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mastershakeman posted:Someone's strength doesn't have anything to do with their strength? No, you said, and I quote "Hell, you shouldn't be able to pull a jean valjean and lift a carriage off of someone with an 8 in str." Your dangling participle indicates that the person under the cart has an 8 in strength, and therefore the valiant original subject of the sentence shouldn't be able to get the cart off them. I figured this out even though I have an 8 in wisdom.
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Apr 20, 2015 19:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you as the DM were going to disallow the player from rolling on a "lift the cart" action because their character is "not strong", that's still an argument against the use of ability scores
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Apr 20, 2015 20:04
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ImpactVector posted:I'm pretty sure both of my 5e DMs (who are cool people trying to make the best of a system that isn't really doing anything to help them out) basically just go by gut feel on all skill rolls anyway, so that's not far off. Assigning DCs is a lot like that platitude about flipping a coin and realizing what you really want as soon as you throw it.
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Apr 20, 2015 20:46
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theironjef posted:Why is this argument always about smart fighters and strong wizards? Never once have I seen someone want to play like an especially charismatic priest. My biggest argument against ability scores being tied to skills is because it's arbitrary as to what the subtle differences between the different scores do or mean. You see strength vs. constitution, intelligence vs. wisdom, sometimes even wisdom and charisma or strength and dexterity ("you can roll an Athletics OR Acrobatics check" is common at my table). Should perception be tied to wisdom? Can't smart people be alert or be able to pick up on things because they're smart? My character dumps intelligence but primaries wisdom, shouldn't that count as his "smarts?" What does "nature" fall under: wisdom or intelligence? "Dungeoneering?" Why do all the divine classes make intelligence their dumpstat mechanically when Religion is tied to it skill-wise? It's all terribly frustrating.
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Apr 20, 2015 21:50
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4e's skill array was often baffling and very wizard-friendly. Next's is no better.
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Apr 20, 2015 22:39
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Once you remove stats, and just have skills or abilities, you then get to choose your own justification for why you're good at something. Roleplaying!
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Apr 20, 2015 23:04
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Mecha Gojira posted:My biggest argument against ability scores being tied to skills is because it's arbitrary as to what the subtle differences between the different scores do or mean. I'm a fan of this argument as well. Like, what score should dictate my ability to climb a cliff face? Is it strength, which dictates how easily I can pull myself up? Is it dexterity, for being flexible enough to climb some of the tricky up-side-down parts? Is it constitution, because a long climb tires out even the best of athletes? Is it wisdom, because sometimes on a new climb you just have to feel out the best path to take up? Is it intelligence, which lets me methodically figure out which rocks and cracks to use? Hell, it might even be charisma, using my sheer force of person to convince myself that I can do this difficult climb. That's why 13th age's background system is cool. Just write 'Climber, +5' on your sheet and be done with it. (yes, 13th age also has ability scores, but I'm pretending we're using DTAS)
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Apr 20, 2015 23:15
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thespaceinvader posted:4e's skill array was often baffling and very wizard-friendly. Next's is no better. Well, my prime go-to example is still that Divine Class/Intelligence Dump Stat/Religion problem, and it carried right on over to Next. My DM even once tried to throw my cleric in 4e a bone with a Religion check, and I just straight up told him it wasn't going to happen without a half-decent roll.
