D&D 5E D&D compared to Bespoke Genre TTRPGs

[loverdrive]

Regarding Fate (since I don't know it and you said it was very hackable), does it have the following and if not how difficult would it be to add them:

1. Armor as both damage avoidance and damage reduction.
2. An abstract measure of damage/exhaustion (hit points in 5e), and...
3. A concrete measure of bodily damage (vitality points, injuries,)

My group will no longer play games that don't incorporate these mechanics and I have to hack them into any system we play. It was very easy in 5e. How difficult would it be to do in fate?

It undeniably has 2 (Stress, used for "Damn that was a close call!") and 3 (Consequences, going from Mild to Moderate to Severe to Extreme, like "Broken ribs" or whatever) out of the box, and kind of has 1, but in a bit of an unorthodox way.

The character in Fate is, hm, "digitized" by three main things -- Aspects (each is a phrase briefly describing a character, like "Armored like a damn tank"), Skills (things you roll -- Evade, Fight, all the familiar stuff) and Stunts (special abilities that allow to break the rules under specific circumstances, or, if you're boring, give you +2 bonus, for example: "Wall of Steel: once per session, when you suffer a physical consequence while wearing armour, put an * near it -- it can be treated like a Mild one, regardless of its severity.").

Damage works very simple: the attacker, well, attacks using one of their skills (in a physical fight, probably Fight or Shoot), and the attacked defends with another skill (in a physical fight, probably Evade) -- they both roll and the attacker inflicts amount of Stress equal to the difference between the rolls. So, if the bad guy rolled 3 on their attack, and you've rolled 1 on Evade, you suffer 2 damage.

Then you can spend a Fate point if there's an Aspect that can help you. Oh, you're Armored like a damn tank? Sure, add +2 to your roll, no damage to you. That's assuming that the bad guy can actually do something to you. If you're wearing a full plate and they have only their bare fists, by the Golden Rule there's no need to touch dice at all.

There's also a thing that everyone forgets for some reason, probably because it's explained piss poorly in modern iterations of Fate. You can invoke aspects for effect. "Nah, ain't gonna work. I'm Armored like a damn tank, he won't be able to slash me with his sword." -- you hand a Fate point to the GM -- "His sword just bounces off."

You can also create your armour as a character with it's own aspects, skills (probably, only one: "Armor", lol) and stunts... But I don't think that armour warrants such measures.


And, yeah, you can just homebrew special rules for handling armour, like slapping a DR on it and it will work fine without any side effects. Unlike, say, 5E, where you'd need to address the fact that fighters don't have a way to do spike damage and suffer two-three times more penalty to their damage than rogues.

And that is why some love it. To each his or her own.

Of course form one perspective you are agreeing with the premise that 5e is hackable in this statement. But I know that is not what you are intending to say.

Well, any tabletop game is hackable, there's no one to stop you from modifying the rules. The difference between easily hackable systems and not easily hackable systems is amount of unintended consequences that you'll need to address.

 

[dave2008]

That's a serious case of believing what you want to believe, mate, come on.

I'm able to see things from multiple perspectives. Always been a gift of mine. Sometime I need a little encouragement, but not usually very much.

However,...

The reality is that many D&D groups house-rule stuff in crazy, crazy ways, whether they work or make any sense at all. No other game has ever suffered from this as severely - it's not because D&D actually is easy to hack, it's because D&D encourages people to make up rules (and has done in all editions except 3E and 4E) in the actual rulebook. If D&D was genuinely "easy" to hack it would be less of a problem because most of the changes would merely be logical extensions of existing rules approaches - this would be true for most of the generic RPGs, such as those mentioned by Umbran. Instead with D&D it tends to be idiocy that stems from people not even understanding the rules. This is amazingly obvious when you get "what are your house rules?" threads on reddit (or even here, at least a few years ago), where literally 40-60% or sometimes even higher of the "house rules" stem from people not knowing the rules, often making up house rules to attempt to "fill gaps" which aren't actually gaps at all - just the person making up the rules doesn't even know the rules.

That's a serious case of believing what you want to believe, mate, come on!

 

[Umbran]

There's also a thing that everyone forgets for some reason, probably because it's explained piss poorly in modern iterations of Fate. You can invoke aspects for effect. "Nah, ain't gonna work. I'm Armored like a damn tank, he won't be able to slash me with his sword." -- you hand a Fate point to the GM -- "His sword just bounces off."

That does not exist in the current Fate Core SRD. You cannot spend a Fate Point to invoke an Aspect to completely negate an action.

