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

[thecasualoblivion]

In practical terms, it sounds like your goals are first to kick butt, and second to pretend to be someone else.

Like, it sounds like you wouldn't have fun pretending to be someone else if you had to pretend to be someone weak, right? Where those two goals conflict, you're a butt-kicker first. It's not like you're ONLY a butt-kicker, but butt-kicking isn't something that can really be compromised on if you're going to have a good time.

Am I in the right area?

If that's true, then I can see that to make and play a kick-butt character, you need to have the freedom to build a butt-kicking character (and the granularity to support many different avenues of butt-kicking), and you need to have confidence that your butt-kicking is going to be respected and honored in play. Someone's not going to just "change the rules" on you at the last minute, and the dice won't determine randomly if you kick butt or not. People who game with me comment that I can turn anything into a combat monster.

Without that, you can't be the butt-kicker you want to be. And if you can't be the butt-kicker you want to be, the roleplaying by itself isn't enough to make it a fun time for you.

If I'm not totally off-base there, I can see that 5e's different priorities would knock your fun down a few pegs.

You got it pretty close. I would call roleplaying a close second in priority, as opposed to simply a second priority. Any character I play, whatever the concept, whatever the system, ends up good in a fight. Back when I used to play oWoD, I played the most violent Ventrue you've ever seen(Fortitude was waaaaay underrated).

Where I've had the most problems is with modern games where you play regular people. Call of Cthulhu or d20 modern for example. I've learned I don't enjoy those sort of games at all, and now avoid playing games in a modern setting unless I'm playing a vampire or have superpowers or whatever.

I've been able to enjoy games that have a primary focus other than combat(a politics focused World of Darkness game, for example), but I'm still the guy whose good in a fight in those games. Whatever we play, I will end up playing that game's version of a butt kicker, and it fails to translate into play I generally won't enjoy the game.

As for the rest, my only comment would be on the dice comment you made. I'm not allergic to random failure due to dice, but confidence dictates that I should have a good idea of the odds of success and can act using that knowledge. Being able to stack the odds in my favor also helps.

 

[Manbearcat]

Well to be fair you haven't actually addressed any of the games that were listed previously... and the ones you are talking about... I am unfamiliar with.

It was my understanding that the current discussion was about (a) the varying complexity/heft of combat engines in RPGs generally and (b) the implementation of weapon mechanics within those varying engines specifically? Am I wrong there?

If I'm not wrong, then what I was trying to do was discuss the way varying systems (Dogs, Powered By the Apoc with DW, and Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy - MHRP as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] had specifically brought that one up) handle the above.

1. If the gun is the only way to initiate a lethal resolution... is it really a choice or is it just a characteristic of guns?

2. I would assume deploying a weapon period would mean there is a chance that an encounter ends with a lethal resolution to the conflict... but are you saying that knives in this game can't kill, but guns can? If so... why?

You can have lethal outcomes with knives (and the like), it is just exceedingly rare due to the math of the system. Post-scene, you roll all of your Fallout dice. Knives (and the like) yield a d8 value. You take the sum of your top two. If you get 13-15, and you're in danger of perishing (one bad Body check away from moving to the next one). If you roll 16 +, you're in grave danger (call it - HPs with one Death Save). 20 and you're dead.

Oh there is definitely a choice. But you have to understand (as I said above), the choice may very well be on a different axis than what D&D typically shoots for (with the reward cycle and thematic indifference often leading to murderhoboing).

You're one of God's Watchdogs. Its your job to root out sin/demonic influence, mete out justice, and uphold The Faith. If your niece has joined a gang of thieves and rabblerousers and your brother has his shotgun and is about to go on a rampage, you need to stop him (because that is murder). But if words don't work, and fists don't work (because the resolution system and your decisions within it say so)...are you gonna pull out some heat and go to work and risk killing your brother? That is going to be a tough call. Also, you'll either have outright Relationship dice with him (decided during the character build phase or earned through play) or you'll get the default d6 to use because he is a blood relative.

