Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
Writing about 1st Edition D&D over the past few weeks has affected how I write on Mythology Monday, Caturday, and . . . whatever Sunday is. Here’s my example today care of MeWe.
Analogizing the herding of cats to the mustering of gamers at a convention is insulting. To cats.
Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to nor endorsed the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
This coming week, this battle is going to boil over as Kessel and I engage (pun intended) in another joint effort. Among other things, I’ll ask why *I* must use the middle initial, but he doesn’t.
NewbieDM is going through a similar journey to my own, only he’s looking at playing an older version of the Star Wars RPG. One of his recent threads caught my eye, in particular, this one.
lightsaber duels are a mixture of a few things… melee combat… social/psychological combat… change of environments…. force powers….
This had me thinking, “What’s the greatest lightsaber duel in Star Wars cinema?” I’m referring to the movies only because I’ve never watched any of the animated series. I copied Kessel Q. Junkie on this post because I’m convinced he knows more about Star Wars than George Lucas. So, let’s look at each duel in movie-universe, chronological order within NewbieDM’s framework. I’m including only those combats that were between force-aware users because I don’t want to waste my time on wannabes. Snoke’s guards aren’t, to my knowledge, force-aware. Despite some quotes from those involved, Finn was never established as force-aware within the context of the movies, so his battle with Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens also doesn’t count. Even the mass battle on Geonosis doesn’t count, which is a damn shame. We’ve never seen so many lightsabers in one place at one time.
Jinn v. Maul, The Phantom Menace
No conversation, no change of environment, nothing peculiar about the combat, and no force powers beyond a jump. They can’t all be contenders.
Jinn and Kenobi v. Maul, The Phantom Menace
This is the one that everyone — even Prequel haters — most often cite (as far as I can tell) as the best lightsaber duel, but I disagree. It probably made for the best display of melee combat, and used both force powers and a change in environment in that combat, but the social/psychological combat was no different than you’d expect in any on screen battle. To me, this criterion requires an attempt to convert someone to the other side morally speaking. That’s not present here. They never even spoke with Maul. Three out of four ain’t bad, but it ain’t perfect.
Anakin and Kenobi vs. Dooku, Attack of the Clones
No real force manipulation, and psychological warfare is only an afterthought based on a prior conversation with Kenobi, which took place a long time ago (pun intended). The entire fight took place in only one cavern. The combat was reasonably good, but none of this sounds like #1.
Yoda vs. Dooku, Attack of the Clones
Force manipulation, good combat (with damn funny special effects on Yoda), and mild psychological warfare (really, just shit-talking, though, which isn’t ideal). Hooray! But all within the same environment, with terrain not really playing a role at all.
Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi vs. Count Dooku, Revenge of the Sith
Again, there’s no change of environment. Terrain is largely irrelevant and is subsumed within the category of use of force powers, which were used to pin an already unconscious Kenobi. Nope.
Obi-Wan Kenobi vs. General Grievous, Revenge of the Sith
Well, Grievous did say that he was trained in the Jedi (Sith?) arts, so this counts. No interesting psychological manipulation and only the most minor of force powers in play keeps this from the top spot.
Palpatine vs. Mace Windu, Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, and Saesee Tiin, Revenge of the Sith
Minor change of environment, a small use of force lightning, decent combat (but with two disappointingly easy deaths), and if you read the novelization, there’s a good about of psychological manipulation. But novels don’t count, so there’s only a bit of manipulation at the end directed towards a non-combatant, Anakin. Very close but no cigar.
Yoda vs. Palpatine, Revenge of the Sith
Change of environment, use of force powers, and psychological shit-talking, but the lightsaber aspect to combat was a bit undersold. I want that to be the foundation on which the other criteria are built. Still, this is very close, and it appears to me that, on the whole, Revenge of the Sith did a better job with lightsaber duels than any other movie.
