D&D 5E Sneak Attack: optional or mandatory?

[Majoru Oakheart]

Do you really? Three times in this thread you have talked about how you write adventures and two of those times you wrote how you spend a year writing a cool dungeon.

I was using a hypothetical introduction. In actuality, my campaigns start like this:
"I bought the Temple of Elemental Evil. It looks interesting and I'd like to run it. It should be fun. Who wants to play?"

It's just as bad if people say no, mind you. Because it means that I wasted the money to buy the adventure and it forces me to write one. Which I don't want to. That's why I spent the money.

Though I did have a DM who spent a year writing an adventure for us an opened like that.

It's not that I've NEVER written an adventure. But I rarely do because of the time. More often I write really short adventures to tie one of my purchased adventures into another one(so that when one finishes we have a smooth transition to the next). I used to write my own adventures way more often in 2e back when I didn't have a job or a girlfriend and the rules were a lot easier to work with.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

One assumption of D&D games is a certain level of sandbox nature to the play, and not forcing players to play just what the DM wants them to play. It's not against the rules to break that assumption, but then...

I don't see any assumption of that in the rules. If that assumption was in the rules then certainly the company who made it would never publish an adventure because simply buying it would be going against the assumptions the game set up.

I know where to start! Don't break assumptions to begin with and then complain when someone else breaks D&D assumptions! I'm cool with you railroading your players into playing the dungeon you prepared for a year in contravention of the custom to give players freedom to choose what they do, but then you should be perfectly happy if others railroad their players into a political intrigue or caper adventure, or at least offer the players the opportunity to choose such an adventure.

Once again, I am not aware of any custom in which the players have the freedom to choose what they do. Every written adventure doesn't give the players this choice, every stream that WOTC has done of one of their games the DM has decided the adventure in advance and has pages of notes written up about what will happen and the players showed up knowing what they were going to play in advance. The same thing is true of the entire structure of Living Greyhawk, Living Forgotten Realms, and every other Organized Play event run by both TSR and WOTC. A bunch of WOTC employees constantly tweet about how they are planning on running a particular adventure for their home group after this one ends. It seems like if the custom existed to always allow the PCs to choose that the reverse wouldn't happen repeatedly and almost exclusively by the company who writes it.

And yes, I'm perfectly happy with someone being railroaded into a political intrigue or caper adventure as long as they knew that's what they were getting into in advance. Every time I suggest an adventure to my players, I almost always get asked "What kind of adventure is it?" and I will tell them "It's mostly a dungeon crawl, but it has some mystery solving and some interesting social interactions in it".

My players are perfectly happy with Dungeon Crawls, so I know I can safely pick those adventures and no almost no one will object. I know that if I tried to have too much social interaction I'd have complaints from 2 of my players who would grumble about being bored and not getting to use their cool combat powers. Which is one reason I try to keep those aspects to a minimum. These two players aren't entirely out of the ordinary for D&D players. I've met quite a few of them in my days of traveling from convention to convention. Most of the players who like political intrigue a lot have migrated to other games. Mostly Vampire: The Masquerade and games like it.

I had to stop right there.

Time for some background from you. Because anyone who starts by saying "Every adventure written for D&D ever" sounds like the setup to a bad joke, and not anyone who's played the game for a very long time. So...what's your background again, that you claim to know every adventure ever written for D&D, and that you think none are non-combat themed?

I'm talking about all the adventures published by WOTC and TSR. The ones they had for sale. I haven't read every single one. But I haven't read one yet that was non-combat themed. Which is kind of why I was asking if you had seen one. I'd be curious if there was one.

Do individual DMs out there write that stuff? Sure, I'm positive they do. Did the company that published D&D ever encourage it by saying "Here's an adventure that I'm sure you'll love, it has no combat in it at all."

It is. That's pretty much the advice in most players handbooks. It's also the advice in DMGs to ask your players what sort of things they like to play - not to tell them what they will play. It's not a rule, but it is the advice.

I'd like to see that quote because I don't ever remember seeing it. There's various advice that different types of players like different styles of games and you should endeavor to run a game in a style that the players will like. Nothing ever says "The players get to pick the adventures they go on, not the DM". I know that a lot of DMs run the game this way, but I've never seen the rules say it.

