D&D General What Is D&D Generally Bad At That You Wish It Was Better At?

[James Gasik]

I disagree. I think courtly intrigue works best with a very light social system and D&D supports that perfectly. I've been in a courtly intrigue campaign.

It doesn't surprise me that "social combat" rules didn't work. I wouldn't expect them to. I would expect that it's very hard to do courtly intrigue without players mentally capable of intrigue and subtlety. A game system can't make a player an expert tactician, and that's true whether we are talking about physical combat or social combat.

D&D like any turn-based system is historically bad at chase scenes, and you have to hack it with a system of relative time and relative distance to get it to work. Really, anything that involves simultaneous action is hard within D&D or any turn-based game, though (ironically) BECMI with its phases and simultaneous declaration gets closest, and would allow you with some hacking to for example run a game of football (any form thereof) in D&D.

I think the problem is more that, in these kinds of situations, a lot of your character's abilities become pointless, since most things that aren't combat-related are spells. That having been said, 2024 has tried to fix this a little- Fighters and Barbarians can use some of their combat prowess to help skill checks, for example.

With social encounters, basically, if a situation is pure roleplay, your stats don't matter, and if your stats do matter, a Bard or Rogue with Expertise in a few social skills does all the heavy lifting, while the best thing the other PC's can do is keep their mouth shut.

And chase scenes, well, some classes do have abilities that trivialize them. Barbarians, Monks, and even Rogues (thanks to double Dash) are especially fleet of foot, and there are many spells that can close the gap with ease (hey I'll make a wall in front of the person we're chasing!). The classic chase scene doesn't really work unless the person being chased only has a slight advantage over you that can be overcome.

This is especially rough when anybody could down a potion of speed or flight in a pinch (unless everyone does, of course). It's things like this that really complicate fleeing in combat in a lot of cases (something else the game is pretty bad at).

 

[James Gasik]

Thats the issue with D&D needing to be all things, all the time.. Is it supposed to provide survival sim, or chase cinematics, or just allow magic to be an expediency button? Kind of hard to be all of that at the same time.

Pretty much, yeah. I mean, what does it say when the game has rules for exhaustion, starvation, and exposure to elements, like these are meant to be big hurdles, then gives the players abilities that lets them laugh these things off by level 5 at the latest?

 

[payn]

Pretty much, yeah. I mean, what does it say when the game has rules for exhaustion, starvation, and exposure to elements, like these are meant to be big hurdles, then gives the players abilities that lets them laugh these things off by level 5 at the latest?

I think thats where the modular space was supposed to come to life. Like the gritty rest rules, you'd have survival sim options. Probably something that took away create food and water spells and added in effects for lacking them.

While there was a time a lot of gamers fond this compelling, i think its become more niche over the decades, and thus farther from the general expectation of D&D.

 

[James Gasik]

I think thats where the modular space was supposed to come to life. Like the gritty rest rules, you'd have survival sim options. Probably something that took away create food and water spells and added in effects for lacking them.

While there was a time a lot of gamers fond this compelling, i think its become more niche over the decades, and thus farther from the general expectation of D&D.

Instead we have both, and it's been a thorn in a lot of people's sides for a long time.

 

[overgeeked]

I think the problem is, your DM would have to be one hell of a storyteller to turn what is, in effect, a series of die rolls, into a visceral action sequence like say, the market chase from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Then again, this is the same problem with combats, so I guess if you've solved one, you solved the other.

It’s not hard. You just have to stick with the fiction and keep things dynamic. If you focus on the mechanics and ignore the fiction, it’ll but dull as hell. Just like combats.

And, just like combats, the scene has to be dynamic or it’ll suck. Boring fights are always the same. Round 1 move into position and maybe attack. Round 2 maybe finish moving into position and attack. Round 3 stand still and attack. Lather rinse repeat until everyone’s bored…then keep going until one side runs out of HP. If you run chases the same way, of course it’ll be boring. Again, 4E has some amazing advice on running action-adventure games.

The environment changes and shifts around you, the enemies have interesting goals with timers that don’t involve simply killing the PCs, monsters power up or down, monsters arrive or leave, objects (walls, furniture, etc) are destroyed or created, etc.

But, let it go too long and even that’ll be boring, maybe 3-4 rounds and you’re out.

There was a thread on the most fun you had in a TTRPG chase scene.

Mine was a 5e game using a sort of 4e style skill challenge to get an Indiana Jones type of feel that worked well. Focusing on the narrative and choices suitable for the players in the scene while structurally going multiple rounds of engaging each player one by one then resolving how the scene progressed based on their choices and successes or failures at their actions worked really well for engaging me and my group to resolve that situation.

5e out of the gate has some tools you can use but not a lot of great guidance.

Exactly. If the scene is static, it’ll be boring. Things have to move and progress and change for there to be interest. The idea of skill challenges is great, it’s the implementation that was flawed. The 4E DMG has amazing advice. There are some great skill challenges buried in 4E.

 

[Quickleaf]

I think chase scenes are just hard in TTRPGs. Even games that do it "well" really only do it "okay" (I'm thinking of Savage Worlds here). It is such an immediate and audiovisual thing that I think primarily verbal media have a hard time doing it. I can't think of a novel, for example, that has pulled it off.

It’s a design challenge, yes, but there are RPGs with great chase rules…

James Bond 007 and Cineflex both use fun bidding systems (the former is more vehicle maneuver based but still involves bidding) which make for exciting chases… I’ve wondered if the White Hack bidding challenges might be retooled for a chase as well. I’ve also heard - but not played - the old Indiana Jones Adventure RPG had good chase rules.

I’ve also written my own that play great in my playtests and the 3 other groups that got back to me with playtest feedback.

So I would pushback on your assertion that a chase needs to be audiovisually stimulating to be thrilling. I have experience to the contrary.

 

[Quickleaf]

Really? That surprises me. Skill Challenges are wonderful for precisely that purpose, especially because a chase scene is extremely amenable to the few tweaks that make SCs even better: degrees of success*, dynamically evolving game-state, and one player reasonably "setting up" another player for a bigger impact.

*By which I mean, not just "partial" success etc., but rather true degrees thereof, all the way from abject failure to stunning success.

My experience was that the default skill challenge system from 4e sucked - it was a deeply flawed system that was harmed by its abstract nature. The d20 Star Wars Galaxy of Intrigue book had the best skill challenge approach that I’ve seen, and even when I used that for chases it… let’s just say it took a lot of massaging to make it great. IME skill challenges do not (out of the gate) produce thrilling chase scenes. YMMV.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Pretty much, yeah. I mean, what does it say when the game has rules for exhaustion, starvation, and exposure to elements, like these are meant to be big hurdles, then gives the players abilities that lets them laugh these things off by level 5 at the latest?

For me, the solution is to weaken or remove said abilities, but I'm sure some folks would rather just shine exploration obstacles altogether.

 

[James Gasik]

For me, the solution is to weaken or remove said abilities, but I'm sure some folks would rather just shine exploration obstacles altogether.

I mean, it's not that there isn't a solution, if you see a problem. It's just that it's confusing to present what seems to be a problem to solve, then immediately hand people the tools to solve it.

It'd be like, I don't know, someone said "ok, so the problem with a bow is you need arrows. Fortunately, here's this ability to give you unlimited arrows by 5th level."*

*I saw something like this in a third party sourcebook, an archer class that had an ability to increase the amount of ammunition they could recover after battle by 10% per level (in 3e, the chance started at 50%) so that by level 5, you recovered 100% of all fired arrows.

 

[humble minion]

Has anyone said ‘mounted combat’ yet?

Because, mounted combat.