D&D 5E What rule(s) is 5e missing?

[James Gasik]

It's not even difficult though. Take a level 10 character as an example:

• +5 from attribute
• +4 from mere proficient or +8 from expertise.
• +1d4 from guidance (avg 2.5)
• that's already a good 11.5-15.5 towards that DC20 & we haven't even tossed in "and I help him" from the help action for advantage. Again the success chance is about double or better the batting average record brought up a few times earlier.

First, go upthread to see what I had to say about Guidance, and almost immediately, I got a response verifying the typical stance on it's use in social interaction.

Second, +9 vs. a DC 20 is a fail case of 45%. So...better than a coin flip for 10th level character. Wow, amazing.

And finally, third, we shouldn't expect or require Expertise using characters to parlay with friggin' monsters. It's a time honored tradition and the foundation of the Interaction Tier....and a thing one does in a roleplaying game.

 

[Shardstone]

You do need to be careful with giving NPC's magic gear. I can attest to this as it's one of the things that finally made me give up on d20/PF. Trying to build good humanoid opponents and keeping the amount of treasure the party would claim from their dead corpses to a reasonable minimum.

You could, I suppose, do what Gary did, with the Drow, by giving them special equipment that was powerful, but basically useless to player characters for anything but short term boosts, but that sort of thing players find obnoxious.

Maybe the best thing to do is give them Boons that simulate magic items? I guess that has a similar issue.

The problem is, we don't really know how to balance magic items, because WotC didn't even try to figure that out themselves. So what would be appropriate at a given level is unknown.

Like I've said before, it's as if they said "uh, here's magic items. We're not going to tell you how/why/when to use them, but if you do, you're on your own, don't blame us!", even as they made it almost necessary to have some magic weapons available.

I run numerous high magic item campaigns, and am currently writing a product due for release this year that really examines the idea of magic items, how to use them, notes I've made from my playtesting, and what a magic item could really be if you tried to get the most design mileage out of them.

My wildest experiment was giving one particular player a legendary magic item at level 3, while the rest had only one uncommon item to see what kind of warping effects it would have. It was a modified Blackrazor combined with a Vorpal Sword, just to really see how far it could push the system.

The answer was, the system wasn't pushed as hard as I thought. There was a definite impact, but that impact was only because I specificially set up an unbalanced situation, and none of the players complained or had issue with it. So I tried this with another group that were all noobies to see what would happen, and it was the same thing. They didn't perceive this legendary magic item as a problem because not only did it come in handy in many clutch situations that could have been really nasty, but also because the power it presented interestingly just wasn't the game warping thing I had expected. My first group I did this for, btw, are all vets and other designers, and there's other groups beyond these two where I experiment a lot.

All this to say, if you give your players relatively comparable magical items, the challenges don't get dwarfed by that much. A 3rd level character with a flametongue, or with one or two arrows of slaying they found, or even a powerful Nine Lives Stealer isn't as much insanity as both Crawford and many people online have suggested for these last ten years.

And this doesn't mean there isn't an impact. There is. But the impact is within the bounds of reason, and the joy my players get when they can use their magic items for various insane things in high stakes scenarios has made this my prefer method of play.

 

[Shardstone]

Holy Word et all, the spells that explodicate anyone who doesn't think the way you do, strike them blind and then pats you on the back for it.

Yay D&D!

 

[James Gasik]

That may be true in 5e. Again though, as I explained, this sort of thing made me give up on trying to run d20 games because most humanoid opponents need gear to compete, and any gear the party gets can be liquidated to give the party better gear than the system guidelines.

And if you've ever frequented a 3e forum, the instant you make a thread about "I'm having problems with balance" the very first piece of advice you will always get is "are you sticking to wealth by level?".

 

[GMforPowergamers]

It's not even difficult though. Take a level 10 character as an example:

• +5 from attribute
• +4 from mere proficient or +8 from expertise.
• +1d4 from guidance (avg 2.5)
• that's already a good 11.5-15.5 towards that DC20 & we haven't even tossed in "and I help him" from the help action for advantage. Again the success chance is about double or better the batting average record brought up a few times earlier.

and that same DC 20 with a party with no one prof (let alone expertise and in a situation that the DM rules can't benefit from help or guidance) you could have the best roll be +4 vs DC 20...

 

[Shardstone]

That may be true in 5e. Again though, as I explained, this sort of thing made me give up on trying to run d20 games because most humanoid opponents need gear to compete, and any gear the party gets can be liquidated to give the party better gear than the system guidelines.

