Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Corn Flakes]

There's really no reason D&D has to use d20 for skills.

They could still use d20, but instead of d20 + mods vs. DC, it would have to be Skill value + mods vs d20 roll under. But WotC wanted a fully unified task resolution system so here we are.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

They could still use d20, but instead of d20 + mods vs. DC, it would have to be Skill value + mods vs d20 roll under. But WotC wanted a fully unified task resolution system so here we are.

I like it how you can marginally connect your physical blow and do max damage (absent a crit) or connect by a country mile and do minimum damage (absent a crit) OR you can crit for near minimum damage (min crit damage should START at max non-crit damage by definition). I like standardizing a crit blow at 1.5*max non-crit damage and taking the chance out of a crit. A crit literally IS BEST CASE SCENARIO. Also, the damage modifier might increase min damage by 400% while increasing max damage by 66.6% (I randomly chose 1D6 vs 1D6 +4 for this). I also generally house rule a "grazing blow" (half damage) or *partial success* for the minimum level of success (to the number success, roll one less and you would have failed).

I do enjoy the Pf2e dynamic of the fact that your skill level will EITHER allow for a crit success OR a crit failure. If you need to roll a 10 or less to succeed, you might get a crit success. If you need to roll an 11 or more, you might get a crit fail. There is no scenario where *both* options are on the table and there are no scenarios where *neither* option is on the table.

 

[p1138]

I'm in the UK so there is no Walmart or Walgreens.

Like I said, I used to see d6s in pound land with packs of cards, but I've not seen them recently.

I guess that explains it, but still seems incredibly fucking weird.

 

[Judge Dredd]

They could still use d20, but instead of d20 + mods vs. DC, it would have to be Skill value + mods vs d20 roll under. But WotC wanted a fully unified task resolution system so here we are.

Hot take but I don't think it really matters much.

The problem with DnD is, and always has been, the scaling. Skill based games like Savage Worlds (and I assume CoC) don't have the problem of constantly inflating numbers. For an easier example, HP. SW doesn't have many ways to increase max HP, and even then you rarely go above a 6 (from a starting point of 3). A PC having 10hp is fine, but when he has 100hp, then you run into problems where a guy with a dagger can never kill anybody unless he stands there stabbing for five minutes of game time.

In skill terms. If talking that bouncer into letting enter was a dc12 at any level, then it would make sense. The problem is it's trivial for a mid level player to have +12 to the roll.

This is problem I've had with my PF2 campaign. @Ghostse plan of PF2 killteam seems to working for the final leg. It doesn't help the rogue can't fail to lockpick any door, simply because RAW the stupid DC treadmil doesn't account for players that are through.


I've been doing prep for future campaigns. One idea I had was to make a setting like Dinotopia. I don't know if dinosaurs would talk like this setting, but having them as beasts of burden all over the place could be a fun twist on the usual medieval fantasy tropes. It could also make low level vermin and undead adventures more fun too. Instead of the usual bears, wolves, rats, and skeletons, I'm thinking small dinosaurs, giant insects, and zombie dinosaurs could work, even if they have the same or similar stat blocks. ...or it could be really dumb and I shouldn't do it. Not sure.

I'm also tempted to go the other direction and go all in on dragons, orcs, and other elemental DnD stuff.

I guess that explains it, but still seems incredibly fucking weird.

Yes, but also no.

If it's true that DnD is basically done. FLGS are no longer allowing games to played there, and said shops are switching to gunpla and funko pops in the wake of Hasbro/WotCs collapse, it makes sense. I didn't think it would be this quick or abrupt though. Like others said, I've not looked for dice in a while.

I could also talk about how FLGS are losing business in the long run by eliminating the third space and putting that burden on customers, but I don't know if that's something people here want to discuss.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

My cousin works at a FLGS in a mid size town in a rural state and he says "our entire business is kept afloat by MtG and Pokemon, everything else is just a niche interest these days."

 

[p1138]

Yes, but also no.

If it's true that DnD is basically done. FLGS are no longer allowing games to played there, and said shops are switching to gunpla and funko pops in the wake of Hasbro/WotCs collapse, it makes sense. I didn't think it would be this quick or abrupt though. Like others said, I've not looked for dice in a while.

