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Thread: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
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2012-11-26, 09:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
It has nothing to do with hurting the player's feelings and everything to do with building an appropriate narrative. The mechanics should serve to create the genre the players and DM are trying to experience. This is why universal systems can never be better than second-best, and why things get weird if you try to use Call of Cthulhu to run My Little Pony.
The question is, as it so very often seems to be, "What is D&D?" What type of game should the mechanics work to create?
I think, when the barbarian wants her character to have no chance of losing to the wizard, but a good chance of succeeding against the Purple Worm, she doesn't want a mathematical impossibility, she wants her character's strength to have narrative weight. Heroes generally don't lose, especially in a direct contest that involves their best strengths, unless this defeat is part of a symbolic death and rebirth where the hero comes out of it profoundly changed (only sometimes for the better). The comparison isn't really Hulk vs. Batman, but more that scene in the Dark Knight where Rachel dies. Think about the ways both Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent responded to this. Without the transformation in both characters, the scene (and the Joker's victory here) would have been meaningless.
Which brings up the question: Should D&D's mechanics work to try to avoid meaningless defeats for the main characters, or should they be frequent and an inherent part of how the game works? I'm not sure of the answer to this question myself.
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2012-11-26, 10:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I was being flippant in referring to the barbarian's feelings, so let me rephrase it less snarkily: Your Str score has zero narrative weight whatsoever, and it shouldn't. Same with your Dex score, or your Con, or your Int or Wis or Cha. A Str score is a numerical quantity that tells you how much you can lift, how hard you hit, how good you are at athletics without formal training, and so forth; a barbarian's 21 Str is worth no more and no less than an ogre's 21 Str. The game doesn't care how you got to that Str score or what bonus types it's composed of right now, and neither should you.
What do have narrative weight are class features, equipment, and other abilities that depend on or augment stats. A high-Int character is clever, but it takes a factotum's ability to apply Int to Str and Dex checks to MacGuyver a lock; a high-Wis character is aware of his surroundings, but it takes a monk's Wis to AC to have Zen-like situational awareness; a high-Con character is implacable, but it takes Steadfast Determination to throw off magic through sheer mass.
Something like an ability score that's shared by every single creature in the game can't have exceptional narrative weight by its nature; something limited like a class feature, special magic item, or the like can have narrative weight, with rarer things having more weight--compare a magic missile (available to any 1st-level arcane caster or anyone else with a feat) to a meteor swarm (available to high-level arcane casters only), or a wand of magic missile (cheap, common, weak) to a staff of power (priceless, unique, potent), you get the idea. That's why we're talking about a barbarian and a wizard (a thematically-strong class vs. a thematically-weak class) as opposed to a fighter and a sorcerer (a class that can be strong but isn't necessarily vs. a class that can be strong but isn't necessarily) or a generic martial class and a generic non-martial class.
To use the superhero analogy again, super-strength, super-speed, super-smarts, etc. are common to the point of blandness in superhero comics, so no one really cares that Spider-Man is agile or Batman is smart; we care that Spider-Man gets better use out of his agility than the similarly-agile Captain America because his spider-sense lets him dodge things before he consciously knows about them, and we care that Batman gets better use out of his intelligence than the similarly-smart Reed Richards because his paranoia and analytic skills make him Always Prepared. There are enough agile and smart heroes out there that you either have to be vastly more agile or more intelligent than them or have some agile/smart schtick to differentiate yourself from the pack.
So, as I said, if you want to give "being strong" narrative weight, don't look at ability checks, look at things that modify ability checks. Do you want "the strong guy" to be a trait of all martial classes? A single martial class? Anyone with a certain feat? Something else? Decide what it is and create that ability, don't try to modify the ability modifier so that 18-Str barbarians beat equal-level 10-Str wizards at arm-wrestling 100% of the time, because that mucks up everything else with wide-ranging consequences where something simple like giving the barbarian +1/2 level to Str-based checks or rerolling Str checks or something would be much simpler, more elegant, and more mechanically sound.
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2012-11-26, 10:30 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I wonder if the best way of keeping the d20 dice for resolution, but making stats matter, is to make them straight rolls, adding the relevent stat. Make the DCs something as follows:
DC 10: Easy. Nearly impossible to fail.
DC 20: Moderate. Reasonable chance of failure, depending on the relevent stat.
DC 30: Hard. Requires a good score, or a better roll.
Opposed checks can be a simple roll off (+ relevent stat). This means that the 8 Strength Wizard has an 11.25% chance of defeating an 18 strength barbarian (assuming ties go to the Barbarian) against the 26.25% chance if using a -1 penalty for the wizard on the roll, and a +4 bonus for the barbarian, which (while still not insignificant chance of success for the Wizard) seems better to me.
