Bring Back Verisimilitude, add in More Excitement!

[Xakk]

I think the general point here is that combat and noncombat need to mesh more. 4e was supposed to be 'newbie friendly' but someone seemed to feel that meant cutting out mechanics for much that wasn't killing things and taking their stuff. D&d is not a videogame.

We can open every door and expect a room. We can walk forever and not fall off the world or hit invisible walls (well not that kind of invisible wall). We can hold conversations with enemies that change their minds every time. We can tear down buildings and have NPCs build new ones. Or arm then and lead them against the king. We can be quest givers or villians.

In both 3 and 4, most of the time when you tried to do something not covered by the rules the DM made a spot call to bring things back to mechanics and that was good. But if you wanted to do it a lot then that call had to become a houserule which was not so good.

In 3rd you got class abilities and feats to let you do things you couldn't before, or in interesting new ways. In 4th they were really focused more on the power economy so class abilities and feats were mostly focused around improving your quantative values, which had become a lot more rationed.
I prefer 3rd editions style much better. Give me mechanics for impersonating a superior officer over +10 to hit any day. Or at least for overrunning with a carriage that isn't /per day.

 

[Herschel]

Only if you think verisimilitude can only mean the exact simulation of reality and forget that you could also be simulating the genre, colour, theme and flavour of a type of fiction.

Except EVERYONE has different ideas of what this constitutes.

So if D&D next comes out and they include a rule that whenever steel touches water, there is an explosion and everyone withing 10 feet takes a bunch of damage because "hey, it's all magic and fantasy and stuff" and people find that jarring or breaking of their immersion, it would be their fault and not the rules?

Really?

Funny you should use that ridiculous example since that actually would have a possibility of a "realistic" occurance even though it doesn't fit in the game if the alloy used was high in Lithium, Potassium, Rubidium, Caesium or Francium. All metals, all react strongly to violently with water.

That said, D&D is a certain style of game. On a macro level, all editions fit that style while the instance you named (just being plain, ordinary metal) doesn't fit that criteria, period. You could make/create a magic sword that does something similar due to the enchantment, but that's more in line of 1E, 2E and 3E magic items.

 

[Wormwood]

It certainly broadens the appeal of the game from just those who like game play to those who like to think in dramatic or story terms to think about scenes and scene framing and whatnot.

Ah, that makes sense. My groups have tended to think of our game using fictional tropes---the encounter as scene concept simply makes sense to us (both inside and outside of combat, by the way. A roleplaying scene is as much an encounter as a fight scene.)

What I like about applying the encounter structure to the game is that it allows us to focus on the parts when the characters are acting, easily relegating minutiae and non-dramatic stuff to 'off-screen'.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I have a constructive suggestion for those with strong simulation preferences, which I think they need to do, and really only they can do:

Start a few threads that are explicity for discussing the boundaries of simulation that are, in your view, necessary versus nice to have versus those that can be sacrificed (for gameplay or other preferences or whatever--doesn't really matter). Then, and this is the important part, hammer out the differences that will arise amongst yourself. If you don't see any differences, you aren't digging deep enough to get practical results.

When you want to branch out to asserting those boundaries to the rest of us, start new topics. This will give the preferences a coherence in presentation that they are currently lacking.

 

[Felon]

Try it the other way around. A barbarian rages, and at the end of his rage, he is fatigued. If already fatigued, he becomes exhausted. If already exhausted, he passes out.

And if the barbarian's already passed out, he dies. If he's already dead, he implodes through time and space resulting in him never having been born.

IMHO, forget both 3e and 4e rages. Rage should just be something that builds up during combat and is expended, somewhat like Iron Heroes' berserker. That's a much cooler mechanic than just getting some big bonus that effectively lasts the entire combat, and then you're tired once everyone's dead and it doesn't really matter that you're tired.

Poor Iron Heroes. Nobody ever talks about it anymore.

 

[Ahnehnois]

IMHO, forget both 3e and 4e rages. Rage should just be something that builds up during combat and is expended, somewhat like Iron Heroes' berserker. That's a much cooler mechanic than just getting some big bonus that effectively lasts the entire combat, and then you're tired once everyone's dead and it doesn't really matter that you're tired.

Poor Iron Heroes. Nobody ever talks about it anymore.

I could see something like that. It's not rage/day.

 

[DonTadow]

You can still rage when fatigued (in my proposal), but you get more tired until you collapse. When you're unconscious from extreme overexertion, then you can't rage.

