"
"The Lich blocked teleports"
"We Disintegrate the walls"
"Walls are enchanted"
"We Dispel Magic"
"Conditional instant-resetting Counterspell trap stops your Dispell magic"
Repeat for tactic and countertactic until the Player is out of moves.
"Okay GM, you've done your homework. Well done. NOW we storm the Lich's fortress and try to fight him."

[Max_Killjoy]

The other thing about 5 dimensional chess is that, when you get to the end, it's boring. Like, really boring.

"We teleport in"
"The Lich blocked teleports"
"We Disintegrate the walls"
"Walls are enchanted"
"We Dispel Magic"
"Conditional instant-resetting Counterspell trap stops your Dispell magic"
Repeat for tactic and countertactic until the Player is out of moves.
"Okay GM, you've done your homework. Well done. NOW we storm the Lich's fortress and try to fight him."

And all that immense power on both sides amounts to nothing, and the GM has no choice but to drop the "Actually, Nope" brick on their cool tricks over and over again... or just let them win.

[Cluedrew]

Question about 3.0/5/P, what would you, anyone reading this, say is the highest level (in terms of actual power level, not character level) published adventure? Does it play 5d chess? Require many of these spells? Or let having these spells be an advantage without being a game breaker? In short, are there and official materials that deal with the fallout of these win buttons?

[Jormengand]

Question about 3.0/5/P, what would you, anyone reading this, say is the highest level (in terms of actual power level, not character level) published adventure? Does it play 5d chess? Require many of these spells? Or let having these spells be an advantage without being a game breaker? In short, are there and official materials that deal with the fallout of these win buttons?

In terms of power level, the Tomb of Horrors has a 3.5 update. It's the worst module ever written precisely because it's full of "The players lose" buttons:


Some technically don't kill you outright, only deal enough damage to kill you, maybe allowing a reflex save to be only severely injured instead. The mouth of no-you-just-die is alive and well, though, as are the arrow traps which don't stop firing at you until you disable them and then dispel magic on them and there's no indication that this is the correct course of action. If you're playing the Tomb of Horrors, you're not playing a game. You're rolling dice at people until they stop moving.
Oh, there's also the pillar which isn't trapped, so the not!trap can't be found, but what it does do is split the person off from the rest of the party and force them to solo an EL 10 encounter (at ECL 9) to escape, and all the enemies are massively under-CRed, and the pillar which takes all your equipment and throws you out of the devil face of instakill, but fortunately turns it off for just long enough to chuck you out safely. Oh, and even the treasure tries to kill you: there's a gem which deals two hundred damage and throws a twisted wish at the user, and everyone else nearby, and the crown which stops you leaving the room it's in. There is a way to take the crown off, but guess what? That forces you to make a completely uninformed choice and if you get it wrong, it tries to kill you as well. But don't worry, because there's a broken staff, and even though it's already broken, guess what it does? It tries to freaking kill you, because even the broken treasure is trying to kill you.

Oh, and the treasure you get at the end of the module? Guess what that tries to do. :smallannoyed:

It doesn't play 5d chess. It just kills the players for daring to exist.

[Psikerlord]

So, I often see posters complaining about "win buttons" - things that just work, and solve problems. Like how Invisibility says you just can't be seen, Flight says you can just bypass any obstacle, or the classic D&D Knock spell lets you just open any door, no skill roll, no risk.

Yes, these things just work. So what? Many - heck, most - games are based on abilities that just work. When the knight moves into the same space as the opposing pawn, it just captures the piece. When I set fire to the obsidian "O", it just turns into a portal. When I pass "Go", I just collect $200. Why do RPG players seen so loath to accept the concept of things that just work?

EDIT
Yes, this is the Playground, home of the Playgrounder Fallacy. And, yes, all of the abilities I listed are available in D&D 3e. But I hadn't actually intended to limit this to a 3e discussion.

Reasons I understand so far:

Inaccuracy - some "win" buttons shouldn't actually automatically succeed
exacerbates problems of what is in character vs what makes for a fun game
potentially jarring shift in granularity / level of abstraction*
may exacerbate problems from differences in opinion on correct level of granularity / what is "important".


Reasons why win buttons get a (potentially-undeserved) bad rap:
Association with unbalanced characters in unbalanced games
system / setting disconnect
different people using different definitions of the phrase


* I personally feel that, like Indiana Jones shooting the master swordsman, this is a good thing, but I can see why others might not feel that way.

I think some are fine, some not. For example, a short duration fly spell - perfectly fine. Teleporting - not fine, and best removed from the PC spell list imo. Such I win options need to be a limited resource, and properly accounted for in class balance. Ideally, every class should have a bit of this spread around in different niches. Of course some classes will have more utility than others. Where exactly the balance lies between classes/utility/etc is a spectrum that reasonable people will disagree on.

I personally have no issues with stuff like: fly, knock, wizard lock, silence, charm person, line of sight dim door, that sort of thing. As long as they are short duration and limited resource with an opportunity cost.

Even with such limitations however I consider the following go too far, and are best removed as standard PC options (but perhaps possible as plot devices etc instead): detect lies, know alignment, teleport, plane shift, word of recall, raise dead (or similar), wish. Quite possibly scrying should also go, but if you remove teleport, it isnt so bad. Actually I prefer to simply cap the game at 10th - 12th level altogether.

[Pex]

Which really doesn't change the whole "who can get the last 5d chess move in and nail the other guy with something he didn't Batman-prep for" problem.

("Batman-prep", as in the ridiculous way in which Batman as depicted hanging with demigods and world-splitters in his JLA appearances ALWAYS was prepared for WHATEVER happened and ALWAYS had a hidden counter up his sleeve because he ALWAYS had already out-thought his opponents, expecting their moves before they even knew that they wanted to make moves against Batman. Because he's Batman. :smalltongue:)

If that's really what people find fun in their RPGs, then more power to them (in more ways than one I guess), but it's certainly not what many others (including me) want, and I think I'm not alone in resenting and rejecting the outright assertion by a few posters that "5d chess counter-counter-counter-spells" is somehow "grownup RPGs for people who've learned how to play" or that accomplishment at such a style is a single-axis progression with "newb" at one end and "elite gamer" at the other.

Even with D&D 3.x and its kin, that style of play was never the design intent for ANY character level -- it's purely an unforeseen emergent property of the complexity and lack of forethought by the designers and publishers. That doesn't make it badwrongfun, but it does make the "git gud, learn 2 play newb" condescension even more ridiculous.



Of course that's ridiculous, but that's not what happens in actual play. That only happens in 3E bashing threads using the Tier System as justification which I have argued against in the past. Spellcasters do not always have the exact spell needed at the moment it's needed. They do not always beat spell resistance. Monsters do not always fail saving throws. Spellcasters do not autowin everything and anything all the time every time.

[Quertus]

Do you realize how condescending this comes across?

Taken at face value, that post is nothing more or less than calling anyone who doesn't "progress" to the sort of hardcore-gamist, spell-counterspell, 5d board game, "Dwarf-Fortress fun" gaming that you personally enjoy... an RPG infant.

It absolutely comes across as "when are you going to leave behind the diapers and training wheels, and git gud?"


And then (it seems) you wonder why you can't get any traction for your ideas?


I don't think anyone has to ditch what they find fun. We can try to understand what other gamers enjoy and why they enjoy it, and have different tastes, without changing what we like or demanding that they change what they like.

What gets me irked is that these discussions repeatedly start out as "I don't understand, please explain your point of view", and then it seems like the veneer quickly peels off, and one side seems to be saying instead "Why do so many of you refuse to become an elite gamer like me and enjoy the high-skill game style I enjoy?"

And when I'm feeling irked and insulted and like I'm dealing with condescension... the knives come out.

Yes, I'm a ****. I freely admit that. I'm... trying to play nice, and I am brutally genuinely trying to understand.

But, even when I'm trying to understand, I'll still attack any argument that doesn't actually prove what it sets out to prove - or any that I can't follow.

Thank you for supporting my stance that what I find fun is what I find fun. I'm not surprised that you get it, but I'm glad that you get it, and that you will say so, even when calling me out on being a ****.

As to the rest... Sometimes, like in this thread, I genuinely am asking why people don't enjoy what I enjoy, so that I can use that knowledge - to avoid problems in games, to build characters that are more acceptable to gamers in general or to the specific group I'm playing with, or even in game design, should I ever go that route.

And I wasn't intending to be the level / type of condescending you perceived - I was more saying the equivalent of, if the game has the power disparity of, say, level 1 vs level 20 of D&D, a level 1 challenge is not a level 20 challenge. Win buttons seem an obvious "I am too tall for this ride" to me.


But note that even without all sorts of mechanical talking benefits....a character in an RPG can still talk. And you don't need the skill ''come up with a clever idea'' to come up with a clever idea.

Strongly agree.


Says the person unwilling to accept that their playstyle isn't universal and stubbornly clings to their view despite long discussions about how flawed it is. this is not only arrogant and condescending to people who argue against you, its hypocritical. you supposedly start these threads to understand yet when we explain, you don't accept our views and grow to accept that you'll never convince us to be like you, because making people try to be like you then saying their children for being like you is not how humanity or being a good person works. I respond because you ask, its your fault if you do not like or accept the answer and therefore do not grow. The fact that you say such a thing says more about you than it does about us.

Hmmm... I am stubborn, and I am a ****, but I still feel this isn't an accurate portrayal of what I am attempting to accomplish.

Yes, I will point out anything that I feel is a logic error, or a leap in logic that feels like it's missing some steps, or a false conclusion complete with what conclusion I reach given the same information. Now, yes, I could do so more diplomatically, and I could do a better job, say, differentiating between "false conclusions" and "not the only possible conclusion".

But I don't feel that my play style is universal - if I did, I wouldn't be making a thread like this. I am explicitly exploring the differences in gaming style. I'm just being a **** about it, and not accepting anything that doesn't either make sense to me based on my experiences, or make sense to me by being explained it in a way that I can understand. I'm a tough audience.

And, even when I do understand things that are new, that doesn't mean that I will consider them fun, for me, or achieve my goals in an RPG.

And I'm not always right. Which makes perceiving this pattern more difficult.

If you carry misperceptions as to my intentions, it should come as no surprise if you have difficulty persuading me of anything. It is difficult to convince someone that they are "wrong" when the position you are arguing against bears little similarity to the position that they actually hold.

And, if I were actually trying to convince you to play like me, that would be good advice for me. But I'm not. I'm trying to understand the diversity in the (gaming) world. And I'm amazed at just how diverse the answers to even this "simple" question have been.

EDIT: and I've come from understanding 0 reasons to hate win buttons to, what, four so far?

[Telok]

EDIT: and I've come from understanding 0 reasons to hate win buttons to, what, four so far?

I think I'll stick with my 'perceived fairness' idea where having certain types of abilities is somehow unfair to the DM, other players, or something. It's also mostly a D&D phenomenon and mainly focused on wizard spells. Because I've never seen this sort of discussion with other game systems or even really other D&D casters from outside of core.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think I'll stick with my 'perceived fairness' idea where having certain types of abilities is somehow unfair to the DM, other players, or something. It's also mostly a D&D phenomenon and mainly focused on wizard spells. Because I've never seen this sort of discussion with other game systems or even really other D&D casters from outside of core.


Certain Disciplines in oWoD Vampire can quickly turn into total "screwjobs" against other players or the GM if the target doesn't have the specific hard counter or have at least the same level of the same power.

[Quertus]

I think some are fine, some not. For example, a short duration fly spell - perfectly fine. Teleporting - not fine, and best removed from the PC spell list imo. Such I win options need to be a limited resource, and properly accounted for in class balance. Ideally, every class should have a bit of this spread around in different niches. Of course some classes will have more utility than others. Where exactly the balance lies between classes/utility/etc is a spectrum that reasonable people will disagree on.

I personally have no issues with stuff like: fly, knock, wizard lock, silence, charm person, line of sight dim door, that sort of thing. As long as they are short duration and limited resource with an opportunity cost.

Even with such limitations however I consider the following go too far, and are best removed as standard PC options (but perhaps possible as plot devices etc instead): detect lies, know alignment, teleport, plane shift, word of recall, raise dead (or similar), wish. Quite possibly scrying should also go, but if you remove teleport, it isnt so bad. Actually I prefer to simply cap the game at 10th - 12th level altogether.

