Does power limit creativity and cunning?

[Bozwevial]

Well in real life if you were to keep hitting a wall with a weapon, the weapon would often wear through before the wall does(if edged weapons didn't get ruined by violent impacts with hard surfaces they'd wreck stone up for the same amount of impact force), but D&D doesn't track durability like that. In real life it'd also take you some long, tiring and noisy hours to plow through, assuming you know to avoid supports.

Something about D&D physics not mapping well to real-life physics, cat-girls, etcetera. But knocking a hole in a foot-thick stone wall with, say, an adamantine dagger takes less than eight minutes on average for the bog-standard commoner.

[ariasderros]

Well in real life if you were to keep hitting a wall with a weapon, the weapon would often wear through before the wall does(if edged weapons didn't get ruined by violent impacts with hard surfaces they'd wreck stone up for the same amount of impact force), but D&D doesn't track durability like that. In real life it'd also take you some long, tiring and noisy hours to plow through, assuming you know to avoid supports.

Capt. made an argument about the fact that the game is about keeping things new and interesting. (/agree)
Then made an assertion that powerful abilities mean there cannot continue to be new and interesting. (/disagree)
He supported his thesis with an example. (it was a bad one; refuted)

The he made an assertion that it is not about power, but rather balance between players and the DM. (/AGREE)
He even stated that there needs to be a gentleman's agreement about power levels and keeping things fun and interesting.  I think I've heard that somewhere else before.(now, what, the 5th time I've linked this? Need to just sig it or something.)

[Mooncrow]

A gentleman's agreement is all well and good, I agree, but it doesn't have much to do with how much power limits creativity. 

The amount of creativity the players need is almost always going to come down to how much creativity the DM puts in.  The more tools at the players' disposal, the more creative he can be with his plans. 

An uncreative DM, on the other hand, means that players won't have to be creative no matter what their power level is - an adamantine sword is pretty far down the list of "potentially game-breaking things", but given a sufficiently stupid DM, apparently it can do the job. 

[ariasderros]

A gentleman's agreement is all well and good, I agree, but it doesn't have much to do with how much power limits creativity. 

The amount of creativity the players need is almost always going to come down to how much creativity the DM puts in.  The more tools at the players' disposal, the more creative he can be with his plans. 

An uncreative DM, on the other hand, means that players won't have to be creative no matter what their power level is - an adamantine sword is pretty far down the list of "potentially game-breaking things", but given a sufficiently stupid DM, apparently it can do the job.

This.

/thread.

[Basket Burner]

Incapable party is walled by a wall and loses 4-0.

While I did say this and was referring to a literal wall I wasn't talking about breaking down a wall. I was talking an infamous incident in which enemies were shooting at the party through arrow slits from behind a wall and the party was unable to deal with that.

[Mooncrow]

Yep, it does go both ways - uncreative players can easily be squashed by a creative DM no matter what their theoretical power level is.

[Basket Burner]

Yep, it does go both ways - uncreative players can easily be squashed by a creative DM no matter what their theoretical power level is.

In this case the problem was lack of abilities. They could think of ideas all they liked. In order for it to matter they had to do something. They had no teleport effects, no blink style effects, and the Dungeoncrasher could not Dungeoncrash the door. No getting around or past the wall, no getting around or past the door. That meant they were stuck on the other side dealing with Improved Cover, and that was enough for 4 NPC Ranger 4s to > 4 level 7 PCs because the latter just couldn't do any real damage. Their accuracy was shaky enough without the IC - both of the mundanes only had +11 to hit, and at level 7 that's Monk level accuracy. The two Warmages were a bit better off but nearly all their spells are either touch attacks or are Reflex save based so they still had a hard time doing anything and got a grand total of one chance to try between them. I knew beforehand lower tier characters have weak defenses (which is a lack of abilities again) but I was surprised just how quickly they got squished. It was much faster than I expected. Maybe it's because I'm used to max HP houserules among others whereas this was run by RAW with average HP.

If the party had the abilities to make a plan and then follow through that fight would have been far less one sided.

[caelic]

Interestingly, when I first read the title, I thought along very different lines:

Does the existence of certain very powerful options tend to limit creativity and cunning when it comes to character creation?

