D&D 5E The Decrease in Desire for Magic in D&D

[Mort]

You can definitely do that, at your table. No one is saying you can't.

Yes,

But I would also like, as a player, to be able to take a skill focused PC without being treated as vastly inferior to the casters (at the vast majority of tables).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, I know that we humans are terrible at knowing when other people are lying and let our preconceived notions color the evidence. Even with the people we know especially well. There have been times I have been sure my young children are lying to me, because it's the sort of thing they often lie about ("have you brushed your teeth?", "did you hit your brother?") only to discover that in this case I was completely wrong.

Thus, what I try to do is hedge, based on risk and reward. I don't know you, so I don't really know whether or not you have a bridge to sell me, but if I want a bridge and you seem to have a nice one I'll do some due diligence to see if you are the legitimate owner, or more likely outsource it to an expert in that area.

So, no, I don't know if somebody is lying to me. (And neither do you, whatever you may think, unless you are an anomalous human.) I have my hunches, but I try to choose courses of actions that don't depend on my accuracy.

Whether you believe it to be the case or not, there are ways to improve your skill at reading people. I, personally, am not very good at it, but there are people out there who are very good. They are not, however, perfect--which is given to us by the dice. Sometimes, you'll just fail to see through someone's lies. Other times, you'll be certain they're lying when they aren't. But it is quite possible to become very good at picking up on lying; there are known physiological tells, for example, which can be suppressed but most people don't know to do so. Grooming behaviors, for example, are often a reflexive thing people do when trying to deceive.

Which is the whole point: you can learn to watch for signs, some of them subtle that you might miss and some of them equivocal that you might over-value. You can also learn to suppress those signs, or fake other signs, but such suppression and fakery are never perfect either, again, given to us by the dice.

"Special" exists toward both ends of any bell curve you can think of.

This is assuming the very thing I am saying is incorrect. Special is not defined by rarity. Rarity can be one source of specialness, but it is absolutely not the only source. To assume that it is is to make the argument circular.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Whether you believe it to be the case or not, there are ways to improve your skill at reading people. I, personally, am not very good at it, but there are people out there who are very good. They are not, however, perfect--which is given to us by the dice. Sometimes, you'll just fail to see through someone's lies. Other times, you'll be certain they're lying when they aren't. But it is quite possible to become very good at picking up on lying; there are known physiological tells, for example, which can be suppressed but most people don't know to do so. Grooming behaviors, for example, are often a reflexive thing people do when trying to deceive.

Which is the whole point: you can learn to watch for signs, some of them subtle that you might miss and some of them equivocal that you might over-value. You can also learn to suppress those signs, or fake other signs, but such suppression and fakery are never perfect either, again, given to us by the dice.

No, this is just wrong. It is a myth. And the stubborn persistence of this myth has put countless people in jail.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Look, I know I'm in a very, very, very slim minority on this one. I just don't think it adds anything to the game to enable lie detection as an at-will, zero-cost action declaration. At the very least I would hope DMs enforce the caveat that in order to make a dice roll, there has to be a meaningful consequence to failure. So it could be, "I'll try to trap him into contradicting himself, to see if he is lying." "Ok, but if you fail he's going to know what you are doing and will be pissed."

This I can certainly grant: attempted actions should not occur without meaningful justification and meaningful consequences.

But I'm coming at this as someone whose favorite games are 4e, 13A, and DW, so...I don't really think about skills the way 5e tells you to, nor how (apparently) most people play them.

No, this is just wrong. It is a myth. And the stubborn persistence of this myth has put countless people in jail.

Literal actual psychology research disagrees with you. Like, for example, this research here about less-conscious responses having a superior rate of detecting deception.

 

[Micah Sweet]

verisimilitude must be judged in the context of the game world.

If you hold skills to some "real world" standard,

But you allow magic to completely and consistently violate that standard? Then for me, verisimilitude, breaks as a result.

Non casters live in the game world too.

This is definitely tricky. Magic, by its very nature, allows effects that can't be otherwise duplicated. If it couldn't, no one would bother learning it. This is why in many stories, either everyone has it or those who do are clearly advantaged.