Anakin Skywalker vs. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Revenge of the Sith
Here’s some more proof of the assertion I just made. This duel had good melee combat, a change of environment with good use of terrain, and the use of force powers to supplement the combat. But the psychological warfare wasn’t true lightsaber duel worthy. This was closer to a hurling of insults than any attempt at conversion. No one was moving anywhere on the morality continuum. Everyone was set in place.
Kenobi v. Vader, A New Hope
The melee combat is dated, and there was no change in environment. It served it’s purpose, and a New Hope is arguably the best Star Wars movie, but this wasn’t the best lightsaber duel.
Luke v. Vader on Dagobah
Doesn’t count, but even if it did, it employed only the psychological weight of a lightsaber duel. No change in environment, weak combat, and no force powers. Let’s move on.
Luke v. Vader, Return of the Jedi
This duel gives us psychological manipulation and a decent combat, but the use of force powers is limited other than when Palpatine sticks his nose in it, and there’s no change of environment. Like the climactic Phantom Menace duel, this comes close, but only one can be the best. This ain’t it.
Ren vs. Rey, The Force Awakens
Minor use of force powers and manipulation, and no change of environment. Disqualified! Scene.
Ren vs. Luke, The Last Jedi
Force projection nonsense. I don’t even think this should count, but many of you will, so here we go. The combat was a bit boring, there was no change in environment, and the use of force powers wasn’t to my liking. YMMV. I will say this, though. The psychological manipulation wasn’t what I gave as basis for a good lightsaber duel, but it really worked here. Luke tricking Ren was a clever use of manipulation. I’ll allow it, but this still doesn’t win the top spot. Part of the scene.
Rey vs. Ren via Force Projection, The Rise of Skywalker
Again, I don’t think this should count, so I analyze it under protest. There were two environments because they were in different places, and the melee combat was mediocre. It should be the foundation of a lightsaber duel, but it played second fiddle to the psychological manipulation. That’s the only strongly satisfied criterion. Nope. Not the best. Scene.
Rey vs. Ren on the Ruins of the Death Star, Rise of Skywalker
Not much along the lines of a change in environment, but it was a neat environment. There was a weak attempt to convert Rey before the battle occurred, and the only use of force powers appears to be lip service. It’s as if they threw them in there just to make sure that they’d score a higher rating on a blog post like this. But the actual melee combat itself was pretty good. Not good enough to win though. Scene.
Luke v. Vader, The Empire Strikes Back
I skipped this one, and I’m sure you all know why. This is the clear winner. There was a noticeable upgrade in special effects from just one movie ago, making for a more interesting melee combat, and that fight involved a change of environment. Peppered throughout are the use of force powers beyond just jumping around, and multiple psychological ploys, all of which were designed to convert Luke to the dark side through appeals to his ego, greed, and need for family. The movement is a little stilted because it was the second-earliest movie in the series with dated special effects, but this lightsaber duel is the complete package from a dramatic point of view. Sorry, Maul, but you lose.
Watch it before it’s taken down!
If I forgot any, please let me know. I apologize, but I can’t be expected to remember all of them. After all, . . .
On Friday (July 23, 2021), I mentioned that I was relearningAD&D 1st Edition (“1e“) with the intention of running it. As I read through the Player’s Handbook (“PHB“), certain mechanics or text will strike me as odd or surprising, but in either case worthy of discussion. In fact, the most surprising thing I’m experiencing is that I’m finding a lot more great ideas in 1e that we’ve since abandoned. I find myself asking, “Why?” As a result, I’ll be writing several posts over the next few weeks. I’m sure everything I’m thinking has been discussed before — sometimes be me — so perhaps my questions have been answered, and my concerns resolved, years ago. My experience with RPGs is relatively limited in scope, having played a small number of games, so I’m sure a lot of what I’m going to say has been incorporated into games I’ve never even heard of. (Some have certainly been addressed by future editions of D&D themselves.) Nevertheless, bringing this directed conversation to the public is new to me, so here it goes.
