D&D General The Problem with Talking About D&D

[Hussar]

Yep. I remember when deckers needed to hard wire in & you basically ran two sessions, one with everyone to get the decker & van into place then everyone but the gm & decker went for pizza while those two had a session that was hopefully wrapping up about the time everyone else got back for the decker to go home or maybe unlock a door between thumb twiddling.

One of my groups has a scout player who gets off on scouting everything to an obnoxious degree & because that group isn't using extra lethal rules I can not impress risk upon him no matter how I phrase "you don't feel comfortable going further because...." he as a player knows for a fact that his character is basically at zero risk from much shy of rocks fall or sudden beholder turns the corner & immediately casts disintegrate type things the group will blame me for. Sure I could throw wandering monsters at the players staying behind, but it doesn't matter to anoyone without attrition & the scout can probably be there in a round or two so they too can take part in a slog of combat.

I'm sorry, but, that's WAYYY overblown. There are a million ways to deal with that. I presume by "very far ahead" we're talking minimum of 3 rounds of full movement. Anything less than that certainly isn't very far ahead.

If you can't challenge a single rogue PC, on its own, without any backup, three rounds ahead of the party, using standard encounters, then that's not a problem with the system. Good grief, off the top of my head (presuming we are in a dungeon):

Roper
Galeb Duhr
Lurker
Darkmantle
anything with a grapple attack - remember you can still move half your speed after you've grabbed something

I mean, if you cannot challenge a single lone PC, using all the tools that 5e gives you, you are really, really playing the wrong game.

 

[James Gasik]

It's not that he can't, as I understood from the explanation, his players think that's a violation of their social contract. They want a game where they can scout ahead for dangers without having to risk losing their rogue.

I mean, it's been my point the whole time, scouting is dangerous and can even be foolhardy. So he's just trying to give them what they want, but this one player is pushing a little far. Personally, what I'd do is let the character go off on their scouting mission, and have monsters show up to attack the rest of the group!

That should be interesting to see.

 

[Ancalagon]

I must admit I haven't read the entire thread, and it may have gone in a different direction.

But I've been thinking about this video a lot, and the message, and it's implications.

At first, I really saw the argument that Coleville was making from one perspective - people who say that "class X is bad" from an optimization point of view (ie power gaming) aren't "right" because there are so many variations between tables and gaming styles and DM rulings. I really disagree, for example, with the notion that "monks are bad". At the right table, and with the right player, they are very good.

But

I am now realizing that the argument cuts both ways. The optimizers are correct - at the wrong table, or with the wrong player, monks are bad. So while we should reject absolutist comments about something being "optimal" all the time, we must also recognize that the statements aren't entirely false either.

 

[James Gasik]

Any class is good or bad based on the player and their decisions. Imagine someone has this crazy idea to play a Kobold strength based Fighter (15 Strength!) with a greatsword because they think it's funny- I would agree, but obviously there's going to be a problem here.

A Sorcerer is spectacularly easy to mess up, since you need to go over their spell list with a fine toothed comb and be very careful with what spells they choose. I know a player who thinks Witch Bolt is the best level 1 spell ever, and nothing you say can convince him otherwise.

What bugs me most isn't if one person optimizes or strategizes or does neither of these things, it's really more when nobody thinks about optimizing the group. DM will have a session 0 and ask what people will play, and about the best you get is one guy grudgingly saying he'll play a Cleric, so everyone goes "yay, we don't have to worry about heals!"...and session 1 begins and the guy is a Dwarf Tempest Cleric who refuses to use Healing Word and wants to wade into melee and go kaboom.

Which is fine, but that means if you go down, he's not going to be much help. Or someone is like "behold! my warlock/shadow monk with devil's sight!" and then when he goes down, you can't use healing word on him because the target line is a creature you can see!

 

[overgeeked]

Any class is good or bad based on the player and their decisions. Imagine someone has this crazy idea to play a Kobold strength based Fighter (15 Strength!) with a greatsword because they think it's funny- I would agree, but obviously there's going to be a problem here.

A Sorcerer is spectacularly easy to mess up, since you need to go over their spell list with a fine toothed comb and be very careful with what spells they choose. I know a player who thinks Witch Bolt is the best level 1 spell ever, and nothing you say can convince him otherwise.

What bugs me most isn't if one person optimizes or strategizes or does neither of these things, it's really more when nobody thinks about optimizing the group. DM will have a session 0 and ask what people will play, and about the best you get is one guy grudgingly saying he'll play a Cleric, so everyone goes "yay, we don't have to worry about heals!"...and session 1 begins and the guy is a Dwarf Tempest Cleric who refuses to use Healing Word and wants to wade into melee and go kaboom.

Which is fine, but that means if you go down, he's not going to be much help. Or someone is like "behold! my warlock/shadow monk with devil's sight!" and then when he goes down, you can't use healing word on him because the target line is a creature you can see!

It’s almost as if the game rewards a diverse group and basically needs certain roles covered. Weird.

 

[James Gasik]

It does, but I rarely see it in action. Everyone goes "I want to play an X" and they get assured that you don't need Y class to play the game.

EDIT: and certainly, for the most part, it seems to work out. Sometimes scarily well, like the AL table where we had four Clerics and a Cleric/Ranger.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm just visualizing this.

