Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Dr.Cornelius 01-03-07, 05:49 PM	A conversation in an unrelated thread got me thinking - is LG about the journey or the destination? The conversation wound its way to a discussion of the role of judges and discretion in combat encounters. Original Thread (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?p=11073126#post11073126): But I repeat. (extremely overpowered encounters) are vanishingly rare, and mostly encountered in Core Specials and battle interactives, or modules with "warning labels". What you cannot change: Statblocks, number of monsters, number of traps... Your thesis seems to be - large imbalances between a party's combat ability and an encounter are rare - so don't worry about it. My counter argument is - why don't the LG guidelines allow for DM discretion in combat encounters? Especially with respect to TPK and permanent character death. At a minimum there should be some escape valve - where the characters or DM can say - OK, for whatever reason there is no way this party has the slightest chance to survive this encounter as written. Lets just withdraw from the encounter and everyone survives (perhaps with some equipment loss) but the mission is failed and there is no experience, gold or access gained. My position is of course precipitated by a particularly bad negative play experience (NPE), and is in the interest of helping others and myself avoid future pointless NPEs. Here is the setup: Randomly seated at a convention with four other players. One is a ten-year-old who apparently gained a lot of levels in an insular home game without gaining much practical experience. Two of the adults are playing sub-optimal builds/classes and there are no spellcasters. Suffice it to say that this was an unbalanced, below-average party. The situation would have improved if LG allowed modifiers to APLs for circumstances like the presence of pre-adolescents. But that is not the LG way. The DM is a novice "eating" the adventure. By the end of the second round of the big encounter, it is obvious that the party is totally outclassed and has not the slightest chance of surviving, much less beating the monsters. But that's life in D&D - sometimes you run into a monster you just cannot deal with. At that point the adventure was not yet a NPE. Your post mentioned disengaging. But many module writers set up the encounter to force resolution. In this case the party was outdoors, on foot, in the open and in difficult terrain against three fliers. No chance to get away. The experience turned into a big negative when the DM looked at us apologetically and said something to the effect that there is nothing I can do - I have to play the encounter as written. I was deeply disappointed that the DM, an otherwise nice guy, felt bound by the rules of LG to TPK the party. Now I am relatively new to LG but have been playing D&D on and off for more than 25 years. The D&D that I love focuses on the journey rather than the destination. When running canned adventures, judges (including myself) feel it is in the best interests of all involved to provide an interesting, challenging and ultimately rewarding experience and not a mechanical encounter a la World of Warcraft. So the judge tweaks the difficulty level to provide an appropriate challenge, rewards good play and penalizes stupidity and foolishness. It seems pointless for a judge to feel obligated to waste four hours of the player's time and create bad feelings all around simply because a couple of marginal players running marginal characters randomly assigned to an unbalanced party ran into an unexpectedly tough encounter. In the end the DM caved and pulled his punches. The monsters mauled the party but mysteriously decided to fly off while the group still had one character standing. Needless to say, the experience was not satisfying in any way. Maybe it would have been more rewarding if the DM had simply permanently killed the entire group as the module as written required. Either way, it left me asking - what's the point of LG anyway? Is LG about the journey -playing your character- or the destination -accumulating ARs.
bhale187 01-03-07, 09:00 PM	I don't follow, your theme throughout suggested you were angry that DMs cannot back out of the module's setup when a party is seriously outmatched, and in the end your DM did precisely that, yet are still sounding bitter over the situation. In fact your statements seem to suggest that you became aware very early on that the party was ill-equiped to complete the mission, so why not back out yourself. I know it would suck to pay for the con and spend the time at the table for no reward, but at the same time, one of your suggested options that DMs should have is for the DM to end the encounter and allow the players to walk away with no rewards. Why not just walk away yourself, why is it the DMs responsibilty. The modules are setup in a very strict pattern in order to assure equality of challenge at every session of the particular module, regardless of the DM. If LG told DMs to make all the adjustments they saw fit two things would occur. 1) Weak DMs would cave in to players who beg for a free ride 2) Over-zealous and/or insensible DMs would far too often develop TPK situations.
