What do you think of defensive abilities in rpgs

[Ameraaaaaa]

Personally i tend to think that it's best if your serving a tank role in a dnd party if you don't go overboard even if you aren't in a game with roles.

For example if you spend 80 points in mutants and masterminds you can become immune to all attacks targeting toughness. Obviously that's bad for you because it's unfair for the gm. Who now has to make every serious encounter have a enemy with a ability that doesn't target toughness.

So not just you've limited your gm's ability to design battles but you've basically wasted 80 points better spent elsewhere.

There's nothing with a tank in dnd by comparison (except if you go with a broken build.) Because 1 your not invulnerable and 2 you actually serve a role on the team.

That's just my opinion and examples tho. What about you?

[Mastikator]

I think making yourself harder to kill is every PCs responsibility, the tank's job is to make their allies less likely to die either by making them harder to kill OR less likely to be targeted. Don't know much about Mutants and Masterminds but it sounds like if a hero is just making themselves very hard to defeat at a cost of utility/DPR then they may wasting their time. If your team mates are dying and you are not then you are not really "tanking".

[MoiMagnus]

For example if you spend 80 points in mutants and masterminds you can become immune to all attacks targeting toughness. Obviously that's bad for you because it's unfair for the gm. Who now has to make every serious encounter have a enemy with a ability that doesn't target toughness.

So not just you've limited your gm's ability to design battles but you've basically wasted 80 points better spent elsewhere.

What you're describing here is far from exclusive to defensive abilities. If you had a character who spend all his creation points in "hypothetical RPG" to buy a "one-shot any enemy not immune to fire, at will", then it will also push the GM to only put enemies immune to fire (or at least every important enemy), making the creation points wasted.

The problem you're showing here is a problem about absolute abilities. And it affects both abilities that are absolute "de jure" (so immunities, one-shot, etc) and abilities that are absolute "de facto" (having an AC so high that no level-appropriate enemy can hit you).
=> Absolute abilities are IMO bad for the game. However, getting rid of absolute abilities usually require adding new layers of complexity (to have a more fine-grained approach), which might not be worth it if those abilities are expected to not be central to the gameplay.

What do you think of defensive abilities in rpgs

A lot of defensive abilities, including control, can really slow down combat and/or be frustrating to the player/GM (e.g stunlock). So I kinda hate them.

On the other hand, those same defensive abilities are also one of the major reasons why combat can be varied and interesting. Defensive abilities are not just about denying moves to your opponents, they are also about allowing you to do moves that would be "basically suicide" without those abilities. So I kinda love them too.

[Xervous]

As someone developing and tuning a system the nature of defensive abilities is an involved topic.

The main rule is that one strategy should not be blindly dominant. Another is that hyper specialization is effective at ensuring the >90% success rate but is costly in other areas.

A narrow immunity is whatever. Enemies should not usually rely on one and only one mode of attack. Stacking explicit immunities isn’t possible, but effective statistical immunities or “close enough” numbers can render the character ludicrously durable.

The thing is durability on its own is worthless. 3.5e monk sucked partly because of this. Tanks need a reason to be targeted, a method for punishing enemies for not targeting them, or a means by which they prevent allies from being affected. An overly durable blob that offers no threat is little more than a moving wall you have to walk around. And yes, as a GM my monsters will walk around something they find they can’t damage that offers them no threat. But if that wall gets free slaps on anyone who attacks its allies, acts as a black hole of movement denial, or is heavily mitigating damage to its allies then there’s a reason for the monsters to consider engaging the tank.

The reality is that most games don’t provide much beyond Durable Frontliner. The most you can typically muster is a Bruiser who leverages its durability for more opportunities to do damage. If it’s the only choice for an enemy to attack the bruiser gets hit, but given the choice between bruiser and non bruiser a given enemy’s effort is generally going to be worth more spent on another player character. It’s fire emblem gameplay with fire emblem AI (before you apply the particulars of the encounter). Take shots at the squishiest targets available, or pool effort on the most certain kill. Bruisers diving into enemy formations are the most common way to ensure they end up getting targeted.

The durable access denying character is a functional wall that, with good positioning, makes it so killing the character is the fastest way to get to the party.

The retaliatory defender is really just a durable damage dealer with conditional triggers. If the damage is too high/frequent to ignore the enemies are best served ignoring the triggers and attacking the defender.

The mitigating defender is the numeric parallel to the access denying defender. Rather than denying permission to target, it denies permission to damage. Again this makes it so the fastest way through the party starts with killing the defender.

Immunities don’t necessarily mean you have to introduce some other way of threatening the tank. If there’s exploding acid zombies and the tank is acid immune, it’s not like the tank can stop all the zombies on its own. Tank being immune means don’t target the tank. If there’s no threat coming from the tank... immunity is somewhat irrelevant. Mr acid immune is busy not dying to the zombies while I, Mastermind McEvilpants, hold him off with a pinky to his forehead as my doomsday device ticks down. Do I send my fidget spinner drones to attack him, or the other heroes who will beat me in the tug of war to pull the shutoff lever?

