Do you DnD?

Aegoth

you playing 3.5?

Trey

Anedhel said:

Oh. Sorry, I thought you were somehow implying that there was no recourse for that. 

I try to stack encounters and roleplaying/information gathering/planning sessions at 1:1, so that the games end up being half development and half fighting. What's your session-to-fight ratio? I find that if you put encounters in each time you sit down to play, people get a go-in-and-smash attitude pretty quick, since it's expected that it's a slugfest, rather than a more nuanced game. 

Also, making use of divination magic, plot devices like dreams, investigative scenes (some of my favorite moments have been in this kind of scene!), fortune-tellers, straight up coincidences that nudge people towards an epiphany regarding an upcoming encounter, prophecies, etc. etc. can really help people get into a figure-it-out-first-THEN-kick-in-the-door mentality! 

But without knowing more about the way you run your game, I can't give super specific advice. We can chat about it, though, for sure, if you'd like! 

That's the thing, though. 4e cleaned up a lot of shit in regards to balancing the effectiveness of everyone in the party, and you can still have info-gathering/rp/planning sessions alongside it. There's literally nothing in there requiring it to be 100% hack'n'slash. Combat mechanics are considerably harder to un-break than RP, and that's all me and Nazihk are getting at, I think. It definitely wasn't perfect, but it felt a lot better. This is coming from a LONG-standing 3rd/3.5 player, and ADnD before that.

Devran

Yeah it's hard though, with Australian timezones. You know this.

Nazihk

Trey said:
That's the thing, though. 4e cleaned up a lot of shit in regards to balancing the effectiveness of everyone in the party, and you can still have info-gathering/rp/planning sessions alongside it. There's literally nothing in there requiring it to be 100% hack'n'slash. Combat mechanics are considerably harder to un-break than RP, and that's all me and Nazihk are getting at, I think. It definitely wasn't perfect, but it felt a lot better. This is coming from a LONG-standing 3rd/3.5 player, and ADnD before that.

Yeah, this.

You can do all the non-combat information gathering and such that you want. Sure, you do lose some of the non-combat tools of 3.x, but for the most part what you're cutting is the ridiculous cheese like Diplomancer builds.

Sure, you lose some of the non-combat spells, but the ritual system gives ritual casters access to a whole lot of the flavor/non-combat spell effects. Discern lies, divine locations, open locks, communicate over long distances, speak with animals, set wards, lock doors, find secret doors, create water, walk on water, breathe water, cure diseases, raise the dead, summon magical mounts, etc, etc, etc. 

The difference is that in 4e those abilities are open to anybody who trains in the appropriate skill(Arcana/Religion) and takes the Ritual Caster feat. Wizards and Clerics start with that feat, but anybody can pick it up, which means that anybody else can pick it up pretty cheaply. This means that it's no longer a case of all of those tools being in the hands of the casters, and so it avoids a lot of that feeling of the casters poaching on other people's turf.

These steps to remove the supremacy of the casters are why I vastly prefer 4e. 

Jukilian

Devran said:

Yeah it's hard though, with Australian timezones. You know this.

Proposed solution: find other Aussies to play with.

Greys

@Jukilan Now I'm stuck thinking how the AUS monstrous manual would differ from the US one.

Anedhel

It would just be a book of local animals  

Jukilian

You enter the house and are immediately beset by a huge 8-legged creature on the wall!

I'd like to roll a Knowledge (Nature) check on this... *dice roll* Okay, I should know what it is.

It's a HUNTSMAN SPIDER! These monstrous creatures can grow to have a legspan as big as a dinner plate!

Sarflus

Now that i think of it, i have also played Pendragon, though as a digital tabletop version over internet.
Particularly one moment was rather amusing. My character's sister and her love interest are in a tent near the tourney area. My character's sister's love interest is putting on armor and i walk in. I roll heraldry and get 20. Critical fail!

"Are you the son of the former swineherd of the area?" 

My sister's love interest rolls 8 on forgiving/vengeful. Forgiving wins the roll and i am out of the tight spot.
You do not meet a knight everyday who is willing to forgive such an insult.

On another occasion there was this talk between my character and another knight in the gardens of Sarum.
I roll 12 on deceitful/Truthful and get critical success. I lie to him about several things and he soak its all up by rolling 4 on Trusting/Doubtful. This started a chain of events that nearly led to my character kidnapping a married man and tying him up at a cottage in the woods so his wife would not cut his throat being a famously vengeful and cruel things she is.