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2012-11-26, 10:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I totally agree: Ability checks are worse than useless for creating the type of game I described. However, I don't think class features or feats are suitable to accomplish this either, at least in the form D&D is currently using them. And it still doesn't answer whether this goal is desirable at all.
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2012-11-26, 11:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
It's a desirable goal, but not for DnD. DnD isn't about narrative, it's about wizards and orcs and magic swords. You don't win because you're the main character and that's how you want the story to end, you win because you have a high strength (or whatever) score, used the right tactics, and rolled well. That's not to say that narrative plays no role in DnD, it just plays no role in the mechanics.
It would work well as a module though, I think. Perhaps something like a "Fate" system, where each character has a certain number of fate points that they can spend to do special stuff like auto-roll a 20, re-charge a spell slot, re-gain HP, take an extra turn, etc. You would start with, say, 3 fate points, and then the DM hands out more whenever you do a cool thing for the narrative, or accomplish something big.5e Homebrew: Death Knight (Class), Kensai (Monk Subclass)Excellent avatar by Elder Tsofu.
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2012-11-26, 11:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2012-11-27, 12:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
The narrative I was talking about was not Narrative as opposed to Simulationist or Gamist, merely narrative as relates to customization of backstory and personality. Some aspects (and Aspects) of games with plot manipulation can fit into D&D just fine, but for the basic narrative you mentioned of someone who is stronger than the norm for his race being more "important" story-wise and thus more likely to win a contest of strength than a member of a normally-strong race can be handled by class features and such just fine.
After all, that sort of thing already exists in D&D in several places: natural talent (your ability modifier) gets you going but training (skill ranks, save/defense bonuses, etc.) outpaces it eventually, "named" NPCs have the elite array in 3e while "normal" NPCs have the 10/10/10/11/11/11 array, and more. Whether you're talking about +X to Str checks or fate points, though, the point stands that it isn't your Str score that's doing the heavy lifting, it's whatever mechanics you attach to it that accomplish what you want.
That's yet another reason I dislike the 5e skill system's approach of using stat checks with small skill modifiers: someone who has a score of 20 will just be better than 10-stat trained characters at low levels, and it takes until 8th level for training to equal talent; contrast this with 3e, where you could have up to +4 from ranks or +5 from stat at 1st level, at 2nd level you could get +5 from ranks and another +2 from synergy, and training improved from there. Talent becoming a smaller portion of your bonus compared to training made starting stats, race, and such less important as you leveled, whereas in 5e as it stands you'll be feeling that 12 for a long time; the more important your stats are, the more you're encouraged to overspecialize in that one stat as we saw from 3e SAD classes and most 4e classes, and that's entirely at odds with 5e's goal of lower numbers making non-primary stats more relevant.
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2012-11-27, 01:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Again, math. By the nature of a 1d20 roll, a +5 is just as relevant when your total is +6 as when your total is +26. It increases your chance of success by 25% in both cases.
For example, let's say you're playing a 3e, and have a fighter with 20 strength and a wizard with 10 strength, and both have 23 ranks in the Climbing skill, and +10 boots of climbing. Now, you're set up against a super-difficult to climb wall, that's perfectly smooth and weeps fire and is covered in angry monkeys. It has a DC of 45 to climb.
The wizard, with no strength bonus, has a total modifier of +33, which means he has to roll a 12 or higher, or a 45% chance of success. The fighter, on the other hand, has a bonus of +38, which means he has to roll an 8 or higher, or a 70% chance of success.
Now, let's turn that around and say you're playing 5e. You have a fighter with 20 strength and a wizard with 10, and both have Atheletics trained. You're set up against a much more mundane wall, made of uncarved rock that's slick from rain. It has a DC of 15 to climb.
The wizard, with no strength bonus, has a total modifier of +3, which means he has to roll a 12 or higher, or a 45% chance of success. The fighter, on the other hand, has a bonus of +8, which means he has to roll an 8 or higher, or a 70% chance of success.
See how little those two situations changed? The only thing that changed was that the numbers were no longer inflated by the massive skill boosts.
What has changed, is that now un-skilled characters can be relevant alongside those who have trained the skills. In 3E, if you wanted to place a skill challenge in front of someone who's trained that skill, it had to be absurdly high in difficulty to be relevant to them, and thus the task would be impossible for the rest of the party. Now, skilled characters and high-ability characters have an advantage, but not so much of one that the DM can't put in something that everyone can handle, even if some can do it better than others. The 18 strength fighter with atheletics trained might be the best at climbing, but even the wizard with 10 strength and no training can attempt to climb the DC 15 wall, even if he's more likely to fall, or at least take a lot longer getting up.5e Homebrew: Death Knight (Class), Kensai (Monk Subclass)Excellent avatar by Elder Tsofu.
