If I had the pick one thing It would be how few interesting choices most classes have with regards to their abilities, especially non-casters. Ontop of this I think having feats compete with ASI's is a terrible thing.
If you go pure fighter or rogue you'll basically have no way of customization your character build, you can't make a mechanically interesting character because you're guided down an entirely linear progression setup, with set abilities being unlocked at specific levels. What this does is put immense value on the few thing that does give you fun and interesting choices, namely feats. The problem is that feats have to compete with ASI's, which are often mechanically better, leaving you with the choice of enhancing your character concept, or you simply maxing out our main ability score.
I think this is why I both hate and love rolling for stats... I hate that it potentially creates a huge imbalance between player characters, but hitting that 17 or 18 means you dont have to worry about ability scores and leaves ASI's open to personalise your character without feeling like you're gimping yourself too much.
So basically I'd give all classes options to pick from through character progression, similar to warlocks, and I'd divorce ASI's and Feats into different level up mechanics.
I also think that it's a real shame that we only have combat feats that support select categories of weapons, whilst other archetype weapons like daggers or wips are entirely unsupported and never see use because of it.
If I had the pick one thing It would be how few interesting choices most classes have with regards to their abilities, especially non-casters. Ontop of this I think having feats compete with ASI's is a terrible thing.
If you go pure fighter or rogue you'll basically have no way of customization your character build, you can't make a mechanically interesting character because you're guided down an entirely linear progression setup, with set abilities being unlocked at specific levels. What this does is put immense value on the few thing that does give you fun and interesting choices, namely feats. The problem is that feats have to compete with ASI's, which are often mechanically better, leaving you with the choice of enhancing your character concept, or you simply maxing out our main ability score.
I think this is why I both hate and love rolling for stats... I hate that it potentially creates a huge imbalance between player characters, but hitting that 17 or 18 means you dont have to worry about ability scores and leaves ASI's open to personalise your character without feeling like you're gimping yourself too much.
So basically I'd give all classes options to pick from through character progression, similar to warlocks, and I'd divorce ASI's and Feats into different level up mechanics.
I also think that it's a real shame that we only have combat feats that support select categories of weapons, whilst other archetype weapons like daggers or wips are entirely unsupported and never see use because of it.
I definitely agree with this. Imo warlocks are the best designed class in 5e despite their multiclassing issues, simply due to the pact boons. You basically get a second subclass meaning that the variety which you can give a warlock is massive.
All classes should have have similar branches imo. Maybe even a second branch at tier 2 or 3.
I would probably base the system on the invocations instead of the pact boons (although that's also an option). Invocations is a great system because not only does it give you a lot of room to personalise your warlock, you also get more slots and more options as you level up. Obviously the warlock would need a rebalance to compensate.
I'd integrate charisma into the Warlock class better. As is, except for the block text, it would make just as much sense to change the prime stat to wisdom or int. They should have more of a reason to use Cha-based skills, perhaps a mechanism involving using Cha-based skills against their Pact Master or the ability to create a cult.
I would like that all classes/races (relativly) start min/maxed, or have a built-in how to, so that you can make informed choices if you choose a not optimized option.
As many players seem to start their character with: "what is the best... (race, class, item, feat ?)", it would be a given.
The more you have choices, the more it takes experience to optimize synergy to min/max and to avoid "players traps" choices.
This creates a growing gap between new players and knowledgable ones.
Exemple: New player finds it awesome to have balanced stats all 13's and 12's (point buy) and plays a 5th lvl warrior fighting with two daggers. Even if she knows that using a bonus action can give her another attack, she chooses to keep it as "ho sh*t" option (dash/disengage). She also was offered advises from more experienced player on how to optimize but didn't mind. The result ends with the two new players hitting for barely 5 points of damage (two-weapons dagger and the other Frosbite spell) as the three others "hurt" for 20 as an average.
This exemple is a recurring theme in my games for years, that makes me looking for options so that players who like min/maxing and others that don't care can play in the same group feeling underwhelming.
I would like that all classes/races (relativly) start min/maxed, or have a built-in how to, so that you can make informed choices if you choose a not optimized option.
As many players seem to start their character with: "what is the best... (race, class, item, feat ?)", it would be a given.
The more you have choices, the more it takes experience to optimize synergy to min/max and to avoid "players traps" choices.
This creates a growing gap between new players and knowledgable ones.
