Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 14, 2023, 10:41:41 AM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 13, 2023, 07:19:15 PM
That's incorrect in terms of how intimidation works in most games that have that skill available for characters. It's literally creating fear in a target, which done successfully means the foe flees, or at least backs off.

OK, which games are those?  One of my questions in the OP was for games that did these actions correctly.  Which ones boil into the combat (with mechanics or examples) those usages of skills)?  I'm looking for a rulebook that I can hand to a brand new player or GM that will encourage this kind of skill use.  Otherwise, your advice is "be a more experienced GM," which isn't necessarily helpful to the kids I'm trying to bring into the hobby...

D&D Rules Cyclopedia: "Intimidation: This is the ability to bully nonplayer characters into doing what the player
character wants them to do. Success means that NPCs are intimidated into doing what the character wants."

The WoTC Game (5e): "Intimidation. When you attempt to influence someone through overt threats, hostile actions, and physical violence, the GM might ask you to make a Charisma (Intimidation) check. Examples include trying to pry information out of a prisoner, convincing street thugs to back down from a confrontation, or using the edge of a broken bottle to convince a sneering vizier to reconsider a decision."

Mutants & Masterminds: "Make an Intimidation check, opposed by the target's insight or Will defense (whichever has the highest bonus). If your check succeeds, you may treat the target as friendly, but only for actions taken in your presence. That is, the target retains his normal attitude, but will talk, advise, offer limited help, or advocate on your behalf while intimidated. The target cooperates, but won't necessarily obey your every whim or do anything that would directly endanger him."

GURPS: "The results of a successful Intimidation attempt depend on the target. An honest citizen probably cooperates, sullenly or with false cheer. A low-life might lick your boots (even becoming genuinely loyal). A really tough sort might react well without being frightened: "You're my kind of scum!" The GM decides, and roleplays it. If you rolled a critical success – or if the subject critically failed his Will roll – your victim must make a Fright Check in addition to the other results of the Influence roll!"

Shadowrun: "Intimidation is about creating the impression that you are more menacing than another person in order to get them to do what you want. The skill may be applied multiple ways, from negotiation to interrogation"

Call of Cthulhu: "Intimidate - The use of threats (physical or psychological) to compel someone to act or reveal information"

Blades in the Dark: "When you Command, you compel swift obedience. You might intimidate or threaten to get what you want. You might lead a gang in a group action. You could try to order people around to persuade them (but Consorting might be better)."

Savage Pathfinder: "Intimidation is the art of frightening an opponent so that he backs down, reveals information, or flees"

Whew! My hands are getting tired from listing all these games  This is just some of them, of course. In the OP you stated your 'hypothesis' as "Any kind of non-attacking skill test or challenge will never be more effective than degrading the enemies' hit points via attacks, and will often be much less efficient." I've used Intimidation in-character to run off characters in ONE ROUND. How long does it take to 'degrade the enemies hit points'? 

Quote from: BadApple on June 14, 2023, 05:35:42 PM
TBH, I don't know if it's a problem with 5e core, how it's presented, or if modern players are just missing something.  Fighting isn't necessarily how you handle every encounter.  If you don't have the debate periodically about whether to negotiate, sneak around, or fight when coming across a new creature, you're missing a large part of D&D dungeon crawling experience.  I think at least part of the problem is that PCs are so hard to kill that players develop the mentality of "shoot first, ask questions later."  It's sad to see gaming degenerated so badly.

In the old days, not everything you met in the dungeon was a mindless attack zombie.  Sure, it might be but it could be a greedy little SOB that will be happy to show you the secret door for a silver coin.  That dragon could be evil or he could be just a sweet good boy doggy with a really bad case of mange.

My own experience suggests that players tend to feed back the energy they get from their DM. If a DM is animated and descriptive, they are likely to roleplay more. If a DM is dry and clinical, they are likely to approach the campaign as a tactical skirmish game. Etc. etc. I've observed the same players play radically differently in different campaigns, just based on a different style of DM-ing, and the same applies to whether they shoot-first or talk-first. I've even seen players switch from one approach to the other over the course of a campaign, as they realized whichever approach they started with wasn't being reciprocated.

All of this is to say that to the extent 5e players are more mindlessly violent than players of other editions (and I'm not sure they are) a likely culprit would be in the DM-ing style that game encourages.

Personally, I'd point the finger at the "adventuring day" concept and the generally attrition-based design of D&D. This has kind of always been a problem in D&D, but 5e characters are particularly designed to be very unlikely to be killed in their first encounter after resting. That design choice practically forces DMs to increase the number of mandatory combats in each adventure, if they want to give their players a reasonable challenge.  If I'm right about that, and players pick up on it, they will quickly start playing the odds and assuming every encounter is likely to be a violent one.

