Frustration
You know what players love? Hitting monsters. Whenever I wind up with my favorite two-hander and swing for the fences, seeing those big numbers come up feels like hitting the sweet spot in baseball. It’s just fundamentally satisfying to roll damage, contribute to party success, and feel like you’ve affected the combat.
You know what players don’t love though? Not hitting monsters. As Thief so ably demonstrates in today’s Handbook, runs of bad luck are damnably frustrating. When you’re swinging and missing round after round, it’s only natural to get discouraged. Of course, there are worse things than simply not hitting.
That brings us to our third and final rhetorical question: Do you know what players absolutely hate? Hitting the monster, then being told actually-no-it-was-really-a-miss. I am of course referring to the 3.X version of displacement, wherein percentile dice and a flat 50% miss chance are in effect. I sympathize with the players on this one. The play loop is infuriating: Roll Dice > Hit Monster > Asshole GM Says Roll % > Retroactively Miss Monster > Hurl Dice at Bystanders. This can be avoided by rolling % simultaneously with your to-hit, but people tend to forget to do that in practice. And even if you do remember to roll simultaneously most of the time, there’s still that initial round to consider. If players are unaware that thing they’re fighting gives a miss chance, there will be that maddening moment of discovery when they find out: “You rolled a 27? Nice job! That would be a hit, but sinister laugh….”
Mirror image offers a similarly obnoxious play experience, tempered only by the fact that you can eventually club all the images to death. I remember a high-level encounter with multiple vrocks in my megadungeon, and it was one of the few times I’ve seen a party full-on retreat. Facing a flock of murder birds is bad enough, but dealing with their oops-you-actually-missed nonsense was more than the party could stomach. As memory serves they rolled the unconscious fighter out under the slowly descending stone door and agreed to tell him they’d won when he came to. Can’t say I blame then.
What do the rest of you guys think? Is there a better way to craft this particular play experience? And in a broader sense, when your players are getting frustrated with a bad bout of swinging-and-missing, what can you do to help them find their fun again? Let’s hear it down in the comments!
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I think that is the most adorable displacer beast I have ever seen. Also, I love using Mirror image myself, so I can’t complain if the baddies do the same. ^^; It’s one of tge must-have spells if you can get it.
What irks me far more than miss chances is the spell Silence. That and about 90% of all Enchantment-spells that subvert or restrain your character. So. Much. Hate…
I actually invested in Iron will and Improved iron will for my 10+ Half-Orc Wizard, I got so fed up with being charmed. Took Inscribe magical tattoo as well so I could hit up the whole party with Protection from evil…
Just like that, I am reminded of this gem:
https://www.yafgc.net/character/displacer-kitty/
Huh. Which reminds me that we haven’t seen the Displacer Kitty since the big Black Mountain exodus.
Sittica and Yapp are with Glon’s colony in the Goblin Lands, but I hope the kitty made it out intact too.
In Pathfinder you can grab the ‘Mind Buttressing’ enchantment to foil domination and the like. Expensive but one of the few immunity effects outright.
https://aonprd.com/MagicArmorDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Mind%20Buttressing
The alt-text identifies it as a misplacer beast, a legally distinct entity from one of the dozen or so 3.5 core monsters not released under the Open-Gaming License, whose name we dare not speak perchance it rouse the Wizard of the Coast.
… Uhh…
I said nothing, WotC. Please go away and stay away.
Also undo some of the weirder plans for Ravenloft 5e, like dissolving the Core, kthxbai.
You mean to say that you don’t like being paralyzed? But when else are you supposed to check your email?
Displacement, blur and other miss chance spells luckily have counters in Pathfinder.
Most notable is the Truthful weapon enchant, which kills all the usual Wizard tricks they pull to avoid getting hit – blur, displacement, mirrors, invisibility. Seeking works as a less effective enchant for ranged characters.
Other tricks include having someone with Faerie Fire effects (kills displacement), Glitterdust (kills invisibility), Blind-fighting (which can be gotten from a wayfinder and specific ioun stone), special senses…
Funnily enough, for mirrors, closing your eyes and trying to hit the target blind turns your chances from 1/10 or so to a flat 50% or better with Blind-fighting.
Also, Fireball. A 20 foot blast radius doesn’t care if the target location is a little imprecise.
