The Beast Fight

The following sequence arose from events played out over several posts, between February 2 to 7, 2018.  Links for the posts are included in the text below.

After the last post, Investigating the Stairs, we're in the position to deconstruct the combat that followed.  This is a particularly example: the players made no particular errors, the dice fell against them for quite a lot of it, the situation was very tense for far too long and the party was able to pull themselves out of an extraordinary tailspin, barely avoiding a total-party-kill.  All things that make this a combat worth examination.

The participants in the combat were Embla the assassin; Lothar the ranger; Engelhart the cleric; Pandred the fighter.  These were supported by Bergthora and Fjall, two hirelings.  A third hireling, Willa, was far away, watching a distant "front door."  My plan was to have Willa appear in the 11th round (if the combat lasted that long, which I did not expect), to tell the party that the owners of the lair had returned, somewhat trapping the party in the lair (though a backdoor was available).

Half of this discussion will cover what is happening from round to round; the other half, I hope, will cover the antagonist's motives against the party, the setting for the combat and the dilemmas presented as the combat was resolved.

The enemy was a "dog-Beast": a huge, eight-and-a-half foot tall humanoid with a dog's head and great long claws.  The Beast received two attacks per round: it could attack with its teeth and with one claw.  I recognize that most monster descriptions tend to make most beasts ambidextrous, but I will often limit a less intelligent, agile monster to the use of only one or the other hand, not both.  That was the case here.  The bite caused 2-16; the claw, 1-8.  There was a special ability.  If the bite rolled a natural 20, it caused triple damage on the hit.  That was a potential quick kill, however unlikely.

At the start of the fight, Embla had failed to kill the Beast outright; however, she had succeeded in reducing the Beast to a total of 24 hit points, a fact kept secret from the party.  By my rules, if one quarter of a defender's present hit points are removed by a single hit, that defender is "stun-locked" ~ for one round.  This is modified if the defender has two attacks.  An attack causing a quarter of the Beast's hit points reduces the Beast to one attack (a claw); to remove both attacks, a third of the Beast's hit points would have to be lost in damage.  From this, I can explain that a single hit of 6 damage would be sufficient to reduce the Beast's combat effectiveness to a claw attack only; a single hit of 8 damage would be enough to stop the Beast from attacking at all (for one round).  In this way, several good rounds by a party against a relatively weak defender can quickly end a fight.  And this was a weak defender (it has been severely injured in may fights, evidenced by the pool of blood).

Round 1: the party rushes in to engage the Beast

The fight begins with Embla immediately adjacent to the Beast.  The rest of the party rushes in, but spend their round closing with the Beast.  Lothar, Fjall and Bergthora are too far away to reach the room, but can be seen on the stairs.  Pandred shouts that the party needs to spread out; she knows that if the party is tripping over each other, this will limit their potential attacks.  As seen in the image, she can't get at the Beast between Embla and Engelhart.  Lothar expresses his excitement: "Looking forward to putting this thing down!"  These are the typical sounds that we've all come to associate with combat; even with playing by comments on a blog, the excitement in the air is palpable.

As is the initial let down, as Embla misses.  About that, I feel it is worth mentioning that in no way are any of the die rolls in this combat being policed.  The players are quite free to lie; I would have no way of knowing.  This is something I used to worry about ~ but I have found players put in this situation to be surprisingly honest ... as the rest of this combat certainly appears to prove.

Round 2: the beast misses and shifts to Embla's left.

With the second round, the Beast gets up.  By the rules I play by, it was entitled to two attacks; however, I chose to play up the relative weakness of the Beast by disallowing the use of its teeth for this round.  This had every possibility of condemning the Beast to a quick death.  For me, however, giving the Beast a "fair and even" chance is not my goal here.  I wanted the party to encounter this thing on its last legs.  As I said, I expected the return of the lair's owners: a group of killer frogs, which the party was already familiar with fighting.  If the Beast went down quickly, all the better.  At no time, was I invested in the Beast's survival.  I never am with monsters.  There's always another monster in the next room.  I also had a thought in my mind that a quick kill would build the party's confidence, perhaps giving them the will to fight those later frogs, without fleeing immediately.

The Beast missed with its claw.  I was ready to write it off at that point.  The party flowed into the room.  Embla and Engelhart attack; Pandred moves around Embla and attacks.  Fjall fires his ready crossbow.  Everyone missed.

It happens.  The Beast was AC 4, the same as a hill giant, which the creature was based upon for combat purposes.  The party is only 2nd-3rd level.  It takes a 15 to 17 on the dice for the party to hit, depending on the combatant.  Still, a 1 in 4 chance was expected and didn't happen.

Round 3: as Embla gets hit, I remove her two hexes away and
cover her with a stun icon, to remind the party she loses an attack.

With the third round, the question needs to be asked: who does the Beast attack?  I perceived the Beast having a high semi-intelligence, about a 4 on a 3d6 scale.  This would make it the equivalent of a high-functioning chimpanzee ~ and much more aggressive.  As it woke, Embla was the only combatant immediately adjacent.  These other creatures may have appeared, but Embla is the one it remembers.  It attacks, biting for 13 damage.

Now, usually what happens with the hit would be decided by DM's fiat: but I've built some rules for this.  The bite causes 11 damage or more, so it creates a wound, which will now cause Embla to lose one hit point of damage per round, until the wound is attended to.  Embla is stunned (more than a quarter of her present hit points lost), so she does not attack for next round, AND she is knocked back and away from the combat.  Against a man-sized creature, this would be one hex removed; but it is a large creature, more than a thousand pounds, so Embla is knocked back two hexes.  I describe it as follows:

DM: It rolls a 13 and hits Embla with its bite (better hope this thing does not roll a critical; all my wolves do triple damage on a critical 20). The bite is a terrifying 2d8 ... and I roll 13 damage. Embla feels the jaws close on her arm and throw her back into 0802 ...