I could also talk about how FLGS are losing business in the long run by eliminating the third space and putting that burden on customers, but I don't know if that's something people here want to discuss.

Done yes, and causing a rapid shift in the UK maybe, but not everywhere. At least in parts of the US, there's still other games that do get played on occasion(we've got a different problem it seems here, where many stores will happily jump on the card bandwagon and try to schedule an event for a different game to fill the shop every night of the week pushing everyone else out but keeping tables full, but that's an entirely different issue). But at the same time those card focused shops will still usually have basic shit like dice on hand.

edit: Also the gunpla thing would be an obvious play by Bandai to get their product into stores making it an easier "in" for their skirmish game that I guess is now coming in 2026, and there's also obvious overlap from just the model kit building perspective. The funko pops? I've got no idea, that shit is and always has been slop to I guess draw in the annoying big bang theory fan types.

 

[ZMOT]

The fact that the challenges in front of the player scale exactly with the player at all times in all things is incredibly immersion breaking, as it only highlights that, yes, this universe literally DOES revolve around you. You will never encounter a high level threat at a low level or a low level threat at a high level, so you can always just rest assured that with proper resource conservation, you are always equipped to manage your task marginally, but it will never be a cakewalk either.

pf2 leans more towards game than simulation, if I want the latter I can always go back to 3.pf cheese or whatever 5e considers encounter math. at the same time for the former I can just run it through an encounter builder and the numbers will roughly check out.

besides, odds are usually scaling anyway, what really makes the difference are the tools at your disposal, but there are are always way to fuck up a party (especially below level 3 where a level 5 boss can easily oneshot chars while they'll whiff all their attacks, more so casters). and even when the numbers don't seem to change much at a closer look, they're still getting bigger which is more or less the only thing people care about. no lvl1 party will be able to deal with a tarrasque tho.

town guard being able to handle any party might not make much sense in "world logic", but it also curbstomps murderhobo shit that wouldn't either, and again saves me the time to turn it into another sideplot thread. but I could do the same in most systems if I wanted to. different systems for different occasions. most kings would be uneasy with people running around that can kill demigods and shit, so the logic is always stretched in "heroic" games, less in older editions or going full mudcore.

That being said, I've found playing with alignment to be difficult unless everyone is on the same page, especially when it comes to alignment shifts because some people will be very passionate about why X action wasn't immoral in their eyes, or will try and come up with wild justifications why certain actions can still be considered within their alignment. Or you have people that want to be special and say they are too deep and complex and can't simply be boxed into the 9 alignments therefore they should be allowed to act out every now and then for free.

there'll always be a god to strike them down - whatever they've written on their sheet or not. it tends keep new players from being little shits tho. the other solution is make the world reflect the players, if they want noblebright it's easy, if they want to be 100% CN retards everyone else will react in kind.

 

[robobobo]

I like it how you can marginally connect your physical blow and do max damage (absent a crit) or connect by a country mile and do minimum damage (absent a crit) OR you can crit for near minimum damage (min crit damage should START at max non-crit damage by definition). I like standardizing a crit blow at 1.5*max non-crit damage and taking the chance out of a crit. A crit literally IS BEST CASE SCENARIO. Also, the damage modifier might increase min damage by 400% while increasing max damage by 66.6% (I randomly chose 1D6 vs 1D6 +4 for this). I also generally house rule a "grazing blow" (half damage) or *partial success* for the minimum level of success (to the number success, roll one less and you would have failed).

I do enjoy the Pf2e dynamic of the fact that your skill level will EITHER allow for a crit success OR a crit failure. If you need to roll a 10 or less to succeed, you might get a crit success. If you need to roll an 11 or more, you might get a crit fail. There is no scenario where *both* options are on the table and there are no scenarios where *neither* option is on the table.

Skill-based systems are usually better about this. Shadowrun, FFG Star Wars, SW, WoD, even 1990s TSR Alternity, a better roll to hit directly translates to more damage. Having the damage roll be completely random and untethered to the attack save for a crit is pretty uniquely tied to D&D and its spinoffs.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Hot take but I don't think it really matters much.

