D&D 5E Thievery in 5e - still relevant?

[Larnievc]

D&D doesn't generally have very good resolution processes for escaping capture or imprisonment. 4e can be an exception, via skill challenges.

Why not use a group check in 5E? Why not say “Okay guys, the guards lock the doors and stalk off laughing nastily about some guy called Gavin the Torturer. Now they are out of sight what are you going to do?”

 

[bloodtide]

Why should they need to? Getting turned to stone in round one of a fight that might take nearly and hour is fun in what way?

That is the point though.

An Always Fun game has a huge list of things that must never happen and things that must happen to keep the game "traditionally" fun.

And...maybe...if you can gather a group of people that all think the same way about nearly everything, you might have an ok game. But any other group of people and there will be endless problems.

And it might not be "fun" to sit at a table and not play as the other players mostly goof off and slowly do a combat taking a whole hour. Though this is really a game problem: why does that combat take an hour....

 

[Lanefan]

Why should they need to? Getting turned to stone in round one of a fight that might take nearly and hour is fun in what way?

It (probably) isn't, but what's the solution?

Removing the risk of being turned to stone isn't a useful option if one wants to preserve that risk (which I for one take as a given). I mean, without their petrifying gaze Medusae become complete pushovers, and the best time for a Medusa to get you is if-when it catches you off guard e.g. you open the door and it's standing right there looking at you. End result: you're at greatest risk of getting petrified before the combat even starts.

Mitigating or neutering effects like this, e.g. by giving a save each round to snap out of it, largely defeats the purpose of having that risk in the first place; and pushes the game much more toward 'sport' than 'war'. The whole point of being turned to stone (or of death, for all that; and I see petrification as being pretty much the same in terms of difficulty to undo) is that the victim simply cannot recover on its own - there has to be outside help. In this case, someone else has to cast Stone to Flesh. And if there's nobody left to do this because the rest of the party have also been petrified or have fled into the hills, you're hooped.

Contrast this with a similarly-disabling spell that (in most editions anyway) has a set duration: Hold Person. Here, provided nobody runs your motionless body through in the meantime, all you have to do is wait: the spell will expire, and away you go.

 

[Lanefan]

And it might not be "fun" to sit at a table and not play as the other players mostly goof off and slowly do a combat taking a whole hour. Though this is really a game problem: why does that combat take an hour....

Depending on the edition, party level, number of both PCs and opponents, and what the opponents have going for them, getting the combat done in as little as an hour might be a dream come true.

 

[Clint_L]

Depending on the edition, party level, number of both PCs and opponents, and what the opponents have going for them, getting the combat done in as little as an hour might be a dream come true.

In another thread, one poster claimed that combat never took their group more than ten minutes. I am skeptical, but if true I would love to see their system!

 

[pemerton]

Why not use a group check in 5E? Why not say “Okay guys, the guards lock the doors and stalk off laughing nastily about some guy called Gavin the Torturer. Now they are out of sight what are you going to do?”

Outside of 4e skill challenges, to the best of my knowledge D&D has no resolution system for how long the guards are gone for; whether or not Zenobia has taken a shine to you or the brother of someone you once killed wants to take vengeance on you; whether or not your attempt to trick a guard generates the result you want; whether the guards look behind your poster to notice the escape tunnel you're digging; etc, other than "GM decides".

 

[bloodtide]

It (probably) isn't, but what's the solution?

There is not one. In every game, there are unfun parts or elements. In softball your pop fly to second base is caught in seconds. In bowling your ball might fall into the gutter. In Uno you might loose a turn.

Of course you can make it fun. Take the 'loose a turn' card out of the Uno deck. Play bumper bowling so your ball can't fall in the gutter. And in softball you can tell the other time not to do anything....so Billy can run the bases and get a home run.

Of course, when you start removing or modifying anything you pick to be 'not fun" you get a very set type of game. And, of course, once you go to things like parallelization or petrification are no fun, it's only a short slide to "character death is no fun" and "loosing hps is no fun". And once you are there, why are you even keeping track of hp?

Depending on the edition, party level, number of both PCs and opponents, and what the opponents have going for them, getting the combat done in as little as an hour might be a dream come true.

Yea, but really this is all on the people in the game. Everyone chooses to goof around, make jokes, not be prepared, slow things down and even simply not play. And all of that is why combat takes so long in a lot of games.

 

[Lanefan]

In another thread, one poster claimed that combat never took their group more than ten minutes. I am skeptical, but if true I would love to see their system!

Was this claim in reference to a D&D (or adjacent) game, or a different system entirely?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Ooh, a literal slippery slope argument.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Outside of 4e skill challenges, to the best of my knowledge D&D has no resolution system for how long the guards are gone for; whether or not Zenobia has taken a shine to you or the brother of someone you once killed wants to take vengeance on you; whether or not your attempt to trick a guard generates the result you want; whether the guards look behind your poster to notice the escape tunnel you're digging; etc, other than "GM decides".

Yeah that's true, but there are D&D-adjacent games that have systems for what you describe (ACKS has good rules for a lot of this, for example), so it can be done without needed to go narrative or play 4e (if you don’t want those things, of course). And that assuming you don't homebrew or find a 3pp subsystem to help. Plenty of options.