Exemple: New player finds it awesome to have balanced stats all 13's and 12's (point buy) and plays a 5th lvl warrior fighting with two daggers. Even if she knows that using a bonus action can give her another attack, she chooses to keep it as "ho sh*t" option (dash/disengage). She also was offered advises from more experienced player on how to optimize but didn't mind. The result ends with the two new players hitting for barely 5 points of damage (two-weapons dagger and the other Frosbite spell) as the three others "hurt" for 20 as an average.
This exemple is a recurring theme in my games for years, that makes me looking for options so that players who like min/maxing and others that don't care can play in the same group feeling underwhelming.
Wouldn't it be best to have a 'suggested ability score starting layout' for the players who don't know. And then experienced players who want to do weirder things can just custom assign them like they do now?
I would like that all classes/races (relativly) start min/maxed, or have a built-in how to, so that you can make informed choices if you choose a not optimized option.
As many players seem to start their character with: "what is the best... (race, class, item, feat ?)", it would be a given.
The more you have choices, the more it takes experience to optimize synergy to min/max and to avoid "players traps" choices.
This creates a growing gap between new players and knowledgable ones.
Exemple: New player finds it awesome to have balanced stats all 13's and 12's (point buy) and plays a 5th lvl warrior fighting with two daggers. Even if she knows that using a bonus action can give her another attack, she chooses to keep it as "ho sh*t" option (dash/disengage). She also was offered advises from more experienced player on how to optimize but didn't mind. The result ends with the two new players hitting for barely 5 points of damage (two-weapons dagger and the other Frosbite spell) as the three others "hurt" for 20 as an average.
This exemple is a recurring theme in my games for years, that makes me looking for options so that players who like min/maxing and others that don't care can play in the same group feeling underwhelming.
This feels mostly like an expectation problem to me. Not caring to at least optimize to some extent, but also not wanting your character to feel underwhelming? That doesn’t work, unless optimization doesn’t matter (which clearly isn’t the case, but maybe they don’t know that). It’s also not very hard to make effective choices (every class even gives a quick build option that suggest a couple of abilities to put your best stats in, as well as a background that complements the class). 5E is not 3E, with page upon page of skills, feats and spells, with dozens of prestige classes and advanced options. Just tell people they don’t have to min/max necessarily, but that very suboptimal choices are going to make it very hard to contribute when the dice come out - and that for 99% of D&D games that dice-rolling, mechanical part is very important. Players can think they don’t (have to) care, but the reality is they almost always find that they do. So tell them. Manage their expectations.
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This feels mostly like an expectation problem to me. Not caring to at least optimize to some extent, but also not wanting your character to feel underwhelming? That doesn’t work, unless optimization doesn’t matter (which clearly isn’t the case, but maybe they don’t know that). It’s also not very hard to make effective choices (every class even gives a quick build option that suggest a couple of abilities to put your best stats in, as well as a background that complements the class). 5E is not 3E, with page upon page of skills, feats and spells, with dozens of prestige classes and advanced options. Just tell people they don’t have to min/max necessarily, but that very suboptimal choices are going to make it very hard to contribute when the dice come out - and that for 99% of D&D games that dice-rolling, mechanical part is very important. Players can think they don’t (have to) care, but the reality is they almost always find that they do. So tell them. Manage their expectations.
Yeah, that's what I did. The new players were disappointed. One from her obsolete daggers, she went for clubs : - ( but rearranged her stats. The other went from Frosbite to Toll the Dead. Shame some of the mechanics aren't balanced. We still had a blast playing tonight.
Regarding the above discussion, my opinion is thus: I agree that it should be newbie friendly (in terms of viability) but I also wouldn't want a system that does not reward mastery.
It should be like this - not caring about much but going by what the book suggests, you are able to squeeze about 80% of your class potential and it should be enough for enjoyable play. If you want the remaining 20%, learn to utilize the rules to your advantage.
This feels mostly like an expectation problem to me. Not caring to at least optimize to some extent, but also not wanting your character to feel underwhelming?
If you look at it from a roleplaying and storytelling perspective (which is that the games are supposed to be, it's a roleplaying game and 4e has shown that the boardgaming/wargaming perspective is not what the community is looking for compared to the success of 5e), there is no reason whatsoever for any non-ridiculous concept to be underwhelming just as there is no reason for min-maxing to produce builds that are so comparatively powerful that a lot of people of this community will only play them while alway speaking derisively of the rest of the 90% of the sub-classes in the game.
