D&D vs. Sports: Part 2

In my younger days, I played a lot of sports: baseball, hockey, soccer, football... all pretty much except basketball, which I have zero talent for. Hell, occasionally, on D&D nights in the summer, we'd occasionally decide to skip the game so we could play some scrub ball or play four-on-four tag football; because we had the warm bodies and it felt wrong to be inside a stuffy room when the whole outdoors was cooling in the evening. I don't hate sports: I respect them. This is why when I want a metaphor for D&D, I automatically reach for sports and not some board game.

During those league or scrub games, one of the conversations on the table was not how the game needed to be changed to make it "more interesting." Habitually, those who watch sports are quite comfortable that the game being played between the Stars and the Broncos this year follows essentially the same rule set, structure, field size, strategy set and guts as a game between the two teams in 1994. Nobody minds. It's time to ask ourselves why.

The interest in sports does not arise from what the rules will permit "this" time. It comes from watching an ongoing process in which individuals are dealing with difficult situations in real time, then producing strategies to manage those situations on the fly, not knowing for certain that they will work. This creates a constant sense of urgency, impelled in part by a clock but also by a willingness to force one's way past an opponent in order to succeed against unknown odds. The spectator can watch those plans unfold; they can watch players make instantaneous choices, produce unexpected intuitiveness in a throw, a catch, while overcoming failures such as being hit with the ball, tripping, falling, the ball being caught in one's glove, the ball taking an irrational bounce that is still, miraculously, fielded despite the discrepancy. Sports aren't always logical; goofy things can happen and the sport permits that... it even thrives off that.

This is a distinction that D&D combat fails to achieve. The dice are supposed to introduce the equivalent of the above "goofiness"... but the game as written is too simplistic for that. The battle map is often too small for free action, the number of choices a player has is limited by "what is most effective" because each ability is designed unto that player class; there are too few rules that define how one player's actions adjust another player's success in real time, as opposed to merely being a spell that A uses to enhance B. Most war battle games introduce uncertainty through defensive fire during an enemy's movement, morale checks, the presence of rout, support weapon malfunctions, repair attempts, leader loss, concealed units, the presence of mines and other hidden hazards, smoke, wind... D&D has critical hits and fumbles. The battle sequence is too static, too sequenced... and the attempt to alter that, by having everyone roll initiative separately, only creates a repetitive, tired additionally predictive sequence. The game doesn't sustain the sort of uncertainty sports does, not because rules can't do this... but because D&D chooses not to.

In researching this post, I watched too much of this video, from which I am now suffering tramatic blackouts. At 28 minutes in, Mercer produces a set-piece of the battle map with is split into multiple parts, to the unquestionably sincere OOOO's and AHHH's of the players.

At 33 minutes, Mercer is still wetting himself about it:

"...each floating island that used to be the top of Entropis as they slowly shift, held in place and rotate around, the storm still cycling around you... they're floating, and now held in place by these green tethers, and they're slowly shifting."

And the immediate answer to this?

Travis: "Hasted, can I attempt to leap from this island to the one that Vax is currently on?"

Mercer: "Yeah. Make an athletics check."

There you are. That's the whole problem, right there in a nutshell.

Oh, you don't see it?

Yes, true enough, "hasted" related to running distance, launch speed and reaction time, but it's not an increase to dexterity, so the referent here is immaterial; and yes, there is an issue that with the islands sweeping around, Mercer simply reduces that to a "check"... a decorative distance overcome by a die roll. But the larger point is this:

After FOUR minutes of blather, and physical models, and all this hype and bullshit, the player's first question is, "Can I perform an action that ignores all that?" and Mercer's answer is "Yes."

Uncertainty is what makes sports interesting. D&D, and games like it, have abandoned uncertainty because, gee, despite all this prep, we can't actually make the player fight on his own island... can we?

A football field, a clock, a recently injured player and the decision whether to pass, run or kick has more gravitas. Without even trying and without that decision being unusual to any given football game. Even if we reduce the pass, say, to a die roll, then the snap has to be one too, and the centre's ability to block, and the other blockers beside, and the quarterback's ability to back, and the runner's ability to get clear, cover the ground, get into position, be seen by the quarterback, who has to dodge a tackle the blocker failed again, throwing the ball, the ball flying right, the receiver catching it, the receiver getting such-and-such number of steps before getting hit... what, that's twenty die rolls? A lot with low thresholds and not all of them needing to be perfect... but it's not ONE roll, now is it? Just give it a moment and think about that.

The snap need not be perfect; it needs to be manageable. The block need not stop the defender indefinitely; it may only need to delay him for two seconds. The quarterback’s retreat may be shortened because pressure comes through. The receiver may be forced off the intended route, forcing the quarterback to notice the change. The throw may be slightly behind, requiring an adjustment. The catch may be insecure, but held long enough. The receiver may then gain three yards rather than twelve because another defender arrives. Success is not singular... but the pattern of successes and almosts and outright failures produces a wide range of possible outcomes that in turn produce situations that must be managed if we're going to consider the game consisting of more than one pass. This is the structure D&D flagrantly chooses to ignore. It isn't willing to consider the detail of how a ball that is snapped well but not perfectly affects the whole performance down the line. There's no room in that for the game's play, which permits no play. It permits pass/fail results, and only that.

Can I ignore your set up if I roll a 15 or less? Sure.

Is there more to the Vecna battle? Yes, of course. Apart from the two meteor swarms, Grog at one point gets removed from the field, Vecna repeatedly targets Scanlan, Scanlan is reduced to one hit point and then knocked unconscious, Vecna attempts to teleport away. But the party's position is never really threatened. They're never in the third quarter and ten points down; it's not the bottom of the eighth and they've got two outs. It just isn't ever like that. It just rambles on and on with descriptions, before conveniently Grog's banishment is broken, outside allies arrive in waves like the cavalry, Pike's Mass Heel returns every member of the Voc to full health... it's a five hour horror of shite-blathering on an epic scale. Of course they were going to win. The channel needed them to win.

In essence, present D&D, with the way setbacks are reversed, is like playing football if the stadium owner can simply tell the techies at some random point in the game to add "15" to the home team's score. And this being considered normal and acceptable by all the club owners.

It is this last corrosive element that has brought the entire culture around to believing this is an example of "good play." None of the players get dead, right? Then it's fine.

Yet it isn't about just the dead bodies. AD&D has plenty of dead bodies and the combat system is still shit... which is why I beat that one to death with the last post. A system that merely includes a "wait to die" feature as hit points run out is not a "better" game... it's just still shit for other reasons. Those who relish that system have just convinced themselves that there's a tension in watching hit points decline, knowing zero is nearing... but that doesn't make the preceding rounds more interactive, more positional and more responsive to player choice. AD&D combat is essentially watching a slow moving roulette wheel where one has to wait seven to ten rounds to pass before learning if it landed on red or black. If red, where we bet, sure, of course we cheer. But cheering because it's not black gets tiresome for most people.

Most people who play D&D quit D&D. That is a hard pill to swallow for the "I'm still playing after 30 years" crowd. But there are far more of them than there are of us. Thirty years of play may demonstrate commitment, but it doesn't answer why so many people experiencing the process quit after a few years. It's easy to dismiss those people as "not the D&D type," but that sort of self-selection among the fanatics is suspect. It's far harder to admit that maybe D&D in the long run isn't sustainable because it is, in large part, actually a pretty shitty game.

I'm not going to get into why I purport to love the game, or the evidence that my solution for this has been to redesign the thing entirely, so that I'm not actually playing the same D&D as anyone else. Instead, I'm going to simply draw all this out as evidence that those who argue that the game must be played as written for "reasons" like "it's a better game" or "it makes more sense when played that way" are really just talking past the problems the original game and all it's illegitimate children have: an effectively defective DNA problem related to a combat system that has never been meaningfully addressed in any significant way. I think it falls into the classification of those who argue vociferously that the Masarati is a "good car." It's good in a few ways, a few specific ways, having a lot to do with feelings and emotional gratification and status. But the distinction misses the point when something that has to spend so many months out of a year in a shop that finds it difficult to make new parts work on the device is called a "car." The Masarati is a good toy. A good car is something that a person can count on for transport every day.

