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Vengarr
Jun 17, 2010

Smashed before noon

Arivia posted:

What other math could the DM even use? 5e is such a mess I'd grab on to any guidelines I could for dear life if I was running it.

Is there a good rundown somewhere of problems with 5e? My sister and I have been listening to The Adventure Zone and I have a feeling she may ask me to DM a game for her and her friends. I don't have a ton of experience with D&D or tabletops in general, but I wouldn't mind learning.

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The Crotch
Oct 16, 2012

by Nyc_Tattoo
Short answer: conservatively designed game that doesn't really do anything particularly well. Tried to do both gridded and gridless combat and is worse at either than a game built to do just one. Re-invents a lot of problems from the early 2000s. Poor class balance (both in terms of effectiveness and how much you can engage with the game's mechanics with various classes). Finicky and unreliable encounter building rules. Lack of content. Confuses "rules-light" with "vague can confusing".

Skellybones
May 31, 2011




Fun Shoe
They tried to recapture the 'good old days' of 3e but without the massive simulationist rules backlog but the whole thing was done in a very half-assed way so it's managed to be both rules-light and over-written, while also being confusing and wordy.

Only spell casters get to do anything interesting beyond "I attack".

Encounter and monster design is also very half-assed and requires the GM to strike off on their own to make challenges that are not incredibly lethal, tedious or easy.

TriggerHappy
Mar 14, 2007

If you play fast and loose with the system the way the Adventure Zone guys do (Griffin is really good at ignoring dumb parts of the system) it's fine. You shouldn't have to fix the system, but at least you have a decent example to work from.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

TriggerHappy posted:

If you play fast and loose with the system the way the Adventure Zone guys do (Griffin is really good at ignoring dumb parts of the system) it's fine. You shouldn't have to fix the system, but at least you have a decent example to work from.

Even the way those guys play (IE: With scant knowledge or regard for what the rules say) you see 5e-isms showing up, like the spellcaster solving a problem with every action while the fighter bemoans the fact that all he gets to do is attack twice in a turn. Then multiclasses into rogue later :psyduck:

Vengarr
Jun 17, 2010

Smashed before noon
Just listening to TAZ it seemed like you could use Advantage and opposed skill checks to make melee attacking interesting without resorting to giving the warrior a bunch of abilities like World of Warcraft. Like you don't have a Cleave ability anymore, but if the warrior says "I want to take a wide swing at both goblins" you could just give him Disadvantage on hitting the second guy. Does that not work in practice?

The warrior taking down the giant spider by wrapping a chain around his legs like he was a snowspeeder fighting an AT-AT got me pretty hype.

Or maybe you could just add back in some of the warrior abilities from 4e? I tried running a 4e game once (even bought the starter set) and it just seemed very slow and complicated. All of my players got very bored very fast.

Admiral Joeslop
Jul 8, 2010




Rolling extra dice to have the chance at hitting two creatures for weapon damage isn't very fun or useful either.

The problem with house ruling a game to hell and back is that you shouldn't have to. A handful of changes here and there is great but if you're redesigning the entire combat system so people besides casters can do interesting things, why not just play another game?

FAT BATMAN
Dec 12, 2009

Because my friends and I already bought all these goddamn books and went through all the effort to learn the system and gently caress the "that's just sunk cost fallacy" argument, it's more fun and creative to try and make our own variant built off of 5e.

Here's a question: when you make an attack roll with a spell like, say, firebolt, are you rolling to see if the firebolt misses, or if the spell sputters out in your hand and never goes off?

FAT BATMAN fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Dec 1, 2016

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

FAT BATMAN posted:

Here's a question: when you make an attack roll with a spell like, say, firebolt, are you rolling to see if the firebolt misses, or if the spell sputters out in your hand and never goes off?
You know what we're going to say.

MadMadi
Mar 16, 2012

FAT BATMAN posted:

Because my friends and I already bought all these goddamn books and went through all the effort to learn the system and gently caress the "that's just sunk cost fallacy" argument, it's more fun and creative to try and make our own variant built off of 5e.

Here's a question: when you make an attack roll with a spell like, say, firebolt, are you rolling to see if the firebolt misses, or if the spell sputters out in your hand and never goes off?