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2012-11-27, 03:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Yes, and I consider that a good thing. I'm totally fine with a heavy door that the party barbarian can bash down but that the rogue or wizard have absolutely no chance of bashing down. It's a team game, so it's perfectly fine to rely on your teammates to do things that your character cannot do. 5E doesn't allow characters to become actually good at their specialty, and that instantly makes a lot of character concepts unviable.
Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
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2012-11-27, 04:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Yes, I'm very well aware of d20 probabilities, thank you. I'm not talking about bonuses vs. DCs, in which case 1d20+10 vs. DC 20 is the same as 1d20+50 vs. DC 60; I'm talking about the proportions in a given bonus and the importance the 5e system places on high stats.
Let's use your example, a fighter with Str 20 and a wizard with Str 10. At 1st level, the wizard can put 4 ranks in a Str-based skill, let's say Jump, and have a +4, while if the fighter puts no ranks in it he'll have a +5. At 2nd level, the wizard has a +5 to match the fighter's +5, +7 if he has 5 ranks in Tumble as well. (Ignore the cross-class difference, since him being a wizard doesn't matter; give him Able Learner if necessary.) By 10th level the wizard has +15 Jump with the synergy bonus while the fighter has +6 Jump (assuming he boosted Str at 4th and 8th), so even though the wizard started with a +0 Str bonus, he can hit DC 25 (respectable for that level) with regularity; at low levels training matches talent (or exceeds it in the case of a 14-16 Str) and at high levels training lets you hit DCs where you should without needing too much talent.
Someone with both talent and training (20 Str, max ranks) has double the bonus at 1st level, but that only works out to one "degree of success" since DCs tend to be set in increments of 5, and +10 at 1st level doesn't break the RNG. At 10th level, he's still only 5 points above the wizard at +20, which again is one degree of success away and doesn't break the RNG. The fighter isn't even off the RNG yet, at +6 vs. +20, and instituting something like a minimum of +1/2 level for untrained skills would preserve the RNG up through level 20. Thus by mid levels, it's if not irrelevant at least not so important to have a high Str to have a good jump, so whether it's a wizard who wants to Jump or a fighter who wants to Spellcraft you can generally get by with low Str or low Int and come out fine.
In contrast, while the 5e system has 1st level characters have comparable bonuses as well (+5 for talent vs. +3 for training), that breaks down fairly quickly. When you max out a certain skill at +7, that and a 20 stat leaves you with a total of +12, half of which is your ability score. Where a 10th level 3e wizard's Str was 1/4 his total bonus, in 5e it's just under 1/2. Further, in 3e a +5 isn't much, just one "degree of success," and not a game-breaker either way; however, in 5e, a DC 25 is Nearly Impossible, which, I quote, means it is "so challenging that only demigods and their peers can succeed without assistance."
Take the 3e wizard's Str bonus away, and he goes from jumping 20 feet on average to 15 feet on average. Take the 5e wizard's Str bonus away, and he goes from completing a task only gods can perform on a 13 to needing a 17, a 25% difference--or, to put it another way, he goes from not possibly being able to fail at bashing open a door even with a circumstance penalty to having a 10% chance of failure. Further, someone with a 20 Str and no training has a 5% chance of completing "godlike" Nearly Impossible tasks, while even a one-point reduction in Str makes that impossible, and training + 10 Str won't do it either. To get that kind of ridiculous swinginess in 3e, your modifier has to be at least in the 50s or more (in the 80s or 100s for some skills) and by that point whether the wizard or fighter started with a 10 or 20 Str is really immaterial.
So, yes, in 5e stats have far too much of an impact on skills; high stat, untrained >> trained, low stat until mid levels and stat + trained outpaces both of them. If they want to make the bounded accuracy concept work, the devs need to either ditch those stupid DCs--and really, declaring a DC that a 1st-level character has a full 5% chance of hitting to be something gods have a hard time with is just pathetic--or they need to severely reduce bonuses. To make those DCs work they'd need to reduce stats and training to max at +2 each, or (more reasonably) they could reduce stats to +3, let training get up to +5, and put Nearly Impossible at DC 30 or so.
