Rocket launcher tag, action multiplication, and all that

[Iainuki]

I'm branching this topic off another thread because what I have to say here isn't relevant to the original.

I always find it odd when folks make comments about things being broken, but then encourage rocket tag by having poor defenses.

The degree to which a system plays more like rocket launcher tag or more like padded sumo is a property of the system, not something that can be affected by character-building decisions.  The system determines the optimization landscape in which characters are built.  3.5 is a system with SoDs, if you fail a save, you're out of the fight.  What happens if you build a character with good defenses?  You're diverting character resources to defenses from somewhere, usually offense.  Is this a good trade?  When it comes to your offense, you need to optimize more or less one thing, usually your weapon damage or your save DCs.  At a basic level, this is usually controlled by one ability score, Str or a key spellcasting ability.  When it comes to optimizing your defenses, you need high AC; touch AC; Fort, Reflex, and Will saves; HP; and ability scores, to protect against being taken out of combat by ability damage, drain, and penalties.  AC, saves, and HP are controlled by three ability scores, Dex, Con, and Wis, and that doesn't count the ability damage/drain/penalty problem.  If you neglect any aspect of your defense, there's some monster that will kill you outright.  If you have great Fort and Will saves, that won't stop an ettercap from gluing you to the floor with web.  I have a friend whose gnome druid dumped Str (it doesn't matter, right, because of wild shape?) and died to shadows.  If there are no-save-just-dies in play, not even the above stats will save you, you'll need blanket immunities too.  In 3.5, it's easier to be good at attacking than it is to be good at defending.

That's not the end of the problems.  There are usually three other people in your party, and regardless of how you build your character, nothing will stop one of the other players from building a squishy-as-all-get-out gray elf wizard with high save DCs, good initiative, terrible HP, terrible Fort save, and dumped Str and Cha.  If your opponents have a choice between attacking you and the wizard, they'll hit the wizard and all the resources you spent on your defenses will be wasted.  It's worse than that, though.  If the wizard wins initiative and sticks an SoD, both of you will be fine.  If you win initiative and hit a monster with your less-maxed-out-offense, your opponent has a higher chance of surviving and doing something unpleasant to the wizard.  In 3.5, the best defense really is a good offense.  And, finally, even if your entire party builds defensive (and how often does that happen?), the Monster Manuals are still filled with glass cannons and puzzle monsters.  It's very hard to stop all of those from killing you with defenses, because you have cover every avenue of attack, and easier to strike first and kill them before they kill you since their defenses are a joke.

The DM can change this equation because the DM controls the rules, the opposition, and the world.  However, players can't, not by building defenses.   There is something that players can do, though, to mitigate 3.5's rocket-launcher-tag aspects, and that is avoiding what I call action multiplication, abilities that give extra actions you can then use to attack.

As for WRT [white raven tactics]. It's fantastic. It doesn't have to be broken.

Yes, it is.  The single most important rules change that Tome of Battle introduces has nothing to do with the classes in the book, it's the potential to graft white raven tactics onto the core full casters using Martial Study.  In core + TB only, you can even set it up so you get Martial Study (white raven tactics) with loremaster at the lowest possible level, 10.  By setting up a big white raven tactics circle, four core full casters can throw eight spells with the potential to end combat in the first round.  If they have belts of battle (MIC), that goes up to twelve spells.  With a 5-minute workday, they don't ever have to worry about running out of spell slots, but realistically even if they're fighting four encounters a day, it's overwhelmingly likely that one of the spells will stick long before they need to run through the full twelve, saving slots for future encounters, and there are things like pearls of power they can use to ensure they have sufficient slots.  This is wildly, dramatically imbalancing.  What kind of CR 10 opposition can withstand that?  How high do you have to increase the EL to challenge that kind of party?

Action multiplication increases the advantages of offense over defense, literally multiplying the power of your offenses by giving you more chances to use them, and increases the advantages of going first by making actions lumpier, since everyone is now taking two or more actions in the same turn.  It makes the rocket-launcher-tag nature of 3.5 vastly worse.  Players can make their DM's life easier and the game more fun by avoiding action multiplication abilities, including white raven tactics.