While that may be a great answer for "what", it fails to address the "why" I was seeking.


I think I'll stick with my 'perceived fairness' idea where having certain types of abilities is somehow unfair to the DM, other players, or something. It's also mostly a D&D phenomenon and mainly focused on wizard spells. Because I've never seen this sort of discussion with other game systems or even really other D&D casters from outside of core.

I've seen it numerous times in various systems - some of them homebrew. Usually, IME, when we bothered to dig deep enough, it was misplaced aggression, and what they were really upset about was something else entirely. Which is why I was surprised to discover that the hate of win buttons had survived the scrutiny of the internet - I didn't really believe it could actually be a real thing.

But, sure enough, people seem to have lots of different reasons for hating win buttons, several of which I've come to understand as legitimate grievances against win buttons themselves, not just using win buttons as a scape goat for some other complaint.

"Perception", to my mind, while amazingly powerful, seems the least legitimate reason possible to hate on something. I won't deny that I understand this concept, but I am loathe to categorize it as anything other than "reasons it may be unfairly targeted" (or whatever I named that category).

That there is also truth to that perception, insofar as, say, balance between classes in 3e is concerned, muddies the waters further.

[Psikerlord]

While that may be a great answer for "what", it fails to address the "why" I was seeking.

For me, why I dislike those particular spells, is that I feel it makes the game too easy. I dont want a mystery being too easily undone wiht a detect lie, or bypassing the travel aspect of the game via teleport. That sort of thing. I have no problems with save or die abilities as "i win" buttons - as long as the system keeps them a rare resource/balances out in other ways.

[VoxRationis]

Breaking away from D&D, it's possible to have interesting adventures in power levels from Ars Magica to Exalted to Nobilis. (Although, it's worth mentioning, all of those settings have characters more specialized than "generic magic man/generic holy magic man".

I realize this is a bit of an aside, but, for what it's worth, D&D's casters are only really "generic" because its success and fundamental relationship to its genre have generalized its particular visions. Having one sort of magician who gets power without strings attached as well as a different sort who gets it through connections with deities is not typical of pre-D&D works, at least to the best of my knowledge. In particular, the wizard is very much the Vancian sort, in more than just the base mechanics of how they cast spells. A D&D wizard journeys through terrible dangers in order to retrieve lost scraps of magical lore from the shattered ruins of past civilizations, copying these treasured spells into grimoires more important than anything. Each spell, which is a work unto itself, freed from any prerequisites other than the ability to cast spells in the first place, is specific in character and has limitations the magician has no ability to alter (such as magic missile not hitting inanimate objects, for example, or invisibility breaking during only those kinds of physical contact or spellcasting which constitute attacks), which further centers the idea of the spells being lost lore. Wizards don't share their spells with everyone, but hoard them, and hide their knowledge behind personal codes and ciphers, and consider others of their craft to be rivals, rather than colleagues.

The clerics are largely very particular as well; rather than just people who are both priests and magic-users, with the exact relationship between these roles nebulous, as can be found, for example, in the works of Fritz Leiber, the clerics are very rooted in Biblical prophets, with some medieval Knights Templar armament added on. AD&D had a spell that could bear you aloft on a chariot of fire, and another one that turned sticks into snakes. Clerics get insect plague and part water even when their deities aren't necessarily involved with either insects or water.

Now, both these archetypes have become less pronounced over the editions, with various effects, not the least of which is the increase in wizards' power (since a more friendly discourse among wizards makes them able to share spells and such to a greater extent), but they're definitely there at the roots of the matter and they've left pronounced effects even unto the 5th edition.

[Mutazoia]

Why didn't the lich king use the same spells on the party earlier? Or just Greater Teleport away as soon as somebody entered his lair - possibly with a contingency spell? You're assuming that powerful magic only exists on one side. By definition, no spell equally available to both sides can make the encounter one-sided and trivial.

The other thing about 5 dimensional chess is that, when you get to the end, it's boring. Like, really boring.

"We teleport in"
"The Lich blocked teleports"
"We Disintegrate the walls"
"Walls are enchanted"
"We Dispel Magic"
"Conditional instant-resetting Counterspell trap stops your Dispell magic"
Repeat for tactic and countertactic until the Player is out of moves.
"Okay GM, you've done your homework. Well done. NOW we storm the Lich's fortress and try to fight him."


Yes, but that kind of logic (the whole 5D chess thing), is quite often poo-poo'd on this forum (and elsewhere) as "Railroading", which adds another level of migrane to the DM's headache.


Spellcasters do not always have the exact spell needed at the moment it's needed. .

Unless that caster is a Sorc, who can freely cast any spell in existance with out prior prep.

[Mechalich]

Unless that caster is a Sorc, who can freely cast any spell in existance with out prior prep.

Even with preparation limitations, mid to high level D&D casters are capable of essentially instantaneous retreat from any situation that is even the least bit dangerous unless the enemy is at least their equal in power and was extremely well-prepared. Thereafter, unless their enemies are prepared to besiege them in the heart of their power (which may be a nigh-unreachable extra-planar stronghold) they only have to emerge when fully informed by the power of their divinations and fully prepared to the best of their players ability to assess - with the legitimate point that in the case of wizards at least these characters are supposed to have inhuman levels of super-genius to support their planning.

Essentially all mid-to-high level full casters are like Dr. Strange. They can always retreat to the sanctum unless ambushed incredibly effectively, they are something like ten times as powerful in the Sanctum as anywhere else, and they only have to take the risk of leaving the sanctum once they have determined exactly how to deal with a problem in the most efficient way. As a result the only stories that are even possible for such characters defy typical narrative convention and go super-weird.

And you can do this if you want. D&D has a whole multi-verse called Planescape to do it in. Mage: the Ascension has an infinite array of bizarre otherworlds to get your Dr. Strange on in. Bruce Cordell and Monte Cook wrote a game literally titled 'The Strange' that I haven't played but seems like its fully in this wheelhouse. All of that stuff works.

The problem is you can't back-cross. You can't take characters suitable for this sort of overpowered extra-dimensions of philosophical magic kind of game and port them in an alternative history swords and sorcery medieval universe, or at least you can have them as characters who actually care about what happens in that world.

The works of Fritz Leiber provide a very good example of this divide. The playable characters Fafrhd and the Gray Mouser are low to mid level martials. that's who you play and mostly the kind of characters they fight - enemy mages are largely extremely low level by D&D standards but are capable of wreaking devastation with their magic anyway. The same universe of Newhon contains two extremely powerful mage characters: Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face, who simply aren't playing by the same rules as our heroes and also are far too busy playing extra-dimensional chess to bother with anything that matters to the people of Newhon. That's the divide - you can play sword and sorcery or you can play phenomenal cosmic forces, but you can't play both games at the same time and the overlap between the stories you can tell with those two things is extremely limited.

[Jerrykhor]

The other thing about 5 dimensional chess is that, when you get to the end, it's boring. Like, really boring.

"We teleport in"
"The Lich blocked teleports"
"We Disintegrate the walls"
"Walls are enchanted"
"We Dispel Magic"
"Conditional instant-resetting Counterspell trap stops your Dispell magic"
Repeat for tactic and countertactic until the Player is out of moves.
"Okay GM, you've done your homework. Well done. NOW we storm the Lich's fortress and try to fight him."
No, they storm the Lich tomorrow because the caster is out of spell slots :smallbiggrin:

[Mutazoia]

No, they storm the Lich tomorrow because the caster is out of spell slots :smallbiggrin:

Nope...they only used a few spells from his Ring of Spell Storing, and maybe a charge or two from a wand or staff....or just said "screw it" and used a couple of scrolls that the caster can re-manufacture after the adventure....

[RazorChain]

I like win buttons. It mostly means that the people I dont want to play with are playing a different game and pushing those buttons

[Âmesang]

I suppose any problem I have with them might be dependent on how readily available the button is… and this presently coming from a 5e perspective:

For example I feel that a caster in the party who learned identify to more easily and quickly identify the properties of magic items is clever—as long as the party has ample down time they're free to effectively know everything about the loot they come across which doesn't bog things down…

…except, if I recall correctly, anyone can identify an item's property if they spend a Short Rest examining it, even with no prior magical knowledge or experience …so why does the spell exist anymore?

Likewise, at least in my group, it seems that the detect magic spell has been completely superseded by generic Arcana skill checks. I guess they… taste the magic in the air? I get that other players what to feel helpful, I do, but on the other hand you've got another player who's spent limited resources specifically for that purpose and that player might start thinking that the choices made are now pointless.

(Granted, I still have a problem with full heal Long Rests, hit-die spending on Short Rests, and death saving throws… and my last couple of groups have also been the type to have "infinitely large" bags of holding because nobody wanted to keep track of weight or volume.)

[Quertus]

I suppose any problem I have with them might be dependent on how readily available the button is… and this presently coming from a 5e perspective:

For example I feel that a caster in the party who learned identify to more easily and quickly identify the properties of magic items is clever—as long as the party has ample down time they're free to effectively know everything about the loot they come across which doesn't bog things down…

…except, if I recall correctly, anyone can identify an item's property if they spend a Short Rest examining it, even with no prior magical knowledge or experience …so why does the spell exist anymore?

Likewise, at least in my group, it seems that the detect magic spell has been completely superseded by generic Arcana skill checks. I guess they… taste the magic in the air? I get that other players what to feel helpful, I do, but on the other hand you've got another player who's spent limited resources specifically for that purpose and that player might start thinking that the choices made are now pointless.

(Granted, I still have a problem with full heal Long Rests, hit-die spending on Short Rests, and death saving throws… and my last couple of groups have also been the type to have "infinitely large" bags of holding because nobody wanted to keep track of weight or volume.)

I was in a (3.5 D&D) game where the non-magic folk could "search" a room faster than one could use Detect Magic to find loot. :smallannoyed: And, of course, such searches were 100% accurate, while Detect Magic had plenty of known limitations.

So I can see where handing everyone a free win button that is better than what a character had to spend resources to get is bad.

[Talakeal]

One thing I have noticed in years of playtesting is that players hate it when they expend a resource and dont get anything in return, thus spells which require spell slots better be win buttons if they dont want angry players ragequitting the game after flubbing a dice roll.

[Hypersmith]

it's kind of why I'm transitioning away from magic when I play in general. It's no fun to flip a switch and be done with things, it makes martial characters seem useless, and when you try to balance it you end up with mages and spell lists just not making much sense. They detract from the epicness of play. If I end up running a game with magic again, gonna need an alternative.

[Max_Killjoy]

One thing I have noticed in years of playtesting is that players hate it when they expend a resource and dont get anything in return, thus spells which require spell slots better be win buttons if they dont want angry players ragequitting the game after flubbing a dice roll.


Gamers vary so much... we had a homebrew system that had "mana" expenditure and skill rolls. Of course, in that case, a failed skill roll only expended a relatively small amount compered to a successful casting.

[Jormengand]

Gamers vary so much... we had a homebrew system that had "mana" expenditure and skill rolls. Of course, in that case, a failed skill roll only expended a relatively small amount compered to a successful casting.

Speaking of skill rolls and not spending resources on a failure, truenamers actually have one thing going for them in terms of good class design!

They still get the penalty if they pass the truespeak check and the enemy passes their save, or the utterance is successful but doesn't have an effect for some other reason, but so few utterances even allow saves...

[NichG]

If you want magic to be more interesting in that regards, then make it a system which builds up effects over time during a scene rather than just adding chances for it to fizzle or be wasted. For example, Chrono Cross had a system where the battlefield environment had a few elemental slots and every time you use an ability of a certain element, it would push out the oldest element and replace it with the element of your ability. Some abilities had requirements that the environment be all one element before they could be used.

It was honestly a bit clunky, but its an example of how achieving a guaranteed action (casting your summons spell) can be broken down into a necessary set of sub-steps that can be interfered with, have value of their own, etc. Nothing in the system involves failure chances of fizzling, but of course an enemy can use a different element ability, you might be forced to use a different element in an emergency such as needing healing, etc.