What has changed, is that now un-skilled characters can be relevant alongside those who have trained the skills. In 3E, if you wanted to place a skill challenge in front of someone who's trained that skill, it had to be absurdly high in difficulty to be relevant to them, and thus the task would be impossible for the rest of the party. Now, skilled characters and high-ability characters have an advantage, but not so much of one that the DM can't put in something that everyone can handle, even if some can do it better than others. The 18 strength fighter with atheletics trained might be the best at climbing, but even the wizard with 10 strength and no training can attempt to climb the DC 15 wall, even if he's more likely to fall, or at least take a lot longer getting up.
Climb and Jump are obviated by flight and levitation; Survival and Use Rope are obviated by extradimensional storage and tracking spells for the former and the same or manacles for the latter; you can stop investing in Tumble when you can reliably hit DC 15, and in Appraise and Decipher Script at 0 ranks. By the time that happens, people who actually invest in those skills should be able to do things untrained people have no chance of doing, because by the high levels you can do a backflip over someone's head, tumble through walls of spears without being hit, and more. Having the skill points to max out Hide and Disguise at in-class rates is like having the hidden class features "Is harder to see than an invisible object" and "Can cast a disguise self spell immune to true seeing" on your sheet, precisely because of the fact that you'll beat people's Spot most of the time.
The solution to that problem is not making it so that a 1st-level wizard trained in Open Lock can match a 10th-level rogue's skill some of the time, or to make demigods weaker than some 1st level characters, it's to make skills have new and different and interesting and useful functions at higher levels, turn those implicit class features into explicit class features for skillmonkey classes, and bring up the low end of skill-users so they don't lag too far behind. Bounded accuracy does not work, and letting ability scores have such a huge influence on skill rolls just makes things worse.
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2012-11-27, 12:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
So your issue is that ability scores matter?
Besides that, you got into a ton of stuff about scaling and the range of randomness, which we've already covered. If you want unexpected results to not happen, then you can't use a random element for your determiner. If you really don't like randomness, then just houserule that everyone takes 10 on all skill checks. Now the fighter will jump the same height every time, the wizard won't perform super-human feats some of the time, and all that other stuff that you mentioned.
Of course, you'll likely also have a player revolt on your hands, because all of the stuff you mentioned is secondary in importance to having a fun, balanced game.
If you have a better system you'd like to propose, that's fine, but I warn you that it'll likely get ripped apart by everyone here just like you've ripped apart the bounded accuracy system.
The object of good design isn't to eliminate all flaws, but to ensure that the flaws you have detract from the game as little as possible.5e Homebrew: Death Knight (Class), Kensai (Monk Subclass)Excellent avatar by Elder Tsofu.
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2012-11-27, 03:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
My issue is that high ability scores (which you either roll randomly or buy with diminishing returns at character creation and that do not advance as you level--that we know of yet, at least) outweigh skill training (which you have full control over and that does advance as you level) at the low levels and compose a large proportion of your bonus at high levels. This means that (A) choices you make at character creation can be more important than choices as you level and (B) the overspecialization this encourages is a bad thing.
Point A is the "locked-in builds" problem in 3e that was so derided during the 4e transition: if a fighter picks some bad feats at low levels and wants to change his style at mid levels, or if a ranger rolls a low Wis and can't boost it high enough to cast spells, oh well, tough luck, you're stuck with it. Point-buy for ability scores and static HP were made the standard methods for 4e for the same reason (being at a disadvantage at 20th for some bad rolls at 1st is not a good thing), and yet now they're making ability scores more important than they ever were there.
Point B is the "fighter feat trees" and the SAD vs. MAD problem: you can pick a bunch of synergistic options and focus your resources, or pick a bunch of non-synergistic options and spread your resources around, and the former is almost always better. Given the choice between being able to do godlike things in one of six areas or merely difficult things in three or four of those six areas, the logical choice is the former, because D&D rewards specialization already and you're going to be doing stuff within your niche most of the time anyway.
Besides that, you got into a ton of stuff about scaling and the range of randomness, which we've already covered. If you want unexpected results to not happen, then you can't use a random element for your determiner. If you really don't like randomness, then just houserule that everyone takes 10 on all skill checks. Now the fighter will jump the same height every time, the wizard won't perform super-human feats some of the time, and all that other stuff that you mentioned.
Of course, you'll likely also have a player revolt on your hands, because all of the stuff you mentioned is secondary in importance to having a fun, balanced game.
The 5e system tries to achieve the same effect by merely shrinking the range of numbers proportionally...but the d20 is still 20 points wide, so the skill range has gone from being roughly 2 RNGs wide for static DCs and 3 wide for opposed checks to being 1.25 RNGs wide for static DCs and 1.5 wide for opposed checks. On the high end, there's no differentiation between high level and low level, expert and non-expert: it's possible for a character of any class with a high stat or a low stat and training to hit the top of the scale from 1st level, and someone who maxes out training in a certain skill is less than 50% away from someone with the same stat with no training. On the low end, it's no longer guaranteed to succeed at normal tasks; like crit fumbles or a dice pool, no matter how skilled you get the chance for failure is always there.
