(no subject)

[seekingferret]

I ran a D&D 5E playtest last night. I'll be running another game with different players, some of whom read this, tomorrow night, so I won't talk too much about the specifics of the adventure. But I wanted to post about the playtest so I can get my thoughts out.

It's a much, much simpler system than 4E, certainly as presented in the playtest materials. Combat is faster, with far fewer in the way of mechanical choices and a lot more freedom given to rule of cool and theater of the mind instead of miniature battle minutiae. In this sense, it seems more in line with 'old school' combat as I understand it, though unlike 'old school' rpgs, there are unified, relatively comprehensible mechanics for everything. I suspect I would have an easier time teaching the system to new players than almost any other full-scale (i.e. not like DREAD, designed only for one-shots) rpg I've played.

Healing's a lot tighter than 4E. I'm not clear if the death rules as written are tighter than the 4E rules on which they're based, because I wasn't really interested in running through them. When my players got knocked out, I gave them a prison-break scenario rather than running through all the death saves. I suspect that the 3 saves and you're stabilized mechanic means these death rules are overall less lethal, though. The one time a player actually got to do a number of death saves, he easily stabilized.

Advantage/Disadvantage rules definitely simplify combat modifiers, but the rules were sufficiently different that I found I was struggling at times to remember when advantage or disadvantage applied. I'm pretty sure with more comfort in the system, this wouldn't be a problem. There were a few other combat rules I missed. I know Attack of Opportunity rules are notoriously complicated and hard to remember, but there was a moment in this game when I said to a player "If this system had Attacks of Opportunity, you would definitely be provoking one right now." I invented an adjudication on the fly for him to duck in between the swarm of kobolds to give his ally a healing potion, but this was probably the moment I was most frustrated with the combat rules. Though to be honest, I would have been happier if the player had tried to distract the kobolds in some way instead of just bulling his way through. I was on the border of just telling him it couldn't be done, but there was a lot of adventure ahead and I just decided to let him give it a shot with a high DC and move on. There's a lot of stuff that system has nothing to do with, where it's just about what the players want and what the DM is willing to let them get.

Our other major note was on the skill rules, or lack of them. Virtually everything is just an ability roll, with specialized skills noted with bonuses to ability rolls. It made for fun freewheeling, but I think in a diplomacy-heavy game, or just in a long-term campaign, this lack of mechanics would get frustrating to me. The skill system has been eroding with each edition, and I already didn't like how coarse the 4E rules were compared to the power and clarity of the 3rd edition skill system. In a one-shot adventure the skill rules were fine, especially for players and a DM learning the system, but if I were running this in a campaign I would have to mod the skill rules.

All told, it was a fun night for both players and DM, I think, though I need to see more of the system before I'd decide what I feel about it. I'm especially interested in seeing their character building rules. It looks like they have interesting ideas, but we didn't get much of a look at them.

Comments

[allandaros]

The skill system has been eroding with each edition

::narrows eyes::

[seekingferret]

I'm not sure I understand what your comment means. Given that this is a playtest, it's a pretty good time to have a discussion of what we want out of an rpg skill system. I'd imagine the answer is different for me than it is for you, but I don't think I know what your ideal skill system is.

I know you've linked to those 'deconstructions' of the 3rd edition skill rules, which individually looked at the RAW descriptions of each skill and decided which ones were useful and which ones weren't. I'm not sure to what degree exactly you agree with that analysis, but I thought the analysis was reductionist and completely missed the reasons I prefer a robust skill system. It's not because whenever I'm faced with an action, I need to roll a die. Obviously there are a lot of cases, even with skills that you have ranks in, where the DM ought to just say "You did it."

But in my experience of playing rpgs, there are a lot of times where it's not clear if players should succeed. For an example from last night, the players were in a craggy cave and they'd detected a pit trap blocking their path. And it's a lot more satisfying to roll a diplomacy check than it is to roll a charisma check, and a lot more satisfying to roll jump or swim than generic athletics. It makes it feel like a player's choices in character development actually had an impact on their success.

Having a more robust skill system doesn't mean that whenever it says in RAW that a particular skill applies, you have to use it, which is the strange assumption underpinning the skill deconstruction series. It says that whenever in an adventure you run into a situation where you need to know if an effort succeeded, you have a clear mechanic to adjudicate it. As both a DM and a player, I find it more satisfying to roll a relevant skill to resolve such a situation than to roll whatever we determine is the most relevant ability score. You wind up with situations where the most relevant ability score seems silly, especially with creative players, but a robust skill system like 3.5 almost always makes you feel like, even when the skill doesn't EXACTLY match the action taken. If I need to know if the players are able to rig a clockwork device to trigger at a certain moment, I feel a lot better if they roll their lock-picking skill than if they're rolling Dex.

