Unpopular D&D Opinions Part 2: Popular To Talk About

[Thrudd]

The game just needs to define what it wants to be, and make that clear to the potential players. Then they will decide if it sounds like a game they want to play.
DCC explicitly says "this is a meat grinder. If you like those, you'll like this game."
Fate says "this is a cinematic story game."
D&D says "this is everything/anything you want!", and as a result doesn't focus its ruleset enough to make us very picky people happy. They made an attempt to create a more modular set of rules that would allow you to put together anything from meat grinder to story mode, and I like that, but they didn't go far enough. Meat grinder survival mode needs a much different set of rules than does cinematic action story.

[Telok]

They made an attempt to create a more modular set of rules that would allow you to put together anything from meat grinder to story mode, and I like that, but they didn't go far enough. Meat grinder survival mode needs a much different set of rules than does cinematic action story.

Whats modular about 5e? I mean you have the feat, multiclass, variant encumberance, and extended duration rest things to toggle on/off. But other than the encumberance & rests that's not exactly changing anything but PC 'get X or Y on level up' options. Its not like there's a low magic module, or a superhero martials module, or a magitech module (Ebberon is a setting that just adds a class & feats, not a different way to play or new optional rules).

[Vahnavoi]

There's also an issue that D&D has very few mechanical setbacks other than 'you can't play for a while'.

Telok already made the joking version, but nonetheless:

From at least AD&D to 3rd edition, D&D had loss of experience points and experience levels, loss of class features, several flavors of ability score loss, disease, insanity, being cursed in a bunch of different ways, loss of wealth and equipment and loss of supporting NPCs. Most of which allow a character to remain in play but have long lasting or even permanent effects if specific actions aren't taken to counter them.

The thing is that these aren't any less reviled than character death, because some players have difficulties accepting that sometimes you get penalized in a game.

[Anonymouswizard]

Dev talkies:
"Limb loss?"
"No fun, drop it."
"Level drain?"
"No fun, drop it."
"Insanity?"
"No fun, drop it."
"Lingering wounds?"
"No fun, drop it."
"Stat damage?"
"No fun, drop it."
"Diseases?"
"Heal checks, low level cure spell, and just cut the penalties to minor nuisances."
"Exhaustion?"
"Death spiral, we'll remove it next edition."
"Whats left?"
"Death. But we'll make it optional next edition."

You might have written it as a joke, but yeah that does seem to have been the train of thought.

Telok already made the joking version, but nonetheless:

From at least AD&D to 3rd edition, D&D had loss of experience points and experience levels, loss of class features, several flavors of ability score loss, disease, insanity, being cursed in a bunch of different ways, loss of wealth and equipment and loss of supporting NPCs. Most of which allow a character to remain in play but have long lasting or even permanent effects if specific actions aren't taken to counter them.

The thing is that these aren't any less reviled than character death, because some players have difficulties accepting that sometimes you get penalized in a game.

For better or worse 3.5 was probably the pinnacle of long term consequences, but depending on magic access they could be either too easy or too hard to shake.

5e on the other hand has too few, rest for a night and all that'll hang around is exhaustion (which, IIRC, not a whole lot gives) and half your hit dice loss. What it probably done is picked one form (I'd suggest ability score damage) and build it more into the system.

Imagine is dropping to 0hp made you lose three random Ability Score points, and that one in three boss-type monsters had attacks that could drop an ability by a point. It would have the potential to be much more interesting.

But yes, too many players see any kind of setback as 'losing', which has led to the relative toothlessness of modern D&D.

[Thrudd]

Whats modular about 5e? I mean you have the feat, multiclass, variant encumberance, and extended duration rest things to toggle on/off. But other than the encumberance & rests that's not exactly changing anything but PC 'get X or Y on level up' options. Its not like there's a low magic module, or a superhero martials module, or a magitech module (Ebberon is a setting that just adds a class & feats, not a different way to play or new optional rules).

