Quote from: soviet;677886Page 3:

Here’s another secret: You don’t actually have to set the DC before the player rolls the ability check. Decide whether the character succeeds based on the check result. You’ll probably find that your gut feeling (and the player’s) squares pretty well with the set DCs presented here. A number below 10 is never going to make it unless the task is trivially simple. A number in the low teens is good enough for an easy task. A number in the high teens will succeed at a moderate task. And when a player rolls a 20 or better, there’s usually little question that the character succeeds.
Your players will never know.

This is just using a predetermined range of success. It's still before the roll, not after the roll. All it does is remove DC from detailed accounting of system mechanics and its modifiers and just rolls the equivalent of percentile success.

The language is pretty clear: below 10 is under 45% or less, low teens is under 75% but higher than 50%, high teens is under 95% but higher than 75%, and 20+ (roll a 20 and have situational benefits) is success. There is no adjusting after the fact, just the lines of demarcation are hazy because not every last jot and tittle is being processed. The DC is there before the roll, just the precision's resolution is fuzzier. (It does make borderline rolls problematic, but the GM made that resolution call for a reason, likely to speed things up.)

I really don't understand the point of this tangent. Strict demarcation v. loose demarcation of determining before the fact is not the same as determining after the fact. So what's the beef this time?

Quote from: The_Rooster;678613Instead, I had the party see the bandits from a good thousand feet away.

Do you know how far a thousand feet is?  Over three football fields.  The only way to see anything at that range is if they are standing in the middle of an open plain. Bandits don't attack in the middle of an open plain in broad daylight.  You certainly don't charge an unknown force from a thousand feet.

Your anecdote is less an indictment of 'random events' and more a description of 'not knowing what the hell you are doing'.

In other words, "Cool story, bro."

Quote from: StormBringer;678761Do you know how far a thousand feet is?  Over three football fields.  The only way to see anything at that range is if they are standing in the middle of an open plain. Bandits don't attack in the middle of an open plain in broad daylight.  You certainly don't charge an unknown force from a thousand feet.

Your anecdote is less an indictment of 'random events' and more a description of 'not knowing what the hell you are doing'.

In other words, "Cool story, bro."

This post is Pure Win.

Quote from: TristramEvans;678763This post is Pure Win.

:hatsoff:

Quote from: Sacrosanct;678552I'm not saying planning out every little detail in some non-linear style of game play.  I'm talking about when the PCs finally meet their arch-nemisis and you end up rolling a 1 or 2 on a saving throw to avoid paralyzation on the first round

I've done that. Resulted in one of the most memorable sessions in my 20+ years of playing.

More recently, there was a session where the PCs killed a major villain who was responsible for wiping out the priestess' village and killing her father. On a pair of lucky rolls, the PCs snuck into the room she was in and shot her in the back of the head before she even realized they were there. Anticlimactic? Not really. Fifty sessions later the players are still talking about how fucking awesome they were that day.

I have literally never seen a player say, "Oh no! We killed the red dragon in one shot!" The reaction is pretty much universally, "Fuck yeah! We killed that red dragon in one shot!"

Quote from: soviet;677886Here's another secret: You don't actually have to set the DC before the player rolls the ability check. Decide whether the character succeeds based on the check result. You'll probably find that your gut feeling (and the player's) squares pretty well with the set DCs presented here. A number below 10 is never going to make it unless the task is trivially simple. A number in the low teens is good enough for an easy task. A number in the high teens will succeed at a moderate task. And when a player rolls a 20 or better, there's usually little question that the character succeeds.
Your players will never know.

That should get cross-posted over in the "Worst Advice for a GM" thread.

I've actually spent months training players out of this mindset.

Player: "Oh no! I rolled a 2!"
Me: "Okay... what's the result?"
Player: "I rolled a 2!"
Me: "Right. Now add you skill."
Player: "18."
Me: "See, your character is actually pretty awesome and that's a success."

What's even tougher is convincing them that we don't need to roll on stuff that their superhuman characters are guaranteed to succeed at.

Quote from: Justin AlexanderWhat's even tougher is convincing them that we don't need to roll on stuff that their superhuman characters are guaranteed to succeed at.

FASERIP is a good antidote for that mindset.

Quote from: StormBringer;678761Do you know how far a thousand feet is?

Yes.

Quote from: StormBringer;678761The only way to see anything at that range is if they are standing in the middle of an open plain.

It was.

Quote from: StormBringer;678761Bandits don't attack in the middle of an open plain in broad daylight.

You're a professional bandit?