What is the follow-on conflict if you are bested by your brother in the street and he guns someone down? What if you gun him down in the street?

But if you're facing a street gang who is terrorizing a town or inspiring all manner of sin? You may start with threats and then go straight to cocking the hammer on your Colt Dragoon. Especially if they are violating a particularly volatile sin and it is one that you have a Relationship with.

What is the follow-on conflict if you fail to root out this sin and mete out justice in this town (eg you Give - think the story loss evasion mechanics in 13th Age - rather than escalating in the conflict because it was moving toward lethality and quickly getting away from you)? What if an innocent dies in the gunfire of a shootout on the street?

Regarding combat and weapons in DitV, that is the type of mental and emotional overhead players must manage.

I'll engage with your commentary/questions on DW and C+ HF tomorrow. Time for bed.

 

[pemerton]

The cliff's not trying to kill you, per se.

But, seriously, that looks, to me, like an argument that climbing the cliff should be more complex. I don't see it, that'd seem boring. Is that what you're getting at? Combat's more detailed because it's meant to be exciting, where more of the game 'happens?'

What I'm trying to get at it is that the decision to resolve climbing via a single check, but to resolve combat via a complex series of checks that often also involve multiple dimensions (initiative, to hit, damage) together with non-random elements also that themselves frame the options for dice-rolling (eg movement and positioning, in D&D, is non-random), is just that - it's a decision.

And this is not an abstract point, it's a practical one - because there are other RPGs out there, including fantasy and action adventure RPGs, that have decided differently, and therefore don't load combat up with special mechanical baggage that other domains of conflict and drama lack.

I was motivated to make this point because some posters upthread suggested that D&D's mechanical focus on combat is not reflective of a choice made by the D&D designers, but is rather a more-or-less natural or inevitable consequence of the significance of combat in fantasy and/or action RPGing. That is not true.

If you want combat to be the main focus of mechanical action because you feel it's more exciting, then that's a fine decision. Likewise if you think that, in the particular fantasy fiction to which D&D aspires, combat is the ultimate crucible for the resolution of conflict. But if you make such a decision (or embrace a game whose designers have made such a decision), it hardly makes sense to then go on and lambast those who enjoy that excitement, and want to deploy those mechanics, as "not real roleplayers".

 

[Imaro]

This example of a "vow" doesn't generate any sort of mechanical disadvantage or burden on the player. I think that's a sufficient basis for drawing a distinction.

Sure it does... My AC suffers because I can't ever use a shield... even when it might be more advantageous to have a higher defense vs. doing more damage...

I thought we were meant to be into rulings rather than rules!

What do rulings have to do with this? We're in the realm of making stuff up whole cloth, not making rulings. Are there any rules in the book for what a particular descriptor can or can't be? Can or can't do? So what exactly am I "ruling" on? It's like saying hey, since D&D 5e has classes it's just making a ruling to create a Warlord class...

This really just takes us back to the bigger issue: why does combat need detailed rules (eg weapon damage rules, facing rules, reach rules, etc) but talking, climbing etc have a rules framework that occupies not much more than half-a-column of text (the GM settles on certainty or uncertainty, if the latter sets a DC, then a skill check is made). If adjudication of fictional positioning is good enough for the latter, I just don't see why it's an inherent problem for the former.


Climbing a cliff can be as complex as fighting an orc - and is unlikely to devolve into violence - yet in D&D it has almost always been resolved via a single die roll. You haven't given any reason why combat demands to be anything but an opposed check.

I think you're viewing this incorrectly... First, climbing has more to it than just setting a DC and rolling. Climbing has it's own special movement rules... the DM has to rule whether a failed roll means no progress, a setback or falling... and so on

More importantly climbing would be a part of the exploration pillar akin to a single round of combat at most (and even that might be a stretch) and thus in and of itself shouldn't be as complex as an entire combat (which is a combination of discrete round by round actions akin to the "action" of climbing that when combined compose an entire pillar).

@Manbearcat addressed MHRP directly (Cortex+).

Ok...

