D&D 5E Is Neil Gaiman Wrong?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I thought we were going to be discussing his thoughts on George R. R. Martin, which he's probably mostly right on, even though Martin is frustrating as hell.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I thought we were going to be discussing his thoughts on George R. R. Martin, which he's probably mostly right on, even though Martin is frustrating as hell.

These two things can be simultaneously true:

1. GRRM is not our .... beach.*

2. GRRM has no pages.


*I have long advocated for the Los Angeles Lakers to change their names to the Beaches, both because it is more appropriate to the town, and because when the team is introduced, the announcer would say, "What's up, Beaches!"

I need to get out more.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I just remembered that the Chainmail fantasy supplement was based on a Tolkien supplement for historical wargames created by Leonard Patt.

EDIT: It had almost exactly the same rules for dragon killing: roll an 11+ on 2d6.

 

[Bohandas]

That was only 50%. Totally not a TPK.

Put it this way, the vast majority of the superheroes in that movie died. Including, IIRC, Spiderman, Vision, Loki, Dr.Strange, and all of the Guardians of the Galaxy

 

[Bohandas]

I've played a couple of campaigns up to level 20 now, they don't feel like top tier super heroes to me. They haven't saved the galaxy, they aren't gods who walk among men.

But there's a wide variety in the superhero category. Are we talking Luke Cage or Superman? Hawkeye or The Flash?

Ideally they progress through different degrees of superheroness. Your barbarian starts out as Mr.Furious from Mystery Men/Flaming Carrot, transitions through being The Beast from Unbreakable 3, and eventually becomes a heavily nerfed knockoff of the hulk at epic levels.

EDIT:
And at high normal levels they're Cú Chulainn

 

[Doug McCrae]

Why does the hero defeat the dragon in a fairy story? Is it because he's better at fighting or is it because it makes for a better story?

To think in terms of damage, hit points, armour class, accuracy, movement rates, ranges, etc is to think like a wargame.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Well, elephants are thought to be about as smart as a person (just differently smart, so no pachyderm projectile weapons). An average intelligence (or smarter dragon) doesn't have to be "demi-human" kind of smart. It can still be "dragon smart" and not necessarily recognizable as an "intelligent creature" from the self centered perspective of two-legs.

You must be careful not to mix up INT with WIS. To make it a bit easier: Int is book smart. Wis is street smart. You could argue about that but it is about how it is handled generally. Make use of your surrounding to get along is wisdom (survival) . Drawing from your acquired knowledge of plants is Int (nature).

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Why does the hero defeat the dragon in a fairy story? Is it because he's better at fighting or is it because it makes for a better story?

To think in terms of damage, hit points, armour class, accuracy, movement rates, ranges, etc is to think like a wargame.

When this hero is fighting the dragon, is he thinking that he's going to win because it makes for a better story?

Or is he thinking things like "How can I avoid the fearsome beast's fiery breath?" and "How can I put something sharp and pointy into a tiny gap in those scales?"

I think it likely that Bard the Bowman spared a thought or two for armor, accuracy, movement, and range.

These mechanics that you keep calling "wargame"-style also appear in many, many other kinds of game, and are not in the slightest incompatible with games that are intended to send their players on adventure stories set in magical otherworlds -- i.e. "fairy tales" as the Chesterton/Lewis/Tolkien crowd understood the term. Whether you want your fairy-tale simulator to take a simulationist or narrativist approach is a matter of preference, with tradeoffs either way. If you take the simulationist approach like D&D, arguably you're better equipping your players to actually get into their roles -- they're thinking the things their heroes would be thinking vis a vis outfighting a giant death lizard, not thinking about what makes for a good story* -- but as a direct consequence of that, they might lose, or otherwise get a bad story.

But all that is beside the point. In both simulationist and narrativist fairy-tale simulators, dragons should be beatable because otherwise you wouldn't be able to run that most archetypical of fairy tales, which seems like a poor design decision. And you've said a couple of times now that dragons are beatable by heroes even in wargames. So, again, why are we talking about wargame rules here?

*Unless of course they are playing not Bard but a bard.

 

[WBruce]

Thank you all for this discussion. It was very helpful and informing. I hold myself to participate because I was trying to get a broader range of opinions, and I would probably ended up directing things to my own issue (is that even possible on the internet?)

Very satisfied with what I learned here.

 

[shadowoflameth]

There's no easy way for one foot soldier to destroy a tank either. The dragon is 800 years old for a reason, and his very high AC, damage, resistance and saves make it hard to affect him. By the time players are 17th level or higher though, they are wielding spells and powers that make them a credible threat to the dragon. If a tank is rolling down the street, even a thousand foot soldiers with rifles aren't going to stop it, but one mine, or one guy calling in an airstrike might. In our game the end boss of a campaign was a very powerful dragon against 20th level characters with epic boons. The dragon made every save, and the party failed every save in the battle but they still won because they were wielding very potent offense and because there were five of them.