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

[Easy e]

And if it's only the players who ever roll, the GM don't have any way to resolve NPC actions other than fiat, if those directions don't actively interact with a PC.

Plus asymmetric mechanics means that when I take the GM seat, I need to, in effect, learn a different set of rules.

Why would an NPC interaction that did not involve a PC fail/matter? At that point it is a story-point/cut-scene which is defined by GM fiat.

In my experience, there are less things for me to know as GM for asymmetrical mechanics. I give a degree of difficulty, the Player rolls for the PC, they tell me if they passed/failed/degree of success. At that point, I apply the result for failure. Pass/Fail and apply result seems easier than consulting stat blocks, looking at charts, comparing stat vs roll, etc.

Horses for courses, of course. This is not a complaint about D&D per se, as D&D uses different mechanics entirely.

[Vahnavoi]

@icefractal: I don't think you are misunderstanding my argument - we're at an impasse because, as you say, there's no comprehensive data. I'm simply warning against getting sidetracked by example - the overaching point is that henchmen are characters you are invested in, them being family is just one example of why.

---

@Easy E: Max_Killjoy's point about the game master rolling for NPC actions applies mostly when the point of the roll is to simulate something. For a simple example, take weather. It matters if, say, rolling on a table is presumed to be better than the game master making stuff up.

[LibraryOgre]

New opinions!

In 5e, Thieves' Cant should have been a background, not class, feature.

[Pex]

Yeah. Or if they did, it only lasted for a few books at most. That's my big "beef" (it's hard to call it a beef, it's not even a calf, just a sense of meh) with the way WotC is treating 5e--they seemed to have a clear intent at the beginning. A design philosophy I liked a lot. As time's gone on, it's becoming more and more ignored (if it ever really existed).

I'm convinced it's because they had an employee purge. Whatever the reason, legit, controversial, opinionated, natural business practice, the people who do 5E now are not the people who did 5E then. The original intent is gone because the original people are gone. 5E is going in a different direction, for good or for ill depending on the individual, because the new people are driving it. There has clearly been a shift in the rate of new published material.

But I still don't get my wish of example DC tables for skill use, darn it.

[Quertus]

But I still don't get my wish of example DC tables for skill use, darn it.

I guess that means that whoever was GM at the time thought that the DC of that wish was too high.

[KorvinStarmast]

Plus asymmetric mechanics means that when I take the GM seat, I need to, in effect, learn a different set of rules.

Yep

In 5e, Thieves' Cant should have been a background, not class, feature.

I have pondered this, and can see the advantages of making it part of the Criminal background, or a custom background, or, keeping with tradition add as a component part of the Thief class.

I think it can work well either way, but a thief should not have to take the Criminal background to get thieves cant.

That, I suspect, is why it's a class feature.

[JNAProductions]

Yep
I have pondered this, and can see the advantages of making it part of the Criminal background, or a custom background, or, keeping with tradition add as a component part of the Thief class.

I think it can work well either way, but a thief should not have to take the Criminal background to get thieves cant.

That, I suspect, is why it's a class feature.

Issue with that is Rogues aren't always thieves. And thieves aren't always Rogues.

[dafrca]

New opinions!

In 5e, Thieves' Cant should have been a background, not class, feature.

I agree. I say this is true of most languages as well. I find the idea that I am X means I was born with the ability to speak a specific language without taking my background into consideration to be overly simplistic.

Issue with that is Rogues aren't always thieves. And thieves aren't always Rogues.

Amen to this for sure.

[Milodiah]

I've never been a fan of the One Language Per Race, Plus Common thing either, but I get that its a simplification for gameplay purposes. It does make it somewhat harder to hand out the diversified languages in my settings because the rules for Knowing Languages are so weirdly built into character creation, though.

[KorvinStarmast]

Yeah. Or if they did, it only lasted for a few books at most. That's my big "beef" (it's hard to call it a beef, it's not even a calf, just a sense of meh) with the way WotC is treating 5e--they seemed to have a clear intent at the beginning. A design philosophy I liked a lot. As time's gone on, it's becoming more and more ignored (if it ever really existed).