Of course, the trade-off is that too complicated a skill system bogs down character creation, and that certainly needs to be balanced, but I find with the characters I play and the types of strange things they end up wanting to try, I'm more comfortable and more satisfied with the experience with a relatively robust skill system backstopping my adventures.

[allandaros]

Hah! You, ah, actually focused on the part of my comment I wasn't stressing. My eye-narrowing related to the fact that the skill system hasn't been narrowing with every edition - it started at zero, expanded, hit its peak in 3e, and then got slimmed down in 4e.

Anyway, going on to your comment: I definitely don't agree that it's more satisfying to succeed in a "swim" check as opposed to a generic strength check. I don't like the idea of having to put points in every little thing that my character can/can't do. The question then arises - how do you decide what characters can or cannot do? I favor common sense, talking it out, and GM adjudication* over a strongly defined skill system.

*A and B are trying to smooth-talk someone in a con game. A has done his research and knows the mark very well, B is just starting out. I would be fine with A getting D&D5's 'advantage,' getting a bonus on the smooth-talking, getting a bonus contingent upon use of the research...any one of those being used to model A's benefit here would be fine by me.

[seekingferret]

A and B are running from a mob of orcs when they stop skittering up at the ledge of an roaring subterranean river. A decides he's going to back up and leap across the river to safety on the other side. B decides she's going to jump in and swim against the current a hundred feet until she reaches a bank she can climb up.

In 5E at the moment, the DM would tell both "Roll a strength check." I find this frustratingly non-granular. Plainly the skills required to do both of these acts is not the same, and I find it unsatisfying as a player to have two different actions with identical resolution. What you seem to be advocating for improved granularity is common sense ad hoc bonuses: The DM needs to evaluate in that moment, "Does B know how to swim? Is she expecting the water to be cold? Are her clothes warm enough?" But isn't this just statting up a skill system on an ad hoc basis EVERY SINGLE TIME you need to adjudicate an event? Why not just systematize it, the same we D&D systematizes combat? Systematizing combat doesn't mean you're locked in and unable to add situaitonal bonuses, but it does mean that you don't need to do the same work over and over again.

[allandaros]

Or it might be a Dex check to jump across the river. (One thing that you could adopt is making ability checks on varying numbers of d6 - 3d6 for an easy task, 6d6 for something fiendishly difficult.)

In regards to your question on systemization, having an ad hoc basis allows for the potential of more dynamic representation of certain events. Let's take your river thing - that could well be represented as "test to see whether you're able to swim against the current, then test to see if you can keep your orientation." Or you could say "You've just got a flat 35% chance to get caught in the undertow." I'm fine with that variety and ability to more precisely model what challenge the GM wants the issue to pose.

I find skill systems often wind up preventing player skill from having a significant effect on play. I can deal with the subterranean river being a swimming check (though I resent having to put points in swimming). But it's frustrating when someone trying to use common sense to disarm a trap is shut down because they don't have any points in "Disable Device."

Ultimately, I find that a skill system leads to shutting off creative options for me (http://beyondtheblackgate.blogspot.com/2012/02/moldvay-theres-always-chance.html). I feel trapped by the character sheet in 3.x. It says "you can only do these things," rather than "you can try anything."

I'm well aware that this is subjective, nothing definitive, but it's incredibly frustrating and off putting.

[seekingferret]

I've never seen it as telling you you can only do these things. I see it as giving you a better idea of what your character can do. I think if you use common sense to disarm a trap and you don't have points in disable device and your DM tells you you can't, that's a DM failure. In my last 4E session I came up with an elaborate and thought-out plan to disarm a trap that had about ten steps but only required a single strength check to resolve (and it was a check to see if I could hold onto a rope as force was applied to the rope, a legitimate strength check). That's how you deal with common sense solutions to problems, but there are lots of problems in D&D games that can't get resolved that way. Lots of times we're playing characters who can do things we can't in real life.

But I think if a player uses common sense to find a trap (forgoing a needless perception check) and it's a complicated mechanical structure that a layman can't just look at and say "Oh, cut the red wire,", it's needlessly challenging for a DM to only have a DEX score, an INT score, and a nebulous conception of the player's character concept and have to intuit on the fly whether the player can disarm it. What's the point when this is an anticipatable problem you can solve at character creation?

[(Anonymous)]

I think I'll stick with 3.5. I think it has a good balance between rules and flavor.

-Noah