D&D General Hot Take: Uncertainty Makes D&D Better

[Neonchameleon]

Do you understand why D&D5 is slow? It's because the to-hit math hasn't functionally changed since 1989 while hit point totals have substantially increased.

Yes it has. An average first level PC in any class in 5e has a primary stat of 16 and a proficiency bonus of +2 - for +5 to hit. Meanwhile a CR 17 Adult Red Dragon has an AC of 19. Our first level PC of any class needs a mere 14 to hit a CR17 dragon. Against something level appropriate like an orc the orc is AC 13 or 8s to hit.

By contrast an average first level PC with a Str of 16 gets no to hit modifier and has a THAC0 of, I think, 20 for a +0 bonus to hit. In 2e the Ancient Red Dragon has an AC of -5 which, pivoting to modern AC values is the equivalent of an AC of 25. Natural 20s or bust. Against a level-appropriate orc, the orc is AC 6 meaning 14 to hit for our first level PC (or 13 for a fighter with weapon specialisation).

The 2e characters basically can't hit that dragon and are almost half as likely to hit the orc as the 5e characters. On the other hand it probably takes two hits to bring down the orc in 5e and only one in 2e.

The to hit math has significantly changed; hitting is now expected meaning that hits are a whole lot less triumphant. And armour is a whole lot less important. You're right that the game was designed for trained combatants to miss or be parried all the time. It's now designed for them to hit almost all the time; the change basically came in with 3.0 when the impact of stat modifiers changed drastically while armour and especially heavy armour remained almost unchanged and then again in 2014 when they decided to take all the level scaling out of AC in the name of "bounded accuracy" (in 3.5 the adult red dragon had an AC of 29 while in 5e the adult red dragon has a lower AC than a run of the mill CR 1/2 Hobgoblin)

As a bunch of folks in the thread have tried to point out, uncertainty doesn't make vanilla D&D better by the numbers. There's a case to be made that risk is fun in any context, or that the rules of D&D could or should be adapted to make better use of uncertainty in defining outcomes, but no one seems content to make these cases.

I've been leading this charge

 

[Baron Opal II]

Does it? I've played a lot of D&D, and a lot of Rolemaster which is close to D&D in the way it presents its characters. And I've never thought of adventurer as a career. It's an idea that I've heard of, because I gather it's a thing in the Forgotten Realms.

Really? Interesting. Adventuring as a career (with class just describing your skill set) was something that seemed apparent to me for decades.

However, as time has gone on I've come to decide that adventuring isn't a career but an estate. One that can be chosen more easily than the Clergy*, but also with a significantly higher mortality rate. Having them be the Fourth Estate** makes of further interest in social dynamics, I think. Tangential to the thread, anyway.

* In this case "Those Who Cast" and inclusive of wizards.
** Or Fifth, if one wants to keep to tradition.

 

[DMZ2112]

Yes it has.

Snipped for brevity, not to dismiss.

I think you're still making a lot of assumptions of equivalence with regard to the rules (monster choice and ability scores), but I acknowledge that the math does seem to check out, at least until I can take a more detailed look myself.

I've been leading this charge

...Then I find your posts even more confusing than I thought!

 

[DMZ2112]

Well, until AI catches up with me, I have some pretty robust spreadsheets that I use when writing/running adventures. I got pretty familiar with pivot tables, pulldown menus, VLOOKUP, and Boolean expressions in engineering school, and I have built some really spiffy generators in Excel. Some of them have been set up to display Roll20 macros which I can then copy/paste into the chat window (usually for dice rolls and descriptions.)

With the click of a button I can generate an entire shop inventory, roll up a random encounter, fill out a treasure hoard, describe a potion, or create an NPC out of thin air. Sure, there are lots of online generators that I could use as well, but they never quite fit my campaign or the PCs...they are usually SRD Only, or Everything From Everywhere, and I usually end up doing multiple iterations until I find something I can use. (Not to mention having to juggle dozens of bookmarks to different websites.) Building my own generator does take some time up-front (about an hour), but saves me a lot more time in the long run because all of my generators are in once place, and all of the options and math have all been tailored to fit my own game.

You are the kind of dungeon master I want and the kind of dungeon master I never want to be.

Seriously, you would enable all of my obsessions and feed all of my compulsions, it would be like anti-therapy

and also wonderful

 

[Neonchameleon]

...Then I find your posts even more confusing than I thought!

