Risk Accountant
Which game would you rather play in? The one where you dare the dangers, swing from the chandelier, and escape certain death with the McGuffin in one hand and a bare handful of hit points in other? Or the one where you discuss all your options in a committee? I think it’s clear which way I lean.
Now don’t get me wrong. There’s obviously a middle ground. Heist games in particular are all about prep and planning. But if your group is a slave to the tactically optimal, you’ll wind up leaving cool character moments by the wayside. For example, Swash and Buckle can’t be brash and impetuous if they have to wait for some Sensible PC™ to OK their every move.
In my own gaming career, I’m reminded of one moment where my party was trying its best to sneak around the outskirts of a murky lake. We knew that hostile Black Lagoon creatures were waiting just below the surface, and so we’d decided to go the stealth route. This was smart from my wizard’s perspective, since preserving spell slots is basic big brain tactics. But as we tried to tiptoe through the shallows, Laurel’s fighter made it a point to complain about the “coward’s route.”
“You’re just afraid I’ll slay more than you.”
“We can’t fight here,” I explained. “This is sahuagin country.”
“Sick Fear and Loathing reference, bro. But why can’t we kill just a few of them? Just for fun?”
I sighed. I pushed up my glasses. “According to my extremely high Knowledge (condescending prick) check, there’s a whole village down there. It wouldn’t be ‘just a few.'”
“Suppose I pushed you in though? Then I’d have to rescue you. That would be fun, right?”
Up to this point, we’d been arguing sotto voce. The rogue and the paladin were making shushing gestures at us, and we could hear our GM fiddling with his the-sahuagin-have-spotted-you dice. Stealth was obviously the smart play, but my IRL Sense Motive was tingling. I could tell that my partner in crime was actually spoiling for the first combat encounter of the evening. And so my wizard snapped.
“I’ll do you one better. Why don’t we all just jump in together?” I was no longer whispering. “Let’s save these bug-eyed fish bastards the trouble and fight amongst ourselves first.” The shushing from the paladin and the rogue had grown frantic. “Push me in? Do you really think it’s going to go down like that? We’re not 1st level anymore. You can’t just call me a wimp and give me a wedgie and get your way.” I was throwing stones in the lake at this point to punctuate each word. “I’VE GOT PHENOMNEAL COSMIC POWER! I KNOW FIREBALL NOW. COME GET SOME!”
“Um,” said the GM. “Roll initiative.”
My wizard was wheezing and breathless at this point. “I probably shouldn’t have done that,” he deadpanned.
And then the sahuagin boiled up out of the water. Many fish were slain on that day, and I seem to recall Laurel getting a pretty sweet adamantine greatsword from the fish boss as well. We all had some fun, and I even got a bit of RP into the bargain. So to return, in my roundabout way, to the point of this little anecdote, I say not to worry too much about playing perfectly. Sure optimal solutions can be satisfying. But if you read the table and pick your moments, characterful ones can be even better.
Question of the day then! Do you have a “risk accountant” at your table? Does the group always go over strategy and tactics with a fine-toothed comb? Or is there room for shenanigans and hijinks? Tell us all about your most entertaining suboptimal moments down in the comments!
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
I mean, the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive you know. Picture this: it’s a Shadowrun game, and we’re following a trail of a human trafficking ring which leads us to their hideout. Wide open space filled with baddies and some of their victims. After much deliberation we’ve concluded that the smartest, safest way to approach this would be to take our car, ram the front door with it and then use it’s mounted machine gun to mow down everyone not wearing handcuffs.
Right. Figure out where the hostages and targets are, then lead with grenades.
Depends how valuable the hostages are. I passed several quests in a couple of seconds by dumping a grenade in the right place in Fallout New Vegas<\i>, and, checking the wiki later, came to the conclusion that that had indeed been the best option.
Shadowrun was very much on my mind with today’s comic. The plan you propose is fine. Most plans are, especially when you take into account the limitations of imperfect information. But I’m more concerned about the potential tedium of planning than the plan itself:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/unmasked-part-2-4
If you find planning tedious, you shouldn’t play Shadowrun with people like me. Coming up with the perfect plan to get in without getting caught is often more fun than watching that plan fall apart at the worst possible time and BSing your way through the rest.
The perfect plan has a % chance to fall apart anyway due to dice. Why waste hours making it even perfecter?
Like I said, heist games have this mess built in, and my tolerance for over planning goes up accordingly. But at some point, I just want to attempt to hack the Gibson and then start blasting.