[Unbeliever]

The OP contradicts itself.  If Rocket Tag-ness is a feature of the system, then the problem of the mythical Grey Elf Wizard in the party isn't the system's problem.  It's that player's stupidity.  I label this "mythical" though b/c any competently built Wizard has a staggering number of ways to protect herself.  Query how the bodyguard would contribute here. 

Further, the OP takes a narrow view of "defense."  Ettercaps and the like aren't typically countered by having crazy high Reflex saves.  Or, at least, that's not the usual way.  They are countered by things like Freedom of Movement.  Defense, properly-construed, includes, at the very least, things like Greater Mirror Image, Displacement, and DR.  You can debate about the penumbra.  Does battlefield control on par with Solid Fog or Web count as defense?  How about spells like Panacea that are great for condition removal? 

Arguably those qualify as "defense" as in stopping your opponent from hurting you in its preferred way (compare to invisibility, or a fog cloud that obscures the line of attack).  I don't care much one way or the other about the label, but it's worth thinking about.

More to the point, the theory of defense in the OP is very passive.  There are no actions being taken by the characters to defend themselves.  Generally, D&D (and most games, I suspect) privilege taking actions over not taking actions. 

None of which is to say that D&D isn't very rocket taggy.  Although, amazingly, it's less so than some games (ahem, White Wolf).  But, for that reason there's no reason to construct a straw man out of it.  The OP seems to also privilege corner conditions a lot.  Defense is defined as having to stop every exotic thing in D&D (quite a tall order).  But, you can flip that on its head.  I'm sure there are exotic puzzle monsters that the usual offensive artillery doesn't manage well.  Is D&D then tilted towards the opposite of rocket tag?   

Finally, the argument that White Raven Tactics is inherently broken is a bit silly.  The reductio-esque argument is that if you use it as a force multiplier for totally awesome optimized characters, they will shred everything.  Readily conceded.  But, that's the nature of a force multiplier.  If you use WRT on a bunch of crappy characters, the difference won't be all that impressive:  4 times crap once per encounter for 2 feats on a 10th level character is sort of shitty.  It all depends how much a given character can do with their actions to begin with. 


EDIT:

...
The DM can change this equation because the DM controls the rules, the opposition, and the world.  However, players can't, not by building defenses.   There is something that players can do, though, to mitigate 3.5's rocket-launcher-tag aspects, and that is avoiding what I call action multiplication, abilities that give extra actions you can then use to attack.

I read over the OP again.  What does the above quote mean?  Is there some sort of "if players use it DMs do" principle at play?  If so, then it'd be worth spelling out.  B/c I cannot conceive of how players avoiding action multipliers helps reduce rocket tag.  If anything, to the extent the OP is right, it just leaves them unarmed.

But, the idea that that is the only thing a player can do strikes me as untrue.  A player can halt a ton of rocket tag just by laying down a Solid Fog or a Web.  Mitigating in a lot of ways that monster with the death touch or that charger who will just leave a blood smear if he gets a free run on you.

[Iainuki]

Further, the OP takes a narrow view of "defense."  Ettercaps and the like aren't typically countered by having crazy high Reflex saves.  Or, at least, that's not the usual way.  They are countered by things like Freedom of Movement.  Defense, properly-construed, includes, at the very least, things like Greater Mirror Image, Displacement, and DR.  You can debate about the penumbra.  Does battlefield control on par with Solid Fog or Web count as defense?  How about spells like Panacea that are great for condition removal?

The immunities and counter-immunities game has the same problem as the basic defenses game I discussed earlier.  To protect yourself against everything, you need as many immunities as you can get, freedom of movement, immunity to poison, immunity to mind-affecting effects, immunity to various forms of ability damage, immunity to petrification, immunity to death effects, immunities to the five energies, and so on and so forth.  To successfully hurt you through your immunities, your enemies need only one thing you aren't immune to.  It is easier, requires fewer character resources, to be good offensively.

