D&D 5E If an option is presented, it needs to be good enough to take.

This is sort of the point of "bounded accuracy" in my mind. If I'm reading the point of bounded accuracy correctly, the idea is to allow a broader range of character effectiveness, i.e. a lower amount of "optimization" is required for a character to remain effective at task resolution for a longer period of time. This is something Savage Worlds manages very effectively by assuming that the baseline competency for a proficient skill is actually quite high.

A d4 skill in Savage Worlds is functionally equivalent to a +7 bonus in a d20-based system, and a d12 skill is equivalent to around a +15. Yes, there's a definite sense that one is more qualified than the other, but the difference is not so overwhelming in game play that the lower skilled character has no hope of contributing.

This reality also tends to push players away from min-maxing (though it can still certainly be done), because the mechanical reward for maximizing a "one trick pony" character is far, far less valuable. Players who min-max in Savage Worlds end up with characters with obvious weaknesses, who are very much tied to their specific "role." They're very good at their "schtick," but unable to contribute in as many situations as other characters.

In some ways, the established D&D-ism of class-based advancement assumes that some options are naturally going to be inferior for some classes; there's just no getting around it. If you want to play a game where there are literally NO inferior choices, only choices that agree or disagree with your character concept, then don't play a class-based game, or just fully embrace the 4e paradigm that every character will have to exist in a rigid mechanical structure.

That said, there's also a difference between "inferior" and campaign-specific assumptions. For example, if you're going to be playing a high-combat oriented campaign in GURPS, you should probably take some combination of the Combat Reflexes / High Pain Threshold / Toughness advantages. You're certainly not required to, but you're definitely going to role play your characters differently if you don't.

Mattachine said:

I am all for roleplaying, but I don't want D&D to go back to this sort of rp interaction:

DM: You manage to track down the merchant's contact in the tavern
Player1: We go over, as a group, and talk to him.
(exchange of dialog, improv-acting, or 3rd-person description)
DM: Hmm . . . the contact isn't convinced to help you.
Player2: The party forms a semicircle around the contact to intimidate him.
DM: Hmm . . . um, sure, he's now intimidated.


Also, this interaction from 2nd-3rd edition to be problematic:

DM: You tracked down the merchant contact.
Player1: The party's rogue, with a high diplomacy skill, tries to convince the merchant to give the vital information.
(exchange of dialog, improv-acting, or 3rd-person description)
DM: Okay, roll, but I'll give +2 in your favor.
Player1: *rolls* Yuck, I rolled badly.
DM: Ah, well, the merchant is unconvinced.


I liked skill challenges, because when done well, it moves away complete DM arbitration, and also means that an important exchange is settled with more than one die roll.

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As I said in my XP tag, 100% this.

You could resolve combat by having the players talk about what their PCs do, and the GM arbitrating it based on those descriptions plus his/her knowledge of their combat stats. But for some fairly obvious reasons we don't normally do it that way - we let the dice pay an important role, in particular mediating that gap between the players' aspirations for their PCs, and whether they in fact succeed or fail. The action resolution mechanics also permit both players and GMs to make decisions about how the combat proceeds (who attacks whom, for example) that shape the way the encounter unfolds in a way that supervenes on the choices of everyone, but is not determined by any single participant.

A skill challenge (or any other comparable extended contest mechanic) plays a similar function in non-combat challenges. The players make choices about how their PCs engage the fiction (a bit like choosing who to attack in combat), and they roll dice which play an important role in determining how that engagement plays out.

In a combat, no one would think that it didn't matter whether a player chose to have his/her PC attack the dragon, or the dragon's kobold flunky. Likewise, in a skill challenge it should matter whether the PC tries to befriend the merchant, or scare him/her. The GM's narration of the consequences of the skill check need to reflect that choice, just as the GM would narrate the dragon and kobold's behaviour in a way that reflects which one was attacked by the PCs. And just as the GM is obliged to narrate either success or failure in combat, depending on which side runs out of hit points first, so the GM is obliged to narrate either success or failure in the skill challenge, depending whether N successes or 3 failures comes up first.

Of course - and as the above makes clear - the GM has a vital role (just as s/he plays a vital role in a combat encounter, by playing the NPCs and monsters). But that role is in adjudicating the complications that flow from successes, and moreso, from failures. Which is functionally somewhat like choosing which PC a monster or NPC attacks during combat - it matters to the outcome, but it doesn't determine it. The outcome supervenes on all the participants' choices, plus the dice rolls.

