D&D 5E D&D 5e death and consequences?

[KarinsDad]

While I agree that a player could spend hours making up his mind about his choices, I think actual pc generation in 5e is pretty quick. I can't imagine it actually taking hours. Then again, I haven't rolled any pcs up above first level. (Then again, in my 5e game, everyone will start at first level.)

It took our group an average of two hours per PC for 5E. Course, we did not do it together in a group, nor did we know the rules well ahead of time.

But if the rest of the group is playing and one player is off in a corner by himself, it really depends on the player. Many players are not invested enough in the game to know the PC creation rules that well. I might agree with you for 1E where most all of the abilities for a PC (without multiclassing) was in a single chart.

But even spells are a pain in the butt. Do you know how long it takes to read just the first level spells for a given class and pick them, let alone picking spells for 4 levels? And 5E is worse than earlier editions where the spells were broken down by level and class. It takes a long time to shuffle though the spell pages in 5E, looking for the next spell. It could literally take a person 4 or 5 hours to create an 8th level spell caster in 5E. A different person could do it in 20 or 30 minutes, but I suspect such a person would already be familiar with that class and its spells (and other things like racial abilities).

 

[Savage Wombat]

It took our group an average of two hours per PC for 5E. Course, we did not do it together in a group, nor did we know the rules well ahead of time.

When you mentioned this last time, I saw a potential reason for the difference in experiences.

If you go into the Player's Handbook cold and ask "What do I want to play" and answer yourself "How about a cool fighting dwarf like in the Hobbit?" - you go straight to Dwarf, Fighter, write down the suggested equipment and are good to go in fifteen minutes.

If you go into the PH and ask "What do I want to play" and say, "Well, what are my choices?" - now you have to read all the race descriptions, all the class descriptions, and some of the spell descriptions to understand the classes, and then try to make a value or preference judgment based on that information.

IOW - character generation is fast IF you know what character you want to generate.

 

[KarinsDad]

IOW - character generation is fast IF you know what character you want to generate.

I'm not convinced that most players know exactly what they want though, especially if they are replacing a dead PC. Which spells. Which feats. Even which subclass or which role in the group.

It's like a lot of things in life. If you are experienced and know exactly what you want, then sure, it's going to be faster. I can say the same about ordering at a restaurant. There are times when I'm ready before I even get the menu.

 

[ExploderWizard]

True.

The problem is that it often takes a long time to create a PC, especially if the player is unsure of what he wants, if the PCs are higher level, and/or the PC is a spell caster.

So yeah, dying in the first hour and then sitting around creating a PC for a few more hours while the other players play kind of sucks.

Chargen is really fast. 5E passes the George Thorogood test. Dice in hand, I can create a 5E character before One bourbon, one scotch, one beer finishes playing.


Higher level, not a problem. All new characters begin at level one easy as pie.

During an actual session I will try and arrange for the player to play an NPC or even a monster until the new character can be made. Sitting doing nothing IS boring.

 

[KarinsDad]

Chargen is really fast. 5E passes the George Thorogood test. Dice in hand, I can create a 5E character before One bourbon, one scotch, one beer finishes playing.

If you say so. Some players might not be as speedy as you and others might be meticulous on backgrounds and abilities.

During an actual session I will try and arrange for the player to play an NPC or even a monster until the new character can be made. Sitting doing nothing IS boring.

Always a good idea.

 

[pemerton]

There is no difference between the two types of encounters.

Bottom line: they are both encounters. With the same creatures and scenario, which can happen, they both have the exact same amount of risk.

The rules do not change, just because the DM has a different path to an encounter or that he is creating the encounter on the fly instead of ahead of time

<snip>

A surprise round is just as risky with the same PCs with the same capabilities and the same NPCs.

There are differences. The differences lie in the who, what, where, and when of the encounter and how many of these factors the PCs can control or influence.

<snip>

The resolution mechanics (rules) do not change. The circumstances of the engagement CAN change dramatically, providing a telling advantage or disadvantage to one side or the other.

In order for the players to be successful in scouting, etc., it requires the cooperation of the DM. If he makes the DCs too difficult, the group might be back at the 30% success level. If he makes it too easy, then the PCs are getting easy XP under the illusion that the PC actions actually mattered. But in reality, the DM was helping.

This depends on what the resolution mechanics are for the PCs' prep. If, for instance, the mechanics allow them to create reliable hidey-holes from wish they launch an ambush, then successful ambushing is not just a gift from the GM. It is the players, via their PCs' declared actions, building up and then deploying resources to aid them in encounter resolution.

