Five things that would change the game forever

[Dave Turner]

DM: You meet with the city council. They are A, B, C and D.
Player 1: Hey, I think we met a guy named D in the gambling house. Is that him?
DM: Make a Memory check. [Dice rolled = failed]. Sorry, you're not sure.
Player 1: Does he look like the same guy/
DM: You failed your memory check. Okay, so the council is giving you ten minutes of their precious time.
Players explain situation.
DM: Make a Convincing roll. Player X has the best Convincing, two people can roll to assist. The head of the Council has Mental Resist score of 22, plus he can get an assist from two other council members if he needs it. [Dice rolled]. Okay, you convinced the council. Now the council wants you to take care of the problem. The head councilman makes a Convincing roll against your Mental Resist. [Dice rolled]. You are convinced. You have to do the mission, the council rolled way over all your Resist so all of you are utterly convinced.
Players: We don't want to do that mission!
DM: Sorry, sometimes the dice are in your favor, sometimes they aren't.

This is exactly how it should look, in spirit if not actual form.

You could throw in the roleplaying that you're concerned about. The player can speak as his character and the DM (through the NPC) can reply in character. But when it comes time to decide how the conflict is to be resolved, then dice should absolutely be rolled. The PCs might fail and suffer the consequences. This happens in combat. I'm sure the players really want to make their saving throw against disintegrate, but it doesn't always work out for them.

My question, upon seeing such things, it why would I want or need them? I feel that such things would actively obstruct roleplaying.

I'm not suggesting that the game needs social AC/hp per se, but point to their absence to highlight an obvious lack of granularity in the rules governing social actions and conflicts.

DMs are given virtually no rules-based guidance on how to construct social conflicts that are as engaging as the physical ones, despite the fact that a vestigial social rules system is in place. Why are there no "maneuvers" for social skills, like Witty Retort or Devastating Rebuttal? Combat has tripping, bull-rushing, disarming, feinting, sneak attacks, attacks of opportunity, charging, and other stuff. There are health conditions like stunned, sickened, and helpless.

Look at the class abilities. Everyone is equipped to contribute to combat, but not everyone is equipped to contribute to social situations. Everyone can fight, but not everyone can talk. This just strikes me as an obvious bias towards combat and physical action.

A robust social action system wouldn't hinder roleplaying, it would bring it in line with the rest of the system. You can still talk like your character talks, but you have to accept the limitations of your character. If I'm a kung-fu master, should I expect my DM to let my monk character be more effective in combat?

 

[Seeten]

Word.

To me, D&D is about a team of characters with complementary abilities standing against great evil.

D&D is about a team of characters with complementary abilities, making a bulwark against the intrusion of good in the world.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The head councilman makes a Convincing roll against your Mental Resist. [Dice rolled]. You are convinced. You have to do the mission, the council rolled way over all your Resist so all of you are utterly convinced.

Ugh. No, no, no, no....PC actions should never be dictated to them by the DM, IMHO. If that happens, they're NPC's, not PC's.

You can say "You are convinced, and you want to do it," but dictating their actions seems to cross the line, to me...

 

[mmadsen]

Back in early high school/intermediate I created a random dungeon table running over 4-5 pages so me & my mate could actually both be players. The 'fine tuning' led to more & more work but I did manage to come up with a series of default tactics for the monsters; simple stuff like attempt to melee the wizard; flee if <1/2 hps or losses >= 1/2 starting numbers. By the time I realized I'd have to create a modulated standard I gave up.

I think you could do dm-less modules & I think they could be pretty fun but rules-rapists would have a field day.

It sounds like you were designing algorithms for a D&D-esque computer game. Perhaps you should be scripting Neverwinter Nights scenarios.

 

[mmadsen]

I, for one, would hate to see the dissolution of the dichotomy between arcane and divine magic. It has plenty of flavor as well as being well grounded in the mythologies of the Real World.

What mythologies are those?

 

[mmadsen]

What are the rules of the game most concerned with? They are concerned with adjudicating physical action, whether it's combat or physical infiltration or athletic activity (Climbing, Jumping, Tumbling, etc.). There are rules for social action, but they are threadbare, vague, and simple.

Straightforward mechanical rules exist for physical phenomena but for social interactions for all the same reasons that we can easily apply mathematical rules to real-world physical phenomena but not to social interactions.