D&D provides the same kind of defense. It has evocative classes, a rich concept, monsters, spells, advancement, treasure, fantasy identity and a long, emotional history as a social phenomenon. But do these things actually make a "good game"?  I don't think they do. I think, for some, they form some kind of deeply felt sort of process that serves a specific need that some people have. It's not a sustainable service for that need, because it has to be shifted and changed and adjusted constantly, like a house that in constant renovation not because the bathroom, the kitchen or the rec room need to be sorted, but because the renovation itself is the point.  A sport, on the other hand, is the sort of game that works because it does... most of them have been in existence for more than a century and they seem to be doing fine. D&D has been around for half a century and it still doesn't work properly. Maybe that's because the whole thing as manifested now simply shouldn't.

The classes, monsters, spells, treasure and fantasy identities create attachment. They give people something to imagine, collect, discuss, revise and identify with. The game then survives by continually supplying new arrangements of those elements. New editions, subclasses, feats, monsters, settings, encounter procedures and balancing revisions keep the renovation going. That is why the game can remain perpetually defective without collapsing. The defect generates capital for those who benefit from making changes; those who seek stability get nothing. Unlike sport, there's no way to capitalise "established" D&D because the participants have been trained to deny such a thing should exist.

Makes me feel, generally, like the last thing a person should get interested in should be this game... because if they do, it has no good place to take them.

D&D vs. Sports: Part 1

Whereas most people tend to think of the quintessential depiction of D&D as four or five adventurers sitting around a tavern, either getting the adventure given to them or celebrating their success, I'm apt to think instead about the above: the moment when the party, consequence be damned, hurls themselves into an enemy of unknown power and size, only to then let the dice sort it out. This is the game as originally conceived: a war game. This is the substance of the game when it really grabs at the emotional strings of the participants, when FEAR is actually something that's felt, because one's character, one's effort to reach this point with that character, one's faith that the party'll think their way through the struggle, whatever happens, is at it's peak.

Yet most game rule changes that have happened in the last four decades as been designed to alleviate that fear and, in consequence, make the above scene boring. Dice rolled in succession, to produce numbers that don't matter, in a procedure that's irrelevant because we know we're either going to win, or we know we're going to escape with our lives, even if one of us has to die and be raised, so we can come back and win. There is no "losing" here. The game is rigged.

Even if this is one of those campaigns where a group of characters CAN die, the next group of characters will get better die rolls when they try and they'll win. And that is the relevant point, because it's not that the next group of players will have learned anything, except maybe which enemy to attack first. D&D as written, early D&D, isn't a very tactical game. It is a very roll-and-slog designed game, which is why Chainmail never became remotely as popular as Squad Leader, Panzerblitz, System Seven, Axis & Allies or even RISK. Tactically, Chainmail sucks. Which is why the D&D combat system sucks. Which is why the game's combat system alone was not sufficient to maintain the game as it was... in the end, after all the cleverness with character class creation, spells, saving throws, to hit, hit points, levels, magic items and monsters... the actual combat system was a flop. Still is. But a flop that people pretend isn't, because all that other stuff is so cool.

Don't misunderstand me. I thought the combat system was awfully rich and neat when I first began to play; but the bloom was falling off the rose about four years later, which was something that my players and I, a group all raised on many tactical boardgames, began to discuss at length. It was clear that the error wasn't any of the things named above. And it was clear that the turn-based-system was not the issue. All strategic combat games are a turn-based-system... and it was possible, obvious even, that it was possible to simulate the sense of two great armies slamming into each other despite that. No, the problem was something else.

This post is not about the solution; I did solve it, ages ago, but that's not the subject material here. Rather, the subject here — to start — is to explain why the system as written, with the basic structure that has not been changed, because it's baked in, is fundamentally weak without appearing to be. I'll start with a portion of D&D that, at the time I began writing this blog in 2008, I still considered an excellent description of how combat should play out. Ah, how I have changed.

On page 71-72 of the original DMG, an example of melee is given, which I'd like to break down section by section. This will take a while.

"Party A (player characters) is composed of Aggro the Axe, a 4th level fighter; Abner, a 5th level magic-user; Arkayn, a 4th level cleric; and Arlanni, a 2nd level thief. They are hastening down a dungeon corridor in order to avoid an encounter with a large group of goblins, whose territory they are now leaving. It is a ten-foot wide corridor and they are moving with the cleric, fighter, and thief in a line in front, followed closely by the magic-user. Suddenly they round a bend and confront Party B, who are earnestly engaged in squabbling over some treasure. Party B is composed of Gutboy Barrelhouse, a 6th level dwarf fighter; Balto, a 1st level monk; Blastum, a 4th level magic-user; and Barjin, a 4th/5th level half-elf fighter/magic-user."

Let's start first by pointing out that most of the above is window dressing. "Hastening" is immaterial to the example, as are the goblins being left behind or the limits of "territory" the goblins have. The width of the corridor is mentioned but, as you'll see, it is irrelevant to the fight that's described. We are given everyone's class and level, which does matter... but as will be seen, again, these classes are more or less just shells that the players wear around their form of attack and the number of hit points they have.

So you can see, we're inventing a lot of prose that more or less romantises detail, which is then discarded almost immediately.

"The first thing the DM must do is determine if either party is surprised. He rolls a d6 for Party B (where the players can see it, since there are no secret modifiers) and a 2 comes up. The leader for the players rolls and gets a 4 for Party A. Party B is surprised (since they rolled a 2), and will be inactive for 2 segments."

The fact that Party A is "hastening" ought to make it clear how they are coming around the corner; the noise they're making in a 10-foot wide "dungeon corridor," almost always depicted at that time as stone, would announce their arrival at least a hundred, more likely two hundred feet away underground. Party B would not, in any realistic way, be surprised, since they'd have heard Party A coming and would be lying in wait. Even if they were arguing, the argument would be suspended at the sound of four persons, two in armour, coming closer and closer and closer. So, right off, "surprise" simply ignores reality. It is a die roll that permits no context.

Further, as written, the players have no engagement here. The DM rolls for both the players and the NPCs (whichever is which). Why not let the players roll for the players? It's more or less a largely meaningless roll, but hey, why not? And why would the DM want it? There is enough for the DM to do, that the DM can assign tasks to the players, such as rolling surprise dice.

As a small point, that does rack up with a lot of combat play, the round/segment separation (10 segments per round) was always confusing and never properly explained. Yet the game, as written, insisted on embracing it when other, far more complicated systems, understood that fixing TIME as a non-changing but CLEAR variable, allowed the players to comprehend more easily what was going on. The confusion of two or three kinds of "time" (the "turn" was 10 rounds) tended to create comprehension difficulties that merely urged many players to simply zone out... not because the system was too difficult, but because it was so unclear why these stipulations existed. As well, the value in game terms of knowing the distinctions was non-existent. One did not become a better tactician by understanding the difference between a round and a segment.

"Next the DM checks distance, and finds that the parties are only 10' apart—sufficiently near to close and strike."

The "distance checking" here seems to impose a strategic factor, but it really doesn't. The DM has not "checked" the size of the corridor, the presence of the characters in it or presumably anything else they haven't seen. Presumably, if the DM has designed the dungeon, and the dungeon has Party B in it, then the DM ought to have provided the exact location of Party B at that time, and not now when Party A happens to turn the corner. Presumably, the rest of the corridor's length is accounted for beyond Party B, and the DM knows that as well. Therefore, the distance check is just window dressing, again. In any case, even if Party A were moving silent, if Party B were ten feet from a blind corner, then presumably they'd have looked around this blind corner before stopping here to have a parley about treasure. There are four members of Party B. Presumably they are not all engaged in an argument so convenient that they are together all talking at the same time, while having forgotten they're in a dungeon where wandering monsters occur (as they do in all D&D dungeons).

