SoDs

[User3]

Why not just have Death Oil, a combination of common herbs and spices? It'll prevent Non-Wishes/Miracles from working.

[RandomCasualty]

The problem with having a feat like that is that you're basically screwing the fighter by forcing him to take it. Getting spells that do that kinda stuff is automatic, you get it just by gaining spell levels anyway. So by making the fighter waste a feat slot is pretty cruel.

If anything, that needs to be a universal ability that all characters get after reaching a certain level or number of hit dice. This at least does not force fighters to spend a slot on a feat slot that does nothing except let them kill people semi-permanently, and even at higher levels, it's not like miracles or wishes are going to be that rare, so the feat isn't even a sure thing.

I'm with Frank's suggestion. Eliminate death from general combat procedure, and have it be something that happens in non-combat situations.

[Username17]

The problem with having a feat like that is that you're basically screwing the fighter by forcing him to take it.

No... but close. The problem is that it makes no difference whether it is "difficult" for enemies to be brought back from the dead because whether and when they are brought back or not is already at the whim of the story-line. If you hit an NPC with a requirement to use a miracle to be restored to life, then he'll still come back if it's dramatically appropriate or not if it isn't.

Nothing has actually changed in this scenario, because the exact number of ninth level spell slots available to the opposing forces is not tabulated on a day-to-day basis. Making the enemy side non-specifically use up one more at some point in the indeterminate future makes no difference.

So you aren't forcing player character fighters to get this feat or spend anything. There's no reason at all for them to invest in it. It's like taking a feat that makes you "look wicked awesome". Unfortunately, the reciprocal is not true for use against the Player Characters, because their number of ninth level slots is determined on a day-to-day basis.

So what you are really doing is adding another kind of monster to the game that the players will have to periodically cough up miracles to bypass. I have no idea why you would want to do that.

-Username17

[rapanui]

Here's another solution: have death be a consequence of combat, and be completely and utterly final except in the most completely extraordinary circumstances (think Jesus here).

If you accept that as a paradigm, many changes need to be made to the game so that it is still fun to the players. For starters, most battles should be against harmless mooks that the players get to slay by the dozens to show of their powers (and deplete their resources before the big battle). Then, when fighting opponents of equal or slightly higher skill battles should be resolved more slowly... as in it should take at least 10 rounds (1 minute) for the battle to be resolved, in order to give the players a chance to solve the "tactical puzzle" of the BBEG.

Result: the game poses challenge (the solvable tactical puzzle), a threat (death), and fun (slaying the mooks in fancy shmancy ways).

[Username17]

Result: the game poses challenge (the solvable tactical puzzle), a threat (death), and fun (slaying the mooks in fancy shmancy ways).

Result 2: The game is short.

That sort of thing works really well for a one-off game, but if you want to have continuing characters for a year of play-time, that just isn't going to work. At all.

If actual death is a real consequence of combat, then every time you face non-mook opposition you're going to lose 0-2 characters out of a 4 player party. That's dramatically appropriate for a "final game", but not so much for a "first game". After all, if you do that three times you'll have run through basically the entire original cast.

In short, what you are talking about is a War Game, and not a Role Playing Game. Continuity is impossible over the long haul in such a scenario, so that's not a valid option.

-Username17

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Not if the DM runs it intelligently and the party realizes how dangerous combat is. Then they don't get into combat so recklessly, and combat only happens when its dramatically appropriate(That is, in plot combats, of which there shouldn't be many)

This helps remedy somwhat the "Well, I've thought about this situation for three whole minutes now, and I can't think of anything, so let's just go kill stuff" mentality that sadly permeates the game to much.

-Des

[User3]

1088096554[/unixtime]]Not if the DM runs it intelligently and the party realizes how dangerous combat is. Then they don't get into combat so recklessly, and combat only happens when its dramatically appropriate(That is, in plot combats, of which there shouldn't be many)

A game where combat is a much more serious business, and where people approach it with great wariness and then only when they've exhausted just about every other possible solution, isn't a bad idea at all. (Nor a new one, but nevermind.)

It's also an idea that pretty much represents the antithesis of the way D&D is at present. Running a combat-light campaign under rules designed for swords-and-sorcery fighting is a little like entering the Indy 500 in a speedboat; why not just start with a game system the mechanics of which better suit your concept of the campaign?

--d.

[The_Hanged_Man]

1088096554[/unixtime]]Not if the DM runs it intelligently and the party realizes how dangerous combat is. Then they don't get into combat so recklessly, and combat only happens when its dramatically appropriate(That is, in plot combats, of which there shouldn't be many)

This helps remedy somwhat the "Well, I've thought about this situation for three whole minutes now, and I can't think of anything, so let's just go kill stuff" mentality that sadly permeates the game to much.

-Des

If you've played a lot of Modern, you know how true this is. Since there's no coming back from death, and little healing even, combat is interesting. COmbat itself doesn't take long - but planning for it is. Players want to find out everything about a situation first, try other options, plan in excruciating detail what to do . . .