If the people on the project, change, and the people leading the project change, the intent and aims will usually change. If you look at who was on the project and who led the project from 2012 to 2016, which was when the core was built, and then look at who is on the project and who leads the project now, of course the impact of that personality change in a creative endeavor will change.

For those of us who liked the core game, this kind of direction change can be to our taste or not to our taste. WoTC, writ large, has a single intent: sell a lot of them books and virtual products. This they have so far been true to, in terms of intent.

[InvisibleBison]

Why would an NPC interaction that did not involve a PC fail/matter? At that point it is a story-point/cut-scene which is defined by GM fiat.

One obvious example is the PCs fighting alongside one or more NPC allies. If the rules don't say how to resolve NPC vs NPC attacks, this perfectly reasonable scenario either becomes impossible or requires the GM to invent some new mechanics, neither of which are a good idea.

[Bohandas]

People who wanted to play humans always could play humans. Trying to bring people who explicitely didn't want to play humans to do so anyway by making all alternatives severely hampered, was always a bad move.

The level caps were just another case of "Designers don't like what players do with their system so they make a heavy handed rules change to force their vision". It is the same with the original reason to introduce alignment, it is similar to their various attempts to get people to retire high level characters and it is in some ways worse than White Wolfs complaining that people played superheroes with fangs instead of following their vision of angst and despair.

For all the "build your own world" and "change the rules to your liking" there was always way too much emphasis in D&D that the default assumption should be a human centric world and all official settings are.

Hear hear. Wholeheartedly agreed.

The level caps were just another case of "Designers don't like what players do with their system so they make a heavy handed rules change to force their vision".

It was always my understanding that the real reason was even dumber than that. I had heard that it was actully because they needed an explanation why all the long lived races didn't advance to be much higher level with their longer lifespans, and so they tried to solve that narrative issue with a gamist rule that came with little or no narrative explanation.

Personally i like playable non-humans that are alien but not that alien. Meaning that there are important differences for very specific aspects of life and society. It's easy to play that out without generally being unable to understand other PCs and NPCs.


Examples from same of the various reptile folk i have played :

- One species had females bury their eggs and then abandon them. The young ones joined the community at a later development state. So no family bounds whatsoever and no understanding of child rearing beyond taking some young apprentice in.

- Another species had sex change at a certain age. Which lead to a culture where all gender stereotypes where mixed and superseded with age stereotypes

- Playing cold blooded individuals could also mean portraying them hyperactive or drowsy depending on ambient temperature.


That is all stuff you can easily portray without being too alien or strange. And it still makes your character palpatibly different.

I like these

I've never been a fan of the One Language Per Race, Plus Common thing either, but I get that its a simplification for gameplay purposes. It does make it somewhat harder to hand out the diversified languages in my settings because the rules for Knowing Languages are so weirdly built into character creation, though.

Plus it's kind of a weird half-measure. If they're going to simplify for gameplay purposes why even have the racial languages? A better system would be just one language, or else one language per creature type (or possibly per subtype in the case of outsiders). So you'd have common for humanoids, giant for giants, draconic for dragons, etc.

(perhaps with an exception for aberrations, who might still use racial languages because their whole point of the aberration typr is that they have nothing in common with each other (or with the other creature types))

You know, this makes me remember that one thing I've always found a little odd (understandable, but still odd fridge-logic wise) is that there's so many fantastical beasts and creatures of legend in fantasy settings, but at the same time pretty much all Earth creatures are represented as-is. I know people mostly want them just because they're something they understand and don't need to read a whole monster manual entry just to say "oh so it's like a deer", but it kinda starts edging on being immersion breaking if you really sit there and think about it.

If these fantasy creatures are truly the hyper-dangerous apex predators they're depicted as, they'd surely have out-competed the mundane apex predators like bears, or jaguars, or birds of prey.

My headcanon is that there are inevitables that conjure up new plants and animals to make the forests stay forests and the plains stay plains etc.

And the depiction of them being just "higher up the food chain" than the mundane predators that some games claim makes no sense whatsoever. From a zoological standpoint there's zero incentive for a predator to consistently target other predators for nutritional purposes when the herbivores said other predators prey on are less dangerous, more numerous, and have the same amount of meat. Sure, there starts to be other behavioral reasons, like territorial encroachment or food shortage, but again, those are situations where the "lesser" predator has to adapt or be driven to extinction.