"Ask your DM" might as well be the tag line for 5e.

Admiral Joeslop
Jul 8, 2010




FAT BATMAN posted:

Here's a question: when you make an attack roll with a spell like, say, firebolt, are you rolling to see if the firebolt misses, or if the spell sputters out in your hand and never goes off?

quote:

You hurl a mote of fire at a creature or object within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 1D10 fire damage. 

Ask Your DM if the spell hits something else when you miss.

Edit: Make all spellcasters do an arcana or religion check before they cast a spell. 10+ spell level DC. If they pass, the spell doesn't sputter out and they can then attempt to hit with it.

TriggerHappy
Mar 14, 2007

Vengarr posted:

Just listening to TAZ it seemed like you could use Advantage and opposed skill checks to make melee attacking interesting without resorting to giving the warrior a bunch of abilities like World of Warcraft. Like you don't have a Cleave ability anymore, but if the warrior says "I want to take a wide swing at both goblins" you could just give him Disadvantage on hitting the second guy. Does that not work in practice?

The warrior taking down the giant spider by wrapping a chain around his legs like he was a snowspeeder fighting an AT-AT got me pretty hype.

Or maybe you could just add back in some of the warrior abilities from 4e? I tried running a 4e game once (even bought the starter set) and it just seemed very slow and complicated. All of my players got very bored very fast.

There's a feat that gives cleave already. Battlemaster fighters get to do more than just attack for damage, too. They're still nowhere near as versatile as a caster would be, but it's not plain old attack rolls.

Vengarr
Jun 17, 2010

Smashed before noon

TriggerHappy posted:

There's a feat that gives cleave already. Battlemaster fighters get to do more than just attack for damage, too. They're still nowhere near as versatile as a caster would be, but it's not plain old attack rolls.

Well, as long as fighters have poo poo to do and aren't sitting around bored.

I just prefer snappy combat. If I could, I'd have one of those clocks like they have in chess. When I was in middle school there was a teacher who ran a D&D 3.0 (3.5?) club after school. A single fight would take hours.

MonsterEnvy
Feb 4, 2012

Shocked I tell you
5e is pretty quick in my experience.

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe

FAT BATMAN posted:

Here's a question: when you make an attack roll with a spell like, say, firebolt, are you rolling to see if the firebolt misses, or if the spell sputters out in your hand and never goes off?

Coming from the warmachine tabletop miniature game, I make my players roll against anyone else currently engaged in melee with the target of their spell or ranged attack if they miss.

Say your fighter is fighting 2 creatures. The ranger shoots at creature1 and misses. I make the ranger roll a d6 on evens/odds. Even for the fighter, odd for creature2. Roll another to hit against AC.

It adds some complexity, but it forces the ranged/casters to make choices about who they're firing off at and gives the melee some priority once they get engaged with creatures.

Vengarr
Jun 17, 2010

Smashed before noon
I distinctly remember a case where a couple of party members were in a runaway elevator, with the rest of the party stuck at the top level. My character was still waiting to be introduced to the adventure. The DM let them split into two groups and they started plotting furiously how they were going to make it out alive. After like 20 minutes he gets bored and starts grading papers.

An hour and a half later, they came back. First kid to move starts to act out their elaborate plan, looks at his character sheet and goes "poo poo...I have a ring of flight!"

Worse than loving detention :negative:

FAT BATMAN
Dec 12, 2009

Admiral Joeslop posted:

Make all spellcasters do an arcana or religion check before they cast a spell. 10+ spell level DC. If they pass, the spell doesn't sputter out and they can then attempt to hit with it.

I think I would like to test a one-shot campaign on DnD that's more storybook fairytale-like. Have magic spells be a bigger deal to cast by making them more difficult to pull off and more infrequent, and I guess in return they have a slightly bigger effect. Or you can choose to automatically succeed at a spell for an automatic roll on a Wild Magic-type effect list.
Right now, at least among my group, focuses like staves or wands that add a bonus to your spellcasting modifier are seen as just that, a nice bonus, and I wonder how the dynamic would change if it were more like "spells are really hard to pull off without a good wand to make it easier."
And fighters should get cleave right out of the gate. And be stronger on a more superheroic scale.

