Post by joshuagoliath on Jan 27, 2014 9:22:20 GMT
The fighter swings his sword (or shoots his gun), the mage casts a fireball, the thief/assassin backstabs, the priest casts a healing spell.
Does that sum up most combats?
Why? Why do players fall into these stereotyped actions so quickly?
It’s a complicated question, with several answers. But, I think it boils down to 4 key factors:
1) Min/Max of abilities and powers
2) Failure to plan
3) Forgetting what they have
4) Character Sheet layout
Now, yes, there are other factors (especially with newer players). But these are, to me at least, the big 4.
This time around, I’m going to examine them one at a time, and point out how it happens, why it happens, and what we can do about it. Then, we’ll take a “big picture” look.
Min/Max of Abilities and Powers
Most players are guilty of this, to various degrees, even if they purposely try to avoid it. And, to be truthful, it makes sense. If swinging a sword is what your character does, don’t you want him to be the best sword swinger he can be? If he mumbles words and throws a fireball, don’t you want that to be the biggest, most badass fireball ever?
But, in doing this, there’s often the drawback of limiting the character to only a few simple acts. If you focus on swinging a sword, but ignore how to bandage a wound, you’re eventually going to die the death of a thousand papercuts. If you know how to bandage a wound like an M.D., but you can barely swing a weapon or hold a shield, you’re not going to live long enough to worry about bleeding out.
Now, many people will say “This is why we adventure as a PARTY. To round everything out. Everyone has their role!” And this is true, to a point. If your character can ONLY do one thing, what does he or she do when the person who does something else goes down? If only the priest can patch people up, what happens when the priest is on the ground, bleeding out? If nobody can stand there and trade blows with the Evil Knight, who’s going to hold him back long enough for the mage to turn him to stone? If nobody but the wizard knows how to read an ancient language, what happens when there are 4 things to read, and limited time to do it?
By maxing the “normal” ability of our character to its absolute limit, we let other things slip. It also encourages us to ONLY do what we’re super good at. Hey, I may not have bandages as perfectly applied as the clerics, but if I stop you from bleeding to death, are you going to complain? Or are you going to be too busy thanking me for saving your life? So, if I let my “primary” ability suffer just a tiny bit, where I’m still excellent at it, I can add ANOTHER ability to my pool. I’m not saying that you let your primary skill/ability drop a lot, just a tiny bit. JUST enough that you can push something else. In Palladium terms, this might mean skipping a couple of the physical skills, and selecting first aid instead & literacy instead.
Failure to Plan
Players generally don’t think too far ahead, or in detail. “Enter the dungeon, kill everyone who tries to stop us, get the loot”. Not too much planning or detail in that. Instead, if players would actually think ahead, they would have so many MORE options.
So, we’re going after an insane cyborg. Maybe, if we could think of a way of shorting out his power supply, we could end the fight before it even starts. Or we could find a way to trap him in a forcefield of some kind.
Instead, players go, find the cyborg, get into a fight, and then say “You know, I wish we had a forcefield of some kind to trap him in!”
With a little forethought, you can equip yourselves better for the coming fight. Going to fight skeletons? Swap that sword of yours for a good heavy warhammer. Going to fight a druid? Be ready for rabid wombats to attack you.
Planning will involve skills (selection and uses), equipment, and abilities. Play on your strengths, but also look on shoring up your weaknesses. Equipment (covered in a bit), is an important bit here. I’m not one of these guys to say that characters are defined by what they use. Instead, I’ll say that what you are should define what you use. If you’re the long range shooter, you’re primary weapon isn’t going to be a sword, is it? But, maybe you should actually invest in a stronger sword than you normally would, to make up for your weakness in that area.
But, the planning isn’t just about your weaknesses. It’s about the groups weaknesses. If you know your group has lots of people good at dishing out damage, but are probably going to take a lot as well, then what about your healing abilities? Does your group have any? Or do you need to find a way to shore up your healing ability? Hiring an NPC cleric, or buying potions or scrolls of healing. Hey, even learning First Aid helps shore up the group abilities.