I can see two potentially interrelated reasons for this. One is the idea from the novel Dracula that life force accumulates in higher members of the food chain in kind of the same way that heavy metals do. The second explanation, which is semi-gamist, is the possibility that these new predators can gain combat XP and so would have some incentive to target more dangerous animals to increase their own power

[Max_Killjoy]

Why would an NPC interaction that did not involve a PC fail/matter? At that point it is a story-point/cut-scene which is defined by GM fiat.

In my experience, there are less things for me to know as GM for asymmetrical mechanics. I give a degree of difficulty, the Player rolls for the PC, they tell me if they passed/failed/degree of success. At that point, I apply the result for failure. Pass/Fail and apply result seems easier than consulting stat blocks, looking at charts, comparing stat vs roll, etc.

Horses for courses, of course. This is not a complaint about D&D per se, as D&D uses different mechanics entirely.

Example: If the NPC is acting on behalf of the PCs, then as the GM I need to roll for the NPC, in the same way the player would roll for the PC. If the rules are different for the NPC doing the thing, that's two sets of rules I need to know.

If the PCs normally roll against a passive defensive stat on the NPC for an action... how does the NPC take that same action against a PC? If the PC makes a defensive roll instead, again, that's two sets of rules, and which one I use depends on which side of the table I'm on.

One obvious example is the PCs fighting alongside one or more NPC allies. If the rules don't say how to resolve NPC vs NPC attacks, this perfectly reasonable scenario either becomes impossible or requires the GM to invent some new mechanics, neither of which are a good idea.

Exactly -- and I've found that systems that do go down this road often also lack any PC vs PC rules, or have them under a "OK, I guess if you want to do this, it's your table" heading.

[Max_Killjoy]

New opinions!

In 5e, Thieves' Cant should have been a background, not class, feature.

Agreed.

But then I think several Classes could use a bit less presumption about the character's nature and backstory.

[Talakeal]

Why would an NPC interaction that did not involve a PC fail/matter? At that point it is a story-point/cut-scene which is defined by GM fiat.

In my experience, there are less things for me to know as GM for asymmetrical mechanics. I give a degree of difficulty, the Player rolls for the PC, they tell me if they passed/failed/degree of success. At that point, I apply the result for failure. Pass/Fail and apply result seems easier than consulting stat blocks, looking at charts, comparing stat vs roll, etc.

Horses for courses, of course. This is not a complaint about D&D per se, as D&D uses different mechanics entirely.

It comes up surprisingly often in my experiance.

For example, PCs engineer a three-way battle between them and two groups of NPCs.

[dafrca]

New opinions!

In 5e, Thieves' Cant should have been a background, not class, feature.

Agreed.

But then I think several Classes could use a bit less presumption about the character's nature and backstory.

I could agree to this thought.

[Telok]

One obvious example is the PCs fighting alongside one or more NPC allies. If the rules don't say how to resolve NPC vs NPC attacks, this perfectly reasonable scenario either becomes impossible or requires the GM to invent some new mechanics, neither of which are a good idea.

It gets better, you can get pcs & npcs using different mechanics for the same thing in such a way that it becomes game breaking for pcs to ally with a random npc unless you stop & rewrite the npc as a pc. 4e did some of it & 5e may be headed that way. Example: its simpler for a npc to have per-fight & recharge mechanics for abilities that pcs have on a per-rest or per-day clock. So what happens when the pcs convince, intimidate, hire, or mind control an npc... healer with a recharging 1st level healing spell power... mage with a recharging fireball spell power... warrior with a per-fight ability thats a pc daily?

Well either the npcs are better at pc abilities than the pcs are, or you change their stats to nerf them when the pcs ally with them (which several video game franchises are known to do).

[Zombimode]

You know, this makes me remember that one thing I've always found a little odd (understandable, but still odd fridge-logic wise) is that there's so many fantastical beasts and creatures of legend in fantasy settings, but at the same time pretty much all Earth creatures are represented as-is. I know people mostly want them just because they're something they understand and don't need to read a whole monster manual entry just to say "oh so it's like a deer", but it kinda starts edging on being immersion breaking if you really sit there and think about it.

