Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5904157" data-attributes="member: 42582">In these two posts rogues poison guards' foods, go on solo assassination missions, etc. And others have mentioned examples, too, of roguish trickery.If this is going to work, D&Dnext is going to need better scene-resolution mechanics than D&D has had in any edition prior to 4e. AD&D, for example, is simply not set up to smoothly adjudicate a poisoning of food. What dice to I roll? What do my friends (both the PCs in the party and the real people at the table) do in the meantime? Contrast this to combat, with its smooth rules: we all roll initiative, declare actions, make attacks etc.I'm not at all saying that scene-resolution is impossible. But skill challenges seem very unpopular for whatever reason, and even the less abstract rules in Burning Wheel (skill checks against objective DCs governed by Let It Ride plus very generous - by D&D standards - assistance and augmentation rules) I think would be highly suspect for many D&D players.Personally, if we get an edition of D&D that is both (i) popular among classic D&Ders and 3E/PFers, and (ii) makes it as likely that a typical group will have the rogue poison the guards' food as just engage them in combat, I'll eat my hat!Yet the only edition that actually has smooth mechanics - if nevertheless widely disliked - for adjudicating the poisoning attempt against the guards.QFT.Of course non-combat can be made as mechanically "weighty" in play as combat. Plenty of RPGs do it. But the closest approximation to this in D&D - namely, 4e's skill challenges - have been said to be "dying in a fire".I simply cannot believe that we are going to get an edition of D&D in which it is as likely that a party with a rogue will poison the guards' food, as opposed to simply attack them all. (Perhaps from surprise, with the rogue playing some lead role in setting up the surprise attack.)</blockquote>

Verification