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View Full Version : Dear DMs, Please stop taking players out of the fight.



Drache64
2019-12-11, 04:16 PM
I get it DMs, action economy is crazy, but we wait all week, for some of us only once a month.

It can be quite demoralizing to wait so long to play only to have a DM banish you, knock you unconscious, etc. Please find a way to manage action economy (adding minions, better use of legendary actions?) so that we can all play the game. Even having us miss a few rounds of combat could turn into sitting out 2 hours of a 4 hour session.

That is all, thank you.

Just spreading the request to all DMs at large.

Edit:
To be clear, when I am taken out of the fight I sit quietly, watch what's happening, I don't zone out, I don't play on my phone, I don't whine or complain, I just patiently wait until I am back in the game.

It's just not fun.

When I was the core DM (was for many many years) I never had to rely on taking players out of the fight to make it challenging, just surprised to see it is such a popular tactic (I think it's kind of rookie IMHO). And to continue to chime in on combat decision while my character is not "there" would be meta gaming.

Edit Edit:

I am okay with player death, I am okay with being knocked unconscious, I am referring to when a DM hand waves someone out of the fight (Happens to me at times and I would prefer that I earn my beating), or the encounter is designed around a strategy of removing a certain player from the fight, this post was created after finishing up campaign 1 of critical role and feeling bad for Travis Willingham as late-game critical role every encounter is designed to keep Grog out of combat lest the Barbarian wreck everything, so he gets banished, paralyzed, etc. after seeing it happen in every fight I thought I would post support for him and others of a similar mind.

Altair_the_Vexed
2019-12-11, 04:28 PM
"Dear Players,
Please stop whining about losing. You want me to spoon feed you success and glorify your character? Go write a fan fic! This here is a game, with consequences. Even Monopoly has "miss a turn" chances."

- Of course, that's not my opinion, but it will be somebody's.
Me, I like to keep people engaged. If a PC is taken out for a set period of time, and the rest of the action is going to take a while, then I compensate by giving them something to do: "Here, you can run the NPC sidekick" or "You can run the animal companion" - anything to keep them from being bored.
But I'm not likely to avoid using the antagonists' best moves out of some desire to mollycoddle the players.

Demidos
2019-12-11, 04:36 PM
The difference is that a full loop of monopoly turns takes about 10 minutes, while DND turns might take 30-40. Also, is Monopoly really the gold standard of games you want to compare too?

(My response to your hypothetical cranky DM)

I would argue that as the DM you have the responsibility to make the antagonist, so it's less of holding back from using their best moves and more of giving them different best moves. E.g. if the antagonist casts wail of the banshee turn 1 and kills 3/4 of the party, no one has fun. If they summon miniature candy golems that stick to people they hit and slow them down, the players can still take their turns but their actions still have consequences. Same idea. Think of it as not mollycoddling the players, but making it so one of YOUR FRIENDS doesn't have to sit and stare at the wall for 30-40 minutes while not being involved.

Shrug. That's my opinion anyway.

Droid Tony
2019-12-11, 05:08 PM
The difference is that a full loop of monopoly turns takes about 10 minutes, while DND turns might take 30-40. Also, is Monopoly really the gold standard of games you want to compare too?


This is of course a game problem. If your game does take 30-40 minutes a turn, you might want to fix it.




Shrug. That's my opinion anyway.

When you only want to do useless pontless things to the characters in an encounter, you have a useless pointless encounter. So why bother?

Sure, it does suck to be taken out of the fight....but that is just part of the game.

RifleAvenger
2019-12-11, 05:08 PM
I'm not going to have antagonists the party is supposed to take seriously purposefully pass on some of the strongest abilities or tactics in the game.

Especially since the PCs have a lot of bodies at my table. Taking a few out is the only way most encounters can attempt to win, run, or just last longer than 1.5 turns. When a certain PC is the biggest threat to the area boss, why wouldn't it try to disable or kill them?

Also, there should be plenty of out of combat time to participate freely. Unless you're getting KO'd or Banished in social situations somehow.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-12-11, 05:19 PM
*scrubbed*

Drache64
2019-12-11, 05:26 PM
*scrub the post, scrub the quote*

I hear your wise words and they have truly struck me, I am a new man.

Marcotix
2019-12-11, 05:55 PM
I see this as more of a game problem then anything. SoS/SoD is largely just bad design.

ngilop
2019-12-11, 05:57 PM
I am glad that you are a new man. Still... I don't really understand your original complaint. You mean that you want you characters to be invincible? Or that your DM is literally not allowing you to play?

I see others have weighed in on their own suggestions and helpful hints as well, but, don't let this distract you from the fact that on June 28, 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.

weckar
2019-12-11, 06:00 PM
No. If your character is taken out, that is no excuse for the player to not be involved in tactical decisions and the like. Next you will ask me to never ever kill your characters.

Jorren
2019-12-11, 06:11 PM
I see this as more of a game problem then anything. SoS/SoD is largely just bad design.

Yes, instead of 'suck it up', my immediate snide reflex would be 'play a good rpg next time'. But yeah, if you insist, it's not the DM's fault.

Rynjin
2019-12-11, 06:17 PM
So...what's your alternative?

Seriously, what's the alternative to effects that can take you out of the fight?

The enemy isn't allowed to HP damage you, because that might knock you unconscious. They can't cast any spells, because those might impact your ability to act. Are they allowed to Grapple you or use some other Combat Maneuver? If so, what is the purpose for doing so if they're not allowed to attempt a way to win?

What's the point of having combat in the first place if there is no possibility of failure, which is really what you're asking for.

MoiMagnus
2019-12-11, 06:27 PM
There are multiple comments that are essentially saying "that's part of the game" or "that's the optimal tactic".
But that's exactly what OP is complaining about, and begging DMs to be aware that not all players think this being "part of the game" should be a thing, and that ruling this out of the game to make the game funnier (at least for him).

There is a reason why a lot of strategy boardgame are designed to prevent player elimination, even if it would be make perfect sense story-wise: a player being made irrelevant or eliminated at the middle of a 4 hour strategy boardgame is bad game design. For a lot of tables, RPG fight are a "lengthy strategy game" put at the middle of the session, hence elimination of any kind at the middle of this "game" is also bad game design (or bad DMing).

If you're the kind of DM that let fight last 2-4 hours, with at most 30min of role-play between each fight, then it's your responsibility to make sure nobody is bored or useless during the fight. Either by accelerating the resolution of fight (especially when some players are out of the game), because honestly 4 hours is probably too much, or by adapting your RPG so that this situation does not happen (by ramping up the difficulty by other means than clever tactics, like putting more stupid monsters). Though if you start, as a DM, to willingly avoid to eliminate players, be open about it so that it does not feel like you're fudging, but more like you're just adding more rules to the game: one of my DM openly said "Apart from exceptions I will signal beforehand, monsters don't finish peoples that are almost dead on the ground, even if it is obvious that they're about to be healed (because they have a healing potion in hand and are about to drink it , for example). On the other hand, prepare yourself to pass a lot of time almost dead on the ground, because that's the kind of game we will be playing."

If your fights are more around 1 hour (which is probably nearer to what was intended by the game designer of the RPG you're playing), then I'd say player elimination is fine, especially if that's something you can play against. (Counter-spell, ...)

MoiMagnus
2019-12-11, 06:40 PM
So...what's your alternative?

Seriously, what's the alternative to effects that can take you out of the fight?

The enemy isn't allowed to HP damage you, because that might knock you unconscious. They can't cast any spells, because those might impact your ability to act. Are they allowed to Grapple you or use some other Combat Maneuver? If so, what is the purpose for doing so if they're not allowed to attempt a way to win?

What's the point of having combat in the first place if there is no possibility of failure, which is really what you're asking for.

Failure and being eliminated of a fight are totally different things. (You could play PCs with infinite HP and immunity to being incapacitated, and still have challenge and possibility of defeat. It just forces the DM to find other ways to challenge you, like a timer in number of turns to succeed the fight)

He is probably asking one of those solutions:
1) That most fight are balanced in a way where either players that are "eliminated" of the fight come back quite easily. So a lot of healing, middle-of-the-fight resurrections, and save DCs not too high so that you statistically don't remain incapacitated for too long (and no stun-lock from enemies spamming control spells).
2) That most fight are balanced in a way such that as soon as one PC fall or is incapacitated in any way, the fight is lost. This probably include getting rid of most save-or-sucks spells because they make the result of the fight depends on a single dice throw.
3) That most fight are balanced in such a way that PC get "eliminated" only around the end of the fight. For example, by having the bad guy keeping his best spells / attacks for the end of the fight (like in films where they always have a bigger weapon for the end rather than cleverly using them at the beginning).

Rynjin
2019-12-11, 06:54 PM
Failure and being eliminated of a fight are totally different things. (You could play PCs with infinite HP and immunity to being incapacitated, and still have challenge and possibility of defeat. It just forces the DM to find other ways to challenge you, like a timer in number of turns to succeed the fight)

This only works a certain number of times before you're just playing Final Fantasy Tactics or something.


He is probably asking one of those solutions:
1) That most fight are balanced in a way where either players that are "eliminated" of the fight come back quite easily. So a lot of healing, middle-of-the-fight resurrections, and save DCs not too high so that you statistically don't remain incapacitated for too long (and no stun-lock from enemies spamming control spells).

If the players wish to build their characters so that this is expected, then they should do so. It's within their power. Everything here except the save DCs are a player responsibility, not a GM one.


2) That most fight are balanced in a way such that as soon as one PC fall or is incapacitated in any way, the fight is lost. This probably include getting rid of most save-or-sucks spells because they make the result of the fight depends on a single dice throw.
3) That most fight are balanced in such a way that PC get "eliminated" only around the end of the fight. For example, by having the bad guy keeping his best spells / attacks for the end of the fight (like in films where they always have a bigger weapon for the end rather than cleverly using them at the beginning).

Except with the way D&D works, an enemy would never GET to use their big guns if they saved them until the end; they just die.

Unless in this scenario the players are also playing softball with the bad guys?

I'm going to echo what others have said; play another system. One with extremely low lethality, or where death is cheap. As I mentioned Final Fantasy earlier, Final Fantasy d6 is a good system, though even then there are some ways you can be stalled out of combat for a round or two.

RifleAvenger
2019-12-11, 07:04 PM
I see this as more of a game problem then anything. SoS/SoD is largely just bad design.
Yes, surely what D&D needs post-5e is more gravitation towards being HP sponges playing rock'em'sock'em robots.

Like, Save or Die is pretty bad, but if Save or Suck gets taken out then a lot of ways of engaging in fights that aren't HP damage are either lost or have to become automatic successes of some variety. Any substantial bonus/penalty swing, most status ailments, etc.

Maybe stacking debuffs to get up to the full effect, but with no failure chance (have to get healed/dispelled/kill the enemy before they full stack you), would be an alternative. Would require longer average fight lengths though.


So...what's your alternative?

Seriously, what's the alternative to effects that can take you out of the fight?

The enemy isn't allowed to HP damage you, because that might knock you unconscious. They can't cast any spells, because those might impact your ability to act. Are they allowed to Grapple you or use some other Combat Maneuver? If so, what is the purpose for doing so if they're not allowed to attempt a way to win?

What's the point of having combat in the first place if there is no possibility of failure, which is really what you're asking for.Likely the point would be whatever reason they're actually at the table for. Abnegation or to socialize, perhaps.

I'd certainly never want to play or run a game with no stakes, but people play for differing reasons and some might not value the thrill of victory compared to the risk or boredom of defeat. That said, as you've said that really calls for a different system. Or flat out freeform communal RP/storytelling.

Anonymouswizard
2019-12-11, 07:05 PM
This is of course a game problem. If your game does take 30-40 minutes a turn, you might want to fix it.

This, about two minutes per player plus two to five for the GM is my experience, other players don't want to sit around while you evaluate every tactical decision!

As a side note, I tend to play high lethality games, and then optimise as much as I can. I once had a character who would have died with no save if he took 8hp in damage (the average attack on that system dealt 7), and that's only because the GM refused to allow me to munchkin my way down to 0hp (hey, it was all legal! And I'd have been saddled with a major disability and no stamina in exchange for being able to boost my Faith to the cap). I've been forced to sit out entire combats due to being hit before I could attack, I tended to become rulesmonkey at that point and look things up for people.

NigelWalmsley
2019-12-11, 07:22 PM
So...what's your alternative?

You could set things up so that each player controls a couple of different characters during combat, so that if one of them goes down, they can still take actions. You could pool HP per side and hand out more debuffs so no one got fully removed until the fight was actually over. I don't 100% support OP's position, but there's definitely stuff you can do.

Mechalich
2019-12-11, 07:31 PM
This, about two minutes per player plus two to five for the GM is my experience, other players don't want to sit around while you evaluate every tactical decision!

Quite, also, players and GMs are supposed to be role-playing. Their characters are not (usually, robots and the like excepted) problem-solving computational machines capable of determining in the second or so they have between actions what the tactically optimal choice in a given situation might be. Sure, the character probably has better combat instincts than the player assuming they are meant to have experience, which justifies a little bit of assessment, but that's all. Make choices in character and make them at combat speed. If you want to play a tactical combat RPG with endless pause for consideration, then just do that, but if you're playing a roleplaying game assume that neither side is operating at anything like perfect efficiency.

Drache64
2019-12-11, 07:34 PM
I'm not going to have antagonists the party is supposed to take seriously purposefully pass on some of the strongest abilities or tactics in the game.

Especially since the PCs have a lot of bodies at my table. Taking a few out is the only way most encounters can attempt to win, run, or just last longer than 1.5 turns. When a certain PC is the biggest threat to the area boss, why wouldn't it try to disable or kill them?

Also, there should be plenty of out of combat time to participate freely. Unless you're getting KO'd or Banished in social situations somehow.

Yes I have had a DM be like "the NPC touches your character and he is now unconscious" I then sat out multiple social situations and a few rounds of combat totaling about 1-2 hour timeout session for me during a 5 hour night.... not very fun.

I have had another DM have a "magic mishap" and my character was teleported far away from the others and had to miss some social RP time and had a combat encounter without me, about 1 hour "time-out".


I am glad that you are a new man. Still... I don't really understand your original complaint. You mean that you want you characters to be invincible? Or that your DM is literally not allowing you to play?

I see others have weighed in on their own suggestions and helpful hints as well, but, don't let this distract you from the fact that on June 28, 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.

Its more about spreading awareness, DMs "hand waving" a character away or picking monsters out of the manual specifically to strategize a character away (Such as Grog in critical role), don't see every request as a complaint. This is just a mild request to all DMs to let them know players enjoy... playing (sorry if that is not a popular opinion). But if a DM stood up, threw a book at me and said SCREW YOU! then I would continue to do what I have done, which is play when I am allowed.


No. If your character is taken out, that is no excuse for the player to not be involved in tactical decisions and the like. Next you will ask me to never ever kill your characters.
You are describing what my tables have all called metagaming. If a character is taken out then the PC cannot advise the other players... unless they are simply stuck in a cage in view of the encounter.


So...what's your alternative?

Seriously, what's the alternative to effects that can take you out of the fight?

The enemy isn't allowed to HP damage you, because that might knock you unconscious. They can't cast any spells, because those might impact your ability to act. Are they allowed to Grapple you or use some other Combat Maneuver? If so, what is the purpose for doing so if they're not allowed to attempt a way to win?

What's the point of having combat in the first place if there is no possibility of failure, which is really what you're asking for.

Thank you for asking, when I DM I plan sessions that play to my players' characters. If I have a barbarian in the group, I give him things to crunch, if I have a wizard in the group I will introduce a rival spellcaster for him to best. Players can die, players can get knocked unconscious, they can lose, but they earn it, it belongs to them. I don't have them banished from the fight before it happens, or plot driven knocked unconscious before they can react with no saving throw or reactions.

Pleh
2019-12-11, 07:40 PM
I agree that FIAT (hand waved) removals and encounters designed to target a specific party member to stress test their system should be used SPARINGLY. Some groups prefer a more competitive playstyle and might appreciate the extra challenge, but in general, it's best to use these sorts of tactics as a curveball to keep the game from becoming stale.

I also agree (especially if you are using FIAT to begin with) that you want to try to make sure players aren't stuck with nothing to do. If you're going to Banish a player for the duration of the fight on Fiat, send them to a pseudo dimension where they have a separate encounter and have to survive until the other players manage to kill the power to whatever is keeping you stuck in the pseudo dimension.

And if your DM is using it too often for your liking, best solution is to talk directly to the DM in question and express how their playstyle is making the game unfun for you so you guys can work together to create a better game experience. It's less effective to broadcast it to people online who have no direct connection to the game.

King of Nowhere
2019-12-11, 07:44 PM
making it so one of YOUR FRIENDS doesn't have to sit and stare at the wall for 30-40 minutes while not being involved.



So... are we playing the same game?

because i don't know about you and others who expressed similar opinions, but at my table we joke and we chat all the time. which is pretty much expected, since you used the word "your friends". they are my friends, i tend to engage them in talking. they also will still contribute to tactics.

You make it look like players whose character got disabled are locked into a closet until it's the start of theuir next turn.
In fact, I'd argue that kind of concept is the real design flaw there: if you only have fun during your turn, and you only spend a few minutes playing your turn while waiting half an hour for all the mooks, minions and stuff before you act again, then it's a bad game. in a good game, you should be able to have fun outside of your tunr too. which happens if you are playing with friends. which is one of the many reasons why it's better to play with friends.

as for the rest, i just don't like it if i feel like the dm is intentionally going soft. either the fight threatens me, or there is no point rolling the dice.

NigelWalmsley
2019-12-11, 07:50 PM
because i don't know about you and others who expressed similar opinions, but at my table we joke and we chat all the time. which is pretty much expected, since you used the word "your friends". they are my friends, i tend to engage them in talking. they also will still contribute to tactics.

Sure. But how often does someone who isn't part of the group show up and just kind of hang out? In my experience, that pretty much doesn't happen, which suggests that while it's there is a social aspect that is important, the ability to participate in the game by having your character take in-game actions is also important.

Lemmy
2019-12-11, 07:58 PM
To be fair... There are certain incapacitating effects that are very frustrating.

SoL / SoD in general are extremely annoying. I generally avoid them as much as possible, both as player and GM. This can be something as simple as an stun effect that lasts 3+ rounds. IMO, most (not all) effects that completely erase a character's turn should be limited to 1 round, then reduced to a lesser version of effect for the remaining of its duration.

Stuff like "stun-locking" a character is also infuriating.

Rynjin
2019-12-11, 08:00 PM
To be fair... There are certain incapacitating effects that are very frustrating.

SoL / SoD in general are extremely annoying. I generally avoid them as much as possible, both as player and GM. This can be something as simple as an stun effect that lasts 3+ simple.

Stuff like "stun-locking" a character is also infuriating.

Excellent, I'll be sure to keep this in mind when designing encounters for Floyd. One day you must pay the penance for only being able to make 1 in 3 sessions. =p

Lemmy
2019-12-11, 08:02 PM
Excellent, I'll be sure to keep this in mind when designing encounters for Floyd. One day you must pay the penance for only being able to make 1 in 3 sessions. =p
That's a good way to get me to make 0 in 3 session.

Rynjin
2019-12-11, 08:47 PM
That's a good way to get me to make 0 in 3 session.

We both know you're addicted to D&D, you'd never drop your weekly fix.

Anyway, @Drache: Your responses seem to be talking about something completely different from the OP. It may be worth editing to clarify the OP again that you object to GM fiat?

The Random NPC
2019-12-11, 08:50 PM
You are describing what my tables have all called metagaming. If a character is taken out then the PC cannot advise the other players... unless they are simply stuck in a cage in view of the encounter.

Personally, I disagree with this part. Oftimes we play characters that are beyond our own capacity, or even beyond reality. If I decide to play a debonair scoundrel, I shouldn't be punished because I'm awkward in real life. Usually, in those instances, the only way to effectively play my character is to get advice from my fellows. That advice is independent of their character's status. It doesn't matter if the demon sorcerer has been banished because it isn't the demon sorcerer telling my scoundrel how to act. It's my buddy telling me that charming people don't scream about bovine feces during a wedding.

JoeJ
2019-12-11, 09:02 PM
You are describing what my tables have all called metagaming. If a character is taken out then the PC cannot advise the other players... unless they are simply stuck in a cage in view of the encounter.

If the tactical discussion takes more than 6 seconds for the entire round*, you're metagaming whether your PC has been taken out or not. It would seem to me to make little sense to ban some people from metagaming while allowing others to do it.

edit: *assuming we're still talking D&D versions 3, 4, or 5.

Drache64
2019-12-11, 09:05 PM
Personally, I disagree with this part. Oftimes we play characters that are beyond our own capacity, or even beyond reality. If I decide to play a debonair scoundrel, I shouldn't be punished because I'm awkward in real life. Usually, in those instances, the only way to effectively play my character is to get advice from my fellows. That advice is independent of their character's status. It doesn't matter if the demon sorcerer has been banished because it isn't the demon sorcerer telling my scoundrel how to act. It's my buddy telling me that charming people don't scream about bovine feces during a wedding.

Still doesn't change the fact the majority of tables I play at call it metagaming.

JNAProductions
2019-12-11, 09:08 PM
Still doesn't change the fact the majority of tables I play at call it metagaming.

The point of the game is to have fun. If metagaming makes the game more fun, then metagame away!

False God
2019-12-11, 09:18 PM
I for one, agree with the OP.

Assuming your game prohibits metagaming and tries to keep chatter to a minimum, having spells or effects that essentially tell a player to "sit down and shut up" or encourage them to "leave the room" for an indeterminate period of time are bad game design. It's different than being dead, because if you're dead you can actively work on making a new character, or you may be involved in some death-related shenanigans (having a vision of the afterlife, speaking to your god) and "death" or "unconsciousness" is often easier to resolve than effects that remove players from the game.

If your game has a mechanic that functionally reads: "Tell your player to put down their dice and go do something else." you've got a problem. You never want your game to make a player feel like they ought to be spending their time doing other things. The game should always make efforts to engage you, even when you're "out".

Tvtyrant
2019-12-11, 09:29 PM
I for one, agree with the OP.

Assuming your game prohibits metagaming and tries to keep chatter to a minimum, having spells or effects that essentially tell a player to "sit down and shut up" or encourage them to "leave the room" for an indeterminate period of time are bad game design. It's different than being dead, because if you're dead you can actively work on making a new character, or you may be involved in some death-related shenanigans (having a vision of the afterlife, speaking to your god) and "death" or "unconsciousness" is often easier to resolve than effects that remove players from the game.

If your game has a mechanic that functionally reads: "Tell your player to put down their dice and go do something else." you've got a problem. You never want your game to make a player feel like they ought to be spending their time doing other things. The game should always make efforts to engage you, even when you're "out".

If your group doesn't chatter and doesn't metagame combat is going to be pretty short. This seems like a strange concern, the things that make combat take forever are removed in that case.

The biggest issues I have had are the phone people who just stop paying attention at all between their turns and the people who talk constantly and do the same thing. If either of these are an issue then being knocked out changes almost nothing, and if not combat is going to go by really quick. A long turn is maybe 3 dice rolls, if the players actually know their modifiers and make the decision parts between their turns it might take 5 minutes tops and more like two minutes. A fighter might take 20 seconds if they are full attacking (regardless of edition.)