The description isn't, then, just fluff, or me making something up.  It is a direct description of how the rules I've designed play out in actual combat.

A stun has various emotional effects on a party.  Unlike a simple hit, the loss of the attack by one player causes the party to realize there are real consequences to being hit hard.  Often, the simple loss of hit points fails to impress itself upon the player.  The number is simply taken off the total store of hit points, the player shrugs and recognizes they've survived the attack and they feel perfectly ready to pick up the die to fight back.

However, with the stun, the player is rendered vulnerable, unable to protect themselves or take any action.  The rest of the party is now a combatant down; as with a hockey player in the penalty box, the enemy is now on a power play.  Everyone else sees they have to pick up the slack.  This is particularly bad when the strongest fighter, the one everyone counts on, is removed from the combat for a round.

Still in the 3rd round, the creature attacks with its claw and rolls a natural 1, fumbling.  I roll a d20, to see if the creature breaks its arm, sustaining an injury, which would render one of its claws useless (I would then reduce it's claw attack to every other round, as it still had a good one).  I need to roll another natural 1, or fumble, for this to happen.  It doesn't.  However, the creature does lose it's footing, shifting to Pandred's left (as shown in the image above).

Still Round 3, now showing the party's move after the Beast attacks.

Again, the party rushes in.  Lothar, Bergthora and Engelhart shift towards the Beast and attack, with Pandred.  In this combat, Pandred is the powerhouse ~ but she is low on hit points, due to early combats in this dungeon and before.  All attack, except for Fjall, who is frantically reloading the crossbow.

And again, everyone misses.

This should now be seen as very unlikely.  Odds are that 1 in 4 attacks will succeed.  The party is zero for 8 at this point.  Naturally, this puts the party on edge.  Some comments:

Engelhart: I let out a "fuck!", make it a holy one.  I'm beginning to see this turning ugly real soon.

Lothar: Attack [die]: 9.  Bloody freaking 9. Soon to be bloody freaking Lothar.  At least it wasn't a 1.  Ugh.

And it does get ugly.  And so far, I have been forgetting to include a rule in combat play, that I will remember to start implementing in the 4th round ~ incidental damage.

Round 4: as the text explains, the Beast attacks Lothar and Pandred,
then falls back one hex, next to Engelhart.  Now it is Pandred who is
stunned; the others are free to attack afterwards.

With the fourth round, I am again facing the question, who does the Beast attack?  I can always implement this at random, 1d4 against one of the random four opponents in front of the Beast.  If the Beast were completely non-intelligent, like a giant beetle, this is exactly what I would do.  But I want to give the Beast some semblance of intelligence.

As it fights, it can sense that the ranger Lothar and the fighter Pandred are its most dangerous opponents.  They have the most dangerous attacks and are hardest to avoid.  Some of their attacks have landed on the Beast's tough hide, but have failed to do any real damage, striking with the flat of the weapon rather than the blade (which is how I choose to describe it ~ the simple truth is that the rules say they miss, so they miss).  Because of the danger presented by these two combatants, the Beast chooses to target them.

At the same time, the Beast wants to get into hex 0204, on the far left [the "2" not showing on the image].  This is the best defensive hex.  The stones above 0204 would make it hard for a combatant to keep their footing against the Beast, so it could be attacked well only from 0304.  However, it doesn't want to go through 0403; this is considered rough ground, would slow the Beast down and the Beast's AC would be lowered as it tried to clamber across.  It could simply jump through 0403 and into 0404, but to do so it would have to forsake all attacks for one round, as this would use up all its movement, getting around Lothar.  It isn't intelligent enough to make a decision like that; it is aggressive and somewhat dumb: so it decides to go through Lothar.  If it can stun Lothar, the ranger will be knocked out of the way and it will be able to go where it wants.  So I awarded the bite against the ranger; and the claw I gave to Pandred the fighter.

Before going into how that turned out, I want to explain that the above logic took about two seconds of actual planning and thought.  I have fought hundreds and hundreds of combats, and am used to thinking in the combatant's mind in various ways, depending on my own interpretation of the combatant's intelligence, from 0 to 18.  I look at the pattern of the room, the combat, the various elements I've created and then go with my instincts, which have been built up from a multiplicity of similar situations I've played out.  It is not a time-waster; nor is it based on frivolity.  I always have firm, definite reasons why a particular combatant acts the way that it does; kept from the party, unless a member of the party has an ESP or like spell in process.

The bite missed, so the way to 0204 is blocked for this round.  The claw rolls a natural 20, causing 10 damage against Pandred.  Pandred has 5 hit points, so Pandred is reduced to negative 5 (not dead, yet).  There are various rules associated with falling into the negatives; I suggest the reader familiarize themselves with the link provided, so that I can continue on with the events as the unfolded.

Pandred is knocked back one hex from the stun (the claw is not as forceful as the bite that threw Embla back two hexes).  The Beast, then, shifts back against the wall, as shown in the image above.

Embla, as said already, loses 1 hit point from bleeding, which always happens on the enemy's turn (like an attack).  Then I roll incidental damage.  As the link above explains, this is damage caused by the sheer size of the Beast.  It may not "hit" with its claw, but the mass behind the attack is enough that even deflecting the blow causes mass-effect damage.  The Beast is large enough to cause 1 incidental damage to anything in an adjacent hex; including Pandred, who was hit.  In this round, Lothar and Engelhart both take a point of damage.

It is little more than an annoyance ~ at first.  It can steadily pile up, however, if a combat stretches out.  For my money, all these things (attacks, wounds, incidental damage) serve to give a greater sense that everyone is involved, not just the target of the creature's attacks.