Planning involves trying to figure out what you’re up against, and what IT has for strengths and weaknesses. Knowledge/Lore/whatever your system calls them skills are WONDERFUL tools in this regard. What good does it do you to know you’re fighting were-beasts if you don’t know to use silver weapons to beat them? How much easier is it do to know that you’re going up against the Demon Snafflefart if you know he’s weak against cold but strong against fire? If you know that, you can load up on cold dealing weapons, as well as magic that throws out cold.
Planning touches on every other category here. USE IT and THINK.
Now, what I’ve written above doesn’t seem too “outside the box” does it? Well, if you take planning, and apply the other parts of this article, you’ll be SHOCKED at what the results are. And hey, with your planning, be creative! Look at some historic battles, and you’ll see that creative thinking and battlefield planning is what won the day. The Trojan Horse wasn’t exactly a “standard” maneuver, was it? It was creative strategy at the last minute!
Forgetting What They Have
I routinely sit and do an AAR (After Action Review) with a group, talking about what went wrong, and what went right. More than once, I’ve had a player say “That fight was ROUGH! I think you may have overestimated what kind of damage we could dish out”, only for me to take the equipment inventory sheet, and point to a specific item that would have made the fight MUCH easier (such as a magic scroll of a wind spell that would have scattered the dust used for the summoning circle). Or for me to point out that they used a slashing weapon against a character that didn’t bleed, but was weak against blunt weapons, while the Warhammer sat there hanging at the fighters side, where he forgot about it.
I could go on and on with examples like those. I’ve had players who forgot that they have HEALING POTIONS! When they drop dead, complaining that the cleric didn’t heal them, they look like an ass when they realize they had a potion that would have taken them to 90% HP.
But, it goes beyond that. Fighting around a 20 meter pit, the PCs were combatting an army of mooks. They were cutting their way through, but then, one by one, they were knocked down the pit. They survived, but were sitting there wondering what they could do now. They failed to pay attention to the fact that they had a rope and grapple. They also had forgotten about the magic items that would have prevented them from getting knocked down the hole to start with! On top of that, they also forgot that they had marbles that they could have used to make the terrain impossible for any of the mooks to get the momentum going to knock them down!
All of that is important, but what does that have to do with thinking outside the box? Equipment can play a key role in creative ideas. Ever read a book (or see a movie) where someone used a hair to mark exact placements of things, or if a door had been opened? Ever think of your character doing that? Why not? Has your character ever used his marbles (literal marbles) to make someone have unstable footing? Have you used your weapons as a way to mark terrain and territory? Scratch marks on the walls or floor? How about just using chalk?
In most game systems, the PCs start off with certain gear, and a lot of times, that gear has clothing (which is quickly ignored and forgotten about) on the list. Have you ever used those clothes to stuff along the bottom of your door at the inn, helping to stop the door from being opened? Or stopping gas or smoke from coming in underneath? Have you ever used those clothes as an impromptu rope (a la every prison escape movie ever)? The items you have are designed for a purpose. Sure, you could use them for that purpose. Or, you can use them for a variety of OTHER uses. A sword is a sword. It’s also a way to scratch marks into terrain, tap messages through walls, or boost your intimidate factor.
That graphite stick you carry around for your (never used) art skill? You can use it to mark terrain, leave encoded messages, or- more creatively- file it all into powder, and mark the floor, so you know if someone walked through the area, and possibly left you a trail to follow. Ever think of that?
By the way, that diamond you’ve been carrying around for 7 levels because nobody you’ve met can afford to pay for it? Find a jeweler. Get him/her to cut it into several smaller gems, (using one to pay him), use one for a glass cutting tool for the thief, and sell them bit by bit. It may not be worth quite as much, but it’s more valuable than something you’re never going to be able to sell.
Examine your gear. Know what you have. And for everything you have, think that it has 2 uses (at least). The one it was designed for, and another one. If you need to, write down the “creative” use. But, look at your gear a LOT. Every time something comes up, look at your equipment and say “what do I have I can use here?” Sometimes, equipment will allow you to completely avoid a problem, while other times it may just make it easier to handle.
Character Sheet Arrangement
This ties in with ALL of the other points. It’s the REASON players forget the equipment they have (and therefore, the tools they have!). It’s the reason players make their characters a one trick pony (and leading to min/maxing).
