D&D 5E Adjudicating Melee

[Saeviomagy]

I think this entire thread highlights the perils of highly variable rules: Iserith made up some rules on the spot intended to hand out success with a consequence, and the rule made up is pretty bad - it has a high likelyhood of killing the player's character without them getting to have any input to the matter and almost never results in a net benefit to her or him.

Outside of combat, most rolls should build story NO MATTER THE RESULT. If you critically stuff up your diplomacy check, you make a powerful enemy. If you fail your jump check, someone has to fish you out of a pit. Usually you could choose not to try to jump that pit if you thought it was too dangerous. Given that, it's ok for those rules to be somewhat flexible, because no matter the outcome, the game is improved by it.

I think most of us would agree that an unspottable, unavoidable pit that has an even chance to instantly kill your character would not be fun, and that's sort of what the orc example is - outside of avoiding the combat entirely, you can't choose to not miss by 2 points, you can't choose to not give him the horrible trade on damage, and you can't choose for him to not attack you next round.

What's worse, is if the DM hasn't telegraphed that they are using this ruleset - that's the equivalent of being told that not only could you not spot the pit or avoid the pit, the DM explicitly stated to you that the hallway the pit is in was free of traps. You rolled a few times and he told you to stop rolling because there are no traps in the hall. And then you fell in a pit.

In short - put some consideration into free-forming combat if you are going to do it. Make sure that trades such as this are fair, not purely detrimental. Tell your players that this is the system you are going to use, and finally - and most importantly of all - let your players make choices.

Do all that, and I can see this as being a fun way to run combats.

 

[iserith]

I would argue that that sentence is more mechanical than narrative. It employs jargon that means something specific in the rules and the mechanics that it calls for are likewise specific. It is also narrative in a minimalist sense, but only in the way that it provides a summary of the narrative which can only be fleshed out after the dice have their say.

We can certainly get fancier with the narrative if you like - I only offered that as a brief example. The result of what the player described is narrated by the DM. The dice are invoked when the DM says so. It could be said that smart play as a player is to try to rob randomness of its power and not have to invoke rules or dice since getting dice involves means there is a chance to fail. Is it wiser to just try for auto-success?

I could have chosen to get fancier with my description, so I don't think that's really the issue here. As an aside, when I'm a player, I only very rarely attack with a weapon, preferring to do just about anything else that is more interesting (and also effective). I don't try to invoke mechanics because that means I have a chance to fail. I try to succeed outright first and fall back on on my character's stats second, depending on how the DM rules.

Neither of these things are true of combat-as-presented. The mechanics are presented as the way combat works unless the DM chooses to override them. The DM has permission to do so, but the expectation is that the presented framework will be adhered to as a default. This distinction is important in the context of this discussion, because it gets at the heart of your question.

It seems to me that you are viewing the presented combat rules as a subset that falls under an overarching Rule 0 that says that all rules are subject to change based on DM fiat. And you're not wrong.

But, the way those combat rules are (and have always been) presented creates the expectation that the combat rules (and related character abilities) sort of stand as an isolated set of rules, only kind of under that Rule 0. This is probably because the language stresses that those rules describe how these things are resolved, without stressing (or even mentioning) that they might not. Possibly, it is also because what the characters can do within combat has always been disproportionately represented in the rules. There is a natural tendency to want "what my character can do" to match "what my character does do."

While I agree that a lot of people see the combat rules that way, maybe that's not the way it's meant to be (if they can be said to be meant to be a certain way). What if we consider the possibility that Rule 0 is actually not applicable at all because the DM isn't changing rules? Rather, he or she is simply bringing rules into play as necessary to resolve uncertainty. The rules themselves aren't being changed. They're just being applied as needed to serve the goals of play and set aside when they are not needed. If the DM doesn't think the player's attack has a chance to miss, there is no reason to bring in the attack roll mechanic, for example. The DM isn't changing the rules the rules for attacking here, right?

That's how they're presented. They don't say "check with your DM to see what mechanic to use with x action and what y result will be." They say "action x uses this mechanic and produces result y."

They also say that players describe what they want to do and the DM narrates the results of the adventurers' action, "often" using dice to determine a result. Sometimes the action has a certain result, but sometimes it is uncertain and the DM makes the call as to whether that's the case and what mechanic to use. This could suggest the player shouldn't necessarily rely on the rules to govern their choices, but rather what they know of the campaign world, the context of the situation, and to some extent the DM. From there, they make the best decisions they can to avoid the invocation of mechanics and, if they fall short, have a decent character that can pick up the slack with bonuses and features.

Time to run my weekly Thursday night game, so I won't be back at this thread till Friday. Thanks for the discussion, all!

 

[LostSoul]

That's just the thing. Combat-as-presented is (and has been in the entire history of the game) a different game with a different set of expectations. Even though DM guidelines have always stressed (or at least mentioned) that the rules are not intended to bind the DM to them, the combat rules (and related character abilities) have never been presented this way. They are presented in black and white as universal laws (as in, "this is how the universe works") which implies an inherent degree of player agency.

I believe that D&D's combat rules came out of miniature war games, and as a result are very fictionally abstract. No one is going to spend the time to narrate the actions of every spearman on the line! Because of that, D&D has never made the details of what your character does important to combat resolution: "I attack with my greatsword" is all you need to say. This is by design, as far as I can tell; out of combat you describe how exactly you open or find that secret door, but in combat you don't. It puts the focus of the game on exploration, one of the reasons XP for GP works well. Once you start asking or providing more detail the combat system begins to break down: called shots, damage on a miss, breaking bones and otherwise maiming characters, etc.

