D&D General Story Now, Skilled Play, and Elephants

[Neonchameleon]

In 5e when you do something tactically strong - it tends to really change the encounter. Most of the tactically strong choices are fairly obvious at this point. But those choices grant huge advantages. Examples:

• Kiting with a ranged rogue
• Casting Hold Monster on a strong solo enemy
• Using your divine smite when you crit
• Polymorphing your low hp ally into a Giant Ape
• Casting healing word to pop back up an ally and still cantrip attack instead of using cure wounds.
• Casting spike growth in a narrow pass with your druid
• Casting Haste on your mount and engaging in hit and run tactics
• Using Action Surge + Trip Attack + Precision attack to down an enemy fast
• Using Maneuvering strike to get an ally out of harms way
• Rushing in and taking a dodge action with your monk, knowing that the first round of combat tends to mean there are more enemies that could attack you
• Or one of the strongest types of tactics - cast a lock down ability (preferably no save) on an enemy and then someone else cast a zone based recurring damaging effect
• Etc.

These kinds of things tend to really matter to outcome. Which likewise makes the choice of when and how to use them quite a bit more obvious. Contrasting that with 4e which tends to offer more 'tactical' play by making the impact of most abilities of fairly low value - and giving all abilities but dailies back to you after the battle (5 min short rest) really shows the difference I'm talking about in terms of how much tactical ability matters.

The thing is that almost all of those "tactically strong" things you list are things you gained the ability to do in character generation with the arguable single exception of the "casting spike growth in a narrow pass" because the narrow pass you need to make that spell shine is not on your character sheet and is not a generic enemy. When all your tactically strong choices are "using this thing I picked up in character creation for its exact intended purpose" then the tactics are in character creation.

Meanwhile in my experience 4e's tactics are vastly more interesting and dynamic thanks to the forced movement and the flanking rules. Flanking is always a risk/reward choice because it invites you to go deeper into the enemy lines for a bonus meaning whether it is good tactics to flank right now varies. And the forced movement rules make you interact with this specific scenario you are playing right now because they are nigh on useless in an empty arena but mean that you interact with what is actually there. And a fire fifteen foot in front of you is very different to one ten foot behind in terms of how you use it, while both invite teamwork to make sure the enemy goes in and you don't.

Tactical ability is not about using the abilities you picked up in character creation to do exactly what they were supposed to with your only real skill apparently being target selection and possibly resource management. It's about responding to dynamic and varying situations to get the most use out of what you have and turn what looks like a losing situation into a winning one.

And the thing that doesn't reset at the end of a 4e fight is the battlefield. So you should never be in quite the same situation twice. Unlike every morning in 5e. (Of course if your battlefields are all the same in 4e that's a DMing issue and it makes for a tedious experience).

Used to be true in 3.5e.
In 4e, turn by turn decisions, positioning and resource management were way more important than character builds. Heck, I would argue that it's nearly impossible to "funk up" a build in 4e.

I've seen a couple of messed up 4e builds - mostly where someone had gone straight to a guide and picked high rated abilities that didn't synergise at all.

 

[Voadam]

Right! And in D&D, the default plot armour for physical prowess is hit points!

Or saving throws.

Sometimes physical stats.

Sometimes physical skills.

Swimming and drowning mechanics in D&D has used various of these at different times.

 

[Imaro]

Conan Drowns. End of story.

I’m kind of with permeton here. Conan wouldn’t be Conan if he drowned in the same conditions as other men. Instead Of drowning Conan is going swim to safety through overwhelming odds.

he can still technically drown. He just isn’t going to. at least not easily. There should be some plot armor in an rpg for that.

Why should there be plot armor in an rpg for Conan drowning? I'm not even understanding this, there is a Conan rpg... I don't think it grants immunity to drowning to PC's.

 

[pemerton]

I said ability check because that's the term in Black Hack, which is a roll under system. SO yeah, CON save in the case of 5E.

I went "save" rather than "check" in the 5e context so that proficiency can come into it, which reduces the dissonance with the highly level-dependent hit points.

 

[FrogReaver]

Why should there be plot armor in an rpg for Conan drowning? I'm not even understanding this, there is a Conan rpg... I don't think it grants immunity to drowning to PC's.

Plot armor is not immunity. Maybe that’s the issue?

 

[FrogReaver]

Or saving throws.

