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13 months ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 8:11PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Jun 10, 2008
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I knew coming in that the game would leave more to the DM. I didn't quite expect that to include the rules that govern actual game fundamentals.
Take advantage/disadvantage. A good mechanic, except for the fact that unless some spell or some condition is specifically defined to cause advantage/disadvantage, it's all up to the DM. Which means flanking, for example, understood to give a Rogue his Sneak Attack for two straight editions, is all of a sudden no longer guaranteed to, depending on who your DM is. Or certain advantageous positions on the battlefield ... or what you would think are advantageous, may or not give you the advantage. It's all up to the DM.
This creates several problems, both for the game system overall and for any feedback resulting from this playtest.
In the game system, this could very often turn gaming sessions into "DM may I?" I don't think I need to elaborate on the conflicts this can cause, especially when more than one player is a rule lawyer, as is the DM. But even if the debates don't typically get nasty, they will still slow the game down tremendously and just generally get tiresome after a while.
And sure, the DM could just, before-hand, define to his players what causes advantage/disadvantage, but in that case you're forcing such a DM to re-invent the wheel, placing an extra burden on his/her shoulders. And from experience playing with many different DMs over the course of my playing days, you can't always trust a DM to have common sense. Some things in the rules do need to be coded, particularly if it's something this vital to D&D combat.
(I've also seen the argument about how not assuming flanking gives advantage helps those who want to run gridless combat. I don't buy that. If your imagination is good enough to run gridless combats successfully, certainly that would include when you and an ally are directly on the opposite sides of an enemy.)
As for feedback, playtest reports from players, I would imagine, are going to vary wildly based on who their DM was. And that could lead to some serious balance problems down the road. Take the Rogue. A player whose DM granted advantage more often than not (and perhaps in the situations that player would rightly expect advantage to happen, as a veteran of 3e and/or 4e) may very well report that the Rogue can hold his own well enough in a combat situation. Whereas a player with a DM who is a lot stingier with advantage is going to report that the Rogue, well, sucks in combat.
A similar situation exists with incidental actions, which as they stand are an absolute mess. Some of those things are things which were swift actions in 3.5 or SWSE, or minor actions in 4e, things that had a limit. Others of them are things that would get typified as free actions. But again, there just isn't any real rime or reason to them. Like drawing a weapon, for example. How many times can you draw a weapon in a round? In 3.5 and 4e that was defined. Now it's not. Also interesting that sheathing a weapon isn't even listed as an incidental action, although I would assume it would be. In that case, how many times can a player draw and sheathe a weapon? Apparently it's up to the DM, and because it's up to the DM, again, we will have a problem with consistency in playtest feedback, as well as with potential "DM may I?" and "reinventing the wheel."
Early on, we see a case of where the road to hell is paved with good intentions, where the desire to give the DM freedom has gone too far. It is resulting in, so far, a very fragile set of rules that will lead to arguments at the table, slower gameplay than what apparently was intended, extra preparation time for the DM, the DM having to reinvent the wheel, and most importantly right now, wild inconsistencies in playtest reports. Before this playtest goes much further, those will have to be addressed.
D&DN Paladin: Half-Fighter, half-Cleric, all useless. D&DN Ranger: Third-Fighter, third-Rogue, third-Druid, all useless. With one interesting concept that has its execution botched. My 4e Character Op work:Character guides
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13 months ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 8:16PM
#2
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I agree completely with the OP. Not only will it skew the results, it will allow **** DMs to be **** DMs. It will rob the fun from players that play with nice DMs (they will almost always succeed or have advantage), and basically makes the DM do way too much work.
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13 months ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 8:31PM
#3
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I agree with the title, but that's not a problem. It won't distort the results, but it'll bring back varied results.
I disagree with the premise of the post. I've run into problems with clearly laid out rules not saying I could do something and the DM deciding that because the rules didn't say yes, the answer was no. This system is much, much, better.
I completely disagree with lokiare. Crap DMs will be crappy either way, but flexibility allows good DMs to be great. Of course this won't be a hugely popular sentiment as it essentially says if your experience with D&D Next isn't good it's because of poor DMing skills (or you could blame it on the Caves of Chaos...), not because of flaws in the system.
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13 months ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 8:36PM
#4
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This is especially a bad idea for newer DM's who come into the game without any experience with prior editions. How will they know what sort of judgement calls to make and what is balanced and fair? By leaving out such huge chunks of the system and making it up to the DM you are just making it difficult for new players to get into the hobby.