I know you guys love to be like "oh you're just reinventing such-and-such" but come on, it's the 5e thread, why not just indulge in some honest homebrewing?

And "ask your DM" is an implied footnote to every answer to a question, when I ask something like that what I'm asking is "how does your group handle it?" because I know how I would handle it as a DM, but I'm wondering if there's better, more fun ways to consider.
"Ask your DM" is not the final word, it should be a way to open up discussion and suggestions with "well when I DM here's how I do it.." and "hey I tried this once and it sucked, I do this instead."

koreban posted:

Coming from the warmachine tabletop miniature game, I make my players roll against anyone else currently engaged in melee with the target of their spell or ranged attack if they miss.

See like this is great! I think I'll try that!

FAT BATMAN fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Dec 1, 2016

Hello Sailor
May 3, 2006

we're all mad here

Vanguard Warden posted:

Note that because of some incredibly silly rules design (which makes the designers sound like they're doing word-limbo to fit the literal meaning of what they originally wrote), the feat actually grants you super-advantage if you have disadvantage when you use it.

I assumed this was intentional, to represent someone who could pull off amazing feats when the chips are down and everything is on the line.

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea

Vengarr posted:

Well, as long as fighters have poo poo to do and aren't sitting around bored.

Yeah, the fighter in the Adventure Zone who complains of having nothing to do but attack twice on his turn while spellcasters outshine him is a battlemaster fighter. He occasionally parries a thing.

Luckily it'll just get worse for him as the party levels.

Autism Sneaks
Nov 21, 2016

FAT BATMAN posted:

I know you guys love to be like "oh you're just reinventing such-and-such" but come on, it's the 5e thread, why not just indulge in some honest homebrewing?

Not to say this is any way your fault, because it isn't, but the questions you're asking are of the sort that should already be answered by the core rules of the game, and a lot of goons understandably chafe at doing Mike Mearls' goddamn job for him, just as they were tired of doing Skip Williams'. I'm sure plenty still have notebooks and binders and word processor files full of house rules still for 3.5, which was itself a revision!

Autism Sneaks fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Dec 1, 2016

Dick Burglar
Mar 6, 2006

FAT BATMAN posted:

See like this is great! I think I'll try that!

It sounds great, but it's actually lovely in practice. Why? Because it doesn't penalize the ranged attacker (aka the caster), it penalizes the characters in melee (aka the martials and paladins/rangers/whatever). Being a non-caster, non-archer (already a fairly lovely deal) just became that much shittier.

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe

Dick Burglar posted:

It sounds great, but it's actually lovely in practice. Why? Because it doesn't penalize the ranged attacker (aka the caster), it penalizes the characters in melee (aka the martials and paladins/rangers/whatever). Being a non-caster, non-archer (already a fairly lovely deal) just became that much shittier.

You'd think so, but it works well in my situation. We had an encounter where the ranger did more damage to the party than the opponents during a particularly difficult encounter. The social pressure that followed and the RP opportunities (He's now known as "TK" among the group of mostly former military types, which I'm told has particularly hilarious connotations. They work at the VA and the nickname has carried over.)

You're right that the spell isn't backfiring in the warlock's face, or the ranger isn't shooting his foot off, but now they're making meaningful decisions when they decide to hordebreaker into the paladin's opponents.

It's not ideal, but it works and I'd rather my players have to take a moment to make a decision about what they're going to do than autofire and crit fishing with no repercussions for missing targets.

Admiral Joeslop
Jul 8, 2010




Last night we fought a frost giant. They're CR 8 but we were only level 6 + an NPC Paladin. I went into melee with my Monk and got pasted for 26 damage, over half my life, in one weapon hit. If the other attack had hit, I would have unconscious, most likely. Playing melee is already hard enough, friendly fire won't make things better.

I also hate the common house rule of losing your weapon if you roll a 1 when attacking.