"Party A immediately recognizes Party B as a group of "evil marauders" they were warned against and moves to attack. First, Arlanni the thief, who had her sling ready (as the player had stated previous to the encounter), fires a shot at Blastum, who is obviously a magic-user. A sling bullet gains +3 "to hit" vs. no armor. Arlanni would usually need an 11 to hit, but now needs only an 8. She rolls a 5, and misses."

Now, here the combat begins to resolve. What matters here isn't the procedure or the manner in which a "ready sling" is interpreted... let's wave all that as irrelevant. The larger reveal here is that the set up, two parties not in conflict, permits no real "tactical judgment" at all. The characters have one attack; Arlanni's is the sling she possesses. We create a "logic" for her to fire at Blastum ("obviously" the mage) except the "obvious" is a metagame knowledge, i.e., only a mage enters a dungeon without armour. No armour, ipso facto, must be the mage. It isn't that another class might have had their armour eaten away by acid or dragon breath, no; it isn't that the character might not be able to afford armour; or that they've simply chosen not to wear it for encumbrance purposes. No, it is pre-determined that the character without armour is the mage... thus, flattening the procedure by telling the character with the weapon that gets a bonus against AC 10 should obviously attack the opponent with AC 10.

That sounds like a tactic, but it isn't. When the rules exaggerate one specific action by giving benefits to that specific action, then taking that specific action isn't tactical, it's falling off a log. This is something D&D does again and again with its combat system. It works because there are a lot of specific tactical benefits, but once the players know what they are, it's plug-and-play, not a tactical endeavour.

Moreover, we can't even argue from the above that Arlanni uses the sling because it brings the benefit: it states plainly that she had it ready before meeting the enemy, before the surprise check, before coming around the corner. It was use the sling or don't attack this round.

All this together makes the succeed/fail roll look worse. Effectively, the attack could be carried out by throwing the die in front of a stuffed dummy with an Arlanni name tag. And this is how a lot of players come to feel when someone shoves a die at them, then roll it, they get a 5, they're told they missed, and the play moves on to some other player. There's no sense of "engagement," because the others at the table are telling the player "this is what you do here." Again, this is an example of play equivalent to turning a roulette wheel.

"Aggro the fighter rushes forward to attack the nearest opponent, who happens to be Balto, the monk. Balto is wearing no armor, so Aggro needs a base 8 to hit Balto. However, Aggro is using a + 1 hand axe, and furthermore an axe is + 1 to hit vs. no armor, so Aggro's adjusted amount needed to hit is only 6 (or, alternately, the cumulative +2 could be added to whatever he rolls to improve his chances of rolling an 8 or better). Aggro rolls a 14 and hits Balto, but only 1 point of damage is rolled, plus a 1 point bonus from the magic axe (2 points total), and Balto can take 4."

The fighter has little else he can do; he might throw a weapon but at this range it's fight anyway and his hand weapon has a potential for greater damage. "Happens" to be Balto is an expression of the way that D&D was played in those days: there's no battle map, so the DM just states the character in front of Aggro, either deciding arbitrarily or having the dice decide. Aggro is not asked, "Which do you fight," nor is it expected he will obviously state that from the above. Players always do state it, in which case DMs often simply say, no, you can't fight the mage, he's over there, you can fight the monk. This again removes any tactical relevance to Aggro's efforts other than rolling a die to see what happens. He might as well be sitting on the sidelines of a game and urging on a batter, for all the relevance his decision makes in the process. The procedure then also resolves without him: miss/hit with calculated modifiers, roll damage, record damage. 

"Meanwhile, Abner and Arkayn have been preparing short (first level) spells. The cleric shouts a command of "surrender!" at Gutboy Barrelhouse, but Gutboy is 6th level and thus gets a saving throw. Furthermore, he is a dwarf with a constitution of 16, and thus saves at +4. He therefore needs a 10 or better to save (instead of a 14). He rolls a 17 and saves easily. Unfortunately, he is almost simultaneously hit by two magic missiles from Abner, the magic-user. Against these there is no save, and Gutboy suffers 6 points of damage (from a possible 4-10)."

Again... Abner is a mage, Arkayn is a cleric. Within the rule set, casting a spell is mechanically no different from Arlanni's sling. There's no cost to casting, except a temporary loss of the spell (a loss that would be "fixed" by later systems); they are not made vulnerable by weaving magic. Thus, there's no sense to their not using their sharpest weapon at this time.

Arkayn even at 4th doesn't have a lot of attack options; hold person would be more effective; perhaps he's used it or hasn't "loaded" it, as they say. Command is a 1st level spell, allows the use of a subjunctive verb (look it up) and a single one at that: "surrender" is a fair option. There aren't many good ones. Kneel, collapse, sleep... some of my old timey players liked "defecate" or "urinate," which is reasonably something that effectively distracts the recipient for the one-round duration of the spell. It doesn't matter. Arkayn, like Arlanni, is using the best arrow in his bow at this point and it's subject to a saving throw... so, in effect, it is the most obvious action with a succeed/failure roll and... not tactical, since any other better option would have been used here. Later, Arkayn gives up magic and just fights.

Abner's two magic missiles are the same logic: the best bullet in his gun. The "hit" is bookkeeping, automatic: needed to win the battle, perhaps, but the obvious thing done at the most obvious time.

Abner doesn't target the other mage (for reasons that aren't clear, since he can "see" what Arlanni sees, that the obvious mage is the more dangerous enemy, but the example here needs everyone in Party B to be threatened so, there we are. Nothing tactical is taking place here except the example is arbitrarily assigning everyone their individual target.

Would targeting the mage be the better tactic? Well, that's worthy discussion. But it's not part of the discussion in the DMG. And it should be.

My opinion of it after 46 years of D&D is that the magic missile does not do enough damage to meaningfully change either option. Either Blastum is such a low level mage that six damage is effective enough to kill him, in which case he was never dangerous, or he's dangerous enough mage that he can shake off six or ten points and still cast as soon as Gutboy puts himself between the mage and whomever else. Either the spell you've got can do the job against the dangerous opponent, or it can't, and you have no tactical control over that. Which, again, is why the system has flaws. Most tactical games are fought on open fields: large scale maps, open plains, desert scapes, street battles fought at a difference over scattered terrain. D&D is normally fought in a tiny enclosed spaces where the fighters can block access to the mages who can blast whatever they can reach. So, effectively, it doesn't matter who Abner targets. It amounts to "let's see who gets lucky."

"As Party B is surprised for 2 segments, Party A has a chance to hit in each segment as if they were full rounds (this does not apply to spell use, of course). In the second segment, Arlanni chooses to set down her crossbow and unsheathe her sword.

The example has forgotten that Arlanni is using a sling. The crossbow would take time to load, so that is a tactical decision... but loading it in this closed space would, from experience with battle, be the wrong decision, so she's again just doing what she most obviously should.

"Aggro would normally get another chance to hit Balto, who would be inactive for another segment, but Balto's dexterity allows him a +1 reaction adjustment, which means that he personally will be surprised for one less segment than the rest of his party. So this segment he IS up and on his guard, and Aggro does not get another hit attempt this round."

By sheer chance, though monks must have a 15 or greater dexterity to be their class, Balto happens to be the one among the enemy who is exempt from this second attack. However, the rules don't explain why or how Aggro is "engaged" with Balto in such a manner that he cannot instead swing on Gutboy or someone else, in this cramped 10 foot wide hallway where presumably everyone arguing was together, and are now not close enough together to be targeted as a group, though they were "surprised." Normally in D&D, if attacking two or more opponents, the combatant is permitted to attack WHICH opponent they wish. But here there is nothing to tell Aggro how far away Gutboy is, or whether or not Aggro is allowed to move away or around Balto now that they're engaged... no, it's described above as though Aggro's feet (being the one not surprised) are now stuck in amber after having attacked one of the enemy's number.

This is the game strategic limitation imposed by non-map tactics. A segment is described as "six seconds." In six seconds, in my youth, I used to be able to run a distance of 40 yards easily. That's 120 feet, twelve times the distance between the parties at the outset of this fight. But my fighter can't reach Gutboy, who must be standing to the monk's left or right, because somehow he successfully blocks me despite being surprised enough for me to fight him one round?

"Arkayn the cleric readies his mace..."