Quote from: ForgottenF on June 14, 2023, 07:42:13 PM

Quote from: BadApple on June 14, 2023, 05:35:42 PM
TBH, I don't know if it's a problem with 5e core, how it's presented, or if modern players are just missing something.  Fighting isn't necessarily how you handle every encounter.  If you don't have the debate periodically about whether to negotiate, sneak around, or fight when coming across a new creature, you're missing a large part of D&D dungeon crawling experience.  I think at least part of the problem is that PCs are so hard to kill that players develop the mentality of "shoot first, ask questions later."  It's sad to see gaming degenerated so badly.

In the old days, not everything you met in the dungeon was a mindless attack zombie.  Sure, it might be but it could be a greedy little SOB that will be happy to show you the secret door for a silver coin.  That dragon could be evil or he could be just a sweet good boy doggy with a really bad case of mange.

My own experience suggests that players tend to feed back the energy they get from their DM. If a DM is animated and descriptive, they are likely to roleplay more. If a DM is dry and clinical, they are likely to approach the campaign as a tactical skirmish game. Etc. etc. I've observed the same players play radically differently in different campaigns, just based on a different style of DM-ing, and the same applies to whether they shoot-first or talk-first. I've even seen players switch from one approach to the other over the course of a campaign, as they realized whichever approach they started with wasn't being reciprocated.

All of this is to say that to the extent 5e players are more mindlessly violent than players of other editions (and I'm not sure they are) a likely culprit would be in the DM-ing style that game encourages.

Personally, I'd point the finger at the "adventuring day" concept and the generally attrition-based design of D&D. This has kind of always been a problem in D&D, but 5e characters are particularly designed to be very unlikely to be killed in their first encounter after resting. That design choice practically forces DMs to increase the number of mandatory combats in each adventure, if they want to give their players a reasonable challenge.  If I'm right about that, and players pick up on it, they will quickly start playing the odds and assuming every encounter is likely to be a violent one.

That brings up two points:

1) As the GM, describe what the PCs are seeing. Not "four bandits" but "four tough-looking men sitting around the intersection and gambling". Description, especially including what the enemies are doing besides waiting to be killed, might help signal that other options are possible.

2) Limited healing can make players be more cautious. 4E D&D did that with "healing surges". Worlds/Stars Without Number has "system strain" that says no more healing beyond X limit, slowly recovering per day.

KrisSnow and ForgottenF,  Those are both perspectives worth looking at.  Like I said, IDK where it comes from but the kill first attitude is the reason why OP thinks skills are useless. 

Going forward, there needs to be a real effort to develop a full experience rather than fighting with interludes.  A GM problem, a game design problem?  IDK, but I don't like it because it robs everyone of a more complete and entertaining experience.

Quote from: BadApple on June 14, 2023, 05:35:42 PM
TBH, I don't know if it's a problem with 5e core, how it's presented, or if modern players are just missing something.  Fighting isn't necessarily how you handle every encounter.  If you don't have the debate periodically about whether to negotiate, sneak around, or fight when coming across a new creature, you're missing a large part of D&D dungeon crawling experience.  I think at least part of the problem is that PCs are so hard to kill that players develop the mentality of "shoot first, ask questions later."  It's sad to see gaming degenerated so badly.

In the old days, not everything you met in the dungeon was a mindless attack zombie.  Sure, it might be but it could be a greedy little SOB that will be happy to show you the secret door for a silver coin.  That dragon could be evil or he could be just a sweet good boy doggy with a really bad case of mange.

The vast majority of players these days never had experience with the original game. Most of us who have are dinosaurs now. They are used to all encounters being winnable just by kicking ass. The common D&D memes of kill, loot, profit are ingrained in the collective gamer consciousness. A big driver of this shift happened once acquiring treasure for xp was discarded. Encounter based xp encourages killing all that you can to rack up xp. That mentality is why when introducing players to an OSR style game, who have only played modern editions, they chew through characters complaining all the while that the game sucks because they try to bum rush everything that they encounter while simultaneously bitching that they don't have enough buttons to push on their character sheets. You can always spot an indoctrinated modern system gamer as a DM when you simply ask "what do you do?" and they gaze down at their character sheet as if they were perusing a menu in a restaurant. Hell I often do the same thing myself when playing newer systems because they condition you to choose menu options, because quite often these options are the only thing that has a chance of changing the situation. The system is so hung up on needing a die roll for everything that the DM will not be likely to know how to process an off menu option and will quickly equate it to one of the available options and call for a roll. That is the heart of the issue. The whole combat options dilemma stems from this. Combat encounters are designed to use up X amount of resources depending on difficulty. This is tied to the concept of the adventuring day. Clever solutions that neutralize the enemy or otherwise end the designed resource draining conflict that do not require these finite resources are eliminated. The rules enforce this. It is quite easy to prove. Show me a condition in 5E that prevents a target from attacking other than being knocked out (hit points ground to zero) or disable by a resource draining magical attack. Even being restrained doesn't prevent attacks, the target simply cannot move. This is due to the action economy structure that dictates that nothing short of the expenditure of limited magical resources can take a target out of action with the possible exception of intimidation if the target is subject to it. The whole concept of morale has been discarded from the core rules. Morale is a lifesaver in older versions of the game. Undead were super scary because they were terminators who would not stop unless successfully turned by a cleric. In the modern versions by the rules every creature is a terminator unless a specific effort is made to intimidate it. Joe the goblin along with his buddies Mack, Slim, Bob, and Jack roll up on some adventurers and decide that they are going to kick ass. In 5E if no specific action is taken to intimidate them, Mack, Slim, Bob, and Jack could be wiped out in round one and Joe would keep plugging away as if had a chance unless someone using their action intimidates him. At that point the party is winning handily so why bother. In an OSR game if three of them went down right away or if any of them were killed and failed to inflict any harm on the party they would need to check morale to carry on the fight. Getting their asses kicked was incentive enough to flee without deliberate PC initiation of an action. The whole kill everything protocol was also helped along by DMs who didn't award full xp for creatures that were not actually slain, meaning that running off opponents resulted in less xp thus the bloodthirsty habits.