BadSamaritan
May 2, 2008

crumb by crumb in this big black forest


I sometimes work friendly fire in if there's a critical miss, but when I do I treat the accidental target as if in half or three-quarters cover on the roll to hit depending on the number of enemies they're engaged in combat with. After all, the player is not trying to hit them, so I don't want to use their regular AC- plus nobody wants to kill their buddy :(

As an aside, the 5e Paladin is a lot of fun and feels pretty flexible in and out of combat, but casting is pretty heavily worked into the class despite the martial focus. Then again, I'm also playing one in the best meshed group I've been a part of so that's going to bias me a ton.

I've also been DMing a 5e game with some newer players, and I've been working pretty hard to give a decent amount of the fights alternative combat options because it can be easy to get bored with the 'I attack' approach- terrain hazards and cover, some cultist-type enemies have spell resistance grenades (smoke that is easily dispersed with wind or a couple rounds of melee agitation), etc., have all forced them to be more creative about how they engage, and demand more involvement from the martial characters in order to make the casters more effective. As a group, they're pretty into the puzzle-solving and teamwork, and I'm psyched whenever they come up with some odd approach.

Two of the players- the rogue and the barbarian- hadn't played D&D before, and I found that holding a 'fight club' session that focused on having them describe fun movement, grappling, and acrobatics really opened up how they approached combat in general. A couple levels later there's a Bag of Tricks and some Slippers of Spider Climb in the mix and I regret nothing.

Man that CR system really stinks, though. It makes preparing tougher encounters nerve-racking because there just feels like no good way to tell how hard a straight fight will actually be.

xiw
Sep 25, 2011

i wake up at night
night action madness nightmares
maybe i am scum

Cpig Haiku contest 2020 winner
If you roll a 1 on your spell hit roll or your spell target rolls a 20 on their save, they deflect the spell back at you - resolve it against yourself.

There we go.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Yeah it's great when my friend rolls low and that means my character dies even though I made good decisions and have been rolling well. You should definitely make sure this fun and awesome scenario can happen in your game too.

And you can have a little roleplay where you say "you shot me, you dick" and they say "I only do bows and everyone was swordfighting, what am I meant to do?" and then in future the ranged attack character can stand quietly while everyone else sword fights so it doesn't happen again!

Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Dec 22, 2005

GET LOSE, YOU CAN'T COMPARE WITH MY POWERS

AlphaDog posted:

Yeah it's great when my friend rolls low and that means my character dies even though I made good decisions and have been rolling well. You should definitely make sure this fun and awesome scenario can happen in your game too.
Yes, sometimes other players rolling low will cause your team to lose the fight and you to die, isn't that kinda how this thing works? I'm a new D&D player so I dunno maybe that's not usually how it is, but each characters actions affecting one another seems like a big part of the point, to me.

NeurosisHead
Jul 22, 2007

NONONONONONONONONO

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

Yes, sometimes other players rolling low will cause your team to lose the fight and you to die, isn't that kinda how this thing works? I'm a new D&D player so I dunno maybe that's not usually how it is, but each characters actions affecting one another seems like a big part of the point, to me.

While character deaths can be an interesting dramatic event, I've always felt that a fundamental conceit in running a campaign is that the players are supposed to win. They should have setbacks, sure. But in the end the idea is to let them tell the story of their heroic adventures. Anything that makes the party actively contribute to Not Winning (like not deliberate friendly fire damage) feels like it doesn't belong in my campaign. That doesn't mean I'm right and anyone else is wrong, but my table wouldn't be real happy about it and I likely wouldn't either.

Sage Genesis
Aug 14, 2014
OG Murderhobo

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

Yes, sometimes other players rolling low will cause your team to lose the fight and you to die, isn't that kinda how this thing works? I'm a new D&D player so I dunno maybe that's not usually how it is, but each characters actions affecting one another seems like a big part of the point, to me.

There's a difference between "teamwork" and "one-way street of punishment". This rule exclusively harms melee characters for the crime of... being a melee character. That's not a healthy interaction between characters, it's just randomly shoveling out more damage on the warriors. What you refer to is something else. Let me put it like this:

Find the odd one out:
* Synergy
* Squad-based tactics
* Cooperative experience
* Friendly fire casualty


D&D actually used to have this rule for decades. ("Coming from warmachine"... and where do you think warmachine got it from?) After many years of experience with this rule, the designers decided to tone it down in 3e. Now in 5e it doesn't exist at all anymore. There is a reason for this.