This is what makes the game "poor" in the view of many people on these forums, they want more possibilities but at the same time will not even consider playing a sub-class or build that is not considered "the best". The game would be much more varied and rich if options were not considered undewhelming.
That doesn’t work, unless optimization doesn’t matter (which clearly isn’t the case, but maybe they don’t know that).
And the only thing that Mithrilbeeis saying - which I fully support - is that the game already has too much optimisation in its process, and that this allows too large a gap between casuals and minmaxers.
If, for example, the game introduced a bit more of randomness in the character generation and progression process, it would prevent this, and it would in particular prevent the 20 levels planning of development that creates such large gaps.
Random stats (with a minimum to avoid real problems) would already be a start, as would be some random generation of powers being available, random ASI, random hit points, ets. All well done and with minimums so that players do not feel frustrated and underwhelming characters are not created through bad luck, of course.
The right way to do this is to have solutions in which you can choose, but on average the choice is always significantly less good than the result of random number. For example, if you had to choose between +1 to an ability of your choice or +1d3 to a random one, I'm pretty sure that it would get you thinking...
Games like Ruenquest, which are actually even more technical than D&D in some aspects perfectly understood this years and years ago, and there is almost never the kind of problems that D&D has been encountering since 3e (although I'm not complaining that much, 5e is much much better, but this is also why I'm absolutely trying to resist anything pushing it more down the slippery slope of minmaxing as the holy grail of the game).
It’s also not very hard to make effective choices (every class even gives a quick build option that suggest a couple of abilities to put your best stats in, as well as a background that complements the class).
And despite this, these choices are always looked at as weak by members of this community, and again this railroads people instead of freeing creativity in developing interesting characters instead of just optimised statblocks.
5E is not 3E, with page upon page of skills, feats and spells, with dozens of prestige classes and advanced options. Just tell people they don’t have to min/max necessarily, but that very suboptimal choices are going to make it very hard to contribute when the dice come out - and that for 99% of D&D games that dice-rolling, mechanical part is very important.
No, it's not, and the number of 99% is clearly an exageration. 5e is cool for our groups because we are close to the right balance of one third each of combat / exploration / social, and at least in the two last segements, rolling is certainly not that frequent and heavily influenced by players skills rather than dice.
It's because of that attitude of 99% importance of "dice-roling" that min-maxing has become so critical to some people, but it does not need to be and our groups have found that it makes the game much, much more enjoyable when there is a less
Players can think they don’t (have to) care, but the reality is they almost always find that they do. So tell them. Manage their expectations.
For a large number of players, including a lot in our groups that have been playing for around 40 years, it is still extremely boring to go through a long term optimisation process, to have a look at all the options in all the books or to come to forums like this in which people will tear through their roleplaying concept and fight about extracting +0.75% DPS in situations which might not even occur most of the time in the campaign.
And again, if you have a whole casual group, it's usually not a problem, the problem always come from the one (or unfortunately sometimes more) minmaxer that hogs the spotlight and looks derisively at the poor choices that the others are doing. And insists that dice rolling and his bonuses are all important, always wants to steer the game around his technical preferences, etc.
The difference between characters who are min/maxed and characters made based on a couple of sensible choices is pretty small, especially if the DM is mindful of the party’s strengths and weaknesses. I’m not suggesting players eke out every last bit of efficiency they can find. Putting decent stats in abilities that matter the most for your class, picking up a few proficiencies that can be useful for the party and choosing a variety of spells (if applicable) so you’re likely to have something for a broad array of situations easily suffices for a character that can contribute and doesn’t feel underwhelming. Certainly in 5E that’s not a time consuming process either. I doubt that a majority of this community sees the quick build suggestions as weak, and if they do they’re wrong. They’re not necessarily all perfectly optimized, but none of them are less than good choices. I’ve advised plenty of new players to look at the quick build as a starting point if they weren’t sure of themselves, never had any problems or complaints.
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Though I like point buy and use it myself, I do think that it's partially responsible for this minmaxing '16 in primary stat or useless character' thing which has gone on in 5e. The amount of people who seem to think that you must pick the species with the correct ASI for the class or it's unviable is sad, and I frequently enjoy characters which are not optimised at all and wish others could do the same.