[digiman619]

it's kind of why I'm transitioning away from magic when I play in general. It's no fun to flip a switch and be done with things, it makes martial characters seem useless, and when you try to balance it you end up with mages and spell lists just not making much sense. They detract from the epicness of play. If I end up running a game with magic again, gonna need an alternative.

*cough*www.spheresofpower.wikidot.com*cough*

[Jormengand]

*cough*www.spheresofpower.wikidot.com*cough*

Friendly reminder that spheres of power is also fundamentally flawed and is not the answer to everything.

Seriously, how much of your life do you spend monitoring threads so that you can find just the right moment to pop up and ask people if they're ready to accept Spheres of Power as their lord and saviour?

[digiman619]

Friendly reminder that spheres of power is also fundamentally flawed and is not the answer to everything.

Seriously, how much of your life do you spend monitoring threads so that you can find just the right moment to pop up and ask people if they're ready to accept Spheres of Power as their lord and saviour?
No system is perfect. I'm not saying SoP is The One True SystemTM
, but I am saying that it's a simple and flexible system that has a lot going for it. And SoP's flaws are manageable, as opposed to the inherently broken Vancian system.

[Cluedrew]

You know NichG and that part of the thread hit on something that might explain why, for all their problems, win buttons creep into D&D. Well I can think of a number of possible reasons but let me focus on the "spell fizzles". So D&D has a binary system, either you pass the check and get what you want or you fail the check and nothing happens. Well obviously something happens, but it often amounts to reverting to the start. Or in the case of stealth and similar failure as you get caught.

These are actually pretty boring, they don't have a low of nuisances to build off of. Most of the time the system makes this more interesting by adding them up. Example: every attack role people make over a combat. But that doesn't work so well for the singular casting of a spell, unless you break it up like NickG suggested. So it either it doesn't work, which is boring and disappointing, or it works, which is still boring but at least justifies spending a limited resource on it. So things have drifted towards the "it works" outcome.

I'm actually just making this up. But it makes some sense right now.

[Talakeal]

In combat abilities are much easier to balance because the time spent using them is in and of itself a cost.

[Hypersmith]

*cough*www.spheresofpower.wikidot.com*cough*

Appreciate the link, but I'm thinking something like Fate system.

[Lord Raziere]

Appreciate the link, but I'm thinking something like Fate system.

Do you know about Dresden Files RPG or not? I don't want to assume.....

[Swizzler]

So, I often see posters complaining about "win buttons" - things that just work, and solve problems. Like how Invisibility says you just can't be seen, Flight says you can just bypass any obstacle, or the classic D&D Knock spell lets you just open any door, no skill roll, no risk.

Yes, these things just work. So what? Many - heck, most - games are based on abilities that just work. When the knight moves into the same space as the opposing pawn, it just captures the piece. When I set fire to the obsidian "O", it just turns into a portal. When I pass "Go", I just collect $200. Why do RPG players seen so loath to accept the concept of things that just work?

EDIT
Yes, this is the Playground, home of the Playgrounder Fallacy. And, yes, all of the abilities I listed are available in D&D 3e. But I hadn't actually intended to limit this to a 3e discussion.

Reasons I understand so far:

Inaccuracy - some "win" buttons shouldn't actually automatically succeed
exacerbates problems of what is in character vs what makes for a fun game
potentially jarring shift in granularity / level of abstraction*
may exacerbate problems from differences in opinion on correct level of granularity / what is "important".


Reasons why win buttons get a (potentially-undeserved) bad rap:
Association with unbalanced characters in unbalanced games
system / setting disconnect
different people using different definitions of the phrase


* I personally feel that, like Indiana Jones shooting the master swordsman, this is a good thing, but I can see why others might not feel that way.

Agreed. Though just a personal thought... D&D has always been a game where the system has been complex/open enough that pretty much any rules can be min/maxed / abused, and so it has always been up to the DM along with their group to together keep things in check. And of course on the other hand, it's always fine if the entire group is up for min/maxing together... no reason why the DM can't simply keep scaling the challenge up.

So yea... agreed.

[Jay R]

Playing at the higher levels makes magic much too powerful. I find that I start losing interest at about level 12-15. At that point, you aren't struggling against a hostile world; you're running roughshod over pretty much anything. If you don't have to plan carefully to survive, then there's no game and no story - just rolling dice and counting loot.

[Pex]

Playing at the higher levels makes magic much too powerful. I find that I start losing interest at about level 12-15. At that point, you aren't struggling against a hostile world; you're running roughshod over pretty much anything. If you don't have to plan carefully to survive, then there's no game and no story - just rolling dice and counting loot.

That's when you stop taking down the local thieves' guild and instead take on the true boss, the Beholder. You no longer deal with the necromancer in the castle. You deal with his master, the Lich. The evil cultists are gone. Time to deal with the true master behind it all using the cult as a front just to gain treasure and power, the Great Wyrm Red Dragon. Those are just the stereotypes. You can't just go Zap, I win.

[Mutazoia]

That's when you stop taking down the local thieves' guild and instead take on the true boss, the Beholder. You no longer deal with the necromancer in the castle. You deal with his master, the Lich. The evil cultists are gone. Time to deal with the true master behind it all using the cult as a front just to gain treasure and power, the Great Wyrm Red Dragon. Those are just the stereotypes. You can't just go Zap, I win.

Unfortunately, 3.X tends to suffer from what I call "Dragonball Syndrome"...power levels get to be so high that even fighting Gods is a yawn-fest. Evenutally they get so powerful, they are fighting people/things that eat suns for breakfast, because there's nothing else that they can even trip over, let alone take notice of. Higher levels in D&D were not balanced, even in the earlier editions, but when you take 3.X innate inbalance at lower levels, and crank that up for level 20+ .... you might as well just stop the campaign around 15-20 and start from scratch, because the "I win" buttons at lower levels are even more broken at the higher ones, and more numerous.

[Anymage]

That's when you stop taking down the local thieves' guild and instead take on the true boss, the Beholder. You no longer deal with the necromancer in the castle. You deal with his master, the Lich. The evil cultists are gone. Time to deal with the true master behind it all using the cult as a front just to gain treasure and power, the Great Wyrm Red Dragon. Those are just the stereotypes. You can't just go Zap, I win.

Except that's literally what you do. It usually takes more than one zap, sure. But fighting one big baddie does not make for a long-term adventure. At most you get a dungeon crawl through a protected dungeon, but dungeon crawls are the archetypal low-level adventure.

Still not seeing how there's any more here than finding out about the big bad (divinations can do the work here), getting to them (teleport), and then one fight.

[Hypersmith]

Do you know about Dresden Files RPG or not? I don't want to assume.....

I'm pretty new to RPGs in general, I've played and DMd 5e for about a year, and have just started to branch out into other stuff.

[RazorChain]

I'm pretty new to RPGs in general, I've played and DMd 5e for about a year, and have just started to branch out into other stuff.



I recommend widening your horizon, every player should aim at testing at least 10 different systems.

If you only know one system then you have nothing to compare it to. It's like following only one news media all your life, expecting them to tell you the truth because they are run by the biggest media conglomeration. It's like eating turd and thinking it's good because you haven't tasted anything else!

[Darth Ultron]

You know NichG and that part of the thread hit on something that might explain why, for all their problems, win buttons creep into D&D. Well I can think of a number of possible reasons but let me focus on the "spell fizzles". So D&D has a binary system, either you pass the check and get what you want or you fail the check and nothing happens. Well obviously something happens, but it often amounts to reverting to the start. Or in the case of stealth and similar failure as you get caught.

These are actually pretty boring, they don't have a low of nuisances to build off of. Most of the time the system makes this more interesting by adding them up. Example: every attack role people make over a combat. But that doesn't work so well for the singular casting of a spell, unless you break it up like NickG suggested. So it either it doesn't work, which is boring and disappointing, or it works, which is still boring but at least justifies spending a limited resource on it. So things have drifted towards the "it works" outcome.

I'm actually just making this up. But it makes some sense right now.

So just talking about spells, what would you change? A lot of spells do the succeed/fail and a lot of spell do the weaker effect on a save, so what would there be to change?

And stealth sure seems to be all or nothing: your caught or not. How can you really do ''um you get caught, but don't get caught''? Like if a sneaky thief is hiding in the bushes, the guard sees him and cries out an alarm or does not see him and does nothing. What could you put in the middle? The guard sees the thief, but does not sound the alarm?

[oxybe]

Read some of the thread, will not bother parsing the rest because obviously I know the reason /smugness

My take on it is a scope mismatch.

People like doing cool stuff. We like having narrative power and win buttons are fun... if it matches the scope of what we expect our character should be able to win at, as well as those around them.

I'm going to use an abstract sliding scale of power, we'll say 1-5.

At level 1, you generally face difficulty 1 & 2 things and your character is assumed competent in most other mundane tasks depending on their backstory and whatnot.

Now here is where things get interesting:

Our theoretical character reaches level 2 and win buttons are being introduced.

The things our character now faces will vary in difficulty from 1-3, and a difficulty 2 thing is on a higher scope of difficulty then a difficulty 1 so the character having a chance of failing these Dif2 challenges.

I'm not just talking about going from bandits with knives to knights with broadswords, but the flow of the adventure changes as a whole as the characters are now able to do much more then they used to.

IE: while it's possible for a level 1 to succeed a diff2, it's still rather difficult and carries a penalty as they're very much out of their element, while for a level 2 character these things aren't necessarily routine, but they can be managed. our scope does the same in relation to the higher levels, where level 2 finds diff3 very tough, but level 3 finds it challenging but still reasonable.

"Win buttons", if used correctly, should allow a level X character to succeed things at difficulty X-1 by largely giving them a greater narrative control of the situation, showing their competence: other Level X characters will probably succeed with a modicum of effort, but this guy does it as easy as breathing, and can likely leverage the skill to some benefit at difficulty X, not a surefire win as it was at X-1, but helps tilt the circumstances in their favour, as would any other of their abilities.

Now the ones that get hate are the ones that allow a level X character to succeed at difficulty X or higher, things that simply outdo or turn what would be challenges into non-issues or is so broad in what it handles that it starts infringing on the other characters' niches.

On the GM side of the screen, this makes it hard for the GM to properly balance encounters against the party since one person holds a not insignificant ability over the others to influence the direction of the game or session.

TLDR: It's not the existence of win buttons that annoys people: it's win buttons that are given or accessed earlier then they should be, considering the power of the PCs and the difficulty/scope of things they face.

[Quertus]

You know NichG and that part of the thread hit on something that might explain why, for all their problems, win buttons creep into D&D. Well I can think of a number of possible reasons but let me focus on the "spell fizzles". So D&D has a binary system, either you pass the check and get what you want or you fail the check and nothing happens. Well obviously something happens, but it often amounts to reverting to the start. Or in the case of stealth and similar failure as you get caught.

These are actually pretty boring, they don't have a low of nuisances to build off of. Most of the time the system makes this more interesting by adding them up. Example: every attack role people make over a combat. But that doesn't work so well for the singular casting of a spell, unless you break it up like NickG suggested. So it either it doesn't work, which is boring and disappointing, or it works, which is still boring but at least justifies spending a limited resource on it. So things have drifted towards the "it works" outcome.

I'm actually just making this up. But it makes some sense right now.

The party encounters a locked door. So, either the rogue fails his check, and nothing happens, which is boring and disappointing, or it works, which is boring but at least justifies spending limited build resources on it?

I think I missed your point.


One thing I have noticed in years of playtesting is that players hate it when they expend a resource and dont get anything in return, thus spells which require spell slots better be win buttons if they dont want angry players ragequitting the game after flubbing a dice roll.

Hmmm... I had just intended to try to understand why people didn't like win buttons - perhaps I should have created a more neutral thread, so people could also express their love of win buttons. Live and learn.

This is a mostly true point. It's horrible when a limited resource which had a significant opportunity cost produces no result. This makes choosing that resource (instead of, say, being able to pick locks or swing a sword all day) seem pointless, and makes the system seem poorly designed.

But there are people who enjoy things being more of a gamble - this is why "having a gambling problem" is a thing.


it's kind of why I'm transitioning away from magic when I play in general. It's no fun to flip a switch and be done with things, it makes martial characters seem useless, and when you try to balance it you end up with mages and spell lists just not making much sense. They detract from the epicness of play. If I end up running a game with magic again, gonna need an alternative.