The problem with DnD is, and always has been, the scaling. Skill based games like Savage Worlds (and I assume CoC) don't have the problem of constantly inflating numbers. For an easier example, HP. SW doesn't have many ways to increase max HP, and even then you rarely go above a 6 (from a starting point of 3). A PC having 10hp is fine, but when he has 100hp, then you run into problems where a guy with a dagger can never kill anybody unless he stands there stabbing for five minutes of game time.

In skill terms. If talking that bouncer into letting enter was a dc12 at any level, then it would make sense. The problem is it's trivial for a mid level player to have +12 to the roll.

This is problem I've had with my PF2 campaign. @Ghostse plan of PF2 killteam seems to working for the final leg. It doesn't help the rogue can't fail to lockpick any door, simply because RAW the stupid DC treadmil doesn't account for players that are through.

Right, I should have been a little more descriptive instead of going for the short and pithy reply. In my defense, I shouldn't check the farms while on work meetings.

Anyway, the premise in the Skill + Mod vs. d20, roll low is that it would also get the scaling under control. Combat scaling makes some sense in the case of D&D since 3e because the player characters are supposed to be larger-than-life by default and therefore be able to fight monsters that would eviscerate entire crowds of peasants, but they're not Chinese Cultivation Fiction-tier overpowered so more mundane tasks can still be challenging. So while the attack bonus can keep climbing up to the stratosphere because it's cool to kill dragons, skills can go from 1 to 20. A task that a novice (skill 6) can complete with 30% success rate can be completed by an expert (skill 18, fuck you emoji parser) at 90% success. And if the task is easy and has a +6 bonus the expert autopasses every time.

Something like that also gets rid of those "I'm the world expert at making sandwiches but a low roll means I'm serving the king two slices of stale bread with water between them" moments.

I like it how you can marginally connect your physical blow and do max damage (absent a crit) or connect by a country mile and do minimum damage (absent a crit) OR you can crit for near minimum damage (min crit damage should START at max non-crit damage by definition). I like standardizing a crit blow at 1.5*max non-crit damage and taking the chance out of a crit. A crit literally IS BEST CASE SCENARIO. Also, the damage modifier might increase min damage by 400% while increasing max damage by 66.6% (I randomly chose 1D6 vs 1D6 +4 for this). I also generally house rule a "grazing blow" (half damage) or *partial success* for the minimum level of success (to the number success, roll one less and you would have failed).

Yeah, one of the first house rules we implemented when we started playing 5e was that critical hits maximize your damage, and then you get to roll again (alongside all your damage bonuses).

 

[Rick Nekieta]

One mechanism that can be used to reduce the likelihood of an extreme Poe's law moment (an expert botched an entry level task) or an extreme According To Hoyle moment (a person who never saw a computer before just hacked the Pentagon) is to double the bonus, double the dice rolled and double the DC. Triple, quadruple, quintiple, whatever. Let's see what this looks like in practice. This preserves similar numbers when the odds of success and failure are 50/50, but as the odds of success drop significantly on both long shot successes and long shot failures. It upends the "every roll has a 10% chance of an extreme upset in one direction or the other" mechanic. So instead of 1D20 +5 vs DC 10, you'd do 2D20 + 10 vs DC 20. or 3D20 + 15 vs DC 30. Just understand it eliminates outliers in BOTH directions.

If you are designing from scratch, note that the multi-die mechanic trends towards the center. If you are adjusting a single die system, you can simply make it a multi-die system by multiplying both sides of the dynamic.

 

[Judge Dredd]

90% success.

Something like that also gets rid of those "I'm the world expert at making sandwiches but a low roll means I'm serving the king two slices of stale bread with water between them" moments.

I might be retarded. How does that prevent it? There's still the 1-in-10 chance of making a mistake.

Skill-based systems are usually better about this. Shadowrun, FFG Star Wars, SW, WoD, even 1990s TSR Alternity, a better roll to hit directly translates to more damage. Having the damage roll be completely random and untethered to the attack save for a crit is pretty uniquely tied to D&D and its spinoffs.

This is why I'm interested in giving Nimble a serious go beyond a simple one shot. In that game you just roll damage, with a nat 1 being a miss, and nat max ignores armour and explodes. It adds strategy to choosing weapons. But more importantly it avoids all the problems mentioned.


