Divination isn't a plot coupon. They are only mostly correct, and can always be cryptic. I am unaware of any spell that if adjudicated correctly does what you suggest.
As usual Lokiare got the spell completely wrong. He's assuming clear answers that won't change. From the spell...
a divination spell can provide you with a useful piece of advice in reply to a question concerning a specific goal, event, or activity that is to occur within one week. The advice can be as simple as a short phrase, or it might take the form of a cryptic rhyme or omen. If your party doesn’t act on the information, the conditions may change so that the information is no longer useful.
Can doesn't mean will, and his question is not one that the spell can handle well. Conditions like that change frequently depending on PC actions. So if they ask about being attacked today, there is a good chance that that will change depending on what they do making any divination pretty worthless. And that's even if they can understand the cryptic answer that is given.
Yes, so it doesn't predict random encounters so what...
100% of the predictions it makes can be wrong. Circumstances change things. You cannot rely on divination.
AH, so it's balanced because the DM can just go "Haha, you fell into my trap, none of your Divination info will be useful because **** you."
Makes perfect sense. I don't see how that's bad at all.
I personally don't like any of the "future telling" or "DM advice" spells, Either it's too cryprtic and players are unsatisfied, or it's to obvious and players feel unsatisfied becuase they get handed too much information (Maybe cool for te first few seconds, but players lose the sense they earned it). SO I generally advise my players to not take it since, I will be leaning towards the side of MOST cryptic. SO as to not kill any real sense of success on the part of the player characters.
A bigger problem for this is that I leave reasons, answers, and mysteries open-ended (with usually a few ideas about where I can take it). I let the characters shape the stories, if the player work really hard and come up with a solution, bam it's the solution. Whatever keeps the game suspensful and exciting. Magic eight balls are harder to integrate into that style of play.
No. No not "play style". Lack of talent. Lack of skill. Lack of effort. Is there ANY chance that what you are doing is being executed poorly and that that is what is leading to your problem? Is there ANY possibility that is the case?
lol.
You realize that the basic dungeon crawl module set up from official modules has no countermeasures against the 5MWD most of the time, so apparently the module writers and designers are lacking in talent and skill. I can point to lots of modules that you can 5MWD your way through.
And if that's the case, then it's probably something that should be fixed if the people making official products can't even get it right.
The basic ruin full of undead and traps is supposed to work as a D&D concept. If the 5MWD makes that not work, then clearly that's a rules problem.
Again read the fallacy. You are trying to use unsound reasoning to 'win' the argument, rather than using sound reasoning to educate or come to a mutually beneficial conclusion to the argument. You actually can prove that the 5MWD is not broken if show examples where it specifically can't happen according to the rules. The closest anyone has come to this was random encounters. This was shown to be bypassed by various spells.
You are attempting to engage someone in a discussion where you aren't even willing to provide proof of your assertion.
I've provided a lot of proof. You just haven't bothered to read the other thread where I present it.
Seriously, how do you even hope to have a discussion with that attitude? I have had ZERO issues with 5mwd which you insist is a mechanically busted OMNIPRESENT problem. Since I have never had it come up as a problem, that immediately disproves your assertion that it is broken.
No where did I insist it was omnipresent. Good DMs and certain play styles may never see a 5MWD, however, my play style which is popular does see it.
I do not need to prove to YOU that the 5mwd is somehow workable...because short of you sitting at a table with someone competent running the game, there's no way to prove it except anecdotally.
It takes quite a bit more than competency. It takes a particular play style and a good DM...
You say the "prefered" playstyle put forth by WoTC themselves is to have 4-5 or there-abouts encounters a day...you then complain that when you create a format where there is only ONE encounter a day that the system doesn't work.
Yes, they need to find a way to balance the classes that doesn't involve the time segment "day".
Wow what a surprise. The system doesn't do what it doesn't say it does! More breaking news in: My car isn't amphibious! Who woulda thunk?!
Wouldn't it be cool if it was though? WotC needs to try to include the most play styles and looking at the thousands of posts in these threads, I'd say my play style is at least popular enough to warrant trying to make 5E play with...
...Doubt all you want, then check out the credits to "Devil's Whiskey". Its an older game, but my name is in the credits. Now that's out of the way. 32 megabits is 32,000,000 bits, not bytes. A byte is 8 bits, so divide by 8 to get the actual number of bytes. That's 4,000,000 bytes. Then take into account variables are either 8 bit or 16 bit on the super nintendo. Depending on how many variables there are (including graphics) most of that 4MB is probably graphics and instructions to the SNES cpu. The fewer variables you have, the faster the games run. So they would want to do it with the fewest number of variables possible. Once you take into account the pathetic speed of the SNES, you will come to the conclusion that they used very few variables and not 'millions' like you are trying to say...
...you don't even know what I'm saying when I use the term "variable" in game terms do you? I am speaking about variables that arise in play. The actual meta-game. How the moving parts interact. Not programming. What would programming have to do with any of this?
I covered both. 6*6 moves some of which don't interact. There aren't a 'million' variables...