And if you've ever frequented a 3e forum, the instant you make a thread about "I'm having problems with balance" the very first piece of advice you will always get is "are you sticking to wealth by level?".

I do think in the past, especially in the 3E era, games were much less tightly balanced than 5E is. 5E isn't perfect by any regards in this aspect, but the power scale of a lot of PCs and magic items is such that especially the first 10 levels of the game you won't notice much effect from magic items. And if they are unique magic items you design or ones from first or third party sources with interesting effects, they open up a lot of doors in terms of what kind of stories you can start telling and what challenges you can make.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Here's my reasoning. First, it's not like we're asking these people to turn on their leaders, join us in taking out a dragon, or giving us their loot. This is simply put "we could fight you and kill you, but we're giving you an option, just stand aside and let us fight your boss, who you don't like anyways, and if you really want to, we can fight on the way back".

With a slightly different approach, achieving the result you want, in that very same table, is described as an easy DC 10 check.

The creature offers no help but does no harm.

Second, it has to do with probabilities. Yes, I know, you can potentially lower the DC, and you might be able to get Help, but if you're looking at a DC 20, you have to understand a max level character has a very high chance to fail that.

Only a true Diplomancer with Expertise in Persuasion can look at a DC 20 and make it reliably (although the issue with Expertise is that they probably make it too reliably...).

Not every party is going to have someone with max Charisma, nor should they be expected to. But in this case, a guy with a 16 Charisma with a +6 proficiency bonus makes that check a coin flip.

And not every table wants challenges that are always trivial. Nailing that DC 20 check at level 2 might be considered an epic moment. So?

And finally, third, parlaying with enemies should be something lower level parties do. Higher level parties can just mop the floor with goons, lol. So putting DC's like this beyond the reach of low level characters (save for a very high die roll) seems rather absurd to me.

Sure, a DM should present challenges that are appropriate for the in-world location and not for the party level. I don’t see anything in the Social Interaction tables that precludes any character of any level from attempting to parlay.

A good DM should balance the approach of the PCs in the scene against whether a roll is appropriate or whether to grant auto-success or auto-failure. I’ve seen all three in play.

ETA: while possibly unlikely, a DC 20 check is not beyond the reach of low level characters who have at least a 10 Charisma.

 

[James Gasik]

I mean, you should have proficiency in a Social skill somewhere in your party. I don't think that's a bridge too far. But unless you're playing a Charisma class, I don't often see people put more than a 12 in Charisma.

I had a 16 Charisma Fighter, but I'm weird (I thought it would make my Rally Maneuver better; it's ok though, I eventually got Inspiring Leader).

I just think bounded accuracy's effect on ability checks doesn't map well to "let's make all difficulty classes increase by 5", and then let's set DC's for things we should want characters to attempt, rather than just murderhoboing everything in sight in our roleplaying game at "well, if I roll an 15 it might work?".

 

[James Gasik]

I do think in the past, especially in the 3E era, games were much less tightly balanced than 5E is. 5E isn't perfect by any regards in this aspect, but the power scale of a lot of PCs and magic items is such that especially the first 10 levels of the game you won't notice much effect from magic items. And if they are unique magic items you design or ones from first or third party sources with interesting effects, they open up a lot of doors in terms of what kind of stories you can start telling and what challenges you can make.

It depends on the magic item. At level 10, I had a character with a Ise Rune from Storm King's Thunder that gave me resistance to cold and let me use Sleet Storm on a short rest, which was pretty sweet and stayed grafted to my character sheet forever. A few levels later I had a Broom of Flying and a Robe of Eyes and those really gave the DM headaches, lol.

 

[Reynard]

Here's my reasoning. First, it's not like we're asking these people to turn on their leaders, join us in taking out a dragon, or giving us their loot. This is simply put "we could fight you and kill you, but we're giving you an option, just stand aside and let us fight your boss, who you don't like anyways, and if you really want to, we can fight on the way back".

You're assuming this would result in a roll at all. I don't think that is necessarily the case. Obviously this is a hypothetical without a lot of context, but I imagine it working out in one of two ways:

a) The minions are fanatically loyal, in which case there is no roll needed because there is no chance of success.
or
2) The GM decides the minions do in fact not want to die and don't particularly like their boss, so they let the PCs pass. They may or may not jump them after, depending on how beat up the PCs look after the boss fight, though.

I don't think I would leave such a thing up to chance, instead of looking at the situation and the NPCs involved and making a GM call. But then, I HATE the "persuasion as mind control" mentality that a lot of people seem to have.