Unpopular D&D Opinions Part 2: Popular To Talk About

[Thrudd]

The game just needs to define what it wants to be, and make that clear to the potential players. Then they will decide if it sounds like a game they want to play.
DCC explicitly says "this is a meat grinder. If you like those, you'll like this game."
Fate says "this is a cinematic story game."
D&D says "this is everything/anything you want!", and as a result doesn't focus its ruleset enough to make us very picky people happy. They made an attempt to create a more modular set of rules that would allow you to put together anything from meat grinder to story mode, and I like that, but they didn't go far enough. Meat grinder survival mode needs a much different set of rules than does cinematic action story.

[Telok]

They made an attempt to create a more modular set of rules that would allow you to put together anything from meat grinder to story mode, and I like that, but they didn't go far enough. Meat grinder survival mode needs a much different set of rules than does cinematic action story.

Whats modular about 5e? I mean you have the feat, multiclass, variant encumberance, and extended duration rest things to toggle on/off. But other than the encumberance & rests that's not exactly changing anything but PC 'get X or Y on level up' options. Its not like there's a low magic module, or a superhero martials module, or a magitech module (Ebberon is a setting that just adds a class & feats, not a different way to play or new optional rules).

[Vahnavoi]

There's also an issue that D&D has very few mechanical setbacks other than 'you can't play for a while'.

Telok already made the joking version, but nonetheless:

From at least AD&D to 3rd edition, D&D had loss of experience points and experience levels, loss of class features, several flavors of ability score loss, disease, insanity, being cursed in a bunch of different ways, loss of wealth and equipment and loss of supporting NPCs. Most of which allow a character to remain in play but have long lasting or even permanent effects if specific actions aren't taken to counter them.

The thing is that these aren't any less reviled than character death, because some players have difficulties accepting that sometimes you get penalized in a game.

[Anonymouswizard]

Dev talkies:
"Limb loss?"
"No fun, drop it."
"Level drain?"
"No fun, drop it."
"Insanity?"
"No fun, drop it."
"Lingering wounds?"
"No fun, drop it."
"Stat damage?"
"No fun, drop it."
"Diseases?"
"Heal checks, low level cure spell, and just cut the penalties to minor nuisances."
"Exhaustion?"
"Death spiral, we'll remove it next edition."
"Whats left?"
"Death. But we'll make it optional next edition."

You might have written it as a joke, but yeah that does seem to have been the train of thought.


Telok already made the joking version, but nonetheless:

From at least AD&D to 3rd edition, D&D had loss of experience points and experience levels, loss of class features, several flavors of ability score loss, disease, insanity, being cursed in a bunch of different ways, loss of wealth and equipment and loss of supporting NPCs. Most of which allow a character to remain in play but have long lasting or even permanent effects if specific actions aren't taken to counter them.

The thing is that these aren't any less reviled than character death, because some players have difficulties accepting that sometimes you get penalized in a game.

For better or worse 3.5 was probably the pinnacle of long term consequences, but depending on magic access they could be either too easy or too hard to shake.

5e on the other hand has too few, rest for a night and all that'll hang around is exhaustion (which, IIRC, not a whole lot gives) and half your hit dice loss. What it probably done is picked one form (I'd suggest ability score damage) and build it more into the system.

Imagine is dropping to 0hp made you lose three random Ability Score points, and that one in three boss-type monsters had attacks that could drop an ability by a point. It would have the potential to be much more interesting.

But yes, too many players see any kind of setback as 'losing', which has led to the relative toothlessness of modern D&D.

[Thrudd]

Whats modular about 5e? I mean you have the feat, multiclass, variant encumberance, and extended duration rest things to toggle on/off. But other than the encumberance & rests that's not exactly changing anything but PC 'get X or Y on level up' options. Its not like there's a low magic module, or a superhero martials module, or a magitech module (Ebberon is a setting that just adds a class & feats, not a different way to play or new optional rules).
Yeah, those variant rules are their attempt. And it isn't nearly enough, like I said. In the development phase, I remember reading somewhere that their intention was to have "modular" rules variants so people could play old-school hardcore mode or modern story mode (my paraphrase) or anything in between. I wish we had actually got that.

[Elves]

5e on the other hand has too few, rest for a night and all that'll hang around is exhaustion
As we all know, sleeping can cure a sword wound but the one thing it can't do is make you less tired

[Tanarii]

How big a loss having to down-time or even permanently lose a character is depends on the expectation that each player will have multiple characters. If you're following one batch of heroes through their adventures, it's a big deal. If you've got a large group of players bringing whatever character they want to a single session, it's painful if a character is out for a while for slow natural healing (1 hp/day) or recovering from a res penalty, but you play another character in the meantime. Different assumptions about how the game will be played require or allow different rule sets.

[Anonymouswizard]

As we all know, sleeping can cure a sword wound but the one thing it can't do is make you less tired

I mean, the other solution is that nobody is getting stabbed, but everybody is working so hard that we're not tracking exhaustion below the 'needs a day to recover from' level.

Although I signed up for epic fantasy adventures. I'd rather deal with my character's long term injuries than play Office: the Temping.

[LibraryOgre]

Yes, and thankfully D&D has evolved from those days. The 2E DMG taught DMs to be the players' adversary. The Stingy DM. The Killer DM. The Tyrant DM. They were accepted norms.

Yeah, I need a citation. I mean, there's a section in the 2e DMG talking about how important it is to make sure how important it is for everyone to have fun.


Therefore, one of the goals of the AD&D game is to have fun. Much of the pressure to provide this elusive quality rests on the DM's shoulders, but the players can also contribute. When they do, players should be rewarded with experience points since they are making the game a good experience for all. The DM who doles out awards for adding to the fun will find more players making the effort to contribute.

It specifically points out problems with being too stingy with XP


If the DM consistently gives too little experience to players, they become frustrated. Frustrated players don't have fun and, usually, quit the game. Even if they don't quit, players can develop an "It-doesn't-matter-what-I-do-so-why-bother" attitude. They stop trying to do their best, figuring they will only get a measly amount of experience whether they play their best or just coast along.

There's a section about how giving out too little treasure is a problem


For all his good intentions, sooner or later the DM is likely to err in the awarding of treasure. Either he will award too little or hand out too much. The first is just tight-fistedness; the second leads to high-powered, low-role-playing campaigns (sometimes called "Monty Haul'' dungeons).

Oh, and the killer DM?


When uncertain, use a small encounter. It is far better for a random encounter to be easily defeated by the player characters than it is for the monster to overwhelm them. An easy PC victory gives the DM information and experience (so he'll know to increase the difficulty of the next encounter) without harming the player characters and his campaign. A crushing PC defeat is almost impossible to correct without obvious manipulation once the encounter has begun.

Bear in mind, these are just excerpts; they're parts of sections saying how important it is to make sure your game is fun, and that your players enjoy it.

So show me where the 2e DMG (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17552/Dungeon-Master-Guide-Revised-2e) taught DMs to be stingy, killing, tyrants?


"There used to be a lot of PC deaths in D&D, so rules were added or changed to mitigate that."
"D&D isn't that lethal, excessive PC deaths are caused by bad play, bad DMs, or bad encounter design."
"Here are examples of how D&D used to be too lethal, and as further evidence, things that were added to changed to address that in newer editions."
"D&D is not too lethal, it has evolved since the editions when it was."

:eek::confused:

That's not quite what's being argued. Pex started by saying that high-lethality games were a priori bad, then ventured into "2e taught DMs to be jerks". I maintain that high lethality games are not necessarily bad... they're not necessarily good, but they're a style of play. One of the most popular settings of 2e was explicitly designed to be high-lethality (Dark Sun)... and it had mechanics in place to mitigate the impact of that lethality (the character tree). Another, Brithright, specifically had rules in place to reduce lethality (any regent automatically gained bonus HP), because lethality in that game was a bigger problem.

A DM running a game where characters often die is not necessarily running a bad game. It's certainly not a game everyone is going to enjoy, and, as the 2e DMG said, the DM should be running a game that is fun for everyone.

[Pex]

What's a "killer DM"? It seems like you're conflating DMs who, OOC, try to gib the players by giving them challenges they can't beat with those who, IC, accurately play foes as trying to kill the PCs.

You brought up the example of a goblin ambush as too lethal. Is having NPCs follow reasonable tactics like this being a killer DM?

When that mysterious number of deaths per X game sessions threshold is reached. When talking about a DM's game you don't talk about the adventures or cool stuff that happened but comparing how PCs died. When the DM boasts about the number of PCs killed or how he killed a PC. When the DM could have his own theoretical graveyard filled with headstones bearing the names of PCs. When the DM thinks if he hasn't even dropped a PC at least once per game session he's doing something wrong and "ups his game". When the DM laughs and jokes when a PC dies or drops.


+1. The lack of injury rules creates a binary that's both unrealistic and bad for the game (because there's no way to penalize someone without kicking them out of the gameplay for a while, which is boring for them). In 4e and 5e, the post-rez penalty is essentially an injury penalty already; why not put that in front of death instead of behind it?

D&D is not a reality simulator. Applying penalties before death leads to a death spiral because each injury makes it that much more easily for the bad guys to kill the PCs. It doesn't matter if it affects the bad guys too because they're only on camera for that one fight. They're supposed to die. When they die game moves on. When a PC dies it's game over for that PC.