Arkayn hasn't another attack spell; a mace makes sense. It inexplicably takes him six seconds to get the mace off his belt and "ready;" Arlanni has the same problem above finding her sword. These are not weapons designed to take more than a second or two to "get ready," but that draw speed for different weapons, say a dagger vs. a halberd, IS described on page 66-67 of the same DMG (five pages earlier), where it's said that the "speed factor" is indicative of "how long it takes to reading a weapon against an opponent," but then it fails to give any hard detail for this "how long" that is applicable here or anywhere else.

Speed factor on those pages is not translated into seconds or segments, and no rule uses it to determine how long Arkayn needs to draw his mace or Arlanni needs to put down one weapon and draw another. The number is only activated under special initiative circumstances after combatants are already prepared to fight. Reading the text reveals it's an idea of a rule that never resolves into anything that's comprehensible. Even the book's own example of combat simply causes the character's to both skip their attacks on account of drawing weapons.

"...as Abner steps back and begins to unroll a scroll for use next round."

This looks like a tactical decision; Abner does not draw a weapon, he chooses to seek out a resource, a magic item, and use that instead. However, there's no explanation of where this scroll was kept on his body; the scroll is apparently not in a case, which would have to be gotten, then the case opened, then the scroll taken out, then the scroll unrolled, and all this presumably with him moving backward so he isn't jostled by the fight while all this is happening. Or did he have it in his hand when casting magic missile, or running down the hall from the goblins? How is it this relatively fragile thing comes so easy to hand? Why he is left alone to do this is explained only by the 1 segment he has left before the enemy is no longer surprised — so what then? Is there a risk involved here? If there is, it's potentially tactical for Abner to choose this option.

The missing map matters again. How far does he "step back?" Is Arkayn now between him and Party B? Does the corridor permit Aggro and Arkayn to form a barrier? Can an enemy move around them? The sentence gives Abner the benefit of positioning without requiring anyone to establish or defend that position. In like manner the scroll is treated as an option on a menu rather than as a physical object.

"Now initiative dice are rolled, and party A's score is lower, so party B gets to react to the assault. Balto attacks Aggro (who is in AC 2) with his staff. He needs a base 18 to hit, and the -7 armor class adjustment for sword vs. plate mail and shield makes this a 20. He (the DM) rolls a 19 —almost, but not quite! Gutboy Barrelhouse and Barjin the fighter/magic-user both attack Arkayn. That cleric's AC is only 5. Gutboy has +l to hit due to strength, and his hammer's armor class adjustment vs. scale mail and shield is + 1, so he needs a 9 or better to hit (1 1 before bonuses). He rolls a 12 and hits for 5 points of damage (including 1 point of bonus damage from strength). Barjin, with a sword, needs a 13 or better to hit Arkayn. He rolls a 13 exactly, and hits for 6 more points of damage. Arkayn is starting to have second thoughts about this whole affair."

At this point, we can see that the attacks above are utterly procedural and not tactical. Plus Balto's not using a sword vs. plate mail and -7 from a base 18 means he needs a 25, not a 20, so... let's just skip that. The point is, none of this makes sense. Gutboy's teaming up with Barjin is arbitrary; it makes more sense for the 6th level dwarf to go after the heavily armoured fighter Aggro, sparing the 1st level monk from fighting him alone; Barjin the 4th/5th level can master a flimsy cleric who has one spell to cast, and command at that. These are the tactical choices here, but there being ignored because... the lack of a map? The DM throwing arbitrary choices at the NPCs? Who knows.

This is a good time to talk about game damage in the original system. Damage, when it occurs, is meaningless if it does not kill. Arkayn may feel unnerved by how many fewer hit points he has, but his effectiveness in combat is unchanged whether he takes 1 damage or 11, as he does here. All he need do is have "second thoughts." His body, presumably the thing taking the damage, is not physically affected by the hits, nor does it get in the way of Arkayn returning an attack as though he's just been landed on by a fly.

This makes combat into bookkeeping in a most extreme way. At lower level, the "zero" is closer, and thus every point feels a little more important... so long as we understand this feeling rests entirely in the player's mind. At higher level, the distance to zero is so great, and the effect so meaningless, that it actively makes playing higher level characters less interesting. Combine this lack of effect with the mass benefits of healing at higher levels, and the combat system is positively a snooze-fest.

"Meanwhile, Blastum has been preparing a shocking grasp spell, and now he steps forward and touches (rolls a successful "to hit" die score) Arlanni the thief, delivering 10 points of damage (1-8 + 4). There is no saving throw: Arlanni has only 8 hit points, and dies."

Again, as a tactical system, this simply blows through several processes. One segment before this "round" began, Blastum was so inert he could not move, he could do nothing but defend himself while Arlanni's sling stone flew past his ears. Now, instantly (so far at the game round matters), he has the spell cast, has it invested into his body, has moved forward to where he can reach Arlanni (presumably not behind anyone, despite the 10 foot corridor and the people fighting), so he can reach out his hand and touch her, killing her instantly. They haven't fought hand to hand at any point prior to this, but she lost initiative so the other can move anywhere on the battle map he wishes as a mage and kill whomever he can hit with his hand. We do not even have a declaration that Arlanni advanced after drawing her sword. So, while Aggro cannot attack someone other than Balto, Blastum can walk past Aggro, past Arkayn, past three of his own people, in a ten foot corridor, and attack the thief at the back.

Nice.

If he could do this, why didn't he go after the mage with the scroll in hand? Because Abner "stepped back"? Is that all it takes to avoid all fighting thereafter?

This is sufficient to make the point. We have something that pretends to be a combat system, but isn't. And since, the same sort of assumptions that exist in the above still exist in the later systems that have copied this procedure, only making it more obstructive by having everyone in the combat roll initiative every single round, as though in any way that improves the tactical structure lacking here. We are still running systems that are effectively instant magic in the place of instant sword swinging, however complicated the kind of sword magic being done, to produce non-tactical results that are just "the next thing to do is to attack the next person."

Fifth edition improves the scaffolding that is missing, yes: it establishes combatants’ positions, gives each creature a definite space, reach and movement rate, restricts movement through hostile creatures, permits movement before and after an action... and provides explicit rules for dash, disengage, dodge, ready, grappling, shoving, cover and opportunity attacks. In a ten-foot corridor, Aggro and Arkayn can occupy the two five-foot spaces across its width; Blastum cannot simply walk through them to touch Arlanni. That particular absurdity has been corrected.

But in many games the map remains optional... and the rules still begin by saying that the DM establishes where everyone is. Consequently, theatre-of-the-mind play can reproduce the same problem in a slightly better-regulated form: the player asks whether a target is reachable and the DM announces whether the imagined position permits it. Fifth edition gives the DM firmer rules for answering, but unless the battlefield is visibly recorded, the player may still be discovering spatial facts only after proposing an action.

And though damaging a caster can break concentration, that's still the most obvious choice to make. And while shoving can move or knock down an opponent, and grappling can stop movement, that's still usually the most obvious thing to do when an opponent needs to be dealt with in some other way than attacking. These are not really a collection of choices one makes, it's just the next obvious action when the enemy is somewhere that they need to be pushed or slowed or toppled or sapped. Fifth edition has increased the number of things an attack can do, but that is not the same as increasing tactical judgment. It has mostly enlarged the library of prescribed responses.

A caster is concentrating, so attack the caster. An enemy stands near a ledge, so push the enemy. Someone needs to be prevented from moving, so grapple or slow that person. An opponent relies upon accurate attacks, so sap the opponent. Once the relevant condition appears, the system often indicates the appropriate button plainly enough that choosing it is little more than recognising a cue.

Genuine tactical decisions require competing benefits; arrange these defenses and those attacks to drive this enemy in this manner there, so they can be trapped thusly or split apart and attacked in smaller groups. Unless the players have the rule sets that allow them to organise themselves in such a manner that they can move over a map that permits BOTH freedom of movement AND rational obstacles that prevent it, then every battle becomes close, fight until the hit points go away and then slog forward.

