Quote from: AnthonyRoberson;495281So, the LotFP rulebook seems to discourage fighting monsters (going so far as to brand those that do so as 'lunatics') but the main method of getting XP seems to be recovering treasure from 'abandoned' or 'uncivilized' areas. Isn't this a bit bizarre?

OD&D was a "get in, get objective, get out" mission dressed up with fantasy elements. If it doesn't make perfect sense, it's because it wasn't supposed to. But yeah, in OD&D the assumed playstyle is that you're going to get as much loot with as little risk as possible. Combat is fun, but deadly at low levels, and the threat is ever-present enough that you don't have to go looking for it.

Quote from: RandallS;496148What would they do with a site that was too large to clear? Say, an abandoned huge ruined "city" (say something like Angkor in SE Asia) or a large megadungeon? The first level of the megadungeon beneath the PC's manor in my current M74 campaign reportedly has at least 400 rooms, for example.

IME, they'll chunk it. They'll clear and secure a level. If the levels get too large for that, they'll find other way to conceptually define an area (usually around chokepoints or by virtue of empty space) and clear the immediate area.

Quote from: Benoist;496233Actually, no. This specific ratio here given by me is derived from actual play in my campaign, counting all XP from monsters defeated versus all XP derived from acquiring treasure, all the while trying to adhere to the spirit of the rules and advice given in the DMG.

Interesting. Because it (not?) coincidentally provides a close match for the XP:GP ratio derived from a strictly mathematical breakdown of monsters and treasure. (This varies, IIRC, from 3:1 to 3:2 in pre-2E.) Based on this, and your statement that you're honoring the treasure generation guidelines, I'm going to conclude that your players aren't actually avoiding combat that often.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;496319IME, they'll chunk it. They'll clear and secure a level. If the levels get too large for that, they'll find other way to conceptually define an area (usually around chokepoints or by virtue of empty space) and clear the immediate area.

This is how my players 'clear'. They reconnoiter, move forward, clear areas only as necessary, and secure their backtrail. They secure their backtrail by collapsing tunnels, by wizard-locking doors, by spiking doors, by... all sorts of things, really. Whatever they think of.

If they can get to the objective by clearing 10 rooms, they'd rather do that than clear 40 rooms 'just to be sure'. They'll extract the prime treasure from 4 dungeons for every 1 the more 'kill everything' group manages. And, since they have to fight much less often, their chances of survival are much higher.

And this is what it's all about for my group. Achieving the goal and surviving to do it. The goal is never, for them, 'kill all the monsters'. So they don't do that. It would be a waste of effort, not to mention lives.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;496319Interesting. Because it (not?) coincidentally provides a close match for the XP:GP ratio derived from a strictly mathematical breakdown of monsters and treasure. (This varies, IIRC, from 3:1 to 3:2 in pre-2E.) Based on this, and your statement that you're honoring the treasure generation guidelines, I'm going to conclude that your players aren't actually avoiding combat that often.

They're not avoiding combat all the time, if that is what you're after. I'm not sure I agree with this idea/meme that you "have to" run away constantly from combat in AD&D either, to tell you the truth.

Being careful, using problem-solving skills, avoiding some confrontations if possible, managing resources wisely, knowing when to back off and live another day to come back the next, knowing something about basic tactics, actual tactics, like using terrain for your advantage, dividing to conquer, those type of things, sure, you totally need them to survive, and even then, luck does help, and death because of some unforeseen development does happen as well. But running all the time period the end? That's another matter. That's an extreme that doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun to me.

I like the 'run first, ask questions later' dictum from the 'successful adventures' section.

It makes sense to me, given our playstyle. We play pretty close to RAW - combat is freaking lethal - it is a crapshoot, it's Russian Roulette. Combat is functionally equivalent to a trap (an AD&D trap, that can just outright kill you). Why on earth would a sane person walk into a trap without at least trying to understand how to address it?

Fall into combat. Run. Come back. Reconnoiter. Figure the best approach. Murder.

As opposed to:

Fall into combat. Stay and hope you win. Die. Complain.

That's why I was talking about actual tactics: actual tactics (where you use your brains to exploit situations and circumstances to give you the best possible advantage on the battle field and shape it to your and not your enemies' expectations) mitigate the lethality of combat. Use actual tactics (including but certainly not limited to knowing when to retreat for safer ground to come back the next day) and you'll see your results increase tremendously.

