[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Combat Paralysis

[Kromm]

It's straying afield, but . . .

There are plenty of fictional examples of teams where most people aren't fighty types yet fighting happens. The popular Sense8 series has only three out of eight (Sun Bak, Wolfgang, and Will), and they quite literally step in for the others – as in, effectively possess the others and fight for them. Most of the others have completely unique skill sets to share. "Nobody can go it alone and we can't afford to lose even one of us" is essentially the premise.

And in real life, you do see teams with low-redundancy specialties. Plenty of ice hockey teams have two goalies and that's it. You can't meaningfully play without a goalie, while a non-goalie won't fare well in the nets.

I think it's probably better to say that in stories modeled on real-world special operations (including hack 'n' slash dungeon raiding!), everybody needs to be able to fight and you can't afford to be without backup for your specialists. In stories modeled on daytime drama or with a premise like "ordinary people thrown into the apocalypse," you often see just one fighter, just one medic, and so on. Those are reasonable things to base a game on.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I guess what I am saying is that a lot of adventuring groups in Dungeon Fantasy/D&D-esque games are the sort who really ought to scrub the whole mission before it starts. If I'm going to buy into the concept, I really need the team to be of a variety where there are actual odds of success through a mechanism other than Plot-Protection.

Pretty sure people can and do play those games with plot protection off and produce successes.

Well, it might be relatively rare if you ban Luck as being plot protection. But only because of how much that would thin the pool of applicable play groups. Obviously, anything you can accomplish with Luck you can accomplish without it, just at a lower probability.

It should be noted that in many such games it's entirely allowable to withdraw from a delve (whether considering that a partial success or mitigated failure) for resupply, recovery, and if need be replacements and then go back in. Unlike a typical military objective a dungeon isn't much of a moving target so you don't have to win decisively on the first attempt.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Realistically, a lot of adventures could wait a year or more. If you get a map to the Lost Caverns of Wealth, but Also All Dooms, maybe don't go there until you think you've got a reasonable chance of avoiding the dooms while obtaining the wealth.

If you're very interested in the Lost Caverns of Wealth you probably don't have the budget to putz around while putting at least two of your team members through doctorate-equivalent training in Middle Auric Era Theomantic Puzzle Locks.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Or more realistically, someone who actually has the resources should be dealing with the issues you were trying to address. Absent very rare situations (usually only present in fiction, e.g. the world actually is ending), trying to deal with a serious situation when you don't actually know how or have what you need to do it is more likely to make things much worse than it is to help.

The assumption that there's actually a well-resourced authority you can call on to fix the problem at hand is at odds with plenty of things people experience in regular life, as well as a huge swathe of fiction.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Cross-training members in various specialities to allow for enough redudancy to face combat losses is a basic concept for any competent military unit or other high-risk team occupations, whether astronauts or dirt-poor guerillas. In fact, only extremely badly organised forces do not do it.

Most military units also have more numerical depth than typical PC parties. And less esoteric specialties.

[Kromm]

Also of note is what your players like. I've had a few who were 100% happy to have their role be "I'm a noncombatant . . . and also the world's expert on this one thing that makes my life worth more than all of yours if you want to succeed."

One example in particular I can think of was the multi-millionaire social engineer with zero action skills: Because of the campaign premise, he couldn't just hang back and play Patron like an NPC, but had to leave safety to solve the problems he was drawn into as a result of acquiring strange powers (which attracted very scary Things). His wealth and social expertise were irreplaceable. Thus, even though the other PCs didn't like this guy, they kept him alive for numerous adventures – often in seriously dangerous situations that happened on the way to or from some rendezvous.

But yeah, I can think of players I've gamed with who would detest such a setup. Another player in the same campaign was playing a hacker who could have said, "Cover for me, or you'll lose one of the world's top hackers and probably fail." But the player didn't like that, so the hacker was actually the physically strongest team member and kind of scary in a brawl.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I guess what I am saying is that a lot of adventuring groups in Dungeon Fantasy/D&D-esque games are the sort who really ought to scrub the whole mission before it starts.

I'm not sure why you say that. Sure, it's not great if some support specialist has combat paralysis, but if he's also got essential expertise that isn't available from another source, the combat specialists will figure out a way to compensate.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Realistically, a lot of adventures could wait a year or more.

