Speculation Do you find the vagueness of 5e's rules to be more of a pro or a con, and why? [Archive]

Contrast

2018-07-04, 01:56 AM

I always find myself wondering if I just have a very different view of RPGs because I've never played earlier systems of D&D (3/3.5 in particular) and my background is from other RPGs.

From the lack of a properly functional skill system (try to build a raft without GM hand-waving, jumping rules explicitly force the GM to invent the results if you want to jump farther than normal, etc...)

Do you want rules on building a raft? Then you need rules for building a cart and a wall and a house and a shed and a wheelbarrow and a...

In my opinion RPGs should be designed to play a certain type of game, as trying to model everything is an exercise in making books filled with information/tables that no-one cares about and people investing in skills/abilities that never come up. Have I ever been at a table where a player has tried to do something and the DM has been totally stumped on how to resolve it (or taken more than a literal minute to check the rulebook)? No. That counts as a win in my book.

to the lack of any semblance of internally consistent monster design,i.e monsters of the same CR will have massive variances in hp, ac and damage output, and special ability power, as well as hit dice seeming to have no correlation with proficiency bonus.

This one is always bemusing to me when I see people bring it up. You have a massive book of enemies. There's also guidance to making monsters and a CR system. This is already much more than you get from most systems. The CR system is pretty wonky but I don't see that trying to introduce some even more formulaic approach is going to make it any more accurate (synergies are powerful). It's reasonably simple and roughly does the job, thumbs up again.

I find myself coming down more on the con side lately, and was curious what others are experiencing at their tables.

I'm not trying to argue 5E is the be all and end all. But coming from someone who could not be talked into trying 3/3.5, I really enjoy playing 5E.

holywhippet

2018-07-04, 01:56 AM

I don't think there is anything wrong with the skill system. 3rd edition had all sorts of wierdness due to the different subskills - like all the different craft and profession skills. With 5th edition you can either handle it via a skill check or a tool proficiency check. So for building a raft you'd either use survival or carpenter's tools. Or a roll with advantage if you have both.

For jumping you could just ask for an athletics check to cover the extra damage with the DC being 10 + number of extra feet. The rules might not specifically cover it but it is a reasonable method of dealing with it.

Monsters are always going to be a mixed bag short of just having every monster at the same CR be roughly identical.

Exocist

2018-07-04, 02:45 AM

In my opinion RPGs should be designed to play a certain type of game, as trying to model everything is an exercise in making books filled with information/tables that no-one cares about and people investing in skills/abilities that never come up.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in a nutshell (exaggeration will follow)

Player: "I skin the rabbit"
DM:"Do you have the Rabbitskinning skill?"
Player: "Uh... yeah? I have cobbling? I can make Rabbitskin boots why can't I skin a rabbit?"
DM: "Sorry, you need the specific rabbitskinning skill to skin that rabbit, do so with a -5 penalty"

a couple of weeks later

Player: "I skin the rabbit"
DM: "Nice, you have the rabbitskinning skill, so it's only a regular check"
Player: "I also skin the bear"
DM: "Do you have the bearskinning skill..."

Monkeyknuckles

2018-07-04, 02:59 AM

While skill bloat can lead to odd and un-fun situations (see RIFTS), I think a certain degree of granularity helps reinforce verisimilitude. Too little clarification makes things so unpredictable and reliant on GM fiat that you can never tell if wanting to do something as basic as climb a wall or sneak past an enemy has any repeatable chance of success.

Too much clarification makes creative problem solving needlessly difficult or impossible. My current feeling is that 5e is too far towards the former (rulings vs rules, to quote the developers) for example, if I ready an action to cast shocking grasp on a door handle when the enemy on the other side of the door tries to open it, does the shocking grasp affect them at all (this exact situation occurred last week btw)? Will the DM yell at me for trying to impose real world physics on a fantasy world? Is there any guideline in place to suggest a course of action for the DM?

Malifice

2018-07-04, 03:41 AM

{Scrubbed}

Sir_Leorik

2018-07-04, 04:04 AM

Something that's been on my mind lately after a little over a year and a half with this edition, is the empty spots in the rules for 5e.

From the lack of a properly functional skill system (try to build a raft without GM hand-waving, jumping rules explicitly force the GM to invent the results if you want to jump farther than normal, etc...) to the lack of any semblance of internally consistent monster design,i.e monsters of the same CR will have massive variances in hp, ac and damage output, and special ability power, as well as hit dice seeming to have no correlation with proficiency bonus.

I find myself coming down more on the con side lately, and was curious what others are experiencing at their tables.

There are two issues you're raising:

1) Why does 5E leave so much room for the DM to decide things;

and 2) How does the 5E monster/NPC creation work?

In response to question one, it is probably a reaction to the way 3.X and 4E worked. In 3.X there's a rule for everything, and it becomes impossible to run the game without looking things up during a session every five minutes. In 4E everything was codified, only it was expressed in a different way. I think the designers were looking to simplify the game, and when they looked for feedback during the playtest of D&D Next, they saw that many players wanted it as well.

Personally, I like this as a DM, and I haven't seen too many complaints from my players. The main complaint one of my players has is with the Initiative mechanic, which has been mostly unchanged since 3.0.

In terms of your second question, there's a chart on p. 274 of the DMG. This chart gives a broad approximation of how to determine monster Challenge Rating. In general higher AC and to hit bonuses are what frequently raise monster Challenge Rating, more than average hit points or average DPR, due to bounded accuracy. Other elements that raise Challenge Rating include damage resistances, proficiency in saving throws, spells, and having certain special traits, like Legendary Resistance. Some things like skill proficiency or condition immunity do not get calculated into monster Challenge Rating.

As a result of the chart, some low hit point, low damage monsters like the Intellect Devourer, are deceptively low CR. Others, like the Mage, deal a lot of spell damage, but don't have enough hit points to justify higher CR. In general, when creating a monster or NPC, I estimate a CR that I expect the monster to hit, then use to chart to get a closer estimate for the final CR. CR generally breaks down at higher levels as a gauge for what a party can face, due to the spells and magic items a high level party has. In general the math holds up at lower levels, with outliers like the Intellect Devourer. Contrast that with the broken math used in 4E, and the algebra required to create an NPC in 3.X.

Unoriginal

2018-07-04, 04:11 AM

OP, there IS a functioning ability check system.

You want to build a draft? Either failure would have interesting consequences/you're pressed by time, in which case the DM ask for the appropriate check (either INT or DEX most likely), determine the DC based on how difficult crafting a draft in those circumstances is, and check if any of your tool proficiencies help (in which case you can add your proficiency bonus to the roll)...or the consequences for failure are not interesting/you have all the time in the world, in which case you just build the draft with an auto-success.

Simple, efficient, functioning.

As for the monsters: WotC has published enough of their monster-crafting methodology to see that aside from a couple of exceptions due to certain rule interractions, the monsters ARE consistent with the CRs, as their different stats are compensated by others.

5e has some vagueness, but you're not talking about any of it.

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

Yeah, I can't stand when people try to pretend their "here is the truth according to me" is a question.

kamap

2018-07-04, 04:18 AM

Somethings do need more clarification others are fine where they are.
For example the herbalist kit says you can make healing potions but nowhere else is it mentioned how to go about it.

Unoriginal

2018-07-04, 04:23 AM

There are two issues you're raising:

1) Why does 5E leave so much room for the DM to decide things;

and 2) How does the 5E monster/NPC creation work?

In response to question one, it is probably a reaction to the way 3.X and 4E worked. In 3.X there's a rule for everything, and it becomes impossible to run the game without looking things up during a session every five minutes. In 4E everything was codified, only it was expressed in a different way. I think the designers were looking to simplify the game, and when they looked for feedback during the playtest of D&D Next, they saw that many players wanted it as well.

Personally, I like this as a DM, and I haven't seen too many complaints from my players. The main complaint one of my players has is with the Initiative mechanic, which has been mostly unchanged since 3.0.

In terms of your second question, there's a chart on p. 274 of the DMG. This chart gives a broad approximation of how to determine monster Challenge Rating. In general higher AC and to hit bonuses are what frequently raise monster Challenge Rating, more than average hit points or average DPR, due to bounded accuracy. Other elements that raise Challenge Rating include damage resistances, proficiency in saving throws, spells, and having certain special traits, like Legendary Resistance. Some things like skill proficiency or condition immunity do not get calculated into monster Challenge Rating.

As a result of the chart, some low hit point, low damage monsters like the Intellect Devourer, are deceptively low CR. Others, like the Mage, deal a lot of spell damage, but don't have enough hit points to justify higher CR. In general, when creating a monster or NPC, I estimate a CR that I expect the monster to hit, then use to chart to get a closer estimate for the final CR. CR generally breaks down at higher levels as a gauge for what a party can face, due to the spells and magic items a high level party has. In general the math holds up at lower levels, with outliers like the Intellect Devourer. Contrast that with the broken math used in 4E, and the algebra required to create an NPC in 3.X.

It's not that the Intellect Devourer has a deceptively low CR, it's just that the nature of its powers give it a big boost if the situation favors it.

Put one Devourer vs 4 lvl 2 PCs in an open area, the Devourer is going down like the Medium encounter it is. Same if you have it act as the hound of a Mind Flayer in a battle at higher level.

Put one Devourer against an isolated PC, in a place where the Devourer can ambush them and hide, and it's a nightmare even at higher level.

Unoriginal

2018-07-04, 04:39 AM

Somethings do need more clarification others are fine where they are.
For example the herbalist kit says you can make healing potions but nowhere else is it mentioned how to go about it.

It is mentioned in more detail in the Xanathar's. Otherwise, it'd just follow the crafting rules, except with the kit as your tool

GreyBlack

2018-07-04, 05:14 AM

Mostly con, with some pro.

Pro: It makes it easier to adjudicate on the fly what rolls need to happen.

Con: The vagueness will inevitably get some rules lawyer to say, "But the rules don't say that! It should work this way!" Increased vagueness decreases consistency across the board, and each DM's table could be wildly different based on past rulings and interpretations.

Contrast

2018-07-04, 05:49 AM

for example, if I ready an action to cast shocking grasp on a door handle when the enemy on the other side of the door tries to open it, does the shocking grasp affect them at all (this exact situation occurred last week btw)?

I mean...the rules are clear on this. No it doesn't (a door handle is not a creature and even if it were, the cantrip does not jump from target to target).

You may be able to convince a DM to allow it (and I don't think it would be unreasonable either way for a DM to allow/disallow).

I can't really fault 5E for that though - do you actually want there to be rules for this?

Should we have a table for the conductivity of different door handle materials? What about if you were casting it in water, how does that change the effects? Can the electric spark be used to light a torch or trigger an explosion? Can you attempt a rudimentary method of restarting someones heart? Can you use it to provide momentary illumination? If we tried to have rules for all these things the description of a single cantrip would be pages long and its not clear to me we're actually gaining anything particularly useful or valuable by doing so.

JoeJ

2018-07-04, 05:56 AM

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in a nutshell (exaggeration will follow)

Player: "I skin the rabbit"
DM:"Do you have the Rabbitskinning skill?"
Player: "Uh... yeah? I have cobbling? I can make Rabbitskin boots why can't I skin a rabbit?"
DM: "Sorry, you need the specific rabbitskinning skill to skin that rabbit, do so with a -5 penalty"

a couple of weeks later

Player: "I skin the rabbit"
DM: "Nice, you have the rabbitskinning skill, so it's only a regular check"
Player: "I also skin the bear"
DM: "Do you have the bearskinning skill..."

You and I remember AD&D very differently.

And with respect to the OP, I find that the more I look at other games, the less vague 5e's rules seem.

Glorthindel

2018-07-04, 06:00 AM

Exocist

2018-07-04, 07:02 AM

You and I remember AD&D very differently.

And with respect to the OP, I find that the more I look at other games, the less vague 5e's rules seem.

Probably, it's usually just

DM: You want to skin the rabbit? Ok, how well do you want to skin it?
Player: Like decently well. Try and get the skin off in one piece if possible
DM: Do you particularly care what you're going to do with the rabbit afterwards? Are you using the skin to tan or the meat to cook?
Player: No
DM: Ok just make a DEX check then. On a failure, you'll still skin it but it might be in two or three pieces.

Some DMs are really anal about the bajillion non-weapon proficiencies though, and give you the NWP penalty if you don't have the exact right one (Weaponsmithing as opposed to Blacksmithing for example).

BeefGood

2018-07-04, 07:18 AM

Lol. Posts thread to bitch about the system disguised as a discussion.

Nice.

Yeah, I can't stand when people try to pretend their "here is the truth according to me" is a question.

The original post raises a question and gives a response to the question to start the conversation. Seems fine to me.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 07:42 AM

Frame challenge:

The rules aren't vague. They delegate decision-making authority in a way you don't like, but that's not vagueness.

I find the rules to be a breath of fresh air and to much better fit actual games and reduce rules-lawyering and munchkinism. They allow the DM and the players to focus on the fiction layer, letting things that should happen (due to the underlying fiction) just happen. You want to build a boat and have a relevant tool proficiency? Sure. Don't have a tool proficiency? You might can cobble together a raft, but that depends on circumstances.

On the CR front, the only issue comes from misunderstanding what CR is designed to do and what it's not designed to do.

CR is
+ a measure of the maximum physical threat that creature poses in isolation. Essentially acts as a "If CR >> character level", expect this to be able to one-round a squishy.
+ a measure of the maximum lifetime of the creature in combat against relevant foes.
+ a measure of the reward expected for facing one in straight combat

That is, it puts a ceiling on the deadliness of that individual creature and on the lifetime. A CR X creature can one-round a standard d6 HD PC of level X - 1 if it hits with all attacks. For foes of CR ~ level, they should last 3 rounds. Those are the underlying assumptions of the CR<->stat tables. The focus on HP damage means that non-damaging abilities don't contribute to CR. Those are accounted for later in the encounter-balance section, specifically because there's no systematic way of accounting for all the interactions.

CR is not
+ a signal of the appropriate foes for a group of APL X. You are not expected to routinely face CR ~ APL foes.
+ directly an encounter-balance tool. It informs encounter balance, but it does not dictate it. Use aXP as a first pass and then consider the specifics of the encounter (terrain, surprise, party strengths and weaknesses, etc).
+ a measure of the synergy of monsters, because that's nearly impossible.

When used for the purposes it was designed for, it works better than any other edition's version. AD&D and before didn't have such things; 3e's system was basically useless (that darn crab), 4e's level system required very specific arrangements and didn't work well until MM3 math came out (padded sumo combat). 5e's CR is straightforward, easy to use, and the wealth of monsters means that creating fully-custom monsters can be a rare event. Most things can be done by simply tacking on a new ability or two or changing a damage type, all of which generally are no-ops for CR purposes.

kamap

2018-07-04, 07:48 AM

It is mentioned in more detail in the Xanathar's. Otherwise, it'd just follow the crafting rules, except with the kit as your tool

The crafting rules for a healing potion which is a magical potion states that you'll need to be a magic user so a barbarian with the herbalism kit couldn't create the potions if you follow the crafting rules from the DMG but in the PHB it says I can with the herbalism kit.

Yeah its finally cleared out (ish) in Xanathar's but still it was weird.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 08:08 AM

The crafting rules for a healing potion which is a magical potion states that you'll need to be a magic user so a barbarian with the herbalism kit couldn't create the potions if you follow the crafting rules from the DMG but in the PHB it says I can with the herbalism kit.

Yeah its finally cleared out (ish) in Xanathar's but still it was weird.

The base healing potion isn't a "magical item" for the xanathar's guide rules. It's an exception to the exceptions. I believe (but can't cite chapter and verse) that that's been cleared up in the Sage Advice Compendium.

The higher-rank healing potions are, however.

kamap

2018-07-04, 08:13 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 08:15 AM

If you only use the PHB and the DMG it is a magical potion.
Though you are correct that it has been cleared up to not be so since but if you don't have access to those extra sources or where playing before those extra sources where there it was confusing.

I agree that should have been better explained. I've always considered it an exception as it's in the basic equipment table. But that's just me.

There are certainly poorly-explained rules and flawed rules. But the skill system and the CR system aren't vague or ill-defined. They're just not to some people's taste.

Spiritchaser

2018-07-04, 08:17 AM

I’d say it’s a blessing and a curse.

In the interest of consistency and managing player expectations, I think some more detail on skill DC would be very useful. Similarly, a number of detailed, precise examples of stealth and perception would be very helpful, including when various conditions would or wouldn’t be expected to grant advantage.

I don’t need much more though, in fact more would be more rules I’d rather not worry about too much.

kamap

2018-07-04, 08:18 AM

I agree.

The healing potions table is on page 130 in xanathar's and its for all healing potions and it seems it can now only be created by someone with the herbalism kit proficiency.
I myself would still let people with healing spells be able to create the potions aswell.

Rolero

2018-07-04, 08:24 AM

I believe the x factor here is how your table likes to play?

After months DMing 5e I am so thankful to this new system. Me and my friends like to play narratively, being creative with the skills and talents of the characters and trying not to stop the action to check on the rules every five minutes. This last part was a recurrent pain in the a** when I was taking charge of the previous campaign with Pathfinder. We liked the game and its options, but to play fast and effectively every one of us had to be a rules lawyer. I had so many headaches discussing rules on every encounter or situation and a fight could easily take the whole session to finish.

D&D5e may have summarize toons of rules and processes but, my god, it makes it so easy to play and enjoy. Now I can improv solutions on the fly with a tool or skill check that could work at the time, or ask for an ability check when in doubt. Thanks to the advantage/disadvantage system you cand make a quick judment to give a bonus or penalty to a roll to reward good ideas or uping the dificulty. Combat is a lot quicker too, we can usually have several encounters in a day an still have time to play some plot and roleplaying moments. And by far, the more I like about are the options for bosses with legendary actions and a lairs. We can finally have an epic encounter against one big baddy an make it challenging. Last session my players fought against a vampire and it was an amazing boss fight from beggining to end.

So, to answer the question of the thread, for me, the pros outmatch the cons by a long shot, but I also understand why it may be a bit lackluster for some players.

Requilac

2018-07-04, 08:45 AM

I suppose the the pros and cons of the “vagueness” of 5e are dependent on what style of game you want. If you would like to play something more along the lines of a war game, video game or a fantastical tactical simulation, then of course you wouldn’t like it. But if you are more interested in role playing, improv acting and storytelling then you would like the more vague rules.

Stricter, more mechanical rules make it a more fair game with better underlying concreteness. Some people, especially those fond of 3.5e, like that more. They know completely what to expect and can plan and build for it accordingly.

But if you are wanting to role play more, than the vague rules are helpful. It allows for more creative room for the player to work with. And it also doesn’t cause so much disruption in the game to have to look up things in the book.

I prefer the more roleplaying approach in my opinion. I would also say that it suits D&D much better. The more mechanical approach always seemed better for video games or war games which don’t care about personalities. But ultimately this is a subjective question which runs down to how you want to play. I like 5e’s vagueness better, and many others do. If you don’t like it, MonkeyKnuckles, than maybe you would be better of* playing another system. There are war games and older editions of D&D after all.

I hope my input has helped.

*i don’t mean to sound passive aggressive here

Naanomi

2018-07-04, 09:01 AM

I don’t find them vague in particular; but I do like the overall system and not having to look up often contradictory minutia from a dozen sources books (which often necessitates a good deal of DM fiat anyways) to do something the ‘right way’... when a 2 second ballpark keeps the game flowing

MaxWilson

2018-07-04, 09:19 AM

Something that's been on my mind lately after a little over a year and a half with this edition, is the empty spots in the rules for 5e.

From the lack of a properly functional skill system (try to build a raft without GM hand-waving, jumping rules explicitly force the GM to invent the results if you want to jump farther than normal, etc...) to the lack of any semblance of internally consistent monster design,i.e monsters of the same CR will have massive variances in hp, ac and damage output, and special ability power, as well as hit dice seeming to have no correlation with proficiency bonus.

I find myself coming down more on the con side lately, and was curious what others are experiencing at their tables.

It's not as simple as "vagueness" across the board

5E's rules and game stats are almost entirely combat-focused, with an emphasis on Combat As Sport and casual play. To the extent that there is a game structure for non-combat activities, it comes down to "roll a d20, add your ability mod and/or proficiency bonuses, and compare it to a number the DM fabricates on the spot." That's probably less useful than having no rules at all because it imposes expectations about the form of the mechanical resolution (the easy part) without giving any guidance on triggers/hooks/goals/default actions (the hard part). See http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15203/roleplaying-games/game-structures-part-11-complete-game-structures for more on this.

It is possible to make up your own game structures in an attempt to draw play towards other activities (politics, for example, or trade) but you're pretty much on your own when you do so. It appears to me that many DMs simply accept this fact and wing it--I suspect those DMs would be equally comfortable, perhaps more so, with a nigh-freeform ruleset that just said something like, "Pick two adjectives to describe your character's core competencies, e.g. 'sneaky' and 'persuasive.' Once per adventure you may push a word related to those adjectives onto a dramatic element of a scene, subject to DM approval. For example, you might climb over a castle wall while declaring that the guards at a castle gate are 'oblivious' to your presence." Maybe Rangers get an extra adjective to use in favored terrain, and Rogues get to use an adjective twice before it's used up.

But instead of 5E gives you a system where Rangers are told, "When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you're proficient in," whatever that means. That bonus is widely viewed as irrelevant because it isn't coupled to any game structures which require terrain-related ability checks in their resolution phases, but it also pressures the DM to ensure that whatever game structure he invents for non-combat still has d20 ability check rolls in there somehow. In this sense, 5E's minimalist ability-check-in-a-vacuum guidance is probably worse than no guidance at all.

Other DMs just run combat-centric games and apparently just roll attacks and damage all night, every night. This is right in 5E's sweet spot, which is why I'm currently more interested in turning 5E into a hack-and-slash RPG than running it at the table, unfortunately.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 09:42 AM

@MaxWilson

I don't know what books you're reading, but that does not describe 5e at all. In any way. 5e is utterly unsuited for a tactical combat video game by design. What you're looking for is 4e for that purpose (which 4e fulfills quite well).

I find the DMG to be full of useful guidance (note, not rules, because the DM doesn't have rules). Guidance that, the more I engage with it (whether I end up accepting or rejecting it doesn't matter), the better my games run and the more fun people have. And that guidance is not all about combat. Combat gets the most specific rules because it is the most oppositional part, where precision matters. Other things have less precision (and more guidelines) because they vary from table to table much more than combat does.

Guidelines don't stop existing just because you don't like them. And for a TTRPG, guidelines are much more useful than rules.

All the "solutions" to the "vagueness problem" boil down to "give tables and make everyone follow them." Not only is that contrary to the design of 5e (which seeks to empower tables and DMs to make decisions that fit the table best, rather than bending knee to the all-mighty rules no matter the collateral damage), it doesn't help anyone do better. It encourages breaking all situations into pre-fab, rule-approved pieces. This cheapens the experience and hampers role-play, as you constantly have to check whether the character has the mechanical authorization to do X (instead of just doing X because you're a competent individual, and competent individuals can do X). It encourages playing the sheet, not the character.

mephnick

2018-07-04, 09:52 AM

Considering 99.9999% of tabletop gaming systems are more "vague" than 5e, I'd say maybe the hobby just isn't for you.

Requilac

2018-07-04, 09:55 AM

But instead of 5E gives you a system where Rangers are told, "When you make an Intelligence or Wisdom check related to your favored terrain, your proficiency bonus is doubled if you are using a skill that you're proficient in," whatever that means. That bonus is widely viewed as irrelevant because it isn't coupled to any game structures which require terrain-related ability checks in their resolution phases, but it also pressures the DM to ensure that whatever game structure he invents for non-combat still has d20 ability check rolls in there somehow. In this sense, 5E's minimalist ability-check-in-a-vacuum guidance is probably worse than no guidance at all.

Other DMs just run combat-centric games and apparently just roll attacks and damage all night, every night. This is right in 5E's sweet spot, which is why I'm currently more interested in turning 5E into a hack-and-slash RPG than running it at the table, unfortunately.

I think there are some flaws in this line of thinking. In fact I would say the exact opposite; the vagueness of 5e's skill check system encourages out of combat scenarios, it does not support Hack and Slash. In fact most of the role playing games which encourage out of combat scenarios have incredibly vague rules. Take Call of Cthulhu and FATE for example, which were clearly not meant for combat, has an even more immensely simplified "skill check" system. With a more complex underlying rule set, your character is restricted to certain actions which is described in the book, and can't do things outside of that very well. That's why so many people were frustrated with ability checks in earlier editions. With the way things are, characters can more easily commit to a greater amount of out of combat actions. Now some may say that this "any character can do anything well" mentality causes problems , but one of these problems is not eliminating chances for out of combat actions.

I would also make the statement the vagueness supports Combat As War over Combat As Sport. There are less rules of engagement, which is exactly what Combat As War is about. In Combat As War the whole idea is that the enemies aren't restricted or bound, whether that be by in game rules or system rules, they are going to do whatever they can to kill you.

Now I will say that the way is 5e designed does encourage a lot of combat, and the DMG's guidance on 6-8 medium encounters per day clearly states that, but that is a completely different reason than vague ability checks.

Merudo

2018-07-04, 10:06 AM

@MaxWilson

I don't know what books you're reading, but that does not describe 5e at all. In any way. 5e is utterly unsuited for a tactical combat video game by design. What you're looking for is 4e for that purpose (which 4e fulfills quite well).

I do agree MaxWilson's criticism applies even more to 4e (in fact the article he linked to was written in 2012 - 5e came out in 2014).

However, I have no idea why you think 5e is "utterly unsuited for a tactical combat video game". 5e is essentially a polished and more balanced 3e/3.5e, which has been extensively adapted into videogames.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 10:18 AM

I do agree MaxWilson's criticism applies even more to 4e (in fact the article he linked to was written in 2012 - 5e came out in 2014).

However, I have no idea why you think 5e is "utterly unsuited for a tactical combat video game". 5e is essentially a polished and more balanced 3e/3.5e, which has been extensively adapted into videogames.

No. It's not a polished 3.5. the underlying philosophy is completely different. Rulings over rules. Guidelines, not tables. Lack of simulation. Extensive delegation to DMs. These make it hard to use directly. 3e went the other way on all of these issues.

mgshamster

2018-07-04, 10:30 AM

No. It's not a polished 3.5. the underlying philosophy is completely different. Rulings over rules. Guidelines, not tables. Lack of simulation. Extensive delegation to DMs. These make it hard to use directly. 3e went the other way on all of these issues.

5e is a decent mix of 3.x rules and 4e rules (and some new ones!) with a lot of pre-3e philosophy.

5e could be turned into a video game, but a lot of things would need a pre-ruling by the programmers, and anything they didn't think of ahead of time would simply not be allowed - if only by the fact that they didn't program it in.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 10:43 AM

5e is a decent mix of 3.x rules and 4e rules (and some new ones!) with a lot of pre-3e philosophy.

5e could be turned into a video game, but a lot of things would need a pre-ruling by the programmers, and anything they didn't think of ahead of time would simply not be allowed - if only by the fact that they didn't program it in.

You could, but it would end up the same as something starting from 3e rules, with only a gloss of 5e sprinkled on top. 3e tried to lock everything into place, which is exactly what you'd have to do to turn a ttrpg into a video game. 5e starts at the opposite side, so you have to fight the system to nail everything down.

mgshamster

2018-07-04, 11:00 AM

You could, but it would end up the same as something starting from 3e rules, with only a gloss of 5e sprinkled on top. 3e tried to lock everything into place, which is exactly what you'd have to do to turn a ttrpg into a video game. 5e starts at the opposite side, so you have to fight the system to nail everything down.

Oh, yeah. No argument there. It could be done, but it would take a lot of work and remove one of the core philosophies of 5e: Rulings over Rules.

It just removes some of the main things about table top RPGs: making stuff up on the fly and using your imagination to play the game.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 11:08 AM

Oh, yeah. No argument there. It could be done, but it would take a lot of work and remove one of the core philosophies of 5e: Rulings over Rules.

It just removes some of the main things about table top RPGs: making stuff up on the fly and using your imagination to play the game.

Yeah. Don't get me wrong, I love CRPGs they're my favorite genre of video game. But ttrpgs have a beauty and a wonder specifically because they're open-ended and adaptable. Specifying all the parameters breaks that, removes the possibility of the unknown, the fantastic.

Tanarii

2018-07-04, 11:12 AM

Con: The vagueness will inevitably get some rules lawyer to say, "But the rules don't say that! It should work this way!" Increased vagueness decreases consistency across the board, and each DM's table could be wildly different based on past rulings and interpretations.IMx rules lawyers getting all rules lawyerly and causing arguments is something that happens in more exacting rules systems. Not more free form ones.

For a quick example of this in action, compare 3e forum rules arguments (common) vs 5e ones (nowhere near so common).

You and I remember AD&D very differently.

And with respect to the OP, I find that the more I look at other games, the less vague 5e's rules seem.Yup. AD&D didn't even have any explicit skills systems, other than their skills, until the Wilderness/Dungeon Survival Guide expansions introduced them.

ad_hoc

2018-07-04, 11:16 AM

The title is begging the question.

I don't think the rules are vague.

MaxWilson

2018-07-04, 11:35 AM

I don't know what books you're reading, but that does not describe 5e at all. In any way. 5e is utterly unsuited for a tactical combat video game by design.