[Ameraaaaaa]

What you're describing here is far from exclusive to defensive abilities. If you had a character who spend all his creation points in "hypothetical RPG" to buy a "one-shot any enemy not immune to fire, at will", then it will also push the GM to only put enemies immune to fire (or at least every important enemy), making the creation points wasted.

The problem you're showing here is a problem about absolute abilities. And it affects both abilities that are absolute "de jure" (so immunities, one-shot, etc) and abilities that are absolute "de facto" (having an AC so high that no level-appropriate enemy can hit you).
=> Absolute abilities are IMO bad for the game. However, getting rid of absolute abilities usually require adding new layers of complexity (to have a more fine-grained approach), which might not be worth it if those abilities are expected to not be central to the gameplay.



A lot of defensive abilities, including control, can really slow down combat and/or be frustrating to the player/GM (e.g stunlock). So I kinda hate them.

On the other hand, those same defensive abilities are also one of the major reasons why combat can be varied and interesting. Defensive abilities are not just about denying moves to your opponents, they are also about allowing you to do moves that would be "basically suicide" without those abilities. So I kinda love them too.

Your right about absolute abilities. That's something i could never articulate before. A genuine thanks since this might help me in the future.

Also agree with the latter points as well. Being free to do suicidal things is pretty fun.

[Lord Raziere]

I think making yourself harder to kill is every PCs responsibility, the tank's job is to make their allies less likely to die either by making them harder to kill OR less likely to be targeted. Don't know much about Mutants and Masterminds but it sounds like if a hero is just making themselves very hard to defeat at a cost of utility/DPR then they may wasting their time. If your team mates are dying and you are not then you are not really "tanking".

What they're talking about is the Immunity effect. basically its a power in MnM real useful for a lot of things, if you need a character that can survive in space without any air, food or water just put ten ranks in it and you can fight Freeza without an atmosphere.

80 ranks basically means your immune to any normal attack. does nothing for fortitude or will based attacks sure. thing is, a standard PL 10 MnM character only has 150 points, so thats more than half their allotment. now you can also become immune to fortitude and immune to will as two more immunity powers each worth 30 points, bringing up to 140 points spent out of 150, then spend those remaining on life support, and you basically can't die to anything......but you don't have any movement powers, no attack powers, no skills, nothing. you spent all those points to become immune to basically everything, congratulations your useless for anything except being a meat shield.

so yes your completely right, they are wasting their time. because yes your unharmable, too bad your too slow to protect anyone without any points spent in the travel powers to respond to a threat in time.

More realistically though you can 20 points on flight, 10 points on damage, 20 points on Will and Fortitude Defense, then a final 20 points into whatever it doesn't really matter and be a flying brick if a narrow one. thing is I still don't see how it protects everyone or invalidates normal damage, because even if you can fly 4 miles in 6 seconds, your still in a turn based order so the enemy would have their turn to target things other than you, supers tend to be more flashy and famous than adventurers so its possible for someone to have heard about their powers and plan around them, so really its not out of the question to plausibly do this. now you can use the Deflect power to defend people at range, but it doesn't defend against ranged attacks with area or perception extras, or against things that don't target dodge or parry, so really they can't defend against bombs, and toughness is a resistance check not a defense class like dodge/parry, so I don't think you can use toughness with Deflect, its something that works on active defenses to prevent damage and Toughness is something more passive, so you'd instead have to have......the Area extra, Area (Burst) Immunity (Toughness) 80.....would 160 points, which is above the 150 points that a stand PL10 game gets, but you could give it the Removable flaw to make be some object you wear that can be taken off putting it back to 80 point cost, but you would have a 30-foot sphere where everyone within is immune to toughness effects to protect everyone. But here is the hilarious thing: unless you take the selective extra, it makes the enemies immune to toughness resisted effects as well meaning NO ONE can hurt ANYONE within your sphere! I have made a pacifists dream.

[Easy e]

I prefer a game where all characters have a defensive choice. So, if I a PC is targeted by an attack they can do something other than just subtract HP from their sheet.

However, I think that is a different subject from what you are talking about.

However, I think defensive abilities should exist as some player prefer to take a defensive character. Not everyone is focused on the "archetypes" we attribute to RPG games. Instead, they may want to play a pacifist or even just someone who likes to be a protector.

[Telok]

The reality is that most games don’t provide much beyond Durable Frontliner. The most you can typically muster is a Bruiser who leverages its durability for more opportunities to do damage.

I'd say many mainstream class based games don't provide much beyond the Durable Frontliner concept. Point buy & other build-your-own systems by default allow you to avoid that problem.

Likewise, I've never found absolute immunities to be an issue in games where non-damage combat options are available & viable. It doesn't matter to me if the party fighter is immune to physical damage as long as four goblins can dogpile & pin, or an ogre can disarm & sit on him. Stuff like fire elementals being immune to fire has never made people complain "op elementals tpk us cuz immune".

However the issue of someone trying to create a "tank" style character and not having options that force opponents to engage with that "tankyness" is an issue. AD&D and D&D 4e did well on that point, but 3e & 5e generally have those abilities on non-fighter types or gated behind specific feats & weapons.

