Guns Blazing (or maybe not?)

 Yesterday, I ran a relatively straightforward combat mission for Missions & Mayhem to play test some of the combat rules. And of course, as we got started, the players were looking for ways they could solve the mission without resorting to combat. But after straight up telling them I needed to test the combat rules, they went with it. 

The players went in with a good tactical plan, hired mercenaries for extra firepower support (old school D&D players want their men-at-arms, you know!), and good use of the "I Know a Guy" rule to get access to night-vision goggles. 

We were able to test out surprise and initiative (just like Classic D&D, and they work just as well), regular attacks and the special double-tap, burst, and spray autofire rules, grenades/explosives, and the first aid rules. 

One area I had been wondering about were the double-tap and burst rules, which I'd imported directly from d20 Modern. For both of these, in d20 Modern, you sacrifice accuracy and ammunition for increased potential damage. As a game mechanic, it's elegant. Firearms all deal 2dX damage. With a double-tap, you fire two rounds and take a -2 to hit, and deal an extra die of damage (3dX). With burst autofire, you fire five rounds and take a -4 to hit, and deal an extra two dice of damage (4dX). 

However, in M&M, it's not as easy to get bonuses to hit (no feats). Also, there's less hit point inflation, because NPCs/creatures have mostly flat hit dice, not bonuses to each die for Constitution scores. When I ran the solo test with Jeremy a few weeks back, we'd discussed the option to change double-tap and burst autofire to be a bonus to hit, rather than a penalty, but deal standard damage on a hit. The thing that holds me back is that ammo expenditure becomes the only reason NOT to double-tap or use burst fire if you have the proficiency for it. 

The rules for spray autofire (expend 10 rounds, trying to target several people with one attack) works similarly to the explosives rules. You only need to hit AC 11 (ascending AC) with your attack roll, but the targets in the area get to make a reflex saving throw. In the case of spray autofire, they take no damage on a save. With explosives, they take 1/2 damage (like fireball in D&D). This seemed to work well. No need for a change. 

I do have notes for figuring out where a grenade or other thrown explosive goes off on a miss. I think I need to also implement them for both burst and spray autofire. We had one instance where a burst attack missed a terrorist standing among the hostages. On the spot, I had the player roll a reflex save to avoid the bullets striking a hostage (failure! But the hostage survived with 1 hit point). That worked, but since I already have rules for how to determine where an explosive goes off (and it may still affect the intended target if you're lucky), it's easier to implement those for missed autofire attacks in crowded areas as well. 

We didn't get to test out the suppression fire rules (empty your magazine in one direction, opponents must make will saves or dive for cover/lose their actions for the round), but everything else went fairly well. 

Right now, I'm working on the first campaign module: Cryptids & Conspiracy. Basically, X-Files, but with potential for psychic or occult Heroes (and villains). I've got the advanced classes and psychic powers done. I need to write up a system/advice for creating and running conspiracy groups as opponents, and of course stats for a bunch of cryptids, alien visitors, and ghosts/demons that can be investigated. Once those are all done, I'll add some mission design guidelines and XP award guidelines. I'll likely include a few sample missions as well.

So still early in the process, but so far I'm happy with what I've done. 

Why you're doing high level adventures wrong

 I just watched this video on high level 5E play from The DM's Lair. 

Now, as you all know, I do play 5E as a player, but will not run it as a DM. But if I were to run it as a DM, I think a lot of the "problems" mentioned in this video wouldn't actually be a problem, because they often are not problems in high level old school D&D. This doesn't mean these things don't happen, it means that these things happening doesn't become a problem. 

 And yes, I will probably be referencing my recent thoughts on high level play from other recent posts like this and this.  Maybe this one too.

Luke's video linked above can really be summed up with one comment. Why is high level 5E hard to run/play? Because you're still trying to run/play high level D&D the same as a low level game. 

But that's not much of a blog post. So let's go through Luke's 10 points and I'll address them one by one.

1. It's hard to create balanced encounters/adventures.

I agree with this statement, and I never even actually got to run high level 5E (I quit while I was ahead and switched to TS&R). I could see where the rules were headed. 