Mechalich
2019-12-11, 09:44 PM
if the players actually know their modifiers and make the decision parts between their turns it might take 5 minutes tops and more like two minutes.

Speaking as a GM, this is, regrettably, a really big if. A lot of players are really bad about knowing their modifiers, their character options, and so forth. OOTS #34 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0034.html) represents an extremely common scenario, especially in D&D, which comes loaded down with all sorts of situational modifiers of varying duration. Many GMs - and I'll count myself among them - specifically avoid utilizing effects that produce major modifier changes, energy drain is the big and obvious one, simply because they're more trouble to keep track of than they're worth.

Now, the general solution here is to play a different system, one with simpler math and fewer overall components in play (entirely too many D&D rolls involve upwards of ten +/- 1 bits of arithmetic) if the players aren't up for doing this. There's a lot to be said for combat systems that are simply fast, because that way when characters are inevitably dropped out of fights - which will eventually happen due to damage if nothing else - they are able to come back quickly.

Tvtyrant
2019-12-11, 10:24 PM
Speaking as a GM, this is, regrettably, a really big if. A lot of players are really bad about knowing their modifiers, their character options, and so forth. OOTS #34 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0034.html) represents an extremely common scenario, especially in D&D, which comes loaded down with all sorts of situational modifiers of varying duration. Many GMs - and I'll count myself among them - specifically avoid utilizing effects that produce major modifier changes, energy drain is the big and obvious one, simply because they're more trouble to keep track of than they're worth.

Now, the general solution here is to play a different system, one with simpler math and fewer overall components in play (entirely too many D&D rolls involve upwards of ten +/- 1 bits of arithmetic) if the players aren't up for doing this. There's a lot to be said for combat systems that are simply fast, because that way when characters are inevitably dropped out of fights - which will eventually happen due to damage if nothing else - they are able to come back quickly.
Agreements all around. If you have players that can't or won't track their own characters perhaps it is better to use a faster system instead of blaming the DM.

False God
2019-12-11, 10:42 PM
If your group doesn't chatter and doesn't metagame combat is going to be pretty short. This seems like a strange concern, the things that make combat take forever are removed in that case.

The biggest issues I have had are the phone people who just stop paying attention at all between their turns and the people who talk constantly and do the same thing. If either of these are an issue then being knocked out changes almost nothing, and if not combat is going to go by really quick. A long turn is maybe 3 dice rolls, if the players actually know their modifiers and make the decision parts between their turns it might take 5 minutes tops and more like two minutes. A fighter might take 20 seconds if they are full attacking (regardless of edition.)

Oh trust me I know. But we've all played D&D. We all know how a "short" or "easy" combat can turn into a grind. And we as players are inherently cats, the DM can only manage so many things and if the players start talking and slowing down gameplay there may just not be enough energy in the DM to manage the DM side, and the players.

So if there is something the DM can do to reduce people walking away from the game, like not using player removal effects, it is probably easier for a DM to say "Hey, I'm not going to use these specific spells."

Besides, a player sitting around doing nothing is more likely to chatter and distract from the game, as opposed to one who the DM is keeping engaged with enemies and spells they have to pay attention to.

I have, by using a timer, found the average player takes ~2 minutes to take their turn, usually broken down as: ~30 seconds to see what's going on, ~1 minute to make a decision, and about 30 seconds of resolving that decision. Averaged of course between players who want to argue the rules or take forever to pick a spell, and players who say "I hit it with my sword."

In a 5 player game, that's a 10-minute round for just the players. Even if the DM moves all their NPCs in half that time, that means one round took about 15 minutes, which means a mere four rounds can take ~ an hour.

Kelb_Panthera
2019-12-11, 11:33 PM
Still doesn't change the fact the majority of tables I play at call it metagaming.

The party staying together, unless forced by circumstance or encouraged by close, long-standing relationships, is metagaming too. Nobody ever complains about that bit. Less than savory character choosing not to betray the party at a good opportunity to further his own goals by doing so is metagaming too. Metagaming is an inevitability. It's generally considered bad form to use player knowledge that the characters in the party has no way to access to your advantage but giving other players tips and advice based on immediately observable details is and should be perfectly acceptable.

It seem, after reading through the thread, that your complaint is with the GM arbitrarily snatching PCs out of play by fiat. I agree that is a terrible practice.

The flipside is that sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes enemies use sneak attacks to deliver debilitating attacks if they have three brain-cells to rub together. As long as all the appropriate attacks rolls and saving throws are called for and made, there's nothing for it but to suck it up. Maybe there's some room to complain if the attack is delivered by an enemy way outside the PCs' abilities to defend against but otherwise fair play is just that.

On the 2+ hour combats though, what the heck is that about? If anybody but the DM is taking more than about 2 minutes to resolve their character's actions then you have a serious efficiency problem. You should address that, first and foremost, IMO.

Pex
2019-12-12, 12:53 AM
This is why in 5E spells and effects allow you to roll your saving throw again at the end of your turn to end the effect. The spell or effect is still worth using because you cost the opponent a round with potentially more but still allows you a chance to get back into the game having only lost a turn at best. If there's no save every round the spell or effect is concentration, in which case the party should be trying to break that concentration. If it's also not concentration than the spell or effect is a debuff, but you're still able to do something and a cure is possible to negate it. Some spells or effects may have more than one of these. Pathfinder added the save every round effect to some spells from their 3E versions. I'm unfamiliar with P2E spell specifics to comment on it. An effect can be a terrain feature like a pit trap. There needs to be a way for a PC to get out of that pit during combat or there's something in the pit that needs doing and worthy to be doing, even if it's just a monster to be fought so the player has the fun of playing and feel awesome soloing a creature.

In D&D past save or do nothing for the rest of the combat/game session was a thing. The designers eventually learned that was Unfun. Apparently the DMs the OP plays with need to learn that as well.

Drache64
2019-12-12, 01:13 AM
The point of the game is to have fun. If metagaming makes the game more fun, then metagame away!

Sadly that's not the table dynamic and you're not my DM. I can't just start doing that and say "well JNA said it was cool".


The party staying together, unless forced by circumstance or encouraged by close, long-standing relationships, is metagaming too. Nobody ever complains about that bit. Less than savory character choosing not to betray the party at a good opportunity to further his own goals by doing so is metagaming too. Metagaming is an inevitability. It's generally considered bad form to use player knowledge that the characters in the party has no way to access to your advantage but giving other players tips and advice based on immediately observable details is and should be perfectly acceptable.

It seem, after reading through the thread, that your complaint is with the GM arbitrarily snatching PCs out of play by fiat. I agree that is a terrible practice.

The flipside is that sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes enemies use sneak attacks to deliver debilitating attacks if they have three brain-cells to rub together. As long as all the appropriate attacks rolls and saving throws are called for and made, there's nothing for it but to suck it up. Maybe there's some room to complain if the attack is delivered by an enemy way outside the PCs' abilities to defend against but otherwise fair play is just that.

On the 2+ hour combats though, what the heck is that about? If anybody but the DM is taking more than about 2 minutes to resolve their character's actions then you have a serious efficiency problem. You should address that, first and foremost, IMO.

most of you sound like me, my turns go incredibly quick. I watch the flow of combat and respond with quick decisive and usually strategic moves. I play Warhammer and other strategy table top games, so it's also possible DMs take me out of combat regularly because my PC is usually pretty effective in combat.

I play with a bunch of new players who don't know the rules very well or their own characters very well so turns can take quite some time.

Astofel
2019-12-12, 01:29 AM
Nah, if the villain knows that a PC is likely to fail a save against Hold Person, that PC is getting Held. That's the consequence for dumping Wisdom, or the party not having a utility spell like Lesser Restoration or Dispel Magic. Or in 5e you can focus fire the caster to hopefully make them lose concentration, maybe before the held PC's turn comes back around even. Smart villains who are aware of the party will be prepared for them, it's up to the players to figure out how to combat that, not for the GM to do half that figuring for them.

If the players only packed offensive spells and have nothing in the way of curing conditions, that's on them. Even something like Dispel Magic is a versatile spell, it can be used to free an ally from a devastating debuff or to remove an enemy's buff, something my party learned the hard way when the wizard Polymorphed herself into a dinosaur only to have it Dispelled before their next turn.

Also I guess asking for advice on how to roleplay a character better is metagaming now? Looks like the metagame police are getting even worse...

weckar
2019-12-12, 03:05 AM
Oh trust me I know. But we've all played D&D. We all know how a "short" or "easy" combat can turn into a grind. And we as players are inherently cats, the DM can only manage so many things and if the players start talking and slowing down gameplay there may just not be enough energy in the DM to manage the DM side, and the players.

So if there is something the DM can do to reduce people walking away from the game, like not using player removal effects, it is probably easier for a DM to say "Hey, I'm not going to use these specific spells."

Besides, a player sitting around doing nothing is more likely to chatter and distract from the game, as opposed to one who the DM is keeping engaged with enemies and spells they have to pay attention to.

I have, by using a timer, found the average player takes ~2 minutes to take their turn, usually broken down as: ~30 seconds to see what's going on, ~1 minute to make a decision, and about 30 seconds of resolving that decision. Averaged of course between players who want to argue the rules or take forever to pick a spell, and players who say "I hit it with my sword."

In a 5 player game, that's a 10-minute round for just the players. Even if the DM moves all their NPCs in half that time, that means one round took about 15 minutes, which means a mere four rounds can take ~ an hour.

This sounds an awful lot like the DM is somesort of babysitter or dancing monkey who has to keep the players engaged and entertained at their own cost, rather than someone who gets to have fun with a game. No wonder so many seem to think of DMing as a chore that should rotate frequently...

Glorthindel
2019-12-12, 03:39 AM
As a DM, I wont hold back on using a villains best weapons (yes, I will and have Disintegrated characters, its the risk you run when you hunt down a Beholder), since the players have no compulsion about shutting my villains down equally hard.

What I am open to is a spell (and ability) amnesty. If a player feels a particular spell is tedious or unfun, I am more than willing to ban that spell for both my villains, and the player characters. If the players are unwilling to give up their fight-ending abilities, then I wont either, but if in the interest of everyone having fun, they are willing to forgo their funsucking abilities in return for me doing the same, then I am more than willing to do so.

Pelle
2019-12-12, 05:29 AM
Still doesn't change the fact the majority of tables I play at call it metagaming.

So for you, "metagaming" is even less fun than having to shut up and stay silent for 40 min? If so, do continue to not metagame, but you don't have to if contributing out of character sounds more fun to you.


Sadly that's not the table dynamic and you're not my DM. I can't just start doing that and say "well JNA said it was cool".

You can instead say "I don't find this fun, and prefer talking out-of-character instead of having to sit in silence". There are lots of different kinds of metagaming, and exactly which are fun or at least acceptable varies by person, there's no universal standard for that.

Anonymouswizard
2019-12-12, 05:50 AM
What do you think of us player who use are phones but are actually playing attention? While I didn't do it too much in combat (as I said, I'm used to a rund taking 15 minutes with a decent sized group, often less) I do it a lot when the group splits up and I probably shouldn't be memorising this information (it's easier to forget if I was also browsing GitP at the time than if it was my only focus).

[QUOTE=Mechalich;24305141]Speaking as a GM, this is, regrettably, a really big if. A lot of players are really bad about knowing their modifiers, their character options, and so forth. OOTS #34 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0034.html) represents an extremely common scenario, especially in D&D, which comes loaded down with all sorts of situational modifiers of varying duration. Many GMs - and I'll count myself among them - specifically avoid utilizing effects that produce major modifier changes, energy drain is the big and obvious one, simply because they're more trouble to keep track of than they're worth.

Now, the general solution here is to play a different system, one with simpler math and fewer overall components in play (entirely too many D&D rolls involve upwards of ten +/- 1 bits of arithmetic) if the players aren't up for doing this. There's a lot to be said for combat systems that are simply fast, because that way when characters are inevitably dropped out of fights - which will eventually happen due to damage if nothing else - they are able to come back quickly.

Do you want to know what IME is the biggest slowdown in combat? It's not tactical decisions or not knowing your modifiers, it's 'what die do I roll to attack again' (insert third rant about how this is the forth session, you should know it's the d20 for everything bar damage and hp rolls by now). I plaed with one group that made me really miss my university group, nobody there had trouble picking up central mechanics (while also being happy with looking up subsystems during other player's turns, it turns out that six engineers/scientists like complex rules systems), and yet in this other group anything which used more dice than Mutants & Masterminds was too complex. Too bad they insisted on playing either D&D or Pathfinder.

King of Nowhere
2019-12-12, 06:00 AM
What I am open to is a spell (and ability) amnesty. If a player feels a particular spell is tedious or unfun, I am more than willing to ban that spell for both my villains, and the player characters. If the players are unwilling to give up their fight-ending abilities, then I wont either, but if in the interest of everyone having fun, they are willing to forgo their funsucking abilities in return for me doing the same, then I am more than willing to do so.
Yes, i do that too for tweaking combats. Removing the most powerful attack options to have combat last 3-4 rounds instead of 1-2. But it goes both ways

I for one, agree with the OP.

Assuming your game prohibits metagaming and tries to keep chatter to a minimum,
I can agree, under that specific assumption.
It's an assumption that, in my experience, doesn't hold for most tables. It is also a way of gaming that i wouldn't particularly like

This sounds an awful lot like the DM is somesort of babysitter or dancing monkey who has to keep the players engaged and entertained at their own cost, rather than someone who gets to have fun

That, too

Imbalance
2019-12-12, 09:43 AM
I see others have weighed in on their own suggestions and helpful hints as well, but, don't let this distract you from the fact that on June 28, 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer's table.

I was there that night, and rest assured that I will remember it all of my days.

OP makes it sound like the DM is putting the story ahead of the game instead of letting the players' sum acts create the story.

16bearswutIdo
2019-12-12, 11:01 AM
Nah, if the villain knows that a PC is likely to fail a save against Hold Person, that PC is getting Held. That's the consequence for dumping Wisdom, or the party not having a utility spell like Lesser Restoration or Dispel Magic. Or in 5e you can focus fire the caster to hopefully make them lose concentration, maybe before the held PC's turn comes back around even. Smart villains who are aware of the party will be prepared for them, it's up to the players to figure out how to combat that, not for the GM to do half that figuring for them.

If the players only packed offensive spells and have nothing in the way of curing conditions, that's on them. Even something like Dispel Magic is a versatile spell, it can be used to free an ally from a devastating debuff or to remove an enemy's buff, something my party learned the hard way when the wizard Polymorphed herself into a dinosaur only to have it Dispelled before their next turn.

Also I guess asking for advice on how to roleplay a character better is metagaming now? Looks like the metagame police are getting even worse...

Quoted for truth.

If the PCs and DM haven't mutually agreed to ban it from the world (NPCs and PCs alike), and the enemy in question has the spell, it's fair game. If your character has low Int and the enemy knows it, you're getting Mazed. If one PC has a stake/silver weapon/mirror and you're against a Vampire, guess who's gotta save vs Dominate?

OP, if you complaint was specifically sparked by Grog in CR, I gotta ask you - did you think Vecna and his minions would just let a heavy-hitting Goliath Barbarian swing around the Sword of Kas at them?

Rhedyn
2019-12-12, 12:13 PM
If this is an issue, your combats are too long and your table is too focused on combat for your preference.

I actually would encourage GMs to take people out of fights in systems where that will drastically speed up conflict resolution. Are you a slow player that takes 5+ minutes every turn? You get CC'd first.

ngilop
2019-12-12, 01:11 PM
I was there that night, and rest assured that I will remember it all of my days.

OP makes it sound like the DM is putting the story ahead of the game instead of letting the players' sum acts create the story.

I am glad somebody got that.

But, on an honest note. OP.. why do you thin having things that negatively impact your character not be allowed to exist?

I am of the group that feels (for the most part) that things the players do against the monsters the monsters can do against the players. So, if you do not feel that monsters should every attack a player and do hit point damage, or use a spell that traps the player in a pit then the players should not do that against the monsters.


OR it sounds like you optimize well above and beyond the rest of the party and have no care or even want to adjust that, then gets mad when the DM puts an obstacle in front of you for the specific purpose of allowing the entirety of the remaining players to be able to play and interact with the game.

Man_Over_Game
2019-12-12, 02:10 PM
So...what's your alternative?

Seriously, what's the alternative to effects that can take you out of the fight?

I'd implement effects that move the character into a different encounter:


A Fallen rises from the floor, and silently challenges you to a duel. Somehow, you're familiar enough with these demons to know that his chains will break free if you try to flee, a barrier keeps outside influences out of the dueling arena, and the only thing keeping this demon from using its full potential are the chains that bind it. The laws that bind them have laws themselves, easily broken and easily obeyed. They fight, not to win, but in the hopes that they can convince a coward to take their place in hell. It knows you now understand, and draws its broadsword.
As the mindfog sinks in, you are ripped into an artificial dream. You are nearly blind in the fog you find yourself in. All you can hear, besides your heaving breaths, is the distant sound of an incoming cavalry charge. They're coming for you.
You seem to have been Blinked into another plane, although you're not exactly sure what. In a space where gravity seems isolated to individual fractures of foreign stone and earth, floating amidst an endless purple sky, you feel the instinctive pull of a native Gate. Sure enough, the telltale ring of a portal is visible off in the distance, a welcome anomaly in this place. If you can find a way to traverse the empty space between you, it might find you a way back.

Kelb_Panthera
2019-12-12, 02:55 PM
Sadly that's not the table dynamic and you're not my DM. I can't just start doing that and say "well JNA said it was cool".

You can't say "the internet said it's okay" as an argument and expect result but you really should be making some kind of argument. The GM is displaying problem behavior and will continue to do so unless you confront him. Check with the other players. I'd bet you're not the only one that has a problem with this.


most of you sound like me, my turns go incredibly quick. I watch the flow of combat and respond with quick decisive and usually strategic moves. I play Warhammer and other strategy table top games, so it's also possible DMs take me out of combat regularly because my PC is usually pretty effective in combat.

My turns do go -very- quickly compared to others at my table. Typically well under a minute and often less than 30 seconds. You'll notice I said about 2 minutes, more than 3 times what I typically take, though. If you're not paying attention in combat you're part of the problem at your table. A simple combat should -not- take 2 hours even with total newbs though, unless the group is unusually large.


I play with a bunch of new players who don't know the rules very well or their own characters very well so turns can take quite some time.

One of my group is a total newb too. The mechanics aren't what's slowing her down even though we play 3.P. She takes too long to make a decision. She trips over the mechanics too, mind, but that rarely takes more than a moment to correct from me or the GM. Is your GM a total newb as well?

Hand_of_Vecna
2019-12-12, 03:16 PM
If as you perceive to be the problem in critical role one character is consistently being targeted for negation, then yes that's a problem the DM should address. On the otherhand, no the DM shouldn't kid gloves all encounters by having the baddies neglect tactics that actually neutralize their opponents. There are a few partial solutions to your issue.

Talk to party, both on and out of character, about being ready to neutralize characters being neutralized. If everyone gives more priority to status removal (including healing unconscious characters) this allows the move that put the status on to be impactful as the target probably lost a turn and someone spent an action putting them back in action, but nobody is sidelined for a whole encounter.

Everyone can work on being decisive during combat. I get antsy if a D&D combat that isn't a flavorful boss battle lasts over 30 minutes. Try not to look up rules, think about how the combat may unfold before your next turn and how your character will react. This will also sometimes require pushing other players a little. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be patient with new players learning the rules or doing for the first time, or even players with handicaps, but more often than not I find when the game is held up it's by a solid player hemming and hawing between perfectly fine options. Remind people that their character does not have five minutes to consider the best course of action and that they aren't playing a solo turn based strategy game. In some groups I've seen positive results from the DM using a 30 or 60 second hourglass on people's turns. The hourglass isn't started when they're told it's their turn it's flipped when the DM feels they've already had enough time to think and have already had a chance to ask for any clarifications on the state of the battlefield also this window can be adjusted for new players or those who really do need more time.

Willie the Duck
2019-12-12, 03:16 PM
There are multiple comments that are essentially saying "that's part of the game" or "that's the optimal tactic".
But that's exactly what OP is complaining about, and begging DMs to be aware that not all players think this being "part of the game" should be a thing, and that ruling this out of the game to make the game funnier (at least for him).

Note: The OP clarified that they are mostly talking about fiat elimination, but I'll continue with the notion that we are simply talking about fights where characters lose their ability to act for several (presumably long) rounds.

The OP really would have done themselves a favor by framing this whole thing not as "Dear DMs, Please stop taking players out of the fight," but instead, "Dear game designers, Please stop making games where the optimal strategy is for opponents to take characters out of the fight." I say that because there seems to have been lost that the OP was complaining about the method/expression by which losing (or even not losing, as this can happen even in fights where your side doesn't get walloped), occurs, not that they lost at all. That's really complaining about the system and what it incentivizes, not a DM having the opponents using the strategies that the game does incentivize.

And D&D (we're in the general section, but we're clearly talking D&D) certainly does that. Because of the abstract HP with you being perfectly functional until down (and in most versions of the game down is likely dead) and the extreme value of action economy, there are really two good things (optimal strategies) to do to an opponent -- focus fire on them until they are down, or hit them with whatever version of 'save or <effectively out>' the edition has. Real world skirmish tactics like routing the opponent or flanking and getting them in a pincer or getting some tactical advantage like elevation or otherwise impede fighting rarely in the game has nearly the impact it does IRL and almost never as much as simply eliminating one person from the other side acting at all.

And it doesn't have to be so. Ghostbusters, for instance doesn't even have a kill condition for the PCs, yet is a perfectly fine tactical game. GURPS, what with the death-spiral effect of shock and bleeding rules, often does have fights end with everyone having something to do right up until one side is so overall incapacitated that they decide to make some kind of retreat. Same with oWoD and the versions of Shadowrun I'm familiar with. Each game has different quirks and nuances and those dictate what the right course of action a strategic opponent might take. And I think it is a reasonable complaint that D&D does incentivize a situation where one person at the table has to sit out a (relatively long) fight without getting to do anything to affect the outcome. It worked better back when fights were shorter and the worst case scenario was you died and hireling #3 got promoted to PC status.

That said, the solution is to play one of the thousands of other systems out there if it bothers you overly. I think the OP has been treated to a bevy of unsupported (here at least) assumptions -- "mollycoddle[d]," "you want you characters to be invincible?," "whining about losing," "spoon feed," "having things that negatively impact your character not be allowed to exist," "[must actually want to play] freeform communal RP/storytelling," -- and those have been almost completely and systematically unfair assertions. However, in the end, the best advice is, 'so play something that doesn't do this thing you don't like. I assure you that it is out there.'


Yes, surely what D&D needs post-5e is more gravitation towards being HP sponges playing rock'em'sock'em robots.

Like, Save or Die is pretty bad, but if Save or Suck gets taken out then a lot of ways of engaging in fights that aren't HP damage are either lost or have to become automatic successes of some variety. Any substantial bonus/penalty swing, most status ailments, etc.