LGMoses 01-03-07, 10:16 PM	its all about the middle ground man.... Run the mods as close to how they're written as possible but don't be afraid to make changes where necessary.
solbergb 01-04-07, 12:52 AM	My counter argument is - why don't the LG guidelines allow for DM discretion in combat encounters? Because...DM's are far more dangerous to the party than authors are. They absolutely can not gauge how dangerous the encounter is to a party. Every time a Judge has violated the rules to make things "more challenging" to a party that is, say, APL14 playing down to APL12 because the mod caps at 12, the EL went up by more than two. A party can seem to be doing really well, blowing away one encounter only to slam into another that they aren't suited for. The CR/EL system, for all its flaws, actually does a reasonable job of predicting how hard a fight will be for a RANDOM party (an author can make no predictions about party composition). It does a far better job than the Judge at the table, who is thinking about a zillion things trying to do a good job in a 4 hour slot of roleplaying, presenting the plot, setting, location, etc and, yes, playing the monsters the way the author intended. He's now also supposed to second-guess the CR/APL rules and do better? He won't. He'll be worse most of the time. The author had months to think it out, several playtests and oversight of some editors. They also screw up but they actually (by experimental proof) usually don't do too badly. Most encounters are easy enough that a suboptimal party will struggle through them, and a normal party with normal luck will just have a few bad moments in a mod but not really be in serious danger of failing. The bell curve on bad decisions and bad luck is wide enough that the encounters should be scaled about like that. Encounters of that difficulty will occasionally kill characters and sometimes prevent success but won't cause a TPK unless all the bad decisions and bad luck are combined with an already weak party. Judges do have one ability though. They can warn a party at mustering time whether he thinks they're too weak for the APL they're attempting and let them decide if they want to try anyway. He can also, if asked, make a judgement call on whether they'll be ok playing up or not, if the party has a choice of going up or down. The judge is wrong often enough on those kinds of advisements that it's only a little more accurate than flipping a coin, but it does weed out things like a party of 12-13s playing APL14 in a mod stuffed with CL13 blasphemies or an APL2 party playing up to APL4 via riding dogs in a mod where the dogs won't be present in the most difficult fight because it takes place in a ballroom.
solbergb 01-04-07, 01:02 AM	Here is the setup: Randomly seated at a convention with four other players. One is a ten-year-old who apparently gained a lot of levels in an insular home game without gaining much practical experience. Two of the adults are playing sub-optimal builds/classes and there are no spellcasters. Suffice it to say that this was an unbalanced, below-average party. I think I can top that. Party was: L6 sorcerer, L5 barb/sorcerer "tank", L4 druid/riding dog type and L8 cleric playing APL6. This actually isn't so bad, except that the L8 cleric was played by a tired 8 year old and in play was kind of like the cleric had a permanent confusion spell on her. We did have three pretty strong *players* at the table, but none of our characters were especially strong, and the barb/sorc was inferior to a straight barb5 in tanking, although damage output was similar. Judge warned us that we'd have trouble. We said "we came here to play, we won't whine if we don't succeed". Our other option was never playing the module, and we were willing to risk death to do it. Well...we saved a bunch of innocents, won a fight, did a fun dance competition and some roleplay, won a really, really tough knock-down-drag-out battle that required everything we had (except of course most of the cleric's spell slots...she mostly wandered around and occaisonally shot a crossbow bolt). At that point we were done. Our characters had no spell slots, no consumables and pretty much nothing but hitpoint totals and our insane cleric. There was more to do, but we physically couldn't do it, so we walked away, and the boss behind the plot got away...but his plans at least partially thwarted. It was a much better experience than not playing. But part of the discipline of playing in a weak party is knowing when to stop. Ususally you make some progress but your resource burn is much higher than normal. If we'd been able to rest, we would have finished the module, but it wasn't structured like that. It's kind of a lottery - some mods a weak party can get through, others are less forgiving. My point is though that even though we had only partial success that weak party was NOT a negative play experience. We had a blast, and yes, even the 8 year old had fun, although not all of it was connected to the game. Is LG about the journey -playing your character- or the destination -accumulating ARs. The journey. Which is why the judge shouldn't be allowed to turn the river into rapids or build a bridge....in LG the journey is the PC's plus his current companions vs settings that are what they are until the PC's interact with them. The tiering alone causes enough suspension of disbelief problems. We don't need a judge randomizing it too. Occasional failures are ok, especially if the PC's brought it on themselves. The weaker parties successes are all the more sweet, but it would be poisoned if the party felt the judge was softballing them. I'd rather have a partial success I earned (as in example above) than one handed on a silver platter because the judge felt sorry for our weak party.