Partly, this has to do with the structure of 5E. The easy short rest/long rest recovery rules make it so that it's hard to wear down PCs over time. It's pretty easy to be at or near top level form for most encounters if the DM allows for frequent resting. Now, sometimes this could also be the case in old school D&D. Wilderness adventures take place over game days, and there might not be encounters every single day. This allows spellcasters, at least, to nearly always have a full compliment of spells when they have an encounter. Even non-spellcasters will likely be able to rely on a fair amount of hit point recovery between encounters, if the party's clerics are using excess spells at the end of the day to heal, or the group decides to take a rest day, prepare only healing spells, and use them up before moving on. 

But running through a group of balanced encounters during a short dungeon shouldn't be the primary type of adventure that high level PCs take on. You don't often see Superman taking on the sorts of street level thugs that Daredevil fights in the comics. And you rarely see Daredevil going up against weird cosmic threats the way Superman often does. 

High level games, whether old or new school, shouldn't be focused on the dungeon delve or the monster combat as the primary challenge of the game. Different sorts of challenges need to be involved. That way, it doesn't really matter if the monsters in the PCs' way are too easy, or too tough. If they're too easy, then focus on the other problems that can't be solved by swinging a sword or casting fireball. If they're too tough, then players need to get ingenious with their spells/abilities/items, and come up with a way around the encounter besides a hit point slog combat (I'll be mentioning hit point slogs a lot in this post, so I'll abbreviate it HPS from now on). 

2. High level spells and abilities ruin the fun.

This is assuming, as I've often mentioned in the past, that WotC seems to think the fun part of D&D is the HPS. The claim (this was also part of Luke's discussion of point 1) is that high level spells can make encounters or even whole adventures a cake walk. Save or die spells (I don't think 5E has any of these anymore) in old school games often did this. And the same powerful spells like wish or time stop, disintegrate, teleport, etc. can render many challenges very easy. 

Have you even been in a situation where you cast a finger of death or some other save or die spell on a powerful monster like a dragon, and it works? Let me tell you from experience, it feels awesome! And not just the first time, either! Of course, in old school D&D, the monsters' saves get much better, so these spells didn't work all the time. But when they did, it was always something to cheer about. 

Luke argues that this sort of encounter hijacking ruins the fun, but just wait until we get to his point about length of combat/high hit points later on... 

If the focus of the game is not on continual missions to a dungeon of the week, scaled to your level, but instead on developing the campaign world, the characters' place in it, and how they want to affect that world, this won't be a problem. That monster was a roadblock. Did it slow them down? Great. Did it not? Doesn't matter, there are other challenges in the game besides monsters.

This isn't "allowing players to win without playing the game." It's playing the game smartly. And does it invalidate DM prep work? I guess it would if you've got some storyline you're planning to run like a readers' theater, or you've got what Justin Alexander calls My Precious Encounter syndrome. But if you're running a world, not a storyline, it's not breaking or invalidating anything. 

Finally, on this point, should the DM use these powerful spells (or powerful monster abilities) on the PCs? Sure, why not? It's part of the game. It retains the risk of the game at high levels. If the monsters/NPCs are just there to be knocked over by the PCs, how is that fun? I get the occasional power trip encounter that allows high level PCs to just tear through some monsters. It helps make you feel like you are a powerful character. But if that's every encounter (3-4 "balanced" encounters and a boss style play), that's gotta get old. There's no challenge. 

And again, even if the combats are threats, a game of endless "enter the dungeon, fight the monsters, take their stuff" should not be how high level games are run.

3. High level play is easy for players, hard for DMs.

When is the game ever not hard for the DM? And if you're throwing more than just combat encounters at the players, you will find plenty of ways to challenge them. And I'm not just talking about kaiju style monsters like the Tarrasque. Although those are great! The thing is, though, you shouldn't be beating the Tarrasque by the HPS method, or even the Save or Die spell method. Go read the Labors of Hercules or some Superman comics and come up with some ideas besides "beat the monster" for a challenge. 