Ok dinosaur ramble over.

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 14, 2023, 07:29:02 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 14, 2023, 10:41:41 AM

Quote from: Theory of Games on June 13, 2023, 07:19:15 PM
That's incorrect in terms of how intimidation works in most games that have that skill available for characters. It's literally creating fear in a target, which done successfully means the foe flees, or at least backs off.

OK, which games are those?  One of my questions in the OP was for games that did these actions correctly.  Which ones boil into the combat (with mechanics or examples) those usages of skills)?  I'm looking for a rulebook that I can hand to a brand new player or GM that will encourage this kind of skill use.  Otherwise, your advice is "be a more experienced GM," which isn't necessarily helpful to the kids I'm trying to bring into the hobby...

D&D Rules Cyclopedia: "Intimidation: This is the ability to bully nonplayer characters into doing what the player
character wants them to do. Success means that NPCs are intimidated into doing what the character wants."

The WoTC Game (5e): "Intimidation. When you attempt to influence someone through overt threats, hostile actions, and physical violence, the GM might ask you to make a Charisma (Intimidation) check. Examples include trying to pry information out of a prisoner, convincing street thugs to back down from a confrontation, or using the edge of a broken bottle to convince a sneering vizier to reconsider a decision."

Mutants & Masterminds: "Make an Intimidation check, opposed by the target's insight or Will defense (whichever has the highest bonus). If your check succeeds, you may treat the target as friendly, but only for actions taken in your presence. That is, the target retains his normal attitude, but will talk, advise, offer limited help, or advocate on your behalf while intimidated. The target cooperates, but won't necessarily obey your every whim or do anything that would directly endanger him."

GURPS: "The results of a successful Intimidation attempt depend on the target. An honest citizen probably cooperates, sullenly or with false cheer. A low-life might lick your boots (even becoming genuinely loyal). A really tough sort might react well without being frightened: "You're my kind of scum!" The GM decides, and roleplays it. If you rolled a critical success – or if the subject critically failed his Will roll – your victim must make a Fright Check in addition to the other results of the Influence roll!"

Shadowrun: "Intimidation is about creating the impression that you are more menacing than another person in order to get them to do what you want. The skill may be applied multiple ways, from negotiation to interrogation"

Call of Cthulhu: "Intimidate - The use of threats (physical or psychological) to compel someone to act or reveal information"

Blades in the Dark: "When you Command, you compel swift obedience. You might intimidate or threaten to get what you want. You might lead a gang in a group action. You could try to order people around to persuade them (but Consorting might be better)."

Savage Pathfinder: "Intimidation is the art of frightening an opponent so that he backs down, reveals information, or flees"

Whew! My hands are getting tired from listing all these games  This is just some of them, of course. In the OP you stated your 'hypothesis' as "Any kind of non-attacking skill test or challenge will never be more effective than degrading the enemies' hit points via attacks, and will often be much less efficient." I've used Intimidation in-character to run off characters in ONE ROUND. How long does it take to 'degrade the enemies hit points'? 

So, do you have anything else for the actual point of this thread?  Sure, games will have Intimidate (though whether or not that works in combat is much more DM dependent ... some games will handle it via morale), but not all of those examples you posted directly refer to combat.  So, just like grappling or tripping, you've provided a specific skill that is game dependent, but you haven't addressed the other part of my question.

But note that I specified in the examples the "help" or support actions.  That's what I asked for evidence of games that handle this better.  You've supplied one skill.  So if I don't take intimidation, then what?  Are there any "help" action mechanics that are useful?  Any "giving aid to a friend" mechanics better than attacking?