The most telling demonstration of this is, I think, that there is a tendency among "let's play" video content to "spice up" combat scenes with meaningless non-game cutscene dialogue that the DM indulges in to provide more context and meaning to the ongoing scene... while, in fact, the dice seem to matter less and less to the outcome. It's rather egregious but it's also evidence that battle, as the game rules dictate, is boring. That does not venture well for the value of D&D as a construction other than collaborative inventive role-playing dreck. Which is why, I feel, the concept has drifted without restraint into that direction. We're not here to fight the monster. We're hear to listen to the DM describe how we fight the monster.

All this begs the question: why go into this level of depth on this process? What is this post trying to prove? That original D&D failed? If so, then the news is a bit behind the times.

Granted. All this, however, is not to prove that the combat system as written sucks, but specifically how and why it sucks: because it is not sports.

I've been writing this post since yesterday; I'm going to post this and continue on part two.

Session 5: Fight!

Most of the session consisted of setting up for this fight, having the fight, then sharing out the treasure and experience after. The battle consisted of 9 goblins with 7 to 10 hit points each (goblin soldiers-at-arms, hardened, selected for unusual constitutions) and one "cavewight," which is the equivalent of the AD&D ogre... though augmented through the cult he'd organised around himself, and a total of 44 hit points. In addition, two ochre jellies, whose presence was inexplicable... even more so since they did not attack the goblins but rather ignored them, while freely attacking the party. So, in all, 12 opponents against six party members, levelled 5, 4, 2, 2, 2 and 1.

The battle was close. I am sorry that I did not take screen shots throughout, I simply didn't think of it, trying to manage combat rules that I've forgotten, which the players knew and had to keep calling me out on. It's a trifle embarrassing, but I felt it proved the wiki's value, since the players were using the wiki's rules to correct me. That's how a rule system is supposed to work.

Mikael the mage, 2nd level, suffered most, after likewise probably landing the most successful hit of the game. The black border around the shrine is a five-foot wide pit, which the cavewight was pressed against when Mikael hit him with an attack, knocking him back across the gap and taking him out of the fight at a critical moment. That gave a chance for Pandred to deal with the second jelly (the first had been killed early) while the others managed goblins for a time before the cavewight could get back into it. That breather, I believed, was much needed. Unfortunately, Mikael was knocked down to -3 by an attack by a goblin... then got in the way of the jelly, the average damage of which would have killed him. The jelly did five damage, leaving the mage with -8... whereupon a miraculous 2 in 20 roll was made that allowed the mage to retain consciousness. Left with only the ability to move one hex per round, without the ability to fight, and with his intelligence being essentially between 3 and 4, the character just tried to keep from being hit. Unfortunately, the cavewight had gotten back in the fight by then, had remembered Mikael, and came forward to crush him — only to miss the mage by 1 point. Mikael lived, while Pandred finished off the cavewight; two of the goblins broke ranks by failing morale and the players were able to mop up.

Ti, going into the battle weak, kept to the outskirts and struggled through the fight. Xoltan missed and missed and was missed and was missed. By round eight or nine, he had still not done a point of damage or suffered one. But both characters kept opponents busy and off the backs of Lexent and Pandred, the highest levelled characters. Pandred was wounded early and bled steadily for at least six or seven rounds; Lexent was also wounded, but neither could do anything about it, since they were needed to keep fighting. It's an awesome image... the combatants bleeding from open wounds, still fighting, keeping the rest of the party alive under difficult conditions.

And a call-out to Arduin, Pandred's hench; the faerie fire spell, plus Lexent's dust devil, were unquestionably both effective; Mikael's telling hit would not have landed without the former, and it would not have stunned if the latter had not bled the cavewight's hit points. Well played, all around.

Treasure offered an average of a thousand experience to everyone in the party; I had to be reminded of my proposed rule, that silver give 1 x.p. for every three coins, regardless of silver's value compared to gold, and 1 x.p. for every four coins of copper. I think that rule works well, as it means I don't have to pile up 55,000 copper to make it worthwhile. A few thousand were enough. The total weight of treasure was 170 lb. — though I'm not certain if that includes the gem or not:

This monster common opal, size shown by the 8 in. tall bullseye lantern (not counting handle), weighs 61 lb., 1 oz., and is worth a thousand gold pieces in Ozd/Miskolc, where the party is. If they can get it out of the Sanjak, the political province where they are, it will be worth more. Broken into pieces and polished, it's probably worth ten times as much. The party chose to split the experience for it. An opal of this size is extremely rare; an opal mine might find a head-sized opal once in a lifetime. The above is liable to be found once in a century. The party checked it for magic and it has none. They managed to heft it out, but the risk of moving it is that if found by a random guard, either an Ottoman in the empire they're in, or a customs' patrol should they try to smuggle it into Hungary, they'll either get dinged so hard for the tariff that it won't be profitable, or it'll be simply grabbed. I don't know how much the party understands about this yet, but I'm sure these smart guys have thought about it.

Anyway, that was the running on Friday, pretty much. Next game is the 17th.

P.S.,

Two things I forgot.

The above is the experience for combat only, experienced by the participants.

The other is that the whole combat, using my "complex" system, took about 2 hours and 45 minutes to play. And that's online; it would have been faster in person. I understand this is fast, compared to how normal D&D, and especially 5e, would do with a total of 18 combatants. I know there are some who have trouble with "tactical" combat, but one thing: it isn't boring.

Cornered

Our next step is to question whether or not combat is an inevitable part of D&D. Traditionally, it has been, as players in various circumstances carry weapons and wear armour for a reason, and not for show. However, with later badly structured combat systems in place, there are many DMs who eschew combat, preferring to focus on other aspects of gameplay, because the mechanics of combat can be sluggish, dragging down the pace of the game and making it boring for both the players and the dungeon master.

It seems obvious, given the failure of the official community to rationally address this problem, that we must address it ourselves. Some advocate that we should twist ourselves into pretzels, adopting time-saving strategies meant to compress moments in combat down to their bare minimum, strategising the way that die modifiers are added up in advance, or demanding players respond with their actions near-instantaneously, to compensate for the rules being radically diverse and complex.

A better answer, it would seem, would be to adopt a top-down approach to fixing the problem. If an automobile becomes so complex that the driver must adopt so many strategies to cope with it that it ends in back problems and a headache at the end of a three hour drive, the solution is not to find a better position in which to sit in order to drive the car. The solution is to sell the damn thing and buy one that drives more easily. In a way, this describes the choice taken by many DMs, who do feel that if the combat system doesn't perform well, get rid of it. But while I suggest getting a better system, they prefer to get rid of the system entirely and replace it by resolving conflicts through social interactions, clever solutions or careful navigation of the world's dangers... treating combat in the game like the addage, "whomsoever throws the first punch loses the argument."

D&D is not a social dispute, however; it's a game, not a moral high ground promoting the idea that violence is the last resort. Violence in D&D is an intentional aspect of the game, with an expansive rule set intended to moderate it, reward for it and frankly encourage it. Combat isn't a fallback or a failure of diplomacy, it's a key part of the adventuring experience.

The real challenge, then, isn't in avoiding combat, but in making combat work. This demands that it be interesting, fluid, easy to play and integral to the players' actions. Our first step is to accept that yes, we have the right to rethink those parts of the combat system that we don't want to be part of our game, going forward. There's a common belief, especially among some DMs, that the rules as written (RAW) are sacrosanct, that to change them is somehow betraying the integrity of the game. But it’s essential that we challenge this notion, because the rules are just tools created by ordinary designers — people who may not have anticipated every style of play, and who certainly aren't sitting next to us as we try to use the contraption they've designed.

The functionality of D&D must continually be questioned if we are to understand our control and mastery of the game, though the experience that we require. We need our game, including the combat system, to be effective and as easy to manage as possible, given that so many aspects of having to control the players, the narrative and the overall demands of the game are already very, very complex. Like anything else that needs to be designed, it's our privilege to look at a part of the game and think, "How can this be done better." In this manner, human beings have improved everything, from flint axes to rocket ships. Our privilege in this process is absolute. It is our game. No designer or official representative of the game takes precedence over our will or that of our players. We have to run this thing; it's our right to fix it, just like we would anything that we buy and which we must use every day, to meet our standard. Empowerment is key here: we are in control, our judgment about what works and what doesn't is valid, and thus we should go about slashing and burning parts of the system as we see fit. Damn those who are not at our table who think otherwise.