And I say all this is a GM, not a player. I don't want to be responsible for deciding outright whether or not the PCs "win" out of combat than I do in combat. I want to be able to frame the scene then push hard on my part, while the players push hard for their PCs. And let the action resolution mechanics - dice plus participants' narration - tell us what happens.

Derren said:

This makes only sense when you declare minmaxing the default gamestyle.
A RPG should not be only about killing.

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I don't undestand your apparent obsession with combat, and your tendency to bring everything back to it.

Suppose the aim of the RPG is to make a range of archetypes viable - say a somewhat likeable rogue (think perhaps the Grey Mouser, or Cugel the Clever), a charismatic paladin (think Galahad, or under some readings Lancelot), a swashbuckler (think Dumas or The Princess Bride) and a magic-user (think perhaps Merlin or Gandalf).

If all these archetypes are to be viable, then all should have a meaningful chance of engaging in the social challenges the game will throw up - negotiating terms with black knights, wooing maidens, conning the careless out of their wealth, persuading kings, etc.

If the game makes one of the archetypes a clearly superior choice for such purposes, then it has failed as a game in a way that has nothing to do with killing. For example, if taking the Linguist/Speak languages ability grants mastery of fewer languages than the Tongues spell, yet consumes more PC build resources, than the game has failed! A player might still take the Linguist ability simply because s/he like the flavour/colour of his/her PC being fluent in many languages, but the game is punishing her - and pointlessly so - for making this choice.

Obryn said:

False dichotomy.

An option that "fits" should also be an option that fits very capably. If you need a feat which is supposed to make you an awesome blacksmith, the feat should make you an awesome blacksmith. Not one that makes you a kinda mediocre blacksmith because of bad design.

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Exactly! I could compare the Craft skill with creation magic, or the Diplomacy skill with charm magic. These are options that can be mechanically balanced or unbalanced, and that have nothing to do with killing.

The game also has to take a view about what sorts of activities are within its purview, and which are not. D&D traditionally has approached the resolution of combat in a more fine-grained way than its resolution of other activities, and its PC build rules reflect this: there are rules which reflect the difference between training in a shortsword and a rapier, for example, whereas there are no rules that reflect the difference between training in jazz or classical clarinet (there is simply Perform (Clarinet), or perhaps even Perform (Woodwind)), or that reflect the difference between expertise in the history of Greyhawk and the history of Dyvers (there is simply Knowledge (History)).

A game which cares more about whether your swordsmanship is with rapier or shortsword, than your style of musical training, is not treating those two domains of endeavour equally. And it is folly to pretend otherwise. Rather, the game should make its expectations and focus (for PC build, for scene framing, for action resolution) clear. If players then want to try and drift it in other directions (eg use 3E D&D to set up and run a game about a series of concert musicians scrabbling their way from gig to gig) that's up to them! - but the game shouldn't lie about what it was designed to handle.

Derren said:

This makes only sense when you declare minmaxing the default gamestyle.
A RPG should not be only about killing. There are other games for that. Now do you want D&D to be an RPG or a miniature skirmish game?

If it is the former than player should choose option which fits their character and don't have to struggle between choosing the option that fits and a option which is labeled powerful.

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The only two options you seem to be allowing for are "Interesting but Weak" and "Dull but Powerful". Which do you think is the situation for 3e spellcasters?

Bluenose said:

The only two options you seem to be allowing for are "Interesting but Weak" and "Dull but Powerful". Which do you think is the situation for 3e spellcasters?

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"I" am allowing?
You seem to have completely forgotten what the OP suggested, so I suggest to read his post again.

"Thus, 5e needs to take this lesson to heart: no deliberately underpowered junk. Not everything needs to be perfectly balanced, but if the developers include an option available to players, it needs to be rougly equivalent in power to the other options."
And when you read the rest of his post, which many people agree with, it is quite clear that he talks about combat and not "wooing maidens". And this is what I heavily oppose. The system should not label options as superior because they make you more powerful in combat or even just suggest that one should take combat feats over other things because they are more "effective".
Because if the system does that, it automatically promotes combat over other forms of gameplay, turning D&D more into a miniature skirmish game than an RPG.