Not necessarily a bad thing, but the game becomes reeeeaaaaallllyyyy slow. Just something to keep in mind.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

1088098168[/unixtime]]It's also an idea that pretty much represents the antithesis of the way D&D is at present. Running a combat-light campaign under rules designed for swords-and-sorcery fighting is a little like entering the Indy 500 in a speedboat; why not just start with a game system the mechanics of which better suit your concept of the campaign?

--d.

What makes you say that?

-Desdan

[User3]

1088102745[/unixtime]]
What makes you say that?

The desire to have the mechanics I play under support the style of game I want to run, without requiring a lot of systems hackery on my part and a lot of knowledge of house rules on my players' part.

No tool is equally good for everything. I don't use a penknife if I want to dig a hole; I don't use a shovel if I want to cut an apple. So I don't use D&D for games I don't find it well-suited to, which includes games where combat is an extremely rare occurrence that's mainly there to serve the plot. The whole reason I have bookcases full of RPGs in the first place is precisely so I can select a system that mechanically supports the kind of game I want to play from the get-go. And I don't mean "supports" in the sense of "well, sure, you can play anything with any rules"; I mean "supports" in the way that, say, Pendragon supports Arthurian knights with its systems for Glory, Passions, etc. etc.

If you want to re-jigger D&D as it is now to suit a completely different style of game -- the kind of grittily realistic combat where death is an everpresent danger every time you pick up a weapon, and where therefore you don't pick up a weapon much -- hey; go for it. I wouldn't think it'd be a particularly easy task, and I personally would rather just pick a system that already handles it well, or at least better than D&D does. But if for whatever reason that isn't an option you're willing to make use of, then you might as well fix the system you're stuck with to be more like the game you want.

--d.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I... meant "What makes you think that D&D doesn't at all work for combat-lite games?". Not "Explain to me this notion of not wanting to use d20 for a game".

-Desdan

[Username17]

D&D has hundreds of pages devoted to combat manuvers, combat spells, and special combat abilities.

It has one skill for gathering information outside of a combat situation. It is called "Gather Information" and it allows you to gain clues known by the populace in a vague sort of way.

D&D has no mechanics for looking up information in books at all.

Enough said. D&D simply has no mechanics for puzzling through a complicated plot. But it has a lot of mechanics for ploughing through a complicated fight. There is little reason to even use the D&D mechanics if what you want is a detective plot, because the mechanics just aren't there. You might as well be playing magical tea party or pretty princess dress up.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1088110277[/unixtime]]
Enough said. D&D simply has no mechanics for puzzling through a complicated plot. But it has a lot of mechanics for ploughing through a complicated fight. There is little reason to even use the D&D mechanics if what you want is a detective plot, because the mechanics just aren't there. You might as well be playing magical tea party or pretty princess dress up.

Sure it does. D&D has divination spells, sense motive, search and gather information, and that's all you really need for a detective plot. In fact you don't even need divinations.

The thing with non-combat plots is that most of the time people don't want to be rolling a lot of dice, so mechanics don't matter much. You have plenty of mechanics for gathering evidence and that's all you need. The fun of the detective story is the PCs actually putting the peices together, and that requires pretty much nothing in the way of mechanics. As with any puzzle oriented game, puzzle players want to actually solve the puzzle themselves, not roll a dice to see if they solved it or not, because that wouldn't be fun anyway.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Gather information covers research too, and if you expect people to have to comb through books regularly, the mechanics are already written up in Modern as the Research skill. Just make it a class skill for Wizard, Bard, and Cleric and cross-class for everyone else.

I've run mysteries, and I've run combat-light games myself, even using basic D&D rules, so those who say D&D isn't good for that is IMO mistaken, and those who, like our guest, claim that it can't be used for it at all are just plain wrong.

-Desdan

[User3]

1088112540[/unixtime]]
I've run mysteries, and I've run combat-light games myself, even using basic D&D rules, so those who say D&D isn't good for that is IMO mistaken, and those who, like our guest, claim that it can't be used for it at all are just plain wrong.

I've never claimed D&D can't be used for combat-lite games. Yes, of course it can be. Shoot, I could run a political intrigue campaign using the rules from "World of Synnibar" if I was in a deeply sado-maso mood. What I said is that it isn't well-suited for them.

And it's not. Frank explains why very adequately. If you're not going to run a game that has a lot of combat -- why on Earth would you pick a system that explicitly expects a lot of combat and lavishes hundreds of pages on preparing for it, resolving it, the monsters you can fight, and the loot you get for beating them? Because your players won't play anything else? Then play it, by all means, but it wouldn't be my first choice.

I seriously don't understand what the confusion is here. D&D is a game built around fireball-flinging, sword-swinging, back-stabbing, undead-blasting characters who gladly leap into battle against the forces of evil when the opportunity arises. If you want to play D&D as a gritty, realistic game of hard-core combat that nobody ever wants to engage in, I'm certainly not going to tell you you're wrong, but that's not what the game is ultimately built to support.

