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PhoneLobster
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Jason wrote:Except that no one other than you ever claimed that the monster cannot be defeated without a successfull check. I certainly didn't.
Oh just fuck you OK?
Jason wrote:Players need to find out, what those weaknesses are and prepare accordingly for the fight to have a reliable chance of winning.
Your entire description well beyond that was about a game founded on investigating monster weaknesses as THE primary thing you were doing other than then APPLYING those monster weaknesses. Your referenced source material is mythology in which monsters can ONLY be defeated by their weaknesses. And then yes, you said THAT just up there and flat out stated that players NEED to find out the weakness in order to win.

If you want to quibble about "reliable chance of winning" lets be fucking clear. "No reliable chance of winning" means a reliable defeat. YOU fucking DID say that the players NEED the weakness information OR THEY LOSE.

This means that you very much have stakes that matter, and there is no "false dichotomy" you are flat out admitting that your trivia checks are meaningless the game WILL deliver the information regardless of their outcome. OR if the outcome of those checks actually matters... then when they fail them they fucking reliably lose.

A "false dichotomy" is not disproved by going "ahaha! I WILL pick one of the options! Take THAT!".

How fucking thick are you?
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Sun May 08, 2016 5:56 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Jason »

MGuy wrote:I don't get what you're saying here. When opposing someone else players don't necessarily need to know what their chance of success really is. You don't 'need' to know when casting spells vs a target's save, you don't need to know it when making an attack, and you shouldn't know it when a surprise encounter happens.
Okay then let me rephrase it in a hopefully more comprehensible way:

You will not be "more likely" or "less likely" to do anything in a game where you alwas take 10 as the only option. It is a wholly binary system. You either always succeed at a given challenge or you always fail at it. No chance to recover, no alternative.
So, to use the senaking example, if I have to decide whether to sneak past those goblins, I need to have a realistic expectation of the outcome, to form my decision or it's just entirely random. I don't need to know exactly the perception modifier of said goblins but I need to know the probable range their modifier can be in, to decide whether I should try it or not. The GM can tell me that, but he shouldn't. It should be a consistent facet of the game universe. We all expect dogs to have a keen sense of smell, so I can realibly expect that an invisibility spell alone won't help me to get past one. We all expect a guy with arms as wide as tree trunks to do well in an arm wrestling contest, so I can reliably expect to lose if I am the skinny guy with twigs for arms. Those are the easy extreme cases but it gets more complicated once we get into the middle range of expected results. That's where K is right when he says it adds tension to not exactly know the outcome and that's also where the player needs a somewhat relibaly basis for his decision making. He need realistic expecations and they need to be represented by according numbers.

And it gets worse if you the opposed challenges involve actual harm to your character:
MGuy wrote:If you miss an attack you missed 'that' attack. As long as your game allows combat to continue beyond that single miss then it's not a big deal. What you 'can' do is make it so that your attacks are 'more' likely to hit so that you can know that you are better at swinging your sword than say throwing it. You don't know what the enemy's combat numbers are but you can bet that by investing in dodge/AC/etc that you are less likely to be hit when they swing their swords at you.
If you always take 10 as your resolution mechanic, then there is no such thing as "more likely to hit". You either hit, always, or you don't, ever. The combat is decided from the moment it began. You initial decision whether to attack or not decided the fate of your character with no further delineations. So, if the ambush check would have given you the chance to avoid enemies you can't defeat, then the success or failure becomes the de facto combat outcome. It is an absolutely deterministic system, where a single decision snowballs into a then ineviteable outcome. The moment your character set foot in the scene, the outcome was more or less set in stone.

And if you leave the area of opposed rolls and look at single checks (where you would expect far less problems) you are still facing a grave enemy: dullness.
Your character's abilities are frozen in their respective numbers. No spur of the momen, no unexpected dramatic actions, no sudden twists of fate, good or bad. Gone are the times where skinny wizard lifts the rock under which the warrior lies to free him, despite his frail stature. That wizard will no longer roll a 16+. Gone are the times of challenging fate with your action. No more "can I make that jump?". You either can or you cannot and you know right from the start.

