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

[Imaro]

Yeah, so, basically we see the root of the reason people may be talking about 'the heist fails at the first check failure'. Every check in 5e is an action bound to a fiction. The GM picks the type of check, and the DC, and does so AFTER the player declares the action. Consequences are never discussed at all, though there is a hint that a 'soft fail' could be possible (but often this won't even make sense fictionally anyway).

See this isn't how I interpret that... again it seems to imply that in order for a roll to take place a task must have a success and failure state... that means it should be clear to player and GM what those two things are.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Personally, I think @FrozenNorth's version of the story rings pretty true. You make some points, people might well be more careful. OTOH 16' is not that tall, most trees in a forested area are easily much taller than that. So I would think that engagement range is going to be SHORT, 10 meters or less typically. OTOH dogs are pretty darn good guards, so daytime alertness probably means there's a decent chance of detection with some warning. This is probably enough, since you 'play the odds' on security. The reasoning is, the Giant has to live its whole life, it isn't going to take a 10% chance of death just to do what? Wreck some houses for a lark?

Instead though, WERE I A GIANT, I would be coming in like gang busters at 3 AM. By the time anyone realizes there's an attack and gets organized, you will be long gone.

You're assuming more stealth than you'd get if the village is aware that they live near giant country or raids are possible. Even without that one of the evolutionary advantages for teenagers going to bed late and adults waking up early is that there is always likely to be someone awake. This has been confirmed by a study of a tribe of 30 having no time when there wasn't someone awake.

You CANNOT underestimate chaos in the real world. If you have ever been in a real disaster situation you will begin to understand. People DON'T just automatically self-organize, and there is a very large, surprisingly large, 'Entropy' to a situation.

Who's talking about "self organizing"? The task isn't complex when someone's yelling "There's a giant! Shoot it!" The big problem is working out what to do. This in this case has a simple problem that doesn't require much self organizing (nothing remotely as complex as a bucket chain) and someone's awake, has worked out what's going on, and should have taken charge.

The thing is shooting something to beat it down is not something that really requires much organisation. It's not remotely forming a bucket chain or fighting in formation. Everyone can pitch in in their own time and at their own pace as long as they have ranged weapons. Even a few goblins would be much more of a danger in a night attack - they aren't a huge target, they are a lot stealthier, they can cause confusion, and they are hard to focus fire.

You wake up at 3 AM hearing screams and crashing sounds, dogs barking, etc. What do you do? Is it a giant? Is it an earthquake? A dragon? WTF?

From the person who was actually awake yelling "Giant attack! North End! Shoot it!" it's pretty easy. Goblins are a much harder problem to work out. They're small, sneaky, can be in multiple places at once, and you want to organise to fight them or you get shanked from multiple sides almost in silence. Meanwhile even a 10' giant is taller than most village houses and a 16' giant towers over them so can be seen and shot from most places.

And it is hardly going to matter which system you 'run' this under. Some will mechanically do a bit better job than others, I guess.

Given that there is a significant difference between being 10' tall and being 16' tall then there's a bit of a difference; single story buildings provide significant cover to it. The AC3 of a hill giant in crude hides is not nice for villagers with THAC0 20 - meaning its 55hp go way further than the 105 of the 5e equivalent.

More importantly the skills of the villagers are different in different editions. In the 5e example with its bounded accuracy I've assumed sling proficiency for my villagers (and it doesn't really matter anyway with the AC of the giant). Slings are a simple weapon - and a weapon both the wizard and the sorcerer are proficient in in 5e. With 5e rules I therefore consider it expected that villagers on the frontier will be. In 3.X and in AD&D weapon proficiencies are much tighter; in 3.5 the experts will be proficient with slings but the commoners almost certainly won't while in AD&D it's far from clear that a sling or bow is in the top two weapons most level 0 villagers should be proficient with; I'd expect the herdsmen to mostly have slings and the huntsmen to mostly have bows. But there are also self defence weapons like staffs or daggers, agricultural implements like scythes, and militia weapons competing for the slots. If our villagers aren't proficient with ranged weapons then it's a whole different ball game and going to get messy.

