Quote from: RPGPundit;920841In old-school D&D, an "attack on a totally unaware opponent" IS a backstab. It's what a backstab is supposed to be about. It's only in later editions where a rogue can backstab in 1000 different ways, often while looking a totally-aware opponent right in the face.  It's why I can't stand later-edition rogues.

:rolleyes:  Yes, we can't have everyone do well in combat, can we?  We have to force a player to sit back, do nothing, while the real damage machine, the Magic User (I believe that's what the name of the class was) does all the work.  And no, a good Thief NEVER engaged in a fight, because with their small weapon dice, and severe lack of armour, but still requiring to be in the middle of monsters, like all good meat walls, would simply get them killed, and we can't have that, not if they want to feel useful when a door or a trap comes around. After all, in combat foes are always aware, and there's no way to pull off a stealth in that chaos, nope.  The Thief has to be alone and in the dark to Backstab a bitch.  Very team oriented that class.

Now, if you're lucky, the DM will make every combat encounter near a trapped/locked door, so that the poor player can feel useful while the Fighter stands there, chipping away, as the Cleric heals and does little else, while the Magic User, the truly effective class, gets to show off by using selected spells.

Assuming they're more than level 1, this is also assuming that their porters and NPC army that they brought is dead by now, the Magic User can often end a fight in a minute or two (1 to 2 Rounds), especially if they have Save of 'Die' spells like Sleep on hand.

And if they don't, you're screwed.  HP attrition is not in the player's favour, and hopefully the DM allows you to run away, and the monsters don't have ranged attacks to pick you off.


I simply don't get the appeal of forcing people to feel useless in a game.  I don't get it.  We bitch and moan when players find something else to do, like play on their phones, when their turn is not up, and yet, in my limited experience that's exactly what the older (Or at least, back to Rules Cyclopedia) editions seem to promote.

I guess I'm too stupid for this hobby after all.  I just like my players to have fun, and so far, having them feel useful seems to work...  I guess I'm just not hardcore enough.

I miss having a tiny violin emoticon.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;920901:rolleyes:  Yes, we can't have everyone do well in combat, can we?  We have to force a player to sit back, do nothing, while the real damage machine, the Magic User (I believe that's what the name of the class was)

You love being wrong on this don't you? Yes. Yes you do.

Once again lets point out that the fighter outperforms the Magic User in sheer damage output. The wizards powerful to be sure. But its a very different and oft fragile power. (Least pre 3e) And in 5e the Fighter out-performs every other class that I've checked so far.

Really. Sometimes I think you post like this just to make me point out again just how much casters suck compared to a fighter. :cool:

Quote from: Bren;920904I miss having a tiny violin emoticon.

Quote from: Omega;920906

Responding to my whining about not having a tiny violin icon with a tiny violin icon is ironic and helpful. Well played sir. Well played.

In my OD&D games, its pretty easy because most guards are going to have 1D6 HP and if you get +1D6 on the backstab (surprise attack), then its 1D6 HP vs. 2D6 damage. Most of the time, that is going to result in a dead guard.

If the guard survives, I am happy use the luck aspect of HPs to describe how the guard turned at the last moment so you could not completely slice their throat.

But it's harder in other game systems. Like Shipyard Locked said, players will generally avoid instant-kill rules once they learn they could be used on their PCs.

If the guard has armour it probably includes neck armour & helmet, and IRL it would be very very hard to disable him with a single surprise attack.

If the guard has lots of hit points, in most editions of D&D and other games that's because he's superhumanly heroic & naturally will be hard to defeat.

I generally find that most editions of D&D at any rate allow for the "single surprise kill" by having that the natural result when high level Thief/Assassin surprises a low level mook. The big exception is 4e D&D where even low level mooks have tons of hit points. The 4e GM has to either make the surprised mook a 1 hp minion (which then doesn't feel 'real'), or not use the combat system at all - maybe a skill challenge/sequence of skill rolls would work, with final roll being an attack roll. But 4e is by far the least naturalistic D&D edition so this is unsurprising.

I think if players want their low level PCs to auto-kill high level armoured Kingsguard just because they snuck up on them, that's a misreading of genre expectations as well as not being particularly realistic.

Quote from: Omega;920905You love being wrong on this don't you? Yes. Yes you do.

Once again lets point out that the fighter outperforms the Magic User in sheer damage output. The wizards powerful to be sure. But its a very different and oft fragile power. (Least pre 3e) And in 5e the Fighter out-performs every other class that I've checked so far.

Really. Sometimes I think you post like this just to make me point out again just how much casters suck compared to a fighter. :cool:

'Damage'?  What the fuck are you wasting spells on 'damage'???  OF COURSE the fighter will out perform on raw damage.  That's why you go for spells that shut a fight down in a single go, the ones recently termed 'Save or Die', like Charm Person/Monster, Sleep, Disintegrate, Grease (this one was a favourite in 3.x, can't speak for anything earlier), Flesh to Stone, these are the truly effective magics, you rarely go for those that do damage, simply because the monsters, unless they have spells too, will have more hit points and do more damage over all.  Pure raw damage, the monsters will invariably win.  There are often more of them, then the PC party.

