Degrees of success and failure exist within 5th edition and have done since 2014. Generally it takes the form of if you succeed or fail a check by 5 or more, there's an additional effect. There are also rules and suggestions for increments of 5. This is present in both the 2014 and 2024 DMG
I was always under the impression that degrees of success was more a 'homebrew' thing not in the official text. (For reference I use '14.) I'm aware of some degrees on saving throws like the medusa but elsewhere seemed to be more pass/fail. Where in the rules should I look for that kind of guidance in regards to skill checks etc.? (I'm genuinely curious.)
Degrees of success and failure exist within 5th edition and have done since 2014. Generally it takes the form of if you succeed or fail a check by 5 or more, there's an additional effect. There are also rules and suggestions for increments of 5. This is present in both the 2014 and 2024 DMG
I was always under the impression that degrees of success was more a 'homebrew' thing not in the official text. (For reference I use '14.) I'm aware of some degrees on saving throws like the medusa but elsewhere seemed to be more pass/fail. Where in the rules should I look for that kind of guidance in regards to skill checks etc.? (I'm genuinely curious.)
Here's the thing, "splashing a few points into cooking for flavor" is functionally identical to just saying "my character likes to cook". You don't need some mechanical notch on your sheet to flavour your character a certain way. This seems to be a mentality of "if there isn't a mechanical representation, it doesn't exist" which might explain your perception of the lack of roleplaying support if you're viewing it through that lens.
It should also be noted that the degrees of success percentage are not dissimilar from 3.5, it's just the numbers are different. It's just that a 5% step in success in 5th edition would be represented by a +1 whereas in 3.5 it would be represented by a +10
Yes that is part of the issue. My point is if you are role playing by just saying my character is good at cooking the system is not supporting that. That is role playing despite the system. And it absolutely can work good players and DMs absolutely will use that. But it is not the same as system support.
As for your math I don't know how you are getting those numbers a +10 in 3.5 results in a 50% difference in your chance of doing something not a 5%. The key IMO being that skill made up a larger part of the total to determine if you you could do something.
Here's the thing, "splashing a few points into cooking for flavor" is functionally identical to just saying "my character likes to cook". You don't need some mechanical notch on your sheet to flavour your character a certain way. This seems to be a mentality of "if there isn't a mechanical representation, it doesn't exist" which might explain your perception of the lack of roleplaying support if you're viewing it through that lens.
It should also be noted that the degrees of success percentage are not dissimilar from 3.5, it's just the numbers are different. It's just that a 5% step in success in 5th edition would be represented by a +1 whereas in 3.5 it would be represented by a +10
Yes that is part of the issue. My point is if you are role playing by just saying my character is good at cooking the system is not supporting that. That is role playing despite the system. And it absolutely can work good players and DMs absolutely will use that. But it is not the same as system support.
As for your math I don't know how you are getting those numbers a +10 in 3.5 results in a 50% difference in your chance of doing something not a 5%. The key IMO being that skill made up a larger part of the total to determine if you you could do something.
There is zero functional difference between saying "my character is good at cooking" with no mechanical representation of that and "my character is good at cooking" represented through some mechanical flag that affords no actual benefit.
As for my numbers I was providing an example of what I mean—it doesn't matter if there's a difference of 1 or 10 in stats if the difference still provides the same probabilistic benefit.
Let me put it this way, if you had a percentile based system vs D&Ds d20 based system, a step of 5 in the percentile system isn't "better" than a step of 1 because they both represent a 5% increase on the dice roll. That's what I'm getting at. Yes, 3.5 had bigger bonuses, but it also had higher DCs to compensate, washing out to the same overall steps in probability.
It's like how in YiGiOh, a monster can have an attack of 3000 and defense of 4000, but that's functionally identical to a Magic the Gathering monster with a power of 3 and a toughness of 4. It's just there are some nice decorative 000s at the end.
The bigger numbers are just satisfying the lizard brain "big numbers go brrrr" part of the player psyche
Here's the thing, "splashing a few points into cooking for flavor" is functionally identical to just saying "my character likes to cook". You don't need some mechanical notch on your sheet to flavour your character a certain way. This seems to be a mentality of "if there isn't a mechanical representation, it doesn't exist" which might explain your perception of the lack of roleplaying support if you're viewing it through that lens.
It should also be noted that the degrees of success percentage are not dissimilar from 3.5, it's just the numbers are different. It's just that a 5% step in success in 5th edition would be represented by a +1 whereas in 3.5 it would be represented by a +10
Yes that is part of the issue. My point is if you are role playing by just saying my character is good at cooking the system is not supporting that. That is role playing despite the system. And it absolutely can work good players and DMs absolutely will use that. But it is not the same as system support.