I don't have issues with abilities like "one-shot anything not immune to fire" or "autokill anything I can charge" in the systems I like to run. Sure, you can't plop down a t-rex in a clearing and have it be an "epic battle". But honestly it probably never was "epic battle" material to begin with. Combats the break the line of effect with terrain or other stuff, fights with piles of minions, encounters where reducing enemy hp to zero isn't the goal... all the stuff that makes encounters more than bags of hp bonking on each other will mitigate a super attack often enough that I'm not in danger of having a boring encounter.

[Stonehead]

I like defensive abilities a lot. I think they do a lot for making different characters feel different. If I want to play a heroic knight in shining armor, but in combat all I do is hit and kill things, just like the evil hellknight, there's some disconnect there. Weird as it may sound at first, mechanics are a really good way to show a character's personality. "Show don't tell", and all that.

So, done right, defensive abilities are awesome. One issue that I haven't seen brought up yet though is that overpowered defensive abilities are a lot more disruptive than similarly overpowered offensive abilities. If you have a one-shot ability, you win the combat turn 1, then move on with the rest of the game. If you have invulnerability, combat drags on forever until you slowly chip away at all the enemies. Also, even with a one-shot attack, you can still lose on initiative, or be ambushed, or attacked by someone outside of your range, hit by a trap and so on. If you're invulnerable nothing, not even out-of-combat threats, concern you.

[HumanFighter]

Defensive abilities in rpgs are always cool, they help you stay alive. My fav kind of defense ability is resistance or even outright immunity to falling damage. May not be that useful most of the time, but when it matters, it really matters, especially from very tall heights.

Does healing count as a defensive ability?

Also I like spells and abilities in games that outright increase your Defense/AC (either temporarily or permanently)

Concerning the matter of tanking, I always wondered if a Protect Other type Ability should have to be learned and acquired, or should it be something anyone can attempt to do, if the situation is right for it? I feel like a designated Tank character should always get an ability like this, within reason of course. Can't expect a normal human in heavy armor suddenly appear across the room to take a hit for the softy mage, now can we?

[icefractal]

Obviously that's bad for you because it's unfair for the gm. Who now has to make every serious encounter have a enemy with a ability that doesn't target toughness.

Has to? No, they do not. In fact, I'd say that in this hypothetical, the GM has made a serious error. They should either:

A) Disallow the ability. No shame in this, it's a lot better to do so up-front than stealth-nerfing in play.
B) Allow the ability, and not modify enemies to counter it. As a result, that PC will be impervious to some foes, including some "serious" ones. Not inherently a problem.
C) Allow the ability but lower the cost significantly and advise the player that most enemies will have ways around it. Therefore it becomes primarily a "ribbon" ability, which is fine if the cost is appropriate to that.

Saying "yes, you can spend 80 points and be immune to many attacks" and then actually making it so that the immunity is mostly meaningless is effectively lying to the players - don't do that.

[HumanFighter]

Has to? No, they do not. In fact, I'd say that in this hypothetical, the GM has made a serious error. They should either:

A) Disallow the ability. No shame in this, it's a lot better to do so up-front than stealth-nerfing in play.
B) Allow the ability, and not modify enemies to counter it. As a result, that PC will be impervious to some foes, including some "serious" ones. Not inherently a problem.
C) Allow the ability but lower the cost significantly and advise the player that most enemies will have ways around it. Therefore it becomes primarily a "ribbon" ability, which is fine if the cost is appropriate to that.

Saying "yes, you can spend 80 points and be immune to many attacks" and then actually making it so that the immunity is mostly meaningless is effectively lying to the players - don't do that.

Games got problems, icefractal's got solutions. Well said

[Quertus]

Defensive abilities? Armor, dodge, soak, immunities, "saving throws" - fair to say that almost every character ever made has some defensive abilities. Kinda odd to imagine anyone other than the worst railroad GM who is explicit "not a fan".

Are full-on immunities "a problem"? Well, they might make a one-trick pony that was supposed to be threatening kinda sad, but I'd say that the problem was in the "supposed to", was in assigning them a role rather than allowing their actual role to evolve organically.

And it does make the game less fun for most people when defense >>> offense, and combat slows to a crawl (see also the pejorative "padded sumo combat").

Plus, a tank that enemies can just avoid/ignore, and kill their teammates, isn't really much of a tank.

So, obviously, the solution is to not make such anemic, ignorable tanks.

However, that's role-based thinking. An all-defense, no offense character is a perfectly reasonable character to roleplay. Maybe they're depressed about how people around them keep dieing. Maybe they're seeking "character growth" to actually protect their allies. Or play the character who's already had that "growth" - for example, IIRC, in Mutants and Masterminds (at least, the edition I played), "can take a hit for another" is an ability that costs a whopping 1 character point. Or look at Armus - his classic move is to open a fight by moving to place himself bodily between one of his allies and "the threat".

And, as a rule, GMs shouldn't change the foes / tailor them to the party. Having a character immune to fire fighting Fire Elementals doesn't break the story, it makes the story.

