I’ve been wrestling with my D&D 3.5 experience. The last campaign ended around level 15 and I didn’t like it. I kept thinking a big part of the problem were the rules, and I started looking for alternatives such as M20 and Labyrinth Lord. But just now I started reading James Edward Raggi IV’s The ‘reality’ AD&D seeks to create through role playing... post, which was very interesting, and led me to another of his posts, Is this how D&D is supposed to be played? – and from there I followed a link to a thread on rpg.net called So what caused the “rest after each fight” thing?
The ‘reality’ AD&D seeks to create through role playing...
Is this how D&D is supposed to be played?
So what caused the “rest after each fight” thing?
And now I’m no longer sure.
Well, for my usual group back in the 3.0 and 3.5 days, we got into the habit of resting every 1-2 encounters because of our confrontational GM. He didn’t believe in bothering with encounters where we had an “easy win”, so every fight had tough critters that were max hit-point, and about an average of 3-5 CRs above the party. Then he’d gripe about how we min-maxed, and treated it like a video game... Guy was a piece of work. – Lost Demiurge ¹
Perhaps that is what happened. My players enjoyed a tough fight at the beginning of the game, so I gave them tough fights. They started optimizing. And thus was I drawn to the Dark Side of powergaming as a DM. Perhaps I caused the very development I’m lamenting now.
If that’s so, I will have to be careful. Changing systems will not automatically solve the problem.
This is also why old-skool gamers tend not to have a big problem with instakills and other powers that short-circuit a fight. The idea is that you should have an opportunity beforehand to learn about the danger, thus giving you a chance to find a solution – research a countermeasure spell, find a macguffin that provides immunity, or whatever. Again, you outsmart the monster, you don’t just overpower it. – Hong ²
I think switching to Labyrinth Lord for my one on one game with Claudia opened my eyes. She loves her characters. I knew from previous experience that the game was lethal and told her that she ought to avoid combat if possible. And so she did. We played very short sessions before going to bed and the like. The first session was spent talking to an NPC and running from a pack of rats. The second session was spent scaring away kobolds, intimidating rats and talking to another NPC. Outsmarting monsters, indeed!
This might also account for the fond memories my players have of a particular diplomatic mission around level five in our last campaign. It was all about outsmarting the opposition and uncovering a spy.
a particular diplomatic mission
I’ll have to think about that.
#RPG #Philosophy
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Thoughtful article. I’ve experienced this myself with the most recent games I’ve run, Shadowrun and Palladium FRPG. Although the ’rest between every encounter’ mechanics are different in those games, it could be that my players were min-maxing because I was trying to bring them to the brink of death each match.
If you eventually answer you’re own questions about DM attitude possibly causing powergaming, I’d like to see an article on it! Maybe you could help me and other DMs solve the problem.
Oh, and I thought about the ’moving to another game system’ to solve the problem. I think that would just be a temporary solution.
– Samuel Van Der Wall 2008-11-29 13:37 UTC
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I think the single biggest thing that causes resting after encounters (well, besides the fact that you actually get resources back) is lack of wandering monsters. In old-school play you could try resting, but it was a big risk unless you took elaborate precautions. 1 in 6 chance every 20 minutes makes it hard to count on turtling for 24 hours until your spells come back. But wandering monsters are one of the first things that seem to get dropped as being unrealistic or not fitting into the story.
– Joshua 2008-11-29 14:12 UTC
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Samuel Van Der Wall: Yeah, I’m starting to suspect that moving to another system won’t help. I’ll try to “play nice” for a while. We’ll see whether players will be complaining of “boring fights” in a few weeks. 😄
Joshua: I’ve that explanation in some threads and it sounds very convincing. What I need to learn, however, is something else: How to make the evening exciting without tough fights depleting all the resources. I’m suspecting that tough fights are the cause for the min-maxing and rules-lawyering at my table which I’m not enjoying.
– Alex Schroeder 2008-11-30 14:43 UTC