Quote from: Tyberious FunkComplete for whose game?  Yours, or mine?

That would be mine, since this thread is about my opinion and preferences. I got no problem with other perspectives or approaches. I don't so much understand them, though:

Your PC's don't play with fire nearly as much as mine do, apparently.

Out of curiosity: If someone did try to light an enemy or a crime scene on fire in your game, what would you do?

Off the top of my head, I can think of several possible reactions, but from what I'm getting, most of the folks who dislike / don't need formal rules of any kind for this sort of thing would make a ruling on the fly -- effectively creating  a rule to cover the specific situation.

Is that what you'd do?

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: J ArcaneI

The example given of World of Warcraft is a load of fucking bollocks.  A computer RPG has the advantage of being, well, on a goddamn computer.  Meaning that it can calculate the most superfluous and complex of calculations on the fly without slowing gameplay down.

Take those same calculations that WoW uses for falling or swimming or drowning or swimming and drowning in lava or whatever the fuck, and apply them to a tabletop gaming session and you'll have a bloody mess of Alternate Realities type proportions.

Not true at all. The rules for falling in the example is "your character takes damage from falling beyond a certain distance. "

There's nothing that superfluous or complex about it. Depending on the game, it can be interpreted it in different ways. I'll use the example of 7th Sea:

In 7th Sea, you can fall just about any distance, as long as there's something to fall into, like a bale of hay or "the ocean". That's there for genre expectations.

Is 7th Sea therefore a game about falling?

In any case, nobody is making the claim that games "need" these rules. So if that's your point of contribution, I can only tell you probably picked the wrong message thread.

Quote from: J ArcaneBasically I don't give a crap about any rules that aren't going to be consistently and regularly applied over the normal course of play.

If it isn't, then it's not worth my time to have to look the damn thing up, and I'm more likely to just make something up on the spot based on whatever makes sense in my head, just so I don't have to spend 20 minutes digging through a rulebook.  

I want a concise basic structure that underlines the game so that when these sorts of situations do come up, I can decide a sensible way of resolving them, because the underlying framework supports being bent to just about any direction.

A point of agreement and one of disagreement:

1) I think the "basic structure" / "framework" is key since no game is going to include rules for everything. Ideally, for me, the framework should support mapping from real-world values to game terms and specific rule-sets for things like drowning and falling should illuminate, illustrate, and clarify the framework.

If a game doesn't have such a framework I'd consider that a weakness--if it does and, additionally, provides drowning and falling rules that are consistent with that framework, I'd consider that an example of a well-made game.

2) I *disagree* with your priority on time & speed of play here.

Not that I disagree those things are important in general, but for me, when we're gaming out really important (e.g. life-or-death) situations speed of play becomes distinctly secondary to other priorities, including

• Fairness to the character -- meaning that the players all agree that the rules are correctly defined and reflect the necessary considerations
• Common understanding -- meaning that all the players understand the ruling being proposed and understand that ruling
• Fidelity to genre -- meaning that everyone feels that the rules under consideration accurately reflect the tone and type of game we're going for

If I'm about to call for a roll to survive a diving crisis, I'd want to meet the criteria above before I worried about taking too much time.

For me, in my games, that usually means having an out-of-game discussion (usually a very quick one) about what kind of ruling I'd make and why I'd make that.

For my group character stats, feats, and skills are important to the players, so any ruling I'd make would (usually) need to consider those (a character with Swimming Skill and a high CON and a background of boating or diving, would have advantages staying underwater over a character with none of those things).

All of this (for me) requires time:

Time to communicate and discuss, time to negotiate (if appropriate) and re-consider, etc.

We wouldn't do that if the situation was less important, but if / when it *is* important, that's how I typically run things...

In those situations, having a *good* set of rules that helps give everyone a common starting point and common-ground is very much appreciated... even if it does mean taking some time to look them up.

One Final Point:

For me, in my games, YMMV (all caveats apply), we use a kind of "precedent" system. If I rule, in one encounter, that fire is an extremely lethal and effective weapon then the players expect it to behave that way in all reasonably similar situations.

