Mearls On D&D's Design Premises/Goals

First of all, thanks [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] for collecting this. I generally avoid Twitter because, frankly, it's full of a$$holes.

That aside: this is an interesting way of looking at it, and underscores the difference in design philosophies between the WotC team and the Paizo team. There is a lot of room for both philosophies of design, and I don't think there is any reason for fans of one to be hostile to fans of the other, but those differences do matter. There are ways in which I like the prescriptive elements of 3.x era games (I like set skill difficulty lists, for example) but I tend to run by the seat of my pants and the effects of my beer, so a fast and loose and forgiving version like 5E really enables me running a game the way I like to.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Or maybe the Barbarian supplies their Nature skill to convince the king that CAMPAIGN ISSUE exists by noting how nature is all out-of-whack and what these signs may portend.

I agree with you, this is a good way of handling it and it is what the Skill Challenge mechanic was trying to get at. However, the way many classes are constructed it's not at all unlikely that they won't have these skills at all. Even if they do, the DCs are often so high that their check is unlikely to be useful. Furthermore skill challenges were written (at least that's how I saw them written) in a way that forced participation. It's an admirable goal in a way, to try to keep everyone engaged and not zoned out during non-combat scenes, but it ran right into bonus/DC creep.

 

[pemerton]

True, but this makes my point about why having skill bonuses inflate dramatically and DCs go up correspondingly is a problem. If the DC is set to challenge the face character with a massive bonus no matter what the barbarian does he notches a failure, unless the DM pushes the DCs around.

In 4e, this will only be a problem if the GM ignores the actual rules for DC by level. I'm sure there were plenty of GMs who did that - but that feeds into the discussion in another current thread about GMs who play systems that have clear and working encounter-building guidelines and ignore them. (I call those GMs bad ones.)

The 30th level fighter in my 4e game has a CHA of 10 and no trained social skills, but is able to succeed on Diplomacy checks from time-to-time.

This is why many skill challenges were written the way they were. I understand what they were trying to do but often felt that, at least the way they were implemented in play (and I played with three or four different DMs, so it wasn't just one) they tried to force participation and often turned into a situation of "guess which skill applies here".

My view is that there is a significant gap between the actual rules and advice for skill challenges, and their presentation in published modules, much as there is a significant gap between the advice for encounter building and establishing quests and their presentation in published modules.

To some extent this was probably inevitable, in that 4e as presented and in its advice is the least GM-driven version of D&D published (at least since Moldvay Basic) whereas contemporary modules are all about a GM-driven play experience.

But anyway, the idea that a player needs to "guess the skill" is completely at odds with the DMG advice, which says (i) that players should explain what their PCs are doing to resolve the situation - which is fiction first, skill second (although the player's description of what his/her PC is doing may include reference to an intended skill), and (ii) that the GM should indicate what skills might be useful (in my own experience that's normally redundant because a vivid description of the fictional situation should make that clear - but in any event it speaks directly contrary to a "guess the skill" approach).

The social system works very differently than combat in most games. Combat does some damage and the wizard doesn't have to just sit there in melee but has various abilities to escape or do something. In the social system, most non-social characters essentially have no ability at all, certainly in higher levels.

If the player of the wizard doesn't want to solve the problem as a melee one, s/he declares appropriate actions to change the situation. (They may or may not work. They may or may not be popular with other members of the group.)

If the player of the barbarian doesn't want to solve the problem as a social one, s/he declares appropriate actions to change the situation. (In People of the Black Circle, Conan meets the princess (?? queen?) - a social situation - but then kidnaps her, changing the attempt to persuade the governor to spare his men into a different sort of challenge!)

If the convention at the table is that one doesn't do that, then the barbarian player either needs to build some social skill into his/her PC, or cope with the fact that s/he will suck a bit. In my 4e game, there are two CHA PCs with good social; a wizard/invoker and ranger/cleric who have unexciting CHA but social skill training and hence average social; and a fighter with 10 CHA and no social skills. The player of the fighter just sucks up the fact that often his attempts at persuasion will not succeed; and sometimes he looks for other ways to contribute When the PCs were trying to persuade the Raven Queen's marut allies that the end times had not come, because this arising of the tarrasque was not the one that signalled those end times, the fighter's contribution was to solo the tarrasque for a couple of rounds and come close to killing it single-handedly - which showed, as one of the other PCs explained to the maruts, that this could not possibly be the coming of the tarrasque that was meant to herald the end of all things.

Social situations are only different from combat situations if the table chooses to make them so. In which case they can hardly complain about it!

