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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 8310440" data-attributes="member: 58172">I appreciate these descriptions. They contributed to a feeling of, I didnt know that I liked this genre.I am thinking about how D&D 5e can work to some degree toward a swashbuckler setting already. Then try to look for ways to encourage the feel further.No armor. Perhaps D&D 5e already favors light armor. No armor is mainly only for Dexterity concepts. (Including high Dex Wizard in Mage Armor.) 5e tends to favor Dexterity builds with no or light armor, consonant with a swashbuckling theme.Combat scenes with moving parts. Swashbuckling involves complex combat, where "environmental combat effects" are part of the challenge. A personal duel could be happening in the midst of a bar fight. Also, two ships could be bucking against each other in a storm, a fight could be happening across a narrow ledge across a cliff, chase scenes across rooftops or airships, or so on. This has less to do with character building mechanics and more about encounter building mechanics. I suspect 5e can do this, I have special terrains and legendary lair mechanics in mind. Additional environmental mechanics seem doable. I vaguely remember 4e making a point to make combat scenes complex, such as with special trap mechanics, so some examples might come from there.The main "social" mechanic in D&D 5e is Inspiration. It relies on DM discretion and is highly subjective. A DM can make a point to employ it to reward players who roleplay wittiness and social style, and in this away modify dice rolling successes. To employ Charisma and Intelligence bonuses seems appropriate, but I would like to do it in a way that encourages roleplaying thoughtfulness. Skill mechanics also rely on DM discretion. For example, I never say, roll Charisma Persuasion to see if you persuade them. The player has to try to do something specific, such as give an incentive to or address some concern of an NPC, and only if that effort seems plausible would I ask for a skill check, and often enough such an effort succeeds automatically because I know that NPC would respond positively to such an overture. Current 5e social mechanics can work effectively to encourage narrative roleplay, but only because of a style that as a DM opt into. A swashbuckling setting can recommend ways a DM can use mechanics to encourage and reward certain player activity that express the daring-do of the setting.I would like to see social skill checks to do social "stunts" during combat. (Actually, I routinely allow the Arcana skill to do spell "stunts", doing a skill check to modify a spell in some way, sometimes for combat tactics, such as using a spell to push a target creature without dealing the damage.) I love skill stunts, and encourage my players to do them, and the mechanics rewards them to look for opportunities within the narrative.D&D 5e already can do much to evoke a swashbuckling feel.In my eyes, the greatest difficulty against evoking a swashbuckling feel, relates to the ability scores themselves.I have for very many years found it frustrating to split up all of the athletic stunts − mobility, running, jumping, falling, tumbling, climbing, balancing, etcetera − into two separate ability scores, both Strength and Dexterity. This BAD-ness of needing to invest in Both-Abilities-Dependencies, and its corresponding opportunity cost, undermines and erodes the feel of a stunt-action campaign.There are various ways to achieve the goal. One way is to make Strength more agile, including balance and falling. Oppositely, an other way is to make Dexterity beefier, including pulling up ones own weight and making long-distance jumps. I ideally, I want to see a fundamental reorganization of the ability scores, so that the Athletic skill and the Acrobatics skill become the same skill, called Athletics. And. Strength and Dexterity disambiguate with definitions that make it obvious that Athletics belongs to one ability and not the other.I get it, some will suggest, just have one skill called, Athletics, and sometimes one uses Strength for it, and sometimes one uses Dexterity for it. However, in this case, I precisely view this BAD-ness as the problem that needs fixing in the first place.The best way to create a swashbuckling setting is to tweak and clarify D&D. There are plenty of precedents that already validate a solution, such as using Strength to wield a sword agilely and precisely. Strength is agilely competent, and can inherently include balance and precision for any athletic physical stunt.If Strength is for agile body stunts like swinging from vine to reach a cliff to scramble up it, and Dexterity is for steady, cautious, sensitive checks like aiming a bow or a gun and like stealth, the disambiguation helps players invest in Strength as the swashbuckling ability score.</blockquote>

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