15 in the main stat does not make a useless character.
It actually makes me so sad when people reduce the game to 99% being the impact of rolling.
If that’s a dig at me, I’ll reiterate what I actually said: the mechanical, dice rolling part of the game is important to 99% of the games out there. Not that it’s 99% of those games (which nobody in this thread has suggested), but that it’s important for virtually every one of them. With combat being a third of your games, I’d say that makes it important for your games as well.
The dice are also important for the roleplaying part. A lot of us play characters that are very unlike our own real life selves. The dice rolling is what allows that to happen fairly. You don’t have to be an extrovert with a way with words in real life to be able to play a persuasive, silver-tongued smooth-talker in game. You do your best to play the role, but you get to roll to see how a someone with your character’s talents does. You can do your best to figure out the clues provided by the DM, but you get to roll to see if your character is smart enough to solve the puzzle if it’s beyond your own capabilities. And that works the other way around as well: rolling means you can’t ignore weak stats by using your own, real life qualities either.
Rolls matter. A lot. That in no way means they have to get in the way of the roleplay, however.
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The Fighter character with the 7 Cha and no proficiency in Persuasion comes before the king. The player delivers an eloquent, convincing argument. Roll? No roll? If no roll, what’s the outcome?
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The Fighter character with the 7 Cha and no proficiency in Persuasion comes before the king. The player delivers an eloquent, convincing argument. Roll? No roll? If no roll, what’s the outcome?
I actually interrupt the player 5 seconds into the speech and ask him if he thinks that that is the character he decided to play, because it's inconsistent with the way he has been roleplayed so far. I've never had a player fail to change back to his standard behaviour.
Moreover, this situation rarely occurs because (and that's one of the strength of D&D as a collaborative game with classes), there is probably another character that is the usual face of the party, and this is the guy that they are sending to discuss with the king, probably after briefing by another party member who is the brain of the party about what to say or not to say.
That being said, if the fighter in question is alone before the king for whatever reason, and gives a good account of his personality in the roleplay (even if it's just a "my character says that he is sorry for bothering the king and is not used to speaking in these kind of circumstances" because the player is timid), the king might still listen (and I might, as a DM, find reasons for the king to believe him, not because the character was convincing, but maybe for political reasons). Or maybe the king is really offended because he's not a bad guy and schedules the guy for execution the next morning... :p
Sure, but: roll or no roll? I’m just trying to get a sense of how you do things.
I’ll go on record and state that, regardless of the above, I’m sure you’re not playing wrong. You’re having fun, that’s all that matters, so you’re doing it right. There’s just a lot of ways to play that can be right.
What I’m getting at as far as the topic we’re discussing is concerned though, what you seem to be doing with the bard is adjudicating a check, at least in part based on stats and mechanics, without making him roll a die. There is still an influence of the character being built to be an effective speaker, however - you mention Cha high as can be, a diplomatic background, etc. At the same time, I’m fairly sure you’re having everyone (including the built-for-combat fighter) roll dice in combat. All in all, the numbers on the character sheets seem to be fairly important here. Arguably, what you’re doing with the bard is a lot like having him take 10 on his Persuasion check. The diceless part isn’t the pertinent bit here, I’d say - characters being built to be good at something or not is.
(for what it’s worth, at my table I have the fighter roll, adjusted for stat (-2) and proficiency (0), with advantage or disadvantage based on circumstance (like being in good standing at the court or having an untrustworthy reputation). The arguments offered only affect the DC I set - good arguments get a lower DC, bad ones a higher one. I’d do the exact same thing with the bard too, though his background and previous experience might affect the DC as well).
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Wish - to make it iron-clad on the spell's limits. DMs can still decide what to do with it, but it will give the DM a rule to fall back upon that gives players more freedom than the standard options without players able to break the game.
Some things are built-in like wishing for the wish to fail. Paradoxes automatically fail before the wish takes effect because impossible wishes are auto-fails. So, no paradox was created because the spell failed, not because the wish succeeded. A compound wish of two or more wishes - no matter how confusingly worded - might grant only one or also simply fail.
...but players like to cry foul if their wish is denied on grounds of "it'll break the game".
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
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Ok I'll add onto my wishlist 'buff humans'.
If I had the pick one thing It would be how few interesting choices most classes have with regards to their abilities, especially non-casters. Ontop of this I think having feats compete with ASI's is a terrible thing.