Would you care to elaborate on that? So far I haven't spotted any issues. It appears admirably suited to adaptation to CRPG format.

What about a hack-and-slash 5E dungeon crawl would break if it were a replayable CRPG module instead of a tabletop game?

All the "solutions" to the "vagueness problem" boil down to "give tables and make everyone follow them." Not only is that contrary to the design of 5e (which seeks to empower tables and DMs to make decisions that fit the table best, rather than bending knee to the all-mighty rules no matter the collateral damage), it doesn't help anyone do better. It encourages breaking all situations into pre-fab, rule-approved pieces. This cheapens the experience and hampers role-play, as you constantly have to check whether the character has the mechanical authorization to do X (instead of just doing X because you're a competent individual, and competent individuals can do X). It encourages playing the sheet, not the character.

Written like someone who hasn't been exposed to many alternate game structures. I recommend http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15126/roleplaying-games/game-structures, with http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15203/roleplaying-games/game-structures-part-11-complete-game-structures as a good synopsis. The more game structures you know, the more easily you can empower players to act in various types of scenarios. The quote the Alexandrian:

One of the specific things I discussed was the fact that when you try to prep a scenario using the wrong scenario structure, the result can be painful for everybody involved (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15215/roleplaying-games/game-structures-part-12-using-scenario-structures). You can see this with clearly wrong-headed ideas like running dungeon exploration as a linear timeline of events; running conversations using combat initiative; or trying to have players navigate a city as if it were a dungeoncrawl (by prepping every street with a keyed encounter and having the players make intersection-by-intersection navigation decisions).

This makes it truly unfortunate that most GMs don’t have a robust library of scenario structures that they can use to build their campaigns. In my experience, the vast majority of GMs are limited to just three structures:

Railroads
Dungeoncrawls
Mysteries

In actual practice it’s actually worse than this because many GMs don’t really understand how to structure mysteries (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule), so they end up defaulting back towards railroads for their mystery scenarios...

So I obviously think it’s really important for GMs to make the conscious decision to think about the scenario structures they use, and make sure they’re using the right scenario structures for the scenarios they want to run (or which they need to run because of the decisions their players are making). One of the things that storytelling games have been doing very well compared to RPGs over the last ten to fifteen years is, in fact, spelling out specific procedures for GMs to follow.

As part of that original series on Game Structures, I also talked about designing custom game structures (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15222/roleplaying-games/game-structures-part-13-custom-structures), using the example of how to design structures for running a campaign about a starship plying interstellar trade routes.

With this series I want to challenge myself – and you! – to do more of this. The truth is that even one of these structures unlocks the ability to confidently prep and run dozens of scenarios. When I figured out node-based scenario design (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7949/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-part-1-the-plotted-approach), it meant that I could suddenly design and run incredibly complex mystery scenarios as a matter of simple routine. When I figured out the party planning structure (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37995/roleplaying-games/game-structure-party-planning) for effectively running large social events, it was like opening a door to a room that I’d never even knew existed. What else is hiding out around here, lurking just within arms reach and yet somehow completely beyond our grasp because we’re blind to the possibility?

Now, after reading the linked article, I'm dying to add in more social scenes to my next TTRPG campaign. (Which looks like it's going to be in DramaSystem instead of 5E, although work on my 5E CRPG is higher priority.) And if I ever do run 5E as a TTRPG again, I'll incorporate game structures learned elsewhere (including the party planning structure from the Alexandrian, and possibly including explicit drama scenes and drama tokens from DramaSystem) and just use the D&D structure for dungeoncrawling. (And even there I'll use old-school D&D game structures, "You see a monster. Do you want to Parley/Hide/Bribe/Fight?", instead of 5E's implicit "You see a monster. Roll initiative!") I may very well leave the room while combat is occurring, since fighting is the part of the game which least needs an active DM. The monsters can roll attacks and saving throws without my involvement.

TL;DR if you think people are asking for more tables and more minutiae, you're missing the point of at least some of the criticism. Mine, for example.

mgshamster

2018-07-04, 11:48 AM

Would you care to elaborate on that? So far I haven't spotted any issues. It appears admirably suited to adaptation to CRPG format.

What about a hack-and-slash 5E dungeon crawl would break if it were a replayable CRPG module instead of a tabletop game?

It'll work fine if 1) It's limited to a dungeon with very little else in the world, 2) it has no dialogue, and 3) is limited to attack rolls only and doesn't allow for anything outside of it.

Once players start to use creativity beyond the character sheet 'buttons' it becomes problematic. 5e is particularly suited to going outside of the Character Sheet, because of the relatively free from nature of ability checks. 5e is also big on Rulings over Rules, which is completely removed from a CRPG. Or at the very least, it's removed insofar as on-the-fly rulings are concerned. Any ruling that the programmers think of ahead of time will be answered, but only for those limited to what is programmed. Anything outside of that won't be allowed.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 11:48 AM

Would you care to elaborate on that? So far I haven't spotted any issues. It appears admirably suited to adaptation to CRPG format.

What about a hack-and-slash 5E dungeon crawl would break if it were a replayable CRPG module instead of a tabletop game?

See above. Everything that makes 5e special breaks. You'd get much better results starting from 4e's chassis.

Exception-based game-play doesn't translate well. Rulings over rules doesn't translate well, unless you pre-determine all the rulings (in which case they're just rules and you've violated the spirit of the instruction). Increased DM discretion (a major design goal) is gone.

You've thrown away everything that makes a TTRPG different away, in favor of a mediocre experience that has to fight the system at every turn. It'd be 5e in name only.

To turn it around, I have yet to see a cogent argument for why 5e would make a good hack-and-slash CRPG (as compared to 3e or 4e, both of which were much more suitable for that purpose precisely because so much was nailed down for you already).

To speak to the main topic:

In any case of rules questions, I have a choice of whom to trust with my fun.

a) Designers (who, although "professionals", aren't anywhere near my table and don't know what I like or don't like)
b) My DM, who is my friend and whom I trust to have my back.

In my view, I find b) a much more palatable option. Rules exist to serve as pre-fab, mutually-fitting building blocks for a group of people to use to assemble a game (through play). They are not the game, nor will blind adherence to them out improve things unless you can't trust the other players. And I'd rather not play than play with people I don't trust.

Competitive environments and those where characters can be used at multiple tables (AL) require more specific rules. And that's exactly what the AL guidelines do--they impose specific rules on top of the general rules, pre-making some of the decisions to ensure consistency where it's needed. And I find that constraining so I don't play or DM AL. If that were imposed on all games, the whole would suffer needlessly for the part. And that's stupid.

MaxWilson

2018-07-04, 12:01 PM

It'll work fine if 1) It's limited to a dungeon with very little else in the world, 2) it has no dialogue, and 3) is limited to attack rolls only and doesn't allow for anything outside of it.

Once players start to use creativity beyond the character sheet 'buttons' it becomes problematic. 5e is particularly suited to going outside of the Character Sheet, because of the relatively free from nature of ability checks. 5e is also big on Rulings over Rules, which is completely removed from a CRPG. Or at the very least, it's removed insofar as on-the-fly rulings are concerned. Any ruling that the programmers think of ahead of time will be answered, but only for those limited to what is programmed. Anything outside of that won't be allowed.

Bearing in mind that the question here was, "What about a hack-and-slash 5E dungeon crawl would break if it were a replayable CRPG module instead of a tabletop game?"

Hack-and-slash dungeon crawls aren't noted for their flexibility. If you go in a hole in the ground, fight mind flayers, and accumulate treasure, then do that again... that's exactly the kind of game in which thinking outside the box isn't encouraged. If you try to recruit a hundred and fifty hobgoblin mercenaries, promising them a share of the loot, and then you scout out the dungeon with Arcane Eye and sneak in through the water mains to take the mind flayers by surprise... you're not playing hack-and-slash dungeon crawling any more.

BTW, by "limited to attack rolls only" I assume you mean "attack rolls, saving throws, spells and other abilities," yes? Because obviously CRPGs can have spells and Divine Smites and metamagic, etc. So you're really just saying "limited to hack-and-slash," which is exactly the point. The Gold Box games were hack-and-slash AD&D but they were still a lot of fun.

You couldn't have a CRPG of the Hillfolk RPG, but I don't see anything preventing you from turning hack-and-slash 5E into a CRPG. And yet PhoenixPhyre claimed that it is impossible, by design, to do that. I'd like that backed up with specifics.

Matrix_Walker

2018-07-04, 12:04 PM

The title is begging the question.

I don't think the rules are vague.

Oh, but they are so, explicitly and intentionally, with the stated reason being to leave the GM added latitude.

In the end, Hasbro would rather sell more games to new players than more books to the same players. It's a better and more reliable profit model. This leads to a "keep it simple, stupid." model to keep the game approachable.

From my perspective, I'd like to say it's a con, but from the business perspective, it is a big pro. I play D&D over the systems I would prefer because this model makes the game widely used enough to have other players ready available, as opposed to other systems where I have to recruit and teach a whole system (and a far more complicated one) to people. In reality, it's hard to call it a con, as it does allow for the quick pickup of a game and help supply a constant flux of new players.

If I could find four local guys for GURPS on a regular basis, I'd never go near another D&D book.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 12:08 PM

Bearing in mind that the question here was, "What about a hack-and-slash 5E dungeon crawl would break if it were a replayable CRPG module instead of a tabletop game?"

Hack-and-slash dungeon crawls aren't noted for their flexibility. If you go in a hole in the ground, fight mind flayers, and accumulate treasure, then do that again... that's exactly the kind of game in which thinking outside the box isn't encouraged. If you try to recruit a hundred and fifty hobgoblin mercenaries, promising them a share of the loot, and then you scout out the dungeon with Arcane Eye and sneak in through the water mains to take the mind flayers by surprise... you're not playing hack-and-slash dungeon crawling any more.

BTW, by "limited to attack rolls only" I assume you mean "attack rolls, saving throws, spells and other abilities," yes? Because obviously CRPGs can have spells and Divine Smites and metamagic, etc. So you're really just saying "limited to hack-and-slash," which is exactly the point. The Gold Box games were hack-and-slash AD&D but they were still a lot of fun.

You couldn't have a CRPG of the Hillfolk RPG, but I don't see anything preventing you from turning hack-and-slash 5E into a CRPG. And yet PhoenixPhyre claimed that it is impossible, by design, to do that. I'd like that backed up with specifics.

No, I said it was "utterly unsuited" for that. Don't twist my words. And it is. You can pave a road with pie crust, but pie crust is utterly unsuited for being pavement material.

You can make a hack-and-slash dungeon-crawl video game out of 5e. But why would you do that? It has nothing useful to offer in that line of work (compared to all the other systems out there) and you'd be fighting the basic system all the way. As well as abandoning any claim to it being 5e except the name. And that's pointless.

You still haven't mentioned why it would be a good choice. And the burden of proof here is on you, as you're making the positive claim.

MaxWilson

2018-07-04, 12:11 PM

See above. Everything that makes 5e special breaks.

You're joking, right? There is nothing about 5E's "roll a d20 to resolve actions that are not impossible" that is special. And 5E as it was first published doesn't have anything except that, outside of combat. Xanathar's added a little bit with tool proficiencies, and that's enormously beneficial, but still most of what makes 5E "special" lies in its painstaking attention to giving you a variety of character archetypes who kill monsters in different ways.

You'd get much better results starting from 4e's chassis.

*shrug* I didn't like 4E and have no desire to play it.

To turn it around, I have yet to see a cogent argument for why 5e would make a good hack-and-slash CRPG (as compared to 3e or 4e, both of which were much more suitable for that purpose precisely because so much was nailed down for you already).

3E made a pretty decent CRPG, and in fact my only exposure to it is via CRPG (Icewind Dale 2). I have no opinion on which of them makes a better CRPG. I do think I have better things to do with my time than roll attacks and saving throws for monsters, and given how much of 5E's text is exclusively combat-oriented (look at the OP of this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?562813-What-levels-are-NPCs-and-how-common-is-spellcasting) for one recent example--the PHB pays lip service to the predominance of non-spellcasting priests, but when it comes time to actually stat some Acolytes out, of course they are spellcasters because otherwise they wouldn't be any fun to fight, and 5E has nothing to say about priests who don't fight) that means I pretty much just want to run the scenes between combats as a TTRPG, and let the fights play out using 5E rules without much involvement from me as a DM except when exceptions need to be made.

95+% of what happens in a typical 5E fight could be DM'ed by a computer. So why not make the computer do it? And I am doing that.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 12:14 PM

You're joking, right? There is nothing about 5E's "roll a d20 to resolve actions that are not impossible" that is special. And 5E as it was first published doesn't have anything except that, outside of combat. Xanathar's added a little bit with tool proficiencies, and that's enormously beneficial, but still most of what makes 5E "special" lies in its painstaking attention to giving you a variety of character archetypes who kill monsters in different ways.

*shrug* I didn't like 4E and have no desire to play it.

3E made a pretty decent CRPG, and in fact my only exposure to it is via CRPG (Icewind Dale 2). I have no opinion on which of them makes a better CRPG. I do think I have better things to do with my time than roll attacks and saving throws for monsters, and given how much of 5E's text is exclusively combat-oriented (look at the OP of this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?562813-What-levels-are-NPCs-and-how-common-is-spellcasting) for one recent example--the PHB pays lip service to the predominance of non-spellcasting priests, but when it comes time to actually stat some Acolytes out, of course they are spellcasters because otherwise they wouldn't be any fun to fight, and 5E has nothing to say about priests who don't fight) that means I pretty much just want to run the scenes between combats as a TTRPG, and let the fights play out using 5E rules without much involvement from me as a DM except when exceptions need to be made.

95+% of what happens in a typical 5E fight could be DM'ed by a computer. So why not make the computer do it? And I am doing that.

No. It can't. You're playing some game that's not the same as the 5e I know. It's completely alien. I have many sessions go by without fights, and fights that turn on all sorts of unorthodox tactics. Heck, I've run games where the players didn't know any mechanics at all and just narrated and I resolved it.

You're fixated on a few mechanics that aren't really that important to the game and ignoring the whole rest of the system. That's your prerogative, but it's silly and you're doing 5e a disservice.

MaxWilson

2018-07-04, 12:20 PM

No, I said it was "utterly unsuited" for that. Don't twist my words. And it is. You can pave a road with pie crust, but pie crust is utterly unsuited for being pavement material.

You can make a hack-and-slash dungeon-crawl video game out of 5e. But why would you do that? It has nothing useful to offer in that line of work (compared to all the other systems out there) and you'd be fighting the basic system all the way. As well as abandoning any claim to it being 5e except the name. And that's pointless.

You still haven't mentioned why it would be a good choice. And the burden of proof here is on you, as you're making the positive claim.

See post above.

If players do bring in 150 hobgoblin mercenaries through the water mains to fight mind flayers, do I really want to roll 150 attacks every round and keep track of 150 separate pools of HP? Not really. Do I really want to be responsible for babysitting the mind flayers through every step of the ensuing slaughter? Also, not really. I'd rather just say, "You hobgoblins, do what the players said and shoot arrows at the mind flayers. You mind flayers, retreat down the tunnels until your reaction force comes up of Intellect Devourers hidden in goblin skulls comes up." If the mind flayers all die (or are forced to Plane Shift out) before then, fine, they die. But I want to make running that invasion as easy as possible on myself, and that means limiting my involvement to the things which actually need a DM, which are relatively few under the 5E ruleset.

No. It can't. You're playing some game that's not the same as the 5e I know. It's completely alien. I have many sessions go by without fights, and fights that turn on all sorts of unorthodox tactics. Heck, I've run games where the players didn't know any mechanics at all and just narrated and I resolved it.

You're fixated on a few mechanics that aren't really that important to the game and ignoring the whole rest of the system. That's your prerogative, but it's silly and you're doing 5e a disservice.

What "whole rest of the system"? Outside of combat, 5E doesn't really have a system beyond ability checks. You might as well be freeform roleplaying.

5E's design is all about giving PCs an extra +d6 to their damage under narrow conditions, or letting them add WIS mod to cantrip damage, or imposing the Restrained condition. All of those things are things that I'd rather have a computer track than me. If you want to handwave all of that and just narrate, "Okay, you trip the ogre and he falls off a cliff and dies," sure, you can do that, but you can't claim that 5E was responsible for guiding you to do that. That's just freeform RP without reference to 5E rules. (And I can do that just as easily in CRPG/hybrid mode anyway. I type "Ogre #1 dies," and it's done. But if there are other ogres around and a fight erupts over that murder, I'll want the computer to handle the rest of the fighting while I think about the plot implications and how this is impacting the dramatic narrative. As I said, the computer is doing 95% of the work in that combat.)

mgshamster

2018-07-04, 12:29 PM

MaxWilson

2018-07-04, 12:31 PM

My combats have a ton of environmental interactions, like trying to destroy a bridge enemies are on, or using a mold earth spell to excavate some ground and create a landslide, or climbing a wall to sneak past enemies, or creating a ladder out of ice using Shape Water, or spreading dung on ourselves to mask our scent, or a hundred other ideas.

If the programmers don't think of those beforehand, I won't be able to do them.

But that's not hack-and-slash gaming.

And in hybrid mode, all the programmers need to anticipate is that the DM can say, "This terrain is now open/closed/difficult" and "These monsters aren't aware of these PCs" and "These monsters take damage". As long as the DM has a concise way to communicate that to the computer in one command/gesture, the computer can resolve all of the environmental actions you've listed, and the rest of the combat including how the monsters respond once they do become aware of the PCs.

The DM's job is to design and referee the game, sometimes on the fly. But just as you can delegate parts of action resolution and monster advocacy to a player, you can equally well delegate it to a computer. And why wouldn't you, when it's 95%(ish) of the game mechanics? Again, it's not like this is Hillfolk or something, where 90+% of the game is stuff that's impossible to delegate to a computer. 5E is mostly just attack rolls, damage calculations, saving throws, and lots of nitpicky little exceptions like "when XYZ happens you can roll the die twice." Computers are great at that stuff.

But the freeform nature of 5e does allow for all of that.

A basic game of only using the things that are on your character sheet is fine, but a different system, like 3e or 4e would be better suited for it.

Possibly. But I'm not talking about whether 3E or 4E would make a good CRPG.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 12:38 PM

See post above.

If players do bring in 150 hobgoblin mercenaries through the water mains to fight mind flayers, do I really want to roll 150 attacks every round and keep track of 150 separate pools of HP? Not really. Do I really want to be responsible for babysitting the mind flayers through every step of the ensuing slaughter? Also, not really. I'd rather just say, "You hobgoblins, do what the players said and shoot arrows at the mind flayers. You mind flayers, retreat down the tunnels until your reaction force comes up of Intellect Devourers hidden in goblin skulls comes up." If the mind flayers all die (or are forced to Plane Shift out) before then, fine, they die. But I want to make running that invasion as easy as possible on myself, and that means limiting my involvement to the things which actually need a DM, which are relatively few under the 5E ruleset.

What "whole rest of the system"? Outside of combat, 5E doesn't really have a system beyond ability checks. You might as well be freeform roleplaying.

5E's design is all about giving PCs an extra +d6 to their damage under narrow conditions, or letting them add WIS mod to cantrip damage, or imposing the Restrained condition. All of those things are things that I'd rather have a computer track than me. If you want to handwave all of that and just narrate, "Okay, you trip the ogre and he falls off a cliff and dies," sure, you can do that, but you can't claim that 5E was responsible for guiding you to do that. That's just freeform RP without reference to 5E rules. (And I can do that just as easily in CRPG/hybrid mode anyway. I type "Ogre #1 dies," and it's done. But if there are other ogres around and a fight erupts over that murder, I'll want the computer to handle the rest of the fighting while I think about the plot implications and how this is impacting the dramatic narrative.)

Yes, if you ignore everything else, there's nothing else. Tautology man is tautological. And pointless.

I don't understand what you think you're saying here, except it's not the 5e I know and play. .

I've had all of the following happen in games:

* Players deciding to pause in the middle of combat and negotiate with an enemy.
* Players cleverly using abilities to throw enemies out of the combat area. Not killing them, but delaying them enough to prevent reinforcements.
* Players altering the battle-space in unexpected and novel ways.
* Players parkouring off of parts of the battle-scape to reach inaccessible enemies.
* Players convincing dim-witted enemies to betray their masters and join them against the masters (this worked partially).
* Players talking an enemy out of combat entirely, using things I'd never predicted but that made sense.
* Players goading an enemy (verbally) into doing something very stupid by playing on its psychology and character.

All of these required DM adjudication. And that is exquisitely sensitive to the precise details, in ways you can't program ahead of time. Ability checks serve their purpose beautifully here, providing enough guidance to allow consistency where it is important without forcing false consistency between things that are different.

You're ignoring all the guidance because it's not in the form of specific, mechanical rules that can be blindly applied. And that's why it doesn't provide good results for you. You seem to want rules for everything and everything within the rules. In that case, you could just program them into a computer even better. 5e is on the light side of D&D editions. Not light overall, but lighter than many other editions.

As for the "having a computer roll the dice", there are many systems that do that already. I have an app that (if I wanted) would roll all the attacks and damage for me. I don't, because I find rolling dice fun. They do put limits on play, as it's not convenient to mutate the combatants list once combat starts.

mgshamster

2018-07-04, 12:39 PM

5E is mostly just attack rolls, damage calculations, saving throws, and lots of nitpicky little exceptions like "when XYZ happens you can roll the die twice." Computers are great at that stuff.

That's the one major thing that I warn everyone against.

Don't let the game become this. Think beyond the character sheet, lest you stiffle creativity, imagination, and thinking outside the box.

Hecuba

2018-07-04, 12:42 PM

You and I remember AD&D very differently.

And with respect to the OP, I find that the more I look at other games, the less vague 5e's rules seem.

That's likely because one of you played with Non-Weapon Proficiencies and the other either skipped them or only played 1st Ed.

NWPs make 3.5 skills look positively bare-bones.

Here is a lovely guide from back in the day:
http://members.tripod.com/Lord_Eadric/profs.html

Highlights include: baking (separate from cooking), begging (which is separate from underclass), chaos shaping, light sleeping (separate from feigning sleep), animal noise (which is different from sound immitation, voice mimicry, and Ventriloquism), animal handling (which is separate from falconry, animal lore, and animal training) flower arranging, giant kite flying, shamanistic ritual, and drinking.

MaxWilson

2018-07-04, 12:43 PM

You're ignoring all the guidance because it's not in the form of specific, mechanical rules that can be blindly applied. And that's why it doesn't provide good results for you. You seem to want rules for everything and everything within the rules. In that case, you could just program them into a computer even better.

How discouraging. Clearly we're not communicating on the same level here. Game structures != rules.

I'm not even asking for complete game structures here. "[Game structures] for everything" is not the point. All I am observing is that there aren't game structures for anything, really, except combat. If 5E's DMG even just had game structures for social parties and riddle contests, you'd see more varied play.

So yes, OP, I think 5E's dearth of structure for anything but combat has negative impacts on the game. It's a missed opportunity.

That's the one major thing that I warn everyone against.

Don't let the game become this. Think beyond the character sheet, lest you stiffle creativity, imagination, and thinking outside the box.

You're a good guy, mgshamster, and I think we prefer a similar style of game: heavy on the Combat As War. I spent years running 5E in that mode, trying to make the game richer, deeper, and more complex. But I got burned out because I felt that I was doing all the work myself with no help from 5E's design--I could just as well have been playing AD&D or GURPS or Shadowrun for those parts of the game. For a while I tried falling back to just letting my players kill monsters and get treasure, which they hugely enjoyed, but I just didn't enjoy running the game in that mode because I kept asking myself, "This stuff is brain-dead simple. Why haven't I automated this yet?"

Life came along and I got busy with other things, but I remain interested enough in 5E's mechanics to want to automate things so I can have the game I really want to run: lots of Combat As War stuff and creative thinking and stuff that happens socially and politically, but also a hack-and-slash option because I know that hack-and-slash can be fun and that tinkering with your combat bonuses is clearly a draw for 5E players (or they'd be playing another game system like FATE). Because hack-and-slash gameplay is, after all, only a power fantasy, and what fun is that fantasy if you can't take that power back outside the dungeon setting? What fun is gaining new spells like Simulacrum if you can only use it to kill things and gain experience to kill more things? No, you want to take that Simulacrum and hatch a scheme that will let you end a hundred-year war by replacing the Iron Overlord!

But I don't enjoy running the hack-and-slash part (though I don't mind playing hack-and-slash occasionally), and I want the computer to do it. Is that so hard to understand?

There are a ton of other things that can be done well only with computer support (adaptive difficulty, scenarios with hidden information like stealth-on-stealth battles) and I'm interested in them. There was a recent forum thread on "What happens if 500 soldiers fight 20 werewolves," and it would have been nice if I could just post a link and say, "Here's what happens if the soldiers are all wielding torches, and here's what happens if they try to grapple/prone and throw flaming oil, and here's what happens if they scatter and flee." Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and an interactive simulation is worth more than a picture. There's a ton of forum threads on calculating optimized DPR under certain sets of assumptions which could just... go away in favor of letting people experiment interactively. "Can my party of 4 9th level characters beat an adult black dragon?" Run a fight 10 times against 4 9th level Sharpshooter Champions to get a rough idea. Test out multiple sets of black dragon tactics against smiting paladins and sorlocks to see which ones make the dragon hard but not a TPK for a 9th level party. Etc., etc.

mgshamster

2018-07-04, 01:21 PM

Unoriginal

2018-07-04, 01:29 PM

You're joking, right? There is nothing about 5E's "roll a d20 to resolve actions that are not impossible" that is special. And 5E as it was first published doesn't have anything except that, outside of combat.

What "whole rest of the system"? Outside of combat, 5E doesn't really have a system beyond ability checks. You might as well be freeform roleplaying.

5E is mostly just attack rolls, damage calculations, saving throws, and lots of nitpicky little exceptions like "when XYZ happens you can roll the die twice."

As always, MaxWilson, I'm puzzled by your active presence on this subforum and your continued work on 5e related things despite your utter and complete loathing for everything that's great about 5e (and your denial than anything but combat exist).

Ignimortis

2018-07-04, 01:32 PM

As for the monsters: WotC has published enough of their monster-crafting methodology to see that aside from a couple of exceptions due to certain rule interractions, the monsters ARE consistent with the CRs, as their different stats are compensated by others.
.

Except they aren't. Bruiser monsters are, gimmicky stuff like spellcasters or ambushers aren't. Look at Lamia and then at Gnoll Fang of Yennoghu. Somehow they're both CR 4, except the latter is uniformly worse.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 01:35 PM

Unoriginal

2018-07-04, 01:41 PM

There are a ton of other things that can be done well only with computer support (adaptive difficulty, scenarios with hidden information like stealth-on-stealth battles) and I'm interested in them. There was a recent forum thread on "What happens if 500 soldiers fight 20 werewolves," and it would have been nice if I could just post a link and say, "Here's what happens if the soldiers are all wielding torches, and here's what happens if they try to grapple/prone and throw flaming oil, and here's what happens if they scatter and flee." Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and an interactive simulation is worth more than a picture. There's a ton of forum threads on calculating optimized DPR under certain sets of assumptions which could just... go away in favor of letting people experiment interactively. "Can my party of 4 9th level characters beat an adult black dragon?" Run a fight 10 times against 4 9th level Sharpshooter Champions to get a rough idea. Test out multiple sets of black dragon tactics against smiting paladins and sorlocks to see which ones make the dragon hard but not a TPK for a 9th level party. Etc., etc.

Except there is no computer game capable of simulating the freedom and the number of choices, tactics, possibilities, environmental factors, etc, that are available in an actual TTRPG.

This is just like the time you claimed a bunch of Gnolls could totally kill an Astral Dreadnought (which you deemed mediocre) all the time and then refused to do an actual in-game test of your claim.

You think that somehow a computer can rivalise with on-the-fly ideas and rulings and the dynamic interactions of dozens of characters, then calculate everything into neat little results and have it declared "this is what happens".

D&D isn't chess, MaxWilson. Run the same encounter against 100 different groups of PCs, you'll never have the same results.

MeimuHakurei

2018-07-04, 01:44 PM

It's more of a con because there's a huge difference between open-ended and vague. In 3.5, skills have the same open-endedness as 5th edition for the most part, but what makes those not vague is that you're given guidelines for what you can accomplish with them and benchmarks for certain things. In 5th Edition, the only guideline is "10 = easy, 15 = medium, 20 = hard" - just having a ~5 page skill section page for what is an example for an easy/medium/hard application of the skill would go a long way with taking the right DC numbers for overworld challenges. The game could even include a small list of examples where a skill uses a different attribute (potentially with the same optional rule tag as feats and such).

"The DM has the stats for the polymorph/summon" is also an eyesore to me - it basically wants to invalidate any informed decision making part on the player's side, as just having the DM decide what a player's ability even does means that you're having a DM playing with themselves. 3.5/4e made the right call to put the information of what they're getting into the player's hands.

2D8HP

2018-07-04, 01:44 PM

.....curious what others are experiencing at their tables.
While skill bloat can lead to odd and un-fun situations (see RIFTS), I think a certain degree of granularity helps reinforce verisimilitude....

That's likely because one of you played with Non-Weapon Proficiencies and the other either skipped them or only played 1st Ed....