Actually you are only dealing with 2 characters at a time, with 6 attacks so that's 6*6 = 36 different combinations of moves. Some of which don't interact so the actual number is much lower.
What? Seriously, what? We are talking about the VARIABLES that can come up in gameplay. If you pick Ryu, your opponent could pick ANY of the 16 characters. If you want to do well you need to know ALL of the characters you could wind up playing against.
Yes, but only 6*6 of those can come up in any one fight. See this whole tangent is so off topic its becoming harmful to the conversation. What was your original point when you started this street fighter tangent, other than a distraction?
Yes, it could entirely be because of my play style. 5E however has to support most if not all of the play styles of its players and DMs. If it doesn't D&D gets shelved. That's what you don't seem to understand...
No. No not "play style". Lack of talent. Lack of skill. Lack of effort. Is there ANY chance that what you are doing is being executed poorly and that that is what is leading to your problem? Is there ANY possibility that is the case?
Ah, so the personal attacks start nice...
Its a play style, nothing more, nothing less. Every game I DM I get compliments for being a good DM, so its unlikely I am making 'mistakes' or have a 'lack of skill'. Its purely a play style issue interacting with bad mechanics. We know this because they fixed it in 4E and its difficult to have a 5MWD unless someone is intentionally trying to have them...
Exaggerate much? Yeah, its not just me, its a large section of players that rejoiced when 4E highly altered the vancian casting style and fixed the 5MWD by discouraging it and encouraging pushing forward. In other words a big group of people won't play 5E if this problem isn't fixed...
Cool. So no arguement for this then, just me exaggerating?
I don't actually like the Vancian magic system, but I can live with it and don't expect to be able to dissuade the vocal majority in favor of it. However, the resource mechanic associated with Vancian magic I DO like, I just wish it was like 25-35 scalable spells not 500+ individual spells to choose from. I posted about my troubles with vancian spell lists and sizes... what I realized after about twenty posts is that my view was not held by very many people. So I dropped it, I'm not here to lobby for lets make D&D:Zago. If hit a wall, I move 25 feet to the left and continue on.
Good sir, you are hitting a wall.
There has been plenty of simple solutions provided to solve your 5MWD problems, you choose to accept none. If that means you have to continue running a different game you love, 4ed., great! If they come through for you and make a module that forces group cooperation for you, well good. But if a playtesting shows that most people don't want it YOUR way, and they make a game that suits the majority of us, how can you be angry about it?
How can you be angry if the best product for the majority of interested parties isn't the best product for you?
Each of the story suggestions limit the stories I can tell and expect me to change my play style. I wouldn't expect you to change your play style for me either. They need to support both play styles. The main problem here is that people don't want a fix. Half of you can't even admit it might be a problem for the rest of us, the other half expects us to totally change our game up rather than get a small rules that fixes the problem at its source...
They dug it up and then cracked open the sealed door and the stale air and the whooshing sound when it opened indicated it, as it should in a logical game. Sure there are undead, but they are bound to the tomb. They also scried the inside and did detect undead, so you know they were prepared...
and than YOU fail as a DM...plenty more could be an underground crypt sealed or not, Any insect type monstyers, anything that can burrow, anything that can phase those are the easy one...you could have Drow, Humans, Graverobbers, anything really down there...who says the crypt (or w/e it is) only has one entrance maybe over the X amount of years its been buried a group of dwarf miners busted into to it and its their secret little hangout away from the dwarven city where they play I dunno, D&D and their not to happy a bunch of adventurers busted into their hideaway.
Everything you've described as "broken" and your rebuttals all lead to either a bad DM or straight up lack of logic.
Yep, because you can never tell the story of a lost tomb that has lain undisturbed for thousands of years full of traps, mindless undead, constructs, and treasure. Again quit trying to tell me I have to change my play style and limit the stories I can tell in order to prevent the 5MWD...5E is for all of us, not just some of us...
Why were they at the abandoned tomb, what was their motivation, what was the drama to keep them moving towards this goal? Why were the characters even interested in this ancient tomb, and willing to face whatever horrors may be inside?
They found a treasure map in their last adventure and they want the treasure...
So amoral grave robbery with no actual motivation for a specific mcguffin within the tomb needed for a grander and possibly life saving goal. Literally no drama of any kind. Not even a self locking door at the front of the tomb? Seriously the movie "The Goonies" had a better plot line. More and more it seems like I can identify where your problem lies and it is not in the mechanics. Seriously unless this is the loot piñata phase of the story, where nothing of note is happening and your just giving them rewards in a fun manner, in which case 5MWD doesn't matter, then you seriously need to work on your writing. It isn't a bad thing to note, and I think represents half of the problems we are seeing here. You aren't developing a heroic fantasy story of any kind your giving shallow reasons to keep the wargame going. You just literally said there was no motivation for them to go near this tomb. There are likely far less dangerous ways to get money in the world, and yet still they went to the tomb instead. With no motivation other than insanity and greed. The fault doesn't lie with the system here. The fault lies with shallow characters and shallow plots. I'm sorry if a good plot is requirement for the game to work. Maybe they should note that somewhere.
