D&D 5E L&L: Exploration and Interaction

[the Jester]

Why present them in any order tho? I think DM's should be able to decide on how a monster should be played.

Agreed. After all, there are many groups of evil pcs out there, and for them, a nymph/solar/lamassu is often a perfectly fine combat encounter, while Orcus might be an interaction encounter.

This sounds like a reaction to the Diplomacy skill being horribly broken in 3.5e, but it just doesn't feel right.

I dunno- why should a good die roll allow the pcs to subvert and befriend their arch-foe? I'm happy with the idea of "basic attitude [hostile/neutral/friendly] only changes over time and via interactions that sway it".

 

[zoroaster100]

This Legends and Lore all sounded good to me. Right now my main concerns are with the balance between PCs and monsters, and hopefully we'll see some improvement in that regard in the next playtest packet. But in terms of interaction and exploration I think they are headed in the right direction. I'm curious to see how they are implementing these rules in the next playest packet, of course, since the devil is in the details.

 

[delericho]

I dunno- why should a good die roll allow the pcs to subvert and befriend their arch-foe?

For the same reason that a sufficiently high roll may well allow them to one-shot an opponent with an attack or spell? And while it's seldom easy, and certainly shouldn't be common, there have certainly been times (and are very likely to be times in future) when that is possible.

 

[I'm A Banana]

For the same reason that a sufficiently high roll may well allow them to one-shot an opponent with an attack or spell?

Y'know, there could be room for this. Interaction Minions. In 5e-speak, if you're a high level diplomancer and your enemy is some nameless droog, you can make him your loyal peon with a significantly accurate crit or somesuch.

I think running with the assumption that most interaction scenes where you'll want rules would be more involved than that is good, but I absolutely see room for Bluff One-Shots.

 

[Szatany]

For the same reason that a sufficiently high roll may well allow them to one-shot an opponent with an attack or spell?

You can befriend an enemy with a spell, doesn't mean it should be possible with an ability check.

 

[Lizard]

Y'know, there could be room for this. Interaction Minions. In 5e-speak, if you're a high level diplomancer and your enemy is some nameless droog, you can make him your loyal peon with a significantly accurate crit or somesuch.

I think running with the assumption that most interaction scenes where you'll want rules would be more involved than that is good, but I absolutely see room for Bluff One-Shots.

This is the kind of thing experienced DMs tend to handle intuitively -- high level characters can trivially intimidate/impress low level flunkies, usually because they're irrelevant. The goals, needs, and challenges facing high level characters won't be solved by bullying some poor slob walking a watch on the outskirts of an encampment or befriending a nameless beggar. At best, these are the first steps on a long ladder, and it doesn't do a lot of good to spend as much time on them as on more relevant encounters.

Having a formalized mechanic for this, as an aid to newer DMs, is not at all a bad idea.

 

[Klaus]

Y'know, there could be room for this. Interaction Minions. In 5e-speak, if you're a high level diplomancer and your enemy is some nameless droog, you can make him your loyal peon with a significantly accurate crit or somesuch.

I think running with the assumption that most interaction scenes where you'll want rules would be more involved than that is good, but I absolutely see room for Bluff One-Shots.

Add in a new trait:

Impressionable: this creature's attitude can be improved by one step with a successful DC XX Charisma check.

 

[Li Shenron]

For the same reason that a sufficiently high roll may well allow them to one-shot an opponent with an attack or spell?

It's not really possible to one-shot an opponent with a weapon attack that doesn't use some magic boost, except at low levels (although might become possible in 5e given the damage bloat).

Also, the issue is about permanently changing the NPC's friendship or enmity towards you. With most NPCs you're going to encounter, you don't even need that. For those you really want to change, I think we can afford to require at least a little bit of roleplay rather than allowing dice alone to achieve something that could effectively last longer than death in a game of D&D.

 

[Argyle King]

I feel kind of "meh." The ideas sound like good ideas when I first glance over them. However, when I think about them more, it seems as though there are a lot of rules for not very many results. Though, I'm not necessarily saying there are too many rules. It just seems as though the default rule set is a lot of detail which gets rewarded with a lot of abstraction, and something about that comes across as strange. As with everything, I'd need to see how it works in actual play.

I see the merit of keywords. That did help a lot of parts of 4E function more smoothly. However, it also had a tendency to make things seem somewhat binary, so there is potential good and potential bad there. The interaction rules sound a lot like skill challenges, but without calling them that. I'm still not quite sold on the exploration rules; while they don't sound bad, something about them just doesn't quite gel for me yet.


edit: I see the merit of keywords, and similar concepts work well in other games I play. That being said, it comes across as feeling somewhat like a ccg. I'm undecided on if I feel that is good or bad.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Add in a new trait:

Impressionable: this creature's attitude can be improved by one step with a successful DC XX Charisma check.

Maybe. I kind of like 5e's idea to handle minions intuitively by having damage increase so that lower-level monsters are automatically one-shotted without the recourse to specialized rules; don't see why that shouldn't really continue on to the other pillars. Minor traps or hazards or opinions that don't phase the great wonder-makers of the world.

I don't think this would be impossible in the system they've advertised here, it just needs to be a bit swingier...mostly turning on options that in the "at level" mode are turned off.