D&D 3E/3.5 Thoughts of a 3E/4E powergamer on starting to play 5E

[Guest 6801328]

Doesn't this assume you know the AC and hit points of the hobgoblin?? Otherwise it doesn't tell you any of that.

Although I disagree with the conclusions, I do see the difference here. In the hobgoblin case the AC and HP are fixed before the encounter begins. The only way they change is if the DM secretly increases either after the fight starts.

But with something like a skill, the DM often doesn't pick a DC until after the player choose an action, effectively allowing him to veto the action by choosing a ridiculously high DC. To prevent that the DM would literally have to anticipate every possible course of action and write down DCs, then stick with them.

Not that it would make a difference, of course: presumably the DM would give really high DCs to anything that might "spoil" his narrative.

Personally this is how I WANT my games to be run. I want the DM to be a storyteller, not just a referee. If I'm about to break the plot I want the DM to make it very hard for me to do so.

What I've seen in practice, of course, is that DM's are as tickled by creative, improbable plans as anybody else, and will happily assign reasonable DCs to narratively rich ideas.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Yeah, I get that. Character options. Some folks love 'em.

I am just utterly failing to understand how that translates to "asking for permission", though. Pemerton's posts add a little bit of clarity, but I'm still not seeing anything that looks like a sudden loss of player agency compared to previous editions.

It's not about having to ask permission, but the lack of having permission in advance.

 

[Imaro]

Although I disagree with the conclusions, I do see the difference here. In the hobgoblin case the AC and HP are fixed before the encounter begins. The only way they change is if the DM secretly increases either after the fight starts.

But with something like a skill, the DM often doesn't pick a DC until after the player choose an action, effectively allowing him to veto the action by choosing a ridiculously high DC. To prevent that the DM would literally have to anticipate every possible course of action and write down DCs, then stick with them.

Not that it would make a difference, of course: presumably the DM would give really high DCs to anything that might "spoil" his narrative.

Personally this is how I WANT my games to be run. I want the DM to be a storyteller, not just a referee. If I'm about to break the plot I want the DM to make it very hard for me to do so.

What I've seen in practice, of course, is that DM's are as tickled by creative, improbable plans as anybody else, and will happily assign reasonable DCs to narratively rich ideas.

I guess I was moreso addressing the assumption that the player has a better idea of his chances... which he only does if he knows the AC and hp's before stating he attacks (which more than likely he wouldn't). But yes I do get that it's created beforehand and that is a difference, I'm just trying to understand what that difference means at a practical level.

 

[TwoSix]

Good post, and helps clarify things for me.

Ultimately, though, doesn't it amount to either the same thing, as the DM adjudicates what features are available? Either that or a contentious arms race that spoils the fun for everyone?

"I'll use Dramatic Swing..."
"Sorry, there's nothing to swing from."
"Where's the light source."
"Magical lights set in the ceiling."
"(grumble)Remind me to first ask for a description of the room next time"
"(grumble)Remind me to never embellish any rooms in case some rules lawyer wants to bypass my carefully designed encounter."

Well, sure, but that's kind of the point. If a player has an ability like Dramatic Swing, the narration of the fiction may have to change to incorporate it. Those magical lights might have a convenient hook. Or there may be some other fixture holding the lights up.

I do realize, though, that this concept can often cause snags with use of older D&D tropes, which often revolve around the gameplay impact of environmental minutiae.

 

[pemerton]

Ok, if I'm reading this correctly, what you are saying is essentially that if a player finds an "exploit"...a weird edge case in the rules, or an unanticipated synergy between abilities, or simply the use of an ability in a setting in which it wouldn't logically work...the 4e resolution is to let the player use the exploit, and the 5e resolution is to have the DM say, "Sorry, that's just not going to work in this case."

Is that a fair summary?

Not remotely. To use non-D&D examples, I'm talking about the difference between a game like Vampire:The Masquerade and a game like Dungeon World. 2nd ed AD&D is more like V:tM (down to the point of endorsing the same "golden rule", that the GM may supsend the action resolution rules at any point in the interests of "a good game). 4e is more like DW.