If you look at the first page of your character sheet, what do you see? Most people see their combat abilities, stats, saving throws, skills, and the “personal data”. If this is what you see first, this is what will be in your mind. Special abilities, powers, gear, spells, etc, gets relegated to a second or third page. This is even more true if your sheets are front and back, as the stuff is often on the backside, down against the table where you can’t see it!
My first page rarely has all my combat abilities on it. Those are on the second page. My first page is personal data and SKILLS. Second page is combat, saving throws, and special abilities. Third is general and mundane equipment. Fourth is magic USE equipment- scrolls, potions, wands, etc, followed by magical gear- bags, rings, etc. Fifth and beyond is spells.
Modern day, a lot of us use our computers (or tablets) to have our character sheets. This is a blessing, as we can have more pages but not have to spread out. One excel file can be our entire character, with additional space devoted to DETAILED abilities and powers of our characters and our items.
But those extra details only matter if you look at them. The key to creative thinking and being able to work around various situations revolves around you being able to KNOW what you have, and what you can do. This only works if you can see your character- not just their combat abilities, but EVERYTHING they can do.
EXAMPLES For the Archtypes….
There are four archtypes in gaming. Now, we can argue the 1,000,001 classes/OCCs in existence, but these are the four BASIC archtypes. I’m going to give two examples of creative thinking for each one.
Fighter-
Bob the Human Fighter has a massive strength, and actually wields a greataxe that’s designed for a giant. He gets into a fight, and swings his through his enemies. He loves his axe. He cherishes it, and every second possible, he’s keeping it sharp and highly polished. One day, when the party encounters a door, they hear someone on the other side, right next to the door. Before they go charging in, they want to know what kind of threat they’re dealing with. Bob lays down, and slips his axe, inch by inch, under the door, until he can see the reflection of the Orc Warchief standing there. He used his axe as a mirror (*Creative use of equipment!). Stepping back, the party discusses their options. Instead of just busting through the door and into a fight, Bob uses his axe as a cleaver, going through the crack under the door, and slicing through the feet and ankles of the orc (*Creative thinking and planning!)
Priest-
Sonova, the Elvish Preaching Man, healed his companions. All. The. Time. That’s what he was good at. But then, that’s all he did. They treated him as a reusable healing potion almost. But, that left him out of most of every encounter. After all, they didn’t need healing until after the first few swings (or later). But, he couldn’t be getting involved, because he had to be ready to heal when needed. What was a priest to do?! Then, he got a shield. Not just a little shield, but a BIG shield. And he became the wall for the mage. He stood next to the mage, and would use his shield to push away enemies that got close, as well as to block arrows meant for the wizard. This left the mage free to worry about throwing his fireballs, and kept Sonova relatively free for when he needed to cast healings (Creative thinking on strategy and equipment- shields are normally to protect the person holding it, not someone else). He further decides that he’s going to use scrolls and potions more than his spells to heal, because that saves spell slots that he can use for blessings and offensive spells, contributing to the actual combat. With a bandoleer of scrolls or potions, he can move to where needed, and be almost as effective at healing while adding a whole new level of abilities (creative use of equipment and abilities!)
Thief-
Limerick the Gnomish Thief had his slot in the party. He disarmed traps, and scouted ahead. He would also get backstabs in when possible. He began taking traps, and moving the triggers to the FAR side, then scouting ahead, and taunting any enemies into chasing him towards the group. They would trigger the trap, and hurt themselves instead of his party members, making the combat that much easier. He also learned the art of coloring glass, to help identify fake gems (and to help make them!). He used a fake gem this way in on a high level spellcaster who was going to cast a soul transference spell. The spell failed, and the mage died instead of swapping bodies.
Mage-
The options for creativity as a spellcaster are almost limitless. Grease/oil slick spell combined with a wind spell, you can send your enemies off the cliff without even fighting. Or have an awesome slip and slide for a birthday party. You’re going to fall into that pit? Can you create enough water to dive into? The stone door is blocking your way? Stone to sand. The enemy is trying to push open the door? Mold the stone walls, floor, and ceiling into braces to keep it closed. The list goes on and on and on! Any good mage should have at LEAST 25% of his available spells as utility options, not just combat. Mages will be covered in depth in another article!
