Comments on: The Path to Victory: Alternate Victory Conditions in 4e

By: Nerd Rage: A Response to the AngryDM

Nerd Rage: A Response to the AngryDM — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 12:00:53 +0000

[...] combat encounter design that has dominated the 4E published adventure landscape. Having multiple Paths to Victory helps alleviate the problem in a way that is itself supported and encouraged (albeit not very [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:24:45 +0000

I’ll stop lurking just long enough to say that I’m very excited about this new series. Even as a fairly new GM, I’d love to run some encounters with goals other than “kill everything that isn’t you.”

By: Rechan

Rechan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:13:15 +0000

THANK BAHAMUT.

I have been ACHING for someone to do a series of articles on this. I have been waiting for someone to smooth the rules out and lay it all out there to be usable.

This topic first came onto my radar from this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/241614-creative-combat-objectives-other-than-kill-em-all.html

I tried one of the victory conditions, or at least, one of the objective-based situations, and it fell flat because I hadn’t ironed it all out. “Why can’t we just do X over and over to succeed?” “How long does Y take? Z? Then why are we rushing to do X?”

I look forward to these articles.

By: ethan

ethan — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:30:12 +0000

I think this is a series that seriously needs to be written. Reading the encounters in the official modules might make you think all enemies fight to the death and prefer to battle in square rooms with uninteresting terrain.

I look forward to seeing a few new victory objectives and hopefully notice them creeping into play.

By: Ryven

Ryven — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:29:41 +0000

Ken has the correct idea here. Matt – my issue with your counterpoint is that you’re still doing damage. Fire Orb? Automatic damage. Backstab? extra damage dice. I’m talking about winning because you made it to a specific square, encounters that you win because you’re still alive after 6 round, heck – winning a full tactical encounter without ever dealing a single hitpoint of damage! That’s what this series is about. And for a preview – check out the 5th episode of the Power Source Podcast.. whenever it comes out.

By: Ken Marable

Ken Marable — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:24:44 +0000

Can’t wait to see more of these. I love this idea! I have been trying to explore a variety of different victory conditions for a while because there is so much more you can do than just “kill them all and move on”. The clearest example of this that I’ve done some variations on is the “Protect the bridge for X rounds so the civilians can escape” basic template. In fact protecting someone other than just your own PC’s adds a lot more drama to many encounters and opens up many more possibilities than “kill them all and move on”.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:08:41 +0000

I know this is secondary to your proposal for alternate victory conditions, but I have to take a shot at your premise. Pure damage attacks are more efficient when looked at from the one character/player perspective. But when you raise the view to the party level movement and status effects become much more intriguing.

That push shoves the gnoll next to a Flaming Orb. That dazed ogre is now in danger of a rogue’s backstab. Sure, your damage may not be as high, but the party output can more than make up for it.

On preview: Quinn’s last paragraph echoes my thoughts.

By: Quinn

Quinn — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:06:27 +0000

The use of different victory conations is something I have played around with on several occasions in several games; some times it has worked quite well other times not so much. One of the worst examples was the cattle glom incident in deadlans. The party was supposed to lure a stampeding heard of undead cattle out of town. However the party saw a monster and all went in to kill mode resulting in two party deaths and one player walking away from the table for a month.
On the other side of the coin has been situations were the objective was to keep an item out of the hands of the villains, here the party played along and just kept running while trading covering fie with there pursuers.

Also while powers like push pull slide and stun don’t do damage directly they are useful for moving opponents in and out of areas that cause damage. Also a tacitly coordinated party can use forced motion to better group enemies for burst attacks This is actually a favorite tactic of the mage in my table top game.