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

[AbdulAlhazred]

Nothing you mentioned there is a problem for me.

The issues I had were what I mentioned in my previous post. There are times when monsters struggled to do many of the same things which would be relatively easy for PCs. It's been literally years since I have played 4E, but an example I remember talking about on a forum was designing an encounter in which the PCs were on gondola lift fighting against a group of enemies on a different gondola lift. It was rather trivial for the PCs to target and destroy the opposing gondola; for the monsters to use the same tactic was difficult.

I was in no way bothered by the PCs using that tactic. In fact, I expected that such a thing would be attempted. What I did not expect was that the numbers generated by the PCs would interact with the numbers the game world was built upon in very different way from how the numbers generated by the monsters were able to interact with the numbers the game world was built upon. In a game which was built around cool combats with moving parts and action (and a game which honestly did a good job at that,) something which was designed to be cool literally fell apart because I did not expect such a drastic difference in what the PCs could do versus what the monsters could do in terms of how they interacted with the world around them. Different? Sure. But that different? No. That was during one of my first attempts at running 4E. It did not upset me nor did it turn me away from the game; I simply learned that how the game instructed me to build things was not the best way to build things for the ideas I had.

If we're talking specifically about skill checks and narrative resolution, I mentioned a few pages back how I ran skill challenges differently.

Hmmm, yeah. There are of course two sorts of reactions that go with two different conceptualizations of where game process/mechanics should apply.

The more 'Gygaxian' question would be to ask how 4e mechanically produced this result because, certainly at low levels, that seems pretty odd. An 'Orc Raider' is a basic level 3 orc, something PCs might take on pretty often, and typical of humanoids. It has a DEX of 15 and a (+3) DEX bonus. +1 of this is basically a level bonus, and +2 is for the DEX itself, though not all monsters actually balance out 'by the math' and we have to imagine they might have 'racial bonuses' or something, though the designers may not have actually bothered to think past "I want this number" and no actual 4e rule states that monster numbers have to 'add up' (Monster builder would supply such numbers by default, but you could override them). So, wouldn't an Orc raider get a +3 to some sort of skill check to do something like that, if it was DEX based? His Handaxe attack power is '+7 vs AC', which is pretty similar to numbers PCs would likely have (a level 3 fighter is likely to have between +7 and +10, so this orc is not stupid accurate with a thrown weapon, but not terrible either). Now, at Paragon or against some other monsters, and taking other skills into account, I would be surprised if a group of monsters performed at the level of the best PCs. Probably closer to average or below average MOST of the time, which seems about right, the PCs are the shnizzle.

The more 'Indie' response would be that numbers are created to be consistent with the fiction and produce an interesting story, so the monsters should have a probability of success which is in keeping with what will produce a tense situation. If it goes badly for the PCs, maybe their car goes crashing down. Maybe they manage to cling to the cables, or some bogies, or something and now they're just in a worse situation, or maybe they go crashing down as well and we enter some new phase of the adventure where they hit bottom and enter a new 'world of hurt'. If it goes well, then the monsters plunge into the abyss and exit stage right. Practically speaking I don't think that monsters should even be making checks, certainly not in this kind of situation. Simply provide a countdown "the orcs will sever your cable in 5 shots unless you stop them." Maybe it would be presented dramatically as just the ropes above snapping and sagging more each round. Now it is up to the PCs to act quickly.

The later is all narrativist DW-style or 4e style (if you make it an SC) kind of stuff. In my own game design I have eliminated ALL non-player dice, completely. So mechanically it is a good bit more like 4e than DW, but in terms of process you only have players roll dice. If a monster attacks you, you pick a defense and make a check. If you are in a contest with one, you pass checks to overcome its moves and fail if you cannot achieve enough successes within the bounds of the fictional situation (generally before 3 failures, but there is some flexibility there).

Obviously Fail Forward is strictly implied in these kinds of process, though it isn't impossible to have a "this story ends here." sort of result.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I agree with this. The most common complaints I saw about skill challenges were two:

(1) "Dice-rolling exercise" - this is a picture of the skill challenge in which (i) the GM stipulates the checks required at the outset, (ii) these are then made by the players largely independent of the initial fictional framing and with no unfolding framing over the course of the challenge, and (iii) the outcome of the challenge is determined by totalling up the results of those checks. This approach to skill challenge resolution obviously contradicts what the DMG says, and what it models with its examples, but it seems to have been extremely common.

This can be a problem with other games with similar mechanics, where the die rolling becomes lifeless because its only is contextualized right at the start. Its easy to fall into because its less time consuming and you can just wind everyone up and go. Arguably its not intrinsically any worse than a lot of simple skill rolls are handled, but because its multiple rolls it stands out more.

(2) "Artificial pacing/outcomes" - this is a complaint that rests on a premise that the only way to frame and adjudicate skill checks is "naturalistic"/"process-oriented", and hence rejects or does not even consider (a) that failure can be narrated in all sorts of ways beyond you suck! (see eg @Manbearcat's gorge; or an example I once gave of a failed Diplomacy check, in an outdoor context, being narrated as the rain starting to fall part way through the character's entreaty) nor (b) that the whole point of the SC pacing (and much like hp pacing in combat) is to constrain the GM's narration precisely so as to deliver a degree of certainty and control to the players.

And this, of course, is a problem with failure in general; enough people already see failure (especially in D20 or D100 games where the linear nature can make it come up really often sometimes) as making their characters feel incompetent; framing all such failures as a fault of the character rather than the million little random elements that die rolls are supposed to represent (many of them outside the control of the character) doesn't help.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Now, please, please explain how this isn't Oberoni fallacy?