If these fantasy creatures are truly the hyper-dangerous apex predators they're depicted as, they'd surely have out-competed the mundane apex predators like bears, or jaguars, or birds of prey. And the depiction of them being just "higher up the food chain" than the mundane predators that some games claim makes no sense whatsoever. From a zoological standpoint there's zero incentive for a predator to consistently target other predators for nutritional purposes when the herbivores said other predators prey on are less dangerous, more numerous, and have the same amount of meat. Sure, there starts to be other behavioral reasons, like territorial encroachment or food shortage, but again, those are situations where the "lesser" predator has to adapt or be driven to extinction.

I attribute this to 1) the lazyness of setting and adventure writers about not taking any care about preserving the sense of "specialness" of adventuring locations and situations. Instead *every* forest, lake, cave, desert, swamp etc. is "The Landmark of Doooom" and full of monsters. *Every* city has absurdly spacious sewers full of monsters AND a Thief's Guild(tm) hiding in it. There are *always* pirates and *always* bandits and they are *everywhere*.

And 2) the monster manuels often making it sound that every creature is a *species* and as such a natural part of the environment.


We as GMs can do better, of course.
In recent times I've tried to establish a distinction between *monsters* and *animals* - that covers how different creatures are used in my adventures and NPC reactions. That line is of course quite fuzzy, but thats OK. It IS a matter of perspective, after all.
To me the line is defined by origin and behaviour. It is NOT drawn at "does exists in the real world" vs. "does NOT exist in the real world", although there is some overlap.

Clear cases:
- the hundreds of Tigers in the jungle, the hundreds and thousands of crocodiles and piranha swarms in the rivers? Animals. While one may run into them in the wild and such encounters may lead to violence, these creature usually stay away from settled lands and groups of humanoids. Accidents happen but overall the locals have learned to live with and share their environment with such creatures who are, if viewed in isolation, quite dangerous.
- the ONE Gambol (one of MM2 several "magical ape" creatures) that terrorizes the town by attacking farms and travelers on the road? Monster. Although it's theoretical killing power is absolutely dwarfed by the combined theoretical killing power of the surrounding animals it is an extraordinary threat to the town - because it is actively attacking humanoids and livestock AND is individually stronger then the majority of inhabitants and travelers. While relatively subdued it's abilities are clearly supernatural and it is not a natural part of the environment. It's origins? Enough possibilities that you don't have to presume a Gambol species.

I also learned that many players are conditioned to expect all these tropes

[VoxRationis]

While you could have your spouse and kids as henchmen, I don't think I've ever seen that be the case. The type of places adventurers often go, I wouldn't want to bring my kids. And it's not like Wizards only marry other Wizards, you know?

I mean, standard adventurer's mentality tends to revolve around the logic that things are safest when they are in direct contact with you (both because in universe, you are a powerful individual that can usually successfully oppose actions by your enemies and because in game, the DM is limited in their ability to arbitrarily decree that things happen a certain way when you can declare some sort of countermeasure), so I could see adventuring wizards deciding to drag their toddlers along on adventures.

[vasilidor]

On the issue of spell books and how paranoid one should be with them I have had one DM I played with tell me that I should make a back up asap and leave that one at home, and I did and the back up was fine. The other that I traveled with fell into peril when facing things like dragon fire.
Another DM I took that character to tried to offscreen kill all the friends and family and burn the treasure he stored at home. No idea how that game went on after that, I just went home and took my character with me.
The wizard Had defenses in play that I would expect to be able to play with. Hired mercenaries and magical beast that had been befriended. A vault of dangerous stuff that needed to be teleported into as well.

The Irony is that I lost that character in a move.

[Easy e]

Thanks you for your examples Invisible Bison, Max_Killjoy, and Talakeal. That helps me understand and I appreciate your time and thoughtful responses.

Perhaps not appropriate for this thread to discuss further, but the tolerance level for GM fiat/GM Mechanics is an important consideration in game play. Not necessarily a D&D issue, but an interesting topic on its own.