Hope this gave you something to think about!
Does that sum up most combats?
Why? Why do players fall into these stereotyped actions so quickly?
It’s a complicated question, with several answers. But, I think it boils down to 4 key factors:
1) Min/Max of abilities and powers
2) Failure to plan
3) Forgetting what they have
4) Character Sheet layout
Now, yes, there are other factors (especially with newer players). But these are, to me at least, the big 4.
This time around, I’m going to examine them one at a time, and point out how it happens, why it happens, and what we can do about it. Then, we’ll take a “big picture” look.
Min/Max of Abilities and Powers
Most players are guilty of this, to various degrees, even if they purposely try to avoid it. And, to be truthful, it makes sense. If swinging a sword is what your character does, don’t you want him to be the best sword swinger he can be? If he mumbles words and throws a fireball, don’t you want that to be the biggest, most badass fireball ever?
But, in doing this, there’s often the drawback of limiting the character to only a few simple acts. If you focus on swinging a sword, but ignore how to bandage a wound, you’re eventually going to die the death of a thousand papercuts. If you know how to bandage a wound like an M.D., but you can barely swing a weapon or hold a shield, you’re not going to live long enough to worry about bleeding out.
Now, many people will say “This is why we adventure as a PARTY. To round everything out. Everyone has their role!” And this is true, to a point. If your character can ONLY do one thing, what does he or she do when the person who does something else goes down? If only the priest can patch people up, what happens when the priest is on the ground, bleeding out? If nobody can stand there and trade blows with the Evil Knight, who’s going to hold him back long enough for the mage to turn him to stone? If nobody but the wizard knows how to read an ancient language, what happens when there are 4 things to read, and limited time to do it?
By maxing the “normal” ability of our character to its absolute limit, we let other things slip. It also encourages us to ONLY do what we’re super good at. Hey, I may not have bandages as perfectly applied as the clerics, but if I stop you from bleeding to death, are you going to complain? Or are you going to be too busy thanking me for saving your life? So, if I let my “primary” ability suffer just a tiny bit, where I’m still excellent at it, I can add ANOTHER ability to my pool. I’m not saying that you let your primary skill/ability drop a lot, just a tiny bit. JUST enough that you can push something else. In Palladium terms, this might mean skipping a couple of the physical skills, and selecting first aid instead & literacy instead.
Failure to Plan
Players generally don’t think too far ahead, or in detail. “Enter the dungeon, kill everyone who tries to stop us, get the loot”. Not too much planning or detail in that. Instead, if players would actually think ahead, they would have so many MORE options.
So, we’re going after an insane cyborg. Maybe, if we could think of a way of shorting out his power supply, we could end the fight before it even starts. Or we could find a way to trap him in a forcefield of some kind.
Instead, players go, find the cyborg, get into a fight, and then say “You know, I wish we had a forcefield of some kind to trap him in!”
With a little forethought, you can equip yourselves better for the coming fight. Going to fight skeletons? Swap that sword of yours for a good heavy warhammer. Going to fight a druid? Be ready for rabid wombats to attack you.
Planning will involve skills (selection and uses), equipment, and abilities. Play on your strengths, but also look on shoring up your weaknesses. Equipment (covered in a bit), is an important bit here. I’m not one of these guys to say that characters are defined by what they use. Instead, I’ll say that what you are should define what you use. If you’re the long range shooter, you’re primary weapon isn’t going to be a sword, is it? But, maybe you should actually invest in a stronger sword than you normally would, to make up for your weakness in that area.
But, the planning isn’t just about your weaknesses. It’s about the groups weaknesses. If you know your group has lots of people good at dishing out damage, but are probably going to take a lot as well, then what about your healing abilities? Does your group have any? Or do you need to find a way to shore up your healing ability? Hiring an NPC cleric, or buying potions or scrolls of healing. Hey, even learning First Aid helps shore up the group abilities.
Planning involves trying to figure out what you’re up against, and what IT has for strengths and weaknesses. Knowledge/Lore/whatever your system calls them skills are WONDERFUL tools in this regard. What good does it do you to know you’re fighting were-beasts if you don’t know to use silver weapons to beat them? How much easier is it do to know that you’re going up against the Demon Snafflefart if you know he’s weak against cold but strong against fire? If you know that, you can load up on cold dealing weapons, as well as magic that throws out cold.
