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Zarick posted:What's a good alternative to 5e if it's so horrible? To me, it seems to fill a niche of medium complexity high fantasy dungeon crawling RPG, which doesn't seem like there are many competitors for. Agreed. But I hope Fantasy Flight Games someday makes a high fantasy RPG (not Warhammer) that basically uses their Star Wars RPG mechanics. That game has the right combination of crunchy mechanics and narrative role playing.
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Feb 10, 2017 07:12
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nelson posted:Agreed. But I hope Fantasy Flight Games someday makes a high fantasy RPG (not Warhammer) that basically uses their Star Wars RPG mechanics. That game has the right combination of crunchy mechanics and narrative role playing. http://www.redshirtdown.com/kingdom/ quote:Sky Wars: Edge of the Kingdom is a 100% free, fan-made fantasy conversion for Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars RPG line.
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Feb 10, 2017 07:17
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Vengarr posted:Any other tips for shaking them of the video game mindset? quote:Gonna shock her next session when I reveal this entire adventure was a trap by the BBEG they could have avoided if they'd done any investigation whatsoever don't do this sit down and have a conversation like an adult
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Feb 10, 2017 07:23
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How did someone run through the entire dungeon without being murdered by several encounters worth of things slapping them down?
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Feb 10, 2017 07:27
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why didn't you stop the game and say "no that's dumb don't do that this isn't a video game"?
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Feb 10, 2017 07:29
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"This isn't 4e! Stop kiting the mobs like in Blackrock Spire!"
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Feb 10, 2017 07:30
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Nobody cares about me and my drama and I'm counting down the clock until Arivia calls me a chode, but me and the DM had another talk and everything is totally smoothed over. Two hour long conversation condensed into a couple sentences, he felt I was flaunting plot armor because of my actions in the situation. I didn't feel that way, I was making careful choices and weighing my options on everything I did, roleplaying appropriately. The failure to communicate this led to him having a moment where he decided it wasn't time to save me via dm fiat and both of us started to tilt because we were both looking for something from the other one. I was waiting to be rewarded for the decisions I was making, he was waiting for me to signal that I wasn't just being reckless and meta-gamey. We talked about how to better communicate in the future, some of the different ways the thing might've gone down if I did something as simple as explain my thought process for why I scuffed the runes on the ritual instead of hiding, or running a different direction, or anything else. Something that would've told him I was roleplaying and not just trying to leverage rules or my position as the party leader/team mascot as plot armor. I finally understand why he did things the way he did and that has gone a long way toward fixing the problem because now I can feel like I could have done something differently. Not in terms of what my character did, but how I communicated what I wanted at the table. He confirmed that my character won't die next session either. That I just have to do my roleplay and come up with a good solution and I'll get back to the safety of the mansion with only a bite wound and a pile of traumatic memories.
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Feb 10, 2017 07:41
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Become a vampire.
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Feb 10, 2017 07:42
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The character would unironically make a fantastic vampire.
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Feb 10, 2017 07:43
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Chode.  Good on you for talking it out like adults.
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Feb 10, 2017 07:45
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4 minutes is less than I would have guessed.
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Feb 10, 2017 07:54
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Vengarr posted:I've got a player who is very strange about roleplaying. She made a great character, she's got a character voice, she wrote a few pages of backstory...then she went charging through my dungeon aggroing everything because "We were going to fight them anyway, might as well trigger all the mobs" What the hell? Even an MMO player would know that engaging all enemies at once will lead to a swift death. Her charging through the dungeon should have ended with her cornered by 40 gnolls or whatever you had in there and swiftly killed. Or if you're making a point, have them be non-hostile and balk when she gets to murderin'.