. . .

I said the 2E DMG teaches the DM to be the player's adversary, not killer tyrants. Those DMs became that on their own. Not every 2E DM was like that, and I never said they were. The 2E DMG tells the DM to say no to players. The 2E DMG tells the DM to deny a player to play a ranger even when adjusting ability scores for rolled stats. It tells the DM to lower scores when the player rolls high but suck it up when he rolls low. At character creation already the DM fights the player on what he gets to play.

[Telok]

Ya know what's weird? WotC D&D and its knockoffs are the only places I actually see real sucky death spirals happening.

Every game held up as a death spiral seems to have its combat dialed to a level where its harder to get to the next penalty step than seems to be assumed by the critics, and the penalties give the players warning as to when they should stop fighting*. D&D (and company) on the other have done level loss, stat loss, exhaustion, and poisons that all make it harder to succeed the next saving throw and/or can be easily & rapidly applied plus are really hard to remove.

I've seen Shadowrun, the WoD games, some supers games, DtD40k, Warhammer games, even Call of Cthulhu has been mentioned as death spiral games. Yet they're all just fine and fun to play. So I really don't trust the "omg! death spirals is teh suck! mah game is ruined!"** type statements without an actual analysis of the various systems that can show that it somehow breaks at least half of the systems using it.

So a D&D style screw-up where using your core class ability more than once a day or just getting hit three times in one round screws you over unless the cleric drops multiple 5th+ level spells to fix you? Yeah, bad death spiral there. Everywhere it's been intentionally designed into the system? Never seen it be a problem***.

* and the games usually have real rules for running away & combat loss options other than TPKs.

** yes, thats hyperbole.

*** haven't looked at any of the Star Wars games since WEG's d6 one like 30 years ago, no personal experience on the post y2k ones.

[NichG]

L5R's death spiral can be quite severe honestly. Even if you can't too easily be one-shot by an attack, the wound penalties are bad enough that first to hit is usually the winner in any sort of duel situation (and the setting does call for duels to be things). It's not necessarily against what that system is trying to depict, but it's something you have to consider in how you play and it does mean that things can get a bit rocket-tag-like. IIRC one of the big reasons for this is that your AC-equivalent also suffers wound penalties, so you get both easier to hit and it becomes quickly impossible for you to hit anything else. This probably depends on edition and it's been at least two editions since I last played though...

Now, if you have a death spiral in a system which makes death optional for the player, that might actually work reasonably well. Rather than a binary between 'get through a fight just fine' and 'get taken out for the rest of the session', having something where your options get closed off round by round if you over-reach, and then come back on within-session timescales seems a lot better to me.

[Vahnavoi]

You might have written it as a joke, but yeah that does seem to have been the train of thought.

That's what game design looks like when it aims to please the least competent and most loss averse players.


But yes, too many players see any kind of setback as 'losing', which has led to the relative toothlessness of modern D&D.

Seeing losing as losing isn't the problem. Being unable to cope with loss in ways other than complaining to or about the referee is.

[Elves]

When the DM boasts about the number of PCs killed or how he killed a PC. ... When the DM laughs and jokes when a PC dies or drops.
It sounds like you had some bad experiences, but it sounds like the problem here is DM intent and conduct, not the actual notion of high lethality games



Applying penalties before death leads to a death spiral because each injury makes it that much more easily for the bad guys to kill the
Hit points are also a "death spiral" in the sense that if a differential opens between equivalent sides, the losing side has to perform better than average to win. And if someone dies from hit point damage, that's one less team member, a very genuine death spiral.

If you think that wound penalties exacerbate the existing death spiral too much, you could do an "adrenaline" mechanic where the wound penalties don't come into effect until after the current encounter. At that point it's no different from rez penalties. Only in the case of losing a limb or something would that not apply.

[Bohandas]

As we all know, sleeping can cure a sword wound but the one thing it can't do is make you less tired

It's just a flesh wound

[Vahnavoi]

You can get a death spiral in a game solely concerned with dealing and healing hitpoint damage. Misjudge when to attack or heal, and you end up at disadvantage, where continuing to attack means you run out of hitpoints before your opponent does, while stopping to heal means your opponent continues attacking and you end up in the same situation next turn, minus whatever resource you used for healing. The more mechanics are tied to hitpoints, the more severe and obvious it gets. For example, if moving through dangerous terrain or jumping off a cliff takes hitpoints, getting hit with said disadvantage can mean you're movement options are gradually decreasing too.

This is, in fact, stupidly common in games that use hitpoints. Inducing such a spiral in your enemy is typically how you win in combat.

[LibraryOgre]

I said the 2E DMG teaches the DM to be the player's adversary, not killer tyrants. Those DMs became that on their own. Not every 2E DM was like that, and I never said they were. The 2E DMG tells the DM to say no to players. The 2E DMG tells the DM to deny a player to play a ranger even when adjusting ability scores for rolled stats. It tells the DM to lower scores when the player rolls high but suck it up when he rolls low. At character creation already the DM fights the player on what he gets to play.

The things you are saying are not true; at best, they are vast simplications of what is said in the book.


Think twice before raising an ability score to let a character into an optional class if he
already qualifies for the standard class in that group.

Think twice is not "deny". It's "do you need to", not "don't do this." As for lowering ability scores? I can't find anything like that in the 2e DMG.


The DM has accidentally pitted his player characters against a group of creatures too powerful for them, so much so that the player characters are doomed. To fix things, the DM can have the monsters flee in inexplicable panic; secretly lower their hit points; allow the player characters to hit or inflict more damage than they really should; have the monsters miss on attacks when they actually hit; have the creatures make grievous
mistakes in strategy (like ignoring the thief moving in to strike from behind).

Support your "Teaches the DM to be the player's adversary", because I cannot find any sign it is true, and have provided multiple citations that it is not. Your examples do not hold up to even basic scrutiny of the text.

[Kymme]

Death does not have to be the only stakes, and overuse of death cheapens the stakes. At some point it becomes 'I died, oh well, somebody hand me a blank sheet'. Assuming the PCs have some form of goal setbacks can be more meaningful than outright death.

There's also an issue that D&D has very few mechanical setbacks other than 'you can't play for a while'. This isn't like Unknown Armies 3e where both the PCs and NPC groups have objective meters they can build, there's very few statuses that stick around, you can't really give a player a minor punishment and instead need to jump to major impediments. As controversial as they are at least death spirals inflict some kind of setback before 0hp.

Another idea, used in games like Fate or Storypath, is the idea of being Taken Out. Essentially when you take damage you can decide that instead of absorbing it by taking some form of penalty, you can declare you're out of the game for a bit and take no lasting consequences. Of course that only really works if there are consequences other than death.

I stand by the notion that Fate has much grittier and meaningful combat than D&D for just this sort of reason. It's the only game I've played where you can stumble out of a swordfight with a pierced lung and a broken arm and have those both be meaningful mechanically.

[Lacco]

I stand by the notion that Fate has much grittier and meaningful combat than D&D for just this sort of reason. It's the only game I've played where you can stumble out of a swordfight with a pierced lung and a broken arm and have those both be meaningful mechanically.

Riddle of Steel and its successors would like a word with you :smallsmile:

[Elves]

I stand by the notion that Fate has much grittier and meaningful combat than D&D for just this sort of reason. It's the only game I've played where you can stumble out of a swordfight with a pierced lung and a broken arm and have those both be meaningful mechanically.
You can't get too specific though if the game is meant to cover a wide variety of physiologies. I would make it abstract, something like each injury gives -1 on d20 rolls, which can be replaced (or augmented?) with a debuff from a set list. You inflict a wound and select the -10 ft speed debuff. That could mean that you hit their legs, could mean you concussed them -- fluff it how you like.

[georgie_leech]

You can't get too specific though if the game is meant to cover a wide variety of physiologies. I would make it abstract, something like each injury gives -1 on d20 rolls, which can be replaced (or augmented?) with a debuff from a set list. You inflict a wound and select the -10 ft speed debuff. That could mean that you hit their legs, could mean you concussed them -- fluff it how you like.

Careful, that's how you get 4e-style pearl clutching over standard penalties on non-standard anatomies. :smallsigh:

[Pex]

The things you are saying are not true; at best, they are vast simplications of what is said in the book.



Think twice is not "deny". It's "do you need to", not "don't do this." As for lowering ability scores? I can't find anything like that in the 2e DMG.



Support your "Teaches the DM to be the player's adversary", because I cannot find any sign it is true, and have provided multiple citations that it is not. Your examples do not hold up to even basic scrutiny of the text.

If you don't think denying a player to play a ranger instead tell him to be a fighter who always wanted to be a ranger but is allergic to trees is adversarial then there's no need for further discussion. That's the DMG telling the DM to tell the player what to play.

[Bohandas]

Unpopular opinion: PC death should be an optional rule. Players should suffer consequences for losing all their hp, starting at 'sit out the rest of the rest of the combat', but having to sit out until either they can get a raise dead spell or a new character can be introduced is too much for some groups.

