Monte Cooks First Legends and Lore

[BryonD]

But, when the mechanics basically tell anyone who isn't highly skilled in X to sit down and watch, that's bad design.

In the games the way I run them the mechanics never tell anyone to do anything.

If a stereotypical high level rogue and a stereotypical high level paladin come to a tall smooth wall and the rogue begins to climb the wall and so the mechanics in turn say that the paladin should also be able to climb the wall then that is simply "wrong". I'll even go so far as to say it is objectively wrong. Yes, you can say that you LOVE it that way therefore it is purely subjective and thus any other preference is equally subjective.

But if you were to forget about games a describe to 10,000 completely random people character concept of the paladin and the rogue and then ask them if both, either, or neither should be able to climb tall smooth walls you will get a overwhelming consensus that the rogue climbing is right and the paladin climbing is wrong. And mechanics which are designed to contradict these fundamental ideas are bad design.

Now, if your DM sucks he may very well say to the paladin, you can't climb the wall so go sit down and watch. But that isn't the mechanics speaking. That's the DM.

In my games characters are constantly running into situations in which they are not highly skilled and some other character is. And neither I nor the mechanics would be swayed by sulking. And there is no issue with sitting down and watching. Everyone is always involved, even if only one character is proactive for a few minutes.

 

[BryonD]

If this is a big problem, 4e isn't much of a fix. In our group, we've got 10th level characters with as many as 16 point differences in skills because of differences in stats, being trained, and a host of other little modifiers all over the place.

I find this very encouraging to read.
This has long been on my list of 4E complaints and people have tried in the past to show me their parties to prove I was wrong. And yet when I really looked even the weakest characters had 50% chances to do "normal" challenge tasks and reasonable chances for "very difficult" tasks.

If your example is now more typical, then perhaps some of the tweaks I've been hearing about are making real progress.

 

[BryonD]

Where my problem comes is that, at a certain point in the game, EVERY wall is too hard to scale. EVERY trap can only be disarmed by the master thief (and in that particular example, that comes up at 1st level since only the rogue can find the trap in the first place).

Reading again....

This probably shines some light on this issue.

If the "EVERY"s are so true that they need capitalization then something is wrong. But, again, that isn't the mechanics saying sit down and it comes back to bad DMing again. If the DM designed it that way, shame on him. If the DM is running a module with this and doesn't see the silliness of it and change it, then shame on both the module author and the DM.

Sure, all the walls "in that compound over there" may be consistent. And, sure, the paladin in full plate may very well have trouble climbing ANY wall. But if the situation is just absolutes, then that is bad APPLICATION of the mechanics. Which doesn't really tell us if the mechanics are awesome or crap.

 

[Bedrockgames]

As it currently stands, the 4e skill system really encourages that behavior, though. If you're not optimized, you're better off not contributing, since you can just not do anything and not rack up a failure.

I am not very familiar with 4E these days, as I don't play. So my reference point is older editions of D&D and other games. I can see how the skill challenge set up in 4E makes things a bit more tricky. But back in 3E I never had any trouble with characters feeling left out because they weren't good at a particular skill.

Well, if he has invested in Intimidate, he is presumably not un-optimized. He WOULD contribute in that situation, and as equally as a bard or rogue might.

Except I am not talking about the skill intimidate in this case (which I believe is chr based) I am talking about using his combat skills to rough people up until they talk.

I was taking as a starting point your hypothetical stupid barbarian who would sit out an investigation because he had nothing to contribute.

I think there would be moments he wouldn't contribute. Over the course of the whole investigation every character can contribute something. But there will always be one moment or two where someone else shines (the thief disarming the trap, the wizard casting speak with dead, etc). If someone has to sit out a whole adventure that is bad, if someone doesn't shine for a moment, there is nothing wrong at all.

If the hypothetical stupid barbarian DOES have something to contribute, he won't be sitting it out. Everyone would contribute, perhaps even equally.

My point is every character will have something to contribute to the adventure. There are going to be moments when they don't add anything, but over the course of the night they should get some contribution. And even when you aren't doing somehting your character is still there and can still participate meaningfully by giving the more skilled character assistance or advice.

Alternately, you could let the barbarian suck, and make his suck-age fun for the entire party to try and overcome, because sometimes, it's fun to suck at something, in order to rock the house at something else. Perhaps in combat, it is the rogue or the bard who sucks. (This type of "balance" would be similar to early-edition balance, with some of the attendant problems: e.g.: A social-heavy campaign rules out the barbarian warrior as an effective character type. That might be OK, though. )

Sure. If the fighter has no social skills, he will suck at diplomacy. That is how it should be. I run a lot of investigation games, which are perfect because over the course of the whole thing everyone usually has something of value to add, but yes there will be moments when the master theif is the guy sneaking into the room or the fighter is the guy who beats up the suspect.