This one honestly never occurred to me. I’m pretty sure my players would run me out of town on a rail if I tried it against a PC though.
Technically you can do it with any creature that doesn’t need eyesight or can’t be fooled visually, usually those with blindsight.
There’s also the weird situations where someone might try to disbelieve the mirrors, or bypass an illusion by not perceiving it to begin with (e.g. walk through an illusionary wall because you aren’t aware of it – kind of like a cartoon character walking into a painted tunnel).
I don’t think you can declare disbelief on an illusion spell that doesn’t offer a save in the first place.
What’s the Misplacer Beast’s ecology notes? Does it spread mischief by slowly pushing objects off shelves with it’s back-tentacles whilst maintaining eye contact?
Its diet is bizarre. I guess it explains the misplacer beast’s weirdly high Sleight of Hand though.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NAs4fhHoetA/hqdefault.jpg
Ah, but the real question is, how long until Ranger tries to adopt one?
If she did, Inquisitor might actually be accepting of it.
A displacer beast makes for a fun flanking buddy!
I’m holding out on a Mink Dog (legally distinct from Blink Dogs).
Blink dogs were released under the Open-Gaming License, so they can just show up in the comic. According to my research, the only 3.5 core* monsters not available under the OGL are: Beholders (gauth and ordinary), carrion crawlers, displacer beasts, githyanki and githzeri, illithids, kuo-toa, all types of slaad, umber hulks, and all kinds of yuan-ti.
Depends on whether Magus is willing to accept another cat beast in the party.
Surely it’s better than any canine companions, right? Maybe if Ranger can find a young one that can trigger those same maternal grooming instincts that got her in trouble with the mushroom people…
Clearly Ranger doesn’t mind partying with felines….
Re: How to represent missing-ey effects: Just increasing AC works in D&D-like systems (such as D&D), but is really boring. Having an extra image up shouldn’t be identical to wearing heavier armor or dodging better.
The 5e solution—disadvantage on attack rolls, with some situations where it’s disabled—is more unique and feels more like you have a peculiar difficulty trying to hit this specific monster (rather than it just being kind of quick or having blows deflected by heavy armor).
More broadly speaking, try to incorporate it into the core mechanics of how attack rolls work, and make it work differently than normal to-hit mechanics.
Advantage is a nice catch-all for these effects, but like I said way back in this one…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/advantage
…That level of abstraction begins to wear thin after a while.
Those seem like opposed design goals to me. Is there an example of how this could work?
Why I quit using Obscuring Mist, at least for fighting in it.
I know, right? Powerful effect, but adding that extra step to combat always seems to slow play to a crawl.
In my first campaign ever, we encountered a boss who used both Mirror Image and Displacement. We threw a pit spell under her (as we were prone to do) but she had Fly. This was our first real showdown with a substantial spellcaster, and we weren’t quite prepared for it. Fortunately, our Blistering Invective got some recurring damage on her, my half-drow finally got to use her Faerie Fire spell-like ability for something, and our gunslinger dutifully plinked away at her mirror images. Finally, the Sorcerer put her to sleep (and used Hideous Laughter, I believe), the grapple Monk climbed up to grab her, and then he broke the neck of that giggling, sleeping, purple-glowing, flaming fat ogrekin lady with a coup de grace. And then promptly fell in the pit she was hovering over (a thing he tended to do). Of course, I promptly stole the Mirror Image/Displacement combo as part of (along with Snake Style and 16 CON) my Magus tank build, so fair’s fair.
My personal favorite trick to up enemy defenses is the Swashbuckler Opportune Riposte and Parry ability (and to a lesser excent the feat Deflect Arrows). That way, it’s not just some arbitrary twist of spacetime screwing you over – it’s the monster blocking your swing with its bare hand and then punching you back because it’s just that badass. Obviously don’t put this on everything, but every so often it’s a real treat to watch. (Like most good special defenses, it’ll wear down over time as the creature runs out of Panache, so the frustration is finite.)
Weirdly, even though I’ve run a musketeers game, I can’t remember actually using this ability on any NPC antagonists. Missed opportunity there.
Oh, it’s great fun. For my Strange Aeons one-book campaign, I’ve given the Tatterman said ability because I plan for the party to fight him several times, and interrupting a player’s turn tends to make them anxious and fits the theme of “supernatural entity that is stronger than you.”
