Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6652218" data-attributes="member: 42582">It seems to me that 5e's PC build rules - including the mechanical definitions of PC abilities - are very similar to 4e (especially Essentials), though obviously not identical. At a general level (as opposed to the particularities of individual classes and subclasses) the most obvious difference from 4e is one of degree: the very great asymmetry in resource recovery across different classes, which puts a fair bit of pressure on the GM to manage pacing in an appropriate fashion.Once we get to action resolution, I think the game isn't terribly much like 4e at all, though, except in the very general sense that (like 3E also) it is a d20 system.The difference from 4e that is significant for me (and, I think, some other posters) is the lack of guidelines/constraints on the setting of DCs.4e has guidelines for level appropriate DCs (page 42 and its successors through the Essentials rules for skill challenges). Furthermore, the relative mechanical symmetry of 4e PCs (in terms of distributions of high and low skill bonuses, and non-skill abilities able to bear on non-combat situations, and - for non-Essentials PCs - ratios of encounter to daily abilities, etc) all mean that infelicities in GM pacing management (whether at the intra- or inter-encounter leve) do not tend to have an uneven effect on different PCs.5e does not have comparable guidelines for level appropriate DCs. And 5e PCs are more asymmetric than 4e ones. So at one and the same time pressure on the GM to manage pacing in a way that will avoid intra-party imbalance is increased, while the system support for doing so is reduced.Whether or not 5e DCs are "fixed to the world" seems to be a matter of contention. [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] and [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION] don't agree, as best I can tell from their posts.My concern, as a GM, is with managing pacing (including the contributions to pacing of successes and failures) in a way that does not unduly favour one player over another. I don't feel that 5e's guidelines help me a lot with that, because (whether or not I treat the DCs as "world set") they don't give me advice on how those DCs relate to expected PC capabilities and player resources.I've given some reasons why it is actually not that straightforward. So has [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]. So has [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION].The combination of narrow bands of DCs having a somewhat ambiguous relationship to "world set" difficulties, plus the asymmetry of the resource suites across PCs/players, plus the pacing issues to which this gives rise, seem to me to make it quite tricky.Personally if I was running 5e I'd run it more like Runequest or Burning Wheel, treating DCs as strictly "objective", and applying "say yes, or roll the dice". My feeling, though, is that this might make spell casters a little too good, as they can succeed without having to roll the dice (by casting spells), whereas fighters and other non-casters have no similar capabilities (as has been noted upthread). This is another difference from 4e, where the abilities conferred on casters by the ritual system - and, hence, the ability to sidestep rolling the dice in pursuit of success - are a bit more modest.These ideas, of thresholds operating in various ways, are interesting. I don't think they highlight the importance of Remarkable Athlete, though - they tend to undermine it, because it doesn't help a fighter cross any threshold.They also introduce a degree of complexity into the system which it is generally a virtue of d20 to avoid. And they have consequences like it being hugely important whether a potion gives you (say) a bonus to STR or a bonus to STR checks - because only the former will help with thresholds. In general, they make the maths less elegant and the system less transparent.I don't fear any control. [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] states the Czege principle upthread, and I generally subscribe to it. I want the GM to have control over the framing of scenes and presentation of challenges. I want the players to have control over deploying their resources to overcome (via their PCs) those challenges. The GM's role at this point should include adjudication, but I think there is a clear difference - even if sometimes it's degree rather than kind - between adjudicating the fiction and deciding whether or not an action declaration succeeds or fails.Setting thresholds, for instance, is tantamount to deciding that a certain PC just can't succeed at a certain action declaration. That's something that I prefer to be approaches with caution and transparency. When done ad hoc in a bonus-based, target-number resolution system, I find it tends to lead to railroading.This runs together GM control over framing and GM control over resolution. I want these kept separate.(Also, in a skill challenge, the players decide what skills or abilities to use: PHB p 179; DMG pp 73, 75.)To the extent that this is true, in feeds into the concerns that I have been expressing above.Yes, it's a matter of taste. Hence, its utility is highly variable. Personally I'm not a big fan. As a GM I don't want to be making up what happens.(I also think you have mischaracterised Gygax's advice in his DMG. He is quite emphatic that overriding the dice in respect of action resolution would be contrary to the most important tenets of the game. The only bit of action resolution override he countenances is in how to adjudicate a PC being dropped to zero hit points. But that's something of a tangent.)If the party contains no STR-based PC, I will tend not to pose STR-oriented challenges - except perhaps as a bit of colour or light relief (the ogre challenges the wizard to an arm wrestle). But if a wizard PC wants to get into a locked and barred room, for instance, I generally expect him/her to use wizardly means, rather than to try and do it as a fighter would (just as fighters aren't generally able to approach tasks as a wizard would).</blockquote>

Verification