Now that I think about it. This would actually alleviate the narrative disconnect of PCs being able to function at full capacity until suddenly they're dying. Now 0hp isn;t necessarily dying, it's just whatever makes then unable to fight anymore, too many broken limbsm shock, unconsciousness, whatever

[LibraryOgre]

If you don't think denying a player to play a ranger instead tell him to be a fighter who always wanted to be a ranger but is allergic to trees is adversarial then there's no need for further discussion. That's the DMG telling the DM to tell the player what to play.

The Rules as Written are what prevent the player from playing what they want. The advice in the DMG is "consider it". Or do you think it's adversarial to not let fighters pick up levels in Dragon Disciple? They wanted to be one, who cares that they don't meet the requirements? Maybe you should let the 16 intelligence wizard cast Meteor Swarm? Or the 12 strength bard take Power Attack? The rules as written prevent those (in 3e)... the 2e DMG is specifically saying "Think about letting them do it, anyway."

[Pex]

The Rules as Written are what prevent the player from playing what they want. The advice in the DMG is "consider it". Or do you think it's adversarial to not let fighters pick up levels in Dragon Disciple? They wanted to be one, who cares that they don't meet the requirements? Maybe you should let the 16 intelligence wizard cast Meteor Swarm? Or the 12 strength bard take Power Attack? The rules as written prevent those (in 3e)... the 2e DMG is specifically saying "Think about letting them do it, anyway."

If there's no adjustment then fine, the player plays the fighter as rolled. If there is to be adjustment then there's no reason to deny anything. In any case thankfully 3E introduced Point Buy into D&D, so this problem has never come up again.

[Thrudd]

If there's no adjustment then fine, the player plays the fighter as rolled. If there is to be adjustment then there's no reason to deny anything. In any case thankfully 3E introduced Point Buy into D&D, so this problem has never come up again.

The point is, the DMG explicitly gave the DM permission to ignore the rules in order to give players what they want. Usually, games don't say "these are the rules...but it's ok to break them sometimes." That's a feature of D&D, and it has been that way since the earliest editions. AD&D wasn't telling DMs to restrict players. It was presenting a game which, by default, was restrictive, and advised DM's to ignore those rules if they think it won't be fun for their players. As of the time WotC took over, it was apparent that many people had, in fact, decided to ignore those restrictive rules in their games...therefore, they made things a lot less restrictive. Even as of the 1e Unearthed Arcana, it was apparent that many players didn't like the restrictions and Gygax gave optional rules for stat generation that would help players get the class they want much more reliably (while still retaining some randomness).

[Kraynic]

If there's no adjustment then fine, the player plays the fighter as rolled. If there is to be adjustment then there's no reason to deny anything. In any case thankfully 3E introduced Point Buy into D&D, so this problem has never come up again.

How is that any different than a DM in 3.whatever that sets the point buy budget? If you use the lowest point buy totals, that makes the more "MAD" classes unappealing, while using higher totals open up more options. The 2E DMG has 6 example methods of generating stats, explains some downside of each method, and specifically mentions you may come up with your own. It is all about finding some sort of balance for a particular game. I'm not seeing how this is adversarial or that the advice is meaningless. You seem to have a lot of hostility towards older editions probably stemming from a background or experience that the rest of us don't share, and the actual text doesn't seem to support.

[Vahnavoi]

The tragedy regarding "optional death" is that adjusting game difficulty downwards isn't all that hard, so even if a designer prefers Hurt Me Plenty, a game master can let their players play on Too Young to Die just fine. Difficulties of resetting a game situation on the tabletop and letting players try the same scenario again are likewise widely exaggerated. These are firmly in the realm of things almost anybody can do and examples of how to do it are ubiquitous thanks to computer games, the only real reason to not do it is if you don't want to.

[Easy e]

Unpopular Opinion: Game Designers should be looking to strip back and minimize rules instead of building them up. The more layers you add, the more complexity you add without adding more depth.

Thoughts?

[kyoryu]

The point is, the DMG explicitly gave the DM permission to ignore the rules in order to give players what they want. Usually, games don't say "these are the rules...but it's ok to break them sometimes." That's a feature of D&D, and it has been that way since the earliest editions. AD&D wasn't telling DMs to restrict players. It was presenting a game which, by default, was restrictive, and advised DM's to ignore those rules if they think it won't be fun for their players. As of the time WotC took over, it was apparent that many people had, in fact, decided to ignore those restrictive rules in their games...therefore, they made things a lot less restrictive. Even as of the 1e Unearthed Arcana, it was apparent that many players didn't like the restrictions and Gygax gave optional rules for stat generation that would help players get the class they want much more reliably (while still retaining some randomness).

Also, restrictions on characters was done presuming a more open-table style game. Sure, you couldn't have a ranger with this character, but maybe next one.

Much like character death, there's a big difference between being restricted with "one of many" vs. "your only character for the foreseeable future".

[KorvinStarmast]

Although I signed up for epic fantasy adventures. I'd rather deal with my character's long term injuries than play Office: the Temping. OK, I giggled.
Yeah, I need a citation. I mean, there's a section in the 2e DMG talking about how important it is to make sure how important it is for everyone to have fun. My experience is the same.

Oh, and the killer DM? They existed, yeah, but I disagree that they were told to be that way by the rules as Pex recalls.

So show me where the 2e DMG (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17552/Dungeon-Master-Guide-Revised-2e) taught DMs to be stingy, killing, tyrants? It didn't. :smallsmile:


One of the most popular settings of 2e was explicitly designed to be high-lethality (Dark Sun)... and it had mechanics in place to mitigate the impact of that lethality (the character tree). Nice example.
A DM running a game where characters often die is not necessarily running a bad game. It's certainly not a game everyone is going to enjoy, and, as the 2e DMG said, the DM should be running a game that is fun for everyone. Nice summary.

When the DM boasts about the number of PCs killed or how he killed a PC. When the DM could have his own theoretical graveyard filled with headstones bearing the names of PCs. As to the latter, I, a player, maintained the Hall of Fallen heroes binder. Each time a PC died I'd add that PC's char sheet to the binder and we'd find a way to have a wake/celebration of that character's exploits.

The things you are saying are not true; at best, they are vast simplications of what is said in the book. You get my Understatement of the Week award. :smallbiggrin:


The point is, the DMG explicitly gave the DM permission to ignore the rules in order to give players what they want. Usually, games don't say "these are the rules...but it's ok to break them sometimes." That's a feature of D&D, and it has been that way since the earliest editions. AD&D wasn't telling DMs to restrict players. It was presenting a game which, by default, was restrictive, and advised DM's to ignore those rules if they think it won't be fun for their players. That's how it came across to us in the elder days.

As of the time WotC took over, it was apparent that many people had, in fact, decided to ignore those restrictive rules in their games...therefore, they made things a lot less restrictive. Even as of the 1e Unearthed Arcana, it was apparent that many players didn't like the restrictions and Gygax gave optional rules for stat generation that would help players get the class they want much more reliably (while still retaining some randomness). Yeah, those dice rolls were a big change when we applied them.

Unpopular Opinion: Game Designers should be looking to strip back and minimize rules instead of building them up. The more layers you add, the more complexity you add without adding more depth.
Agree. See also the Alexandrian's articles on structure.

[kyoryu]

The tragedy regarding "optional death" is that adjusting game difficulty downwards isn't all that hard, so even if a designer prefers Hurt Me Plenty, a game master can let their players play on Too Young to Die just fine. Difficulties of resetting a game situation on the tabletop and letting players try the same scenario again are likewise widely exaggerated. These are firmly in the realm of things almost anybody can do and examples of how to do it are ubiquitous thanks to computer games, the only real reason to not do it is if you don't want to.

I think that "frequency of death" and "difficulty" are at least semi-orthogonal.

[Vahnavoi]

Unpopular Opinion: Game Designers should be looking to strip back and minimize rules instead of building them up. The more layers you add, the more complexity you add without adding more depth.

Thoughts?

Simplicity is one factor you'd put in an usability matrix for your game - alongside speed, memorability, learnability, cost, expressive power, reliability etc..

The things you want out a game aren't necessarily fully congruent. The simplest game capable of doing what you want might be very slow to do it on the tabletop, for example. A lot of the time, simplicity only comes up in the form of Occam's razor: given two rulesets that are otherwise equal, pick the one with fewer rules. This isn't necessarily an intuitive call to make, because a) hobbyists are bad at counting game rules and b) emergent gameplay isn't visible from staring at a ruleset.

[Xervous]

Unpopular Opinion: Game Designers should be looking to strip back and minimize rules instead of building them up. The more layers you add, the more complexity you add without adding more depth.

Thoughts?

I’d avoid such a broad stroke as it’s more about knowing your intended audience, and it’s a spectrum rather than an on/off switch.

There’s also the curious angle of “are we designing in a mostly additive fashion where each new feature is scrutinized, or throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and slowly peeling back?”

[kyoryu]

Unpopular Opinion: Game Designers should be looking to strip back and minimize rules instead of building them up. The more layers you add, the more complexity you add without adding more depth.

Thoughts?

In general, I think a good guideline is that the rules for an RPG should be as simple as they can be (to meet that game's goals) but no simpler.

In some cases, part of the intended fun of the game is in navigating some of the complexity, in builds, at play time, and figuring out optimal(ish) solutions. Too simple of game systems can reduce that fun.

However, the more moving parts you have, the more likely it is that you have unintended interactions between them. We see this a lot in MMOs that have completely open character creation, where you end up with, functionally, a small handful of viable builds (with minor variations). A system designed to increase choice ends up decreasing choice inadvertently.