Right.

I've played and enjoyed some 5e, but my time DM'ing it was extremely brief (and only for kids) so I'm going to extrapolate based on other games.

'78 rules RuneQuest was more detailed than D&D and impressed me by feeling like it had more versilama-what's-it, but it just didn't have the heights of fun that D&D did.

1977 bluebook Basic rules D&D was 48 pages of sublimety, but I wished for more rules that would cover all the situations not covered by those 48 pages, and then I got AD&D.

Flipping through many pages trying to find a specific rules, and especially watching someone do that, isn't much fun.

Forget that.

Less pages is better.

Just be clear about what I need to make up.

Ignimortis

2018-07-04, 01:53 PM

By the numbers, the Lamia is CR 2.5 (dCR 2, oCR 3). The Gnoll Fang of Yennoghu is also CR 2.5 (dCR 1, oCR 4).

How is a spellcaster with access to 5-th level spells and a way to stick those spells to the players an equal of a rather weak melee bruiser?

MaxWilson

2018-07-04, 02:02 PM

Max, I can certainly see your point of view. And a lot of what you say I can agree with.

I mean, sometimes I just want to play a non-thinking hack-n-slash game as you describe. But for a game like that, I think I'd much rather play Gloomhaven, where much of the rules are automated, there's no DM, and all of us can play a PC together.

I do really like your proposal of "let a computer run all the boring automated parts" while a person runs all the rest. That would actually be kind of cool - play a video game for the dungeon crawl and pick up a table top for the non-dungeon parts.

All in all, I'm not sure I disagree with you, I just want to also caution against getting stuck in a non-thinking rut. :) That's when we start seeing questions like, "what can you spend gold on if there's no magic marts?" That's a question from a person who had learned to not think beyond the character sheet.

Absolutely, I agree.

I should note that in my ideal world, you'd use the same app to run games in person as you did to run them over the Internet: when the DM says, "Suddenly, the ground erupts and you're surrounded by Umber Hulks!" the players can either look at the DM's laptop and give their orders to the DM verbally (who will enter them), or they can choose their actions by pushing a button on their phone (potentially using player-predefined PC-specific tactics like "Dervish of Death: shove prone/GWM x2/retreat out of range" + select a target [Umber Hulk #3]). As a DM I like it when the DM doesn't have to be a bottleneck for action declarations.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 02:08 PM

How is a spellcaster with access to 5-th level spells and a way to stick those spells to the players an equal of a rather weak melee bruiser?

A few things to note: The lamia doesn't have unrestricted access to 5th level spells. It has innate spell-casting, none of which are directly damaging. So for CR purposes (which only measures the maximum threat posed to PC health), those don't count.

It's innate spells are: disguise self, major image. charm person, mirror image, scrying, suggestion. Geas.

It has a DPR of 16.5 (oCR 2), but with its higher attack bonus it ends up oCR of 3. It has 97 effective HP (after resistances and immunities, etc) and AC 13, for an adjusted dCR of 2.0.

The Gnoll Fang (which I don't have the book for right now, so I'm just going off my spreadsheet of all the numbers) has an adjusted DPR of 31.33 and a normal ATK, for an offensive CR of 4. But with only 65 eHP, its dCR is 1.

The lamia is a powerful narrative creature, but it's not a major combat threat by itself. The gnoll, while less potent for moving a story along, poses a much more serious combat threat (although a bit of a glass cannon).

JoeJ

2018-07-04, 02:11 PM

1977 bluebook Basic rules D&D was 48 pages of sublimety, but I wished for more rules that would cover all the situations not covered by those 48 pages, and then I got AD&D.

Flipping through many pages trying to find a specific rules, and especially watching someone do that, isn't much fun.

Forget that.

Less pages is better.

Just be clear about what I need to make up.

Have you looked at Fate Accelerated (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114902/Fate-Accelerated-Edition)? It's 50 pages, tells you what you need to make up, and it's PWIW so the price is always right.

MaxWilson

2018-07-04, 02:14 PM

This is just like the time you claimed a bunch of Gnolls could totally kill an Astral Dreadnought (which you deemed mediocre) all the time and then refused to do an actual in-game test of your claim.

I refused to do your work for you, yes. I'm perfectly willing to do my own work my way to illustrate my position, but when you ask for a play-by-post of something I deem too boring to play out at the table, you have to do it yourself.

At least if you were doing it in person you could just roll the dice, but trying to communicate dozens of rounds of 3D envelopement over a textual medium like GITP forum, for Unoriginal's amusement? No thanks. That's the whole reason I'm interested in automation and visualization tools. I don't owe Unoriginal that much, or anything at all.

Pex

2018-07-04, 02:23 PM

https://s26.postimg.cc/p5zxg15mx/dontgetmestarted.jpg

Unoriginal

2018-07-04, 02:25 PM

Except they aren't. Bruiser monsters are, gimmicky stuff like spellcasters or ambushers aren't. Look at Lamia and then at Gnoll Fang of Yennoghu. Somehow they're both CR 4, except the latter is uniformly worse.

Lamia/Fang comparison:

Armor Class: 13/14
HPs: 97/65
Speed: 30/30
STR: 16/17
DEX: 13/15
CON: 15/15
INT: 14/10
WIS: 15/11
CHA: 16/13

Saving Throws: Str +3, Dex + 1, Con +2, Int +2, Wis +2, Cha +3/ Str +3, Dex + 2, Con +4, Int + 0, Wis +2, Cha +3
Skills: Deception +7, Insight +4, Stealth +3/---
Senses: Darkvision 60/Darkvision 60

Other features: Innate Spellcasting. (spell save DC 13) At will: disguise self (any humanoid form), major image, 3 per day each: charm person, mirror image, scrying, suggestion, 1 per day: geas/ Rampage

Actions: multiattack: +5 to hit, 14 or 5 damage AND +5 to hit, impose disadvantage on WIS if hit/ multiattack: +5 to hit, 6 damage if hit + 7 if fail DC 12 CON save AND +5 to hit, 7 damages AND +5 to hit, 7 damages

Sorry to say, Ignormortis, but it's quite easy to see that you claim is not accurate.

The Lamia beats the Gnoll Fang of Yeenoguh in HPs (by 32 points), raw INT, WIS and CHA, INT saves, skill proficiency, and has access to a few useful spells. The Fang beats the Lamia in term of AC, DEX, DEX and CON saves, and damage output.

How is a spellcaster with access to 5-th level spells and a way to stick those spells to the players an equal of a rather weak melee bruiser?

Being a spellcaster doesn't make you better than anyone else. The Lamia's spells are mostly illusions and enchantments, only 4 can be used to gain an edge in combat (with disguise self being useful to set up an ambush before the Lamia join the fray), and out of those most can be dealt with quite easily. Plus that "way to stick those spells to the players" require the Lamia to go in melee, which make several of its spell less useful.

Also, the Fang isn't "rather weak".

All in all, the two monsters are pretty equivalent, and even if the Lamia is a bit stronger on some points, the Fang is largely within the power level of a CR 4 monster. A CR is a category, with minimum and a maximum values to belong to it, and the Fang fits within those.

I don't owe Unoriginal that much, or anything at all.

One could say that when you make a claim, you own it to everyone involved in the debate, including yourself, to at least try to demonstrate it in a tangible manner.

Making an even wilder claim such as "I can control the near-limitless possibilities of dozens of rounds of combats in a 3D environment using a computer program, including all the strategies and reactions of both opposing players, to produce a predictable and provable result" is not demonstrating anything. Well, it's not demonstrating anything regarding the first claim, at least.

Now, I can certainly understand you having a poor opinion of me, as I'm a rather unpleasant jerk, so not wanting to interact with me is legitimate, but when you have such a low opinion of the game itself to the point you refuses to interact with it, I don't understand why you would inflict something like staying on this forum to yourself.

Ignimortis

2018-07-04, 02:41 PM

Being a spellcaster doesn't make you better than anyone else. The Lamia's spells are mostly illusions and enchantments, only 4 can be used to gain an edge in combat (with disguise self being useful to set up an ambush before the Lamia join the fray), and out of those most can be dealt with quite easily. Plus that "way to stick those spells to the players" require the Lamia to go in melee, which make several of its spell less useful.

Also, the Fang isn't "rather weak".

All in all, the two monsters are pretty equivalent, and even if the Lamia is a bit stronger on some points, the Fang is largely within the power level of a CR 4 monster. A CR is a category, with minimum and a maximum values to belong to it, and the Fang fits within those.

I'd say a way to turn your enemies against themselves is pretty important. If your barbarian turns around and hacks your knees off because the pretty woman asked him really nicely, that's two enemies and minus one party member. The gnoll doesn't do that, and while his damage is better, his defenses are still worse (+1 AC doesn't compensate for +30 HP on the Lamia, and saves don't bridge the gap either). Lamia is a more dangerous opponent if it's used to its' full potential, while the Gnoll Fang is basically three Gnolls in one enemy.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 02:52 PM

I'd say a way to turn your enemies against themselves is pretty important. If your barbarian turns around and hacks your knees off because the pretty woman asked him really nicely, that's two enemies and minus one party member. The gnoll doesn't do that, and while his damage is better, his defenses are still worse (+1 AC doesn't compensate for +30 HP on the Lamia, and saves don't bridge the gap either). Lamia is a more dangerous opponent if it's used to its' full potential, while the Gnoll Fang is basically three Gnolls in one enemy.

But suggestion can't do that. Not at all. Remember that the command must be reasonable as judged by the PC (when used against one). And a lamia only has a DC 13 on that ability. They'd have to go into melee and hit with their touch first to impose disadvantage. And if they do so, they (and all their allies) can't harm that target or it immediately ends.

You over-rate spells. The lamia has great potential as a mastermind monster, charming a bunch of NPCs to do its will. In a straight up fight, it's toast without doing much damage. The Gnoll, while less potent a manipulator, actually poses a physical threat to level 4 PCs.

JNAProductions

2018-07-04, 02:52 PM

I'd say a way to turn your enemies against themselves is pretty important. If your barbarian turns around and hacks your knees off because the pretty woman asked him really nicely, that's two enemies and minus one party member. The gnoll doesn't do that, and while his damage is better, his defenses are still worse (+1 AC doesn't compensate for +30 HP on the Lamia, and saves don't bridge the gap either). Lamia is a more dangerous opponent if it's used to its' full potential, while the Gnoll Fang is basically three Gnolls in one enemy.

And how does the Lamia do that? The only spell I see that MIGHT work is Suggestion, but there's a world of difference between, say, "Leave your axe and armor behind-we won't need it where we're going," which would probably work to get the Barbarian disarmed, and "Go kill/maim your friend."

Unoriginal

2018-07-04, 03:00 PM

I'd say a way to turn your enemies against themselves is pretty important. If your barbarian turns around and hacks your knees off because the pretty woman asked him really nicely, that's two enemies and minus one party member.

And do tell, how would the Lamia accomplish such a thing?

The Lamia has Charm Person, which cannot force someone to hurt one of their allies, and since it's a combat situation the Barbarian would have advantage on the WIS save (the Intoxicating Touch would bring that back to regular roll, provided the Lamia attacked the Barbarian with it before, but it requires the Lamia to be in melee). At most it'll make the Barbarian not attack the Lamia, but there are all the other adventurers who can still attack, and the Lamia spent her Action casting this spell.

The Lamia also has Sugggestion, wich also canot force someone to hurt one of their allies (in fact, demanding so would end the spell).

The gnoll doesn't do that, and while his damage is better, his defenses are still worse (+1 AC doesn't compensate for +30 HP on the Lamia, and saves don't bridge the gap either). Lamia is a more dangerous opponent if it's used to its' full potential, while the Gnoll Fang is basically three Gnolls in one enemy.

Saves can't be discounted, there is quite a bit of spells that target DEX and CON.

But you're right, the Lamia's defences are still better, if only by a relatively small margin.

You are, however, way overestimating what a Lamia can bring to the table in a fight, or way underestimating how powerful a 3-Gnolls-in-one combatant can be.

A Lamia is a much better face-of-the-enemy/spy/manipulator, but that doesn't make her stronger as an opponent.

JNAProductions

2018-07-04, 03:04 PM

Also, as was pointed out, CR 4 is not a point, it's a range.

A monster can be on the high end of CR 4 and another can be on the low end. So one might be clearly better, but so long as the gap is relatively small, they both fit. Yes, it does mean CR ain't perfect, but I don't think anyone has claimed it is. Useful tool, not infallible.

mephnick

2018-07-04, 03:08 PM

I mean the Lamia can tell the Barbarian to prone and grapple another character which effectively takes both characters out of the combat. That's well within the realms of Charm Person.

JNAProductions

2018-07-04, 03:10 PM

I mean the Lamia can tell the Barbarian to prone and grapple another character which effectively takes both characters out of the combat. That's well within the realms of Charm Person.

Depends on the character. And actually, literally all Charm Person does is Charm you. So you can't attack the Lamia, and it gains advantage on Charisma checks against you... But not much else.

But yeah, you grapple and prone the Cleric? Eat Sacred Flame and Spiritual Weapon, because those are affected not at all by being grappled or prone.

MeeposFire

2018-07-04, 03:20 PM

I find how the rules work to be great when I am at the table. However I find that people at a place like this often cannot handle a discussion with them. I might hold that against it but I have been around boards like this for 3e and 4e and just having more and more defined rules everywhere did not make for less arguments. Just different arguments. 3e more than 4e though really only because back then the Sage of the time was very much into the written rules and would rule that way and if what was written did not match the intent then at a later date an errata would be made and change it so that the written would match the intent.

This of course reduced arguments over that sort of thing but then you get people getting upset since all the eratta made their books "obsolete" or that the new rule is an unfair buff or nerf so really you never win you just choose what works best.

Unoriginal

2018-07-04, 03:24 PM

I mean the Lamia can tell the Barbarian to prone and grapple another character which effectively takes both characters out of the combat. That's well within the realms of Charm Person.

It's not within the realms of Charm Person.

Proning and grappling an ally in the middle of a fight is not something you can just convince an experienced combatant to do by snapping your fingers.

Even if the Lamia is the only hostile creature, making the Barbarian not consider this a combat situation, it'd take more than an advantage and a +3 to CHA (or +7 to CHA(Deception) to convince someone to attack their allies without reason, even in a non-lethal manner, and it'd be even harder to do that for more than one round.

And even then, you're still allied with the person, while that woman who told you to do that is a stranger, if a convincing one. If the Barbarian gets told something like "your friend is mind-controlled, you must stop them from moving" by some random person, the Barbarian is much more likely to go "wait, what?" than doing it unthinkingly, no matter how charming this random person is.

Depends on the character. And actually, literally all Charm Person does is Charm you. So you can't attack the Lamia, and it gains advantage on Charisma checks against you... But not much else.

But yeah, you grapple and prone the Cleric? Eat Sacred Flame and Spiritual Weapon, because those are affected not at all by being grappled or prone.

Or rather, the Lamia will eat those even if she asks the Barbarian to grapple the Cleric and somehow succeed.

MaxWilson

2018-07-04, 03:29 PM

And actually, literally all Charm Person does is Charm you. So you can't attack the Lamia, and it gains advantage on Charisma checks against you... But not much else.

It does a little bit more than that. "The Charmed creature regards you as a friendly acquaintance."

mephnick

2018-07-04, 03:30 PM

And even then, you're still allied with the person, while that woman who told you to do that is a stranger, if a convincing one. If the Barbarian gets told something like "your friend is mind-controlled, you must stop them from moving" by some random person, the Barbarian is much more likely to go "wait, what?"

It makes you a friendly acquaintance to the lamia, she is no longer a stranger to you. Depending on how attached to your party you are, she's may as well be on par with everyone else there without CHA checks.

Or rather, the Lamia will eat those even if she asks the Barbarian to grapple the Cleric and somehow succeed.

Or he could grapple someone who wasn't cherry picked for abilities that wouldn't be affected, like another martial. Now your front line is gone.

Unoriginal

2018-07-04, 03:51 PM

It makes you a friendly acquaintance to the lamia, she is no longer a stranger to you.

Fair, it seems I missed that part.

Depending on how attached to your party you are, she's may as well be on par with everyone else there without CHA checks.

Even so, if a friendly acquaintance tells you "grapple your other friendly acquaintance", it's still not something easy to convince. If there are other enemies in the room, the Barbarian will almost certainly go "hell no" because doing so is actively detrimental to themselves.

If the Lamia is alone in the room and the other adventurers try to convince the Barbarian to not do that, then

Or he could grapple someone who wasn't cherry picked for abilities that wouldn't be affected, like another martial. Now your front line is gone.

Possible, but then what? Someone Charmed letting their friendly acquaintance kill each other without reacting is far out of the realm of the spell, and even without frontliners the Lamia isn't that terrifying a combatant.

Xetheral

2018-07-04, 06:03 PM

the Lamia isn't that terrifying a combatant.

She is if she escapes.... That makes the stakes much, much higher. Sure, one can make a decent argument that "ability to destroy the party out of combat" isn't what CR is trying to measure, but one can make an equally good argument that disregarding non-combat power makes CR useless for anything except a fight to the death.

The Gnoll doesn't become a LOT more dangerous if bypassed. The Lamia does.

JNAProductions

2018-07-04, 06:05 PM

She is if she escapes.... That makes the stakes much, much higher. Sure, one can make a decent argument that "ability to destroy the party out of combat" isn't what CR is trying to measure, but one can make an equally good argument that disregarding non-combat power makes CR useless for anything except a fight to the death.

The Gnoll doesn't become a LOT more dangerous if bypassed. The Lamia does.

Not a fight to the death, just a fight in general.

And what do you WANT CR to measure? Yes, the Lamia is more dangerous and savvy in most out of combat scenarios. But CR measures combat potential-that's what it's there for.

Unoriginal

2018-07-04, 06:16 PM

She is if she escapes.... That makes the stakes much, much higher. Sure, one can make a decent argument that "ability to destroy the party out of combat" isn't what CR is trying to measure

Xetheral, if someone says "X is not that terrifying a combatant", saying "X is a terrifying combatant if X escapes combat and destroy people out of combat" doesn't make sense.

Yes, the Lamia is a threat outside combat. But that's not what CR is about, and Ignimortis was talking about the Lamia's combat performance.

but one can make an equally good argument that disregarding non-combat power makes CR useless for anything except a fight to the death.

...that's basically all what CR is about, yes. Acknowledgedly and on purpose.

Although it's "a fight until one of the side is unable or unwilling to fight anymore", not always to death.

If the Grung Elite Warrior is the kind to surrender when low on HP, it's still a defeat, and has no impact on the CR (since it still is determined by how hard it is to bring said Grung to that point).

The Gnoll doesn't become a LOT more dangerous if bypassed. The Lamia does.

Well given that one Gnoll creates more Gnolls by existing, it's also a threat to let them go. But sure, it's more a "down the line you might face more Gnolls" thing rather than "you might have a mastermind after you".

Xetheral

2018-07-04, 06:35 PM

The reason the distinction between "a fight" and "a fight to the death" matters is because a creature more powerful out of combat than in-combat is not going to willingly stick around to fight to the death.

A lamia won't try to kill you if combat starts. The lamia will flee and try to destroy you later using its powerful out-of-combat abilities. So sure, its CR measures the difficulty of killing it before it can kill you, but that happens to be irrelevant since it's unlikely to happen. The relevant difficulty of an encounter with a hostile lamia is how hard it is to kill before it escapes.

Accordingly, a lamia can't be used interchangeably in an encounter with a creature of the same CR without radically changing the difficulty (and nature) of the encounter. I therefore think it's a good example of the limitations of CR as a measure of difficulty.

Hecuba

2018-07-04, 06:47 PM

[...]and your denial than anything but combat exist.

My reading of his comments is somewhat different than yours: he doesn't seem to be saying nothing outside of combat exists. He seems to me to be saying that 5e does not approach them through the kind of robust system that allows them to exist as a game element in their own right.

And I think that is a fair comment: if you were to remove combat entirely for 5e, what would you have left? There are a few niche elements like traps, a subset of spells that deal heavily with non-combat situations, and ability checks. There is significant world building, but much of the actual non-combat play does end up as primarily RP-driven rather than being supported by a robust rule system.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, and it seems to be a deliberate design choice. But it does make, for example, strategic challenges in the non-combat space hard to build a game around.

On the flip side, that's not something any version of D&D had ever excelled at. Things logged Burning Wheel do better there.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 06:48 PM

Accordingly, a lamia can't be used interchangeably in an encounter with a creature of the same CR without radically changing the difficulty (and nature) of the encounter. I therefore think it's a good example of the limitations of CR as a measure of difficulty.

Very few creatures can. Even trading a melee-heavy bruiser for an archer of the same CR changes the encounter. That's why CR is not (directly) used for balancing encounters. It plays a role, certainly, but is only one of several factors. That's not a limitation, that's by design.

CR is only for determining:

* The average survival time (in rounds) against comparable PCs.
* The probability that it will one-round KO a weak PC.

That is, it's a ceiling on the direct combat threat posed by the creature, in isolation. That's all it ever pretends to be. Turns out for many encounters, this is an important component of encounter balance.

And as far as "runs away and causes bad things to happen", the king of that (pun intended) is the Noble. Attack a king and don't kill him and you'll have his whole army after you. And that's a CR 1/8 NPC stat block. Narrative power and CR are completely uncoupled from each other. By design. By good design. Otherwise all your kings have to be high-level combat monsters, which (knowing history) is a bit screwy and cuts out a lot of possible stories.

Xetheral

2018-07-04, 07:11 PM

Very few creatures can. Even trading a melee-heavy bruiser for an archer of the same CR changes the encounter. That's why CR is not (directly) used for balancing encounters. It plays a role, certainly, but is only one of several factors. That's not a limitation, that's by design.

CR is only for determining:

* The average survival time (in rounds) against comparable PCs.
* The probability that it will one-round KO a weak PC.

That is, it's a ceiling on the direct combat threat posed by the creature, in isolation. That's all it ever pretends to be. Turns out for many encounters, this is an important component of encounter balance.

And as far as "runs away and causes bad things to happen", the king of that (pun intended) is the Noble. Attack a king and don't kill him and you'll have his whole army after you. And that's a CR 1/8 NPC stat block. Narrative power and CR are completely uncoupled from each other. By design. By good design. Otherwise all your kings have to be high-level combat monsters, which (knowing history) is a bit screwy and cuts out a lot of possible stories.

Do you agree that neither of things you cite as being measured by CR are relevant for fleeing opponents? The fleeing opponent won't be making attacks, so offensive CR is useless, and the number of rounds it will last in a stand-up fight is only loosely correlated to how many rounds it can last when it's dashing between full cover.

If you agree, then isn't it fair to say that CR doesn't measure anything relevant for either the Noble or the Lamia?

If you disagree, can you please explain how either component of CR is relevant to a fleeing creature?

JNAProductions

2018-07-04, 07:12 PM

Xeth, what do you want CR to be? Hell, do you have an example RPG that has an Offensive CR, a Defensive CR, a Fleeing CR, a Social CR, a so on and so forth?

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-04, 07:15 PM

Do you agree that neither of things you cite as being measured by CR are relevant for fleeing opponents? The fleeing opponent won't be making attacks, so offensive CR is useless, and the number of rounds it will last in a stand-up fight is only loosely correlated to how many rounds it can last when it's dashing between full cover.

If you agree, then isn't it fair to say that CR doesn't measure anything relevant for either the Noble or the Lamia?

If you disagree, can you please explain how either component of CR is relevant to a fleeing creature?

Huh?

Why should it be? That's not what it is intended or designed for at all. So why should it be useful for that?

CR measures what it was designed to measure, not something else. A fork not being useful as a shovel doesn't make it a bad item. Getting bad results from paving streets with pie crust doesn't make pie crust useless. It means you're using it for something it was never supposed to be used for.

Narrative power and CR are completely uncoupled, by design. As I said.

Also, there are really only two options when someone flees. Either they're caught quickly and can't escape again/die, or they get clean away. Movement is really the only thing that matters there, as well as passive defenses (HP + AC + some saves) for the first round or so.

Xetheral

2018-07-04, 07:21 PM

Huh?

Why should it be? That's not what it is intended or designed for at all. So why should it be useful for that?

CR measures what it was designed to measure, not something else. A fork not being useful as a shovel doesn't make it a bad item. Getting bad results from paving streets with pie crust doesn't make pie crust useless. It means you're using it for something it was never supposed to be used for.

Narrative power and CR are completely uncoupled, by design. As I said.

Also, there are really only two options when someone flees. Either they're caught quickly and can't escape again/die, or they get clean away. Movement is really the only thing that matters there, as well as passive defenses (HP + AC + some saves) for the first round or so.

I'm not claiming that CR should be relevant for fleeing opponents. I'm claiming that CR isn't relevant for fleeing opponents. And it sounds like you agree.

I'm also claiming that Nobles and Lamias (with greater Narrative power than combat power) will (almost always) flee from combat, and therefore that CR (usually) doesn't tell us anything useful about either creature.

Does that make more sense?

JNAProductions

2018-07-04, 07:23 PM

I'm not claiming that CR should be relevant for fleeing opponents. I'm claiming that CR isn't relevant for fleeing opponents. And it sounds like you agree.

I'm also claiming that Nobles and Lamias (with greater Narrative power than combat power) will (almost always) flee from combat, and therefore that CR (usually) doesn't tell us anything useful about either creature.

Does that make more sense?

No. Narrative power is not CR, but that doesn't mean you don't fight.

If you run combat-free D&D, then yes, CR is pretty much useless. But it is pretty useful for making good, properly challenging encounters.

Unoriginal

2018-07-04, 07:25 PM

Do you agree that neither of things you cite as being measured by CR are relevant for fleeing opponents?

It's useful to see how good they are at fleeing when opposed by people who want to stop them

The fleeing opponent won't be making attacks, so offensive CR is useless, [QUOTE=Xetheral;23198723]

That's utterly absurd. People who flee often have to fight to do so, so that they can actually manage to do so.

[QUOTE=Xetheral;23198723]
and the number of rounds it will last in a stand-up fight is only loosely correlated to how many rounds it can last when it's dashing between full cover.[QUOTE=Xetheral;23198723]

Again, utterly absurd. What full cover? Why is everyone who flee obligatorily within the range of full cover, rather than within the reach of enemy weapons, be they ranged or melee from someone who's fast enough to do so?

[QUOTE=Xetheral;23198723]
If you agree, then isn't it fair to say that CR doesn't measure anything relevant for either the Noble or the Lamia?

Xetheral, you're just not making any sense.

Lamias can fight to the death. They can also fight a while until they realize their foes are too much to handle, and then flee. They can also try to flee but be blocked. They can also try to stay away from enemies while commanding minions and then going for the kill.

Same thing for the Noble. The Noble statblock actually is used at several different places to represent a military leader, so not all of them are going to be kings rushing to safety the instant danger shows up.

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove, but it's not going to work.

Kane0

2018-07-04, 07:28 PM

It's a pro to me.

For me, D&D as a system has always just been a set of tools and mechanics that allow one to make a story with their friends in the manner they so choose. Each edition is a different set focusing on different things and so far I find the framework of 5e the easiest to work with, though I admit I haven't had much exposure to pre-3rd ed D&D at the table. I've never let myself be restricted by what is or is not written, nor imposed that restriction on others I play with, so the relative freedom provided by the basic mechanics 5e sets up is very useful to me without going overboard.

Basically, I find 5e more open and moddable than 3rd and 4th (partially due to some of that vagueness) so I get more enjoyment out of tinkering with it, which actually sees play at the table.

Sigreid

2018-07-04, 07:31 PM

It's useful to see how good they are at fleeing when opposed by people who want to stop them

[QUOTE=Xetheral;23198723]
The fleeing opponent won't be making attacks, so offensive CR is useless, [QUOTE=Xetheral;23198723]

That's utterly absurd. People who flee often have to fight to do so, so that they can actually manage to do so.

[QUOTE=Xetheral;23198723]
and the number of rounds it will last in a stand-up fight is only loosely correlated to how many rounds it can last when it's dashing between full cover.[QUOTE=Xetheral;23198723]

Again, utterly absurd. What full cover? Why is everyone who flee obligatorily within the range of full cover, rather than within the reach of enemy weapons, be they ranged or melee from someone who's fast enough to do so?

Xetheral, you're just not making any sense.

Lamias can fight to the death. They can also fight a while until they realize their foes are too much to handle, and then flee. They can also try to flee but be blocked. They can also try to stay away from enemies while commanding minions and then going for the kill.

Same thing for the Noble. The Noble statblock actually is used at several different places to represent a military leader, so not all of them are going to be kings rushing to safety the instant danger shows up.

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove, but it's not going to work.

Being tough, cunning and dangerous warriors is how nobles originally got to be nobles in Europe at least.

georgie_leech

2018-07-04, 07:43 PM

[.

Being tough, cunning and dangerous warriors is how nobles originally got to be nobles in Europe at least.

It's how the family's became Noble at least. YMMV on the retention of such qualities through the generations.

Also, you might want to double check your quotes there.

Tanarii

2018-07-04, 07:44 PM

That's likely because one of you played with Non-Weapon Proficiencies and the other either skipped them or only played 1st Ed.If you say "AD&D" and you're not talking about 1e, that's a failure to communicate. /grognardgrumble

Also, there are really only two options when someone flees. Either they're caught quickly and can't escape again/die, or they get clean away. Movement is really the only thing that matters there, as well as passive defenses (HP + AC + some saves) for the first round or so.Clearly we need a Chase Rating. ChR?

