D&D 5E Fixing the Fighter

[Obryn]

Emphasis mine... what do you mean by "narrative change"? Doesn't any action taken by any PC in the game result in a change in the narrative being constructed at the table?

Sure! But the Charm spell places a limit on the DM's roleplaying. There's a version of it in every edition of D&D, up to and including 4e ("Instant Friends" from HotFL). The DM can't decide, "Yeah, that barkeep hates you anyway" if he's running the game by the rules. That's the player fiat in question.

I mean, you're casting Charm Person to do something, right? It has an effect on the game and the narrative that's meaningful in some way and useful beyond simple skill checks and roleplaying? If you want to argue the spell does absolutely nothing, that's your prerogative, I guess.

-O

 

[Remathilis]

Emphasis mine... what do you mean by "narrative change"? Doesn't any action taken by any PC in the game result in a change in the narrative being constructed at the table?

I read it as "using the rules to bully past the DM's story". Which is fine for free-wheeling, improv-based sandbox play but a real pisser when the DM prefers narrative-based play.

 

[Remathilis]

Anything on a crit is meaningless to me here. It's not a tactical choice at that point - it's pure luck

Notice that's PF's solution, and its tacked onto 3.5's system. I'm advocating for the use of Expertise dice to the same effect, not criticals.

 

[Imaro]

Sure! But the Charm spell places a limit on the DM's roleplaying. There's a version of it in every edition of D&D, up to and including 4e ("Instant Friends" from HotFL). The DM can't decide, "Yeah, that barkeep hates you anyway" if he's running the game by the rules. That's the player fiat in question.

Theoretically...couldn't the same thing be accomplished with the use of Diplomacy or Intimidate?

I mean, you're casting Charm Person to do something, right? It has an effect on the game and the narrative that's meaningful in some way and useful beyond simple skill checks and roleplaying? If you want to argue the spell does absolutely nothing, that's your prerogative, I guess.
-O

But you can accomplish the same thing, or close enough to it to enact "narrative change" with the use of skills by raw?... not sure what the whole "doing nothing" comments are about since I made no such claim...

 

[Obryn]

Theoretically...couldn't the same thing be accomplished with the use of Diplomacy or Intimidate?

But you can accomplish the same thing, or close enough to it to enact "narrative change" with the use of skills by raw?... not sure what the whole "doing nothing" comments are about since I made no such claim...

Mmkay. I think there is a difference still, but for the sake of stopping the derail, I'll suggest we table Charm Person in the specific for now. Replace it with Dominate, which we can both agree is a massive amount of control via fiat.

-O

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Sure! But the Charm spell places a limit on the DM's roleplaying. There's a version of it in every edition of D&D, up to and including 4e ("Instant Friends" from HotFL). The DM can't decide, "Yeah, that barkeep hates you anyway" if he's running the game by the rules. That's the player fiat in question.

I mean, you're casting Charm Person to do something, right? It has an effect on the game and the narrative that's meaningful in some way and useful beyond simple skill checks and roleplaying? If you want to argue the spell does absolutely nothing, that's your prerogative, I guess.

-O

So PC's shouldn't have the ability to change a DM's story? Campaigns aren't usually one sided that can only be completed one way. Now if that is a DM's preferred playstyle then that's fine but to be honest, there are other games that facilitate this type of style better.

 

[Obryn]

So PC's shouldn't have the ability to change a DM's story? Campaigns aren't usually one sided that can only be completed one way. Now if that is a DM's preferred playstyle then that's fine but to be honest, there are other games that facilitate this type of style better.

Holy cow. I just can't stop this derail.

The point is that, through a spell, a caster is declaring "There is now a big fireball here" or "Joe Barkeep loves me". I am not arguing this is a bad thing - quite the opposite, in fact. I am arguing that similar levels of player-driven narrative fiat should not be the casters' sole prerogative.

-O

 

[Ahnehnois]

Scaling back the casters is one alternate approach, but I'd rather both have the ability to dictate parts of the narrative.

Like [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], I'm unclear in what you mean here. It seems readily apparent to me that any action a character takes dictates a part of the narrative. If you say "I move 30 ft." you've just dictated that your character moved 30 ft. If you say "I attack", you've dictated that your character attacked, and the DM is essentially bound by the results of the attack roll in the same way you've described. The player of a fighter has the same amount of control over his character and that character's actions that a player of any character does.

There are some effects in the game world that a spellcaster can create, but which a noncaster cannot. I'm unclear as to what you're saying in this context.

For example, are you saying that a fighter should be able to produce effects equivalent to those of spells? For example, if a wizard can cast Otto's Irresistible Dance, are you saying that a fighter character should likewise be able to touch an opponent and effectively disable him for several rounds without a die roll? I hope not; I share [MENTION=91812]ForeverSlayer[/MENTION] 's viewpoint on this that doing so makes the whole concept of magic rather pointless. Clearly, magic can do things that can only be accomplished with magic.

Or are you saying that the player of a fighter should be able to produce such effects regardless of the in-game reality, through some sort of metagame mechanic? This is not an entirely invalid viewpoint, but it would certainly be a radical departure from D&D, and implementing that is a whole new can of worms.

I guess I still can't tell what the ideal is that you're advocating.

 

[Obryn]

Let's take an easy example. A Fighter and a Wizard want to blind an enemy.

The Wizard casts Blindness or Glitterdust or (depending on the edition) Light.

How does the Fighter blind an opponent? Mechanically-speaking, here.

-O

 

[n00bdragon]

Theoretically...couldn't the same thing be accomplished with the use of Diplomacy or Intimidate?

I'll just zero in on the 3e/Pathfinder rules here because:
a) previous editions didn't have Diplomacy or Intimidate at all
b) 4e has an extremely limited scope of what Diplomacy and Intimidate can do mechanically

Now, with that settled here is why Charm Person is nothing like either or both of those skills. I will only be discussing what the rules of the game explicitly state that they do because anything else is a pure Mother May I asspull by the DM at which point all discussion of the actual rules becomes meaningless.

Intimidate can do two things. You can use a Standard Action in combat to make a fairly easy DC check and cause one creature to become shaken for one round (or longer in Pathfinder). This is a generic debuff that does not in any way influence the action of the target. Secondly, you can take an entire minute of time to make a similar check to make a creature friendly for a few minutes. This time restriction makes it difficult to use in passing or in combat and even then the things you can force the creature to do are limited.

Diplomacy on the other hand is a decent contender... once you can slap down a +40 or +50 bonus. Diplomancers are well known for destroying games since the DCs for their checks are set in stone more or less and take away the DM's ability to present intelligent NPCs or even enemies or monsters to the players. In Pathfinder Diplomacy loses this ability to instantly befriend a band of orcs in the first round of combat but guess what DOESN'T get a nerf...

Charm Person, lastly, can be used at level 1 and in the middle of combat if needed and contrary to what everyone in this topic has been saying actually DOES allow you to give commands to the charmed person and tell them what to do. Sometimes it requires a paltry charisma check in the case of fighting its own allies, but unless your DM is cheating then it does exactly what the spell says it does and the creature will do what you say so long as you don't order it to smash it's own head into a wall. Beyond that, Charm Person lasts a whopping 1 hour per level, meaning even a level 1 caster using the spell gets far more mileage out of it than anyone with an infinite diplomacy and intimidate bonus. At very very worst Charm Person can be used as a combat trick to remove an enemy from a fight. A level 1 save or suck with an unfavorable saving throw bonus. That only unravels a fight. A better usage by far is to gain control over a crucial NPC and unravel the DMs entire plot. At level 1.