And because it's easier (and more accurate) to model social interaction by...socially interacting.

 

[I'm A Banana]

What mythologies are those?

A lot of monotheistic traditions hold that magic falls into one of two categories:

-- things inspired by God, and thus are Good and Heroes Do Them
-- things inspired by Other Powers, which are at best iffy, but obviously have some power, even if it's not very holy.

Christian Arthur had Merlin, but Merlin wasn't a priest. Janni inspire poets in Muslim tradition, but they are servants of Satan. You can always worship a "false God" from the time of Ankhenaten.

Heck, even in many preliterate cultures, a dichotomy exists. The Patamona tribes of New Guinea have two kinds of shamans: Piya, the shamans that sit in tents and cure people and unify the village; and Kanaima, the shamans that transform into jaguars and kill people and drink their life-essence.

"Light Magic" and "Dark Magic" is a useful dichotomy, and Divine and Arcane magic pretty much form that divide. It's not exacting and detialed, nor should it be, since good shamans can still kill and bad shamans can still cure, and Merlin didn't have to be evil, and priests could still be corrupt, but the categories are VERY useful in that mythological vien.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Thanks, KM!

Magic items of Greek mythology were more often than not the gifts from the gods. However, Man discovered secrets that were powerful in their own right...the blood of several different mythological monsters was lethal enough to slay even divine beings.

Norse mythology distinguished between the powers that the gods gave, and the magical creations of the Dwarves. In fact, there were items that Dwarves could create that the Asgardians could not... And Rune magic was a gift from the gods...but the magic of Gems, Herbs and other materials was uncovered by trial and error research, handed down from practitioner to practitioner.

Also, look back to Europe's Middle/Dark/Rennaisance... Magic of the biblical variety was sticks to snakes, driving out demons and devils, healing...Other magic was dark sorcery, gained by making pacts with evil beings.

There was also the magic of Man (alchemy), considered a pale imitation of the powers that god granted, but considered by its practitioners to be a reasoned study... indistinguishable from science (to them, at least).

Even in African and other mythologies, there are distinctions between the powers of the gods & spirits and the mystical discoveries of man, like sympathetic magic.

 

[mmadsen]

I think what you mean is to replace skills with skill categories. But how would this work for knowledge or craft? Would you join Climb, Jump, Swim into a single skill, despite their many differences? I can swim very well, but I cannot rock climb and I cannot run hurdles. I cannot see that much similarity between the three.

If we ignore specialists (e.g. Olympic athletes), the same people who climb well tend to jump well, swim well, balance well, etc. They're athletic. I think we can reflect that easily enough with (1) an Athletics skill, (2) a number of proficiency feats, and (3) a few specialist feats.

A typical soldier, trained to run and jump on a horse, climb over obstacles, etc., would have ranks in Athletics. A commando would have more ranks in Athletics, and he would have feats for "extreme" climbing.

I can see Balance folded into Tumble and perhaps - just perhaps - even with Jump.

Who can "tumble" well without balance and without jumping? Really, I think there should be one skill for parkour or freerunning or doing what Jackie Chan does.

I can see Listen and Spot - and maybe Search - folded together, as well as Open Lock and Diable/Repair Device made into one skill. And Hide / Move Silently would have to be folded together if Listen / Spot were.

Definitely.

But there are many skills not so readily folded in with others. What of Craft (painting) and Craft (carpentry)? What of Knowledge (local) and Knowledge (arcana)? What of Forgery, Disguise, and Use Magic Device?

Knowledge (arcana), Use Magic Device, Spellcraft, and Decipher Script could probably all be wrapped up in one skill. Forgery and Disguise could easily be feats.

Many of the knowledge skills could be easily wrapped up into knowledge (lore), analogous to the the bard's bardic knowledge ability: Geography, History, Local, Nobility.

 

[mmadsen]

"Light Magic" and "Dark Magic" is a useful dichotomy, and Divine and Arcane magic pretty much form that divide.

My point was that there's generally a divide between good magic (often not called magic) and evil magic, but there aren't typically two axes: good vs. evil and divine vs. arcane. In Christian mythology, anything coming from God is Divine, and thus Good; any sorcerous powers are not-Divine, and thus Evil.