Still Round 4; Pandred passes out while the party is challenged by the
ground.

Considering what is happening as the party presses the attack.  Bergthora, who is a "zero-level" [a term I've ceased to use, but descriptive enough for most readers] backs out and lets the levelled combatants, Lothar and Engelhart, engage.  Pandred fails a check against being in the negatives and passes into unconsciousness.  Embla decides not to stop and bind her wound, instead grabbing for Pandred's axe, which she can use.

Lothar misses.  Engelhart misses.  Embla picks up the axe, throws it ... and hits for six damage (mistakenly adding her strength bonus to make it seven, which momentarily confuses things).  This is enough to stop the Beast from attacking with its bite next round; but it still gets a claw attack.

A word or two about Embla's choice not to bind.  I've been careful with rules surrounding wounds to ensure there are lots of ways to deal with them, particularly a quick heal like a healing salve or a goodberry.  One thing I like about the rule, however, is that it does seem like the 1 hp loss can be ignored, for awhile ... IF it seems more practical to just keep fighting.  In my rule system, any sort of heal does require a round (to fish out the healing object and down it, or cast the spell) ~ so it is a choice between attack and defense; except under special circumstances, one has to be sacrificed for the other.  The decision here by Embla turns out to be the right one ... but there are terrible consequences for it, as will be seen.

Round 5: Not a good one for the Beast. It seems the party is
back in control.

With the fifth round, the Beast is hard-pressed.  Now it takes an animal's response; it backs into the uncertain ground of the rocky pile.  It can't attack Embla, who hurt it; Engelhart came closest to hitting it, so it swings it's claw at the cleric.  The claw misses.  Lothar takes 1 point of incidental damage.  Embla bleeds 1 point from her wound.  That is all the bad that happens to the party.

This, too, is something I like about the system.  All it takes is one good hit to drive the enemy back and give a little breathing room.  Unlike the original combat system, where fights just go back and forth, like a tennis match, the stun-lock effect keeps changing the ebb and flow of the combat.  If I had hit the cleric, Lothar might now be alone, with Engelhart stunned; but I missed, and the two of them can gang up.  It is this uncertainty that makes the combat more interesting and far more concerning for the players, even round to round.  For example, at this point, it looks like the players are sure to get the upper hand.

After firing in Round 2, it has taken Fjall three rounds to load the heavy crossbow (12 seconds a round).  He will fire in Round 6.  Once again, Embla chooses not to bind her wound, moving in to fight; to get into a melee position, she's had to climb onto the rocks herself, causing her to suffer a-2 to both attack and armor class.  Lothar shifts into Engelhart's place.  The cleric drops his maul and draws a warhammer to throw it.  Bergthora throws her dagger.

Engelhart hits for 3 damage!  It is enough to reduce it to 15 hit points, but not to stun.  The party is now 2 for 15 attacks, which is still poor.  It is a perfect demonstration of what I've just explained.  All at once, the balance of the advantage shifts.  The Beast has two attacks; that potential 20-crit with the bite is looming.  Embla is still bleeding.  All of the sudden, her choice to press the engagement seems very much like the wrong one.

But it is an easy error to get into.  The fact that as a combatant you're only going to lose 1 hit point; it seems dismissive, a fully acceptable sacrifice to make, if it means one solid hit right now could end the fight.  But it is like a gambler who keeps putting one after another coin into a slot machine.  Too soon, all the coins are gone.

Round 6: Lothar and Embla are knocked aside.

With the sixth round, that chicken comes home to roost for Embla.  She takes 1 damage from the wound, and as it happens she also takes 1 incidental damage at the same time.  Embla's hit points are so low at this point that it only takes 1 point to stun her.  Embla staggers back a hex, unable to fight.

When you're wounded, it is very hard when you're stunned.  It means that you're going to take another point of damage before you can do anything about the problem ... and you're vulnerable at the same time, to another attack.  Thankfully for Embla, she's spared this.

Instead, the Beast attacks Lothar.  Following Embla's earlier attack, my view is that the Beast is angered, now; it is no longer thinking of the best defensive position.  Instead, now, it just wants blood.  It's bite attack does 7 damage to Lothar, throwing the ranger back into Engelhart's hex.  This is similar to medieval ship wargames, where ships pushed together become "fouled."  The Beast leaps forward and attacks the hex containing the fouled characters, gaining a bonus; fortunately, the Beast misses with it's second attack.  Yet it does a point of incidental damage to Lothar, for good measure.

Still Round 6, as the second rank moves in to take up the fight.

Things are looking dire.  Lothar is stunned, as is Embla (forgot to add the stun symbol to the images, which happens in the rush of getting the content posted on the blog).  Engelhart disentangles himself from Lothar, pushing the ranger out of the combat, so he can attack.  Rushing to protect her master, Bergthora rushes in.  Fjall fires with the loaded crossbow ...

Feel that tension?  This really feels like a battle.  I've participated in battles in other campaigns, which feel repetitious and dull.  Here, everyone has to think, strategize, figure out the best plan, try to survive.  I recognize that quite a number of table-top role-players feel that tactics and strategy have no place in an RPG ... but I don't understand that myself.  No one in an actual fight fails to employ a tactic of some kind; I can remember several fist-fights I had as a boy, with which I had a very limited expertise.  Even at that, I would try different things; and when grabbed or punched, I would respond the best I could!  The fight itself is a mental process ~ and it is irrational to pretend that playing a role as a character able to fight, trained to fight, wouldn't be in a position to make decisions in a fight.

My contention with the naysayers to fight tactics is in two parts: first, that the D&D combat system as originally conceived was certainly lacking.  Rolling a die for initiative each round, and waiting for the complete removal of hit points to change the fighting status as a combatant, is not enough to create the kind of uncertain random effects that make a battle ebb and flow back and forth.  My second belief is that the naysayers just don't want to deal with it; either because the system as is possesses this flaw, so that resolution is dull, or because the dice rolls themselves defy direct control of the pacing by the DM or players.  These are people who have turned to role-playing as an alternative to combat, preferring to make the combats as simple as possible, to get them out of the way.