 

[pemerton]

Or maybe the Barbarian supplies their Nature skill to convince the king that CAMPAIGN ISSUE exists by noting how nature is all out-of-whack and what these signs may portend.

Sure, that works too!

When the PCs in my 4e game were trying to persuade the baron who had invited them to his dinner party to really trust them, at a certain point they were discussing how they had defeated some gelatinous cubes in combat. To answer a query from the baron, and encouraged by his friends (the fellow PCs), the fighter got up and demonstrated how one uses polearm techniques to defeate a gelationous cube. I can't remember if the check was made on Athletics or as a combat check, but that was an occasion where the players set things up so that it made sense, in the fiction, for the PC to impress a baron with a display of physical prowess.
[MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] upthread talked about the challenge in an encounter being the way it makes the players think, and have to engage the ficiton. Shaping the way things unfold in a skill challenge, so as to open up opportunities to bring your talents to bear, while protecting your weak links, is an example of that.

 

[Aldarc]

I agree with you, this is a good way of handling it and it is what the Skill Challenge mechanic was trying to get at. However, the way many classes are constructed it's not at all unlikely that they won't have these skills at all. Even if they do, the DCs are often so high that their check is unlikely to be useful. Furthermore skill challenges were written (at least that's how I saw them written) in a way that forced participation. It's an admirable goal in a way, to try to keep everyone engaged and not zoned out during non-combat scenes, but it ran right into bonus/DC creep.

True, but this makes my point about why having skill bonuses inflate dramatically and DCs go up correspondingly is a problem. If the DC is set to challenge the face character with a massive bonus no matter what the barbarian does he notches a failure, unless the DM pushes the DCs around.

This is one of the reasons why I am considering adopting a more modern/sleeker OSR-inspired roll under system like Black Hack. Less need to alter DCs. Plus, ability checks and not skills.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Social situations are only different from combat situations if the table chooses to make them so. In which case they can hardly complain about it!

Agreed here, and I think every table does it a bit different. My preference is to not let the social skill system overtake actual role-playing so I don't set DCs for a diplomacy or social check until I see what the player actually says or does in roleplay. If the player is in character and acts appropriately to the situation, the DC lowers. If they're not, it goes up.

Simulates the ability some people have to tell someone to go to heck in a handbasket and have the person enjoy it. Obviously a high roll.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

In 4e, this will only be a problem if the GM ignores the actual rules for DC by level. I'm sure there were plenty of GMs who did that - but that feeds into the discussion in another current thread about GMs who play systems that have clear and working encounter-building guidelines and ignore them. (I call those GMs bad ones.)

I would prefer to call them "people who could improve in this area of GMing."

My view is that there is a significant gap between the actual rules and advice for skill challenges, and their presentation in published modules, much as there is a significant gap between the advice for encounter building and establishing quests and their presentation in published modules.

Yep, exactly.

To some extent this was probably inevitable, in that 4e as presented and in its advice is the least GM-driven version of D&D published (at least since Moldvay Basic) whereas contemporary modules are all about a GM-driven play experience.

I have no warm fuzzies for Moldvay Basic or even a copy of it, so I'll have to take your word on it. Most contemporary modules don't seem to be GM-driven but more writer-driven, particularly Adventure Paths with a lot of things written as a sequence of scripted set pieces with the GM needing to keep things on book. To some degree this is just fine. I mean, a dungeon is often a setting with a bunch of boundaries and various encounters, although Ye Olde Claffick Dungeonne usually didn't have much of a story associated with it and the PCs often wander around as needed kicking in doors.

But anyway, the idea that a player needs to "guess the skill" is completely at odds with the DMG advice, which says (i) that players should explain what their PCs are doing to resolve the situation - which is fiction first, skill second (although the player's description of what his/her PC is doing may include reference to an intended skill), and (ii) that the GM should indicate what skills might be useful (in my own experience that's normally redundant because a vivid description of the fictional situation should make that clear - but in any event it speaks directly contrary to a "guess the skill" approach).

I teach at a university for a living and one key maxim is: "If many students are making the same mistakes over and over, the problem is the curriculum and instruction."

Social situations are only different from combat situations if the table chooses to make them so. In which case they can hardly complain about it!

Uh... not if the rules they're given don't really present them with clear guidance. You say the DMG (4E) has it, a point I'm totally willing to grant it does, but then nearly every written example violates those very same guidelines! It's all well and good to lay out the theory, but if the examples aren't solid, it's not surprising that people can't execute them.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Agreed here, and I think every table does it a bit different. My preference is to not let the social skill system overtake actual role-playing so I don't set DCs for a diplomacy or social check until I see what the player actually says or does in roleplay. If the player is in character and acts appropriately to the situation, the DC lowers. If they're not, it goes up.

