D&D (2024) Do you plan to adopt D&D5.5One2024Redux?

Oofta said:

First, it was an attempt at humor. Oh well.

Click to expand...

A very poor one, considering how often you've been insulting by saying that our ideas are ridiculous and illogical.

Oofta said:

Second, you flat out told me that I am "reading the backgrounds wrong." Then you bring in a background we have never previously discussed that's not even relevant to any of the discussions up to this point. I mean, I also disagree that it proves what you think it proves because it literally states a 50% percentage chance to find someone who admires you. Why would someone admire you if they've never heard of you? In some cases there's a 0 percent chance anyone admires you because no one knows who you are.

Click to expand...

Clearly this shows you don't actually get what I mean, because I wasn't showing you the athlete to prove anything, but to show you how backgrounds are written.

The folk hero background doesn't say "there's a 50% chance that someone will recognize you from your folk heroing days" or "while you're within 100 miles of your home town, commoners will help you out." The sailor background doesn't say "you must have served on the ship you're trying to hitch a ride on." The criminal background doesn't say "name the messengers who you can call on to carry a message to your contact" or "you can only get in touch with your criminal contact via your messengers."

I'm all in on Tales of the Valiant, will have a good campaign under my belt with that version by the time D&D 6 arrives and I can then give that one a spin. I do not foresee changing unless they do some really weird stuff with the new edition, given my track record of playing D&D continuously since 1981, only broken by the dark days of 4E when I switched to pathfinder 1E.

Vaalingrade said:

You've never happened to know something important to a situation you run into?

Click to expand...

Once in a rare while, yes.

Every time? Very much no.

And it's the "every time" piece we're talking about here. Every village you go to, no matter where it is, you're known as a folk hero. Every place you visit, you know a criminal contact there. Every port you're in you can get free passage on a ship.

And all because, by the rules, the NPCs have to do what your background tells them to do. There's no roll, no refusal option*, no by-RAW way for the DM to say no this doesn't work here.

* - unless the PC self-inflicts such by being an idiot.

Not a Decepticon said:

Em, is there supposed to be this empty space here? Like, seriously this is a screenshot from my screen of this post:
View attachment 360579
Or do you expect me to argue with empty space now?

You know what? I actually went and asked somewhere else people to explain to me the points I raised and got some decent, thought-provoking, informative replies. You've been just telling me to playtest it, as if I have time or opportunitty to do so as a forever DM with two campaigns. Your behavior has been very dismissive and condescending.

Click to expand...

You either have him blocked or he has you blocked. Yes, there is a large quote there. Everyone else can see it.

Faolyn said:

Ack-chullay, the spell gaseous form doesn't make you immune to being grappled either. Like how daylight doesn't actually producing vampire-harming daylight.

Spoiler: Gaseous Form

You transform a willing creature you touch, along with everything it's wearing and carrying, into a misty cloud for the duration. The spell ends if the creature drops to 0 hit points. An incorporeal creature isn't affected.

While in this form, the target's only method of movement is a flying speed of 10 feet. The target can enter and occupy the space of another creature. The target has resistance to nonmagical damage, and it has advantage on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution saving throws. The target can pass through small holes, narrow openings, and even mere cracks, though it treats liquids as though they were solid surfaces. The target can't fall and remains hovering in the air even when stunned or otherwise incapacitated.

While in the form of a misty cloud, the target can't talk or manipulate objects, and any objects it was carrying or holding can't be dropped, used, or otherwise interacted with. The target can't attack or cast spells.

So in gaseous form, you can't attack--meaning you can't grapple--but you'd at least have advantage on checks to get out of a grapple.

Click to expand...

Easy enough to interpret this as implying the reverse is also true: you can't grapple, thus you also can't be grappled.

That spell write-up falls woefully short on a few very obvious and commonly-seen points, however: how does someone in gaseous form interact with other things or beings that are also in gaseous form, or with high winds, or with poisonous or very smoky air? Also, will someone gaseous and incapacitated drift away on the breeze?

Faolyn said:

(I should point out that vampires in mist form aren't immune to being grappled or restrained either. Several air-type elementals aren't immune to being grappled--although there are some that aren't immune to being grappled but are immune to being restrained.)

At my table, we'd probably say "wow, that's dumb," and decide "grappling: yea or nay" as a group. If we were really on the ball, we might even remember to write it down on our list of house rules.

Click to expand...

Were it me I'd hope to catch this before play even starts, and rewrite the spell to include all these factors.

Faolyn said:

Because here's the thing: D&D has a ton of crunchy little rules that interact in weird ways. I could rewrite the gaseous form and wild walk spells to include a bit about being immune to the grappled and restrained conditions... and then go through all of the other spells and monsters and probably magic items as well, hope I got everything. And then do the same thing for every other aspect of D&D that may produce questionable results.