Yeah, those variant rules are their attempt. And it isn't nearly enough, like I said. In the development phase, I remember reading somewhere that their intention was to have "modular" rules variants so people could play old-school hardcore mode or modern story mode (my paraphrase) or anything in between. I wish we had actually got that.

[Elves]

5e on the other hand has too few, rest for a night and all that'll hang around is exhaustion

As we all know, sleeping can cure a sword wound but the one thing it can't do is make you less tired

[Tanarii]

How big a loss having to down-time or even permanently lose a character is depends on the expectation that each player will have multiple characters. If you're following one batch of heroes through their adventures, it's a big deal. If you've got a large group of players bringing whatever character they want to a single session, it's painful if a character is out for a while for slow natural healing (1 hp/day) or recovering from a res penalty, but you play another character in the meantime. Different assumptions about how the game will be played require or allow different rule sets.

[Anonymouswizard]

As we all know, sleeping can cure a sword wound but the one thing it can't do is make you less tired

I mean, the other solution is that nobody is getting stabbed, but everybody is working so hard that we're not tracking exhaustion below the 'needs a day to recover from' level.

Although I signed up for epic fantasy adventures. I'd rather deal with my character's long term injuries than play Office: the Temping.

[LibraryOgre]

Yes, and thankfully D&D has evolved from those days. The 2E DMG taught DMs to be the players' adversary. The Stingy DM. The Killer DM. The Tyrant DM. They were accepted norms.

Yeah, I need a citation. I mean, there's a section in the 2e DMG talking about how important it is to make sure how important it is for everyone to have fun.

Therefore, one of the goals of the AD&D game is to have fun. Much of the pressure to provide this elusive quality rests on the DM's shoulders, but the players can also contribute. When they do, players should be rewarded with experience points since they are making the game a good experience for all. The DM who doles out awards for adding to the fun will find more players making the effort to contribute.

It specifically points out problems with being too stingy with XP

If the DM consistently gives too little experience to players, they become frustrated. Frustrated players don't have fun and, usually, quit the game. Even if they don't quit, players can develop an "It-doesn't-matter-what-I-do-so-why-bother" attitude. They stop trying to do their best, figuring they will only get a measly amount of experience whether they play their best or just coast along.

There's a section about how giving out too little treasure is a problem

For all his good intentions, sooner or later the DM is likely to err in the awarding of treasure. Either he will award too little or hand out too much. The first is just tight-fistedness; the second leads to high-powered, low-role-playing campaigns (sometimes called "Monty Haul'' dungeons).

Oh, and the killer DM?

When uncertain, use a small encounter. It is far better for a random encounter to be easily defeated by the player characters than it is for the monster to overwhelm them. An easy PC victory gives the DM information and experience (so he'll know to increase the difficulty of the next encounter) without harming the player characters and his campaign. A crushing PC defeat is almost impossible to correct without obvious manipulation once the encounter has begun.

Bear in mind, these are just excerpts; they're parts of sections saying how important it is to make sure your game is fun, and that your players enjoy it.

So show me where the 2e DMG taught DMs to be stingy, killing, tyrants?

"There used to be a lot of PC deaths in D&D, so rules were added or changed to mitigate that."
"D&D isn't that lethal, excessive PC deaths are caused by bad play, bad DMs, or bad encounter design."
"Here are examples of how D&D used to be too lethal, and as further evidence, things that were added to changed to address that in newer editions."
"D&D is not too lethal, it has evolved since the editions when it was."

That's not quite what's being argued. Pex started by saying that high-lethality games were a priori bad, then ventured into "2e taught DMs to be jerks". I maintain that high lethality games are not necessarily bad... they're not necessarily good, but they're a style of play. One of the most popular settings of 2e was explicitly designed to be high-lethality (Dark Sun)... and it had mechanics in place to mitigate the impact of that lethality (the character tree). Another, Brithright, specifically had rules in place to reduce lethality (any regent automatically gained bonus HP), because lethality in that game was a bigger problem.

