Legends & Lore: What Worked, What Didn't

[Plaguescarred]

What Worked, What Didn't
Legends & Lore
By Mike Mearls

In this week’s Legends & Lore, Mike talks about the evolution of a few key points of rule design in D&D Next.

What do you think?

 

[Plaguescarred]

Advantage and Disadvantage is a great mechanic my group and i found.

Weapon Powers is something i like the idea and would have liked to see it more playtested. I was fond of the Halberd with property to knock prone.

Concentration is a mechanic i like and i'm glad to see being brought back.

Auto Success is something i'm not too fond of, i like a minimum of randomness. Even climbing a ladder can be failed, that's why we often have dumb accidents in the most mundane tasks we do.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Auto Success is something i'm not too fond of, i like a minimum of randomness. Even climbing a ladder can be failed, that's why we often have dumb accidents in the most mundane tasks we do.

It's been my experience that rolling the dice for common place things not only slows the game down due to constant die rolls but ends up making the PCs look like bumbling idiots.

I've played a couple of games like this and when we're rolling for EVERYTHING it just gets silly: "Roll to see if you open the door or if you miss the door, slip over your own feat and smash your skull against the pavement."

Yes, accidents do happen, but they happen so rarely that you can't use a d20 to determine whether they happen. You need a d10,000 for most of these accidents. My general rule of thumb is if I don't see an average person failing at least 1 time in every 20 times they try something, I don't bother with a roll. Glad to see a similar philosophy is part of D&D Next.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I agree that common place things like walking or running should not be checked as they bug the game down, but climbing has usually been a check of some sort. Ok may be not a ladder, but a rope though.

I prefer handwaving checks as autosuccess to remain at DM's discretion i guess.

 

[thewok]

It would depend on the situation. I think anyone with at least an 8 or 9 in Strength should be able to climb a rope given some help from others in the group (assuming the character is not morbidly obese). In a combat situation, though, where they can't take the time to ensure they have their feet placed well before trying to push up? Yeah. That can be a check. But, assuming a normal ladder or a normal rope in a situation where there is no immediate danger and they don't need to rush? That's an auto-success.

I would like to see the weapon powers in a module later on.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I'm not yet sure what to think about ad/disad. While it's cool to boil down the whole bonus/penalty business, one can go too far in this direction. And if the gate are thrown open to allow for different mechanisms beyond ad/disad, the whole simplification and speed-up it brings will soon be history.

 

[delericho]

Advantage and Disadvantage is a great mechanic my group and i found.

Yep. It's a good one. As Mearls says, it causes so much clutter just to drop out of the game it's quite amazing.

Weapon Powers is something i like the idea and would have liked to see it more playtested. I was fond of the Halberd with property to knock prone.

I think there's a strong argument for introducing a generic 'hand weapon' for those players who just want something simple that does damage, alongside some more complex "signature weapons" for those players who want more detail. But it might be better if those "weapon powers" only become available to PCs who take the appropriate Weapon Focus (or equivalent), and perhaps fall into some broad categories (so all flails trip, all picks have anti-armour uses, etc).

Concentration is a mechanic i like and i'm glad to see being brought back.

Agreed.

Auto Success is something i'm not too fond of, i like a minimum of randomness. Even climbing a ladder can be failed, that's why we often have dumb accidents in the most mundane tasks we do.

We do, but I'm not sure it's beneficial if the heroes of our games do - Aragorn, Conan, and Lancelot very seldom suffer that sort of failure of basic competence.

Having said that, I'm not convinced it's a good idea to omit DCs less than 10 completely. I think perhaps it's better to list them, but advise DMs simply not to call for a roll at such low DCs. The reason for including them is for scaling purposes - climbing a ladder may be DC 0, but climbing a badly damaged ladder in a gale probably isn't, and it may well be easier for the DM to derive that DC if he's given the baseline one to start with.

Or not; that's just a gut feeling - I don't really know.

 

[Plaguescarred]

I see Weapon Powers as a great addition for an optional module if its not in core rules., it has enought granularity and tactical depth for optional tactical module though.

I liked the halberd property to knock prone a few packets ago but in core rules i wouldn't necessarily want to see every weapon do something on a hit without feat, feature or optional rules in use.

I also think it'd be preferrable to call them Weapon Maneuvers over Weapon Powers. The term "powers" seems to not jive well with some people in the hand of non-spellcasters... #4ELessons

 

[Minigiant]

Some autosuccess is good and some just is weird or even bad,

For example, a DC5 checks is something a character with a 10 in the score would fail 20% of the time. I can't think of any thing that fits that bill.

Climbing a ladder is something so routine that only in the worse circumstances would a character fail. Then the DC would be at least 10.

Things like ranger tracking and rogue decipher script are so rare in use that an autosuccess is not too bad. Especially if it is all they get that level.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Generally agree with the article, but they haven't won me over to the Passive Perception bandwagon.

No roll without action!, I say!