Quote from: Exploderwizard on June 14, 2023, 09:47:13 PM

Quote from: BadApple on June 14, 2023, 05:35:42 PM
TBH, I don't know if it's a problem with 5e core, how it's presented, or if modern players are just missing something.  Fighting isn't necessarily how you handle every encounter.  If you don't have the debate periodically about whether to negotiate, sneak around, or fight when coming across a new creature, you're missing a large part of D&D dungeon crawling experience.  I think at least part of the problem is that PCs are so hard to kill that players develop the mentality of "shoot first, ask questions later."  It's sad to see gaming degenerated so badly.

In the old days, not everything you met in the dungeon was a mindless attack zombie.  Sure, it might be but it could be a greedy little SOB that will be happy to show you the secret door for a silver coin.  That dragon could be evil or he could be just a sweet good boy doggy with a really bad case of mange.

The vast majority of players these days never had experience with the original game. Most of us who have are dinosaurs now. They are used to all encounters being winnable just by kicking ass. The common D&D memes of kill, loot, profit are ingrained in the collective gamer consciousness. A big driver of this shift happened once acquiring treasure for xp was discarded. Encounter based xp encourages killing all that you can to rack up xp. That mentality is why when introducing players to an OSR style game, who have only played modern editions, they chew through characters complaining all the while that the game sucks because they try to bum rush everything that they encounter while simultaneously bitching that they don't have enough buttons to push on their character sheets. You can always spot an indoctrinated modern system gamer as a DM when you simply ask "what do you do?" and they gaze down at their character sheet as if they were perusing a menu in a restaurant. Hell I often do the same thing myself when playing newer systems because they condition you to choose menu options, because quite often these options are the only thing that has a chance of changing the situation. The system is so hung up on needing a die roll for everything that the DM will not be likely to know how to process an off menu option and will quickly equate it to one of the available options and call for a roll. That is the heart of the issue. The whole combat options dilemma stems from this. Combat encounters are designed to use up X amount of resources depending on difficulty. This is tied to the concept of the adventuring day. Clever solutions that neutralize the enemy or otherwise end the designed resource draining conflict that do not require these finite resources are eliminated. The rules enforce this. It is quite easy to prove. Show me a condition in 5E that prevents a target from attacking other than being knocked out (hit points ground to zero) or disable by a resource draining magical attack. Even being restrained doesn't prevent attacks, the target simply cannot move. This is due to the action economy structure that dictates that nothing short of the expenditure of limited magical resources can take a target out of action with the possible exception of intimidation if the target is subject to it. The whole concept of morale has been discarded from the core rules. Morale is a lifesaver in older versions of the game. Undead were super scary because they were terminators who would not stop unless successfully turned by a cleric. In the modern versions by the rules every creature is a terminator unless a specific effort is made to intimidate it. Joe the goblin along with his buddies Mack, Slim, Bob, and Jack roll up on some adventurers and decide that they are going to kick ass. In 5E if no specific action is taken to intimidate them, Mack, Slim, Bob, and Jack could be wiped out in round one and Joe would keep plugging away as if had a chance unless someone using their action intimidates him. At that point the party is winning handily so why bother. In an OSR game if three of them went down right away or if any of them were killed and failed to inflict any harm on the party they would need to check morale to carry on the fight. Getting their asses kicked was incentive enough to flee without deliberate PC initiation of an action. The whole kill everything protocol was also helped along by DMs who didn't award full xp for creatures that were not actually slain, meaning that running off opponents resulted in less xp thus the bloodthirsty habits.

Ok dinosaur ramble over.

You've raised a really good set of points in the last couple of posts.  When the game was focused on a majority of experience via treasure, the optimal process was gaining loot by avoiding combat.  Now combat has become a central expectation of progression, to the point where some DMs will even award less than full experience for an enemy that is bypassed or that flees.  So combat utility has taken on an outsized importance.  Because of this, performance in combat and optimization in combat have taken on an importance they didn't have in earlier iterations of the game.  Definitely food for thought...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 14, 2023, 10:31:57 PM
You've raised a really good set of points in the last couple of posts.  When the game was focused on a majority of experience via treasure, the optimal process was gaining loot by avoiding combat.  Now combat has become a central expectation of progression, to the point where some DMs will even award less than full experience for an enemy that is bypassed or that flees.  So combat utility has taken on an outsized importance.  Because of this, performance in combat and optimization in combat have taken on an importance they didn't have in earlier iterations of the game.  Definitely food for thought...

I really do hope you start seeing the game play you really want.  Combat is best when it's meaningful, rare, and intense.  I personally don't reward players for killing monsters unless it's a job item.

If you're not the GM of your group, then do some one shots for your regular table.  Get some adventures that focus on investigation and diplomacy.  Set goals for XP like "completed quest" or "found lost girl" instead of "killed things."  Two adventures that worked well for me in this regard are Thicker Than Blood/Atlas Games/Cyberpunk 2020 and Murder on Arcturus Station/GDW/Classic Traveller.  (They are easily adapted to any system.)