SR can be played in two ways. Pink Mohawk is %100 D&D style shenanigans, and is fun for those who like it. Black Trenchcoat is the exact opposite, where you really can plan a perfect heist (assuming the GM is not planning a pillow party for the PC’s, which is often because of previous failures), and is fun for those who like it.
The big gilded lizard there sound like a BT player like me, and you sound like a PM player. Nothing wring with that, people enjoy as they can, but you 100% would hate a SR game with folks like me and them if planning is tedious for you. In truth, that’s probably the hardest part of getting a SR group going, managing expectations so you don’t end up with a mixed group of folks who very much dislike the other’s play style.
If the planning is interesting, then you’re golden. Fun little investigative challenges, meeting interesting NPCs, and putting together different pieces of the puzzle en route to the big run. When you spend a literal session and a half arguing about several equally-viable approaches, I begin to lose interest.
Huh. I suspect Thief will have some pointed questions for Cleric about why he’s babysitting the Swashbucklers
We do these cross-party team ups occasionally. Remember Mercy?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/tools
Half the fun for me with this single panel, snapshot moments style is asking exactly this sort of question. In my own mind, Cleric needs a big diamond for spell component reasons, and hired a pair or aquatic dudes to guide him through the aquatic dungeon of spontaneous giant diamond generation. That’s just a guess though. I’d welcome competing theories.
Obviously, most of the party couldn’t show up to the session. Swash and Buckle make perfect backup characters for either Thief’s player or Wizard’s (or both)—connected to Thief’s background, so she knows what they’re like, and Wizard gets that juicy, juicy roleplay opportunity; after all, how often to you get to delve into your PC’s partner’s backstory so directly?
It seems to me like this ought to happen more often in my own games. It can make for a fun change of pace, that’s for damn sure.
I was more thinking about “why were you palling around with the mutineers that marooned me on a desert island?”
Well, that assumes Cleric even knows about that! Last time she tried to give some exposition on her backstory, Wizard ended up stepping on her moment, and she doesn’t seem quite as RP focused as Wizard in the first place, so it’s possible that it hasn’t come up again—or that it hasn’t come up in character, and the party is about to get some of that good dramatic irony.
My players are very strategic, but can also generally think on the fly. One of them, however, is perfectly willing to spend an entire session of play working out how his epic-level wizard can end in one surprise round a fight that he started at the beginning.
Now see, that’s the sort of planning that drives me nuts. If everyone is on board then great: more power to the wizard. But at some point I think you’ve got to say “good enough” and cast a friggin’ spell.
I generally run his sessions at the start of the game. Then we play through events with everyone else and he lets me know hen he has a plan worked out so I can cut back to him at the next appropriate moment.
He’s Int 26, it makes sense.
I recall my Half-Elf Bard and the party’s Dwarf Fighter got into a big argument about… something… that ended with both of us charging into a dungeon to prove our manly mettle.
A dungeon with giant skeletons.
In Ravenloft.
^^; Highly amusing and completely insane. We survived, but probably shouldn’t have…
Gimli and Legolas would be proud.
I’m… not entirely sure? ^^;
Legolas never threatened Gimli with Dwarficide and claim that “No jury in existence would convict me”.
They also didn’t fight – physically – over whether or not to take a lycanthrope bane sword with a threatening inscription from a tomb. Spoiler alert: “My Bard, recently infected with lycanthropy, actually rolled a 20 on an opposed Strength check and walked away with the sword, without wolfing out.
Quoth the Bard: “This curse says I’ll turn into a beast under the full moon of I carry this thing. BIG WHOOP! That’s my problem ALREADY!”
Somehow, the question of the day puts me in mind of a gaming legend.
Old Man Henderson, the man who won Call of Cthulhu by being crazier than the GM and all of the Great Old Ones combined.
We can all only aspire to reach full Henderson.
I wouldn’t want to go that far. 70% Henderson, for brief periods? Sure. But that’s the kind of power that corrupts if you use it too much.
Even Waffle House Millionaire would agree. He burned Henderson’s character bio, calling it “evil” and went on to say the world was better off without it.
If the story of its creation is all true, Henderson may even have come from Somewhere Outside…
But that said, he was the eldritch abomination that party needed.
once played a cleric (light domain). his battlecry was “fuck it, fireball”. I think you can guess how our group approach “tactics”
I sincerely hope that the cleric had a high initiative. Or at least went before his melee teammates.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/artillery
surprisingly yes. IIRC, the rogue had higher but he went for an archer build. Noone we cared about died from fireball related trauma anyway.