Exploration and social interaction has always been more fictionally concrete: you can describe exactly what your PC is doing and the DM can narrate the results.

 

[GMMichael]

Replace the fictional declaration with "I try to appeal to the King's well-known mercy to spare our lives," change AC to DC, keep the life-or-death stakes, and now we're in a whole different game with different expectations? This seems odd to me. Perhaps our expectations are not in line with what the game actually is. Rather we're taking our expectations from other games and trying to apply them to D&D 5e.

Well, D&D 5e has explicit rules for combat resolution, like "attack rolls," "armor class," and "hit points." So combat in D&D isn't interchangeable with other types of encounters.

But I'm a supporter of GM narration in combat, in proportion with other situations.

 

[Thyrwyn]

The rules don't give the DM their authority. The consent of the players does. - Mallus

I'm just going to leave this here...

 

[sidonunspa]

I don't know where you get the idea any of that comes from 3e. People have been playing RPGs in an adversarial manner since they first appeared. Knights of the Dinner Table has been lampooning the excesses of that style since 1990 - long before 3e appeared.

I dont think so.. even in RPGA GMs had a lot of leeway before 3.X

with 3.X every table had to be run the same way....

 

[sidonunspa]

I want to see someone post how "unfun" it is when a GM bends the rules in the players favor...

hand waving a death (no your not dead, your knocked out) is NOT in the rules I tell you!!! off with his head!

 

[iserith]

Yes.

Okay, that sheds some light on why you take the position you do. Thanks.

The way in which rules serve us is by guaranteeing that everyone understands how things work, without having to stop so one person can explain it at every step along the way. When you ignore the rule, or when the DM changes a rule on-the-fly, you defeat the purpose of having rules in the first place.

Okay, help me understand what a typical game looks like for you:

Do you overtly ask to make checks?

If you lie to the king, do you expect that because you lied it necessarily demands a Charisma (Deception) check?

If you say you attack, do you automatically make an attack roll without prompting?

I don't consider the stakes to be that important to the situation at hand. You can certainly RP your way into a bad situation, but that's in line with expectations; if you lie to the king, and fail on the Deception check, then that's your own fault.

The situation with this rule is that you make a check, and the player expects one of two outcomes, but the DM says something unexpected happens due to a marginal success. I don't know that it's something that could really happen with a social interaction, though, because success on a social interaction is nebulously defined. There aren't exactly two outcomes that the player could expect.

Let's say you lie to the king, the DM calls for a Charisma (Deception) check and you blow that check by one or two. The DM narrates the outcome as: "The king appears to believe you, but his corrupt yet wise council adviser eyes you coldly and whispers something to his page who leaves the room immediately without looking at you. What do you do?"

Compare with you attacking a hobgoblin, missing by one or two, and getting to do damage but being disarmed.

My guess is you'd be okay with the former but not with the latter, yet they are in all ways the same adjudication - success at a cost. The DM is adjudicating consistently over those two situations. It's just one is social interaction and one is combat. I'm still struggling to see the heart of the objection here. Or is it possible you expect that the only results of your Deception check could be that the king believes you or doesn't believe you?

 

[iserith]

I think this entire thread highlights the perils of highly variable rules: Iserith made up some rules on the spot intended to hand out success with a consequence, and the rule made up is pretty bad - it has a high likelyhood of killing the player's character without them getting to have any input to the matter and almost never results in a net benefit to her or him.

Outside of combat, most rolls should build story NO MATTER THE RESULT. If you critically stuff up your diplomacy check, you make a powerful enemy. If you fail your jump check, someone has to fish you out of a pit. Usually you could choose not to try to jump that pit if you thought it was too dangerous. Given that, it's ok for those rules to be somewhat flexible, because no matter the outcome, the game is improved by it.

I think most of us would agree that an unspottable, unavoidable pit that has an even chance to instantly kill your character would not be fun, and that's sort of what the orc example is - outside of avoiding the combat entirely, you can't choose to not miss by 2 points, you can't choose to not give him the horrible trade on damage, and you can't choose for him to not attack you next round.

What's worse, is if the DM hasn't telegraphed that they are using this ruleset - that's the equivalent of being told that not only could you not spot the pit or avoid the pit, the DM explicitly stated to you that the hallway the pit is in was free of traps. You rolled a few times and he told you to stop rolling because there are no traps in the hall. And then you fell in a pit.

In short - put some consideration into free-forming combat if you are going to do it. Make sure that trades such as this are fair, not purely detrimental. Tell your players that this is the system you are going to use, and finally - and most importantly of all - let your players make choices.

Do all that, and I can see this as being a fun way to run combats.

1. I didn't make up or change a rule. I applied a resolution method from the DMG. As previously stated, it might be more interesting to have another setback instead or to offer it as a choice, but that's easily remedied. The larger point stands.

2. Math nerds disagree on whether it's a bad deal for the fighter.

3. It is not established in the example whether or not the DM said they are applying Success at a Cost. For all we know, the DM uses it frequently and the players in the example love it. I think a lot of people are seeing things only through the lens of their bias with regard to this point.

 

[iserith]

Well, D&D 5e has explicit rules for combat resolution, like "attack rolls," "armor class," and "hit points." So combat in D&D isn't interchangeable with other types of encounters.

But I'm a supporter of GM narration in combat, in proportion with other situations.

Explicit rules which are completely at the discretion of the DM to apply as he or she sees fit to resolve uncertainty. I think the method of adjudication is very much interchangeable with other types of encounters.