[Vahnavoi]

I think that "frequency of death" and "difficulty" are at least semi-orthogonal.

That's why I mentioned situation reset and retries separately. These can be separated on a design level and you can do some funky things with them if you do, such as a game where the goal is to die but doing so is very hard. In practice, however, for many games frequency of death has a straightforward causal relationship with game difficulty because character elimination is either a sign or penalty for failure and a natural endpoint for a player's participation.

[Willie the Duck]

If you don't think denying a player to play a ranger instead tell him to be a fighter who always wanted to be a ranger but is allergic to trees is adversarial then there's no need for further discussion.
You have stumbled into a truth here. There really isn't*.
*for what it is worth, I am still sympathetic to the horrible DM experiences that you have had, regardless of whether I think your interpretation of rules text as a result of these experiences are accurate.

Broadly speaking on the not-ranger in the scenario -- I think it is a good thing for the game that we've (mostly) moved past the era of rewarding good initial fortune with secondary good fortune in the, 'Oh, look, you rolled really well on your character creation dice rolls! Now, on top of the direct benefit that provides (Strength makes you better at hitting and lifting things, Constitution makes you hardier), you also get additional perks like faster advancement* or access to one of the premier classes,' manner. Having Rangers and Paladins be (approximately) on the same level as all the other classes (and same open access) and such was a positive step. The good-fortune-cascade, however, has precious little to do with tyrannical DMs.
*Yes Korvin, initially it was the XP boost that was the direct benefit.


I can't find anything like that in the 2e DMG.
...
Support your "Teaches the DM to be the player's adversary", because I cannot find any sign it is true, and have provided multiple citations that it is not. Your examples do not hold up to even basic scrutiny of the text.

OK, I giggled. My experience is the same.
They existed, yeah, but I disagree that they were told to be that way by the rules as Pex recalls.
It didn't. :smallsmile:
The closest I can find to any language suggesting DM adversarial-ness in 2nd Edition would be the twist-your-words-trait of Wishes (which seems unchanged from 1E), and an example of play designed to show turn declaration and initiative and such where this one player keeps getting interrupted by her peers, and for some reason the DM admonishes her to make up her mind or lose her turn. The latter example is bizarre, and even when I first read it as a ~15 year old it came off as a 'someone failed their fiction writing check' moment, but in isolation wouldn't color the rest of the text specifically because it is so aberrant.

To me, if we are going to discuss adversarial DMing, I'd first want to mention Tomb of Horrors (the module for sure but moreso that fact of it being one of the first published modules, inadvertently advertising the contained playstyle as something TSR considered normal), 1st Edition's DMG (where Gary definitely did include mentions of not letting the PCs get away with too much), and the state of affairs where many-to-most gamers of that era got into the game as a kid/tween/teen (a time period when people can be surprisingly awful to each other), often with DMs of the same age (learning as they go). Second Edition's DMG doesn't even make the first cut when it comes to rules texts that incentivize or normalize adversarial play.

[LibraryOgre]

Unpopular Opinion: Game Designers should be looking to strip back and minimize rules instead of building them up. The more layers you add, the more complexity you add without adding more depth.

Thoughts?

Eh. Some games, I like complexity. Others, I want simplicity.

For example, my main two games of choice these days are Hackmaster and Savage Worlds. Hackmaster is incredibly complex, with d10,000 critical tables, variable mastery gain on skills, and a whole host of modifiers. Savage Worlds isn't a stripped down game by any means, but it's a far sight simpler than Hackmaster.

[kyoryu]

That's why I mentioned situation reset and retries separately. These can be separated on a design level and you can do some funky things with them if you do, such as a game where the goal is to die but doing so is very hard. In practice, however, for many games frequency of death has a straightforward causal relationship with game difficulty because character elimination is either a sign or penalty for failure and a natural endpoint for a player's participation.

Sure, becuase most games don't do a good job of consequences besides death.

My personal preference is that most combats/etc. are to find out "what happens". They're branches in the "story". So losing means that things don't go the way you want - any personal consequences are icing on that bad cake.

A lot of people presume more of what I call a "gated challenge" - a scene/combat/whatever you want to call it exists to be beaten. And without death, you can just retry the challenge as many times as you want.

What I'm talking about is more of a branching structure - you go on one path or the other, and things change as a result. This doesn't work as well in location-based exploration games, of course, but works well in other scenarios. In that way, you can have a very hard game, which means that things are fairly likely to not go the way you want them to, without having to rely upon death as a failure state.

[Vahnavoi]

I could list half dozen broad categories of non-death penalties in D&D alone, so I don't really agree on lack of other consequences. Instead I'll once again draw attention to the observation that when non-death penalties become significant, they become just as reviled as character death. Which leads back to game difficulty: you're typically getting hit with penalties because you aren't doing well in a game. You can disassociate death from losing, but that doesn't get rid of sore losers and people who are finding your game too hard.

[kyoryu]

I could list half dozen broad categories of non-death penalties in D&D alone, so I don't really agree on lack of other consequences. Instead I'll once again draw attention to the observation that when non-death penalties become significant, they become just as reviled as character death. Which leads back to game difficulty: you're typically getting hit with penalties because you aren't doing well in a game. You can disassociate death from losing, but that doesn't get rid of sore losers and people who are finding your game too hard.

Arguably non-death penalties in D&D are worse, since they're usually harder to get rid of than death, ironically enough.

What I'm really advocating is consequences that aren't focused on the character, but rather the world/"story". That can still hit people wrong that expect to win all the time, for sure, but I've found that usually those types of things go over better, and can be used more frequently.

"Something bad happened and we didn't get the thing and now the bad guys have it" is a plot twist. "I lost a level" hits way different.

[Vahnavoi]

I'm not sure those two things hit different as any kind of general rule.

[BRC]

I'm not sure those two things hit different as any kind of general rule.

Eh, they generally do.

Losing a level or other non-death penalties are generally just Frustrations. Nothing is really changing, you're just having Less Fun now since your toys were taken away.

Narrative level consequences work well to add tension (Assuming the players are invested in the story), but actually pulling the trigger on them doesn't mean anybody is having Less Fun with the game.

The issue with Death as a Consequence is that while it provides the necessary tension, actually RESOLVING a PC death isn't generally fun for anyone (There are exceptions).

A Narrative consequence can still be fun to play through and resolve.

[icefractal]

Re: "Difficult" -
It's an ambiguous term, because it's used for at least three different things:
* Something that requires significant effort.
* Something that requires particular skills.
* Something that's significantly unlikely.

In the last category, an example would be winning the lottery. If I said "it's not difficult to win the lottery" people would probably disagree. But it's not a "challenge", it doesn't require any particular skill or effort, it's just a very unlikely result.

So to apply this to games, deadliness != challenge. Between these two scenarios:
A) Your character has a peaceful stroll down Gumdrop Lane, reaches a barred gate, and you have to solve a simple and easy riddle to pass.
B) Your character travels down a long corridor of cursed runes, each of which is 90% likely to kill you. They can't be avoided, only survived.

Scenario A has more challenge. Not very much challenge, but still more than rolling a die a bunch of times.

Now gambling can be fun, so I'm not saying that luck-based situations are wrong to have, but it irritates me when they get conflated with challenge/skill. Rolling well is not a skill, unless you're cheating.

[kyoryu]

I'm not sure those two things hit different as any kind of general rule.

My experience is that they actually do. When people have negative things, especially permanent, happen to their character, it seems to impact a lot of players much differently than "the bad guys got away" or "you lost the MacGuffin".

For some people? Yeah, any kind of loss they just can't deal with, and so you've got to tailor your game to that.

[Tanarii]

Sure, becuase most games don't do a good job of consequences besides death.

My personal preference is that most combats/etc. are to find out "what happens". They're branches in the "story". So losing means that things don't go the way you want - any personal consequences are icing on that bad cake.
I mean, if you assume the PCs are protagonists that are protected by plot armor, and the game is an action or superhero movie where there's a lot of exciting fighting but no real chance of the protagonist(s) being killed, that makes sense. Maybe occasional death of an NPC to motivate the PCs to revenge, or even a primary protagonist PC during an epic final battle.

But if you assume they aren't and combat is deadly and should be avoided, then instead you just have an RPG with a completely different focus for play. Dungeon survival horror where your primary goal is figuring out tricks and traps and staying alive. Cthulhu horror where your primary goal is figuring out what's really going on while fighting a rear guard action of the inevitability of sanity loss and madness.

Basically your position makes perfect sense if the players want plenty of combat and find it enjoyable in their own personal hero story.

[kyoryu]

I mean, if you assume the PCs are protagonists that are protected by plot armor, and the game is an action or superhero movie where there's a lot of exciting fighting but no real chance of the protagonist(s) being killed, that makes sense. Maybe occasional death of an NPC to motivate the PCs to revenge, or even a primary protagonist PC during an epic final battle.

But if you assume they aren't and combat is deadly and should be avoided, then instead you just have an RPG with a completely different focus for play. Dungeon survival horror where your primary goal is figuring out tricks and traps and staying alive. Cthulhu horror where your primary goal is figuring out what's really going on while fighting a rear guard action of the inevitability of sanity loss and madness.

