D&D General Styles of D&D Play

[GrimCo]

5e doesn't have Endure elements spell. You could use Protection from energy to bypass harsh weather conditions, but it's 1 hour for one creature concentration spell. And you burned 3rd level slot for it. Yes, magic can overcome some of the stuff, but you burn slots for that. And those slots came mighty handy later. Survival is not only foraging for food or water or shelter. It's also staying away from all the things that look at you and think "foood". Or you could be mean and go by RAW with spells. FE In the lush jungle, players find small pond. Water is clear. They have Purify food and drink, so they don't bother with Survival skill since they have spell to turn it harmless. So they cast ritual, cleanse water from poisons and diseases. And in process they ingest nice parasite that would be killed by simply boiling the water and they would know it if they bothered to use Nature or Survival.

 

[Aldarc]

Can you please stop with the edition warring? Is that really too much to ask?

No, 5e does not talk about success at a cost, "just like 4e". It really doesn't. 5e presents skills as binary pass/fail. There's a bit of advice buried in the DMG about the notion of degrees of success or failure, but, there's nothing about the notion of success at a cost. There's barely any advice on the notion of group checks.

But, then, why would you want any sort of success at a cost? That's just rollplay, right? After all, you can only have success at a cost if you're rolling checks. ANd, you have REPEATEDLY claimed that that's rollplay and not something you want to do. So, which is it? Freeform roleplay or roll play?

In fairness, Success at a Cost is described on page 242 of the DMG. However, it's questionable whether D&D really supports this idea in praxis. The text may talk about it, but the vast bulk of the game may subsequently ignore it. So to what extent is success at a cost part of the game? For example, the game also says that the GM should "Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure" (DMG, p. 237); however, it's pretty clear IMHO that there are a fair number of rolls called for in adventures that don't have any meaningful consequences for failure. It's just binary pass/fail, and nothing happening on a fail. No consequences whatsoever.

Again, we're just not going to agree here @Imaro. Your definitions and mine are just too different.

I'm not sure if the core issue is about definitions. Sometimes it's more about wanting to claim D&D as an omni-system that can do everything, with all arguments ultimately stemming from that core desire. This is pretty clear when similar arguments made in favor of D&D's capacity to do multiple things won't be granted to other non-D&D game systems.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Where are you getting the components or focus from? You're in the underdark as a slave and you have unlimited sprigs of mistletoe?? From where?

At 2nd level, you can use a druidic focus as a spellcasting focus for your ranger spells. A druidic focus might be a sprig of mistletoe or holly, a wand or rod made of yew or another special wood, a staff drawn whole from a living tree, or an object incorporating feathers, fur, bones, and teeth from sacred animals.​

First you only need a single sprig of mistletoe at most because that's an explicit focus. Second unless you have literally nothing most animals are sacred to someone. And unless there is literally nothing present then a few scraps of animals are all you need.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And I'm saying it's not the DM that is the one who has to make it fit. If the players can see how to make what they are best at fit what they are trying to do that's fine. If they can't they can't.

Is the rogue working out how to use their stealth to aid in social situations (e.g. by finding people to spy on) a problem for you?

There are times when it could work, and times when it couldn't. But every time I used that system, or saw it used, it devolved to every player presenting increasingly ridiculous reasons why this skill (which happens to be the one in which they have the highest bonus) should be allowed, so they can get the "W" and win the challenge. So in my experience (which is all I have to go on) skill challenges did not benefit play, which is why I don't like them and don't use them. I know our resident 4e fans have different experiences, and I don't expect agreement from them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's not what most survival videogames look like. For most you tend to spend the beginning trying to solve simple needs...food, water, shelter, etc. But the whole point is that as you master the game and become better at it... previous challenges become easily overcome and you are presented with different challenges.

A game where you stayed stuck scrounging for bare minimums would be the most boring survival game ever. Look to games like Conan Exiles, Valhheim and Ark for examples.

Getting decent food in Valheim and Ark (two games I've played extensively) remains a challenge all the way through; the scaling system allows for and encourages this.

 

[Imaro]

Getting decent food in Valheim and Ark (two games I've played extensively) remains a challenge all the way through; the scaling system allows for and encourages this.

In Valheim we were able to easily get food from less dangerous biomes as we made better weapons, armor, etc. Now better food was a different story but that was a want not a need to survive.

Edit: it's been a while since my friends and I played but I actually remember we were able to breed animals in a pen to eat at one point... enough to support all of us and a couple of wolf pets we had domesticated.

 

[Imaro]

At 2nd level, you can use a druidic focus as a spellcasting focus for your ranger spells. A druidic focus might be a sprig of mistletoe or holly, a wand or rod made of yew or another special wood, a staff drawn whole from a living tree, or an object incorporating feathers, fur, bones, and teeth from sacred animals.​

First you only need a single sprig of mistletoe at most because that's an explicit focus. Second unless you have literally nothing most animals are sacred to someone. And unless there is literally nothing present then a few scraps of animals are all you need.