The weight of choice is moved from mechanical minutiae to fiction and framing. Again, I find it odd to have that dismissed as exemplifying a lack of weight in a thread where the OP has repeatedly been lectured about caring too much about mechanics.

Did I lecture the OP about anything? If not why quote me and cite what others are doing as some sort of... what exactly?

IMO...The difference is that the "mechanical minutiae" is defined and thus gives you concrete advantages and disadvantages around the choice you make. On the other hand in the other systems being discussed it is purely up to consensus and /or GM judgement as to what weight if any your choice has in the context of the game... If you prefer one over the other cool... but it doesn't change the fact that mechanically there is little to no difference or weight behind the free-form descriptors in games like FATE, HeroQuest, etc.

In other words an attack with the descriptor Dagger Dervish +2 or Disciplined Sword Saint +2 amount to the same thing mechanically.

 

[Guest 6801328]

This makes me think of Keanu Reaves, who I supposed is technically an "actor" but he always plays the same character. Not sure if he *can* play another character.

 

[Shasarak]

Seems cool to me, and means that the first time the party fights a ghost, you can use your fathers ancestral sword, instead of reaching into the golf bag and grabbing out some magical axe you found somewhere in what has to be one of the most immersion breaking things required of fighters ever.

I would have imagined that expecting your fathers ancestral sword to be able to hit every kind of creature would be only slightly less immersion breaking then being able to fireball a Fire Elemental.

 

[pemerton]

Players absolutely want to impact the game and take charge. But they want to do it without "controlling the planchette". They want to overcome challenges purely as their character. If they can use the powers of the DM to overcome their goals then they have instantly failed to overcome the challenges "as that character".

I think there's plenty of room for different playstyles, some of which are very concerned about who gets to control and contribute to the world and its fiction.

This is the second time in this thread that posters other than me have equated impact the fiction with do stuff that the GM normally does. (It happened earlier upthread, with [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION].)

It seems pretty clear to me that [MENTION=59096]thecasualoblivion[/MENTION] wants to impact the fiction, but as a player, not as a GM. He (? I hope I've got this right) wants to be able to confidently declare actions for his PC, with a robust sense of how those action declarations will be adjudicated, and what the outcomes will be of rolling high or rolling low. And he wants to be able to bend the fiction to his will - eg when (as is PC) he desires that a monster or NPC be dead, he wants to have a robust mechanical capability to make this so, in the fiction. Hence the significance of DPR.

This sort of desire to be able, as a player, to confidently engage with the fiction and shape it, has nothing to do with "using the powers of the DM". But, as I posted upthread, in many of the posts on this thread there is an implicit suggestion that wanting to impact the fiction in this sort of way is not a virtuous way to engage a RPG.

Which is why I was reminded of Ron Edwards's point about "moving the planchette". He is not saying anything about who has authority over backstory (what, on ENworld, is often called "narrative mechanics"). He is referring to an approach to RPGing which effaces, rather than acknowledges, that the game proceeds by way of participants making moves that shape the fiction. If we think it is a virtue to ignore the ability to make such moves in building PCs; and to ignore that we are making such moves in declaring actions for PCs; then we are - it seems - trying to maintain a pretence that the planchette moves itself.

In practice, what this tends to mean I think - at least for D&D - is that the GM does most of the moving. As we see in the suggestion that it is good RPing to choose a low-damage weapon for your fighter, which choice the GM will then make up for by throwing you a bone. Why not just let the player move the planchette him-/herself?

 

[pemerton]

Sure it does... My AC suffers because I can't ever use a shield... even when it might be more advantageous to have a higher defense vs. doing more damage...

Maybe I'm missing your point here, but it seems to me that - at least in 4e and 5e D&D - the trade off between a two-handed weapon (more damage) vs one-handed weapon and shield (more defence) is expected to be a meaningful one, where neither option is strictly superior to the other.

So choosing to have a two-handed sword or axe, vs a one-handed longsword or battleaxe + shield, is not imposing a mechanical burden on your PC.