That can and does work in other, "grittier" games, but not in a game where "good at skills" is one of the three protected niches and the main schtick of one of the four iconic classes, and not in a game where you're traditionally superhuman by the mid levels, whether explicitly (4e's explicit paragon and epic tiers) or implicitly (3e's implicit tiers and AD&D's "normal people are 0th level" thing) and thus better in your area of focus than mere mortals.
If you have a better system you'd like to propose, that's fine, but I warn you that it'll likely get ripped apart by everyone here just like you've ripped apart the bounded accuracy system.
The problems with those systems were never the systems themselves, but the spells, items, and such attached to them. Use some method to remove the reliance on stat-boosters (inherent bonuses in 4e, a simple houserule in 3e) and remove the stupidly-high bonuses in 3e like glibness and such--two trivial things to do if you're making a new edition based on one of them--and the problem basically goes away. The only difference between the two, really, is whether you want someone who doesn't specifically train at something to still have a chance of success because you assume he's been practicing off-camera (the SWSE/4e way) or not to have a chance of success because being trained means you're better than a normal person and only training gets you the extraordinary results (the 3e/d20 way), and switching between one and the other requires literally less than a paragraph of rules, maybe one sentence if you're being concise.
The object of good design isn't to eliminate all flaws, but to ensure that the flaws you have detract from the game as little as possible.
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2012-11-27, 04:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
5e Homebrew: Death Knight (Class), Kensai (Monk Subclass)Excellent avatar by Elder Tsofu.
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2012-11-27, 04:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Where does the human warrior get his +2 to attack from? +1 is from Strength and the other +1 as an unclassified modifier to represent his elite status? Or is there another source for the +1?
We are not standing on the shoulders of giants, but on very tall tower of other dwarves.
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2012-11-27, 04:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Any predictions for the next playtest? From the most recent Legends and Lore article it sounds like they are close to being done the core classes, but they also mentioned in a different past article that they are usually several iterations of the game ahead of the play test packet so we might not be seeing those mostly finalized core four yet.
I'm excited to see Rogues, as they definitely got the bad end of the stick in this iteration. I'm also excited to see the changes in maneuvers. I'm a fan of the expertise dice mechanic so far and believe it's got great potential even if it's not perfect yet.
I didn't get a chance to play this iteration but I'm still hoping to. Ideally number five will be out for Christmas holidays so I can find some time then.Originally Posted by cattoy
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2012-11-27, 04:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
"I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums. I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that." -- ChubbyRain
Crystal Shard Studios - Freeware games designed by Kurald and others!
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2012-11-27, 05:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
The last few posts have been basically the most boring thing I've ever read. And when I was 6 I read a 700-page manual on how to operate various pieces of equipment in a sewage treatment plant. Don't ask.
So, idea of the day. I was reading through the Agon rulebook when I found this interesting little bit: When your character is retired, your next character starts out stronger depending on how much your previous character accomplished in their lifetime.
What if this was the only method of character advancement in D&D? Character turnover is assumed to be very high, and characters don't get stronger as they gain XP through adventures. XP instead makes your next character stronger.
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2012-11-27, 05:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-27, 06:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
No, he pointed out the flaws of the system and proposed a dozen or so vague "solutions" without providing any detail. Are those solutions wrong? Maybe, maybe not. They would be wrong to some people, and right to others. Because there is no mathematical right answer.
5e Homebrew: Death Knight (Class), Kensai (Monk Subclass)Excellent avatar by Elder Tsofu.
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2012-11-27, 06:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
When I see numbers discussions all I see is:
BLABALABLAABBASJBABANAAABBLABABLABLBALBALABLABLABL ABLABLBALABLABLBALABLABLABLABLABLABLABLABLBALABLAB LABALBALBALBALBALBALBALBALABLABLABALB
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2012-11-27, 07:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
It can be problematic in several ways, but the biggest one is that it encourages serial character creation: a series of disposable characters each designed to live fast, die young, and leave a heroic corpse. While this resembles certain "old school" versions of D&D (Basic D&D, Hackmaster) it is not a popular style of play nowadays and does not work well with the increasingly elaborate character creation system WotC favors.
You can, of course, work against this natural inclination but as I always say: using two rules to reach the right outcome is worse than using just one. If you want Serial Character Gameplay then by all means use that approach; otherwise use something else.
