D&D 5E Simulation vs Game - Where should D&D 5e aim?

[Hussar]

Here's one bit I was thinking of:
The important idea is that everyone should follow the same rules. Thus, if a human ranger can go out and kill a deer with a Survival check, it would also be reasonable to expect that a Red Dragon could go out and kill a PC with a Survival check. Comparable scenarios.

Is that what you think should happen? I'm guessing if your PC died that way, you wouldn't be thrilled.

To me, the idea of killing a creature by hunting, would be (potentially) an example of where the DM might want to cheat. That is, when I go and say that the players found some food and include a living creature that was killed as part of it, I'm cheating a bit. That's the houserule. The idea of Survival not killing people is the default.

(Maybe I should repost that one in the DMing advice thread).

Would you have a problem with the Dragon eating people as the result of a Survival check? I certainly wouldn't. But, you don't get to pick and choose your dinner with a Survival check. You get food, not necessarily the food you want.

On the flip side, if the PC's are so powerful that, a dragon is now relatively a non-combat deer to them, then why not? The reason you can kill deer or rabbits with a survival check is because there is no (or at least extremely little) chance that either of these animals could kill you. So, why would you bother engaging the combat mechanics for a forgone conclusion?

So, I'd have zero problem with the Red Dragon feasting on villagers after a Survival check. But my 15th level fighter? Not too likely since that's not a fight with automatic success. My PC's certainly could, at that level, give the dragon a run for its money.

Now, killing low level PC's? Sure, but, that's the poorest form of DMing we could find. Killing PC's is ludicrously easy. Challenging them is hard.

 

[billd91]

Indeed. As I read the 3.5 rules, hunting small game is explicitely included within the bounds of the survival skill. Any interpretation therefore that changes it so they are not is directly contrary to both the rules as written and the rules as intended and so is a house rule. There's nothing wrong with house rules - but if your house rules change the letter and the spirit of the rules in the way in question then you should accept that what you are talking about is your own rules and not D&D.

You know, going out and playing through the hunt with a variety of skill rolls and actually rolling combat isn't actually contrary to the rules nor does it require house rules. You just have to choose to do so rather than accomplish it with a survival check. The survival check is there so you don't have to play it out. It is not the mandatory way to feed your PC with small game.

So perhaps we should dispense with this idea of changing the spirit of the rules and not being D&D.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You know, going out and playing through the hunt with a variety of skill rolls and actually rolling combat isn't actually contrary to the rules nor does it require house rules. You just have to choose to do so rather than accomplish it with a survival check. The survival check is there so you don't have to play it out. It is not the mandatory way to feed your PC with small game.

So perhaps we should dispense with this idea of changing the spirit of the rules and not being D&D.

No, we shouldn't, because, if you've been following the conversation, Ahn specifically claimed, and has since claimed again, that Survival checks CANNOT, RAI, result in the death of any creatures, and that it is a kind of "cheating" to allow them to, even though the Survival skill expressly states that it including hunting, which inevitably involves the death of creatures.

No-one but you as suggested that CHOOSING not to use Survival and to run a hunt another way is not RAI. That's not implied in the piece you quote, because that text was written in a certain context.

Keeping things straight:

Ahn's position is that it is a kind of "cheating" AND not RAI for use of the Survival skill to result in dead animals (or people).

The position I and Neon are (I believe) advocating is that Survival expressly includes hunting (as I demonstrated), and that it is both RAI and RAW for it to result in dead animals (and perhaps people if a dragon is doing it and the people are like rabbits or the like to it, which PCs probably are not).

Your position is that choosing to not roll Survival and run a hunt as a series of skill checks culminating in a combat is within the RAI and RAW. The thing is, that position in no way conflicts with the ones that Ahn, Neon and I are stating. It's to the side of that.

 

[Hussar]

You know, going out and playing through the hunt with a variety of skill rolls and actually rolling combat isn't actually contrary to the rules nor does it require house rules. You just have to choose to do so rather than accomplish it with a survival check. The survival check is there so you don't have to play it out. It is not the mandatory way to feed your PC with small game.

So perhaps we should dispense with this idea of changing the spirit of the rules and not being D&D.

But, you're missing the point. Ahn's point is that killing something with a skill check is contrary to the rules. It was then pointed out that Survival lets you kill things. So, essentially, you're agreeing with Pemerton that it's perfectly legitimate to kill things with a skill check, since you can use a survival check instead of playing it out.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You know, going out and playing through the hunt with a variety of skill rolls and actually rolling combat isn't actually contrary to the rules nor does it require house rules. You just have to choose to do so rather than accomplish it with a survival check. The survival check is there so you don't have to play it out. It is not the mandatory way to feed your PC with small game.

So perhaps we should dispense with this idea of changing the spirit of the rules and not being D&D.

I don't understand the relevance of this comment. No one is saying you can't hunt using the combat rules and playing the whole thing out in detail. And I don't think that anyone who treats the game rules as representational rather than a physics engine is claiming that you should always do things precisely the same way.

There is however one person on this thread saying that the rules as written for one of the functions of Survival is contrary to the rules of D&D 3.5. And there is a huge gap between saying you can do things multiple ways (a sentiment I agree with) and saying that doing things by one of the ways presented in the rule book is contrary to the rules of the game.