I've played with this rule in the 90's. It lead to some fun, memorable moments of roleplaying. Once. The first time it happened. After that it was just a loving hassle, a rule we kept using because we didn't know we were allowed to houserule stuff away.

mastershakeman
Oct 28, 2008

by vyelkin
Considering this threads penchant for reflavoring and refluffing anything (see the warlock/paladin discussion) im shocked no one has rewritten the wizard and sorcerer classes as muscle wizards with every spell refluffed to be done with brawn.

Zomborgon
Feb 19, 2014

I don't even want to see what happens if you gain CHIM outside of a pre-coded system.

mastershakeman posted:

Considering this threads penchant for reflavoring and refluffing anything (see the warlock/paladin discussion) im shocked no one has rewritten the wizard and sorcerer classes as muscle wizards with every spell refluffed to be done with brawn.

But then it would just be "I cast fist!" for half the session! That would be boring!

Fighters, of course, are totally fine with "I attack."

kingcom
Jun 23, 2012

Alright so i need to explain something to people here that may not understand what they are doing when they try to 'open up' options to the melee classes because those classes are boring as gently caress.

If you ever make the unique special thing more difficult than just attacking, then you've hosed up because they wont do it, or will try it, fail and never try it again. If the interesting choice is harder to pull off (unless the reward is exponentially greater than the difficulty) there is no reason to do it. Don't make something a skill check they arent going to have, dont make it a stat check (ever) because its going to be worse than just attacking. Adding disadvantage can be crippling too so again, if the person paying attention to the dice gets told they need to roll disadvantage to try 'cool thing' they probably wont or fail and never try again. You are mentally conditioning behavior whether you like it or not, so if you want to encourage something, make it as easy as the regular attack or even easier. Dont punish people for trying something new.

ALSO ALSO Cause holyshit i thought people had figured this out but apparently not. Do NOT under any circumstances set up situations where character action/ability use/behavior is curbed based on other members of the group being negative towards them for their in character actions. The example being brought up is the 'you might hit him if you shoot into melee' solution people are trying to use. The result of this is that either:

a) Everyone interprets this as never shooting into melee which only results in the ranged characters getting pissed when the melee character decides to do the one thing they can do and attack in melee and the melee character now gets stranded in fights with their cause nobody wants to shoot into melee. It means the melee is also even worse at stopping the bad guys from just going after the ranged squishes since anyone he gets locked into melee with is someone the rest of the party cant take out, so either he protects them and the ranged characters ignore that whole zone for the fight or he doesn't protect them and they get rushed. It only servers to gently caress the melee even harder. You're creating tension where character are no longer about working together but instead splitting off AND have the potential to just gently caress over whatever someone else was trying to do. This is before we even think about fights that revolve around 1 big enemy the party is going to fight and either the ranged do nothing or the melee do nothing.

OR

b) Everyone ignores this and continues to attack into melee, now the melee will have an even worse time than before and randomly just take bonus damage from his allies, this results in building tension and conflict for a class that is already at a huge disadvantage but now is going to have to deal with the idea that any time he tries to do the SINGLE THING HIS CLASS IS ALLOWED TO DO then hes going to be punished for it. Either the ranged people get upset with the melee or the melee people get upset with the ranged and whoever is going to be outnumbered is going to feel shafted by the others as a result. Sure this tension might not be a huge thing but you've created a situation where the party now needs to think of the other party members as obstacles for their class which is a loving dumb thing in a team game.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

Yes, sometimes other players rolling low will cause your team to lose the fight and you to die, isn't that kinda how this thing works? I'm a new D&D player so I dunno maybe that's not usually how it is, but each characters actions affecting one another seems like a big part of the point, to me.

Players should lose based on decisions they made not on just a random dice roll that kills you before you have a chance to react hth.

kingcom fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Dec 2, 2016

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe
Or alternatively, I set up the encounter such that the ranged guys have other targets to shoot at, or they can whip out their weapons and touch spells for no detrimental effect.