So... Having to walk for months feels more epic than being able to teleport? Having to turn around because of a large hole in the ground feels more epic than being able to cross it? Being unable to win because the informant is dead, or on another plane, feels more epic than having solutions?

I feel we must be using very different definitions of the feel of epic.


In combat abilities are much easier to balance because the time spent using them is in and of itself a cost.

And here I've been, arguing for making all spells at will, to make balancing them easier.

[Florian]

D&D practically forces players to look for "I win buttons". That´s the major flaw for this whole system, as any test, any roll, can only generate a binary pass/fail result. The core rules don´t even include something like "extended test" or the often derided "skill challenge".

So, naturally, you build your character to succeed, either directly influencing the mechanics or using available discreet rules elements (spells, class features, magic items, etc.) to bypass the situation.
That´s basically a good thing, because we want our players to succeed and proceed along the story/campaign. But it´s also something that the machines force upon us. Other systems have finer tuned skill systems with margins of success and failure, for example, and the magic system is tied into that, like a "chameleon spell" giving a 3 step bonus on the stealth skill result, and so on.

I rather think that D&D has three very annoying parts when it comes to "I win buttons".
- Skills, feats and spells do not even remotely play in the same league and don´t even use the same core mechanics.
- Consumables are cheap and can be created. So instead of being forced to make a choice when preparing spells, you outsource a lot of basic "I win buttons" to WBL.
- "Creative use of spells". Meaning there´re so many specialized spells with the usual vague design, someone will always find a use for them.

It might have been better when some skills or feats "unlock" certain spells (and corresponding slots). Like Disable Device 5 giving the Knock spell, Stealth 5 giving the Invisibility spell, and so on.

[Pex]

Unfortunately, 3.X tends to suffer from what I call "Dragonball Syndrome"...power levels get to be so high that even fighting Gods is a yawn-fest. Evenutally they get so powerful, they are fighting people/things that eat suns for breakfast, because there's nothing else that they can even trip over, let alone take notice of. Higher levels in D&D were not balanced, even in the earlier editions, but when you take 3.X innate inbalance at lower levels, and crank that up for level 20+ .... you might as well just stop the campaign around 15-20 and start from scratch, because the "I win" buttons at lower levels are even more broken at the higher ones, and more numerous.


Except that's literally what you do. It usually takes more than one zap, sure. But fighting one big baddie does not make for a long-term adventure. At most you get a dungeon crawl through a protected dungeon, but dungeon crawls are the archetypal low-level adventure.

Still not seeing how there's any more here than finding out about the big bad (divinations can do the work here), getting to them (teleport), and then one fight.

You answer the thread question. There is that.

Still, again it comes down to personal taste. You are not preferring that at the high levels your staple adventure types don't work anymore. You won't adapt your style to fit the new normal of high level play. The big numbers. The flashy spells. They're anathema to you. That doesn't make them terrible, broken, or ruin the game. They're just not for you.

[Cluedrew]

So just talking about spells, what would you change? A lot of spells do the succeed/fail and a lot of spell do the weaker effect on a save, so what would there be to change?I would probably overhaul the system completely. I know the magic system I made for my RPG looks nothing D&D spell casting. Of course I was going for a very different aesthetic there as well.


How can you really do ''um you get caught, but don't get caught''? [...] The guard sees the thief, but does not sound the alarm?Perfect! The guard sees you but hasn't raise the alarm yet. You have a chance to stop the alarm from being sounded.


I think I missed your point.Hence the "I'm just making this up." Of course often the rogue can try again, although the lost time might have some issues. More importantly, it is a rough idea that works in some cases, I haven't fit into my grand unified theory of role-playing yet.

[NichG]

So just talking about spells, what would you change? A lot of spells do the succeed/fail and a lot of spell do the weaker effect on a save, so what would there be to change?

A combat example from systems I've used recently.

One system is based on the idea that characters have resource pools which are used both to power abilities and to avoid the worst-case consequences of bad things sent their way. For example, if someone attacks you with a sword it basically is assumed to, by default, automatically hit you and probably disable or kill you outright. However, you can always spend resources to reduce those consequences as long as you have the appropriate kind of resource to spend, and you can choose between an expensive 'I totally avoid all consequences' defense and a weaker 'I mitigate the worst of it and tough out the rest' defense which lets through secondary debuffs and things like that. Those secondary effects can be specific to the target, like 'you now move slower because your leg is injured', but one of the common forms of secondary is that they provide a generic pool of 'leverage' that one side of the fight has over the other.

Leverage is built-up advantage that can be used by other characters on the same side to augment subsequent actions, and there are various abilities which interact further with leverage or let it do additional things.

So in this system, you might have a spell 'cause papercut' and a spell 'cursed fate' and a spell 'destroy the soul'. If you open up with 'destroy the soul', your target will just spend the points to full-evade and basically reduce it to the equivalent of a fixed amount of hitpoint damage. Of course, this will cost you more than casting 'cause papercut' would, but if you can fake them out and get them to full-evade against cause papercut then that's the better option at the start. But when the enemy side is tapped out of their pools, 'cause papercut' and 'cursed fate' can't actually deliver a killing blow no matter what, though 'destroy the soul' of course can. If 'cursed fate' has a secondary which grants your side leverage, you might be able to trick the enemy into letting the secondary hit them in order to save points, but then have someone else turn around and use that leverage to make 'destroy the soul' too expensive to dodge.

Basically the point is, since you're working from a finite pool of resources and deciding in sequential order how they should be allocated in the face of uncertainty, everything you do tends to at least a little bit chain into the next part of the situation.

For non-combat examples, the tricky thing is that you need some kind of tension which prevents condensing sets of related chained actions into a fixed procedure: 'I do the same 20 actions I always do, lets call that SOP #35'. That tension could be from the possibility of failure, but its better if you can make it some kind of systematic changes going on with the situation at hand. For example, if we're talking stealth, then the systematic change could take the form of an 'alert level' which, as the guards get more and more evidence that something is going on, leads to more frequent patrols, more force being made ready to deploy in case the intrusion is actually discovered, etc. It could also be that as the infiltration proceeds, there's a timeline of things going on that might make some opportunities appear or disappear - if you take too long, the CEO gets back from dinner or the morning shift change happens or ...

Another way to make that tension more automatic (and therefore require less work from the DM) is to make there be long-lived traces to any action of significance that get carried along for multiple sessions. One type of ability that works this way is to combine a 'win button' with a 'Murphy'. Something goes totally right now, in exchange for something going unavoidably wrong at an uncontrollable point in the future. E.g. whenever you use the 'Open Lock' spell, that lock opens no matter what but also there will be some lock in the future that should be openable that will be fused shut and completely jammed. Presumably you could (and should) make more complex systems where the extended consequences can also be positive and can chain into things other party members can do, or even have it go to an ambient sort of set of conditions which both the party and the opposition can contest over who gets to tap.

[Hypersmith]

I recommend widening your horizon, every player should aim at testing at least 10 different systems.

If you only know one system then you have nothing to compare it to. It's like following only one news media all your life, expecting them to tell you the truth because they are run by the biggest media conglomeration. It's like eating turd and thinking it's good because you haven't tasted anything else!

I'm taking it easy, 5e was easy to get into and I enjoyed the games I played, but the more I got into it the more unsatisfied I was, so I'm branching out.

[Faily]

That's when you stop taking down the local thieves' guild and instead take on the true boss, the Beholder. You no longer deal with the necromancer in the castle. You deal with his master, the Lich. The evil cultists are gone. Time to deal with the true master behind it all using the cult as a front just to gain treasure and power, the Great Wyrm Red Dragon. Those are just the stereotypes. You can't just go Zap, I win.

+1 to this, and this is the kind of progression in our games we've enjoyed for many years in the different groups I play in.

[Talakeal]

And here I've been, arguing for making all spells at will, to make balancing them easier.

Can we have a serious discussion about this?

I would love to hear ideas about a system where you can balance this sort of thing.

In my experience doing it right means cutting out so many elements of what makes a wizard cool or entire aspects of the game.

Now, I assume you don't actually want "balance," as your previous couple of threads have indicated that you like games where casters are flat out better than muggles, but it is still hard to have any semblance of balance when the really cool things wizards can do become at will.


For example:

If wizards have buffs every group that doesn't have a dedicated "buff monkey," is at a massive disadvantage in every area.
If wizards have mind control / summoning abilities they need to have a very very short duration or we get into endless armies that are impossible to manage.
If wizards can heal wounds we need to throw out the whole resource management aspect of the game and most encounters cease to be meaningful from either a tactical or narrative sense.
If wizards can transmute / conjure / or craft objects the economy ceases to be a factor.
If wizards have spells like long distance teleportation or creating food the setting no longer makes any sense unless you do something like Tippyverse.

Etc. etc.

I would really like to discuss ways around these problems, although it might warrant a new thread.

[Hypersmith]

Can we have a serious discussion about this?

I would love to hear ideas about a system where you can balance this sort of thing.

In my experience doing it right means cutting out so many elements of what makes a wizard cool or entire aspects of the game.

Now, I assume you don't actually want "balance," as your previous couple of threads have indicated that you like games where casters are flat out better than muggles, but it is still hard to have any semblance of balance when the really cool things wizards can do become at will.


For example:

If wizards have buffs every group that doesn't have a dedicated "buff monkey," is at a massive disadvantage in every area.
If wizards have mind control / summoning abilities they need to have a very very short duration or we get into endless armies that are impossible to manage.
If wizards can heal wounds we need to throw out the whole resource management aspect of the game and most encounters cease to be meaningful from either a tactical or narrative sense.
If wizards can transmute / conjure / or craft objects the economy ceases to make sense.
If wizards have spells like long distance teleportation or creating food the world no longer makes any sense.

Etc. etc.

I would really like to discuss ways around these problems, although it might warrant a new thread.

I agree it might need a new thread. However, I thinkbifnthere is to be any semblance of balance there need to be repercussions to using magic, or it must shouldn't be game breaking powerful.

[Quertus]

Now, I assume you don't actually want "balance," as your previous couple of threads have indicated that you like games where casters are flat out better than muggles,

Um... I'll come back to the rest of your post (and several others') later, but I wanted to address this now: no. No, I don't want casters to be better than muggles.

I think that, in some ways, casters are better than muggles. But, despite the fact that "I play mages" is one of 100+ things I should hotkey, "I want muggles to be better than mages" should probably also be one of my hotkeys.

One of the most recent parties my signature character, Quertus, for whom this account is named, adventured with, my tactically inept academia mage decidedly took a backseat to the keen vorpal great cleave fighter, let alone the (figurative) goddess monk who seemed more than capable of soloing... well, everything, to be honest. The only thing she couldn't do was slap Quertus (not for lack of trying), due to him having created a custom dwoemer for just such purposes. The only reason they kept him around was because his teleportation / plane shift / gate / etc was faster than walking, so they could get back to drinking / training / petting fluffy bunnies / whatever faster.

That's the sort of party I prefer.

[Hooligan]

Um... I'll come back to the rest of your post (and several others') later, but I wanted to address this now: no. No, I don't want casters to be better than muggles.

I think that, in some ways, casters are better than muggles. But, despite the fact that "I play mages" is one of 100+ things I should hotkey, "I want muggles to be better than mages" should probably also be one of my hotkeys.

One of the last parties my signature character, Quertus, for whom this account is named, adventured with, my tactically inept academia mage decidedly took a backseat to the keen vorpal great cleave fighter, let alone the (figurative) goddess monk who seemed more than capable of soloing... well, everything, to be honest. The only thing she couldn't do was slap Quertus (not for lack of trying), due to him having created a custom dwoemer for just such purposes. The only reason they kept him around was because his teleportation / plane shift / gate / etc was faster than walking, so they could get back to drinking / training / petting fluffy bunnies / whatever faster.

That's the sort of party I prefer.

nice humblebrag. are we supposed to take something else away from this?

[Anymage]

So just talking about spells, what would you change? A lot of spells do the succeed/fail and a lot of spell do the weaker effect on a save, so what would there be to change?