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Feb 10, 2017 08:20
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gradenko_2000 posted:
I was going to respond to the last post, but this one's good too: Without thinking too much into it, I like that idea as a simple way of handling skill checks. It's clever. That said: a week or so ago we were talking in this very thread about how simple acts shouldn't take a skill check. If you are super good at a thing, don't make your people roll for it, just let them complete it because it's cool and fun and makes them feel powerful in ways they built their character to be. I see intimidation vs. lockpick as two different skill check archetypes. Working against an NPC is subject to that NPC's mood/disposition/alignment/etc. Having Fightgar be more intimidating than Wizlock makes sense at a basic level and any person face to face with a hulked out guy weilding a battleaxe is going to be more intimidated, regardless of the chiseled features of his chin. The difficulty of a lock against picking is a mechanical construct. It doesn't care if you hit it first or look at it in a *really* imposing manner. It's a fixed, mechanical skill value. It has no sense of self preservation. If you are skilled and dexterous, you'll have a better chance and easier time of it. Incidently, Fightgar may have just as easy a time breaking the door down with his aforementioned battleaxe. This is one of the things I really dislike about the hates5e crowd; everything has to be a fixed and static number. Because 3.5/Pathfinder did it that way and *that's* a better system! Numbers for everything! You knew what your DC was and you had 15 modifiers plus your dice roll to make sure you passed it! Nah, man. Thanks, but I'm ok with Fightgar, the -1Cha bonus meathead having a DC 8 check to intimidate Bob the Gate Guard while Wizlock the +3Cha gnome sorcerer needs an 18 to scare the piss out of Bob. It just makes sense to me that way. They'll both need to pass a DC17 Dex check to disable/break the lock on the side gate to sneak into town if they manage to piss off Bob and his friends, but that's what Shifty the rogue is hanging out for. It's still a DC17 for him, but he's got +3Dex and proficiency with thieves' tools.
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Feb 10, 2017 08:32
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Zarick posted:What's a good alternative to 5e if it's so horrible? To me, it seems to fill a niche of medium complexity high fantasy dungeon crawling RPG, which doesn't seem like there are many competitors for. 13th Age doesn't seem any better (and is in many ways worse), 3e/PF are obviously poo poo, and stuff like Dungeon World is almost entirely handwaving. (I tried to have my players play this, it didn't make it through a whole session because it was all: "What do I do now?" It's too open-ended for a lot of novice RPG players.) I'm not sure if it qualifies as "doing what 5e is trying to do" but I always like to recommend Old School Hack, which is admittedly more of a hack and slash game than a dungeon-crawling game, but it's a very fun hack and slash game with an old-school D&D coat of paint on it. Things it does well: having gridless combat while still allowing for tactical choices. Its combat works better if you have some sort of a visual representation, but I feel that even when you're playing fully gridless and with abstract positioning a map and some tokens really speed up play, so that's not really an issue specific to Old School Hack. Also, gives each class something to do, and in my opinion manages to balance out Fighters with mostly at-will talents with Magic-Users with more impressive daily talents. My main complaints about the game boil down to the fact that its system for out-of-combat activities is very bare-bones (I mean, it's simply 1d12+ability versus DC, and if you roll high enough you succeed, but the system isn't really extrapolated on in any depth so it feels a bit tacked on) and the fact that in spite of its focus on combat it treats those two separate parts of the game as if they were on equal footing when it comes to making choices in character creation (for an example, Fighters get a +1 bonus to all attack roll simply by virtue of being Fighters, which is actually pretty powerful in the context of the game's math, while Thieves get the ability to automatically succeed on two particular types of attribute checks once per session; then when you look at a single class you might find stuff like the Dwarf being able to take a talent which lets them win at all drinking contests forever, or getting a cool shield bash attack that can stun an enemy). It's still a fun game and I think pretty much everyone who enjoys fantasy RPGs should give it a whirl at least once. It's also free. The game only goes until level 5 though, so it's not very good for extended campaigns, but I've found it's pretty much perfect for short mini-campaigns when people just want to punch orcs.
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Feb 10, 2017 08:40
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koreban posted:That said: a week or so ago we were talking in this very thread about how simple acts shouldn't take a skill check. If you are super good at a thing, don't make your people roll for it, just let them complete it because it's cool and fun and makes them feel powerful in ways they built their character to be. That's sort of a separate issue from what I've been talking about with regards to setting DCs and the math of success rates. Yes, if there's no cost associated with the action, then don't even let the players roll for it. Yes, if letting the players pass automatically makes them feel good and cool and special and drives the story forward, then don't even let the players roll for it. But if are in a situation where you want to have the players roll and the rules kick in, the rules should, ideally, work right out of the box. If you want to say "okay, you pick the lock, no sweat" because nothing was at stake, or if you want to say "okay, you pick the lock, it takes you 5 minutes" and you have something going on in the background that makes the 5 minute passage of time mean something (the guards get closer! more monsters! change in patrol configuration! princess is 5 minutes closer to execution!), then yeah, do that too. But when you finally get to that point where the players actually are rolling for something, for whatever reason, then what's written in the book should work, or else what did you fork over the :tenbux: for. koreban posted:This is one of the things I really dislike about the hates5e crowd; everything has to be a fixed and static number. Because 3.5/Pathfinder did it that way and *that's* a better system! Numbers for everything! You knew what your DC was and you had 15 modifiers plus your dice roll to make sure you passed it! My point is, why isn't the Fightgar's intimidation check so much higher than Wizlock's just by virtue of them being those respective characters with those respective stats, such that you still have to reduce Fightgar's intimidation check DC anyway? Isn't that a problem with the way that the game's own numbers work out?
