D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[Scott Christian]

But including 4 of your 12 Charisma classes in the PHB and having all the active social skills be Charisma with no mitigation for that is bad design objectively.

To be fair, the rules are clear that the ability attached to the skill is not set in stone, and any DM can ask for a skill check using an alternative ability. For example, a strength based intimidation, a wisdom based persuasion, a dexterity based performance, or a constitution based deception. (intimidating a goblin horde after ripping one in half, speaking to a village elder to let in the refugees based on ethos and logos, playing a technical lute piece that twists and turns the fingers, or lying to a dragon and not pissing yourself.)

 

[Scott Christian]

And people who run full scene spotlight game claim there is no problem because they lack empathy for other styles of play.

I don't think it is a lack of empathy. I think it is a possible misunderstanding of how you, and others, play your games. Like I reiterated before, I guess if everything is isolated like book chapters, and things never cross-mingle, and the players get to choose who rolls during social encounters, then perhaps we don't understand because we have never seen the game played that way.

 

[Scott Christian]

I don’t think anyone is playing how they play because streamers. Like DMs take ideas from them, I know I’ve stolen ideas from Matt Mercer, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Aabria Iyengar, Mark Humes, Brian Murphy, Griffin McElroy, Jerry Holkins in his guise as Jerriford K Horkrims, DM of Teh C Teams, and Victoria from Broadswords, and certainly at least a few others. But nothing I’ve seen suggests that any of these shows have anything at all to do with groups not doing long adventuring days. This was a thing before the rise of streaming, and it is now dominant because anyone who isn’t playing with the baggage of old school D&D is vastly less inclined to see 6 battles in a day as reasonable.

I am going to beg to differ. Most adventure paths are not set up that way. And, having run a high school D&D club for ten years now (in two different high schools), and having watched hundreds of kids learn how to play, they never go more than one encounter. They are worse than old schoolers. Maybe it's the young DMs that haven't figured out the storytelling tools to spur a second or third encounter. Maybe its the players that always insist they rest; therefore, the DM gives in. But young players actually seem to rest a lot more than any old school player I've encountered.
I am not discounting your experiences, but I am just telling you what I see.

 

[Minigiant]

Minigiant, I agree with everything you say here, with the exception of social challenges being one roll. I have seen it done with single rolls and multiple rolls, so I can't speak for most tables. But what I can speak to is it doesn't matter that you have a paladin or warlock or bard at the table with you. The roll, especially social rolls, are determined by who says what. Our bard tonight rolled zero social rolls. Our ranger rolled two. That's because while roleplaying, he was the one that prompted the DM to ask for the rolls. I believe our paladin rolled one too.

It's like I was saying, at your table, do the players determine who rolls or the DM? If it's the players, I get the confusion we have with one another. If it is the DM, then I don't understand the problem with their being multiple charisma-based characters - because the DM determines the roll based on who says what

The one who talks rolls. But usually by session 3, the group self selects the person with the highest chances of success to do the talking.

Just how party's tend not to have to bulky clumsy barbarian do the lockpicking, they tend to nudge the high Persuasion PC's play to do most of the talking unless another more extroverted player jumps ahead.

I even see some groups get meta and let other players talk but nudge the high Charisma Persuasion/Deception proficient bard/paladin/rogue/sorcerer/warlock to jump in so they make the roll.

Happens in my game with my ranger and my friends barbarian. The warlock jumps in to explain away my Ranger's offensive comments and the Barbarian's idiocy in order to roll his maxxed out modifers. The DM counters our metagaming with "Idiot" checks. But rolling to not accidentally insult people is not in the DMG to get everyone involved without cheesing the system.

 

[tetrasodium]

F

I am going to beg to differ. Most adventure paths are not set up that way. And, having run a high school D&D club for ten years now (in two different high schools), and having watched hundreds of kids learn how to play, they never go more than one encounter. They are worse than old schoolers. Maybe it's the young DMs that haven't figured out the storytelling tools to spur a second or third encounter. Maybe its the players that always insist they rest; therefore, the DM gives in. But young players actually seem to rest a lot more than any old school player I've encountered.
I am not discounting your experiences, but I am just telling you what I see.

That's kind of echoing my experience with newer players who started with 5e. The resulting 5mwd loop makes save scumming without chest codes look like like some kind of extreme nightmare difficulty Ironman play and the rules do little to aid the gm in pushing back. At the end of the session there's not much the gm can do if the players simply refuse to do anything but take another rest and not much 5e leaves as a thing capable of rising to concern worthy of that rest places it in jeopardy that the gm could leverage.

Not all of them, but enough that nobody wants to be the fun police for wotc's 5mwd enabling design. It's not uncommon for me to tell someone that they don't feel safe trying to rest [here] and that doing [that thing you are doing seems like it's not going to change that] only to have the rest of the group dig in with some variation of "nothing, we are watching/waiting for him to finish"no matter how many times the loop cycles.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Fair enough. I care less about why most people don’t use 6-8 encounter days and more about the fact that the game is balanced around the fact they do when the vast majority of the published adventures don’t have the party play through 6-8 encounters.

Tbh, I don’t even believe that it is balanced like that. It’s balanced around PC earning that amount of XP, not around actually necessarily having that many distinct encounters.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I am going to beg to differ. Most adventure paths are not set up that way. And, having run a high school D&D club for ten years now (in two different high schools), and having watched hundreds of kids learn how to play, they never go more than one encounter. They are worse than old schoolers. Maybe it's the young DMs that haven't figured out the storytelling tools to spur a second or third encounter. Maybe its the players that always insist they rest; therefore, the DM gives in. But young players actually seem to rest a lot more than any old school player I've encountered.
I am not discounting your experiences, but I am just telling you what I see.

You misread my post, or conflated it with another. I never said anything remotely in contradiction with what you’re saying here.

I was making the point that the reason that people don’t do 6+ encounters per day is simply that most people don’t want to, not because of any influence from streaming games.

 

[Aldarc]

Paladins should use wisdom instead of charisma.

I broadly think that the classes need reshuffled back into the deck in favor of archetypes defined by their playstyle rather than where they get their spells.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I broadly think that the classes need reshuffled back into the deck in favor of archetypes defined by their playstyle rather than where they get their spells.

In another game, possibly. But that wouldn't be D&D - and I don't think it would improve much.

 

[Aldarc]

In another game, possibly. But that wouldn't be D&D - and I don't think it would improve much.

There was a magic-user before there were wizards, sorcerers, bards, and warlocks as well as a fighting-man before there were rangers, barbarians, and paladins, and it was still D&D. I think that D&D can survive a reshuffle of its classes while still being D&D. There are plenty of games out there that are D&D in all but name that have reshuffled the classes. I don't think that having the current set of casters improves much of anything at all.