If you go in at night as a giant in 5e you've at least a 10% chance of getting killed by a village.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've only played a few sessions, but it doesn't seem like PF2 incentivizes this so much as allows for it. So you'd need to know that your gm or AP is going to favor these elements to reach for them. In 5e they're already close to optimal if not actually optimal.

Sure. Its just that the way PF2e handles skills its not super-painful to have, say, a Fighter with decent Stealth while still covering other things (like Athletics) you might find more important; I won't comment about how it compares to 5e (because all I've ever done is read it in enough basic detail to figure out its not my cuppa, so nuances of it are lost on me), but its a lot better than, say, 3e (or as I recall, even 4e) or PF1e in that regard.

 

[FrozenNorth]

It’s also just odd to me that Hill Giant became the assumed giant in the example, and it went from me talking about towns guard to a small village with no guard, but some other notes:

Hill Giants are the least scary giant. They’re just big and hungry. Scare them and they run.

But the real giants? They make and use real weapons, and armor, and shields, and have natural magical abilities, and are smart. But, the towns guard should still be able to drive them off.

Well, the issue that roped me in was that a town militia of 10 guards could defeat a lone giant and that was somehow a problem.

A town with a dedicated militia (say 25 people, so that 10 can be on duty at any given time), that can afford to outfit its guards with medium or heavy armor and crossbows, should be able to chase off a lone giant without trouble.

It shouldn’t (and I would argue isn’t) the case for a village, even with a hill giant rather than a stronger giant. Why a hill giant? Most of the other types of giant probably wouldn’t attack alone, and are sufficiently intelligent to give a village or a town a much worse time.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I genuinely don't care about this line of discussion. Your whole perspective on what rules even are is...not something I am going to have an easy time being nice about. I find it absurd to the point of being comperable to replaying to the question "What is the result of 5 minus 5?" with "Apple".

Okay. Plenty of other people seem to grok it, so maybe rather that dismissing it as

Not really. We use the 5e rules and mechanics, with some additional mechanics to modify gameplay. Improv is a large part of the point of playing TTRPGs, IMO, but that doesn't mean I'm just ignoring the rules and playing calvinball.

On the other hand, the rules do not matter or have any actual authority. Full stop. They exist to facilitate play, and that is the context they are used in. We use them because it's easier to do so than to just make everything up, and because we have found that different stories emerge when we freeform roleplay vs when we have constraints and oddball idiosyncrasies to bump up against and interact with.

There is a famous scene in the actual play podcast Adventure Zone, in the first campaign, Adventure Zone: Balance, that just would not ever happen in a story that doesn't feature the wierd idiosyncrasy that is the Magic Jar spell, or the way that dnd planes work, or some other stuff in that scene. Likewise, parts of that scene wouldn't happen in a game that makes a GM feel like improvising the fighter being robbed of their body and then possessing a wooden mannequin is going outside the scope of the game.

Again, while system matters, I believe that finding a mechanical framework you enjoy most, and then expanding that framework to encompass different genres, tones, themes, stories, etc,is worthwhile, because that is the primary sense in which system matters, IMO. The rules of a TTRPG are an illusion created by clever system designers to help a group facilitate satisfying experiences in the world of make believe. That's all they are.

Because of all of the above, I'm running a full campaign, or a game that doesn't stray waaaaaay outside of the wheelhouse of dnd (and so, doesn't feature any action of adventure or elements of the fantastical, pretty much) I will more often opt to adopt optional and unofficial and third party mechanics into 5e dnd, because my group enjoys and groks the basic systems of 5e DnD, and I can balance things at a glance when running it, and they know that when I say, "we are using XYZ optional rule" or "I'd like to try out using a success ladder of set DCs instead of coming up with DCs on the fly, and see how it feels" or "I've ported some concepts from various other games where players control more of the narrative than just their character's actions to a framework that I think will fit seemlessly into our play experience, are ya'll down to try it out?", they know what I'm saying, what to expect, what is being modified.

You keep saying that 5e doesn't have this or that rule, but what you're ignoring is that there is no one 5e DnD. My 5e game does have those rules, as does my fellow frequent DM, and as does my wife's when she runs the occasional game for her book club friends. In each case, the players do know what they're dealing with, and what the rules are, because they know our 5e. They know that in our 5e most important tasks will have multiple rolls, that they'll know how many before they roll the first one, and that they will have broad latitude in deciding what skills and how to use them. They know that languages are valuable both because lack of a language can cause disadvantage or simply cause a roll to be called for when it wouldn't be if they spoke the same language fluently, and that they can leverage a language just like they can leverage tools (xanathar's) to get advantage.