I think the higher the level of magic in the game - which means the more wacky the basic cosmology and menagerie, and the higher level the PCs and their opponents - the harder this becomes to fairly adjudicate. D&D is more wacky in this respect than (say) Runequest or even Rolemaster, but especially at lower levels I think the obstacles to fair adjudication aren't insuperable. For instance, if the party outfit themselves with darkvision capabilities, and then launch a night-time raid against a group of camping 0-level humans (eg a squad of soldiers), the GM can fairly adjudicate that the humans can't see in the dark. In AD&D, if the soldiers have a MU companion, the GM is expected to make random rolls on the spell tables to see whether or not that NPC has an infravision spell available for casting.

I'm guessing that ExploderWizard runs games mostly at low-to-mid levels (but not above 10th level). Maybe I'm wrong in that guess, but in my experience it's at those higher levels where GM decisions about what magical resources the NPCs have available make a huge difference to the prospects of the players' success, and become hard to adjudicate in an impartial fashion.

The DM does not cooperate or punish players when he or she sets DCs (or encounters, or whatever else). The DM does these things (or should) based on what makes sense, regardless of what the PCs do. I.e., if a particular check is hard, it's going to have a hard DC value. The particular level of the PCs, or their prof bonuses, or whether or not that check/encounter is hard for them isn't relevant. The challenges are there to exist in the game world and adhere to the rules of the game.

I don't really agree with this.

First, whether DCs should be set "objectively" or on a relative basis is a matter that varies from RPG to RPG and from table to table. 4e tends to favour "relative" DCs, for instance, and that is not a particular problem. It just doesn't sit particularly well with sand-box style pre-prep.

Second, the GM making decisions based on what "makes sense" often isn't a very good guide. Does it make sense that the wizard friend of the soldiers would have learned a darkvision spell to deal with night-time ambushes? Or that s/he has got unlucky and never managed to get that spell in his/her spellbook? This is why Gygax's AD&D emphasises random determination of spellbook contents, but that has its own oddities (how did someone who knows only Affect Normal Fires, Read Magic and Pyrotechnics get a job as a caravan guard?). And in any event 5e doesn't seem set up to support random selection of spell (eg there are no numbers next to the spell names, unlike the original AD&D spell lists).

There is more to impartial adjudication in sandbox style RPGing than simply "doing things based on what makes sense".

 

[pemerton]

Have you ever wondered why D&D is one of the only few non-humor RPGs out there which even has a hardcoded and easy way to revive dead characters?
Why is this even necessary?

why does D&D need such lax "return from the death" rules or needs them at all?

My view is because, more than many other RPGs, it makes violent combat to the death a pre-eminent site of conflict.

Other fantasy games also often emphasise combat, but they frequently have wounding or other "death spiral" mechanics which mean that a combat comes to an effective end without needing to kill the other party. (And then, in place of "raise dead" mechanics, they have magical healing mechanics instead to play the same functional role.)

 

[Agamon]

If you say so. Some players might not be as speedy as you and others might be meticulous on backgrounds and abilities.

Some people might take 10 minutes to walk across a room, too. That doesn't make it typical.

One of my players hates when we change games, or even editions, because he hates learning new rules. But when his monk died back in the playtest days, he had a paladin ready to go in less than 10 minutes.

Now, tying the PC into the campaign, giving him motivation and interests, might take some more time, but that can be done after the game, when time is less of a luxury.

 

[Paraxis]

Some people might take 10 minutes to walk across a room, too. That doesn't make it typical.

One of my players hates when we change games, or even editions, because he hates learning new rules. But when his monk died back in the playtest days, he had a paladin ready to go in less than 10 minutes.

Now, tying the PC into the campaign, giving him motivation and interests, might take some more time, but that can be done after the game, when time is less of a luxury.

Can you make a character in 10 min sure, should you probably not.

I build my characters, I think about what feats they will take long before I ever get one to spend, I look for exploits and loopholes, I try to optimize for whatever thing my character is going to shine in. Rolling up a character 10 min, building one easy an hour or more. Then you get into the backstory and interpersonal connections to other PC's and existing NPC's. If you are a religious character pouring through the beliefs of the deities in the world that grant your desired domain. If multiclassing is part of the build things just got more complicated and you need to make sure you meet the ability score requirements, and start to think about when you should take those levels and what class is first, the one with the higher starting h.p, the one that gives more skills, the one that gives the best armor?

So yeah just winging it picking a race, class, background, rolling some stats can make a character on paper but not one I would want to play in a campaign.

 

[KarinsDad]

So yeah just winging it picking a race, class, background, rolling some stats can make a character on paper but not one I would want to play in a campaign.

I haven't wanted to do that since my first PC in the 1E days. I agonize over some of my PCs. Others, not so much, but it still takes a while to even decide race and class, let alone details. Some of my favorite PCs were ones where the race did not match the class (at least mechanically). There's no way I could create such a PC quickly. I don't have my PHB in front of me, but there are something like 14 races/subraces and 40 classes/subclasses. That's 560 choices if my numbers here are correct.