Two things. Maybe three.

First, have a more robust system instead of D&D's accretion. If invisibility gave +20 to stealth and there were more ways for a super perceptive character to gain a super high perception skill, you couldn't just cast invisibility on a random person and let them walk around willy-nilly. I want to feel like character build matters more than my equipment list and what's in my spellbook.

Second, get rid of generalist casters. And/or make the cost to learn spells actually meaningful. Using the JaronK tier list, there's a categorical difference between "has some broken toys" and "has all the broken toys". Someone who has a limited list of power is easier to plan around, especially if it's a themed list. And it's easier to handle any specific broken powers as they come up. Handling bookfulls is another matter entirely.


And stealth sure seems to be all or nothing: your caught or not. How can you really do ''um you get caught, but don't get caught''? Like if a sneaky thief is hiding in the bushes, the guard sees him and cries out an alarm or does not see him and does nothing. What could you put in the middle? The guard sees the thief, but does not sound the alarm?

The guard hears something suspicious, and tells his buddy that he's going to take a look, but doesn't raise the alarm just yet.

An extended test/skill challenge/whatever you want to call it can raise tension by breaking the task into a series of rolls instead of hinging the whole thing on one binary action. Especially if there's some sort of limited plot pool the player has to decide how and when they want to apply. That would also work if it were magical; an extended test to see if the PC could scry the bad guy's lair instead of D&D's current system of asking if the DM remembered to put anti-scrying defenses in place.


Can we have a serious discussion about this?

I would love to hear ideas about a system where you can balance this sort of thing.

In my experience doing it right means cutting out so many elements of what makes a wizard cool or entire aspects of the game.

Now, I assume you don't actually want "balance," as your previous couple of threads have indicated that you like games where casters are flat out better than muggles, but it is still hard to have any semblance of balance when the really cool things wizards can do become at will.

Separate "magic you can do more or less on a whim" from "ritual magic that is lengthy, costly, uncertain, and/or dangerous".

It wouldn't hurt to give high level "mundanes" nigh-supernatural tricks of their own, and to ask that your caster's book of day-to-day tricks is smaller. I don't mind your wizard telling me the ritual effects you want, and me telling you the adventures you need to go on to get the required materials, support, and whatnot. The problem comes when those adventures are solved by flipping through rulebooks to find just the right solutions to short-circuit the adventures.

[digiman619]

Um... I'll come back to the rest of your post (and several others') later, but I wanted to address this now: no. No, I don't want casters to be better than muggles.

I think that, in some ways, casters are better than muggles. But, despite the fact that "I play mages" is one of 100+ things I should hotkey, "I want muggles to be better than mages" should probably also be one of my hotkeys.

One of the last parties my signature character, Quertus, for whom this account is named, adventured with, my tactically inept academia mage decidedly took a backseat to the keen vorpal great cleave fighter, let alone the (figurative) goddess monk who seemed more than capable of soloing... well, everything, to be honest. The only thing she couldn't do was slap Quertus (not for lack of trying), due to him having created a custom dwoemer for just such purposes. The only reason they kept him around was because his teleportation / plane shift / gate / etc was faster than walking, so they could get back to drinking / training / petting fluffy bunnies / whatever faster.

That's the sort of party I prefer.
You like playing highly handicapped T1 characters next to PO martials? You do realize you're in the minority about that, right?

[Faily]

You like playing highly handicapped T1 characters next to PO martials? You do realize you're in the minority about that, right?

I do not think that's a minority, tbh. I've seen way more playgroups being excited for the level when the casters finally pick up Teleport so that they don't have to walk around all the time, than I've seen playgroups complaining about it. And I've only once or twice actually seen anything resembling close to the "always prepared for anything"-casters that the Playground loves to throw around all the time as game-breakers. Frankly, I wasn't aware that some people had such a huge distaste for even entertaining the idea of using Knock, Invisibility, and Teleport until I started actively lurking around these forums, because it had never been a problem in the different groups I play in, nor in our local gaming club (which has a little short of 200 members).

Yes, it's anectodal evidence, but that's the only thing all of us can bring to the table here.

What Quertus wrote about seems more to me like most of the groups I have played with, or that others in our community here play in.

[Pex]

I do not think that's a minority, tbh. I've seen way more playgroups being excited for the level when the casters finally pick up Teleport so that they don't have to walk around all the time, than I've seen playgroups complaining about it. And I've only once or twice actually seen anything resembling close to the "always prepared for anything"-casters that the Playground loves to throw around all the time as game-breakers. Frankly, I wasn't aware that some people had such a huge distaste for even entertaining the idea of using Knock, Invisibility, and Teleport until I started actively lurking around these forums, because it had never been a problem in the different groups I play in, nor in our local gaming club (which has a little short of 200 members).

Yes, it's anectodal evidence, but that's the only thing all of us can bring to the table here.

What Quertus wrote about seems more to me like most of the groups I have played with, or that others in our community here play in.

Indeed. In my Pathfinder game the fighter was happy when my arcanist learned Web and even happier when I used it against a rust monster. The rogue was thrilled when the druid's Entangle spell caught the drake preventing it from flying. Funny thing, unlike these Forums, not one warrior player in all the games I've played has ever resented a spellcaster casting a spell, especially when said spell did in that particular case make the combat easier.

[BRC]

I do not think that's a minority, tbh. I've seen way more playgroups being excited for the level when the casters finally pick up Teleport so that they don't have to walk around all the time, than I've seen playgroups complaining about it. And I've only once or twice actually seen anything resembling close to the "always prepared for anything"-casters that the Playground loves to throw around all the time as game-breakers. Frankly, I wasn't aware that some people had such a huge distaste for even entertaining the idea of using Knock, Invisibility, and Teleport until I started actively lurking around these forums, because it had never been a problem in the different groups I play in, nor in our local gaming club (which has a little short of 200 members).

Yes, it's anectodal evidence, but that's the only thing all of us can bring to the table here.

What Quertus wrote about seems more to me like most of the groups I have played with, or that others in our community here play in.

It's a question of whether the caster is helping the GROUP succeed, or whether the caster is effortlessly completing a task somebody else had built their character to perform.

With Teleport, it's rarely a problem, as few games have characters who specialize in transporting the party across the map. One the wizard picks up Teleport, it's not like anybody else's character becomes obsolete.

With Invisibility, it may or may not be a problem. Usually, it's fine. Pre-invisibility, only the stealthy characters can sneak, but that means splitting the party. Once you have access to Invisibility, you can bring a few additional characters along by expending resources (meanwhile, a stealthy character can sneak without expending resources). So, stealth becomes a more viable approach, since more characters can come along. The Rogue's investment in stealth becomes more valuable in return.
It becomes a problem if you reach a point where the Wizard can render the entire party invisible without expending much in the way of additional resources. Now suddenly the Rouge may as well have not put points into stealth, because the wizard might as well just make them invisible with everybody else. Suddenly, the Rogue no longer needs their own stealth skill, since the Wizard is making the entire party more invisible than the Rouge could ever be on their own.

With Knock, you're basically just replacing the Rouge's ability to pick locks. At pretty low levels in fact. There's a major part of your character's role that the Wizard not only can fill, they can do better than you ever could, since Knock doesn't involve rolling dice, just declaring "Hey, the lock is picked now".

The idea that the Caster can do what you can do, better than you can do it, and without even investing very much into being able to do it. That's the problem.

Web and Entangle don't really "Replace" anybody else's character sheet. Dealing damage is additive with how much damage the rest of the party is dealing. A wizard that uses Fireball to soften up the enemies before the Fighters charge in is going to be more successful if he's got good fighters helping out. The Wizard and the Fighters are succeeding together. Similarly, a wizard who uses Web against a monster will only win because the Fighters chopped the monster to bits before it broke free. They won Together.


"I Win" Buttons like Knock or instant-kill spells are not the party winning Together, it's the Caster winning alone. The only reason for the rest of the party to be there is to do stuff when the Wizard has run out of/doesn't feel like spending Resources.

When you start to approach challenges as "Should we actually try to solve this, or do we just have the Wizard spend a spell slot to make this problem go away", it's hard for the rest of the party to feel worthwhile.

[Talakeal]

Indeed. In my Pathfinder game the fighter was happy when my arcanist learned Web and even happier when I used it against a rust monster. The rogue was thrilled when the druid's Entangle spell caught the drake preventing it from flying. Funny thing, unlike these Forums, not one warrior player in all the games I've played has ever resented a spellcaster casting a spell, especially when said spell did in that particular case make the combat easier.

You are truly living in a blessed realm.

Out of curiosity, have you ever had a player have to sit out an entire encounter because they were caught in a Force Cage or other "no save just lose" spell?

[Anymage]

I do not think that's a minority, tbh. I've seen way more playgroups being excited for the level when the casters finally pick up Teleport so that they don't have to walk around all the time, than I've seen playgroups complaining about it. And I've only once or twice actually seen anything resembling close to the "always prepared for anything"-casters that the Playground loves to throw around all the time as game-breakers. Frankly, I wasn't aware that some people had such a huge distaste for even entertaining the idea of using Knock, Invisibility, and Teleport until I started actively lurking around these forums, because it had never been a problem in the different groups I play in, nor in our local gaming club (which has a little short of 200 members).

Yes, it's anectodal evidence, but that's the only thing all of us can bring to the table here.

What Quertus wrote about seems more to me like most of the groups I have played with, or that others in our community here play in.

Sometimes the wizard steps on someone else's toes, sometimes he doesn't. Other players are often happy when they have a support caster around.

The 4e controller, who debuffs the enemies or sets up battlefield conditions, is fine. The wizard who invalidates another character with a couple of tricks (say, a wand of knock and a wand of invisibility replacing the rogue) is not fine. More importantly, having to balance encounters around the wizard negating multiple issues is tricky. (E.G: structuring a fight against air elementals on the assumption that the party will have flight spells cast on them, see invisibility spells cast on them, and electricity resistance spells cast on them. That's awfully swingy to assume based on a specific daily spell loadout, and limits what other characters can do without the wizard's help.) And most importantly, while players can like loads of powers, DMing can often be a pain when you have to read through tons of books lest your whole adventure be brought down with a handful of well-placed spells. If you feel like taking a swing at the six plot challenge, feel free to have at it.

That also bypasses the win button nature of the thread. A webbed enemy is easier, but not an autokill. Cloudkill and a forcecage on a nonteleporting foe may be fun the first time or two, but gets boring fast when it becomes SOP.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

That's a big part of the problem imo, and can be seen in the thread about Fighters against high level threats in the 3.5 subforum: if the other characters can't suceed without the mage and the mage could have succeeded without them, the rest of the party are pointless side characters.

[Quertus]

nice humblebrag. are we supposed to take something else away from this?

I'm not familiar with the term, but I can guess. :smallannoyed:

Since the first however many times I said I prefer, if there is an imbalance, for that imbalance to favor the muggles didn't sink in, I figured I'd try a more memorable story approach.

What are you supposed to take away? That I'll hold the same opinion, repeatedly. That I'll repeat myself, repeatedly. That I'll eventually try different approaches, if my first approach seems to fail, repeatedly. But, most of all, that, if there is an imbalance, I prefer it to favor muggles That's what you're supposed to take away. Everything else was thrown in for free. :smalltongue:


You like playing highly handicapped T1 characters next to PO martials? You do realize you're in the minority about that, right?


I do not think that's a minority, tbh. I've seen way more playgroups being excited for the level when the casters finally pick up Teleport so that they don't have to walk around all the time, than I've seen playgroups complaining about it. And I've only once or twice actually seen anything resembling close to the "always prepared for anything"-casters that the Playground loves to throw around all the time as game-breakers. Frankly, I wasn't aware that some people had such a huge distaste for even entertaining the idea of using Knock, Invisibility, and Teleport until I started actively lurking around these forums, because it had never been a problem in the different groups I play in, nor in our local gaming club (which has a little short of 200 members).

Yes, it's anectodal evidence, but that's the only thing all of us can bring to the table here.

What Quertus wrote about seems more to me like most of the groups I have played with, or that others in our community here play in.

