D&D 5E Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[Thomas Shey]

A high level challenge must take in to account things like "the PCs cannot be stopped by locked doors" and "the athletic one can spiderman climb on ceilings" and so forth. There's a general understanding about PC capability as it relates to spells, we understand PCs can deploy flight and teleportation and scrying and all that, but we tend to try and make the skill game exactly the same; instead PC capability actually needs to expand, thus that they have different tools to resolve problems. It's insufficient to simple change the adjectives describing the challenge, it's underlying structure needs to change.

Of course that can end up feeling like the rogue is just a necessary ritual component (in the sense if they're there, the locked door is not an issue, but they don't really do anything).

I mean, yes, sometimes mages work that way, but mage players are also used to have a wider range of things they do, and a lot of what they do being all or nothing. Non-spellcasting classes are not similarly versatile, and if what they do is solve problems by fiat it can end up feeling to players of same that they're just effectively a piece of equipment.

So I don't really think that "above a certain point, locks are never a problem again" is actually going to be a satisfactory solution to most people.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course that can end up feeling like the rogue is just a necessary ritual component (in the sense if they're there, the locked door is not an issue, but they don't really do anything).

I mean, yes, sometimes mages work that way, but mage players are also used to have a wider range of things they do, and a lot of what they do being all or nothing. Non-spellcasting classes are not similarly versatile, and if what they do is solve problems by fiat it can end up feeling to players of same that they're just effectively a piece of equipment.

So I don't really think that "above a certain point, locks are never a problem again" is actually going to be a satisfactory solution to most people.

Is making sure you've got that 65% success rate no matter what level you are satisfactory?

 

[occam]

Oh, boy! I really feel you. Back in 4e, I had a cool concept for a lightly armed military scout, which I built as a rogue. This character was consistent with the DM’s worldbuilding, as the starting location had just finished a war, so I figured an irregular military veteran trying their hand at adventuring would be interesting. I made this clear to the DM.

The adventure starts with my character (and only my character) breaking into a place on a quest for the Thieves ‘ guild, getting caught so all other PCs principally know my character as a thief, and the climax of the adventure revolving around my character reading thieves’ cant.

The presence of Thieves' Cant as a feature of the rogue is highly annoying when trying to repurpose the concept, though. I've also wanted to use the rogue as a tribal scout, for example, and been vexed by the nonsensical proficiency with the Cant. It's a relic of when the rogue was still called "thief", and should be relegated to an optional proficiency (as should also be done for thieves' tools) and made available to backgrounds like the Criminal.

 

[occam]

The thing is, there's no harm in adding MORE to the reason. You only need one or two lines of evocative text to tie it together and that small effort has a big impact on the overall feel of the dungeon. Why are we advocating for the absolute bare minimum when just the minimum can greatly improve products in subtle ways?

More importantly, I don't get a lot of criticisms in this thread. Why is it so bad to want WotC to try harder on their adventures and other content? We're not asking for a massive ecological essay on the dungeon, just one or two lines on how the hydra is eating itself or finding nourishment elsewhere. If I know it's eating itself, now I'm like hmmm, I can feed the hydra something else and maybe avoid combat. Or if I know that its eating something else, I can attack its food source and cause it to attack itself.

To say that there's no reason to put this stuff and that WotC just shouldn't is just so weird to me. Again, it's just one or two lines for the hydra. Yeah, you have to do that throughout the product now, but that makes an overall STRONGER product. They could even release a "DLC" via DND Beyond article for people who want it!

I don't actually disagree with you. I just take issue with Justin's absolutist portrayal of the problem, to the extent that it exists. Could the hydra/water weird encounter have benefited from a little more depth and clarity? Sure. But it wasn't the boneheaded oversight that Justin makes it out to be.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

The presence of Thieves' Cant as a feature of the rogue is highly annoying when trying to repurpose the concept, though. I've also wanted to use the rogue as a tribal scout, for example, and been vexed by the nonsensical proficiency with the Cant. It's a relic of when the rogue was still called "thief", and should be relegated to an optional proficiency (as should also be done for thieves' tools) and made available to backgrounds like the Criminal.

Yep, should be granted in the thief subclass and the criminal background and left out of default rogue chassis.

 

[Hussar]

Forty years of gaming and I've never once had Thieves Cant come up in a game. Same with Druidic. It just never, ever comes up. Never seen it in a published adventure, zero monsters can use it - other than druids and actual rogues of course. It's never referenced anywhere except in the PHB.

You guys have weird games.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

Forty years of gaming and I've never once had Thieves Cant come up in a game. Same with Druidic. It just never, ever comes up. Never seen it in a published adventure, zero monsters can use it - other than druids and actual rogues of course. It's never referenced anywhere except in the PHB.

You guys have weird games.

My group gets a ton of use out of things like Thieves Cant, Druidic, and Arcanic (the language wizards use in their spell work in my games), as well as other languages. But my group tends to like trying to communicate with every create they meet to try and stave off unnecessary combats or overhear interesting tidbits of information. It’s been a blast for us.

 

[Remathilis]

Not really no.

I'd like them to release the rest of their settings to the Guild, because I do believe 3pp do better work in that area.

And yeah, people do unfortunately tend to respond to WotC, so I guess we have to wait sometimes for them to release a product so others can make better versions of it.

Of course, in my ideal world WotC wouldn't have the unjust oversized influence and privilege over the industry they currently enjoy. Not a fan of officialdom where ever it comes from.

You know, I don't get it...

You can get all sorts of 3pp rule sets from Level Up to Tales of the Valiant. You can go on DMs Guild and get high quality fan conversions of almost every setting but Dark Sun and Greyhawk. You can do it without giving more than the 50% DMs Guild licensing fee to WotC. They literally have given more parts of the D&D game away to the fans than ever before.

You should be happy. Ecstatic even. Everything you want is right there. But you never are, or at least you don't sound happy. Why?

 

[Lanefan]

My group gets a ton of use out of things like Thieves Cant, Druidic, and Arcanic (the language wizards use in their spell work in my games), as well as other languages. But my group tends to like trying to communicate with every create they meet to try and stave off unnecessary combats or overhear interesting tidbits of information. It’s been a blast for us.

Language is a big deal in our games as well but even there I ended up dropping alignment tongues and Thieves'/Assassins' cants, mostly because for the decade-plus when I did have them they were never used.

And I too have players who would rather talk to everything they meet. Sometimes this works in their favour. Other times, not so much.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Is making sure you've got that 65% success rate no matter what level you are satisfactory?

It at least inserts some uncertainty into the equation, and encourages seeing if you can improve that situationally.

I mean, lets get real: as I've noted before, most parts of D&D (and most games far as that goes) at best encourage engagement in the mechanics of combat; everything else gets roll-and-you're-done (when it doesn't push off things to entirely player level decisions, i.e. frequently "Do I know how to play the GM?").

But when you don't even have to bother to roll (either because its basically certain or basically impossible), that's not exactly going to increase engagement.