I find that when I make up rules on the fly, I tend not to always think carefully about how a ruling might affect things in the future unless I'm careful and take some time.

Having a game that *appropriately* reflects things like fire, falling, etc. helps save me from making a ruling that will need to be undone ("Guys... let's revisit  the whole flask-of-oil-is-better-than-a-bastard-sword thing...") later.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: BalbinusGrimGent,

What's Praedor like?  I've never seen a copy and it always sounded quite cool.

Eh, that isn't surprising: for all that Praedor is the most popular Finnish RPG to date, there's no English translation nor any plans for publishing one. (Well... although admittedly I've toyed with the notion of putting together an unofficial little demo.)

It's a gritty sword-and-sorcery game based on the comics by Petri Hiltunen, and influenced most notably by Robert E. Howard, Roadside Picnic by Arcady and Boris Strugatsky, and Spaghetti Westerns. The PCs are the titular praedors, professional adventurers and dungeon crawlers who make a living by looting ancient ruins; and you earn that title by venturing into the devastated and demon-infested city of Borvaria which surrounds the known world on all sides and stretches beyond the horizon (forever, some say). That, you see, is all which remains of what was once the greatest civilization in the history of this world and perhaps all others. At the height of its power, the arcane science and magic commanded by the immortal citizens of Borvaria could plunder infinite parallel realities, plucking alternatives to the natural laws at will, along with toys and slaves and whatever they could ever wish for. For a time, they were gods. And then, in a single night, all that came to an end when the weakened structure of existence itself could no longer sustain these wounds between the worlds, and all the countless universes touched by the city began collapsing together uncontrollably. Now, thousands of years later, Borvaria still stands, still merged with the beasts and landscapes of a thousand hells. In the midst of it lies Jaconia, a perfectly circular region of habitable land, protected from the chaos beyond by the wards set in place by the sorcerors who foretold the fall of the city. There, humanity still lives, and from there, a few adventurous souls venture outside in search of lost treasures and knowledge.

The system is based on an additive d6 pool: if the total sum rolled is equal to or less than the relevant skill rating, you succeed, and each set of five points below the rating grants you another "level" of success which often have further beneficial effects. Adjusting difficulty is a simple matter of increasing or reducing the number of the dice (three, most commonly), and you'll obviously want to keep your pool as small as possible since that improves your chances. Roll all ones, and you automatically succeed at the highest possible level, 3, regardless of the actual target number. Roll two sixes, and you automatically fail. Roll three sixes, and you automatically botch.

Also, as I said, combat's pretty darn lethal, and that's not helped by the fact that many of the usual opportunities for healing found in other fantasy RPGs simply aren't available. Even alchemical potions are highly expensive and take time to work, so you can't just quaff one of them in the middle of a battle for some instant HPs (or "Blood", as it's called in the game). Magic could restore a warrior's strength in a heartbeat, of course, but the PCs won't be seeing much of that: it's strictly for sorcerors, and sorcerors are strictly NPCs. You could receive a mystical item of some sort as a payment from one of them, or stumble across just about anything in the ruins beyond, but such devices are never without drawbacks of their own. Common people are only allowed to study and practice the science of alchemy which mortal slaves learned from their masters during the reign of the Wizard Kings, but its products cannot really bend the laws of nature without a sorcerous catalyst called capra that isn't exactly easy to come by...

Even through magic, there are no true resurrections, ever. In fact, no one knows what happens to folks after they die, although various cults and religions naturally have their own ideas about that. Priests and monks in Jaconia cannot be any more certain about the reality of their faith than, say, any Catholic priest in our world: no god bestows special powers on them in return for their convictions. Rumoured "miracles" are almost certainly the result of trickery, alchemy, or demonic influence...

"Demon" is the common name for all extradimensional beings from the void between the worlds. Many of these were forced to serve as slaves during the glory days of Borvaria, and they still carry a grudge about that; some of them were worshipped, back then, and they haven't forgotten that, either. Still, the vast majority of them are mindless beasts, although there does exist a conspiracy of sorcerors, the Curarim, who have allied themselves with the more intelligent variety and deliberately attempt to merge with them in an effort to become living gods...