Xetheral

2018-07-04, 07:44 PM

It's useful to see how good they are at fleeing when opposed by people who want to stop them

That's utterly absurd. People who flee often have to fight to do so, so that they can actually manage to do so.

Again, utterly absurd. What full cover? Why is everyone who flee obligatorily within the range of full cover, rather than within the reach of enemy weapons, be they ranged or melee from someone who's fast enough to do so?

Xetheral, you're just not making any sense.

Lamias can fight to the death. They can also fight a while until they realize their foes are too much to handle, and then flee. They can also try to flee but be blocked. They can also try to stay away from enemies while commanding minions and then going for the kill.

Same thing for the Noble. The Noble statblock actually is used at several different places to represent a military leader, so not all of them are going to be kings rushing to safety the instant danger shows up.

I'm not sure what you're trying to prove, but it's not going to work.

Attacking to help flee works in real life because you might hider the pursuit. But under the 5e combat rules pursuers aren't hindered by damage until they fall to zero HP. Ergo, in 5e, the only time attacking helps with fleeing is if you have some non-damage-based reason to attack (e.g. Mobilty, Fancy Footwork, Shocking Grasp, etc.) Lamias don't have any of those. Otherwise you need the speed increase from the Dash action if you want to open up distance as quickly as possible from your opponent to get out of range.

In addition to Dashing, full cover is the other important part of fleeing, because it protects you from attacks without requiring an action. Sure, if there is no cover, defensive CR is a decent measure of how many rounds you have to get out of range. But that (a) isn't a particularly common scenario where no cover is available at all, and (b) gets added to the otherwise-useless-for-fleeing creatures offensive CR to create the overall CR, diluting the value of the later figure.

Yes, Lamias can fight to the death. But for a character whose power is almost all based on non-combat abilities, why would they?

Hecuba

2018-07-04, 08:13 PM

If you say "AD&D" and you're not talking about 1e, that's a failure to communicate. /grognardgrumble

Sorry, my bad: I put my NWPs in Dream Interpretation, Necrology, and Veterinary Healing rather than something that would help with communication (like Oratory, Sign Language, or Fast Talking).

Tanarii

2018-07-04, 08:52 PM

Eric Diaz

2018-07-04, 09:11 PM

Mostly a con, since makes things unclear (ranged weapon attack different than ranged attack with a weapon or something, etc).

Sure, it gives some leeway, but I'd house rule it anyway. And the system is good enough as it is, so I think it could have been clearer.

The lack of a properly functional skill system, including rules for building a raft is definitely a PRO, IMO, since I dislike rules bloat nowadays.

Monsters variance... heh... could be better.

Still the best D&D since BX IMO (okay, MAYBE the RC).

2D8HP

2018-07-04, 10:19 PM

Have you looked at Fate Accelerated (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114902/Fate-Accelerated-Edition)? It's 50 pages, tells you what you need to make up, and it's PWIW so the price is always right.

Thanks! I actually picked it up last year but I haven't had a chance to play it yet.

I find how the rules work to be great when I am at the table. However I find that people at a place like this often cannot handle a discussion with them. I might hold that against it but I have been around boards like this for 3e and 4e and just having more and more defined rules everywhere did not make for less arguments. Just different arguments. 3e more than 4e though really only because back then the Sage of the time was very much into the written rules and would rule that way and if what was written did not match the intent then at a later date an errata would be made and change it so that the written would match the intent.

This of course reduced arguments over that sort of thing but then you get people getting upset since all the eratta made their books "obsolete" or that the new rule is an unfair buff or nerf so really you never win you just choose what works best.

5e seems to me to be the most encouraging of house rules and general tinkering after 0e, both because of language in the rules (especially the DMG) and a relatively robust core.

Now I just need players for my version.

Kane0

2018-07-04, 10:34 PM

5e seems to me to be the most encouraging of house rules and general tinkering after 0e, both because of language in the rules (especially the DMG) and a relatively robust core.

Now I just need players for my version.

Glad it's not just me.

Do tell?

MaxWilson

2018-07-04, 10:55 PM

5e seems to me to be the most encouraging of house rules and general tinkering after 0e, both because of language in the rules (especially the DMG) and a relatively robust core.

Heh. Heh heh heh. Do you remember how much AD&D 2nd edition was houseruled/tinkered? It had, like, ten thousand rule variants for everything, and everybody played it differently.

I think you could make an argument that 5E is approximately as friendly to tinkering as 2nd edition was, but it's certainly not MORE friendly to tinkering. For example, I've only seen maybe one or two variant magic systems for 5E (counting DMG spellpoints), but I know of at least six for AD&D 2nd edition.

Tanarii

2018-07-04, 10:58 PM

Still the best D&D since BX IMO (okay, MAYBE the RC).
That's pretty much where I stand on the matter at the momenT. OTOH I've liked every edition when it was 'live'. But I'll always hold a special place in my heart for BECMI.

opaopajr

2018-07-04, 11:33 PM

It's a good thing, IMHO and IME.

Some want to codify ALL into Legalistic statute and technical writing jargoned incremental steps... But life has gaps in it, it just does, (thanks Sarah Silverman!). There is no grand unifying abstract theory applicaple to ALL things. And this goes infinitely moreso for Imagination Land (the range of the imaginable). To ask for otherwise is to ask for a One-Size-Fits-All for all of sapience's needs, desires, and imagination.

It's Chasing the Dragon for Absolute Objective Truth on the Lowest Possible Stakes Imaginable (tee hee, I made a "punny!"). It's rather missing the point about The Toy Known as RPGs.

If that's your hill to die on? Have fun. But as you get older perspective and priorities change. And that's OK, too. The world is big, filled with mystery, and so is the thinking mind. It's OK to juggle contradictions, be flexible as you travel amid peers, and think up of 6 impossible things before breakfast.
:smalltongue:

opaopajr

2018-07-04, 11:56 PM

That's likely because one of you played with Non-Weapon Proficiencies and the other either skipped them or only played 1st Ed.

NWPs make 3.5 skills look positively bare-bones.

Here is a lovely guide from back in the day:
http://members.tripod.com/Lord_Eadric/profs.html

Highlights include: baking (separate from cooking), begging (which is separate from underclass), chaos shaping, light sleeping (separate from feigning sleep), animal noise (which is different from sound immitation, voice mimicry, and Ventriloquism), animal handling (which is separate from falconry, animal lore, and animal training) flower arranging, giant kite flying, shamanistic ritual, and drinking.

NWPs from ADnD 2e were optional and by RAW considered professional level skills: where one would not have to roll unless it was significantly challenging to a professional.

But not every table played that way. They often ran it as permission-based instead, and often over-rolled. Rules as second hand experience became a thing from a lot of table divergence. Normally not a bad thing, but can lead to impressions divergent from the actual edition content.

I've experienced tables ran like you lament. But then I also experienced tables that disabused that misinterpretation. And when I ran my own 2e I went back to the source and found out what it actually was, the latter, profession-based so as to wave away extra rolling.

EDIT: I should add that by the post-Player's Options (essentially 2.5e) that they were giving up the ghost to power inflation and permission-based skills, but that was like on the transition of TSR death and WotC buy-out and the herald coming of 3e. I remember that intimately during my penance years serving time at a game store. :smallsmile:

Hecuba

2018-07-05, 10:15 AM

NWPs from ADnD 2e were optional and by RAW considered professional level skills: where one would not have to roll unless it was significantly challenging to a professional.

But not every table played that way. They often ran it as permission-based instead, and often over-rolled. Rules as second hand experience became a thing from a lot of table divergence. Normally not a bad thing, but can lead to impressions divergent from the actual edition content.

I've experienced tables ran like you lament. But then I also experienced tables that disabused that misinterpretation. And when I ran my own 2e I went back to the source and found out what it actually was, the latter, profession-based so as to wave away extra rolling.

EDIT: I should add that by the post-Player's Options (essentially 2.5e) that they were giving up the ghost to power inflation and permission-based skills, but that was like on the transition of TSR death and WotC buy-out and the herald coming of 3e. I remember that intimately during my penance years serving time at a game store. :smallsmile:

Even for profession level skills, NWPs were overboard. For example: Animal Handling, Animal Lore, Animal Training would probably be best summarized as Animal Husbandry (though 3rd ed grouped it under "Animal Handling" instead, which is fine). I get the goal - there were different NWP availabilities by class, keyed to different stats to control difficulty. But it is still a bit overboard.

5e, in my opinion, went a bit too far in the other direction on the subject. To its credit, it is probably bet best version of D&D for straightforward adventuring. But it largely cedes the rest of the game's world to a combination of role-playing, DM prerogative, and setting design.

That is a valid design goal, and arguably one that gets closer to the heart of D&D. As a whole, I think it's probably a good thing.

But it does, for example, limit some of the non-adventuring side games you an pursue on the side. I've got a player in one game right now who is building an illicit potions cartel in downtime. 5e doesn't have much to support interacting with the world in that way off-the-shelf if you want things like degree of success.

I decided to mirror the combat system rather than expand the ability check system - the cartel and its competitors have "character" sheets. Money maps to HP, basic undercutting and supply manipulation represents attack rolls, customer "loyalty"/fear represents AC, underhanded shenanigans (like manipulating a convenient adventuring party into raiding an illegal potions warehouse) map to spell slots, weeks map to short rests, months to long rests. Once I came up with the basic solution, the homebrew became workable and straightforward - effectively, I'm just building additional monsters with renamed stats and balancing 1v1 encounter. But it did still need some homebrew to interact consistently with that realm of play as a game system.

Edit: That said, while I do think you could probably accommodate a little bit more without ceding significant ground on 5e's simplicity of play design goals, you're probably not going to get it to handle Cartels and Corporations without undermining those goals or requiring home. Overall, I find the design goal meritorious, even if I think the implementation was a bit too conservative.

2D8HP

2018-07-05, 12:06 PM

Glad it's not just me.

Do tell?

Heh. Heh heh heh. Do you remember how much AD&D 2nd edition was houseruled/tinkered? It had, like, ten thousand rule variants for everything, and everybody played it differently.

I think you could make an argument that 5E is approximately as friendly to tinkering as 2nd edition was, but it's certainly not MORE friendly to tinkering. For example, I've only seen maybe one or two variant magic systems for 5E (counting DMG spellpoints), but I know of at least six for AD&D 2nd edition.

No I really don't remember 2e that well as I thought '85's Unearthed Arcana was a foretaste, and a ferret drove me out of my last D&D table for decades.

I do remember "variants" of oD&D (All the Worlds Monsters, Arduin, et cetera) but mostly I remember:

Dungeons &Dragons vol. 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (1974)
page 36,

"AFTERWARD:
There are unquestionably areas which have been glossed over. While we deeply regret the necessity, space requires that we put in the essentials only, and the trimming will oftimes have to be added by the referee and his players. We have attempted to furnish an ample framework, and building should be both easy and fun. In this light, we urge you to refrain from writing for rule interpretations or the like unless you are absolutely at a loss, for everything herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way! On the other hand, we are not loath to answer your questions, but why have us do any more of your imagining for you? Write to us and tell about your additions, ideas, and what have you. We could always do with a bit of improvement in our refereeing."

There was similar "make to game your own" language in AD&D, but there was also "...you must avoid the tendency to drift into areas foreign to the game as a whole. Such campaigns become so strange as to be no longer "AD&D"....", and as far as I can tell subsequent A/D&D also had both pro-customization and "one-true-way" language, leading to RAW worship and "player empowerment" :yuk:

The 5e DMG dumps that mess and lists options not set-in-stone-commandments, encouraging a more oD&D rather than AD&D approach (albeit with a giant pile of AD&D sized content).

You'd think that would lead to more DM's (who are in short supply), but instead there's been a giant increase in forlorn players.

Oh well, it's still better than when World of Darkness was the top game, and tables playing A/D&D without attack ferrets couldn't be found by me.

After tables playing A/D&D disappeared by the late 1980's (except for that one with the damn ferret!) was there a revival with 2e like there was with 3e and 5e?

[now slightly edited for clarity]

KorvinStarmast

2018-07-05, 12:32 PM

poisons the well. OK, your opinion is noted. I don't find the rules vague, but there are spots where they trip over themselves. 5e is not "rules light" and with the bloat from the supplements, you need to keep track of stuff if you want it to run smoothly. It may not require the kind of system mastery that 3.5 did, to avoid trap options, but a little mechanics mastery goes a long way. As a player, all you need to know is what you class can do, and what anyone can do. That, and IMO everyone needs to understand the action economy.

There are two issues you're raising:
1) Why does 5E leave so much room for the DM to decide things;
and 2) How does the 5E monster/NPC creation work?
As I see it, point (1) It makes the game move faster. Make a ruling a play on. Based on the Mearls and Crawford utterances in the past 4 years, the premise is anti rules lawyer. I favor that philosophy. On point (2) it's in the DMG and it works OK. There is enough stuff in the MM to where you can start with something in there and then fiddle with it, if you like.

It's not that the Intellect Devourer has a deceptively low CR, it's just that the nature of its powers give it a big boost if the situation favors it. *golf clap* that's a good run down of the I.D.'s threat level.

Some DMs are really anal about the bajillion non-weapon proficiencies though, and give you the NWP penalty if you don't have the exact right one (Weaponsmithing as opposed to Blacksmithing for example). Yeah, I've been at tables like that.

If you only use the PHB and the DMG it is a magical potion. Yeah, when we started it was "the only magic item you can buy/make easily."

Considering 99.9999% of tabletop gaming systems are more "vague" than 5e, I'd say maybe the hobby just isn't for you. Could be.

5e is a decent mix of 3.x rules and 4e rules (and some new ones!) with a lot of pre-3e philosophy.

5e could be turned into a video game, but a lot of things would need a pre-ruling by the I've got Sword Coast Legends. Still trying to find that last thing in the Sewers in Luskin, then stopped playing since our group broke up for a bit.

No. It can't. You're playing some game that's not the same as the 5e I know. It's completely alien. I have many sessions go by without fights, and fights that turn on all sorts of unorthodox tactics. Heck, I've run games where the players didn't know any mechanics at all and just narrated and I resolved it. You're fixated on a few mechanics that aren't really that important to the game and ignoring the whole rest of the system. That's your prerogative, but it's silly and you're doing 5e a disservice. Yeah, we've done some ToTM sessions that were fantastic using this chassis. And the action moved a lot faster.

But that's not hack-and-slash gaming. D&D isn't required to be hack and slash gaming. A subset of D&D, the dungeon crawl, is like that. Played plenty of that, but that's not the only way to do it.

That's the one major thing that I warn everyone against. Don't let the game become this. Think beyond the character sheet, lest you stiffle creativity, imagination, and thinking outside the box. Yeah, good post.

As always, MaxWilson, I'm puzzled by your active presence on this subforum and your continued work on 5e related things despite your utter and complete loathing for everything that's great about 5e (and your denial than anything but combat exist). We each have our own soap box that we prefer to stand upon, I suppose ...

Also, as was pointed out, CR 4 is not a point, it's a range.
Good point, to often overlooked.

The reason the distinction between "a fight" and "a fight to the death" matters is because a creature more powerful out of combat than in-combat is not going to willingly stick around to fight to the death. Hmm, my brain just pointed to Rakshasa. :smallcool:

opaopajr

2018-07-06, 02:53 AM

Even for profession level skills, NWPs were overboard. For example: Animal Handling, Animal Lore, Animal Training would probably be best summarized as Animal Husbandry (though 3rd ed grouped it under "Animal Handling" instead, which is fine). I get the goal - there were different NWP availabilities by class, keyed to different stats to control difficulty. But it is still a bit overboard.

Eh, opinions. I prefer NWP better because it reminded you that it's a tinkerer's toolbox and demanded for you to own your campaign's setting. Running with everything 'On' cedes ground to a deluge of material. And you should drown in it for abdicating your GM job, and trying to "build a birdhouse" with "every tool in Home Depot."

I don't truck much with "the game made me do it!" whinge. :smalltongue: Especially with optional material.

NWPs were there to handwave away extra rolling. But it also asked of a slice of professionalism as pertinent to your world. Animal Training, Handling, and Lore are all very different professions -- whose differences may or may not be pertinent to your setting or campaign. The challenge is to be assertive and choose. So if you do turn those all on *why did you make that a priority* in your campaign's setting, which implies "now *show us why they are a priority*."

Not everyone wants to bother. OK. Then use the PHB optional NWP core choices (or not), and voilà you are done, no major contradictions. But don't pass off too many optional choices, especially from other texts, as if you were obliged to include them all. :smallsmile: Again, Home Depot, don't need to use all the available tools each and every time. :smallcool:

MaxWilson

2018-07-06, 03:31 AM

D&D isn't required to be hack and slash gaming. A subset of D&D, the dungeon crawl, is like that. Played plenty of that, but that's not the only way to do it.

Yes, I know that. But hack-and-slash game is required to be hack-and-slash gaming, by definition. If that's confusing, go back and read the context of the discussion, which was about what kinds of games might as well be CRPGs.

2D8HP

2018-07-06, 09:50 AM

Yes, I know that. But hack-and-slash game is required to be hack-and-slash gaming, by definition. If that's confusing, go back and read the context of the discussion, which was about what kinds of games might as well be CRPGs.

Oh that's easy.

None.

Video games give me headaches.

mephnick

2018-07-06, 09:50 AM

D&D isn't required to be hack and slash gaming. A subset of D&D, the dungeon crawl, is like that. Played plenty of that, but that's not the only way to do it.

It..kind of is if you're using the system for it's intended design, which is the whole point of choosing a system. If you're regularly ignoring major mechanics or a major focus of a system then it's the wrong system for you. I know there are other reasons to choose a system (already know it, group unwilling to learn, it's the most popular), but you aren't really playing D&D if dungeons (adventure sites) and dragons (killing monsters) aren't the major focus of your narrative. There are lots of TTRPGS out there that don't focus on combat, modern D&D isn't one of them. You choose Apocalypse World if you want a game of surviving a wasteland and exploring interpersonal relationships. You choose Dogs in the Vineyard if you want a game about exploring religious authority and using it to "fix" problems. You choose Stars Without Number or Traveler if you want to explore space. You choose D&D if you want a game about exploring caves and killing ****. You choose GURPS if you don't know how to research a different system that definitely does a better job at your goal than GURPS.

I know you know this and I'm not digging in to you personally, but I'm getting pretty sick of people teaching others new to the hobby that "D&D isn't about combat" or people posting how "my players didn't fight once last night and I'm so proud" as if that's how the system should work, when they're simply too uninformed to realize they don't enjoy D&D and should pick a different game.

Tanarii

2018-07-06, 10:42 AM

You choose D&D if you want a game about exploring caves and killing ****.
I prefer exploring adventuring sites and stealing their stuff, with killing being a option if required. But having that directly built into the system ... that ship has sailed.

Unoriginal

2018-07-06, 01:54 PM

D&D is a lot about combat. A third of it, at least.

It doesn't mean that the combat will be as reductionist and limited as in a bloody video game.

Even the most complex, open-world, multiple-choices-means-multiple-results is going to be limited compared to an actual Tabletop RPG

KorvinStarmast

2018-07-06, 03:51 PM

I know you know this and I'm not digging in to you personally Yes, I do know all of that. What I do not agree with is the premise that D&D is only a dungeon crawl. It isn't, though the points made by you and others in re the significant amount of effort/rules/crunch that supports combat are of course correct.

Dungeon Crawls, like Diablo I, were called CRPG's but they were due to the limitations of software code dungeon crawls, and rather light on RP. (Then again, plenty of us threw RP into that game because we could). Fun is where you find it, I once heard someone say.

Your points on other systems having other emphasis and strengths is agreed.

Heck, original Traveller was bloody lethal if it was treated like a dungeon crawl. Such an approach often resulted in "OK, and my new character for today is ..."

Segev

2018-07-06, 04:09 PM

Sorry, my bad: I put my NWPs in Dream Interpretation, Necrology, and Veterinary Healing rather than something that would help with communication (like Oratory, Sign Language, or Fast Talking).

Clearly, you should be playing Palladium. And choosing your OCC skills better!

Edit: I just wish that the skill system in 5e gave some examples for what qualified as "easy" or "difficult" for each skill. Without that, the link of "A DC N is easy, while a DC X is hard" is meaningless.

MaxWilson

2018-07-06, 04:24 PM

What I do not agree with is the premise that D&D is only a dungeon crawl.

Are you under the impression that someone here is advancing that premise, or is your point purely academic?

I've made a point which is somewhat related to the premise you describe, but I'm unclear on whether or not you are trying to address me or just some hypothetical person who believes that "D&D is only a dungeon crawl."

To reiterate my position, just in case: I think 5E (not D&D in general) is primarily combat-oriented in its structure, to the point where you might as well be freeform RPGing outside of combat. The DMG has a game structure for chases, and Xanathar's has game structures for downtime activities, and I think that's pretty much it aside from the micro-structure of "make an action declaration and the DM will have you roll an ability check if the action's outcome is in doubt". (I'm discounting the DMG's advice on DCs for turning hostile creatures friendly because all it really gives is DCs, not game structure.)

I think the dearth of noncombat game structures is a huge missed opportunity for 5E, and it would have been beneficial to include at least a few pages on alternate game structures ("what do the players do and how do they do it? what are the players' default action options and at what granularity of detail are they resolved?") such as riddle games, mysteries, and dramatic scenes. So my answer to the OP is, "it's not simple, and some kinds of complexity are not helpful, but I think 5E's lack of non-combat structures is harmful to the game because it puts all the onus on the DM to invent his own game structures, which is a lot of work, probably more work than it would be if 5E didn't exist. Fortunately 5E still makes a pretty fun hack-and-slash game, and that's rewarding enough that it can be worth embedding 5E into a larger DM-created game as its hack-and-slash component. But it's a missed opportunity that 5E didn't pay more attention to game structure out of combat, and it makes it necessary to learn those structures from other game systems and outside sources."

Unoriginal

2018-07-06, 04:24 PM

Edit: I just wish that the skill system in 5e gave some examples for what qualified as "easy" or "difficult" for each skill. Without that, the link of "A DC N is easy, while a DC X is hard" is meaningless.

Why?

The difficulty of the task is kinda obvious based on what the task is.

I mean, do you have an example of task you can't determine if it's easy or hard?

Segev

2018-07-06, 04:43 PM

Why?

The difficulty of the task is kinda obvious based on what the task is.

I mean, do you have an example of task you can't determine if it's easy or hard?

Convince a wolf to chase the thrown hunk of meat rather than attacking the party's horses.
That's Easy! Any wild animal would rather free meat than facing humanoids!
Moderate difficulty; sure, you're armed, but your horses smell frightened and are bigger meals.
No way that's anything but Hard; that paltry bit of food will still be there after the wolf takes you down and gets you and your horse, too!

Disguise yourself as the King
Easier than you think! The face on the coinage is not particularly sharp and generally pretty stylized, and people aren't going to take risks if you look the part.
Moderate chance; neither you nor most folks know what the king looks like beyond the coinage, but it's still not YOUR face, so you'll have to work to match it.
Rather Hard, actually; everybody sees the King's face on the coinage regularly. You'll have to be pretty convincing to match it perfectly enough to fool them.

Build a camp fire without a tinderbox or magic
How hard could that be? Easy! Just gather some wood and strike some rocks together. What do you mean there's more to it than that?
You've got the skill, so probably know what you're doing. The Moderate-difficulty roll is mostly to see if you can find the right kind of dry tinder.
Have you any idea how difficult it is to light a fire without flint and steel or other lighting equipment? This is really hard, especially since you don't even have guaranteed-to-be-dry firewood.

Catch yourself on the wall when you don't leap far enough to make it to the other side of the chasm.
Easy enough. Just grab the first knob or rocky outcropping.
You're falling, but the wall has points you can latch onto. Moderate difficulty to account for having to catch and hold.
Are you kidding? It's ridiculously Hard to close your fingers over a grip and arrest your downward momentum when you're already falling and the handhold is unsure!

Adding to that last one, is an "easy" wall one with cobblestone-like texture, or does it have to have lots of roots sticking out? Or is that Moderate, and Easy requires literal handles evenly spaced and reasonably close-together? Is a rough rock wall Moderate or Hard to catch hold of?

The trouble is that it's actually highly subjective what's "easy" vs. "hard," with loads of misestimations based on ignorance of either what complications can arise or of one's own skill that one is using as a benchmark.

Just ask a bunch of people what the "casual play" difficulty on Rock Band, DDR, and Beat Saber is. You'll get a lot of different answers, largely based on their circle of friends and their own skill at the game.

Moving out of D&D adventuring skills and into a field I know more about: Which is harder, programming a smartphone to know where a picture was taken, or whether that picture contains a bird? (I suspect we all are rather knowledgeable compared to those who aren't frequently online, but I hope this illustrates the point anyway.)

Heck, is it easy, moderate, difficult, or automatic to set up a snare, bear trap, or the like?

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-06, 05:00 PM

Segev, your position requires that those have unique, universal (in space), and constant (in time) answers, valid for all campaigns everywhere (at least as a sane default). They don't.

A bad default is worse than no default, and setting good defaults is hard (more precisely, impossible) when the range of similar tasks (to the resolution of the system) is high and the granularity is low. That's exactly why the current system works so well (at least for me)--I, as a living DM who came up with the scenario, have a much better chance of properly calibrating the DC than a static table that has to be all things to all people.

And the numbers aren't meaningless at all.

Consider some basic breakpoints in skill modifiers: +0 (amateur), +5 (skilled), +10 (expert). The first is a normal commoner, the second is someone who either has high proficiency or high ability, the third is someone who has both (or expertise).

The following table gives the probability of failure for each DC and each skill level:

DC
Amateur
Skilled
Expert

5 (very easy)
20%
0%
0%

10 (easy)
45%
20%
0%

15 (medium)
70%
45%
20%

20 (hard)
95%
70%
45%

25 (very hard)
100%
95%
70%

30 (impossible)
100%
100%
95%

So you, the DM, knowing the situation much better than the designers ever could, can easily assign a DC based on the chance that a person of relevant skill level should have. For example, stick with the 45% failure set. Ask yourself: how skilled should someone in this universe, facing this exact task have to be to have a 50% chance of success? That defines the DC right there. And it's much more likely to be fun and meaningful than a designer slapping something down without any knowledge.

Contrast

2018-07-06, 05:00 PM

Segev

2018-07-06, 05:09 PM

Weirdly, I find it difficult to guage difficulties of things in which I have little to no experience. I have a gross tendency to under- and over-estimate. As a DM, without examples of what constitutes a "moderately difficult" task for, say, diagnosing a skin rash, I am liable to be frustrated and wind up making an idiotic assignment based on how hard it really is. I have no idea how hard it is to tell poison ivy from sunburn, for instance, and am likely to say, "It's a rash. Rashes look more or less the same, right?" (Not sure how wrong that is, honestly.) "So it's Hard."

And then if we need to differentiate between hard, very hard, and impossible? Gah!

Even a simple example of the kinds of things that represent each difficulty gives me a ballpark to aim for.

Though every time I bring this up, I'm told that I'm alone in this inability to properly guess the difficulty of all things ever, so maybe I'm just too stupid to run D&D 5e. ^^;

mgshamster

2018-07-06, 05:59 PM

MaxWilson

2018-07-06, 06:01 PM

I mean, do you have an example of task you can't determine if it's easy or hard?

Easy or hard for whom? For a world-class expert or a trained professional or a novice?

5E doesn't even tell you what the baseline is supposed to be.

Unoriginal

2018-07-06, 06:13 PM

Convince a wolf to chase the thrown hunk of meat rather than attacking the party's horses.
That's Easy! Any wild animal would rather free meat than facing humanoids!
Moderate difficulty; sure, you're armed, but your horses smell frightened and are bigger meals.
No way that's anything but Hard; that paltry bit of food will still be there after the wolf takes you down and gets you and your horse, too!

Disguise yourself as the King
Easier than you think! The face on the coinage is not particularly sharp and generally pretty stylized, and people aren't going to take risks if you look the part.
Moderate chance; neither you nor most folks know what the king looks like beyond the coinage, but it's still not YOUR face, so you'll have to work to match it.
Rather Hard, actually; everybody sees the King's face on the coinage regularly. You'll have to be pretty convincing to match it perfectly enough to fool them.

Build a camp fire without a tinderbox or magic
How hard could that be? Easy! Just gather some wood and strike some rocks together. What do you mean there's more to it than that?
You've got the skill, so probably know what you're doing. The Moderate-difficulty roll is mostly to see if you can find the right kind of dry tinder.
Have you any idea how difficult it is to light a fire without flint and steel or other lighting equipment? This is really hard, especially since you don't even have guaranteed-to-be-dry firewood.

Catch yourself on the wall when you don't leap far enough to make it to the other side of the chasm.
Easy enough. Just grab the first knob or rocky outcropping.
You're falling, but the wall has points you can latch onto. Moderate difficulty to account for having to catch and hold.
Are you kidding? It's ridiculously Hard to close your fingers over a grip and arrest your downward momentum when you're already falling and the handhold is unsure!

...but all those answers are legitimate. You just have to decide which one of the situations is actually happening right now.