I've played plenty. D&D not only does horror, it's done it frequently and well, and it's a major theme supported by both WOTC and TSR before them in numerous published adventures in Dungeon magazine and elsewhere.

It has been tried, and yes, encouraged by various articles and published scenarios. Whether it's succeeded or not is kind of subjective. I don't believe it has except when new rules were introduced in order to help it. Things like the fear, insanity, and corruption rules help to foster a feeling of dread which is important in a horror campaign.

Wait, you're guessing? You earlier made a claim to have knowledge of all D&D adventures, EVER, and you don't even know what goes into a swashbuckling adventure (again, a major theme supported for D&D play in many adventures)?

See above about which adventures I have knowledge of. And I do know what goes into a swashbuckling adventure. Everything I listed there.

My point was that you used a sea based adventure as an example of a campaign that didn't use dungeons or combat to show that combat and dungeons weren't what D&D was about. I was pointing out that every swashbuckling campaign I was aware of tends to focus heavily on combat and "dungeons".

I'm a liar because your personal experience doesn't match mine? I'll say again, play a game with Kevin Kulp as GM and then come back and tell me it's impossible for a GM to keep all his players engaged even when the action doesn't involve the primary interest of some players.

Obviously I can't play a game with him. I'm busy and don't have time for that. However, I can say that with the right group of players, it's ABSOLUTELY possible. I'm not saying you're lying. I'm saying that you managed to find the perfect storm of people who like that sort of game.

I can tell you that any DM, even Kevin Kulp(who, I don't actually know who he is) would be tearing their hair out and ready to quit if they attempted to run that adventure for most of the players I've met. A number of them literally turn their brain off as soon as they find out we're in a long, prolonged non-combat scene.

It is, it can work fine, you should try it before dismissing it as impossible.

As I've mentioned, I have. It didn't turn out well. And I've tried it with 4 completely different groups of people, each time under the hope that since I had new players that hopefully THIS group of people would be able to keep their attention span long enough to do this.

You know, PirateCat and Rel are publishing a book on D&D, and both are excellent at pulling this off, maybe there will be something in that to explain how it's done? Or perhaps you could watch a video of one of their games on YouTube? Maybe beg them for a game at GenCon or another con they go to? Not to say they're the only good DMs out there...just that they're two notable ones that are fairly accessible.

I'm aware of the legend of PirateCat and his DMing. I've considered signing up for his game a couple of times at GenCon. However, I suspect from some of the reports of his games that they likely wouldn't be fun for me. I'm not saying he isn't a good DM. I'm saying that his style likely wouldn't mesh well with mine.

Which is exactly my point. It's impossible to have enough of everything to satisfy every type of player. Most people are just lucky that they've got a particular group whose style meshes well with one another.

I've seen it done. Maybe you should call it inconceivable rather than impossible, just to set up the joke better.

You're telling me you've never seen a player who hates combat say at the hour and a half mark of a battle something to the effect of "How long has this battle taken anyways? This is getting boring and I just want to move on"?

You're saying you've never had a player who interrupted you in the middle of a sentence as an NPC and said "Blah, blah, blah, all this guy does is talk. I hold a sword up to his throat and I tell him he either tells us what we want to know or we kill him. What? He said no? I kill him"?

I have one player in particular who likes to make the most socially antagonistic actions in existence. Especially if the rest of the party is in the middle of trying to be nice and get information from someone. This happened in my last Numenera session:

DM: "Everyone is helping rebuild the town after the battle except for one guy. He is off to the side, smoking with a foul look on his face, however the way he eyes you you think he might know something you don't about the creatures that just attacked. As you approach him, he gives you a glare like he doesn't want to speak to anyone."
Player 1: "Hey there, how's it going? I couldn't help but notice you standing around out here. Is something the matter?" I make a roll to improve his reaction to me.
Player 2: "While he's doing that, I walk over and take the cigarette out of his mouth and walk away, smoking it"
DM: "Wait, what? He isn't happy that you just stole his cigarette and runs after you saying 'Give that back, I was smoking it.'"
Player 2: "I tell him that I have it now and he can go screw himself."
Player 1: "I apologize about my companion and ask him to tell us what he knows."
DM: "Yeah, that isn't going to happen. He's rather angry that your friend just stole stuff from him."

