I fully understand the good enough for government sentiment, but we have seen hashed out over this thread for last 3-4 pages is not a good enough for government work argument. We have seen people argue that D&D is in fact better at the things other games use as their selling points. That it is just good or better at what other games set out to do. I just do not get why there is so much resistance to the conceit that different games do different things well and should be valued for it even if those games are not to our individual tastes.
The bolded text is directly false.
And I think that is pretty much the beginning and end of this topic right there
D&D does some things well, and it does other things less well, or simply doesn't offer any capability to do them at all. This is not simply a question of things like "we have no rules for simulating a character hacking a computer." THAT would be perfectly simple to add, and games like MA/GW, 4e GW, d20 Modern, etc. have all done so with ease. Instead the challenge here is more with
process of play. D&D allocates roles at the table to different participants, and provides associated process for them to use. This is structured to provide a certain type of game, and not other types of game. These sorts of game design elements also permeate other aspects of game design. While you can certainly graft different things together, a design where specific processes are envisaged from the start will play better in many cases.
Beyond that, the concept of a power curve, PCs which level up from relatively weak to incredibly powerful really works well for the type of game it is. It won't necessarily work well with other types of game. For example most supers games don't really include a progression of character power, or at least not much of one. Likewise with most games which are set in more 'real world' types of settings, James Bond doesn't have 100 hit points, so to speak, or at least that mechanic doesn't capture the genre very well.
Obviously you COULD make games that use some elements of the d20/D&D rules to an extent to make other games. d20 in the 3e era was an attempt to do that. I'd note that most of the games which were written/ported to that core set of rules ended up not going far. A bunch of shops/designers dropped a d20 variation of their games, but in almost every case they went back to other mechanics. Maybe some of that was business decisions, but I think most of it reflects an inability to really get a generic set of rules like that to produce the desired game experience. Other 'general systems', d6, BRP, GURPS, have all run into the same pattern. Some games work well under them, but most are improved by using custom bespoke mechanics.
This is a bit tangential to the point, though. It is easier in some systems than in others to add new mechanics to do a specific thing, that then do not impact the rest of the game after you've done that thing. We can see this by just looking at 5e combat vs 5e interaction. It is easier to add mechanics and play dynamics to interaction than to combat, because one is more detailed and prescribed than the other.
But more importantly to the OP, none of this creates a scenario wherein it is helpful, if I say, "I would like advice for certain elemtns of my Space Fantasy! setting for an upcoming "Casablanca In Space!" adventure I'm going to run", for you to say, "Don't even try, it won't work."
I'm less talking about specific party makeup than you are I believe.
I'm not talking about specific party makeup at all.
What I'm talking about is that D&D features an abundance of focused archetypes with niches and in most of the D&D's history (4e D&D omitted), the lack of functional Conflict Resolution mechanics has served to only heighten the lack of breadth that D&D Heroes are capable of.
The game doesn't lack functional conflict resolution mechanics.
This is why in 4e, Fail Forward + Success w/ Complications + Skill Challenge Conflict Resolution + the system maths + easy to obtain rerolls/augments for Skill Powers made 4e Heroes hugely broadly competent. The Fighter PCs in my game were fantastic in climbing walls and absolutely capable of rousing speeches to ensure support from a king and they could sneak as well. This is because of the intersection of all of that stuff above.
But you can do all that in 5e, as well. The DMG includes suggestions for combining Ability Score and Skill differently to suit the fiction. ie let the fighter use wisdom rather than Charisma to give a rousing speech. he's not charismatic, but he understands people. Not only can the roll be Wisdom (Persuasion), or even just Wisdom (Insight), it could be Wisdom (Proficiency due to being from this town and knowing the people, or from being a Folk Hero, or from being a Veteran of the war that left this area embittered against the person the fighter is rousing them against, etc. Again, this is another area where the rules allow a thing, but don't highlight it like they should, don't organize it well, and use examples in place of explanation to an excessive degree.
The system math is friendlier to broad competence than 4e's was. I was talking about reducing the math progression (success rate math and HP/Damage math) ten years ago on the wotc forums for this exact reason. Having a decent Wisdom makes you not suck at Wisdom checks. Proficiency makes you good at them. You don't have to do anything to stay good, and you can convince an epic dragon as a level 1 character.
But if you remove the stuff that made those things work, then you're left with serious niche protection and heroes lacking broad competence.