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Apr 20, 2015 23:42
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And then they made nature into survival-but-still-a-knowledge-skill by making it key off of wisdom. And Dungeoneering keyed off of wisdom as well so battlewise fighter would have something to do, occasionally.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:03
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Mecha Gojira posted:Well, my prime go-to example is still that Divine Class/Intelligence Dump Stat/Religion problem, and it carried right on over to Next. My DM even once tried to throw my cleric in 4e a bone with a Religion check, and I just straight up told him it wasn't going to happen without a half-decent roll. I said gently caress that poo poo and had him roll 1d20 + 1/2 level + Wisdom, because whatever the merits of Religion being INT-based (like how the most faithful are not always the most familiar with doctrine or dogma) him failing that Religion roll would have been stupid.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:06
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So I was giving ability scores a lot of thought today and it's actually pretty amazing how far the rabbit hole goes. One of the most/worst grog thing about Ability Scores is that they don't accurately model any kind of human competence. In real life people don't have a high or low strength score; there are all kinds of strength, upper body and lower body, long and short twitch, and on and on. Dexterity is hopelessly broad - that represents manual dexterity, speed, accuracy (which, shouldn't that by tied to perception, really?) and on and on. I'm not really upset about that; DnD is a game, it should be a little gamey, but it's just important to note that they don't really model anything. What they might model are narrative archetypes; if you have a high Strength score, you get to be Strong Hero or if you have a high Intelligence score you get to be Smart Hero and so forth. In a really vague way they represent a way to enforce the agency of a limited number of archetypes on the game world. But they don't really even do that; they represent, at most, a 25% additional chance to maybe get to enforce the agency of the archetype in question. The disconnect happens when you try to embody the archetype using the wrong stat; or when you realize the variance on the D20 is way higher than what the actual scores grant you. Great, you want to play Hercules? Well, too bad, you only have a 15% greater chance of success than the guy next to you. You want to be Sherlock Holmes? Same problem. Ability Scores used to be a great way to randomly generate a throwaway character. It was the roguelike method of character generation - throw some numbers into a pot and see how far you can get your little imaginary person to go. Increasing dependency on math to drive the game over weeks or months requires a greater level of equilibrium over the party. DnD is a game where dice get rolled a lot. It isn't a game where a character can have a lovely score and still contribute through his antics and efforts. Sidekicks don't do well in DnD because everything is generated on the fly with the RNG. If the cost of standard arrays are the fact that my group doesn't get to enjoy a crazy powerhouse demigod character from time to time, sign me up. Playing with a superpowered character is fun sometimes but it gets old in the long term. DTAs, all the way.
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Apr 21, 2015 00:21
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mastershakeman posted:Yet this takes away from playing an ultra smart fighter or super strong wizard. The math expectation of optimization limits your choices. So instead of going back to a fixed math system like 4e, smooth out the bonuses so that it isn't required to max your primary stat or else. Oh, so your solution is to make ability scores matter less relative to dice rolls, for instance by lowering the bonus they provide. A reasonable stance to take. mastershakeman posted:Hell, you shouldn't be able to pull a jean valjean and lift a carriage off of someone with an 8 in str, even if you did take the skill athletics. You should also be hitting things a bunch better and harder (than others of your class and level) if you're the strongest guy alive . etcetc. This isn't complicated Oh, but a d20 allows for a lot of variance compared to how much of a bonus your ability scores provide. Currently, if you make it impossible for the weakling, you also make it so the literal strongest man alive will fail 80% of the time. So you're advocating to make ability scores matter more relative to dice rolls, for instance by increasing the bonus they provide. A reasonable stance to take. Wait no. Those are exactly opposite and your "solutions" are incoherent garbage.
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Apr 21, 2015 01:51
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Jimbozig posted:Oh, so your solution is to make ability scores matter less relative to dice rolls, for instance by lowering the bonus they provide. A reasonable stance to take. Probably because having a flat bonus to everything based on a attribute , while looking clean, isn't very good for multiple situations. Let's go back to these days:  And splicer, while I appreciate the effortpost and understand your arguments, I just don't agree with a lot of it.
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Apr 21, 2015 02:13
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Bend Bars/Lift Gates is the only skill you should ever need.
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Apr 21, 2015 02:16
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Oh yes, the good old days of charts
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Apr 21, 2015 02:19
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starkebn posted:Oh yes, the good old days of charts Correct.
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Apr 21, 2015 02:21
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mastershakeman posted:Probably because having a flat bonus to everything based on a attribute , while looking clean, isn't very good for multiple situations.
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Apr 21, 2015 02:39
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It's been a while since I've seen that chart, but am I reading it right that a character with an average STR of 10-11 (The average of a 3d6 random roll) only has a 30% chance to open a door?
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Apr 21, 2015 02:42
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There was a note somewhere that they're talking about stuck, waterswollen, filthy dungeon doors. There's a certain hilarity in needing a fighter along because the dungeon door is jammed, though.