Disguising yourself as the king can be easy or hard, depending on how familiar with his face the people you're trying to fool are, and how suspicious they'd be.

Baiting a wolf away can be easy or hard, depending on how desperate the wolf is.

The trouble is that it's actually highly subjective what's "easy" vs. "hard," with loads of misestimations based on ignorance of either what complications can arise or of one's own skill that one is using as a benchmark.

Just ask a bunch of people what the "casual play" difficulty on Rock Band, DDR, and Beat Saber is. You'll get a lot of different answers, largely based on their circle of friends and their own skill at the game.

And what's matter is that YOUR subjectivity as a DM is the one taken into account, with the principle that you're trying to be fair taken into account.

You're not trying to simulate a world, you're in control of an element in an adventure.

When Conan or Sherlock Holmes or Rincewind are confronted by a locked door, the door is precisely as hard to open as a) how hard it makes sense for it to be (a moldy cabin door isn't going to be as resistant as the one of a noble's treasury b) how interesting it being that difficult is.

Heck, is it easy, moderate, difficult, or automatic to set up a snare, bear trap, or the like?

Well I'd say it's automatic to set it up (failure is not interesting), but it might require an opposed check vs the creature's WIS to hide it well (or the creature WIS against a set DC, depending on the trap).

That's my opinion, however.

Weirdly, I find it difficult to guage difficulties of things in which I have little to no experience. I have a gross tendency to under- and over-estimate. As a DM, without examples of what constitutes a "moderately difficult" task for, say, diagnosing a skin rash, I am liable to be frustrated and wind up making an idiotic assignment based on how hard it really is. I have no idea how hard it is to tell poison ivy from sunburn, for instance, and am likely to say, "It's a rash. Rashes look more or less the same, right?" (Not sure how wrong that is, honestly.) "So it's Hard."

And then if we need to differentiate between hard, very hard, and impossible? Gah!

Even a simple example of the kinds of things that represent each difficulty gives me a ballpark to aim for.

Though every time I bring this up, I'm told that I'm alone in this inability to properly guess the difficulty of all things ever, so maybe I'm just too stupid to run D&D 5e. ^^;

I think you're underestimating yourself.

Do you have any trouble deciding if a bad guy should be easy or hard to defeat based on their role in the adventure?

Easy or hard for whom? For a world-class expert or a trained professional or a novice?

MaxWilson, you can stop with the dishonesty here, we all know you've actually read the rules. Making claims like that is just utter nonsense.

D&D doesn't make a task's difficulty be higher depending on who's performing it, it has a default difficulty and then you get different modifiers if you're "a world-class expert or a trained professional or a novice". It's been the case for at least three editions now.

MaxWilson

2018-07-06, 06:25 PM

MaxWilson, you can stop with the dishonesty here, we all know you've actually read the rules. Making claims like that is just utter nonsense.

Apparently that went over your head. I'll explain in more detail.

You could certainly make a rule system was, "Set a dice target of 5 if you think the task should be easy for the PC, 10 if you think it's of medium difficulty, 15 if it's hard, or 20 if it's very hard. Roll a die. If it meets the target, the PC succeeds." That system would be very simple to run, because all tasks are defined relative to the DM's perception of the PC's competence.

5E doesn't do that. It asks you to decide, in a vacuum, whether the task is "Easy"/"Medium"/"Hard", but apparently relative to some character-independent baseline because PC abilities are factored in afterwards as bonuses to your roll. This is an example of 5E's rules making the game actually harder than if there were no rules at all and you were just doing freeform roleplaying.

D&D doesn't make a task's difficulty be higher depending on who's performing it, it has a default difficulty and then you get different modifiers if you're "a world-class expert or a trained professional or a novice". It's been the case for at least three editions now.

Exactly the problem. As I said, 5E doesn't give a baseline.

I'll take your word for it on 3E/4E. I have no interest in those games. I'm an AD&D guy.

Unoriginal

2018-07-06, 06:40 PM

Telok

2018-07-06, 06:56 PM

There IS a baseline. A task that can be accomplished by most people all the time is auto-succeed. A task that cannot be accomplished by anyone is auto-fail. A task that cannot be accomplished by most people but world-wide experts have a tiny chances is DC 30. A task most people will succeed most of the time is DC 5. etc.

My personal experience is that a DM with a bad back will set the DC to climb a rope at 15 and the DC for a str 14 character trained in athletics to jump 15 feet at "no" because there aren't rules for it.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-06, 07:18 PM

...If you're that unable of understanding the very concept of 5e 'sability check system, then no wonder you only think combat matters and that the rest of the books is full of empty .

There IS a baseline. A task that can be accomplished by most people all the time is auto-succeed. A task that cannot be accomplished by anyone is auto-fail. A task that cannot be accomplished by most people but world-wide experts have a tiny chances is DC 30. A task most people will succeed most of the time is DC 5. etc.

Looking at the numbers I posted above, the most natural baseline is a character with a +4 modifier in the relevant ability/skill combination. That gives the following probabilities of failure:

DC : % failure
5 : 0
10 : 25%
15 : 50%
20 : 75%
25: 0%

This is what you'd have in the following situations:
Level 1:
+2 ability mod, proficiency
+0 ability mod, expertise
+4 ability mod, no proficiency (or straight up ability check).

Level 5:
+1 ability mod, proficiency
-2 ability mod, expertise
+4 ability mod, no proficiency (or straight up ability check)

Level 11:
+0 ability mod, proficiency
-4 ability mod(!), expertise
+4 ability mod, no proficiency (or straight up ability check)

Or, refer to DMG 238 for an equivalent, but different baseline:

If you've decided that an ability check is called for, then most likely the task at hand isn't a very easy one. Most people can accomplish a DC 5 task with little chance of failure. Unless the circumstances are unusual, let the characters succeed at such a task without making a check.
Then ask yourself, "Is this task's difficulty easy, moderate, or hard?" If the only DCs you ever use are 10, 15, and 20, your game will run just fine. Keep in mind that a character with a 10 in the associated ability and no proficiency will succeed at an easy task around 50 percent of the time. A moderate task requires a higher score or proficiency for success, whereas a hard task typically requires both. A big dose of luck with the d20 also doesn't hurt.

There. There's the baseline right out of the rules. Easy = tossup for 0 modifier. Moderate = tossup with proficiency or high ability score. Hard = tossup with proficiency and high ability score.

Tanarii

2018-07-06, 07:19 PM

My personal experience is that a DM with a bad back will set the DC to climb a rope at 15 and the DC for a str 14 character trained in athletics to jump 15 feet at "no" because there aren't rules for it.one of the bullet points for Athletics is "You try to jump an unusually long distance or pull off a stunt midjump."

Climbing is supposed to be automatic unless the DM determines it is "a slippery vertical surface or one with few handholds"

Its true that the flexibility 5e gives DMs will lead to table variation, possibly quite extreme. But examples given are far too often ones of DMs that apparently haven't really read the rules.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-06, 07:36 PM

one of the bullet points for Athletics is "You try to jump an unusually long distance or pull off a stunt midjump."

Climbing is supposed to be automatic unless the DM determines it is "a slippery vertical surface or one with few handholds"

Its true that the flexibility 5e gives DMs will lead to table variation, possibly quite extreme. But examples given are far too often ones of DMs that apparently haven't really read the rules.

And you can't fix that by adding more rules. Because they won't read those, either.

JoeJ

2018-07-06, 08:22 PM

Weirdly, I find it difficult to guage difficulties of things in which I have little to no experience. I have a gross tendency to under- and over-estimate. As a DM, without examples of what constitutes a "moderately difficult" task for, say, diagnosing a skin rash, I am liable to be frustrated and wind up making an idiotic assignment based on how hard it really is. I have no idea how hard it is to tell poison ivy from sunburn, for instance, and am likely to say, "It's a rash. Rashes look more or less the same, right?" (Not sure how wrong that is, honestly.) "So it's Hard."

Is there anyone at the table with more expertise that you in that field? If so, ask them for advice. If not, make up whatever would be most interesting, confident that nobody else there knows enough about the subject to call you on it.

ad_hoc

2018-07-06, 09:03 PM

Is there anyone at the table with more expertise that you in that field? If so, ask them for advice. If not, make up whatever would be most interesting, confident that nobody else there knows enough about the subject to call you on it.

It isn't even necessary to have any expertise or knowledge.

Just use action movie logic. Does this make sense in an action movie? If the answer is yes then the character can do it.

Action movies are worse when they get mired in minutiae. The same is true of D&D.

Segev

2018-07-07, 01:23 AM

...but all those answers are legitimate. You just have to decide which one of the situations is actually happening right now.All those answers are based on identical situations for each difficulty, with purely subjective interpretations of whether those situations should be considered easy, moderate, or hard to achieve.

The whole point of the examples is that they are not three different scenarios per check. They are the same one, and I can justify any difficulty I want based on the situation and my ignorance of how hard it really is.

I think you're underestimating yourself.

Do you have any trouble deciding if a bad guy should be easy or hard to defeat based on their role in the adventure?There are actual guidelines for that. There aren’t for skill DCs.

And the guidelines for CR of enemies would be very bad to use to determine DCs, because that would mean that all tasks should be scaled to the expected bonus of a trained character of the party’s level.

JoeJ

2018-07-07, 01:44 AM

There are actual guidelines for that. There aren’t for skill DCs.

Except there aren't any guidelines for how difficult an enemy should be to defeat. There are guidelines for creating an encounter of a predetermined difficulty, but not for deciding whether any particular encounter should be easy, medium, hard, etc.

Unoriginal

2018-07-07, 02:17 AM

Except there aren't any guidelines for how difficult an enemy should be to defeat. There are guidelines for creating an encounter of a predetermined difficulty, but not for deciding whether any particular encounter should be easy, medium, hard, etc.

This.

How do you decide how hard an encounter should be?

opaopajr

2018-07-07, 05:20 AM

JackPhoenix

2018-07-07, 05:32 AM

All those answers are based on identical situations for each difficulty, with purely subjective interpretations of whether those situations should be considered easy, moderate, or hard to achieve.

The whole point of the examples is that they are not three different scenarios per check. They are the same one, and I can justify any difficulty I want based on the situation and my ignorance of how hard it really is.

But they are not identical situations. If the wolf thinks differently in each scenario, the situation isn't identical. The second situation shouldn't be a static DC in the first place, but an opposed check between the character and any observers. The third one, yeah, I grant you, and in the last one, the wall is apparently different in every scenario.

Beelzebubba

2018-07-07, 05:39 AM

No amount of rules can prevent a **** DM from being a ****. 3e proved that. The old Wizards forums of 'my DM is a ****' still had plenty of posts.

5e solves for people with average communication skills who are acting in good faith. Not *****. it has fewer rules that have more broad applicability and rapid resolution, so it's more fun for non-**** people.

So, IMO: definitely a pro.

It falls down with some situations of overlapping complexity, mostly in stealth and darkness, to the point that some vectors of game play can be nerfed or overpowered because the DM couldn't be bothered to connect the dots that are scattered around between sections and require some logical deduction to figure out. That's the biggest flaw I see.

Unoriginal

2018-07-07, 05:41 AM

But they are not identical situations. If the wolf thinks differently in each scenario, the situation isn't identical. The second situation shouldn't be a static DC in the first place, but an opposed check between the character and any observers. The third one, yeah, I grant you, and in the last one, the wall is apparently different in every scenario.

The third one is different situations as well. The three examples are:

-Everything to make a fire is here around you

-You need to find dry wood, which is not readily available

-You don't have a flint & tinder

Three different situations, three different DCs.

You just have to pick which one is happening right now.

I don't want to sound condescending, but it really seems to me that most of the people who complains about 5e's ability check system just don't understand the rules.

At least the guy who ranted about how WotC should never listen to people who like the current system ever again and instead pander to his tastes doesn't post here anymore.

Jormengand

2018-07-07, 05:57 AM

The way I see 5e is this: 5e is not a finished system. It isn't even the idea of a finished system yet. There are vanishingly few rules for skill DCs, the rules for catching on fire are in the monster manual, and the rules for traps and poisons almost admit that the listed traps and poisons are samples of what you could come up with, not actually a full system. The rules for falling into a vat of acid and breaking huge or larger objects pretty much literally tell you to make it up. The 5e game I'm currently DMing, everyone's class is homebrew; the one I'm currently playing, half of everyone's equipment is homebrew and the DM is making on-the-fly rulings about how exactly dreadfully-inspecific abilities work on the fly.

However, 5e is a decent framework for building your own game. If I want a game where the book actually tells me "The climb DC to climb a surface with ledges to hold onto and to stand on, such as a very rough wall or a ship's rigging is 10" then I'll play 3.5, because guess what, 3.5 tells you exactly that. "The athletics skill can be used to climb a sheer or slippery cliff, avoid hazards while scaling a wall, or cling to a surface while something is trying to knock you off" is less helpful.

On the other hand, messing with how 3.5 works is hard. I tried messing around with how, say, base attack bonus works in 3.5 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?535112-The-Whirler-(Class-in-30-minutes-PEACH)) but that's so much weirder than just handing out extra attack (5) and expertise on attack rolls if I want to power up my 5e fighters. If you want to mess with something in 5e, you can usually just do it, and you can make your own game.

So, if you just want a game that you can pick up and play without having to make rulings every five seconds, I don't recommend 5e. It's not a game, it's a toolkit for making your own fantasy game, with a few examples of things you can build with it drawn onto the Lego box.

JackPhoenix

2018-07-07, 06:03 AM

The third one is different situations as well. The three examples are:

-Everything to make a fire is here around you

-You need to find dry wood, which is not readily available

-You don't have a flint & tinder

Three different situations, three different DCs.

You just have to pick which one is happening right now.

I've read it differently. You don't have flint and tinder in either situation, you already have the gathered material, but the DC to set it on fire is different each time. If I was running that situation, the check would be to find the material, not to start the fire when you already have it.

Unoriginal

2018-07-07, 06:04 AM

Jormengand

2018-07-07, 06:12 AM

5e gives you the DC to climb a very rough wall or a ship's rigging. It's 0.

You auto-succeed that kind of climb, it just cost you twice as many ft than the same distance in the ground.

I stand by my statement about people not understanding the rules...

If the rigging is slippery (possible if it's been raining) or has few handholds (possible if it's damaged), the DM can just decide that it requires an athletics check and then make up on the spot what the difficulty is. Is it 10? Is it 25? Is it 5? Nobody knows!

You know what the DC is in 3.5? 10. It's 10. Because that's what it says in the book. It says it's 10.

What about a surface with few, narrow handholds and footholds? In 3.5 it's DC 20. In 5e, the DM might just let you climb it, or they might just decide it's DC 30.

I understand the rules. I just don't agree with you on them. "Everyone who disagrees with me doesn't understand!" is some pretty elegant rhetorical sleight of hand, though.

Unoriginal

2018-07-07, 06:20 AM

"Everyone who disagrees with me doesn't understand!" is some pretty elegant rhetorical sleight of hand, though.

I said "most people who complain about it". Not "everyone who disagrees with me".

As people in this very thread admitted not getting the rules.

I'm fully aware that, say, Pex does understand the rules and disagree with me about them, for example.

Cybren

2018-07-07, 07:05 AM

In general, I think 5es vagueness is good. It’s an acknowledgement of how most people play the game (in that, I don’t think anyone that frequents a d&d forum is a representative sample of “d&d players” as a whole), but there’s some areas where added clarity might be nice.

I find a larger annoyance with some really counter-intuitive rulings they’ve made since release, but in some cases they seem to be going back on them, as with, for example, the bonus action timing debacle. (Though I think the gameplay is worse with a stricter reading of that rule, I found it strange that they ruled it the other way to begin with)

DanyBallon

2018-07-07, 07:47 AM

If the rigging is slippery (possible if it's been raining) or has few handholds (possible if it's damaged), the DM can just decide that it requires an athletics check and then make up on the spot what the difficulty is. Is it 10? Is it 25? Is it 5? Nobody knows!

You know what the DC is in 3.5? 10. It's 10. Because that's what it says in the book. It says it's 10.

What about a surface with few, narrow handholds and footholds? In 3.5 it's DC 20. In 5e, the DM might just let you climb it, or they might just decide it's DC 30.

I understand the rules. I just don't agree with you on them. "Everyone who disagrees with me doesn't understand!" is some pretty elegant rhetorical sleight of hand, though.

It's a design intent to not give specific DCs. 5e revolves mostly around the concept where the DM describe a situation, the players tell what their characters are attempting to accomplish, and then the DM decide if they succeed, a roll is needed (in which case, the DM set the ability checks needed, the relevant skills applicable and the DC for the task), or if they fail.

The play of the Dungeons & Dragons game unfolds according to this basic pattern.

1. The DM describes the environment.

The DM tells the players where their adventurers are and what’s around them, presenting the basic scope of options that present themselves (how many doors lead out of a room, what’s on a table, who’s in the tavern, and so on).

2. The players describe what they want to do.

Sometimes one player speaks for the whole party, saying, “We’ll take the east door,” for example. Other times, different adventurers do different things: one adventurer might search a treasure chest while a second examines an esoteric symbol engraved on a wall and a third keeps watch for monsters. The players don’t need to take turns, but the DM listens to every player and decides how to resolve those actions.

Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results of an action.

3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions.

Describing the results often leads to another decision point, which brings the flow of the game right back to step 1.

This pattern holds whether the adventurers are cautiously exploring a ruin, talking to a devious prince, or locked in mortal combat against a mighty dragon. In certain situations, particularly combat, the action is more structured and the players (and DM) do take turns choosing and resolving actions. But most of the time, play is fluid and flexible, adapting to the circumstances of the adventure.

Often the action of an adventure takes place in the imagination of the players and DM, relying on the DM’s verbal descriptions to set the scene. Some DMs like to use music, art, or recorded sound effects to help set the mood, and many players and DMs alike adopt different voices for the various adventurers, monsters, and other characters they play in the game. Sometimes, a DM might lay out a map and use tokens or miniature figures to represent each creature involved in a scene to help the players keep track of where everyone is.

The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, D&D is driven by imagination. It’s about picturing the towering castle beneath the stormy night sky and imagining how a fantasy adventurer might react to the challenges that scene presents.

Dungeon Master (DM): After passing through the craggy peaks, the road takes a sudden turn to the east and Castle Ravenloft towers before you. Crumbling towers of stone keep a silent watch over the approach. They look like abandoned guardhouses. Beyond these, a wide chasm gapes, disappearing into the deep fog below. A lowered drawbridge spans the chasm, leading to an arched entrance to the castle courtyard. The chains of the drawbridge creak in the wind, their rust-eaten iron straining with the weight. From atop the high strong walls, stone gargoyles stare at you from hollow sockets and grin hideously. A rotting wooden portcullis, green with growth, hangs in the entry tunnel. Beyond this, the main doors of Castle Ravenloft stand open, a rich warm light spilling into the courtyard.

Phillip (playing Gareth): I want to look at the gargoyles. I have a feeling they’re not just statues.

Amy (playing Riva): The drawbridge looks precarious? I want to see how sturdy it is. Do I think we can cross it, or is it going to collapse under our weight?

Unlike a game of make-believe, D&D gives structure to the stories, a way of determining the consequences of the adventurers’ action. Players roll dice to resolve whether their attacks hit or miss or whether their adventurers can scale a cliff, roll away from the strike of a magical lightning bolt, or pull off some other dangerous task. Anything is possible, but the dice make some outcomes more probable than others.

Dungeon Master (DM): OK, one at a time. Phillip, you’re looking at the gargoyles?

Phillip: Yeah. Is there any hint they might be creatures and not decorations?

DM: Make an Intelligence check.

Phillip: Does my Investigation skill apply?

DM: Sure!

Phillip (rolling a d20): Ugh. Seven.

DM: They look like decorations to you. And Amy, Riva is checking out the drawbridge?

What I realized over time is that some players (mostly experienced players used to older editions od D&D or other heavily codified system) have a hard time grasping this concept.
While an heavily codified system have its merits, like providing players knowledge of what their character can and cannot do, or limit to a certain extent DM abuses, but I feel that on the downside, it slows down the game, by having to constantly checks in the rulebooks for the DC of a specific situation and I also find that it limits players creativity as they will often refrain from attempting a task because there is no DC for what they want to try, or because their character isn't proficient enough.

5e design intent was to speed the game and let the players try crazy stuff if they wanted, and put back in the DMs hand the task to decide if a roll is needed or not, and if needed what are the parameters of the roll.

Unoriginal

2018-07-07, 08:05 AM

Strict rules don't prevent abuse from the DM, because abusive DMs don't Care about the rules (only the power the rules grant them). Setting a ridiculously high DC for a check just to give the impression the players had a chance yet still keep them where the DM want them to be was, and probably still is, one of the tools of jerk DMs.

Before it's just the DM had free reigns on the mods rather than the DCs. 5e did away with the miscellanious mods and told people to make the task as difficult as they thought it should be.

Though I'm not sure everyone realized that "the task" in the previous sentence didn't refer to "playing the game".

Contrast

2018-07-07, 08:14 AM

The way I see 5e is this: 5e is not a finished system. It isn't even the idea of a finished system yet.

Do you mind if I ask how many RPG systems you consider 'finished'?

I'm not sure any system I've ever played would meet your standards.

Edit - and for clarity, I do not believe I would want to play a system which met your definition of finished :smalltongue: spending my time looking up tables because I don't trust my DM is not my idea of a great way to spend my playing time.

Segev

2018-07-07, 09:53 AM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 10:01 AM

Segev

2018-07-07, 10:08 AM

But saying "the DC to light a fire is X" is completely opposite to any form of verisimilitude. Because fire lighting is too variable. Either you mandate that there is only one type of fire or you include fiddly modifiers.

Adjusting it up or down based on conditions is reasonable.

But one needs a baseline from which to adjust.

If I tell you that it is easier to do Butterfly in DDR than it is to do Sandstorm, but refuse to tell you how difficult it would be for somebody with a 10 Str and 10 Dex and no training in Athletics nor Perform to do either, what do you use to determine whether Butterfly is "easy" and Sandstorm is "hard", or Butterfly is "moderate" and Sandstorm is "hard," or Butterfly is so trivial as to not require a roll, and Sandstorm is "easy," or...?

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 10:25 AM

Adjusting it up or down based on conditions is reasonable.

But one needs a baseline from which to adjust.

If I tell you that it is easier to do Butterfly in DDR than it is to do Sandstorm, but refuse to tell you how difficult it would be for somebody with a 10 Str and 10 Dex and no training in Athletics nor Perform to do either, what do you use to determine whether Butterfly is "easy" and Sandstorm is "hard", or Butterfly is "moderate" and Sandstorm is "hard," or Butterfly is so trivial as to not require a roll, and Sandstorm is "easy," or...?

That requires stacking circumstance modifiers, something that 5e (thankfully) did away with. And once you've introduced modifiers, they swallow the baseline entirely. Because if something can be anywhere on the DC 5 to DC 15 spectrum, all you're doing by saying DC 10 +- 5 is giving a false illusion of certainty.

And another thing--lighting a fire doesn't even pass the threshold question (should you even have a check for that?) except in exceptional circumstances, and then those exceptional circumstances set the difficulty. Because if you can retry at will, it's auto-success and you're rolling at most for the time it takes to do it. Because competent people can light campfires under normal conditions.

There's no fixed difficulty for anything that's important. Saying that there is either restricts the options available (cheapening the world) or is a false sense of certainty.

And your example doesn't make any sense in this context. Saying X is harder than Y does require a baseline, but saying "X is hard (meaning someone with proficiency and a good modifier has a 50% chance of success) is an absolute statement.

Determining DCs is exactly isomorphic to determining the probability of success for a person of a fixed skill level. And that's up to the DM's judgement. If you're not capable of doing that on the fly, then make your own table. It will be very different than my table, because it's a different world with different parameters. Your wolves are not my wolves.

Tanarii

2018-07-07, 10:26 AM

One of the issues I have with set DCs is that once it happens, players get rather annoyed and start complaining whenever you go away from whatever the DC is, regardless of circumstances.

As evidence of this, I point to every single 3.0, 3.5, and PF game I've ever been in across 15 years from when 3e first came out to when I quit playing Pathfinder.
This.

Far too often 'Examples' are quickly read among users as 'Best Practice', and then 'Stare Decisis', and finally 'Traditional Law'.

And now imagination becomes subservient to the calcified mind of tradition: disconnected from your table's setting context and focused on obedience to predictable past examples.That was also my experience, both on the DM and Player's side of the table. Initially 3e DCs seemed wonderful: It wasn't as locked in as "roll under ability score" and there were tons of examples! But eventually it became too limiting. Accounting for wide variation, as much as a 50% or more chance of success for a normal person for two different but similar-seeming-at-a-glance situations, became impossible without causing table arguments.

Unless they've had 3e experience and refuse to accept the paradigm shift, IMX 5e players generally accept the concept that the DM judges the situation and makes a DC call.

Personally I was one of those 3e players who considered everything should be a check, even if it's DC 0, and skipped the Acrobatics checks to walk across the room without falling becaus you could always make it. (for example). That the skill check system was an underlying physics engine for the imaginary universe. Luckily for me coming into 5e, I also played and DMd 4e extensively. Despite that I still had a few vestiges of it for quite a while, because the 5e system "felt" more like a reworked 3e.

If the rigging is slippery (possible if it's been raining) or has few handholds (possible if it's damaged), the DM can just decide that it requires an athletics check and then make up on the spot what the difficulty is. Is it 10? Is it 25? Is it 5? Nobody knows!

You know what the DC is in 3.5? 10. It's 10. Because that's what it says in the book. It says it's 10.
And that's not acceptable to me. Why is every rainy rigging or damaged rigging the same Athletics check DC 10 to climb? Each task needs unique consideration to decide if it needs a check in the first place, and what the DC is.

Edit: or to use Segev's example, why is lighting a fire in environment Y always DC X? That makes no sense to me. It should vary from Automatic success to automatic failure depending on a host of factors.

ciarannihill

2018-07-07, 10:28 AM

The situations are all the same. The only difference is the DM’s understanding of how hard something is based on how he is thinking about the scenario. Note hat I’ve cast myself as the DM in each one, and my hypothetical problem is that I am unsure which of the interpretations of the scenarios is the right one.

I reject “how hard do you think it should be, narratively?” because that leads to every check either auto-passing or auto-failing based on whether my story requires them to succeed or fail.

I prefer to run games that lean more sandboxy, where things are as he’d as they are because of the in-game nature of it.

Lighting a fire is DC X in this environment no matter how high level your PC is and no matter whether I prefer you to easily light it because I want the orcs to notice your camp fire or I prefer it to be difficult because I wanted a narrative of a cold and unpleasant night to plague your PCs.

I definitely do not want it to be trivial to light that fire here at level 3 and nigh-impossible at level 8 just because the narrative cares about the drama of the fire more, now.

Either the PCs’ bonuses are meaningful because the difficulty is rooted in some quality of verisimilitude, or they’re meaningless mummery because the DM just makes up difficulties to arrange success or failure based on his estimation of whether the PCs should succeed or not.

I prefer the former. But without those examples, I have to make them up myself to achieve this. This is why you get complaints of an incomplete game. For those who aren’t just making it up as they go along (which is a fine way to run, but also doesn’t need the half-finished skill system, either), the need to essentially write part of the game rules before you can use them gives that impression of incompleteness.

Is there a compelling narrative or mechanical reason for the lightning of the fire to be in question? If not then don't roll for it. If later on your require a roll to light a fire, it means circumstances have changed and it can be a way of signaling to your players that fact.

Otherwise when they ask to light a fire I would describe the circumstances that make it easier or difficult: Wet vs dry wood, humidity in the air, poor tools, etc. And use those to allow them to get an idea of the DC you're establishing, but it needn't be a consistent algorithmic determination. Going by feel is a lot more practical and less time consuming and works just as well IMO as working with fiddly modifiers. It's impossible to account for all circumstances always, and the more you try to the more apparent the ones you aren't accounting for are. Going by feel removes the illusion of that entirely and is to the benefit of the game IMO.

mgshamster

2018-07-07, 10:30 AM

So basically, people are mad because they have to think and use their imagination in a game designed to make people think and use their imagination.

It reminds me of apost I saw some time ago, right here on GitP.

DMing a lot builds your confidence in making rulings. One need not be a rule cripple.*

---------------------

* About the "rules cripple" thing I mentioned above: if one does not or cannot exercise a muscle, it atrophies. (Point of reference: breaking an arm or a leg and having it in a cast means that when the bone is finished knitting, one has to rebuild the atrophied muscle ...)

a. When GPS came out and became more used in the early 1990's, those of us who knew a bit about land navigation became concerned about those raised with GPS as their primary navigational tool. GPS gives you outcome, not process nor understanding about spatial relationships. We used the term "GPS cripple" to describe the lack of the ability to understand/innovate/make intuitive leaps that this induced. A similar problem cropped up in air navigation during that decade.

b. There was a long running debate about whether or not a pilot was a "HUD cripple" in terms of aircraft carrier landing skill. When the HUD (Heads Up Display) was up, the boarding rate was markedly higher among new pilots. But those who became HUD dependent weren't as good at simply flying the approach to the three wire when the HUD was on the fritz. (These days, HUD reliability is impressive, I will note).

