D&D General Circle Magic Concerns In "Heroes Of Faerun"

[Blue]

When you start our by saying that all the examples have to be excluded without having specified that there were any limits before, it makes responding rather difficult. I am, of course, specifically talking about the very thing you seem to think is a tiny exclusion, not large sections of the text.

This is your limitation, from the very beginning.

"5e is never going to be a game where the rules just inherently work out of the box. That was, quite literally, one of the design intents, leaving a portion of the design for the GM to figure out."

We're talking about the rules not working. Which is why when you started down a path that doesn't sound like rules, but rather advice where DMs have multiple valid ways to go, I wanted to keep us on track.

You said D&D 5e it too loosey goosey, and the rules don't work out of the box. So valid criticisms need to come from those rules that you claim aren't working.

So I'm not particularly interested in continuing a conversation where the rules change in your favor halfway through.

As you can see, they haven't. I have stayed on the topic as you have defined it.

So please, don't run away. Either support your statements or gracefully concede you may be wrong. Let's talk about the rules, which are the things you critiqued as not working out of the box.

 

[AlViking]

Okay. I can only go by the rulebooks I read. The ones that repeatedly say things of the form "You can do X. Or you can not do X. You decide!"

Or the absolutely hilarious, legitimately "you can't make this stuff up" level of anti-advice, when the game literally tells you to figure out how much XP to give for noncombat encounter by...telling you to pretend that it is a combat encounter and thus use those rules. Without even spending a single sentence talking about, y'know, how you'd do that.

All of which just acknowledges what DMs have always done. Are they not supposed to say it out loud?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

All of which just acknowledges what DMs have always done. Are they not supposed to say it out loud?

There is a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge difference between throwing GMs to the wolves because you know every GM will make small tweaks here and there to the game, and making a game that is designed to work exactly as advertised, while recognizing that GMs will likely make small changes here and there to make it truly sing for them.

But I know that continuing this discussion with you is absolutely 100% pointless, so I'm not replying beyond this post.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

There is a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge difference between throwing GMs to the wolves because you know every GM will make small tweaks here and there to the game, and making a game that is designed to work exactly as advertised, while recognizing that GMs will likely make small changes here and there to make it truly sing for them.

I'm trying hard to see your side and understand the huge difference, but I just don't see it. Tomato Tomahto you're saying the same thing twice except slightly differently

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm trying hard to see your side and understand the huge difference, but I just don't see it. Tomato Tomahto you're saying the same thing twice except slightly differently

The former is the designers saying "we don't have to actually design a functional game. We just need to print something on the page. GMs will figure it out." The latter is, "We took very seriously that the game needs to actually be well-designed from the beginning, even though we know you will probably make changes to it."

It is the TTRPG design version of "that's not a bug, it's a feature!"

If you would like a different analogy: When you give someone a recipe, you expect them to probably tweak it slightly. That's why we talk about adding salt "to taste" and the like; different ingredients (maybe this brand of evaporated milk has less water content than that brand, or this bouillon has more salt in it than that bouillon, or whatever), different tools (pans, ovens, burners, knives, etc.), different ambient conditions (humidity, temperature, pressure, etc.) and more, mean that you need to taste it and adjust the salt to your preferences, and probably will grow more comfortable with the recipe and what it needs as you become more experienced with cooking it. But you, the person getting that recipe, are going to expect the result to actually be a good meal (or a good dessert or whatever) without needing to cook it five times first and rework the recipe until it actually comes together properly.

The first statement is drafting a recipe for others to cook without doing more than cursory testing yourself, because you know "salt to taste" is in there. The second statement is saying that you've tested this recipe extensively, you are quite sure it achieves the intended result if followed, but folks should still salt to taste.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

The former is the designers saying "we don't have to actually design a functional game. We just need to print something on the page. GMs will figure it out." The latter is, "We took very seriously that the game needs to actually be well-designed from the beginning, even though we know you will probably make changes to it."

Yeah I suppose this (and everything you wrote afterwards) makes sense, but we're both looking at the same content and many people (e.g. you) conclude the former while many other people (e.g. me) conclude the latter. The line is very subjective and seems highly dependent on your general opinion of DnD and/or WotC as a whole.

It is the TTRPG design version of "that's not a bug, it's a feature!"

This is entirely how I would describe it. Ease of DM tailoring the rules is the single #1 strength of DnD for me, but I can definitely see how that would irk others

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah I suppose this (and everything you wrote afterwards) makes sense, but we're both looking at the same content and many people (e.g. you) conclude the former while many other people (e.g. me) conclude the latter. The line is very subjective and seems highly dependent on your general opinion of DnD and/or WotC as a whole.

I mean, sure, but let's dig up that specific quote I referenced earlier, which (supposedly) I have an unfair interpretation of.