 

[avin]

I've been called arrogant for saying this but...

I've never experienced this. Or, at least, not in a very long time.

It is the DM's job to cater to everyone's fun.

I think it has a lot to do with a good group. When I run a game my major concern is that everybody has fun... but some players I know are only happy when they do more damage than others.

In general I like Monte's approach. In any system I run I like rewarding "poking" players, but also can't let a plot die because of a bad roll.

Lots of good discussion about collaborative playing, hope 4E collaborative combat style remains on 5E.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But back in 3E I never had any trouble with characters feeling left out because they weren't good at a particular skill.

There could be a lot of reasons for that, only one of which is "It's not important for everyone to contribute."

Except I am not talking about the skill intimidate in this case (which I believe is chr based) I am talking about using his combat skills to rough people up until they talk.

Okay. Then he can contribute, likely just as well as the bard or the rogue.

So far, it's sounding like Everyone Contributes To Success, which is something that others in the thread certainly aren't fans of.

Over the course of the whole investigation every character can contribute something. But there will always be one moment or two where someone else shines (the thief disarming the trap, the wizard casting speak with dead, etc). If someone has to sit out a whole adventure that is bad, if someone doesn't shine for a moment, there is nothing wrong at all.

I agree. One quick skill check is one thing. A big hour-long climactic challenge is another. If the adventure for the night is "find the murderer," and the big dumb barbarian can't (or doesn't want to, or isn't helped to) contribute, that's a problem. If finding the murderer is a quick skill check, then any one person can do it, and you don't need everyone to contribute.

Thing is, sometimes you want the first one, sometimes you want the second one, and the rules design of D&D shouldn't be telling you it has to be one way or the other. Skill rules that were a binary "you can either do this, or you can't" don't allow for much out of the box nuance until you force a DM to intervene.

If the fighter has no social skills, he will suck at diplomacy. That is how it should be. I run a lot of investigation games, which are perfect because over the course of the whole thing everyone usually has something of value to add, but yes there will be moments when the master theif is the guy sneaking into the room or the fighter is the guy who beats up the suspect.

Right, but if you sit down to "play D&D," it is entirely possible that you sit down to a social adventure with a character fighter with no social skills. That's a problem. We should either give fighters (and everyone else) "for free" social skills, or design adventures that use a variety of fast challenges, so that if the fighter needs to sit out, it's only for a quick d20 roll or two, not the entire night.

To me, though, it's not exactly a good move to be able to make a character that then needs to sit out an adventure or "think outside the box" constantly in order to make some small contribution.

 

[Hussar]

Ipso facto? Is this another problem with skill systems we should be discussing alongside these others? Are some systems designed such that it is not worth bothering to dabble if one doesn't optimize? Can a system function where dabbling works without having an optimizer so outshine the dabbler that the point is moot? Is the problem in having divorced the mechnicals effects from roleplaying?

Again, I'm going to go back to what I said earlier. If the range from top to bottom is not so large, then dabbling works while still allowing the focused guy to do his thing too.

If there's a 16 point spread between two characters, then that system has failed to allow the bottom end guy to have any really meaningful contribution.

Which kinda goes back to Monte's article. If there are only 4 or 5 "classes" of expertise for any given skill, then the range becomes much easier to deal with. Sure, the bottom end guy can't do a Level 5 check, but, he can probably do a level 4 one on a good day with a lot of luck.

This is the way Savage World's sets up its skill checks really. The more expertise you have in a given area, the bigger the die you roll - d4, d6, d8 and d10 (IIRC, or does it cap at d12 with plusses? Been a while since I looked at the rules). But a success is always a 4 or better.

I'm not sure how you could port that over to d20, but, it is a pretty solid way of doing skills without forcing anyone to sit in the corner for extended periods of time.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If there's a 16 point spread between two characters, then that system has failed to allow the bottom end guy to have any really meaningful contribution.

I think this ties into my apparent mantra this month, myself: D&D is functionally a 10-level game. The difference between "lowest level" and "highest level" is about 10 points. Which can mean a d20 is a great equalizer.

 

[Mark CMG]

I think this ties into my apparent mantra this month, myself: D&D is functionally a 10-level game. The difference between "lowest level" and "highest level" is about 10 points. Which can mean a d20 is a great equalizer.

Indeed. I felt the stretching of 3.XE to 20 levels and 30 levels for 4E created problems since the d20 was the resolution paradigm. For Griffins & Grottos (to be released later this month), I've gone back to a 10 level system to avoid that problem and the knock on problem of having to invent lots of "cool" level-by-level features to justify the stretching.