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Savage Worlds vs DnD 5e
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<blockquote data-quote="dbm" data-source="post: 9296934" data-attributes="member: 8014"><p>The system is definitely comparable in overall ‘crunch’ to 5e, however I personally feel that it makes better use of that crunch. It’s a quite permissive system and you can bring in elements of narrative permission without moving too far from being a ‘traditional’ role-playing game.</p><p></p><p>For example, during dramatic tasks there is great latitude in how you use your skills. As an example, we are playing a campaign inspired by Descent in to Avernus ( inspired by in the sense that the GM has taken the premise of devils loose in the Realms and seemingly tossed 90% of everything else). We have been on a sub-quest in support of freeing dwarves slaves from Gracklstugh and through a deal with some rogue houses we had brought chaos to the city, allowing them to take over. In payment they had dumped about 500 dwarven slaves at the docks, where we had put some plans in place to ship them out in boats. But we had to get them on the ships before the authorities could gather themselves and come after us. The GM ran this as a Dramatic task. The dwarven priest used his magic to command the captains we had already paid to get to loading, even though they were expecting slaves in irons, not freed slaves. The fighter surveyed the group and identified stragglers, helping those most in need of it. The elven wizard jumped up on a high point and spoke to the crowd, telling them their freedom was at hand and to board as quickly and smoothly as they could. And promptly rolled a 23 on his performance check, earning over half the successes the group needed with that one act. A few more rounds of coordination were needed but our character had used their skills to save the group and it was a great scene in the adventure. The best bit is that the dwarven cleric and elven mage have a real grudge relationship but it was the elf who saved the day. The dwarf may never hear the end of it! <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" /></p><p></p><p>None of those things were using written ‘abilities’ of the skills and powers our character had, rather we described something plausible our characters were attempting and then the GM said what skill we should roll. It’s a really flexible system and can generate great moments of drama, tension and heroic successes (or failures). And the character abilities all interact with that system in a consistent way. You still use the cards for initiative, and having an edge that lets you draw more initiative cards to pick from works as it should and is super useful in dramatic tasks since drawing a club for your initiative means a complication which can put the whole task at risk.</p><p></p><p>We find combat comparable to 5e in duration on average, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. But keep in mind that every fight we have is meaningful, none of it is filler. And the monsters are more intricate than 5e monsters but that is a positive from our perspective because 5e monsters were stripped way, way, back from what they could do in earlier editions and we find most of them a bit dull to run as the GM to be honest. Most monsters should be extras, almost by definition, and they are just up, shaken or incapacitated so managing mobs of them is really easy. Much easier than tracking 15HP for five or six otherwise identical monsters. For Wildcard enemies having tokens makes it much easier to track their status. We have the original box set with wound tokens and they make a big difference. The token set also has ones for shaken, distracted, vulnerable and so on. Savage Worlds is a system where having the play aids makes a big difference if you are playing on the table top. If you are using a VTT then many of them have really solid rules implementations which will help track those things for you, too.</p><p></p><p>We certainly enjoy combat in Savage Worlds much more than 5e combat, and the balance between martial and magic wielding characters is much better in our experience.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="dbm, post: 9296934, member: 8014"] The system is definitely comparable in overall ‘crunch’ to 5e, however I personally feel that it makes better use of that crunch. It’s a quite permissive system and you can bring in elements of narrative permission without moving too far from being a ‘traditional’ role-playing game. For example, during dramatic tasks there is great latitude in how you use your skills. As an example, we are playing a campaign inspired by Descent in to Avernus ( inspired by in the sense that the GM has taken the premise of devils loose in the Realms and seemingly tossed 90% of everything else). We have been on a sub-quest in support of freeing dwarves slaves from Gracklstugh and through a deal with some rogue houses we had brought chaos to the city, allowing them to take over. In payment they had dumped about 500 dwarven slaves at the docks, where we had put some plans in place to ship them out in boats. But we had to get them on the ships before the authorities could gather themselves and come after us. The GM ran this as a Dramatic task. The dwarven priest used his magic to command the captains we had already paid to get to loading, even though they were expecting slaves in irons, not freed slaves. The fighter surveyed the group and identified stragglers, helping those most in need of it. The elven wizard jumped up on a high point and spoke to the crowd, telling them their freedom was at hand and to board as quickly and smoothly as they could. And promptly rolled a 23 on his performance check, earning over half the successes the group needed with that one act. A few more rounds of coordination were needed but our character had used their skills to save the group and it was a great scene in the adventure. The best bit is that the dwarven cleric and elven mage have a real grudge relationship but it was the elf who saved the day. The dwarf may never hear the end of it! :D None of those things were using written ‘abilities’ of the skills and powers our character had, rather we described something plausible our characters were attempting and then the GM said what skill we should roll. It’s a really flexible system and can generate great moments of drama, tension and heroic successes (or failures). And the character abilities all interact with that system in a consistent way. You still use the cards for initiative, and having an edge that lets you draw more initiative cards to pick from works as it should and is super useful in dramatic tasks since drawing a club for your initiative means a complication which can put the whole task at risk. We find combat comparable to 5e in duration on average, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. But keep in mind that every fight we have is meaningful, none of it is filler. And the monsters are more intricate than 5e monsters but that is a positive from our perspective because 5e monsters were stripped way, way, back from what they could do in earlier editions and we find most of them a bit dull to run as the GM to be honest. Most monsters should be extras, almost by definition, and they are just up, shaken or incapacitated so managing mobs of them is really easy. Much easier than tracking 15HP for five or six otherwise identical monsters. For Wildcard enemies having tokens makes it much easier to track their status. We have the original box set with wound tokens and they make a big difference. The token set also has ones for shaken, distracted, vulnerable and so on. Savage Worlds is a system where having the play aids makes a big difference if you are playing on the table top. If you are using a VTT then many of them have really solid rules implementations which will help track those things for you, too. We certainly enjoy combat in Savage Worlds much more than 5e combat, and the balance between martial and magic wielding characters is much better in our experience. [/QUOTE]
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