Push 'em Real Good
by Chris Young
The only way to discover your limits is to push yourself until you just can't take any more -- and then push some more. Too often, though, players set their limits too low, play too cautiously, and back off too soon. Don't let them!
Talk about this article here.
The only way to discover your limits is to push yourself until you just can't take any more -- and then push some more. Too often, though, players set their limits too low, play too cautiously, and back off too soon. Don't let them!
I think this is great advice, and I do it all of the time. Usually, I force the next encounter, basically making the bad guys go and get the PCs. I think it makes sense because dungeons are not static environments where creatures patiently wait, doing nothing, in their rooms. I imagine they roam around, get bored and shuffle somewhere else, etc...
I also run two (or sometimes three) encounters into one long, pitched battle. It irritates me to hear talk of needing an extended (or short) rest too soon because someone used one daily early. It's meta-gamey and not in the spirit of the game.
Of course, I do this all responsibly. If dice rolls are hurting the party and some bad luck or bad timing is indeed gonna cause some undue harm, I'll be less aggressive.
I also run two (or sometimes three) encounters into one long, pitched battle. It irritates me to hear talk of needing an extended (or short) rest too soon because someone used one daily early. It's meta-gamey and not in the spirit of the game.
My players consistently have shown to dislike encounters strung together, because they take so much longer (not as many encounter powers to go around especially, so it's duller) and more damaging because they can't fight as well -- not because of any particular increase in difficulty.
Maybe if you reduce those occurrences, they will be able to truck on longer. It may be that they want to stop to rest up just in case they run across another monumental battle around the corner...
Dungeon
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Push 'em Real Good
by Chris Young
The only way to discover your limits is to push yourself until you just
can't take any more -- and then push some more.
Bah. Bad advice. Missing a lot of the context that would allow it to work.
The least fun thing I can imagine is beating on a big bag of hit points when there's nothing you can do that makes sense from a tactical perspective than to just keep beating on it. If you can't do anything cool, you're just waiting to see if you can roll higher than the DM... That sucks. It's almost exactly the opposite of fun.
If the "push" encounter is set up to allow you to be clever, then there might be something. If a bull-rush would actually make sense (terrain elements that do more damage than an at-will attack), if tactical maneuvering matters, if there's something you can do that's better than throwing a rock, then maybe.
But if anything you do is worse than just attacking with your at-wills, or you don't have the HP to do anything but run away, and your only choices are between bad and worse...
But this is a recipe for disaster in the hands of the unwary.
1) The combat encounters take so much more time now. We normally play for 3-4 hours, once per week. In that time, the most action we've ever seen is 2 encounters. If you take Treasure of Talon Pass as an example of a standard dungeon crawl, then that's 4-6 weeks of playing if not more. From a timing standpoint, I don't see how to constantly drain these guys and not allow them to replenish. The time just isn't there to do all that. They have a week to figure out what they need to do and in turn I have created an environment instead where they are frequently debating resting. They don't cheapen the game by taking many rests on top of each other so they are always at max strength because they're good players. It's a group decision. Sometimes that means you protect a needed party member knowing he is low or out of surges. Sometimes it means you rest. But I would not push the party into a tough battle for the sake of doing so. Because that leads to:
2) Frequent death. This is something I have seen reported in many places, on many forums. That's where the current "Playtesters" are all residing. And not because the new system builds drama with many deaths now. That's fun. I mean final death. And as we all know, final death isn't fun. I think the conservation and expenditure of resources is an extremely fun element. It's crazy fun. But I wouldn't push the characters into a more than 50/50 shot at death based on low resources in any given encounter. In fact, I fear the heck out of that in this new game. I don't see where someone creatively using a sunrod is an excuse to potentially kill the front line fighter. But there are exceptions like:
3) Creatively using the character sheet in a low-level encounter when resources are low. And I think for me that's the bottom line here. You can push your PCs on, but you better be really smart about that final battle you're pushing them into. Because in the new game, math is everything when it comes to combat. And if that final battle is designed to be a memorable one where you fight the boss and his crew or a solo, that's not the time to push the party and I am surprised that's the advice given in this column.
I rarely use these forums. I made the mistake of questioning artwork, was misunderstood and walked into a buzzsaw I didn't see coming. But I had to comment on this one because I strongly disagree with the premise of it in the brave new world of 4th edition.