They are farmers forced from their lands and resorting to desperate measures just to feed themselves. They were on the road waiting for a weak caravan to pass. The caravan wasn't anything more than food from three neighbouring farms that gave the responsibility of selling their excess in the town to this one man and his family.

So yes. Bandits do attack in the middle of a plain in broad daylight.

Quote from: StormBringer;678761You certainly don't charge an unknown force from a thousand feet.

By the time the PC's took that first pot-shot and downed one of the bandit's number, they were 320 feet away. The bandits were surprised but could see the party was only five people, not on horseback and there were six of them all on horses. So they charged in anger. They were not military geniuses. They did not stop and make a tactical assessment and consult their battlemaster.

I'm sure in your world everyone is a tactics and strategy god, even lowly commoners.

Quote from: StormBringer;678761Your anecdote is less an indictment of 'random events' and more a description of 'not knowing what the hell you are doing'.

The funny thing is that this perfectly describes exactly what you just did. You knew virtually nothing about the situation and yet decided to judge it and then insult me. Keep posting ignorant, stupid shit. It makes me look good.

Quote from: StormBringer;678761Do you know how far a thousand feet is?  Over three football fields.  The only way to see anything at that range is if they are standing in the middle of an open plain. Bandits don't attack in the middle of an open plain in broad daylight.  You certainly don't charge an unknown force from a thousand feet.

Your anecdote is less an indictment of 'random events' and more a description of 'not knowing what the hell you are doing'.

In other words, "Cool story, bro."

Good lord even in wooded hills you can wind up with sight lines of two miles or more. Certainly not in all directions and its constantly changes as you move through the terrain. But it more than plausible and is something I have first hand experience of considering the number of times I drove or hiked through the Allegheny National Forest.

If anybody wants to get a sense of far you can see the next time you are driving and crest a ridge look as far as you can see up the road, then look at your odometer. When you hit that point look at the odometer again to see how far you driven. You will be surprised how far you can see details.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;678552I'm not saying planning out every little detail in some non-linear style of game play.  I'm talking about when the PCs finally meet their arch-nemisis and you end up rolling a 1 or 2 on a saving throw to avoid paralyzation on the first round

It's always fun when an npc like 'Saruman' immediately takes a dirt nap right after he tells the pc's they are doomed!

Quote from: Exploderwizard;678588The drama over gameplay thing is all about subversion of fair resolution to the rule of cool. For example aranging something normally resolved via standard method to taste because it would "create more tension" or "be better for the story".

This is antithetical to emergent gameplay. If what you enjoy is being surprised/ finding out what happens next, then engineering extra tension doesn't make sense.

Nothing is better than a good shot of tension that emerges through natural play without any nudging to get it there. It happens less often but it is far more memorable when it happens.

If the story is more important than organically finding out what happens next and the group desires that, then there isn't any badwrong fun happening.

I think the reason I have trouble relating at all to this concept is that when I gm I don't actually think about 'story' at all. I never have thoughts of 'what is good or bad' for the story, and It would not occur to me to change an event for that purpose. I just don't think that way.

I just have npc's and event do what seems to fit them at the time.

If I judged a door bashing roll on the fly, it has nothing to do with caring if the door is bashed. It is about if the attempt to bash is plausible.

Quote from: TristramEvans;678763This post is Pure Win.

Especially when you figure earlier in this thread he just got done saying what a worthless feat Archery Mastery is because (one of the reasons) you'll never really run into a situation where you're using a long bow at a far enough range to enforce disadvantage.

Between that and this changing stories about being banned, the more he posts the more contradictions he has.  I'm almost convinced he's just making stuff up at this point to get a reaction since his stories keep changing.

Quote from: Bill;678828It's always fun when an npc like 'Saruman' immediately takes a dirt nap right after he tells the pc's they are doomed!

It does make for memorable sessions.  The funny thing is all those people who hate AD&D because of Save or Die (suck)?  You never hear them complain when the same rules apply to the monsters.

Quote from: The_Rooster;678805You're a professional bandit?

Hee. :rotfl:

Quote from: Sacrosanct;678854It does make for memorable sessions.  The funny thing is all those people who hate AD&D because of Save or Die (suck)?  You never hear them complain when the same rules apply to the monsters.

Most players love to 'gank' npc enemies.

One of the most fun moments in a dnd game I played in ever was when the pc's beat the snot out of an npc that was essentially a pope or religious church leader. This powerful npc ended up trying to flee out a window and perished in a humilating manner hanging halfway out the window.

It was awesome, becaue the gm did not throw up roadblocks to 'save' this npc.