From this RL experience, I propose the parallel problem of the rules cripple (it can happen to any of us in any edition of D&D since 1e AD&D): a DM who is so used to a rule telling him/her what to do, who is so book/rule focused, that the habit of innovating and improvising shrivels/atrophies, or never develops.

I will point out that something similar is happening among airline pilots: the term of art is 'children of the magenta line' and what is happening is that Over Reliance on Automation is manifesting itself in two critical problems: reduced hand flying skill, and significantly reduced airmanship/judgment.

What I find most interesting in D&D is that Gygax walked both sides of that line at the same time, in terms of what was for sale from TSR. The AD&D system was built to support the ability to play a standardized / convention style of play (the Schick influence), while at the same time, in the DMG, it spent no small amount of time telling DM's to play in the rules light method that Gygax himself ran, that Dave Arneson ran, that Rob Kuntz ran, etc. (Per commentary by Rob Kuntz over at the odd74 forums).

We, the gaming audience, were always hungry for more content, but once you got that mountain of content, what do you do with it all? The Dragon was full of 'try this' which made amateur play testers of a lot of us. The result tends to become "you take what you like and leave the rest" and you focus as a GM on running a game.
It takes some "learning by doing" to do that.
Nobody can expect to be a good GM without having tried it.
(And at this point, please head to Angry GM's website).

D&D isn't rules light; there is a certain amount of system mastery/understanding required to know the mechanics of the game well enough to improvise. (Analogy: to improvise well on piano, you have to first be really good at playing piano). So you can expect a learning curve as you run games. That's not a bad thing, since your decision making ability grows as you do it more.

Don't let the muscle atrophy.

People who complain that 5e is "incomplete" or that the rules don't tell them what to do have let their muscles atrophy - they've allowed the game to dictate things for them to the point where they're no longer able to think for themselves.

Exercise that muscle again, use that brain. Once you get back in the practice of making decisions for yourself and not letting the books simply tell you what to do, this whole issue of trying to figure out what DC will be applied to what situation will go away. You'll be able to do it on your own.

DanyBallon

2018-07-07, 10:30 AM

Unoriginal

2018-07-07, 10:39 AM

If you have a set DC, but feel free to modify it depending on circumstances, why woud you have a problem with establishing the DC based on circumstances in the first place?

What decision seems more difficult to take: if there is a task that the book says is DC 20 but you feel is actually pretty easy because of X, so you change the DC to 10, or if there a task that you feel is pretty easy so you attribute a DC of 10 to it?

MaxWilson

2018-07-07, 10:39 AM

I stand by my statement about people not understanding the rules...

I'm pretty sure I understand the rules better than you do. I think you aren't understanding the gaps in 5E, perhaps because D&D 3E+ is the only game you've ever played. It's easier to see what's missing when you've seen those missing game structures elsewhere.

Do you mind if I ask how many RPG systems you consider 'finished'?

I'm not sure any system I've ever played would meet your standards.

Edit - and for clarity, I do not believe I would want to play a system which met your definition of finished :smalltongue: spending my time looking up tables because I don't trust my DM is not my idea of a great way to spend my playing time.

Agreed: I'm not aware of any game systems with complete game structures. (See http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/15203/roleplaying-games/game-structures-part-11-complete-game-structures for more theory.) There are systems though that have MORE game structures than 5E does, for e.g. commerce, drama, exploration, etc., and there are system-independent game structures that you can learn and implement on your own. The Alexandrian claims, and I think he's correct, that most DMs are familiar only with three game structures: dungeoncrawling (default action: "we go through one of the exits") and linear railroading (default action: "we go along with whatever the DM is suggesting right now") and mysteries (default action: look for clues to lead you on to the next adventure node), and that in practice many DMs are not even familiar with how to run mysteries properly so they wind up falling back on linear railroading and dungeoncrawling. 5E missed an opportunity by not including any game structures for noncombat activities like e.g. alliance-building, riddle games, or commerce.

Asking for more game structures isn't about more tables to look things up in. It doesn't straitjacket the DM either; just because there is a game structure for dungeoncrawling doesn't mean a DM is forced to use it when it isn't appropriate. (E.g. when you're in a city, and the players tell you they want to go to the nearest inn, if you dungeoncrawl through the city describing every street corner and asking which direction they want to go, you're doing it wrong.) But the absence of a suitable game structure for certain activities makes it much less likely that that type of activity will occur in play, and in 5E's case it also means that there are also missed opportunities in class design. If 5E had game structures for alliance building, maybe the Purple Dragon Knight would have interacted with those structures to become better at making friends and recruiting followers than the average Fighter is; instead the PDK just gets a bonus to Persuasion checks, in a vacuum, which nobody wants or knows what to do with. That's what happens when your game lacks non-combat structures. (A DM could still build his own system for alliance-building that rested on Persuasion checks, but any advantage the PDK would have in that system would be shared with everyone else who is good at Charisma checks including Lore Bards with Enhance Ability and Persuasion Expertise. It's a missed opportunity to differentiate the PDK.)

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 10:46 AM

Here's a framework for setting appropriate DCs. All based on the world you're playing in, not narrative reasoning. And all from the DMG (which contradicts the idea that there's no guidance).

When in doubt, set the DC lower rather than higher. Let the PCs have a chance at being awesome and doing amazing things. Fun is more important than realism or careful calibration of difficulties.

1. Does this action have all of the following characteristics:
a) a substantial chance of failure
b) failure would change the scenario in meaningful ways (time is not meaningful unless there's severe time pressure)
c) retrying the exact action is limited/impossible
d) the action is possible based on the scenario presented.

If one or more of these is not present, then the action either succeeds or fails (if and only if condition 1.d is not present), no roll needed.

2. Is this an action that regular characters (a commoner, for example) should be capable of doing normally as part of every-day life? If yes, auto-success except in extreme circumstances [2].

3. Is this an action that a commoner can not do, even with the best of luck? DC 25 or 30.
3a. Should someone with aptitude or training be able to do it on a stroke of luck? DC 25. Otherwise DC 30.[1]

4. Is this an action that a commoner should have a decent chance of doing? DC 10

5. Is this an action that requires either aptitude or training to have a decent chance of doing? DC 15

6. Is this an action that requires both aptitude and training to have a decent chance of doing? DC 20.

[1] Tasks with DCs > 20 should be rare if they're present at all. You can have a great campaign 1-20 with all DCs being 10, 15, or 20.

[2] In that case, worry about the circumstances, not the task. The task is irrelevant.

Segev

2018-07-07, 11:05 AM

Determining DCs is exactly isomorphic to determining the probability of success for a person of a fixed skill level. And that's up to the DM's judgement. If you're not capable of doing that on the fly, then make your own table. It will be very different than my table, because it's a different world with different parameters. Your wolves are not my wolves.It is the need to create this table before the system is usable that engenders the, "This is an incomplete game," complaints.

Sure, many DMs will take the time to modify the provided table, if it's there, based on their own preferences. But having it there is a necessity to it being a completed game, rather than a vague suggestion that a game might be completed if the DM chooses to.

So basically, people are mad because they have to think and use their imagination in a game designed to make people think and use their imagination.
(...)
Exercise that muscle again, use that brain. Once you get back in the practice of making decisions for yourself and not letting the books simply tell you what to do, this whole issue of trying to figure out what DC will be applied to what situation will go away. You'll be able to do it on your own.I find this rather insulting. It isn't refusing to "use my imagination" when I admit that I have no idea how difficult something is in an objective sense. I recognize that I am a biased individual with particular skills and talents, and that what is easy to me may not be easy to everybody else, and what I find ridiculously hard may be rather trivial to others.

I am an unathletic man with no ability in sports or situations which require sudden snap reactions. Climbing a rope seems "nigh impossible," to me. (I exaggerate my bias in order to illustrate the point, because obviously the problem lies where I am unable to recognize that bias, but by definition I wouldn't be able to hold up such as an example since I wouldn't recognize it.) Should I therefore assume that it takes a DC 30 check to climb a knotted rope, because I know I couldn't do it at all? Clearly, it must take somebody with at least a +10 modifier to have even a shot at it!

What is the baseline expectation in D&D? What does a Strength of 10 really mean in terms of skill at climbing rope?

I am a rather good solver of logic puzzles. Should they therefore be DC 5, since I find them pretty easy?

The lack of baseline invites inconsistency and inventing DCs based on what you know your PCs' modifiers to be.

I find the fact that I would prefer them to have given some examples to set a baseline being said to be refusal to use my brain to be condescending and insulting.

It's quite easy to figure out, 5e assumes that adventurers can succeed at most mundane task if not under pressure and given enough time. So your baseline DC for mundane task is between 0 (auto-success) and 5 ( very easy). If conditions modify the baseline assumptions, then you just up the DC to the next difficulty level the DM think is appropriate, just the same in 3.P you would add a multitude of modifiers to the baseline DC. The difference is that instead of having to look into books to get any relevant modifiers, the DM can you make up the DC and/or ask to roll with advantage or disadvantage.So, then, the baseline DC for literally everything is 0. Anybody can play a violin passably. Anybody can dance a jig without embarassing themselves. Anybody can weave a basket. Anybody can build a boat. Anybody can swim successfully. Anybody can forge a sword. Anybody can design and build an iPhone. Automatically. Unless the DM decides there's something making it harder.

Is that right?

Because I reject that as a bit ridiculous. Some things are harder to do than others. The trouble is figuring out where the baseline of "anybody can do this without a check" stops applying. once you have that, it starts becoming easier to set the other difficulties, because you can ask yourself how much harder X is than Y. But you need that baseline. Otherwise, you're just making things up and may as well just declare a number on the die the PC has to roll to succeed.

If you have a set DC, but feel free to modify it depending on circumstances, why woud you have a problem with establishing the DC based on circumstances in the first place?

What decision seems more difficult to take: if there is a task that the book says is DC 20 but you feel is actually pretty easy because of X, so you change the DC to 10, or if there a task that you feel is pretty easy so you attribute a DC of 10 to it?Note that "because of X" means you're modifying it to be easier than it would without X. You have the baseline of 20 where X doesn't apply. It gives you a starting point of expectation.

X makes it "easier" than "normal," but without knowing what "normal" is, do you assign it automatic success? DC 5? DC 10? DC 20, because the task is "normally" impossible?

Do you see the difference? One works from a reference. The other just spitballs into the wind.

If I tell you, "Your DC is 10 easier than it otherwise would be," what is your DC? I don't tell you what it otherwise would be, so how can you know?

MaxWilson

2018-07-07, 11:13 AM

I mostly want to stay out of the DC debate because it's tangential to my main beef, which isn't about the lack of tables and modifiers. But a quick comment on this:

If you have a set DC, but feel free to modify it depending on circumstances, why woud you have a problem with establishing the DC based on circumstances in the first place?

What decision seems more difficult to take: if there is a task that the book says is DC 20 but you feel is actually pretty easy because of X, so you change the DC to 10, or if there a task that you feel is pretty easy so you attribute a DC of 10 to it?

A more appropriate question is, "Which one is more fun for the players, to have a baseline guesstimate of how hard a given task usually is, or to declare an action blindly and wait for the DM to set a DC?"

Xanathar's provided some sample usages for various tool proficiencies and suggested DCs, and those sample usages are undoubtedly making tool proficiencies more fun and interesting for lots of players. (Even though some of the suggested DCs are ridiculous and best ignored, it's still overall a net gain.)

mgshamster

2018-07-07, 11:18 AM

I find this rather insulting. It isn't refusing to "use my imagination" when I admit that I have no idea how difficult something is in an objective sense. I recognize that I am a biased individual with particular skills and talents, and that what is easy to me may not be easy to everybody else, and what I find ridiculously hard may be rather trivial to others.

I often find that people who refuse to think for themselves find it insulting when you tell them that they need to think for themselves. I honestly don't know another way to put it.

Learning how to think for oneself is a bit of a learning curve and part of growing up; but many people do not learn it as they become adults, for one reason or another.

Likewise, adults can forget how to think for themselves by stopping such practices. A prime example is once one starts letting others do something for them all the time, such as cooking, laundry, cleaning house, etc.. even otherwise capable people forget how to do those things. And in some cases, they refuse to relearn, going so far as to actively fight against having to do something as simple as laundry, because "they don't know how" and they can't imagine how to do it. But as soon as start trying and actually doing it, they start to learn again. Soon enough, they're just as capable as most others.

Likewise, figuring how how to assess a situation and coming up with something as simple as a DC is just something you need to practice at. You've either never learned or have forgotten how to do it, because previous rules have always done it for you.

It's time for you to learn again.

It's time to stop fighting the things you should be perfectly capable of doing yourself. It's time to stop relying on others to do your thinking for you.

There are plenty here who are offering ideas for you to use to help learn along the way, and there's plenty of advice in the books and blogs to help.

But I have little sympathy for any who claims that they find it insulting that they need to think for themselves. Cowboy up and use that brain of yours.

Xetheral

2018-07-07, 11:20 AM

That was also my experience, both on the DM and Player's side of the table. Initially 3e DCs seemed wonderful: It wasn't as locked in as "roll under ability score" and there were tons of examples! But eventually it became too limiting. Accounting for wide variation, as much as a 50% or more chance of success for a normal person for two different but similar-seeming-at-a-glance situations, became impossible without causing table arguments.

Despite playing 3.0 (and later, 3.5) from release until I made the switch to 5e, I don't recall ever encountering table arguments regarding skill DCs. In that system I set the DCs similar to how I do in 5e. I just also had a bunch of printed examples to fall back on if I wished.

Based on posters on this forum, however, I think my experience with 3.0/3.5 may be atypical.

Unoriginal

2018-07-07, 11:26 AM

I'm pretty sure I understand the rules better than you do. I think you aren't understanding the gaps in 5E, perhaps because D&D 3E+ is the only game you've ever played. It's easier to see what's missing when you've seen those missing game structures elsewhere.

I've played or DMed Guilds, Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, 4e, and 5e, Call of Chulhu (d20 and d100 if I'm not mistaken), Legends of the Five Rings (the most recent one as well as an "homebrew" mix of the first and second ones), Les Mercenaires de l'Ombre, le Donjon de Naheulbeuk, Donjon Clefs en Main, Wizard of Oz RPGPlaytest Exalted 3e, 7e Seas, Pathfinder, Warhammer Fantasy RPG, Star Wars d6, Lanfeust de Troy RPG, Mutants & Mastermind, GURPS, and a few other published systems or homebrews I've played but can't remember the names of.

That's not counting the systems I've only read, such as Cartoon Action Hour, and the system I wrote for someone who needed a quick and easy system without going freeform for a work-related thing.

Now, MaxWilson, I believe you have a big list of published RPGs and homebrews you've played and DMed and read and wrote, probably way bigger than mine (so let's cut the ****-measuring contest short) but don't try to claim you understand 5e's ability check system better than me when you've been claiming things like "5e has no baseline" when the baseline was quoted (btw, thank you for it, PhoenixPhyre).

mephnick

2018-07-07, 11:27 AM

I have a feeling many posters here have only ever played D&D and don't know anything about the TTRPG hobby in general if they think 5e rules are "incomplete" or "vague".

georgie_leech

2018-07-07, 11:30 AM

snip.

As someone that enjoys 5e's skill system... none of this. To read someone expressing cogent complaints about a system as just not thinking, is spectacularly missing the point. And you are being needlessly insulting in how you go about arguing your point.

To Segev: one thing I find helpful is to sit down ahead of time and try to work out some DC's based on some guy feelings. Knowing that I'm biased in what I find difficult or easy though, I like to run them by my players for feedback. This helps me avoid using only my own experience as a guide, and I imagine my players with athletically inclined characters appreciate it :smallamused:

Tanarii

2018-07-07, 11:34 AM

Despite playing 3.0 (and later, 3.5) from release until I made the switch to 5e, I don't recall ever encountering table arguments regarding skill DCs. In that system I set the DCs similar to how I do in 5e. I just also had a bunch of printed examples to fall back on if I wished.

Based on posters on this forum, however, I think my experience with 3.0/3.5 may be atypical.
I've heard people say before that the 3e rules were explicit somewhere that they were just example DCs.

If so, my own comment on 5e rules also applies to 3e: you can't really blame the system for DMs (or players) that don't understand the rules. :smallamused:

Jormengand

2018-07-07, 11:34 AM

It's a design intent to not give specific DCs. 5e revolves mostly around the concept where the DM describe a situation, the players tell what their characters are attempting to accomplish, and then the DM decide if they succeed, a roll is needed (in which case, the DM set the ability checks needed, the relevant skills applicable and the DC for the task), or if they fail.

You know what else uses that system?

Roll to dodge.

The rules shouldn't waste page space telling the DM that she can do what she wants. She's the DM. She can already do what she wants. It should provide her with, at the very least, a baseline rule that she can adjust if the circumstances change (so for example, you can whack a +5 on the DC of climbing a rigging if it's broken, but at least you have a baseline DC to work on.

Do you mind if I ask how many RPG systems you consider 'finished'?

I'm not sure any system I've ever played would meet your standards.

Edit - and for clarity, I do not believe I would want to play a system which met your definition of finished :smalltongue: spending my time looking up tables because I don't trust my DM is not my idea of a great way to spend my playing time.

3.5 and Pathfinder are very close in my eyes, and are more "Finished but with gaps that I'd rather they'd filled" than "Unfinished". The tables for most skills list what the DCs are to do specific things in normal circumstances, and some of them note modifiers that apply under certain circumstances.

Think about it this way: if each 5e skill had as much effort put into it as a monster or two, then it would have at least some examples of set DCs for the DM to use. If the monsters had as much effort put into them as the skills, they'd have vague descriptions like:

"A vampire excels at all ability scores, and moves about as fast as a human. It can change into the form of a bat or a cloud of mist, and automatically assumes its mist form if it would be killed. It regenerates as long as it isn't in sunlight or running water, but is harmed by both of them. It can't enter a dwelling uninvited and a stake through the heart paralyses it. The vampire fights with claws and a bite, the latter of which can turn creatures into vampire spawn. The vampire can summon bats, rats and wolves to help it fight."

And that's still longer than most skill descriptions! Imagine anyone who would quite like the vampire to have some stats being told "You have no imagination!" If I want to represent a vampire who is slippery or damaged, I can modify the base vampire rules, but I need something to modify rather than being told "Use your imagination!"

Cazero

2018-07-07, 11:55 AM

Think about it this way: if each 5e skill had as much effort put into it as a monster or two, then it would have at least some examples of set DCs for the DM to use.
What for?
5e skills are circumstance modifiers. Setting DCs is (or ought to be, if you think it currently isn't) covered by the general rules on ability checks.

DanyBallon

2018-07-07, 11:56 AM

So, then, the baseline DC for literally everything is 0. Anybody can play a violin passably. Anybody can dance a jig without embarassing themselves. Anybody can weave a basket. Anybody can build a boat. Anybody can swim successfully. Anybody can forge a sword. Anybody can design and build an iPhone. Automatically. Unless the DM decides there's something making it harder.

Is that right?

Because I reject that as a bit ridiculous. Some things are harder to do than others. The trouble is figuring out where the baseline of "anybody can do this without a check" stops applying. once you have that, it starts becoming easier to set the other difficulties, because you can ask yourself how much harder X is than Y. But you need that baseline. Otherwise, you're just making things up and may as well just declare a number on the die the PC has to roll to succeed.

If you find this ridiculous, then you can just set the base DC for any task at 10 and adjust depending on the situation, just as you would have done with modifiers in 3.P
What I don’t like about such a solution, is that your asking for roll every time someone wants to try something, slowing donw the gameplay. 5e tried to get rid of unnessary rolls by saying that you should roll only if there is a chance of failure, and that failure would have significant consequence.

As for some thing being harder than other, I agree with you, and it’s easily done.
i.e. starting a fire at a campsite with dry wood and matches should be done without rolling any dice, trying to do the same with damp would is a bit harder and could have a DC 10 if there is some meaningful consequences, trying to start a fire without matches or a tinderbox, in a blizzard so you don’t freeze, will absolutely need you to roll an ability check, and the DC will be much higher since the task is harder to do.

You don’t need to have a specific table that tells you that startng a fire with drywood is DC 0, with Damp wood is DC 10, and in a blizzard is DC 20.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 11:57 AM

In the interests of being helpful, here's a different baseline.

The Die Hard Standard
1) Go watch a bunch of action-hero movies. Die Hard. Mission Impossible. The A Team. Anything with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it except the Terminator series.

This is the default tone of 5e. PCs are action heroes.
2) Ask yourself--is this something an action hero should have a chance of failing?

No: Auto-success. If there's no chance of success for an action hero, auto-failure.

Yes:

3) How hard is it for an action hero?
3a) easy, but still a risk. ==> DC 10
3b) a even shot ==> DC 15
3c) a challenge ==> DC 20
3d) has to get really really lucky ==> DC 25

And that's it. There's your DC. Don't use yourself as the baseline--you're not an action hero. PCs (at least at low-mid levels) are. They become superheros at high levels, but they're never worse than action heroes.

georgie_leech

2018-07-07, 12:03 PM

Unoriginal

2018-07-07, 12:04 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 12:05 PM

Also that, with the caveat that while the rules might have been made with Action Heroes in mind, a given campaign can and will have different genres to emulate. Though that's getting into game design.

True, but it's a baseline. The designed one, in fact. If you made changes, it's up to you to adjust.

mgshamster

2018-07-07, 12:08 PM

As someone that enjoys 5e's skill system... none of this. To read someone expressing cogent complaints about a system as just not thinking, is spectacularly missing the point. And you are being needlessly insulting in how you go about arguing your point.

"I don't know how to do it, I'm not willing to figure out how to do it, and someone else (the designers) need to do it for me" is not a cogent argument. It's a tactic to avoid having to figure it out for yourself.

Complaints that it's insulting to be told that you need to figure it out for yourself is a guilt trick tactic to get others to back away and do it for you, instead of having you do it for yourself.

I'm happy to give advice on how to figure it out. Most of my advice would be a re-itteration of what's already been said in the tread. The DMG has advice as well - and so do many blogs such as Angry DM.

I'm happy to help someone learn. I'm happy to assist with something quick in the rules or even something quick that requires thinking but someone just needs a little assist.

But at some point, people need to try it out for themselves.

You know what I just did right now, between writing this post? I built an obstacle course for my kids. I've never done it before. I didn't know how to do it. No one has ever showed me how. Part of it included using a saw and a drill to build a stand for the balance beam so it wouldn't fall over. No one has ever shown me how to to that and I've never done it before. But I figured it out. I gave it a try, and now I've learned something and the next time I'll be able to do it better.

But what I didn't do is tell my kids they can't have an obstacle course because I didn't know how to do it and no one was around to do it for me. But heck, if I really needed it, I'm sure I could have found some advice online which would have assisted me in learning how to do it myself. Much like there's plenty of advice here in this thread, on various blogs, and the DMG for how to determine a DC for any given challenge. And once you start doing it yourself, you'll quickly become adept at it and you won't need to rely on the book and the game designer to do it for you.

Xetheral

2018-07-07, 12:24 PM

This is the default tone of 5e. PCs are action heroes.

I disagree with this claim. I don't see anything in the books to suggest that 5e even has a default tone.

Additionally, I would surprised if "action movie" is even the most common tone. I would instead suspect that "heroic epic" is more prevalent.

Segev

2018-07-07, 12:29 PM

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 12:59 PM

I disagree with this claim. I don't see anything in the books to suggest that 5e even has a default tone.

Additionally, I would surprised if "action movie" is even the most common tone. I would instead suspect that "heroic epic" is more prevalent.

It's a clear extrapolation from the described behaviors and from the fiction on which it's based.

And "heroic epic" is even more powerful than superhero status. You're talking Fionn mac Cumhaill, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, etc. People slicing mountains open when they miss. People throwing mountains at each other. Fighting for days straight. Killing thousands of people without a scratch. Things that would make a shonen anime protagonist worry about verisimilitude.

At lower levels especially, 5e is much more grounded than that. At low levels you're action heroes, doing improbable but not totally impossible things. Surviving things that should kill you. Making those 1/1e6 jumps. Hitting too many targets, too accurately. At high levels you're the Avengers on the low-power end of their depictions. Not challenging gods, but fighting massive monsters and surviving. Tanking a dragon's breath. Etc.

Edit: the point being that using a 21st century, out of shape male (so not even "guy at the gym" here) as the benchmark is way out of scope and designed to produce horrible results. By reframing to action hero (which is as low on the "heroic people doing heroic things" scale as you get), you get things that are more true to the rules and are much more fun (which is kinda the point).

georgie_leech

2018-07-07, 01:08 PM

Thanks, georgie_leech.

And yeah, I know, and that's more or less what I do. That doesn't change that I'm frustrated that I have to take this extra step to essentially homebrew a skill system.

In a lot of ways, it feels like Xanathar's Guide to Everything - which expands on and adds rules and guidelines like these, as well as having a better-thought-out magic item creation ruleset - is what the DMG should have been, and that the DMG is mostly a lot of wasted text rushed out the door.

See, I totally get that. It was something that frustrated me for a while too. There are some examples in the DMG, but they don't make themselves obvious.

For me, the turning point was in realizing that there are pretty much two use cases for the game: either I'm playing something homebrewed, or I'm using a prepublished adventure of some sort (either an single adventure path Curse of Strahd style, or as part of a larger body of published work). In the latter case, they do give a bunch of example DC's. Trap DC's, environmental interactions, and the like tend to be pretty common. In those cases, problem solved. I remained somewhat peeved by how inconsistent they seemed though.

Then I realized that while some of the inconsistencies boil down to different writers, others were better explained by a different feel. Like, when I first ran CoS, I was struck by how many of the DC's seemed artificially inflated for the intended level range. But thinking about it from another angle, it seemed like the module was supposed to feel like everything was against the players. From there, I better realised how the skill DC's can help set the tone for a campaign, and further, that my player-solicitation phase of campaign prep was the perfect chance to get that out and set a floor for player expectations at the same time.

Which is also why I agree that the DMG could use more concrete examples on that sort of thing. IMO, it generally doesn't do a good job of showing what it looks like to have the Action Hero-y tone the rules were originally imagined for.

It's also why the Chase rules are my hands down favorite section of the book. Now there's a place where they show how to get the kind of feel and stakes I'm looking for in a good chase. And with mild tweaking, they're easy to adapt to everything from a hasty scramble after a fleeing suspect, to running from overwhelming forces, to leading the guards on a merry goosechase. I've happily stolen wholesale borrowed elements from their framework for different gamesystems entirely.

Unoriginal

2018-07-07, 01:13 PM

I'm looking forward for the Dragon Heist chase scene.

Jormengand

2018-07-07, 01:21 PM

"I don't know how to do it, I'm not willing to figure out how to do it, and someone else (the designers) need to do it for me" is[...] a tactic to avoid having to figure it out for yourself.

Uhm... yes?

When I buy a product with the WotC emblem on it, I expect it to be written by Wizards of the Coast, not by Jormengand. You'll know when you come across something by Jormengand because it comes with a note at the bottom saying something to that effect. So no, I don't want to have to do the work to build the game that I've paid Wizards to build for me.

MaxWilson

2018-07-07, 01:25 PM

It's also why the Chase rules are my hands down favorite section of the book. Now there's a place where they show how to get the kind of feel and stakes I'm looking for in a good chase. And with mild tweaking, they're easy to adapt to everything from a hasty scramble after a fleeing suspect, to running from overwhelming forces, to leading the guards on a merry goosechase. I've happily stolen wholesale borrowed elements from their framework for different gamesystems entirely.

While I'm not a fan of the implementation of the chase rules myself, I just want to highlight this example here of how beneficial it is when 5E devotes even a tiny bit of attention to alternate game structures. I've said upthread that combat, the DMG blurb on chases, and the the conceit of "roll an ability check and compare it to a DC that the DM makes up on the spot" are the only game structures 5E has... and yet look how beneficial the chase rules are to some people!

Five pages in the PHB on procedures for riddle contests, dramatic interactions (where the goal is to seek emotional concessions from another character, as opposed to a material gain), hexcrawling (clearing/keeping land), alliance-building, and commerce (trade routes, making money) would not have gone amiss, even if they weren't very good implementations. We might see more conflicts being resolved by riddle contests instead of fights to the death; and we might have seen Inquisitives be good at riddle contests and Purple Dragons Knights be good at building alliances. We might also see more high-level play that isn't about "save the world from Big Bad Evil." Missed opportunity.

Xetheral

2018-07-07, 01:26 PM

It's a clear extrapolation from the described behaviors and from the fiction on which it's based.

I disagree that one can extrapolate (let alone "clearly" extrapolate) from the books that D&D has a default tone.

And "heroic epic" is even more powerful than superhero status. You're talking Fionn mac Cumhaill, Gilgamesh, Beowulf, etc. People slicing mountains open when they miss. People throwing mountains at each other. Fighting for days straight. Killing thousands of people without a scratch. Things that would make a shonen anime protagonist worry about verisimilitude.

I was using the term "heroic epic" to refer to any epic tale about a hero, but it looks like that by doing so I may be stepping on the toes of a technical definition that refers specifically to poetry. I'll retract that part for want of appropriate terminology, but I still would be surprised if "Action Movie" is the most common style.

JoeJ

2018-07-07, 01:46 PM

Uhm... yes?

When I buy a product with the WotC emblem on it, I expect it to be written by Wizards of the Coast, not by Jormengand. You'll know when you come across something by Jormengand because it comes with a note at the bottom saying something to that effect. So no, I don't want to have to do the work to build the game that I've paid Wizards to build for me.