Nazihk

That's one thing I absolutely hate about how the roll-based skill systems are generally used. 

When physical skills like jumping/climbing/lockpicking/etc get a critical failure it tends to be played off as bad luck causing an otherwise competent person to fail. But when social skills get a critical failure it tends to be played off as an otherwise competent person doing something absolutely bugfucking stupid for no good reason at all. 

If you critically fail while climbing a rope, what happens? The rope breaks, probably. If you critically fail while running away from the city guard, you'll hit some wet cobblestones and faceplant. 

But if you critically fail a heraldry check to identify a noble who is putting on tournament armour, you ask if he's the son of a pig herder? This is like critically failing your Move Silently check by deciding that this hallway would be a great place to yodel. 

Greys

@Nazihk Handling crit failures always is a matter of improv. Your DM treating it as your person holding the Idiot Ball is a rather weak way. Plenty of ways to offend someone inadvertently. 

@Sarflus I never played a system where your character's reactions were also subject to dice rolls. You lucked out or a bad roll from @Naomh and you would have never been born!

Fengrich

Current DM. I run one online for friends every Wednesday and run two more as an official DM for a nearby store. I use the Pathfinder, Stars Without Number, and Savage Worlds systems (though I prefer Pathfinder for complexity).

I've only dabbled a bit in D&D 2e and 3.x, but have a good working knowledge of 4e and 5e.

Atalkez

Would be fun to get back into playing.

Sarflus

Greys said:

@Nazihk Handling crit failures always is a matter of improv. Your DM treating it as your person holding the Idiot Ball is a rather weak way. Plenty of ways to offend someone inadvertently. 

@Sarflus I never played a system where your character's reactions were also subject to dice rolls. You lucked out or a bad roll from @Naomh and you would have never been born!

You have some influence over your character's personality. When you create him/her you can choose between things such as Merciful/Cruel, Trusting/Doubtful and Energetic/Lazy etc. All of these personality traits amount up to 20 points. The balance of the points is yours to decide. You roll dices and they give you a number. If you were rolling for a merciful 12 for example, but roll 18 you fail at being merciful and instead you will have to act cruel and vice versa. 12/8 on Merciful/Cruel just means you have a bigger chance of being Merciful when rolling dices. It never rules out the possibility of your character doing something against their nature. It makes people's reactions unpredictable and interesting in some scenarios.

In Naomh's case this would had probably been a successful lazy roll and failed romance roll.

Kresslack

Stumbled across this tonight. Dan Harmon invites celebrity friends to play a table-top RPG in front of an audience. Not sure how I haven't seen this until now.

Ahmet

Celebrities playing DnD... That reminds me of when Vin Diesel played DnD with the guy from Critical Role.

ETA: I fouuuuuuuuuuund it

Greys

@Sarflus psh, you are assuming the wrong one is the instigator.

Greys

Had this forwarded to me:

Aerek

Nazihk said:

That's one thing I absolutely hate about how the roll-based skill systems are generally used. 

When physical skills like jumping/climbing/lockpicking/etc get a critical failure it tends to be played off as bad luck causing an otherwise competent person to fail. But when social skills get a critical failure it tends to be played off as an otherwise competent person doing something absolutely bugfucking stupid for no good reason at all. 

If you critically fail while climbing a rope, what happens? The rope breaks, probably. If you critically fail while running away from the city guard, you'll hit some wet cobblestones and faceplant. 

But if you critically fail a heraldry check to identify a noble who is putting on tournament armour, you ask if he's the son of a pig herder? This is like critically failing your Move Silently check by deciding that this hallway would be a great place to yodel. 

For the record, "critical failures" don't actually exist in the core rules of any edition of D&D I've played. Only critical hits are stated in the rules, and those only apply to actual combat rolls, not on skill checks, saving throws, or any other die rolls. (Pathfinder did add critical misses to its core rules, but they likewise only apply to combat rolls, and only make the attack automatically miss) The heinous, open-ended effects of crit misses (and action-hero effects of crit hits, for that matter) are just house rules that 99% of players seem to enjoy adding in.

Granted, you said "generally used", so I guess that includes house rules, but I share disdain for exaggerated, sometimes nonsensical results of crit hits/misses, and I've been guilty of playing rules lawyer on the topic. I don't mind them as long as they make sense, (and have used some nifty game aides that I agree added some excitement) but I think they can definitely be a negative impact on the experience if the DM gets carried away with them.

