D&D 5E June 17 Legend & Lore - Playtesting Dragons

[Obryn]

First off, I like the lair mechanics and flavor - those are pretty great. However.

I think it's kind of silly that a "Legendary" creature needs ***MAGIC!*** to break the action economy and be a telling threat to an entire party. I think this sort of thing is unnecessary; some monsters can be scary and dangerous just because they are ... scary and dangerous.

My next problem is that the dragon, at the end of the day, is still just a big bag of hit points that can deal damage and breathe acid. Ho-hum.

Now, the "fate points" I think can drive an encounter in an interesting direction, where a party needs to throw its small stuff at the dragon before trying to hit it with a big whammy. (Like ... attacking as 5 robot lions for a while before forming Voltron.) That's a pretty good narrative arc, as long as the party isn't packing two or more spellcasters. (I really don't like that they're Daily though. That makes no sense to me, game-wise.) With all that said, it's kind of a band aid on what I think are the two bigger issues... (1) that a party would have enough save-or-suck stuff that a dragon needs to outright ignore all of it, and (2) that saving throws are seriously jacked up because of bounded accuracy.

However, it's nonetheless still a more convincing-looking and interesting solo threat than most anything in 1e, 2e, 3e, or early (MM 1&2) 4e.

-O

 

[Ratskinner]

I think it's kind of silly that a "Legendary" creature needs ***MAGIC!*** to break the action economy and be a telling threat to an entire party. I think this sort of thing is unnecessary; some monsters can be scary and dangerous just because they are ... scary and dangerous.

Keeping in mind that this is their first run at it...there's nothing about the mechanics that particularly require magic to be involved. I wouldn't be surprised to see non-magical-yet-legendeary critters appear.

 

[GX.Sigma]

I think it's kind of silly that a "Legendary" creature needs ***MAGIC!*** to break the action economy and be a telling threat to an entire party. I think this sort of thing is unnecessary; some monsters can be scary and dangerous just because they are ... scary and dangerous.

I think it's absolutely necessary. Otherwise, well, an oliphaunt is scary and dangerous. Is that legendary? Drizzt is scary and dangerous. Is he legendary? To a level 1 character, the hobgoblin chieftain is scary and dangerous. Is that legendary? If you don't have a solid in-world definition of what the legendary tag means, it leads to devaluation of the tag (like what Mike was talking about with Solo encounters in 4e). That might not be a big deal if you're into that, but for campaigns with a more naturalistic worldview and less focus on tactical combat, it's a problem.

 

[Obryn]

I think it's absolutely necessary. Otherwise, well, an oliphaunt is scary and dangerous. Is that legendary? Drizzt is scary and dangerous. Is he legendary? To a level 1 character, the hobgoblin chieftain is scary and dangerous. Is that legendary? If you don't have a solid in-world definition of what the legendary tag means, it leads to devaluation of the tag (like what Mike was talking about with Solo encounters in 4e). That might not be a big deal if you're into that, but for campaigns with a more naturalistic worldview and less focus on tactical combat, it's a problem.

It's whatever works in the context of the game as a whole. The tag itself doesn't need to have value beyond that. It's not about naturalistic world views; it's about the monster/NPC behaving in the game as a thematic and interesting individual or opponent.

-O

 

[GX.Sigma]

It's whatever works in the context of the game as a whole. The tag itself doesn't need to have value beyond that. It's not about naturalistic world views; it's about the monster/NPC behaving in the game as a thematic and interesting individual or opponent.

-O

I'm not quite sure what you mean here, but I think you're saying that the mechanics should serve to make the game fun, regardless of how the fictional world supposedly works. That idea is directly opposed to naturalism.

 

[Obryn]

I'm not quite sure what you mean here, but I think you're saying that the mechanics should serve to make the game fun, regardless of how the fictional world supposedly works. That idea is directly opposed to naturalism.

No, only to a rather narrowly construed firm of naturalism which requires specific correspondence between rules and the fiction/world, such that the numbers behind an npc need to be derived through a certain specific process.

-O

 

[GX.Sigma]

No, only to a rather narrowly construed firm of naturalism which requires specific correspondence between rules and the fiction/world

That's pretty much my whole definition of naturalism from a game design perspective. What's yours?

 

[Obryn]

That's pretty much my whole definition of naturalism from a game design perspective. What's yours?

Naturalism from a fictional or narrative perspective.

Rules are just tokens to generate specific effects in gameplay. A sense of naturalism is best served when those effects on gameplay are appropriate in the fictional context.

-O

 

[GX.Sigma]

Naturalism from a fictional or narrative perspective.

I'm not sure what you mean by naturalism here.

Rules are just tokens to generate specific effects in gameplay.

I disagree with that (and I think a lot of the OSR crowd would, too). In a naturalistic game design, rules are tools used to describe the world.

 

[Obryn]

I'm not sure what you mean by naturalism here.

I disagree with that (and I think a lot of the OSR crowd would, too). In a naturalistic game design, rules are tools used to describe the world.

I'm talking about the "naturalistic world view" from your post a few up. Making monsters and npcs feel like natural parts of a fictional setting doesn't require a specific process-sim design approach. Oliphants, for example, might be modeled by different rules tokens over the course of play, but still feel and act like believable Oliphants.

Rules are used to describe the fictional world. The world is part of that fiction.

-O