Thing is, these are two extremes on the spectrum of conditions that provide a net win. Most situations would reasonably fall somewhere between the two: things don't necessarily go as planned and maybe an over-inquisitive guard gets his throat slit somewhere along the line but there's no mass combat...that sort of thing. And it's this middle ground that's being ignored somewhat, I think.
I don't disagree with you. OTOH (and I missed most of this whole thread, forgive me) I think I concur with others that the stealthy op scenario might not be the best point of comparison in this specific situation. I, for example, recently played in a 5e campaign where my PC was a Catfolk Battlemaster, with a 19 DEX and specializing in TWF. He's EXTREMELY stealthy, can literally climb almost anything. My only point being, if you were building a 5e party to represent something similar to what a BitD crew is, then they would be able to carry out things like Stealth missions. So it might be better to use a more clearly distinct case.
I'd suggest something like Trail of Cthulhu, where you do paranormal type investigation, and there is a theme of facing overwhelmingly powerful entities (IE you will NOT win a fight, except maybe against some very minor opponents, any monster will basically eat the party if you fight it). The rules are pretty much Gumshoe and oriented towards research, investigation, and uncovering dark mysteries. It can also handle some sneaky stuff, and HAS a combat system, but it is pretty realistic and deadly. The game is intended to work more as a 'fiction first' kind of setup where the PCs always move forward and things like skill checks don't create hard fails. If you need to sneak, failing is not a hard catastrophic fail, usually. It is just causing you to need to mitigate whatever problem was created or go ahead with some penalties.
What you guys are missing with this is what is trying to be demonstrated and how one should go about demonstrating that:
1) Its necessary to go to the tails of the distribution to demonstrate just how different these two games are in terms of both (i) genre and (ii) what is actually happening at the table to get us there.
2) I've talked about the extreme differences in genre (i), so lets talk about how one gets there. I've poked at it, but let me try to demonstrate just how enormously different the play yield is for the formulation of actual action resolution procedures + the resources that individual PCs can call upon to make this happen.
a) The Fighter that AA is proposing above is not your bog-standard D&D Fighter. Its not a shield-bearing, medium to heavy armor wearing tank nor a Strength-specialized, but Dex-average (or deficient), Berserker who isn't proficient in Stealth. Its a Dex-heavy duelist/skirmisher, archer, invested in Stealth or something like this. Out of the historical spread of the bajillion D&D Fighters that have been made...this makes up what ridiculously low %? Maybe 1 in 10 (at best)?
Let's take this guy at level 7. Lets give him +5 Dex and Training in Stealth. He's +8 Stealth. Against a DC 20 stealth obstacle (as proposed above), he's only
succeeding 40 % of the time.
b) Now let's take the Blades analogue; the Cutter. This only a 1st level character...not a 7th level character. This character has NO INVESTMENT IN PROWL (Stealth in 5e).
This character can spend 2 out of his 9 available Stress or they can Accept a Devil's Bargain or a Teammate can spend 1 Stress to Assist to yield a
Success w/ Complications (so he's done his stealthy thing but something else has happened to complicate the situation) 50 % of the time! And if they want, they can Resist the Complication (and they'll surely have 2d6 to do so because Prowl falls under Prowess...the physical "Saving Throw" to use D&D parlance)!
I don't have to go "off-script" or outside the bog standard Fighter in Blades for someone to be stealthy. I don't have to invest in stealth. I can be 1st level.
If this doesn't demonstrate that the paradigm is fundamentally different in terms of breadth of competency/capability and the cognitive space that players are inhabiting during play, I don't know what will. Just like D&D 5e,
Blades is absolutely about leveraging your strengths. But the
active tools (and the player-facing nature of the whole game) to manage your weaknesses is fundamentally different.
The upshot of this is that everyone is managing their individual collective limited use resources (Stress, Armor, Special Armor, Loadout Slots including Consumables) and managing all of the other considerable aspects of PC and Crew play/life (Harm, Trauma, Heat, Coin, Cohorts, Clocks, Assets like Vehicles/Tools) to push every caper toward low-exposure (including body count as body count creates multiple feedback loops from Heat to potential Clocks that you have to deal with during Downtime) and expected return. So if you want to get something done, there are a great many individual buttons and levers to push to (a) leverage your (and others) strengths, (b) minimize your weaknesses, (c) deal with complications as they (inevitably) arise, (d) punch above your weight (higher returns) to ensure that things don't go all A-Team with explosions and body count and getaway chases and the attendant significantly increased exposure left in the Crew's wake (which they'll have to answer for because of the feedback loops of the system).
Yes, sometimes it turns into A-Team. But that is hugely rare in Blades.
I've probably run 200 Scores as a GM (maybe more). The number of times its turned into A-Team I could count on probably 2 hands. Lets even double that to 20/200. That is 10 % of the time it turns into A-Team. So its probably somewhere between 5 % at the low end and 10 % at the high end that Blades turns into A-Team. D&D capers? Its nearly A-Team all the way down (its got to be 75 - 90 % A-Team). Which is awesome. But its not the same play space, its not the same genre outputs, and that is because the system architecture and incentive structures ensures that.