Finally, even if your table is stuck in the murder hobo way of playing, you can adjust it by simply running a "The Witcher" type game.  They have to get a bounty on a monster before any reward will be given.  They need to find out what they are up against based on clues.  They have to find the monster.  They have to find the monster's weakness.  Any collateral damage results in losses from reduced payouts to full on getting chased by law enforcement.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 14, 2023, 10:31:57 PM


You've raised a really good set of points in the last couple of posts.  When the game was focused on a majority of experience via treasure, the optimal process was gaining loot by avoiding combat.  Now combat has become a central expectation of progression, to the point where some DMs will even award less than full experience for an enemy that is bypassed or that flees.  So combat utility has taken on an outsized importance.  Because of this, performance in combat and optimization in combat have taken on an importance they didn't have in earlier iterations of the game.  Definitely food for thought...

This progression can be most easily tracked by the evolution of the thief. Originally the class was an exploration specialist that was relatively weak in combat. Now it is a full blown dps class that out performs the fighter in all ways except the number of hits the character can absorb. Especially in 3E where the rogue could flank and do damage that would put any fighter to shame if the opponent was subject to sneak attack. In 5E they even got rid of classes of opponents that are immune to sneak attack although they did limit the ability to sneak attack more than once per turn. All classes have the same proficiency modifier to hit so the fighter isn't anything special in combat. They just gave the fighter buttons to push like all the other classes. This was all born out of the focus on combat leading to having to make every class be able to kick ass in a fight. Fighters are not combat specialists anymore they are just one of the crowd of such characters. Its as if the modern D&D leverage team was made up of a half dozen Elliots.

Quote from: Old Aegidius on June 14, 2023, 04:07:27 AM
Just allowing characters to give each other a small bonuses by helping with a skill or attribute test by comparison is almost never viable, I'd agree. Some people said it best earlier in the thread though: there are exceptions when it's so risky and pointless for your character to try to do direct damage that you're better off just pumping up an ally who has better odds. That can be really unfun too though, if that's a regular occurrence.

To prevent direct damage from being the best way to approach a combat, I think you need to either:

• Tune the math so it's sometimes more risky to go for direct damage than to help an ally who has better odds.
• There are too many opponents or they may arrive in unpredictable order/waves so you can't just nova the enemy to death.
• The enemy that is least-likely to be killed with direct damage is also the one that represents the most active and dangerous enemy in the opposing force (like a dragon).

It helps if debilitating conditions also enable more effective basic actions on those debilitated targets. It's gamey, but something like a mark that can be exploited by different powers can make certain combinations of powers or certain tactics more beneficial from time to time.

A few more suggestions I would add to that list.

--Persistent debuffs: giving up one action to disadvantage an opponent is more worthwhile if it affects them for one more round. That shifts the profit-and-loss calculation more in favor of the non-attack option. A good example might be a "sunder armor" ability, like you get in MMOs.
--Fold the skill check into the attack action: Players would be more likely to chance the skill check if it didn't cost them their action at all. Essentially this would be a more involved version of the "reckless attack" or "fighting defensively" options you get in a lot of games. Of course it would have to be balanced out by a disadvantage incurred if you fail the skill roll.
--Multiple actions: Related but simpler. You just allow everyone to take an additional action each round, with the contingency that it can't be another attack/spell. If they don't need to move, and they have a spare action, they might as well try something creative. Again, you'd probably have to impose a penalty for failure.

The core problem is in making the non-attack option useful, but not so useful that it supplants the attack or becomes something the players do every round. I think most games over-correct and make all the non-attack options too ineffective, but there are some examples of it going the other way. Tripping in 3.5/Pathfinder comes to mind. Standing up in that game provokes an attack of opportunity, so if you outnumber an enemy and can trip them, all of your allies can get a free attack when they try to stand up.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on June 14, 2023, 11:02:45 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 14, 2023, 10:31:57 PM


You've raised a really good set of points in the last couple of posts.  When the game was focused on a majority of experience via treasure, the optimal process was gaining loot by avoiding combat.  Now combat has become a central expectation of progression, to the point where some DMs will even award less than full experience for an enemy that is bypassed or that flees.  So combat utility has taken on an outsized importance.  Because of this, performance in combat and optimization in combat have taken on an importance they didn't have in earlier iterations of the game.  Definitely food for thought...

This progression can be most easily tracked by the evolution of the thief. Originally the class was an exploration specialist that was relatively weak in combat. Now it is a full blown dps class that out performs the fighter in all ways except the number of hits the character can absorb. Especially in 3E where the rogue could flank and do damage that would put any fighter to shame if the opponent was subject to sneak attack. In 5E they even got rid of classes of opponents that are immune to sneak attack although they did limit the ability to sneak attack more than once per turn. All classes have the same proficiency modifier to hit so the fighter isn't anything special in combat. They just gave the fighter buttons to push like all the other classes. This was all born out of the focus on combat leading to having to make every class be able to kick ass in a fight. Fighters are not combat specialists anymore they are just one of the crowd of such characters. Its as if the modern D&D leverage team was made up of a half dozen Elliots.