Basically your position makes perfect sense if the players want plenty of combat and find it enjoyable in their own personal hero story.

Sure, and I've spoken lovingly of old school dungeon crawls before.

But a lot of people don't really have the appetitie for that any more (sadly). And so I think it makes a lot of sense in the more "modern" style of game (One True Party, often story-based, expectation of low player death) to move consequences away from death since that usually doesn't happen in a modern game.

Or, to put it simply - I think failure should be a thing. And if the consequence for failure is death, and you're not willing to deliver on that, the game suffers. So you need to have some consequence, regardless of what it is.

If death really is truly on the table (and if it happens once per hundred sessions, then no, it's not really on the table) then that's fine. But if not - add in another consequence.

[Tanarii]

I guess my main point was, it only holds true that combat shouldn't be deadly and needs to have other interesting failure states if you want to have many sessions full of combat (or tell many stories about combat if you prefer), and also all with the same character.

Besides the obvious of not caring if it's the same character (in which case combat can be deadly), there's also wanting to sessions full of other things than combat (in which case combat can be deadly), and even actively discouraging combat to make sure that happens (in which case combat definitely should be deadly).

[Telok]

Although one good thing about a death spiral is that it can be a signal of when to stop combat before character death happens. Of course that also requires some way to end combats before all of one side is dead. Which is not something all D&Ds are capable of.

[Vahnavoi]

Re: "Difficult" -
It's an ambiguous term, because it's used for at least three different things:
* Something that requires significant effort.
* Something that requires particular skills.
* Something that's significantly unlikely.

The first two don't create any amboguity because both are applicable. The third is a genuinely bad use that I don"t see outside roleplaying game circles. Decreasing likelihood of random bad consequences typically lowers game difficulty, though, but that's because they then take less effort and skill on part of players to deal with.


In the last category, an example would be winning the lottery. If I said "it's not difficult to win the lottery" people would probably disagree. But it's not a "challenge", it doesn't require any particular skill or effort, it's just a very unlikely result.

So to apply this to games, deadliness != challenge. Between these two scenarios:
A) Your character has a peaceful stroll down Gumdrop Lane, reaches a barred gate, and you have to solve a simple and easy riddle to pass.
B) Your character travels down a long corridor of cursed runes, each of which is 90% likely to kill you. They can't be avoided, only survived.

Scenario A has more challenge. Not very much challenge, but still more than rolling a die a bunch of times.

Now gambling can be fun, so I'm not saying that luck-based situations are wrong to have, but it irritates me when they get conflated with challenge/skill. Rolling well is not a skill, unless you're cheating.

Yes, independent random functions don't rely on player skill.

Most roleplaying games aren't just a series of independent random functions, meaning player skill has impact on character success, meaning difficulty has a causal relationship with deadliness. This is easily observable in plenty of games, including most variants of D&D. Even when gambling with dice, being able to calculate probabilities and how much to bet are skills which can influence how well you do. And there is a LOT a game master can do to make that easier for players.

[Anonymouswizard]

The tragedy regarding "optional death" is that adjusting game difficulty downwards isn't all that hard, so even if a designer prefers Hurt Me Plenty, a game master can let their players play on Too Young to Die just fine. Difficulties of resetting a game situation on the tabletop and letting players try the same scenario again are likewise widely exaggerated. These are firmly in the realm of things almost anybody can do and examples of how to do it are ubiquitous thanks to computer games, the only real reason to not do it is if you don't want to.

Eh, you can houserule the other way just as easily.

Also, there's a world of difference between getting rid of character death and getting rid of 'out'. With optional death a PC at 0hp still can't act, but the player gets to jump back in relatively quickly, assuming the entire party doesn't get taken out.

It also opens up the door to narrative focused games continuing after a party wipe. Which is important because for better or worse D&D gets promoted as a narrative experience.


Unpopular Opinion: Game Designers should be looking to strip back and minimize rules instead of building them up. The more layers you add, the more complexity you add without adding more depth.

Thoughts?

Eh, I own much simpler games, the trade-off is generally being more focused on an idea. I love Don't Rest Your Head, but it also gives a much more specific experience than D&D.

Yes, despite D&D doing terribly at anything other than D&D. When you go for minimalist rules every single system you keep becomes more vital. Don't Rest Your Head has a fatigue track but no health track and that fact is paramount to it's feel.

[Zombimode]

Although one good thing about a death spiral is that it can be a signal of when to stop combat before character death happens. Of course that also requires some way to end combats before all of one side is dead. Which is not something all D&Ds are capable of.

Hm... seeing that in my games fleeing from combat or surrendering are common occurances - from both the player characters and the NPCs - I have hard time accepting this statement as a fact.

Can you explain why you think this is a problem in particular for D&D*?


I have also a hard time understanding some other sentiments expressed in this thread:

that PC death on the one hand and narrative consequences on the other hand are somehow alternatives to each other (while in my experience they coexists quite nicely - in fact characters death IS also a narrative consequence)
the redefinition of the term "death spiral" to include the spending of limited ressources: while we're at it, why not include the trivial observation that if one side loses more combat units then the other side it becomes progressively harder to win for the side with more losses? Yes, in the broadest sense this is also a death spiral. But that is not how the term is used - at least in the discussion I have seen. Instead a death spiral describes mechanisms for the principle "the more hurt you get the harder it becomes to fight back". Systems that employ mechanics like this are for instance DSA 4 and 2d10 Conan, in both characters can accumulate "wounds" in addition to hit point loss and each wound applies penalties to some or all combat values (attack and defense). THAT is what people usually mean when they talk about death spirals. Ressource management or simple tactical observations are just different topics.




* for the record: when talking about D&D my experiences are pretty much exclusively based on 3.5

[Vahnavoi]

Telok's already explained it: equal and fairly invariant movement rates make it seem like fleeing from combat is impossible. And situationally that can be true, especially if no attention is paid to terrain or any additional rules.

The tactics you'd typically use to escape in a turn-based game with set movement rates involve creating an obstacle between yourself and the enemy. Classic examples include using your turn to move behind a door and then closing said door, moving over a bridge and then destroying said bridge, leaving one character behind to block a chokepoint or creating some kind of dangerous or impassable terrain between you and the enemy (eall spells). Other tactics involve creating distractions, such as splitting a group so pursuers have to split or choose, dropping treasure or food on the path of the enemy, or breaking line of sight and hiding. And, of course, D&D being D&D, there are spells specially made for retreating, such as expeditious retreat.

So, flat movement rates don't necessarily mean escape and retreat are impossible. Flat movement rated combined with lack of other details can mean that. It's sad and hilarious if D&D is struggling with such a basic concept when D&D retroclones and computer games as simple as Pokemon have it figured out.

[Willie the Duck]

I have also a hard time understanding some other sentiments expressed in this thread:

that PC death on the one hand and narrative consequences on the other hand are somehow alternatives to each other (while in my experience they coexists quite nicely - in fact characters death IS also a narrative consequence)
I believe the preponderance of what people mean here is that players will be less likely to invest in PC Joe's quest to impress the local Viscount enough to be granted actual land and noble title instead of mere treasure if Joe has a relatively high likelihood of dying and being replaced in the party by Jim long before this plot arc has any real chance of coming to fruition.



I have also a hard time understanding some other sentiments expressed in this thread:

the redefinition of the term "death spiral" to include the spending of limited ressources: while we're at it, why not include the trivial observation that if one side loses more combat units then the other side it becomes progressively harder to win for the side with more losses? Yes, in the broadest sense this is also a death spiral. But that is not how the term is used - at least in the discussion I have seen. Instead a death spiral describes mechanisms for the principle "the more hurt you get the harder it becomes to fight back". Systems that employ mechanics like this are for instance DSA 4 and 2d10 Conan, in both characters can accumulate "wounds" in addition to hit point loss and each wound applies penalties to some or all combat values (attack and defense). THAT is what people usually mean when they talk about death spirals. Ressource management or simple tactical observations are just different topics.

I agree. This is a non-standard use of the term. People usually mean things like Shadowrun/White Wolf (as mentioned earlier)'s wound penalties, GURPS's shock rules, and so forth.


Telok's already explained it: equal and fairly invariant movement rates make it seem like fleeing from combat is impossible. And situationally that can be true, especially if no attention is paid to terrain or any additional rules.

The tactics you'd typically use to escape in a turn-based game with set movement rates involve creating an obstacle between yourself and the enemy. Classic examples include using your turn to move behind a door and then closing said door, moving over a bridge and then destroying said bridge, leaving one character behind to block a chokepoint or creating some kind of dangerous or impassable terrain between you and the enemy (eall spells). Other tactics involve creating distractions, such as splitting a group so pursuers have to split or choose, dropping treasure or food on the path of the enemy, or breaking line of sight and hiding. And, of course, D&D being D&D, there are spells specially made for retreating, such as expeditious retreat.

So, flat movement rates don't necessarily mean escape and retreat are impossible. Flat movement rated combined with lack of other details can mean that. It's sad and hilarious if D&D is struggling with such a basic concept when D&D retroclones and computer games as simple as Pokemon have it figured out.