Well, in 2e and later.  Previous editions you got to hire minions, although I often have to wonder how most PC's survive past level 1 in those, simply because you often don't have enough gold to hire much after getting some basic gear.   Unless of course, you have a 15 man PC party and 23 Henchies, then the numbers game is reversed.

Quote from: S'mon;921001The 4e GM has to either make the surprised mook a 1 hp minion (which then doesn't feel 'real'), or not use the combat system at all - maybe a skill challenge/sequence of skill rolls would work, with final roll being an attack roll.

I never had a problem with that. When you had PCs doing a minimum of 4-7 damage with their at-will attacks, then it didn't matter if the Minion had 1 HP or 7 HP. The end result was the same thing. In OD&D, the 1D6 HP vs. 1D6 Weapons meant that all 1HD creatures (men, orcs, etc) were 1 hit kills 50% of the time.

Quote from: Spinachcat;921011I never had a problem with that. When you had PCs doing a minimum of 4-7 damage with their at-will attacks, then it didn't matter if the Minion had 1 HP or 7 HP. The end result was the same thing. In OD&D, the 1D6 HP vs. 1D6 Weapons meant that all 1HD creatures (men, orcs, etc) were 1 hit kills 50% of the time.

In 4e a 1st level NPC typically has around 28 hit points, where an at will attack might do 9-10 damage. Like I said, this is a specifically 4e issue, other editions of D&D work fine IME.

I make mooks by giving them the least possible HP that they can have via thair statblock. So if a human soldier gets 1d10+3 hp, i'll give them 4hp each.

I also make mooks do morale checks or outright surrender/retreat if they're dropped to nearly zero hp. So even if I did make the rogue roll damage, odds are that their target will be out of commission in some way.

In later editions, "Backstab" was changed to "Sneak Attack" to broaden the opportunities for use. Now its whenever the rogue can exploit an opening for a dirty strike. I'm cool with that, and would probably house rule older editions to work the same way. At my table, anyway.

I don't care if that's not old school, to be honest.

Edit: i hated 4e and stopped playing it, so that game's issues for sneak attack did not concern me.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;920901:rolleyes:  Yes, we can't have everyone do well in combat, can we?  We have to force a player to sit back, do nothing, while the real damage machine, the Magic User (I believe that's what the name of the class was) does all the work.  And no, a good Thief NEVER engaged in a fight, because with their small weapon dice, and severe lack of armour, but still requiring to be in the middle of monsters, like all good meat walls, would simply get them killed, and we can't have that, not if they want to feel useful when a door or a trap comes around. After all, in combat foes are always aware, and there's no way to pull off a stealth in that chaos, nope.  The Thief has to be alone and in the dark to Backstab a bitch.  Very team oriented that class.

Now, if you're lucky, the DM will make every combat encounter near a trapped/locked door, so that the poor player can feel useful while the Fighter stands there, chipping away, as the Cleric heals and does little else, while the Magic User, the truly effective class, gets to show off by using selected spells.

Assuming they're more than level 1, this is also assuming that their porters and NPC army that they brought is dead by now, the Magic User can often end a fight in a minute or two (1 to 2 Rounds), especially if they have Save of 'Die' spells like Sleep on hand.

And if they don't, you're screwed.  HP attrition is not in the player's favour, and hopefully the DM allows you to run away, and the monsters don't have ranged attacks to pick you off.


I simply don't get the appeal of forcing people to feel useless in a game.  I don't get it.  We bitch and moan when players find something else to do, like play on their phones, when their turn is not up, and yet, in my limited experience that's exactly what the older (Or at least, back to Rules Cyclopedia) editions seem to promote.

I guess I'm too stupid for this hobby after all.  I just like my players to have fun, and so far, having them feel useful seems to work...  I guess I'm just not hardcore enough.

You may be too stupid but it doesn't have much to do with being hardcore or not.

When WOTC took control of D&D and released 3rd edition, the game focus shifted almost exclusively to combat. Thus to feel "useful" EVERY character class had to perform on nearly the same level in combat. This is why the rogue killed the fighter and took his stuff.

The fighter, to inflict decent damage, had to get full attacks each round which in most instances relied on the character standing stock still like a statue and playing whack-a-mole. Meanwhile the rogue danced around with paired weapons flanking enemies and hitting multiple times for what amounted to fireball damage on every hit.

So what you end up with is a game with a class called 'fighter' that ends up being on the mediocre end of fighting effectiveness among all the classes. That doesn't make much sense from a logic perspective.

The old TSR thief only seems useless because the class wasn't geared to be strong in combat. Gary and Dave designed a game with a class that was designed to FIGHT and do it well. They named that class the FIGHTING MAN so even those a little slow on the uptake could tell at a glance which character was the combat machine.