With the combat system redesigned as I have done, the players aren't bored.  They feel desperate; anxious; thrilled; on the edge of their seats.  Read the comments section; their sentence structure shortens.  They express their frustrations, while at the same time expressing their hopes and fears.  They are alive in the moment.  Engelhart expresses his wish that Willa were present (unknowing that she is, actually, five rounds away at this point).  And as it happens, everyone, Fjall, Bergthora and Engelhart, all miss with their attacks.

The players are 2 hits for 18 rolls.  On the internet.  With no one to watch their rolls or force them to be honest.  I am in awe.

Round 7: the Beast hits, but only a glancing blow at Engelhart.

With the seventh round, the beast is in full rage.  Engelhart takes a point of incidental damage.  Embla bleeds for a point of damage from her wound.  Throughout the combat, Engelhart has been mostly ineffectual ... and the Beast can't tell the difference between a 3rd level cleric and a no-level hireling, so it attacks Bergthora (who got closest to hitting the Beast last round).  Bergthora gets the bite and is missed.  Engelhart gets the claw and is hit for 5 damage.  Not enough to stun him.

That's a break for the party.  The Beast remains with its back to the wall; it is cornered.  Lothar, with the best chance to hit, can rejoin the fight.  And Embla, potentially, could finally fall back and bind wounds.  The assassin has bled down to zero hit points.  There's a real chance something might happen and she could bleed out.

But Embla's blood is up, too.  Instead of bowing out and dealing with the issue, she wants badly to bring the Beast down.  That is not necessarily a mistake: it is an emotional response, which is what I want as a DM.  The system might be about tactics: but there is enough room in that tactical struggle to allow for simple emotions, as well.  That is what makes combat exciting.  It is about the characters the players are running, too!

Still Round 7, and the party fights back as best they can.

Embla, having nothing else to throw, finds a rock among the rubble and throws that, missing.  Rather than reloading the crossbow again, Fjall the hireling gives up on it and rushes in.  He throws his dagger as he comes on, missing.  Engelhart swings and misses.  At that point, the party is 2 for 21 attacks.  Unbelievable.

But Bergthora rolls and hits with a 19, causing 2 damage.  Then Lothar throws a dagger and rolls a 20 critical.  By that point, the party is due.  Almost.  With the chance of causing double damage to the Beast, Lothar rolls a 1 on a d4.  The Beast, remember, has 15 hit points, not that the party knows.  The first 2 damage is not enough to stun it, but drops it to 13.  But the second 2 damage also fails to stun it, dropping it to 11 hit points.  Just unbelievable.

Engelhart puts it best:

Engelhart: This party truly has some atrocious luck. By my calculations we'd need 5 damage to stun away the creature's bite attack... two hits later and one of them a crit to boot: 4 measly damage to show for.  Damn.

Lothar:  Damage is damage.  We're getting closer at least.

Laconic to the end.  The party is facing a TPK, straight up ... and they know it.  But there's still hope.

Round 8: Where the Beast was once falling back, now it moves
forward to the attack.

With the eighth round, Bergthora's success, however meagre, makes her the certain target for the Beast.  The bite hits, causing 8 damage (9 total, with the incidental damage).  On top of this, she takes a point of incidental damage.  She's hurled two hexes away, to the edge of the stacks of broken wood, where she is stunned at zero hit points.

With Bergthora out of its way, the Beast can move forward to attack Lothar with its claw, since the ranger also did damage last round.  As it passes Engelhart, it causes a point of incidental damage to the cleric.  But it misses Lothar.

Embla bleeds a point of damage, as she slides into the negatives.  That is the Beast's whole attack.  Bergthora is a set back, but not an excessive one.  The party could still mount a strong comeback; remember, the Beast only has 14 hit points left ... a five-point hit would be enough to render it helpless for a round, letting the party finish it off.

Still Round 8, with the remaining combatants dog-piling the Dog Beast.

Fjall, who has done hardly anything at this point, only has 1 hit point, having taken damage in other fights.  However, being a childhood friend of Lothar AND Bergthora, and having had a strong association with the rest of the party, he's ready to throw away his life if necessary.  He rushes in.  Embla makes up her mind to ignore her wound, once again, and attacks directly (gaining the bonus of flanking the Beast's right).  Engelhart shifts to flank the Beast's left.  Lothar holds the front position.  This could, at last, be it.

Engelhart and Fjall miss.  Lothar manages a 2 point hit, dropping the Beast to 9 hit points, still not stunning.  Embla, for whom this might be her last chance, misses.  Bad, bad, bad.

Bergthora is a hireling and has to make a morale check.  She misses the number by 1; not a rout, so she doesn't flee, but she hasn't the nerve to dive in.  She staggers to find Fjall's crossbow, so she can begin loading it the next round.

Round 9: the Beast cleans house.  Once again, I've forgotten to add
stun symbols for Fjall and Lothar ... but we'll remember.

With the ninth round, the proximity of everyone to the beast makes the whole party susceptible to incidental damage.  Embla is the only one that suffers a point.  With her wound, she takes two points, dropping her to -4.  In the next round, she'll have to make a check to stay conscious.  Jumping ahead for the moment, she'll fail it.  Then, she can't bind her wounds.  Like Pandred, she'll be unconscious; unlike Pandred, however, if someone doesn't get to her soon, she'll bleed out and die.