So, your problem is twofold:

1. To allow players to make informed decisons for their characters (an ability utterly nescessary for a deterministic system to even remotely work), you need numbers that are able to realistically protray their chances. Simply taking 10 on a 3.x skill check won't do that in most circumstances as the underlying math is tilted slightly against the players to create more tension and reward high rolls.

2. Not allowing for varying results sets your character in stone. He becomes a dull and binary thing that either always succeeds at a given task or always fails, leaving no room for actual "challenges". What would you challenge such a character with? It is either no challenge or insurmountable with no third option.
PhoneLobster wrote:If you want to quibble about "reliable chance of winning" lets be fucking clear. "No reliable chance of winning" means a reliable defeat.
No it does not. It means an unreliably chance of winning. That's not even remotely the same as a reliably chance of defeat. It's not simply binary. Take a Thuata De for excemple, clad in sidhe armor. You will have a very hard time to pierce said armor unless you use cold worked iron against it. That doesn't mean you can't attack parts of the Thuata De that are not armored and bypass his protection that way, but you will be at a significant disadvantage in such a fight. You can still win. You can lose as well. Having cold worked iron would give you a tremendous advantage in that situation and increase your odds significantly.

You're trying to turn this into a binary scenario. You also ignore the little word "based" in "based on eurpean mythology" when you conclude that thus monsters are invulnerable outside their weaknesses.
PhoneLobster wrote:This means that you very much have stakes that matter[...]
Exactly. They don't need to be erased by simply giving everything to the players, though.
PhoneLobster wrote:[...], and there is no "false dichotomy" you are flat out admitting that your trivia checks are meaningless the game WILL deliver the information regardless of their outcome. OR if the outcome of those checks actually matters... then when they fail them they fucking reliably lose.
And this is your very false dichotomy. You only see two options because you onyl want to see two options. You claim to base your dichotomy on "my source material" when you simply non-sequitured entire different meanings out of what I said.

I am not here to piss in your cereal. I ask you to read what I actually wrote, however, before you attempt to rip my head off. I already said that I agree that nescessary information should not be withheld from the players. That doesn't mean they need to have access to all information, however. And information is not only binary in that it is either nescessary or useless. Some information can provide advantages or negate disadvantages. Then it is usefull, but not nescessary. It's not just two options.
Last edited by Jason on Sun May 08, 2016 9:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by momothefiddler »

Regarding the take 10:
In situations where there's only a single option, you make an attempt, you learn through resulting success or failure whether your abilities were sufficient, you move on.
In D&D terms: "Try Again: No".

I honestly don't get the argument that if you had perfect information you could predict the future? That knowing an enemy's Spot modifier would make hiding deterministic? Because yes, but you don't know the enemy's Spot modifier. Imperfect information is what makes us call dice random too - on any size scale high enough for us to care about, die rolling can be modeled just fine as deterministic, given sufficient information. You come out swinging about how twigarms should be able to know he'll lose against bear wrestler, and then handwave that into "the game's no fun because obviously you know beforehand that he has a +15 vs your +14" without ever justifying knowing that.

But beyond that, so what if it's deterministic? That doesnt inherently make it the hellscape of bland tedium you offer up (chess is so repetitive and predictable that it only interested people for three hours from its invention! dice chess has so much more replayability). I'm not arguing that 3.5-take-10 would be a good game (or that any diceless game would necessarily be) but its not from a fundamental issue with lack of dice. Hell, "I hit it with my sword" "You miss" "I hit it with my sword" becomes less likely to happen. Because here's the other side to what I mentioned at the top there with there being only one option: both chess and 3.5-take-10 combat have a lot of choices you can make - different things you can try. If your first hit doesn't connect, just because you cant try the same damn thing again doesn't mean it's time to go home. Maybe next time use less power attack, or flank the bastard, or whatever.

