D&D 3E/3.5 Thoughts of a 3E/4E powergamer on starting to play 5E

[hawkeyefan]

The thing for me for 5E is that I can't count on the DM. If I'm in a situation where we're playing a home game where we're cooperating to make things enjoyable for everyone, it won't be a 5E game. There are enough players in my area that I don't have to play 5E if I don't want to. This being said, 5E in my area is dominating organized play, so if I'm going to be playing 5E it will be in that setting. I used to do a lot of organized play during 4E, and I kind of miss it.

Would you feel the same if it actually was a 5E home game rather than an organized play game?

Is it really more a matter of the game varying by DM instead of being as codified as 3E and 4E?

 

[pkt77242]

A 5E character has far less of these abilities than a 4E or 3E character. The problem for 5E is a matter of degree.

Permission mostly applies to concrete "X happens" abilities, powers and spells. For skill checks, it does come down to probability, but that probability is far less transparent to the player in 5E than it would be in 3E or 4E. Again, this is a matter of degree.

You keep saying that you need the DM's permission when you really seem to be talking about codified options/abilities

It is fine to say that there isn't enough options/powers abilities but that is still very different from needing the DM's permission. I think that the wording it is causing some of the disagreement. I think that you probably would get people to agree that their is a lack of options/abilities in 5E in comparison to 4E and 3E (though some people are very happy about that).

 

[Guest 6801328]

Potentially. The same thing can happen if a player takes longsword specialisation, or archery style, or whatever for his/her fighter and the GM rules that no longswords (or bows, or arrows) can be had for either love or money.

Or the wizard PC knows fireball, and the GM rules that there is no bat guano to be found anywhere in the land.

D&D tends not to have explicit rules, or even guidelines, on how the GM is meant to handle these issues where player abilities depend upon elements of the shared fiction over which the GM has the final say. (Though as [MENTION=59096]thecasualoblivion[/MENTION] notes, 4e is a bit of an exception here, with a more explicit orientation towards "say yes".)

My own view is that once a player has an ability like that, the GM is expected to allow it to come into play. A bit like thieves stealing the MU's spell book, I think a little bit of infiction action denial can go a long way. (In this post, I give an example of when - as a consequence of adjudicating a skill challenge - a PC's familiar was temporarily shut down. At the time, this example prompted a long discussion in another thread of when shutting down abilities via adjudication of the fiction is fair or unfair, when it is best seen as GM force or a consequence of what a player has staked, etc.)

As I see it, there are two main ways that the players impact the fiction.

One way is that they declare an action, and the GM says yes - so the fiction changes in the appropriate way, and the game moves on. Sometimes the rules might oblige the GM to say yes - eg the player casts a Wall of Force spell, and so now the GM is obliged to allow that a wall of force has been brought into being - and sometimes this is up to the GM. In D&D, traditionally spells (and other magical effects) have been the main way to oblige the GM to say yes. But there have been other examples (eg the yakuza class in the original OA book has abilities around contacts and calling on clan assistance that come pretty close to this; and as has been discussed in this thread, there are 4e non-spell abilities that can do this).

The other way is that a player declares an action, and the GM calls for a check, and the check succeeds. In this case, the more resources the player can bring to bear (bonuses to checks; rerolls; etc) the more control the player has over the outcome. I personally find it fairly satisfying for the player to be able to expend resources roughly in proportion to the extent that they care about the outcome. (In 5e this might be via Inspiration, for instance; and you can then get a reward cycle going if the player can earn the inspiration back by declaring the action in the first place, because there is an alignment between what the player cares about and how the goals/flaws etc of the PC are framed.)

In your terminology, is the first way what you mean by "narratively" and the second what you mean by "mechanically"?

Not exactly. By "mechanically impact the fiction" I mean altering something that is is based in mechanics. E.g. the DM has a door that can only be opened by speaking the command phrase, with no obvious way to pick it and a ridiculous DC to force it. So a player casts Passwall and the DM is left scrambling to figure out what they're going to do for the next 2 hours of play time.