I see it the opposite way. The system which allows to you just say, I’m good at cooking is supporting that as role play choice, where a system which mandates you put points in cooking before you pick up a pan is discouraging that role play choice.
(Also, there is a cooking tool proficiency, which would make you better at cooking than the average person, and a chef feat which would also help. I realize we’re talking about cooking as a more abstract example, but it happens to have pretty concrete mechanical support.)
Here's the thing, "splashing a few points into cooking for flavor" is functionally identical to just saying "my character likes to cook". You don't need some mechanical notch on your sheet to flavour your character a certain way. This seems to be a mentality of "if there isn't a mechanical representation, it doesn't exist" which might explain your perception of the lack of roleplaying support if you're viewing it through that lens.
It should also be noted that the degrees of success percentage are not dissimilar from 3.5, it's just the numbers are different. It's just that a 5% step in success in 5th edition would be represented by a +1 whereas in 3.5 it would be represented by a +10
Yes that is part of the issue. My point is if you are role playing by just saying my character is good at cooking the system is not supporting that. That is role playing despite the system. And it absolutely can work good players and DMs absolutely will use that. But it is not the same as system support.
I see it the opposite way. The system which allows to you just say, I’m good at cooking is supporting that as role play choice, where a system which mandates you put points in cooking before you pick up a pan is discouraging that role play choice.
(Also, there is a cooking tool proficiency, which would make you better at cooking than the average person, and a chef feat which would also help. I realize we’re talking about cooking as a more abstract example, but it happens to have pretty concrete mechanical support.)
This is exactly why I bounced off of Pathfinder, every time I wanted to add some minor thing to a character that served little purpose other than flavour it became a case of having to actually put points in that skill (at the expense of things that were vital) rather than just being able to create a more rounded backstory. That’s not supporting role play, that quashing role play
This is exactly why I bounced off of Pathfinder, every time I wanted to add some minor thing to a character that served little purpose other than flavour it became a case of having to actually put points in that skill (at the expense of things that were vital) rather than just being able to create a more rounded backstory. That’s not supporting role play, that quashing role play
That is an interesting perspective. I very much gravitate toward there being some numerical support for how I describe my character but that can create mechanical disadvantages depending upon how specifically it is implemented.
This is exactly why I bounced off of Pathfinder, every time I wanted to add some minor thing to a character that served little purpose other than flavour it became a case of having to actually put points in that skill (at the expense of things that were vital) rather than just being able to create a more rounded backstory. That’s not supporting role play, that quashing role play
That is an interesting perspective. I very much gravitate toward there being some numerical support for how I describe my character but that can create mechanical disadvantages depending upon how specifically it is implemented.
Do you want D&D to have rules for food, or other trivial roleplaying things?? That seems to be what you're getting at.
This is exactly why I bounced off of Pathfinder, every time I wanted to add some minor thing to a character that served little purpose other than flavour it became a case of having to actually put points in that skill (at the expense of things that were vital) rather than just being able to create a more rounded backstory. That’s not supporting role play, that quashing role play
That is an interesting perspective. I very much gravitate toward there being some numerical support for how I describe my character but that can create mechanical disadvantages depending upon how specifically it is implemented.
Do you want D&D to have rules for food, or other trivial roleplaying things?? That seems to be what you're getting at.
I mean there are rules for food. Costs are outlined for various foods, there is lifestyle costs, and you can get levels of exhaustion from not eating.
I think there is lots of room for a medium between trying to detail every single aspect of everything and what we have now which is IMO not enough detail and also skill and talent not counting as much as I feel it should in terms of determining outcomes.
D&D’a greatest strength as a system is knowing when to be rules heavy and when to be rules light to ensure the game is fair and the narrative flows well. Generally speaking, that is defined by when an antagonistic relationship works where the outcome is determinative in a fundamental way.
Combat requires a lot of rules - those rules make the game more balanced between the DM and players, as well as the players and players. It ensures there is a clear system with limited flexibility, making the life and death decisions of combat determined by the rules and dice, not the whims of the DM and players.
Social encounters are designed to be flexible - these might be antagonistic, but they are not fundamentally life or death decisions (even if they might have that risk as an ancillary threat). To the extent there is conflict, that is where rules do come in - contested social checks (ex. Insight vs persuasion) or checks with set DCs.
By providing a lot of flexibility and limiting the amount of time folks have to actually roll mechanics, conversations can flow like a conversation. Game systems that are more heavy on roleplay rules lead to more interruptions of that roleplay with immersion breaking mechanics.. which, at least from my perspective make them paradoxically worse roleplay systems than D&D.
I mean, I kind of get what you're talking about with the "low support for role-playing". Here's how I see the argument.
A brand new player, never has done TTRPGs or anything similar, wants to play 5e and joins a table. Makes a character (there's rules for all that), writes some backstory, and is ready to go at the session.