4. Not enough published content for high levels.

If you've run a campaign from level 1 up to level whatever, and you still don't know how to make your own content, or run the world, and need WotC (or TSR, or Paizo, or some other company) to spoon feed you content, the problem is not with the game itself. You need to learn how to run a campaign world. 

Again, stop thinking of D&D as just "Hey, here's the dungeon for the next few sessions! Once you beat it, you'll go to a higher level dungeon!" and think of it as a world. There are politics, natural disasters, resource management, and all sorts of other challenges in the world besides monster slaying. And that's not even getting into the planar adventuring stuff. 

If you can't make your own content, maybe you should stick to the low level stuff until you feel confident enough to make the game your own. 

But don't blame that on a lack of high level adventures. There are plenty out there, if you convert older edition or 3rd party stuff, IF you still need that crutch after years of DMing. 

5. Low chances of death take the fun out of combat.

If the monsters don't have a chance of killing the PCs, yeah, that's gonna make combats less fun. But again, why are we focusing on the HPS? There are plenty of ways for PCs to die. And yes, there are lots of high level spells that reverse death. That doesn't remove the sting of dying from the game, though. Or at least, it didn't in older editions, where there were limits and drawbacks to raising the dead. But even in BX/BECMI, with lower penalties/drawbacks for raising the dead than AD&D had, it still sucks to lose a character, even if it's only temporarily.

But even if the high hit points and good saving throws and easy resurrection takes some of the risk out of combats, there are still risks. And again, if the only time we're engaging in risks is when fighting monsters, the game has more problems than PCs that are hard to kill. 

Also, it's been often noted -- and claimed by fans as one reason they prefer new school games -- that there is a reduced risk of death at ALL levels in 5E (and 4E before it). And yet, combat is supposed to be the only fun part of the game. Someone square that circle for me, please? 

6. Combats are a slog.

Ah, here we are. The HPS point. 

And if we want to get around the 4 hour long HPS? Let the PCs use save-or-die magic to end it quickly. That's not a bad thing! 

7. Characters get more complex.

This is true in any edition, but 5E characters start out a good deal more complex than PCs in old school D&D. So yeah, it's gonna happen, and I can see why it's worse in 5E (one of the reasons I quit running that edition). 

I don't think there's any way to mitigate this aspect of high level play. High level PCs in any edition have more to keep track of. Abilities, spells, magic items, henchmen/hirelings/followers, domains, etc. 

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts linked above, it's OK to slow down the pace of the high level game. It doesn't need to be constant cliffhangers and races against time. It's not an episode of 24. 

Also, again, if combats are not all HPS, then we don't need to worry so much about players taking their time to plan out their actions. If those actions will lead to swift resolution of the encounter rather than the HPS, you're saving time in the long run.

8. Math gets too complex.

Um, too complex? I understand that you don't need to be a math nerd to have fun playing D&D, but he's complaining that you need to add up too many d6s for high level spell damage or backstabs. 

I have sympathy for people for whom math is not a strong suit, but Luke claims sometimes it takes 2 minutes to total up all the damage dice. I don't have a lot of sympathy for that. Here's some advice. If it takes you that long to total the dice, don't add them one by one. Group them into pairs or sets of three that total 10 each set. Makes the math much easier, and faster. There, no more 2 minutes wasted on basic 3rd grade level math problems. 

Now if you're playing Pathfinder 2E (from what I've heard), or Rolemaster or Palladium or something, the math does sometimes get a bit complicated. But D&D 5E doesn't have hard math, really. 

9. Players get bored with their characters. 

I can understand this. Ever since 3E came out, and even before that with games like various Palladium offerings with tons of options and customization for characters, or skill defined systems like CoC, all the options available can make you curious about how they work in play. Or if you could craft a character in this way, or model a PC off of a favorite fictional character, and so on. Character building in these games can and often is fun (though time consuming). 

As a DM, you get to scratch that itch by running lots of NPC. But not so much as a player, especially if you're in a game like 5E in which character death is hard to come by (see point 5 above). 

