Comments on: The Final Boss Has No Stats

By: Capt_Poco

Capt_Poco — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:12:43 +0000

“At what point do you just say “to heck with it”, toss out the rules, and just make up what happens in combat?”

Everytime I sit down to play

By: gamefiend

gamefiend — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:07:20 +0000

I do this all the time. I think the only people you can’t do this with are those who are playing to “beat” the game. For players like that, it is important that everything be consistent and “by the rules”. Most players are more flexible than this. It’s worth making the modifications needed to make the game fun wherever possible.

That said, I also strive to design encounters that are just right at the very outset so I don;t have to do this. But without having the ability to playtest, sometimes encounters aren’t as fun in play as you imagined them. Adjusting on the fly allows you to get back to fun, and not just a boring slog.

By: ethan

ethan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:19:34 +0000

I’ve seen this method work and I’ve seen it really frustrate some players.

It worked really well when I had to scale down a horrifying 5 player adventure designed for 6th level veterans. Very few people showed up to the event and I ended up running the entire thing with a father and his 13 year old son, both of whom had never played 4e.

It went really poorly at a similar event when a player got upset over some home-brew encounters. After challenging whether or not I could target him with an opportunity attack, he demanded to see the creature’s stats. He left the table and said I was “cheating” when he found out I was adapting old AD&D encounters for them to fight on the fly.

I guess it’s tolerable when rule bending helps the players but aggravating when it works against them, even if it’s a challenge you’re sure they can handle.

By: JackOfHearts

JackOfHearts — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:20:02 +0000

@Brian: If a collaborative effort between the players and GM is going to be fun, there are almost certainly going to have to be some adjustments on the fly. If you want to call that rail-roading you may, but to me rail-roading is when you’ve removed choice from the players to force the actions you’ve planned for them to happen. This is more like improvisation, something that I strongly favor but in almost all cases takes away from the “game” half of D&D and adds to the “role playing/story” half of D&D.

By: Ken Marable

Ken Marable — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:08:16 +0000

Although I’ve never gone completely off the cuff, I might have to give that a try! However, I typically do tweak the stats (especially hit points) on the fly to make the fight memorable. If the party tears through the villain so fast that it’s anticlimatic (as opposed to an awesome butt whooping – the difference is entirely in the current mood of the players) I have often thrown a bunch more hit point on the villain to keep it going.

More often however, after a great attack that almost finishes off the villain but doesn’t, I just drop them dramatically and call it good rather than making someone take an anticlimatic simple attack for those last few hit points.

So I’ve had it go either way. I’ve raised and lowered AC on the fly (which can be tricky if the players pay close attention) to keep it fun.

But I like the idea of just having some vague ideas and making it up as I go, especially powers. With 4e’s monster system, that is far more possible now. Thanks for the idea!

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:01:33 +0000

An interesting notion, and something I toyed with at one time, but finally decided it does eat away at the integrity of the game too much. You do realize that you’ve just written an argument for railroading, yes? At what point do you just say “to heck with it”, toss out the rules, and just make up what happens in combat?

By: Vanphil

Vanphil — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:58:49 +0000

Hi , great post here
I always played with minimal stat blocks whenever I DM’d, and I generally use this rule for HPs: critters have 1, relevant npcs have enough to take a bashing.
This helps the game in different ways: lesser prep time, no relevant npcs screwed up by a lucky roll (“200 HP dragon? Well, I just rolled a 20, so I deal 1d10+199 dmg…”), and always exciting combat scenes, where players don’t have spend hours clearing the field of an already won battle…
I really like this style.