If you go pure fighter or rogue you'll basically have no way of customization your character build, you can't make a mechanically interesting character because you're guided down an entirely linear progression setup, with set abilities being unlocked at specific levels. What this does is put immense value on the few thing that does give you fun and interesting choices, namely feats. The problem is that feats have to compete with ASI's, which are often mechanically better, leaving you with the choice of enhancing your character concept, or you simply maxing out our main ability score.
I think this is why I both hate and love rolling for stats... I hate that it potentially creates a huge imbalance between player characters, but hitting that 17 or 18 means you dont have to worry about ability scores and leaves ASI's open to personalise your character without feeling like you're gimping yourself too much.
So basically I'd give all classes options to pick from through character progression, similar to warlocks, and I'd divorce ASI's and Feats into different level up mechanics.
I also think that it's a real shame that we only have combat feats that support select categories of weapons, whilst other archetype weapons like daggers or wips are entirely unsupported and never see use because of it.
I definitely agree with this. Imo warlocks are the best designed class in 5e despite their multiclassing issues, simply due to the pact boons. You basically get a second subclass meaning that the variety which you can give a warlock is massive.
All classes should have have similar branches imo. Maybe even a second branch at tier 2 or 3.
I would probably base the system on the invocations instead of the pact boons (although that's also an option). Invocations is a great system because not only does it give you a lot of room to personalise your warlock, you also get more slots and more options as you level up. Obviously the warlock would need a rebalance to compensate.
I'd integrate charisma into the Warlock class better. As is, except for the block text, it would make just as much sense to change the prime stat to wisdom or int. They should have more of a reason to use Cha-based skills, perhaps a mechanism involving using Cha-based skills against their Pact Master or the ability to create a cult.
The game needs about twice as many spells.
While we're on the topic, I'd like the Elven High Magic back as it was introduced in 2e. Simple, flavorful, impactful.
Not that "Epic Spellcasting" bullshit from 3e with basically "uncastable" spells.
I would like that all classes/races (relativly) start min/maxed, or have a built-in how to, so that you can make informed choices if you choose a not optimized option.
As many players seem to start their character with: "what is the best... (race, class, item, feat ?)", it would be a given.
The more you have choices, the more it takes experience to optimize synergy to min/max and to avoid "players traps" choices.
This creates a growing gap between new players and knowledgable ones.
Exemple: New player finds it awesome to have balanced stats all 13's and 12's (point buy) and plays a 5th lvl warrior fighting with two daggers. Even if she knows that using a bonus action can give her another attack, she chooses to keep it as "ho sh*t" option (dash/disengage). She also was offered advises from more experienced player on how to optimize but didn't mind. The result ends with the two new players hitting for barely 5 points of damage (two-weapons dagger and the other Frosbite spell) as the three others "hurt" for 20 as an average.
This exemple is a recurring theme in my games for years, that makes me looking for options so that players who like min/maxing and others that don't care can play in the same group feeling underwhelming.
Wouldn't it be best to have a 'suggested ability score starting layout' for the players who don't know. And then experienced players who want to do weirder things can just custom assign them like they do now?
This feels mostly like an expectation problem to me. Not caring to at least optimize to some extent, but also not wanting your character to feel underwhelming? That doesn’t work, unless optimization doesn’t matter (which clearly isn’t the case, but maybe they don’t know that). It’s also not very hard to make effective choices (every class even gives a quick build option that suggest a couple of abilities to put your best stats in, as well as a background that complements the class). 5E is not 3E, with page upon page of skills, feats and spells, with dozens of prestige classes and advanced options. Just tell people they don’t have to min/max necessarily, but that very suboptimal choices are going to make it very hard to contribute when the dice come out - and that for 99% of D&D games that dice-rolling, mechanical part is very important. Players can think they don’t (have to) care, but the reality is they almost always find that they do. So tell them. Manage their expectations.
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Yeah, that's what I did. The new players were disappointed. One from her obsolete daggers, she went for clubs : - ( but rearranged her stats. The other went from Frosbite to Toll the Dead. Shame some of the mechanics aren't balanced. We still had a blast playing tonight.
How would you reduce the amount of optimisation possible to balance things out?
Regarding the above discussion, my opinion is thus: I agree that it should be newbie friendly (in terms of viability) but I also wouldn't want a system that does not reward mastery.