Besides, rogues have uncanny dodge and evasion. They shouldn’t be too bothered by the odd fireball or lightning bolt aimed at their position.
Yeah, but Neutral Good means I kinda have to pretend to not be ok hurling fiery death at my so-called friends. heretics are fine though.
“But, nobody got hurt. Well, maybe somebody got hurt, but nobody we know.”
When you’re a cleric, strangers are just heretics you haven’t purged yet 🙂
“Of course I know them, that’s me”
Mostly anyway, I tone it down a bit depending on what character I’m playing.. but while I do enjoy the spectacle of action movie style gameplay, part of me always wants things to be realistic and more sensible, for sure
One time while playing the party accountant/skillmonger/diplomancer, I accidentally let my emotions get the better of me.
We were exploring some kind of deep underground volcano’y place, and there was a long stone bridge across a pit of lava, with some orcish guards at the end
Can you say ‘Elaborate fancy combat encounter, where fire elementals are 100% going to emerge from the lava and attack us on the bridge?’
Yeah, that was totally going to happen.. so we prepared accordingly, attacked the orcs with ranged stuff so that we could draw aggro and start the encounter with us on the up, rather than surprised in the middle of the bridge
It was only after killing all the orc guards (and the fire elementals which came up out of the lava, nailed it), that my character went “.. .. huh, they might not have actually been bad, we never actually talked to them first.. ”
Oops. The sheer obvious set up of the combat encounter just made us leap straight into combat mode
Luckily it turned out they were members of an evil yuan-ti cult, so all’s well that ends well! Murder into accidental ‘did the right thing probly’
But for a while my character was over compensating and giving this totally evil cult a more fairer chance than they deserved, cause she felt bad about killing the guards out of nowhere
Walking the tightrope of “what the GM expects me to do” is maddening. Knowing whether combat is warranted or diplomacy is called for seems like mind reading and guess work half the time. In that sense, going with the characterful play can save you a lot of recriminations. If you created a cool moment at the table, then you made the right decision.
I am very much the risk accountant of most groups I join. Such is the way of being tactically-minded and having high levels of anxiety/over-analysis! I try to break the trend with more reckless characters though.
If I ever catch myself, as a barbarian, saying things like, “Maybe we should go invisible? Or do you think we could try to lure them out with an illusion?” I know something has gone wrong. No need to contradict the wizard when he suggests that mess, but bold adventure and analysis paralysis go together like peanut butter and motor oil.
What are Swash & Buckle doing adventuring with Cleric? Are Thief & Wizard too busy vigorously honeymooning to adventure? Is Fighter watching the brawlbarian-mud-wrestling fantasy cup?
I invite your wild surmise on the matter.
You know what? I think clerics should get mage hand* (might be my SF showing).
*They do in my home game. In fact in my home game quite a few of the classes share a common set of utility cantrips like mage hand et al.
IT DOESNT SAY CLERIC HAND! IT SAYS MAGE HAND! BAD WRONG FUN! REEE3EE!
ACKSHUALLY, it should be called Wizard Hand. Or Sorcerer Hand.
lol
Arcanokinetic Hand.
drops mic
Minor telekinesis
Am the table’s “risk accountant” in and out of character, can confirm that people never listen to sense
I say to throw out you opinion once, see if the group goes for it, and then shrug and cast fireball when they inevitably don’t.
If your clever ideas are always getting talked over, then there is indeed a problem. But in my mind, repeatimg the merits of a plan until everyone else relents can be just as bad. It’s all down to group dynamics, ya know?
Hey, do we have Wizard’s transition timeline? How DID wizard transition again? Like, what spell?
Timeline: Between “Classy Quests Part 1/4” and “Classy Quests Part 2/4”. Made permanent somewhere between “Classy Quests Part 4/4” and “Crossplaying”.
The process wasn’t plot-relevant or funny, so we didn’t see the details. Sticking to spells that would A. let you change your physical body like that and B. can be permanency‘d in PF1 (which I assume is the system used in this comic whenever rules details come up)…there are, surprisingly, no proper transfigurations which you can permanency. There are extremely specialized ones like anthropomorphic animal and curse terrain, but no polymorph or alter self or anything.