The apocalyptic merging which ruined Borvaria produced (and still produces) any number of "nameless creatures", unfortunate combinations of lifeforms from several realities. Each of them is uniquely deformed, and no two of them are alike in appearance or abilities. Most of them are in hideous and constant pain, which can only be eased by devouring flesh from this world, or by the proximity of objects from their native universe. And when you remember that the way of life in the ancient civilization was based on such items, and that nameless creatures can sense them from a distance, you might want to consider twice before hanging on to every little trinket you find in the city...

So there are demons and nameless creatures and abominations created through sorcery, but no non-human cultures of any kind, no elves, no orcs. Technically, sorcerors might count as something other than human: heirs to the power of Borvaria, they are immortal and aloof demigods who consider themselves far above the common rabble. The Wizard Kings of old are dead and the sorcerors no longer rule the mortal masses, but not all of them are content with this state of affairs. It wouldn't take much to spark another civil war that might even bring down the wards which keep the end at bay...

Praedors wander in the middle of all this. Folk heroes to some and dangerous trespassers to others, they may be escaped slaves or exiled nobles, mercenaries or alchemists or courtiers, men or women: a praedor can usually be trusted to judge another by his own merits rather than the values of the surrounding society. Most of all, they have proven themselves to be survivors who can walk into the Kingdom of Death and back again, and it's a rare Jaconian who doesn't treat them with at least a grudging respect because of that. Besides, they are very, very good at what they do, more so than any ordinary thief or sellsword, and you never know when you might find yourself in need of their services...

It's the kind of a game that takes all the cliches of the genre and then either runs cheerfully with them ("A wizard did it!") or inverts them in amusing ways ("So... we live in the wilderness and go adventuring in the city?"), while remaining accessible to complete newbies. Nifty, that.

(But even the revised edition doesn't have an index. That's unforgivable.)

Quote from: Abyssal Mawhttp://www.lumpley.com/comment.php?entry=36

Wow, there's some incredibly stupid shit going on in that conversation. It's like a train wreck made out of words.

I personally think a lot of these bad ideas gain traction in the 'theorization culture' because it steadfastly refuses to accept dissidence, and the benefit of playing along is that you will be granted the privelege of tapping into a promotion network for whatever thing (game?) you are trying to peddle.

So it's really just a case of the most manipulative sociopaths rising to the top, making pronoucements about what is or isn't "socially destructive" or "healthy play" or whatever else. Then the remaining community members can choose to either sign on and chin-wag along, or leave the fold and strike off on their own.

QuoteFairness to the character -- meaning that the players all agree that the rules are correctly defined and reflect the necessary considerations

You know, I've been in some really fucked up groups in my time, and nowhere in my gaming history has "fairness" ever been some massive problem of such proportions as it gets presented as in online debates about gaming.  

So you'll forgive my apathy perhaps, because I don't think it's all that much of a damn problem.

QuoteCommon understanding -- meaning that all the players understand the ruling being proposed and understand that ruling

So you're suggesting I shouldn't make on-the-fly rulings because my players might be too stupid to understand them?

QuoteFidelity to genre -- meaning that everyone feels that the rules under consideration accurately reflect the tone and type of game we're going for

I sincerely am unfamiliar with any games in which the covering of such subjects as falling damage is integral to the emulation of it.  

I can think of a genre or two that would be better served by simpler games with little need for a focus on silly special rules that come up maybe half a dozen times over the course of a player's entire gaming career.

Quote from: JimBobOzI'm curious about these game sessions where you needed rules for urinating on demand. I've never needed that in a game session. Can we have a description of these sessions?

It's happened a few times, mostly a variation on one of...

1. The characters come across a religious site or the lair of the bad guy or whatever and wish to desecrate it by taking a leak.  

2. After defeating a serious bad guy, players take their frustrations and anger out by pissing on the body.

3. The characters believe (rightly or wrongly) that urine could be used for treating an injury (like a sting or something like that).