For instance, virtually every druid is going to take Natural Spell as his or her sixth level feat; it's just too powerful and too useful, and there's simply no other option that even comes close.  About the only time this will not take place is if someone's deliberately making sub-optimal choices.

3.0 Haste would be another good example; EVERY sane wizard would open up the encounter with Haste, because not to do so was SO tactically disadvantageous.

The key in both cases seems to be relative power.  If the characters are extremely powerful, but so is their opposition, then creativity does not tend to be diminished.  If, however, the players are extremely powerful and the opposition is much less powerful, then creativity becomes less of an imperative.

Likewise, if there are many very powerful options in character design, then creativity reigns; players can take many roads to power.  However, if certain options are much more powerful than the alternatives, then creativity tends to be diminished, because most or all players select those options.

[ariasderros]

Interestingly, when I first read the title, I thought along very different lines:

Does the existence of certain very powerful options tend to limit creativity and cunning when it comes to character creation?

For instance, virtually every druid is going to take Natural Spell as his or her sixth level feat; it's just too powerful and too useful, and there's simply no other option that even comes close.  About the only time this will not take place is if someone's deliberately making sub-optimal choices.

3.0 Haste would be another good example; EVERY sane wizard would open up the encounter with Haste, because not to do so was SO tactically disadvantageous.

The key in both cases seems to be relative power.  If the characters are extremely powerful, but so is their opposition, then creativity does not tend to be diminished.  If, however, the players are extremely powerful and the opposition is much less powerful, then creativity becomes less of an imperative.

Likewise, if there are many very powerful options in character design, then creativity reigns; players can take many roads to power.  However, if certain options are much more powerful than the alternatives, then creativity tends to be diminished, because most or all players select those options.

If that were the simple truth, then the article headline that I linked wouldn't make sense. We all would be playing wizards. With Incatatarix, SCM, Dweomerkeeper, Etc.

Of course, everyone not playing pun-pun may fall under "deliberately making sub-optimal choices".

Which, you must admit, pun-pun was pretty creative.

I still say:

A gentleman's agreement is all well and good, I agree, but it doesn't have much to do with how much power limits creativity. 

The amount of creativity the players need is almost always going to come down to how much creativity the DM puts in.  The more tools at the players' disposal, the more creative he can be with his plans. 

An uncreative DM, on the other hand, means that players won't have to be creative no matter what their power level is - an adamantine sword is pretty far down the list of "potentially game-breaking things", but given a sufficiently stupid DM, apparently it can do the job.

This.

/thread.

[Mooncrow]

Yep, it does go both ways - uncreative players can easily be squashed by a creative DM no matter what their theoretical power level is.

In this case the problem was lack of abilities. They could think of ideas all they liked. In order for it to matter they had to do something. They had no teleport effects, no blink style effects, and the Dungeoncrasher could not Dungeoncrash the door. No getting around or past the wall, no getting around or past the door. That meant they were stuck on the other side dealing with Improved Cover, and that was enough for 4 NPC Ranger 4s to > 4 level 7 PCs because the latter just couldn't do any real damage. Their accuracy was shaky enough without the IC - both of the mundanes only had +11 to hit, and at level 7 that's Monk level accuracy. The two Warmages were a bit better off but nearly all their spells are either touch attacks or are Reflex save based so they still had a hard time doing anything and got a grand total of one chance to try between them. I knew beforehand lower tier characters have weak defenses (which is a lack of abilities again) but I was surprised just how quickly they got squished. It was much faster than I expected. Maybe it's because I'm used to max HP houserules among others whereas this was run by RAW with average HP.

If the party had the abilities to make a plan and then follow through that fight would have been far less one sided.

Well, I my previous statement does assume that DMs are taking the party's toolset into account when designing encounters.  If they don't, then you're right, and power level doesn't limit DM creativity - it just limits playtime from the rolling up up new characters.

Interestingly, when I first read the title, I thought along very different lines:

Does the existence of certain very powerful options tend to limit creativity and cunning when it comes to character creation?

For instance, virtually every druid is going to take Natural Spell as his or her sixth level feat; it's just too powerful and too useful, and there's simply no other option that even comes close.  About the only time this will not take place is if someone's deliberately making sub-optimal choices.

3.0 Haste would be another good example; EVERY sane wizard would open up the encounter with Haste, because not to do so was SO tactically disadvantageous.