Player 2 above has the knack for turning almost any social interaction into a combat. It's his way of complaining that he's bored and wants to move on to a combat. He tries to provoke people.

If I tried to run an entirely political intrigue campaign, his character would likely be barred from the court within the first session if not imprisoned for some sort of crime.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I am sure there are others, but those come to mind.

Thanks for the list. I'll have to find and read some of these. I'm curious as to exactly how non-combat focused they are. Though compared to the other couple hundred adventures published in Dungeon magazine this number seems EXTREMELY small.

Edit: Also, I'm rather curious how "group friendly" these adventures are. I found most non-combat adventures are good as long as your group is extremely small or very involved. Some adventures where it focuses on a sporting event or something are often fun for the 1 or 2 people in the group who have the desire to participate in the event and the other players get to sit back and watch.

 

[Starfox]

By the way, here are some published adventures that come to mind that have either very large components, or are entirely composed of, non-combat:

Almost anything by Jonathan M. Richards, including:
Challenge of Champions I, in Dungeon issue #58
Challenge of Champions II, in Dungeon issue #69
Challenge of Champions III, in Dungeon issue #80
Challenge of Champions IV, in Dungeon issue #91
Challenge of Champions V, in Dungeon issue #108
Challenge of Champions VI, in Dungeon issue #138
He wrote a Challenge of Champions VII, and I have it, but it's currently unpublished as far as I know.
Also Gorgoldand's Gauntlet, in Dungeon issue #86

Then there are these:
Mike Shel's "The Mud Sorcerer's Tomb" from Dungeon #37,
Coby W. Hedberg's "Deadly Treasure" from Dungeon #41,
Rick Maffei's "Training Ground" from Dungeon #67,
Paul F. Culotta's "Operation Manta Ray" in Dungeon #66 (the obstacle course section to infiltrate the pirates)

I am sure there are others, but those come to mind.

The ones I recognize from these are quite special. The Challenge of Champions in particular are trick dungeons with problem solving, very old skool. No interaction with character values, no combat, no magic, no skill rolls - it is all up to the players, not the characters. Which is fun in its own way, but VERY atypical for DnD.

 

[Mistwell]

Thanks for the list. I'll have to find and read some of these. I'm curious as to exactly how non-combat focused they are. Though compared to the other couple hundred adventures published in Dungeon magazine this number seems EXTREMELY small.

First you said you didn't believe me about a claim and then when I challenged you, you replied that oh you weren't saying you didn't believe me, you just hadn't seen it (as if "I don't believe you" doesn't mean "you're lying").

Now, you ask for some examples, I pull TWELVE from the top of my head (I'd like to see you pull twelve examples of an adventure type by name and magazine number from the top of your head), and that number is not enough for you and you claim it's "extremely small"?

I know someone who isn't arguing in good faith, when I see them. Sorry, I'm out. Find someone else to break Wheaton's Law to.

 

[abirdcall]

I'm talking about all the adventures published by WOTC and TSR. The ones they had for sale. I haven't read every single one. But I haven't read one yet that was non-combat themed. Which is kind of why I was asking if you had seen one. I'd be curious if there was one.

Most Ravenloft adventures are this way. A lot of the bigger ones are sandbox too.

Basically, here is the setting and here are all the things you can do. Here are some plot hooks to get started if you want and then you should let the players do whatever they want. At some level the players have limits because the sandbox has boundaries, but usually not in a go from point a to point b way.

Ravenloft is a gothic horror campaign setting. Big combat heavy elements would completely ruin it.

Castles Forlorn is a good example of a sandbox adventure. The combat that is there mostly involves the characters running from things that are more powerful than they are. The PCs spend most of their time trying to gain information, namely digging up the history of the ghosts so that they can know how to lay them to rest.

That is simplified (there is also a puzzle involving time travel among other things) but the general idea.

 

[Greg K]

As I've mentioned, I have. It didn't turn out well. And I've tried it with 4 completely different groups of people, each time under the hope that since I had new players that hopefully THIS group of people would be able to keep their attention span long enough to do this.

You have bad luck or a poor pool of gamers or I have been very fortunate.

Which is exactly my point. It's impossible to have enough of everything to satisfy every type of player. Most people are just lucky that they've got a particular group whose style meshes well with one another.