In another of my campaigns, one PC has a Swashbuckler dip. The people she learned that technique from are upcoming antagonists whose elites have it as well, even though they tend to be STR-focused heavy armor knights. Should be interesting to see what the players come up with to counter that. Or just walk into it every single time, because players.
My strat for the Tatterman was to make the fear effects into tailored nightmares. Once you fought your way out of a solo-combat with some low-level dream monster, you got to get back in the main fight. This was my attempt to make the whole “you run away and don’t get to do anything for X rounds of the boss fight” slightly less obnoxious.
That’s cool! I was planning to leave off the “you are forced to run away” thing for now (Aura of Shaken is fine), since I’ve always found that “you are scared now” effects are not actually scary. Besides, he already has PC-disabling sleep spells. If the PCs start doing too well against him (they do have a Celestial Bloodrager who can get through the DR and regeneration), I’ll bring it back. For now, they’re about to run into him at Level 2, so I think he’ll make his point known. (I also followed a suggestion and switched Tatterman’s bloodline to Psychic, replacing his never-likely-to-use Lullaby power for a decent ranged attack, should the need arise.)
Also, one great irony of those darn costal wizards’ “iconic” creatures is that I, having come into the hobby via Pathfinder, have basically never heard of any of them. Like, I know what a beholder looks like, but that’s about it. And I think yuan-ti are snake people, but that’s not a very distinguishing feature in this hobby. So whenever anyone makes an “almost but not quite because legal reasons” joke, it immediately flies over my head.
(“Misplacer beast” is a great name, though. I think I actually like that more than the original name – sort of like when you hear a parody song, and then the original, and decide you like the parody better.)
I will happily take on the mantle of Weird Al.
I’m beginning to wonder if I should do more with the misplacer beast somehow. People seem to like him.
Misplacer beast is, naturally, responsible for lost character sheets, dice that roll into unreachable locations, and the like.
I’m imagining a villain sitting in a chair, petting a misplacer beast and gloating about their evil plan despite the subtle whiff! sound effect.
Or the beast has ended up with all the loot from unfound secret doors and paths the PCs never went down.
Or it’s teamed up with the cat mafia.
Hey, Goldie is out of the bag! Enjoy your freedom while it lasts.
Continuity in this comic is like a kind of chronic pain. It comes and goes at random.
Nah, Goldie knows Thief can’t hit the Misplacer Beast to save her life.
And afterwards she can claim she did what was asked of her and avoid having to show for an actual combat that would tarnish her. It’s a win-win!
Ah yes, concealment “mechanics.” Which are, apparently double frustrating for Rogues. I mean let’s look at it-you already are stuck with 3/4 BAB (as a primary DPS class), you’re trying to fulfill flanking requirements, and now this dink has a flat percentage miss chance, and just by virtue of having it, is immune to precision damage.
Now, in the case where somebody casts a spell to do it… I say well, they blew a resource. Fair game. But when it’s just a passive thing is when it gets kinda’ brutal.
I ran an Alchemist Knight (Vivisectionist who picked up a martial weapon and heavy armor profs) and got to be on that fun side of the spectrum of having permanent displacement myself through use of the Eternal Potion discovery. And in an ironic twist, every single time my AC was penetrated, the DM never once rolled under that 50% miss chance. I additionally had Heavy Fortification running due to other discoveries, and let me tell ya…
Nothing is more stunning and infuriating than having every hit that got through AC also get through Displacement, and every Crit that the DM landed also rolled higher than that 75% for fortification.
Amazing how % miss chances always work for GMs and never work for PCs. I suspect the hand of the trickster god Confirmation Bias in the business. 😛
Or do you think there were GM cheats involved?
Not at all. We’re playing in R20 with all rolls being visible. But in your shoes, I would suspect confirmation bias as well… but in this case I think it’s more ‘small sample size.’
Most hits didn’t get past my AC, so there were only about… maybe 7-12 attacks that did once I got that very high level discovery. Two or three of those were critical hits.
I only remember it because I spent so much time planning out the character’s front line, party tank defenses just to have my hopes crushed that the only one that mattered in the end was being able to cast Heal on myself by drinking an extract.
