Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6244816" data-attributes="member: 2067">Totally! I've got no objection to a thief who takes some exploration skills, some sneak attack damage dice, and some interaction features and is a well-balanced, broad adventurer who is handy with a trap, can bluff her foes, and also stabs pretty well. Jack-of-all-trades!What concerns me is when we've got someone who wants to play a thief reminiscent of older e's whose player has chosen to eschew combat in favor of being an exploration god, but the game doesn't recognize this as a valid trade-off. This might look like all rogues having sneak attack, or all exploration challenges insisting that you include interaction skills so that the foppish noble can do something. Well, everyone needs to roll dice to actually shine. Even if the game is set up so that you have a way to shine, you've still gotta roll more than a about 10 or so on a d20 to do it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />That's the kind of thing that might wreck the fun of both the druid (who doesn't want to be good at this stuff) and the noble (who does), though. I'd like the ability to look at that and say "You can make an untrained CHA check like anyone else, Druid, and even if you make it, it's not going to be the equal of the noble's Graceful Foppery ability, because people are not your strong suit." Yeah, it wasn't necessarily consistent or well applied. And like you point out, it varied drastically depending on the DM.These are things elements like the Three Pillars help with, because you can include them in the rules for class and adventure and encounter design.  By designing a game or an adventure that fires on those three cylinders, where there are multiple correct answers to "How do you get the MacGuffin?" that different parties of different make-ups can try, you get to a point where not everyone has to be good at combat in order to be a viable D&D hero. You don't have to fight the goblins or slay the dragon to save the day -- but that is one way to do it. There's at least two others that you could try if you've got the right skills, though. You could also scare away the goblin king and develop an alliance with the dragon. Or sneak in and assassinate the goblin king and grab the MacGuffin from the dragon's hoard as it sleeps. Or do a little of one and a little of another and a little of the third.</blockquote>

Verification