If you want to hunt using tracking and attack rolls, that's fine. Not in any way against the game. But hunting for food using Survival is also explicitly one of the functions of that skill. There is more than one way to do things - but if a way is mandated in the book, that way is not wrong. And claiming that that way is not wrong is wrong.

 

[Hussar]

Of course, NeonC, this is the same person who's telling us that using Diplomacy to influence the chamberlain so you can see the king is outside the rules too. Never minding that the example is actually explicitly drawn from the 3.5 PHB as an example of what you can do with diplomacy.

Ahn is rather specific about which rules he allows into the conversation, quoting chapter and verse when convenient, but, also conveniently ignoring those bits that don't fit.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Would you have a problem with the Dragon eating people as the result of a Survival check? I certainly wouldn't. But, you don't get to pick and choose your dinner with a Survival check. You get food, not necessarily the food you want.

I would. If someone else wouldn't because they place less value on NPCs lives, I suppose that's fine.

On the flip side, if the PC's are so powerful that, a dragon is now relatively a non-combat deer to them, then why not? The reason you can kill deer or rabbits with a survival check is because there is no (or at least extremely little) chance that either of these animals could kill you. So, why would you bother engaging the combat mechanics for a forgone conclusion?

A conceivable (if unlikely) scenario. It would take some very powerful PCs. Again, I would put this in the category of "cheating" that is potentially acceptable depending on one's disposition.

Of course, NeonC, this is the same person who's telling us that using Diplomacy to influence the chamberlain so you can see the king is outside the rules too.

No, I'm saying that it's within the rules for the DM to say no, not outside the rules for him to say yes. Big difference.

Ahn is rather specific about which rules he allows into the conversation, quoting chapter and verse when convenient, but, also conveniently ignoring those bits that don't fit.

If there are any pertinent bits that I've ignored, no one else has come up with them yet either.

Hunting is expressly and explicitly part of the survival skill. Hunting describes killing things. QED.

As it does not say you choose what you hunt/forage, that is the DM's purview (could be anything he considers appropriate). But hunt you will.

The word "hunt" refers primarily to the search for the animal and only secondarily to actually killing it. Thus, it may be that the intent was for the skill to cover hunting for the animal, and then for the result of that hunt to be played out using whatever means the DM determines (at which point he could do anything from rolling up initiative to just saying "you kill some rabbits"). Then again, it's possible that whoever wrote this just whitewashed over the issue I'm getting at anyway because it's the sort of thing that only people who post on message boards care about anyway.

The skill as written certainly doesn't entitle a PC to declare that he is killing a particular creature or dictate that outcome. It opens up a swath of outcomes that may or may not include that.

 

[pemerton]

Here's one bit I was thinking of:

Normally, NPCs should obey all the same rules as PCs.

The important idea is that everyone should follow the same rules. Thus, if a human ranger can go out and kill a deer with a Survival check, it would also be reasonable to expect that a Red Dragon could go out and kill a PC with a Survival check. Comparable scenarios.

Just a small point: since when is a deer or a rabbit an NPC?

 

[pemerton]

On hunting, here are what strike me as the relevant passages from the 3E Survival skill (on d20srd.org):

You can keep yourself and others safe and fed in the wild. . .

DC 10: Get along in the wild. Move up to one-half your overland speed while hunting and foraging (no food or water supplies needed). You can provide food and water for one other person for every 2 points by which your check result exceeds 10. . .

A single Survival check may represent activity over the course of hours or a full day.​

The use of the word "hunting", and the absence of any qualification of the food as plant matter only, suggests to me that one possible outcome of a survival check is that the character kills an animal.

In the 4e PHB (p 186), the Nature skill includes the following text:

nature, including finding your way through the wilderness, recognizing natural hazards, dealing with and identifying natural creatures, and living off the land. . .

Forage: Make a Nature check to locate and gather enough food and water to last for 24 hours. . .

DC: DC 15 to find food and water for one person, DC 25 for up to five people. The DM might adjust the DC in different environments (5 lower in a cultivated environment or 5 higher in a barren one).​

This is pretty similar to 3E, though the suggestion that environment might affect the difficulty of foraging is absent from the SRD. Again, there is no indication that the food will be solely plant matter.

The first hunting rules I know of for D&D were in the Wilderness Survival Guide. I remember, when I first read them, having the same issue as Ahehnois has: how are they bypassing the combat mechanics? I hadn't fully thought through the parallel to an assassin's chance to assassinate, the rule that even a 1st level MU can kill one sleeping victim per round, etc.

An additional consideration is that, because D&D's combat rules have nothing to cover bleeding (except from extremely magical swords) and nothing to cover exhaustion, it is basically impossible to use them to actually model the reality of hunting larger animals. In real life a human being can stalk and bring down a deer, whereas using the D&D combat rules it is almost impossible for a 0-level NPC (or a 1st level commoner) to do so.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And ffs, a human using Survival to stay alive isn't hunting specific prey. They are looking for whatever wanders into their path. The draconic equivalent would be raiding a farm and eating a few commoners and maybe a cow. You use that function of Survival to survive, not to hunt specific targets.

Could a red dragon kill a couple of easy to find almost unarmed commoners with a skill check? Probably.