A DM running a game where characters often die is not necessarily running a bad game. It's certainly not a game everyone is going to enjoy, and, as the 2e DMG said, the DM should be running a game that is fun for everyone.

[Pex]

What's a "killer DM"? It seems like you're conflating DMs who, OOC, try to gib the players by giving them challenges they can't beat with those who, IC, accurately play foes as trying to kill the PCs.

You brought up the example of a goblin ambush as too lethal. Is having NPCs follow reasonable tactics like this being a killer DM?

When that mysterious number of deaths per X game sessions threshold is reached. When talking about a DM's game you don't talk about the adventures or cool stuff that happened but comparing how PCs died. When the DM boasts about the number of PCs killed or how he killed a PC. When the DM could have his own theoretical graveyard filled with headstones bearing the names of PCs. When the DM thinks if he hasn't even dropped a PC at least once per game session he's doing something wrong and "ups his game". When the DM laughs and jokes when a PC dies or drops.

+1. The lack of injury rules creates a binary that's both unrealistic and bad for the game (because there's no way to penalize someone without kicking them out of the gameplay for a while, which is boring for them). In 4e and 5e, the post-rez penalty is essentially an injury penalty already; why not put that in front of death instead of behind it?

D&D is not a reality simulator. Applying penalties before death leads to a death spiral because each injury makes it that much more easily for the bad guys to kill the PCs. It doesn't matter if it affects the bad guys too because they're only on camera for that one fight. They're supposed to die. When they die game moves on. When a PC dies it's game over for that PC.

. . .

I said the 2E DMG teaches the DM to be the player's adversary, not killer tyrants. Those DMs became that on their own. Not every 2E DM was like that, and I never said they were. The 2E DMG tells the DM to say no to players. The 2E DMG tells the DM to deny a player to play a ranger even when adjusting ability scores for rolled stats. It tells the DM to lower scores when the player rolls high but suck it up when he rolls low. At character creation already the DM fights the player on what he gets to play.

[Telok]

Ya know what's weird? WotC D&D and its knockoffs are the only places I actually see real sucky death spirals happening.

Every game held up as a death spiral seems to have its combat dialed to a level where its harder to get to the next penalty step than seems to be assumed by the critics, and the penalties give the players warning as to when they should stop fighting*. D&D (and company) on the other have done level loss, stat loss, exhaustion, and poisons that all make it harder to succeed the next saving throw and/or can be easily & rapidly applied plus are really hard to remove.

I've seen Shadowrun, the WoD games, some supers games, DtD40k, Warhammer games, even Call of Cthulhu has been mentioned as death spiral games. Yet they're all just fine and fun to play. So I really don't trust the "omg! death spirals is teh suck! mah game is ruined!"** type statements without an actual analysis of the various systems that can show that it somehow breaks at least half of the systems using it.

So a D&D style screw-up where using your core class ability more than once a day or just getting hit three times in one round screws you over unless the cleric drops multiple 5th+ level spells to fix you? Yeah, bad death spiral there. Everywhere it's been intentionally designed into the system? Never seen it be a problem***.

* and the games usually have real rules for running away & combat loss options other than TPKs.

** yes, thats hyperbole.

*** haven't looked at any of the Star Wars games since WEG's d6 one like 30 years ago, no personal experience on the post y2k ones.

[NichG]

L5R's death spiral can be quite severe honestly. Even if you can't too easily be one-shot by an attack, the wound penalties are bad enough that first to hit is usually the winner in any sort of duel situation (and the setting does call for duels to be things). It's not necessarily against what that system is trying to depict, but it's something you have to consider in how you play and it does mean that things can get a bit rocket-tag-like. IIRC one of the big reasons for this is that your AC-equivalent also suffers wound penalties, so you get both easier to hit and it becomes quickly impossible for you to hit anything else. This probably depends on edition and it's been at least two editions since I last played though...