[King of Nowhere]

defensive abilities are what makes the game interesting for me.
without defence, who goes first win. boooring. I like tanking.

But! I like the interplay of attack and defence. you try to increase your to-hit while I try to increase my AC. I try to increase my saving throws, and you try to increase your saving throw DC. Flat-out immunities are the opposite of that; there's no game, you are either vulnerable or you're not.

balancing attack and defence at my table shows a difference between immunity-based and number-based approach. martials can only hit you with weapons, you can buff your ac and they can buff their attack bonus, immunity to weapons would make them irrelevant. therefore, anything that's resembling an immunity to weapons - even a partial one, like starmantle - is a hard no. it would break the game.
on the other hand, magic has a lot more avenues of attack. you have three different saving throws to target, or you can target touch ac to deal hit point damage, or you can use effects that are weak but have virtually no counter. for this reason I am much more free in allowing immunity to some magical effects, because the caster can always target something else.
and it's almost like it's two different games. with a martial, you just have to pump your attack. with a caster, you have to figure out which avenues of attack are more likely to work against your target. described like this, the caster game looks much more interesting, but it must not be exaggerated. if there are too many different things that can be attacked or that they can be covered by immunity, attacking becomes a guessing game, and tanking becomes virtually impossible - you have to spread your build resources too thin to protect yourself from too many kinds of attacks.
as for the martial game, the description make it look boring - let's just compare your attack bonus to my AC - but at least in 3.x there are enough ways to gain circumstantial modifiers to both of those numbers that strategy in the fight matters, and this, again, keeps things interesting.

[SimonMoon6]

Different defensive abilities provide different challenges.

I remember back in the late 80's when I discovered that it was better to be super-agile than it was to be invulnerable to injury (whether in an RPG or in the fictional stories on which an RPG is based).

A super-agile character is allowed to simply dodge every attack and nobody minds because, well, he *could* have been hit and injured. But an invulnerable character has to constantly be put in situations where he gets hurt despite being invulnerable just to show that he can be hurt. A story where an invulnerable character never gets hurt tends to be viewed as boring (even if there are ways to stop such a character without injury, such as grapples or entanglement). So an invulnerable character will paradoxically be injured more often than an agile character.

A lot of seminal comics also tended to make it seem as if an agile and skilled character (like Captain America or Spider-Man) would always beat a strong and tough character (even if in the real world, the opposite is probably true), so RPGs based on comics have tended to go along with this idea.

[Satinavian]

I agree somewhat. To much defense resulting in invulnerability is bad. Nothing is as counterintuitive than to realize that each side has at least one participant that the other side can't harm no matter what they roll or what strategy they use and the only possible end to the fight, provided people continue to fight, is that those two people are the only ones left standig and still not being able to hurt each other. Even if only one side has someone invulnerable that means that the other side simply can't win and should stop fighting because coninuing can only result in defeat.

But defensive measures that make someone hard but not impossible to defeat are fine as are narrow immunities that can be worked around.

[icefractal]

Even if only one side has someone invulnerable that means that the other side simply can't win and should stop fighting because coninuing can only result in defeat.

Well that depends on their objectives, and on how much offense the invulnerable person can deliver.

If the non-invulnerable side is just trying to escape, then reducing their pursuers to one person will at least let most of them escape, even if the invulnerable one is also fast.

If it's to destroy the other side as a fighting force - reducing it to one survivor will be a pretty big change.

If it's to take control of something, then it depends on how much offense the invulnerable survivor can output - if the other side can just defend against that long enough to do what they came for, they win.

And that's in addition to the fact that tactics like tying up the invulnerable foe or trapping them in a pit become much easier once it's many vs one.

[Quertus]

defensive abilities are what makes the game interesting for me.
without defence, who goes first win. boooring. I like tanking.

But! I like the interplay of attack and defence. you try to increase your to-hit while I try to increase my AC. I try to increase my saving throws, and you try to increase your saving throw DC. Flat-out immunities are the opposite of that; there's no game, you are either vulnerable or you're not.

balancing attack and defence at my table shows a difference between immunity-based and number-based approach. martials can only hit you with weapons, you can buff your ac and they can buff their attack bonus, immunity to weapons would make them irrelevant. therefore, anything that's resembling an immunity to weapons - even a partial one, like starmantle - is a hard no. it would break the game.
on the other hand, magic has a lot more avenues of attack. you have three different saving throws to target, or you can target touch ac to deal hit point damage, or you can use effects that are weak but have virtually no counter. for this reason I am much more free in allowing immunity to some magical effects, because the caster can always target something else.
and it's almost like it's two different games. with a martial, you just have to pump your attack. with a caster, you have to figure out which avenues of attack are more likely to work against your target. described like this, the caster game looks much more interesting, but it must not be exaggerated. if there are too many different things that can be attacked or that they can be covered by immunity, attacking becomes a guessing game, and tanking becomes virtually impossible - you have to spread your build resources too thin to protect yourself from too many kinds of attacks.
as for the martial game, the description make it look boring - let's just compare your attack bonus to my AC - but at least in 3.x there are enough ways to gain circumstantial modifiers to both of those numbers that strategy in the fight matters, and this, again, keeps things interesting.