Sometimes physical stats.

Sometimes physical skills.

Swimming and drowning mechanics in D&D has used various of these at different times.

Those things aren’t plot armor. None of them guarantee success in overcoming whatever they are protecting against up to a certain limit. The are defenses. But plot armor is a specific kind of defense.

 

[Imaro]

Plot armor is not immunity. Maybe that’s the issue?

Maybe it is...

Those things aren’t plot armor. None of them guarantee success in overcoming whatever they are protecting against up to a certain limit. The are defenses. But plot armor is a specific kind of defense.

Wait what??

EDIT: I have to ask... what is the drowning threshold for the sword and sorcery genre??

 

[Voadam]

Those things aren’t plot armor. None of them guarantee success in overcoming whatever they are protecting against up to a certain limit. The are defenses. But plot armor is a specific kind of defense.

Plot armor is generally just the hero/protagonist survives because we narratively want him to.

One way to effectuate Conan's protagonist story narrative plot armor in D&D mechanics in the game is for him to have more levels and/or higher stats or saves or skills than others, not just more hp.

Non ablatable defenses are often a part of keeping D&D characters alive. Most poisons from OD&D through AD&D 2e were save or die without interacting with hp, but also representing a limited form of plot armor instead of just dying.

Action/hero points from various D&D options throughout editions are another way to give a character some narrative plot armor.

Even if you go with ablatable mechanics as defining plot armor in your usage, physical stats in 3e qualify as there are ability damage/drain that can show Conan's physical prowess allowing him to survive things that kill lesser men.

 

[clearstream]

I, and others like @Manbearcat, have spoken to just how much 5e design encourages use of GM Force, which I've noted obviates skilled play. And this is true -- 5e does lend itself to GM Force -- but it is not required, and individual GMs can establish play principles that work to enable skilled play by avoiding GM Force. The issue here isn't that 5e disallows skilled play, it's that 5e allows, and even encourages, use of Force, and that disallows skilled play.

Even DM Force could foster skilled play. For example, there would be skill in DM as player applying Force to enhance achievement of the goals of their table. And they might use it to elevate the skill requirement. It may even serve as training-wheels, to help develop skill in new players. I don't believe Force is black and white. It can be used to obviate skill, and perhaps it often is, but that is not a given.

There's nothing special or unique about OSR play that enables or disables skilled play except that system is expected to be rigorously applied. But, what this effectively does is limit the opportunity for Force. It doesn't eliminate it, though, as the 10' pole example @pemerton provided is still up to the GM to determine outcomes. Granted, there's an expectation of neutral adjudication, which is a principled approach and serves to limit Force, but even Gary offers advice that this is really up to the GM in a given situation, so Force can still be, and expected to be, applied.

The argument isn't that OSR enables or disables skilled play (no quotes), it is that it is the original context giving meaning to the label "skilled play".

I'm also concerned that @clearstream, and perhaps others, are reading "skilled" in skilled play as having something to do with PC skills.

It is surprising to me that you have read that from my posts. To be clear then, I am not reading "skilled" as having something to do with PC skills. Although I believe those stochastic mechanics can be used more or less skillfully.

Leveraging the system means leveraging all parts of the system, when they apply. There's nothing about this that prevents you from leveraging metagame aspects into play. And here I don't mean the D&D narrow version of "using player knowledge," although that certainly applies as well. What I mean here is the literal meaning -- the game above and about the game rules. CharOp is meta. Playing your GM's tastes is meta (and can be skilled in some contexts). To evaluate skilled play in a given game, you need to look at how well the players use all aspects of the game, including the meta, to "win," however that may be defined in that game.

The arguments I have heard relate to using a skill (and this time meaning in the 5e skills sense) to elide action in the fiction. For example, "I roll 20 Charisma (Persuasion) does the Queen do what I want?!" (Without further detail from player.) What others have said is that the player should describe what they do in the fiction.

 

[clearstream]

I've got no dissent from your usage of system, which is broader than @clearstream (who uses it, I think, as a synonym for mechanics).

The totality of rules, elements and parameters form the system.

Collections of rules form mechanics, which are methods invoked by agents for interacting with the game world. In this view, there can be system components that are not part of mechanics, for example governing background processes. Game systems contain multiple mechanics, although a system could form a single mechanic strictly speaking.