The bite falls on Lothar, who did damage the round before.  The bite causes 11 damage to the ranger, enough to cause another wound; now it is Lothar who is bleeding every round.  The ranger is thrown back two hexes and is stunned.  The claw lashes out and hits Fjall for just 1 damage; but this is all the hireling has.  He staggers back, also stunned.  As the image shows, everyone is knocked back, except for Engelhart the cleric.  He's alone, back against the wall, as the Beast turns and grins.

This is it.  The party is going to die.  Willa is just two rounds away.  In terms of the dungeon layout, she's just running through the kitchen now, at the top of the stairs shown on the map's right.  Probably too far away to do any good.  With great sadness, Bergthora tries to load the crossbow, terrified of pushing herself back into the combat (morale failure, remember?).  I think at this point, the cleric's description gives a sense of the party's feeling:

Engelhart: Attack Roll: 8.

(Took the care to go and fetch the second d20 that I own, as this campaign has made me nothing if not mildly superstitious; Alas, I seem to be constant across die types, roll surfaces and hours of the day...)

With the leftover AP, I pondered moving in search of higher ground, but this would mean taking Lothar out of strike range once he comes around. Can't have that.

I feel like this fight has clearly turned the corner of being endable without casualties. Sure wouldn't want to be in Embla's shoes...

Throughout this fight, the party has done an excellent job fighting as a team.  The dice have been against them; they have taken far more damage than they've delivered; yet they've been able to keep everyone alive up to this point, they've rallied repeatedly to make the best of the situation and now here, above, Engelhart is thinking of where he needs to be to ensure others can help.  Notice he isn't telling other players what to do; but rather, he is keeping his messages communicative and supportive, which encourages others to make up their own minds how to interface together.  That's praiseworthy. We want this from our players.

With the tenth round, and only Engelhart left, both of the Beast's attacks fall on the cleric.  No incidental damage; and the bite misses.  But the claw criticals and causes 12 damage ~ another wound ~ and the Beast turns away, leaving the cleric to slump against the wall.  It engages Fjall; it has no attacks with, but mere proximity to the Beast's huge body, swinging around, causes 1 point of incidental damage to the hireling.  Fjall is stunned again.

Because Fjall doesn't have a level, he won't die at -10 hit points, but at -4.  He's at -1 right now.  Lothar is at 2 hit points.  Engelhart is helpless.  Both Lothar and Engelhart are bleeding.  Embla is slipping towards death.  Bergthora is in her second round of loading the crossbow.  Unknown to the party, Willa is still one round from making her arrival known.  Things couldn't look worse.

If I were running this game at a table, I would do my best to stretch this moment out.  Of course, playing online, the method of play did it for me; but if we were playing in real time, I would take a moment to get myself a cup of coffee, deliberately teasing the despair out.  It's possible here that people are going to die; if they are, they need a moment to get used to the idea before it actually happens.  I find this is important, for game play.  They know they might die; yet they still possess a glimmer of hope. The slower the situation resolves itself for the worst, the more time the Player has to prepare mentally for the final blow.

DMs will, unfortunately, rush the moment, thinking the best way is to get it over with, as soon as possible.  That's a mistake.  This isn't a band-aid.  The faster it happens, the greater the shock will be.  That's not good.  We don't want to exacerbate the feeling of loss with an additional feeling of shock.  So understand: I'm not being cruel, spacing the moment out ... I'm giving human beings a chance to deal.

It's also worth noting that, if the players pull it out, the more keenly they feel the despair at this point, the greater will be the feeling of triumph if they survive.

As it happened, the players did pull it out.  Lothar stepped up and hit the beast for 8 damage.  This dropped it to only 1 hit point, stunning it completely.  While it howled in pain, in round 11, Engelhart staggers forward from the wall and hits it [FINALLY! shouts the cleric] for 6 more damage. 

The beast is dead.  Just like that.  Willa shows up just then and isn't needed.

And that shouldn't surprise us.  The beast should have gone down in the second round; it is a miracle that it survived to round 11.  But this is how things pan out.  Needless to say, the party didn't stick around for the killer frogs, that I had planned for them to fight. They found an exit behind the pile of rocks and fled.  No one died.  Amazing.

Investigating the Stairs

The following sequence arose from events associated with the Campaign Juvenis, played in succession from January 26 to February 2, 2018.

To set the scene.  The players are moving through an underground lair in the control of what, by the old Monster Manual, would be called killer frogs.  The players know them as "froglings."  They're a little stronger than the original, with 2 hit dice, and have proved troublesome in the past.  Stumbling across a small kitchen, the players find it full of slaughtered froglings, apparently torn limb from limb.  There's no explanation for what killed them.  The only way out of the kitchen, apart from the way in, is a flight of stairs down, behind a large lattice-iron door, the metal of which has degraded over many centuries.  However, recently, the door has been broken, so that it is clear it was forced open.

After digging out some of the booty from the kitchen, the party begins to get interested in the stairway.  It is a 55-degree slope of crumbled steps; this sounds very steep but it isn't for the time period.  After Engelhart, the cleric, makes an observation, I describe the stairs.

Engelhart: I have no special agility sage ability, I'm really just a clod with a crucifix. How hard would it be for me to descend, safely and silently?

DM: It is as difficult as a normal staircase, but the stones are out of place or ground away. There are signs of water damage. You can make your way down, but it would be a hell of a place to fight a combat (multiple rolls for slipping).

Why should I take the time to describe what the stairs would be in combat?  There isn't a combat, right?  Am I not deliberately jerking the players' chain, making them think twice about descending?

Yes, of course I am.  I don't have the benefit of making them feel the stairs, or seeing them, in near darkness, with the broken stones.  I have to put it into a context that players will appreciate.  The stairs are fine as long as nothing bad happens.  That's all I'm saying.

