D&D 5E Starter Set Character Sheet Revealed!

[Majoru Oakheart]

The outcome of a DM- arbitrated encounter should be indistinguishable from what would have happened if it had played out following all of the rules. One-in-twenty chances are allowed to happen, about 5% of the time.

Except that's not how math works. A 5% chance of something can happen 20 times in a row. It's random. The only way to know how it would have happened if you followed all the rules is to actually follow all the rules. Saying that things happen only precisely statistically is even worse. Sure, each monster does a critical hit 5% of the time...so what if they made 19 attack rolls before this combat started? Does that mean that all of them are suddenly "due" their crit and they all crit the first attack this combat?

Literally any result you decide on that doesn't involve rolling the actual dice is purely fiat, made up by the DM. It isn't "what would have happened if it had played out following all the rules". You can look at the rules and say "This is one of the likely outcomes", but there's no way to know 100% what would have happened if you followed the rules. Not only that, but even following the rules there is so much variation in what could happen based on the actions people within that battle choose to take. If one of the caravan drivers in a battle hides instead of fighting, suddenly the combat is completely different since he is not contributing to damage. If the goblins drop a huge net on the caravan from above, surprising the caravan and hindering their attacks and movement while they peppered them with arrows, suddenly the combat is completely different.

Without the PCs around, I argue that all of that ceases to matter anyways. Because rules don't govern stuff the PCs aren't there for. Instead, you determine whether a goblin is capable of cutting off someone's head and whether the swing of their sword does so. You don't determine the number they need to hit and the amount of damage they do.

Tying it back around to the original point of this tangent, though, it would be inconsistent for an NPC soldier to come out of any off-screen conflict with a broken arm or leg. There is no way to apply the combat rules such that (slow-healing) broken bones are a result. (Unless you're using some sort of optional rules for critical hits or something, at which point it applies equally to PCs and NPCs.)

Yeah, if you are assuming the rules are the physics of the world. Which they really shouldn't be. The rules are an attempt to simulate a reality while still allowing the game to move forward at a decent pace. You could roll for broken bones every time someone attacks, but it would take too long and would get boring and would hinder the storyline of the game. So, it's unwanted in a game simulation where the players might be the target of these effects.

However, the goal of the entire system should be to simulate and actual living, breathing world. Which means that the same sort of things that happen in real life DO happen to people in the game world. Just not all of them happen to the PCs.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Literally any result you decide on that doesn't involve rolling the actual dice is purely fiat, made up by the DM. It isn't "what would have happened if it had played out following all the rules". You can look at the rules and say "This is one of the likely outcomes", but there's no way to know 100% what would have happened if you followed the rules.

You can work with probabilities, though. You should be able to quickly determine whether one side will win with little damage taken, or whether it will be an extremely close fight. You can, occasionally, have things turn out unexpectedly. After all, the one benefit of not watching the fight is that you don't get a close look at all of the details, so there's only a finite amount of accuracy needed in your prediction. It's not quite as random as what you'd get from rolling it out, but it should be close enough to the expected outcome if you had rolled it out as to not seem out of place. It's impossible for any DM to actually be unbiased (due to human failings), but the DM should strive to be as unbiased as possible while arbitrating this outcome.

It's like, a goblin might beat an ogre in a fight, but will probably die quickly. If the fight happens off-screen, and the goblin wins, then that's fine very occasionally. If that sort of thing happens routinely, then it strains suspension of disbelief.

 

[pemerton]

internally consistent and simulationist? That's definitely not 4E, and it's not really any edition prior to 3E either.

<snip>

I think that's where Saelorn and pemerton are baffling each other.

I don't dissent from the bulk of your post, but I did want to respond to this.

I'm not baffled. I spent nearly 20 years GMing Rolemaster, and have played and GMed plenty of Runequest and Classic Traveller too. I understand the pleasures of a simulationist rule system. My contention is simply that a simulationist system is not a necessary condition of a consistent gameworld.

The 4e gameworld - the 4e default setting as presented in the books for that system - is in fact one of the most consistent ever developed for D&D, with a coherent conception of its cosmology, mythic history, and so on. The monster books (mostly) fit smoothly into the setting and backstory.

But the consistency is achieved via free-text description of things; not via mechanical modelling. In this respect 4e uses methods that are more like authorship and less like wargaming.

I wish that they would be externally consistent in their mechanical representation of an entity that is supposed to be internally consistent, both because it's less work and because it introduces less inconsistencies elsewhere.

What is an example of an inconsistency in the gameworld that results from the 4e approach? Or of things being more work?

If the outcome of an unobserved fight needs to be determined, it should be determined using the same methods as if it were observed. Or at a minimum, the outcome of the fight needs to be the same as what the outcome would be if you'd figured it out long-hand.

I'll buy that a minion against a level 17 party can be the same as an elite against a level 7 party, but my big problem - which showed itself back when I was playing 4E on a regular basis - is what the creature's stats are when it's just by itself. Or when it's fighting a different monster. Or when it falls down a thirty foot cliff.

A creature doesn't have stats when its by itself. It has a narrative description (eg powerful enemy even for paragon heroes; able to cause fear with but a glance; etc) from which outcomes can be inferred. The game does not expect the GM to deploy its action resolution mechanics to determine what happens when no player has declared an action.

Given that the outcomes "figuring it out long hand" is random (within a fairly wide parameter of possible results) free narration is not going to cause any difficulties for a GM who has a firm grasp of those narrative descriptions.

Whether or not one likes this technique (a matter of preference), it is not a source of inconsistency in the gameworld.

