D&D General If you could put D&D into any other non middle ages genre, what would it be?

CapnZapp · Jun 21, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
That's the thing, whatever plot armor mechanism you settle on, it'll either make only that last bullet a 'real threat' - or it'll fail as plot armor (at least some of the time, a "protagonist who shouldn't die at this point in the story," will).

Meh. RQ, for instance, did scads of things differently from D&D, not just eschewing a plot armor mechanic. Armor absorbing damage, skill-based instead of class/level, completely different take on magic, etc, etc...

The 'problem' (emulating genre with a creaky old RPG mechanic) isn't insoluble, it's just not soluble by making firearms into instant-death wands, or treating hps as structural integrity units instead of plot armor (or something that can be a fig-leaf for plot armor, like 'luck,' which notoriously runs out).

Not sure what you're on exactly. It feels like you're trying to oppose my points, but honestly I'm not sure.

Oofta · Jun 21, 2019

CapnZapp said:
I'm sure you realize things change if you somehow increase the range of your longswords to 100 ft...

Good point. Because there's no weapon in D&D that does the same damage of a longsword that has a short range of 150 feet. It's not possible to take a feat that increases range to 600 feet without penalty while ignoring cover.

robus · Jun 21, 2019

Sacrosanct said:
My post in my OP: I'd really love to hear how you would apply D&D rules to a different genre.
Last 8 pages: That would never work

Should have been expected, really...

I’ll bite.

Leaving guns aside, I think the best way to apply D&D rules to a different genre is to basically remove player options that aren’t appropriate. While WotC seems to want to allow all races & classes in any adventure, preserving genre feel means cutting stuff that, if it appeared, would be like a needle being dragged across an LP. For example, in my “Curse of Innistrad” campaign setting, the genre is humans against the creatures of the night. So players can only choose human as their character race, and only a small subset of classes are available. No wizards, no bards etc.

With those limitations in place the genre can be more effectively preserved while not messing with the rules much at all. Basically constrain your PC options to suit the genre.

Tony Vargas · Jun 21, 2019

CapnZapp said:
Not sure what you're on exactly.

Nothing most 70+ y/o athyreotic stroke survivors aren't taking.

robus · Jun 21, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
The 'problem' (emulating genre with a creaky old RPG mechanic) isn't insoluble, it's just not soluble by making firearms into instant-death wands, or treating hps as structural integrity units instead of plot armor (or something that can be a fig-leaf for plot armor, like 'luck,' which notoriously runs out).

HP, in my opinion, is not plot armor, it is tracking a character’s ability to continue to defend themself from attack. It’s why HP shouldn’t factor into PCs taking out sleeping baddies. If they’ve stealthed close enough then, sure, they’re dead.

This is why guns raise a problem. There’s no real defense to being shot at (except for cover). Unless you’re Neo in the Matrix and you can switch to bullet time (now that might be a fun D&D setting

)

There are actually two separate “guns in D&D” discussions:

1) Only good guys have guns, i.e. “humans” vs “monsters” which can really benefit from upping the damage dealing produced by the guns. Blasting away zombies or what have you with a BFG is awesome.

2) Bad guys also have guns. This the one that suddenly causes trouble because for a gun to feel right, it’s got to hit hard and players don’t like it when their PCs get hit hard and perhaps die. So I agree with CapnZapp, it needs something beyond just rebranding HP. My proposal: shooting a gun accurately is hard. So I would say that a gun shot only hits if you roll a nat-20 (sharpshooter can lower that to 19 or even 18). (this is in an active combat situation, if you’re sniping and the enemy is exposed then you just kill them, only a mean DM would turn this on the players btw, just like we do in regular D&D

). If the shot hits a PC, then the targeted player rolls 2d10 to figure out where their character got hit: 2=headshot, they’re dead, 20=bullet just grazed them. In between means arm, leg, gut etc. Taking cover, but still partially visible means the shooter has disadvantage. Sneaking up behind a person who thinks they have cover gives the shooter advantage. (There would also need to be wound level tracker to make sure people didn’t just take a bunch of shots with no cost)

Utterly unplaytested of course

and my worry would be that things would get boring because the hits would be rare. But that’s kind of what I think you’d have to do to make guns (in the hands of baddies) feel right.

Tony Vargas · Jun 21, 2019

robus said:
HP, in my opinion, is not plot armor, it is tracking a character’s ability to continue to defend themself from attack.

I don't suppose there's a whole lot of functional difference. Either way, if you're being shot at, you're not being hit, or taking less serious hits, whether it's modeling author force (plot armor), divine intervention, a sixth sense, finite luck, or desperate defense.

This is why guns raise a problem. There’s no real defense to being shot at (except for cover). Unless you’re Neo in the Matrix and you can switch to bullet time (now that might be a fun D&D setting )

And in some genres, bullet-time would be just fine. In most genres, characters being shot at do move & dodge, defending themselves not by seeing a bullet and moving out of it's trajectory like Neo, but by making themselves a much harder target.

2) Bad guys also have guns. This the one that suddenly causes trouble because for a gun to feel right, it’s got to hit hard and players don’t like it when their PCs get hit hard and perhaps die.

That's one of the inconsistent expectations that monkeywrenches adapting D&D/d20 to some genres. Firearms kill. They also miss. They also wound, sometimes not even that seriously. It's a deadly weapon. So is a dagger doing 1d4. Deadly just means it does actual damage, and can kill an ordinary person under ordinary circumstances, enough of the time that you wouldn't want to use it if your intent wasn't to kill. If you want most of the redshirts and black hats in the setting to obligingly drop dead when shot, give them fewer hps. They'll also obligingly drop unconscious when you break a whiskey bottle over their head, or give 'me the old one-two. Which is probably as it should be.

Oofta · Jun 21, 2019

robus said:
HP, in my opinion, is not plot armor, it is tracking a character’s ability to continue to defend themself from attack. It’s why HP shouldn’t factor into PCs taking out sleeping baddies. If they’ve stealthed close enough then, sure, they’re dead.

This is why guns raise a problem. There’s no real defense to being shot at

Somebody should tell that to the people that make kevlar. I could also say that there's no defense against getting run through by a sword ... except in D&D there is. Not all bullet wounds are fatal and HP will always be an abstraction of many things, not just how tough you are.

robus · Jun 21, 2019

Oofta said:
Somebody should tell that to the people that make kevlar. I could also say that there's no defense against getting run through by a sword ... except in D&D there is. Not all bullet wounds are fatal and HP will always be an abstraction of many things, not just how tough you are.

Sure, there are solutions in *some settings*, but most action adventure scenarios don't have people running around in kevlar

robus · Jun 21, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
That's one of the inconsistent expectations that monkeywrenches adapting D&D/d20 to some genres. Firearms kill. They also miss. They also wound, sometimes not even that seriously. It's a deadly weapon. So is a dagger doing 1d4.

I addressed that by discussing the fact that HP is recording your ability to defend yourself from the attack. If you're not defending yourself then that dagger attack is going to kill you no matter what your HP. The difference for guns is there is no reasonable defensive tactic except cover.

If you want most of the redshirts and black hats in the setting to obligingly drop dead when shot, give them fewer hps.

Sure that's fine for cannon-fodder, but for actual shootouts with competent adversaries?

The Crimson Binome · Jun 21, 2019

robus said:
If you're not defending yourself then that dagger attack is going to kill you no matter what your HP.

How do your players feel about their epic god-slaying hero being murdered in their sleep by some punk with a knife, with their only possible defense being a Perception roll (at Disadvantage) to wake up in time?