Simulates the ability some people have to tell someone to go to heck in a handbasket and have the person enjoy it. Obviously a high roll.

I definitely try to weight it based on what the RP was or what the preconceived notions of the person in interaction would have, but I do actually want the character's attributes to matter, not just the speaking ability of the player. I mean, maybe I'm a fairly smooth talking person who's playing a alcoholic pseudo-Scottish walking stereotype dwarf who has an uncanny ability to offend. Or, vice versa as is more common, I'm a fairly mundane, normal person who ums and ahs but I'm venturing to play a face character. I don't want the latter person to roll-play, of course, but do want the system to back up the fact that they're able to say things that most folks wouldn't and get away with it. So, maybe the dwarf is talking to another pseudo-Scottish dwarf. I'll give advantage on that roll, absolutely, and maybe throw disadvantage to the half elf bard, but I'd still want to make sure that investment in social skills was valuable, meaning that another dwarf who had invested in some Persuade would be better.

So it's part of the "Simulates the ability some people have to tell someone to go to heck in a handbasket and have the person enjoy it."

 

[Kobold Boots]

I definitely try to weight it based on what the RP was or what the preconceived notions of the person in interaction would have, but I do actually want the character's attributes to matter, not just the speaking ability of the player. I mean, maybe I'm a fairly smooth talking person who's playing a alcoholic pseudo-Scottish walking stereotype dwarf who has an uncanny ability to offend. Or, vice versa as is more common, I'm a fairly mundane, normal person who ums and ahs but I'm venturing to play a face character. I don't want the latter person to roll-play, of course, but do want the system to back up the fact that they're able to say things that most folks wouldn't and get away with it. So, maybe the dwarf is talking to another pseudo-Scottish dwarf. I'll give advantage on that roll, absolutely, and maybe throw disadvantage to the half elf bard, but I'd still want to make sure that investment in social skills was valuable, meaning that another dwarf who had invested in some Persuade would be better.

So it's part of the "Simulates the ability some people have to tell someone to go to heck in a handbasket and have the person enjoy it."

Sure. Depends on your group too.

My strong preference is to have the majority if not all of my table be strong with the kibitz because it's boring as heck otherwise. That preference informs my approach. If I had someone who wasn't as social at the table, I'd probably aim your way. However, that only works so long as the person isn't a drag on the energy at the table otherwise.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Sure. Depends on your group too.

My strong preference is to have the majority if not all of my table be strong with the kibitz because it's boring as heck otherwise. That preference informs my approach. If I had someone who wasn't as social at the table, I'd probably aim your way. However, that only works so long as the person isn't a drag on the energy at the table otherwise.

Oh, me too, but even there it's possible for some to be more vocal than others. In addition, I feel that the roll helps keep me honest. As I've said elsewhere I use rolls a fair bit to help push me as a GM into not necessarily going with my own inclinations as they happen. But usually that comes at the end of a fairly substantial bit of RP.

 

[Lanefan]

Level drain is no fun but I love it as a mechanic because the fact that it exists means you should make sure as a player it never happens to you. It just is so great in distinguishing the undead from everything else, and really, the undead shouldn't be just another monster with just another attack. It's a freaking vampire, you better be afraid, right?

As it is now, all the undead do is make you need to take a nap for a night and then you are good as new nice and spiffy. With level drain lets see how fast the 9th level fighter wants to mix it up with a wight or wraith, or what the party does when a mummy or vampire come calling. Suddenly it's no longer stats, math, and we know we can win this. Yes, you can win this but at what cost? It really heightens the tension and as a side bonus it really brings the cleric class to the fore. With the undead, all the fighters, barbarians, rogues with the 5 dice of sneak damage and whatever else all have to hide behind the cleric.

It also shouldn't wreck a campaign. Yes it is frustrating and sucks, but your character is still your character and if the campaign has an interesting storyline the level shouldn't matter as much--especially in 5e where every time you turn around someone is leveling up. The last 5e campaign I played in I think I was 4th level after seven sessions. If I got zapped back to third what difference would it make really? Next week I will be 4th again probably, or the week after that.

And as something of a mitigator you can always have (Greater) Restoration give back the lost level(s) at a cost.

Level-draining would work better in 5e than in 3e or 4e in part because 5e can better handle a variable-level party., where in 3e and 4e the PCs all kinda needed to be pretty close in level if not all the same.