Luck of the player pool, perhaps. However, I interview players before joining. As a player and DM, I hate dungeoncrawling on a regular basis, hack and slash, build mentality (pre-planning out and expecting to stick with the build), and min-maxing. Power gaming (playing with a focus/desire for new bonuses, cool powers, etc.) is excepted to a very thin line with the line being wanting to see the character grow and reflected in the mechanics. Playing with a heavy focus on power accumulation over everything else is not acceptable when I run. The same for Butt-kicking

So far, I have only had one "problem" player since the mid-eighties (excluding the . That player was brought into the group by the person that took over the DM duties when I didn't have time to run due to school and work and took a leave from the group which I had started six years earlier.

You're telling me you've never seen a player who hates combat say at the hour and a half mark of a battle something to the effect of "How long has this battle taken anyways? This is getting boring and I just want to move on"?

Myself and every player in a group that I have started since the mid-eighties excluding the one player. The sweet spot has been a length of 15-20 min (less for insignificant battles). 30-45 minutes for a climatic battle (by 30 minutes, I am already itching to move on to something else)

You're saying you've never had a player who interrupted you in the middle of a sentence as an NPC and said "Blah, blah, blah, all this guy does is talk. I hold a sword up to his throat and I tell him he either tells us what we want to know or we kill him. What? He said no? I kill him"?

Only the one problem player. He was a powergamer, a butt-kicker, and a very heavy optimizer for combat. The one GM that brought him in did so, because they were good friends. He then ran very heavily combat focused games, because he knew that his friend would whine and complain if there was anything, but combat for two minutes.
When I returned to the group, I played one session and got bored. The next week when the group played, I turned down the invitation to play. I did this for two week when the GM asked me why I was not interested and I told him that I found a focus on hack and slash boring.
You know what he did? He breathed a heavy sigh of relief and confided that he too found his games boring. That is when he explained that he focused the game on combat to keep the one player from derailing the game. He, then, called each player except the problem player, to find out that they were bored, but were too polite to say anything, because they wanted to play anything until I started running.
The next session, combat started taking a much smaller role in the sessions he ran. As expected, the one player kept playing for a while, he would sulk and complain and demand we skip past the "talky boring stuff".
When I refused to take over the GM chores unless I didn't invite him, my roommate who had become best friends with the other GM and good friends with the problem player offered to run, because the player was cool away from the gaming table. Eventually, my roommate grew weary and two or three times talked to him about his behavior. The guy straightened out for a week or two and then returned to his old ways.
The straw that broke the camel's back?
We were trying to gain the trust of a catlike creature that became trapped in our dimension and was stealing life stock. He had killed the owner of some sheep who had tried to stop him. The group thought there was misunderstanding. The barbarian (played by the previous GM) and my rogue approached him with no weapons, to show we meant know harm, we kneeled down on the ground hands at our side (palming daggers incase we misjudged the situation). Eventually, the cat-creature used comprehend languages and cautiously approached us weapon drawn.
The Barbarian and I determined that he was a warrior and would test our honor by launching a fake attack similar to how some tribes shoot arrows or throw spears to determine someone's reactions. We were prepared just in case, but we motioned for and told the others, regardless of what happens, to not due anything unless we said to fight.
Sure enough, the creature tested us.
Suddenly, the problem player had his wizard start hurling spells at the cat-man creature just as the player of the fighter entered the room to say that he was still prepared to ambush the creature if necessary. The problem player told the fighter's player that we were in combat and to attack. Not knowing what was going on, the fighter attacked. My rogue and the barbarian got in between and tried to stop the other two members from attacking, but the wizard killed the cat-man creature.
The problem player tried to argue that he, honestly, thought we were under attack. Nobody bought it. The barbarian's player and I, now, refused to trust the other two characters. There was no way we would ever adventure with them. The problem player tried to argue out of character that it was unreasonable, because we adventured with his character for so long.
The GM was livid. He told the wizard's player that he would not longer run for him, and, now, backed the majority that wanted him out. However, he was willing to hang with him away from the gaming table. He was also pissed off at the player of the fighter until the barbarian's player and I told him that he was told to attack as soon as he entered the room and had no idea what he walked into. After a round or two, he stopped attacking and had is character not take sides. The GM agreed the player was not at fault for attacking, but he could no longer run for the character, because the two "heroic" characters would not adventure with him (many sessions later, the fighter ran into the two characters and started making amends including warning them that the wizard, now an NPC, was sending assassins after them and was creating something to take over the country).