Very interesting.

On the one hand, I greatly agree with this, at least as one perspective.

On the other hand…

For martials, I like to advocate them *not* falling into the trap of only having one button to push. In largely 3e parlance, being able to trip, disarm, disable, move, manipulate, grapple, choke out, suffocate? I think *I* could do all of that (and more) IRL; if my RPG muggle cannot, or the player cannot think to, it's a problem. And, with a few tools, tying up, drugging, setting on fire, and dis-arming (or dis-legging, or beheading, or…) are among the possibilities.

For Wizards… while I like/love… the *existence* of that "so many tools, which is optimal?" minigame… Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, does his best to "cheat" that game, with knowledge skills / experience, and spells that optimize how much information he gains. Of course, that just adds to how bloody useless he is, while he's gathering information rather than accomplishing something.

So, I guess I prefer a game that doesn't get broken by the odd immunity, even if it is "immune to muggle damage".

[Anonymouswizard]

Has to? No, they do not. In fact, I'd say that in this hypothetical, the GM has made a serious error. They should either:

A) Disallow the ability. No shame in this, it's a lot better to do so up-front than stealth-nerfing in play.
B) Allow the ability, and not modify enemies to counter it. As a result, that PC will be impervious to some foes, including some "serious" ones. Not inherently a problem.
C) Allow the ability but lower the cost significantly and advise the player that most enemies will have ways around it. Therefore it becomes primarily a "ribbon" ability, which is fine if the cost is appropriate to that.

Saying "yes, you can spend 80 points and be immune to many attacks" and then actually making it so that the immunity is mostly meaningless is effectively lying to the players - don't do that.

To be fair, M&M is very much designed with the idea that the players and GM will have a running discussion during character creation to make sure that nobody's breaking the game. So any GM that fits allow such things had better be ready to make it matter, but not too much.

Although in practice people just pump Toughness instead of buying outright immunity.

On the other hand, IIRC there are ways around the trinity of Fort/Will/Tough immunity. If they've not invested in Dodge/Parry I believe that RAW you can target some powers towards those (it's how I'd use Affliction to build things like nets) and I think of you can hit things like offensive teleportation still works. If a party had one or more characters with Inventor, Artificer, or Ritualist it could be an interesting thing to throw at them and just see what workarounds they come up with. Just make sure that their attacks aren't any real trouble for the PCs but cause lots of destruction (something like Damage 4 with five stackings of the Area modifier).

But yeah, the interesting defensive powers are going to generally be things like creating walls, temporary defensive boosts, or immunities that open up new options (like the previously mentioned immunity to falling damage). Nothing wrong with straight up damage negation, but if it's all you have you're going to end up relatively boring to play.

[King of Nowhere]

Very interesting.

On the one hand, I greatly agree with this, at least as one perspective.

On the other hand…

For martials, I like to advocate them *not* falling into the trap of only having one button to push. In largely 3e parlance, being able to trip, disarm, disable, move, manipulate, grapple, choke out, suffocate? I think *I* could do all of that (and more) IRL; if my RPG muggle cannot, or the player cannot think to, it's a problem. And, with a few tools, tying up, drugging, setting on fire, and dis-arming (or dis-legging, or beheading, or…) are among the possibilities.

i can agree in theory, but in 3.x all those tools are suboptimal unless you are built for it. but what's much worse in my book, most of them would be extremely hard to adjudicate. and they would risk being game-breaker, or extremely annoying.

take, for example, the classic martial vs caster. at my table, with our level of optimization and our general guidelines of what's allowed and what's not, the caster has a lot of options. but the martial can deal a lot of damage if he manages to get close.
so, the caster can try to target the martial's worst save with a save-or-die. which could end the fight immediately, or it may fail¹. and if it fails, the martial can get close and the caster's in trouble. Or, the caster can use crowd control and keep the distance and wear the martial down. which is most likely to work in the long run, but it will occupy the caster full time, in which case the martial is still contributing to the fight by keeping the enemy caster fully occupied².
this equilibrium ensures that, despite the caster-martial disparity, everyone can contribute in a team fight. we all like this point of equilibrium, and we try to keep it.