5e is more ambiguous than any of the above-mentioned systems, but on balance seems to me to be closer to the 2nd ed AD&D/V:tM end of the spectrum.

While in practice I found this to be true, this is not actually true by the rules. See D&D 4e Rules Compendium page 9 where it says the DM can override the results of a check for the good of the story. Further, in the section on skill challenges, it talks about how skill checks should never be a substitute for what the DM thinks is good roleplaying. Further, there is a blurb in one of the books that talks about how the DM can say a power simply doesn't work in a given fictional situation. (I can't recall which book this is, but it's a thing. I've had this discussion before with regard to D&D 4e. Perhaps someone else recalls it.)

You are correct about the 4e RC. It is different in wording from the 4e PHB: here are the two extracts (PHB p 8, RC p 9):

* Adventure Builder: The DM creates adventures (or selects premade adventures) for you and the other players to play through. . . .

* Referee: When it’s not clear what ought to happen next, the DM decides how to apply the rules and adjudicate the story.

* Adventure Builder: The DM creates adventures, or selects published ones, for the other players to experience. . . .

* Referee: The DM decides how to apply the game rules and guides the story. If the rules don’t cover a situation, the DM determines what to do. At times, the DM might alter or even ignore the result of a die roll if doing so benefits the story.​

At the time I posted that the RC wording (adventures as an "experience" rather than something played through; the GM not only "adjudicating the story" but also suspending the action resolution mechanics "to benefit the story") was a retrograde step from the point of the overall design logic and play of 4e, and I still take that view.

The issue of adjudicating fictional positioning and the use of PC abilities is more subtle. To give a non-D&D example, in Marvel Heroic RP before a player can successfully declare an action (say, the use of strength to rip a streetlight out of the ground and clock a bad guy over the head with it) the GM has to be satisfied that the action declaration is "credible" given the abilities of the PC. (The example given is credible for the thing, but probably not Captain America.) HeroQuest uses a similar "credibility test", with genre considerations as the main constraint (so if Joe the cowboy has a speed rating of 17, and his horse has a speed rating of 8, Joe's player is nevertheless not permitted to declare, as an action, "I try and outrun my horse", unless the genre is weird and wacky westerns).

In my 4e game I also use a theme-and-genre credibility test, with the tiers (heroic, paragon, epic) being the main guide, as these position the PCs in the fiction relevant to the main antagonists and background characters (temporal rulers, demon lords, gods etc).

But in all these systems, once the credibility test has been applied the DCs are set based on a table (for 4e, HQrevised and DW) or via a mechanically determined opposed roll (for MHRP), And to the extent that the game is properly designed (and I posted an example upthread where 4e breaks down at the upper end), the players have a known chance of succeeding at this DC, as well as a resource suite to bring to bear in pursuit of that.

I think 5e could be drifted in this direction, but I'm not sure that it starts there.

 

[Guest 6801328]

It's not about having to ask permission, but the lack of having permission in advance.

Is it possible you mean, "Permission with guaranteed success?" Because you do have permission in advance in 5e! You may try to swan dive off of cliffs and try to land in the beer barrel. You may try to talk a dragon out of its treasure. You may try to sneak past the squadron of alert guards in the brightly lit room. You may try to stomp on the ground so hard that you send shockwaves that knock your enemies down. You can try all of these things. In general I try to avoid saying there's a right way and a wrong way to play, but if your DM says, "No, you can't do that" to any of the above, he's playing wrong. THAT would be loss of player agency, in my book. You should be free to try by rolling some dice. And the DM should be free to set the bar high.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

Is it possible you mean, "Permission with guaranteed success?" Because you do have permission in advance in 5e! You may try to swan dive off of cliffs and try to land in the beer barrel. You may try to talk a dragon out of its treasure. You may try to sneak past the squadron of alert guards in the brightly lit room. You may try to stomp on the ground so hard that you send shockwaves that knock your enemies down. You can try all of these things. In general I try to avoid saying there's a right way and a wrong way to play, but if your DM says, "No, you can't do that" to any of the above, he's playing wrong. THAT would be loss of player agency, in my book. You should be free to try by rolling some dice. And the DM should be free to set the bar high.

