Quote from: CRKrueger;991089Greataxe and two-handed sword, those famed slaver's weapons.

You just wave it at them for damage.:-)

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;990592It's amazing how many times I've heard this.  Or "rules to screw players" or "rules to make the game less fun."

I kind of wonder what kind of pictures people get in their head when they write things like that.

They get the picture of their character doing all the k3wl thingz, never dying, never needing to worry about food, encumbrance, movement rates, morale or anything else.

Last session I had players who did not seem to get the concept that it might take them multiple combat rounds to cross a half-mile of open field. Said field being under fire from the enemy.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;991095And OD&D talks about subduing dragons, and it took us about 0.3 seconds to realize that if you could subdue dragons, you could "strike to subdue" other things too.

One of my players took one look at the three-headed boar they had encountered, decided he wanted it for a mount and asked "can I hit it to knock it out without killing it?"  Knock out or subdual damage should be pretty much inherently obvious.

Yeah, and if you extend the same courtesy to NPCs, GMs that hate killing PCs no longer need to fudge rolls:). It's a rule I approve because I'm tired of people whining about being afraid to TPK the party.
Besides, hit points are hit points, what happens when you run out of hit points is that you lose. Doesn't have to mean "you die", so if you have abstract damage rules, you can use them to reduce the whining on many, many tables;).

Though frankly, I prefer the approach in Backswords and Bucklers, where what happens when you lose your hit points depends on whether the next hit you take is from a bashing, slashing, or piercing weapon. It's a nice little game where all weapons deal 1d6 damage, and this rule fits very well with the setting:D!

Quote from: Vargold;989837I just pulled some examples from 5E. The specifics don't matter here: the fact is that builds are a technique in games for getting players up to speed quickly. Technically, every one of the templates in WEG 1st edition Star Wars is a build--they're all built on the same number of points, and it's very easy to reverse-engineer them to get the basic schema. (I used to do this in the early 1990s to make up new templates that were balanced with those in the book.) But rather than say, "You have X points to spend on Attributes and Y points on Skills," you give the build: Brash Pilot, Quixotic Jedi, Young Senatorial.

The word at issue was "archetype" not build and certainly not template. The templates in 1st edition WEG Star Wars are genius.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;990592It's amazing how many times I've heard this.  Or "rules to screw players" or "rules to make the game less fun."

I kind of wonder what kind of pictures people get in their head when they write things like that.

I picture a guy hiding behind a file cabinet while repeatedly making rocks fall on the heads of all the PCs.  

Why what do you picture?

Quote from: Bren;991303I picture a guy hiding behind a file cabinet while repeatedly making rocks fall on the heads of all the PCs.  

Why what do you picture?

Gary sitting around in his penthouse office on the 1000000th floor of TSR Towers in Lake Geneva, sitting at his desk while wearing his Armani suit, smoking hand rolled Cuban cigars lit with thousand-dollar bills and sipping single malt chilled with ice made from the tears of players whose characters died in Tomb of Horrors, and thinking up new ways to "screw the players".

That's a nice picture.

Quote from: DavetheLost;991176They get the picture of their character doing all the k3wl thingz, never dying, never needing to worry about food, encumbrance, movement rates, morale or anything else.

Man that sounds pretty dumb. In every edition I ran, things like encumbrance, movement, food (albeit not as much in 4e and 5e), morale, and ammo tracking were things we did. In our 4E games there's a rogue trick that allows him to throw sand and debris in people's eyes and I have disallowed him using that power then they were in places that had a lack of it. So he carried around a few pouches of dirt, sometimes fine sand, etc. I also don't get the fun about never really dying. I mean, in a game where raise dead and resurrection are easily found or created you'd think this wouldn't be such a big deal.

Quote from: DavetheLost;991176Last session I had players who did not seem to get the concept that it might take them multiple combat rounds to cross a half-mile of open field. Said field being under fire from the enemy.

Assuming everyone runs at 30-ft a round and assuming that running (non-combat move) about 120 ft. (ie. 40 yard dash in 6 seconds) per round you're going to move that distance in 22 combat rounds or just over 2 minutes in time (which is FAST with gear and armor). I'd probably say they take a penalty or have some sort of exhaustion or endurance check because that's difficult.

What medieval weapon had a half mile range?  If its a trebucht I can't imagine they had any risk of actuuly being hit.  Its accurate enough to hit a city, a person is a bit much.  Especially since a person can see it coming.  

Now a block of Calvary or pikemen might be at risk, but a party of a half dozen?  I wouldn't worry.

Mutant Future game, lasers and gunpowder are in play. What was odd was the players' idea that they would go from half a mile away to melee range in a single footstep.  They were actually surprised when the first, and then the second volley hit them and they were still quite a ways off...  Party of 13, including a 23' tall squid-headed giant.

Quote from: DavetheLost;991709Mutant Future game, lasers and gunpowder are in play. What was odd was the players' idea that they would go from half a mile away to melee range in a single footstep.  They were actually surprised when the first, and then the second volley hit them and they were still quite a ways off...  Party of 13, including a 23' tall squid-headed giant.

Well, I hope they learned.  If not, keep killing them.

And yeah, that's not much with modern weapons.  A tripod mounted M60 will cover 1000 yards effectively.

Quote from: DavetheLost;991709Mutant Future game, lasers and gunpowder are in play. What was odd was the players' idea that they would go from half a mile away to melee range in a single footstep.  They were actually surprised when the first, and then the second volley hit them and they were still quite a ways off...  Party of 13, including a 23' tall squid-headed giant.

Ahhh!

When my players do something like that I figure they don't understand something.  Their expectations are wrong some how.  Which is on me.  I am their senses and their history.  

Could they see the machine guns and lazar emplacements a half mile away?  Did you tell them "none of you expect to make it to the other side of the field." ?

You are going to be in effective kill range for 20 rounds.

Yeah, that situation does sound so ridiculous (that they would expect to get there in one round) that it seems like we're missing something from their thought process.

As far as I can tell their thought process is "This is a combat scene. So I draw my sword and fight"  I explained repeatedly that they were half a mile away, and the first two characters to try crossing the field were both met by agressive volleys, so it should hardly have been a surprise that the enemy would shoot at them.  Their play style seems heavilly influenced by video games or something. Just kill things, everything else will fall in your lap.

I have been taking Gronan's advice and killing them until they learn better.