Now, if you have a death spiral in a system which makes death optional for the player, that might actually work reasonably well. Rather than a binary between 'get through a fight just fine' and 'get taken out for the rest of the session', having something where your options get closed off round by round if you over-reach, and then come back on within-session timescales seems a lot better to me.

[Vahnavoi]

You might have written it as a joke, but yeah that does seem to have been the train of thought.

That's what game design looks like when it aims to please the least competent and most loss averse players.

But yes, too many players see any kind of setback as 'losing', which has led to the relative toothlessness of modern D&D.

Seeing losing as losing isn't the problem. Being unable to cope with loss in ways other than complaining to or about the referee is.

[Elves]

When the DM boasts about the number of PCs killed or how he killed a PC. ... When the DM laughs and jokes when a PC dies or drops.

It sounds like you had some bad experiences, but it sounds like the problem here is DM intent and conduct, not the actual notion of high lethality games

Applying penalties before death leads to a death spiral because each injury makes it that much more easily for the bad guys to kill the

Hit points are also a "death spiral" in the sense that if a differential opens between equivalent sides, the losing side has to perform better than average to win. And if someone dies from hit point damage, that's one less team member, a very genuine death spiral.

If you think that wound penalties exacerbate the existing death spiral too much, you could do an "adrenaline" mechanic where the wound penalties don't come into effect until after the current encounter. At that point it's no different from rez penalties. Only in the case of losing a limb or something would that not apply.

[Bohandas]

As we all know, sleeping can cure a sword wound but the one thing it can't do is make you less tired

It's just a flesh wound

[Vahnavoi]

You can get a death spiral in a game solely concerned with dealing and healing hitpoint damage. Misjudge when to attack or heal, and you end up at disadvantage, where continuing to attack means you run out of hitpoints before your opponent does, while stopping to heal means your opponent continues attacking and you end up in the same situation next turn, minus whatever resource you used for healing. The more mechanics are tied to hitpoints, the more severe and obvious it gets. For example, if moving through dangerous terrain or jumping off a cliff takes hitpoints, getting hit with said disadvantage can mean you're movement options are gradually decreasing too.

This is, in fact, stupidly common in games that use hitpoints. Inducing such a spiral in your enemy is typically how you win in combat.

[LibraryOgre]

I said the 2E DMG teaches the DM to be the player's adversary, not killer tyrants. Those DMs became that on their own. Not every 2E DM was like that, and I never said they were. The 2E DMG tells the DM to say no to players. The 2E DMG tells the DM to deny a player to play a ranger even when adjusting ability scores for rolled stats. It tells the DM to lower scores when the player rolls high but suck it up when he rolls low. At character creation already the DM fights the player on what he gets to play.

The things you are saying are not true; at best, they are vast simplications of what is said in the book.

Think twice before raising an ability score to let a character into an optional class if he
already qualifies for the standard class in that group.

Think twice is not "deny". It's "do you need to", not "don't do this." As for lowering ability scores? I can't find anything like that in the 2e DMG.

The DM has accidentally pitted his player characters against a group of creatures too powerful for them, so much so that the player characters are doomed. To fix things, the DM can have the monsters flee in inexplicable panic; secretly lower their hit points; allow the player characters to hit or inflict more damage than they really should; have the monsters miss on attacks when they actually hit; have the creatures make grievous
mistakes in strategy (like ignoring the thief moving in to strike from behind).

Support your "Teaches the DM to be the player's adversary", because I cannot find any sign it is true, and have provided multiple citations that it is not. Your examples do not hold up to even basic scrutiny of the text.

[Kymme]

Death does not have to be the only stakes, and overuse of death cheapens the stakes. At some point it becomes 'I died, oh well, somebody hand me a blank sheet'. Assuming the PCs have some form of goal setbacks can be more meaningful than outright death.

