D&D 5E L&L December 16th Can you feel it?

[howandwhy99]

Indeed yes, but then creating a permanent magic item usually meant investing a point of Con, which was a major sacrifice, whereas in 3E you merely expended XP. And expending XP meant that the crafters were often a level or more lower than the fighter-types which meant that they gained more XP per encounter. Even 3 levels lower would not be unreasonable while they were working on the Inherent Bonuses.

I hear you. I see 3e as its own thing. Disparity in levels between PCs for that game was a big problem in my opinion. And its prevalence of readily available magic items, especially healing magics, changed expectations about game play considerably. For older D&D we don't usually create magic items ourselves as it is a lengthy and costly process, but I don't believe non-permanent, non-renewable resource ones require Con loss either. Besides, we usually find magic items as part of treasure, barter for them from NPCs, or even contract custom ones from friendly NPC wizards who don't go out adventuring.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I thought Mearls's description of the problems with Sneak Attack ("SA") not affecting certain classes of critters was an interesting take that I hadn't heard before.

We all know that "Combat Is The Only Option (and Measure)" is not a great way to design the game, so the complaint that, say, undead being immune to backstabbing makes the thief a sub-optimal choice for the game is a bit...milquetoast. Okay, if you play a game defined by combat, yeah, but that's a pretty extreme corruption of the core loop of a D&D game (Town -> Wilderness -> Dungeon -> Treasure -> Return).

But Mike's point is more subtle than that. His point is that SA not being useful against certain classes of critters means you're not thinking like a thief!

I think I can say, without too much controversy, that D&D thief is an opportunist. When you roleplay a thief, part of what you want is to think sneaky, think about the little edge you can get, think about looking for chinks in the armor, weak points to stick a dagger. In many ways, the player using their move action to flank represents that. "I get into position, and spend an action to do that."

But with blanket immunity for some critters, you're instead playing an amateur D&D Linnean, classifying critters according to their anatomies. And certain classifications stop you from thinking of them in terms of combat targets. By the rules, it doesn't matter how long you look for a joint at which to strike the golem, there's no "weak point" at all. So, the rules tell you, don't look for a weak point in combat. Stop thinking like a sneaky opportunist. Just go stab the thing 'till it stops moving. The rules don't reward you thinking like a sneaky opportunist, so they don't encourage you to roleplay a thief.

I believe Mearls is on record stating that he doesn't want the 5e thief to depend on Sneak Attack to contribute to the game. I think he's totally on the right course there! But I think what has me even more excited is the possibility that a player's psychological mindset is important to them when they are designing the game. I mean, I've been ranting about this stuff since at least 2008 (a la wrought iron fences made of tigers), so maybe my excitement is a little bit a chance to point and cheer and be happy that the designers of my favorite game are on my page. But I think it's important -- this ain't about SA being The Only Thing Thieves Do, it's about how immunities shut down parts of your imagination, why they are often kind of boring in gameplay. And yeah, I can see his point there. I'm still kind of a fan of how clear immunities can be, so there's some trade-offs, but yeah, point taken: immunties are kind of a shut-down.

 

[Minigiant]

I think Mearls' point was that if you made too many creatures immune to sneak attack, you discourage rogue players from using it. Then they stop sneaking and ambushing people. They stop running around for and shiving busy foes. They became weak fighters who sometimes got a lot of bonus damage. It becomes an "happy bonus" rogue players are just happy to get and stopped encouraging sneakiness.

Like the old Ranger's Favored Enemy. "Oh look, they aren't evil outsiders, dragons, or giants. Meh. Stab. Slash." Instead FE was made, as I hoped and suggested, to be tailored to defeating the monster. "I'm charging into the middle of ALL THESE ORCS. Now they all die."

EDIT: It's also how Turn Undead was so niche in use that many clerics found ways to do other thing with turn attempts. I've seen a cleric not be able to turn undead because they burned all their turns on other stuff. And we TPKed because the DM thought she'd just turn all the undead.

 

[Sage Genesis]

There's a reason MMORPGs(and 3e and 4e D&D) made rogues into a DPS character, they realized that the rogue's shtick was so small as to be insignificant in most games.