Both scenarios tended to mostly happen playing D&D as kids.  And realistically, only a handful of times over a 17 year period.  But still definitely more frequently than I've seen a character drown in a game (which I don't think I've ever seen).  And probably more frequently than I've needed rules for catching fire which I can recall happening only a handful of times.

I'm strongly tempted to put falling/drowning/firey deaths down to simple yes/no equations. In fact, that's almost always how I would run it.

Character in heavy armor falls into the ocean: Does someone try to save him? Yes: He lives after suitable dice rolls and possibly low level injuries due to sucking seawater.  No? He drowns. No rolls, he sinks like a stone.

Falling: Is the fall high enough to be 'garaunteed lethal' given the premises of the setting? Yes? he dies barring intervention, particularly if being stupid lead to said fall.  Not quite? He lives after suitably hard dice rolls and much injury. No? he lives, move on.

Fire: people are HARD to set on fire. Seriously, the bums in the back yard almost always live unless I tie them down first.  Sometimes that isn't enough as the rope will burn through before they've really gotten to burning.  If someone does something 'execution style' involving fire, you die. Painfully. Otherwise, it's a damaging attack using flame, no more, no less. I don't need special rules for 18 types of fire.  Put someone in a burning building and start applying smoke damage, round by round.

Yeah, it's idiot simple and can be a bit cruel, but given that it's fiated, you don't get players thinking their character can take a shortcut down to the ground by leaping out of a jetplane without a parachute, simply because they have enough hit points, so it hasn't really come up very often.


Then again, I'm the fucking poster child for ignoring the RAW and playing it by ear.  I'm constantly amazed by the rules that the players will apply to themselves without my asking them too.... :what:

Quote from: J ArcaneYou know, I've been in some really fucked up groups in my time, and nowhere in my gaming history has "fairness" ever been some massive problem of such proportions as it gets presented as in online debates about gaming.  

So you'll forgive my apathy perhaps, because I don't think it's all that much of a damn problem.

Hmm.. okay -- why all the swearing? Is that for some kind of rhetorical effect or are you finding something offensive?

Fairness, for me, is largely an internal issue rather than one that has anything to do with a group dynamic.

I see GMing as, in large part, a refereeing roll where I'm acting with a commitment to be fair and impartial.

Not everyone sees it that way.
Not everyone who does would consider themselves "committed" to doing the job fairly.

I'm not sure why it would be a "massive problem" (did I say it was somewhere?), but if you're apathetic about that aspect of the role, that's certainly up to you.

Quote from: J ArcaneSo you're suggesting I shouldn't make on-the-fly rulings because my players might be too stupid to understand them?

No--that wasn't what I meant.

In most cases, where no one in the room is an expert on what's going on, none of us will be working with a common set of assumptions about how something should turn out.

Since the GM is, in essence, guessing at a ruling, there's no way for the other players to know what he's thinking -- unless he tells them. Or they're psychic.

Or there's a rule that they can reference.

Since I was, evidently, offensively unclear, let me suggest an example that's come up a few times for me:

Characters burn a crime scene to destroy evidence of their heroic, but extra-legal battle against cosmic evil: the question is, "Does the fire destroy the scene before the Fire Department arrives to put it out?"

Odds are no one at the table knows what the fire-department response times are for the area they're in. And odds are no one knows how fast fire spreads or what affect an accelerant would have, or how much "evidence" would be consumed.

And no game I know of has rules for even some of this -- so there need to be some GM judgment calls.

Now, let me add one more element: the *characters* are experienced investigators. They probably *do* have experience with crime-scene destruction, arson, forensics, etc.

As a GM, I would want to discuss my ruling *before* the characters lit the fire.

Here's why: The PC's would, likely, know what the odds of success were, and would balance that before they took action. They might also *modify* their actions (spraying the scene with gasoline, for instance) if my initial assessment was too unlikely to succeed.

So I'd discuss this with them.

Not because they're stupid.

Because they're not psychic.

Make sense?

Quote from: J ArcaneI sincerely am unfamiliar with any games in which the covering of such subjects as falling damage is integral to the emulation of it.  

I can think of a genre or two that would be better served by simpler games with little need for a focus on silly special rules that come up maybe half a dozen times over the course of a player's entire gaming career.