How do you get around that?
Build a party to a very specific niche (eg all Stealth archetypes - Rogue, Ranger, Monk, Dex Bard) and deploy that "Score (to use Blades parlance) Strategy" repeatedly. Or you could sub Monk and Dex Bard for Dex Barb and Druid and you can reliably defeat Stealth and Wilderness Exploration and Journeys conflicts.
But overwhelmingly...D&D is going to look like A Team w/ a D&Dified version of plan/approach > conflict with the enemy > complications > shootout/explosions > getaway.
In your experience, perhaps.
See my post directly above. A game needs much more than just Fail Forward and Success w/ Complications to work (hence why I didn't like 13th Age...which, its Fail Forward approach is very similar to what a 5e game would put forth using the Basic PDF). There are multiple integral parts that turn Fail Forward from dysfunctional (no real mechanical cost for failure, impossible to achieve Loss Con and have story loss imposed) to functional (exciting conflicts with broadly competent heroes who absolutely are risking things and can still lose).
It may need those things for
you to enjoy using fail forward and success with complications. It doesn't need to mechanize them in order for those tools to work.
what's the answer to the question 'how do you bribe a guard?' 5e provides no answer, just says figure it out GM and tell your players. This whole 'canonical' bit is a red herring.
Except it does provide several answers. That isn't any less "rules for doing XYZ", it's just a different style of rules than it uses for casting sleep or shooting someone with arrows, because dnd is a game that doesn't try to shoehorn all tasks into the same style of resolution, which in turn is one reason that so many people enjoy it.
d&d provides a framework for initiating tasks
yep. glad we agree.
Right, I say the only rule is "ask your GM how it works" and you quote me rules that say "ask your GM how it works." I mean, was your point to refute something I've said, here?
But that isn't what those rules say.
I'm tired of reading about if D&D does heists or not! Can we switch it up to argue if D&D can do
Thirsty Sword Lesbians for a change of pace??
I say no! If D&D really could do Thirsty Sword Lesbians, we be seeing this stuff on the DM's Guild instead of it's own RPG!!
My wife's paladin in our Eberron game says yes. Enthusiastically. While winking at her cute tiny-but-dangerous elf girlfriend, or flirting with the imposing medusa with the Morpheous sunglasses who designed the group's townhouse in Sharn, or thirsting respectfully after a priestess of the Blood of Vol during a ceremony, or carousing with her best friend and playing wingman for eachother. Etc.
But then again the question isn't whether we can do another game in dnd, but if we can do a genre/story type in dnd.
No, it isn't a lack, it's an intentional design choice -- to make the GM the one that decides how things work. There's no support from the system, because the entire system is to make the GM decide. This is the actual strength you're reaching for when you claim you can do whatever in 5e. The odd thing is that you also insist that the system supports doing anything with it's rules, when it's the very lack of those that allows what you claim to want! Such a strange argument!
Your entire framework for looking at this stuff is so alien to me that I can't meaningfully interact with it, if the above actually makes sense to you.
You...you know an optional rule is still a rule, right? Like...feats are part of dnd 5e. Feats are optional. Feats can support a given fiction, lets say the fiction of being such an incredible cook that you can lift people's spirits with your food.
What you are doing above is saying, the DM decides if feats are available, therefor DnD does not support the fiction of being an incredible cook. It's completely absurd on every level.
That also ignores the reality of play, which is that the character has skills on their sheet, access to the PHB wherein resides the descriptions of the skills and information on how tasks are meant to be adjudicated, and thus players will asks to make checks, even if simply via implication, by positing their approach to a tasks in a way that supports a given skill or at least Ability Score, based on what their character is good at.
Regardless of whether the DM decides that a roll for that ability score and skill is necessary, or possible, the check is actually "made". The DM just is empowered to skip rolls that can't have or shouldn't have more than one possible outcome, and go straight to narrating the results.
Claiming that rules that don't always have to be used literally don't exist is either so far into illogical thinking that I refuse to follow, or it's a case of being too wound up in winning an argument and/or not being seen to change position.
because the invisible armored guy (who apparently wasn't smart enough to downgrade into something quieter) clanked by and guard happened to hear it.
This is a thing that was bothering me earlier. We are talking about "stealth missions"....and assuming that the Paladin is wearing plate? Why?