[Telok]

The Irony is that I lost that character in a move.

RL rule of thumb: three moves equals one house fire for the purposes of losing stuff.

On topic: I think D&D 5e inhabits an uncanny valley between simple-fast-abstract-easy and logical-simulation-complex.

For example: Classic Traveller is quite abstract, combat is in "range bands" that characters can move through 2 at a time, skills are often massively broad, and mapping attributes to RL stuff is extremely vague. Its also very easy to learn & play, relies greatly on the GM to fill in blank spots in the rules, and runs fast once learned. Champions is simulationist, you can map strength to real weight lifts & characters move in discrete RL distance measurements, interactions like weapon armor penetration versus a brick wall used as cover or a ballistic vest are well defined, etc.

But D&D 5e is weird. HP aren't meat but poisoning attacks like snake bites require them to be meat or theres no logic to it. Being made of solid steel makes creatures just as hard to hit as being fast & dodgy, even against things like disentegration rays that supposedly just have to touch something to work. Juvenile white dragons are juvenile white dragons if the party fights 2 of them, but fight just one and it gets extra attacks & automatic saves & can make the scenery attack the party because the narrative of "exciting fight scene" needs it to happen.

If you wanted fast & simple you could fold weapon damage into attack rolls & hp into hit dice. Just add some more ac to deal with the attack boost, increase numbers of hit dice for con & class instead of hp, and have each successful attack deal one hit die of 'wounds'. You could just collapse the skill/prof list into about 1 or 2 broad things per stat like a general "knows stuff" prof and a catch all "good at talking" prof. Less math, less rolls, more abstract. If you wanted something more simulationist you do things like armor as damage reduction & increase falling damage by the size/mass of the creature. Maybe not make the abilities of people & creatures dependent on your requirement for a "narratively exciting" fight or if they're pcs or npcs. A little more math, a bit more complex, but logical & more accurate to how things actually work.

You could even have different add-on rules or splats/modules that change the game one way or the other to let people easily add & remove complexity & options. People would buy those. But D&D 5e is weird. It inhabits an uncanny valley between simple-fast-abstract-easy and logical-simulation-complex.

[Milodiah]

I've also always kinda nursed a grievance towards the D&D (especially 3.5/PF) skill system, and while I strongly dislike the 5e skill system for basically removing a lot of the variety from choosing, it at least removed my problems with the skill points per level thing. 2 + Int classes are just pathetic, especially Fighter since you're almost never seeing a straight Fighter with an int of 14+. You'll never get to be as competent at stuff as the dedicated skill monkeys, regardless of how much you want to be, unless you multiclass. If you want your fighter to be a sailor, you're basically going to have to dedicate all two of those skill points to Profession (Sailor) and then probably a supporting skill like Swim (or err on the side of historical accuracy since most sailors actually weren't strong swimmers), Climbing (to get to the masts), Balance (to stay on the masts and also not be crippled by rough seas), etc etc. So goodbye to all your other skills. Meanwhile, an Int-heavy Rogue might end up putting points into Profession (Sailor) because he's actually starting to run out of places he can put his eleven skill points per level and he'll just write it into his backstory that he did some time on a merchant ship.

So the Fighter's gonna be hoping for a DM who's willing to roll all those other skill checks into Profession (Sailor) and even then its running off Wisdom which probably isn't a great bonus for him anyway. Plus we all know Fighters get ****ed on the various perception rolls too, which are statistically proven to be the most commonly called for skill rolls at virtually any table. People make fun of human fighters as being the most basic thing, but what are two defining features of fighter? They thrive on as many feats as possible and need as many bonus skill points as they can get. Small wonder, then, that a race whose main perks are those exact things get paired with Fighter so often.

My other point is that I absolutely hate that Spot/Listen/Perception/etc are considered skills on par with blacksmithing or spellcraft in a lot of systems, not just D&D. Its such a disproportionately important thing in most cases that people are always putting skill ranks or points or whatever into it that would otherwise be going to sculpting their character how they want. Most people don't conceptualize their characters as "super good at noticing things" unless they're planning ahead for the mechanics of the game and acknowledging that spotter/sentry/Noticer Of The Unusual is a legit role to be filled because of how these games are built.

