D&D 5E what is it about 2nd ed that we miss?

[Guest 6801328]

Oooh....ooh....ooh....Mr. Kottah....

I just thought of what I REALLY miss about 2e: there were no 4e veterans complaining about what got taken away from them.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You should test your theory. Find yourself an alcoholic - someone who knows they have a problem, like someone coming out of an AA meeting or something - and ask if they want a drink. I can make a guess about what their choice will be. Then, hand them a glass of whatever alcohol seems appropriate to the situation. I won't predict whether they'll actually drink it, because that's a matter of willpower rather than a conscious decision, but I'm fairly confident about what their choice would be.

Objection! You are seriously skewing your sample there by suggesting someone coming out of an AA meeting. And the answer to your test is that if they didn't want to drink it they wouldn't. GURPS is pretty good at modelling members of Alcoholics Anonymous. What it's terrible at is modelling the alcoholics you meet in pubs and bars. (And Fate can manage AA members of course). You know, the ones who are likely to pay money to buy drinks despite knowing they have a problem.

The fundamentally flawed premise of FATE is that it asks the player to make conscious decisions beyond the scope of what the character is capable of deciding. This is one example of such, though by no means is it the most egregious.

The fundamentally flawed thing about tabletop RPGs is that you can never have direct access to everything your character knows about their world through living in it and through feeling what that character feels. Fate and other such games aim at a high trajectory rather than straight at the target because that means you get nearer what the target feels rather than having a 1:1 correspondence.

The best thing about 2E is that it doesn't include any of the rules, buried as options in 5E, that are supposed to appeal to FATE players. That whole "yes, and..." mindset did not exist when 2E came out, so the designers didn't have to pander to that crowd.

Which is one of the many reasons it suggests using overwhelming DM force to make up for having a rules set that is not fit for purpose.

 

[Tony Vargas]

D&D does no such thing. D&D is an objective resolution engine. It tells you what happens as a result of a given action. If X, then Y.

That's what some resolution mechanics can be. In 5e, not a whole lot of them, since most rely on the DM's subjective judgment to some degree.

And 'objective' probably isn't the best way to describe it even when it is the case. Deterministic ...?...no, not really, because of the dice... Impartial, I suppose, or simply fair.

But, that's only as far as actual resolution sub-systems go (and D&D has been standardized on d20+mods vs DC for a while). Everything else, like determining when the resolution system applies, may be another story.

It is a language for translating events within the world into a mechanical system for the purposes of determining an outcome without bias.

Other way 'round. There are no events in the imagined world until they're imagined. The system helps the players & DM reconcile their individual images of what's happening in the world, to a degree. It's only one tool at their disposal to help them do so, though.

 

[Maxperson]

Correct. So when the rules imply that characters can tell when some hit points are lost (no matter which of the various things abstracted into hit points it might be a result of) by not suggesting that the DM hide that information from the players, and by having characters via their players capable of choosing what intensity of healing to use in a concrete sense - the book says a potion of healing restores 2d4+2 hit points, and that cure wounds at 1st-level recovers 1d8 + spellcasting ability modifier, not "this restores some number of hit points. Your DM will know how many." - and then doesn't make any contradiction of that, implied or otherwise, we can see what it is that is not part of the rules.

There is no such implication. There is nothing in the hit points section that says or implies anything of the sort. When you get to the describing the EFFECT of the damage, it says that it typically (more often than not) has no signs. No signs means that PC cannot possibly know about it. There isn't a single way you can describe ANY damage that doesn't involve signs, and that the PC could know about.

"No sign of injury" and "no sign of hit point loss" are not the same thing.
It says no such thing.
Glad we can agree on that.

Hit points are not an in game thing. Damage is the in game thing. Hit points are for the player to know about so he can track the PC's damage.

 

[Tony Vargas]

IMO, being heard is not the same as being seen. The ogre might not be able to find the character, he might think the sound was just a rat or something. That's not the same as disadvantage on a stealth check. Two rolls in this case are not always a binary pass or fail.

In the end, however much detail you layer onto it, the character either sneaks by or doesn't. In general, the more checks - or worse, opposed checks - between failure and success the more likely you are to fail. You might be able to fail-forward. Or, you could have gradations of success that way, though, which might be appealing if they matter (if there's a practical distinction between being heard but not seen and slipping by unnoticed).