The key in both cases seems to be relative power.  If the characters are extremely powerful, but so is their opposition, then creativity does not tend to be diminished.  If, however, the players are extremely powerful and the opposition is much less powerful, then creativity becomes less of an imperative.

Likewise, if there are many very powerful options in character design, then creativity reigns; players can take many roads to power.  However, if certain options are much more powerful than the alternatives, then creativity tends to be diminished, because most or all players select those options.

I don't think things like Natural Spell are a good example, tbh - I consider that more of a feat tax than a powerful feat.  It's certainly powerful for druids, but not much use beyond that.  DMM, or any of the tricks to get multiple free persistent spells, on the other hand; every caster struggles for ways to fit that into their build. 

But I do agree with the rest of your statement. 

[Basket Burner]

Well, I my previous statement does assume that DMs are taking the party's toolset into account when designing encounters.  If they don't, then you're right, and power level doesn't limit DM creativity - it just limits playtime from the rolling up up new characters.

They're a level 7 party. They have no business being walled by a wall. They have a character specifically for breaking through dungeons which includes doors and walls. Said character could not successfully do the thing he was best at. That's the biggest point here since the common meme is that low tier stuff is fine as long as it's only put up against low tier stuff which Rangers and mundane obstacles certainly are. And yet those very things completely obliterated them just as an enemy Wizard or dragon would.

What's more that was the second fight. To get to it they had to get through the first fight. That was a matter of pure luck - the entire party went first despite everyone having lower initiative, the two non Warmages accomplished exactly nothing due to their shaky accuracy and the two Warmages killed the enemy before it got a turn. Otherwise (either because one of the Warmages was slower, the enemy was faster, or the group did less damage) the enemy would have gotten a turn and 1-2 PCs would die setting up for a quick sweep at the very beginning. After all only the Warmages could consistently hit anything, the other two missed about half the time with their best attacks and didn't hit that hard if they could hit. They're also casters that look like casters, making them prime targets. If both die the party would have lost right there. If one died the party would have still likely lost and even if they didn't there'd only be one left to take on the second fight out of four.

The encounter they only made it past by pure luck only to get walled by a wall? Skullcrusher Ogre Dungeoncrasher Fighter 2. Same abilities as one of the party, even level encounter, should be easy. For any decent party he would be easy. Glitterdust, Mirror Image, Wings of Cover... doesn't matter if he hits for 25-30 then Dungeoncrashes for 30 more if he can't hit in the first place. A Grease would have likely stopped him cold for a degree of resource expenditure that is a rounding error away from zero. Slight problem. Low tier classes don't really get any of those things.

For that matter it's not really accurate to even call it a tier system.

In a tier system you use OU and below in OU and UU and below in UU and so forth and you don't end up with things that sweep the whole tier or can't perform their role in the tier - and if you do it's a self correcting problem.

What happened here was both sides were using low tier stuff but one was still clearly much stronger. That means the other side - the PC side can't really do anything. The lack of a range of abilities and the power even to be good at their specialties killed them. In a true tier system the party would have been fine since the opposing side was as restricted as they were.

[Mooncrow]

7th level?  Yeah, you're right, they have no business getting stopped by a wall - but that goes back to my previous statement - they weren't creative enough to have solutions to the problem.  Why didn't a single person have an Anklet of Translocation?  or Travel Devotion?  Or another easily available to everyone answer to that commonly encountered problem?  Creativity isn't just about what you do in a given encounter, it's also about preparing for the possibilities. 

[Halinn]

The problem is when one tactic or power or ability is too powerful. I'm reminded of a group that got an adamantine weapon and simply bashed down any doors or walls or floors or ceilings or anything in their way. It kept working so they kept doing it. The DM wasn't adept enough to cope with it and it broke the game.

That comes from not reading the Ineffective weapons section of the rules for breaking objects. Generally a sword shouldn't be capable of smashing through a wall or floor.

Breaking doors is fine usually, the rogue (or other skill user) could be opening them anyway so breaking them down is about the same, solution wise.

Real life has shown several times that something like a spoon has proved capable of going through a concrete wall.

[Kajhera]

7th level?  Yeah, you're right, they have no business getting stopped by a wall - but that goes back to my previous statement - they weren't creative enough to have solutions to the problem.  Why didn't a single person have an Anklet of Translocation?  or Travel Devotion?  Or another easily available to everyone answer to that commonly encountered problem?  Creativity isn't just about what you do in a given encounter, it's also about preparing for the possibilities.