Click to expand...

Indeed. But isn't that what we could reasonably expect the designers to have already done?

Faolyn said:

At which point I might as well create a brand new game entirely wherein I could do all the spells and monsters exactly the way I want to.

Click to expand...

Indeed again, says he, speaking as someone who has done exactly this.

Faolyn said:

Or we could take each instance as it comes along in game instead of trying to head it off at the pass. Because you know what? The first time wind walk or gaseous form comes up in my game, it may actually be in a way wherein being grappled makes sense.

Click to expand...

And that could be an exception to your established default precedent, sure. Those happen fairly often - but they don't overturn the precedent.

Lanefan said:

And thus is well-written. If they were all this way this discussion need never have happened.

And that's a bridge too far. How would I, a random commoner in British Columbia, have any clue that the guy who just walked in is a folk hero back in France and because of this I have to give him shelter? (it does say "will" give shelter, not "may" or "might"; I have to do it)

Click to expand...

Actually, it doesn't say that at all.

It says that you can find a place to hide and rest among the commoners as long as you haven't shown yourself to be a danger (which, let's face it, will automatically disqualify at least half of adventurers right off the bat, since even carrying a weapon can easily make you seem too dangerous for many). the commoner will shield you from people who are looking for you but won't risk themselves in doing it.

It also--and I've only said this a hundred times--says absolutely nothing about them recognizing you as a folk hero. What they recognize is that you're not a highfalutin noble or snooty merchant or untrustworthy crook--they recognize you as one of them, a real salt of the earth type whom they can judge by the strength of your handshake. Stuff like that.

Anyway, to get this feature to work for you:

1. You have to look and act like a fairly non-dangerous person[1].
2. You have to be running from someone (which automatically makes you seem potentially more dangerous).
3. You have to then want to go hide in a commoner's house instead of any of a thousand other potential hiding places.

Then the commoner will tell you to go hide in the storm cellar.

But if the person who is chasing you actually tracks you to the commoner's house and then waves a sword in the commoner's face, threatens to arrest them, or stands in the streets and says that they're going to kill a random civilian every ten minutes until you come out, then the commoner is almost certainly going to try to save themselves by ratting you out.

-----

[1] Probably one of the few times to ignore that clause is if you're in a place where everyone hates the people who are chasing you to the point it doesn't matter how scary you look. Like, if the guards of the Evil Tyrant Usurper are chasing you, then probably the enemy of my enemy, right?

-----

People keep treating this background like its godmode or something, and it's really not.

Lanefan said:

Correct. And the farther afield you go from that village, the farther you have also left that background behind. You're a folk hero in your home village and the surrounding area and probably always will be - you've got free beer for life in the local pub - but what you did in your home village shouldn't make any difference to anything when you're in another village half a world away.

Click to expand...

Which is why the background doesn't say that people recognize you as a folk hero. It says, quite clearly, that they recognize you as a commoner.

You did something heroic in your home village (thus making you a folk hero). That's why you decided to go off and adventure now.

I once got recognised in a foreign country by someone I'd never met, and who'd never met me, and we had no interaction on the day, but he knew my brother, saw the resemblance, then bumped into my parents (who also don't know him) when he was back home and said 'hey you look like soviet's brother's parents, does soviet's brother have a brother? And if so was he in country X last week because if so I saw him.'

Just saying

Faolyn said:

Actually, it doesn't say that at all.

It says that you can find a place to hide and rest among the commoners as long as you haven't shown yourself to be a danger (which, let's face it, will automatically disqualify at least half of adventurers right off the bat, since even carrying a weapon can easily make you seem too dangerous for many). the commoner will shield you from people who are looking for you but won't risk themselves in doing it.

Click to expand...

if carrying a weapon is enough to disqualify you, then you might as well remove that feature... at a minimum you are squarely back in the 'DM may I' territory you so fight against

soviet said:

I once got recognised in a foreign country by someone I'd never met, and who'd never met me, and we had no interaction on the day, but he knew my brother, saw the resemblance, then bumped into my parents (who also don't know him) when he was back home and said 'hey you look like soviet's brother's parents, does soviet's brother have a brother? And if so was he in country X last week because if so I saw him.'

Just saying

Click to expand...

Same thing happened to my dad when he was in another country, where someone recognized his voice from a radio interview he did.

Faolyn said:

Same thing happened to my dad when he was in another country, where someone recognized his voice from a radio interview he did.

Click to expand...

Clearly we both have weak-ass permissive GMs!