In this case, I think more granularity is welcomed.

I'm not crazy about excessive granularity when it comes to defining skills. It creates incompetence and the payoff for the added complexity can be slight (and accomplished other ways, if you do want to introduce additional depth). But I get that you'd draw that line for 'excessive' further along than I would. I'd caution against actually making skill definitions open-ended, though.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

There is no such implication.

I believe there is.

...it says that it typically (more often than not) has no signs.

Again, "No sign of injury" is not the same statement as "No sign of hit point loss."

There isn't a single way you can describe ANY damage that doesn't involve signs, and that the PC could know about.

My point, precisely. All hit point loss - damage - involves some sign that the PC could know about, even when there is no sign of injury.

Hit points are for the player to know about so he can track the PC's damage.

Again, that is exactly what I've been saying - HP are just the tool by which the player understands information that their character has.

 

[Maxperson]

My point, precisely. All hit point loss - damage - involves some sign that the PC could know about, even when there is no sign of injury.

Show me the rule. The only rule involves damage and the PC being unaware. You are fabricating things with this hit point claim.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The fundamentally flawed thing about tabletop RPGs is that you can never have direct access to everything your character knows about their world through living in it and through feeling what that character feels. Fate and other such games aim at a high trajectory rather than straight at the target because that means you get nearer what the target feels rather than having a 1:1 correspondence.

I am entertained to see you admit that FATE is not a tabletop RPG. Even I would not go that far... on these forums... with the moderators watching.

The point of an RPG ruleset is not to manipulate the emotional state of its players. An RPG ruleset exists to provide impartial adjudication, so that players can make the decisions that their characters would make and have those decisions be meaningful. If you refuse to understand that - which seems fairly evident by now - then there is no point in continuing this discussion.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Show me the rule.

I've already told you I believe it to be the implication created by the way in which the rules you already know where to find are written. That you disagree that the implication is made does not actually mean it isn't.

The only rule involves damage and the PC being unaware.

There is no rule that does such a thing, because the words found in the rule you are mentioning do not mean what you are claiming them to mean - especially not when this rule starts with "Dungeon Masters describe hit point loss in different ways." which shows its meaning to provide suggestions, not enumerating the one and only way that hit point loss can be described.

You are fabricating things with this hit point claim.

I'm not.

 

[hawkeyefan]

IMO, being heard is not the same as being seen. The ogre might not be able to find the character, he might think the sound was just a rat or something. That's not the same as disadvantage on a stealth check. Two rolls in this case are not always a binary pass or fail.

In addition, sneaking past a sleeping guard would require a move silently roll and not both. Special equipment like footpad boots come into play and not the character's darksuit. Of course, in 2e race, kit, class, level, dex, and equipment all factor into each roll. This means that some races and kits are better at hiding and others are better at moving silently. In this case, I think more granularity is welcomed.

So have a PC who may possibly be seen AND overheard make two stealth checks.

There is no such implication. There is nothing in the hit points section that says or implies anything of the sort. When you get to the describing the EFFECT of the damage, it says that it typically (more often than not) has no signs. No signs means that PC cannot possibly know about it. There isn't a single way you can describe ANY damage that doesn't involve signs, and that the PC could know about.

Hit points are not an in game thing. Damage is the in game thing. Hit points are for the player to know about so he can track the PC's damage.

So do players in your game never use any kind of healing until past the 50% HP threshold?

One thing I did in 2E that I miss a little bit is that for one campaign that I DMed, I kept track of all damage. I rolled damage to the PCs behind the screen, and kept track of their HP, and used only description to convey what happened to them with each hit, and where they were at overall. It created a very interesting dynamic because they were by no means certain how to allocate their healing resources. It resulted in some interesting situations.

Ultimately I abandoned it because the bookkeeping aspect of it did not justify the slight increase in dramatic tension that it sometimes created.

However, this discussion reminded me of that campaign because absent HP, I still had to explain to the players what was happening to their characters. I'd never have even thought to say nothing at all until they were at half HP. That seems like a very odd interpretation.