Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8306464" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think there are some more basic considerations that push in the same direction as what you have posted:In another currently active thread, about spellcasters-to-fighter-balance in 5e, I am being told that the DC to kill an ogre with a single sword blow is declare attacks using your actions in the prescribed action economy, rolling damage as and when appropriate, and once the ogre is dead we'll narrate that as a series of feints followed by a single killing blow.It's taken as premise in that thread that does not need to be argued that there is no DC for a fighter's check to call magical lightning bolts from the sky. I haven't seen anyone contest that premise.What's the DC for the following action declaration: I use my knowledge of the dungeon to travel to the largest treasure horde on the 9th level, where I confront its guardians? I don't think 5e even permits that as an action declaration, and I don't think it has any canonical way of setting a DC or evaluating consequences for success or failure; but there are other RPGs that would be fine with this.In other words, it's simply not true that there is nothing more to action resolution in 5e D&D then declare an action then roll to meet a target number. There are all sorts of parameters - grounded in class design, spell design, barely articulated principles about what minutiae of the fiction matters and what doesn't, etc - that govern what is a permissible action declaration, what the scope of permitted consequences is, etc. Playing the game depends upon knowing what all those parameters are.The only RPGs I can think of that can actually be run with nothing more to action resolution than declaring an action and then making a roll are HeroQuest revised, Burning Wheel (if all the optional more complex subsystems are eschewed and everything is done using the simple test rules) and Cthulhu Dark. Even Prince Valiant, which is far more mechanically simple than 5e D&D, uses complex resolution (ie multiple checks with the fiction unfolding from check to check, like a 4e skill challenge) in some contexts; Classic Traveller, another mechanically lighter game, has rules for how to adjudicate wounding and injury that go beyond the basic check rules and also has a number of subsystems to resolve different sorts of activities; RQ is similar in this context to Traveller; etc.</blockquote>

Verification