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

[Neonchameleon]

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.

It's one of the key places I find 5e makes combat positioning a lot less tactical and interesting. And it's a lot more than two editions IIRC.

The other one is the default rules allowing for Str for thrown weapons and Dex melee for finesse weapons. This is fine for most PCs who know where they want to be anyway and have things like fighting styles or smites. But if you try kiting an ogre or gluing its feet down its weapon damage drops from 2d8 for its greatclub to 2d6 for its javelin and nothing else changes (it might even be more dangerous thanks to better target selection). By contrast if you rush an archer they will draw a shortsword or scimitar and now drop from 1d8 (longbow) to 1d6 (scimitar) and nothing else changes. It's barely worth it.

Putting things in MOBA terms 5e wants you to front-to-back teamfight and heavily penalises dive compositions. I find dive more fun.

 

[dave2008]

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.

That is not true. The 5e DMG has advice on using multiple checks to resolve a situation and advice on degrees of failure and success at cost. I mean it is in one of the core books of the game. The book that explains to DMs how to run the game tells them that one failed check is not a catastrophic failure.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

I think the big problem here is that Hussar has this like mental image of a heist that doesn't really match what other people (except maybe tetra) have. Like, the way he's describing it, the second the guard realizes you're not who you say you are, he's forced to immediately radio in to his colleagues or start hollering at the top of his lungs or whatever, without even trying to ascertain the situation, and then bells start ringing and all hell breaks loose, and it's like if they have guards like that, and a system like that, you need a plan where that isn't going to happen (like maybe you need to dig into the vault or something).

But really, guards are likely to be people (sometimes they'll be monsters or things, but those have different ways of dealing with them). Most people don't want to be embarrassed, don't want to die, and don't like pain, and do like being alive, money, safety and so on. They aren't simply metagame constructs or suicidal maniacs (I mean, mostly).

This embarrassment thing is particularly important. People don't like to cry wolf, and the sort of people who become guards are disproportionately likely to be either lazy or bullies or both. This isn't theory - if you look at real-world heists a lot of them succeed because guards are lazy and guards don't want to be embarrass themselves by unnecessarily calling other guards, let alone the police. Fear is a big motivator too - that can work for you or against you.

If a guard sees through your disguise, he probably still doesn't know who you are. If you're on your own, and look non-threatening under the disguise, he may well attempt to constrain or bully you, and might get another guard to help (depending on the culture of the place), but probably isn't ringing the alarm. Or he might try and get you to reveal who you are. If he sees through the disguise and realizes that there's a decent chance you're extremely dangerous, especially if your group outnumbers him, he may well attempt deception of his own as he tries to get away from you, preferably putting an impassable obstacle (like a heavy door) between you, and then try and raise the alarm, because he doesn't want to die horribly or be turned into a frog or whatever. Or he may try to get you to leave, continuing to pretend you are who you said you are, but saying that he needs to wait for his manager, please come back later or w/e.

And all the details matter. If he has a silent panic-button (hyper-advanced for most D&D settings), he's probably going to press that if he's at all scared. Ultimately though, if he's a person, he probably just wants to go home today with all his limbs. So then we have to factor in what happens if he screws up? Is there a villain in charge of him? Is he in a position to torture/murder people who fail him? That can also be a double-edged sword - fear of the villain may make him obey the villain, but he may also be more willing to let the PCs through if they're going to kill the villain or create a situation in which the guard can escape (and bribery can factor in). Or he can just decide letting himself getting tied up and/or knocked out is the right way to go - most real people decide exactly that in heists and robberies.

The ideal heist is you get in, take the thing, you get out, nobody even knows you were there - you were a ghost.

But many heists can never go that well, because for that to even be possible you need flawed security. And there are countless situations less ideal than that, but which are still successful.

(Hussar's scenario would make sense with fanatics, or well-disciplined well-trained modern-day soldiers guarding a military base, note. But it's not very broadly applicable.)

 

[Imaro]

The ideal heist is you get in, take the thing, you get out, nobody even knows you were there - you were a ghost.

But many heists can never go that well, because for that to even be possible you need flawed security. And there are countless situations less ideal than that, but which are still successful.

(Hussar's scenario would make sense with fanatics, or well-disciplined well-trained modern-day soldiers guarding a military base, note. But it's not very broadly applicable.)

Well the other consideration is that in most Heist movies/shows... things don't go perfectly smooth. It would be boring if the entire show or movie was them sneaking in and getting out without any complications. I would argue that most heist shows are about how the team deals with the complications that arise during the heist either through planning or improvisation.

 

[Campbell]

Perception of difficulty is tough.