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Feb 10, 2017 08:52
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koreban posted:This is one of the things I really dislike about the hates5e crowd; everything has to be a fixed and static number. Because 3.5/Pathfinder did it that way and *that's* a better system! Numbers for everything! You knew what your DC was and you had 15 modifiers plus your dice roll to make sure you passed it! This is a weird thing to post in this thread, because pretty much everyone here who doesn't like 5E thinks 3.x is a garbage fire and that 5E hosed up by being too heavily based on 3.x. Everything in 5E, as designed, is a fixed and static number because that's how they designed the game. Departing from that is fine, but fixed numbers is the assumption the designers had in mind (that's why the options in the DMG for handling skills checks are options and not the core rules).
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Feb 10, 2017 08:53
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thefakenews posted:This is a weird thing to post in this thread, because pretty much everyone here who doesn't like 5E thinks 3.x is a garbage fire and that 5E hosed up by being too heavily based on 3.x. It's also not entirely accurate because 3.x does have "opposed rolls" as a target-number mechanic besides just a static DC.
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Feb 10, 2017 09:02
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Zarick posted:What's a good alternative to 5e if it's so horrible? To me, it seems to fill a niche of medium complexity high fantasy dungeon crawling RPG, which doesn't seem like there are many competitors for. 13th Age doesn't seem any better (and is in many ways worse), 3e/PF are obviously poo poo, and stuff like Dungeon World is almost entirely handwaving. (I tried to have my players play this, it didn't make it through a whole session because it was all: "What do I do now?" It's too open-ended for a lot of novice RPG players.) OD&D with full tracking is actually pretty complex on it's own. But it's a game of strategy, planning, and logistics compared to the tactics, combat, and magic panaceas of later editions. It's also not high fantasy, which in the context of "dungeon crawling RPG" really seems like code-words for heroic tactics and combat. If that is the case I'd say a stripped down 4e. Select no feats, select no skills, limit or outright prohibit buffing and reaction power choices outside of what's built into base classes. Probably mid-late heroic level. Adjust monster stats to compensate for the reduced power levels, but from what I know of playing with optimized parties this will be pretty close to following the actual normal encounter guidelines instead of always running hard and deadly encounters against up-leveled foes. Then you've got to make the actual dungeon crawling part interesting. There's less there for 4e than I'd like. Basically the entire 4e party is restricted to 5e martial mechanics for dungeon crawling. Arguably better than 5e's disparity, arguably worse than 5e's actually having some resource management beyond combat readiness. My opinion is that you have to figure it out on your own with either edition but you're better off with a blank slate than a rotten foundation.
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Feb 10, 2017 09:18
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TheBlandName posted:I'd say a stripped down 4e. Select no feats, select no skills, limit or outright prohibit buffing and reaction power choices outside of what's built into base classes. Probably mid-late heroic level I wrote something about doing exactly this as a framework
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Feb 10, 2017 09:28
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That's solid work. The responses on reddit are exactly what I'd expect from people who don't understand both math and design though. "Why would you write up a chart of values instead of recomputing every single time, it's not like it's a hard problem." "Why are you getting rid of variability? I don't understand that everyone who knows what they're doing is hitting the same benchmarks and everyone else is just being punished for not engaging with the char-op minigame."
