D&D 5E [+] Questions for zero character death players and DMs…

[Chaosmancer]

A DM can always kill characters if they want to. I think what people are generally trying to express when they call 5e “easy mode” is that the game is built to generally favor the players to win more often than they lose, if run according to all the guidelines in the books.

Old-school play is often more geared towards encouraging players to try and circumvent challenges via their own clever thinking, rather than to use their stats to try and overcome challenges directly. And 5e… isn’t really built with that as the assumed mode of play. The game balance is deliberately tilted in the player’s favor with things like the target 65% success rate, and “medium” encounters being ones that a party is expected to be able to win with no deaths, even if they don’t use any limited resources.

None of this to say 5e can’t be challenging. Again, the DM can always ramp up the challenge to whatever degree they wish. But, the way the guidelines are written suggests that the design intent is for players to reliably be able to use their stats to directly overcome most challenges they face. To someone who is used to or prefers that more challenge-circumvention model of gameplay, that can feel like “easy mode” because you basically never have to look for ways to circumvent a challenge.

Most games are designed so that someone always wins, 100% of the time. Every game of Risk or Chess or Poker ends with a winner.

RPG's aren't like that, they are closer to cooperative board games, like Pandemic, Spirit Island, ect where the players are playing against the "game" and working together. And those games are always weighted (at least the good ones) so that player victory, if you know how to play, is more likely than losing. Because of course they are. No one wants to spend 2 hours setting up and playing a game, just to inevitably lose.

And the problem I have with the "challenge circumvention" model is that it is often set-up where if you aren't avoiding using your stats, you will lose. Which, is a rather bizarre thing, since it raises the question of why bother having stats? And often, if you are facing a fight you can possibly win, you will. But it is in the area of traps that you cannot fight that you instantly die with no save.

But, in my experience? That style doesn't make my player's more clever. It makes them stressed. It is a constant grind where the only reward is a lack of punishment.

To wrap this up in an analogy. I think 5e does a good job of laying all the pieces out on the table, for the players to assemble the puzzle. Just because some of the puzzle pieces don't randomly explode into acid and eat through your fingers, so you have to use tongs, except on those pieces which are electrified and you need to use a stick, doesn't mean completing that puzzle is easy. The challenge is merely different.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Max, you do realize that if the vast majority of every other type of storytelling in the entire world has this property, and that DnD is an RPG, and RPG's are about telling a story with friends, then by the transitive property, it would make sense to RPGs to have that property, because they are a type of storytelling.

You aren't doing something wholly unique and unconnected from storytelling just because you are rolling dice at a table.

D&D isn't necessarily about telling stories with friends. It didn't start out that way, and it doesn't have to be if you don't want it to. If you don't assume that point (and many don't), then your logic breaks down.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The bulk of the group I played with in 84 were 8 years older than me and had been playing for years together. I don’t know how long. We almost never did modules, it was almost exclusively home brew. The Hickman Revolution passed us by. So while yes, I started in 84, I learned from people older and with years of experience who explicitly avoided modules and 2E. So everything that brought in the notion of RPGs as stories and keeping characters alive at all costs we skipped.

Because it’s fun. It’s way more fun to try big things and gamble than to know you’re immortal and can’t lose. Again, the emergent story of the group, not individual PCs as the protagonists of a story. If I want a story, I’ll read a book. I don’t play games for story. I play games for the challenges and the agency.

It is when you have four people with about 40 years of board game, wargame, and RPG experience each. Encounter balance is wildly in favor of easy PC wins. Monsters are undertuned. PCs start with a Monty Haul grab bag of abilities. Healing is too plentiful. And death saves make it so even a semi-competent healer can keep everyone alive in most fights.

It is for us.

No, but it should be an option and a relatively easy one. Adventurers should start as peasants with a few more months training than everyone else and they should die if the player does something stupid. That’s a style we enjoy. You don’t. To each their own.

For some players, yes. For us, not at all. It perks up our ears and we pay attention more when the game’s challenging and hard. It makes us want to overcome and beat the odds. When it’s too easy we start snoring at the table.

A lot of it is, for us. You take risks without precautions, that’s stupid. You fight dirty and use every trick you can to beat the monsters before you even roll initiative, that’s smart.

I will never understand an attitude where killing PCs is fun and should be an easy option. It feels like the attitude that smashing ants is fun and engaging.

 

[Charlaquin]

Most games are designed so that someone always wins, 100% of the time. Every game of Risk or Chess or Poker ends with a winner.

RPG's aren't like that, they are closer to cooperative board games, like Pandemic, Spirit Island, ect where the players are playing against the "game" and working together. And those games are always weighted (at least the good ones) so that player victory, if you know how to play, is more likely than losing. Because of course they are. No one wants to spend 2 hours setting up and playing a game, just to inevitably lose.

And the problem I have with the "challenge circumvention" model is that it is often set-up where if you aren't avoiding using your stats, you will lose. Which, is a rather bizarre thing, since it raises the question of why bother having stats? And often, if you are facing a fight you can possibly win, you will. But it is in the area of traps that you cannot fight that you instantly die with no save.