Nazihk

Natural 1's are an automatic failure on skillchecks in pretty much every system I have ever played, that's what I meant by critical failure.

My problem is that lots of people play off the natural 1 on a physical skill as an honest failure like a slip or a trip, whereas a critical fail on a social check is something like the aforementioned 'I say, noble knight, is your father a pigherder?"

Sarathai

I don't know about 4E, but in 3.5, PF and I'm pretty sure 5E, nat1s on a skill check is not an auto-fail by the core rules (except for 3.5/PF's Use Magic Device skill, but only under the specific circumstance that the result with the 1 plus modifier wasn't enough to pass anyway does it become a "crit fail").

Jacen

Yeah, in 5e, nat 1 is auto-miss and nat 20 is auto-hit/crit in combat. They have no special meanings for saving throws or skills checks.

Szanthax

And the claws come out...

Sarflus

The combat system in Pendragon made some interesting situations at times. Rolling strength, dexterity and your skill at the weapon you are wielding. Critically failing strength would mean you do next to no damage, critically failing dexterity would mean that you trip and faceplant in front of your enemy, critically failing at your skill on the weapon you are wielding would lead to you fumbling with it and dropping/breaking it in the process.

There was this one occasion where two knights were dueling after a court meeting after rather heated debate on the fate of a knight who had disgraced himself by cowardice in battle.

The duel was about to end when the first knight rolled a failure on his dexterity and lost his footing/balance while the second knight rolls a critical failure on sword and ends up pushing the advantage too close and almost hugging the first knight. They both fall on the ground in undignified heap. The first knight is just about to surrender after being stripped from his weapon when the second knight runs out of health and faints on top of him. The first knight is unable to kill him without a weapon and being under about 60 - 80 kilograms of steel is unable to even move a single limb  and so the duel ends in a tie.

Siduri

Jacen said:

Yeah, in 5e, nat 1 is auto-miss and nat 20 is auto-hit/crit in combat. They have no special meanings for saving throws or skills checks.

If I remember, critical failures are defined on a case-by-case basis by module designers or DMs. I have seen a few: If more than half of the group miss the DC by 5 or more, apply these consequences, etc.

So no, nat 1s are not automatic failures (but come on, let's face it, the maths aren't in your favour)

Greys

@Sarflus heh fun story. After all, your players never remember when things go according to plan, its when things don't and they have to struggle that they remember.

Liyane

I just bought the Force and Destiny beginner game for the Star Wars tabletop and I've played other variants of Star Wars tabletops over the last few years. But the last time I played D&D was 4th edition.

Nazihk

Siduri said:

Jacen said:

Yeah, in 5e, nat 1 is auto-miss and nat 20 is auto-hit/crit in combat. They have no special meanings for saving throws or skills checks.

If I remember, critical failures are defined on a case-by-case basis by module designers or DMs. I have seen a few: If more than half of the group miss the DC by 5 or more, apply these consequences, etc.

So no, nat 1s are not automatic failures (but come on, let's face it, the maths aren't in your favour)

I feel like this question is really sort of academic, honestly.

A natural 1 should always be a failure because you should not be rolling a skill check if the task is so trivial that it is literally impossible for you to fail at it. 

Jacen

Nazihk said:

Siduri said:

Jacen said:

Yeah, in 5e, nat 1 is auto-miss and nat 20 is auto-hit/crit in combat. They have no special meanings for saving throws or skills checks.

If I remember, critical failures are defined on a case-by-case basis by module designers or DMs. I have seen a few: If more than half of the group miss the DC by 5 or more, apply these consequences, etc.

So no, nat 1s are not automatic failures (but come on, let's face it, the maths aren't in your favour)

I feel like this question is really sort of academic, honestly.

A natural 1 should always be a failure because you should not be rolling a skill check if the task is so trivial that it is literally impossible for you to fail at it. 

In a general sense, I agree, but I think there are a few particular cases where I think its important that the distinction is made. 1) my original point was that crit-fail isnt a thing, and I think thats an important distinction because a poor DM will make you look like you have the functional capacity of a rotten banana for 5% of your rolls. Crit fails can certainly be well applied in the hands of a good DM, but I don't think they belong in the general ruleset. 2) the DM doesnt know the modifier for every skill of every player, usually. They could ask you to roll a DC10 check, forgetting you have a +9 modifier in that skill. * Sorry for formatting/spelling on mobile!

Jukilian

That's what taking 10 or taking 20 is for.