Oof. Much empathy. The mythic game from my story feature a defense oriented paladin. Nothing could touch him… Except for the x 4 crit that killed him. (Don’t worry. He got better.)
But for real, when things start needing crits to hit, those crits become a lot more serious of a problem.
Absolutely. But my AC wasn’t out of control. It was high, but since RotR is full of giants, they all have inflated to hits anyways. We had another member beating my AC by close to 15 pts at the end, so… let’s just leave it Unchained Monk is a little ridiculous.
Actually, about that game… I checked in every couple weeks with the GM if he wanted me to tone it down. Toward the end, he admitted he was just taking build notes. He liked the idea so much he made his own Vivisectionist alchemist for another game.
“what can you do to help them find their fun again?”
That’s not much, but I would withhold the foe’s concealment effect if a player rolls in their critical range.
Would you institute this as a formal house rule, or just fudge the concealment behind the screen in this scenario?
It’s for good reason that auto-miss effects like Mirror Image, Blur, and Displacement are low-level spells (and most notably arcane spells) for classes who need them the most to survive. Even with Blur and Mirror Image at low levels, there’s still the chance that something will hit by rolling the right number or ignoring the effect (like with blindsight).
While discouraging or annoying when used against PCs, these abilities are absolutely intended for use by PCs so they can adventure longer!
There’s no arguing that they’re effective. I’m just not convinced that they’re any fun.
Heh, one of my favorite comp characters was a ninja that loaded up on miss chances. Permanent total concealment, at-will blink, invisibility every 3 rounds, and Darkstalker to foil special senses. On top of that, at mid-levels Spell Reflection made every missed spell attack retarget onto the caster, and at high levels every attack against him provoked an opportunity attack, whether it hit or not.
Normally going that defensive is a bad plan, because enemies can just ignore you in favor of easier-to-hit foes, but having total concealment also makes enemies flat-footed towards you, and he was stacking Sneak Attack, Skirmish, and Iaijutsu Focus all as bonus damage on his attacks.
I do not have enough energy to hunt for the FAQs necessary to play such a build.
I typically roll concealment in advance to reduce player frustration from “wasted” hits. I know statistically it makes no difference, but it does help psychologically.
On a related note, did you know that in Pathfinder 2nd Edition RAW, the concealment rules apply to demoralizing enemies (after all, it’s a targeted action), so you can fail to intimidate someone because you can’t see them properly? It’s kind of silly.
I’ve yet to play much 2e. Just a couple of one-shots at cons.
Of course, I can imagine it being slightly less intimidating if the guy threatening you is talking to a spot-where-you-ain’t.
Yeah. I know this feeling very well. Recently, I was in a group of four; all level 6 (an arcana cleric, man aberrant mind sorcerer, a rogue/fighter, and I was playing an eloquence bard). We were hunting down a vampire. We came across him in a shack in the woods and he got the jump on our sorcerer or had fireball prepped and set the place on fire; almost garnering the attention of Smokey the Owlbear.
After rolling for initiative, we couldn’t hit for shit and the vampire kept making his saves. Mind you, the GM gimped him a bit, but he was still rolling well. He even got two crits back to back. Eventually, we got to do enough damage after ten rounds of combat that the GM finally said screw it and we managed to kill him. No one was happy after that mess.
The math of the game is tilted in the players’ favor. When the dice go weird and the monster fails to explode, the whole play experience stops working. While the threat of that possibility adds to the tension of the game, facing it in fact straight up sucks.
I remember playing in an RPGA adventure at DragonCon years ago. In theory, it was a light-hearted and silly holiday-themed romp, but in actual practice, success or failure came down to one die roll at the end.
When the big-bad made his saving throw against the One Thing That Could Have Stopped Him (RAW, unlikely, but possible), the obvious consequence was a single-round TPK. The fun ended, the table stared at the offending d20, the DM stared, stunned, then consulted his notes in silence. Our time was just about up, as well, so I think we all muttered “good game” or some such and slunk away in silence. It “straight up sucks” indeed.
Yeah, the thing was, we were not using dice. We have been playing on Discord since the usual meetup spot is out of the question for now. We were using Avrae for dice rolling. Same issue, but more frustrating when you are working with an RNG.
Back in the 70s, Gary Alan Fine talked about how players inherently distrusted calculator-based dice rollers in “Shared Fantasy.” It’s a proud tradition.