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Feb 10, 2017 09:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:My point is, why isn't the Fightgar's intimidation check so much higher than Wizlock's just by virtue of them being those respective characters with those respective stats, such that you still have to reduce Fightgar's intimidation check DC anyway? Isn't that a problem with the way that the game's own numbers work out? This is a good question, and here's my answer to it: Each specific skill in the game is based on one of 5 ability score abstractions. Honestly, there's 4 because Athletics/Strength is the only interaction there, so we'll call it 4. Of those, 3 are social/mental skills. When you're looking at 14 specific skills spanned across 3 specific stats and try to extrapolate that out to encompass thematic tasks, you're going to have some that get pretty close to the mark, and some that just miss it completely. I think Intimidation is one that misses by a larger margin in most situations. When you think about Intimidation, especially in respect to an archetypal Fighter, you're thinking of someone bordering on murder scaring the piss out of someone else. You're appealing to the victim's sense of self preservation. That *would* count as projecting your personality or emotions in such a way as to influence another person, which is the thematic "thing" that charisma does. However, it's also calmly telling someone the consequences of not doing an action that could have dire effects on the person. You can approach it from an almost psychopathic perspective: think Don Corleone giving a very veiled but non-specific threat. Both situations would, I think, be a natural fit for an Intimidation roll. So we're using Charisma as the stat to take the ability check. Going back to Fightgar and Wizlock: Fightgar hulking up and yelling and waving a huge axe at Bob the Gate Guard is going to present a fairly intimidating figure for Bob. Bob is going to fall back on his sense of self preservation fairly quickly because he recognizes that Fightgar is a half second and a twitchy shoulder rotation away from cleaving Bob in two. Therefore it's an Easy-to-Moderate skill check for Fightgar. Fightgar has a negative modifier to his Charisma stat, which means he's not as good at projecting himself and maybe is 10% less likely than the raw dice score to pull it off, but hey, angry man scary. Wizlock is some tiny dude in a jerkin who barely comes up to Bob's waistline. If he's going to try and intimidate Bob, then Wizlock is going to have to get past Bob's initial reaction to an angry short person threatening him. Bob isn't scared of Wizlock by his appearance, and if Wizlock isn't throwing around magical balls of light or otherwise augmenting his words, he's going to have a harder time convincing Bob that he's as much a threat as Fightgar. This, again, goes back to the PHB stating that each ability check is calculated with a DC. I count each character as making their own ability check, therefore I calculate DCs for both of them. I think that if there was a rule that expressly stated that all DCs are to be calculated as Task DCs and each character that attempts to make them does so at a fixed target number, it would be a serious problem with the game's use of numbers and calculations. Just take the archetypal Paladin and Barbarian and think which one would be a more intimidating threat to a guard at a city gate, just by their appearance. Huge scarred musclebound freak of a person holding a giant axe, or a knightly guy in plate armor and some holy sigil. Who's more likely to murder a gate guard for stopping him and asking for his travel papers? By the book mechanics, the paladin will win out just about every time. They prioritize Charisma as a primary stat, and for barbarians it's almost always a dump stat. (That's also partly by design in the core class abilities and secondary effects of ability scores for things like initiative and perception.) By the same token, having a high charisma makes you equally as good at intimidating people as lying to them, talking them into things and entertaining them? This is where the DM setting DCs with a little bit of thought as to who is requesting the check comes in. Some Wild Mage outcast may lie pretty well to keep herself alive because magic=witch, but it doesn't mean that the bard is only 10% better at performing in front of a crowd as her. (Counting proficiency vs. equal stats in Cha). If for some reason they were having a dance-off in the Inn and it was judged by crowd response, the Bard might clear a "good performance" check on a 10, but the sorcerer who has the same charisma score, but by background and play is supposed to be aloof and keeping themselves out of sight, would probably need to roll 13-15, because holy poo poo, that's not something they would normally be good at, even if the one stat out of the three you get to choose from is equal. If you want to make the argument that the problem with the game is that 3 stats dictate 78% of all possible skill check interactions, I'm right there with you. I *do* think that's one of the shortcomings of D&D. However, I do have a RAW way of coping with it that seems to work out ok as long as the DM is reasonably familiar with their player's characters and can memorize a chart with 6 number thresholds..