I have one player in particular who likes to make the most socially antagonistic actions in existence. Especially if the rest of the party is in the middle of trying to be nice and get information from someone. This happened in my last Numenera session:

DM: "Everyone is helping rebuild the town after the battle except for one guy. He is off to the side, smoking with a foul look on his face, however the way he eyes you you think he might know something you don't about the creatures that just attacked. As you approach him, he gives you a glare like he doesn't want to speak to anyone."
Player 1: "Hey there, how's it going? I couldn't help but notice you standing around out here. Is something the matter?" I make a roll to improve his reaction to me.
Player 2: "While he's doing that, I walk over and take the cigarette out of his mouth and walk away, smoking it"
DM: "Wait, what? He isn't happy that you just stole his cigarette and runs after you saying 'Give that back, I was smoking it.'"
Player 2: "I tell him that I have it now and he can go screw himself."
Player 1: "I apologize about my companion and ask him to tell us what he knows."
DM: "Yeah, that isn't going to happen. He's rather angry that your friend just stole stuff from him."

Player 2 above has the knack for turning almost any social interaction into a combat. It's his way of complaining that he's bored and wants to move on to a combat. He tries to provoke people.

If I tried to run an entirely political intrigue campaign, his character would likely be barred from the court within the first session if not imprisoned for some sort of crime.

Try not playing with Player 2. It might improve your game. Getting rid of that type of player worked wonders for ours.

 

[Dausuul]

This should be the case with all abilities and in reverse. Sneak Attack isn't necessarily the problem, the problem is that it's not usable outside of combat. What is the skill set that the rogue has to be able to perform a sneak attack and how can that skill set be used out of combat to do other things. I'd like to see it expanded to all classes, abilities, feats, skills, and spells. What are the non-combat utilities of Fire Ball? Perhaps as a way to provide heat to a tent/room/area or to light all the candles in a room simultaneously, perhaps to slowly increase the temperature in a room which has implications on social encounters. Perhaps abilities/feats/etc can be combined with skills to make other uses possible. If you have Diplomacy (5 ranks) and Sneak Attack, you can make jabbing/witty remarks to throw your opponent off balance and win the debate. If you have Survival (5 ranks) and Fire Ball spell you can increase the temperature in an area by 5 or 10 degrees for 8 hours making for a good nights sleep in your tent.

Fireball needs no such adjustments; it already has a ton of utility. It lets you set things on fire!

Need to create a distraction? Set something on fire. Need light? Set a tree on fire. Facing enemies dug into a superior position? Set the fortifications on fire. Need to discourage pursuit? Set the bridge on fire. Worried about the guys you just killed coming back as undead? Set the bodies on fire. Being eaten by green slime? Set yourself on fire. The possibilities are endless.

 

[Starfox]

I've been in a campaign where Lightning Bolt was used for communication - unlike a fireball, it could actually be mistaken as something natural. In most games, all spells/powers have this kind of noncombat use. It was just 4E, with its emphasis on "ignore the fluff" that lost it - if this power can be reskinned as the player wishes, how can any noncombat uses be invented with reference to the fluff?

Dausuul's tagline "There is no fluff. There is no crunch. There are only rules of varying precision. When you understand this, you will be master of the rules." sums up my attitude to this - EVERY power has and SHOULD have LOTS of potential uses!

(I really didn't have to to search deep to find the tagline once I thought of it - just quote from the last post, right above where I was typing. ^^)

 

[sheadunne]

Fireball needs no such adjustments; it already has a ton of utility. It lets you set things on fire!

Need to create a distraction? Set something on fire. Need light? Set a tree on fire. Facing enemies dug into a superior position? Set the fortifications on fire. Need to discourage pursuit? Set the bridge on fire. Worried about the guys you just killed coming back as undead? Set the bodies on fire. Being eaten by green slime? Set yourself on fire. The possibilities are endless.

Those are all combat uses for the spell. (and by combat I mean destroying things rather than interacting with things). Any suggestions for non-combat uses, such as social and exploration?