Planning touches on every other category here. USE IT and THINK.
Now, what I’ve written above doesn’t seem too “outside the box” does it? Well, if you take planning, and apply the other parts of this article, you’ll be SHOCKED at what the results are. And hey, with your planning, be creative! Look at some historic battles, and you’ll see that creative thinking and battlefield planning is what won the day. The Trojan Horse wasn’t exactly a “standard” maneuver, was it? It was creative strategy at the last minute!
Forgetting What They Have
I routinely sit and do an AAR (After Action Review) with a group, talking about what went wrong, and what went right. More than once, I’ve had a player say “That fight was ROUGH! I think you may have overestimated what kind of damage we could dish out”, only for me to take the equipment inventory sheet, and point to a specific item that would have made the fight MUCH easier (such as a magic scroll of a wind spell that would have scattered the dust used for the summoning circle). Or for me to point out that they used a slashing weapon against a character that didn’t bleed, but was weak against blunt weapons, while the Warhammer sat there hanging at the fighters side, where he forgot about it.
I could go on and on with examples like those. I’ve had players who forgot that they have HEALING POTIONS! When they drop dead, complaining that the cleric didn’t heal them, they look like an ass when they realize they had a potion that would have taken them to 90% HP.
But, it goes beyond that. Fighting around a 20 meter pit, the PCs were combatting an army of mooks. They were cutting their way through, but then, one by one, they were knocked down the pit. They survived, but were sitting there wondering what they could do now. They failed to pay attention to the fact that they had a rope and grapple. They also had forgotten about the magic items that would have prevented them from getting knocked down the hole to start with! On top of that, they also forgot that they had marbles that they could have used to make the terrain impossible for any of the mooks to get the momentum going to knock them down!
All of that is important, but what does that have to do with thinking outside the box? Equipment can play a key role in creative ideas. Ever read a book (or see a movie) where someone used a hair to mark exact placements of things, or if a door had been opened? Ever think of your character doing that? Why not? Has your character ever used his marbles (literal marbles) to make someone have unstable footing? Have you used your weapons as a way to mark terrain and territory? Scratch marks on the walls or floor? How about just using chalk?
In most game systems, the PCs start off with certain gear, and a lot of times, that gear has clothing (which is quickly ignored and forgotten about) on the list. Have you ever used those clothes to stuff along the bottom of your door at the inn, helping to stop the door from being opened? Or stopping gas or smoke from coming in underneath? Have you ever used those clothes as an impromptu rope (a la every prison escape movie ever)? The items you have are designed for a purpose. Sure, you could use them for that purpose. Or, you can use them for a variety of OTHER uses. A sword is a sword. It’s also a way to scratch marks into terrain, tap messages through walls, or boost your intimidate factor.
That graphite stick you carry around for your (never used) art skill? You can use it to mark terrain, leave encoded messages, or- more creatively- file it all into powder, and mark the floor, so you know if someone walked through the area, and possibly left you a trail to follow. Ever think of that?
By the way, that diamond you’ve been carrying around for 7 levels because nobody you’ve met can afford to pay for it? Find a jeweler. Get him/her to cut it into several smaller gems, (using one to pay him), use one for a glass cutting tool for the thief, and sell them bit by bit. It may not be worth quite as much, but it’s more valuable than something you’re never going to be able to sell.
Examine your gear. Know what you have. And for everything you have, think that it has 2 uses (at least). The one it was designed for, and another one. If you need to, write down the “creative” use. But, look at your gear a LOT. Every time something comes up, look at your equipment and say “what do I have I can use here?” Sometimes, equipment will allow you to completely avoid a problem, while other times it may just make it easier to handle.
Character Sheet Arrangement
This ties in with ALL of the other points. It’s the REASON players forget the equipment they have (and therefore, the tools they have!). It’s the reason players make their characters a one trick pony (and leading to min/maxing).
