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NPC Ability Checks and Stunting or...Ogre Smash
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7002037" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>OK.</p><p></p><p>OK - the quest for objective DCs is not done.</p><p></p><p>The rules lose me at this point because they don't tell me how I'm meant to judge whether or not something is uncertain. Does this mean "I can think of a way it might fail?" Well, that's true for spellcasting too - the caster might sneeze while uttering the magic words, or be stung by a bee, or whatever - but we don't normally roll dice for that.</p><p></p><p>Does it mean "I, the GM, haven't decided what the outcome should be"? That's a pretty hardcore rule for a RPG!</p><p></p><p>Does it mean something else? Dunno. I don't see how it can mean "Has X% chance to fail if attempted by this character", because sometimes I'm meant to set DCs even though a PC might succeed even on a roll of 1 (eg they're already pretty good, then someone casts guidance and a bard gives them inspiration).</p><p></p><p>Clarification, or contradiction?</p><p></p><p>Again - clarification, or contradiction?</p><p></p><p>Pushing over a tree looks impossible to me, if the metric is "ordinary person". If I'm forced to assign a DC, I guess it's Nearly Impossible. And hence impossible for the Ogre (advantage won't help), but barely possible for a high level strong warrior (+11 STR + non-expertise Athletics vs DC 30, assuming no retries - retries make it fairly straightforward for that character, given a bit of time to apply him-/herself to the task).</p><p></p><p>Perhaps this is best seen as an infelicity of drafting.</p><p></p><p>I think the number of 5e GMs who would adopt your procedure without having some exposure to Dungeon World (or maybe some comparable system) is pretty close to zero. I think it would be very hard to get that just out of the books. Which is not to say that it's bad, but if that's what the designers intended as on possible way of running the game, they could have made their intentions a bit more clear! (The 4e rulebooks sometimes had the same problem.)</p><p></p><p>EDIT: Also, the fact that a high-level warrior has a better chance of pushing over the tree than the ogre puts pressure on the coherence of the fiction more generally. If the 17th level gnome fighter is better able to push over trees than the ogre, what does that tell us about that gnome, and his/her prodigious power that is utterly belied by his/her smallness? D&D has always had issues with this sort of thing, at least on the margins (qv Gygax's discussion of the hit points of a high level fighter compared to a warhorse), but in AD&D even most high level warriors were probably not as strong as an ogre (18/00), and if they were it was because they'd used a wish or a magic tome or something else that made them, quite explicitly, enchanted beings. (Like the weirdly powered knights in Arthurian legend.) Whereas the 5e gnome can get there by dint of nothing but levelling in a non-magical class.</p><p></p><p>4e tried to tackle this through the idea of epic tier. I can't say I've got a good handle on how 5e makes sense of it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7002037, member: 42582"] OK. OK - the quest for objective DCs is not done. The rules lose me at this point because they don't tell me how I'm meant to judge whether or not something is uncertain. Does this mean "I can think of a way it might fail?" Well, that's true for spellcasting too - the caster might sneeze while uttering the magic words, or be stung by a bee, or whatever - but we don't normally roll dice for that. Does it mean "I, the GM, haven't decided what the outcome should be"? That's a pretty hardcore rule for a RPG! Does it mean something else? Dunno. I don't see how it can mean "Has X% chance to fail if attempted by this character", because sometimes I'm meant to set DCs even though a PC might succeed even on a roll of 1 (eg they're already pretty good, then someone casts guidance and a bard gives them inspiration). Clarification, or contradiction? Again - clarification, or contradiction? Pushing over a tree looks impossible to me, if the metric is "ordinary person". If I'm forced to assign a DC, I guess it's Nearly Impossible. And hence impossible for the Ogre (advantage won't help), but barely possible for a high level strong warrior (+11 STR + non-expertise Athletics vs DC 30, assuming no retries - retries make it fairly straightforward for that character, given a bit of time to apply him-/herself to the task). Perhaps this is best seen as an infelicity of drafting. I think the number of 5e GMs who would adopt your procedure without having some exposure to Dungeon World (or maybe some comparable system) is pretty close to zero. I think it would be very hard to get that just out of the books. Which is not to say that it's bad, but if that's what the designers intended as on possible way of running the game, they could have made their intentions a bit more clear! (The 4e rulebooks sometimes had the same problem.) EDIT: Also, the fact that a high-level warrior has a better chance of pushing over the tree than the ogre puts pressure on the coherence of the fiction more generally. If the 17th level gnome fighter is better able to push over trees than the ogre, what does that tell us about that gnome, and his/her prodigious power that is utterly belied by his/her smallness? D&D has always had issues with this sort of thing, at least on the margins (qv Gygax's discussion of the hit points of a high level fighter compared to a warhorse), but in AD&D even most high level warriors were probably not as strong as an ogre (18/00), and if they were it was because they'd used a wish or a magic tome or something else that made them, quite explicitly, enchanted beings. (Like the weirdly powered knights in Arthurian legend.) Whereas the 5e gnome can get there by dint of nothing but levelling in a non-magical class. 4e tried to tackle this through the idea of epic tier. I can't say I've got a good handle on how 5e makes sense of it. [/QUOTE]
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