But the biggest issue I have with that post is it has no focus and there's no attempt to isolate why your argument applies to one thing (sneaking, stabbing) and not another (speaking, skedaddling), which leaves you ranting that not only would combat be inherently worse without dice because everyone knows everyone else's ACs and can never try different maneuvers, movement would be inherently better with dice, because everyone moves along a line and knows everyone else's speeds.

(Sidenote:
Jason wrote:
PhoneLobster wrote:If you want to quibble about "reliable chance of winning" lets be fucking clear. "No reliable chance of winning" means a reliable defeat.
No it does not. It means an unreliably chance of winning. That's not even remotely the same as a reliably chance of defeat.
Law of large numbers, iterative probability, etc. etc.
If you want hunting monsters to feature heavily in your theoretical monster hunting game, it does mean that, the end.)
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Jason wrote:No it does not. It means an unreliably chance of winning. That's not even remotely the same as a reliably chance of defeat. It's not simply binary.
Honest to god winning or losing a combat isn't binary?

THAT isn't binary.

You just go from "reliably winning" to "unreliably winning" and when the other thing that isn't winning happens all times bar the "unreliable" ones (you know like I don't know reliably) it isn't losing?

Your position is such blithering nonsense that it's offensive.

Here. TRY putting some numbers behind your argument. How many times out of 100 does the party win when they "reliably win" and how many times out of 100 does the party win when they "unreliably win". Now plug that into some itterative probability, notice how many of your games/campaigns will end in ignominious failure if the information on monster weaknesses isn't delivered and shut the hell up about your magical middle ground of entirely fucking unspecified "things that you need but which you also don't need".
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Post by deaddmwalking »

It's still possible to lose and for the game to continue. See, for instance, The Empire Strikes Back.
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Post by MGuy »

Jason I'm going to ignore a good deal of your last reply because it is stupid. It is stupid because all you talk about is "If you take 10" and that makes you unfit to actually engage the points I made right out the gate. I am not talking about a system in which people just take 10, that wasn't even a question 'I' raised and I didn't even bother answering it because it suggests that I would keep something just like the current 3.x skill set up which I wouldn't if I were to change how things worked.

Second, even 'if you took 10' yes, having a higher modifier means you're more likely to actually succeed even if you had to succeed just by showing up with bigger numbers from the get go because that's how numbers work. The fact that you don't know this very basic thing is extremely bizarre. Yea, you could run into things with bigger numbers but you are less likely to the larger your numbers are from the get go. How don't you know this?

Lastly, your two fold problem is not real. It's not a thing. If my character has wall of stone, fly, and animate object he is not more dull because I don't have to roll for those to work.
Last edited by MGuy on Sun May 08, 2016 3:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by ishy »

Jason wrote:If you always take 10 as your resolution mechanic, then there is no such thing as "more likely to hit". You either hit, always, or you don't, ever. The combat is decided from the moment it began. You initial decision whether to attack or not decided the fate of your character with no further delineations. So, if the ambush check would have given you the chance to avoid enemies you can't defeat, then the success or failure becomes the de facto combat outcome. It is an absolutely deterministic system, where a single decision snowballs into a then ineviteable outcome. The moment your character set foot in the scene, the outcome was more or less set in stone.
Uhmm, no? Even if you always take 10, you can still modify your attack roll by for example using flanking, aid another or high ground. You might still be able to sunder the enemies armour, reducing their armour class. You can still use a wall of stone to separate your enemy.
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Post by Kaelik »

ishy wrote:You might still be able to sunder the enemies armour, reducing their armour class.
Technically, if you are playing exactly 3.5 with only tens instead of rolls, you can't sunder armor.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Kaelik wrote:
ishy wrote:You might still be able to sunder the enemies armour, reducing their armour class.
Technically, if you are playing exactly 3.5 with only tens instead of rolls, you can't sunder armor.
Since I felt the need to look this up - technically, if you are playing 3.5, you cannot sunder armour worn by someone else in 3.5, full stop. It's not a by-product of "take 10 on everything".