Maybe stacking debuffs to get up to the full effect, but with no failure chance (have to get healed/dispelled/kill the enemy before they full stack you), would be an alternative. Would require longer average fight lengths though.

I think it would be nifty if the game incentivized the situation where a flanked, entangle-d, darkness-ed team has to decide whether to flee/surrender or fight on, perhaps by re-codifying the morale rules (yes, I know they exist in 5e, but only in a very vestigial form). Stacking incremental debuffs is not unlike accumulating incremental wound penalties in other games.

Unavenger
2019-12-12, 03:20 PM
Obviously, occasionally knocking players out of the game, however temporarily or permanently, is necessary if the game is going to have any built-in failure conditions* (time-sensitive missions and NPC/item protection are ways of adding those conditions, of course). However, that doesn't mean that having enemies open with SoD/SoL spells is healthy game design, let alone NSJD/NSJL spells like 3.5's pre-errata irresistible phantasmal killer or 5e's maze (although most PCs at that OP level will be immune to the former, and the latter allows a sort-of save to end the effect, although a nigh-impossible one).

If you're not making plays, you're not having fun, for the most part. This is incidentally even more annoying in forum games, where you're waiting possibly weeks for a turn to roll around where you can do more than roll a save to end.

Save-or-penalty spells, save-or-disadvantage spells, or at higher levels NSJ-penalty/disadvantage spells are fine. For example, in 3.5, ray of enfeeblement (AC is kinda like a save, it's just a different person rolling) is fine. Sleet storm is fine. But I'm no big fan of colour spray (mercifully, in 5e, they changed it to last one round, only mostly incapacitate the target, and act as an power word/executioner effect).

*Outside of abstracted failure conditions, for example: each character is vastly reduced in power (but not to the point of ineffectuality) when they are seriously injured. When all of the party members are seriously injured, they must retreat or die. Alternatively, a character who would die in standard D&D is instead mortally wounded, and will die in X rounds (or they die at end of combat; when all players are mortally wounded, or all nonmortally wounded players leave the fight somehow, the mortally wounded ones die).

Tawmis
2019-12-12, 03:25 PM
So I never try to take anyone out of the game.

However, I do try to make the fights threatening. Otherwise, there's no "risk" of danger. And the players know they will always win.

So for example, in the last work game I ran, an Ettin caught the sleeping party unaware (even gave them all a Perception roll, those who were awake) to spot (visually or audibly) if they were awake/keeping watch. There just happened to be only one person awake/on watch (the others were resting to recover spells). Said person rolled horribly, so I described the night, and how beautiful it seemed, until the Ettin suddenly arrived, stepping out of the darkness. This made it so the sleeping characters missed the first round of initiative (I still had them roll, so I had the order ready once everyone was awake).

The main person on watch happened to be one of the two clerics. Seeing that he was awake the Ettin went after him. Now the Cleric is wearing chain (or whatever) so he's got a reasonably good armor class - the Ettin however, with two attacks, managed to hit. And hit hard. The others awoke the following round (awaken by combat sounds, and the cleric shouting). The Ettin, having already wounded the Cleric focused on him, and he did manage to knock him out below zero. So now he's doing death saves, as the fight goes on. Granted, each round he did get to roll to avoid dying, but he was technically taken out of the fight for like four rounds.

RifleAvenger
2019-12-12, 04:00 PM
I think the OP has been treated to a bevy of unsupported (here at least) assumptions... "[must actually want to play] freeform communal RP/storytelling,"

but in the end the best advice is, 'so play something that doesn't do this thing you don't like. I assure you that it is out there.'

‐---------

I think it would be nifty if the game incentivized the situation where a flanked, entangle-d, darkness-ed team has to decide whether to flee/surrender or fight on, perhaps by re-codifying the morale rules (yes, I know they exist in 5e, but only in a very vestigial form). Stacking incremental debuffs is not unlike accumulating incremental wound penalties in other games.I think it's unfair that you included the suggestion for freeform in with all the truly sneering remarks. It's a "system" of its own, and one where (with a not terrible group) no one is ever removed from play w/o consent. The same cannot be said for any system with a built in death/failure mechanic.

‐------------
Notably some instances in D&D kinda, but not really, do this.

A lot of petrifying effects in 5e are multi-step.

Suffocation in Pathfinder, though it's more Save or Lose and then Save Some More or Die.

Shaken -> Frightened -> Panicked in 3e, though it only takes two steps to be out of the fight.

I wouldn't mind that system being expanded to other status ailments or spells.

As much as I like nWoD/CoD and the wound penalty system it shares or resembles in other systems, I don't think such would be widely well received in D&D. For better or worse, critical existence failure is pretty lodged into the game.

Drache64
2019-12-12, 04:18 PM
So I never try to take anyone out of the game.

However, I do try to make the fights threatening. Otherwise, there's no "risk" of danger. And the players know they will always win.

So for example, in the last work game I ran, an Ettin caught the sleeping party unaware (even gave them all a Perception roll, those who were awake) to spot (visually or audibly) if they were awake/keeping watch. There just happened to be only one person awake/on watch (the others were resting to recover spells). Said person rolled horribly, so I described the night, and how beautiful it seemed, until the Ettin suddenly arrived, stepping out of the darkness. This made it so the sleeping characters missed the first round of initiative (I still had them roll, so I had the order ready once everyone was awake).

The main person on watch happened to be one of the two clerics. Seeing that he was awake the Ettin went after him. Now the Cleric is wearing chain (or whatever) so he's got a reasonably good armor class - the Ettin however, with two attacks, managed to hit. And hit hard. The others awoke the following round (awaken by combat sounds, and the cleric shouting). The Ettin, having already wounded the Cleric focused on him, and he did manage to knock him out below zero. So now he's doing death saves, as the fight goes on. Granted, each round he did get to roll to avoid dying, but he was technically taken out of the fight for like four rounds.

That all sounds perfectly fine, what I am referring to is if it went this way: The Ettin shows up, sneaks up on the sleeping party and swallows one player whole, the rest of the party fights the entire combat and at the end cuts the swallowed player out of the stomach.

Or if the party is awake, the DMNPC casts a Oteluke's Resilient sphere on one player so he cannot react, then the Ettin attacks and that one player spends the entire time in the sphere outside of combat.

Reynard
2019-12-12, 05:59 PM
I have literally never had a DM do that, or have I ever done it as a DM. That is a problem with a specific DM, and they need to be asked to stop. Then, if they don't, to be told to stop. And if that doesn't work, you get up and just walk out on them. Not worth attempting to play with someone who clearly doesn't want you to play.

But the way you opened this thread with none of the specific context seems to have opened another, different discussion about crowd control spells.

redwizard007
2019-12-12, 06:49 PM
I'll admit Hold Person, Maze, and **** like that absolutely suck to get tagged with. It's worse if you continue to tank your saves and no friendly casters help you out. Those same spells are cash money if a PC pulls them off in the right place. A more gradual save or suck slide would be more player friendly, as would auto-save hero points, but it wouldn't be as dramatic.

Tawmis
2019-12-12, 07:00 PM
It's an interesting thing...

Because on the flip side, I see a lot of people who _hate_ that a monster can save _every round_ against specific spells that can take them out...

Those same people don't always seem to realize, those same spells, can be used on players.

The attempt to _save every round_ is not for the monster's benefit - but for the PLAYER'S benefit so they're not out of the game.

This is why well rounded groups help a group's survival. A group full of fighters is not going to do well. They may tank away - but if there's a wall to stop them from getting to a caster, they're going to get mind fubared. Same thing if it's all mages, glasses cannons can still easily be broken, even by the simplest of mobs, such as Kobolds who use pack tactics. You need your party to help YOU survive, and they need YOU to help them survive. Sometimes things don't pan out that way, when the dice are ill favored.

Pex
2019-12-13, 12:38 AM
Quite, also, players and GMs are supposed to be role-playing. Their characters are not (usually, robots and the like excepted) problem-solving computational machines capable of determining in the second or so they have between actions what the tactically optimal choice in a given situation might be. Sure, the character probably has better combat instincts than the player assuming they are meant to have experience, which justifies a little bit of assessment, but that's all. Make choices in character and make them at combat speed. If you want to play a tactical combat RPG with endless pause for consideration, then just do that, but if you're playing a roleplaying game assume that neither side is operating at anything like perfect efficiency.

Actually the DM is. All the bad guys fight together tactically at the speed of DM thought. They have a plan of attack before the combat started by the DM creating the encounter. They adapt in unison to the situation of whatever happens in the fight because the DM thinks on it. It is quite fair for the players to talk to each other in combat for tactics. It is reasonable for the DM not to let the combat pause while the players have a 5 real world minute conversation about it, but players offering quick suggestions of actions to take is fine. The DM is already doing it with himself in his head.

Mechalich
2019-12-13, 01:05 AM
Actually the DM is. All the bad guys fight together tactically at the speed of DM thought. They have a plan of attack before the combat started by the DM creating the encounter. They adapt in unison to the situation of whatever happens in the fight because the DM thinks on it. It is quite fair for the players to talk to each other in combat for tactics. It is reasonable for the DM not to let the combat pause while the players have a 5 real world minute conversation about it, but players offering quick suggestions of actions to take is fine. The DM is already doing it with himself in his head.

The GM is supposed to be roleplaying the bad guys too. They should only adapt in unison if that's in character for whatever the antagonists happen to be (ex. Formians). Otherwise they should be just as fractious, dissonant, and potentially at cross-purposes as the PCs, perhaps moreso in many cases since common antagonists in RPGs represent groups with extremely low espirit de corps (ex. goblins).

Anyway, I didn't say anything against quick suggestions, but 'quick' has to be applied fairly strictly. There are many tables were one player offering a 'suggestion' to another, consists of spending multiple minutes to completely map out the other player's turn, which is not only unreasonable, it's a role-playing failure. In general, it is pretty much impossible to both stay in character in combat and to have combat move slowly (unless you're portraying something like Adam West style Batman slapstick), because combat is by nature a fast-moving process, and if characters aren't operating at combat speed then those characters are acting wildly out of context - this is rather in the fashion of how VATS shatters immersion for many players in Fallout games.

Now, if you're running a tactical wargame, none of that matters, because the game is about problem-solving rather than role-playing, this is one of the reasons why generic and disposable characters are common in tactical RPGs but not scripted RPGs. D&D's problems with overly involved combat resolution systems trace back to its tactical wargame roots. And, in fairness to D&D, a huge portion of the player base is content to play it as a sort of modified tactical wargame squeezed into dungeons and that's actually arguably the most developed part of the system. So this is one of the many areas where D&D is confined by its highly restrictive implicit design goals.

Glorthindel
2019-12-13, 09:06 AM
Actually the DM is. All the bad guys fight together tactically at the speed of DM thought. They have a plan of attack before the combat started by the DM creating the encounter. They adapt in unison to the situation of whatever happens in the fight because the DM thinks on it. It is quite fair for the players to talk to each other in combat for tactics. It is reasonable for the DM not to let the combat pause while the players have a 5 real world minute conversation about it, but players offering quick suggestions of actions to take is fine. The DM is already doing it with himself in his head.

Its also worth noting that we don't roleplay every second of characters lives. The hours of riding down the road, sitting up on watch at night, and relaxing in a tavern for a couple of days are going to be spent doing something, and one of those things is going to be discussiong combat tactics, and making plans for common (and probably very uncommon) situations.

In my mind, player tactical table-talk is simulating that missing time. Call it a flashback to when one evening around the camp fire when a similar situation came up in conversation, but barring the truly bizarre occurances, its highly likely at some point the party members will have discussed a situation very similar to the one the party are in, and would have forumalated some way to deal with it.

Jay R
2019-12-13, 09:57 AM
Actually the DM is. All the bad guys fight together tactically at the speed of DM thought. They have a plan of attack before the combat started by the DM creating the encounter. They adapt in unison to the situation of whatever happens in the fight because the DM thinks on it.

That depends on the DM, and the DM's understanding of the situation. If the NPCs are a well-trained unit, then yes, they will fight like a well-trained, coordinated unit.

But if one NPC sees something, I don't assume that the others know about it. For instance, some games have specific rules for seeing through illusions, and how much it helps that one of your group tells you it's an illusion.

My goblins are a undisciplined rabble. Alone, they just rush in randomly and each attacks the closest target. They will also run away at the first sign of trouble, unless there is a strong non-goblin leader. Six second- and third-level PCs once broke a siege of about 50 goblins, by taking out the three ogres leading them.

Once, a group of wolf-riding goblins attacked the PC's camp. They expertly cut between one PC and the rest, and tried to drag that single PC off. That tactic was chosen because the actual leader was the alpha wolf, not the goblin riding him.

By contrast, my kobolds fight a carefully planned, coordinated attack. If they are surprised and had no time to plan, they will flee, and try to set up an ambush later.

The gnolls that the PCs have seen so far have had an initial plan, but without further coordination. They generally work together, and will break off if it seems warranted. But the next time the PCs encounter them, the gnolls will be starving, and the PCs will be the first meat they've seen in three days. The gnolls will fight to the death because they have to -- but at a minus for being starved.

The point is that the NPCs act as coordinated, or as fractured, as the DM plays them. And a good DM plays different characters differently.

Guizonde
2019-12-13, 12:25 PM
if my bad guy knocks down or knocks out a player, it's the dice's fault. i don't intentionally single out a player for the ko. that said, i also impose time limits on turns. it forces on the fly thinking for the players, resulting sometimes in less than optimal decisions, but hey. combat is chaotic, sometimes you will myopically do a moronic thing. it happens.

in general, a player's turn takes maximum a minute, dice rolls included. that means if you're knocked out for three rounds, you're out for what? 15 minutes tops? last game i played, our scout was out for 2 turns since he failed his spot check and was out of range for the ambush. he wasted 2 turns running like crazy to get in the fight. the only complaints were that we were getting thrashed without him. he was rolling combat in less than 10 minutes.

if you have a problem with being taken out, talk to the dm and the players about it, and get yourself an hourglass so that people know how much time they've got left to act. if you don't act before time runs out, too bad, either skip your turn or play at the end of the turn. believe me, it speeds up combat spectacularly.

knockouts suck, since often it ties up the medic as well, but it happens. just make the best out of a bad hand and speed up combat considerably via time limits.

"oh, but i can't do that, how will i look up the perfect spell to use at that moment?!" i hear you say. that's what the downtime between turns is for. keep one ear on the fight and prepare accordingly. memorize your spells, make cheat sheets, and failing that, remember vaarsuvius' theorem of fireballs. if it speeds up your turn, it speeds up everyone's turn.

the games i run are brutal in terms of damage dealt. it's not rare for an encounter to last 2 turns. most fights are dealt with in less than 30 minutes real-time, and once the adaptation period is over, most players are loath to get back to the old system of "let me see, um, what should i do, maybe drink a potion? no, i need to cast a spell, but which one, lemme see my spell list..."

hell, i gave that pointer to my dm in pathfinder, and after some grumbling he tried it out. the oracle grumbled loudest, since he's an optimizer, but the monk and bard (both victims of multiple knockouts per combat) loved it. we impose a 2 minute time limit however, to read up on how spells work.

hope this helps. i know i thank the psycho-dm that taught me that rule.

Tanarii
2019-12-13, 01:29 PM
Even having us miss a few rounds of combat could turn into sitting out 2 hours of a 4 hour session.
That's your problem, right there. Even in 4e, which IMX had the slowest and most tactical combat of any edition of D&D, a full combat with five players didn't take more than 45 minutes.

Xervous
2019-12-13, 03:04 PM
That's your problem, right there. Even in 4e, which IMX had the slowest and most tactical combat of any edition of D&D, a full combat with five players didn't take more than 45 minutes.

4e’s combat was slow not as a measure of player turn length but by a measure of total turns as on level fights were tuned by 4e’s tighter math to take so long to kill. Short of intricate blender interactions most turns were simply “toss my encounter power I’m just rolling extra dice”. IIRC it was benchmarked as 6 rounds at lower levels then bloating towards 8+

Tanarii
2019-12-13, 03:48 PM
4e’s combat was slow not as a measure of player turn length but by a measure of total turns as on level fights were tuned by 4e’s tighter math to take so long to kill. Short of intricate blender interactions most turns were simply “toss my encounter power I’m just rolling extra dice”. IIRC it was benchmarked as 6 rounds at lower levels then bloating towards 8+
That wasn't my experience at all. They were long turns each, maybe as much as 2 minutes per player and 5 for the DM. Individual powers took a lot to properly resolve. But even at 15 minutes per turn, which is a LOT, combats were only about 3 rounds. Combats only went to at-will powers at the very lowest levels, and those are the powers that could be resolved quickly, but also could take more than 3 rounds, so it tended to take about the same time.

Contrast to 5e, where a player taking a minute to execute is taking a long time, and a Medium difficulty combat with 5-6 players only takes at most 15-20 minutes to run. A complex Difficult combat with 6 or so rounds (each with long player turns) might take up to 45 minutes, but it's twice as many rounds at 4e.

redwizard007
2019-12-13, 04:16 PM
That's your problem, right there. Even in 4e, which IMX had the slowest and most tactical combat of any edition of D&D, a full combat with five players didn't take more than 45 minutes.

4e? The edition with minions? Your combats ran long with freaking minions. I can't even...

MoiMagnus
2019-12-13, 05:22 PM
Those same people don't always seem to realize, those same spells, can be used on players.

That's one of the reason I actually like asymmetry between PCs and NPCs for tactical combat. It allows to give to the player capacities no player would ever want against them, and to NPCs capacities that wouldn't make sense in the player action economy.
The only real problem I have with such an asymmetry is that if it is too significant, it can become difficulty to not ignore it during the RP. (Oh, and it makes PC vs PC mechanically weird, if not impossible by rules, but that's rarely an issue).


4e? The edition with minions? Your combats ran long with freaking minions. I can't even...

4e is the D&D edition I've played where the combats tend to drag the most. (I've played 3.5, Pathfinder, 4e and 5e)
Minions are great, in fact, one of the very good idea of 4e, but that doesn't compensate for all the rest.

The only fight that lasted longer than my 4e fight were:
+ "3 in 1" fight, where the PCs essentially got 3 successive fight without transitions (Ive done that once in 5e).
+ Fight with long rule discussions and game design analysis. Those are not necessarily long in number of turns, but they compensate.

False God
2019-12-13, 05:41 PM
4e? The edition with minions? Your combats ran long with freaking minions. I can't even...

Minions saw a lot less use in the actual written material than they were actually employed by DMs at the table. Most "combats" would be against 4 or 5 regular enemies who all had HUGE amounts of HP and pretty good defenses, especially compared to the previous edition where defenses were good, but HP was minimal. I think "average" low-CR enemies had around 30-40 HP.

The advantage to minions is really just numbers. They're great to fill out an army or a horde without having to track individual HP or use swarm mechanics.

Jakinbandw
2019-12-13, 05:42 PM
4e is the D&D edition I've played where the combats tend to drag the most. (I've played 3.5, Pathfinder, 4e and 5e)
Minions are great, in fact, one of the very good idea of 4e, but that doesn't compensate for all the rest.

The only fight that lasted longer than my 4e fight were:
+ "3 in 1" fight, where the PCs essentially got 3 successive fight without transitions (Ive done that once in 5e).
+ Fight with long rule discussions and game design analysis. Those are not necessarily long in number of turns, but they compensate.

My wife is in a 3.5 game where each round of combat took over an hour. It has 8 players, each player has multiple npcs they are responsible for, ect. When her character got taken out once she spent the next 3 sessions not playing the game because a single combat took that long.

zinycor
2019-12-13, 05:56 PM
Dear players:

Get over it!

King of Nowhere
2019-12-13, 06:05 PM
My wife is in a 3.5 game where each round of combat took over an hour. It has 8 players, each player has multiple npcs they are responsible for, ect. When her character got taken out once she spent the next 3 sessions not playing the game because a single combat took that long.

without going to that extreme, combat is long at my table too, and for problems that cannot really be solved with timers.
on one hand we all talk about tactics before deciding what to do - and we like doing that, we wouldn't want anyone setting a timer to stop our fun.
but there are also a lot of other interactions.
we rarely use a grid, so resolving area spells can be complicated. when we do use a grid, we take time setting it up.
there are often discussions on how to adjudicate rules interactions, and whether some enemy will have some immunity or not. at high level, i've never been able to keep track of all the passive defences and abilities of anything more than my character.
then there are also times when one character wants to do something out of the ordinary, and asks what check should be entailed. In particular, "does my character think he can make it?" i wouldn't roll in the blind, as my character should know in advance if he can make a certain acrobatic feat. on the other hand, it requires me asking the dm, and the dm figuring out a dc, and perhaps he would tell me that it would be too hard and so i'd have to pick another action.

and finally, most of it is descriptions. we often try to clarify stuff. especially when the dm uses homebrew mosnters and we are trying to ddetermine how they are reacting to our attacks.

and frankly, i much prefer the homey babble that results. the fast fights some people are describing here feel.... sterile. passionless. and way too fast to enjoy properly.

Jay R
2019-12-13, 06:44 PM
I pay attention to the game when it isn't my turn. Even when my character is unconscious and it won't be my turn again throughout this melee.

I actually like D&D. Not just my turn -- the entire game.

Drache64
2019-12-13, 07:36 PM
That's your problem, right there. Even in 4e, which IMX had the slowest and most tactical combat of any edition of D&D, a full combat with five players didn't take more than 45 minutes.

You haven't played with 7 players vs 30 mobs?


if my bad guy knocks down or knocks out a player, it's the dice's fault. i don't intentionally single out a player for the ko. that said, i also impose time limits on turns. it forces on the fly thinking for the players, resulting sometimes in less than optimal decisions, but hey. combat is chaotic, sometimes you will myopically do a moronic thing. it happens.

No offense but I stopped reading right here, it's obviously not what I'm talking about.

JNAProductions
2019-12-13, 08:11 PM
You haven't played with 7 players vs 30 mobs?

No offense but I stopped reading right here, it's obviously not what I'm talking about.

But that’s what your title and OP indicate you’re talking about.

TripleD
2019-12-13, 10:26 PM
and frankly, i much prefer the homey babble that results. the fast fights some people are describing here feel.... sterile. passionless

Weirdly enough those are the exact words I’d use to describe the kind of combat you illustrated.

Different strokes n’ all.

Mechalich
2019-12-13, 10:30 PM
You haven't played with 7 players vs 30 mobs?

Generally no, and you shouldn't be either. Tabletop gaming systems are generally designed for 3-5 players. Going above that will almost always have deleterious consequences for gameplay, it's simply too many people involved at once. This is true even in exceedingly simply systems, but doubly so in complex ones like D&D. If you have 7 players and the GM keeps arbitrarily removing one from play, it suggests they are unable to handle the multitasking necessary to manage such a large group at once.

zinycor
2019-12-13, 10:47 PM
You haven't played with 7 players vs 30 mobs?


So... You enjoy suffering at your games?

False God
2019-12-14, 12:39 AM
This sounds an awful lot like the DM is somesort of babysitter or dancing monkey who has to keep the players engaged and entertained at their own cost, rather than someone who gets to have fun with a game. No wonder so many seem to think of DMing as a chore that should rotate frequently...