The only permanency-able spell on d20PFSRD which could allow something like this would be recorporeal incarnation, which basically turns a corpse into a perfect disguise. (Interestingly, it functions as alter self plus extra benefits, like weapon proficiencies, so I don’t know why alter self isn’t allowed to be permanency’d.) But I don’t think that’s what Wizard used, partly because fem!Wizard looks like a feminine form of masc!Wizard rather than an unrelated woman and mostly because that would be uncharacteristically squicky for the party to do. Fighter aside, I guess.
Still, if “alter self with perks” can be permanency’d, I’d houserule in permanent alter self too.
Maybe Street Samurai brought in an elixir of sex shift from Starfinder? No doubt she wound up in that setting at some point while searching for the portal back to Shadowrun….
Now I just want to see Handbook World store that makes and sells serums and spell amps. Maybe Alchemist’s place?
We really need to hire an ysoki at some point….
Don’t forget — Ysoki cheek pouches are endless comedy gold.
And unfinished sandwiches.
TBH I headcanon that it was at first a permanencied alter self, and then later wizard got a serum of sex shift so the process was permanent/undispellable.
Plus, alter self can be used to alter yourself into a specific form. And even if not, “female version of you” is generic enough that it could be allowed.
Anybody realize that Wizard’s timeline is measured in literal panels, and not years? Came off as funny to me.
Although it doesn’t make perfect sense given the dialogue in the strips in question, there’s always the ever-popular Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity. In the original backstory of one of my pathfinder PCs, she used one to transition—which, if it had ever come up, would have made her reluctant to be the target of a “remove curse” spell, both because she didn’t have access to it (or another one) anymore and because, once the curse is removed, the same Girdle has no effect on the same creature.
How do you think the star of the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy was born? Poor Femme Fighter is still trying to undo that girdle curse.
Presumably, Polymorph Any Object would work just fine out of the box. It’s not exactly the same as “extending the effect that was already on Wizard,” of course, and since it is Permanent rather than Instantaneous, it would be subject to dispel, antimagic, and interaction with other Polymorph spells.
Given the existence of the Girdle of Masc/Fem, an amenable DM might allow Bestow Curse to work the same way. Still a Permanent effect, though less subject to removal.
However, I pretty much just assumed “plot” anyways, given the lack of general rules for “altering” a Robe of the Archmagi, much less to make it “female-only” (and if it’s just an embarrassing physical alteration, presumably male!Wizard could have just worn it under other clothing for the mechanical benefits anyhow, though would seem in character for Wizard to feel that transitioning was more RP than crossdressing-even-not-very-visibly).
I do think there’s some value to your approach, and that the really really important part lies in the “read the moment and the group” step.
Your story would after all have been significantly different if the result wasn’t “we had a cool new sword after a fight but are down a few ressources”, but instead where “the rouge is dead and their player have to make a new character and we no longer have any hope of rescuing the paladins mentor in time due to those lost resources”.
So it matters there whether the caution/smart course of action is actually needed or if you have enough slack to deliberately make “mistakes” in character.
Even if you do have the slack there’s also a balance to be struck between the various interests of the players. For instance even with the the same events and same result if the rouges version of the story is “that one time we actually got to use stealth succesfully but then the other players decided that since the dice hadn’t failed for them they’d have to do it themselves”, that also be bad.
It’s really all about being on the same page, or at least negotiating some agreeable switching from one mode to another for variety’s sake.
Personally I prefer variety with different campaigns landing differently on the scale, but with a default around “we try to play smart, but have room for some character decisions” and also heavy “we don’t quarterback each other, each player get to decide what to do with their turn themselves”.
Some of my pals talk about the one time they managed to diplomacy their way out of a fire fight in Shadowrun. Dude threw a grenade at the baddies moments after they’d agreed to let the the party walk away. It was not a popular decision.
Counterexamples are always possible. But beyond the old standby of “read the room,” I think that moving away from discussing all your problems to death is important. It’s the difference between planning a fun caper as a group (good) and litigating someone’s combat action for half an hour every time their turn comes up (less good).
What kind of party doesn’t have at least one character who knows mage hand to prank NPCs and/or the party?
I almost told the story of “crushy burny trap” for today’s comic. It involved a party of paladin, bow paladin, and cleric solving a complex trap, and it remains my favorite trap encounter to date. It would not have been half so fun if some wizard had just magic’d them out of danger.