But yes, conceptually you could do things that take you from "never hit" to "always hit", but the same things will always have the same output under that circumstance. Almost turns encounters into puzzles - "find the attack pattern that makes me always hit and them not hit me enough times to matter, victory is now mine, let us not drag this on any longer".
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Sun May 08, 2016 6:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Kaelik »

Omegonthesane wrote:
Kaelik wrote:
ishy wrote:You might still be able to sunder the enemies armour, reducing their armour class.
Technically, if you are playing exactly 3.5 with only tens instead of rolls, you can't sunder armor.
Since I felt the need to look this up - technically, if you are playing 3.5, you cannot sunder armour worn by someone else in 3.5, full stop. It's not a by-product of "take 10 on everything".
Yes... that is what I said? 3.5 doesn't let you sunder armor. So if you are playing 3.5 with only 10s instead of rolls, you would not be able to sunder armor.

Obviously, if you were really trying to design a game that didn't have an RNG, and used explicit rules, you would change some things, and allowing people to make actions that would then allow them to hit people they couldn't hit before would likely be one of the changes.
Last edited by Kaelik on Sun May 08, 2016 7:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by momothefiddler »

Omegonthesane wrote:But yes, conceptually you could do things that take you from "never hit" to "always hit", but the same things will always have the same output under that circumstance. Almost turns encounters into puzzles - "find the attack pattern that makes me always hit and them not hit me enough times to matter, victory is now mine, let us not drag this on any longer".
And presumably they could take measures to put you back into "never hit". Having a set output for a given board state+input is fine if there are a lot of board states and both sides have the ability to change them. Sure, randomness can be a source of tension, or a way to simulate incomplete information, or both, but both of those can be gained without. There are plenty of fine games with perfectly viable resolution mechanics without randomizers and I really don't get why that's the sticking point here.

"Search shouldn't be randomized!" -> "Search needs randomness because it adds ________ and Search specifically needs that."
This works fine.

"Search shouldn't be randomized!" -> "Randomness is an easy way to add tension and missing information and the argued costs are negligible because ________."
This works fine.

"Search shouldn't be randomized!" -> "Without randomness, everything is boring and unfun!"
This does not, unless you honestly don't find anything fun unless it has dice, in which case... I'll concede you're at least being consistent, I guess.
Last edited by momothefiddler on Sun May 08, 2016 7:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

Without a random element, the trap filled hallway is - at best - the game of "guess what number I am thinking of." And that is a terrible game that is also terrible for human relationships between the player and the MC.

If searching for things and not finding them has potential negative consequences, then a player had fucking better get a chance to find them. Otherwise the negative consequences feel like the MC pissing directly on the player, because that is basically what happened. Having a chance means there has to be a random element. Otherwise there isn't a chance, by definition.

If searching for things has no potential negative consequences, the traps don't have any gravitas or tension at all.

All roads lead to the need for a die roll. And I genuinely don't even understand the argument otherwise.

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Post by PhoneLobster »

If only traps could or did incorporate any other dice rolls other than search, like an attack roll or a saving throw or something.

But since they can't and don't I suppose the search roll is required for fairness...

...wait a second!
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Post by MGuy »

Frank's big gotcha isn't about what skill you roll but that a roll or whatever RNG thing you use is necessary. Since he admits that he doesn't know what's being argued about you will have to forgive him for not realizing that no one is arguing for no rolls ever. Now I don't know how rolling search every room and hoping you succeed at all makes the slog of going through a shitty trap marathon actually interesting. I mean you could have traps that are better handled with brains than just a search check but hey whatever.
Last edited by MGuy on Sun May 08, 2016 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by momothefiddler »

FrankTrollman wrote:Having a chance means there has to be a random element. Otherwise there isn't a chance, by definition.
Cute wordplay but please tell me you have an actual argument that doesn't depend on conflating "a chance" as in "an opportunity" (connected because of probability as a measure of unknowns) and "chance" as in "randomness". Because as an actual argument that's a cop-out and you should feel bad.