Now, note the final word from the cleric: "silently."  Players are obsessed with silence.  After years of dealing with different incarnations of rules surrounding the idea of creeping up on an enemy, I finally hit upon the idea behind my present stealth rules.  They work pretty well, I have found ... and will usually favor a thief or an assassin eager to surprise an enemy.  However, they are devilishly hard for players to grasp, for some reason ~ I think because they are also hard to bend to a player's will.

Basically, the principle is this: you want to approach an enemy.  If you're a long, long way from that enemy, you're certain not to be noticed.  On the line graph between a long, long way, and close enough to the enemy to put a sword between your enemy's ribs, you're going to be noticed.  You don't know where that threshold will be.  You're not meant to know.  So you move up to a certain distance ... and you find you're not noticed.  After that, every step forward that you take is a risk.  There's nothing else for it.  You have to either move that step forward, or retreat.

Since creating this system, where once I found players willing to bet their success on a surprise roll or an initiative roll, I now find players somewhat lacking in fortitude.  If they can't be absolutely sure they'll be close enough to the enemy before they're discovered, they're very hesitant.  Observe:

Pandred (the fighter): Alright, stairs it is.  I'm willing to go on, but I've got no stealth, and I am not personally prepared to risk a lighter armored run.  I know you mentioned using Sanctuary earlier Engelhart, and unless Embla or Lothar want to join your fearless foray I think it'd be a worthwhile idea.

Engelhart: I ask for a lantern and shed away all weight other than hammer & shield. This still leaves me at 4 AP as the armour is just too damn heavy and not taking it doesn't look like a good tradeoff. Here’s the thing, I obviously don't want us to get into trouble, just to get a finer sense of where we're heading and some intel of how safe it might be to overnight in the storeroom, seeing as it is still rather near to the potential focus of danger.

For all we may know, the beast may have been put down already, rather than left to rampage across the frogling compound. If all I find is closed doors, we can feel somewhat safer. Beside faith in the Lord, I'm gathering that such a brute must make more noise than I ever would. (If the party will give me missile cover from up above, I might be able to duck on their command?)

Initially, the cleric meant to remove his extra weight and not his armor; and that's fine.  He knows what the stealth rules give as a penalty, so he's making his choices.  Afterward, he reads the stealth rules I linked for him (as I have linked for the reader) and changes his mind:

Engelhart: It seems that should I lose the armour and shed all weapons there's virtually no chance of being discovered as long as I take measured steps and keep it cool down there. Since the plan wasn't to triumph through arms anyway, I'll go ahead and strip down to hauberk and chausses. Once AC ceases being a concern, might as well leave both shield and hammer behind, as well.

That's what I want from a game system.  The risks can be managed IF the player is prepared to sacrifice some of his benefits in order to receive other benefits.  That is how game play should function.  Everything is a strategy.

At the moment, the cleric can't see how far the stairs go; no light source had been produced ... so this becomes the subject of discussion for a bit.  I had not added "candlelight" to my stealth rules, so I did so, inserting it between dim moonlight and starshine, as far as giving away an individual.  If that seems kind, remember that a candle can be hidden by one hand, or gutted so that it reveals very little flame.  Anyway, I explain the rule change to the player and we move forward.

This is what I mean by saying that rules can be made in game; and once the rule is added, it becomes standard.  Since the rule is being invented above board, any of the players can interject a comment or a criticism, and they often do; in this case, it isn't that important, so no one finds it a problem.

So I have a non-player hireling provide the cleric with a candle (playing by post means sometimes we find ways to circumvent issues that take seconds at a game table), and then I describe the rest of the stairway:

DM: The stairs curve after a drop of some twenty feet, or nearly two complete flights. About half the way down, Engelhart can see a large, dark patch on the wall, reaching from about two feet above the cleric's shoulder all the way down to the floor. Upon closer examination, this is plainly blood, and still slightly damp to the touch. There is quite a lot of it ... and signs of blood spill further down the stairs. It looks to the cleric like something fell against the wall here, rested, then continued to move down the stairs.

And at that point, Engelhart can hear something large, about twenty or so feet away groan, shift, and begin to snore ...

This is important!  The stealth rules must cut both ways.  Just as the players might give themselves away by approaching too closely, whatever is at the bottom of the stairs must also roll dice to see if IT gives itself away.

Now, the players don't know what's down there, but as we're all DMs here, full disclosure.  It's a big, dog-headed beast, about the size and shape of a hill giant.  It is well over a thousand pounds and eight and a half feet tall.  Take note: it is not shaped like a basketball player: it is shaped like a heavy-set man, but with the head of a terrifically fanged wolf.  Earlier in the campaign, the players found a sculpture of such a beast and opined that there might be one in the lair, that they might discover.  That was my intention, but I never expected the players would come to that conclusion, at least not until afterward.

I've been keeping the actual existence of this beast a secret in my mind for nearly a year, partly because the players retreated from the dungeon once before and partly because we took a seven-month hiatus.  This is what a DM does, however.  Secrets of all kinds must be rigorously held back from the players, for the day when they are finally revealed.  The reveal itself is something that is earned.  Players who won't take risks, who won't return and try again, don't deserve to ever, ever know what was hidden and not discovered.  Just as I don't give treasure that wasn't fought for and risked for, information is a valuable commodity that deserves safekeeping.

Thinking that there might be a dog-beast, and actually finding it, is a dopamine rush; it is one of the best moments for a player to have and a DM must be conscious of it.  Dopamine set-ups should be installed in the adventure; allowed to evolve naturally; and highlighted when they occur.  Yes, you were bang on, I would say.  There it is; you called it; and now you have to deal with it.

Unfortunately, when the players did see the thing, they had either forgotten the sculpture, or forgotten to mention it.  The connection was made later, however ... and the connection is why the players have returned to this same dungeon a fourth time.  That, however, is another story.