Session comes up and at the beginning of the session there is a battle. Bam! Right in the thick of it. New player says "What can I do?" The response? "You can attack with your sword! You roll this to see if it beats this number, and you add these numbers to your roll. You hit! Great, now you roll this for damage. 7 points of piercing damage! Nice work! Oh you want to cast a spell? You can cast a bonus action spell, since "Attack" is listed as an Action, and you only have one. Here is a list of the specific things you can do with a Bonus Action!" etc etc. A new player can quickly pick up the rules of combat. 1 Action, 1 Bonus Action, 1 Reaction, roll to hit, roll for damage, etc. There is a lot of support for combat in the game, because there is a structure to how combat encounters go and work.
The battle is now over. Great! DM describes the scene: there's townspeople around, the city guard is approaching, etc. New player says "What can I do?" The response? "Whatever you want!" Uh...okay? Where combat was very structured in what was possible, how you resolved things, etc, other things like social encounters are not. Yes, there are optional rules for social encounters in the DMG, and there are certainly things in your background and even some classes that have more of an impact on things outside of combat than in it (I can think of a rogue ability that lets you infiltrate a place with enough time spent preparing, and background features that are about finding hospitality and the like), but for the most part outside of combat and maybe some other more-scripted scenarios the answer to "What can I do?" is "Whatever you want!" without much structure. This could be perceived as a lack of support in role-playing.
Now, do people want more structure to their roleplaying in D&D? Obviously OP does, but overall...probably not. There are games out there that have very structured social-encounter and other role-playing rules, and people are welcome to find and play those, but I don't really think that is what D&D has ever been about. But people wanting more structure like that in their game isn't wrong or bad, it just isn't what D&D is.
This is exactly why I bounced off of Pathfinder, every time I wanted to add some minor thing to a character that served little purpose other than flavour it became a case of having to actually put points in that skill (at the expense of things that were vital) rather than just being able to create a more rounded backstory. That’s not supporting role play, that quashing role play
That is an interesting perspective. I very much gravitate toward there being some numerical support for how I describe my character but that can create mechanical disadvantages depending upon how specifically it is implemented.
Do you want D&D to have rules for food, or other trivial roleplaying things?? That seems to be what you're getting at.
I mean there are rules for food. Costs are outlined for various foods, there is lifestyle costs, and you can get levels of exhaustion from not eating.
I think there is lots of room for a medium between trying to detail every single aspect of everything and what we have now which is IMO not enough detail and also skill and talent not counting as much as I feel it should in terms of determining outcomes.
It's starting to sound like you think d20s are too random, to which I have a solution: Drop all DCs by 5-10 and use a d10 instead of a d20.
In the 3.5 system you could splash a couple points into cooking for flavor, or have a few points in a knowledge without it being a massive commitment for the character.
Here's the thing, "splashing a few points into cooking for flavor" is functionally identical to just saying "my character likes to cook". You don't need some mechanical notch on your sheet to flavour your character a certain way. This seems to be a mentality of "if there isn't a mechanical representation, it doesn't exist" which might explain your perception of the lack of roleplaying support if you're viewing it through that lens. And as for commitment issues with skills, skills are fairly easy to come by. You can gain skills through feats, backgrounds, training, bastion features etc. They're easy to come by to the point that there are discussions not just about how to make a build that gets all the skills, but what's the lowest level you can achieve that by. And skills give a solid mechanical reward that scales with level, meaning a small investment yields a high return.
Yeah, I've played games like GURPS where the designers went all in and tried to include skills for everything. It doesn't lead to a lot more role play in my experience, it leads to "wait, why are walking, jogging, sprinting, and distance running separate skills?" and the general feeling that you have to dump points into random skills for your character's background instead of skills that actually contributed to the game. Same goes for 3.5 D&D, where the Craft and Profession skills were ignored unless a player was angling for a particular prestige class that required them.
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"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Here's the thing, "splashing a few points into cooking for flavor" is functionally identical to just saying "my character likes to cook". You don't need some mechanical notch on your sheet to flavour your character a certain way. This seems to be a mentality of "if there isn't a mechanical representation, it doesn't exist" which might explain your perception of the lack of roleplaying support if you're viewing it through that lens.
It should also be noted that the degrees of success percentage are not dissimilar from 3.5, it's just the numbers are different. It's just that a 5% step in success in 5th edition would be represented by a +1 whereas in 3.5 it would be represented by a +10
Yes that is part of the issue. My point is if you are role playing by just saying my character is good at cooking the system is not supporting that. That is role playing despite the system. And it absolutely can work good players and DMs absolutely will use that. But it is not the same as system support.
