D&D 5E (2014) Simulation vs Game - Where should D&D 5e aim?

[Lanefan]

There is also the further question of whether or not the players know the DC, and hence know that declaring the attempt would be futile. In 4e the default is that the players do know the DC.

That, to me, is an awful piece of design in terms of anything realistic to the characters.

A Thief goes to pick a lock. Sure she could study it for a while and *maybe* get a vague idea of how tough the task might be (easy, moderate, hard, fuggetaboudit), but to know the exact DC? No.

And in anything involving social interation (which really should be roleplayed anyway) how in the nine hells do you know the DC of what you're doing before you even interact with anyone involved? I'm a tough guy, walking into a bar looking to intimidate the barkeep into telling me where the local Thieves' guild hides out. How on earth would I know the DC? What I'm doing might not even be possible - the barkeep can't tell me what the barkeep doesn't know, though he can always lie - nor do I-as-character (or I-as-player) know what this particular barkeep might have going for him. For all I know he's way tougher than I am, and all I'm about to do is get my nose bent into my face (which also renders my stated action mostly moot).

The characters, and thus the players, should not know whether something is futile until they try it, unless the reason for the futility is obvious. (you're not getting an audience with the king today because the king just left for his country home, and you just saw his carraige leaving town while you were waiting at the gate to get in)

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

But, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], my AdnD thief knows exactly the dc to open every lock. It's my open lock percentage. There might be some corner case exceptions but usually I know precisely the dc.

 

[Lanefan]

But, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], my AdnD thief knows exactly the dc to open every lock. It's my open lock percentage. There might be some corner case exceptions but usually I know precisely the dc.

Not quite. You know your base percentage. You don't know the modifiers I'm putting on that particular lock (they range from trivially easy to nigh-impossible and run the gamut between, most locks have a modifier of some sort); and because of that I always do the rolling for such things. Ditto for traps, when there's any to find at all.

Lanefan

 

[Hussar]

Heh. Different strokes. I too rolled trap checks, but locks were player rolled. Then again I didn't futz around with too many modifiers. Thieves were bad enough at their job without my help.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Gee, I would have said the complete opposite on all of those points. I saw in 3e an attempt to model out of combat capabilities in a much more detailed and naturalistic way than NWPs. I saw arbitrary restrictions lifted (like race/class restrictions, and indeed 3e's multiclassing system is far more realistic than the predetermined character paths that came before it). I saw detail piled on to environment rules and similar minutiae.

Conversely, in PF I see incremental steps towards simplifying things or towards dissociating them; not futher steps towards reality at all.

HP are definitely not the model for realism in any version of D&D, I'd agree.

PF is the one where they added detailed rules for fighting on stairs. It isn't the one which simplified things I think the 3.XE skill system and Feats can be argued both ways, but let's be real - Monte Cook specifically stated that he had made Feats into a game system involving system mastery, with intentional bad Feats and so on. That isn't a game striving for realism, in combat, or out.

That's not what I'm suggesting, though. That is, I'm not saying a foraging ranger should roll every attack against a minor forest creature he's hunting. I'm saying that, in theory, said attack exists. If the creature died, it's because someone rolled attacks, hit its AC, and removed all its hit points, because that's how things work.

Absolutely not. Attacks and HP are abstractions of what really happened - what really happened is a tired elven ranger finally spotted a fat rabbit and shot him with his bow. The attack roll and HP are abstractions of the "reality" that only apply "onscreen". They are not intended to be the physics of the D&D world - again, the designers of 3E would agree with me on this, and I believe Cook has said as much.

Whether we actually play that out "onscreen" as it were is an entirely different matter. I'd say that a lot of that stuff is checks that we don't bother rolling. It's in that category of rolling a Dex check to tie your shoes: you could, but why bother? Nor do I as a DM play out all the battles that have occurred in the world before the campaign started, even though I assume that they happened and that all the rules were engaged in determining their outcomes. In fact, I'd argue the appropriate resolution is for the DM to dictate the results of the hunting, with everyone understanding that the combat mechanics were in play if we really wanted to use them.

The part that is problematic to me is not the idea of forgoing the attacks, but of substituting a skill check for them. After all, if I can roll a Survival check to hunt for a deer and come back, why can't a roll a higher DC and bag a dragon? Or a human? The solution in my mind is that the skill check can't directly cause the outcome of some creature being dead. There are a variety of indirect mechanisms that could cause this outcome of course, but those weren't evident to me in the example under discussion.

