D&D 5E Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[pemerton]

I'd like to think so, but I've got the impression from a few that this is exactly what their goal is: that the DC of the same cliff or the same lock change such that it provides x-degree of challenge to the characters trying to climb/pick it, where x is roughly the same no matter what level the characters are.

Then you need to go back and re-read.

 

[pemerton]

Forty years of gaming and I've never once had Thieves Cant come up in a game. Same with Druidic.

Languages? Sure. I totally get that. But only one specific class speaks thieves cant and one speaks Druidic. How often do you meet either that don’t speak common? Or some other language someone in the group speaks?

I don't remember if Druid's Tongue ever came up, back in our AD&D days, but Thieves' Cant did. Mostly in thief-oriented campaigns set in cities.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You know, I don't get it...

You can get all sorts of 3pp rule sets from Level Up to Tales of the Valiant. You can go on DMs Guild and get high quality fan conversions of almost every setting but Dark Sun and Greyhawk. You can do it without giving more than the 50% DMs Guild licensing fee to WotC. They literally have given more parts of the D&D game away to the fans than ever before.

You should be happy. Ecstatic even. Everything you want is right there. But you never are, or at least you don't sound happy. Why?

Oh, I am happy, mostly. I just don't like how much everyone looks to WotC like they can't make a design decision without checking with them first, and we certainly can't talk about D&D (which is what I'd actually like to do) without assuming WotC 5e as the core game for everything. I swear, I really wish I could not care about WotC. But the community won't let me.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It at least inserts some uncertainty into the equation, and encourages seeing if you can improve that situationally.

I mean, lets get real: as I've noted before, most parts of D&D (and most games far as that goes) at best encourage engagement in the mechanics of combat; everything else gets roll-and-you're-done (when it doesn't push off things to entirely player level decisions, i.e. frequently "Do I know how to play the GM?").

But when you don't even have to bother to roll (either because its basically certain or basically impossible), that's not exactly going to increase engagement.

Then make the other parts of the game more interesting.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

They are talking about a CR-equivalent for non-combat challenges.

You mean the broken and useless CR? I never use that, apart from as a rough estimate of "is Monster A tougher than monster B?"

Players encounter whatever makes sense to be in that location. I really can't understand why anyone would want to have some kind of fixed number and difficulty for encounters. It certainly wasn't part of the D&D I grew up with (1st edition).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Then make the other parts of the game more interesting.

Indeed. How about asking players to use their brains to solve a problem? E.g. they need to figure out what an actually NPC wants, by asking the right questions.

 

[pemerton]

I really can't understand why anyone would want to have some kind of fixed number and difficulty for encounters. It certainly wasn't part of the D&D I grew up with (1st edition).

AD&D has monster-by-level tables, with rules for adjusting encounter difficulties depending on the level of the dungeon. 3E D&D didn't invent the notion of measuring the difficulty of encounters!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Thieves Cant: The written form is quite important. It's supposed to include the signs and symbols thieves use to mark targets: "likely prospect" "has guard dog" etc. In 5e if you are going to use it, it should go with the Criminal background, rather than a class. It did crop up in the original Baldur's Gate CRPG.

Solasta didn't have Thieves Cant, but it did have "Codes and Cyphers" which went with the Spy background. It's the sort of thing the DM can add if they think they might want to use it. I'm not sure that I've ever seen druidic used, but historically, druids had no written language, and modern druids make a big deal of the oral record.

Lock Picking: This was added to D&D purely to give groups a reason to include a thief. In a pseudo-medieval setting, locks should be rare and simple. They improve with technology, and most 21st century locks should be DC 20 or 25. Not something that can be tackled without tools and training. I try to keep locks to a minimum. They don't really add anything to the game (unless they only open for a specific key they the players need to obtain).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

AD&D has monster-by-level tables, with rules for adjusting encounter difficulties depending on the level of the dungeon. 3E D&D didn't invent the notion of measuring the difficulty of encounters!

Measuring the difficulty, sure, as in A is tougher than B. And CR works for that. But none of this "you must have X encounters with Y difficulty per day" nonsense.

 

[Micah Sweet]

AD&D has monster-by-level tables, with rules for adjusting encounter difficulties depending on the level of the dungeon. 3E D&D didn't invent the notion of measuring the difficulty of encounters!

But the community hadn't drunk the Kool-Aid on that being a necessity back then.