D&D General What Is D&D Generally Bad At That You Wish It Was Better At?

[pemerton]

I think D&D is historically pretty bad at "courtly intrigue." It is a staple of both historical and fantastical fiction, but there has never really been a mechanism in D&D that aids with courtly intrigue. This is a subset of the broader lack of decent social interaction rules, but I am calling out courtly intrigue just because it is a staple of the genre(s) D&D purports to be at least adjacent to. I have tried a few different fixes in various editions, from integrating others game system to developing "social combat" rules, and none of it has ever really worked. i think part of that is because in most versions of D&D, there just aren't any mechanical bits defining characters outside of exploration and combat.

4e D&D supports courtly intrigue - there are social skills, and skill challenge resolution.

Here are a couple of actual play examples:

P

Thread 'Actual play: my first "social only" session'

Aug 11, 2011

On the weekend I ran my first session of 4e that invovled only social interaction. So I thought I'd post about how it went.

The starting point
The PCs are low paragon - a dwarf fighter/warpriest of Moradin, a paladin of the Raven Queen, a wizard/invoker, a drow chaos sorcerer/demonskin adept, and a ranger-cleric of the Raven Queen. The player of the ranger-cleric was absent from the session.

The scenario combines elements of Thunderspire Labyringth (a 4e module), Heathen (from a 2008 online Dragon magazine), Speaker in Dreams (a 3E module from WotC) and Night's Dark...

• pemerton
• Replies: 51
• Forum: *Pathfinder & Starfinder

• 

P

Thread 'Whelm reforged as Overwhelm, and other recent skill challenges'

Jun 12, 2012

My 4e campaign is in a bit of a rest and recuperation period after a big campaign arc (starting at 1st level) came to an end with the PCs at 16th level.

In the downtime, the players have been planning their next move(s), tying up loose ends, buying and making new equipment, planning the renovation of the temple of Erathis that they are re-founding, etc.

One interesting part of this, for me, has been running a number of complexity 1 skill challenges to resolve the various situations that have been coming up in the course of this.

To renovate their temple, the PCs first had to repossessit...

• pemerton
• Replies: 8
• Forum: *Pathfinder & Starfinder

• 

Non-magical hero options.

<snip>

4e was probably the best for this with the ability to do a whole competent and balanced martial party and to use inherent bonuses to go without magic items and have the default math work.

4e is excellent for non-magical hero options, at least as I experienced it.

 

[Corinnguard]

Rangers.

Hot mess design wise. Overpowered (1E, Gloomstalker) or meh (2E, 3.0, Beastmaster)or doesn't feel right (3.5, 4E).

All over the place design wise.

One reason why I took a liking to Laser Llama's version of the Ranger class.

Alternate Ranger by laserllama

Alternate Ranger by laserllama - Created with GM Binder.

www.gmbinder.com

Its' Knacks feature allows for more customization for your Ranger character, and they are a prepared half-caster.

Have you never seen a game that uses social interaction rules before?

How about a game where each class has class features that cover all three pillars of game play (combat, social interaction, exploration)? 5.5e is just now talking about these three pillars and hasn't gotten into the mechanics of how each class approaches these pillars. Level Up has done this for each of its' classes. They have more class features for each class (outside those provided by the class archetypes) and less dead levels than 5e.

PF did a nice job of having lots of class features for its' classes as it lessened the need to do a multiclass dip into another class. I like to think the Level Up also lessens this need. But if you do multiclassing in Level Up, there's a bit of an incentive to do so thanks to its' synergy feat chains.

I don't think social interaction rules are the fix, however; in fact I think that'd make it worse if anything.

Especially when each class approaches social interaction differently.

 

[GrimCo]

I've run exactly that with the system (PF). What were your problems?

Too many classes have magic (5e) and pure non magic using classes were subpar without magic gear (3e). I played too little of 4e to have enough experience in it. Magic item dependency, specially in 3.x cause at some point, monsters begin developing resistances and immunities to non magic weapons. Healing (in 3.x) was very slow without casters or magic items. It's good for more gritty game, but no so much for action packed one with lots of combat. Without magic items, saves and AC is rather low, to hit and damage is also lagging and higher level monsters pack decent punch.