This series has gotten a lot of feedback, most of which has been extremely helpful. For example, between that feedback and further analysis on my part, I’ve changed position on Armor Class Ratings. It’s a great theory, but it’s implemented poorly in 1e, in part because of the specifics of 1e’s mathematical framework. I’d like to see it in a game, but not in 1e. So, hooray for the hive mind!
However, this is not a nice post. On Facebook, I asked a question about how to balance encounters in 1e. Specifically, I asked where that information is provided. I got an answer from the overwhelmingly helpful: the tables at Dungeon Master’s Guide, pages 171 and 177-179. From that I was able to get even more information by looking through Monster Manual II, pages 133-134, and Field Folio, page 100-110. However, several answers came from a perspective that I encountered frequently but never understood. Despite my acknowledgement within the question itself that some encounters should be trivial or impossible for story reasons, I received quite a few lectures on, well, the fact that some encounters should be trivial or impossible for story reasons. Some people seemed downright offended by the fact that I was even asking the question, as if there’s never a place for an encounter where the fight is challenging but winnable. This was duplicated on another Facebook post where I published a link to my post on boring magic items. In that post, my first substantive statement was:
DMs balance encounters to suit the game they want to run. Maybe they want the encounters to be average, harder than average, or easier than average, but whatever the balance they want, that’s what they want.
Nevertheless, I received criticism for not acknowledging the very point I made, including placing words in my mouth that were, in fact, that exact opposite of what I wrote.
Let me be clear: I’m not criticizing that style of play. This has nothing to do with how difficult you want your encounters or campaigns to be. That’s a matter of taste, and everyone’s entitled to play the game they want to play. My concern is that a few don’t understand the distinction between the nature of the question and play style. Even if DMs want all encounters to be exceptionally hard or exceptionally easy, how can they make them that way if they don’t know how to balance encounters? That is, if DMs don’t have a clue as to where the even balance point is, how do they know that their exceptionally hard encounters are indeed exceptionally hard? They don’t, so what they’re criticizing is my insistence on knowing whether I’ve accomplished my own goal, whatever it may be.
This isn’t championing old school gaming; it’s discouraging DMs from being prepared, and DMs with no idea what they’ve written are most certainly not prepared. Even if players shouldn’t have any sense of what they’re facing – that makes little sense unless negotiation or retreat is always a practical option – DMs should know what they’re throwing at the players. DMs should know that 4 orcs is too easy for a 10th-level party, and that Asmodeus is too hard for a 2nd-level party. Again, this isn’t to say that either encounter is per se inappropriate; it’s simply saying that DMs should know which is which. Throwing a merciless (i.e., won’t negotiate), 8 HD, never-surprised, barbed devil at a party of 1st-level PCs that can neither run away nor fight their way through is nothing more than a conscious choice by the DM to TPK that party. Why would anyone want to do that? If a DM does not want to do that, why would any DM want DMing to be an annoying trial-and-error process spanning months of gaming sessions to get enough sense of the game to avoid it?
But This Is About Game Design
Of course, this may not be the fault of DMs. The game system itself may not provide the tools necessary to make this determination, creating that annoying trial-and-error period. As this article points out, 1e could have done a better job. In fact, much of what is discussed in that post is already part of the design process of a game a friend and I are designing. (I’m tempted to do a lot of work and apply those principles to 1e.) The first box set for the Dragon Age RPG certainly falls into that category as well, providing no guidance for building balanced encounters. I was trying to do something cool by throwing something other than just another band of brigands at the low-level players. The encounter was a TPK not only because of the tremendously overpowered creatures I used, but also because their nature kept the characters from retreating. How is that fun? It’s not risky. There’s absolutely no risk at all. Those characters had a 0.000000% chance of survival. They couldn’t have won even if every single one of their d6 rolls was a 6. Did I throw the DARPG equivalent of Asmodeus at them? Nope. They were giant spiders. Giant spiders! That was an impossible encounter because the spiders showed no mercy, they were faster, and they were a superior combat force. This stupid encounter wouldn’t have occurred if there were challenge ratings attached to the creatures. Clearly there’s no story benefit to walking through the forest and dying at the hands of randomly appearing giant bugs, so why leave that as certain to occur eventually? I don’t think a single one of those players played the game again, because of course they didn’t.
