biggest problem 5e has with stuff like that is everyone thinks they are supposed to roll dice to determine anything. I ran a younger group awhile back and when I told them that I wasn't using Bluff, or intimidation or any other such skills between party members that they all knew each other and would have to roleplay amongst themselve's to determine if they could bluff each other, they freaked out because they actually had to interact with each other without dice.
D&D (2024) What type of ranger would your prefer for 2024?
- Thread starter Horwath
- Start date
oh no the extra rules for everything just create an expectation for a new rule at any new idea. It's Asmodeus's design to eventually destroy the game.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
And now a lot of people want a nonmagical one. Turns out, opinions vary on how magical the ranger should be. Shocker.
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
I do both during a social encounter.
Make the players describe what they are doing (or roleplay it out if they wish).
If it seems like it would automatically work, then it does.
If it seems implausible it autofails.
If it seems like it could go either way, they do an Ability (Skill) Check to determine the success of their effort.
This is what happens when developers go to forums and listen to the Opinionated minority. Simple Fact. most people aren't willing to share thier opinions on anything. so you if someone tells you the majority want anything they are either stupid or lieing (on what people want on a ranger)
If the party members dont' know each other well then ok. But once they know each other I make them roleplay it out. One it's more realistic. It's a lot harder to bluff, intimidate or any such skill on someone who knows you, (unless you are a sociopath), and it makes most of the stupid interpc stuff personal and costly and reduces a lot of interparty drama.
Yes, and this is not a given in a particular ruleset. How DND currently does it is not something we need to assume will still be the case, especially in the context of a rules update to the game (of which economy overhauls is precisely the type of thing that should be happening)
I'm using my own RPG to illustrate the ideas I'm conveying about integrating the gameplay loops. It pays dividends to engage with crafting because that loops back into your ability to be good at Combat twice over; first in the items you create and second in the Stats you get for leveling up your skills. As of this writing, maxing out your Mining skill would give you an effective +7 on its own to your Strength, meaning if you trained nothing else you'd have +7 to your Wrestling, Heavy Weapons and Heavy Armor skills. Max those, and you get up to a cumulative +30.
And then by integrating those skills alongside those associated with Dexterity (Stealth, Light Weapons, Light Armor, and Sleight of Hand) and/or Endurance (Conditioning, Animal Handling, Athletics, Smithing), you start building up your Energies, which for a character interested in these would be mainly your Composure (HP) and your Stamina (SM). Increasing both of these not only gives you more resources to spend on Combat, but also makes your abilities stronger because your current Energies (IE, you're current HP or current Stamina) are what you base your Saving throws on, so having them high is not only good because you can do more, but good because you do more with what you do more.
And by engaging with all of those skills, you're now engaging with quite literally every "Pillar" in the game. You're not just a one-note character that only does what those in the Ivory Tower deemed to give you, you're able to do quite a lot across a lot of different scenarios.
And the best part is, you don't have to engage with anything you don't actually want to engage with, but you are encouraged to give things a try for the same simple reason you don't have to engage with them in the first place. You can shift your Skill points around (with relatively little cost to time or gold), which not only lets you take random scraggler points (like say you had to roll, lets say, Tactics, for some reason and thats not what you're wanting to focus on, and yet you now have a skill point in it. Spend some time, and you can shift that Skill point over to a skill you actually want to use) and assign them elsewhere, but also lets you even shift focus if you don't want to engage with something, or just want to change.
Its a very flexible and ultimately forgiving system. You are directly allowed to get as much optimization out of it as you care to have because I'm going out of my way to give you ways to not have to be optimized, and not have to spend precious cognitive power on engaging with everything in the game, and to not have to spend an egregious amount of cognitive power on these things even when you do decide to engage with them.
I know my game is a very substantive cognitive shift in how TTRPG's are thought of, but one should try to keep an open mind.
There is no minimalist answer that's going to solve all of these problems in one sentence, and too many (not necessarily you) seem obsessed with trying to find a proverbial White Whale.
Yes. And also other things. A simple example is Rock Monsters; have to break them with a pickaxe to actually put them down, and you can then take that basic conceit and design what you might call a "Skilling Boss", to borrow a phrase from video games.
The same basic Energies that feed into Combat are also just as relevant whilst using your Skills; having a high Composure and Stamina is going to be important for Mining and Smithing even if you're not facing some bonkers Rock Monster that you need to carve a hole into so you can stab its fleshy molten core.
As simple as necessary, is what you should say. You can go too far in the other direction, and 5e is actually littered with examples of why chasing minimalism isn't a good idea.
And the actual best solution in regards to 5e was already covered a while ago. Making Rangers 1/3 casters, where they get spells through subclasses, is ideal for satisfying both camps as then whether or not you have magic becomes a genuine choice.
Just requires making 1/3 casters not suck ass, which is something the game needs to do anyway, so its a no-brainer way to approach it.
That comes down to preference.
Roleplaying yourself vs Roleplay a different character and everything between.
At one table, every conversation is a INT WIS or CHa check because the DM enforces that we are out PCs and have to leave with out dumpsters.
The other table, conversation rolls are only for attitude changes.
Which co.es down to the spell-less ranger and rules. Does a ranger who can charm beasts without magic roll against the low mental stats of most beasts in a simple Animal Handling check.
Or do you make a whole subsystem of beast types, characteristics, and special cases to deal with the complexity of the animal kingdom and reward the ranger over the rogue.
Or something in between.
Because as an animal fan, I can make a page long animal handling subsystem. I would dig it.
You don't wanna see my Language Houserules. Or maybe you do.