A more detailed fatigue system? That everyone used? Perhaps tied in with a vitality/wound concept or the equivalent of subdual damage? That would be fine, even better than the existing rules maybe.

Think about it, the module class, each class worked the same. You get so much fatigue points a day. Players can choose their spell level and thus spells per day based on it. Rage is based on it. Everything that requires resources is based on one resource. So a player can play a wizard or cleric or fighter and feel comfortable.

How many people avoid certain classes cause they just didnt know how the mechanics worked.

 

[Sylrae]

This is really the crux, to what level of Verisimilitude should be the default? should the game be totally simulationist and provide rules for every little bit of the world?

Should it be totally naritivist and the rules dont interact with the naritive?

Probably somewhere in the middle. There should probably some some internal consistancy but the ruels shouldnt spell out the world in all it's little details.

I'm not talking about trying to represent *Everything* in the world. I just don't want the things that are represented to be balanced by "Because of Game Balance" without regard to how that fits verisimilitude.

It is all in 4E and should be transferred into the new edition.

As for more Dynamic Combat: 4e isn't dynamic enough. It's basically, "move and use one of your 9-12 powers": Which is an improvement for martial characters, a reduction for casters, but I really dislike the way it was implemented; and well, it's not what I want out of 5e. The Idea behind it would be good to transfer: "Everyone should have a decent number of viable options they can use on a given turn."

The PCs will face these conditions more often, because they fight in every encounter. Whereas the opponents only face these conditions in one encounter, namely the one the PCs win. I do not think that sitting at the table doing nothing for hours because my PC is paralyzed and the spellcaster ran out of anti-paralyze-spells is a fun thing.

Monsters don't have to follow the same Rules as PCs. Just because your typical PC has several win button abilities, doesn't mean every monster should have them.

I do not think this will work. And why should somebody who tinkers with a lot of things every level be just as good as somebody who concentrates on one thing only?

Because having a 20th level character who has a ton of completely useless 1st level abilities that never come up, worthless Spell DCs, and is about as powerful as a level 12 character (who can last a bit longer before he's out of spells) Is far too weak.

I do not agree with this at all. I think that a 20th level character should not be challenged by 20 first level opponents on a mechanical level but instead on a narrative level by the fact that he has to decide how to use that power responsibly (or irresponsibly) when dealing with people much less powerful. That is the roleplaying experience. Mechanically he should be challenged by creatures of great power, because that is where the epic story is.

You could increase the total number of levels to please both of us. I dont care for the power gap where you can singlehandedly slaughter armies. You do. Instead of 20 or 30 levels, you can make each tier bigger, and have say, a total of 90 levels.

And in the case of speed, you could also easily allow for people to gain 2-3 levels at a time each time they level, in which case you get to godslaying in the same amount of time it takes now.


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Fire Sets things on Fire, etc.

This is best left to DM rulings at the table.

Trying to encode this into the official rules as anything more than a list of helpful suggestions will significantly increase their complexity of the system. Which means significantly slowing down play.

So instead of being completely silent on the issue, make the list of helpful suggestions and give the GM some leeway. I dont want to be told by a player that a fireball can't catch a bunch of papers on fire, or told as a player that I can't use cold spells to freeze water because it's not spelled out in detail in the rules. Give the GM some leeway with it and make the suggestion that they use their best judgment.

What about "x spells per day per level" for casters, ie Vancian magic?

I'm not especially attached to it, but it doesn't offend me in the way that being told you can only chop a watermelon with a knife once a day.

This is all cool stuff... but the more you rely on explicit rules to handle these situations --as opposed to handling them abstractly and/or with on-the-spot rulings-- the more cumbersome the system becomes.

Meaning it will play slower.

Well, I either feel the need for more options, or mechanics expansive enough to support "doing something cool on the fly". The abstractions aren't satisfying, and the 'rules on the fly' are often met with being told its not mechanically supported. "You cant end a turn on another creature" etc. Or its treated as just refluffing a basic attack, even where that doesn't make sense.

This would be great -- just don't include a universal framework for "building" monsters a la 3e.

Absolutely. Give us a shortcut to build them, but don't make them personality-less "here's something to kill" all the time.

I'm all for lasting ill effects. But I'm against any implementation of buffs/debuffs that has you recalculating on the fly during combat, or has you playing the bonus stacking game. It's too time consuming.

-2Str means -1 to Hit, -1 Damage, -1 to Strength based skills, and lowered carrying capacity. I could easily see ditching the carrying capacity, and just spell out what they lose instead of just the attribute.

