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

[Lanefan]

That's not a rules problem. It's a social contract problem. Players don't need rules to tell them they can break the social contract.

When dealing with anything in-game that characters do or can do, the rules are the social contract. If the rules say you can do it, you can do it; and if the rules aren't clear then you can (try to) do it until-unless someone or something tells you to stop.

What specific problems are you talking about here?

In the example of the backgrounds under discussion, the specific problem is that the wording of the rules allows those features to work in nonsensical situations. Thus, the wording of those rules needs to be changed by houserule such that those features work as intended: to wit, when it makes in-fiction sense that they would work.

A smart DM catches and fixes things like this before play begins. That said, the designers shouldn't be making a DM have to do this work in the first place.

 

[Hussar]

kinda, I do not use that much either for that reason… either the NPC seeks you out because they want something from you, or you know who to look for / have to find someone, and in the latter case you knocking on random doors will not get you there either

Yet I got taken to task for @Faolyn example upthread. Funny that.

 

[CreamCloud0]

But that's only because you choose to have the odds are poor. You can always choose that the odds are something else. After all, you have chosen to believe that it's logical that all fighters (and all barbarians, rangers, and paladins) are proficient in all weapons, even though that is extremely illogical.

You make a mistake here in saying that this is something we ‘choose’ to believe, it is not a choice so much as a conclusion based on what we consider logical assumptions and probabilities about our worlds, why doesn’t the sailor background PC just so happen run into some crew they knew just when they happened to need passage whilst in the feywild an entirely different plane of reality? I don’t know, why doesn’t the party just so happen to run across a rural town where everything from the tankards to the town hall is crafted out of emeralds and no magic was involved? The people just made their town this way, What you don’t think that’s probable? Don’t worry just choose to believe that it’s more likely, that’s what you’re telling us to do.

 

[mamba]

But that's only because you choose to have the odds are poor. You can always choose that the odds are something else.

not really, the odds are what the odds are, and sometimes these odds are based on more or less realistic expectation for how likely something would be in real life. Also, as I said, the background itself says it is local, so I just agree with that...

Almost nothing in D&D is actually logical.

yes, same as in Star Wars or much of fiction literature, so? Because I have to suspend disbelief sometime, nothing matters any more?

If your DM decided that your D&D fighter wasn't actually allowed to be proficient in swords because it's illogical that someone of your chosen social class would be able to afford one or been able to be trained in one

and if the fighter in your game declared 'I aim my bow at the dragon, the arrow strikes him in the eye and he dies from the wound' without rolling anything, would you just accept that?

 

[mamba]

Yet I got taken to task for @Faolyn example upthread. Funny that.

we already established that @Faolyn and I have different gaming styles

 

[Faolyn]

You make a mistake here in saying that this is something we ‘choose’ to believe, it is not a choice so much as a conclusion based on what we consider logical assumptions and probabilities about our worlds, why doesn’t the sailor background PC just so happen run into some crew they knew just when they happened to need passage whilst in the feywild an entirely different plane of reality?

Well, in the case of the sailor or the criminal, you don't just happen to run into anyone--you're actively seeking people out at a location where they would likely to be. The sailor background also doesn't say you have to actually know the ship or crew, just that you might have served on it or with them. Sure, it says you're calling in a favor, but that also can mean that you're offering a favor for a favor.

Also, while sure, you're quite unlikely to run into someone you actually know when in a different plane (unless planar travel is fairly common in your setting, or the plane is one--like Ravenloft or even the Feywild--where a magical copy of the boat or runner can be made by the powers that be), an instance where the PC is both on another plane and also wants to use their background feature is so vanishingly rare as to be dismissed. I'd go so far as to view that as a bad faith argument, because it's saying "because this feature shouldn't work across the planes, it also shouldn't work if you happen to be in a different place on your own world.

I don’t know, why doesn’t the party just so happen to run across a rural town where everything from the tankards to the town hall is crafted out of emeralds and no magic was involved? The people just made their town this way, What you don’t think that’s probable? Don’t worry just choose to believe that it’s more likely, that’s what you’re telling us to do.

First off, there's a huge difference between "NPCs aren't required to stay at home all the time and sometimes have reasons why they would be traveling; therefore, there is a chance that the PCs and NPC may run across each other" and "here is a small village where everything is made of jewels."

But anyway, isn't that what, like, 75% of D&D adventures are like? The players just happen to be in the location where either some weird event is going on, or someone approaches them, asking them to help deal with some weird event? One of the first Dungeon Magazine adventures I ran involved the players just happening across a tiny village that, in ages past, had petrified a powerful demon in a circle of standing stones.

<grabs Curse of Strahd>

Three of the four hooks are the PCs just happening to be in a location where they meet someone who lures them into Barovia. The fourth hook is a railroad.

<Looks up other adventures>

Descent Into Avernus. Without reading the entire adventure, it looks as though the NPCs just happen to be drafted into protecting the town that happens to get yanked into Hell.

Wild Beyond the Witchlight. One of the hooks is that all of the PCs just happened to have sneaked into a circus without paying when they were a child.

Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. It looks like the hooks are all either the PCs all decided to go somewhere for a festival, or someone approaches the PCs looking for help, or the PCs happen to know someone who need help.

All of these are quite the coincidence, yes? It's almost like the typical D&D party is always in a place where there's adventure to be had.

So if I were in a party where we came across a town where everything was made of emerald, I'd go "plot hook!" and look to see if the ruler was a friendly scarecrow.

 

[CleverNickName]

I'm not monitoring it very closely, but I noticed a spike in the "Yep" votes when the Creative Commons thing was announced. How many folks changed their vote because of it?

 

[Faolyn]

and if the fighter in your game declared 'I aim my bow at the dragon, the arrow strikes him in the eye and he dies from the wound' without rolling anything, would you just accept that?

There's a ginormous difference between those two things and you know it.

 

[mamba]

There's a ginormous difference between those two things and you know it.

yes, but between it and the criminal always finding a messenger, there is very little… and that is where we started before you set out to show that nothing in D&D is logical, so why care at all about that

 

[Faolyn]

yes, but between it and the criminal always finding a messenger, there is very little… and that is where we started before you set out to show that nothing in D&D is logical, so why care at all about that

Sigh...

Look, I asked the question, which you very deliberately chose to not answer. Why, out of all the illogical things in D&D, do you care so much about the perceived lack of logic in a couple of backgrounds?

Which is why I brought up fighters and weapons. It's illogical that every single fighter, ranger, paladin, and barbarian should all happen to know how to use every single weapon with equal proficiency, regardless of the characters' wealth, training, access to materials, and any differences in the societies where they grew up.

By the rules, you could have a character have been a penniless urchin who never wielded anything bigger than a knife and who came from a society where only the military was allowed to wield swords and yet not only know how to use a broadsword, but probably be better at using it than a soldier (soldiers in the MM only get a +3 attack bonus). And you would allow it without blinking an eye.

Yet the idea that an NPC might travel and end up in the same place as a PC is just too far, even though it might only happen once in a multi-year campaign, if that much?