This is central to something I've been experimenting with a lot lately, not only in the system but in the adventure design and how I present it.  It's because I'm sitting in this gray area between old-school treasure for XP style and the more recent thing where combat is a blast.  One foot in each camp.  So I don't want to go complete fantasy Vietnam with getting the gold out be the only good way to advance.  Yet I do want treasure and general adventure success to be a lot more important than it is in, say, 5E.  Every test, I'm tinkering with the XP mix for different activities, and being rather explicit with what gets XP and what doesn't.  Don't even care if it is OOC right now, because I'm trying to find the balance that I like. 

What's surprising is just how finely balanced that act can be.  I've played up that combat is deadly (and it is, both in the system and how I run the foes).  I've explicitly mentioned multiple times per session that there is limited XP for wandering monsters, and that it degrades fast with each wandering encounter.  (You get something for being in the area and adventuring based on the kind of monsters that are there, but you get almost the same thing if you avoid them all as if you fight them all.  So after the first fight or two, the cost/benefit goes against the players.  Have fun, fight a few things, but don't hunt everything down.)  Even with all that, it's been hard to get WotC D&D habits knocked out--even having run my previous WotC games more old-school than the rules would suggest.

Last session, I was explicit that taking a chance on turning a captured bandit into a henchmen was potentially worth a fair amount of XP.  That was after we were playing back and forth in character, the players were debating whether or not to trust the bandit, and then knowing it was a play test, and what I'd been saying, one of the players flat out ask me.  When I explained how that could work, I saw light bulbs go off around the table.  I have also been explicit that recovering a treasure or rescuing prisoners or other such "goals" are worth a lot.  Last session, they really chased it, and finally got some solid XP from it.  We'll see how that translates next session.

That's a tangent from the main topic, but I think like the above quotes, it's relevant to the attitude the players bring to the game.  Grappling an enemy or getting them to surrender or putting them into a bad spot might or might not be skill tests, but they won't be tried just for combat.  Within the parameters of the OP, it's almost locked down.  There's got to be something different about how you want the combat to resolve before more "tests" start to look attractive, not only in the rules, but in the character actions within the conceits of the setting.

QuoteOK, with that out of the way, my primary hypothesis is as follows: Any kind of non-attacking skill test or challenge will never be more effective than degrading the enemies' hit points via attacks

From an action economy perspective, this is often not the case.  Even the most basic "support action"- healing- can be more effective if it keeps a valued ally alive one more round, assuming that round is substantially more important than what you are doing (and if it keeps them up two more rounds, then it's an easy win).  This is true even in systems where the amount of healing is broadly less than the incoming DPR- especially when you consider that a wounded ally can take actions that result in him taking up even more of the enemy's actions should they press the attack, such as 3.X's total defense or 5ed's dodge action (older versions had some other kind of shenanigan here too).

But there's more going on that that.  We have the baseline "help" action- brought over from 3.X's Aid Another, and represented in a bunch of OSR places too ("make a swarm attack" in Sine Nomine is a common sight in that gaming set).  You bring up that:

QuoteNow, either of these options are almost always going to be worse than attacking the target.

This isn't true!  In 5ed, help actions are generally provided by minions or familiars, sure- often upping the odds that someone with over triple your average damage is an easy sell- but there's plenty of cases where someone will be attacking and you are out of good stuff.  This math is often dependent on the amount of damage you can do, the amount of damage an ally can do, and the target number he has to roll, but it definitely happens.

But yes, overall, if two reasonable combatants are fighting some guy, neither one benefits more from 'help' instead of 'attack'- and if that weren't true, it would be a design failure in the system (by contrast a mage out of spells or preserving spells may well do better with 'help' than 'attack' or 'cantrip'- especially if the mage isn't just a pile of offensive cantrips and only has one or two attack cantrips, neither ideal for the case).

Which brings up the other big point addressed my many- there's a bunch of other types of support actions that can deny or mitigate enemy attacks.  If you are standing in a doorway with a good armor class and a sword, a dodge action may mitigate a lot more enemy actions than anything else. As could casting Blade Ward, as could some kind of object interaction or status effect, such as extinguishing lights, igniting a poured flask of oil, or casting something that denies or reduces the efficiency of actions, like Rainbow Pattern or Slow.