solbergb 01-04-07, 01:05 AM	Your post mentioned disengaging. But many module writers set up the encounter to force resolution. In this case the party was outdoors, on foot, in the open and in difficult terrain against three fliers. No chance to get away. . For every encounter like that there are 5-6 where you can disengage, it just isn't something the party usually thinks of doing. It's fairly tricky in D&D. Open and difficult terrain? How about getting under cover and making the fliers come down. Nothing like that? Get out the scroll of obscuring mist or the smokesticks and turn it into a close quarters fight. Of course at APL8+, fliers are nothing special. You disengage with stuff like dimension door, wind walk, plane shift or whatever. It's harder at lower levels, but something as simple as having the whole party mounted can allow exit from many bad situations, or avoiding them entirely (ride away from the swarm till it loses interest, then ride arond it now that you know where the wasp nests are) In the situation described, a lot depends on motivations of the flyers. But a fairly typical solution would be for one guy to sacrifice himself by holding their attention (probably the best archer or slowest guy or whatever) while the others flat out run. There you don't have a TPK, but you do save some folks and the death might even be recoverable, if expensive, if the party can sneak back and recover the body or parts thereof. One more thing - you describe a novice DM running a mod he didn't understand very well. You're gonna entrust THAT guy with resetting the difficulty level? Not me. He'll ruin it by making it either too hard or too easy.
LGMoses 01-04-07, 01:12 AM	Yeah, you have to know when to retreat. I've been in parties in home games where we haven't known when its time to just run away. Sometimes its the best option.
Dr.Cornelius 01-04-07, 02:47 AM	There was more to do, but we physically couldn't do it, so we walked away... And would your reaction have been different if the final encounter had been an ambush that you could not just walk away from? I think yes. "Sorry guys - the mod says I have to TPK you..." Consider my suggestion in a different light - what about circumstance modifiers to APL? For example, 8 and 10 year olds. Or late developing builds like a Cleric 3/Wizard 3 that is technically character level 6 but fights more like level 4. Or some longtime LG player's idea of a "fun" character - a clown with 30 ranks in Perform[Kazoo] but no practical contribution to the party. What's wrong with a DM considering a party's situation at mustering or halfway through the adventure and saying: Look - this party is completely outclassed, you don't have a fighting chance - or - You guys are steamrolling the encounters in one round - why not adjust the APL and move on? Whether too high or too low, LG's overly rigid APL system seems to be a recipe for unrewarding adventuring...