Which is exactly what you get when you buy a WotC adventure. As has already been pointed out, the DC for pretty much everything they expect players to try is given in the text of the adventure.

djreynolds

2018-07-07, 02:06 PM

I think the vagueness could be a benefit because some players want a challenging game and others do not, and it allows the DM to tailor the game.

But the same vagueness can affect veteran players with "expectations" of rules. A solid list of task and DCs is what they want.

And some veteran players like to break the game by enforcing rules. Some players will go with the flow of the story, some will not!

Some DM's (myself included) have had to include "DM armor class" or "DM DCs" because there are honestly too many variables to juggle if you complete TASK A now, rather than down the road. I may set a DC really high only because I need you to do this later.

Now honestly I have sometimes not done my homework as a DM and figured the party would gain entrance into the castle through route A or even route B, and some kid came up with the idea of a possible route C, and that's awesome and you just have to roll with punches and at least make it challenging. But there are also players who exploit "game knowledge" and really just want to rub the DMs face in it.

I think the vagueness allows the DM to just keep the story progressing.

Does this tightrope walk even need a role? Is it just there for a cool story element, to give the rogue a chance to shine

If it does need a role, what are the implications if the player fails? Does the player die, if the player dies is the story over?

Who needs to make the crossing, the rogue or the fat cleric, and why?

Do you want the cleric to fail or not even have a chance? Did the cleric miss another area where he could've avoided the tightrope?

I find as a DM you need to present options to the party or the party needs to know this is the only way to complete this section of the adventure, and then the players... find away or die trying. But that part of the danger of the game.

Having set DCs, can honestly blow up in a DMs face, even a DM who has done their homework and are thoroughly prepared

Some players want to see the adventure through and be victorious, some players want to defeat the DM and be victorious. DMs be wary of who is at your table.

Contrast

2018-07-07, 02:18 PM

Discussion about game systems

I think this is where we fundamentally disagree. You see any game that doesn't model as much as it can as incomplete. I see a game that tries to model more than it needs to as wasteful and inefficient. Adding more rules does not make a game/system intrinsically better. In fact it has a good chance of making it worse by bogging DM and players down trying to get to grips with rules that aren't relevant to actually doing what you're trying to do while having fun doing it.

A more appropriate question is, "Which one is more fun for the players, to have a baseline guesstimate of how hard a given task usually is, or to declare an action blindly and wait for the DM to set a DC?"

Xanathar's provided some sample usages for various tool proficiencies and suggested DCs, and those sample usages are undoubtedly making tool proficiencies more fun and interesting for lots of players. (Even though some of the suggested DCs are ridiculous and best ignored, it's still overall a net gain.)

So to be clear, WotC published guideline DCs in response to criticism at the lack of guideline DCs that you immediately ignore because using your judgement and experience you think they set the guideline DCs wrong? But you're using the other ones that did resonate with your expectations for guideline DCs?

In other words those guideline DCs were totally useless to you as you only listened to them when they reflected what you were already going to do?

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 02:45 PM

Xetheral, consider the blurb from the back of the PHB:

The world needs heroes. Will you answer the call?

And then consider the opening words in the class descriptions:

A tall human tribesman strides through a blizzard, draped in fur and hefting his axe. He laughs as he charges toward the frost giant who dared poach his people's elk herd.

Holding high a gnarled staff wreathed with holly, an elf summons the fury of the storm and calls down explosive bolts of lightning to smite the torch-carrying orcs who threaten her forest.

A dwarf in chain mail interposes his shield between an ogre's club and his companion, knocking the deadly blow aside. His companion, a half-elf in scale armor, swings two scimitars in a blinding whirl as she circles the ogre, looking for a blind spot in its defenses

I can clearly see Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or any of the other famous action hero actors in those roles. These are all "people on the front lines, doing heroic things" descriptions. On a scale that goes something like

regular joe --> action hero (still human but less fragile and more capable than average joe) --> superhero (basically invulnerable to average joe, but still has weaknesses) --> shonen protagonist/mythic hero at his peak (basically invulnerable except to very particular things and capable of destroying worlds),

5e PCs start out somewhere between steps 1 and 2 (better than average but not fully action heroes yet due to fragility) and end up somewhere in the superhero range. 4e went from action hero to mythic hero/godling. 3e went from regular joe to ??? (depending on optimization).

5e PCs are (past level 3 or so), way higher than average people just in plain ability scores (+6 total, compared to +0 for a commoner), HP (16 + CON for the weakest, taking averages, compared to 4), combat abilities (duh), and features. By level 10 they're shrugging off fireballs (if they don't negate them entirely) and slaying adult dragons.

I think that action hero is the lowest on the power scale you can go with the default tone. So for someone who struggles with using themselves as the baseline--use an action hero instead. The genre conventions are pretty well defined--the range of capabilities doesn't really vary much from one movie to another. Assuming that anything an action hero can do effortlessly, a PC can do as well without a roll prevents you from drastically overestimating the difficulty, and puts you right in the middle of the "eh, well, it's normal variation" range

In other words those guideline DCs were totally useless to you as you only listened to them when they reflected what you were already going to do?

Remember, if I don't like a rule, that rule doesn't exist!

JoeJ

2018-07-07, 03:01 PM

Tanarii

2018-07-07, 03:20 PM

From the beginning, task resolution in D&D has used two methods:

1) Roll the dice and compare the result to a number the DM makes up.

2) Roll the dice and compare the result to a number printed on a table plus a modifier the DM makes up.

I really don't see how the second method adds anything except an unnecessary extra step. The end result is still that the DM decides how challenging a task is. Just like every other RPG I know of that uses target number based task resolution.IMX old school was mostly) roll the dice and compare to the ability score the DM decides on. Possibly with a modifier the DM made up.

5e went with:
3) Roll the dice if the DM decides it's actually necessary, add a modifier based on the ability score and skill/tool he DM chose, and compare the result to a number chosen from a table by the DM, with some guidelines on which numbers on the table to choose more often. Plus add a specific modifier (adv/dis) at the DMs discretion.

IMO that's closer to 2 than 1.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 03:24 PM

IMX old school was mostly) roll the dice and compare to the ability score the DM decides on.

5e went with:
3) Roll the dice if the DM decides it's actually necessary, and compare the result to a number chosen from a table by the DM, with some guidelines on which numbers on the table to choose more often. Plus add a specific modifier (adv/dis) at the DMs discretion.

IMO that's closer to 2 than 1.

That old school method (since the ability score called on is DM's choice) is exactly the same as #1.

Without specifying all possible rolls and the target numbers (and all possible modifiers) and disallowing any changes, all TN systems break down to #1 in the end. Because if the DM is free to modify the TN (whether by modifiers or not), the number is arbitrary in the end.

Tanarii

2018-07-07, 03:35 PM

That old school method (since the ability score called on is DM's choice) is exactly the same as #1.Not really. Because unless there are DM modifiers (which there usually were) each character had exactly six TNs to do anything.

MaxWilson

2018-07-07, 03:39 PM

I think this is where we fundamentally disagree. You see any game that doesn't model as much as it can as incomplete. I see a game that tries to model more than it needs to as wasteful and inefficient. Adding more rules does not make a game/system intrinsically better. In fact it has a good chance of making it worse by bogging DM and players down trying to get to grips with rules that aren't relevant to actually doing what you're trying to do while having fun doing it.

Yeah, that's a pretty fundamental difference all right. I have no use for the DMG chase rules or the MM NPC stat blocks, but I don't see them as bogging me down in any way.

So to be clear, WotC published guideline DCs in response to criticism at the lack of guideline DCs that you immediately ignore because using your judgement and experience you think they set the guideline DCs wrong? But you're using the other ones that did resonate with your expectations for guideline DCs?

In other words those guideline DCs were totally useless to you as you only listened to them when they reflected what you were already going to do?

In no way does your "to be clear" summary reflect my actual beliefs. The Xanathars lists aren't "totally useless". That may perhaps be your opinion but it isn't mine.

There are a few DCs that are obviously ridiculous in the context of D&D (DC 20 for an expert carpenter to pry apart a door, when any fool can dismantle a door-shaped monster like a mimic using regular old weapons?) and a number that I don't have strong opinions about, and would shrug and accept. Overall I think the lists in Xanathar's are useful and I'm glad they exist, not least because they give players lots of options and ideas without having to play Mother May I with me, the DM, to generate those ideas.

Jormengand

2018-07-07, 03:48 PM

Which is exactly what you get when you buy a WotC adventure. As has already been pointed out, the DC for pretty much everything they expect players to try is given in the text of the adventure.

But it should be in the actual game rules, not just in the adventure paths.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 03:58 PM

I don't understand the problem with what's derisively called "mother may I". As both a player and a DM, I love those back and forth conversations/negotiations about actions.

As a player, it helps me build the shared mental model that the game relies upon. There's lots of things that may not be mentioned in a narrative description that are important components. And that my character would have seen just fine. It helps me collaborate with my DM and the rest of the party to do amazing things in ways that satisfy everyone. It builds trust--both with the DM and with other players.

As a DM, it gives me critical insight into what the player wants, and thus lets me tailor the game to their fun better. It usually points out places where my narration wasn't sufficient--where the shared mental model got out of sync. Often they surprise me with Gordian Knot-style solutions. It lets me avoid senselessly wasted actions that the character would know are wasted. It builds trust that I'm not playing gotcha games. This is important for everyone's fun.

It seems to me that avoiding them reduces the game to "do I have a relevant button on my character sheet" instead of real people doing real (if heroic) things. It constrains thinking outside the box. It encourages rules-lawyering and mistrust between players and DM.

But it should be in the actual game rules, not just in the adventure paths.

No. Because it's too context sensitive. A DC that works in CoS (with it's particular tone) may not work for another setting or another table in a different adventure. Proper scoping of variables (and DCs are variables) is critical to avoid conflicts. Edit: That is, DCs belong to settings and worlds, not to tasks in the abstract. It's the difficulty to do this particular thing, this particular way, on this particular occasion. It doesn't generalize at all.

JoeJ

2018-07-07, 04:05 PM

But it should be in the actual game rules, not just in the adventure paths.

That would require them to create all the adventures before releasing the rules. And it wouldn't serve any purpose, since you'd still need the rest of the adventure those DCs apply to.

Tanarii

2018-07-07, 04:29 PM

Sa much as I enjoy the ability to set Dcs as appropriate for things that definitely follow the paradigm of this specific thing done this specific way in my particular campaign for things like Traps, Locks, Difficult Climbs/Jumps, Doors (finding and breaking) ... the DMG still gives examples for Traps, Poisons, Diseases.

It is also possible to have tables of generalized DCs for some things. Provided they're a sufficient abstraction that's being resolved. And the 5e DMG includes those for the most common needs outside the dungeon. Foraging, Becoming Lost, Environmental effects (all ~p109), Social Interaction (p245).

So ... we have a flexible generalized system for things that cannot easily be pegged to a specific DC. We have specific tables for things that can be pegged as part of a solid abstraction. And we have examples of some common components.

THE most common examples brought up of the "vague" 5e rules are Jumping, Climbing, Traps, Picking Locks, and Finding things, ... things which already have a solid rule the players can reference, or by their very nature cannot be pegged to a to a one-size-fits-all static DC for all campaigns, as demonstrated by 3e's poor handling of them. And even then we have examples for Traps, which are the ones a new DM will need the most guidance on.

MaxWilson

2018-07-07, 04:37 PM

I don't understand the problem with what's derisively called "mother may I".

Are you genuinely looking for insight here or just loudly voicing an opinion? If you are genuinely looking for insight, it may help if you try imagining 5E with no spells listed in the PHB, where every wizard has to Mother May I the DM every time he wants to spend a spell slot. Everything you say about the benefits of explicit conversation between player and DM in terms of building a shared mental model would still hold true in that world--but would it be as good of an experience without the PHB spells as a starting point?

It's not that there's anything wrong with ad hoc negotiation between player and DM, but if Mother May I is the only way to gain information about what your options are it slows down gameflow, hurts consistency, and detracts from the players' sense of agency (feeling of empowerment which comes from the ability to make choices within the fictional world whose effects are correlated to player intentions).

Never forget that you, the DM, are the players' sole window into the gameworld. They can't read your mind, and things that are obvious to you are not obvious to them. Do everything you can to get them all the information they need in order to act effectively.

Contrast

2018-07-07, 05:03 PM

In no way does your "to be clear" summary reflect my actual beliefs. The Xanathars lists aren't "totally useless". That may perhaps be your opinion but it isn't mine.

There are a few DCs that are obviously ridiculous in the context of D&D (DC 20 for an expert carpenter to pry apart a door, when any fool can dismantle a door-shaped monster like a mimic using regular old weapons?) and a number that I don't have strong opinions about, and would shrug and accept. Overall I think the lists in Xanathar's are useful and I'm glad they exist, not least because they give players lots of options and ideas without having to play Mother May I with me, the DM, to generate those ideas.

I'd be interested to know what use you feel you're getting out of them then? As I said, you're clearly ignoring ones you feel are incorrect and accepting ones that seem right to you. Which is exactly what you'd have been doing beforehand.

I get your argument about giving players more certainty in terms of giving them lists of stuff they can do but I'd say the problem there is it encourages the 'if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail' issue. Once you tell people 'this is what you can do with this' they often forget that they can do anything else outside of that. The whole point of playing tabletop RPGs is to be able to do anything.

For clarity, there being chase rules doesn't ruin the game for me. What ruins the game for me is being in the middle of an exciting scene, the villain tries to run away then the DM goes 'hmm, I think there are rules for this somewhere, where were they...'. The more of those things you add the less likely the DM is to be able to remember them all which means more referencing and so on. Having to look things up or scenes dragging on due to mechanical complexity are the worst parts of any system in my opinion.

Edit - forcing a DM to spend hours and hours preparing for sessions by reviewing potential rules which may come up and bookmarking relevant rules for future reference also not ideal :smallbiggrin:

DanyBallon

2018-07-07, 05:04 PM

Are you genuinely looking for insight here or just loudly voicing an opinion? If you are genuinely looking for insight, it may help if you try imagining 5E with no spells listed in the PHB, where every wizard has to Mother May I the DM every time he wants to spend a spell slot. Everything you say about the benefits of explicit conversation between player and DM in terms of building a shared mental would still hold true in that world--but would it be as good of an experience without the PHB spells as a starting point?

It's not that there's anything wrong with ad hoc negotiation between player and DM, but if Mother May I is the only way to gain information about what your options are it slows down gameflow, hurts consistency, and detracts from the players' sense of agency (feeling of empowerment which comes from the ability to make choices within the fictional world whose effects are correlated to player intentions).

How is it "Mother May I"?
The very first section of the PHB states that the gameplay goes as follow:

1. The DM describes the environment.

The DM tells the players where their adventurers are and what’s around them, presenting the basic scope of options that present themselves (how many doors lead out of a room, what’s on a table, who’s in the tavern, and so on).

2. The players describe what they want to do.

Sometimes one player speaks for the whole party, saying, “We’ll take the east door,” for example. Other times, different adventurers do different things: one adventurer might search a treasure chest while a second examines an esoteric symbol engraved on a wall and a third keeps watch for monsters. The players don’t need to take turns, but the DM listens to every player and decides how to resolve those actions.

Sometimes, resolving a task is easy. If an adventurer wants to walk across a room and open a door, the DM might just say that the door opens and describe what lies beyond. But the door might be locked, the floor might hide a deadly trap, or some other circumstance might make it challenging for an adventurer to complete a task. In those cases, the DM decides what happens, often relying on the roll of a die to determine the results of an action.

3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions.

Describing the results often leads to another decision point, which brings the flow of the game right back to step 1.

This pattern holds whether the adventurers are cautiously exploring a ruin, talking to a devious prince, or locked in mortal combat against a mighty dragon. In certain situations, particularly combat, the action is more structured and the players (and DM) do take turns choosing and resolving actions. But most of the time, play is fluid and flexible, adapting to the circumstances of the adventure.

Often the action of an adventure takes place in the imagination of the players and DM, relying on the DM’s verbal descriptions to set the scene. Some DMs like to use music, art, or recorded sound effects to help set the mood, and many players and DMs alike adopt different voices for the various adventurers, monsters, and other characters they play in the game. Sometimes, a DM might lay out a map and use tokens or miniature figures to represent each creature involved in a scene to help the players keep track of where everyone is.

If describing the DM what your characters wants to do is Mother May I, then I believe that D&D 5e will be a constant disappointment for you.

From the description the DM gave you about the situation/environment, you have all the latitude you want to take any actions you can think of. Then and only then, the DM consider your action and decide if a check is needed or not. If a check is needed he set a DC for the task and let you know which ability check to roll. You can suggest to use a skill you think is relevant to the task or situation, or even ask to use an other ability, and the DM let you know it it applies or not to the roll. The DM then Describe the result of the action and this set the table for the next round of play.
This is not "Mother May I" but a normal and constant interaction between a DM and its players.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 05:05 PM

Xetheral

2018-07-07, 05:10 PM

Xetheral, consider the blurb from the back of the PHB:

And then consider the opening words in the class descriptions:

I can clearly see Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or any of the other famous action hero actors in those roles. These are all "people on the front lines, doing heroic things" descriptions. On a scale that goes something like

regular joe --> action hero (still human but less fragile and more capable than average joe) --> superhero (basically invulnerable to average joe, but still has weaknesses) --> shonen protagonist/mythic hero at his peak (basically invulnerable except to very particular things and capable of destroying worlds),

5e PCs start out somewhere between steps 1 and 2 (better than average but not fully action heroes yet due to fragility) and end up somewhere in the superhero range. 4e went from action hero to mythic hero/godling. 3e went from regular joe to ??? (depending on optimization).

5e PCs are (past level 3 or so), way higher than average people just in plain ability scores (+6 total, compared to +0 for a commoner), HP (16 + CON for the weakest, taking averages, compared to 4), combat abilities (duh), and features. By level 10 they're shrugging off fireballs (if they don't negate them entirely) and slaying adult dragons.

I think that action hero is the lowest on the power scale you can go with the default tone. So for someone who struggles with using themselves as the baseline--use an action hero instead. The genre conventions are pretty well defined--the range of capabilities doesn't really vary much from one movie to another. Assuming that anything an action hero can do effortlessly, a PC can do as well without a roll prevents you from drastically overestimating the difficulty, and puts you right in the middle of the "eh, well, it's normal variation" range

You appear to be using the word "tone" as a synonym for "power level". Is that correct? If so, I don't disagree that D&D characters often have a power level similar to action heroes.

But I don't think that's a standard usage of the word "tone". When you say that...

This is the default tone of 5e. PCs are action heroes.

... and compare D&D to Die Hard and Mission Impossible, it instead comes across to me that you're claiming that the default in D&D is to emphasize tonal elements from that genre, such as a casual (sometimes whimsical) approach to over-the-top violence. That's what I was objecting to. The passages you cite are illustrations of what a character can do, but don't have the context necessary to suggest an overall tone to the game.

JoeJ

2018-07-07, 05:12 PM

MaxWilson

2018-07-07, 05:43 PM

I'd be interested to know what use you feel you're getting out of them then? As I said, you're clearly ignoring ones you feel are incorrect and accepting ones that seem right to you. Which is exactly what you'd have been doing beforehand.

I get your argument about giving players more certainty in terms of giving them lists of stuff they can do but I'd say the problem there is it encourages the 'if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail' issue. Once you tell people 'this is what you can do with this' they often forget that they can do anything else outside of that. The whole point of playing tabletop RPGs is to be able to do anything.

For clarity, there being chase rules doesn't ruin the game for me. What ruins the game for me is being in the middle of an exciting scene, the villain tries to run away then the DM goes 'hmm, I think there are rules for this somewhere, where were they...'. The more of those things you add the less likely the DM is to be able to remember them all which means more referencing and so on. Having to look things up or scenes dragging on due to mechanical complexity are the worst parts of any system in my opinion.

Edit - forcing a DM to spend hours and hours preparing for sessions by reviewing potential rules which may come up and bookmarking relevant rules for future reference also not ideal :smallbiggrin:

Hey Contrast,

First off, let me say that I share your opinion on how bad it is for the DM to pause in the middle of an exciting scene to look up "rules for this somewhere." That's compensating for bad DM prep by being a bad DM during play: lose/lose. It shouldn't happen and I hope it never does happen, though you'd have to ask my players to know for sure.

Second, you ask what value I'm getting out of the lists, and then I think you answer your own question by noticing that it's all about giving players more certainty by handing them a list of possibilities. We seem to have different experiences in terms of what players do with those kinds of lists. My experience is that if you hand a player a list and say, "Here are some ideas for you, use these as a base" rather than stifling them, it unlocks their creativity. When I gave my players all copies of the Book of Lost Spells and said, "Here, you can't select these spells automatically on level-up like you can PHB spells, and some of them are too powerful or too weak, but use these for inspiration when you're thinking about what spells to research," they came back to me with various proposals for druid cantrips for growing Wolverine-type claws (for the Shadow Monk/Druid) and "Darkballs" of necromantic energy for the Necromancer and various other things, many of which did not come from the Book of Lost Spells at all. If my experience had been like what yours apparently is, you'd have predicted that my players would have had their creativity stifled and would have stuck strictly to what was in the book for their research ideas, but the opposite happened: seeing the possibilities I was prepared to allow unlocked their creativity.

I'm not running 5E at the moment (I'm running DramaSystem at the table, and 5E is only my CRPG project at the moment) and haven't since before Xanathar's came out so I haven't observed directly how the metagame has been impacted by the lists in Xanathar's, but I expect the impact has been positive and that tool proficiencies like Glassblower's Tools and Painter's Tools are probably impacting the game more than they did before.

But again, remember that this whole argument over DCs is a sideline for me. I don't feel as strongly about it as Segev does. My beef is more about the lack of game structures than the lack of tables of DCs, because DCs are much, much easier to create on the fly and communicate to players than game structures are.

-Max

How is it "Mother May I"?
The very first section of the PHB states that the gameplay goes as follow:

If describing the DM what your characters wants to do is Mother May I, then I believe that D&D 5e will be a constant disappointment for you.

From the description the DM gave you about the situation/environment, you have all the latitude you want to take any actions you can think of. Then and only then, the DM consider your action and decide if a check is needed or not. If a check is needed he set a DC for the task and let you know which ability check to roll. You can suggest to use a skill you think is relevant to the task or situation, or even ask to use an other ability, and the DM let you know it it applies or not to the roll. The DM then Describe the result of the action and this set the table for the next round of play.
This is not "Mother May I" but a normal and constant interaction between a DM and its players.

If you stick strictly to that gameplay loop, "player declares action and then DM resolves," you're asking players to declare their actions blindly with no real idea what their capabilities or approximate odds of success are. That's jarring because it is neither fun for the player nor reflective of the in-game logic: as in real life, characters should know roughly what they are capable of.

So in practice, it's common for players to ask the DMs for rulings preemptively, a la "Can I climb that cliff?" "Sure, it would be a DC 20 Acrobatics check, and if you fail you fall halfway up." "Okay, then can I use my crossbow to shoot a grappling hook instead and climb that?" "[thinks] Sure, I'd have you make an attack roll, and if the attack succeeds the grapple lands and I'll give you advantage on the Acrobatics check for having a rope." "How difficult does the shot look?" "Probably about AC 16 but you're not quite sure until you try it. " Etc. It is this process of querying the DM repeatedly to which I referred when I said, "Overall I think the lists in Xanathar's are useful and I'm glad they exist, not least because they give players lots of options and ideas without having to play Mother May I with me, the DM, to generate those ideas."

There's nothing wrong with that process, but a game which is founded exclusively on that Mother May I loop is worse than one where the players already have some information about their own capabilities.

Note that once the player makes the shot and the DM looks at the attack roll and says, "You tug on the rope and it seems to be solid," the player still has some uncertainty about what will happen once he actually starts to climb. He doesn't know in advance whether the grapple will hold or whether there are monsters lurking at the top of the cliff--but at least he knows that he, the player, will be rolling with advantage if the rope holds, which is analogous to the player character knowing that ropes make difficult climbs quite a bit easier, and he's absolutely entitled to know that fact in advance.

MeimuHakurei

2018-07-07, 06:04 PM

If spelling out player actions and codifying rules prevent proper roleplaying and stifles storytelling, why are you playing 5e and not freeform RP?

mgshamster

2018-07-07, 06:07 PM

If spelling out player actions and codifying rules prevent proper roleplaying and stifles storytelling, why are you playing 5e and not freeform RP?

While I'm sure there are plenty of people who enjoy free-form RPGs, taking such an extreme for this conversation is about as useful as asking the other side why they're not just playing FATAL if they like rules so much.

DanyBallon

2018-07-07, 06:18 PM

If you stick strictly to that gameplay loop, "player declares action and then DM resolves," you're asking players to declare their actions blindly with no real idea what their capabilities or approximate odds of success are. That's jarring because it is neither fun for the player nor reflective of the in-game logic: as in real life, characters should know roughly what they are capable of.

So in practice, it's common for players to ask the DMs for rulings preemptively, a la "Can I climb that cliff?" "Sure, it would be a DC 20 Acrobatics check, and if you fail you fall halfway up." "Okay, then can I use my crossbow to shoot a grappling hook instead and climb that?" "[thinks] Sure, I'd have you make an attack roll, and if the attack succeeds the grapple lands I'll give you advantage on the Acrobatics check for having a rope." "How difficult does the shot look?" "Probably about AC 16 but you're not quite sure until you try it." Etc. It is this process of querying the DM repeatedly to which I referred when I said, "Overall I think the lists in Xanathar's are useful and I'm glad they exist, not least because they give players lots of options and ideas without having to play Mother May I with me, the DM, to generate those ideas."

There's nothing wrong with that process, but a game which is founded exclusively on that Mother May I loop is worse than one where the players already have some information about their own capabilities.

See, for the same situation, at our table it would have been more like this:
DM: your reach the bottom of a cliff. What do you want to do.
Player: I study the cliff to evaluate how difficult is the climb
DM: usually you can climb a cliff this height quite easily, but this one seem to have a small inverted pitch, and the rock looks more slippery that what you are used to.
Player: I’ll try to throw a grappling hook over the edge then.
DM: Fine, roll a dexterity check, and you may add your proficiency bonus on bows. (DM secretly set DC)
Player: 18
DM: you succeed into securing the grappling hook. While the rope will help you climb, it won’t be an easy task, but not that hard either, just beware of falling.
Player: Alright, I’ll climb first and set pitons in the rocks to prevent falling from too high, it will also help my fellow adventurer to climb more easily.
DM: I’ll have you roll to dexterity checks, if you succeed both, you mange to clib without any issue, if you faila check, it will take you twice as long to climb, and if you fail one by more than 5, you’ll fall 10ft only thanks to the pitons you did set as you climb.
Player: I’m proficient in Athlethics, can I use my proficiency bonus for the roll.
DM: sure do!
Player: 16 and 12
DM: you succeed one and failed the other, but do not fall. You took twice as long, but you reach the top of the cliff. What are you doing next.

As you can see, the player is having an active roll, and except for one time, he never had to ask permission to the DM, nor changed his course of action because he metagamed that his chance of beating the DC were low.

KorvinStarmast

2018-07-07, 06:41 PM

5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 ... get out of the rut.

It is OK for a DM to set a DC at 13, or 11, or 9, or 22.

Look at the wide variety of save DC's in the MM. Or based on a player's stats.

Beyond that, mghamster has a good point even though some people found it offensive in presentation. Use those muscles, as a DM, or have them atrophy.

MaxWilson

2018-07-07, 07:42 PM

See, for the same situation, at our table it would have been more like this:
DM: your reach the bottom of a cliff. What do you want to do.
Player: I study the cliff to evaluate how difficult is the climb
DM: usually you can climb a cliff this height quite easily, but this one seem to have a small inverted pitch, and the rock looks more slippery that what you are used to.
Player: I’ll try to throw a grappling hook over the edge then.
DM: Fine, roll a dexterity check, and you may add your proficiency bonus on bows. (DM secretly set DC)
Player: 18
DM: you succeed into securing the grappling hook. While the rope will help you climb, it won’t be an easy task, but not that hard either, just beware of falling.
Player: Alright, I’ll climb first and set pitons in the rocks to prevent falling from too high, it will also help my fellow adventurer to climb more easily.
DM: I’ll have you roll to dexterity checks, if you succeed both, you mange to clib without any issue, if you faila check, it will take you twice as long to climb, and if you fail one by more than 5, you’ll fall 10ft only thanks to the pitons you did set as you climb.
Player: I’m proficient in Athlethics, can I use my proficiency bonus for the roll.
DM: sure do!
Player: 16 and 12
DM: you succeed one and failed the other, but do not fall. You took twice as long, but you reach the top of the cliff. What are you doing next.

As you can see, the player is having an active roll, and except for one time, he never had to ask permission to the DM, nor changed his course of action because he metagamed that his chance of beating the DC were low.

That's just one example of your table though. Presumably it doesn't always happen so easily. If the DM had said, "No, Athletics doesn't apply this time," or if he had been deterred by the need difficulty of the climb itself (e.g. if the DM had required two successes instead of just one) perhaps he would have changed his mind and either not tried to climb or asked for additional support from other PCs ("stand by to Feather Fall me if I drop!").