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Feb 10, 2017 10:03
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koreban posted:Just take the archetypal Paladin and Barbarian and think which one would be a more intimidating threat to a guard at a city gate, just by their appearance. Huge scarred musclebound freak of a person holding a giant axe, or a knightly guy in plate armor and some holy sigil. Who's more likely to murder a gate guard for stopping him and asking for his travel papers? By the book mechanics, the paladin will win out just about every time. They prioritize Charisma as a primary stat, and for barbarians it's almost always a dump stat. (That's also partly by design in the core class abilities and secondary effects of ability scores for things like initiative and perception.) I ran into this exact same problem the very first time I ran a game of 5e, in that the Fighter was bad at intimidation because it was tied to CHA. Following the book-supported variant rule of decoupling specific ability scores from specific skills was, correspondingly, one of the first changes I made to my game, so that intimidation could be a STR + proficiency roll. I suppose my follow-up question to you would be: if the Barbarian could make a STR + proficiency roll for their intimidation check, and if the Wizard trying to do the same thing (physically muscle-over a prisoner) would also roll the same thing (which in the Wizard's case would be a low STR + no proficiency), do you think that the gap between the two would then be large enough to justify using a single DC across both of them, or still not? EDIT: I want to make it absolutely clear that I'm not trying to pin you down to some kind of a gotcha argument here. I'll be the first one to say that I think the skill DC math in 5e is busted, and you're making the best with what you have. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 10:19 on Feb 10, 2017 |
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Feb 10, 2017 10:15
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It doesn't make sense to me to rejigger DCs on the fly to account for different characters. If you decide, on the fly, that Bob the Fighter should have a DC 5 check to intimidate some goblins even though they dumped their Cha and don't have proficiency in the skill simply because they're a big tough dude, then you're undermining the choices made by Fizban the Fearsome who has a high Charisma and proficiency in intimidation. It also cuts the other way: if you arbitrarily lower Sheila the Thief's DC to pick a lock simply because it makes sense it widens the gap between her and Bob the Fighter and effectively lets gives her the benefit for being a Thief twice (I mean, I'm assuming she already has proficiency in the check). DCs should be static. A character's chance at succeeding at a task should be based on the character's inherent abilities, i.e. what is actually written on their character sheet. If you're finding that the system doesn't produce a meaningful difference in chances of success between Bob the Fighter and Sheila the Thief then there's probably something wrong with the system. Rejiggering DCs based on which character is attempting the check simply doesn't feel like the right fix to me. Having said that, DCs can and should vary, but that should be based on approach, not on which character is attempting the thing. If we assume the hypothetical situation of assault on goblin gully, the players might have multiple approaches: maybe the goblin guards haven't been paid for a while and are thus susceptible to bribery and manipulation (DC 10 Charisma check). Maybe a frontal assault will most likely alert their sentries (Stealth check opposed by the sentries' Perception check) but enough investigation reveals an unguarded path (no need for a Stealth check because there are no guards posted there) but it's in such difficult and awkward terrain that a climbing check (DC 15) is needed to get there. It's probably enough that one character makes the check, they can then lower a rope that allows their companions to climb in without so much as a check needed, 'cause climbing ropes is actually pretty drat easy. Hell, just storming the gates and fighting the goblins is an option, and for that we've got the huge combat system for determining how well your players kill the goblins. And bam, now you've introduced multiple ways for different characters to succeed without, at any point, having to rejigger the DCs of individual checks to make them better suited for individual characters.
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Feb 10, 2017 10:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:I ran into this exact same problem the very first time I ran a game of 5e, in that the Fighter was bad at intimidation because it was tied to CHA. I chose to stick with the skill/ability assignments as presented because I didn't want to have to extrapolate too many skills out of what was printed, for the exact reason of a paladin wanting to use CHA skills, because that could be totally appropriate. quote:I suppose my follow-up question to you would be: if the Barbarian could make a STR + proficiency roll for their intimidation check, and if the Wizard trying to do the same thing (physically muscle-over a prisoner) would also roll the same thing (which in the Wizard's case would be a low STR + no proficiency), do you think that the gap between the two would then be large enough to justify using a single DC across both of them, or still not? I appreciate the question. In that same vein, I'm not opposed to changing my mind on some of these things if a solid argument is made and I can no longer support my own arguments in the face of new evidence, so this is as much an exercise in testing my own ideas as it is challenging others'. To answer your question: it might be, or probably would be a lot closer. Str as an ability check for intimidation just works better in that scenario, so less abstraction would mean closer DC. It's difficult to quantify exactly where that range would lie. A lot of it comes down to the "feel" of the scenario. A night watchman for a tiny hamlet would probably have a D.C. Threshold of about 10, whereas a guard for a military post might be at 20. Just to use round numbers. It also would come down to how the players described what they wanted to do and how they'd go about it. If we boil it down to "I yell at the guard and raise my weapon and try to look as intimidating as possible" as our basic approach, then I'd bring the barbarian down slightly because he's already intimidating looking to begin with. By that same token, a gnome in a jerkin with a dagger would look somewhat ridiculous and I'd probably raise his DC by a couple points because the guards first impression may be that his buddies hired a poor sap to gently caress with him. If you visualize your NPCs as characters, you can express the smallest interactions more "realistically", which I use loosely. I hope the idea comes across clearly enough.