Unrelated. A bunch of culture war YouTubers have popped up in the recommendations complaining about the 2025 starter set. That the cover features a they/them barbarian carrying a box of stuff instead of adventurers doing cool shit, and the character creator has cards so you can mix and match characters and clothing. I don't know how true any of this is.

Supposedly it features a sequel version of Keep on the Borderlands set many years after the original. One YouTuber I gave a listen complained that it was rewriting Gygax as problematic, and speculated that given the state of WotC and Hasbro, this might be the last physical DnD book produced.

Despite being shit, I'm kinda tempted by it. I wouldn't pay much for it, but I like Keep on the Borderlands, and having beginner guides to running wilderness exploration could be good.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

I might be retarded. How does that prevent it? There's still the 1-in-10 chance of making a mistake.

He is assessing a DC 0 task, vs 18 skill with a +6 modifier. It is impossible to roll a 24 on a D20. The rule, whether of house origin or game origin, gives a +6 bonus when an expert is doing an easy task, per the text he provided.

 

[The Ugly One]

D&D's skill system has so little connection with combat that I think it would be easier to just wholesale use a different game's system than try to make d20 not be shit for skills.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I might be retarded. How does that prevent it? There's still the 1-in-10 chance of making a mistake.

Traditionally, percentile systems (which is what d20 roll under effectively is, just with 5% steps instead of 1%) give you bonuses to easy and medium tasks, and you roll against base percentile for hard tasks. Some do extra-hard tasks with penalties. Some go for fixed bonuses (40%/+8 for Easy, 20%/+4 for Medium), others go for multiplication (3x skill for Easy tasks, 2x skill for Medium tasks), but the final outcome is the same: unless you're operating with some kind of fumble rule, a character with a modified skill of 100+% (or 20+ in our case) automatically passes the check. Which in practice means most characters with reasonable training on a given skill (anything past 50%) won't have to make any kind of check for the kind of mundane task they're proficient with.

D&D's skill system has so little connection with combat that I think it would be easier to just wholesale use a different game's system than try to make d20 not be shit for skills.

Probably, yep. And then 5e would finally have a skill system that allows you to improve your skills without having to up your stats or burn feats.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

I have to jet on an errand to a store that closes in 25 minutes, but I just want to chime in with the observation that D and D 5e has no scholastic or lore based skills that would inform players about the hazards of the world around them. In RAW, everything in the Monster Manual is for the GM's eyes only and the player operating on the principle that they know the creature's basic abilities is considered "metagaming" according to some complainers. While there is a general Religion or History or Nature skill, there is no studied lore of actual hazards and no way for a player to gain some degree of scholarship at the expense of other features. Major fucking design fail.

 

[AnOminous]

I might be retarded. How does that prevent it? There's still the 1-in-10 chance of making a mistake.

I think that's somewhat high for a lot of tasks but I'm okay with some situation where even if you're medieval Gordon Ramsay, you could serve the king a fancy ass grilled cheese that was so abominably bad you offended him because you have never made peasant food before and didn't know he prefers it that way.

In RAW, everything in the Monster Manual is for the GM's eyes only and the player operating on the principle that they know the creature's basic abilities is considered "metagaming" according to some complainers.

The problem with that is like if you had my core group, everyone in it also GMed for other groups at least sometimes, and we'd occasionally swap players for one-shots and other things like that. Usually for things like you have to have a situation where an NPC knows something or has secret motives, but is also important enough the GM can't just spend time doing PC shit or play it like Generic Shopkeeper #12.

Our general rule was players couldn't consult GM materials DURING PLAY, but everyone was also autists with an encyclopedic memory of details. I generally would just tolerate the fact we were going to have lore-aware PCs because pretending they knew nothing about the world they lived in was too silly, and even outright metagaming if it didn't wreck the flow.

So spending an hour doing Monte Carlo simulations on a scientific calculator for the next action, no. But "hey I'll wait on my initiative so you can land your saving throw penalty debuff on the ogre and then I'll swing Vorpy" would be fine.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I have to jet on an errand to a store that closes in 25 minutes, but I just want to chime in with the observation that D and D 5e has no scholastic or lore based skills that would inform players about the hazards of the world around them. In RAW, everything in the Monster Manual is for the GM's eyes only and the player operating on the principle that they know the creature's basic abilities is considered "metagaming" according to some complainers. While there is a general Religion or History or Nature skill, there is no studied lore of actual hazards and no way for a player to gain some degree of scholarship at the expense of other features. Major fucking design fail.