I know that (many think) a game system can’t be designed to be perfect in this regard (damn, have we all been sold a bill of goods on that one), but that’s not a reason for it not to give us a good approximation, especially considering that most game designers in fact do a decent job with it. I know the dice can always roll consistently high or low, but that’s the nature of all RPGs. I know that there are min/maxers out there who game the system, but that’s also the nature of all RPGs. I know that there are tricks and traps (as 1e calls them) that make weak monsters stronger, but other game systems account for the effect of tricks and traps within their challenge rating system. None of these facts impact my argument in any way whatsoever. In fact, they don’t even address it because, as I showed, they are neither unique to 1e nor unworkable.
A game isn’t fun unless there’s a chance at both success and failure, regardless of how that success or failure is achieved. Allowing those chances to bounce from high to low prevents the game from getting stale. However, when they reach anything near 0% or 100% – not because of an occasional story necessity, but because of poor game design or game control – I have tremendous difficulty finding a reason to play. Ergo, I want to know exactly how to design encounters, and I want my DMs to know too. That’s not a lot to ask.
But here’s what really bugs me. As I said, it may not be the DM’s fault, but there are people that proudly revel in such imprecision. This is the way they claim they want to run their games, having no clue whether they’ve created a scenario that’s easy, challenging, or absolutely unwinnable. They literally might as well just roll a single d20, and if it’s [greater|lower] than a target number proclaim, “You’ve [won|lost] D&D!” Then everyone can go home and watch Netflix. I’m not the slightest bit interested in being at those tables; most people aren’t. YMMV, but some of the criticism seemed to be a reflexive reaction to specific keywords rather than an appeal to logic, so I’m not sure they believed what they were saying. I bet they don’t create impossible encounters, which I define as not having at least one means of success (combat, negotiation, or retreat).
But hey, maybe not, and that’s okay. Different strokes and all that. If you get a thrill out of killing characters with absolutely no chance of success, and the players somehow enjoy that, more power to you all. As always, play the game you want to play.
Some of You Are Your Own Worst Enemies
Disagreement is wonderful because it opens one’s eyes to other possibilities. Mischaracterizing of my words and mean-spirited snark, however, are not. (Humorous snark is always welcome.) A small few (none of whom were on MeWe) fell into the stereotypical role of an “old school gamer” that immediately launches an illogical and unfair attack against anyone who ever mentions “balance” (among other keywords). This creates a greater barrier to player recruitment than any game designer ever could. I’d love to play a game via Zoom with an experienced 1e DM before attempting to run my own game, but I won’t take the risk of being stuck with a DM like that. At least religion and politics deal with important social consequences. The fact that people behave this way when discussing games is perplexing.
I’m reluctant even to ask a simple question about the rules on Facebook because of the reactions. For example, I’ve asked for the locations of rules within the sourcebooks, which means the rules I’m looking for have an historical basis in D&D. A small number infer (fairly or not) that I want to play the game in a way differently than they do, and they have a problem with that. They’re not going to be in my game, so why do they care how I play? Their objections seem petty and insecure. I believe that’s what the kids are calling “gatekeeping,” which ruins things for the rest of us. Sadly, I’ve stopped posting these musings to specific groups littered with these folks – though they’re getting this one and will likely project their holier-than-thou attitudes onto me – so I’m going to have to be content just doing my best running the game for players I know personally even though none of us have played 1e in years or decades. I’m sure this experiment will be shorter because of it. Considering these same people complain that there aren’t enough 1e players drips with irony. To the vast majority that don’t think this way (and have been quite helpful), it’s up to you to rein in these dipshits. They certainly won’t listen to me.