 

[pemerton]

One of the nice things about 5E is that bounded accuracy should make it possible to avoid needing multiple statblocks for the same monster. The same hobgoblin stats can work for the single hobgoblin you battle as a 1st-level newbie, and the battalion you hack through as a 20th-level demigod.

AD&D aspired to this too. In practice, a name level fighter hacking through a horde of 100 orcs could get a bit mechanically bogged down. I'm curious as to what sorts of tools 5e will use to deal with this.

 

[pemerton]

No, you don't have to actually play out the battle with dice by following all of the rules. That would be tantamount to watching the tree fall.

Rather, you expect that the outcome of the fight should be exactly what it would have been if you had played it all out with dice.

The dice are random, so unless they are actually rolled we have no epistemic access to what would have occurred were they rolled. We only have epistemic access to what might have happened.

You can work with probabilities, though. You should be able to quickly determine whether one side will win with little damage taken, or whether it will be an extremely close fight.

<snip>

It's like, a goblin might beat an ogre in a fight, but will probably die quickly. If the fight happens off-screen, and the goblin wins, then that's fine very occasionally. If that sort of thing happens routinely, then it strains suspension of disbelief.

If the PCs fight the guard, and it turns out he has 100hp and +27 to hit for ~35 damage, but the guard is later defeated by some goblins, then we don't expect those goblins to have 10hp and +2 to hit for ~4 damage. We expect that the outcome of the fight should be very close to what it would have been, had we actually played it out.

This can all be achieved with a narrative conception of relative toughness, though.

The outcome of a DM- arbitrated encounter should be indistinguishable from what would have happened if it had played out following all of the rules. One-in-twenty chances are allowed to happen, about 5% of the time.

Tying it back around to the original point of this tangent, though, it would be inconsistent for an NPC soldier to come out of any off-screen conflict with a broken arm or leg. There is no way to apply the combat rules such that (slow-healing) broken bones are a result. (Unless you're using some sort of optional rules for critical hits or something, at which point it applies equally to PCs and NPCs.)

In a narrative/fiction-first game, which is how I (and I think many others) run 4e, the test is the other way round. The constraint is that the rules deliver outcomes consistent with the fiction. It is consistent with the fiction that no one's leg gets broken, and the rules deliver this. Of course, that means that the PCs are rather lucky, never suffering broken legs - but that's not inconsistent with the range of possibilities. Even the real world contains lucky people, and heroic action fiction is rife with them.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

A creature doesn't have stats when its by itself. It has a narrative description (eg powerful enemy even for paragon heroes; able to cause fear with but a glance; etc) from which outcomes can be inferred. The game does not expect the GM to deploy its action resolution mechanics to determine what happens when no player has declared an action.

So what happens when an ogre falls from a cliff? How injured does it get? How many hit points does it lose? Or in an avalanche?

What's the chance that it will be able to break down a iron-banded wooden door (DC 25), when nobody is watching?

If the same ogre interacts with both level 3 characters (and it has stats for a level 2 elite at this point), and then interacts with level 9 characters (as a level 8 standard monster), then how does the damage done in the first encounter translate to damage done in the second encounter? What if it encounters both at the same time?

If a creature only has stats in relation to the heroes, then that system is absolutely worthless for resolving anything about that creature other than its interaction with those heroes. I need more than that. I need to know how it interacts with everything in the world.

That's the reason I paid so much money for this set of books. That was the baseline assumption I'd made about this ruleset, based on experience with every other game I've ever seen that only has one set of stats for any given creature.

 

[The Hitcher]

So what happens when an ogre falls from a cliff? How injured does it get? How many hit points does it lose? Or in an avalanche?

What's the chance that it will be able to break down a iron-banded wooden door (DC 25), when nobody is watching?

If the same ogre interacts with both level 3 characters (and it has stats for a level 2 elite at this point), and then interacts with level 9 characters (as a level 8 standard monster), then how does the damage done in the first encounter translate to damage done in the second encounter? What if it encounters both at the same time?

If a creature only has stats in relation to the heroes, then that system is absolutely worthless for resolving anything about that creature other than its interaction with those heroes. I need more than that. I need to know how it interacts with everything in the world.

Unless you are a computer running a simulation, the answer to all of those questions is "whatever the DM decides". You may look at stats to get an idea, but you should base your decisions on what will make the game more fun. Monsters are not PCs, and shouldn't be treated as such.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Monsters are not PCs, and shouldn't be treated as such.

And what's the in-game justification for why an NPC wizard has re-charge spells and a ton of hit points, where a PC wizard has AEDU spells and healing surges? Why does a PC fighter need a +X magic weapon in order to strike with the same accuracy as an NPC fighter?

 

[The Hitcher]

And what's the in-game justification for why an NPC wizard has re-charge spells and a ton of hit points, where a PC wizard has AEDU spells and healing surges? Why does a PC fighter need a +X magic weapon in order to strike with the same accuracy as an NPC fighter?

The justification is that PCs are the heroes of the narrative, and that each has an individual human to manage a whole lot of bits and pieces. Those pieces need to be enjoyable for them to manage.

Monsters and NPCs are just extras and set-dressing. Making them simple lightens the DM's workload and keeps the PCs' story moving along.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The justification is that PCs are the heroes of the narrative, and that each has an individual human to manage a whole lot of bits and pieces. Those pieces need to be enjoyable for them to manage.

That justification, while valid on a gamist level, does not represent anything within the game world. Where anything within the game world reflects something that exists only in the real world, it violates causality.

There's no way I can possibly suspend disbelief that far.