The Role of "Monsters" in Combat

2009-11-29T19:40:30Z

Something that a GM needs to remember when designing foes for the players - especially foes created using the same rules the players use (humanoid enemies with class levels), is the difference in role between a PC and an enemy.

A PC sticks around. He faces, (in theory) on average, four encounters a day, every day. Generally, the player who makes him is planning on playing him for the duration of the campaign. The PC is created with the intent to live.

An enemy doesn't last all that long. One direct encounter and he's gone. Caput. So long, sirs, and thanks for all the fish. An enemy is created with the intent to die. He's supposed to challenge the PCs, push them hard, but in the end, if all goes according to plan, he should be laying down and they should be standing up.

This doesn't mean that PCs should never die, or that an enemy should never live to fight another day. If a player does something dumb and doesn't find his way out of it, the PC dies. If the player hits an inexplicable string of bad luck, the PC dies. If the enemy is planned to be a recurring villain and the players don't thwart his escape plan, the enemy lives.

However, in general, the plan is that the players win - and live - and the enemy loses. The penalty for his loss is death.

Which brings us to the topic of this little bit of writing. Since PCs and enemies have different roles, it makes sense that they'd use different effects. This is especially true of mages.

In the hands of a PC, a nuke spell is a subpar piece of magic (usually). In D&D, a foe with 1 HP is just as dangerous as a foe with 1000 HP. Thus, damaging a bunch of enemies but not enough to kill them (which is what nukes do against balanced foes) is generally inferior to killing a single foe with a removal spell.

However, in the hands of an opposing mage, a nuke is terrifying. When you're on the second encounter of the day, and you know there's two more left to get through on your current stock of hit points and the priest's current stock of spells, a fireball is one of the last things you want to see heading your way. No, it won't kill you... but it'll hurt you and your friends enough to force you to be even more careful the rest of the day.

A fireball is a great tool of drama in the hands of a GM, but a lousy tactical tool for a player character. However, those death spells that the PC mages are lobbing around are bad in the hands of a GM. The moment of tension they create isn't worth the frustration of losing a character to a single bad roll.

Of course, when a player's agreed to have their character drop for drama's sake, all bets are off. ;-)

On the Failure of Fumbles

2009-11-29T19:24:00Z

Fumbles. They've never been anything more than an optional rule. While there have been, on occasion in different versions of the game, printed rules for fumbles, these have never been part of the core rules. Yet it seems most groups use them. That's not a bad thing.

However, I have come to the realization that most GMs use fumbles without considering the full implications of the set of rules they are using. So I'm going to lay out the implications of fumble rules.

1. Fumble rules always hurt PCs more than they hurt monsters. This is because a PC makes thousands of attack rolls over the course of a campaign, whereas a monster that lasts 10 rounds and full attacks each time with 3 attacks (total of 30 attacks in his lifetime) is considered an exceptionally lucky beast.

2. Further, fumbles also hurt PCs more than monsters statistically. D&D combat favors the PCs. This is because, if the monsters were always equal in power to the PCs, the average campaign would last no more than two combats, since each combat would have about a 50% chance of ending in a wipe. Anything that increases randomness favors the underdogs; thus, fumbles favor the monsters.

3. Fumbles render mass combat entirely unrealistic. If 5% of attacks end in Something Awful happening, a battle between armies of more than 500 degenerates into a flurry of dropped weapons, snapped bowstrings, and people flinging their greatswords into their friends' backs. How does one fight a war in a situation like that? And, if that situation's not there, then how come the PC Thog, the Master Barbarian of the Crescent Serpent, with the skill at arms to defeat 90% of the world's blademasters, is flinging HIS sword into his friend's backs 5% of the time?

4. Fumbles hurt warriors more than mages. This is actually my sticking point on them - melee characters in D&D, aside from a few exploitive builds (infinite-damage hulking hurler, invincible frenzied berserker), are already struggling to keep up with the mages in terms of effectiveness. Why saddle them with even more trouble?

5. More skilled warriors fumble more often than less-skilled warriors. This one is entirely counterintuitive and counterrealistic. If a natural 1 either fumbles or threatens a fumble, then a character with +20 BAB (4 attacks, not counting any extras from two weapon fighting, Haste, a speed weapon, or other such abilities) is going to, round by round, roll four times as many fumbles as a level 1 commoner with a stick. He's swinging four times as many times; he's going to fumble four times as many times. In games that used particularly brutal fumble systems, I've found myself voluntarily forgoing my lower iterative attacks - a choice that costs a melee character a lot of his power.

6. Critical hits already have a counterbalance. Further, that counterbalance already occurs, automatically, on a natural 1 attack roll. That counterbalance is called "missing." A critical hit, unless you have an additional ability to make it better, deals, in most cases, less than twice the damage a normal hit does - bonus dice, which nearly everyone who makes attack rolls regularly accumulates over their career from class abilties, feats, and weapon special abilities, are not multiplied in a critical hit. Thus, a fighter who rolls a critical hit and later in the combat rolls a miss has effectively dealt damage as if he was constantly rolling normal hits.

Ghostwheel's blog

The Role of "Monsters" in Combat

On the Failure of Fumbles