Well in the adventure you're 1st level in the underdark with little to no equipment. I also disagree that nearly all animals are sacred to someone... that may be a truth of your particular campaign world but then you are consciously choosing to diminish the survival aspects.

Edit: Off the tip of my head I can think of Drow w/spiders in the underdark (which wouldnt have fur, teeth, bones) are there other common sacred animals to underdark cultures?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, the way 4e explained it was pretty elegant, IMO. Gods do not "grant" their power, like some kind of continuous, revocable loan. They bestow a mote of their power...permanently. Investiture is a completed transaction. That mote of power can then be nurtured, intensified, grown--but it cannot be recalled. Not anymore, after the gods were (more or less) banned from entering the mortal world. A new ritual can be conducted to take the power back, but you have to actually have the person there, and the deity's agents must perform the ritual themselves (it wouldn't be useful if just any old person could do it.) This is why churches have to be really, really careful about who they grant investiture to! Your "faithful" can betray you and yet still wield the power they were given.

That, incidentally, is the lore reason why Avengers existed. They were the "internal police" of the faithful, those trusted with the duty to hunt down (and, if necessary, kill) those who received Investiture and then later betrayed the faith.

It definitely works as a concept, but very much not to everyone's preference, and quite different from how that question was handled in every previous edition.

 

[Maxperson]

And yet, that's what survival genre games look like. You don't get to "overcome" that low level challenge. Because the "low level challenge" is meant to be a challenge. Not just a speedbump. The fact that you can overcome that survival challenge means that the system is not supporting that style of play.

I disagree with you on this. I've read books where survival was a thing at the beginning. Eventually the heroes overcame and established a base, farmed food so it wasn't scarce, etc. and the story moved on to other challenges. Survival roleplay is no different. You aren't supposed to stay with the same level initial challenge the entire time. It's not that the world conditions have necessarily changed(though that's possible), but rather than you've figured out a way to get past the initial challenge and have moved on to more difficult world challenges to try and conquer and survive those.

And, again, we're not limited to just one thing. There's a shopping list of spells, powers, whatnot, that make survival trivial. I look at my current group, for example - one Autognome Artificer, no need for food or water, can create items that create water (alchemy jug), plus various other survival bypassing abilites, one druid with a shopping list of abilities and spells that bypass and trivialize survival, one astral elf wizard with Leomund's Hut in his spellbook, meaning that an instant, 8 hour, indestructable house is a mere ten minutes away at any time plus three more PC's, all of which now coast on the backs of the other characters any time survival elements come up.

Sure, but remember that in my scenario, they were marooned at level 1, so no alchemy jug unless you the DM wanted to have it be buried treasure or wash up on shore, in which case you gave it to them to help them survive. One PC that doesn't need to eat doesn't help the others survive. The druid helps with food and water, but there are still many other survival aspects to the island that the druid a 1st level druid can't help with. The hut didn't come into play until 5th level and can help out for sure, but that's fantastic. They've eventually gained a tool to help survive! That's what the style is all about.

Again, I point to something like Basic/Expert D&D, where survival style games were very easy to do. Or Gamma World, which absolutely makes survival a major element of the game. Or Ironsworn, again, making survival a well supported play style. But 5e D&D? Naw. Sorry, no.

The existence of games that do survival better doesn't make 5e poor. I've already said that D&D does the styles decently to well, but not great. Pointing to other games that do it great is just pointing to another game that does it great, not showing that 5e is bad at it or unsupported.

But, I know we're not going to agree here because we fundamentally aren't communicating. You are insisting that so long as you call something survival, then that's what it is, regardless of how many hoops the system makes you jump through. To me, if you have to rewrite the playstyle to fit the system, and then rewrite it again every few levels as you do in 5e D&D (as well as a number of other D&D editions), then no, D&D does not support that playstyle.

That's what I'm saying. I'm not jumping through any hoops. None. Survival games are about evolving challenges. Watch Castaway or any other Robinson Crusoe style movie. Initially they can barely find anything to eat and are on the verge of starvation. Then they figure out the tricks and techniques to finding food and water moving past it as a survival issue. They are basically farming the island. They need to work, but aren't danger of starvation. Then a harder survival challenge like a hurricane shows up. That's the survival style.

So, I don't think we can really go any further here. We're just talking past each other.

Fair enough. It was enjoyable, even if we did disagree.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In Valheim we were able to easily get food from less dangerous biomes as we made better weapons, armor, etc. Now better food was a different story but that was a want not a need to survive.

Sure, but character death in video games is an annoyance as opposed to a danger, so food survival shifts to keeping up with the curve of where you are in the game, and that challenge persists all the way through.