I'd like to expand a little on this.

Rogues (or Thieves if you prefer) are sometimes called the "skill monkey" class. This is wrong. They are not skill monkeys. A "skill" in D&D/RPG context is a trained ability that can be learned by anyone. What Rogues actually used to have were unique class features. Find/Remove Traps wasn't a skill anybody could pick up, it was a Thief-only ability. Anybody can hide in darkness, but only the Thief could hide in shadows.

If you look at 2e, the Rogue classes actually get the least amount of non-weapon proficiency slots of all, not the most.

But then 3e came along and a universal skill system was put in place that included the traditional Rogue abilities. Anybody can now learn to pick pockets, open locks, and so on. The Rogues had eight skill points per level, sure, but that doesn't really cover all bases. There are far/i] more than eight good skills you need to be a kickass thief. And who needs a specialist sneaky-guy class if the Ranger can do your job just as well? There is nothing that makes the Rogue better at sneaking than Rangers or Monks (again, unlike in 2e when the Thief was clearly better at this).

So what is the niche of the Rogue? It's not "unique Rogue abilities" any longer, those have been absorbed into a universal skill system. Is it "really good at skills" then? They were kind of decent at skills in 3e, but not so good at it that they could really fill a whole niche. In Iron Heroes the Thief class had a ton of skill points and had a cap of level+5 instead of level+3, something that game at least got very right.

Where does that leave you? Sneak attack. Yeah, you could limit it and take it almost entirely away, but then you're left with a class that really doesn't bring much to the table anymore. You're not the cool trap-foiling scout if any class can take the Guild Thief background and do your job just as well as you can. That's not a niche.


Fortunately, Next does do some positive things for Rogues in this regard (and I say this as someone who really, really doesn't like Next). Expertise gives back some of that skillfulness that they lost, cunning action gives mobility and sneak-ness in combat, Rogue Style can genuinely make you better at certain roguish skills than anybody else with the same background. I'd love to see the Rogue made even more skillful and tricky than they already are and their Sneak Attack toned down by a few d6, with perhaps a superior progression of sneak attack damage offered to a stabbing thug style option (in exchange for less tricks of another kind).

This game has niches and certain characters to fill those niches. The rogue is fun as written - they just are sometimes not all that good in combat. Expecting them to be equally good fighting every thing is just unreasonable.

Fighters and Barbarians have problem when facing incorporeal ghosts, golems, and sometimes flying enemies. Rogues have the exact same problems... and also all undead, plants, elementals, constructs, and slimes. There is nothing unreasonable about noticing and disliking this discrepancy. Nobody wants Rogues to be always good against everything. But when they face much more problems than any other martial class, that can be a legit issue. In AD&D this was better because Rogues had superior level progression and unique class abilities, but, well... I just went over that.

 

[pemerton]

As time goes on, I am increasingly convinced that all (non-minion) D&D characters in all worlds must, in fact, have glowing green bars above their heads, which shorten and change color from yellow to red as they engage in dangerous activities. Its the only way to make sense of have Narrative Cohesion for the characters' decision-making. Otherwise, I can't imagine what sort of madness would have to overtake someone to make your second example rational in any way.

The player and the character know that if they are hit by a sword or fall down a pit, that they will take damage. If they are low on hp, hence having taken damage, they may be killed or knocked out.

I'm closer to Ratskinner on this one.

A player whose character who has more than 6 hp remaining knows that the character's neck cannot be broken by a 10' fall. And, at least in my experience, players act on that sort of knowledge - much of the combat system in fact seems to be predicated on the assumption that players will use knowledge of their hit points remaining to tactical effect.

But what knowledge on the part of the character does this correspond to? How can the character know that s/he cannot be killed by an unexpected 10' drop, or that s/he cannot be killed by a goblin's sword blow?

Is it bad when the thing that makes me least willing to play D&D is reading articles by its designers?

Well that was....well...I'm glad I don't have to grade these...

