Defeating Extraordinary Opponents

[Vile Traveller]

This post was brought on by one of Nikolas Lloyd's "lindybeige" videos, specifically this one: A point about weapons in fantasy worlds - YouTube.

It always bugged me that all you needed was enough "to hit" bonuses (and possibly a magic weapon with a certain number of pluses) and you could hurt and kill pretty much anything. In other words, you can take out superhuman beings with ordinary weapons made for human conflict. The upshot of this, at least in my experience, is that players don't tend to think of alternative means of dealing with big bad guys, means that even primitive man might have used such as pit traps or using natural terrain to trap or hinder very large animals, or Siegfried's method of digging a foxhole in the path of the dragon so he could slit its belly when it passed overhead (not that he thought of that one himself). In fact, this is one of the best things about new gamers in the group - they tend to think less in meta-gaming terms and come up with solutions such as setting up tripwires or pools of oil to fell opponents.

Have you come across innovative methods of dealing with opponents employed by players (or yourself) in your games?

[Finarvyn]

Not exactly what you are talking about, but one of my favorite tricks is to provide characters will spell lists but no spell descriptions. When they ask "what does spell X do?" my reply is often "what does it sound like it does?" and players tend to brainstorm new and innovative ways to use the spell. And as you noted, it's the newbies that often have the best inspiration because they aren't hampered by "knowing" what the spell is "supposed" to be used for.

I think that combat is more complex an issue because it's more simple an action. My games tend to be roll, damage, roll, damage kinds of combats. I suppose one thing to do would be to try something like the "deed dice" in the DCC RPG where characters can try cool actions from swashbuckler movies and have a chance for "out of the box" actions to work. This might encouarge players to come up with new innovations in combat like throwing sand in the face of the monster, or whatever.

I think you have a much better chance of pulling this stuff off in OD&D than you do in more rules-structured games like AD&D. AD&D tries to define everything, but OD&D games are designed for the GM to "wing it" (a la stat checks, etc.) and so you tend to get more creative thinking.

Just my two coppers.

[Sean Michael Kelly]

Jan 5, 2013 6:08:50 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Not exactly what you are talking about, but one of my favorite tricks is to provide characters will spell lists but no spell descriptions. When they ask "what does spell X do?" my reply is often "what does it sound like it does?" and players tend to brainstorm new and innovative ways to use the spell. And as you noted, it's the newbies that often have the best inspiration because they aren't hampered by "knowing" what the spell is "supposed" to be used for.

I think that combat is more complex an issue because it's more simple an action. My games tend to be roll, damage, roll, damage kinds of combats. I suppose one thing to do would be to try something like the "deed dice" in the DCC RPG where characters can try cool actions from swashbuckler movies and have a chance for "out of the box" actions to work. This might encouarge players to come up with new innovations in combat like throwing sand in the face of the monster, or whatever.

I think you have a much better chance of pulling this stuff off in OD&D than you do in more rules-structured games like AD&D. AD&D tries to define everything, but OD&D games are designed for the GM to "wing it" (a la stat checks, etc.) and so you tend to get more creative thinking.
Just my two coppers.

Marv, bingo! I love this type of thing, because it really brings out the "role play" aspect and of course, kids love it. There are times when I scale things back and let the rules speak for themselves as guidelines, but overall, this helps get them out of the rut of.. "I swing... I swing again!"

This was also something whimsical I've always loved about the T&T spell names!

[Vile Traveller]

Jan 5, 2013 6:08:50 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

OD&D games are designed for the GM to "wing it" (a la stat checks, etc.) and so you tend to get more creative thinking.

I think that is spot-on, and one of the reasons I have migrated back to old editions (and why my games writing tries to achieve minimalism). The approach of trying to cover every possibility goes against the grain of one of my earliest impressions of the purpose of the DM, that you cannot write a rule for everything - so only do it when you really have to. I do play Pathfinder, and even with the pretty mature group I game with there is always a tendency to work within the rules. Thinking outside the box can be very invigorating.

I like that spells idea, I must try and use that if I get the chance.