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

[TwoSix]

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.

Interestingly, 13th Age allows you to do exactly those sort of things with your spells if you have the Cantrip Mastery talent.

 

[sheadunne]

Interestingly, 13th Age allows you to do exactly those sort of things with your spells if you have the Cantrip Mastery talent.

I was actually thinking that it would make a pretty cool change to cantrips, nice to know that others think the same way I don't expect D&D to go that direction, but it would be nice to have multipurpose abilities. Why design to silo into the three tiers when you can design to encompass all the tiers at the same time!

 

[Sadrik]

I don't know if this was brought up but the idea of a sneak attack is hitting someone and scoring a critical hit and doing additional damage. So I think the rogue's sneak attack and things like critical hits and coupe de grace and things like massive damage rules can all be entertwined. In fact, I think this concept is an excellent concept for the rogue overall. Let them be the guys who score crits more often. I think having extra subsystems that allow you to do extra damage is a bit too much, have the damage come from the same source but rogues are easy at tapping into the extra damage. Would totally be awesome but totally will not happen.

 

[Mistwell]

I'm running the game. When I start games, they start like this: "Hello everyone, I want to run a D&D game. I've got this cool dungeon that I've been writing up for the last year. I'll be a lot of fun for everyone to explore. Who wants to play?"

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...

Doesn't seem like they'd contribute that much. This entire scenario goes against so many D&D assumptions, I don't even know where to start.

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.

Firstly, my first rule and the assumption of every adventure written for D&D, ever

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?

Either way, if we assume that isn't the case and "make up whatever characters you want" is the rule of the day.

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.

My point is that each game has a tone it's built for. It sounds like you haven't played many of them so you may not know this. Call of Cthulhu is a horror game where you run away from enemies and solve problems using mostly non-combat methods because its system builds only characters who are bad at combat. Which is rather the opposite of D&D, which creates characters who are good at combat.

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.

I'm guessing that swashbuckling adventure involves...

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)?

I don't believe you. I've tried it. It ALWAYS ends up with at least one party member bored out of his mind and leaving the table to go play SNES because: "My character doesn't like to sneak around, so he'll wait at the inn while you guys do this."

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.

I don't think this is possible.

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

The goal is to have enough of everything to satisfy every type of player while not concentrating on anything long enough to make any of the other players bored. Unfortunately, that's not entirely possible.

It really is possible.

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.

Inevitably, the game still needs a core experience that all players need to be involved in. In D&D, that's fighting. There's too much time in a session and battles take too long for it to be possible to accommodate players who absolutely hate combat without alienating those who like it.

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

 

[Starfox]

Remember old Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax? And how they couldn't agree on what DnD was? The way I hear the story, it seems Gygax was with Majoru Oakheart (doing the adventures the DM prepared) while Arnesson was more like Mistwell (more of a sandbox). Grossly simplified of course, but this is not a new clash of ideas. ^^

 

[Mistwell]

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.

 

[pemerton]

"The Mud Sorcerer's Tomb" from Dungeon #37

How similar is this to the D&Dnext version? I haven't read the whole thing, but by room 10 there's the potential for combat with golems, mummies and an animated suit of armour.

 

[Mistwell]

How similar is this to the D&Dnext version? I haven't read the whole thing, but by room 10 there's the potential for combat with golems, mummies and an animated suit of armour.

I do not know. I never read the modern version, and it's been many years since I read the original.

 

[Starfox]

"Mud Sorcerers Tomb" in the original is much like the Tomb of Horrors - there is combat, but not a lot of it.

The basic problem with not having combat siloing has to do with the micro-game aspect of combat in DnD. That is, combat is expected, and when it happens it pushes most other activities to the side. Now, an interesting combat scene has some kind of mcguffin or objective besides "do to them before they do to us". As soon as there is such a side objective, the entire game changes, and suddenly what would ordinarily be non-combat powers are viable. This is nice. Problem is, a completely (or even largely) combat-incompetent character ties the gamemasters and adventure designer's hand - suddenly there can be no battles where winning the fight is the sole objective. In some genres, such as pulp, this is ok, even good. But for high fantasy, the pure combat scene is a very strong trope.

 

[Greg K]

I'm running the game. When I start games, they start like this: "Hello everyone, I want to run a D&D game. I've got this cool dungeon that I've been writing up for the last year. I'll be a lot of fun for everyone to explore. Who wants to play?".

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.

Yet, you wrote the following, yesterday, in D&D Next (5e) playtest packet due in September thread here

I believe my responsibility as a DM really begins and ends at the table. I'm here to run whatever adventure I most recently bought at the gaming store for the 4 or 5 hours we've allotted to play. I don't write my own adventures because that takes too long.

(Note: Emphasis mine)

So which is it?