D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

[Micah Sweet]

Sigh.

So what?

The purpose of the feature is that you have an in with the criminal underbelly. You have that in via your contact, and you can get in touch with your contact wherever you are via your messengers. The messengers themselves are not actually important to the feature. Your contact is what's important, and even then, only so they can liaise with the criminal network.

You need someone to help you break into a bank? Your contact knows a guy.
You need some paperwork forged? Your contact knows a guy.
You need to buy or sell some illegal magic items or spell components? Your contact knows a guy.
You need to know the passwords the guards use? Your contact knows a guy.
You need to get in touch with the local underground rebellion? Your contact knows a guy.

This is the feature's purpose. To get you access (for a cost) to abilities you and your party lack. The messengers only exist so you can get in touch with your contact because instant forms of communication like cell phones are fairly rare in D&Dlandia. If you happened to get your hands on a pair of sending stones and you give one to your contact, you wouldn't even need a messenger.


That was one possibility I gave. One.

The Dark Powers may just want to set you up with a contact and then sit back and watch without interfering. The Dark Powers may not even be involved: It could actually be one of the zillions of monsters in Ravenloft who can overhear your conversations or read your mind and want to lure you in so they can eat your face, or it could be legitimate criminals (who overheard your conversation or read your mind) and who want a new person the Darklord's minions don't know. It could even be your actual contact, or a copy of your actual contact (the Dark Powers do that as well) who got brought into Ravenloft at some earlier point in time!

There are dozens of possibilities here. Stop getting hung up on the part of the feature that is not actually important and focus on the part that is: getting in touch with a network of criminals.

It looks to me that you consider the messengers unimportant because you are looking at it from a narrative point of view, not from an in-universe "how does this work?" point of view. That's fine, but its a preference, not an objective rule, and others have a different perspective.

 

[Faolyn]

Did they take them there because it thwarted their ability? Or did the characters happen to do things that would get them taken to Strahd?

Two of CoS's hooks are "Someone asks the PCs for help. If they agree, the Mists come and they get whisked off to Barovia."

One of the hooks is "The PCs hear about werewolf attacks and go to investigate. Then the Mists come and they get whisked off to Barovia."

The last hook is "The PCs are walking down the road. Then the Mists come and they get whisked off to Barovia."

When I ran the adventure, I did what I usually do: have the PCs be natives to Ravenloft, because I hate the "weekend in hell" concept.

Anyway, the actual point is that some people were saying that it's not their job as a DM to tell the players that their choice was going to be nerfed (I would consider that to be a common courtesy), and you'll note that in none of these hooks are the players actually informed that they're going to another plane of existence that they can't willingly leave.

(Do most people usually choose backgrounds because they will explicitly be useful, or because they sound like they will make an interesting character?)

I think most people choose their backgrounds with the idea that their background feature won't suddenly become worthless because of DM fiat.

If someone is a fire mage, what effort should the DM do if there are some places on the map that currently have fire giants or a red dragon?

Bad analogy. It's more like if the PC is a pyromancer and the DM deliberately gives every single enemy resistance or immunity to fire damage just because. Bandits, ogres, frost giants, white dragons--all resistant or immune to fire. Oh, and they didn't bother to tell the player ahead of time. Why? Because the DM has decided that it makes sense.

See, the difference is this: If I'm playing a pyromancer, I do so knowing that sometimes my chosen damage type is not going to be useful, or it may even be a serious hindrance. But I also expect that sometimes it will be useful and sometimes will be super effective. That's exactly what the game should do. I shouldn't have to worry that the DM may arbitrarily decide to shut my ability down.

 

[Lanefan]

Your hypothetical player thinks it's plausible and fits with the campaign setting as constructed, otherwise they wouldn't have used the ability, right?

More likely my hypothetical player tried using the ability hoping to gain some sort of in-character advantage, without much if any regard for plausibility or how it might fit with the setting as constructed/presented.

Which in itself is fine, provided that the DM is allowed to rule that it won't succeed based on those plausibility and-or does-it-fit issues. Problem is, when read strictly as written the rules don't give the DM this authority.

 

[Faolyn]

It looks to me that you consider the messengers unimportant because you are looking at it from a narrative point of view, not from an in-universe "how does this work?" point of view. That's fine, but its a preference, not an objective rule, and others have a different perspective.

But as I showed in my previous post, there was also a very simple way to get new messengers. And that while the background assumed that you started the game knowing the messengers, there was nothing that said you couldn't get new ones.