Whereas if you are a barbarian who chooses a quarterstaff as your two-handed weapon (d8 rather than d12 for the axe) then you have imposed a mechanical burden on your PC.

My suggestion was that, in the latter sort of case (previously I canvassed a monk who renounces weapons, or a fighter who wields only a shortsword), we could add a Vow slot to the personality mechanics ("I vow never to use a weapon", "I vow to wield only my father's shortsword", maybe the barbarian admires druids and says "I vow never to wield tools made of metal"). The player would then get Inspiration for upholding the vow, which would counter-act the mechanical penalty to damage.

As I already said, I haven't done the maths in any serious way - it's just an example of the sort of thing that can be done within a 5e-ish context. I don't think the logic of it is that puzzling.

Are there any rules in the book for what a particular descriptor can or can't be? Can or can't do? So what exactly am I "ruling" on?

<snip>

The difference is that the "mechanical minutiae" is defined and thus gives you concrete advantages and disadvantages around the choice you make. On the other hand in the other systems being discussed it is purely up to consensus and /or GM judgement as to what weight if any your choice has in the context of the game... If you prefer one over the other cool... but it doesn't change the fact that mechanically there is little to no difference or weight behind the free-form descriptors in games like FATE, HeroQuest, etc.

In other words an attack with the descriptor Dagger Dervish +2 or Disciplined Sword Saint +2 amount to the same thing mechanically.

I don't know what "book" you're referring to. Do you mean the HeroQuest revised rulebook? Or the FATE core rulebook?

Upthread (post 605), you said "I don't agree that the systems themselves are particularly good at representing a wide variety of character types mechanically because the games like HeroQuest, Fate, etc essentially eliminate there being an actual choice with weight." I replied by saying that "The weight of choice is moved from mechanical minutiae to fiction and framing." Now you are asking whether there is a mechanical difference between Dagger Dervish and Disciplined Sword Saint.

To repeat myself: the difference or the weight is located in the fiction and the framing. If it never matters in the fiction of your game that you are a Dagger Dervish rather than a Disciplined Sword Saint, then you are correct (tautologically correct, I think) that nothing will turn on which descriptor a player writes on the sheet.

Just off the top of my head, here are some circumstances in which the choice of descriptor might matter in a practical or procedural way: you are fighting in confined quarters; you are in a combat where you and your opponent(s) start outside of arm's reach; you want to use your weapon to reach under a couch/vehicle/low-ish verandah/etc to knock out some item that has fallen underneath it; you are trying to sneak into somewhere while armed; you are applying for a job with the militia; you are trying to do an impressive dance.

Here are some circumstances in which it might matter in a more dramatic way: you are trying to become master of the dojo; you have to fight a duel over a point of honour; you arrive at the Temple of the Moon and beseech the high priest for aid.

As for what is being "ruled on": in these games (I can't comment so much on FATE, which I don't know as well, but I think it is broadly similar in this respect to HeroWars/Quest, Maelstrom Storytelling, etc) the GM has to adjudicate fictional positioning to (i) establish that action declarations are permitted (eg if my PC is across the road from yours as a procession is passing by, I probably can't declare an attack against your PC using Dagger Dervish), and (ii) to impose any modifiers on the raw check that might be required (eg if my dagger-wielding PC has to close on your sword-saint PC across an open field, you will have the advantage due to weapon length).

This doesn't seem to me to be wildly different from what a 5e GM has to do in adjudicating non-combat action declarations (which requires determining if success is possible, if so if it is uncertain, if so what the DC is, and also whether or not a given skill is applicable). This is why I was puzzled by your suggestion that adjudicating action declarations in these games has some sort of problematic feature that D&D lacks.

 

[Manbearcat]

Alright, back at it. I'm going to invert the rest and start with the bottom.

I disagree (at least in 5e)... there are broad fighting styles, damage differences, feats, restrictions based on classes, properties, style considerations, magic treasures found, situational aspects and so on that, at least IME, don't make this true... unless of course the DM purposefully feeds into this hard specialization... caters to it with treasure placement, encounter makeup and so on.