That's a problem you have, though, not a problem with the rules. You've decided, arbitrarily, that Skill Checks cannot result in dead things, and that it is cheating if they do. You have then insisted that this is RAI - which it most certainly is not. Nor is it RAW. Survival can't bag a dragon not because it can't kill things, but because it's about Survival, not hunting and killing a *specific* animal, and it can only result in dead things that would naturally be the product of hunting.

EDIT - If there was already a dead dragon in the area (for some campaign-specific reason), I would most certainly allow a Survival check (and an easy one at that) to locate it (likely it'd be pulling in raptors and corvids for dozens of miles), and hey, there might be edible meat there, if it hadn't been dead long and assuming dragons aren't poisonous.

 

[Neonchameleon]

That is not a true description of D&D as I play and experience it. Nothing in the guidelines pushes me towards the ordinary - for instance, Moldvay Basic tells me that a fighter can be Hercules and a magic-user Merlin - and I don't GM a game involving primarily treasure hunters, and haven't for over 30 years.

Likewise. And given that a fifth level 3E wizard can use more magical power in a day than Gandalf does in the Lord of the Rings as a whole, the idea that PCs are meant to be ordinary is one I find to be against the letter and spirit of D&D as written.

But this actually isn't true. There are plenty of people in Australia who can get cabinet ministers on the phone if they want them. That's not true of me, but there are some current and former members of Parliament whom I can walk up to and expect to have them interact with me.

I'm going to emphasise this. First, MPs run surgeries - if I need to reach an MP who isn't mine I can. Monarchs have audiences - and certainly within the Anglo Saxon traditions for Britain any peasant had the right to appeal right the way up at fairly short notice (if they could find the King), and one of the stories I was raised on involved a peasant shaming a king who brushed her off to go hunting. This changed towards the late middle ages as populations got bigger (and was well and truly gone by the 30 years war), and peasants were a class above serfs.

Any king who rules as well as reigns that is impossible to reach by their subjects is one who's courting guillotines.

It's never occurred to me that it is a character flaw for a player to prefer to play a game involving royalty rather than peasantry.

Agreed. Or that even if you are playing peasants in a Low Fantasy setting that's not an active dystopia seeing the monarch is impossible rather than simply risky. (Of course the Rennaissance and the 30 Years War/English Civil War are definitely dystopian periods).

Not quite. The assumption is that, if the players and GM get out of whack in respect of these things, the GM's view is not automatically to be preferred. (This will come up again below, in the context of action declarations and resolution.)

The GM has the loudest voice, but certainly not the only one.

And finally, notice how the issue is resolved of whether or not the PCs can goad an evil advisor into attacking by way of taunts and more-or-less veiled threats to out him: namely, the dice are rolled and the attempt resolved! This does not pose any threat to the consistency of the gameworld. How is the gameworld less consistent because it does rather than doesn't contain a taunted and provoked advisor?

To put it simply, it isn't.

That, to me, is an awful piece of design in terms of anything realistic to the characters.

A Thief goes to pick a lock. Sure she could study it for a while and *maybe* get a vague idea of how tough the task might be (easy, moderate, hard, fuggetaboudit), but to know the exact DC? No.

The thing is that two pieces of information are sufficient to get the 4E DC. The level and whether it's easy, medium, or hard.

Absolutely not. Attacks and HP are abstractions of what really happened - what really happened is a tired elven ranger finally spotted a fat rabbit and shot him with his bow. The attack roll and HP are abstractions of the "reality" that only apply "onscreen". They are not intended to be the physics of the D&D world - again, the designers of 3E would agree with me on this, and I believe Cook has said as much.

Indeed. As I read the 3.5 rules, hunting small game is explicitely included within the bounds of the survival skill. Any interpretation therefore that changes it so they are not is directly contrary to both the rules as written and the rules as intended and so is a house rule. There's nothing wrong with house rules - but if your house rules change the letter and the spirit of the rules in the way in question then you should accept that what you are talking about is your own rules and not D&D.

That's a problem you have, though, not a problem with the rules. You've decided, arbitrarily, that Skill Checks cannot result in dead things, and that it is cheating if they do. You have then insisted that this is RAI - which it most certainly is not.

Indeed. It's a straight up house rule. Survival allows you to provide food and water by hunting and foraging. Any interpretation of Survival that doesn't allow for hunting for food is directly contrary to RAW. And I'm curious what the point of Profession (Hunter) is...

As for to hit rolls and hit points, they are a map as to what is going on in the game world. But the map is not the territory. And contour lines on a map mean there's a hill, not that the terrain is flat with lines running across it.

And I wish [MENTION=17106]Ahnehnois[/MENTION] would stop talking about his personal and idiosyncratic interpretation of 3.X as if it was the whole of D&D - or even entirely representative of 3.X.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I think the 3.XE skill system and Feats can be argued both ways, but let's be real - Monte Cook specifically stated that he had made Feats into a game system involving system mastery, with intentional bad Feats and so on. That isn't a game striving for realism, in combat, or out.