As for your math I don't know how you are getting those numbers a +10 in 3.5 results in a 50% difference in your chance of doing something not a 5%. The key IMO being that skill made up a larger part of the total to determine if you you could do something.
What you're describing is something called Mechanical Obstruction. It's something that applies to other types of games, but I think is more relevant in RPG's
The way this works is that if you add a mechanic to a game, that mechanic becomes the definition of an executable action and is now represented by that mechanic in the game.
So in your example, if you add a "Cooking Skill", you have now defined that when someone takes a "cooking action", they execute that mechanic, and there is a function and a mechanical outcome of the cooking action. As such, cooking is now a mechanic; it's no longer part of the free-form aspect of role-playing.
It's called Mechanical Obstruction because in an RPG, the more mechanics you have, the more mechanical executions there are and the more interruptions to free-form role-playing there are. When a mechanic is not relevant to the core gameplay its a Mechanical Obstruction.
Mechanics never "supports" role-playing, quite to the contrary, the more mechanics you have for things, the less role-playing there is.
Again and I want to make this super clear so we don't stray into the argument about "what role-playing is"... This applies as long as you accept that role-playing is the free-form interaction between players and GM's. Aka, it's a creative conversation that is not based on mechanics.
I understand what you're trying to say however so I don't want to discount your opinion. What you're suggesting is that character sheets represent who a character is in a descriptive sense, so if you want to be a D&D character and be a Master Chef, if there is no skill or mechanic for cooking, it becomes impossible to represent that in the game on a character sheet mechanically.
I think the point D&D 5e makes as a design is that if you want to be a Master Chef, that is a narrative thing, not a mechanical thing, so you can simply "claim" to be one because being a Master Chef has no impact on the game, it only has impact on the story and the story is a free-form thing that we invent at the table that neither requires or is desired to have rules. If you want to be a Master Swordsmen, that requires mechanics in D&D because that has an impact on the game (for example when fighting monsters), which is relevant to D&D gameplay.
So mechanics in D&D are added that are relevant to the game, not to role-playing and that is kind of the point of how most RPG's work. They give you mechanics that are relevant to the game.
For example in Vampire The Masquerade it's relevant to the game who your contacts and allies are and how much influence you have among different mortal organizations because politics are part of the game not just the story. That is not the case in D&D because politics are not part of the game, they are just part of the story and only in some games.
I don't know if that makes sense but basically, you want to have as few mechanical obstructions that are not relevant to the core gameplay of the RPG in question. What qualifies as a mechanical obstruction depends a lot on what the game is trying to be, what the core gameplay is of that game.
D&D like all RPG's is a role-playing game first and foremost but as a mechanical game it's about exploration and fighting monsters so these are the mechanics that are the focus of the rules.
As someone already pointed out if you ever want to see the "extreme" of what happens when you try to mechanize every aspect of role-playing, GURPS is a great example. You quite literally roll dice for almost everything. Even if you just talk or run, you have to roll the dice to see how you did. It is the ultimate game of mechanical obstructions, but in its defense, the point of GURPS is not to apply all rules at all times. The core rule of the game is only use the rules when its fun and interesting to do so, as such GURPS is a GM trust game where the players have to trust the GM to apply the rules when appropriate. As a result, sometimes you roll for stealth, sometimes you don't. You don't universally always apply the rules, you do so selectively and at the GM's discretion. But that is an entirely different topic. It can be fun, but GURPS would make a much better video game than it does a tabletop RPG and its because it has so many mechanical obstructions that players don't know what will or won't be relevant in the game as the game can literally be about anything.
Again and I want to make this super clear so we don't stray into the argument about "what role-playing is"... This applies as long as you accept that role-playing is the free-form interaction between players and GM's. Aka, it's a creative conversation that is not based on mechanics.
Of course, if you define D&D's philosophy as the definition of "best", then yes, naturally, D&D does it the best. It's not a very productive position or attitude in a discussion, especially if someone doesn't actually mean improv when they reference roleplay, but it certainly makes it easy to argue that D&D has the epitome of approaches.
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This is exactly why I bounced off of Pathfinder, every time I wanted to add some minor thing to a character that served little purpose other than flavour it became a case of having to actually put points in that skill (at the expense of things that were vital) rather than just being able to create a more rounded backstory. That’s not supporting role play, that quashing role play
That is an interesting perspective. I very much gravitate toward there being some numerical support for how I describe my character but that can create mechanical disadvantages depending upon how specifically it is implemented.
Do you want D&D to have rules for food, or other trivial roleplaying things?? That seems to be what you're getting at.
I mean there are rules for food. Costs are outlined for various foods, there is lifestyle costs, and you can get levels of exhaustion from not eating.
I think there is lots of room for a medium between trying to detail every single aspect of everything and what we have now which is IMO not enough detail and also skill and talent not counting as much as I feel it should in terms of determining outcomes.