The quote is as follows, from the 2014 DMG. This is the complete entirety of its guidance for how to give XP for non-combat encounters.

---

Noncombat Challenges​

You decide whether to award experience to characters for overcoming challenges outside combat. If the adventurers complete a tense negotiation with a baron, forge a trade agreement with a clan of surly dwarves, or successfully navigate the Chasm of Doom, you might decide that they deserve an XP reward.

As a starting point, use the rules for building combat encounters In chapter 3 to gauge the difficulty of the challenge. Then award the characters XP as if it had been a combat encounter of the same difficulty, but only if the encounter involved a meaningful risk of failure.

---

It...literally doesn't tell you anything. At all. It gives zero guidance for what it means to gauge the difficulty of the challenge. You are simply instructed to pretend that it's a combat encounter, and then use those rules instead. Nothing else is said. At all.

The rules for building encounters are entirely based on combat-related statistics. They have nothing--diddly-squat nothing--to do with the difficulty of the social task. The authors seem to think that it is a completely trivial task to do this translation into combat-centric rules. It is not. It is nothing of the sort, in fact. But I'm apparently the horrible awful jerk for asking for rules that lift even a finger to explain how on earth you'd translate "this is a difficult negotiation with a clan of dwarves" into COMBAT RULES so that you can somehow magic up XP for it. For goodness's sake, they don't even tell you what part of the chapter! Just plonk the entire Chapter 3 rules in there, you'll figure it out, you're a smart cookie!!!!

This is entirely how I would describe it. Ease of DM tailoring the rules is the single #1 strength of DnD for me, but I can definitely see how that would irk others

Whereas for me, ease of the GMs using the rules that are already there is the #1 requirement. Tailoring is going to occur no matter what you do, and while it is good to try to help that, you cannot do anything to stop it, and even things you do that might slow it down aren't going to slow it down very much.

Folks who want the system to be something other than what it is will take a sledgehammer to it either way. Folks hoping for a system that actually works out of the box are SOL if you give them a system that doesn't.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The rules for building encounters are entirely based on combat-related statistics

XP rules have always been hand waved for combat as well as non-combat encounters. Different tables play D&D with different emphasis, and XP is awarded to reward the activates the table wants to encourage, in a quantity to match the desired rate of levelling. Ergo Gygax awarded XP for killing monsters and accumulated wealth. Any other activity was played for love (aka no reward). Later, as social activities became more standard, they were seen as a way to bypass combat, and thus awarded however many xp you would have gained by murderhoboing it. 3e then made things even more complicated by including magic items into progression. If you look at CRPGs like BG1, they award xp for completing objectives based on the desired rate of progression.

So yes, it’s all completely arbitrary, which is why WotC has largely dumped xp and made milestone levelling standard. You gain a level whenever you reach a certain point in the plot. How you get there is irrelevant.

The fact is, xp, gold and level really doesn’t matter anyway. There is no winning or losing in D&D. It’s just brownie points to make the players feel good.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

XP rules have always been hand waved for combat as well as non-combat encounters. Different tables play D&D with different emphasis, and XP is awarded to reward the activates the table wants to encourage, in a quantity to match the desired rate of levelling. Ergo Gygax awarded XP for killing monsters and accumulated wealth. Any other activity was played for love (aka no reward). Later, as social activities became more standard, they were seen as a way to bypass combat, and thus awarded however many xp you would have gained by murderhoboing it. 3e then made things even more complicated by including magic items into progression. If you look at CRPGs like BG1, they award xp for completing objectives based on the desired rate of progression.

So yes, it’s all completely arbitrary, which is why WotC has largely dumped xp and made milestone levelling standard. You gain a level whenever you reach a certain point in the plot. How you get there is irrelevant.

The fact is, xp, gold and level really doesn’t matter anyway. There is no winning or losing in D&D. It’s just brownie points to make the players feel good.

If you're writing a rules section....

...which specifically purports to tell the GM how to award XP for non-combat encounters when they wish to do so...

...then the entirety of this argument is completely irrelevant.

The section is already assuming that you are using XP levelling, not milestone levelling. It is assuming that you, the GM, care about rewarding behaviors with progress. It is assuming that players receiving XP and levelling up will be considered a victory condition.

You are literally saying, "Well if we assume that nothing matters, then the fact that this is useless is irrelevant." Yes...but that assumption is in direct contradiction to what the text is doing.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If you're writing a rules section....

...which specifically purports to tell the GM how to award XP for non-combat encounters when they wish to do so...

...then the entirety of this argument is completely irrelevant.

It purports to advise the DM.

It is assuming that you, the GM, care about rewarding behaviors with progress.

It's an illusion of progress. The characters will level up, come what may. And the monsters will get tougher to compensate, come what may. The PCs have to level up at the end of Chapter 1, because otherwise Chapter 2 will be too difficult.