I think that in general, if you're making a D&D-like game, you probably want the general idea, in a perfectly even fight, to be straightforward- attacks or spells.  In a case of mundane characters swinging hard with weapons, you want that to generally be the best strategy, barring some complexifying options.  Because those complexifying options will exist.  Someone in 3.X will have taken two feats of disarming and anything with a weapon can't keep a grip.  Or someone has done some retarded trick with the grapple rules, acquiring a pile of pluses to the roll via some set of absolutely antilogical combination of things (the 5ed valor bard is a better grappler than the barbarian, because he gets expertise in athletics and can self-buff with Enlarge- and a lore bard is even better than that, because not only does he get the spell faster, he can shit talk the opponent with his bard power, applying a penalty to their grapple check).

Whatever the case may be, the non-complex case should reward directly beating on hit points, and then in actual combat simulation that will often not the be the optimal choice.

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 14, 2023, 10:13:53 PM
So, do you have anything else for the actual point of this thread?  Sure, games will have Intimidate (though whether or not that works in combat is much more DM dependent ... some games will handle it via morale), but not all of those examples you posted directly refer to combat.  So, just like grappling or tripping, you've provided a specific skill that is game dependent, but you haven't addressed the other part of my question.

But note that I specified in the examples the "help" or support actions.  That's what I asked for evidence of games that handle this better.  You've supplied one skill.  So if I don't take intimidation, then what?  Are there any "help" action mechanics that are useful?  Any "giving aid to a friend" mechanics better than attacking?

The actual point of this thread, according to your first paragraph, was "a viable non-attack option in combat...", and scaring off opponents was explicitly one of the options you gave in your assumptions; Intimidation absolutely fits the bill. Your "primary hypothesis" is clearly disproven by it. If you meant something else, the post is such a wall of text that the meaning is unclear.

Other options in my experience have been completely situational - just like non-damaging magic, forced movement. Drive/ride/boat for conveyances? Object interactions for things in the environment? All those 4e combat arenas are calling.... So, damaging attacks are the lowest-common-denominator, the things that you can do anywhere, but anything outside them is predicated on exactly the ruleset, the characters present, the environment, etc.

Not answering your question, but alluding to some of the other posters: even in my 5e game the players recently found themselves up against an enemy who wasn't hurt by nonmagic weapons, they were low on spell slots so only hitting with a couple of cantrips per round, and taking damage way too fast. They filled a pit with grease, set the grease on fire, forced the enemy into the pit, and held a boulder on top to try to burn him to death. No direct damage being done by anyone in the party for several rounds but it ended the fight a lot faster than direct attacks could have. (After a couple of attempts to escape the pit failed, the enemy turned to mist and retreated, the party pillaged his lair, and headed off, not seeming to think about the repercussions of having this enemy on the loose and his ties into the power structure, even when the next two sessions had reminders.)

XP for surviving encounters is quite an old idea. So fleeing successfully was like 1/4 XP in several D&D recommendations, letting the opponent flee was like 1/2 XP, and each defeated monster was full XP -- and that's defeated not killed, so surrenders counted. It changes the No Quarter attitude of play.

Further there was extra GM discretion ways to earn XP like clever use of Spell or Thief Skills. So if you could end a hostile encounter with that you get XP for clever usage, plus the XP for survival and whatever level of success it was. Then you add XP for GP treasure and you are awash in ways to learn from your experiences.

Point being a lot of these ideas of scaling down the butting-heads, tactical skirmish game was there from the earliest, from D&D and others. The challenge was having the table adjust their expectations. Texts conversed with the reader that whole encounters could be resolved fruitfully with little to no dice, because sometimes you could "win" in Surprise or Reaction stage of the encounter, surviving and gaining XP from a positive exchange or neutral exchange.

When you allow a simple bribe, apology, or fleeing action to succeed in at least part, suddenly the game is richer for the breadth. Not everything becomes dependent on combat balance, but becomes strange new mysteries or wild opportunities. It explains the wildly lethal or weird Rare and Very Rare slots in several adventure Random Encounter Tables. When you have more than hammers, you can build a lot of different stuff, and you stop hunting for nails. 

Quote from: Eirikrautha on June 13, 2023, 04:27:14 PM
So, another thread mentioned the use of skill or attribute "tests" in combat in lieu of attacking, and I wanted to discuss how more games are including these options (and why I find them generally unsatisfying).  Of course, the title of this thread frames the question as an absolute (primarily because there is a group of posters on here who just lose it every time someone posts an absolute... and it's amusing to watch the 'tards "Reeeee!"), but I'm interested in games that have created a viable non-attack option in combat... because I just haven't seen one yet.

