Which is why they shouldn't take it.
D&D General Playstyle vs Mechanics
- Thread starter Emerikol
- Start date
OptionalRule
Hyperion
5e is the most fragile edition of DnD yet. By that I mean, it supports a single, very narrow playstyle and the system breaks easily if you try to tweak it to something else. To make it work you have to go with a complete overhaul, like Shadowdark.
There is no bigger contract to me than 1e/2e and 5e. You need only look at the proliforation of genres and settings supported in the 2e era to understand how flexible the system was. It supported everything from gritty Dark Sun like play, to Space Super-Heroes of Star Jammer. The only real varience in 5e is what color capes you want your supers to wear.
You mean, if the feature is explicitly considered to be the result of time spent in the underworld making contacts, the player shouldn't take it if their character is too young to have done that? That's defensible, at least.
TwoSix
Everyone's literal second-favorite poster
You're doing great! I mostly was a lurker for like 7 years before I got comfortable enough to post regularly.
Pedantic
Legend
Point of order, improvised action DCs (and very particularly skill challenges) are anathema to my preferred D&D, and I'm a direct product of an older D&D edition. I recently saw someone put forward a very useful summation of the position as "it is necessary for the rules to be laid out completely to the players before play begins so that the characters can know what they can do."
It's not sufficient to simply write rules for all these things, without very clear advice in both the player and DM facing books indicating what to include, what to disclude and why. I do not want to have to explain to a player that there is no significantly cool description of their intended outcome than can cause Religion to include new effects, and equally I need to know if it's worth knowing the list of Climb DC modifiers to hit a specific breakpoint, or if Climb DCs are going to scale to the perceived stakes of the situation.
I would argue that's a whole extra design task; the game needs to create effective language for calling out those toggles, something like an expanded version of Fantasy Craft's campaign qualities. Then you probably need session 0 advice on getting rules/adjudication buy in as a separate matter from genre/tone, establishing player expectations, and so on. Even basic things like "who determines which rules apply?" Needs to be laid out clearly.
Just offering all these options is, if anything, worse. A real toolkit needs to explain how to use its content, and unfortunately is going to be harder to use than a game that can commit to one style of play and super that throughout. Content curation and ruling are established at the table game play elements/skills players and GMs are expected to develop, but systemic curation is pretty rarified and not well understood. I don't think any RPG designer has shown any real skill in leading players to it consistently.
I'm usually on the "design is hard, we should be paying people to do the hard stuff" side, but I'm both doubtful at this point that anyone has the skill or ambition to take on that task, and ultimately not confident that even if such a product were produced, people would be willing to engage with it at the level it would require.
This is just simply not true.
5e can EASILY be made much more gritty (if that's what you want) and the DMG has plenty of advice for how to do so. Heck, eliminate death saves and watch how suddenly grim and gritty the campaign gets!
Does it support every genre and playstyle - not even close, but it can EASILY support any of the ones 2e was decent at and likely do it even better (rules set is just more consistent and has some modern refinements).
Jefe Bergenstein
Legend
Sure, a wizard can go from apprentice to creating a pocket dimension (rope trick) in a few adventuring days time, but lets hamstring the criminal background.
Pedantic
Legend
This whole discussion of background features feels predicated mostly on disagreement about the role of players at the table. Are they collectively telling a story as their first and foremost goal? If so, it's no particular imposition to ask everyone to work toward justifying/validating the background feature's outcome.
The unstated alternative is "the player is primarily motivated by trying to overcome problems facing their character" in which case the feature is much trickier, because it creates a massive chain of causality that a player would of course be interested in manipulating to their character's ends, and doesn't provide clear boundaries on what is and is not a valid move for them to declare.
The unstated alternative is "the player is primarily motivated by trying to overcome problems facing their character" in which case the feature is much trickier, because it creates a massive chain of causality that a player would of course be interested in manipulating to their character's ends, and doesn't provide clear boundaries on what is and is not a valid move for them to declare.
The point is that players are supposed to apply common sense here too, right? I could see how you could have a 16 year old with that background if they'd been raised a criminal from an early age, or something like that. Or as has been suggested you could reframe it to work along the lines of a young person with obvious potential who befriends contacts along the way. Either make it make sense or pick something else.
Bigger on the inside isn't exactly a high bar for a beginner spell given examples of somewhat readily available pocket dimension stuff