Anti-debuffs like panacea count as defense, but battlefield control effects are definitely offense.  In fact, they're the perfect illustration of exactly what I'm talking about, which is that it's more effective to build to take your enemies out of combat ASAP.  In rocket-launcher tag, the best defense is a good offense.

More to the point, the theory of defense in the OP is very passive.  There are no actions being taken by the characters to defend themselves.  Generally, D&D (and most games, I suspect) privilege taking actions over not taking actions.

I've rarely had someone make my point for me so ably.  Yes, taking actions to remove your enemies from combat is better in 3.5 than trusting to passive defenses, taking actions in combat to set up defenses, or taking actions to anti-debuff yourself or your allies.

I'm sure there are exotic puzzle monsters that the usual offensive artillery doesn't manage well.  Is D&D then tilted towards the opposite of rocket tag?

But defenses don't help against puzzle monsters, either.  You either have the solution or you don't.  Complete immunity to everything the puzzle monster can do might turn it into a standoff rather than a TPK, but they won't make it a victory.

Finally, the argument that White Raven Tactics is inherently broken is a bit silly.  The reductio-esque argument is that if you use it as a force multiplier for totally awesome optimized characters, they will shred everything.  Readily conceded.  But, that's the nature of a force multiplier.  If you use WRT on a bunch of crappy characters, the difference won't be all that impressive:  4 times crap once per encounter for 2 feats on a 10th level character is sort of shitty.  It all depends how much a given character can do with their actions to begin with. 

You're not addressing my point here, which is that action multiplication decreases the chances that glass cannon characters will ever have to face enemy attacks at all and increases the advantage of having high initiative, both of which make rocket-launcher tag more lethal.  Force multipliers do increase the gap between optimized and unoptimized characters too.

I read over the OP again.  What does the above quote mean?  Is there some sort of "if players use it DMs do" principle at play?  If so, then it'd be worth spelling out.  B/c I cannot conceive of how players avoiding action multipliers helps reduce rocket tag.  If anything, to the extent the OP is right, it just leaves them unarmed.

The DM has complete control over the opposition.  If they think the opposition needs more actions to challenge the PCs, they can simply add more monsters, they don't need abilities that let their existing monsters act more times.  Action multiplication in the hands of the DM simply doesn't work like it does in the hands of the players.

But, the idea that that is the only thing a player can do strikes me as untrue.  A player can halt a ton of rocket tag just by laying down a Solid Fog or a Web.  Mitigating in a lot of ways that monster with the death touch or that charger who will just leave a blood smear if he gets a free run on you.

A successful use of solid fog or web ends the fight in the favor of the PCs.  You use those spells to lock down enemies and prevent them from hitting you while you bomb them to death with ranged attacks.  That is rocket launcher tag.

[Dragon lord]

Personally I was under the impression that rocket tag was where the game had got to the point where if you go first then you win and there's no real way out, but of they go first they win.  Spells like solid fog don't seem to do that as far as I can see.  What they do do is defuse the rocket tag into normal tag.

Round 1 time stop, force cage, cloud kill, cloud kill resume...

[Iainuki]

Fog cloud substitutes for forcecage in that combination.  Unless an enemy has some counter to it like freedom of movement or teleportation, it's going to take them three rounds at least to escape, plenty of time to hit them with ranged AoEs like cloudkill.  Forcecage will take an enemy out of combat rather than delaying them like solid fog, but it should at three spell levels higher and with an expensive material component.

[Dragon lord]

What's the average amount of damage that a caster can do in three rounds with AoE's? How many hp does the average charger build have at (7th level assuming no healing items  or hp boosting items).

[Mixster]

What's the average amount of damage that a caster can do in three rounds with AoE's? How many hp does the average charger build have at (7th level assuming no healing items  or hp boosting items).

When counting damage, are you adding multiple targets dps, or are you simply counting how much damage he can do to each target?

How well build is the caster for doing damage? If he's a cheesed out dragonwrought kobold he can do a bit more damage than a transmuter that just happens to have fireball prepared.