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Apr 21, 2015 02:52
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Agent Boogeyman posted:It's been a while since I've seen that chart, but am I reading it right that a character with an average STR of 10-11 (The average of a 3d6 random roll) only has a 30% chance to open a door? Consider that only a Fighter can open a door, and then you will have achieved true D&Dlightenment
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Apr 21, 2015 03:09
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mastershakeman posted:Correct. You realise you could use that for a skill like athletics that anybody could choose to take (take out + to hit and damage) and their core class competency would not be affected? I feel pluses to hit and damage should be reliant on Level, not attributes
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Apr 21, 2015 03:16
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Assuming I can convince my DM to let me retcon my Eldritch Knight into a Battlemaster Fighter/Abjuration Wizard, what are some actual good maneuvers? Feinting Attack seems to be the clear winner, and I think Maneuvering Attack could be useful in the right circumstance, but the rest of them seem pretty underwhelming. Jesus. The reward for leveling up is more of these things and I can't even get through the initial allotment without scraping the bottom. At least "Feinting Attack until dice used up/Shield when hit" will feel slightly more engaging than "Attack/Shield when hit," right?
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Apr 21, 2015 03:36
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Solid Jake posted:Assuming I can convince my DM to let me retcon my Eldritch Knight into a Battlemaster Fighter/Abjuration Wizard, what are some actual good maneuvers? Feinting Attack seems to be the clear winner, and I think Maneuvering Attack could be useful in the right circumstance, but the rest of them seem pretty underwhelming. Trip attack is pretty nice if you have other melee members of the team, because curbstomping an enemy grants advantage. -- I'm sure this has been asked before, even possibly by me in this thread ages ago, but perhaps with time the answer has somewhat changed (even as generally ill-disposed towards 5e as this thread frequently is): What does 5e genuinely do better, or in an interestingly different way, to 13th Age? Newbie player and GM support is one thing, of course - that's part of the advantage of multiple books and a different approach to players. Product support, because DnD is still probably going to have somewhat of a supplement treadmill. But aside from those, where does 13th Age fall flat where 5e succeeds? I'm told 13th Age still manages to have some class balance problems, but I'm unsure how they compare to 5e class imbalance.
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Apr 21, 2015 03:55
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Solid Jake posted:Assuming I can convince my DM to let me retcon my Eldritch Knight into a Battlemaster Fighter/Abjuration Wizard, what are some actual good maneuvers? Feinting Attack seems to be the clear winner, and I think Maneuvering Attack could be useful in the right circumstance, but the rest of them seem pretty underwhelming. e: For the rest, I think somebody (maybe either AlphaDog or gradenko_2000, but I could be wrong) did a rundown of which maneuvers are actually worth half a poo poo in either this or the early days of the newbie thread. ImpactVector fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 04:33
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Solid Jake posted:Assuming I can convince my DM to let me retcon my Eldritch Knight into a Battlemaster Fighter/Abjuration Wizard, what are some actual good maneuvers? Feinting Attack seems to be the clear winner, and I think Maneuvering Attack could be useful in the right circumstance, but the rest of them seem pretty underwhelming. Feinting Attack is the best because it doubles your crit chance, is roughly equivalent to +5 to-hit, and the die roll still gets added to your damage roll. Precision Attack is what you should use when you already have Advantage. Trip Attack will let you give yourself and everyone else advantage, but it's not nearly as reliable as it could be since it still goes through a saving throw. Distracting Strike is Feinting Attack for your friends. Those are the top 4 and you can get by just using those. The utility of the rest all depend on how generous your DM is with Superiority Dice regeneration and how he stats up the monsters (i.e. saving throw chances for Disarming, Goading, Menacing, Pushing and Trip Attack). bewilderment posted:I'm sure this has been asked before, even possibly by me in this thread ages ago, but perhaps with time the answer has somewhat changed (even as generally ill-disposed towards 5e as this thread frequently is): 13th Age has better skill support with its versatile backgrounds, better encounter building and monster creation rules, standardized skill check DCs (on par with 5e), better book layout for class mechanics/spells/abilities/feats, combat rules that actually support Theater of the Mind, and a 4e-esque "AEDU Powers" system rather than a traditional D&D spells system. I honestly couldn't say that 5e does anything better than 13th Age. 13th Age does have class balance issues, but they're not nearly as bad as 5e's. D&D perhaps has a more fleshed-out setting, but you don't really need the 5e books specifically to get at that, and some goes for whatever world-building and DM-management advice is in the DMG*. * As an aside, the 4e DMGs are excellent resources for such things, although of course there's also a wealth of free stuff on the internet.