So now I'm a bad DM because I enjoy the old school dungeon crawl? Nice. Yeah, again they have to support the major play styles and old school dungeon crawls is one of them...
Even an old school dungeon crawl should be filled with motivations. The characters should have reasons, outside of pure greed and insanity, for being in that dungeon. There should be some goal to find in the dungeon, or a sequence of them in order to find the big goal within the dungeon. If those goals are not known upon entering the dungeon it should be exposed early during the dungeon crawl. Early in the dungeon something should wet the adventurers appetite to get to the next goal within the dungeon. There should be clues to follow, and some reason for expediency, and some reason to be there, even if the reason is different for every member of the party, or else the only strategy that makes sense is the 5MWD. Heck you give me that situation, a dungeon and no precise motivation to explore it, in real life, and I'm going to immediately seal the dungeon and come back to it later since I currently have no reason to go into it. It would be stupid to go into this ancient abandoned shrine that I know is full of monsters. Even executing the 5mwd would be stupidly risky. I could just as easily live a life by building a still and making booze for people.
Actually a majority of the old school dungeon crawls really didn't have a point. I used to have tons of dungeon magazines that had endless greed based dungeon crawls. In fact in 1E and before that was the whole point of playing a Rogue(Thief)...
..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />Cool. So no arguement for this then, just me exaggerating?
I don't actually like the Vancian magic system, but I can live with it and don't expect to be able to dissuade the vocal majority in favor of it. However, the resource mechanic associated with Vancian magic I DO like, I just wish it was like 25-35 scalable spells not 500+ individual spells to choose from.
Couldn't agree more! There should be a simpler structure to spells where they can be tweaked to have different strengths/elements/areas/etc instead of just making 40 bazillion different variations. They should be teaching to fish instead of handing over tuna and ahi tuna and trout and rainbow trout and blahblahblah. Enough variations on a theme...just give us the means to create themes.
Yeah. I've heard compelling arguments from wizard lovers that really, really, like the feel of a rich vancian system, which I get, but I feel like keeping the core mechanics simple and versatile is best. Even my whole group was like, "Why did you complain about Vancian magic, dude?" I eventually conceded that too many people were just in LOVE with it, and my greater pursuit of simplicity and minimalism has a few minor weaknesses in way of character and flavor.
I would be very excited if they released a module that was essentially a spell builder, allowing players make their own spells, and let them be scalable, that's would be a sweet bonus for us in the minority.
Alas... there is dignity in compromise (Take notes Lokiare).
Compromise means both parties didn't get what they wanted. We should be working toward a Win/Win instead where both parties get what they want. You can start by not denying that other have experienced it and that your solutions might infringe on our play styles...
In other words you want me to change my play style to prevent a mechanical problem. Sorry, 5E has to work with my play style too...
First of all if your play style causes the problem, and it does, then it isn't a mechanical problem. If your play style is to be predictable, no amount of rules (or even houseruling) can fix the problem.
The argument goes, that some idiot at the table might claim that because there is a "default" that is the only true way to play D&D. An idiotic misconception that should be quite easy to disprove just by reading the rules, coming to these forums, or sending a quick note off to Customer Support and sharing the inevitable response with the group. BTW, I'm not just talking about Next when I say this. Of course, D&D has always been this way since at least the late 70's when I began playing.
My First D&D - 1979 D&D Basic Set (6th Printing)Show
So now I'm a bad DM because I enjoy the old school dungeon crawl? Nice. Yeah, again they have to support the major play styles and old school dungeon crawls is one of them...
No, but it should tell you something that there was probably one professional static abandonded crypt dungeon ever written (Tomb of Horrors), and that admittedly was so deadly that it didn't even matter in most cases if the party rested after every encounter.
If you have any doubt about how to do a murder mystery I suggest Len Lakofka's Assassin's Knot as at least recommended reading.
So no. Most old school dungeon crawls are nothing like the static snooze fest your describe. Your "style" is apparently pretty unique to you and actually causes the problem you are complaining about.
The argument goes, that some idiot at the table might claim that because there is a "default" that is the only true way to play D&D. An idiotic misconception that should be quite easy to disprove just by reading the rules, coming to these forums, or sending a quick note off to Customer Support and sharing the inevitable response with the group. BTW, I'm not just talking about Next when I say this. Of course, D&D has always been this way since at least the late 70's when I began playing.
My First D&D - 1979 D&D Basic Set (6th Printing)Show
Yes, so it doesn't predict random encounters so what...
Well that was your whole point.
And actually it doesn't predict anything with the kind of unfailing accuracy you suggest. You like to misrepresent spells quite a bit it seems. First Rope Trick, now Divination. Like to try for 0 for 3?
The argument goes, that some idiot at the table might claim that because there is a "default" that is the only true way to play D&D. An idiotic misconception that should be quite easy to disprove just by reading the rules, coming to these forums, or sending a quick note off to Customer Support and sharing the inevitable response with the group. BTW, I'm not just talking about Next when I say this. Of course, D&D has always been this way since at least the late 70's when I began playing.
My First D&D - 1979 D&D Basic Set (6th Printing)Show