now, let's assume that I allow the caster to get starmantle. now the caster will take half damage from the martial, and there's nothing the martial can do - besides dealing double damage.
now the caster can effectively ignore the martial, and the martial has become ineffective. that's a problem. so now the martial will start looking for other options...
grapple is flat-out negated by freedom of movement, which everyone has at high levels. which is ok, because grapple has some very annoying mechanics that nobody wants to look up in detail, and with grapple allowed the martial would be able to shut down the caster big time - which, again, would be a problem, we want the caster to be vulnerable, but "incapacitated as soon as an enemy gets in melee" would be too harsh.
Then there's trip. Trip gives one a penalty to movement, which prevents the caster from keeping the distance - or forces them to burn a quickened dimension door. it also gives -4 to AC. but if the martial is incapable of hurting the caster, then tripping is irrelevant.
Disarm? the caster has no use for a weapon. But maybe you can take away the spell component pouch? Ok, this has two possible outcomes: 1) the caster is shut down forever. any martial that touch a caster can "disarm" the caster and shut him down hard. Which we'd find too punitive for the caster. 2) Every smart caster travels with half a dozen spell component pouches in different parts of their body, rendering the whole "disarm" manuever pointless - unless successfully executed a half dozen times.
Manipulate, choke? i guess they would count as grappling. so, negated. if they weren't, again, we'd be forced to use annoying grapple mechanics. But assume instead that they are not. So the martial says "I try to grab the caster and strangle him". Ok, now what? What do I ask him to roll? What should the caster roll for defence? While I like players thinking outside the box, in combat having to come up with mechanics on the fly is not a good outcome, and it's virtually indistinguishable from dm-may-i? either i rule that the opposed roll uses something that favors the martial, in which case the caster is gone. or i use something that favors the caster, in which case the manuever is useless. or i roll a 50-50, in which case the whole character builds are made moot.


1 at equal level and optimization, the martial can be expected to pass the saving throw between half and one-quarter of the times. there's also the fact that the weak save of martials is will, and most will-based save-or-die do allow immunity, so the caster would have to guess which immunity the fighter may or may not have. But a basic protection from evil is so commonplace, nobody tries to dominate person in high level combat anymore. except maybe after dispelling.
2 the martial will have access to see invisibility, flight and other stuff, so that the caster can't just fly out of reach and ignore the martial altogether. a smart martial will keep forcing the caster to spend actions to stay out of reach. Again, that's part of the op equilibrium that we worked to build

All this to say that in years of gaming we have fine-tuned combat to a point that we like, and throwing a wrench in it would have bad effects. Either the new strategy would be ineffective, or it would be game-breaking, or it would be yet-another-thing-that-people-have-to-remember-to-prepare-against.
It's much more convenient to agree on keeping the equilibrium by banning/changing everything that would break it, then it would be to break the game and then try to glue the pieces back together.

[Satinavian]

Well that depends on their objectives, and on how much offense the invulnerable person can deliver.

If the non-invulnerable side is just trying to escape, then reducing their pursuers to one person will at least let most of them escape, even if the invulnerable one is also fast.

If it's to destroy the other side as a fighting force - reducing it to one survivor will be a pretty big change.

If it's to take control of something, then it depends on how much offense the invulnerable survivor can output - if the other side can just defend against that long enough to do what they came for, they win.

Yes, there are some cases where continue fighting might be sensible. But imho those rarely come about organically. Most fights are about control a place or a thing or possibly because people hate each other but really enough to throw away their lives just to hurt some of the other side.

And that's in addition to the fact that tactics like tying up the invulnerable foe or trapping them in a pit become much easier once it's many vs one.

That would be true if this invulnerability is only about physical damage and can be worked around. I am more thinking of situations where the person is also invulnerabe to all negative status effects the other party could try to apply and can't be shut down either even with superior numbers.

[Quertus]

i can agree in theory, but in 3.x all those tools are suboptimal unless you are built for it.

We're on the same page.

Except… I have no problem with sometimes asking someone to use a suboptimal tactic. Or, rather, with sometimes having a normally suboptimal tactic being situationally optimal.

but what's much worse in my book, most of them would be extremely hard to adjudicate.

Agreed, "extremely hard to adjudicate" is bad.

Although… while 3e is suboptimal in this regard, I don't think I agree that it's "extremely hard to adjudicate".

and they would risk being game-breaker, or extremely annoying.

In some systems, yes, some of them are. (3e grappling certainly is annoying).

take, for example, the classic martial vs caster. at my table,

Well, I can't really grok that, as I'm not into PvP.

If the wizard takes ½ damage from the monsters, they have twice as long to guess what immunities the monster has. If, you know, the Fighter hasn't already killed it. Not really a big deal at my tables.

If the monster takes ½ damage from the Fighter, it's that much more important for the Wizard to guess correctly how to shut it down. Or for the Fighter to either not be a one trick pony, or for it to be a really good trick. Not really a big deal at my tables.

If the Fighter takes ½ damage from the monsters… yay?

this equilibrium ensures that, despite the caster-martial disparity, everyone can contribute in a team fight. we all like this point of equilibrium, and we try to keep it.

If it works, and y'all like it, OK. But I'll not say it's anywhere close to "required", IME, in order to let everyone contribute.

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In 3e parlance, "choke out" would be a grapple that targets the suffocation rules, rather than the damage rules.

"Manipulate" includes "I push you off the bridge", "I steal your hat", "I pull your hat down over your eyes", etc.

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All this to say that in years of gaming we have fine-tuned combat to a point that we like, and throwing a wrench in it would have bad effects. Either the new strategy would be ineffective, or it would be game-breaking, or it would be yet-another-thing-that-people-have-to-remember-to-prepare-against.
It's much more convenient to agree on keeping the equilibrium by banning/changing everything that would break it, then it would be to break the game and then try to glue the pieces back together.