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Feb 10, 2017 11:21
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Ratpick posted:It doesn't make sense to me to rejigger DCs on the fly to account for different characters. If you decide, on the fly, that Bob the Fighter should have a DC 5 check to intimidate some goblins even though they dumped their Cha and don't have proficiency in the skill simply because they're a big tough dude, then you're undermining the choices made by Fizban the Fearsome who has a high Charisma and proficiency in intimidation. This is the best argument against the points I'm making that I could come up with, myself. My answer to it is that a fighter with an armory on his back hulking out at a guy is going to be intimidating, regardless of his charisma score. It's just illogical that it wouldn't be. quote:It also cuts the other way: if you arbitrarily lower Sheila the Thief's DC to pick a lock simply because it makes sense it widens the gap between her and Bob the Fighter and effectively lets gives her the benefit for being a Thief twice (I mean, I'm assuming she already has proficiency in the check). I specifically used the pick lock example as something that would have a static D.C. Because you're not overcoming an NPCs emotions or mental barriers. You're overcoming a fixed, mechanical contraption. It's like 2 of my posts back. quote:DCs should be static. A character's chance at succeeding at a task should be based on the character's inherent abilities, i.e. what is actually written on their character sheet. If you're finding that the system doesn't produce a meaningful difference in chances of success between Bob the Fighter and Sheila the Thief then there's probably something wrong with the system. Rejiggering DCs based on which character is attempting the check simply doesn't feel like the right fix to me. This makes sense only inasmuch as you can trust the abstract ability scores to correctly represent the parts of their characters skills or personalities to accomplish the task. Intimidation is perhaps the best case against this argument, where sleight of hand or deception are some of the closest skill/ability pairings. quote:Having said that, DCs can and should vary, but that should be based on approach, not on which character is attempting the thing. If we assume the hypothetical situation of assault on goblin gully, the players might have multiple approaches: maybe the goblin guards haven't been paid for a while and are thus susceptible to bribery and manipulation (DC 10 Charisma check). Maybe a frontal assault will most likely alert their sentries (Stealth check opposed by the sentries' Perception check) but enough investigation reveals an unguarded path (no need for a Stealth check because there are no guards posted there) but it's in such difficult and awkward terrain that a climbing check (DC 15) is needed to get there. It's probably enough that one character makes the check, they can then lower a rope that allows their companions to climb in without so much as a check needed, 'cause climbing ropes is actually pretty drat easy. Hell, just storming the gates and fighting the goblins is an option, and for that we've got the huge combat system for determining how well your players kill the goblins. Nothing I've said goes against what you've said here. In fact, you could (and should) do both. Maybe you have a goblin companion that could be your "face" for bribing the guards (lower the DC by 2 because he's a goblin and they're more comfortable with him), even if his charisma score is 6(-2). A failure could be that he's a different tribe, not that he wasn't pretty enough. The rest of your example is great and absolutely is how D&D should be played. I wouldn't change the DC of a climb over rocky terrain based on class or character, unless someone wanted to use dex over str, which I'd allow, no DC difference. To further clarify: the things I would change DCs for would mostly be in player/NPC interactions, not interactions with inanimate objects. I hope that clarifies some of what I've been trying to express.
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Feb 10, 2017 11:33
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koreban posted:This is the best argument against the points I'm making that I could come up with, myself. My answer to it is that a fighter with an armory on his back hulking out at a guy is going to be intimidating, regardless of his charisma score. It's just illogical that it wouldn't be. On the other hand, the guy with the armory on his back can at best deal HP damage. The guy in the weird robes and an aura of weird charisma about them might be able to turn you into a frog. Like, I actually agree that a Fighter all decked out with weapons should be intimidating and should probably be able to use their Strength instead of their Charisma for the sake of intimidation if they were literally threatening violence, but at the same time the weirdo in robes in a world where people know that weirdoes with robes can often wield crazy destructive magic powers should also be. I also think that if you lower the DC for the Fighter who hasn't spent a single resource on intimidation being their thing still devalues the choices made by a player who decided that they wanted their character to be a really spooky while not necessarily physically imposing dude and made a lot of choices in character creation to that effect then giving a bonus to a player for basically just writing "Fighter" on their character sheet strikes me unfair. koreban posted:To further clarify: the things I would change DCs for would mostly be in player/NPC interactions, not interactions with inanimate objects. I hope that clarifies some of what I've been trying to express. Thanks for the clarification and sorry on my part for not having noticed you making the point about lockpicking above. I'd still say for the aforementioned reasons (i.e. not wanting to undermine choices players make in character creation) that this should boil down to a question of approach, not which character is doing it. Assuming we do the smart thing and decouple Intimidation from any particular ability score. The simple act of Intimidation now opens up multiple approaches: maybe the goblins are craven and adverse to physical confrontation, meaning that an Intimidate+Strength check would only have a DC of 10. They still do cow to authority and simple force of personality, so the DC for a vanilla Intimidate+Charisma check would be 15. Hell, a character who is neither physically imposing nor particularly charismatic might try to cow the goblins with their booksmarts, describing in painstaking detail exactly how they're going to dissect the goblins and which of their organs they're going to force them to eat, rolling Intimidate+Intelligence. But of course, goblins are dumb and don't really understand big words, so the DC for that might be as high as 20. Ultimately it should all boil down to approach, and you don't have a clear idea on what approach the player is using until they tell you what they're doing exactly. If a player says "I intimidate them" that's a start, but it doesn't tell you jack poo poo about what the character is actually doing in the fiction. Is the character just staring at the enemy intently, giving them one of those Christopher Lee as Dracula looks, or are they just casually sharpening their huge loving sword in the most scary manner possible? Once you know the actual approach it's time to set the DC; but the key is that another character taking the same approach would have the exact same DC. Fizban the Fearful might not have as good a chance as Bob the Fighter if he tried to resort to physical threats (because Bob the Fighter has a higher Strength), but he can try it all the same.