As an aside, I have literally never played a game with an actual hallway full of traps. Is that a thing people still do? Is it at all fun? Sounds like a lot of die-rolling and waiting for die-rolling, to be honest. I think if I was gonna have fun from a trapped hallway, it'd end up being more interactive and less random than that. Like a quick game of Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Kaelik wrote:
Omegonthesane wrote:
Kaelik wrote:
Technically, if you are playing exactly 3.5 with only tens instead of rolls, you can't sunder armor.
Since I felt the need to look this up - technically, if you are playing 3.5, you cannot sunder armour worn by someone else in 3.5, full stop. It's not a by-product of "take 10 on everything".
Yes... that is what I said? 3.5 doesn't let you sunder armor. So if you are playing 3.5 with only 10s instead of rolls, you would not be able to sunder armor.
Wasn't contradicting you (this time); I didn't know 3.5 by heart well enough to know that you were referring to the fact that armour couldn't be sundered "full fucking stop" rather than claiming that the DC could never be met when taking 10, so assumed at least one other board member would be in a similar position.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Sun May 08, 2016 9:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Sergarr »

FrankTrollman wrote:Without a random element, the trap filled hallway is - at best - the game of "guess what number I am thinking of." And that is a terrible game that is also terrible for human relationships between the player and the MC.

If searching for things and not finding them has potential negative consequences, then a player had fucking better get a chance to find them. Otherwise the negative consequences feel like the MC pissing directly on the player, because that is basically what happened. Having a chance means there has to be a random element. Otherwise there isn't a chance, by definition.

If searching for things has no potential negative consequences, the traps don't have any gravitas or tension at all.

All roads lead to the need for a die roll. And I genuinely don't even understand the argument otherwise.

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I can think of at least one mechanic where you can have traps that have potential negative consequences, that can be partially or completly avoided by high Trap Finding skill or whatever, but without dice rolling - that is, traps always trigger in your presence, but their damage/effect is reduced, corresponding to your Trap Finding skill.

Now you'll say "but that still leaves the agency in DM's hands, because he determines the lethality of the traps, and thus without dice, he can just decide that everyone dies the instant they step into the hallway", but I'm pretty sure that they can do that in the dice-rolling system, already - by setting the DC high enough.

It seems to the that "dice adds player agency" argument simply relies on most DM's being probability-illiterate and thus erroneously agreeing to rules that do not mean what DM thinks they mean, and then exploit their previous agreement on the matter of rule-correctness in order to hopefully prevent them from going "actually, I intended to make this trap kill you all, so this roll you just made doesn't actually count as a successful save, because fuck you". Which seems to be a valid point, but... I don't think that playing with those DM's would be actually fun, even with these sorts of social mechanics in play helping players to retain their agency.

Wouldn't this kind of DM simply resort to making up dozens of house-rules designed to replace the "hard to manipulate into doing what I want" game-mechanics with their own, easy-to-fudge ones, thus making the extensive dice-rolling simply postpone the inevitable campaign breakup for a few sessions?

(and no, I'm not arguing against all dice rolling everywhere, there are a lot of moments where you need dice rolls simply because the game would become impossible to balance otherwise; however, I think that D&D has way too many rolling mechanics that basically require you to be fucking psychic and predict what challenges you'll have to overcome in the future, in order to be able to prepare accordingly and have a good chance of passing them - like all the "star trek trivia" Knowledge checks - and thus are pretty bad from the point of player agency)
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Post by Wiseman »

Of course that arguement makes arguing about rules at all pointless, because rule zero means that asshole DMs will be asshole DMs and the only winning move is to not play.

Anyways, this entire discussion is nothing but stupid arguing in circles. If you want to do something about the problem, fucking do something!

Here, if the problem of some skills is that you pass or fail on a single die roll, and in combat you don't usually pass or fail on a single die roll, then the solution is to make a skills minigame like the combat minigame. Have a searching for traps/people/hidden things/your dick minigame, have a stealth minigame, and though it's likely that there will never be a satisfactory outcome, have an interaction minigame. Hell that's what 5e promised on, and then didn't even bother trying.
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Post by Ghremdal »

Dice add to player agency if the systems mechanics are good enough that dice rolls make sense, or in other words that dice rolls yield expected results.