Early D&D (can't remember if oD&D or B/X) had rules about how many corners you had to turn before enemies would break off pursuit. Current D&D has chase rules in the DMG (not perfect ones, but certainly sufficient to indicate intent). What D&D probably has the largest deficit in is clear communication and expectations. Exactly how and when to transition to chase mechanics (and maybe reminding people that they exist) could have been included in the PHB (where people actually read things, apparently) combat rules/examples might help.

That said, 5e could certainly do with a 'run' (or maybe 'bolt') where you move even farther than the move+dash double-move, but make yourself more vulnerable if someone does attack. That would probably please a lot of people who would like fleeing combat (either for the party, or just the one injured character) to be easier. 3e had it and I think it helped the game.

Also that said, things get a lot more deadly running from combats outside the dungeon. If you turn and run from an opponent with longbows (who advance and shoot while you flee), you'll get shot up a bunch before you get out of their range. That's not all that unrealistic*, but realism doesn't much help here. D&D used to code combat encounters outside the dungeon as 'really risky, avoid at all costs until you are 'expert' gamers with experienced characters.' That seems to have fallen by the wayside without a serious change in the rules to match.
*Although reality has lots of confounding variables that rarely show up in RPGs, like the fleeing enemy could be luring the archers out of safety, and every bit of distance from the archer reduces likelihood of hitting and damage, etc.

[Lord Torath]

So show me where the 2e DMG (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17552/Dungeon-Master-Guide-Revised-2e) taught DMs to be stingy, killing, tyrants?Well, it kinda does... In the Spell Research section of Chapter 7: Magic it says spell research should cost just more than the PC currently has available, which is a bit of a crap move to pull. But then it also goes to suggest 1d10 x100 gp per spell level. The magic items creation rules are also really messed up. The bit about needing something from what you want your magic item to be effective against, and that you need to harvest it fresh, yourself is one. If I need to kill a red dragon to make a sword of red dragon slaying, well then, I really don't need the sword at all, do I? On the one hand, yes, it encourages adventuring. One the other hamd, most players do not need extra encouragement to go adventure. That's the point of the game, after all, and we're not playing Pencils and Paychecks.

There are several places where it talks about removing 'excess gold' from PCs somewhat arbitrarily as well.

I recall reading a couple other bad pieces of advice, but they are few and far between (and I can't remember what they are or what they said, only that I read them and thought "Yeah, no!"). On the whole, I feel it gives pretty solid advice, and the over-all feel of the advice is not to be a stingy killer tyrant.

[Max_Killjoy]

the redefinition of the term "death spiral" to include the spending of limited resources: while we're at it, why not include the trivial observation that if one side loses more combat units then the other side it becomes progressively harder to win for the side with more losses? Yes, in the broadest sense this is also a death spiral. But that is not how the term is used - at least in the discussion I have seen. Instead a death spiral describes mechanisms for the principle "the more hurt you get the harder it becomes to fight back". Systems that employ mechanics like this are for instance DSA 4 and 2d10 Conan, in both characters can accumulate "wounds" in addition to hit point loss and each wound applies penalties to some or all combat values (attack and defense). THAT is what people usually mean when they talk about death spirals. Resource management or simple tactical observations are just different topics.



Yeah, the redefinition strikes me as one of those "if I define this loosely enough, it ceases to make any distinction, and I win that part of the argument" moments.

[kyoryu]

Yeah, the redefinition strikes me as one of those "if I define this loosely enough, it ceases to make any distinction, and I win that part of the argument" moments.

Or, often, part of what I call a "narrow/broad/narrow" argument, which boils down to:

Make claim A that people don't agree with
Redefine A so broadly that it encompasses everything
Assert that my original narrow claim is valid

[NichG]

Or, often, part of what I call a "narrow/broad/narrow" argument, which boils down to:

Make claim A that people don't agree with
Redefine A so broadly that it encompasses everything
Assert that my original narrow claim is valid

I've heard this called the motte and bailey style of argumentation. You have a bailey which is a hard to defend claim that contains an easy to defend subclaim (the motte). When you can't defend the bailey, retreat to the motte claim. Then when that fails to be dismissed, argue that the bailey also hasn't been fully resolved.

[Max_Killjoy]

Or, often, part of what I call a "narrow/broad/narrow" argument, which boils down to:

Make claim A that people don't agree with
Redefine A so broadly that it encompasses everything
Assert that my original narrow claim is valid

One of my "favorites".

As previously established on certain topics.

[Elves]

while we're at it, why not include the trivial observation that if one side loses more combat units then the other side it becomes progressively harder to win for the side with more losses? Yes, in the broadest sense this is also a death spiral.
Yes, it is a death spiral, and the game already works this way. The argument against injury penalties would have to be that it exacerbates the death spiral, not that it adds one where there was none before.

In the broadest sense, any game that bases victory on serial events and doesn't have a catchup mechanism creates a "spiral" where it becomes harder to win if you fall behind, because you need to perform better than before to succeed. This is functionally similar to a penalty in that it results in lower victory chance. But I think it's fair to limit the definition of death spiral to cases where performance is actively impaired. Losing pieces to death certainly counts.

[kyoryu]

Yes, it is a death spiral, and the game already works this way. The argument against injury penalties would have to be that it exacerbates the death spiral, not that it adds one where there was none before.

"In the broadest sense", any game that bases victory on serial events and doesn't have a catchup mechanism creates a "spiral" where it becomes harder to win, because the loser needs to perform better than before to succeed. This is functionally similar to a penalty in that it results in lower victory chance. But I think it's fair to limit the definition of death spiral to cases where performance is actively impaired. Losing pieces to death certainly counts.

I really don't think it does - death spirals are usually scoped to characters, not sides. Including "loss of pieces" in the definition of a death spiral basically means that every game ever made has one, and as such then the statement "this game has a death spiral" becomes effectively meaningless.

Broadening the term to that level doesn't help, and only confuses the original, fairly clear definition.

[BRC]

Yes, it is a death spiral, and the game already works this way. The argument against injury penalties would have to be that it exacerbates the death spiral, not that it adds one where there was none before.

In the broadest sense, any game that bases victory on serial events and doesn't have a catchup mechanism creates a "spiral" where it becomes harder to win, because the loser needs to perform better than before to succeed. This is functionally similar to a penalty in that it results in lower victory chance. But I think it's fair to limit the definition of death spiral to cases where performance is actively impaired. Losing pieces to death certainly counts.

Eh, I think there's another element as regards "Wound Penalties" that can exist separate from the "Death Spiral" itself.

Wasting your actions is not fun. Wound Penalties mean that not only are you closer to defeat, but you also have a greater chance of "Wasting" a turn.

Imagine a Death Spiral mechanic where an injured character suffered no penalties, but other characters attacking them gained bonuses (Say, being able to spend fewer resources to do more damaging attacks, representing the injured character being less capable of defending themselves).

Or something like a fighting game, where by dealing damage you build up some resource which can then be spent to use more powerful abilities. That also represents a form of "death Spiral" (Although in that case it's usually referred to as "Snowballing").


Which is to say, somebody can be perfectly okay with Death Spirals (or Snowballing), but dislike Wound Penalties because they find ever increasing failure chances to be unfun.

[kyoryu]

Eh, I think there's another element as regards "Wound Penalties" that can exist separate from the "Death Spiral" itself.

I suspect that's likely. The feeling of loss of agency can cause a lot of heartache, apart from the death spiral itself. "Why even bother, I can't do anything with these penalties" does not make for a good time.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I suspect that's likely. The feeling of loss of agency can cause a lot of heartache, apart from the death spiral itself. "Why even bother, I can't do anything with these penalties" does not make for a good time.

5e exhaustion, especially at ranks > 1, feels like this at times. And I agree.

[kyoryu]

5e exhaustion, especially at ranks > 1, feels like this at times. And I agree.

Exhaustion seems a touch better as it's mostly a mechanic that you opt in to, rather than one inflicted on you - you get exhausted by pushing yourself traveling, not eating, not resting, etc. I think penalties like that always feel a bit better when you take them willingly rather than it being something that's done to you.

[Elves]

I really don't think it does - death spirals are usually scoped to characters, not sides.
Each individual's chance of winning goes down with every team member who drops.


Including "loss of pieces" in the definition of a death spiral basically means that every game ever made has one, and as such then the statement "this game has a death spiral" becomes effectively meaningless.
Is it meaningless to say people breathe air if they all do? Something like chess does have a death spiral because uncompensated piece loss leads to compounding loss of more.

Games often work either through points (most sports) or through KO (chess, checkers, and similar). While in the case of chess they try to approximate piece loss with piece point values, there's a real difference. If someone draws ahead of you in points, you can keep functioning as before -- you just need to perform better if you want to win. But in chess, each piece you lose actually impairs your functioning, so that once one goes, it's more likely that you will lose more. This is why I said it's fair to draw a difference between a death slope and a death spiral.

D&D-like RPGs have a hybrid points-KO system. If one opponent is just more damaged than the other, that's like being behind in points. But once a certain points threshold is reached, KO happens and at that point death spiral effects kick in.

[Cluedrew]

Each individual's chance of winning goes down with every team member who drops.That may be true, but still I can say that I've never seen someone use "death spiral" to refer to a whole side without commenting that "if we apply to idea of a death spiral to a team" or similar. Usually people use terms like "advantage" and "disadvantage" or refer to feedback loops. In fact I would say that death spiral is limited to a character progressing towards death imposing a disadvantage, if the disadvantage and the progression towards death/taking damage are not tied together than it is not a death spiral. A fairly narrow definition but if we want to be broader we can discuss feedback loops.