This is why I advocate for risky and/or difficult magic. That way you can still do the cool stuff, but it's dangerous.

 

[Bill Zebub]

This is why I advocate for risky and/or difficult magic. That way you can still do the cool stuff, but it's dangerous.

I really wish that’s how D&D magic worked.

 

[Minigiant]

Because they can't? I mean, they can in your fantasy setting if you want, but not in the real world.

Modern police interrogation techniques do not rely on detecting lies through intuition or watching "tells", which has been shown to be complete b.s., but by asking increasingly complicated questions then circling back to see if they eventually contradict themselves. If there was a cool way to model that in D&D (using Investigation? As a sustained opposed test?) I'd be all over it.

That's how I would do lie detection

And Investigation Check against the target's Insight. Then and Insight check against the Deception.

And with the "new 1D&D rules" these are subject to crits where magic is not.

 

[Garthanos]

No, this is just wrong. It is a myth. And the stubborn persistence of this myth has put countless people in jail.

I love the show lie to me... even if its ultra hyperbolic at best and just plain pseudoscience on the other end (with some maybe valid in the middle). But when I am playing fantasy games high end insight can do the gamut yup yup yup.

 

[Garthanos]

I really wish that’s how D&D magic worked.

It would be bloody interesting if it fit the fiction better in that way.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is definitely tricky. Magic, by its very nature, allows effects that can't be otherwise duplicated. If it couldn't, no one would bother learning it. This is why in many stories, either everyone has it or those who do are clearly advantaged.

This is why I advocate for risky and/or difficult magic. That way you can still do the cool stuff, but it's dangerous.

Though there are other approaches.

For example, Shadowrun (while imperfect in its implementation) makes magic work very poorly with tech, in a world where tech is very important. That is, to be a decker you (pretty much always) have to have cybernetic implants allowing you to "jack into" the Matrix. Cybernetic augmentation causes a loss of "essence," which is (very crudely) the "connection" your soul has to your body. All beings start with 6 essence and cannot have less than 1 essence without dying. Folks who have very low essence are generally speaking really noticeable. They have muted or disturbed emotional responses to things, behave in inhuman or disturbing ways, etc.

Thing is...essence also affects magic. If you lose any essence, it reduces your Magic stat by an equal amount, and for the purpose of how much Magic you have, you always round essence down. So if you get an induction datajack (a relatively non-invasive option that goes beneath the skin of one of your hands), it costs 0.25 essence. For the purposes of getting more augmentations, that means you have 5.75 essence remaining, but for the purpose of magic, you've just lost one whole point of essence and your Magic (both maximum and current) are reduced by that amount. People with only 1 essence are effectively incapable of using magic.

There are also a few people, "technomancers," who can do Matrix hacking stuff without the aid of technology at all, and their powers are defined by "Resonance." Resonance and Magic cannot mix--if you are a technomancer you cannot learn to use magic, and if you somehow do acquire magic, all of your technomancer abilities are instantly and permanently lost.

As a result, magic is contrasted against both combat-focused cyberware, which is usually of interest to "street samurai" (the equivalent of D&D Fighters in Shadowrun), and more hacking/robot-control cyberware, which is of interest to deckers (hackers) and riggers (drone-using and vehicle-operating folks.) Mages (wizards, but they can learn healing spells), shamans (spirit-conjurers), and physical adepts (essentially D&D Monks) almost exclusively stay the hell away from any of that cyberware stuff, because it destroys their ability to use their magical skills; at most, you'll see mages dip their toes into it by taking only 1 essence worth of augmentations and making sure those augs are as top-line and impactful as possible. (Higher-grade cyberware has a lower essence cost than entry-model cyberware, but requires more complex and expensive facilities to install. The highest grade, as of SR5e, was "deltaware," and only a handful of clinics in the world have the kind of tech needed to install that stuff. But it gives a hefty discount on essence costs.)

Magic is somewhat rare in Shadowrun, in that Awakened individuals (those who can use magic) are a comparative minority, but in-universe they're actually pretty common as shadowrunners. That's because being Awakened and not a corporate wage-slave usually means you're on the run or being hunted or trying to keep a low profile. You have valuable skills and few places to employ them other than by shadowrunning.