... okay.

I'm kinda surprised -- let's look at falling.

Action heros fall from heights all the time and either get lucky, or hit things on the way down to break their fall and take less damage / keep going.

Maybe you aren't familiar with action movies: Let me recommend Casino Royale (The recent remake) -- lots of jumping and controlled falling takes place in the opening sequence.

A grittier, more realistic genre would probably have those falls and the characters attempting them take more damage.

More likely: characters wouldn't even *try* to jump from high places in a game where the odds of survival were low. They'd surrender or give up or whatever.

Action hero's also drown and resist drowning -- often by having to fight while someone's holding their head under water (or holding someone's head under, conversely).

Whether this is a good tactic or a stupid waste of time depends on how your game models it -- but it happens in the genre quite a bit (Recently, Sin City comes to mind with both forced drownings and an escape under water by Marv, who clearly could hold his breath longer that I'd expect someone in a realistic drama to).

Drowning's a pretty scary way to go, and also shows up in horror quite a bit where it's far more lethal, even if it's not quick.

I can name a few scary movies where folks have asphyxiated... but if you're not familiar with either horror or action-adventure and the conventions of the genre, what genres are you familiar with?

I bet we can find some appropriate source material that addresses these kinds of rules.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.Hmm.. okay -- why all the swearing? Is that for some kind of rhetorical effect or are you finding something offensive?

I like swearin'.  Sometimes it helps to get the point across.

QuoteI'm not sure why it would be a "massive problem" (did I say it was somewhere?), but if you're apathetic about that aspect of the role, that's certainly up to you.

A lot of people seem to consider it some great problem, since they like to go on about it at great length.

Life isn't fair.  Games aren't always fair.  You do the best you can, and it's always a consideration, but it's not some grand issue that really merits much discussion in my experience.  

QuoteNo--that wasn't what I meant.

In most cases, where no one in the room is an expert on what's going on, none of us will be working with a common set of assumptions about how something should turn out.

Since the GM is, in essence, guessing at a ruling, there's no way for the other players to know what he's thinking -- unless he tells them. Or they're psychic.

So, umm, you tell them?  I'm not aware of any rule present in any game that says the GM has to be some kind of mysterious black box that spits out only short answers to questions.  There's nothing stopping you from explaining your reasoning.

QuoteOr there's a rule that they can reference.

And again we're back to having to dig for that one page in the book where it's discussed, and gameplay gets slowed down.  Because I don't find that players are any more likely to remember these sorts of special rules than the GM, barring the occasional rules lawyer.  


To the latter examples regarding falling, I'd point you to Spike's post above, as a great way of resolving matters, and one which realyl requires no formal rules for.

I would actually suggest that you James Bond example is perfect for what I was talking about.  Complex special rules for falling damage are incompatible with a genre and style of play high on action and short on thought.

Leaping out the hotel window becomes a lot less fun process when it requires digging through a rulebook, height calculations, die rolls, the works, everytime someone gets a bit cavalier.  

THAT more than uncertainty, will inhibit player action.  Players do all kinds of crazy crap, if they think it'll be fun.  

If it's instead an excercise in bad trigonometry, it ain't gonna appeal.

Quote from: SpikeI'm strongly tempted to put falling/drowning/firey deaths down to simple yes/no equations. In fact, that's almost always how I would run it.

Character in heavy armor falls into the ocean: Does someone try to save him? Yes: He lives after suitable dice rolls and possibly low level injuries due to sucking seawater.  No? He drowns. No rolls, he sinks like a stone.

Falling: Is the fall high enough to be 'garaunteed lethal' given the premises of the setting? Yes? he dies barring intervention, particularly if being stupid lead to said fall.  Not quite? He lives after suitably hard dice rolls and much injury. No? he lives, move on.

Fire: people are HARD to set on fire. Seriously, the bums in the back yard almost always live unless I tie them down first.  Sometimes that isn't enough as the rope will burn through before they've really gotten to burning.  If someone does something 'execution style' involving fire, you die. Painfully. Otherwise, it's a damaging attack using flame, no more, no less. I don't need special rules for 18 types of fire.  Put someone in a burning building and start applying smoke damage, round by round.