You can say all you want that "players don't know what the DC is so there is no rule except ask the DM" but I've never seen a single table actually run that way. I've never seen players uncertain of what their chances were or what would be asked of them or how a given task would generally be handled.

5e can be considered as much a toolkit to cooperatively make a game as it can be considered a game. That is what makes it better than some games for "hacking", that's why you can use the damage by spell level chart to balance damn near anything in the game with an understanding that the system only even tries to be balanced within a range of a couple spell levels in any given case, and it's why it has so many optional rules.

If I were to try and run Monster of The Week for an extended period, I would end up hacking it pretty inevitably, because yes, the system should not constrain the group. DM or players. IMO, of course, since apperently such caveats are required in this thread to not have one's words blatantly twisted.

As to the bolded text, well, that's the whole damn point, isn't it.

And you're wrong. Full stop. I didn't play this way in 4e because 4e actively fights against being played this way. You're essentially saying in one post that system matters, and in another that it doesn't. Which is fine. I'm doing the same thing, but inverted, but at least recognize what you're doing.


So, to sum up;

• System frameworks create differing levels of freedom, differing levels of prescription of process, and thus work better or worse for different groups in general. A group that prefers one isn't likely to get great results from the other.
• Mechanics can impact things like tone and genre, but because we are telling stories, prescribed bespoke genre mechanics are a bonus not a requirement for nearly any genre or theme.
• A game that presents a toolkit from which to build your game is not a game without rules, it's just a game where every table won't play exactly the same way.
• What is easy for one person is not as easy for another, and may be too hard to bother with for another, even if all three people are equally competent and intelligent.
• Pretty much no person's experience of anything is universal, so it is not reasonable to tell someone they can't do something just because you couldn't. It is reasonable to warn them of particular difficulties and pitfalls.

So this thread, and more specifically @Hussar 's story about the 3 DM's he played under, inspired me to go back and re-read the DMG section for 5e on Ability checks... and I have to say I was surprised at just how much it did to set out the expected practices of 5e... which contrary to many people's assumptions don't appear to be... do whatever you want (though like any game the DM is free to ignore advice, examples, practices, etc.). I decided to pull excerpts (with commentary) from the DMG below to highlight what I am talking about...

Using Ability Scores...

When to roll
1. When a player wants to do something it's often appropriate to let the attempt succeed without a roll

2. Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure

3. When deciding whether to use a roll ask the following questions
a. Is a task so easy and free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure
b. Is a task so inaapropriate or impossible that it can't work

4. If the answer to both of these questions is no then some type of roll is appropriate


So above we have the process by which a DM should decide to say yes to an action... say no to an action or roll the dice.



Ability Check: A test to see whether a character succeeds at a task that he or she has decided to attempt

The DMG defines what a check represents... specifically the chance to succeed or fail at a single task. Which in turn implies that any action being rolled for should be framed as a single discrete task that has success state and a failure state.

Multiple Ability Checks

• If the only real cost is time yes (a character spending ten times the normal amount of time auto-succeeds at the task)
• If not the circumstances or approach must be changed to attempt again (with a harder DC at the DM's discretion)

Contests
-Use a contest if a character attempts something that either directly foils or is directly opposed by another creature's efforts

• Instead of a DC ability checks are compared to each other
• DM picks the ability that each creature must use

Above we are given the practices for using multiple ability checks and contests as opposed to a regular ability check. Of particular interest is the fact that if players can come up with a new approach or change their circumstances they can roll again. Personally I don't think many DM's enact this specific practice


Difficulty Class
- Think of how difficult a task is and then pick the associated DC from the typical DC's table

- Most people can accomplish a task of DC 5 (Very Easy) with little chance of failure, if a roll is deemed necessary a task usually will not fall into this category. Unless there are unusual circumstances this should be an auto-success

-If not ask yourself if a task's difficulty is easy moderate or hard...If the only DC's you ever use are 10/15/20 your game will be fine

-A DC 10 task is accomplished 50% of the time w/attribute 10 and +0 prof bonus

-You can use a higher DC than 20 but caution and level consideration is advised

So the first thing here is it really brings home how easy it is to determine success rates for an ability check in D&D 5e due to nearly every +1 easily translating into 5% and using DC's that increase in 5 point intervals. But more importantly there are practices laid out above for determining the DC and while one can go beyond them in both the range of the DC and rolling for the DC 5 the game takes time to caution against it except in special circumstances.