To set the table, I want to make sure we're all on the same page as to my assumptions and assertions.  So I want to lay the following assumptions out before we look at the present iterations of skill tests:

• I am focusing on mechanical results, and not subjective or narrative results --- Sure, you can do a backflip to awe the enemy so that your partner might kill it, and the DM can rule that you impress the spectators enough that you boost your standing with the locals... but that's not a mechanical result and it's not doing anything to help with the actual combat
• I am focusing on the most efficient resolution of fights --- sure, there are any number of ways to use skills to prolong, delay, and change the nature of a fight.  But unless the tactic can result in an equal or less cost in resources, time, damage, etc., then it is considered "sub-optimal" for the purpose of this discussion (an additional note: "optimal" results don't mean some kind of nefarious min-maxing.  They actually make the most sense in character as well as in the game.  What character will prefer to lose half his hit points in a fight when the option was available to lose only one quarter?  No rational human is ever going to choose the tactic that costs the most of anything, except in rare enough circumstances that don't really address the main issue here)
• I am talking about situations where violence either has or will imminently break out and the only choice is to defeat the enemy, either by killing, wounding, capturing, or scaring off.
• I am assuming enemy combatants are equal or greater in number than the player characters --- this is a bit of a narrowing assumption, but just because it comes up very frequently in most of the RPGs I've played, and because a highly unbalanced action economy in the players' favor doesn't seem like it is a true test of utility.

OK, with that out of the way, my primary hypothesis is as follows: Any kind of non-attacking skill test or challenge will never be more effective than degrading the enemies' hit points via attacks, and will often be much less efficient.  So, how do I come to this conclusion?  Well, let's look at combat tests from probably two of the most popular game systems right now: D&D 5e and SWADE.  In 5e, a player may perform a "help" action, which gives the helped creature advantage on the next attack roll against the chosen creature.  In SWADE, a character may use the support action (resulting in a +1 or +2 bonus to a fighting roll for an ally) or perform a test, which results in either a distracted or vulnerable (-2 or +2 respectively to opponents' rolls or allies' rolls) with the possibility to make the target shaken on a raise.

Now, either of these options are almost always going to be worse than attacking the target.  I don't want to get too far in the weeds to figure out how much better your skill would have to be as opposed to your chance to hit in order to make the test viable (getting to do something, even if it's not really helping, as opposed to just missing every turn), so let's assume a relative parity in chances to hit and pass the test.

Now, I know that an argument against that is that tests allow a player to build a character that is not combat facing, but still useful in combat.  But, I think, based on the following points, that "useful" may not be accurate, and that this illusion helps to make unbalanced (and even min/maxed) parties more viable and likely because of the lip service paid to tests.

So, what ends a fight?  All enemies are one of the following: dead, incapacitated, or fled.  Just sticking to the mechanics related in the games, none of the skill tests create a chance of flight.  Sure, you can house rule it, but that's not really confirming the utility of the mechanics as they stand... since you're having to change it.  Incapacitation might be possible due to some kind of grappling, but you haven't removed the threat; you've just delayed having to remove it (and if there are more enemies than players, you still have active combatants that can kill you while you try to keep your target out of the fight).  But grappling is its own thing, so I'm not really talking about that in this case.  So that leaves killing/rendering unconscious due to damage as the primary goal.  And tests suck at this.

I'll note that a similar argument has been proffered previously by many folks when it comes to damage or healing.  Generally speaking, healing is less efficient than doing damage, as it spends resources without reducing the threat or capacities of the enemy.  The best healing is the healing that revives or keeps a character in the fight, as it preserves damage output and shortens the fight.

What most skill tests seem designed to do is allow one character to give up a chance to do damage in order to make another character slightly more likely to do the same damage that he would have done without the test.  To be viable (i.e. to actually reduce the time in combat), a test would need to guarantee a least as much damage as both characters would inflict on average.  Now, this will only happen when one character has a huge disparity in accuracy or damage over the other (an extremely unbalanced party), or in a case where one party member's contribution is unneeded in the fight (and I know we all want to feel like that player!).  It makes one player into a sidekick in the combat realm, which I think most players aren't too keen on as a permanent role.

You could argue that a player who uses his character's action to worsen the chances of an opponent to hit might be worthwhile.  But, once again, the reduction in damage needs to be enough to make up for the increased time the fight goes because of the lost damage from the helping character.  I'm not going to crunch the numbers here, but I would suspect the damage reduced needs to be very large to pay off (or the helping character must be highly outclassed by his party-mate).

So, in the end, it comes down to the fact that the chance to do damage is always going to shorten the fight by an amount that doesn't make the usage of skill tests valid. If anyone knows of a mechanical approach that defies this analysis, I'd love to hear about it.  Because, otherwise, I feel like skill tests are directed towards players with a dramatically underpowered character (with respect to the rest of their group).  So a mechanic to address a Session Zero problem.  And, outside of a few rare cases (which you don't need to recount, because a few singular examples don't disprove the general trend), skill tests just seem to be meant to make the useless character in combat seem to have a purpose, even when they don't...

Intimidation is ONE of the solutions to your hypothesis and other posters have agreed. Now you're doing what everyone does by shifting the goalpost in a desperate attempt to be right. 

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu writes "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting". But, you're suggesting fighting is the optimal choice. No