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Feb 10, 2017 12:18
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Maybe the truth is in the middle and what koreban is doing reducing DCs is just the obverse of the rest of us adding a circumstantial bonus to rolls. From the 3e PHB: quote:Favorable and Unfavorable Conditions
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Feb 10, 2017 12:25
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Koreban, I guess I see what you mean, but it sounds like it'd be better framed as what's going on modifying the DC (or adding bonuses to the roll, same same), rather than who's doing it. Sure, the huge dude with twelve huge axes and swords strapped to him is intimidating to the average person, but is it always going to be a bonus? Soldiers don't generally crap themselves and run away at the sight of large armed men, so Meatflex Wrestlingham doesn't particularly scare them - they know 3 bigger dudes just in their platoon. But goddamn black ops assassins creep up on you and you're dead before you even get to fight. Zephyrus Shadowblade scares them just by existing. Or maybe your imposing size and fierce visage aren't especially intimidating to kobolds because all humans look huge and scary to them, so you don't get an easier DC. Maybe it's really hard to bribe the palace clerks because just this month four of them have been fired for taking bribes. Out of catapults. But since they're short-staffed now, some clerk-looking dude who can demonstrate a knowledge of history or religion could probably talk their way into the building by showing up with a resume and asking for a job. Flamboyo The Magnificent: Bard Extraorinaire isn't going to pass, but I bet Holy Man Dan could do it. e: Beaten while replying, but yeah, I think Gradenko's right. Like I said in the first line, modifying the DC and circumstantial bonuses/penalties are effectively the same thing. I think Koreban's just phrased it weirdly by focusing on who is rolling rather than what's being done. Not that who's rolling isn't sometimes important too. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:30 on Feb 10, 2017 |
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Feb 10, 2017 12:27
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gradenko_2000 posted:Maybe the truth is in the middle and what koreban is doing reducing DCs is just the obverse of the rest of us adding a circumstantial bonus to rolls. That's actually a really good point, but I'd personally frame a 3e style circumstance bonus as Advantage in 5e, and I could definitely see that working with my own approach to things: maybe keep the DCs static, but apply Advantage and/or Disadvantage depending on approach. Using my above example, the DC would probably be the same for all attempts, but a character using physical threats would roll at an Advantage while a character using big words would roll at a Disadvantage.
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Feb 10, 2017 12:28
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Endie posted:That's pretty much just good DMing, isn't it? You don't remember the rules for grappling (it's always grappling or overbearing) in system x so instead of looking it up and carefully reading you just tell someone to roll a d20 and use common sense (or some previous system) to interpret it while appearing confident. I wouldn't class "making some poo poo up instead of using the rules, because they suck/I can't be bothered to remember them" as being "good DMing", no. If the DM is supposed to be the arbiter of the rules, then they should know the rules; filling in gaps in the text could arguably be considered good DMing, but that's a failure of the game's design, as is having lovely rules that the DM doesn't want to bother using.