It's starting to sound like you think d20s are too random, to which I have a solution: Drop all DCs by 5-10 and use a d10 instead of a d20.
A d20 and a d10 are equally random, the d10 is just less volatile.
Randomness means that outcomes of an event are not individually predictable. Then there's randomness bias/weighting which measures the probabilities of each outcome of a random event. Volatility is a measure of the range between extremes of outcomes.
A d20 and a d10 are both random, and both equally random (Probability of any given outcome is equal to 1/number of total outcomes). However a d20 has a higher volatility than a d10—1 to 20 vs 1 to 10.
Again and I want to make this super clear so we don't stray into the argument about "what role-playing is"... This applies as long as you accept that role-playing is the free-form interaction between players and GM's. Aka, it's a creative conversation that is not based on mechanics.
Of course, if you define D&D's philosophy as the definition of "best", then yes, naturally, D&D does it the best. It's not a very productive position or attitude in a discussion, especially if someone doesn't actually mean improv when they reference roleplay, but it certainly makes it easy to argue that D&D has the epitome of approaches.
I neither said, suggested or implied that, so I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion. I simply pointed out that if you have a different definition of role-playing other than a free-form conversation, the advice/comment I made does not apply. You're looking to place me on a "side" of some sort of imagined argument your trying to identify in my comments.
This is exactly why I bounced off of Pathfinder, every time I wanted to add some minor thing to a character that served little purpose other than flavour it became a case of having to actually put points in that skill (at the expense of things that were vital) rather than just being able to create a more rounded backstory. That’s not supporting role play, that quashing role play
That is an interesting perspective. I very much gravitate toward there being some numerical support for how I describe my character but that can create mechanical disadvantages depending upon how specifically it is implemented.
Do you want D&D to have rules for food, or other trivial roleplaying things?? That seems to be what you're getting at.
I mean there are rules for food. Costs are outlined for various foods, there is lifestyle costs, and you can get levels of exhaustion from not eating.
I think there is lots of room for a medium between trying to detail every single aspect of everything and what we have now which is IMO not enough detail and also skill and talent not counting as much as I feel it should in terms of determining outcomes.
It's starting to sound like you think d20s are too random, to which I have a solution: Drop all DCs by 5-10 and use a d10 instead of a d20.
A d20 and a d10 are equally random, the d10 is just less volatile.
Randomness means that outcomes of an event are not individually predictable. Then there's randomness bias/weighting which measures the probabilities of each outcome of a random event. Volatility is a measure of the range between extremes of outcomes.
A d20 and a d10 are both random, and both equally random (Probability of any given outcome is equal to 1/number of total outcomes). However a d20 has a higher volatility than a d10—1 to 20 vs 1 to 10.
That is basically what I meant. The idea is that using a d10 would make ability scores and proficiencies matter more than the roll of the die, which seems to be what OP wants.
Roleplay is best left freeform, because not everyone engages or comes at Roleplay with the same angle or goal. Having mechanics that enforce it will just discourage people from doing it, because they may not do it the way the mechanics want it done. It is bad enough that a cleric or druid who is trying to compassionately convince someone to let them help them has to use Charisma, an often dumped stat for those classes, to do it, and OP wants more obstacles?
As for the AI stuff, I believe that a lot of the fresh AI worries are from the Interview John Height did with gamesindustry DOT biz, where there is an entire section called "The AI Future" where John enthusiastically talks about applying it to certain projects.
I would post the link and his quotes, but the last time i tried, i was unable to access General Discussion ( and just General Discussion ) for more than a day. I still can't on my main browser, so i am not sure what that is about. This isn't just left over worries from Chris and his comments, the new guy is making people nervous too.
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I don't know if that makes sense but basically, you want to have as few mechanical obstructions that are not relevant to the core gameplay of the RPG in question. What qualifies as a mechanical obstruction depends a lot on what the game is trying to be, what the core gameplay is of that game.