Everyone balances their encounters, and their overall campaign has a balance to it as well. Balance isn’t a four letter word and shouldn’t be treated as such. On the other hand, you shouldn’t hurl genuine four-letter words at people when discussing games. Well, as long as you’re not being an asshole about it. 🙂
This isn’t about making the game easy or hard; it’s about knowing whether or not you have. Knowledge is power.
On Friday (July 23, 2021), I mentioned that I was relearningAD&D 1st Edition (“1e“) with the intention of running it. As I read through the Player’s Handbook (“PHB“), certain mechanics or text will strike me as odd or surprising, but in either case worthy of discussion. In fact, the most surprising thing I’m experiencing is that I’m finding a lot more great ideas in 1e that we’ve since abandoned. I find myself asking, “Why?” As a result, I’ll be writing several posts over the next few weeks. I’m sure everything I’m thinking has been discussed before — sometimes be me — so perhaps my questions have been answered, and my concerns resolved, years ago. My experience with RPGs is relatively limited in scope, having played a small number of games, so I’m sure a lot of what I’m going to say has been incorporated into games I’ve never even heard of. (Some have certainly been addressed by future editions of D&D themselves.) Nevertheless, bringing this directed conversation to the public is new to me, so here it goes.
During the last in-person Winter Fantasy (2019), I play-tested Delve RPG, which was run by my friend, Stephen Radney-MacFarland. As sometimes occurs, I let him know what I thought about game design, but he had no choice but to listen. My sole purpose to being there was to criticize. I pointed out that my understanding (at least in the D&D world) was that characters should, on average, expect to hit on a d20 roll of 9. According to Stephen, 11 was the magic number. At least for 1e, looking at the matrices, it appears he’s right. No surprises there.
The Magic Number
My position is that the magic number should actually be 7. Any miss can be frustrating depending on the timing, but for the most part no one gets too upset if they miss on a 4 because they expect that roll to miss. On the other hand, missing on a 9, or even worse on a double-digit 11, can be especially frustrating. You expect to hit on those rolls, but if 11 is your average, then particularly tough creatures will require even higher rolls than that.
Even worse, the greater the range rolls that miss, the more often it occurs, which means you’re more prone to very frustrating bad streaks. How many times have you seen a player have ridiculously bad luck at the table? That can derail an entire session for that player.
What I suggest (and am doing) is adjusting the amount of damage a character can withstand so that the increase in hits averages out to take down an opponent in the same number of rounds. The combats are no faster or slower, but they’re always more dynamic. In this case, dynamic = fun.
NPCs
So what about the NPCs? Should they hit at the same rate? Well, more or less, yes. On this flip side, getting hit a lot adds to the tension of combat even if the net result is mathematically the same. You just don’t know if you’re going to make it. Accordingly, a game designer should make the same adjustments to PC stats to account for the increased hits.
Of course, as I’ll explain tomorrow, not all encounters are perfectly balanced for a wide variety of reasons. However, this baseline would still improve most of those encounters as well, or entire campaigns, that are written to be either more or less difficult. The level of threat the GM wants doesn’t change; just the feel of the game.
Great Shatner’s ghost, I love mythology. Here’s a link to an article on Native American monsters care of Natasha Ishak. Because of this blog’s current focus on Dungeons & Dragons, I note that some of these monsters don’t appear in these precise forms in any RPGs I’ve played or read. There are similarities, of course, but some of these represent variations of what I’ve seen, so there’s some room for inspiration here. This is true despite how extensive the gaming library is.
Mythology is an eternal fountain of ideas. There’s always more you can grab from it.
Follow me on Twitter @gsllc Follow Natasha Ishak @npishak
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, who neither contributed to nor endorsed the contents of this post. (Okay, jackasses?)
Sundays now are lazy days for me. I either post something silly or other people’s work. Usually both. Today, it’s both in a diversion from my rants about my impending return to 1st Edition AD&D. I actually had Avengers: Infinity War running in the background yesterday while working, so a little MCU seems appropriate.
I have no idea who Krang is and am too lazy o Google it.