Jesus Christ it's seriously like some of you play Linear Hallways and Dragons.

The last encounter I set up for my players had a hobgoblin warband attempting to lure a wyvern into a trap. They had stolen the wyvern's egg and when it came for them they used some ballistae net throwers to restrain the wyvern.

The players came upon the warband and engaged them. There were 8 hobs trying to subdue the restrained wyvern, 6 hobs that attacked with bows, 1 hob captain with an ogre bodyguard and a hob war chief on a worg. There were also two 3-man ballistae crews who were targeting the boat.

The paladin ran up and engaged the war chief and a few of the hob archers, the cleric went toe to toe with the ogre, the warlock and ranger went after ballista crews. When it got down to a few hobs remaining and the war chief died, the paladin disengaged from the archer hobs to assist the cleric on the ogre/captain while the ranger and warlock blasted the hobs.

The hobs fighting the wyvern got left alone until things went to poo poo because they were busy with a thrashing, pissed off wyvern.

Everyone had a job to do, everyone made an effort and it wasn't a "focus Fire on the tank's target" sort of fight. The players had fun, the miss penalty works both ways, and everyone felt like they had something to contribute. I didn't pull punches or make the hobgoblins harder or smarter than they should have been. They went after the ranged attackers rather than the melee scrum their capable war boss was in.

No one escaped unscathed. The cleric had a couple of rounds of not attacking in order to toss out a heal. The ranger had to move to take 3/4 cover because he was being pelted with volleys of arrows... all in all, it was a dynamic, chaotic encounter that challenged the players to consider their actions and movements because they all had consequences.

Sometimes, the melee even used abilities to do things like blind their opponents or disengage to assist party members instead of "I attack twice"ing through the game.

And if your 7th level ranger can't hit an AC 13 ogre, he probably deserves the poo poo he's going to get from the party for doing 12 damage to the cleric.

Sage Genesis
Aug 14, 2014
OG Murderhobo

koreban posted:

Or alternatively, I set up the encounter such that the ranged guys have other targets to shoot at, or they can whip out their weapons and touch spells for no detrimental effect.

Sorry, but this really reads as "My shooting-into-melee houserule is not bad, because sometimes people don't shoot into melee."


koreban posted:

And if your 7th level ranger can't hit an AC 13 ogre, he probably deserves the poo poo he's going to get from the party for doing 12 damage to the cleric.

Sometimes the RNG of a d20 will gently caress a character over. A 7th level character has, what, +3 proficiency? And like +4 from Dex? Throw in the +2 Archery style bonus and you end up with a +9 to hit.

Well guess what, that still means you miss 15% of the time. That's just flat d20 distribution for you. The idea that you "deserve poo poo" for rolling a 2 is so absurd that I have to wonder if you're even being serious here.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Pointing out that you can build encounters so that the bad situation caused solely by your bad houserule doesn't come up is a weird way of defending your bad houserule.

If you were playing on a grid, you could work it so firing into melee is only a bad idea if you're trying to fire through a friendly (ie, the space occupied by an ally). That would mean that the ranged attacker would have to maneuver to avoid friendly fire, bringing a tactical aspect to it that "random chance to hurt a friend so realistic so gritty" doesn't have.

Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Dec 2, 2016

mastershakeman
Oct 28, 2008

by vyelkin
well it's true that ranged attackers should be discouraged and this is one way to do it

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe
This here is exactly why no one will ever be pleased with any ruleset that gets released, ever.

I don't give a poo poo whether you like my houserule or not, since it doesn't affect anyone else here, but the kneejerk reactions were more than I was expecting.

koreban
Apr 4, 2008

I guess we all learned that trying to get along is way better than p. . .player hatin'.
Fun Shoe

Sage Genesis posted:

Sorry, but this really reads as "My shooting-into-melee houserule is not bad, because sometimes people don't shoot into melee."

Sometimes the RNG of a d20 will gently caress a character over. A 7th level character has, what, +3 proficiency? And like +4 from Dex? Throw in the +2 Archery style bonus and you end up with a +9 to hit.

