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

[prabe]

But I'm sure a 5e D&D GM could call for some sort of check - DEX? INT? - to see how well a PC cooks a dish.

Given that the Chef Feat lets you boost Wisdom, I'd expect a GM who's looked in Tasha's to make it a Wisdom check--though Dex might work if one needed to fabricate some vegetables or bone poultry in a hurry, and Int would certainly make sense to recall a specific recipe.

I'm ... assaying humor, not arguing. Promise.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Ok, I'm really confused here... @hawkeyefan just listed off a ton of mechanics based around giving the PC's more and more control and competency... what am I missing here? Is it an illusion so that the players feel this way but mechanically it isn't the case?

There's a difference between competency and agency; if you were to just add +5 to all d20 rolls by players you'd add a lot of competency but very little agency in D&D.

Low level Blades characters have a lot of agency to try things (including flashbacks) but a lot of what they try is going to blow up in their face and badly so. In D&D a failed roll is just a failed roll unless it was specifically dangerous (don't fail an athletics roll to jump between buildings...) In Blades every failed roll (and at low level even most of your successes) will put you in a more dangerous spot or do harm. And you aren't going to have many clean successes. So you start off living on the edge.

 

[Campbell]

Blades is at heart a game about pressing your luck in the face of great odds. It's hard scrabble. In the short term you often have the tools to shift the odds in your favor (not control outcomes), but in the long term things are more difficult. PC death is fairly rare, but injuries, narrative consequences, stress (which can lead to ongoing trauma), heat (which can lead to getting arrested and doing time) tend to add up. In Blades you are almost always punching up so when things go sideways they tend to do so in fairly big ways.

 

[Imaro]

I haven't seen that as a main argument at all. I've seen that Blades has support for this type of play and D&D does not. The competence of Blades characters is assumed in a way that isn't true in D&D, yes, but this isn't a primary driving differentiator -- it's a detail that goes into the mix. However, there's a difference between being competent and the nearly mythical perfection that you stated in that paragraph.

Competence in Blades is more represented by succeeding but with a cost.

Eh, like usual let's agree to disagree. D&D has support for it... whether those tools are good or bad, extensive or not is something we can discuss but I don't think you can deny it has tools that can be used to run and play in heists. The fact that you can't see that means we probably won't get far in discussing it.

 

[Imaro]

Blades is at heart a game about pressing your luck in the face of great odds. It's hard scrabble. In the short term you often have the tools to shift the odds in your favor (not control outcomes), but in the long term things are more difficult. PC death is fairly rare, but injuries, narrative consequences, heat (which can lead to getting arrested and doing time) tend to add up. In Blades you are almost always punching up so when things go sideways they tend to do so in fairly big ways.

So it could blow up in your face at the end of the heist (and by blow up I mean end up in a battle, be arrested, etc.)... this was specifically called out by @Hussar as something that made D&D ill-suited for heist adventures but BitD (because it didn't happen) better... and I thought the post by @hawkeyefan was at least in some part backing this assertion up.

EDIT: I'm really trying to get a handle on what type of heist stories BitD is designed for... what would be the quintessential BitD heist movie or show it emulates?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Eh, like usual let's agree to disagree. D&D has support for it... whether those tools are good or bad, extensive or not is something we can discuss but I don't think you can deny it has tools that can be used to run and play in heists. The fact that you can't see that means we probably won't get far in discussing it.

I keep seeing this "D&D has support" but never an example of that support. What rules does D&D feature that supports a heist (or other such play)? The only thing D&D has is the skill system, which is absolutely "the GM will tell you how this works." This isn't support.

 

[pemerton]

Given that the Chef Feat lets you boost Wisdom, I'd expect a GM who's looked in Tasha's to make it a Wisdom check--though Dex might work if one needed to fabricate some vegetables or bone poultry in a hurry, and Int would certainly make sense to recall a specific recipe.

I'm ... assaying humor, not arguing. Promise.

I didn't know that 5e D&D has a Chef feat until you mentioned it. I just Googled it and learned that, in addition to the WIS boost you mentioned, it gives a way of healing hp, a way of granting temp hp, and proficiency in cooking utensils.

It doesn't seem to tell us anything about whether or not the character should do better in a cooking competition than another character without the feat. That would be something the GM would just have to decide, I guess.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So it could blow up in your face at the end of the heist (and by blow up I mean end up in a battle, be arrested, etc.)... this was specifically called out by @Hussar as something that made D&D ill-suited for heist adventures but BitD (because it didn't happen) better... and I thought the post by @hawkeyefan was at least in some part backing this assertion up.

No, this is thinking like D&D, where the stakes on a given roll are entirely up to the GM. In Blades, one roll cannot make everything go sideways as a feature -- what's staked on that roll may. And how you stake a roll is clearly laid out in the rules of the game, is entirely open to the table, and it would be uncommon to have such a single roll wreck a score. That's just not how the game builds things out (although it is something I've seen in D&D, where everything comes down to a single roll).

 

[Imaro]

I keep seeing this "D&D has support" but never an example of that support. What rules does D&D feature that supports a heist (or other such play)? The only thing D&D has is the skill system, which is absolutely "the GM will tell you how this works." This isn't support.

As one example...the simple fact that it has rules for stealth supports heist stories. Again if you don't see that as support (whether minimal or not is a matter of discussion) there's nothing for us to really talk about concerning this.

 

[Imaro]

No, this is thinking like D&D, where the stakes on a given roll are entirely up to the GM. In Blades, one roll cannot make everything go sideways as a feature -- what's staked on that roll may. And how you stake a roll is clearly laid out in the rules of the game, is entirely open to the table, and it would be uncommon to have such a single roll wreck a score. That's just not how the game builds things out (although it is something I've seen in D&D, where everything comes down to a single roll).

I didn't say one roll... I asked if the heist could end like this. It was the result that other posters were claiming just didn't happen in BitD