On Friday (July 23, 2021), I mentioned that I was relearningAD&D 1st Edition (“1e“) with the intention of running it. As I read through the Player’s Handbook (“PHB“), certain mechanics or text will strike me as odd or surprising, but in either case worthy of discussion. In fact, the most surprising thing I’m experiencing is that I’m finding a lot more great ideas in 1e that we’ve since abandoned. I find myself asking, “Why?” As a result, I’ll be writing several posts over the next few weeks. I’m sure everything I’m thinking has been discussed before — sometimes be me — so perhaps my questions have been answered, and my concerns resolved, years ago. My experience with RPGs is relatively limited in scope, having played a small number of games, so I’m sure a lot of what I’m going to say has been incorporated into games I’ve never even heard of. (Some have certainly been addressed by future editions of D&D themselves.) Nevertheless, bringing this directed conversation to the public is new to me, so here it goes.
My predictive text just suggested "DM" after I typed "totalitarian." Funny thing is: the next word I was going to type was "DM." #DnD#rpg
— Rob Bodine, #Attorney by Day, #Nerd by Day & Night (@GSLLC) July 24, 2021
Keep that in mind. I don’t like talking about serious matters on this blog. This is supposed to be goofy and fun. But bear with me. Every election cycle, there are lawsuits by candidates wanting to get their names at the top of the actual voting ballots. Why? Because people often pick the first candidate they see. This tendency to pick the first option has an affect on how RPGs are played. I don’t want to feed the ridiculous notion that good science is practiced via the internet — no, 100 YouTube videos of a thing found after a focused search does not mean it’s a trend among 325 million Americans, let alone 7.5 billion humans — but we work with what we’ve got, right? I asked my friend, Sly Flourish, to run a poll for me. He has a much larger footprint than I do, and so his poll didn’t disappoint. The results?
This is a poll for #dnd 5e players and DMs. What method do you use to generate ability scores for your D&D 5e characters?
These results show that over half of gamers chose the first option presented in the 5e PHB. I don’t think this is a coincidence, but let’s dig further.
Let’s consider another example: 4e skill challenges. I have a lot of thoughts on those but will refrain from going down that rabbit hole. Instead, I’ll just acknowledge that they could have been designed better, but with the caveat that they were far more maligned than they should have been. Their introduction in the Dungeon Master’s Guide was were presented in the The 4th EditionDungeon Master’s Guide 2 introduced us to progressive and branching skill challenges, but the one time I saw each in a Living Forgotten Realms adventure, they weren’t received well. “What is this? Just do a skill challenge!” You didn’t see them often. In fact, Wizards of the Coast themselves didn’t use these in their own published adventures. Even the ballot-maker voted for the first entry (so to speak).
Again, this isn’t great science. There’s limited data, some of which is based on my personal experience, but for what it’s worth, I ran a gaming club that almost 300 people considered themselves part of, I ran a gaming convention for two years and worked admin for several others for decades, and at one point I was organizing games every single weekend across as many as 6 different locations. My experience may count for something, and this example is consistent with what I’ve experienced in many other contexts. Also, this is consistent with a well-documented psychological phenomenon.
I want my table to be a constitutional democracy, but much like citizens often get in the way of democracy (freedom includes the freedom to be stupid), so do players often get in the way of gaming. My writing is at its best when I’m writing legal briefs, not blog posts, and certainly not gaming handbooks, so I don’t have an answer as to how you should present these materials. All I have is a thought that I hope game designers will take to heart. They’re usually better equipped to solve a problem like this. It just depends on whether they’re aware of the problem and willing to fix it. Right now, options are presented as a simple list, with the first option appearing at the “head of the table.” Somehow, readers need to view these options as equal. King Arthur had a round table so that no one would be seen as at the head of the table. I’m not sure how to do that with writing. Something has to be written first, but game designers have to find a way to to make sure each option is an equally valid choice so that when multiple options can be used in the same game, they will be. Or maybe we should keep reading after the first option.
Democracy is still the best form of government, so my table will always be a constitutional democracy.
