Legends & Lore: A Few Rules Updates

[Klaus]

She's putting all the due diligence into hiding the trap that any professional trap-crafter would (which, given that traps are designed to be unseen, and the trap-crafter is presumably a professional and not just some dude off the street and thus has some training in the skill, would fool your "average" onlooker).

You and I have very different views of what "Take 10" means. To me, "all due diligence" isn't "Take 10", it's "Take 20". "Take 10", to me, means doing the basic effort to get an acceptable, professional result. It's an average result, no more, no less. It's not slacking, but just enough to "get by".

 

[ExploderWizard]

I think it was @ExploderWizard - whoever it was, I XPed it.

EDIT: Post number 15:

That was kind of a joke in response to a complaint about random encounters being too arbitrary.

Please.........don't shoot food.

 

[I'm A Banana]

You and I have very different views of what "Take 10" means. To me, "all due diligence" isn't "Take 10", it's "Take 20". "Take 10", to me, means doing the basic effort to get an acceptable, professional result. It's an average result, no more, no less. It's not slacking, but just enough to "get by".

Take 20 to me means that you do it until you get it perfectly -- which is why you can't do it if there's some penalty for failure. You expect to fail over and over again, and if the only cost is your time, you just spend the time necessary to do it perfectly. Take 20 is like rolling a 20, so it is the best that you can ever do.

Take 10 to me means that you do an average job. You take your time, avoid dumb mistakes, and perform basically on par for yourself. You do it to avoid failure, when you have the time to just apply what you already know.

But that "average job" is going to produce variable results. If you spend the time to do an "average job" on a new piece of artwork, it's going to be MILES ahead of my "average job" doing the same thing. You've got skill and training where I don't.

Someone hired to put a deathtrap in a dungeon (or a green slime hiding on moist walls, or a mimic, or a lie told by a master of deceit or an illusion crafted by a standard illusionist, or whatever) is presumably doing something they're trained to do. Their Take 10 produces much better results than someone without the training. And their Take 10 is going to beat those that don't have equal training in detecting their traps.

Which just puts it in the camp of, "Normally, the PC's are surprised by traps/lies/mimics/illusions/secret doors/etc. Special character options (like alertness or trap sense or being a gnome or an elf or trained in Perception) might mean that you are not necessarily surprised by these things, and may notice them without special effort."

So the guy who is trained in making traps doing an average job tricks anybody who isn't trained in detecting traps, but having some training in detecting traps means that you might not have to do anything special to avoid a trap. That's really binary (there's no real point in ever including a trap in a dungeon that the PC's do detect, so the PC's will only ever fall prey to traps), but add onto that the ability for a PC to use up some resources to be extra-cautious and make a roll, and you've basically got my proposal above.

 

[Teataine]

In my eyes this only strenghtens the argument that you shouldn't touch the dice if nothing interesting is going on, if there's no danger or risk of failure.

If you're trying to pick that lock, you're rolling because if you fail, your tools are going to snap, or you'll trigger a trap or a monster is going to catch you or something simmilar. If none of those factors are in play, ie. if failure has no consequences and it's just a "can I try again?" type of deal, then the DM should just say "ok you unlock it".

Taking 10 and taking 20 only puts an additional, unnecessary step to table procedures.

Even if you're not rolling vs a DC, but only to see the "quality" of your roll, such as the case could be with, say, crafting, you still roll to see if there's some variance to your result. If you have Craft (Blacksmithing) and you want to make a sword, and you have all the time in the world, sure, you make the best sword you can, no problem. Otherwise roll and let's see how good a sword you can make in the three days the prince has given you before the contest.

Say yes or roll the dice, boom, taking 20 becomes irrelevant.

"why does a trap that we see without doing anything and that thus has no effect even exist?

Because bypassing the trap is the real challenge. Rolling and failing to spot a trap means just some arbitrary random damage. Finding a trap and then figuring a way to trigger or deactivate it, that's the interesting part.


Edit: because I wasn't particularly clear above. The DM should always give clear hints or descriptions of traps anyway. Only if the party is carelessly strolling about, risking to walk straight into a trap, you can ask for a perception roll, the risk being...you walk into a trap. At which point you can also ask yourself why not simply roll a Save at that point. Perception has always been borked in D&D, especially in relation to traps. I have given up on asking my players to roll perception. If there's something there, they'll notice it. If the ignore it, only then will it hit/trap/attack/whatever them and we can go to the dice.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

Pst. Hey, guys, you don't need permission from the game rules or WotC to make your games fun for you and your group. You can use a variety of methods to handle similar situations in different ways for different reasons. Do people really read the DMG and expect it to tell them exactly how to run their game in all situations? It's a GUIDE. It says it right there in the title.

