D&D 5E D&D compared to Bespoke Genre TTRPGs

[Hussar]

It does help that my main group are extremely smart, lateral thinkers who like thinking and planning, are familiar with this sort of genre, and who very much want to be Locke Lamora or Kaz Brekker and crew, particularly enjoy masquerading as people, and like actually want to come up with the plan.

And, now not only am I a failure of a DM, my players aren't particularly bright either. LOL. These just keeps getting better and better.

Note, in D&D, it's not that a single check has to succeed, it's that EVERY SINGLE check has to succeed because failure is catastrophic. The guard spots you, the guy sees through your disguise, you failed your bluff check, whatever. As soon as you fail, the balloon goes up and it's time to kill everything.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Heck, it's why I get kinda shirty when people talk about how the game was "back in the day" as if their play experience was universal. We've all seen those posts, over and over again. The "truisms" of various editions - AD&D was all about avoiding combat as much as possible, as an example, which, frankly, is a load of hooey. It might be true for a given table, but, it certainly wasn't universal. Or that all tables were really into Gygaxian naturalism. Or all tables were all about strip mining adventures for every last gp. None of the generalizations are true. At best, you can only talk about your (and I mean this as the generic you, myself most certainly included here) tiny slice of experiences.

This is an inherently hypocritical position, you see that right? You're saying people are literally allowed to only speak about their own direct experiences, but a couple of sentences before, you yourself made sweeping claims about what was and wasn't universal, which absolutely rely on you talking about a ton of stuff you didn't directly experience. You are generalizing when you say things like "AD&D was all about avoiding combat as much as possible, as an example, which, frankly, is a load of hooey". I mean I agree with it, but it's a generalization reliant on indirect knowledge. There's also a large element of projection/hearing what you want to hear, as with "AD&D was all about avoiding combat as much as possible, as an example, which, frankly, is a load of hooey" - that's not something anyone here has said. I think it's you wildly exaggerating me and others pointing out that early D&D tended to be about ambushes and avoiding combat which wasn't advantageous, but that's obviously not the same thing as saying AD&D was about that - AD&D was where things began to move towards a more heroic model, though 3E really kept "ambush == win" design-wise.

And, now not only am I a failure of a DM, my players aren't particularly bright either. LOL. These just keeps getting better and better.

If that's all you got from multiple paragraphs of explanation, then I can safely say I'm not the one with a problem here. Not everything in the world is about you, and if you read that much text, and all you extract is a sense of personal victimhood relating to a single line, then I really don't think you're here for the discussion. It's obviously not a legitimate or good-faith reading of what I was saying, and you even dumped the context of the rest of the paragraph, which is particularly white guy blinking gif. It's also funny because @loverdrive actually brought the issue up countless posts ago that relatively few groups could do that sort of planning, so I guess he was victimizing you too with his cruel suggestion that not all groups were capable of or even interested in in-depth planning. How dare we suggest some people might not be into a thing, or not good at a thing.

(This is of course particularly funny to me, because as a player, I'm not like them. I don't enjoy making elaborate plans, I like seat-of-the-pants stuff and had less of a problem with BitD's approach than they did - my brother was DMing. I'm fine with following them, but making them? Not so much. So I guess I was saying I'm not "particularly bright" by your logic?)

Note, in D&D, it's not that a single check has to succeed, it's that EVERY SINGLE check has to succeed because failure is catastrophic. The guard spots you, the guy sees through your disguise, you failed your bluff check, whatever. As soon as you fail, the balloon goes up and it's time to kill everything.

This literally isn't true. It's not even arguable. If you think that's how D&D works, again, the problem is not with anyone else in this thread. You can run a game where every failure is catastrophic, but that's a choice, it's not inherent to the design. It's funny because you yourself said:

Heck, just the notion of what a failed check means is hard to reproduce as how one DM interprets failure can be radically different from another.

That's incompatible with the flat claim that checks are inherently catastrophic.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say, your interpretation that check failures = catastrophe is idiosyncratic and erratic in the classic sense, to a fairly extreme degree. You've clearly expressed this view that all failures should result in immediate total mission failure for heists, but it's not something that's actually the case.

This whole "kill everything" notion is particularly bizarre. If the PCs are so dangerous that they can do that, why are people even engaging them? Is this bank run by and employing suicidal maniacs? In real heist scenarios where people are heavily armed and armoured (as has happened actually surprisingly quite a few times in history) people tend to get the hell out of their way. It can actually be part of the plan - c.f. the successful heist at the beginning of HEAT (which is clearly designed to minimize actual deaths and serious injuries - an evil character with no self-control undermines that of course).

Basically what you're saying is like if a PtbA DM made extreme and ridiculous hard moves every time a check was failed. You can definitely ruin a PtbA game really hard and really fast if you do that, including BitD.

Maybe we can agree this principle:

"If you have a D&D* DM who views any check failures as immediately catastrophic to any plan** then you probably cannot use D&D* to run heists"

Do you disagree with that?

* = Equally true of any other RPG.
** = which would extend way beyond heists

 

[Imaro]

No more presumptuous and rude than presuming that what works at your table is a universal experience and telling anyone who has difficulties reproducing their results that if they were just a bit better of a DM they could do it too.

Or assuming because you can't do something it can not be done even though others are actually doing it... and please stop playing the sad little victim role in the thread @Hussar it really doesn't suit you.

Just because a table could do it does not mean that you can reproduce how they did it. There could be many, many reasons why it was successful that can't be reproduced.