That's because you've missed one of mine that got buried. So I'll rewrite.

Predictability leads to more ability to plan and planning and testing your planning is fun. But 5e does not lean in to the positive aspects of planning either in the oD&D sense, the 3.X sense, or the 4e sense.

• oD&D involved operational planning. Resources, light management, time management and testing your luck against the wandering monster checks. Not in 5e at all that I can tell (and light is a cantrip, long rests are full recharges, and there's a lot of spells that make these issues trivial).
• 3.X involved strategic planning. Buying/making items (no longer a magic item market), layering buffs, and trying to win before the fight started. 5e has deliberately taken away the magic item market and included Concentration to minimise layered buffs.
• 4e involved tactical planning, combining powers with each other, using the terrain, and using forced movement to take advantage of the terrain. 5e has minimal forced movement, Advantage rolls up almost all the small modifiers, and Dex giving everyone full finesse melee modifiers and Str full thrown weapon modifiers means there's little point diving the back line or even immobilising the front line.

There is nothing wrong with predictability because it enables types of gameplay to work better. 5e's goal is not being the best D&D but the least worst - and its predictability isn't paired with anything that makes that sort of predictability shine.

 

[Remathilis]

Well, until AI catches up with me, I have some pretty robust spreadsheets that I use when writing/running adventures. I got pretty familiar with pivot tables, pulldown menus, VLOOKUP, and Boolean expressions in engineering school, and I have built some really spiffy generators in Excel. Some of them have been set up to display Roll20 macros which I can then copy/paste into the chat window (usually for dice rolls and descriptions.)

With the click of a button I can generate an entire shop inventory, roll up a random encounter, fill out a treasure hoard, describe a potion, or create an NPC out of thin air. Sure, there are lots of online generators that I could use as well, but they never quite fit my campaign or the PCs...they are usually SRD Only, or Everything From Everywhere, and I usually end up doing multiple iterations until I find something I can use. (Not to mention having to juggle dozens of bookmarks to different websites.) Building my own generator does take some time up-front (about an hour), but saves me a lot more time in the long run because all of my generators are in once place, and all of the options and math have all been tailored to fit my own game.

I give it 5 years before a chatbot style DM could spit that info out pretty effortlessly. What will be interesting is when AI can correlate that info simultaneously. You'll pop in the chat box "what is the weather?" And it will generate a weather cycle based on the exact location of the world, the date and time of year, historical weather patterns, variations based on other events (a local volcano erupting) and climate models pulled from real world metrology. Then, it keeps that knowledge in it's database and references it the next time the question is asked.

Imagine a world that not only generates a shop's worth of items, but can account for the effects of local bandit the PCs stopped, a visit by the Duke two weeks ago, a bad harvest of wheat, and other micro events that would be difficult if not impossible for a live DM to track. And then catalogues those events for the next time.

That will be the moment when AI will surpass meat DMs.When it can track variables no human could (or would) want to track. And in a large, collaborative application (like say, the Forgotten Realms) you could have it spit out results that rival reality.

And that will be child's play compared to 15 years from now...

 

[CleverNickName]

I for one welcome our robot DM overlords.

 

[Reynard]

I for one welcome our robot DM overlords.

I would absolutely use an AI co-GM that can keep all the fiddly details straight.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yeah, generators have been part of my games since the very early 90's. First in QBasic, then Visual Basic, and now Excel. Most of them are still for AD&D, but they work well enough for 5E, too.

 

[Maxperson]

I didn't say it did farce well - instead it just pushes everything towards farce by produce a high volume of silly results, like combat rounds where literally everyone misses, dumpstat characters often rolling highest on checks and so on.

This farce problem is a problem with how you envision things. I mean, if you imagine everyone swinging and whiffing, they sure it will seem farcical to you. In my game, though, a miss doesn't always mean you hit air. Your "miss" could strike a shield that blocks what would have been a killing blow. Your "miss" could be parried by a skillful opponent. Your "miss" could strike the dragon solidly, but fail to penetrate a thick scale. A round in which everyone misses doesn't need to be the farce you are making it out to be.

As for dump stat characters rolling high, well sometimes they get lucky. A dump stat individual isn't clueless or totally unable to accomplish things, and someone with a high stat isn't perfect. That's not farcical at all.