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Have we failed to discourage min-maxing?
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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6854912" data-attributes="member: 996"><p>5e's ruling-over-rules and bounded accuracy signatures do encourage resolving things with RP rather than mechanics, which a lot of folks love, I know, but which does leave open the option to sacrifice anything you can snow your way through without reference to mechanics (mostly meaning bypassing checks), so as to maxx the few things you can't (mostly combat and casting).</p><p></p><p>Maybe I wasn't doin' it by the book, but:</p><p>Just go around the table, everybody makes a check. </p><p>Statistically it beat the unholy heck out of the original <em>n</em> successes before <em>n</em>/2 failures, which actually got easier the greater the value of <em>n</em>, the opposite of what 'greater complexity' was supposed to represent. </p><p>I sometimes feared the opposite, that they could be a little too structured & prescriptive. I was always sure to point out that the player could make a case for any skill if he had an idea that didn't fit the structure.</p><p>This is one where I thought the 3-failure approach worked really well. One failure, add a complication or resource loss. Two, add another or pile on the first. Three, things go badly wrong, resources/opportunities are lost and "<em>fail forward</em>."</p><p></p><p>Combat emphasis may be in part a problem with the adventures, but it's also an issue with the system. Like most RPGs, D&D still simply has a lot of rules devoted to combat, making it seem important. They're also less DM-dependent rules, which means that you expect to have more consistent impact if you emphasize combat than if you emphasize checks (which the DM may essentially gloss over by narrating success with no roll, or undermine by narrating failure with no roll). There's just not a lot of 'meat' to the process of resolving something via checks, while there is some with combat. Bounded accuracy also makes checks less character-defining. You have to be careful to limit the opportunity to make a check to the player who declares the action or asks the question first, otherwise the 'pile on' effect will make checks more of a random event than a chance for the guy who's actually good at the particular check to shine.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6854912, member: 996"] 5e's ruling-over-rules and bounded accuracy signatures do encourage resolving things with RP rather than mechanics, which a lot of folks love, I know, but which does leave open the option to sacrifice anything you can snow your way through without reference to mechanics (mostly meaning bypassing checks), so as to maxx the few things you can't (mostly combat and casting). Maybe I wasn't doin' it by the book, but: Just go around the table, everybody makes a check. Statistically it beat the unholy heck out of the original [i]n[/i] successes before [i]n[/i]/2 failures, which actually got easier the greater the value of [i]n[/i], the opposite of what 'greater complexity' was supposed to represent. I sometimes feared the opposite, that they could be a little too structured & prescriptive. I was always sure to point out that the player could make a case for any skill if he had an idea that didn't fit the structure. This is one where I thought the 3-failure approach worked really well. One failure, add a complication or resource loss. Two, add another or pile on the first. Three, things go badly wrong, resources/opportunities are lost and "[i]fail forward[/i]." Combat emphasis may be in part a problem with the adventures, but it's also an issue with the system. Like most RPGs, D&D still simply has a lot of rules devoted to combat, making it seem important. They're also less DM-dependent rules, which means that you expect to have more consistent impact if you emphasize combat than if you emphasize checks (which the DM may essentially gloss over by narrating success with no roll, or undermine by narrating failure with no roll). There's just not a lot of 'meat' to the process of resolving something via checks, while there is some with combat. Bounded accuracy also makes checks less character-defining. You have to be careful to limit the opportunity to make a check to the player who declares the action or asks the question first, otherwise the 'pile on' effect will make checks more of a random event than a chance for the guy who's actually good at the particular check to shine. [/QUOTE]
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