Yeah, the DM has more responsibility to managing "the game" than the players do. Yeah, the DM has more responsibility for presenting a viable gameworld and ensuring it's elements engage the players. The gameworld won't do that itsself, the book won't roll dice, manage NPCs or present the plot hooks. It'll just sit there until someone reads it and then presents it in an interesting way. All the fish have to do is swim in the river and take the bait. The fisherman still needs to travel to where the fish are, ensure he has proper supplies, and have at least some idea of how to cast a line. The fish? Swim and bite.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-12-14, 01:03 AM
Yeah, the DM has more responsibility to managing "the game" than the players do. Yeah, the DM has more responsibility for presenting a viable gameworld and ensuring it's elements engage the players. The gameworld won't do that itsself, the book won't roll dice, manage NPCs or present the plot hooks. It'll just sit there until someone reads it and then presents it in an interesting way. All the fish have to do is swim in the river and take the bait. The fisherman still needs to travel to where the fish are, ensure he has proper supplies, and have at least some idea of how to cast a line. The fish? Swim and bite.

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False God
2019-12-14, 01:15 AM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

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Koo Rehtorb
2019-12-14, 01:43 AM
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

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JakOfAllTirades
2019-12-14, 04:03 AM
Does nobody playing D&D 5E have spellcasters in their party who uses Counterspell to protect the others from SoS/SoD spells? D&D combat takes teamwork, and if the teamwork is lacking, everyone suffers for it. At my table the DM pulls no punches (he once tried to Plane Shift a character to Hades) and there's no whining; we count on our casters to counterspell, or cast Bless/Resistance to boost saving throws when needed. Our martials either protect our casters, or go after enemy casters if they're concentrating on a spell that's keeping one of our guys out of the fight.

Guizonde
2019-12-14, 04:14 AM
No offense but I stopped reading right here, it's obviously not what I'm talking about.

none taken, but if that's not what you're talking about, then i don't understand what you are talking about. you don't want dm's to knock your characters out, that's understandable. if it's done on purpose to up the challenge, that's a problem with the dm. if it's accidental, it sucks, and my solution is to set up turn time limits to alleviate the pain of uselessness.

also, in your case of 7 vs 30, may i suggest "swarm rules"? i homebrewed one (my preferred system doesn't have that rule) that i'm still tweaking, but essentially, you take one standard mook profile and multiply its attack value and its hp by however many you want in the game. speeds up the game a lot more than "ok, mook 6 does his turn, now on to mook 7 of 16".

i read your problem as a case of slow combat. if it's the "getting knocked out" part, i'm sorry, but never play a medic or healer class, you will be bogged down often with all your turn being "go heal this guy, go heal that guy" and very little casting spells to end the encounter.

MoiMagnus
2019-12-14, 06:54 AM
Does nobody playing D&D 5E have spellcasters in their party who uses Counterspell to protect the others from SoS/SoD spells? D&D combat takes teamwork, and if the teamwork is lacking, everyone suffers for it. At my table the DM pulls no punches (he once tried to Plane Shift a character to Hades) and there's no whining; we count on our casters to counterspell, or cast Bless/Resistance to boost saving throws when needed. Our martials either protect our casters, or go after enemy casters if they're concentrating on a spell that's keeping one of our guys out of the fight.
It depends a lot on how Counterspell is actually handled by your DM.
Do you know which spell is cast before choosing to counterspell?
Do you know which person is targeted before choosing to counterpsell?
As for RAW, the only thing you know is "this creature is casting a spell", since it cost a reaction to know more about it, and casting a counterspell also cost the reaction. As for my particular DMing houserule, I communicate the spell level and the "approximative targeted zone", which indeed significantly reduce the problem of SoS/SoD. But without that kind of houserule, unless you accept to waste a significant number of counterspells against cantrips, then you cannot really rely on counterspell. Unless you're particularly good at reading the DM's bluff, or your DM is particularly bad at bluffing.
(I've also encountered DMs that find counterspell OP in 5e, so ban it, but that's another subject)

Jay R
2019-12-14, 11:38 AM
I sympathize. I really do. For me, the most frustrating part is coming to the table with my character sheet prepared, and waiting for everybody else to update their sheet with the experience points from last week. Last week's "4:00 game" actually started after 5:00.

Yes, it's frustrating to have your character knocked out of a fight early.
It's frustrating to sit on the bench because you're a defensive player and the offense is currently on the field.
It's frustrating to play Monopoly and have your piece stuck in jail.
It's frustrating to be at a fencing tournament after you've been eliminated.
It's frustrating to watch the game go by when you landed on the "Lose One Turn" square.
It's frustrating to sit in the dugout when somebody else is up to bat.
It's frustrating to sit in the car while somebody else is driving.
It's frustrating to visit a museum with somebody who spends more time at each exhibit than you want to.
It's frustrating to be at a track meet or swim meet waiting for your event.
It's frustrating to ...

... but enough.

In every group activity, there are times when you aren't the active person -- sometimes for long periods of time. D&D is like that, too. You will get your full allotment of time and action, but that means some long stretches when your teammates are waiting while you have the spotlight, and other long stretches when you are waiting while they are in the spotlight.

Accept it. Learn to enjoy watching the action, or at least, to wait patiently.

[Another of my frustrations is when a PC is knocked out, and a couple of rounds later the cleric heals him so he can act again, and then he needs us to waste time explaining the situation because he wasn't paying attention while his character was unconscious.]

Tanarii
2019-12-14, 12:31 PM
You haven't played with 7 players vs 30 mobs?
6 vs more than 30 in 5e, several times. Staged as 2 Medium wave fights of 15+. I don't recall any of them taking more than an hour, so call it taking 3-4 times as long as a single fight to do two (high creature count) fights back to back.

But if 7 players vs 30 enemies at once is your normal game ... then all sorts of adjustments probably need to be made. Your request not to have to sit it out is probably reasonable.

OTOH if it was a one time thing, I understand your frustration and sympathize.

But calling for DMs to avoid it globally based on either of those unusual circumstances, while a classic vent, isn't going to resonate.

Kaptin Keen
2019-12-15, 03:32 AM
So .. 3 pages worth of snide remarks? Not going to read through all that. Drache has a point - and if he's termed it as player agency instead, most of you would be cheering for him.

As I see it, this is the good old Hold Person conundrum: A spell perfectly designed to rob the Fighter of his one moment to shine. Several classes, but perhaps the Fighter more than any other, is only ever really relevant in a brawl - so when initiative is rolled, and the first thing that happens is that the cleric takes you out of the fight, that's legitimately frustrating.

And ... to be completely honest, if you fail to see that, you're not trying hard enough.

It's not necessarily the DM's fault, though. The spell is there to use, and the cleric villain really should - it's hugely effective. It's not the players fault either - the class is there to be played. I'm sure some would claim that it's up to the player to shore up those defences. Go buy a ring of mind shielding*, ya scrub.

But it's neither's fault in reality. It sloppy game design, and that really all there is to say. No player of any game ever created has a good time not playing**. Even when it first becomes available, hold person lasts long enough to eliminate the fighter for pretty much the entirety of the fight.

* Ring of mind shielding doesn't do what I'm implying it should - but that's on the game designers, not me.
** The exception being Bingo - there's a christmas bingo at my workplace I'm more than happy to not be playing.

JoeJ
2019-12-15, 03:43 AM
So .. 3 pages worth of snide remarks? Not going to read through all that. Drache has a point - and if he's termed it as player agency instead, most of you would be cheering for him.

As I see it, this is the good old Hold Person conundrum: A spell perfectly designed to rob the Fighter of his one moment to shine. Several classes, but perhaps the Fighter more than any other, is only ever really relevant in a brawl - so when initiative is rolled, and the first thing that happens is that the cleric takes you out of the fight, that's legitimately frustrating.

And ... to be completely honest, if you fail to see that, you're not trying hard enough.

It's not necessarily the DM's fault, though. The spell is there to use, and the cleric villain really should - it's hugely effective. It's not the players fault either - the class is there to be played. I'm sure some would claim that it's up to the player to shore up those defences. Go buy a ring of mind shielding*, ya scrub.

But it's neither's fault in reality. It sloppy game design, and that really all there is to say. No player of any game ever created has a good time not playing**. Even when it first becomes available, hold person lasts long enough to eliminate the fighter for pretty much the entirety of the fight.

* Ring of mind shielding doesn't do what I'm implying it should - but that's on the game designers, not me.
** The exception being Bingo - there's a christmas bingo at my workplace I'm more than happy to not be playing.

Teamwork is a thing. Hold Person can be countered with Counterspell or Dispel Magic, or simply by breaking the caster's concentration.

Kaptin Keen
2019-12-15, 04:09 AM
Teamwork is a thing. Hold Person can be countered with Counterspell or Dispel Magic, or simply by breaking the caster's concentration.

Oh, sorry - did I leave you with the impression that I've never played the game? No, I know that other PC's can help, but thanks for pointing that out*.

I do not agree with you, however. The fact that another player can fix the thing that's wrong with my class - or the spell - or the game design - does not make the thing that's wrong to away.

It just makes it worse. The thing that makes my class an exercise in futility is trivial .... for someone else. Provided they can be bothered.

* Guilty of snide remarks myself. I mean that humorously =)

JoeJ
2019-12-15, 04:20 AM
Oh, sorry - did I leave you with the impression that I've never played the game? No, I know that other PC's can help, but thanks for pointing that out*.

I do not agree with you, however. The fact that another player can fix the thing that's wrong with my class - or the spell - or the game design - does not make the thing that's wrong to away.

It just makes it worse. The thing that makes my class an exercise in futility is trivial .... for someone else. Provided they can be bothered.

* Guilty of snide remarks myself. I mean that humorously =)

That's not a problem with your class, it's a positive feature of the game. Making the PCs dependent on each other is good design for a team game. And if the other players can't be "bothered" to undo the thing that's negating 25% (assuming four players) of their combat power, the party deserves to lose.

Kelb_Panthera
2019-12-15, 04:30 AM
So .. 3 pages worth of snide remarks? Not going to read through all that. Drache has a point - and if he's termed it as player agency instead, most of you would be cheering for him.

It's not all snide. I at least started with an earnest critique of his idea.


As I see it, this is the good old Hold Person conundrum: A spell perfectly designed to rob the Fighter of his one moment to shine. Several classes, but perhaps the Fighter more than any other, is only ever really relevant in a brawl - so when initiative is rolled, and the first thing that happens is that the cleric takes you out of the fight, that's legitimately frustrating.

Gotta tell ya; terrible example. In both 3e and 5e you get to save against hold person every round.

In 3e, a fighter that's serious about being the best fighter he can -will- cover that gap. Even as early as level 3 he can be swinging as high as +3 or more on that save against a dc between 13 and 17. Even in the worst case of trying to hit 17 off of a -1, you're still gonna shake it off 15% of the time before it even affects you. 40% of the time or so you'll have shaken it off by round 3 if you take it at the top of the fight and, again, this is -worst- case. More likely, it's more like 35% initial and 84% by round 3.

I can't get quite as specific with 5e but I'd bet the odds are in the same ballpark if not a little more forgiving.

In either case, the odds aren't all that bad that you'll be back in the fight before it's over and that's if none of your allies intervenes. In 3e there are even hard counters that just plain say "no, thanks. I'mma keep fighting."


And ... to be completely honest, if you fail to see that, you're not trying hard enough.

The greater the strife, the sweeter the victory. There are lot of frustrating things in lots of games, both TTRPG and otherwise. As long as they're applied -fairly- as part of the game and not just as a lazy short-cut by the GM they only make the satisfaction of final victory that much more satisfying. I'll readily agree to the notion that too much is a bad thing but I won't conceed that any at all is automatically badwrongfun.


It's not necessarily the DM's fault, though. The spell is there to use, and the cleric villain really should - it's hugely effective. It's not the players fault either - the class is there to be played. I'm sure some would claim that it's up to the player to shore up those defences. Go buy a ring of mind shielding*, ya scrub.

Top of my head; mind aspect dragonborn are outright immune to paralysis regardless of source, as are all creatures of the dragon type. For a fighter, specifically, I'll take the resolute feature at level 2 virtually every time I can afford it.


But it's neither's fault in reality. It sloppy game design, and that really all there is to say. No player of any game ever created has a good time not playing**. Even when it first becomes available, hold person lasts long enough to eliminate the fighter for pretty much the entirety of the fight.

I disagree. One of my absolute favorite things about 3e is the near perfect transparency between PCs and NPC. Paying the cost of having to defend against such things is more than fair trade for having the ability to choose them, if I so wish.

What it is, in fact, is "not to everyone's taste." By all means, drop such things from your game if you wish but please stop saying it's bad design just becaue you don't like it.

Bad design is things like making loopholes in the rules that allow characters to get wildly powerful effects for well under the intended cost of those effects, i.e. any of the various methods of getting wish effect without having to shell out the 5k xp cost in 3e.

AdAstra
2019-12-15, 04:31 AM
That's not a problem with your class, it's a positive feature of the game. Making the PCs dependent on each other is good design for a team game. And if the other players can't be "bothered" to undo the thing that's negating 25% (assuming four players) of their combat power, the party deserves to lose.

Not to mention the fact that most debuffs (and all hard lockdowns that I'm aware of in 5e) are concentration-based. Your fellow PCs can help free you just by attacking the person who's preventing you from acting. Even if the Wizard won't Dispel Magic on the enemy mage's Hold Person, they could at least include that mage in the AOE of a Fireball, which has a good chance of breaking their concentration and freeing you.

Drascin
2019-12-15, 05:07 AM
The difference is that a full loop of monopoly turns takes about 10 minutes, while DND turns might take 30-40. Also, is Monopoly really the gold standard of games you want to compare too?

In fact, among board game enthusiasts Monopoly is generally considered to be an abysmal game and an object lesson in what NOT to do in game design, and part of it is, in fact, the fact that you can have a player be basically already out of the game but the game is still going to go on for a while.

In general, as a GM, I have learned that you want to be very careful with things that completely remove people from the game. Because if it goes long enough that they zone out and start doing something else (which they will understandably do), you will not get them back easily. You want your lockdowns to be a turn, two at most, because the moment a player disconnects from the game, that's it, you lost them, and it's going to take you an hour to get them back to the same level of investment they had beforehand.

And if you completely down a guy but the fight is looking to go on for a while, give them something else to do. Let them run some NPCs. Something. If you let people sit there bored for an hour while everyone else is having fun, you're going to lose them, and it will not be their goddamn fault. As a GM I'm an entertainer, I'm here to manage a show so everyone has fun, and if a quarter of my audience is asking if they can play my Switch, I ****ed up somewhere along the line.

JakOfAllTirades
2019-12-15, 05:22 AM
It depends a lot on how Counterspell is actually handled by your DM.
Do you know which spell is cast before choosing to counterspell?
Do you know which person is targeted before choosing to counterpsell?
As for RAW, the only thing you know is "this creature is casting a spell", since it cost a reaction to know more about it, and casting a counterspell also cost the reaction. As for my particular DMing houserule, I communicate the spell level and the "approximative targeted zone", which indeed significantly reduce the problem of SoS/SoD. But without that kind of houserule, unless you accept to waste a significant number of counterspells against cantrips, then you cannot really rely on counterspell. Unless you're particularly good at reading the DM's bluff, or your DM is particularly bad at bluffing.
(I've also encountered DMs that find counterspell OP in 5e, so ban it, but that's another subject)

Our DM (and the rest of our group) finds that the RAW for identifying spells in XGtE nerfs Counterspell to the point of uselessness; it's next to impossible to counter anything that way. Those rules are a joke, full stop.

We treat identification of spells the same as creatures, characters, magic items, and anything else; if it's a spell they've seen before, the caster doesn't need to roll dice to identify it. And we don't require an action to identify a spell; either the caster knows what it is or he doesn't.

All of this goes for the enemy casters as well, so it's not uncommon for our party's spells to get countered. Our characters don't get casually taken out of the game, but the playing field is level. We can't casually take an enemy off the board without running the risk of wasting a spell slot.

All this makes for fun and challenging combats in our game. It makes Counterspell useful as a defense without letting it get out of control.

Kaptin Keen
2019-12-15, 05:22 AM
Gotta tell ya; terrible example. In both 3e and 5e you get to save against hold person every round.

So - this is our primary disagreement.

You build your melee character to be strong in melee, and that means you're building him to be weak at most other things. Melee is designed to be weak - for some reason - so you're already behind.

Meanwhile, casters have zero built-in deficits.

So in 3e you propably have a DC of 17, and a big, fat save bonus of +1. 25% chance to save, and odds are you're out of the entire fight. Or you built to be weak at your one trick. But you put most of your precious points in strength and toughness. Sure, you may have opted to dump charisma, in which case ... let's say you have +2. But it's a game of trade-offs for the melee classes. And that's the problem: Yes, you can invest in one thing until you reach an acceptable level - but there is not trade-off for casters.

Anyways ... I really have nothing further to add. If you think it's ok for one class to be made completely irrelevant, and to not get to play the game - odds are you're playing another class.

Boci
2019-12-15, 05:30 AM
Our DM (and the rest of our group) finds that the RAW for identifying spells in XGtE nerfs Counterspell to the point of uselessness; it's next to impossible to counter anything that way. Those rules are a joke, full stop.

That kinda hurts your opening of "Does nobody playing D&D 5E have spellcasters in their party who uses Counterspell to protect the others from SoS/SoD spells?" if you then have to add the clause that this only works if your DM isn't using the latest RAW.

Gluteus_Maximus
2019-12-15, 05:49 AM
So - this is our primary disagreement.

You build your melee character to be strong in melee, and that means you're building him to be weak at most other things. Melee is designed to be weak - for some reason - so you're already behind.

Meanwhile, casters have zero built-in deficits.

Wizards, at least, have no armor. Others unless you're a cleric (or druid with some sort of chitinous plate mail) have little armor. That is a built-in deficit. Low-level spellcasters also have very few spells per day/rest, making them weaker than the fighter who can keep trucking forever as long as they have at least 1 hit point. That's a built in deficit... Melee is weak only in an open space situation, meanwhile ranged sucks in closed quarters. Every possible option is weak in some way, and that makes it more balanced.


So in 3e you propably have a DC of 17, and a big, fat save bonus of +1. 25% chance to save, and odds are you're out of the entire fight. Or you built to be weak at your one trick. But you put most of your precious points in strength and toughness. Sure, you may have opted to dump charisma, in which case ... let's say you have +2. But it's a game of trade-offs for the melee classes. And that's the problem: Yes, you can invest in one thing until you reach an acceptable level - but there is not trade-off for casters.

Anyways ... I really have nothing further to add. If you think it's ok for one class to be made completely irrelevant, and to not get to play the game - odds are you're playing another class.

The trade off for casters is you have to roll high enough or configure your stats right so you can have a decent DEX and CON alongside two of INT, WIS, and CHA, or sometimes all three. Casters will always suck in situations with high save DC's on physical scores, like the above DEX and CON, and though it's rare STR.

Opinion: The best way to alleviate the issue- and the problem of getting knocked out of the fight so much- is to remove all sense of ego. If you want to be the strongest character in your party, that's wanting to be a main character in the game where everyone should get time to shine. If you aren't stepping up and doing things outside of your character's class features, that's all it is, a pile of class features, racial features, feats, and maybe even a name. Have your fighter analyze a magic item he finds while in another room with his -1 arcana, or your low dex dwarf go sneaking about. With this comes an utter removal of metagaming and real flawed characters doing things that their players want them to do. Flawed characters open the game up to having them express their backstories. I personally prefer weak characters. It lets you explore the problems someone with those weaknesses might go through.

Or, you can just have fun. That evil cleric can only hold one person at a time you know! And with that that means your friends can charge in and make them lose concentration. Then, you're right back in the fight! And considering the number of villains that are going to be clerics, spellcasters in general, or monsters with a SLA of Hold Person(s), this is not going to occur often.

Lord Arkon
2019-12-15, 05:53 AM
Using abilities to take a player out of the fight is the light-handed method. If a GM REALLY wants to take s PC out of a fight, they'll separate the party by fiat, and veto or fail any attempt to get back to the party. I've spent more than two thirds of a session sitting in another room waiting for the GM. Ahh, the 90s. If that happened in a game today, I would walk.

Even when it's not that bad, say my character 'falls into the Spirit World' for a short while, it can skip an entire combat. That gets old fast.

My 'favorite' though is when the GM says your action has "no effect"' every turn for an hour of combat, and turns his attention back to his friend who is back in town for one session and is the only one who can save the day. That has actually happened to me more in game than actual in-game abilities locking me down.

Those are the heavy-handed ways of taking a player out of a fight. And I've observed that they can dramatically cut down on the number of Players who attend the next session.

King of Nowhere
2019-12-15, 09:47 AM
Meanwhile, casters have zero built-in deficits.


wrong. they have plenty of built-in defects. low healt, low defences, limited resources.
it's just that splatbooks and feats after 3.0 made available plenty of resources to completely negate or make irrelevant those built-in defects.
so, if you are talking about anything like high optimization, fighters are made irrelevant by casters. but that's not a problem of removing them from combat, it's a problem with game balance.

Personally, i had just two houserules avoiding that
1) the world was high-magic and high-cash, so magic items are common and easy to get. the fighter can get his protections and immunities without really sacrificing much.
2) no spell can screw you up too badly without a saving throw. to be applied depending on specific circumstance

And after those two changes, it was the casters who had to struggle against the martials. it was really hard for a wizard to kill a fighter if he couldn't do it without giving him a saving throw - to which the fighter had huge boosts from items. while a fighter could still kill a wizard easily.
at least until disjunction became available. even then, good party tactics negated it.


Using abilities to take a player out of the fight is the light-handed method. If a GM REALLY wants to take s PC out of a fight, they'll separate the party by fiat, and veto or fail any attempt to get back to the party. I've spent more than two thirds of a session sitting in another room waiting for the GM. Ahh, the 90s. If that happened in a game today, I would walk.

Even when it's not that bad, say my character 'falls into the Spirit World' for a short while, it can skip an entire combat. That gets old fast.

My 'favorite' though is when the GM says your action has "no effect"' every turn for an hour of combat, and turns his attention back to his friend who is back in town for one session and is the only one who can save the day. That has actually happened to me more in game than actual in-game abilities locking me down.

Those are the heavy-handed ways of taking a player out of a fight. And I've observed that they can dramatically cut down on the number of Players who attend the next session.

in this case the complaint is not about taking a player out of combat. it's about dm railroading, dm fiat, dm playing favourites.

Tanarii
2019-12-15, 10:37 AM
And if you completely down a guy but the fight is looking to go on for a while, give them something else to do. Let them run some NPCs. Something.
This seems particularly relevant to the OP. Obviously they aren't the DM, but requesting (preferably out of sessions)that players who have lost control of their characters be allowed to control some subset of the 30 monsters the DM is controlling might be a solution.

Totally DM depending on the DM's level of trust and not having control issues of course. But I've done this before, usually when players are out for a few encounters due to character death. Personally I find players are far more ... Invested? Focused? Motivated? ... at trying to wipe out their former comrades than I am. :smallamused:

Kaptin Keen
2019-12-15, 11:18 AM
... That is a built-in deficit ...