The more you know about your capabilities without having to consult the DM in the middle of planning, the smoother the game flow. Do you disagree?

Any further questions?

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 08:04 PM

The more you know about your capabilities without having to consult the DM in the middle of planning, the smoother the game flow. Do you disagree?

I find just the opposite--when people don't talk about their plans you get retcons and confusion when it becomes clear that there was a mismatch in the mental model. When people ask questions and discuss things openly, things get resolved in a way that fits the players' intentions and best models their desires. When they try to back-seat DM or read the DM's mind (trying to second-guess how it will be resolved based on game rules) you get conflict, feelings of gotcha tactics, and a greater chance for hard feelings.

This is true for all aspects of the game, not just ability checks. Ability checks show it the most because they're the most open-ended part, where mismatched mental models and inadvertent miscommunications are the biggest worry (since you're using a very lossy medium to communicate fine details).

DanyBallon

2018-07-07, 08:05 PM

The more you know about your capabilities without having to consult the DM in the middle of planning, the smoother the game flow. Do you disagree?

As a matter of fact, the only thing I need to know is that my character is proficient in some skills, and that means that he is better than an untrained person in these fields.
If my character is good at climbing, he will look at the possibility of climbing that cliff, it’s up to me to ask if there are any hints that it’s a easy/difficult/near impossible climb. I don’t need to know the DC, I just need to get as much information as my character would normally get from his experience in climbing. If it’s a difficult task, and I fail to read the signs correctly and my character falls, then so be it. I’ll play it as my character being overconfident, which cause his fall. On the other hand, my character could also decide that the risk looks too great, and took a longer route. Again, those decisions are made from the interaction with the DM, not from knowing before hand that climbing a steep cliff is DC X.

mgshamster

2018-07-07, 09:06 PM

I find just the opposite--when people don't talk about their plans you get retcons and confusion when it becomes clear that there was a mismatch in the mental model. When people ask questions and discuss things openly, things get resolved in a way that fits the players' intentions and best models their desires. When they try to back-seat DM or read the DM's mind (trying to second-guess how it will be resolved based on game rules) you get conflict, feelings of gotcha tactics, and a greater chance for hard feelings.

This is true for all aspects of the game, not just ability checks. Ability checks show it the most because they're the most open-ended part, where mismatched mental models and inadvertent miscommunications are the biggest worry (since you're using a very lossy medium to communicate fine details).

That just happened to me the other day.

DM had a group of Goblins on a cliff top, bows and arrows pointing down at us.

I cast the Mold Earth cantrip, aiming to excavate a 5ft cube of earth just below the Goblin leader; I was hoping to cave in the earth underneath the leader so he'd fall down to our level. Not really intending to hurt him, but more as an intimidation tactic to convince them to leave us alone.

Meanwhile, in the DMs headcannon, that cliff was solid rock, which means it doesn't work with the Mold Earth spell. The spell requires it to be loose earth.

So even a spell with clearly laid out rules required good communication with the DM - or what others seem to be calling "mother may I."

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 09:24 PM

That just happened to me the other day.

DM had a group of Goblins on a cliff top, bows and arrows pointing down at us.

I cast the Mold Earth cantrip, aiming to excavate a 5ft cube of earth just below the Goblin leader; I was hoping to cave in the earth underneath the leader so he'd fall down to our level. Not really intending to hurt him, but more as an intimidation tactic to convince them to leave us alone.

Meanwhile, in the DMs headcannon, that cliff was solid rock, which means it doesn't work with the Mold Earth spell. The spell requires it to be loose earth.

So even a spell with clearly laid out rules required good communication with the DM - or what others seem to be calling "mother may I."

Exactly. Having a shared mental model of the scenario is critical to having good game play. I'm constantly shocked at how resistant people are to using their words like adults. It's a social game, where talking to each other is both the primary vehicle of play and the primary point.

As a DM, unless I understand what you're trying to do and how you're trying to do it I can't adjudicate it fairly. This means conversation. As a player, unless I know how the DM has modeled the scene, I don't know what options I have. That usually means asking questions, probing for information to make an informed decision. Exactly none of this relies on having exact numbers or difficulties--I don't play spreadsheet-wielding optimization accountants. Knowing a basic easy/medium/hard, even if easy is DC 12 (not 10), etc. is plenty and usually signals that I've misunderstood something or miscommunicated when something I predict will be easy ends up being hard. That leads me to ask questions because I must be missing something important or have a false model.

And I trust my DMs much more than I trust the rules designers when it comes to setting difficulties. Because the rules designers are miles and years away, writing for a general audience. My DM's right at hand and is my friend.

MaxWilson

2018-07-07, 09:24 PM

Meanwhile, in the DMs headcannon, that cliff was solid rock, which means it doesn't work with the Mold Earth spell. The spell requires it to be loose earth.

So even a spell with clearly laid out rules required good communication with the DM - or what others seem to be calling "mother may I."

Now just imagine if that experience was routine for spellcasting--if there were no Mold Earth cantrip at all, and every interaction with spellcasting required you to ask the DM, "Can I do this and how much will it cost?"

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-07, 09:26 PM

Now just imagine if that experience was routine for spellcasting--if there were no Mold Earth cantrip at all, and every interaction with spellcasting required you to ask the DM, "Can I do this and how much will it cost?"

As noted, that's many light-rules games. And it works just fine for them.

Rules have both costs and benefits. They spread the workload, at the cost of rigidity. Each proposed rule must be evaluated on its own--more is not better (neither is fewer, inherently). And different areas of the game benefit more (or are worse hit) by different levels of rule-specificity.

mgshamster

2018-07-07, 10:05 PM

Now just imagine if that experience was routine for spellcasting--if there were no Mold Earth cantrip at all, and every interaction with spellcasting required you to ask the DM, "Can I do this and how much will it cost?"

Oh, sorry, I wasn't complaining. I was showcasing an example of how many spells already require good communication with the DM in order to work.

Like every illusion spell or every time I cast fireball in a TotM game; "How many are in the area of the fireball?"

I believe open communication between the DM and the players is not only vital, but enhances the game, so I'm not concerned with the "mother may I" aspects of the game. I believe they enhance the game.

Having listed DCs, in my experience usually ends up as something like this:

Player: "The DC is X, right? I should be able to do it."
DM: "I think it's X, but I don't quite remember. Let's look it up."
And then the game pauses.

I mean, I know that doesn't happen once you memorize DCs, but in 3.X there were hundreds of them. We couldn't memorize them all, and more often than not would just confuse different things and end up looking it up anyways, and then looking up what modifiers apply (because there's a chart for those, too), amd half the time discover that there isn't a modifer for the specific situations we're in, so we'd look that up on the forums to see if someone else had a similar situation, and by that point we've spent 5-10 minutes on what takes us about 20 seconds in a 5e game including the back and forth conversation that clears up all confusion.

Or even worse than that - the player who presumes a situation, adds up all the modifiers themselves, and then rolls without prompting and dictates to the table that X happens without discussing it at all with anyone else, even the DM. That has always bugged the crap out of me, even as a fellow players.

Edit: I just opened my copy of the PF CRB; I started counting how many DCs were listed and the available modifiers for special situations. I got to over 100 DCs and modifiers by the Fly skill. That's only ten skills in on a list of 26 different skills (combining all the knowledge skills into one). And that's just the CRB; one book out of hundreds of PF books. How do you memorize all that to the point where you don't have to stop the game to make sure you've got the correct value for a skill check?

JoeJ

2018-07-07, 11:25 PM

The more you know about your capabilities without having to consult the DM in the middle of planning, the smoother the game flow. Do you disagree?

In 5e the player does know their character's capabilities. They know what their character is good at, and how good at those things they are.

MaxWilson

2018-07-08, 12:05 AM

Edit: I just opened my copy of the PF CRB; I started counting how many DCs were listed and the available modifiers for special situations. I got to over 100 DCs and modifiers by the Fly skill. That's only ten skills in on a list of 26 different skills (combining all the knowledge skills into one). And that's just the CRB; one book out of hundreds of PF books. How do you memorize all that to the point where you don't have to stop the game to make sure you've got the correct value for a skill check?

I don't play PF but here's how I'd do it as a DM:

DM: Hmmm, I'm not sure but that sounds like a DC 15 to me, about the same as [ABC]. Does that sound reasonable to you?

Players either say "Sure" or "the table on page 333 says similar situation [XYZ] is DC 12."

In the latter case, DM says, "Okay, let's call it DC 12."

In either case, the game moves on, no muss no fuss. Note that this is exactly the same procedure you follow in 5E when you don't know the details of a spell and don't want to look it up. In some cases the players are wrong (you may end up using the wrong AoE on a spell for instance) but it's better than stopping the game to look things up.

JNAProductions

2018-07-08, 12:07 AM

I don't play PF but here's how I'd do it as a DM:

DM: Hmmm, I'm not sure but that sounds like a DC 15 to me, about the same as [ABC]. Does that sound reasonable to you?

Players either say "Sure" or "the table on page 333 says similar situation [XYZ] is DC 12."

In the latter case, DM says, "Okay, let's call it DC 12."

In either case, the game moves on, no muss no fuss. Note that this is exactly the same procedure you follow in 5E when you don't know the details of a spell and don't want to look it up. In some cases the players are wrong (you may end up using the wrong AoE on a spell for instance) but it's better than stopping the game to look things up.

So, in other words, you use your judgement and adjust if there's a printed DC that seems reasonable?

Why can't you do that in 5E?

leogobsin

2018-07-08, 12:08 AM

I don't play PF but here's how I'd do it as a DM:

DM: Hmmm, I'm not sure but that sounds like a DC 15 to me, about the same as [ABC]. Does that sound reasonable to you?

Players either say "Sure" or "the table on page 333 says similar situation [XYZ] is DC 12."

In the latter case, DM says, "Okay, let's call it DC 12."

In either case, the game moves on, no muss no fuss.

... Or there's the situation where the player says "hang on, I know there's a listed DC for that in [XYZ], I don't remember what it is though." And then you've got five minutes while they pull out their books and hunt through, quite a bit of 'muss and fuss'.

mgshamster

2018-07-08, 12:27 AM

... Or there's the situation where the player says "hang on, I know there's a listed DC for that in [XYZ], I don't remember what it is though." And then you've got five minutes while they pull out their books and hunt through, quite a bit of 'muss and fuss'.

That's usually how it worked in games I played in. That includes home games, games over chat, PFS games, games at Meetup groups or the local college games. It was pretty prevalent to stop the game for a rules lookup.

For my home games, that entire culture came to a screeching halt about a month into playing 5e. I'm not in college anymore, so I don't go to the college games, and I have kids so playing over chat or at a Meetup group doesn't really happen anymore. But for my home games, we did a bunch of rules lookups for our first few sessions, and after that it was done maybe once every handful of sessions.

It completely changed how we played. My players were ecstatic that they were actually able to accomplish things in game and that each session had a real sense of progression. And as a bonus, we finally finished a full campaign - something we were never able to do in PF.

MaxWilson

2018-07-08, 12:33 AM

So, in other words, you use your judgement and adjust if there's a printed DC that seems reasonable?

Why can't you do that in 5E?

Firstly, I think you've got me confused with someone else. I've said over and over that my beef with 5E is not primarily over the lack of skill DCs (which are useful to have but aren't that hard to fabricate on the spot) but the lack of game structures (which are not easy to create on the fly). 5E has probably benefitted from the Xanathars tables, but when I talk about missed opportunities you'll hear me talking about missing game structures for riddle games, alliance-building, etc., and not about skill DCs.

Secondly, to answer your question specifically, "Why can't you do that in 5E?", 5E doesn't have PF-style tables in the first place so the procedure wouldn't apply. The closest you could do is ask players if the DC sounds reasonable compared to other DCs you've set in the past similar situations. That's niche even that I wouldn't even bother asking; I'd just expect them to raise an objection if necessary.

... Or there's the situation where the player says "hang on, I know there's a listed DC for that in [XYZ], I don't remember what it is though." And then you've got five minutes while they pull out their books and hunt through, quite a bit of 'muss and fuss'.

Why would you ever do that? Obviously you're not actually in favor of stopping the game to let a player look stuff up, or you wouldn't be raising it as an objection in this thread. If you object to it, why do it? Just say, "Okay, without objection the DC is 15" and move on.

This illustrates my point about game structures actually: when you're using a bad procedure (slavishly-consult-tables-to-resolve-controversies), people will often not think to invent a new procedure on the fly (check-for-strong-objections-and-then-move-on, optionally with tiebreaker votes going to whoever brought pizza). "How the players do it" is important part of what goes into a game structure, and it's beneficial to think through options in advance. 5E would have benefitted from more design time and more text spent on game structures (and maybe a short discussion of play procedures too, judging by this thread).

Ignimortis

2018-07-08, 03:40 AM

In 5e the player does know their character's capabilities. They know what their character is good at, and how good at those things they are.

Not really. They know what their character is slightly better than others at, but until higher levels that basically means "has +20-40% to succeed than that other guy", and when the initial chances are around 20%, then no, you don't know what your character is good at. You know what your character is supposed to be good at and that they succeed at those things a bit more often. Not "Yes, I'm good at that, I can do that in my sleep", merely...passable.

MeimuHakurei

2018-07-08, 04:43 AM

DanyBallon

2018-07-08, 04:57 AM

With the whole "think for yourself" approach about how it's a good thing 5e has no framework for any kind of noncombat interaction whatsoever (3.5 has a short list of like 5-6 items about DCs and modifiers, 4e has skill challenges), I still don't have an answer in how far you want to play 5e over freeform.

Simply because by it’s design, D&D 5e fits our needs in term of balance between free-form and rule complexity.
In the very introduction 5e gameplay is describe in a free-form manner, and it’s specified that sometimes (like for combat) more detailed rules are provided, but in essence, the flow of the game is still the same.

In fact, those who argue for more complexity and more defined rules, are moving away from the design intent. So let me ask you, why do you want playing 5e, if you don’t want to follow the intent?

The beauty of 5e, is that its rules can be enjoyed by a variety of play style. Those who wants a more narrative approche can do so, and those who prefer a solid set of rules, can do as well, both groups houseruling aspects they find less tuned to their play style. But you can't complain about the system if you deliberately choose to not follow the design intent.

JackPhoenix

2018-07-08, 06:24 AM

Firstly, I think you've got me confused with someone else. I've said over and over that my beef with 5E is not primarily over the lack of skill DCs (which are useful to have but aren't that hard to fabricate on the spot) but the lack of game structures (which are not easy to create on the fly). 5E has probably benefitted from the Xanathars tables, but when I talk about missed opportunities you'll hear me talking about missing game structures for riddle games, alliance-building, etc., and not about skill DCs.

What missing game structures? Riddle games? Simple, the players sitting around the table solve (and give) the riddles, like they always did. What structure do you want for that? Alliance building? That's roleplaying, with the existing skill mechanics providing solution when skill check is required. Commerce? Not the focus of the game anymore than spaceship piloting is.

For someone who's complaining that 5e seems like a videogame, you sure seem to want to turn it into a videogame and negate the most important thing, the interaction between the players in favor of dice rolling.

2D8HP

2018-07-08, 06:59 AM

.....In fact, those who argue for more complexity and more defined rules, are moving away from the design intent. So let me ask you, why do you want playing 5e, if you don’t want to follow the intent?......

:confused: Why is that in bluetext?

JoeJ

2018-07-08, 01:47 PM

Not really. They know what their character is slightly better than others at, but until higher levels that basically means "has +20-40% to succeed than that other guy", and when the initial chances are around 20%, then no, you don't know what your character is good at. You know what your character is supposed to be good at and that they succeed at those things a bit more often. Not "Yes, I'm good at that, I can do that in my sleep", merely...passable.

You're conflating what they know with how good they are. At low level a character isn't all the good, but the player definitely knows how good the character is.

MaxWilson

2018-07-08, 03:13 PM

You're conflating what they know with how good they are. At low level a character isn't all the good, but the player definitely knows how good the character is.

And yet they don't know, without consulting the DM, if they can reliably climb a 40' tall tree.

JNAProductions

2018-07-08, 03:22 PM

And yet they don't know, without consulting the DM, if they can reliably climb a 40' tall tree.

So, in 3.5, can you climb a 40' tree? If that's literally all the detail given.

Because if it's a solid slab of sheer ironwood, with the first branch 20' up... Well, that's quite different from a regular old oak with branches at the 4' level and plenty of them.

JoeJ

2018-07-08, 03:32 PM

And yet they don't know, without consulting the DM, if they can reliably climb a 40' tall tree.

So it's like real life, then. Nobody in the world knows whether or not they can reliably climb a 40' tall tree without specifying which 40' tree you're talking about, and what equipment they are allowed to use. (Okay, somebody who is paralyzed knows that they can't reliably climb any tree at all, but that's obviously not what we're talking about here.)

What you're asking for is not rules that specify what a character can do, but rules that specify what kind of world a DM can create.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-08, 03:37 PM

And yet they don't know, without consulting the DM, if they can reliably climb a 40' tall tree.

It's odd that climbing is the go-to example--there's an answer straight in the PHB for that. Yes, they can, unless the tree is unusually free of handholds. It costs double movement, but anyone can climb any normal surface. Full stop. A thief rogue can do it at full speed.

This is why it seems like the complainers don't know the rules--they keep bringing up things like climbing and swimming that have explicit rules (no check needed) in the PHB.

And for exceptional trees (or rough waters, etc), that's so context dependent that you can't give a fixed answer without materially constraining the types of trees (or water conditions) a DM can add to the game. And constraining that would be :doing_it_wrong:

MaxWilson

2018-07-08, 03:38 PM

So it's like real life, then. Nobody in the world knows whether or not they can reliably climb a 40' tall tree without specifying which 40' tree you're talking about, and what equipment they are allowed to use.

That's not true. In real life, people who have climbed lots of trees before have a good idea of whether or not they can climb a tree. This is exactly the kind of self-knowledge to which I referred earlier, "The more you know about your capabilities without having to consult the DM in the middle of planning, the smoother the game flow. Do you disagree?"

You responded, "In 5e the player does know their character's capabilities. They know what their character is good at, and how good at those things they are," but to me that appears not to be true. We disagree.

It's odd that climbing is the go-to example--there's an answer straight in the PHB for that. Yes, they can, unless the tree is unusually free of handholds. It costs double movement, but anyone can climb any normal surface. Full stop.

Including hippos, if you read the rules that way.

I don't see anything in the 5E PHB requiring that there be no chance of failure in climbing. The rule blurb to which you refer dictates speed, not success rate. (To put it another way, when my DM asks me to make a DC 10 Dex check as I'm climbing the tree, or fall out of it, I don't get to point to the PHB and tell him he's wrong.)

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-08, 03:41 PM

That's not true. In real life, people who have climbed lots of trees before have a good idea of whether or not they can climb a tree.

With no more information than "a tree", no, no they don't. Because the variation between trees is enormous.

It's like asking a rock climber "can you climb a cliff?" Until you give more details, they won't know. They'll know the types of cliffs they've climbed in the past (based on ratings and experience), and if given more details can probably predict how well they'll be able to climb one, but in a lot of cases you don't know until you try. Because there are often cases where you find a seemingly-inviting rock face that's really treacherous and unforgiving.

JNAProductions

2018-07-08, 03:42 PM

Yes, because they can see the tree and see how tough it is.

But if you ask them “can you climb a 40’ tree?” And give NO MORE info than that? They’ll say “I have no idea.”

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-08, 03:46 PM

Including hippos, if you read the rules that way.

I don't see anything in the 5E PHB requiring that there be no chance of failure in climbing. The rule blurb to which you refer dictates speed, not success rate. (To put it another way, when my DM asks me to make a DC 10 Dex check as I'm climbing the tree, or fall out of it, I don't get to point to the PHB and tell him he's wrong.)

You're not reading it right at all.

While climbing or swimming, each foot of movement costs 1 extra foot...At the DM's option, climbing a slippery vertical surface or one with few handholds requires a successful Strength (Athletics) check.

The words are clear. Only climbing a "slippery vertical surface" or "one with few handholds" requires a check, and that only at the DM's option. Anything else merely costs extra movement. By RAW. Interpreting it otherwise voids several sentences and is a total misreading of the text.

Edit: and hippos are creatures and you can't share a space with another creature. So no, you can't climb a hippo. Unless the DM is using the optional "climbing larger creatures" rules from the DMG.

Unoriginal

2018-07-08, 03:48 PM

I've never seen any 3.X game where a PC was able to climb a tree without checking with the DM if it was possible. Or at least without the DM declaring it's possible when you attempt the action.

MeeposFire

2018-07-08, 03:48 PM

Yes, because they can see the tree and see how tough it is.

But if you ask them “can you climb a 40’ tree?” And give NO MORE info than that? They’ll say “I have no idea.”

As an example a tree with no branches on the way up (perhaps like a palm tree) may be harder to climb up for 40 feet than the tree in my yard that has lots of branches spaced out conveniently for you to help you climb yet both could be the same height.

JoeJ

2018-07-08, 03:58 PM

That's not true. In real life, people who have climbed lots of trees before have a good idea of whether or not they can climb a tree. This is exactly the kind of self-knowledge to which I referred earlier, "The more you know about your capabilities without having to consult the DM in the middle of planning, the smoother the game flow. Do you disagree?"

As somebody who spent much of my youth climbing trees, I can say that you're simply wrong. An experienced climber can look at any particular tree and have a very good idea whether or not they could climb it, but they have to know which tree you're talking about. You can't just say "tree" because that's much too large and diverse a category.

Per the PHB, climbing anything requires a roll only if the DM decides that it's especially difficult, so your complaint really comes down to the fact that there's no default DC to climb especially difficult things. IOW, the rules don't tell the DM what kinds of surfaces they're allowed to put in their world. It's not about knowing your character's abilities. You as a player player know what your character's athletic ability is, both in comparison to an unskilled commoner and in relation to the 0-30 DC range.

Tanarii

2018-07-08, 05:10 PM

It's like asking a rock climber "can you climb a cliff?" Until you give more details, they won't know. They'll know the types of cliffs they've climbed in the past (based on ratings and experience), and if given more details can probably predict how well they'll be able to climb one, but in a lot of cases you don't know until you try. Because there are often cases where you find a seemingly-inviting rock face that's really treacherous and unforgiving.
I can climb 5.10a and V1 reliably without any serious chance of falling, although I of course use a rope for 5-series climbs. I know this from about four years recent experience regularly climbing in climbing gyms and out doors.

If I am not told by someone with far more experience than I have, or a guidebook, that a route is rated 5.10a or V1, and I don't have person experience trying the specific route before, I can't look at a route and say for sure I'll be able to climb it. I can take a rough guess, but there's no way I could tell without looking at it directly. Any given route is going to vary in its difficulty.

For reference, those are climbs with decent handholds that are steep enough they require some practice, especially outside a gym. Plus probably advantage for climbing shoes, which are very customized modern gear for the job.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-08, 05:32 PM

I can climb 5.10a and V1 reliably without any serious chance of falling, although I of course use a rope for 5-series climbs. I know this from about four years recent experience regularly climbing in climbing gyms and out doors.

If I am not told by someone with far more experience than I have, or a guidebook, that a route is rated 5.10a or V1, and I don't have person experience trying the specific route before, I can't look at a route and say for sure I'll be able to climb it. I can take a rough guess, but there's no way I could tell without looking at it directly. Any given route is going to vary in its difficulty.

For reference, those are climbs with decent handholds that are steep enough they require some practice, especially outside a gym. Plus probably advantage for climbing shoes, which are very customized modern gear for the job.

Right. There is no generic "cliff", there are only specific ones.

Or take an example that's more my speed (since I don't do outdoors stuff). I have a PhD in Physics. If you ask me "how hard is it to solve a physics problem", I'm going to look at you weird and say "it depends." Because you have problems like this:

* Three objects with masses M1, M2, and M3 (M1 ~ M2 ~ M3) are placed at coordinates X1, X2, and X3 and velocities v1, v2 and v3. Solve for their positions at t = T'.

Simple newtonian mechanics, right?

Can't be done. It's a chaotic system with no analytic solution.

or problems like this:

* A conducting shell of arbitrary (but closed) shape S has a total charge Q distributed over its surface with distribution sigma(x). Find the electric field at point P located within the volume enclosed by the shell.

Sounds complicated, probably involving nasty numeric integrals.

Trivially 0--for any conducting shape S the electric field inside must be zero by Gauss's Law.

The first one looks easy, but is impossible. The second looks hard, but is trivial. And there are lots of problems out there that aren't quite so well known--many you don't know if there even exists a solution until you try (and often not even then).

Pex

2018-07-08, 06:47 PM

JoeJ

2018-07-08, 06:50 PM

Oh the horror players knowing the rules of the game and wanting to use them.

Even to the point of confusing the rules of the game with the details of the world.

Kane0

2018-07-08, 06:50 PM

Where some see enthusiastic players, others see backseat DMs. Often a matter of perspective.

I'm lucky enough to be a part of multiple gaming groups, and I can easily see a case for both.

Pex

2018-07-08, 07:06 PM

I didn't want to get into this conversation, but I suppose it was inevitable.

A jerk DM will be one regardless of edition. While I wholeheartedly agree 5E does not encourage them nor teach DMs to be such, it facilitates the behavior because of the vagueness. Experienced players know better and won't tolerate it. They quit and get a new DM if the DM won't change his ways. New players don't know any better. If they're bothered enough they'll also quit but not come back to the game at all. If they don't quit they'll pick up bad habits they bring to other games.

Given a DM is not being a jerk, vagueness is still a problem because the rules change depending on who is DM. The ability of my character to do stuff is not dependent on my choices of character creation. I can only do what the mood of the DM thinks I can do. My 10 ST not proficient in Athletics character can climb any tree he wants to just because he wants to. My 18 ST proficient in Athletics character in another game only has a 60% chance to climb a tree because I have to roll against DC 20. Paladins in one game can use great weapon style on smite damage but not in another. Players choose what creatures are summoned with Summoning spells in one game but not in another. This lack of consistency is the problem. It becomes necessary to have a list of questions to ask the DM when you join a new game. It should not be that way.

Of course there can't be a specific rule for everything. To demand it is madness. That is no excuse to leave many things up to interpretation.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-07-08, 07:09 PM

It becomes necessary to have a list of questions to ask the DM when you join a new game. It should not be that way.

Why not? There are already a whole list of questions to ask (about character creation even), and always will be.

mgshamster

2018-07-08, 07:14 PM

Why not? There are already a whole list of questions to ask (about character creation even), and always will be.

I'm running a game right now where the DC is always 10. Even then, players have to ask questions about what they can do.

Why? Because you only roll when the result is questionable. All other times, it's auto success or auto fail.

Pex

2018-07-08, 09:15 PM

Why not? There are already a whole list of questions to ask (about character creation even), and always will be.

You ask questions like:

When do we play? Where do we play? Is (splatbook) allowed? Is there PvP? Do we order food or bring our own? Who is playing what class? May I use this backstory?

You don't ask how to play the game, unless you're a brand new player.When the brand new player does ask, when he plays his next game he's not a brand new player anymore and would be rightfully miffed to find out how he learned the game doesn't work anymore. When he sees the paladin using great weapon style on smites, for his next game he wants to play the paladin he expects to use great weapon style on smites and will be upset when told he can't. Doesn't even have to be a new player. I myself have played in several games where the wizard used his familiar to Help someone else in combat giving Advantage. I was rightly upset when it was my turn to play the wizard but was denied the ability to use my familiar to Help someone else in combat giving Advantage. The rules of the game should not change because of who is DM that day.

Tanarii

2018-07-08, 09:28 PM

Given a DM is not being a jerk, vagueness is still a problem because the rules change depending on who is DM. The ability of my character to do stuff is not dependent on my choices of character creation.This is true. Table variation will exist.

I can only do what the mood of the DM thinks I can do. My 10 ST not proficient in Athletics character can climb any tree he wants to just because he wants to. My 18 ST proficient in Athletics character in another game only has a 60% chance to climb a tree because I have to roll against DC 20. Paladins in one game can use great weapon style on smite damage but not in another. Players choose what creatures are summoned with Summoning spells in one game but not in another. This lack of consistency is the problem. It becomes necessary to have a list of questions to ask the DM when you join a new game. It should not be that way.You gave one example where the DM (questionably) may not be following the rules for climbing, and two where there is a Sage Advice. And ...

Of course there can't be a specific rule for everything. To demand it is madness. That is no excuse to leave many things up to interpretation.
3e, to contrast, had far more specific rules. And yet there were far more rulings needed and Sage Advice and forum arguments, and in my experience table disagreemeets, about specifics. Because despite (or because of) all those rules, the interactions of them were very commonly not clear. Or alternative interpretations were extremely common.

IMx this was also the case for 4e Powers, which were heavily codified in game terminology.

I liked 3e and 4e a lot. Including at the time the codification, definitely in both systems the unification of resolution mechanics, the large numbers of specific rules, and heavy use of game terminology. Because at heart, I'm kind of a rules junkie/lawyer. But ultimately, I've found the 5e way both easier to run and play. It's got a good balance of specific rules that appeals to my rules lawyer heart, along with flexibility to keep things somewhat simple to adjudicate.

Now BECMI (including RC), which still holds a special place in my heart, has a rules system is a bit of a headache. It's too constricted in terms of classes, it has too many subsystems, and it's skills system really is a mess.