Warbringer
Explorer
Which is why they ran headlong right into the same problem with ghouls in the Next gameplay streaming; they (he) still have not quite come to grips with the powerful consequence of action denial.
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Which is why they ran headlong right into the same problem with ghouls in the Next gameplay streaming; they (he) still have not quite come to grips with the powerful consequence of action denial.
S
Sunseeker
Guest
This, IMO, was why I so loved "immediate reaction" powers in 4e. Certainly action denial was still a huge deal, but being able to react to it the moment it happened instead of having to wait it out is still a great idea.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
And here's one of my big problems with improvising and it's likely effects. If improvising almost always is able to make an enemy irrelevant or even defeat an enemy faster than using the rules in book, then improvising becomes the ONLY choice. Why attack for 1d8 damage when an improvised action causes rocks to fall on the enemies head and kill them instantly. Or locks them in a corner, unable to get out for days.
I prefer improvising to work WITHIN the rules in order to keep in balanced with the rest of the rules rather than it be external from the rules and something the DM makes up. Of course, this ends up with me saying "no" most of the time to improvising because as I said above, if improvising becomes the best option, then it will be done every round. If it's done every round then I either have to make up rules every round(for games where there aren't good improvisation rules) or I have to figure out WHICH improvised rules to use. Either way, it's more work for me as a DM. I'd prefer players stick to defined options the majority of the time.
The risk he was talking about was the risk the DM rejects your improvisation outright. If you "hit the Daily button", you know the daily power will, in nearly 100% of cases, have the effect listed in the book. If you improvise an action your DM might assign it at-will damage or encounter damage instead of daily damage. The DM might determine that it only qualifies for damage a couple levels lower than you. They might decide that using p42 for this particular improvised maneuver isn't appropriate and make up a new mechanic all together. Or, they might simply say "No, I don't think that's possible unless you have an appropriate power for it". This may or may not use up your action to do it.
Your character is likely willing to take the risk. He's an adventurer. However, the risk is entirely out of game, so it's only player risk.
Rules are props in improv drama. However, D&D is NOT improv drama. I'm keenly aware of this, especially now when I just finished attending 6 shows of the Dungeons and Dragons Improv Show that has been running in my city at our Fringe Festival for 5 years now. It is a super popular show and is hilarious. They use d20s as a prop to decide what happens in many scenes. However, the DM who narrates and helps run the show has been known to completely ignore the dice rolls by assigning arbitrarily large bonuses whenever the scene doesn't go the way he thinks would be the most entertaining.
This works fine for an improv show whose primary goal is to be funny and entertaining to the audience. It doesn't work nearly as well in a game with 6 players who care about their characters way more. When you might be playing the same character for years on end, their success and the success of your quest can be rather important to you. The rules help to make sure that outcome is fair. Because in the case of a normal D&D game, the players are ALSO the audience so what entertains them is often their character succeeding(or at least having a reasonable chance of succeeding).
My point is that you wouldn't do it if that was the reason. But balance reasons are somewhat more important reason not to add a power.
I understand you don't seem to like Mike Mearls. Keep in mind, he was also lead designer on 4e D&D and also on D&D Next. The rules exist the way they were BECAUSE of Mike Mearls.
My point was that if the guy responsible for a lot of the 4e math says "Yeah, when we made some monsters, we screwed up and gave them powers we didn't expect to be as powerful as they were" even though they had months of playtest time, that random additions of powers to monsters isn't a good idea for a DM who likely doesn't playtest it at all. "Don't add stuns to monsters" isn't that "common sense" when the designers did it.
I, personally, never changed a single monster in the multiple years of running 4e. I was too intimidated to try because I was afraid I might not consider a balance issue and accidentally TPK the party. Which was my entire point. Having the rules be as structured as they are in 4e makes it very difficult to stay within the spirit of the rules while improvising. The spirit of the rules, of course, being "All of these monsters are balanced and work well".