The Fighting man was one role out of three to choose from (the thief would make 4). There were a lot of things to do in the game besides fighting so not all classes were designed to excel in combat. The thief is one of those classes. Sure they can be occasionally dangerous if they get the drop on an unsuspecting foe, but they are weak in open battle as they should be. Their lower XP requirement to gain levels is a sure indicator that the class was weaker than most others, so why the expectation that they should be whirling death machines?

TLDR version: When you turn a game of fantasy exploration featuring a variety of classes with different specialties into a fighting game, then things are going to suck.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;921021You may be too stupid but it doesn't have much to do with being hardcore or not.

When WOTC took control of D&D and released 3rd edition, the game focus shifted almost exclusively to combat. Thus to feel "useful" EVERY character class had to perform on nearly the same level in combat. This is why the rogue killed the fighter and took his stuff.

Wait, are you saying the game was never about combat?  I find that hard to believe when most of the effective spells affect combat, always have.  Even the least effective ones, like Fireball or Lightning Bolt, which admittedly isn't as effective as Sleep or a Charm spell to end a fight, because it does damage, but it still ends fights.  Better than most non-casters, simply because they hit multiple targets at once.

I find this hard to believe.  Not saying it isn't true, just...  Implausible.  Especially since it's roots are a fantasy WAR GAME that used miniatures and extensive combat rules, in which, if I remember correctly started out with two 'classes', Fighting Man and Magic User.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;921021TLDR version: When you turn a game of fantasy exploration featuring a variety of classes with different specialties into a fighting game, then things are going to suck.

'Fantasy Exploration'?  This is a game about getting loot and getting stronger so we can get better loot at it's most basic.  Fantasy Exploration is what us fancy-prancy non-Wargamers player coddlers who came in during the 'Advanced' days turned the game into.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;921024Wait, are you saying the game was never about combat?  I find that hard to believe when most of the effective spells affect combat, always have.  Even the least effective ones, like Fireball or Lightning Bolt, which admittedly isn't as effective as Sleep or a Charm spell to end a fight, because it does damage, but it still ends fights.  Better than most non-casters, simply because they hit multiple targets at once.

I find this hard to believe.  Not saying it isn't true, just...  Implausible.  Especially since it's roots are a fantasy WAR GAME that used miniatures and extensive combat rules, in which, if I remember correctly started out with two 'classes', Fighting Man and Magic User.



'Fantasy Exploration'?  This is a game about getting loot and getting stronger so we can get better loot at it's most basic.  Fantasy Exploration is what us fancy-prancy non-Wargamers player coddlers who came in during the 'Advanced' days turned the game into.

I never said combat wasn't a part of the game. The key word here is PART.  Getting loot to attain power was the main focus of play. That required exploration to go find it. Sometimes it had to won in combat. It could also be discovered trapped without any monsters, gotten by trickery or deceit, etc. The point is that the players decided primarily how they would go after the loot.

You want to find out what drives play? Follow the XP. TSR D&D rewarded gaining loot far more than fighting. WOTC threw that out and based XP on 'encounters'. This meant that any characters that were not that great in a fight got reduced to non-entities.

The original game started out with 3 classes; Fighting Man, Cleric, and Magic User. One third of those classes was designed almost purely for combat. Once the thief was introduced the fighting classes were at one quarter of available classes. If the game were all about fighting why would the latest class addition be a weakling in combat?

The basic point I'm trying to get across is that if you start with the premise that EVERY class must contribute more or less equally in battle why do you need a class such as 'Fighter'?

" So fella, what do you do?"

" I'm a fighter. I fight."

" No shit. We all fight, and do it well. What else ya got?"

" Umm....."



Battle expertise is pointless as a core class ability when every class gets that as a baseline.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;921024Wait, are you saying the game was never about combat?

No he said the game was not only about combat.

QuoteI find that hard to believe when most of the effective spells affect combat, always have.

I'm not at all surprised that you find that hard to believe. It's obvious that for you "effective spell" and "affects combat" are essentially equivalent. Anyone who accepts your definition of "effective spell" will agree with your belief. Others may find spells like "Knock" or "Hold Portal" highly effective in an exploration setting but not effective in combat per se.

QuoteI find this hard to believe.  Not saying it isn't true, just...  Implausible.

We're back to the difference between "never about combat" and "not only about combat."

QuoteEspecially since it's roots are a fantasy WAR GAME that used miniatures and extensive combat rules...

The combat (and all the other rules e.g. jousting tables and such) were contained in a 40 page booklet (~ 20 typed pages). Anyone who has played any of the newer and far more voluminous rules has no business calling 20 pages of rules "extensive."

Quote'Fantasy Exploration'?  This is a game about getting loot and getting stronger so we can get better loot at it's most basic.  Fantasy Exploration is what us fancy-prancy non-Wargamers player coddlers who came in during the 'Advanced' days turned the game into.

"Fantasy Exploration" means exploring the world, be that a dungeon, city, or wilderness. That's not at all the same as exploring your fantasies about being a maximized, damage per round, twin-blade wielding combat monster ninja-assassin-thief.