D&D General Alternate thought - rule of cool is bad for gaming

[Maxperson]

So is it really any surprise that I put forward this scenario as an example of an action declaration which has no clear resolution procedure under the 5e rules?

Nope! You and I are often at odds with rules and interpretations, but I cannot fault your selection here.

 

[tetrasodium]

That's one way a DM can go, but there is no guidance there. Is 1 more foot easy? Is 5 more feet easy? Or is it moderate or hard? No one knows. DCs are also no just in multiples of 5, so is 1 foot an easy 5? An easy 4? An Easy 6? No one knows. Is the farthest extra amount you can go with a nearly impossible DC 25 more feet? 10 more feet? 50 more feet? No one knows.

There is no guidance for how to set the DCs or the length of extra footage. All we get for guidance is "unusually far."

Yea, it's a stupid & useless spill of ink that fails to provide any functionality even before other stuff tries to hook into it by making PCs more capable than the baseline h2ik the GM is provided

 

[DinoInDisguise]

I might be alone, but I'd rather have no guidance than have everything prescribed. And this discussion seems to be people proposing the latter.

On the prior page, people promote that a DM having to make up a DC isn't a granular enough resolution system. A couple pages back people actually argued that DM's not using the results of the random table somehow made the table less useful. And some postulated that random tables are better than DMs making the decisions up - for verisimilitude.

I think there is an upper limit on the amount you can hem in a DM with "guidance" and rules before you take the game out of the game. And I think once we are seriously discussing rules that prescribe every outcome or DMs needing to abide by the results of random tables, we have crossed that line.

I wonder what happens to the number of DMs as their role transforms into one of memorization. I don't remember liking memorization when I was in school, so I am not optimistic.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's not crystal clear to me how random wilderness encounter tables interact with this goal. They don't seem essential to it. Do they facilitate it?

They're not required, but they do help to provide a reasonable range of creatures and other encounters by terrain. Tables are also nice to provide that sense of surprise to the players and GM both.

 

[tetrasodium]

I might be alone, but I'd rather have no guidance than have everything prescribed. And this discussion seems to be people proposing the latter.

On the prior page, people promote that a DM having to make up a DC isn't a granular enough resolution system. A couple pages back people actually argued that DM's not using the results of the random table somehow made the table less useful. And some postulated that random tables are better than DMs making the decisions up - for verisimilitude.

I think there is an upper limit on the amount you can hem in a DM with "guidance" and rules before you take the game out of the game. And I think once we are seriously discussing rules that prescribe every outcome or DMs needing to abide by the results of random tables, we have crossed that line.

I wonder what happens to the number of DMs as their role transforms into one of memorization. I don't remember liking memorization when I was in school, so I am not optimistic.

Even in the editions that provided player facing hard numbers for a lot of things like 3.5 the GM was provided with a wealth of tools like a DC chart where the GM could make a logical DC choice for who could do it based on the situation & DM's best friend to provide some feedback of risks to players or fiddle with hard numbers when appropriate. Earlier editions like 2e went the other way by (often) not really having anything on top of being a wildly different system mechanically. Also because of the need for PCs to eat opportunity costs of sunk skill points by investing in skills & jump being a good enough skill that was generally hard to justify taking 10/20 it rarely had high enough values that superhero jumping came into possibility.

in areas like jump 5e tends to provide the worst of both with easily reached hard values expected by players for PCs enjoying cost free passive numerical advancement stacked against the sucking void provided to the GM

 

[Micah Sweet]

In Moldvay's example of play, initial reaction dice are rolled, then the player has their PC make an advance, then the dice are rolled again to determine the Hobgoblins' response to that.

Never read Moldvay. My first D&D experience was Mentzer.

 

[Oofta]

That's one way a DM can go, but there is no guidance there. Is 1 more foot easy? Is 5 more feet easy? Or is it moderate or hard? No one knows. DCs are also no just in multiples of 5, so is 1 foot an easy 5? An easy 4? An Easy 6? No one knows. Is the farthest extra amount you can go with a nearly impossible DC 25 more feet? 10 more feet? 50 more feet? No one knows.

There is no guidance for how to set the DCs or the length of extra footage. All we get for guidance is "unusually far."

But the point is that we do have a resolution process. The PC can't jump that far automatically so the DM decides if it's possible. If it's uncertain but possible they set a DC.

I agree that some guidelines would be nice, taking jump as an example of how to set them. Problem is that we can't have specifics for every possible option. They tried giving us concrete numbers in 3E, but it never really helped all that much. We'll have to wait and see what they do in the 2024 DMG.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Maybe such a group should stick close to town then, to be honest.

This assumes that most of the meaningful things in the game to do are near town. I know there are town based adventures, but in fantasy games, I've seen fairly few campaigns where that wouldn't add up to "So when are you going to play some characters who actually want to do something?" Sometimes the simple fact is that the majority of adventuring things to do require you to go out into terrain where retreating isn't liable to be a practical option. I suppose you could, as players, demand the campaign not be set in such areas, but, uhm...

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well...their call, I suppose.

It doesn't strike me as that particularly unlikely in the case of groups with a strong moral slant or those with strong camaraderie. "No man left behind" is motto in the real world for some groups after all.

 

[Older Beholder]

I might be alone, but I'd rather have no guidance than have everything prescribed. And this discussion seems to be people proposing the latter.

Yep, it's why 5E's 'rulings over rules' philosophy has made it so successful.