On the perception front: the detailed description of clues and such that someone could find with passive perception and perception rolls: That's GREAT when I want that level of detail for a particularly interesting secret door, but I'm not going to that level of effort for every hidden door in every dungeon the heroes might wander through. Sometimes it's ok to have a simple hidden door DC 20 perception (search) to find it. Other times I want the player to tell me that his thief character is looking behind the the throne and tapping on the wall listening for the hollow space to find the hidden panel. As long as I (and they) have a clear understanding of what's going on here, we're all good and we're going to have fun.

On the wandering monsters bit: if you're doing a careful XP budgeted adventure with level appropriate encounters, etc. you either have to ignore random encounters or make sure you account for them in your budget. If you're doing a sandbox-style game/adventure where the PCs meet what they meet depending on where they go, then the random encounters introduces a bit of variety. In all cases your random encounter charts should make sense for the purpose you intend to use them and in the game world you've created.

 

[pemerton]

Please.........don't shoot food.

I googled that - Gauntlet?

Anyway, I quite liked the monster-spawning shrine of bones!

 

[Mistwell]

I googled that - Gauntlet?

Anyway, I quite liked the monster-spawning shrine of bones!

Yes, he means Gauntlet.

[video=youtube_share;7mMJio2MO6w]http://youtu.be/7mMJio2MO6w[/video]

 

[Lokiare]

The DM Guidelines pdf in the last packet referred to the chance of encountering wandering monsters, and how to resolve encounters with them. That's it. Nothing to suggest "infinite spawn randomness" unless you want to twist the intent of what's there. Simply put, if any DM doesn't have the presence of mind to reduce or eliminate the chance of random encounters in an area that the PCs have thoroughly cleaned out, they weren't the target audience for the playtest packet. In the released versions of 5e, a rule along the lines of "A cleared area has no wandering monster checks for X amount of time" should take care of business.

There's two DM styles being highlighted here: one where the wandering monsters are part of the DM's budget and he/she knows exactly how many there will be. The other is where the number of wandering monsters that will show up is variable; the DM doesn't know till the dice are rolled. Either style is fine, and 'variable' doesn't mean "keep them coming forever, well past the point of credulity.".

Everyone was a target audience for the play test. We can't assume every DM will know these kinds of things or are experienced. New DMs will play and DMs that don't know any better will also play. So yes the 5E packet pretty much says "infinite respawning monsters" because it doesn't talk about a limit.

Sure they could fix it in the release version, but they could also release 4.5E in the release version. I'm more worried about what they have shown us and what they have said, rather than some kind of 'what if' question that isn't related to the facts available.

The problem comes down to 'some will like it and some won't'. Which means they need to have two options and thoroughly explain the upsides and downsides of both...

 

[Ichneumon]

Everyone was a target audience for the play test. We can't assume every DM will know these kinds of things or are experienced. New DMs will play and DMs that don't know any better will also play. So yes the 5E packet pretty much says "infinite respawning monsters" because it doesn't talk about a limit.

Sure they could fix it in the release version, but they could also release 4.5E in the release version. I'm more worried about what they have shown us and what they have said, rather than some kind of 'what if' question that isn't related to the facts available.

The problem comes down to 'some will like it and some won't'. Which means they need to have two options and thoroughly explain the upsides and downsides of both...

OK. Let's assume that a DM does interpret that rule as "infinite respawners". What sort of PC group traipses round an empty dungeon forever waiting for random orc patrols to show up? Even a bunch of complete neophytes are bound to get sick of it quickly and go elsewhere. The closest thing I can compare it with is 'grinding' in MMOs. Infinite respawning needs to not be an option at all, as it leads to a playstyle that will be teeth-grindingly boring to 99% of groups out there.

If a gaming group decides to play this way of their own accord, fair enough, but the rules shouldn't endorse it in any way, even if it means adding a rule that wandering monsters dry up after an area is cleared.

 

[pemerton]

Do we really need a rule that wandering monsters dry up after an area is cleared?

If the guidelines for players are any good, they will talk about different approaches to designing a setting, and a scenario, and the different sorts of tools that can be used - including wandering monsters - and how these can be incorporated into the story. The question of whether or not wandering monsters dry up is just a footnote to that broader discussion of playstyles and GMing techniques.