D&D General Playstyle vs Mechanics

[prabe]

And you don't see what @prabe suggested as being the kind of creative collaboration that I mentioned?

Clearly the players will take maximum advantage of all abilities, misreading or misusing them as they see fit, and the only way to prevent this is to say no as often and as loudly as possible.

 

[soviet]

Clearly the players will take maximum advantage of all abilities, misreading or misusing them as they see fit, and the only way to prevent this is to say no as often and as loudly as possible.

I once left my seat to go to the bathroom and a player stole all my dice and read the module.

Weirdly a couple of weeks later he GM'ed something and he couldn't have been nicer

 

[prabe]

I once left my seat to go to the bathroom and a player stole all my dice and read the module.

Weirdly a couple of weeks later he GM'ed something and he couldn't have been nicer

The dice-theft seems like a step too far, dunnit?

(My dice luck is so notoriously bad that none of the players at my tables will even touch my dice, and my handwriting is so horrible that they don't even try to read my notes. Obviously, not everyone can be me, and equally obviously, no one else should even want to.)

 

[tetrasodium]

@Maxperson You are demonstrating the other big reason why 5e enforces OneTrueWay of gameplay. Wotc never bothered with things like playeroptions:combat&tactics 3.5 unearthed arcana/PHB2 or similar. Because of that you have a situation where someone is leaping to express that 5e very much already does it can do it easily or the thing doesn't ,atter any time someone says that 5e does something poorly or that something else does a thing 5e doesn't/can't do. I've even seen someone leap from being told that anime5e changes the game frombeing class based to being pointbuy to telling the group that "oh well if that's all then there's no reason to even look at that book because 5e already does that" followed by page flipping & the page number for pointbuy attributes in the 5e phb.

That is correct. Darkvison in 5e is a big nothing burger.

It's pretty significant because Darkvision is reliable predictable & always perfectly av in ways that no light source can be
Here's a story about darkness

Spoiler

If you know the creatures cannot hurt you, they will not hurt you. Because they are not real
If you think the creatures can hurt you, they will hurt you. Because they are real to you

Darkvision is the ability to always know that you have a perception check of N against the unknown & to do it with no risk of exposure.

The edge case comic while amusing, misses the biggest issue with 5e darkvison. Namely that you get disadvantage on every perception check involving vision. So it doesn't matter if you need the green sword or red sword, because in all likelihood you can't see the sword.

You fail to understand the usefulness of darkness to a dungeon crawl. Disadvantage on a perception check is [2d20 drop highest+mods=N not an unknown. The player knows exactly how much risk a patch of darkness poses can never be left scrambling for a snuffed/fallen torch & will never find themselves trying to wave a visible torch around at unseen creatures in the distant darkness. Not knowing the colors of the unknown things in the dark is a thing of zero consequence

In any case, what happens if you take all darkvison away? People just use torches or cast light. The party is still going to be able to see in the dungeon, so what is the real difference between light spell or darkvison? The dungeon crawl is going to play out roughly the same whether the darkvison is there or not.

Unless you play by RAW, in which case the darkvison folks still use light to avoid the perception penalty.

There you go showing more rules & widespread abilities to trivialize the usefulness of meaningful darkness to a dungeon crawl. Bullseye lanterns trade the downside of being heavy & single directional for the ability to hide the light without needing to snuff then relight the lamp, 5e is so generous with carrying capacity & things like darkvision/light cantrips/etc that the weightof light sources is pretty meaningless & the benefits are not even worth considering.

I'll assume that you recognize the other noted problems posed to sandbox games in the 5e ruleset too given that you didn't even mention the ways that extreme durability & safe trivialized recovery anywhere

 

[Micah Sweet]

(Bold emphasis added in both quotations.) The answer to the bolded question above is that the connotation of "the desire for control" is unusually dependent on context. I see it as entirely reasonable and consistent for someone to espouse a preference for a DMing style that features maintaining personal control over the game setting, but simultaneously object to descriptions of the style that seem to bear even a whiff of the bolded sentiment below:

Yeah...hard not to take the bolded negatively.

 

[Maxperson]

The light of a torch will warn most enemies. Far better to not alert them by using darkvision.

Wrong. With disadvantage to all visual perception checks you will set off pretty much every trap you encounter. Plus undead, constructs and other dark dwelling creatures will surprise and ambush you a ton.

You will take less damage from alerting enemies with the light than stumbling around using darkvison.

 

[soviet]

Yeah...hard not to take the bolded negatively.

That's ridiculous. It literally is about control. Control isn't automatically a pejorative. The GM in this situation requires creative control of what ingredients players can and can't add to the game so as to maintain a cohesive vision.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It may have started as the background, but right from the jump, I suggested coming up with ways to make it work. Instead of just saying "ugh, that's implausible and makes me groan, so NO!" to first see if you can think of a reason to say yes.



No, but if the DM just overrides things the player does that are legal moves, then that's pretty much all that's left.

Player: "I cast Zone of Truth!"

DM: "No, you don't because I need this NPC to lie to you!"



Yes, this permissibility is rampant. Magic can do it all because magic. Anything else needs to adhere to bizarre standards.

But really, what we're talking about, magic or not, are game moves. Privileging one set of moves over another just seems like a crappy approach to a game.



Well, it's a game... so magic is capable of whatever the designers and participants decide its capable of. Same as mundane elements meant to represent the characters and their qualities.



And you don't see what @prabe suggested as being the kind of creative collaboration that I mentioned?



I think the key here is that it's meant to be a roleplaying aid rather than an I-Win button. I mean, presumably at some point, the PCs are likely to make a contact in the new location. So this simply facilitates something that would most likely happen anyway.

Now, if the PCs are in some far off, hostile city or what have you? Sure, there can be exceptions. Generally speaking, I think "No" should be the exception rather than "Yes" when it comes to PC abilities.

The problem with the ability is, as written, there are no exceptions. The player is within their rights to just insist that it works.

 

[soviet]

I don't think anyone is looking to die on a hill about 5e being perfectly written

 

[Mort]

The problem with the ability is, as written, there are no exceptions. The player is within their rights to just insist that it works.

First, we have had fairly long threads on the topic of how, in 5e and most versions of D&D, the rules, for the DM are merely suggestions - there is no such thing as no exceptions if the DM decides otherwise. But more importantly,

The feature is vaguely worded. Specifically, it does not specify time as an element, so the DM is completely within their rights to be realistic and have any message take as long as the feel appropriate.

The real key here is to treat the ability as clearly intended - a RP aid that facilitates interaction with the environment and not some player power grab that must be limited/squashed at all costs.