Sounds like you've played with about as many people as I can still remember names of people I've gamed with (I actually tested myself the other day - I'm bad with names :smallredface:). Nice to hear my experience isn't actually that unusual. And that many people show win buttons the appreciation they deserve.

Now, I doubt many people play my style of "properly balanced" games, where monks and fighters get to shine quite so bright next to tier 1 casters, even through high epic levels, but feel free to correct me if your experience matches mine there, too.

[Mechalich]

I do not think that's a minority, tbh. I've seen way more playgroups being excited for the level when the casters finally pick up Teleport so that they don't have to walk around all the time, than I've seen playgroups complaining about it. And I've only once or twice actually seen anything resembling close to the "always prepared for anything"-casters that the Playground loves to throw around all the time as game-breakers. Frankly, I wasn't aware that some people had such a huge distaste for even entertaining the idea of using Knock, Invisibility, and Teleport until I started actively lurking around these forums, because it had never been a problem in the different groups I play in, nor in our local gaming club (which has a little short of 200 members).

Yes, it's anectodal evidence, but that's the only thing all of us can bring to the table here.


A large percentage, perhaps even the majority, of D&D payers take their cue from the implicit input of the designers, which even in 3.5 and Pathfinder is skewed towards an incredibly low optimization level or even deliberately de-optimized. Published adventures and the majority of DMs accommodate this by playing many monsters to well under their potential or simply not using huge numbers of level appropriate monsters and abilities to completely shut down whole classes. Some also take it a step further by pushing back hard against 'I win' strategies at low level (for example, the 1st Level sorcerer took Color Spray and Sleep - prepare to face undead for the next ten encounters), or simply disallow many of the tricks that optimization relies upon (the number of GMs who allow minionomancy is minimal). Many experienced players - such as Quertus by his own admission - routinely handicap T1-2 characters to almost extreme levels in order to allow this to occur.

Additionally, the number of game groups that incorporate the impacts of D&D's incredibly high magic levels into their worldbuilding is puny, in large part because the published settings explicitly ignore this. The Forgotten Realms - to use the most obvious example - makes exactly zero sense by RAW and simply breaks into a million pieces when stressed at all hard. That's why the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting has 'The Role of the Mighty' as a sidebar. That's Ed Greenwood openly pleading for the playerbase to play nice so that the Realms works.

The problem is, at some point in most gamer's careers the scales fall from their eyes and they realize something like 'crap, FR makes no sense' or 'hey this absurd metamagic reducer combination I found is totally legal' or 'this ubercharger build can one-shot balors' or any number of similar revelations and once they either smash through affiliated playgroups by abusing the win buttons or they become massively disillusioned by the game as a whole. Note that this phenomenon is not unique to D&D, similar breakdowns happen with games like oWoD, Exalted, and many others, especially in rules-heavy systems. Good game design is hard even for the highly constrained inputs and outputs of board games, tabletop games, especially those with pseudo-universal pretensions like D&D tend to crash and burn when put to the test.

[Pex]

You are truly living in a blessed realm.

Out of curiosity, have you ever had a player have to sit out an entire encounter because they were caught in a Force Cage or other "no save just lose" spell?

It has happened from time to time. Of course it's a bummer when it does, but it's not every combat and not the same character repeatedly. Everyone gets their moment to shine and moment of "oh were you there?".

[Necroticplague]

Because I prefer a more tactical game than a strategic one. Challenges should be about finding how you can use what you have to overcome the challenges you face. Exercises in managing how many perfect solutions you have aren't interesting challenges to me. So, to that end, I prefer a wide variety of always-usable abilities that can be part of the solution, but are never the whole solution. I understand some people prefer fantasy accounting, and thus appreciate counting their win buttons, but it's not my style.

[Jerrykhor]

It has happened from time to time. Of course it's a bummer when it does, but it's not every combat and not the same character repeatedly. Everyone gets their moment to shine and moment of "oh were you there?".

I think Matt Colville has discouraged DMs to use spells without save per round like Banishment on players, which would take a player out of the whole fight. As Matt would have said, 'the players come to the table to roll dice and kill stuff', its just bad design if you force one of them to sit on the sidelines and do nothing.

[Quertus]

Indeed. In my Pathfinder game the fighter was happy when my arcanist learned Web and even happier when I used it against a rust monster. The rogue was thrilled when the druid's Entangle spell caught the drake preventing it from flying. Funny thing, unlike these Forums, not one warrior player in all the games I've played has ever resented a spellcaster casting a spell, especially when said spell did in that particular case make the combat easier.

Nice to hear that working as a team isn't dead. :smallcool:


It's a question of whether the caster is helping the GROUP succeed, or whether the caster is effortlessly completing a task somebody else had built their character to perform.

With Teleport, it's rarely a problem, as few games have characters who specialize in transporting the party across the map. One the wizard picks up Teleport, it's not like anybody else's character becomes obsolete.

With Invisibility, it may or may not be a problem. Usually, it's fine. Pre-invisibility, only the stealthy characters can sneak, but that means splitting the party. Once you have access to Invisibility, you can bring a few additional characters along by expending resources (meanwhile, a stealthy character can sneak without expending resources). So, stealth becomes a more viable approach, since more characters can come along. The Rogue's investment in stealth becomes more valuable in return.
It becomes a problem if you reach a point where the Wizard can render the entire party invisible without expending much in the way of additional resources. Now suddenly the Rouge may as well have not put points into stealth, because the wizard might as well just make them invisible with everybody else. Suddenly, the Rogue no longer needs their own stealth skill, since the Wizard is making the entire party more invisible than the Rouge could ever be on their own.

With Knock, you're basically just replacing the Rouge's ability to pick locks. At pretty low levels in fact. There's a major part of your character's role that the Wizard not only can fill, they can do better than you ever could, since Knock doesn't involve rolling dice, just declaring "Hey, the lock is picked now".

The idea that the Caster can do what you can do, better than you can do it, and without even investing very much into being able to do it. That's the problem.

Web and Entangle don't really "Replace" anybody else's character sheet. Dealing damage is additive with how much damage the rest of the party is dealing. A wizard that uses Fireball to soften up the enemies before the Fighters charge in is going to be more successful if he's got good fighters helping out. The Wizard and the Fighters are succeeding together. Similarly, a wizard who uses Web against a monster will only win because the Fighters chopped the monster to bits before it broke free. They won Together.


"I Win" Buttons like Knock or instant-kill spells are not the party winning Together, it's the Caster winning alone. The only reason for the rest of the party to be there is to do stuff when the Wizard has run out of/doesn't feel like spending Resources.

When you start to approach challenges as "Should we actually try to solve this, or do we just have the Wizard spend a spell slot to make this problem go away", it's hard for the rest of the party to feel worthwhile.

Well, I've built characters with mastery of logistics, and it's how I "won" a "good vs evil" game. It's something I really care about. But I've still never been upset when someone decided to win button my efforts.

I suspect that there are several reasons for this. First is the character themselves. Those characters weren't just logistics, or any one other thing, either. Using a win button on one aspect of the character just lets them focus on some other aspects of their capabilities.

Secondly, is attitude. My characters are who they are, independent of anyone else. The existence of Einstein doesn't make me any less brilliant. Or, perhaps, the existence of me doesn't make Einstein any less brilliant. Whichever.

And "Wand of Knock" really ought to be a UMD Rogue thing. A wizard wasting money on a (fully charged) wand of knock is suboptimal; doing so when you have a perfectly good Rogue in your party is both very suboptimal and being a ****. Doing so in a pickup game? Meh, someone else could have brought a better Rogue, making your Rogue obsolete, so I'm not seeing the big deal.

But, other than the fact that my characters are not so one-dimensional as to be so easily obsoleted, I generally agree with your assessment that obsoleting another character is generally bad form, and that win buttons could facilitate that process, if used on those who not only don't have win buttons themselves, but also have less facets to their character than another character has win buttons. Although, at that point, I suspect the problem is more with the system, that one character could have more win buttons than another character has buttons, than with the concept of win buttons themselves.

[Draconi Redfir]

"I Win" Buttons like Knock or instant-kill spells are not the party winning Together, it's the Caster winning alone. The only reason for the rest of the party to be there is to do stuff when the Wizard has run out of/doesn't feel like spending Resources.

When you start to approach challenges as "Should we actually try to solve this, or do we just have the Wizard spend a spell slot to make this problem go away", it's hard for the rest of the party to feel worthwhile.

quoting for enphasis

[Mutazoia]

"I win" buttons, for an TTRPG, are the same as cheat codes for video games. They take all the challenge and fun out of the game.

[icefractal]

I don't know why people always present Knock as the exemplar of win buttons. Yes, it opens doors and so does the Rogue (sometimes), but:
1) Opening doors is not the sole or primary ability of the Rogue.
2) Nor is it Rogue-specific. Other classes can get that skill, and not all Rogues have it.
3) But most importantly - anyone can break a door down!

Seriously, people give doors waaay too much credit. In video games, they may be an impenetrable barrier that requires finding the right key (which is conveniently in the area), but in D&D they are just wood/stone/metal objects. If you can beat an animated object or golem, you can definitely beat an inanimate one.

If Knock obsoletes anyone, it isn't the person with Open Lock (why wouldn't you try that first anyway, it's free), it's the Barbarian with a big hammer that would otherwise have been "plan B" for the skill failing.

[BRC]

Well, I've built characters with mastery of logistics, and it's how I "won" a "good vs evil" game. It's something I really care about. But I've still never been upset when someone decided to win button my efforts.

I suspect that there are several reasons for this. First is the character themselves. Those characters weren't just logistics, or any one other thing, either. Using a win button on one aspect of the character just lets them focus on some other aspects of their capabilities.

Secondly, is attitude. My characters are who they are, independent of anyone else. The existence of Einstein doesn't make me any less brilliant. Or, perhaps, the existence of me doesn't make Einstein any less brilliant. Whichever.

And "Wand of Knock" really ought to be a UMD Rogue thing. A wizard wasting money on a (fully charged) wand of knock is suboptimal; doing so when you have a perfectly good Rogue in your party is both very suboptimal and being a ****. Doing so in a pickup game? Meh, someone else could have brought a better Rogue, making your Rogue obsolete, so I'm not seeing the big deal.

But, other than the fact that my characters are not so one-dimensional as to be so easily obsoleted, I generally agree with your assessment that obsoleting another character is generally bad form, and that win buttons could facilitate that process, if used on those who not only don't have win buttons themselves, but also have less facets to their character than another character has win buttons. Although, at that point, I suspect the problem is more with the system, that one character could have more win buttons than another character has buttons, than with the concept of win buttons themselves.

A character doesn't have to become totally obsolete for things to start feeling bad, you just need to reach a point where it feels like you paid an unnecessary cost, or where something you consider a key part of your character's identity gets overshadowed.

Like, lets say you expect the campaign to involve a lot of delving into ancient ruins. So, you build your character as a scholar, and you spend a lot of points to be able to read the ancient language of the forgotten civilization whose ruins you're delving. Maybe this was a point buy system, and it cost a lot of points to read the ancient language, or maybe it's just what was forefront in your head when you made the character. You can also fight, sneak, disarm traps and the like, but being The Guy Who Can Read The Runes is a key part of your character. Even if, mechanically it's just one of many things you can do, "Being the Guy Who can Read the Runes" was a major part of why you built this character.

Then, somebody else makes Bob The Wizard. Bob has his own thing going on, and isn't The Guy Who Can Read The Runes. But, a couple levels down the line, Bob picks up "Comprehend Languages" as a spell. This lets him perfectly understand EVERY language, including the Ancient Language!

Now, your character's role is overshadowed. In-narrative you're still the Scholar who has spent his life learning this ancient language. But mechanically Bob can read it just as well as you can.

A big part of the Fantasy of RPGs is feeling Special. "This Victory wouldn't have been possible without me" is a great feeling. "If I hadn't deciphered those runes, we wouldn't have won".
But, when somebody else comes in with an I Win button, you don't get to say that. "Oh boy, if I hadn't been here to decipher those runes...Bob would have had to expend an additional spell slot". When another character becomes as good, or better, than what you consider to be your character's Specialty, you're denied that fantasy. What's the point if building your scholar character if you're not even the best one to decipher to runes. You're just another warm body, denied to role you imagined for yourself in the narrative.

