Old School : Tucker's Kobolds and Trained Jellies

[Scribble]

It seems from the hints of the stat driven skill system that this is the aesthetic they are going for in 5e. I hope so, but I was curious to see what the general opinion was.

My general opinion is start small, and build from there.

My HOPE is that basic bottom level 5e sort of resembles Basic or OD&D. Characters can be built in a manner of minutes and improving an entire session will be simple for the DM, with a very bare minimum amount of RAW.

I DON'T want the game to start off assuming most players want X rule in their game, and then giving options to change it. (That's where I think 3e and 4e went wrong.)

I want them to get down to the very core level of the rules then let US decide what to layer on top.

 

[TheFindus]

So one of the purposes of random (or at least story-unrelated) encounters is to allow me to feel that the world is not revolving around us PCs, that there are other beings out there pursuing their own agendas who couldn't care less about my quest for the Triangle of Zinfab. Yes, there is irony here, ces't la vie.

You can have that feeling, as you admit, without random tables. But this really is a big difference between out styles of play then. Because even though the Triangle of Zinfab is not interesting for the band of worg riders, there needs to be story about the worg riders. And maybe you can come up with that on the spot as you roll a 82 on the random table. But I have made the experience with the players that I play with that they are more satisfied if they, before or even after the encounter, discover exactly that worg-rider-story. So the worg riders may be plot-unrelated, I grant you that, but there is always a story.
But this then is something where the two of us have different tastes and I am glad I learned something new about how to play the game. And I am really sincere about this. This is why I come to these boards.

 

[SKyOdin]

But it is utterly clear that 4e has, as an explicit and driving goal, a playstyle where PCs are always challenged, but in a sufficiently modest way that they can solve any given problem out of pocket. They are not expected to need to run, they are not expected to get a TPK because they hit a bad patch on the wandering monster table, they are not expected to find a wall they cannot climb. Nor do they find one that would be too easy.

A good GM will vary things up a bit, and 4e doesn't say they can't. But I think the expectation that PCs should be able to cope with any challange within the existing resources on their character sheets is a hinderance to creative or unusual use of resources or abilities to deal with problems in unexpected ways. Even the (excellent) section on terrain makes it clear that tactical use of terrain features is something that should be offered to the PCs rather than merely permitted.

I think you are overthinking things and making far too many assumptions about how people play 4E. Right now, I am running a one-on-one 4E campaign, and my singular level-1 player just picked a fight with a nine lizardmen, all of whom were significantly higher in level than him. He did so by getting ahead of them and dropping a rock-slide on their heads. It wasn't nearly enough to kill them, but it was enough to confuse and distract them long enough for my player to rescue some prisoners. He then managed to lose the lizardmen during a breakneck pursuit through the forest. It doesn't hurt that the dice gods seem to favor those who make bold and audacious plans.

I had not intended my player to take on this kind of group, but he chose to take the risk anyway, and used out of the box thinking, tactics, preparation, and terrain to get an advantage. I had to make a lot of on-the-fly rulings, but I think the 4E rules helped me a lot here. 4E's rules are very robust, and can be adapted to handle all sorts of situations. It is also the case that it is more fair to the players to throw really tough challenges at them where they might have to run away. In my example, one of the Lizardmen did get the opportunity during the chaos to get an attack in on my player's PC. If this was 3E, that PC would be dead right now. But 4E PCs are a bit more resilient from the get go, so they actually have the opportunity to get away if a plan goes south. I think it actually encourages players to attempt using crazy plans against crazy powerful opponents, since they actually do have the means to survive a brief engagement.

In any case, I think there is a world of difference between how a D&D book reads to someone, and how a game actually unfolds in play. You can't make arguments about how a game plays in practice based solely on how it sounds on paper. You at the very least need anecdotal evidence. And in my experience, D&D players who enjoy crazy plans are going to attempt them, regardless of what edition they are playing.

 

[pemerton]

That’s true, but I wasn’t thinking on that. Expanding on what I wanted to say in the first quote, the problems so to speak are first that many rules have little fluff providing context. In the example mentioned in the OP, I’d have no qualms declaring that the origami collection is burned since the mage’s spell is an area effect that doesn’t discriminate between friend and foe and also the brief description provided evokes a deflagration of sorts.

