Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
I don't think its either/or, and I think players can on average handle more than they're getting.
D&D General What's wrong with Perception?
Benjamin Olson
Hero
Interesting. I think a pure "apply proficiency where appropriate" system might be most intuitive and appealing with the variant proficiency dice rule. It makes the extra bonus feel more impactful and worth fussing over, particularly at low levels if you are lobbying to add a d4 rather than to just add 2, and I think if you can't use the current neatly pre-calculated total bonus then being able to figure out a couple dice and add them to a bonus comes more naturally to most players than adding a die, a bonus and and additional bonus.
Vaalingrade
Legend
Honestly rethinking the whole point of having surprise at all.
Benjamin Olson
Hero
Sure, but it's not the average player in the group we have to worry about, it's the member of the group who is already struggling with rules long-term. In my experience this is not a person lacking intelligence, but just a person with a busy life who is not able to spend much of their time away from the table thinking about rules, and who maybe also avoided math since High School.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
So games should be designed based on the people who would struggle the most? That's one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. You need to at least design to the average, or you're leaving the majority of your player base high and dry.
And I think the average is higher than what we've been provided.
I'm not saying that you're saying this, but if this is the case, why include ambushes? Why include traps? Why include secret doors? Why include clues at all? Why include surprise?
I find that players in 5e, IME at my table, want all of the above to go away. They want complete control of the situation, don't want to be under any threat, or uncertainty. They certainly never want to take damage, and even under 5e games with no optional rules, will undergo 5 minute work days to be at maximum health and nova ability.
I mean, what is the point of even playing a "game" when you want to remove the game element from it? No danger? No chance of being ambushed? Everything laid out? What's the point? And that is what I see a lot of the arguments around Perception falling into: I don't want to ever fail. I want to see everything. I don't want to auto-fail, and I certainly have built my character to have as close to a 95% chance of success as possible, 100% if I take Lucky!
We switched from 5e to Basic for this exact reason. No Perception skill. No skills at all. You want to figure something out, you figure it out. Sometimes the DM will call for an ability roll, but that's not always the same ability, depending on what you do and situation. So its not as easy as just maximizing certain things.
Hell, my Fighter's maximum ability score is 12. 12! Can you imagine the horror of 5e players?!? Even ability checks aren't even a 50/50 for me a lot of the time. And I managed to survive to 5th level. Imagine that.
Benjamin Olson
Hero
No, you're leaving the majority of players with a much larger potential player base of people to game with, by not abandoning the quintile or quartile of players who struggle the most.
There are plenty of games that cater to more hardcore tabletop gamers at the expense of a broader player base. The flagship, gateway game in the hobby should not be one of them.
I'm sure you've heard worse ideas in your life than making D&D broadly accessible.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
A company that actually wanted to make a good game that wouldn't unnecessary frustrate people would provide solid rules and levels of complexity to suit that broad base they want. What we have now is lazy design that's not going to get better because enough people don't care for them to feel they don't have to bother.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
I think what we're more likely to have here is a player disgruntled that most people seem satisfied with the game as it is rather than match his own preferences. And is then willing to project laziness onto the designers rather than accept that fact.
Ok, but what's the upside here? You don't invest in Perception so you get hit by every trap, miss every secret door, and get ambushed by any enemy with Stealth? How is that fun?
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