There's also an issue that D&D has very few mechanical setbacks other than 'you can't play for a while'. This isn't like Unknown Armies 3e where both the PCs and NPC groups have objective meters they can build, there's very few statuses that stick around, you can't really give a player a minor punishment and instead need to jump to major impediments. As controversial as they are at least death spirals inflict some kind of setback before 0hp.

Another idea, used in games like Fate or Storypath, is the idea of being Taken Out. Essentially when you take damage you can decide that instead of absorbing it by taking some form of penalty, you can declare you're out of the game for a bit and take no lasting consequences. Of course that only really works if there are consequences other than death.

I stand by the notion that Fate has much grittier and meaningful combat than D&D for just this sort of reason. It's the only game I've played where you can stumble out of a swordfight with a pierced lung and a broken arm and have those both be meaningful mechanically.

[Lacco]

I stand by the notion that Fate has much grittier and meaningful combat than D&D for just this sort of reason. It's the only game I've played where you can stumble out of a swordfight with a pierced lung and a broken arm and have those both be meaningful mechanically.

Riddle of Steel and its successors would like a word with you

[Elves]

I stand by the notion that Fate has much grittier and meaningful combat than D&D for just this sort of reason. It's the only game I've played where you can stumble out of a swordfight with a pierced lung and a broken arm and have those both be meaningful mechanically.

You can't get too specific though if the game is meant to cover a wide variety of physiologies. I would make it abstract, something like each injury gives -1 on d20 rolls, which can be replaced (or augmented?) with a debuff from a set list. You inflict a wound and select the -10 ft speed debuff. That could mean that you hit their legs, could mean you concussed them -- fluff it how you like.

[georgie_leech]

You can't get too specific though if the game is meant to cover a wide variety of physiologies. I would make it abstract, something like each injury gives -1 on d20 rolls, which can be replaced (or augmented?) with a debuff from a set list. You inflict a wound and select the -10 ft speed debuff. That could mean that you hit their legs, could mean you concussed them -- fluff it how you like.

Careful, that's how you get 4e-style pearl clutching over standard penalties on non-standard anatomies.

[Pex]

The things you are saying are not true; at best, they are vast simplications of what is said in the book.



Think twice is not "deny". It's "do you need to", not "don't do this." As for lowering ability scores? I can't find anything like that in the 2e DMG.



Support your "Teaches the DM to be the player's adversary", because I cannot find any sign it is true, and have provided multiple citations that it is not. Your examples do not hold up to even basic scrutiny of the text.

If you don't think denying a player to play a ranger instead tell him to be a fighter who always wanted to be a ranger but is allergic to trees is adversarial then there's no need for further discussion. That's the DMG telling the DM to tell the player what to play.

[Bohandas]

Unpopular opinion: PC death should be an optional rule. Players should suffer consequences for losing all their hp, starting at 'sit out the rest of the rest of the combat', but having to sit out until either they can get a raise dead spell or a new character can be introduced is too much for some groups.

Now that I think about it. This would actually alleviate the narrative disconnect of PCs being able to function at full capacity until suddenly they're dying. Now 0hp isn;t necessarily dying, it's just whatever makes then unable to fight anymore, too many broken limbsm shock, unconsciousness, whatever

[LibraryOgre]

If you don't think denying a player to play a ranger instead tell him to be a fighter who always wanted to be a ranger but is allergic to trees is adversarial then there's no need for further discussion. That's the DMG telling the DM to tell the player what to play.

The Rules as Written are what prevent the player from playing what they want. The advice in the DMG is "consider it". Or do you think it's adversarial to not let fighters pick up levels in Dragon Disciple? They wanted to be one, who cares that they don't meet the requirements? Maybe you should let the 16 intelligence wizard cast Meteor Swarm? Or the 12 strength bard take Power Attack? The rules as written prevent those (in 3e)... the 2e DMG is specifically saying "Think about letting them do it, anyway."