The Existence of Einstein doesn't make anybody less brilliant, but if you've built your character to be "The Best Physicist In the Party", and somebody else shows up with "Summon Einstein", where does that leave you when it's time to do some physics? You might as well have just built The Best Baker In The Party, and taken "Summon Einstein" yourself, then you would have physics AND muffins.

At the same time, this hypothetical scholar-rouge character probably wouldn't mind of the Wizard I-Win buttoned away lockpicking or trapfinding checks. In the player's mind, the character is primarily a scholar of the ancient civilization, with the lockpicking and trapfinding being incidental skills on his character sheet.

Eventually, you can reach a point where a player feels like the group wouldn't have lost anything if they just copied somebody else's character sheet.


I don't know why people always present Knock as the exemplar of win buttons. Yes, it opens doors and so does the Rogue (sometimes), but:
1) Opening doors is not the sole or primary ability of the Rogue.
2) Nor is it Rogue-specific. Other classes can get that skill, and not all Rogues have it.
3) But most importantly - anyone can break a door down!

Seriously, people give doors waaay too much credit. In video games, they may be an impenetrable barrier that requires finding the right key (which is conveniently in the area), but in D&D they are just wood/stone/metal objects. If you can beat an animated object or golem, you can definitely beat an inanimate one.

Knock is just an easy example. The classic "Rogue Lockpick" may be oversimplified, but it has a strong presence in the general conciousness. Knock is egregious because it's a guaranteed success with nothing else to it. Unlike Flight which, yeah, invalidates climb and jump checks, but also makes other things possible, Knock literally just opens locks better than any mundane lockpick could. It's not so much that Knock itself ruins games, but it's the easiest, most straightforward example of an I-Win Button. If you took Knock out of the game, Open Lock would become more important, but you wouldn't really lose anything else.

A better example is save-or-lose spells invalidating the Fighter, since all the damage dealt doesn't matter if the enemy just gets turned to stone as soon as the Wizard can be bothered to do so.

[Pex]

It would be a waste of the wizard's spell to petrify an opponent the fighter is already damaging and occupying the opponent's actions. Better is to petrify an opponent otherwise not hurt or engaged to deny those actions. If the wizard is to attack the opponent the fighter is fighting use a lower level spell to contribute to damage attrition, debuff the opponent, or buff the fighter. Just because a wizard can do something doesn't mean he should. He's better off using the Wand of Knock when the rogue is not with him or failed to open the lock for whatever reason and can't try again.

As the proverb goes, when you have a hammer everything is a nail, but the issue is not the existence of the hammer.

[BRC]

It would be a waste of the wizard's spell to petrify an opponent the fighter is already damaging and occupying the opponent's actions. Better is to petrify an opponent otherwise not hurt or engaged to deny those actions. If the wizard is to attack the opponent the fighter is fighting use a lower level spell to contribute to damage attrition, debuff the opponent, or buff the fighter. Just because a wizard can do something doesn't mean he should. He's better off using the Wand of Knock when the rogue is not with him or failed to open the lock for whatever reason and can't try again.

As the proverb goes, when you have a hammer everything is a nail, but the issue is not the existence of the hammer.

When you're only using your skills because it's not worth it for the caster to spend spell slots, its hard to feel like you're character is contributing more than another, identical Caster would.


Edit: This isn't a question of Logic, it's a question of psychology and what feels fun at the table.

Logically, a lockpicking rogue can PROBABLY open any given lock, basically for free (it may take them a bit of time). A Wizard with Knock can Guaranteed open that lock, instantly, by expending resources.

So, logically speaking, it's better to use the Rogue as primary, with the wizard as backup. Logically, the Rogue's position as "Party Lockpicker" is safe until the wizard reaches a point where casting "knock" is no longer a meaningful expenditure of resources.

But, that's not what it feels like for the rogue. Especially if you're invested in the idea of your character as The Party Lockpicker, knowing that what you consider a key part of what your character is bringing to the table is, at best, preserving the wizard's resources doesn't do a lot to make you feel special.

[Drakevarg]

The recurring pattern in this thread seems to be "any argument I don't comprehend/sympathize with is invalid."

Over and over and over it's "I don't like Win Buttons because X, Y and Z." "Well X, Y and Z don't matter or are good things, so what's the problem?"

People have different opinions, fine. But this entire thread has been a circular debate about how each other's preferences are wrong.

For the record, my contempt for Win Buttons is simply because to me they are the equivalent of playing an "escape the room" puzzle wherein on one side of the room there are a number of esoteric objects which can be cleverly combined to provide a variety of solutions... and on the other side of the room is a big green button labeled "RESOLVE" which just opens the door.

The standard counterargument in this thread seems to be "well then the GM shouldn't have put that kind of puzzle there in the first place." So in other words, the only scenarios allowed in an RPG are the very limited set of situations in which these Win Buttons don't apply? Why not just take those spells out then and just have a big long list of stories you're not allowed to tell?

[Lord Raziere]

The standard counterargument in this thread seems to be "well then the GM shouldn't have put that kind of puzzle there in the first place." So in other words, the only scenarios allowed in an RPG are the very limited set of situations in which these Win Buttons don't apply? Why not just take those spells out then and just have a big long list of stories you're not allowed to tell?

Well the standard counterargument for those questions I hear is that the GM should just get better at making scenarios that are more complex and challenging. My problems with that is that this is auto-assuming the GM is on board with it. If the GM doesn't want the game to go that direction, its not going to go that direction, or the GM is not having fun and thats unacceptable because everyone is here to have fun. Including the GM. I wouldn't want to get into the weird games that come from I Win button as player, and especially not as GM, because then I have to know this stuff and play this stupid metagame that has nothing to do with the game I actually want to play with everyone. Not every GM can make this hyper challenging world of ridiculous death and overpreparation that these players demand and everyone being these contingency planning geniuses strains at suspension of disbelief.

I mean sure its all about communication and agreeing to all this beforehand, but I've had situations where people just assumed that something was fair that others didn't in games in general before and it caused friction.

Point is, you can't just demand anything of the GM, and it just limits the stories in a different way: it means only the most contingency planning geniuses of magic can exist. Anything that isn't part of some cosmic beings plan becomes irrelevant because there is no preparation to keep the PCs from solving it. Anything that isn't some elaborate scenario contrived to be an actual threat to the PCs becomes meaningless, because its solved instantly. The only story able to be told is "this enemy is doing everything in their power to kill you for reasons, despite how stupid that is considering your track record." or "no one fights you anymore, deal with it." or "you find a dungeon, its not challenging at all, what did you expect? the world doesn't change to suit your desires for more challenge and fun. It is cold and uncaring, and if you rise so high as to wish for more challenge that doesn't exist in reality, you are only wishing for that which does not exist. you are already victorious, and there is no further battle for you to fight."

[icefractal]

For the record, my contempt for Win Buttons is simply because to me they are the equivalent of playing an "escape the room" puzzle wherein on one side of the room there are a number of esoteric objects which can be cleverly combined to provide a variety of solutions... and on the other side of the room is a big green button labeled "RESOLVE" which just opens the door.This can be true for some situations, but IME it is often overestimated, or claimed in cases where the non-spell way is just as straightforward.

For example, Knock again. We remove it. The party comes to a locked door. So what happens?

The Rogue rolls Open Lock. So clever! Much amaze! Oh, but that could fail ... so then someone breaks it down. Much amaze?

I'm not saying there aren't situations where the non-spell approach is more interesting, but just adding "roll a d20" doesn't make it so, nor does "solve it in a normal way that's obvious", like the often seen "fly is lame, renting a boat is cool" ... why?

[Pex]

The recurring pattern in this thread seems to be "any argument I don't comprehend/sympathize with is invalid."

Over and over and over it's "I don't like Win Buttons because X, Y and Z." "Well X, Y and Z don't matter or are good things, so what's the problem?"

People have different opinions, fine. But this entire thread has been a circular debate about how each other's preferences are wrong.

For the record, my contempt for Win Buttons is simply because to me they are the equivalent of playing an "escape the room" puzzle wherein on one side of the room there are a number of esoteric objects which can be cleverly combined to provide a variety of solutions... and on the other side of the room is a big green button labeled "RESOLVE" which just opens the door.

The standard counterargument in this thread seems to be "well then the GM shouldn't have put that kind of puzzle there in the first place." So in other words, the only scenarios allowed in an RPG are the very limited set of situations in which these Win Buttons don't apply? Why not just take those spells out then and just have a big long list of stories you're not allowed to tell?

When the party has reached the level where they can access the Resolve Button, you resent the button for allowing the party to leave the room instead of moving the party to a different room with a new set of objects, one or more of which was a Resolve Button of the previous room but not for the new room.


Well the standard counterargument for those questions I hear is that the GM should just get better at making scenarios that are more complex and challenging. My problems with that is that this is auto-assuming the GM is on board with it. If the GM doesn't want the game to go that direction, its not going to go that direction, or the GM is not having fun and thats unacceptable because everyone is here to have fun. Including the GM. I wouldn't want to get into the weird games that come from I Win button as player, and especially not as GM, because then I have to know this stuff and play this stupid metagame that has nothing to do with the game I actually want to play with everyone. Not every GM can make this hyper challenging world of ridiculous death and overpreparation that these players demand and everyone being these contingency planning geniuses strains at suspension of disbelief.

I mean sure its all about communication and agreeing to all this beforehand, but I've had situations where people just assumed that something was fair that others didn't in games in general before and it caused friction.

Point is, you can't just demand anything of the GM, and it just limits the stories in a different way: it means only the most contingency planning geniuses of magic can exist. Anything that isn't part of some cosmic beings plan becomes irrelevant because there is no preparation to keep the PCs from solving it. Anything that isn't some elaborate scenario contrived to be an actual threat to the PCs becomes meaningless, because its solved instantly. The only story able to be told is "this enemy is doing everything in their power to kill you for reasons, despite how stupid that is considering your track record." or "no one fights you anymore, deal with it." or "you find a dungeon, its not challenging at all, what did you expect? the world doesn't change to suit your desires for more challenge and fun. It is cold and uncaring, and if you rise so high as to wish for more challenge that doesn't exist in reality, you are only wishing for that which does not exist. you are already victorious, and there is no further battle for you to fight."

Well, yes, some DMs can't or won't deal with the new power level. If they can't, they end the campaign to never try, make mistakes and learn, to play such games in the future. If they won't, that's their business. They just end the campaign and start over or find a different game system. All fine and dandy, but their displeasure doesn't make the game wrong.

[Drakevarg]

When the party has reached the level where they can access the Resolve Button, you resent the button for allowing the party to leave the room instead of moving the party to a different room with a new set of objects, one or more of which was a Resolve Button of the previous room but not for the new room.

Yes, I flatly do resent it. Because what stories I am or am not allowed to tell shouldn't be dictated by a frakking spell list.


All fine and dandy, but their displeasure doesn't make the game wrong.

The game is neither right nor wrong, it simply is. That doesn't invalidate contempt for its design elements, just means you don't share them. The game, especially in the case of a discontinued one like 3.5, won't change either way.

[Faily]

I honestly begin to wonder what sort of games some people have experienced, seeing as the claims that the presence of high-level play or existence of spells like Teleport, Fly, and Invisibility make the world into a "continous deadly challenge in being the most prepared person in existence and nothing is a challenge anymore"... I mean... part of me is completely baffled, because it doesn't have much foot in any reality I've seen in my years of gaming.

I mean... yeah, sure, I can see how the presence of spells like Shapechange and Forcecage makes things less fun for some, (though I personally find level 1 play less fun because almost every combat seems like a one-shot-one-kill waiting to happen), but really, most tables don't feature the kind of high optimization that is bounced around on messageboards. Gaming forums aren't exactly a representative majority of all gamers.


For example, Knock again. We remove it. The party comes to a locked door. So what happens?

The Rogue rolls Open Lock. So clever! Much amaze! Oh, but that could fail ... so then someone breaks it down. Much amaze?

I'm not saying there aren't situations where the non-spell approach is more interesting, but just adding "roll a d20" doesn't make it so, nor does "solve it in a normal way that's obvious", like the often seen "fly is lame, renting a boat is cool" ... why?

