D&D 5E A traditionalist at heart, a NEW mechanic I desperately want from 5e.

[Aberzanzorax]

Mostly I just want 5e to take the best of all prior editions and cobble together a fantastic D&D experience. I want that to the degree that I hope they restrain themselves from introducing too many new rules or elements that don't hearken back to at least one (but ideally more than one) prior edition.


BUT!

Here is a request for something that fits with D&D (IMO, YMMV), but has been somewhat conspicuously absent (or tacked on).


What I'd like is for the gravity of the threat to be at least somewhat intelligible to both players and their characters.



In my opinion, it's good game design to include elements and foes that the player characters can't defeat (yet) unless they're truly lucky (and foolish). However, in most of D&D it is not always obvious whether the tentacled monstrosity is cr 5 or 25...and whether players need to fight or run. Similarly, there is the element of the npc (or any statted, leveled humanoid) who might be level 1 or might be level 20. Just how impressed/intimidated/likely to die, is something I'd like for my player characters (or at minimum, players) to be able to gauge.


Now, I'm not saying that there couldn't be trickery involved, with a high level sorceror posing as a peasant (or somesuch). I also don't want to entirely remove the mystery. And yes, description of the monster or the NPC, including gear, is a tool, but not a great one.



So...what I'm asking for is a way for characters to gauge whether an encounter or monster or npc is: likely easy, likely a fair challenge, likely a boss fight/difficult challenge, beyond their capability (but they might get lucky), or auto death (attacking Orcus at level 3 when he's undisguised and apparent...but even when players just see "a fat demon the size of an ogre" and they COULD defeat the ogre).


Thoughts? Am I missing existing mechanics for this? Are there unseen problems with this that I'm not noticing?

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Isn't that one of the main points of the various knowledge and lore skills? Knowledge (Dungeoneering) will let you know about how tough that tentacle beast is, Bardic Knowledge or Knowledge (Local) will tell you that the local duke is a master swordsman, etc.

 

[RangerWickett]

Especially since we're now going to have fairly flat AC and attacks, it will be possible to attack a high-level monk, 'hit him' for 10 damage, and think "We're kicking his butt." Unless the GM does a good job explaining that the blow fazes old man Chiun not one bit, the party has no real clue that the Shinanju master is a deadly threat.

Hm. How to do it?

I mean, you could have a sort of meta mechanic, a "Badassometer." If you go for cinematic combat, perhaps at the start of combat each side gets a number of "awesome points" equal to the highest level combatant on that side. This lets low-level PCs teamed with high-level ones to be cool, and lets villainous mooks occasionally be a major threat.

If you actually placed the awesome points on the table -- in the form of beads or something -- you'd be encouraged, "While putting out these awesome points, if this is the first time the party has encountered the foe, narrate something impressive about the enemy, slowly placing tokens from your hand one by one to raise the tension."

 

[n00bdragon]

You mean... like giving monsters a level? Cause... uh. They did that already in the Edition Which Must Mot Be Named.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Isn't that one of the main points of the various knowledge and lore skills? Knowledge (Dungeoneering) will let you know about how tough that tentacle beast is, Bardic Knowledge or Knowledge (Local) will tell you that the local duke is a master swordsman, etc.

These are good points, and I'd forgotten about them.
I even agree, but only to a point.


In my opinion, various knowledge skills should give you an advantage to defeat the beast (in combat or plotwise/storywise). E.G. for a werewolf go get wolvesbane or silver, or simply do detective work in town to determine who the werewolf commoner is. However, if I, an accomplished fighter who has slain several foes of varying difficulties, sees a new monster...I should have at least a general idea of whether it can totally waste me or if it will be a cakewalk. I might not have knowledge of demons or dungeon denizens or whatever...and so wouldn't know that its tentacles can excrete poison...but I should be able to gauge, based on size, apparent movements, and general genre understanding if it is something I'm supposed to be afraid of and run, or if it's something that I'm so powerful that I think is wimpy.

I could be wrong, of course.

But, there should be some way for me to at least form an opinion without investing book learnin' or study. I wanted to toss out a real world example, but real world examples don't really address heroism (and D&D is primarily heroic fantasy).

If I am a skilled knight, tactician, and general badass in the real world...I'm still gonna run from an legion of 20+ guys charging me. In D&D it'd be cowardly for a lvl 10 fighter to run from a bunch of lvl 1 mooks. In D&D it'd be suicide for a lvl 10 fighter to attack a bunch of level 10 soldiers.


Often the story calls for "you're brave because you're competent..but it's still a risk". I'm not looking to quantify the risk totally...but I'm looking for ways that players and player characters can determine if they're competent to attempt the task (informed consent, and informed risk).

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Especially since we're now going to have fairly flat AC and attacks, it will be possible to attack a high-level monk, 'hit him' for 10 damage, and think "We're kicking his butt." Unless the GM does a good job explaining that the blow fazes old man Chiun not one bit, the party has no real clue that the Shinanju master is a deadly threat.

Hm. How to do it?

I mean, you could have a sort of meta mechanic, a "Badassometer." If you go for cinematic combat, perhaps at the start of combat each side gets a number of "awesome points" equal to the highest level combatant on that side. This lets low-level PCs teamed with high-level ones to be cool, and lets villainous mooks occasionally be a major threat.

If you actually placed the awesome points on the table -- in the form of beads or something -- you'd be encouraged, "While putting out these awesome points, if this is the first time the party has encountered the foe, narrate something impressive about the enemy, slowly placing tokens from your hand one by one to raise the tension."

This definitely goes in the direction of solving the problem that I'm considering. I'm not sure if it's the best or only way, but it's pretty elegant mechanically.


I'm big on fluff to incorporate things, and awesomepoints could be done fluffwise as well, I think. But there's a weird balance...because when is a monster NOT described as scary, terrible, slavering, etc regardless of whether it's a challenge to level 1 characters or level 20 characters...and that is even harder with humanoids. So I guess a part of what I'm asking for is an "in character" or "narrative" way of determining this as well (but that might not be possible...this might NEED to be more meta).

 

[Aberzanzorax]

You mean... like giving monsters a level? Cause... uh. They did that already in the Edition Which Must Mot Be Named.

Sure. But how do the players access knowledge of what that level might be?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

In 5E, monsters will be color-coded by difficulty.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Soutionwise, here's the best I can come up with at the moment (using 3e rules as the base to houserule since I'm most familiar with em).

Using base attack bonus (so fighters, being the best fighters, have the best combat intuition), one rolls a check similar to a caster level check.

If a character's roll of 1d20+BAB exceeds the monster's cr (or the encounter level for multiple monsters), the character knows the monster's relative power. If a player fails, a monster can pretend to be more wimpy or powerful up to the degree of failure. (So if a fighter failed a cr 10 monster by 5, it could pretend to be 15 or 5...but couldn't pretend to be cr 4 or 16).

If a character has a relevant knowledge skill for that type of monster, they can substitute the skill for bab (making smart wizards more likely to know about their focuses of knowledge, but fighters more likely to have more generalist instinct...and knowldege would still provide other elements like "immune to fire" and whatnot).

 

[YRUSirius]

I don't think this needs to be supported mechanically by the rules itself necessarily.

It could be handled by the DM narratively. NPCs flee or warn them (Gandalf and the Balrog), they hear rumors beforehand (so they know that the demon they will encounter is the slayer of worlds etc).

In screen writing there's this concept of "planting and reaping" I think. You plant an idea somewhere in the beginning of the narrative and when it comes up later in the story you can reap the benefits of this planting (emotions, etc.).

So creative dungeon mastering might be the answer. Take cues from screenwriting.

-YRUSirius