But where to start? We must, after all, identify those parts of the combat system that are dragging down the experience and see why. First, let's consider elements of complexity that are bogging down the game's flow. This includes issues such as the initiative system and its aggravating turn order, which must be rescheduled with every round. This process creates dead time where players lose focus and become disengaged, while the changing order creates a confusion about whose turn it is. Why not just establish a set order based upon, say, dexterity, or intelligence, and have it stay that way in perpetuity. Then Oliver knows he always follows Janine, who always follows Dave, so that the person who follows Oliver knows precisely how much time there's left before it time to declare his or her own actions.

We can minimise spellcasting complexity, and at the same time undercut how powerful the spells are by limiting their scope and effectiveness. Force players to find some other way to innovate than by allowing them to invent forty ways each spell might be made useful in some odd and unique situation, which only creates a long-lasting dialogue around, "What if I do this, or that, or this other thing, or possibly this..." and so on endlessly, as the non-spellcasters sit around and wait, wait, wait.

Excessive adjustments to die rolls create enormous problems with combat flow, with nearly every throw being modified in some odd way; deciding which way to modify a throw, additionally, creates a decision paralysis that frequently holds up the game, while the need to be accurate about the totalling of modifiers does also. This constant math in the middle of what should be a fast-paced, exciting part of the game reduces the process to an ugly mathematical problem that, in reality, adds very, very little to the emotional benefit the characters gain. By simply eliminating dozens of adjustments that applies to most players, this has the effect of reducing the number of modifiers without actually changing the power levels of the combatants in respect to one another. And without the time spent on players who make a fetish of stacking modifiers, they, too, have to apply themselves to other solutions in order to improve their combat effectiveness.

We could also consider issues having to do with hit point tracking, specifically the escalation of numbers for damage and hit points. The reason for this shift appears to have been an attempt by game designers to create a more epic and powerful feel for the combat, especially at higher levels. Imaginably, when characters deal out numbers like 40 damage, this is supposed to be significant. Similarly, having creatures with hundreds of hit points also feel more "epic" when a party is facing something massive, like a dragon. The increase in hit points also allows for longer, more drawn-out fights, which can work for some playstyles but ends up bogging down the game for many.

How is it actually a better design to do 40 damage against a creature with 200 hit points than it was to do 5 damage against something with 25 hit points? The experience of the players is the same. The higher numbers adds mental arithmetic and make combat feel longer without increasing the tactical complexity, with a psychological impact that is short-lived, and negligible in any case. Human beings quickly adapt to the change, making the higher numbers appear meaninglessly elevated, while sacrificing the immediacy of combat resolution. When the numbers were smaller, the effect of an attack could be seen at once; with the DM having to constantly adjust totals in the hundreds, it creates a drag on the game.

This said, fixing this problem is an enormous undertaking. It would require a DM to go through a dozen books, page by page, and personally scale down the numbers, which is a time-consuming and complex process. And since all official materials promote these same inflated numbers, every time a new purchase is made, it means more of the same painstaking work... followed by the necessity of teaching one's players to re-adopt numbers that make sense, but which aren't in line with their memories and habits. The problem, then, is virtually insolvable for anyone without a mad sense of righting things, which does not describe the typical dungeon master. In a fashion, then, everyone is forced to deal with this same absolutely unnecessary change to the rules, more or less with our being made into the company's bitch. We are more or less helpless in having to manage the new game's bloated numbers, even when we recognise that they're bloated for no good reason.

This is the reason why many DMs simply accept the system and try to bend themselves to it, rather than fix the system. The car in this case has been deliberately built to be undrivable... and to some degree, the car has cornered the market so that all the cars we might want to buy are undrivable. The way out of this mess and mayhem is long and tedious and without an easy end in sight... but anyone who styles themself as a dungeon master who intends to still be doing this in ten years time must recognise the necessity of addressing these issues as something that CAN'T BE FIXED EASILY. Rationally, it is better to return to an earlier game version of D&D, prior to these changes being made, and add things that we like from later editions. Then, rather than a long period spent tearing down, we are renovating and building up instead, taking a game with less troubles to start with and building it into a game with some later characteristics, but not necessarily all of them.

As stated already, the goal here is empowerment. As a DM, we shall always do better when the game is what we want it to be. This, obviously, isn't simple, and there's no getting around that. There are few drivers who decide that the best way to get the car they want is to build one themself in their garage, over the space of years... but here I am advocating exactly this mentality if what's wanted is a smooth, practical, immersive game. IF car companies the world over were dedicated to making undrivable cars, then more drivers WOULD be making their own car in their own basement — this would become, unquestionably, a world-wide phenomenon, until the car makers changed their ways and adopted a more sensible product. This author did not invent this problem; it merely exists, of it's own accord, and the solution is not one that can be gotten around in some other way.

Disappointment

Oooooooh ... I've been sick.  So sick.  Not covid, just a cold, and in any case I'm shot full for that anyway.  Meant to write some posts this week and I've crashed and audiobooked my week instead.  Felt up to working today on the wiki some.  Time to write here.

Monday I wrote about my party's fight with a drow elf and some gargoyles.  As the title says, our subject today is disappointments, exactly the sort that come of throwing dice in the open and the continuous possibility of loss, which I steadfastly build into my rules.

I said that last week I felt like my old DM self.  That included being on my feet for much of the game, moving around the table, hovering over player shoulders, watching people's die rolls, which I know is an unusual behaviour for a DM.  Some might call it, um, oppressive.  Am I going to look at your character sheets?  No, probably not, but if you're going to make a roll that might drastically alter the consequences of this combat, then yes, I'm going to come over and watch that die roll.

There are two stories in this post, and the first hinges on Ivan, the 10th level thief.  Ivan is my son-in-law's character, and the henchfolk of the 12th level druid Pikel, whom I occasionally mention on this blog.  When Pikel was a young low-level druid, he was a spongy thing that the party constantly had to rescue to keep alive.  His spells weren't that much, his starting hit point rolls weak, his strength and constitution stats near non-existent ... yet the player is a smart fellow and Pikel managed to limp along until finally getting his first henchfolk at 5th level, Ivan.

Now, one might expect tottering-in-a-light breeze Pikel to want a fighter to stand in front of him, but upon reaching 5th Pikel was just starting to come into his own.  The third level druid spells make a big difference, at least in my game.  Ivan, however, was a strange choice.  The player certainly has the dark turn of mind that's needed to play a traditional thief (no weeny-ass rogues, please), but in truth my son in law relies pretty hard on game metrics.  Give him a metric and he'll bend it twenty ways until it looks like a balloon animal ... but for most of my game world's existence the thieving abilities have always been mostly shit.  AD&D's rules are mendacious to say the least and I think very, very little of what 2nd and 3rd editions tried.  My own efforts up to 2014 were repeatedly frustrating, largely for reasons discussed in this post.

As such, to BE a thief in my game, one has had to be metric fluid.  Steadily, since 2014, I've been creating a set of sage abilities for the thief, most of which remain unbuilt at this time — yet the structure is proving rational and as each new part is added, Ivan's player has been finding the thief an easier character to play.  With the last session, he patiently worked his way through the sage ability I call stealth (discussed on the blog here) and acting upon them, using the huge floorspace available, was able to work his way around for a chance at backstabbing the 7th level drow.

Now, a few points about that.  First of all, I don't really consider the attack as literally "backstabbing."  That's just a convenient term to use.  In actual fact, if you want to run your weapon through an enemy in order to kill them, there are multiple points on a body that are completely effective, both back and front.  The real key to the attack is surprise.  If you're a thief and you surprise your opponent, then yes, you get a pretty good chance to pick the target point of your weapon and get a lot of damage in.  The drow had 56 hit points, so he needed just 14 to stun.  Some here are familiar with my stun lock rules.  I cleaned mine up on Tuesday, just as my cold was taking hold.