Wait, actual topic. Nobody in my group is a formal risk accountant, but most people in the group are eager to reduce risk when possible. Sometimes this means bypassing combat encounters, sometimes it means trying to convince the remaining mooks to surrender once we slaughter half of them, sometimes it means pretending to parley before a surprise attack.
And sometimes it means incredibly elaborate schemes that get disrupted or bypassed because the DM prepared a combat encounter dammit.
Just remembered a story where we failed to bypass risk management.
So there we were, on an iceberg with a frost giant fortress on it. We’d sneaked right up to the mead hall without too much violence and were trying to figure out how to safely get in to take their shells. (Long story, you might be familiar with it.)
Two of our players were playing an ettin, and one of them had a bright idea: Do a stupid plan and start combat to get this over with! (This wasn’t the first time we’d fought a fortress full of giants; we visited a hill giant hillfort a few levels early and managed to survive that.) So he went in with some ridiculous line about joining the Jarl’s forces.
So yeah, that failed. Then another player had the brilliant idea of pretending to be a human slave by dressing himself up in the loincloth of a giant we’d killed earlier, which I and the other player not feasting in the mead hall (under heavy watch) let him do despite knowing it was dumb for reasons which I won’t explain here. Turns out the humans we thought were slaves were just short allies. That PC didn’t last long.
I don’t remember what the last two of use wound up doing, but it worked.
Judging by the first two plans, I’m guessing the remaining two Warner Bros PCs tried the old “telegram for Mongo” trick.
I love tactical game play, which makes me happy to be a part of the group I am currently in. Most of us think very tactically and stealth is the prefered method of going into most situations.
Does this hinder the adventurous side of things? Not once the dice start falling!
While WE might want to go in stealth and have a plan that we think will work, once we are told to roll that first check (or save!) everything typically goes all forky and we have to just do our best with what the cosmos has planned for us.
So at the end of the day, we still get our adventure, despite trying to stealth right past it, because eventually, someone is going to roll a 1 (usually our rogue… ironic? He doesn’t think so XD )
I think the most important aspect overall, is if everyone is enjoying the general play style (if there is one) and at our “table” (virtual) we all prefer the more tactical way of doing things, even if it rarely works out the way we planned, so fun is had by all! (Especially our DM who cackles when things start to go far away from whatever plans we made!)
This is my point. Planning is fine. Tactical considerations are part of the game. But if you over analyze every decision when chance is involved anyway, you risk slowing the game to a crawl without adding any real advantage. You get the nice sensation of being a master planner, but the calculus for me is always, “Is that worth an hour and a half of not hitting things?”
The bigger issue in my game seems to be players being on the same page and moving together. Once we’re on combat time, you have to move when it’s your turn, so we keep having these issues where someone THOUGHT someone else was moving up with them and then, well, NOT SO MUCH.
Or someone is moving up unstealthed with someone who IS stealthed and then they eat all the attacks from the enemies who spotted them and not their stealthy companion. Oopsydoodle!
Still, no one’s died, and I encourage playing to have fun more than anything else. Kick in the doors! Make obscene gestures at the monsters! GRAB THE SHINY THING!
Same page issues have been on my mind lately. Just came out of a fun Blades in the Dark session, but I was setting up traps in an alleyway while we were actually in a city park, while the party whisper was casting lighting bolts at baddies from two city blocks and one secluded wharf away. Theater of the mind can be hard sometimes.
The original text for G1-Steading of the Hill Giant Chief accounts for this sort of thing, stating that there’s (at best) only an 8% chance of starting a fire, but “If the party should manage to set the upper works of the Steading aflame…” Yeah, Gygax & Arneson knew how we play. My first time through the module we burned it to the ground, then quit to play a different adventure. (The giants had been punished, the raids had ended, and the adventurers saw no reason to pick through the ruins.) The fire might have been my fault. I plead the fifth.
I wrote a paper once upon a time that called this “the discourse of if.” If the PCs do X, respond with Y. It’s just a beat guess on the designers’ part about what players might do, but I always read it as maneuver for control.
“They might attempt to burn the witch’s cottage down, but it’s too damp and soggy to catch.” The module’s storyline defends itself from player hijinks, deputizing the GM into its service.
Not a bad thing by any means, but it is a dynamic that you can spot out in the wild. In my mind, it’s all about showing the GM how they can react to the unexpected in consistent ways, serving as an example of how to negotiate narrative control with players.