That table exists, sure. But I'm not sure you'd use it when you have rules in Athletics itself for what DCs are. That's the problem, there are 2 completely different systems at work. One under the skill that says "X surface is DC 10" and another one that says "When improvising assume an easy DC for PCs of level 20 is 15." Is this particular DC 10 or 15? It depends which set of rules you are using.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
That just it. I don't know exactly how claws turn enemies attacks against them. People don't punch the claws. Also, why would his skeleton do the same amount of damage to them as they did to him? It just seems...disconnected.
Regeneration says to me "I take damage normally, but I regain it quickly" vs a forcefield which says to me "I stop damage from ever occurring. In MHRP, both just add a dice to your dice pool when defending. It's one way of doing rules. But the rules are disconnected from what is actually happening.
In an average round, I found from watching other people play that most people were spending 90% of their time adding dice together. The pools almost always added up to the same numbers but they were build different ways each time. So, a player would say "I'm Spiderman and I'm using my web to swing at the enemy and kicking them at the end. That allows me to use my web, my agility, my strength, and my tactics because I'm above the battle and can choose the best angle of attack. That means I'm added 1d10, 1d8, 1d6, and 1d4 to my dice pool."
The next player would go and they'd add the exact same dice to their dice pool, just acquired in a different way(claws and berserker and strength, for instance). But, inevitably, every character was simply rolling the exact same set of dice.
I admit, the SFX were the most flavourful part of the game. Though there was so few of them that it felt like they were the only part of the rules connected with the fiction.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
As I mention in my previous post. This would be fine if the traits and powers seemed to have any effect on the game at all except slightly different die sizes.
That's the reason a lot of people complain about 4e and all the powers feeling "the same". I understand their concerns, though I disagree with them(mostly). However, 4e powers still feel more connected with the fiction than MHRP powers do. At least if you use a power that stuns someone, your attack roll is based on the weapon being used and the feats you have, your damage is likewise based on the weapon you are using and feats you have. It's effect(stunning) is based on the fiction of you hitting them especially hard.
It doesn't seem to differentiate between ANY defensive power unless they have SFX. They all simply add a dice to your defensive pool. Spiderman's ability to dodge is exactly the same as Wolverine's skeleton which is exactly the same as Captain America's shield which is exactly the same as Scarlet Witch's luck field which is exactly the same as someone else's toughness. Which is fine, as I've said. It's just VERY disconnected from the fiction.
It's different than "This makes you faster, so you get bonuses to Reflex saves. This makes you tougher so you either get damage reduction, bonuses to your fort save or AC depending on the situation".
The less rules there are, often the more abstract the rules that do exist get. Of course, if there are too many rules then they become confusing and difficult to keep track of(Hero System comes to mind). D&D has always attempted to be somewhere in the middle. Which I like.
Oh, I agree. Unfortunately, there are so FEW situations that have enough interesting things to narrate to require that complexity of skill challenge that they should almost never be used. Plus, for a lot of DMs, they have no idea how much interesting things they have to narrate until they come out of their mouth since they are DMing mostly on the fly.
Though, that doesn't stop the DMs who are pretty much improvising on the spot from saying "I need to give them a bunch of XP, so I'll use a high complexity skill challenge because I don't want to run a combat." and then end up spending the next 15 minutes saying "That's not enough successes, roll again".
This almost always feels artificial, in my experience:
"I tell the king that the kingdom will fall to the horde of demons we saw approaching and he needs to ride out and meet them. There were hundreds of them and we can't defeat them alone!"
"Make a Diplomacy check."
"I get 30. That should convince him."
"He's not completely convinced. Maybe if you demonstrated your strength, he'd be convinced."
"Really? An army of demons isn't enough to convince him? I have to lift a table over my head as well?"
"Yeah, sorry, I didn't expect you to make such a great point as your first check, and this is a complexity 5 skill challenge."
I find "I'll keep asking for skill checks until I'm convinced they've succeeded in their goal" works much better than setting a specific number of successes required. If it takes only 1 skill check to succeed in something, then so be it. If it takes 30, that's fine as well. I think skill challenges are just too formal.
