Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;908128I simply play unintelligent monsters by random roll.

Animals don't attack randomly.  That may be fine if you're playing some tabletop version of Final Fantasy, but "unintelligent animals" still fight smart.  They wouldn't be apex predators if they didn't.

Quote from: daniel_ream;908141Animals don't attack randomly.  That may be fine if you're playing some tabletop version of Final Fantasy, but "unintelligent animals" still fight smart.  They wouldn't be apex predators if they didn't.

But an animal doesn't know a magic user from a fighter.  They don't understand what armor or lack of it means.  Animals attack for food or defense.  If not hungry and not feeling threatened, most animals will decline to attack.  And how does one determine if an animal is hungry or not?  I choose to determine it randomly.

I only roll randomly if the enemies are truly mindless like golems or some undead.  Predatory animals have hunting strategies that they use.  They don't know a fighter from a wizard but they do know that wounded prey is easier to take down and that a straggler is an easier target than prey in a group.

Quote from: daniel_ream;908141Animals don't attack randomly.  That may be fine if you're playing some tabletop version of Final Fantasy, but "unintelligent animals" still fight smart.  

Animals might attack randomly TOO, or based on factors that - in the eyes of a human - make the result look like total chaos.

Take Honey Badger which doesn't seem to give much damn about attacking a rhino. Look at abominations (counted mistakenly among the dog species), that see nothing wrong in chasing a car and barking at it.

It wouldn't be uncommon for a pack of hyenas to attack armorerd dwarf (because he is the shortest and therefore "obviously" least threatening) rather than way weaker (in terms of raw power), but taller PCs. It wouldn't be unreasonable to see animals attack in waves and being slaughtered like a cattle, when simple tactics would immediately change the tide of a battle.

QuoteThey wouldn't be apex predators if they didn't.

Peaceful herbivore might make very dangerous enemy too.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;908092It depends on the kind of fighting and when in the fight. Sure, 6 seconds is an eternity in (say) boxing when they are right on top of each other and throwing mad jabs. While they are circling, dancing, looking for opening, it can be 12-15 seconds between any meaningful actual attempts at hitting the other. If you average the whole fight, one exchange per 6 seconds might be accurate, or close to it.

It's partly why I declared as a fiat that I was running 3 second rounds, not the standard 1 second GURPS round, which just suggests an insane rate of tinkerhammering.

Even so, trying to mimic a real combat, with its frequent rest pauses and evaluations, is tough.  I've seen several fixes, but nothing at all playable.

Quote from: CRKrueger;908133This whole "I know the way people really played back in the old AD&D days, despite me demonstrably having no experience or knowledge of it " schtick you have going on is incredibly tiring.  Not only are you the umpteenth in a long string of jackasses who have tried that shit to bolster their own idiotic arguments, but you're terrible at it.

Yeah, but it's the explanation, isn't it?  He demonstrably came of age in the One True Way era of the supremacy of RAW, where nothing that wasn't in the black-letter rules was permitted, and everything that wasn't was forbidden.  There's a sharp divide from the 1970s, when house ruling and homebrews weren't merely endemic, but you were considered a moron if you didn't come up with something to plug any holes you figured were there.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;908142But an animal doesn't know a magic user from a fighter.  They don't understand what armor or lack of it means.  Animals attack for food or defense.  If not hungry and not feeling threatened, most animals will decline to attack.  And how does one determine if an animal is hungry or not?  I choose to determine it randomly.

No, but they go for the closest available target, or if they can ambush they go for the weakest looking target.  Which means Thief/Rogue and Wizard, if they know what the smell of metal means, or the fighter and cleric, if they don't and will attack them because those would be slower.

But some of us DMs actually like to think about what the monsters would do based on their stats.  It's how we play.  You may not, but that doesn't make either way right or wrong.  Just different.

Quote from: Madprofessor;908057I don't think the topic is derailed.  To the contrary, I think niche protection, and the types of parties that it generates, does impact party tactics and by extension, monster/npc tactics and scenario design.  Then, discussions about tactics leads to rules interpretations, questions about game balance, play style, the nature of a shield, and blah, blah, blah. It's a natural enough progression.

For me, the tactical implications of niche protection are not inherently good or bad - I'm just bored running games for the same swiss army knife parties who have a specialist for every occasion and expect me to come up with scenarios with mufti-fasceted challenges that allow each unique flower of the same perfect pot, a day in the Sun. I am ranting against my players here I guess because somehow it is intrenched in them that they need niche protection to "win" or something.  This is probably my fault somehow.  Nevertheless, my problem with niche protection I think is that I simply bored with trying to challenge the same old niche protected party over and over again.

Well, thank you, you're kind. I'll bring the calamine lotion once everyone's done.

Easiest way to challenge them is volume & distance. Can't be two places at once, can't have everyone be a hyper-specialist in everything. Eventually once the party splits up the generalists shine because "good enough right now" beats "perfect but unavailable."

The biggest challenge about that is getting your players to trust travelling your campaigns unglued from each other's hip.

Continuous Mission-based adventures don't help that. They tend to be high pressure, high stakes challenges that don't leave too much in the way of unclenching one's sphincters. If everything is in a pressure cooker, you're going to get "boiler room" solutions. (Go, go, mixed metaphors!)

So, Chris Brady, did your first level characters routinely encounter 200 goblins in a single encounter in a dungeon? What party size and what tactics were successfully employed in actual play for a party to defeat 200 goblins in one encounter? How many characters were in the party? Same question applied to wilderness encounters? What rules were you playing? Actual play, not theoretical?