* * *
Personally, I found the "narrative weight of character sheets" discussion and interesting topic but the arguments seemed to rather be beside the point.
In truth the concern was how much your character sheets defines your character's abilities
SpoilerNamely, does an 18 STR mean your character can best lower STR characters in arm-wrestling as a body-builder could crush the proverbial 90 lbs weakling or is it just an indicator of your likelihood to succeed. Relatedly, does X points in Knowledge (Physics) mean you are a Physics Grad Student compared to an untrained Grade Schooler answering questions in the field, or does it merely indicate one factor out of many that determines your ability to best another in the area.
Despite popular conceptions, character sheets have always been the latter more than the former -- even in TSR D&D a weakling Magic User had a chance to best a brute Fighting Man in an arm-wrestling contest. WotC weakly introduced the former concept with things like "trained only" skill checks and impossible DCs (e.g. DC 40 checks) but its implementation has always been awkward due to the underlying d20 mechanic and a desire not to allow bonus/penalty tracking to get out of hand.
IMHO, allowing character sheets to more closely define your character's capabilities is a good direction for D&D to go. For one, it permits Players to have a better sense as to what they are "buying" when they construct a character sheet in a particular fashion and not get frustrated when "purchases" turn out to be meaningless in the face of the Random Number God. This is not to say that randomness need be eliminated, or even meaningfully reduced, from the game; merely that randomness should be applied where it is most "fun" (i.e. in genuinely uncertain events) rather than cast about haphazardly).Lead Designer for Oracle Hunter GamesToday a Blog, Tomorrow a Business!
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2012-11-27, 07:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
You have my sincerest apologies for the excessive verbosity and grandiloquence of my habitual style and method of sharing my ruminations on the philosophical and statistical ramifications of mechanical alterations to the rules systems and subsystems of the forthcoming edition and the incentivization of optimal strategies pertaining thereto.
So, idea of the day. I was reading through the Agon rulebook when I found this interesting little bit: When your character is retired, your next character starts out stronger depending on how much your previous character accomplished in their lifetime.
What if this was the only method of character advancement in D&D? Character turnover is assumed to be very high, and characters don't get stronger as they gain XP through adventures. XP instead makes your next character stronger.
Mechanically, it encourages things like playing big beefy fighters at low levels where you don't have many spells, getting far enough for casters to be workable, and then switching over to casters. It has all the drawbacks of starting new characters while the game is in progress without the mitigating circumstances that generally people like to play the same character and won't deliberately kill off their PC for a mechanical advantage.
Vague solutions without detail? What part of "Copying the 3e or 4e mechanical backbone for 5e wholesale, with the two specific alterations I outlined, would be better than the travesty that is bounded accuracy" was insufficiently specific?
It's certainly impossible to come up with an objectively optimal resolution mechanic, because different mechanics have different strengths, weaknesses, and outcomes. However, given a set of design goals--which include both the obvious/straightforward things like "higher-level characters should be better at things than lower-level characters" and "characters should be good at their class's schtick" and non-obvious/vague things like "this game should attempt to replicate the feel of previous editions" and "don't go off the RNG too far"--it's easy to compare mechanics to see which ones meet the design goals most closely, which ones are the most simple and elegant, and which ones are the easiest for players and designers to parse.
So, given the design goals we know of thus far, I am completely comfortable in saying that straight-up dropping the 3e or 4e resolution mechanics into 5e would be better at solving those design goals, would accomplish those goals in a simpler and more straightforward manner, and would be more familiar and acceptable to old players than the proposed 5e mechanics are.
1) I'm guessing the WotC devs feel the same way about math, hence skill challenges and bounded accuracy.
2) I'm not seeing how talking about the fundamental mechanical underpinnings of the game is "poking holes" or isn't important. I mean, it's not like we're talking about Pun-Pun here or similarly obscure and obtuse rules interactions. It's about the most basic and straightforward "optimization" you can possibly make: "Hey, I rolled a 17, cool. Wzards use Int, so I want a high Int, I'll put my 17 there. I'm a human, so that becomes a 19 Int, and wizard makes that 20." *start the game* "Hey, that's a cool campaign intro, Mr. DM, about this mysterious god that no one knows about. Can I roll Lore to figure out who that is? Okay, cool, I rolled a 17, and since Recall information known to no one else alive and Identify a unique monster are both DC 22, I guess that means I know who this god is. Guess what, party, we're going to be fighting this guy named Vecna...."
If having a 20% chance to basically duplicate 3e's legend lore as a free action because WotC screwed up the math isn't important, I don't know what is.