Well guess what, that still means you miss 15% of the time. That's just flat d20 distribution for you. The idea that you "deserve poo poo" for rolling a 2 is so absurd that I have to wonder if you're even being serious here.

Alternatively: Make encounters bigger than 4 on 1 and give people choices. If the choices are binary, you're probably doing something wrong. Also, you're playing into the odds if you choose to do the shooting into melee thing.

For the record, you've got a 15% chance to miss the ogre, then you're rolling evens/odds to see if you accidentally hit the cleric or the hob captain, then you roll against your cleric's AC of, what, 20? I'm not a statistician, but that's gotta be under 5%. That 5% gives your ranger something to think about. The consequence of failure being potentially sort of a big deal.

How is that not a better option than "I shoot my bow, I miss. next!"

kingcom
Jun 23, 2012

koreban posted:

This here is exactly why no one will ever be pleased with any ruleset that gets released, ever.

I don't give a poo poo whether you like my houserule or not, since it doesn't affect anyone else here, but the kneejerk reactions were more than I was expecting.

Sounds like you give quite a few shits tbh.

You may think these are kneejerk reactions but this is from people who have played all sorts of different rpgs with all sorts of systems and styles and approaches to problem solving over the years (im sure much like yourself) and seen how these problems aren't actually solved by what your proposing. People kinda realized this back in 3e when it was changed to just be a feat tax you took to get rid of the penalty to hit rather than any chance to hit your allies. This is a thing figured out ages ago, much along the same lines as having skill-checks with no result for a failure or skill-checks requiring a success to advance the adventure etc

koreban posted:

Alternatively: Make encounters bigger than 4 on 1 and give people choices. If the choices are binary, you're probably doing something wrong. Also, you're playing into the odds if you choose to do the shooting into melee thing.

For the record, you've got a 15% chance to miss the ogre, then you're rolling evens/odds to see if you accidentally hit the cleric or the hob captain, then you roll against your cleric's AC of, what, 20? I'm not a statistician, but that's gotta be under 5%. That 5% gives your ranger something to think about. The consequence of failure being potentially sort of a big deal.

How is that not a better option than "I shoot my bow, I miss. next!"

You're right there 'I shoot my bow, I miss. next!' is absolutely a boring and interesting options but setting things up where you are now making potentially 4 rolls instead of 2 is a bit silly and almost certainly must slow down the game without really adding anything interesting to it.

As a ranged character if the option is 'do the optimal thing and focus fire with the melee' and the odds are To Miss number -> 50% -> Melee AC, then im going to shoot into melee combat every single time. The risk is no longer mine to take and 3 dice rolls, almost regardless of what they are is generally not going to come up. The suboptimal choice is going to hurt me and the party far more anyway (focus fire is always the optimal choice unless i specially need to spend my action economy to 'get/use/interact' with some objective within a time limit'). You've not added a choice or decision, you've not added any real risk to me the ranged character because the opportunity cost is going to be worse if i dont help focus fire so yeah the house rule falls into result (a) where I just ignore the house rule entirely.

Its not fun for the melee character really and they're the ones who need the most help. Hell its barely even fun for the ranged character and if I were the melee character I would hope the ranged character shot into melee to help kill the target because denying the enemy actions and potential damage to me is going to far outweigh anything else. You've only created a circumstance in which the melee character has one extra penalty on top for zero actual benefit to the intended goal of giving some penalty to the spellcaster/ranged martial.

kingcom fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Dec 2, 2016

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Sage Genesis
Aug 14, 2014
OG Murderhobo

koreban posted:

This here is exactly why no one will ever be pleased with any ruleset that gets released, ever.

I don't give a poo poo whether you like my houserule or not, since it doesn't affect anyone else here, but the kneejerk reactions were more than I was expecting.

Most people here are very familiar with your "houserule" - like I said, it used to be a standard D&D rule. For nearly two and a half decades, I think. (But don't quote me on that.) That's not kneejerk, that's just experience.

And if it works for you, great. Keep using it. I'm serious, I'm not being internet-sarcastic or anything. Do whatever works for you. But, just as you bring up that rule to others here, I will bring up to them that it was awful for my group. I figure between the various opinions they can make up their own minds.

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