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Apr 21, 2015 06:14
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5e absolutely kicks 13th Age's rear end at having "Dungeons & Dragons" on the cover. Other that that, 13A more-than-delivers on the empty promises of the Next playtest. The Escalation Die does a neat end-run around bounded accuracy, for instance. Interestingly, every time you use a "skill" (background) the system encourages you to flesh out your character. It's been common wisdom that rules can't make you roleplay better, but there's the game helping you improv backstory.
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Apr 21, 2015 06:40
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mastershakeman posted:And splicer, while I appreciate the effortpost and understand your arguments, I just don't agree with a lot of it.
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Apr 21, 2015 10:47
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Thing is, the points buy/array system in 5e is kind of messed up. Basically, the number of points is right for the average of rolled ability scores, but there's also the restriction that you can't have higher than a 15 (or 16 if you use the array). Obsessive graph time:  Essentially, if someone rolls and only does "average", at the same level points-buy is meant to simulate, they will still have a pretty significant chance of being just plain better than someone who used points buy because they'll have a stat over 15. And in 5e flat math makes that a big deal, because a +1 on a stat puts you 5 levels ahead, plus affects your multiclass options when it comes to taking front loading classes. From what I'm understanding, the idea is that points buy was supposed to be a "safer" alternative to dice rolling - rather than what it really ought to be, which is an alternate route to the same game experience. The tradeoff with safety never works because, as others have mentioned, nobody enjoys playing a character with dice-crippled stats and therefore most groups won't force someone to play one. Also, all the roleplaying arguments seemed to break down when our group's powergamer suggested replacing my rogue, who had a roguey background, with a character who worshipped the God of Life briefly, then sold his sold to Cthulhu, then forgot about both (without losing powers or gifts from either!) and took up singing.
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Apr 21, 2015 12:23
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^^ neato Splicer posted:A stunning riposte. If you could prefer I could go through it line by line and nitpick away but I don't think that's very useful to do.
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Apr 21, 2015 13:36
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mastershakeman posted:^^ neato e: removed some needlessly confrontational wording. Splicer fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 14:06
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bewilderment posted:in an interestingly different way, to 13th Age? Mechanically, the answer to this is: In 13th age, backgrounds are super general, in 5th e they are specifically defined (unless you create your own?) In 13th age feats are specific, in 5th e they are broad. Edit: Oh, right. I had a lot of hope for the Weapon Master mechanic, but it ended up being done in an extremely dull way. It's fairly unique? As for "In what ways is 5th e better than 13th age?" 13th age is basically incapable of emulating 'low' fantasy, it's designed for "high energy" fantasy and pretty much only does that genre. Which is not to say that I would suggest 5th e for a high-rule system, low-fantasy campaign. I would unequivocally suggest Torchbearer for that. DalaranJ fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 14:35
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DalaranJ posted:In 13th age, backgrounds are super general, in 5th e they are specifically defined (unless you create your own?) To be fair, there is a variant rule for that: quote:BACKGROUND PROFICIENCY I'm guessing they weren't quite ready to go full storygame on the Background system yet given the expectations of their target market.
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Apr 21, 2015 14:50
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Splicer posted:Wall of quote:
quote:Finally, you're treating arguments against random rolling as arguments against your reasons for random rolling. An argument against a solution is not an argument for the problem. Again, nobody is saying that being able to play a well-rounded and also effective character is a bad thing, quite the opposite. The argument is that random rolling (in the context of 3.X+ D&D) is a lovely solution that causes way more problems than it resolves. Even if all (or at least most of) the root causes are ignored, there are potentially better solutions that allow for disparate ability scores while keeping equivalent narrative agency that don't have the abysmal downsides of random rolling. At the least they'll have different abysmal downsides. Hell, random rolling against the DC of lifting a cart is incredibly inferior to pulling out the chart and seeing how much someone can lift, so I guess you're right that rolling is pretty bad on occasion.