Sure, many people likely don't agree with that or don't care because D&D was always combat focused. And if you want it to stay that way than the OPs suggestion make sense. But I am advocating for D&D to finally grow beyond its wargame roots and catch up with many other RPGs on the market which are build around you playing a character in a world instead of limiting you to play a adventurer raiding dungeons.
You can say that D&D was quite successful in the past with its combat focus, but in my opinion the the 3E/4E split showed, among other things, that there are a lot of people who care about the "other" stuff besides combat and they were among them who were driven away by 4E.

@Derran: when something appears clear only to you, it's probably not actually "quite clear" and you may be misreading the OP.

I actually agree that there should be lots of roleplay powers - and they should be handled in a different manner than everything else. Having one system, called "Feats" that is the only way to differentiate your character is terrible.

Non-combat stuff should have its own system. That would emphasize its importance to the game. There could be an entire module on roleplay-related backgrounds you could take.

Derren said:

You can say that D&D was quite successful in the past with its combat focus, but in my opinion the the 3E/4E split showed, among other things, that there are a lot of people who care about the "other" stuff besides combat and they were among them who were driven away by 4E.

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I think you still have a misunderstanding. Or you're painting all 4e players with a broad brush. Maybe both.

The 4e players that I know and converse with - real people, as opposed to strawmen or caricatures - care about that "other stuff" a great deal. I just don't like out-of-combat excellence in things like blacksmithing & baking to come at the expense of skills that matter more frequently during adventuring. Ideally, too, all characters should be able to contribute well during any part of an adventure - be it conversation with NPCs, exploration, investigation, or combat.

-O

GreyICE said:

@Derran: when something appears clear only to you, it's probably not actually "quite clear" and you may be misreading the OP.

I actually agree that there should be lots of roleplay powers - and they should be handled in a different manner than everything else. Having one system, called "Feats" that is the only way to differentiate your character is terrible.

Non-combat stuff should have its own system. That would emphasize its importance to the game. There could be an entire module on roleplay-related backgrounds you could take.

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Actually it only brings about it's non-specialness. It brings out the "this is the combat pool and this is the everything-else-pool" situation whihc is very undesirable.

NWPS had combat and non combat options, the same for 3.x feats and to some extent 4e feats, but non-combat feats ended up being extremely poor in comparison to the mandatory feats, this got compounded since the reduced skill list forced a lot of things that were gothen through skillpoints to become obtainable by feats. Getting an extra language was relatively easy in 3.x, you just sacrificed a trivial amount of skill points, +1 to one skill on a single level might or may not be too much, however when the same language has to compete with a mandatory +1 to hit or to a defense which happens only every two levels, things obviously get nasty.

But we don't need a combat silo and a non comabt silo for this to work, we need two pools indeed but they have to be a "big abilities pool that you can only draw at certain levels" and a "smaller abilities pool that you can draw every level/more often" and then have the different abilities clasiffied on the appropriate pool and given a fair cost. Arbitrariously labeling the big ones as "comabt only" and the small ones as "everything else but not quite", only brings needless rigidness and makes certain character concepts impossible or unviable.

It is very important they keep the "math feats" to a minimum or even get rid of them altogether, no feat should give a boring "bonus to hit" or anything similar, those things get out of hand pretty fast and are extremely boring, worse they start feeling compulsory and is then when people will begin insisting you cripple your character by not taking them and start labeling you a scrub that cares not about the group on the slightest if you chose not to take them.

GreyICE said:

Non-combat stuff should have its own system. That would emphasize its importance to the game. There could be an entire module on roleplay-related backgrounds you could take.

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No, having a separate system for combat and "everything not combat" only emphasizes that combat is special and more important than everything else as you have to take it no matter what you play.

Derren said:

No, having a separate system for combat and "everything not combat" only emphasizes that combat is special and more important than everything else as you have to take it no matter what you play.

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I don't understand why making a separate background system for non-combat elements that encourages every character to show off their own unique background and expand on their history would DISCOURAGE roleplaying here.

But maybe I'm not understanding the goal. Is the goal to encourage roleplaying or allow certain people to make characters that are worthless 75% of the time and overpowered 25% of the time through min-maxing and system mastery?

If it's to encourage roleplay, a separate background system does a lot more to encourage that than some tacked-on feats. If it's to give people another avenue to min-max (granted, min-max for out-of-combat situations, but min-maxing is min-maxing) then, well... I'm not honestly sure it's a goal D&D should head for. Diplomomancers were stupid.