Its another reason I like point buy games over class and level, because things like perception can exist without being shoehorned into either skills or class features or whatever.

[JNAProductions]

But D&D 5e is weird. HP aren't meat but poisoning attacks like snake bites require them to be meat or theres no logic to it. Being made of solid steel makes creatures just as hard to hit as being fast & dodgy, even against things like disentegration rays that supposedly just have to touch something to work. Juvenile white dragons are juvenile white dragons if the party fights 2 of them, but fight just one and it gets extra attacks & automatic saves & can make the scenery attack the party because the narrative of "exciting fight scene" needs it to happen.

That's not how it works. Legendary Creatures are Legendary regardless of how many you use-though admittedly I've never run a fight with multiples.

I'm not saying your whole point is wrong, mind you, but that specific example is.

[Max_Killjoy]

My other point is that I absolutely hate that Spot/Listen/Perception/etc are considered skills on par with blacksmithing or spellcraft in a lot of systems, not just D&D. Its such a disproportionately important thing in most cases that people are always putting skill ranks or points or whatever into it that would otherwise be going to sculpting their character how they want. Most people don't conceptualize their characters as "super good at noticing things" unless they're planning ahead for the mechanics of the game and acknowledging that spotter/sentry/Noticer Of The Unusual is a legit role to be filled because of how these games are built.

Its another reason I like point buy games over class and level, because things like perception can exist without being shoehorned into either skills or class features or whatever.

I've seen class/level systems that make "perception" a derived stat, or a roll based on a characteristic, or something other than "You can learn to notice things, or you can learn to make horseshoes".

But yeah, overall, it tends to be better in a system like HERO than in a system like D&D.

[Kraynic]

My other point is that I absolutely hate that Spot/Listen/Perception/etc are considered skills on par with blacksmithing or spellcraft in a lot of systems, not just D&D. Its such a disproportionately important thing in most cases that people are always putting skill ranks or points or whatever into it that would otherwise be going to sculpting their character how they want. Most people don't conceptualize their characters as "super good at noticing things" unless they're planning ahead for the mechanics of the game and acknowledging that spotter/sentry/Noticer Of The Unusual is a legit role to be filled because of how these games are built.

Going back to the fighter in the rest of your post, it bothers me that fighters usually have lowish wisdom scores and don't have perception as a class skill (in pathfinder 1E anyway). This means that a fighter makes an absolutely horrible guard of anything, including the group's campsite at night unless the fighter is a half elf and spent the skill focus bonus feat on perception. And since perception ties into combat in ambushes, determining whether you get to act in a surprise round, the lack of good support for this skill actually makes the fighter a worse fighting character unless every combat is without any surprise.

Since there are people that run the game with non-int based builds having a skill point base of 4 instead of 2, and the whole "Elephant in the Room" skill revamp as a community option, you certainly aren't the only one bothered by the skill system.

[Xervous]

a fighter makes an absolutely horrible ... anything,

Misquoted for hot take. The only good fighters are found in the editions that can be expressed by 2^X for X >= 0

[Kraynic]

Misquoted for hot take. The only good fighters are found in the editions that can be expressed by 2^X for X >= 0

Oh, I don't know. My current thought is that a fighter 3 (for medium armor training) makes a pretty good barbarian.

[Milodiah]

Since there are people that run the game with non-int based builds having a skill point base of 4 instead of 2, and the whole "Elephant in the Room" skill revamp as a community option, you certainly aren't the only one bothered by the skill system.

Oh yeah, I always bump 2+Int to 3+Int and call it a "pity point".

[Bohandas]

I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion, but I'm sick of the overuse of opaque middle english spellings like "draught" and "gaol" which are literally just obsolete spellings of "draft" and "jail" but are so obscure and goofy looking that they give the incorrect impreasion of being seperate words

But D&D 5e is weird. HP aren't meat but poisoning attacks like snake bites require them to be meat or theres no logic to it.

To be fair, it's always been like that. Maybe not in the specific case of poison, but there's always been plenty of situations where HP only made sense as meat. Especially since there's already two other things that do the alternate explanation of turning a lethal blow into a glancing one more clearly