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Feb 10, 2017 13:29
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The issue is twofold one is that social skills are trash and shouldn't even be in the game. I know that fucks over people who can't roleplay well, but it's the best solution. you don't want people saying "I'm smart and come up with a plan let me roll my int and wisdom" either. Then you have the issues of skills in generally. 5e has a small list that relies on being applied to lots of situations, whereas other games have huge lists where if you ever run across a unique situation you can pretty much just say "well im a cobbler of course I can fix this shoe". also what the gently caress kind of idea is "expecting to be rewarded by the GM for my play.". you were a rogue doing rogue stuff how is that innovative whatsoever
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Feb 10, 2017 14:57
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I don't entirely disagree and most of the games I've enjoyed have been some sort of balance where the DM often just doesn't ask for checks if we roleplay well enough, but there is one problem with it. Sometimes somebody might be playing a character who is just smarter than they are, some sherlock holmes genius boy detective or what have you, and it's really not possible to straight roleplay somebody who would figure things out that you as a player can't. In those situations I'm totally down with a character replacing roleplay with dice. The kicker though is that dice can't be the first option. When faced with roleplay elements like that if the player just reaches for the dice and rolls and demands I just tell them the answer, thats not going to end so well for that. Gotta give it at least a little effort.
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Feb 10, 2017 15:09
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Elfgames posted:don't do this sit down and have a conversation like an adult Why not? It was a trap. She's trying to DM her own game soon, so she knows how poo poo is supposed to work. Like I said, a little bizarre. Especially since I let them skip most of my last dungeon because they were clever! SettingSun posted:What the hell? Even an MMO player would know that engaging all enemies at once will lead to a swift death. It was an undead-filled catacombs and the party had a Cleric and a Paladin, I guess she felt confident. I think the Monk almost getting killed (missed getting insta-gibbed by 2 points of damage) and her dropping to single-digit HP smartened her up a bit, but you never know.
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Feb 10, 2017 15:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'll be the first one to say that I think the skill DC math in 5e is busted, and you're making the best with what you have.
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Feb 10, 2017 16:09
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Vengarr posted:Why not? It was a trap. Next dungeon just literally have trap doors that have her fall into a pit. Don't even kill her, just get her stuck in one. As to playing a character that's sherlock holmes, well, it's pretty much impossible to do in D&D. Otherwise you'd end up just having the DM play your character through the optimal route. That being said, for social skills, I don't think you need anything more than roleplaying through a conversation then reminding the DM that your charisma is low/high, or you're super physically imposing (or not at all), or whatever and having him go from there. Heck, I just had a good RP encounter last session because I shared a similar name to the guy we met up with and he liked that. There's no reason to put that into a DC check. mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Feb 10, 2017 |
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Feb 10, 2017 16:22
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I'm also a fan of just using the ability score I like for what the player is doing, which is one of those vague "this is okay if the DM wants" things that 5e does so much of. My player says "I want to intimidate him." Okay, great, describe what you do. If he describes sidling up real close to the guy, leaning in, and making an implication about some possible harm that could happen, you know, if someone doesn't cooperate, great. Charisma check. If he describes flexing his muscles while staring straight into the dude's soul, his gestures obviously accenting his giant club? Roll strength. If one party member does the implication while the other one starts flexing and punching his fists together boy oh boy both of you roll using those stats and get some XP for working together that's good poo poo there.
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Feb 10, 2017 16:32
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With Star Wars being space fantasy already, I'd love it if FFG put some effort to that, as good as fan-stuff is/can be. Their Star Wars system is very well-done, and fantasy has less space-dogfights (the weakest part of the system), so it's a win-win.
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Feb 10, 2017 17:12
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Don't make players role play out every little scene if they don't want to. The player is clearly communicating what they want to do in the context of the rules. Don't make them encode their intentions in a terribly cliched improv scene and then hope the DM manages to decode their intentions back into the rules.
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Feb 10, 2017 17:37
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Bar Crow posted:Don't make players role play out every little scene if they don't want to. The player is clearly communicating what they want to do in the context of the rules. Don't make them encode their intentions in a terribly cliched improv scene and then hope the DM manages to decode their intentions back into the rules. See, I think the opposite, but agree that mixing the two is wrong. The player shouldn't be saying 'i want to intimidate.' He should be roleplaying with the NPC as played by the DM in order to achieve his results. Basically you can do it one of two ways: player: i use my intimidate skill. *rolls* or player: bla bla bla bla bla Don't require both. And the former is vastly inferior.
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Feb 10, 2017 17:41
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P.d0t posted:I wouldn't class "making some poo poo up instead of using the rules, because they suck/I can't be bothered to remember them" as being "good DMing", no. lawl that's awful
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Feb 10, 2017 17:42
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