On Friday (July 23, 2021), I mentioned that I was relearningAD&D 1st Edition (“1e“) with the intention of running it. As I read through the Player’s Handbook (“PHB“), certain mechanics or text will strike me as odd or surprising, but in either case worthy of discussion. In fact, the most surprising thing I’m experiencing is that I’m finding a lot more great ideas in 1e that we’ve since abandoned. I find myself asking, “Why?” As a result, I’ll be writing several posts over the next few weeks. I’m sure everything I’m thinking has been discussed before — sometimes be me — so perhaps my questions have been answered, and my concerns resolved, years ago. My experience with RPGs is relatively limited in scope, having played a small number of games, so I’m sure a lot of what I’m going to say has been incorporated into games I’ve never even heard of. (Some have certainly been addressed by future editions of D&D themselves.) Nevertheless, bringing this directed conversation to the public is new to me, so here it goes.
I’ve talked a little about this already, and foreshadowed the coming of this post. I’m not going to repeat what I wrote there, so you may need to read that post for context, but here’s my premise. At least at some point beyond character creation, if not immediately, the range of ability scores for player characters tends to be far too great, at least with respect to various editions of D&D. This occurs because of the use of boring magic items and ability score bumps. Needless to say, the Wizard isn’t going to boost his strength, while the Fighter absolutely will. Because they likely started 10 points apart (Wizard 8, Fighter 18), the already great spread gets even worse as they level up. This is a problem because of how it cascades through a game’s design to harm both skill rolls and the design itself.
Skill Checks
All games that I’ve played recently employ some form of “group skill check.” This is a check where all the characters are working together, so each player makes the same skill check representing their character’s contribution to the effort. 4e expanded this into the oft-maligned skill challenge. If, for example, all of the players are scaling a cliff, that check would be something like D&D‘s Athletics check. The problem is that in both 4e and 5e, neither of those characters are the slightest bit concerned as to what they roll. The Wizard is going to fail miserably, and the Fighter is going to succeed easily. That’s boring for both players. You need both skill rolls to matter, which means the target number for success must be attainable to both. That can’t happen if their scores are too far apart.
There’s another way to resolve this issue. During the group skill check, players can assist one another. The games I’ve played have done this, but with issues. Usually, the assist isn’t good enough, and the Wizard fails anyway far more often than makes sense to me. Sometimes the party should fail, but only when failure is based on a skill roll against a reasonable target number. I’ve seen this result avoided far too often via deus ex machina rather than by a fair game design. (By now, you should know how much I hate dei ex machina.) In other cases, this is handled reasonably, but only by adding an unnecessary layer of complexity to the process. The Fighter makes a second roll, and if she succeeds, she reaches down and pulls up the Wizard. Not only is that more time consuming, but it sometimes completely nullifies the Wizard’s roll. Instead, the Fighter should roll once, and that single roll should be measure not just for success, but for how much it succeeded. Did the roll succeed by 1? 3? 5? 10? The answer to each of those questions determines a bonus the Fighter can hand out to other characters that need it. That simulates the Fighter reaching down and pulling up the Wizard without a bulky second roll; it’s simply part of the process. However, keep in mind that the Wizard’s roll also has to matter. The Fighter’s shared bonus has to be small enough that the Wizard will still fail if the Wizard doesn’t come close on his roll.
Having both of these solutions working together is the best option. With the way I’ve mapped out, both skill rolls matter. The Fighter cares because her roll must uber-succeed, and the Wizard cares because his roll has to come within a reasonable distance of success. Other characters just have to worry about themselves. All of this requires an underlying mathematical foundation that supports it, and I often don’t see that.
Each of these problems can be solved with a slight tweak here and there, but one of my points is that they’re all connected. If you don’t have a fundamental design structure that fixes all the problems, you’ll continue to have these problems pop up here and there. The problems is I don’t think game designers actually want to solve this problem. Wizards of the Coast promised to do so with 5e but quickly abandoned that promise.
Play What You Want 