By "narratively" I mean simply adding details that the DM didn't invent, but that don't affect the mechanics of the game. The player succeeds at a Persuade roll, so he narrates how he noticed the lady's pendant (which the DM hadn't inserted into the game) and notices that it suggests she's a member of the Royal Waterdhavian Wildflower Society, so he mentions how the monster they're trying to kill is known for consuming honey bees....etc. The player has inserted details into the campaign, to narrate the outcome of his roll, but it doesn't affect anything that would be subject to a rule or a dice roll.

 

[Guest 6801328]

You keep saying that you need the DM's permission when you really seem to be talking about codified options/abilities

It is fine to say that there isn't enough options/powers abilities but that is still very different from needing the DM's permission. I think that the wording it is causing some of the disagreement. I think that you probably would get people to agree that their is a lack of options/abilities in 5E in comparison to 4E and 3E (though some people are very happy about that).

Yup, this.

Pemerton has some interesting points about the role of the DM in various editions, but I don't think that's what casualoblivion meant. And in any event those differences are going to be slight and hardly ever actually show up at the table.

 

[Ancalagon]

In 4e, as a general rule the NPCs/monsters don't have the same degree of control as the players. Instead, they tend to have bigger numbers (higher base hp; higher base damage, though the latter can be subject to quite a degree of table variation, depending on PC builds).

The basic narrative of 4e combat is therefore that the NPCs/monsters start on top of things, as they are beating up the PCs and are not going down themselves; but then, as the players draw upon their greater depth of resources (eg abilities that unlock healing surges and hence restore lost hp; limited use abilities that exercise a high degree of battlefield control; etc), the tide turns and the PCs carry the field.

On the GM side, the skill is mostly in coming up with an interesting suite of creatures and terrain that will introduce some enjoyable subtlety or variation into that basic narrative. On the player side, the skill is mostly in making good calls about which resources to use, and when; plus the kudos of doing it with less rather than more resource consumption.

In that sense, the two roles are not symmetric.

This narrative makes for a good fight but... I'm not comfortable with the notion that there is only one general narrative for how a fight should go! What about "the PCs walk into an ambush and beat a hasty retreat because they have no idea who they are facing?" Or the "PCs lure an aggressive monster to attack the front gate of the evil temple"? Or "the PCs set a vicious trap for the enemy and wipe the floor"? etc etc

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6777737]Bacon Bits[/MENTION], in my view notes for a skill challenge in a published module have to be treated in the same way as the tactical notes for a combat encounter: they are guidelines to help a GM who is otherwise unsure about how to adjudicate the fiction.

The basic instructions in the DMG (p 74) are that "You describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results." The idea of narrating results is elaborate upon in the DMG2 (p 83): "Each skill check in a challenge should . . . ntroduce a new option . . . change the situation . . . [or] grant the players a tangible consequence". (Some people take the view that the DMG2 was a correction or alteration. To me, it was clear what "narrating the results" meant before the DMG2 was published, perhaps because I was familiar with the skill challenge idea from other, earlier RPGs with similar mechanical systems.)

I don't doubt that a table where skill challenges are run just as a series of rolls, ignoring the step of narrating the results, and hence reframing the fiction for the ensuing checks, will have a boring time of it.

On some of the other matters you raise:

Nonsensical results: if a PC cuts off an orc's head, but the orc still has 6 hp left, that's nonsensical! Answer: in general, the PC hasn't cut off the orc's head until it is reduced to zero hp.

If for some reason the whole combat framing becomes irrelevant - say a tidal wave is conjured and washes everyone away - then we deem the combat over even though the orc hadn't been reduced to zero hp. A skill challenge might be similarly obviated.

Die rolls: if a player declares an action that is automatically successful, then no roll is needed. In the DMG and the DMG2, the canonical examples of such actions are rituals, but other possibilities are obviously possible. (Likewise in combat: if I sneak up behind the guard and don't fumble my garrote, then presumably the guard is dead with no need to roll an attack die.)

Bonus XP: Whatever happens - success or failure - the players will earn more XP, because (unless the campaign comes to an end) the GM will frame them into more encounters.

