Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="GnomeWorks" data-source="post: 5868345" data-attributes="member: 162">Okay, I think I'm okay with that. I think my knee-jerk reaction was due to that the phrase is usually used in regards to how fast movement is accomplished - ie, if the players need to get somewhere and the DM wants it to take two weeks, their mode of transportation will take two weeks, even if in other instances it would take one week, or a month.However, if you're in a situation where the PCs need to just sit around for a couple months waiting for something else to happen, generally handwaving that time-period in some fashion is, IMO, acceptable. I'd prefer less handwaving, but also understand that dealing with the intricacies of day-to-day living while just waiting can be mind-numbingly boring.So is combat.But is this because that is what players want, or is it because that's what the system allows for, in terms of character focus?I would argue that D&D has always lent itself to a stronger combat-based approach, because - as I've pointed out - every class has a combat aspect. Not every class has an exploration or a social aspect. If this were changed, I imagine your percentages would, as well.As the side-dish to the entree. They're not the focal point. Even the ranger and the rogue, the most explorer-y of the classes, have strong combat aspects.We also don't need a suite of magical powers for combat, yet here we are.They aren't needed, but imagine what the game would look like if they were there. I think it would be significantly more balanced among the pillars, and allow for a wider breadth of play.No reason the combat aspects of classes couldn't be turned into skills. *shrug*I'm not going to say that you should, because that would be ludicrous. We don't ask for a skill check to tie your shoes; asking a question of someone willing to answer shouldn't call for a skill check, either.You just have to reframe the concepts of exploration and social encounters in a way that makes them similar to combat, which has a definite beginning and definite end.In any given challenge, there are two outcomes - you succeed, or you fail. In combat, success means you win and your enemies are defeated; failure means you are defeated, whether that means you're dead, unconscious, taken prisoner, whatever.In exploration, the goal is to get from Point A to Point B. Success means you arrive, failure means you don't. Failure might mean that you die (you decided to go through a mountain pass closed for the winter, and got avalanche'd on), or it just means you have to try again from a new Point A after recuperating and getting more supplies. Failure is significantly less definite, but success isn't.Social encounters are, I'll admit, a lot trickier in terms of defining them in this kind of framework. However, if you take a social encounter to mean trying to convince someone to see something your way, then success means they agree with you, and failure means they don't (or they even wind up making you agree with them! Though that's a lot harder to do when you're dealing with PCs). There's no reason this couldn't be represented by a more indepth system than just simple bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate.I... don't know where this tangent came from?I don't know about anybody else in the thread, but I'm not talking about doing a strict IRL:IC time comparison. I'm more for having definite units of time being used in-game, that can be referenced by in-game mechanics, not the marriage of real time to game time.</blockquote>

Verification