Aldarc
Legend
Bait? I wasn't baiting you. I was sharing a similar personal experience as what @MuhVerisimilitude was recounting about his players. That's it.
D&D General Renamed Thread: "The Illusion of Agency"
- Thread starter Bill Zebub
- Start date
Swarmkeeper
Hero
I'd argue that @Bill Zebub's methodology actually enhances the "usefulness" of all PCs outside of the combat pillar, regardless of class/subclass/abilities/whatever. But, I get it. That's not what this thread is about.
Back to the premise:
The party scout has returned to the party, who are hidden safely in the wood (frickin' Leomond's Tiny Hut!), to let them know there are two goblin guards outside the mouth of a cave in a clearing 1,000 feet to the north. The cave is at the base of a cliff that is 400 feet high. A third and fourth goblin have been passing by the mouth of the cave every 15 minutes or so, apparently on a predetermined lookout circuit. The scout couldn't hear the stationary guards clearly but did make out a few exasperated, exaggerated words in goblin: "hungry", "forever", "unfair".
The party needs to get into that cave, for reasons, and wants to be sure that anyone in the cave has no forewarning.
How might this play out?
Back to the premise:
The party scout has returned to the party, who are hidden safely in the wood (frickin' Leomond's Tiny Hut!), to let them know there are two goblin guards outside the mouth of a cave in a clearing 1,000 feet to the north. The cave is at the base of a cliff that is 400 feet high. A third and fourth goblin have been passing by the mouth of the cave every 15 minutes or so, apparently on a predetermined lookout circuit. The scout couldn't hear the stationary guards clearly but did make out a few exasperated, exaggerated words in goblin: "hungry", "forever", "unfair".
The party needs to get into that cave, for reasons, and wants to be sure that anyone in the cave has no forewarning.
How might this play out?
So the thing I’m stuck on is that the entire OP is, as far as I can tell, largely restating the OSR ethos and then going “so how would this work in 5e / scenarios that would break it.”
-you are expected to look at the game world and dig deeper, using player knowledge and ideas.
-skills generally barely exist, those that do are aligned with very specifics classes.
-creative solutions, generous GM info, and “roleplaying” (as in: acting as your character and having them interact with the world, not funny voices) are held paramount over any mechanics.
-consequences for failure are baked in: time and resources.
So, it works (with a hefty dose of GM fiat which that play culture umbrellas under “rulings not rules”). I think a better question is: if I did this in 5e, what systemic issues might my players raise and how would I adjust for them.
-you are expected to look at the game world and dig deeper, using player knowledge and ideas.
-skills generally barely exist, those that do are aligned with very specifics classes.
-creative solutions, generous GM info, and “roleplaying” (as in: acting as your character and having them interact with the world, not funny voices) are held paramount over any mechanics.
-consequences for failure are baked in: time and resources.
So, it works (with a hefty dose of GM fiat which that play culture umbrellas under “rulings not rules”). I think a better question is: if I did this in 5e, what systemic issues might my players raise and how would I adjust for them.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Sorry, bad word choice again. Not that you were intentionally baiting me, but "martials" vs. "casters" is a fraught topic and I should have stayed away from it.
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Yeah, that's the related topic that I wish I had stayed away from. I agree with you, but I don't really want to tilt at that particular windmill.
This is a really rich scenario. So rich that I'm going to have to get back to it when I have more time!
But I hope in the meantime some others decide to answer....
Bill Zebub
“It’s probably Matt Mercer’s fault.”
Well put.
I'll add that there are aspects of 5e, and guidance on how to play, that seem to perfectly support this approach, but then other aspects and guidance (and examples in published adventures) that seem to conflict with it.
Which may simply be the result of trying to build too large of a tent.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
First question: was the scout able to see into the cave at all, to determine whether help for the watchers is close at hand?
After that, and regardless of the answer, there's no way to determine how this might play out without knowing the makeup of the rest of the party. Clearly they have a scout (Ranger? Rogue? Assassin?) and a 5th+-level mage (as evidenced by the Tiny Hut), but what else do they have?
A stealth-heavy group might send two sneaky back-strikey types to knock off the goblins on watch then lie in ambush and take out the patrollers as well.
A talky-face group might send someone out to engage with the goblins, offering them food so as to draw them away from the cave mouth (and a sleep-inducing poison in the food would help too!). Lather rinse repeat when the patrollers return.
A tank-heavy group will have problems. They might try to find the patrollers first and take them out before worrying about the two at the entrance, but if they want to get in un-noticed they're almost certainly going to have to rely on the scout and-or the mage for stage two of this process.
A caster-heavy group can use any combination of Sleep, Charm, Silence, or illusions.
Right. People over in the 5e to OSR pipeline thread were asserting that you can do everything OSR preaches in 5e without issue. Other folks raised teh fact that the system in 5e puts a lot of barriers in your way. One of those is the existence of detailed skill systems; a person over there was like "we just play 5e like we played B/X: we say what we look at and the DM tells us stuff and we go back and forth and roll once in a great while."
Which is great! BUT you have to establish a social contract at your table that you're basically gonna ignore a big chunk of the systems (and/or hack in attrition ones that are more detailed) or raise the bar for skill triggers much higher then 5e2014 kinda establishes culturally (much less 2024, which has player facing actions that further create an expectation of levers). And then you have to look at the fact that spell casters have way more tools at their disposal very early on compared to say B/X/OSEtc, so if you want to give parity to teh non-spell classes you're going to be fiating things like crazy (ok yeah BigBobTheFighter - you can totally rip the door open without a check, convince the guard that you're a superior officer using that badge you found, dictate tactics, whatever).
MichaelSomething
Legend
So? People have been ignoring official rules since racial level limits and gold for xp. Why can't we just keep doing that??
"BUT you have to establish a social contract at your table that you're basically gonna ignore a big chunk of the systems."