If you say this works out that way at your table, then I'll take your word for it. But it is hard for me to imagine this working out in a game with feats (which pack so much potency and therefore narrowing of opportunity cost with respect to action value). A game with feats seems to tend to push play toward weapon/tactics specialization; Polearm Master/Sharpshooter, Bless, Help Action/Inspiration leveraging, etc. Magic items with speced weapon only further narrows things.

Now, a game without feats? I think a fighter spending ASIs on Str and Dex will naturally diversify their portfolio and broaden action value. This is the 5e that I ran and I saw a bit of switching from Range weapons to Reach weapons or to sidearm and shield. That mostly resembled my experience running Moldvay Basic so good on them (as I think that is what they were going for). This was similar to the game I ran with a Slayer with the general Expertise Feat (+1/tier all weapons and quick draw) and Alternate Advancement (DMG2) rules rather than + hit/damage to magic items.

The game of D&D where I've seen the most switching of weapons on a per combat and per adventuring day basis? 4e D&D with AA rules and the Weaponmaster fighter with (a) an actual golfbag of weapons (with their own tags/riders) and (b) the suite of powers that have varying boons/riders for each weapon group embedded within.

This doesn't seem like free-form descriptor to me, which is what the discussion was about... in fact it seems pretty close to D&D, especially since there are older editions where damage was based around class... and newer editions have properties on weapons.

Again, I didn't know the discussion was solely about free-form descriptor systems. I thought that was one focused area of it, but not the totality. If that is the case, then only C+ applies.

It should seem pretty close to D&D. Dungeon World is pretty much a mash-up of Moldvay Basic and 4e using the Powered By the Apocalypse system (and some other indie inspiration). The thing that makes Dungeon World extremely different is it is utterly fiction first. It is not constrained at all by the artificiality of the wargame-inspired, strictly mechanical architecture that is (a) initiative, (b) rounds/turns, (c) action economy, (d) precise units for spatial orientation, (e) facing, (f) movement rate, etc.

Its tags orient players strictly around the fiction rather than a mechanical proxy and play moves from there (see my quick and dirty examples in the post you responded to). And with the lack of constraining wargame components, combats become much more dynamic without having to rely on the typically limiting mechanical tech as a proxy. With situations snowballing as they due to the basic procedures of play (and the nature of the tags and moves), you'll get varying weapons used in battle (sometimes used Awkwardly - another tag which would generate a take -1 and/or a 7-9 result at best) and varying difficult decisions with respect to weapon deployment/loss and having to reorient yourself spatially and tactically.

If you're interested in an extended example, start here.

I'll answer your stuff about Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy later. Have to exit stage left.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

As for the rest, my only comment would be on the dice comment you made. I'm not allergic to random failure due to dice, but confidence dictates that I should have a good idea of the odds of success and can act using that knowledge. Being able to stack the odds in my favor also helps.

5e's Bounded Accuracy may be giving you an issue here. Its designed to keep balance in terms of low-level monsters and players vs high level ones. However it does mean that unlike 3.5, you can't generally build a character to the extreme of you requiring anything other than a natural 1 to fail for example. Neither are there many automatic effects such as in 4th edition: if you want to shove a monster away, you have to roll for it.

Without memorising the MM or expecting the DM to tell you what a monster's Str(Athletics) score is, you're unlikely to be able to calculate the exact odds for any action, but you can get a pretty good idea generally simply because there is less stat inflation compared to 3.5 for example.

This makes me think of Keanu Reaves, who I supposed is technically an "actor" but he always plays the same character. Not sure if he *can* play another character.

If playing a combat monster all the time is what he enjoys, then there isn't a problem with it. I get the impression that some of the concepts of 5e are already outside his comfort zone, so sticking to something familiar in terms of roleplaying is perfectly natural.

Besides, there is no reason to suppose that he plays all his characters the same way. Just because a character is mechanically effective in combat doesn't mean that it has to be roleplayed as a violent thug. There are actors (not Keanu Reeves) who can play different characters even if they generally star in action films for example.