If that works for y'all, great, I guess? It's a little odd for me, thinking in terms of the infinite variety of, say, MtG, and hearing someone reducing it to chess, to limited playing pieces with a set pattern of balance.

Yes, my old Benalish Hero is one more thing for a modern MtG player to have to analyze… but, to me, that's the fun of the game!

If y'all truly prefer to play chess with your 16 approved MtG cards on a side, then have fun with that. I just may struggle to understand why you would choose that particular flavor of fun.

[King of Nowhere]

We're on the same page.

Well, I can't really grok that, as I'm not into PvP.

not pvp, but PvNPC. my campaign, especially at high level, involves a lot of fighting other opponents with pc class levels. the general premise is that there are several power groups (religions, nations, maybe even secret societies) and they all can call on a bunch of high level people.
monsters are still there, but they are rarely a threat at high level. anything that cannot defend themselves properly against scry-and-die tactics is not a credible threat at high level.

If that works for y'all, great, I guess? It's a little odd for me, thinking in terms of the infinite variety of, say, MtG, and hearing someone reducing it to chess, to limited playing pieces with a set pattern of balance.

Yes, my old Benalish Hero is one more thing for a modern MtG player to have to analyze… but, to me, that's the fun of the game!

If y'all truly prefer to play chess with your 16 approved MtG cards on a side, then have fun with that. I just may struggle to understand why you would choose that particular flavor of fun.

there is still a lot of variety. Trip and disarm are still on the table. grappling is still available, if someone dispels the freedom of movement. the vast majority of spells are still available.
the main rule of thumb for what's allowed and what's not is simple: nothing can screw up too badly a character of equivalent level without allowing for defence or counterplay. that still leaves open most options. everything with a saving throw: negates is kosher. everything that grants a numerical buff is allowed, provided the buff is not too huge. same goes everything that inflicts a numerical penalty. hit point damage is fine, as long as it's not enough to one-shot your average opponent.

it's a lot more variety than if people were allowed to play uberchargers and mailmen. in which case, everyone would be forced to play uberchargers and mailmen to keep up, and whoever acts first would kill the opponent.

[NichG]

I don't think tournament 1v1 PvP is a context I would ever care about as far as tabletop gaming. Whether one PC could kill another with impunity isn't really relevant to actual play.

As far as defensive abilities, I'd say that things which let a character control the flow of events while keeping them moving are fine, but things which let a character create stalemates or slow things down can cause problems at a meta level of just being very boring to play out. There should always be some kind of timer counting down towards 'this situation will be resolved'.

[icefractal]

I don't think tournament 1v1 PvP is a context I would ever care about as far as tabletop gaming. Whether one PC could kill another with impunity isn't really relevant to actual play.

If PCs and NPCs play by the same rules then it's relevant to actual play, in that most players don't enjoy their PCs being taken out of the fight with no chance to resist.

For example, I will gladly sacrifice the ability to cast Shivering Touch in exchange for not needing defenses against Shivering Touch on every single PC. I'll give up the ability to know any foe's secrets in exchange for being able to have secrets myself (personal house-rule / ruling: Simulacrum does not have the original's memories beyond what could be considered "public knowledge"). And so forth.

[King of Nowhere]

If PCs and NPCs play by the same rules then it's relevant to actual play, in that most players don't enjoy their PCs being taken out of the fight with no chance to resist.

For example, I will gladly sacrifice the ability to cast Shivering Touch in exchange for not needing defenses against Shivering Touch on every single PC. I'll give up the ability to know any foe's secrets in exchange for being able to have secrets myself (personal house-rule / ruling: Simulacrum does not have the original's memories beyond what could be considered "public knowledge"). And so forth.

thanks for extrapolating on my behalf!

[NichG]

If PCs and NPCs play by the same rules then it's relevant to actual play, in that most players don't enjoy their PCs being taken out of the fight with no chance to resist.

For example, I will gladly sacrifice the ability to cast Shivering Touch in exchange for not needing defenses against Shivering Touch on every single PC. I'll give up the ability to know any foe's secrets in exchange for being able to have secrets myself (personal house-rule / ruling: Simulacrum does not have the original's memories beyond what could be considered "public knowledge"). And so forth.

4v4 can be quite different than 1v1. Encounters you prepare for can be quite different than 'two people are dropped into a featureless plain and try to kill each-other', not to mention encounters which you either engage in or avoid on the basis of understanding your limits relative to the enemy's abilities. Encounters can have goals that aren't the complete destruction of the other side, and those goals can be approached from different directions by different participants. Additionally, NPCs don't have to be equal level or equal in resource budget to PCs, they don't have to be encountered in the same numbers, they're not obligated to be optimized to whatever the standard of the established meta is, they may or may not know as much about the PCs as the PCs know about them at the time when they enter into an adversarial relationship, etc. And NPCs generally won't all be using the same rules as PCs anyhow - monsters may share a mechanical basis, but usually they pull from different ability sets and their numbers are distributed differently than either an unoptimized or optimized PC.