Spoiler: From the FATE Core SRD

In order to invoke an aspect, explain why the aspect is relevant, spend a fate point, and you can choose one of these benefits:

• Take a +2 on your current skill roll after you’ve rolled the dice.
• Reroll all your dice.
• Pass a +2 benefit to another character’s roll, if it’s reasonable that the aspect you’re invoking would be able to help.
• Add +2 to any source of passive opposition, if it’s reasonable that the aspect you’re invoking could contribute to making things more difficult. You can also use this to create passive opposition at Fair (+2) if there wasn’t going to be any.

In previous versions, you could spend a Fate Point to establish a minor fact (like, "there's a chandelier for me to swing from") but I have never seen anyone use that to say, "The enemy action fails outright."

These days, you'd have a Stunt, like, "Since I am Armored Like a Tank, once per session I may ignore one melee attack."

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And, yeah, you can just homebrew special rules for handling armour, like slapping a DR on it and it will work fine without any side effects. Unlike, say, 5E, where you'd need to address the fact that fighters don't have a way to do spike damage and suffer two-three times more penalty to their damage than rogues.

Yikes.

Okay, so...not really. In play, it's quite clear that they don't. I know because feats are an easy way to modify enemies and make them stand out, so heavily armored enemies often have Heavy Armor Mastery, and thus DR, in my games.

DR is the same as having a fairly easy source of THP, or direct healing, in terms of balance. Because it's at will, it has to be a lower amount than THP or healing would be, but that's easy to work out with any familiarity with the system.

5e DnD just isn't nearly as impacted by changes to the system as you think it is. Speaking from rather a lot of experience.

 

[loverdrive]

That does not exist in the current Fate Core SRD. You cannot spend a Fate Point to invoke an Aspect to completely negate an action.

Just checked, what SotC referred to as "Invoke for effect" is pretty much a compel now, though compel has different implications.

Maybe it was the way how the guy who introduced me to SotC ran the things and not an intended usage, but NPC Invocation for effect compel like "Turns out, she's actually a *Cyborg ninja from far future! She moves like a lightning and before you even can comprehend what's happening, you're on the ground and she slowly cocks her revolver with a naughty word-eating grin. What ya gonna do?" feels like a normal thing for me and I can't see why the players can't do same things.

Okay, so...not really. In play, it's quite clear that they don't. I know because feats are an easy way to modify enemies and make them stand out, so heavily armored enemies often have Heavy Armor Mastery, and thus DR, in my games.

DR is the same as having a fairly easy source of THP, or direct healing, in terms of balance. Because it's at will, it has to be a lower amount than THP or healing would be, but that's easy to work out with any familiarity with the system.

That's because 3 is barely any DR, of course it doesn't make any significant difference. Like, 6 damage or 3 damage, who cares. Even DR5, on the other hand, is more significant, and something like DR10 is debilitating for a fighter and just annoying for a rogue.

HAM is fine (and, honestly, very weak), but using DRs as a way to distinguish between different kinds of armour creates additional problems.

 

[Umbran]

Regarding Fate (since I don't know it and you said it was very hackable), does it have the following and if not how difficult would it be to add them:

1. Armor as both damage avoidance and damage reduction.

In Fate, there's no separate "to hit" and "damage" rolls, so avoidance vs reduction is not a meaningful distinction. You might be Quick as Lightning (damage avoidance) or have Ablative Armor (damage reduction) or both, and they'll be effective.

1. An abstract measure of damage/exhaustion (hit points in 5e), and...

Yep. We call it "Stress".

1. A concrete measure of bodily damage (vitality points, injuries,)

In Fate, these are Consequences that can be styled as injuries. Minor ones clear quickly, Severe ones take longer, even. And they do impact your performance. You don't walk around on a Broken Ankle without it getting in the way.

 

[dave2008]

Thank you for the detailed response!

It undeniably has 2 (Stress, used for "Damn that was a close call!") and 3 (Consequences, going from Mild to Moderate to Severe to Extreme, like "Broken ribs" or whatever) out of the box, and kind of has 1, but in a bit of an unorthodox way.

Interesting. What is the difference in the granularity between Stress and Consequences, if there is one. Is it possible to improve one or both? If so, how much?

The character in Fate is, hm, "digitized" by three main things -- Aspects (each is a phrase briefly describing a character, like "Armored like a damn tank"), Skills (things you roll -- Evade, Fight, all the familiar stuff) and Stunts (special abilities that allow to break the rules under specific circumstances, or, if you're boring, give you +2 bonus, for example: "Wall of Steel: once per session, when you suffer a physical consequence while wearing armour, put an * near it -- it can be treated like a Mild one, regardless of its severity.").

Skills and stunts sound interesting, Aspects less so, but I get it.