We always do the %roll before the hitting roll and we add a bonus to hitting. That way if you can hit you can hit, if not we don’t even bother to roll 🙂
You just reminded me of the other thing that drives me nuts as a player: Attacking invisible enemies. You have to roll both to-hit and % chance in those cases. If the GM says “don’t bother rolling,” then you know that you’ve attacked into the wrong square on a meta-level, even if it would be a time saver.
If we ever play togheter I am gonna make an encounter just invisible displacing beast for you. Hope you enjoy it 😀
In the meantime I will tell our DM that idea 🙂
My hypothetical rage. It knows no hypothetical bounds.
Glad you enjoy the prospect 😀
When I have to deal with a miss chance, my default is to just drop a fireball on their ass. This is not helpful if what I’m hitting is in the middle of my allies and has A) fire resistance/immunity or B) evasion (freaking Red Mantis Assassins).
Realistically though, it’s up to the players to come up with a strategy/prepare for this eventuality, which isn’t always feasible depending on whether or not there was any reason to expect something like this. It’s one thing to be fighting something invisible and prepare something like See Invisibility or Invisibility Purge, but a true miss chance like Mirror Image or Displacement can be a royal pain in the ass when used against the players (or a life saver if they’re using it).
Incorporeal and swarm enemies can feel the same way. Those fights just drag on forever if the party isn’t prepared.
Fucking incorporeal… Castle Scarwall was just the absolute worst because of all the incorporeal undead. At best you’ve spent at least 8000 gold on a weapon to prepare for it (or you’ve used the cheaper 200 gold ghost salt weapon blanch to get at least one hit in) or you can try to use the incredibly unreliable ghost bane dirge. My group accidentally used a third party spell (didn’t check the source on d20pfsrd) that gave ghost touch and it was still a massive slog.
At least with swarms, they are easy enough to deal with IF you’re prepared. But problem is that at the level you’re likely to run into swarms, you don’t have the resources to adequately prepare for them. Most likely, your team is going to have some torches, maybe some oil, and maybe if the AP or GM is kind, some alchemist’s fire or something like that.
It’s enough to make a guy wonder if the Batman Wizard is the assumed default playstyle.
As my Agents of Edgewatch wizard would say; “Miss Chance? I think you mean ‘make a will save.'”
Makes sense to me that a magical police force would be all about enchantment-based de-escalation tactics.
Yeah, I specifically prepare no damaging spells except for Hand of the Apprentice for emergencies. It’s all statuses and debuffs/buffs… or summons that deal nonlethal damage anyway, like the mechanical carny’s extendable boxing gloves.
Note; mechanical carnies can have short voice clips recorded into them, so every mechanical carny I summon comes with a pre-recorded “STOP, YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE LAW!” It’s 50/50 on whether people groan or laugh when I summon one.
Yeah, this is when you bust out the save vs spells and have the tanks play the game back at the monster by just standing around dodging or otherwise do their fullest to be nuisance obstacles rather than proper combatants.
I believe we’ve talked before about how unfun the game becomes when both sides resort to all the nonsense up their sleeves they can pull out in an emergency. As such, monsters that use concealment type mechanics are best few and far between. Enough to be the occasional bit of different to spice things up, but not even close to the standard experience.
It used to be that, whenever I had incorporeal creatures to throw at the party, I’d go full-on play-to-win mode. They’d dodge in and out of the walls, take 5′ steps into the floor, and in general try to do as much damage as possible through smart tactics. After a few sessions of the “I ready my attack ballet,” I just defaulted to dumb tactics to expedite play. Dragging on fights to that degree is no one’s idea of a good time.
It’s a pretty good sign something has gone wrong with proper game operations if the entire party is readying actions instead of acting on their turn. nods
My son’s solution to facing the dreaded D_placer Beast in 3.5 was to spend all his remaining gold to buy two tanglefoot bags–he figured that with a high Dex bonus and the monster’s touch-AC of 11, two bags gave him a decent chance to hit with at least one of them. Once the critter was glued to the ground, the PCs rained unholy heck upon the 5′ square where the glue was splattered.
He was not so picky years later, when a pair of socks of displacement enabled his new character to avoid a near-certain death-blow and escape combat.