 

[Cadence]

...
I think most people choose their backgrounds with the idea that their background feature won't suddenly become worthless because of DM fiat.
...
See, the difference is this: If I'm playing a pyromancer, I do so knowing that sometimes my chosen damage type is not going to be useful, or it may even be a serious hindrance. But I also expect that sometimes it will be useful and sometimes will be super effective. That's exactly what the game should do. I shouldn't have to worry that the DM may arbitrarily decide to shut my ability down.

I would hope most DMs would do things like grant advantage or a bonus on rolls for things a sailor would usually be good at even if the background doesn't say it. On the other hand I would hope most player's wouldn't be like: D&D (2024) - Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

 

[Micah Sweet]

But as I showed in my previous post, there was also a very simple way to get new messengers. And that while the background assumed that you started the game knowing the messengers, there was nothing that said you couldn't get new ones.

You're still assuming that mechanical success of the rules widget is more important than the effect in-universe the widget is supposed to represent, by suggesting that the setting be modified to accommodate the rule. Not everyone agrees with that philosophy.

 

[Lanefan]

These are rules for playing an actual game. If a problem doesn't arise in actual gameplay, then a problem doesn't exist.

With the bolded, I disagree.

Many a problem can be seen coming ahead of time and averted before it actually arises in play via pre-emptive rulings and-or changes to the RAW. Here, for example, having been made aware of this headache with some background features I'd pre-emptively change the word "will" to "could" or "might" in those features were I ever to adopt them, in order to nip this problem in the bud.

Doesn't mean the problem never existed, though.

 

[Lanefan]

It's even worse than that. It's nearly useless to use as a mimic detector. The area is one creature. One! When the party walks into a room that has 3 chests, 10 barrels, a desk, and a chair, the cleric would have to cast that spell 15 times in order figure out if there are mimic(s) present. Multiply that by the several rooms the party goes into before resting and the fact that nearly no rooms will have a mimic, and you can see just how monumentally useless the spell is for that purpose.

The spell is also target creature, so you have to see the creature or know exactly where it is, which eliminates it as a pregnancy detector.

It's a UA spell, which by default means it needs rewriting to either boost it or nerf it.

In this case it needed boosting, so we made it able to check one (potential) life-form per round and that, where something is already known to be alive it could be ignored in favour of what's actually being checked (otherwise it would be useless in, say, a forest when surrounded by living trees and plants). We also allowed it to target plants and other non-creature life-forms, suspecting their omission to in fact have been a Gygax error in the first place.

 

[mamba]

Sigh.

So what?

so what? this is describing the essence of the feature, how it works.... the feature is not 'you can in some unknown, miraculous way get messages to your contact', you give them to the messengers you know

The purpose of the feature is that you have an in with the criminal underbelly. You have that in via your contact, and you can get in touch with your contact wherever you are via your messengers.

no, because your messengers are not everywhere, the criminal network is not world spanning

The messengers themselves are not actually important to the feature. Your contact is what's important

that is like saying the mailman is not important, the only one that matters is the recipient... no mailman, no delivery

You need someone to help you break into a bank? Your contact knows a guy.
You need some paperwork forged? Your contact knows a guy.
You need to buy or sell some illegal magic items or spell components? Your contact knows a guy.
You need to know the passwords the guards use? Your contact knows a guy.
You need to get in touch with the local underground rebellion? Your contact knows a guy.

or not, none of this is spelled out by the feature, your contact is not all knowing and can help everywhere and with everything

This is the feature's purpose.

sure, I am questioning that it works everywhere and all the time

To get you access (for a cost) to abilities you and your party lack. The messengers only exist so you can get in touch with your contact because instant forms of communication like cell phones are fairly rare in D&Dlandia.

that is another thing, it is also not instantaneous, it might take months, even years, to hear back...

The Dark Powers may just want to set you up with a contact and then sit back and watch without interfering.

maybe, but that still is not my contact, so not a use of this feature

You seem to not care about how anything works, just as long as you can always get a message to your contact (apparently you do not even care if it is your contact, just as long as someone gets the message...). It's basically all inexplicable and illogical but still somehow reliable despite this. I am not interested in that.

 

[Lanefan]

Ah, so therefore, you're assuming that's going to be the case in every game everywhere?


Which again is not what the feature says. It doesn't even say that you have to know someone on that ship! It says "might."

It say "you can", earlier, when talking about getting free passage on a ship. The "might" is just a qualifier for how the "you can" could appear in the fiction.

The real debate is whether "you can" is permissive (equating to "you might") or absolute (equating to "you can always"). I, and I suspect numerous others, read it as the latter.