There are often vast differences between perception of difficulty and the actual cognitive effort that goes into performing a particular task, particularly if you are conditioned to believe the general task (like running a game) should be somewhat difficult. There are also often vast differences in standards for what counts as a solid performance. So often when I feel a particular task may be difficult and you say it is easy we are talking about vastly different things and might have vastly different perceptions of difficulty despite putting forward similar levels of mental energy. If you say it's easy you might even be expending more cognitive energy then me to perform the task.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well the other consideration is that in most Heist movies/shows... things don't go perfectly smooth.

Indeed. And then they do something clever to recover the situation (e.g. Ethan Hunt catches the bead of sweat). And that's what D&D doesn't do very well. In D&D the best thing to do when something goes wrong is to fall back on hack and slash.

I remember (exactly) one double episode of Mission Impossible (the original TV series) that, despite all the trickery and rubber masks in the end it went pear-shaped and was resolved in a gunfight. It's like, for a change this week we will do Mission Impossible using the D&D ruleset.

 

[prabe]

There are often vast differences between perception of difficulty and the actual cognitive effort that goes into performing a particular task, particularly if you are conditioned to believe the general task (like running a game) should be somewhat difficult. There are also often vast differences in standards for what counts as a solid performance. So often when I feel a particular task may be difficult and you say it is easy we are talking about vastly different things and might have vastly different perceptions of difficulty despite putting forward similar levels of mental energy. If you say it's easy you might even be expending more cognitive energy then me to perform the task.

Yes. There are also differences in what people of roughly the same general competency level find easy. I'd be willing to wager real money that you find acting--especially in front of people--much easier than I do. I suspect that would be the case even if I put time into studying acting. OTOH, writing poetry is easy for me--and it's not for other similarly intelligent people.

There's no real reason why GMs wouldn't be different. @Ruin Explorer has run heists in several games, and could probably prep one in 5E easily--and might almost be able to ad-lib one. If I needed to run one, it'd probably take me hours (and hours) to prep, and I'm still not sure I'd be able to run it to how I'd want to. (Some of this might be differences between our approaches to the game, and to GMing, but some portion of it is plausibly aptitude.)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Indeed. And then they do something clever to recover the situation. And that's what D&D doesn't do very well. In D&D the best thing to do when something goes wrong is to fall back on hack and slash.

I remember (exactly) one double episode of Mission Impossible (the original TV series) that, despite all the trickery and rubber masks in the end it went pear-shaped and was resolved in a gunfight. It's like, for a change this week we will do Mission Impossible using the D&D ruleset.

I don't get why you think it's that clear-cut, or why you think it's harder to recover in D&D, than say Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020? Can you explain that?

Because I don't think it inherently is. In practice, a certain subset of DMs turn any failure into combat (as we've seen with Hussar's "catastrophe" deal, presumably he's one of them), and don't allow recovery from failures to happen, but I don't think that's inherent to D&D, or RAW.

Systems which let players assert fiction by metafictional methods rather than diegetic ones are easier to recover in, but I'm interested in why you'd say MI was "D&D rules" not "SR rules" or "2020 rules" or whatever.

OTOH, writing poetry is easy for me--and it's not for other similarly intelligent people.

Yup. I can run a heist game in an apparently un-ideal system (which is 95% of systems) pretty damn easily, but goddamn, write a poem? I'm nearly completely incapable, especially of writing anything elegant or lovely. Huge respect for people who can (and I'm a straight-A English/English Lit. student and I like poetry, I just have only written it when mandated to, and am definitely not talented at it at all).

Another example of difficulty is portraiture. If someone is in front of me, and have a pencil or charcoal or w/e and paper, I can draw them. It'll be a good likeness. People will often be shocked how good it will be. It isn't hard. I didn't have to work for this skill - working at it made me a lot better, as did learning about stuff like negative space, but I've been able to do it since I was small. So my perception is that, for me, it's easy. For others? Well I know a lot of people, including some people who I would consider vastly better artists than me, are just terrible at it, literally couldn't do it well at gunpoint.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I don't get why you think it's that clear-cut, or why you think it's harder to recover in D&D, than say Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020? Can you explain that?

There are some RPGs that allow you to expend a resource to recover from a failed roll*. Shadowrun is pretty similar to D&D though. I've never played Cyberpunk 2020.


*If I did want to come up with a D&D hack for heists this is something I would put in.

 

[loverdrive]

I was waiting too damn long for my steak and I thought of a game where, uhm, planning and executing a heist sounds cool to me. Don't think I'd count it as an RPG though.

So, the GM (or whoever we may call her, maybe, the House? Idk) has a pool of points to spend on security measures of the heist mark, cameras, turrets, whatever. The players have a similar pool of options for their preparation -- acquiring termite, helicopters and whatnot. Maybe also include casing here, so they can spend points from their pool to ask questions.

Then, execution. Let's see whether their plan works, and if not, whether they'll still succeed.