Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6643184" data-attributes="member: 2067">IMXP, whenever there's a body of water that needs crossin'. This can originate from interesting battle terrain (you're on one side of the river, the archers are on the other!), or in an abstract exploration sense (there's a river you need to cross to make it to the other side of this hex) or in a more "encounter moment" exploration sense (you've come across a river with the bridge washed out, what do you do?) or even from player decisions (...you know, we heard rumors about trolls on that bridge...can we just ford the river instead?). Also popular on board ships, like with pirate encounters or sahagin fights. I've seen character die from failed skill checks like that. Hell, I've visited death on PC's that can't swim before. Bypassing HP is often one of the quickest and most effective ways to kiss a PC goodbye, and drowning in most rulesets ignores your HP total and goes straight for "you're dying." Aye, but if there's no significant consequence of failure, why the heck are we even rolling for it? "After a few minutes, you manage to wade through the hip-deep water and you're on the other side. Wizard stumbles a little bit halfway through and Fighter grabs his arm to steady him." It's not an obstacle at that point, it's just flavor text. You can't just dismiss resource management at any level in 5e. In my actual experience:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> In character creation and spell selection, a caster might not grab that spell. This happens more often than theorycraft would often realize - misty step and fly and the like are 50% of your spell choice for a level. Simply not having that spell in your spellbook - because you're an abjurer, or because you're damage-focused, or because you focus on rituals or whatever - is more often the case than not.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> In the case that the caster knows the precise correct spell, it is not a foregone conclusion that spending the slot on it is going to be worth it. Even low-level slots are a valuable resource at all levels in any game that follows the encounter guidelines. Casting that is one less invisibility, one less fireball - that's not always a tradeoff that a caster is willing to make. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> If the caster has the correct spell and wants to use it, they are spending a limited resource to remove an obstacle for themselves. This is fine. Intentional, even. The fighter will shine in the next fight against 40 goblins in a room when the caster doesn't have a fireball. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> On the Str-based Fighter's side, I'm not sure why the STR 20 Fighter hasn't taken Athletics or isn't a Champion (most people choose skills that augment their high ability scores)...but putting that aside for the moment (maybe he's a dwarf who is afraid of water!), even if they have no proficiency whatsoever, that 50% chance is the best chance in the party. And he's also got the best chance to secure the rope on the other side (for instance, if the "river" is water down a dungeon corridor, so there's not a convenient tree to tie off to on the other side), making it more party-friendly. Why would the caster blow a spell slot when Beefy McMightythews can swim the churning water and strap down the other side? </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> A mid-level party in general is not challenged significantly by a river (a typical STR 20 Fighter who was level 12 and had proficiency would turn that raging rapid into a perfunctory "don't mess it up" skill check), so even if it was dismissively cheap to overcome the river (maybe a warlock!), it'd be a little like trying to challenge the party with a bugbear - yeah, they're going to trounce it, it might cost them a bit to do so. </li> </ul>If you're facing frequent checks that entail no significant consequence of failure, that's yer problem. DMG pg. 237: "Only call for a roll if there is a meaningful consequence for failure," provided with a pretty thorough account of how to determine if that's the case and when to allow auto-success on multiple checks. Yeah, if ability score checks are perfunctory in your games, you're not going to get a lot of mileage out of high or low ability scores and you're going to lean much harder on class features and the like, but that's flagrantly ignoring a pretty significant chunk of the game. If it's not meaningful to have a STR 20 vs. a STR 18 vs. a STR 10, there's a series of house rules that are likely in order (like perhaps, auto-assigning bonuses and having FATE-like traits that you put on your character rather than assigning ability score numbers).</blockquote>

Verification