It should be like this - not caring about much but going by what the book suggests, you are able to squeeze about 80% of your class potential and it should be enough for enjoyable play. If you want the remaining 20%, learn to utilize the rules to your advantage.
The difference between characters who are min/maxed and characters made based on a couple of sensible choices is pretty small, especially if the DM is mindful of the party’s strengths and weaknesses. I’m not suggesting players eke out every last bit of efficiency they can find. Putting decent stats in abilities that matter the most for your class, picking up a few proficiencies that can be useful for the party and choosing a variety of spells (if applicable) so you’re likely to have something for a broad array of situations easily suffices for a character that can contribute and doesn’t feel underwhelming. Certainly in 5E that’s not a time consuming process either. I doubt that a majority of this community sees the quick build suggestions as weak, and if they do they’re wrong. They’re not necessarily all perfectly optimized, but none of them are less than good choices. I’ve advised plenty of new players to look at the quick build as a starting point if they weren’t sure of themselves, never had any problems or complaints.
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Though I like point buy and use it myself, I do think that it's partially responsible for this minmaxing '16 in primary stat or useless character' thing which has gone on in 5e. The amount of people who seem to think that you must pick the species with the correct ASI for the class or it's unviable is sad, and I frequently enjoy characters which are not optimised at all and wish others could do the same.
15 in the main stat does not make a useless character.
If that’s a dig at me, I’ll reiterate what I actually said: the mechanical, dice rolling part of the game is important to 99% of the games out there. Not that it’s 99% of those games (which nobody in this thread has suggested), but that it’s important for virtually every one of them. With combat being a third of your games, I’d say that makes it important for your games as well.
The dice are also important for the roleplaying part. A lot of us play characters that are very unlike our own real life selves. The dice rolling is what allows that to happen fairly. You don’t have to be an extrovert with a way with words in real life to be able to play a persuasive, silver-tongued smooth-talker in game. You do your best to play the role, but you get to roll to see how a someone with your character’s talents does. You can do your best to figure out the clues provided by the DM, but you get to roll to see if your character is smart enough to solve the puzzle if it’s beyond your own capabilities. And that works the other way around as well: rolling means you can’t ignore weak stats by using your own, real life qualities either.
Rolls matter. A lot. That in no way means they have to get in the way of the roleplay, however.
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The Fighter character with the 7 Cha and no proficiency in Persuasion comes before the king. The player delivers an eloquent, convincing argument. Roll? No roll? If no roll, what’s the outcome?
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I would specifically add a d3 to the listed set of dice.
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Sure, but: roll or no roll? I’m just trying to get a sense of how you do things.
I’ll go on record and state that, regardless of the above, I’m sure you’re not playing wrong. You’re having fun, that’s all that matters, so you’re doing it right. There’s just a lot of ways to play that can be right.
What I’m getting at as far as the topic we’re discussing is concerned though, what you seem to be doing with the bard is adjudicating a check, at least in part based on stats and mechanics, without making him roll a die. There is still an influence of the character being built to be an effective speaker, however - you mention Cha high as can be, a diplomatic background, etc. At the same time, I’m fairly sure you’re having everyone (including the built-for-combat fighter) roll dice in combat. All in all, the numbers on the character sheets seem to be fairly important here. Arguably, what you’re doing with the bard is a lot like having him take 10 on his Persuasion check. The diceless part isn’t the pertinent bit here, I’d say - characters being built to be good at something or not is.
(for what it’s worth, at my table I have the fighter roll, adjusted for stat (-2) and proficiency (0), with advantage or disadvantage based on circumstance (like being in good standing at the court or having an untrustworthy reputation). The arguments offered only affect the DC I set - good arguments get a lower DC, bad ones a higher one. I’d do the exact same thing with the bard too, though his background and previous experience might affect the DC as well).
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Wish - to make it iron-clad on the spell's limits. DMs can still decide what to do with it, but it will give the DM a rule to fall back upon that gives players more freedom than the standard options without players able to break the game.
Some things are built-in like wishing for the wish to fail. Paradoxes automatically fail before the wish takes effect because impossible wishes are auto-fails. So, no paradox was created because the spell failed, not because the wish succeeded. A compound wish of two or more wishes - no matter how confusingly worded - might grant only one or also simply fail.
...but players like to cry foul if their wish is denied on grounds of "it'll break the game".
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.