Japangirl 01-04-07, 03:05 AM	My problems with the possibility of APL adjustment: 1) Never assume a competent GM. Think of the worst GM you've ever had. The one that didn't know the rules and wasn't interested in making sure the game ran, just that s/he was "right" even though the whole table knew s/he wasn't. Do you really want him/her to adjust APLs up or down? 2) Always assume at least semi-competent players. The player made the effort of getting the character to X level. This is especially valid at about APL 6+. Players are only 1 of 4-6 people at the table, and while having a mediocre player can make the experience less fun, it isn't likely to completely hose a party. Adjusting for player competence isn't fair to the players who are highly competent, because they are being penalized for their abilities. The only way to get better is to be fully challenged and shown the difference between decent, good, and excellent play. 3) Do not assume that a 10 year old is a worse player than a 20 year old or a 40 year old. Anyone can be really bad. Enough said. Help the young player play his/her character better, and use DM discretion, but if the character does something really dumb and dies, so be it. 4) Do not adjust APL for builds that have later power curves. The player knew going into it that s/he would be weak at lower-mid levels, and that is a price they have to pay to get the power later on. Lowering difficulties makes high-level power too painless, in a way. It also penalizes those who forwent the lategame power builds in order to ensure maximum effectiveness throughout the character's career. 5) Do not adjust APL for "fun" characters with very little utility. That person knows s/he is a drain on party resources and chose to play anyways, and the party chose to play with that person. Besides, while it is easy to make a mediocre character, it is surprisingly difficult to make a completely useless one if the player is competent at all. 6) Don't adjust APLs up if the party is steamrolling it. At APL 4, a level 6 wizard + cronies might be a really easy fight for a balanced and powerful table. That same wizard at level 8 with powered up cronies could easily TPK them, as the fireballs are now 8d6 each and there are many more of them, there are two scorching rays per spell, and there can be an Evards or other fourth level spells. What do you do then? Take back the deaths because you messed with the module? It's hard to adjust APL in an appropriate manner without making it too difficult. Also, the party chose to play at the APL they are playing at, so let them cakewalk it. OK, that should about cover it. Basically, you have to go for the lowest common denominator since the judge pool is so varied. The rigid APL system has its flaws, of course, but it's better than one that allows DMs overly much discretion. EDIT: Oops, this wasn't supposed to be this long.
pedr 01-04-07, 04:12 AM	One possibility is to allow players to choose the APL they want to play at, regardless of the table APL. They get the rewards for the APL they play at or the table APL, whichever is lower. So a technically APL 6 party which knows it is underpowered can play at APL 4, or even APL 2 if they are underpowered and tired and just want to experience the module rather than being challenged by it. They'd get the APL 4 (or 2) rewards. Conversely an APL 10 party which plays together a lot, knows that they are very powerful for their APL and have heard rumours that the mod is a bit on the 'easy' side could play up to APL 12... just for the challenge. They'd not get any more rewards, but they'd enjoy the module more. Living Arcanis allows this to a certain extent - the most you can vary from the calculated APL is one tier (so an APL 6 table could play APL 4, 6 or 8).
frupton 01-04-07, 04:39 AM	I'm fairly new to LG, and haven't DM'd an LG game yet, but I don't think it makes sense to be adjusting the APL on the fly. At the outset, you know what your party consists of. That's the time to be deciding if the party is going to be OK at the APL(s) you can play. I've played with some very competent 10-yr-olds. OK, maybe they were 12 yrs old. And I confess I was a bit worried about the table at first, but was pleasantly surprised. Also it was a pretty low APL, so even if I got killed it wasn't going to be a tragedy. I do think that maybe tables should have more flexibility to play down, if the table is concerned that the party has some flaw that will make them overmatched. If you have a table of 3 5th-level characters and 3 4th-level characters with no tank and no cleric, maybe you'd rather play APL 4 instead of being forced to play APL 6. You do take an x.p. and AR access penalty, so this decision won't be made lightly.
Samwise 01-04-07, 01:27 PM	A DM can simply caution a party. I've done that many times and it has meant the difference between an expected TPK (the party came in weaker than a stronger table that I'd previously mauled) and a near cakewalk. Having a DM you trust warn you that he thinks you should strongly consider not playing this slot (or this week or whatever) can be enough to ensure the players start on edge and don't wait for the first 200 damage auto-kill before switching from casual adventure fun mode to LG-slaughterfest mode. And if the DM is wrong? Nothing. The players survive with a bit of wasted sweat. The potential danger is likely obvious so future warnings will still be taken seriously, but one potential player killer has been avoided. That's an all around win to me.