Yeah, it's idiot simple and can be a bit cruel, but given that it's fiated, you don't get players thinking their character can take a shortcut down to the ground by leaping out of a jetplane without a parachute, simply because they have enough hit points, so it hasn't really come up very often.


Then again, I'm the fucking poster child for ignoring the RAW and playing it by ear.  I'm constantly amazed by the rules that the players will apply to themselves without my asking them too.... :what:

I see danger as a chance for players to rise to a challenge. There's an AP report I did over here early on where the players were fighting a tentacled horror on the dock where their own boat was. The heavily armored character was forced to choose between dropping into the water, or trying to break past an area that would have surely ended in a tentacle strike that would have laid him out.

He dropped into the water. He effectively gambled against the rules by having his charcter hold his breath until he could maneuver out of the situation. And he did just that. Scrambling up the slippery underwater ditch he fell into and back out onto the shore.

In the game this week, the characters entered a sort of "bottled city" adventure. Only (surprise!) as they warped in (by stepping through the gateway portal), they entered the demi-plane from 800' feet altitude and "fell". This is a probably unsurvivable 20d6 fall in the terms of the rules of the game we were playing. Did I just houserule them as dead? No. But it was important to know how much damage they were facing.

AGAIN, the players countered by using their wits and tactics and activating defenses. One character immediately activated a ring of feather falling. His rate of descent slowed to 60' per round. Another one used his levitation power in the 1st of his 2 rounds of freefall. The other character fumbled through his gear for a potion of flying during the 2 rounds of free-fall.

(and then I had the Nightwing attack them in mid-air.. which turned into a pretty cool aerial battle)

At DDXP, the module 'Trouble with Pirates' begins when your assembled D&D special forces strike team air-drops in invisibly (via feather fall) onto an enemy ship, infiltrates it, and places a magical bomb that disables the air elemental powering it so that another ship can catch up with it. It's an awesome "mission impossible" type deal.

The environment itself can be an opportunity for interesting conflicts. This is especially true if the game is actually about danger (or adventure?) rather than stuff like "tackling social issues" or whatnot. So is everyone clear on that part? This is not about how games "need" such things as rules for dealing with environmental dangers. I can completely recognize that not all games "need" rules for such things. Indeed, if your game is about guys who solve parlor mysteries--or young doctors in love.. or whatever else--  then these kinds rules may not be that important.

But to me they serve a use, and the environment itself can be a pretty cool adversary.

The difference here, AM, is that I don't stick my players into 800' drops without some plan for them to survive it already in mind.  I'm perfectly content with making stuff up on the fly. Player in armor falls into reasonably shallow water fighting a tentacle monster?

Not going to fiat his death, no. Might give him 'damage a round' from the problems with holding his breath while fighting, and given the abstract HP of D&D feel perfectly justified in doing so.


Like I said, dying due to enviornment, like anything else, should be the end result of player actions, and if it's really 'unsurvivable' then putting an extra layer of rules in there only slows things down.    If it's not unsurvivable, then fancy rules can bog stuff down.  I abstract, I cheat.  I make shit up as a go and only tell the players a little bit.


Here's an example: Say you have the bad guys give the hero some cement shoes and toss him off a pier. Perfect example, text book even, of a time for 'Drowning rules'... right?  I mean, you need to know if the hero can save himself before he dies, right?

Wrong.  First of all, you as the GM put the player into that situation, you chose to put him into the water. Now, you decide if you need him dead or not, if that serves the purpose of tossing him in the water.  Chances are, he can't really rescue himself, and if he can it's more due to canny planning than simply struggling, same with armor and swimming btw. If the player has a canny plan, let him do it. Make a few 'fortitude checks' to ratchet up the tension a bit, maybe apply some damage or fatigue, but let him do his 'cunning plan' and feel all clever and heroic.