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2012-11-27, 08:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Er, all of it? That's incredibly vague. Are you suggesting we use 3e or 4e? They're very different. And which two specific alterations? Removing 1/2 level bonus? Removing spells that bypass skills? Using "some method to remove the reliance on stat-boosters"?
Pas that, I'll just point to this article, which I'm sure many of you have already read, but it lists out the reasons for bounded accuracy better than I can.Last edited by AgentPaper; 2012-11-27 at 08:44 PM.
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2012-11-27, 08:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Odd. In debates like the one that's been going on here, that's all I see until numbers show up. My brain goes, "Finally! Something I can judge objectively, instead of just a contest to see who can voice their opinions loudest!"
Nice.
Anyway, I feel like the issue here essentially comes down to number of die rolls. Multiple rolls decreases randomness; we can all agree on that, right?
Because it seems to me like Dice and Kurald are protesting the bounded-accuracy-ability-checks system based on the strange results it leads to in situations where just one die roll is used to determine success or failure. And AgentPaper and sometimes Craft(Cheese) are rebutting them based on situations where a series of die rolls determine success or failure, and therefore they are bothered by the idea of an individual roll in the series having a 100% or 0% success rate.
(Dice and Kurald's math seems to assume that a DM will call for a single Strength check to determine an arm wrestling contest, or a single Intelligence check to determine a chess match; this is probably sensible, since I've never heard of a group of D&D players who had the patience to play through a whole Skill Challenge-esque series of die rolls when they say "My character challenges the NPC Duke to a chess game."
Meanwhile, AgentPaper is referring to things like a grapple contest; while such checks certainly happen in D&D, it is important to realize that their individual success or failure is not usually important, because they are one roll in a series of many d20 rolls that resolve an entire battle.)
I think people in this debate are really saying the same thing, more than they realize. Both want the PCs to have a chance of failure ... but they want it to be a very small chance, since a large chance of failure leads to a game that is too swingy to make a great story.
The current rules in 5e accomplish this goal -- in situations where many rolls are involved. The too-much-randomness (built into the system for an individual Ability Check vs. Ability Check contest) gets smoothed out over the course of an entire combat sequence. However, this leaves situations that the party wants to resolve with a single roll too swingy for many players' taste.
Meanwhile, doubling all ability modifiers, or something similar, would smooth out the single-d20 contests a bit, but would make the individual rolls made during combat too predictable for AgentPaper's taste.
Frankly, I think the way this needs to get resolved is to explicitly make separate mechanics for single-roll situations as opposed to many-roll situations. At the simplest level, what if Skill or Ability Checks with an important individual result were made using 1d10 or 3d6 instead of 1d20, while in-combat 1d20 rolls remained unchanged? Would that strike everyone as a relatively effective patch to the problem?You can call me Draz.
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2012-11-27, 09:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-27, 09:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-27, 11:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
But why should the 20 str barbarian be winning against a 35 str purple worm? If the monster's stat bonus is that much higher than the Barbarian's, then that monster probably shouldn't be a level appropriate challenge for that barbarian. By the time the Barbarian is taking a Purple Worm on toe to toe, he should be as strong as the purple worm. The Worm will still have size modifiers on his side, but a dedicated grappling barbarian should have some ability that says "I ignore size modifiers"
What you describe isn't a problem with the 20str barbarian vs 5 str wizard, it's a problem with expectations that monsters are stronger than PCs.If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?
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2012-11-28, 12:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I said that either 3e or 4e would work better; which one they'd prefer to start with doesn't really matter (I'm guessing 4e since it's not under OGL), but yes, all of it; strip out the spells, powers, feats, and other selectable fiddly bits and just look at the basics (chapters 1, 4, 8, 9, and 10 in the 3e PHB, and the equivalent in 4e). The math works--not in the marketing-speak "the 4e math just works!" sense, but in the sense that it doesn't collapse under scrutiny like bounded accuracy and the fact that the concept of the "sweet spot" exists at all. The things that make low and high levels not work in either edition are fragile PCs on the low end and spells, powers, and stacking bonuses on the high end, while the basic resolution mechanics work just fine.
Speaking of which, those were indeed the two suggestions: remove the item reliance and remove overly-high bonuses. If you're making a new edition, those two are as simple as not having items grant pluses and not having spells that grant +20 or more to certain rolls. You can do the former in several ways (give the PCs scaling bonuses to compensate for item plus removal, lower the monsters' stats, leave the numbers the same as in standard 3e or 4e and just make the game "harder" that way, etc.), which again depends on taste; any of them would work, so you can just throw darts at a dartboard if you can't decide.