In said example where you hit your enemy with Solid Fog, you could then stack black tentacles on it to make their speed 2.5ft. Giving you even more turns.

But assuming that you get only three turns and none of the builds are optimized for it but the wizard still decides to throw in a bunch of fireballs when the solid fog is up:
Usually charger builds have around 14-16 con, and have roughly 5 levels with d12 hp and 2 with d10 hp. That's 4*6.5+2*5.5+7*2.5+12 = 26+11+17.5+12=56.5 hp on average.
The fireballs, cast by a 7th level wizard deal 7d6 damage each or half that on a succesful save. Meaning 24.5 damage on a failed save and 12.25 damage on a succesful one. So over three rounds that's 36.75-73.5 damage.
Therefore the charger has to fail two saving throws to go down from the three fireballs. Assuming he has no resistances or other defenses.

This is highly theoretical though. Since it raises a multitude of questions like who prepares 3 fireballs to cast after you solid fog? Who doesn't have any defenses against the most used element ever?

[SorO_Lost]

What's the average amount of damage that a caster can do in three rounds with AoE's? How many hp does the average charger build have at (7th level assuming no healing items  or hp boosting items).

All depends how you build them.

For the charger, I'd look at 6d10+1d12 for HP. Fighters, Monks, and Paladins make better Chargers than a Barbarian due to their additional support and Lion Totem is only worth while after your BAB supports additional attacks. Constitution will very greatly as well, but let's assume 14. That gives us 10+(5.5*5)+(6.5)+14, for PCs the first Hit Die is maximized, or 58 HP.

An unaugmented Fireball deals 7d6 damage. But, we are talking rocket tag and our vs example is optimized to deal hundreds of damage. So why leave this one untouched? Reserves of Strength & Pyro alone give us 10d6+10 damage (45 avg) and if we cast Spell Enhancer (SpC) prior to then it deals 12d6+12 (54 avg). And we haven't started with Class choice, PrCs, or additional augmentations. The upper end might look like Cold Spell Specialized cost-mitigated Empower for 12d6+36 (117 avg) with additional debuffs. Or it may not even by Fireball but a Persisted Wreath of Flames using a Ring of Mystic Fire (free action team friendly 6d6+6 per round, additional 6d6+6 per successful melee attack). There is a few ways to break the Metamagic bank, Maho, Spelldancer, Incantatrix in a level or two, Errata's Arcane Thesis, Bardic Music, True Dragon, etc. that would really open this avenue up.

[Iainuki]

D&D is not generally an arena match between characters with class levels, and CR 7 monsters have an average of 82.6 plus or minus 31.0 HP.  As SorO mentioned, it's quite possible to do that much with an AoE, much less two AoEs.   A maximally cheesed-out damage wizard wouldn't even need the solid fog since they could just kill a target in one hit.  Actually, if you're facing a single opponent, solid fog is not the spell you go for, it's for locking a larger group of weaker enemies, each of which have fewer HD and lower HP, that you can then kill with AoEs.  You kill single opponents with boosted single-target damage spells or SoDs.

[Waazraath]

Imo the OP is rather complicated, because several stuff is adressed at the same time; rocket tag, in relation to the game system and player's choices, how a very small part of the system (action multipliers) interacts with that, DM / player options... it's also related to caster / non-caster issues I think, and the power level on which a campaign takes place. I'll try to structure my thoughts around it a bit.

Does the 3.5 system necessarily leads to rocket tag?
No, I don't think it does. The system is vast. There are hundreds of rule books, thousands of spells and feats to choose from, and thousands of monsters. With the ability to advance monsters, also by giving them class levels, and to involve traps and surroudings in encounters, the possibilities for creating encounters are for practical purposes infinite, for every CR. It is possible to play a lvl 1-20 campaign with a group of 4 monks, and finish the campaign without ever a SoD spell will be cast, on either side of the DM screen. All within the framework of the rules. Is rocket tag possible? Yes, definitely, it's even likely to occur, in which several aspects play a role:
- the more high powered the campaign, the more likely the game is to develop into rocket tag: Save or dies / sucks, highly optimized DC's, and very high damage realative for level all contribute to rocket tag
- casters contribute more to rocket tag then non-caster. Almost every caster can easily some SoD's by picking them, while plenty of non-casters need a specific build to participate in the rocket tag game.

