D&D 5E The Ravenloft Rule and D&D5; or how to control player power

[Remathilis]

Once upon a time, There was this little setting called Ravenloft that tried to mix gothic horror and fantasy. To do so, it had to alter the core rules slightly to make certain thing unpredictable. Divinations were faulty, if not useless. Summoning was a dangerous gambit. Powers that fought undead (like turning) was weakened, while undead gain lots of strengths previously unknown. If you took a group of characters and transported them to Ravenloft (a thing many DMs did) those characters often started playing different immediately, and that was BEFORE fear/horror and powers checks!

The Ravenloft rule then, could be described Thusly: "To keep the tension and mystery of Ravenloft, a player character must know he CANNOT rely on his character's abilities to save him." In other words, lots of automatic "I win" buttons prevalent in AD&D got hosed and HARD, so PCs had to do more than think which spell of such will give them success. They PCs were constantly behind the 8-ball.

When 3e came out, the Arhaus Ravenloft never captured that same feel (despite trying, and in some points overtrying). 3e was inherently PC oriented, and the rise of feats, prestige classes, and wealth-per-level meant that a lot of Ravenloft's shackle's were thrown off. A paladin could live without his detect evil in 2e and still an effective PC, but in 3e he had too many automatically reliable features (smite, immunity to fear) that needed crippling to keep the sense of terror that the class was basically worthless. To keep it viable, you had to start breaking the Ravenloft Rule and thus defeat the point. Things got even worse when you started adding any sort of optional material: It was far too easy to build PCs geared at fighting the supernatural via feats, magic items, and PrCs, to the point to even try to maintain the Ravenloft Rule you had to ban whole swaths of rules, even whole books.

And that's even when they tried: The 2e version of Masque of the Red Death CRIPPLED spellcasting to keep the flavor of 1890's earth feasible. They changed spell parameters, removed spells, and then applied the Ravenloft changes on top. The 3e update? Spellcraft checks to cast and that's it.

Of course, 4e, added nothing to the conversation: no official Ravenloft material existed except for a few 4e domains and stats for Strahd. I'm sure if the fabled Ravenloft game had come out, it'd have continued the 4e notion of "never gimp the PCs" and allowed priests to wave their holy symbols over hordes of undead and blast them with divine light, just as the core rules did.

So we now come to next. It promises to be closer to AD&D in terms of play, but how about power? Will it allow the Ravenloft Rule to work with only minor changes, or will it require massive banning and re-writes to work as 3e did? Will controlling PC "I wins" be done on the micro-or-macro-level? I'm hopeful that the simpler rules, the optional magical items, and the tweaks-and-dials method of the game will allow a more faithful Ravenloft experience than 3e did.

 

[Mistwell]

In terms of the playtest rules, I've found them to be very forgiving of changing things up. For example, I gave Drow the ability to see in their own darkness, and suddenly they became very scary, but still workable. The PCs knew they could not depend on their normal tactics (after that first encounter), but they were able to adapt OK. Drow became much scarier though. It's no fun to go into a room you cannot see in, but your enemy can, every time. Particularly when the thing stalking you also uses poison, and is fast, and smart.

 

[Klaus]

I disagree that crippling all reliable class features was needed for RL. Fighters and Thieves, for instance, were barely touched. And Domains of Dread added RL-specific classes that had reliable abilities (Avenger, Anchorite, Gipsy...). You could even play a pretty straightforward Cleric or Mage if you chose to forgo Powers Check-inducing spells in favor of stuff from Abjuration, Transmutation, Illusion and other schools along those lines.

I think DDN will offer a great baseline to run RL. For starters, the game runs perfectly without magic items, which suits RL and MotRD. Hit Point recovery can be adjusted easily with the "rest length" dial (short rest = 1 night, long rest = 1 week). Add in a few modules to take care of Divinations, increase the powers of "classic" monsters and add in Fear/Horror/Madness, and you're good to go. Since most RL and MotRD games have very little actual combat, you'd be realying the most on the skill system, which is versatile enough to allow everyone to participate.

 

[Remathilis]

I disagree that crippling all reliable class features was needed for RL. Fighters and Thieves, for instance, were barely touched. And Domains of Dread added RL-specific classes that had reliable abilities (Avenger, Anchorite, Gipsy...). You could even play a pretty straightforward Cleric or Mage if you chose to forgo Powers Check-inducing spells in favor of stuff from Abjuration, Transmutation, Illusion and other schools along those lines.