UMiskatonic 01-04-07, 01:44 PM	In this case the party was outdoors, on foot, in the open and in difficult terrain against three fliers. No chance to get away. Well, here's your problem. I'm of the opinion that most really tough encounters are poorly equipped parties in disguise. The good news is that you have a chance to fix this situation with every single AR. Try these actions and purchases: take cover hide negotiate fight defensively ready actions ranged weapons smokesticks horses potion of fly potion of invisibility potion of blur potion of expeditious retreat scroll of obscuring mist scroll of leomund's tiny hut scroll of earthbind (need access) scroll of dimension door scroll of spiritual weapon scroll of windwall scroll of protection from arrows scroll(s) of magic missile
solbergb 01-04-07, 02:21 PM	I'm fairly new to LG, and haven't DM'd an LG game yet, but I don't think it makes sense to be adjusting the APL on the fly. At the outset, you know what your party consists of. That's the time to be deciding if the party is going to be OK at the APL(s) you can play.. You may be new but you've grasped the essential. I do think a judge should warn a party if he's uncomfortable about their chances of surviving with the characters/levels described in the beginning, but in the end it is the player's decision. Getting into a TPK situation after you've been warned that you're being kind of stupid to play the mod with this party at that APL pretty much falls under a learning experience. It can happen to good players too, when we get cocky. At one con a table mustered at APL7 walked over the APL8 module, and we mustered roughtly the same table and tried to repeat the experience and our below-APL saving throws very nearly wiped us out. Ironically it was one of those mutted-out medeocre-to-point-of-almost-useless characters that saved the day, because while multiclassing various caster classes is a bad idea, they do crank your will save to stratosphere and since he had divine levels too, his fort save was awfully good. He couldn't kill the bad guy but he did keep him busy long enough for the rest of us to recover from the bad effects.
LGMoses 01-04-07, 02:24 PM	LG is a magic carpet ride:P
Jay_Ibero_911 01-04-07, 09:06 PM	With regards to the topic title, I'd say that LG fluctuates between both. At first, it's the destination of getting a 1st level character to a specific point in their build that you can really start enjoying their abilities, at which point you do worry less about plowing through mods and actually absorb them a little more. Like my druid for instance, who recently hit level 10. Once I hit level 9, I became quite pleased with his abilities, and he's very durable, so now that I worry less about survival, I do tend to role play much more with him (and he has no shortage of quirks to role play...). The interesting thing about a druid, is it's very hard to make a bad druid build, but very easy to play a druid badly. With respect to the issue of APL adjustment...I think DM's have more than enough leeway with encounter difficulty based just on how they run the monsters. For a very strong party, he can play the creature's more tactically than normal, attacking a party's weak points where he can. Against a weaker party...the monsters could make one or two bad combat decisions that give the party an oppening. For situations where there is a potential TPK because the party can't outrun the bad guys, examine the baddies motives to see whether or not they really would pursue a fleeing party, and if so, how far? Unless the bad guys are specifically out to kill the party, or out to get something from them, they probably wouldn't chase them too far...
MatBlack 01-05-07, 01:03 AM	an unfortunate part of LG is that you won't necessarily get experienced judges. in most cases (especially a convention setting), event organizers will realize that it is in their own best interest to staff the event with the best judges that they can find, but this doesn't happen all the time. i've had my fair share of bad judges. a couple i've been within moments of just walking away from the table completely. but for every bad judge i've had, i've had three excellent judges, at least. the best you can do is roll with the punches as best you can. if you think that the judge really fubarred the whole thing, you can always appeal to the senior gm. most event organizers are an understanding lot, even if they are overstressed. also, and this has been said already, it's always fine to know when to back down as a player. there was one mod i played at a con a few years back where i failed a save against a poison spell in the first encounter of an interactive. it left my frontline fighter with a CON of 4. the party had two other members who were frontlines, and i had little to no chance of being effective at archery. i bit the bullet and sat out the rest of the round. i got an AR with almost no rewards, but in the end, it was worth not having to shell out cash i didn't have on the very likely event of my death. on the judge front, there are usually little steps that judges can take to ensure that the encounters end up being more in line with a party's abilities. one of the biggest is tactics. there's nothing saying that the ogre absolutely has to Power Attack, or that any creature HAS to take an attack of opportunity when one presents itself. i'll admit that i've had to run a few encounters that were vastly overpowered. in one low level mod, as an example, i convieniently forgot to take into account a creature's fast healing ability. the PCs never knew the abilities of what they were fighting, so no one was the wiser at the time, and even neglecting that ability, everyone in the party was in low single digit hit points and completely out of spells and consumables. in the end, the number one rule should be that people get to enjoy themsleves AND be challenged. it falls to those of us judging to find that balance within the framework we have.