Also, a fundamental difference at the meta level is that in a PvP situation it's going to feel unfair if both sides have an unequal chance to win, but in a PvE scenario the enemies are generally supposed to lose - the matchups should be unequal 95%+ of the time. Depending on the table, it can be the players' responsibility to ensure that (not taking on adversaries who are their equals) or the GM's (preparing appropriate encounters for the party) or both.

[icefractal]

4v4 can be quite different than 1v1.

Oh definitely, but not in favor of DNS (death/defeat, no save) attacks being less annoying to the PCs - more annoying, if anything.

Let's say you have four PCs vs four foes. It's pretty likely at least one PC will get DNS'd in the first round if both sides are using them. And while that might not be a problem to the ultimate outcome - in that the PCs end up winning anyway - I can say from experience that the player who didn't get to even act is probably not having a good time. And if by bad luck it happens 2x-3x in a row, they're really going to get annoyed.

Likewise alternate win conditions can swing either way, prior knowledge can swing either way, and the "with no counter" thing means that even lower level NPCs could still take out a PC with it.

Now there's also this:

they're not obligated to be optimized to whatever the standard of the established meta is

But it kind of sounds like suggesting the NPCs obligingly line up to get shot, and refrain from shooting back too hard?

I'm not saying they need to scale to the PCs (in fact they shouldn't), but things like "there's an extremely effective strategy all the PCs are using, but apparently nobody else in the world realizes it's possible" make the NPCs seem dim more than they make the PCs seem awesome.

[NichG]

Oh definitely, but not in favor of DNS (death/defeat, no save) attacks being less annoying to the PCs - more annoying, if anything.

Let's say you have four PCs vs four foes. It's pretty likely at least one PC will get DNS'd in the first round if both sides are using them. And while that might not be a problem to the ultimate outcome - in that the PCs end up winning anyway - I can say from experience that the player who didn't get to even act is probably not having a good time. And if by bad luck it happens 2x-3x in a row, they're really going to get annoyed.

If you're designing around groups rather than individuals, you can have it so that any single character might be susceptible to a hard shutdown alone, but together no member of the group can be shutdown. E.g. a glass cannon caster can be one shot by a full attack from a martial, but if the system has effective mechanics for area control or protection, the caster isn't a viable target during the alpha strike because of another character involved in the situation covering their weakness.

Or you don't make it about lining up in ranks and rolling initiative. The guy who would be hard-countered by the martial can be somewhere else doing something else in parallel that doesn't expose them to their kryptonite.

Now there's also this:But it kind of sounds like suggesting the NPCs obligingly line up to get shot, and refrain from shooting back too hard?

I'm not saying they need to scale to the PCs (in fact they shouldn't), but things like "there's an extremely effective strategy all the PCs are using, but apparently nobody else in the world realizes it's possible" make the NPCs seem dim more than they make the PCs seem awesome.

This is the effective reality in any game that involves a party that isn't dead by the 10th encounter. It might be crass to outright admit it, but every functional table is using some kind of way of making enemies oppose the PCs in situations where they have little to no chance of victory. Maybe it's because they underestimate the PCs, or maybe they're being discarded as fodder by a callous boss, or maybe they're non-sentient, or maybe they're fighting for their lives against a home invasion and don't have a choice, but most encounters must be unequal in games predicated on fights to the death.

A lot of what makes it palatable is supported by suspension of disbelief that becomes weakened when you start thinking of NPCs in character as if they see the world like players do out of character. Questions like 'why did you level in Commoner rather than Wizard?' are meta, and if you adopt that as a default way of looking at the fiction it can be very limiting.

NPCs don't have to know what options are possible. NPCs don't have to be eligible for every option, even if there aren't mechanical restrictions.
NPCs cannot choose their race and stats and background.
NPCs don't have to be able to access every spell or item arbitrarily, on the basis of what makes for a good build.
NPCs need not be aware that there are things called levels, feats, stats, etc to the degree that they can distinguish what particular form of training or study or selectiveness leads to the most powerful builds.
NPCs don't need to think like people with literal access to the true written rules of physics and an extensive community who spends decades theorycrafting builds.

So with that in mind, if e.g. most warriors in a setting aren't uberchargers that shouldn't be immersion breaking.

[Satinavian]

This is the effective reality in any game that involves a party that isn't dead by the 10th encounter. It might be crass to outright admit it, but every functional table is using some kind of way of making enemies oppose the PCs in situations where they have little to no chance of victory. Maybe it's because they underestimate the PCs, or maybe they're being discarded as fodder by a callous boss, or maybe they're non-sentient, or maybe they're fighting for their lives against a home invasion and don't have a choice, but most encounters must be unequal in games predicated on fights to the death.

I honestly prefer enemies just being weaker instead of being stupid. Other complication might apply nenetheless.

A lot of what makes it palatable is supported by suspension of disbelief that becomes weakened when you start thinking of NPCs in character as if they see the world like players do out of character. Questions like 'why did you level in Commoner rather than Wizard?' are meta, and if you adopt that as a default way of looking at the fiction it can be very limiting.

No, thinking of NPCs in character works fine and makes for believable NPC behavior lifting up the whole setting.

If something breaks when NPCs act rationally, then something is already broken and likely needs to be nerfed or changed.