Explicetly adressing 'rocket tag' before a campaign
3.5 is over ten years old now, I think. 3.0 even older, and plenty of players played previous editions before that; most players will be at least in their mid twenties, probably older. So I expect most groups are experienced enough to sit down before a game starts, and discuss what kind of game they want to play. Among others: what power level do we want? Do we want to play rocket tag or not? If yes, fine, go pump those DC's, initiative scores and go for those SOD or 1000 damage per hit builds. If not, we'll do something else.

player choices and rocket tag
Players have many options in avoiding rocket tag, either because it's an explicit agreement at the start of a game or simply because they want to. A melee build can be a chaintripper, focus on buffing / debuffing, or be a 'hit and run' kind of build instead of an ubercharger or hood. Same for casters: instead of a sneak attack ray build that does 1000 damage, or SoD's with impossible DC's, or no-save-just-die tactics, a caster can summon, command a horde of undead, use battlefield controll like walls (without totally destroying the encounter), or use spells to buff and debuff.

DM's choices and rocket tag
For a DM it's even easier to avoid rocket tag, since the DM creates the game world and all challanges within. Just pay attention when picking monsters / challanges / traps, and rocket tag does not need to occur. In my experience, power creep (and related to that: increased rocket tag) is something that occurs as a DM response to player optimization. If the players start killing monsters on turn 1, the DM needs to respond to keep encounters challenging. Even when players use rocket tag though, a DM can counter it in other ways then using it as well. For example, SoD's and uberchargers can be countered by multi-enemy encounters (when facing 20 opponents, killing 2 in the first round doesn't matter too much); solid fog and black tentacle using tactics can be countered with foes arriving from different directions, incorporality or teleportation effects, or ambush strategies (due to which enemies are already in the middle of the party).

action multipliers
In itself, action multipliers don't contribute to rocket tag. Above is already mentioned that an extra standard action or even an extra turn isn't that important if the character that uses it sucks. This is correct. It is also correct that in a game that already is rocket tag, action multipliers make it even more so. In the case the monster rolls a 20 on the impossible saving throw against a first action SoD, hey, you can just use another SoD! Also, it can turn a game from non-rocket tag into rocket tag (though not necessarily so). For example, if you have a character that in a normal round does 50-75% of HP damage against an appropriate CR'd foe, giving that character an extra turn makes it a 1 round kill. This is situational though; in my experience in a lot of battles, one extra action or turn won't end a battle (it's just an extra buff or debuff, extra summoned creature, a little bit of extra damage done, etc.).

My conclusion: rocket tag isn't inevitable. Rocket tag is more likely to occur in optimized campaigns. Even in optimized campaigns, rocket tag can be avoided if you want. Action multipliers can turn rocket tag into atomic rocket tag, but usually won't turn a non-rocket tag game into rocket tag.

[nijineko]

rocket tag is a problem of the participants of any game, not necessarily the game itself. while some games provide more options for optimization than others, the choices the participants (inlcuding GM) make, are what creates a rocket tag situation.

basically, it's a failure of creativity and lack of experience on the part of one or more participants in the game, because rocket tag has always been, always is, and always will be a people problem.

[Iainuki]

Both Waazraath and Nijineko are missing my central point, which is that whether a game tends to rocket launcher tag, padded sumo, or neither is a property of the system, not build choices in the system.  I am specifically talking about the optimized case because the case where everything is unoptimized is not well-defined.  There are very bad builds in 3.5 that are not good at rocket launcher tag, this is true.  It's possible to build characters that are very bad at anything you want them to be bad at.  You could even play an entire campaign that consists of a bunch of weak characters where the DM never puts them up against SoD-using opposition because the party wouldn't be able to handle it.  This doesn't change the fact that good characters in 3.5 are designed to play rocket-launcher tag well.  Such a campaign also relies on de facto bans on large sections of the rules: no full casters or severe restrictions on what spells those casters can cast and what feats and magic items they can take; no monsters with SoDs; and so on. 

