D&D 5E Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[pemerton]

Back in 4e, I had a cool concept for a lightly armed military scout, which I built as a rogue. This character was consistent with the DM’s worldbuilding, as the starting location had just finished a war, so I figured an irregular military veteran trying their hand at adventuring would be interesting. I made this clear to the DM.

The adventure starts with my character (and only my character) breaking into a place on a quest for the Thieves ‘ guild, getting caught so all other PCs principally know my character as a thief, and the climax of the adventure revolving around my character reading thieves’ cant.

That’s not the only example, it’s just the most glaring.

What strikes me in this example is not so much the "cage of names" as the unadulterated railroading!

 

[Pedantic]

I suppose it depends on what you consider a challenge and how long should something like picking a lock really be challenging in and of itself. Am I expected to assume a never-ending progression in lock technology will be in place as my group moves from fighting goblins to gnolls to drow to fire giants to pit fiends? Or is there a point where it no longer really makes sense for the locks to get any more diabolical in their intricacy or difficulty? Same with doors, cliffs, or any other inanimate obstacle? Should the locks and doors always get harder when the PCs get better at their jobs? If so, what's the point of getting better at those skills? Does it really feel like my wall-scaling rogue is improving if the narration of the wall shifts from being close set brick to seamless sheets of metal? It's the same pig, different lipstick. I think I might prefer an easier, less stressful pig.

This is precisely the problem with presenting generic DCs, or scaling DCs. Rolling with a 65% chance of success (or any other number) isn't a meaningful challenge; whatever prompted the PC to make the decision to accept the risk provided by the roll is the challenge. Going from "35 is the hard DC at the PC's level" to looking at the table and spotting that DC 35 locks are usually made of mithral to putting putting a mithral lock in the dungeon is not actually showing progress, it's just shuffling adjectives around so you can maintain the same gameplay loop of rolling to open the locked door.

A high level challenge must take in to account things like "the PCs cannot be stopped by locked doors" and "the athletic one can spiderman climb on ceilings" and so forth. There's a general understanding about PC capability as it relates to spells, we understand PCs can deploy flight and teleportation and scrying and all that, but we tend to try and make the skill game exactly the same; instead PC capability actually needs to expand, thus that they have different tools to resolve problems. It's insufficient to simple change the adjectives describing the challenge, it's underlying structure needs to change.

This is, of course, a lot of hard work. I've lately come to believe that the actual high level differentiator is about the PC's agency. The move to higher level has them moving more and more from a reactive to proactive position. At lower levels you enter the dungeon and deal with what it throws at you, and then slowly you get the ability to ignore more and more problems outright or mitigate them via preparation/bringing the right tool. Eventually you can't be forced onto a reactive footing at all, and will start setting the terms on which you'll engage with your foes and problems. I think that shift in adventure/campaign structure generally needs more attention. We've talked about domain management, which is one manifestation and part of it, but that's not the only way it can go, or even the most common one in modern D&D; more likely you need to shift from presenting problems the players need to react to, to letting them decide what they want to do. At the most basic level, the PCs will stop encountering meaningfully threats in their immediate areas and will actively have to go to places that are dangerous to be challenged, which means giving them new motivators to be proactive.

 

[Scribe]

This is the first time I hear of this cage of name concept and... why would you let yourself be trapped in that? If you want to play X that "isn't the stereotypical X"... then go ahead and do that. Who's enforcing this cage of name?!?!

The same folks who think Alignment is a straightjacket.

 

[Micah Sweet]

These questions can also, in principle, be asked about sword-fighting.

They sure could. That should be easier too. Bounded accuracy is nice in concept, but overrated in execution in 5e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is precisely the problem with presenting generic DCs, or scaling DCs. Rolling with a 65% chance of success (or any other number) isn't a meaningful challenge; whatever prompted the PC to make the decision to accept the risk provided by the roll is the challenge. Going from "35 is the hard DC at the PC's level" to looking at the table and spotting that DC 35 locks are usually made of mithral to putting putting a mithral lock in the dungeon is not actually showing progress, it's just shuffling adjectives around so you can maintain the same gameplay loop of rolling to open the locked door.

