UngeheuerLich
Legend
Not what I said, not what I meant. Just what you think.
That is your take from what I wrote. I am sorry that your feelings were hurt by a bad DM.
D&D 5E The Magical Martial
Jefe Bergenstein
Legend
That's my take based on the statements of old school DM's talking about "skilled play" and their preference for players not knowing how the rules work.
Look, there are broadly two camps/minds on this topic and never the twain shall meet.
-The 'game world' is a real life analog with certain magical elements sprinkled on top, but virtually all other normal considerations are still in place.
-The game world is not a real life analog and is broadly fantastical many considerations are no longer relevant or meaningful.
There's no reason to argue because these camps have fundamentally different core premises.
-The 'game world' is a real life analog with certain magical elements sprinkled on top, but virtually all other normal considerations are still in place.
-The game world is not a real life analog and is broadly fantastical many considerations are no longer relevant or meaningful.
There's no reason to argue because these camps have fundamentally different core premises.
I think that a more charitable understanding of OSR style "skilled play" would be describing how you go about searching for a trap or secret rather than walking into a room and saying, "I roll perception - 17 - what do I see?"
FrogReaver
As long as i get to be the frog
Because there's no frame of reference for spells in our real world.
Because certain effects need more mechanical definition but not all do. How much damage a martial character does with his longsword as an example.
He already has that. He can shape the whole world, including having places/objectspeople not be influencable by spells.
No. It's a spell. I wouldn't be opposed to it upscaling by being upcastable in a higher level slot though.
CreamCloud0
One day, I hope to actually play DnD.
the friction arises from the fact we are both attempting to play these premises in the same system, and we can't really have the system do it both ways.
Right but unless you're making your argument to the dev team at WotC my point stands.
UngeheuerLich
Legend
Which I reject and did not speak of. So why respond that to me?
Jefe Bergenstein
Legend
I'm not a trained thief, the DM isn't a trained engineer, and what seems obvious to the DM is not obvious to the player. I have a 45+ hour a week job and other stuff to do, including the fun part of D&D which isn't poking inanimate things with sticks. I don't have time to pixel fart around to find a secret door or a trap, which is probably just some lame attrition trap like a crossbow or poison needle anyways. "I roll" is the player cutting out the middleman of "I check under the table. I check behind the tapestry" or a checklist of standard door opening procedure.
Regardless, we have 90 pages of concrete rules for spells. Athletics proficiency doesn't even let you run faster beyond "mAeK iT Up!" 5E tries to have it both ways, to the detriment of the game as a whole. More guidelines on skills and their DC's and fantastical things for skill expertise would help set expectations for players and guidelines for DM's. I say this as someone who almost exclusively DM's.
Jefe Bergenstein
Legend
Then my apologies, it wasn't necessarily intended to be directed at you, more towards the point of "we don't need clear rules". Skill checks are a great weakness for D&D, one of the reason it appears to be almost entirely combat focused, and a limiting factor on fulfilling the non-caster fantasy. Expanding expertise to make it explicitly beyond human capability would help.