 

[Theory of Games]

Too many classes have magic (5e) and pure non magic using classes were subpar without magic gear (3e). I played too little of 4e to have enough experience in it. Magic item dependency, specially in 3.x cause at some point, monsters begin developing resistances and immunities to non magic weapons. Healing (in 3.x) was very slow without casters or magic items. It's good for more gritty game, but no so much for action packed one with lots of combat. Without magic items, saves and AC is rather low, to hit and damage is also lagging and higher level monsters pack decent punch.

Yeah that's all GM issues. I banned casters and didn't use any monsters that required magic to harm. Slow (natural) healing has been an aspect of D&D until 4e came along. It seems as if you're expecting Sword & Sorcery to have the same gameplay "feel" as High Fantasy, which it shouldn't. A good GM has to know how to adjust the rules to create the proper play experience.

Can't blame the system for that

 

[TiQuinn]

D&D is generally "bad" at dexterity, agility, and swashbuckling.

The reason is, splitting agility between both Strength and Dexterity, creates mechanical death for the entire theme and tropes.

Strength itself must be agile, athletic, and the single go-to stat necessary for an agile character concept.

Other than real life gymnastics, speed and agility requires strength, what in the game does not work?

This appears to be simply not liking the labels on the ability score.

 

[GrimCo]

Yeah that's all GM issues. I banned casters and didn't use any monsters that required magic to harm. Slow (natural) healing has been an aspect of D&D until 4e came along. It seems as if you're expecting Sword & Sorcery to have the same gameplay "feel" as High Fantasy, which it shouldn't. A good GM has to know how to adjust the rules to create the proper play experience.

Can't blame the system for that

Banning casters isn't problem. You just lose most of classes. Which is cool. Not feel of High fantasy. Slow healing is problem when you are going for that 80's S&S action movie feel. For more GoT style game, with sparse combat, sure, can be done. But if you want that cool kick ass & chew bubble gum, Manowar blasting, leather & loincloth wearing, action galore ( like Conan, Red Sonja, Beastmaster, Kull the Conquerer) or even something like 13th warrior, not so much, at least not straight out of box.

We are talking about what is good out of the box, not what can be done with DM doing heavy lifting.

 

[The Soloist]

Green Ronin’s a game of thrones rpg has that. A noble in plain clothes can use social standing and interaction to stop a warrior in full armor from attacking him. GR lost the licence. They rebranded it as the Chronicle system. Never play it but I like the idea.

 

[Theory of Games]

We are talking about what is good out of the box, not what can be done with DM doing heavy lifting.

Yeah but adaptability is one of D&D's key features. Outside of the BrOSR, nobody's playing D&D RAW nor did the game's designer expect us to. It's kind of weird to me that someone (not you) might say, "Well, playing D&D rules-as-written inhibits X-style of play".

I'd also opine that what you call "heavy lifting" is just the normal legwork all GMs do to prepare one-shots or campaigns. Finally, I'm not suggesting you're wrong or anything. These are just our viewpoints, right?

 

[GrimCo]

Yeah but adaptability is one of D&D's key features. Outside of the BrOSR, nobody's playing D&D RAW nor did the game's designer expect us to. It's kind of weird to me that someone (not you) might say, "Well, playing D&D rules-as-written inhibits X-style of play".

I would argue that decent amount of people play it out of the box. They don't look at d&d as a toolset, rather as a complete product to use as is.

I'd also opine that what you call "heavy lifting" is just the normal legwork all GMs do to prepare one-shots or campaigns. Finally, I'm not suggesting you're wrong or anything. These are just our viewpoints, right?

Agree. Viewpoints and personal experiences with game. Heavy lifting, imho, is when you need to do most of work yourself. Light lifting, or normal legwork is when most of stuff you need is already there in books, you just take what you need, remove what you don't, but it just works without much manual labour.

 

[mamba]

A good GM has to know how to adjust the rules to create the proper play experience.

Can't blame the system for that

isn’t the blame that you do have to adjust the rules to get it to work in the first place?

If you need to adjust things then the game is not good at it on its own