... they have plenty of built-in defects ...

Irrelevant, since if you know what you're doing, it never enters play. That's the difference. Casters are 100% selfreliant, and their 'weaknesses' never affect them, period. While melee classes have no such luxury. Melee weaknesses are, generally speaking, part of every single fight ever, and they are not selfreliant - they need someone else to make them relevant.

This discussion is older than time itself, and I'm not doing a full rerun.

King of Nowhere
2019-12-15, 12:46 PM
Irrelevant, since if you know what you're doing, it never enters play. That's the difference. Casters are 100% selfreliant, and their 'weaknesses' never affect them, period. While melee classes have no such luxury. Melee weaknesses are, generally speaking, part of every single fight ever, and they are not selfreliant - they need someone else to make them relevant.

This discussion is older than time itself, and I'm not doing a full rerun.

no, it's very relevant, because the classes were NOT designed to be self-reliant. it takes a lot of optimization (i've been playing this game for more than 5 years, and reading this forum, and i wouldn't be able to go that far myself, unless apeing some build) to be self-reliant.

So, it's not a problem with the class concept, but with the class balance. You (we? some of us?) are playing the class in a way that was not intended by the designers. the problem is that things could be done with the class that the designers did not predict nor account for.

now, this leads us to class tiers. i'm not contesting that there are class tiers, or the reality of the tiers.

I'm just saying that the cleric being able to shut down the fighter with a single spell is not a problem of "taking players out of the fight". it's a problem of tier difference.

redwizard007
2019-12-15, 01:16 PM
Irrelevant, since if you know what you're doing, it never enters play. That's the difference. Casters are 100% selfreliant, and their 'weaknesses' never affect them, period. While melee classes have no such luxury. Melee weaknesses are, generally speaking, part of every single fight ever, and they are not selfreliant - they need someone else to make them relevant.

This discussion is older than time itself, and I'm not doing a full rerun.

I understand your point, but I couldn't disagree more.

Yes, some martial classes are easy targets for specific spells. Luckily, not every enemy has those spells prepared. Likewise some casters are easy targets for specific spells (or grappling.)

Do casters have an offensive advantage? Almost always, if we prioritize versatility and save or suck spells. Once we factor in single target damage (and concentration checks) martials fare much better. In fact, from a pure damage standpoint martials have an advantage almost as lopsided as casters do with control spells.

On top of all that, we have a game designed for 4-6 PCs working cooperatively. Discounting allies counterspelling and breaking concentration with damage is doing the game designers a big disservice. All classes have a role to play. Can you imagine how many spell slots a party of casters would blow through if they didn't have martials vomiting damage at their opponents? Every encounter would be followed by a long rest.

I will admit that fighters are more obviously at the mercy of spells like hold person, but are wizards not just as weak against Earthen Grasp?

Psyren
2019-12-15, 01:31 PM
While I don't agree with how it was phrased, I do think the OP has a point. "Save or suck" effects are inherently more engaging than "save or die/lose" - too many of the latter and the game turns into unsatisfying rocket tag. And while yes, these effects can encourage teamwork by forcing you to need help to throw them off, that has the negative side-effect of making the game less engaging for your allies who now have to choose between doing the cool thing they were originally planning to do, or playing healbot and bailing you out.

I think Pathfinder did a good job with mitigating many of these vs. D&D 3.5. Glitterdust for example, in PF the victim gets a save every round to try and throw it off. And for PF Blasphemy, many of the effects were given saving throws to mitigate, making it far less of an encounter nuke, especially when used by a boss.

Kaptin Keen
2019-12-15, 01:57 PM
... it takes a lot of optimization ...

... it takes playing caster.

There's really no magic involved. Caster blasts melee out of the water, hands down, no contest. At higher levels of optimization, the gap widens. But it's always there.


I understand your point, but I couldn't disagree more.

It sounds very much like you agree.

Sure, you can work around the point, if that's really what you want. But you know you're fishing - I'm utterly convinced you know you do. It's absolutely possible to construct a situation in which a caster is as pathetically helpless on his (or her) own as a melee. But you're building your case on a fringe example, and you know it.

Melee does enormous amounts of direct, single-target damage. It he (... or she) ever get's to take an action.

Casters do not have any such problems. When they - very rarely - do, it's something they can fix on their own. Lacking tools for selfreliance are hammered into melee classes' design, in exactly the same way that not lacking such tools is hammered into caster class design.

Now - as I said - this discussion predates the time when mountains arose from the sea, and I'm not going to reprise it in it's entirety. I merely thought it worth the effort to point out that Drache isn't just pulling stuff out of his .. hat.

Drache64
2019-12-15, 02:07 PM
So .. 3 pages worth of snide remarks? Not going to read through all that. Drache has a point - and if he's termed it as player agency instead, most of you would be cheering for him.

As I see it, this is the good old Hold Person conundrum: A spell perfectly designed to rob the Fighter of his one moment to shine. Several classes, but perhaps the Fighter more than any other, is only ever really relevant in a brawl - so when initiative is rolled, and the first thing that happens is that the cleric takes you out of the fight, that's legitimately frustrating.

And ... to be completely honest, if you fail to see that, you're not trying hard enough.

It's not necessarily the DM's fault, though. The spell is there to use, and the cleric villain really should - it's hugely effective. It's not the players fault either - the class is there to be played. I'm sure some would claim that it's up to the player to shore up those defences. Go buy a ring of mind shielding*, ya scrub.

But it's neither's fault in reality. It sloppy game design, and that really all there is to say. No player of any game ever created has a good time not playing**. Even when it first becomes available, hold person lasts long enough to eliminate the fighter for pretty much the entirety of the fight.

* Ring of mind shielding doesn't do what I'm implying it should - but that's on the game designers, not me.
** The exception being Bingo - there's a christmas bingo at my workplace I'm more than happy to not be playing.

THIS 100%. But I'll also add that 5e isn't DM vs players, the DM is designing an engaging and wonderful world for himself and everyone to enjoy. If you design an encounter that sucks for 1 player, then you failed your job as DM.

My brother's first encounter with d&d was a game where he showed up and was forced to declare Dodge for 4 hours or die.

He didn't play d&d again for months until I convinced him to try again with a better DM.

Edit: and shame on me I need to clarify, by suck I don't mean challenging or difficult, I mean that is not fun because the player (operative term player) is not able to play.

JoeJ
2019-12-15, 02:45 PM
Irrelevant, since if you know what you're doing, it never enters play. That's the difference. Casters are 100% selfreliant, and their 'weaknesses' never affect them, period. While melee classes have no such luxury. Melee weaknesses are, generally speaking, part of every single fight ever, and they are not selfreliant - they need someone else to make them relevant.

Class balance is a completely different topic than the OP's issue of one player being taken out of the fight. And in this context, not accurate. Fighters are no more vulnerable to Hold Person than sorcerers or bards; none of them have proficiency in Wisdom saves and none has any special reason to either boost or dump Wisdom more than either of the others. And whereas wizards are more resistant to Hold Person, they are more vulnerable to Sleep and Color Spray (as are sorcerers), due to their low hit points. Every PC is vulnerable to being taken out by some attacks, and highly resistant to others and that's a good thing. PCs should have to spend some of their actions and/or resources helping other PCs. It only becomes a problem if the same PC keeps being taken out over and over again, or if they have to sit out for an inordinately long period of time (in which case, letting the player run one of the NPCs may be the best solution).

King of Nowhere
2019-12-15, 02:48 PM
While I don't agree with how it was phrased, I do think the OP has a point. "Save or suck" effects are inherently more engaging than "save or die/lose" - too many of the latter and the game turns into unsatisfying rocket tag.


rocket tag is when those effect mostly work. it gets better when those effects mostly don't work, although it feels less rocket tag but more a lottery.
as far as i know, it's not save or die that cause rocket tag. high-op builds rarely rely on those. it's stuff with no save, no resistances.

in one of my campaign rocket tag was an option, but defences were high, so save or die was more likely to save. it turned out that it was the tactic of those who were losing, who had better chances by hoping for luck, while the side with advantage generally didn't resort to those spells. it was fun because death was cheap, resurrection was no problem, so a character or two tanking their saving throw in some combat were no big deal.
then mass heal came into play, and suddenly save-or-die was the only thing that could not be negated completely at the beginning of the next round.


And while yes, these effects can encourage teamwork by forcing you to need help to throw them off, that has the negative side-effect of making the game less engaging for your allies who now have to choose between doing the cool thing they were originally planning to do, or playing healbot and bailing you out.

i don't like how this is phrased, as it looks like the game is about doing cool things and showing off, while cooperating with your allies and especially helping them is considered not cool.
playing a martial, i had my fair share of fights where i could not do "my thing" because i had to protect the casters. those fights were great. i fondly remember using the total defence and taking the role of a wall to protect my team's flank.



I think Pathfinder did a good job with mitigating many of these vs. D&D 3.5. Glitterdust for example, in PF the victim gets a save every round to try and throw it off. And for PF Blasphemy, many of the effects were given saving throws to mitigate, making it far less of an encounter nuke, especially when used by a boss.
this seems more like a problem with spells too powerful, or just too powerful fo their level (glitterdust) than with general encounter and game design.

... it takes playing caster.

There's really no magic involved. Caster blasts melee out of the water, hands down, no contest. At higher levels of optimization, the gap widens. But it's always there.


I assure you, most of the tables i'd been in were low-op tables where the casters were even less useful than the martials. also...

But you know you're fishing - I'm utterly convinced you know you do
accusing someone of intentionally lieing is not nice. it also shows close-mindedness, as in "those people can't possibly have different opinions or experiences than mine! they must be liars for certain!".
and weren't you who complained about snide remarks? you're definitely not improving the mood of the thread by throwing around personal accusations.

redwizard007
2019-12-15, 03:20 PM
accusing someone of intentionally lieing is not nice. it also shows close-mindedness, as in "those people can't possibly have different opinions or experiences than mine! they must be liars for certain!".
and weren't you who complained about snide remarks? you're definitely not improving the mood of the thread by throwing around personal accusations.

Thanks, but I certainly didn't take that personally. For an online conversation it was down right polite.

Keen certainly has a strong opinion on the matter, so I assume he has had multiple issues in actual 5e play of seeing fighters get sidelined by spells. I have too, but no more than I've seen casters get grappled, or hit in their softer saves, or abused by rogues that snuck up on them...

Is it a problem? Probably more so in AL games (guessing because I don't participate in them.) In games with friends I see players bend over backwards to drag PCs back into relevance. That could mean a spell to buff saves, a counterspell, killing the offending caster, or shoving a potion down someone's throat. I just finished a session on Roll20 where I buffed the crap out of my temp HP and interposed myself between my team and the ranged baddies we fought. Did I win the damage competition? No, but we kicked their butts. It was entirely satisfying, and a nice change of pace from saying I smack it with my sword a couple times. Take 50 slashing damage.

Kaptin Keen
2019-12-15, 03:34 PM
accusing someone of intentionally lieing is not nice. it also shows close-mindedness, as in "those people can't possibly have different opinions or experiences than mine! they must be liars for certain!".
and weren't you who complained about snide remarks? you're definitely not improving the mood of the thread by throwing around personal accusations.

Did I say you were lying? Please quote me, if so. Show me a quote where I call you a liar.

Not one where I say I believe you to be cherry picking - which would be correct - but one where, word for word, I call you a liar. Go ahead.

Or ... you know, don't. I have nothing further to say here. Goodbye - enjoy the rest of your sunday =)

King of Nowhere
2019-12-15, 08:31 PM
wait a minute, have we tried changing perspective a bit and consider, accepting for the sake of hypothesis that crowd control taking people out of the fight is bad, what should be done?

because the only way i see to "fix" this supposed problem would be to entirely remove - or nerf to the point of uselessness - all crowd control and all save-or-die. may as well remove flight too, it would take out of the fight everyone who can't fly. i think most people would not want that.
on the other hand, we could not use those effects on the players, so the players now have whole schools of magic that only they can use (give the players "hero points" to arbitrarily negate those effects would be equivalent). some would like it, but for me, it would feel like being a spoiled brat. it would remove all sense of accomplishment from victory.

so, it's not that i don't see how removing people from a fight could be a problem, but i do believe that anything else would be much worse.


Did I say you were lying? Please quote me, if so. Show me a quote where I call you a liar.

Not one where I say I believe you to be cherry picking - which would be correct - but one where, word for word, I call you a liar. Go ahead.

Or ... you know, don't. I have nothing further to say here. Goodbye - enjoy the rest of your sunday =)

cherry picking for the purpose of demonstrating something untrue is lying. on the same par with implications, half-truths, and lies by omissions.
and i don't want to accuse (you said that to another poster, by the way), i merely want you to be aware that since you started posting in this thread you kept a forcefully assertive attitude bordering on aggression - ever since your first post where you dismissed most of what came before as "snide remarks" and stated that anyone who doesn't see the point "is not trying hard enough".
I kindly ask that you tone it down. Different people have different gaming experiences than you, they enjoy different things, and they are entitled to see things from other perspectives.

Mechalich
2019-12-15, 11:32 PM
wait a minute, have we tried changing perspective a bit and consider, accepting for the sake of hypothesis that crowd control taking people out of the fight is bad, what should be done?

The overarching issue is not related specifically to crowd control, it's that taking a player out of active participation in the game for long enough that they lose investment in ongoing play is bad.

Crowd control effects are a means by which this happens, but it is very strictly dependent upon how long they last in real time. For example, lockdown crowd control effects are a common feature of any number of competitive video games, both in PvE and PvP environments, but as their length is usually measured in single-digit seconds they may spike a player's internal rage meter, but they don't generally kill investment.

Likewise the impact of save-or-die effects is highly dependent upon the overall lethality of a mechanical system. In many systems even fairly powerful characters still have a fairly decent chance of going from full health to zero on a strong hit that gets through cleanly - this is quite common in modern systems where, ahem, guns kill people. When that's a possibility a potential instant death attack is simply a different type of ordinary attack rather than something of unreasonable potency. Similarly in high-op 3.X D&D, melee characters like uberchargers effectively become walking save-or-die effects because their attacks due more than the full HP of anything they might reasonably encounter and this problem disappears (though such games have other problems).

In order to determine whether an effect is problematic in terms of ruining player investment by imposing prolonged downtime we need to determine how much downtime that effect is likely to cause. This depends on multiple factors such as system, the level of preparedness by players and GMs, the overall number of people at the table, and even things like whether miniatures are in use.

In general the sourcebooks explaining a game should try to set guidelines that reduce the variation presented by such factors. D&D, for example, is intended for 4 players. If you increase past that everything takes longer, and do to the nature of the action economy more players means more enemies so it's a non-linear increase. It's entirely possible that a crowd control effect could be viable for a group with four players but not for one with seven, even with all other conditions unchanged, and since D&D is designed for groups of four, its more of a table issue than a design issue. By contrast, D&D has an extremely large number of ongoing situational modifiers for a game that is intended to use entirely mental arithmetic. While some tables can manage this, many, especially those comprised of inexperienced or low effort players, struggle with tracking everything that's happening. This is very much a design problem, one that to some extent stems from a seeming blindness among TTRPG designers to assume that most gamers have their extremely high level of investment in gaming.

As a rule of thumb, I'd say anything that on average takes a character out of the game for more than 20 minutes of real time is clearly too much, but it's really a matter of actual playtesting to figure out which effects will have that impact.

aerilon
2019-12-16, 12:15 AM
I switched to Pathfinder a few years back and am most up-to-date with it, so I'll chime in from that perspective - though I've got extensive 3.x experience pre-PF, and extensive background in other systems too.

If you fail a Save-or-Suck (whether it's save vs. death or save vs. petrification or save vs. paralysis, I'm lumping them all in here) and get taken out of combat, that's one thing, and even if it happens on the first round or as a surprise initiating combat, them's the breaks.

But I've also played in a game where the GM would find a way to make sure the party's only source of effective crowd/battlefield control (not only POSSIBLE source, because we had another caster, but that caster refused to use control of any kind because then he wouldn't be getting the kills himself) and buff/debuff/combat support spells. One game? That character was abducted in the middle of the night before the rest of the party was attacked by assassins. Another? They were locked outside of the building where the combat was taking place, and our only lockpicker (our other caster didn't have Knock - no support spells) was being actively blocked from getting to the door. Yet another game, that character's attendance at an event was 'requested' while the rest of the party went to retrieve a MacGuffin. I was not that player - I was the Reach Weapon Paladin of the group, backing up the Barbarian.

That player almost never got to participate in combat encounters. They had a word with the GM. The GM had been doing it because control and support spells could shut down combat encounters (as people have mentioned here - and incidentally, as that GM had a tendency to try to use them against us for and why we were lucky that we ALL had good saves and the good fortune not to fail our saves often) without his oh-so-fun nasties getting a chance to use all their fun abilities on us after just that happened in the first couple sessions. So the GM had been intentionally removing that character's ability to participate in combat.

You fail a save and your character gets disabled? Tough. Fail a skill check and get taken out by a trap? Them's the breaks. Ganged up on or singled out as a target because you're either 1: particularly threatening, or 2: soft and squishy or 3: both (glass cannons, I'm looking at you)? That's how the game is played. Your character is removed from the game, and not allowed to participate via GM fiat like in the scenarios I described? In my opinion, it CAN be okay if there is a valid story reason to do it and it is done sparingly - like a "your friends are fighting for their lives right now, and they WILL lose, because you do not have the MacGuffin your party needs to end the Curse of Undying Torment animating the dread beast they face - but I'm willing to give it to and send you to them, for a price" type deal or the party face meeting with a rival and giving them a "As we speak, my companions are loading the cargo you were expecting onto a ship bound for Port City Y, where it will be delivered to a friendly merchant. Thank you for the payday. I just want you to know this disruption to your business will continue until you acquiesce to our very reasonable demands that you relinquish your bid for the recently vacated position in the Guild leadership, and cast your support behind a candidate of our choosing." But most of the time, especially when overused, it's just bad GMing. That player in question flat out told the GM they were there to play, and having their character just handwaved out of the situation, without any input whatsoever, nearly every time? Was taking that away, and they were questioning why they were even still playing.


On the subject of time: I've been (and seen) a combatant who acts quickly and whose turn is over in the amount of time it takes to resolve the needed rolls. On the other hand, especially when I'm playing a caster, it might take me several minutes to make my turn. I might have been intending to cast Glitterdust, but before my turn came, the archer took out one of the targets in the area of effect, and the Fighter got close enough to the others that I can no longer target it in such a way that I hit more than one enemy without also getting the Fighter. So it's no longer a good tactical choice, so I'm gonna take a moment to glance at my prepared spells, consider whether I want to cast an Intensified Snowball, or Scorching Ray, then make my rolls. I'm okay with setting a reasonable time limit on how long it takes for a player to take their turn, but what is reasonable?

I've also seen 2 hour combats. And they're not necessarily because someone's doing something wrong. We had one in one of my weekly games recently. No one did anything wrong - in fact, things went really well. We started off by inflicting several status effects on them, took almost no damage among our party, and used almost no resources beyond the spells used. But it was 4 (us) vs 10. It took a little while to get through that combat. So I don't think a long combat is necessarily a sign something's being done wrong.

JakOfAllTirades
2019-12-16, 02:41 AM
That kinda hurts your opening of "Does nobody playing D&D 5E have spellcasters in their party who uses Counterspell to protect the others from SoS/SoD spells?" if you then have to add the clause that this only works if your DM isn't using the latest RAW.

On any normal day, I have zero use for house rules. I consider 99% of them to be idiotic solutions looking for non-existent problems. "Don't fix it if it's not broken" is my number one meta-houserule. But if anyone looks at the spell ID rules in XGtE and fails to realize they're broken, nor implements any fix, it comes as no surprise they're not having fun.

This problem exists because WOTC broke their game. You can either fix it, or play it broken. Complaining on the internet accomplishes nothing.

Satinavian
2019-12-16, 02:41 AM
{Scrubbed}

Zombimode
2019-12-16, 04:20 AM
... it takes playing caster.

There's really no magic involved. Caster blasts melee out of the water, hands down, no contest. At higher levels of optimization, the gap widens. But it's always there.

Uhm, no, not in my experience.

A caster played by typical player, that is a player that doesn't do "gaming homework", will have few if any defensiv spells active (or even memorized).
They will often rely on the DM not specifically target them.
They will use the wrong spells against the wrong targets: they will use Fort save spells like Desintegration against big melee bruisers. They will use Reflex Half spells to clear out hordes of small (and nimble) enemies. They will use Mind-Affecting/will save spells against Undead, Constructs and spellcasters. They will use elemental SR: yes spells against outsiders. They won't prepare (Greater) Dispel Magic.


For the average player a wizards low base stats for survivability (health and AC) and the inability to simply do damage like a fighter are quite relevant downsides.

Glorthindel
2019-12-16, 04:48 AM
That's not a problem with your class, it's a positive feature of the game. Making the PCs dependent on each other is good design for a team game. And if the other players can't be "bothered" to undo the thing that's negating 25% (assuming four players) of their combat power, the party deserves to lose.

This is something notable when playing a turn-based strategy game; the default primary tactic is to prevent enemy abilities and attacks that take members out for a round (in particular your heavy hitters).

This is obvious to any player of this type of game when they are controlling the whole party, but the tactic seems to slip when multiple players are controlling the various members.

Boci
2019-12-16, 05:49 AM
But if anyone looks at the spell ID rules in XGtE and fails to realize they're broken, nor implements any fix, it comes as no surprise they're not having fun.

Worth noting, the ID rules of XGtE are not broken, they just don't fit a certain style of play. If the DM isn't a big fan SoS/D die spells, or the party doesn't mind being on the recieving end of them, then there's nothing wrong with the ID rules, and it can be fun having to break out the scientific method when you fail the check and need to figure out if the enemy teleported away or went invisible.

Kelb_Panthera
2019-12-16, 06:50 AM
So - this is our primary disagreement.

You build your melee character to be strong in melee, and that means you're building him to be weak at most other things. Melee is designed to be weak - for some reason - so you're already behind.

Meanwhile, casters have zero built-in deficits.

I see this myth persists.

Classes accross the spectrum have their weaknesses and ways to mitigate them in 3e. Optimization boards tend to ignore non-caster optimization to the point that the preception has been severely twisted. Failure to cover your weaknesses is entirely on the player, regardless of class. Can't speak to 5e.


So in 3e you propably have a DC of 17, and a big, fat save bonus of +1. 25% chance to save, and odds are you're out of the entire fight. Or you built to be weak at your one trick. But you put most of your precious points in strength and toughness. Sure, you may have opted to dump charisma, in which case ... let's say you have +2. But it's a game of trade-offs for the melee classes. And that's the problem: Yes, you can invest in one thing until you reach an acceptable level - but there is not trade-off for casters.

Two things:

25% to negate entirely means 43.75% on round two, 57.8% on round three, and 68.36% on round four.

DC 17 is actually peculiarly high for a cleric unless he's well past the point he should be using hold monster and the targets should long since have warded themselves. Might be about right for a wizard but then you'd be swinging a +2 on that save, rather than a +1 and only if you didn't bother to shore up that weakness at all. +4 is trivial and +6 is doable with little investment.


