D&D General D&D Evolutions You Like and Dislike [+]

[Remathilis]

so you want a game of fiction made up by another person using a system that has mecjhanics to "simulate" being fooled, or simply being mistaken but you want to be able to ignore the mechanics.

I want the ability to decide if my character believes his eyes or not, rather than the the dice telling me what my character believes. I want the option to be wrong even in the face of overwhelming evidence. If I can't decide that "while I can't prove it, there is something shady about that guy.", then I'm not playing a role. I'm moving a pawn across the board.

This is simple. Quit playing D&D and go find another game without dice.

If you want to play a game where the dice decides everything, quit playing RPGs and play Monopoly.

I will point out that a smart DM would after one of these conversations simply just decide and tell you whether or not the potion was bad or good without a die roll. Only difference is the DM is actively deciding what happens to you and there is no randomness. Or me I'd just roll behind the screen without telling you and I'm sure that would be you being screwed as well.

Dice rolls are for when there is ambiguity in the scene. Did the con man give a tell that my character picked up on. Does the water look convincingly like a magic potion. If the evidence is obvious, no roll is needed. If there is doubt, the dice can determine if my PC finds the subtle clues or not. The dice does not me I have to believe my lying eyes.

Even in diceless systems the game master can just decide something is or is not. They can even lie to you and let you believe what they told you none of that is someone else playing your character for you. The stretch of logic to get to that argument is quite extreme

Your damn right that logic is extreme! I'm still well within my rights as a player or character to believe what I want. That doesn't make it so, I agree. Me thinking the Queen is a succubus doesn't make it so, regardless of what I roll. What matters is that the DM cannot tell me my character doesn't believe she is a succubus because of a die roll. If they can, then the dice control my character, not me.

The whole point of those die rolls is to simulate the things that can't happen on decisions at the table because we all live outside the reality and can look at the DM's face, overhear stuff or just flat out know stuff because we read the module or whatever breaks the 4th wall.

Absolutely not. The dice are there to account for things that not being a creature in the game cannot replicate. The body language of the potion seller. The breeze coming from behind the book care. The smell of ash that lingers when the Queen leaves the room. The other senses we aren't privy to. The stuff that you might pick up on if it you were there in the moment. They aren't an anti-cheat device.

That's all those things are is an attempt to insert some randomness into the game. It's no different that playing risk and having 200 armies be destroyed by 50 because some guy rolls nothing but 6's. It's just a mechanic to insert the randomness into the game which for most people is more fun.

You are correct that dice add randomness. However, imagine if playing Risk the other player could force you to attack in a specific place and you had no choice but to do so. You at that point have lost the ability to decide your own actions on your turn and your opponent is now playing your turn for you. Are you still going to argue that they outsmarted you when they are playing both sides of the board with no interaction from you?

And the reason we have it. Is most players have your reaction when the DM decides it was bad instead of rolling it was bad. So I'm pretty sure Hasbro will lose more players doing it your way than the way we've always done it. But you being this upset because someone made you roll to see if you knew it was bad instead of just deciding it was bad is a strange argument to me. in a game where its been the norm since the 70's

So do you roll NPC reactions for every NPC the PCs meet? Of course not. You react to the players based on how they interact with NPC. If you aren't sure, you roll the dice. If the dice rolls are nonsensical ("the innkeeper attacks") you ignore it.

Turning this around. If a player with a +20 to persuasion goes up to the king and tells the king to surrender his kingdom and his queen (she's a succubus anyways) to the PC and rolls a natural 20 (DC 40!) are you going to have the king just give up his land, fortune, family and title to the PC?

Because if you would, your game is as nonsensical as Life.

But having said all that if your table doesn't like it. Then table rule it your way, play the game and have fun..

I plan to.

 

[nevin]

I want the ability to decide if my character believes his eyes or not, rather than the the dice telling me what my character believes. I want the option to be wrong even in the face of overwhelming evidence. If I can't decide that "while I can't prove it, there is something shady about that guy.", then I'm not playing a role. I'm moving a pawn across the board.

If you want to play a game where the dice decides everything, quit playing RPGs and play Monopoly.

Dice rolls are for when there is ambiguity in the scene. Did the con man give a tell that my character picked up on. Does the water look convincingly like a magic potion. If the evidence is obvious, no roll is needed. If there is doubt, the dice can determine if my PC finds the subtle clues or not. The dice does not me I have to believe my lying eyes.

Your damn right that logic is extreme! I'm still well within my rights as a player or character to believe what I want. That doesn't make it so, I agree. Me thinking the Queen is a succubus doesn't make it so, regardless of what I roll. What matters is that the DM cannot tell me my character doesn't believe she is a succubus because of a die roll. If they can, then the dice control my character, not me.

Absolutely not. The dice are there to account for things that not being a creature in the game cannot replicate. The body language of the potion seller. The breeze coming from behind the book care. The smell of ash that lingers when the Queen leaves the room. The other senses we aren't privy to. The stuff that you might pick up on if it you were there in the moment. They aren't an anti-cheat device.

You are correct that dice add randomness. However, imagine if playing Risk the other player could force you to attack in a specific place and you had no choice but to do so. You at that point have lost the ability to decide your own actions on your turn and your opponent is now playing your turn for you. Are you still going to argue that they outsmarted you when they are playing both sides of the board with no interaction from you?


So do you roll NPC reactions for every NPC the PCs meet? Of course not. You react to the players based on how they interact with NPC. If you aren't sure, you roll the dice. If the dice rolls are nonsensical ("the innkeeper attacks") you ignore it.