I think the issue I am having is at least partly due to play style. The way I like to play being a master chef DOES affect the game significantly, as do contacts. That is part of why I see D&D as a combat rule set. It clearly emphasizes things you do in combat and while you can absolutely free form role play with D&D sheets in front of you there is not much there to inform your role play. You are not recording that you are a decent cook, or a mater chef, you don't have any specific thing to roll to impress the king with your amazing pie. I do understand that it absolutely STINKS to go too far in the direction of mechanizing everything. But having more support than 5th ed provides IMO can very much help prompt people to do things that are not focused entirely on combat optimization. Like you could use the rules for a table top minis game to role play combat and just freefrom social interaction but you wouldn't call that system support for roleplaying. Yes D&D has more support than that but IMO it has gone too far in the direction of minimizing anything that is not combat centric, while maintaining robust combat rules. However, that does very much work if you are doing mostly dungeon crawling with lighter roleplay and character development in between combats. So it may be that the game designers are supporting a play style that is just not how I like to play the game. I do like many of the optional rules they have provided for downtime, and reputation with various factions. I would just like to see more coverage by the base skill system. I played in a number of 3.5 games where the GM would house rule an extra few points for craft or professions specifically to encourage people to build out those aspects of their character and having something like that be in the core rules would be great IMO. The other part I don't like is even where there IS support like rolling social skills, the characters talent and skill don't seem to make much of a difference, so I feel like even when there is system support, there is not enough difference between someone who is trained at something and someone who is not. That is a little less apparent in combat because there are so many different abilities and special rules that affect what you can do and how it comes out. But to some degree it is present there as well.
Basically by using D&D for the style of game I like to play there is some degree to which I am using a screwdriver as a hammer.
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I must've read that and forgot about it. Thanks for linking it!
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Just wanted to point out this is also in the 2024 DMG, so it's not a dropped rule or an only 2014 thing .
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/dmg-2024/running-the-game#DegreesofFailure
Yes that is part of the issue. My point is if you are role playing by just saying my character is good at cooking the system is not supporting that. That is role playing despite the system. And it absolutely can work good players and DMs absolutely will use that. But it is not the same as system support.
As for your math I don't know how you are getting those numbers a +10 in 3.5 results in a 50% difference in your chance of doing something not a 5%. The key IMO being that skill made up a larger part of the total to determine if you you could do something.
There is zero functional difference between saying "my character is good at cooking" with no mechanical representation of that and "my character is good at cooking" represented through some mechanical flag that affords no actual benefit.
As for my numbers I was providing an example of what I mean—it doesn't matter if there's a difference of 1 or 10 in stats if the difference still provides the same probabilistic benefit.
Let me put it this way, if you had a percentile based system vs D&Ds d20 based system, a step of 5 in the percentile system isn't "better" than a step of 1 because they both represent a 5% increase on the dice roll. That's what I'm getting at. Yes, 3.5 had bigger bonuses, but it also had higher DCs to compensate, washing out to the same overall steps in probability.
It's like how in YiGiOh, a monster can have an attack of 3000 and defense of 4000, but that's functionally identical to a Magic the Gathering monster with a power of 3 and a toughness of 4. It's just there are some nice decorative 000s at the end.
The bigger numbers are just satisfying the lizard brain "big numbers go brrrr" part of the player psyche
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I see it the opposite way. The system which allows to you just say, I’m good at cooking is supporting that as role play choice, where a system which mandates you put points in cooking before you pick up a pan is discouraging that role play choice.
(Also, there is a cooking tool proficiency, which would make you better at cooking than the average person, and a chef feat which would also help. I realize we’re talking about cooking as a more abstract example, but it happens to have pretty concrete mechanical support.)
This is exactly why I bounced off of Pathfinder, every time I wanted to add some minor thing to a character that served little purpose other than flavour it became a case of having to actually put points in that skill (at the expense of things that were vital) rather than just being able to create a more rounded backstory. That’s not supporting role play, that quashing role play
That is an interesting perspective. I very much gravitate toward there being some numerical support for how I describe my character but that can create mechanical disadvantages depending upon how specifically it is implemented.
Do you want D&D to have rules for food, or other trivial roleplaying things?? That seems to be what you're getting at.
I mean there are rules for food. Costs are outlined for various foods, there is lifestyle costs, and you can get levels of exhaustion from not eating.
I think there is lots of room for a medium between trying to detail every single aspect of everything and what we have now which is IMO not enough detail and also skill and talent not counting as much as I feel it should in terms of determining outcomes.
D&D’a greatest strength as a system is knowing when to be rules heavy and when to be rules light to ensure the game is fair and the narrative flows well. Generally speaking, that is defined by when an antagonistic relationship works where the outcome is determinative in a fundamental way.
Combat requires a lot of rules - those rules make the game more balanced between the DM and players, as well as the players and players. It ensures there is a clear system with limited flexibility, making the life and death decisions of combat determined by the rules and dice, not the whims of the DM and players.
Social encounters are designed to be flexible - these might be antagonistic, but they are not fundamentally life or death decisions (even if they might have that risk as an ancillary threat). To the extent there is conflict, that is where rules do come in - contested social checks (ex. Insight vs persuasion) or checks with set DCs.
By providing a lot of flexibility and limiting the amount of time folks have to actually roll mechanics, conversations can flow like a conversation. Game systems that are more heavy on roleplay rules lead to more interruptions of that roleplay with immersion breaking mechanics.. which, at least from my perspective make them paradoxically worse roleplay systems than D&D.