Warbringer
Explorer
But that's not a skill challenge, it's a simple skill check, so run it as one
As a skill challenge this is my structure:
Challenge: You've made it to the city, the great demon forces behind you, but now you've got to let the king know. Getting into the Royal Palace won't be easy, the king is always wary of threats to his life, and he should be, for his palace is full of liars and deceivers; even spies! Get to the King and convince him of the reality and threat of the encroaching army.
Difficulty: 5 successes/2 failures
Resource at Risk : Wealth (Gold), Healing Surges, Threat (in my game when you fail fully or partially the DM can make the next challenge more difficult); Time
Applicable Skills: With the king (Persuasion, Perform, Arcana); Getting to the King (whatever the players come up with)
Failure: Depending where they may not reach the King, end up in a fight, in jail, ejected from the city. In front of the king, arrested for treason, insulting the king, falling into the hands of a spy.
The challenges are then focused on getting into the Palace (Persuade/Streetwise past the guards or by Stealth); discovering where he is (Stealth, Bluff, Arcana); Holding of his entourage while you try to explain (Bluff, Persuade, even combat); Explain (Persuade, Arcana, Status) ...
Failure at certain points propagates forward in someway, allbeit into a very dangerous situation: (They finally make it to the King after breaking in, been followed, insulted the King's niece, actually injured a member of the personal guard).. Now, convince the King!!!
Vyvyan Basterd
Adventurer
It can be narrated as either the weapon being blunted on his skeleton or him using his claws to damage/destroy the weapon.
It causes an equal level stunt or you can step back the damage and redirect it at the attacker. So, the designer agrees with you that the reversal shouldn't deal the same amount of damage.
Regeneration (called Healing Factor in the SFX section) doesn't add any dice. Wolverine's Godlike Stamina allows him to take hits. He isn't exactly a pushover in the comics that deals with tons of physical damage by regenerating it all (with some exceptions). He can take a hit and what does get through heals quickly.
You must have been watching relatively new players. It doesn't take experienced players that long to grab a dice pool. They usually do so while describing what they are doing.
Kind of like grabbing a d20 and determining whether you hit? It's a standard of most dice-using RPGs. There are many more decision points before and after your roll that translate into how much effort you're putting in with PP.
Not really. Complication are a big part of the game once a player gets more comfortable with the system. They allow you to go beyond the "I attack" button. And they are completely informed by the fiction. Wolverine can use his claws to cut through the steel catwalk supports to inflict a complication on a villain standing on the catwalk. If the player of Dagger tried the same using her Light Daggers the table would disallow it based on her character's fiction. Just like the table would disallow Wolverine to create a Blinded complication on the villain at a range with his claws.
The connection is not inherent in the system, you can obviously play against it or not play into it. But the mechanics encourage you to play into the fiction (spend a PP for a d6 'push' die or describe a stunt to receive a d8) and once you are used to the system the mechanics melt away into the background. I've run numerous sessions of MHRP and have not experienced the feeling you get off of the read and watching others play.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
I agree. It's possible to make a decent skill challenge but it always seems like it takes more effort than it's worth. Sure, "convince the king" makes a lousy skill challenge. So do a lot of other things. But many of them SEEM like skill challenges so DMs try them.
But even given the skill challenge you presented, what makes a skill challenge better than simply a series of skill checks with no defined number of successes? You could run the skill challenge instead as a series of rolls based on the situation at the time. Which means after a couple of failures, they might find themselves in a bad situation and need to make more skill checks to get out of it, but they technically haven't "failed" yet. Even though the skill challenge rules would say "two failures and you're out".
On a mostly unrelated note, my favorite Skill Challenge story was when a friend of mine tried to invent his first skill challenge. It was fairly complicated, though I don't know the exact number. The skill challenge was "Build a bridge so that the cart we were guarding could make it across the ravine since the old bridge was out."