Yes, a fighter could still swing a sword and a thief pick a lock. A wizard could still fireball, a cleric cure wounds. (This was a mistake the 3.5 Ravenloft game made; they overgimped each class. A powers-check chance each level of fighter you take?) Still, the abilities that could "break" the game often were gimped to keep the PCs on their toes: you can't rely on detect evil to determine if the baron is a vampire or turn undead to send him running. Later D&D seemed very hesitant to limit such things and changes the tone.

I think DDN will offer a great baseline to run RL. For starters, the game runs perfectly without magic items, which suits RL and MotRD. Hit Point recovery can be adjusted easily with the "rest length" dial (short rest = 1 night, long rest = 1 week). Add in a few modules to take care of Divinations, increase the powers of "classic" monsters and add in Fear/Horror/Madness, and you're good to go. Since most RL and MotRD games have very little actual combat, you'd be realying the most on the skill system, which is versatile enough to allow everyone to participate.

I'm hoping so.

 

[Obryn]

Isn't the solution not making magical "I win" buttons in the first place?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Isn't the solution not making magical "I win" buttons in the first place?

Yes. (Those buttons are usually, but not always, magical.)

 

[Unwise]

I run a game that is quiet similar to Ravenloft. What I have done is play up the fact that the ever present fog and rain are actually tied to the unlife of the place. When the fog rolls in heavily, things like detect evil, repel undead and divinations do not work as reliably. The same goes for the semi-regular and unnatural seeming storms. The effect of this is that I can keep the Paladins and Clerics of the world with their full power most of the time, but tone them down when I want a more horrific and suspenseful feel to a scene.

So yes, they could scan the Count to see if he is a vampire, but not if there is an elecrtical storm over his castle. Oddly, there always seems to be a storm of a thick fog surrounding that castle. The trick is using the fog and rain consistently, even when they are not relevant. I want the players to know that it is a bad night to be out on the roads and act accordingly. I don't want them thinking "oh, there is fog, so someone here must be a hidden vampire".

I think that his really helps drive home the fact that the world itself is tainted and scarey. It also adds a nice forboding which is really needed for gothic horror. The PCs can be on the road and see a storm rolling in, they really need to get to a town asap, or face something far worse than getting wet. I also sometimes have the fog change the way undead work, so for instance zombies get the save vs death if it is a 'bad night', but don't when the fog has not rolled in and there is no storm.

 

[CM]

4e did a great job at removing the "I win" buttons, but it remains to be seen if 5e will keep a tight leash on player power, or if it gets looser as time goes on. Some people see that as a feature.

 

[Lanefan]

I run a game that is quiet similar to Ravenloft. What I have done is play up the fact that the ever present fog and rain are actually tied to the unlife of the place. When the fog rolls in heavily, things like detect evil, repel undead and divinations do not work as reliably. The same goes for the semi-regular and unnatural seeming storms. The effect of this is that I can keep the Paladins and Clerics of the world with their full power most of the time, but tone them down when I want a more horrific and suspenseful feel to a scene.

So yes, they could scan the Count to see if he is a vampire, but not if there is an elecrtical storm over his castle. Oddly, there always seems to be a storm of a thick fog surrounding that castle. The trick is using the fog and rain consistently, even when they are not relevant. I want the players to know that it is a bad night to be out on the roads and act accordingly. I don't want them thinking "oh, there is fog, so someone here must be a hidden vampire".

I think that his really helps drive home the fact that the world itself is tainted and scarey. It also adds a nice forboding which is really needed for gothic horror. The PCs can be on the road and see a storm rolling in, they really need to get to a town asap, or face something far worse than getting wet. I also sometimes have the fog change the way undead work, so for instance zombies get the save vs death if it is a 'bad night', but don't when the fog has not rolled in and there is no storm.

This is excellent stuff! Ideas already flowing...

Isn't the solution not making magical "I win" buttons in the first place?

There's nothing wrong with "I win" buttons as long as:
- they are relatively rare; or difficult and-or expensive to use
- they are unreliable and-or unpredictable and-or carry high risk for the user
- the opposition also have access to them under these same conditions

Sometimes a well-placed "I win" provides the high point of a long-retold story. It's only when it becomes standard operating procedure that the problems arise.

Lan-"I win"-efan

 

[Savage Wombat]

Doesn't seem too dissimilar to the idea of whether some monsters should be immune to sneak attack damage. I expect the mind-set of "keeping players from using their powers is badwrongfun" is still quite present.