However, say I use a monster with an at will power named “entrancing call” that’s a large close burst that deals psychic damage and pulls the victim. The brief entry on the creature’s fluff mentions that this thing lives near the shore and uses his powers to pull victims overboard, drowning them. Right off the bat, the player doesn’t have much to latch on: while the effects are well defined, there’s not much information to McGiver the environment to their advantage, other than trying to exploit the line of sight/effect rules. The player or the DM may very well think that the monster’s power doesn’t rely on sound and is more a telepathic thing; actually, by the power’s mechanics it shouldn’t be carried by sound since bursts are blocked by hard cover and sound isn’t (it makes more sense if the monster’s power is a gaze attack actually). So the idea of covering the rowers’ ears with wax may never cross the players’ mind, or if suggested, the DM may declare it fails automatically.

I think keywords are very important here - the fireball does [fire] damage, the charm does [psychic] or [thunder] damage, etc - but I agree with you that sometimes the keywords leave things a bit unclear (as in your hypothetical).

I think the Pact Hag is one of the trickier creatures I've used in this respect. The fiction associated with some of its powers is fairly obscure. But I also think that robust GMing can help a bit, and I think the rulebooks could do more to encourage it. For example, in a skill challenge with a Pact Hag, I responded to a failed check by the fighter (Diplomacy or Intimidate, can't remember which) by having the Hag respond with some sort of instruction, and the PC complying - he stepped onto the hidden trapdoor, which the Hag then opened by pulling the secret lever. Having established what the Hag can do in the out-of-combat context made subsequent RPing involving the Hag, and the eventual combat with her, easier to adjudicate.

A different sort of example that came up recently was when the tieflling paladin was on fire (10 OG fire damage) and wanted to use this to drive back the hobgoblins he was fighting (a 13th level swarm hobgoblin phalanx). In return for granting combat advantage, I let him make a skill check (Intimidate, from memory) to add fire damage to his ordinary khopesh damage.

on the other hand there are other mechanics that are much more gamist and outright defy acting against them. Marking, for example, is a nebulous concept with an explanation that often involves the marker “closely watching” the marked creature and disrupting his attacks

For the sorts of reasons you give, I tend to treat martial marking as a purely metagame condition.

I think the rules overall could benefit from a bit more fluff and structuring the rules in a way that sparks the player’s out of the box thinking, instead of relegating this IMO very important part of the gaming discussion to a ghetto page in the DMG.

Agreed. I think there could be better support for GMs also, on how to incorpoate powers and other effects into action resolution.

 

[pemerton]

The upside is that the players are not conditioned to looking first and always at the listed block of abilities on their character sheet to accomplish all goals.

I don't see anything wrong with looking at the character sheet first. And I don't see any big in-principle difference between looking at the equipment list or looking at the class features or looking at the skills or powers. These create different aesthetics, and produce a focus on different elements of the fiction, but I don't find doing wacky stuff with improvised equipment inherently more exciting than (for example) tricking the enemies into a situation in which the PCs can bring their combat training to bear with maximal effectiveness.

I've heard a fair number of "How we got out of that scrape" stories. I've never yet heard one boasting about how they resolved it with carrots, rubber dice and a hampster... at least not at the table level.

I guess I'm not especially into the "carrots, rubber dice and hamster" aesthetic. I've just reread the REH Conan story "The Scarlet Citadel" and the only equipment that figures prominently is a sword (used in the conventional fashion), a torch (likewise used only as a light source) and some keys (stolen from a jailer). Doing wacky stuff with carrots doesn't figure prominently in LotR either, unless you count Sam's cooking efforts in Ithilien.

A recent session in my 4e game did involve the sorcerer trying to boost the speed of his flying carpet by drawing on the power inherent in a bottle of pure elemental fire - with explosive results when his Arcana check failed. But I tend to see this as comic relief rather than the mainstay of action resolution.

I will go so far as to say I think 5e would do well to have something very like 4es page 42, and then assign bonuses to specific classes rather than have laundry lists of "Kick him in the shin so he falls back" and "Kick him in the shin so he falls down" abilities.