Upon hearing the snoring beast, the response was,

Engelhart: I choke down a prayer to the Lord.  Ahm, how far away from the stair top is my near-naked self? I'm guessing ten feet as I'm still at the point where the bloodstain can be found?  The *thing* is thus some 20-odd feet from me, with the bend still between us, correct? Can I get Sanctuary cast without waking it up?

Now, this surprised me.  But before I get into that, I'll quickly explain the sanctuary spell in the context above.

The player had noticed an interesting method for using the spell sanctuary.  By casting the spell, the character can move very slowly into an enemy lair, observe what there is to see and retreat again, with a guarantee of not being noticed.  The caster can move only 10 feet per round and the spell only lasts 2 rounds, +2 rounds per level, so not that much can be seen before the character has to back away at the same rate, to ensure the spell does end with the caster exposed.  Invisibility is a better spell overall, but sanctuary would let an enemy actually walk into the caster and fail to notice anything had happened; the same is true for anyone who might witness this.

What surprised me was that I had given away that whatever down there was sleeping, and yet the whole party did not automatically load up and go down together.  As a DM, I don't really understand this need that players have (and it seems to be universal) for seeing things before attacking an enemy.  I remember during my early years of play, we did this all the time!  The point of reconnaissance isn't to "see" ~ it is to identify where the enemy is.  I grew up on war movies where the enemy would be found inside a house, and the soldiers would smash their way in and kill everyone.  Now everything has to be done with this kittenish sensibility ~ I suppose it has something to do with the surveillance culture, where little cameras can be poked around corners so that there's a better chance of hitting someone with the first bullet.  I don't get it.

Yet it's not up to me, so I have to play along.  It wastes a lot of game time, however, as players do everything they can to avoid a stand-up fight.  This sequence is a case in point.  The cleric sneaks down with the sanctuary spell, manages the stairs, reaches the bottom, then sees the dog beast sleeping, covered in a lot of blood (left over from the battle with the froglings), and blood all over the floor.  They get this picture, which speaks for itself.

It's not the best picture of dog-beast; it shouldn't
even be wearing clothes ~ but we do what we can.

It is quite clear the beast is at less than full hit points.  I even say,

DM: The humanoid has the ends of two spears (broken off) still stuck in its back. It's breathing is fairly labored; it has quite clearly been seriously wounded in whatever fight it had in the kitchen (for that is the logical conclusion).

Pretty anvilicious, I thought.  "I'm wounded, come kill me."  The cleric could easily signal the rest of the party to come down and then get it on.

Engelhart: I'm not sticking around. I retreat back up and inform the comrades while re-equipping my gear.  This thing is too dangerous to leave in our proximity if we wish to rest down here.  I put forward my vote that we dispatch it post haste while we have it in our hands.  A surprise round from the party ought to be enough to dispatch it, or at least turn the fight decisively in our favour.

Embla (the assassin): I concur with Engelhart.

Engelhart: Alexis, in attacking a motionless opponent, what advantage can we expect to have?

Whereupon I send the player to have a look at my helpless defender rules.

Once again, we have a case of the character deciding to put their suit of armor back on ... and as things would turn out, that was probably for the best.  The events in the cave were much to the party's credits, for reasons I will explain after.

This is not a bad time to suit up again.  There's no actual time pressure on the party (that they know about), the redressing is up the stairs and presumably back from the doorway, in the kitchen, so silence isn't an issue.  The walls and the beast's snoring would cover up any carefully managed sounds (and I do assume the player would redress as quietly as possible).

What I don't understand is this: the character removed his armor before he heard the beast snoring; and then he used his sanctuary spell to ensure he wasn't heard, because apparently the beast snoring wasn't reassuring enough; and additionally, didn't dress in armor again before going down the first time, for the same reason.  YET, the second time, with nothing actually changed, why did the character feel that going down with armor now and without the spell, and with the rest of the party, wouldn't wake the beast up?  That one puzzles me.

However, it didn't matter.  The cleric read the helpless defender rule and came back informed:

Engelhart: And the answer came back surprising: assassinating this canine heap is a job for the assassin.  I'll be close by, but really, seems like an open-and-knifed case.

Lothar (the ranger): I am in favor of Embla attempting to dispatch the beast for us.  For the record.

Embla: Well, that seems a reasonable proposition. Let's. I grab my battleaxe, leaving my pack behind, and sneak far enough down the stairs that I can see the creature.

Pandred: I wait midway downstairs. Part of me thinks we should try and see if this fellow is sentient. The other part hopes it puts up a big devilish fight.

I do encourage the players to read the rules I create, but there's only so much I can do.  Note how this particular rule doesn't feel "limiting" on the player's behaviour ... rather, it is considerably reassuring.  Suddenly the players feel less needful to be as careful.  They're still sending Embla the assassin on her own down the stairs, but the cleric goes at least as far as the bend near the bottom of the stairs, not worrying that walking in his clunky armor might spoil the assassin's chances of approaching in silence.  The fighter has no problem coming halfway down the stairs.

Again: the cleric could have stayed where he was, earlier, and waved the assassin down.  But not knowing the rules, not thinking about the assassin's special skills here, and that pesky need to put the armor on again, pretty much meant a lot of time spent in gaming with no actual alteration in the final analysis.  I find this happens a lot in gaming.  Much of it has to do with player uncertainty about their actual potential in a stand-up fight, some of it comes from fear ... but most of it comes from just not trusting the DM.