[Pex]

The Rules as Written are what prevent the player from playing what they want. The advice in the DMG is "consider it". Or do you think it's adversarial to not let fighters pick up levels in Dragon Disciple? They wanted to be one, who cares that they don't meet the requirements? Maybe you should let the 16 intelligence wizard cast Meteor Swarm? Or the 12 strength bard take Power Attack? The rules as written prevent those (in 3e)... the 2e DMG is specifically saying "Think about letting them do it, anyway."

If there's no adjustment then fine, the player plays the fighter as rolled. If there is to be adjustment then there's no reason to deny anything. In any case thankfully 3E introduced Point Buy into D&D, so this problem has never come up again.

[Thrudd]

If there's no adjustment then fine, the player plays the fighter as rolled. If there is to be adjustment then there's no reason to deny anything. In any case thankfully 3E introduced Point Buy into D&D, so this problem has never come up again.

The point is, the DMG explicitly gave the DM permission to ignore the rules in order to give players what they want. Usually, games don't say "these are the rules...but it's ok to break them sometimes." That's a feature of D&D, and it has been that way since the earliest editions. AD&D wasn't telling DMs to restrict players. It was presenting a game which, by default, was restrictive, and advised DM's to ignore those rules if they think it won't be fun for their players. As of the time WotC took over, it was apparent that many people had, in fact, decided to ignore those restrictive rules in their games...therefore, they made things a lot less restrictive. Even as of the 1e Unearthed Arcana, it was apparent that many players didn't like the restrictions and Gygax gave optional rules for stat generation that would help players get the class they want much more reliably (while still retaining some randomness).

[Kraynic]

If there's no adjustment then fine, the player plays the fighter as rolled. If there is to be adjustment then there's no reason to deny anything. In any case thankfully 3E introduced Point Buy into D&D, so this problem has never come up again.

How is that any different than a DM in 3.whatever that sets the point buy budget? If you use the lowest point buy totals, that makes the more "MAD" classes unappealing, while using higher totals open up more options. The 2E DMG has 6 example methods of generating stats, explains some downside of each method, and specifically mentions you may come up with your own. It is all about finding some sort of balance for a particular game. I'm not seeing how this is adversarial or that the advice is meaningless. You seem to have a lot of hostility towards older editions probably stemming from a background or experience that the rest of us don't share, and the actual text doesn't seem to support.

[Vahnavoi]

The tragedy regarding "optional death" is that adjusting game difficulty downwards isn't all that hard, so even if a designer prefers Hurt Me Plenty, a game master can let their players play on Too Young to Die just fine. Difficulties of resetting a game situation on the tabletop and letting players try the same scenario again are likewise widely exaggerated. These are firmly in the realm of things almost anybody can do and examples of how to do it are ubiquitous thanks to computer games, the only real reason to not do it is if you don't want to.

[Easy e]

Unpopular Opinion: Game Designers should be looking to strip back and minimize rules instead of building them up. The more layers you add, the more complexity you add without adding more depth.

Thoughts?

[kyoryu]

The point is, the DMG explicitly gave the DM permission to ignore the rules in order to give players what they want. Usually, games don't say "these are the rules...but it's ok to break them sometimes." That's a feature of D&D, and it has been that way since the earliest editions. AD&D wasn't telling DMs to restrict players. It was presenting a game which, by default, was restrictive, and advised DM's to ignore those rules if they think it won't be fun for their players. As of the time WotC took over, it was apparent that many people had, in fact, decided to ignore those restrictive rules in their games...therefore, they made things a lot less restrictive. Even as of the 1e Unearthed Arcana, it was apparent that many players didn't like the restrictions and Gygax gave optional rules for stat generation that would help players get the class they want much more reliably (while still retaining some randomness).

Also, restrictions on characters was done presuming a more open-table style game. Sure, you couldn't have a ranger with this character, but maybe next one.

Much like character death, there's a big difference between being restricted with "one of many" vs. "your only character for the foreseeable future".