Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Water Bob" data-source="post: 5628316" data-attributes="member: 92305">It does. Sorry. I should have read YOUR post better. I apologize.      It's crazy to think that all it takes to stop a character from dying--one that has a wound so bad that he will day in less than a minute--is 3-4 seconds. A person can't even fully examine a wound in 3-4 seconds. It's a bad rule. Doesn't make sense at all. This is my attempt to fix it. People bitch about 4E being a "board game" instead of a role playing game. This First Aid rule is a "board game" type rule. There's nothing "roleplaying-esque" about it. It's a rule that you'd see in a computer game. Or a board war game. Not in a role playing game. RPG rules typically have some sense or reality to them. This one has none.        Wow. No roleplaying in your group? I don't mean that to be snarky. It's just that, I can't fathom leaving my brother to die if I can do something about it. I'd try to find a way to save him, if at all possible. It seems that at least some of the adventurers in your party might feel the same about each other? If not, then it's as your footer says. Such is life.      I am the GM. I am the rulebook. I control the world, the environment, everything except the PCs. When a player asks, "I look at the chest, what do I see?" What I tell him is...arbitrary. The GM having aribrary calls is not a bad thing. In fact, it happens all the time.      I actually do stuff like that in my game. For example, I know that people do not wear armor all the time. So, if the PCs are smart, they can catch bad guys out of their armor. At night, for instance. Guards will be wearing armor, but most other people will not--especially if its close to bed-time.      I have....and I haven't. I'm keeping the RAW mechanics and action types. It's just that the player doesn't know the outcome. Let's say a Taurl goes down, and his buddy Fronn comes to help him. When Fronn arrives, I secretly throw the First Aid check and know that Taurl is stablized. I'll keep that result no matter what Fronn does. But, Fronn doesn't know the result. So, we start to roleplay the situation...then Fronn decides that he has no choice but to go help his comrades in the battle. Fronn leaves Taurl, not knowing if he'll live or die. There's a lot of drama there. After the battle, the PCs come back to check on Taurl....and find him....alive! Stable. Of course, Taurl might be dead, too. Depends on how the roll turned out.         It's the GM's job to keep the game interesting. I'll adjust if it gets boring.      Actually.... <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> ....I do! I really do. We roleplay combat. It's not about I-roll-you-roll. It's more, "I duck under that swing and come up into your armpit with the tip of my sword." It's really fun. You should try it.      It was a shadow across the stone floor from the torchlight. But, it's the player's job to ask questions. This is the give-n-take of roleplaying.  These would be some good questions to ask. And, if you come up with another idea to disable the trap that might work, I'll give you a roll. But, you're right. If you can't figure out how to disable the trap, then no, you don't get a roll "just because".     There are two basic styles of gaming. There's this type.... [FONT=TimesNewRoman,BoldItalic]The Pit Trap (Modern Style)[/FONT] GM: “A ten-foot wide corridor leads north into the darkness.”John the Rogue: “I check for traps.”GM: “What’s your target number for checking?”John the Rogue: “15.”GM: Decides that the pit trap in front of the party is “standard,” so all John has to do is roll a 15 or better. “Roll a d20.”John the Rogue: “16.”GM: “Probing ahead of you, you find a thin crack in the floor – it looks like there’s a pit trap.”John the Rogue: “Can I disarm it?”GM: “What’s your target number for that?”John the Rogue: “12. I rolled a 14.”GM: “Okay, moving carefully, you’re able to jam the mechanism so the trap won’t open.”John the Rogue: “We walk across. I go first.”  That's pretty "blah" and unexciting in my book, and that's how the First Aid rule seems to be played by many.Not in my game.I prefer this style, below. It's much more interesting and leads to extremely memorable game sessions.  [FONT=TimesNewRoman,BoldItalic]The Pit Trap (Old Style)[/FONT] GM: “A ten-foot wide corridor leads north into the darkness.”John the Roguish: “We move forward, poking the floor ahead with our ten foot pole.”GM: Is about to say that the pole pushes open a pit trap, when he remembers something. "Wait, you don’t have the ten foot pole any more. You fed it to the stone idol.” [if the party still had the pole, John would have detected the trap automatically]John the Roguish: “I didn’t feed it to the idol, the idol ate it when I poked its head.”GM: “That doesn’t mean you have the pole back. Do you go into the corridor?”John the Roguish: “No. I’m suspicious. Can I see any cracks in the floor, maybe shaped in a square?”GM: Mulls this over, because there’s a pit trap right where John is looking. But it’s dark, so “No, there are about a million cracks in the floor. You wouldn’t see a pit trap that easily, anyway.” [A different referee might absolutely decide that John sees the trap, since he’s looking in the right place for the right thing].John the Roguish: “Okay. I take out my waterskin from my backpack. And I’m going to pour some water onto the floor. Does it trickle through the floor anywhere, or reveal some kind of pattern?”GM: “Yeah, the water seems to be puddling a little bit around a square shape in the floor where the square is a little higher than the rest of the floor.”John the Roguish: “Like there’s a covered pit trap?”GM: “Could be.”John the Roguish: “Can I disarm it?”GM: “How?”John the Roguish: “I don’t know, maybe make a die roll to jam the mechanism?”GM: “You can’t see a mechanism. You step on it, there’s a hinge, you fall. What are you going to jam?”John the Roguish: “I don’t know. Okay, let’s just walk around it.”GM: “You walk around it, then. There’s about a two-foot clearance on each side.”      I do run my game in the "Old Style", but I haven't had any bad consequences show up that you seem postive will show up in the game. And, I typically do make notes on the enemy NPCs and monsters--just for player questions, as you suggest above. I've got something at hand:  I've got a session coming up, and here's a sheet for a bad-guy NPC. First off, I name all my NPCs, if the players can speak the language.  In this case, they can, so I named the bad guy NPC.  His name is Gerald. He's human.  A 2nd level Barbarian warrior of the Grath clan.  16 years old.  I've written down his stats, HP, nish, BAB, and a couple relevant skills.  I wrote down his weapons (a club, a stiletto, and three primitive wood javelins) with their relevant stats. Then, I have a section where I jot down other things he has on him:   - Sm belt pouch with 18 teeth in it, some human, some not.- Cloth leine, V-neck, billowy.  (This is a type of shirt.)- Shiny black and grey kilt, to the knees, made of some sort of reptile skin.- Javelin quiver.  Thick belt crosses chest.  Holds 3-4 javelins (holds 3 if you want to get them out easily).- Bone necklace.- Leather bracers that have thumb holes.- Leather belt.- Water costrel that criss-crosses his chest with the javelin quiver.- He's bare-footed.  No shoes or boots. And, I have another little section on the sheet where I write these notes: - He has no ears.  Both have been cut off with a blade.- He has a small, dime-sized tatoo of a five leaf clover at his left temple.- His teeth are all sharpened to points.    Doing this requires a little extra time during prep, sure.  But, I think the benefits are worth it.  The notes help me create vivid, bigger-than-life characters for the players to interact with.  They'll remember this guy.  He won't be just another moog to cut down. And, I find, as I give the NPCs little notes like this, that I "discover" their personalty.  This stuff realy lends itself to roleplaying.</blockquote>

Verification