As for Kilpatds, I think I agree with you entirely. This article was not properly spelled out enough and as he said, this would be a recipe for disaster in the hands of the DM that follows this article blindly, unprepared for the reality of a) no fun or b) final death.
Most groups can afford to be pushed a bit more than they are, and overcoming an encounter or two when the proverbial chips are down is enjoyable for the players and DM. Obviously, this requires more skill from the DM, and tactical play from the players based on the foe and environment.
If the DM creates many combats where the PCs' only choice is At-Wills, that will quickly become chore-like.
He's not entirely wrong. There are times that PCs do need to be pushed, but like anything else in the DM Bag o' Tricks, it should be used sparingly. Case in point: while I was running "Rescue at Rivenroar," the PCs managed to activate the scrying pool, and saw one of the people they were trying to rescue tied to an altar. Bad news, clearly. This gave them an overriding goal: find her before it's too late. They pushed through encounters until both defenders were out of surges, and eventually found her.
Once in awhile, it's good; if there's an NPC-du-jour that shows up to say, "They're about to break the Maguffin and summon Bob the Evil Demon From Beyond!", it's bad.
One last thing. This article ended saying, "And with that, they kicked in the door, to be continued this week. I can't wait to see what happens." Wouldn't it be great if the editorial started by saying, "So, they all died."?
It's an editorial, not a real article, and as such, it's the editor's soapbox. If he wants to spend an editorial giving the recipe for the brownies he made for his last session, well, it's his space. He can do with it what he wants.
Agreed. I can still disagree with the advice given.
He's not entirely wrong. There are times that PCs do need to be pushed, but like anything else in the DM Bag o' Tricks, it should be used sparingly.
The point of this trick is to push the PCs out of their normal game plan. If every fight goes down the same way, if every encounter has the same powers used in the same sequence, this trick is a good way to shake things up.
Force the players to see that there are other things on the sheet. Force them to look around the room for other things they can do. Force them to think.
But ... and it's an important but ... There Has to be Other things on the sheet, or other things in the room.
If not, you've changed their battle plan from being "Battle-Plan-A" to being "and now we all die, having no fun and no options".
If they should be using the room more, then make sure it makes sense to do so. (Kicking someone into the camp fire should do more damage than the at-will they decided to not use. DMG P185 has a very handy table.) Don't claim you want more interesting encounters, then punish people who step outside the lines by making their actions suck in the name of balance.
If they should be using other things, exploring their powers more, make sure they have some. Don't pull this on 1st level PCs and expect anything other than death.
Ok... You can push them but that seems to be the biggest problem I find and keep hearing about 4th edition. Ya, you can push them, but that's because they've changed the game so much that everyone is becoming independent of needing a group.
When I started playing you needed to cooperate with your team mates to make it through a dungeon... But now they've made it so you have this illusion that your actions can be completely independent of the group; practically solo like. I hate this new 4th edition.
And don't get me wrong... I understand why they designed it this way. We have a whole new generation of people who are used to playing W.O.W. and running through a D&D game totally independently. That's all they did was take D&D and turn it into a board game as closely resembling to W.O.W. as they could.
Only now, we've got players who don't know what they're doing and have no interest in playing as a team. So you can push and push them all you want... But in the end, when one person runs out of surges or what they think makes them powerful they are the first person high-tailing it out of there and the game goes to hell.
I'm sorry. But this change to 4th edition was the worst thing HASBRO and WIZARDS OF THE COAST ever did to D&D.
-Charles
P.S. And if you want to reply to me send the email to [email]xman053@yahoo.com[/email]... I have no problem defending my point of view or giving yours a fair shake.
As for the healing thing, again, my party views things the other way. It's always discussed and not once has an extended rest been forced selfishly on the group. This is why I say it's most likely the PC's. I think we're having very different experiences and I think I am admittedly in the minority here. When I saw this article initially I feared the worst when clearly it's designed to help those in the jam your crew or crews seem to find your games in. Until I read this article I never even suspected this was an issue and still I am surprised. I think the players need to be forced into stretches of activity where resource conservation is the key to survival. Not frequent resting and recouping, but the act of conservation itself.
Anyway, just a suggestion. When & if you reply, just want to say I am looking for respectful debate and not argument or a shouting match. But even moreso, if you could site examples of what you have run into I would be curious to read about them. I don't live on the boards so pardon my naivite if this is all over the place already and sorry to make you rehash if you have already done so at length elsewhere.