The reader should take note that the stealth rules have nothing to do with surprise.  They have to do with getting close to the enemy, so that if the enemy is surprised, you're right there.  Ivan dropped his pack, his wings, every weapon but his short sword to lighten himself sufficiently to get a better bonus.  Though that wouldn't have served him well if he hadn't succeeded in surprising the drow.

But, identifying the roll, and identifying that his chance to surprise was 2 in 6, I rolled the die in front of the whole table and yes, a 2 came up.  Big cheers all around.

Ivan hasn't backstabbed anyone in a long time.  Like I said, doesn't really think like a thief.  Honestly, the player thinks more like a really dangerously smart spellcaster.  Keeps the party alive a lot of the time.  In this case, Ivan was quite surprised to learn that as a 10th level thief (and here I still use the old AD&D rule) that his damage was quadruple, not the double he expected.  He owns a Players Handbook but with so many rule changes in my game, most of my players don't read it.

Ivan rolled and hit.  He moderately lamented not rolling a natural 20, making the damage 8 times, but as he adds +3 damage to the d6 for his short sword, he felt pretty good.  By then I was lurking behind his chair, watching him roll.  Usually, he rolls very well.  Scarily well, I have to say.  But, in this case, he rolled a 1.  Four damage, times four, equals 16.  Stunned the drow, but now Ivan faced a combatant with 40 hit points left, 100 feet from the rest of the party who were fighting the three gargoyles, without much hope of support.

Yet he could have really ended the fight right there.

There'd been good luck leading up to that point.  The surprise roll, the dice he rolled for stealth, the successful to hit roll ... and 16 is not bad damage.  And in the end, Ivan walked away from the fight, albeit with a lot fewer hit points.  When the drow unleashed with the prismatic blade he had, lots of people took a lot of damage.

The player took it well.  No shouting, no lamenting, no repeated references to the 1 (except that the next time he was able to do damage, he rolled a 1 again).  Hurt though ... to get quadruple damage and not achieve total wreckage.

The other half of this story weaves around the character Hof.  Hof is a burly 6th level fighter with an 18/51 strength (I have no idea how to explain that to 5e people, except to provide a link) that gives him +2 to hit on his attack roll and +3 damage, in a game where 12 points is quite a bit of damage.  Hof also uses a +2 trident of warning (link is to the original DM's Guide) that he's been carrying around for awhile.  Hof also has an 18 constitution so that at 6th level he has 60 hit points.

In the combat he absolutely slaughtered the first gargoyle single-handed, and was moving onto the second one.  With weapon and strength together, he pile-drives every hit with 2d4+5 damage, which is an average of 10.  And the player running Hof also tends to roll well.

Hof at this point has lost a suit of +1 armour to the prismatic blade, the first attack the drow made before recharging his weapon while Ivan crept up.  The armour failed saving throw and cracked in two.  It's not stopping him from clubbing the second gargoyle to pieces however, which is good because half the party lacks the weapons to hurt one at all.

Hof also gets 5 attacks every 4 rounds.  In my game, this means he has to go 3 rounds at 1 attack per round ... and then in 4th round, he gets two attacks.  At this point, Hof hasn't missed; he had his three attacks and I cannot tell you the thrill of excitement he got as he reached for two 20-sided, declaring happily that it was his two-attack round.

He rolled a 1 and a 2.

I linked the critical hits and fumbles page already, but here it is again.  The picture shown here is also on that page.

If that was all, we wouldn't be talking about it.  But the player running Hof had to make another d20 roll and, in front of all and sundry, rolled another 1.  His fierce +2 trident was downgraded to a +1.

Oh, that hurt.  That really did hurt.  He'd acquired the trident at 4th level because he'd been the only character able to use one and so it had more than power-value ... it was a legacy of Hof's beginning to be a heavy hitter in the party.

When you join a party of higher levels and you have to start at 1st, as I require, there's a transition point to which you get nearer and nearer, where you stop acting on the fringes of a fight, and you stop needing others to carry the weight for you.  Pikel started to reach that threshold at 5th; Hof, at 4th, had it handed to him in the form of a +2 trident.  Not that he hadn't been carrying his weight thematically and practically prior to that, as the player behind Hof is an insightful, keeps-up-with-me just fine problem solver .  But the trident added some clout to the character ... and though he needs it less now, the player feels that particular loss keenly.

I have trouble explaining to some people why my players find such a deep satisfaction with combat in my game.  There's a tremendous nuance built into the rules set, so that it's never just two people standing face to face blandly exchanging blows of 30 hit points until one runs out.  I've given my all to enhancing and redesigning the combat rules so that every player has an opportunity to think out of the box (though it takes the wherewithal to do so) and nothing is ever wholly predictable.  It's predictable enough to let players gamble upon risks, but the die rolls can go so badly all of a sudden that when those thuds happen, everyone has to reassess how deep in they've gotten themselves.

To remind the reader, in this battle, Makar died.  If Ivan hadn't gotten the surprise roll, he might have died too.  This drow and three monsters did more than 200 total damage, in AD&D numbers (approximately 525 damage in 5e), to a party between 4th and 10th level.  It could have been more.

I have two more posts about this fight, that I'll get to when I can.

_____

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Better

Okay, combat.

The party crosses the threshold into the dungeon and encounter a group of  six kobalds dwelling in the forward guard room of a kobald lair.  As described in Keep on the Borderlands:

"1. GUARD ROOM:  6 kobold guards (AC 7.  HD 1/2.  hp 3 each, #AT I, D 1-4, Save NM, ML 6).  They will throw their spears the first round if they have initiative.  Each carries d6 silver pieces. One will run to warn areas 4. and 6.. The guards will be alerted by loud noises or lights."

 

This is 43 years old so it begs the question, is this still interesting?

The answer is yes.  I can still make this work, because it advantages some tried-and-true tropes that are no easier for players of the same game than it was then.  The one that runs to warn the rest of the lair virtually assures that the party achieves no surprise going forward, while the possibility exists of them having to fight all the rest of the kobalds in the lair in one combat (though I knew no one in my youth with the nerve to run the Caves of Chaos that way).  The volley of spears is a good start, especially if the mage is one of the targets, though the chances are only one or two spears will hit and, being kobald spears, won't do much damage.  Still, the format is sound ... and if it's six ogres and they start the combat by all throwing rocks, that makes a strong encounter for a higher level party.

But we can obviously do better.  We don't need to send one kobald to warn other areas, because we don't stupidly build a lair where room (4) is 150 ft away in one direction, while room (6) is 110 ft in another:

If rooms 3 through 6 are a rational distance from room 1, where the guards are, then the one kobald can shout, or bang a cymbal, or ring a bloody bell, and then fight with the others.  And this means it only takes two or three rounds for another 20 kobalds to appear, plus maybe the big one in room 5.  In quick order, the party does well against the first six, finds themselves getting rushed come round 4, give ground and stumble outside, and then it's a running fight through the forests to the keep, unless the mage has something that can turn the tide.  Better combat.

Better still, we can put all the kobald rooms, including the guard room, in a more logical arrangement: we put the guard room around a blind corner, with the same pit trap.  Only now the situation is this: you see the end of the passage and the hall becomes a 10 ft. wide, 20 ft. long area of worked stone.  On the far left side of of this small rectangle is a 3 ft. high wall, which a player can easily jump over.  But when the player moves to jump over the wall, they set off the pit trap at the hall's end.  Now they can't jump straight over the pit, because straight over the pit is a wall.  And if they do somehow get over the 3 foot wall, well ... I'll give you a diagram:

See?  The guards don't have to SEE the party coming, they can hear them; and the guards can't be seen because they're around a 180-degree corner; in fact, the players have no idea there's anything around the corner but more hallway.  As the party comes within 15 feet of the pit, they're just as close to the guard room.  As they chat to each other, with their clanking metal armour and so on, the kobalds can hear everything.  And if the players won't set off the pit trap, the kobalds will.

