D&D 5E (2024) The Problem with Healing Powercreep

[Lanefan]

That's true. Hated the Weave's assumption in the 5.0 game.

The Weave isn't the best magic-as-physics system I've ever seen but I'm glad they at least put something in there as an attempt to explainmagic's underlying physics.

 

[Lanefan]

So, what if I told you that, just like Magic, Luck is a thing that has Goddesses, point to spend, and seems to actually exist in the world of DnD. In fact, why don't you tell me. WHat is the difference between a Halfling with the Lucky Feat, and a human Sorcerer? Does the sorcerer have something real in the DnD world (magic), but the Halfling has a fake thing that doesn't really exist (Luck), even as they pray to the Goddess of Luck while holding a magical item that increases their luck?

If there's a Goddess of Luck then I could perhaps justify Her Clerics getting some sort of Luck ability (though not as written in 5.xe). But it wouldn't in any way be species-dependent.

And the Luck would cut both ways. There's bad luck as well as good luck, you know...

 

[Lanefan]

Pretty hard for you to imagine it maybe. But I've read perhaps a dozen or so stories with characters who have luck or probability altering powers, so it is trivial for me to imagine a character who decides to use such a thing.

Where I read those same (or very similar) stories and think "Yeah, that's fine for this story but there's no way in hell I'd want to see that as a character power in D&D".

 

[Lanefan]

Uncanny Dodge, Deflect Attack, Superior Hunter's Defense, unless you would like to tell me that the character has enough time to consider whether or not they want to take an action between the time of being hit and the strike finishing. Because these don't trigger "when attacked" they trigger "when you take damage" or "when hit"

And to me the way that works is truly awful. Abilities like those should trigger only a) when attacked and b) when the target knows the attack is coming, all before the attack is resolved.

"When you take damage" is already too late as you're retconning something that has already happened.

 

[James Gasik]

And to me the way that works is truly awful. Abilities like those should trigger only a) when attacked and b) when the target knows the attack is coming, all before the attack is resolved.

"When you take damage" is already too late as you're retconning something that has already happened.

This made me think of monster abilities- are those considered meta as well?

For example:

Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If the dragon fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.

 

[Lanefan]

This made me think of monster abilities- are those considered meta as well?

For example:

Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If the dragon fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.

Yes. I'd never allow something like that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This made me think of monster abilities- are those considered meta as well?

For example:

Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If the dragon fails a saving throw, it can choose to succeed instead.

I don't treat them as meta. It is something the creature consciously does. I often describe them somehow shaking off the effect or something like that. This is to telegraph it to the players that the resistance has been used.

Also, recently the characters took from a slain troll hag an item that gave them a one use legendary resistance! This again, of course, is something the character needs to intentionally invoke.

 

[Pedantic]

It isn’t Oberoni to assert that the point of the game is NOT to provide a 1-to-1 mapping between mechanic and narrative. That leaving those mappings malleable is the point of the design.

5e has way, way too many fictionally “loose” abilities to not assume the looseness was intentional. Which is exactly what you’d expect from a game trying to bridge the gaps between 4e, 3e, and AD&D.

I've come to believe there's a hierarchy of how strong a negative reaction you're likely to get from a mechanic that isn't mapped that way from the set of people who care about it.

In relative order of importance:

1. Temporal mapping: if the action doesn't map forward in time to the character's action, and changes the fiction before the action is declared.
2. Agency: if the action specifies positioning or action on the part of other characters/NPCs.
3. Resource mapping: if the action maps to a resource the character isn't aware of.
4. Plausibility: if the player can conceive of a person performing the action, subject to genre conceit.

You're less likely to get a negative reaction to say, a limited number of barbarian rages per day than you are to a mechanic that proposes the an enemy trips and you get a perfect shot off on them as a result, or a mechanic that allows you to reveal something your character did hours or days before, and if you start stacking those, (once per day, you can pull out some pocket sand you've stashed earlier and fling it in an enemy's eyes at an ideal moment) the resistance mounts higher.

You can get away with just about anything if you make the action explicitly supernatural, though that can run into trouble if there's an established metaphysics, which the action is then presumed to be beholden to.

It would be interesting to see a game lay out more explicit principles for reskinning to set tone. Guidelines around it tend to either be very weak ("you might add a skull effect to your spells") or very permissive. I don't think I've actually seen a game lay out parameters beyond that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't treat them as meta. It is something the creature consciously does. I often describe them somehow shaking off the effect or something like that. This is to telegraph it to the players that the resistance has been used.

Also, recently the characters took from a slain troll hag an item that gave them a one use legendary resistance! This again, of course, is something the character needs to intentionally invoke.

Level Up actually describes something happening in the fiction every time a monster with this ability does this.

My kind of game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It is not that, or rather it is not just that. What you describe is merely one tool.

But in any case, the actual point is about the difference between first person immersion to the character, experiencing the things as the character, vs third person authoring the character. Your diversions in style of "you're not actually an elf in fantasy land though" are besides the point. Everyone knows that, we are not insane so it is just confusing and pointless to bring such up. I truly do not understand what you're even trying to do. Deny the existence of first person immersion?

Bit late on this one. But I believe the point is that first-person immersion in a blatantly non-real situation, such as one involving magic or space travel etc., depends on the player willfully, intentionally, and knowingly letting go of their knowledge that some of the things they're talking about cannot be real. They must knowingly suspend disbelief, which is an active choice, not just a passive and uncontrollable thing. They must intentionally accept some premises and not others, and that acceptance is a choice, not something they simply spontaneously do, however much they may try not to think about having made it. And they must willfully maintain this state of mind. It cannot be passively preserved, as there are too many factors which could disrupt it without actively willing it to stay in place.