The party i was in had to cross a battlefield between two factions in a pocket fire plane dimension. My charactervwas a fire genasi. I threw up gang signs to signal to both sides I was cool. It worked.
What… What is the fire genasi gang sign? I know an antipaladin who might find that info useful.
I did not specify.
I’m playing a risk accountant in my current campaign, but it’s a character choice more than it’s necessarily an inherent player trait.
In our first real combat, my character (the cleric) prioritized getting the VIP out of danger over going and healing the unconscious/dying party member (discussed with the other players, of course—that’s the kind of choice that can hurt feelings if people aren’t on board). Luckily, other characters weren’t so willing to leave him behind, and our divine soul sorcerer was able to pull off an intimidate/move/heal combo to end combat and bring him back up.
Later, my character suggested getting NPC backup to kick down the door of the bad guy lair, but the party decided against it. Apparently the DM was expecting is to get backup, but the ensuing (very difficult) fight was incredibly fun.
I tend not to play super reckless characters, mostly more pragmatic ones, but I always try to remember that these are character choices, and that the fun of the group, in my opinion, will be a higher priority ten out of ten times.
This is a critical difference. A worrywart character can be a lot of fun. A player that insists you talk out all the details of every action, not so much.
I’m very much the risk accountant for my D&D group, and I’m starting to looooathe hijinx. “Good luck sneaking in, here’s a reminder that my armour penalty is -9 as a way to indicate I’m not coming, hope you won’t need healing or other spell support!”
Are you suggesting that not sneaking (i.e. walking straight in the front door) is the smarter play? If so, it strikes me that there are risks either way.
The whole setup, about hanging from the chandelier, made me recall my opinion about role playing differences between boys and girls.
The way I explain it: You’re at the top of the stairs, with your rapier at the ready, and the royal guard is coming up those same stairs to try and catch you.
Here is what I always tell is the difference between how boys react to how girls react: Boys will inquire about any chandeliers hanging about, and will then proceed to escape in the flashiest way possible, via that selfsame chandelier. Girls will inquire about the carpet (lose rug to cover the steps, not glued on) that is on the stairs, and will proceed to grab that, and thereby, efficiently and quickly, dump all those guards down the stairs, after which the exit will be far less flashy, but less stressful also. This is all very generalized, and I have known enough people to play counter to the above stereotype. However I always use it to illustrate why I like a mixed gender table, as both kinds of solutions have their merit and time in a game, and both kinds of players should also be willing and able to embrace the thoughts and consequences of both solutions. As both a GM and a player I find that intra-party friction usually rears its ugly head when players are not willing or able to see the occasional use, and merit, of a different approach. If all players are always okay with the SOP, than it’s not a problem. If, however, some players get overruled more often, be it either the flashy one, or the more practical one, that is not a good balance, and will, over time, sour either the behavior within the group, or the fun for that player in coming along with that group.
I do realize that this is a difficult balance, and of course there is some give and take between players themselves, and between players and the GM, but it is something to be aware of for all people involved.
In sum: Every group, and every situation that group encounters, has their own way of dealing with it. Depending on that situation, and how the GM (or me, when I’m the GM) has described the mission, its preferred outcome, and the tools at hand, and the mood at the table, will have an impact on how that situation will be handled. We have one game group that always goes for the most flamboyant option that they can think of in the RPG system that we play, and we always have a great time, with lots of laughter. The same people are in the same group, but a different RPG system, and there they are the best raid\heist\mission planners, with close to zero risk taking, and a dozen contingency plans to ensure that the mission will be a success. Those missions are far more suspenseful, and dramatic if, and when, the plan goes sideways, but than the mood is very different at that table. We are willing and able to do both, because we choose the system, and the time, to indulge in both sides of the coin. Different systems, different expectations, and therefor different outcome, even with the same players and GM.
Such an important point. In the stealth / not stealth setup, it’s easy to empathize with the long-sufferimg rogue who just wanted to play it smart for once. That’s especially true because it’s easy for one player to “overrule” stealth by charging ahead with a battle cry. You can’t exactly ruin a party’s glorious charge by sneaking off solo.
My point in today’s rant is less that ignoring group desires in the name of “what my character would do” is always the right call. I think we can all agree that isn’t the case. Rather, I’m cautioning against the tyranny of the majority, where the need to do the smartest possible thing makes every decision a group decision. Even if the intentions are good (“What do you guys think I should do this round?”), defaulting to that setup can grind play to a crawl. That’s where the caution against “risk accountants” comes into play.