Pas that, I'll just point to this article, which I'm sure many of you have already read, but it lists out the reasons for bounded accuracy better than I can.
SpoilerGetting better at something means actually getting better at something.
In 3e and 4e, you already get better at something when you level. If you're talking about objective benchmarks, pick some arbitrary benchmark (bashing in a door, hitting a troll, jumping a gap, whatever) and you get better at that as you level. If you're talking about relative skill, in 3e attack bonus outpaces AC by virtue of one of them scaling and the other not while in 4e it outpaces AC by virtue of bonus stacking. The fact that Mearls thinks that it isn't the case in either edition that "When a fighter gets a +1 increase to his or her attack bonus, it means he or she hits monsters across the board 5% more often" just means he can't do math; by definition, getting +1 on a d20 means your chances of hitting against X increase by 5% for any X as long as you need ≤20 to hit (as is the case with all published monsters).
Nonspecialized characters can more easily participate in many scenes. You don't need bounded accuracy to do this; as I mentioned above, simply instituting a +1/2 level rule in the 3e system makes the difference between an expert and a noob within the RNG if you get rid of the game-breaking spells.
The DM's monster roster expands, never contracts. This is already the case in 3e, as I think I mentioned upthread with the name level discussion, it's just that mid levels mean you can take on several hundred goblins instead of two dozen--which, I would argue, is a good thing. If facing whole armies is not to your liking, look to 4e, where a specific selling point of the edition was that minions let a party of 5 PCs take on 20 monsters and have it be a fair fight.
Bounded accuracy makes it easier to DM and easier to adjudicate improvised scenes. Page 31 in the 3.5 DMG, page 42 in the 4e DMG. Lists of benchmark DCs for improvisation have been around for a while.
It opens up new possibilities of encounter and adventure design. As mentioned, lots of mooks vs. few strong characters is already a thing.
It is easier for players and DMs to understand the relative strength and difficulty of things. For basic NPCs, there's this thing called a Monster Manual that Mearls may have heard of that stats out your basic hobgoblin. For "named" NPCs, I don't see why "plate armor = tough to hit, leather armor = easy to hit" should be a valid assumption when rogues and bards are running around.
It's good for verisimilitude. See above regarding skill benchmarks.
Suffice to say I find Mearls's arguments unconvincing at best and a sign that he hasn't read the previous two editions' DMGs at worst.
Note the difference here between a Strength check and a Strength contest. In both if your examples you're referring to opposed rolls, but the contest part isn't the problem; two fighters with max Str, max ranks/training, and identical miscellaneous bonuses rolling against each other will have a 50/50 shot regardless of the skill system being used. The check part is the problem, because that's the part that has the bad objective benchmarks and that's the part where comparing static DCs vs. the width of the RNG causes problems.
Flip it around and use normal skill checks: even if you need just one success on a DC 25 Int check in one case and multiple successes on multiple DC 25 Str checks in another case, if a 1st level character can succeed at a DC 25 check and accomplish "godlike" results, it doesn't matter how many checks they need to or can make because the fact that they can make it at all is the problem in and of itself.
Frankly, I think the way this needs to get resolved is to explicitly make separate mechanics for single-roll situations as opposed to many-roll situations. At the simplest level, what if Skill or Ability Checks with an important individual result were made using 1d10 or 3d6 instead of 1d20, while in-combat 1d20 rolls remained unchanged? Would that strike everyone as a relatively effective patch to the problem?
As I mentioned in a later post, I agree with you completely and think that they should have normalized it so CR = HD and stats are in line for PCs and NPCs of similar HD and role. I was using the purple worm example to show that changing how the X Str barbarian interacts with the X-Y Str wizard will also change how the X Str purple worm interacts with the X-Y Str barbarian, even if it's something like wizard Str 16, barbarian Str 18, and purple worm Str 20, and thus you can't push for "the stronger party easily beats the weaker party" in one case and "the weaker party has a noticeable chance to escape" in the other.
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2012-11-28, 01:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-28, 01:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
He's referring to a simple math trick: Rolling multiple times and summing the result lowers the variance, which means it's less swingy.
To be completely arbitrary, let's say the Dragon's Spot is +7 and the Goblin's Hide is +0.
If we do this as a simple contest, the chance of the dragon spotting the goblin is 77%. But if we do it skill challenge style and keep rolling until one side gets 3 successes before 2 failures, the chance of the dragon spotting the goblin rises to 92%. 5 successes before 4 failures brings it up to 99%.
Skill challenges sucked because they basically weren't interactive and had no real choices. Doesn't mean that, say, an in-depth and detailed Diplomacy subsystem would be impossible.