System mastery and some feats being better for adventuring than others, however, are (relatively) realistic, compared to the conceit that everyone is equally capable at combat and the like.

The attack roll and HP are abstractions of the "reality" that only apply "onscreen". They are not intended to be the physics of the D&D world - again, the designers of 3E would agree with me on this, and I believe Cook has said as much.

Not what I read in the books themselves. Not by a long shot.

That's a problem you have, though, not a problem with the rules. You've decided, arbitrarily, that Skill Checks cannot result in dead things, and that it is cheating if they do. You have then insisted that this is RAI - which it most certainly is not. Nor is it RAW. Survival can't bag a dragon not because it can't kill things, but because it's about Survival, not hunting and killing a *specific* animal, and it can only result in dead things that would naturally be the product of hunting.

That's quite a rationalization. Not one that I'd buy if I was a player.

EDIT - If there was already a dead dragon in the area (for some campaign-specific reason), I would most certainly allow a Survival check (and an easy one at that) to locate it (likely it'd be pulling in raptors and corvids for dozens of miles), and hey, there might be edible meat there, if it hadn't been dead long and assuming dragons aren't poisonous.

Sure. Absolutely. I wouldn't have issue with that. The Survival skill certainly covers looking for things that are already there, and the DM is free to decide that this is one such thing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

System mastery and some feats being better for adventuring than others, however, are (relatively) realistic, compared to the conceit that everyone is equally capable at combat and the like.

No, they are a metagame, and in no way "realistic". The point, which I will not further labour, is that D&D is and always has been pretty keen on game-y design.

Not what I read in the books themselves. Not by a long shot.

What you are saying you read in the books literally is not in those books. You are presenting your unusual, perhaps unique house rule as RAI and RAW, and it is neither.

That's quite a rationalization. Not one that I'd buy if I was a player.

It's RAW and RAI, so, you apparently would be a bad player arguing with the DM despite him following RAW and RAI. I'm beginning to see why you argue so strongly for supreme and unquestioned DM authority, given how severely aberrant from the RAW/RAI the position you're arguing for is.

 

[Ahnehnois]

What you are saying you read in the books literally is not in those books. You are presenting your unusual, perhaps unique house rule as RAI and RAW, and it is neither.

Here's one bit I was thinking of:

Normally, NPCs should obey all the same rules as PCs. Occasionally, you might want to fudge the rules for them in one way or another (see DM Cheating and Player Perceptions, below), but in general, NPCs should live and die-fail and succeed-by the dice, just as PCs do.
...
Still, NPCs are people too. Don't let it be obvious that a particular character is "just an NPC", implying that what he or she does isn't as smart or important as what a PC does. While that might be true, it shouldn't seem to be true. In order to make the game world seem real, the people who populate it should act real.

The important idea is that everyone should follow the same rules. Thus, if a human ranger can go out and kill a deer with a Survival check, it would also be reasonable to expect that a Red Dragon could go out and kill a PC with a Survival check. Comparable scenarios.

Is that what you think should happen? I'm guessing if your PC died that way, you wouldn't be thrilled.

To me, the idea of killing a creature by hunting, would be (potentially) an example of where the DM might want to cheat. That is, when I go and say that the players found some food and include a living creature that was killed as part of it, I'm cheating a bit. That's the houserule. The idea of Survival not killing people is the default.

(Maybe I should repost that one in the DMing advice thread).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Here's one bit I was thinking of:
The important idea is that everyone should follow the same rules. Thus, if a human ranger can go out and kill a deer with a Survival check, it would also be reasonable to expect that a Red Dragon could go out and kill a PC with a Survival check. Comparable scenarios.

Is that what you think should happen? I'm guessing if your PC died that way, you wouldn't be thrilled.

To me, the idea of killing a creature by hunting, would be (potentially) an example of where the DM might want to cheat. That is, when I go and say that the players found some food and include a living creature that was killed as part of it, I'm cheating a bit. That's the houserule. The idea of Survival not killing people is the default.

(Maybe I should repost that one in the DMing advice thread).

You're quoting a piece of vague advice far out of it's context in order to attempt to invalidate the expressly stated purview of a skill and claim it's RAW/RAI purpose is "cheating".

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/survival.htm

See DC10.

Hunting is expressly and explicitly part of the survival skill. Hunting describes killing things. QED.

As it does not say you choose what you hunt/forage, that is the DM's purview (could be anything he considers appropriate). But hunt you will.