If he's got nothing now you can either let him die, or save him. Rules don't help here, they outright hinder.  Maybe the secret merprincess rescues him, maybe he wakes up feeling half dead on the beach with no explanation, maybe he wakes up feeling half dead in the bed of some NPC who you've been itching to get the PC's to talk to.  You don't need rules, you need to keep the game running and maybe save the character along the way.   Let the player wonder what happened. The last thing you want to hear is 'according to page 273, there is no way I could have been rescued after I passed out.' and yes, I've known players who would be that asinine to apply a rule against themselves just to prove their mastery of the rules was superior.  


My point is this: My role at the table as a GM is to give the PC's things to work with/against.  Swatting down annoying characters is easy. Doing stuff to the PC's is easy. I'm the GM, I've got Orbital Elephant Weapons if I need 'em.   I don't need rules to kill a player who jumps off a cliff, I don't need rules that make it hard to save a character who flubs a 'reflex save' while fighting on top of a cliff.   I'm not going to object to having rules I can use as resources, but I'm not going to cry so much if I can't tell just how much damage a player takes from sticking a fork in a lightsocket.  And I've seen those rules.

Quote from: SpikeWrong.  First of all, you as the GM put the player into that situation, you chose to put him into the water. Now, you decide if you need him dead or not, if that serves the purpose of tossing him in the water.  Chances are, he can't really rescue himself, and if he can it's more due to canny planning than simply struggling, same with armor and swimming btw. If the player has a canny plan, let him do it. Make a few 'fortitude checks' to ratchet up the tension a bit, maybe apply some damage or fatigue, but let him do his 'cunning plan' and feel all clever and heroic..

I think we're totally on the same page.

Cement shoes is a classic example of the kind of dangers that make interesting challenges. I'm trying to think what would happen if I did it to the guys in my campaign. The psion would just metamorph out, or disintegrate the block, as would the arcane trickster. The goblin cleric has a variety of spells (like 'free action') that would probably allow him to squirm out. The ranger, I have no idea.. but he does have access to a few things to help him. He has the ability to call animals and cast a few spells.

These characters are like Batman- the danger is there to provide a challenge. But it's up to the players to counter-act the situation with their abilities. Batman would just go into his utility belt and get out the rebreather mask, and the laser-torch or whatever.

But the rules part- is still there, because maybe thats used as a time and limitation thing. If Batman 'forgets" to check his utility belt, he'd die. if Batman didn't get his rebreather mask on, (or drops it), he has to hold his breath to saw his way out before he blacks out and drowns. So you still need to know 'how many rounds can that guy stay underwater...'

The same thing with the falling damage. I gave them an arbitrary altitude of 800 feet, knowing that they'd think of a way out in the 2 rounds of freefall they'd have. The price of not thinking something out was 20d6 damage.

I never had to roll the damage, because the consequence was clear -- "we have to think of something now, this round, or .. we die".

What's all this about not killing PCs? Sounds like someone needs to play a few sessions of Paranoia. You'll see just how fun character death can be!


Seriously though, I can understand not wanting to see 'heroic' characters dying of something as stupid as slipping on a banana peel and falling off a cliff. Or tripping and falling into a kidde pool and drowning.

But let's remember, heroic people have died due to similarly stupid things. General George Patton survived all through WWII fighting, only to die in a freaking car accident.

Yea, yea, you don't want that in your game. I know. But I do know that I get bored when I play with a GM that won't kill a character. It makes me want to say "Hey, if we're not going to die from this, can we just skip it?"(I'm talking about a should be lethal situation, so don't try to be dense)

If you want to use a heroic stance for that, say you can hold your breath for 20mins per con/health/stamina point, fall 1000' and only have a few bruises or maybe a twisted ankle..... Well that's fine. Do that. But I personally prefer to punish the lack of foresight that gets them into these situations in the first place.

Now most rules I've seen are rather simple for drowning or falling. 1d6 per 10', max 20d6 (terminal velocity) Drowing,(been awhile since I used this, I think it goes) hold breath for 1/2 con in rounds, damage per round there after till death. Not all that complex, not all that hard to remember.

But if I had to make 3-4 rolls, per round/action, then cross reference some chart, check character ability's, then apply damage..... Well, I think I'd drop the rules too.