Anyways ... I really have nothing further to add. If you think it's ok for one class to be made completely irrelevant, and to not get to play the game - odds are you're playing another class.

Seriously, I play warriors more than most other archetypes. Being knocked out of a fight once in a while really isn't that big a deal and it's easily avoidable unless you're just leaving yourself wide open. There are things -far- worse than hold person's temporary inconvenience.

Fighter 6 with resolute and combat focus: +2 base, +1 wis, +3 for resolute: +6 total; +8 if you manage to land a hit on anyone before it comes up.

Level 6 wiz/sorc casting hold person: 10, +3 spell level, +5 ability; dc 18.

Both of those values can go a few points higher with only a little more effort but the cost for the caster is actually the higher of the two.

Tanarii
2019-12-16, 01:20 PM
On any normal day, I have zero use for house rules. I consider 99% of them to be idiotic solutions looking for non-existent problems. "Don't fix it if it's not broken" is my number one meta-houserule. But if anyone looks at the spell ID rules in XGtE and fails to realize they're broken, nor implements any fix, it comes as no surprise they're not having fun.

This problem exists because WOTC broke their game. You can either fix it, or play it broken. Complaining on the internet accomplishes nothing.
The 5e XtgE rule just locks in Counterspell working as originally
intended: you do it blind. Unfortunately the original PHB didn't make that clear enough, that until XtgE there was no way to identify a spell being cast.

RifleAvenger
2019-12-16, 02:25 PM
On Counterspell, my group has one player ID and the other counters.

Pex
2019-12-16, 06:34 PM
The problem of course is the NPC's edge. When an NPC is able to Counterspell the DM knows what the player casts beforehand because the player has to say what he's doing and the DM needs to know it. Otherwise you get the mind game of a player saying he casts a spell, pause waiting to see if the DM says the NPC counterspells, then announce what he's casting for every spell forever. It gets annoying real fast. To avoid the player changing his mind in his mind, i.e. wanting to cast Disintegrate but because the DM said Counterspell says he casts Fire Bolt, you need to take time to write the spell down or use a card or something. The player doesn't know if the DM does that so may want the DM also to place down a spell card.

In other words, the rule is dumb. I'm glad there finally is an official benchmark guideline on how to identify a spell being cast, but the dumbness was making it take a Reaction. Even if it didn't take a Reaction the NPC has an edge because the player needs to roll to know the spell while the NPC autoknows what the player casts because the DM knows, but a DM could be fair about it and give the NPC a roll to know officially. In any case it's the cost of the Reaction that causes the mind game. Get rid of that cost and the problem is solved.

Some DMs are even fine with just saying what the NPC is casting, and if a player wants to Counterspell he does. It's not like the DM wants the NPC to win how dare the player know things, right? :smallyuk:

Tanarii
2019-12-16, 06:49 PM
Agreed, if you're going to hardline Counterspell, PCs should be just declaring they are casting a spell. That's easily handled with spell cards, player just puts it face down when they declare they're casting a spell.

That slows down the game. But it does allow the DM to use spells which otherwise are severely hampered or completely pointless if automatically identified. Having spells automatically identified removes a lot from the game.

Of course, the DM has an edge on those spells too. Illusions being an example of where DM knowledge is frankly a pain in the ass to adjudicate.

Edit: RAW on 5e Counterspell aside, personally I usually just blurt out what spells NPCs are casting in the heat of running a fast paced combat without thinking about it much. And besides, the vast majority of the time they're casting their biggest spells out the gate. (Not necessarily the most important to negate tactically, but countering them is rarely a complete waste.)

Drache64
2019-12-17, 02:07 PM
That player almost never got to participate in combat encounters. They had a word with the GM. The GM had been doing it because control and support spells could shut down combat encounters (as people have mentioned here - and incidentally, as that GM had a tendency to try to use them against us for and why we were lucky that we ALL had good saves and the good fortune not to fail our saves often) without his oh-so-fun nasties getting a chance to use all their fun abilities on us after just that happened in the first couple sessions. So the GM had been intentionally removing that character's ability to participate in combat.


A lot of people have taken the discussion other places, but this is exactly what I am talking about.

King of Nowhere
2019-12-17, 06:44 PM
But I've also played in a game where the GM would find a way to make sure the party's only source of effective crowd/battlefield control (not only POSSIBLE source, because we had another caster, but that caster refused to use control of any kind because then he wouldn't be getting the kills himself) and buff/debuff/combat support spells. One game? That character was abducted in the middle of the night before the rest of the party was attacked by assassins. Another? They were locked outside of the building where the combat was taking place, and our only lockpicker (our other caster didn't have Knock - no support spells) was being actively blocked from getting to the door. Yet another game, that character's attendance at an event was 'requested' while the rest of the party went to retrieve a MacGuffin. I was not that player - I was the Reach Weapon Paladin of the group, backing up the Barbarian.

That player almost never got to participate in combat encounters. They had a word with the GM. The GM had been doing it because control and support spells could shut down combat encounters (as people have mentioned here - and incidentally, as that GM had a tendency to try to use them against us for and why we were lucky that we ALL had good saves and the good fortune not to fail our saves often) without his oh-so-fun nasties getting a chance to use all their fun abilities on us after just that happened in the first couple sessions. So the GM had been intentionally removing that character's ability to participate in combat.



A lot of people have taken the discussion other places, but this is exactly what I am talking about.

the reason the discussion has been taken in other directions is that there isn't much to say here. the problem is not even much the taking out of the fight, but the while dm fiat of moving around the party members like that. having a guy kidnapped in the night without rolling? wtf? this is horrible, and there's nothing to discuss

Chauncymancer
2019-12-17, 06:55 PM
To say something about the more general question of Encounter Design: the mechanical and narrative distinction between a specialist and a generalist is that the generalist is worse than a specialist at any perticular thing, but cannot be taken out of encounters because they have at least one trick for any situation. Whereas a specialist is better in every way in one domain but can't meiningfully participate in some other domain. A melee character who can't fly, a ranged character who can't see in the dark, a wizard with no good skills or stats.
So if being a generalist is a choice one of your players has made, being a specialist has to have some consequence, they have to be taken out sometimes. But how often is "sometimes"?

Drache64
2019-12-17, 07:46 PM
To say something about the more general question of Encounter Design: the mechanical and narrative distinction between a specialist and a generalist is that the generalist is worse than a specialist at any perticular thing, but cannot be taken out of encounters because they have at least one trick for any situation. Whereas a specialist is better in every way in one domain but can't meiningfully participate in some other domain. A melee character who can't fly, a ranged character who can't see in the dark, a wizard with no good skills or stats.
So if being a generalist is a choice one of your players has made, being a specialist has to have some consequence, they have to be taken out sometimes. But how often is "sometimes"?

In 5e specifically, magic items and multicasting are optional rules, so how could a Barbarian avoid being a specialist baring a magical class dip or magical items.

Not to mention your depiction sounds more like a game of Warhammer than a game built on story telling and narrative driven choices. If I'm not mistaken you're saying a player should spend his hypothetical points in strategic places rather than on narrative driven options.

AdAstra
2019-12-17, 08:34 PM
To say something about the more general question of Encounter Design: the mechanical and narrative distinction between a specialist and a generalist is that the generalist is worse than a specialist at any perticular thing, but cannot be taken out of encounters because they have at least one trick for any situation. Whereas a specialist is better in every way in one domain but can't meiningfully participate in some other domain. A melee character who can't fly, a ranged character who can't see in the dark, a wizard with no good skills or stats.
So if being a generalist is a choice one of your players has made, being a specialist has to have some consequence, they have to be taken out sometimes. But how often is "sometimes"?

Well one solution is not allowing, or at least making it difficult, to make a character so specialized as to be useless outside of their specialty. For example, the fighter that can’t fly can still use javelins or bows at longer range, but will do less damage. The ranged character can still shoot, they just suffer penalties, or they can pull out some shortswords or a rapier and use those. Basically, you’re good at one thing and bad at another, but not totally helpless.

AdAstra
2019-12-17, 08:39 PM
In 5e specifically, magic items and multicasting are optional rules, so how could a Barbarian avoid being a specialist baring a magical class dip or magical items.

Not to mention your depiction sounds more like a game of Warhammer than a game built on story telling and narrative driven choices. If I'm not mistaken you're saying a player should spend his hypothetical points in strategic places rather than on narrative driven options.

A barbarian can gain wisdom save proficiency through (admittedly still optional) feats, or pick the berserker subclass, which provides immunity to charm and fear while raging, giving you effective immunity to a great many save-or-suck effects. Alternatively, Zealot gives you a free save reroll once per rage, which can be used to increase your likelihood of success against such spells.

For ranged combat, javelins and even longbows are both useable options, since barbarians are encouraged to have at least decent dex. You’ll do a good deal less damage, but you won’t be useless either.

If you want to get really out there, you can play as a gnome or yuan-ti barbarian, which both will give you advantage on saves that will put you out of the fight. Not ideal stats for a Barbarian, but you can still build a useable one from those two races.

Drache64
2019-12-18, 09:55 AM
A barbarian can gain wisdom save proficiency through (admittedly still optional) feats, or pick the berserker subclass, which provides immunity to charm and fear while raging, giving you effective immunity to a great many save-or-suck effects. Alternatively, Zealot gives you a free save reroll once per rage, which can be used to increase your likelihood of success against such spells.

For ranged combat, javelins and even longbows are both useable options, since barbarians are encouraged to have at least decent dex. You’ll do a good deal less damage, but you won’t be useless either.

If you want to get really out there, you can play as a gnome or yuan-ti barbarian, which both will give you advantage on saves that will put you out of the fight. Not ideal stats for a Barbarian, but you can still build a useable one from those two races.

But again, all these recommendations are based on making a strategic character for the miniature strategy battle game of D&D, that's not what D&D is supposed to be.

zinycor
2019-12-18, 10:15 AM
But again, all these recommendations are based on making a strategic character for the miniature strategy battle game of D&D, that's not what D&D is supposed to be.

What? Since when it isn't? The game that was based on a war game has always been made with miniatures in mind. There are many ways to play DnD, but "making a strategic character for the miniature strategy battle game of D&D" is a big part of the game.

Jay R
2019-12-18, 12:38 PM
But again, all these recommendations are based on making a strategic character for the miniature strategy battle game of D&D, that's not what D&D is supposed to be.

They are recommendations for playing the actual game of D&D more effectively, according to its actual rules, independent of what you or I or anybody else thinks the game is "supposed to be".

Drache64
2019-12-18, 04:45 PM
They are recommendations for playing the actual game of D&D more effectively, according to its actual rules, independent of what you or I or anybody else thinks the game is "supposed to be".


What? Since when it isn't? The game that was based on a war game has always been made with miniatures in mind. There are many ways to play DnD, but "making a strategic character for the miniature strategy battle game of D&D" is a big part of the game.

D&D 5e Page 5 Introduction "The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ROLEPLAYING game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, D&D is driven by imagination."

Page 192 "VARIANT: PLAYING ON A GRID. If you play out a combat using a square grid and miniatures or other tokens, follow these rules."
(CAPS theirs, emphasis mine.)

No offence, but you're wrong according to its actual rules, independent of what you or I or anybody else thinks the game is "supposed to be".

False God
2019-12-18, 04:45 PM
In 5e specifically, magic items and multicasting are optional rules, so how could a Barbarian avoid being a specialist baring a magical class dip or magical items.
By taking a particular background, or being a particular race. Maybe they're a high elf, so they get a cantrip. Maybe they're also kinda roguey because of that so they take the Charlatan background, giving them some extra skills and tool use. Maybe the player wants to make a particularly charming Barbarian, so they have a good Cha (say a 14).

It's fairly easy to specialize with certain classes. But there are also ways around it. Even if you don't have proficiency in a particular skill, having a higher-then-normal stat in it can help you make up ground. There's no reason you can't be a smart barbarian.

It just depends on what you want out of your character. Making a smart and dextrous barbarian may not be what was intended with the class design, but that doesn't mean you can't be one.


Not to mention your depiction sounds more like a game of Warhammer than a game built on story telling and narrative driven choices. If I'm not mistaken you're saying a player should spend his hypothetical points in strategic places rather than on narrative driven options.
D&D is hardly a narrative game. It's biggest focus is and always has been combat, I mean heck, it was initially designed by wargamers. There are numerous games on the market that are narrative-driven games. Story-telling games with a focus on cooperative story creation and not on numbers and combat. D&D isn't one of those games.

Drache64
2019-12-18, 04:51 PM
By taking a particular background, or being a particular race. Maybe they're a high elf, so they get a cantrip. Maybe they're also kinda roguey because of that so they take the Charlatan background, giving them some extra skills and tool use. Maybe the player wants to make a particularly charming Barbarian, so they have a good Cha (say a 14).

It's fairly easy to specialize with certain classes. But there are also ways around it. Even if you don't have proficiency in a particular skill, having a higher-then-normal stat in it can help you make up ground. There's no reason you can't be a smart barbarian.

It just depends on what you want out of your character. Making a smart and dextrous barbarian may not be what was intended with the class design, but that doesn't mean you can't be one.


D&D is hardly a narrative game. It's biggest focus is and always has been combat, I mean heck, it was initially designed by wargamers. There are numerous games on the market that are narrative-driven games. Story-telling games with a focus on cooperative story creation and not on numbers and combat. D&D isn't one of those games.

See my post above.

JNAProductions
2019-12-18, 04:54 PM
See my post above.

You shouldn’t blindly take everything at face value.

D&D might CLAIM to be narrative... but it ain’t. It’s fun! But not narrative.

redwizard007
2019-12-18, 07:06 PM
D&D is hardly a narrative game. It's biggest focus is and always has been combat, I mean heck, it was initially designed by wargamers. There are numerous games on the market that are narrative-driven games. Story-telling games with a focus on cooperative story creation and not on numbers and combat. D&D isn't one of those games.

You had me nodding up until this paragraph. D&D was designed by wargames that already had wargames. They got to Chainmail and decided they wanted something even less wargamey. Thus D&D was born many iterations ago. Looking back to those early days we see things like XP being based on loot value. That leads me to believe combat was less important than puzzle solving, though probably more combat than roleplaying (based on the high lethality of those early days.)

In more modern times I have played with tables where roleplaying is 90% of the focus and tables where combat was the priority. I have my preference, but that doesn't mean the other folks are playing wrong...

King of Nowhere
2019-12-18, 07:07 PM
D&D 5e Page 5 Introduction "The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ROLEPLAYING game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, D&D is driven by imagination."

Page 192 "VARIANT: PLAYING ON A GRID. If you play out a combat using a square grid and miniatures or other tokens, follow these rules."
(CAPS theirs, emphasis mine.)

No offence, but you're wrong according to its actual rules, independent of what you or I or anybody else thinks the game is "supposed to be".

so, if the game is not about combat, why are there hundreds of pages of manual devoted to the rules for combat?
if the game is not supposed to be played on a grid, why everyone has listed movement speed and all those spells have a range and area? :smallconfused:

plus, that's the 5E manual. the 3.x manuals had nothing of the sort written on it.
now, don't get me wrong. d&d is indeed a game about storytelling, a game of make-believe.
but it's also a game with a strong combat component. d&d is actually many games all in one, and one of those games is a strategic wargame. and another is this character creation minigame.
so, when you create your character, you should have a concept of what you want your character capable of doing, and then you should build him accordingly. if you cannot, you can ask someone with the mechanical skill. if there isn't this guy in your group, you can post here.
but if you want to play a certain character and then you build a different character, that's on you

False God
2019-12-18, 08:13 PM
See my post above.

A game can say it's about anything. D&D could say it's an instruction manual on how to sell fish to mermaids. But it's how it actually functions at the table that really matters. 5E is far less crunchy than previous editions, but it's a far cry from a storytelling game. The fact that you can tell a story with it, around it, in addition to it is nice. But the game functions perfectly fine without any of that. Storytelling games do not function without the story.

Satinavian
2019-12-19, 01:17 AM
D&D is about storytelling in the sense that RPGs are about storytelling. It is a valid and useful description in comparison to non-RPGs. I mean, you could probably use chess to tell a story but D&D is made to do so and vastly superior for that purpose.

But compared to other RPGs, D&D is not about storytelling. It is one of the games with the least focus on this area and the most on tactical combat. It basically fullfills the minimum storytelling requirement to count as RPG and then ignores this topic mostly.

Pleh
2019-12-19, 08:43 AM
D&D is about storytelling in the sense that RPGs are about storytelling. It is a valid and useful description in comparison to non-RPGs. I mean, you could probably use chess to tell a story but D&D is made to do so and vastly superior for that purpose.

But compared to other RPGs, D&D is not about storytelling. It is one of the games with the least focus on this area and the most on tactical combat. It basically fullfills the minimum storytelling requirement to count as RPG and then ignores this topic mostly.

We could split the difference and say D&D is an RPG telling stories about fantasy warfare. Really, all the non combat RPG stuff (in D&D) is designed to set up (or occasionally defuse) a combat. It's a great way to tell stories about warriors (in the sense they characters in a wargame), bridging the gap between people wanting action packed, tactical combat with also wanting to know their characters on a personal level (or, for some folks, PCs are about self-insertion into the game, which is not too different)

Willie the Duck
2019-12-19, 09:13 AM
D&D 5e Page 5 Introduction "The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ROLEPLAYING game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, D&D is driven by imagination."
No offence, but you're wrong according to its actual rules, independent of what you or I or anybody else thinks the game is "supposed to be".
This is not how crafting a convincing argument works. In particular because the rulebook lines you quote don’t actually refute the points people made, but also because a single statement in the front of the rulebook about what the game is about is not some kind of definitive decree on high about what the game is about. It doesn’t have that power.

See my post above.
And this certainly isn’t either. If you want to convince anyone other than yourself, I would suggest going back to square one.

You had me nodding up until this paragraph. D&D was designed by wargames that already had wargames. They got to Chainmail and decided they wanted something even less wargamey. Thus D&D was born many iterations ago. Looking back to those early days we see things like XP being based on loot value. That leads me to believe combat was less important than puzzle solving, though probably more combat than roleplaying (based on the high lethality of those early days.)

In more modern times I have played with tables where roleplaying is 90% of the focus and tables where combat was the priority. I have my preference, but that doesn't mean the other folks are playing wrong...

D&D was crafted initially for the specific job of exploring the tunnels underneath a castle that soldiers were undermining (with the initial goal of, y'know, winning the siege and treasure as a side perk, but treasure quickly becoming what people actually wanted to pursue), in a game where the battles were being run using Chainmail, and the siege was being conducted using Braunstein. Even if there was a specific ‘why’ one can ascribe to the game, it morphed from original purpose before the system saw print.

If one looks at the initial ruleset, it decidedly most-directly facilitates exploring constrained environments (‘dungeons’) with an aim towards accumulating treasure. At least in the early levels (later levels mostly about owning a keep & castle and presumably running wars using some other system, like Chainmail).


We could split the difference and say D&D is an RPG telling stories about fantasy warfare. Really, all the non combat RPG stuff (in D&D) is designed to set up (or occasionally defuse) a combat. It's a great way to tell stories about warriors (in the sense they characters in a wargame), bridging the gap between people wanting action packed, tactical combat with also wanting to know their characters on a personal level (or, for some folks, PCs are about self-insertion into the game, which is not too different)

I think statements that almost all of D&D is combat rules misses the non-combat physical task resolution part (there are also a number of rules pertaining to travelling between places with treasure and combat opportunities, feeding oneself during that travel, lighting the places so you can search for the treasure and combat opportunities, getting across chasms and through locked doors or stone walls to get to the treasure and combat opportunities, etc.). A lot of that also has hand-wave-aways (no encumbrance penalty outside of variants) or spells that trivialize them (Goodberry, Light, etc.) particularly because a lot of people consider those the uninteresting part of the game.

Regardless, I agree with the many who have stated that D&D mostly focuses on physical acts (with a heavy weighting towards combat) and very little social or narrative aspects in the ruleset. Compare that to the so-called storygame RPGs like Dramasystem or Microscope or hybrid systems with mainly conventional systems but with large narrative subsystems (Fate and James Bond 007, for instance, are mostly a conventional resolution system games, except that Fate Points/Hero Points act like narrative system mechanics), and D&D is very much far from the storytelling side of RPGs.

Imbalance
2019-12-19, 09:58 AM
D&D is absolutely about storytelling. It's just that without the combat, there isn't much to tell.

Boci
2019-12-19, 10:02 AM
D&D is absolutely about storytelling. It's just that without the combat, there isn't much to tell.

That's just not true. I know that this is a minority case, but I've had a game where my character went through several days of ingame story telling, interacting with multiple NPCs and developing both my character's relationship with them and her view of the world. There were 3 instances of combat by the most generous definition, non of them vital, and one of them me and the DM even agreed would have been better if it hadn't happened.

kyoryu
2019-12-19, 10:49 AM
You had me nodding up until this paragraph. D&D was designed by wargames that already had wargames. They got to Chainmail and decided they wanted something even less wargamey. Thus D&D was born many iterations ago. Looking back to those early days we see things like XP being based on loot value. That leads me to believe combat was less important than puzzle solving, though probably more combat than roleplaying (based on the high lethality of those early days.)

In more modern times I have played with tables where roleplaying is 90% of the focus and tables where combat was the priority. I have my preference, but that doesn't mean the other folks are playing wrong...

I'd argue that 1e and prior were more about exploration than anything. You could make an argument that, influenced by DragonLance, 2e started becoming more about storytelling in the "adventure path" sense, where the game became a vehicle to tell (mostly) linear stories.

The rules emphasis in 3e and beyond definitely started being combat.

(I actually have a whole theory of why the game evolved this way, but htat might be interesting elsewhere)

And none of that takes into account the fact that a given table is going to play however they want, regardless of what the rules are aimed at.


D&D is absolutely about storytelling. It's just that without the combat, there isn't much to tell.

I think we have very different ideas about what "story" means.

Asmotherion
2019-12-19, 11:06 AM
The question here is how many players do you play with?

In a regular 4 member party it's not such a big deal to miss a few turns. A round would translate to more or less 10 minutes of real time. A Party of 8 on the other hand would translate to around 20 minutes even if players are prety fast to choosing their actions due to the amount of players and monsters/npcs in the encounter.

Play in smaller groups, use a seccond DM and have your strategems preset for faster pace (both the DM and PCs, especially casters who have tons of options on their actions).

Imbalance
2019-12-19, 12:00 PM
That's just not true. I know that this is a minority case, but I've had a game where my character went through several days of ingame story telling, interacting with multiple NPCs and developing both my character's relationship with them and her view of the world. There were 3 instances of combat by the most generous definition, non of them vital, and one of them me and the DM even agreed would have been better if it hadn't happened.

