D&D (2024) Pulse check on 1D&D excitement level

[deganawida]

God imagine if they put the Next playtest under CC.

Oh man I didn't even think of that!!!

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I really wish someone could explain to me why Persuasion and Deception need to both be CHA skills, or why they should be separate at all. Why are Dex and Cha so overrepresented? It's really ironic that Str, Int, and Wis aren't the top attributes given how the game started out!

Because the skills aren't primarily assigned to abilities from a balance perspective, they're assigned based on what ability the designers anticipated them being paired with most often. Free-form matching of skill with the most suitable ability for the occasion is presented as an optional rule, but it is clearly how the game was designed to be played, they just backed off from enforcing it. If they arbitrarily made Deception Intelligence based, or whatever, people would still just call for Charisma-based Deception checks.

Persuasion and Deception are separate skills because either one is a top tier skill on its own. If they were combined into some sort of mega-persuasion skill (which should also logically subsume intimidation at that point) then everybody takes it who isn't trying to give themself a special challenge or emphasize a socially inept character.

 

[Incenjucar]

It's going to be hard to really balance skills and classes until we get an edition that doesn't tie to-hit to a predetermined ability score.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Because the skills aren't primarily assigned to abilities from a balance perspective, they're assigned based on what ability the designers anticipated them being paired with most often. Free-form matching of skill with the most suitable ability for the occasion is presented as an optional rule, but it is clearly how the game was designed to be played, they just backed off from enforcing it. If they arbitrarily made Deception Intelligence based, or whatever, people would still just call for Charisma-based Deception checks.

I don't buy that. You want me to believe that they took that rule, and then explicitly labelled it Variant under it's own special heading. Meaning, not the assumed, default rule. Then, they took each skill and placed them explicitly under a specific attribute. Not just on the summary chart of all skills available, but the entirety of the skill descriptions themselves.

If they wanted the DM to pick the attribute, then they presented both attributes and skills exactly incorrectly. They did it so overwhelmingly incorrectly that it's not really credible to believe that they honestly thought the variant would or even should be a common occurrence in the game, never mind the default assumption. I simply don't believe that the D&D design team is that incompetent at writing books.

It seems clear to me that what they did was decide, after playtesting and surveying, that skills should stay under one attribute essentially always. However, in limited circumstances, it can make sense to use different attributes entirely. In other words, they had a design idea, it just never came up, and so they walked it back.

Persuasion and Deception are separate skills because either one is a top tier skill on its own.

No, they really aren't. There's almost nothing at a conceptual level that one can do that the other cannot. There's almost no situation where one is valid and the other is not. You have to manufacture limitations for one to apply and the other to be unusable. They may have different long-term consequences, but in nearly every situation where Persuasion comes up, you can simply substitute Deception to accomplish an immediate goal or vice-versa. In my mind that does not really justify them being two different skills under the same attribute.

The fact that you can persuade someone that a lie is the truth, or deceive someone into doing what you want and the game says that both times you should assume you're using Charisma just doesn't pass the design smell test.

Now, if Deception were instead a use of cunning and falsehood to trick someone into trusting you, then that seems like a different skill. But that's not actually how Deception is described, and putting it under Charisma doesn't really reinforce that they're different skills, either.

That's why they put Investigation under Int and Perception under Wis. That's why they Nature under Int and Survival under Wis. That's why they put Persuasion under Cha, but Animal Handling is under Wis. These are all already skills that do the same thing but do so with different ability scores.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I don't buy that. You want me to believe that they took that rule, and then explicitly labelled it Variant under it's own special heading. Meaning, not the assumed, default rule. Then, they took each skill and placed them explicitly under a specific attribute. Not just on the summary chart of all skills available, but the entirety of the skill descriptions themselves.

I want you to believe that game design is a messy process, and that many of the variant and optional rules are things they intended as standard rules at some point but that were deemed too complicated (or not up to snuff).

In any case if you don't like the abilities 5e skills are softly assigned to, don't use them with those abilities. You're just doing what the designers wanted you to be able to do.

 

[Minigiant]

It's going to be hard to really balance skills and classes until we get an edition that doesn't tie to-hit to a predetermined ability score.

It's actually very easy to do so. You just need to

1. Rejigger the skills/ability score ratio by adding more skills.
2. Not force narrow steerotypical class skill lists

 

[Malmuria]

I think I'm out of interest in 5e; there's just too many more compelling games out there to try. I have a more distant interest in what happens with one dnd though. I've tried to read through some of these playtests but it the way the game is written is just too tedious to read. I'm talking about the pseudo-natural language and the need to consider every possible rules interaction when presenting anything:

You stay in that form for a number of hours equal to half your Druid level or until you use Wild Shape again, have the Incapacitated condition, or die. You can also end Wild Shape early as a Bonus Action.
...
Choose a point within 30 feet of yourself, and spectral flowers appear for a moment in a 10 foot radius sphere centered on that point. Then roll a number of d4s equal to your Wisdom modifier and add the dice together.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I want you to believe that game design is a messy process, and that many of the variant and optional rules are things they intended as standard rules at some point but that were deemed too complicated (or not up to snuff).

In any case if you don't like the abilities 5e skills are softly assigned to, don't use them with those abilities. You're just doing what the designers wanted you to be able to do.

I believe that what they ended up publishing is the design they they thought was best. I don't believe that the design they started with is what we should consider when looking at the game critically. Their decision to present skills as they did is also equally a part of the design. After all, a huge part of design is discarding ideas that fail.

It's just not credible to say that what they ended up publishing is not what they meant to publish. That's insane.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I find the rogue does well in all three pillars. Paladins and Rangers as well. Which means to me what they really need to do is give more non-combat features to classes like Fighter, Monk, and Barbarian.

Rogues definitely can do okay, depending on how they are built. Rogue DPR potentially takes a noticeable and totally unnecessary hit with 1D&D though - they actually made the rules on SA more complicated too, which is particularly perverse. Not sure what the thinking was there apart from limitations for limitations' sake (wouldn't be the first TTRPG to do that of course).

Paladins and Rangers I've never seen do well in all three - but if they're built by sane people, they reliably do well in two pillars (Combat/Social for Paladin, Combat/Exploration for Rangers), which is a lot better than one!

But yeah giving more to those three would be a big help. Barbarians having obvious ways they could do well in both Social and Exploration (Intimidation and Strength/Athletics stuff, for example), but the abilities aren't really there. Be easy to make them there. Making Battlemaster stuff the default with Fighters and handing out the +skill manuevers separately from the combat ones would potentially solve a lot of it with Fighters.

I do think that handing out a few fiat abilities would be good though - it's pretty silly that so many spells have their non-combat effects work without a roll, but almost all non-spell abilities require a roll.

 

[Clint_L]

It's actually very easy to do so. You just need to

1. Rejigger the skills/ability score ratio by adding more skills.
2. Not force narrow steerotypical class skill lists

So...Pathfinder?