I mean, I kind of get what you're talking about with the "low support for role-playing". Here's how I see the argument.
A brand new player, never has done TTRPGs or anything similar, wants to play 5e and joins a table. Makes a character (there's rules for all that), writes some backstory, and is ready to go at the session.
Session comes up and at the beginning of the session there is a battle. Bam! Right in the thick of it. New player says "What can I do?" The response? "You can attack with your sword! You roll this to see if it beats this number, and you add these numbers to your roll. You hit! Great, now you roll this for damage. 7 points of piercing damage! Nice work! Oh you want to cast a spell? You can cast a bonus action spell, since "Attack" is listed as an Action, and you only have one. Here is a list of the specific things you can do with a Bonus Action!" etc etc. A new player can quickly pick up the rules of combat. 1 Action, 1 Bonus Action, 1 Reaction, roll to hit, roll for damage, etc. There is a lot of support for combat in the game, because there is a structure to how combat encounters go and work.
The battle is now over. Great! DM describes the scene: there's townspeople around, the city guard is approaching, etc. New player says "What can I do?" The response? "Whatever you want!" Uh...okay? Where combat was very structured in what was possible, how you resolved things, etc, other things like social encounters are not. Yes, there are optional rules for social encounters in the DMG, and there are certainly things in your background and even some classes that have more of an impact on things outside of combat than in it (I can think of a rogue ability that lets you infiltrate a place with enough time spent preparing, and background features that are about finding hospitality and the like), but for the most part outside of combat and maybe some other more-scripted scenarios the answer to "What can I do?" is "Whatever you want!" without much structure. This could be perceived as a lack of support in role-playing.
Now, do people want more structure to their roleplaying in D&D? Obviously OP does, but overall...probably not. There are games out there that have very structured social-encounter and other role-playing rules, and people are welcome to find and play those, but I don't really think that is what D&D has ever been about. But people wanting more structure like that in their game isn't wrong or bad, it just isn't what D&D is.
It's starting to sound like you think d20s are too random, to which I have a solution: Drop all DCs by 5-10 and use a d10 instead of a d20.
Yeah, I've played games like GURPS where the designers went all in and tried to include skills for everything. It doesn't lead to a lot more role play in my experience, it leads to "wait, why are walking, jogging, sprinting, and distance running separate skills?" and the general feeling that you have to dump points into random skills for your character's background instead of skills that actually contributed to the game. Same goes for 3.5 D&D, where the Craft and Profession skills were ignored unless a player was angling for a particular prestige class that required them.
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What you're describing is something called Mechanical Obstruction. It's something that applies to other types of games, but I think is more relevant in RPG's
The way this works is that if you add a mechanic to a game, that mechanic becomes the definition of an executable action and is now represented by that mechanic in the game.
So in your example, if you add a "Cooking Skill", you have now defined that when someone takes a "cooking action", they execute that mechanic, and there is a function and a mechanical outcome of the cooking action. As such, cooking is now a mechanic; it's no longer part of the free-form aspect of role-playing.
It's called Mechanical Obstruction because in an RPG, the more mechanics you have, the more mechanical executions there are and the more interruptions to free-form role-playing there are. When a mechanic is not relevant to the core gameplay its a Mechanical Obstruction.
Mechanics never "supports" role-playing, quite to the contrary, the more mechanics you have for things, the less role-playing there is.
Again and I want to make this super clear so we don't stray into the argument about "what role-playing is"... This applies as long as you accept that role-playing is the free-form interaction between players and GM's. Aka, it's a creative conversation that is not based on mechanics.
I understand what you're trying to say however so I don't want to discount your opinion. What you're suggesting is that character sheets represent who a character is in a descriptive sense, so if you want to be a D&D character and be a Master Chef, if there is no skill or mechanic for cooking, it becomes impossible to represent that in the game on a character sheet mechanically.
I think the point D&D 5e makes as a design is that if you want to be a Master Chef, that is a narrative thing, not a mechanical thing, so you can simply "claim" to be one because being a Master Chef has no impact on the game, it only has impact on the story and the story is a free-form thing that we invent at the table that neither requires or is desired to have rules. If you want to be a Master Swordsmen, that requires mechanics in D&D because that has an impact on the game (for example when fighting monsters), which is relevant to D&D gameplay.
So mechanics in D&D are added that are relevant to the game, not to role-playing and that is kind of the point of how most RPG's work. They give you mechanics that are relevant to the game.
For example in Vampire The Masquerade it's relevant to the game who your contacts and allies are and how much influence you have among different mortal organizations because politics are part of the game not just the story. That is not the case in D&D because politics are not part of the game, they are just part of the story and only in some games.
