Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Ah, my bad. I didn't realize you were invoking a hypothetical other to be the stand in for the argument. I postulate a hypothetical other that is the perfect customer for the game. Where does this go from here?
D&D (2024) 4e design in 5.5e ?
Nowhere. You have successfully demonstrated the pointlessness of attempting further interaction.
Have a nice life!
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Nefermandias
Hero
These potions your are taking about only came with Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium, and that was already the beginning of WoTC efforts to win back 3.5e people. Doesn't really count since they are not in the original spirit of the edition.
MichaelSomething
Legend
What are people's goals though? I can't parse that out?? Do people want a return to the 5 minute workday???
overgeeked
B/X Known World
Since we’re doing skill challenges, here’s this from another thread. I’d love for something like this to be in 5.5.
I really, really loved skill challenges in 4E. They had their flaws but it was a great idea. We found it really hard to come up with interesting consequences to failure that weren't forced combat, death, or lose a healing surge. To us that was boring. So we loosened up the already loose framework, but made it more concrete instead of abstract. Though it could still easily handle abstract and montage scenes well. The DM would set up some montage or action scene and would include obstacles to overcome. There was generally either a separate timer (be done in X rounds or bad thing Y will happen, survive the night, etc) or some consequential fail state, NPC dies, lose some resource, lose favor with NPC, etc.
You rolled as normal, a regular success counted as one and a crit counted as two. A failure counted as one but fumbles weren't used. A failure would either add a new obstacle (usually one success' worth) or would add one to a given obstacle. So you need to climb a wall that takes two successes. Get one success and you're halfway up the wall. Fail and you slide back down and now you need two successes to climb the wall. But it had to make narrative sense. If you're halfway up a wall and you fail the wall doesn't get taller. You slide down. And you populate a skill challenge with a few obstacles that take different skills to overcome and that require differing numbers of successes. You can see an official 4E skill challenge that basically works like this in Dungeon 173. The Colossus of Laarn. Because we'd already converted to doing it this way, switching over to 5E didn't mean abandoning skill challenges.
Two of my favorites were the giant obstacle course and the zombie horde.
We were captured by giants and forced to go through an obstacle course while the giants were cheering, jeering, and throwing boulders. A failure could mean either you fell, slid down a wall, or a giant threw a boulder at you. A PC was halfway up a wall, failed and fell down, failed again so a giant threw a boulder. DEX save or take damage. The player then used the boulder to climb up the wall. There was more to it, of course, but that was the most memorable part.
We were in a town attacked by a zombie horde and had to survive the night. Checks to sneak from building to building without being caught. Checks to scrounge for supplies. Checks to barricade the building we were in. Failures meant time wasted or attracting zombies. The zombie horde would degrade the barricades by one every few hours depending on how many were there. If we were loud more would show up and degrade the barricade faster. Each success made the barricade stronger so it would last longer, but we only had so many resources to work with. We went to the inn and broke up the tables and chairs for wood to barricade the door. One PC was a guild artisan carpenter and handled that while the barbarian pulled larger bits of furniture, barrels, etc in front of the barricade.
It's a loosey-goosey system but it was a lot more fun, dynamic, and interesting than the nailed down skill challenges as written.
I really, really loved skill challenges in 4E. They had their flaws but it was a great idea. We found it really hard to come up with interesting consequences to failure that weren't forced combat, death, or lose a healing surge. To us that was boring. So we loosened up the already loose framework, but made it more concrete instead of abstract. Though it could still easily handle abstract and montage scenes well. The DM would set up some montage or action scene and would include obstacles to overcome. There was generally either a separate timer (be done in X rounds or bad thing Y will happen, survive the night, etc) or some consequential fail state, NPC dies, lose some resource, lose favor with NPC, etc.
You rolled as normal, a regular success counted as one and a crit counted as two. A failure counted as one but fumbles weren't used. A failure would either add a new obstacle (usually one success' worth) or would add one to a given obstacle. So you need to climb a wall that takes two successes. Get one success and you're halfway up the wall. Fail and you slide back down and now you need two successes to climb the wall. But it had to make narrative sense. If you're halfway up a wall and you fail the wall doesn't get taller. You slide down. And you populate a skill challenge with a few obstacles that take different skills to overcome and that require differing numbers of successes. You can see an official 4E skill challenge that basically works like this in Dungeon 173. The Colossus of Laarn. Because we'd already converted to doing it this way, switching over to 5E didn't mean abandoning skill challenges.
Two of my favorites were the giant obstacle course and the zombie horde.
We were captured by giants and forced to go through an obstacle course while the giants were cheering, jeering, and throwing boulders. A failure could mean either you fell, slid down a wall, or a giant threw a boulder at you. A PC was halfway up a wall, failed and fell down, failed again so a giant threw a boulder. DEX save or take damage. The player then used the boulder to climb up the wall. There was more to it, of course, but that was the most memorable part.
We were in a town attacked by a zombie horde and had to survive the night. Checks to sneak from building to building without being caught. Checks to scrounge for supplies. Checks to barricade the building we were in. Failures meant time wasted or attracting zombies. The zombie horde would degrade the barricades by one every few hours depending on how many were there. If we were loud more would show up and degrade the barricade faster. Each success made the barricade stronger so it would last longer, but we only had so many resources to work with. We went to the inn and broke up the tables and chairs for wood to barricade the door. One PC was a guild artisan carpenter and handled that while the barbarian pulled larger bits of furniture, barrels, etc in front of the barricade.
It's a loosey-goosey system but it was a lot more fun, dynamic, and interesting than the nailed down skill challenges as written.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
On a crit you can perform a stunt. Stunts are chosen from a list or free form based on context and DM approval. You could even have a fighting style or feat that expanded your stunt range. Stunt on 19-20, for example.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
Posts by Scott Rouse, Ryan Dancey, Greg Tito while still writing for The Escapist, ICv2. There's quite a bit out there.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Maybe.
I've never seen the 5-minute workday as being the massive issue some others seem to have with it, as in reality it's what the adventurers would do if they could.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
Up to a point, yes. I think one of the major problems with 5E is the amount of player input taken on board. In my experience, most modern players don’t want a challenge they just want endless easy wins. So we got an open playtest, however many thousands of players pushing for cool toys and no challenge and 1/10th as many DMs pushing for more challenging game play. So we ended up with a game that uses terrible assumptions about party size and quantity of combats in a day and balances the game around that. Which means it’s hard to challenge PCs unless you go way beyond the suggested limits of encounters. Which makes players happy because the game is easy mode and DMs are frustrated because they can’t challenge the party without going way out of spec. D&D should stop trying to be all things to all people.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Or, to tie stunting more closely to fighting proficiency, you can stunt if you roll a nat 20 or if your adjusted to-hit roll beats the target AC by at least 10. (where 10 is replaceable by any other number depending how often you want these stunts to come up in play)
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