Think like a moron with no imagination, your brain trapped in a jar made of rules within rules wrapped between the covers of the game manuals, and you'll die.

Quote from: Kaldric;496337I like the 'run first, ask questions later' dictum from the 'successful adventures' section.

It makes sense to me, given our playstyle. We play pretty close to RAW - combat is freaking lethal - it is a crapshoot, it's Russian Roulette. Combat is functionally equivalent to a trap (an AD&D trap, that can just outright kill you). Why on earth would a sane person walk into a trap without at least trying to understand how to address it?

Fall into combat. Run. Come back. Reconnoiter. Figure the best approach. Murder.

As opposed to:

Fall into combat. Stay and hope you win. Die. Complain.

"Damnit Valentine, runnin aint no kind of plan. Runnin's what you do when a plan fails."  

I much prefer to:

1) Reconnoiter
2) Asess the situation
3) Decide if any action is to be taken or not.
4) Come up with a primary plan and a backup for when everything goes to shit.

Just falling into combat and planning to run away is very rash and stupid. What if the enemy is much faster than you?  Assuming that you do get away, the enemy is now aware of you and gaining suprise might be more difficult.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;496319IME, they'll chunk it. They'll clear and secure a level. If the levels get too large for that, they'll find other way to conceptually define an area (usually around chokepoints or by virtue of empty space) and clear the immediate area.

Yep, that's what I've experienced as well.  My 4e campaign spent a good 6 months just clearing out a haunted graveyard.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;496401"Damnit Valentine, runnin aint no kind of plan. Runnin's what you do when a plan fails."  

I much prefer to:

1) Reconnoiter
2) Asess the situation
3) Decide if any action is to be taken or not.
4) Come up with a primary plan and a backup for when everything goes to shit.

Just falling into combat and planning to run away is very rash and stupid. What if the enemy is much faster than you?  Assuming that you do get away, the enemy is now aware of you and gaining suprise might be more difficult.

I've seen pretty much the same style of players over the last 25 years with all kind of different groups.  It usually ends up looking like this:

The party sends one guy ahead to scout.  He may or may not actually spot anything.

If they are just trying to get through an area on a temporary, quick mission, they try to hide/avoid the monster.  If they are exploring the old ruins or whatever, they will almost always decide to attack.

They will come up with some kind of plan based on realistic tactics of what might work in the real world with humans.

The plan will fail spectacularly because D&D uses monsters with special powers and large numbers of hit points that won't die after a single hit like a real world human would.  At best, they will manage to bottleneck the monsters somewhat to avoid taking on everything at once.

People will start getting badly injured/dying.  A discussion about retreating will occur.  They almost never actually end up retreating because there is usually no way to escape once you get into close combat with a monster.

The monster(s) will finally die after they've used up all of the magic/powers/etc.  They will retreat back to town to heal up, raise people from the dead, then head back to the dungeon again.

Here's how it usually has gone with my groups...

Quote from: jgants;496408The party sends one guy ahead to scout.  He may or may not actually spot anything.

Scouts are ahead of the party, with magical detections to help them cast on them to help them if the party has them available.

QuoteIf they are just trying to get through an area on a temporary, quick mission, they try to hide/avoid the monster.  If they are exploring the old ruins or whatever, they will almost always decide to attack.

If the monsters are something they believe can easily take and taking them looks worth the effort, they will attack -- usually after a bit of planning so everyone knows what they should do at least until contact with the enemy messes up plans. If the monsters look too dangerous to be a sure kill with little damage to them, they withdraw and either go somewhere else or get what they think they might need to take out the monsters if going through them is truly needed. Note that monster reaction rolls mean that few monsters will autoattack so there are often other options besides combat even if they do need to move through the area the monsters are.

QuoteThey will come up with some kind of plan based on realistic tactics of what might work in the real world with humans.

The plan will fail spectacularly because D&D uses monsters with special powers and large numbers of hit points that won't die after a single hit like a real world human would.  At best, they will manage to bottleneck the monsters somewhat to avoid taking on everything at once.