[Unbeliever]

I'm going to reiterate one of my points, which were overall ably addressed. 

Spending actions > not spending actions.

So, if your view of "defense" is passive, in the sense of not spending actions, then "offense" will always trump "defense." 

Now, once you recognize that, then it's just a debate on terminology.  Is traditional battlefield control, e.g. web, "offense" or "defense"?  What if it's just used to funnel attackers so that they have to line up and face the meat shield one at a time?  What about an illusion that distracts some enemies?  In other threads, we've acknowledged that D&D doesn't have a ton of great defensive abilities, but a few exist and a few are pretty awesome.  Counterspelling  comes to mind.  That being said, the lack of such active options on "defense" may account for saying the game is tilted in the offensive direction. 

It's hard for me to think of BFC abilities as "rockets," at least not most of them.  Wall of Stone hardly constitutes one in the common understanding.  I think this distinction accounts for some confusion and also makes Iainuki's later posts less persuasive than they might be otherwise.  These are either defenses or enablers or something else.  But, "rocket" tends to imply "takes this guy out of combat."  Not "delays him for a few rounds."  In a lot of ways BFC is a kind of tactical debuff. 

It is true that being able to stand there and take hits and make that into a winning strategy requires a whole lot of relative firepower.  B/c it's kind of a silly strategy.  D&D is largely an attrition game (almost all of them are, I think), and you're ceding that to one side.

That being said, I don't dispute that D&D is pretty rocket taggy, especially at higher levels.  Countering an enemy's "rockets" becomes one of the high priorities of a party at a certain point.  And, like Iainuki, I think this is a property of the system.  It's something that you can mitigate or exacerbate at your table, but it's good to know it's there so that you can make an explicit choice in how you want to address it. 

However, I think these comments neglect that D&D, unlike a lot of other game systems, has a lot of fiddly tools built in there to actually allow for some defense against rocket tag.  I'm implicitly comparing D&D to say White Wolf games in this regard.  This may be a bad (read:  fucked up) comparison b/c White Wolf games are sort of awful.  But, in those games rocket tag comes online very early and there's no defense.  In D&D, there are often things you can do to an incoming rocket.  Or, hell, you can just get revivified right there on the spot.  That's kind of nice when compared to other systems. 

[Caim_Silent_Blade]

I get the feeling there is miscommunication going on here. The OP simply stated that on optimized games rocket tag happens a lot and is nearly unavoidable. Then others have stated that it can be avoided by simply changing monster placement. Spreading them out or even dropping them into the middle if the group so they caster can't just aoe nuke all of them. And there is also ways around solid fog such as teleport or freedom of movement. There is a large amount of ways a DM can get past rocket tag it just takes some ingenuity on the DMs part. They're just saying it doesn't have to be all SoD or naive damage I  a turn to challenge the PCs. It can be more tactics from the monsters that are in packs or more.

[nijineko]

i think my point was missed by some. rocket tag only happens if the people decide to do so. period. the degree to which any given game system helps or hinders the people's decision to engage in rocket tag is irrelevant. if the people don't decide to rocket tag, it doesn't happen.

[Leviathan]

Rocket tag can and does happen by accident. If you had to decide to play rocket tag, nobody would worry about it. Naive build choices can leave you with only rockets, or with only a choice between rockets and useless or irrelevant abilities. Since rockets are, by definition, powerful and difficult to defend against, a player concerned for the character's power will always pick a rocket over a weaker or more situational ability. Choosing not to use rockets makes your character weaker, especially if everyone else does have rockets.


In a sense, yes, rocket tag is created by the choices of the players and DM. However, the choices that lead to rocket tag are otherwise good choices; the bad consequences of rocket tag aren't immediately apparent to anybody who starts down that road, and once you have started toward rocket tag, the most obvious best choice is to continue. The road to rocket tag, one might say, is paved with good intentions. I don't think that players and DMs can be blamed for it, because most of them don't see it coming.