Not to mention, a Rogue dedicated to being a skill-monkey can easily take 10 on opening doors, so no die-roll is required there either! :smallbiggrin:

Also, most boat-adventures end in tears. Never get on the boat. :smallwink:

[Talakeal]

I mean... yeah, sure, I can see how the presence of spells like Shapechange and Forcecage makes things less fun for some, (though I personally find level 1 play less fun because almost every combat seems like a one-shot-one-kill waiting to happen), but really, most tables don't feature the kind of high optimization that is bounced around on messageboards. Gaming forums aren't exactly a representative majority of all gamers.

I find that the games quality suffers on both ends of the level curve. Both high and low level are very lethal, but at low level it is because the dice are more important than the numbers while at high level it is because the numbers are more important than the dice.

Sure, at low levels a lucky crit can take you out, but at high level there are many "save or die" effects, and if you don't have the right immunity it is fully possible to be in a situation where you need to roll a natural 20 to save.

[Max_Killjoy]

I find that the games quality suffers on both ends of the level curve. Both high and low level are very lethal, but at low level it is because the dice are more important than the numbers while at high level it is because the numbers are more important than the dice.

Sure, at low levels a lucky crit can take you out, but at high level there are many "save or die" effects, and if you don't have the right immunity it is fully possible to be in a situation where you need to roll a natural 20 to save.


To me this is reflective of D&D's baggage from its earliest days, and the attempt to cram character "power" across multiple orders of magnitude into a single progression... first "zero to big-damn-hero", and then "zero-to-demigod" in later editions.

[Mechalich]

I honestly begin to wonder what sort of games some people have experienced, seeing as the claims that the presence of high-level play or existence of spells like Teleport, Fly, and Invisibility make the world into a "continous deadly challenge in being the most prepared person in existence and nothing is a challenge anymore"... I mean... part of me is completely baffled, because it doesn't have much foot in any reality I've seen in my years of gaming.

I mean... yeah, sure, I can see how the presence of spells like Shapechange and Forcecage makes things less fun for some, (though I personally find level 1 play less fun because almost every combat seems like a one-shot-one-kill waiting to happen), but really, most tables don't feature the kind of high optimization that is bounced around on messageboards. Gaming forums aren't exactly a representative majority of all gamers.


The thing is, when people use game-breaking strategies in actual games, the games end and people leave. So such experiences are brief. Stable campaigns require working around the design failures inherent in the system, any system.

Generally good GMs who understand their systems ban obvious broken options from the beginning, but there are so many such options it's easy to miss them. I recall playing in an admittedly very low optimization game where the sorcerer took the Incantantrix PrC (this was early in 3e) and the GM had no idea how powerful it was compared to what everyone else could do and it totally imbalanced all encounters going forward and eventually torpedoed the campaign.

However, the real problem with this is not found in tables with friends who know each other and GMs who run an session zero where there is an implicit or explicit understanding of where the power level is going to be. The problem is online, or at events, where the players are strangers and no one knows what to expect. In such circumstances optimization variance destroys many such campaigns before they can even begin.

[Anymage]

Yes, I flatly do resent it. Because what stories I am or am not allowed to tell shouldn't be dictated by a frakking spell list.

This is why I like to call the "just make better adventures" people out and ask them to advance their own plots. It's easy to say "well, don't make plots that are invalidated by published spells". It's another thing entirely to actually do so.


I honestly begin to wonder what sort of games some people have experienced, seeing as the claims that the presence of high-level play or existence of spells like Teleport, Fly, and Invisibility make the world into a "continous deadly challenge in being the most prepared person in existence and nothing is a challenge anymore"... I mean... part of me is completely baffled, because it doesn't have much foot in any reality I've seen in my years of gaming ... Also, most boat-adventures end in tears. Never get on the boat. :smallwink:

That's kind of the whole narrative point of boats. Complications are what make adventures interesting. The Odyssey would be really dull if Odysseus got home with no complications. Which is what a teleport spell would have done.

As far as seeing that sort of thing in play, players like to take advantage of their cool powers. And honestly, letting players feel cool for doing cool things with their cool powers is one of the things a good GM should do. The problem comes partially when particular plot-devicey spells invalidate whole plots, and partially depending on when those player controlled plot devices come on line.

As Mechalich said, there's also the question of required system mastery to not blow things up. Experienced players may well not select Teleport because they know that short-circuiting the adventure means that everybody will wind up sitting around with nothing to do. Less experienced or less thoughtful players can blow up a game just by using printed abilities for their stated purpose. This is not using one of a genie's wishes to bind more genies for even more wishes. This is bypassing the first two Fellowship of the Rings books because you have a clear mechanical ability that lets you skip straigh to Mount Doom.

[Max_Killjoy]

This is why I like to call the "just make better adventures" people out and ask them to advance their own plots. It's easy to say "well, don't make plots that are invalidated by published spells". It's another thing entirely to actually do so.


I think that's been requested for a while now over a couple similar discussions.

[Pex]

This is why I like to call the "just make better adventures" people out and ask them to advance their own plots. It's easy to say "well, don't make plots that are invalidated by published spells". It's another thing entirely to actually do so.



Angels from Heaven have entered the world declaring everyone unclean. They annihilate all to let the gods sort them out and start over. Convince them of their error.

The Blood War is over. Devils and Demons have united and are attacking the Upper Planes. Get the Blood War started again.

The Cult of Pelor the Burning Hate is spreading. Prove to the world the Blasphemy and restore Pelor's Good name.

Two Beholders claim to be Xanathar. Waterdeep and surrounding areas are in Thieves' Guilds Wars. You need to get the real Xanathar in sole power because of a deal he made crucial to the safety of Waterdeep even the Open Lord Paladin knows and accepts, but is Xanathar one of those Beholders?

[oxybe]

So your answer to "knock and such things are a right pain in the arse, what do?" is "bugger it all, it's Apocapalooza! We're getting all the end of world prophecies all at once!"?

There's escalation and then there's hyperbole. neither solve the problem at hand.

As I said in my post: these effects aren't a problem in a vaccum, but it's because they don't fit the scope of power the genre conventions at that level assumes.

Then there is a second issue that the D&D Wizard is, IMO, a conceptually bad class, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.

[Drakevarg]

Angels from Heaven have entered the world declaring everyone unclean. They annihilate all to let the gods sort them out and start over. Convince them of their error.

The Blood War is over. Devils and Demons have united and are attacking the Upper Planes. Get the Blood War started again.

The Cult of Pelor the Burning Hate is spreading. Prove to the world the Blasphemy and restore Pelor's Good name.

Two Beholders claim to be Xanathar. Waterdeep and surrounding areas are in Thieves' Guilds Wars. You need to get the real Xanathar in sole power because of a deal he made crucial to the safety of Waterdeep even the Open Lord Paladin knows and accepts, but is Xanathar one of those Beholders?

Those are more premises than plotlines. Given enough of a timeline you could make them the main story at any level, since practically anything could occur between the opening blurb and the resolution. To use TV a clunky analog, those are entire seasons. The problem with Win Buttons tends to occur closer to the episodic level.

Unless you're implying that the proper way to play high-level D&D is to treat the end of the world as something that interrupts your weekend at most.

[Lord Raziere]

from what I've heard, none of those adventures would be enough for the players who do this I-Win button stuff, they'd just start pulling even crazier combo on the level of tippyverse or something. or they start complaining that isn't a sandbox anymore, because somehow I win buttons and sandboxes always seem to attract each other, whereas I personally don't see the point of sandboxes and want to play out my characters story.

I can just hear the optimizers going "oh that, I already prepared for that and have this spell combo that destroys all demons/convinces the head angel/scry and die the cult leader/kill both Beholders and kills all the thieves because they're criminals"

[Pex]

Don't like the answer don't ask the question. When you're at world changing power you deal with world changing problems.

You can do the stereotypes.

Kill the lich. Slay the great wyrm red dragon. Find the baby prophesied to grow up to become a mass murderer and make sure that doesn't happen.

Stop resenting it's no longer about guarding caravans, slay the pirate captain, rescue the princess, clear out the abandoned mine. If you prefer, maybe it's guard the caravan as it sails on the River Styx, slay the bag of devouring monster, rescue Harmonious' Heironeous' daughter, clear out a demiplane. Nothing world threatening at all. If you complain that's all about plane hopping, that's what Plane Shift and Astral Projection are for.

If you are going to resent it, accept that's just your personal taste. You are not caring for the high power, but that doesn't mean the game is broken. It's just not for you. You don't have to like high power play, and I'm not going to make you. I don't need to. It answers the thread question. Learn to accept that other people do like the high power play and do not share whatever issues you have about it. Don't try to convince me to hate it.

[Max_Killjoy]

It's pretty telling when an argument comes down to personal attacks from one side...

[Faily]

Let's see, high-level adventures...

All the final chapters of published adventures. Pathfinder's tend to end with PCs achieving 17th level at the end of the adventure. Of all the published adventures I've played so far, they seem to take into account players utilizing spells like Teleport, Plane Shift, Gate, etc... War of the Burning Sky saw us pool our resources like crazy into Gate to bypass a problem that would've been a huge stain on the conscience of the entire party (not gonna reveal the spoiler, but in short, the game wanted you to do something not-nice to get to the end, and well... a party of 3 LG and one NG just wasn't going to accept that).

For non-published adventures, some years ago we had a pretty epic campaign that started with us at level 6 or so, and we eventually got to 17-18 before the end. It was pretty amazing, how we started out as do-gooders who earned the recognition of the king, and then later were entrusted by the king to investigate an evil cult, and the cult turned out to be trying to bring about the end of days. We travelled far and wide to recruit allies, take out enemy commanders and allies (and yes we did Teleport while travelling), and had some pretty epic battles where the party-priests called a Solar into combat to help destroy a great evil, and our Barbarian waded into combat like a deadly juggernaut alongside the Swordsage. *blissful sigh* Was my first high-level campaign and I still have lots of fond memories from it.

Then it's our long-running Mystara campaign, playing with Pathfinder rules. Started out at level 1, slow xp progression, 3 of the 4 party members are the same that we started with (4th player likes to change characters and try different things :smallsmile: ), highest level is my Paladin at level 19. My paladin and the sorcerer are both doing Kingdom-things, and the cleric is dedicating herself more to her church and furthering her goddess' influence. And all 4 are attempting to achieve Godhood, which in Mystara actually has different challenges set forth that they must complete. Almost all of our adventures have been old-school modules, so for high level adventures we've done something like the Oddyssey (but in spaaaaace!), fought in wars, engaged in delicate diplomatic incidents between different countries, saved a forgotten elven kingdom (I honestly don't remember the name of all the modules we've gone through, but the ones I do remember are: Saber River, Five Coins for a Kingdom, Revenge of Alphax, Tree of Life... I'd have to ask GM for the names of the ones we have played). We've played this campaign for years, and we've had great fun along the way... and the optimization level has a pretty wide-range in the group. At the high-level of system mastery and rules knowledge is me, and the GM is a very close-second, followed by our youngest player being slightly above average in terms of it(he's in his early 20s, rest of us are in our 30s and 40s), and the last two have less than average-skill, and "still can't for the life of him remember most rules even if we use them every session"-level. So it's not like we're a group of hardcore optimizers knowing every counter and contingency, always playing 100% tactical (trust me, we don't... well... half the party is somewhat tactical, and the other half is not, but hey it's gotten us into some fun situations :smallbiggrin: ). And I think our GM does a great job of upping the stakes now that we're in the end-game of things. The battles are tense and fun, and the adventures are fun too. Sure, a locked door hasn't been a problem since level 1, since if Disable Device didn't work, we'd just break it down. :smallwink: The entire campaign has been super-high magic, high-fantasy, with a lot of old D&D flavour.

[Telok]

As I said in my post: these effects aren't a problem in a vaccum, but it's because they don't fit the scope of power the genre conventions at that level assumes.
I'd ask what scope of power is being assumed at a particular level. It would seem that the levels where flying/teleporting/etc. become a perceived problem are also usually the levels where the counters and negations of those abilities show up. Could it instead be people wanting a particular scope of power at a particular level but playing a game that has a different set of assumptions?