I mean, you now flat out stating that the DM's I played with were running the game wrong and if they would just run the game right, the problems would go away.

Oh, sorry, I guess I'm just being a martyr again.

If you're misunderstanding the rules and how the game works on a basic level, then I don't think it counts as "The Oberoni Fallacy", because otherwise that's just hysterical mate.

There are really three possibilities here:

1) You got really unlucky and played with multiple DMs who have decided, for reasons unknown, that every failure is as you put it "a catastrophe" (your words, not mine).

2) That actually didn't happen and you're just really overstating things for effect. This happens all the time on the internet.

3) Space aliens?! Sorry ME:LE just finished unpacking and my train of thought has derailed.

And you are being martyr! I don't hate on you for it but it's pretty funny.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Do you think they run it like that because that is the stock/orthodox way of running 5e (no modules and no outside resources) and/or/both because it’s the way (removing 4e Skill Challenges and its plethora of Damage/Effect on a Miss) D&D always was?

That was my guess (and it’s what I’ve seen “in the wild”).

Its not just D&D and not just stealth. Unless a game goes out of its way to spell out consequences of failure or very strongly encourages a Fail Forward sort of dynamic, there's a strong history in the hobby as a whole to trait failed skill rolls in potentially catastrophic situations to go catastrophic. You see this with a lot of physical skills like jumping, climbing and swimming, too.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Solving this problem in a fundamental way would require revisiting the maths of skill bonuses from the ground up and trying to bring it into line with attack and defence numbers. I believe that @AbdulAlhazred does just this in his HoML hack/variant.

Yeah, it was pretty easy. First I did away with AC, so there's no weird 2 point better than the others defense. Secondly I made all proficiency into one rule, so you get the same bonus to attacks and skill checks for it. Third I just did away with all bonus stacking, and made bonuses 'fixed' (there are no dynamic bonuses at all in HoML, you either do or do not get (dis)advantage, period). That's it, I mean beyond that there are no fixed bonuses larger than +3. A level '30' fighter using his bare hands and completely naked is thus only at a marginal disadvantage, and a 'Titan' of the same level would naturally have stats that were pretty close to the fighter's. OTOH in the most current iteration of the rules only PCs make checks, so monster 'skills' and such are simply DCs, which is pretty much how late edition 4e was already doing anything outside of combat by default.

 

[dave2008]

That is a good solid idea.

What I like it that it doesn't affect CR (it is basically Legendary resistance, but with the HP penalty built in). I have made a couple different versions and can't decided which I like best.

 

[jmartkdr2]

And, of course, to confuse the issue, D&D has had a big enough footprint long enough that its fed back into fiction (even avowedly non-D&D fiction) to some degree.

And yes, one of the more notable edition-war dialogs tends to turn on whether something is a bridge too far to be called D&D in some people's minds. This isn't unique to D&D and its derivatives, but because its had a long history and has had more variations than some other games with long ones, it tends to be a stronger effect (probably because its been more mechanically idiosyncratic than some in the first place, too).

But you do see this effect outside of ttrpgs fairly often: is NuTrek really Star Trek? Is the Sequel Trilogy really Star Wars? Is DOA Beach Volleyball still a DOA game?

DnD is just the only ttrpg big enough for this discussion to make noise.

 

[Thomas Shey]

1) You got really unlucky and played with multiple DMs who have decided, for reasons unknown, that every failure is as you put it "a catastrophe" (your words, not mine).

Honestly, man, I think you're underestimating how many GMs default to that sort of thing as I said above. I've seen that a lot over the years (I probably did it myself for far too long), and I've been heavily in the hobby long enough to see an awful lot of different GMs. I think its kind of naturalistic to see a failure where catastrophic results are the dramatic one (because particularly in visual media that's where they tend to go in a lot of such situations) and not see that its kind of a bad idea to do as a default. As I noted, you don't just see it with stealth, either.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I can't remember if I ever used a MM Dracolich. I know I used a MM Black Dragon and a MM Wraith (both notorious for their action and effect denial to the PCs) and both worked fine - at least from this GM's perspective!

Yeah, I remember the Black Dragon being one of the better Solos of that era, because it could create a lot of debuffs through its darkness powers. Even if the PCs managed to lard it with conditions things were still on a more even keel. Also being a lurker was helpful, at least as long as you gave the thing a solid lair. Mine lived under a huge heap of logs, slimy, slippery, unstable logs jutting out of a black bog. Yeah, it was no fun fighting that dragon... I think the PCs eventually negotiated with it.

Wraiths were pretty obnoxious with all the half damage stuff. The PCs did figure out their weaknesses and drove them off. The Dracolich was just stupid obnoxious. All it did was stun stun stun. Nobody got to do anything. There were rounds and rounds of basically both sides glaring at each other with no actions. Phase Spider venom produced a somewhat similar issue. Luckily there was only one, and it only bit one PC (who promptly did nothing for the whole fight).

 

[Thomas Shey]

But you do see this effect outside of ttrpgs fairly often: is NuTrek really Star Trek? Is the Sequel Trilogy really Star Wars? Is DOA Beach Volleyball still a DOA game?

DnD is just the only ttrpg big enough for this discussion to make noise.

Absolutely. Where it gets a little odd with RPGs is that the connection between the fans and the creators is close enough that you can sometimes get ripple effects back up, where the fact its a blood war among fans actually impacts how further design work goes, and sometimes in a way that's independent of whether the changes are overall fairly popular or not.