D&D (2024) Rogue's Been in an Awkward Place, And This Survey Might Be Our Last Chance to Let WotC Know.

[Pauln6]

It is pretty weird that these tangents so rarely end up talking about something interesting and rather some point of agonizing minutia isn't it? You'd think we'd rabbit off talking about cool stuff more often.

Ok then, so I'm going to trial the Level Up version of Expertise in my next game, where you add +1d4 instead of double proficiency bonus and give all the players an expertise related to their background. The idea, I think is that as it is less powerful and more random, the gap between haves and have nots is not as wide, and you can dish it out to other classes so they get good at their core skills too (like fighters with low charisma being terrible at intimidation), but there are ways to stack it in Level up that don't exist in 5e, so I wonder how this will affect rogues using their core skills.

I suppose if opening locks and disabling traps is now Sleight of Hand, and thieves tools give advantage on every check, might it be sensible to reign it in a bit more?

 

[Vaalingrade]

I suppose if opening locks and disabling traps is now Sleight of Hand, and thieves tools give advantage on every check, might it be sensible to reign it in a bit more?

Given that traps have gone back to being massive killer setpieces rather than hazards, I'd rather it stay something that can be more easily bypassed for someone focused on it.

 

[Pauln6]

Given that traps have gone back to being massive killer setpieces rather than hazards, I'd rather it stay something that can be more easily bypassed for someone focused on it.

I haven't really kept up with the changes to traps. Still with expertise and Guidance, that's +1d6 to the roll or rather 1d20 +1d6+5 with advantage on the 1d20. It all depends on the DC?

 

[Maxperson]

Given that traps have gone back to being massive killer setpieces rather than hazards, I'd rather it stay something that can be more easily bypassed for someone focused on it.

I missed that in the playtest. What changed with traps?

 

[Maxperson]

That's the beauty of it. Wear a wig and a cloak and you buy the poison from the village shop, claiming you have a 'rat' problem. A BIG rat problem.

LOL Now I have an image in my head of a long line of ancient dragons wearing trench coats and wigs, standing outside of the local apothecary.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I missed that in the playtest. What changed with traps?

From 4e to 5e, not 5e to 5.5.

 

[Maxperson]

From 4e to 5e, not 5e to 5.5.

Aha! Okay. Thanks!

 

[Pauln6]

From 4e to 5e, not 5e to 5.5.

As someone who lived through 1e and 2e traps, 5e traps are mediocre threats at best. It feels weird always having advantage as long as you are trained in Sleight of Hand and have your thieves' tools but I suppose you have to find them first and Investigation and Perception checks are a bit harder to win.

 

[tetrasodium]

As someone who lived through 1e and 2e traps, 5e traps are mediocre threats at best. It feels weird always having advantage as long as you are trained in Sleight of Hand and have your thieves' tools but I suppose you have to find them first and Investigation and Perception checks are a bit harder to win.

Agreed, realistically in actual play deploying traps as a 5e gm just feels like a waste of everyone's time. I say that as a gm who has in the past used them for amazing results like this, but that 100% depends on forcibly teaching the players to take the metaphorical baton and run with it with zero support from the system&rulebooks for either side of the gm screen. The whole thing collapses into a multi mile car pileup or an annoying rail roaded QuickTime event where the gm tells a story if the players don't confidently take off like Usain bolt without stumbling even a tad the second they get offered the baton by their gm. Back in3.xI could tell them they guess it's an insane DC & show them the dm's best friend entry to get the ball honestly rolling with interest, but oing that with 5e tends to provoke a "I want to play 5e not some other edition, wotc playtested what's fun & must have had a reason to leave that out"* flavor of active willful refusal

* I put that in quotes because it's very close to what I had a player once say when I tried it after shooting down "I want to roll x".

 

[Yaarel]

Agreed, realistically in actual play deploying traps as a 5e gm just feels like a waste of everyone's time. I say that as a gm who has in the past used them for amazing results like this, but that 100% depends on forcibly teaching the players to take the metaphorical baton and run with it with zero support from the system&rulebooks for either side of the gm screen. The whole thing collapses into a multi mile car pileup or an annoying rail roaded QuickTime event where the gm tells a story if the players don't confidently take off like Usain bolt without stumbling even a tad the second they get offered the baton by their gm. Back in3.xI could tell them they guess it's an insane DC & show them the dm's best friend entry to get the ball honestly rolling with interest, but oing that with 5e tends to provoke a "I want to play 5e not some other edition, wotc playtested what's fun & must have had a reason to leave that out"* flavor of active willful refusal

* I put that in quotes because it's very close to what I had a player once say when I tried it after shooting down "I want to roll x".

As far as I can tell, Advantage/Disadvantage is the 5e version of the earlier +/− Circumstantial Bonus.

I use it all the time.

Does the player effort sound plausible?
• Yes (Auto Succeed)
• Probably (Advantage)
• Maybe
• Unlikely (Disadvantage)
• No (Auto Fail)


In practice, the Advantage is worth about +2½: better than +2 and less good than +3. Advantage wins lower DCs more reliably but doesnt achieve a very high DC.


For me a Trap is moreorless the same thing as a Skill Challenge. I dont think 4e and 5e have hit on the best method to do it, yet. It is hard to make a Challenge protracted and interesting when there is little consequence beyond yes/no. It doesnt fight back. In many circumstances, success is inevitable, so failures mean amount of time spent, which often has little consequence.

In the meantime, narrative adjudication helps much. The players coming up with solutions that I didnt anticipate, and which seem plausible, allow for a kind of interactivity that can make the Skill Challenge interesting.


I place Traps sparingly, and only when narratively they seem necessary. I dont want a game of "ten foot pole" paranoia or "running chickens". But some things obviously would have a trap.