Going with a 3.x example if a Search DC for a trap is 25, then a character will make that check dependent on how much investment into search did he make, assuming such a resource investment is reasonable.

That means that a DM shouldn't make DC 25 death traps if to have a reasonable chance of detection a PC has to take a two feats and a prestige class to make, but its totally OK if its just a feat or spending skill points and having a high attribute.

This is players enablement. The player has a choice, and knowing DC 25 death traps can exist he can decide how much resource he wants to invest to beat a potential future trap, with the chance of success dependent on resources invested. This is THE choice a player makes about his character since it mechanically defines what his character can or cannot do. Do I want my character to be a good trapfinder or do I want him to be a good jumper or whatever.

P.S. This is not going into the design choices of DC 25 death traps.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Wiseman wrote:Of course that arguement makes arguing about rules at all pointless, because rule zero means that asshole DMs will be asshole DMs and the only winning move is to not play.
If the asshole MC has to houserule extensively or set bullshit DCs to be an asshole, that necessarily generates more warning signs than if they are running Bear World, and thus more chances to bail before the night has become worse than no gaming.
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Post by Kaelik »

Wiseman wrote:Of course that arguement makes arguing about rules at all pointless, because rule zero means that asshole DMs will be asshole DMs and the only winning move is to not play.

Anyways, this entire discussion is nothing but stupid arguing in circles. If you want to do something about the problem, fucking do something!

Here, if the problem of some skills is that you pass or fail on a single die roll, and in combat you don't usually pass or fail on a single die roll, then the solution is to make a skills minigame like the combat minigame. Have a searching for traps/people/hidden things/your dick minigame, have a stealth minigame, and though it's likely that there will never be a satisfactory outcome, have an interaction minigame. Hell that's what 5e promised on, and then didn't even bother trying.
Making a minigame involves making things take more time, and writing up hundreds or thousands of abilities for PCs to use in the minigame. That's a lot of work to do for something I want my characters to spend less time on. I don't want to spend more time figuring out if my character finds the letters that take 30 seconds to read, or if my character correctly appraises the value of some object before sale.
Last edited by Kaelik on Sun May 08, 2016 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by ishy »

FrankTrollman wrote:Having a chance means there has to be a random element. Otherwise there isn't a chance, by definition.

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Actually, no. For example, you could have a cleric who can cast find all traps. So the chance in finding the traps is in whether the cleric casts that or not (which still sounds pretty terrible, but there is no real random element).
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Wiseman wrote:Here, if the problem of some skills is that you pass or fail on a single die roll, and in combat you don't usually pass or fail on a single die roll, then the solution is to make a skills minigame like the combat minigame.
Not all things should be minigames. Not everything is important enough to require a minigame and you have limited time and complexity resources. Sometimes the correct solution is not to emphasis and add to a mechanic but to reduce it instead.

"The solution" or solutions have been proposed already, and the solution is what you do with any questionably beneficial pure MTP element. Remove what you can, only leave what facilitates MTP, include GMing guidelines based on beneficial game outcomes instead of counterproductive fantasies about search rolls being allowed to matter, don't let players take it as a trap option in exchange for REAL abilities.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Mon May 09, 2016 12:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Wiseman
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Post by Wiseman »

Fair enough, although guidelines are just that, guidelines, and in the hands of a bad DM, they're simply ignored.
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TheFlatline wrote:Legolas/Robin Hood are myths that have completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a bow".
The D&D wizard is a work of fiction that has a completely unrealistic expectation of "uses a book".
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Wiseman wrote:Fair enough, although guidelines are just that, guidelines, and in the hands of a bad DM, they're simply ignored.
The ONLY thing we can do about the GM who decides to actually call game over on a star trek trivia check "because it should matter!" is to tell them not to, and that no, it shouldn't.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Mon May 09, 2016 1:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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