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13 months ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 8:44PM
#5
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That never made it hard on the millions who came into the hobby with AD&D 1e/BD&D....
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13 months ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 8:45PM
#6
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That never made it hard on the millions who came into the hobby with AD&D 1e/BD&D....
I found it difficult. Are you saying my opinion is invalid?
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13 months ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 8:46PM
#7
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I have heard complaints here on these grounds: that this provides too much power of decision to the DM and too little agency to the Players, because the DM has the final word and the rules can't be used against the DM to do cool things by the book. This is why some players love powers – they define what players can do, much like a chess piece has a defined set of actions it can do. But this is not the purpose in DDN. The Fighter is not lacking in variety of actions, he's just lacking in defined powers, which ironically trapped him psychologically into a small set of what he could do, rather than the endless roleplaying possibilities. In DDN, the agency is on the players, and good roleplaying could bring in advantages to their rollplaying.
The important thing is DMs should follow Wheaton's Law – don't be a meanie-head crappypants. Say YES to your players, unless they're getting out of hand. Then say yes, but subtly influence things to convince them to not be out of hand, but in a non-crappy way. The game is more fun when players can do the cool things they come up with. DMs shouldn't be so beholden to what they prepped and doing things exactly how they wanted it to happen – the DM isn't writing a novel, the DM is running a game so that a whole group of people can have fun.
"DM May I?" would never happen if all DMs followed Wheaton's Law. Obviously not all do, but the idea is to train DMs to run more fun, enjoyable games.
The game should be made with nice DMs / good DMs in mind, not with trying to make crappy DMs not matter because the rules do all the work. The DM is EXTREMELY important. This isn't a computer game. It's a game run in the imaginations of several persons, one of which is also the arbiter of what happens and what doesn't, but at the same time plays the losers. The DM should never be playing to win (it's not about me vs them) – but should be playing to challenge the players if they want a challenge. Push the players to their limits, but there's no winning or losing, there are successes for the players and setbacks for the players, and sometimes those setbacks are TPKs (though this scenario should be dealt with EXTREMELY cautiously).
Furthermore, not only should it be made with good/friendly DMs in mind, the game should be training new DMs to be good DMs, not crappy ones. I'm sure the core rulebooks will talk a lot on these subjects.
A great man once said "If WotC put out boxes full of free money there'd still be people complaining about how it's folded." – Boraxe
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13 months ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 8:50PM
#8
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Date Joined:
Jun 17, 2003
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so that a whole group of people can have fun.
"DM May I?" would never happen if all DMs followed Wheaton's Law. Obviously not all do, but the idea is to train DMs to run more fun, enjoyable games.
That's a very nice theory but the fact is that many (frankly I'd say most) don't. I don't mean to say that most DMs are malicious but a lot simply don't know any better. Given that the game depends almost entirely on DM discretion instead of a hard mechanical framework almost everywhere (the point of the OP I think), then getting a good baseline seems problematic at best.
Not only that, but rules exist for a reason, and contrary to what White Wolf once claimed, bad/unclear rules do NOT make a good game.
Bottom Line: If a game depends on a good to stellar DM to make it a good game, then it isn't. A good DM can make any system good (even FATAL). However, most DMs aren't in this league and it shouldn't be an assumption going into the game.
-Polaris
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13 months ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 8:59PM
#9
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That never made it hard on the millions who came into the hobby with AD&D 1e/BD&D....
I found it difficult. Are you saying my opinion is invalid?
No need to make a strawman argument.
No matter, detailed rules are worse for newbies, not better. The more rules, the more overwhelming it is. The more general the rules, the more grab and go it is, which makes it more accessible.
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13 months ago ::
May 25, 2012 - 9:01PM
#10
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I have heard complaints here on these grounds: that this provides too much power of decision to the DM and too little agency to the Players, because the DM has the final word and the rules can't be used against the DM to do cool things by the book. This is why some players love powers – they define what players can do, much like a chess piece has a defined set of actions it can do. But this is not the purpose in DDN. The Fighter is not lacking in variety of actions, he's just lacking in defined powers, which ironically trapped him psychologically into a small set of what he could do, rather than the endless roleplaying possibilities. In DDN, the agency is on the players, and good roleplaying could bring in advantages to their rollplaying.
Exactly. WPs constrained fighters rather than giving them options. NWPs constrained all characters rather than giving more options. In 3e and 4e skills just made that worse, and the same goes for feats. Feats were originally a good idea, but what they morphed into wasn't good at all.
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