That sounds more like character development. The story is what has happened; the telling comes after the fact. No offense, but if your story amounts to "I had relations and grew as a person and see things differently than when I began," feel free to keep that to yourself. On the other hand, if our collective story is an actual adventure with conflict, trials and triumphs, tragic failures, and ultimately either accomplishing what we set out to do or dying in the attempt, then let's recall those events with relish. We may have differing preferences about the kind of story we want to have, but that doesn't make one's view of D&D any more or less true than another's. Heavy combat, no combat, everything in between is valid, and the fact that I may not be interested in your character's development in no way invalidates that character or her arc. Conversely, an overabundance of violence isn't everybody's cup of tea, but it almost always advances the plot. Consider that few people knew who Bruce Willis was when he was co-starring with Cybill Shepherd. It wasn't until after he tossed some C4 down an elevator shaft to thwart terrorists, got the assist from Holly dropping Hans out of a 30th floor window, and was outright saved by the reluctant Alan and his hand cannon that people started talking. Moonlighting was a fine show, but Diehard is a classic.

I...may have jumped trains there, but I think I brought my point with me...

Boci
2019-12-19, 12:10 PM
That sounds more like character development. The story is what has happened; the telling comes after the fact. No offense, but if your story amounts to "I had relations and grew as a person and see things differently than when I began," feel free to keep that to yourself. On the other hand, if our collective story is an actual adventure with conflict, trials and triumphs, tragic failures, and ultimately either accomplishing what we set out to do or dying in the attempt, then let's recall those events with relish.

My character had conflicts and failing. She was a half-elf warlock, and had a rivalry with a high elf wizard. He would insult her breeding, but a successful insight check revealed he actually wasn't racist, not overtly, he was actually intimidated by the fact that as a warlock she could cast 1st level spells at a far younger age, and was worried she would overtake him. I'm not claiming my DM was the first to have that idea, but it was a cool character angle to explore. There was also failure, a friendship with an eladrin ruined, or at least badly damaged, when my character mistook a point she was making as an insult aimed at her heritage.

Point being: It was a story with most things you expect from one, a little short and the game ended before we could do everything we wanted to in it, but it was still a story with drama and development and not much combat and it was a 5e game.

Imbalance
2019-12-19, 12:47 PM
My character had conflicts and failing. She was a half-elf warlock, and had a rivalry with a high elf wizard. He would insult her breeding, but a successful insight check revealed he actually wasn't racist, not overtly, he was actually intimidated by the fact that as a warlock she could cast 1st level spells at a far younger age, and was worried she would overtake him. I'm not claiming my DM was the first to have that idea, but it was a cool character angle to explore. There was also failure, a friendship with an eladrin ruined, or at least badly damaged, when my character mistook a point she was making as an insult aimed at her heritage.

Point being: It was a story with most things you expect from one, a little short and the game ended before we could do everything we wanted to in it, but it was still a story with drama and development and not much combat and it was a 5e game.

I agree with you on this point - that you're telling a story about what happened. I think I only disagree with you upon the assertion that my opinion about combat isn't true. Which is to say that D&D shouldn't be compartmentalized into this or that aspect, that it is all of these things that we love even if we love them for different, even conflicting reasons. Which is maybe better clarified by instead of telling |THE STORY|, we relate The Story So Far... to the extent that anyone else is interested.

Along with that, a DM who removes a character from combat is inherently taking them out of the story.

Boci
2019-12-19, 12:54 PM
I agree with you on this point - that you're telling a story about what happened. I think I only disagree with you upon the assertion that my opinion about combat isn't true. Which is to say that D&D shouldn't be compartmentalized into this or that aspect, that it is all of these things that we love even if we love them for different, even conflicting reasons. Which is maybe better clarified by instead of telling |THE STORY|, we relate The Story So Far... to the extent that anyone else is interested.

Along with that, a DM who removes a character from combat is inherently taking them out of the story.

Didn't you comparmentalize things when you said without combat there isn't much to tell? There is a lot to tell without combat. Social interaction, character relationships and arcs, exploration, culture, ect. You're right that the D&D rules are, volume-wise, relate to combat more times than not, and because of this its reasonable to expect most groups to features games and stories with a lot of combat, but that doesn't mean there not much story to tell without combat as you initially claimed.

Drache64
2019-12-19, 12:56 PM
This is not how crafting a convincing argument works. In particular because the rulebook lines you quote don’t actually refute the points people made, but also because a single statement in the front of the rulebook about what the game is about is not some kind of definitive decree on high about what the game is about. It doesn’t have that power.

And this certainly isn’t either. If you want to convince anyone other than yourself, I would suggest going back to square one.

They made the comment about the rulebook. I read them the rulebook.

Checkmate.

And I could care less about convincing them, {Scrubbed}

JNAProductions
2019-12-19, 01:01 PM
They made the comment about the rulebook. I read them the rulebook.

Checkmate.

And I could care less about convincing them,{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Again, don't blindly take everything at face value.

That blurb is basically marketing-do you also assume that you'll find the love of your life within a week after seeing an OK Cupid commercial, or that Wendy's really has the freshest and highest quality meat ever?

zinycor
2019-12-19, 01:14 PM
They made the comment about the rulebook. I read them the rulebook.

Checkmate.

And I could care less about convincing them, {Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

You quoted me, so I get to say: I didn't comment on the rulebook


What? Since when it isn't? The game that was based on a war game has always been made with miniatures in mind. There are many ways to play DnD, but "making a strategic character for the miniature strategy battle game of D&D" is a big part of the game.

{Scrubbed}

Koo Rehtorb
2019-12-19, 01:16 PM
D&D is a roleplaying game about combat. You can tell, because most of the rules are about combat. You can certainly do other things while nominally "playing" D&D, but the system doesn't get any credit for it because you're not using the system.

Boci
2019-12-19, 01:21 PM
D&D is a roleplaying game about combat. You can tell, because most of the rules are about combat. You can certainly do other things while nominally "playing" D&D, but the system doesn't get any credit for it because you're not using the system.

I was still using the ability checks and skill proficiencies when I played my half-elf girl in an almost combat-devoid game. Racial abilities came up a few time too, as did wild magic surge. You're probably still using the system even if you ignore large chunks of it.

Imbalance
2019-12-19, 01:31 PM
Didn't you comparmentalize things when you said without combat there isn't much to tell? There is a lot to tell without combat. Social interaction, character relationships and arcs, exploration, culture, ect. You're right that the D&D rules are, volume-wise, relate to combat more times than not, and because of this its reasonable to expect most groups to features games and stories with a lot of combat, but that doesn't mean there not much story to tell without combat as you initially claimed.

First - no, that wasn't me saying "D&D is only this." I was affirming that it is also that, stating my belief in its inclusivity. Perhaps I should amend: "without combat, there isn't much *worth telling, IMO*" and add a smiley? Because I also want to be clear that "not much" does not equal absolute zero.

Also, I made no mention regarding rules volume.

Anachronity
2019-12-19, 01:57 PM
this post was created after finishing up campaign 1 of critical role and feeling bad for Travis Willingham as late-game critical role every encounter is designed to keep Grog out of combat lest the Barbarian wreck everything, so he gets banished, paralyzed, etc. after seeing it happen in every fight I thought I would post support for him and others of a similar mind.I've gotta say critical role has a lot of issues and shortcomings that I always see people hesitant to acknowledge just because the voice acting and set dressing is so stellar. Matt Mercer is a great role model for voice actors but not a particularly good one for GMs.

But...
A lot of people have taken the discussion other places, but this is exactly what I am talking about.I don't think I've ever had a GM fiat a player out of a fight before. Not unless they were simultaneously having a fight or meaningful social encounter elsewhere or something. That just seems like horrid GMing.


A personal story is when a player of mine got enraged/confused by a demon's ability in pathfinder (basically a custom-made combination of the Rage and Confuse spells). It was interesting the first round. sort of frustrating the second round. And then it lasted five more.

At that point I learned my lesson and said to hell with any save-or-suck that lasts the whole combat. I never use them anymore and prefer that my players don't, or at least that they don't abuse them. It just isn't fun, or fair to any of the 'suckers' who want to try whittling down hitpoints instead. A solid sword blow or two should down most anyone; I don't see why that needs to be abstracted into requiring many attacks in a prolonged fight but save-or-sucks don't need to be.

I mostly like how 5e handles it with most disables requiring concentration and/or allowing a new save each turn. Concentration in particular means that if a player fails their save they can still be rescued by allies breaking the caster's concentration. As for solo boss encounters I've simply accepted long ago that they don't really work in D&D, unless you can finagle them to where they secretly aren't a solo boss encounter in terms of mechanics (they summon dudes, they have mindless combat servant allies, they mechanically function as multiple creatures somehow, etc.)

Jay R
2019-12-19, 02:07 PM
Once upon a time, six blind posters were arguing over what an elephant was.

One poster felt the small figurines, and said, “An elephant is like a miniatures game.”
Another heard the introduction, and said, “An elephant is like a story-telling game.”
The third poster listened to the in-character discussions, and said, “An elephant is like a role-playing game.”
The fourth poster listened to people build their characters, and said, “An elephant is like a strategic character-building game.”
Other posters added their own ideas, each correctly describing one aspect of the game.

Finally, one small boy said, “Would you please stop arguing with each other, and open your eyes? You’re not blind, and you all know exactly what an elephant is. It’s a large awkward, funny-looking beast, too complex for any simple description to completely cover, and unlike anything else on earth.”

But because their ears were also shut, nobody heard him, and they all went on arguing.


-----

I hope you all have as much fun playing this large awkward, funny-looking beast as I do.

JNAProductions
2019-12-19, 02:17 PM
Once upon a time, six blind posters were arguing over what an elephant was.

One poster felt the small figurines, and said, “An elephant is like a miniatures game.”
Another heard the introduction, and said, “An elephant is like a story-telling game.”
The third poster listened to the in-character discussions, and said, “An elephant is like a role-playing game.”
The fourth poster listened to people build their characters, and said, “An elephant is like a strategic character-building game.”
Other posters added their own ideas, each correctly describing one aspect of the game.

Finally, one small boy said, “Would you please stop arguing with each other, and open your eyes? You’re not blind, and you all know exactly what an elephant is. It’s a large awkward, funny-looking beast, too complex for any simple description to completely cover, and unlike anything else on earth.”

But because their ears were also shut, nobody heard him, and they all went on arguing.


-----

I hope you all have as much fun playing this large awkward, funny-looking beast as I do.

Heh. I like you.

Willie the Duck
2019-12-19, 02:45 PM
They made the comment about the rulebook. I read them the rulebook.

Checkmate.

And I could care less about convincing them, I'm just clearing up a falsehood they propagated.


I barely know where to begin with this. First and foremost, anyone who declares their own position to be "Checkmate" is almost always wrong. Regardless, what you are describing is not what happened. What happened is that you* made a declarative statement about what the game is about. Right here:
*as in, all burden of proof is now on your shoulders.



But again, all these recommendations are based on making a strategic character for the miniature strategy battle game of D&D, that's not what D&D is supposed to be.

They then objected to it with these:


They are recommendations for playing the actual game of D&D more effectively, according to its actual rules, independent of what you or I or anybody else thinks the game is "supposed to be".


What? Since when it isn't? The game that was based on a war game has always been made with miniatures in mind. There are many ways to play DnD, but "making a strategic character for the miniature strategy battle game of D&D" is a big part of the game.

Both of which are statements (again, positions, not quotes of rulebooks, and thus not lying, regardless as to whether you think they are correct or not) that you could have chosen to discuss, possibly finding fault in the positions thereof. Instead you posted this:


D&D 5e Page 5 Introduction "The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ROLEPLAYING game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, D&D is driven by imagination."

Page 192 "VARIANT: PLAYING ON A GRID. If you play out a combat using a square grid and miniatures or other tokens, follow these rules."
(CAPS theirs, emphasis mine.)

No offence, but you're wrong according to its actual rules, independent of what you or I or anybody else thinks the game is "supposed to be".

Which doesn't actually prove them wrong in any way whatsoever. ...Actually, I should say that you haven't shown how it discredits their cases in any way. And regardless the burden of proof about what the game is about is still on your shoulders, not theirs.

King of Nowhere
2019-12-19, 03:13 PM
This is not how crafting a convincing argument works. In particular because the rulebook lines you quote don’t actually refute the points people made, but also because a single statement in the front of the rulebook about what the game is about is not some kind of definitive decree on high about what the game is about. It doesn’t have that power.

unfortunately that's what RAW discussions have brought upon us: people looking for a specific quote somewhere in the books supporting their specific interests, and ignoring all context.

Afghanistan
2019-12-19, 05:31 PM
This thread reminds me of an experience that happened to me quite recently. There were a few things that were basically just red flags that should have told me this is the type of experience I would basically be having, but whatever.

Anywho, joined a group of people for a game of FATE. It was mid adventure, but whatever that was fine, it was with a bunch of other new people as well, with 4 veterans. It was my first time playing with that system with those groups of people. We're doing some sort of hostage negotiations with some evil empire, I built a character more or less for this. Not 10 minutes in, and the bad guy basically casts a sleep spell and puts everyone new to sleep.

Awesome. We then proceed to just be told to sit down and shut up for the next 2 and a half hours until the Veterans who made their saves resolved the entire issue. There was a fight scene, dramatic interactions, romance, etc. That half the group missed because in the first 10 minutes we were just downed and had no option to get back into the game. Once all that ended, the veterans just woke us up (not sure why the explosions, or the shouting, or whatever didn't wake us up, but whatever) and we go on a chase scene.

Except we can't go on the chase scene, because the half that were asleep, and I quote, "woke up too late to pursue" so we were basically just told to sit down and shut up again for another hour. At that point, I had enough and just bounced. My favorite quote from that game was another new player basically saying what all of us were thinking "Wow, my first session and I spent the entirety of it on the ground and asleep. Can't wait for the next game."

He never came back, I never came back, anyone new to that group basically just left the community because of just how absolutely awful that experience was.

kyoryu
2019-12-19, 06:18 PM
the bad guy basically casts a sleep spell and puts everyone new to sleep.

A) That's awful.
B) Somebody doesn't know how Fate works.

Pex
2019-12-19, 06:50 PM
But...I don't think I've ever had a GM fiat a player out of a fight before. Not unless they were simultaneously having a fight or meaningful social encounter elsewhere or something. That just seems like horrid GMing.


I had in a 2E game a long time ago. New campaign started in an already established group. DM wouldn't let my character start with the rest of the party. A combat happened. I just sat there doing nothing. Finally combat ended, and I was expecting to finally be introduced. A moment later another combat was about to start, and I still wasn't there. That's when I left the table and went home. I got a phone call later by another player telling me how angry the DM was I messed up his plans and was kicked out of the group I had already quit.

There's a reason I have a tendency of anti-DM bias in Forum discussions. With one or two exceptions all my 2E DMs were variations of bad DMs. I eventually learned it didn't have to be that way, and my gaming fun increased.

King of Nowhere
2019-12-19, 06:50 PM
Once upon a time, six blind posters were arguing over what an elephant was.

One poster felt the small figurines, and said, “An elephant is like a miniatures game.”
Another heard the introduction, and said, “An elephant is like a story-telling game.”
The third poster listened to the in-character discussions, and said, “An elephant is like a role-playing game.”
The fourth poster listened to people build their characters, and said, “An elephant is like a strategic character-building game.”
Other posters added their own ideas, each correctly describing one aspect of the game.

Finally, one small boy said, “Would you please stop arguing with each other, and open your eyes? You’re not blind, and you all know exactly what an elephant is. It’s a large awkward, funny-looking beast, too complex for any simple description to completely cover, and unlike anything else on earth.”

But because their ears were also shut, nobody heard him, and they all went on arguing.


-----

I hope you all have as much fun playing this large awkward, funny-looking beast as I do.

while this post is nice, it does not represent this discussion. everyone here is acknowledging that d&d is a blend of many elements, except for drache who is insisting that some of those elements do not apply

Chijinda
2019-12-20, 12:14 AM
But again, all these recommendations are based on making a strategic character for the miniature strategy battle game of D&D, that's not what D&D is supposed to be.

You're correct, at least as far as the "recommendations are based on making a strategic character", but I'm not sure what your point is, here.

If you feel that "hey, it doesn't suit my Barbarian to have good Wisdom saves", then that's perfectly fine-- but then you don't get to complain when the GM hits your 10 Wisdom Barbarian with a Hold Person spell and he fails the save, because his Wisdom save isn't very good.

Just the same as if I decided to make a Wizard, with a dumped Constitution stat because it fits his image, I don't get to complain when my Wizard spends the majority of combats unconscious because an enemy sneezes in his general direction.

D&D is a storytelling game, but it's also a game about resource management. And the choices you make when you level up in-game are resources as well.

Osuniev
2019-12-20, 06:13 AM
I honestly feel like the problem here is not the DM using Save-or-Suck, it's the PCs (and maybe the DM too) being too long. A player turn should be 30 seconds, nd in my games sometimes drags to 1 min. If the player des not now what he's doing 6 seconds in, he loses his turn. If he doesn't know how the spell works and he's not looking at it as his turn begins, he loses his turn.

MoiMagnus
2019-12-20, 07:01 AM
I honestly feel like the problem here is not the DM using Save-or-Suck, it's the PCs (and maybe the DM too) being too long. A player turn should be 30 seconds, nd in my games sometimes drags to 1 min. If the player des not now what he's doing 6 seconds in, he loses his turn. If he doesn't know how the spell works and he's not looking at it as his turn begins, he loses his turn.

Well, yes and no.

Yes, because 4h fight makes "taking players out of the fight" much worse, and something a DM should actively avoid doing early on. On tables where fight goes under 10min per round, you can do a lot more without having players being frustrated. And honestly, if the goal is to play a 4h-6h long tactical boardgame, there are far better games for that than D&D (take most dungeon crawling boardgame, for example).

No, because not every table would actually enjoy playing that fast. Not everybody want to play a game where their reflection time is tight and they need to think fast. This is a game, which mean peoples have here to have fun, not to be efficient.
Additionally, while most players don't have problems with their character being "more efficient than it should" because of metagame, the contrary is quite frustrating. One of the most frustrating I know is when my character is "less efficient than it should" because of metagame. This include the (not relevant here) high Cha characters not being able to convince a NPC because the player doesn't find good arguments, and this also include the (much more relevant here) high Int wizard with a lot of experience in battle making beginner mistakes because its player was pressed by time and didn't have a good knowledge of its spell-list. In other words, some players are just bad at playing quickly the character they build, and punishing them for it will just make them not enjoy the game at all.

kyoryu
2019-12-20, 01:58 PM
One of the most frustrating I know is when my character is "less efficient than it should" because of metagame. This include the (not relevant here) high Cha characters not being able to convince a NPC because the player doesn't find good arguments,

This is why I roll in social situations. The general approach of the player dictates what the outcomes can look like (bribing someone has different results than threatening them, good or bad), and whether a roll is even called for - but then just roll and let it stand.


and this also include the (much more relevant here) high Int wizard with a lot of experience in battle making beginner mistakes because its player was pressed by time and didn't have a good knowledge of its spell-list. In other words, some players are just bad at playing quickly the character they build, and punishing them for it will just make them not enjoy the game at all.

I absolutely, 100%, believe that the GM should nudge the players about things that their characters would know. Including spell details (assuming the GM knows them).

Osuniev
2019-12-21, 09:02 AM
I absolutely, 100%, believe that the GM should nudge the players about things that their characters would know. Including spell details (assuming the GM knows them).

I whole-heartedly agree. I'm also very wiling to help PC understand how their spell work if I feel they genuinely missed something whilst reading the spell. I make cheatsheets for the casters which explain in a few words each of them. But I have much less patience when they didn't even TRY to figure out what their spell can do before their turn (after 6 months of campaign, there's obviously a normal period of getting to know the game).



This is a game, which mean peoples have here to have fun, not to be efficient.

Yes, but I feel like so often, people forget that OTHER PLAYERS are waiting while they are taking their 5min-turn, which is REALLY unfun.

I feel like being inefficient from time to time (because you were rushed and made a suboptimal decision on your turn) is a small price to pay for everyone to enjoy a faster-paced combat.
And you still have a 2 to 6 min round to THINK about how to be optimal, if you enjoy that (which I very much do).

Basically, your right-to-have-fun ends where others right-to-have-fun begins.

Calthropstu
2019-12-21, 09:29 AM
I am going to jump in here. I only read the first page and am presenting some relevant info to the original topic so this does not point to any side debates.

I have had numerous complaints from players for numerous reason both about some of my or other characters or my monsters and other actions when I gm.

A monster uses an at will illusion power to make a wall. Monk tries to jump on top of it and falls taking damage. Complaint.

A monster uses illusion magics to hide himself in fake clouds. Complaints.

A monster uses dimension door at will to keep himself out of melee range. Complaints.

One pc takes all the monsters down with ranged attacks. Complaints.

I stop the final boss with a hold monster spell. Complaints.

I summon monsters to prevent the monsters from getting to the party (or the party to the monsters) complaints.

I field a monster that runs away. Complaints.

Now we have your comaints OP.

I get what you are saying, but I have to be honest... It really just seems you are doing the same thing I have seen so many other people do. Anything that doesn't result in "lol roflstomp" elicits complaints. And even that eventually leads to "this is too easy."

I don't pull punches as a gm. If you go down, so be it. There's still plenty to do just BEING WITH FRIENDS. Crack jokes, throw things, make snide comments, yell at the healer, write a eulogy for your fallen character, plan your revenge... And you can always, as someone said, take over other things. Maybe even take control of an enemy or two.

huttj509
2019-12-21, 10:30 AM
I am going to jump in here. I only read the first page and am presenting some relevant info to the original topic so this does not point to any side debates.

I have had numerous complaints from players for numerous reason both about some of my or other characters or my monsters and other actions when I gm.

A monster uses an at will illusion power to make a wall. Monk tries to jump on top of it and falls taking damage. Complaint.

I don't pull punches as a gm. If you go down, so be it. There's still plenty to do just BEING WITH FRIENDS. Crack jokes, throw things, make snide comments, yell at the healer, write a eulogy for your fallen character, plan your revenge... And you can always, as someone said, take over other things. Maybe even take control of an enemy or two.

The damage seems weird on that first example.

The OP is referring to times when a player repeatedly "happens" to be unable to participate in combat, or otherwise just sit there not able to do anything for the majority of the session.

I mean, I love sitting around hanging out with friends. I love it less when I was expecting to do something else.

Calthropstu
2019-12-21, 04:23 PM
The damage seems weird on that first example.

The OP is referring to times when a player repeatedly "happens" to be unable to participate in combat, or otherwise just sit there not able to do anything for the majority of the session.

I mean, I love sitting around hanging out with friends. I love it less when I was expecting to do something else.

He jumped 30 feet in the air to grab at the top of the wall. Then fell through it.

JNAProductions
2019-12-21, 04:29 PM
He jumped 30 feet in the air to grab at the top of the wall. Then fell through it.

How was he able to jump 30' high?
If he was able to jump 30' high, why can't he land that without taking damage?

zinycor
2019-12-21, 04:42 PM
He jumped 30 feet in the air to grab at the top of the wall. Then fell through it.

Did he fall into a trap?

Boci
2019-12-21, 05:37 PM
Did he fall into a trap?