Everyone saw the bridge out and immediately told the caravan master that he was screwed and there's no way he'd get his cart across. The caravan master spent forever telling us we weren't getting paid unless we got him across there. We told him it was impossible as we'd need weeks and some skilled artisans in order to build a bridge. The caravan master said he needed to be there later today. We said it was impossible. The DM stepped out of character in order to tell us that we were in a forest and bridges were made of wood, so it should be possible.
We all shrugged and said "Well, we don't know anything about building bridges, but the DM says it's possible so...I guess we build a bridge. How exactly do we do that?"
The DM starts miming chopping down a tree with an axe and sits there waiting for someone to pick up a dice and roll.
I say, "We don't even have anything to cut down trees. We have swords, which don't exactly work for that purpose."
The DM said "Umm...err....well, you have an axe, right?"
I said, "Yeah, a battle axe...which is quite a bit different from a wood chopping axe."
The DM said "Well, that'll work."
I say "Alright, I'll cut down a tree then...I suppose."
He says "So, what skill do you think you'd use for cutting down trees?"
I say, "Umm, Athletics maybe?"
He says "Great! Make a roll."
Then I succeed and say "Alright, then...we do whatever we need to do to turn this log into a bridge."
He says, "Well, what skill do you think would be useful in this situation?"
It isn't until now that I realize the DM has turned building the bridge into a skill challenge and hasn't thought it through at all. He simply wrote down 10 successes before 2 failures, Athletics, Acrobatics, and Endurance are the primary skills. He was simply waiting for us to keep announcing skills and rolling them without really knowing or caring what they were for as long as we got 10 successes.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
Skill challenges can be really difficult for GMs to frame without them seeming too artificial or without leading the PCs through the steps like a bull with a ring in its nose. Different approaches should work better with different sorts of challenges.
In the case of convincing the king, the diplomacy check success may lead the king to say, "You make a strong case, but how can I be certain that I am not merely placing my neck on the block by aiding you? You are asking me to risk my army, my treasure, on your word when I cannot be certain you can back that word up with deeds." At that point, the players should take the cue that some demonstration of prowess be make - perhaps a direct display or perhaps a well-told story of their exploits (perform).
To borrow an idea from MegaTraveller, expanded procedures for jumping from one system to another, you'd could have a much more explicit skill challenge with a fairly standard procedure. The navigator makes the calculation, the engineer manages the jump reactor and fuel flow, the pilot maneuvers to optimal jump point, and you manage the results based on the number of successes/failures. Three successes and you come out on target and on time, one failure and your time is off, two and you have a rough (and damaging) exit, all three and you misjump to a different destination.
Majoru Oakheart
Adventurer
I don't know. A couple of them were less experienced for sure, but a couple of them appeared to know what they were doing. It just seemed like their entire description of their turn was justification to use dice.
A couple of times people were like "I punch him. Oh, wait, I swing at him and THEN I punch him, that way I get webs added to the dice pool. Oh, wait, I also do a backflip so I can use my agility as well."
Then a bunch of time was spend considering whether to use the extra points they could use. It took them about an hour and a half to run a combat against a couple of villains. I barely remembered which villains they were fighting by the end of the battle. It didn't seem significant to the actual play since most of the time was spent looking at each category of powers to find the power that gave the biggest dice and then justifying a way to use that power against the enemy.
My point is that everyone uses a d20 to hit in D&D, that's fine. It takes 2 seconds to pick up your d20 and roll. It took about 2-5 minutes per person for them to describe their turn in order to figure out which powers applied just so they could figure out which dice were in their pool, And in the end, it amounted to them using their best powers every round of combat. But they'd spend 5 minutes EXPLAINING how their dice pool came to the same as last round and waiting after each justification for the DM to say ok before continuing their description.
This just seems like "You get whatever power you can explain to me". It's mother may I with fiction. Thus, there's no "rules" that give you the ability to cut through steel. There is instead a agreement between player and DM that "my claws are so sharp, they should be able to cut through steel."
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