So then if you truly believe that then why do you keep trying to paint this picture that others are claiming or inferring that it is because you can't DM well? Your tendency to twist of mis-represent what others are saying is really astonishing.

 

[tetrasodium]

And, now not only am I a failure of a DM, my players aren't particularly bright either. LOL. These just keeps getting better and better.

Note, in D&D, it's not that a single check has to succeed, it's that EVERY SINGLE check has to succeed because failure is catastrophic. The guard spots you, the guy sees through your disguise, you failed your bluff check, whatever. As soon as you fail, the balloon goes up and it's time to kill everything.

A perfect example of this happened in a rhimevof the frostmaiden game I'm playing in.

Party decides to cause a distraction in one room with unseen servant and go deal with some guards on the dungeons (next room).

Immediately something unexpected happens when guard asks cjsngelong who looks like a duergat why these prisoners aren't shackled. Changeling says its because he didn't have any after subduing them with a successful deception check. Conveniently the guard happened to have some and gives them to the changeling to put on the party. Changeling rogue succeeds at sleight of hand check to put them on without locking them. While party is being put in cells the rogue moves to ho open the others to start a prison riot... except he rolled like a seven. Guard beats the rogue silly as the rogue opens a cell to find an ommelaciated naked human. Another guard is running for help telling about an attack.
Things were pretty screwed from the start but the players had literally no way possible to salvage things once they realized and the first failed check instantly took it from "this is bad we need to fix it" to "the whole situation just turned to naughty word" the only goal the players had was to avoid fighting both rooms at once and that very reasonable goal failed worse than just charging in blasting probably would have.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I'd say the biggest advantage 5E has over 4E is length of combat and the fact that combat doesn't turn into and endless whirl of Interrupts, Immediate Actions, Reactions, Opportunity Attacks and so on as you get into the teen levels (which in 5E terms are more like around level 10, as 4E is 1-30 by design). I also say this a big 4E fan. It has a lot of places where it kind of falls down too, particularly in some of the class/archetype design, but that's a separate discussion.

I'll agree with that. I think that some of the 4e reactions are good. But there are just too many of them when about half the PCs come with an encounter reaction power or two. 5e took things too far in the other direction; disadvantage for ranged attacks is fine, but all it means for the casters is they use the save-spells rather than the zappy spells that roll to hit. You shouldn't be able to have an enemy in your face and throw a fireball 50' away with no penalties.

 

[dave2008]

No more presumptuous and rude than presuming that what works at your table is a universal experience and telling anyone who has difficulties reproducing their results that if they were just a bit better of a DM they could do it too.

You keep saying statements like this, but no one has said that (that I am aware of). It is just an assumption you are making. If someone says something it is easy, that doesn't mean someone else is incompetent if they can't do it. Even more so in this context when both sides are coming at the question with different objectives and variables.

 

[tetrasodium]

You keep saying statements like this, but know one has said that (that I am aware of). It is just an assumption you are making. If someone says something it is easy, that doesn't mean someone else is incompetent if they can't do it. Even more so in this context when both sides are coming at the question with different objectives and variables.

"They cant do it" has nothing to do with if the system handles it well enough to be considered worth noting the system's support for it in positive terms like fine. The system does it fine implicitly blames someone who cant fythe failure and places all or nearly all of the blame on them.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'll agree with that. I think that some of the 4e reactions are good. But there are just too many of them when about half the PCs come with an encounter reaction power or two. 5e took things too far in the other direction; disadvantage for ranged attacks is fine, but all it means for the casters is they use the save-spells rather than the zappy spells that roll to hit. You shouldn't be able to have an enemy in your face and throw a fireball 50' away with no penalties.

Yeah my players still often get this "???" look when an enemy spellcaster is able to cast in their face because he's using a spell that doesn't involve an attack roll. The spellcaster PCs have all worked out and internalized it for themselves, but I've still seen them be confused when it happens the other way around "??? I don't get an opportunity attack?!" - I guess that two entire editions of conditioning can be hard to break.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Note, in D&D, it's not that a single check has to succeed, it's that EVERY SINGLE check has to succeed because failure is catastrophic.

Not true at all. One of the key weaknesses to D&D for heists as compared to Blades in the Dark is that there is limited guidance as to the result of a failure.

It's entirely possible to read it in good faith as a failure is catastrophic - and at other times equally possible to understand D&D rules as "you can just keep rolling until you pass" again in good faith. Your example of the guard spotting you shouldn't be a catastrophe - what happens next? You bribe the guard? You intimidate them? You knock them out? There are now more questions.

 

[dave2008]

But, see, this, right here, is why suggestions of how to hack 5e become problematic. Because your 5e is idiosyncratic to your table, same as mine, what works or doesn't work at my table will be different from yours. Which means that any advice will be problematic because there are so many intangible issues that we don't share and likely have internalized to the point where we are just talking past each other because neither of us understands why the other person doesn't understand.

Because 5e is so heavily idionsyncratic to individual tables, there is far less common language between us. The more idiosyncratic the table, the less common language there is.

I agree, but I also agree with @doctorbadwolf that is one of the strengths. However, I disagree with you that advice is not broadly applicable. I find advice on how to do somethin in 1e or 4e is also generally applicable to 5e. Not to mention things from other RPGs which are often also applicable (like clocks, VP system, etc.). I just don't find that RPGs (and D&D in particular as that is the one I know the best) are so fragile that they can't handle broad range of advice on how to tweak them.