If you look at the first page of your character sheet, what do you see? Most people see their combat abilities, stats, saving throws, skills, and the “personal data”. If this is what you see first, this is what will be in your mind. Special abilities, powers, gear, spells, etc, gets relegated to a second or third page. This is even more true if your sheets are front and back, as the stuff is often on the backside, down against the table where you can’t see it!
My first page rarely has all my combat abilities on it. Those are on the second page. My first page is personal data and SKILLS. Second page is combat, saving throws, and special abilities. Third is general and mundane equipment. Fourth is magic USE equipment- scrolls, potions, wands, etc, followed by magical gear- bags, rings, etc. Fifth and beyond is spells.
Modern day, a lot of us use our computers (or tablets) to have our character sheets. This is a blessing, as we can have more pages but not have to spread out. One excel file can be our entire character, with additional space devoted to DETAILED abilities and powers of our characters and our items.
But those extra details only matter if you look at them. The key to creative thinking and being able to work around various situations revolves around you being able to KNOW what you have, and what you can do. This only works if you can see your character- not just their combat abilities, but EVERYTHING they can do.
EXAMPLES For the Archtypes….
There are four archtypes in gaming. Now, we can argue the 1,000,001 classes/OCCs in existence, but these are the four BASIC archtypes. I’m going to give two examples of creative thinking for each one.
Fighter-
Bob the Human Fighter has a massive strength, and actually wields a greataxe that’s designed for a giant. He gets into a fight, and swings his through his enemies. He loves his axe. He cherishes it, and every second possible, he’s keeping it sharp and highly polished. One day, when the party encounters a door, they hear someone on the other side, right next to the door. Before they go charging in, they want to know what kind of threat they’re dealing with. Bob lays down, and slips his axe, inch by inch, under the door, until he can see the reflection of the Orc Warchief standing there. He used his axe as a mirror (*Creative use of equipment!). Stepping back, the party discusses their options. Instead of just busting through the door and into a fight, Bob uses his axe as a cleaver, going through the crack under the door, and slicing through the feet and ankles of the orc (*Creative thinking and planning!)
Priest-
Sonova, the Elvish Preaching Man, healed his companions. All. The. Time. That’s what he was good at. But then, that’s all he did. They treated him as a reusable healing potion almost. But, that left him out of most of every encounter. After all, they didn’t need healing until after the first few swings (or later). But, he couldn’t be getting involved, because he had to be ready to heal when needed. What was a priest to do?! Then, he got a shield. Not just a little shield, but a BIG shield. And he became the wall for the mage. He stood next to the mage, and would use his shield to push away enemies that got close, as well as to block arrows meant for the wizard. This left the mage free to worry about throwing his fireballs, and kept Sonova relatively free for when he needed to cast healings (Creative thinking on strategy and equipment- shields are normally to protect the person holding it, not someone else). He further decides that he’s going to use scrolls and potions more than his spells to heal, because that saves spell slots that he can use for blessings and offensive spells, contributing to the actual combat. With a bandoleer of scrolls or potions, he can move to where needed, and be almost as effective at healing while adding a whole new level of abilities (creative use of equipment and abilities!)
Thief-
Limerick the Gnomish Thief had his slot in the party. He disarmed traps, and scouted ahead. He would also get backstabs in when possible. He began taking traps, and moving the triggers to the FAR side, then scouting ahead, and taunting any enemies into chasing him towards the group. They would trigger the trap, and hurt themselves instead of his party members, making the combat that much easier. He also learned the art of coloring glass, to help identify fake gems (and to help make them!). He used a fake gem this way in on a high level spellcaster who was going to cast a soul transference spell. The spell failed, and the mage died instead of swapping bodies.
Mage-
The options for creativity as a spellcaster are almost limitless. Grease/oil slick spell combined with a wind spell, you can send your enemies off the cliff without even fighting. Or have an awesome slip and slide for a birthday party. You’re going to fall into that pit? Can you create enough water to dive into? The stone door is blocking your way? Stone to sand. The enemy is trying to push open the door? Mold the stone walls, floor, and ceiling into braces to keep it closed. The list goes on and on and on! Any good mage should have at LEAST 25% of his available spells as utility options, not just combat. Mages will be covered in depth in another article!
Hope this gave you something to think about!
