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

[EzekielRaiden]

Nah. I'm just gonna outright say that if a DM goes to the low INT character and say; "you're acting too smart, please start making stupid decisions." is a bad GM and shouldn't try to run a game with that attitude.

If I may ask, then: What do the ability scores actually represent?

Because from this, we can conclude that someone with 3 Int can still come up with genius plans (so long as the player can do so), someone with 3 Cha can still speak incredibly persuasively (so long as the player can do so), and someone with 3 Wis can dispense sagacious advice (so long as the player can do so).

But the character with 3 Str cannot lift massive boulders (whether or not the player can), the char with 3 Dex cannot precisely hit a target from 300 feet away (whether or not the player can), and the char with 3 Con cannot stave off exhaustion (whether or not the player can).

Why are the mental stats given the privilege of "since you can roleplay it, you can do it", but the physical stats are strictly enforced?

This seems to imply that physical stats do in fact actually represent the capabilities of the character--that the character simply cannot do some of the things the player might wish to do, if their physical stats are inadequate--but the mental stats represent nothing whatsoever, and are simply there to give the occasional boost to a spell attack or to make it harder to resist a saving throw.

 

[pemerton]

I am not terribly familiar with the stories, only the movie and the reputation others present for the character. I was given to understand that Conan was more on the amoral side, not a bad person but doing things for personal benefit (glory, achievement, power) rather than because they were particularly virtuous.

Even if you play a glory-oriented PC in classic D&D, you will probably suffer for it. The game rewards caution and planning (as per Gygax's advice to players in his PHB), not the pursuit of glory.

In terms of the fiction it supports, classic D&D has more in common with the fiction generated by a small-unit wargame than with that found in a REH Conan story, or even a small-unit-oriented story like Aliens or Predator.

This is not a criticism of classic D&D - that is what it is. Just a comment on the notion that classic D&D actually generates, in play, anything remotely resembling the swashbuckling-y, S&S action found in a typical REH Conan story.

 

[Theory of Games]

Nope! You can absolutely do that. You can change literally every single word of the game if you want (though one might argue that would mean you aren't playing that game anymore).

EXACTLY

 

[Theory of Games]

Clue does not allow me to attempt to take over the world using troop movements. It's a bad game.

Actually that's exactly my point. Thanks

 

[mamba]

EXACTLY

oh, so if I change enough then I am not playing the game anymore, and yet D&D is suitable for anything because you can throw out large chunks of the game and replace them with something else? That is not D&D any more either…

 

[GrimCo]

Modularity. That's what it's bad at. And by that i mean, you take out of box variant rules, put them together and they work, without need to use house rules, home brew or 3pp ( which is just homebrew somebody published). It somewhat worked in 2ed cause basic system was pretty simple, characters were simple and decent amount of stuff was left for DM to figure out. With more codified systems (3,4,5), there are lot more moving parts and alternate/variant rules are much harder to implement in a way that works.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

EXACTLY

Okay...but that causes your argument a serious problem.

Because now there's a line you can cross, where too many changes make it a completely different game. Meaning, your clean "if X, then good, if not X, then bad" dichotomy cannot apply. You yourself have now accepted that there are degrees of change.

So that's now three problems, none of which you have actually addressed in any meaningful fashion:

1. You insist that this one axis is the only possible way that a game can be badly designed. I have given you a counter-example: a game that claims to be about combat, but which has no rules whatsoever for actually doing combat. You have not actually responded to this counter-example, except to blow it off.
2. Your standard has been that the game must explicitly say that you can change it--that it must have "Rule Zero"--and yet you then cite a number of games (chess, football, poker) which do not have "Rule Zero" or anything analogous to it. Which means you have now taken both sides of the issue: a game is good if and only if it explicitly includes "Rule Zero", but it is also good so long as it does not explicitly reject "Rule Zero", but then you cite other games that don't explicitly reject it but merely allude to it or imply it or whatever else. So what is it? Unless you actually settle on an actual position here, your argument looks like whatever you feel like pointing to at any given moment.
3. And now, as noted above, you admit that there are such things as degrees of change, and some of those degrees can be too much, so in fact you admit that there are games that are bad because you have to transform them into some other game entirely in order to actually play them. Which means that merely having explicit, official permission isn't even enough now, because the base game needs to be fitting enough as-is so that you don't have to completely rewrite it, thus producing a totally new game.

Far from being a clean, neat, simple standard, your standard has taken every possible position, including those that are directly self-contradictory; you have dismissed counter-examples with nothing more than "nuh-uh!" in slightly more words; and you have openly admitted that the simplicity of the standard evaporates even by your own analysis!

What, exactly, am I supposed to make of an argument that does such a thing? There's a reason I called it risible--other than repeatedly pointing out the problems, the only response I have left is to laugh!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Modularity. That's what it's bad at. And by that i mean, you take out of box variant rules, put them together and they work, without need to use house rules, home brew or 3pp ( which is just homebrew somebody published). It somewhat worked in 2ed cause basic system was pretty simple, characters were simple and decent amount of stuff was left for DM to figure out. With more codified systems (3,4,5), there are lot more moving parts and alternate/variant rules are much harder to implement in a way that works.

Had the modularity that the "D&D Next" designers spoke of--I personally think it was abso-friggin-lutely a promise and they abso-friggin-lutely reneged on that promise HARD--actually manifested in 5th edition, it truly WOULD have been the "big tent" edition, one that could even have actually healed the wounds of the Edition War rather than exacerbating them, reopening them, stuffing salt into them and calling the losing side bad names. (No, I will not ever forgive Mike Mearls for openly using edition-warring jokes, even if he "wasn't serious". Not unless he expressly and specifically apologizes for doing so, explaining why it was wrong to do that, even in jest. And he wasn't even the only one!)

 

[James Gasik]

If I may ask, then: What do the ability scores actually represent?

Because from this, we can conclude that someone with 3 Int can still come up with genius plans (so long as the player can do so), someone with 3 Cha can still speak incredibly persuasively (so long as the player can do so), and someone with 3 Wis can dispense sagacious advice (so long as the player can do so).

But the character with 3 Str cannot lift massive boulders (whether or not the player can), the char with 3 Dex cannot precisely hit a target from 300 feet away (whether or not the player can), and the char with 3 Con cannot stave off exhaustion (whether or not the player can).

Why are the mental stats given the privilege of "since you can roleplay it, you can do it", but the physical stats are strictly enforced?

This seems to imply that physical stats do in fact actually represent the capabilities of the character--that the character simply cannot do some of the things the player might wish to do, if their physical stats are inadequate--but the mental stats represent nothing whatsoever, and are simply there to give the occasional boost to a spell attack or to make it harder to resist a saving throw.

So what about the reverse? How many Int 20 Wizard players are super-geniuses? When they do stupid things, should we police their roleplay by saying "you're too smart to do that"?

 

[Corinnguard]

Because from this, we can conclude that someone with 3 Int can still come up with genius plans (so long as the player can do so), someone with 3 Cha can still speak incredibly persuasively (so long as the player can do so), and someone with 3 Wis can dispense sagacious advice (so long as the player can do so).

I can't see any player wanting their character to have such a low INT, WIS or CHA to begin with. If I rolled a 3 for any of my character's mental attributes, I would find myself hoping that my DM would allow me to reroll something higher for any one of them.

Didn't one of the earlier editions of D&D have a table or tables that said, 'if you have an ability score of X, you were considered to be Y in RL'? Ex. If you had an 18 for DEX, you were the equivalent of an Olympic-level long distance runner."