But, in my experience? That style doesn't make my player's more clever. It makes them stressed. It is a constant grind where the only reward is a lack of punishment.

To wrap this up in an analogy. I think 5e does a good job of laying all the pieces out on the table, for the players to assemble the puzzle. Just because some of the puzzle pieces don't randomly explode into acid and eat through your fingers, so you have to use tongs, except on those pieces which are electrified and you need to use a stick, doesn't mean completing that puzzle is easy. The challenge is merely different.

I don’t disagree with you, I was just explaining where people are coming from when they say 5e is “easy mode,” because you said it boggles you.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But that's not really accurate, it's 5% per attack.

So let's say you're closing with a monster that Demonstrably has a claw/claw/bite routine - 3 attacks a round. Combat averages 4 rounds.

Do you bring an umbrella 60% chance of rain? And if you didn't, are you still surprised when you get wet?

Sure, of course the monster and scenario in question involved only a single 5% chance, not a monster with three attacks doing a full attack routine. So this doesn't apply to that scenario.

But I'm sure that every player can easily calculate the exact damage the monster could possibly do if they hit twice and crit once, and of course, most monsters with a three attack pattern have one attack that is stronger than the others, so they will of course assume that the strongest attack crits, and then since they know the monster's likely damage output they will compare that to their hp and then decide that the situation is possibly too dangerous, because when they compare their AC to the monsters bonus to hit, they can then easily calculate the expected damage.

Sure is nice when you can just open the monster manual and read the monster's statblock to do all the math needed to realize that you are taking a "foolish" risk.

 

[overgeeked]

D&D isn't necessarily about telling stories with friends. It didn't start out that way, and it doesn't have to be if you don't want it to. If you don't assume that point (and many don't), then your logic breaks down.

Exactly. For us, D&D is absolutely not about telling stories with friends. D&D is about gaming with friends. If a story happens to come out of that gaming, cool. Even if it’s one about pointlessly random character death. We laugh it off, make a new character, and keep playing.

 

[James Gasik]

Of course, the problem with the 5% thing is, trying to predict how much damage the attack does, crit or otherwise.

Do I assume the giant monkey will roll the following damage with his 7d6+4?

11?

28.5?

46?

88?

 

[Chaosmancer]

No. RPGs are not about telling a story where the end has already been written and everything scripted prior to shooting the first scene or writing the first chapter.

Which is a thing I never claimed ! Huzzah for being on the same page. Good job.

As a writer, who has written over a million words over 4 stories, I can tell you I still don't know how any of them will end, and I definetly started the first chapter. There is also a thing called improv theater, where there is no script or plan at all, and rarely does that end with random participants dying and not being part of the skit anymore.

So, your entire basis for objection is just... wrong. Heck, there is a huge phenomena in Anime where the shows diverge from the manga, because the shows start before the Manga finish, but due to the nature of the various mediums, they overtake the written version and so either stall out waiting to see what happens, or wildly diverge because they started filming before the end was written.

RPGs are about the adventure and seeing where the story takes you, and trying to make it to the end and accomplishing your goals. There is and never has been a guarantee of making it to the end and achieving your goals in D&D as written. Not in any edition.

What you are suggesting between RPGs and other types of media is a False Equivalence. RPGs are not like those other media types, even if both involve a story. Essentially, you are equating a bicycle to a jumbo jet because both have wheels(involve story).

And you seem to have very little idea how the writing process goes, if you think no author has ever started writing a story without knowing how it ends. Which allows you to look at a pedal-powered plane and claim it is a bicycle because you've never seen one fly.

 

[Chaosmancer]

D&D isn't necessarily about telling stories with friends. It didn't start out that way, and it doesn't have to be if you don't want it to. If you don't assume that point (and many don't), then your logic breaks down.

It may not have started that way, but if you read the very first sentence of the very first book published for DnD 5th Edition, you'll find that is what this version is. And I bet you can find similar text in early 4e and 3e books.

 

[Maxperson]

Which is a thing I never claimed ! Huzzah for being on the same page. Good job.

As a writer, who has written over a million words over 4 stories, I can tell you I still don't know how any of them will end, and I definetly started the first chapter. There is also a thing called improv theater, where there is no script or plan at all, and rarely does that end with random participants dying and not being part of the skit anymore.

So, your entire basis for objection is just... wrong. Heck, there is a huge phenomena in Anime where the shows diverge from the manga, because the shows start before the Manga finish, but due to the nature of the various mediums, they overtake the written version and so either stall out waiting to see what happens, or wildly diverge because they started filming before the end was written.



And you seem to have very little idea how the writing process goes, if you think no author has ever started writing a story without knowing how it ends. Which allows you to look at a pedal-powered plane and claim it is a bicycle because you've never seen one fly.

:sigh: That changes nothing about my point. You are still scripting the entire thing and an ending MUST happen if the book is to finish, regardless of what you know and when. An RPG doesn't have to have an ending. TPKs can happen. Adventurers(the players) can just say, we're done with this campaign. A PC can die and never achieve his goals. This is very much unlike the media you are falsely comparing RPGs to.