Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5991412" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't think D&Dnext needs page 42, at least in the full 4e form. I'll explain why by reference to a susbsequent part of your post.I think that this is correct. When I look at the DM Guidelines, and keep in mind the commentary on "bounded accuracy", it seems pretty clear to me that DCs are to be set in an "objective" fashion (ie DCs tell us how steep the wall is, how stuck the door, how intricate the lock, etc). So you don't need page 42 (ie a general mechanic for level-appropriate DCs) - because you can set DCs based on objective difficulty in the fiction. (This is the OP's "photographic memory" problem. I personally don't think it's that bad.)Page 42 also gives level appropriate damage, but I think it would be consistent for D&Dnext not to need that either - it would make sense for damage to also be "objective" rather than level appropriate. (You might still need guidelines for how much damage it is appropriate to send against PCs of a given level. But that wouldn't be page 42. It would be more like the advice in 4e about not using pits more than X feet deep for level Y characters if you don't want to kill them off - falling damage being about the only example of "objective damage" in 4e.)Burning Wheel is an example of a fantasy RPG that uses "bounded accuracy" and "objective DCs". It also uses some techniques to make sure that PCs have a mix of bonuses, and hence to avoid situations in which PCs are guaranteed to be able to steamroll over the GM's challenges. Because D&D has a strong tradition of "the numbers always get bigger" and "when playing your PC, always do your best to use your biggest number", I think that this is going to be the real challenge for GMing D&Dnext: avoiding players with big numbers steamrolling over your gameworld with objective DCs.3E "solved" this problem by giving high level monsters +33 natural AC bonuses. That's just level-dependent DCs wearing a fig leaf of objectivity. And it does away with bounded accuracy. I am hoping that D&Dnext will tackle the problem in a proper way, and give the GM the necessary tools to make it work. The lack of such tools in the playtests to date is one of the main causes of my disappointment in what I've seen so far (I think some of the spells are broken, and I think Vancian casting is probably broken per se, but both those ships have already sailed, I think, so I'm not particularly disappointed by them). But I agree with you that the maths of advantage aren't an issue.</blockquote>

Verification