Damage works very simple: the attacker, well, attacks using one of their skills (in a physical fight, probably Fight or Shoot), and the attacked defends with another skill (in a physical fight, probably Evade) -- they both roll and the attacker inflicts amount of Stress equal to the difference between the rolls. So, if the bad guy rolled 3 on their attack, and you've rolled 1 on Evade, you suffer 2 damage.

I can get behind that.

Then you can spend a Fate point if there's an Aspect that can help you. Oh, you're Armored like a damn tank? Sure, add +2 to your roll, no damage to you.

OK, I knew I didn't like the sound of Aspects. Not really my style, but I am sure it works for some. Interestingly it is very similar to a mechanic I am developing called Authority (and similar to other Hero Point mechanics). It is for an Immortals 5e game. This type of mechanic makes sense for god to me, not so much for mortals. But we all like different things.

That's assuming that the bad guy can actually do something to you. If you're wearing a full plate and they have only their bare fists, by the Golden Rule there's no need to touch dice at all.

I like the golden rule, but not the example provided. Is that an actual rule or just an example you made up? I mean I can think of many ways to injury a armored person with my bare hands. I assume this doesn't apply to creatures with claws, teeth, and such.

There's also a thing that everyone forgets for some reason, probably because it's explained piss poorly in modern iterations of Fate. You can invoke aspects for effect. "Nah, ain't gonna work. I'm Armored like a damn tank, he won't be able to slash me with his sword." -- you hand a Fate point to the GM -- "His sword just bounces off."

Personally not a fan of such mechanics, but it seems easily hackable

You can also create your armour as a character with it's own aspects, skills (probably, only one: "Armor", lol) and stunts... But I don't think that armour warrants such measures.

I'm not following this, but I am sure it would make sense if I really knew the rules!

And, yeah, you can just homebrew special rules for handling armour, like slapping a DR on it and it will work fine without any side effects. Unlike, say, 5E, where you'd need to address the fact that fighters don't have a way to do spike damage and suffer two-three times more penalty to their damage than rogues.

We have very simple armor with DR rules (AC still applies) that work well for us (and can even benefit the fighter). But we also have simple rules for spike damage (just trade extra attack for extra damage)!

Well, any tabletop game is hackable, there's no one to stop you from modifying the rules. The difference between easily hackable systems and not easily hackable systems is amount of unintended consequences that you'll need to address.

Well that is your definition. For me it would be closer too: how quickly can we make the game more fun for our group.

 

[dave2008]

That's because 3 is barely any DR, of course it doesn't make any significant difference. Like, 6 damage or 3 damage, who cares. Even DR5, on the other hand, is more significant, and something like DR10 is debilitating for a fighter and just annoying for a rogue.

DR is a bad example as it is really easy to do meaningfully in 5e.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Just checked, what SotC referred to as "Invoke for effect" is pretty much a compel now, though compel has different implications.

Maybe it was the way how the guy who introduced me to SotC ran the things and not an intended usage, but NPC Invocation for effect compel like "Turns out, she's actually a *Cyborg ninja from far future! She moves like a lightning and before you even can comprehend what's happening, you're on the ground and she slowly cocks her revolver with a naughty word-eating grin. What ya gonna do?" feels like a normal thing for me and I can't see why the players can't do same things.


That's because 3 is barely any DR, of course it doesn't make any significant difference. Like, 6 damage or 3 damage, who cares. Even DR5, on the other hand, is more significant, and something like DR10 is debilitating for a fighter and just annoying for a rogue.

HAM is fine (and, honestly, very weak), but using DRs as a way to distinguish between different kinds of armour creates additional problems.

Anything with big numbers you do to any system that uses math is going to Bork things. That isn’t even a potential point of discussion.

However, DR that is within the realm of what protective healing is allowed to do in 5e makes a difference on the player side, but it’s side effects are very minor.

Stuff like an effect that makes the fighter less effective against a given enemy but doesn’t have as much effect on the rogue is fine, as long as it isn’t big numbers worth of difference. The fighter also has more benefit from damage bonuses than the rogue, and the game survives just fine when you do things like adding a feat that gives +proficiency bonus to damage rolls. Tangentially, soemthing like that is really good because it gives an edge to monks and fighters without significantly boosting the most powerful classes.

Again, it’s not hard to tinker with 5e. You just keep the math roughly within the band of the phb options, and you’ll be fine.

 

[Umbran]

Just checked, what SotC referred to as "Invoke for effect" is pretty much a compel now, though compel has different implications.

So, I don't really agree, but this thread is not about the details of how to run Fate, so I'm not going to argue here.