Options = creativity, and in this game options = power ... no, I wouldn't say power limits creativity and cunning, before the points of no return at least. The ways in which power limits creativity is when being powerful at one thing renders your other options useless or pointless, and you go from choosing between many different things to choosing one thing, whether that one thing is 'I damage it for 25!' or 'I have my army of solars take care of it'.

There are a lot of creative uses of an adamantine dagger (or a spoon), whether or not that breaks everything.

[Basket Burner]

7th level?  Yeah, you're right, they have no business getting stopped by a wall - but that goes back to my previous statement - they weren't creative enough to have solutions to the problem.  Why didn't a single person have an Anklet of Translocation?  or Travel Devotion?  Or another easily available to everyone answer to that commonly encountered problem?  Creativity isn't just about what you do in a given encounter, it's also about preparing for the possibilities.

Travel Devotion is take a move action as a swift action, not teleportation if I recall correctly.

You're right about the Anklet though. Some of their mistakes were player error based.

Just to give a few other examples:

Zero PCs had Improved Initiative. Despite the fact going first and killing things before they themselves were killed was the only means by which they could get through encounters since making it through encounters in other ways requires that you have respectable defenses. One of them had decent AC, but was one of the ones that couldn't hit anything and he only had that because he stacked things that boost AC when you move so if killed before he moved...

One of the Warmages essentially ruined his entire build for scouting, and not just any scouting but the kind where you spend a 1 round action to get a tiny elemental for the next 2 rounds meaning you're so close to whatever it is you want to check on that all you're doing is giving the enemy early warning even if scouting itself were a valid style. If you want it to actually tell you what it found its range is even more limited (since it has to go there and back) and that makes it even easier to notice since the DC to hear speech is around... 0, modified by about 3 or so for distance. Instead he should have focused on damage like the other one did so their success would be a little less luck based.

The Dungeoncrasher Fighter actually had more levels of Knight than Dungeoncrasher Fighter. But the meat of the build was smacking people around. Since he was only marginally less squishy than the Warmages he really doesn't want to taunt the enemy into attacking him. The player error here is not only taking those Knight levels but sacrificing the real power of his build to do so... 18 Str on a Goliath melee, all because he wanted some Cha that was ultimately counterproductive anyways? Imagine a human melee with 14 str - both are six points behind where they should be at this level.

Without the player errors they'd have done better. However one Warmage was still dead before they got a turn, the other died next round and even with the build errors fixed the doorbreaker guy still isn't that good at breaking down doors as having the proper Str score only increases his odds from 30% to 45% per attempt and he only gets two chances before he dies. If all six of his levels were Dungeoncrasher Fighter 70%, so what most likely happens is he smashes the door, then dies, then the other Warmage kills them... and it's two PCs vs two encounters.

The real group never made it this far but if they did they had almost no answers to mundane and magical darkness being used together so the third fight (vs a Warlock) would have been slow but ultimately one sided unless they got really lucky again in which case she could have easily escaped if not killed outright. They had even fewer answers to the same + Ring of the Darkhidden so an Fleshraker under an effective Improved Invisibility jumps on them in the fourth fight damaging HP, Dex, and knocking them into Grease and Trapsmith traps while being hit with ranged sneak attacks with a DoT effect from the BBGG (that's big bad gimp guy) Rogue/Trapsmith. Who also has the ability to escape fights not going his way if not killed outright along with some defensive measures that as long as both Warmages are dead by now would let him wall the party for far longer than he needs to. He also had that thing that reflects rays, if I recall correctly so if a Warmage did make it this far he'd suicide himself like so:



Edit: I checked the logs again, and I was thinking of something else. He actually attacked for 2d8+14 and 4d6+18 Dungeoncrashing for an average of 23 and 32, respectively and not 25-30 + 30. Still 55 is close enough to 55-60 and only one of the PCs had enough to take an average hit and remain conscious (party HP: 41-60) so he was still running around OHKOing them with two attacks a round and enough accuracy that one hit is near certain and two are not so unlikely.

[ariasderros]

@ BB
So, out of curiosity, how does an example wherein the players lacked power, cunning, and creativity relevant to the thread.