Assuming they are familiar with the monsters abilities their plans are based on realistic tactics (there really aren't any "rules manipulation tactics" in my games) based on their abilities and those of the opposition. They don't use tactics that would work on humans when fighting flame wargs  any more than a person on Earth today would see the same tactics fighting a pack of wolves than they would use on a gang of humans.

The plan may still fail, although not usually as spectacularly as charging in and attacking without any plan would (let alone as bad as simply assuming that because they encountered the monsters they should be able to take them would).

QuotePeople will start getting badly injured/dying.  A discussion about retreating will occur.  They almost never actually end up retreating because there is usually no way to escape once you get into close combat with a monster.

My groups almost always retreat if the battle starts really going against them. They often have plans for this, including a reserve of fresh(er) people to help with a fighting withdraw. It doesn't always work, but since we are using 0e based rules,which do not have every monster pursuing forever (any more than they have every monster attacking the party on sight), it often does.

QuoteThe monster(s) will finally die after they've used up all of the magic/powers/etc.  They will retreat back to town to heal up, raise people from the dead, then head back to the dungeon again.

Once the monsters are dead, they usually continue on with their mission unless they are just too banged up to risk it. After all, heading back to town is risky (wondering monsters and the like) and if they do head back to town they realize that something else may have moved into part of the area they went through meaning getting back to the point they left off may not be a cakewalk.

AD&D surprise rules mean that monsters that get surprised get dead. If they don't die, the morale rules mean they are more than likely going to run away. AD&D combats, played by the rules, rarely last more than three or four rounds until monsters panic and flee, if you get surprise, they die or flee before they get a chance to hit you. Monsters run away not just occasionally - they try to run away most of the time, by the book.

Surprise rules mean the monster could take 4 full rounds of attacks before it gets to do anything. Not really flabbergasting that it dies or runs away.

If you play monsters as all being immune to morale, and you don't use the 'pursuit and evasion' rules that let PCs run from monsters and get away, even from monsters faster than the PCs - then yeah, you end up just slugging away until all the hitpoints are gone.

And then you 'fix' this boring condition by coming up with a miniatures game that allows you to mindlessly slug away, but gives you lots of rules to complicate the slugging match.

Quote from: Kaldric;496442AD&D surprise rules mean that monsters that get surprised get dead. If they don't die, the morale rules mean they are more than likely going to run away. AD&D combats, played by the rules, rarely last more than three or four rounds until monsters panic and flee, if you get surprise, they die or flee before they get a chance to hit you. Monsters run away not just occasionally - they try to run away most of the time, by the book.

Surprise rules mean the monster could take 4 full rounds of attacks before it gets to do anything. Not really flabbergasting that it dies or runs away.

If you play monsters as all being immune to morale, and you don't use the 'pursuit and evasion' rules that let PCs run from monsters and get away, even from monsters faster than the PCs - then yeah, you end up just slugging away until all the hitpoints are gone.

And then you 'fix' this boring condition by coming up with a miniatures game that allows you to mindlessly slug away, but gives you lots of rules to complicate the slugging match.

Which AD&D set of rules are these?  Because according to my AD&D book the average mathematical chance of a usable surprise is about 22%, you get one segment of action on a surprise, there's less than a 50% chance on average that a monster will flee a battle, and the pursuit and evasion rules pretty much doom you in a dungeon if you have anyone slow at all in the group (which a by the book fighter wearing heavy armor will certainly be).

25 years ago, the basic D&D battles I saw all played out by having the fighters move in and attack while the others stayed back and generally continued until someone died.

20 years ago, the AD&D battles I saw all played out by having the fighters move in and attack while the others stayed back and generally continued until someone died.

15 years ago, the AD&D 2e battles I saw all played out by having the fighters move in and attack while the others stayed back and generally continued until someone died.

5-10 years ago, the D&D 3e battles I saw all played out by having the fighters move in and attack while the others stayed back and generally continued until someone died.

In the last few years, the D&D 4e battles I saw all played out by having the fighters move in and attack while the others stayed back and generally continued until someone died.

Right now, I've switched back to playing basic D&D and it's still played out having the fighters move in and attack while the others stay back and generally continues until someone dies.


I have not experienced any change in the basic flow of the game regardless of edition except that some editions took longer to get through but tended to give the PCs more options along the way.

jgants, that's not how surprise works in AD&D 1e.

