OK, I see most everyone really likes this idea!!!

Ever had a Big Boss encounter fall flat, because the PCs got a few lucky rolls?

Ever had an encounter drag on forever?

Those scenarios each suck too.  I was just thinking out loud.....  Heck, it's better DM advice than a D&D 5E CR number.

Quote from: Razor 007;1072253Ever had a Big Boss encounter fall flat, because the PCs got a few lucky rolls?

No. I use systems where both sides are robust enough that it takes more than just a few lucky rolls to end a combat against a "Boss."

Also, if you're thinking of encounters in terms of "Boss Fights" you're not running an RPG you're narrating a story. In an RPG the PCs might avoid half the fights coming into a dungeon, kill the toughest guy in the dungeon and then end up having the fight of their lives with a random encounter on the way out because they blew most of their resources on easily defeating the dragon. The fight everyone recounts regularly (i.e. the real way an adventure becomes a story) is the one against what you'd probably call "trash mobs" while the "boss" is a footnote needed only to explain why the fight against the mooks was so difficult.

QuoteEver had an encounter drag on forever?

Nope. Again because I use a system where the monsters aren't just bags of hit points to be depleted either. The only truly long encounters were ones designed be long (generally speaking, engagements between the PCs armies and an enemy's army with the PCs actively participating and attrition being a major part of the challenge).

Quote from: Razor 007;1072253Those scenarios each suck too.  I was just thinking out loud....

Not if you know what you are doing, they don't.  PCs getting a few lucky rolls is great and memorable.  They'll talk about it for years.  If the encounter drags on forever, the GM has all kinds of ways to fix that, including having the opposition either run or negotiate.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1072259Not if you know what you are doing, they don't.  PCs getting a few lucky rolls is great and memorable.  They'll talk about it for years.  If the encounter drags on forever, the GM has all kinds of ways to fix that, including having the opposition either run or negotiate.

It would be such a letdown for the party to finally come face to face with Dracula, and it be an easier encounter than Renfield was, because of 3 good dice rolls.

It would also be bad if the encounter with Renfield drug on for much too long; simply because nobody could roll high enough, time after time....

Quote from: Razor 007;1072264It would be such a letdown for the party to finally come face to face with Dracula, and it be an easier encounter than Renfield was, because of 3 good dice rolls.

It would also be bad if the encounter with Renfield drug on for much too long; simply because nobody could roll high enough, time after time....

It would be in a book, or a movie, or any other means of expressing traditional story-telling.  RPGs, however, are not the same thing.  So no, it is not a let down in those cases.

Now, it is kind of a chicken or egg thing to understand why that is so.  It is necessary for a GM to have run enough in the manner where an RPG session is not traditional story-telling in order to fully experience the highs and lows unique to the RPG.  There's a leap of faith involved by the GM to pull that off, but it starts with:  "An RPG is not primarily a story-telling device."

I am fine with the swift takedown of Dracula - it was swift in the original story! The occasional lengthy fight is fine too, it is only a problem if all the fights are lengthy - that is a system problem.

Quote from: S'mon;1072269I am fine with the swift takedown of Dracula - it was swift in the original story! The occasional lengthy fight is fine too, it is only a problem if all the fights are lengthy - that is a system problem.

In a similar way, just about every big bad guy in a Conan story ends up going down fairly quickly once combat starts. Not all tales of heroic struggle require long drawn-out fight scenes.

Quote from: Razor 007;1072264It would be such a letdown for the party to finally come face to face with Dracula, and it be an easier encounter than Renfield was, because of 3 good dice rolls.

It would also be bad if the encounter with Renfield drug on for much too long; simply because nobody could roll high enough, time after time....

Anything where the outcome is uncertain has the potential to not turn out according to expectations/be a letdown if you were expecting something specific.

That leads to the general question of what you are trying to get out of your RPG experience -- if you are trying to replicate your favorite narrative (book, movie, etc.), then Dracula being easier than Renfield is a problem. If you are trying to play a game (with success and failure, if not outright wins and losses), then forcing Dracula to be harder than Renfield (in spite of any actions, random or otherwise) means that you aren't really playing the game, so much as playing out the narrative, but with trappings of a game.

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!

(I can't believe I'm the first one to yell this.)

But yeah, the absence of mandatory expected and "satisfying" results is why I prefer rpgs to traditional fiction.

But what if you just.......

OK, nobody likes this idea.

Quote from: Razor 007;1072347But what if you just.......

OK, nobody likes this idea.

Don't let the nay say-ers rain on your parade. It wasn't the worst suggestion ever.

I liked the "mook" rules from 4th edition, an edition that really needed an alternative to full hit points in some battles.

Try this one: "instead of hit points, mook examples of monsters are defeated after a number of hits equal to the creatures hit dice"

Example, the party is fighting through a crowd of untrained mook ogres. Each one has 4 HD worth of hp normally. But in this case, any combination of 4 hits to each mook ogre will drop it. Maybe we have to do something to account for the number of damage dice done per spell.

This a house rule I have been contemplating to speed up some larger scale battles. It would make hordes o goblins go down just by rolling a hit no matter what the hp or damage would say. It is also very cinematic and fits the feel of many campaign worlds such as Conan.

It could be a decent narrative idea, but as soon as the players find out it's going to suck.

It would have to be something the DM is just doing behind the screen secretly.

Quote from: MonsterSlayer;1072350Don't let the nay say-ers rain on your parade. It wasn't the worst suggestion ever.

I liked the "mook" rules from 4th edition, an edition that really needed an alternative to full hit points in some battles.

Try this one: "instead of hit points, mook examples of monsters are defeated after a number of hits equal to the creatures hit dice"

Example, the party is fighting through a crowd of untrained mook ogres. Each one has 4 HD worth of hp normally. But in this case, any combination of 4 hits to each mook ogre will drop it. Maybe we have to do something to account for the number of damage dice done per spell.

This a house rule I have been contemplating to speed up some larger scale battles. It would make hordes o goblins go down just by rolling a hit no matter what the hp or damage would say. It is also very cinematic and fits the feel of many campaign worlds such as Conan.

The "X Hits" rule though is still hit points. Heck, its arguably the original iteration of hit points from Chainmail (the attacker rolled one die for damage and the defender's HP were the results of one die roll as well). A system where you need X hits to overcome an enemy is only different from current iterations of D&D in level of detail, not in type of resolution method used and completely different than the OP suggested where it doesn't even matter WHAT the PCs do, the monster just dies after X rounds due to a reason determined by the GM.

Quote from: Chris24601;1072354The "X Hits" rule though is still hit points. Heck, its arguably the original iteration of hit points from Chainmail (the attacker rolled one die for damage and the defender's HP were the results of one die roll as well). A system where you need X hits to overcome an enemy is only different from current iterations of D&D in level of detail, not in type of resolution method used and completely different than the OP suggested where it doesn't even matter WHAT the PCs do, the monster just dies after X rounds due to a reason determined by the GM.

Ok, yeah I thought he was looking for a faster alternative to hp. Re-reading it, yeah he he just wants encounters to end in a predetermined narrative.

I was just giving him a solution where the outcome was nearly guaranteed for low importance combats but might still require some resource use to get it over quickly.

Carry on....

Quote from: Chris24601;1072354A system where you need X hits to overcome an enemy is only different from current iterations of D&D in level of detail, not in type of resolution method used ...

A lower "resolution of resolution", as it were.