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Apr 21, 2015 16:00
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incoming:
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You're right that DTAS wouldn't solve the problem of, say, the disparity between a Champion Fighter and about 75% of the other class/archetypes in the game, but that just means you have to solve both of them. Now, when you refer to going back to the days of 2e and that STR chart, do you mean that there's no "chance" to lift a wagon, that it's simply you can or you can't based on the weight of the wagon? Because that just shifts the DM fiat from "what DC do I assign this check?" to "how heavy should the wagon actually be?", which both ways simplifies down to "does it matter whether the character can do this or not? Do I just let them?" And when you're asking yourself that question, one of your touchstones is supposed to be "How strong is the character?" The argument against attribute scores is that "How strong is this character?" ALWAYS comes out as "as strong as possible" if they're a Fighter, because that's the way the game obliges them to stat themselves out. EDIT: Disconnecting a character's to-hit and damage bonuses from their attribute scores and simply giving them whatever numerical bonus they should have might not solve balance issues between a Fighter and a Wizard, but it allows a Fighter to set their INT or WIS or CHA to whatever value they want while still retaining a baseline level of combat competency in a game where combat is something you will always eventually partake in. Whether you're going to adjudicate the lifting of a cart with a d20 roll or a STR chart, and indeed whether you're going to allow an 8 STR character to even try to lift the cart in the first place, DTAS is a good idea because it creates a "safe space" for 8 STR characters to exist in the first place. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 16:34
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DarkHorse posted:This literally just happened in my 4E game where the party members were sequentially trying to impress a dracolich with tales of their prowess so that it would let them pass. I told everyone that they could use any skill they wanted if they came up with a plausible explanation. The cleric's player, who is all about doing what his character would do, used a religion roll to represent him summoning a divine flame from his god and talking about how he turned the tide of a battle by calling an avatar of his deity. He botched the roll. At that point, why roll at all?
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Apr 21, 2015 17:40
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thespaceinvader posted:At that point, why roll at all? It starts with a v.
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Apr 21, 2015 18:30
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Am I wrong in thinking that Medium Armor is poo poo? Like, are there a lot of people putting 12s or 14s into their DEX? It seems like you'd want a 16 with light armor or a 8-10 with heavy armor (which multiclassing makes trivially easy to get)bewilderment posted:I'm sure this has been asked before, even possibly by me in this thread ages ago, but perhaps with time the answer has somewhat changed (even as generally ill-disposed towards 5e as this thread frequently is): I'm not sure if this is "interesting" or "different" (because I don't really know how 13th Age does it) but the Proficiency bonus is a nice scaling method that encapsulates all the nickel-and-dime things that 4e cobbled together to get your math right. It's also nice not having to update your numbers as often. Did they calibrate the resulting math properly? Doubtful. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 20:55
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You need at least 13 DEX to multiclass into/out of a few classes (Rogue, Ranger, Monk, Fighter if you don't have strength), so there isn't much reason not to bump it up to 14 for the extra point on everything. Also, though Medium Armor Master isn't a great feat, it lets you reach 18 AC in half plate with no penalty to stealth checks with only 16 DEX, which heavy and light armor can't do. It's mostly just for characters with bad DEX scores that didn't get heavy armor proficiency, though. Half of the cleric domains fall into this field.
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Apr 21, 2015 21:31
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Vanguard Warden posted:Also, though Medium Armor Master isn't a great feat, it lets you reach 18 AC in half plate with no penalty to stealth checks with only 16 DEX, which heavy and light armor can't do. The thing is ASI and Feats being an either/or, Level 1:
Chain Shirt + 16 DEX = 15 AC Level 4:
Scale Mail + 16 DEX + Medium Armor Master = 17 AC Level 8:
Half Plate + 16 DEX + Medium Armor Master = 18 AC So the person with Studded Leather is 1 AC behind once you hit level 4 (in a single class) but gets better at DEX saves, DEX skills, and initiative at each bump. They also never have to change out their equipment, whereas the Medium Armor user does (assuming they want to never have Stealth Disadvantage.) This is ignoring the fact that someone who's not DEX-focused will probably never drop a 16 into DEX, medium armor proficiency or not. Now, if your Medium Armor user is a Human and takes MAM off the bat, that means they're ahead on AC from level 1, but they never improve past that. Notably, if you get good stat rolls it's the same as being ahead on ASIs/Feats 
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Apr 21, 2015 21:58
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So don't pick the feat? I don't see the problem here.
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Apr 21, 2015 22:10
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