Not necessarily success being determined in advance, but the resolution being determined in advance and known to the player in advance. I can do most anything in 5E, but the resolution isn't likely to be specified in advance and/or known to me.

 

[pemerton]

Skill challenges simply replaced approaching a scenario organically with throwing enough die rolls at it to be able to say "I win". It was fairly unsatisfying.

The results of successfully hiding are readily apparent. You are not detected. What that means in the overall situation depends on the scenario. It might mean you gain entrance to someplace secretly. It might mean that you get to listen or observe something that other parties are unaware of. " I made 5 die rolls of difficulty X what do I win?" isn't a very satisfying final result of any action.

You've posted this before, and I've replied before: I get the impression that you don't have much familiarity with how non-combat closed scene resolution mechanics (of which the skill challenge is an example; other examples are found in Burning Wheel - say, the Duel of Wits - and in HeroWars/Quest and in Marvel Heroic RP) are meant to work.

Here are some links to actual play examples of skill challenges. You'll see that in all of them fictional positioning is crucial to action declaration, as per the DMG discussion of skill challenges (at pp 72 ("More so than perhaps any other kind of encounter, a skill challenge is defined by its context in an adventure"), 75 ("t’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation") and elsewhere).

The key feature of the skill challenge, or its analogues in other systems, is that each successful check obliges the GM to move the fiction in the direction desired by the player, with ultimate success meaning the player (and therefore his/her PC) achieves whatever was at stake in the fictional situation.

In terms of combat mechanics, D&D has always been like this: a successful hit reduces hit points, and hence takes the players closer to success (zero hp). There is a contrast here with (say) Rolemaster or Runequest combat, in which a successful hit might not move the fiction forward at all (eg if the NPC makes a successful parry check (RQ), or if the hit does only a handful of concussion hits damage and the player rolls 01-05 on the crit roll (RM)).

Skill challenges are a device for applying this sort of closed resolution, with finality generated via players' successful checks, to non-combat resolution.

 

[pkt77242]

It's not about having to ask permission, but the lack of having permission in advance.

But you do have permission in advance. You have permission for class and racial abilities (and skills and feats). If you have a half-way decent DM you should have permission to do just about anything, though the DC may be placed very high as other have pointed out. I believe that 5e is about saying yes but placing an appropriate DC to it, and while you can't really know in advance what all the DCs will be because every situation is different (take the chandelier swinging, how high is the chandelier, how far do you want to swing, etc), and that is where rulings not rules comes in.

Do you really want a known DC for every type of situation in which you might have to swing from a chandelier, so that you can know in advance your chance for success?

ETA: You don't really seem to be talking about permission more than you want to know the probability of success in advance, correct?

 

[thecasualoblivion]

But you do have permission in advance. You have permission for class and racial abilities (and skills and feats). If you have a half-way decent DM you should have permission to do just about anything, though the DC may be placed very high as other have pointed out. I believe that 5e is about saying yes but placing an appropriate DC to it, and while you can't really know in advance what all the DCs will be because every situation is different (take the chandelier swinging, how high is the chandelier, how far do you want to swing, etc), and that is where rulings not rules comes in.

Do you really want a known DC for every type of situation in which you might have to swing from a chandelier, so that you can know in advance your chance for success?

ETA: You don't really seem to be talking about permission more than you want to know the probability of success in advance, correct?

A 5E character has far less of these abilities than a 4E or 3E character. The problem for 5E is a matter of degree.

Permission mostly applies to concrete "X happens" abilities, powers and spells. For skill checks, it does come down to probability, but that probability is far less transparent to the player in 5E than it would be in 3E or 4E. Again, this is a matter of degree.