--d.

[Draco_Argentum]

1088111212[/unixtime]]
Sure it does. D&D has divination spells, sense motive, search and gather information, and that's all you really need for a detective plot. In fact you don't even need divinations.

Replace need with want.

[Username17]

Gather information covers research too, and if you expect people to have to comb through books regularly, the mechanics are already written up in Modern as the Research skill. Just make it a class skill for Wizard, Bard, and Cleric and cross-class for everyone else.

Sure. Whatever. We could write in new mechanics and ad hoc every single other aspect of a research propelled detective genre adventure as well. And we'd have to.

D&D has no mechanics for lingual dialects, and speaking a language is handled on a binary basis. There isn't even a place on your character sheet to note that you can order food in a hobgoblin establishment. The default language system is that there is a magical language called "Common" that everyone speaks!

And so on and so forth. If you try to bend the game into something that it's not, you're going to be making shit up off the top of your head. Which means that you don't even have a game system, you're just making shit up off the top of your head. You can theoretically use any game system to represent any genre or style of storytelling, but only by resorting to the Oberoni fallacy - by essentially making up an entirely new shadow game system to mold the game system you are theoretically playing into whatever it is that you are trying to do.

By the time you make D&D into a game system which is not combat-centric, you are no longer playing D&D. You are playing some other game which is in fact using little or none of the original mechanics.

The D&D mechanics have your entire social ability as a single number, with another number representing how much exposition you get from the DM when NPCs talk. And of the eleven basic character classes, five of them don't get either number.

There's nowhere on your character sheet to record what social groups you run with, no place on your character sheet to list contacts or enemies. They can be added, but the difference between adding to a game and writing a new game is nonexistant.

Playing non-combat D&D is like playing non-combat Warhammer Fantasy Battle. You can do it, but you don't even have a game system where you are going. It's just exactly like cooperative storytelling around a campfire at that point.

You don't need figures for that. You don't even need dice, books, or character sheets. Really. That's how far into the world of make believe you have to go to make D&D work in a non-combat oriented fashion.

There are no rules in D&D for the way a Fighter is able to do any of the things that he does in an intrigue situation. Not "the rules are inadequate", there are no rules at all. And that's the bottom line.

-Username17

[rapanui]

Frank said:

"Result 2: The game is short.

That sort of thing works really well for a one-off game, but if you want to have continuing characters for a year of play-time, that just isn't going to work. At all.

If actual death is a real consequence of combat, then every time you face non-mook opposition you're going to lose 0-2 characters out of a 4 player party. That's dramatically appropriate for a "final game", but not so much for a "first game". After all, if you do that three times you'll have run through basically the entire original cast.

In short, what you are talking about is a War Game, and not a Role Playing Game. Continuity is impossible over the long haul in such a scenario, so that's not a valid option."

In truth, yes. What I want is a roleplaying game with a War Game like feel.

You note that in D&D there is a high death toll on non-mook encounter. That could be changed. Generally, if combat goes on for longer, players are able to figure out their best tactical options. Meanwhile the DM plays the non-mook as someone caught in the midst of combat, with no time to analyze his best tactical options. The fact that the players are on a different time scale (real world time) for analyzing their moves gives them the advantage they need to be heroes.

If done correctly, this would allow PCs to fight, say, a party of their same level, and all come out alive say... 95% of the time. Across 20 levels, that's only 1 dead person, the victim of truly foul luck.

"GM is pulling punches" you say. In a sense, yes. The GMs job would be to provide a tactical scenario, but then act as the villain would if s/h/it were caught in the midst of deadly combat situation. Despite the Dm pulling a few punches, the combat would be more relevant to the players and characters, as it has the capacity to be truly deadly.

"It's also an idea that pretty much represents the antithesis of the way D&D is at present."

It isn't a complete antithesis. The game in mind doesn't have to even be combat-light. Most fights (75%) are against mooks. The fight that has the potential to be really deadly, passes slowly so that characters could figure things out.

It IS different though, I'll grant that. Characters would have to be defensively superior in the sense that they shouldn't die in the first round of combat because they got hit with an attack they are weak against.

[Username17]

Let's try this again:

If player characters are removed from a battle, they must be easily returnable to combat readiness if the story is to have meaningful continuity.

Player characters must be removed from combat fairly often or the game won't "feel" challenging, regardless of the actual odds of victory or defeat.

---

So no, your proposed system does not work. It won't feel challenging because characters don't seem to go down much, and then arbitrarily you'll lose story continuity abruptly and irrevocably later on.

If you really want a highly "mortal" game, I suggest that you have a game in which players play multiple characters, and then actually kill these characters off from time to time. That way a player will still have continuity because some of their characters are always there, and the individuals will still be extremely mortal as they will go down and stay that way with some regularity.

One player for one character simply doesn't work unless those characters can be repaird with considerable facility.

-Username17