I'm not going to say whether a death spiral is a good idea in general though, it depends on the game and its goals.

[kyoryu]

Yeah, I don't think a definition that includes "a side losing pieces is a death spiral" is useful.

It's definitely outside the usual definition of the term. And while it's worth noting that losing people on a side makes you less likely to win, I think it's also generically true enough that it doesn't make it useful in talking about specific game designs. It's kind of like saying "roleplaying games where you have characters" at that point.

The point about "each character's chance of winning goes down if someone on their team drops" feels enough like wordsmithing that it feels like it's bordering on leaving the good faith territory.

[Hytheter]

A death spiral is specifically a mechanism by which injured combat units become less effective, thus making it harder for them to fight back and/or easier to suffer further damage. Expanding the definition to include things like dropped allies and spent resources makes it a needlessly broad term with little discussion value. You can liken the loss of allies to a death spiral, sure. You can even give it a specific term of its own, like 'team death spiral.' But using the same term for both concepts devalues the term altogether.

[Lemmy]

I suspect that's likely. The feeling of loss of agency can cause a lot of heartache, apart from the death spiral itself. "Why even bother, I can't do anything with these penalties" does not make for a good time.
I've actually seen research that suggests that loss of agency is the number one most frustrating thing to players in any game.

For example, in fighting games, having to wait while your opponent combos your character for 10+ seconds is actually more annoying than whatever damage the combo does. To the point where games with really long combos often get more criticism due to combo length than to combo damage.
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Unrelated: I agree that using the term "death spiral" to describe any advantage gained in game is needlessly broad and makes the term basically useless.

[Elves]

A death spiral is specifically a mechanism by which injured combat units become less effective, thus making it harder for them to fight back and/or easier to suffer further damage.
That's a very specific use. I would say a death spiral is when a setback actively impairs your ability to win, or vice versa (instead of just making winning less or more likely within the game's horizon).

For example, in soccer, if every time you scored a goal you got to remove one player from the opposing team (or add one to yours), that would create a death spiral where the first person to score becomes more likely to score again, and even more likely to score again if they do, etc.

Meanwhile, playing iterated matches in a KO game (like a chess tournament) dampens the death spiral effect by distributing it. But if the winner of a match gets to remove one of their opponent's pieces from the next match, cumulative with each match, you could keep the death spiral snowballing from game to game.


And while it's worth noting that losing people on a side makes you less likely to win, I think it's also generically true enough that it doesn't make it useful in talking about specific game designs.
I don't think it's generically true. Overall, the point-counting method is more popular -- it's what pretty much every sport uses.

Each time someone scores a goal against you in soccer, the performance level required for you to win the game in the remaining time gets steeper (a tiny bit steeper if you're way ahead, a lot steeper if you're behind) -- a "death curve". But it doesn't become any harder for you to score a goal. That's meaningful to contrast with a KO game like chess where success leads to success and one failure leads to more -- a "death spiral".

And like I said, looking at D&D this way, we can see it's a hybrid. Hit points are points based, but at a certain threshold they result in KO. Injury penalties might introduce a ramp to the death spiral instead of a binary switch.

But they don't actually need to. The practical ways to put injury penalties in D&D are with combat maneuvers that apply rider debuffs, like what all the martial classes had in 4e, or with called shot rules similar to 3e's special attacks (bull rush, sunder, etc).
First, in both those cases you're forgoing some amount of damage potential in order to apply a debuff.
Second, the game is already full of abilities that apply debuffs, so this is nothing out of the norm.

[Hytheter]

That's a very specific use.

Yes. It's a specific term, with a specific meaning and a specific purpose, intended for specific kinds of conversation about the design of specific kinds of games. If you want a more general term then create one; this redefinition defeats the point of the existing term entirely.

[Vahnavoi]

Elves is right and you are all wrong. "Death spiral" is a figurative descriptor of system behavior, widely used to describe systems that run themselves to the ground. The term pre-exist gaming usage and was applied to game systems with wound penalties because said penalties cause such behaviour, the penalties themselves are not in any way definitional to the term. Other things being able to cause a death spiral is an observation, not semantic trickery or motte-bailey-debating. For actual game analysis, finding all causes of death spirals is perfectly valid and useful.

[KorvinStarmast]

Exhaustion seems a touch better as it's mostly a mechanic that you opt in to, rather than one inflicted on you - you get exhausted by pushing yourself traveling, not eating, not resting, etc. I think penalties like that always feel a bit better when you take them willingly rather than it being something that's done to you. For D&D 5e, sickening radiance called and would like a word. :smallsmile:

Yeah, I don't think a definition that includes "a side losing pieces is a death spiral" is useful. For games with action economy it is useful in the context of the party/team losing effectiveness.
The point about "each character's chance of winning goes down if someone on their team drops" feels enough like wordsmithing that it feels like it's bordering on leaving the good faith territory. But to be fair, in a team/party based game how many effectives are up and active does influence party success (or the odds of a TPK happening).

A death spiral is specifically a mechanism by which injured combat units become less effective, thus making it harder for them to fight back and/or easier to suffer further damage. It's a phenomenon in real world combat that has been studied in some depth by those concerned with such things. There's an entire moral/emotional/mental aspect to this that makes it uneven in application, elite units being less prone to this, yadda yadda I am wandering off topic.

"Death spiral" is a figurative descriptor of system behavior, widely used to describe systems that run themselves to the ground. It is also an explicitly used term in aviation to describe how to, under the influence of vertigo or other vestibular malfunctions/distractions/failures, fly an aircraft into the ground/sea. (One example among many being JFK Junior's crash)

[Willie the Duck]

It is also an explicitly used term in aviation to describe how to, under the influence of vertigo or other vestibular malfunctions/distractions/failures, fly an aircraft into the ground/sea. (One example among many being JFK Junior's crash)

We use it in health insurance too to represent closed-group plans where the healthy people flee as the costs increase (because the healthy people are fleeing, and so on...). Google also tells me that it is also a figure skating term meaning the broad-group set in which Cosmic Spirals, Life Spirals and Love Spirals are sub-sets (I will give them credit, that's some pretty inventive terminology). That is, of course, examples of differing sub-groups having their own uses for terms, indicating to me that there is no specific reason that TTRPGers shouldn't have their own colloquial definition of the term.

Regardless, there's a difference in experience between gradually-worsening-situation by team attrition and by accumulation of combat penalties, and having discussions of one mistaken for discussions of another do no one any good. One could try to change the board culture to use the term to the broader, potentially more accurate(ly inclusive) meaning, and I wish anyone the best at that attempt (I'll be sitting here on Dapple, dreaming of my Teresa and my promised ínsula).

I think either understanding of the word is, at best, a closely overlapping venn-diagram circle to what people really dislike, which I feel is the real goal of the conversation. I think we focus on the (usually accumulation of combat penalties version) death spiral because most people can probably agree that they dislike the extreme versions. As I believe was mentioned upthread in this thread, a lot of the games known for their wound-penalty-death-spiral mechanics (Shadowrun, White Wolf WoD games, West End Star Wars) aren't actually that un-fun when it comes to combat (at least for this reason). Quite probably because you still get to act and contribute, and the penalties are not out of line with the other situational bonuses and penalties that exist in the game system. Lemmy might be on to something in suggesting that the real culprit (disliked thing) is lack of agency (or, to add my own qualifiers, have agency and be able to make meaningful decisions which contribute to overall success). Anecdotally, in the 5e discussions some of the biggest complaints about fighters and warlocks in combat is that roughly 90% of the time the character-action-decision-point is 'do I just do a normal attack again, or do something else which would be less effective?' In that case, the player actually gets to contribute, yet still feels unfulfilled.

[Vahnavoi]

The usage of "death spiral " in insurance comes from the same root as the usage in roleplaying games: a system that runs itself to the ground. The cause and context are different, the effect is the same. The literal death spiral in aviation also has an example of this: trying to pull a plane up when it is losing altitude in a descending spiral causes the spiral to tighten, so the plane loses altitude even faster, so the pilot keeps pulling up... so on and so forth, until it crashes. In short, don't confuse specific examples as special definitions.

[Max_Killjoy]

I've actually seen research that suggests that loss of agency is the number one most frustrating thing to players in any game.

For example, in fighting games, having to wait while your opponent combos your character for 10+ seconds is actually more annoying than whatever damage the combo does. To the point where games with really long combos often get more criticism due to combo length than to combo damage.
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Unrelated: I agree that using the term "death spiral" to describe any advantage gained in game is needlessly broad and makes the term basically useless.

Agreed on both counts.

On the first, yes, that's perhaps the most frustrating thing in any game, where control of your "point of contact" with the game is lost for an extended period of time. Can even be an issue when characters make decisions on their own, or otherwise avoidable things happen, in video game cutscenes.

On the second, in general, the broader definitions become the less useful they become. A definition that doesn't make a distinction is useless.

[Telok]

The usage of "death spiral " in insurance comes from the same root as the usage in roleplaying games: a system that runs itself to the ground. The cause and context are different, the effect is the same. The literal death spiral in aviation also has an example of this: trying to pull a plane up when it is losing altitude in a descending spiral causes the spiral to tighten, so the plane loses altitude even faster, so the pilot keeps pulling up... so on and so forth, until it crashes. In short, don't confuse specific examples as special definitions.