To put it another way:

7th level?  Yeah, you're right, they have no business getting stopped by a wall - but that goes back to my previous statement - they weren't creative enough to have solutions to the problem.  Why didn't a single person have an Anklet of Translocation?  or Travel Devotion?  Or another easily available to everyone answer to that commonly encountered problem?  Creativity isn't just about what you do in a given encounter, it's also about preparing for the possibilities. 

Anyone else ready to just say Mooncrow has won this thread / discussion?

[Basket Burner]

@ BB
So, out of curiosity, how does an example wherein the players lacked power, cunning, and creativity relevant to the thread.

My point is that in order for creativity and cunning to mean anything you need the power to back it up. In this case that would mean having someone that can actually break down the door, or that has the item to teleport to the other side of the wall, or otherwise has some ability to deal with the obstacle. If you look at it on a grander scale it means many other things that are all along the same lines - thinking doesn't matter if you can't follow through. Otherwise they can think of all the ideas they want - they can't do any of them so it doesn't matter.

According to many here just thinking of an idea is enough to make it work. That isn't how things work at all. Many of those same people have gone so far as to say having the ability to follow through on ideas limits those ideas and your ability to develop them instead of serving to enable them as something you can reasonably attempt.

Not having a simple and common item is player error instead of tier error but it still amounts to lacking the abilities to follow through on your plans. It was also one of the many examples that occurred during that short little demonstration designed to mimic a single adventuring day.

Edit: Here's an example of the reverse happening that I am more familiar with as I was directly running the game instead of just following along with developments once things got underway.

Party develops plan to attack and destroy bridge and kill all the guards at it - a force that amounted to over a dozen archers, a pair of warchanters (taking shifts), some wolf riders, berserkers, etc... and a dragon. The plan involved many things but the lynchpin was Deeper Darkness. Without that ability the whole plan would have fell flat - instead of being able to get close enough to attack before being detected and putting the dragon on the defensive right away, keeping him out of the fight until most of the others could be dealt with, being protected against most of the counterattacks as only the dragon could feasibly find him to attack, and then using that protection to take the pressure off his allies when they started taking too much fire he'd have been seen coming a great distance away, the dragon would have plenty of time to buff, and the party would have to deal with everything at once. The priority target can be seen, so while he has good defenses he still wouldn't have been able to sustain focused fire from the entire encounter for any significant length of time, and then when the pressure turned to the others they wouldn't be hidden from sight and so could be targeted. Of course this party has many and diverse abilities so they could have managed many of the same things in other ways but without that Deeper Darkness the whole multipronged night attack thing starting with surprise jumping the dragon would have fallen flat instead of being mostly successful (Jorr died because humanoid NPCs are squishy, one PC died near the end because the dragon seen him, both got better) which is still far better than the alternative.

[Rejakor]

There are people who if they have an easy solution won't look for a more complex, interesting, or harder one.

They are most people.

Some people will look for interesting/hard solutions even if they have a fireball in their pocket.


As the GM, it is your job to make sure that no matter what the party has, it can't solve the problem with something it has in it's pocket unless the problem is intended to be trivial.

Thus, the situation is moot unless the GM is already failing at their job.

[Basket Burner]

What you describe is intentionally nullifying the party. That's a far cry from what anyone here is talking about.

According to you Beguilers should be met by all undead, all the time. Just because they're a Beguiler. Not that you fight a mix of things and that some of them happen to be undead, not that you say at the beginning this is an undead campaign and someone decides to go for a ton of [Mind Affecting] stuff anyways, but intentional counterteaming. At that point it doesn't matter what you do as nothing will work. Except finding a new game, which you really should.

I really hope I'm misunderstanding you here.

[Jackinthegreen]

As the GM, it is your job to make sure that no matter what the party has, it can't solve the problem with something it has in it's pocket unless the problem is intended to be trivial.

The GM's job is to move the campaign along and provide for an entertaining experience.  Always preventing the party from achieving something will only serve to piss off the players into leaving the campaign outright.

Certainly a GM shouldn't be adverse to entirely roadblocking the party every now and then, but failures have to be balanced with successes.

The party shouldn't always have to go out and get something it doesn't yet have for an obstacle it's about to face.  Requiring a new item or ability for every encounter is a failure to be creative with what the party already has.