Furthermore, from the hall beyond the guard room, we can add all that other help from rooms 4, 5 and 6.  Who are at least partially protected by a simple 3 ft. wall that the players will have difficult getting across faster than one at a time.  That's all the advantage the kobalds need.

Better combat still.

So your first task is to figure out a better arrangement for the combat based on the intelligence of the creatures being attacked.  Kobalds aren't that smart, but even a small child knows to put a gate in front of a house.  Imagine the kind of obstacle course a group of elves could invent with blind corners, three foot walls and pit traps.  And other things too, obviously.

You can go with the tried and true method of just throwing the bad guys willy nilly at the party.  I did it last week, sort of.  And the 2nd-4th level party had a good time slaughtering a gang of 22 goblins, though six of those were archers, who started targeting the 4th level, 52 hp fighter with every volley.  They drilled "Hof" down to 14 hp before the archers had to run away; they were a bit slow; Hof got one.  The targeting was logical: Hof wreaked absolute havoc on everything near him.  He has an 18 +1+3 strength and a +2 trident.  It's not pretty what that does to goblins, even when one is 3rd level with 25 hp.

But putting the players in a situation where they find themselves at the top of a hall going, "Huh?  This doesn't look right ..." is miles better.  I haven't done the blind corner bit above, not yet ... but my party is moving into a drow elf lair, so, it should get interesting.

The party's not high enough level, obviously.  But so long as this group beats a hasty retreat at the right time, it's a collection of the players' henchfolk they're running, so they have access to their own higher level characters.  To whom they'll bring valuable intel.

If you can design combat fields that belie the standard D&D models, you'll give the players a far better combat experience and increase the intensity of your game by quite a bit.  But to do so requires that you embrace an aspect of game combat that many, many dyed-in-the-wool D&Ders eschew with great bitterness.  You'll have to adopt a tactical model.

Now I ran combats like the set up shown for years using paper and pencil, sometimes making a notation for who was who but most of the time not needing to.  The distances were meaningless, it only mattered who you attacked last time and who was attacking you now.  This is rather easy and provides no valuable tactical intel.  The only value it adds to a combat is that you can see how many of the enemy is left, and enjoy a small dopamine thrill when one of the X's get scratched out.  Players are always O's.

I can run a non-tactical combat if I so desire.  For example, the players are coming through a forest and get attacked by a swarm of giant ticks.  The ticks attack and scurry off, disappearing into the undergrowth, so I can randomly attack a party with random ticks for a few rounds before they're "fought off" and the party can count their number.  I don't need a map for this.

But doing it with a map would be better.

I understand, however, why many DM's resent any notion of making combat tactical.  It takes an enormous amount of time, years, to (a) get used to a tactical system; (b) build a tactical system that can rationally handle anything you throw at it; (c) and learn how to educate new players and old into how your tactical system works.  This also requires patience and belief in a system and the ability to change as a person.  Most of these demands are quite beyond the sort of stale, lazy, fussbudgety DM heels who hate combat anyway, with a passion, because they believe D&D is not about combat.  Despite the fact that 160 pages of the original DMG's 200 are dedicated in some manner to combat and it's rewards.  

I'm not concerned that there are loads of DMs running around trashing tactical combat.  I'm concerned about you, reading this now.  Games are inventions that depend on hitting the right buttons with human persons.  Several centuries before the invention of RPGs, tactical combat board games proved their value to millions of persons ... far more than will every play RPGs, as those games remain wildly more popular by far.  Whatever our feelings about combat board games, we can't disparage their popularity.  Rather, we should maintain an open mind about how to steal some of that popularity for ourselves.

Non-tactical D&D combat is, to say the least, forgettable.  It doesn't lend itself much to story telling.  As a result, the "rule of cool" model that discards all logic in non-tactical combat modelling has become the guideline in many existing communities.  It isn't what your attack does, but how you describe your attack.  It's the same die, and the same metric of removing points, but your ability to graphically explain a profound set of expressible actions within a three foot space defines whether or not the DM's light shines upon you.  Call the "move" you make whatever you want; it's still just a die and a number.  To paraphrase a physicist talking about how many subparticles exist in the universe, "If I wanted to remember all the combat feats that are available in all the splatbooks related to D&D, pathfinder and other games, I'd have been a botonist."

The second path is to avoid combat like the plague ... or, when it happens, get it over with quickly and move on.

The third path is to build a tactical system.  Or adopt one.  And get so good at it that you can run your tactical system so fast the players won't give a damn.  Which is what I do.  What's rewarding about it is the way players use a tactical system to make amazing things happen.  In a session I was running a month ago, I had two players do tricks with light and fog during a combat so profound I'm still trying to figure out how to write it in a blog post.  It unfolded unexpectedly to me, and I guess you had to be there to see it.

Notes on Melee

I'm well aware that there's a hateful attitude towards combat tactics in D&D, as though its the most sinful thing imaginable to know where my character is standing in relation to the enemy.  As though that doesn't help the players decide what to do, or give them a sense of what's going on ... without total dependence on the dungeon master.  For that is what the anti-tactical stance fails to address: the simple fact that without clear evidence of how far the enemy is, and rules that dictate how far that enemy can travel, or who it can actually attack, I'm utterly at the DM's fiat.

Those who have seen my online combats know that I run my combats on a hex map, rather that on squares.  There's an equidistant factor in that every hex is exactly the same distance from every other, which cannot be said with squares.  The sole benefit to squares is that they are easier for publishers to represent things ... the company's choice to opt for this choice is plain evidence that they don't give a fuck about the user.  But then, most of the users drink the koolaid and believe in their deepest, dumbest hearts that squares are definitely better.  So maybe they get the products they deserve.

The combatant demonstrated here is inaccurate for the scale of the hex, which is 5 feet in diameter, from flat side to flat side, not point-to-point.  This is only a representation.  Judging the combatant to be 2 feet in diameter, with armour and equipment (which is still judging the size in excess of the truth), the correct size would be something like the example shown below.

This, however, gives less detail for the user, hampering the ease with which they can instantly recognise their character during a combat, where there can be a lot of junk on the battle map ... not just individual characters.

Still, the question arises as to how much space this provides.  If we assume combatants in an adjacent hex, the gap between the two seems to be four or five feet, which seems irrational.  However, I put it to the reader that the combatant's comfortable arm reach is at least 15 inches, and that the effective reach of the sword is at least 3 feet.

This, I stress, is very conservative ... the reality is probably much better, but a distance of 4-and-a-quarter feet is enough to make my point.

The image below gives an approximate reach for the combatant's arm, centering the circle just beyond the character's left shoulder, as this person is presented as left handed.

Note that it reaches well into 0304 and 0404, well past the boundaries of 0405.  We may presume just as easily that the enemy's reach does the same, creating a Venn-diagram in which the shading would indicate the point of contact between weapons.  More about that in a moment.

Different weapons would have different amounts of reach, so that we could argue a dagger's reach would strongly weaken the combatant's offense, while really having little effect on defense, assuming the defender was just as proficient with the dagger as the opposing combatant with a sword.

Remember the dagger is lighter, more flexible, so that in the hands of an experienced defender, it's possible to turn the swing and the weight of the sword-wielder against him or her.

If we imagine the combatant indicated making a move that's a mere one foot to the right, or back, we can easily recognise how much better coverage of the defended hex, 0405, really is.  It's important to remember that while the representative image is static, the actual combatant in a fight would not be.  The individual is perceived to move freely throughout the hex, which includes movements greater, turning, twisting, giving ground and diving in.  Every time the combatant changes position within the hex, the Venn-diagram of where the weapons touch changes, with an ebb-and-flow that a combat map can't demonstrate.

The best way is to think of every combatant like an electron moving within the envelope of an electron shell ... in which that electron is both everywhere and in a given position at the same time, in the time frame of the combat round.  The battle hex is merely a simple way of defining the approximate location of the multitude of combatants, who might actually be outside the designated hex at the moment of causing damage or taking it.  That doesn't matter, because the mean remains where the combatant is proposed to be on the battle map.

This helps explain how a friendly character can move through a hex occupied by a character in combat, because the ally's movements are judged and the hex owner lets the ally move through.  There is plenty of space, after all.