Right. Didn’t see it that way. And as I do not play D&D in any of its many guises (including Pathfinder and OSR here), we seldom get to the super tactical, I want to plan every combat move and feat use in excruciating detail mode. Most of the systems we use, are far less detail oriented. In my mind even RuneQuest, which has a fairly detailed combat mode, due to the vagaries of the dice, does in my view not lend itself to this hyper detailed, and unrealistic, risk management. Or I never played with those kind of players, might be the reason 😉
Right on. I think that the mindset can go beyond feats and tactical play though. That’s why there’s all the conversation about heists and Shadowrun elsewhere in the thread.
I’m interested in the boy vs. girl split you brought up. The boy wants to be flashy and the girl wants to solve the problem efficiently. Is that really a gendered thing though, or is that more of a player approach? Have you seen it break down along gender lines in practice?
Yes, and no. Most of the boys that I play, or GM, with will indeed more often go for the flashy option. And most of the girls for practical. However, this is definitly not always the case. Not even with the same player. All depends on system and mood at the table. But more than half the time I think it works that was, yes
Also my wife agrees with the statement, so who am I to argue? 😉
one of the groups I‘m in is a team of Risk Accountants, the other us a team of Risk Accountants plus a Barbarian.
to the comic: looks like a false dilemma.
First you swing for it (and fail)
then you fight the sharks.
then Cleric blows all his spell slots to heal them up.
And everyone is happy.
I think that not wanting to blow all his heal slots is exactly Cleric’s dilemma.
but getting the loot right now by the path of the swashbuckler, blowing all spells slots on healing and taking the rest of the day off is just as effective as his plan is to come back next day with a scoll.
Spell slots are free, scoll cost money.
and anyways
that thing weighs 5lb and 1oz
Oh yeah. I always hate the obstacles that could be solved with a simple and common mechanic you don’t have access to (Being much more dangerous without said mechanic), because I’m always the only player that is willing to backtrack to gain the edge safely. I’ve made the suggestion several times across my groups, and no one EVER listens to it.
You need ring gates.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/r-z/ring-gates/
Our Campaign is very high-risk by nature – the DM uses a modified version of the Arduin Crit tables, for crying out loud – so we tend to try to avoid fights if able. (He’s said we have the lowest turnover rate of PCs of any group he’s DMed for exactly this reason.) One time we encountered some sort of Dire Ettin or something, thing must have been 30 feet tall – so we sent an undead dog we had to lure it away and just snuck around. Not that we DON’T fight, but… yeah.
Today’s Handbook advice is definitely contingent on campaign style. What’s fun and characterful in 5e may get the party killed in Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Is that…. a silver Rupee?
According to the script:
So yes. It is 100% a silver Rupee.
Why don’t they just pelt the sharks with ranged attacks and then have the Triton swim over once the sharks are dead?
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/environment/wilderness/terrain/aquatic-terrain/
Hence the expression, “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” which is meant to indicate an impossibly difficult task.
Not sure if that was sarcasm, but anyway, potentially interesting anecdote: the Mythbusters tested this, and it turns out the shockwave from the bullet hitting the water is enough to kill many fish (they used sensors, no animals were harmed), even if you miss completely. That may have been where the saying came from.
Barrels were commonly used to transport edibles like fish over long distances; the usually salted or smoked (and thus quite dead) fish would be packed almost as tightly as sardines in a tin. Therefore, shooting fish in a barrel would be easy, because as long as you fired a projectile into the barrel, you’d asssuredly hit one or (more likely) several fish. But that is neither a myth nor is it interesting, which is why I suspect the Mythbusters went the route they did.
Shooting fish in a barrel is actually meant to indicate a stupidly easy task.
Look bro, I shot a .22 once at Scout Camp, AND I eat sushi at least once ever couple of months. Maybe every three months. Irregardless, I’m pretty much an expert on shooting fish in barrels.
And then there’s the time you DO use Mage Hand on the Artifact Of Doom That Will Try To Possess You, so you don’t have to physically touch it, but you’re playing the Tomb of Annihilation. Thankfully it was my bard that tried this, and it was a charisma saving through to resist the possession. Poor Wongo. Not only did no one else in the party want him, the bard started calling his Mace of Terror the “Bonk Stick of Go Away” until even the DM gave up and started referring to it as that.
The party examines from a distance, an object hanging from a branch. The problem? it hangs over a quicksand pit.