[veekie]

i think my point was missed by some. rocket tag only happens if the people decide to do so. period. the degree to which any given game system helps or hinders the people's decision to engage in rocket tag is irrelevant. if the people don't decide to rocket tag, it doesn't happen.

It does actually, if you for example, were having  a random encounter and picked up a monster which has an attack far in excess of what a character of that level can be expected to survive(been on both sides of the table for this). Or if a player unknowingly picks up a spell which oneshots an encounter. Or if cumulative common sense improvements leaves them with a decidedly massive output they never intended(I've had a player new to the game simply pick up the common sense options and then kill any monster of up to CR+2 in a single full attack at range).

[nijineko]

i think my point was missed by some. rocket tag only happens if the people decide to do so. period. the degree to which any given game system helps or hinders the people's decision to engage in rocket tag is irrelevant. if the people don't decide to rocket tag, it doesn't happen.

It does actually, if you for example, were having  a random encounter and picked up a monster which has an attack far in excess of what a character of that level can be expected to survive(been on both sides of the table for this). Or if a player unknowingly picks up a spell which oneshots an encounter. Or if cumulative common sense improvements leaves them with a decidedly massive output they never intended(I've had a player new to the game simply pick up the common sense options and then kill any monster of up to CR+2 in a single full attack at range).

again, that simply proves my point even more. the DM PICKS (ie: human choice) a monster which is too powerful... a PLAYER PICKS (unknowing or not, that's a human choice, and if a GM can't adapt and adjust to an accidental one-shot of an encounter without rocket tag, again that's the DM's fault-and maybe they need to study things out a bit more before DMing again)... common sense improvements = PLAYER CHOICE, and the response to it is GM CHOICE...

in other words, it all boils down to what people decide to do... period. the rules of the game are irrelevant.

I have a player who runs a character designed by our group's uber-munchkin. her monk outputs something like 100+hp per hit... yes, that's per individual strike, averaging 500-600 damage per round. I have no problems working with this character in encounters, nor do I have any problems challenging this character, nor have I had any difficulty in reminding this character that doing enough damage to realistically punch through walls doesn't mean that they are still vulnerable to the occasional thing. My group has anywhere from 4-7 characters depending on player attendance.

We have never gotten into rocket tag with these characters, and my average party level is now 19. We don't ever rocket tag because everyone in the group makes intelligent choices. As for my part as DM, I've managed to foil extremely high level abilities (and only on occasion, 'cause it's no fun for the players if they can't enjoy their toys and abilities) with very low level effects, ranging from 2nd to 6th level in power. Despite my "let-the-players-enjoy-powers-n-toys" approach, they still find themselves challenged by my encounters.

If I am not mistaken, rocket tag, by definition, is the continuing escalation of power levels and or reprisals by the players vs dm? a one-shot or occasional accident don't really qualify. I feel that rocket tag is the lawful-stupid alignment/play style of players and dms alike.

Try playing smarter instead, and no one will ever get into rocket tag. Of course, that only works if EVERYONE is on board with playing smarter... not a guarantee, belike.

[Gazzien]

Nitpick: wouldn't "playing smarter" be playing the ultimate Batman Wizard / Easy Bake Wizard, so that you can just say no to anything and because of that survive any encounter short of DM Fiat?

[nijineko]

depends on what the ultimate goal of all the players and the DM are. if the goals for playing an rpg together support one or more players playing (an) ultimate character(s) using all the rules possible and available, then yes. if that is not the goal of everyone in the group, then no.

besides, even such a character is vulnerable to a lot of things short of DM fiat. that's part of playing smarter, if as i said, the group goal in playing supports having such (a) character(s) in the first place.

if the members of a group have diverse goals that are incompatible with each other, and one or more of the group refuses to come to a resolution, cooperative agreement, or mutually agreeable solution to the differences, that's not playing smarter.