No, they jumped onto a 30ft high which was an illusion so they fell through it and took falling damage.

zinycor
2019-12-21, 06:45 PM
No, they jumped onto a 30ft high which was an illusion so they fell through it and took falling damage.

weird, I would expect someone able to jump 30 ft, to be able to fall from such jump without taking damage.

from my table: there is a frogman who usually does this sort of thing, and he doesn't take damage from such jumps.

Boci
2019-12-21, 06:59 PM
weird, I would expect someone able to jump 30 ft, to be able to fall from such jump without taking damage.

We don't know where they jumped from, plus I could see a DM ruling that falling unexpectedly means you take damage when you normally wouldn't for jumping down 30ft.

King of Nowhere
2019-12-21, 07:36 PM
Yes, but I feel like so often, people forget that OTHER PLAYERS are waiting while they are taking their 5min-turn, which is REALLY unfun.

I feel like being inefficient from time to time (because you were rushed and made a suboptimal decision on your turn) is a small price to pay for everyone to enjoy a faster-paced combat.
And you still have a 2 to 6 min round to THINK about how to be optimal, if you enjoy that (which I very much do).

Basically, your right-to-have-fun ends where others right-to-have-fun begins.

i really, really, really don't like this premise, and what it says of the table.
the idea that the game is only fun during your turn. that you don't have fun while your friends are playing. that while you are playing your turn (and you may have to rethink of your whole strategy because the guy before you just used some cc that radically altered the battlefield) the other people at the table are all "will this guy get done quickly, i want to get back to the only thing that matters: my character. i hope he get knocked out, that way i'll get to take my turns more often".
no, thanks. if i had that mindset, i would play alone. that way there would be no one to steal my spotlight.

in my group, when someone else's character is making a scene, we cheer him. people also zone out, but generally to throw jokes.

i can understand if it's in a group of 10 people, or if someone is really taking a lot of time because they are not doing their homework (maybe i cast this spell? let me check back on the spell list what does it do). but as a general principle, if i don't enjoy the game also outside of my turn, or if i have to feel rushed because for the other people at the table it is a chore to wait for me... then no, i'm not enjoying the game, and i should not play it.


weird, I would expect someone able to jump 30 ft, to be able to fall from such jump without taking damage.

from my table: there is a frogman who usually does this sort of thing, and he doesn't take damage from such jumps.

while i agree (and i would certainly call in acrobacy and jump to reduce that damage), if one can jump 9 meters, he must be pretty high level, and the falling damage would be 1d6. 2d6 most. no reason to make a big deal out of it.
i can also point out that if i jump as high as i can and then i land maladroitly, i can get hurt.

Tanarii
2019-12-21, 08:04 PM
If every player takes 30 seconds, and the DM takes 2 minutes, in a 5 player game each player has 4 minutes to be thinking about what they're going to be doing.

IMX the only time players need extra time to decide what to do when their turn starts is either they weren't paying attention, or they're approaching the game like a turn-based tactical mini-game.

The latter is hardly surprising, since that's what it technically is. But it also destroys immersion and pacing, resulting in bored players who's turn it isn't. Just because you want all the latest data to process so you can then consider all your options carefully while others wait.

Drache64
2019-12-21, 11:34 PM
What? Since when it isn't? The game that was based on a war game has always been made with miniatures in mind. There are many ways to play DnD, but "making a strategic character for the miniature strategy battle game of D&D" is a big part of the game.


You quoted me, so I get to say: I didn't comment on the rulebook
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

I don't appreciate someone implying I am lying, so if this post reads a little hot I apologize but I am about to vehemently disagree with your lack of logic here.

Understanding what a game is, is to adhere to its rulebook. When you say "Such and so is a big part of the game" you are commenting on the rulebook.

If you are saying something is a big part of the game and someone quotes you the source material contradicting your opinion, then the only conclusion is that you are wrong, or the source material contradicts itself.

You are left with two options: either show the source material contradicts itself, or admit you were incorrect in asserting that something is what it states it isn't.

All in all I am not here to have a conversation about how you are playing a hobby you love incorrectly, but when you start throwing out your opinions on the internet you should expect them to be challenged. Calling someone a liar is not the best way to handle that.

In summary: You stated what a game is, I read you the game's rulebook, and your only defense was to call lies.

In case you want to "win" this argument, (which I have no interest in continuing), I will play out your options:
you can refer to the 3.5 rulebook which has a bit more of a comment about how the game is part dungeon crawler, in which case you have a stronger argument there, especially as the combat section in 3.5 states that those rules were all written with miniatures in mind.
To which I respond you stated what the game "is" not what it "was" and therefore lean on the argument for using the 5e introduction.
and ultimately you then fall back on a completely opinion based argument of the zeitgeist of the game leaning into it's battle map usage being a staple of the game regardless of a battle map being an "alternative" rule in 5e.
Then I fall back on arguing that just because a battle map is the best way to play out combat, doesn't mean that this is a combat focused game, and how 5e's rules did away with the combat heavy language and now 5e is the most popular D&D has ever been, thus claiming the zeitgeist to be on my side.

Or we could skip all that and simply say "Hey I love D&D too, let's shake hands"

zinycor
2019-12-21, 11:37 PM
{Scrubbed}

Drache64
2019-12-21, 11:46 PM
I barely know where to begin with this. First and foremost, anyone who declares their own position to be "Checkmate" is almost always wrong. Regardless, what you are describing is not what happened. What happened is that you* made a declarative statement about what the game is about. Right here:
*as in, all burden of proof is now on your shoulders.

They then objected to it with these:

Both of which are statements (again, positions, not quotes of rulebooks, and thus not lying, regardless as to whether you think they are correct or not) that you could have chosen to discuss, possibly finding fault in the positions thereof. Instead you posted this:

Which doesn't actually prove them wrong in any way whatsoever. ...Actually, I should say that you haven't shown how it discredits their cases in any way. And regardless the burden of proof about what the game is about is still on your shoulders, not theirs.

{Scrubbed}. Coming in and saying "burden of proof" a dozen times doesn't mean you are correct. When one of either party states what something "is" it is upon both parties to validate their own claims. I validated mine with textual evidence, they did not.


{Scrub the quote, scrub the post}

Again, you come to a point where I make a statement: "When you state what something is you must refer to the material that quotes what it is"

{Scrubbed}

I am sorry, but you were not misrepresented, you were quoted good sir.

JNAProductions
2019-12-22, 01:12 AM
Drache, you're basically taking marketing blurbs at face value. Do you understand why you shouldn't take that seriously?

Drache64
2019-12-22, 01:17 AM
Drache, you're basically taking marketing blurbs at face value. Do you understand why you shouldn't take that seriously?

Actually I'm citing nothing related to marketing blurbs, I didn't respond to your previous comment about it because it was pretty far off.

No offense but I couldn't disagree with you more on the whole marketing blurb angle and wanted to skip the pointless rebuttals.

JNAProductions
2019-12-22, 01:21 AM
Actually I'm citing nothing related to marketing blurbs, I didn't respond to your previous comment about it because it was pretty far off.

No offense but I couldn't disagree with you more on the whole marketing blurb angle and wanted to skip the pointless rebuttals.

So you ignored me because you disagreed? That's not a very healthy way to debate.

Koo Rehtorb
2019-12-22, 01:28 AM
Players being misled by games that lie about what they're about is an actual real problem in the industry. Or maybe the problem is games that aren't designed to be about what they want to be about. Either way.

Drache64
2019-12-22, 01:29 AM
So you ignored me because you disagreed? That's not a very healthy way to debate.

Sorry but I'm not interested in debating marketing blurbs vs rulebooks, and why you think they are the same. It's pretty far off topic anyways and so I'm not really compelled to debate it in the first place.

JNAProductions
2019-12-22, 01:43 AM
Sorry but I'm not interested in debating marketing blurbs vs rulebooks, and why you think they are the same. It's pretty far off topic anyways and so I'm not really compelled to debate it in the first place.

Pray tell, what narrative rules does 5E have? If you're so knowledgeable, should be easy to quote them, right?

Koo Rehtorb
2019-12-22, 01:44 AM
Pray tell, what narrative rules does 5E have? If you're so knowledgeable, should be easy to quote them, right?

something something inspiration

JNAProductions
2019-12-22, 01:45 AM
something something inspiration

That's one. One minor, often forgotten rule, but there's that.

How many others are there? And how many compared to the more simulationist and combat rules?

AdAstra
2019-12-22, 01:51 AM
So, you've had/seen bad play experiences where a DM fiats a player out of a fight. In what way does this have anything to do with what the game is "about"? Forcing a player out of combat with no recourse is just as much of a jerk move in wargaming/hack-and-slash as it is in a storytelling game.

What a game is about is not entirely up to the designers, because people play the game how they want. Yes, the text says it's about storytelling (and I think that's more or less true), but how people see the game matters more in most ways (pretty sure most people just see it as a game unless asked to elaborate). People can be objectively right or wrong about what a game's about in the same way that people can be objectively right or wrong about what football's about (or what football even is).

Drache64
2019-12-22, 01:56 AM
Pray tell, what narrative rules does 5E have? If you're so knowledgeable, should be easy to quote them, right?

Allow me to give credit where credit is due and show you the work of another poster here:


I looked through the PHB and made a list of combat vs. non-combat spells.

1. Combat. These are spells that don't really do anything except harm some creature. They may have some minor niche use outside combat, but are mostly only useful in a combat situation:

Cantrips: Acid Splash, Blade Ward, Chill Touch, Eldritch Blast, Poison Spray, Ray of Frost, Sacred Flame, Shillelagh, Shocking Grasp, Thorn Whip, True Strike, Vicious Mockery

Spells: Antilife Shell, Armor of Agathys, Arms of Hadar, Aura of Life, Aura of Purity, Bane, Banishing Smite, Banishment, Barkskin, Beacon of Hope, Bestow Curse, Blade Barrier, Bless, Blight, Blinding Smite, Blindness/Darkness, Blur, Branding Smite, Burning Hands, Call Lightning, Chain Lightning, Chromatic Orb, Circle of Death, Circle of Power, Cloud of Daggers, Cloudkill, Color Spray, Compelled Duel, Compulsion, Cone of Cold, Confusion, Conjure Barrage, Conjure Volley, Contagion, Cordon of Arrows, Counterspell, Crown of Madness, Crusader’s Mantle, Darkness, Death Ward, Delayed Blast Fireball, Destruction Wave, Dispel Evil and Good, Dissonant Whispers, Divine Favor, Divine Word, Earthquake, Elemental Weapon, Ensnaring Strike, Entangle, Evard’s Black Tentacles, Eyebite, False Life, Fear, Feeblemind, Finger of Death, Fire Shield, Fire Storm, Fireball, Flame Blade, Flame Strike, Flaming Sphere, Flesh to Stone, Fog Cloud, Forcecage, Foresight, Globe of Invulnerability, Grasping Vine, Grease, Guardian of Faith, Guiding Bolt, Hail of Thorns, Harm, Haste, Heat Metal, Hellish Rebuke, Heroism, Hex, Hold Monster, Hold Person, Holy Aura, Hunger of Hadar, Hunter’s Mark, Ice Storm, Imprisonment, Incendiary Cloud, Inflict Wounds, Insect Plague, Lightning Arrow, Lightning Bolt, Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Maze, Melf’s Acid Arrow, Meteor Swarm, Mirror Image, Moonbeam, Mordenkainen’s Sword, Otiluke’s Freezing Sphere, Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere, Otto’s Irresistible Dance, Phantasmal Killer, Power Word Kill, Power Word Stun, Prismatic Spray, Prismatic Wall, Protection from Evil and Good, Ray of Enfeeblement, Ray of Sickness, Sanctuary, Scorching Ray, Searing Smite, Shatter, Shield, Shield of Faith, Sleep, Sleet Storm, Slow, Spike Growth, Spirit Guardian, Spiritual Weapon, Staggering Smite, Stinking Cloud, Stoneskin, Storm of Vengeance, Sunbeam, Sunburst, Swift Quiver, Tasha’s Hideous Laughter, Thunderous Smite, Thunderwave, Tsunami, Vampiric Touch, Wall of Fire, Wall of Ice, Wall of Thorns, Warding Bond, Web, Weird, Wind Wall, Witch Bolt, Wrathful Smite

2. Non-Combat. These are spells that don't do anything that you would normally want to do in the middle of a battle, or that have a casting time too long to be of any real use there. As with the previous category, there might be some niche situations where you could use one of these spells in combat.

Cantrips: Dancing Lights, Druidcraft, Friends, Guidance, Light, Mage Hand, Mending, Message, Minor Illusion, Prestidigitation, Thaumaturgy

Spells: Alarm, Animal Messenger, Antipathy/Sympathy, Arcane Eye, Arcane Lock, Astral Projection, Augury, Awaken, Beast Sense, Clairvoyance, Clone, Commune, Commune with Nature, Comprehend Languages, Contact Other Plane, Continual Flame, Control Weather, Create Food and Water, Create or Destroy Water, Creation, Demiplane, Detect Evil and Good, Detect Magic, Detect Poison and Disease, Detect Thoughts, Disguise Self, Divination, Drawmij’s Instant Summons, Dream, Etherealness, Fabricate, Feign Death, Find the Path, Find Traps, Forbiddance, Gaseous Form, Gate, Geas, Gentle Repose, Glibness, Glyph of Warding, Guards and Wards, Hallow, Hallucinatory Terrain, Identify, Illusory Script, Knock, Legend Lore, Leomund’s Secret Chest, Leomund’s Tiny Hut, Locate Animals or Plants, Locate Creature, Locate Object, Magic Circle, Magic Mouth, Meld into Stone, Mirage Arcane, Modify Memory, Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion, Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum, Move Earth, Nondetection, Nystul’s Magic Aura, Pass Without Trace, Passwall, Phantom Steed, Planar Binding, Prayer of Healing, Project Image, Purify Food and Drink, Raise Dead, Regenerate, Reincarnate, Remove Curse, Resurrection, Rope Trick, Scrying, See Invisibility, Seeming, Sending, Sequester, Speak with Animals, Speak with Dead, Stone Shape, Symbol, Telepathy, Teleport, Teleportation Circle, Tenser’s Floating Disk, Tongues, Transport via Plants, Tree Stride, True Resurrection, Unseen Servant, Water Breathing, Water Walk, Wind Walk, Word of Recall, Zone of Truth

3. Multi-Use Spells. These spells are reasonably useful in combat, and also have reasonably common uses out of combat. For example, damaging spells that can affect objects as well as creatures are included in this category, because of their usefulness in exploration. Healing spells are here as well, since there are many ways, apart from combat, for a character to be injured.

Cantrips: Fire Bolt, Produce Flame, Resistance, Spare the Dying

Spells: Aid, Alter Self, Animal Friendship, Animal Shapes, Animate Dead, Animate Objects, Antimagic Field, Arcane Gate, Aura of Vitality, Bigby’s Hand, Blink, Calm Emotions, Charm Person, Command, Conjure Animals, Conjure Celestial, Conjure Elemental, Conjure Fey, Conjure Minor Elementals, Conjure Woodland Beings, Contingency, Control Water, Create Undead, Cure Wounds, Darkvision, Daylight, Dimension Door, Disintegrate, Dispel Magic, Dominate Beast, Dominate Monster, Dominate Person, Enhance Ability, Enlarge/Reduce, Enthrall, Expeditious Retreat, Faerie Fire, Feather Fall, Find Familiar, Find Steed, Fly, Freedom of Movement, Giant Insect, Greater Invisibility, Goodberry, Greater Restoration, Gust of Wind, Heal, Healing Word, Heroes’ Feast, Hypnotic Pattern, Invisibility, Jump, Lesser Restoration, Levitate, Longstrider, Magic Jar, Major Image, Mass Cure Wounds, Mass Heal, Mass Healing Word, Mass Suggestion, Mind Blank, Mislead, Misty Step Mordenkainen’s Faithful Hound, Phantasmal Force, Planar Ally, Plane Shift, Plant Growth, Polymorph, Power Word Heal, Programmed Illusion, Protection from Energy, Protection from Poison, Rary’s Telepathic Bond, Reverse Gravity, Revivify, Shapechange, Silence, Silent Image, Simulacrum, Speak with Plants, Spider Climb, Suggestion, Telekinesis, Time Stop, True Polymorph, True Seeing, Wall of Force, Wall of Stone, Wish


For those of you who don't feel like counting them all: 12 cantrips and 143 spells are classed as combat; 11 cantrips and 99 spells are classed as non-combat; 4 cantrips and 92 spells are classed as multi-use. I won't try to draw any conclusion from those numbers, but I will say that's a lot more non-combat magic than I expected to find. Somebody will probably disagree with one or more of my categorizations, which they obviously have the right to do. If anybody disagrees with a lot of them, that person might want to make their own list.

I'll also add I think it is a bit disrespectful to just demand someone go dig up tons of stuff from a rulebook and judge it as an easy feat.

I was basically like "Your argument isn't compelling to me" and you basically responded "oh yeah? go do homework!"

JNAProductions
2019-12-22, 01:59 AM
I didn't say "Non-combat". I said "Narrative."

Do you understand the difference?

Drache64
2019-12-22, 02:01 AM
So you ignored me because you disagreed? That's not a very healthy way to debate.


I didn't say "Non-combat". I said "Narrative."

Do you understand the difference?

Yeah I'm good here. Happy holidays. Peace out.

Tanarii
2019-12-22, 03:01 AM
Players being misled by games that lie about what they're about is an actual real problem in the industry. Or maybe the problem is games that aren't designed to be about what they want to be about. Either way.
Yeah. Claiming Dungeons and Dragons is about storytelling was a pretty blatant one.

Or rather, it's only about storytelling if you're a railroading DM.

Boci
2019-12-22, 07:27 AM
Yeah. Claiming Dungeons and Dragons is about storytelling was a pretty blatant one.

Or rather, it's only about storytelling if you're a railroading DM.

Co-operative storytelling is a thing, and quite a common way to describe RPGs to people who are unfamiliar with how they work.

Drache64
2019-12-22, 10:22 AM
So, you've had/seen bad play experiences where a DM fiats a player out of a fight. In what way does this have anything to do with what the game is "about"? Forcing a player out of combat with no recourse is just as much of a jerk move in wargaming/hack-and-slash as it is in a storytelling game.

What a game is about is not entirely up to the designers, because people play the game how they want. Yes, the text says it's about storytelling (and I think that's more or less true), but how people see the game matters more in most ways (pretty sure most people just see it as a game unless asked to elaborate). People can be objectively right or wrong about what a game's about in the same way that people can be objectively right or wrong about what football's about (or what football even is).

I agree 100%

This was a weird and unfruitful tangent I somehow got pulled into.


Yeah. Claiming Dungeons and Dragons is about storytelling was a pretty blatant one.

Or rather, it's only about storytelling if you're a railroading DM.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes....

Just kidding, but seriously I am sorry you haven't gotten to experience a d&d campaign that was storytelling focused and not railroading, they are really the only way I like to play. There is maybe 1 combat a session if that.

Tajerio
2019-12-22, 11:24 AM
Co-operative storytelling is a thing, and quite a common way to describe RPGs to people who are unfamiliar with how they work.

That's true, but it's not what D&D is really set up to be in any of its editions. If people want to play a cooperative storytelling game, they're not gonna get much help from D&D rulebooks. The D&D rulebooks are set up for a game run by a DM that's primarily focused on combat. A lot else can happen in a game of D&D, but as someone said upthread, that's beholden to the work the players and DM are willing to do, not to the system.

Jakinbandw
2019-12-22, 11:28 AM
If every player takes 30 seconds, and the DM takes 2 minutes, in a 5 player game each player has 4 minutes to be thinking about what they're going to be doing.

Okay, I really have to disagree here. I've been working on designing a system, and timing turns, and I just don't see this. So let's say that a standard turn involves just 2 things (which it often doesn't) Moving and attacking. Moves can be fast, but they do involve moving their token around the map, so that takes some physical time. The attack roll has to be made the result (hit or miss) called out by the GM, then damage rolled. The GM then has to go update the monster stats, then that process repeats because generally in 5e characters have 2 attacks right from level 1.

And that doesn't even get into what happens when a spell is cast on a group of enemies, or the open hand monk flurries and has to choose where he's pushing the foes they hit. All of these things take time to alter on the map, on the character sheet, and time is needed for the decisions. I urge you to actually time how long an average combat round takes. I think you'll find it surprising.

Tanarii
2019-12-22, 11:37 AM
I urge you to actually time how long an average combat round takes. I think you'll find it surprising.Been there, done that. Medium encounters in 5e takes my groups an average of 15-20 minutes. That's 3-4 rounds of combat, for a typically 5 player group plus henchmen, and I usually use large groups of enemies.

Battles using battlemats do take a bit longer than those without, but that's mostly setup time.

Boci
2019-12-22, 12:33 PM
That's true, but it's not what D&D is really set up to be in any of its editions. If people want to play a cooperative storytelling game, they're not gonna get much help from D&D rulebooks. The D&D rulebooks are set up for a game run by a DM that's primarily focused on combat. A lot else can happen in a game of D&D, but as someone said upthread, that's beholden to the work the players and DM are willing to do, not to the system.

But they're doing in the system. Whatever the reasons, they are telling a story, in the D&D system, and the co-operative story they are telling would not be the same if it didn't use the system.

JNAProductions
2019-12-22, 12:38 PM
But they're doing in the system. Whatever the reasons, they are telling a story, in the D&D system, and the co-operative story they are telling would not be the same if it didn't use the system.

That is true. But the system itself doesn't offer any real narrative tools. The only rule I'd consider narrative in 5E is inspiration, as said earlier.

Boci
2019-12-22, 12:42 PM
That is true. But the system itself doesn't offer any real narrative tools. The only rule I'd consider narrative in 5E is inspiration, as said earlier.

That's not too relevant though. People write stories with no system and no nerrative tools be they official published books/comics, posted fanfictions, freeform RPs. So whilst its noteworthy pointing out that the D&D rulebook has few nerrative rules when talking about its content, its not worth much in a dicussion of how you can use the rulebook to tell a story, because people don't need nerrative tools from a system to do that.

King of Nowhere
2019-12-22, 02:32 PM
The D&D rulebooks are set up for a game run by a DM that's primarily focused on combat. A lot else can happen in a game of D&D, but as someone said upthread, that's beholden to the work the players and DM are willing to do, not to the system.


Allow me to give credit where credit is due and show you the work of another poster here:


For those of you who don't feel like counting them all: 12 cantrips and 143 spells are classed as combat; 11 cantrips and 99 spells are classed as non-combat; 4 cantrips and 92 spells are classed as multi-use. I won't try to draw any conclusion from those numbers, but I will say that's a lot more non-combat magic than I expected to find.

i would say more exactly that d&d is focused on adventuring and problem-solving, of which combat is one major avenue (after all, there are very few problems that cannot be solved by bashing someone in the face).
yes, there are a lot of spells that do not deal with combat. they deal with making light (for exploring dungeons where you fight), making food and water for a small party of people (so that you don't have to be worried about that when you go adventuring in a dungeon), barring doors or opening dungeon doors, finding information, moving around, etc.

there are very few spells that would be useful in civilian life, as well as very few spells that would be useful at the level of army engagement.

also keep in mind that 5e and 3.x are different games with somewhat different focus, and 3.x is more combat focused.