A high level challenge must take in to account things like "the PCs cannot be stopped by locked doors" and "the athletic one can spiderman climb on ceilings" and so forth. There's a general understanding about PC capability as it relates to spells, we understand PCs can deploy flight and teleportation and scrying and all that, but we tend to try and make the skill game exactly the same; instead PC capability actually needs to expand, thus that they have different tools to resolve problems. It's insufficient to simple change the adjectives describing the challenge, it's underlying structure needs to change.

This is, of course, a lot of hard work. I've lately come to believe that the actual high level differentiator is about the PC's agency. The move to higher level has them moving more and more from a reactive to proactive position. At lower levels you enter the dungeon and deal with what it throws at you, and then slowly you get the ability to ignore more and more problems outright or mitigate them via preparation/bringing the right tool. Eventually you can't be forced onto a reactive footing at all, and will start setting the terms on which you'll engage with your foes and problems. I think that shift in adventure/campaign structure generally needs more attention. We've talked about domain management, which is one manifestation and part of it, but that's not the only way it can go, or even the most common one in modern D&D; more likely you need to shift from presenting problems the players need to react to, to letting them decide what they want to do. At the most basic level, the PCs will stop encountering meaningfully threats in their immediate areas and will actively have to go to places that are dangerous to be challenged, which means giving them new motivators to be proactive.

Yup. You want to still pick locks and clear dungeon rooms after a certain point, it time to start a new party.

 

[Lanefan]

But this breaks down further:

Non-proficient: -1 to +5.

Non-proficient should be -4 to +5, shouldn't it?

Not everybody uses point-buy or array.

Proficient: +1 to +11.
Expertise: +3 to +17.

That non-proficient bonus? That's not going to change. So, if you're dealing with a group check (a majority of PCs must succeed), you should always be setting DCs with that bonus in mind UNLESS you want the players to often fail.

If it only needs a majority succeeding they won't fail often in any case.

If the rule said every character has to succeed, that'd be different.

 

[Lanefan]

No one in this thread is suggesting that the DC for the very same cliff, in the very same weather, climbed using the very same tools should change.

I'd like to think so, but I've got the impression from a few that this is exactly what their goal is: that the DC of the same cliff or the same lock change such that it provides x-degree of challenge to the characters trying to climb/pick it, where x is roughly the same no matter what level the characters are.

 

[occam]

To be fair there were a lot of very good and very bad adventures in 2nd and 3rd edition. But neither of those editions had to be completely non offensive to anyone. It's a really high bar to make fantasy modules full of villains and scenes of monsters and death, of great quality that dont' offend anyone. I'm not sure we will ever see great modules from 5th edition simply for that reason.

Setting aside for the moment that I find the proposition of quality necessitating the giving of offense to be dubious...

"Um... Demons? Devils? Never heard of 'em. <ahem>", said 2e-era TSR, nervously pulling at its collar.

It's just funny to hear that TSR was so willing to offend people; that certainly wasn't the general perception I saw discussed at the time. If you're referring to content that would be regarded by many as offensive today rather than decades ago, I would argue that such content existed not out of any willingness to offend, but due to lack of recognition of the offense.

 

[Thomas Shey]

No, he's giving you examples of what the Cage of Names means, and how it obstructs fun.

The entire point of reskinning and creative character design is to use the rules to embody different concepts, that are less stereotypical.

Mutliclassing, feats and subclassing were supposed to help people get away from being forced into slots by classes, but here you still are. And people wonder why a fair number of people fled class based games over the years.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I'd like to think so, but I've got the impression from a few that this is exactly what their goal is: that the DC of the same cliff or the same lock change such that it provides x-degree of challenge to the characters trying to climb/pick it, where x is roughly the same no matter what level the characters are.

A lot of people have no concept of high level. At high level, the lock should be the last line of a multi layered defense network.

Or a construct that gets into the PCs backpack when they don't notice so there's an easy scry target for tracking.

Or be just one of the hundred locks that keep the chest closed.

But I guess people just want to keep adventuring with slightly higher numbers.