It's Friday night and I'm in a game where I'm playing a character I don't want to play because the game 'needs' certain roles covered and I'm the chump this time.

Instead of smacking down some monsters, we get something out of our pay grade sicced on us and the DM expects us to run... but then kills my character because 'running is dangerous'.

So I just spent my precious time not playing the game and not playing the game as a character I'm interested in, then being excluded from the game (via character death) for doing the not playing the game the DM wanted me to do.

Why am I still at the table?

 

[billd91]

But, there's the issue.

It's all about cost/benefit. What are the costs of scouting - well, there's a non zero chance that your scout is going to fail to be sneaky (and, over time, that chance changes from non-zero to virtually guaranteed without magic) and touch off an encounter that the scout absolutely can't win. And, if the scout isn't quick enough, it is entirely possible that the scout dies as a result.

So, what's the benefit here? You gain a couple of rounds worth of information about the situation ahead of you. Which, by and large, doesn't actually help you all that much. What difference does it make that you know that next cave has two trolls in it vs the entire party learning that there are two trolls in that cave? You might gain a surprise round? Maybe? The rogue can't really do anything about the trolls, particularly, so, the scout goes up, sees the trolls, reports back to the party, who then goes and confronts the trolls.

The benefit is highly contingent on the environment. In a dungeon that has lots of ways around things, it’s useful because the paths don‘t dump you all in the same next encounter. You get more choice - and in this case, an informed one. But if the environment is linear, it may not be all that helpful.

Versus, the party simply wanders forward, being careful of traps and whatnot, but, not particularly stealthy, and meets the trolls.

Is the information really worth the risk? For many groups, no, it's not. I used to really wonder why groups didn't scout more, but, then I realized that by and large, having a PC scout was pointless. At best it was a waste of time, while one player got to play and everyone else sat on their hands waiting. At worst, it alerted monsters and left the party badly out of position and was often a major disadvantage.

Different play styles. Neither is wrong, they just involve different trade-offs.

The only time I see scouts anymore is with renewable resources - far, FAR better to risk a small amount of gold on a renewable familiar than actually send a PC ahead.

I’m not sure that changes the “one player got to play” issue.

 

[Ancalagon]

What bugs me most isn't if one person optimizes or strategizes or does neither of these things, it's really more when nobody thinks about optimizing the group. DM will have a session 0 and ask what people will play, and about the best you get is one guy grudgingly saying he'll play a Cleric, so everyone goes "yay, we don't have to worry about heals!"...and session 1 begins and the guy is a Dwarf Tempest Cleric who refuses to use Healing Word and wants to wade into melee and go kaboom.

See, I find this a bit sad, because to me party optimization is a lot more interesting than single PC optimization - and when I say optimization, I don't mean "the best party build is!!!". I mean finding all the various permutations of party composition that can work fairly well together and testing them out in a campaign.

Like that cleric situation above - so one play says "fine, I'll play a cleric, but I don't want to be a healbot, I want to blow naughty word up" and takes something like a knowledge cleric so they can also be the "party scholar" - so now we have a cleric willing to use offensive magic, and fill a party role. So the warlock - who doesn't have to the the party scholar even though he's the "mage" - to help the cleric be more than a healer, takes the "healer" feat. The player wanting to be the tank takes paladin, but he also takes outlander, providing the party with healing, tanking and "nature lore". The last player didn't want to play a rogue, but chose monk to provide the party with some scouting... but open-hand because they wanted to do kung-fu and kick butt. This party did very well.

The beauty of 5e is that there are a lot party comp that work fairly well, as long as some of the players are willing to be flexible - and even the less flexible players tweaking their build to help out. A decently designed PC will be strong in one thing, but be good at a 2nd and decent at a third, and that flexibility is so good to have.

 

[Ancalagon]

I'm just visualizing this.

It's Friday night and I'm in a game where I'm playing a character I don't want to play because the game 'needs' certain roles covered and I'm the chump this time.

Instead of smacking down some monsters, we get something out of our pay grade sicced on us and the DM expects us to run... but then kills my character because 'running is dangerous'.

So I just spent my precious time not playing the game and not playing the game as a character I'm interested in, then being excluded from the game (via character death) for doing the not playing the game the DM wanted me to do.

Why am I still at the table?

well
First, talk to the DM. If that doesn't work, find another table.

Second, as I said above, even though a party has "roles" as you say, important roles (like healing) should be "shared" by more than one PC. So if you look at the example above (where the tank was a paladin, and the mage took the healer feat), this allowed the cleric to take a "not healing" subclass and use their clerical magic to help the party and to blast, not just heal. The player could probably have instead played a druid, or even a bard, and it would still have been a viable party composition.

One could make similar examples with other "roles", such as ranged combat or stealth. You don't need more than one "specialist" in those roles, but a: it's really useful if some (or all!) of the other party can attack at range (... every PC should have at least javelins or darts or a short bow or something!) orbe sneaky. And b: (and more importantly) there are several ways to build a ranged combat specialist, or a scout. And it's not hard to build a PC that is very good at both. The party face could be ... a hexblade, a paladin, a sorcerer, a rogue even... A party tank has several permutations, so does the "gish" concept. etc etc etc.