I suspect that most campaigns consist of endless jump scares, on the scale of video game mechanics, where the entire principle of tension is built on something being around every corner and everything always having perfect knowledge of where the shooter is and when the shooter is coming.  Of course, it has to be that way, it's a video game.  But table-top is flexible enough to have guards and monsters that don't "come awake" when floor pad xt7fxy-D0a is stepped on.  Monsters should give themselves away a lot of the time; they should be precisely where the players expect them to be; there shouldn't be a special hidden bonus wizard waiting in every room, concealed in a cupboard and ready to pop out and fireball the party ... monsters don't expect to be invaded in their homes and are probably quite bored most of the time, scraping fungus from rocks to pass the time between meals, chatting it up loudly with their buddies and being, for the most part, "normal."  There are other ways to produce tension ... most of the time, the best tension will just create itself, as it did in this case.

But if a player is going to be jumped a hundred times by every DM they play with, they're going to develop a complex.  That's going to train them to jump, before there's any reason to jump, even if they're playing with a new DM.  And it will take a new, less cheap-style DM potentially years to train that out of a player and develop a deeper level of trust, based on a world that isn't poised and waiting for a player character to walk by.

I'll sum up what happens next.  Embla gets next to the beast without being detected and attempts to assassinate using my rules.  I've used this method several times now and it seems to be proving itself.  Embla is only 2nd level here and the beast has 9 total hit dice + levels, so it would technically be impossible for Embla to succeed.  Nonetheless, Embla doesn't know that, so I have her go through the sequence: roll to hit, roll to see what level can be assassinated ... and she fails.

Still, she does 20-70% of the monster's hit points under the helpless defender's rule.  The monster's total, maximum hit points are 80.  The monster's current hit points are 40.  Embla has a 50% chance of knocking the beast down to zero and a 1 in 3 chance of killing it anyway.

Now, consider.  We're playing this game by blog; I can't witness the player's rolls, can't be sure at all that Embla really does roll, say, a 6 on a d6, so player fudging is super-easy.  However, to her credit, the player running Embla rolls the die, gets a 1, and honestly abides by it.

Here I made a straight-up DM's error.  In the following fight, I failed to account for the wound that was caused.  I didn't deliberately ignore it ... but even in a set up where I have plenty of time, such as the online campaign, I simply forgot the rule.  It happens.  Very often, I count on players to correct me with these things ~ which is why I post all the rules in open-source, on the wiki.  I like being corrected in this way.  I don't mind being kept honest.  I wrote the rule, I like the rule ... and in this case, I wish a player had corrected me, because what followed was almost a TPK for the party.

But when a rule is missed, as this one was, and nobody notices it, or says anything about it, I don't sweat it.  D&D is a complex game.  With so many rules, something is bound to be skipped.  Sadly, I didn't forget to apply this self-same rule against the players in the same fight.  That certainly looks malevolent ~ and it doesn't help with DM-Player trust.  But realistically, this is the sort of thing that happens and I have definitely made similar mistakes in the other direction.  The thing to do is to hand-wave it, learn from the mistake, and move on.  In fact, I didn't realize I had made the error until I began looking over the events, in order to write this post. No one else has ever mentioned it.

Admittedly at the time, I was suffering from insomnia, which is mentioned several times in the thread; that probably had something to do with it.  And everyone lived, so what the hell.

So, in response to Embla's muff, I answered,

DM: Embla, that's unfortunate. Your level tells against you, and it is a big creature; the assassination failed. But you cause 20% of its full hit points, which is enough to stun the beast. It is, however, now in the process of waking up; which means you can't try to assassinate again.

If the party will tell me what it's doing, I'll set up a new map and position tomorrow when I'm able. Engelhart can reach 0903 with 2 AP. Pandred can reach it with 4 AP. Lothar, Fjall and Bergthora can get near to there by the end of the round; Fjall's crossbow is loaded, so AFTER the creature attacks, if Embla and Engelhart don't stun it, Fjall will be able to fire. Unless Embla wants to just run ... in which case I presume Engelhart will see that, and react, which Pandred will see, and be warned, etcetera.

Embla: Alas. That's what I feared. I stand my ground, call out "Help!", and attack again. Heads up: I've shed some weight (losing the javelin) and now have 5AP.

Pandred: HROAGH! I have and spend the 4AP to get downstairs.

Englehart: It's bumrushing time. I move to 0903 and from there to 0702 or 0802 (whichever Embla isn't on).

Lothar: I drop my bow at the sound of Embla's call and draw my sword, ready to spring into action.

So it is going to be a stand-up fight anyway.  At least Embla's hit took it down a peg.  And as things turned out, they certainly needed it.

It's a bloody crime that combat gained a reputation for being a tiresome, unpleasant slog.  I know it came about because of 3e, compounded by 4e and not entirely solved with 5e.  Those of us still playing the early game can see from the evidence, like that above, how goddamned exciting combat is, and with what gusto it is enjoyed by players.

The stealth and under-cover of darkness crap is done.  The doubt and uncertainty is done.  In Han Solo's words, "I prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around."  I haven't ever had a party that didn't feel precisely that way ~ and let's be honest, that is one of the best gawddamned lines from Star Wars.

The sentiment, are we going to talk all day, or are we going to fight, ought to etched on a DM's brain ... because if the reader's game is dying from lack of interest, it is almost certainly because the most talkative player in the game is forcing all the other participants, including the DM, to engage in that player's personal masturbation enablement.  Players can enjoy role-playing; it can be a moving, momentous sequence in a game setting.  There are structurally and chemically huge benefits from creating the realism of non-player characters chatting up the players in a particular way, bringing the game forward into new ideas.

But take away the threat of winning, of pulling out maul, axe and sword and going at it head to head, with mayhem in your pocket, and the game will ultimately become a dry, desiccated hulk, where none of that beautiful rhetoric retains any fundamental meaning.  People have to feel they're putting something BIG at risk, to feel alive ... and the easiest thing to reach for is some good, honest combat.

I intend to pick up this combat, as it played out, but I'm going to cut off this post here.  This has been a good example of a build-up to combat; at a later time, I may highlight other, similar examples.  We shall see.