Realistically, people wouldn't go 'delving' in a static dungeon, you'd just disassemble it gradually and safely, so unless the players are willing to ignore plausible tactics, adding time pressure is essential.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kromm

It's straying afield, but . . .

There are plenty of fictional examples of teams where most people aren't fighty types yet fighting happens. The popular Sense8 series has only three out of eight (Sun Bak, Wolfgang, and Will), and they quite literally step in for the others – as in, effectively possess the others and fight for them. Most of the others have completely unique skill sets to share. "Nobody can go it alone and we can't afford to lose even one of us" is essentially the premise.

Heh. My gaming group watched that. In fact, we discussed how much it resembled the dynamics of an adventuring party. On the other hand, we concluded that Wolfgang can pretty much go it alone, as he's pretty obviously a much higher point value character than the others. Fancy martial arts are less effective than his brutally practical talent for violence, he's social enough to handle any talky situation without needing anyone to step in (granted, often with his Fearsome Stare Intimidation, but hey) and he apparently has better contacts than anyone else in the group, given that he can obtain a rocket launcher at short notice.

For Wolfgang, it's just that he doesn't want to go it alone.

'Riley Blue' Gunnarsdóttir, however, has no useful purpose but to look sort of cute, be angsty and occasionally offer characters drugs when they are sad. She's either an NPC to serve as a McGuffin/Love Interest or her player is really, really bad at character design. Or just bad at everything, really, as she also makes questionable decisions and actively makes everything around her worse.

Originally Posted by Kromm

And in real life, you do see teams with low-redundancy specialties. Plenty of ice hockey teams have two goalies and that's it. You can't meaningfully play without a goalie, while a non-goalie won't fare well in the nets.

I guarantee that if killing the goalie was allowed, but the game still had to go on, every other player would be required to cross-train as a goalie.

Originally Posted by Kromm

I think it's probably better to say that in stories modeled on real-world special operations (including hack 'n' slash dungeon raiding!), everybody needs to be able to fight and you can't afford to be without backup for your specialists. In stories modeled on daytime drama or with a premise like "ordinary people thrown into the apocalypse," you often see just one fighter, just one medic, and so on. Those are reasonable things to base a game on.

Eh, I guess. I've even done it, for one-shots.

It's just that continuing campaigns usually feature PCs actively seeking out situations full of danger, violence and killing. It's plausible as an accident once, but a couple of dozen sessions in, nobody is really going to believe that your group aren't professionals if you keep running toward danger instead of away from it.

And then it's just a question of being competent professionals or the incompetent kind. I despise incompetence. It's worse than evil, if only because I've encountered plenty of incompetence and the horrific consequences it can have, but the jury is still out on how real the concept of 'evil' is.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I guarantee that if killing the goalie was allowed, but the game still had to go on, every other player would be required to cross-train as a goalie.

You can't murder the goalie, but injuring them is certainly possible. Not exactly allowed but certainly not rigorously prevented.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

You can't murder the goalie, but injuring them is certainly possible. Not exactly allowed but certainly not rigorously prevented.

As far as I can tell, goalies are injured most seldom of any position in hockey.

Also, as in almost any sport other than full-contact combat sports, deliberate attempts to injure another player to prevent him from being able to compete are probably harshly punished. And, as far as I can recall from watching hockey occasionally, you can hardly touch a goalie without it being a foul.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

A more useful analogy might be space mission crews, which have specialties but also crosstrain seriously to have redundancy in the most critical skills. But, of course, those are ridiculously well-resourced groups picking their members from enormous selection pools and then investing fantastical amounts in their training.

Space mission crew is seriously overqualified compared to the randomly assembled bunch of misfits and never-do-wells that describes archetypal parties saving the world . . .

[Micahel Silverbane]

Originally Posted by phayman53

If you are creating "realistic" NPCs, how many of them should have this? I don't feel like it is something that everyone should have as standard, but should it be terribly common?

It seems to me that the standard response by untrained people is to flee from combat, duck, or possibly do something unproductive (though there are exceptions), but how many people actually freeze?

From some quick googling, it looks like maybe around 13% of people may experience strong "tonic immobility" in response to a threat stressor.