5e didn't expect the players to ask questions or make plans, they expected players to walk into a pack of monsters, fight the pack of monsters, then move on to the next pack of monsters.

The fact so few enemies in the base Monster Manual have properly nasty attacks or abilities, compared to AD&D and BECMI, bears this out to me. Combined with 5e's infamously slow combat (my groups always went through turns quickly, but apparently we're the exception), nobody wants to have to deal with being paralyzed or otherwise debuffed, so the monsters are designed around being damage races with the occasional minor twist for flavor.

 

[p1138]

5e didn't expect the players to ask questions or make plans, they expected players to walk into a pack of monsters, fight the pack of monsters, then move on to the next pack of monsters.

The fact so few enemies in the base Monster Manual have properly nasty attacks or abilities, compared to AD&D and BECMI, bears this out to me. Combined with 5e's infamously slow combat (my groups always went through turns quickly, but apparently we're the exception), nobody wants to have to deal with being paralyzed or otherwise debuffed, so the monsters are designed around being damage races with the occasional minor twist for flavor.

While that is true, people have bitched about players "metagaming" knowledge of shit like vampires getting paralyzed with a stake through the heart(really, most shit is vulnerable to a stake through the heart), or trolls needing to be hit with fire or acid to stop their regeneration, or other basic shit. Even if the system had skills for players to know about monsters without having to try and use nature/arcana/religion/survival for everything(which barely even work for that as written) you wouldn't even have anyone question knowing some shit like that in another system because it's such basic lore anyone would have heard about it as a folktale in the village at some point and barely less obvious than using bludgeoning weapons instead of piercing weapons against a skeleton. The 5e "community"(if it can really be called that) is filled with a bunch of morons who don't actually know what the hell they want out of a ttrpg, with the game itself having nothing interesting for people who want more as it is effectively just another basic edition and same goes with the 2024 version.

 

[The Ugly One]

Probably, yep. And then 5e would finally have a skill system that allows you to improve your skills without having to up your stats or burn feats.

I wasn't kidding earlier when I said just use Call of Cthulhu. It's simple.

Your skills range from 0 to 100. A normal check is roll-under, a hard is half that, and an extreme is a quarter that. So if we did that in D&D, the Barbarian would have an Athletics of 75/37/18, while the Wizard has an Athletics of 15/7/3. You're trying to shoulder-bash a door? DM just says "Make a Normal Athletics check." And if you get the Extreme result, he adds some bonus (monsters on the other side are surprised for a round)...or not!

One reason I like it is there's no trouble setting a DC. Everything is Normal, Hard, or Extreme, and it is mathematically impossible to have better than a 50% chance of a Hard task, or 25% on Extreme. So if I say a lock is Hard, it's got a high chance of failure, period, whereas in D&D, a lock with a DC of 15 is trivial if the rogue has +18 on his check. Becuase no, the wizard isn't going to try to pick the lock.

 

[Rick Nekieta]

One good metaprinciple that I encourage in all GMs and can apply to any system is, if it is easy to do so, allow any lateral adjustment the player wants. For example, you get +1 or +2 for lore rolls in a certain subset at an expense of -1 or 2 in another subset. Any reasonable, small lateral trade that distinguishes the player from the general archetype is always good by my estimation. The only hazard/counterargument is that this can NOT be offered to complete min/maxxers who are only going to specialize in the task at hand and will try to stack this multiple times. Set a reasonable limit on customizations. On the other hand, being the specialist FOR the nuanced case might explain why they were chosen over similarly powered colleagues. You're slightly more knowledgable than the average fighter, but you always have to roll 2D20 when attacking and if one of them is a 1, that is your result, drastically increasing chances of a fail and slightly diminishing the average roll. You are slightly less effective than the average fighter at combat, but this is reflected in a bonus to scholastic pursuits. I like lateral house customization if it is limited in scope. You also need high trust players that aren't out to exploit.