Turning this around. If a player with a +20 to persuasion goes up to the king and tells the king to surrender his kingdom and his queen (she's a succubus anyways) to the PC and rolls a natural 20 (DC 40!) are you going to have the king just give up his land, fortune, family and title to the PC?

Because if you would, your game is as nonsensical as Life.

I plan to.

Well once again we have a wall of extreme nonsense that no one but you argued. Continue your "appeals to the extreme "or 'Strawman Arguments" for as long as you want. No one but you is buying them..

 

[Remathilis]

Well once again we have a wall of extreme nonsense that no one but you argued. Continue your "appeals to the extreme "or 'Strawman Arguments" for as long as you want. No one but you is buying them..

Apparently if I roll high enough on my persuasion check, you'll have to.

 

[nevin]

Apparently if I roll high enough on my persuasion check, you'll have to.

seems more like I'll have to let you beat the dead horse till it explodes with flies......

 

[mamba]

I want the ability to decide if my character believes his eyes or not, rather than the the dice telling me what my character believes. I want the option to be wrong even in the face of overwhelming evidence. If I can't decide that "while I can't prove it, there is something shady about that guy.", then I'm not playing a role.

Not sure what your character saw that would make them suspect the potion dealer. Based on the die roll they apparently saw nothing…

As far as I am concerned the potion can be fake or not, your character may think they have a reason to believe the potion is real or fake, that reason might also just be your character being mistaken. Ultimately you the player decides whether your character buys the potion or not

 

[Remathilis]

As far as I am concerned the potion can be fake or not, your character may think they have a reason to believe the potion is real or fake, that reason might also just be your character being mistaken. Ultimately you the player decides whether your character buys the potion or not

That's really all I'm asking.

 

[Lanefan]

And do you not see how this is precisely what causes 5e (and 3e, and really most versions of D&D) to be actually not designed as teamwork games?

If it is often easier--better, more effective, less hassle, etc.--to "do your own thing", then it isn't a team game.

Sounds fine from here...

In a mass melee, if I-as-a-Fighter choose to stand in and bail out our other Fighter who's getting beaten to a pulp, all is good. The moment someone else forces me to do so, however, even if doing so is clearly the best thing for me to do in that moment, all is very much not good.

It's just a game where four to six individual adventurers happen to adventure in the same place at the same time. Which is a crying shame, when the game itself repeatedly tells us how much it's about teamwork.

Ever since day one back in 1974, what the rules repeatedly tell us and what actually gets played at the table have had a more or less distant relationship with each other.

 

[Lanefan]

Okay...

So you are, fundamentally, hostile to the idea of "teamwork". You never ever want even a whiff of being "told what to do". That's...going to make it really had to play a game where the rules require that you coordinate with your allies, aka, teamwork.

There's your misinterpretation. The rules don't in fact require any such thing. They suggest it, sure, but they don't require it.

To wit, the rules can just as easily support five characters each doing their own thing in isolation and-or even ignorance of what the others are doing (i.e. what happens every time a party tries approaching a combat under Silence while all invisible and with no further pre-planning, a common occurrence IME). Such things are not banned by the rules

If you are not comfortable doing things because another player set things up for you, why would you play a game where the rules expect you to do that on the regular? Why would you play a game with other people at all? Just play single-player stuff. Then it's literally not possible for anyone to tell you what to do.

I'm not even joking here. What's the point of playing with other people if you never, ever want to have anyone offer suggestions, come up with plans, or coordinate?

I'm fine with all of that as long as it is and remains my in-character choice whether or not to (and-or how to) engage with said suggestions, plans, or coordination.

You come up with your plans and ideas, and if I think they're good I'll go along with them and if I don't think they're good I'll follow my own script instead of yours.

At the same time, I'll sometimes come up with ideas, tactics, etc. and suggest them, but if those ideas aren't any good I've no expectation anyone will follow them.

Take the session I'll be playing in tonight. We're at a ruined city, the bad guys are (we think) hiding out in what used to be the sewers, and we've found an outfall - complete with discreet guards inside - into a small river, that tracking clearly shows they've been using as an entrance. Onr mage just dropped a couple of heavy fireballs into the entrance (fireball expands to volume in our games so while some of the fire blew back outwards, some of it may have gone a fair way in) from across the river, and that's where the session stopped.

Where's my Thief during all this? She's nowhere near the party; they've no idea in character where she is, other than she's flying. She is in fact about 300 feet in the air, invisible, watching the ruins to see if any bad guys come out of exits we don't yet know about; if they do she'll take them out herself (she hopes!) while everyone else storms the entrance.

Both in-character and out, if I told the others that's what I'd be doing before I left they'd try to talk me out of it (even though it's probably the most useful thing I could be doing right now!) and find a way to mess it up. Better that I just say nothing and do it, and let the chips fall where they may. My risk.

 

[Lanefan]

no worries, there was no offence taken, though i am a bit surprised that Command is not on the Wizard list, feels like something they'd have, to me at least.

Wizards get Charm Person, which lasts longer and is light-years more flexible in what you can ask your victim to do or say.

 

[Lanefan]

Let me ask you this, having a good sense of how you play by your contributions here over the years: If they don't have that conversation mid-battle "in-character" would you, as DM, negate the effect?

Situationally dependent, but at least sometimes yes. If the characters are far enough apart that conversation is unlikely (battle is noisy) there'd at best be a roll for the listener to hear what's said; if one or both is in Silence then no conversation happens and thus no effect, etc.