Applying Adv/Disadv
-Advantage when: Circumstances provide an edge, An aspect of the environment contribues to success, player shows creativityor cunning in attempting or describing a task, previous actions improve success.
-Disadv when: Circumstances hinder success, an aspect of the environment hinders success, some aspect of a plan or descriotion makes success less likely.

Resolution & Consequences
-As DM you determine the consequences of attack rolls, ability checks and saving throws

-In most cases doing so is straightforward: When an attack hits, it causes damage...when a creature fails a saving throw, the creature suffers a harmful effect...when an ability check equals or exceeds the DC, the check succeeds.

- As a DM you have a variety of flourishes and approaches you can take when adjudicating success and failure to make things a little less black and white
a. Success at a Cost: When a character fails a roll by 1 or 2 you can allow the character to succeed at a cost. When you introduce costs such as these try to make them obstacles and setbacks that change the nature of the adventuring situation. In exchange for success, characters must consider new ways of facing he challenge
b. Degrees of Failuer: Sometimes a failed ability check has different consequences depending on the degree of failure

-Critical Success and Failure : Increase the impact of success or failre on a 1 or 20


Practices for determining advantage and disadvantage as well as practices for determining consequences of rolls with some optional ways to expand on it.


OPTIONAL RULES

Variant: Automatic Success
-A character automatically succeeds on a check with a DC less than or equal to the relevant ability score -5
- If a characters proficiency bonus applies to a check (through skills or tools) they automatically succedd at a DC 10 or less, at 11th level they auto-succeed on DC 15 or less

Also I included this rule because its optional but it does seem to address the general competency complaint some have about the d20...at least when it comes to tasks that should be relatively easy for heroic characters.

One thing noticeably lacking is a closed resolution system for multiple tasks... On the one hand I don't know if it's necessarily needed... On the other hand I think for those that want it... that the complex trap rules in Xanathar's would be a good basis for something similar to the 4e skill challenges... though I also think the skill challenges from 4e could easily be adapted to 5e.

You're exerpting has left out that you've cited the "middle path" mostly for advice. In that same section the DMG also says you can roll for everything and roll for just about nothing (ie, just make it up according to the GM). It doesn't really put any primacy or recommendation on selecting between these (and even says you can switch between them) outside of the fact that the middle path has no listed downsides while the other two do mention potential pitfalls.

So, your large quote here that 5e does give a lot of direction on how to do ability checks is rather cherry picking. It's absolutely a way you can play, for sure, but it's not the unified kind of advice your post makes it out to be -- not even close.

Now, full disclosure, this is usually the quotes I stress when offering advice on running 5e.

 

[Argyle King]

But you do see this effect outside of ttrpgs fairly often: is NuTrek really Star Trek? Is the Sequel Trilogy really Star Wars? Is DOA Beach Volleyball still a DOA game?

DnD is just the only ttrpg big enough for this discussion to make noise.

In the case of Trek (and some newer Star Wars content,) I think it's an issue of violating the perceived internal consistency of the settings "rules." That's related to something I said a few pages back.

Post in thread 'D&D compared to Bespoke Genre TTRPGs' D&D 5E - D&D compared to Bespoke Genre TTRPGs

 

[Arilyn]

In a world full of monsters, (enough for adventurers to keep busy!), villages would be set up much more defensively. And have more training in spears, bows, etc. And as labourers, they are going to have decent strength scores! Poor farmers are always underestimated in fantasy games!

I'm thinking much more Saxon warrior village, less farmers huddling in their exposed villages. People adapt to survival rather well.

 

[Imaro]

You're exerpting has left out that you've cited the "middle path" mostly for advice. In that same section the DMG also says you can roll for everything and roll for just about nothing (ie, just make it up according to the GM). It doesn't really put any primacy or recommendation on selecting between these (and even says you can switch between them) outside of the fact that the middle path has no listed downsides while the other two do mention potential pitfalls.