These are actually really interesting phenomina. They're a situation where the logical or rational response (leaving the pool, pulling up out of the dive) makes the situation worse because of the way the underlying rules work.

Most 'wound penalty' death spiral games have some sort of an exit once the spiral situation starts. It may be because combat wasn't the goal, winning isn't reliant on combat, retreat is possible, surrender isn't a 'game over' or 'as good as dead' type loss condition, or whatever. This means the badly designed death spirals are the ones where the only, useful, or normal thing to do (pull out of the dive) makes the situation worse.

And out of timr again, unfin8sh post

[LibraryOgre]

Well, it kinda does... In the Spell Research section of Chapter 7: Magic it says spell research should cost just more than the PC currently has available, which is a bit of a crap move to pull.

I don't know that it's a crap move. It's not "spell research should always be beyond reach", just "You can't sit down and research a spell every time you have an idea."



There are several places where it talks about removing 'excess gold' from PCs somewhat arbitrarily as well.

Which I'd say pretty much every edition has... 3e formalized it into "Wealth By Level" guidelines, for example.

[Elves]

On the first, yes, that's perhaps the most frustrating thing in any game, where control of your "point of contact" with the game is lost for an extended period of time.
This seems like far more of a problem with death, which the game already has, than with wound penalties.

In fact it seems like an argument for preferring penalties (you can act with a lower chance to succeed) over action denial like stuns, paralysis etc.

As I said upthread, I do think D&D should have more for players whose PCs are dead to do. If the game is a social experience, Xing people out of that experience for a prolonged period is a gameplay problem. That doesn't mean getting rid of death, it means giving those players some way to participate.

[Pex]

This seems like far more of a problem with death, which the game already has, than with wound penalties.

In fact it seems like an argument for preferring penalties (you can act with a lower chance to succeed) over action denial like stuns, paralysis etc.

As I said upthread, I do think D&D should have more for players whose PCs are dead to do. If the game is a social experience, Xing people out of that experience for a prolonged period is a gameplay problem. That doesn't mean getting rid of death, it means giving those players some way to participate.

Not quite. Action denial conditions are a thing, and D&D has addressed the issue from history. Save or die is now long gone. In 5E you get to roll another save after failing the initial one or party members can break concentration of the creature controlling the effect. Adding penalties on top of whatever caused you to lose hit points is adding insult to injury. I could even call it passive aggressive. "Sure you can still do something. You will likely fail, but you can always try /sarcastic voice. It makes attacks more powerful than what they're supposed to be. I hit you for 10 damage. That's all it's supposed to be, 10 damage. Now if because of that 10 damage you are at -4 to hit, -4 to AC, and can only take a move or action, not both, and no bonus action, I hurt you for a lot more than a mere 10 damage.

Adding in additional penalties also has the added side effect of having pressure for someone to be a healbot. Personally playing a cleric I like to prepare Lesser Restoration for the just in case scenario I need to cast it to remove an affliction. It's standard party support. In practice I can go several gaming sessions where I never need to cast it. However, unless it's an all talking session, which can happen and are fun, people will lose hit points all the time. It's good to heal in combat to prevent someone from dropping, but kill bad guys first then heal also works. When you add in the death spiral of penalties, now someone must heal in combat or else someone dies/drops because they'll drop at a faster pace. No doubt there are those players who enjoy playing a heal bot. Hooray for them, but gaming history has shown it's not something that should be forced upon someone because someone has to be on or else the party is doomed.

[KorvinStarmast]

Not quite. Action denial conditions are a thing, and D&D has addressed the issue from history. Save or die is now long gone. In 5E you get to roll another save after failing the initial one or party members can break concentration of the creature controlling the effect.
Feeblemind called and would like to ask you how that once per month save is going. :smallcool:

[Telok]

Yay, I get to finish the post.

So D&D has never been really good at applying penalties. Its all pretty much binary between unnoticable/ineffective and crippling/"skip your turn(s)". Like a -2 to hit or damage is really almost meaningless in most situations because of the d20 being ten times as large or you already throw out 2d6+14 damage on 70hp monsters. But then it jumps to things like half speed or -5 to saves and now the barbarian is basically immobile or needs a 18+ on the d20 to do anything. And of course where death spirals matter, combat, the D&D editions keep simplifying stuff untill the only mechanic supported win condition* is attacking untill the other side is all at zero hp.

Yeah, D&D has a long history now of not doing "gradual erosion of ability" very well. It just sort of flips from "doing fine" to "you are teh suk & lol-fail" in one or two rolls. Thats just how the d20 rolls. Binary success, binary options, binary outcomes, binary "you do/don't have a character to play".

* Important, the DM can always butt-pull something or let any player suggestion work. But removing morale, fleeing, mass incapacitating effrcts, & combat ending skill uses from the player rules and dropping them or putting them in as optional DM-only choices means they don't happen at all unless the DM remembers it & wants it to happen.

[Elves]

Adding penalties on top of whatever caused you to lose hit points [...] makes attacks more powerful than what they're supposed to be. I hit you for 10 damage. That's all it's supposed to be, 10 damage. Now if because of that 10 damage you are at -4 to hit, -4 to AC, and can only take a move or action, not both, and no bonus action, I hurt you for a lot more than a mere 10 damage.
Are 3e Tome of Battle maneuvers or 4e martial powers OP because they can tack a debuff onto a damaging attack?

How about a called shot where you have -x or disadvantage to hit in exchange for inflicting a debuff if you do?

Is a spell OP if it deals damage and also imposes a debuff? There are plenty of those -- seems like a double standard if it's ok when spells do it but not when martial attacks do.


Adding in additional penalties also has the added side effect of having pressure for someone to be a healbot.
I see that as a plus given that combat healer is a role that's widely presumed to exist but in D&D has never really been optimal. If this fleshes it into more of a primary role someone can fill, so much the better.

[Pex]

Feeblemind called and would like to ask you how that once per month save is going. :smallcool:

Touche. One got through.


Are 3e Tome of Battle maneuvers or 4e martial powers OP because they can tack a debuff onto a damaging attack?

How about a called shot where you have -x or disadvantage to hit in exchange for inflicting a debuff if you do?

Is a spell OP if it deals damage and also imposes a debuff? There are plenty of those -- seems like a double standard if it's ok when spells do it but not when martial attacks do.


I see that as a plus given that combat healer is a role that's widely presumed to exist but in D&D has never really been optimal. If this fleshes it into more of a primary role someone can fill, so much the better.

No because that's the effect of the attack itself and supposedly balanced in reference to when the power comes online and comparison to other abilities that come online at the same time. The analogy isn't apt. My hypothetical attack was just 10 damage. It was not 10 damage and -4 to attacks, - 4 AC, no bonus action, and may or only move or take an action. Those hypothetical penalties were add-ons the generic rules would place as an example of a death spiral.

Then count yourself as one of the people who enjoy playing healbots, but for the most part people don't because it's boring to heal for the only thing you do in combat. Some people demand that's what clerics should be doing. I was literally yelled at in public during my 2E days in college by a fellow player for the audacity while playing a cleric to have cast a spell that was not Cure Light Wounds or make a weapon attack instead of casting Cure Light Wounds in the previous night's game. I like healing party members, but I'm not their servant.

[Davesdewas]

I was once in a one-shot where a player played a Kenku and brought a soundboard app, instead of talking he pulled some classic Samuel L Jackson lines.

[KorvinStarmast]

Touche. One got through. :smallsmile:
I mention it for a couple of reasons, beyond its unusual save scheme. (1) I had to use greater restoration to clear Feeblemind off of a party member a few months ago, and (2) I tried to land that spell on three different enemies (I sooooo wanted to get them) but sadly each time they saved. If I could have gotten it to land, their Cha of 1 and my Cha of 20 alongside persuasion proficiency might have made for some silly fun. Oh well, opportunity missed.

On a related note to other elements of your post: I particularly liked playing something like a healbot in Tier 1 (my original life cleric with Magic Initiate/goodberry cheese in my brother's campaign) and early Tier 2 for two reasons. One was to reassure my party mates that it was OK to take damage (don't panic!) and thus they can take more riske and (2) I could BA heal (or use CD) (well, I could try to heal) NPCs that our more murderhobo inclined party members killed in haste. This paid off very well on more than one occasion.

[kyoryu]

Feeblemind called and would like to ask you how that once per month save is going. :smallcool:

Fair, but there's clearly been a de-emphasis.


Are 3e Tome of Battle maneuvers or 4e martial powers OP because they can tack a debuff onto a damaging attack?

Speaking of 4e, specifically, since that game is really designed around players vs enemies (not PvP), and those are all PC abilities - no, it wouldn't.

3e ToB is still more aimed at players, and in that scenario, no, it's not.

(But shouldn't it count if you're debuffing a GM's characters? Nah, not really, they get multiples so having a few of them heavily restricted isn't a big deal. Even if multiples are, they can still coordinate them which gives a layer of involvement that players don't get).

[KorvinStarmast]

Fair, but there's clearly been a de-emphasis. It used to be more damaging. The -4 to the saving throw was brutal.