“It’s too heavy to mage hand, so how do we get it?” says the bard
“I could cast Gravity Well to make you hover above it.” says the sorcerer.
The cleric looks at the ranger, then rips a branch off a tree, stands on the edge of the quicksand and uses the branch as a hook, pulling the item’s chain until it’s in reach. “Really?”
An actual conversation from my saturday group.
An element of trust in the game is critical here. Less so in the anecdote, but definitely in the premise of the comic panel. Essentially, before swinging on a convenient rope or using sharks as stepping stones, you need to be confident that your DM is open to “Indiana Jones” gameplay where failing a roll won’t mean severe consequences.
I mention this because my first thought upon seeing the chamber in the comic was that the premise looked very familiar. Unfortunately, I thought I’d seen it in Grimtooth’s Traps: sure enough, page 18 (The Greystoke Memorial) illustrates a very good reason for a player to suggest that swinging across to the artifact may be a very bad idea.
My thoughts on risk management is to do your due diligence in terms of assessing what the potential dangers are and what you can do to minimize them, but to not let it shut down the game. In my Curse of Strahd campaign, we’ve got a VERY cautious “risk accountant. Too frequently IMO we shy away from actually doing anything because of fear of what might happen. To be fair, in CoS, that’s not unreasonable considering how dangerous the setting is for low to medium level characters. But the entire point of taking part in that campaign is to take those risks, kicking ass and taking names while confronting the evils that plague the land due to Strahd’s actions. Unfortunately, this has led to my paladin developing a bit of a “Leroy Jenkins” reputation in-group, since I/he want to come face to face the monsters in the valley and smite the shit out of them.
It’s good to be cautious, but not to the point of crippling indecision. Of course, in less dungeon crawly games like Shadowrun, the planning to avoid the danger is half the point. You need to plan accordingly otherwise the various megacorps will skullfuck your team.
I’m definitely the risk assessment player. The balance I’ve found and try for is ‘warn them about what they’re up against, then let them pick their course’. I try to back people up when they go for rule of cool and help them accomplish it/survive it. The only time I get pushy is when the heroic charge is looking to turn Light Brigade-y for the entire party, if you get my meaning. Or if the DM is giving off heavy ‘are you sure about this?/oh please no’ vibes, but I try to avoid anything more than pointing out ‘this’ll probably kill us all’.
That said, I still have a streak of backseat driving in battle, but I’ve been able to mostly get rid of that since I started playing.
One solution: make the “safe” solution turn into an obviously-guaranteed-losing solution.
Come back tomorrow with Mage Hand? Not if the pedestal is slowly sinking, and the jewel explodes if it gets wet – and being so large, perhaps it would catch the adventurers in the blast even if they started running away immediately.
Sneak around the sahuagin? Doesn’t work too well if your path leads you right through their nest and/or they will wake up later once you do what you’re doing and block your only exit, but where you are right now gives you better fighting ground.
Or to borrow from my day job (and stretch the theme a bit): the FAA requires that one prove safety (literally, that on average – computing statistical likelihoods – you will kill less than 0.00003 people per launch, the exact number varying between general public, launch crew, and so on) before they will give a license to launch large rockets. While this seems like them being risk accountants (for good reason), certain proposed so-called “safety” measures actually push the per-launch expected casualties above this number, so the FAA (in its capacity as a DM-analogue, with the US’s launch companies as the players) disallows them.
But Colin, what if my wolves are microhobo and murdermanager? =P
Yeah, there’s always that tendency to try and analyze the situation and do it “correctly”. I’m pretty sure this behavior is a byproduct of the old “you never know what kind of GM you’ve got until you find out through experience” issue. Players are naturally going to try to “solve” the encounter if they’re worried their GM might be extremely punishing if they try to do it “wrong”.
I think you’ve just discovered a spin-off series about a free wheeling pixie and her serial killer companion.
This HEAVILY depends on the DM. I have one DM where you can get away with anything, and another where the risk manager is the most important team member, so it’s not applicable to all groups.
I you’re adventuring in the land of Grimtooth, then sure:
https://geekandsundry.com/grimtooths-traps-are-an-old-school-way-to-cause-dd-chaos/
Go ahead and tap every square with a 10′ pole. But even there, if you’re doing too much playing by committee then you run into the old quarterbacking problem:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/general-disarray
At some point you’ve got to choose a course of action and make a move.