The part that really went away from this in 4e, is you can't kill a creature by attacking its attributes anymore. And I want more ways to skin an orc than through his hitpoints.

Like other people said, option paralysis is a bad thing. And the more explicit mechanical options you have, the greater the tendency to view everything occurring in-game through the lens of the rules, ie for some people, the options themselves break immersion.

I imagine that would be a matter of writing style. D&D doesn't give GM's alot of wiggle room in judgment without houserules.

The rules can't evaluate the specifics of a situation. Only the DM can. Which means "rulings not rules".

Yes. but also, dont have the rules get in the way of rulings that make sense.

Absolutely!

Savage Worlds kinda does this... it's a nice approach, but I wonder if it's too different from traditional D&D. You can certainly flatten the power scale, to something closer to AD&D than 3e.

Or make the level chart bigger, so you can do the 3 tier thing by going to 60, or even 90, or you can say; go to 20 or 30 and its more the AD&D thing.


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Why does this not fit your narrative approach. In books, comics, games and classic dnd, a raging barbarian is always winded or tired afterwards.

Why is a per encounter until adequate rest limitation not suitable? Either that or a reduction into the overall power of Rage.

I dont think x/encounter is a good way to model fatigue afterward, because it affects nothing but his ability to rage again.

If it was instead: After Raging, you suffer a -5 to all actions until you sit down and rest for 10 minutes, or something like that. For scaling, you can increase the duration of rage, increase the bonuses, reduce the following penalties, or reduce the amount of rest needed, to represent "GEtting better at handling this."

Or to simplify: As Ahnehnois mentioned: use hte fatigue and exhaustion mechanics.

If you want the campaign to involve stomping through hell and fighting demondragons and killing Asmodeus, then fine.

If you want to make a full campaign out of the bottom tier, then you have mechanics to support it.

 

[nnms]

Except EVERYONE has different ideas of what this constitutes.

So what? Just because me and the OP might have different ideas about what things should be represented to get the verisimilitude we want, that means that neither of us want something legitimate and verisimilitude is a crock that should be tossed out?

You pick an element and you design a game mechanic to produce it. What does it matter if I say we should represent the passage of time and moment by moment pacing and another person says we should represent the dramatic structure of a three act play? Both of our preferences don't count because they're not the same?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

You pick an element and you design a game mechanic to produce it. What does it matter if I say we should represent the passage of time and moment by moment pacing and another person says we should represent the dramatic structure of a three act play? Both of our preferences don't count because they're not the same?

To me, your preferences do count, but frequenlty the problem in this situation is that both of your are, in effect, short-changing yourselves. The preference is too vague to be realized, and often not paying sufficient attention to the potential or even probable consequences of seeking it. This vastly reduces the chance that you'll get what you reall want.

From the other side of the argument, I'll tell you what it often looks like (even when I know full well it isn't): It looks like the guy with the preference doesn't want to be pinned down on details for some reason. This is why so many counter-arguments show frustration so fast, and talk about things the guy with preference don't really care about. They are trying to dig out the details in order to discuss it and/or remembering previous conversations that did not go so well.

That's why I said earlier that the boundaries are what matters here, if you want results. You want moment by moment pacing? OK, typical turns are 1 second, 3 seconds, 6 seconds? What can a character do during that time? And then you might say, "Naw, 1 second is too fine. We aren't playing full-bore GURPS here." Well, already we are making progress. But we can't make that progress until we get past this:

Sim Guy #1 (who wants 1 second): We need moment by moment pacing.
Sim Guy #2 (who wants 3 seconds): Sounds great!
Sim Guy #3 (who wants 10 seconds, multiple actions): Yeah, that's great!
Playability Guy: Couldn't that turn into something overly detailed?
Sim Guys in Chorus: Naw man, we need moment by moment pacing, we all agree! Why you always trying to knock us down?

I perhaps engage in a bit of hyperbole here for effect.

But seriously, the dirty secret of simulation preferences is that most people want at least a little simulation, at least part of the time. So the range is huge.

You know what used to kill immersion for me? Having heavily armored warriors that have no mechanical means to punish monsters that blithely run by them to smack their robed wizard pal. Oh, well I often just had the monster act like they ought to act given the "reality" of the situation, not how the game said it worked. So understand the idea that the mechanics not fitting the reality of the widget in question can be annoying. But having had to wait almost 30 years to get a version of D&D that effectively addressed my annoyance in this regard, I'm well aware that what people say they want in general and what they mean in particular is not always as closely linked as it first appears.