One of the reasons I don’t really like 1d20+stuff. Just as likely to get the best possible outcome as the worst.

Is there a name for this trope of cramming really wacky, difficult, high spotlight, stuff into a game like DND that doesn’t especially support it?

I usually feel bad because I want to encourage creativity, but I also don’t want this guy to have 80% of the table attention while Bob the Fighter and Joy the Rogue are playing by the numbers.

Reminds me of the “Last Call Cats” art set that I really like.

Not finding the original but here they are in coaster form https://arnamiller.com/products/drunk-cat-coasters

And DMs, if you want to surprise people, do it with plot and stakes, not constant item ambushes.

A good surprise has foreshadowing so the players go “ooh that makes sense. We should have thought of that”. If all the corpses in the room look like they died of drowning and there’s scratches on the door, it’s not a total surprise if there’s a trap that locks the door and fills the room with water.

I think it’s the kind of thing new groups discover and then usually realize it sucks. So it’ll keep coming up as long as new players are entering the hobby.

Like every group has done the “what if we make characters based on ourselves??” trope.

Riddles are often lateral thinking or other cleverness, so they seem more finesse than power. But yes, I wrote “dexterity” when I meant “Wits”.

One of the things I liked about the Chronicles of Darkness system is it cleared this up nicely. Stats were in a 3x3 grid.

One axis was physical, mental, social

The other was Power, Finesse, Resistance.

Want to shove something? Physical + Power. That’s strength.

Want to figure out a riddle? Mental + Finesse. That’s Dexterity Wits. (Edit: wrote dexterity originally, meant Wits)

Command attention? Social + Power. That’s the Presence stat.

Lie and misdirect? Social + Finesse. Stat was called Manipulation.

Now you can have a character that’s commanding without also being a natural liar and flirt. DND doesn’t help let you do that because the concepts are bundled together into a single stat.

(You could invest separately into like Expression for making speeches and Deception for lying, of course)

Humans are rated 1 to 5, where a 5 is the peak of human capability. Presence 5 is like AAA movie stars and great leaders.

Of course, if you add supernaturals to your game a starting chump vampire could have seven presence if they take Majesty as their power, and become a nearly irresistible magnet of attention.

As GM, I would ask the party for their standard operating procedure and then fast forward until something interesting happened. I really don’t like the “well you didn’t explicitly say you were checking this tile so you set off the trap” mode .

Kind of. You only get one extra attack for most classes (and most games, since a minority reach level 11 and also have a class with third attack).

It would be interesting if con only got you an HP bonus at first, fifth, and sometimes 11th level.

DND stats are weird. Only con gets more impactful as you level. Imagine if strength was +damage and carry per level. 18 strength at first level is +3 damage, but fourth level is +12. That might be the path to reinventing Pathfinder, though.

I’ll also say, playing games that don’t have the six stats, or even character attributes at all was really refreshing. Just skills worked fine.

Bob presumably has been using player knowledge to inform character decisions in a way the group doesn’t like.

For example, illusions may require a wisdom check to realize they’re not real. When Bob rolls openly on the table and gets a 1, he decides as a player that his character is going to treat the lava monsters as illusions. If he instead had to roll in the opaque jar, he as a player would be less certain about if they’re illusions or real.

And that’s where the metagaming comes into play, with the player finding alternative ways to be able to act on what they believe was a lie, even though their character believes something to be a truth.

My favorite solution to this comes from Fate’s compels. In short, you bribe the player with the equivalent of Inspiration for buying in.

So, yeah, maybe the NPC is lying, but I can invoke their “Very Trustworthy” aspect, because the dice said they’re coming off as very trustworthy, and you get a nice shiny fate point so long as you go along with it.

It can channels the metagamer’s desire to win in a more story friendly direction.

Maybe! Most commoners only have like 1 hit die, so their explosions would be small.

I also intended only for the initially marked people to explode, but I realize I wrote it so it reads like “anyone initially marked or anyone hit by the explosion explodes”. The latter might be a “Greater Immolation” variant, where the explosions mark victims for subsequent explosions.

I don’t think D&D will ever really change much. There are people that really like its quirks, and there’d be a backlash from people if they made large changes. People still repeat largely nonsense complaints about 4e, sometimes while trying to patch 5e with ideas that 4e did.

Unfortunately, some people like it without ever trying anything else. D&D is a mega behemoth. I personally think it’s more popular than it should be, given how many people I’ve talked to that play it only with a generous heaping of house rules and practices that transform it into something else.

One of the things I like from Fate is the concept of Conceding. It gives players the option to give up.

So when you have bad rolls or the situation is going real bad, you can concede. You all decide what that looks like. You don’t get whatever you wanted in the conflict, but you decide if that means you’re just left for dead, or you fall into the river and are swept away, or what. You get one or more fate points, too. Because this is written into the rules, it doesn’t feel as cheaty as it would in DND for a player to say “I don’t think we can win this. Can we say we escape somehow?”

You can always choose to fight to the bitter end, but then you don’t really have anyone to blame but yourself.

DND is an old game and it’s just missing whole concepts like this that I think would make a better experience.

I feel like I would never burn edge, but hold onto it like Elixirs in final fantasy. (Unless you can restore it somehow)

It depends on the system and GM style.

I usually would tell players the target number. Their character would typically have a sense of how hard something is, more so than a desk job nerd sitting comfortably at home trying to imagine climbing a brick wall. If I say climbing the wall is difficult enough they have slim odds, they can then make an informed choice.

DND is also largely missing meta game currency, degree of success, and succeed at a cost. All of those change how the game works, and make hidden rolls less appealing.

For stuff like “there’s a hidden trap” or “they’re lying to you”, you don’t want players to enter into meta game “I know there’s something here so I’m going to be extra cautious” mode. I often find a hazard they can see and need to deal with is better than a hidden surprise. Like, all those black tiles shoot negative energy out when stepped on. And also a lot of Zombies just woke up and are shambling towards the tiles floor. Enjoy!

Personally I like how games like Fate you can mechanically reward players for going along with it. DND almost has that with Inspiration, but it’s very under baked.

DND is also especially loosey-goosey about target numbers aside from physical combat defenses and damage.

Another system might have a more explicit “To bully your way past someone, roll your provoke vs their will” combined with “the bouncer’s will score is 2”. DND has vague rules no one uses for “asking a favor”.

Sorry for a long unfocused answer. Happy to talk about whatever if you have questions

That’s a valid mode of play, but I feel like if we’re going to have agreed upon rules we should follow them, and not unilaterally change them. If the rules say “you spot the trap on a roll of 10 or above”, the GM deciding you just don’t spot it because they say so can feel wrong. It can feel like cheating. We had an agreement, and they just broke it.

On the other hand, if in your session 0 you all agree that the GM may fudge things for more drama, then have at it.

On the third hand, I’ve done things like “the rules say X but I think that’s going to stink here. Anyone object to changing it?”.

The important thing is everyone gives informed consent.

One reason people may dislike secret rolls is you can’t be sure the GM isn’t just lying to you. Though if that’s the case, you should probably find a GM you trust.

On the other hand, I prefer systems where dice aren’t the sole arbiter. I want to be able to spend a fate point or inspiration, or succeed at a cost.

I hadn’t read about the new weapon masteries. I am shocked they didn’t make these limited per day powers. That’s usually how anything fun in DND goes- you can do this cool thing but only once or twice.