To my mind, the real problem with the structure of "fail the challenge and having a random combat encounter" is that the penalty for failure is boredom. 4e is quite good at barracking for "fail forward", but not all that good at giving robust practical examples. That's why I take a lot of my 4e GMing advice from Luke Crane's Adventure Burner for Burning Wheel and other non-D&D books!

 

[pemerton]

By "narratively" I mean simply adding details that the DM didn't invent, but that don't affect the mechanics of the game. The player succeeds at a Persuade roll, so he narrates how he noticed the lady's pendant (which the DM hadn't inserted into the game) and notices that it suggests she's a member of the Royal Waterdhavian Wildflower Society, so he mentions how the monster they're trying to kill is known for consuming honey bees....etc. The player has inserted details into the campaign, to narrate the outcome of his roll, but it doesn't affect anything that would be subject to a rule or a dice roll.

I don't think any version of D&D has much of this, though there has always been some here and there.

When I talk about impacting the fiction I am talking about (or at least think I am talking about) what you call "plot": exerting protagonism so as to generate outcomes that serve the PCs' (and thereby the players') goals/aspirations/ideals.

Not all RPGing involves players with goals in this sense (eg in Runequest or Classic Traveller, the players might just be finding out what happens to their PCs as they explore the world; in traditional CoC, the players find out in what way their PCs go insane this time).

When RPGing does involve such goals, and when they are more complex than beating the dungeon, then the issue of who gets to decide whether or not they are accomplished can become a pretty big deal, both in game design and in actual play at the table. (I see a lot of discussions about "railroading" or "player entitlement" through this prism - not necessarily all of them, but many of them.)

The ability of players to introduce backstory by their own efforts without needing to go via the GM - like your example of the pendant - can be related to this, but on the whole I think is secondary. (In games where it is possible, I also think it is generally mechanical - eg in OGL Conan you spend a fate point; in Burning Wheel you make a Wise or Circles check; etc.)

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton has some interesting points about the role of the DM in various editions, but I don't think that's what casualoblivion meant. And in any event those differences are going to be slight and hardly ever actually show up at the table.

I don't agree with the last sentence.

At least in my experience, both as a player and as a poster, those differences can be pretty huge, and are at the heart of many discussions around "railroading", "player entitlement", "Am I a good/bad/foolish GM?", etc. As well as discussions about systems, editions etc that generate similar sorts of concerns.

(Maybe you mean: the differences are real, but changing editions won't change the GMing style. I disagree with that less, but I think different editions suit different styles to different and noticeable degrees.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

What about "the PCs walk into an ambush and beat a hasty retreat because they have no idea who they are facing?"

OXMG, what about it? Every since "Pursuit & Evasion of Pursuit" in the 1e DMG, D&D has consistently and utterly failed to give PC parties a viable 'run away' option. Seriously. DM-hand-waving required. In theory, 4e Skill Challenges offered a way to finally handle escaping an encounter as a viable/playable option. They were never that well-presented, though, and were initially as broken as any sub-system I'd ever seen (early SCs actually got /easier/ as you raised the primary indicator of difficulty, 'complexity').

Or the "PCs lure an aggressive monster to attack the front gate of the evil temple"? Or "the PCs set a vicious trap for the enemy and wipe the floor"? etc etc

All depends on the group, of course.
But, those could be examples of players trying to evade vs leverage the system. In many systems (not just D&D, though of course, as the first RPG, it all started there), there were explicit mechanics so unfavorable or unplayable that the best thing to do was maneuver things around until you found a gap in those rules and the DM had to insert a ruling, instead - hopefully, if you manipulated things correctly, a ruling entirely in your favor. 5e, with 'rulings over rules' cuts to the chase and encourages the DM to do that without the players having to jump through a lot of hoops first.
Conversely, in some systems it's highly desirable to position yourself so the mechancis favor you, in spite of the DM. You see a lot of enthusiasm for 'RAW' among players using such systems.

 

[Valador]

Not gonna dig through all the posts but it seems that the OP really just wants to play a video game. If dice are too random for you, you may be playing the wrong game. WOW may be a better alternative. You can twink your heart out.