From the PHB:

'Each 1 of surprise equals 1 segment (six seconds) of time lost to the surprised party, and during the lost time the surprising party can
freely act to escape or attack or whatever.'

A chart follows explicating that the difference between the two surprise dice is the number or segments lost.

So, if the difference in the surprise dice is 3 and the side that was surprised subsequently loses initiative on the first normal round of combat, they could potentially have been hit by up to 4 attacks before getting to resolve any of their own actions.

Quote from: jgants;496471Which AD&D set of rules are these?  Because according to my AD&D book the average mathematical chance of a usable surprise is about 22%

AD&D, 1st edition. If you know the monsters are there (you've reconnoitered), they don't get to roll against you (DMG page 62)  You'll surprise them 33% of the time, (1-2 on a d6) for 1 or 2 segments. If your advance party is all elves and halflings or in boots of elvenkind/cloaks of elvenkind or otherwise moving in such a way as to be certain the monsters don't see or hear you (and why wouldn't they be, when setting up an ambush), you'll surprise 66% of the time, for 1 to 4 segments. These aren't normal segments - each one is treated as an entire round, for purposes of missile fire and melee combat - so, if a fighter gets 2 attacks a round, and gets 4 segments of surprise, that fighter will get 10 attacks before the monsters get any (gaining surprise means you automatically win initiative). A missile weapon fires at triple speed during surprise segments, again treating each surprise segment as an entire round. Surprise is murderously lethal. If you achieve surprise and are ready to take advantage of it, killing monsters outright is the rule, not the exception.

Quoteyou get one segment of action on a surprise,

If you set it up intelligently, you can get up to 4 - and be firing missile weapons at triple speed for all 4 segments.
 

Quotethere's less than a 50% chance on average that a monster will flee a battle,

No, that's actually the just the base morale score a monster has. All sorts of things can force the monster to check more than one time - for instance, fighting an obviously superior force makes them check morale every round. An obviously superior force is up to the DM, but an example is one that hits them 2x for every 1x they hit back. A force of 5 PCs firing bows is going to make a monster run like hell, most times. Having their leader slain forces a check on an entire force with an 80% chance of failure. You could make a hundred hobgoblins run by slaughtering their leader in the surprise round. Losing 25% of the group forces a morale check. They check again when they've lost 50% of their hitpoints, and 50% of the group. By the book, the vast majority of combats should be ending when the monsters do a fighting retreat, try to disengage, flee in panic, or surrender. Some monsters will fight to the death, and they're tagged that way.

Quoteand the pursuit and evasion rules pretty much doom you in a dungeon if you have anyone slow at all in the group (which a by the book fighter wearing heavy armor will certainly be).

Fighters wearing heavy armor don't get to be in the front group - it's like ringing a dinner bell for monsters. IMC, fighters don't wear heavy armor when exploring at all. You can't surprise anyone while dressed like that, and you drastically increase your chances of being surprised - the ranger's and elves' and halflings abilities don't work when they're with fighters dressed in a blacksmith's shop. Fighters IMC wear heavy armor only when they absolutely know they can't achieve surprise, or it's not a significant factor - in pitched battles in open terrain, in other words.

As for the pursuit and evasion rules dooming you, not really. Drop some caltrops. Drop flaming oil. Drop some coins if the pursuers are smart. Drop food, if they're hungry and dumb. All of these are ways to distract or halt pursuers, even when they're faster than you. Have reinforcements along your backtrail - when they join with you, the monsters check again to see if they follow. The pursuit rules are as much a system as the combat rules. Assuming you play smart, you get away - or lead the monsters into an ambush you've prepared.

Quote... battles I saw all played out by having the fighters move in and attack while the others stayed back and generally continued until someone died.

This sounds horribly boring to me. It's basically just giving up on tactics and strategy, pretending the surprise and morale and pursuit rules aren't in the game, or don't matter, when they really do matter quite a bit.

edit: And how did everyone else attack when the fighters charged in? In AD&D, you can't target individuals in a melee with ranged weapons. You just roll randomly to see who you hit.

Awesome post, man.

I don't have the phb; is that stuff all covered in the DMG (which I just got a copy of)?