The tactics we used to protect the MU were not based on "gentleman's agreement". They were tactics that evolved out of teh monsters doing their best to kill the MU, forcing the party to take preventative measures.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;908152Animals might attack randomly TOO, or based on factors that - in the eyes of a human - make the result look like total chaos.

It wouldn't be uncommon for a pack of hyenas to attack armorerd dwarf (because he is the shortest and therefore "obviously" least threatening) rather than way weaker (in terms of raw power), but taller PCs. It wouldn't be unreasonable to see animals attack in waves and being slaughtered like a cattle, when simple tactics would immediately change the tide of a battle.

Peaceful herbivore might make very dangerous enemy too.

1: Totally off topic but some insights.
Given enough encounters that are lived through an animal will pick up on things like guns/weapons being pointed at them, or that armour = I need a can opener to eat this thing.

2: Predator types will go after the weakest looking member as, well, thats that they do. So the wizard might get pounced from the bushes because hes A: at the back of the group, thus a straggler, and B: usually isnt as physically imposing as the fighter or cleric. A slow dwarf or halfling would also indeed be a good target as size-wise they look like weaker young of the adults. Especially halflings.

3: Just about any large herbivores can be appallingly dangerous due to size and some of the natural weaponry some sport. Alot more unpredictable too. Females can be very violent if they think their young are threatened.

Quote from: Omega;9081791: Totally off topic but some insights.
Given enough encounters that are lived through an animal will pick up on things like guns/weapons being pointed at them, or that armour = I need a can opener to eat this thing.

2: Predator types will go after the weakest looking member as, well, thats that they do. So the wizard might get pounced from the bushes because hes A: at the back of the group, thus a straggler, and B: usually isnt as physically imposing as the fighter or cleric. A slow dwarf or halfling would also indeed be a good target as size-wise they look like weaker young of the adults. Especially halflings.

3: Just about any large herbivores can be appallingly dangerous due to size and some of the natural weaponry some sport. Alot more unpredictable too. Females can be very violent if they think their young are threatened.

...in addition:

I think people forget about how diverse the animal kingdom is.

A feline enemy might be as efficient as the alien from "Predator" movie - attacking by night, killing one by one, avoiding traps, moving like a ghost. A monkey might throw rocks, coconuts, use sticks or bones of some large animal as a weapon. A pack of wild dogs or an army of insects might pursue the enemy relentlessly, never give up and avoid traps and by that surpass in danger a band of cutthroats and burglars.

But that's not how all animals act.

A rhino, a bull, or a horde of some bison-like creatures might (and should) prefer a simple solution over some elaborate tactics. Just "run in the direction of the enemy" will do. That they break legs on the way, or get shot multiple times? That there are some obstacles on the way?



Berserk, bullrush, complete lack of fear, or the stupidity of massive proportions are among completely acceptable behavior for certain animals. Heck, given correct circumstances it's acceptable behavior for way more intelligent creatures.

Quote from: Ravenswing;908155It's partly why I declared as a fiat that I was running 3 second rounds, not the standard 1 second GURPS round, which just suggests an insane rate of tinkerhammering.

Even so, trying to mimic a real combat, with its frequent rest pauses and evaluations, is tough.  I've seen several fixes, but nothing at all playable.

I've always felt that the 'standard combat round' should be left relatively undefined (the combat is supposed to be abstracted anyways), only really analyzable after-the-fact, and unless there is a ticking bomb, it usually doesn't matter.

Wow. I can almost still see the original thread topic from here out in the weeds. I'll try to formulate my thoughts on that in a bit.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;908182I've always felt that the 'standard combat round' should be left relatively undefined (the combat is supposed to be abstracted anyways), only really analyzable after-the-fact, and unless there is a ticking bomb, it usually doesn't matter.

It affects the rate of fire of missile weapons. I'm honestly not sure what to make of firing a bow vs. a crossbow in a D&D 1 minute round. Whereas a 3 second round means that a blackpowder musket will take at least 5 rounds to reload - longer for a matchlock - so combat is likely to be over before the shooter can ever reload. (Obviously this would change if most melee rounds are spent evaluating, resting, sidestepping, or whiffing.)

Chris, one thing that might inform your opinion is to watch some SWAT training videos.

One of the things that the English SWAT teams are trained with are molotovs. They stand there with their large shields while the trainer throws a real, lit flask of gas at them. There are a couple of guys in the background with fire extinguishers, just in case. While it was a training exercise, it was certainly powerful to see a guy holding up his shield and protecting himself against burning gasoline.

Now, it was a training exercise and riot shields are pretty big. But, they are the same size as a Roman legionnaire shield, at the spatter was, all in all, pretty small. There was certainly nothing behind him.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;908181I think people forget about how diverse the animal kingdom is.

I think this topic is long overdue for its own thread, as personally I'd love a codex of "how things behave in stressful situations".  Although admittedly I have no interest in "how things behave in dungeon corridors" because I don't play dungeon fantasy any more.

One thing that might inform people's opinions is to not blather on concerning things they know nothing about.  The only way someone could say "You can't block a Molotov with a shield" with a straight face is to have no idea how a Molotov works.  It wouldn't surprise me if the misperception is of an airburst fireball with a 10' wide blast radius.

I realize that pontificating based on That Gamebook You Read or That Movie You Saw Once is endemic in the gaming world, but sheesh.