At the same time, if your player is getting bored with the character they are currently playing, it's probably because you're only giving them one type of challenge (another monster fight), and they've already figured out how to best manage that challenge with that character. They want a new character to have some variety in the game. They're tired of being the front-line warrior and want to try the skirmisher. Or the heavy damage dealer. Or the spell-slinger. They crave variety in their PCs because there's no variety in the challenges set forth in the game. 

Play high level games properly, with more immersion in the game world, problems besides the dungeon/monster of the week, and multiple threads going at the same time, and suddenly they don't want to just switch characters. If they have ties to the game world (not necessarily domain play, but that helps), there is an incentive to stick with this established character, rather than keep switching PCs every month or two. 

10. The story arch is completed. 

Hmm, not much to say about this one. If you've set your game up as a limited campaign, with a "story" to follow -- even if it's an open-ended one with no railroad -- and now it's complete, I completely understand not wanting to continue it. 

The trick for continued high level play, as I've mentioned above, is to have a living campaign world that revolves around more than just one quest or BBEG. There should be a plethora of potential BBEGs and artifacts to quest for, lands to conquer, far away lands/continents/planets/planes of existence to explore, human drama, political rivalries, and so on in the game if you want to keep it going. 

This is one of the reasons I dropped my West Marches campaign. It was a one-trick pony of a game, and as the PCs started to get up into the lower mid-level range (4 to 7), I was seeing that there just wasn't a lot of opportunity for growth and expansion in the game, without completely abandoning the West Marches premise. I could have done that, but started a new game instead, with a setting rich in potential for dungeon delving, getting involved in political rivalries, growth, and eventual settlement/conquest by the PCs, if that's what they choose. I think it will be a much longer lasting campaign. 

So if you don't want your campaign to end, don't hinge the entire premise on one story line.

The Phased Combat Round

I'm not sure why I keep the phased combat round from BX/BECMI in TS&R. I mean, I put it in the books because that's what the rules are supposed to be. But I rarely ever follow it. For a few sessions in my West Marches campaign, I tried using it strictly. I got lots of pushback from the players. And I felt it was more of a hassle than an aid to combat. So, I went back to my usual method of ignoring it.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, in Classic D&D, the combat round actions for a side are supposed to be resolved in the following order: 

Movement

Missile Fire

Magic

Melee

Now, this presents some interesting tactical/logistical challenges. If you don't move at the start of the side's turn, you don't get to move. Missile fire or a charge are the only ways to disrupt a spellcaster. You can't fire a missile and then duck back behind full cover. 

I suppose it would be easier if I did a Declarations phase with more detailed actions. But after years of playing newer editions, where each player has full reign on their PC's action to do all the moves, maneuvers, attacks, and bonus actions they like, players feel like when they state their intention, that's their action. 

If I have players make Declarations at all, it's just something simple like "I'll cast a spell" or "I'll run up and attack the ogre in melee" rather than their whole detailed plan of action. If I had them give more detailed plans, and took notes each round, then resolved things in the order above, that might make it seem more worthwhile. As it is, though, all that extra note-taking and adjudicating phases seems like a needless hold-over from D&D's wargame roots, where the referee was often given hand-written orders by the players for each turn, and then had time to sort things all out. 

At the D&D table, I'd rather keep things moving. 

I was thinking that the above phases would be useful for rounds where initiative between the monsters and the players is tied. If things are tied, all sides move (including charge attacks, attacks with spears set for charge, fighting withdrawal, and parting shots/attacks of opportunity on those that retreat rather than withdraw). Then all sides fire missiles. Then all sides cast magic (including magic items and specials like breath weapons or gaze attacks). Finally, all engaged characters that haven't taken an action yet can make their melee attacks. 

On rounds where initiative isn't a tie, each side just goes in the order they please. 

This is sort of like the AD&D system, where weapon speed factors (and maybe spellcasting segments?) are only supposed to come into play if initiative is tied. 

Next session, I'll maybe try this out and see how it goes. In the meantime, I'm considering if I should edit my TS&R books to get rid of the outdated Declarations and combat phases, and just write it up the way I actually play the game instead. It wouldn't be a big change, especially since people can download the rules for free.