So, your large quote here that 5e does give a lot of direction on how to do ability checks is rather cherry picking. It's absolutely a way you can play, for sure, but it's not the unified kind of advice your post makes it out to be -- not even close.

Now, full disclosure, this is usually the quotes I stress when offering advice on running 5e.

Can you provide a quote so I know exactly what you are talking about.

Unless you're talking about the part where a DM can say yes....say no... or roll the dice which I did address in my post.

EDIT: And since this has consistently been the crux of your entire stance in this thread I would assume it will be easy to find a quote stating this rule.

EDIT 2: Actually I feel this is needlessly nitpicky... the initial claim was that D&D 5e had no advice or principles for resolving ability checks... when in fact the DMG has a ton. It also has a closed resolution system for social interactions.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And it is hardly going to matter which system you 'run' this under.

It can matter quite a bit whether the system assumes giants see in the dark better than humans or not. Its not close to a universal assumption once you move away from direct D&D derivatives.

 

[Neonchameleon]

At the very least it requires a crossbow. At 25 gp each, this is something that NO ONE in our small village of 10 families would have.

Which is why I used a sling.

The D&D SRD had them at 10.5’. Forgotten Realms wiki has them at 15’, so I woon’t debate the point.

I'm not sure which SRD you're using - but this is something that changed between editions to make giants more like giants and less like slightly bigger ogres. Hill giants grew to 15' in 5e and other giants grew correspondingly

Goatherd blows his horn, gets eaten.

Or goatherd sees the giant coming and retreats before blowing his horn. Then blows his horn when it's clear the giant's heading towards the village. At this point either the giant doubles back or he's alive.

The call didn’t go out “Giant!”. A horn was blown, the goatherd was eaten. The villagers don’t currently know if the threat is a wolf or a giant, but they know an unspecified threat has attacked the goatherd.

That depends how organised the villagers are and how common the giants are. The villagers probably know that the threat isn't a wolf because wolves don't like attacking humans. They don't know if it's a giant or goblin raiding party.

They were in the fields. They return to their homes to grab weapons. Maybe they have some slings in addition to bows, but they probably don’t have javelins.

Most farmers and homesteaders don’t send their noncombatants out to fight because they don’t want them to die, in addition to the fact that they are well, non combatants.

But the giant or the raiding party is coming to them. They don't send the noncombatants out of the town. Which means they are around to provide covering fire rather than easy prey for a raiding party.

Also, I would expect that most able folk would have some sort of weapon, but I wouldn’t expect the non-combatants to.

Why not? Slings are cheap and many of the non-combatants will have been stronger when they were younger.

It isn’t stupid. You are just operating with perfect knowledge of what is happening. You know that the goatherd blew his horn because his flock was attacked by a giant, and not because it was attacked by a wolf, or because the goatherd saw a squad of knights of evil Lord Redrum bearing done on the village. The villagers don’t have that knowledge, so they have to balance the risk of overreacting to a small challenge (their flock gets eaten because they called out the whole village and set out in force) with incorrectly approaching a larger challenge (hiding would be a better approach to a squad of mounted knights).

The giant was attacking the village in the specified set-up. And is clearly out for blood or it would just take a goat.

So what would be the villagers next step?

What sort of scouting do they have? If the goatherd can't sound the all clear they know that it's serious - and it's too late for a rescue.

Thanks to the valiant goatherd, the village is in a better scenario than the surprise scenario I described in my previous post. They have advance warning that something is happening, and have time to go home and grab weapons.

So the first group to get ready (maybe 10 or so) head to where the flock generally grazes. At this point, they are still not sure what the threat is, so if they act quickly they believe they might still save their flock. They come across the giant coming in the other direction.

Yes, that's it. Split the party when you're worried about giants and entire raiding war parties. Given the alarm call that was sounded the village needs to know if it's an assault on the village or a violent one on the goats. Which means scouting. The fastest, stealthiest few people go out to try to find out which it was and report back. Meanwhile if there's a possibility of an assault on the village fort up. You don't want to have all the fighters out and the noncombatants at home. The giant doesn't see them (they know the terrain) and heads to the village it wants to assault - and that's ready for it.