This is interesting, though seems to me different from wacky equipment oriented action resolution. It sounds a bit like Ars Magica-style spontaneous spell creation extended to the martial sphere.

 

[Hassassin]

I take it that you don't want Fate/Hero points, because these are a metagame resource?

Yes, I find them annoyingly immersion breaking.

This is true, but I'm not sure what follows from it.

I think it suggests that the core of the game must have as few metagame resources or mechanics as possible, if it is to unify gamers of different play styles. Even if such things are "relegated" to optional rules, the game can be designed to work with them and support narrative play style better than just tacked on action/fate/hero points.

 

[Hussar]

Right. Again, I'm not against having universal mechanics, in fact I'm strongly in favor of them.

I am a fan of out of the box thinking however.

I'm wondering if, rather than having such characters with such large boxes, 5e might do better with just a page 42 like general improvisation system with classes and feats that play around with that universal resolution mechanic.
/snip

Do you not see the inherent contradiction in your point? If you are strongly in favor of universal mechanics, then you can't have "out of the box" thinking because, if you actually have universal mechanics, all actions are inside that universe.

Just because it's codified does not mean that it's not creative.

 

[Hassassin]

Do you not see the inherent contradiction in your point? If you are strongly in favor of universal mechanics, then you can't have "out of the box" thinking because, if you actually have universal mechanics, all actions are inside that universe.

Just because it's codified does not mean that it's not creative.

I don't see a contradiction.

If a player wants to try something indirect that is not in the books, he is thinking out of the box - regardless of whether the DM tells him to resolve it using universal mechanics like ability checks or attack rolls.

If the attempt is resolved using ad hoc mechanics like "exploding d8, roll below Dex", then the DM is thinking out of the box for no good reason. I don't see how that improves the game at all.

 

[Andor]

Do you not see the inherent contradiction in your point? If you are strongly in favor of universal mechanics, then you can't have "out of the box" thinking because, if you actually have universal mechanics, all actions are inside that universe.

Just because it's codified does not mean that it's not creative.

What on earth are you talking about? How did we go to pulling actions from outside the universe? I said character sheet. Character sheet <> universe.

Let's take an example of creative use of enviromental features to deal with a hazard that the party cannot deal with using only the resources on their character sheets. A mid-level party that stumbles across a powerful dragon for example.

It will certainly destroy them in combat, can keep up with them if they run, and will quickly incinerate them once outside the caverns where it can employ it's flight. So they flee. And the dwarf says "That large room two encounters back, you said that was a natural cave right?"
GM: "Yeah."
PC: "Did it have stalactites?"
GM: "...yeah."
PC: "Ok, when we get to the cavern I want to use my thunderhammer to try and knock a stalactite off the ceiling and onto it's wing. Hopefully that will slow it down long enough for us to get away."

No system of D&D covers this exact eventuality. Even a universal resolution mechanic can only provide general guidelines for this. The GM will have to make a lot of judgement calls.

Is he going to worry about the hardness/hitpoints of the stone? The to-hit roll against the stalactitie? The to-hit roll against the dragon? How much damage will it do? Can it impale the dragons wing? How long will that slow the dragon down for? Does the Dragon get a save? What's it's target number?

Page 42 will not have all your answers, nor does Savage worlds, the Hero system, GURPs or any other game. No system models that exact set of conditions.

But it is plausible, dramatic, themantically appropriate and clever. Any GM worth his salt should allow the attempt. It's coming from outside the rules, certainly outside the listed abilities on the character sheet, but not outside the universe.

 

[Hussar]

Ahh. Well, adjudicating using stalactites in 4e. 5th level party using a daily power and page 42. That gives us the damage range that he should be dealing, and add a "Slowed, Save Ends" rider effect. Done. All covered within the resolution mechanics of the system.

So, by your definition, it's not actually creative to do this, because, it's covered by the character sheet - the attack bonuses, damage range and rider effects are all quantified by the system. Other than picking and choosing a bit of column A and column B for the DM, there's virtually no DM fiat going on here at all.

That's the whole, entire point of having universal resolution mechanics. That, pretty much no matter what, the mechanics are there to give guidance to the DM for how to adjudicate any action. Otherwise, it's not universal is it?