I don't know if that makes sense but basically, you want to have as few mechanical obstructions that are not relevant to the core gameplay of the RPG in question. What qualifies as a mechanical obstruction depends a lot on what the game is trying to be, what the core gameplay is of that game.
D&D like all RPG's is a role-playing game first and foremost but as a mechanical game it's about exploration and fighting monsters so these are the mechanics that are the focus of the rules.
As someone already pointed out if you ever want to see the "extreme" of what happens when you try to mechanize every aspect of role-playing, GURPS is a great example. You quite literally roll dice for almost everything. Even if you just talk or run, you have to roll the dice to see how you did. It is the ultimate game of mechanical obstructions, but in its defense, the point of GURPS is not to apply all rules at all times. The core rule of the game is only use the rules when its fun and interesting to do so, as such GURPS is a GM trust game where the players have to trust the GM to apply the rules when appropriate. As a result, sometimes you roll for stealth, sometimes you don't. You don't universally always apply the rules, you do so selectively and at the GM's discretion. But that is an entirely different topic. It can be fun, but GURPS would make a much better video game than it does a tabletop RPG and its because it has so many mechanical obstructions that players don't know what will or won't be relevant in the game as the game can literally be about anything.
Of course, if you define D&D's philosophy as the definition of "best", then yes, naturally, D&D does it the best. It's not a very productive position or attitude in a discussion, especially if someone doesn't actually mean improv when they reference roleplay, but it certainly makes it easy to argue that D&D has the epitome of approaches.
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A d20 and a d10 are equally random, the d10 is just less volatile.
Randomness means that outcomes of an event are not individually predictable. Then there's randomness bias/weighting which measures the probabilities of each outcome of a random event. Volatility is a measure of the range between extremes of outcomes.
A d20 and a d10 are both random, and both equally random (Probability of any given outcome is equal to 1/number of total outcomes). However a d20 has a higher volatility than a d10—1 to 20 vs 1 to 10.
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I neither said, suggested or implied that, so I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion. I simply pointed out that if you have a different definition of role-playing other than a free-form conversation, the advice/comment I made does not apply. You're looking to place me on a "side" of some sort of imagined argument your trying to identify in my comments.
That is basically what I meant. The idea is that using a d10 would make ability scores and proficiencies matter more than the roll of the die, which seems to be what OP wants.
Roleplay is best left freeform, because not everyone engages or comes at Roleplay with the same angle or goal. Having mechanics that enforce it will just discourage people from doing it, because they may not do it the way the mechanics want it done.
It is bad enough that a cleric or druid who is trying to compassionately convince someone to let them help them has to use Charisma, an often dumped stat for those classes, to do it, and OP wants more obstacles?
As for the AI stuff, I believe that a lot of the fresh AI worries are from the Interview John Height did with gamesindustry DOT biz, where there is an entire section called "The AI Future" where John enthusiastically talks about applying it to certain projects.
I would post the link and his quotes, but the last time i tried, i was unable to access General Discussion ( and just General Discussion ) for more than a day. I still can't on my main browser, so i am not sure what that is about.
This isn't just left over worries from Chris and his comments, the new guy is making people nervous too.
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I think the issue I am having is at least partly due to play style. The way I like to play being a master chef DOES affect the game significantly, as do contacts. That is part of why I see D&D as a combat rule set. It clearly emphasizes things you do in combat and while you can absolutely free form role play with D&D sheets in front of you there is not much there to inform your role play. You are not recording that you are a decent cook, or a mater chef, you don't have any specific thing to roll to impress the king with your amazing pie. I do understand that it absolutely STINKS to go too far in the direction of mechanizing everything. But having more support than 5th ed provides IMO can very much help prompt people to do things that are not focused entirely on combat optimization. Like you could use the rules for a table top minis game to role play combat and just freefrom social interaction but you wouldn't call that system support for roleplaying. Yes D&D has more support than that but IMO it has gone too far in the direction of minimizing anything that is not combat centric, while maintaining robust combat rules. However, that does very much work if you are doing mostly dungeon crawling with lighter roleplay and character development in between combats. So it may be that the game designers are supporting a play style that is just not how I like to play the game. I do like many of the optional rules they have provided for downtime, and reputation with various factions. I would just like to see more coverage by the base skill system. I played in a number of 3.5 games where the GM would house rule an extra few points for craft or professions specifically to encourage people to build out those aspects of their character and having something like that be in the core rules would be great IMO. The other part I don't like is even where there IS support like rolling social skills, the characters talent and skill don't seem to make much of a difference, so I feel like even when there is system support, there is not enough difference between someone who is trained at something and someone who is not. That is a little less apparent in combat because there are so many different abilities and special rules that affect what you can do and how it comes out. But to some degree it is present there as well.
Basically by using D&D for the style of game I like to play there is some degree to which I am using a screwdriver as a hammer.