“Hey, can I wear the socks of displacement and the boots of speed?”
“No. They take up the same foot slot.”
“But… But… Socks go in shoes.”
“Not in D&D world they don’t! Now put those socks on your ears and get back in there!”
Personally I like Mirror Images, and feel that they are significantly different from other forms of miss chances in this regard.
The difference lies in the images going away (one at a time) when they cause you to miss*, which means that the attack still caused progress towards your goal of defeating the enemy.
Often I find that it’s a good way to extend the lifespan of a boss without needing to give them a truly enormous amount of hit points.
*sometimes they also go away if you miss on your own but only a bit, but that’s not important to the point
For other forms of concealment it doesn’t bother us too much and we solve it by rolling the miss chance at the same time. General frustration from missing a lot is still a thing though, whether that be due to misplacer beasts or just low attack rolls.
If that’s enough for you, then more power to ya. But in practice, I find that combat is more or less over by the time all those mirror images are gone, making them strictly better than displacement in most combats. And even more than the sense of progress as the images disappear, it’s the knowledge that you aren’t actually dealing damage that drives the players crazy.
In my experience combat almost never end before the images have been gone for some time, but in my experience mirror images are almost always something used by bosses, (and PC’s but since we are talking player frustration here and we don’t PVP outright combat enough for that to come up in that context).
Those bosses are in turn generally tough enough that the battle is very unlikely to end without removing the images first, in much the same way it’s unlikely to end without someone removing their hit points first. (the most likely exception to both is even the same situation, they fail a save against being turned to stone or paralysed or some other means of save or die/lose)
It’s not to do with miss chance, but a very similar corollary happens to me very frequently with some of the encounters I run for the shared Pathfinder game I’m in. I often use enemies who use the stat line for Elementals, and a key feature of them is that they’re immune to flanking and precision damage. So I often have to say to rogues and swashbucklers in my encounters ‘Yes, that’s a very big damage roll, but now subtract the damage from sneak attack/precise strike’ and they are rarely happy with it. I try to tell people before they roll their damage, but as mentioned, a lot of times people will roll their attack and damage at the same time. Luckily do to the way my matches are formatted, most of the players now recognize the enemies that are immune to precision damage, so it’s coming up less, but I don’t have a great solution.
That’s rough. Maybe drop headbands of vast intellect (knowledge: planes) in front of rogues and swashbucklers…?
I’m mostly just resigned to the fact that I’m going to have to go through it with every precision-based character at least once. The good news is that it’s pretty clear to anyone paying attention that all these enemies are similar so once they’ve gone through it once all my players so far have figured it out.
I wonder if there’s another way to play it mechanically? How do you manage the whole “magical defenses” thing without turning it into an unfun slog?
Well, at this point I’ve got my players expecting it. I’ve been running a series of encounters loosely based on the Rogue-lite game Wizard of Legend, so cycling through boss types and elements (Knight, Lancer, Rogue, Archer, Mage, Summoner for boss types, and Fire, Water, Wind, Lightning, Earth for elements) and at this point players know to expect immunity to the matching element, and weakness to something else, sometimes another element, sometimes a specific damage type. So at this point most of my players enjoy sussing out the bosses’ weaknesses, so that gets them past the ‘this attack didn’t seem very effective’ blues pretty easily.
I’m very lucky that our core group of players very much enjoy complicated encounters, which lets us GMs be a little more creative than ‘kill X enemies.’
For example, a recent Chaos Trial boss I ran was a Water Element summoner. On its turn, it would create 2 Wisp-like enemies, up to a maximum of 8. The wisps wouldn’t attack the turn they were created, but had some nasty abilities, and could teleport back to the summoner in a pinch. The wisps also boosted the summoner’s AC while they were adjacent to it, so the players had to balance knocking down wisps with continuing to focus on the summoner. While it was a difficult combat, the players (and I) had a lot of fun with it, and they left feeling pretty happy.
A bit off topic, but something I’ve always been curious about:
What with all the scryphones/scryTVs, is there some kind of Internet in Handbook world? That street samurai comic implies there is.
Also, who sells them?
Wizards make them.
That doesn’t really answer the first point though.
Also, is there like a magical Apple store in Handbook world? 😉
You’ve asked me this question three times now. Wizards is all you get.