So, we go through a circle of "<X> is important to game design, and here's a thing about D&D that makes <X> hard/impossible" what like three times. Was this article supposed to just list the things about D&D that make a designer's life hard? Maybe I've been reading and playing Fate too much lately, but this article seemed like a long list of "Things that make D&D lame."

Whoa, it's good to see you're not holding back!

Out of curiosity, what was the third thing - spells, sneak attack, ?.

 

[howandwhy99]

But with blanket immunity for some critters, you're instead playing an amateur D&D Linnean, classifying critters according to their anatomies. And certain classifications stop you from thinking of them in terms of combat targets. By the rules, it doesn't matter how long you look for a joint at which to strike the golem, there's no "weak point" at all. So, the rules tell you, don't look for a weak point in combat. Stop thinking like a sneaky opportunist. Just go stab the thing 'till it stops moving. The rules don't reward you thinking like a sneaky opportunist, so they don't encourage you to roleplay a thief.

That's a good post. I hope it is why Mearls is talking about removing immersion for players playing rogues. I'm on record for class being roleplaying in D&D, so it lines up with my thinking too.

Your particular example, however, I don't find unique to rogues. Golems are increasingly more difficult to stop because of the material they are made up of. In terms of immunity, not only are they immune to sneak attacks, but also to normal weapon damage, most all magic, and turning. They are the shutdown kings of D&D. With those monstrosities it's almost better to be the best class at avoiding confrontation.

There are a lot of monsters like this, monsters understood to be combat threats yet not best defeated through traditional combat. Undead are more geared for clerics, than other classes. Unliving, yet active attackers who can't be killed with standard HP loss, but require full on hacking to bits HP loss. And that's only the corporeal ones. Also, I'll go on record now that Elementals should probably have their own kind of anatomy too as they are living creatures from other planes. (Though perhaps not all elementals). Many constructs have an "anatomy" of their own as well with the mess of components making them up inside. I mean, if you're attacking an animated suit of plate mail, attack the armor just as you might if it were worn. It can be broken up and you might be good at that if you've spent years figuring out ways to stab people in the back. (I mean that literally )

 

[GreyLord]

On the 10 foot fall thing...even I don't think I'd be killed on a calculated 10 foot fall. 10 feet isn't THAT high to tell the truth. 20 feet may even be survivable by most. A character probably would think along similar lines, especially if their life depended on whether to jump down/fall down that 20 feet (or 10 feet) or not.

The bigger issue is the 100 foot fall and the 9th level fighter in regards to reality check IMO.

 

[delericho]

On the 10 foot fall thing...even I don't think I'd be killed on a calculated 10 foot fall. 10 feet isn't THAT high to tell the truth. 20 feet may even be survivable by most. A character probably would think along similar lines, especially if their life depended on whether to jump down/fall down that 20 feet (or 10 feet) or not.

Ah, but could you jump up and carry on at full effectiveness? Or would you most likely suffer some sort of injury that impedes your further movement.

The bigger issue is the 100 foot fall and the 9th level fighter in regards to reality check IMO.

Personally, I don't have a problem with that. Beyond very low level, D&D characters are quite clearly superhuman. I don't see any great problem with superhumans doing superhuman things.

 

[Nikosandros]

Personally, I don't have a problem with that. Beyond very low level, D&D characters are quite clearly superhuman. I don't see any great problem with superhumans doing superhuman things.

Exactly. Not to mention, that I don't get all this obsession with realistic falls. It's not very realistic to walk away easily from being punctured by a long blade and what about being hit by a giant? Realistically a character ought to be reduced to a pulp.

 

[Nikosandros]

Getting back to the discussion about the combat effectiveness of rogues. I can see the arguments from those who dislike the combat upgrade of rogues in recent editions, but personally I'm in the other camp. D&D, IMVHO, is a game in which I expect combat to play a considerable role and thus I want all classes to be effective in combat. In a single encounter a certain character might shine while another is a bit less effective*, but overall I'm expecting combat balance.

This has nothing to do with expecting an automatic victory for the PC. An encounter might still be taxing (and potentially even disastrous) for the characters even if all the PCs have a chance to contribute.

*Even in this case, I expect the character to be able to contribute in meaningful way.